a declaration of the commander in chief of the forces in scotland, and of the officers of the army under his command, in vindication of the liberties of the people, and the priviledges of parliament. scotland. army. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription b01499 of text r211296 in the english short title catalog (wing a844). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 b01499 wing a844 estc r211296 53298926 ocm 53298926 179722 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b01499) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179722) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2798:4) a declaration of the commander in chief of the forces in scotland, and of the officers of the army under his command, in vindication of the liberties of the people, and the priviledges of parliament. scotland. army. albemarle, george monck, duke of, 1608-1670. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by christopher higgins ..., edinburgh : 1659. caption title. initial letter. text in black letter. signed at foot: signed in the name and by the consent of the commander in chief and the officers of the army in scotland. william clarke, secretary. imperfect: creased, with slight loss of text. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. eng scotland -army -history -sources. scotland -history -1649-1660 -early works to 1800. great britain -history -commonwealth and protectorate, 1649-1660 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. b01499 r211296 (wing a844). civilwar no a declaration of the commander in chief of the forces in scotland, and of the officers of the army under his command, in vindication of the scotland. army 1659 520 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2008-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-09 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-11 megan marion sampled and proofread 2008-11 megan marion text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a declaration of the commander in chief of the forces in scotland , and of the officers of the army under his command , in vindication of the liberties of the people , and the priviledges of parliament . having , to the great grief of our hearts , been informed of a most unhappy difference lately fallen out betwixt the parliament and some officers of the army at london , which hath occasioned the displacing of sundry of the said officers ; and also the interruption of the members of parliament in the discharge of their duty , we therefore , having earnestly besought the lord to direct us in this great and weighty affair , wherein the liberty and peace of these nations , and the interest of the godly and faithfull therein is so nearly concerned , do finde it our duty to declare , and we do hereby declare , that we shall use our christian endeavours to the utmost for the begetting of a right understanding and reconciliation betwixt the parliament and the said officers of the army . and we do also declare , that we shall , through the strength of god , assert and maintain the freedom and priviledges of the present parliament , the so often , and lately acknowledged supream authority of these nations , and not suffer the members thereof to be illegally interrupted or molested in the discharge of their duties ; and we do solemnly avow to all the world , that our only intention in doing this , is to preserve the rights of our country , and to protect and encourage all the godly and faithfull therein , according to our declaration to the churches , lately emitted and published ; and likewise to establish the peace of these nations , and the government of a free-state or commonwealth , to which we stand obliged by several vows and engagements , made before god and many witnesses : and as we have within us the testimony of sincere hearts and unbyassed consciences to encourage us in these our vndertakings , so we doubt not of the concurrent assistance of all the unprejudiced faithfull in the land , for whose sakes principally we are drawn forth to this engagement . and we therefore invite all our brethren of the army , and of the militia , and all others that professe love to god and his people , and to their own and their posterities liberties , to come and give us their chearful aid in this work , whereunto the lord hath called us , lest they be made a prey to the lusts of men , and then bewail the losse of this opportunity which god hath put into their hands . linlithgow , octob. 21. 1659. signed in the name and by the consent of the commander in chief and the officers of the army in scotland . william clarke , secretary . edinbvrgh , printed by christopher higgins , in harts close , over against the trone church , 1659. the speech of his grace james duke of queensberry his majesties high commissioner to the parliament. the 30 of may when adjourned to the 20 of june. queensberry, james douglas, duke of, 1662-1711. 1700 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a56876 wing q161 estc r216699 99828421 99828421 32848 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a56876) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 32848) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1857:12) the speech of his grace james duke of queensberry his majesties high commissioner to the parliament. the 30 of may when adjourned to the 20 of june. queensberry, james douglas, duke of, 1662-1711. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to the kings most excellent majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1700] reproduction of the original in the edinburgh university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng great britain -history -william and mary, 1689-1702 -early works to 1800. great britain -politics and government -1689-1702 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. 2008-09 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-11 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 megan marion sampled and proofread 2009-01 megan marion text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the speech of his grace james duke of queensberry , his majesties high commissioner to the parliament . the 30 of may when adjourned to the 20 of june . my lords and gentlemen , i am troubled with such a cold and hoarsness , that not being able to speak much , nor in a condition to stay any time here ; i shall therefore only tell you , that as i was ever firm and faithful to my king , so i was ever zealous for the honour and interest of my countrey : and at this time i hop'd to have done acceptable service to both . for i can boldly say , that i have power and instructions , for every thing that appear'd necessary or convenient for the good and advantage of the nation , as to their religion , property , liberty , trade , and particularly what could be of most solid use to our african and indian company . but several things have occurr'd , wherein i find my self obligd to consult his majesty , and so of necessity must adjourn for some days . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrem anderson , printer to the kings most excellent majesty , anne dom. 1700. act and intimation, anent this currant parliament. edinburgh, october 11. 1694. scotland. privy council. 1694 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05291 wing s1388 estc r226037 52528891 ocm 52528891 178911 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05291) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 178911) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2774:50) act and intimation, anent this currant parliament. edinburgh, october 11. 1694. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to their most excellent majesties, edinburgh : anno dom 1694. caption title. royal arms at head of text. signed: gilb. eliot cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-12 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 megan marion sampled and proofread 2009-01 megan marion text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion act and intimation , anent this currant parliament . edinburgh , october 11. 1694. the lords of their majesties privy council considering , that where the present currant parliament was by their majesties last proclamation thereanent , adjourned to the twenty fifth day of october instant : and his majesty being now abroad forth of his kingdoms , hath not as yet signified his pleasure , either by sending a commissioner for holding thereof at the said day , nor his royal order for adjourning the same to a further day : and seing that both by the nature of the high court of parliament , and by express acts of parliament , parliaments are currant , without the necessity of an express continuation untill they be dissolved by their majesties express warrand , whose sole prerogative it is to dissolve , as well as to call , hold , and prorogue the same . therefore the saids lords of their majesties privy council , in expectation of their majesties express orders , and to prevent the unnecessary trouble of the members , and other good subjects who may be concerned to repair to the meeting of parliament ; have thought fit to ordain intimation to be made , that all members of parliament be ready to meet and attend in this currant parliament , so soon as their majesties will and pleasure shall be signified to them for that effect : and that none may pretend ignorance , ordains these presents to be printed , and to be published at the mercat-cross of edinburgh by the lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds an● pursevants , and at the whole mercat-crosses of the remanent head-burghs of the several shires within this kingdom , by macers or messengers . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot cls. sti. concilii . god save king vvilliam and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to their most excellent majesties , anno dom. 1694. a proclamation for adjourning the parliament from the fifteenth of march instant, until the fifteenth of june next. scotland. privy council. 1694 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05624 wing s1818 estc r183490 52529289 ocm 52529289 179057 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05624) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179057) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:46) a proclamation for adjourning the parliament from the fifteenth of march instant, until the fifteenth of june next. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the successors of andrew anderson, printer to their most excellent majesties, edinburgh : anno dom. 1694. caption title. royal arms in ornamental border at head of text; initial letter. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the twelfth day of march, and of our reign the fifth year, 1694. signed: gilb. eliot, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation for adjourning the parliament from the fifteenth of march instant , until the fifteenth of june next . william and mary by the grace of god , king and queen of great-britain , france , and ireland , defenders of the faith. to our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers of our privy council , pursevants , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as , we with advice of the lords of our privy council , did by our proclamation of the date , the twenty six day of december one thousand six hundred and ninety three years , adjourn the current parliament of this our antient kingdom of scotland , from the ninth day of january last by past , to the fifteenth day of march. and we considering , that the present state of our affairs in this our antient kingdom , doth not require that the members of our said parliament should meet upon the foresaid day . and we being unwilling , that they should be put to any trouble , that may be dispensed with ; do therefore with advice of the saids lords of our privy council , hereby adjourn our said current parliament until the fifteenth day of june next to come : hereby requiring all the members of our parliament to attend that day , in the usual way and under the certifications contained in the several acts of parliament madethereanent . our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly , and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and to the mercat-crosses of the remanent head-burghs of the several shires of this our antient kingdom , and there by open proclamation , make intimation of the adjourning of our parliament of this kingdom , from the said fifteenth day of march insant , to the said fifteenth day of june next to come . and ordains these presents to be printed . given under our signet at edinburgh , the twelfth day of march , and of our reign the fifth year , 1694 . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . elliot cls. sti. concilii . god save king william and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the successors of andrew anderson , printer to their most excellent majcesties , anno dom. 1694. a proclamation, continuing the adjournment of the current parliament, from the first thursday of april next, to the twenty ninth of that moneth, 1686. scotland. privy council. 1686 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05553 wing s1732 estc r183428 52612310 ocm 52612310 179615 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05553) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179615) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2794:9) a proclamation, continuing the adjournment of the current parliament, from the first thursday of april next, to the twenty ninth of that moneth, 1686. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1686. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. dated at end: given under our signet at edinburgh, the twentieth two day of march, 1686. and of our reign the second year. signed: colin mckenzie cls. sti. concilii. imperfect: stained with slight loss of text. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-09 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-09 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation , continuing the adjournment of the current parliament , from the first thursday of april next , to the twenty ninth of that moneth , 1686. iames by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith : to our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers of our privy council , pursevants , or messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally specially constitute , greeting : whereas by our proclamation of the date , the twenty first day of september last , we thought fit to continue the adjournment of the current parliament of this our ancient kingdom , to the first thursday of april next ensuing the date of these presents . and seing our service requires the further adjournment thereof , for some weeks longer ; vve , therefore with advice of our privy council , do hereby continue the adjournment of our said current parliament , from the said first thursday of april next ensuing , to the twenty ninth day of that moneth . and to the effect our royal pleasure in the premisses may be known , our vvill is , and vve charge you strictly , and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat cross of edinburgh , and all the other mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the shires of this kingdom , and other places needful , and there in our royal name and authority , by open proclamation make publication of the continuation of the adjournment of our said current parliament , from the said first thursday , to the said twenty-ninth day of april next ensuing the date of these presents : requiring hereby all the lords spiritual and temporal , the commissioners from the several shires , and those from our royal burrows , to meet that day in the usual way , under the accustomed certifications : and vve ordain these presents to be printed . given under our signet at edinburgh , the twentieth two day of march , 1686. and of o●● reign the second year . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . colin m ckenzie cli. sti. concilii . edinburgh . printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his 〈…〉 a proclamation for adjourning the parliament to the twenty sixth of august next. scotland. privy council. 1696 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05627 wing s1821 estc r183492 52529291 ocm 52529291 179059 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05627) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179059) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:48) a proclamation for adjourning the parliament to the twenty sixth of august next. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1694-1702 : william ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to the kings most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1696. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh the thirtieth day of june, and of our reign the eighth year, 1696. signed: gilb. eliot, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion wr diev et mon droit honi soit qui mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation for adjourning the parliament to the twenty sixth of august next . william by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith ; to our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers of our privy council , pursevants , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting ; forasmuchas , we by our proclamation , of the date the sixtenth day of march last by past , with advice of the lords of our privy council , did adjourn the current parliament of this our ancient kingdom , to the twenty first day of july next to come : and whereas the present state of our affairs , doth not require the meeting of our parliament , so soon as the said day to which it is adjourned : therefore , we with advice of the saids lords of our privy council , do continue the said adjournment from the said day , to the twenty sixth day of august next . and being desirous to prevent the unnecessary trouble and charges that the members of parliament may be put to , by ●ttending the said twenty first day of july next ; do hereby with advice foresaid , adjourn our said current parliament , until the said twenty sixth day of august , next ensuing the date hereof , requiring all the members of our said parliament , to attend that day in the usual way , and under the certifications contained in the several acts of parliament made thereanent . our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly , and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and to the mercat-crosses of the remanent head-burghs of the several shires and stewartries of this our ancient kingdom , and there by open proclamation , make intimation that our said parliament is adjourned to the said twenty sixth day of august next to come , and ordains these presents to be printed . given under our signet at edinburgh the thirtieth day of june , and of our reign the eighth year , 1696 . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot cls. sti. concilii . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to the king 's most excellent majesty . 1696. a true copy of a speech delivered in the parliament in scotland, by the earle of argile concerning the government of the church : together with the kings going to parliament august 19, 1641. argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a25798 of text r7455 in the english short title catalog (wing a3672). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 5 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a25798 wing a3672 estc r7455 12325601 ocm 12325601 59542 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a25798) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 59542) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 932:10) a true copy of a speech delivered in the parliament in scotland, by the earle of argile concerning the government of the church : together with the kings going to parliament august 19, 1641. argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. [2], 6 p. [s.n.], london : 1641. reproduction of original in huntington library. eng church of scotland -government. scotland. -parliament. church and state -scotland -early works to 1800. a25798 r7455 (wing a3672). civilwar no a true copy of a speech delivered in the parliament in scotland, by the earle of argile, concerning the government of the church. together w argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of 1641 764 1 0 0 0 0 0 13 c the rate of 13 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2003-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-05 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-06 john latta sampled and proofread 2003-06 john latta text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-08 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a true copy of a speech delivered in the parliament in scotland , by the earle of argile , concerning the government of the church . together with the kings going to parliament august 19. 1641. london , printed . 164● . the earle of argile his speech to the parliament in scotland . gentlemen , and you the burgesses of the house of commons ; i am commanded by the lords to let you know , that they have taken serious deliberation of the propositions made by you the other day at a conference concerning the church-government in this kingdom . first , i am commanded to put you in minde what have passed already upon this occasion before in the maintenance of the church-government of this kingdom , wherein the house of commons have shewed such great affections to the good of the church and of the state therein for the maintenance of it . first , that the church-government in both kingdomes , is that which were so be vvished , but no alteration or innovation msust be of that vvhich is setled by the lavves of each kingdom , and enacted by them . secondly , that the government of the church of england is setled and established by the lawes and statutes of the kingdom to the uniting of a brotherly love and government in both kingdomes under his majesties dominion . secondly , i am commanded to let you know their lordships pleasure in this , or in any thing else that may conduce to the honour of almighty god , the service of our king , and the good of our kingdom , and will be very ready to give such assistance as you shall propound , or upon debate with them , thinke fit to advance the worke you were pleased to deliver unto them . and finding also that there have been , and having great cause to suspect that there still are , even during this present sitting in parliament , endeavours to subvert the fundamentall lawes of this kingdom and of england , whereby they may introduce the exercise of a tyrannicall government by most pernicious and wicked counsels , plots , and conspiracies , that hath been taught against this kingdom , and the kingdom of england , with divers innovations and superstitions , that have been brought into this church , multitudes driven out of his majesties dominions , with the great suppressing of them by the bishops and their tyrannicall government over the church , and the good religious ministers therein . and therefore because the government of the church doth remain as properly to proceed from you , as from us , therefore if you shall thinke fit that any thing else shall be propounded by you , that may be effected for the government of the church and kingdom , or if you do not propound , their lordships will then let you know their propositions ; if you be not now provided to confer about it , we shall when you please debate the same , and give you such reasons for it , as you shall thinke fit of , to the honour and praise of god , and the good of our king and kingdom . finis . the kings arrivall in edinborough , with the manner of his going to parliament . there was one appointed to go before him to make room , for the multitude came in throngs to see his majestie , all crying , as he passed by them , in their owne language , god save king charles , god save our king . next to him which made room came our king , my lord humes going on his right hand , and my lord of argile on his left hand , the rest of the nobility , and those which were of the parliament-house , followed according to their degrees , but much ado they had to go to the house , the desire of the people was so great to see their soveraigne . when they were come to the parliament house , there stood a noble-mans son , who as yet goes to school , and saluted his majesty with a latine oration , which he took most graciously , and thanked them all for their kindnesse , and good-will ; then they entered into the parliament-house , and when they were seated , the earle of argile made a speech unto him . a letter, from william king of england, to the estates of the kingdom of scotland, at their meeting at edinburgh ... from our court at hamptoun, the seventh day of march, 1688/9 ... / william r. england and wales. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1689 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a96543 wing w2348 estc r42772 38875736 ocm 38875736 152506 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a96543) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 152506) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2299:16) a letter, from william king of england, to the estates of the kingdom of scotland, at their meeting at edinburgh ... from our court at hamptoun, the seventh day of march, 1688/9 ... / william r. england and wales. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) william iii, king of england, 1650-1702. 1 sheet ([1] p.). [s.n.], edinburgh : printed in the year, 1689. imperfect: stained and torn. reproduction of original in: william andrews clark memorial library, university of california, los angeles. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng great britain -history -william and mary, 1689-1702. scotland -history -17th century. broadsides -london (england) -17th century. 2007-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-06 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-07 robyn anspach sampled and proofread 2007-07 robyn anspach text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a letter , from william king of england , to the estates of the kingdom of scotland , at their meeting at edinburgh . my lords and gentlemen , we are very sensible of the kindness and concern that many of your nation have evidenced towards us , and our undertaking for the preservation of religion and liberty , which were in such imminent danger ; neither can we in the least doubt of your confidence in us , after having seen how far so many of your nobi●ity , and gentry , have owned our declaration , countenancing and concurring with us in our endeavours , and desiring that we should take upon us the administration of affairs , civil and military ; and to call a meeting of the estates , for securing the protestant religion , the antient laws and liberties of that kingdom , which accordingly we have ●one . now it lyes on you to enter upon such consultations as are most probable to settle y●u on sure and lasting foundations , which we hope you will set about with all c●venient speed , with regard to the publick good , and to the general interest and i●●nations of the people , that after so much trouble , and great suffering , they may li●e happily and in peace ; and that you may lay aside all animosities and factions , that may impede so good a work. we were glad to ●●nd that so many of the nobility and gentry , when here at london , were so mu●h inclined to an union of both kingdoms , and that they did look upon it as one o● the best means for procuring the happiness of these nations , and settling of a lasting peace amongst them , which would be advantagious to both , they living in the sam● island , having the same language , and the same common interest of religion and liberty , especially at this juncture , when the enemies of both are so restless , endeavouring to make , and increase jealousies and divisions , which they will be ready to improve to their own advantage , and the ruine of britain . we being of the same opinion , as to the usefulness of this union , and having nothing so much before our eyes , as the glory of god , the establishing of the reformed religion , and the peace and happiness of these nations , are resolved to use our utmost endeavours in advancing every thing which may conduce to the effectuating the same : so we bid you heartily farewell , from our court at hamptoun , the seventh day of march , 1688 / 9. william r. edinburgh , printed in the year , 1689. a proclamation discharging the levying and transporting any men for the warrs beyond seas scotland. privy council. 1677 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05586 wing s1770a estc r233275 52612316 ocm 52612316 179621 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05586) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179621) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2794:15) a proclamation discharging the levying and transporting any men for the warrs beyond seas scotland. privy council. gibson, alexander, sir, d. 1693. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : 1677. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. intentional blank spaces in text. dated at end: given under our signet at edinburgh, the 18. day of january, 1677. and of our reign the twenty eighth year. signed: al. gibson. cl. sti. concilii. imperfect: stained and creased with some loss of text. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -army -recruiting, enlistment, etc. -law and legislation -early works to 1800. impressment -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation discharging the levying and transporting any men or the warrs beyond seas . charles by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defen●●● of the faith , to macer or messengers at arm , our sheriffs in that part conjunctly and severally specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch , as it being represented to vs th●● a number of men are l●vyed in this kingdom for the service of france , whe●●of some are landed there and moe are expected for the same purpose ; and t●● men are clapt up in pri●ons , and detained untill there be an opportunity to se●● them away to france , and as we are confident that our privy council of t●●● kingdom have not given the least authority for making levyes contrair to o●● treaties , and to that neu●rality , which , as mediator , we are resolved to keep : 〈◊〉 we have thought fit , upon this occasion to renew our positive commands , t●a● our council be careful tha● no men be levyed or sent out of scotland by any conivance whatsoever . like●●●● we , with advice of the lords of our privy cou●●il , do command and charge , that none of our subjects or others within this kingdom presume to levy or transport any men out of our said kingdom upon any pretence whatsoever , unto the service of any beyond the sea now in war. and we strictly require all the magistrates and officers of our customs in all the sea-ports of this kingdom , to be careful in their several jurisdictions , that this our command be punctually obeyed . and further , we , with advice foresaid , do command and require the magistrates of burghs immediately to set at liberty any men whom they shall find to be keeped in prison in order to their transportation , and to return to our co●●●●d the names of any persons so imprisoned , and the names of these who ap●reh●●ded them . and ordains these presents to be printed and published at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and other places ●●●●ful , that none pretend ignorance . given under our signet 〈◊〉 e 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the 18. day of january , 1677. and of our reign the twen●● eighth y●●● . god save the king. edinburgh , p●●●●●● 〈…〉 andr●● anderson , pri●●●● to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈…〉 d●● . 1677. act, anent the deficients in the last levy. edinburgh, the thirteenth day of december, 1694. scotland. privy council. 1694 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05299 wing s1395 estc r226045 52528896 ocm 52528896 178916 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05299) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 178916) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2774:55) act, anent the deficients in the last levy. edinburgh, the thirteenth day of december, 1694. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to their most excellent majesties, edinburgh : anno dom. 1694. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. signed: gilb: eliot, cls. sti. concilli. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -army -recruiting and enlistment -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-12 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 megan marion sampled and proofread 2009-01 megan marion text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion act , anent the deficients in the last levy . edinbvrgh , the thirteenth day of december , 1694. the lords of their majesties privy council , do hereby ordain their majesties sollicitor , to transmit to the sheriffs of the shires and stewarts of the stewartries within this kingdom , or their deputs or clerks , such lists of the d●ficients of the new levy , as have come to his hands ; and where no lists shall be sent by the sollicitor , ordains the saids sheriffs , and stewarts and their deputs , and clerks of supply , to make up full and exact lists of the saids deficients , and to transmit doubles thereof to their majesties sollicitor , within fifteen days , after this act shall come to their hands ; and also ordains the respective sheriffs , stewarts of stewartries , and bailies of bailiaries within this kingdom , and their deputes , within the said space of fifteen days after this act comes to their hands , to exact and uplift from the persons lyable in putting out any men of the new levy ; and who have not put out these men before the first day of november last , the penalty of two hundred merks , wherein every such person is lyable , conform to the proclamations and instructions thereanent . and the saids lords do hereby authorize and warrand the said sheriffs , stewarts , baillies of bailliaries and their deputs , either to call a party of their majesties forces , from any commander within the shire , stewartrie , or bailliary : and ordains the saids commanders to furnish parties to them , for poynding of the persons failȝiers and deficient , as said is , before the said first day of november last , or otherwise to make use of their own officers , for that end , and declares that the persons deficient , as said is , are to be poinded in manner prescribed by the act of parliament one thousand six hundred and sixty nine , anent the militia , and the expense of the poynding is to be exacted from them accordingly . and the saids lords do hereby ordain the saids sheriffs , stewarts and baillies , and their deputs , to pay , or cause pay in the penalties to be exacted and uplifed by them , to the collector of supply within the shire , and ordains the collector to transmit the one halfe of these penalties to the general receiver of their majesties crown rents , to be applyed towards the perfecting the geographical mapps of this kingdom , and the other half to be disposed of by the commissioners of the shire , for the publick uses within the same , ( the said collector retaining always the twentieth penny for his pains ) with certification to the said sheriffs , stewarts , baillies and their deputs and clerks , and collectors of supply respective who shall failȝie , in discharge of any part of their duty specified in this act , that they shall be lyable for the penalties of these deficients whom they should have listed , and poynded , and whose penalties they should have collected , and transmitted as above appointed ; and that letters of horning shall be direct , for charging them for payment thereof simpliciter . and ordains these presents to be printed , and appoints their majesties sollicitor to send printed copies of the same , to the sheriffs , stewarts , baillies , or their deputs , or clerks , with all convenient diligence . extracted by me gilb : eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save king vvilliam and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to their most excellent majesties , anno dom. 1694. the character of a true subiect, or the loyall fidelity of the thrice honourable lord, the lord marquesse huntley expressed in this his speech in the time of his imprisonment, by the covenanters of scotland, anno 1640. together with the fruitlesse hopes of rebellious insurrections, and warres taken in hand, against god his lawes, and their princes prudent government. huntly, george gordon, marquess of, d. 1649. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a72190 of text s125233 in the english short title catalog (stc 12052.5). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a72190 stc 12052.5 estc s125233 99898485 99898485 173410 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a72190) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 173410) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 2041:11) the character of a true subiect, or the loyall fidelity of the thrice honourable lord, the lord marquesse huntley expressed in this his speech in the time of his imprisonment, by the covenanters of scotland, anno 1640. together with the fruitlesse hopes of rebellious insurrections, and warres taken in hand, against god his lawes, and their princes prudent government. huntly, george gordon, marquess of, d. 1649. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by e. g[riffin]. and are to be sold [by t. lambert] at the horse-shooe in smithfield, london : 1640. printer and publisher's names from stc. steele notation: seeme periurie: may. reproduction of original in the bodleian library, oxford, england. eng huntly, george gordon, -marquess of, d. 1649 -early works to 1800. covenanters -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -church history -17th century -early works to 1800. a72190 s125233 (stc 12052.5). civilwar no the character of a true subiect, or the loyall fidelity of the thrice honourable lord, the lord marquesse huntley, expressed in this his spe huntly, george gordon, marquess of 1640 893 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2008-08 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-10 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-11 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-11 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion c r honi soit qvi mal y pence flower surmounted by a crown thistle surmounted by a crown fleur-de-lys surmounted by a crown harp surmounted by a crown the character of a true subiect , or the loyall fidelity of the thrice honourable lord , the lord marquesse huntley , expressed in this his speech in the time of his imprisonment , by the covenanters of scotland , anno 1640. together with the fruitlesse hopes of rebellious insurrections , and warres taken in hand , against god his lawes , and their princes prudent government . i stand before you a prisoner , accused of loyalty ; for who can charge me of any other crime ? you seeme to doe me some great favour , when you leave it to my free election , whether i will be so or not : is any so in love with fetters , but that he would change them for freedome , ( were the conditions equall ) ? true it is , liberty is offered : but like merchants you value it at such a rate , that my fidelity , honour , and all that is deare to a noble mind , must be the price to purchase it . if i refuse what you propound , rack , torture , losse of goods , lands , and perhaps life it selfe : ( a hard choyce ) it is in my power to bee a free man : but how ? if i will be a slave , enter into covenant , and take an oath which in it selfe is plaine periurie : as if treason were nothing , unlesse i made it sacramentall . i have already given my faith unto my prince , upon whose head this crowne is by law of nature and nations justly fallen . shall i falsifie that faith , and joyne my wicked hands with yours to put it off againe ? ( heaven forbid ) : what but religion , liberty and glorious shewes are pretended ? dare not all rebels cloake their purposes with such goodly titles ? they are much deceived who thinke that religion , and rebellion can be companions ; or that god will favour their attempts , that strike at himselfe through the princes sides . in that very word king , there is such a deity enclosed , that who wounds them , wounds the divine nature . why doe you then so rashly draw the sword under so holie a vaile ? was religion ever built on bloud ? did the primitive christians ever propagate the gospell with other then their owne blood ? which they at all times shed , not onely to god ; but to their owne princes although pagans , but never against them . as the devill was the first rebell , so iudas was the onely traitor among the apostles : and shall wee ranke our selves with those hated examples of disloyaltie and treacherie ? but were our case good , and we able to contend with the forces of england : when have we fought with them , but we have beene beaten ? even then , when their dominions and strength were lesse , by all that ireland and wales have added to their power : and then , when they did labour , both with forraigne , and their owne civill distractions , their title no better then the sword : yet we found it a hard taske to keepe our kings in their seates , whose royall off-spring wee doe endeavour to tumble out . we have no france to flee unto for succour , our ancient league is worne out , theirs wholly simented , by strong tie of marriage . to depend upon any other forraigne assistances , were to build castles in the ayre . and besides that , traitors are distastefull to all kings : our persons cause , is not more odious then our religion . it is easie to begin , but let us see what will be the event of such ill grounded warre . i foressee with horror the miseries that attend it : as firing of houses , wasting of goods , famine , ruine of townes and citties , and the unjust libertie usurped , lost in an instant and for ever ; wife , children and bloud , man by nature holds most deare ; if we pittie not our selves , yet let us not forget them wee hold most deare : kings have strong hands to put a bit in the most stubborne ; if you cannot relish gentle subjection , how will you digest slavery ? put not backe therefore this blessed arme that stretcheth out to receive us ; when all is wildernesse , we shall then begge what now we refuse . for my part , i am in your powers , and know not how this free speech of a prisoner will be taken . howsoever you dispose of me , i will never distaine my ancestors , nor leave that foule title of traitor , as an inheritance to my posterity : you may when you please take my head from my shoulders ; but not my heart from my soveraigne . london printed by e. g. and are to be sold at the horse-shooe in smithfield , 1640. on the death of the most sadly, ever to be deplored, most illustrious, right honourable, james lord marquess of montrose, &c. funeral elegie. murray, mungo, 17th cent. 1684 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b04437 wing m3111 estc r180802 52528859 ocm 52528859 178841 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b04437) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 178841) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2772:17) on the death of the most sadly, ever to be deplored, most illustrious, right honourable, james lord marquess of montrose, &c. funeral elegie. murray, mungo, 17th cent. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh? : 1684] caption title. imprint suggested by wing. text signed at end: m. m. text printed in two columns, within thick black frames. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng montrose, james graham, -marquis of, 1612-1650 -poetry. scotland -history -1649-1660 -poetry. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-12 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-12 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion on the death of the most sadly , ever to be deplored , most illustrious , right honourable , james lord marquess of montrose , &c. funeral elegie . together rendevouz , you watry clouds , distill your selves into tears bitter flouds ; a new deluge , whereby you may compose to weep the death of th'marquess of montrose : death , death , i 'll not dyve in thy origine , let divines judge , how thou at first came in : vagrant , ubiquiter , through th' world does roam ; yet in each house , still present is at home : though uncreated , lifeless , yet to thee , the lord of life , on cross did yielder be ; though thou the wages be of sin , 't is strange on th' innocent thy wrath should bear revenge ; in sickness-bed , has stoll'n upon that heart , in field with sword could have out-dar'd thy dart : the mount has levell'd , where the rose did grow , from foes wound-wrinkles kept old albions brow , which brings all flow'rs within our paradise into a mourning withered sad disguise ; a dismal loss unto the age does bring long before summer , plucked in the spring ; the royal-thistle causing to be sad to see his darling rose so soon to fade , whose fragrancy did please the lyons scent , his guardian , for whom life would have spent ; for whom our lower ranks of subjects groans , the highers ears fills with unwonted moans ; princes and peers together seem to strive for thee , the deepest sorrow to contrive : a general grief does all the land ov'rspread , it 's love and joy , with death's dark vail is clade , by albany ought never be forgot , crowns-royal-line endeavour'd to promote : when that in war ingaged was gainst france , in england did a scottish : troop advance : most quick ingine , with arms and arts acquaint , to camp and colledge was an ornament ; in van led royal-guard with such a grace , rais'd courage in each guarders breast and face ; in cathredal desir'd the miter shine as well as wars , observ'd church-discipline : natures choise jewel of nobilitie , enliv'd , and honour'd magnanimitie , on state-stage early flourishing aspir'd , young matchivilian , by the old admir'd , in council known , a perfect sober wit , betimes call'd thereto , charles thought requisite : keep'd secresie as clam-shels closs entire , councils designs to know , defi'd the air : both prudence and true gallantrie maintain'd , the ways of emulation much disdain'd , th' elixar of all high-born eminence , fraught with both heaven and earths intelligence , in either , no thing is but thou did know ; the center of all worthiness did show , this in a quiet way , did make appear ; scorn'd of a victims sacrifice to hear . on self-opiniators could not look , resolv'd with reason what thou undertook . for countreys publick safety , ever stood ; did before greatness , study to be good : plots and conspiracies abhorred so , was to rebellion a most severe foe . as thy grandsire this character did merit , a loyal-subject of casarean spirit : his valour had , that razed adrians wall , broke abercorns ; severus pride made fall . chief of grames name , who alwayes have been great , has seventy one kings serv'd in war and state ; has thirteen hundred twenty seven years stood ; with whom king fergus-second , match'd in blood : to royaltie may say , truth to discover . to king eugenius-second bred queen-mother . thy jovial house , turns now the house of woe , no heart of stone unbroke , can therein go : alace to see thy lady marquess state , heartless become , by this sad stroke of fate , with her young marquess sits , whose doleful crys , with her to joyn , moves all our sphears and skies ; bereav'd of her dear lord , t'wixt whom was love , that imitate heavens hierarchie above . ah! ah ! young marquess in thy bud , to see of thy paternal-root , robed to be ; by which thy name and house enervat are , of chief and master , of both who had care : chronologizers theam t' inlarge long story , the soul of virtue now is gone to glory . m. m. the address presented to his majesty at kensington the 11th. day of june 1700. by the lord ross, and the lairds of grubbet, torwoodlie and dollary, commissioners appointed by the other members of parliament, who subscribed the same 1700 approx. 9 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a75880 wing a555 estc r231594 99897443 99897443 137092 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a75880) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 137092) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2487:1) the address presented to his majesty at kensington the 11th. day of june 1700. by the lord ross, and the lairds of grubbet, torwoodlie and dollary, commissioners appointed by the other members of parliament, who subscribed the same ross of hawkhead, william ross, baron, 1656?-1738. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [london : 1700] imprint from wing (cd-rom edition). reproduction of original in the john carter brown library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. great britain -history -1689-1714 -early works to 1800. broadsides -england 2008-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-09 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the address presented to his majesty at kensington the 11th . day of june 1700. by the lord ross , and the lairds of grubbet , torwoodlie and dollary , commissioners appointed by the other members of parliament , who subscribed the same . vve your majesty's most loyal and dutiful subjects , the subscribing noblemen , barons , and burgesses of this your ancient kingdom of scotland , members of the same parliament which happily settled your majesty's government over us , and has ever since given continued proofs of zeal and affection to your majesty's service in the several sessions thereof : do humbly represent to your majesty , that having according to your majesty's royal appointment , met together in parliament , with full resolution to have proceeded in the like good intentions , for the honour and interest of your majesty and people ; it is to our unspeakable grief and disappointment , that not only there has been no return given to the unanimous address of the last session of parliament , expressing the whole nation 's concern in the indian and african company : but also after a motion made in this session of parliament for a resolve , that our colony of caledonia in darien , is a legal and rightful settlement , in the terms of the act of parliament 1965. and that the parliament would mantain and support the same . members beginning to reason thereupon , were interrupted by an adjournment , which we humbly conceive is not agreeable to the 40 act of the 11th , parliament of king james the 6. where it is promitted , that nothing shall be done or commanded , which might directly or indirectly prejudge the liberty of free voting , and reasoning of the estates of parliament , or any of them in all time coming . and thereafter , by a subsequent adjournment , from the thirtieth day of may instant , to the twentieth day of june next , the parliament was not permitted to come to any resolution , in the pressing concerns of the nation ; which we cannot think consistent with that article of our claim of right , whereby it is declared , that for the redress of all grievances , and for the amending , strengthning , and preserving of the laws , parliaments ought to be frequently called and allowed to sit , and the freedom of speech and debate secured to the members . we do therefore in all humility and earnestness , intreat , that your majesty will be graciously pleased , to allow your parliament to meet at the day to which it is now adjourned ; and to fit as long as may be necessary , for redressing the grievances of the nation , asserting its just rights and priviledges , as well at home as abroad , in its colony of caledonia , and for enacting such laws as may be for the advancement and security of religion , the honour of your majesty , and the true interest of this nation . we are may it please your majesty , your majesty's most dutiful , most loyal , and most obedient subjects and servants . burgesses . robert chieslie for edinburgh robert smith perth robert cruikshanks aberdeen walter stewart linlithgow james smith st. andrews patrick murray a 〈…〉 ather-easter john cuthbert inversess alexander gedd bruntisland francis molison brechin james hamilton dumfermling george smith pittenweem , robert faa dumbar john muir peebles james stewart elgin patrick steven aberbrothock john lyon forfar robert stewart rothsay james scott rutherglen robert cleilland anstruther-wester alexander stevenson kilrenny daniel simpson fortross william beatie bervie patrick murray stranrawer adam ainsly jedburgh william hamilton queensferry william brodie forres alexander edgar haddingtoun robert stewart dingwall barons . alexander gilmore of craigmillar . william hepburn of beenstoun john home of blackader george baillie of jerviswood william bennet of grubbet francis scott of thirlestane james pringle of torwoodlie alexander murray of blackbarrony william baillie of lamington james hamilton of aikenhead alexander johnston of elshishiels william mackdowal of garthland john craford of kilbirny . robert pollock of that ilk alexander monro of bear crofts patrick murray of livingston thomas sharp of houston james craigie younger of dumbarny thomas burnet of lees. alexander arbuthnet of knox james more of stonywood ludovick grant of that ilk duncan forbes of collodin george brodie of aslisk james kilpatrick of closburn : william enster of anstru●her james carnagie of finhaven . james scot of logie junior thomas abercromby of birkinbog alexander duff of braceo adam gordon of dalfolly alexander gordon of garthie alexander brodie of that ilk patrick murray of pennyland william craigie of gairsie john erskine of alva john swinton of that ilk jame . scott of logie . john scott of well james scott of galla robert craig of rickerton william morison of prestoungrange john lauder of fountainhall william steward of ambrismore noblemen . hamilton tweeddale marischall southerland cassils tullibardin rugland strathallan salton ross lindores blantyre burleigh forrester bargany elibank belhaven duffus colvil kinnaird . memorandum , that several other members of parliament , who happen'd not to be present at the signing of this address , did not only previously agree to it , but did moreover sign the last national address , which in express terms concurrs with this . act condemning the transactions concerning the kings majesty, vvhilst he was at newcastle, in the years, 1646. and 1647. at edinburgh, 20. february, 1661. scotland. parliament. 1661 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92481 wing s1074 thomason 669.f.27[4] estc r210251 99869066 99869066 170701 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92481) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 170701) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 256:669f27[4]) act condemning the transactions concerning the kings majesty, vvhilst he was at newcastle, in the years, 1646. and 1647. at edinburgh, 20. february, 1661. scotland. parliament. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by evan tyler printer to the kings most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1661. annotation on thomason copy: "march. 28."; the second 1 in the imprint date has been altered to "0". reproduction of the original in the british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2007-09 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion act condemning the transactions concerning the kings majesty , vvhilst he was at newcastle , in the years , 1646. and 1647. at edinburgh , 20. february , 1661. the estates of parliament , considering the many sad and dangerous consequences that do accompany the neglect and contempt of lawful authority ; and that among the other iudgements , wherewith it pleaseth almighty god to visit such who resist the powers , and oppose the commands of those intrusted by him , as his vicegerents , for the government of his people , they are oft-times left to their own counsels , to do that which highly provokes god to wrath , renders themselves justly odious to the world , and hateful to their posterity . whereof there is too doolfull an experiment in an act of the printed records of parliament , of the si●teenth of january , 1647. entituled , declaration of the kingdom of scotland , concerning the kings majesties person . which being now taken into consideration , the estates of parliament do find and declare , that it was carried on , and concluded by a prevalent party , against the judgement of many of his majesties loyal subjects ; and that it is a most sinful , disloyal , and unworthy act , contrary to the will and commandment of god ; contrary to all laws , divine and humane ; contrary to the duty and allegiance of subjects ; contrary to all the rules of justice , honour , gratitude and humanity ; and highly reflecting on the honour of this ancient kingdom , and the reputation of his ▪ majesties good subjects therein . and therefore the kings majestie , with advice and consent of his estates of parliament , doth hereby annuall and condemn the same for ever : and ordains it to be expunged out of all records , and never to be remembred again , but with due abhorrence and detestation . and the estates of parliament , conceiving themselves obliged in conscience , to make the truth of this business , and the manner of the carrying of it , known to the world , for the just vindication of this kingdom , and his majesties dutyfull and loyal subjects , who otherwise may seem to be comprehended and concluded in it . they do therefore , from their certain knowledge , declare , that even in that parliament , ( from which many of his majesties good subjects were debarred , for their affection and adherence to his majesties service and commands ) there was a considerable number of worthy patriots , of all estates , who , at the passing of that base act , gave a publick testimony and disassent from it . which is here recorded for their due honour ; and for which their memory will in all ages receive a famous celebration ; and that there were divers others , who , upon the pretexts of reformation and assurances of the safety of his majesties person , being inveigled , were in the simplicity of their hearts drawn along for the time ; but shortly thereafter , being convinced of their error , did embrace the first opportunity to expiate the same , by freely hazarding their lives and fortunes in the year 1648. to redeem his majesty from these restraints and dangers , which by that impious act he was driven into . and therefore , his majesty , with advice and consent foresaid , doth declare , that the act of parliament foresaid , of the si●teenth of january , 1647. is not to be look'd upon as the deed of the kingdom , but as the act of a few disloyal and seditious persons , who , having upon specious , but false pretences , screwed themselves into the government ; did , by force of arms , keep the same ; and from the conscience of their own guiltiness , being afraid of the justice of his majesties government , did violently carry on that act. and in further owning thereof , did in the said year 1648. rise in arms , in opposition to those who endeavoured to restore his majestie to his government , and to relieve him from the imprisonment and hazard he was then lying under , as the natural effects of that unworthy transaction , so justly hereby condemned . and for the further clearing of the sence of this kingdom , as to that base and treacherous act , and the aspersions , which have been thereupon raised as if there had been previous transactions and bargains of money for carrying on of the same , the estates of parliament declare , they do abominate the very thought of any such thing ; and that if at any time hereafter , there shall be discovery of any such wickedness ( which they are confident god almighty will in his iustice bring to light , ( if it be true ) and wherein they earnestly entreat the concurrence of all his majesties dutyful and loyal subjects ) the persons guilty therof , shall without mercy be pursued as the vildest of traitors , and shall be incapable of the benefit of any act of pardon , oblivion , or indempnity for ever . a. primerose . cls. reg : edinburgh , printed by evan tyler printer to the kings most excellent majesty . 166● a proclamation, for providing magazines of corns, hay and straw, to their majesties troops. scotland. privy council. 1690 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05670 wing s1890 estc r183524 52528983 ocm 52528983 179084 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05670) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179084) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:73) a proclamation, for providing magazines of corns, hay and straw, to their majesties troops. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to their most excellent majesties, edinburgh : anno dom. 1690. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. intentional blank spaces in text. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the twelfth day of december, and of our reign the second year, 1690. signed: da. moncreiff, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -army -supplies and stores -law and legislation -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2008-08 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion monogram of 'w' (william) superimposed on' m' (mary) diev et mon droit honi soit qui mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation for providing magazines of corns , hay and straw , to their majesties troops . william and mary , by the grace of god , king and queen of great-britain , france and ireland , defenders of the faith ; to our lovits , macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : we taking into our royal consideration , the great and many inconveniencies , which our troops , as well as the countrey , do , or may sustain , in case provisions and stores of corn , hay and straw , he not timously and orderly made , at the respective burghs and places , where our forces shall be quartered . therefore we , with the advice of the lords of our privy council , require and command , the commissioners of supply , or the plurality of such of them as shall conveen , conform to the 6th act , 3d sess . of our first parl. within the several shires , where any of the troops of our forces , horse , or dragoons shall happen to be quartered , to meet each first and third tuesdays of every moneth , during the continuance of the forces in the saids shires , and to appoint reasonable prices of corns , hay , and straw , at which the same shall be sold and furnished ; and we with advice foresaid , require and command the saids commissioners , to ordain the collectors of supply , within the several shires of this kingdom , upon a competent allowance for their pains , to provide , buy up , and furnish , where they can best have it for ready money , ( to be payed by them out of the cess of the saids shires , received by the said collector ) sufficient magazins of corn , hay , and straw , for the space of fourteen dayes , at the several burghs of the saids shires , for the number of horses quartered , or to be quartered upon them , and in the present service of the saids officers , troopers , or dragoons themselves ; with certification , that if any horse not presently in their service , shall be intertained upon the said magazin , the horse shall be confiscat , and the officer , trooper , or dragoon , in whose name he is intertained , shal be cashired , and turned out of the said troop , and so from time to time , during the continuance of their quarters at that place : and we declare , that what provisions have been , or shall be furnished by the saids collectors , forth of the forsaids magazines , to the officers or others of our forces , and shall be unpayed by them , the same shall be allowed to the saids collectors , and retained by them , out of the first end of the cess , due and payable by the saids shires , conform to the receipts thereof granted to them by any trooper or dragoon , or any of their officers , condescending upon the names of the saids officers , troopers , or dragoons , and upon the troop and regiment , to which they do belong ; and the saids officers are hereby required from time to time , to call such of their saids troopers as cannot write , before themselves , and in their names grant receipts to the collector for what hath been or shall be delivered by him to them , out of the saids magazines , under the certification above-written . and we , with advice foresaid , do hereby peremptorly command and require , the general receivers of the cess and supply , to allow to the collectors foresaids , what shall be instructed to be given out by them in the terms above-written , in the first end of the cess and supply of the shire , where the saids provisions have been , or shall be made , and to receive the saids receipts from the collectors in the several shires , as sufficient exoneration to them of the cess of the shire pro tanto , and only order quartering for what shall be resting by the saids shires , after the saids magazines and provisions are allowed , under the pain of being deprived of their offices as general receivers in all time coming , and the premisses to be observed as the rule of providing , and furnishing such of our forces , as are upon the scots establishment ; and as to these of our forces which are upon the english pay , we with advice foresaid , ordain the collectors foresaids of the respective shires , to furnish them forth of the saids magazines , upon their making payment by ready money for what they shall receive at the reasonable prices foresaids , to be set down or appointed by our saids commissioners of supply in the several shires , as said is , and no otherwise . and to the effect our pleasure in the premisses may be known , our will is herefore , and we charge you straitly and command , that incontinent , these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and to the mercat-crosses of the whole remanent head-burghs of the several shires within this kingdom , and there , in our name and authority , by open proclamation , make publication of the premisses , that none may pretend ignorance , as ye will answer to us thereupon ; the which to do , we commit to you , conjunctly and severally , our full power , by these presents delivering them by you , duly execute , and indorsed again to the bearer . given under our signet at edinburgh , the twelfth day of december , and of our reign the second year , 1690. per actum dominorum secreti concilii . d a. moncreiff , cls. sti. concilii . god save king william and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to their most excellent majesties , anno dom. 1690. charles by the grace of god, king of great britaine ... forsomuch as in our parliament holden at edinburgh upon the twentie eighth day of june, 1633 ... have made one voluntarie and free offer of one taxation ... thirtie shillings ... scotland. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) 1633 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a11701 stc 21990 estc s2321 23272172 ocm 23272172 26483 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11701) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 26483) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1803:23) charles by the grace of god, king of great britaine ... forsomuch as in our parliament holden at edinburgh upon the twentie eighth day of june, 1633 ... have made one voluntarie and free offer of one taxation ... thirtie shillings ... scotland. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) charles i, king of england, 1600-1649. 1 broadside. r. young, [edinburgh : 1633] second pt. of title from text. imprint suggested by stc (2nd ed.). "given under our signet at edinburgh the twentie eight day of june, and of our reigne the ninth year, 1633." reproduction of original in the town house (aberdeen, scotland). charter room. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng taxation -scotland. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649. scotland -proclamations. 2007-08 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2007-09 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion charles by the grace of god , king of great britaine , france , and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. to 〈…〉 messengers , our sheriffs , in that part conjunctly and severally specially constitute greeting . forsomuch as in our parliament holden at edinburgh upon the twentie eighth day of june , 1633. the three estates of our kingdome of scotland being assembled , having taken to their consideration the many blessings which this nation doth enjoy under our most wise , happie , and peaceable government , whereof each estate is most sensible , our royall zeale for propagating the gospel of jesus christ , our care for providing sufficient maintenance for the clergie , our extraordinarie pains taken for uniting the dis-jointed members of this common-wealth , and extirping of all roots of discords , relieving the oppressed , and with so even and fatherly a hand curing the wounds of this common-wealth , as the wisest eye can finde no blemish in the temper of all our royall actions ; and lastly , the great comfort they have by enjoying of our presence , pains taken , and expences disburst by us in this our journey , have made one voluntarie and free offer of one taxation to be imposed , collected , and payed to us in manner and at the six termes following , that is to say , for the barons and free-holders partes of the same taxation thirtie shillings money to be uplifted of everie pound land of old extent within this our kingdome pertaining to dukes , marquesses , earles , vicounts , lords , barons , free-holders and fewars of our proper lands , holden by them immediately of us ▪ and to be payed by them at everie one of the six severall termes following , videlicet , the sowme of thirtie shillings money 〈…〉 feast and terme of martinmasse in the year of god , 1634. years . the sowme of other thirtie shillings money at the feast and 〈…〉 ●●●●inmasse in the year of god , 1635. the sowme of other thirtie shillings mony at the feast and terme of martinmasse in th● 〈…〉 1636. the sowme of other thirtie shillings mony at the feast and terme of martinmasse in the year of god , 1637. the sow●●●● other thirtie shillings mony at the feast and terme of martinmasse in the year of god , 1638. and the sowme of other thirtie shillings money at the feast and terme of martinmasse in the year of god , 1639. and for the spirituall men and burrows , partes of the same taxation , that there shall be uplifted of everie archbishoprick , bishoprick , abbacie , priorie , and other inferiour benefice , and of everie free burgh within this our said kingdome at everie one of the said six severall termes payment , the just taxation thereof as they have been accustomed to be taxed unto in all time by-gone whensoever the temporall lands within this our said kingdome were stented to thirtie shillings the pound land of old extent . and the same taxation to be payed at everie one of the six severall termes above-written . and for inbringing of the 〈…〉 termes payment of our burrowes , parts of the same taxation , our other letters are direct , charging the provest and bayliffs of each burgh to make payment of the taxt and stent thereof to 〈…〉 our co●●●or generall appointed by us for receiving of the same taxation , or to his deputes and officers in his name , having his power 〈◊〉 the same , at the feast and terme of martinmasse , in the year of god one thousand six hundred thirtie 〈…〉 years , 〈…〉 of rebellion , and putting of them to our horn . for whose relief 〈…〉 our will is , and we charge you straitly and command , that incontinent these our letters seene , ye passe , and in our name and authoritie command and charge the councell of that our burgh of 〈…〉 to conveene with you the said provest and bayliffs , and elect certain persons to stent their neighbours , and the same election being made , that ye charge the persons elected to accept the charge upon them in setting of the said stent upon the inhabitants of that our said burgh , and to conveene and set the same , and to make a stent roll thereupon as effeiris , within twentie foure houres next after they be charged by you thereto , under the pain of rebellion and putting of them to our horne . and if they failyie therein the said twenty foure houres being by-past , that ye incontinent ▪ thereafter denounce the disobeyers our rebels , and put them to our horne , and escheat and inbring all their moveable goods to our use for their contemption . and likewise the said stent roll being made and set down as said is , that ye in our name and authoritie command and charge the burgesses , indwellers and inhabitants within that our burgh , to make payment of their said stent to you our said provest and bayliffs conform to the taxt roll to be made and given out thereupon within three daies next after they be charged by you thereto , under the paine of rebellion , and putting of them to our horne . and if they failyie the said three daies being by-past , that ye incontinent thereafter denounce the disobeyers our rebells , and put them to our horne , and escheat and inbring all their moveable goods to our use for their contemption . and if need be , that ye our said provest and bayliffs poynd and distreinyie therefore , as ye shall think most expedient , according to justice , as ye will answer to us thereupon . the which to doe we commit to you conjunctly and severally our full power , by these our letters delivering them by you duely execute and indorsed again to the bearer . given under our signet at edinburgh the twentie eight day of june , and of our reigne the ninth year , 1633. per actum parliamenti . by the king, a proclamation containing his majesties gracious and ample indemnity scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) 1688 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a46539 wing j319 estc r37019 16186275 ocm 16186275 105011 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a46539) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 105011) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1595:98) by the king, a proclamation containing his majesties gracious and ample indemnity scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) james ii, king of england, 1633-1701. 1 broadside. printed by the heir of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh : 1688. "given at our court at white-hall, the twenty fifth day of september, 1688. and of our reign, the fourth year." imperfect: cropped around royal arms of head. reproduction of original in the harvard university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -revolution of 1688. scotland -politics and government -17th century. 2007-11 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion by the king , a proclamation , containing his majesties gracious and ample indemnity . james rex . james the seventh by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. to all and sundry our good subjects , whom these presents do , or may concern , greeting . we having been graciously pleased , by our proclamation for indulgence , for the better uniting of the hearts of our subjects amongst themselves , and removing of all discords and jealousies , which the difference of religion , and of their several perswasions did occasion and foment amongst them , to allow to all our subjects , of whatsoever perswasion , the free exercise of their religion , upon the terms , and with the provisions mentioned in our gracious proclamation for indulgence : and we still persisting in our princely and fatherly care of the peace , quiet , and prosperity of all our subjects , and that we may at once extinguish all fears and jealousies , that any of our subjects may have deservedly incurred , by their crimes and delinquencies against our laws , and convince all our subjects , even the most obstinat and irreclaimable , of their happiness and security under the protection and benign influence of our most auspicious and most clement government ; therefore , we , of our unparalelled clemency and goodness , do , by vertue of our soveraign authority , absolute power and prerogative royal , and from the fulness , and plenitude of the same , parden , remit , indemnifie , and for ever acquit all our subjects , of whatsoever quality , state , or condition , of all crimes , of perduellion , rebellion , treason , or concealing of treason ; harbouring , reset , supplying , corresponding and intercommuning with rebels ; and all other species's or kinds of lase-majestie , as well common , as statutory ; and of all crimes of leasing-making , depraving , or mis-construing of our laws , mis-constructing of our proceedings , or mis-representing to us any of our subjects ; or us to our subjects ; with all other crimes , offences , delinquencies , or transgressiens of whatsoever nature , or quality , committed , acted , or done by any of our subjects , by word or writ , or any other acts of commission or omission , preceeding the date of these presents , which directly or indirectly , are , or may import , by any inference , or construction , the contravention of any law , act of parliament , custom , or constitution of that our ancient kingdom , or may infer any pain or punishment against any of our subjects , to the prejudice of their lives , fortunes , estates , fame , or reputations , either ad vindictam publicam vel privatam ; or for damage and interest : all which , we , by vertue of our royal authority , and out of the plenitude , and fulness of our power , will , ordain and declare to be , and are hereby pardoned , acquitted , indemnified , and put in perpetual oblivion , for now and ever . declaring and ordaining , that this general pardon and indemnity , shall be as valid and effectual to all our subjects , for their exoneration , and security in the premisses , as if every particular crime , offence , delinquency , or mis-demeanor were herein particularly set down ; and as if remissions were past under our great seal for the same ; wherewith we , for our self , and our successors , have dispensed , and hereby do dispense for ever , likeas , we do hereby prohibite and discarge any of our ministers or judges , to call in question , any of our said subjects , either criminally or civilly for the same in any time coming : and do declare and ordain , that this our general indemnity shall be interpreted in the most benign , favourable and comprehensive sense , the same can admit of , for the security of our subjects in the premisses . excepting alwayes forth and from this our indemnity , all forfaultures and sentences or dooms thereof , and that as to the estates only thereby forefaulted , but without prejudice to the persons hereby indemnified , and their memories and posterities , against whom the said sentences or dooms were given , and pronounced ; as likewise , excepting all pecuniarie fines or mulcts already paid or transacted : and generally , excepting all fines exceeding one thousand merks scots the fine , imposed upon heretors and liferenters , as to which fines , nevertheless not paid or transacted , and yet hereby excepted : it is our royal will and pleasure , that all execution , personal or real therefore be suspended , for the space of one year hereaster ; during the which time , we are resolved to take the same into our own gracious consideration . and further , excepting forth , and from this our indemnity , the murderers of james late arch-bishop of st. andrews , the murderers of mr. pearson , minister at carsfairn , and of thomas kennoway , and duncan stuart at swine-abbay ; as also , all murders , witchcrafts , assassinations , depredations , roberies , spulzies , thests and mutilations of private persons ; all which crimes , and those guilty thereof , are no way to be comprehended in , or have any benefit any manner of way , by this our pardon and indemnity ; and likewise in particular , excepting the persons and estates of mr. robert ferguson preacher , partick hume , sometimes called sir patrick hume of polwart , andrew fletcher , sometime of saltonn , and mr. gilbert burnet . doctor of theologie : as also , coll m cdonald and his associats , who were accessory to the late opposition made to a party of our forces , under the command of the deceast captain mckenzie of suddy , lately in lochaber : as also , all false coyners , and all persons now in prison for publick crimes , from all benefit of the same ; with which exceptions and restrictions allanerly , and no other , we hereby publish and declare our pardon and indemnity . and lastly , to the end all our good subjects may have notice of this our royal will and pleasure , we do hereby command our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers , pursevants , and messengers at arms , to make timeous proclamation thereof , at the mercat-cross of edinburgh ; for all which , these presents shall be to all persons whatsoever , who may be therein any way concerned , a sufficient warrant . given at our court at white-hall , the twenty fifth day of september , 1688. and of our reign , the fourth year . by his majesties command , melfort . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty : anne dom. 1688. a proclamation for calling out heretors, &c., for his majesties service scotland. privy council. 1688 approx. 8 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a58744 wing s1850 estc r41642 31355710 ocm 31355710 110619 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a58744) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 110619) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1752:19) a proclamation for calling out heretors, &c., for his majesties service scotland. privy council. paterson, william. 1 sheet ([1] p.). edinburgh, printed by the heir of andrew anderson ... and reprinted at london by john wallis ..., [london] : anno dom. 1688. "given under our signet, at edinburgh, the third day of october, 1688. and of our reign the fourth year. per actum dominorum secreti concilii. will. paterson, cls. sti. concilii." reproduction of original in the guildhall library (london, england). created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -17th century. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688. broadsides -london (england) -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-03 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion honi soit qvi mal y pense diev et mon droit a proclamation , for calling out heretors , &c. for his majesties service . james by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith , to our lyon , king at arms , and his brethren bernulds , macers of our privy council , pursevants , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch , as we being obliged by the vast preparations of the states of holland , to put this our antient kingdom in a condition of defence , as well for the securing of our own honour , as the protecting the lives and estates of all our leidge people ; therefore , we with advice of our privy council , do hereby peremptorily require and command , the whole heretors , liferenters , and wodsetters , and the factors and chamberlains of such as are minors , out of the kingdom , or otherwise necessarily absent , to conveen their best horses and arms , and to be rendezvouzed , under the command , and at the respective places ofets after mentioned , viz. the shire of nithisdale and stewartry of annandale , at the town of dumsreis , the fifteenth of october instant , under the command of the duke of queensberry ; the shire of wigtoun , the said day at dumsreis , under the command of the earl of galloway , and in his absence the laird of logan ; the stewartry of kirkcudbright , the said day and place , under the command of the discount of kenmure , or the laired of lagg the bailliary of cunninghame , the said day at glasgow , under the command of the lord montgomery ; the baislaries of kile and carrist , the said day and place , under the command of the earl of cassils ; the shire of renfrew , at the said town , the twelfth day of october instant , under the command of the earl of dundonald ; the shire of lanerk ; the said day and place , under the command of the duke of hamilton , and in his absence , lord john hamilton his son ; the shire of dumbartoun , the said day and place , under the command of the earl of glencairn ; the shire of tiviotdale , at edinburgh , the tenth day of october instant , under the command of the earl of lothian and the lord new-bootle ; the shire of berwick , the said day and place under the command of sir. archibald cockburn of lantoun barronet ; the shires of forrest and peebles , the said day and place , under the command of the land of drumelzier ; the shire of east lothain , the said day and place , under the command of the lord yester ; the shire of mid lothian , the said day and place , under the command of the earl of lauderdale ; the shire of west lothian , stirling and clackmannan , at stirling , the said teenth day instant , under the command of the earl of mar ; the shires of fife and kinross , the said day , at the town of burnt-island , under the command of the earl of belcarras ; the western division of perth-shire , at stirling , the foresaid tenth instant , under the command of david discount of stormonth ; the eastern division of that shire , the foresaid day and place , under the command of the lord murray : the shire of forsar , at the burgh of strivling , the twelfth instant under the command of the earl of southesk : the shire of merns , at the burgh of perth , the fifteenth instant , under the command of the lord keith ; marshals part of aberdene , at brichen or forsar , the fifteenth instant , under the command of the earl of kintore : the rest of the shire of aberdene , with the shire of bamsf , the said day and place , under the command of the duke of gordon : all betwirt spay and ness , at the burgh of brichen , twentieth second instant under the command of the lord duffus : the shires of ross and caithness , at the burgh of elgin , the twenty fourth instant , under the command of the master of tarbat : and hereby requires and commands the earl of caithness to levy two hundred foot , out of the shire of caithness , in place of the militia of the said shire , sifficiently armed and provided with fourteen days loan , which is to be proportionably said on by the commissioners of supply of the said shire , upon all persons lyable in dutreik of the militia , and with these to march to the head of lochness , betwixt and the twenty ninth instant : as likewise , requires and commands the lord doun , forthwith to rendezvous the foot-militia , betwixt spey and ness , and to make a detachment of the third part thereof , provided with fourteen days loan , which is to be imposed and proportioned upon these lyable in manner above-exprest , and with these to march to lochness , betwixt and the twenty ninth instant . as likewise , requires the lord strathnaver to levy two hundred men in place of the militia of sutherland , and to march forthwith to the head of lochness , with fourteen days loan , which is to be laid on the proportioned on the said shire , in manner above mentioned ; and this besides and without prejudice to the proportions of men , formerly-ordered by our council , to be rendezvouzed , and levied by those of our mobility and centry , having interest in our highlands ; with certification to such as shall fail herein , the shall be punished as absents from our host , conform to our laws and acts of parliament . and ordains all the saids commanders , and all under their respective commands , to remain at the respective above mentioned places , till further order from our council . and for the security of all persons concerned in this our service , we do hereby by vertue of our royal prerogative , discharge all personal execution for any civil cause or debt , against any person , who comes out to our host , in obedience to this our royal command , and that during their attending the same : and to the end our pleasure in the premissers may be made publick and known , our will is , and we charge you strictly and command , the incontinent , these our letters seen , ye pass the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and whole remnant mercat-crosses at the head burghs of the shires of the kingdom , and other places needful , and there , in our royal dame and authority , make open proclamation of the premisses , that all persons concerned may have notice thereof , and give punctual and exact obedience thereto , as they will be answerable at their highest peril . given under our signet , at edinburgh , the third day of october , 1688. and of our reign the fourth year . per actum deminorum secreti concilii . will paterson , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . by the king. a proclamation containing his majesties gracious pardon and indemnity scotland. sovereign (1660-1685 : charles ii) 1679 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b02107 wing c3279 estc r171269 53981483 ocm 53981483 180160 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b02107) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180160) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2819:14) by the king. a proclamation containing his majesties gracious pardon and indemnity scotland. sovereign (1660-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson ..., for andrew forrester, edinburgh : 1679 ; and re-printed at london : 1679. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. dated at end: given at our court at windsor castle, the twenty seventh day of july, one thousand six hundred seventy and nine. and of our reign, the thirtieth one year. imperfect: torn with slight loss of text. reproduction of the original in the bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng government, resistance to -scotland -early works to 1800. pardon -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -sources. 2008-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-08 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms by the king. a proclamation . containing his majesties gracious pardon and indemnity . charles r. charles the second , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland defender of the faith , &c. to all and sundry our good subjects whom these presents do or may concern , greeting : the just resentments we have of the rebellious courses taken by some in that our ancient kingdom of scotland , by poisoning our people with principles inconsistent with true piety , and all humane society , as well as with our royal government , and of the humorous factions of others , who ( under pretext of re-presentin● grievances to us ) have most unjustly , both in scotland and england , defamed our judicatures of scotland , and thereby weakened our authority , therein represented ; all which , did not hinder us from endeavouring to quiet the one by our late proclamation ; and the other by a publick hearing and debate : and being most desirous to cover all the imperfections of our subjects , and to remove the fears and jealousies , whence they proceed ; we have therefore , by our royal authority , and the undoubted prerogative of our crown , thought fit ( with the advice of our privy council ) to indemnifie , remit and pardon ( with the exceptions after specified ) all such as have been at field , or house conventicles ; all such as are guilty of irregular administration of the sacraments , and other schismatick disorders , all such as have been engaged in the rebellion , 1666. or the late rebellion this present year of god , 1679. all such have spoken , written , printed , published , or dispersed any traiterous speeches , infamous libels , or pasquils , all sich as have mis-represented any of our judicatures , servants , or subjects , or have advised any thing contrary to our laws , all such as have maleversed in any publick station , or trust : and generally , all such as are lyable to any pursuit , for any cause , or occasion , relating to any publick administration , by contrivances , actings , oppositions , or otherways preceeding the date hereof , declaring the generallity of these presents , to be effectual to all intents and purposes , as if every circumstance of every the foresaid delinquencies , or mis-demeanours were particularly and specially here inserted ; and as if every of the persons that might be challenged and pursued for the same , had a remission under our great seal , or an act of indemnity past in his favours . discharging any of our officers , or subjects , to pursue any person or persons upon any such accounts , either advindictam publicam vel privitam , or to upbraid them therewith . and commanding all our judges to interpret this our remission and indemnity , with all possible latitude and favour , as they will be answerable to us upon their highest perils . excepting such as are already forefaulted by our parliaments , or our criminal court , fined by our privy council ; and such who being fined by inferiour judicatures , have payed , or transacted for their fines , in so far as concerns their respective fines , so imposed : excepting also , all such heretors and ministers , who have been in the late rebellion , or were contrivers thereof , and such heretors as have contributed thereto , by levies of men or money , and excepting likewise such as obeyed not our , and our councils proclamation , in assisting in our host ; to be pursued for that their delinquency , according to law ; and such persons as have threatned , or abused any of the orthodox clergy , or any of our good subjects for assisting us , in suppressing the late rebellion ; and that , since our proclamation , dated the twenty ninth day of june , last past : which indemnity we do grant to those who were ingaged in the late rebellion , provided that they shall appear before such as our privy council shall nominate , betwixt and the dyets following , viz. these that are within this kingdom , betwixt and the eighteenth day of september , and these that are furth thereof , betwixt and the thirteenth of november next to come , and enact themselves , never to carry arms against us , or our authority , and with express condition , that if ever they shall be at any field conventicle , or shall do any violence to any of our orthodox clergy , this our indemnity shall not be useful to such transgressors any manner of way ; as it shall not be to any for private crimes , such as murders , assassinations , thefts , adulteries , the fines and denunciations thereof , and such like as never use to be comprehended under general acts of indemnity , and particularly the execrable murder of the late arch-bishop of st. andrews : nor to such as were appointed to be carryed to the plantations , by our letter , dated the twenty ninth day of june last , though their lives be by this our royal proclamation also , secured unto them , in manner , and upon the conditions above-mentioned . but lest the hope of impunity should embolden the malicious to future disorders ; we do hereby command our privy council , and all our other judicatures , to pursue and punish will all the severity that law can allow , all such as shall hereafter threaten or abuse the orthodox clergy , murmure against our judicatures , or officers , or shall make , publish , print , or disperse lybels , or pasquils ; these being the fore-runners of all rebellions ; and which , by defaming authority , do disappoint all its just and necessary methods . and to the end , all our good subjects may have notice of this our royal will and pleasure , we do hereby command our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers , pursevants , and messengers at arms , to make timous intimation hereof , at the mercat cross of edinburgh , and other places needful . given at our court , at windsor castle , the twenty seventh day of july , one thousand six hundred seventy and nine . and of our reign , the thirtieth one year . by his majesties command , lauderdale . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew ander●●● , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1679. and re-printed at london , for andrew forrester , in king-street , westminster . caledonia triumphans: a panegyrick to the king. pennecuik, alexander, 1652-1722. 1699 approx. 8 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b04677 wing p1395b estc r187054 52614828 ocm 52614828 176019 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b04677) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 176019) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2759:1) caledonia triumphans: a panegyrick to the king. pennecuik, alexander, 1652-1722. 1 sheet ([1] p.). s.n., [edinburgh : 1699?] caption title. attributed to pennecuik by wing (2nd ed.). place and date of publication suggested by wing (2nd ed.). imperfect: cropped, tightly bound with loss of text. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng william -iii, -king of england, 1650-1702 -poetry -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745 -poetry -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-06 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-07 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-07 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion triumphans . a panegyrick 〈◊〉 the king . ●hrice mighty prince , 〈◊〉 by thy birth , bellona's glory : splendor of the earth . 〈…〉 der of brav'ry , and of charming parts , 〈…〉 t conquerour of kingdoms and of hearts , ●he fam'd hero's in our age that be , 〈…〉 e lose their lustre , when compar'd with thee . 〈…〉 ed peace-maker in our bloody wars , 〈…〉 e reconciler of intestine jarrs . 〈◊〉 martial thistle budds , and no more withers , 〈◊〉 fragrant rose it's scent again recovers . 〈◊〉 harp is tun'd : and valiant sir , to thee , 〈◊〉 conquering lillies bow and humbled be . 〈◊〉 ballance of all europe sir , is your's , 〈◊〉 help and shelter of oppressed powers . 〈◊〉 mortal in his veins bears nobler blood , 〈…〉 ng from a race , both ancient , great and good , 〈…〉 nders of our faith , to pop'ry foes , 〈◊〉 holland , fla●ders , and all europe knows . 〈◊〉 ●appy orange-tree , both branch and root , 〈◊〉 hath blest brittan with such cordial fruit , 〈◊〉 those that in the northern world do dwell , 〈◊〉 much refreshed by the very smell . ●●●ch perfumes all our european costs , ●●●●ugh boreas blasts and hyperborean frosts . 〈◊〉 our own thule , and the orkney isles , 〈…〉 ound cold russia many thousand miles . 〈◊〉 rare accomplishments that shine in you , 〈…〉 s caledonia thus her case renew . ●ow if great sir , you list to lend an ear , 〈◊〉 a far countrey , joyful news we hear , 〈…〉 rus gently blows , and whistling , sings , 〈◊〉 my sweet gales , delicious tydings brings . 〈◊〉 of november , that auspicious day , 〈◊〉 valiant scots their colours did display , ●he western world , where they did meet , ●●●●sands of welcomes prostrat at their feet . 〈…〉 soveraign director was their guide , 〈…〉 ne them favour'd ; earth , seas , wind and tyde . 〈◊〉 natives made their joyes ring to the skyes , 〈◊〉 them ador'd as demi-deitys . 〈◊〉 harmless heathens , whom through time we vow , 〈…〉 ain good subjects both to god and you. andrew our first tutelar was he , vnicorn , must next supporter be , caledonia doth bring up the rear , 〈…〉 ht with brave hardy ladds , and void of fear ; ●●lendedly equpit , and to the three , endeavour and dolphin hand-maids be , 〈◊〉 to these praises , this addition have , ●njuries they 'l give , nor yet receive . ships and men commanded sir , it 's true , ●aptains both of sense and honour too . 〈◊〉 are these youths the scum of this our land , 〈…〉 n effect , a brave and generous band. 〈…〉 t'd with thirst of fame , and sound to have , 〈…〉 s upon the marbles of their grave . ●hough that hundreds in that train do come , ●●●se vertues are eclipst with want at home . 〈◊〉 ●ere their means but equal to their mind , 〈◊〉 the world you should not braver find . ●o allay youths rash unwary deeds , 〈◊〉 have their orders sent from elder heads . 〈◊〉 wise senat , who consult and vote , 〈◊〉 is the companys int'rest , and what not . 〈…〉 ding fertile fields and golden mountains , 〈…〉 th 〈…〉 with clear 〈◊〉 〈…〉 ristal fountains ; rivers , safe bayes , variety of plants ▪ and useful trees which our old brittain wants . here grows the nicaragua manchionell , vannileos also , that perfumes so well . our sable night is gone , the day is won , the scots are follow'd with the rising-svn . the ev'ning crowns the day , and what remains ? old albany its antient fame regains . fergvs 1st . your brave ancestor gave the scots of old fergvs 1st . a lyon rampant in a field of gold. when he our coat-armorial did dispense . which now is ours , in a true literal sense . and can our breasts such swelling joys contain , wllliam the lyon rules the scots again : a nation who with hearts , with hands and head , will serve you , soveraign sir , in time of need . warlike gaustavus , and great charl le maigne , did ne're employ our martial swords in vain . the brittons , romans , saxons and the danes , did all invade us , but with fruitless pains . the treach'rous picts did oft attempt the same ; but for reward , lost countrey , life and name . the noble race of douglass did excell in military glory , all can tell at home , and forraign shoars , yea , ever still , of all the sirname , very few prove ill . the antient grahams are brave , ●●d all confess , true to their sov'raigns , chiefly in distress . the danes who made our neighb'ring nation slaves ; found here the hays who beat them to their g●ave kind mantua hath never yet forgot rare creighton , call'd the admirable scot , whose life shews him a miracle of men : as it is drawn by an italian pen. wallace and bruce , i shall not now rehearse lest i offend you , sir , with tedious verse . and hundreds more of undenyed fame , for arts and arms , whom i forbear to name : and as our valour flew all europe round , so now our trade scarce both the poles shall bound . if you but own us , mighty sir , and then no devils we fear , nor yet malicious men. what humane counter-plot can marr the thing , that is protected by great-brittains king. our claim is just : and so we value not the brags of spain , nor thundrings of the pope , who may well threaten ; yet don dare not fight , when he minds ' darien , and old eighty eight . their cruelties were catholick indeed , not christian , to poor indians and their seed , but those they call hereticks of our nation , we hope will shew a meeker reformation , nor shall insulting neighbours henceforth taunt the gen'rous scots , for poverty and want. our ships through all the world shal go and come , even from the rising to the setting sun. then shall we from the genuine spring command , what now we truckle at a second hand . and we shall flourish by your royal rays , with honour , riches , and old nestors days : and ever bless our god , and praise our king , and caledonia's triumphs gladly sing . no mercenary thoughts , or base design of servile flatt'ry , made th 〈…〉 verse● the parliament having received intelligence of the taking of the castle of sterling in scotland ... england and wales. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a38034 of text r33330 in the english short title catalog (wing e2124). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a38034 wing e2124 estc r33330 13265559 ocm 13265559 98696 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a38034) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 98696) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1550:19) the parliament having received intelligence of the taking of the castle of sterling in scotland ... england and wales. parliament. 1 broadside. printed by john field ..., london : 1651 title from first two lines of text. at head of title: saturday the 30th day of august, 1651. reproduction of original in the harvard university library. eng derby, james stanley, -earl of, 1607-1651. lilburne, robert, 1613-1665. great britain -history -commonwealth and protectorate, 1649-1660. scotland -history -1649-1660. a38034 r33330 (wing e2124). civilwar no saturday the 30th day of august. 1651. the parliament having received intelligence of the taking of the castle of sterling in scotland ... england and wales. parliament 1651 263 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2008-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-08 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion saturday the 30th day of august . 1651. the parliament having received intelligence of the taking of the castle of sterling in scotland ( wherein were the records of scotland , forty pieces of ordnance , five thousand arms , with several provisions and ammunition ) as also of the dispersing of the new levies of the enemy in scotland ; and likewise of the total rout and overthrow of the earl of derby , and all the forces under his command in lancashire , by the parliaments forces under colonel robert lilborne ( the particulars whereof , together with the number and names of divers of the colonels slain or taken prisoners , is contained in a letter sent to the parliament from the said colonel robert lilborne ) do order , that on the next lords day , thanks be given to almighty god by the ministers in all churches and congregations within the late lines of communication , and weekly bills of mortality , for these great and seasonable mercies ; and that they do then also beg of almighty god , a blessing upon the parliaments army now ready to ingage with the enemy . and that the lord mayor of the city of london do take care , that timely notice be given to the said ministers accordingly . ordered by the parliament , that this order be forthwith printed and published . hen : scobell , cleric . parliamenti . london , printed by john field , printer to the parliament of england . 1651. a proclamation against spreading of false news, &c. edinburgh, november 10. 1688. scotland. privy council. 1688 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05471 wing s1608 estc r183343 52615073 ocm 52615073 176101 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05471) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 176101) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2762:44) a proclamation against spreading of false news, &c. edinburgh, november 10. 1688. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh, : anno domini 1688. title vignette: royal seal with initials i r. caption title. initial letter. some text in black letter. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng sedition -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-12 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 scott lepisto sampled and proofread 2009-01 scott lepisto text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal blazon or coat of arms i r honi soit qvi mal y pense a proclamation , against spreading of false news , &c. edinburgh , november 10. 1688. present in council . the earl of perth , lord high chancelor . his grace the lord arch-bishop of st. andrews . his grace the lord arch-bishop of glasgow . the marquess of athol , lord privy-seal . his grace the duke of gordon . the earl of errol . the earl of marr. the earl of cassils . the earl of linlithgow , lord justice-general . the earl of drumfermling . the earl of strathmore . the earl of southesque . the earl of traquair . the earl of belcarras . the earl of bradalban . the lord viscount of tarbat , clerk of register . the lord strathnaver . the lord maitland , theasurer-deput . the lord duffus . the lord kinaird . the mr of balmerino . the lord president of the session . the lord advocat . the lord justice-clerk . the lord castlehill . lieutennent general monro , the laird of niddrie . whereas we have seen a proclamation issued out in name of his most sacred majesty , declaring , that the prince of orange and his adherents , have designed to invade his majesties kingdoms ; and that now his majesty hath signified by his royal letter , of the date at whitehall the fifth day of november instant , that they are landing in england , and in order thereto , have contrived and framed several treasonable papers , and declarations , hoping thereby to seduce and corrupt his majesties subjects , and that several persons are imployed to disperse the same ; and since such methods may be taken to corrupt his majesties subjects , in this his antient kingdom ; therefore we , the lords of his majesties privy council , in his royal name , and by his authority , have thought it necessary to admonish all his majesties subjects within this kingdom , of what degree or quality soever , that they do not publish , disperse , repeat , or hand about the saids treasonable papers , or declarations , or any of them , or any other paper , or papers of such like nature , and particularly a declaration in the prince of orange's name , and another in the name of the states general , nor presume to read , receive , conceal , or keep the said treasonable papers , or declarations , or any of them , or any other payer , or papers to that purport ; or to disperse any false news , tending to the amusing his majesties subjects , or to the disturbance of the peace of the kingdom , without discovering , and revealing the same as speedily as may be , to some of the privy council , or to some other iudges , iustices of the peace , or magistrats , upon peril of being prosecuted according to the outmost severity of law. extracted forth of the records of privy council , by me , will. paterson , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno domini . 1688. a proclamation for adjourning the parliament from the first day of march next, to the eighteenth day of the said month scotland. privy council. 1690 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a58735 wing s1812_variant estc r225835 07984969 ocm 07984969 40739 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a58735) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 40739) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1212:14) a proclamation for adjourning the parliament from the first day of march next, to the eighteenth day of the said month scotland. privy council. [1] p. printed by the heir of andrew anderson ; reprinted by g. groom, edinburgh : london : 1690. "by order of the privy council." reproduction of original in the huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -privy council. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation for adjourning the parliament from the first day of march next , to the eighteenth day of the said month. edinburgh , the eighteenth day of february , 1690. whereas his majesty , by his royal letter of the date at holland-house , the thirtieth of november last bybast , authorised and required the lords of his privy-council , to issue forth a proclamation in his name , continuing the adjournment of this current parliament till the first day of march next : and that the council have in obedience to his majesty's commands , and in his name , and by virtue of his royal authority , declared the same parliament current , and continued the adjournment thereof until the said first day of march next : and his majesty having signified by his letter , to the lords of tne privy-council , of the date at kensingtoun , the thirteenth day of february , one thousand six hundred and ninety years , that many great and urgent matters , which concerned the good of the protestant interest , and the well of these kingdoms , did necessitate his majesty to continue the adjournment of the , parliament in this kingdom for some longer time , and hath thereby authorized and required the saids lords , to issue forth a proclamation in his name , continuing the adjournment until the eighteenth day of the said month of march next . therefore the lords of the privy-council , do in his majesty's name , and by his special command and authority , declare the said parliament current , and continues the adjournment thereof until the said eighteenth of march next : and require and command the lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers of privy-council , pursevants , messengers at arms , sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , that incontinent these presents seen , they pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh and remanent mercat-crosses of the head burghs of this kingdom , and there in his majesty's name and authority foresaid , by open proclamation , make intimation of the continuation of the said adjournment , from the first day of march next , to the eighteenth day of the said month ; requiring hereby all the members of parliament to attend that day , at ten a clock in the forenoon , in the usual way , and at the ordinary place , and upon the accustomed certifications , for doing of all which , the saids lords commit to them conjunctly and severally his majesty's full power by these presents , delivering the famine by them duely execute and indorsed again to the bearer . extracted by me , gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concili . god save king william and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , by order of privy-council . reprinted at london by g. croom , at the blue-ball in thames-street , 1690. a proclamation, discharging levies, vvithout his majesties special licence scotland. privy council. 1675 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05567 wing s1749 estc r183440 52612313 ocm 52612313 179618 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05567) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179618) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2794:12) a proclamation, discharging levies, vvithout his majesties special licence scotland. privy council. gibson, alexander, sir, d. 1693. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by andrew anderson, printer to the king's most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1674. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. intentional blank spaces in text. dated at end: given under our signet at edinburgh, the twenty third day of july, one thousand six hundred and seventy four, and of our reign, the twenty sixth year. signed: al. gibson, cl. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -army -recruiting, enlistment, etc. -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-06 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-07 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-07 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion c r royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , discharging levies , vvithout his majesties special licence . charles , by the grace of god , king of great brittain , france , and ireland , defender of the faith ; to our lovits , macers or messengers at armes , our sheriffs in that part conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : whereas , we are informed , that some persons have of late presumed to levy men within this our ancient kingdom , although they have not any authority from vs for that effect . therefore , we , with advice of the lords of our privy council , do hereby prohibit and discharge any person or persons , whatfoever to levy any men in this kingdom , or to take or transport any of our subjects thereof into the service of any forraign prince or state whatsoeever , without our special licence : and discharges all masters of ships to receive on board , or transport them , under all highest pains to be inflicted upon the contraveeners ; requiring hereby the fermorers of our customs and excise , their collectors , and waiters , to take special notice of any such persons , whom they shall find passing forth of this kingdom , upon the foresaid account ; and to stop them in their passage , as they will be answerable . and if need be , that they require the concurrence of the magistrates of burghs , and others in authority under vs , who are hereby ordained to be aiding and assisting to them herein . and ordains these presents to be printed , and published at the mercat cross of edinburgh , and other places needful , that none pretend ignorance . the which to do , we commit to you , conjunctly and severally , our full power , by thir our letters : delivering them by you , duely execute and indorsed again to the bearer . given under our signet at edinburgh , the twenty third day of july , one thousand six hundred and seventy four , and of our reign , the twenty sixth year . at. gihson , cl. s ti concilii . god save the king. edinbvrgh , printed by andrew anderson , printer to the king 's most excellent majesty , 1674. a proclamation for calling out heretors, and others in the shires of perth and forfar, and others beyond the water of tay scotland. privy council. 1689 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a58745 wing s1853 estc r6284 13698755 ocm 13698755 101451 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a58745) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 101451) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 848:54) a proclamation for calling out heretors, and others in the shires of perth and forfar, and others beyond the water of tay scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, by the order of his majesties privy council, edinburgh : 1689. reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -proclamations. broadsides -scotland -edinburgh (lothian) -17th century 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-03 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation for calling out the heretors , and others in the shires of perth and forfar , and others beyond the water of tay. at edinburgh , the sixteenth day of july , one thousand six hundred and eighty nineyears . whereas his grace the lord high commissioner , and the lords of his majesties privy council , are sufficiently informed , that there are some numbers of irish papists and others , shipped at craig-fergus , in three men of war , and that they have past the mule of kintire , and sailed betwixt isla and jura , and are probably before this time landed in some place of the isles , or highlands , about innerlochie ; therefore the lord high commissioner , and the lords of his majesties privy council , have thought sit , in his majes : ties name and authority , to certifie the liedges anent the invasion , and descent of these barbarous and bloody people , who will certainly joyn with the viscount of dundee , and other rebels that are in arms with him ; and do require the leidges , that none of them take in hand to correspond with , reset , supply , or any wayes assist these rebels and papists , but on the contrary , all sheriffs , baillies of regalities , or bailliaries , stewarts , and all other magistrats whatsomever within the sheriffdom of perth and forfar , and all others upon the north side of the water of tay , are hereby expresly required and commanded , to attend general-major mccay , commander in chief of his majesties forces in this present expedition , for reducing of these rebels and invaders , and that they receive and obey his orders from time to time , either in conveening the heretors and other inhabitants of the respective shires in arms to his majesties host , at what times or places he shall think sit to appoint ; or in furnishing provisions , baggage-horses , and what else may be necessary for his majesties service in this expedition , as they shall be advertised by the said general-major mccay , or his order : requiring likewayes the heretors and inhabitants of the several shires to obey punctually the orders , that shall be given to them by the respective sheriffs , stewarts , baillies and magistrats , to the effect foresaid : and his grace the lord high commissioner , and lords of privy council do certifie , that if any of the magistrats or inhabitants of these shires of perth , forfar , and others beyond tay , shall be negligent or refractory in conveening in arms , when required in manner foresaid , or giving their assistance for the maintainance of his majesties troops , furnishing of horses , or the carrying and transporting of their ammunition , provision , and baggage at this time , when the countrey is invaded by barbarous papists , joyned with intestine rebels , that they shall be proceeded against to the outmost extremity of law. and ordain these presents to be published at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and at the mercat-crosses of perth , forfar , and other mercat-crosses needful beyond the water of tay. extracted by me gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save king william and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , by order of his majesties privy council , anno dom. 1689. a letter from the parliament of scotland, to the honourable william lenthall esquire, speaker to the house of commons. scotland. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a92575 of text r211207 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.14[50]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a92575 wing s1284 thomason 669.f.14[50] estc r211207 99869937 99869937 163038 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92575) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 163038) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 246:669f14[50]) a letter from the parliament of scotland, to the honourable william lenthall esquire, speaker to the house of commons. scotland. parliament. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [london : 1649] dated at end: edenburgh, 26 junii 1649. imprint from wing. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng scotland -foreign relations -england -early works to 1800. england -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. great britain -history -commonwealth and protectorate, 1649-1660 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1649-1660 -early works to 1800. a92575 r211207 (thomason 669.f.14[50]). civilwar no a letter from the parliament of scotland, to the honourable william lenthall esquire, speaker to the house of commons. scotland. parliament 1649 839 1 0 0 0 0 0 12 c the rate of 12 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2007-09 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a letter from the parliament of scotland , to the honourable william lenthall esquire , speaker of the house of commons . sir , the estates of the parliament of this kingdom having received a letter dated the 23 of may , signed by you as speaker of the parliament , and written in the name of the common-wealth of england ; which titles , in regard of the solemn league and covenant , and treaties , and the many declarations of the parliaments of both kingdoms , are such as they may not acknowledge . as for the matter therein contained ; those many things of just resentment , wherein satisfaction is demanded from this kingdom , are onely mentioned in the generall , and therefore cannot so well receive a particular answer : but if by these generall expressions , the late unlawfull engagement against england be understood , they desire that their protestation against the same in parliament , and the opposition made thereunto by them afterward in arms ( which they never laid down untill the garisons of berwick and carlisle were restored unto the kingdom of england ) may be remembred , together with the letter of the house of commons to the generall assembly of this kirk , of the third of august 1648 : and that lieutenant general cromwel , authorized from both houses of parliament , did upon the 5 of october last , represent to the committee of estates of this kingdom , the wrongs and injuries committed against the kingdom of england in that engagement ; and thereupon did demand that they would give assurance in the name of the kingdom of scotland , not to admit or suffer any who have been active in , or consenting to that engagement , to be imployed in any publick place or trust whatsoever ; which was not onely granted , and afterward confirmed in parliament , but all acts for prosecution thereof have been repealed , and all proceeding relating thereunto publickly disclaimed . and if any other wrongs shall be make known unto us , we shall be ready to return such an answer as may give just satisfaction . if the bonds of religion , loyalty to the king , and mutuall amity and friendship betwixt the kingdoms be impartially considered , according to the solemn league and covenant , and the professions and declarations of both kingdoms , the estates of parliament think that they have just cause to complain of the late proceedings in england in reference to religion , the taking away of the kings life , and the changing the fundamentall government of that kingdom ; against which this kirk and kingdom and their commissioners , have protested and given testimony , whereunto they do still adhere . and since it is apparent there hath been of late in england a backsliding and departure from the grounds and principles wherein the two kingdoms were engaged , the parliament of this kingdom doth propound , that the late proceedings there against covenant and treaties may be disclaimed and disavowed , as the prosecution of the late unlawfull engagement against england hath been disclaimed and disavowed here ; and that such as have departed from these principles , and their former professions , may return to the same : upon which grounds they are content to ●uthorize commissioners on behalf of this kingdom , to treat with commissioners from both houses of the parliament of england , sitting in freedom , concerning all matters of just complaint which either nation may have against the other , and for redresse and reparation thereof , and to do every thing that may further conduce for continuing the happy peace and union betwixt the kingdoms , which can never be setled upon so sure a foundation as the former treaties , and the solemn league and covenant : from which , as no alteration or revolution of affairs can absolve either kingdom ; so , we trust in god , that no success , whether good or bad , shall be able to divert us ; but as it hath been our care in time past , it shall be still our reall indeavour for the future to keep our selves free of all compliance with , or inclining to the popish , prelatical and malignant party upon the one hand ; or to those that are enemies to the fundamentall government by king and parliament , and countenance and maintain errour , heresie , and schism upon the other . i have no other thing in command from the parliament of this kingdom , but to take notice that there is no answer returned to their letter of the 5 march last . and so rests for the honourable will . lenthal esquire , speaker of the house of commons . edenburgh , 26 junii 1649. your humble servant , loudoun cancellarius , praeses parliamenti . finis . charles by the grace of god king of great brittain, france and ireland, defender of the faith. to our lovits [blank] messengers, our sheriffes in that part conjunctly and severally specially constitute, greeting. england and wales. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a79124 of text r211963 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.7[31]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a79124 wing c2826 thomason 669.f.7[31] estc r211963 99870628 99870628 161013 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a79124) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 161013) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 245:669f7[31]) charles by the grace of god king of great brittain, france and ireland, defender of the faith. to our lovits [blank] messengers, our sheriffes in that part conjunctly and severally specially constitute, greeting. england and wales. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) charles i, king of england, 1600-1649. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh : 1643] dated and signed at end: given under our signet at edinburgh the eighteenth of august, and of our reigne the nineteenth yeare, 1643. per actum dominorum conventionis. arch. primerose cler. conven. a proclamation for raising men and arms in scotland, in pursuance of the solemn covenant entered into between england and scotland. with engraving of royal seal at head of document. annotation on thomason copy: "printed at edinburgh. 18 august 1643.". reproduction of the original in the british library. eng solemn league and covenant (1643). -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. a79124 r211963 (thomason 669.f.7[31]). civilwar no charles by the grace of god king of great brittain, france and ireland, defender of the faith. to our lovits [blank] messengers, our sheriff england and wales. sovereign 1643 841 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2008-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-06 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-07 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-07 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion c r honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms charles by the grace of god king of great brittain , france and ireland , defender of the faith . to our lovits messengers , our sheriffes in that part conjunctly and severally specially constitute , greeting . forsameikle as the estates of our kingdome of scotland presently conveened , taking into their most serious consideration the great and imminent danger of the true protestant reformed religion , and of the peace of thir our kingdomes from the treacherous and bloudy plots , conspiracies , attempts and practices of papists , prelats , malignants , and their adherents , have after mature deliberation thought expedient to enter into a solemne and mutuall covenant with our kingdome of england , for the defence of the true protestant reformed religion in the kirk of scotland , and the reformation of religion in the kirk of england , according to the word of god , the example of the best reformed kirks , and as may bring the kirk of god in both kingdomes to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion and church government , and siclike to preserve and defend the rights and priviledges of our parliaments , and liberties of our kingdomes respectivè , and to preserve and defend our person and authoritie in the preservation of the said true religion , and liberties of our saids kingdomes , and to observe the articles of the late treaty and peace betwixt the two nations , and to assist and defend all that shall enter into this covenant , in the maintaining and pursuing thereof , as the same more fully proports : which as it wil be a comfort and incouragement to all christians who fear god , and love religion , to all good and loyall subjects who truly honour us , and to all true patriots who tender the liberty of their countrie : so doubtlesse it wil exasperate and inrage the said papists , prelats , malignants , and their adherents , to practise and execute all the mischief & cruelty they can against this kirk and kingdome , as they have done in our kingdoms of england and ireland . for preventing therof , the estates of this our said kingdome ( according to the practise of our councel , convention of our estates , & of our parliaments in former times of the like exigence ) have resolved to put this our said kingdom , with all possible speed , in a present posture of defence , and for the better safety and securitie thereof , have statute and ordained , and hereby statues and ordaines , that immediately after the publication hereof , all the sensible persons within this our kingdome of scotland , betwixt sixtie and sixteene yeares of age , of whatsoever qualitie , rank , or degree , shall provide themselves with fourtie dayes provision , and with ammunition , armes , and other warlike provision of all forts , in the most substantious manner , for horse and foot , with tents , and all other furnishing requisite , and that the horsemen be armed with pistols , broad swords , and steel caps , and where these armes cannot be had , that they provide jacks , or secrets , lances and steel-bonnets , and that the footmen be armed with musket and sword , or pike and sword , and where these cannot be had , that they be furnished with halberts , loquhaber axes , or jeddart staves and swords . our will is herefore , and we charge you straitly and commands , that incontinent thir our letters seene , you passe to the market crosse of edinburgh , and severall burrowes of this our kingdome , and parish kirks thereof , and there by open proclamation make publication hereof , wherethrough none pretend ignorance of the same , and that you command and charge all and sundry our subjects foresaids , being sensible persons , betwixt sixtie and sixteene yeares , to provide themselves in manner foresaid , and to be in readinesse to make their randevous thus armed at the places to be appointed by our saids estates , or committees having power from them , within eight and fourty hours after they shall be lawfully warned by order from them to that effect , as they will testifie their affections to the true protestant religion , the liberties of our kingdomes , our owne honour , and the peace and safety of that their native countrey ; and under the paine to be esteemed and punish as enemies to religion , us and our kingdomes , and their whole goods to be confiscate to the use of the publick . given under our signet at edinburgh the eighteenth of august , and of our reigne the nineteenth yeare , 1643. per actum dominorum conventionis . arch. primerose cler. conven. printed at edinburgh 15 august 1648 a proclamation for apprehending the persons after-named, as having been in france contrair to the acts of parliament. scotland. privy council. 1696 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05640 wing s1840 estc r183501 52528975 ocm 52528975 179070 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05640) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179070) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:59) a proclamation for apprehending the persons after-named, as having been in france contrair to the acts of parliament. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1694-1702 : william ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to his most excellent majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1696. caption title. initial letter. intentional blank spaces in text. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the twelfth day of march, and of our reign the seventh year, 1696. signed: gilb. eliot, cls. sti concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng treason -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign relations -france -early works to 1800. france -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2008-08 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation for apprehending the persons after-named , as having been in france contrair to tke acts of parliament . william by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith , to macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly , and severally , specially constitute , greeting ; for as much as by the eighth act of the fourth session of this our current parliament ; it is statute and ordained , that none of the subjects within this kingdom without express leave from us or our privy council should presume to go to the kingdom of france , or any of the dominions subject to the french king after the first day of june one thousand six hundred ninety three , or being already in the said kingdom of france , or countries foresaid , should presume to stay or abide therein after the first day of august then next to come , without express leave from us , or our privy council under the pain of treason : nevertheless in manifest contempt of the foresaid act of parliament , and us and our authority , grahame younger of duntroon , mr. charles kinnaird brother to the lord kinnaird , mr. alexander maitland brother to the earl of lauderdale , captain deans , captain ruthven , lieutenant isaac threcal , lieutenant auchmouty , ensign alexander innes , lieutenants daniel and john banes , ensign william ramsay , sometime in hodge's regiment , ensign alexander sandelands sometime in wauchop's regiment , ensign laurence drummond of captain robert somervail , captain william davidson , lieutenant william main , lieutenant james henderson , ensign robert southerland , ensign alexander sinclair , lieutenant john bell , sometime in d'offerel's regiment , ensign william innes in d'offerel's regiment , ensign william lyon in the said regiment , william and hugh southerlands nephewes to major general southerland , walter nisbet son to alexander nisbet of graigintinny , william sinclair son to the deceas'd sinclair of dun , thomas clark brother to the deceas'd mr. william clark advocat , robert kinloch of mr , william pearson son to pearson sometime minister at stirling , alexander nisbet son to nisbet merchant in glasgow , mr. james oswald sometime chappeland to the lady halket , cuthbert son to cuthbert provost of inverness , captain patrick grahame , captains robert and william charters , captain john ramsay , lieutenant collonel rattray , lieutenant collonel oliphant , lieutenant colonel douglas , robert stuart agent in edinburgh , ensign john menzies son to menzies of comrie , major john gordon , captain james adamson , charles farquharson robert king , captain john livingston , lieutenant john creighton , sir john m clain of that ilk , irwine of stepletoun , captain mair ; have dared most presumptuously to repair and go to the said kingdom of france , or being therein to remain and continue within the same , after the times prefixed by the foresaid act of parliament ; whereby they have manifestly incurred the pain of treason specified in the said act : and we being informed that the saids guilty persons are returned to , and lurk within this our ancient kingdom without being seased upon , and brought to condign punishment as their crime deserves ; therefore we with advice of the lords of our privy council , hereby require and command , the sheriffs of the several shires within this kingdom and their deputs , the stewarts of stewartries , baillies of regalities and their deputs , and magistrats of burghs within their respective jurisdictions , to search for , take , and apprehend all and every one of the persons above named , and commit them to safe custody , and sure firmance , and detain them prisoners within their respective tolbuiths until they be brought to tryal and condign punishment for the crimes above-written ; and that they report their diligence in the premisses to the lords of our privy council betwixt and the first day of aprile next to come , under the pain of being reckoned countenancers of , and connivers at the saids treasonable persons ; as also we with advice foresaid , impower and command all the officers of our army , and our other good subjects within this kingdom to sease upon , take , and apprehend all or any of the persons above-named , where ever they can be discovered , and deliver them to the next magistrat , to be committed and detained prisoners in manner above-specified and to the effect none of our good sujects may be ensnared , or made partakers of the guilt of the saids persons by their lurking among them . we with advice foresaid strictly prohibit and discharge any of our subjects within this kingdom , to harbour , reset , provide , or any ways relieve and supply any of the foresaids persons ; but that they deliver them up to one or other of the magistrats foresaids to be proceeded against according to justice , under the pains contained in the acts of parliament made thereanent . our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly , and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and remnant mercat-crosses of the haill head-burghs of the several shires and stewartries within this kingdom ; and there in our name and authority , by open proclamation make intimation hereof , that none pretend ignorance ; and ordains these presents to be printed . given under our signet at edinburgh , the twelfth day of march , and of our reign the seventh year , 1696. per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king. edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to his most excellent majesty , anno dom. 1696. a proclamation discharging persons to travel to ireland without passes. scotland. privy council. 1695 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05571 wing s1754 estc r183443 52529272 ocm 52529272 179022 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05571) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179022) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:11) a proclamation discharging persons to travel to ireland without passes. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1694-1702 : william ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to the kings most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1695. caption title. initial letter. intentional blank spaces in text. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the thirtieth first of december, and of our reign the seventh year, 1695. signed: gilb. eliot cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng international travel regulations -scotland -early works to 1800. national security -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign relations -ireland -early works to 1800. ireland -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-06 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-07 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-07 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation discharging persons to travel to ireland without passes . william by the grace of god , king of great britain france and ireland , defender of the faith , to macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute ; greeting , forasmuch as , seve●●al vagabounds and other idle persons have been in use to haunt and frequent this our kingdom , for several years by past , during the summer time only , and have retired themselves into the kingdom of ireland , how soon the winter did approach ; as also many young men have put themselves out of setled service , that they might be at the greater liberty to withdraw themselves and retire out of the kingdom , whenever recruits were to be made up for our service , or the time of making the levies appointed by act of parliament drew near , to the great prejudice of our service , and increase , and incouragment of vagabounds and idle persons , who might be well imployed therein : for remedy whereof , we with advice of the lords of our privy council do strictly prohibite and discharge all persons whatsomever , either as passengers or howsoever , otherway●s imployed in ships , or boats , to go or transport themselves into the kingdom of ireland , without sufficient passes under the hand of one of the lords or others of our privy council , or of the sheriff of the shire , stewart of the stewartry , or baillies of the ●eg●lity or bailliery , within whose bounds the persons intending for ireland does dwel and reside , bearing their names , designations , and places of their abode , and inployment for the last year preceeding ; and we wi●h advice foresaid , do hereby require , and strictly command all collectors of our customs , surveyers , clerks , waiters at the several ports , and all masters , and sea men of ships , barks , or boats , that they suffer no person whatsomever to pass or transport themselves to the said kingdom of ireland , without they be furnished and provided with a sufficient pass , granted in manner above-mentioned , as they will be answerable at their highest peril ; and if any shall attempt to transport themselves to the said kingdom , otherways then is above provided , that they sease upon their persons , and deliver them to the next magistrat by him to be committed and detained in prison till farder order . our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly , and command , that incontinent , these our letters seen ye pass to the mercat cross of edinburgh , and to the mercat crosses of the whole remanent head burghs of the several shires and stewartries within this kingdom , and there in our name and authority by open proclamation make intimation hereof , that none may pretend ignorance ; and ordains these presents to be printed . given under our signet at edinburgh , the thirtieth first of december , and of our reign the seventh year , 1695. per actum dominorum secreti concilii , gilb eliot cls. sti. concilii , god save the king. edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to the kings most excellent majesty , 1695. to the most illustrious, john, earle of lauderdale, &c. his majesties high commissioner for the kingdom of scotland, his grace, a congratulatory welcome of an heart-well-wishing quill: hecatombe. murray, mungo, 17th cent. 1670 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b04439 wing m3113 estc r180804 52528861 ocm 52528861 178843 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b04439) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 178843) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2772:19) to the most illustrious, john, earle of lauderdale, &c. his majesties high commissioner for the kingdom of scotland, his grace, a congratulatory welcome of an heart-well-wishing quill: hecatombe. murray, mungo, 17th cent. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh? : 1670?] in verse. caption title. imprint suggested by wing. end of text signed: m. m. text printed in two columns. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng lauderdale, john maitland, -duke of, 1616-1682 -poetry. scotland -history -1660-1688 -poetry. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-08 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion to the most illustrious , john earle of lauderdale , &c. his majesties high commissioner for the kingdom of scotland , his grace , a congratulatory welcome of an heart-well-wishing quill : hecatombe . awake , dull muses , from lethargick trance ; apollo calls , in raptures to advance . each quill hath freedom ; now is time or never the treas'rie of invention to discover . all hopes are frustrate of rebellions band , now manacl'd , in blood can no more stand . the venom'd , waspish , mutinous tongues are known ; 't will fruitless prove the language such have shown : enigma ridling-satyrs , upon stage , self-ruine does to th' authors but presage : as night owls dare in day not show their faces , repining state-moths would destroy all peaces . behold ! behold ! comes th' atlas of our crown , ( its good , and kingdoms shield ) foes to pull down : his princes thoughts , wishes , desires ( exprest ) seal'd's in a loyal secretaries brest : nay more , his royal heart he doth present , to signifie his love to parliament . what male-contented spirit can he be , thee does not welcome with alacritie ! while others sleep'd , thy contemplation wak'd , fearing thy countreys glory should be shak'd by circumveening councels of strange foes , whose vigilance all machiavils outgoes . no native , sure , can thy intents mistrust ; prov'd , by experience , all along , most just : 'twixt king and subject , betwixt church and state , impartiall vmpire , reconciles debate . in albions wildest , and remotest ground , makes concord flourish , and in fruits abound : a soveraign balm , ( men judging now supposes ) will cure all jars 'twixt thistle and the roses ; yea , link them fast into a gordian-knot , and make amneste by-past wrongs out-blot : so by the couching lions 't will be vaunted , the rampant's courage makes them now undaunted : then who dares touch the rose to do it harm ! will find the thistle a defensive arm : whose pricking valour , fatal chair , and crown , a birth-right pleads : no nation like can owne . but who will judge who hes the prior seat ? ' gain when renuptiat's britains divorc'd state : thy countries honour late hath so preferr'd , ( unvoyc'd ) her case may to thee be referr'd : her dearest son of merit , 'bove whose head the garlands of her throne ne're withered ; whose fragrant leaves to scepter will , by thee , as verdent looks , as when first pull'd from tree : strong , stately twist , does keep unrent asunder th' unconquer'd ophir closs crown , ( ages wonder ) whose priviledges thy foreseeing wit and martiall prudence makes in safety sit . but mark ! the voice of caesar's great command , hes measur'd britain with his mighty hand , surrounded with the ocean ( as a wall of brass ) whose force the world can not make fall : without partition , th' undivided center , heav'ns sey-piece of creations first adventure : free from the evah-bondage of that tree , tempt'd mans free-will to infelicitie : where providence hath fix'd her ruling hand , under one head makes britains body stand ; whileas of old upon her shoulders stood numbers of kings , thirsting each others blood : composed now in one fit monarchie , of head and members glorious to see . may his great world-terr'fying work go on , that kings may become subjects to his throne ; perplex'd too long , by sad intestine broyls , which might have conquer'd all resisting soyls . o how in fear each forrain state may stand , left britains unknown strength shall them command , thral'd in past ages , ne're to light could come , hid as twinn'd-children wrestling in one womb ; the mothers bowels oft have almost burst , striving who should the other first out-thrust : whose succinct laws ( made from corruption free ) to athens schools will prove the librarie ; nay , 't will be found , lacedemoneas court of students , will to britains coasts resort : then by a common freedome in this union , her natives may traffique in each dominion vvith canvass wing'd , beyond the lyne may flie , and make our britain europs emporie : so may thy splendor unto our horizon the scepter sway , and royall power blazon : calm stormy clouds , dispell our babel tongues , compesce sedition and imagind wrongs : let britain become in one state pollitick , and that her church be scriptures apostolick , that others may to her conformists be , purg'd from th' impostumes of black heresie : thus hence our law , religion , and commerce , be one , and free throughout the universe : then happy thou this union if prove wrought , vvhich former tymes ne're to perfection brought ; a future blessing to thy monarchs line , succesfull heir t'an hundred kings and nine . heav'ns second thee to better charles his waine , our boreas pole , for it the onlie man. m. m. * ⁎ * notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div b04439-e10 john met●l●n anag : the onlie man. a proclamation, offering a reward of one hundred pound sterling, to any who shall bring in the person of mr. james renwick (a seditious field-preacher) dead or alive. scotland. privy council. 1686 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05716 wing s1957 estc r183574 53981743 ocm 53981743 180376 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05716) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180376) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2827:5) a proclamation, offering a reward of one hundred pound sterling, to any who shall bring in the person of mr. james renwick (a seditious field-preacher) dead or alive. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) 1 sheet ([2] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1686. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the ninth day of december, 1686. and of our reign the second year. signed: will. paterson, cls. sti. concilii. imperfect: stained with some loss of text. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng renwick, james, 1662-1688. covenanters -legal status, laws, etc. -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1660-1688 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-10 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-12 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-12 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation , offering a reward of one hundred pound sterling , so any who shall bring in the person of mr. james renwick ( a seditious field-preacher ) dead or alive . iames by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith ; to our lyon king at arms , and his brethen heraulds , macers of our privy council , pursevants , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch , as one mr. james renwick , a flagitious and scandalous person , has presumed and takes upon hand , these several years bygone , to convocat together numbers of our unmarry , and ignorant commons , to house and field-conventicles , ( which our law so justly terms the nurseries of sedition , and rendezvous's of rebellion ) in some of the western shires of this our ancient kingdom , and has frequently preached at these rebellious meetings , his seditious and traiterous principles and opinions , intending thereby to debauch some of the ignorant people from their bouden duty , and obedience they ow to us as their rightful soveraign lord and monarch . and we out of our royal care and tenderness to our people , being desirous to deliver all our loving subjects , from the malign influence of such a wretched imposture ; have therefore , with advice of our privy council ( as is usual in such cases ) not only thought sit to declare the said mr. james renwick an open and notorious rebel , and traitor against us , and our royal government , but likewise hereby authorise and require all our loving subjects to treat him as such and also prohibite and discharge all our subject , men or women , that none of them offer or presume to harbour , reset , supply , correspond with , hide , or conceal the person of the said mr. james renwick , rebel foresaid , under the pain of incurring the severest punishments , prescribed by the acts of parliament and proclamations of our privy council , made against resetters of rebels ; but that they do their outmost endeavour to pursue him , as the worst of traitors : and to the end the said mr. james renwick may the better be discovered , apprehended and brought 〈◊〉 justice : we with advice foresaid , do hereby require and command all our sheriffs , stewarts , baillies of regalities 〈…〉 ●●gistrats of burghs , and justices of the peace , not only to cause search for , pursue and apprehend the person of the 〈…〉 james renwick , rebel foresaid , wherever he can be found within their respective jurisdictions , 〈…〉 their assistance to any who shall offer to apprehend him : and if in pursuit of the said mr. james renwick 〈…〉 he , or any of his rebellious associats , resisting to be taken , any of our saids magistrats , or other 〈…〉 kill , or mutilat him , or any of them , we hereby declare that they , nor none assisting them shall 〈…〉 pursued civily or criminally therefore in time-coming , but that these presents shall be al 's sufficient for 〈…〉 they had our special remission , and that their doing thereof shall be repute good and acceptable service 〈…〉 incouragement of such as shall apprehend , and bring in the person of the said mr. james renwick , 〈…〉 alive , he , or they shall have the reward of one hundreth pound sterling money , to be in instantly payed to 〈…〉 of our thesaury . and we ordain these presents to be published at the mercat-cross of edinburgh 〈…〉 head-burghs of the several shires of this kingdom , on the south-side of the water of tay , and other 〈…〉 riffs in the saids respective shires , that none pretend ignorance . given under our signet at edinburgh , the ninth day of december , 1686. and of our reign 〈…〉 per actum dominorum secreti concilii . will. paterson , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1686. a proclamation requiring all heretors and free-holders, and militia of the kingdom of scotland to be in a readiness to come out in their best arms and provided (upon advertisement) for his majesties service england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) 1685 approx. 8 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a46587 wing j368c estc r21393 12567277 ocm 12567277 63365 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a46587) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 63365) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 962:9 or 1339:37) a proclamation requiring all heretors and free-holders, and militia of the kingdom of scotland to be in a readiness to come out in their best arms and provided (upon advertisement) for his majesties service england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson ... ; by george croom ..., edinburgh : reprinted at london : 1685. reproductions of originals in the henry e. huntington library and art gallery and bodleian library. broadside. at end of text:" given under our signet at edinburgh, the eleventh day of may, 1685." signed: col. mackenzie. item at reel 962:9 identified as wing j368c (number cancelled). created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng james -ii, -king of england, 1633-1701. scotland -militia -government policy -sources. broadsides 2007-11 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-02 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion diev et mon droit a proclamation requiring all the heretors and free-holders , and militia of the kingdom of scotland to be in a readiness to come out in their best arms and provided ( upon advertisement ) for his majesties service . james , by the grace of god king of great-britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith ; to mac●rs of our privy council , or messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as we being resolved that in the present exigence of affairs , all our subjects , and particularly heretors and free-holders , and our militia , should be in a readiness , in defence of us and our government , do therefore , with advice of our privy coucil , hereby peremptorily require and command all heretors and freeholders within this our realm , above one hundred pounds scots valued yearly rent , to be in a readiness , sufficiently armed and provided to come out on horse-back , with their followers and servants , and with twenty dayes provision , to attènd our army , on twenty four hours advertisement , and to march and obey such orders as they shall recieve from our council , or one of our general officers , and herein they are not to fail , as they will answer at their highest peril , and under the pains and certifications appointed by the laws of this kingdom , against absents from our host : and that neither the said heretors and free-holders , nor these concerned in the out-reik of our militia , may pretend excuse , either as to the want of arms or amunition or such warlike provisions , we hereby allow them to be readily furnished therewith , forth of the magazine of our castle of edinburgh , and our other magazines , at the ordinary rates ; declaring , that all such as shall not be sufficiently armed and provided as said is , that they shall be holden and repute as absents from our host , and be proceeded against and punished accordingly ; and we , but prejudice of the generality aforesaid , being resolved that the hereitors and free-holders of the shiers under-written , in place of the militia horse should come out , under the command of the persons following , viz. these of the shires of rosi , southerland and caithness , under the command of the earl of caithness ; these of the earl of seafort , and lovats part of inverness shire , under the command of the lord lovat's tutors or factors : these of the shires of elgine , nairn , and the other part of inverness shire , under the command of the lord ●●…sus : these of the shire of aberdene , no● being marisehals part , and the shire of ramff , under the command of the duke of gordon : these of the shire of kinnardin and marischals part of aberdene , under the command of the earl of kintor , or the lord inverary his son : these of the shire of perth under the command of the lord marquess of athol , lord privy-seal , ( who is also conform to a commission of lieutenency , for the shires of argile , and tarbot , under our royal hand , dated at white-hall the fourth instant , to call out all the sencible men in the shires of perth , argile and tarbot , to his assistance , in prosecution thereof : ) these of the shire of forfar , under the command of the earl of southesk , or the lord carnagy his son : these of the shires of fife and kinrosse , under the command of sir charles halket of pitsirrin : these of the shires of stirling and clackmannan , under the command of william livingston , of kilsyth : these of the shire of roxburgh , under the command of the earl of lotham : these of the shire of linlithgow , under the command of the earl of linlithgow : these of the shire of peebles , under the command of the laird of drumelzier : these of the shire of mid-lothian , under the command of the earl of lauderdale : these of the shire of east-lothian under the command of the lord yester : and these of the shire of berwick , under the command of the laird of langtoun elder : as also , that the militia regiments of foot , of the shires under-written , should come out under the command of their collonels respective , viz. the militia regiment of the shire of forfar , under the cammand of the earl of strathmore : that malitia regiment of the shire of perth , belonging to the lord chancellor , under the command of his lieutenant collonel : these of the shires of stirling and clackmannan , under command of the lord elphingstoun : the militia regiments of the shires of linlithgow and peebles , under command of the duke hamilton : the malitia regiment of the shire of berwick , under the command of the earl of home : the militia regiment of the shire of mid-lothian , under the command of the lord collingtoun : the militia regiment of the shire of east-lothian , under the command of the earl of wintoun : and the regiment of the town of edinburgh , under the command of the lord provost of edinburgh . we hereby require and command the said heretors and free-holders , and malitia regiments forsaid , to be in a readiness to rendezvous , or march as they shall be required by their said commanders , or collonels respective , the militia being to rendezvouz at the ordinary place for the first diet upon the nineteenth of may instant , and the heretors and free-holders , as shall be appointed by their commanders , they being alwayes armed and provided in manner , and under cirtifications above-written . and that this our pleasure may be known : our will is , and we charge you strictly and command , that incontinent , these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat cross of edinburgh , and all other mercat crosses of the head burghs of the shires of this kingdom , and other places needful , and there by open proclamation , in our name and authority , make publication of the premisses , that all persons concerned may have notice thereof , and give due and exact obedience thereto . given under our signet at edinburgh , the eleventh day of may , 1685 . and of our reign , the first year . per actum dominorum secreti concilij . col . mackenzie , cls. sti. concilij . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to the kings most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1685. and reprinted at london , by george croom , at the sign of the blue-ball in thames-street , over against baynard's-castle . for the right honourable the lords and commons assembled in the parliament of england. scotland. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a84669 of text r211045 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.13[44]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a84669 wing f1438 thomason 669.f.13[44] estc r211045 99869781 99869781 162940 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a84669) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 162940) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 246:669f13[44]) for the right honourable the lords and commons assembled in the parliament of england. scotland. parliament. england and wales. parliament. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed for john wright, at the kings head in the old-bayley, london : 1648. as they were thankful for the coming of the army under lieut.-gen. cromwell and maj.-gen. lambert so now that they are retiring the committee of estates bear testimony to their excellent carriage, strengthening and confirming the amity of both kingdoms -cf. steele. dated at end: edenburgh 7. novemb. 1648. order to print dated: die veneris 17 novemb. 1648. signed: joh. brown cler. parliamentorum. hen. elsyng cler. parl. d. com. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng scotland -foreign relations -england -early works to 1800. england -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a84669 r211045 (thomason 669.f.13[44]). civilwar no for the right honourable the lords and commons assembled in the parliament of england. scotland. parliament 1648 286 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2007-09 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-09 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion for the right honourable the lords and commons assembled in the parliament of england . right honourable , as we are very sensible of the benefit and advantage afforded to this kingdome , ( against the enemies to the peace and happinesse of both nations ) by the comming hither of your forces under the command of lievtenant generall crumwell , and major generall lambert ; so we hold it fitting when the condition of our affaires and posture of our forces have now permitted their returne , to render them this deserved testimony , and to acknowledge that the deportment of the generall officers , under-officers and souldiers in their comming into this kingdome , during their aboad amongst us , and in their returne to england , hath beene so faire and civill , and with so much tendernesse to avoid all causes of offence , and to preserve a right understanding betwixt the kingdomes , that we trust by their carriage the maglignant and disaffected shall be much convinced and disappointed , and the amity of both kingdomes strengthned and confirmed , which we shall likewise on our part inviolably study to preserve , and to witnesse that we are edenburgh 7. novemb. 1648. your very affectionate friends and humble servants loudoun canc. signed in the name , and by command of the committee of estates . die veneris 17 novemb. 1648. ordered by the lords and commons assembled in parliament , that this letter be forthwith printed , and published . joh. brown cler. parliamentorum . hen. elsyng cler. parl. d. com. london printed for john wright , at the kings-head in the old-bayley , 1648. the scotts declaration, in answer to the declaration, sent unto them by their commissioners now at london, from the honourable houses of parliament of england: expressing their care to prevent the effusion of christian blood; and their affections to reformation both to kirk and state. ordered by the lords and commons, that this be forthwith printed and published, h. elsynge, cler. parl. dom: com scotland. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a86194 of text r18646 in the english short title catalog (thomason e115_3). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 18 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 8 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a86194 wing h1438 thomason e115_3 estc r18646 99860444 99860444 112564 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a86194) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 112564) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 20:e115[3]) the scotts declaration, in answer to the declaration, sent unto them by their commissioners now at london, from the honourable houses of parliament of england: expressing their care to prevent the effusion of christian blood; and their affections to reformation both to kirk and state. ordered by the lords and commons, that this be forthwith printed and published, h. elsynge, cler. parl. dom: com scotland. parliament. henderson, alexander, 1583?-1646. scotland. convention of estates. 15, [1] p. printed, for edw. husbands and john francks, and are to be sold at their shops, in the middle temple, and next door to the sign of the kings-head in fleet-street, [london] : septem. 1. 1642. attributed to alexander henderson by wing. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng church history -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -sources. a86194 r18646 (thomason e115_3). civilwar no the scotts declaration, in answer to the declaration, sent unto them by their commissioners now at london, from the honourable houses of par scotland. parliament 1642 3044 7 0 0 0 0 0 23 c the rate of 23 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-04 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-05 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-05 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the scotts declaration , in answer to the declaration , sent unto them by their commissioners now at london , from the honourable houses of parliament of england : expressing their care to prevent the effusion of christian b●ood ; and their affections to reformation both to kirk and state . ordered by the lords and commons , that this be forthwith printed and published , h. elsynge , cler. parl. dom : com : printed , for edw. husbands and john francks , and are to be sold at their shops , in the middle temple , and next door to the sign of the kings-head in fleet-street , septem. 1. 1642. the scots declaration . the generall assembly of the kirk of scotland having received a declaration sent unto them by the commissioners of this kingdom now at london , from the honourable houses of the parliament of england , expressing their care to prevent the effusion of christian blood in that kingdom , and their affections to reformation both in kirk and state : and having taken the same to such consideration , as the importance of so weighty matters , and the high estimation they have of so wise and honorable a meeting as is the parliament of england did require , have , with universall consent , resolved upon this following answer : i. that from the recent sense of the goodnesse of god in their own la●e deliverance , and from their earnest desire of all happinesse to our native king , and that kingdom , they blesse the lord for preserving them in the midst of so many unhappy divisions and troubles , from a bloody intestine war , which is from god the greatest judgement ; and to such a nation , the compend of all calamities . they also give god thanks for their former and present desires of reformation , especially of religion , which is the glory and strength of a kingdom , and bringeth with it all temporall blessings of ▪ prosperity and peace . ii. that the hearts of all the members of this assembly , and of all the well-affected within this kingdom are exceedingly grieved , and made heavy , that in so long a time , against the professions both of king and parliament , and contrary to the joynt desires and prayers of the godly in both kingdoms , to whom it is more dear and precious then what is dearest to them in the world , the reformation of religion hath moved so slowly , and suffered so great interruption . they consider , that not onely prelates , formall professors , prophane and worldly men , and all that are popishly affected , are bad counsellors and workers , and do abuse their power , and bend all their strength and policies against the work of god , but the god of this world also , with principallities and powers , the rulers of the darknesse of this world , and spirituall wickednesse in high places , are working with all their force and fraud in the same opposition , not without hope of successe ; they having prevailed so far from the beginning , that in the times of the best kings of iuda of old , and the most part of the reformed kirks of late , a thorow and perfect reformation of religion hath been a work full of difficulties : yet do they conceive , that as it ought first of all to be intended , so should it be above all other things , with confidence in god , who is greater then the world , and he who is in the world most seriously endeavoured . and that when the supreme providence giveth opportunity of the accepted time and day of salvation , no other work can prosper in the hands of his servants , if it be not apprehended , and with all reverence and faithfulnesse improved . this kirk and nation when the lord gave them the calling , considered not their own deadnesse , nor staggered at the promise through unbelief , but gave glory to god . and who knoweth ( we speak it in humility and love , and from no other minde , then from a desire of the blessing of god upon our king and that kingdom ▪ but the lord hath now some controversie with england , which will not be removed , till first , and before all , the worship of his name , and the government of his house be setled according to his own will . when this desire shall come , it shall be to england , after so long deferred hopes , a tree of life , which shall not onely yeeld temporall blessings unto themselves , but also shall spread the branches so far , that both this nation , and other reformed kirks shall finde the fruits thereof to their great satisfaction . iii. the commissioners of this kingdom in the late treaty of peace , considering that religion is not onely the mean of the service of god , and saving of souls , but is also the base and foundation of kingdoms and estates , and the strongest band to tye subjects to their prince in true loyalty , and to knit the hearts of one to another in true unity and love , they did , with preface of all due respect and reverence , far from arrogance or presumption , represent , in name of this kingdom , their serious thoughts , and earnest desires for unity of religion ; that in all his majesties dominions there might be one confession of faith , one directory of worship , one publike catechism , and one form of kirk-government : this they conceived to be acceptable to god almighty , who delighteth to see his people walking in truth and unity ; to be a speciall means for conserving of peace betwixr the kingdoms , of easing the kings majesty and the publike government of much trouble which ariseth from differences of religion , very grievous to kings and estates ; of great content to the king himself , to his nobles , his court , and all his people , when — occasioned to be abroad , without scruple to themselves , or scandall to others , all may resort to the same publike worship , as they were at their own dwellings : of suppressing the names of heresies and sects , puritans , conformists , separatists , anabaptists , &c. which do rent asunder the bowells both of kirk and kingdom ; of despair of successe to papists and recusants to have their profession , which is inconsistent with the true protestant religion , and authority of princes , set up again , and of drawing the hearts and hands of ministers from unpleasant and unprofitable controversies , to the pressing of mortification , and to treatises of true piety , and practicall divinity . the assembly doth now enter upon the labour of the commissioners , unto which they are encouraged , not onely by their faithfulnesse in the late treaty , but also by the zeal and example of the generall assemblies of this kirk in former times , as may appear by the assembly at edinburgh , decemb. 25. in the yeer 1566. which ordained a letter to be sent to england against the surplice , tippet , cornercoap , & such other ceremonies as then troubled that kirk , that they might be removed . by the assembly at edinburgh , april 24. 1583. humbly desiring the kings majestie to command his ambassadour then going to england to deal with the queen , that there might be an union and band betwixt them and other christian princes and realms professing the true religion , for defence and protection of the word of god , and professors thereof , against the persecution of papists and confederates , joyned and knit together by the bloody league of trent : as also , that her majesty would disburthen their brethren of england , of the yoke of ceremonies imposed upon them against the liberty of the word . and by the assembly at edinburgh , march 3. 1589. ordaining the presbytry of edinburgh to use all good and possible means for the relief and comfort of the kirk of england , then heavily troubled for maintaining the true discipline and government of the kirk ; and that the brethren in their private and publike prayers recommend the estate of the afflicted kirk of england to god . while now by the mercie of god , the conjunction of the two kingdoms is many wayes increased , the zeal of the generall assembly towards their happinesse ought to be no lesse . but besides these , the assembly is much encouraged unto this duty , both from the kings majestie and his parliament joyntly , in their answer to the proposition made by the late commissioners of the treaty , in these words , to their desire concerning unity of religion , and uniformity of kirk-government , as a speciall means for conserving of peace betwixt the two kingdoms , upon the grounds and reasons contained in the paper of the 10 of march ; and given in to the treaty and parliament of england . it is answered upon the 15 of june , that his majestie , with advice of both houses of parliament , doth approve of the affection of his subjects of scotland , in their desire of having conformity of kirk-government between the two nations ; and as the parliament hath already taken into consideration the reformation of kirk-government , so they will proceed therein in due time , as shall best conduce to the glory of god , the peace of the kirk , and of both kingdoms . and also severally ; for his majesty knoweth that the custody and vindication , the conservation and purgation of religion , are a great part of the duty of civil authority and power . his majesties late practise , while he was here in person , in resorting frequently to the exercises of publike worship , his royall actions in establishing the worship and government of this kirk in parliament . and in giving order for a competent maintenance to the ministery and seminaries of the kirk ; and his majesties gracious letter to the assembly ( seconded by the speech of his majesties commissioner ) which containeth this religious expression , where any thing is amisse , we will endeavour in a fair and orderly way a reformation , and where reformation is setled , we resolve with that authority wherewith god hath vested us , to maintain ▪ and defend it in peace and liberty , against all trouble that can come from without , and against all heresies , sects , and schismes which may arise from within . all these do make us hopefull that his majestie will not oppose , but advance the worke of reformation . in like manner the honourable houses of parliament , as they have many times before witnessed their zeal , so now also in their declaration sent to the assemblie , which not only sheweth the constancie of their zeal , but their great grief that the work hath been interrupted by a malignant party of papists and evill-affected persons , especially of the corrupt and dissolute clergy by the incitement and instigation of bishops and others . their hopes according to their earnest desire when they shall return to a peaceable and parliamentarie proceeding by the blessing of god , to settle such a reformation in the church as shall be agreeable to gods word ; and that the result shall be a most firm and stable union between the two kingdoms of england and scotland , &c. the assemblie also is not a little encouraged by a letter sent from many reverend brethren of the kirk of england , expressing their prayers and endeavours against every thing which shall be found prejudiciall to the establishment of the kingdom of christ and the peace of their soveraigne . upon these encouragements , and having so potent a doore of hope , the assemblie doth confidently expect , that england will now bestir themselves in the best way for a reformation of religion ; and do most willingly offer their prayers and uttermost endeavours for furthering so great a work , wherein christ is so much concern'd in his glory , the king in his honour , the kirk and kingdom of england in their happinesse , and this kirk and kingdom in the puritie and peace of the gospell . iv. that the assemblie also from so many reall invitations are heartned to renew the proposition made by the aforenamed commissioners of this kingdom , for beginning the work of reformation , at the uniformitie of kirk-government : for what hope can there be of unitie in religion , of one confession of faith , one form of worship , and one catechisme , till there be first one form of ecclesiasticall government ? yea what hope can the kingdom and kirk of scotland have of a firm and durable peace , till prelacie which hath been the main cause of their miseries and troubles first and last , be pluck't up root and branch , as a plant which god hath not planted ? and from which no better fruits can be expected , then such sower grapes , as this day set on edge the kingdom of england . v. the prelaticall hierarchy being put out of the way , the work will be easie without forcing any conscience to settle in england the government of the reformed kirks by assemblies , for although the reformed kirks do hold without doubting their kirk officers , and kirk-government by assemblies higher and lower in their strong and beautifull subordination , to be jur● divino and perpetuall , yet prelacie as it differeth from the office of a pastor , is almost universally acknowledged by the prelats themselves and their adherents , to be but an humane ordinance introduced by humane reason , and settled by humane law and custome for supposed conveniency , which therefore by humane authority without wronging any mans conscience may be altered and abolished , upon so great a necessity as is a hearty conjunction with all the reform'd kirks , a firm and well-grounded peace between the two kingdoms , formerly divided in themselves and betwixt themselves by this partition wall , and a perfect union of the kirks in the two nations , which although by the providence of god in one island , and under one monarch , yet ever since the reformation , and for the present also are at greater difference in the point of kirk-government which in all places hath a powerfull influence upon all the parts of religion then any other reform'd kirks , although in nations at greatest distance and under divers princes . vi . what may be required of the kirk of scotland for furthering the work of uniformitie of government , or for agreeing upon a common confession of faith , catechisme and directorie for worship shall according to the order given by this assembly , be most willingly performed by us , who long extreamly for the day when king and parliament shall joyne for bringing to passe so great , so good a worke : that all wars and commotions ceasing , all superstitition , idolatry , heresies , sects and schismes being removed ; as the lord is one , so his name may be one amongst us , and mercie and truth , righteousnesse ▪ and peace meeting together and kissing one another , may dwell in this island . st. andrews , august 3. 1642. johnston cler. eccl. at edinbvrgh , the eighteenth-day of august , 1642. the lords of secret councell having read heard , and considered the petition this day given in to them , in the name of the late generall assembly holden at saint andrews , by their commissioners appointed for that effect , desiring the councell to concur with them in their remonstrance to the parliament of england , toward the setling of vnity in religion , and vniformity in kirk-government in his majesties three kingdoms . and having also heard the petition directed from the assembly to his majestie , with their answer to the parliament of england , the scots commissioners of the treaty at london , and certain ministers of england concerning this matter . and finding the reasons therein express'd to be very pregnant , and the particular desired much to conduce for the glory of god , the advancement of the true christian faith , his majesties honour , and the peace and union of his dominions . the said lords , out of their duty to the furtherance of so much wished and important a work , and affection to their brethren of the kingdom of england , do unanimously and heartily concur with the said nationall assembly , in their earnest desires to the honorable houses of the parliament of england , to take to their serious consideration the particulars aforesaid , touching vnity in religion , and vniformity in kirk-government in the said three kingdoms , as a singular mean of his majesties honour , the good of the true christian faith , and happinesse of his majesties dominions ; and to give favourable hearing to such desires and overtures as shal be found most conducible for the promoting of so great and good a work . extractum de libris actorum secreti consilii s. d. n. regis , per me arch. primerose , cler. s. cons. edin . 26. aug. 1642. finis . allegiance and prerogative considered in a letter from a gentleman in the country to his friend, upon his being chosen a member of the meeting of states in scotland. gentleman in the country. 1689 approx. 37 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 9 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a26677 wing a955 estc r11003 11994573 ocm 11994573 52071 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a26677) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 52071) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 47:26) allegiance and prerogative considered in a letter from a gentleman in the country to his friend, upon his being chosen a member of the meeting of states in scotland. gentleman in the country. 17 p. s.n.], [edinburgh? : 1689. place of publication from wing. reproduction of original in british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng allegiance -england. prerogative, royal. scotland -history -1689-1745. great britain -history -william and mary, 1689-1702. 2007-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-02 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion allegiance and prerogative considered in a letter from a gentleman in the country to his friend upon his being chosen a member of the meeting of states in scotland . printed in the year mdclxxxix . allegiance and prerogative considered in a letter from a gentleman in the country to his friend upon his being chosen a member of the meeting of states in scotland . sir , i received yours , wherein you tell me you are chosen a me●ber of the ensueing meeting of the states of this kingdo● ▪ you desire my opinion , what should be their behaviour towards k. james the 7th . how far we are now tyed by our allegiance , what limits ought to beset to the prerogative , &c. which you say are at present , the great subjects of discourse . i doubt not , since these things are so much talk't of by every body , and the itch of writing is so universal , but you will see several things on these heads from much abler pens : and from such who not only are better qualified for the undertaking , but also by hearing and perhaps , ( being personally present , ) by seeing the practices and methods of england in the same case , are better furnished with helps for the performance ; so that any thing i can say to you will be superfluous . yet in obedience to your desire , and to testify my sincere and unbiassed affection to the good of my country , and withall to convince you , that it is not from any fond principle of bigotted loyalty , nor from a stupid unconcern'dness in the great concerns of the nation , that i decline coming to town at this time , when as you say , it is expected that the greatest part of the gentry will be present during this assembly of the states : i shall freely give you my rude thoughts of what appears to me , to be the proper work and necessary duty of this meeting , in the present extraordinary conjuncture , and leave it to you to make what use thereof you shall think fit . as to the first point you mention , tho you know i am neither divine nor casuist , yet i must say that i think 't is very evident to any thinking man , that heaven it self has very fully loos'd the nation from their allegiance , and by remarkable providences granted a clear dispensation from their oaths to k. james the 7th . we need not dispute what was the genuine sense of these oaths , whether they allow'd this implicite reservation , that if the king should subvert the foundations of our government , our laws , religion , liberties and properties ; the people should in that case be free , to assert and assume their native rights : neither need we enter upon the invidious task of examining how farr the king advanced in these unjust practices and designs . heaven it self , i say , seems most convincingly to have superseeded all such debates and enquiries , and to have laid it upon this meeting of the states to settle and establish just and solid foundations for the government of the nation in all time coming . 't is acknowledged by all christians , that no oath can bind , when either their superveens a physical impossibility of performing it ; or when the performance becomes morally unlawful . and every considering man must acknowledge that providence hath cast both these impediments in the way of this assembly , to divert them from their allegiance to k. james . for now england has dethron'd him , and their action is applauded , ( as proceeding upon just and valid grounds , most of which are common to us with them ) by the greatest part of this nation ; so that it is obvious to every one , that it would be impossible for this assembly of our states to maintain and support him , in the exercise of his royal dignity here , against the unquestionable attempts , that we must expect englands jealousies of such an irritated neighbour , would provoke them to set about for his overthrow . and these attempts could not miss of success , having , as unquestionably , a great , if not the far greatest part of this nation for their abettors . thus what a scene of blood , war and confusion should these nations become ? and what a feeble distracted government might we expect in such circumstances ? but if any shall plead that there 's no physical impossibility in the case , and that the histories of past ages teach us , that this nation , when unanimous in their allegiance may maintain their king against all the efforts of england ; especially since we may now expect more assistance then ever from our old allies the french. yet this at least , i am sure , every protestant must consess is moral●y unlawfull for him to concur in ; since such a conjunction were utterly inconsistent with his indispensible moral duty of preserving , or at least doing nothing that evidently tends to the ruine of the true reformed religion . now any man that is capable of the least serious reflection upon the present state of affairs , must plainly see that the interest of his present majesty of england and his party , are so intervoven with that of the reformed religion , that the one cannot suffer loss or overthrow without the notable dammage or apparent ruine of the other , not only in this island , but all christendom over . he must also see no less clearly , that it were a meer dream to imagine it possible to support and preserve k. james in his power here , without wronging the k. of england and his interest . for to be sure , either of them would imploy his whole art and might for the others ruine ; such different interests ( beside the particular quarrels of the late revolution ) being now altogether incompatible in this island . neither is it to be thought that k. james would value this crown further then that he might thereby be enabled to recover that of england thus 't is plain that we can never fancy to preferve k. james's power here , without resolving to assist and second him in his attempts ; to the great prejudice , if not the total ruine ( so far as men are able ) of the reformed religion over all europe . but i am perswaded no protestant of common sense , can ever think his allegiance will warrant or in the least justify him in any such practice . for whatever has been said to evince that allegiance did bind subjects to passive obedience , tho secrued to the highest pitch : yet none was ever so impudent as to assert that it oblidg'd them to an active concurrence with their king , in methods directly tending to the suppression or extirpation of the true religion . here christians of all perswasions will own . that it is better to obey god then man. wherefore it being thus irrefragably evident that god in his wise over ruling providence , has ordered things so , that it is both impossible for this meeting of the states to preserve the crown to k. james , or at least not to be undertaken without exposing this nation to all the lamentable evils , that a weak , unlettled government , constant warrs and confusions can bring upon it ; and that it is also unlawful for us protestants , to aim at it ; since he cannot now be re established but upon the ruines of the whole reformed interest in christendom ; let all therefore awfully observe the hand of god ; and chearfully submit to his will , and without attempting to strugle against heaven , leave k. james to the disposal of providence . let every man in his station contribute , what in him lyes , to re●reive our religion and laws from the grievous abuses they have suffered , and to secure them to us and our posterity ; from the like hereafter , and from falling under the fatal dangers from which god has been pleased so signally to rescue them : neither let this assembly of estates look back , as if they were under any tye to withhold them from advancing vigorously , in setling the government of this nation , now under anarchy , a state in which it cannot subsist . nor let any thoughts of the right of succession stop their procedure , for besides that there can be no heir to a living man ; the former arguments are as part against the prince of wales , true or supposititious as against king james the 7. but now when god has so wonderfully put this opportunity in their hands , let them be as honest and upright hearted patriots , set themselves seriously to consider , what is fit to be done , for settling a government in this nation upon just and solid foundations ; whereby the true religion and publick peace may be established and secured , the just property and liberties of the subject clearly asserted , and the high-stretched prerogative of the crown brought to an equal frame . i am perswaded , that as it is the genius , so it is the interest of this nation to have a monarchy still established , for any other form must unavoidably evert the whole bulk of our laws and customs , which might be of fatal consequence : nor could any other model be long liv'd here considering the natural bent of scotsmen to this . besides since experience has discovered to us the worst diseases , that can attend monarchy , i think if we be wise , we may now apply such remedies , as may secure us , for the future , against them ; and so we may be safer under it , then any other kind of government , the inconvenieneies whereof ( in this nation at least ) we can only discover by a tract of time . as to the choice of a monarch , i think the best method is , to follow the example england has set us . for besides the just and solid reasons that determined their choice , which are all as pregnant and applicable to us ; we have further this cogent reason , that england having already declared the prince of orange their king , out of a due sense of the great deliverance he has been instrumental in working for them ; we must do the same , unless we will declare our selves the most ingrate of mankind , since we are delivered from a far greater bondage then ever england felt : and unless we will resolve to break with england and their king , which how fatal it might soon prove , every body can see , more then is fit for the honour of this nation to express . this i shall only say , that it were certainly very unkind to the reformed religion , to divert , and weaken by such a breach , the k. of englands hands , who is now , under god , the chief support of it . but seeing the fondness of this nation , for the restoration of k. charles the second , did hurry them from one extream to another ; from having abandoned the king and royal family , to give too much ; and lay the foundations of an unbounded prerogative ; upon which an aspiring court ( designing to copy after the perfidous cruel h●ctor of europe ) finding still unhappily amongst this poor , proud ; self seeking people , fit tools for their service ; have rear'd up an uncontrolable , despotick , absolute power in the king ; and that by repeated laws , but more by a constant series of arbitrary practices ; whereby they have brought us into absolute bondage , and laid a yoke upon us that neither we nor our fathers were able to bear . it therefore nearly concerns and highly becomes the wisdom of the states of the kingdom ; yea it is their duty to the nation , whom they represent , and what they owe to their posterity in after-ages ; before they give the crown out of their hands , to smooth and purge it of every thing that may be hard and grievous to the people ; and to leave it only adorned , with such jewels , as can only be firm and shining , when by justice and mercy they attract the peoples hearts ; but will prove brittle and dim when put to gall their necks . i would therefore humbly offer to the consideration of this ensueing meeting , some things , that to me seem necessary and incumbent for them to do , for retrieving this nation from the intollerable thraldom we have been brought under ; and for vindicating and asserting the peoples just right and freedom , without robbing the crown of any jewel , that 's fit for the hononr of a king , who is to rule by law ; or without diminishing any part of the kingly power , that is necessary for enabling out kings , to perform the great duties of their high charge . let our kings be vested with power to be nursing fathers to the church , to be patres patriae , vigorous asterters and defenders of the honour and well of the nation , against attempts from abroad , or seditions at home ; let them have power to be terrors to evil doers , and encouragers of these that do well ; let them have power to preserve to all their subjects , their respective properties and liberties from all insolence and injustice ; to see all our laws vigorously , executed and all transgressors impartially punished . these are the only true jewels of the crown , and every beyond this , that 's fixed to it ought to be cleansed and wiped off , as noisom dust and rust , that will throughly corrupt it . it is then the unquestiouable duty of this meeting of the states , to cut off from the crown , all such excressences as are useless to a just king , and to our sad experience , are pernicious and of most dangerous consequence to the people . first , then , it has been often asserted and maintained , that the king derives his crown and dignity immediately from god , that the people do not , nor cannot give any right or title to it ; that all power and authority is originally and eminently inherent in the crown , and that therefore the parliament can give no prerogative to the king. this has been long currant coyn at court , and amongst court parasites , and of late has had the boldness to appear bare-fac'd in our parliaments , where it seems to have given rise to yea dictated some of our acts about the prerogative . but it is obvious , that this is a mother evil , and may be broody of all the mischiefs that can be dreaded from arbitrary power or tyranny ; for if this maxime hold good , what security for our religion , laws , property , or any thing that 's dear to free men or christians ? sure none , but the princes pleasure . why then should we complain of the late court stile , which makes the prerogative royal , and a supreme absolute power to be obeyed without reserve , to signifie the same thing ! me thinks the stile is very just and congtuous and goes very well on the foot of this maxime . wherefore , as we would deliver our selves and our posterity from the evident hazard of absolute slavery , this pernicious principle must be absolutely eradicated . it will be fit the states seriously revise all our acts about the prerogative , & where-ever any thing is found to look this way , it must either be explained to a harmless meaning , or if it will not bear a tolerable sense , it must be cancelled ; for a little leven may soure the whole lump . it will also be necessary , that the asserting of this principle by word or writ , be declared an high-crime , against the very nature and constitution of our government , punishable as treason and unpardonable ▪ it has taken deep root , and will need a severe steady hand over it , to keep it from springing up again in its season , from which god deliver us . 2. the late assumed prerngative of disabling , suspending or dispensing with standing laws , must be declared illegal , and against the constitution of a free nation . i need not insist to lay open the mischief of such a power ; all the world sees it , and even some of those who asserted it , now cry shame on 't , 't is so palpably a gangrene that might overspread , eat out or enervate all the strength and life of our whole laws . i shall only say , it will be fit to declare that all judges or others , to whom the execution of the law is committed , shall upon their highest peril be obliged , to put the laws of the nation to due execution , notwithstanding of any command , mandate , or dispensation they may get to the contrary , from any person or persons whatsoever . 3. i humbly conceive it will be much the nations advantage , if the power of pardoning be restrained , as to assertors or propagators of any principles against the freedom of the nation and parliaments , in favour of any pretended prerogative . as also , as to all judges , officers or ministers of state and others having the king's commission , for malversing in their respective offices . because if ever it be the ill-fate of this nation , to come under a designing and aspiring prince , so long as he has the power of pardoning such , he will never want instruments to set up and establish his prerogative as high as ever : neither will he want judges and others , who will palpably pervert justice , wrest and trample on our laws and freedom , and with all their might sacrifice them and us to his ambition , or other ill designs . and i appeal to every man , that will make but any reflection on our late government , if he is not convinc'd , that many who serv'd it , durst never have made such steps as they did , if they had not rested secure on that pillow ; that however criminal they became , by such measures , they being for the kings service , could get his remission on demand ; since there is , and will ever be a perverse crew of ill men , whom neither honour nor conscience can bind , to be faithful and just to their country ; but who still upon any hopes of impunity , will be . animated to say and do all the mischief they can , when 't is accep●able to the princc . let the terror of severe laws be set before them , to over-awe them and strip them of all hopes of impunity by a princes favour . such a limitation will not be uneasie , to a just and good prince , and is absolutely necessary for our safety under an ill one . 4. it must be declared illegal , and not in the kings power , to constitute any judge or judicature , ecclesiastick , civil or criminal , except such as are authorized by the laws of the nation . as also that it is illegal for the king to give wa●rand to any judge to proceed otherwise in judgement , then by the forms and rules ; the law and practice of the kingdom has set , for the several judicatures and cases therein cognoscible , and that all who accept and proceed , conform to any such commissions or warrands shall be severely punished . the experience of the grievous oppressions the western , southern , and some other shires of this kingdom , have suffered , and the much blood that hath been shed in them very summarly ( to say no worse ) by vertue of such commissions and proceedings , will i am confident evince the necessity of this . for certainly so long as such a power is left to the crown no man or partie can reckon themselves secure of their liberties or estates , no not of their very lives longer , then they escape being obnoxious to the court , for then packt judges and arbitrary forms and rules of proceeding , may make sharp work , and havock enough , i confess i have often been surprised to see several sober and rational men satisfied with , and applaud such methods when used against these , they wished to see undone . for being blinded with a passion to have such a party ruined , they did not consider that if the cannon were turned a●ainst themselves , they might soon find the fatal effects of such methods , and be thereby summarly exposed to some severe punishment in their bodies or goods , or perhaps both without hopes of reddress . so it is every man's interest that every subject have a fair and legal tryal , and that all his concerns be judged by the ordinary judges ; and conform to the known laws and practice of the realm . and that any such power be quite exploded , for which there can be no pretence , unless you will grant the king a prerogative above all laws . perhaps it will be alledged that such commissions have been very useful in our high-lands and borders , and that it is impossible to bring the theeves there to condign punishment , or prevent their ruining these countries , unless it be allowed that they be judged without the ordinary rules and forms of law. i humbly think it may be worth the serious consideration of our first parliament to give their special orders and instructions for this case . but by no means , on this account , ought the least twigg of any such transcendant power above the laws be left to the king. for if it should be allowed , that the king by an inherent power in the crown may by his commission warrand the judging of theeves , without observing the ordinary law in the nation : why may he not , by the same inberent power ? give such commissions for trying all alledged guilty of every kind of treason , or other crimes and transgressions of any penal laws ? then , pray , what security has any subject of a legal tryal for any guilt he ma● be charged with ? or what availeth the laws and judicatures established for the safety of the innocent , as well as the punishment of the guilty . 5. it will be fit it be declared ; that all the ministers of state , lords of session and justiciary , and other inferiour judges , who receive their commissions from the king , shall always get them , ad vitam aut culpam : and not durante beneplacito . for when men hold these places at pleasure , it is certainly a great temptation to them who are not of a very firm honesty , to comply with any designs of the court , and humours of the present chief favourites . and when an honest man stands his ground , and refuses such a servile complyance against his honour and conscience , then ( as we have seen ) he is presently to be turned out and some plyable tool ( that will receive any impressions from these hands ) put in his place ; and so our judicatures , filled with men who will give themselves up to a blind obedience to the dictates from court. and what justice can the nation expect from such judges ? i do not say , the abolishing commissions durante beneplacito will ascertain us of just judges : but , to be sure , it will free them , whom we shall have , from many temptations to be unjust , and secure to us more firmly these that are just and honest : so it is well worth the while . there is one thing i cannot pass about our judges , tho it be not hujus loci . i think it would be much our interest to have crimen ambitus in force amongst us ; as to session and justiciarie especially . many wise people have thought that a man's sueing and soliciting for such offices , was a just ground to make him suspected , as unworthy of the trust . this is certain , if such methods were strictly discharged and every one , at his admission to these offices , oblidged to purge himself of them ; we might justly expect , they should go more by merit , then they can do while men are allowed to brigue and intrigue for them . for commonly cunning and false men are most assiduous , and dexterous at insinuating into a court. 6. i think the kings ecclesiastick supremacy , as it stands now asserted by acts of parliament ought to be abrogated . i will not enter on the debate , what power is allowable to a christian magistrate in or about eccl●siastical matters : but leaving this as unnecessary to be discussed here ; i shall prove the assertion from these two considerations , first if there is any such supremacy allowable in a christian nation to any civil persons or judicature , it cannot with safety be trusted but where the legislative power is lodged . 2dly . it appears uncharitable and unchristian to enact , or leave in force any laws declaratorie of such a supremacy . first , then consider that by this supremacy , the king has power to turn off any churchman summary , without any process , ( of this we have seen several instances ) he hath also power thereby at pleasure , to crush any set of clergy or church government he thinks uneasie to him , and advance any party or model , he hopes to be better served by . he has by this supremacy likewise power ( if not in express terms , yet by very natural consequence , ) to suppress all assemblies , convocations of the clergy , synods , presbyteries , sessions , or any other meetings of churchmen necessary or convenient , for preserving order in the church . from consideration of these things , it is evident and clear as sun shine ; that if such a supremacie be allowed to our kings , then they shall have power to introduce corruptions in our religion by a corrupt clergy , to raise constant schisms in our church , to nourish and foment a spirit of animositie and persecution by one party of clergy against another , to the great reproach of our religion , and danger of our state ( as past experience may teach us ) finally they shall have power to dissolve and unhing our church , by depriving her of all means necessary , for establishing and preserving of order and discipline without which no society can subsist . and surely , these things cannot happen in a christian nation without bringing deadly convulsions upon the civil state. now i am confident that after very little reflection on the whole , you and every rational man will anticipate me in the inference , and conclude that such a supremacy is of the last importance , both to the religion and civil interest of the whole nation , and not to be trusted to any , but reserved to king and parliament ; if it is allowable to any civil power . secondly , that it is vncharitable , to enact any laws declaratorie of such a supremacie , will evidently appear from this , that it gives great scandal to good protestants , and p●aceable subjects , and is no wayes necessary . surely , then it is very unbecoming christian charity and moderation to give great offence , and lay a stumbling block before such , officiously and needlesly . now all the world knows this supremacy has been a st●ne of stumbling both to jew and gentile , ( if i may so speak ) for not only the presbyterians have still declaimed against it , as an antichristian inchroachment upon christs prerogative ; but many episcopal have judged it an invasion and diminution of the intrinsick power , consigned by christ to his church ; whereupon severall minent amongst that clergy resused our test . thus as the offensive nature of such laws is evident ; so every considering man must acknowledge , that they are useless , because all laws about church government should only be founded on these grounds ; that , what is thereby injoyned is agreeable to the word of god , most consonant to the practise of the purest churches , and most proper and conducing for the advancement of truth , piety and good order in this church . now on these reasons , onely let every thing in relation to the p●licy of the church be enacted in parliament , without pretending or declaring by any act , what power they have in such matters . thus i am sute , king and parliament may do their duty in this matter , from time to time , and a great deal , if not all the offense would be removed . for it cannot be denyed , that , the legislative power being in them , what form of government they apply their civil sanction to , it becomes the legal government of the nation ; which is all needs be claimed , and their medling in such matters cannot be quarrelled , since all protestants , do not only approve , the parliaments ratifying of our very confession of faith , but ordinarly plead that thereby we have greater priviledges and right for defence of it , than any principle of religion it self gives us . the only hazard is , that they may err in their choice , but i know no remedy for this , ( unless we go to rome for infallibility , and i fear we should loose our labour ) except , that no such laws be imposed rigorously , to be owned by all , but a reasonable toleration allowed to peaceable dissenters : seeing then there is no use for such declaratory laws of an ecelesiastick supremacy ; were it not very uncharitable to keep them on foot , for a snare and for ginn to so many of our christian brethren of the same religion . i may add further , it were very dangerous to the publick peace , for certainly from this fountain many of our intestine commotions have sprung , and these streams are not yet dryed up . 7. and lastly , having already far exceeded the due bounds of a letter , and the brevitie i designed ; i shall croud all that occures to me further about the prerogative into one article . i think it necessary the convention take to their serious consideration , the kings sole power of disposal of trade , his power of setting valuation on current money , his power of the militia , of peace and warr , and raising the nation in arms ; as they are declared in the respective acts thereanent : as also the practice of the kings establishing instructions of warr , and thereby exempting souldiers from the ordinary laws and judicatures . we have seen and felt grievous abuses in the nation from all these , as i could instance , but that i haste to a close ; and it is enough to my purpose , that every thinking man upon a very little reflection will see such powers may be the foundation of arbitrary proceedings in many cases of high importance to the whole nation . i confess i do not think it adviseable or safe ; to divest the king wholly of these powers , and reserve them to a parliament : for the exercise of all or most of them may be very necessary , much oftner then we can expect or desire parliaments , & may trvst with the reasonable intervals of parliaments ; neither do i think it possible to lay down fixed rules , that can continue useful for any time , for the kings managment of these powers , such is the inconstancie and vicissitude of humane affairs . the only medium i can think on is , that the king shall be restricted , in the exercise of these powers , to the advice and concurrence of a council , or councils to be named by the parliament out of the whole states : this council may have their settled annual meetings , or more frequent if needful , and withal be obliged to conveen when upon any emergent the king shall call them but as for the militia , since it is palpablie useless to the crown and government and very heavy to the people , i hope all will be unanimous to have it totally discharged . as for exempting souldiers from the ordinary laws and judges , in causes civil or criminal betwixt them and other sub●ects , least at it is of dangerous consequence , and there is no shadow of law or justice for it in this nation , wherefore it ought to be discharged and declared illegal in all time coming . i doubt not e're you come this length , you will be as wearie in reading this tedious and indigested letter , as i am of writing it . so i shall delay at this time , the troubling you with what is fit to be done , for securing our crown from falling again into popish hands , what convenient amendm●nts may be made , as to the constitution of , and forms of procedure in our parliaments , and what is expedient for the redress of our past grievanc●s and necessary for the providing wholesome remedies for preventing the like hereafter . the slightest review of all these ( tho desired in powers ) would swell this letter into the volume of a treatise , which i have no thoughts of writing : i hope you do not expect it , and though the stuff is course , you have large enough measure already , for an letter . b●sides what is here omitted , seems to be the prop●r work of a parliament when the crown is settled , but what is spoke of , seems necessary to be dispatched by the meeting of states before they declare the crown . for though i am fully perswaded , that if we give the crown to the king of england with as absolute , unlimited a prerogative , as ever any tyrant or sultan usurped : yet our religion and laws , and every man's liberty and property , would be as secure to us , under so brave , generous , pious and just a prince , as they can be by all the provisions we can devise for their security : but it is uncertain how long god may bless us with him , & who may come after him . and this is certain that if once the crown be settled , and a set of officers of state , and counsellours established , ( our nobility and great ministers have unhappily been so accustomed , to carrie things here with so high a hand , ) they will be sure to use all their interest to frustrate all projects for such limitations of the prerogative , foreseeing easily that thereby their hands will be more bound up , then was usual , and i doubt not , if you will be at the pains to observe it , you 'l easily perceive that such as have but any faint hopes and a remote prospect of getting any share of the government into their hands , will already be shy on these points . wherefore it nearly concerns every honest sincere scotsman , to strike thee iron while it is hot , for it is much better holding then drawing : if this is acceptable and gives you any satisfaction , you shall by the next have more of the matters now omitted . march 6. 1689. i am yours , &c. postscript . sir , i have said nothing of the kings negative vote in parliament , and his power of adjourning and dissolving them . tho it is of the greatest importance , for if it stands , as it is now asserted , all hopes of redress of griveances by a parliament are cut off under an ill government , when there is greatest need of it . wherefore it much concerns this meeting to adjust in to an harmless temper . yet i must confess . i can hit upon no overture for this that pleases me . but i doubt not , the things is so obvious and of such vast consequence , you will hear of it from better hands . finis . reformation of church-government in scotland cleared from some mistakes and prejudices by the commissioners of the generall assembly of the church of scotland, now at london / published by especiall command. church of scotland. general assembly. commission. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a43317 of text r42074 in the english short title catalog (wing h1437). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 41 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 13 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a43317 wing h1437 estc r42074 23660639 ocm 23660639 109557 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be 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(eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a43317) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 109557) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1702:10) reformation of church-government in scotland cleared from some mistakes and prejudices by the commissioners of the generall assembly of the church of scotland, now at london / published by especiall command. church of scotland. general assembly. commission. henderson, alexander, 1583?-1646. [2], 22 p. printed by evan tyler ... edinburgh : 1644. attributed to alexander henderson. cf. dnb. contains ms. notes in margins. reproduction of original in british library. eng church of scotland -government. scotland -church history -17th century. a43317 r42074 (wing h1437). civilwar no reformation of church-government in scotland, cleared from some mistakes and prejudices: by the commissioners of the generall assembly of th church of scotland. general assembly. commission 1644 7409 3 0 0 0 0 0 4 b the rate of 4 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the b category of texts with fewer than 10 defects per 10,000 words. 2004-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-03 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-05 rachel losh sampled and proofread 2004-05 rachel losh text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-07 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion reformation of church-government in scotland , cleared from some mistakes and prejudices : by the commissioners of the generall assembly of the church of scotland , now at london . published by especiall command . edinburgh , printed by evan tyler , printer to the kings most excellent . majestie . 1644. reformation of church-government in scotland , cleered from some mistakes and prejudices . while we , the meanest of many our brethren , for a time separated from our particular callings and stations , and sent forth into this kingdome for a more publike imployment , are in all humility and patience , waiting what the lord who is about some great work in his church , ( for which are raised so great commotions in these and other kingdoms of the earth ) will be pleased to do for reformation of religion ; the great work of the honourable houses of parliament , and the reverend assembly of divines ; and for uniformity in religion , so much desired by all the godly in the three kingdomes : unto whch an entrance is made by a solemne league and covenant . we finde our selves bound against the prejudices and mistakings of some , who in the dark are afraid of that which they know not , and suffer their affections of love and hatred to run before their understanding ; and against the mis-representations and indirect aspersions of others , who do so commend their own way , that the reformed churches thereby suffer disparagement ; to give that testimony unto the order and government of the reformed churches , and particularly of the church of scotland , which they do well deserve , and to honour them whom the lord hath so highly honoured , in advancing the kingdom of his son , in the converting and saving of so many souls , and in opposing and suppressing a world of corruptions , heresies , and schismes , by his wonderfull blessing upon their order and government . in this our humble testimony and true relation , unto which we are at this time thus necessitate , we shall endeavour nothing but a simple and innocent manifestation and defence , without desire or intention to give the smallest offence to any who fear god , love the truth , & desire to walk in truth and in love with their brethren . this our profession , we are confident will finde credit with all that know us , and have observed our wayes since our coming into this kingdom , which have been , and ( so farre as the the truth will suffer us ) ever shall be , to unite , and not to divide ; to compose , rather then to create differences ; which we conceive also to be one principall end , of the calling of the assembly of divines , and which all the members of the assembly , against all particular interests , are after a speciall manner ingaged to aime at and endeavour . the order and government of the reformed churches in the beauty and strength thereof , as it is not hid in a corner , wrapped up in a mystery , or covered under a cloud of darknesse ; but is known to the nations and kingdomes of the earth , openly professed and practised in the eyes of the world , and cleerly seen , as a city that is set on a hill , in the light of the sunne at noone day ; so is it commended , and already confirmed by a long tract of time , and the experience of many yeers , and hath been countenanced from heaven , and blessed from above , with the preservation of the truth and unity of religion , against heresies and errours in doctrine , idolatry and corruptions in worship , and all sorts of sects and schismes , wherewith it hath been continually assaulted : how goodly are thy tents : o jacob , and thy tabernacles o israel , &c. it hath made the church of christ terrible as an army with banners , and like a strong and fenced city , against which the adversaries have despaired to prevaile , but by making a breach in this wall , and where they have gained ground or gotten any advantage , either the wall hath not been built , or being built hath been broken down , or not vigilantly keeped by the watch-men . the instruments which the lord used in the blessed work of reformation of the church of scotland ( wee speak not of the reformers of other churches ) were not onely learned and holy men , but had somewhat in their calling , gifts , and zeal to the glory of god , more then ordinary : their adversaries were not able to resist the wisdome and spirit by which they spake ; some of them had a propheticall spirit , manifested in divers particular and wonderfull predictions , and some of them were honoured to be martyrs , and sealed the truth with their blood : so that in them , in the people of god converted by them , and and in the reformation brought about by the blessing of god upon their labours , against all the learning , pride , policie , and abused power of the time , there was to bee seen a representation of the primitive and apostolicke times , and a new resurrection from the dead . after them also did the lord raise up in the church of scotland many burning and shining lights , men of the same spirit , mighty in converting of souls , walking in the same way , and who communicated their counsels and keeped correspondence with divines of other nations , and with the greatest and purest lights in the church of england , in the point of reformation and setling of church-government , which at that time was the common study and endeavour of both , and wherein they and their successors continued till the times of defection , which made an unhappy interruption of the work . what men are like to do in after times we cannot foresee ; but we have not seen or heard of any to this day , farrer from partiality and prejudice in the matters of god , then their wayes witnesse them to have been ; and were they now living we beleeve there would be none in the reformed churches , so far swayed with partiality or prejudice , that would deny them this testimony . they had no other rule and paterne of reformation but the word of god , and the practice of the apostolicke churches in the word . all the books of god are perfect , the book of life , the book of nature , the book of providence , and especially the book of scripture , which was dy●ed by the holy ghost , to be a perfect directory to all the churches , unto the second coming of jesus christ ; but so that it presupposeth the light and law of nature , or the rules of common prudence , to be our guide in circumstances or things locall , temporall , and personall , which being ecolesiastico politica , are common to the church with civill societies , and concerning which , the word giveth generall rules to be universally and constantly observed by all persons , in all times and places : of things of this kind a godly and wise divine giveth two rules : one is , that the physician cannot by sending his letter to the patient appoint the dyet and bath , the pulse must bee toucht , and as it is in the proverbiall speech , gladiatorem oportet in arena capere consilium . the other is , that in things of this kind , when the change is not to the better , it is both without and against reason to make a change ; without reason , because when the change is made unto that which is but as good , the one and the other in reason are equall : against reason , because the change it self in such a case , is an hinderance to edification , savoureth of the love of innovation , and derogateth to the authority which maketh the constitution . what they had once received , not upon probable grounds in way of conjecture , but upon the warrant of the word , and by the teaching of the spirit , with certaintie of faith , that they resolved to hold fast , & did hate every false way contrary unto it . they did not in the matters of religion rest upon a sceptical or pyrrhonian uncertainty ( the charge of the orthodox divines against the tenets of arminians and socinians ) which keepeth the mind uncertain unstable , is a fountain of perpetuall alterations in the church of god , an open door to all heresies and schismes to enter by , and a ground of despairing to bring questions and controversies to a finall issue and determination . and for us , as upon the one part , we not only conceive , that no man attaineth so full assurance of faith , in any matter of religion , but he may receive encrease of his faith , and therefore should alwayes have his minde open and ready to receive more light from the word and spirit of god : but also do ingenuously acknowledge ( as wee have formerly professed ) that wee are most willing to hear and learn from the word of god , what needeth further to be reformed in the church of scotland : yet god forbid , that we should never come to any certainty of perswasion , or that we should ever be learning , and never come to the knowledge of the truth ; wee ought to be resolute and unmoveable in so far as we have attained ; and this we take to be the ground , as of other practices , so also of covenants and oaths , both assertory and promissory , in matters of religion . as they held it not sufficient , to receive or retain some such practices , as other reformed churches judged warrantable ; for thus they should have rested upon some few principles and beginnings of reformation , and might have differed as much in other things from the reformed churches , as they agreed in some things with them ; so can it not be satisfactory , that any church should only practise some things , universally received in the reformed churches . ( 1 ) all christian churches , although very different in ordinances and practices , yet do agree in some things , ( 2 ) if our desire of uniformity with other reformed churches , and the reverend esteem we have of them , draw us to conform to them in some things ; upon the same reason we ought to joyne in all things wherein they do all agree amongst themselves . ( 3 ) differences about negatives and the denying of profession and practice in other matters wherein they are all unanimous and uniform , may prove no lesse dangerous and destructive , then differences about affirmatives . the arrians , socinians , and many others , do erre dangerously in denying some positive points and received principles of the doctrine of the reformed churches , concerning the person of christ , and his offices . the antinomians also ( if we should mention them ) do also agree with us in the principles of grace ; but in their superstructures and conclusions , runne in a way destructive to the doctrine and deductions of the apostolick and reformed churches , and to the principles received by themselves . ( 4 ) such churches as make profession of differences only in negatives , or in denying some practices received in the reformed churches , have received , and do hold some positive practices of their own , which the reformed churches do not allow , and which to them are negative . of this ( would we suffer our selves to descend into particulars ) we might give divers known instances : now if they do not allow of the reformed churches , in so far as they do not admit of these their positive practices , how shall they think that the reformed churches can allow them in the like ? for the rule is , wherein thou judgest another , thou condemnest thy self , for thou that judgest dost the same things . they did honour luther , calvin , and many others , whether their predecessors or contemporaries , who had heart or hand , especially in an eminent degree , in the blessed work of reformation : for their direction , they made use of the light which such notable servants of jesus christ did hold forth , in doctrine and discipline , and in all thankfulnesse they did desire and wish , that their names might be had in eternall remembrance : nor was it possible that so great an alteration as the corrupt state of the church required could be effected , and not carry some remembrance of the instruments : but for this to call us calvinians ; and the reformed churches , calvinian reformed churches , is to disgrace the true churches of christ , and to simbolize with the papists , who call themselves the catholicke church , and hold the rule delivered by hierome against the luciferians : if anywhere we finde men professing christianity , called by the particular names of men , know them to be the synagogue of antichrist , and not the church of christ . the separation may be well allowed to be called brownists , and others from the matter wherein they erre , and part from all , not onely the reformed , but christian churches , as the monothelites of old , and the anabapists now , may bear their own names . they who apprehend any danger in names ( as there is a great deale of danger in them ) ought not to appropriate unto their own opinion , that which is common to all the reformed churches , nor to joyne with papists in giving names of sects unto the reformed churches ; and they who conceive no evill in so doing , ought not to offend , that names are given unto them , especially since their differences from the reformed churches , must be designed under some name and notion , and in this case charity commands the mildest names , such as hint most clearly at the difference , and are farrest from reproach , to be attributed unto them , as most discriminative and tolerable . nothing was farrer from their thoughts and intentions , then to frame in their own forge a lesbian rule , answerable to any particular forme of civill policy , or complyable with state ends . that they looked with singlenesse of minde to the rule of scripture , we give these three evidences ( 1 ) the great pains they took in searching the will of god , and after they had found it , their grievous sufferings from the civill authority in defence thereof , of both which afterward in the own place ( 2 ) the restlesse objection and continuall opposition of politick men and court sycophants against presbyteriall government , as incompatible with monarchy , and their manners ( 3 ) and the necessary assertion of the true policy of the church by divines in both kingdoms ( between whom there was no notable difference ) demonstrating that it was in it self unalterable , because divine , and yet complyable with every lawfull kinde of humane policy and civill government , and able to keep a whole kingdom or state in a right and sure way of religion . our chiefest reformers , had indeed their education in other churches , which was the goodnesse of god to them and us : there did they see examples of reformation , and conversed with other reformers , by whom they were taught from the word in the wayes of god , and thence did they bring ( as the romans their laws of old from greece and other nations ) models of church-government , that comparing one with another , they might fix upon that which was builded upon the foundation of the apostles . like as we accompt it no small happines , that we have bin educated in the church of scotland , and are acquainted with the practice of church-government there , which giveth us much light and confidence against such scruples and doubtings as are powerfull enough to suspend the assent of others , who by reason of their education in other churches , are strangers unto it . nor do we know a reason why education in sound doctrine and true worship , should be accompted a matter of thanksgiving to god , and yet should glory in this , that we are not by education ingaged in any one form of of discipline and church-government , but left to our selves to be moulded by our own private thoughts . they intended and designed from the beginning , the government of the church by assemblies and presbyteries , although they could not attain that perfection at first in the infancie of reformation , but gave place to necessity , which in such cases is universall , and in this they followed the example and practice of the churches planted by the apostles , which if not at first , yet afterward were of greater number in one city , then did or could ordinarily assemble in one place for the worship of god , and therefore had a plurality of pastors and officers , which made up a common presbytery for governing the whole : they set up such officers in the church , as were both necessary and sufficient for the church , pastors , teachers , ruling elders , and deacons : they did not permit such as are called laymen , and intended to continue such , to preach or prophesie in the congregation , nor did they admit of any other ruling elders , but such as are solemnly elected and ordained , although they do maintain themselves upon their own means , and attend their own particular callings , which is not incompatible with their office , especially they being appointed in a number competent and proportionable to the number of the people , and quantity of the congregation ; and their ecclesiasticall charge , not being pastorall , nor requiring any great meditation or study apart , but such as they may easily attend , without neglect of their owne particular affaires . what shall be rendred unto the magistrate by others , whose particular tenets are not yet known either to the church or magistrate , unlesse it be in a hid and secret way , unto which we are not privy , we cannot determine : but the doctrine of the reformed churches , concerning the honour and obedience due to the magistrate , is openly known by their confessions of faith , and long continued practices ; and this much we know , that the principles both of civill and church-government , are laid out in scripture , and therefore the one cannot be contrary to the other , or they inconsistent between themselves . nor do wee measure the power of the magistrate by the principles of presbyteriall government , but both of them by the word , and therefore deny not unto the magistrate what god giveth them ; and more then this dare we not professe , for any respect to our selves , or to the form of ecclesiasticall government professed by us : how much , and for what ends , the pagans and infidels of old , the papists , prelates , and arminians of late , have laboured to make the way of christ hatefull to princes and magistrates , is too well known , and hath been bitterly felt , yet god hath cursed this policy in the end . there may bee good reason to expresse our judgement of this or other points of duty from scripture : but to avouch when we are not challenged , and that only in the generall , by way of comparison , that we ascribe more to the magistrate , then the reformed churches doe , they being faithfull to their own principles of ecclesiasticall government , may suffer a harder construction , then we our selves would willingly under-go , or put upon the intentions of men , who seek not their own things , but the things of jesus christ . as the blessed instruments of reformation proceeded by no other rule but the word of god , so did they with great judgement and learning , which they had in a measure above others , examine and frame all things diligently and exactly according to the rule ; and although the reformers in england were either altogether , or for the greater part taken up with the doctrine ; yet in the church of scotland it was otherwise . after the doctrine was established , which was speedily done , they were exercised in conferences and assemblies , with debating the matters of discipline and government above the space of 20 years , which endured much opposition from authority , from worldly men , and from the adversaries of the truth , both prelaticall on the one hand , and upon the other hand separatists , of which sort some came into scotland from england , which was unto them a whetstone to quicken them , and to make them the more circumspect & exact in their way , which lay in the middle , betwixt episcopacy upon the one hand , and popular confusion on the other . it pleased the lord , whose presence and blessing they sought after in these dayes with frequent prayer and humiliation , both in private and in the publike nationall assemblies , so to assist and lead them in all truth ; that the church of scotland was honoured from abroad , both from england and other nations , with the testimony of such a reformation , as other churches accounted to be the greatest happinesse upon earth , and when they were wishing after a reformation , they made it the measure of their wishes . we would willingly shun comparisons , were we not brought upon this straine : we do upon very good reason judge the church of england in the midst of her ceremonies , to have beene a true church , and the ministery thereof , notwithstanding the many blemishes and corruptions cleaving unto it , to have been a true ministery , and shall never deny unto them that praise , whether in debating controversies with papists , or in practicall divinity for private christians , which they do most justly deserve . upon the other part , we are neither so ignorant nor so arrogant , as to ascribe to the church of scotland such absolute purity and perfection , as hath not need or cannot admit of further reformation . yet that there is a wide difference betwixt the one and the other , acknowledged also in the common covenant ; wee bring two famous witnesses from the church of england to prove : the one is brightman ; loath would i be ( saith he , speaking of the church of scotland ) to provoke any man to envy , or to grieve him with my words : yet this i must say , there is no place where the doctrine soundeth more purely , the worship of god is exercised more uncorruptly , where more faithfull diligence of the pastor doth flourish , or more free or willing obedience is given by the people , nor yet where there is greater reverencing of the whole religion amongst all orders . and afterwards ▪ neither doth it onely keep the doctrine of salvation free from corruption , but it doth also both deliver in writing , and exercise in practice , that sincere manner of government whereby men are made partakers of salvation , revel. of the apocal. cap. 37. the other is cartwright : yea , the scottish nation , which were some yeers behind us in the profession of the gospell , the first day almost that they received the truth , did by many degrees in the way of purity outstrip us . these two witnesses , unto which we might adde many other from the reformed churches in other nations , bear testimony , that there is no such thing in the church of scotland , as might prove her to be no church , or bar communion in worship with her , as the liturgy , ceremonies and prelacy in the church of england ; or that the corruptions of the one and the other are of the same kinde , equally destructive of the essence of a church , and equally impedetive of communion and worship . all visible churches , which have been , or shall be at any time on earth , consist of persons good and bad , sheep and goats , wheat and tares , such as walk christianly and such as walk inordinatly : which therefore must also be the condition of the church of scotland , yet the order of the church , admitteth not either ignorant or openly prophane and scandalous persons , to the participation of the lords supper : if any pastor and particular eldership bee negligent in their duty , it is their fault , who are to beare their own guiltinesse , and ought not to be imputed to the order of the church , which standeth in force against it . we may be very confident , that the godly people , who did transplant themselves out of this island , ( the fame of whose piety and zeal shall never suffer detraction or the smallest diminution from our thoughts or words ) might have lived in the church of scotland , injoying the pure ordinances of god , with peace in their consciences and comfort to their souls , and would have willingly come into scotland , when they went into new-england , could they have been free of the usurpation and tyranny of prelats and the prelatical party , which at that time did reigne and rage in that kingdome , vexing the godly ministery and people there , with many and bitter sufferings . the two extreams of the true forme of church-government , which standeth in the middle way betwixt popish and prelaticall tyranny , and brownisticall and popular anarchie , were contrary one to another , and have their own degrees of tyranny or anarchie in themselves , which is the cause of their sub-divisions , fractions , and differences amongst themselves : but both sides agree , and strongly joyne in opposing the true government , which standing constantly , and without variation between the one and the other , is contrary to both . this is the true cause ( nor could it be otherwise ) that on what hand the invasion was hotest , there the defence was strongest . against prelacie which had many friends , and therefore made many enemies to presbyteries , the presbyteriall power and pens were long pleading : no sooner is the prelaticall party , by the power and blessing of god , begun to be subdued in this island ; but ariseth unexpectedly , the opposition on the other hand , waiting the opportunity , stronger then it was before , which moved some of our divines of late , to write on this hand in defence of the government of the reformed churches , as others had done before them in other churches . in france beza , & against morellius sadeel . two nationall synods also of the reformed churches in france , the one at orleans in the year 1561. another at rothel 1571. and in all the reformed churches , governed by presbyteries and assemblies , the positive grounds of the government are laid open , which work equally against adversaries on both sides , and have been applyed against them prove nata as they did arise or shew themselves . if so much have not been written upon one hand as the other , in a polemicall and anaskeuastick way , let it be attributed unto the adversarie , which was but obscure and weak , and from whom small danger was apprehended ▪ it being laid for a common ground by them all , that where a whole nation is converted to the christian faith , every particular church is not to bee left to it selfe , as if it were alone in a nation , but that christ had provided a way , and there is a necessitie of a common nationall governement , to preserve all the churches in unitie and peace . it is the will of god , and hath been alwayes the constant course of divine providence , that when his servants have been diligent in searching the truth , and zealous by professing and preaching , to hold it forth unto others , that they confirme and seal the truth , which they have beleeved and professed with their confession and suffering . the church of scotland had many confessours , divers pastours brought before the lords of councell , the high commission , diocesan synods , were removed from their places , deprived of all the means of their livelyhood ; some confined , others imprisoned : a third sort brought into england , whence some of them were never suffered to returne , all of them for the government of the church . others for the same cause were proceeded against by the criminall judge , condemned of treason , sentenced to death , and after long imprisonment , before and after the sentence , could finde no other mercy , but perpetuall banishment , wherein the greater part of them ended their dayes , without any congregation , or company of their owne nation , rich or poore , to comfort them . so many of these witnesses as were suffered to live in their owne land , did not undergoe any voluntary exile ; but in much poverty and affliction , went up and down , teaching and confirming the good people , and waiting for a spring time , wherein the face of god might again shine upon his church and ( to use their owne expression ) some buds might arise out of the stumpe of church government left in the earth . had they at that time abandoned the poore oppressed church , when they were put from their places , and deprived of their liberty , and had carried away with them such of the people as were of their minde , they had ( if wee would judge according to ordinary providence , and the course of second causes ) opposed the poore desolated church for a prey to episcopall oppression , and made the case of religion in that kingdome desperate : or if they should have returned upon a revolution of extraordinary providence , they would have preferred the sufferings of their brethren left behinde them in the midst of the fiery triall , unto their owne exile , and would have been loath to have impeded or retarded the late reformation , with any thing they had brought with them from abroad : so many as returned from constrained banishment , having in all unitie of minde , and heart joyned in the worke of reformation . the church of scotland , as all other reformed churches , hath used the power of the keyes , & church-censures of all sorts , especially the gravest of excommunication , with such sharpnesse and severity , and yet with such caution and moderation , as it hath been very powerfull and effectuall , to preserve the name of god from being blasphemed , the church and people of god from contagion , and the delinquents brought under censure from destruction ; which are the ends proposed by them in executing the censures or the church , and where such scandalls arise , whether in matter of opinion or practise , as are apt to make the name of god to be blasphemed , are dangerous for the church , and waste the consciences of the sinners themselves , being accompanied with obstinacie and contempt of ecclesiasticall authority , they doe apply this last remedy , according to the order prescribed by christ , against scandalous transgressours ; to limit the censure of excommunication in matter of opinion , to the common and uncontroverted principles ; and in the matter of manners , to the common and universall practises of christianitie ; and in both , to the parties knowne light , is the dangerous doctrine of the arminians , and socinians , openeth a wide doore , and proclaimeth liberty to all other practices and errors , which are not fundamentall , and universally abhorred by all christians , and tendeth to the overthrow of the reformed religion : which we wish all sound and sober spirits to abstain from , lest it render them and their profession suspected of some such opinions and practises , as in charity wee judge to be farre from their minds and wayes . two main objections are made against the principles and practise of the order and government of the reformed churches , for which the church and kingdome of scotland , have done and suffered so much of old and of late . one is , that there is no need of the authoritative power of presbiteries and synods , and that the exhortation of particular churches one to another , the protestation of one against another , and the withdrawing of communion one from another , may bee a sufficient remedy , and no lesse effectuall against all offences , then excommunication it selfe : especially if the magistrate shall vouchsafe his assistance , and interpose his authoritie , for strengthening the sentence of noncommunion ? to this we answer . 1. that this objection supposeth a case , which hath not been found in the church of scotland for the space of above fourescore yeares , and which wee beleeve was never heard of in any of the reformed churches , except those of the separation : the pronouncing of non-communion or excommunication against a whole church . our excommunication hath beene executed , and but seldome against particular members , never against a whole church , and wee thinke never shall bee , and therefore this imaginary feare of that which never falleth forth , is not considerable : rules are made for ordinary and usuall cases . 2. what shall bee the remedy where the censure is mutuall , and two or more churches mutually protest , and pronounce the sentence of non-communion one against other ? unlesse there be a common presbyterie , or synod made up of the whole , which may decide the controversie , and give order unto the severall churches . this non-communion may prove a mean of division , rather then union . 3. in this exhortation , protestation , and non-communion , there is no more to be found , then one particular member may doe against another , which yet is acknowledged to bee unsufficient for removing of offences , unlesse the authority of the church , of which both of them bee members , shall interveine : were it in the power of particular members to submit , or not submit , as they please , there would bee as great difference and division amongst members , as now there is amongst churches . 4. what shall be done if the magistrate be negligent or care for none of those things ? or if his authoritie cannot be obtained ? or if hee bee of another religion , and foment the difference for his owne politicke ends ? hath not the wisedome of the sonne of god provided remedies in the church for all the internall necessities of the church , and constitute it a perfect body within it selfe . 5. by what probabilitie can it be made to appeare to any rationall man and indifferent minde , that no authoritie shall be as valide as authority against the obstinate , that via admonitionis , & requisitionis , is equall with via citationis , & publicae authoritatis : there cannot be so much as triall and examination of the offence without authoritie , unlesse the partie be willing to appeare : that perswasion and jurisdiction , that the delivering over to satan , and thereby striking the conscience with the terrour of god , by the authority of jesus christ , which hath the promise of a speciall and strong ratification in heaven , and any other ecclesiasticall way whatsoever , which must be inferiour to this , and depend onely upon perswasion on the one part , and free will on the other , can be supposed to bee a like efficacious . no man will say , but in civill matters , it is one thing to have adoe with our neighbour , who hath no more authority over us , then we have over him ; and another thing to have to doe with civill power which hath authority over both . the other objection is : that by this authoritie and order of government , one church hath power over another , which is contrary to that liberty and equalitie christ hath endued his churches with , and is no other but a new prelaticall dominion set over the churches of christ ? to this we answer . 1. that we are very farre from imposing or acknowledging any such collaterall power of one particular church over another , nay not of the greatest , in all respects whatsoever over the smallest , for god hath made them equall one to another . the power which we maintain , is aggregative of the officers of many congregations over the particular members of their corporation : even as a member of the naturall body is not subject to another ; but each one of them to the whole man consisting of them all : and as one member of parliament , one counseller ; or to goe lower , one member of a company , is not subject to another , but every one to the whole colledge : the same may bee said of townes and cities : so is it with particular congregations combined in one presbyterie . all the reformed churches acknowledge the independencie of one particular church upon another . 2. it is as miserable a mistake to compare presbyteries and prelates together : for the courts of prelates are altogether forraign and extrinsecall to the congregations over which they rule , and then indeed the metropolitan church usurpeth and tyrannizeth over other churches : but the power of presbeteries in intrinsecall and naturall , they being constitute of the pastors and elders of the particular congregations over which they are set : so that another without themselves doth not beare rule over them ; but all of them together by common consent doe rule over every one , which is a most milde and free forme of church-government : it being no more contrary to the liberty of a particular church to bee ruled by a common collegiate presbytery , or ecclesiastick senate , then it is for a member of a particular congregation to bee ruled by his owne particular eldership . 3. were this way of government as well known by experience unto others , as it is unto us , it would bee accounted rather subsidium , then dominium , and would be looked at , rather as auxiliary to particular ministers and elderships , then authoratative over them , especially since they neither ordain nor depose ministers , they discern no censure , nor sentence of excommunication of any member , without the knowledge and consent of the congregation which is particularly concerned therein : whatsoever their authority be , the minister and particular eldership are advised , assisted , and strengthned , rather then commanded , enjoyned , or forced : which the particular churches should much rather chuse , then through want of counsell and assistance , suffer themselves to run rashly upon deposition or excommunication , and afterward either be brought to the neighbouring churches to the publike confession of their errour , which lesseneth their authority afterward , or to have the sentence of non-communion pronounced against them , which must bee the cause of schisme or scandall . so much for the present have we said , not for confutation ; but meerely for justifying our owne , and other reformed churches , against such misrepresentings and mistakings , as in matters of religion are too frequent in this place at this time , to the perverting and abusing of simple and unstable minds , which will never be brought to a consistence and unitie , without this true order and governement of the church , and the blessing of god from heaven upon his owne ordinance . were magistrates and civill powers acquainted with the power thereof , they would finde their authority increased , their worke more easie , and their places more comfortable thereby . such as are most adverse to this order and government ( if they allow no materiall difference in doctrine , worship , or practise ) might enjoy their peace , and all the comforts of their ministery and profession under it , without controlment , from that authoritative power which they so much apprehend . the church of england which god hath blessed with so much learning and pietie , by this reformation and uniformitie with other reformed churches , which all of us have solemnely sworn and subscribed , sincerely , really , and constantly through the grace of god , to endeavour in our severall places and callings , should be a praise in the earth . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a43317e-120 the occasion . our intention . the government of the reformed churches is known . the reformers of the church of scotland . the rule and patern of their reformation . their certainty in matters of religion . their consent with other reformed churches . they are not to be called calvinians . their reformation was not framed to state ends . the reformers not byassed , but benefited by education . they intended presbyteriall government from the beginning . what they give unto the magistrate . their diligent search for true church-government , and the good hand of god upon them . the defence therof against adversaries on both hands . their sufferings for the true church government . their exercising of that true church government for which they had done and suffered so much . this government necessary for churches living together . this government agreeeth with the libertie and equalitie of particular churches . this government usefull and beneficiall to all sorts of persons . a proclamation for securing the peace of the shire of caithness scotland. privy council. 1680 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05685 wing s1912 estc r183540 53299291 ocm 53299291 180021 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05685) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180021) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2810:46) a proclamation for securing the peace of the shire of caithness scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1660-1685 : charles ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh, : anno dom. 1680. caption title. initial letter. title vignette: royal seal with initials c r. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng caithness (scotland) -history -17th century -sources. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion cr honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation for securing the peace of the shire of caithness . charles by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith ; to macers , or messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly , and severally , specially constitute , greeting ; forasmuch as notwithstanding by our laws and acts of parliament , the convocating of our leidges without our special , authority and warrand therefore , be expressly discharged ; yet we are informed , that certain broken , and lawless men , within our shir● of caithness , have from time to time convocate themselves in arms within the said shire and have most unwarrantably , first besieged , and then thrown down , the houses bel●●ging to the earl of caithness , and continues still to exact upon , and oppress his tenant● taking away the corns out of his girnels , exacting sums of money , and free quarter , t● the great contempt of our authority . and we being resolved to protect all such as 〈◊〉 peaceably under us , and in obedience to our laws ; have therefore with advice of our privy council , thought fit to declare and testifie our abhorrence of all such atrocious crimes of oppression , and illegal procedure ; and that we will with all speed and rigor punish all such as shall be found to have had any accession to the same , before our ordinar judicatures . but least in the mean time , the rents and victual payable out of the said earls lands should be transported , so that reparation could not be had : we do therefore expressly discharge any merchants , to buy , or any skippers to transport the victual growing upon any of the said earls lands , without his own , or his , chamberlains licence and consent , under the pain of the confiscation of the said ship , wherein the said victual shall be transported . likeas , to prevent the transporting of the same , under the name and colour of victual belonging to private persons : we do hereby declare , that any such persons who shall lend their name to such a transportation , shall be lyable to the said earl , in the sum of ten pounds scots , for every boll so transported . and to the end the said earl may have peaceable access to his own estate in caithness , we hereby discharge all our subjects , of what quality soever , to stop him , his friends and followers in their journey , to and from caithness ; commanding also hereby all such as have ferry-boats , to give him the ordinary and speedy passage , and our subjects upon his way , to provide him and them with entertainment at the ordinary rates of the country , as they will be answerable : commanding hereby all our good subjects to countenance and assist our heraulds , pursevants , and messengers at arms , either for citing the persons concerned in our name , or for executing our laws against them , and more especially in the publication hereof . and ordains these presents to be printed , and published at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , aberdene , inuerness , thurso , caithness-weik , and other places needful , that all persons concerned may have notice of the same . given under our signet at edinburgh , the fourth day of march , one thousand six hundred and eighty years . and of our reign the thirty and two year . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . a l. gibson , cl. sti. concilii . god save the king. edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1680. his majesties gracious letter to the privy council of scotland, for adjourning the parliament england and wales. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1690 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a66140 wing w2337 estc r222315 99833498 99833498 37975 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a66140) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 37975) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2182:12) his majesties gracious letter to the privy council of scotland, for adjourning the parliament england and wales. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) william iii, king of england, 1650-1702. 1 sheet ([1] p.) by the heir of andrew anderson, [edinburgh : 1690] imprint from wing. at end: given at our court at kensigtoun, the twentieth day of march, 1689/90. and of our reign, the first year. reproduction of the original in the harvard university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -privy council -early works to 1800. 2008-02 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-03 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-04 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2008-10 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-12 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-12 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion his majesties gracious letter to the privy council of scotland , for adjourning the parliament . william r. right trusty and right entirely beloved cousin and counsellor , right trusty and entirely beloved cousin and counsellor , right trusty and right well beloved cousins and counsellors , right trusty and well beloved cousins and counsellors , right trusty and well beloved counsellors , and trusty and well beloved counsellors , we greet you well . the earnest desire we have of bringing all the counsels and deliberations of our parliament to a happy close , and with as general satisfaction as is possible , moves us upon some very serious considerations , to stop their proceedings for a very short time , until some matters before them be so prepared , and some interests so adjusted , as their unanimity thereafter may encourage all good men , and disappoint those , who being as well enemies to our parliament as to us , place much of their vain hopes upon apparent divisions amongst them . if our affairs here had allowed our presence with them , as we once designed , we should have judged this worthy of our immediat endeavours ; but in our absence we have recommended to the lord melvill our commissioner ( in whose fidelity to us , unstained affection to religion , and to the national interest , our parliament , as well as we , may justly confide ) to take such methods for removing these evils , with their causes , as may best conduce to prepare matters for their consideration , and bring our good subjects to that concord and unity in our service , as shall make , we hope , that meeting to be called , the happy and healing parliament . we therefore require you forthwith to adjourn the meeting of our parliament , from the twenty seventh day of march instant , to the fifteenth day of april thereafter , and to issue forth a proclamation in our names , continuing and adjourning our parliament to the said day , and requiring all the members thereof , to be present then in the usual manner , at the accustomed place , and under the certifications appointed by our laws . for doing whereof , this shall be to our commissioner , and to you a sufficient warrand ; and so we bid you heartily farewel . given at our court at kensingtoun , the twentieth day of march , 1689 / 90. and of our reign , the first year . a proclamation for re-establishing the staple-port at camphire. scotland. privy council. 1699 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05676 wing s1898 estc r183529 52528986 ocm 52528986 179087 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05676) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179087) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:76) a proclamation for re-establishing the staple-port at camphire. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to the king's most excellent majesty, edinburgh : anno dom, 1699. caption title. initial letter. intentional blank spaces in text. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh the 30th day of march, and of our reign the tenth year, 1699. signed: gilb. eliot. with a list of staple commodities below imprint. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng harbors -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -commerce -netherlands -early works to 1800. netherlands -commerce -scotland -early works to 1800. zeeland (netherlands : province) -history -17th century -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation for re-establishing the staple-port at camphire . william by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith ; to macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally specially constitute , greeting ; forasmuch , as by a treaty betwixt our commissioners appointed by us , as marquess of camphire , and the commissioners of our town of camphire , and the royal borrows of this our ancient kingdom , concerning the continuation and re-establishment of the staple-port of this kingdom , within the foresaid town . the staple-port of this kingdom , for the netheriands is re established by contract , and settled at the said town of camphire , and the same contract ratified and approven by the states of zeland , & the convention of our royal borrows , on the one and other parts . and we being satisfied , that the said contract is for the advantage of the trade and commerce of this our ancient kingdom , and that by long experience , it hath been found that the town of camphire , is the most convenient and fit place to be the staple-port for this our kingdom , have therefore , by a signature under our royal hand , of the date , the twentieth day of march currant , ratified , approved and confirmed the said contract , in its whole heads , clauses and articles : and we being further resolved , that the same be duely observed , by all the subjects of this our ancient kingdom , trading to the united provinces of the netherlands , and that all the standing laws , and acts of parliament , with all other acts of our council , or exchequer , relating to the said staple , and acts of convention of our royal borrows be put to full and vigorous execution , for the due and exact observance of the said staple-port for the future : therefore , we , with advice of the lords of our privy council , do hereby require , and command all our subjects , to give due and punctual obedience to the laws and acts of parliament , with all other acts of our council or exchequer , relating to the said staple , and acts of the convention of our royal borrows made for the observing the staple-port , which are all hereby declared to be in full force . and seing now the foresaid scots staple-port is re-established , and continued at the said town of camphire , therefore we , with advice foresaid , prohibite and discharge all merchants and skippers , or any other of our subjects to export , furth of this our kingdom , any goods , ware or commodities , which are , or shall be declared to be staple commodities , to any other port or place of the united provinces of the netherlands but only to the said staple-port , and town of camphire in zeland , under the pains and certifications contained in the saids act of parliament , with all other acts of our council or exchequer , relating to the said staple , and acts of convention of borrows , which pains and penalties we ordain to be exacted from the transgressors , with all rigour . and that they be furder proceeded against , as our privy council shall find cause . and we with advice foresaid , do hereby require the farmers , tacksmen or collectors of our customs , and their sub-collectors , and survyers for the time being , that they make exact search and tryall for all staple goods , and commodities that shall be hereafter exported forth of this kingdom to any part or port of the united provinces in the netherlands , and that they , and their clerks , and all clerks of coquets , take sufficient security from the merchants , or skipper , sailers and transporters of goods to the said netherlands , that they shall carry and liver the same at the said staple-port of camphire , and at no other place , nor port within the said united provinces , and that they shall not break bulk before their arrival thereat , conform to the acts of parliament , oblidging the exporters to report certificats from the conservator , or his deputs at camphire . bearing , that the said staple commodities were livered there , without breaking bulk , as they will be answerable to the lords of our privy council thereanent . and we do ordain the saids certificats to be delivered in quarterly by the collectors , and their clerks , at the several ports , to the agent of our royal borrows for the time . to the end , exact diligence may be done by him , against all the transgressors of the said staple , conform to the laws and acts made thereanent , our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly , and command , that in continent thir our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and whole remanent royal burrows of this kingdom , and other places needful , and thereat , in our name and authority , by open proclamation make publication of the premisses , to the effect , our royal burrows , and all merchants , and other persons may have timous notice hereof , and give due and punctual obedience , as they will be answerable at their outmost perril , and appoints copies to be affixed at the several custom-houses , and sea ports of this kingdom , that none pretend ignorance and ordains these presents to be printed . given under our signet at edinburgh the 30th day of march , and of our reign the tenth year , 1699 . per actum dominorum sti. concilij . gilb . eliot . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to the king 's most excellent majesty , anno dom , 1699. staple commodities are , all sorts of wooll . woollen and linen yarn . all woollen and linen manufactories . hydes and skins of all sorts . playding . kerseys , scots cloath , stockins , salmond , yallow , oyl . all sorts of barrel flesh . pork , butter , leather dressed . and undressed . a proclamation, appointing the magistrates of burghs of regality and barrony, and their clerks, to take the oath of alleadgeance, and signe the declaration. edinbvrgh, the first day of august, 1678. scotland. privy council. 1678 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05544 wing s1708a estc r183418 52612307 ocm 52612307 179613 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05544) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179613) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2794:7) a proclamation, appointing the magistrates of burghs of regality and barrony, and their clerks, to take the oath of alleadgeance, and signe the declaration. edinbvrgh, the first day of august, 1678. scotland. privy council. gibson, alexander, sir, d. 1693. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1678. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. signed: al. gibsone, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng loyalty oaths -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -officials and employees -legal status, laws, etc. -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion c r honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , appointing the magistrates of burghs of regality and barrony , and their clerks , to take the oath of alleadgeance , and signe the declaration . edinbvrgh , the first day of august , 1678 : the lord commissioner his grace , and lords of his majesties privy council , considering , that by the fifth act of the second session of his majesties first parliament , his majesty , with advice of his estates of parliament , did statute , ordain , and enact , that all such persons as should thereafter be called or admitted to any publick trust or office , under his majesties government within this kingdom ; that is to say , to be officers of state , members of parliament , privy counsellers , lords of session , commissioners of exchequer , members of the colledge of justice , sheriffs , stewarts , or commissaries their deputs and clerks , magistrates , and council of burghs , justices of peace and their clerks , or any other publick charge , office and trust within this kingdom , shall at and before their admission to the exercise of such places or offices , publickly in face of the respective courts they relate to , subscribe the declaration thereto subjoyned , and that they shall have no right to the said offices or benefites thereof , untill they subscribe the same as said is ; but that every such person who shall offer to enter and exerce any such office , before he subscribe the declaration , is to be reputed and punished as an usurper of his majesties authority , and the place to be disposed of to another : and by the second act of the third session of his majesties said first parliament , relating to the former act , it is recommended to his majesties privy council to be carefull , that these acts be put in due execution , and receive obedience conform to the tenour thereof . and whereas the lord commissioner his grace , and lords of his majesties privy councill are informed , that the magistrates of several burghs of regality and barrony , and their clerks , who exerce publick jurisdiction , office and trust in their several bounds , and who by the said acts of parliament , are obliged , at or before they enter to the exercise of such offices and plac●s , to take the oath of alleadgeance and signe the declaration , yet do take upon them the exercise of the said publick trust , office and jurisdiction , without taking the said oath and signing the declaration : do therefore hereby require and command , all such magistrates of burghs of regality and barrony , and their clerks , ( who have not at their entry to their saids offices , taken the oath of alleadgeance and signed the declaration ) to take the said oath , and sign the declaration , publickly in face of the respective courts to which they relate , betwixt and the term of michaelmas next : and it is hereby declared , that the saids magistrates of burghs of regality and barrony , and their clerks , shall hereafter have no right to their saids offices or benefites thereof , untill they take the said oath , and subscribe the declaration , as said is ; but that every one of them who shall exerce any such publick office , charge or jurisdiction , before they so do , is to be reputed and punished as an usurper of his majesties authority , and the place to be disposed of to another , conform to the saids acts of parliament : hereby requiring the sheriffs of the several shires to see this act put in execution , and to report to the council their diligence , betwixt and the second thursday of november next . and ordains these presents to be printed , and published at the mercat cross of edinburgh , and mercat crosses of the head burghs of the several shires , that none pretend ignorance . al. gibsone , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinbvrgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1678. the last offers of the noblemen and gentlemen now in armes for the covenant, to the earls of craford glencairn and lanerk, george munro and others joyned with them in the late unlawfull engagement against the kingdome of england. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription b04295 of text r179659 in the english short title catalog (wing l498b). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 b04295 wing l498b estc r179659 52211861 ocm 52211861 175714 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b04295) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 175714) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2747:15) the last offers of the noblemen and gentlemen now in armes for the covenant, to the earls of craford glencairn and lanerk, george munro and others joyned with them in the late unlawfull engagement against the kingdome of england. henderson, thomas, fl. 1649. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by evan tyler printer to the kings most excellent majestie, [edinburgh] : 1648. caption title. initial letter. dated and signed at end: woodside 16th september 1648. signed by command of the commissioners for the treatie. tho: henderson. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. eng glencairn, william cunningham, -earl of, 1610?-1664. crawford-lindsay, john lindsay, -earl of, 1596-1678. hamilton, james hamilton, -duke of, 1606-1649. scotland -history -1625-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1625-1649 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. b04295 r179659 (wing l498b). civilwar no the last offers of the noblemen and gentlemen now in armes for the covenant, : to the earls of craford glencairn and lanerk, george munro an [no entry] 1648 654 1 0 0 0 0 0 15 c the rate of 15 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2008-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-08 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the last offers of the noblemen and gentlemen now in armes for the covenant , to the earls of craford glencairn and lanerk , george munro and others joyned with them in the late unlawfull engagement against the kingdome of england . vvee have seriously considered the sad and deplorable condition , to which this kingdome is now brought , by your proceedings and actions in pursuance of the late engagement , against our neighbour nation of england , with whom wee are joyned in covenant , and the fearfull desolation that is like lie further to come upon it , by the return of a part of that armie which invaded england ; and after severall debates and conferences with your lordships , these severall dayes by past , both by word and writing , wee do find the state of the the difference betwixt your lordships and us to be this . that which hinders agreement upon our part , is the point of conscience , forbidding us to do any thing , which may inferre an accession to the late engagement , the desire wee have to keep the covenant and treaties , and not break the union betwixt the kingdomes , and to avoid a quarrell with england , which may destroy this kingdome and entayle a warre upon us and our posteritie , and to prevent the exposing of the cause and kingdome to the same dangers under which they now lie , from which grounds wee cannot part ; whereas the arti●les on your part , which hinder agreement , are such , from which your lordships may easilie recede . wee have verie much endeavoured in our last paper to give your lordships all just and reasonable satisfaction ; yet that it may further appear how desirous wee are to prevent an intestine warre , and to have the peace of the kingdome setled , wee offer unto your lordships these articles following to be agreed on . i. that for easing the burdens of the kingdome , and to prevent famine and desolation , all forces on both sides whither in the field or in the garisons of berwick and carlile , or the garisons within the kingdome be disbanded betwixt the 25th day of this instant moneth of september . ii. that the secureing and setling of religion at home , and the promoteing the work of reformation abroad in england and ireland , be referred to the determination of the generall assemblie or their commissioners , and that all civill questions and differences whatsoever be referred to the determination of a parliament to be speedilie called . iii. to prevent the imminent dangers to religion and a quarrell with our neighbour nation in the mean time , untill the meeting of a parliament ( which cannot be done without a treatie betwixt the kingdomes ) that all of your number who have been employed in publick place or trust , shall forbear the exercise thereof , and not come to the committee of estates , to the end there may be a committee of estates consisting of such members as are free of the late engagement , & against whom england may not have this exception , that such have the manageing of the affairs of this kingdome as they esteem their enemies , and with whom they cannot treat . and if your lordships shall out of love to this almost ruined kingdome yeild to those our just desires , wee are verie confident that the peace this kingdome shall be setled , the union betwixt the kingdomes continued , and all quarrells prevented . signed by command of the commissioners for the treatie . m. tho. henderson . woodside 16. september . 1648. printed by evan tyler printer to the kings most excellent majestie . 1648. at edinburgh, the 15 of june, 1696 the council-general of the company of scotland, trading to africa and the indies: ... company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1696 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a80263 wing c5592 estc r231853 99897628 99897628 137257 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a80263) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 137257) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2510:7) at edinburgh, the 15 of june, 1696 the council-general of the company of scotland, trading to africa and the indies: ... company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh : 1696] title from caption and opening lines of text. imprint from wing cd-rom, 1996. reproduction of original in the john carter brown library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -17th century -early works to 1800. scotland -commerce -early works to 1800. broadsides 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion at edinburgh , the 15 of june , 1696. the covncil-general of the company of scotland , trading to africa and the indies : do appoint and ordain , that the manner of transferring and aliening the joynt-stock , or capital-fund of this company , shall be by an entry in some one or other of the books of the company , signed by the person , or persons , bodies-politick or corporate , transferring the same , or by some one or other by him , her , or them , thereunto deputed in writing . which transfers , shall be in the form , or to the effect following , i do transfer of the capital-fund of the company of scotland trading to africa and the indies , unto done at this day of anno dom. or if by some person or persons deputed thereunto , then all such deputations shal be entred & recorded apart , in some one or other of the books of the said company ; and such transfers , shall be in the form , or to the effect following , i for do transfer of the capital-fund of the company of scotland , trading to africa and the indies , unto done at this day of anno dom. unto which respective transfers , the person or persons , bodies-politick , or corporate , to whom such transfers shal be made or some one or other by him , her , or them thereunto appointed , shall subscribe ; signifying his , her , or their acceptance thereof ; and such transfers and assignments , shall be good and valid , and convey the right and property to the acceptor , or acceptors thereof . by order of the said covncil-general , rod. mackenzie , sec : ry die veneris 15. august. 1645. an ordinance of the lords and commons assembled in parliament for the continuance of the monethly assessement for the maintenance of the scottish army. england and wales. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a83176 of text r212251 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.9[42]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a83176 wing e1962 thomason 669.f.9[42] estc r212251 99870893 99870893 161140 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a83176) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 161140) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 245:669f9[42]) die veneris 15. august. 1645. an ordinance of the lords and commons assembled in parliament for the continuance of the monethly assessement for the maintenance of the scottish army. england and wales. parliament. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed for iohn wright at the kings head in the old-bayley, london : 16 august 1645. in this edition there is no comma after "parliament" in line 3 of title and the first letter of the publisher's name in imprint is an "i" in place of a swash "j". order to print signed: ioh. brown cler. parliamentorum. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng scotland. -army -early works to 1800. taxation -law and legislation -england -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. a83176 r212251 (thomason 669.f.9[42]). civilwar no die veneris 15. august. 1645. an ordinance of the lords and commons assembled in parliament for the continuance of the monethly assessement england and wales. parliament. 1645 330 2 0 0 0 0 0 61 d the rate of 61 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the d category of texts with between 35 and 100 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-12 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-12 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion die veneris 15. august . 1645. an ordinance of the lords and commons assembled in parliament for the continuance of the monethly assessement for the maintenance of the scottish army . whereas by an ordinance of parliament bearing date the 20 of febr. 1644. intituled , an ordinance of the lords and commons assembled in parliament , for the raising and leavying of the monethly sum of 21000. l. towards the maintenance of the scottish army , under the command of the earl of leven , by a monethly assessement upon the severall counties , cities , and townes of the kingdome of england ▪ therein mentioned : it is ordained , that there shall be severall sums of money taxed , leavyed , and paid towards the maintenance of the said army upon the several counties , cities and towns therein mentioned , by a monethly assessement , to continue for foure moneths , beginning the first of march 1644 and since expired . be it ordained , and it is now ordained by the lords and commons assembled in parliament , that the said ordinance , and every clause therein contained , the severall taxes and payments therein expressed , and the power and authority thereby given and appointed to all and every the committees and persons or any of them named or mentioned in the said ordinance , shall be in force and continue for the space of foure moneths longer , to begin from the first of iuly , 1645. to all intents and purposes ▪ as if the said ordinance had bin at first made to have continuance for eight moneths , from the first day of march 1644. ordered by the lords and commons assembled in parliament , that this ordinance be forthwith printed and published . ioh. brown cler. perliamentorum . london , printed for iohn wright at the kings head in the old-bayley , 16 august 1645. a proclamation, containing his majesties grace and favour to his subjects [in t]his his ancient kingdom of scotland proclamations. 1674-03-24 scotland. privy council. 1674 approx. 8 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92677 wing s1727 estc r483507 99899465 99899465 153566 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92677) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 153566) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2370:31) a proclamation, containing his majesties grace and favour to his subjects [in t]his his ancient kingdom of scotland proclamations. 1674-03-24 scotland. privy council. charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by andrew anderson, printer to the king's most excellent majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1674. steele notation: arms 232 lojects twenty. dated at end: given under our signet at holy-rood-house the twenty fourth day of march, 1674. and of our reign the twenty sixth year. dfo copy, reel 2370, is creased and torn with some loss of text. reproduction of original in the folger shakespeare library, washington, d.c.. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng taxation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2007-09 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation , containing his majesties grace and favour to his subjects 〈◊〉 ●his his ancient kingdom of scotland . c r honi soit qui mal y pense charles , by the grace of god , king of great brittain , france and ireland , defender of the faith , to our lovits , _____ our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers , p●rsevants , messengers at a●ms , our sheriffs ●●…hat part conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : fo ●● much , as the affection which we have to this our ancient kingdom of scotland , makes us readily to embrace ●ll occasions , whereby we may witness our zeal to do all things which may be for the advantage and ease of ●ur good subjects ; and we being informed by our right trusty and intirely beloved cousin and counsell●● the duke of lauderdale , our commissioner , of some things which have been , and still are troublesome a● burdensome to our good subjects of this our kingdom : we have thought fit as an act of our royal bountie , by our royal authority , with advice of our privy council , to declare our royal pleasure , for the ease and satisfaction of our good subjects in manner following . first , we , with advice foresaid , do hereby statute and enact , and accordingly do free●y and absolutely discharge to our subjects all rests of assessments , monethly maintenance , loan and tax , levies , out-reiks of hor●● and foot , excise , tenth and twenty ●enny : and generally all impositions whatsoever due , or imposed upon this our kingdom , 〈◊〉 any time before our happy restauration ; excepting all sums of money already payed , or bonds given for money ( which by assigna●●ons may be conveyed through several hands ) and all these particulars above-mentioned , we , with advice foresaid , do now discharge , notwithstanding of any commission gra●ted to sir john weymes of bogie , or any others for collecting them , or any of them . we , in like manner , with advice foresaid , discharge all rests of the taxation ordinary and extraordinary , granted to our royal father of blessed memory , by the parliament in the year of god , 1633. comprehend●●g therein the taxation of two of ten 〈◊〉 annual-rents , excepting all sums of money already payed , or bonds granted preceeding the date hereof ; and excepting all sums of money due by any person , lyable for the relief of those who have made payment or gven bond. but in regard the duke and dutchess of h●miltoun , have a right to the rests of the said taxat●●● untill they be 〈…〉 of cert●●● sums of money acclaimed , as yet re●●ng to 〈◊〉 by us , conform to a contract past betwixt 〈…〉 duke of hamiltoun , and a commission granted by us ●o william now duke of hamiltoun : we do declare , that we 〈…〉 satisfie the 〈…〉 the said duke after count and reckoning of his intromission with the said 〈◊〉 ; th● 〈◊〉 grace and favour intended hereby to our good subjects may be made effectual , and entire to them ; but prejudice in the m●●●time , to the duke of hamiltoun , of hi● right and execution thereupon , ay and untill he be satisfied of what shal be found due to him , 〈…〉 court and reckoning of his intromission with the said taxation . we do likewise , with advice foresaid , freely and absolutely discharge all such parts of the annu●●e of ●einds as were due to us before our happy restauration : and do suspend the charging for , the receiving or paying of any annuity due 〈…〉 our restauration , ay and until the earl of lowdon make account ( to any vve shall appoint for that effect ) of what he o● his father 〈…〉 received of the saids annuities : to the end we may then declare our further pleasure , excepting alwayes from this all sums of mone● 〈◊〉 pay●ed , or for which bond is given upon that account , preceeding the date hereof : and this , notwithstanding of any 〈…〉 granted by us 〈◊〉 to the earl of lowdon , for collecting of the saids annuities . we do also , with advice foresaid , freely and absolutely discharge all fynes imposed by ou● first parliament of this our kingdom , excepting such as are already payed , or such for which there is bond already given . it is alwayes hereby declared , that all moneys received by collectors or sub collectors from their several entries in all or any of these particulars , 〈…〉 discharge , or others entrusted for uplifting thereof , are ●●●eby excepted : and the saids collectors , sub-collectors , and others foresaid declared accomptable for the same , to any who have or shal have our commission for that effect . and last , we for a further proof of our affection to our good subjects of this our kingdom ; do , ●●th advice foresaid , freely and absolutely grant ageneral pardon and discharge of all arbitrary and pecunial pains incurred by any of our subjects , before the date hereof through the contraveening of any laws , penal statutes , or publick acts whatsoever ; except such pecunial pains as are already inflicted 〈…〉 our privy council , or any other competent judicatory , for 〈…〉 of money payed : and excepting all sentences of 〈…〉 imprisonment or 〈◊〉 , declaring alwayes , this ●ardon is not to be extended to any who were guilty of the rebe●li●● in the year 1666. and are not admitted to the benefit of our ●●mpnity , not to such as are guilty of 〈◊〉 crimes . and we having given , as said is , so full proof of our bounty and goodness 〈…〉 ●●bjects , a●● of our full pardon of all arbitrary and pecunial pains , extending even to these against conventicles , withdrawing 〈…〉 ances , disorderly baptisms and marriages , we do expect , that this our unparalelled grace and goodness will oblige all our good subjects ●● to express their due sense of and thankfulness for the same , by a more careful observance and due obedience to our laws , from which nothing is to be derogate hereby as to their due observance in time coming . and to the end , that our royal clemency and bount● to o●● good subjects , may be for their full security made known to them ; our will is , and we charge you straitly and command , that incontinent , these our letters seen ; ye passe to the mercat cross of edinburgh , and the market crosses of all the other royal burroughs of this our kingdom , and other places needful and thereat , in our name and authority , with all due solemnities , by open proclamation , make publication of the premisses . the which to do we commit to you conjunctly and severally our full power by these our lette● , delivering them by you duely execute and indorsed again to the bearer . given under our signet at holy-rood-house the twenty fourth day of march , 1674. and of our reign the twenty sixth year . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gibson , c. s ● concilii . god save the king. edinbvrgh , printed by andrew anderson , printer to the king 's most exc●llent majesty . anno dom. 1674. a sermon preached in the high church of edinburgh at the election of the magistrates of the city, on the 2d of octob. 1694 / by james webster. webster, james, 1658?-1720. 1694 approx. 28 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 9 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-01 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a65355 wing w1208 estc r26310 09427448 ocm 09427448 43046 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a65355) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 43046) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1319:21) a sermon preached in the high church of edinburgh at the election of the magistrates of the city, on the 2d of octob. 1694 / by james webster. webster, james, 1658?-1720. 15, [1] p. printed by george mosman, edinburgh : 1694. reproduction of original in the harvard university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church of scotland -sermons. justice, administration of -moral and ethical aspects. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745. 2000-00 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2001-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2001-11 tcp staff (michigan) sampled and proofread 2001-12 apex covantage rekeyed and resubmitted 2002-01 tcp staff (michigan) sampled and proofread 2002-01 tcp staff (michigan) text and markup reviewed and edited 2002-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a sermon preached in the high church of edinburgh , at the election of the magistrates of the city . on the 2d of octob. 1694. by james webster , minister of the gospel . edinburgh . printed by george mosman , and are to be sold at his shope in the parliament closs . 1694. psal 101 , verse 1. 2. i will sing of mercy and judgement — o when wilt thou come unto me ? the best , and most perfect model of government ever obtain'd in the world , the jews enjoy'd under their judges ; it being indeed a pure theocracy ; god himself was their political head and king , and ( as it were ) their supreme magistrate , both sacred and prophane history , bear witness to this : in him were lodg'd all the prerogatives royal , all the rights of majesty ; he gave them their laws immediatly from heaven , went forth before their armies , fought their battels , appointed their rulers , deputies under him , and exacted from them tribute . briefly after a narrative of his glorious appearances , and mighty works for them , and of their deep obligations to him ; he offers , and they accept of him to be their king , and by a mutual covenant they bind themselves one to another . but his stupid people , ignorant of their true interest , and weary of their happiness , shake off the yoke of god , and exchange it for mans , call to samuel to give them a king ; and by no means would be diverted from their rebellion and treason ; having ( 't is likely ) a design at once to change their god and their king , to throw off their religion and their allegiance together . however , in anger they have their desire , they get a king who lived wicked and died miserable . to him doth our psalmist succeed , according to a promise the lord had given him ; and betwixt the promise and its accomplishment , ( as some think ) or immediatly afte the accomplishment ( as others ) he composes this psalm , where he comes under solemn engagements and vows , not to abuse his power as saul had done ; but to employ and manage it for god i 'le sing &c. the psalm is one contiuued chain of david's resolutions to govern for the lord ; and in our text , he promises to have a particular regard to righteousness and mercy , the two great vertues of a ruler , and the two great pillars of a government : this mercy is a generous compassion , inclining rulers , to observe , countenance , hearken to , judge and reward , the good , the innocent , and the oppressed : he binds and obliges himself to this so necessary a work. the melancholy scene , and the great variety of miseries people groan under , should invite the rulers pity , draw out his bowels , and open his eyes , his heart and hand to their relief : this is his proper province ; this is the original design of government . mercy is not ( as the disciples of zeno thought ) a weakness of soul , a litleness and meanness of spirit , and a down-right vice : no , our psalmist puts a just value on it , and vows it shall have a fixed residence , and constant lodging in his royal and religious breast . but least this compassion ( to which ( as is well observed by some ) wee are by nature swayed , and by the very make and constitution of our body prompted and inclin'd ) should by carrying us too far , degenerat , and bound into a vice , he in great wisdom and discretion , resolves to temper it with a mixture of justice , by discountenancing , punishing , and being terrible to evil doers . i 'le sing of judgement . magistrates at all times ( especially now when wickedness takes strength from forbearance and indemnity , enboldens offenders , and the government is in danger of sinking under its own mildness ) should be sons of thunder , and imitat him whose ministers they are , who both gave his laws , and executes them in all circumstances of terrour : some difference is to be made betwixt moses rod and aaron's ; this ( to speak so ) is silently fruitful , without all noise and observation , sends forth its buds , blossoms and fruit : but that turns unto a serpent , hisses , and stings unto death . no sooner did constantin ( once an inhabitant of this island ) mount the imperial throne , then he sung of mercy to the harass'd and perlecuted christians , and of justice to the pagan idolaters , to them he speaks in lightning and thunder , and is so severe and terrible unto them , that its prophecy rev 6. is easily mistaken for a description of the last judgement . david , to demonstrat the natural delight , himself , and all rulers should have in a well temper'd goverment , sings his obligations and engagements to it , with a joyfull emotion of spirit , voweth , when god shall come to him ( as the words may be read ) i. e. ( as interpreters say ) when he shall be king , to sway , and weild his scepter for the glory of god , and the good of his people . and whereas he promises , then to execut justice and mercy , it is not to be understood as if he had neglected the same in his privat station ; but that when in power he will be in a more publick and better capacitie to do it . there is one textual difficulty to be removed , e're i go farther : why doth his coming to the throne goe under the phrase of god's coming to him ? wee must remember , he had god's promise of the kingdom ; and in scripture , god is said to come unto men ; when he accomplisheth his promise , and bestows any singulat blessing on them . but more particulary to persons invested with civil power , god's word of commission comes psal. 82. 6. i have said , ye are gods , he speaks to them , and with this creating word , confers upon them power : the serpent flattered us with a promise that we should be gods , but the lord doth really make some men gods the word of god mentioned john 10. 34. according to the best interpreters , is the divine warrand and commission to be magistrates ; for the office and power is from god though handed down and conveyed by men , and upon that score called by the apostle peter an humane ordinance . farther as soon as men are cloathed with authority , god comes to them , and gives them another heart and a large measure of necessary and sutable gifts , by a plentiful effusion of his spirit , breaths into them noble dispositions ; which , together with a call from men , are heaven's credential letters , that prepare their reception , and command obedience and submission from the people . and in fine by phrasing it thus , the psalmist , condemns all unjust practising to get into power , for though having been anointed by the lords express command , he had an undoubted title to the succession , he has not the ambition to shuffle his anointed head under the crown , till god by the vote of such as had right to give it , comes and puts it on , which he knows , will make it to sit the surer , and shine the brighter . the proposition that lyes before us , and is the scope of the words , is , persons in authority should manage their government with an equal mixture of mercy and justice . a government well temper'd with them two , should be the magistrates delight job 29 from 14 to 18. i put on righteousness , and it cloathed me : my judgement was a rob and a diadem . i was eyes to the blind , and feet was i to the lame . i was a father to the poor : and the cause which i knew not , i searcbed out . and i brake the jaws of the wicked , and pluckt the spoil out of his teeth . it appears from the history , job was not only a good man , and a good citizen , but a good magistrat , and he answers this character , by his sincere love to justice and mercy , like a good ruler , he makes the impartial administration of justice his chief business and delight , his ornament and glory , 't is better in his account , than a diadem and robs , and indeed , one single act of justice , is of far greater value than those ; which without it , are meer pageantry : a good ruler puts on righteousness in the morning , wears it all the day ; and on the bench wraps it so closely about him , that no temptation can blow it aside . from the forcited place , 't is evident , that job has no less regard to the exercise of mercy , i was eyes to the blind &c. micah 6. god reckons the exercise of justice and mercy , the whole of our obedience , and prefers it before ten thousand rivers of oyl and rom. 13 , 4. the two very different setts of men , there , make the exercise of mercy and justice equally necessary , for he is the minister of god to thee for good : but if thou do that which is evil , be afraid for he beareth not the sword in vain : for he is the minister of god , a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil . i shall follow forth this head , first by taking a separate view of mercy and justice , the two essential parts of a well manag'd government . 2. consider them in conjunction , as giving mutual help and support one to another . 3. demonstrat , that in all publick administrations , magistrats should have a particular regard to them . 4. bring home all to practice . as to the first , i shall begin with mercy , not only because our psalmist does so , but because this sweet and gentle method , all magistrates should observe : drawing the sword is the last remedy , and never to be used , save in extremity , when all other ways prove uneffectual , and nothing else can serve the turn . god himself reckons justice his strange work , a forreign part of his providence , and which he never works till constrained , and ev'n then with some aversion : mercy is god's darling and triumphant attribute , the immediat off-spring of his nature , but for this divine affection , the world long since had fallen about our ears : mercy challengeth the present scene as its own ; and the conclusion of time is almost all that is reserved for justice ? the mercy of rulers ought to be a copy of that wondrous compassion god shewed to a destroyed world , and as far as possible , an exact transcript of that grand exemplar , and consisteth 1 , in their protecting and defending the innocent from all unjust violence and oppression . they are by sacred writters stiled gods , and by both sacred and prophane fathers , for the great tenderness they should exercise towards their people that are their children and creatures ; a cruel father , is an unnatural , and a cruel god is a monstrous thing . magistrats are appointed to be cities of refuge , where the oppressed may take sanctuary , and therefore should be all eye to spy out the peoples burdens , all ear to hear their complaints , and all hands to relieve them , and avenge them of their adversaries . the unjust judge in the gospel , is not branded with any wrongful sentence or act of unjustice , but with want of a merciful disposition , he had not bowels enough towards the injured widow , who makes many a vain journey to his lodgings . this mercy , in the second place , is much concerned in regulating the execution of the laws on offenders ; magistrates may not go to the utmost rigour against them , some considerration would be had of the disadvantageous circumstances mankind labours under : humane frailties and infirmities , surprises and ignorance , plead strong for some abatement and moderation ; else the best and wisest law givers can't so frame their laws , as that a strict and rigourous execution of them , shall not be an unsupportable severity ; for the highest act of justice , is a kind of unjustice ; and it were hard to urge the letter of the law too farre , when neither the intention of the law-giver , nor common equity ( the standard of all laws ) are violated : and where the cause is doubtfull they should incline to mercy as the safer side ; for better spare ten guilty , then destroy one innocent ; of the injury done the latter , no reparation can be made , the fault can not be mended ; but though the other may for some time flie from the hand of justice , vengeance will not suffer them always to escape . 't is somewhat strange what is storied of a sentence of the areopagi , the great court of athens , before whom a lady was arraign'd , and accused for killing her husband and son , because they had kill'd a son of hers by another husband : the judges ordered her and her accuser to appear before them , some hundred of years after , declaring thereby , they would not absolve , and could not condemne her , but leave the determination of the cause to the gods . i come now to the second , the exercise of justice , the magistrats weareth not god's sword in vain , but to manage and weild it as god himselfe would , were he on the earth . a godly ruler proposeth to himselfe the best and most excellent laws , by which he is to govern , and takes up a fixt resolution , never to swerve from , nor do any thing that 's contrary or disagreable to them , yea , in the smallest circumstances , and on all ocasions to exercise justice , without being diverted from the same , by any temptation , of promises or threats , or nearness of relation ; iustice is blind , and has no regard to these forreigne considerations , but only to the merit of the cause . rulers are under the greatest obligation to this , whither wee consider their relation to god , or to the law , or to the people : as to the first , they are the ministers of a righteous god who loveth , and delighteth in righteousness : to do judgement , is more to him , than all sacrifices and whole burnt-offerings : these , without that , are unprofitable , unacceptable and an abomination , isa. 1 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 17. these solemn and august ordinances , though commanded and rewarded by the lord , yet when divorced and separated from justice , are but bright sins in his account : he puts upon them a slight , as solemn as their institution , who required those things at your hands ? the practice of rulers should have a conformity to the eternal law of righteousness ; for the power , the bench , the judgement , are the lord's , and must not be made tools and weapons of unrighteousness , this were to profane the most sacred things , they are likewise appointed to be the guardians of the laws , trusted with the keeping and execution of them : they should be a living law : the best laws without execution are a dead letter , they want edge : the law must take special hold of persons guilty of gross immoralities and disorders , unsupportable to any government , such disturbers of human society , have need to be mortified ; for they are a scandal to christianity , a reproach of mankind , and draw down judgements on themselves and others : compassion to the innocent makes the punishment of others sometimes necessary ; and the perverseness of some men accents the song of judgement against them . lastly , their relation to the people ( who have lodged in them all exercise of power ) is a strong bond : they have trusted them with all their most precious things , their estates , their liberties , their lives , and , which is to them dearest of all , their religion : now , to betray under trust , those unvalueable priviledges , were an unpardonable treachery . we come now to the second thing proposed , the consideration of the two , in conjunction , and first , they make the magistrat the lively image of god , who is both merciful and just , those two divine attributes have their different actings on their proper objects , without doing prejudice one to another , and in the proclamation god makes of himself to moses , mercy is the first , and justice the last part of his name . besides , his two eternal decrees concerning man's final state , are commonly thought acts of the highest mercy and justice , rom. 9 18. and farther his glorious providences , shine bright with a wise mixture of them : in every dispensation , mercy and justice kiss each one other . such an administration , is also an enblem of the great and general judgement , which god has design'd for the manifestation of his mercy and justice . secondly , the double title of father and ruler , of god and judge , the magistrate wears , is to be considered ; the one designation , is as full of pity , as the other is of terrour . thirdly , they are a counterpart of , and fitly answer the two essential peeces of sanctification , love to good , and hatred of evil. fourthly , by a government so qualified , god doth in a manner , make streight that which seem'd crooked : what is wanting in immediat providence , with respect to the evil and the good , is here supplied : so that the atheist has no reason to talk so much of prosperous wickedness , and oppressed innocence . in the third place , i come to shew , that 't is very necessary and reasonable , that persons in authority should in all their publick administrations , mingle mercy and justice together , and here i shall confine my self to one main topick , as most proper for the day , namely , the mighty and universal influence such a government has on the publick happiness and prosperity of human society , prov. 14. 34. righteousness exalteth a nation : two things prove this , 1. the justice of the divine providence . indeed as to particular persons , the providences of god are many times promiscuously administred in this world ; so that no man can certainly conclude god's love or hatred to any person , by any thing that befalls him in this life . but god do's not deal thus with nations ; because publick bodies and communities of men , as such , can only be rewarded and punished in this world : for in the next , all those publick societies and combinations , wherein men are now link'd together , under several governments , shall be dissolved . god will not then reward or punish nations , as nations . and a litle after in the usual course of his providence , he recompenseth religious and vertuous nations , with temporal blessings and prosperity . for which reason austin tells us , that the mighty success and long prosperity of the romans , was a reward given them by god for their eminent justice . — this the scripture declares to be the setled course of god's providence ; that a righteous nation shall be happy , the work of righteousness shall be peace , and the effects of righteousness , quietness and assurance for ever . thus far the learned primate . 2. their joint exercise , doth in its own nature conduce to the publick interest . when rulers do checker their administrations with mercy and justice , this tends to make men live together in peace ; and like a cement to the common wealth , unites and holds all fast together . there cannot be a more certain presage of a declining state , than dissolution of manners , through the neglect of mercy and justice . but to come a little nearer , an equal mixture of mercy and justice , does by ballancing the procedure of rulers , prevent all the evil consequences of bad administration , for , as on the one hand , an effeminat pity and undiscreet compassion makes both the laws and authority to be trampled on ; so , on the other hand , unmix'd wrath turns men desperate , and we can't tell what men driven to extremitie may do . but let us yet take a nearer view & prospect of the matter , and we shall observe how admirably the two are adjusted to the two great governing passions of man , hope and fear , that are as the helme of societies ; a well temper'd government , by taking hold of them , constrains men to good , and restrains from evil . some petsons are of a good and generous disposition ; such are a proper province for mercy to gain ; they must be drawn with cords of a man , and bands of love ; others have a more ackward temper , and tempt the ruler to instruct them , as gideon did the men of succoth with briers and thorns . in fine , the great variety of peoples conditions and manners , and their different circumstances , call for different treatment to some , the melancholy tune of justice must be sung , others must be comforted with the calm and still voice of mercy . i come now in the last place , to make some improvement of what is said , by bringing it home to the business of the day . and i beg liberty to address my selt to those honourable persons , who had the government of the city this last year , and are now to lay down the staff , and commit their power to others . i trust that ye with respect to your publick management , have the approbation of heaven and the testimony of your own consciences , and honour from men , and , to use our psalmists phrase , since god came to you , he has been ever with you , and ye have walk'd with him , and been just ruling in the fear of god , and as the light of the morning , when the sun riseth , as a morning without clouds , as the tender grass springing out of the earth , by clear shining after ram , ye are under the deepest obligations , to preserve the power in its proper subject , by handing it down to faithful men ; for ye are the image of god , as ye are men , as christians , as magistrats , and as ministers of mercy and justice to the people , look therefore that the persons ye elect this day , have the qualifications required in a good ruler , exod , 18 , 21. moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people , able men , such as fear god , men of truth hating covetousness , and place such over them to be rulers , &c. let this text serve as an authentick directory to your present work , for , without a due observance of it in your election , there will be an utter neglect of mercy and justice . ye are to chuse men of great abilities of mind , persons of good judgment and prudence . magistrates should be wise as an angel of god , of a discerning spirit , and vast comprehension ; they are likewise to be such as fear god ; religion in a magistrate , ( as one well sayeth ) strengthens his authority , because it procures veneration , and gains reputation to it , and in all the affairs of the world , so much reputation is really , so much power . the magistrat must have the greatness of god , and the deformity of vice , and the condition , of the people full in his eye , which he cannot have , if his heart be not possessed with awful impressions , and a lively sense of the divine majesty . this holy and religious fear , serves as a powerful restraint on mens natures , and makes them invincible , though assaulted with the great temptations that accompany their office. they are also to countenance and encourage religion by their good example , the lewd practice of a ruler ( as one sayeth ) is very infectious , makes a thousand fall at his side , and ten thousand at his right hand . the best of men are in danger to turn a little worse by promotion , and how much religion soever they carry to the bench , it will be sound little enough when it comes there . ye must likewise look out for men that are lovers of truth , judges ought to make a critical search , an exact and diligent inquiry after truth , the cause i knew not , says job , i searched out ; they should copy after our lord , who judged not by the appearance of the eye . they must not be imposed upon , nor abus'd by an artful representation , and cunning disguise of matters , and guilding of falshood with a fair shew of truth . and to compleat the character of men fit to be chosen , they must be haters of covetousness . i. e. not only innocent of , but full of aversion to that base vice ; it was the emperout hadrian's common proverb , i am to inrich the people , nor my self and a saying of ptolmeus , the riches of my subjects are my plenty . it s fit that magistrars have a flourishing and plentiful fortune , that in dispensing of justice , they may have a single regard to the publick interest , and no mercenary respect to their own . and above all , they are to have a perfect indignation at that gross perverter of all justice , bribery , judges were wont to be pictur'd without hands . to shut up this exhortation , see ye manage your election with all possible sincerity , consider ye are a congregation of gods , and the supreme god is among you , observing and recording all your ways , and weighing your designs , and penetrating into the most inward and hidden springs of your actions ; in the mid'st of you , ●iff●sing his influences as the centre of your happiness . in the second place , i have a word to you , to whom god shall come this day , take on david's vows , to sing of mercy and judgement ; this hath been god's way with you , let it be your way with the people . know , that though you be gods on earth , ye are subjects of heaven , and accountable to him that is higher than the highest . suffer me to give you a few directions 1. exercise mercy and justice with christian courage , in the lords cause be bold as a lyon ; let difficulties only serve to whett your resolutions , kindle your zeal , and be a spur to your endeavours . solomons throne of judgement was supported by lyons , an embleme of courage . the cowardice of sorry peasants is altogether unworthy of your character . he deserves not to wear god's sword that has not a heart to draw it , put an intire confidence in the divine protection , and fear nothing . know , that providence exerciseth a peculiar care over magistrates in the practise and obedience of their duty ? he is with you in judgement : ye are fenc'd and rail'd about with his infinit wisdom , almighty power , and unchangeable faithfulness ; trust god for once , and be jealous for him ; breath life into the laguishing laws , by executing them on notorious offenders ; say to the mighty , list not up the horn , rise up for god against evil doers . many disorders abound in the city , make it your business to drain that deluge of impiety , that has over run it ; sin unpunish'd , blows up a government ; `t is therefore your wisdom , interest and duty , by the due execution of justice to prevent it . 2. ye must do it speedily , this seems to be the dictat of nature , ezra . 7. 26. slow pac'd justice , is the next degree to unjustice : and unnecessary delay in giving of judgement is a great grievance . 3. yet ye would act with great deliberation , which serves as a check upon the former . hasty and rash judgement is a most dangerous thing . an omniscient god will not punish a sodom . though their wickedness was notoriously known , till he first bring them to a trial the ruler is to have two ears to hear both parties it was an ingenious check machetas gave philip of macedon , for giving rash judgement against him , the king having slumbred all the while the case was a pleading : machetas , at the giving of the sentence , with a loud voice , call'd out , i appeal , at which philip being surprized , demanded , to whom , to yourself sir , said he , when you are well awake . i conclude all with a serious advice to the magistrates and the people , to read , and consider well that 13 romans , where we have the true measures of the people submission , and the rulers power . finis . at this time were elected magistrates , the right honourable robert cheisly , lord provost , john robertson , george hume , archibald rule , adam broun . baillies . hugh blair , dean of gild. patrick thomson , thesaurer . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a65355-e170 dr. tillit serm. james the seventh by the grace of god, king of scotland, england, france, and ireland ... england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) 1685 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a46535 wing j316 estc r2632 12889163 ocm 12889163 95070 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a46535) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 95070) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 716:9) james the seventh by the grace of god, king of scotland, england, france, and ireland ... england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) james ii, king of england, 1633-1701. 1 sheet ([1] p.) : 31 x 40 cm. printed by the heir of andrew anderson ... ; for l. curtiss ..., edinburgh : and reprinted at london : 1685. broadside. title taken from first lines of text. concerns dissolving of scottish parliament upon death of charles ii. reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament. scotland. -convention of estates. broadsides -england -london -17th century 2007-11 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-08 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2009-01 megan marion sampled and proofread 2009-01 megan marion text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal coat of arms james r. james the seventh by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france , and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. to all and sundry our good subjects whom these presents do or may concern , greeting . whereas by the decease of our most dear and most entirely beloved brother king charles the second of ever blessed memory , the parliament of our ancient kingdom of scotland , which was current before that time , is now actually dissolved . and seeing upon divers weighty considerations , of great importance to our service , and to the peace and tranquillity of that our ancient kingdom , we have thought fit to call a parliament to meet at our city of edinburgh upon the ninth day of april next ensuing the date of these presents . we do therefore require and command all arch-bishops , dukes , marquisses , earls , viscounts , bishops , lords , and officers of state of our said ancient kingdom to be present and attend that dyer . and we do also require and command all our sheriffs in the several shires , and their deputs forthwith to call and conveene all the freeholders in the respective shires , to the end that according to the laws and acts , of parliament , elections may be made of sit persons to be commissioners for this parliament . and we do likewise require and command our royal burrows to make choice of commissioners accordingly ; and them and all persons having interest , to attend this our parliament , under the pains contained in our laws made thereanet . and to the effect all our good subjects may have notice of this our royal will and pleasure , we do hereby command our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers , pursevants , and messengers at arms , to make timeous proclamation of these presents at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and at the mercat-crosses of the head-burrows of the several shires of that our kingdom . given at our court at vvhite-hall the sixteenth of february 1685. and of our reign the first year . by his majesties command , morray . edinbvrgh , the 20 of february 1685. ordered by his majesties privy council , that his majesties said proclamation be forthwith published at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and all other places needful , with all the usual and accustomed solemnities . and printed . will paterson , clericus secreti concilij god save the king edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , and reprinted at london for l. curtiss , near fleet-bridge . 1685. the declaration of his excellencie james marquis of montrosse, earle of kilcairn, lord greme, baron of mont-dieu, lievtenant governour of scotland, and captaine generall of all his majesties forces by sea or land, for that kingdome montrose, james graham, marquis of, 1612-1650. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a51203 of text r202891 in the english short title catalog (wing m2516a). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 53 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 13 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a51203 wing m2516a estc r202891 99825196 99825196 29573 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a51203) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 29573) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2191:16) the declaration of his excellencie james marquis of montrosse, earle of kilcairn, lord greme, baron of mont-dieu, lievtenant governour of scotland, and captaine generall of all his majesties forces by sea or land, for that kingdome montrose, james graham, marquis of, 1612-1650. scotland. parliament. aut [2], 22 p. printed for matthew simmons, next doore to the golden lyon in aldersgate streete, london : 1649 [i.e. 1650] includes a partial reprinting of and reply to: a declaration of the committee of estates of the parliament of scotland, in vindication of their proceedings from the aspersions of a scandalous pamphlet, published by that excommunicate traytor, james grahame. under the title of a declaration of james marques of montrosse, &c. printed in the year, 1649. "extracts of a declaration of the committee of estates of the parliament of scotland" has title page on a4v, with imprint: edinburgh, printed by evan tyler, printer to the kings most excellent majestie. 24. january. 1650. reproduction of the original in the henry e. huntington library and art gallery. eng montrose, james graham, -marquis of, 1612-1650 -early works to 1800. scotland. -parliament. -declaration of the committee of estates of the parliament of scotland, in vindication of their proceedings from the aspersions of a scandalous pamphlet, published by that excommunicate traytor, james grahame. under the title of a declaration of james marques of montrosse, &c. printed in the year, 1649 -controversial literature -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1642-1649 -early works to 1800. a51203 r202891 (wing m2516a). civilwar no the declaration of his excellencie james marquis of montrosse, earle of kilcairn, lord greme, baron of mont-dieu, lievtenant governour of sc montrose, james graham, marquis of 1650 9403 78 0 0 0 0 0 83 d the rate of 83 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the d category of texts with between 35 and 100 defects per 10,000 words. 2003-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-01 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2004-07 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2004-11 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2004-11 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-01 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the declaration of his excellencie james marquis of montrosse , earle of kilcairn , lord greme , baron of mont-dieu , lievtenant governour of scotland , and captaine generall of all his majesties forces by sea or land , for that kingdome . london ; printed for matthew simmons , next doore to the golden lyon , in aldersgate streete . 1649. the declaration of his excellencie james marquis of montrosse , earl of kincairn , lord greme , baron of mont-dieu , lievtenant governour of scotland , and captaine generall of all his majesties forces by sea or land for that kingdome . however the justice of his majesties cause , the wickednesse of those rebells , and my own integrity , are all of them so cleare and evident , that to doe any thing which in the least measure may seeme to descend to a dispute , or to hold such enemies as a considerable partie , may rather be interpreted as an act both of publicke injustice to his sacred majestie , and private injurie to my selfe , then of dutie , or equitie : yet the further to confirme the world in a truth so generally known , and acknowledged , the more to encourage those who will engage with mee , and the more powerfully to disabuse those , who have hitherto unwillingly been involved , and out of their simplicitie inveigled in those desperate courses ▪ i doe in the name of his most sacred majestie , and by vertue of the po●●● , and authoritie by him graunted to me declare . that howbeit there hath been ( and still is ) a most horrid , and infamous faction of rebells , in the kingdome of scotland , who as at first they did hatch a most groundlesse rebellion against his majestie of ever glorious memorie , so when his majestie had graunted them ( by their own confession ) even all their violent and most injust demands , they were notwithstanding so farre from being satisfied therewith , that ( being themselves unable to finde any further pretences ) they did perjuriously sollicite a partie in the kingdome of england to begin there , where shame or necessitie had forced them to breake off . and when the english ( being , by much , lesse wicked ) would often have been contented with his majesties extraordinarie concessions , for as then many did not intend those desperate lengths ( which the fa●all successe of a rebellious warre , and the cruell craf●i●esse of some m●licious , hollow-hearted men did thereafter drive them unto ) these notable j●gglers , ( to adde oyle to the fire , and to keep green wounds still raw ) did intrude themselves into their counsells , till they had brought : affaires into a condition past all cure . and not contented to act this their so b●oudie a tragedi● in the foxe skinne alone , or as it were behind the hangings , ( which indeed could never have compassed all their wicked ends ) when they had received all imaginable satisfaction at home ( witnesse their very own publicke acts of parliament , wherein they confesse that his late m●j●sty parted a co●tented king from a contented people . ) they pull off the 〈◊〉 , and appea●e in that of a lyon , or rather a wolfe , a beast , as farre lesse generou● , so farre more cruell . for when they found their rebell-brood , which they had begot in england , begin to lessen , and that his majesties partie appeared to have by much the better , they , ( not onely contrary to the dutie of subjects , but also contrary to all faith , covenants , oaths , attestations , to which they had so often invoked god , his angells , and all the world as witnesse , ) did enter the kingdom● of england with a strong armie , did persecute their own prince in a forraigne countrey , did assist strange rebells against their native king , and all those who continued in their loyaltie to his majestie in that kingdome ; which trayterous p●oceedings of theirs , the whole world doth know , was the onely cause which stopped the course of his majesties victories , and of bringing that unnaturall warre to such a conclusion , as all good men could have wished . and not ashamed of all this ( which even many of their owne partie doe blush to own ) when his late majestie reduced ( by god knowes how many treacheri●s ) to thinke upon courses of greatest extremitie for his safetie , was pleased ( of his invincible goodnesse , and naturall inclination towards his owne native people , notwithstanding all their former treasons and rebellions ) to commit himselfe to the protection of that ignoble , and ingratefull faction , hoping that whom his greatnesse , and their owne dutie could not oblige , his miserie at least , and an act of so great trust , and confidence , might move to pittie , and compassion : they , contrary to all faith , and pactions , dutie of subjects , lawes of hospitalitie , nature , nations divine , or humane , an action so barbarous , ( which as it never had any president that it may follow , so wee hope it will never be followed by any subsequent imitation ) most infamousl● , and beyond all possible expressions of basenesse , to the blush of christians , and the abomination of all mankinde ) sold their soveraigne to their mercilesse fellow-rebells , and fellow-traitors , to be by them murthered . for it is more then too too evident by the frequent , and secret intercourses both before , and at the time of that horrid , never enough detested parricide , and by their mutuall correspondence , and familiarity since , that the rebellious factions in both nations did unanimously conspire and plot the destruction of his late gracious majesty , now a glorious martyr : nor is it a small aggravation ( if any circumstance can aggravate so bloody a deed ) that his late majesty justly jealous of their more then punick faiths , did resolve first to engage them to his protection before he would put himselfe into their hands ; of which by a long treaty and many intercourses he received all manner of assurance . this indeed they are so much ashamed of , that they would gladly cover it with some frivolous excuses ; yet the secret guilt of their owne consciences , and the publick knowledge the world hath of so undeniable a truth , shuts up even their most im●udent mouthes in silence . and so little are these god●ie ▪ and religious men toucht with any sence of what mischieves they have already done , that they begin afresh with his majestie our now gracious soveraigne upon the same score , where they left with his father of ever blessed memorie . they declare him indeed to be their king , but with such conditions , and provisoes , as robb him of all right and power . for while they pretend to give him a little , which he must accept of as from them , they spoile him of all that power and authority , which the law of god , of nature , and of the land , hath invested him with , by so long continued descent from his famous predecessors : they presse him to joyne with those , who by a sacrilegious covenant have confederated all his dominions in rebellion , and laid all royall power in the dust , which in effect were nothing better then that he himselfe should asperse with infamy the sacred memory of his ever glorious father , that he should with his owne hands destroy himselfe , and ruine all such , who have still beene loyall to him in his thr●e kingdomes . these are the men , who first entring england sollicited those of their faction to rise in that desperate rebellion ( as a prolouge to the ensuing tragedie which they meant to act ) these are they who were the chiefe , and maine instruments of all the battaills , slaughters , and bloody occasions within that or their owne kingdome ; these are they who sold their soveraigne , to a bloody and infamous death ; yea these are they , who still digg in his grave , and who are more pernitiously hatching the destruction of his present majesty , by the same bare , old , antiquated treacheries , then ever they did that of his most excellent , and most innocent father . notwithstanding all which because the greatest part of the people of the kingdome of scotland , hath beene hitherto ignorantly misguided to follow their leaders , not knowing the pernicious ends their wicked counsells did drive at , which they had wrapped up in specious coverings ; but have now most of them ( by gods mercy ) their eyes opened , and their hearts inflamed to returne ( at least in their desires ) to their due obedience towards their most gratious soveraigne : and because even in the worst times there never ●anted a loyall partie of men of all sorts , and conditions , who still gave evident demonstrations of their unwearied loyallty and fidelity , their sincere duties and affections to their dread soveraigne , his majesty even in contemplation of those righteous ones is mooved with a tender passion of all such , who now at last , have a true remorse , and doe seriously repent them of their former error● , and wickednesse . his gracious majestie therefore , out of a fatherly affection to all his people , and subjects , especially those of the kingdome of scotland , is not onely willing , and ready to pardon all , and every one ( ●xcepting such who upon cleare evidences shall be found guilty of that most damnable parricide on the person of his deare father ) who upon the sight or knowledge of this our declaration , doe immediately , or with the first possible opportunity , abandon those rebells , and rise , and joyne with us , and our fo●c●s , in this present service . but also promiseth in the word of a prince , ( which he desires all men to be most assuredly perswaded of ) that so soone as god shall be pleased to inable him , he will with the advise , and consent of the lawfull , and ordinary supreme , judicatories in that kingdome , ratifie and confirme whatever hath been done by his royal father , in order to their peace . nor doth his majesty requi●e or demand any more of them but that they would returne to their dutyfull obedience , and afford him their faithfull service to revenge that horrid murther of his royal father , to reestabli●h himselfe in his just power and government , and to procure their owne perpetuall peace and happinesse . wherefore , what ever true scotch-man there is , who hath any sence of his duty left him towards god , his king , countrey , friends , wife , children , or houses , or would change ( now at last ) the tyranny , violence , or oppression of those reb●lls , with the mild , and innocent government of their just prince , or revenge the horrid and execrable murther of their sacred king , redeeme their nation from infamy , and themselves from slavery , restore the present , and oblige all ages to come . let them as christians , subjects , patriots , friends , husbands , and fathers , joyne th●mselves forthwith with us , in this present service which is so full of conscience , duty , honor , and all just interests . and let no man so much feare , or apprehend things future , and uncertaine , as abhor those present evills , under which they groane , since no calamities can match , much lesse outstrip , that vile and unjust servitude , which now oppresses them . for however at the first blush the enterprize may seeme hard , and full of many and great difficulties , yet let not christians and men of courage doubt of gods justice , and that perpetuall care wherewith he watches over princes , or their owne resolutions , or the fortunes of those with whom they are joyned , and by whom they are commanded . but let them resolve with joab to play the men for their people , and the citties of their god . and let the lord doe what seemeth him good wherein whatever shall befall them , they may , at least be assured of crastinus his recompence , that dead , or a live , the world will owe and pay them deserved thanks . montrosse . the declaration of the scotts in answer to this of montrosse , being very long , and much of it , tending onely to justifie their proceedings while their army was in england , being that with which they have often vexed the presse before , and which for the most part hath received such answers as were never replyed unto ; i have thought fit to save the reading of that which is not to the present purpose , to extract out of their large declaration onely those passages that looke at the person of montrosse : this being intended , onely to shew the world what opinion they professe to have of each other . extracts of a declaration of the committee of estates of the parliament of scotland . in vindication of their proceedings from the aspersions of a scandalous pamphlet , published by that excommunicate traytor , james grahame . vnder the title of a declaration of james marques of monrosse , &c. printed in the yeare , 1649. as also of a declaration and warning unto all the members of this kirk and kingdom , in answer to a paper intituled and reputed the declaration of james grahame by the commission of the generall assembly of the kirk of scotland . edinbvrgh , printed by evan tyler , printer to the kings most excellent majestie . 24. january . 1650. extracts out of a declaration of the committee of estates of the parliament of scotland , in vindication of their proceedings from the aspersions of a scandalous pamphlet , published by that excommunicate traytor , james grahame , under the title of a declaration of james marques of montrosse , &c. printed 1649. it may seem strange to such as know the state of affaires in this kingdome , that we should thinke it worth the while to answer the slanders and groundlesse reproaches of that viperous brood of sathan , james grahame , whom the estates of parliament have long since declared traytor , the church hath delivered into the hands of the devill , and the nation doth generally detest and abhor . since we know there hath been and will be in all ages a wicked rabble of godlesse men , who make it their worke to follow the righteous cause with aspersions and calumnies , and it is an endlesse labour to answer every voyce that speaks against the truth ; and seeing also at length the innocencie of our cause , the integrity of our hearts , and the candor of our actions will prevaile over the malicious tongues of our adversaries , yet because our silence may be subject to misconstruction , and some of the weaker sort may be inveagled by the bold assertions and railing accusations of this impudent braggard , presenting himselfe to the view of the world , clothed with his majesties authority as lievtenant governour and captain generall of this kingdom : we shall shortly answer what is said against us , take off the ma●ke which he hath put on , and expose him to publick view in his own apparell . this excommunicate traytor in the first place , chargeth his own nation with hatching a rebellion in this kingdome , then with the promoting the like in england , and lastly , with the sale and murther of their native king , and robbing his son of all right ; horrid crimes indeed , if true : but , &c. his l●st and main forgeries against us , are , that his late majesty being red●cted to thinke on extream courses , did engage us by a treaty , and having got all manner of assurance from us , did cast himselfe in the hands of our army which was sent into england for assistance of the two houses of parliament against the popish , prelaticall and malignant party ; and that we , contrary to all faith , p●ction and duty , sold our soveraign , and afterwards complotted his destruction , and now begin upon the same score with the son , d●claring him king with provisoes , and robing him of all right while we would seeme to give some unto him , and are more perniciously hatching the destruction of his present majestie then ever we did his sacred fathers . what a strange contexture of multiplied lies doth this malicious man heap together ? in all this , there is not one word true , save one , that his majestie was redacted to think on extream courses , and that makes against him ; for sir thomas fairfax , having defeated the kings forces in the fields , suddenly resolves to block up oxford , where the king was in person , thinking that the shortest way to put an end to their troubles , wherewith his majestie being surprized , privatly escapes with two or three from oxford , &c. and that it is a malicious wicked device and manifest untruth , that wee sold our king ; wee abhorre the very thought of it as sincerely as wee doe abhominate the treacherous actions of that perfidious traytor james grahame , who , as a childe of the devil , hates to speake truth . as to the remainder of that which is said against us by that wretched man , that wee complotted his late majesties destruction , and have declared his sonne king with provisoes , robbing him of all right , and are more perniciously hatching the destruction of his present majestie then ever wee did his royall fathers . wee say no person on earth has contributed more toward his majesties ruine then james grahame himselfe . in the beginning of our troubles , the lord having put it into the hearts of his people of this land to renew their nationall covenant formerly taken by king james , in the yeare 1580. that dissembling hypocrite james grahame , then earle of montrosse , did with teares in his eyes , and both his hands lifted up to heaven sweare the words of that covenant unto the lord , in the publick assembly of his people ; but being a man of a meane and desperate fortune , and not meeting with that esteeme and reward which be in his vanity , proposed to himselfe , at the first pacification he began to hearken to the promises of the court , and to study a faction within ; and hold correspondence with the adverse pa●ty without the kingdome , and by false information , to d●v●de his maje●ty f●om his people . ●is base and treacherous practises were dive●se times discovered , and himselfe made ashamed , yet would he not give over untill at length he was made prisoner in the castle of edinburgh , and afterward brought to his tryall before the committee , for tryall of plotters and incendiaries , appoynted by his majesty , and the estates of parliament , where he was found guilty of perjury and treachery , and had he then received his due punishment according to justice , he had not troubled the world since ; but such was the mercy and favour of his majesty , and the estates of parliament , as he was pardoned , and no further censure inflicted upon him , but that his majesty declared and caused it to be inserted in the records of parliament , that he should be incapable of any office or place , in the court or common wealth , and not have accesse to his majesties person ; yet not long after his enlargement , contrary to his owne promise and the articles of the large treaty betwixt his majesty and this kingdome , he repaired to his majesty in england , and obtained a commission for invading his native countrey , which shortly thereafter he did attempt upon the south borders , and was repulsed , but rather then faile in his designes , he choosed to joyne himselfe with that barbarous crew of popish irish rebells , which invaded this kingdome upon the north , with whose assistance ( and of some unnaturall countrymen , voyd of all religion and humanity ) taking advantage of the qui●tnesse and security of this kingdome , when their armies were abroad in england and ireland , he did cruelly destroy with the sword diverse thousands of his owne countreymen , spoyled many of their goods , burned houses and cornes , ravished women , murthered old and young , killed ministers , complyed with papists , countenanced idolaters , and despised the worship of god ; for which abominable crimes , and his rebellion and treason , as he was excommunicated by the church , so he was declared traitor by the estates of parliament , his coat of armes torne , and his estate forefaulted : but for all this , he is not weary of committing wickednes , and therefore would returne into this kingdome to over-act all his former transgressions and abominations . but if he shall come , we trust in god it is that he may be brought to a shamefull death , and cursed end , and here receive from the hand of justice his deserved punishment , where he hath murthered so many of the lords people , and julian-like hath made apostasie from that cause and covenant to which he was so solemnly engaged by oath and subscription . to gaine supplies abroad and assistance at home , this vaine m●● doth publish this his declaration under the name and title of lievtenant governour and captaine generall for his majesty of the kingdome of scotland . upon what bare pretences he did formerly obtaine a commission from his late majesty to invade this kingdome , we shall not now descant , bu● we are very sure that there was scarce any act his made could have done that was more destructive to his owne interest or more displeasing to this k●ngedom● , it being expresly contrary to the ties and bands betwixt king and people ; and here we may justly retort upon james grahame , that he doth begin with the son upon the same score that he left with the father , for whither he hath really obtained such a commision from his majesty , or doth onely abuse his name , certainly he is not capable of doing his majesty greater dis-service then is held forth in that declaration . the king received our commissions in holland , and the parliaments letter , and treated with them , he denyed that he had given any commission to james grahame , or any other , to invade this kingdome , and promised a further answer to our desires , by an expresse from himselfe which is never yet come unto us . the straine and scope of the declaration makes the whole n●tion , the party whom his majesty gives commission to invade and destroy , for it condemnes all the proceedings of the kingdome : even at the very first beginning of these troubles , as the rebellion of an horrid and infamous faction of rebells , at first causlesly ha●ched against his late majesty of glorious memory , notwithstanding they were approved by his majesty in the yeare 1639. at the treaty at berwick , wherein james grahame himselfe was an actor and consenter . it condemns all the proceedings of this kingdome in the yeare 1640. notwithstanding his majesty is obliged in the large treaty ( which is ratified in the parliament of both kingdomes ) for himselfe and his successors by his promise in verbo principis , never to come in the contrary thereof , nor any thing therein contained , but to hold the same firme and stable in all poynts , and that he shall cause it to be truely observed by all his majesties leidges , according to the tenour and intent thereof for now and ever , these are the very words of the treaty . and now what can be imagined to be a security to the subjects of this kingdome , if that which their king is solmnly ingaged unto by promise , for himselfe and his successours , in verbo principis , and confirmed in the parliaments of both kingdomes , shall not onely be questioned , but their desires agreed unto by his majesty declared to be violent and most unjust . and all this is not enough to quarrell treaties and established lawes , and to accuse the whole nation , but they are by this declaration accounted more wicked then any in england , or i●●l●nd , this miserable miscreant is better pleased with the sectaries or the irish rebells , then with his native countrey , wherein he declares his apostacy to be of such a stamp , as he can sooner reconcile with all the world , the● with the cause and covenant , which he did once sweare to maintaine and defend . if he may but sit and judge all those in the kingdome , who have kept the oath of god , and made conscience of their covenant , shall be found accessory to the murther and ruine of the king , and all those who have perjured themselves , and made apostacy from the cause and covenant , as he hath done , shall be justified as the onely righteous persons of the nation , as he is pleased to style them in his declaration . neither is this the height of his insolency and ambition , but in the frontispeice of that pamphlet he is exalted to be governour of scotland , as if it were a province or conquered nation , a title which our ancestors would never endure in the person of any but the king , and we trust in god it shall never take place in this nor any subsequent generation . is it not a sad and lamentable thing , that when his majesty hath lost possession of the kingdome of england , is in li●tle better condition for ireland , and onely scotland is desirous to imbrace him , upon grant of their just desires , there should yet be such counsellors about his m●jesty , as would advise him no other wayes to come to his throne in scotland , but by conquest , and before the conquest be made , to declare the governour , and to choose that governour , such a one as is more generally hated by many degrees , then any person of the nation . what greater provocations can be given then these ? or what designe worse then this , can be set on foote to make his majesty and his people irreconcilable ? but we know that no bounds can be set to the wickednesse of this malicious man , who had rather see both king and kingdome utterly ruined , then that his owne designes should faile , and therefore we are very unwilling to thinke that these things are done with his majesties knowledge and approbation , but rather that his majesties name is abused in that pretended declaration , or if there hath beene any commission granted unto him , that it hath been surreptitiously purchased from his majesty ; in which opinion we desire to rest , and shall patiently wait for his majesties answer to our desires now againe presented to his majesty in the isle of jersey . these things being duely weighed and considered by forrain princes and states , wee trust that since we have never done any injury or wrong to them , but have rather been ready to performe all friendly duties in our power , as we have had occasion and opportunity , and seeing we onely desire to enjoy our religion and liberties under his majestie , according to the word of god , and the lawes and constitutions of this ki●k and kingdome , and are most willing , upon just satisfaction given to our desires presented to his majesty , and published to the world in print , not onely to receive his majesty , and submit to his government ; but also to contribute our best endeavoure by all lawfull and necessary means according to the covenant , and the duty of faithfull subjects , that his majesty may be restored to the peaceable possession of the government of his other kingdomes ; they will be mindfull of that common rule of justice knowne by the light of nature , and confirmed by our saviour christ , whatsoever yee would that men should doe to you , doe so to them . and therefore as they would expect from us in the like case , wee doe expect from them that they will neither contribute men nor moneys , nor any other a●d or assistance to a declared traytor , who is neither seeking his majesties honour and happinesse , nor the good of his native countrey , but meerly to satisfie his own lusts and ambitious ends , and designes . but in a speciall manner we doe expect from all protestant princes and states , that they will remember what is said to jehosapht for assisting achab. shouldst thou help the ungodly , and love them that hate the lord ? therefore is wrath upon thee from before the lord . and that as they desire to keepe the communion of saints , they will forbeare to give him either countenance or assistance , but looke upon him as a person justly excluded from civill society for his treasonable practises , and excommunicated from the church of christ , for his a●●minable transgressions . if he shall come into this kingdome , we are confiden●that all those in whom the sense of the feare of god , duty to the king , and affections to their native countrey , is not utterly decayed and extinguished , will heartily and unanimously joyne to resist and oppose him , and to use their best endeavours , that he may be brought to condigne and exemplary punishment . but if there shall be any found in the land so foolish , base , and treacherous , as to hearken to the vaine promises , and empty professions of that scandalous , wicked , and infamous pamphlet , published under the name of a declaration of his excellency james marquesse of monrosse ; lievtenant governour , and captain generall for his majestie of the kingdome of scotland , ( which in detestation thereof , wee have caused burne publickly at the crosse of edinburgh , by the hand of the common hangman ) and shall ayd or assist the said james grahame , in his wicked designes against religion , king , and kingdome . wee doe hereby declare all such as shall joyne or concurre with him or his adherents in armes , to be guilty of high treason , and to be punished and proceeded against as the parliament or their committees , shall thinke fit ; and doe further discharge all persons of whatsoever quality or degree , to joyne with them in any oath , band , or association whatsoever , or to assist or supply them and their adherents , or any of them with men , money , armes , ammunition , victuall , counsell , or intelligence , or to keep any sort of correspondence publick or private with them , or any wayes to ayd or countenance them , or any of them , under the paine of being esteemed as rebels , and proceeded against as the parliament or their committees shall thinke fit ; and this wee declare to be instead of all letters of intercommoning . and power and warr and is hereby given to all good subjects within the kingdome , to rise in armes for opposing and suppressing all such as shall joyne in rebellion , as they shall be called and required thereunto by the lord generall , lievtenant generall , or any others having authoritie for that effect . and for the encouragement of al● such as shall suffer in opposing or suppressing them , wee doe further declare , that not onely the losses and sufferings of such as shall be active in the cause against them , shall be taken in speciall consideration , and repaired out of the estates of such as shall joyne in rebellion , as aforesaid ; but their service shall be rewarded , according as they shall be found to deserve ; and wee doe ordaine these presents to be printed and published at the mercat crosse of edinburgh , and other ordinary places of publication needfull . a. jonston . clericus registri . edinburgh , 2. january 165● . antemeridiem . the declaration and warning of the commission of the generall assembly unto all the members of this kirk and kingdome , in answer to a paper , intituled and reputed the declaration of james grahame . albeit the carriage of those who are engaged in the worke of reformation in this land hath been from the beginning so agreeable to the rule of the word of god , and of sound reason , and so eminently owned and blessed by the lord in all the tenour and proc●dour thereof , as may sufficiently refute all the calumnies of enemies , and strengthen his people against all their slanders and attempts for undoing of the same ; yet least our silence in this day of blasphemy and rebuke should be construed either as a neglect of our dutie , or as weaknesse through the sense of the guilt , to wipe off the aspersions that are vented to the world in the name of that excommunicate and forfeited traytor james grahame , wee have resolved till there may be opportunitie for a larger declaration , shortly to touch the revilings contained in that paper , and to declare unto men their dutie in reference to such purposes and desires as are holden forth therein . in the first place the instruments of the worke of reformation are charged as an horrid and infamous faction of rebells , who did hatch a rebellion against his late majestie : but to say nothing that that wretched man was accessorie unto the laying of the foundation of that blessed worke , which now in the blindnesse of his minde , and hardnesse of his heart , as being given up of god , as pharaoh was , he calls rebellion . this is no other then the common calumnie that hath been cast upon the servants of god from the beginning of the world in all their endeavours and attempts for reformation of religion : was it rebellion to stand to our defence , when in stead of an answer to all the earnest and reiterated supplications and desires of this land against the corruptions of doctrine , worship , discipline , and government , wee were invaded with an army both by sea and land , that a yoke might be wreathed about our necks by oppression and violence ? not onely had wee the lords word , and the practise of the reformed churches abroad , and of our owne church at home in the dayes of our fathers to justifie us in this , but also the king himselfe , who upon information did retract the declaration set forth against u● , and grant what we had desired . n●xt it is charge upon this nation , that they did solicite a partie in the kingdome of england to beginne where they had left off , and that finding their rebell brood there beginning to lessen , they did , contrary to all faith , covenants , oathes , &c. enter with a strong army the kingdome of england , persecute their prince in a forreigne nation , and assist a company of strangers rebells against their native king , &c. what was the grounds and first rise of the warre betwixt the king and the parliament of england , needs not now to be repeated , being so well knowne every where ; but this nat●on were so farre from fomenting of the same , that for a long time they did mediate a peace ; and so continued , untill england by their earnest invitation , did for the preservation and reformation of religion , the honour and happinesse of the king , the peace and good of these kingdome● , crave their assistance against the popish , prelaticall and malignant partie then in armes , who were like to have destroyed all : for which end , when they had entred in a solemne league and covenant with that nation , as they did oblige themselves for the defence and preservation of his majesties person and just greatnesse and authority in the defence and preservation of religion , so they did never desist to solici● his majesty for satisfaction to the just desires of both kingdomes , and were alwayes , upon his majesties granting of the same , willing to admit him to the exercise of his royall power . thirdly , it is alleaged , that after all manner of assurances given to his majesty before his comming to the scottish armie , notwithstanding of assurances , he was sold unto the english : but wee are confident that albeit all the generation of malignants of the three kingdomes have now for three yeares together filled this and the nations abroad with the noyse of such things , that yet to this day never any of them did , nor could bring any evidence of such assurance given , or such bargaine made by this kingdome ; nay such assurances were alwayes refused , and when the king did cast himselfe upon the scottish army , this kingdome was so farre from making any sale of him , that they did not condescend to leave him wit● his subj●ct in england , untill sufficient surety was given by both houses of parliament , concerning the safety and preservation of his majesties person . it is ●reat malice to say , that because the scottish army , about the time of al● majes●ies living at new-castle , did receive some part of those arrears due unto them for their painfull & faithfull service in england , that therefore this kingdome did ●ell their king ; the arrears which were then received were due before the king came unto our army , and in all probability had been more timously and cheerfully payd if he had not come thither at all . fourthly , they are slandered as complotters of the kings destruction by secre● intercourses both before , in the time , and since his majesties horrid murther : if those things be evident , why were not the proofs brought forth and produced before the world for convincing the authors and abetters thereof , and gaining credit to the cause of those that make so bold alleagance ? the publick endeavours and testimonies of this kirk and kingdome against the taking of his majesties life , doe sufficiently refute all such secret and private whisperings . lastly , they are charged as robbers of the king , who now is of all right , because of their declaring him king wîth provisoes : but are these provisoes or conditions any other then such as have been in the time of his predecessors , and whereunto by the lawes and constitutions of this kingdome he is obliged , and without which , religion , and the peace of the kingdome cannot be secured . these , and the like slanders are made a ground of invitation unto the people of this land to abandon the cause , and worke of reformation , and to rise in armes against the parliament and kingdome , and joyne themselves with such forces as that monster of men , and his complices shall make use of for invading of this land ; to which he labours to perswade a promise of pardon for what is past , and of his majesties resolution to be ever ready to ratifie , so soon as it shall please god to put it in his power , according to the advise of the supreme judicatories of this kingdome , all what has been done by his royall father , in order to our peace . though we should be silent and say nothing , we are perswaded that there be none in the land who has any regard to truth or righteousnesse , or in whom any sponk of the love of the lords work , or of this countrey does resid● , but as they abhominate and abhor the very name of that excommunicate wretch , and thinke these lies worthy of no other entertainment then is to be allowed to the devises of the father o● lies , unto whose hands he is delivered ; so we are confident that they will d●●est and avoid all such desperate and wicked designes , attempted whither by him or by any other . shall men , after so many solemn vowes and promises before the lord , and his hand lifted up so high in making plaine before them , the way wherein they should walke , be so blind and base , as to be charmed into a most godlesse course against religion and the blood of the lords people by the offer of a pardon , where there has been no transgression but a following of duty ? or shall any be cheated into delusion by a flourish of most ambiguous words of his majesties resolution to be ever ready to ratify , so soone as it shall please god to put him in his power according to the advise of the supreame judicatories of this kingdome , all what has beene done by his royall father in order to our peace ? to say nothing , that the league and covenant and the union betwixt the kingdomes , and the whole worke of uniformity , is here cut off at one clap , though yet we trust that these things will be dearer to all the lords people in the land , then their estates or lives : the words are so empty and doubtfull , as may suffer any interpretation men list to put upon them , and may consist with the utter undoing of all that has been done in this land for asserting the purity of religion , and the liberty of the subject . his majesty must first be put in power , before he ingage himselfe to doe any thing at all , and when in power , no obligation upon him , unlesse the supreame judicatories of the kingdome sha●l so advise ; neither is it determined what these judicatories are , whither his majesty shall be obliged to follow the advise , and which is more strange , religion is not so much as named in all the concession , but all is wrapped under the notion of these things which the king his royall father granted in order to our peace : which may be so expounded as to take in things civill onely that concerne the peace of the kingdome , or at the best , insinuates the motive of all that his majesty granted concerning religion to this kingdome , to have beene onely a desire of peace , and not any thing in religion it selfe , and so drawes along with it a secret reflection upon the nationall covenant , and all the work of god relating thereto , and concludes them alterable as the change may produce peace or warr . we thinke we need not desire any man to consider what could be the case of religion , and of all that love is in this land , if it were in the power of that persidious and proud atheist , to modell the supreame judicatories of the kingdome according to his minde : hee who hath so far forgotten his covenant and oath , in which he enterd in so publick and solemn a way , as to call all that is contained therein , and has flowed there from violent and most unjust desires , and the worke of reformation , from the beginning rebellion , will not spare the overturning and destroying thereof , and the bringing back this poore nation to the licking up of the vomit of prelacy , the ceremonies and the service-book , for making way to a fuller compliance with the church of rome : which we have the more cause to feare , for that the free excercise and full liberty of popish religion is granted by his majesty to those bloody rebells in ireland . to us it is above question , that as the alteration of religion , and the establishing of an arbitrary and i● limited power for bringing the same about , was the designe from the beginning , so that the same is still promoted by the popish , prelaticall , and malignant party , and shall ( if they prevaile ) be the fruit of their works . therefore , as the servants of the living god , we warne and obtest all the lords people throughout the land , that as they would not draw on themselves the wrath of the most high god , by breach of covenant and grosse backslidings , that they doe not hearken to any such calumni●s and slanders ; nor suffer themselves by the power thereof to be drawne from their stedfastnesse , or to give any connivance , let be countenance or assistance unto any who shall invade this kingdome , or raise warre therin , under pretence of commission from his majesty , and putting him in the excercise of his royall power before satisfaction had from him , to the just and necessary desires of this kirk and kingdome , concerning religion and the covenant . the late generall assembly , in their declaration , did by many grave and undenyable reasons , demonstrate the unlawfullnesse and sinfullnesse of any such attempt ; and it shall be now seasonable for any man , who doubts to make use of these things for satisfying his judgement , and convincing him in the poynt of conscience , that he may not dash himselfe against the rock of the lords power , which shall certainly breake in peices all those that oppose themselves to his work , and lead forth with the workers of iniquity , all those that turne aside to their crooked wayes . albeit , the avenging hand of the most high , hath pursued and followed with vengeance , many of those who assisted that unnaturall man in the shedding of the blood of his countrey , and that many of them have tasted of the bitter fruits both of civill and ecclesiastick censures , and that a temptation to so great a wickednesse from such a one as james grahame , seeme to be so grosse as may scarre most of the malignant party themselves , who yet continue in opposition to the worke of god , let be those who have humbled themselves for their former complyances with evill courses , or have kept their integrity without swarving ; yet it shall be the wisdome of all within the land , to guard their hearts by prayer and supplication , and to arme themselves with the strength of the lord against defection . experience hath proven throughout all the tract of the word of god , that many hath fallen off from day to day , and that new trialls have produced new discoveries of the hollownesse of the hearts of some , concerning whom many did promise to themselves better things ; none can be stedfast in the covenant , but those , whose hearts are right with god : we wish therefore every man to search and try his wayes , and as to repent of all his former provocations , so in the strength of the mediator jesus christ , to study to walk with god , and to order his conversation aright ; then may we be confident that the lord shall establish us , and that no weapon that is formed against us shall prosper , and that every tongue that riseth against us in judgement we shall condemn . a. ker. hee that shall looke backe but a few yeares , and shall consider what these two parties have done to and suffered by each other . and shall withall observe the present style and language exchanged between them , will easily believe the controversie such , the animosity so high , and the feu'd so deadly , as nothing but the extirpation of one partie is like to end and put it out unlesse that happy time were now ready to blesse the world , when the wolfe shall dwell with the lambe , and the leopard lye downe with the kid ; when none shall any more hurt or destroy in all the holy mountaine of god , and the earth become full of the knowledge of the lord as the waters cover the sea . but as it is , montrosse is come into scotland an incense enemy , to the now governing partie there , ingaged against them by his owne declaration , from which he cannot recede with honour and reputation , to take up with lesse than full satisfaction , were to pleade guiltie to all their accusation . and he comes also provoked by this declaration of theirs , wherein they have represented him ( to the utmost power of language ) for such , as if they can hereafter take hands with him , there will be little reason to doubt , but ( if interest should require it ) they can also make an agreement with hell it selfe ; for on this side that t will be hard to finde any that may beare all those titles and attributions they have bestowed upon him . this man comes amongst them to head a numerous discontented faction there . he comes armed with the ple●ipotency of full commissions from their king , of generalissimo both by sea and land ; signalized with markes of his speciall favour , in sending him lately from jersey a little before his going thence the order of the garter , besides those caresses in his late letter to him published to the world . how little the governing partie in scotland hath gained upon their king , by all their addresses to him this yeare past both in holland and at jersey , is evident in his letter to the committee of estates , sent by libbertoun , which hath been also published . the greatest hope left them of him , is , that his mother ( who meets him at beauv●is in his journey to breda ) will instill into him some of her maximes and principles , that may divert him from montrosse , and encline him to close with them ; which if she should effect in foure dayes , ( which he is determined to stay there ) or in eight , for so long it seems shee would have the conference hold for his be●ter instruction , ( if their purses will beare it ) it would be something strange , considering his knowne inclination to montrosse , and perfect hatred of the other . if shee doe prevaile , he is like to prove a blessed instrument to promote or settle the reformation of religion they so solemnly hold out , when he shall be wrought to it by his mother , and act upon her principles , whose religion is believed to be as farr from theirs , as theirs from the sectaries . it is a riddle that the queene his mother should wish well to presbytery . a little time will shew us the effects of her councells . if shee prevaile with him to desert montrosse , whom he hath so entrusted , impowered , caressed , and dignified , what assurance can he give the scotts , that he will not also desert them , when his or his mothers interest shall require it , and he shall have power to doe it . if he doth continue to carry on his designes by montrosse , are not they in a sine condition the meane time , to suffer themselves to be rocked asleepe by a treaty , till montrosse shall be able to march all over scotland ? but if it were but possible by some state magick to charme the enmitie betweene montrosse and the scots , so as notwithstanding all the ingagements , and provocations of these declarations , they should yet unite in one , to settle their king , both among themselves , and also in these pretensions to england and ireland ; were it not rare jugling ? and were they not a fine parcell of men for any people of this nation to hold correspondency and cabals withall ? and to hope by them to be delivered , from the images of their grievances drawne and multiplyed in their fancies , by their causelesse discontents . have they not had experience of their former comming into this nation for all our goods , and can any man believe after such jugling among themselves , they are ever like to keepe faith with any others ? if the the conference at beauvais , nor the treaty at breda , worke neitheir of these rare effects , but that the king of scotland , follow his owne naturall inclination to persue his interests , by montrosse , scotland will have work enough to doe and cause them though ( perhaps ) not time enough repent them , that ever they espoused that quarrell which is like to prove so funest to their poore kingdome . this is licensed to be printed by matthew simmons , together with the declaration of montrosse . gualter frost . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a51203e-1960 〈…〉 4. letters from the marquesse of argyle, the earle of lanerick, lord warriston, and others now at edenburgh, to their friends at london intercepted by sir richard willys ... argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a25791 of text r200021 in the english short title catalog (wing a3661). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 25 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 7 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a25791 wing a3661 estc r200021 12166076 ocm 12166076 55322 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a25791) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 55322) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 805:34) letters from the marquesse of argyle, the earle of lanerick, lord warriston, and others now at edenburgh, to their friends at london intercepted by sir richard willys ... argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. hamilton, william hamilton, duke of, 1616-1651. warriston, archibald johnston, lord, 1611-1663. willes, richard, sir, 1613 or 14-1690. [2], 10 p. printed by henry hall ..., oxford : 1645. reproduction of original in huntington library. william hamilton was known as the earl of lanark. eng scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649. a25791 r200021 (wing a3661). civilwar no letters from the marquesse of argyle, the earle of lanerick, lord warriston, and others now at edenburgh, to their friends at london. interc [no entry] 1645 3914 5 0 0 0 0 0 13 c the rate of 13 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2000-00 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2001-11 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2002-02 tcp staff (oxford) sampled and proofread 2002-02 tcp staff (oxford) text and markup reviewed and edited 2002-03 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion letters from the marqvesse of argyle , the earle of lanerick , lord warriston , and others now at edenburgh , to their friends at london . intercepted by sir richard willys governour of newarke , and printed faithfully by the originals . oxford , printed by henry hall printer to the university . 1645. the reader may take notice that these letters are printed exactly according to the authours spelling , without the least alteration of vvord or syllable : most of them beare date at edenburgh about the middle of march , and were superscribed to london , except that written by j. meldrum in january to his friend in france , which therefore we place first ; the rest follow according to their severall dates , in this order . viz. to the earle of lowdon from mr patrick maule of his majesties bedchamber . to mr hebbe a merchant at london , from mr mowet conceived to be one of their advocates of the sessions . to james oswold from ro. kirkwood said to be one of the writers to the signet . to the scots commissioners at london from archibald johnston lord warriston . to the earle of lauderdale ' one of the scots commissioners at london , from the earle of lanerick brother to the duke of hammilton to the scots commissioners at london from the marquis of argyle earle of cassils , lanericke , lord balmerinoth , and the rest of the commissioners at edenburgh . from mistris dorothy spense ( without a superscription . ) to the earle of somerset at london from j. elphinston the lord balmerinoths sonne . from master james stuart a merchant in edenburgh to his kinsman at london , to john campbell a merchant in london from john wood a stationer in edenburgh . to the earle of lowdon from master j. meuar . letters from the marquesse of argyle , the earle of lanerick , lord waristone , and others now at edenburgh , to their friends at london , &c. sulsi● the 26 of ianuary . 1645. most loving freind , i perceave in your last letter to me ye hav not resaved any from my hand ; indeed yee sall not wonder thairat , nor imput any neglect of dewtie to me , for i have not forgotten you nor never sall , but the evill tym i hav endured he s maed me almost forget my selfe and my country both ; for sinc the irishes cam amongs us ( which was in iuly ) we never hav had peac or quietnes but in danger of our lives and estates ; as for my estate , i thanke god i have spent in this yeare more nor i can win in thrie yeir to cum , by quartering of troopers rigging out of seuldiers , horse and fut , tax and loan , tents and twanties , and victuall to the army , with my own personall service at all occasiones to the publicke , he s put me meer in debt nor ever i can get paied . the occurments of our kingdome ar many but not guid , ther cam in in our west-ills in july last about the number of tua thousant irishes , under the conduct of alex : clan donald , alias colmak●ittach , and within short tim the marques of montros joined with them , being cum out of ingland secretlie , and raised many in our hilands and all atholl , and cam towards sant iohnstonn about the number of 4000 men , being the beginning of september , whom ane sunday the fift , strathern , angus , with perthshire , with 6000 met tham abowt sant iohnstonn , where for want of governament and commanders we wes put to flight , and the number of 800 killed and drowned in the water in the flying , and than entered the towne and plundered it . from thence they cam throw angus , and gat many ajoint to tham as arlie kinowl , spiney , with the meister , & divers barons : than to the mearns , marshall keipt dunnotter his house : they crosed die at the milnes of drum , and cam to aberdene , the shirif of aberdene and bamff being present at the tua mill crosse where elchoes regiment and the townesmen , gaiff ane assault wpon the 13 of september , the wind being high and with tham , we was forced to retire to the losse of many of our men , the towne of aberdene losed sevin scor and ten and also many more , they staied three daies in the towne . this is all i can shew you for the present . the laird of haltowne is dead of ane fever upon the 6 of ianuar . your loving father in the lord iesus . j. meldrum . to william gray preacher to coll : dowglas regiment in france . edenburgh march 8. 1645. my lord , it hath pleased my lady to conclude the businesse betwixt my lady iane your daughter , and my sonne , so it wants nothing now to the finishing thereof but your aprobatione and blissing to it , and i pray the lord with all my soull to blesse them , and make their happinesse according to their affections ; my opinion is , the privater that it is consummate it will be the better , wherein you may signify your pleasure and it will be obeyed , both the time , and your absence forth of the kingdome requiring privacy . i thinke my occasions will force my comming to london this summer , if there be any possibility of travailing either by sea or land : if you thinke at my being there if i procured liberty to goe and see the king , that i might say any thing to his majesty that might be for the good of himselfe and his dominions , that you would be pleased to write thereof to the marquis of argyle , that i might speake with him therein : for unlesse there be some middles found to save the miserable distractions of this kingdome , we and our posterity shall be but miserable at the best : for unlesse that god almighty hath decreed the ruine of the king and his race , it is not to be doubted but he will prevaile in the end , though to the ruine of all his kingdomes . i have many times spoken the marquesse herein , for he gets much blame from his majesty of the courses that this kingdome takes , and i thinke gets not many thankes here for his paines , which is all i will say for the present , but that i shall ever remaine your lordships most humble servant . patricke maule . for the earle of lowdon . edenburgh march 12. 1645. loving brother , i omitted yesternights packet because i had this bearer iohn pringle , george lesly's godsonne , before my hands . i remit likewise to his relation the estate of our present affaires , which are not as you could wish . these godlesse rebels since the routing of argyles forces in lothaber , did returne to murray , and finding innernesse fortified went not that way , but held them about ferres and elgin , and all the parts of that poore country . and turning over spey returned be ennys and bamff , and yesterday we heard they were at aberdene , using all the expedition possible to be at angus and farther south before we be in readinesse . the parliament before it rose , ( which was upon saturday last ) made all the hast it could to provide for monies to our army , which is making against these rebels , for without present pay no souldier could be moved to advance . colonell vrrey was sent away hence upon saturday last , to guard our troopes , we expect two regiments presently from new-castle , and as many are sent for from ireland , but apparently these will come late . the perfidious lord gordon went into that wicked band in murray , and since the earle of seaforth . the gordons and graunts are risen and are with them . this is our present condition , which or it be long , must suffer ane change , or else we sall be made very miserable : the lord assist us and grant us ane happy deliverance from such ane base cruell enemy : there hath beene ane great fray neare yorke lately at the releife of pontfract castle , which was reported here to have beene ane totall overthrow of fairefax armies : this bearer and others from new castle will report the truth farre betternor i , who hath it scarcely at the third hand . our generall marcht from new-castle ( as we heare ) towards yorkeshire , upon the report of that overthrow , with 3000 fut and the most part of his horse , his sonne the lord balgonie is not like to live , it is in effect ane consumption , proceeding , as is reported , from intemperancy . the parliament is very slow in all their determinations . lord be with you and grant us ane happy and peaceable meeting to his glory and our comfort . so i rest your loving brothera . movv●t . for master heb merchant , &c. edenburgh this 12 of march . 1645. iames oswald , and loving freind , my love remembret . i wonder that i never hare from you since your departing from london to the country concerning your commission you left me about charles dickeson . for newes hear yester night certain word cam of montrosse his arrivall at aberdein , accompanied with the earle of seaffort being about 7000 men in all , not compting thoss he hes left behind him at innernesse , our parliament is risen and nothing expected heir bot miserie . gen. leslie is to march presently southward with his armie , onlie leaving a garrison at newcastle . it is thought that montros will be this night at dundie , our parliament hes ordered ane armie of 10000 men , bot they ar so slow in leviing , that god hes left us and som heavie judgement to light on us . master william rutherfoord and crawfoord and all your freinds remember them to you . i rest your affectionate . ro. kirkwood . for iames oswald , &c. edenburgh march 13. right honourable , i can adde little to what i did write by sea with our ministers , and thereafter with the post , there is a publicke letter from the committee about the ships , and another for favour or triall at new-castle to the delinquents that are sent up ; the generall of artillery hes prest it very hard , ye will make the best use of it as may not wrong this kingdome in thair reputation and affection amongst the weall affected . i have gotten the answer to the parliaments letters , as also to sir william ermin's papers , drawne up very faire , which we shall , god willing , bring with us on tuesday next . my lord craford and the rest of the committee for the north goeth to bailie this day and to morrow ; the enemy we beleive be with seaforth his prisoner with his will now at aberdene ; i am my selfe this day under physicke and so he s not attended the committee . if crafurd and middletoun continue not in imployment thair , i wish them at home with our armies ; monroe will be dispatched hither to assist garthland and cowdon , whom we have sent to ireland . thus in hast resting for the commissioners of the kirk and kingdome of scotland . i feare m. baitzee , and m. gilespie , with maistresse murray , be driven over to campheire in the water , that went from this yesterday morning . your lordships reall servant arch : johnston . my deare lord , edenburgh march 13. 1645. it hath now pleased god to put an happy end to this session of parliament , after a solid course was taken , for maintaining our forces at home against our as yet prevailing enemies & recalling such from england & ireland as our danger & necessity forced us to ; which i hope will no waies be misunderstood where you are , seeing the onely way to make us usefull to our freinds , and considerable every where abroad , is to preserve our selves entire at home . the bad successe of the treaty occasions a great confidence here in malignants , of his majesties powers and meanes of persuing actively the warre this ensuing summer ; and the new alterations in the command of the parliaments armies , give some grounds to honest men , ( who lookes at a distance upon their proceedings ) not onely to feare a great losse of time by these changes , and hazard of disobedience to their commands , but likewise more desperate and dangerous effects from an appearance of divisions in their counsels . it is not long since you had the like feares of that amongst us here ; i confesse i cannot say there wants discontented persons amongst us , and those even of the honestest , but i am confident it can never heighten so as to occasion disaffection in any , to the great worke we are all sworne to ; for whatsoever particular mistakes there may be amongst persons , yet praised be god , there hath beene unanimity in our counsels , which ( whatsoever your lordship may heare to the contrary ) none shall more constantly endeavour to continue and preserve then my selfe , for as i shall answer to god i have no private or particular ends , nor doe i otherwise consider or looke upon my selfe , but as i may be usefull to the publicke , and i hope all amongst us have the same thoughts , if not these sifting times will soone seperate the corne from the chaffe . i pray the lord blesse you in your imployment , and send us a happy meeting when he thinkes fit . your lordships faithfull and obliged servant lanerick . for the earle of lauderdale . postscript . my lord , i am desired to recommend to you the desires of a brother in law of my wifes , one sir thomas boyer , i hope your lordship will not looke the lesse favourable upon him that he hath this interest in your servant . edenburgh 13 march 1645. right honourable , wee have several tymes heirtofore represented to your lordships the prejudices have ensued to this kingdome throw the parliament of englands not sending of ships to attend our coasts as they are bound be treatee . and now finding that there is not one ship on our coast toward ireland ( captaine kerse being come in for fresh provision ) and being certainelie informed of great preparations of men and ammunition to come out of ireland for supplee of the rebells who now infest this kingdome , and whose coming heere had beene interrupted , if the parliament had performed what they are obl●idged to be the treattie . we do seriouslie recomend to your l●● care to deale effectuallie with the parliament of england that besides captaine kerse two other shipps of 20 peece of ordinance a peece with two pinnaces be surthwith sent to attend on our west coast toward ireland and our isles . and that they be provided with six months provision . and some setled course tane be exchange or otherwayes , how they may be furnished of new within this kingdome and not forced as formerly they have done for want of provision to leave the service . and that they be ordered to obey all such direction as sall be given to thame be the marques of argyle , generall major monro , or any other having power from the committee of estats for that effect . your lordship sall also desire , that the excyse of merchandise that comes to newcastle be not anticipat an london but that the same may be payed at newcastle and employed for the use of the armie , and the like for such merchandise as sall come to sunderlaind and hartlepoole , wee rest your lorships assured freinds argyle yester yougar patrick leslie cassillis lannericke balcarres tullibardine balmerinoth braighall sir vvilliam dicks . for the commissioners of scotland at london , &c 13 of march 1645. good freind having this sure bearer i could not omit but let you know how it is with me , i am blessed be god in health , and would be glad to heare the like of you , and hope ere long to heare of your arrivall here with the rest . you desire to heare newes , truly we can promise our selves nothing but miserie , for the enemy growes stronger , and our hands weaker , for god hath taken all courage from us ; and the ministers of god foresees great desolation , and still threatens the people , but still they continue a stuped unsencible people , and doe not see gods hand in it . i thinke we must drinke of that cup which england hath begunne to us , and i feare we here must drinke the dreggs . my lord argyle is going out againe with new forces for he was defeated by the helpe of some of his owne me . so now i cease to write but never from being your faithfull freind dorothy spense edenburgh march 13. 1645. loving cussing , your last by the ordinar post i answrit by the samen , 10 current ; wherein i sent you the list of the north committie , i haif nothing new to inlarge ; onely montrose came to aberdene with his rebels on saturday the 8 of this , bailie iefrey came yesternicht who shewes that nathaniell gordun with a partie of horse fell on the baggage of lothians regiment and hes taken it with leiutenant colonell murray prisoner . the earll of * craford went over water this day for pearth where baillie staies ; it s like god hes a great contraversie with this land , the judgement so growen by reason meanes ar not activelie followed , and yit no man will say its his default , nether haif we had successe since my lard chancelor went away , though i cannot attribute it to that onlie , yit i am confident matters would go a great deale better of his presentts , generall major hurrie is gone the north and commands nixt to baillie , thair is small appearance baillies stiring , so t is like montross sall once essay all our sitting . my humble service to my lord chancellour , lady warriston , &c. your cussing to power i. steuart . from the abbay the 14 of march . 1645. i wrett to you befor that all your trunkes wes broken up , for ane blacke hart of my lord maitland's , and shortlie they have taken your hat caisse for my lord maitland's use ; i have no fewer newes to wrytt to you but that the bearer can aquent yow ; times lookes strangelye in scotland , the enemy is very strong and daylie gatheres strength , by numberes that runes into him both greatt men and commones . and for anie thing that i can sie , scotland shall drinke as deip in the cupp of the lords wraith as either england or irland . it hes pleased the lord to stryke scotland with twa rodes , and threatenes for with the thride , and yet there non that laies to heart ; never more grosse sining against god in scotland nor at this same time . now the lord be with you . your humble servant till death . john wood . for iohn campbell &c. 14 march . 1645. my lord , i have so longe bein silent that any good newis from this cuntry i can shew your lordship are not worthy of your lordships paines , the parliament heere did close on saturday 8 of this month having farfaulte the erles of montros , nithisdaill , airlie , lord aboyne , harrise , and alexander mackdonald who is appoynted generall major of his majesties forces nnder the marquis of montrose , who now although a marquis by his majesties patent under his owne rashet not having passed the grit seall is declared a traitor by the state , the erles of seafort & the lord gordon are latelie joyned to him , he hes bein at elgin in murray and hes rased divers gentlemens housis , the lard of brodies house he hes razed to the ground , and two other gentlemens housis . i have named this gentleman the rather because of his saythfull and approved service to his cuntry , the lord gordon hes likewise wasted all the viscount of freindret and the lord frasers boundis , all out deadlie fead that hes bein tuixt the gordouis and the lord forbese and fraser who are the two pryme men in these boundis . this is all i can say at this tyme for newis , wishing your lordship all health and happinesse , i rest your lordships humble servant i. elphinston . for my much honoured lord and uncle the earle of sommerset at london . newcastle 15 march 1645. most honoured and my most noble lord , i sent a letter by this poast on wednesday last , i have heard of your lordship in print since at the common counsell at london , i know not how , but the lord for a time hath departed frō us . in my last i spoke of your lordships regiment which is claimed by lumsden as his owne that you would signifie your minde to my lord generall his excellence . my poore opinion is that in these times your lordship ought to be so farre from quitting of your regiment , that one of your lordships trust had rather need of ane army which may be cleare before you have the kingdome in the posture wherein your lordship left it , i say no more , but referre it to the bearer , the quicke dispatch with this bearer i hope will signifie your lordships sense of the troubles at home , and the remembrance of your lordships most affectionate minister i. meuar . for the earle of lovvdon finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a25791e-690 * a new earle of craford of their owne making , the true earle being for his loyalty prisoner in edenburgh . additional instructions for the militia: edinburgh, the eight day of july, 1680. scotland. privy council. 1680 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92639 wing s1474a estc r183039 47683489 ocm 47683489 172947 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92639) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 172947) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2659:1) additional instructions for the militia: edinburgh, the eight day of july, 1680. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.). s.n., [edinburgh : 1680] imprint suggested by wing (2nd ed.). signed at end: will. paterson, cl. sti. consilij. reproduction of original in: sutro library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. scotland -militia -early works to 1800. broadsides -england -london -17th century. 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion additional instructions for the militia : edinburgh , the eight day of july , 1680. i. the lords of his majesties privy council considering , that by the first article of the late instructions ; the heretors and liferenters are ordered to stent the number of horse and foot in the usual way : do declare , that albeit according to the act of parliament , the heretors and liferenters be lyable thereto , yet they are to have their relief from the tenants , whose proper burthen it is to furnish the bodies of the footmen and their arms , and pay , during the days of the rendezvous ; and the heretors may accordingly force any of their tenants or servants who are fittest : the rest of the tenants contributing for their several proportions , in the way formerly accustomed , either by paroches , or otherwise , according as has been used in the respective shires . ii. as to the third and fourth articles of the saids instructions , whereby it is appointed , that no souldier , horse or foot , be changed for another , and that no horse once received and listed , be changed without consent of the leiutenant ; it is ordered that no such change be made without expresse consent of the leiutenant , and two commissioners of the militia . iii. as to the sixth article of the instructions , where it is appointed , that rendezvous be kept eight days every two months , for the space of ten moneths : it is ordained , that the first rendezvouz shall meet for this year , as is formerly appointed , viz ▪ upon the 13 , and 24. of august respective , and to continue together for eight dayes , and the next rendezvouz to begin the first wednesday of october , and to continue together sixteen days ; and for the subsequent years , it is appointed that the first rendezvouz shall begin the first wednesday of june , and to continue for sixteen dayes , and the next rendezvouz to be upon the first wednesday of october , and to continue then likewise for sixteen dayes , and so forth to continue yearly thereafter ; which two rendezvouzes compleats the 32. dayes , payable by the country . iv. as to the ninth article , it is appointed , that the militia horse be worth ten pound sterling , conform to the act of parliament , and be fiftie eight inches high , at least , that the horse be of sufficient size , fit for service . v. it is hereby declared , that these that are liable in the fraction , shall pay to the leaders of horse , and outreikers of foot , their proportional parts of what is due for the pay both of horse and foot , during the whole time they stay at the rendezvouses . vi. whereas , since the act of parliament in the year 1663 , establishing the militia , by which there are 800. foot , and 88. horse , appointed for the shire of dumfreis ; there is an late act of parliament disjoyning the militia of the five kirks of eskdale from the said shire , and uniting the same to the militia of roxburgh , whose proportion of the great militia is one hundreth foo● and ten horse : the lords of council ordains the proportion of the new model'd militia of these two shires to be regular accordingly . extracted by me will. paterson , cl. sti. concilij . a proclamation appointing some forraigne species of gold and silver to be current scotland. privy council. 1677 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05541 wing s1705 estc r225702 53981577 ocm 53981577 180364 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05541) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180364) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2826:52) a proclamation appointing some forraigne species of gold and silver to be current scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1677. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the twenty seventh day of february, and of our reign the twenty ninth year, 1677. signed: al. gibson, cl. sti. concilii. imperfect: creased with slight loss of text. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng money supply -scotland -early works to 1800. money -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. finance, public -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion c r honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation appointing some forraigne species of gold and silver to be current . charles by the grace of god , king of great britain , france , and ireland , defender of the faith , to our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers , pursevants , and messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly , and severally , specially constitute , greeting ; forasmuch as the lords of our privy council , having taken to their consideration a petition presented by the provost of edinburgh , in name , and by warrand of the royall burrowes of this kingdom , representing , as one of the great causes of the decay of commerce amongst all qualities of people of this kingdom , and the deadness of the forraign and inland trade thereof , to be the great scarcity of the stock of coyn , and of all manner of species of money in this kingdom , that does much incommodate all manner of dealers , who are necessitate to deal upon credit , wanting the supplies of species of money to maintain the same : which scarcity having been occasioned by the small quantities of silver that used to be coyned formerly in our mint , before our late happy restauration , and the frequent exportation even of the saids small quantities into forraign parts ; and having remitted the consideration of the foresaid petition to a commitee of their number , for preparing the said matter , impowering them to confer with the officers of our mint , and these of the burrowes who were intrusted with the said petition , and to take exact tryal of the fineness of forraign coin both of gold and silver ; who having accordingly conferred with these of the saids burrowes , and officers of our mint , and having seen exact tryal taken of the intrinsick finenesse and value of several sorts of forraign coyn , by the subtile essay taken in their presence , did make report , that the spanish and dutch duccatoon , the spanish milrynd and french crown , are much finer than other forraign coyn now presently currant in this kingdom . w e therefore , being unwilling to restrain the forraign coynes presently currant , while our proper coyn of this kingdom is so small , and so much exported because of its fineness ; and finding it the better way to keep out course forraign coyn , by allowing the said finer forraign coyn to be currant : and considering , that the foresaids species of money are the coyn of these places with which this kingdom hath most considerable trade , and will be a great mean to inable merchants to return money for the export of this kingdom : whereas if the coyn of these places be not currant here , their ships must return light , or loaden with forraign commodities of lesse use for this kingdom , to ballance their whole expert : have thought fit , with advice of our privy council , to declare and ordain , and by the tenour hereof do declare and ordain , that the particular species of forraign coyn , above and after mentioned , shal have course within this kingdom at the rates following , viz. the spanish and dutch duccatoon to passe currant amongst all our subjects , for three pounds ten shillings scots : the spanish milrynd , for two pounds seventeen shillings scots : and the french crown for two pounds sixteen shillings . and also we considering , that there hath been an surcease , and long time since the coyning of any gold in this kingdom , and that the species of all old gold is transported , and little forraign gold imported ; and for the further incouragement of the merchants in this kingdom , concerned in the spanish and dutch trades , to make the returns of their yearly export and effects in such species of gold coynes as these countreys do afford ; do hereby also , with advice foresaid , ordain , and declare , the quadruple spanish pistol , or piece of eight of gold , to have course amongst our subjects of this kingdom , at the rate of fourty two pounds scots the piece , the same being of usual weight , of twenty one deniers : and also the smaller species of the said gold pistol down-ward , to pass at the saids rates proportionally : as likewise , the hungary , dutch , and fleemish duccat of gold weighing two deniers , fifteen grains , to passe , and have course for five pounds twelve shillings scots , the same being of the said weight . and to the effect all our leiges may have notice hereof , our will is , and we charge you strictly , and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and other places needful , and thereat , in our name and authority , by open proclamation , make publication of the premisses . given under our signet , at edinburgh , the twenty seventh day of february , and of our reign the twenty ninth year , 1677. per actum dominorum secreti concilii . al. gibson . cl. s ti . concilii . god save the king. edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1677. a proclamation, discharging the levying or transporting of souldiers vvithout licence scotland. privy council. 1674 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05587 wing s1770b estc r183453 52612317 ocm 52612317 179622 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05587) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179622) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2794:16) a proclamation, discharging the levying or transporting of souldiers vvithout licence scotland. privy council. gibson, alexander, sir, d. 1693. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by andrew anderson, printer to the king's most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1674. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. intentional blank spaces in text. dated at end: given under our signet at edinburgh, the first of october, one thousand six hundred, and seventy four years. signed: al. gibson cl. sti. concilii. imperfect: creased and stained with slight loss of text. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -army -recruiting, enlistment, etc. -law and legislation -early works to 1800. impressment -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion c r royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , discharging the levying or transporting of souldiers vvithout licence . charles , by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith , to macers or messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch , as we did by a proclamation of the twenty third of july last , prohibit any persons whatsoever to levy any men in this our ancient kingdom , or to transport any of our subjects thereof into the service of any forraign prince or state without our special licence : and discharged all masters of ships to transport them under all highest pains . and we being informed , that notwithstanding of the said proclamation , since the publishing thereof , many of our subjects of this kingdom , have been taken on and transported abroad , and some of the souldiers of our standing forces have been , and daily are seduced and debauched from their service , and ingaged to serve in forraign countries by persons having no warrand or licence from vs , in high and manifest contempt of our authority , and contrare to the said proclamation . therefore , we , with advice of the lords of our privy council , do hereby prohibit and discharge all masters of ships to receive on board , or to transport to any forraign countrey any subjects of this kingdom who have been levyed without our special licence , or any other passengers who are not merchants or seamen , unless they have a pass under the hand of any one of our privy councellors : certifying such as shall transgress herein , that they shall be fyned in the sum of three thousand merks , scots money ; whereof a third part to be applyed to the use of the informer . likeas , we do hereby authorize and require any one of our privy councellors , upon information given , that any of our subjects of this kingdom , souldiers or others are taken on to serve in any forraign countrey , without warrand , as said is , to cause stop them in their passage , and imprison them , and to cause seize upon and secure the persons who have ingaged them , or who shall be known to have been dealing with , and seducing them thereto , until they find caution to answer for the same , and that they shall not levy or transport any of our subjects to any forraign service ; with power to any privy councellor to give such orders as shall be necessary for that effect to the magistrats of burghs , or any of our standing forces , who are hereby required to put these orders in execution , as they will be answerable at their highest peril . and it is hereby declared , that such persons as have already contraveened the former proclamation , shall be proceeded against , and censured conform to the tenor thereof . the which to do we commit to you conjunctly and severally our full power by thir our letters , delivering them by you duely execute and indorsat again to the bearer . given under our sig●●● a● edinburgh , the first of october , one thousand six hundred , and seventy four years . al. gibson cl. s ti . concilii . god save the king. 〈…〉 to the kings most excellent majesty . 1674. the bloudy battel at preston in lancashire between his majesties forces commanded by duke hamilton, and sir marmaduke landale, and the parliaments forces commanded by lieutenant generall cromwel, and major generall lambert. with the particulars of the fight, the totall routing of the scots generals army, and their killing of 700. upon the place, and the place, and taking of 1100 horse, 47. colours, 20. pieces of ordnance all their armes and ammunition. likewise, the resolution of the scottish army, touching lieutenant generall cromwel, and both houses of parliament, and the present proceedings concerning the kings majesty. together with a message from his highnesse the prince of wales, to the lord gen. fairfax. and his excellencies answer thereunto. walton, j., of the parliamentary army. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a97088 of text r205115 in the english short title catalog (thomason e460_20). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 11 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 5 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a97088 wing w675 thomason e460_20 estc r205115 99864553 99864553 162142 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a97088) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 162142) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 73:e460[20]) the bloudy battel at preston in lancashire between his majesties forces commanded by duke hamilton, and sir marmaduke landale, and the parliaments forces commanded by lieutenant generall cromwel, and major generall lambert. with the particulars of the fight, the totall routing of the scots generals army, and their killing of 700. upon the place, and the place, and taking of 1100 horse, 47. colours, 20. pieces of ordnance all their armes and ammunition. likewise, the resolution of the scottish army, touching lieutenant generall cromwel, and both houses of parliament, and the present proceedings concerning the kings majesty. together with a message from his highnesse the prince of wales, to the lord gen. fairfax. and his excellencies answer thereunto. walton, j., of the parliamentary army. [2], 9 [i.e. 6] p. s.n.], [london : printed in the yeer. 1648. place of publication from wing. annotation on thomason copy: "aug ye 22". reproduction of the original in the british library. eng scotland. -army -history -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. a97088 r205115 (thomason e460_20). civilwar no the bloudy battel at preston in lancashire between his majesties forces commanded by duke hamilton, and sir marmaduke landale, and the parli walton, j., of the parliamentary army 1648 1962 26 0 0 0 0 0 133 f the rate of 133 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the f category of texts with 100 or more defects per 10,000 words. 2007-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-05 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-06 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-06 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the bloudy battel at preston in lancashire between his majesties forces commanded by duke hamilton , and sir marmaduke langdale , and the parliaments forces commanded by lieutenant generall cromwel , and major generall lambert . with the particulars of the fight , the totall routing of the scots generals army , and thei● killing of 700. upon the place , and ●aking of 1100. horse , ●7 . colours , 20. pieces of ordn●●ce , and all their armes and ammuni●ion . likewise , the resolution of the scottish army , touching lieu●enant generall cromwel , and both houses of parliament , and the present proceedings concerning the king● majesty , together with a message from his highnesse the prince of wales , to the lord gen. fairfax . and his excellencies answer thereunto . printed in the yeer , 1648. a perfect relation of a great victory in the north , obtained by the forces commanded by lieu●enan● generall cromwell , and major generall lambert , against the scottish forces commande by duke hamilton , as it was certified thence by letter . sir , vvee in these parts have suffered much by the late incursion of the scots , they plundering and taking away from us , all what they saw good , paying neither royallist nor presbyterian ; and if any that had acted much in their behalfe , in rai●ing either men , mony , or been any other way their favourite , had informed the scottish comman●ers , of what service they had done in their behalfe , and desi●●ng that they might be freed from plunder , and such other ●nconveniencies , all the answer they could have , was thi● , that they conceived the best way was , for them to convey away their goods , that it might not be a temptation to the souldiers ; for they could not restraine them from such extravagancies : so you may see that whether we be for them , or against them , their friends , or their enemies , all shall speed alike ; and it their friends have no better assurance to keep their goods , but the hiding them away , they have no greater priviledge for security then their enemies : then with what heart can any act for them ? and besides their plundering of us , they lie upon free quarter , none paying for what they received , and to augment our burthens so many were quartered upon us , that we by that time the soul●iers were satisfied , had not sufficient bread to put in ou● mouths , and when they removed their quarter● , it was because that we had no provision left to su 〈…〉 them , and sometimes when they have removed , they ha●● 〈◊〉 so b 〈…〉 f●r want of provision , that we have endured much hunger , before we could get any thing to relieve our wa●● , and if that were too little , they laid great taxes upon many of us , and compelled us to pay it , and on all the chiefest of us they laid se●les for man and horse , every man worth 20 , or above 20 pounds by the year , was to set forth a horse and man compleatly armed , and furnished for the war , so that by these meanes , a great part of northumberland , cumberland , westmerland , and a part of lancashire are much impoverished thereby . but now we are in great hope , that this black northern storm will in some time be blown , and it beginning to clear cleer already by , meanes of a great victory obtained by lieut. gen. cromwell , major gen. lambert against the forces commanded by duke hamilton , the earl of calender and o●hers , though they were unwilling to fight , and tooke more pleasure in plundering , and free quarter , then in martiall affairs , as should become souldiers , yet they were at last compelled to fight ( as you shall here anon ) or else for ought i know , they must have starv'd in their quarters , beginning to rise and oppose them in what parts soever they came , but of this enough , the manner of the fight was thus . lieut. gen. cromwell , having left 2 regiments of horse and foot to secure and block the castle of scarborough and pomfract , ( and understanding that the scots had entred lancashire , and began to seek fresh quarter , he tooke with him the new raised forces of northampton shire , leicester-shire and york-shire , and so joyned with maj. gen. lambert , and their forces being united , they marched in a body towards the scottish quarters , and sent out parties to rouse the stragling , plundering scots , and force them from their head quarters . the scottish straglers cared little for fighting , but still made way before our forces , and gathered towards their head quarters . our forces thus chasing them , gave a strong alarum to the whole scottish army , who when they saw there was no remedy , began to make preparation for a sudden engagement . our forces very resolutely marcht towards them , with an intent to fight them , or force them to a retreat the scottish forces perceiving the gallant resolution and intention of our soldiers , and seeing they were necessitated to a present engagement , seemed very willing and desirous to try one bout before they returned ; wherfore they immediately drew all their forces , both foot and horse into batalia , and made choise of their ground near a town in lancashire , called preston , some 12 miles from the city of lancaster ; where finding a commodious piece of ground for their purpose , both armies prepared for the fight , and drew their armiesn to two bodies . upon barbers moor , the scots being first deawne up , got the wind and the most advantagiou● ground ; but yet our forces would not be discouraged , but resolved to fight , though with some disadvantage , both armies faced each other , we being about 12 or 13 thousand , and the scots above 20 thousand ; parties were drawn out on both sides , who met together and fought , in the mean time both armies prepared themselves for a charge , and our party overcame the scots parties , this put us in some hopes of victory , we receiving it for a good omen : then fresh parties were drawn out , and fought again , and at the last the whole bodyes drew up to the charge , both parties at the first engaged couragiously , and after some dispute , our infantry being the left wing , was like to have been worsted , and being overpowred by their numbers , were forced to give ground a little , but yet maintained it with great courage . while this dispute lasted , our right wing worsted the scots , and quite defeated their cavalry , for after the scottish horse had stood to it a charge or two , and finding such not service , began to retreat , our horse followed them , and with their shot so galled them , that they forced them to run , our forces persued them as farre as they could , and not be endangered by the ●cottish foot . in this persuit many were slain , and divers taken prisoners . then our horse retreated , and came in very good time to relieve our left wing , which was in great danger of being defeated ; when they came , they found them to have lost some of their ground , but by the comming in of our horse they were much comforted and encouraged , they having endured two hours of very hot service , the canons playing often on both sides ; then our horse began to charge the scottish infantry , who began to be greatly disheartened by seeing their chavalry thus defeated , and a great part of our chavalry comming in to assist our left wing , they charged the scots again and recovered their lost ground ; and udon the second charge the scots retreated , and were put to a confused flight , our forces persued them till the nghr parted them , and had the pillage of the field . in this fight we took eighteen hundred prisoners , many of them being men of note , in the next i shall give you a list of the particulars . in the persuit we likewise rescued all the prisoners they had taken , at the beginning of the fight , and slew 700 ▪ of them in the place , wounded many , duke hamilton himself narrowly escaping . we took 1100 horse , 47 colours , 10 peeces of ordnance , most of their cariages and ammunition , and above four thousand arms . the scottish horse are fled towards scotland , but lieutenant generall cromwell hath sent a partee of horse ( if it bee possible ) to get before them and stop them . with the next i shall give you a more particular relation , take this for the peesent , from your assured friend , j. walton . aug. 20. 1648. a copy of prince charles his letter , to the lord generall fairfax . my lord , beeing informed that some rigorous cause is intended against m. g. laughorn , c. powell , c. poyer , and others now prisoners of war , for things done under the authority of my commission , i thinke fit to let you know , that i cannot but be extreamly sensible of such proceedings , as well in regard of the persons , and of my owne honour , which i take to be highly concerned in their preservation , as also because thereby a necessity will bee put upon mee of proceeding with such as shall fall into my hands in a way very contrary to my nature , and as far from my intentions , unlesse i be necessitated thereunto by your rigour to those gentlemen , i desire therefore that by your care and seasonable interposition , such moderation may be used toward them , as becomes souldiers to one another , and as i conceive to be due to them , which will be an ingagement to me to pursue my inclination towards those that shal be in my power , and so i remain . your loving friend , aug. 14. 1648. his excellencies answer . may it please your highnesse , i have acquainted the houses with your highnesses letter concerning m. g. laughorn and the rest , it being not in my power to act further , the parliament having ordered in what way they shall be proceeded against , not so much that they were in hostility against them ( i suppose ) as that they have betrayed the trust reposed in them to the sad ingaging this nation in a second warre and bloudy ; so it is not in my power to interpose their justice ; but that all obstacles of a just and firme peace may be removed , shall be the earnste prayer of your highnesse most humble servant . fairfax , 14 aug. 1648. finis . act and intimation anent this current parliament. at edinburgh the fifteen day of november, 1698 years. scotland. privy council. 1698 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05292 wing s1389 estc r182965 52528892 ocm 52528892 178912 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05292) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 178912) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2774:51) act and intimation anent this current parliament. at edinburgh the fifteen day of november, 1698 years. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to the kings most excellent majesty, edinburgh : anno dom 1698. caption title. signed: gilb. eliot, clericus secreti concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-12 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 megan marion sampled and proofread 2009-01 megan marion text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion act and intimation anent this current parliament . at edinburgh the fifteen day of november , 1698 years . the lords of his majesties privy council , considering that his majesty by the last act of this last session of this current parliament had adjourned the same to this fifteenth day of november instant : and that his majestie being now abroad furth of his kingdoms , hath not as yet signified his pleasure , either by sending a commissioner for holding thereof at the said day , nor his royal order for adjourning the same to a further day ; and seing both by the nature of the high court of parliament , and by express acts of parliament , parliaments are current without the necessity of a special continuation , until they be dissolved by his majesties particular warrand , whose sole prerogative it is to dissolve al 's well as to call , hold , and prorogue the same . therefore , the saids lords of his majesties privy council in expectation of his majesties express orders ; and to prevent the unnecessary trouble of the members , and other good subjects who may be concerned to repair to the meeting of parliament , have thought fit to ordain intimation to be made , that all members of parliament be ready to meet and attend in this present current parliament , so soon as his majesties will and pleasure shall be signified to them for that effect ; and that none may pretend ignorance : ordains these presents to be printed , and to be published at the mercat-cross of edinburgh by the lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds and pursevants , and at the mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the several shires within this kingdom by macers or messengers at armes . extracted by me gilb . eliot , clericus secreti concilii . god save the king. edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to the king 's most excellent majesty , anno dom. 1698. a true copie of the letter from the committee and estates of the parliament of scotland inviting his highnesse the prince of wales, to come and remaine in scotland, or with the scotch army, now in england. scotland. parliament. committee of estates. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a92619 of text r210851 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.13[1]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a92619 wing s1352 thomason 669.f.13[1] estc r210851 99869606 99869606 162896 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92619) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 162896) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 246:669f13[1]) a true copie of the letter from the committee and estates of the parliament of scotland inviting his highnesse the prince of wales, to come and remaine in scotland, or with the scotch army, now in england. scotland. parliament. committee of estates. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh : 1648] imprint from wing. signed: crawford, lindsay. annotation on thomason copy: "aug: 18 1648". reproduction of the original in the british library. eng charles -ii, -king of england, 1630-1685 -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a92619 r210851 (thomason 669.f.13[1]). civilwar no a true copie of the letter from the committee and estates of the parliament of scotland; inviting his highnesse the prince of wales, to come scotland. parliament 1648 484 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a true copie of the letter from the committee and estates of the parliament of scotland ; inviting his highnesse the prince of wales , to come and remaine in scotland , or with the scotch army , now in england . may it please your highnesse , amongst all the calamities , and miseries which this nation these late yeares hath wrastled under , none doth more deeply wound and afflict us : ( next to his majesty your royall father his present sad condition and restraint ) then your highnesse long absence from this kingdom , whereunto by gods mercy and a long discent from your many royall progenitors , your right and title is so just and unquestionable , and seeing the forces of this kingdome , are now againe in england , in pursuance of their duty to religion , and his majesties rescue , wee the committee and estates of parliament intrusted by them with managing the publique affaires of this kingdome under his maiesties government , do presume humbly begg : that your highnesse would be pleased to honor and countenance with your presence and assistance , our pious and loyall endeavours for religion and your royall fathers re-establishment upon his throne , with all your just power : which we look upon as the most eminent and hopefull means of strengthning and uniting us in this great work , being confident that if it shall please god to honor us with being instrumentall in his majesties rescue , that your hignesse will effectually apply your self , to procure from him just satisfaction to the desires of parliaments , and those intrusted by them in both his kingdomes . and if your highnesse shall be pleased to grant these our humble desires and intrust your person amongst us , we doe ingage the publique faith of this kingdome for your being in honour , freedome , and safety : during your aboad with us , in scotland , or with our army or forces now in england , and that your highnesse shall have a free and entire liberty to remove from us when , or whither your highnesse shall think fit . these our humble desires we have presumed to offer to your hignesse by the right honourable the earle of lauderdaile a person of great honor and loyalty , who hath been eminently instrumentall and usefull in this present engagement , who is fully instructed and authorized by us in every thing concerning this service , to whom we beg your highnes would be pleased to give trust to all shall be by him presented to you : from your highnesse most humble , most obedient , and most faithfull servants the committee of estates of the parliment of scotland in whose name , and by whose warrant this is signed . crawford , lindsay . a memorial for his highness the prince of orange in relation to the affairs of scotland together with the address of the presbyterian-party in that kingdom to his highness : and some observations on that address / by two persons of quality. cromarty, george mackenzie, earl of, 1630-1714. 1689 approx. 56 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 16 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a50598 wing m169 estc r18197 13410868 ocm 13410868 99416 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a50598) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 99416) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 465:8) a memorial for his highness the prince of orange in relation to the affairs of scotland together with the address of the presbyterian-party in that kingdom to his highness : and some observations on that address / by two persons of quality. cromarty, george mackenzie, earl of, 1630-1714. mackenzie, george, sir, 1636-1691. church of scotland. general assembly. presbyterian address from scotland to the prince of orange. 30 p. printed for randal taylor ..., london : 1689. "by george mackenzie, viscount tarbat, and sir george mackenzie" --halkett & laing (2nd ed.) reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng william -iii, -king of england, 1650-1702. scotland -church history -17th century. 2003-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-07 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-01 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2004-01 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a memorial for his highness the prince of orange , in relation to the affairs of scotland : together with the address of the presbyterian-party in that kingdom to his highness ; and some observations on that address . by two persons of quality . psal. xcv . 10. forty years long have i been grieved with this generation , &c. licensed . london , printed for randal taylor near stationers hall. 1689. a memorial for his * highness the prince of orange in relation to the affairs of scotland . may it please your highness , the rise of our animosities , and the reason why they are warmer in scotland than in england , is , that england reformed by the royal authority , and therefore the government of their church was suted to the monarchy ; but scotland reforming by force and violence , some of our reformers coming from geneva , and the republicks of switzerland , tho otherwise good divines , yet were so far mistaken in their politicks as to inspire many of their converts with an aversion to the monarchy , as well as to popery ; buchanan and others wrote books which were thereafter condemn'd as treasonable even in king iames's minority . these puritans ( as they were then called ) so vex'd the righteous soul of king iames the 6th , that he was never at ease or secure till he succeeded to the crown of england , and then he setled episcopacy in scotland ; as most sutable to the monarchy , and fitted to unite the two kingdoms : and though it was fully agreed to for many years , yet some factious and ambitious noblemen being desirous to advance themselves , though by the ruin of their country ; and some priest riden and blind zealots among the gentry , admiring the parts and persons of their enthusiastick preachers , were instigated by them to join with the puritanical party , and at length to rise in a most unjustifiable war against their lawful sovereign . during which , the presbyterians entred in a covenant , wherein they obliged themselves by solemn oath to extirpate prelacy and bring all opposers of their covenant to condign punishment : and thereafter into a league with england , wherein they obliged themselves to reform england after the model of the best reformed churches abroad , for their own ends leaving the rule thus general . all these oaths and leagues being entred into by subjects without and against , yea and in despite of the royal authority , and the evident design of them being to overturn the fundamental constitution of the church and state in the two kingdoms , were therefore mostly justly condemn'd as treason by the parliaments in both nations . notwithstanding whereof , the covenanters in prosecution of the black designs of these oaths , raised first the rabble , and afterwards strong armies against that most pious and protestant king charles i. who out of a religious desire as much as in him lay to preserve their peace and his own , condescended to all that they desired , in a parliament held by himself at scotland . but the lust of rebellious zealots hath no bounds ; for the faction encouraged with this success , and having obtained now the government of the church , they immediately after usurped that of the state , calling by their own pretended authority rebellious parliaments , wherein they rescinded all the royal prerogatives , murthered thousands of the kings best subjects , and almost quite ruined all the antient families of the nation who opposed them , preferring and enriching chiefly mean and factious persons who headed the rabble , robbing more from these loyal families in one month , without any pretext of law , than hath been exacted from them since the kings restauration in prosecution of it ; besides the many other barbarities which they committed under pretext of religion ; as the poyniarding hundreds of them in cold bloud after quarter granted , and the hanging them with the kings commission about their necks . at length having robbed the king of all power to defend himself , they gave him perfidiously up to those who inhumanly murthered him at his own palace-gate , to the great reproach and scandal of the reformation ; themselves being all the while after supported by these very regicides , against the royalists , whom they called malignants ; till god restor'd king charles ii. and then offers of peace and pardon were made to these presbyterians , provided , they would but disown the covenant and their rebellious principles . but they refusing all offers , episcopacy was restored chiefly for the monarchies sake : the faction being enraged at this , proceeded with all fire and fury to preach up rebellion in their conventicles . the parliament in the mean time justly displeased at this insolence and contempt of authority , and desirous to secure the peace and the people from the poison of rebellious and false doctrine , appointed all to come to church ; whereupon they broke forth in open rebellions , and some of their ring leaders being taken in the guilt , and not disowning nor promising to help these faults , were punish'd in order to terrify others ; and this is all the severity complain'd of . by this your highness may see : 1. that you being come to support our laws , you are in honour bound to support episcopacy , which is confirmed by twenty seven parliaments . 2. that episcopacy is necessary for support of the monarchy , and that the scottish presbytery is not opposed by us as an ecclesiastical government , but as having incorporated into it many horrid principles , inconsistent with humane society , in which the monarchy is more concerned than we . 3. that what these who were in the government did , was conform to law , and that these laws were made for preservation of the protestant religion , monarchy , humane society , and self-defence . and that they value their church-government more than the protestant religion , is clear by their late compliance with the papists upon getting an indulgence ; whereas the church of england and we hazarded all rather than comply ; they magnified the dispensing power , and we opposed it . 4. this appears more clearly by their present principles , whereby many , as we are informed own , that subjects have a right to force their king to do them justice , and that they are his judges , and may dethrone him ; that the rebellion against king charles the first and second , and in favour of the duke of monmouth were just ; and that the monarchy being returned by forfeiture to the people , there remains no prerogative with future kings who are to have no more power than the people will give them : and because we love the monarchy , we are decry'd as slaves ; whereas it had been easier for us to have connived at their insolencies , and to become republicans with them . 5. to evidence that they resolve not as yet to be quiet ; they in place of accommodating differences at this time , wherein all protestants should shew what happy change they hope for from your highness coming to restore our religion and laws , do threaten magistrates out of their government , and ministers from their charges , forcing them to swear , after many indignities , that they shall never return to their imployments , doing thereby all that in them lies to disgrace your highnesses designs , and to persuade the nation that they onely must give measures , and that none can live peaceably there without complying with all their inclinations . 6. that their numbers are not near so great as ours , appears convincingly from this : that twenty seven parliaments have run unanimously against them under four kings , and that they have still been easily overcome in all their rebellions : and though now they appear numerous here , yet that proceeds from their being all here , upon design to make themselves appear considerable , that they may be thought necessary ; and to the end , that some of them may recover what was justly taken from them , and may get employments by procuring the possessors to be incapacitated . whereas others , trusting to the laws , the interest of the monarchy and your highness's just sense of things , thought no such appearance necessary till the convention . these presbyterians have also instigated some tumults , to fright honest men , who will not rise in arms without authority , yet if there be not forces sent down under well-principled officers , they will be forced again to beg leave to raise new forces in self-defence , without which we can neither live at home nor go to serve your highness in the convention . 7. many of them pretending that their presbytery is iure divino , and that they are bound to it by oaths ( tho declared treason ) do own that they can submit to no laws inconsistent with presbytery , whereas we are ready to comply with whatever your highness and a parliament shall find convenient for the monarchy and the good of the kingdom , being grieved at those animosities in which they delight . and to demonstrate our innocence and our readiness to accommodate all matters justly , we desire to be heard before your highness or any you shall name . 8. we do in the next place , offer to your highness's consideration , whether in this age , wherein episcopacy is acknowledged to have been the best bulwark against popery , the english , who so justly love and reverence episcopacy will unite with scotland , if subjected to presbytery ; especially since the presbyterians , who generally own the covenant ▪ are sworn to extirpate episcopacy , having violently and effectually concurred in the last age , to throw it out of both nations . which oath will certainly bind them to overthrow episcopacy in england more industriously , when england by the union becomes a part of their native countrey . we design not by this to load all of that persuasion , amongst whom we confess many are so moderate as to deserve , that for their sake we should encline heartily to such an indulgence as may satisfie sober dissenters , nor would we have troubled your highness with this account , if we had not been assured that there was an address prepared , craving a total extinction of episcopacy , as contrary to the divine right of presbytery ; which if it be acknowledg'd , they can be subject to no law ; and the covenant , though illegal and irreligious , must be the rule : which if yielded , no sober man can live in security ; and though some things may now be reformed in that address by advice from london , yet the first draught shews their inclination : and even the extinction of episcopacy which will certainly be craved , they being sworn to it in their covenant , obliges us to offer this in defence of our laws , and to prevent the inconveniences and insolencies which would ensue on so great an alteration . lastly , we humbly entreat your highness to consider , that in the church , as it is now established by law under episcopacy amongst us , we have no ceremonies at all , no not so much as any form of prayer , no musick but singing in the churches , the doctrine and discipline is the same both in the church and conventicle ; and in a word not one ace of difference between the two , but that in the present church instead of their moderators , whom themselves have sometimes confess'd may be constant , we have bishops whom the king is pleased to make lords , allowing the presbyters a free vote in their elections ; and even the bishops govern only by presbyteries and synods , as the world shall have a more particular and full account of hereafter . and now after this we leave your highness and the world to judge , what just ground they have for their separation from our churches communion : or if the difference betwixt us and the presbyterians , for such they all own themselves , be indeed such as may justifie their constant clamour , present noise and tumults , their uncharitable censures and cruel persecutions of their reformed brethren ; whether the difference betwixt us be truly such as may warrant their dividing the church , disturbing the state , and weakning the reformation , which your highness hath so generously and piously ingaged to protect ; and which we shall always heartily pray god to prosper you in . the reader is desired to observe first , that the figures placed in the address , lead to the annotations , on that part of it which are marked with the same figures . secondly , that the publick resolutioners and remonstrators were two conten●ding parties among the scots presbyterians , who as they found favour from the usurper , or had power and interest with the rabble , mutually excommunicated and persecuted one another . these were called publick resolutioners , who adhered to the publick resolves of the state in favours of the king : and they called remonstrators , who dissented from these proceedings of the publick , by their open remonstrances against them . the presbyterian address from scotland to the prince of orange . may it please your royal highness , when we ( 1 ) begin to think how the lord hath blessed your illustrious progenitors in being the happy instruments of so much good to his church , and in standing in the gap , and appearing for the people of god , his truth and interest in times of the greatest extremity , when matters seemed desperate in the eyes of all who could look no higher than the hand of second causes , and how the lord crowned their resolute endeavours with the success of planting ( 2 ) a beautiful church in the united provinces , and delivering the people of god there from the fury of the spanish persecutions . and that your royal highness hath succeeded these worthies of the lord , as in their estates and dignities , so in their zeal for the gospel of christ , sympathy withi his ( 3 ) suffering people , and magnaninous resolution in appearing in such an astonishing way for the ( 4 ) kingdom of our lord iesus , and for his faithful servants , while lying in the mouth of the lyon , while refuge failed , and we looked on the right and left hands ( 5 ) and no man was found till the lord raised up your highness , and put it in your heart to lay down life and all things of a ( 6 ) corporal interest at the stake , while ye did act for his glory , and lamentably oppressed servants . ah , we have not hearts to prize that wonderful mercy , the greatness of past and present sufferings , the inexpressible hazard , the irremediless ( as to the hand of man ) condition we seemed to be in , do heighten the mercy beyond our apprehension , so that when your highness first appeared , we were like them that ( 7 ) dream , and our hearts were filled with matter of hope and ioy , yet how are we overwhelmed with fear , considering our ( 8 ) provocations and sinning in the face of iudgments , and in a day of so much wrath and indignation , the combination of so many potent adversaries , the perils from winds and raging seas , the hazard to your valiant army , but especially to your highnesses royal person , sent us to the throne of grace ( and oh how great had our guiltiness been , if we had lain by ) to ( 9 ) wrestle for the protection of heaven towards your highness's person , army and navy . and now that the lord hath not despised the prayer of the destitute , and hath made his out-stretched arm appear in the prudent conduct and desirable success of such an heroick vndertaking , and that the lord hath ( 10 ) melted the hearts of some in making them joyn with your highness's forces , hath bound up the hands of ( 11 ) implacable adversaries , and hath stopt all ways of escaping , is the doing of our god , and it 's wonderful in our eyes . and god forbid , that ever we forget such a mercy , or that we neglect to stir up the people under our charges to magnifie his name for so seasonable and so great a mercy , which upon several accounts may be compared with the delivering of god's people out of egypt , and out of babylon , and from antichristian darkness by the reformation , begun by zuinglius and luther , if now we get grace to improve it to the ( 12 ) honor of his name . great sir , as the welfare and happiness of the kirk hath mainly influenced your highness's great vndertaking , so we are confident , that the sad case of the kirk of scotland , occasioned by the overturning of that ( 13 ) beautiful government , the presbyterian government of the kirk established there , and mother churches in france , united provinces , &c. will by your tender care , and providence , now find a sutable remedy : and that your highness will commiserate the deplorable state of a kirk once ( 14 ) famous for its reformation , purity , ( 15 ) piety , order and vnity . ( 16 ) and oh how refreshing was it to christs afflicted ones , to find that your highness was so nearly concerned , and so deeply touched with our late sufferings , as to hold forth your sympathy in your highness's gracious declaration , containing one just epitome of our sad tryals , and unparallel'd ( on such account ) sufferings , which would require a volume for rehearsing the several particulars , and giving a full history of the merciless perseiutions we were forced to lie under , since the erection ef prelacy : yea , the severity ran to such an heighth , that by the eighth act of king james the seventh his parliament , it was statute and ordained , that all preachers in houses or field conventicles , and all present at field-meetings , should be punished by ( 17 ) death , and confiscation of goods . and tho by the light of nature , and law of nations , it be the oppresseds innocent refuge to supplicate the iudges or ruler , yet with our rulers it was accounted a crime of the highest demerit . and his majesties commissioner in his first parliament , after his return from exile , sent to the several provincial synods , then meeting at the set time , to raise them ; which accordingly they did . so soon as they did move , as all of them were to do , towards a supplication to the parliament for ratifying the government of the kirk , established by king and ( 18 ) solemn acts of parliament . and what tongue can express the oppression we have met with since that day . and tho it were not pertinent in this our humble address to trouble your royal highness with an account of particulars , yet we have given to ( 19 ) these now sent from us to your highness , such information concerning those , as during the short time of our staying together , we could provide , which they are ready to offer to your highness , when required ; neither could we take upon us to condescend upon any method for remedy of our grievances , but intirely relying upon your highness's zeal for the glory of god , and good of this kirk , do in all humility beseech , and in the bowels of christ iesus intreat your highness to procure the ( 20 ) extirpation of prelacy , and re-establishment of presbyterian government of this kirk , and of the restoring of the faithful ministers of christ to their respective charges , from which they were so unjustly thrust out . it will not ( 21 ) ( we hope ) seem strange to your highness's goodness , tho some of us being on the place about the time the king allowed to ministers the free exercise of their ministry , opened the prison doors , and set the captives at liberty , recalled the exile , took off the arrests , and permitted these to return to their homes , ( 22 ) who know not where to hide their heads , did by their address thankfully acknowledge the favour of a little respite from so much slavery and intolerable sufferings , all of them being ready solemnly to protest , that it was far from their thoughts to homologate the liberty granted to papists , or the arbitrary dispensing power , to speak nothing of that absolute power , without reservation , claimed by his majesty , and ( 23 ) asserted by parliament and council . but our confidence of your highness's perswasion of our integrity in that matter , makes us forbear any farther apology . but oh , as the lord hath followed your pious endeavours for the delivering of britain and ireland from the persecution they were lying under ( while we could espie no remedy ) with wonderful success : so he will be pleased to strengthen your highness ( 24 ) for going on in his work , and will make you an happy instrument for delivering of other churches groaning under popish persecution . babylon the great must fall . and that this may be the time , and your highness the man of gods right hand , whom he hath made strong for being eminently instrumental in such a glorious work , that he would more and more sanctifie and ( 25 ) humble you under his bountiful dispensation , and would guard and preserve your person , and multiply his choice blessings spiritual and temporal on your precious princess , your royal consort , shall be the continual prayer of serene highness , your assiduous orators at the throne of grace , and most faithful and humble servants . their letter to the prince : which they ordered to be sent at the same time with the preceding address . sir , if we might have met for moving in this great concernment , or had known how to transmit a testimony of our congratulation at your highness's safe arrival , we had not been so far wanting in duty , as to have delayed to this time . and if it had been supposed needful to have called a fuller meeting , we know few or none , except such as are byassed by interest , or ( 26 ) accession to our persecution , who would not have cordially concurred as in one gratulation ; so in this our humble supplication to your royal highness , and for evidencing our zeal for your highness's happiness and prosperity , we have appointed a solemn day of thanksgiving for your highness's great and glorious success to be forthwith observed in all congregations , and that continual prayers be poured out to god for your highness's royal consort , as in families of private devotion , so in our publick meetings . edinburg , 8. ian. 1689. annotations . you are pleased to call the prince royal highness , we do not grudge him the highest titles ; we know he deserves the greatest that are due to the most worthy heroes , and we hope , that in due time he shall justly enjoy these that are proper to the most glorious monarchs ; only we cannot but think it strange , that the popes and puritans should be the only clergy-men that take upon them , without publick consent , to dispose of royal titles . just so in your late address to king iames the seventh , you are pleased to compare him to some of the great deliverers of god's people in the old testament , altho in your former books , sermons and prayers , you would allow no better titles to the best of your own protestant kings , but that of ahab , iehu , or ieroboam . ( 1 ) when we begin to think , &c. ] the reader ought not to imagine , that this address is like their extemporary prayers , ( wherein if one may judge by their expressions , they never so much as begin to think . ) no , this is the last effort of all the remonstrator-wit in the nation revised and refined , and indeed the smoothness and harmony of the first paragraph is an undeniable proof of their thoughtfulness and eloquence . however , i hope the glorious actions of the prince , and those of his illustrious ancestors shall be recorded far otherwise than in the panegyricks of enthusiasts . ( 2 ) a beautiful church , &c. ] this expression is remarkable ; for that the protestant church in the united provinces presume not to prescribe to the state , as your assemblies always did ; sometimes purging the army , as you did the king's at dunbar , to the ruin of it ; sometimes declaring against the publick acts of the nation , as you did against the honorable attempt , made by duke hamilton , to relieve the king , when prisoner at the isle of wight . for tho that army was raised and sent under his grace for that purpose into england , by the publick authority of the nation , yet you were pleased to condemn it as an irreligious design , and the battel it self as an unlawful engagement ; afterwards compelling the best of the nobility to do open penance in sack cloth before your congregations , for being concerned in it . moreover , it 's worth your notice , that the reformed churches in the united provinces , which you confess so beautyful , have their organs , which they use in the divine service ; they observe other holy days besides the lords day , and in all their publick administrations have a grave liturgy , or set form of prayer , wherein they religiously and constantly use the lord's prayer , creed and ten commandments , all which you disclaim as superstitious fooleries . ( 3 ) his suffering people , &c. ] tho you made others to suffer more , and with far greater bitterness and cruelty ; yet you would have your selves thought the only people in britain that dare suffer for conscience sake . you forget , it seems , how in the time of your covenant your scaffolds stood up for some months , imployed in the bloody execution of many noble and worthy persons , who because of their previous oaths of allegiance , and canonical obedience , could not in conscience or honor submit to your covenant , the obligations whereof you thought sufficient to cancel all former tyes , even those of the ten commandments not excepted . ( 4 ) the kingdom of the lord iesus , &c. ] id est , presbytery , after the scotch model , for that in their language is the kingdom of christ , altho your ruling elders and you , governed with such a rod of iron , as seems quite opposite to christ's scepter . ( 5 ) no man was found to help us , &c. ] did not father petre , with all vigor , employ his power and interest , at the court , to procure your indulgence and toleration ? if he had not applyed himself to serve your interest , he had not obeyed the directions of his society for distracting the reformation : then you faithfully served the whore of babylon , in supplanting the church , when her face was against a more powerful and formidable enemy . ( 6 ) of a corporal interest , &c. ] a fulsom expression indeed , but that 's not extraordinary for some men to use , were not honor and reputation things of far greater value for a prince to venture , but you presume to measure his highness by your own scantling . ( 7 ) like them that dream , &c. ] when his highness knows you better , he will find that you are dreamers indeed . 't were good for the people , whose morals you have debauched , that you dream'd less ; for it cannot be denyed , but that in the multitude of your dreams there are divers vanities . ( 8 ) our provocations , &c. ] there is certainly nothing could recommend you more to his highness , than most ingenuously to confess and forsake your habituul faults , your incurable spight against the royal race , your sawciness to king iames the sixth , your binding king charles the first a sacrifice upon the altar , your open rebellions against king charles the second . if you will heartily acknowledge these provocations , and what you have frequently done against the authority of king and parliament , and by some publick deed of yours renounce the principles that naturally yield such consequences , then there is no doubt but the prince of orange will accept your repentance . ( 9 ) to wrestle , &c. ] it cannot be denyed indeed , but that your prayers in the publick are wrestlings without a metaphor , but they are levelled most against the pulpit , and all the struggling is how to press out one sentence after another , and to keep wind in the bags for two hours together . just so we were told , after you were warmed with the dispensing power , that the queens big belly was the effect of the heat and pregnancy of these your wrestlings in prayer . but the priests thought 't was the result of their devotions at loretto . and as you ascribe all the courage and conduct of this wonderful action of the prince to the prevalency of your own prayers ; so in your addresses to king iames , you alledged all the piety and goodness you so much magnified in the late indulgence , to have proceeded from the same fountain ; altho it be well known that that very indulgence was first framed at the conclave , & sent hither from rome : & secr. coleman's letters , still upon record , are sufficient to convince the world , that such an indulgence was all along design'd as the readiest method to destroy the north. heresie . ( 10 ) melted the hearts of some , &c. ] namely , the sons of the church of england , who , as you would charitably represent them , can do nothing in favours of the protestant religion , but when they are forced to it by some extraordinary accidents , or outward violence . ( 11 ) implacable adversaries , &c. ] compare this with your late address to king iames , when you had neither the courage nor fidelity to open your mouths against popery , altho your selves could not but be convinced , that it was violently breaking in upon us at the door which was opened mostly by your divisions . here you also promise to stir up the people under your charges ; i know not how they came to be under your charge , but this the whole nation too well knows , that the design of most of your sermons and prayers too is to stir them up , as you have done formerly , to tumults , calumnies and assassinations , and whose name i beseech you , do you magnifie in this , unless it be his who was a lyar and murderer from the beginning . here also it 's observable , that in the list ye assign of the first reformers , ye make no mention of the learned calvin ; sure the peaceable father knox would not have denyed him the honor of naming him among the reformers , and at least have given him equal place with either zuinglius or luther . but ah his letters , his unsavoury letters , these unadvised and unholy letters to the limbs of the beasts , the bishops of england , our throughly reformed consciences cannot away with these letters , wherein like a worldly courtier , and carnal politician he compliments and commends these popishly affected bishops , and approves of the constitution of their superstitious church , as most agreeable to the government of the state and monarchy of england , tho not to the republick at geneva . these ye think were carnal and worldly ends , unbecoming the purity of your new light and doctrine , therefore the poor old gentleman calvin must be no longer mentioned among the reformers . another dash of a through-paced assembly would certainly exclude luther too ; for you know he never took the covenant , and therefore could not be throughly reformed . and besides he seems to smell rankly of the scarlet whore , in the superstitious forms of prayer , ceremonies in worship , and holy days , which he allowed and appointed to be observed in the church where he was concerned . ( 12 ) improved to the honor of his name , &c. ] you should have added here , and to the persecution of far better christians than our selves . ( 13 ) beautiful government , &c. ] if the devils sacrifices , human blood aud slaughter , the trampling upon the state , the exirpation of all liturgies , and the everlasting contentions of publick resolutioners and remonstrators could make it beautiful , it cannot be denyed but that it was so in the highest degree . ( 14 ) once famous for , &c. ] a church without prayers , whose worship is invisible , and as often vaiyed as the several administrators appear in different places , or are affected with different passions ; a church without canons , without uniformity , and void of decency , in this sense your church was and is still famous . ( 15 ) purity and piety , &c. ] in this catalogue of excellent things that made your church famous , not one word of charity ; indeed that 's none of the ingredients of the remonstrator-constitution . he who would see that in its proper colours , let him strip christianity naked of all morality , and in lieu of that , place these vices which our saviour reproved in the pharisees ; hypocrisie , pride , insolence and singularity . then add to these a conversation so ordered , as to apply the prophetical language of the old testament , frequently and impertinently to every trifling occurrence , keeping at the same time the greatest distance from what 's recommended in christ's sermon on the mount ; and by this means a man may have some idea of the religion of our remonstrators . ( 16 ) on how refreshing , &c. ] 't was very comfortable indeed to you , that you imagined his highness the prince had no account of the regular clergy , but from these that studied to defame them , and to represent them all , without exception , either as ignorant or wicked persons . but to your great grief the prince is not precipitant , he will deliberately enquire into your former ways , and how the remonstrator-learning appeared , either in sermons , as books against popery , when it so fiercely assaulted us . may be some will be so just as to tell his highness , that learning was never so much your talent , and that some of the most famous doctors * our nation had since the reformation , men whose learning and conscience were their greatest crimes , were not allowed a country church to preach in , nor so much as the benefit of a private school to teach , when you were last upon the stage . ( 17 ) punished by death , &c. ] it would be difficult for you to name one man put to death for being present at a field-conventicle , tho i could name some that you have killed formerly for wearing the king's livery . † and it would be as impossible for you to justifie your meetings in the field with vast numbers of armed men , when the laws have declared it treasonable , and when there is not any thing in the worship of the church established by law , that you scruple at , except the lord's prayer , the doxology , and the reading of the scriptures before the minister goes into the pulpit : neither of which we are ashamed of ; tho you ought to be for separating upon that account . ( 18 ) solemn acts of parliament , &c. ] the king and parliament having experience of your sawcy behaviour , and unheard of cruelties for so many years did in a full and free parliament re-establish the episcopal government about a year after the restoration of king charles ; and it is arrogant , as well as unjust , for you to imagine , that his highness the prince will believe you , when you asperse the memory of his royal uncle king charles , ( whom all men know to have been merciful and wise to a miracle ) with such cruelties as are inconsistent with the laws of nature and nations . ye ought in justice to have told the prince also how many indulgences he emitted in your favours , and how little you deserved them at his hands : you should have likewise told him , that episcopacy never forced it self upon the state by violence , ( as presbytery did , and still endeavous to do . ) but the king , nobility and gentry , wearied with the tyrannical discipline of your assemblies , did over and again ratifie that apostolical government in parliament , and cannot therefore now be removed till those many laws be taken away even by them who are deeply sworn never to endeavour the alteration of the government in the church or state. which oath was not as your covenant , pressed upon any without the consent of lawful authority , nor under any penalties , except the not being intrusted in publick offices be accounted as such ; and it were very hard not to allow the government the choice of such as should serve in it . ( 19 ) these sent from us , &c. ] and you are confident his highness will believe all they say without any farther examination , just as you would have the ignorant mobile believe , and receive all your doctrines with an implict faith. ( 20 ) extirpation of prelacy , &c. ] and will nothing less satisfie you , than the total extirpation of that government which hath now continued in all the parts of the christian church for fifteen hundred years , and was first planted with christianity it self by the apostles , whose doctrines , it seems , you relish not in these points which are not agreeable to your covenant . when the parliament is legally constituted , and the sense of the whole nation fully heard , there may be some things in the constitution of the church-government made more perfect , but it is strange , if it can be entirely removed , unless the civil government of the nation be again usurped by a committee of the general assembly . it will be considered who they are that demand this change ? a set of men who have renounced the communion of all the reformed churches in europe , presbyterian or episcopal : for the conform clergy in scotland are willing to refer all debates between them and you to foreign presbyterians , who cannot be supposed to have any biass to our side . and tho your industry and faction ( in populous cities on the south side of forth ) make you appear numerous ; yet any , who throughly knows the nation , knows that you are not truly one twentieth part of it . but whatever your strength be , let me intreat you , that when ye beg for new revolutions , ye would forbear to abuse the sacred name jesus , by making it the prologue to confusions in his church ; alas , it hath been too too ordinary to usher in such black designs with that holy name . ( 21 ) we hope , &c. ] now comes in your apology for your late address , under the influences of the dispensing power , and then your zeal against popery appeared in a profound silence ; for you told your people you preached christ , and that was enough , tho you did not insist on the particular controversies against rome . now and then you darted some waspish reflections against the church of england , when she was otherwise employed than to take notice of your whistling arguments and unjustifiable spight against her , which appeared more visible lately when it was tost in your divan ; whether or not you should address the prince of orange for abolishing episcopacy over all britain and ireland ; but tho you be sworn to that in your covenant , yet you must wait some further time for it . it is a part of the ceremony ye use in removing the conformed clergy of the west , to inquire if they have the book of common prayer of the church of england , and if they have it , it is wrapped up in the ministers gown , and both committed to the flames together , with loud shouts of joy and triumph . witness your late outrage to mr. bell , minister of kilmarnock , and even your pretended kindness for the prince of orange is known to be much cooled , since you heard of his communicating with the church of england : nor is it long since you preached that the church of england was more idolatrous than the church of rome ; because they received the sacrament kneeling , where they believed no corporal presence to be . just so one of these whom you have since appointed a commissioner from you to the prince , hearing that his highness frequented the prayers of the church of england , and that he had received the sacrament from the hands of a bishop , was so unadvisedly indiscreet and impertinent , as to say , that he never expected better of a dutch conscience . a true specimen of a remonstrator's charity , and signal evidence , that ye value not the best consciences , when they will not stretch to the full length of your covenanted standard . i cannot here omit what one veatch , canting in mr. hamilton's meeting house at edinburgh lately said , his words were these ; oh sirs , wonderful things , and great things , sirs , very great things have been done here by mean instruments : ( meaning the rabble , on whose commendation he had fully enlarged before . ) but alas , sirs , the half of your work is not done , so long as the prelates and curates are to the fore ( that is in true english so long as they are left alive ) and if the prince of orange will not put to his helping hand , and lend god a lift , i will say to him as modecai did to hester , hester iv . 14. who knows but thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this ; but if thou wilt altogether hold thy peace , deliverance will come from another place to the jews , ( a most pertinent epithet for remonstrators ) but thou and thy fathers house shall perish . another of their preachers about the same time , holding forth to his auditory , said , oh sirs , sirs , but ye be an hide-bound people , a lucken handed and fast griping people , sirs , i could gar ( that is cause ) a few fourteens ( that is scotch marks ) drive all the prelates and curates out of the town ; indeed i could easily do it , sirs . this is a doctrine very agreeable , i confess , to the covenant ; but whether it be so to the gospel of peace or no , i leave the world to judge . ( 22 ( who knew not where to hide their heads , &c. ] good lack , poor gentlemen , no where to hide their heads ! and yet if we may believe what ye confidently affirmed before , the byass of the whole nation is for presbytery ; it seems they were a very merciless , as as well as unconscionable people , who were so much affected to your cause , and yet would not allow the professors of it , when persecuted , the least shelter , ( mendaces oportet esse memores ) but this was your comfort , in these troubles , that many angels were sent to support you , and if it were not that i am resolved to avoid all personal reflections , i could name some , who when removed from their places for nonconformity , had little or nothing ; and yet purchased considerable estates under the pretended persecution . the severity of our laws never appeared against dissenters for having different opinions from the established church ; nor can you instance any one that suffered either ecclesiastick or civil censure , only upon that account , but for high treason against the state. some indeed , according to their demerit , suffered death , such as cameron , one of your preachers , who emitted a declaration of war against the king , declaring , that every covenanted brother was bound to cut off from the face of the earth his majesty , and all that had , or did bear office under him : and hackstoun of rathallat , and a weaver , murtherers of the late archbishop of s. andrews , as also a fidler , who had murdered his own wife , when big with child . these were some of the martyrs of your new gospel , whose heads and hands you have lately removed from the publick gates at edinburgh , and buried with all the solemnity that the reforming rabble , and your preachers upon their van , could possibly make . ( 23 ) asserted by parliament , &c. ] the absolute power seemingly implied not asserted in some parliaments , is not to be understood in that unlimited sense , that your assemblies assumed it to themselves , but as it is restrained and interpreted by the constant tenor of our laws , the practice of the nation , and the just and necessary exceptions that all such general words must be supposed to receive from reason and the liberties of mankind . ( 24 ) for going on in his work , &c. ] let it be a through reformation , a truly covenanted work , such as may bring all malignants , the most protestant kings not excepted , to condign punishment , or else you 'll never believe it to be indeed the work of the lord. ( 25 ) humble you , &c. ] he will be sufficiently humbled , if ever you get him under the yoke of presbyterian discipline , and you should take all care to conceal from him the methods you are wont to use for humbling princes ; as also the difference betwixt your way , and that of the presbyterian churches abroad , either in france , or the netherlands . ( 26 ) accession to our persecution , &c. ] you mean undoubtedly the conform clergy , whom , when you have not power to persecute , ye shew your inclinations to it , by calumniating and misrepresenting them . however in the present business , whenever lawful authority injoyns them , they will be ready to observe a day of thanksgiving for our deliverance from popery and slavery , with more chearfulness and order than you can pretend to . in the mean while it 's worth the prince's notice ; how you adventure without the state to appoint publick solemnities . it may be some will inform his highdess how your predecessors appointed a thanksgiving on that very day wherein the state had injoyned a fast. and to shew their cross disposition , a fast at another time , when king iames the sixth had appointed a feast for the publick entertainment of foreign ambassadors in the city of edinburgh . this is the address which in your publick meeting of the assembly at edinburgh you agreed to , and subscribed ; but upon the news of the prince's having communicated with the english church , you demurred a little , and the sending of it to his highness was delayed till ye heard from your friends at court , by whose advice your address perhaps suffered some alterations before it was sent thither ; but these , as i am credibly informed , were not material , and therefore deserve no notice . however , the industry you used to have some persons of quality at london subscribe it , was very remarkable ; for , as some of these persons themselves have told me , you would not allow them to read it , till they should first sacredly promise to subscribe it . a method very agreeable to that which ye used in getting hands to the covenant , when several young children were taught to write their names of purpose to affix them to it ; and school-boys were brought from dreiving their tops , to dreive on the work of the lord in subscribing the covenant . implicit faith , it seems , is a doctrine as much in vogue among scots presbyterians , as among papists themselves ; and the consistory and conclave do not really differ so much as you would have the world believe . in all this that i have said , i must tell you , that i have no thoughts of cruelty against distenters , i indeed pity them , as deluded . and if it were in my power i would not persecute them , but rather , as brethren , restore them with the spirit of meekness . i allow , that so long as they are willing to contain themselves within the just liberties and limits of subjects , they have as good a right to the royal protection , as any other set of men in the nation ; but then they should let the world see , that they can allow other protestants to live too , as having the same natural right with themselves : and that they are capable of such an accommodation as the learned protestants abroad are not against : and that they do not abhor the communion and practices of other reformed churches ; and particularly , that they do not think themselves bound by the covenant , or any other tye to persecute these of the church of england . lastly , it were very just and pertinent in them to declare their resolutions never again by their sentences , to counteract and condemn the decrees of the supreme civil judicatures of the nation ; and to satisfie the world in this , it will be fit for them by some publick deed to disclaim and renounce that absolute supremacy or papacy which the kirk hath always claimed over kings , and civil powers . many publick and known instances might be assigned , wherein they have challenged and usurped this power ; but hercules may be known by his foot , and therefore one instance that 's yet fresh in the memory of many , shall serve for all ; and it 's that of the unnatural as well as undutiful behaviour of the kirk to their lawful sovereign king charles the second in the year 1650 , when like a hunted partridge he fled from the birds of prey in england to them for sanctuary . the easiest proposals they made to him were no less than these : 1. to subscribe the covenant , which they knew his majesty did not , nor could not like , because of the destruction it had brought upon his father and kingdoms , and of the door it opened for continual rebellion against himself . 2. to make publick satisfaction to the kirk , that is open penance before their congregations , for his own sins , and these of his fathers house , particularly for his and his families godless opposition ( as they called it ) to the cause of god , the work of the covenant . 3. that his majesty should subscribe , and publish to the world a declaration , charging himself and his family with the whole guilt of all the miseries and blood ( not excepting that of the royal martyr his father ) which had been occasioned by these unhappy civil wars themselves had raised , and carried on for so many years before . upon these conditions they promised to make him a most glorious king indeed . but when his majesty modestly declined the last two , which in honor and conscience he could not submit to , immediately out comes that tundering bull from the general assembly against him , the act of the west kirk ; it was commonly called so , because the assembly was held at the west church of edinburgh , where both the foresaid declarations which they would have imposed upon the king , and that act of the west kirk are still kept , and to be seen upon record in the publick register at that place . a true and exact copy of which act , as it was faithfully transcribed from the authentick original , i shall here for the satisfaction of the reader subjoyn . west kirk , the 13th . day of august , 1650. the commission of the general assembly , considering , that there may be just ground of stumbling , from the king's majesties refusing to subscribe , and emit the declaration offered unto him by the commissioners of the general assembly , concerning his former carriage and resolutions for the future , in reference to the cause of god , and enemies and friends thereof , doth therefore declare , that this kirk and kingdom do not own or espouse any malignant party , quarrel or interest , but that they fight meerly upon their former grounds and principles , and in defence of the cause of god , and of the kingdom , as they have done these twelve years past ; and therefore as they do disclaim all the sin and guilt of the king , and of his house , so they will own him and his interest no otherways than with a subordination to god , and so far as he owns and prosecutes the cause of god , and disclaims his and fathers opposition to the work of god , and to the covenant , and likewise all the enemies thereof . and that they will with convenient speed take into consideration the papers sent unto them by oliver cromwel , and vindicate themselves from all the falshoods therein contained , especially in those things wherein the quarrel betwixt us and that party is mistated . as if we owned the late kings proceedings , and were resolved to prosecute and maintain his present majesties interest , before , and without a full acknowledgment of the sins of his house , and former ways , and satisfaction to god's people in both kingdoms . sic subscribitur a. ker. the order for printing this act is signed by tho. henderson . accipe nunc danaum insidias , & crimine ab uno — disce omnes . many papers to this purpose , and more odious , might be published , but my design is not to expose , but if possible , to reclaim those whom this antimagistratical party leads by an implicit faith of the assemblies infallibility in all its oracles ; nor would i have sent this abroad , if our whole church and nation had not been first attacqued by them , and that not only in their present outrages against all who are not of their gang ; but also in most scandalous and scurrilous libels , in one whereof they have accused the government in all its proceedings since the restoration , to have been worse than the inquisition ; tho it was malicious , yet it was cunningly done in them to print and publish this among strangers ; for they knew it could find no credit at home , where the falshoods of it would have been as easily discovered as the malice of the authors is . the publick proceedings of the nation against that party , were indeed no more than self-defence , and therefore may easily , as they will be shortly vindicated , and justified to the world , where all the matters of fact of that which they call persecution , and the true causes of it , will be impartially discovered and laid open , which will be but little to the credit of the party , or their pretended martyrs , of whom they have now promised so glorious and full a history ; and i doubt not but the impartial and unprejudiced part of mankind will abominate and abhor when they hear the former and present barbarities and bloody cruelties , which that covenanted party , under pretence of reformation , have committed , and do daily at this time inflict , without any respect to office , age or sex , upon all such as differ from them , only in a very inconsiderable punctilio of government , and not in the least point ( that themselves can alledge ) either of doctrine , discipline or worship . and i doubt not but his highness the prince , by their open disobedience to his late proclamation for securing the peace , and by their opposition to , and contempt of all former government , will be soon convinced , how impossible it is to make them quiet under any ; and the world will be easily satisfied by but a little inquiry into their principles and practices , how inconsistent the papacy of the scots presbytery is with any form of government , except that of popery , which arrogantly presumes ( as they also do ) to punish and persecute all governors in the state at their pleasure , and manage all secular interests in ordine ad spiritualia . would to god they would but comply with this one advice of the apostle , study to be quiet , and do your own business . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a50598-e150 * n. b. these were written some time before the prince was proclaim'd king of england , &c. * the learned doctors at aberdeen were all deposed and expelled , for disputing against the legality of some subjects imposing oaths upon others , without the consent of lawful authority . † two of king charles the second's life-guard murthered at swyn abbie some few years ago , being by some of that party barbarously shot from the windows , and killed , as they sate at supper in their inn. a proclamation for adjourning the parliament, to the twentieth of march next, 1696. scotland. privy council. 1695 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05626 wing s1820 estc r226062 52529290 ocm 52529290 179058 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05626) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179058) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:47) a proclamation for adjourning the parliament, to the twentieth of march next, 1696. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1694-1702 : william ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to the kings most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1695. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh the fifth day of february, and of our reign the seventh year. signed: gilb. eliot, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion wr diev et mon droit honi soit qui mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation for adjourning the parliament , to the twentieth of march next , 1696. william by the grace of god king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith , to our lyon king at arms and his brethren heraulds , macers of our privy council , pursevants , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting ; forasmuch as by the last act of the fifth session of this our current parliament , the same is adjourned to the seventh day of november , then next to come , now instant : and our affairs not requiring a meeting thereof at that time , we have thought fit that the adjournment thereof shall be continued from the said day to the twentieth day of march next to come , therefore , we with advice of the lords of our privy council , do hereby adjourn our said current parliament , unto the said twentieth day of march next ensuing the date hereof ; requiring all the members of our said parliament to attend that day in the usual way , and under the certifications contained in the several acts of parliament made thereanent . our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly , and command , that incontinent , these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat cross of edinburgh , and to the mercat crosses of the remanent head burghs of the several shires of this our ancient kingdom ; and there by open proclamation make intimation , that our said parliament of this kingdom is adjourned to the said twentieth day of march next to come and ordains these presents to be printed . given under our signet at edinburgh the fifth day of november , and of our reign the seventh year . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to the kings most excellent majesty , 1695. the speech of a fyfe laird, newly come from grave [sic]. p. m. 1680 approx. 9 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b04470 wing m66b estc r180227 53299194 ocm 53299194 179936 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b04470) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179936) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2808:41) the speech of a fyfe laird, newly come from grave [sic]. p. m. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [scotland : c. 1680] text in black letter. signed at end: p. m. place and date of publication suggested by wing (2nd ed.). reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1660-1688 -poetry -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-10 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-12 megan marion sampled and proofread 2008-12 megan marion text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the speech of a fyfe laird ; newly come from grave . what accident , what strange mishap , awakes me from my heavenly nap ? what sprit ? what god-head by the lave , hath rais'd my body from the grave ? it is an hundred years almost , since i was buried in the dust : and now i think that i am living , or else , but doubt , my brains are raving : yet do i feel ( while as i study ) the faculties of all my body : i taste , i smel , i touch , i hear , i find my sight exceeding clear : then i 'm alive , yea sure i am , i know it by my corporal frame : but in what part where can i be , my wavering brains yet tortures me . once i was call'd a great fyff laird , i dwelt not far from the hall-yard . but who enjoys my land and pleugh , my castle , and my fine cole-heugh : i can find out no living man , can tell me this , do what i can : yet if my memory serve me well , this is the shyre where i did dwell : this is the part where i was born : for lo , beneath me stands kinghorn : and there about the lowmond hill , stands as it stood yet ever still . there is bruntiland , aberdore , i see fyffs coast alongst the shore . yet i am right , for my life , this is my native countrey fyff . o but it 's long and many a year , since last my feet did travel here . i find great change in old lairds places , i know the ground , but not the faces . where shall i turn me first about , for my acquaintance is worn out ? o this is strange that even in fyff , i do know neither man nor wife ; no earl , no lord , no laird , no people , but lesly and the mark-inch steeple . old noble w●eems , and that is all , i think enjoys their farhers hall . for from dumfermling to fyffs-ness , i do know none that doth possess 〈◊〉 grandsyres castles and his towers : 〈◊〉 is away that once was ours . 〈◊〉 full of wrath , i scorn to tarrie , i ●now them no more than the fairie : 〈◊〉 i admire and marvel strange . what is the cause of this great change ? i hear a murmuring report , passing amongst the common sort : for some says this , and some says that , and others tell , i know not what ? some says the fyff lairds ever rews , since they began to take the lews : that bargain first did brew their bail , ●s tells the honest men of crail . same doth ascribe their supplantation , into the lawyers congregation . ●o , but this is a false suppose . for all things wyts that well not goes , ●e what it will , there is some source ●ath bred this universal curse : this transmigration and earth-quake , ●hat caus●d the lairds of fyff to break . he that enthrones a shepherdling , he that dethrones a potent king : and he that makes a cotter laird , the barrous bairns to delve a yard . almighty , he that shakes the mountains , and brings great rivers from smal fountains it is the power of his hand , that makes both lords & lairds have land . yet there may be , as all men knaws , an evident and well seen cause : a publick and a common evil , that made the meekle master-devil to cast his club all fyff throughout , and lent each laird a deadly rout . mark then , i 'll tell you how it was , what way this wonder came to pass : it sets me best the truth to pen , because i fear no mortal men . when i was born a meddle-yerd wight , there was no word of laird or knight : the greatest styles of honour than , was to be tituled the goodman ; but changing time hath chang'd the case , and puts a laird in good-mans place . for why ? my gossip good man iohn , and honest iames , whom i think on , when we did meet whiles at the haulking , we us'd no cringes , but hands shaking , no bowing , shouldring , gambe-scraping : no french whistling , or dutch gaping : we had no garments in our land , but were spun by the good-wives hand ; no drap de-berry , cloaths of seal : no stuffs ingrain'd in cusheneal : no plulsh , no tushue , cramosie : no china , turky , toffaty : no proud piropus , paragon , or chackerallay , there was none : no figurata , or water-camblet : no bishops-satine , or silk chamblet , no cloth of gold , or bever-hats , we car'd more for then the cats : nor windy flowrishing flying feathers , nor sweet permusied shambo leathers : no hilt nor crampet richly hatched : a lance , a sword in hand we snatched : such base and boyish vanities , did not beseem our dignities : we were all real and compleat , stout for our friends , on horse or feet , true to our prince to shed our blood , for kirk , and for our common good . such men we were , it is well known , as in our chronicles are shown . this made us dwel into our land , and our posterity to stand : but when the young laird became vain , and went away to france and spain , rome racking , wandring here and there : o then began our bootless care . pride puft him up because he was far travell'd , and return'd an ass . then must the laird , the good-man oy , be knighted straight , and make convoy , coatche through the street with horses four , foot-grooms pasmented ore and ore . himself cut out and slasht so wide , en'n his whole shirt his skin both hide . gowpherd , gratnizied , cloaks rear pointed embroidered , lac'd , with boots disjointed : a belt embost wich gold and purle : false hair made craftily to curle : side breeks bebutton'd ore the garters , was ne're the like seen in our quarters . tobacoo and wine frontinack , potato pasties , spanish sack , such uncouth food , such meat and drink , could never in our stomack sink : then must the granure swear and swagger , and show himself the bravest bragger . a bon-companion and a drinker , a delicate and dainty ginker . so is seen on 't . these foolish gigs , hath caus'd his worship sell his rigs . sy lady , as she is a woman , is born a helper to undo man. her ladiship must have a share , for she is play-maker and mair ; for she invents a thousand toys , that house and hold and all destroys , as scarfs , shephrons , tuffs and rings , fairdings , facings . powerings rebats , revands , bands and ruffs , lapbands , shagbands , cuffs and muffs , folding outlayes , pearling sprigs , aterys , vardigals , periwigs : hats , hoods , wyrs and kells , washing-balls , perfuming smels : french gows cut out and double banded , iet rings to make her pleasant handed : a fan , a feather , bracelets , gloves , all new-come busks she dearly loves : for such trim bony baby clouts , still on the laird she greets and shouts : which made the laird take up more gear , then all the land and ●igs could bear . these are the emblems that declares the merchants thriftless , needless wares , the taylors curious vanity , my ladies prodigality . this is the truth which i discover : i do not care for feed or favor : for what i was , yet still i am , an honest , plain , true dealing man ; and if these words of mine would mend them i care not by though i offend them : her● is the cause most plainly shown , that hath our countrey-overthrown , it 's said of old , that others harms , is oftentimes the wise mans arms : and he is thought most wise of all , that learns good from his neighbors fall . it grieves my heart to see this age , i cannot stay to act more stage : i will ingrave me in the ground , and rest there till the trumpet sound : and if i have said ought affray , which may a messons mind dismay , i do appeal before the throne or the great powers , three in one ; the supream soveraignity , the parliament of verity . and if you think my speech offends , ye must be there , i's make amen●s . finis . mercurius scotus hybernicus . p. m. an essay upon the inscription of macduff's crosse in fyfe by i.c., 1678. cunningham, james, d. 1697? 1678 approx. 47 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 11 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a35431 wing c7593 estc r22651 12233831 ocm 12233831 56670 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a35431) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 56670) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 138:15) an essay upon the inscription of macduff's crosse in fyfe by i.c., 1678. cunningham, james, d. 1697? 20 p. printed by the heir of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh : 1678. the ascription to james carmichael cited in lowndes ii, 569, probably arises from confusion of names, written by james cunningham. cf. halkett & laing (2nd ed.). reproduction of original in british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -antiquities. 2006-09 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2006-09 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-02 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2007-02 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an essay , upon the inscription of macduff's crosse in fyfe . by i. c. 1678. veterrima quaeque ut ea vina quae vetustatem ferunt esse debent suavissima : cicer. de amicitia . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to the king 's most excellent majesty , 1678. antiquius quo quid est , hoc venerabilius ▪ the inscription upon macduffs cross , which stands above the newbvrgh , near lvndores , upon the confines of stratherne and fyfe . maldraradrum dragos malairia largia largos spalando spados sive nig fig knippite gnaros lorea lauriscos lauringen louria luscos et coluburtos sic fit tibi bursea burtus exitus et blaradrum sive lim sive lam sive labrum propter maegidrim et hoc oblatum accipe smeleridem super limpide lampida labrum . though i had this of an ingenious gentleman , telling me he came by it from the clerk of crail , who informed , that several succeeding clerks there , have , for a considerable time , engrost this as a true copy in their books , to preserve it from utter perishing , for it is now quite worn off the stone , at least altogether illegible . but be it so recorded in crail , newburgh or elsewhere , yet with their good favour , scarcely can i judge this a true and exact copy ; whether the fault has lyen in the first copiator from the stone , or from the engraver , or partly both : for , none who knows the history of mackbeth , malcom canmore and mackduff , will , i hope suppose , that such a king as malcom canmore , when he intended to witness a favour for mackdaff's services , and such a subject as mackduff , when he was willing to publish the royal bounty of his master , would upon the cross of so famous a sanctuery ( as this was ) have inscribed but non-sense . and though the true meaning and purport of the words be dark and abstruse to us , who now live at such a distance ; yet i wonder why the learned skeen should brand them as barbarous ( i hope he only means unintelligible , and not nonsensical ) for questionless they are ( for what i have said ) significative , and i doubt not but to purpose ; and most probably they were written , either to signifie the priviledges given by king ma●colm to mackduff , with the benefits he enjoyed by virtue thereof , or the immunities , freedoms and pardons indulged by , and conferred upon , that girth , if not in a complicated sense , all of these together . so then , allowing them to signifie sense , which few men in a sober charity can well refuse ; le ts see ( as far as we may ) to what language the words are best reducible , for to any single one they cannot : for , albeit the termination , flexion and construction i take to be most after the latine , and that there be some latine words intermixed , yet none will aver it all to be latine ; so to some other language we must go , which is but one of two . our old high-land or irish tongue , or the saxon : and as i hardly think it the high-land or irish , as well , because i never , heard that brought under roman terminations , constructions , or declinations ; so even those that would wrest it to that language in some words , cannot follow it out in all , although they be seen in the irish tongue . and it is strange , none of our highlanders , tho scholars ever interprets it ; therefore i much rather incline to deduce it ( at least most of it ) from the saxon , which i hope will not seem strange to the intelligent when he remembers what footing the saxons had in this isle , and how malcome canmore was not onely long an exile at an english saxon court , but that he had interest in northumberland , cumberland , and westmorland , which was but sometimes a province of the west saxons and as there came 10000 english saxons then in with sibardus the kings grand-father , so they must be but novices in our language , who do not find vestiges of the saxon in it almost every where . taking then this inscription to be saxon ( as to th● main ) aped in a latine dress , as to the main , i say , for suppose some words might savour of a danish , or old french extract , it needs not import , since both are of a teutonick origine , aped , i say , in a latine dress , whither from the fancie of the authour , to make it to run the smoother with the n●erlaced latine in this his hexametrall composure , or from some inclination of king malcome himself , of whom and of whose time , sayeth a grave author , as now the english court by reason of the abundance of normands therein , became most to speak french , so the scotish court , because of the queen and many english that came with her , began to speak english , i understand the english saxon , the which language it would seem , king malcome himself had before that learned , and now by reason of his queen , did the more affect it ; thus far he , where if i might be allowed a conjecture , perhaps this sanctuary was granted at that pious queens intreaty , and here inscribed with her native tongue for her greater honour , and the rather under a latine vizorn , to invite the scots ( of no language more studious then latine ) to some love and knowledge of the saxon. and so let us now with allowance , to rectifie what escapes may be in the orthography , modestly examine the words themselves ; but lest i be thought to be too peremptory to impose my naked conjectures , in a matter of such antiquity , i shall bring my vouc●ers where i have them , with the probable motives that prevail with me to such a sense , still leaving a just liberty to all who can find out better . first then ( as the words ly in order ) i take maldraradrum to be a supposititious genitive , in the plural number after the greek way , from maldra , maldrus , the german maldar , pro modio seu certa mensura frumentaria ; and spelman sayes , maldri vocabulum est alemanicum ; and have we not to this day with us the word melder and a melder of corn , and this genitive maldraradrum i construe with dragos , conjoined with its latine adjective largos , and this dragos i supose de●izon'd a roman from drach or drache of the greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 manipulus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 prehendo , manu arripio , fut. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , from which belike we have the words draught ( as applyed to cups and fish-netts ) drag , draw , so that largos , dragos , maldraradrum , may signifie large quantities or measures of corn , to be taken by some compulsive or distreinziable force , as will i hope anon be sound agreeable with the rest of the sentence . malairia , i fancie here by wrong orthography mis-written for mairia , officium majoris , majoratus , praefectura , sayes spelman , ( sufficiently known in the burrowes royal : ) and does not our skeen in his 15. chap. of the statutes of alexander the second , call the earl of fyfe , marus regis comitatus de fyfe , ( whereof more anon ) m●iria , i take to be in the ablative case , for we must not here be tyed to the strict rules of metrical quantities , or grammatical constructions . largia , mis-written i suppose for lagslita , or laghslita , by inadvertency or transposing of the saxon letters ; yea , and the saxons sometimes in their capitals , plac'd letters within letters , and were somewhat odd in their contractions and abbreviations , especially in monumental inscriptions ; lagslita , transgressio legis , legis violatae poena , proprie ruptio legis , seu mulcta pro transgressione legis , lag & lagh , lex , & slit , rupta , vox danica , & in anglo-danorum legibus primum deprehensa , sayes spelman ; but what needs me cite spelman , have we not the phrase , ilk land has its laugh , and is not the word slit , as obvious as beneficial to every taylor : lagslita , i take to be in the accusative case , which must be supplied with the preposition propter , and yet for all this the sentence is but mank without the help of a verbe , which must be borrowed in knippite , written belike for knighthite , by placing the roman p for the saxon th , which yet may be excused ; since spelman finds that fault in the transcriber of canutus laws , upon the word thegen , or pegen . knighthite then , or knippite , being a supposititious verb , ( for i know not the saxon constructions or conjugations ) after the latine form , from the saxon knight , or knyt , signifying famulus minister , may import as much as , receive ye as my servant or deputie , and being joyned with mairia , as my lieutenant , ( for so is yet a maire within burgh ) so that famulus minister in this word here must be honourable , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as it is in theini , theigni , thani , who from thien to serve , were but famuli ministri , and yet were those famuli regni barones , as spelman notes . and thus the sentence may be expounded , receive for your service as my lieutenant , and through and by virtue of your office of lieutenantry , uplift and distreinzy large quantities and measures of corn , for the transgressions and breach of the laws , and why then should skeen terme that barbarous , who himself homologats the same sense in another language , in that his above-cited chapter of king alexander the second , intituled , de forisfacturis levandis ab illis qui remanent ab ●xercitu , where in the marginal gloss upon the 4. para. speaking of the earl of fyfe , his words are , et ille non sicut comes , sed sicut marus regis comitatus de fyfe , ad rectitudines suas exigendas : and does he not again , in his de verborum significatione , in the word clanmackduff , say out of boettus , that amongst other priviledges , mackduff and his clan had the priviledge and right of a regality ; yea and does not the learned spelman say , what was gildwite to the english saxons was laghslite to the danes , and and both forisfactura to the normans , ( amerciaments with us ) where may be noticed the judicious exactness of the composer , in his prefixing the general word laghslita , to be amerciat by victual or corn ; for laghslitae , sayes one , anumerandae sunt mediis & levioribus delict● , quorum mulctae pietatis intuitu , & per misericordiam imponuntur . nec graviora crimina , sayes another , inter laghslitas simplices numerata aut levia , quaeque instar graviorum mulctata quisquam opinabitur . and so how methodically does here our old versificator proceed to faults and crimes of greater guilt , and more special denomination yet for a while still under the conduct of knippite . sive gnaros spalando spados , i conjecture to signifie , whether such as are known cunning , or accustomed to want , or put away their weapons of warfare : the two first words being latine , i hope will not be refused ; the construction of spaland● , i take to be a gerund for an infinitive , gnaros spalare a counterfeit conjugation from an old french word , espaler to scatter , cast away , or spread abroad . spados from espade or espadon , in the same language , a sword , and by a metonymy , for any weapon . neither needs it be strange that these words are borrowed from the old french , which did depend upon the teutonick and high german , as the modern does now more upon the latin● ; and that wanting and away putting of weapons of warfare were with us reputed crimes , and punished as such , see skeen himself , in the 27 chap. of the first statutes of king robert the bruce , de armaturis pro guerra & poena corum quo eas non habent ; which is there said to be forfaulture , or escheate of all his goods , and in the last chap. of the same statutes , entituled , non licetrendere arma hostibus regni : the punishment is loss of life , and limb , and all they can tyne to the k●ng , which must be goods . and it were but frivolous to alledge that these statutes are lo●g after the upsetting of macduffs cross : for , how many things are punishable by the common law and practick of the kingdom , before they become statutorie : and does not their coming under a statute , imply a prior custom ? yea , an● who knows , but that after such a catastrophe as was at , and before , the bruces coming to the crown , they might be rather but revived , then original . and have not our subsequent laws for weapon-shawings been founded upon thir customs , to prevent such inconveniences for the future ? sive nig , and here we must return again to the saxon , nig , for nighwite , the syllable wite , mulcta poena , being left out , which is sometime ordinarie ( our ancestors delighting much in monosyllables ) and the rather allowable in this metrical composure , nig or nigh contracted from nithing , nidling or niderling such as stay away from the host ; for , sayes not ; malmesberiensis , jubet ( scilicet ●ex ) ut compatriotas advocent ad obsidionem venire , nisi siqui velin● sub nomine niderling , quod nequam sonat remanere , angli qui nihil miserius putarent quam h●jus●e vocabuli dedecore aduri catervatim ad regem , confluunt & invincibilem exercitum faciu●t and sayes not matthew paris , vt ad obsidionem ventant jubet nisi velint sub nomine nithing , recenseri ▪ angli qui nihil contumeliosius & vilius estimant , quam hujusmodi ignominioso vocabulo &c. and does not spelman deduce nidling , à vocabulis anglo normanicis , nid , id est , nidus & ling pullus , ac si ignavi isti homines , qui in exercitum proficisci nolunt pullorum instar essent , qui de nido non audeant prodire domi latitantes & torp●scentes . and have we not the above cited 15 chap. of our alexander the second , entituled , de foris facturis levandis ab illis qui remanent ab exercitu regis , where the earle of fyfes priviledge is expresly reserved to him , qua marus regis ad rectitudines suas exigendas ; and wh●t be the pains and punishments of such as stay from , or desert the kings host , are they not sufficiently known , and freshly remembred by us to this day ? fig for figwi●e , figwita , or fyghtwita , the mulct of such as by fighting raises a fray , trouble , or disturbance in the host , or perhaps more generally , mulcta rixarum cum verberibus , vel ipsae pugnae and ranulphus cistrensis calls fy●twite , amerciamentum pro conflictu ▪ and have we not a severe certification in a subsequent statute against such a raises a fray in the host , 54 act , 12. par. ja 2 d. and is not the word fight y●t plain with us ? lorea by wrong orthographie ▪ pro lothea ( i suppose ) from the saxon hloth , hlode , the saxon aspiration being left out in the transcribing as is ordinary , the saxons having a peculiar way of fixing aspirations on their consonants , by ingrossing them with the same figure , as the greeks in their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the r. here written for th , the saxon figure of both being apt to impose one for another , if not narrowly noticed : qui de hloth suerat accusatus abneget per centum viginti hidas , & sic emendet : hoc est , sayes spelman , qui ●urmae illegitimae interfuisse arguitur , &c. and hlothbota , mulcta ejus est qui turmae il●egitimae intersuerit , bo●e saxonicum , compensatio emendatio ; and have we not a phrase in some places , they clod together , from the saxon hlode turma , , and how far unlawful meetings and convocations of the leige ; have been , and yet still are troublesome to this kingdom , these that run may read : and if this word be rightly deduced , it seems , our forefathers have very prudently here placed it among the thick of the cryms , which makes me the rather admire , why so much noise hath in this our age been made for suppressing them , as if unlawfull meetings had never been thought a cryme with us , till of late , i know some may incline to deduce this word from lot , of the saxon hlot , sors , pars tributi sive solutionis alicujus quam inter alios quis tenetur praestare , sayes sp●lman ; so that such would make the meaning here to be a gift or s●r●ender of all unlaws or escheats belonging to the king , and in that so often cited 15 chap. of the statutes of alexander the second , in the 5 parag . some ground may be there for such a conjecture from de cavellis vero , &c. and some such priviledge is yet granted to the house of argyle , in point of escheats ( or unlaws for crymes ) which yet here i conceive sufficiently included in knigththite , mairi● , and therefore likes best of the first exposition of the special cryme of unlawfull convocations , with liberty to the candid reader to choose as he pleases . lauriscos , i suppose should be read leudiscos , from leudis , leodis & leudum , quae verba dicuntur pro wergildo , de capitis estimatione leudi soccisi scilicet de compositione quam aliter weram & wergildum , vocan . leudis , vasallus , cliens , homo ligius , subditus : so leudiscos may signifie the amerciaments which were then due to the king by and attour the kinbote ) for killing of a free leidge . and that it was the custome among the northern nations , rather to amerciat then to take bloud for bloud , hear tacitus , germani veteres & aquilonares gentes , qui jugum pariter & leges omni europae imposuere gravissima delicta ipsaque homicidia pecuniis commutabant : and another saying , poenarum enim ratio apud mediorum saeculorum homines in mulctis , potius quam in sanguine sita fuit . for lauringem , i willingly would read laricingin , robbrie and theft , for thus with the n it is in the plural number from laricinium , the french larrecin , and both belike from the latine latrocinium , where sayes spelman , prisca anglorum lex larricinium divisit in majus & minus , the one with violence and force , the other without , the one in things of greater moment , the others of less : hence the legal tearm petit larcens , yet in use with the english . lauria , i would read lairia , for lairwite layrwit , or leirwite , stupri seu concubitus illegitimi mulcta in adulteros , fornicatores , virginumque corruptores animadversio ( belike in thir lines a rape , as they are expounded relative to the girth ) from the saxon lagan , concumbere legar , concubitor , & wi●e , quasi concubitoris mulcta . and sayes not clearly spelman , ad maneriorum dominos ( nescio an ad omnes ex consuetudine ) olim pertinuit jurisdictio de nativis suis ( id est servis & ancillis ) corruptis cognoscendi multamque delinquentibus , tam viris quam foeminis inferendi ad quosdam etiam non de his solum sed & de aliis quibuscunque intra dominium ipsorum sic peccantibus , and have we not yet the word laire in childbed laire and others . luscos , i do not here take to be the latine luscus , but that the word should be rather written , liscos , for , or from fliscos , the letter f , being lest out to make the line run the closser upon the letter l. fliscos , fugitivos , fugitives , the words flee , flight , and flisk , sufficiently known , as to flisk up and down here and there , as fugitives use to do , who dare not well stay long in one place , all from , or in great affinitie with leipa , si quis à domino suo sine licentia discedat , ut leipa emendetur , which spelman understands , de profugo . et coloburtos , i read , colovurtos , or yet rather colovortos , or colovertos : but like the vowel u , is written in the third syllable , to clinch the better by bur , with the last word of the line : and every bajane knows the affinitive betwixt the letters , b. and u. the signification however i take to be runawayes , such as run away from their colours , and culvertagium , i find a reproachful tearm of cowardice , which spelman thinks to come from culvert a dove , à columbina timidiatte , perhaps ( as well , if not better ) from vertere colobium : sure i am , we have the word turn-coat , allusive to its sense ; and may not our disdainful word collie derive its pedegree hence ? sic fit tibi bursea burtus , and so through the amerciaments and unlaws of the above written crymes , your purse shall be heavy , that is , your gains and advantage the greater , bursea for bursa , and is not the word burthen , of known signification to the meanest ? and thir above written words would i rather , at least more especially expound with a relation to the regalitie , and its priviledges , in favours of the earle , yet not excluding some benefits of a sanctuary to the transgressours ( upon a composition ) as the reader at his pleasure may best incline to . but for my own part ( with a just deference to better judgements ) as i should attribute the preceeding lines , rather to the regalitie , so should i give the subsequent more to the sanctuary . exitus et blaradrum , would i read exitus et bladadrum , a genetive , as maldraradrum , from blade a weapon by which a mortal wound is or may be inflicted : hence with us blade , a sword , or sharp edged weapon , and with the countreymen , to give a blad , blaw , or after the english dialect , a blow , all ( it would seem ) from the greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , laedo , and does not spelman say , that the saxons in their language agreed with , and followed much more the graecians , then the romans . sive lim , whether on a limb , sive lam , id est , lath , lith , ●ra lit , the vowel i , commuted for a , and the letter m , fort , or th , it being usual for the poets then , who were the priests , to run much upon a letter ; and is it not given for a rule , literae ejusdem ordinis & organi inter se sunt permutabiles ; and here th , being consonans aspirata , is not so intirely and depress'dly a mute , but that it may be changed for a liquid in a saxon poem . limb , membrum cum ●sse lith , articulus cum nervis . and is not lath used for what is plyable by , with , or on some ligament . labrum , i take here to signifie life , by some catechresis of the author , allusive to the phrase , our life is in our lip . propter magidrim ▪ i would write , magidrin , familias cognationis , seu cognatorum , from the saxon maeg cognatus , , sayes spelman , the diphthong being abreviated to the vowel , ( as is ordinary in the transcribing or compounds of that language ) mag , mage , or maghe , a kinsman , or cousin : whence we use the word maech , for affinis to this hour and hired , hidre , or hider , which verstegan interprets a linage , a family , hidrin , in the plural number : the saxons making that by adding n , as we do now s , and leaving out the aspiration in the composition : does not thus magidrin better quadrat and agree with the priviledge skeen gives by that girth , to the clanmack-duffe , then to take propter for prope , as some would , and magidrim for mugdrim , because forsooth , the cross stands upon , or near a place of that name : but allowing their conjecture , what sense or cohaesion can they make from this , their prope mugdrim ? yet a little to convince them , dare they not rather think , their mugdrim bears that name from this magidrin , in the lines , and imports as much , as the land , or place lying beside , or about the cross , of the kindred . and seing there are yet the vestiges of some old buildings at mugdrim , would it be any heresie to think , that sometimes dwelt there an overseer , to notice such as came to , and claimed the benefit of , the sanctuarie ? which skeen sayes , was such to the kindred of mackduff , that when any manslayer , being within the ninth degree of kin and bloud to mackduffe , came to that cross , and gave nine kye and a colpindach , he was free of the slaughter committed by him . and thus hath our learned skeen made us understand , hoc oblatum . accipe smeleridem , and for your oblation , receive an oblivion , an indemnitie , a pardon ; whence belike we yet have the word smeire , smeare , smore , as if a thing so covered over , by consequence may be presumed to be forgotten , or smeleris , smeleridis , ( after the greek way , as from spelman , i have said , was but ordinarie with the saxons ) quasi abstersio , detersio , purgatio , form 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , abstergo , detergo , purgo . i know some would have smeleridem , to signifie a kiss , from smeirikin , a word so used in some places : but sure , our smeleridem here must import more otherwayes , alas ! this priviledge would prove to the man-slayer , but as in the proverb , a kiss and a drink of cold water : but because the conjecture came ( as i heard ) from a man of reverence and reading , let me ingross it thus , for this your offering or gift ( to wit , of the kye ) and by kissing of the cross , receive ye an oblivion . super limpide lampida labrum , sufficiently explained already , only i could have wisht they had come to my hand under a more saxon garb : limthite lamthita , the saxon th , in the transcribing being often turned to b , d , or p , whether from the ignorance of the saxon character , or euphoniae gratia , for good companies sake of the words with which they are conjoyned : and that i had reason to reduce most of these words to the saxon , i now ( from what i have said ) referr to the courteous reader , and hope i shall not be judged unreasonable to think these lines , as i got them , might be miswritten in their orthography , whether from the misunderstanding of the saxon character , if they were so ingraved , or ( after so many centuries ) even of any other in which it might have been cut , since none who knows any thing , but knows it wants not its own difficulty to read but the characters of an age or two from our selves , be they written in parchment , or ingraven in brass or stone : as for instance , i shall not stick to say they be no small clerks , whom i could hold upon a wager , would they go to st. andrews , they should hardly at the first view , read me distinctly , with one breath , the inscription of bishop kennedies tomb , in the chappel of st. salvators colledge , though he died but in the year , 1466. and seing i have heard several copies and various readings of these lines ( should i rather say of the inscription upon this cross ) all differing amongst themselves , why may not i ( seeing skeen , of the two last which being most stuffe with latine , might be thought most legible , sayes no more , then , that they appeared to be conform to that purpose ) crave leave to offer mine , which to the intelligent will not appear very dissonant from the coppy i have already here transcribed , and the less will the difference yet be , to any who knows the saxon character , yea , and what if in some characters our predecessours wrote not as the english ? does not every language have its dialects differing sometimes in whole syllabications , as in the lettering , writing , and pronunciation , ( not to speak of the injuries of weather in so long a tract of time ) so upon all adventures , i willingly would rectifie and read my copy thus , maldraradrum dragos mairia laghslita largos spalando spados sive nig fig knighthite gnaros lothea leudiscos laricingen lairia liscos et colovurtos sic fit tibi bursia burtus exitus et bladadrum sive lim sive lam sive labrum propter magidrin et hoc oblatum accipe smeleridem super limthide lamthida labrum . and this my reading with thir orthographical amendments , i submit to the discretion of the judicious , allowing any to use either the roman p or the saxon th , in what words i have here altered as they think fit , or shall agree best with their ear and fancy ; and having already been so full upon every word , i hope a closs interpretation needs not be here expected , because belike it may relish better , that ( from what i have said ) every man be his own interpreter . yet not too much to burden the memory of the reader , may i briefly paraphrase it ; for a verbatim exposition here , as in all the old tongues ( and they say the teutonick , whereof the saxon is but a branch , came with twisco from babel ) would sound a little harsh , as well in respect of the idiotisms of the two languages , as that most of the words are legal terms , or relating thereto , and so will hardly allow a narrow and precise exposition : and although the ground work be saxon , yet appears it under a latine mask ; therefore as i said , i crave pardon to paraphrase it under one view thus , ye earl of fyfe , receive for your services , as my lieutetenant by right of this regality , large measures of victual or corn , for the transgressions of the laws , as well from those as want or put away their weapons of warfare , as of such as stays away from or refuses to come to the host , or those that raises frayes or disturbances therein , or from such as keep , haunt , and frequent unlawful convocations ; together with all amerciaments due to me , for the slaughter of a free leige , or for robbery and theft , or for adultery and fornication within your bounds , with the unlaws of fugitives , and the penalties due by such cowards as deserts the host , or runs away from their collours ; thus shall your gains be the greater . and yet further , to witness my kindness , i remit to those of your own kindred , all issues of wounds , be it of limb , lith , or life , in swa far as for this offering ( to wit , of nine kyne and a queyoch ) they shall be indemnified for limb , lith , or life . and thus have i adventured to read and explain this old inscription , quae molta tenet anteiqua sepolta ; and which , with skeen's good leave , i can no otherwise condemn for barbarous , then that it is saxon under a latine cover ; where it would be remembred , that after the goths and vandals came into italy , the purity of the roman tongue was at a loss , untill somewhat revived in the last centurie , and that the poets about malcome canmore's time , were ordinarily the priests , and those of no great reading , and for the most part no great and exact linguists , or so neat and closs in their poesie ; as witness that composition of the carmelite frier 's upon the battel of bannockburn , some hundreds of years after the setting up of this cross : and as this was one of , if not the oldest regality in this countrey , so by the priviledges hereby granted , it will to any understanding man appear to be very great ; whence belike we have that common phrase , the kingdom of fife , ( an epithet given to no other shire ) as if mackduff had enjoyed his estate much after the way of hugh lupus ( or more properly de abrincis ) in his earldom of chester , of whom it is said , he enjoyed that earldom from his uncle the conqueror , adeo libere ad gladium , sicut ipse rex tenebat totam angliam ad coronam ; and yet i cannot affirm that fife was ever a palatinate ; but sure the priviledges of this regality and sanctuary were somewhat more then ordinary . and this our mackduffs posterity continued in a line male till the dayes of king david the bruce : for one of them i find governour of perth for the second baliol , after the battel of duplin , for which , whether he was forfaulted , or that his estate and honours , through want of issue-male , went with a daughter , i cannot positively averr : for , one william earl of fife i find a witness in a charter , granted by king david 2d , to the scrimzeour of didupe , in the 29. year of his reign , whom i conceive to be that william ramsay said by skeen to have been made earl of fife by king david , withall priviledges , & cum lege quae vocatur clanmackduff , who might have married a daughter of earl duncans , as well because he got all the old priviledges confirmed to him ▪ as that in the scrimzeours charter , he is placed before the earle of march ; it not being so probable that the king would have given the priviledges , and precedencie of the old earles of fyfe to a new stranger , if he had not had an interest of bloud . and why should we too rashly conclude that noble familie , whose predecessors had deserved so well of the crown , extinct upon a forefaultour for holding the town of perth for the second baliol : since our historian sayes no more , but that he was sent prisoner to the castle of kildrummie , and that he makes him also a prisoner to the baliol , with the earles of murray , monteth , and others ; who , as he sayes , after the battel of duplin , were rebus desperatis coacti jurare in verba balioli . neither were the bruce's too strick and severe in their forefaultours , ( but upon great and singular provocations ) studying rather to gain and reconcile the subject by indemnities , and oblivions , then to exasperate them by too sharp punishments ( especially when the baliols had some pretence and shadow of right ) but what became of this william ramsay , i cannot say ; whether he was forefaulted , or whether through want of issue , the earledom of fyfe returned to the crown , or whether he had a daughter who was married to robert the governour , who enjoyed the estate and honours of fyfe : but if as full in its priviledges as the old mackduffs , or william ramsay , i dare not determine . but skeen does positively tell us , that one spence of wormeston laid claim to , and enjoyed the priviledge of the sanctuarie , upon his killing of one kinninmonth , as being within the degrees of kindred to mackduffe . the earle of weems , and the laird of mackintosh speak themselves truely descended in a line male from this our mackduffe , by two of his sons ; but since i have seen nothing in write , as i shall be tender of their honour , not doubting but that they are sufficiently able from good documents , to evince their assertions to any who may be concerned ; so i hope , it shall give no offence , though i glance at what i have from tradition . mackintosh then ( be he the elder or the younger brother ) in his mother tongue calls himself to this very day , maktosich● vichdhu●e , ( that is , filius thani filii duffi : the son of the thane , who was the son of duffe ) whose predecessor some three or four generations down from mackduffe , was in the days of k. william the lyon , by means of his uncle mackdonald of the isles , matched to the heretrix of the clanchattan , by whom he got the lordship of lochaber : the jurisdiction or stewartrie whereof , as the laird of mackintosh yet retains , so quarters he the coat of mackduffe in the chief corner of his shield . the earl of weems ( be he from the younger brother or elder ) yet possesses for his inheritance , a part of the old mackduff's estate in fyfe : and whose progenitor , sir david weems , ambassador for the maiden of norway upon the death of k. alexander the third , is by buchanan ( nothing lavish of his titles ) styled , equus fifanus illustris . and doth not the earle of weems quarter also the armes of the earle of fyfe , in his first and last escutcheons . but as upon conference , i have met with an objection or two , so indulge me , reader , i pray , for your fuller satisfaction , briefly here to repeat them with my answers : which ( seing i leave every man to his own judgement ) may i hope , be neither an impertinent , nor altogether an unpleasant diversion . first then , was it alledged , that neither mackintosh , nor weems , give the surname of mackduffe : and what then ? will any pretender to the least knowledge of any antiquity , or reading , urge the arguement as conclusive , that therefore they are not of the same stock , or bloud ; yea , even by a line male but ( not here to debate , whether at that time any other surnames , then patronymicks , were fixed to a family or progeny ) can there be a clearer deduction then duffe , mackduffe ( who was the thane ) and macktosich-vichdhuie , or would the movers of this objection , put me upon the question , when surnames ( as now in use ) first setled amongst us ? and what if that was not before , perhaps considerably after , the days of macolm-canmore ( i wish those disputants would be pleased to teach me , what were the surnames of the old earles of stra●●erne , lennox , and rosse ) yea , and does not the native exposition of mackint●sh , imply him begot en ( and perchance he was of age too ) ere mackduffe was dignified with the tittle of earle , and consequently , before the return of malcolm canmore , with whom ( some say ) first came in as well that order of honour , as the customes of our surnames . and seing weems was mackintosh's brother , might not he have been ( and if elder surely , and even though the younger belike ) in the same condition , begot before his father went to england , seing buchanan sayes of mackbeth , that upon mackduff's escape , in uxorem & liberos omnem iram effudit : the latitude whereof i leave to be measured by such , who can best fathom the passions of an exasperated tyrant . but what if i should say , as boetius observeth upon the stuarts in a much later time , that it was customary with us ( as yet somewhat it is with the second sons of barons in france ) for cadets to quit the surnames , they might have from their paternal familie , and betake themselves and their posteritie to others , and most ordinarily to t●e names of their proper possessions ( as weems here , from that word signifying caves , whereof there be no scarcity thereabout ) and so much the more easily in this case , where the paternal it self mackduffe , is but a patronymick . yet shall i not escape without a second attacque , managed with i know not what confidence : to wit , that mackduffes race , save in mackintosh and weems , continued not above a generation or two : sure then , has our buchanan exceedingly abus'd us ; who all alongst , even down to the battel of duplin , and the siege of perth thereupon , writes them still mackduff ; his words in his ninth book , being , mackduffus , fifae comes qui oppidum balioli nomine tenuerat , and a little before that above-cited place , yet more particularly , duncanus mackduffus , fifensis comes ( with others ) apud hostem captivus . and as all our writers do unanimously rank this duncan , the first secular of the six governours , after the death of k. alexander the third , so have i my self read him , in a letter from the parliament at abirbrothock to the pope , anno 1320. first of all named , and signing as earle primier of the kingdom , where his seal yet appends fresh , four times bigger then any of the rest , with the impresse as they record the armes in the books of herauldrie for the old earles of fyfe , and as yet they are quartered by mackintosh and weems . but thirdly , it is retorted upon me , that if the earle of weems , and laird of mackintosh , had been true cadets in a line male , then if the mackduff of fyfe had not been forefaulted , one or other of them would undoubtedly , as the nearest heir male , have faln to , and enjoy'd , if not the estate , at least the honours of fyfe . but the starters of this doubt , would be pleased to remember the slipperiness of its grounds ; for are not feudal tailzies , and seclusive provisions to heirs male , of a far later date with us : and so might that earledom as well in its honours , as fortune , have gone with a daughter ( as heir of line ) to william ramsay , and by a grand , child to robert stuart : yea , and who well knows in what terms our grants of honour , ( if then in malcom canmor's dayes consigned to writ ) were conceived , or if they reached collaterals ▪ and the predecessors of the earle of weems and laird of mackintosh , having come off many generations before the familie failed in the issue male , the honours might ( the relation being remote ) the more readily have been conveyed by a new patent , with a daughter or oye in favours of some noble minion , such as ( belike was this william ramsay , and ) that robert stuart the kings second son , who was sometimes governour of scotland , and duke of albanie , in the person of whose son , duke murdoch , was that earldom forefaulted to the crown , in the days of k. james the first , and not as yet given out again , none ever since injoying the title and dignity of earle of fyfe . but having thus far presumed upon , if not quite wearie● your patience , in this so thornie and mistie affair ; i must now , courteous reader , stand to the discretion of your censure , where i shall allow you , that rebus in priscis , ad unguem haud est quaerenda veritas . if on the other hand you will be pleased to grant me , fidum annalium genus , sunt pervetusta carmina . and suffer me to conclude with what skeen closeth the preface to his de verborum significatione , si quid novisti rectius istis , candidus imperti : si non , his utere mecum . finis . that , gentle reader , i may conceale you nothing ; just now , as it was a doing under the irons am i told there is an exact coppie , with a true exposition of this inscription at the newburgh , in the hands , or books of the clerk there : and yet my informer , though with us a good antiquarie and historian , could neither tell me the lines , nor the exposition . and pitie it were that so old and famous a monument in this our kingdom , should be so closlie dormant , in a poo● countrey-village , without being communicate ( for ought i know ) to any : for it should seem , our clerk-register skeen , had neither seen nor heard of it , otherwayes ( me thinks ) he would hardly have called the lines so barbarous . but this , however , i hope may invite those of the newburgh to divulge it , ( if any-such thing they have ) for it is onely truth , ( not vanity ) that here i am in quest of . and as this my weak essay , i have adventured upon , without the help of any living● so crave i no it other patron , but , courteous reader , your own candour and ingenuity . proclamation for making up men deficient in the last levies. scotland. privy council. 1694 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05661 wing s1879 estc r226041 52528980 ocm 52528980 179079 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05661) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179079) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:68) proclamation for making up men deficient in the last levies. scotland. privy council. england and wales. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to their most excellent majesties, edinburgh : 1694. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. intentional blank spaces in text. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the second day of august, and of our reign the sixth year, 1694. signed: gilb. elliot. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -army -recruiting, enlistment, etc. -law and legislation -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-04 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-05 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2008-05 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal blazon or coat of arms honi soit qui mal y pense proclamation for making up men deficient in the last levies . william and mary , by the grace of god , king and queen of great brittain , france , and ireland , defenders of the faith , to macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting ; for as much as , in prosecution of the seventh act of the fourth session of this our current parliament , cheerfully offering to us , a present levy of two thousand nine hundred and seventy nine foot , to be levyed off the several shires and burghs of this kingdom , effeiring to the proportions and numbers set down in the foresaid act. the lords of our privy council , conform to the power given to them in the foresaid act of parliament , by their instructions to the commissioners of supply within the several shires of this kingdom , of the date the eighth day of february last by past : appointed the saids commissioners furthwith , to make exact lists of the heretors and lands lyable in the said levy , that so it might be perfectly known who were lyable . and in case any men were to be put out by fractions , and that they could not agree who should furnish the body of the man , the saids commissioners should order the fractions to meet at a certain day and place , and there determine it by an equal lot , effeiring to their respective numbers of men , or the quantities of their respective valuations , as the use was in every shire ; so that every lotter was to have as many lots , as he had numbers of men , or quantities of valued rent sufficient for the outreik of a man : and in case any of the saids fractions should not meet , or should refuse to lot , the saids commissioners were authorized to appoint such as they should think fit , to meet and lot for them . and in case the person upon whom the lot fell to put out a man for himself and his fraction , should fail in furnishing the man , or should furnish an insufficient man ; then the tennents and possessors of the lands and ground belonging to the saids persons who should have put out the man , should be lyable ; and the person upon whom the lot did fall , and who failȝied to put out the man in manner foresaid , should be decerned in the sum of two hundred merks . to which act of parliament and instructions foresaid , we expected punctual and exact complyance and obedience . yet , not only a great many outreicked and furnished to serve as souldiers in the said new levy , are rejected and sent home as insufficient ; but likewise , many lyable to outreick and furnish men for the said levy , are deficient and altogether wanting , in sending out the numbers of men wherein they are lyable , conform to the said act of parliament and instructions foresaids , and thereby have incurred the penalties contained in the saids instructions , by and attour their being lyable for the persons of the men whom they were to have outreiked , conform to the said act of parliament and instructions . therefore , and for the more effectual providing the said men , and compleating the number of souldiers offered to us by the foresaid act of parliament , and exacting the penalties constitute in the foresaids instructions ; we , with advice of the lords of our privy council , peremptorly require and command the sheriff , of the several shires , and their deputs , stewarts of sewartries , baillies of regalities , and their respective deputs , and magistrats of burghs royal , within this our antient kingdom , as they wil be answerable , each of them within their own respective jurisdictions , presently upon sight hereof , to call for a list of the deficient men within their respective bounds , and of the persons who should have put out the same and upon recept thereof , where no lotting hath been made for fractions , that he immediatly cast lots amongst the saids fractions , who shall put out the man one or more , and then shall pass to the ground of his lands upon whom the lot shall happen to fall , and there immedialy pitch upon , take and apprehend a sufficient man out of his said men , able to serve us as a souldier , and commit them prisoners to the prison of the head burgh of the shire , there to be keeped at four shillig scots per diem , upon the expenses of the officer who is to receive him upon advertisement from the sheriff , or other judge foresaid who causes apprehend and commit him to the said prison : and which allowance is to be refounded to the said officer , by the pay of the said souldier , which is to be allowed to him for the said person , from the day of his being committed , as if he had been listed and inrolled as a souldier in our service ; and in like manner , shall apprehend sufficient men upon the ground of the lands of these who are deficient , according to the numbers they have not put out , and are lyable to , whether by the rule of the militia specified in the act of parliament , or other ways ; and deliver them to the next commanding officers , in manner , and to the end above mentioned : and likewise , that they cause exact the penallies mentioned in the saids instructions , from all who have incurred the same , by and attour the apprehending and delivering the man , in manner foresaid . our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly , and command , that in continent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and to the mercat-crosses of the remanent burghs of the whole shires of this kingdom , and there in our name and authority , make publick intimation of the premisses , that none may pretend ignorance . given under our signet at edinburgh the second day of august , and of our reign the sixth year , 1694. per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . elliot . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson ; printer to their most excellent majesties . 1694. the kings majesties speach [sic], to the parliament; conveaned at perth, the 25 of november, charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription b02129 of text r175756 in the english short title catalog (wing c3607a). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 b02129 wing c3607a estc r175756 52528761 ocm 52528761 178727 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b02129) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 178727) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2768:16) the kings majesties speach [sic], to the parliament; conveaned at perth, the 25 of november, charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) by j. brown, [aberdeen : 1650?] caption title. imprint suggested by wing. imperfect: creased with some loss of text. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. eng charles -ii, -king of england, -1630-1685 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1649-1660 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. b02129 r175756 (wing c3607a). civilwar no the kings majesties speach [sic], to the parliament; : conveaned at perth, the 25 of november, charles ii, king of england 1650 373 1 0 0 0 0 0 27 c the rate of 27 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2008-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-08 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the kings majesties speach , to the parliament ; conveaned at perth , the 25 of november , 1650. my lords , and gentlemen ; it hath pleased him , who ruleth the , nations & in whose hands are the hearts of kings ; by a verie singular providence , to bring mee thorow a great many difficulties , unto this my ancient kingdom : and to this place , where i may haue your , advyce , in the great matters , that concern the glory of god , and the establishment of my throne ; and that relate to the generall good , and common happiness of these three covenanted kingdoms ; over which hee hath set mee . and truely , i can not express the hight 〈◊〉 that joy , wherewith ●ee hath filled my soull , from this singular . experiment of his kyndness , non how strong and servent desyres , hee hath created in mee to evidence , my thankfulness , by studying to reygn for him and with an humble & just subordination to him ; that which increasseth my hope and confidence , that hee will yet continue to deall gratiously with mee is ; that hee hath moved mee to enter in covenant with his people , ( a favour which no other king can clame to ; ) and that hee hath inclyned mee to a resolution by his assistance , to liue and die with my people , in the defence of it . this is my resolution , j profess it before god and you : and in testimony hereof , j desyre to renew it in your presence ; and if it please god to lengthen my days , j hope my actions shall demonstate it : but j shall leaue the enlargement of this ; and what so der j should say to my lord chanceller ; whom j have commanded , to speak to you at greater length : and lykewyse , to inform you of my sence : not only of the folly , but the sinfulness of my way-going from this place , and the reasons of it . god saue the king a remonstrance concerning the present troubles from the meeting of the estaees [sic] of scotland, aprill 16. unto the parliament of england. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a11674 of text r212142 in the english short title catalog (stc 21928). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 66 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 14 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a11674 stc 21928 estc r212142 21499765 ocm 21499765 24660 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11674) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 24660) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1714:5) a remonstrance concerning the present troubles from the meeting of the estaees [sic] of scotland, aprill 16. unto the parliament of england. scotland. parliament. [2], 27 p. [cloppenburg press], [amsterdam] printed : 1640. place of publication and publisher suggested by stc (2nd ed.). signatures: a-c⁴ d². errors in paging: p. 8 and 9 misnumbered 9 and 8. reproduction of original in the harvard university. library. eng scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649. scotland -politics and government -1625-1649. a11674 r212142 (stc 21928). civilwar no a remonstrance concerning the present troubles from the meeting of the estaees [sic] of the kingdome of scotland, aprill 16. unto the parlia [no entry] 1640 12289 243 0 0 0 0 0 198 f the rate of 198 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the f category of texts with 100 or more defects per 10,000 words. 2002-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2002-04 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2002-05 tcp staff (michigan) sampled and proofread 2002-05 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2002-06 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion ir a remonstrance concerning the present troubles from the meeting of the estaees of the kingdome of scotland , aprill 16. unto the parliament of england . printed in the year of god . 1640. a remonstrance concerning the present troubles from the meeting of the estaees of the kingdome of scotland , aprill 16. unto the parliament of england . when we look unto the records of the ages past , to find out the greatest blessings that god hath bestowed on this i le , wherin we live , we cannot but acknowledge , that next to the christian faith , the union of the two kingdomes under one head , doth by many degrees exceed all other that fall in the reckoning . many practises and policies were set afoot by our princes of old , to hasten this work : but all in vain did the plots of men strive to crosse or prevent the councell of god , who had reserved for us and our fathers that singular happines , to see that union begun neither by a breach of faith , nor by bloud , but as the gift of god , to fall in our hands by the ordinary gate which the princes right sets open unto all , and the generall and common interest of both nations did heartily receive and imbrace . with what successe this union hath begun and continued to this day , the peace and plenty we have enjoyed all this time , can witnesse in part , whiles all the rest of europe almost , round about us , hath been a field of blood and desolation . what apprehension the enemies of our religion had at our peaceable conjunction , and with what eye of jealousie the neighbour states did look upon us , and envie our happines , the history of these times can beare record : but for the present , in regard of what hath passed these many yeares by-gone , and what we presently feel and fear , we may truly confesse to our own guilt and great dishonour , that neither scotland nor england unto this day hath righty understood or made use of this ra●●blessing of heaven , for increasing their respect abroad , or securing t●eir own safety at home ; neither have the reformed churches found tha●comfort and relief which they did expect from us in the day of t●eir distresse , but on the contrary we have been made , even against ou●wills , a br●k●n reed , a rocke of offence , and a shipwrack unto all that have fought unto us for shelter from the storme , and to our selves the one nation against the other , a rod of correction and jealousie , in the hands of a few wicked and ungodly men , men of sep●ration , who divide the king from his people , and the people ●●om their king ; and who raise up brethren ag●in●t brethren● that they in the end might prey and make havock of all . amongst many that have been authors of these evils under which the two kingdoms have for a long time groaned , and belike must either now or never be disburthened , none deserve so justly to be challenged in the first place as some amongst you who call themselves church-men , but have left their station to become ignorant and unhappy statesmen , who have made the church and the tenets therof , an instrument of bondage to the subject , of liberty to themselves , and of unjust usurpation to the prince , whom we had reason to feare long agoe by your example , and whom we find named as the chief instrument and object of your just feares of the change of religion and government of estate in the kingdome of england , in that grave and solemn remonstrance that was made not many yeares agoe , by the house of commons to the kings majesty , if that had stopped them any way , your pulpits and pamphlets can beare witnesse for them and the rest of their crue since that time , yea how constant they are to the●e wretched ends , their attempts upo● us , and that deep plot of ob●ruding the seeds of all popish superstition and tyranny , upon our kirk , in the bookes of common prayer , and canons , will be a strong evidence for them how much they have deserved of rome , to make that kirk which had departed farthest from her to be fi●st in the return , and exemplar unto others and how much more they may yet deserve of them , and all the enemies of those tw● kingdomes , if they ●ffer for a sacrifice in a blo●die warre , the rel●g●on and liberties of both the nations , to appease the fury o● ther pres●n● disapp●intment , and prevent the shame of their de●e●ved ●all . certai●ly the posterity will hardly beleeve as we who have ●ee● it cannot but wonder ) how it hath come to passe , that the subjects of scotland ( whose union with engl●●d this day is known to be of g●ea●●r fo●ce , ●or her assurance at home , and strength abroad , then all the alliances , pra●tises , policies , conques●s your p●inces have made from the begi●ni●g ) ●hould have so long pe●itioned their native prince r●sidi●g amongst you to do them j●stice wher●f he is debtor to his pe●ple , and to heare their just complaints against the us●rpa●ion of a ●ew men , who were undermining the p●o●ess●●●●ligion and government of the state , and to suffer them to live according to their laws , and yet could never be hea●d nor answered in the poin● of their just desires , farre lesse will they guesse what hath been the ground of that merit and trust of one domineering pr●lat in the affection of the prince , that it should be more forcible to disswade , then all the supplications and int●rc●ssions of so ancient and faithfull a n●tion , who among all the kingdomes of europ● have longest continued and main●ai●ed in one line the honour of the royall crown , toge●her with the preservation of their own liberties , should have power to move . truly for our selves when we call to mind what courage and co●stancie god hath given unto ●s since the beginning of these troubles , ●o stand for the maintenance of our religion and liberties , that we have not suffered our selves to be drawn headlong unto the servit●de of soul●s and bodies , from which there had been no hope of liberty for us or our po●●erity , and which in regard of ou● conjunction with you under one king , had been a violent prejudice , and of dangerous conse●uence for your liberties when they come to be questioned in their own time and place , and on the other part when we remember what strange and violent wayes were taken by our adversaries to keep from the englis● nation the knowledge of our affaires , and what unjust and false aspersions were laid upon all our ac●ions and intenti●ns● to provoke you to be actors of that re●●nge that was determined against us by the insolent advice of such● who now govern his majesties councels , and ●ettle their own ill acquired g●eatnes by the oppression of his obedient subjects in their religion and liberties in both kingdomes , we cannot but bl●sse god who armed u● with an invinsible pa●ience and resolution to es●hew for our part● 〈◊〉 the uttermost of our power any nationall breach : for ye may remember when co●trary to our expectation his majesty by all the evil councell of those men , did march towards us with an armie , we neglected all courses which might advance our humane safety , rather then start from any jot of our obedience , or give any seeming distaste to our deare brethren of england , and rather adventured the ruine of our own countrey , then indangered theirs : yea further , when we did with horrour and amazement heare those unexampled proclamations given out against a whole nation , who were never tainted with the least thought of disobedience to their prince his just commands , according to the rule of their lawes , notwithstanding of this great prov●cation , there was nothing to be heard amongst us but vows for his majesties prosperity , and hearty desires from all to spend their bloud for the increase of his estate , and service of his crown , and who abhorred then to be reduced to that extremity , as to arme themselves for their own defence and preservation . it will scarcely be beleeved by strangers , by what means two nations so near together , and so straitly tyed in all the bonds of goodwill and mutuall respect , where there was so little cause of espousing these quarrells , wherin none of the nations were concerned or wronged by the other in their own proper rights , should be brought to such a posture , and near so dangerous a rupture , that would not been easily ( to say no more ) p●eced up again in our dayes , but it was the worke of god , and it should be wonderfull in our eyes , who in the carriage of all this great busines , hath made every stoppe and ●et● casten in by the adversary , a step of advancement , to the furthering of his cause , as is well known and acknowledged by all whom god hath honoured to be the least instruments in this work , who also made this a singular meane to testifie our loyaltie , and the sincerity of our hearts , where we presented our humble and just desires unto his majesty , and for the honour of the cause which we maintain , and the tender regard to the credit of our own prince ( although then armed against his own people ) and for the brotherly respect unto the nobility , and others of our neighbour nation , in●ending nothing , we beleeve , but to follow the king , although really sa●isfying the ambi●ion and bloud thirs●ing reve●ge of a miserable prelat . we laboured in the treatie to give all satisfaction on our part that could be required of most loyall subjects , and sensible of our kings honour ●ourenemies being judges ) even to our own apparent disadvantage , for we delivered all places into his majesties hands , which were desired , in testimony of our obedience , and although they might have been in our hands , pledges of assurance for performance of these articles that were agreed to be granted in the following assembly and parliament ; and now contrary to our expectation are turned for engines of terrour , and fetters of slavery to frustrate us from obtayning the benefit of that capitulation . notwithstanding of all breach of promise we cannot but professe according to our tender respect to our prince , wherein we are inwardly g●ieved for the dishonour that is done to his majesty by the bad instruments that are about him , that neither we were then ever-reached , nor do we yet repent upon our part for that great trust and confidence we reposed upon his majesty , for we did then remember that we were dealing with our prince , with whom as we should not strive for appurtenaces , when the maine was granted , so we might rest assured , that if he could not be brought in his own mind to judge aright how farre he had been misled against us his own people , who had given such an ample testimony of our trust , and of the interest we should have in his favour above all other , but still continue to pursue any advantages to our prejudices : we did not otherwise think but when ever he had a minde to breake , he could never want ill grounded pretence , to alledge against us ; and it was fittest for us rather to hazard the disadvantage , and commit the successe to god what ever prejudice we should suffer ; for if the word of a king which should be the oracle of truth to his people , and the faith of promises and contracts under hand and seale , which is the ground-work of trust in all humane society , and is sacred and inviolable amongst infidels and turks , may not justly challenge for us the performance of the articles of the treaty upon his majesties part , then may we truly think that nothing we could have framed or desired then , would have been for our safety of any avail unto us , as nothing had done us good or succeeded according to our minde in all these things we have condescended unto ( wherunto we were not oblidged by any duty or respect whatsoever , otherwise then that we might not be defrauded of the full and reall performance of the articles of agreement ) but on the contrary it doth evidently appeare by all that hath past , that there hath been no desire nor meaning of peace in the hearts and minds of our adversaries unto this day ; for all the businesse of the capitulation hath been taken by them as a cloak to cover their more cunning and crafty designes , hoping thereby to weaken us in time by their wicked policie , whom they could not then overcome by open force : making us a ●how to dissolve all forces on either side that they might lay the foundation of a more dureable warre , by setting strong garrisons on the border , receiving the strong holds of the kingdome to be keeped after that condition they were in before these troubles began , and presently preparing them for nests of violence to the chief parts of the kingdome : calling forth by his majesties letters a great number of our chief men under weak pretences of businesse ( when all the matters of the treaty had been ended with a few of that number ) unto barwick , and when some of them came , keeping matters in the clouds untill the rest were come , and sending them back again like stales to bring in their fellows , and when this did not hold , laying then plots deep and a farre off to entrap some of our principall men , as god hath wonderfully discovered since , and will more and more to the confusion of these who have been authors and abetters to such base assasinats . and which hath been the master-piece of their ●ubtill device : suffering the assembly to goe on and determine all matters of the kirk that had been in question . the commissioner in the kings name consenting to all the acts that passed , promising also to ratifie them all in the parliament that was presently to follow , plotting hereby that what they gave with the one hand , they would take away with the other , for this seeming of setling matters in the assembly , and withholding the civill sanction of the parliament for their being and existance in the common-wealth , as it would make them really of no effect , so it did gain a colour and pretext to that designe they did most intend : that the next rupture , to which they were preparing , should not be for matters of religion which were all setled in the assembly , as they did alledge , but for other civill differences in the common-wealth , and truly in all appearance the matters of the kirk were setled in that assembly , with the consent of the commissioner , but that wise men began to doubt of the sincerity of the work , when they found him by his after declarations and explanations digging ●● posterne to escape and make way , for his after den●all of what had been concluded . and in these tearms the parliament did begin , and hath continued not to settle the affairs of the kirk as was promised , and was certainly expected by us : but to bring in a precedent of servitude ( which neither we no● our fathers were acquainted with ) and so it hath been broken off and adjourned , by his majesties own authority , without consent of the ●states , which is di●●ctly against the ●aws and prac●is●s of this kingdome , and contrary to the articles of agr●ement : and although our predecessours took another course , yet we came onely with supplications and prayers , and to shew our invincible obedience unto his majesty , sent up our commissio●ers to london , who were rejected , and never seen nor heard , and yet hoping with this unexampled patience to overcome the malice of our adversaries , we send up again our commissioners with prop●sitions that were so just , as that they contained nothing but what was before granted unto us , under his majesties hand and seal , nor could receive any denyall from a picus and just prince , as being all comprehended in this . and which had been the summe and subject of all our supplications , protestations , informations , declarations , from the beginning , namely , that the fundamentall laws of the kingdome , which had been violated , and the religion which was manifestly infringed , might in a free assembly and parliament be again confirmed , and the unworthy authors legally questioned , and which had been more expresly set down in the articles of pacification , that as there according to the tenor of the articles of agreement , all matters civill were to be judged by parliaments , and all ecclesiasticall matters by the assemblies of the kirk : and that as the assembly promised by his majesty had been granted and had concluded the differences of the kirk , so his majesty would not delay or deny the conclusion of the parliament , for ratifying the acts of this assembly , and settling other differences of the common-wealth , a● was fully agreed in that treatie at the kings camp , yet these propositions and desires being so necessarie and vitall unto this kingdome could find no accesse unto the eares of the gracious king , by reason of the powerfull diversion of the archbishop of canterbury , and deputie of ireland , who ( strengthened with the high and mighty faction of papists neare his majesty ) onely side in all matters of●spirituall and temporall affairs , and makes the necessity of their service to his majesty appear in being the only fit instruments ( under the pretext of vindicating his majesties honour ) to oppresse both the just liberties of his free subjects , and the true reformed religion in all his kingdomes . in which devilish designe , we have great cause to say they are far advanced , if the granting of a free assembly and parliament to us at this time , which hath been the ground of all our just desires from the beginning , and the conclusion of the treati● this last yeare , as the onely mean to cure all the evills of kirk and state , and settle the peace and welfare of both kingdomes , prove in the end , as it appeareth this day , like the councel of trent to the christian kirk , which was appointed for reforming , the abuse therof , yet through the ambition and covetousnesse of kirk-men and the miserable jealousies of the princes of the time , who minded more their private end and interest then the cause of christ and his kirk , was found in effect the active engine and instrument to establish and settle the tyranny of the pope and his clergie : wherfore the greater and more lively are our apprehensions of danger at this time , that all these c●ooked and crosse plots , interchecking one another , in denying a parliament to us , where it was promised upon the honour of a king , and for the safety of two such nations , in granting it unto you , where it was not expected , for the reasons that all wise men cannot but remember , and in forcing one upon ireland , where none is desired : giving out commissions to destroy us before we can apprehend any other or new guiltinesse , but that we have been constant suters for the conclusion of the parliament , and the fulfilling of the articles of the treaty , raising our parliament contrary to the laws , and the expresse articles of the agreement ; inforcing garisons upon us , that they might force us to a necessary denyall of such unreasonable demands , and to a necessity to provide for our selves : that all these , we know , are done and devised to pick a quarrel , and to be the ground of a false and wyre drawn remonstrance against us , and now by the particular instigation of these men we named before , a mighty army is preparing , and an utter ruine threatned to our religion and countrey . lest in regard of these premisses , our silence in so necessary a time should argue a neglect of our duty to god and our king , the safety and honour of our conntrey , the peace and ●elfare of both the nations , what so nearly trenches to the prejudice and hazard of all these , cannot be longer forborne ; therfore we professe before the christian world , and to our dear brethren of england , especially the representative body of the kingdome , now happily conveyned in both the houses of parliament , whom it most concerns , that we cannot otherwise judge and esteem , but that all these councels that have been given of late by these intemperat counsellors , who direct the course of all affaires , do not onely proceed from such persons as to serve their own ends under colour of advancing his majesties prerogative , doe weaken royall power , and bring the kingdomes unto confusion , but that they truly are first hammered in spain and in the conclave , and put into the hand of their cunning artisans among you , who have ever been a viperous brood , which with tooth and naile , have assayed to rent the bowels of their own mother , yea who never sooner learned to obey the roman church as their mother , but assoon they acknowledged the catholick king for their father , and their own king for an usurper , if they think him to be an heretick● so that we are perswaded that neither the invincible armado of the eighty eight , nor the gun-powder plot , nor any other royall navie from thence , like unto that which came the other yeare upon your coast , ( the which ye had the more reason to suspect that it came so unlooked for and at so unseasonable a time ) needs to be attempted any more for the ruine of this i le , but onely ●hat they be carefull ( as we doubt not they are ) that the fire of this civil warre which hath been so long smoaking may be once kindled , and that they be ready under-hand to adde fewell to the flame , wherin they will not be wanting , especially where every thing is so near that can furnish matter , and all is farre off that can help to extinguish the same , when it is once begun , yea , which is worse for us all , when it is apparent , that it cannot be setled without great hazard even of them that may seem to overcome in the end : and although that we may justly suspect that this calling of you together at this time by their suggestion , who have raised this fire of civil discord in this famous isle without your consent or advice , be rather to perswade you to bring oyle then water to quench the flame , so that in the heat of these broyles you may be induced to contribute to the overthrow of your best friends , while they avenge themselves of their enemies : notwithstanding of this , we hope that it will not be displeasant unto all good men in these honourable assemblies of both houses , that we with great joy of heart and freedome of spirit professe and declare , as we do this day , that all our obligations and mutuall assurances of love and brothterly kindnesse are so nearly twisted and joyned together with you in all duties toward god and man , prince and people , that we cannot but have the same friends and foes , either in the defence of our common safety against forraigne foes , or in the maintenance of our severall rights against inward and homebred underminers who are more dangerous , except we would depart from the onely firme rule of our own safety and preservation . and therfore since in regard of the situation of this whole isle , and the union under one head , we are all , as it were , one house , if it fall we shall be all buried in the ruines , we are all imbarqued in one ship , if it perish or split upon the rocks of division , hardly can we escape : suffer us to re●oyce with you in the midst of this storm , for this first sunne-shine of comfort and good hope that we see you who are the true pilots , brought to the helm : and give us leave to conjure you for the interest we have in the common adventure of these rich goods , our peace , our liberties , our religion , which are all in one hold , that ye abandon not the ship of the common-wealth in this tempest , although it did belong to you to have been called when the season was more calme , and yet let it be the true ground of your comfor● and encouragement , that when the skie was clear , you have forewarned our great master , of the clouds that were gathering , and although the winds were invisible then to most , yet to many of your house of commons , and others also of all ranks : they that did blow then to gather these clouds together , were well known , and from what coast they came , and many humble desires and earnest suites have been made by you to his gracious majesty , that he would not abandon his own and the kingdomes safety , unto the pleasure of men in a voyage full of dangerous and fearefull straits , in the conduct of which , they had nothing but their own ambition and privat gain , for compasse and said . and who have thrust both prince and people out of the safe harbour of the quiet calme unto this present storme , wherin they are to make profit of both our shipwrack , if in this strait it were not allowed to the meanest passenger to give warning of the imminent danger , we notwithstanding of our place and interest in your welfare might hold our peace : but since we have been in the first watch , and have indured the first and greatest torment of this storme , while you have been at rest ; for your assurance that we cannot abandon you , or leave you alone one your turne , when you are so near to give tryall of your courage and skill , you may perceive by what hath passed , that no assembly nor parliament , no rotten cable , and slipping anchor of articles and agreement , whereunto we had fastened our hopes , can be any road and harbour of safety unto us , so long as both our enemies sit at the helme and govern all courses that are to be followed amongst you . therfore before we come to advise what are in our judgement the most ●itting means ●or removing of the evils of us both , give us leave to touch in passing what we apprehend have been the concurrent causes to bring you by degrees from that height of ●appin●sse , wherin somtime ye were glorious in the sight of europe , to this gulf of misery and abasement wherein ye have fallen , and drawn us by example and imita●i●n , that in this sad repres●n●ment , as in a darke shade , the glorious light of your appearing day may be more comfortable and refreshing unto us both , which is the hearty with and assured hope of your dear brethren in scotland , because of the sensible feeling of that great mercy of god upon themselves , who have been farther in the transgression , and at a lower ebbe in mind and spirit then ye can well imagine before their troubles began ; therfore , because our evils are not of yesterday , and could not have overflowd the face of this isle on a sudden , let us search up unto the well head and period of time , whe●e and when they b●gan fi●st to spring and arise , when we left to fear others by reason of our union then began we to have need to look for evill from our selves : the sub●ile enemies of this isle knowing that what was not to be attempted by open force , was to be u●dertaken and pursued by cunning and secret practises , took the advantage of the humours of men , following commonly the nature and the conditions of the times , did make the surfets and ease of peace more dangerous to the life of the estate , then the straits and hazards of warre had been before , disposing the subjects to ease and slavery , an inuring the prince to follow their appetite and the rules of uncontrouled power : then began the publicke wayes of honour and rep●tation to be un●requented : then the use of parliaments which is the stay and strength of your kingdom to be suspected , and so these eyes and eares of the prince and people , the great councel of the land did make way peece and peece to the darke passages of the corner of a cabinet , where flatterie , malice , envy and partialitie amongst few hands , disguises with ●alse appearances without controule all that comes in their handling , and makes the people miserable , and the prince infortunat , since they have gotten ●ooting , parli●ments have been called not to ease the grievances of the subject , but to supply the necessities of the prince , and so whereas they should have helped to cur● , they have increased the diseases of the estate : and because there can be no evill humour in the body that can master your skill , if you please to apply fitting remedies , and what hav● been formerly in practise , therfore you are made to disagree amongst your selves about the method of the cure , and when you begin to incline to an agreement your consultations are broken off , and so by these meanes the common wealth languisheth without hope of relief , the princes mistakes and the peoples grief and burthens doe equally increase , and every breach of a parliament begets a new grievance and maladie to the people , so much the more dangerous and d●adly , that the authors of these abuses ) when you use not your courage and constancie to maintain that power and place which your predecessors have put in your hands , and wherof the posterity will call you to accompt , as a right of entaile and their proper inheritance which cannot be weakened in your hands without your eternall infamie , and their endlesse losse ) begin to despise you , and take courage to undermine and blow up the foundation of your once well setled e●tate : bringing you in contempt with the people , for the guard of whose liberties you have so long continued , and in hatred with the prince , for whose honour and safety it hath alwayes been , that none about him should be more powerfull , nor the laws , and nearer him in place and affection , then you whose councells could not be corrupted by ends : these are they who bringing you once to mind your owne things , and to be carelesse of the publick , have teached the princes , that all the rights and liberties of the subject , and the maintenance of them , are doales of grace , and gifts of meere favour proc●eding from the prince and not the true birth right of the subject● which they may truly challenge ) which are to be continued or changed as ther princes shall think fit : who have teached princes to use that maxime in a free kingdome to wrong ends : parliaments are in their power to begin , continue , and break them off , as they find the fruit of them good or bad , so are they to have their being , or not to be at all , thus they have done what is in them to make the royall authority , which should be like a sun beame shining for the comfort and light of others , turn to a comet and blazing star , a matter of wonder and admiration for the time , and a prognostick of worse things to follow . truly the prerogative of the prince , which hath been keeped in veneration , and as a secret untouched amongst the wisest princes and the best times ; which is that which the laws have given him above all private men , for the common safety of us all , and cannot be used to another end , but for our good , had not suffered so much in it self , and lost of its proper lustre , by the oft and common handling therof , to the mani●e●● prejudice of the subjects right , and the reall weakening of the true royall power , had it not falne in some of your clergies hand , who to the staine of the kirk and the bane of the common-wealth , have subjected all men , and all laws , to the appetite of the prince , of whom they have the absolute rule , that so under that goodly visour of his royall power , they may accomplish at last that great designe of the change of the religion and government of the estate which they have so long a●med at : whereof they cannot faile in this happy conjuncture , where all things promises them good successe . a prince enraged against his own native people , by their procurement , who will not be perswaded that they are good subjests to him , because they are avowed enemies to them , who have b●en the destroyers of their religion , and the t●oubles of the peace of the kirk , to whom it is necessary that he forget that he is their naturall prince , while he remembers that he is advanced to be the monarch of the whole ile , and with whom of necessity he is obliged to continue in this quarrel , that under the pretext of their rebellion , he may have leisure to arme , and make the one kingdome a scourge to the other , while in the end they both become sl●ves , which if they refuse , he cannot eschew of force to bring in strang●rs , and use such other power as god hath put in his hands by the doctrine of these good divines , to the establishing of the boundlesse government wherat they ayme , so by the joynt helpe of the papist , who are a strong faction amongst you of late , and of others , whom they call good subjects , and are the greatest number , who while they are going on in any course to helpe themselves , cannot think they are accomptable to god or man for any wrong they are doing to others , these also concuring who are of great number and of no small force in any state , who are content to wear fetters themselves , so they may be of gold , and they have the making of them , or helpe therunto for others , all these meeting together , they cannot misse to effectuat their designes , and these are they who look at this time to undoe us , and hope assuredly to work you to their ends . and for this effect , as it appeares , are ye called together after so many breaches and breaking up of parliaments in england , whereby his majesty had been deprived of the faithfull councels and free aides of his people heretofore , and the pressures and grievances of the subjects daily more and more increased without hope of reliefe , that all men ( who looked upon the train of affaires , and marked wha● undue courses had been taken of late , that there should be no need of their meeting , and how the number and height of offenders is increased , for whose safety it is not that parliaments come in place and request again ) may justly marvell to see this day , and in all likely-hood conjecture that either this parliament will prove the happiest that ever was in this isle for the good and peace of the kingdomes , or else ( which god forbid ) will become the fatall engine and axletree in our enemies hand , for the overthrow of kirk and state , turning our doubts unto despaires , and our feares into a certainty of confu●ion . wherfore the more need have all good men who love the truth of religion , the honnour of the king , the safety of the kingdomes in so necessary and perillous a time to be instant with god by fasting and prayer● that as the beginning of your meeting together is the subject of all mens feares and hopes , good or bad , ●o the close may be in fruit and memory● the joy of the present age , and the blessing of posterity , whereof there is no small ground of hope at this time ; for if that spirit of wisdome , courage , and true zeale for the good of religion , and safety of king and kingdomes do but begin as in former time to appeare in your councels , who knoweth what recompence god is preparing for your often disappointments in that kind : the which we are moved the rather to beleeve and expect , that the powerfull h●nd of god hath forcibly led them who have been the authors of your evils , and actours in the mischief intended against us ; against their will to call for your assistance to oppresse us : and su●ely we think that what art can invent , and malice can doe , will not be wanting ( even amongst some of your number ) to move the rest to consider aright of all the advantages of the time , and reconceal the differences that are amongst themselves and labour to seek the ease of your own burthens when you may have them at an easie rate with small expense and paines , to increase ours , and many specious pretences will be offe●ed , to hide the bad intentions of a few , and the ill consequences of their privat designes against the publick quiet of the kingdomes , but certainly a thick cloud of prejudices and misrepresenta●ions of all our businesses most assuredly be casten before your e●es , and great must that darknesse be , before so wise , so advised a judicatorie of all the choice wits in that kingdome condescend to that resolution which in effect carrieth with it , in furthering the overthrow of our religion and liberties , and in the buriall therof to begin and digge a tomb for your own to follow , and to make the end of this parliament a mean that there should never be need of any hereafter . but we expect ( right honourable ) better things of you , and such as belong properly to the happinesse of this time , for the glory of god in the advancement of his truth , for the honour of the king in punishing of the wicked , for the welfare of the kingdomes , that in our union they may be crushed , who in our division have builded their hopes , and made this warre with your brethren , the trojan horse to bring in all these calamities , which a civill warre will undoubted●y inforce upon this i le , and we are certainly perswaded that the singular wisdome and justice of your honou●able court , which can have no other end in all their counsell , but the service of his majesty , and the safety of his kingdomes ( which cannot be separated in any consideration whatsoever ) will judge otherwise of the state of our affairs , and affoord us better measure then we have found as yet at the hands of these men , who as they have been the authors of our evil , and of that corruption that was creeping in , in kirk and state , so have both you and we suffered much more by them , and have greater reason to complain of the inconvenience and mischie● of the remedie that they have applyed since , then of the disease it selfe : in vain doe they think to cover their wicked designes with the bare pretext of their zeale and affection to his majesties greatnes and dignity , seeing it tends to the ruine and destruction of his faithfull subjects , whose riches is his treasure , whose quiet is his glory , whose hearts and affections are his strong garisons that cannot be overcome , and whose pr●sperity is the happines of his crown , and miserable and wretched are the effects of that power , which produceth nothing but weaknes to the prince , and calamity to his subjects , and in vain do we expect that god will blesse in our age what he hath cursed in all ages before . let us look unto the records of former ages , and we shall ever find , that there is not any thing that doth so much move the wrath of god , as to see his worship and churches profaned , and to fall into the hands of these who have sold themselves to the world , and are devouted to the temporall service of the prince : where ever it hath been practised , it is a certain demonstration of the alteration and change of an estate , and of their miseries and disgrace who abuse it licentiously , their affaires alwayes declining even unto their end . we need not put you in mind of the stu●●es and hot contests of your best princes , and of greatest spiri●● with your archbishops at home , to keep down that papac●● they claymed to themselves amongst you , and to suffer them to be kings beside them , which could not be granted but at their discretion : they that lookt to the dangers of this time , and who they are that be the authors of this mischief intended , may easily perceive , that if all the subjects of the two kingdomes could be moved to undergoe that burthen the bishop of canterbury and his followers would put upon us , and could be peswaded in conscience , that we were bound to obey these spirituall fathers in all their commands , we should soon see they would alledge some other ground for their aspiring greatnesse , then the zeale of his majesties service and honour , and the princes that are to follow would find , that all their paines was for themselves , and to establish their own tyranny over prince and people . or , are there any so ignorant and wilfully blind to think , that all that spight and malice they carry to the covenant of scotland● is , because that it hath weakned the kings power , and made his majestie appeare so in the sight of his enemies ? if this were true , then would the pope and the king of spaine give many millions that the like were in england and ireland : they need not dissemble , we know where it pricks them , they see the hand of god in it against their unjust usurpation and worldly pomp , and they feare , that as they have found it a wall of brasse to the subjects of scotland against the fury of their malice , when they could have no protection , neither in their laws , nor in their prince , in whose saving favour they may claim speciall interest , so it may prove by example dangerous to them elswhere , and at once put an end to all these plots and designes they have to overthrow the reformed religion : and this is the cause they charge it and us with many crimes , to plant the hatred of us and that cause in the hearts of others , which is already ingraven in theirs , but we are assured the equitie , justice , and wisdome of your court will be farre from thinking this a sufficient ground of quarrell betwixt the two nations , because we demand to enjoy the benefit of our laws , and the exercise of our religion , if this be a cause that any of your nation should come to assaile us , or any part of the power of that kingdome should be imployed to that use , you would not have taken it in ill part or think we have done you wrong , if the like course had been taken by us when there were any contests and dispute betwixt his majestie and you in your parliaments for the rights of the subject : but as we have alwayes wished you good successe unto your pa●liaments , so can we not think that the paines we have taken to maintain our own rights , can be grievances unto you , or of evill example to weaken your estate , or move you to destroy us . princes when they are misled by evill counsell , may easily begin warre at thei● pleasure , but since the subjects blood must determine the controversie , it were necessary that they who have so great a part of the hazard , should also know their quarrel . and since civill warre and homebred division● as inward diseases are more hard to cure then these that are without , we are tyed in all respects to seek to prevent them before thy come . and wheras by all that hath passed , we may perceive that these who are chief actors in these troubles , ●eek by all means to have us engaged , the more should our care be to preserve our selves by their disappointment , and by a seasonable remedy , provide for the safety of our selves and posterity . the readiest meane for the present that can come in our consideration in this , that as when the treatie of the union was intended , but did not take effect , the two parliaments did sit , and did appoint their commissioners to treat thereanent ( with expresse reservation of their own lawes and liberties ) and to report their proceedings back againe to them that sent them , so now when the two nations are ready to be plunged in a bloudy warre , to the overthrow of the liberties of both . our soules desires , that his majesty would be pleased to appoint the like or any other meane whereby the parliaments may sit freely , and without feare of force , and by their commissioners appoint time and place , where by their scanning the equity or inquity of our demands may be fully weighed , that we may no longer suffer by false and artificiall relations , but they be noturly known as they are , and their fraud and hypocrisie discovered ( if there be any ) for we shunne no tryall which is not inconsistent with a free and independent kingdome , and which the kingdome of england would choose in the like case of the quarreling of their laws and liberties , the king being resident amongst us : for which end if his majesties forces may be discharged , and his further levies suspended , we will most gladly disband , and leave off any that we are preparing for our own necessary and just defence , which otherwise we cannot doe without our own apparent ruine , neither can the parliament sit with any security in either kingdome , if they see a sword drawn ove● thei● heads , and this we know the parliament of england in their wisdome will think very reasonable , and the least that can be granted , and will joyne with us in this pe●ition for their own clearing before god and the world , that they have not taken in hand to subdue us by armes , before they have convinced us and made known to all true christians and honest men , for what cause , and upon how great reason . if this be denyed us , as what may we not expect in this kind , but that the conduct of this affai●e will be answerable to the first undertaking : and as this plot hath been set on foot for the benefit of strangers , so it will be continued to the weakning of both the kingdomes the overthrow of our religion , and civill liberties , to the uttermost of their power . so we ( that the close of this discourse may bring in a short view all that hath been touched before ) cannot but begin with this , that it is j●st with god to make us feel the sad e●fects of civill discord , who have not ma●e the right use of our long enjoyed peace , and that we suffer in the danger and hazard of the cure , who have so long by our tollerance and permission strengthned that ill humour , which is now ready to master the life both of kirk and state . you are called together who are the great physitians of that state , it is not unfitting for the present occasion to put you in minde of an old t●le that belongeth unto your art : philotimus a physician in greece , made this answer to one who offered his finger to dresse , by whose face , look and breath , he knew he had an impostume in his lungs , my friend ( saith he ) it is not fit time t● busie your selfe about your nailes : the time was not long since when the grea●est question was , whether the bill of tunnage and poundage , or the bill of the subjects right should be first moved in your house ; the times are farre changed , the case much altered , before you judge of any matters now , or condemn others● you cannot but look whether your selves be free , and what right you have : for if the maintenance of our religion , and the liberties of the kingdome , be a ground of a quarrell betwixt too nations that are so nearly joyned , and if it be judged so in that honourable court , we cannot see how you can condemn us and acquit your selves ; for it was your glory to be the faithfull guardians of the subjects right , it cannot but blemish your reputation to be sound now the overthrowers of your brethrens liber●ies . if all this motion of a warre with scotland were truly perceived to be a conception of spain or rome , we do not doubt but for your own interest you would be carefull to stra●gle this monster in the very first birth ; but if you take it for a ready meane to ●ase your own distressed estate , and that by wronging us you can better your condition . and although we know the cond●ct of your councels had ever more honourable and honest grounds , yet let us take it as it may be propounded to you : can the benefit that is offered to you countervail your losse : we need not bring it nearer , the example is but of yeste●dy , and cannot be out of your sight . all the provinces and prince of france , envyed the good estate of the protestants , the priviledge● of their chambers , and the ben●fit of the edicts they enjoyed , every one did outrunne a●other to contribute to their ●uine , and to endeer themselves by so doing , to these that had the managing of all these affaires ; with what successe , they know this day , and all that looks upon them , seeth what defence they have left themselves against the regiments of the guards . we writ not this as doubting your wisdome and circumspection in a businesse of this nature , that so neare concerns your selves , but since the malice of our adversaries hath prevailed so farre upon our gracious king , that he forgets the affliction of his people , whiles he gives way unto their endlesse malice , who seeks by all meanes to cut asunder that knot of our obedience , wherby we are tyed in conscience of our duty to his majesty , to the observance of the laws : and which is the sure foundation of his majesties greatnesse , and the union of the kingdomes , and which hath holden fast-against all the violence of time in so many ages past , and against the force of all adversaries whatsoever to the royall crown , the which the more we labour to preserve , and fence , the more they seek to undoe , and to put in the place therof a chaine of violence and force . we beseech you therefore , right honourable and dear brethren , now conv●ened in both houses of parliament , that according to your place and s●ation , you will heare from our selves the true representation of our pressing grievances , and becaus● a linke of that chain cannot but approach you also , if it take hold on us : we intreat you to divert in time our gracious king from runing headlong unto these violent courses , which cannot but produce in the end lamentable effects both for prince and people . and since we have just cause of feare , that what hath been begun without your consent , will also be followed contrary to your advise , although we think nothing more properly doth belong unto to the justice of that high court then ●o provide , that they who have been drawers of his majesty t● this action , so dangerous for himself , and so desperate for the kingdomes should not passe away unquestioned and unpunished . and nothing could be further from our expectation then that the councel of england should conclude a warre against us , upon the relation of one man ●brought upon the stage of purpose to act that malicious part ) without your consent● wherby it is apparent , that these our adversaries have come to that height of insolencie , to let all the subjects see that they have taken to themselves a liberty to throw down the laws of the kingdome , and laid a necessity upon us his majesties own people , as it were to choose their leasure and attend untill they have power , and come and worke our overthrow by sea and land , and that without a warning going before : so now we understand that a restraint is put upon our commissio●ers ; some of them being put in the hands of sheriffes , some of justices of peace at london , contrary to our expectation , for who expecting this would either have send or gone in that commission : contrary to the law of nations , for we are two dive●se nations and kingdomes , and they were sent from a parliament promised and called by his majesty , and warranted by his majesty , to repaire to his presence , and to shew the reasons of our demands . contrary to the very foundation of our present treaty , for a committee was appointed legally by the authority of the parliament , and neces●arily , for keeping correspondence with our commissioners , and to receive from them his majesties answers ( that we wonder any man should be so absurd as to suggest to his majesty , that it is an unlaw●ull or presumptuous committee , or that they have taken upon them the gov●rnment of the town of edinburgh ) and that for a long time past , no word or writ commeth from them , and we are put out of hope to heare from them hereafter● that we can neither know whether there was any want in their propositions and reasons , or whether there was any thing to be supplyed by us for a ●ull satisfaction , and contrary to the deservings of our commissioners : for nothing is pretended to have escaped them which might have deserved this captivitie : and as for the present condition of safetie of the earle of southesk , and sir lewes stewart at edinburgh , it can be no true ground there of , his majesty being fully informed by their own letters , how that harmlesse accident of their surprizall came on a suddain by the unexpected follie and rashnesse of the governour of the castle , threatning presently upon their dispatch , to discharge all his ordinance against the town : and to ring ( as he was pleased to speak ) an uncouth peale of bells in their eares , and ( we may truly adde ) by their own precipitation , and too great haste to speed themselves to the ports for escaping the common danger : the multitude not without their own grounds , conceived that the arresting of them might be a defence to themselves , or at least a delay of the governours furie . but no sooner were they arrested by the people , but they were rescued by order from the magistrate , and courteously used by such of the nobilitie and gentrie as were in the town . since that time no violence hath been done against them , but they have of their own accord , and for their own safetie stayed in the town , with such libertie as they think meet to use to repair to the streets , kirk , gardens , or whither they will . and in what equity can a particular tumult of some ●ew commons in one city , reflex upon the per●ons of the commissioners sent from the whole parliament o● the whole nation . but at the writing hereof we are advertised , that the matter draweth a greater deep , and that the lord lowdoun is committed to the towre , not upon the shallow pretext of safety to any arrested here , but upon his own guiltines , his hand and subscription being found at a letter directed to the french king from certain earles and lords of scotland , for imploring his assistance to their courses : this by our adversaries and such as had decreed our destruction before , is already exaggerat and raised to a mountaine , not onely to fall upon the lord lowdoun and others whose hands are found in it , but that all former friends and all indifferent persons may stumble at our cause , as hereby evidenced to be nothing lesse forsooth then religion : but the honourable houses of parliament , who are acquainted with the designes and malice of our enemies , and to whom our innocencie in times past cannot altogether be unknown , are more grave and wise then upon the hearing or seeing of such a letter , to precipitate in judgement against us and our nation before we be heard . for their satisfaction , and for vindicating our-selves , we are constrained against our hearts in this our remonstrance , to remember and represent the words of that unexempled proclamation given at york april 25. 1639. otherwise never to have been resented , but buried in silence , and in studied senselesnes , and which we doe not attribute to the majesty of our king , but to the base cruelty of our barbarous enemies . the words are thus : we are forced to have r●course to a more ●harp and quick way to cure their obstinancy and rebellion by the sword of justice : and therfore in that case we do proclaime all such as shall reject this our free and grat●ous pardon , and does not return before the said eight dayes , to that civill and dutifull obedience to be from thenceforth open rebels and traitours to us , our crown and dignity , and declare all their lands and possessions , goods and geir to be forfeited to us , and our crown , and that we shall dispose of their lands , possessions , goods and geir to our wel deserving subjects , noblemen , gentlemen , and others who shal adhere to us , & obey our just commands . and to this purpose we discharge all vassals and tennants to any rebels , from making paym●nt to them of any of their rents , duties , or casualties , and require them to keep the same in their hands , the one ha●f● whereof shall be kept for our use , the other halfe for themselves : promising also to the tennants of the said rebels , who shall leave their misters , and assist us to the maintenance of our authority , good tearms of yeares in the estates they poss●sse , with the dimunition of the third at least , if not more , of the duties they pay , as we shall find them to deserve by their good service and ready obedience to us : and to the vass●ls of such superiours as are rebels , that they shall become our immediat tennants and vassals , and hold their lands and poss●ssi●ns of us , and that for payment of the third part lesse duty then is contained in their present charters , and they pr●sently pay to their superiour , providing they adhere to us , and assist not their disloyall superiours , but leave them , and concurre with us for maintenance of our authority and if the superiour be loyall , and the vassals and tennants refuse this our grace , and to adhere to us● or to concurre with the said superiour in our ser●ice , we declare it shall be leasume for the said superiour to expell the said vassals and tennants thus rebellious , forth of their lands and possessions . and what shall accesse to us by the forfeiture of their lands and possesssions , we freely d●sp●ne and totally resigne it to the loyall superiour , promising to concurre and assist him for effectuating hereof . and further we discharge all debtors who are addebted summes of money to any of the said rebels , to make payment to them of the summes of money addebted to them , or any part thereof : assuring our good subjects , that they shall have retribution out of the same moneyes as we shall find them to deserve : and so forth as followeth . although before this time we had heard from our countrey-men abroad , that other states , princes and nations did wonder much that their ears being filled with informations against us , nothing had come from us to make known unto ●hem ou● cause , or our case and condition : yet s●ill hoping and patiently waiting for a gra●i●us answer to our many humbl●supplications , we did abstaine . but our hopes being extingished by that unexpected declaration , as we took our swords in our hands at home for our just d●f●nce , so we were thinking to send some informations and petitions abroad , especially to the frenc● king , wherein , we tr●st , no word hath escaped us , that can either procure the indignation of our owne king , or will be found contrary to the duty and loyalty of good subiects . and that no lesse could have been said by any nation , in so great extreamity : yet this was but an imperfect motion , which died in the bud amongst our selves , and never did rise to that ripenesse to be seen of others . when we were so sore threatned , and when execu●ion was comming upon us by a terrible armie , it must be laid to our charge as a fault inexpiable● and our commis●ioners punished for it , that we dared so much as to intend to cry to others to interceed for us , when our own supplications could not be heard : poore souls● we must be beat●n , and neither resist , nor complain● : it is therfore our earnest desire that every eye that seeth that innocent letter , may with the same view look upon the proclamation given out at that ●ime , and compare them together : and withall , we desire to be informed what we shall doe in the like exigence now when armies are coming against us , if it be not lawfull for us both to cry to god and to men to help us , and to interceed with our king for us . that letter was written before his majesties coming to the camp , and was not concealed by our nobleme● , but made known to some of prime quality there : if there had been a purpose in the hearts of our enemies , that the articles of pacification should have been observed , this letter● although it had been sent and all other quarrels of this kind , had been by a law of oblivion forbidden to appear . it could not have been a ground of calling the subcribers to quarrell them after the pacification , but the wicked sycophant and delatour would have been found in the transgression , and made the sacrifice . and that there be no more doubt in the minde of any good man , we have here , upon our faith and honour , set down the very words of our instructions●ub●cribed at that time● and yet ex●ant● which were not given , but were to be given to the carrier● and unto the which the le●ter i●self doth referre : to represent the ●uncient● and strait league betwixt the two king●●mes of france , and sco●land , often renewed , and 〈◊〉 invi●l●●l● kept , for many hundreth of yeares , whereby both nations , have frequently upon the distresse of the one found the benefit of that mutuall amity , by ready succour and assistance of the other , which hath ●ver been crowned with successe , and acknowledged by interchange of nationall kindnesse as the chronicles of both kingdomes , and diverse publick act● extant in the records doe testifie . to shew that our intentions are no wayes against monarchiall government , but that we are most loyally disposed toward our sacred soveraigne , whose person and authority we will maintain with our lives and fortunes : but that all our desires reaches no further then the preservation of our religion , and liberty of church and kingdome , established by the laws and constitu●ions therof . that the calumnies vented against us by our enemies for their own ends make no impression , because they are most manifest untruths , maliciously forged to stirre the envy and discontentment of neighbour princes , estates and nations against us● whera● our whole thought● , words , actions and proceedings are most legall and loyall , as the bearer can particularly instruct and make cleare at length . that seeing we have many times supplicat his majesty , and have not prevailed , therfore to intreat the king of france , to interceede and meditate with our soveraigne , to lay down his armies , intended and raised against us , and to suffer this his ancient and native kingdome to enjoy her religion , and liberties , in peace and freedome under his majesties authority , albeit we be not diffident of gods assistance whensoever we shall be necessitate to our own defence , which is approven both by the law of god , nature , and nations . our enemies , who catch all pretexts against us , may have enough here wherewith to please themselves . but when tha● grave and great councell shall consider that the letter was never sent , and nothing from france or at home shall ever be found that can prove the sending of it abroad , that it was intended upon the hearing of so harsh a proclamation , and before the pacification , wherein it ought to have been buried , and that it was accompanied with such instructions , as no●e but malice it selfe can censure : for no threats from england , non preparations in view , can cast us upon resolutions of intertaining forraigne confoederations , in such sort as may set up a partition wall betwixt the two kingdomes ; therfore we trust they shall finde no more ground of pleasing our enemies , and of grieving us in this , then in our other proceedings , which we earnestly desire to be unpartially examined by them . now against this high and extreame insolencie of our adversaries , which swelleth every day to a greater bignesse and exulceration , and is to breake out imperiously at their pleasure . although in obedience to the law of god and nature , we be thinking upon our preparations for safety and defence , and ●or obtaining our often presented humble and just desires , yet nothing but extreame necessity which hath no law , shall enforce us to go beyond the bounds of petition and d●f●nce , and when that extreamities shall come ( which god in his mercy to both kingdomes prevent ) we trust our carriage shall refute the s●anders and reproaches of our enemies : that we are not seeking our selves and our own ends : but with the assistance o● all in england , who tender their own happinesse and ours , to petiti●n his majesty the more powerfully , for receiving right information , and for submitting both all differences , and all those wicked counsellors , who have shaken the foundations of the kirk , state , and the kings throne , unto the judgement and censure of a free par●iament , by which we hope the gospell of christ shall be inlarged , both the kingdomes freed from danger , and our dread soveraigne made more great and glorious , then any of his predecessors , which , as it is the end , so it is the un●eigned prayers o● us all . finis . act concerning the declaration to be signed by all persons in publick trust. at edinburgh, the fifth day of septembre, one thousand six hundred and sixty two. scotland. parliament. committee of estates. 1662 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b06076 52612232 wing s1067 estc r183874 52612232 ocm 52612232 179537 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b06076) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179537) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2793:9) act concerning the declaration to be signed by all persons in publick trust. at edinburgh, the fifth day of septembre, one thousand six hundred and sixty two. scotland. parliament. committee of estates. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by evan tyler, printer to the kings most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1662. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. text partly in black letter. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng loyalty oaths -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -officials and employees -legal status, laws, etc. -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion c r honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms act concerning the declaration to be signed by all persons in publick trust . at edinburgh , the fifth day of september , one thousand six hundred and sixty two . forasmuch as it hath pleased almighty god , in his majesties restitution to his royal government , to restore this kingdom to its ancient liberties and peace , and to deliver his majesties good subjects from these miseries and bondage whereby they have been oppressed , during these troubles ; and the estates of parliament , finding themselves obliged in a due resentment of this mercy , and in discharge of that duty they owe to god , to the kings majesty , to the publick peace of the kingdom , and the good of his subjects , to use all means for the due preservation of that peace and happiness they now enjoy under his royal government ; and to prevent and suppresse every thing that may tend to the renewing or favouring of these courses , by which the late rebellion hath been fomented and carryed on ; and conceiving , that the imploying of persons of found principles and entire loyalty , in all offices of trust and places of publick administration , will conduce much to these ends . therefore , and for quieting the spirits of his majesties good subjects , and begetting a confidence in them of their security for the future , his majesty hath thought fit , with advice and consent of his estates of parliament , to statute , ordian and enact ; likeas his majesty , by these presents , doth , with advice foresaid , statute , ordain and enact , that all such persons as shall hereafter be called or admitted to any publick trust or office , under his majesties government within this kingdom ; that is to say , to be officers of state , members of parliament , privy councellors , lords of session , commissioners in exchequer , members of the colledge of iustice , sheriffs , stewarts or commissaries , their deputes and clerks , magistrates and council of borroughs , iustices of peace and their clerks , or any other publick charge , office and trust within this kingdom ; shall at and before their admission to the exercise of such places or offices , publickly , in face of the respective courts they relate to , subscribe the declaration underwritten : and that they shall have no right to their said offices or benefites thereof , untill they subscribe the same as said is ; but that every such person who shall offer to enter and exerce any such office , before he subscribe the declaration , is to be repute and punished as an usurper of his majesties authority , and the place to be disposed to another . likeas his majesty doth , with advice foresaid , remit to his commissioner , to take such course as he shall think fit , how these who are presently in office , may subscribe the said declaration . and it is hereby declared , that this act is without prejudice of any former acts , for taking the oath of alleagiance , and asserting the royal prerogative . i do sincerely affirm and declare , that i judge it unlawfull to subjects , upon pretence of reformation or other pretence whatsoever , to enter into leagues and covenants , or to take up armes against the king or these commissionated by him : and that all these gatherings , convocations , petitions , protestations , and erecting and keeping of council-tables , that were used in the beginning , and for carrying on , of the late troubles , were unlawfull and seditious . and particularly , that these oaths , whereof the one was commonly called the national covenant , ( as it was sworn and explained in the year , one thousand six hundred and thirty eight , and thereafter ) and the other entituled , a solemn league and covenant , were , and are , in themselves , unlawfull oaths , and were taken by , and imposed upon , the subjects of this kingdom , against the fundamental laws and liberties of the same . and that there lyeth no obligation upon me , or any of the subjects , from the saids oaths , or either of them , to endeavour any change or alteration of the government , either in church or state , as it is now established by the laws of the kingdom . edinburgh printed by evan tyler , printer to the kings most excellent majesty , 1662. to the right honourable james earl of perth, lord drummond, and stob-hall, &c. lord high chancellour of his majesties most ancient kingdom of scotland. the congratulatory welcome of an obliged quill. murray, mungo, 17th cent. 1685 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b04438 wing m3112 estc r180803 52528860 ocm 52528860 178842 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b04438) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 178842) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2772:18) to the right honourable james earl of perth, lord drummond, and stob-hall, &c. lord high chancellour of his majesties most ancient kingdom of scotland. the congratulatory welcome of an obliged quill. murray, mungo, 17th cent. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh? : 1685?] in verse. caption title. imprint suggested by wing. text signed: m.m. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng perth, james drummond, -earl of, 1648-1716 -poetry. scotland -history -1660-1688 -poetry. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-05 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-06 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-06 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion to the right honourable james earl of perth lord drummond , and stoh-hall , &c. lord high chancellour of his majesties most ancient kingdom of scotland . the congratulatory welcome of an obliged quill . since that the muses , breathed first on earth , had ne're more noble worthy theme then perth ; high chanc'llour of old albion , plac'd and made , which brings all ranks of subjects to be glade , you welcoming , with soul alacratie , next unto royal charles , and albanie ; whose well deservings did them animate , should to the office be commissionate ; the fulfill'd wishes , of both low and high , triumphingly to day , do signifie : by clement smyls ; else putting all in hope , impartial justice , ev'rie hand shall grope . silence the tongues will , that cry out for wars ; will pacifie whiggish intestine-jars : to grivances a soveraign medicine , rebellion and base tumu●s will hedge in ; in high-lands has already setled peace , none needs to fear a thieving robbers face ; to low-lands like shall be , by thee obtain'd , conventiclers shall no resetting find : none shall aarons sacrifice gain stand ; the priest-hood at the altar shall command ; as moses will our israel govern , no byass shall the sanhadrim discern : in solmons wit , and policie well known , kings yours , and contry's safety will be one : our rights and liberties will settle so , that none before thee ever did outgo : the errors of our laws will rectifie , and to them add what necessarie be ; dangers fore-sees , skill'd pilote can evite , those rocks and shelves , on which have others split : drea'd charles his wain in the straight course will guide , to state-distempers , will a cure provide ; the nations needs , will furnish and supplie ; will ease those think they under burden lye ; for great designs , in council is most found , with goodness and with mercy does abound : plenty shall on our barren mountains spring , in valleys vertue shall have flourishing : the hearts of peers in whom united are , mongst them shall no incendarie appear : superlative in learning and in arts , to suit thy place , endowments has and parts ; caesarean-spirit , scorns the egiptian treate , a conquer'd foe , to have disastrous fate ; scotlands affairs , and all the worlds beside ; has by your study in the furnace try'd : frae whom shall legislators , dictats draw , how monarchs should make subjects stand in awe ; rejoyce unto both sol , and cynthia that our jove has neptuns waves so estimate ; good reason why , to stob-halls house look in ? eight kings , one queen , from thence have crowned been : fames familie , car'd never to be great , yet in both peace and war serv'd king and state ; with fortune , and with lives , in such away , from loyaltie were never found astray . my lord , when dieving in your soaring praise , sees you the dazling-glory of our skies ; truth telling of your welcome , all may say , t is as sun is , to an ecclipsed day : this you may judge , in grandour for to see , your convoy and reception so to be . comfort , and bliss , will prove unto this sphere , of which you 'l have sure a paternal care. m. m. his majesties most gracious letter to the parliament. [sic] of scotland england and wales. sovereign (1694-1702 : william iii) 1696 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a96549 wing w2371c estc r220113 99899745 99899745 135559 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a96549) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 135559) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2450:11) his majesties most gracious letter to the parliament. [sic] of scotland england and wales. sovereign (1694-1702 : william iii) william iii, king of england, 1650-1702. 1 sheet ([1 p.]) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to the king's most excellent majesty, [edinburgh : 1696] dated at end: given at our court at loo the 28 august 1696. and of our reign the eighth year. appointing john, earl of tullibardine, commissioner for the session of parliament. imprint from wing. reproduction of original in the folger shakespeare library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign relations -england -early works to 1800. england -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides 2007-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-06 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-07 robyn anspach sampled and proofread 2007-07 robyn anspach text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion his majesties most gracious letter to the parliament of scotland . william r. my lords and gentlemen , the continuance of the war obliging us to call you together at this time , for your own safety and security , as well as for our service , and hindering us to be present in person : we have appointed our right trustee , and right well beloved cousin and counsellor , john earl of tullibardine to be our commissioner , for representing our person and authority in this session of parliament . the knowledge we have of his capacity , as well as of his zealous affection , and firm fidelity to our person and government , will certainly render him acceptable . we have fully instructed him in all that may concern the good and welfare of that our antient kingdom , and the interest of our service ; and therefore you are to give him entire trust and credit . he is to ask nothing of you in our name , but what your own safety makes necessary . the delivery that god almighty lately gave us , from that imminent danger to which both our person and kingdoms were exposed , by the crafty and bloody designs of our enemies , is fresh in your remembrance , and calls for our joint care and providence for the future . the supplies granted in the last session of parliament , are now almost expired ; and you also know how much the funds there to appointed , are sunk below expectation . the continuing of the forces , the buying of arms and ammunition , the repairing of forts and garisons , and the provisions for your frigats , being all for your own defence , with the other charges and contingencies of the government , will readily perswade you to give what is needful , for those ends. and that in the most effectual and easy manner , recruits during the war must also be had ; which we hope you will provide in such ways as may best prevent abuses . we have impowered our commissioner , to give our royal assent , to such laws as shall be judged necessary , for the better securing to our subjects their rights and properties . it hath been , and shall still be our royal care , to preserve you in peace and safety , and to promove your welfare and prosperity : and therefore we expect you will treat and conclude all matters , with that prudence , calmness and concord , as will be most to our satisfaction , and no less to your own honour and advantage ; and so we bid you heartily farewell . given at our court at loo the 28 august 1696. and of our reign the eighth year . his majesties letter to the privy council of scotland, for opening the signet, and intimating the sitting of the session. william iii, king of england, 1650-1702. 1689 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b06608 wing w2366 estc r186652 53299352 ocm 53299352 180073 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b06608) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180073) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2812:17) his majesties letter to the privy council of scotland, for opening the signet, and intimating the sitting of the session. william iii, king of england, 1650-1702. england and wales. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, by order of privy council, edinburgh : 1689. caption title. item identified as w2366 on wing reel 951 is actually w2372a. cf. wing (2nd ed.). imperfect: right edge cropped, with slight loss of text. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-02 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-03 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-04 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-10 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-12 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-12 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion his majesties letter to the privy council of scotland , for opening 〈◊〉 signet , and intimating the sitting of the session william r. right trusty and right wel-beloved cousins and counselors , 〈◊〉 trusty and wel-beloved cousins and counselors , right trusty 〈◊〉 wel-beloved counselors , and trusty and wel-beloved couns●●●●● we greet you well ; whereas our commissioner and the e●… of our parliament , did think fit to stop the opening of the signet for 〈◊〉 time , till we should signifie our pleasure , concerning the nomination 〈◊〉 lords of session ; and we having seriously considered that matter , an 〈…〉 great inconveniency that must arise to our leiges , by so long a su 〈…〉 of justice , in that our ancient kingdom : therefore , we have resolv●● 〈◊〉 make up a compleat nomination of the lords of session , and to open 〈◊〉 signet , that justice may have its course , and we do authorize , an●●●quire you to emit a proclamation in our name , certifying our leidge 〈◊〉 the session will sit at the ordinary time , the first day of november next 〈◊〉 that the lords of session will proceed in the administration of justice , 〈◊〉 patch processes as they stand in the books of enrollment , those processing allwayes wakened in our name , and the queens , and that our sig●●● opened , so that all summons and writs may be expeded in the c●… form. and we do require you to dispatch this proclamation and cause the signet with all diligence . likewise you are to advertise these lo 〈…〉 our former nomination , whose oaths were taken by the earl of c●… upon our special order , to give attendance for passing of bills of su●… on , and other bills in common form : and whereas sir james dalry●… stair president of our colledge of justice , and sir john baird of 〈…〉 ( whom we have now reponed to his place in the session ) and alexander swinton of mersignton have been tryed , as to their qualifica●… required by the acts of parliament , and accordingly admitted , we therefore authorize , and require you to appoint them , or any two of 〈◊〉 to examine and try the qualifications of the remanent persons , nam●… us , and admit them to the said office , if they shall find them qu●… according to the saids acts of parliament ; and that these who shall be ●…mitted concur with them , in tryal and admission of the rest : for all 〈…〉 this shall be your warrand , and so we bid you heartily farewel . given at our court at new-market the fifth day of october , one tho●●●●● six hundred eighty nine , and of our reign the first year . by his majesties command melvil● edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , by order of privy c●●●cil , anno dom. 1689. charls by the grace of god, king of scotland ... for-sa-meikle as we are not ignorant of the great disorders which haue happened of late within this our ancient kingdome of scotland, occasioned, as is pretended, vpon the introduction of the service booke, booke of canons, and high commission, thereby fearing innovation of religion and laws ... scotland. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) 1638 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a11707 stc 21997 estc s2325 23273560 ocm 23273560 26489 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11707) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 26489) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1803:27) charls by the grace of god, king of scotland ... for-sa-meikle as we are not ignorant of the great disorders which haue happened of late within this our ancient kingdome of scotland, occasioned, as is pretended, vpon the introduction of the service booke, booke of canons, and high commission, thereby fearing innovation of religion and laws ... scotland. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) charles i, king of england, 1600-1649. 1 broadside. e. raban, [aberdeen : 1638] second pt. of title from text. imprint suggested by stc (2nd ed.). "given at our court of greenwich, the twentie eyght day of june, and of our reygne the thirteenth yeare. 1638." reproduction of original in the town house (aberdeen, scotland). charter room. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649. scotland -church history -17th century. scotland -proclamations. 2007-08 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion crown charls , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france , and ireland , defender of the fayth , to our lovits , heraulds , messengers , our shyreffs , in that part , conjunctlie and severallie , speciallie constitute greeting . for-sa-meikle as we are not ignorant of the great disorders , which haue happened of late within this our ancient kingdome of scotland , occasioned , as is pretended , vpon the introduction of the service booke , booke of canons , and high commission , thereby fearing innovation of religion and laws . for satisfaction of which feares , we well hoped , that the two proclamations of the eleventh of december , and nineteenth of februarie , had beene aboundantlie fufficient : neverthelesse , finding that disorders haue daylie so increased , that a powerfull rather than perswasiue way , might haue beene justlie expected from us : yet wee out of our innatiue indulgence to our people , grieving to see them run themselues so headlong into ruine , are graciouslie pleased to trye , if by a fayre way wee can reclayme them from their faults , rather than to let them perish in the same . and therefore , once for all , wee haue thought fit to declare , and hereby to assure all our good people , that we neyther were , are , nor by the grace of god ever shall bee stained with popish superstition : but by the contrarie , are resolved to maintaine the true protestant christian religion alreadie profest within this our ancient kingdome . and for farther clearing of scruples , wee doe heereby assure all men , that wee will neither now nor heereafter presse the practice of the foresayde canons and service booke , nor anie thing of that nature , but in such a faire and legall way , as shall satisfie all our loving subjects , that wee neyther intende innovation in religion or laws . and to this effect haue given order , to discharge all acts of counsell made thereanent . and for the high commission , we shall so rectifie it with the helpe of advice of our privie counsell , that it shall never impugne the lawes , nor bee a just grievance to our loyall subjects . and what is farder fitting to be agitate in generall assemblies and parliament , for the good and peace of the kirke , and peaceable government of the same , in establishing of the religion presently profest , shall likewise be taken into our royal consideration , in a free assemblie & parliament , which shall be indicted & called with our best conveniencie . and we hereby take god to witnesse , that our true meaning and intention is , not to admit of anie innovations eyther in religion or lawes , but carefullie to mayntayne the puritie of religion alreadie profest and established , and nowayes to suffer our lawes to be infrindged . and although we cannot bee ignorant , that there may be some disaffected persons , who will stryue to possesse the hearts of our good subjects , that this our gracious declaration is not to be regarded : yet we doe expect , that the behaviour of all our good and loyall subjects will be such , as may giue testimonie of their obedience , and how sensible they are of our grace and favour , that thus passeth over their misdemeanors ; and , by their future carriage , make appeare , that it was onlie feare of innovation , that hath caused the disorders which haue happened of late within this our ancient kingdome : and are confident , that they will not suffer themselues to bee seduced , and missled , to misconstrue us , or our actions ; but rest heartilie satisfied with our pious and reall intentions , for mayntenance of the trve religion , and lawes of this kingdome . wherefore , wee requyre , and heartilie wish all our good people , carefullie to advert to these dangerous suggestions ; and not to permit themselues , blindlie , vnder pretext of religion , to be led in disobedience , and draw on , infinitelie to our griefe , their owne ruine ; which wee haue , and still shall stryue , to saue them from , so long as we see not royall authoritie shaken off : and most vnwillinglie shall make vse of that power which god hath endewed us with , for reclayming of disobedient people . our will is herefore , and we charge you straytlie , and command , that incontinent these our letters seene , you passe to the market-crosse of our burgh of edinbvrgh , and all other places needfull ; and there , by open proclamation , make publication hereof , to all and sundrie our good subjects , wherethrough none pretend ignorance of the same . the which to doe , wee commit to you conjunctlie and severallie , our full power , by these our letters ; delivering the same , by you duelie executed and indorced , agayne to the bearer . given at our court of greenwich , the twentie eyght day of june , and of our reygne the thirteenth yeare . 1638. per regem . the last proceedings of the parliament in scotland, against the marquesse of argyle. together, with the speech and defence of the said marquesse, in vindication of himself from the aspersions of his having a hand in the deaths of his late majesty, james duke hamilton, marquesse huntley, marquesse of montross. and of his dealing with the english after worcester fight. scotland. parliament. 1661 approx. 29 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 9 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92567 wing s1251 thomason e1086_5 estc r203476 99863422 99863422 115624 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92567) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 115624) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 161:e1086[5]) the last proceedings of the parliament in scotland, against the marquesse of argyle. together, with the speech and defence of the said marquesse, in vindication of himself from the aspersions of his having a hand in the deaths of his late majesty, james duke hamilton, marquesse huntley, marquesse of montross. and of his dealing with the english after worcester fight. scotland. parliament. argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. [2], 14 p. printed by t.m. for t.j., london : 1661. the words "his late majesty, .. montross." are bracketed together on title page. annotation on thomason copy: "march 30". reproduction of the original in the british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng argyll, archibald campbell, -marquis of, 1598-1661 -trials, litigation, etc. -early works to 1800. trials (treason) -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1649-1660 -early works to 1800. 2007-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-03 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-04 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-04 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the last proceedings of the parliament in scotland , against the marquesse of argyle . together , with the speech and defence of the said marquesse , in vindication of himself from the aspersions of his having a hand in the deaths of his late majesty , james duke hamilton , marquesse huntley , marquesse of montross . and of his dealing with the english after worcester fight . london , printed by t. m. for t. j. 1661. at the parliament house in edenburgh , march 13. 1661. the parliament being all convened , the marquess of argyle , being accused with high treason , at the instance of sir j. fletcher , his majesties advocate , for his interest was brought to the bar ; his lordship desired to speak but a few words before reading the inditement , assuring to speak nothing in the cause it self . whereupon his lordship was removed a little ; and after some small debate , the house resolved , that the inditement should be first read : then his lordship desired that a bill ( which he had caused his advocates give in to the lords of the articles ; desiring a precognition ; with many reasons , urging the necessity of it ; to which he had received no answer ) might be read before the inditement ; which being likewise refused , the inditement was immediately read ; after reading thereof , the marquess being put off his first thoughts , made this extemporarie discourse following . may it please your grace , &c. my lord chancellor , before i speak any thing , i shall humble protest my words may not be wrested , but that i may have charity to be believed ; and i shall ( with gods assistance ) speak truth from a heart . i shall ( my lord ) resume mephibosheths answer to david , after a great rebellion , and himself evil reported of . sayeth he , a yea let him take all , since my lord the king is come again in peace to his own house . so say i , since it hath pleased god almighty , gratiously to return his sacred majesty , to the royal excercise of his government over these nations ( to which he hath indoubted right ) and most unjustly , and violently , thrust therefrom , by the late tyrannizing usurpers . it is ( my lord ) exceeding matter of joy to us all , that , that iron yoak of usurpation ( under which we have these many years , sadly groaned ) is now broke : and with such freedome , this high , and honourable court of parliament are meeting together , under the refreshing warm beams of his majesties royal government , so much longed for , by our almost starved expectations ; and i do earnestly wish his royal presence upon his throne amongst us ; but since at this time , that great happiness cannot be probably expected ; i am glad , that his majesties prudency hath singled out such a qualified , and worthy person as my lord commissioners grace , to represent himself : whose unspotted loyalty to his majesty , we can all witnesse . i cannot ( my lords ) but acknowledge , that there are two grand mercies , which comfortably attend my present condition . one is the high thoughts i deservedly entertain , of that transcendent , and princely clemency , wherewith his sacred majestie is so admirably delighted , abundantly evindenced by many noted and singular testimonies , in all the steps of his majesties carriage ; as those most gratious letters , declarations , and that free , and most ample act of indempnitie , &c. granted to all his majesties subjects , to eradicate any time●ous jealousie of his majesties gratious pardon ; which might happily arise , by serous reflectings , convincing them forcibly of their own miscarriages , in these most unhapy times of distraction , the effects ( my lords ) of which princely deportment , i am confidently hopeful , his majestie hath already experimentally , and shall futurely find , prove an effectual cement , to conciliate the most antimonarchich , and disaffected persons ( excepting some ) those barbarous phanaticks ) in all his majesties dominions ) most willingly to the subjection of his majesties royal scepter ; and with a perfect hatred * abominate all disloyal practises in themselves , or others in all times coming . the second is , my lords , when i consider , that my judges are not such as we had of late ( strangers ) but my own country men ; both which joyntly together with the royal sence , and solid convictions i had of my innocency , of these calumnies most unjustly charged upon me ) encourages my hopes rather , to expect such dealing , as will most sympathize with that clement humour , ( to which his sacred majesty hath such a natural propensitie ) and such equal administrate justice , ( void of all byassing prejudices ) as will be most sutable for such a high , and honourable meeting . i shall therefore ( my lord ) desire to use pauls answer for himself , being accused of his countrymen , ( i desire not to be mistaken ) having a learned orator ( tertullius ) accusing him , as i have my lord advocate : pauls was heresie , mine of another nature ; but i must say with him , * that the things they all laid against me , cannot be proved . but this i confesse , in the way allowed , by solemn oaths , and covenants , i have served god , my king , and my countrie , ( as he said ) which they themselves allow . therefore i shall ( my lord ) remember ( not with repining , but for information ) my hard usage , never having had any hearing , nor allowance of pen , ink , or paper , until i received this summons ; which was ( in effect ) a load , above a burden ; enemies ( both scots and english ) out of malice , calumniating me for all the same things , excepting what relates to his majesties most royall father of ever glorious memory . therefore , ( my lord , ) i beg charity and patient hearing , not doubting , but the wisdom and goodness of the parliament will be so favourable , and not as the inconsiderate multitude ( as a learned able man writes ) sayes he a as we see in experience , that dogs they alwayes bark at those they know not : and that it is their nature to accompany one another in those clamours ; so it is with the inconsiderate multitude , who wanting that vertue which we call honesty in all men , and that speciall gift of god , which we call charity in christian men ; condemn without hearing , and wound without offence given ; led thereunto by uncertain report only , which his majesty king james only acknowledgeth to be the father of lies . i shall not desire to be in the least mistaken by any that hear me : but sure i am , it is pertinently applicable to my case . i intreat likewise your lordships seriously to consider the words of another notable man , c who sayes ( d ) as the tongues of parasites are ill ballances to weigh the vertues of princes , & great men ; so neither ought theirs nor other mens blemishes be looked upon , as they are drawn with the deformed pencill of envy , or canker , which do alwayes attend eminency , whether in place or virtue . i shall not ( my lord ) be so presumptuous , as to arrogate any thing to my self in this , only i want not the two companions ; for i am but a weak man , subject to many failings and infirmities , whereof i do not purge my self ; for as we must all confesse to god almighty , * if he should mark iniquities , who can stand ? neither shall i say , that there cannot an hole be discovered ( as the proverb is ) in my coat : and it cannot but be so with any , specially such as have laboured in such times and businesses ; but i blesse the lord , that in these things which hath been , and are here cast upon me , i am able to make the falshood , and misconstructions of them palpably appear . my lord , ( before i mention any thing in particular ) i must shew this honourable meeting of parliament , & all that hear me ( who doubtless have various apprehensions of my being present in this condition , ) that i am here rather upon the account of misfortune than injury , wherein i desire to explain the differences , as plato and aristotle do very well , calling injuries , such things as are done purposely , and with a wicked mind ; and misfortunes , such things as are done with a good mind , though the events prove bad ; yet , we could not foresee them . so ( my lord , ) i shall take god to record ( who must judge me one day , ) upon my conscience , that what i did , flowed not from any injurious pinciples to any , though i acknowledge , the events were not still successefull , which was my misfortune indeed : but it has been my lot often , in these times , ( wherein i , and many others , were inevitably involved by the malicious tongues of my calumniating enemies , to be misconstrued for the worst ; yea , even in many which the lord was pleased to make successefull : for the truth of this , i may ( i hope ) safely appeal to many in this honourable house , who can abundantly witnesse my faithfull , and loyall endeavours for both my king , and native country , whereof i should be very sparing to be a herald my self , were not the contrary so impudently affirmed . there are five main calumnies , that i desire ( my lord ) to satisfie all that hear me a little in , to the end , that the rest of less moment , may be likewise ( in its own due time ) heard afterward , abstracting more from personal prejudice . the first calumny is , my lord , concerning that horrid and unparaleld murder of his late royal majesty , of eternall blessed memory : i do here publickly declare , that i neither desire , nor deserve the least countenance , or favour , if i was either accessary to it , or on the councell , or knowledge of it : which to make clearly appear , is under oath in the parliament books 1649. ( whereof i was the first startour my self ) to the intent , we might both vindicate our selves , and endeavour a discovery , if any amongst us had any accession to that horrid and villanous crime ; as also in my latter will , which i made ; going to england , in anno 1655. or 1656. fearing what possibly might hereafter be obtruded by any upon me or my family upon that account , i set it down , to clear me to posterity , that i was altogether free of that detestable and execrable crime , or of any prejudice at his majesty , in either person or government . i left this with a very worthy gentleman , ( i believe ) well known to your lordships all , and never saw it since ; so your lordships may be pleased ( if ye will ) to call for it , and try the truth ; whatsoever other thing may be in it , i hope ( my lord ) this opportunity is a mercy to me , to have that vile calumny ( among many others ) against me to be cleared . and ( my lord ) to make this particular yet more evident , i did still , and do positively assert , that i never saw that monstruous usurper , oliver cromwell in the face , nor never had the least correspondence with him , or any of that sectarian army , untill the commands of the committee of estates sent me with some other noble men , and gentlemen , to the borders , in anno , 1648. to stop his march into scotland , after those who returned from preston fight . neither , after he left the borders in the year 1648. did i ever correspond with him , or any of that sectarian army ; so unsatisfied was i with their way , after the wicked and sinistrous courses he and they were upon , afforded evident presumptions for us to apprehend , that he , and they , intended prejudice to his royall majesty : onely one letter i received from sir arthur haslerig ; to which i returned answer , that he might have spared his pains in writing to me : for i blessed the lord , who had taught me , by his word , to fear god , and honour the king , and not to meddle with them that were gi●en to change. though sir arthur be now dead , yet he acknowledged to severall in the tower , that my letter he still had : and when i was there , i often desired he might be posed , and examined upon it ; which i can presently instruct . and during ( my lord ) my being in england , neither at london , nor newcastle , in anno 1647. there was not any thing so much as mentioned , concerning his late majesties person : all that ever i heard of it , was in publick parliament 1647. the commissioners papers at london , and committee-books at newcastle , will clear this fully . the second calumny is , anent the inhumane murther of duke james hamilton . my lord , it s well known , my great respect to that truly noble , and worthy person ; whereof ( upon all occasions ) i gave ample testimonies , and can yet convince any of his friends with the reality of it ; and evidenced my true sorrow , for the wicked cruelty commited on him . but indeed , i cannot deny , i refused to complement cromwell on his behalf ; he having ( my lord ) been immediately proceeding so instrumental , and so very active in that most horrid , and lamentable murder of his late sacred majesty . and if i had done otherwayes , undoubtedly , it had been a more black article in that lybil now read , then any that 's in it . the third calumny is , that which breeds a great part of these groundless clamours , ( though it be not in the inditement ) i● my lord marquess of huntly his death , wherein ( i may truly say ) i was earnest to preserve him , as possible i could , which is very well known to many in this honourable house . and my not prevailing , may sufficiently evidence , i had not so great a stroak , nor power in the parliament , as is lybelled . and my lord , for his estate , i had nothing in that , but for my own absolute necessary releif : and was even most willing to part with any interest i had therein ; getting his friends ( who professed zeal , for the standing of the familie ) engaged for warrandise to me , for any proportion that should happen to fall for my satisfaction . and to evidence that i was no means to harm the familie , i stood with my right , betwixt all fines , and forfeitures of lands , and accompted for any thing i did receive : and to manifest yet further , that the burden of that family , was not from any extrinsick cause to themselves ; i have under the old marquesses own hand , and his son george lord gordoun , ( who was a very worthy young nobleman ) the just inventory of their debts , amounting to about one million of mark scots , in anno 1640. it would i fear , ( my lord , consume too much of the parliaments pretious time ) to hear many other circumstances to make this particular more clear : which i shall at this time forbear . the fourth calumny is , the death of the marquess of montrose . there are many in this house ( my lord ) who know very well , i refused to meddle either in the matter , or manner of it ; and so far were we from having any particular quarrells at one another , that in anno 1645. he and i was fully agreed upon articles , and conditions , contained in a treaty past betwixt us ; and it was neither his fault , nor mine , that business did not end at that time ; which ( its known to all ) proved very obnoxious to the kingdom thereafter . the fifth calumny is , concerning my dealing with the english after worceter fight : it s well known ( my lord ) to many , that my self , and the gentlemen of argyle-shire ( my kinsmen , vassalls , and tennants ) endeavoured cordially , to engage all their neighbours about them , on all hands against the english , which they did not prevail in ; but was most unhappily made known to the english commanders , for the time , ( which they caused immediately to publish ( as a very notable discory ) in their newes books ) which occasioned two sad disadvantages to us ; for they not only crushed our attempts in the infantry , but also determined the severer resolutions against us ; whereby two strong regiments of foot ( overtons and reads ) and very neer the number of one of horse , ( under the command of one blackmore ) were sent to argyle-shire , and when dean came there , it pleased god to visit me with a great distemper of sicknesse , as dr. cunningham , and many others who were with me can witness . what ( my lord ) i was pressed unto , when i was violently in their hands , may be instructed by the paper it self , written by deanes mans own hand , yet extant to show , which i did absolutely refuse , upon all the hazard of the uttermost of their malice ; as also what i was necessitated to do , is likewise ready to be shown , whereby i was still detained their prisoner upon demand . i shall ( my lord ) add one reason more to clear this , besides many other weighty publick reasons and considerations ( which i shall forbear to mention at this time , it being more naturall to bring them by way of defences afterwards ) my own interest , and of all noblemen , and superiours in scotland ; it may be rationally presumed , that i had been a very senseless fool , if ever i had been for promoting such and such authoritie , or interest over me , as levelled all , and was so totally destructive to all that differenced my self , and other noble-men , from their own vassals ( which many sayes they were too earnest in ) yea , it being likewise so absurdly derogatory to all true nobilitie , and my ancestors and i ( as is said in that lybell ) have had so many titles of honour , dignitie , and eminent places of trust conferred upon us , by his majesties royal predecessors and himself , all for our constant loyalty and adherence to the crown , at all occasions , ( as the records and histories of this ancient kingdom holds forth , besides the narrative of all our grants ) and asserting the just priviledges thereof against opposers . i did ( my lord ) ever ( even when the englishs were at the intollerable height of usurpation ) declare my abhorrence to a common-wealth government , which was well known to them all . i was not indeed ( my lord very dissatified , when there were rumors current , of cromwells being made a king ( as some here can witness . ) for i told them , it was the most probable way for his majesties advantage ; therefore the less it were opposed ; and the more it were encouraged , it would tend to cromwells , and their deformed common-wealths governments ruine ; and promote his majesties just interest the more . my lord , i shall not much blame my lord advocate for doing his endeavour , ( it being in essentiall part of his function to accuse ) but i must say , that its very hard measure , that so able a man hath neer as many moneths , in taking paines to promp as many enemies as his perswasions could possibly invite , to bend upon the highest notes of their malice , and laying out search by them for , and collecting all the bad reports , or rather ( to give them their genuine term ) i may call them a confused mass of the common classis of the countrie ; thereby to devise misconstructions of all the publick actings of both parliaments or committees , during the late troubles , and with strange and remote inferences , and to adduce all those to the channell of my particular actings , as many i say ( my lord ) moneths , as i have dayes to answer them , ( being an exceeding disadvantage . ) but ( my lord ) that 's not all , i am likewise extreamly gauled , that he labours in that libell all along , to draw an obscure vail of perpetuall oblivion over all my good services , and specially my faithfull , and royall endeavours , in restoring his sacred majesty to the crown of his this most ancient kingdom of scotland , and the excercise of his majesties royall authority therein ; with my cordiall endeavours for his majesties restitution to the rest of his dominions also , which his majesty both knows , and has been pleased often to acknowledge it to have been good service : and yea , many present in this honourable house knows , that i extended both my zeal and affection to the uttermost of my power , for his majesties service in that particular : which i willingly acknowledge nothing ( my lord ) but my duty , whereunto i was tied , both by natural , civil , and christian bonds to my soveraign ; and especially such a deserving king , of whom i may now ( as i have often ) affirme , that he is a king , in whom the lord has taken such pleasure , as to possesse his majesty with so many superlative degrees of excellency , that any of his princely perfections may be a characteristick distinction sufficient to exalt his majesties fame , both in our age , and to the subsequent posterity , above all the monarchs in the world. so ( my lord ) we may consequently discover a high demonstration of the lords singular kindness , and speciall providentiall care for us his majesties subjects , in preserving such a rich blessing as his sacred majesty ; ( in whom the happiness of these nations is wrapped up ) under the safe wings of his divine protection , i may say , even when the extravagant malice of men would have swallowed him up . after his lordship had ended this discourse ( being heard very attentively by all without any interruption ) my lords advocate sayes to my lord chancellor thus , my lord chancellour , but what can the marquess of argyle say to the opposition at striveling in anno , 1648 ? the marquess replyed , that he found my lord advocate endeavoured to bring him to debate the particulars , which he hoped should be cleared at a more convenient time , and waved it , answering nothing to the thing it self , but insisted thus : ( my lord chancellour ) i have informativè only hinted at the main things , which i am often charged with , my memory cannot fully reach all , neither will time permit to circumstantiate these particulars , which i have onely touched in the generall ; nor is my purpose at present , to fall on the debate of that libell , not having , as yet unfolded the processe . by reason those advocates your lordships was pleased to allow me , have not yet all embraced , and the excuses of my ordinary advocates ( in whom i had confidence ) being admitted as relievant : and this gentleman that hath been pleased ( in obedience to your lordships commands ) to come here with me , not being much acquainted with matters of this weight , and not having embraced till within these two or three dayes , so that they are strangers altogether to my case . i shall therefore ( my lord ) humbly desire , that a competent time may be allowed me , that i may prepare my defences , and i shall ( god willing ) abundantly clear every particular in the libell . and also ( my lord ) i humbly desire , that those other advocates , who were ordained by your lordships to assist me ; after the honourable lords of the articles rejected their excuses , they may be now ordained by your lordships , to consult and appear for me . the marquesse his advocates entred a protestation , that what should happen to escape them in pleading ( either by word or write ) for the life , honour and estate of the said noble marquesse their client , might not thereafter be obtruded to them as treasonable ; whereupon they took instruments . the marquesse assured my lord chancellour , that he knew not of any such protestation to be presented , and that it flowed simply of themselves , and not of him . whereupon my lord chancellour desired the marquess and his advocates , to remove till the house should consider of both ; my lord marquesses desire , and the advocates protestation . the marquesse and his advocates being removed , the house ( after some small debates ) resolved , as to my lord marquesses desire , his lordship should have till the 26 of march to give in his defenses in write , and ordained mr. andrew ker to be one of his advocates . as to the advocates protestation , the house resolved , that they could not be allowed to speak any treason , either by word or write , but upon their perill : only allowed them , in the generall , as much as ever in such cases was indulged to any . the marquess and his advocates being called in , my lord chancellour intimates the foresaid resolutions of the house , both in reference to my lord marquesses desires , and to the advocates , in relation to their protestation . when my lord chancellour had done , the marquesse spake as followeth : my lord chancellour , there is one thing that had almost escaped me , anent that opposition at striveling 1648. that my lord advocate was speaking of , that it may not stick with any of this honourable meeting , i shall ingenuously declare , that after the defeat at preston , i was desired to come , and meet with the committee of estates ( meaning those who were not in the then engagement ) i came with some of my friends to striveling , fearing no harm , nor suspecting nothing ; i was invaded by sir george monro , where several of my friends were killed , and my self hardly escaped ; which is all that can be said i acted in armes , which many here knowes to be most true . my lord , not that i am any wayes diffident , but i shall in due time clear every particular in that libell : yet i am not a little troubled , that some , who have heard the calumnies therein , may let them have such an impression ( being asserted with such confidence ) as to conceive a possibility , if not a probability of their being true . i shall therefore humbly desire so much charity from this honourable meeting , that there may be no hard thoughts entertained by any , till i be fully heard . the marquesse thereafter , with joint concurrence of his advocates , humbly desired , that his bill , containing many pungent reasons for a precognition of his business , given in to the honourable lords of the articles , may be considered in plain parliament . to which my lord chancellour replyed , that it had been formerly refused at the articles , and that it would not be granted . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a92567-e180 a * 2 sam. 19. 30. * psal . 139. 22. * acts 24. 14 , 15 , 16. a sir walt. rauleighs preface to the hist . of the world. c speed in his history . * psal . 130. v. 3. a proclamation, for setling of the staple-port at campvere scotland. privy council. 1676 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05689 wing s1921 estc r183545 52612334 ocm 52612334 179637 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05689) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179637) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2794:31) a proclamation, for setling of the staple-port at campvere scotland. privy council. gibson, alexander, sir, d. 1693. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1676. caption title. dated at end: given at edinburgh, the eleventh day of october, one thousand six hundred and seventy six years, and of our reign the 28 year. signed: al. gibson, cl. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng free ports and zones -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. free ports and zones -netherlands -veere -early works to 1800. foreign trade regulation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -commerce -netherlands -early works to 1800. netherlands -commerce -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion cr honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , for setling of the staple-port at campvere . charles , by the grace or god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith , to our lovits , macers , messengers at arms , our sheriffs , in that part conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : whereas upon occasion of the unsetled condition of the scots staple in the low-countreys ; the merchants of this our ancient kingdom of scotland have for diverse years past , suffered great prejudice , intheir trade and comerce to those provinces . and being graciously inclined to countenance all fair and just means , for setling of the said staple : we therefore gave full power and commissios to our resident and conservator of the priviledges granted to our subjects of scotland in the low-countreys ; to treat with any town or place most convenient and advantagions for the merchants and trade of this our kingdom : so the articles agreed by him with the commissoners of the prince of orange , and deputies of the town of campvere , for the re-setling of the scots staple-court within the said town , are approven by us : whereupon the said staple court is removed from dort to the town of campvere . and to the end this our royal pleasure , may be made known to all our loving subjects of this our ancient kingdom , we with advice of the lords of our privy council , do ordain pablick proclamation to be made thereof at the usual places of this our kingdom ; that no person may pretend ignorance , but duely obey our royal pleasure herein , as they will answer at their peril . and further , we , wish advice foresaid , do declare that the ancient standing acts of parliament made by our royal progenitors , in favour of the staple-court , and the conservator , are in full force and strength . and further , we ordain the royal burroughs in their meetings to make strick acts , that the staple may be duely observed , which we with advice foresaid , declare to be binding upon all our subjects whatsoever trading to , or residing within any town , or place of the united provinces . and we ordain thir presents to be printed and published at the market cross of edinburgh , and other royal burghs and sea-ports needful , that none may pretend ignorance therof . given at edinburgh , the eleventh day of october , one thousand six hundred and seventy six years , and of our reign the 28 year . al. gibson , cl. sti. concilii . god save the king. edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty : anno dom. 1676. the declaration and engagement of the marquesse of huntley, the earle of atholl, generall midletou [sic], and many of the nobility of scotland that have lately taken up arms for the defence of his maiesties person and just authority. huntley, lewis gordon, marquess of, d. 1653. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a86916 of text r212041 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.15[60]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a86916 wing h3780 thomason 669.f.15[60] estc r212041 99870695 99870695 163134 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a86916) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 163134) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 246:669f15[60]) the declaration and engagement of the marquesse of huntley, the earle of atholl, generall midletou [sic], and many of the nobility of scotland that have lately taken up arms for the defence of his maiesties person and just authority. huntley, lewis gordon, marquess of, d. 1653. atholl, john murray, marquess of, 1631-1703. middelton, thomas, sir, 1586-1666. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by samuell broun english bookseller, hagæ : 1650. dated at end: this declaration and engagement was signed by the above nam'd persons the 20. of october 1650. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng scotland -history -1649-1660 -early works to 1800. great britain -history -commonwealth and protectorate, 1649-1660 -early works to 1800. a86916 r212041 (thomason 669.f.15[60]). civilwar no the declaration and engagement of the marquesse of huntley, the earle of atholl, generall midletou [sic], and many of the nobility of scotla huntley, lewis gordon, marquess of 1650 433 1 0 0 0 0 0 23 c the rate of 23 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-09 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-11 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-12 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-12 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the declaration and engagement of the marquesse of huntley , the earle of atholl , generall midletou , and many of the nobility of scotland that have lately taken up arms for the defence of his maiestie person and just authority . vve vnder scribers , being touched with a deep sence of the sad condition this our native kingdome of scotland is in , by a prevailing army of sectaries , who having murthered our soveraign the late king , and overturned religion , and government in our neighbour kingdomes of england and ireland , have invaded this kingdome , and are in a way ( having so considerable a part thereof under foot ) to reduce the whole to a province , except the lord in his mercy prevent it , by joyning his maiesties subjects in the band of vnity , which is the onely means ( in our judgement ) to preserve religion , king and kingdome ; but to the grief of our hearts we find in the place of vnion the breach proving wider , and that not only in church and estate , but likewise in the remnant of our army : our resolutions therefore are , firmly and faithfully to joyn our selves together , and neither for fear , threatning , allurement , nor advantage to relinquish so good a cause , or lay down armes without generall consent ; and what shall be done to the least of us in prosecuting of the said vnion , shall be taken as done to all . and seeing the best undertakings are under the mercy and favour of malice , we cannot but apprehend our selfes to be subject to that lawlesse inquisition ; therefore , and for the satisfaction of all who are satisfiable , we do promise and swear , that we shall maintain the true religion as it is established in scotland , the covenant , league and covenant , the kings maiesties person , power , greatnesse , and authority , the priviledges of parliament , and liberty of the subject . so help us god . this declaration and engagement was signed by the above nam'd persons the 20. of october 1650. and was brought over by a person of reputation that came out of scotland upon the 25. who assures that it was resolved his maiesties coronation should be a●st . johnstons the 30. following ; and the parliament at that time to begin and sit there also . hagae , printed by samuell broun english bookseller , 1650. a proclamation, discharging the payment of the rents of the bishopricks to any, but the persons named by the council proclamations. 1689. scotland. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1689 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a58731 wing s1774 estc r214013 99826250 99826250 30647 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a58731) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 30647) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1800:13) a proclamation, discharging the payment of the rents of the bishopricks to any, but the persons named by the council proclamations. 1689. scotland. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) william iii, king of england, 1650-1702. mary ii, queen of england, 1662-1694. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed at edinburgh, and re-printed at london by g. croom for thomas watson, [london : 1689] originally published: edinburgh : printed by the heir of andrew anderson, 1689. reproduction of the original in the guildhall library, london. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. scotland -church history -17th century -early works to 1800. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion diev et mon droit honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , discharging the payment of the rents of the bishopricks to any , but the persons named by the council . whereas the meeting of the estates of this kingdom , in their claim of right , of the eleventh of april last , that prelacy , and the superiority of any office in the church , above presbyters , is , and hath been a great and insupportable grievance to this nation , and contrair to the inclinations of the generality of the people , ever since the reformation ; and that their majesties , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , have by their act of the date the fifth day of july last bypast , abolished prelacy , and all superiority of any office in the church above presbyters : and his majesty considering the prejudice it may be ▪ to his interest , if sit persons be not appointed to look after , and receive the rents and emoluments , particularly those consisting of tithes , which formerly did belong to the bishops . hath therefore signified his royal pleasure , that the lords of his majesties privy council should give warrand to alexander hannlion of kinkell , for drawing and uplifting the tithes and other rents of the archbishoprick of st. andrew , he giving sufficient security for his faithful performance of his duty in the said office ; and hath also lest it to the council to appoint sit persons for drawing and uplifting the tithes of other bishopricks for this present cropt and year of god 1689 , that none concerned suffer prejudice : except the bishoprick of orknay , which his majesty is resolved to have uplifted with the rents of the lordship . and the saids lords of the privy council having in obedience to ▪ his majesties commands , nominat and appointed fit and qualified persons for drawing of the tithes , and uplifting of the rents formerly belonging to the bishops , deans , or any other person of superior order and dignity in the church above presbyters ; and least before the time that some of them can be able to come to this place , and find caution for their faithful discharging of that trust , and make intimation of their respective commissions to uplift the saids rents for the said cropt and year of god foresaid , to the persons lyable in payment thereof , the teinds and other rents of the arch-bishopricks and bishopricks , and other foresaids may be imbazled , and intrometted with by persons who have no right thereto ; therefore the saids lords of privy council , in their majesties name and authority foresaid , prohibite and discharge all and sundry heretors , feners , life-renters , tacks-men of teinds , tennents and others whose teinds were formerly in use to be drawen , and who were lyable in payment of any rent or duty to the saids late arch-bishops or bishops , or others foresaids , to draw or suffer their teinds to be drawen , or from payment of any rental-bolls , feu , blench or tack-duties , and other rents , casualities and emoluments , formerly payable to the saids late arch-bishops , bishops , and others foresaid , except to such persons as shall be authorized by the saids lords of privy council for uplifting thereof ; with certification to them , if they do any thing in the contrary hereof , they shall be lyable therefore , notwithstanding of any pretended discharge that may be impetrat or obtained from any other person or persons for the said cropt and year of god foresaid . and ordains these presents to be printed and published by macers of privy council at the mercat cross of edinburgh , and by messengers at arms at the mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the other shires within this kingdom , that none may pretend ignorance . at edinburgh , the ninteenth day of september 1689. per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot , cls. secreti concilii . god save king william and queen mary . a proclamation for adjourning the parliament. scotland. privy council. 1696 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05628 wing s1822 estc r226080 52529292 ocm 52529292 179060 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05628) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179060) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:49) a proclamation for adjourning the parliament. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1694-1702 : william ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to his most excellent majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1696. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh the third of december, and of our reign the eight year 1696. signed: gilb. eliot, cls. sti. concilii. continuing the adjournment of parliament "from the eight day of december instant, to the eighteen day of march next to come." reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion wr diev et mon droit honi sit qui mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation for adjourning the parliament . william by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith ; to our lyon , king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers of our privy council , pursevants , messengers at arms our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as , by the last act of the sixth session of this our present current parliament , dated the twelfth day of october last by-past , our said parliament is adjourned to the eight day of december instant . and whereas the present state of our affairs does not require the meeting of our parliament so soon , as the said day , to which it was adjourned . therefore we , with advice of the lords of our privy council , do continue the adjournment from the said eight day of december instant , to the eighteen day of march nixt to come : and being desirous to prevent the unnecessary trouble , and charges that the members of parliament may be put to , by attending the said eight day of december instant , do hereby , with advice foresaid adjourn our said current parliament untill the said eighteenth day of march nixt ●nsuing the date hereof . requiring all the members of our said parliament to attend that day in the usual way , and under the certifications contained in the several acts of parliament made thereanent . our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly , and command that in continent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat cross of edinburgh , and to the mercat crosses of the remanent head-burghs of the several shyres and stewartries of this our ancient kingdom , and there by open proclamation , make intimation , that our said parliament is adjourned to the said eightteenth day of march nixt to come . and ordains these presents to be printed . given under our signet at edinburgh the third of december , and of our reign the eight year 1696 . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to his most excellent majesty , 1696. a proclamation against the resset of the rebels, and for delivering them up to justice england and wales. sovereign (1660-1685 : charles ii) 1679 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a32360 wing c3225 estc r1828 12129368 ocm 12129368 54678 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a32360) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 54678) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 760:27) a proclamation against the resset of the rebels, and for delivering them up to justice england and wales. sovereign (1660-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson ... ; and now reprinted, edenburgh : london : 1679. broadside. reproduction of original in bodleian library. entry for c3225 cancelled in wing (2nd ed.). created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng covenanters. scotland -history -1660-1688. broadsides -england -london -17th century 2008-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2009-01 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal coat of arms a proclamation , against the resset of the rebels , and for delivering them up to justice . charles , by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith , to all and sundry our leidges and subjects , whom these presents do or may concern , greeting : forasmuch as upon the first notice given to our privy-council of the rising and gathering of these disloyal and seditious persons in the west , who have of late appeared in arms in a desperate and avowed rebellion against us , our government and laws , we did declare them to be traitors , and discharged all our subjects to assist , resset , supply , or correspond with any of them , under the pain of treason . and the saids rebels and traitors being now ( by the blessing of god upon our forces ) subdued , dissipated and scattered ; and such of them as were not either killed or taken in the field , being either retired secretly to their own homes and houses , expecting shelter and protection from the respective heretors , in whose lands they dwell , or lurking in the countrey . and we being unwilling that any of our good subjects should be ensnared , or brought into trouble by them ; have therefore with advice of our privy-council , thought fit again to discharge and prohibit all our subjects , men or women , that none of them offer or presume to harbour , resset , supply , correspond with , hide or conceal the persons of robert hamilton , brother german to the laird of prestoun , john patoun in meadow head , alias captain patoun , joseph lermont , alias major lermont , william cleeland , john balfour of kinloch whytfoord of blaquhan younger , medellan of barstob , john wilson , son to alexander wilson town-clerk of lanerk , rosse , pretended major , thomas weir , brother to kirkfield , haxstoun of rathillet , carmichael , son to the earl of wigtons chamberlane , connon of mondrogau , mr. william ferguson of ketloch , james russel in kinksketle , george balfour in gilstoun , andrew and alexander hendersons , sons to john henderson in kilbraichmont , andro guilon weaver in balmerino , george fleeming younger of balbuthy , robert dingwall , son to dingwall in caldhame , mr. samuel arnot , mr. gabriel semple , mr. john wolsh , mr. john king , mr. donald cargil , mr. george barclay , mr. john rae , mr. thomas dowglas , mr. forrester , mr. robert muir , mr. lamb , mr. richard cameron mr. david home vre of shirgarton , forrester of bankhead , john haddoway merchant in dowglas , james white writer there , cuninghame of mountgrenan , and mr. john cuninghame sometime of bedland , james and william cleillands , brethren-in law to john haddoway merchant in dowglas , thomas bogle of boglehole , alias nether carmile , gordons of earlstoun elder and younger , medowgall of french , the laird of remenstoun , brother to the earl of golloway , the laird of castle-stewart , brother to the said earl , gordon of craichlay , turnbul of beuley , thomas turnbul of standhill , hendry hall , george home of greddin , macky of cloncard , mr. john rae , somervel of vrats , mr. archibald riddel , brother to the laird of riddel , cathcarts , two sons of the lord cathcart , blair of phinnick , murdoch , alias laird murdoch ; rolland , richisond fewar in gilmerton and his three sons . or any others who concurred or joyned in the late rebellion , or who upon the account thereof , have appeared in arms in any part of this our kingdom : but that they pursue them as the worst of traitors , and present and deliver such of them as they shall have within their power , to the lords of our privy-council , the sheriff of the county , or the magistrates of the next adjacent burgh-royal , to be by them made forth-coming to law : certifying all persons , either heretors , tenents , or other men or women , as shall be found to fail in their duty herein , they shall be esteemed and punished as favourers of the said rebellion , and as persons accessory to , and guilty of the same . and to the end , all our good subjects may have timeous notice hereof , we do ordain these presents to be forthwith printed , and published at the mercat-crosses of edenburgh , linlithgow , stirling , lanerk , air , rutherglen , glasgow , irwing , wigton , kirckcudburgh , dumsreice , cowpar in fife , jedburgh , perth , and remanent mercat-crosses of the head burghs of the several shires of the kingdom , by macers or messengers at arms : and we do recommend to the right reverend our archbishop and bishops , to give order that this our proclamation be , with all diligence , read on the lords day in all the churches within their several diocesses , that none pretended ignorance . given under our signet at edenburgh , the twenty-sixth day of june , 1679. and of our reign the thretty one year . al. gibson , cl. sti. concilii . god save the king . edenburgh printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1670. and now re printed at london . the protestation of the generall assemblie of the church of scotland, and of the noblemen, barons, gentlemen, borrowes, ministers and commons; subscribers of the covenant, lately renewed, made in the high kirk, and at the mercate crosse of glasgow, the 28, and 29. of november 1638 protestation. 1638-11-29 church of scotland. general assembly. 1638 approx. 20 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 8 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2005-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a11752 stc 22047 estc s116929 99852144 99852144 17451 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11752) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 17451) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1394:13) the protestation of the generall assemblie of the church of scotland, and of the noblemen, barons, gentlemen, borrowes, ministers and commons; subscribers of the covenant, lately renewed, made in the high kirk, and at the mercate crosse of glasgow, the 28, and 29. of november 1638 protestation. 1638-11-29 church of scotland. general assembly. warriston, archibald johnston, lord, 1611-1663. [16] p. by george anderson, printed at glasgow : in the yeare of grace, 1638. written for the general assembly by archibald johnston, lord warriston. a protest against the proclamation of 29 november dissolving the assembly. signatures: a-b⁴. running title reads: protestation november 29. in this state a2r has catchword "intruded"; first word on a2v is "intruded". variant: quire a wrongly printed with the outer forme of stc 22047.5; first word on a2v is "of". reproduction of the original in the henry e. huntington library and art gallery. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i). -proclamations. 1638-11-29 -controversial literature -early works to 1800. church and state -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -church history -17th century -early works to 1800. 2004-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-04 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-11 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2004-11 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-01 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the protestation of the generall assemblie of the chvrch of scotland , and of the noblemen , barons , gentlemen , borrowes , ministers and commons ; subscribers of the covenant , lately renewed , made in the high kirk , and at the mercate crosse of glasgow , the 28 , and 29. of november 1638. printed at glasgow by george anderson , in the yeare of grace , 1638. the protestation of the generall assembly of the church of scotland , &c. wee commissioners from presbyteries , burghes , and universities , now conveened in a full and free assembly of the church of scotland , indicted by his majestie , and gathered together in the name of the lord jesus christ the only head , and monarch of his owne church ; and wee noblemen , barons , gentlemen , ministers , burgesses and commons , subscribers of the confession of faith , make it knowne that where wee his majesties loyall subjects of all degrees , considering and taking to heart the many and great innovations and corruptions lately by the prelats and their adherents intruded of this church , which had beene before in great puritie to our unspeakable comfort established amongst us , were moved to present many earnest desires and humble supplications to his sacred majestie , for granting a free generall assembly , as the only legall and readie meane to try these innovations , to purge out the corruptions , and settle the order of the church , for the good of religion , the honour of the king , and the comfort and peace of the kirk and kingdome : it pleased his gracious majestie , out of his royall bountie , to direct unto this kingdome , the noble and potent lord , james marques of hammiltoun , with commission to heare and redresse the just grievances of the good subjects , who by many petitions , and frequent conferences , being fully informed of the absolute necessitie of a free generall assemblie , as the only judicatorie which had power to remedie those evils , was pleased to undergoe the paines of a voyage to england for presenting the pitifull condition of our church to his sacred majestie ; and the said commissioner his grace returned againe in august last , with power to indict an assembly , but with the condition of such prelimitations , as did both destroy the freedome of an assemblie , and could no wayes cure the present diseases of this church : which was made so clearly apparent to his grace , that for satisfying the reasonable desire of the subjects , groaning under the wearinesse and prejudices of longsome attendance , hee was againe pleased to under-take another journey to his majestie , and promised to endeavour to obtaine a free generall assemblie , without any prelimitation , either of the constitution and members , or matters to be treated , or manner , and order of proceeding , so that if any question should arise concerning these particulars , the same should bee cognosced , judged , and determined by the assemblie , as the onely judge competent : and accordingly by warrant from our sacred soveraigne , returned to this kingdome , and in september last , caused indict a free generall assemblie , to be holden at glasgow , the 21. of november instant , to the unspeakable joy of all good subjects and christian hearts , who thereby did expect the perfect satisfaction of their long expectations ; and the finall remedie of their pressing grievances : but these hopes were soone blasted : for albeit the assemblie did meet and begin at the appointed day , and hath hitherto continued , still assisted with his graces personall presence , yet his grace hath never allowed any freedome to the assemblie , competent to it by the word of god , acts and practise of this church , and his majesties indiction , but hath laboured to restraine the same , by protesting against all the acts made therein , and against the constitution therof by such members , as by all law reason and custome of this church were ever admitted in our free assemblies , and by denying his apprebation to the things proponed and coucluded , though most cleare , customable , and uncontraverted . and now since his grace after the presenting and reading of his own commission from our sacred soveraigne , and after his seeing all our commissions from presbyteries and burghes produced and examined , and the assembly constitute of all the members by unanimous consent , doth now to our greater griefe without any just cause or occasion offered by us , unexpectedly depart and discharge any further meeting , or proceeding in this assembly , under the paine of treason ; and after seven dayes sitting , declare all acts made , or heereafter to be made in this assembly , to be of no force nor strength ; and that for such causes as are either expressed in his maiesties former proclamations , ( and so are answered in our former protestations ) or set downe in the declinatour , and protestation presented in name of the prelats , ( which are fully cleared in our answere made thereto ) or else were long since proponed by the commissioner his g. in his eleven articles or demands sent unto us , before the indiction of the assembly ( and so were satisfied by our answers , which his grace acknowledged , by promising after the recept thereof to procure a free generall assembly , with power to determine upon all questions , anent the members , manner , and matters thereof ) all which for avoyding tediousnesse wee heere repeat : or otherwise the said causes alleadged by the commissioner , were proponed by his grace , in the assemblie ; such as first , that the assemblie refused to reade the declinatour and protestation exhibited by the prelats , which neverthelesse was publicklie read and considered by the assemblie , immediatly after the election of a moderatour and constitution of the members , before the which , there was no assemblie established , to whom the same could have been read : next , that ruling elders were permitted to have voyce in the election of commissioners from presbyteries , which was knowne to his grace , before the indiction and meeting of the assembly , and is so agreeable to the acts and practise of this church , inviolably observed before the late times of corruption , that not one of the assembly doubted thereof , to whom by the indiction and promise of a free assembly , the determination of that question , anent the members constituent propertie belonged . and last , that the voyces of the six assessors , who did sit with his grace , were not asked and numbered , which we could not conceive to bee any just cause of offence , since after 39. nationall assemblies of this reformed church , where neither the kings maiestie , nor any in his name was present , at the humble and earnest desire of the assembly , his maiesty graciously vouchsafed his presence either in his owne royall person , or by a commissioner , not for voting or multiplying of voyces , but as princes and emperours of old , in a princely manner to countenance that meeting , and to preside in it for externall order ; and if wee had been honoured with his maiesties personall presence , his maiestie ( according to the practice of king james of blessed memorie ) would have only given his own iudgment in voting of matters , and would not have called others who had not been cloathed with commission from the church to carry things by pluralitie of voyces . therefore in conscience of our duetie to god and his trueth , the king and his honour , the church and her liberties , this kingdome and her peace , this assemblie and her freedome , to our selves and our safetie , to our posteritie , persons and estates , wee professe with sorrowfull and heavie , but loyall hearts . that wee cannot dissolve this assemblie , for the reasons following . 1. for the reasons alreadie printed anent the necessitie of conveening a generall assemblie , which are now more strong in this case , seeing the assemblie was alreadie indicted by his maiesties authoritie , did conveene , and is fully constitute in all the members thereof , according to the word of god , and discipline of this church , in the presence and audience of his maiesties commissioner ; who hath reallie acknowledged the same , by assisting therein seven dayes , and exhibition of his maiesties royall declaration , to bee registrate in the bookes of this assemblie , which accordingly is done . 2. for the reasons contained in the former protestations made in name of the noblemen , barons , burgesses , ministers , and commons , whereunto we doe now iudicially adhere , as also unto the confession of faith and covenant , subscribed and sworne by the body of this kingdome . 3. because as wee are obliged by the application and explication subioyned necessarily to the confession of faith subscribed by us ; so the kings maiestie , and his commissioner , and privie councell ; have urged many of this kingdome to subscribe the confession of faith made in anno 1580. and 1590 : and so to returne to the doctrine and discipline of this church , as it was then professed : but it is cleare by the doctrine and discipline of this church , contained in the booke of policie then registrate in the bookes of assemblie , and subscribed by the presbyteries of this church ; that it was most unlawfull in it self , and preiudiciall to these priviledges which christ in his word hath left to his church , to dissolve or breake up the assemblie of this church , or to stoppe and stay their proceedings in constitution of acts for the welfare of the church , or execution of discipline against offenders ; and so to make i● appeare , that religion and church-government should depend absolutely upon the pleasure of the prince . 4. because there is no ground of pretence either by act of assemblie , or parliament , or any preceeding practice , whereby the kings majestie may lawfully dissolve the generall assemblie of the church of scotland , far lesse his majesties commissioner , who by his commission hath power to indict and keep it , secundùm legem & praxim : but upon the contrary , his majesties prerogative royall , is declared by act of parliament , to be nowayes prejudiciall to the priviledges and liberties , which god hath granted to the spirituall office-bearers , and meetings of this church ; which are most frequently ratified in parliaments , and especially in the last parliament holden by his maiestie himself , which priviledges and liberties of the church , his maiesty will never diminish or infringe , being bound to maintaine the same in integritie by solemne oath given at his royall coronation in this kingdome . 5. the assemblies of this church have still inioyed this freedome of uninterrupted sitting , without or notwithstanding any contramand , as is evident by all the records thereof ; and in speciall by the generall assembly holden in anno 1582. which being charged with letters of horning by the kings maiestie his commissioner and councell , to stay their processe against master robert montgomerie , pretended bishop of glasgow , or otherwise to dissolve and rise , did notwithstanding shew their libertie and freedome , by continuing and sitting still , and without any stay , going on in that processe against the said master robert , to the finall end thereof : and thereafter by letter to his maiestie , did shew clearly , how far his majestie had been uninformed , and upon misinformation , prejudged the prerogative of jesus christ , and the liberties of this church , and did inact and ordaine , that none should procure any such warrant or charge under the pain of excommunication . 6. because now to dissolve , after so many supplications and complaints , after so many reiterated promises , after our long attendance and expectation , after so many references of processes from presbyteries , after the publick indiction of the assemblie , and the solemne fast appointed for the same , after frequent convention , formall constitution of the assemblie in all the members thereof a and seven dayes sitting , were by this act to offend god , contemne the subjects petitions , deceive many of their conceived hopes of redresse of the calamities of the church and kingdome , multiply the combustions of this church , and make every man despaire heereafter ever to see religion established , innovations removed , the subjects complaint respected , or the offenders punished with consent of authoritie , and so by casting the church loose and desolate , would abandon both to ruine . 7. it is most necessary to continue this assemblie for preveening the prejudices which may ensue upon the pretence of two covenants , whereas indeed there is but one . that first subscribed in 1500. and 1590. being a nationall covena●● , and oath to god ; which is lately renewed by ●s , with that necessary explanation , which the corruptions introduced since that time contrary to the same , inforced : which is also a knowledged by the act of councell in september last , declaring the same to bee subscribed , as it was meaned the time of the first subscription : and therefore for removing that shame , and all preiudices which may follow upon the show of two different covenants and confessions of faith in one nation , the assemblie cannot dissolve , before it trye , finde and determine , that both these covenants , are but one and the selfe same covenant : the latter renewed by us , agreeing to the true genuine sense and meaning of the first , as it was subscribed in anno 1580. for these and many other reasons , wee the members of this assemblie , in our owne name , and in the name of the kirk of scotland , whom wee represent ; and wee noblemen , barons , gentlemen , ministers , burgesses , and commons before mentioned , doe solemnely declare in the presence of the everliving god , and before all men ; and protest , 1. that our thoughts are not guiltie of any thing which is not incumbent to us , as good christians towardes god , and loyall subjects towardes our sacred soveraigne . 2. that all the protestations generall or particular , proponed or to bee proponed by the commissioner his grace , or the prelates and their adherents , may bee presentlie discussed before this generall assemblie , being the highest ecclesiasticall iudicatorie of this kingdome : and that his grace depart not till the same be done , 3. that the lord commissioner depart not , till this assemblie do fully settle the solide peace of this church , cognoscing and examining the corruptions introduced upon the doctrine and discipline thereof : and for attaining hereof , and removing all iust exceptions which may bee taken at our proceedings , we attest god the searcher of all hearts , that our intentions , and whole proceedings in this present assemblie , have beene , are , and shall be according to the word of god the lawes and constitutions of this church , the confession of faith ; our nationall oath , and that measure of light , which god the father of light shall grant us , and that in the sinceritie of our hearts , without any preoccupation or passion . 4. that if the commissioner his grace depart and leave this church and kingdome in this present disorder , and discharge this assemblie , that it is both lawfull and necessarie for us to sit still and continue in keeping this present assemblie ; indicted by his majestie , till we have tryed , judged , censured all the bygone evils , and the introductors , and provided a solide course for continueing gods trueth in this land with puritie and libertie , according to his word , our oath and confession of faith , and the lawfull constitutions of this church ; and that with the grace of god , wee and every one of us adhering hereunto , shall sit still and continue in this assemblie , till after the finall settling and conclusion of all matters , it be dissolved by common consent of all the members thereof . 5. that this assemblie is and should be esteemed and obeyed , as a most lawfull , full and free generall assemblie of this kingdome : and that all acts , sentences , constitutions , censures and proceedings of this assemblie , are in the self , and should be reputed , obeyed and observed by all the subjects of this kingdome , and members of this church , as the actions , sentences , constitutions , censures and proceedings of a full and free generall assemblie of this church of scotland , and to have all ready execution , under the ecclesiasticall paines contained , or to bee contained therein , and conforme thereto in all points . 6. that whatsoever inconvenience fall out , by impeding , molesting , or staying the free meeting , sitting , reasoning , or concluding of this present assemblie , in matters belonging to their judicatorie , by the word of god , lawes & practice of this church , and the confession of faith , or in the observing and obeying the acts , ordinances and conclusions thereof , or execution to follow thereupon : that the same be not imputed unto us , or any of us , who most ard entlie desired the concurrance of his maiesties commissioner to this lawfull assembly : but upon the contrare , that the prelats and their adherentes , who have protested and declined this present assemblie , in conscience of their own guiltinesse , not dareing to abide any legall tryall , and by their misinformation have moved the commissioner his grace to dep●rt and discharge this assembly , bee esteemed repute and holden the disturbers of the peace , and overthrowers of the liberties of the church , and guiltie of all the evils which sh●ll follow heereupon , and condignely consured ; according to the greatnesse of their fault , and acts of the church and realme : and to this end . wee againe and againe doe by these presents cite and summond them , and every one of them , to compeere before this present generall assembly , to answere to the premisses , and to give in their reasons , defences , and answeres against the complaints given in , or to bee given in against them , and to heare probation led , and sentence pronounced against them , and conforme to our former citations , and according to iustice , with certification as effeirs . like as by these presents wee summond and cite all those of his majesties councell , or any other , who have procured , consented , subscribed , or ratified this present proclamation , to bee responsable to his majestie and three estates of parliament , for their counsell given in this matter , so highly importing his majestie , and the whole realme , conforme to the 12. act , king james 4. parliament 2. and protest for remedie of law against them , and every one of them : 7. and lastly wee protest , that as wee adhere to the former protestations all and every one of them , made in the name of the noblemen , barons , gentlemen , ministers , burghes , and commons ; so seeing wee are surprised by the commissioner his graces suddaine departing , farre contrary to his majesties indiction , and our expectation , wee may extend this our protestation , and adde more reasons thereunto in greater length and number , whereby wee may fully cleare before god and man , the equitie of our intentions , and lawfulnesse of our proceedings : and upon the whole premisses , the foresaids persons for themselves , and in name aforesaid asked instruments . this was done in the high church of glasgow , in publicke audience of the assemblie , begun in presence of the commissioner his grace , who removed and refused to heare the same to the end , the twentie eight day of november : and upon the mercate crosse of glasgow , the twentie ninth day of the said moneth , the yeare of god , 1638. respectivè . finis . the remonstrance of the nobility, barrones, burgesses, ministers and commons within the kingdome of scotland vindicating them and their proceedings from the crymes, wherewith they are charged by the late proclamation in england, feb. 27. 1639. church of scotland. general assembly. 1639 approx. 51 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 17 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-08 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a11659 stc 21907 estc s116848 99852063 99852063 17366 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11659) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 17366) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1531:2) the remonstrance of the nobility, barrones, burgesses, ministers and commons within the kingdome of scotland vindicating them and their proceedings from the crymes, wherewith they are charged by the late proclamation in england, feb. 27. 1639. church of scotland. general assembly. henderson, alexander, 1583?-1646. aut 32 p. imprinted by iames bryson, edinburgh : anno domini 1639. drafted by alexander henderson. at end: revised according to the ordinance of the generall assembly .. 22. of march 1639. reproduction of the original in the bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder 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assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church of scotland -early works to 1800. england and wales. -sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i). -proclamations. 1639-02-27 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. 2004-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-03 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-06 rachel losh sampled and proofread 2004-06 rachel losh text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-07 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the remonstrance of the nobility , barrones , burgesses , ministers and commons within the kingdome of scotland , vindicating them and their proceedings from the crymes , wherewith they are charged by the late proclamation in england , feb. 27. 1639. edinburgh imprinted by iames bryson anno domini 1639. although the depthes of the counsell of god , and the secrets of the wayes of the most high cannot be sounded nor found out by us , till they be discovered and unsecreted by himself ; yet so far as we can conceive and consider of the course of divine providence in our present affaires , we begin to think , that the lord is about some great work in the earth . for the cup which hath been propined to other reformed kirks is at this time presented unto us : we have used all meanes by our earnest intercessions , by our true remonstrances and humble supplications , to informe his majestie , and to deprecate his wrath : but finde both his eares possessed by the false and spitefull misinformations of the late pretended prelats , and of such as hope to catch some great things in our troubled waters : whereby his majesties wrath waxeth hoter every day : as is too sensible to us his majesties humble and loyall subjects , who were expecting a gracious answer to our last supplication , and may be apparant to all men , by the late proclamation and declaration in england feb. 27. ordained to be read in every kirk within that kingdome . we are indeed confident and comforted in this ; that the gates of hell shall not prevaile against the cause mantained by us , and that in the end glory shall be to god in the highest by the testimony which shall be given to the kingdome of his son iesus christ now in question , that peace shall be on earth , and good-will and loving kindnesse shall be to the people of god. but in the meane time it cannot but wound our hearts and grieve us sore ; that we are brought to this extremity , that we must either perish under the burthen of so many foule aspersions , or be constrained , to appeare in termes of contradiction against such pieces and proclamations as the malice of our adversaries , prevailing with his majesty , doth lybell and send out continaually against us . although the foresaid proclamation and declaration chargeth us with nothing materiall , which we have not from the sincerity of our hearts and the manifest truth and reasons of our proceedings aboundantly answered before , in our printed protestations , information , and answers unto the declaration made by his majesties commissioner , and unto the bishops their declinatour , yet lest by our silence the cause of god and our innocency in defending thereof , receive the smallest prejudice in the mindes of the well affected , and that we may yet more convince the consciences , if not close the mouthes , of our self-condemned enemies , we shall not wearie to make a summarie repetition and true application of what hath been formerly written at large . the title beareth , 1. that the proclamation is intended to informe the loving subjects of england ; which is the desire of our hearts , and for which we have laboured ; being confident that all his majesties loving subjects of england , after true and full information , wil allow of our actions , as proceeding from the love of christ , and of our king and countrey , which to us are inseparably joyned , and wherein we are so emulous , that we are heartily grieved , and think our selves heavily wronged , that in love and loyaltie , we should be reckoned second , or inferiour , to any subjects in the christian world . but what truth of information may be expected from our prelats , with their pages and parasites , who can have no hope of rysing again , but from our certaine ruine , all the judicious subjects of england may easily discerne . 2. the title beareth that by our seditious practises we are seeking to overthrow his majesties regall power under the false pretences of religion . none of all our actions is more challenged of sedition , then our necessarie confession of faith and nationall covenant , wherein we are so far from overturning regall authority , that we declared before god & men that we had no intention or desire to attempt any thing that might turne to the diminution of the kings greatnesse and authority . we could not so much as imagin , that the refusing of the service book , and the rejecting of episcopall government , which two over-turne the frame of gods worship and the discipline of the kirk , as they were here established , should ever have been interpreted to be the overthrowing of regall power ; the pillars of true regall power are religion and righteousnesse , which by our oath we have endevored to establish , and are confident , if we can have them in peace , shall be seen by all the world to be strong supporters of his majesties throne . our practises are called seditious , our carriages tumultuous , our returnes froward and perverse , our intentions traiterous , our informations and declarations infamous lybels , our protestations mutinous , our covenant aband or rather a conspiracie against the lords anoynted , pretended to be with god , that we may with the better countenance do the works of the divell , such as are treasons and rebellions , our preparations for defence hostile , as if the king were our sworn enemy , our aimes to be the invasion of the good subjects of england , to make whole our broken fortunes , our actions increasing and dareing insolencies , our present case a brain-sick distemper , our selves evil and traiterously affected persons , factious and turbulent spirits &c. to which we answer , 1. it may be that the lord will look on our affliction , and that the lord will requite good for this cursing . blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you , and shall say all manner of evill against you for my sake . 2. these railing accusations have proceeded from the unchristian hearts of our prelats , who are rageing waves of the sea , foaming out their own shame , and thereby give publick proof , that by the sentence of excommunication from the kirk , they are indeed delivered unto satan , the spirit which now worketh mightily in them . all their revilings against us , shall not draw from us one word , which may reflect upon the kings majestie . they have learned an arte , like unto that practised of old , cunningly to insert the image of their hierarchie , into the kings portract , that no man can do reverence to the one , but he must adorethe other , no man speak , or do , against the one , but he must speak , and do against the other . but we are not unacquainted with their craft , and god hath taught us the way to honour the king , and detest treason , sedition and rebellion , without honour done to them , and without the perfidious acknowledging of their abjured tyrannie . 3. by two things all men may perceive , that the prelats would have their anger to come to a mischief : the one is , that they use extreme bitternesse of words . yet in this they faile of their end ; that their words are rather common railings and flyting , then sharp , pointed and proper , more labouring to speak all the evill they can devise against us , then to speak any truth against our persons and cause . the other is , that they would ingage his majestie so far in their businesse , that no place may be left to a retreat . but in this also we trust they shall be disappointed , and that they shall never induce his majestie , to act any thing which is not revocable . princes who ought to be common parents , will not make themselves a party ; for that were to overthrow the boat by unequall weight on the one side , and make not only the passengers , but him that sitteth at the helme to perish ; which our prelats have desperatly chosen , rather then to repent , or with ionas to cast themselves in the sea , that they may perish alone . their maxime is old ; when we are dead and gone , let the earth be burnt up with fire . in the narrative we are glad that they judge of our intentions ( which are directly known to god only ) by our proceedings and actions before the world : which against their obloquies and misconstructions we justifie . 1. by our long suffering the outrages and insolencies of the prelats ; who against the unity of hearts , authority of assemblies , order of ministerie , purity of doctrine and worship and whole reformation of religion in this kirk ( which was the wonderfull work of gods greatest mercy to this kingdome , and the glory of our land ) for no other end , but for satisfying their ambition and avarice ( which are known to be the two great inchanters of naturall men , and have proven cruell harpyes against religion ) they did overturne all ; bringing in for unity , division , for authority of assemblies , their own usurpation , for order of the ministerie , episcopall tyrannie , and for the purity of worship , first humane inventions , and thereafter ( being now grown by their rents and lordly dignities , by their power over the ministers and other lieges , by their places in parliament , councell , session , exchequer , and high commission to a plenipotent dominion and greatnesse ) they frame a book of canons for ruling the kirk and disposing upon religion at their pleasure . and yet all this time the greatest opposition was the zeale of some preachers in giving testimonie to the truth , and sealing the same by their sufferings , and the groaning of the people , and their crying to god , that he would come down and deliver them from these more then egyptian taskmasters . 2. by the peaceablnesse of our proceedings , ever since we begune to appeare in a publick way of opposition : although their insolencie ascended so high as without consent or knowledge of the kirk , they have framed a service book to be received in all the kirks of the kingdome , as the only forme of gods publick worship , procured letters of horning against ministers for that effect , practised it themselves , and not only discharged some readers and ministers who refused the book , but also obtained a charge , that no man under the paine of death should speak against the bishops or their service book : and yet although the book was brought in without order , and known to be a change of the whole forme of gods worship ; the noblemen , barrones , burgesses , ministers and commons conveening although in a very great number , yet in most peaceable manner without any tumult , did only supplicat most submisly the lords of his majesties councell , and direct their supplications to his majestie for remeeding their just and important grievances . thirdly , when their supplications received no other answer , but terrible proclamations condemning all their meetings and proceedings , and highly allowing the evils which were their grievances ; their complaints against the many haynous crimes of the prelats were not heard , and their distresses still pressing them more ; the supplicants entering into a deeper search of the causes of all their evils , and of the barring of their supplications ; found them to be from themselves and their former perfidious dealing against the covenant of god. and therefore resolved to renew their nationall oath and covenant with solemne humiliation and prayers to god for reconciliation , and for better successe afterward . they resolve also to renew their supplication to the kings majestie for a generall assembly and parliament , as the ordinarie and able meanes to redresse their evils , and essayed all possible wayes of presenting it . they answered to the full all exceptions taken against the covenant , and left nothing undone , which beseemed christian subjects , who honour god and feare the king. fourthly , after many petitions and long exspectation when a generall assembly was conveened by his majesties speciall indiction , and orderly constitute in all the members thereof , in the presence of his majesties commissioner ; we were forbidden to proceed and commanded to rise , without any just cause offered by us . in this extremity of the precipitating of the kirk and kingdome in a world of confusions upon the one side , and of sitting after the interdiction , on the other part , we chosed that course which was warranted by christ , was most agreable to his majesties will formerly manifested , and to the publick weale , as is contained in the supplication of the generall assembly directed to his majestie , whereof no mention is made in the proclamatiō . since that time we have been threatned with armies and hostile invasion from england , against which we have been preparing for our lawfull and necessarie defence , far from the least thought of invading or harming our neighbours . our wayes then have been , after long silence , no other but humble supplications to god and the king , necessary protestations , religious renewing of our nationall covenant , sitting in a generall assembly conveened by his majesties indiction , information and preparation for necssarie defence against open hostility . the particular evidences of our traiterous intentions are expressed in the proclamation to be : first , the multitude of infamous libels stuffed full of calumnies against the kings authority . if any peice coming from us had been here designed , our answere might have been particulare ; and therefore in generall we are bold to affirme , that what hath passed from our hands of that kinde , as it hath been meant to cleare our intentions of disloyalty , so it carrieth nothing with it which can merite so foule an aspersion , all being done both in matter and expression with the highest respect we could conceive to his majesties sacred person and royall authority , and with the best construction of his majesties proceedings . secondly , letters sent to private persons in london and sending some covenanters to privat meetings at london to incite people against the king and to pervert them from their duty ; a traiterous intention we confesse , which will never be so happie as to harboure in a loyall brest . and as we are assured that such missives or messengers were never sent from the covenanters in common ; so must it be , either cunning in the prelates , to alledge that which we cannot prove to be false , or malice to attribute that unto us , which private persons have done from their own motions without our knowledge : that in such a time there should be found libels or licentious discourses , false news running up and down , and letters carrying the names of such authores as never saw them , should seem nothing strange . and whether the search of such things with too great diligence , and the suppressing of them by too much severity , or the neglect and despysing of them by authority , be the best remedie against them , let statesmen judge . it is known when water is stopped one way it runneth asunder and breaketh out many wayes . thirdly , our publick contemning of all his majesties just commands , and our mutinous protesting against them . it is our delight to obey his majesties just commands , and is farre from our hearts to contemne any of his majesties commands , although unjust , or to protest mutinously against them : but to protest in a faire way , and as beseemeth duetifull subjects , is a course customeable , legall and ordinare , and in some cases so necessare for preservation of right , and preventing of evil , that at sometimes it cannot be omitted , and at no time can give just offence . fourthly , the fourth evidence beareth three points , which require particulare answere . 1. that no covenant or band of that nature is warrantable without civill authoritie . this exception hath been so fully answered from warrands of divine & humane authority , both ecclesiasticall & civill , from the practise of the godly of old , from the example of our religious progenitors , from the continued subscription used in this kirk , and from the nature of the oath it self , which is nationall , that we trust all men , who are not strangers to what we have written , are satisfied to the full , except the prelats & their adherents , who are endlesse in their cavillations , and craftily labour to bring us back again to the beginning of the controversie , that they may ( if it were possible ) undoe what hath been done by us . 2. that we have rejected the covenant commanded by authoritie , because commanded by authoritie . the reasons not of our rejecting , but of our modest with-holding of our subscription commanded by authoritie are at length set down in our publick and printed protestations , september 22. and december 18. in our answer to the declaration made by his majesties commissioner , and in the acts of the late assembly , which properly owneth the publick judgement and interpretation of the confession of faith. in all which it is found that the confession commanded by authoritie according to the meaning put upon it , is in matters of religion , not only contrarie to our subscription in february , but also to the confession as it was meant and professed in the year 1580 , and therefore could not be subscribed by us , except we would by manifold perjurie have made our selves transgressours , and have brought upon our selves a farre greater weight of the wrath of god , then the first was , which by our subscription we laboured to avert and prevent . thirdly , that our covenant is a conspiracie against the king pretended to bee with god , for doing the works of the devill . this is a blasphemie , to which we are sure , neither the kings majestie , nor any fearing god , can be accessory , and which addeth much to our confidence , that the lord hath ratified in heaven the curse pronounced upon the prelates , that he will reprove the words which hee hath heard uttered by them , and that their work shall not prosper : and therefore comforting our selves in the lord our god , who hath been pleased by so many signes and undenyable evidences , to countenance and confirme our covenant , we bring against them no railing accusation , but say , the lord that hath chosen ierusalem rebuke them , and save the king. lastly , our hostile preparations to invade england : against which as much hath been said and sworne by us in our late informations , as we trust hath given satisfaction to all good subjects there , although they had been so uncharitable , which we will never beleeve , as hastily to have embraced such reports . our best actions , & which ought to give to that kingdome greatest contentment , will never by them be wrested to that sense : and although the prelates in the mood of despaire to recover their losses , except by our ruine , traduce us to be desperate hypocrites , yet the event will bear witnesse , that we have spoken , as men fearing the great name of our god , with whom we have reneued our covenant ; and who , when his time commeth , will be avenged , whither upon our hypocrisie , or their calumnie . yet our enemies , seeking the way to make suspicion , where no cause is , have given out , that many , and some of the chiefest amongst us , are men of unquiet spirits , and broken fortunes , &c. but in this they have been evil advised . for suspicions among thoughts , are by wisemen compared with bates among birds , which flee not at the no one-day , but in the time of twilight . it is known by all , who are acquainted with this countrey , that almost the whole kingdome standeth to the defence of this cause , and that the chiefest of the nobles , barrons , and burgesses , are honoured in the places where they live for religion , wisedome , power , and wealth answerable to the condition of this kingdome ; that the meanest of the commons who have joyned in this cause , are content of their meane estates , with the enjoying of the gospel ; and no lesse known , that our adversaries are not for number , any considerable part of the kingdome , and that the chiefest ( setting aside some few states-men , & such as draw their breath from court ) are known athiests , or professed papists , drowned in debt , denounced his majesties rebels , for a long time past , are under caption of their creditours , and have already in their imaginations divided amongst them the lands of the supplicants , which they hope to be possessed in , by the power of england . but we hope that by this shift they may well be worse , but they shall be no better . in the meane time against all these calumnies , the lord from heaven hath looked upon the integritie of our hearts , and in his wisedome hath found the way to clear our innocencie . for beside our supplication to the councel ian. 13. for this end , and our late information to england feb. 4. we have the publick testimonie of the councel of the kingdome to make it known . a letter sent to england from one george sterlin in edinburgh , with the advise of iohn sterlin commissar of wigtoun both in neer relation to the late pretended b. of galloway , did come to our hands , bearing what the prelates now say ; this was exhibited to the councel , feb. 22. & 28. with our complaint , supplication , attestation of the great name of god , and our own consciences , and offer of our subscription , or any other meane of purgation to the contrare , whereupon the lords of privie councel , sent up our supplication to the kings majestie , with their own , wherein they humbly supplicate , lest upon such informations , his majestie should be more easily moved to think upon harder courses , than he had heretofore been pleased to keep with his majesties ancient and native kingdome and subjects ; that his majestie in his accustomed fatherly care of the good and preservation of this kingdome , would be pleased , to resolve upon some such course , as without force of armes , or shewing of his princely power , the estate of this kingdome may be setled , as may be seen at greater length in the letter it self . we are challenged here also as usurpers of regall power . first , because we have taken upon us to command the print , and forebidden and dismissed the printer , whom his majestie established . this is the old complaint of the popish prelats against our reformers in the yeare 1559. and very untruly by their successours renewed against us : for we have neither dismissed nor forbidden the printer , who still hath his liberty , and residence in edinburgh . nor doth the act of the generall assembly , which we take to be here meant , containe any thing that can be construed to be the usurpation of regall power , or the smalest diminution of the priviledges royall about printing . it only forbideth under the paine of kirk censure to print any piece that concerneth the kirk , without warrand of the kirk : a power belonging to the kirk in all kingdomes , and ordinarly used in this kirk , not only in the times of popery , but since the reformation , as is manifest by diverse acts of assemblies censuring abuses of printing , appointing some treatises to be printed , and naming some to revise what was to be put to the presse . neither must we think that the nationall kirk is shorter in her liberties of this sort , then our universities are , who without restraint , use their own liberty ; nor will any man think , that schollers shall have the liberty to print their propositions yearly , without controlement , and liberty shall be denied to the generall assembly to print their acts and constitutions . particulare professours use to publish their treatises with adjurations of printers ( because they have no further authority ) that they print them not in another edition , nor in another character : and shall not the kirk make use of that authority which god hath granted her for her own peace and the good of religion ? secondly , because we have conveened the subjects , raised armies , blocked up and besieged his majesties castles &c. so many of these heavy challenges as have any shew of truth , are so fully and plainly answered in our last protestation decemb. 18. that as the prelats needed not to make the objection , so need we to make no new answere . in our last information intended for england , besides that the true , honest and loyall expressions of our hearts , are taken to be false , base and fawning passages : we are particularly challenged of two scandalous and most notorious untruths : first , that the armies now raised , are in the hands of papists . so indeed were we informed , and therefore spake with this caution ( as we are informed ) and why shall not the captaines and leaders of the armie , be sutable to the prime movers , the cause , and end of the work , all which smell of rome and of popery ? the other untruth is , that some of power in the kirk of england have been the cause of taking armes for invasion of this kingdome and of medling with our religion . this we offer to verifie both by write , and by the deposition of prime stats-men and councellours , against some kirk-men there , namely against canterburie himself , that he did negotiate with rome , about the frame of our service book and canons , that with his own hand he altered , and interlyned diverse passages thereof , tending to conformity with rome : a plot so perilous , that had not the lord disappointed it , first , scotland and then england by him , and such as cooperate with him , had become , in their religion , romish . his reprinted conference with m r. fisher , will not serve to vindicate his reputation . and therefore we earnestly intreat all in england , that affect the truth of religion , and the kings honour , and all true patriots that love the liberty , of the kingdome , to supplicate his majestie for calling a parliament there , that this mysterie of iniquity which hath been in working this time past may be discovered , and the prime agents therein , according to their demerits may be tryed and punished , and that this craft and treacherie , in joyning both kingdomes in a bloody war , that by weakning both , rome may be built in the midst of us , and the pope in end set over all , may be seen and disappointed , that god may have his own glory , the king his honour , and his subjects may be in safety , from forraine tyraine over their bodies , and soules . least the prelats should passe any point true or false that may serve their turne ; this also is laide to our charge ; that the kings lawes are in a manner oppressed by us , in so much that the judges are so awed as they dare hardly proceed according to law . the prime judges of the land remember , that by them justice hath been refused us , according to law ; not from their own disposition , but for feare to offend against missives procured against us : we must also now remember , that having of late requyred letters of horning and caption , against the excommunicate prelats , conforme to the act of parliament : whereof they use not to deny the common benefite to the meanest subject ; the lords of session resolved upon a letter to be sent to his majestie march 2. wherein they bring his majesties pleasure , signified by his majesties command , and otherwise , as the only cause of refusing these letters , according to the act of parliament , and withall joyn their most ardent desires and humble wishes for such peace and quietnesse to the kingdome , as it hath injoyed before . which evidenceth that not only the laws , but the judges are for us , and that from conscience of their duty to god , the king and countrey , and not from feare and aw from us . to make all that hath been said the more credible , it is alledged that some of us refuse both the oath of alledgeance and supremacie , and publickly mantaine that we are not oblidged to take the same , and that three scotishmen taken in wales , are at this day , imprisoned for denying these oathes . we can say nothing of these taken in walles , neither there persons nor their purposes being known to us . it seemeth that the inquisition is hote there . but for our selves , although there be a difference betwixt the oath of alledgeance , and supremacie , and we cannot take the oath of supremacie as it is extended , and glossed by the flattering prelats , yet we heartily rander that to his majestie which is due and useth to be given by reformed and sound divines to the civill magistrate , knowing that the fifth command containing the duty of subjects to their princes and rulers , is the first commandment of the second table , and that our confession of faith , acknowledgeth his majestie to be the lordsvice-gerant on earth : to whom the conservation and purgation of religion , doth belong . as this is the conception which our enemies have begotten in his majesties minde against us , so may we learne by this declaration , what his majesties intentions are against this kirk and kingdome , and what birth may be looked for , if divine providence by changing the heart of our king , or by some other way known to himself , make not an abortion , or chock it in time . for first , through the incurable superstition and inveterate malice of the prelats against the reformed religion , declaration is made , that by introducing the service book , there was not the least thought of innovation of religion , but meerly to have a conformity with the worship of god which is observed in both the other kingdomes ; though evil minded men have wrested somethings in it to a sinistrous sense . thus the service book is still no innovation of religion , but by our sinistrous sense , is made to seem so : conformitie with the worship of god in other kingdomes , is urged upon us , as if we were , tabularasa , and had not a forme of worship established by the acts of the kirk and laws of the kingdome : meerly to have conformity is averred , although the manifold litures and interlynings of the service book , used in both the other kingdomes testifie the contrare , by the hands of our own prelates and of canterburie himself . hence wee must pay for abusing the book , and the book it self must in the own time be received . secondly , through the pride and greed of our prelates , episcopall government must be retained as it is established by acts of parliament ; as known to the whole world to be most christian in it self , most peaceable for the civill estate , most consonant to monarchicall government , and without which the parliament will not stand compleat of three estates : although the truth is , there be no act of assembly , nor of parliament for that office in this kingdome , that it is known to reformed christendome , rather to be antichristian in it self , most prejudiciall to the peace of the civill estate , and hath in all nations proven the most pernicious enemy to monarchs , and true monarchicall government . and that the parliament hath been , may be , and is in the nature thereof , compleat and perfect without this excrescence . hence bishops we must have jure divino to serve the will of the prince in the worship of god , and these as lordly as ever before . thirdly , no covenant must be indured to which the kings majestie shall not consent , and our covenant only pretended to be with god , that we may with better countenance do the works of the devill , such as are treasons and rebellions . hence our covenant can be no more endured then treason and rebellion , and the covenanters either renounce god , so solemnly attested by them , or punished as rebels and traitours . fourthly , the question is conceived to bee no more about the service book and episcopall government : but whether the kings majestie shall bee our king or not : and is determined that we have stricken at the very root of kingly government , vilified the regall power in his majesties person , and assumed it to our selves . fifthly , it is declared , that his majestie is forced to take armes to establish and set his kingly authority right here , to make the best of us see , that he will indure no such covenant as we have made . hence resolution is taken and declared , that for establishing the service book and episcopall government , for abolishing of our covenant , and for being avenged on us , as rebels and traitours , his majestie cometh in a hostile war , with all the power that can be raised in england , by all other meanes and by this proclamation , which is ordained to be reade in time of divine service , in every kirk within the kingdome , for that effect . our part in this case is to resolve , whither we will , with sin and shame lie under the pressing weight of so many foule aspersions , as rarely in the worst times have been laide upon christians , receive the service book , as the only forme of divine worship , which is declared by the assembly to be a masse of errours , superstition , idolatry and antichristian tyrannie , welcome home againe our prelats and their abjured government , condemne our reformers and the glorious work of reformation , renounce our covenant and be so many times perjured as we have sworne and subscribed the same , losse all our labours and paines , bestowed for so large a time in so good a cause , open with our own hands a wide doore , and by our example shew a brode way for the entring of popery & of all changes in religion hereafter , lay a stumbling block in the kings way to the kingdome of heaven , and hinder the queens conversion , give offence to all the reformed kirks who have been praying for us , harden the hearts and strengthen the hands of all the enemies of the truth at home and abroad , make our selves an odious spectacle to men and angels , forget our bygone slavery and our wishes for redemption , deny our own experience of the mercy truth and power of god , so many times , and so many wayes , to our unspeakable comfort , manifested this time by-past , losse the posterity and the children that shall come after us , who shall mourne in misery for our misdeeds , make the faces of so many to blush and be ashamed , because of us , leave nothing but laments to our friends and jubilees of joy to our enemies , interrupt the march of the lord of hosts upon the earth , and wrest his dis-played banner out of his hands , pull the crown from the head of christ our judge , our lawgiver and our king , grieve and resist the holy ghost , pull down the golden-candlestick and put out the light , and bring all the plagues that are written in the book of god upon us , so that all nations shall say , wherefore hath the lord done this unto this land ? what meaneth the heate of this his great anger ? then men shall say because they have forsaken the covenant of the lord , therefore are these evils come upon them ; a word of defection could no sooner come from our mouthes but the horrour of hell should enter in our souls : or rather on the contrary use the power which god hath put in our hands , not for invading england , or doing the smalest harme to any of the people of god who trouble not our peace ; cursed be the breasts that harbour such intentions , and the hands that execute them , but meerly for our own defence and safety against armed violence and unjust invasion . and therefore where it is demanded in the proclamation what we will defend ; we answere ; not our disobedience but our religion , liberties and lives : and where it is asked against whom we will defend ; least our intentions or actions should be mistaken , by such as are not acquainted with our case , or misconstrued , as contrary to the doctrine of sound divines , or to the laudable practises of christians of old , or of late , we desire that distinction may be made , and difference put between the king resident in the kingdome , and by opening his ears to both parties , rightly informed , and the king farre from us in another kingdome , hearing the one partie , and mis-informed by our adversaries : between the king as king , proceeding royally according to the laws of the kingdome against rebels , and the king as a man comming down from his throne ( at the foote where of the humble supplication of his subjects lyeth unanswered ) & marching furiously against his loyall and weal-meaning people : between a king who is a stranger to religion , and tyed no further , but according to his own pleasure , to the professours of religion , living in his dominions , and our kiug professing with us the same religion , and obliged by his fathers deed , & his own oath , to desend us his own subjects , our lives , religion , liberties & laws : again , difference would be put , between some private persons taking armes for resistance , & inferiour magistrats , iudges , councellors , nobles , peeres of the land , parliament men , barrons , burgesses , and the whole bodie of the kingdome ( except some few either courteours , stats-men , papists , or popishly affected , and their adherents ) standing to their own defence : between subjects rising , or standing out , against law and reason that they may bee freed from the yoke of their obedience , and a people holding fast their alledgeance to their soveraigne , and in all humilitie supplicating for religion and justice , between a people labouring by armes to introduce novations in religon contrarie to the laws , and a people seeking nothing so much as against all innovations , to have the same religion ratified , which hath been professed since the reformation , and hath not only been solemnely sworn long since by the kings majestie , and by the whole kingdome both of old and of late , but also commanded by the kings majestie to be sworn by his counsellours , and commanded by his councell to bee subscribed by all the people as it was professed at first : between a people pleading for their own phantasies and foolaries , or inventions , and a people suspending their judgement and practise about things controverted , till they should be determined by a nationall assembly , the only proper and competent judicatorie , and after determination , receiving and standing for the conclusions of the assembly . whither in this case , and matters so standing , wee shall stand to our own defence , we are taught by the light and law of nature , by the word of god in the old and new testament , by the covenant betwixt the people and god , by the end for which magistrates are ordained of god , by our standing in our order and line of subordination under god , the great superiour , when our immediate superiours go out of their line & order , by the testimonies of the best divines and sound politicians and lawyers , even such as pleadmost contra monarchomachos , by the mutuall contract betwixt the king and the people at the coronation , by acts of parliament , and by the example of our own predicessours . and now for our brethren and neighbours , in england , whose eares , we suppose , have been filled with this proclamation in their particular kirks ; from that honour which we ow unto authoritie , as the ordinance of god , and from the naturall and loyall affection which we bear unto our king and dread soveraigne , borne and baptized amongst us , we are unfainedly , and from our hearts grieved that first his sacred eares should be so farre possessed , and next his royall name so farre abused by wicked men , as to receive and give way to so many absurd and incredible false calumnies against a whole nation , his own native countrey and kingdome ; it is too manifest how extremly pernitious , and damnageable are calumnies , especially universall ones of this kinde , and therefore to represse them , ought not any law or ordinance be spared , that may serve to the purpose ; from that love which is due from us unto them , to whom in verie many respects , and by many strong bands naturall , civill and spirituall , we are sibber and more nearly joyned , then to any other nation or people on earth , wee are heartily sorie that their kirks and hearing are taken up with such discourses and would wonder at their credulitie , if they should be beleeved by them ; yet because speeches may be the seminaries of sedition , even amongst brethren , who are at greatest distance when they have once begun to divide and discord , we must intreat ( if with so wise a nation there be any need of intreatie ) that they will not upon any declaration which they have heard , be suddenly stirred to attempts against us to our mutuall hurt , or with a golden hook to catch so small commodities , as may bee hoped for in such a warre , and by so doing , make both nations a mocking to strangers , and this yland which hath been blessed with so long a peace , to be a field of blood , and a prey to our common enemies , who now for many years have been looking upon us with an evil eye , and are still waiting for an evil houre : that when they hear of any of our preparations for defence , or of any of our actions which to us are so necessarie , that without them our defence is impossible , and wherein there is no wrong done , or intended against them ; they will judge charitably of us , and of our doings in such an exigent and extremity , as this is , and that they will wisely and christianly , supposing our case to be their own , make use of that common rule of equity , what soever ye would that others did to you , do ye even so to them . that hereafter , reports and declarations made against us by our enemies , be not suddenly beleeved ; since the authours , from the conscience of their own deceitfull dealing , publish them amongst the english only , who cannot controle the untruth of them , and keep them up from the knowledge of this kingdome , where they cannot abide the common light and triall , every one of the commons knowing their forgerie and falshood , and when any of them happen to come to our hands , the difficultie and danger is so great in carying our answers , and the true information , as matters now stand , unto their knowledge . and that they will at last , both poure forth their prayers to god and their supplications to the king in our behalf ; and if need be , use their power for our lawfull defence against merce-naries and wicked men the sons of beliall . are we not their own brethren , their own flesh and bone ? are we not all under one roof , in one and the same shipe , and members of one body ? their religious progenitours at the time of reformation vouchsafed us their help and assistance for establishing the reformed religion , neither have we so evill deserved , nor are they so far degenerated , as that we have reason to feare , that we shall be deserted by them at this time , the cause being the same , the case not much different and the persons only changed , our salvation is common . let us together earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints , that mercy peace , and love may be multiplied unto us . considering also how far our late actions against the persons of our greatest enemies and the chief strengths of the kingdome , as of the castle of edinburgh , &c. are subject to the obloquies of such , as have to the worst sense wrested all our former counsels and necessary conclusions ; and may be mistaken by our friends , who looking at a great distance , cannot well perceive the ripenesse of the occasion and opportunity of our doing , we judged it necessary for silencing the one , and for satisfying the other , to make known to all , how we were driven to this by the present exigence of our affaires for our lawfull and necessary defence . it cannot be unknown to all the subjects of this kingdome , what have been the terrours and threatnings of diverse proclamations at home , as of that , iuly 4. and of the other decem. 18. and to many it is known also what missives have been directed to the nobles and gentlemen of england , for attending the royall banner at yorke april 1. and what proclamations have been made in england , both that of the date ianu. 29. and above all the last declaration feb. 27. condemning our loyall proceedings , our humble supplications , our legall protestations , our true and modest informations , and our very intentions ( after we have attested god so many times and so solemnly on the contrare ) as false and traiterous , our selves as rebels and traitours , and therefore denouncing war in the most hostile manner against us . we are not ignorant what letters have been sent to some of our cold-friends , to excite them , and some of our professed enemies , to embolden and strengthen them against us , with moneys and munition , and with directions and order for the wayes of their combination and running together with their forces ; and on the other side , of the large promises and bold undertakings , of our dis-natured countrey-men , some at court and others at home , to mak up armies of so many thousāds in the north and south parts of the kingdome , for environing us on all sides . the scotish councelours , nobles , and gentlemen about court are made to subscribe the kings covenant with this addition ; that they shall not acknowledge the late generall assembly , that they shall not adheare to the late covenant and band sworn and subscribed by us ; and that they shall oppose against us to the best of their power as they shall be directed by his majesties command ; according to these warnings and preparations , the kings houshold hath entered on their journey , monday last march 18. the king himself taketh post wednesday next march 27. intending on the third day to be at yorke , or new-castle , to march forward with his forces , the scotish noble-men appointed to come home , accompanied with skilled commanders to draw together their friends and followers , to put them in order , and under their generall the marquesse of hammilton to joyn with our forraine enemies attending the kings majestie . the earl of lind-sey goeth to sea with 17. of the kings great ships furnished with three thousand souldiours , to come in their expedition to such places of this kingdome , as their commission , when it is unsealed , shall command them ; six hundreth hors-men are to be sent presently towards scotland , to infest the borders , our enemies at home are waiting for their comming ; our excommunicate prelats and their adhearents are fled to england ; the lands and estates of noblemen , of chief barrones & burgesses , who have joyned in this cause , are designed as a spoil to be parted amongst our enemies . while matters stand thus , and the maine confidence of our adverse partie and pursuers is placed in our divisions , in the power of some papists and others of note amongst our selves , and in some places which are appointed to be strengths for defence of the kingdome against forraine invasion ( as is at length cleared in our protestation ) especially the castle of edinburgh , a chief member of our incorporation and the place of our meetings ; there was no time for longer delay , but in this extremity we must either do or die either defend our selves or come in the reverence of our enemies , whose mercies are cruell . and therefore such dispatch , as ye have heard , in matters necessarly serving for our defence , hath been used in edinburgh and in other parts of the land . where this work will end , the lord whose work it is , and who hath led us so far on , he knoweth ; and as we resolve to stay where we finde not his presence going with us : so are we able to justifie what we have now designed and done , to the consciences of all men : shall defence be necessary , and shall the necessary meanes , without which there can be no defence , be judged unlawfull ? may we not prevent the blow as lawfully , as repell it ? is not the taking of the weapons out of the hands of our boasting enemies and the apprehending of such as draw the kings majestie to so hard courses against his subjects , as lawfull , as the defensive war it self , and is it not more safe both for the king and the kingdome , then to take them in battell ? the law both naturall and civill teacheth , that ad defensionem sufficit , quod praecedat offensa vel justus timor offensae , nec debet quis expectare primum ictum : melius enim juraintacta servare , quam post vnlneratam causam remedium quaerere . quando praecedunt signa & actus manifestae offensionis , & quando aliter nos met tueri non possumus tum inculpata ac necessaria dicitur tutela , a● in dubio insultatus quicquid facit in incontinenti praesumitur ad sui defensionē facere . it is enough for defence that offer of offēce , or just fear of offence go before . all our reasons for lawfull defence and for guarding the castle of edinburgh , militate for us in the surprysall thereof in this case and at this time . this necessary prevention was the practise of france , of holland , of germanie , and of our own nation , when for the defence of their religion or liberties they took armes , which they offered alwayes to lay down how soon they should be secured ; likeas we declare at this time , that we take armes not for invasion , not for alteration of the civill government , not for wronging any mans person , or to possesse what belongeth to any man , but for the defence of our religion , liberties and lives . that even when we hold our sword in the one hand , we will present our humble supplication to his sacred majestic with the other ; that how soon our supplication is granted , our selves secured , and the peace of the kirk and kingdome setled , we shall suffer our swords to fall from us , shall leave nothing in our power unperformed for perfect pacification , and shall vow to live and die in obedience to his majesties laws , and mantainance of his majesties royall person and authority , which we heartily wish and earnestly pray , that god would incline his majestie to heare , before matters be desperate , and the rupture become uncurable . revised according to the ordinance of the generall assembly , by me m r. a. ihonston clerk thereto : edinb . 22. of march 1639. finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a11659-e90 2. sam. 16. 12. mat. 5. 11. a proclamation, for calling of the parliament. edinburgh, the fifteenth day of july, one thousand six hundred and sixty nine. scotland. privy council. 1669 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05647 wing s1846a estc r183506 52612327 ocm 52612327 179631 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05647) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179631) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2794:25) a proclamation, for calling of the parliament. edinburgh, the fifteenth day of july, one thousand six hundred and sixty nine. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by evan tyler, printer to the king's most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1669. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. text in black letter. signed: tho. hay, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-03 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion honi soit qui mal y pense a proclamation , for calling of the parliament . edinburgh , the fifteenth day of july , one thousand six hundred and sixty nine . charles , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith ; to all and sundry our good subjects , whom these presents do or may concern , greeting . forasmuch as , upon divers great and weighty considerations , relating to the establishment of the quiet and happiness of this our ancient kingdom in all its interests , and for the good of our service ; we do think it necessary to call a parliament , to be held at edinburgh , and to begin the nineteenth day of october next , at which time , our commissioner , sufficiently authorized and instructed by us , shall be present . therefore , we , with advice of the lords of our privy council , do hereby require and command , all the lords spiritual and temporal , the archbishops and bishops , the dukes , marquesses , earls , discounts , lords , and our officers of estate of this kingdom , to be present at our parliament the said day : as also , we do require and command all those who have right to choose commissioners for the several shires , to meet within the respective shires at the michaelmas head court next ensuing , and make their elections according to law ; and sicklike , we require and command our royal burroughs to meet in due time for choosing of their commissioners ; and that the lords spiritual and temporal , and our officers of estate aforementioned , commissioners of shires and burroughs , and all other persons concerned and having interest , be present at edinburgh the foresaid nineteenth day of october , to keep this meeting of our parliament , under the pains contained in our acts of parliament made thereanent . and that all our good subjects may have notice of this our royal will and pleasure , we do hereby command our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers , pursevants and messengers at arms , to make timeous proclamation hereof at the mercat-crosse of edinburgh , and at the mercat-crosses of the head burroughs of the several shires of this our kingdom , that none pretend ignorance . tho. hay , cls. sti concilii . edinburgh , printed by evan tyler , printer to the king 's most excellent majesty , 1669. reasons against the rendering of our sworne and subscribed confession of faith warriston, archibald johnston, lord, 1611-1663. 1638 approx. 9 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 3 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a11742 stc 22036.5 estc s105682 99841408 99841408 5989 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11742) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 5989) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 561:5) reasons against the rendering of our sworne and subscribed confession of faith warriston, archibald johnston, lord, 1611-1663. [4] p. printed by g. anderson?, [edinburgh : 1638] by archibald johnston, lord warriston. erroneously attributed to alexander henderson. caption title. imprint from stc. signatures: c² . in this edition c2r line 1 has: prelates. probably intended to be issued with stc 22026, but often found bound with stc 22030, 22056, and other items (stc). identified as stc 22036a on umi microfilm. reproduction of the original in the folger shakespeare library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church of scotland -history, (17th century) -early works to 1800. covenants (church polity) -early works to 1800. scotland -church history -17th century -early works to 1800. 2002-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2002-12 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-01 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2003-01 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion reasons against the rendering of our sworne and subscribed confession of faith. 1. if wee should rendér our subscribed covenant , wee can not bee free of the great guiltinesse of perjurie before god : for as wè were drawn by necessitie to enter into a mutuall union and conjunction amongst our selves . so are wee bound not only by the laws of god and nature , but by our solemne oath and subscription , against all dangerous or divisive motions , by all lawfull meanes to promove and observe the same without violation , and not suffer our selves by whatsoever suggestion , allurement , or terror , directly or indirectly to be divided , or drawn from it : and it is too manifest , that no mo●ion can be more divisive upon the one side , nor can we upon the other part more directly give way to division , then willingly , and with our own consent to render the band of our union and conjunction to be destroyed , that no testimony thereof may be any more extant . 2. wee would distinguish ( except wee will decave our selves ) between res iurata , that which is sworn , and iuratio our swearing thereof : for although all the generall and particular points contained in our subscribed covenant were to be insert in another covenant , to be made by the expresse commandement of authority ; yet to rander our sworne confession , were both to passe from our swearing thereof , a● si res esset integra , as if we had never sworne and subscribed ; and also to destroy that which we have beene doing , as a thing unlawfull , and to be repented of . it were not only to make our oath to be no oath , our subscription no subscription , and our testimony no testimony , but really to acknowledge and confesse our selves in this to have beene transgressours ; so that we can neither clame any right to the promise of god , nor think our selves obliged in any duety to god by vertue of that oath . it must ever be remembred that oaths and perjuries are multiplied , not only according to the diversity of the things that are sworne , but according to the sweareing of the same thing at diverse times ; so oft as we sweare and subscribe the same thing , by so many oathes and obligations are we bound unto god , and consequently the rendering of our subscription , is the renunceing of that individuall b●nd and obligation , although possibly by another we may s●●nd bound or sworne . 3. our voluntary renewing of our covenant with god , carieth greater evidence of a free service to god : then if it had beene done by expresse commandement of authority : because the power of god makeing his people so willing , and the readinesse and sincerity of the people is so much the more manifest , like as the lord from heaven hath testified his acceptance by the wonderfull workings of his spirit in the hearts both of pastors and people , to their great comfort and strengthning in every duety , above any measure that ever hath beene heard of in this land ; and therefore to give any token of recalling the same were unthankfully to misregard the work of god , and to quite all the comforts and corroborations that the people of god have to their great joy experienced at this time . 4. we have decla●ed before god and the world , that this our covenant , as it now stand●th sworne and subscribed , is lawfull and necessary , that it is done in obedience to the commandement of god , conforme to the practice of the godly , and according to the laudable example of our religious progenitors , who by the like oath have obliged us to the substance and tenor of this : and therefore if we should now by rendering our covenant un●o that which we have done , we should deny the commandement of god , condemne the examples in scripture , and the practis●s in this kirk , and precondemne all like commendable cou●ses to be taken by posterity in the like exigence . 5. no covenant in things civile can be alt●red or rescinded without consent of the parties with whom it is made ; but our covenant is a religious covenant made with god and amongst our selves , and therefore can not be rendered without the expresse consent of the meanest of all the subscribers ▪ who justly for their comfort may crave of us all the benefite and performance thereof . 6. there is no appearance that such as affect the prelates and their courses , will be moved to sweare and subscribe all the parts of this covenant : as for instance , to labour by all meanes to recover the former puritie and libertie of the gospel , as it was established and professed , before the novations alreadie introduced , or to declare that they undoubtedly do believe , that the innovations and evils contained in our supplications ; complaints , and protestations are abjured in the confession of faith , as other heads of poperie expresly contained therein . 7. although all the points of the subscribed covenant were ratified by act of parliament , yet could we not render the subscribed covenants : because acts of parliament are changeable , and of the nature of a civile ratification : and it is necessarie , that this our oath being a religious and perpetuall obligation , should stand in vigour for the more firme establishing of religion in our owne time , and in the generations following . 8. all the world may justly wonder at our inconstancie , and our enemies who in their insolencie are readie to insult upon us at the least occasion , would not cease to mock at us , and traduce us as perjured covenant-breakers , and troublers of the peace of the kirk and kingdome , without any necessary cause . 9. although we do not compare the scriptures of god wi●h a written confession of faith , yet as the rendering of the bible w●s the sin of traditores of old , and a signe of the denyall of the truth contained therein : so the rendering of our confession of faith , so solemnly sworne and subscribed , for staying the ●●urse of defection , and for barring of poperie , and all other corrupt●o●s of religion , could be interpreted to be no lesse , then a reall denyall of our faith before men , in a time when god calleth for the confession thereof . 10. many fair promises have beene made , for not urging of articles already concluded , and for not troubling us with any further novations , which being beleived , have ensnared many , and drawne them on to doe that which otherwise they would not have done , all which promises have beene broken and denyed , when the performance was craved . and why shall we not expect the like in this case , especially where the challenge will be found to be more hard and difficile ? objections answered . ob. 1. it may be objected that the confession of faith being confirmed by the kings authoritie were much to be pr●ferred to this , which seemeth to have no expresse command●ment of authoritie . ans. 1. our covenant wanteth not the warr and civile and eccle●i●sticall , which authorised the former covenant : 2. although rash and unadvised oathes be unlawfull , yet voluntary covenanting with god is m●re free service to god ( as hath beene said before ) then that which is comm●nded by authoritie . 3. we ought not to do ill that good may come of it , and must resolve to choose affliction rather then iniquitie . ob. 2. the rendering of the whole copies of the subscribed covenant were a ready meane to remove all feares of the kings wrath against the subscribers . ans. 1. it is more fearefull to fall in the band of the living god. 2. they wrong the king who t●reaten his good subjects with his wrath , for covenanting with god , in defence of religion and of his majesties person and authoritie . 3. it were more righteous with god to turn his majesties heart and hand against vs , for d●●ling thus deceatfully in his covenant . o● 3. if this be not granted , his majestie will grant neither ●●ssemblie nor parliament for establishing religion , and setling the peace of the kirk and kingdome . ans. 1. the good providence of god so sensible in this whole 〈…〉 beginning , will incline the heart of so just and gratious a king , to 〈◊〉 more kindely and benignely with his good subjects . 2. we have law , reason , and custome for craving and expecting of 〈…〉 remedies of the grievances and feares of the whole kirk a●d c●untrey . ob. 4. the end of the making of our covenant was , that we might be delivered from the innovations of religion , which being obteined , our covenant should cease , as having no further use . ans. 1. as acts of parliament against poperie did not abolish our former confess●●n of faith , wherein poperie was abjured , so acts of parli●ment to be made against these innovations can not make our co●●nant to be unprofitable . 2. although the innovations of religion 〈◊〉 the o●●●sion of makeing this covenant , yet our intention was a●●i●st th●se , and against all other innovations and corruptions to e●●ablish religion by an euerlasting covenant never to be forgotten . a proclamation for calling a convention of estates scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1678 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b02113 wing c3320 estc r225705 52528760 ocm 52528760 178726 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b02113) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 178726) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2768:15) a proclamation for calling a convention of estates scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1635-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : 1678. royal arms at head of sheet; initial letter. dated at end: given at our court at whitehall, the twenty-third day of may, 1678, and of our reign the thirtieth year. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -convention of estates -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-08 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion c r honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , for calling a convention of estates . charles , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. to all and sundry our good subjects whom these do , or may concern , greeting : the great kindness we bear to that our ancient kingdom , hath at all times inclined us to be very watchful over all its concerns : and considering , that all kings and states do , at present , carefully secure themselves and their people , by providing against all such forreign invasions and intestine commotions , as may make them a prey to their enemies ; and that it is not fit , that that our kingdom should only , of all others , remain without defence , especially at a time wherein those execrable field-conventicles ( so justly termed in our laws , the rendezvouzes of rebellion ) do still grow in their numbers and insolence ; against all which , our present forces cannot in reason be thought a suteable security . therefore , and that we may be the better enabled to raise some more forces , for securing that our kingdom against all forreign invasions and intestine commotions , and to maintain them in the most equal and regular way , and to let the world see the unanimous affection of our people to us ; we have thought fit to call a convention of the estates of that our ancient kingdom , to meet at edinburgh upon the twenty sixth day of june next to come : and we do hereby require and command , all archbishops , dukes , marquesses , earls , viscounts , bishops , lords , and officers of state of that our kingdom , to be present , and attend that dyet : and also we do require all our sheriffs in the several shires , and their deputs , that if there be any new elections already made for this year , of commissioners to parliament or conventions , they make timeous intimation to these commissioners , to keep this meeting ; but if there be no elections already made , that then , they forthwith call and conveen all the free-holders in the respective shires , that according to the laws and acts of parliament , elections may be made of fit persons , to be commissioners for this convention : and that our royal burrowes make choice of commissioners accordingly , and that they and all other persons having interest , attend this convention of estates , under the pains contained in our laws made thereanent . and that all our good subjects may have notice of this our royal will and pleasure , we do hereby command our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers , pursevants , and messengers at arms , to make timeous proclamation hereof at the market cross of edinburgh , and at the market crosses of the head burghs in the several shires of that our kingdom . given at our court at whitehall , the twenty third day of may , 1678. and of our reign the thirtieth year . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1678. act, appointing the officers of his majesties forces to attend their respective commands. at edinburgh, the 30 day of july 1689. scotland. privy council. 1689 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05305 wing s1404 estc r182980 52615046 ocm 52615046 176154 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05305) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 176154) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2762:21) act, appointing the officers of his majesties forces to attend their respective commands. at edinburgh, the 30 day of july 1689. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, by order of privy council, edinburgh, : 1689. caption title. initial letter. text in black letter. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -army -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-12 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 megan marion sampled and proofread 2009-01 megan marion text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion act , appointing the officers of his majesties forces to attend their respective commands . at edinburgh , the 30 day of july 1689. the lord high commissioner , and lords of his majesties privy council , considering how much it importeth the peace and interest of the nation , as well as the necessary defence thereof in this present juncture , that all the officers of the standing forces , horse , foot and dragoons , attend their respective stations , for ordering and exercising the troops of his majesties forces , under their command , and to have them in readiness , to prosecute and follow forth such orders , as they may receive from time to time from the lords of privy council , or the commanding officer of his majesties forces for the time ; do therefore in his majesties name and authority , strictly require and command , all officers of the standing forces , horse , foot and dragoons , upon this side of the river of tay , who were not at the ingagement with major-general mackay , within twenty four houres , to repair to the places where the soldiers , under their command lyes , under the pain of losing their respective offices , ipso facto , and being further censured by a council of mar , and to march them from thence towards striviling , and to continue and give punctual attendance at their saids commands , and not to depart therefrom , without a special order from his majesties high commissioner , the lords of privy council , or their superior officers , under the pain foresaid : and sicklike , the lord high commissioner , and lords of his majesties privy council , considering , that many officers and soldiers , that have been at the late ingagement above-mentioned , are scattered and dispersed in divers places of the countrey , unlisted , or brought again under discipline : therefore they require and command , all officers and soldiers , who have been at the said late ingagement , betwixt major-general mackay and dundee , to repair with all speed to the town of edinburgh , and there to betake themselves to their saids officers , and list and inrol themselves in their service , under the pain of being accounted and punished as deserters ; and that the saids officers , how soon they have listed , and gathered together the persons foresaids , make report thereof to his majesties high commissioner , or lords of privy council , to the effect they may be furnished with arms , and other necessaries , for military service . and that none may pretend ignorance , ordains these presents to be printed , and published by macers , at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and other places needful . extracted by me , gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save king vvilliam and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , by order of privy council , 1689. theatrum scotiæ containing the prospects of their majesties castles and palaces : together with those of the most considerable towns and colleges, the ruins of many ancient abbeys, churches, monasteries and convents, within the said kingdom : all curiously engraven on copper plates, with a short description of each place / by john slezer ... slezer, john, d. 1714. 1693 approx. 114 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 99 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2006-06 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a60373 wing s3993 estc r19602 12442681 ocm 12442681 62127 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a60373) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 62127) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 948:7) theatrum scotiæ containing the prospects of their majesties castles and palaces : together with those of the most considerable towns and colleges, the ruins of many ancient abbeys, churches, monasteries and convents, within the said kingdom : all curiously engraven on copper plates, with a short description of each place / by john slezer ... slezer, john, d. 1714. sibbald, robert, sir, 1641-1722. trenchard, john, sir, 1640-1695. [10], 65, [2] p., [114] p. of plates : ill. printed by john leake for abell swalle ..., london : 1693. reproduction of original in huntington library. proclamation at beginning of work signed: j. trenchard. the descriptions drawn up by sir r. sibbald were intended to be published in latin, but were inaccurately translated into english without leave or acknowledgement of the author. table of contents: p. [9] errata: p. 65. engraved on double plates. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -description and travel -early works to 1800. 2005-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2006-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2006-03 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2006-03 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2006-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion theatrum scotiae . containing the prospects of their majesties castles and palaces : together with those of the most considerable towns and colleges ; the ruins of many ancient abbeys , churches , monasteries and convents , within the said kingdom . all curiously engraven on copper plates . with a short description of each place . in defence nemo me impune lacesset by john slezer , captain of the artillery company , and surveyor of their majesties stores and magazines in the kingdom of scotland . london , printed by john leake for abell swalle , at the vnicorn at the west-end of st. paul's church-yard , mdcxciii . marie r. william and mary by the grace of god , king and queen of england , scotland , france and ireland , defenders of the faith , &c. to all our loving subjects , of what degree , condition and quality soever , within our kingdoms and dominions , greeting . whereas our trusty and well-beloved john slezer , gent. hath represented unto us , that he hath been at considerable charge , and great pains in finishing the first volume of a book , entituled theatrum scotiae ; and that he intends to publish two other volumes upon the same subject , and hath humbly besought us , that in consideration of the great charge he will be at in perfecting the same , we would be pleased to grant him our royal license for the sole printing and publishing the said book , wherein we are pleased to gratifie him ; we do therefore hereby , grant unto him the said john slezer , our royal license for the sole printing and publishing the said three volumes of the said book , entituled theatrum scotiae , or any of them , and do strictly charge , prohibit and forbid all our subjects to reprint within our kingdoms the said books , or any of them , or any abridgment , or any part of any of them , or to import , buy , vend , utter or distribute any copies or exemplaries of the same , or any part thereof reprinted beyond the seas , for the term of fourteen years next ensuing the publishing hereof , without the consent and approbation of the said john slezer , his heirs , executors or assigns , as they and every of them so offending will answer the contrary , not only by the forfeiture of the said books , copies or exemplaries , but at their utmost peril , whereof as well the wardens and company of stationers of our city of london , as all and singular our officers of the customs in this port of london , or any other place within our dominions , and all other officers and ministers whom it may concern , are to take particular notice , that due observance be given to this our royal command . given at our court at white-hall , the 6th . day of june , 1693. in the fifth year of our reign . by her majesty's command . j. trenchard . to the king and queen . may it please your majesties , the kingdom of scotland , containing so many great and remarkable monuments of antiquity , and nothing of this nature being yet published , i do , in all humility , present this short account of so many considerable places , to your majesties most gracious view . may god almighty grant unto your majesties a long and prosperous reign over this and your other dominions , and that your majesties will vouchfafe your royal pardon for the boldness of this dedication , is the humble petition of your majesties most loyal and obedient subject and servant , john slezer . to the reader . it 's a matter worthy of ones enquiry , how a nation , as scotland , so much addicted to military arts , and so constantly ingaged in both foreign and domestick wars , should have been in a capacity to erect such superb edifices as that kingdom abounds with . there is no country in europe that can brag either of greater piles of buildings , or a more regular architecture in its ancient churches and religious fabricks , than scotland was mistress of about an age or two ago . to instance one for all , the metropolitan church of st. andrews was probably the bigest in christendom , being seven foot longer and two foot broader than that of st. peter at rome ; and for the heighth and embellishing of its pillars and roof , the beauty of its stones , and simetry of its parts , was one of the best of the gothick kind in the world. reader , you may receive this impartial account from me as a foreigner , who am now settled in this nation ; and having met with the usual civility and kindness strangers are treated with amongst them , it is no wonder if i am tempted to leave some little marks of gratitude behind me , in transmitting to posterity those venerable remains of former ages , and oblige other nations with the prospects of so many considerable places ; which i presume will be very acceptable to them . it is a work of so great charge , and will require so many volumes , that i cannot satisfy the publick but from time to time in it . and according to the reception these first endeavours shall meet with , it will encourage me to go on with the rest . in the mean time , i hope no person will take exceptions , though the towns , and such of the nobility , whose arms are here inserted , are not always placed conform to the rank they keep in parliament ; it being a thing which cannot be adjusted in a work of this nature till the whole design is compleated . the contents . particular dedications . the prospects of plates marked number duke of hamilton . edinburgh . 1 , 2. duke of lennox . dumbritton . 3 , 4 , 5. earl of marr. stirling . 6 , 7 , 8. earl of linlithgow . linlithgow . 9 , 10. viscount of falkland . falkland . 11 , 12. lord secretary johnston . st. andrews . 13 , 14 , 15. viscount of stairs . glasgow . 16 , 17 , 18. earl of aberdene . aberdene . 19 , 20. earl of tweddale . haddington . 21 , 22. marquess of montross . montross . 23. marquess of atholl . dunkell . 24 , 25. marquess of caermarthen . dumblane . 26 , 27. earl of arran . hamilton . 28. lord secretary stairs . aire . 29 , 30. earl marshal . dunotter . 31. earl of errol . drybrugh . 32 , 33. lord stranaiver . invernesse . 34. viscount of stormont . scoon . 35. earl of elgin . elgin . 36 , 37. earl of strathmore . dundee . 38 , 39. earl of southesk . aberbrothock . 40 , 41. earl of cassillis . corsregal . 42. viscount of tarbat . channerie . 43. viscount of strathallan . perth . 44. earl of levin . dumfermelin . 45 , 46. earl of kincardin . culrosse . 47 , 48. earl of roxburgh . kelso . 49 , 50. earl of farfor . bothwell . 51. earl of haddington . melrosse . 52. earl of panmure . brechen . 53. earl of cathnesse . roslin . 54. earl of dundonald . pasley . 55.   the basse . 56 , 57. theatrum scotiae . to his grace william duke of hamilton , marquess of cliddesdale , earl of arran and lannerick , lord aven , machlanshire and pomont , &c. lord high commissioner for the kingdom of scotland , president of their majesties most honourable privy council ; and knight of the most noble order of the garter , &c. edinburgh . edinbvrgh is situated in mid-lothian , a shire of scotland . it is the chief city of the kingdom , and royal seat. it far surpasseth all the other cities of the kingdom in the stateliness of its churches , the beauty and neatness of its publick and private buildings , the pleasantness of its site , the largeness of its precincts , the number and opulency of its inhabitants , and dignity of its rulers . by the most ancient inhabitants it was called dun eden ; by the latins , edinodunum , and by the germans , edinburghen ; all which signifie the same thing . dun eden signifies a town upon a hill , or rather a city of the edeni , situated on a hill. the edeni are those who by ptolemy are termed ottodeni , which word ( as some learned men think ) was mistaken for scottodeni , the two first letters sc being worn out with time : for near to this city is curia ottodenorum , whose name remains to this day in a village four miles west from the city , called currie : and two miles west from the town is corstopitum ( which also was among the ottodeni ) which is a village commonly called corstorfin . ptolomy calls this place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , castrum alatum , the winged castle , which is not so called from that kind of wings which the greek builders ( as says vitruvius ) call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ( which are double walls so rising to the height , that they resemble wings : for it is likely there was no regular building in that place at that time ) but that they were such as by the poet juvenal are called castella brigantum ; which sort of castles we may see described by tacitus , annal. lib. xii . where he says , that upon high mountains , and other places of difficult access , he built up stones in form of a fence , where the river did run on a slippery ford. now these fences of stone were nothing else , but stones cast together without mortar , which is also clear from the same author in the fore-cited place , where he says , the souldiers holding their bucklers over their heads for a defence , pulled down the unwrought and ill-built stones ; which could not have been so easily done , if they had not been cast together without mortar . and certainly our ancestors chose out this as a very fit place for a fort of that nature : for the hill where the castle stands is exceeding steep and craggy , and the ascent very difficult , except where it looks to the east , which part they fortified with stones cast together as before . the ascent on which the city now stands had , and yet hath upon the north-side , a standing pool , which is commonly called the north-loch . upon the south-side of the hill there was likewise another standing-pool called the south-loch : the verity of which the rights and leases of some houses of st. ninian's row , do testifie , which are let with the privilege of a boat annexed ; and these two lochs or lakes bounded the city upon these two sides , as the north-loch does it at this day upon the north-side ; but the south-loch was drained a hundred years ago , and upon the banks thereof are built two several tracts of houses , between which ( in the place where the loch it self stood ) is a street called the cowgate . and so the breadth of the city toward the south , is far extended beyond its former limits ; as likewise the length thereof toward the west is much enlarged , for the grass market and horse market are now within the city-wall . the reason why this place is called castrum alatum , or the winged castle , is to be taken from the very nature of the place : for , besides the lakes on both sides , there are two hills near the rock on which the castle stands , viz. sarisbury and neils craigs , so named from the sometime owners thereof , which in a manner resemble wings , as is easily perceived coming to the city from the south-east by the sea side ; for then these rocks appear like wings stretched forth , and the rock on which the castle stands , like the head of a bird with a tuft . and this is the genuine derivation of the word . i know there are some learned persons who will have ptolomy's castrum alatum , to be in another part of the country , and not to be edinodunum , seeing he makes his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be amongst the vacomagi ; but ptolomy must be born with in all his mistakes of the situation of places here ; for being an egyptian , living in alexandria , and forced to take things upon trust , and follow the relation of others , it is no wonder if he be sometimes mistaken . the greater part of the city is built upon the ascent , and it is very probable that the castle has been the cause of building the city : for first the neighbours have built a few houses near the castle , that under the reach thereof they might be defended from the injuries of their enemies . the number of the people growing apace , the number of the houses likewise encreased , and stretched forth to the very foot of the ascent toward the east ; by which the city , together with the suburbs of the canon-gate and king's palace , is become one entire scotch mile in length ; but in breadth it is less by the half , notwithstanding the suburbs be included . the high street from the castle to the abbey is adorned with stately buildings , which are of late made of hewen stone , since that by an act of the town-council it hath been prohibited ( for the frequent burnings which happened ) to build any more timber-houses either in the city or suburbs . the great breadth of the high street , and of the many lanes which lie on each side the same , from the north to the south ( which send up the air as it were in pipes into the high street ) and the nearness of the two hills called neils craigs on the north , and sarisbury craigs on the south , do always refresh the town with air ; which conduces not a little to the wholesomeness hereof , and it was never heard that the plague raged in it , except brought in thither by infected wares . which purity of the air is daily encreased since the time that excellent fresh water was brought into the city from a fountain three miles distant from the same , and that by a most wise act of the council all nastiness is removed . the city is enclosed with a kind of an old roman wall on every side , except towards the north , where the north-loch does secure it instead of a wall. the city is entered by six gates or ports : two of which are to the east , two to the south , one to the west , and one lately made to the north. one of the gates to the east is called the netherbow , which in the year 1616 , was magnificently rebuilt , being the chief gate of the city , adorned with towers on both sides . the other gate to the east is called the cowgate port , through which there is an entry into the nether street , of the length of the whole city , and is called the cowgate . the eastmost of these gates to the south ( through which is an entry into the city ) is called the potter-row port , from the suburb called the potter-row . the westmost of these is called the society port , properly the brewer's port. they have a great square court in that place , with buildings and brave houses round about it , to the very walls of the city . the west-gate at the other end of the city , lying beneath the castle , affords an entry from the suburb of the same name . the north-gate , which was last made at the lower end of the north-loch , is twofold , the inner and the outer port , through which there is an entry into the city from the suburb called the mutter's hill. there are two streets extending the whole length of the town . the chief street which is also called the higher , is one of the broadest in europe : from it there run many lanes on both sides . the nether or lower street hath also many lanes running to the south . in the very middle of the city there is a cathedral church , which is called st. giles's church , of such largeness that it is divided into three churches , every one of which has its own parish . it is built of hewen stone , adorned with pillars and vaultings of stone . in the middle it forms a perfect cross , by four parts of this church meeting together , and they support a stately , high tower , with a top of curious workman-ship , representing an imperial crown . beside this cathedral church there are in the city , the south-church , called the gray-friars church , which stands in the middle of the common burial-place . many tombs and monuments do surround the church-yard , amongst which that of sir george mackenzy does appear like a mausolaeum . there is also a church of square hewen stone with a tower built in the year 1641 , which is called the trone-church . the collegiate-church of the sacred trinity , was built by mary of gueldres , king james the second 's queen , where also she lies interred . near to this church is the hospital of st. thomas , in which the poorer sort of inhabitants , both men and women , are maintained splendidly enough , and have their own proper chaplain . over-against this church is the correction-house , commonly called paul's work , in which there are divers manufacturies of linen , wooll and silk , where dissolute persons are forced to earn their living with their labour . the lady yester's church , was built by one of the lady yesters , who also left a summ of money for maintaining a good and able man to preach and perform divine service therein . besides these churches there are two chapels in the city , that of st. magdalen's in the cowgate , and st. mary's in nedries wind. there is another chapel of the same name at the foot of the cannon-gate ; as likewise several meeting-houses lately built , both in the city and suburbs . about the middle of the cannon-gate , upon the north-side of it , there is built , within these five years , a very beautiful church , and a considerable piece of ground inclosed for a church-yard , by a mortification made by sir thomas moodie of sachten-hall , for that purpose . near unto the cathedral church is the parliament-house , where the three estates of the kingdom do convene . it stands in a great court , the north-side whereof is bounded by the church it self ; the west-side is inclosed by the council-house , where the town-council assembles ; the south-side is inclosed by the sessions-house , where the judges and lords of session sit to give justice to the people . in the upper part of this building are the privy-council and exchequer-chambers . the rest of the south and east-side of this court , is inclosed with the upper and lower exchange , and with a tract of most stately buildings . here is one of the highest houses in the world , mounting seven stories above the parliament-court , and being built upon a great descent of the hill , the back part of it is as far below it , so that from the bottom to the top , one stair-case ascends 14 stories high . in the middle of the court is the statue of king charles the ii. in brass , erected upon a stately pedestal , at the charge of the city of edinburgh . about twenty years ago the said magistrates were at a vast expence also to bring one of the best springs in scotland into the city , by leaden pipes from a hill above three miles distant from it ; and they have erected several stately fountains in the middle of the high street , to serve the town with water . in gray's close near the netherbow , is the mint-house , with a large court , adorned with most neat and convenient buildings , for accommodation of the over-seers and work-men thereunto belonging . upon the south-side is the college of king james the vi. founded in the year 1580 , endowed with all the privileges of an university . it hath most large precincts inclosed with walls and divided into three courts , two lower and one higher , which is equal to both the other in largeness . these courts or area's are adorned on all sides with excellent buildings . there is also a high tower built over the great entry . the publick schools are large . there is likewise a very large common-hall , in which theology and the hebrew tongue is taught , and publick orations made . there is a library with all sorts of books and some manuscripts . under the library is the king's printing-house . there is very good accommodation for the students , and neat and handsome dwellings for the professors ; with very fine gardens for their recreation . the castle is situated at the head of the town to the west , where the hill doth rise into a large top. it is a very 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for it both hangs over , and commands the town . the rock on which the castle is situated , is upon the south , west and north , inaccessible . the entry to the castle is from the town . the chief defence on this side is of the round battery ; at the foot of which there is a designed out-work , which is not yet brought to a condition of defence , and will add very much to the strength of it when finished . in the castle also is a royal palace of hewen stone , where the regalia of the kingdom are kept . this castle is the chief magazine for the arms and ammunition of the nation , and hath a most pleasant prospect to the neighbouring fields , and to the river of forth , from whence it is saluted by such ships of war as come to an anchor in leith road. the governours of this fortress since king charles the ii's restauration , have been , the earl of middleton , the dukes of lauderdale , queensbury and gordon , and since their sacred majesties accession to the throne of scotland , the earl of levin hath the chief command of it . heriot's hospital is likewise within the city , situated to the west of the publick burial-place . it is a nursery for boys , in which the citizens children who are poor , are brought up , under the tutelage of a governour , who , according to the constitution of the founder , is to live single . they have likewise a chaplain to instruct them in the grounds of learning , till they be fitted for the publick schools and colleges . this hospital was founded by george heriot , jeweller to king james the vi. who was descended of the family of trebroun ; and after he had lost two sons by shipwrack going from scotland for london , where dying without issue , february the 15 th . 1624. he left in legacy to this hospital two hundred thousand pounds scots money , that youth might be maintain'd therein , and instructed in arts and sciences till they were of mature age , having left the city of edinburgh his executors . this fabrick is stately like a palace , the statue of the founder being erected upon the inner frontispiece . round about the houses are most pleasant gardens adorned with large walks and pleasant greens . without the walls of the city are the suburbs , amongst which that which lies from the netherbow to the abbey , called the cannon-gate , hath the preheminence . it is adorned with goodly buildings and fine gardens . upon the north-side of it is the tolbooth , where the bayliffs of the same do convene for the administration of justice . on the south-side is a very fine house belonging to the earl of murray , with very pleasant gardens adjoining . at the lower end of this suburb is the abbey of holyrood-house , founded by king david for the monks of the order of st. augustine . this was consumed by fire , and the church only remains , in which divers of our kings and queens are interred . the royal palace hath four courts . the outer court , which is as big as all the rest , hath four principal entries ( besides several inlets into the adjacent gardens ) three of which are on the west , and the other on the east-side . the entry of the palace is adorned with great pillars of hewen stone , and a fine cupola in fashion of a crown above it . the forepart of the palace is terminated by four high towers , two of which toward the north were erected by king james the v. and the rest by king charles the ii. the fabrick of the inner-court is very stately , with piazza's round about it , all of fine hewen stone . from these covered walks you have access to the several apartments which are most royal and magnificent . but above all the long gallery is remarkable , being adorn'd with the pictures of all the kings of scotland from fergus i. the palace on all hands is bounded with lovely gardens . on the south lies the king's park , which hath great variety of medicinal plants . here also is an admirable fountain , which through conduits serves the whole house . his grace the duke of hamilton is hereditary keeper of this palace . arcturi jonstoni , carmen in edinburgum . cominus ut spectet superos coeloque fruatur , montis in acclivi surgit edina jugo . ancillatricem cererem nymphas que ministras et vectigalem despicit inde thetin . hic ubi nascentis se pandunt lumina phoebi , sede sub arcturi regia tecta vides . solis ad occasum surgens arx imminens urbi ; haec habet arctoi tela tremenda jovis . adspicis in medio templum , decus vrbis & orbis : hac pietas stabilem fixit in aede larem . cuncta nitent intus : regalis more coronae plexilis aurato marmore lucet apex . virginis astraea domus est contermina templo , digna polycleti , praxitelisque manu . tecta colunt cives solis heroibus apta . nullius illa minas , nullius arma timet . albula romuleam venetam mare territat vrbem , quas regit undarum ridet edina minas . crede mihi , nusquam vel sceptris aptior urbs est , vel rerum domina dignior orbe locus . de edinburgo , johannis jonstoni carmen . monte sub acclivi zephyri procurrit in auras : hinc arx celsa , illinc regia clara nitet . inter utramque patet sublimibus ardua tectis vrbs armis , animis clara , frequensque viris . nobile scotorum caput , & pars maxima regni , pene etiam gentis integra regna suae . rarae artes & opes , quod mens optaverit , aut hic invenias , aut non scotia tota dabit . compositum hic populum videas sanctumque senatum sanctaque cum puro lumine jura dei. an quisquam arctoi extremo in limite mundi aut haec , aut paria his cernere posse putet ? dic , hospes , postquam externas lustraveris oras , haec cernens oculis credis an ipse tuis ? to his grace charles duke of lennox and richmond , duke and peer of france , earl of darnley and march ; baron of torbolton and settrington , knight of the most noble order of the garter , &c. dunbritton . dvmbarton or dunbritton , is a town in the sheriffdom of lennox , which beda calls allclyth , others allcluith . it has its name from dun , which in our ancient language signifies a hill or rock , and bar which in the same language signifies the top or height of any thing . the town is situate in a plain on the bank of the river levin , near the place where it enters into clyde , a little below the castle , which is excellently fortified by nature , owing little to art ; and seems to have been built by the ancient brigantes . this town had its privileges procured to it by one of the countesses of lennox . the castle hath a strange kind of situation ; for where the waters of clyde and levin meet , there 's a plain extended to the length of a mile at the foot of the neighbouring hills : and in the very corner of this meeting there rises a rock with two tops , the higher of which looks to the west , with a watch-tower on the top of it , having a large prospect on all sides . the other being a little lower lies to the east . betwixt these two tops are steps hewen out of the rock with great pains and labour , which yield passage only to one person at a time , to the upper part of the castle . to the south where clyde runs by the rock which is naturally steep , it hath a little descent , and as it were with out-stretcht arms embraces the plain ground ; which partly by nature and partly by art is so enclosed , that it furnishes room for several houses and a garden . it secures the harbour by its ordnance , and obliges the smaller boats to come up almost to the very gate of the castle , the chanal of the river running on that side . the middle of the rock where the entry to the castle is , being built up with houses , makes as it were another castle distinct from the former . this castle , as appears by its prospects , does almost stand like a sugar-loaf upon a plain ground . the circumference of it is but very small , and yet it hath at the top a little kind of a lake and several other springs . besides the natural fortification , it is bounded on the west by the water of levin , and on the south by clyde , which are to it instead of ditches . to the east , the sea at a full tide beats against the foot of the rock ; and when it ebbs it does not leave a plain of sand , but of a soft clay , which is divided by a rivulet that runs down from the neighbouring hills . to the right honourable john earl of marr , lord areskin and garioch , &c. hereditary governour of stirling . stirling . stirling is the chief town of the shire of that name , where the sheriff keeps his courts . it hath its name from its situation ; for the town stands upon the descent of a steep rock , at the foot of which there runs a deep river call'd boderia or forth . it takes its name from the saxon word ster , which signifies a hill , and lin a water . it was of old called binobara , which by some is judged to be ptolomy's vindovara : for bin in our old language signifies a hill , and vara a river : so that the name which the town now retains , is the signification of the old name thereof . at the head of the town stands a well fortified castle , adorned with stately buildings in the former age , by king james the v. this is the place , as tacitus observes , where clyde and forth being carried back divide from one another . for a great way they are separated by a small neck of land , which was then strengthned by a garrison ; and all that isthmus was possessed by soldiers , the enemies being removed as it were into another island , the inscription on a stone below the castle toward the bridge , which makes mention of a wing of the army that kept watch there , seeming to intimate as much : and although the romans did several times infest some places beyond it by their inroads , yet the strength and glory of the roman name had its bound in this place . the king's park lies at the very foot of the castle , and the city stands on the back of a hill toward the south . it is enclosed with a wall , and toward the north , it is bounded with the river forth , which crossed by a bridge in that place . the bridge is of hewen stone , and fortified with an iron-gate . it consists of four stately arches , and lies south and north. the ships at full tide come up to the bridge , and the haven is a little below the same . the church , which is of hewen stone built very artificially , stands in the upper part of the town toward the east , adorned with a very high tower. not far from the church may be seen the mansions of the earls of argyle and marr , notable both for their bigness and artifice of their structure . the earl of marr is governour of this castle by heritage . it hath a competent number of great ordnance , for defending the passage of the bridge , and a sufficient garrison established for its security . in times of trouble the chief magazine of the nation is usually transported to this place , it lying upon a considerable pass , and almost in the center of the kingdom . as this city stands in a most commodious place for commerce , so it hath a most delectable and pleasant prospect , by the great and various windings of the river forth , which are so extraordinary , that from the bridge of stirling to the town of allowa , it is 24 miles by water , and but 4 by land. allowa , a town in clackmannon-shire , and seems to be the same ptolomy calls allauna , is situated on a pleasant plain to the north of forth ; and hath a convenient harbour for ships of burthen , many of which come thither for salt and coals . here the earl of marr , chief of the areskins , hath a pleasant dwelling with a wood adjacent . arcturi jonstoni , de sterlino carmen . sterlino quis digna canat ? cunabula reges hic sua securis imposuere jugis . aura salutifera est ; facit hoc vicinia coeli , nec datur à saevo tutior hoste locus . adspicis hic geminis structas in rupibus arces , tectaque tarpeii turribus aequa jovis . fortha triumphales hic , dum fugit , excipit arcus , cogitur & curvo subdere colla jugo . haud aliter phrygiis ludit maeander in oris : saepe fluit , trepida saepe recursat aqua . orbe pererrato levis huc vestigia flectens advena miratur ruris & urbis opes . admiranda quidem sunt haec , & carmine digna : plus tamen hic virtus martia laudis habet . non semel ausonios sterlinum reppulit enses , limes & imperii , quem bibit , amnis erat . de sterlino , j. jonstoni carmen . regia sublimis celsa despectat ab arce pendula , sub biferis maenia structa jugis . regum augusta parens , regum nutricula natis ; hinc sibi regifico nomine tota placet . hospita sed cuivis , quovis sub nomine , amicus sive es , seu non es ; hospes an hostis item . pro lucro cedit damnum ; disordia tristis heu quoties procerum sanguine tinxit humum ! hoc uno infaelix , at faelix caetera ; nusquam laetior aut coeli frons , geniusve soli . to the right honourable george earl of linlithgow , lord levingston and callander , &c. one of the lords commissioners of the treasury ; and one of their majesties most honourable privy council . linlithgow is the same which ptolomy calls lindum , so named for its being situated on the side of a lake . the king's palace stands on a little hill , towards the middle of the said lake , in which there lies an island which ascends with several stairs in the form of an amphitheater . this palace is magnificently built of hewen stone , begun by the former kings and perfected by king james the vi. it consists of four towers , between which the court , the chapel , and the rest of the buildings are extended . the porch bears the name and arms of king james the v. in the inner court there is a very artificial fountain , adorned with several statues and water-works . close by the palace is a church , commonly called st. michael's , of a most excellent structure , with a very high steeple , to which the late earl of linlithgow added an extraordinary neat chapel . there is a small and easie descent from the palace to the town , where is to be seen a large four-square court , in the middle of which there is another curious fountain exceeding in all respects , that which is in the inner court of the palace . on the south side of this court is the tolbooth , which is very neatly built of hewen stone , having a very high steeple with bells ; and a very fine clock . in this tolbooth the sheriff and town-magistrates keep their courts . there is a large street reaches from the one end of the town to the other , which is adorned on every side with fair buildings ; from each side of which street divers lanes do break out , which open a passage into several pleasant gardens . the lake it self is a mile in length , and a quarter of a mile over , and abounds with perch , and other sorts of fish . on the north side hereof lies the king's park . this town hath a harbour for all sorts of ships near the castle of blackness , where there is a large custom-house built , with other houses for the use of merchants . the earl of linlithgow is hereditary keeper of the palace , and the king's baily in that place . de limnucho , carmen arcturi jonstoni . nobile limnuchum est , pario de marmore templum hic nitet , impensae non mediocris opus . aemula sunt templi turrita palatia regis , et praetio superant solis utramque domum . proximus est urbi nullo lacus aggere cinctus ; squammiger illimes grex natat inter aquas . ista triumphales praebent vivaria caenas grampiaco quoties sub jove miles ovat . regius hic lacus est lucrinus , caesaris unda : plus habet hic luxus , plus habet ille dapis . to the right honourable anthony viscount of falkland , &c. one of the lords commissioners for executing the office of lord high admiral of england , and one of their majesties most honourable privy council , in the said kingdom . falkland . falkland is a pretty little town in the sheriffdom of fife . at the foot of lomon hill , there is a stately palace , which king james the v. caused to be built for a retiring place , it being most convenient also for hunting . the king's park and a wood are adjacent to it , into which , as also into the plain towards the east , it hath a most pleasant prospect . the marquess of athol is hereditary keeper of this palace , and hath a considerable rent by the neighbouring lands and stewardry . it gives the title of viscount to the family of falkland . to the right honourable james johnston , one of the lords of their majesties most honourable privy council , and principal secretary of state for the kingdom of scotland . s t andrews . saint andrews , in latin , andreanopolis , or fanum sancti andreae , has its name from st. andrew , whose bones are said to be brought hither from patras , a town in peloponnesus , by regulus a grecian monk , anno 368. a man in that age much esteem'd for piety , as appears by the church dedicated to him , and called after his name . from him also ( as ancient writers report ) this town was at first called regimund , that is , mons sancti reguli ; for we read that oengus , or vngus , king of the picts , did grant to god and saint andrew , that he should be head of all churches within the jurissdiction of the picts . likewise it is manifest from old manuscripts , that this was the principal see of the culdai , who had the care and management of holy things from the first reception of christianity in those parts . this city is the metropolis of the whole kingdom , and the see of an archbishop , who is primate of all scotland . it lies towards the east with a pleasant prospect to the ocean , having a harbour for ships , the sea near it plentiful in fishes , and fields wholesome and spacious . there yet remain the marks of venerable antiquity , the ruines of the cathedral church and monastery , which do abundantly testifie their ancient glory and magnificence . the town it self is situate in a plain , from east to west , with a most pleasant prospect to the german ocean . it had a very strong castle of old , whose rubbish and ruines are yet to be seen upon the rocks on the sea-side towards the north. it has streets straight and broad , stretching east and west , whereof two lead to that once famous abbey of canons regular of the order of st. augustine , situate toward the east and south-east , the wall surrounding this abbey being yet intire , and of hewen stone , with many towers and turrets which give it the resemblance of a king's palace . the chief church in the town now , is that called the new church , not far from the new college . in it there is to be seen a very magnificent monument of archbishop sharp . there is also another church called st. leonard's adjacent to a college of the same name , the rector whereof is ordinarily the principal of the said college ; but the greatest ornament of the city is the university , the athens of scotland , consisting at present of three colleges ; and was first founded by laurentius lindoris , and richardus corvellus , doctors of law , and publick professors of philosophy . the college of st. salvator , commonly called the old college , was founded by james kennedie bishop of st. andrews , together with a church beautified with an high towering steeple all of hewen stone , in which his monument of curious workman-ship is yet to be seen . mr. skene doctor of divinity and principal of the college , has of late repaired and augmented the fabrick thereof , having made a collection for that end . he has also founded a library , which by the donations of learned men is now very well furnished with good books . st. leonard's college was founded by james hepburn , prior of st. andrews ; in which are several professors , as first the principal , who is always doctor of divinity , and four professors of philosophy , to whom john scot of scots tarvett knight , added a professor of philology , with a liberal salary , and augmented the library with the gift of several considerable volumes . it is likewise of late very much increased by sir john wedderburne , doctor of physick , who dying left his great collection of books to it . here also is the famous manuscript of the scottish chronologer , john fordon . the new college was founded by james beaton archbishop . in it are two professors , always doctors in divinity , the one stiled principal professor of theology , the other only professor of theology ; to which of late is added a professor of mathematicks ; the first professor whereof , mr. james gregory , erected a commodious observatory for mathematical observations in the college garden , having caus'd a contribution to be made for that purpose . he also furnished it with many mathematical instruments much better than it had before his time. alexander the i. king of scotland , founded a priory here for the monks of the order of st. augustine , the government of the picts being abolished in britain ; and kenneth iii. tranferred the episcopal see from abernethie to st. andrews , about the year 850. arcturi jonstoni , carmen de andreapoli . urbs sacra nuper eras toti venerabilis orbi , nec fuit in toto sanctior orbe locus . jupiter erubuit tua cernens templa , sacello et de tarpeio multa querela fuit . haec quoque contemplans ephesinae conditor vrbis , ipse suum merito ridet & odit opus . vestibus aequabant templorum marmora mystae , cunctaque divini plena nitoris erant . ordinis hic sacri princeps , spectabilis auro , jura dabat patribus scotia quotquot habet . priscus honor periit , traxerunt templa ruinam , nec superest mystis qui fuit ante nitor . sacra tamen musis vrbs est phoebique ministris , nec major meritis est honor ille tuis . lumine te blando musas quae diligit eos adspicit , & roseis molliter afflat equis . mane novo juxta musarum murmurat aedes rana thetis , somnos & juvat esse breves . proximus est campus , studiis hic fessa juventus se recreat , vires sumit & inde novas . phocis amor phoebi fuit olim , palladis arte in te jam stabilem fixit uterque larem . de andreapoli , carmen joannis jonstoni , quondam ibi theologiae professoris . imminet oceano paribus descripta viarum limitibus , pingui quam bene septa solo , magnificis opibus ; staret dum gloria prisca pontificum , hic fulsit pontificalis apex . musarum ostentant surrecta palatia coelo , delicias hominum , deliciasque deum . hic nemus umbriferum phoebi , nymphaeque sorores , candida quas inter praenitet vrania , quae me longinquis redeuntem teutonis oris suscipit , excelso collocat inque gradu . vrbs nimium faelix , musarum si bona nosset munera & aetherei regna beata dei. pelle malas pestes vrbe , & quae noxia musis , alme deus : coeant pax pietasque simul . to the right honourable james viscount of stairs , lord dalrimple , glenluce and strenrare , president of the college of justice , and one of the lords of their majesties most honourable privy council . glasgow . glasgow is the most famous empory of all the west of scotland . nothwithstanding that it is inferiour to many in antiquity , yet if we respect the largeness of the city , the number and stateliness of its publick and private buildings , its commerce with foreign nations , and the opulency of its inhabitants , it is the chief of all the cities in the kingdom next to edinburgh . the city stands most pleasantly upon the east bank of clyde , which is navigable up to the very tower , by ships of small burden ; but new glasgow which stands on the mouth of clyde , is a haven for vessels of the greatest size . the city it self is joined to the suburbs , which stand on the west brink , by a beautiful bridge of eight arches , built of square hewen stone . the most part of the city stands on a plain , and is in a manner four-square . in the very middle of the city is the tolbooth , magnificently built of hewen stone , with a very high tower , and bells which sound melodiously at every hour's end . at the tolbooth four principal streets crossing each other do divide the city as it were into four equal parts , every one of which is adorned with several publick buildings . in the higher part of the city the cathedral church stands , commonly called st. mungo's . it amazes the eyes of the beholders for its stupendious bigness , and artifice of its structure . it consists of two churches , of which the one is over the other . the several rows of pillars , and exceeding high towers , do show a wonderful piece of architecture . near to the church is the archbishop's castle , fenced with an exceeding high wall of hewen stone , and looks down to the city ; but the chief ornament of the city is the college which was founded by king james the ii. pope nicholas the v. granting an indulgence , and confirming it by his bull to have the rights and liberties of a college , where general learning should be taught . it was erected by the great labour and expences of that reverend prelate william turnbull archbishop of glasgow . the words of the bull for the founding of it , are , that general study should flourish in the same , as well in theology , and the canon and civil law , as in all other arts and faculties ; and that the masters and teachers there should enjoy all and sundry the privileges , liberties , honours , immunities and exemptions which have been granted by the apostolick see , or others , any other way , to the masters , teachers , or students of our college at bononia . the fabrick of the college is remarkable , consisting of divers courts . the fore-part of it towards the city is of an excellent structure being of hewen stone . the precincts of the college are enlarged by some acres of ground , purchased by some money granted to it of late by the king and estates of the kingdom . it is separated from the rest of the town by an exceeding high wall. de glasgua carmen arcturi jonstoni . glasgua , tu socias inter caput exeris urbes ; et te nil ingens pulchrius orbis habet . sole sub occiduo zephyri te temperat aura , frigora nec brumae nec canis ora times . glotta latus cingens , electro purior omni est , hic regis imperio lintea mille tuo . pons jugat adversas operoso marmore ripas , et tibi securum per vada praebet iter . aemula phoeacum tua sunt pomaria , sylvae ruraque poestanis sunt tibi plena rosis . farra ceres , armenta pales , thetis agmina gentis squammigerae , nemorum dat tibi diva feras . tecta nitent , ipsas & tangunt vertice nubes : quo commendentur plus tamen intus habent . templa domos superant , radiant haec marmore puro , marmoris & praetium nobile vincit opus . non procul hinc themidos se tollunt atria , patres hic ubi purpureos dicere jura vides . in medio residens sua pandit limina phoebus , hic cum parnass ; o pegasis unda fluit . civibus ingentes animos , deus armiger artes ; nata jovis stabiles juno ministrat opes . moenia dardanidum posuit grynaeus apollo , et deus aequoreis qui dominatur aquis . glasgua te fausto struxerunt sydere divi quot mare , quot tellus , quotquot & aequor habet . roberti magni , m.d. carmen in insignia civitatis glasguae . salmo , quercus cui insidet rubecula avis , & campana , & annulus aureus salmonis ore exertus . salmo maris , terraeque arbor , avis aeris urbi promittunt quicquid trina elementa ferunt . et campana ( frequens celebret quod numinis aras vrbs ) superesse polo non peritura docet . neve quis indubitet sociari aeterna caducis annulus id , pignus conjugiale , notat . de glasgua carmen jo annis jonstoni . non te pontificum luxus non infula tantum ornavit , diri quae tibi causa mali . glottiadae quantum decorant te glasgua musae , quae celsum attollunt clara sub astra caput . glotta decus rerum , piscosis nobilis undis finitimis recreat jugera laeta soli . ast glottae decus , & vicinis gloria terris glasgua foecundat flumine cuncta suo . to the right honourable george earl of aberdeen , viscount of trumartin , lord haddo , mechlick , tarvis and kellie , &c. old aberdeen . aberdeen the old is situated a mile to the north of the new town , commonly called bon-accord , it hath its name from its situation , being placed at the mouth of the water of don. the name of the river sufficiently shews that the picts who inhabited this part of the country were of a scythian descent , for the river which by the latins is called danubius , by the germans is called dunave , by the polonians dunaum , by the turks tuna , being of the very same name with our don. the river is remarkable for the multitude of salmon and perches which are taken in it . about half a mile from old aberdeen it hath a bridge of one single arch , which is both large and stately , it is made up for the most part of square hewen stone , both the ends of it being fixed on rocks . by its crooked winding it breaks the force of the stream , so that nature it self seems to have made way for its situation . a little below it don enters into the sea. above the bridge two miles , is a heap of stone artificially cast in the mouth of the chanal for the easier catching of the salmon . it is the bishops seat , and hath a cathedral church commonly called st. machars , of a large and stately structure ; being built of hewn stone by the several bishops of that see. it anciently consisted of two ranks of stone pillars , another cross church and three turrets , the greatest of which , was the steeple , which was set upon four pillars of vaulted works . in the church likewise was a library , but about the year 1560 it was almost wholly destroyed , so that the ruines do now only remain . but the chief ornament of this town is the king's college , placed on the south side of the town , conspicuous beyond the rest of the houses for the neatness and stateliness of its structure . 't is inferiour to no college in scotland . one side of it is covered with slate , the rest with lead ; the church , and turret or steeple are of hewen stone . the windows were of old remarkable for painted glass , and some reliques of their ancient splendor do yet remain . here is a fine monument of bishop elphingston . the steeple besides others hath two bells of an extraordinary bigness . the top of it is vaulted with a double cross arch , above which is a king's crown , having eight corners upheld by as many pillars of stone , a round globe of stone with two gilded crosses closing the crown . in the year 1631 it was overturned by a storm , but shortly after was built in a more stately form. it was begun by bishop forbes , continued by william gourdon dr. of physick , and helped on by the largesses of several noblemen and gentlemen of that country . close to the church there is a library provided with many books , much enriched by those which dr. henry scougal , professor of divinity there , and the right reverend dr. patr. scougal , bishop of aberdeen , his father , did lately bequeath to it . this college was founded by bishop elphingston , anno dom. 1500. and the greatest part of the work was likewise built by him ; but king james the iv. assumed the patronage of it to himself , whence it is called the king's college . in it there is a primar or principal , a professor of theology , a professor of the civil law , a professor of physick , a sub-principal , who is also a professor of philosophy , three other philosophy professors , and a professor of the languages . this college and that in the new town make up one university , called the university of king charles . new aberdeen . aberdeen , as i have said , is twofold , the new town and the old. they are distant the one from the other about a mile . abredonia seems to be the same which ptolomy calls the city devana , placed in the province called texale , upon the mouth of the river dee ; for aber in the old british tongue signifies or denotes the mouth of a river , and deva , or d ee , is the name of the river upon whose mouth this city is situated . but new aberdeen is the capital of the sheriffdom of aberdeen , and the seat of the sheriff for trial of causes . it is placed at the eastern corner of the shire , where it is wash'd with the german sea. this city very much exceeds the rest of the cities of the north of scotland in bigness , greatness of traffick , and beauty ; it enjoys a wholesome air , and abounds with well-bred inhabitants , and has a great revenue from its salmon fishing . the old city seems to have been placed upon a bank of the sea ; because it is the common opinion that the monastery of the holy trinity which is thought to have been formerly the palace of king william , is situate in the very creek of that sea , and not far from it are the ruins of an old praetorium . in tract of time the inhabitants seem to have filled several neighbouring little hills with houses , and now the city is chiefly built upon three of those hills , and the greatest part upon the highest . it hath an access by an ascent every way . the exteriour parts thereof are spread out upon the plain , as suburbs in many places . that there was a mint heretofore in the city , appears by silver coyns there stamped with this inscription , vrbs aberdeae , which are yet preserved in the closets of the curious . the streets are paved with flint , or a very hard stone resembling flint ; the houses beautiful both within and without , are four stories high , or more , and have for the most part gardens and orchards belonging to them ; so that the whole city , to those that approach it , gives the resemblance of a wood. at the west-end of the city , a little round hill adjoyning offers it self to sight , from the foot of which hill breaks forth a fountain of clear water , and in the middle of the same , another spring flowing down to the foot of the hill , bubbles out , and sends forth a stream as rapid as a torrent , but the spring it self is easily distinguish'd both in colour and taste from a torrent . it is called the aberdonian spaw , because both in taste and quality it comes very near to the spaw water in the bishoprick of liege . this water is cold to the touch . doctor william barclay a physician , has written a treatise concerning it . in the high street there is a church of the franciscans worthy to be taken notice of , built of free-stone ; a work begun by doctor william elphingston , then bishop , and finished at the charge of gavinus dumbar , bishop of aberdeen about the year of christ 1500. the said bishop gavinus dumbar , hath also got himself immortal honour , by a famous bridge of seven arches laid over the river dee , about a mile from the city , built very firm and durable , of free-stone , which in more places than one by inscription testifies its author or builder . but the great ornament of the city is its college , called the mareshallian academy , as founded by the earl marshal , george keith , in the year 1593 , which the city of aberdeen hath very much adorned with several additional buildings . it has , besides a primary professor , who is called principal , four professors of philosophy , a professor of theology , and a professor of the mathematicks . there is also a famous library founded by the city of aberdeen , supplied by the gifts of learned men , and furnished with divers mathematical instruments . add to these the school-house , founded by dr. dune , which has one head master , and three ushers under him . there is also a school for musick . the cathedral church nominated from st. nicholas , its patron , is built of free-stone and covered with lead ; has a steeple resembling a pyramid , and covered likewise with sheets of lead to a considerable heighth . it was divided formerly into three churches , the bigest whereof was called the old church , the other the new church , and the third the arched , named the arch of the lady of mercy . this cathedral is propt with pillars of free-stone , and has three bells of a vast weight , which by their quick and continual sounds divide the half hours . the body of this church is adorned with a tower and pinacled steeple . here is kept the court for the publick trials of the townsmen , and the county courts , where is also a prison and a work-house . besides these there is an alms-house for the maintenance of the old people of aberdeen , that are come to decay , with three hospitals founded by several persons . and adjoyning to the custom-house lies the port or wharf . de abredonia veteri , carmen arcturi jonstoni . te pius antistes colit , vrbs antiqua , regitque , donaque faelicem reddit & unda freti . amnis aquas uno pons admirabilis arcu integit ; autores suspicor esse deos . talis erat rhodii moles operosa colossi , turgida quam subter vela tulere rates . hunc prope salmonum soboles argentea nassas sponte subit , laqueis induiturque suis . est quoque quod jactes vetus & venerabile templum ; caetera praedonum diripuere manus . turribus hoc surgens geminis pharos esse putatur ; puppibus & tutum per vada monstrat iter . non procul hinc phoebi surgunt & palladis arces ; aurea crux illas & diadema tegit . has pius erexit praesul , rex divite censu donavit , titulos prodiga roma dedit . non tot equus pedites fudit trojanus achivos , lumina quot patriae protulit ista domus . nobilis urbs , extra praeconem quaerere noli , hunc populum qui te praedicet intus habes . de abredonia nova carmen arcturi jonstoni . urbs nova , piscosi quam ditant ostia devae vrbibus antiquis praeripit omne decus . hanc delubra beant , totum cantata per orbem , templaque mortali non fabricata manu ▪ haec prope romuleis aedes sacrata camaenis surgit : athenaeum non procul inde vides . ardua sydereis rutilant praetoria pinnis hic , ubi planities panditur ampla fori . adspicis hic procerum vicina palatia coelo , et populi pictos , aureolosque lates . quid memorem ternos , tria propugnacula , colles ; qualibus urbs surgit quae caput orbis erat . hanc quoque lanaris mons ornat , amaenior illis hunc ferrugineis spada colorat aquis . inde suburbanum jamesoni despicis hortum , quem domini pictum suspicor esse manu . salmonum dat deva greges , maris aequora gazas memphi tuas , & quas india jactat opes . pons septemgemino cameratus fornice devam integit : autorem juncta tiara notat . haec celebret vulgus : solos ego praedico cives ; his collata nihil caetera laudis habent . martia mens illos commendat & aurea virtus , rebus & in dubiis saepe probata fides . hospita gens haec est , & comis & aemula divum , quaeque regunt alios huic famulantur opes . si locus est meritis , urbs haec regina vocari , et dominae titulum sumere jure potest . caetera mortales producunt oppida solos : vrbs haec heroas , semideasque parit . aliud ejusdem de eadem . cvm populo quisquis romanam suspicis urbem , et mundi dominam , deliciasque vocas . confer aberdoniam ; thetis hanc servilibus undis alluit , urbs famulo nec procul illa mari est . vtraque fulta jugis , subjectos despicit amnes , vtraque fulminea spirat ab arce minas . illa suos fabios , invictaque fulmina belli scipiadas jactat caesareamque domum . mennesios urbs haec proceres , gentemque culenam , et collisonios lausoniosque patres . vrbe quirinali minor est urbs grampica , cives sunt tamen hic animis ingeniisque pares . de abredonia nova , carmen d.j. jonstoni . ad boream porrecta jugis obsessa superbis inter connatas eminet una deas . mitior algentes phoebus sic temperat auras , non aestum ut rabidum , frigora nec metuat . foecundo ditat neptunus gurgite , & amnes piscosi gemmis alter adauget opes . candida mens , frons laeta , hilaris , gratissima tellus hospitibus ; morum cultus ubique decens . nobilitas antiqua , opibus subnixa vetustis martiaque invicto pectore corda gerens . justitiae domus , & stadiorum mater honoris : ingenio ars , certant artibus ingenia . omnia ei cedunt meritos genetricis honores : pingere non ulla ars ingeniumve valet . to the right honourable john earl of tweddale , lord hay of yester , &c. lord high chancellour of scotland . haddington . haddington is situate on a pleasant plain , on the brink of the river tyne , surrounded with several noblemens dwellings . the most remarkable whereof is the house of yester , the ordinary mansion house of the earl of tweddale . it is one of the pleasantest seats , and hath the finest and greatest planting about it in all scotland . of old this town was fortified by the english , several vestigies whereof are yet to be seen . here is a church excellently built of hewen stone , the ruins whereof do testifie its former splendor . in a chapel belonging to this church there is an excellent burial-place for the chiefs of the family of maitland . chancellour maitland and his lady , several others of the said family , and the duke of lawderdale , are interr'd in this place . it gives the title of earl of haddington to a branch of the house of hamilton , who hath large possessions and fine seats hard by it . henry prince of scotland , son to st. david , and ada his countess , founded a nunnery in this place . within four miles of edinburgh , the earl of tweddale hath another most pleasant house and gardens , called pinkie . no place in scotland is surrounded with more little towns and houses of the nobility and gentry than this is , which appears chiefly from the house of stony-hill , where the variety of so many towns and buildings , so great a part of the court of lothian , the river of forth , and the court of fyfe , give a most delightful prospect . carmen arcturi jonstoni de hadina . proxima bervico caput hadingtona periclis obtulit , & scotis aggeris instar erat . saepe caledoniam defendit fortibus armis , nec semel hostiles est populata greges . viribus interdum , nunquam virtute subacta est , et cum multa tulit vulnera , plura dedit . grampigenas ne crede duces , floremve juventae sed tutelares hic habitasse deos . j. jonstoni , carmen de eadem planities praetensa jacet prope flumina tinae fluminis . arguti clauditur ista sinu vulcani & martis quae passa incendia , fati ingemit alterno vulnere fracta vires . nunc tandem sapit icta , dei praecepta sequuta praesidio gaudet jam potiore poli . to the right honourable james marquess of montross , earl of kincardin , lord graham and mugdock , &c. montross . a town in the shire of angus , so called ( as some think ) from moinross , which in the ancient british language signifies a fennish promontory , and was of old called celurra . this town is situated at the mouth of the river of southesk , on the north side of it . it hath a harbour for ships of a considerable burthen , and has frequent correspondence with foreigners ; being adorned with fine buildings of all sorts , and has an hospital for the poorer inhabitants . it gives the title of marquess of that name to the chief of the family of the grahams . de monte rosarum , carmen arcturi jonstoni . nobilis urbs rosei jam gaudet nomine montis quae prius a coelo dicta coelurca fuit . proximus huic mons est quem praeterlabitur amnis , ambrosias populo praebet uterque dapes . mons lectas pecudes , salmones sufficit unda , lautius & si quid stagna neronis habent . quae recreent oculos incingunt lilia ripas , ipsaque puniceis sunt juga picta rosis . ad latus eoum se vectigale profundum explicat ; & velis mille teguntur aquae . propter aquas populo praebet spectacula campus , flumine quem boreas hinc lavat , inde notus . hic juvenum pars flectit equos , pars utitur arcu , pars rotat herculea grandia saxa manu : sunt quos lucta juvat , pars gaudet ludere disco , vel volucres curvo pellere fuste pilas . vrbs celebris , te si spectet capitolia romae jupiter , idalium deseret alma venus . de eadem carmen . j. jonstoni . avreolis urbs picta rosis , mons molliter urbi imminet : hinc urbi nomina facta canunt . at veteres perhibent quondam dixisse coelurcam : nomine sic prisco & nobilitata novo est . et prisca atque nova insignis virtute , virumque ingeniis , patriae qui peperere decus . to the right honourable john marquess of athol , earl of tullibardin , viscount of balquhidder , lord murray , balvenie and gask , &c. knight of the most ancient and most noble order of the thistle . dunkell . a town in the sheriffdom of perth , on the north of tay , at the foot of the grampian hills , being surrounded with pleasant woods . it is the chief market-town of the highlands , and the bishop's seat. the ruins of the cathedral church are yet to be seen ; but that which chiefly adorns it , are the stately buildings lately erected by the marquess of athol . to the right honourable thomas marquess of carmarthen , earl of danby , viscount of dumblane and latimer , baron osborne of kiveton , &c. lord president of their majesties council in england , and knight of the most noble order of the garter , &c. dumblane . dvmblane is a pleasant little town , on the bank of the river allan , where the ruines of the bishops and regular canons houses are to be seen . here the lord william drummond , viscount of strathallan , hath very fine dwellings , and considerable revenues in the circumjacent country . here also was a church of excellent workman-ship , a part of which remains yet intire . in the ruines whereof is an ancient picture representing the countess of stratherne , with her children kneeling , asking a blessing from st. blanus cloathed in his pontifical habit. not long ago robert lighton was bishop of this place , a man of an exemplary life and conversation . he was afterwards translated to the see of glasgow , which he willingly resigned , and gave himself wholly up to the exercises of a pious and contemplative life . at his death he left all his books , both manuscripts and others , to the use of the diocess of dumblane , and mortified a summ of money for erecting a library . a salary was mortified also to the bibliothecarius by the same bishop's sister 's son. it gives the title of viscount of dumblane to the family of carmarthen , in england . to the right honourable james earl of arran , eldest son to the duke of hamilton , and knight of the most ancient and most noble order of the thistle . hamilton . hamilton is a town of lower clidsdale , situated in a most pleasant plain upon the western bank of clyde . it s chief ornament is the palace of the duke of hamilton , the court whereof is on all quarters adorned with most noble buildings ; especially the frontispiece looking toward the east , is of excellent workman-ship ; and has a magnificent avenue . upon the one hand of this avenue there is a hedge , and on the other , fair large gardens , abundantly furnished with fruit-trees , and pleasant flowers of all sorts . upon the west side of the town there is a large park , surrounded with a very high stone wall , which is about seven miles in circuit ; the brook aven running through it . this park is also famous for its forest of tall oaks , and for the great number of harts and buffles it abounds with . there is a church adjacent to the palace , in the vaults whereof is the burial place of the dukes of hamilton . to the right honourable john maister of stairs , one of the lords of their majesties most honourable privy council ; and principal secretary of state for the kingdom of scotland . aire or airth . aire an ancient town , and the chief market-place of the west of scotland . in it the sheriff courts are kept , it being the head town of that sheriffdom , which bears the same name . it was of old called st. john's town ; but now that name is antiquated . this town though it be situated in a sandy plain , yet it hath pleasant and fruitful fields , and greens equally pleasant both summer and winter . it hath a stately church ; and a bridge with four arches joins it to the new town , which is situated on the north side the water , where is to be seen the castle of the laird of craigwallace . a mile north of the town , not far from the sea-shoar , there is a lazer-house , commonly called the king's chapel , which king robert de bruce set apart for maintaining lepers . this town by the king's patent is the sheriff's seat , and hath thirty and two miles to the south and north within its jurisdiction . de aira , carmen arcturi jonstoni . urbs coeli contenta bonis , vel ab aere puro vel quo forte cluis nomen ab aere trahis . mole quidem parva es , sed molem dotibus auges , vrbibus & magnis nobilitate praeis . grandia saxa vides , exili corpore gemmas ; plus tamen exilis gemma nitoris habet . et jovis exiguo surgit de semine quercus , et septemgemini fluminis or a latent . macte animis terras sibi quae subjecit & undas tibridis urbs , olim nil nisi villa fuit . de eadem , carmen j. jonstoni . parva urbs , ast ingens animus in fortibus haeret , inferior nulli nobilitate virum . aeris e campis haurit purissima coelum , incubat & miti mollior aura solo . aeria hinc , non aera prius , credo , illa vocata est : cum duris quid enim mollia juris habent ? infera cum superis quod si componere fas est , aurea fo rs dici debuit illa prius . to the right honourable george earl of marischal , lord keith and allrie , &c. hereditary mareschal of scotland . dunotter . it lies in the shire of the mairnes , and is situated upon a high and inaccessible rock stretcht out into the sea , and fortified with strong walls . it is one of the dwellings of the earls mareschal , the chief of the keiths , who for the warlike valour of their predecessors in defending their country from foreign enemies , were made hereditary mareschals of scotland . to the right honourable john earl of arroll , lord hay and slains , &c. lord high constable of scotland . drybrugh . the abbey of drybrugh is situate upon the bank of the river tweede , in tivedale . 't was founded by hugh de morvill , high constable of the kingdom of scotland , for the monks of the order of premontre . to the right honourable john lord stranever , eldest son to the earl of sutherland , hereditary sheriff , lord of regality , admiral of sutherland and the rest of those seas , colonel of a regiment of infantry ; and one of their majesties most honourable privy council . invernesse . the head town of the sheriffdom of invernesse , and the sheriff's seat , where he keeps his court. it is most commodiously situated on the south side of the water of nesse , on the very brink of the river , a fit place for entertaining commerce with the neighbouring places . of old it was the seat of the kings of scotland , and has a castle standing on a pleasant hill , having a large prospect into the circumjacent fields and town . near the castle , there is lately a bridge built over the water of nesse , consisting of seven arches all of hewen work. it hath a harbour fit for smaller vessels . as also two churches , the one for the english , and the other for the irish . de innernessa , carmen arcturi jonstoni . urbs vicina freto , tu surgis in ubere campo , et prope parrhasiae virginis ora vides . atria te regum decorant , & sanguine fuso pictorum , toties qui rubuere lacus . vela ferens nessus vitreis interluit undis et ratibus famulas applicat ille rates . non coit unda gelu , medio sed tempore brumae libera victrices in mare volvit aquas . nec desunt gravidae gelido sub sydere messes , nec minus est famuli fertilis unda freti . proxima te thule vicinaque ditat ierne , omnis & arctois insula septa vadis . abstulit imperii dudum bodotria fasces , et dominae titulo coepit edina frui : tu tamen emporium regni diceris , honorem hunc natura tibi dat geniusque loci . to the right honourable the viscount of stormont . scoon . scoon is a town in the sheriffdom of perth , famous in former ages for the abbey which was founded by king david i. for the monks of the order of st. augustine . it is situated on the north bank of tay , and is thought to be the center of the kingdom . here is a church , famous for the usual coronation of the kings of scotland ; in which is the tomb of dav. murray , who was the first of the family of bavaird , and was made knight baronet by king james vi. who also erected stately buildings here , which are possessed by his heirs , under the title of the viscounts of stormont . to the right honourable the earl of elgin and ailsbury , viscount bruce of ampthill , baron bruce of kinlos , wharton and skelton , &c. elgin a town in the shire of murray , situated on a pleasant plain . it is the bishop's seat , and the head town of that sheriffdom . upon a sandy hill to the east of the town are to be seen the ruins of an old castle . it had a cathedral church of admirable structure , as appears by the walls and ruins which are yet extant . it gives the title of earl of elgin to the family of ailsbury , in england . de elgina , carmen arcturi jonstoni . laudibus elgini cedunt peneia tempe et bajae veteres , hesperidumque nemus . hinc maris , inde vides praedivitis aequora campi . frugibus haec populum , piscibus illa beant . huc sua phaeaces miserunt poma : damasci pruna nec hic desunt , vel corasuntis opes . attica mellifici liquistis tecta volucres ; et juvat hic pressis cogere mella favis . aemulus argento foecundos loxa per agros errat & obliquis in mare serpit aquis . arcibus heroum nitidis urbs cingitur , intus plebei radiant nobiliumque lares . omnia delectant , veteris sed rudera templi dum spectas , lachrymis , scotia , tinge genas . to the right honourable patrick earl of strathmore and kinghorn , viscount of tannadice , lord lion and glammis , &c. dundee a town in the shire of angus , so called from dun , which in our old language signifies a hill , and tay the name of a river , it being situated at the foot of a hill on the north side of the river tay , not far from its entry into the ocean . it stands on a most pleasant plain , and is adorned with excellent buildings of all sorts . it hath two churches , a high steeple , a harbour for ships of burthen , and a considerable traffick with strangers , whence the inhabitants are generally rich , and those who fall into decay have a large hospital provided for them . of old this town gave the title of earl , and dignity of constable to the chief of the scrimgers , but of late it gave the title of viscount to the lord dundee ; who was killed by their majesties , king william and queen mary's forces , at the battle of gillicrankie . de taoduno , carmen arcturi jonstoni . urbs vetus undosi cui parent ostia tai , et male cimbrorum quod tegit ossa solum . genua te spectans , sua ridet marmora , moles pyramidum floccii barbara memphis habet . ipsa suas merito contemnunt gargara messes , quasque regit damnat terra liburna rates : et venetum populi de paupertate quaeruntur ; nec cnidus aequoreas jactat ut ante greges . si conferre lubet , pubes spartana juventae , consulibus cedit roma togata tuis . qui mendicatum tai de gurgite nomen dat tibi , credatur mentis & artis inops : structa deum manibus cum possis jure videri , jure dei donum te tua terra vocat . de eadem , carmen j. jonstoni . qva notus argutis adspirat molliter auris , hac placide coeunt taus & oceanus . hic facile excipiens venientes littore puppes indigenis vasti distrahit orbis opes . saepe dolis tentata & belli exercita damnis , invictis animis integra praestat adhuc . fama vetus crevit cum religione renata , locis & hinc fulsit pura nitela aliis . alectum dixere prius , si maxima spectes commoda , fo rs donum dixeris esse dei . tu decus aeternum gentisque urbisque boeti caetera dic patriae dona beata tuae . to the right honourable charles earl of southesk , lord carnegie of kinnaird and leachers , &c. aberbrothock . aberbrothock or arbroth is a town in angus , so called from aber , which in our ancient language signifies a side or bank , and brothock the name of a water which runs by it . it lies on the sea-side near the promontory , called rid-head , and has a harbour for ships . here was one of the richest monasteries of this nation , founded by king william of scotland , about 1170 , in honour of thomas becket archbishop of canterbury , with whom he was intimately acquainted . it had several considerable donations from gillchrist earl of angus , and his son gillbred . it was possess'd by the monks of st. bennet . to the inhabitants of which town , for the monastery's sake , at the request of the said king william , king john of england granted the same privileges and liberties through all the kingdom of england ( except london ) which the natives did enjoy . the patent is yet to be seen among the records of arbroth . to the right honourable john earl of cassillis , lord kennedy and dunnur , &c. corsregal . this monastery ( an ancient but stately edifice ) lies in the shire of carrick , and was founded by donkan earl of carrick , for the use and conveniency of the cistercian monks . to the right honourable george viscount of tarbat , lord m ccloed of castlehaven , &c. lord register , and one of their majesties most honourable privy council . channerie a town in the shire of ross , so called from the college of canons regular that flourished there , lies on the sea side , and is surrounded with pleasant hills . it had a large cathedral church , a part of which doth yet remain , and is a bishop's seat. here is to be seen a stately dwelling of the earl of seaforth , who hath considerable revenues in that county . to the right honourable william viscount of strathallan , lord drommond of cromlix , &c. perth the head town of the sheriffdom of perth , and the sheriff's seat where he keeps his courts . for dignity it is the second town in scotland , and is commonly called st. john's town , from a church built there and dedicated to st. john. it is a pretty town , placed between two greens on the south bank of tay. at a full tide small vessels may come up to the town . of old it had a bridge of stone , which was carried away by an inundation . here was also a famous monastery , founded by king james the i. anno dom. 1430 for the carthusians . it gives the title of earl to the family of perth , chief of the name of drommond . de pertho , carmen arcturi jonstoni . be●ta prius , perthum nunc urbs antiqua vocaris , et simul a sancto praesule nomen habes . te tua mundities commendat & aura salubris , et qui foecundos irrigat amnis agros . divitias lapsi testantur fragmina pontis , et non vulgari fragmina coesa manu . hunc jovis imperio collectis imbribus unda subruit , impositum nescia ferre jugum . hic quoque grampigenae , quam tollunt carmine vates , est tibi flumineis insula cincta vadis . insula parva quidem , celebrem sed reddidit olim monticolas inter pugna cruenta duces . hic agiles exercet equos generosa juventus , linquit & alipides post sua terga notos . martius hic meruit circus vel arena vocari , grajugenum levibus nobilitata votis . sunt tibi vicini saltus ; hic figere cervos : mollibus & capreis tendere lina potes . carsia nec procul est , hic redolentia poma et pyra crustrithis aequiparanda legis . vtile dum dulci mulces , punctum omne tulisti : et tibi debetur summus honoris apex . de eadem , carmen j. jonstoni . propter aquas tui liquidas & amoena vireta . obtinet in medio regna superba solo . nobilium quondam regum clarissima sedes ; pulchra situ , & pingui germine dives agri . finitimis dat jura locis , moremque modumque huic dare , laus illis haec meruisse dari . sola inter patrias incincta est maenibus urbes , hostibus assiduis ne vaga praeda foret . quanta virum virtus , dextrae quae praemia norunt cimber , saxo ferox , & genus hectoridum . foelix laude nova , foelix quoque laude vetusta : perge recens priscum perpetuare decus . to the right honourable david earl of levin , lord leslie of balgenie , principal governour of the castle of edinburgh , and one of their majesties most honourable privy council . dumfermelin a town situated on the west end of the sheriffdom of fife . it was of old the kings seat : for on a little hill near the bridge are to be seen the ruines of an old castle , which is supposed to have been the palace of malcolm canmois . it hath a royal palace in it , near to which are the ruines of a stately monastery which was founded anno 1130 , by david i. king of scotland , for the benedictine monks , and finished by king malcolm iii. where also both he , and st. margaret his queen , are buried . it is famous for the birth of king charles i. and gives the title of earl to a branch of the family of the seatons . to the right honourable alexander earl of kincardin , lord bruce , &c. culrosse hath its name from cul , which signifies a bank or border , and rosse , which was the ancient name of fife , because it lies in the western corner of that shire . it is situated on a descent at the side of the river of forth , its chief commodities being salt and coals . that which chiefly adorns it , is the stately buildings of the earl of kincardin ; with the gardens and terrace walks about it , having a pleasant prospect to the very mouth of the river forth . near unto these buildings are to be seen the ruins of an ancient monastery . to the right honourable the earl of roxburgh , lord kerr of cessford and cavertoun , &c. kelso a town in teviotdale , situated near the mouth of the river tweede . it was lately almost wholly destroyed by fire , but is now rebuilt and adorned with most stately buildings . it is surrounded with several noblemen's mannors , and most pleasant and fruitful fields . here are to be seen the ruines of an ancient monastery founded by king david , and possess'd by the cistercians , an order instituted about the year 1000 , under pope vrban the ii. by robert , abbot of the famous monastery of cisteaux in burgundy , whence the observers of that order were called cistercians . to the right honourable archibald earl of farfor , lord vandall and oyd , &c. one of the lords of their majesties most honourable privy council . the castle of bothwell in lower clidsdale , not far from the river of clyde , near to which is a bridge of hewen stone : the ruines of it only are to be seen , which notwithstanding do testify its former greatness . here of old was a prebendary enjoy'd by a secular priest , founded by archibald lord douglas . to the right honourable charles earl of haddington , lord binning and byres , &c. melrosse . it lies in teviotdale on the bank of the river tweede , was founded by st. david , in the year 1136 , and possess'd by the bernardines , monks so called from st. bernard a burgundian ; who entring the monastery of cisteaux , proved so strict an observer of monastick discipline , that the regulars of the foresaid order took their name from him ; and are called at this day promicuously , bernardines or cistercians . to the right honourable james earl of panmure , lord maule , brechen and navarr , &c. brechen . brechen is a town situated upon the banks of the water of southesk , in the shire of angus ; and is a bishop's see. here is a stately bridge over the river esk , consisting of two arches . it is a considerable market-town for salmon , horses , oxen and sheep . here also are to be seen the ruins of the bishop's palace , and of the canons houses . brechen likewise is famous for the memorable slaughter of the danes , not far from it . de brechina , carmen arcturi jonstoni . fertile brechinum geminos interjacet amnes : hic boream spectat , respecit ille notum . rupibus inclusae sternuntur pontibus undae : sunt quoque securis flumina plena vadis . hanc simul arctoi decorat victoria regis perfida cum socii terga dedere duces . praesulis hic sancti domus est , & pyramis aedi proxima , phydiacae forsitan artis opus . si molem spectes , nihil est exilius illa , ipsa tamen coeli culmina tangit apex . est structura teres , nec raro lumina fallit , eminus hanc spectans esse putabis acum . daedula compages est , & ventos ridet & imbres , nec metuit magni tela trisulca jovis . si fabricam conferre lubet , brechinia turris pyramidas superat , nile superbe , tuas . to the right honourable george earl of caithness , lord biridall , &c. roslin chapel . this chapel lies in mid-lothian , four miles from edinburgh , and is one of the most curious pieces of workman-ship in europe . the foundation of this rare building was laid anno 1440 by william s t clair , prince of orkney , duke of holdenburgh , &c. a man as considerable for the publick works which he erected , as for the lands which he possess'd , and the honours which were conferred upon him by several of the greatest princes of europe . it is remarkable that in all this work there are not two cuts of one sort . the most curious part of the building is the vault of the quire , and that which is called the prince's pillar so much talk'd of . this chapel was possess'd by a provost , and seven canons regular , who were endued with several considerable revenues through the liberality of the lairds of roslin . here lies buried george earl of caithness , who lived about the beginning of the reformation , alexander earl of sutherland , great grand-child to king robert de bruce , three earls of orkney , and nine barons of roslin . the last lay in a vault , so dry that their bodies have been found intire after fourscore years , and as fresh as when they were first buried . there goes a tradition , that before the death of any of the family of roslin , this chapel appears all in fire . to the right honourable the earl of dundenald , lord cochran , &c. pasley , a monastery in the barony of ranfrew , founded by the steward of scotland , in the year 1160. the monks of clugny were the first possessors thereof , then the cistercians , and after that the monks of clugny a second time , who were religious persons of the order of st. bennet , but reformed by odo abbot of clugny in burgundy , from whence they had their name . the monks of this place wrote a history of this nation , commonly called the black book of pasley . at the reformation it was bestowed on the duke of chatterault . sir robert spotswood had this book in his library , and after his murder general lambert got it , and brought it to england . the basse is a little island within the forth , about a mile distant from the south shore . the prospects of it sufficiently testifie how difficult the access to it is . upon the top of this island there is a spring , which sufficiently furnishes the garrison with water ; and there is pasturage for twenty or thirty sheep . 't is also famous for the great flocks of fowls , which resort thither in the months of may and june , the surface of it being almost covered with their nests , eggs and young birds . the most delicious amongst these different sorts of wild fowl , is the soaling goose , and the kittie waicke . there is only one island more in the west of scotland , called ailsey , where these geese do breed ; and from these two places the country is furnished with them , during the months of july and august . this island of the basse was an old possession of the family of lauder , and in king charles ii's reign it was bought and annexed to the crown . errata . pag. 14. l. 8. read which is . p. 16. l. 10. r. steps . p. 23. l. 15. for tower r. town . p. 34. l. 6. for court r. coast twice . p. 64. l. 1. r. dundonald . finis . the prospects . facies arcis edenburgeenae the southside of the castle of edinburgh . prospectus civitatis edinburgenae a proedio dean dicto the prospect of edinbrugh from y e dean . arx britannodunensis ab oppido cella patric●● dicto . the castle of dumbritton from kilpatrick . prospectus arcis regiae britannodunensis ab occide●● their malies castle of dumbritton from the west . facies arcis britannodunensis ab oriente . prospect of y e castle of dumbritton from y e east . the prospect of the town of sterling from the east urbis sterlini , prospectus ab oriente . the prospect of their maties castle of sterling . arcis regiae sterlinensis prospectus . the prospect of the house , & of the town of alloa prospectus arcis , et oppidi de alloa . prospectus civitatis limnuchi . the prospect of the town of linlithgow . prospectus regis palatis limnuchensis . the prospect of their maj ties palace of linlithgow . prospectus falcolandiae ab oriente . the prospect of falkland from the east . palace of falkland faeics civitatis sancti andreae . the prospect of the town of s t. andrews . ruderae ecclesioe cathedraelis sancti andreae . the ruins of the cathedrall of s t. andrews . rudera arcis sancti andreae . the ruins of the castle of s t. andrews . facies civitatis glascoae ab austro . the p●●spect of the town of glasgow from y e south . facies civitatis glasgow ab oriente estevo . the prospect of y e town of glasgow from y e north east . the colledge of glasgow facies civitatis novae abredoniae ut a propugnaculo blockhous 〈◊〉 aspicitur . new aberdene from the block house facies civitaetis aberdoniae veteris . the prspect of old aberdien . prospectus civitatis hadinae . the prospect of the town of haddingtown . prospectus oroe maritimoe lothianae a prcedio de stony hill . the coast of lothian from stony hill . prospectus civitatis montis-rosar● the prospect of the town of montrose . prospectus civitatis calidoniae . the prospect of the town of dunkeld . ecclesia cathedralis calidoniae . the cathedrall church of dunkell . prospectus oppidi dumblani . the prospect of the town of dumblane . ecclesia cathedralis dumblani . the cathedrall church of dumblane . prospectus oppidi hamiltoniae . th● prospect of the town of hamilton . prospectus civitatis aerae ab orientale . the prospect of the town of air from the east . prospectus civitatis aerae a domo de newtown● the town of aire , from y e house of newtowne . prospectus arcis dunotrie . the prospect of dunotter castle . prospectus oppidi de dryburgh . 〈◊〉 prospect of the town of dryburgh . rudera coenobij de drybrugh . 〈◊〉 ruines of the abbey of drybrugh . prospectus civitatis innerness . th● prospect of y e town of innerness , prospectus palaty et oppidi de skuyn . th● prospect of the house and town of skuyn . prospectus oppidi elginae . the prospect of the town of elgine . rudera templi cathedralis elgini . the ruins of the cathedrall church of elgin . prospectus civitatis taoduni . prospect of y e town of dundee . prospectus civitatis taoduni ab oriente . the prospect of y e town of dundee from y e east . prospectus oppidi aberbrothiae . prospect of y e town of aberbrothick . prospectus coenobij aberbrothiae . the prospect of y e abby of aberbrothick . rudera caenoby de corsregal seu crucis sti re●●● . the ruines of y e abby of corsregal . chanonria civitatis rossiae . the channery town of ross . prospectus civitatis perthi . the prospect of y e town of perth . prospectus oppidi et caenoby fermelodunens . the prospect of y e town & abby of dumfermling . prospectus cenoby fermelodunen ▪ the prospect of the abby of dumfermling . prospectus palatij & oppidi culrossiae . the prospect of y e house & town of colross . prospectus coenobij de culross . th● prospect of the abby of culross . prospectus oppidi calsonis . the prospect of the town of kelso . monasterium calsonense . the abby of kelso . prospectus arcis bothweliae . the prospect of bothwell castle . rudera coenobij de melross , the ruines of the abbie of melross . prospectus oppidi brechinae . the prospect of y e towne of brechin . capella de rosslin . the chappell of rosslin . prospectus caenobij et civitatis pasleti . the prospect of the abbey & town of paislay . facies insulae bassae ab ora maris australi . the prospect of y e bass from y e south shore . latus insulae bassae orientale . the east syde of the bass . the end of the prospects . a proclamation, for bringing in the accompts due by their majesties forces. scotland. privy council. 1690 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05644 wing s1843 estc r183503 52528976 ocm 52528976 179071 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05644) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179071) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:60) a proclamation, for bringing in the accompts due by their majesties forces. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to their most excellent majesties, edinburgh : anno dom. 1690. caption title. royal arms in ornamental border at head of text; initial letter. text chiefly in black letter. intentional blank spaces in text. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the fourth day of august, and of our reign the second year, 1690. signed: gilb. eliot, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -army -finance -law and legislation -early works to 1800. requisitions, military -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-03 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation , for bringing in the accompts due by their majesties forces . william and marry , by the grace of god , king and queen of great britain , france , and ireland , defenders of the faith ; to our lovits , _____ macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly , and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch , as by an act and proclamation of our privy council , of the date , the tenth day of january , 1690 pears , the lords of our privy council , by our special warrand and authority , did require and command the commissioners of assessment , or excise , or either of them , where any of our forces have been quartered , to make intimation by beating of drums , and publick proclamation at the several mercat-crosses , that the land-lords and other might bring in their accompts , due by our forces to them , betwixt and the twentieth day of february last by past ; and we considering , that by an act of the second session of our current parliament , there is a fond secured for payment of what is due by our forces to the countrey ; and we out of our royal care , being earnestly desirous that these who have so seasonably and willingly furnished any of our forces , with meat , drink , forrage , and other necessary provisions , or have advanced , or payed to them any sums of money for their subsistence , should be thankfully re-imbursed , and satisfied for the famine ; and in respect that the former proclamation took not its full effect , and that since the day therein prefixed , there may be debts contracted by our forces , yet resting unpayed ; therefore we , with advice of our privy council , do hereby allow and ordain , the saids land-lords to repair to the saids commissioners of assessment and excise , or any two of them , and before them state and verifie by writ , or witnesses , how many soldiers were quartered on them , and how long , and by writ , or the oath of the land-lord , what they advanced to them , not exceeding two thirds of their pay , and that they have received no part thereof , and report the saids accompts due to them by the forces , as well upon the scots as english establishment , with the verifications and probations thereof , to the clerks of our privy council , betwixt and the first day of november next to come , with certification to the saids land-lords and others , to whom our saids forces are adebted , that if the saids accompts be not reported betwixt and the said day , that thereafter they shall be understood as satisfied : and to the end that all persons concerned may have timous notice of our pleasure in the premisses ; our will is herefore , and we charge you straitly and command , that ye passe to the mercat-cross of edinburgh and the remanent mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the several shires and stewartries within this kingdom , and in our name and authority , make publication hereof , that none may pretend ignorance . and we ordain these presents to be printed , and published in manner foresaid . given under our signet at edinburgh , the fourth day of august . and of our reign the second year , 1690. per actum dominorum sti. concilii . gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save king william and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to their most excellent majesties , anne dom. 1690. the complaint of time against the tumultuous and rebellious scots sharply inveighing against them (as most justly they deserve) this yeare, 1639. by w.s. saltonstall, wye, fl. 1630-1640. 1639 approx. 13 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 5 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2005-12 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a11385 stc 21643.5 estc s106432 99842148 99842148 6778 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11385) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 6778) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 585:16) the complaint of time against the tumultuous and rebellious scots sharply inveighing against them (as most justly they deserve) this yeare, 1639. by w.s. saltonstall, wye, fl. 1630-1640. [8] p. printed by b. a[lsop] and t. f[awcet] for richard harper in smithfield, at the bible and harpe, london : 1639. w.s. = wye saltonstall. printers' names from stc. in verse. signatures: a⁴. formerly stc 21525. identified as stc 21525 on umi microfilm. reproduction of the original in the folger shakespeare library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng covenanters -scotland -early works to 1800. england -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign relations -england -early works to 1800. 2003-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-05 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2005-04 simon charles sampled and proofread 2005-04 simon charles text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-10 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the complaint of time against the tumultuous and rebellious scots . sharpely inveighing against them ( as most justly they deserve ) this yeare , 1639. by w. s. london printed by b. a. and t. f. for richard harper in smithfield , at the bible and harpe . 1639. the grounds and reasons of times complaint against the rebellious scots . this land ( god be thanked ) is blest in the happy government of a most gracious king , against whom in despight of mercy divers aff●onts have lately beene offerd by the rebellions scots , who under pretence of religion would ouerthrow the hierarchy of the church , pulling downe the house of god , and building babels of their owne invention , and man'd with this furious zeale , they have raised great forces , and stand ready armed in the field to resist the head of the church in his dominions our most gracious king charles ; time therefore hearing how these bold attempts under the title of covenanters bad acted many outrages , entrencht vpon the kings soveraigne power , and have hitherto neglected and slighted his royall authority ; therefore in this complaint of time some reasons are laid downe . for the chronicles of this land due witnesse that rebels have beene alwayes overthrowne in their designes , and at last met with a deserved death . thus mortimer who rebelled against king edward the second , and violently tooke away his queene , was afterwards himselfe taken and beheaded . also those rude mechannicke rebels that were led under the conduct of watt tiler , tom miller , and iack strae made a great tumultuous vproare in kent and essex , untill sir william walworth than lord mayor of london did with his dagger stabbe iacke straw in smith-field , whereupon the dagger was set in the armes of london . the rebellion for perkin warbek was soone disanimated , and the imposture discovered , and so likewise iack cade and his associates were soone confounded and overthrowne , and punished according to their deserts . and thus rebellion is like that ignis fatuus or that phantastick apparition of fire , which running under hedges doth affright country-people , but having blazed a while , it is soone dissipated and extinguished . the scots therefore cannot promise to themselves any better fortune than their rebellious predecessours , who were soone scatter'd and confounded , and their leaders received condigne punishment . if therefore any precise humorist that accounts himselfe a transcendant protestant , and a goliah in religion ▪ when indeed he is an hypocriticall puritane , if any such doe thinke the complaint of time against the scots is too satyricall ▪ i would have him know , that the rebellion of the scots as it is haynous in its owne nature , and deserves a sharpe vindication and revenge , so it also hath cast an aspersion vpon time , for both the city and country doe find fault , that it is a very hard , dangerous and doubtfull time. and some in regard of this unnaturall rebellion say , time declines and growes worse , and that many discentions , divisions and rebellions shall happen in the old age of time , unto all which accusations time doth make answere with one old ancient verse ▪ conscia mens recti famae mendacia ridat . the conscience that is cleere from spot or stayne , laughs at the false reports of flying fame . time did not cause the scots rebellious factions , which breaking forth in time , time blames their actions . the complaint of time against the tumultuous and rebellious scots . anno dom. 1639. age now hath silver'd ore the haires of time , and as i am growne old , so i decline in native goodnes , else what frantick moode could make the scots so prodigall of their blood to staine their honour by the imputation of tempting their king to high indignation by being sonnes of tumult and of thunder ? time grieves for them , and shooke with holy wonder admires what genius leades them on to be revolters against sacred majestie , why they had best attempt if they thinke good to prove themselves of the gygantick brood pelion on ossa hurling up againe , so to invade the high olimpian name of love ; for whether wont their boldnesse presse ? vnlesse the just revenger send redresse . time needs not heere from his owne height descend as to make answere to what they pretend in frivolous objections , for what pretence can heaven allow them for their bold offence ? what have they made such a strange scrutiny that none but they have found divinity ? or have they fanci'd to themselves abstractions of angels zeale set forth in divelish actions ? will they allow unto the king of heaven no ceremonies which are duly given vnto his majesty , but will bluntly fall without ceremony to rebellion all , must they needs teare the miter from the head of bishops ; what antipathy is bred within that land which doth on england border that they should seeke equality of disorder ? which alwayes tends to ruine , nature makes in all her workes a resemblance of estates , the peacefull bees have kings , the waspes have none , they onely buzze , and sting , and so are gone ; most perfect creatures have the truest sence of soveraignty and true obedience ; the hierarchy of angels still doe cry all prayse and honour be to god on high whom they obey , and government on earth from heaven had originall and birth . and would the scots thinke by their furious rage . to turne the world into a golden age as in the infancy of time ? yet then saturne did raigne , and was obey'd by men , then iupiter the ancient world sway'd whose soveraignty was generally obey'd ; and time that measures out the workes of nature from the first being of a formed creature to thee not being , was at first created by the king of heaven , and my power is dated and whatsoever is his great decree i must therein obey his majesty . but since the giants warres i was not tooke with greater feare , nor with more horrour strooke then when lowd fame did bring unto my eares the scots attempt ; i drown'd my cheekes with teares and wisht that i my patent might resigne before the world should say that aged time had thus produc'd by the seeds of dissention an armed brood of men sprung from contention that in despight of mercy will proceed to court their ruine , and desire to bleed . is there a plurisie , and an excesse in spirituall matters that must find redresse by such a cruell salve ? or doth the sword more mercy then is vsuall now afford ? and not cut off ill members , will it spare those who in deepe affronts engaged are against their soveraigne ? who did wooe them long by mercy which was powerfull and strong to conquer good minds , but when his grace found that balme of mercy could not cure the wound , then our dread soveraigne mindfull of his cause , went downe against those that did flight his lawes arm'd with his iustice full of powerfull dread for kings have iron hands , though feete of lead . now heaven protect him , time on aged knees prayes that these waspes which scorne the obedient bees though they are gathered into mighty swarmes yet may bee all compell'd by force of arm●s to yeeld their stubborne neckes , let angels drive these waspes away out of the churches hive . who bring no honey , but have often stung their mother with contentions from them sprung . time hath spoke liberally , but now hee 'le stay no correct himselfe , for some perhaps will say that the scots beare an earnest great affection vnto my daughter truth , by whose direction in her defence this furious course they take for love of truth through danger way doth make , but they doe erre herein , for my deere childe and daughter truth 's by nature soft and milde . christ was all truth , yet when hee came to wooe the world to goodnesse , and the way to shew vnto all truth the holy angels then sang peace on earth , and goodwill unto men . can therefore tumult , and the thundring drum speake in a language that may well become the wooers of faire truth ? or else transported doe they imagine truth can thus bee courted ? me thinkes i see the angels hide their faces and blush in angry zeale , for their disgraces no thinke the scots should thinke faire truth to winne from her most just defendor , and her king. me thinkes i see sad truth kneele downe and speake her wrongs against them who her lawes doe breake , shee pleads for mercy and doth plead againe and with her oratory doth enflame the kings most royall brest , then having got his gracious favour , shee tels him the scot with many shewes of holinesse doth wooe her , pretends much inward zealous love unto her but yet doth mocke her with a smooth pretence of love to colour over his offence ; and then shee wishes shee may never know heaven if truth did bid them thus to goe in huddle into armes , for truth sayes shee loves and obeyes your sacred majestie ; and all my precepts say that kings appeare like gods on earth and his vice-regents heere ; then why should they the truth and you abuse and fasten upon truth a false excuse ? no 't is their pollicie that doth extend to use my name to a prodigious end , and with the veyle of truth to hide and shrowd their proud ambition which walkes in a cloud and like a piller of fire guides them on into a wildernesse of rebellion . thus would my daughter truth make her complaint 'gainst the tumultuous scots that doe so vant in crying up her name , when heaven knowes that truth was never tooke with feyned showes . bee dumbe night-ravens then , and doe not croake to piece up the alleageance you have broke with faire pretences , for old time doth know you have entrencht on soveraignty , and doe grow gyants in your opinion , being so given to furious zeale that you would invade heaven , pluck iupiter out of his seate , and all of you would then be gods in generall . and yet they are but shadowes you pretend while in substantiall matters you offend by fallacie joyning god and king together , and yet will shew obedience unto neither ; there you devide the cause by your affection and distinguish of a limited subjection . even nature doth instruct that you should be subject unto the power of majestie , and all the workes of nature seeme to speake hee is a rebell doth alleagiance breake . then trust not to your selves , though you are strong , for heaven will vindicate all rebellion , and truth doth say of old , no warres can bee happie attempted against soveraigntie . how dare you still persist ; time bids pull downe your baffling flags , and on your knees fall downe , and for your colours let your blushing cheeke display them , while you doe for mercy seeke ; if not , then time doth bid you know bold scots , your vrne is turn'd , and fate hath shooke your lots , you have betray'd your selves , up english then and shew your courage against those contemne heaven in their king , o let not his great cause suffer while they 〈◊〉 his power and lawes . finis . the pennyles pilgrimage, or the money-lesse perambulation, of iohn taylor, alias the kings majesties water-poet how he trauailed on foot from london to edenborough in scotland, not carrying any money to or fro, neither begging, borrowing, or asking meate, drinke or lodging. with his description of his entertainment in all places of his iourney, and a true report of the vnmatchable hunting in the brea of marre and badenoch in scotland. with other obseruations, some serious and worthy of memory, and some merry and not hurtfull to be remembred. lastly that (which is rare in a trauailer) all is true. taylor, john, 1580-1653. 1618 approx. 96 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 27 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2005-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a13485 stc 23784 estc s118255 99853462 99853462 18845 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a13485) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 18845) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 941:5) the pennyles pilgrimage, or the money-lesse perambulation, of iohn taylor, alias the kings majesties water-poet how he trauailed on foot from london to edenborough in scotland, not carrying any money to or fro, neither begging, borrowing, or asking meate, drinke or lodging. with his description of his entertainment in all places of his iourney, and a true report of the vnmatchable hunting in the brea of marre and badenoch in scotland. with other obseruations, some serious and worthy of memory, and some merry and not hurtfull to be remembred. lastly that (which is rare in a trauailer) all is true. taylor, john, 1580-1653. [54] p. printed by edw: all-de, at the charges of the author, london : 1618. partly in verse. signatures: a-g⁴ (-g4). running title reads: taylors pennilesse pilgrimage. reproduction of the original in the henry e. huntington library and art gallery. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng england -description and travel -early works to 1800. scotland -description and travel -early works to 1800. 2000-00 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2001-00 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2001-06 tcp staff (michigan) sampled and proofread 2003-05 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2004-11 andrew kuster sampled and proofread 2004-11 andrew kuster text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-01 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the pennyles pilgrimage , or the money-lesse perambulation , of iohn taylor , alias the kings majesties water-poet . how he travailed on foot from london to edenborough in scotland , not carrying any money to or fro , neither begging , borrowing , or asking meate , drinke or lodging . with his description of his entertainment in all places of his iourney , and a true report of the vnmatchable hunting in the brea of marre and badenoch in scotland . with other obseruations , some serious and worthy of memory , and some merry and not hurtfull to be remembred . lastly that ( which is rare in a trauailer ) all is true . london printed by edw : all de , at the charges of the author . 1618. to the trvly noble , and right honorable lord , george marquesse of buckingham , viscount villeirs , baron of whaddon , iustice in eyre of all his maiesties forrests , parkes , and chases beyond trout , master of the horse to his maiesty , and one of the gentlemen of his highnesse royall bed-chamber , knight of the most noble order of the garter , and one of his majesties most honorable priuie councell of both the kingdomes of england and scotland . right honorable , and worthy honour'd lord , as in my trauailes , i was entertain'd , welcom'd , and relieu'd by many honourable lords , worshipfull knights , esquires , gentlemen , and others , both in england , & scotland . so now your lordships inclination hath incited , or inuited my poore muse to shelter herselfe vnder the shadow of your honourable patronage , not that there is any worth at all in my sterill inuention , but in all humilitie i acknowledge that it is onely your lordships acceptance , that is able to make this nothing , something , and withall engage me euer . your honours , in all obseruance : iohn taylor . to all my louing aduenturers , by what name or title so euer , my generall salutation . reader , these trauailes of mine into scotland , were not vndertaken , neither in imitation , or emulation of any man , but onely deuised by my selfe , on purpose to make triall of my friends , both in this kingdome of england , and that of scotland , and because i would be an eye witnesse of diuers things which i had heard of that country ; and whereas many shallow-brain'd critickes , doe lay an aspersion on me , that i was set on by others , or that i did vndergoe this project , either in malice , or mockage of maister beniamin ionson , i vow by the faith of a christian , that their imaginations are all wide , for he is a gentleman , to whom i am so much obliged for many vndeserued courtesies that i haue receiued from him , and from others by his fauour , that i durst neuer to be so impudent or ingratefull , as either to suffer any mans perswasions , or mine owne instigation , to incite me , to make so bad a requitall , for so much goodnesse formerly receiued ; so much for that , and now reader , if you expect that i should write of cities scituations , or that of countries i should make relations : of brooks , crooks , nooks ; of riuers , boorns and rills , of mountaines , fountaines , castles , towers & hills , of shieres , and pieres , and memorable things , of liues and deaths of great commanding kings : i touch not those , they not belong to mee , but if such things as these you long to see , lay downe my booke , and but vouchsafe to reede the learned camden , or laborious speede. and so god speede you and me , whilst i rest yours in all thankfulnes : iohn taylor . taylors pennilesse pilgrimage . list lordings , list ( if you haue lust to list ) i write not here a tale of had i wist : but you shall heare of trauels , and relations , descriptions of strange ( yet english ) fashions . and he that not beleeues what here is writ , let him ( as i haue done ) make proofe of it . the yeare of grace , accounted ( as i weene ) one thousand , twice three hundred and eighteene , and to relate all things in order duly , 't was tuesday last ; the fourteenth day of iuly , saint reuels day , the almanacke will tell ye the signe in virgo was , or neere the belly : the moone full three dayes old , the winde full south ; at these times i began this trick of youth . i speake not of the tide ; for vnderstand , my legges i made my oares , and rowed by land , though in the morning i began to goe , good fellowes trooping , flock'd me so , that make what hast i could , the sunne was set , e're from the gates of london i could get . at last i tooke my latest leaue , thus late at the bell inne , that 's extra aldersgate . there stoode a horse that my prouant should carie , from that place to the end of my fegarie , my horse , no horse , or mare , but guelded nagge , that with good vnderstanding bore my bagge : and of good cariage he himselfe did show , these things are ex'lent in a beast , you know . there , in my knapsack , ( to pay hungers fees ) i had good bacon , bisket , neates-tongue , cheese , with roses , barbaries , of each conserues , and mithridate , that vigrous health preserues ; and i entreate you take these words for no-lyes , i had good aqua vita , rosa so-lies : with sweet ambrosia , ( the gods owne drinke ) most ex'lent geere for mortalls , as i thinke . besides , i had both vineger and oyle , that could a daring sawcie stomack foyle . this foresaid tuesday night 'twixt eight and nine , well rigg'd and ballac'd , both with beere and wine , i stumbling forward , thus my iaunt begun , and went that night as farre as islington . there did i finde , ( i dare affirme it bold ) a maydenhead of twenty fiue yeeres old , but surely it was painted , like a whore , and for a signe , or wonder , hang'd at ' dore , which shewe , a maidenhead , that 's kept so long , may be hang'd vp , and yet sustaine no wrong . there did my louing friendly host begin to entertaine me freely to his inne : and there my friends , and good associates , each one to mirth himselfe accommodates . at well head both for welcome , and for cheere , hauing a good new tonne , of good stale beere : there did we trundle downe health , after health ( which oftentimes impaires both health and wealth . ) till euery one had fill'd his mortall trunke , and onely nobody was three parts drunke . the morrow next , wednesday saint swithins day , from ancient islington i tooke my way . at hollywell i was inforc'd carrowse , ale high , and mightie , at the blinde-mans house . but ther 's a helpe to make amends for all , that though the ale be great , the pots be small . at high-gate hill to a strange house i went , and saw the people were to eating bent , i neither borrow'd , crau'd , ask'd , begg'd or bought , but most laborious with my teeth i wrought . i did not this cause meate or drinke was scant , but i did practise thus before my want ; like to a tilter that would winne the prize , before the day hee 'le often excercise . so i began to put in vre , at first these principles 'gainst hunger , and 'gainst thirst , close to the gate , their dwelt a worthy man , that well could take his whiffe , and quaffe his canne , right robin good-fellow , but humors euill doe call him robin pluto , or the deuill . but finding him a deuill , freely harted , with friendly farewels i tooke leaue and parted . and as alongst i did my iourney take , i dranke at broomes-well , for pure fashions sake . two miles i trauelled then , without a bayte , the sarazens head at whetstone entring straight , i found an host , might lead an host of men , exceeding fat , yet named lean , and few , and though we make small reckoning of him heere , hee 's knowne to be a very great man there . there i tooke leaue , of all my company , bade all farewell , yet spake to no-body . good reader thinke not strange , what i compile , for no-body was with me all this while . and no-body did drinke , and winke , and scinke , and on occasion freely spend his chinke . if any one desire to know the man , walke , stumble , trundle , but in barbican . ther 's as good beere and ale as euer twang'd , and in that street kinde no-body is hang'd , but leauing him , vnto his matchlesse fame , i to st. albanes in the euening came , where mr. taylor , at the sarazens head , vnask'd ( vnpaid for ) me both lodg'd and sed . the tapsters , hostlers , chamberlaines , and all , sau'd mee a labour , that i need not call , the iugges were fild and fild , the cups went round , and in a word great kindnes there i found , for which both to my cosen , and his men , i le still be thankefull in word , deed , and pen. till thursday morning there i made my stay , and then i went plaine dunstable high-way . my very hart with drought me thought did shrinke , i went twelue miles , and no one bad me drinke . which made me call to minde , that instant time , that drunkennes was a most sinful crime . when puddle-hill i footed downe , and past a mile from thence i found a hedge at last . there stroke we sayle , our bacon , cheese and bread we drew like fidlers , and like farmers fed , and whilst 2. houres we there did take out ease , my nagge made shift to mump greene pulse and pease . thus we our hungry stomacks did supply , and dranke the water of a brooke hard by . a way t'ward hockley in the hole , we make , when straight a horsman did me ouer-take , who knew me , and would saine haue giuen me coyne , i said my bonds did me from coyne inioyne . i thank'd and prayd him to put vp his chinke , and willingly i wisht it drownd in drinke . away rode he , but like an honest man , i found at hockley standing at the swan , a formall tapster , with a iugge and glasse , who did arest mee , i most willing was to try the action , and straight put in bale , my fees were paide before , with sixe-pence ale. to quitt this kindnesse , i most willing am the man that paide for all , his name is dam at the greene dragon , against grayes-iune gate , he liues in good repute , and honest state . i forward went in this my roauing race , to stony stratford i toward night did pace , my minde was fixed through the towne to passe , to finde some lodging in the hay or grasse , but at the queenes armes from the window there , a comfortable voyce i chaunc'd to heare , call taylor , taylor and be hang'd come hither , i look'd for small intreaty and went thither , there were some friends , which i was glad to see , who knew my iourney ; lodg'd , and boorded me . on friday morne , as i would take my way , my friendly host entreated me to stay , because it rain'd he tolde me i should haue , meate , drinke , and horse-meate and not pay or craue . i thank'd him , and for 's loue remaine his debter , but if i liue , i will requite him better . ( from stony stratford , the way hard with stones ) did founder me , and vexe me to the bones , in blustring weather , both for winde and raine , through tocetter i trotted , with much paine , two miles from thence , we satt vs downe and dynde , well bulwark'd by a hedge , from raine and winde . we hauing fed , away incontinent , with weary pace toward dauentry we went , foure miles short of it , one o're-tooke me there , and tolde me he would leaue a iugge of beere , at dauentry at the horse-shoe , for my vse , i thought it no good manners to refuse , but thank'd him , for his kinde vnasked gift , whilest i was lame as scarce a leg could lift , came ilmping after to that stony towne , whose hard streetes , made me almost halt tight downe . there had my friend performed the words he saide , and at the doore a iugge of liquor staide the folkes were all informed , before i came , how , and wherefore my iourney i did frame , which caused mine hostesse from her doore come out , ( hauing a great wart rampant on her snowt . ) the tapsters , hostlers , one another call , the chamberlaines with admiration all , were fild with wonder , more then wonderfull , as if some monster sent from the mogull , some elephant from affricke , i had beene , or some strange beast from th' amazonian queene . as buzards , widgions , woodcocks , and such fowle , doe gaze and wonder at the broad-fac'd owle , so did these brainlesse asses , all-amaz'd , with admirable non sence talk'd and gaz'd . they knew my state , ( although not tolde by me , ) that i could scarcely goe , they all did see , they dranke of my beere , that to me was giuen , but gaue me not a drop , to make all eeuen . and that which in my minde was most amisse , my hostesse she stood by and saw all this , had she but said , come neere the house my friend , for this day heere shall be your iourneys end , then had she done , the thing which she did not , and i in kinder wordes had paid the shot . i doe intreat my friends , ( as i haue some ) if they to dauentry doe chance to come , that they will balke that inne ; or if by chaunce , or accident into that house they glaunce , kinde gentlemen , as they by you reape profit , my hostesse care of mee , pray tell her of it . yet doe not neither , lodge there when you will , you for your money shall be welcome still . from thence that night , although my bones were sore , i made a shift to hobble seau'n miles more : the way to dunchurch , foule with dirt and mire , able , i thinke , both man and horse to tire . on dunsmore heath , a hedge doth there enclose grounds , on the right hand , there i did repose . wits whetstone , want , there made vs quickly learne , with kniues to cut downe rushes , and greene fearne , of which we made a field-bed in the field , which fleepe , and rest , and much content did yeeld . there with my mother earth , i thought it fit to lodge , and yet no incest did commit : my bed was curtain'd with good wholesome ayres , and being weary , i went vp no stayres : the skie my canopy , bright pheabe shinde , sweet bawling zephirus breath'd gentle winde , in heau'ns starre chamber i did lodge that night , tenne thousand starres , me to my bed did light ; there baracadoed with a banke lay wee below the lofty branches of a tree , there my bed-fellowes and companions were , my man , my horse , a bull , foure cowes , two steere : but yet for all this most confused rowt , we had no bed-staues , yet we fell not out , thus nature , like an ancient free vpholster , did furnish vs with bedstead , bed , and bolster ; and the kinde skies , ( for which high heau'n be thanked , allow'd vs a large couering and a blanket : aurora's face gan light our lodging darke . we arose and mounted , with the mounting larke , through plashes , puddles , thicke , thinne , wet and dry , i trauail'd to the citie couentry . there maister doctor holland caus'd me stay the day of saturne , and the sabaoth day . most friendly welcome , he did me affoord , i was so entertain'd at bed and boord , which as i dare not bragge how much it was , i dare not be ingrate and let it passe , but with thankes many i remember it ( in stead of his good deedes ) in words and writ , he vs'd me like his sonne , more then a friend , and he on monday his commends did send to newhall , where a gentleman did dwell , who by his name is hight sacheuerell . the tuesday iulyes one and twenteth day , i to the citie lichfield tooke my way , at sutton coffill with some friends i met , and much adoe i had from thence to get , there i was almost put vnto my trumps , my horses shooes were worne as thinne as pumps ; but noble vulcan , a mad smuggy smith , all reparations me did furnish with . the shooes were well remou'd , my palfrey shod , and he referr'd the payment vnto god. i found a friend , when i to lichfield came , a ioyner , and iohn piddock is his name , he made me welcome , for he knew my iaunt , and he did furnish me with good prouant : he offred me some money , i refus'd it , and so i tooke my leaue , with thanks excus'd it . that wednesday i a weary way did passe , raine , winde , stones , dirt , and dabling dewie grasse , with here and there a pelting scatter'd village , which yeelded me no charity , or pillage : for all the day , nor yet the night that followed , one drop of drinke i 'm sure my gullet swallowed . at night i came t' a stonie towne call'd stone , where i knew none , nor was i knowne of none : i therefore through the streetes held on my pace , some two miles farther to some resting place : at last i spide a meddow newly mowde , the hay was rotten , the ground halfe o're-flowde : we made a breach , and entred horse and man , there our pauillion , we to pitch began , which we erected with greene broome and hay t' expell the colde , and keepe the raine away ; the skie all muffled in a cloud gan lowre , and presently there sell a mighty showre , which without intermission downe did powre , from tenne at night , vntill the mornings foure . we all that time close in our couch did lye , which being well compacted , kept vs dry . the worst was , we did neither sup nor sleepe , and so a temperate dyet we did keepe . the morning all enroab'd in drisling fogges , we being as ready as we had beene dogges : we neede not stand vpon long ready making , but gaping , stretching , and our eares well shaking : and for i found my host and hostesse kinde , i like a true man left my sheetes behinde . that thursday morne , my weary course i fram'd , vnto a towne that is newcastle nam'd , ( not that newcastle standing vpon tine ) but this townes scituation doth confine neere cheshiere , in the famous county stafford , and for their loue , i owe them not a straw for 't ; but now my versing muse craues some repose , and whilst she sleepes i le spowt a little prose . in this towne of newcastle , i ouertooke an hostler , and i asked him what the next towne was called , that was in my way toward lancaster , he holding the end of a riding rod in his mouth , as if it had beene a fluit , piped me this answere , and said , talke on the hill ; i asked him againe what hee said , talke on the hill : i demaunded the third time , and the third time he answered me as he did before , talke on the hill . i began to grow chollericke , and asked him why hee could not talke , or tell mee my way as well there , as on the hill ; at last i was resolued , that the next towne was foure miles off mee , and the name of it was , talke on the hill . i had not trauailed aboue two miles farther : but my last nights supper ( which was asmuch as nothing ) my mind being enformed of it by my stomacke . i made a vertue of necessity , and went to breakfast in the sunne : i haue sared better at three sunnes many a time before now , in aldersgate streete , creeplegate , and new fishstreete ; but here is the oddes , at those sunnes they will come vpon a man with a tauerne bill , as sharpe cutting as a taylors bill of items : a watch-mans blil , or a welch-hooke falles not halfe so heauy vpon a man ; besides , most of the vintners haue the law in their owne hands , and haue all their actions , cases , bills of debt , and such reckonings tried at their owne barres ; from whence there is no appeale . but leauing these impertinencies , in the materiall sunne-shiee , wee eate a substantiall dinner , and like miserable guestes wee did budget vp the reuersions . and now with sleepe , my muse hath eas'd her braine . i 'le turne my stile from prose , to verse againe . that which we could not haue , we freely spar'd , and wanting drinke , most soberly we far'd . we had great store of fowle ( but 't was foule way ) and kindly euery step entreates me stay , the clammy clay sometimes my heeles would trip , one foote went forward , th' other backe would slip . this weary day , when i had almost past , i came vnto sir vrian legh's at last , at adlington , neere macksfield he doth dwell , belou'd , respected , and reputed well . through his great loue , my stay with him was fixt , from thursday night , till noone on monday next , at his owne table i did dayly eate , whereat may be suppos'd , did want no meate , he would haue giu'n me gold or siluer either , but i with many thankes , receiued neither . and thus much without flatterie i dare sweare , he is a knight beloued farre and neere . first he 's beloued of his god aboue , ( which loue , he loues to keepe , beyond all loue ) next with a wife and children he is blest , each hauing gods feare planted in their brest . with faire demaines , reuennue of good lands , hee 's fairely blest by the almighties hands , and as hee 's happy in these outward things , so from his inward minde , continuall springes fruits of deuotion , deeds of piety , good hospitable workes of charity , iust in his actions , constant in his word , and one that wonne his honour with his sword . hee 's no carranto , capr'ing , carpet knight , but he knowes when , and how to speake or fight . i cannot flatter him , say what i can , hee 's euery way a compleat gentleman . i write not this , for what he did to me , but what mine eares , and eyes did heare and see , nor doe i pen this to enlarge his fame , but to make others imitate the same . for like a trumpet were i pleasd to blow , i would his worthy worth more amply show , but i already feare haue beene too bolde , and craue his pardon , me excusd to holde . thankes to his sonnes and seruants euery one , both males and females all , excepting none . to beare a letter he did me require , neere manchester , vnto a good esquire : his kinsman edmond prestwitch , he ordain'd , that i at manchester was entertain'd two nights , and one day , ere we thence could passe , for men and horse , rost , boyl'd , and oates , and grasse : this gentleman , not onely gaue me harbor , but in the morning sent to me his barber , who lau'd , and shau'd me , still i spard my purse , yet sure he left me many a haire the worse . but in conclusion , when his worke was ended , his glasse informd , my face was much amended . and for the kindnesse he to me did show , god grant his customers beards faster grow , that though the time of yeare be deere or cheape , from fruitfull faces hee may mowe and reape . then came a smith , with shoes , and tooth and nayle , he searched my horse hooues , mending what did faile , yet this i note , my nagge , through stones and dirt , did shift shoes twice , ere i did shift one shirt : can these kinde thinges be in obliuion hid ? no , mr. prestwitch , this and much more did , his friendship did command , and freely gaue all before writ , and more then i durst craue . but leauing him a little , i must tell , how men of manchester , did vse me well , their loues they on the tenter-hookes did racke , rost , boyld , bak'd , too too much , white , claret , sacke , nothing they thought too heauy or too hot , canne follow'd canne , and pot succeeded pot , that what they could doe , all they thought too little , striuing in loue the traueller to whittle . we went vnto the house of one iohn pinners , ( a man that liues amongst a crew of sinners ) and there eight seuerall sorts of ale we had , all able to make one starke drunke or mad . but i with courage brauely flinched not , and gaue the towne leaue to discharge the shot . we had at one time set vpon the table , good ale of hisope , 't was no esope fable : then had we ale of sage , and ale of malt , and ale of worme-wood , that can make one halt , with ale of rosemary , and bettony , and two ales more , or else i needes must lye . but to conclude this drinking a lye tale , we had a sort of ale , called scuruy ale. thus all these men , at their owne charge and cost , did striue whose loue might be expressed most . and farther to declare their boundlesse loues , they saw i wanted , and they gaue me gloues , in deed , and very deede , their loues were such , that in their praise i cannot write too much ; they merit more then i haue here compil'd , i lodged at the eagle and the childe , whereas my hostesse , ( a good auncient woman ) did entertaine me with respect , not common . she caus'd my linnen , shirts , and bands be washt , and on my way she caus'd me be refresht , she gaue me twelue silke poyntes , she gaue me baken , which by me much refused , at last was taken , in troath shee prou'd a mother vnto me , for which , i euermore will thankfull be . but when to minde these kindnesses i call , kinde mr. prestwitch author is of all , and yet sr. vrian leigh's good commendation was the maine ground of this my recreation . from both of them ; there what i had , i had , or else my entertainment had bin bad . o all you worthy men of manchester , true bred blouds of the county lancaster ) when i forget what you to me haue done , then let me head-long to confusion runne . to noble mr. prestwach i must giue thankes , vpon thankes , as long as i doe liue , his loue was such , i ne're can pay the score , he farre surpassed all that went before , a horse and man he sent , with boundlesse bounty , to bring me quite through lancasters large county . which i well know is fifty miles at large , and he defrayed all the cost and charge . this vnlook'd pleasure , was to me such pleasure , that i can ne're expresse my thankes with measure . so mistresse saracoale , hostesse kinde , and manchester with thankes i left behinde . the wednesday being iulyes twenty nine , my iourney i to preston did confine , all the day long it rayned but one showre , which from the morning to the ene'n did powre , and i , before to preston i could get , was sowsd , and pickeld both with raine and sweat . but there i was supply'd , with fire and food , and any thing i wanted , sweete and good . there , at the hinde , kinde mr. hinde mine host , kept a good table , bak'd and boyld , and rost , there wedensday , thursday , friday i did stay , and hardly got from thence on saturday . vnto my lodging often did repaire , kinde mr. thomas banister , the mayor , who is of worship , and of good respect , and in his charge discreet and circumspect . for i protest to god i neuer saw , a towne more wisely gouern'd by the law. they tolde me when my soueraigne there was last , that one mans rashnes , seem'd to giue distast ▪ it grieu'd them all , but when at last they found , his majesty was pleasd , their ioyes were crown'd , he knew the fairest garden hath some weedes , he did accept their kinde intents , for deedess one man there was , that with his zeale too hot . and furious hast , himselfe much ouer ▪ shot . but what man is so foolish , that desires to get good fruit , from thistles , thornes and bryers ? thus much i thought good to demonstrate heere , because i saw how much they grieued were . that any way , the least part of offence , should make them seeme offensiue to their prince . thus three nights was i staide and lodg'd in preston , and saw nothing ridiculous to iest on , much cost and charge the mayor vpon me spent , and on my way two miles , with me he went , there ( by good chance ) i did more friendship get , the vnder shriefe of lancashire , we met , a gentleman that lou'd , and knew me well , and one whose bounteous minde doth beare the bell . there , as if i had beene a noted thiefe , the mayor deliuered me vnto the shriefe . the shriefes authority did much preuaile , he sent me vnto one that kept the iayle . thus i perambulating , poore iohn taylor , was giu'n from mayor to shriefe , from shriefe to iaylor , the iaylor kept an inne , good beds , good cheere , where paying nothing , i found nothing deere . for the vnder shriefe kinde maister couill nam'd , ( a man for house-keeping renown'd and fam'd ) did cause the towne of lancaster afford me welcome , as if i had beene a lord. and 't is reported , that for dayly bounty , his mate can scarce be found in all that county . th'extreames of mizer , or of prodigall he shunnes , and liues discreete and liberall , his wiues minde , and his owne are one , so fixt , that argos eyes could see no oddes betwixt , and sure the difference , ( if there diff'rence be ) is who shall doe most good , or he , or she . poore folks reports , that for releeuing them , he and his wife , are each of them a iem ; at th'inne , and at his house two nights i staide , and what was to be paid , i know he paide ; if nothing of their kindnesse i had wrote , ingratefull me the world might iustly note : had i declar'd all i did heare and see , for a great flatt'rer then i deem'd should be , he and his wife , and modest daughter besse , with earth and heau'ns felicity , god blesse . two dayes a man of his at his command , did guide me to the midst of westmerland , and my conductor , with a liberall fist to keepe me moyst , scarce any alehouse mist. the fourth of august ( weary , halt , and lame ) we in the darke , t a towne call'd sebder came , there maister borrowd , my kinde honest host , vpon me did bestow vnasked cost . the next day i held on my iourney still , sixe miles vnto a place call'd carling hill , where maister edmond branthwaite doth recide , who made me welcome , with my man and guide . our entertainement , and our fare was such , it might haue satisfied our betters much ; yet all too little was , his kinde heart thought , and fiue miles on my way himselfe me brought , at orton he , i , and my man did dine with maister corney , a good true diuine , and surely maister branthwait's well belou'd , his firme integrity is much approu'd : his good effects , doth make him still affected of god and good men , ( with regard ) respected . he sent his man with me , o're dale and downe , who lodg'd , and borded me at peereth towne , and such good cheere , and bedding there i had , that nothing , ( but my weary selfe ) was bad ; there a fresh man , ( i know not for whose sake ) with me a iourney would to carlile make ; but from that citie , about two miles wide good sir iohn dalston lodg'd me and my guide . of all the gentlemen in england bounds , his house is neerest to the scottish grounds , and fame proclaimes him , farre and neere , aloud , he 's free from being couetous , or proud : his sonne sir george , most affable , and kinde , his fathers image , both in forme and minde : on saturday to carlile both did ride , where ( by their loues and leaues ) i did abide , where of good entertainement i found store , from one that was the mayor the yeare before , his name is maister adam robinson , i the last english friendship with him won . he ( gratis ) found a guide to bring me thorough , from carlile to the citie edinborough : this was a helpe , that was a helpe alone , of all my helps inferiour vnto none . fight miles from carlile runnes a little riuer , which englands bounds , from scotlands grounds doth seuer . without horse , bridge , or boate i o're did get on foote , i went yet scarce my shooes did wet . i being come to this long look'd for land , did marke , remarke , note , renote , viewd and scand : and i saw nothing that could change my will , but that i thought my selfe in england still . the kingdomes are so neerely ioyn'd and fixt , there scarcely went a paire of sheares betwixt ; there i saw skie aboue , and earth below , and as in england , there the sunne did shew : the hills with sheepe repleate , with corne the dale , and many a cottage yeelded good scotch ale ; this county ( avandale ) in former times , was the curst climate of rebellious crimes : for cumberland and it , both kingdomes borders , were euer ordred , by their owne disorders , such sha king , shifting , cutting throates , and thieuing , each taking pleasure , in the others grieuing ; and many times he that had wealth to night , was by the morrow morning beggerd quite : to many yeares this pell-mell furie lasted , that all these borders were quite spoyl'd and wasted , confusion , hurly-burly raign'd and reueld , the churches with the lowly ground were leueld ; all memorable monuments defac'd , all places of defence o'rethrowne and rac'd . that who so then did in the borders dwell , liu'd little happier then those in hell . but since the all-disposing god of heauen , hath these two kingdomes to one monarch giuen , blest peace , and plenty on them both hath showr'd exile , and hanging hath the theeues deuowr'd , that now each subiect may securely sleepe , his sheepe , and neate , the blacke the white doth keepe , for now those crownes are both in one combinde those former borders , that each one confinde , appeares to me ( as i doe vnderstand ) to be almost the center of the land , this was a blessed heauen expounded riddle , to thrust great kingdomes skirts into the middle . long may the instrumentall cause suruiue from him and his , succession still deriue true heires vnto his vertues , and his throane , that these two kingdomes euer may be one . this county of all scotland is most poore , by reason of the outrages before , yet mighty store of corne i saw there growe , and as good grasse as euer man did mowe : and as that day i twenty miles did passe , i saw eleuen hundred neat at grasse , by which may be coniectur'd at the least , that there was sustenance for man and beast . and in the kingdome i haue truly scand , there 's many worser parts , are better mand , for in the time that theeuing was in vre , the gentles fled to places more secure . and left the poorer sort , t' abide the paine , whilest they could ne're finde time to turne againe . that shire of gentlemen is scarce and dainty , yet there 's reliefe in great aboundance plenty , twixt it and england , little oddes i see , they eate , and liue , and strong and able bee , so much in verse , and now i le change my stile , and seriously i 'le write in prose a while . to the purpose then ; my first nights lodging in scotland was at a place called mophot , which they say is thirty miles from carlile , but i suppose them to be longer then forty of such miles as are betwixt london and s. albanes , ( but indeed the scots doe allow almost as large measure of their miles , as they doe of their drinke , for an english gallon either of ale or wine , is but their quart , and one scottish mile now and then may well stand for a mile and a halfe or two english ) but howsoeuer short or long , i found that dayes iourney the weariest that euer i footed ; and at night being come to the towne , i found good ordinary countrey entertainment ; my fare , and my lodging was sweete and good , and might haue serued a far better man then my selfe , although my selfe haue had many times better : but this is to be noted , that though it rained not all the day , yet it was my fortune to be well wet twise , for i waded ouer a great riuer called eske in the morning , somewhat more then 4. miles distance from carlile in england , and at night within two miles of my lodging , i was faine to wade ouer the riuer of annan in scotland , from which riuer the county of annandale hath it's name . and whilst i waded on foote , my man was mounted on horse-backe , like the george without the dragon . but the next morning , i arose and left mophot behind me , and that day i trauailed twenty one miles to a sory village called blithe , but i was blithe my selfe to come to any place of harbour or succour , for since i was borne , i neuer was so weary , or so neere being dead with extreame trauell ; i was founderd and refounderd of all foure , and for my better comfort , i came so late , that i must lodge without doore all night , or else in a poore house where the good wife lay in child-bed , her husband being from home , her owne seruant mayd being her nurse . a creature naturally compacted and artificially adorned with incomparable homelines ; but as thinges were i must either take or leaue , and necessity made me enter , where we gat egges and ale by measure and by tale . at last to bed i went , my man lying on the floore by me , where in the night there were pidgeons did very bountifully mute in his face : the day being no sooner come , and i hauing but fifteene miles to ederborough , mounted vpon my ten toes , and began first to hobble , and after to amble , and so being warme , i fell to pace by degrees ; all the way passing through a most plentifull , and firtill countrey for corne and cattle : and about two of the clocke in the afternoone that wednesday , being the thirteenth of august , and the day of clare the virgin ( the signe being in virgo ) the moone foure dayes olde , the winde at , west , i came to take rest , at the wished , long expected , auncient famous citty of edenborough , which i entred like pierce penilesse , altogether monyles , but i thanke god not friendlesse ; for being there , for the time of my stay i might borrow , ( if any man would lend ) spend if i could get , begge if i had the impudence , and steale if i durst aduenture the price of a hanging , but my purpose was to house my horse , and to suffer him and my apparell to lye in durance , or lauender in stead of litter , till such time , as i could meete with some valiant friend that would desperately disburse . walking thus downe the street , ( my body being tyred with trauell , and my minde attyred with moody , muddy , moore-ditch melancholly ) my contemplation did deuoutly pray , that i might meete one or other to prey vpon , being willing to take any slender acquaintance of any man whatsoeuer , viewing , and circumuiewing euery mans face i met , as if i meant to draw his picture , but all my acquaintance was non est inuentus , ( pardon me reader , that latine is none of mine owne , i sweare by priscians pericranion , an oath which i haue ignorantly broken many times . ) at last i resolu'd , that the next gentleman that i met withall , should be acquaintance whether he would or no , and presently fixing mine eyes vpon a gentleman-like obiect , i looked on him as if i would suruay something through him , and make him my perspectiue : and he much musing at my gazing , and i much gazing at his musing , at last hee crost the way and made toward me , and then i made downe the streete from him , leauing him to encounter with my man who came after me leading my horse , whome hee thus accosted . my friend ( quoth hee ) doth yonder gentleman , ( meaning mee ) know mee that he lookes so wistly on me ; truely sr. said my man i thinke not , but my mr. is a stranger come from london , and would gladly meete with some acquaintance to direct him where he may haue lodging and horse-meate : presently the gentleman , ( being of a generous disposition ) ouer-tooke me with vnexpected and vndeserued courtesie , brought me to a lodging , and caused my horse to bee put into his owne stable , whilest we discoursing ouer a pinte of spanish . i related asmuch english to him as made him lend me ten shillings , ( his name was mr. iohn maxwell ) which money i am sure was the first that i handled after i came from out the walles of london : but hauing rested two houres and refreshed my selfe , the gentleman and i walked to see the citty , and the castle , which as my poore vnable and vnworthy pen can , i will truely discribe . the castle on a loftie rocke is so strongly grounded , bounded , and founded , that by force of man it can neuer bee confounded ; the foundation and walles are vnpenetrable , the rampiers impregnable , the bulwarkes inuincible , no way but one to it is or can be possible to be made passable . in a word , i haue seene many straights and fortresses , in germany , the netherlands , spaine , and england , but they must all giue place to this vnconquered castle both for strength and scituation . amongst the many memorable thinges which i was shewed there , i noted especially a great peece of ordinance of iron , it is not for batterie , but it will serue to defend a breach , or to tosse balles of wilde-fire against any that should assaile or assault the castle ; it lyes now dismounted . and it is so great within , that it was tolde mee that a childe was once gotten there , but i to make tryall crept into it , lying on my backe , and i am sure there was roome enough and spare for a greater then my selfe . so leauing the castle , as it is both defenciue against any opposition , and magnificke for lodging and receite , i descend lower to the citty , wherein i obserued the fairest and goodliest street that euer mine eyes beheld , for i did neuer see or heare of a streete of that length , ( which is halfe an english mile from the castle to a faire port which they call the neather-bow ) and from that port the streete which they call the kenny-hate is one quarter of a mile more : downe to the kings pallace called holy-rood-house , the buildings on each side of the way being all of squared stone , fiue , sixe , and seauen storyes high , and many by lanes and closes on each side of the way , wherein are gentlemens houses , much fairer then the buildings in the high streete , for in the high-street the marchants and tradesmen doe dwell , but the gentlemens mansions and goodliest houses are obscurely founded in the aforesaid lanes : the walles are eight or ten foote thicke , exceeding strong , not built for a day , a weeke , or a month , or a yeare ; but from antiquitie to posteritie , for many ages ; there i found entertainment beyond my expectation or merite , and there is fish , flesh , bread and fruite , in such variety , that i thinke i may offencelesse call it superfluitie , or sacietie . the worst was , that wine and ale was so scarce , and the people there such mizers of it , that euery night before i went to bed , if any man had asked mee a ciuill question , all the wit in my head could not haue made him a sober answer . i was at his maiesties pallace , a stately and princely seate , wherein i saw a sumptuous chappell most richly adorned , with all apurtenances belonging to so sacred a place , or so royall an owner . in the inner court , i saw the kings armes cunningly carued in stone , and fixed ouer a doore aloft on the wall , the red lyon being the crest , ouer which was written this inscription in latine , nobis haec inuicta miserunt , 105. proaui . i enquired what the english of it was ? it was told me as followeth , which i thought worthy to be recorded . 106. fore-fathers hath left this to vs vnconquered . this is a worthy and a memorable motto , and i thinke few kingdomes or none in the world can truly write the like , that notwithstanding so many inroades ▪ incursions , attempts , assaults , ciuill warres , and forraigne hostilities , bloodie battels , and mightie foughten fields , that maugre the strength and pollicie of enemies , that royall crowne and scepter hath from one hundred and seauen descents , keepe still vnconquered , and by the power of the king of kings ( through the grace of the prince of peace ) is now left peacefully to our peacefull king , whom long in blessed peace , the god of peace defend and gouerne . but once more , a word or two of edinborough , although i haue scarcely giuen it that due which belongs vnto it , for their lofty and stately buildings , and for their faire and spacious streete , yet my minde perswades me that they in former ages that first founded that citie , did not so well in that they built it in so discommodious a place ; for the sea , and all nauigable riuers , being the chiefe meanes for the enriching of townes and cities , by the reason of traffique with forraigne nations , with exportation , transportation , and receite of variety of marchantdizing ; so this citie had it beene built but one mile lower on the sea side , i doubt not but it had long before this beene comparable to many a one of our greatest townes and cities in europe , both for spaciousnesse of bounds , port , state , and riches . it is said that king iames the fifth ( of famous memorie ) did graciously offer to purchase for them , and to bestow vpon them freely , certaine lowe and pleasant grounds a mile from them on the sea shore , with these conditions , that they should pull downe their citie , and build it in that more commodious place , but the citizens refused it : and so now it is like ( for me ) to stand where it doth , for i doubt such another proffer of remoueall will not be presented to them , till two dayes after the faire . now haue with you for leeth , whereto i no sooner came , but i was well entertained by mr. barnard lindsay , one of the groomes of his maiesties bed-chamber , hee knew my estate was not guilty , because i brought no guilt with mee ( more then my sinnes , and they would not passe for current there ) hee therefore did replenish the vaustity of my emptie purse , and discharged a peece at mee with two bullets of gold , each being in value worth eleuen shillings white money : and i was credibly informed that within the compasse of one yeare , there was shipped away from that onely port of leeth , fourescore thousand boles of wheate , oates , and barley , into spaine , france , and other forraigne parts , and euery bole containes the measure of foure english bushels , so that from leeth onely hath beene transported three hundred and twenty thousand bushels of corne ; besides some hath beene shipped away from st. andrewes , from dundee , aberdeene , disert , kirkady , kinghorne , burnt-iland , dunbar , and other portable townes , which makes mee to wonder that a kingdome so populous as it is , should neuerthelesse sell so much bread corne beyond the seas , and yet to haue more then sufficient for themselues . so i hauing viewed the hauen and towne of leeth , tooke a passage boate to see the new wondrous well , to which many a one that is not well , comes farre and neere in hope to be made well : indeede i did heare that it had done much good , and that it hath a rare operation to expell or kill diuers maladies ; as to prouoke appetite , to helpe much for the auoyding of the grauell in the bladder , to cure sore eyes , and olde vlcers , with many other vertues which it hath , but i ( through the mercy of god hauing no neede of it , did make no great inquisition what it had done , but for nouelty i dranke of it , and i found the taste to be more pleasant then any other water , sweet almost as milke , yet as cleare as cristall , and i did obserue that though a man did drinke a quart , a pottell , or as much as his belly could containe , yet it neuer offended or lay heauie vpon the stomacke , no more then if one had dranke but a pint or a small quantity . i went two miles from it to a towne called burnt-iland , where i found many of my especiall good friends , as m. robert hay , one of the groomes of his maiesties bed-chamber , maister dauid drummond , one of his gentlemen pentioners ▪ maister iames acmooty , one of the groomes of the priuie chamber , captaine m●rray , sir henry witherington knight , captaine tyrie , and diuers others ▪ and there master hay , maister drummond , and the good olde captaine murray , did very bountifully furnish mee with gold for my expences , but i being at dinner with those aforesaid gentlemen , as we were discoursing , there befell a strange accident , which i thinke worth the relating . i know not vpon what occasion they began to talke of being at sea in former times , and i ( amongst the rest ) said i was at the taking of cales , whereto an english gentleman replied , that he was the next good voyage after at the ilands : i answered him that i was there also . he demanded in what ship i was ? i tolde him in the rainebowe of the queenes , why ( quoth hee ) doe you not know mee ? i was in the same ship , and my name is witherington . sir , said i , i doe remember the name well , but by reason that it is neere two and twenty yeeres since i saw you , i may well forget the knowledge of you : well , said hee , if you were in that ship , i pray you tell me some remarkable token that happened in the voyage : whereupon i tolde him two or three tokens which hee did know to be true . nay then said i , i will tell you another which ( perhaps ) you haue not forgotten ; as our ship and the rest of the fleete did ride at anchor at the i le of flores ( one of the isles of the azores ) there were some fourteene men and boyes of our ship , that for nouelty would goe a shore , and see what fruit the i land did beare , and what entertainement it would yeeld vs : so being landed , wee went vp and downe and could finde nothing but stones , heath and mosse , and wee expected oranges , limonds , figges , muske-millions , and potatoes : in the meane space the winde did blow so stiffe , and the sea was so extreame rough , that our ship-boate could not come to the land to fetch vs , for feare she should be beaten in pieces against the rockes ; this continued fiue dayes , so that wee were all almost famished for want of foode : but at last ( i squandring vp and downe ) by the prouidence of god i happened into a caue or poore habitation , where i found fifteene loaues of bread , each of the quantity of a penny loafe in england , i hauing a valiant stomacke of the age of almost 120. houres breeding , fell too , and eate two loaues and neuer said grace : and as i was about to make a horse-loafe of the third loafe , i did put 12. of them into my breeches , and my sleeues , and so went mumbling out of the caue , leaning my backe against a tree , when vpon the sodaine a gentleman came to me and saide , friend what are you eating , bread quoth i , for gods sake said hee giue me some , with that i put my hand into my breech , ( beeing my best pantrey ) and i gaue him a loafe , which hee receiued with many thankes , and saide that if euer hee could requite it hee would . i had no sooner tolde this tale but sr. henry witherington did acknowledge himselfe to bee the man that i had giuen the loafe vnto 22. yeares before , where i found the prouerbe true that men haue more priuiledge then mountaines in meeting . in what great measure , hee did requite so small a courtesie , i will relate in this following discourse in my returne through northumberland : so leauing my man at the towne of burnt iland , i tolde him , i would but goe to sterling , and see the castle there , and withall to see my honourable friends the earle of marr , and sir william murray knight , lord of abercarny , and that i would returne within two dayes at the most : but it fell out quite contrary ; for it was fiue and thirtie dayes before i could get backe againe out of these noble-mens company . the whole progresse of my trauell with them , and the cause of my stay , i cannot with gratefulnesse omit ; and thus it was . a worthy gentleman , named master iohn fenton , did bring mee on my way sixe miles , to dumfermling , where i was well entertained , and lodged at master iohn gibb his house , one of the groomes of his maiesties bed-chamber , and i thinke the oldest seruant the king hath : withall i was well entertained there by master crighton at his owne house , who went with mee , and shewed mee the queenes palace ; ( a delicate and a princely mansion ) withall i saw the ruines of an auncient and stately built abbey , with faire gardens , orchards , and medowes belonging to the palace : all which with faire and goodly reuenues , by the suppression of the abbey , were annexed to the crowne . there also i saw a very faire church , which though it be now very large and spacious , yet it hath in former times been much larger . but i taking my leaue of dumfermling , would needs goe and see the truely noble knight sir george bruce , at a towne called the cooras : there hee made mee right welcome , both with varietie of fare , and discourse ; and after all , hee commaunded three of his men to direct mee to see his most admirable cole-mines ; which ( if man can or could worke wonders ) is a wonder : for my selfe neither in any trauels that i haue been in , nor any history that i haue read , or any discourse that i haue heard , did neuer see , reade , or heare of any worke of man that might parallell or be equiualent with this vnfellowed and vnmatchable worke : and though all i can say of it , cannot describe it according to the worthinesse of his vigilant industry , that was both the occasion , inuentor , and maintainer of it : yet rather then the memory of so rare an enterprise , and so accomplisht a profit to the common-wealth shall bee raked and smothered in the dust of obliuion , i will giue a little touch at the description of it , although i amongst writers , am like he that worst may , holds the candle . the mine hath two wayes into it , the one by sea and the other by land ; but a man may go into it by land , and returne the same way if he please , and so he may enter into it by sea , and by sea hee may come foorth of it : but i for varieties sake went in by sea , and out by land. now men may obiect , how can a man goe into a mine , the entrance of it being in the sea , but that the sea wil follow him and so drown the mine . to which obiection thus i answer , that at a low water , the sea being ebd away , and a great part of the sand bare ; vpon this same sand ( beeing mixed with rockes and cragges ) did the master of this great worke build a round circular frame of stone , very thicke , strong , and ioyned together with glutinous or bitunous matter , so high withall ▪ that the sea at the highest flood , or the greatest rage of storme or tempest , can neither dissolue the stones so well compacted in the building , or yet ouerflowe the height of it . within this round frame , ( at all aduentures ) hee did set workemen to digge vvith mattockes , pickaxes , and other instruments fit for such purposes . they did digge more then fourtie foot downeright , into and through a rocke . at last they found that which they expected , which was sea-cole , they following the veine of the mine , did digge forward still : so that in the space of eight and twentie , or nine and twenty yeares they haue digged more then an english mile under the sea , that when men are at worke belowe , an hundred of the greatest shippes in britaine may saile ouer their ●●●ads . besides , the mine is most artificially cut like an arch or a vault all that great length , vvith many nookes and by-wayes in it : and it is so made , that a man may walke vpright in the most places , both in and out . many poore people are there set on worke , which otherwise through the want of imployment would perish . but when i had seene the mine , and was come foorth of it againe ; after my thankes giuen to sir george bruce , i tolde him , that if the plotters of the powder treason in england had seene this mine , that they ( perhaps ) would haue attempted to haue left the parliament house , and haue vndermined the thames , and so to haue blowne vp the barges and wherries , wherein the king , and all the estates of our kingdome were . moreouer , i said that i could affoord to turne tapster at london : so that i had but one quarter of a mile of his mine to make mee a celler , to keepe beere and bottle-ale in . but leauing these iestes in prose , i will relate a few verses that i made merrily of this mine . i that haue wasted months , weekes , dayes and howers in viewing kingdomes , countreys , townes and towers , without all measure , measuring many paces , and with my pen describing sundrie places , with few additions of my owne deuizing , ( because i haue a smacke of coriatizing . ) our mandeuill , primaleon , don quixot , great amadis , or huon traueld not as i haue done , or beene where i haue beene , or heard and seene , what i haue heard and seene ; nor britaines odcomb ( zanye braue vlissis ) in all his ambling saw the like as this is . i was in ( would i could describe it well ) a darke , light , pleasant , profitable hell , and as by water i was wafted in , i thought that i in charons boate had bin : but being at the entrance landed thus , three men there ( in the stead of cerberus ) conuaid me in , in each ones hand a light to guide vs in that vault of endlesse night . there young and old with glim'ring candles burning , digge , delue , and labour , turning and returning , some in a hole with baskets and with baggs , resembling furies , and infernall haggs : there one like tantall feeding , and there one , lake sisiphus he rowles the restlesse stone . yet all i saw was pleasure mixt with profit , which prou'd it to be no tormenting tophet ; for in this honest , worthy , harmelesse hell , there ne're did any damned diuell dwell : and th' owner of it gaines by 't more true glory , then rome doth by fantastick purgatory . a long mile thus i past , downe , downe , steepe steepe , in deepenesse farre more deepe , then neptunes deepe , whilst o're my head ( in fourefould stories hye ) was earth , and sea , and ayre , and sun , and skie : that had i dyed in that cimerian roome . foure elements had couered ore my tombe : thus farther then the bottome did i goe , ( and many englishmen haue not done so ; ) where mounting porposes , and mountaine whales , and regiments of fish with finnes and scales , twixt me and heauen did freely glide and slide , and where great ships may at an anchor ride : thus in by sea and out by land i past , and tooke my leaue of good sir george at last . the sea at certaine places doth leake , or soake into the mine , which by the industry of sir george bruce , is all conueyd to one well neere the land ; where hee hath a deuise like a horsemill that with three horses and a great chaine of iron , going downeward many fadomes , with thirty sixe buckets fastened to the chaine , of the which eighteene goes downe still to be filled , and eighteene ascends vp to be emptied , which doe empty themselues ( without any mans labour ) into a trough that conueyes the water into the sea againe ; by which meanes he saues his myne which otherwise would be destroyed with the sea , beside he doth make euery weeke ninety or an hundred tuns of salt , which doth serue part of scotland , some hee sends into england , and very much into germany : all which shewes the painefull industry with gods blessings to such worthy endeauours : i must with many thankes remember his courtesie to mee , and lastly , how he sent his man to guide me ten miles on the way to sterling , where by the way i saw the outside of a faire and stately house called allaway , belonging to the earle of marr , which by reason that his honor was not there , i past by and went to sterling , where i was entertained and lodged at one mr. iohn archibalds , where all my want was that i wanted roome to containe halfe the good cheere that i might haue had there ; hee had me into the castle , which in few words i doe compare to windsor for scituation , much more then windsor in strength , and somewhat lesse in greatnes ; yet i dare affirme , that his majesty hath not such another hall to any house that he hath neither in england nor scotland , except westminster hall which is now no dwelling hall for a prince being long since metamorphosed into a house for the law and the profits . this goodly hall was built by king iames the fourth , that married king henry the eights sister and after was slaine at flodden field ; but it surpasses all the halls for dwelling houses that euer i saw , for length , breadth , height and strength of building , the castle is built vpon a rocke very lofty , and much beyond edenborough castle in state and magnificence , and not much inferiour to it in strength , the roomes of it are lofty , with carued workes on the seelings , the doores of each roome beeing so high that a man may ride vpright on horsebacke into any chamber or lodging . there is also a goodly faire chappell , with cellers , stables , and all other necessary offices , all very stately and besitting the maiestie of a king. from sterling i rode to saint iohnston , a fine towne it is , but it is much decayed , by reason of the want of his maiesties yearely comming to lodge there . there i lodged one night at an inne , the goodman of the house his name being patrick pettcarne , where my entertainement was with good cheere , good drinke , good lodging , all too good to a bad weary guest . mine host tolde mee that the earle of marr and sir william murray of abercarny were gone to the great hunting to the brea of marre ; but if i made hast i might perhaps finde them at a towne called breekin , or breechin , two and thirty miles from saint iohns stone , wherevpon i tooke a guide to breekin the next day , but before i came , my lord was gone from thence foure dayes . then i tooke another guide , which brought mee such strange wayes ouer mountaines and rockes , that i thinke my horse neuer went the like ; and i am sure i neuer saw any wayes that might fellow them . i did goe through a country called glaneske , where passing by the side of a hill , so steepe as is the ridge of a house , where the way was rocky , and not aboue a yard broad in some places , so fearefull and horrid it was to looke downe into the bottome , for if either horse or man had slipt , he had fallen ( without recouery ) a good mile downe-right ; but i thanke god , at night i came to a lodging in the lard of eggells land , where i lay at an irish house , the folkes not being able to speake scarce any english , but i sup'd and went to bed , where i had not laine long but i was enforced to rise , i was so stung with irish musketaes , a creature that hath sixe legs , & liues like a monster altogether vpon mans flesh , they doe inhabite and breed in most sluttish houses , and this house was none of the cleanliest , the beast is much like a louse in england , both in shape and nature ; in a word they were to me the a. and the z. the prologue and the epilogue , the first and the last that i had in all my trauells from edenborough ; and had not this highland irish house helped mee at a pinch , i should haue sworne that all scotland had not beene so kind as to haue bestowed a louse vpon me : but with a shift that i had , i shifted off my caniballs , and was neuer more troubled with them . the next day i trauelled ouer an exceeding high mountaine , called mount skeene , where i found the valley very warme before i went vp it ; but when i came to the top of it , my teeth beganne to daunce in my head with colde , like virginall iackes ; and withall , a most familiar mist embraced mee round , that i could not see thrice my length any way : withall , it yeelded so friendly a deaw , that it did moysten through all my clothes : where the olde prouerbe of a scottish miste was verified , in wetting mee to the skinne . vp and downe , i thinke this hill is sixe miles , the way so vneuen , stonie , and full of bogges , quagmires , and long heath , that a dogge with three legs will outrunne a horse with foure : for doe what we could , wee were foure houres before we could passe it . thus with extreame trauell , ascending and descending , mounting & alighting , i came at night to the place where i would bee , in the brea of marr , which is a large countie , all composed of such mountaines , that shooters hill , gads hill , highgate hill , hampsted hill , birdlip hill , or maluerne hilles , are but mole ▪ hilles in comparison , or like a liuer , or a gizard vnder a capons wing , in respect of the altitude of their toppes , or perpendicularitie of their bottomes . there i saw mount benawne , with a furr'd mist vpon his snowie head in stead of a nightcap : ( for you must vnderstand , that the oldest man aliue neuer saw but the snow was on the top of diuers of those hilles , both in summer , as well as in winter . ) there did i finde the truely noble and right honourable lords , iohn erskin earle of marr , iames stuart earle of murray , george gordon earle of engye , sonne and heire to the marquesse of huntley , iames erskin , earle of bughan , and iohn lord erskin , sonne and heire to the earle of marre , and their countesses , with my much honoured , and my best assured and approoued friend , sir william murray knight , of abercarnye , and hundred of others knights , esquires , and their followers ; all and euery man in generall in one habit , as if licurgus had beene there and made lawes of equalitie : for once in the yeare , which is the whole moneth of august , and sometimes part of september ; many of the nobilitie and gentry of the kingdome ( for their pleasure ) doe come into these high-land countreyes to hunt , where they doe all conforme themselues to the habite of the high-land men , who for the most part speake nothing but irish ; and in former time were those people which were called the redshankes : their habite is shooes with but one sole apiece ; stockings ( which they call short hose ) made of a warme stuffe of diuers colours , which they call tartane : as for breeches , many of them , nor their forefathers neuer wore any , but a ierkin of the same stuffe that their hose is of , their garters beeing bands or wreathes of hay or straw , with a plead about their shoulders , which is a mantle of diuers colours , much finer and lighter stuffe then their hose , with blew flat caps on their heads , a handkerchiefe knit with two knots about their neckes : and thus are they attyred . now their weapons are long bowes , and forked arrowes , swords and targets , harquebusses , muskets , durks and loquhabor axes . with these armes i found many of them armed for the hunting . as for their attire , any man of what degree soeuer that comes amongst them , must not disdaine to weare it : for if they doe , then they will disdaine to hunt , or willingly to bring in their dogges : but if men bee kinde vnto them , and bee in their habit ; then are they conquered with kindnesse , and the sport will be plentifull . this was the reason that i found so many noblemen and gentlemen in those shapes . but to proceed to the hunting . my good lord of marr hauing put me into that shape , i rode with him from his house , where i saw the ruines of an olde castle , called the castle of kindroghit . it was built by king malcolm canmore ( for a hunting horse ) who raigned in scotland when edward the confessor , harold , and norman william raigned in england : i speake of it , because it was the last house that i saw in those parts ; for i was the space of twelue dayes after , before i saw either house , corne fielde , or habitation for any creature , but deere , wilde horses , wolues , and such like creatures , which made mee doubt that i should neuer haue seene a house againe . thus the first day wee traueld 8. miles , where there were small cottages built on purpose to lodge in , which they call lonquhards , i thanke my good lord erskin , he commanded that i should alwayes bee lodged in his lodging , the kitchin being alwayes on the side of a banke , many kettles and pots boyling , and many spits turning and winding , with great variety of cheere : as venison bak't , sodden , rost , and stu'de beefe , mutton , goates , kid , hares , fresh salmon , pidgeons , hens , capons , chickins , partridge , moorecoots , heathcocks , caperkellies and termagants ; good ale , sacke , white and claret , tent ( or allegant ) with most potent aqua vitae . all these and more then these wee had continually , in superfluous aboundance , caught by faulconers , foulers , and fishers , and brought by my lords tenants and purueyers to victuall our campe , which consisted of fourteene or fifteene hundred men and horses ; the manner of the hunting is this . fiue or sixe hundred men doe rise early in the morning , and they doe disperse themselues diuers wayes , and 7.8 . or 10. miles compasse they doe bring or chase in the deere in many heards , ( two , three , or foure hundred in a heard ) to such or such a place as the noblemen shall appoint them ; then when day is come , the lords and gentlemen of their companies , doe ride or goe to the said places , sometimes wading vp to the middles through bournes and riuers : and then they being come to the place , doe lye downe on the ground , till those foresaid scouts which are called the tinckhell do bring downe the deere : but as the prouerbe sayes of a bad cooke , so these tinkhell men doe lick their owne fingers ; for besides their bowes and arrowes which they carry with them , wee can heare now and then a harguebuse or a musquet goe off , which they doe seldome discharge in vaine : then after wee had stayed three houres or thereabouts , wee might perceiue the deere appeare on the hills round about vs , ( their heads making a shew like a wood ) which being followed close by the tinkhell , are chased downe into the valley where wee lay ; then all the valley on each side being way-laid with a hundred couple of strong irish grey-hounds , they are let loose as occasion serues vpon the heard of deere , that with dogges , gunnes , arrowes , durks and daggers , in the space of two houres fourescore fat deere were slaine , which after are disposed of some one way and some another , twenty or thirty miles , and more then enough left for vs to make merry withall at our rendeuouze . i liked the sport so well , that i made these two sonnets following . why should i wast inuention to endite , ouidian fictions , or olympian games ? my misty muse enlightened with more light , to a more noble pitch her ayme she frames . i must relate to my great maister iames , the calydonian anuall peacefull warre ; how noble mindes doe eternize their fames by martiall meeting in the brea of marr : how thousand gallant spirits come neere and farre , with swords and targets , arrowes , bowes and gunnes , that all the troope to men of iudgement , are the god of warres great neuer conquered sonnes . the sport is manly , yet none bleed but beasts , and last , the victors on the vanquisht feasts . if sport like this can on the mountaines bee , where phoebus flames can neuer melt the snow : then let who lift delight in vales below , skie-kissing mountaine pleasures are for me : what brauer obiect can mans eyesight see , then noble , worshipfull , and worthy wights , as if they were prepard for sundry fights , yet all in sweet society agree : through heather , mosse , 'mongst frogs , and bogs , and fogs , mongst craggy cliffes , and thunder battered hills , hares , hindes , buckes , rees are chas'd by man and dogs , where two howres hunting fourescore fat deere killes . low lands , your sports are low as is your seate , the high-land games and minds , are high and great . beeing come to our lodgings , there was such baking , boyling , rosting , and stewing , as if cooke ruffian had beene there to haue scalded the deuill in his feathers : and after supper a fire of firre wood as high as an indifferent may-pole : for i assure you , that the earle of marre will giue any man that is his friend , for thankes , as many firre trees ( that are as good as any shippes mastes in england ) as are worth ( if they were in any place neere the thames , or any other portable riuer ) the best earledome in england or scotland either : for i dare affirme hee hath as many growing there , as would serue for mastes ( from this time to the end of the world ) for all the shippes , carackes , hoyes , galleyes , boates , drumlers , barkes , and water-craftes , that are now , or can bee in the world these fourtie yeares . this sounds like a lie to an vnbeleeuer ; but i and many thousands doe knowe that i speake within the compasse of truth : for indeede ( the more is the pitie ) they doe growe so farre from any passage of water , and withall in such rockie mountaines , that no way to conuey them is possible to bee passable either with boate , horse , or cart. thus hauing spent certaine dayes in hunting in the brea of marr , wee went to the next countie called bagenoch , belonging to the earle of engye , where hauing such sport and entertainement as wee formerly had ; after foure or fiue dayes pastime , wee tooke leaue of hunting for that yeare ; and tooke our iourney toward a strong house of the earles , called ruthen in bagenoch , where my lord of engye and his noble countesse ( being daughter to the earle of argile ) did giue vs most noble welcome three dayes . from thence wee went to a place called ballo castle , a faire and stately house ; a worthy gentleman beeing the owner of it , called the lard of graunt ; his wife beeing a gentlewoman honourably descended , being sister to the right honourable earle of atholl , and to sir patricke murray knight ; shee beeing both inwardly and outwardly plentifully adorned with the guifts of grace and nature : so that our cheere was more then sufficient ; and yet much lesse then they could affoord vs. there staied there foure dayes , foure earles , one lord , diuers knights and gentlemen , and their seruants , footemen and horses ; and euery meale foure long tables furnished with all varieties : our first and second course beeing threescore dishes at one boord ; and after that alwayes a banquet : and there if i had not forsworne wine till i came to edinbrough , i thinke i had there dranke my last . the fifth day with much adoe wee gate from thence to tarnaway , a goodly house of the earle of murrayes , ●●here that right honourable lord and his ladie did welcome vs foure dayes more . there was good cheere in all varietie , with somewhat more then plentie for aduantage : for indeed the countie of murray is the most pleasantess , and plentifullest countrey in all scotland ; being plaine land , that a coach may bee driuen more then foure and thirtie myles one way in it , all alongst by the sea-coast . from thence i went to elgen in murray , an auncient citie , where there stood a faire and beautifull church with three steeples , the walles of it and the steeples all yet standing ; but the roofe , windowes , and many marble monuments and toombes of honourable and worthie personages all broken and defaced : this was done in the time when ruine bare rule , and knox knock'd downe churches . from elgen we went to the b. of murray his house which is called spinye , or spinaye . a reuerend gentleman hee is , of the noble name of dowglasse , where wee were very well welcomed , as befitted the honour of himselfe and his guests . from thence wee departed to the lord marquesse of huntleyes , to a sumptuous house of his , named the bogg of geethe , where our entertainement was like himselfe , free , bountifull and honourable . there ( after two dayes stay ) with much entreatie and earnest suite , i gate leaue of the lords to depart towards edinbrough : the noble marquesse , the earles of marr , murray , engie , bughan , and the lord erskin ; all these , i thanke them , gaue me gold to defray my charges in my iourney . so after fiue and thirtie dayes hunting and trauell , i returning , past by another stately mansion of the lord marquesses , called stroboggy , and so ouer carny mount to breekin , where a wench that was borne deafe and dumbe came into my chamber at mid-night ( i beeing asleepe ) and shee opening the bed , would faine haue lodged with mee : but had i beene a sardanapalus , or a heliogobalus , i thinke that either the great trauell ouer the mountaines had tamed me ; or if not , her beautie could neuer haue mooued me . the best parts of her were , that her breath was as sweet as sugar-carrion , being very well shouldered beneath the waste ; and as my hostesse tolde mee the next morning , that shee had changed her maiden-head for the price of a bastard not long before . but howsoeuer , shee made such a hideous noyse , that i started out of my sleepe , and thought that the deuill had beene there : but i no sooner knewe who it was , but i arose , and thrust my dumbe beast out of my chamber ; and for want of a locke or a latch , i staked vp my doore with a great chaire . thus hauing escaped one of the seuen deadly sinnes at breekin , i departed from thence to a towne called forfard ; and from thence to dundee , and so to kinghorne , burnt iland , and so to edinbrough , where i stayed eight dayes , to recouer my selfe of falles and bruises which i receiued in my trauell in the high-land mountainous hunting . great welcome i had shewed mee all my stay at edinbrough , by many worthy gentlemen , namely , olde master george todrigg , master henry leuingston , master iames henderson , master iohn maxwell , and a number of others , who suffered me to want no wine or good cheere , as may be imagined . now the day before i came from edinbrough , i went to leeth , where i found my long approoued and assured good friend master beniamin iohnson , at one master iohn stuarts house : i thanke him for his great kindnesse towards mee : for at my taking leaue of him , hee gaue mee a piece of golde of two and twentie shillings to drinke his health in england . and withall , willed mee to remember his kinde commendations to all his friendes : so with a friendly farewell , i left him , as well , as i hope neuer to see him in a worse estate : for hee is amongst noble-men and gentlemen that knowes his true worth , and their owne honours , where with much respectiue loue hee is worthily entertained . so leauing leeth , i return'd to edinbrough , and within the port or gate , called the netherbowe , i discharged my pockets of all the money i had : and as i came pennilesse within the walles of that citie at my first comming thither ; so now at my departing from thence , i came monesse out of it againe ; hauing in my company to conuey mee out , certaine gentlemen , amongst the which was master iames acherson , laird of gasford , a gentleman that brought mee to his house , where with great entertainement hee and his good wife did welcome me . on the morrowe he sent one of his men to bring mee to a place , called adam , to master iohn acmootye his house , one of the groomes of his maiesties bed-chamber ; where with him , and his two brethren , master alexander , and master iames acmootye , i found both cheere and welcome not inferiour to any that i had had in any former place . amongst our viands that wee had there , i must not forget the sole and goose , a most delicate fowle , which breedes in great aboundance in a little rocke called the basse , which stands two miles into the sea. it is very good flesh , but it is eaten in the forme as wee eate oysters , standing at a side-boord , a little before dinner , vnsanctified without grace ; and after it is eaten , it must be well liquored with two or three good rowses of sherrie or canarie sacke . the lord or owner of the basse doth profite at the least two hundred pound yearely by those geese ; the basse it selfe being of a great height , and neere three quarters of a mile in campasse , all fully replenished with wildfowle , hauing but one small entrance into it , with a house , a garden , and a chappell in it ; and on the toppe of it a well of pure fresh water . from adam mr. iohn and mr. iames acmootye went to the towne of dunbarr with mee , where tenne scottish pintes of wine were consumed and brought to nothing for a farewell : there at master iames baylies house i tooke leaue , and master iames acmootye comming for england , said , that if i would ride with him , that neither i nor my horse should want betwixt that place and london . now i hauing no money or meanes for trauell , beganne at once to examine my manners , and my want : at last my want perswaded my manners to accept of this worthy gentlemans vndeserued courtesie . so that night hee brought mee to a place called cober spath , where wee lodged at an inne , the like of which i dare say , is not in any of his maiesties dominions . and for to shewe my thankfulnesse to master william arnet and his wife , the owners thereof , i must a little explaine their bonntifull entertainement of guests , which is this : suppose tenne , fifteene , or twentie men and horses come to lodge at their house , the men shall haue flesh , tame and wild-fowle , fish , with all varietie of good cheere , good lodging , and welcome ; and the horses shall want neither hay or prouender : and in the morning at their departure the reckoning is iust nothing . this is this worthy gentlemans vse , his chiefe delight beeing onely to giue strangers entertainement gratis : and i am sure , that in scotland beyond edinbrough ▪ i haue beene at houses like castles for building ; the master of the house his beauer being his blew bonnet , one that will weare no other shirts , but of the flaxe that growes in his owne ground ; and of his wiues , daughters , or seruants spinning ; that hath his stockings , hose , and ierkin of the wooll of his owne sheepes backes ; that neuer ( by his pride of apparell ) caused mercer , draper , silke-man , embroyderer , or haberdasher to breake and turne bankerupt : and yet this plaine home-spunne fellow keepes and maintaines thirtie , fourtie , fiftie seruants , or perhaps more , euery day releeuing three or fourescore poore people at his gate ; and besides all this , can giue noble entertainement for foure or fiue dayes together to fiue or sixe earles and lords , besides knights , gentlemen & their followers , if they be three or foure hundred men and horse of them , where they shall not onely feed but feast , and not feast but banquet , this is a man that desires to know nothing so much as his duty to god and his king whose greatest cares are to practise the works of piety , charity , and hospitality : hee neuer studies the consuming art of fashionlesse fashions , hee neuer tries his strength to beare foure or fiue hundred acres on his backe at once , his legges are alwayes at liberty , not being fettered with golden garters , and manacled with artificiall roses , whose weight ( sometime ) is the last relliques of some decayed lordship : many of these worthy house-keepers there are in scotland , amongst some of them i was entertained ; from whence i did truely gather these aforesaid obseruations . so leauing coberspath we rode to barwicke , where the worthy old soldier and ancient knight , sir william bowyer , made me welcome ; but contrary to his will , we lodged at an inne , where mr. iames acmooty paid all charges : but at barwicke there was a grieuous chance hapned , which i think not fit the relation to be omitted . in the riuer of tweed , which runnes by barwicke are taken by fishermen that dwell there , infinite numbers of fresh salmons , so that many housholds and families are relieued by the profit of that fishing ; but ( how long since i know not ) there was an order that no man or boy whatsoeuer should fish vpon a sunday : this order continued long amongst them , till some eight or nine weekes before michaelmas last , on a sunday , the salmons plaid in such great aboundance in the riuer , that some of the fishermen ( contrary to gods law and their owne order ) tooke boates and nettes and fished , and caught neere three hundred salmons ; but from that time vntill michaelmas day that i was there which was nine weekes , and heard the report of it , and saw the poore peoples miserable lamentations , they had not seene one salmon in the riuer ; and some of them were in despaire that they should neuer see any more there ; affirming it to be god , iudgement vpon them for the prophanation of the saboth . the thirtieth of september wee rode from barwicke to belford , from belford to anwick the next day from anwick to newcastle , where i found the noble knight , sir henry witherington ; who , because i would haue no gold nor siluer , gaue mee a bay mare , in requitall of a loafe of bread that i had giuen him two and twenty yeares before , at the lland of flores , of the which i haue spoken before . i ouertooke at newcastle a great many of my worthy friends , which were all comming for london , namely , maister robert hay , and maister dauid drummond , where i was well welcom'd at maister nicholas tempests house . from newcastle i rode with those gentlemen to durham , to darington , to northallerton , and to topeliffe in yorkshire , where i tooke my leaue of them , and would needs try my pennilesse fortunes by my selfe , and see the citty of yorke , where i was lodged at my right worshipfull good friends , maister doctor hudson one of his maiesties chaplaines , who went with me , and shewed me the goodly minster church there , and the most admirable , rare-wrought , vnfellowed chapter house . from yorke i rode to doncaster , where my horses were well fed at the beare , but my selfe found out the honourable knight , sir robert anstruther at his father in lawes , the truely noble sir robert swifts house , hee being then high sheriffe of yorkeshire , where with their good ladies , and the right honourable the lord sanquhar , i was stayed two nights and one day , sir robert anstruther ( i thanke him ) not onely paying for my two horses meat , but at my departure , hee gaue mee a letter to newarke vpon trent , twenty eight miles in my way , where mr. george atkinson mine host made me as welcome as if i had beene a french lord , and what was to bee paid , as i cal'd for nothing , i paid as much ; and left the reckoning with many thankes to sir robert anstruther . so leauing newarke , with another gentleman that ouertooke mee , wee came at night to stamford , to the signe of the virginitie ( or the maydenhead ) where i deliuered a letter from the lord sanquhar ; which caused master bates and his wife , being the master and mistresse of the house , to make mee and the gentleman that was with mee great cheare for nothing . from stamford the next day wee rode to huntington , where wee lodged at the post-masters house , at the signe of the crowne ; his name is riggs . hee was informed who i was , and wherefore i vndertooke this my pennilesse progresse : wherefore hee came vp into our chamber , and sup'd with vs , and very bountifully called for three quarts of wine and sugar , and foure lugges of beere . hee did drinke and beginne healths like a horse-leech , and swallowed downe his cuppes without feeling , as if he had had the dropsie , or nine pound of spunge in his maw . in a word , as hee is a poste , hee dranke poste , striuing and calling by all meanes to make the reckoning great , or to make vs men of great reckoning . but in his payment hee was tyred like a iade , leauing the gentleman that was with mee to discharge the terrible shott , or else one of my horses must haue laine in pawne for his superfluous calling , and vnmannerly intrusion . but leauing him , i left huntington , and rode on the sunday to packeridge , where master holland at the faulkon , ( mine olde acquaintance ) and my louing and auncient hoste gaue mee , my friend , my man , and our horses excellent good cheere , and welcome , and i paid him with , not a penie of money . the next day i came to london , and obscurely comming within moore-gate , i went to a house and borrowed money : and so i stole backe againe to islington , to the signe of the mayden-head , staying till wednesday that my friendes came to meete mee , who knewe no other , but that wednesday was my first comming : where with all loue i was entertained with much good cheere : and after supper wee had a play of the life and death of guy of warwicke , plaied by the right honourable the earle of darbie his men . and so on the thursday morning beeing the fifteenth of october , i came home to my house in london . the epilogve to all my aduenturers and others . thus did i neither spend , or begge , or aske , by any course , direct , or indirectly : but in each tittle i perform'd my taske , according to my bill most circumspectly . i vow to god i haue done scotland wrong , ( and ( iustly ) gainst me it may bring an action ) i haue not giuen 't that right which doth belong , for which i am halfe guilty of detraction : yet had i wrote all things that there i saw , misiudging censures would suppose i flatter , and so my name i should in question draw , where asses bray , and pratling pies doe chatter : yet ( arm'd with truth ) i publish with my pen , that there th' almighty doth his blessings heape , in such aboundant food for beasts and men ; that i ne're saw more plenty or more cheape : thus what mine eyes did see , i doe beleeue ; and what i doe beleeue i know is true : and what is true vnto your hands i giue , that what i giue may be beleeu'd of you . but as for him that sayes i lye or dote , i doe returne , and turne the lye in 's throate . thus gentlemen , amongst you take my ware , you share my thankes , and i your moneyes share . yours in all obseruance and gratefulnesse , euer to be commanded . iohn taylor . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a13485-e560 my thankes to sir iohn & s. george dalstone , with sir hen : gurwin ouer eskl waded . the afore named knightes had giuen money to my guile of which hee left some part at euery ale-hoose . the representation, propositions, and protestation of divers ministers, elders and professors, for themselves, and in name of many others, well-affected ministers, elders, and people in scotland presented by the lord wareston, mr. andrew cant, mr. john livingston, mr. samuel rutherford and diverse others, to the ministers and elders met at edinburgh, july 21, 1652. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a57049 of text r10184 in the english short title catalog (wing r1109). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 41 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 11 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a57049 wing r1109 estc r10184 12827042 ocm 12827042 94267 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a57049) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 94267) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 776:33) the representation, propositions, and protestation of divers ministers, elders and professors, for themselves, and in name of many others, well-affected ministers, elders, and people in scotland presented by the lord wareston, mr. andrew cant, mr. john livingston, mr. samuel rutherford and diverse others, to the ministers and elders met at edinburgh, july 21, 1652. warriston, archibald johnston, lord, 1611-1663. 20 p. by evan tyler, printed at leith [scotland] : 1652. reproduction of original in huntington library. eng church of scotland -government. scotland -history -1649-1660. a57049 r10184 (wing r1109). civilwar no the representation, propositions, and protestation of divers ministers, elders and professors, for themselves, and in name of many others we church of scotland. general assembly 1652 6977 9 0 0 0 0 0 13 c the rate of 13 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2000-00 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2001-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2001-11 tcp staff (michigan) sampled and proofread 2001-11 tcp staff (michigan) text and markup reviewed and edited 2001-12 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the representation , propositions , and protestation of divers ministers , elders and professors , for themselves , and in name of many others well-affected ministers , elders , and people in scotland . presented by the lord wareston , mr. andrew cant , mr. john livingston , mr. samuel rutherford , and diverse others ; to the ministers and elders met at edinburgh july 21. 1652. printed at leith by evan tyler . 1652. unto the reverend the ministers and elders met at edinburgh july 21. 1652. it is represented by the ministers , elders , and professors under subscribing for them selves , and in the name of many others well-affected ministers , elders and people . it is matter of unspeakable grief and sorrow , to consider how great indignation the lord hath let forth against us , heaping wrath upon wrath , and making one judgment to follow another ; as the waves of the sea , and for the most part , the fruits thereof through the land , have bin no other then further departing from his wayes , and dividing one from another in judgment and affection . our breach is wide as the sea , and who can heal it ? spirituall judgments especially are multiplied upon us , temptations abound , and divine influences are restrained he hath poured upon us the fury of his anger , and the strength of battell , and it hath set us on fire round about , yet we knew it not , and it burneth us , yet we lay it not to heart . there is no returning to the lord , his hand is stretched out still ; and is there not great cause to fear , lest the glory of the lord should depart from amongst us ? it were good for us , if we could ( with jerusalem ) remember all our desireable things which we had in the dayes of old , and compare them with the days of our misery and affiction . if we look back to that which we have already attained of the work of reformation ( notwithstanding our short coming in the power and practice of godlinesse ) what purity was there of worship ? what soundnesse of doctrine ? unity of faithfull pastors ? order and authoritie of assemblies ? what endeavours for promoving the power of godlinesse ? for purging of the ministery , judicatories and armies ? and for employing such in places of power and trust , as were of constant integritie and good affection to the cause , and of blamelesse conversation . and again , if we consider how in place of these , within these two years , have succeeded for unity , division , for order , confusion , for purity of worship , outward contempt ; for the power of godlinesse , atheisme and profanenesse ; for purging of the ministery , judicatories and armies , sinfull mixtures ; for zeal , lukewarmnesse and tolleration . it is too palpable , that we are far gone on in the way of declining , having lost much of that which we had attained , and that which remains being ready to die . if we look before us , it seems now there is a wide door open for conjunction with all parties , in case of straits and necessities . how subtile are the devices of sathan , to make use of the same bad principle , for contrary ends , and may we not make use of what was said in former times , to the declining children of this church ? how will posterity blame us that we have not resisted the beginnings of evils ? shall not their hearts mourn , when they shall behold so fair a fabrick , so dearly conquest , so firmly grounded , to be so pittifully ruined be their fathers ? if we look inward to our own hearts , whether we have had most of the lords spirit with us in the old ways , or the late ; and whether our spirits were then more with the lord , or now ? it is easie to judge : if we look about us on every hand , what hardening is there of adversaries of all sorts ? what offence given to the weak , who see changes of parties , and fear change of principles and interests , when they perceive conjunction with those against whom the covenant was made , and deserting of these for whom it was made ; and see mens interests preferred to the lords ; sinfull mixtures make way for sinfull separations , and the preferring of mans interest to gods , makes our adversaries to be exalted over us . thus he writes our sin upon our judgment ; and because we trusted his interests to his adversaries , therefore he gives up our interests to the power of our adversaries ; and judgment hath entered by the door , which policy had locked fastest . it was the complaint of the non-conformists of old , that conformitie was preferred to the duties of the first and second table ; for if a minister were conform , grosse faults were passed over in silence ; and if he were not conform , though an able , painfull , and gracious pastor , and blamelesse in his conversation yet he was the object of persecution . this was held by the non-conformists , a sure sign of defection in the church : we wish there were nothing like this amongst us , and that insufficient and scandalous ministers , made not a sanctuary of the publick resolutions . what acts are made against expectants , students , and profedors , which are not of this judgment , we desire may be remembred ; and we have it to regrate , that too many make it their practice upon this ground , to debar such as would be usefull in the lords vineyard . how great influence this hath also had , and may farther have in all elections , we need not mention . how much precious time have the publick resolutions caused to be spent in debates , and thereby many diversions from most necessary duties , &c. is matter of great stumbling , both to the weak , and to strangers which are amongst us , that grosse ignorance and scandals are not onely to be found in professours uncensured , but also amongst elders ; and that many ministers are not onely carelesse to instruct the ignorant , and to endeavour , that scandals may be censured , but some are openly given to the same themselves , and not onely no course taken to censure them , but some who have been justly censured for prophaneness and malignancie , are readmitted ; and unqualified expectants in some places , put in the ministery . the approbation of the publick resolutions being made a main part of qualification . we hope it will be easily acknowledged on all hands , that there hath been a great backsliding of heart from the lord ; for the which we are filled with our own wayes ; we trust also that there be few that will deny , that the lords quarrell against us is for his broken covenant ; and therefore it is , that he hath threatned against us , as against israel , not only that we shall not be a kingdom , but that we shall not be a nation , nor a church , but put away by a bill of divorce . it is high-time for us then , to search and try our wayes , and turn again to the lord . let us examine by what way we have departed from him , that by the same steps we may return , wherein the land hath declined from their sworn covenant with the lord , and known principles , before this ruine came upon us ; and wherein they have sithence further departed , by staying upon those that smote them , and forsaking the lord , the covenanted god of this nation . it was unto us no small matter of grief and trouble , that the testimonies given the last ; year against the publick resolutions of the commission of the general ! assembly 1650 and against the meeting at s. andrewes and dundee , and their proceedings , was looked upon by many ( of whom we desire to judge charitably ) as not proceeding from principles of conscience , but as a compliance with the invaders of the land . blessed be the lord our god , who knowing our innocencie and integritie , hath made that cloud of reproach so clear to evanish , as we trust we are now freed from that calumnie , in the judgments and consciences of all judicious and charitable men . there is another advantage on your path , that you are now free from the temptations ; which reduced many to act and co●cur●e in these resolutions for necessity was mainly pretended for what was done ; which now , these temptations being removed , can have no place for a ground , to renew and re-act the same proceedings . we may also adde , that time hath fully discovered , and clearly determined , how ●●●●ground there was on our 〈◊〉 to oppose the ●●●●itting of these men , concerning whom the contest was the last year , into places of power and trust over the work and people of god . an overture was made to us at our meeting in winter last , that we would desist from making use of any power derived from the generall assembly 1650. and we conce●ved we had ground to expect on the other hand , that no use should have been made of any power , by vertue of the meeting at s. andrews and dundee . and that in the mean time , endeavour should have been used for agreement , which was assayed by us once , and again ; but the advantages of the time having setled on another quarter then that season wherein the overture was made , did seem to promise to such who did not well consider principles and parties . it is now fallen out other wise , and by power from them , without any agreement you are now conveened . in the meeting at s. andrews , it was earnestly desi●ed , that there might have been an adjournment , which through the lords blessing might have prevented much of the division that hath since fallen out , and the differences that were amongst us , might have been more easily removed . the breach is now wider , and only the strong hand of the lord can help us . if you should now again proceed to assume unto your selves the power , and constitute your selves into a generall assembly , we look upon it as a very great obstruction in the way of our agreement , and ( as that which for ought we can yet see ) may highten the difference : the lord is calling to holinesse , and to return to the work of reformation , and purging the church according to the word of god , and approven rules of this kirk , and not to confirm the last years proceedings , which were the chief ground of our divisions it is a thing beyond all question in reason , that all doubts and objections proponed , concerning the constitution of an assembly , ought to proceed the constitution , and not to follow after it . when the question is determined , sad experience may teach us , from former times , what influence an assembly hath according to its constitution , right or wrong ; for which cause , the generall assembly 1639. 〈◊〉 determine the keeping and authorizing corrupt generall assemblies , to be one of the chief causes of the many evils which had befallen this church in time of defection . we do therefore with all tendernesse and due respect , earnestly beseech , that you will ●●●eo●sly consider , how inconvenient and unwarrantable it is for you , to constitute your selves into a generall assembly , and to assume the power and authority thereof , not only when the authority by which you are conveened , is so much questioned , and such prelimitations are upon the elections of commissioners ; but when you also want the concurrence of so many presbyteries , who are not clear in their consciences to concur with you . and when you want the concurrence of commissioners from burrows , who by reason of their present in capacity , cannot send commissioners to sit in any assembly . and when the far greater part of commissions from presbytries , and universities are questioned and contraverted , by dissents and protestations in their meetings for election ; and some by reason of usurpation of them who are no presbyteries : so that we know not how few can be admitted unquestioned members ; and besides we beseech you , consider how great a snare your former actings which were not to edification , have been to some people to tempt them to the way of separation , and to the shaking of the government of this church , from which as we desire to be keeped free as from a course highly displeasing to god , and impedimentall to reformation : so we desire you may not tempt them further , and lay new snares in the way of any , by your not right using of so precious an ordinance of christ , as are the assemblies of this church upon these , and other grounds , we are constrained to make this application to you , that without assuming any such power unto your selves , you would be pleased to appoint a conference with us , wherein we may ( with the lords assista●ce . ) search out the causes of his wrath against us , and freely and friendly debate concerning our differences , and propone overtures , and remedies for removing both the one and the other : in order thereunto , we offer these propositions herewith communicated , for the subject of our conference ; it being our earnest desire , that an agreement being made , we may through the lords blessing , have a free , and lawfull well constituted generall assembly . and now having laid these our thoughts and desires before you , we do solemnly obtest you by the meeknesse , and gentlesse of christ , by his consolations , and the comfort of his love , and by the fellowship of the spirit : if there be any bowels and mercies , by the affection which you bear to the word of truth , to the peace and order of this church , to the lords precious ordinances , and to his people in this generation , and to the posterity , that you will take these things into your serious consideration , and hearken to our request . who knoweth but the lord may have compassion on our condition , and bring the blinde by a way they know not , lead them in paths they have not known , make darknesse light before us , and crooked things straight ? even do all these things unto us , and not forsake us . propositions offered to the meeting of ministers , and others , at edinb. july the 21. 1652. whereas we , and many of the godly in the land , have been really scandalized , and stumbled at the late acts , and proceedings relating to publick resolutions , conceiving the same in the nature and intention of the work , to have obstructed and shaken the work of reformation ( although we think honourably of divers godly and learned men , who have been concurring in the same , and dare not judge their intentions to be such as we think their work hath been , and do allow charity to others ) . therefore for satisfaction of our consciences , and for the securing the work of reformation , for purging the church , and for promoving the power of godlinesse , and for removing of these sad differences , and for attaining and preserving a good understanding , we desire , i. that they give evidence , and assurance that they approve of , and will adhere unto , our covenants , and the solemn publick confession of sins , and engagement to duties , and all the acts of the uncontraversed assemblies of this church , for advancing the work of reformation , in the litterall and genuine sense and meaning thereof : and that in dispensing of the ordinances , censuring of scandalous persons , receiving of penitents , trying , admitting , removing , & deposing of church officers , they walk according to the same . ii. that it may be laid seriously to heart before the lord , how after such a defection , and so sad judgements for it , the lord may be restored to his honour , the land to his favour , and the like defection prevented in time coming . iii. that as we are ready in our station to follow all religious & conscionable means and overtures for securing , and guarding of the cause and vvork of god , against errour , heresie , and schisme , on the one hand : so they would hold out to us a solide way for securing the same , against dangers from malignancie on the other . and , we desire to know what shal be the characters in time coming by which malignants may be known , and judged . iv. that a reall and effectuall course be taken , according to the established rule of this kirk , for purging out , and holding out all such from being church officers as have not the positive qualifications required in the word of god , and acts of this kirk ; particularly , that ministers deposed by lawfull assemblies , who have intruded themselves , or have been unwarnantably restored by synods , and presbyteries to their charges , contrary to the form , and order prescribed in the acts of assemblies , be removed , and condign censures inflicted , and that sufficient provision be made for preventing the like in time coming . v. that effectuall means be fallen upon , and followed for censuring of all scandals , and scandalous persons , and casting out of these who shall be found grosly , and obstinately scandalous , or ignorant , after they are made inexcusable by sufficient means , and pains taken for their instructing , and reclaiming . vi . that some course more effectuall then any hath been fallen upon hitherto , may be condescended upon , for putting in execution the acts of this kirk , anent debarring from the lords table such persons , who are found not to walk sutable to the gospel , and have not the knowledge to examine themselves , and to discern the lords body . vii . that in the receiving of penitents , care may be had , that none be admitted to the publick profession of repentance , or reconciled to the church , but these who are found to give such evidence of their repentance , as is expressed in the acts of the assemblies , concerning the receiving of penitents . viii . that an effectuall course may be taken for securing of the work and people of god , from the harme and evill consequences which bath already , and may further ensue from the late pretended assembly , at st. andrews , and dundee , and the acts thereof , and for preserving the right constitution of free generall assemblies for time to come . subscribed in name of many ministers , elders , and professors throughout the land , who desire truth and peace , by mr. andrew cant. unto the reverend , the ministers and elders met at edinburgh july 21. 1652. the protestation of the ministers , elders , and professors under subscribing for themselves , and in name of many others well-affected ministers , elders and people . it is so wel known to divers of your number , what peaceable endeavours we have used without successe , in order to the removing of the differences that are amongst us , that we shall not trouble you therewith ; nor how we were neglected in the sending timeous advertisements for your last meeting in this place , where a desire of reconciliation was presented , but peremptorily the electing and sending of commissioners from presbyteries , to keep the day indicted by the pretended authority of the meeting at dundee , was concluded on as the only mean to heal our breach ; and not so much as some few dayes of delay could be obtained , by these few of our number which were then present , whereby they might give advertisement to others . we have laboured with some in private , and have given a paper to all in publick , with some propositions , wherein we have the concurrence of the generality of the godly in the land , earnestly entreating a conference , wherein we might have opportunity with the lords assistance , to have laid before you the causes of the lords controversie against the land , and how we might be united in the lord ; being ready also to have heard what you should offer to us upon the same subject ; but this ye have denied unto us , and proceeded to assume the power , and constitute your selves into a generall assembly . it is a burden upon our spirits , and we have no delight to be contesting with , and opposing any who professe themselves to be maintainers of the government of this kirk ; but the truth is ( with grief of heart we desire to speak it ; for we think that it doth much provoke the lord , and threaten his departure from the land ) that although with the renewing of the nationall covenant , and with the casting out of prelates , and the corruptions introduced by them , the lord was graciously pleased to give repentance to not a few , who were involved in that defection ; yet since that time there hath alwayes remained a corrupt party of insufficient , scandalous , and ill-affected ministers in this kirk , enemies to the power of godlinesse , and obstructers of the work of reformation , and purging of the kirk , whereof many were sworn vassals to the prelats ( as we are able to make good by their subscriptions to horrid oaths ) this party complied with the times , and pretended for reformation , though they were groaning under it as a heavy yoke which they could not endure , as did appear by their carriage and expressions , upon several occasions , when any revolution offered them the opportunity of discovering their mindes , particularly in the time of james grahams prevailing , and of the engagement against england ; and having of lategotten a greater advantage then at any time before , since the beginning of this reformation , by the publick resolutions and actings of the commission for bringing in of the malignant party , to places of power and trust , and bearing down of such as were opposers of these resolutions , and had bin faithfull and straight in the cause , and stirring up the civill magistrate against them , subjecting also the liberty of the word in the mouth of christs ambassadors for the reproof of sin , to the immediat judiciall cognisance , restraint and censure of the civill magistrate , contrary to the many acts and practices of our predecessors grounded on the word of god , and our covenants , having the countenance of king , state and army , and diverse worthy and gracious men ( of whom we shall ever esteem honourable , and love them dearly ) upon consideration of the straits and pressures of the time , concurring also with them in the publick resolutions , that party perceiving , that they were not able to endure tryall in a time of reformation and purging , began the last year to lift up their heads , and speak the language of their own , being much encouraged by the constitution , acts and censures of the pretended assembly at s. andrews and dundee , they have so strengthened themselves by their practices since in the judicatories of the kirk , as they now carry the determinations therof to their own ends . and may we not with sad hearts say , what can be expected from such of whom we have experience , how forward they are to favour wicked men , and every evill course , to persecute such as make conscience to seek the lord in sincerity of heart , and suppresse the power of godlinesse , and to open the door of the ministery to such as for insufficiencie , scandals , or dis-affection , have been justly deposed , and to bring in the like . in regard whereof , we wish there were not too great cause to make use of the words of the prophet , i have seen also in the prophets of jerusalem , saith the lord , a herrid thing , they strengthen the hands of evil doers , that none doth return from his wickednes : therefore thus saith the lord of hosts concerning the prophets , behold , i will feed them with wormwood , and make them drink the water of gall ; for from the prophets of jerusalem is prophaneness gone forth into all the land . these things we speak not to reflect upon the ordinances of jesus christ in this land ; it shall be our stedfast purpose ( as the lord shall enable us ) to maintain the doctrine , worship , discipline and government of this kirk , and particularly the nationall assemblies , which we look upon as a rich priviledge , and speciall blessing from heaven , for suppressing errour on the one hand , and prophanenesse on the other , so long as they are preserved from corruption in the constitution thereof . and , we trust , all who are acquainted with the principles and practices of our worthy predecessors , and of the learned and godly non-conformists in england , wil easily see how far we are from their judgments who follow the wayes of separation . we hold it our duty , firmly to adhere to the church of scotland , wherein ( through the lords goodnes ) we do this day enjoy the purity of doctrine and worship , and the government which christ hath appointed in his house , though there be corruptions in the constitution of a pretended assembly . whereby we are deprived of the benefit of a free , lawfull , and well constitute assembly for the present ; where we meet with corruptions , we shall ( the lord assisting ) disclaime and oppose them . and herein we have the approbation of the first and second assembly of this kirk , in the beginning of this last reformation ; the one annulling and declaring void six severall assemblies , upon many of the same grounds , for which we do protest against the present corrupt assemblies . and the other having clearly determined the keeping , and authorizing corrupt generall assemblies , to have been one of the chief causes of the many evills which have befallen this church . we trust in the lord our god , that our actions shall abundantly witnesse for us in this respect , and so we shall not further insist upon it . we have clear grounds in scripture to warrand us to plead , and testific against corruption ; and therefore being sensible that there is a course of defection carried on in the church , we have endeavoured , first to prevent the same , in the beginnings thereof , and afterward to give testimony against it , as it comes to be discovered to us ; we have since studied in a christian , and brotherly way , to reclaime the authors thereof , and these that have concurred with them , and now when still we perceive our labours and endeavours to be without successe , as we professe our adherence to former testimonies against the late defection , so we are necessitated to adde this upon the grounds before mentioned ; and for all , or some of the reasons following . i. this meeting hath dependance upon , and the power and authority to which it can lay claime ; for the indiction thereof is derived from the pretended assembly which met at st. andrews , and adjourned to dundee , which being unfree , unlawfull , and corrupt , cannot derive or communicate to another that which it had not in it self . ii. it is constitute after the same manner ( for the most part ) of the members constituted as the former pretended assembly , of persons which were authors , and abettors of and have carried on a course of defection in this church , contrary to the vvord of god , the solemn league and covenant , the solemn engagement , and the expresse acts and declarations of the kirk , which persons being under so great a scandall , are by the acts of the kirk incapable to be members of generall assemblies . iii. because of the pre-limitation of election by the acts made at dundee , injoyning provinciall synods , and presbyteries to proceed with the censures of the kirk against ministers , students , expectants , & professors , who altogether opposed the publick resolutions , or shall not acquiesce to the acts made at dundee ; and so excludes all who are not involved in the course of defection , as incapable of election , which is a corrupt rule for election and constituting assemblies ; and in pursuance thereof , there were several pre-limitations made since by severall synods , and ptesbyteries , in their acts , ratifying the proceedings of the pretended assembly at dundee . iv. there are many presbyteries who have expresly refused to send commissioners to this meeting as an assembly and who do concur in protesting against the same , and where presbyteries have sent commissioners , the elections are generally contraverted , there being protestations made , or at least dissents entred against most of their elections upon good grounds conform to the acts of the kirk ; also there be wanting commissioners from burrows , who in regard of their present incapacity , cannot send commissioners . the generality of the godly in the land go along with us , and approve our protesting against this meeting , as an unlawfull and corrupt assembly . therefore from the zeal we owe to the glory of god , to this cause and truth , the duty of our callings , as set for the defence of the gospel , and according to our covenant , wherein we are bound to prevent , and reveal all parties and courses contrary thereunto , from the sense of the awful judgements of an angry god , both felt , and feared for these begun , and continued in-defections , that we may according to the example of our forefathers , acquit our selves as guiltlesse of this growing apostacie to the present age , and transmit to our posterity the right constitution of free and lawfull generall assemblies , and to prevent the lords giving a bill of divorce to the land . we do hereby solemnly declare and protest , against the constitution , authority , acts , and proceedings of this pretended assembly met at edinburgh , and particularly against their ratifying or renewing the former defection , in the matter of publick resolutions , and against their entering into any the like confederacie , or association with any party opposite in principles , and practices to the word , work , covenant , cause , and people of god in this land , against their appointing of commissions , emitting of declarations , warnings , causes of humiliation , and against their receiving and discussing of appeals , references , and dissents , or doing any thing competent to a free , lawfull generall assembly , and that neither the authority , acts , or censures of the meeting at st. andrews , and dundee , or of this present meeting , shall be obligatory to any synod , presbytery , minister , elder , or member of this church . and we do humbly beseech and implore the lord our god , that he wil not look upon these your proceedings as the deeds of the representative of the kirk of scotland , nor impute the same into the collective body ; but that he would be pleased in his mercy , freely to pardon all our transgressions . and we do further protest , that the general assembly 1650 be held and accounted in this church as the last free and lawfull generall assembly ; and that it shall be lawfull to us , and every one of us , to continue in the full and free exercise of our function , and in our callings and stations to observe and keep the former good old principles , declarations , and acts of the lawfull and free generall assemblies of this kirk , notwithstanding any declarations , warnings , proceeding , and censures of the said meetings at st. andrews , dundee , and edinburgh , or any commission following therefrom , or any exemption thereof , by any other ; and likewise that it shall be lawfull to conveen in a free generall assembly , when the lord shall give opportunity . and lastly , we do protest , that it shall be lawfull to us to give in to this meeting , or publish to the world , or to present to the first free and lawfull generall assembly this our protestation , and to enlarge the same as shall be found most to conduce to the honour of god , the good of his work , comfort of his people , and for our exoneration . in testimony thereof , we subscribe thir presents , and do take instruments . the names of the ministers who subscribed the fore-going protestation . m. andrew cant. m. james ker. m. samuel rutherfurd . m. john scot . m. robert trail . m. john vetche . m. john sterline . m. william guthrie . m. john nevay . m. ralph rodgers . m. matthew mowat . m. geo. nairne . m. john livingstoun . m. william oliphant . m. ja. guthrie . m. and. donaldsone . m. pat. gillespie . m. robert stidman . m. james symsone . m. ephraim melvill . m. hew kennedy . m. iohn sinclar . m. iohn cleland . m. iohn gray . m. gilbert kennedy . m. robert fergusen . m. al. living stoun . m. james ferguson . m. tho. ramsey . m. iohn crafurd . m. william wishart . m. harie simpil . m. william iack . m. robert rue . m. iohn dicksone . m. io. macmichan m. iam. donaldsone . m. iohn mean . m. francis aird . m. iames rust. m. robert keith . m. samuel row . m. iohn sempil . m. iohn durie . m. iames wallace . m. will somervell . m. david swann . m. iohn hamilton . m. gilbert hall . m. iames nisbet . mr. will. somervell . m. robert lockhart . mr. adam kae . m. daniel donglas . mr. alex. dunlop . m. gabriel maxwel . mr. george gladstaines . m. robert broun . m. arthur mitchel . m. iohn lithgow . m. alex. turnbull . m. robert lockart . m. the . wyllie . m. iohn hamilton . m. iames tuedie . m. will. ferguson . m. pat. macclellan . sixty seven . elders , professors , and expectants , many of whom subscribed not onely in their own names , but in name of others , from whom they were sent to the meeting . lord kilcudbright . rob. iack . sir arch. iohnstoun . william gordoun . sir iohn cheislie . robert cannoun . sir andrew ker. william gordoun . william bruce . william creickton . alex. pringle of whitebank . iam. mosman . sir walter riddel iohn cannoun . walter pringle of greenkno . iohn lamb . colonell robert halked . iohn thomson , sir tho. nicolsone . william meik . i. dundas of dudinstoun . iames selkirk . i. hepburne of smeitoun . william crafurd . pat. whartlaw . iohn maclinchie . peter rollock of piltoun . t david coventry . m. arch. iohnstoun of hil oun . cap. and. arnot . francis galloway . tho. bannatyn . will. broun of dolphingtoun . george pringle . william laurie of blakewood . william douglas . m. iohn sprewil . iames masson . alex. gordoun of knockgray . david park . alex. forbes tutor of pitsligo . m. wil. duguid . m : iohn inglis of cramount . quintin makadam . iohn cranstoun of glenn . iohn stother . major robert stuart . iohn dickson . iames gray . m. iohn douglas . iames kirkco . david mure . m. arch. porteous . c iohn nairn . geo. dickson . m. tho. stuart . rob. bruce . m. iohn pearson . edward gordown . and. adirson . john myln . patr. list●●n . mr. james stuart . iames spittell of k. alexander mershall . m. and ruthurfurd . james hill . m. geo walker . james morison . iam. greirson . mr. john justice . iames hamilton . william falconer . iohn tait . mr. peter kidd . a. iohnstoun . andrew kirkco . david matthie . pat. anderson . tho. douglas . james melros . jam. bruce . mr. jo crooksbank younger . john gordown . mr. alexander janison . 95. besides divers others ; some of whose names could not well be read ; others being with-drawen by their necessary affairs , were not present with the rest in time of subscribing , and the many hundreds of the well-affected throughout the land , who have by these whom they sent abundantly shown their love to the businesse , and will subscribe with their own hands when they have opportunity . the names of the ministers who presented these papers . mr. andr. cant. mr. john livingston . mr. sam. rutherford . mr. james guthry . mr. matth. mowat . mr. sam. row . mr. patr. gillespie . mr. james nasmith . mr. ephraim melvil . mr. jam. symson . mr. will. oliphant . mr. james ker. mr. rob. trail . mr. john dickson . mr. rob. keith . mr. thom. wyllie . mr. alex. livingston .   the names of the ruling elders , and professors . lord kirkudbright . laird of blair . tutor of pitslago . whytbank . sir . and. ker of greenheed . walt. pringle of greenknow . sir archibad johnston of wariston . j. johnston of hilton .   john graham . sir john chiesley . mr. john spreul . col. rob. halket . mr. william ferguson . j. dundas of duddiston . smeatoun hepburn . sir walter riddell . alex. gordoun of knockgray . sir william bruce .   these 35 were nominated and appointed by their meeting , to present the papers . upon thursday , the meeting of protesters did divide themselves in four severall committees , to think upon , and confer about overtures , how to make the matters of their propositions practicable and effectuall in their own stations , according to their capacities . and the next morning , the minde of the several committees upon that matter being reported in writ . the several clerks of these committees were apointed to meet together , and draw up in one paper , all that was reported , which being done , there was another committee appointed to meet upon it , and to consult and advise more deliberately thereanent , and to report their diligence upon munday to the whole meeting , whereby it appears that they do really , and seriously mind the work themselves , which they prop●●● to others , which will appear the more by their resolutions , when they come forth after the overtures are digested , and fully agreed upon . finis . at edinburgh, the 9th day of july, 1696 whereas the books of subscription to the company of scotland trading to africa and the indies, have continued open at edinburgh for the twenty sixth day of february last, to this instant; ... company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1696 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a80264 wing c5593 estc r231864 99900074 99900074 137261 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a80264) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 137261) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2510:8) at edinburgh, the 9th day of july, 1696 whereas the books of subscription to the company of scotland trading to africa and the indies, have continued open at edinburgh for the twenty sixth day of february last, to this instant; ... company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh : 1696] title from caption and opening lines of text. imprint from wing cd-rom, 1996. reproduction of original in the john carter brown library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -17th century -early works to 1800. scotland -commerce -early works to 1800. broadsides 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion at edinburgh , the 9 th day of july , 1696. whereas the books of subscription to the company of scotland trading to africa and the indies , have continued open at edinburgh from the twenty sixth day of february last , to this instant ; and altho' continuing the subscriptions in scotland so long , hath been very prejudicial to the affairs of the company at home and abroad ; yet in regard that all doubts and difficulties may be fully obviated , and no reasonable means or opportunity omitted to make this the most diffusive and national joynt-stock in the world : the court of directors of the said company , do hereby agree and declare , that the said books of subscriptions shall continue open until saturday the first day of august next , at six a clock in the afternoon : and the said court of directors do further resolve , publish and declare , that if any of the subscribers of the said company shall neglect to pay the first quarter-part of their subscriptions until the tenth day of the said month of august ; that then , and from thence-forward , the share of stock belonging to such person or persons , shall either be pursued for according to law , or transferr'd and dispos'd of by the said court , to such as will adventure and pay the sum or sums required , at the pleasure of the said court of directors . published by order of covrt , rod. mackenzie , sec : ry edinburgh , the 3 d of august 1696. the above-written act of the said covrt of directors was read , considered and approved of by the covncil-general of the said company : and the said covncil-general , doth hereby further enact and declare , that the said covrt of directors may , at any time after the said tenth day of august instant , invest in themselves , for the company' 's vse , the respective shares and interests of such subscribers or proprietors in the joynt-stock of the said company , as shall either neglect or refuse to pay or cause pay the first fourth-payment of the respective sums subscribed by them as aforesaid , before the said tenth day of august : and that upon such investment , the said covrt of directors , or any appointed by them for that intent , may thereafter transferr the several shares and interests , not paid as aforesaid , to such as , by advancing the several sums required , shall become proprietors thereof . then a report being made to the said covncil-general , by the company' 's chief-accomptant , that the compleat sum of four hundred thousand pounds sterling was subscribed in the books of the said company , by persons residing in scotland ; the said covncil-general have ordered the said books of subscription to be closed , and that the same be hereby published and declared accordingly . david home p. act discharging any person to go aboard of, or correspond with french privateers. edinburgh, august 3, 1697. scotland. privy council. 1697 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05311 wing s1408 estc r182987 52528905 ocm 52528905 178923 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05311) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 178923) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2774:62) act discharging any person to go aboard of, or correspond with french privateers. edinburgh, august 3, 1697. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to the king's most excellent majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1697. caption title. initial letter. signed: gilb. eliot cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng grand alliance, war of the, 1689-1697 -collaborationists -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign relations -france -early works to 1800. france -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-12 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 megan marion sampled and proofread 2009-01 megan marion text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion act discharging any person to go aboard of , or correspond with french privateers . edinburgh , august 3 , 1697. the lords of his majesties privy council being informed , that notwithstanding the laws and acts of parliament against such as correspond with his majesties enemies ; and particularly the act one thousand six hundred ninety three , intituled act against corresponding with france : yet upon the occasion of french privateers , and others his majesties enemies coming upon the coasts of this kingdom , several persons have either been ensnared , or have presumed to go on board of them , or otherways to correspond with them , albeit enemies , and in actual hostility as said is : therefore the saids lords of privy council have discharged , and hereby discharge all and every one of his majesties leidges to go on board any of the saids privateers , or otherways to correspond with them in any sort , or to have any manner of dealing with them , without express licence obtained for that effect from the saids lords of privy council , under the pains in the saids acts. and the saids lords of privy council do hereby ordain , that all sheriffs , stewarts , baillies and their deputs , and other magistrats whatsoever , be careful that these presents be duely observed , as they will be answerable : as also , that they be printed and published at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and other places needful . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot cls. sti. concilii . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to the king 's most excellent majesty , anno dom. 1697. a proclamation requiring all the members of parlament to wait on, and attend his majesties high commissioner at the palace of holy-rood-house, the 23. of april, 1685 england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) 1685 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a70983 wing s1984 estc r6907 12567259 ocm 12567259 63364 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a70983) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 63364) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 848:62 or 962:10) a proclamation requiring all the members of parlament to wait on, and attend his majesties high commissioner at the palace of holy-rood-house, the 23. of april, 1685 england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) 1 broadside. printed by the heir of andrew anderson ... ; by george croom ..., edinburgh : reprinted at london : 1685. includes list of council members. at end of text: "given under our signet at edinburgh, the fourteenth day of april, 1685." signed: will paterson. wing number j368d cancelled in wing (2nd ed.). reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng queensberry, william douglas, -duke of, 1637-1695. england and wales. -parliament. scotland. -privy council. broadsides 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion j2r diev et mon droit honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation requiring all the members of parlament to wait on , and attend his majesties high commissioner at the palace of holy-rood-house , the 23. of april , 1685. present in council his orace the duke of queensberry , &c. his majesties high commissioner . the lord high chancellor . the lord archbishop of st. andrews . the lord arch-bishop of glasgow . the marquess of athol , l. privy seal . the lord marquess of dowglass . the earl of errol . the earl of linlithgow , lord justice . general . the earl of southesk . the earl of panmure . the earl of balcarras . the earl of kintore . the lord livingston . the lord kinniaird . the l. president of the session . the l. register . the l. advocat . the l. justice clerk. the l. castle hill. drumelzier . abbots-hall . gos●foord . james by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france , and ireland , defender of the faith , to our lyon king at armes , and his brethren heraulds , macers of our privy council , pursevants , and messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch , as we having by our royal proclamation , dated at our court at white-hall , the sixteenth day of february last , upon divers weighty considerations of great importance to our service , and to the peace and tranquillity of this our ancient kingdom : thougt sit to call a parliament , to meet at our city of edinburgh upon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 day of april , then next ensuing : and which diet of meeting was thereafter by our royal proclamation of the twentieth and second of march last , continued and adjourned from the said ninth , to the twentieth and third day of the said month of april instant ; and we being resolved that all the members of the said parliament should according to their allegiance and duty , attend and keep the said meeting of parliament , upon the said twentieth third instant , and upon that day by eight a clock in the morning wait upon our high commissioner , from our palace of holy-rood house to our parliament-house , in his riding up and down from , and to , our said palace , and keep and attend the whole diers and meetings of our said parliament , during the sitting thereof . we therefore with the advice of our privy council , do hereby require and command all the lords , spiritual and temporal , and all commissioners of shires and burrows , to wait upon , and attend our high commissioner , tho said day of the meeting of our parliament , by eight a clock in the morning precisely , and to ride according to their ranks and orders , from our said palace to our parliament-house , and from thence down again to our said palace ; and to keep and attend all the diets and meetings of our said parliament , during the sitting thereof ; certifying such as ( without a lawful excuse , timely represented and admitted by our high commissioner ) shall be absent , they shall be lyable unto , and incur the pains and penalties following , contained in an act of the first session , of the first parliament of our dearest brother , of ever blessed memory ; dated the thirteenth day of may , 1662. viz : each arch-bishop , bishop and noble man , the summ of twelve hundred pounds scots : each commssioner of shires the summ of six hundred pounds scots : and each commissioner of burrows , the summ of two hundred pounds scots , to be paid to our cash-keeper , for our use : at whose instance , all execution necessary is hereby ordered to pass for payment thereof : which penalties conform to the said act of parliament , are declared to be by and attour , and without prejudice of what other censure our parliament shall think sit to inflict for fo high contempt and neglect of our authority . and we further declare , that such members of our , parliament as shall not accompany our high commissioner on horseback decently with foot-mantles , from our said palace , to our said parliament-house , and from thence down again to our said palace , shall bo reputed for absents , and incur the same pains and penalties , as if they were absent , which are to be inflicted and exacted with all rigour , conform to the thirty fourth act of the eleventh parliament of our royal grandfather king james the sixth of ever blessed memory . and further , wo hereby require and command all persons who have recieved commissions from our several shires and burrows for being members of our said parliament , to enter and give in the same to our clerk of register , the day immediately preceeding the said sitting of our parliament , betwixt ten and twelve a clock in tho forenoon , ( or sooner ) to be by him considered and marked , as they will answer the contrary oh their peril . and to the effect our pleasure in the premises may be timeously known to all persons concerned , our will is , and we charge you strictly and command , that in continent these our letters seen , yo pass to tho mercat cross of edinburgh , and other places needful , and there by open proclamation , make publication of our pleasure in the premises , that all persons concerned may have notice thereof , and give exact and peremtor obedience thereto . given under our signet at edinburgh , the fourteenth day of april , 1685. and of our reign the first year . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . will. paterson , cls. sti. , concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to the kings most sacred majesty , ann dom , 1685. and reprinted at london , by george croom , at the sign of the blue ball in thames-street , over against baynard's-castle . by the king. a proclamation. containing his majesties gracious pardon and indemnity proclamations. 1679-07-27 scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1679 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a79298 wing c3277 estc r231345 99899855 99899855 136993 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a79298) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 136993) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2457:29) by the king. a proclamation. containing his majesties gracious pardon and indemnity proclamations. 1679-07-27 scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1679. dated at end: given at our court, at windsor castle, the twenty seventh day of july, one thousand six hundred seventy and nine. arms 232; steele notation: defender all thretti-. reproduction of original in the folger shakespeare library, washington, d.c. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng pardon -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. 2008-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-05 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-06 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-06 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion by the king. a proclamation containing his majesties gracious pardon and indemnity . charles r. charles the second , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. to all and sundry our good subjects whom these presents do or may concern , greeting : the just resentments we have of the rebellious courses taken by some in that our ancient kingdom of scotland , by poisoning our people with principles inconsistent with true piety , and all humane society , as well as with our royal government ; and of the humorous factions of others , who ( under pretext of re-presenting grievances to us ) have most unjustly , both in scotland and england ; defamed our judicatures of scotland , and thereby weakened our authority , therein represented ; all which , did not hinder us from endeavouring to quiet the one by our late proclamation ; and the other by a publick hearing and debate : and being most desirous to cover all the imperfections of our subjects , and to remove the fears and jealousies , whence they proceed ; we have therefore , by our royal authority , and the undoubted prerogative of our crown , thought fit ( with the advice of our privy council ) to indemnifie , remit and pardon ( with the exceptions after specified ) all such as have been at field , or house-conventicles ; all such as are guilty of irregular administration of the sacraments , and other schismatick disorders ; all such as have been ingaged in the rebellion , 1666. or the late rebellion this present year of god , 1679. all such as have spoken , written , printed , published , or dispersed any traiterous speeches , infamous lybels , or pasquils ; all such as have mis-represented any of our judicatures , servants , or subjects , or have advised any thing contrary to our laws , all such as have maleversed in any publick station , or trust : and generally , all such as are lyable to any pursuit , for any cause , or occasion , relating to any publick administration , by contrivances , actings , oppositions , or otherways preceeding the date hereof declaring the generality of these presents , to be as effectual to all intents and purposes , as if every circumstance of every the foresaid delinquencies , or mis-demeanours were particularly and specially here inserted ; and as if every of the persons that might be challenged and pursued for the same , had a remission under our great seal , or an act of indemnity past in his favours . discharging any of our officers , or subjects , to pursue any person or persons upon any such accounts , either ad vindictam publican vel privatam , or to upbraid them therewith . and commanding all our judges to interpret this our remission and indemnity , with all possible latitude and favour , as they will be answerable to us upon their highest perils . excepting such as are already foresaulted by our parliaments , or our criminal court , fined by our privy council ; and such who being fined by inferiour judicatures , have payed , or transacted for their fines , in so far as concerns their respective fines , so imposed ; excepting also , all such heretors and ministers , who have been in the late rebellion , or were contrivers thereof , and such heretors as have contributed thereto , by levies of men or money ; and excepting likewise such as obeyed not our , and our councils proclamation , in assisting in our host ; to be pursued for that their delinquency , according to law ; and such persons as have threatned , or abused any of the orthodox clergy , or any of our good subjects for assisting us , in suppressing the late rebellion ; and that since our proclamation , dated the twenty ninth day of june , last past : which indemnity we do grant to those who were ingaged in the late rebellion , provided that they shal appear before such as our privy council shal nominate , betwixt and the dyets following , viz , these that are within this kingdom , betwixt and the eighteenth day of september , and these that are forth thereof , betwixt and the thirteenth of november next to come , and enact themselves , never to carry arms against us , or our authority , and with express condition , that if ever they shal be at any field-conventicle , or shal do any violence to any of our orthodox clergy , this our indemnity shal not be useful to such transgressors any manner of way ; as it shall not be to any for private crimes ; such as murdersr , assassinations , thests , adulteries , the fines and denunciations thereof , and such like as never use to be comprehended under general acts of indemnity ; and particularly the execrable murder of the late arch-bishop of st. andrews : nor to such as were appointed to be carryed to the plantations , by our letter , dated the twenty ninth day of june last , though their lives be by this our royal proclamation also , secured unto them , in manner , and upon the conditions above-memioned . but lest the hope of impunity should embolden the malicious to futuse disorders ; we do hereby command our privy council , and all our other judicatoures , to pursue and punish with all the severity that law can allow , all such as shall hereafter threaten or abuse the orthodox clergy , murmure against our judicatures , or omcers , or man make , publish , print , or disperse lybels , or pasquils ; these being the fore-runners of all rebellions ; and which , by defaming authority , do disappoint all its just and necessary methods . and to the end , all our good subjects may have notice of this our royal will and pleasure , we do hereby command our lyon king at armes , and his brethren heraulds , macers , pursevants , and messengers at arms , to maketimous intimation hereof , at the mercat crols of edinburgh , and other places needful . given at our court , at win for castle , the twenty seventh day of july , one thousand six hundred seventy and nine . and of our reign , the threttieth one year . by his majesties command . lauderdale . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1679. a proclamation, for adjourning the parliament, to the twenty seventh of march. at edinburgh, the fifteenth day of march, one thousand six hundred ninety years. scotland. privy council. 1690 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05623 wing s1813 estc r183488 52612325 ocm 52612325 179629 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05623) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179629) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2794:23) a proclamation, for adjourning the parliament, to the twenty seventh of march. at edinburgh, the fifteenth day of march, one thousand six hundred ninety years. scotland. privy council. eliot, gilbert, sir, 1651-1718. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, by order of the privy council, edinburgh : 1690. caption title. initial letter. signed: gilb. eliot, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1689-1702 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation , for adjourning the parliament to the twenty seventh of march. at edinburgh , the fifeteenth day of march , one thousand six hundred ninety years . whereas his majesty by his royal letter of the date at kensingtoun the thirteenth day of february one thousand six hundred and ninety years , authorized and required the lords of his majesties privy council , to issue forth a proclamation in their majesties names , continuing the adjournment of this current parliament , till the eighteenth day of march instant , and that the council have in obedience to his majesties commands , and in their majesties names , and by vertue of their royal authority , declared the said parliament current , and continued the adjournment thereof until the said eighteenth day of march instant ; and his majesty having signified by his royal letter to the lords of his privy council , of the date at kensingtoun , the twenty eight day of february last by-past , that divers considerations now moved his majesty to continue the said adjournment , from the said eighteenth day of march , to the twenty seventh day of the said moneth , hath authorized and required the saids lords to issue forth a proclamation in their majesties names , continuing the adjournment of the said parliament , until the twenty seventh day of the said moneth of march instant : therefore their majesties high commissioner , and the lords of privy council , do in their majesties names , and by their special command and authority , declare the said parliament current , and continues the adjournment thereof till the said twenty seventh day of the said current moneth of march ; and do hereby require and command , the lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers of privy council , pursevants , messengers at arms , sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , that incontinent these presents seen , they pass to the mercat cross of edinburgh , and remanent mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of this kingdom , and there , in their majesties names and authority foresaid , by open proclamation , make intimation of the continuation of the said adjournment , from the said eighteenth day of march instant , to the said twenty seventh day of the said moneth of march current , certifying all the members of parliament , that the parliament will then sitt ; and requiring hereby all the members thereof to attend that day at ten a clock in the forenoon , in the usual way , and at the ordinary place , and upon the accustomed certifications ; for doing of all which , their majesties high commissioner , and the lords of privy council , commit to them , conjunctly and severally their majesties full power , by these presents , delivering the same by them , duly execute , and indorsed again to the bearer . per actum dominorum sti. concilii . glib . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save king william and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , by order of the privy council , 1690. a proclamation discharging the importing of foreign linnen and woollen cloth, gold and silver thread, &c. england and wales. sovereign (1660-1685 : charles ii) 1681 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a70980 wing s1768 estc r33759 13553793 ocm 13553793 100247 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a70980) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 100247) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1184:76 or 1557:20) a proclamation discharging the importing of foreign linnen and woollen cloth, gold and silver thread, &c. england and wales. sovereign (1660-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. scotland. privy council. 1 broadside. edinburgh printed by the heir of andrew anderson ..., 1681, and reprinted at london for s.j., [london] : [1681] date of reprinting suggested by wing. "given under our signet at edinburgh, the first day of march one thousand six hundred eighty and one, and in the three and thirtieth year of our reign." item at reel 1184:76 identified as wing c3295 (number cancelled). reproduction of originals in the huntington library and the harvard university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng nontariff trade barriers -scotland. scotland -history -1660-1688. scotland -politics and government -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion c2 r diev et mon droit honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation discharging the importing of foreign linnen and woolen cloth , gold and silver thread , &c. charles by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith , to macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , especially constitute greeting : forasmuch as the lords of our privy council , having for increase of mony , and improvement of the manufactures of this kingdom , appointed a committee , who with advice of the merchants , and other persons experienced in these affairs , have agreed upon several conclusions , which are with all possible convenience and expedition , to be formed into a mature and digested proclamation , for regulation of the manufacture and trade of this kingdom : but because several merchants may either by mistake , or upon a sinister design , give order for importing of these goods which are prohibited ; therefore to prevent all inconveniencies which may arise to this our antient kingdom , by the import of those commodities , which are either to be debarred , as superfluous in themselves , or supplied by domestick manufactures , or private industry of our own subjects , and to make the importers thereof inexcusible ; we with advice of our privy council , do hereby discharge the importation of all silver and gold thread , silver and gold lace , fringes , or tracing , all buttons of gold and silver thread , all manner of stuffs , or ribbons in which there is any gold or silver thread , all philagram work : as also , all forraign holland-linen , cambrick , lawn , dornick , damask , tyking , bousten , or dametry , tufted or striped holland , callico , musline , selesia and east-india linen , and all cloaths , made of linen or cotton : as also all foreign cloaths and stuffs whatsoever , made of vvooll-yarn , or vvool and lint : all foreign silk , and vvoolen stockings : all forraign laces made of silk , grimp or thread , and all manner of laces and point of any sort of colours ; all forreign made gloves , shoes , boots and slippers ; and do hereby discharge all merchants and others whatsoever , to import into this kingdom any of the foresaid commodies , after the date hereof ; excepting only such as can be made appear upon oath , to have been ordered by preceding commissions , and shipped before the 10th . of march instant ; which time they have to recal their commissions , if any such have been given ; with certification that all such goods which shall be imported , shall be burnt and destroyed and the importers and ressetters shall be fined in the value of the goods so imported ; and that if any taxmen of the customs , collectors or waiters shall connive at the inbringing thereof , they shall be likewise punished , by payment of the value of the goods imported , and by being removed from all charge relating to our customs , or any employments depending thereupon . and we ordain these presents to be printed and published at the market cross of edinburgh , that none pretend ignorance . given under our signet at edinburgh , the first day of march , one thousand six hundred eighty and one , and in the three and th●rtieth year of our reign . per actum dominorum secreti concilij . pat . menzies . cl. sti. concilij . god save the king. edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1681. and reprinted at london for s. j. a proclamation for opening the mint scotland. privy council. 1687 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05663 wing s1881 estc r233626 53981580 ocm 53981580 180371 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05663) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180371) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2826:59) a proclamation for opening the mint scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1687. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the twentieth day of january, 1687. and of our reign the second year. signed: will. paterson, cls. sti. concilii. imperfect: creased with slight loss of text. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng mints -scotland -early works to 1800. coinage -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. finance, public -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion i 7r diev et mon droit honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation for opening the mint . james , by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith ; to our lyon king at arms , an● his brethren heraulds , macers of our privy council , pursevants , o● messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as w● 〈…〉 that our mint should be op●ned , and that a free coynage should 〈◊〉 therein , conform to an act made and past in the last session of the lat● parliament of this our kingdom ; do i herefore , with advice of our privy council , hereby declare our mint-house to be opened , from and after the first tuesday of may next to come , and no sooner : and to the end , that all merchants and others may be certiorated of the time of the opening of our said mint , and of our having signed a warrand for coynage , of the date the fourteenth day of august last by-past , for the several speciesses of the silver coyn , conform to the foresaid act of parliament , seing we are resolved to begin with that coyn : our will is , and vve charge you strictly and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and remanent mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the shires of this kingdom , and there , by open proclamation , make publication of our royal vvill and pleasure , concerning the opening of our said mint , from , and after the said first tuesday of ma● next ensuing , that all persons concerned may have notice thereof . given under our signet at edinburgh , the twentieth day of january , 1687 . and of our reign the second year . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . will. paterson , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1687. an act for the continuance of judicatories in scotland. england and wales. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a82440 of text r211551 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.16[71]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a82440 wing e1103 thomason 669.f.16[71] estc r211551 99870267 99870267 163224 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a82440) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 163224) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 246:669f16[71]) an act for the continuance of judicatories in scotland. england and wales. parliament. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by john field, printer to the parliament of england, london : 1652. order to print dated: tuesday the twenty sixth of october, 1652. signed: hen: scobell, cleric. parliamenti. with parliamentary seal at head of text. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng great britain -politics and government -1649-1660 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1649-1660 -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1649-1660 -early works to 1800. a82440 r211551 (thomason 669.f.16[71]). civilwar no an act for the continuance of judicatories in scotland. england and wales. parliament. 1652 364 1 0 0 0 0 0 27 c the rate of 27 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2007-11 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion blazon or coat of arms incorporating the commonwealth flag (1649-1651) an act for the continuance of judicatories in scotland . whereas the commissioners of the parliament of the commonwealth of england , for ordering and managing affairs in scotland , by vertue of the power to them granted , did nominate and appoint several persons to be commissioners and visitors of the universities , colledges and schools of learning ; others to be commissioners for the administration of iustice in causes criminal and c●●●● ; and others to be sheriffs and commissaries within several freedoms , limits and places in scotland : the said respective commissions so made & granted , to continue and be in force for and until the first day of november , one thousand six hundred fifty two , and no longer . be it enacted by this present parliament , and the authority thereof , that the said commissions and every of them , and all orders and instructions relating thereunto , and in pursuance thereof , shall be , and are hereby continued , and shall remain and be in full force and vertue until the first day of may , one thousand six hundred fifty three : and that the respective commissioners therein named , shall do and execute the like matters and things , as they or any of them by vertue of the said commissions , orders or instructions respectively were authorized and enabled unto , the said commissioners , their officers and ministers and every of them , having and receiving for themselves respectively , such fees , salaries and allowances , as they or any of them were authorized to have and receive by vertue of their respective commissions , or by any order , direction or instruction granted by the said commissioners of parliament : and all persons whatsoever concerned in the premises are to take notice hereof , and conform themselves hereunto accordingly . tuesday the twenty sixth of october , 1652. ordered by the parliament , that this act be forthwith printed and published . hen : scobell , cleric . parliamenti . london , printed by john field , printer to the parliament of england . 1652. his majesties gracious letter to the meeting of the estates of his ancient kingdom of scotland william r. william iii, king of england, 1650-1702. 1689 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a66135 wing w2334 estc r20554 12444778 ocm 12444778 62193 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a66135) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 62193) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 951:2) his majesties gracious letter to the meeting of the estates of his ancient kingdom of scotland william r. william iii, king of england, 1650-1702. scotland. convention of estates. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh : 1689. announces intent to form scottish parliament. at end of text: "given at our court, at hampton-court, the seventeenth day of may, one thousand six hundred and eighty nine, and of our reign the first year". broadside. reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament. broadsides -scotland -edinburgh -17th century 2008-02 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-03 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-04 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-10 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-12 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-12 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion his majesties gracious letter to the meeting of the estates of his ancient kingdom of scotland . william r. my lords and gentlemen , the commissioners sent by you have presented your letter to us , with your petition , or claim of right , the grievances , and your address for turning you into a parliament , which were all read in our presence ; after which the queen and we did take and sign the oath tendered to us by your said commissioners , which ( by god's assistance ) we will religiously observe . at our first engaging in this undertaking , we had particular consideration and regard for scotland , and therefore we emitted a declaration for that , as well as this kingdom , which we intend to make good and effectual to you , and you shall always find us ready to protect you , and assist you in making such laws as may secure your religion , liberties , and properties , and prevent or redress what ever may be justly grievous to you . we shall never believe , that the true interest of the people and the crown can be opposite ; and shall always account that our greatest prerogative , to enact such laws as may promote truth , peace , and wealth in our kingdoms . at your desire , we have resolved to turn you ( who are the full representatives of the nation ) into a parliament ; but , because the instructions to our commissioner , and other things necessary , cannot be expected before the twenty one instant , to which you are adjourned ; therefore , we do authorize you to adjourn your selves to the fifth day of june next , against which time you are to require all your members to be present ; that then you may proceed with unity , and alacritie , to dispatch what affairs do most conduce to the right settlement of that nation . and as we do assure you , on our part , that we will not put the advantages the crown may have , in the ballance , with the true interest of the kingdom : so we do expect on yours , that ( all animosities , and private interests being laid aside ) you will cheerfully concur with us , in settling the welfare of the kingdom , by such laws as may procure your own happiness , and establish the publick good. and so we bid you heartily farewell . given at our court , at hampton-court , the seventeenth day of may , one thousand six hundred and eighty nine , and of our reign the first year , by his majesties command , melvill . edinbvrgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , by order of the convention of estates , anno dom. 1689. an impartial account of some of the transactions in scotland, concerning the earl of broadalban, viscount and master of stair, glenco-men, bishop of galloway, and mr. duncan robertson in a letter from a friend. friend. 1695 approx. 64 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 17 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a46076 wing i65 estc r15762 12209845 ocm 12209845 56237 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a46076) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 56237) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 764:26) an impartial account of some of the transactions in scotland, concerning the earl of broadalban, viscount and master of stair, glenco-men, bishop of galloway, and mr. duncan robertson in a letter from a friend. friend. [2], 30 p. printed and sold by the booksellers of london and westminster, london : 1695. errata: prelim. p. [2]. reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng breadalbane, john campbell, -earl of, 1635-1716. scotland. -parliament. 2006-12 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2006-12 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-02 john latta sampled and proofread 2007-02 john latta text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an impartial account of some of the transactions in scotland , concerning the earl of broadalban , viscount and master of stair , glenco-men , bishop of galloway , and mr. duncan robertson . in a letter from a friend . london : printed , and sold by the booksellers of london and westminster . 1695. errata . page 2. l. 6. read eustick . l. 24. r. and that some men suffer . p. 5. l. 1. r. this simple discourse . l. 4. r. tenendae . l. 7. r. corvis & columbas . l. 15. for was , r. there were . p. 8. l. 6. & 7. r. the great men then . l. 8. r. did intend to leave the bench , and to travel abroad . p. 12. l. 30. r. bailiary . p. 28. l. 31. r. of all men in scotland . p. 29. l. 12. r. if he were really guilty . l. 17. r. byass or interest . p. 30. l. 34. leave out , i hope . l. 36. effectual and supply . an impartial account of some of the transactions in scotland concerning the earl of broadalban , viscount and master of stair , glenco-men , bishop of galloway , and mr. duncan robertson . in a letter from a friend . sir , though i be none of the most curious to pry into foreign matters , yet the various reports we have had of the proceedings of , and contests betwixt some of the members of the scots parliament , prompted me to desire the favour of you ( as a person i believe not much concerned in factions or parties ) to let me know something of the matters of fact were in agitation there : as also who these persons are , and their actions have been , occasioned such great heats concerning them , at such a juncture , when all good men ought to be cemented for the good of the publick , and ought to stand by one another , as one man , to oppose the evil designs of the common enemy . for my part , i find in ordinary conversation , that both good and bad people speak generally of these matters , as they affect such men and parties , &c. sir , i will avouch that my steadfastness to the present government is known by good men to be such , that i cannot in justice be termed disaffected ; and my interest is so little with particular parties , that i dare tell so much of the truth to the government 's friends , and my own also , as is convenient : will therefore strain my inclinations to give you a succinct account of some matters of fact ; as also what i could learn concerning these men you writ of , which can give no offence : and though my obligations to great men ( since the late happy revolution ) be little , yet will do them all the justice imaginable . but before i come to answer your expectation in particulars , will take the freedom ( by way of a rustical preamble ) to paraphrase a little upon some wise men's sentences . seneca said , that the most universal vice in the world was ingratitude , because punishable by no statute law , but by publick hatred and the discourse of the schools , which is said to be the greatest punishment ; yea , ingratitude sways the scepter in most places , as well in private as in publick men . some men were ungrateful to their countries , ( of whom we could name several ) and some countries were ungrateful to their own worthy , loving , and affectionate children : pride , contempt , avarice , and envy , are said to be the chief reasons , and seldom all these concur without malice and height of rigour : but i suppose that that part of a nation is either the indocile , ignorant , or vicious . socrates suffered for doing good to his country , even whilst he was doing good to his country-men in prison ; they condemned , and put him to death . some will object , that there is some secret crime brings on a punishment , and suffers for crimes they may not be guilty of ; and so it 's their judgment . but be it so or not , that 's neither argument nor excuse for the instrument's being cruel or ungrateful , to punish by guess , without a fair tryal , and conscientious jury , in estate , fame , or body ; for he who makes no scruple to take away a man's good name , will make no steps to take his life also if he can . philosophers as well as historians declare , that the epicureans denyed a providence , but that the stoicks asserted it ; whatever might be in that contest amongst the ancient heathens and modern pretended atheists , yet we , who assume the name of christians , must not only own a providence , that it over-rules all actions , motions , and events , exalteth one , and pulleth down another ; but also createth friends and enemies , and that a society of good as well as of bad men may differ in opinion , which oftentimes occasions not only jealousies , emulations , and debates , but also strifes , contentions , threats , persecutions , war , and the death of many well and evil designing men. cato struggled long before the people of rome could understand his counsels to be for their good and safety ; he was affronted and contemned by them , nor did they ever consider his worth till they lost him . scipio was dismist , cicero exiled , and seneca destroyed , he by a tyrannical prince only for his goodness . paul suffered as an evil doer ; yea , our saviour himself was contemned , set at nought , and condemned to the shameful cross by his country-men , out of pride and ignorance , for his kindness and goodness to them . so it 's no new thing for good and bad men to be mistaken , and others to be mistaken of them . it is an ancient saying , that loyalty often suffers the punishment due to rebels , and treason receives the reward of fidelity . there may be two principal reasons for this ; ignorance , and depravity of mens natures . ignorants not being judges of men fit for government , nor the governour 's actions , or secrets of state , which is generally the failure or mistakes of the populace . here you will always find improbarum duces , who influences the blind populace vela dare suae fortunae , to accomplish their designs , though it were upon the ruins of the common-wealth . and under the second may be comprehended all the vices of the mind , which would be too long to be named here ; only this one observed by the wise , that we have the wickedness of other men always in our eyes , but cast our own over our shoulders * . this confirms all the proofs of the former reasons of ingratitude . whence it comes to pass , that a peasant would be a tribune , a tribune a praetor , a praetor a consul ( as the philosopher said ) never minding what he had been in a little time before , but looking still forwards to what he would be * . i know not but brutus thought ( that when he had destroyed caesar ) to have been caesar himself ; but he had only in place thereof , remorse left with him , ( with , et tu mi fili brute ) for his great expectations . both good and great men we see are subject to envy ; for some people never think themselves happy , till such and such men be out of their way , as in the case of haman and mordecai ; but neither they , nor the common-wealth can well know the want of such men till they be gone , when there is no retrieving : for in what sad condition had esther and the poor jews been , if haman had conquered mordecai ? and it had been better for haman he had let mordecai alone . upon which considerations , it were very advisable for societies , if they be any ways split in parties , to take the wise man's advice , before they accuse or prosecute , and to consider three things : first , their strength whom they accuse ▪ secondly , the enterprize and merit of the cause . and thirdly , the person or persons they have to do withal ; and that in respect of their superiours , equals , or inferiours , &c. for as no good musick , so no good government or society without concord , which cannot well be without bearing of injuries . and epicurus said , that wise men will bear with all injuries , ardua res haec est , where the publick is concerned . i will therefore conclude this point with a sentence of seneca's , when in an epistle to his friend he was condemning anger and choler , he adds a but. but ( says he ) in case of exemplary and prostitute dissolution of manners , when clodius shall be preferred , and cicero rejected ; when loyalty shall be broken upon the wheel , and treason shall sit triumphant upon the bench. is not this a subject to move the choler of any vertuous man ? now , lest i should weary you too much with a simple discourse ( yet knows it is to my friend only ) i come to satisfie so much your curiosity as is in my power , without reflection or byass : nam pacis mihi cura temendae . illud amicitiae sanctum & venerabile nomen sed dat veniam corvus vexat censura columbis , hoc impedit , &c. as for the bishop of galloway , being first in view . in the year 1686. the late king james having sent the earl of morray his high commissioner to scotland , with instructions to repeal the penal laws against papists ; the aforesaid bishop stood firm to the protestant religion , and though very infirm , went every day to the meetings of parliament , to give his testimony against the courses then in hand ; for which there was evil designs against him , but that god removed him in great age and peace a little time after the adjourning of that parliament . he being a pious , hospital , and generous man , left his lady ( being upwards of eighty years old ) but poor : his eldest daughter was married to one mr. patrick smith , advocate , many years before his decease . his second daughter was married to a parson ; and the third was run away with , a little time before his death , by the aforesaid mr. duncan robertson , without the bishop's or any other friend's knowledge , the said robertson judging her to be a great prize , the other two daughters being married , and she being then the only child in familia . the aforesaid mr. duncan robertson was a high-land gentleman's son , bordering upon athol and lochquhaber , bred up something to the law at edinburgh , became a sollicitor that way , and practised that employ when he run away with , and married the aforesaid bishop's daughter . when the last earl of argile was forfeited in those days , ( and his children scattered here and there , and the estate being sequestred by the then publick authority ; and all argile's officers and friends in his vast dominions being laid aside ) he , the said robertson , what by money and interest he made in those days , stept into the clerkship of the sheriff-ship of argile ; but upon the late happy revolution , argile being restored to his estate , the said robertson was justly excluded from the said office of clerkship ; the same being heritable in the earl of argile and his families gift , past memory of man. the lord viscount stair , he is the representative of the ancient family of the dalrymples of stair , a barony in the county of kyle in the west of scotland , he being educated in , and endowed with all manner of learning and sciences of our horizon , was received into the faculty of a advocates , in the year 1648. having before had ( when but very young ) a considerable post in the army , verifying ovid's phrase in him , pace data terris ad civilia , &c. in the year 1650. he was made choice of by the then parliament , to be clerk or secretary to the committee of the parliament , and ministers went for king charles ii. to holland , where he not only gave great satisfaction by his behaviour to the committee of parliament , and all concerned in the said transaction , but likewise king charles took particular notice of him , &c. upon the restauration of king charles ii. he was created knight and baronet , and advanced to be one of the lords of b session , at which time he began to observe and write the c decisions of the lord of the session , and afterwards digested them with former and after observations of his own and others , in a system or body , these being presidents or rules to decree by , ( afterwards ) in parallel cases . in the year 1662. the presbyterian government being abolished , and the episcopal government established in scotland , there was a declaration formed , abjuring the presbyterian government , all its consequences , and all the oaths formerly taken : which declaration he not being clear to take , left the bench , travelled abroad , and coming to court after his travels , king charles excused and restored him to his place again , dispatching a letter to the lords of the session , ( signifying that sir james dalrimple of stair , having given him full satisfaction in relation to the said declaration ) required them to receive him again to the bench , without signing the same . thus i find it marked in the books of sederunt of the lords of the session , anno 1664. then it was that he began to compose a system of the civil law , intermixt with the law of scotland , and practises and presidents of that soveraign court , which makes the law intelligible and known to all the king's subjects there , who can read english . when sir john gilmor ( being then d president of the session ) was called up to court to draw up the contract ( or articles ) of marriage between the duke and dutchess of monmouth , the lord stair was chosen vice praeses of the session , as he was several times afterwards , when sir john gilmor turned infirme . and all along when the said lord stair was a single lord of the session , and sitting by turns on the bench in the outer house , where most of the cases and processes are heard and decreed in the first instance by a single lord , and where the judges as to their parts , judgment , justice , or injustice , are mostly known , having none other of the lords votes to interfere with their judgment . he had the greatest character of dispatch and justice of any man that ever sat upon that bench ; all men being desirous to have their cases brought and tried before him * . in the year 1670. he was one of the lords who went up to court about the union , designed then between england and scotland : at which time sir john gilmore ( the then president of the session ) died , and he was advanced to be president of the session . upon this step some envied him . the lord president was sent for to court in march , 1676. to have some differences composed , when he was offered to be chancellour , which he declined . but seeing great men turning into factions , and fearing the thing which came afterwards to pass , intend to go abroad and to desert the bench * . in winter 1679. the duke of york being sent to scotland , ( 't was thought , by advice of the duke of lauderdale for his safety ) the president would not adjourn the session , to meet him upon the road towards edinburg , ( in procession with all the lords of session ) as was expected ; ( and as most of the nobility and gentry of scotland did ) giving for his reason in his speech , ( when he , and the rest of the lords of session went in their formalities to wait upon the duke , as a prince of the blood , at the king's palace of holyroodhouse , the next day after his arrival ) that the session could not adjourn themselves ( being a constituted soveraign court , instituted by king and parliament ) without the king and parliament , which gave offence ; as did also another expression in his said speech , against popery and bigotry ; the duke then mask'd , and not going publickly to mass . in the spring , 1681. the duke of rothes chancellor dying , ( when there was a commission given by king charles to the duke of york , to be his high commissioner for scotland ) 't was mightily talked then , that the lord president would be made chancellor . but in that parliament 1681. the designing party of the nobility and clergy flattering the duke of york , that all would be as he wished ; matters lookt with a very bad aspect , the president could expect no good . yet as god said to the prophet , ( that there were 7000 in israel , who had not bowed their knees to baal ) there was some of the clergy , many of the nobility , and most of the gentry , who did fore-see the torrent ) they laid aside their private heats and emulations , joined hands to stop the current , and by plurality of votes , ( though some things did pass current in that parliament before that time , would have been prevented , if some men had not been lull'd asleep , ) they did stop more mischief . for the president had drawn up a test for preservation of religion , liberty and property , ( too long to be inserted here ) made a speech in parliament to that purpose , and , though seconded by very many , was thrown out , but some of the then court-party drew up another test to their purpose , which was carried the very next morning into the g articles , and past current there . at the meeting of the parliament that morning the court test was presented and read , whereupon the duke of hamilton , the earl of argile , haddington , &c. the bishop of dunkell , ( bruce ) the lord stair , president , sir george lockhart , sir john cunningham , and many others of the several states , stood up to oppose the said test , but would not do ; and all they could gain by the arguments used , was to get the confession of faith ( made concerning the protestant religion , mentioned in king james the sixth's acts of parliament ) insert in their test . the inserting of which confession of faith ( the intriguing party then not understanding the thing , being fond to pass their own test with any quality without examination ) was the very thing made some of the bishops , nobility , and gentry stand firm against taking away the penal laws in the parliament 1686. ( they and all the members of that parliament having taken the said test . ) but when the bishops and others of the then court-party ( after the adjourning of the parliament that evening ) had met together , and considered what they had done , in voting the said whiggish confession of faith ( as they called it then ) and procured the royal assent thereto , went in a body to the duke of york , and exclaimed against the lord stair , president , as the only man who had wheedled them in the matter , by surprize ; but were told , the thing could not be helped then , being it was past the royal assent , but that the contrivers should be animadverted upon ; and in some few days that parliament being adjourned , and the president in disgrace , he retired to the country , sent his son , sir john dalrymple , now master of stair , to the duke , to signifie , that seeing his father was not pleasing to his royal highness , he intended to go to court , and give up his commission to the king his master , who gave it to him . upon the delivery of which message , the duke of york ( being surprized ) dispatched coll. graham ( then his privy purse ) post to the king , to give account of the lord president 's behaviour , which was the occasion the president had no access to the king when he went to court ; but the king desired to tell him , that he might live at home privately under his protection : upon which assurance he went to his country house in scotland , did not live there long without an alarm , which obliged him to repair privately to edinburgh to advise his safety ; nor was he long there , when there was a warrant to seize him , upon which he went incognito to holland : for certainly his fate had been the same which was the late argile's if he had staid at home , when in holland there were ruffians sent to seize him , but by providence made his escape to corners , diverting himself there with the conversation of the schoolmen and scholars of the two famous universities of leyden and vtricht , and then writ a system of natural philosophy . his lady was harrass'd , and forced to fly to holland also . his houses made a receptacle of souldiers , his heritable office taken from him , and his tenants spoiled . the then government raised process of treason several times against him , but they could not reach his estate , by all the stretches of law were made . in the year 1687. king james sent him a h remission to holland , which he slighted , judging himself guilty of no crime deserving a remission , and being safe under the protection of the prince of orange and the states of holland , rested satisfied . in november 1688. he , the said president , came over with the prince of orange ( now our gracious king ) his majesty being pleased to communicate his resolutions to him , as a man fit to give , and keep counsel . sir george lockhart being president of the session when the king came over ( but being unfortunately murdered in march 1689. by a base ruffian , for pronouncing an unjust sentence against him ( as he alledged ) though no such thing ) my lord stair was re-established in the president 's chair again . in the year 1690. he is created viscount of stair , lord dalrymple and glenluce . and though this hath been an age , where meaner men were ashamed to serve god in their families , i will add this one good quality more to him , that he ( besides his private devotion ) was never a day in the worst of times but he read the scripture , and prayed himself twice in his family , were there never so great or many strangers present , which might be a reflection in these days , but i hope not now , and to tell the truth , i dare give no worse character of him . as for his behaviour in matters of state , these are matters i do not meddle with , let him put his misbehaviour in publick who will venture to do it , if they can , but i judge it will puzzle any to do it ; and rational men will judge , that he who rules his family best at home , is the fittest to rule in publick , and i pray god long may such men rule amongst us . i will not say , but the lord viscount stair is envied by some people for his parts and growing greatness , but that should be no argument with rational good men , being that mens vertues ought not to be accounted their crimes . and i believe he may say in his old age , whose ox , or whose asse have i taken * ? the master of stair is the foresaid viscount's eldest son , liberally educated and bred to the law , being upon his travels in the time of the dutch war , he and one ramsay , son of sir andrew ramsay , of abbots-hall , being intimate companions , happened to be at chatham , and , as i am informed , preserved one of the king's men of war from being blown up by the dutch , with the hazard of their own lives ; for which brave action ( when they were but very young ) king charles knighted them , before he knew who they were , thus i heard it . in the year 1672. sir john was admitted , after his tryals , to be an advocate , which employ he followed for several years , being of the first rank . in the year 1683. when the said viscount ( his father ) was forc'd to abscond in holland , as is said before , the laird of claverhouse ( afterwards viscount dundee ) having the command of the army , which was sent to the west country to spoil and dragoon the dissenting party ( not without our scots bishops consent ) did attempt to possess himself of the office of the baily of regality of the lordship of glenluce ( which did heritably belong to the said sir john , and the viscount of stair his father ) sir john , now master of stair ( by creation of his father lord , baron , and peer of the realm ) did oppose the lord dundee , and beat him off , for which he was convened before the council , and fined in 500l . which he paid . in the year 1684. the said master was seized at his own house , when his lady was just to lye in , and made prisoner , being suspected , it seems , by the then government to have correspondence from holland , and to have carried on intrigues against the government ; and being brought to edinburgh , was carried from the palace of holyrood-house ( where he was examined by the ministers of state ) as a trophe ( it seems to disgrace him ) between the common soldiers , along the publick streets , to the common prison ) more than half a miles distance ; was kept close prisoner there for several months , not knowing for what crime , ( but as himself then said ) for the original sin of the father . at last , after many petitions , he had the favour granted him by the council , to be enlarged to the castle prison , where he lay a long time , till the government was ashamed they could not fix a crime upon him , set him at liberty . in the year 1687. there being none of the advocates ( but these who were advanced to be lords of the session , for their then zeal and loyalty to the cause in hand ) ( fit to be the king's advocate i the court ( hoping to gain him to their party , and to wheedle his father over from holland ) made the master king's advocate , ( that being the time of the toleration ) and during a whole year he continued king's advocate , there was none prosecuted to death , but one man , upon the score of nonconformity . the court perceiving the master's behaviour in that post that year , and intending to take another course , by the dispensing power ; and finding him not to be a fit tool for their purpose , brought in sir george mckhenzie again , to be king's advocate , and they degraded the master to be justice clerk ; then they found out he was the man saved the bishop of ross , in anno 1686. by advising him to appeal from the bishops court to the parliament . upon the revolution , the earl of perth ( then chancellor , fearing the just indignation of the enraged mob ) taking his flight , the said master ( and some others of the privy councellors ) taking care first of keeping things in order , and distributing ( so far as was then in their power ) the government in the best hands ; went up to wait upon the prince of orange in december , 1688. concurred in making the address to the prince , for taking on the administration of the government , assisted in the convention 1689. as a chosen member thereof ; was the man chiefly ( with the indefatigable pains and endeavours of the late duke of hamilton , chosen president of the convention ) who concerted the resolution , and stated the vote of forfeiting king james , and proclaiming his majesty and the late queen , king and queen of scotland . the master of stair in conjunction with the earl of argile , and sir james montgomry were voted , and sent up commissioners from the three estates of scotland , to make offer of the crown to their majesties , when our gracious king was pleased to make the master his advocate again , and lord melvil secretary of state , &c. the foresaid convention being turned into a parliament ( the duke of hamilton made lord high commissioner ) some people ( who pretended great matters for religion , liberty and property , being displeased , it seems , that they were not advanced instantly to some places of high dignity and trust in the government , recoiled : and then it was that we unhappily turned into parties , which put the subjects in a ferment , made our proceedings uneasie ever since at home , and makes the king's affairs sometimes to be retarded both here and abroad , thus by our divisions , giving too much encouragement to the disaffected party . in the winter , 1690. the master of stair was advanced to be conjunct secretary of state with the earl of melvil , who , upon the revolution , was made sole secretary of state for scotland , as aforesaid , which he did merit as ( formerly ) a great sufferer , and always a true common weals man. in the year 1692. mr. james johnson was made conjunct secretary of state with the master of stair , and the earl of melvil sent to scotland , to be lord privy seal : and as to these three persons they continue in the same stations and offices still . the earl of broadalban , who was formerly called sir john campbell of glenorchy , an ancient family in the highlands , a cadent of the family of argile , when he married the late earl of argile's sister , ( countess dowager of the late earl of caithnes , who died without issue male ) he the said sir john was created earl of caithnes in the year 1677. or 1678. and brought several debts upon the earldom of caithnes , and made use of force to possess himself of the estate ; which created him enemies afterwards , an heir male and of tail appearing to the deceased earl of caithnes , he the said sir john campbell took a new patent to be earl of brodalban . in the year 1677. by order of council he sent a double regiment of his tenants and vassals , in conjunction with the marquis of athol , earl of perth , and several other noblemen and gentlemen to the west country ( which was then called the highland host ) there was a commission of the council sent along with them to try the dissenters ; this created the earl of broadalban enemies also . upon the revolution he stood out , but being convinced of his errour as to the alteration from that of arbitrary and dispotick power , to that of a mild , merciful and peaceable government , tracing the true constitution and fundamental laws of the nation ; he joined forces , and offered his service to the government , by bringing in of the highland clans and rebels by fair means , or necessary stratagems to make the effects answer the end . as for the glenco-men , the truth is , hic labor , hoc opus est , to describe them without reflection upon my country-men , which i would willingly avoid ; but the real truth is , they were a branch of the mc. donnels ( who were a brave couragious people always ) seated amongst the campbells , who ( i mean glenco-men ) are all papists , if they have any religion ; were always counted a people given to rapine and plunder , ( or sorners ) as we call it , and much of a piece with your highway-men in england : several governments designed to bring them to condign punishment , but their purses , it seems found them out protectors , and their country was inaccessable to any small parties ; and though i dare not approve of the method taken in january and february , 1692. by killing them under trust , and in cold blood , yet at the same time they deserved the heavy hand of justice , in a regular and legal manner , which would have made their neighbours live in more peace and tranquility . i do remember when i first heard then of the matter ; i said to some great persons , that the best method would be to make these men prisoners , and send them abroad to be soldiers , or to the plantations , and wishes it had been so . now that i have given you a historical account of these persons in as brief terms as i could , to make you understand the men , and the relation of matters afterwards . i begin again with the bishop of galloway , mr. robertson , and the lord viscount stair's affair . the viscount of stair is by his own , his author's and predecessors charters , heretable bailly or judge of the royalty or regality of the lordship of glenluce , within the bishoprick of galloway for which the bishop is obliged , and was constantly in use to pay him 20l. sterling yearly of fee ( or sallary ) in money or value , besides the perquisites of the court , which is allowed to the deputy always . the bishop of galloway died , as was mentioned : the three daughters and their husbands did contend about proving the will of the deceased , the bishop's widow being poor , and detained from what effects the bishop left , by the contention and tedious unnatural law debates of her children : mr. hugh dalrymple ( the lord stair's son ) being factor for uplisting of his father's rents , the time of his father's exile , as abovesaid , and the viscount himself likewise after his return home , did support her with money , that she might not starve , during the law debates ; for which they took security , both from her self and mr. patrick smyth her eldest daughter's husband to repay them . after long and litigious debates , the lords of the session pronounced a i decreet in favour of mr. patrick smyth , being found to have the best right , and who supported the mother by his credit . this mr. duncan robertson , encouraged * by some persons ( not well inclined to the lord stair , to be sure ) presented a petition to the parliament upon the 3d day of june last , complaining , that the said viscount had pronounced an unjust sentence against him . it would be needless , and not to your purpose , to repeat all the said complaint , and the great and long debates followed thereupon ; so i only give you the substance , and the most material points in the complaint ; ( viz ) that the president in the debate betwixt the said robertson and mr. patrick smith , should have done injustice by making up himself ( or by his influence ) a debate , or minutes and interloquitor subjoyned thereto upon the 29th . of july , 1692. and signed the same privately in the vacation . 2. that after there was a decree pronounced in favour of mr. smith against mr. robertson ( against which decree mr. robertson gave in a bill of suspension ) upon which bill the clerk of the bills refused to write a k sist , by the president 's order , thereby stopping the ordinary course of the law. 3. that the president transacted during the dependence of the plea with mr. smith , as executor to the bishop , for a debt due by the president to the late biship , l and had an m ease from mr. patrick of the debt , and took allowance of 20l. sterling of baily fee , which the bishop would never have paid . the answer made to the first was , that if mr. robertson , or any other could prove against the president , that he did sign any interloquitor or debates privately , but what was the meaning of the rest of the lords p in praesentia , as well as his own opinion , he were most unjustifiable ; but nothing at all thereof was proved : on the contrary , one smyth , a witness q adduced by robertson himself , deposed , that the king's advocate did dictate them , who is a man of great honour and integrity , and owned the same . the clerk also deposed the same , and mr. john frank , robertson's own advocate , deposed , that the point mentioned in these minutes , was stated by the president , which should have been debated , mr. robertson's advocates declined to debate , and mr. patrick smith craving a decreet , and that the same was pronounced in mr. frank's own hearing and others , so not done privately . two of the lords of session , halcraig and crosrig , deposed to the same purpose , and one of these lords doth exactly remember , that before the cause was called , the lords resolved , that the parties should debate the very points mentioned in the minutes , which was stated truly by the president , as all the lords resolved . and it is further cleared ( the aforesaid interloquitor being res gesta , known to , and authorized by all the lords ) by a subsequent decreet of suspension which followed thereupon the first of february , 1693. it was answered to the second , that the clerk of the bills , james nicolson , did refuse to receive or write upon the bill of suspension , because mr. robertson was litigious , and after two decreets in foro , he offered a third bill , and mr. patrick smith having found caution or surety to relieve mr. duncan robertson and his wife of any process might be intended against them , as executors to the bishop , ( which was the pretence or reasons of his last bill of suspension ) and all the lords rejected the bill , and discharged the clerk of the bills to receive any other bill of suspension from mr. robertson , except upon obedience , he having refused to debate before ; which deliverance was shewn and duly intimated to the clerk of the bills , which is his warrant : and that the president never spoke directly nor indirectly to him about the same . the lord aberuchill also ordinary deposed , that the clerk did refuse to write a sist by reason of the said deliverance of the lords in praesentia . it was answered to the third , that , as was said before , mr. hugh dalrymple , by his father's orders , ( when in exile ) and the president himself when he came home , advanced money to the bishop's poor widow , to save her from starving , during the dependency of the plea , for which they took bond , to be repaid as aforesaid , which was a security to them in omnem eventum , without any dependence upon the event of that plea of law : for though mr. robertson's title had been just , and sustained by the lords , the president 's security was good beyond exception . 1. because the widow was provided to a considerable r life-rent by her husband , which was a debt undeniably preferrable to the interest of either party , smith or robertson ; and the advancement to her being less than her provision , the president could have no byass that way ; besides that mr. patrick smith also had an unquestionable interest in the dead's part , and the legittim , and had acquired the interest of a third sister , as mr. robertson's own bill to the parliament doth acknowledge . so there was no hazard to , or injustice in the president , though he had advanced more to mr. patrick or the widow , which he never did , and made no other transaction , but as aforesaid . and as to the other member of that allegation , that the president got an ease from mr. patrick smith of the debt due by him to the bishop . it was answered , that it was a very false allegation : for by the discharge granted to the president , it will appear , that the several and particular sums paid , are instructed either paid by the president himself , or mr. hugh dalrymple in his absence ; that the president had no advantage by it , nor was the president concerned what mr. duncan's claim was against the bishop , or his executors , seeing the president was not obliged to pay any more to the bishop , or any claiming right to his estate , but what was truly due , and to them who had the best right . as to that , that the president should have taken an allowance of 20l. sterling to himself yearly of baily fee. the president owns he did take the same , and instructs his right by an original charter anno 1560. and by another charter under the great seal , anno 1618. both charters bearing an heritable office of bailiary , and a fee of three chalders of meal out of the first and readiest of the fruits and emoluments of the lordship of glenluce , which three chalders of the measure of wigton ( which is the measure of that country ) will be four chalders and a half of linlithgow measure , and which would be worth more than 30l . sterling yearly ; yet the president being only in use to receive an allowance of 20l. sterling , he exacted no more . and as the said president 's right was instructed by his charters , so the use of payment appeared by two several agreements , one with bishop hamiltoun , anno 1666. who preceded bishop aitkin , and another , anno 1688. with bishop gordon , who succeeded him , both stating the baily fee at 20l. sterling yearly . after debating of these points before the parliament , it was moved , that the affair should be committed to a committee chosen for that particular case , but it was carried by plurality of voices , that it should be committed to the committee of safety , who were appointed to give their report thereof in open parliament upon the tenth day of the said month of june . and the committee having accordingly examined many witnesses upon the most material articles of the complaint , viz. the alledged injustice of the sentence , nothing was proved as i can see against the viscount of stair by robertson ; on the contrary , it was proved by the depositions of the lords of session , mr. robertson's own advocate , and several other evidences , as abovesaid , that the president 's transactions were fair , and the sentence just ; so that mr. robertson did not think it adviseable to insist upon the other articles of the complaint . upon the tenth of june it was moved , i hear , in behalf of the lord president , that the parliament would call for the report of the committee , and either declare the president guilty , or if nothing of the complaint should be proved against him , that they would acquit the lord president , and appoint a suitable punishment upon the libeller for so impudent a calumny ; but the motion was not favoured , there being matters of greater importance in hand . however the president 's friends say , they are glad ( that even now in his lordship's absence ) there are no greater matters of complaint or accusation found against him through the whole course of his life , being sufficiently vindicated of this accusation by these and other grounds represented , judging there is enough known ( and will be justified by all good unbyassed men ) of his long service in the publick , integrity of life , firmness of principles , his and his families sufferings in dubious and dangerous times , and dutiful adherence to his majesty's interest , before and since the late happy revoluton : and that they do confidently hope that his majesty's high commissioner , and the honourable estates of parliament will sometime or other find the justice of the nation interested to see the laws and acts of parliament for securing , maintaining , and defending the honour and reputation of judges ( who do represent his majesty's person and his authority ) fully and effectually executed by the exemplary punishment of the malicious libeller , so as judges in all time coming may be fenced and secured from such bold and insolent attempts . and upon the whole matter , the president 's friends say further , that he lost 100l . sterling by these transactions concerning the bishop's affair , which he never expects again ; so that according to the wise man's saying , as it is a hard matter to be both popular and just , so to strike , and not wound , is anger lost , for he is invulnerable , and not hurt , who is struck . as for the matter of the indictment against the earl of broadalban , in so far as i can learn , the matter is thus : that the earl , anno 1691. promised to the king to reclaim the high-land rebels , which way he did it , is in publick now ; but mac donnel of glengary ( who is the most sensible , and of greatest probity amongst them ) came in , and deposed before the parliament , that the earl did , by articles agreed upon betwixt him and them , engage , that if king william could not condescend to such and such articles , he , the said earl , should with all his friends and followers , joyn the highland army . the said deposition being read , it was moved that the king's advocate should be ordered to commence a process of high treason against his lordship , and that he in the mean time should be committed prisoner to the castle of edinburgh . and 't was pleaded for the earl , that he might have time to deliberate his answer before impeachment , this being a surprize to him , and doubted not but he would make it appear to the parliament there was no ground for the impeachment . it was further pleaded for the earl , that glengary , not being summoned by a judge to come in as a witness against him , and especially considered that he was a roman catholick , had been in rebellion against the king , and never knew he had submitted to the government , unless done privately at this time , and carrying an inveterate enmity to the earl's family , he hoped the parliament would not found a process of high treason against him upon his deposition . these arguments did not prevail . it was further pleaded by the earl , that he had an ample commission from the king to do in that affair all that he should think fit for effectuating his design : that as well his majesty as all the world knew that in such negotiations there must be allowances for men commissioned to go , or at least pretend to go great lengths , and to yield to such condescendencies as they find most taking for accomplishing the design . that the effect and consequence had justified the methods he had taken . that not only they there sitting , and their constituents at home , who suffered most in that unnatural and cruel war , but also the kingdom of england ( who for its own safety was obliged to maintain some regiments here in scotland ) yea , and all the confederacy had reaped advantage by his conduct in that treaty , many troops and much money being now employed against the common enemy abroad , which that troublesome war had exhausted for several years here at home . that seeing the thing it self was good and advantagious for the nation , he wondered persons should take exception against the particular methods which in prudence he was obliged to take in carrying it on ; however that he had made it known to their majesties , whatever he had said or done in that affair , and had their approbation since . it was alledged , that things now libelled , were not then known . it was answered , that upon a complaint given against the earl for these very things he is now accused of , his majesty recommended to the privy-council here to make enquiry into the matter , which was done accordingly , and transmitted to the king ; that the minutes of council would clearly shew the same , and desired that the minutes might be called for , but the parliament did not think fit to call for them . the earl of melvil , then secretary of state , and now lord privy-seal , 't is said , rose up , and avouched the truth of what had been said , and asserted , that the precognition taken bo the council , was upon a complaint ( if not in the same words , yet at at least to same purpose ) with what was contained in glengary's depositions , was sent by the council to him , as secretary of state then ; that he shewed it to the queen ( the king being then in flanders ) who kept it a whole night by her , that the next day he transmitted it to the king , who ( he knew by the returns he got from flanders ) received and perused it . the duke of queensbury did declare likewise , that it consisted with his knowledge , that his majesty received the same , he being then in flanders with the king , and heard his majesty discourse of the matter very often . upon this some person moved , that seeing his majesty had taken the earl's behaviour to his own consideration , and had been informed of all the methods of his proceedings in the matter , and had shewn a satisfaction with the earl's conduct , by preferring him at that time to several places of honour and trust , the parliament would please not to proceed in an affair of such importance against one of his majesty's ministers of state , until he was first acquainted with it . but this being refused , it was desired in behalf of the earl , they would delay their proceedings at least until the next meeting ; but it was voted and carried , that the king's advocate proceeded immediately against him ; and an order of parliament was signed for committing him to the castle , where his lordship was carried immediately after the rising of the parliament . the lord advocate sent him a copy of his indictment , and he was ordered to give in his answer thereto by the first of july instant . upon the first instant the earl desired an exculpation , which was granted to him . upon adjourning of the parliament to the seventh of november next , the prosecution of the earl is delayed till that time . as for the matter of the glenco-men , made so much ado , we are something in the dark as yet , nor will i meddle to speak , much less to write of any point the parliament have voted , only the historical part of that matter is this . that when the earl of broadalban did undertake to cause the highlanders to lay down their arms , give over hostility , and to give passive obedience to the present government , by taking of the oaths ( which was very well done , whoever did it ) before they laid down their arms , there were two or three indemnities issued forth by his majesty , encouraging them to come in ; and they did come all in by the prefixed q diet in the last indemnity , except the glenco-men , who it seems finding themselves without help or support by the other chieftains and clans coming in , old mac kean of glenco himself only ( as i am informed , as ad aram ultimam ) went to , and prevailed with campbel of ardkinglass , sheriff-deputy of argile-shire ( a very worthy honest gentlemen , and formerly a great sufferer ) six days after the diet was elapsed , who received him , and mac kean took the oaths ; though at the same time it was , and is still the opinion of many good men , that to confide in these men , or to bring them to conformity to the government , were penelope's telam texere . nor did the taking of the oaths after the diet prefixt was elapsed , save or protect them or him from the lash of the law ( not having come in , in the terms of the law ) the mercy tendered in the indemnity being conditional , in case they came in , and submitted before , or upon such a day ; but was a ground for mercy and mollification of the rigour of the law , supposing him or them to have taken the oaths bono animo , and upon true repentance . i do not hear the rest of his followers came in , and took the oaths , judging , it 's like , he and they were safe by his only taking of the oaths , though post meridiem diei . the court ( it seems ) not knowing of these transactions at a great distance of four or five hundred miles ( and being informed by all hands that they were nests of thieves and robbers ) his majesty , after refusal of many offered mercies , sent to treat them as enemies and rebels : yet at the same time his majesty , by his instructions , as i am informed , left room for mercy to them , according to discretion , and circumstances of time and affairs , which is all could be expected in reason from his majesty . the master of stair , secretary of state , writ letters , it seems , likewise at the same time to the government , or officers of the army there , much to the same purpose , but ( it 's said ) in severer terms , and exceeding his majesty's instructions , to treat them like the men they were represented . what may be in this , we know not , not having seen the master's letters ; but many wish that they , and all the instructions relating to that matter of the glenco-men , had been printed , to undeceive the generality of good men , who speak as they affect , but could make no true judgment of the matter as it then stood , only this , that the parliament has been very zealous to discover at whose door the fault ( in killing the glenco men ) lies . that they were killed in cold blood , and under trust * , judging themselves secure and safe ( with their thirteen days guests or lodgers ) is undeniable . but in fine , the parliament , as you have it in publick , finds that his majesty's orders and instructions had mercy in graemio , so that it cannot lodge there , and god forbid it should . they have likewise voted sir thomas livingstoun , commander in chief of his majesty's forces in scotland ( who sent the orders to col. hill , governour of fort william , and hamilton , his lieutenant-colonel ) clear of it , as also col. hill , have summoned lieutenant-colonel hamilton to appear before them , to answer concerning the said matter ; and upon further scrutiny where the said murder will fix , i know not ( grammatici certant , & adhuc sub judice , lis est ) for the common souldiers will readily say , that they obeyed but their superiour officer's command ; and the master of stair's friends here say , that they desire the master's letters to be printed , that the world may judge of them ; and if he be judged to have exceeded bounds , or his majesty's instructions , it was his zeal for the government , but never intended at the same time that these men should be killed in cold blood ; and that he did not at all know that any of the glenco-men had taken the oaths , ( either before or after the diet ) when he writ these letters , being at court four or five hundred miles distant , as said is ; so it 's wish'd the men , who had the trust of the execution of the matter upon the spot , had acquainted the court or our government of these unhappy mens then circumstances , before they went so far on , in which case i doubt whether any of them had been killed or murdered , and consequently no reflection had been upon any part of the goverment , or any ever mentioned in the affair . it 's an old saying , that the counsels of wise men are certain , but events uncertain . as for my own part , i know nothing of it , but god in heaven , and the master of stair himself knoweth best if he be guilty of a designed murder of these men , or any others : nor will i argue about any point such a wise , loyal parliament have voted or found . but this i may say , that i do not understand where the master of stair's interest lay to destroy the glenco men , for if he be any ways suspected to be a jacobite , it was not his interest upon that score to destroy them by any means in scotland , their religion and blind zeal bending them then altogether that way , whatever new light these who are living of them have found of late , and if he be thought to be a church of england man ( though that be against our present constitution , yet no man in his right wits will call it a crime . ) these men were not presbyterians , to be destroyed upon that score ; nor do i think any man would be so mad as to bribe him to kill them by authority , without the hand of justice going along with it . some good-natured people may say , out of good will to the master , that they were idle men , robbers , thieves , & telluris inutile pondus , granting all that yet a statesman's interest was , to make their young men souldiers , or to send them to the plantations , which had been to good purpose . but a man of his trust , capacity , and reason , to be accessory to their destruction in cold blood , is unaccountable . and being the honourable parliament has found that slaughter a murder ( as no doubt it was ) in the manner it was done , and that the master exceeded his majesty's instructions , it were a very pertinent question to ask , what under god's heavens , was the master's byass in the matter ? i can imagine none . there was an information printed and dispersed ( as you heard formerly ) by commissary dalrymple ( hearing that his brother , the master of stair , and his letters were made mention of in the commission appointed for examining the glenco business ) in vindication of his brother's behaviour and conduct , as secretary of state , in the said affair ; representing , that if people did construct some paragraphs , sentences , or periods of his brother's letters so and so , without connexion of other sentences , &c. without hearing ( in his own absence ) they did not know what to say of it . but if one sentence , &c. were connected with others , the whole would not bear the commentaries the people might put upon them separatim , a and several other arguments to this purpose . the dispersing of which informations , after the commission 's sentiment ( and they being ready to report their opinion in open parliament ) gave offence to the parliament . he said , his printing and dispersing of them , was before the vote of parliament , and said , he intended to give no offence , mean time he was reprimanded , and was obliged to beg pardon . the parliament since summoning of lieutenant-colonel hamilton , have declared him fugitive , for not appearing , he is gone since into flanders , as we hear , to wait upon his majesty . the parliament have likewise made an address to the king , to send persons home , who may be found guilty , to be prosecuted for the said murder , or not , as his majesty thinks fit . sir , this parliament have done great things for his majesty's service , and safety of the publick : for though there might have been some misunderstandings between some of the members , yet all concurred unanimously to serve the king and the country . you know what was said concerning the nation and common-wealth of the romans , tantae molis erat , romanam condere gentem . for great matters take up much time to effectuate the ends proposed ; so as we have had good beginnings , good proceedings , hopes all our matters will end well ; for though the almost desperate and uneasie jacobites ( who but fish in muddy waters ) should vaunt upon the occasion of some accidents , ( as to see some honest , well-meaning men differ only in points of opinion , ) they being a people soon elevated to castles of the air , and soon cast down to the dust , yet all the bustle they make , comes to nothing at last , but exposes themselves the more to folly . and i am very apt to believe , that all our seeming differences would evanish upon the sight of our most gracious king's presence , upon his throne in our parliament ; so will conclude with a great moralist's saying , or to this purpose , that by the two blessings of reason and union , we might secure and defend our selves against the violence of fortune ; sense and reason we have enough , and what is wanting of the latter , i hope the defeat of lewis le grand , and our most gracious king's ( i mean king william's ) presence once here in our parliament , would , i am certain , effectuate . i long to see his majesty here . vale , & bene valeat & vivat rex noster gulielmus . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a46076-e210 * lintae foris talpae domi . * fortuna non mutat genus . a a counsellor at law. b or one of the 15 judges c cases . ( c ) journal . d or lord chief justice . * qui vindice nullo sponte sua sine lege fidem rectumque colebat . * beatus ille qui procul à negotii , &c. horat. car . 5. g the articles was a committee of parliament then in use , made up of the 8 statesmen , 8 noblemen , and so many bishops , and 8 burgers , and the commissioner and statesmen ruled all there . h or pardon . * hic murus aheneus esto , nil conscire sibi nulla palescere culpa . i attorney general . i a decree . * sic stetit sententia . k a sist is a stop of execution of a decree by a judge for a certain limited time . l lord stair pay tithes to the bishop . m an abatement . p in presence of , and by the unanimous consent of all the lords . q produced . r or annuity . q diet signifies the day appointed in the indemnity to come in by . * faber est quisque fortunae suae . a it 's a saying of the great seneca . that the best way to help every thing by a fair interpretation , and where there is a doubt , is , to allow it the most favourable construction . die mercurij 16. aprill, 1645. ordered by the lords and commons in parliament assembled, that the lord major of the city of london is hereby desired and required to give direction that publike thanksgiving be made on the next lords day, in every church, & chappel within the lines of communication, and bills of mortallity for gods blessing to the forces in scotland, against the rebells in that kingdome. england and wales. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a82956 of text r200015 in the english short title catalog (thomason e278_10). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 1 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a82956 wing e1734 thomason e278_10 estc r200015 99860817 99860817 112942 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a82956) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 112942) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 46:e278[10]) die mercurij 16. aprill, 1645. ordered by the lords and commons in parliament assembled, that the lord major of the city of london is hereby desired and required to give direction that publike thanksgiving be made on the next lords day, in every church, & chappel within the lines of communication, and bills of mortallity for gods blessing to the forces in scotland, against the rebells in that kingdome. england and wales. parliament. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [london : 1645] signed: jo: browne cler. parliamentorum. imprint from wing. at foot: to the gentleman vsher attending this house, or his deputy to be delivered to the lord major of the city of london. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng city of london (england). -lord mayor -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. london (england) -history -17th century. great britain -politics and government -1642-1649. a82956 r200015 (thomason e278_10). civilwar no die mercurij 16. aprill, 1645.: ordered by the lords and commons in parliament assembled, that the lord major of the city of london is here england and wales. parliament. 1645 108 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-12 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-12 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion die mercurij 16. aprill , 1645. ordered by the lords and commons in parliament assembled , that the lord major of the city of london is hereby desired and required to give direction that publike thanksgiving be made on the next lords day , in every church , & chappel within the lines of communication , and bills of mortallity for gods blessing to the forces in scotland , against the rebells in that kingdome . jo : browne cler. parliamentorum . to the gentleman vsher attending this house , or his deputy to be delivered to the lord major of the city of london . charles, by the grace of god, king of scotland, england, france and ireland, defender of the faith. to our lovits [blank] heraulds messengers, our sheriffs in that part, conjunctly and severally specially constitute greeting. forsameikle as wee are not ignorant of the great disorders ... proclamations. 1638-06-28 scotland. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) 1638 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a11706 stc 21996 estc s122280 99857432 99857432 23170 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11706) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 23170) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1610:3) charles, by the grace of god, king of scotland, england, france and ireland, defender of the faith. to our lovits [blank] heraulds messengers, our sheriffs in that part, conjunctly and severally specially constitute greeting. forsameikle as wee are not ignorant of the great disorders ... proclamations. 1638-06-28 scotland. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) charles i, king of england, 1600-1649. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by robert young, [edinburgh : 1638] concerning canons, the service book, etc. dated at end: greenwich the twenty eighth day of june .. 1638. imprint from stc. arms 221; steele notation: the so twenty. reproduction of the original in the university of illinois (urbana-champaign campus). library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church and state -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -church history -17th century -early works to 1800. 2007-08 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms charles by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith. to our lovits heraulds messengers , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally specially constitute greeting . forsameikle as wee are not ignorant of the great disorders , which have happened of late within this our ancient kingdome of scotland , occasioned , as is pretended , upon the introduction of the service book , book of canons , and high commission , thereby fearing innovation of religion and laws . for satisfaction of which fears , we well hoped , that the two proclamations of the eleventh of december , and nineteenth of februarie , had been abundantly sufficient : neverthelesse , finding that disorders have daily so increased , that a powerfull rather then perswasive way , might have been justly expected from us : yet we out of our innative indulgence to our people , grieving to see them run themselves so headlong into ruine , are graciously pleased to try , if by a faire way we can reclaime them from their faults , rather then to let them perish in the same . and therefore once for all we have thought fit to declare , and hereby to assure all our good people , that we neither were , are , nor by the grace of god ever shall be stained with popish superstition : but by the contrarie , are resolved to maintain the true protestant christian religion already profest within this our ancient kingdome . and for farther clearing of scruples , we do hereby assure all men , that we will neither now nor hereafter presse the practice of the foresaid canons and service book , nor any thing of that nature , but in such a fair and legall way , as shall satisfie all our loving subjects , that we neither intend innovation in religion or laws . and to this effect have given order to discharge all acts of counsell made thereanent . and for the high commission , we shall so rectifie it with the help of advice of our privie counsell , that it shall never impugne the laws , nor be a just grievance to our loyall subjects . and what is farder fitting to be agitat in generall assemblies and parliament , for the good and peace of the kirk , and peaceable government of the same , in establishing of the religion presently profest , shall likewaies be taken into our royall consideration , in a free assembly and parliament , which shall be indicted and called with our best conveniencie . and we hereby take god to witnesse , that our true meaning and intention is , not to admit of any innovations either in religion or laws , but carefully to maintain the puritie of religion already profest and established , and no wayes to suffer our laws to be infringed . and although we cannot be ignorant , that there may be some dis-affected persons who will strive to possesse the hearts of our good subjects , that this our gracious declaration is not to be regarded : yet we do expect that the behaviour of all our good and loyall subjects will be such , as may give testimonie of their obedience , and how sensible they are of our grace and favour , that thus passeth over their misdemeanors , and by their future carriage make appeare , that it was only fear of innovation , that hath caused the disorders which have happened of late within this our ancient kingdome . and are confident , that they will not suffer themselves to be seduced and mis-led , to misconstrue us or our actions , but rest heartily satisfied with our pious and reall intentions , for maintenance of the true religion and laws of this kingdome . vvherefore we require and heartily wish all our good people carefully to advert to these dangerous suggestions , and not to permit themselves , blindely under pretext of religion , to be led in disobedience , and draw on infinitely to our grief their own ruine , which we have , and still shall strive to save them from , so long as vve see not royall authoritie shaken off . and most unwillingly shall make use of that power which god hath endued us with , for reclaiming of disobedient people . our vvill is herefore , and vve charge you straitly and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , you passe to the market crosse of our burgh of edinburgh , and all other places needfull , and there by open proclamation make publication hereof to all and sundry our good subjects , where through none pretend ignorance of the same . the which to do , vve commit to you conjunctly and severally our full power , by these our letters , delivering the same by you duely execute and indorsed again to the bearer . given at our court of greenwich the twenty eighth day of june , and of our reigne the thirteenth year . 1638. per regem . reasons why the parliament of scotland cannot comply with the late k. james's proclamation sent lately to that kingdom, and prosecuted by the late viscount dundee : containing an answer to every paragraph of the said proclamation, and vindicating the said parliament their present proceedings against him : published by authority. welwood, james, 1652-1727. 1689 approx. 48 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 18 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a65418 wing w1309 estc r2126 12369547 ocm 12369547 60533 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a65418) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 60533) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 906:12) reasons why the parliament of scotland cannot comply with the late k. james's proclamation sent lately to that kingdom, and prosecuted by the late viscount dundee : containing an answer to every paragraph of the said proclamation, and vindicating the said parliament their present proceedings against him : published by authority. welwood, james, 1652-1727. graham, john, viscount dundee, 1648-1689. [6], 29 p. printed for dorman newman ..., london : 1689. reproduction of original in huntington library. attributed to james welwood. cf. nuc pre-1956. epistle dedicatory signed: j.w. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng james -ii, -king of england, 1633-1701. -proclamation against adherents of the prince of orange, 4 may 1689. scotland. -parliament. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745. 2003-08 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-09 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2003-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-12 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion reasons why the parliament of scotland cannot comply with the late king iames . advertisement . an answer to the late king iames's declaration to all his pretended subjects in the kingdom of england , dated at dublin castle , may 8. 1689. ordered by a vote of the right honourable the house of commons , to be burnt by the common-hangman . reasons why the parliament of scotland cannot comply with the late k. iames's proclamation , sent lately to that kingdom , and prosecuted by the late uiscount dundee . containing an answer to every paragraph of the said proclamation ; and vindicating the said parliament their present proceedings against him . published by authority . london : printed for dorman newman , at the king 's arms in the poultry . mdclxxxix . to his grace the duke of hamilton , &c. their majesties high commissioner for the kingdom of scotland . may it please your grace , the following paper ambitionates no meaner patron , than a personage who has had the honour , for a great many years , to struggle against the encroachments made on a kingdom , whereof he himself is the first peer ; and who has crown'd all his other actions with that of giving a mighty and powerful influence , on a revolution that , it s hoped , may at last make us happy . accept of this as a part of that vast acknowledgment your countrey owe's you ; and pardon the address of may it please your grace , your grace's most humble , and most obedient servant , i. w. london , aug. 12. 1689. reasons why the parliament of scotland cannot comply with the late king iames , &c. if one were to draw the scheme of one of the most despotick governments in the world , he needed not go so far as constantinople , moscow , or some of the eastern courts , for a copy to design after ; scotland alone might sufficiently furnish him with all the idea's of oppression , injustice and tyranny , concentred for the space of twenty years and upwards in that kingdom . to display the tragick scene of these three kingdoms in their most lively colours , would require the imitation of that celebrated piece of antiquity , the sacrifice of iphiginia , where every on-looking graecian appeared sad , and the sadder as they stood in nearer relation to the royal victim : but the painter , conscious of the weakness of art , to express the grief of agamemnon , chose rather to draw a veil over a disconsolate father's face , than vainly to endeavour the tracing the sorrows of his countenance by the pencil . england's dismal state , for some years past , requires to be exprest in mournful characters , that of ireland perhaps in more mournful yet ; but to delineate the unexampled misery of scotland , surpasses the power of history , or the force of eloquence . to look back upon athens under the government of the thirty tyrants , on rome under the triumvirate , or on these three kingdoms under the usurpation of cromwel , might surnish some weak draughts , to take up a notion of the late condition of that nation ; but all of them would fall short of the scotch ▪ original . it were in vain to attempt the history of scotland , under the two last reigns , in a paper of this kind ; the materials being large enough for the most bulky volume : and if ever i should venture upon it apart , it is more than probable , i might find that maxim verified at my cost , curae leves loquantur , ingentes stupent ; and the rather , that i am not altogether able to divest my self so far of humanity , as to forget my own share in the ruines of my country . my design , at present , is only to make some reflections on a proclamation issued out by the late king iames , with relation to his pretended subjects of scotland , dated at dublin the fourth of may last , signed by himself , and countersigned by my lord melfort ; in which it's hard to determine , whether ill nature , or want of politicks , takes most place , both of them outvying one another for precedency . only upon first view it will be found , that the late conspiracy in that kingdom , is the native consequence of this proclamation ; and though that plot had amounted to a design of assassinating their majesties high commissioner , and the whole members of parliament ; yet the actors of such a villainy are not only by this proclamation indemnified , but fairly invited and required so to do . the proclamation begins thus : iames , &c. to all our loving subjects of our ancient kingdom of scotland , greeting . whereas several of our subjects , men of pernicious principles and wicked designs , have taken upon themselves , contrair to the law of god , their natural allegiance to us their lawful and undoubted sovereign , the laws and acts of parliament of that our ancient kingdom , to meet in an assembly , to call themselves the states of that kingdom , and therein treasonably and wickedly to question our authority , and to judge of our proceedings ; and finally to dispose of our imperial crown , which we hold from god alone , usurping our power which is not communicable to any , whether single persons , or bodies collective , without our authority be interposed thereto : and that these wicked and lawless persons still go on to oppress our people by heavy burdens , imprisonments , and other things grievous to our subjects , contrair to all law and equity , as well as to our royal right and prerogative , uniting themselves with the prince of orange and his adherents . all these blustering expressions might have a tolerable good grace in the mouth of the grand segniour , or great mogul , who vainly arrogate to themselves the high-flown titles of king of kings ; but if they can be at any rate excusable in king iames , it must be upon the supposition of these two principles . first , that king iames , as king of scotland , was so far an arbitrary and despotick prince , that he was not obliged to govern by law , and could in no case forfeit his right to the crown . and secondly , that he was unjustly , by the states of the kingdom , laid aside . now if it can be made appear , that in the first place , the royal dignity of scotland is so far from being an arbitrary and despotick kind of government , that it carries along with it , in its very essence , a mixture of interests betwixt king and people , and an obligation upon the king to govern , not by his own edicts , or will , but by the known laws of the land ; which are indeed the two great hinges of the government : and in the second place , that king iames did forfeit his right to the crown , by subverting these two fundamental hinges of the government , and thereupon that the states of the kingdom did justly lay him aside : i say , if these two general heads be made appear , then necessarily the other two supposed principles fall in consequence , and the above mentioned narrative of the proclamation as built upon them , must tumble with them . as to the first general head , that the royal dignity of scotland is so far from being an arbitrary and despotick kind of government , that it carries along with it , in its very essence , a mixture of interests betwixt king and people , and an obligation upon the king to govern according to law. here i shall not run up the length that our histories have with any probability traced the affairs of our nation , where we may , upon the one hand , find our selves one of the most ancient kingdoms of the world , under one line of kings ; so on the other , we shall meet all along the clearest prints of a bounded and mixed government : nor shall we be able , in all the changes of our monarchy , to instance one of our kings , that pretended to such an absolute power over his subjects , as every one of them was to obey without reserve ; the new coining of these words , and the making use of the thing signified by them , being reserved for the reign of the late king iames : nor will i presume to pass censure upon some acts of parliament made of late , that have stretch'd the prerogative of the king , and the obedience of the subject beyond their ordinary limits ; acts of parliament being , in my opinion , only subject to the censure of those that can unmake them . i shall only ( to put this general head beyond question ) take a short hint of the nature of the government of scotland , as it is agreed to by all parties ; and then fix upon that particular constitution , by which the king is obliged to govern according to the laws of the kingdom . that the government of scotland , notwithstanding all the acts of parliament made in the last two reigns , in favour of the prerogative , was and is a mixed sort of government , is clear from this part of its constitution , that the three estates of parliament , and every one of them , are equally as necessary and essential to the making of laws , as the king is . it is the king , and the three estates of parliament all together , that make laws , and not the king alone , nor the three estates , nor the king with any one or two of the three estates : here there is one negative vote lodged in the king , and another lodged in the parliament ; for albeit the king , or his commissioner , should bring in a bill in parliament , stampt with the royal assent , the estates of parliament , by their negative vote , may deny their concurrence , and thereupon it proves an abortive ; so on the other hand , what-ever sanctions are enacted by the estates of parliament , they amount no higher than so many dead letters , till once the king withdraw his negative , and imprint upon them his enlivening assent . this being the native uncontroverted constitution of our government , i would fain know what becomes of our new coin'd absolute power , which all were to obey without reserve ; since a power in the people , to deny their concurrence with the king , in making of laws , is an uncontroverted essential part of the original constitution . and to place this in as clear a light as possible , let us suppose the king should cause be presented to the parliament , somewhat in form of an act , and should back it with a command to the estates , to give their concurrence ; in this case , by the absolute power we are to obey without reserve , the parliament is directly obliged to concur ; and thereby that essential part of the government , which gives them a negative vote in making of laws , is totally unhinged : yea farther , though the king should , without consulting his parliament , lay his commands upon his subjects , in matters that natively require a parliamentary sanction , such as taxes , and the like ; this late assumed absolute power does as much inforce obedience thereto , as if there were an act of parliament concurring ; because , if it should be pretended that such a sanction is illegal , as not done in parliament ; that very pretence it self is a reserve upon their obedience , and all reserves whatever , king iames was pleased to exclude . in fine , if a man be obliged to obey without reserve , then all laws and acts of parliament , cease ipso facto to become obligatory , when once the king takes it upon him , by vertue of this absolute power , to command the contrary . as the government of scotland is in it self a mixed government , so likewise our ancestors have been so careful to preserve it in an equal poize , that they have thought fit ex superabundante , to bind up the king from invading the fundamental constitution , or venturing on an unlimited power , by the most sacred tye among men , a solemn oath and promise at his coronation , to govern according to the laws of the land , that is , these made by the king and parliament : and this obligation upon the the king to govern according to law , i take to be the second fundamental hinge of our government . that there was a contract betwixt the king and people , equivalent to a coronation oath , at the very first founding of our monarchy , we have considerable vestiges in our history : and in corbred's time , he is said to have sworn , se majorum consiliis aquieturum : i. e. that he should be determined by the advice of the elders ; which at that time must needs be something of the nature of parliaments : and gregory , named the great in our antiquaries , was sworn to maintain the liberties of the christian religion : and mackbeth another of our kings , is said to be sworn to maintain the commons of the realm . yea , the kings of scotland were so far from pretending to an unlimited power over their subjects , that we find in finnanus's reign , the tenth of our kings , a formal stipulation betwixt him and the people in these ▪ words , that the kings in time coming , should do nothing of any great concernment without the authority of their publick counsel ; that he should manage no publick business which belonged to the kingdom , without the advice and conduct of the elders , nor should make peace or war , nor enter into leagues , or break them by himself , without concurrence of these elders , and the heads of the tribes . this continued a fundamental law of the kingdom for a great many ages ; and the breach of it prov'd fatal to a great many succeeding kings . this i mention , not because that i approve so narrow boundaries of the royal prerogative , as to be divested of the power of entring into leagues , and of making peace and war ; but to evince , that there was an express contract betwixt the king and people , and that the king did not pretend to hold his imperial crown of god alone , as the penner of king iames his declaration expresses it . the coronation oath of scotland , during the time of popery , was express , as to governing the people according to the laws of the land ; but because it also contained an obligation to maintain the heirarchy and errors of rome , it was altered at the reformation , and made to relate to the reformed religion , as then established by law , and was enacted to be taken by all the succeeding kings of scotland , at their coronation : by it they are to promise and swear , as in the presence of the eternal god , that they shall during the whole course of their life , serve the same eternal god , according as he is revealed in his most holy word ; and shall , according to that same word , maintain the true religion , the preaching of the holy word , the due administration of the sacraments , now received and preached within the realm of scotland ; that is , upon the matter , the same as to swear to be of the reformed religion , since that religion was established , as the religion of the nation , previous to this act. thereafter the king is to swear by the same oath , that he shall rule the people committed to his charge , according to the command of god , and according to the laws and constitutions received in this realm . here i must confess my own weakness , in the point of the late king iames's accession to the crown ; for my reason could never persuade me of any right he could justly claim to it , as long as this act of parliament , enacting this coronation oath to be taken by all succeeding kings , was in force ; since he neither did , nor could swear it . thus the two fundamental hinges of the government of scotland , being first , that the laws the people are to be governed by , are such as are made by the king and parliament : and secondly , that the government be administred by the king according to these laws from the obligation of a coronation oath : if either the king alone , or the three estates by themselves , take upon them to make laws , then the one hinge is broken off ; and if the government be not administrated by the king according to these laws , then the other hinge is broken off also ; and in either or both of these cases , the constitution is at an end and our legal government ceases . before i come to the other general head proposed , there is one objection that lies naturally in my way , which i judge necessary to be removed . when i speak of laws being only made by the king and the three estates of parliament , it will be told me by a certain sort of men , that this late act of parliament of their present majesties reign , abolishing episcopacy , seems to infringe that fundamental constitution ; because one of the three estates is thereby removed , viz. that of the bishops . this is easily answered , when i have told them , that before the reformation , the three estates of parliament were thus reckon'd up , the archbishops , bishops , abbats , priors , and commendator of the order of st. iohn of ierusalem , made up the first estate , and were named the lords spiritual ; the temporal lords made up the second ; and the representatives for counties and burroughs together , made up the third : but at the reformation , in respect of our being reformed by presbyters , and of the great opposition of the bishops to the reformation it self , the parliament was pleased not only to abolish the errors of the see of rome , but also the hierarchy of bishops , with all their privileges and honours , whereof that , of being the first of the ▪ three estates , was one . the church of scotland having continued under the government of presbyters , for a great many years , king iames the first of england , sound a way to restore episcopacy , in spight of the strugling genius of the nation : and albeit at that time the bishops , by a tacit consent , took their places in parliament ; yet , whether by neglect or design i know not , they were never restored to that privilege ▪ of being accounted one of the three estates ▪ of parliament ; but were ever since reputed to make up but a part of one estate , in conjunction with the temporal lords ; the second being ▪ the representatives of counties ; and the third these of the burroughs . this account i judge the fitter to give , that a great many , who have not the occasion of being acquainted with the constitution of our country , are inclinable to think , that our reckoning up of the three estates , is parallel with that of england ; when indeed there can be nothing more different . england owed its reformation to bishops , whereof some of them had the glory of sealing it with their bloud ; and that order has ever since afforded the greatest luminaries of the church . when popery was abolished in england , the heirarchy of bishops was so far from being laid aside , that it continued in the same state , as to all its privileges , and particularly that of being the first distinct state of parliament , as they found it at the reformation . what i have advanced in point of the present reckoning up of the three estates of scotland , will appear farther beyond all doubt , if we consider , that in most of the parliaments of king iames the first his reign , there was none of the order of bishops , the hierarchy being not yet restored ; and yet the validity of these parliaments were never called in question , in any of the succeeding reigns . i come now to the second general head proposed , viz. whether or not the late king did forfeit his right to the crown , by subverting the above-mentioned two fundamental hinges of the government , and if thereupon the estates did justly lay him aside . in inquiring into this , i shall not give the reader the trouble of enumerating the several cases , in which the greatest champions of regal prerogative allow , kings may forfeit their right ; though such a digression might be pardonable , being that king iames's proclamation insinuates fairly , that in no case it can happen . i confess , i am so great a friend to monarchy , as being the best of governments , and most suitable to the genius of our nation ▪ that i could not wish it precarious , nor the royal prerogative sunk below what our parliaments , preceding the two last reigns , have determined it : and i think the late king iames had reason to say of the laws of scotland , the same he was pleased to say of these of england , that they were sufficient to make the king as great a monarch as he could wish . there are a great many arguments that inforce the unreasonableness of that opinion , that kings may be called to an account for every mis-management ; and indeed , it would seem much safer for the people , many times , to lie under the incroachments of their princes , then to endeavour a redress by a remedy , that proves often worse than the disease : and therefore it is not mis-managements in general , though many and great , that unmakes a king , but only such as shake and subvert the essence of the government , and unhinge the fundamental constitution of the kingdom . and if mis-managements of this kind can be justly charged upon the late king , it follows necessarily , that immediately upon his so doing , our constitution is at an end , and our legal government dissolved ▪ and thereupon he ceased to be our king , and we to be his subjects . and how far the late king is thus chargeable , will appear in the following considerations . that the first fundamental hinge of our constitution , viz. that the laws the people are to be governed by , be made by the king and parliament , was subverted by the late king , is evident , in his assuming a power to annul and disable laws , by his two proclamations for a toleration , anno 1686. for a power to ease , annul , and disable laws , is as much a part of the legislature , as a power to make laws ; since properly , none can unmake laws , but those that made them ; yea , it would seem , that power to annul laws , should be greater than that which made them , considering that all nations by their practice have agreed to this , as a principle in politicks , that to abrogate an ancient custom or law , is one of the greatest stretches of the legislature , and should be the result of the most deliberate and sedate consultations . so that the late king , by assuming a power to annul laws , made by king and parliament , did at the same time arrogate to himself a power , at least as great , if not greater , than that of both king and parliament together . moreover , that the annulling of laws is equivalent to the making of laws , is plain , in the case before us ; for there are a great many laws incapacitating roman-catholicks to enjoy publick offices and benefices : now when king iames assum'd a power to annul these laws , and from an absolute power , which every one was to obey without reserve , was pleas'd to capacitate these persons , whom the laws made by king and parliament had incapacitated , this was equivalent , in the opinion of both the giver and receiver , and had the same effects , as if there had been an act of parliament expresly made in their favours . but not only did the late king in his declarations for liberty of conscience , by annulling of laws , take upon him a power equivalent to that of making of laws , but did in a direct and express manner invade the legislature lodged in king and parliament , by his imposing on his subjects an oath contrary to law , and , which even the king and parliament together could not impose , because it was in it self a subversion of the constitution , as being an obligation to support a power directly destructive to both the fundamental hindges of the government . by this oath the subjects were oblig'd to the utmost of their power , to defend , assist , and maintain the king and his successors in the exercise of their absolute power ; and thus , as the oath was created by this absolute power , so the absolute power must be supported by this oath , and thereby all the remnants of natural liberty , or a legal government , were extinguish'd , being the subjects were oblig'd by oath to maintain the exercise of that which plainly destroy'd them . some have been at a loss to find out the reason of the difference of styles in the late king's declaration for liberty of conscience in england , and that of ours ; the imperial language of annulling and disabling of laws being left out in the english one , and in their stead , the softer words of dispensing with laws , made use of . i confess i know no other reason of this different conduct , but that we were brought to that state of slavery , that it was not worth the while to dissemble his designs against us ; and the english requir'd to be somewhat better smooth'd over , because they had not been so fully accustomed to an arbitrary government . thus i have made out , that king iames , both by consequence , and directly , did invade the legislature , which is the main hindge of the constitution , and thereby subverted the government : and if the government was subverted , it must necessarily follow , that the kingly power was subverted with it ; and all our tyes of allegiance , whether founded upon oath , or otherwise , are extinguish'd , when the constitution we were oblig'd to maintain , is dissolved ; and the king of himself had divested himself of that authority , which we were to defend and obey . and if it be necessary to determine the time when this dissolution happen'd ; i answer , that albeit for these many years our slavery was design'd , and a great many steps made to it , which , perhaps , taken all together , might amount to a consequential subversion of the government ; yet without all doubt , in that declaration for liberty of conscience , dated the 12th of february 1686 ▪ which asserted an absolute power , which every one was to obey without reserve ; and thereupon a power to disable laws , the late king finisht his design , and our ruine : and from that critical moment i must fix the epocha of the subversion of the scotch government . but because there are some people so ridiculously fond of slavery , that they cannot endure to hear that any of the kings of scotland can forfeit his right , which i beg leave to say , is nonsense to deny , in the case of a total subversion of the government , as this in question is . i would sain know why such a thing as forfaulture should be lookt upon as so monstrous in scotland ? we find that the late king did not only assume a prerogative to annul and disable laws , and such a power as we were not only to obey without reserve , but to swear to maintain . we find that by virtue of this prerogative and power thus assumed , he did actually annul and disable a great many laws for security of our religion . now suppose he had been pleas'd to impose taxes upon his people without a parliament , and had levied them by his own army or dragoons borrowed from the invincible monarch , and had to boot annulled all our laws made for the security of our rights and properties : and in fine , suppose he had been pleas'd to lay aside the whole body of our laws , by one of these royal edicts , which all were to obey without reserve . i would willingly know of these gentlemen , by what name to call such practices ; and whether in this case , we are patiently to suffer a king to subvert the whole frame of our government , and to render bondslaves those that were born free subjects to the protection and privilege of laws . and such suppositions are both possible , and , perhaps might have been actually existent , if some had continued at the helm a year or two longer . i might here resume some things with relation to this absolute power assum'd by the late king ; and the word invincible necessity , mention'd in his first declaration for liberty of conscience , which i had occasion to hint at in my answer to the late declaration to his pretended subjects of england , &c. but i am not so fond of my own notions , as to repeat them twice ; and the rather , that the entertainment the world was pleas'd to give that paper , infinitely beyond what it deserved , makes me think , that this can come to the hands of few , who have not seen the other . only i must say this , i take no pleasure to aggravate the faults of any , or make the consequences of them look more ghastly than they are in themselves ; much less would i be guilty of such a thing toward crown'd heads . however , i am not able to alter the just appearance of this , that the publick safety can never be secured in any constitution whatsoever , and that the ends of the government are quite lost , if the person who subverts it , doth not at the same time destroy and forfeit his own share in it . i come to the second member of the second general head , viz. to inquire whether or not the late king iames did subvert that other main hinge of the government of scotland , which i have explain'd to be an obligation to govern by the laws made by the king and parliament ; and thereupon , if the estates of the kingdom did justly lay him aside ? this inquiry is indeed no difficult , though an ungrateful and meloncholly task . for what man that loves his countrey , can look back upon its ruines , without emotions of tenderness ! to enumerate all the dismal instances of the subversion of this hinge of our government , for the space of many years , requires such a pen as sung the fall of troy , or the destruction of thebes . and as the subject merits to be set beyond the power of oblivion , i cannot but hope that this fertile age will produce some one , that shall dare to imitate sueton's character , by writing the lives of some of the great , tanquam ipsi vixerint ; and handle down to posterity the fatal methods us'd for enslaving a free-born people . and rather than the memory of these transactions should perish for want of a better historian to perpetuate them , i may perhaps be induc'd to venture my own reputation in doing it , short of what the tragick theme may bear , than that it shoud not be done at all . but to confine this head to as few words as possible ; it 's equally evident , that the late king iames did subvert this fundamental of the government , as well as the former ; for so far was he from governing according to the laws made by king and parliament , that his whole government , especially since the time of his assuming a dispencing and annulling power , was a continned downright opposition to laws . here i need do no more , but refer the reader to the printed instrument of government for setling the crown of scotland upon their present majesties ; in which we have contain'd a summary of the late king 's more palpable and gross breaches of this fundamental of the constitution , and which i shall only explain a little , for the benefit of those that are strangers to our countrey . king iames did not only lay aside a great many laws and acts of parliament made against saying of mass ▪ and against iesuits and seminary priests , but would needs , in the greatest and most publick cities of the kingdom , erect publick schools and societies for iesuits and seminary priests , and did apply no inconsiderable part of the publick revenue to that use . and farther , he was pleas'd frankly to invade the property of the subjects , by inverting summarly , without any previous sentence , several protestant churches and chappels into publick mass-houses , and particularly the great church of hollyroodhouse within the capital city of the kingdom , the ancient burying-place of our kings , that had been a paroch church ever since the reformation . in spite of law , he not only caus'd to be erected popish printing-houses for printing popish books , but refus'd to allow the printing of protestant ones , merely because ▪ they were against the king's religion . he not only did invade the laws of the land , but the most tender part of the law of nature , in taking protestant noblemen and gentlemens children from their parents and friends , to be educated in foreign popish universities : as ▪ particularly the earl of wigton , and his only brother , two of the most hopeful gentlemen , and one of the noblest and ancientest families of scotland , were ravish'd from the arms of their mother the countess of crawford , where neither the prayers nor tears of the young noblemen themselves , nor the generous offer of the earl of crawford , to educate them upon his own charges , were able to prevent so hard a fate , lundie , one of the most antient families of the gentry of the kingdom , and who had the honour to be among the first reformers from popery , tho of an age that made him master of himself , was searched for , in order to be sent the same errand ; and that in a manner only becoming the action . in open defiance of a great many laws to the contrary , the late king iames was pleased to fill up some of the most important places of the government with roman catholicks ; such as chancellor , secretaries of state , commissioners of the thesaury , lords of privy-council , session , and exchequer . he was pleased to commit the great magazine of the kingdom , the government of the castle of edinburgh , and the custody of the regalia , to one of that religion ; and to fill up a great many important places of the army , with the same men that the laws had render'd incapable . our laws have wisely adapted the measure of punishment to the nature of the crime ; some infering the loss of chattels , and others the loss of life and whole estate , whether in lands or chattels ; and this last , our law calls a forfaulture , and is only inflicted upon the most attrocious criminals ; king iames did so far subvert this reasonable part of our constitution , that some of his ministers did impose upon some thousands of people , fines that far exceeded their whole estates , and consequently amounted to a forfeiture ; and all this , upon such imaginary crimes as this , because the wife went not to church once in three weeks , tho the husband did it ; and i am able to instance above 400 thus fin'd , or rather forfeited , for the like minute crimes , within the bounds of one single county . it 's an uncontroverted principle of our law , that no man can be condemn'd to die , but upon his being found guilty of the crime by a iury of fifteen men. notwithstanding of this great security of our lives and fortunes , king iames was pleased to grant commissions to military officers , impowering them to put to death without either iury , tryal , or record ; and which commissions were as boldly put in execution . nothing seems more directly founded on the law of nature , than that a man should not be depriv'd of his liberty , without showing him a cause for it ; yet how many hundreds have been in a manner buried alive in a sort of dungeons , for several years , without being told to this very day , what was their crime . the burroughs of scotland were always reputed as one of the estates of the kingdom , and by their charters ratified in parliament , were vested with a power to elect their own magistrats ; yet king iames did so far trample upon the liberties of this third estate , that without the pretence of either surrender , consent or sentence , he was pleased to impose upon them for magistrates , those that were strangers , and not free of their corporations , and a great many of them roman catholicks . it were in vain to endeavour to confine to this paper , all the instances of king iames his subverting this hinge of our constitution , viz. the obligation to govern according to law : i shall conclude with one paramount instance , that entails an eternal blot upon the government of the late king , and upon the late iustice of our nation ; i mean , the indictment of high treason against that noble person the late earl of argyle ; of whom , to say too much were impossible ; and to say too little , were a crime . it 's true , this affair was transacted in the late king charles his reign , but it justly merits the glory of being accounted one of king iames's managements , since he was his brother's commissioner , and upon the place at the time , and the source and promoter of that great person 's ruine . one would think that it needs must have been some horrid crime that could obliterate all the eminent services done by this nobleman to the crown , even in its lowest figure , that could provoke iustice to convict him of no less than high treason , to taint his blood , and declare his family ignoble ; to forfeit his estate ; to extinguish his honour , the first of its rank in the kingdom ; and to sentence himself to die the death of a traytor , and all this to happen within a few weeks after that he had been seen to move in the highest orb of favour , and to entertain the then duke of york with the greatest magnificence at his house in stirling . king charles had reason to call this crime of the earl of argyle's , a metaphysick kind of treason , and a thing he could never make sense of . but that those who are strangers to our kingdom , may have a short hint of this unintelligible affair , i beg leave to inform them , that in the parliament , where the late king iames represented his brother as high commissioner , there was an oath or test enacted to be taken by all persons in publick offices ; in which test , there were some things contained so hard of digestion , and of apparent contradiction in it self , that a great many persons of all ranks , scrupled it upon that score . yea , the universal dislike of it at first was such , as oblig'd the bishop of edinburgh , and afterward the privy council it self , to emit a publick explanation of this test , and therein to piece up , in the best manner possible , the seeming contradictions contained in it . notwithstanding of all this , and that most of the clergy , especially of the north , did take this test and oath , with , and under express explanations , and were by authority allowed them ; yet the earl of argyle had his life , honour , and fortune sacrific'd , for venturing on that which the meanest countrey minister was permitted . but that the ages to come , may know the very words , wherein this chymereal treason lay , and thereby be the better capacitate to have a true value of the learning and integrity of those gentlemen that had the honour of finding it out . i shall repeat the very expressions which were declared by the plurality of his judges to be in themselves high-treason : which are these , according as they are set down in the indictment , upon which he was found guilty . i have considered the test , and am very desirous to give obedience as far as i can . i am confident the parliament never intended to impose contradictory oaths , and therefore i think no man can explain it but for himself , and reconcile it as it is genuine , and agrees in its own sense ; and i take it in so far as it is consistent with the protestant religion , and it self : and i do declare , i mean not to bind up my self in my station , and in a lawful way , to wish , and endeavour any alteration i think to the advantage of church or state , and not repugnant to the protestant religion , and my loyalty ; and this i understand as a part of my oath . behold the transcendent crime that brought one of the greatest and ancientest families of our nation to ruine , and at last , one of the greatest and best of its subjects to the block ; and therein an unexampled instance of an arbitrary power , that scorn'd to be bounded by the mean and weak bonds of iustice and law , but could boldly venture upon all that uses to be sacred among men , when it was found needful to sacrifice to revenge any that might have the honour to oppose the design of introducing popery , and arbitrary power . it 's to be regretted , that death has exempted from a temporal bar the rest of this nobleman's iudges , that gave their vote against him , and has left us behind but one of them ; b. of f. a person iustice must stoop to , before she can meet him ; and whom heaven has denied any qualities that might render him a suitable victim for the atonement of so illustrious blood. here it is but reasonable , that i should mention with honour a great many noble and generous persons , who merit to have their names affixt on the temple of fame to after-ages , for the glory of daring to make what opposition they could to the enslaving their countrey : some of whom , neither places of preferment , nor the honour of sitting at the council-board , and on the bench , could tempt to betray the liberties of the nation ; and of whom others were proof against the frowns of princes , and could not be frighted by the loss of imployments and disgraces , from their duty . but this fertile subject i leave to a better pen. thus , i hope , i have made it appear , that the two great hinges of the government of scotland are , that the laws the people are governed by , be made by king and parliament : and that the government be administred according to these laws . i have also prov'd , that the late king iames has subverted both these two hinges of the government ; and thence , that our constitution was dissolv'd , and our obligations of obedience , and oaths of allegiance to that king , are extinguish'd , and at an end . from all which it must follow by a necessary consequence , without necessity of proving it , that the estates of the kingdom did justly fill up the throne , vacant by the dissolution of the government ; and thereby the above-mentioned narrative of king iames's proclamation has now no more force than a bull of excommunication in countreys where the thunders of the vatican have lost their force . there is but one objection that can be made with any shadow of reason against king iames his obligation to govern by law , and it is so trivial , that it scarce requires an answer ; and it 's this , that he never took the coronation-oath , and therefore cannot be charged with unhinging that part of our constitution , to govern according to law. to this , all i shall say , is first , he was obliged to take it , as being an oath enacted to be taken by all the kings of scotland ; and it were most unreasonable , that his fault in not taking it , should put him in a better condition , or us in a worse , than if he had taken it . secondly , whoever accepts the regal dignity in right of succession , is thereby understood to assume the government with , and under the same conditions and limitations that his predecessors were under : so that king iames , by accepting the crown of scotland in right of succession to his brother , that very right that entail'd upon him the crown which was once his brother's , does at the same time entail also upon him the necessary and essential conditions of the government , as they were stated in his brother's time . the rest of the proclamation runs thus . by all which they have incurr'd the guilt and pains of high-treason ( meaning the parliament , as mentioned in the former part ) and rebellion against us , and our authority . therefore we hereby declare the saids wicked persons assembled , as aforesaid , consenting to such proceedings , rebels and traytors : willing and requiring you , and all our good subjects to take notice hereof , that you give them no obedience ▪ concourse , or assistance ; but that to the utmost of your power you rise in arms against , assault , attach and destroy them , their assistants and abettors , and to take and apprehend them , and bring them to condign punishment , according to the laws and acts of parliament of that kingdom ; their estates and goods to seize , and imploy for our use , or your own subsistence , in our service . and for whatever shall happen in prosecution of this our will and pleasure , this shall be to you , and all others concern'd , a sufficient warrand and command : and for all blood-shed , slaughter , mutilation , fire-raising , or other damage done to these rebels , their accomplices , assisters , abettors , their lands , and inheritances , goods , or possessions , a sufficient indemnity , pardon , warrand and approbation , for now and ever : the which all our iudges are to explain in the most favourable and extensive sense the words can bear , in favours of our saids subjects , obeying our said order as aforesaid . declaring , we will make good to our subjects whatever we promis'd them in our declarations in favours of the protestant religion , and liberty of conscience , to all who will live peaceably , and rights and properties of our people . given at dublin ; &c. i would not have been at the pains to transcribe these expressions , if i did not think that the very reading of these unexampled invitations to slaughter , fire-raising , &c. should excite a just horror in the minds of all men , of what we are to expect , if ever heaven , for the punishment of our ingratitude , should suffer us to fall under the power of the prince that uses them . and i have chose rather to pass them over with a bare repeating of them , than by such an answer as perhaps they require , add reflections upon a prince , who has his fortune too much sunk already , and whom a great many considerations obliges me always to treat with all possible respect . finis . advertisements . a seasonable discourse wherein is examined what is lawful during the confusions and revolutions of government ; especially in the case of a king deserting his kingdoms : and how far a man may lawfully conform to the powers and commands of those , who with various successes hold kingdoms . whether it be lawful ▪ i. in paying taxes . ii. in personal service . iii. in taking oaths . iv. in giving himself up to a final allegiance . as also , whether the nature of war be inconsistent with the nature of the christian religion . sold by rich. ianeway , in queen's-head court in pater-noster-row . ioannis georgii graevii oratio de auspicatissima expeditione britannica . cum potentissimus & invictissimus guilielmus arausionensis princeps , angliae , galliae & hiberniae rex inauguraretur , die xi aprilis , auctoritate praepotentium & illustrium ordinum trajectinae dioeceseos , habita 1689. impensis d. newman , ad insignia regalia in vico vulgo vocato the poultry . at edinburgh the fifth day of february, one thousand six hundred fourty and nine years. scotland. parliament. committee of estates. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a74122 of text r211204 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.13[82]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a74122 thomason 669.f.13[82] estc r211204 99869935 99869935 162978 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a74122) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 162978) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 246:669f13[82]) at edinburgh the fifth day of february, one thousand six hundred fourty and nine years. scotland. parliament. committee of estates. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by evan tyler, printer to the kings most excellent majesty [i.e. s.n.], edinburgh [i.e. london] : 1649. a london reprint. cf. steele. at head of text: engraving of royal seal, and "god save the king." signed: william scot, cler. parl. proclaiming charles ii king of great britain, france, and ireland. he is to give satisfaction by taking the covenant. this to be printed and proclaimed. a london reprint of [steele iii] no. 2005, with tyler's edinburgh imprint -cf. steele. annotation on thomason copy: "feb. 5. 1648". reproduction of the original in the british library. eng charles -ii, -king of england, 1630-1685 -early works to 1800. solemn league and covenant (1643). -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. great britain -history -commonwealth and protectorate, 1649-1660 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1649-1660 -early works to 1800. a74122 r211204 (thomason 669.f.13[82]). civilwar no god save the king. at edinburgh the fifth day of february, one thousand six hundred fourty and nine years. scotland. parliament 1649 541 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2008-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-08 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion god save the king . at edjnbvrgh the fifth day of february , one thousand six hundred fourty and nine years . the estates of parliament presently conveened , in this second session of the second trienniall parliament , by vertue of an act of the committee of estates , who had power and authority from the last parliament for conveening the parliament , considering , that , forasmuch as the kings majesty who lately reigned , is contrary to the dissent and protestation of this kingdome now removed by a violent death ; and that by the lords blessing there is left unto us a righteous heire , and lawfull successour , charles prince of scotland and wales , now king of great britain , france and ireland ; we the estates of parliament of the kingdom of scotland , doe therefore most unanimously and cheerfully in recognisance and acknowledgment of his just right , title , and succession to the crown of these kingdoms , hereby proclaim and declare to all the world ; that the said lord and prince charles is by the providence of god , and by the lawfull right of undoubted succession and descent , king of great britain , france , and ireland , whom all the subjects of this kingdome are bound humbly and faithfully to obey , maintain and defend according to the nationall covenant , and the solemn league and covenant betwixt the kingdoms with their lives and goods against all deadly , as their onely righteous soveraign , lord and king . and because his majestie is bound by the law of god , and fundamentall lawes of this kingdome to rule in righteousnesse and equity for the honor of god , the good of religion , and the wealth of his people : it is hereby declared , that before he be admitted to the exercise of his royall power , he shall give satisfaction to this kingdom in these things that concerne the security of religion , the union betwixt the kingdomes , and the good and peace of this kingdome , according to the nationall covenant , and the solemn league and covenant , for the which end we are resolved with all possible expedition to make our humble and earnest addresses to his majestie ; for the testification of all which , we the parliament of the kingdome of scotland , publish this our due acknowledgement of his just right , title , and succession to the crowne of these kingdoms at the mercat crosse of edinburgh with all usuall solemnities in the like cases , and ordains his royall name , portract and seale to be used in the publike writings and judicatories of the kingdom , and in the mint-house , as was usually done to his royall predecessors , and command this act to be proclaimed at all the mercat grosses of the royall burghs within this kingdom , and to be printed , that none may pretend ignorance thereof . god save , king charles , the second . william scot , cler. parl. edinburgh , printed by evan tyler , printer to the kings most excellent majesty , 1649. nahash redivivus in a letter from the parliament of scotland, directed to the honorable william lenthal, speaker of the house of commons examined and answered by john harrison. harrison, john, of the inner temple. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a45672 of text r9915 in the english short title catalog (wing h894). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 51 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 12 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a45672 wing h894 estc r9915 11811122 ocm 11811122 49520 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a45672) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 49520) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 495:26) nahash redivivus in a letter from the parliament of scotland, directed to the honorable william lenthal, speaker of the house of commons examined and answered by john harrison. harrison, john, of the inner temple. 23 p. printed for thomas brewster ..., london : 1649. attributed by thomason to john harrington. reproduction of original in huntington library. eng scotland. -parliament. -letter from the commissioners of the kingdome of scotland ... to w. lenthal. a45672 r9915 (wing h894). civilwar no nahash redivivus in a letter from the parliament of scotland, directed to the honorable william lenthal, speaker of the house of commons. ex harrison, john, of the inner temple 1649 9963 14 0 0 0 0 0 14 c the rate of 14 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2004-08 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-10 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-11 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2004-11 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-01 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion nahash redivivus in a letter from the parliament of scotland , directed to the honorable william lenthal , speaker of the house of commons . examined and answered , by john harrison of the inner-temple esquire . 1 sam. 11.2 . and nahash the amonite said unto them , on this condition will i make a covenant with you , that i may thrust out all your right eyes . vers 11. saul put the hoast in three companies , and they came into the midst of the hoast in the morning watch , and slew the amonites til the heat of the day ; and it came to pass that they which remained were scattered , so that two of them were not left together . si pars una faedus violaverit , poterit altera a foedere discedere , nam capita foederis singula conditionis vim habent . h. grot. in lib. 2. de jure belli & pacis cap. 15. n. 15. si vel tantillum ex dictis pars alterutra transgrederetur rupta fore pacta . eodem in loco ex thucydide . london , printed for thomas brewster , and are to be sold at the three bibles in creed-lane , neer the west-end of pauls . 1649. nahash redivivus in a letter from the parliament of scotland , directed to the honorable william lenthal esquire , speaker of the house of commons . although it may perhaps seeme strange to those who having taken the boldness to believe themselves men , and in that belief to make use of their own reason , and by the exercise thereof have formed to themselves right apprehensions of things and men , and have seen through those masks and pretences of religion , covenant and reformation , by which our ill neighbours on the other side of tweede have endeavoured to vail and muffle themselves , while they pursued their own interest : that either precious time should be spent , or good paper so ill employed as take notice of their late letter from their parliament misdirected , and therefore perhaps ought not to have had publick reception , much less an answer . yet for that there are many good souls amongst us , ful of integritie and piety , and whose zeal to the common wealth of england is as warm , and their affections as real as any others , according as they apprehend , who yet come not beyond that infant rate of illumination and reformation of presbytery ; and therefore while they are under that scottish mist , and calidonian darkness , are in great danger of seducement , and of being imposed upon by those , who march behinde , that stalking horse to shoot their game dead , and of being made by them to serve turns , perfectly opposite to their own good intentions , and promote interests destructive to the common-wealth of england and the good of the people in it : to which ininconveniency their candor and innocency alone would never have subjected them , if they would but have acted as men , and have taken the pains to prove , and examine all things , and not have suffered themselves to be led blindfold by those blind-guides amongst us , especially a few wretched ones here in london , the antisignani of the appollyonists , who wear a black garment to deceive , by whom they are made believe that the blessed reformation in scotland , and the happy government there , is purely evangelical , and according to the minde of christ , and that all is gospel that comes from thence ; to which belief experience hath shewed us , that we have many honest men , though sufficiently weak , as firmly glewed , as any poor , wretched , and perhaps well-meaning papist is to believe , that all is canonicall which the roman consistory shall resolve , that vrim and thummim are the linings of the popes pall , and that oracular verity is as clearly and frequently spoken now from his chair , as it was of old from between the cherubims . for the sake therefore of poor honest presbyterians , whose weakness apprentizing their judgments to their teachers , and they for interest causing them to depend upon a forraign state , makes them as dangerous to this common-wealth , besides their intentions , as those are intentionally , who are acted from rome , i shall for their sakes , and caution to them , crave leave of those that need it not a little to examine this scots letter , and upon that occasion to offer some light to those who are benighted in a fog of that land of darkness . and although i very well understand what the power of prejudice is , and of what difficulty to remove ; and that it is not an easie matter to dispel those suffusions , or couch those cataracts that have been growing upon our eyes from our birth ; yet for that the intellectual organ ( pardon the abuse of the expression ) hath a right formation , and is intrinsecally adequate to the receptions of light , if what is adventitious and extrinsecal be removed , i shall not wholly despair , that so many as love truth will see it , if it be rightly proposed , though perhaps not so at first as to distinguish men and trees ; but when they shall perceive light to come in , they will undoubtedly say , surely the light is a good thing , and finde that it offends onely those who have weak , or sore eyes . i also know how hard it is to perswade any of their own imperfections , and especially in matter of knowledg , most men beleeving , that themselves ( or some other , whom their laziness hath propounded to follow as an infallible guide ) have attained the aym of knowledg ; and that though many are below them , who ought to come up to their measure , yet that nothing is really beyond them , which they should move toward ; and that what ever goes besides their rule , is error and schism ; and what ever pretend beyond their view , is fancy and enthusiasm : most being like her in seneca , who would not believe the blindness of her eyes , but accused her house of darkness . to evidence therefore , that there is a suffusion remaining upon the discerning faculty of most men , it would be necessary to shew , that it is originally upon all , and how it grows , that so we may the more willingly submit to the cure of it . to this end , we might consider , that man liveth the several lives , or passeth through the several states of vegetation , sense , and reason . of the first , we shall say nothing , from thence this disease grows not ; but when he comes out of infancy ( though that also be on this side vegetation ) into childhood , and begins to receive in the objects of sense , specially those of hearing and seeing ( the other will not in this subject concern us ) he begins to form to himself certain idola or images of things , as they are brought to him by those senses , which wanting a judgment to examine , he layes them up as they offer themselves in the store-house of his memory ; and by often , either acts of memory , or of new reception of the same object by the same sense , it becomes familiar to him , conformed to his sense ( to him ( then ) the highest judg of truth ) and is seldom after reduced to examination , that being a thing which few believe to be necessary , and of which number fewer are willing to undergo the pains . thus from our eyes come all errors , natural or physical , and quantitative ; and from our ears , all those that refer to things aeconomical , political , or theological . i will not descend to the other senses , as nothing to this subject , they looking at errors , personal or individual , nor was there need to have named the first but for evidence to the second , and demonstration both of the disease and the cure . in a word ( that the gate may not be too great for the house ( this being no place for a just volumn , which the subject might deserve , and exact from a greater leisure ) nor seem to be built wholly of an heterogeneal matter ) we live a life of sense before we can live a life of reason ; and by the frequent acts of sense , we put a false tincture upon our then weak judgments , not yet able to act by themselves : which tincture dis-colours to our after receptions , whatsoever is rightly offered to our discussion or discourse , for quo semel est imbuta recens , servabit odorem , &c. how easily are children deceived in quantity at distance ? what childe not otherwise told , doth not to firmly beleeve , being taught by his sense , that the moon is not greater then a sieve , or at most then a cart-wheel ? and this conceit he shall carry to his grave , and beleeve it knowledg , and his conception truth , if he be not delivered by demonstration : for , that other way of being delivered by the assertion of some man , whom he beleeves in those things fit to be his master , is onely to beget a belief , not a knowledg . but let this childe be instructed with arithmetick and geometry , and so prepared , let him read the doctrines of the sphears and of trigonometry , he will then easily discover there is a parallax , and finde what it is ; and by the help of his lines , and angles , and numbers , be able to determine her distance , and to demonstrate her quantity to his own satisfaction ; and wonder that his sense should have so far misled his former opinion . i might say the like of the daily and annual motion which sense hath put in the heavens , though an inabled judgment will finde it in the earth , and deliver also the planets from all retrograde motion in their respective circles , and see it certain , equal , ordinate , and progressive , with respect to their own centers , and that all anomalous phaenomena arise from the place of our contemplation of them ; but this is to wander too far , onely the truth that is found in these contemplations , demonstrative and satisfactory , may well put men upon , at least , a suspition , that error and mistake , may enter by the ears , as well as by the eyes , in all those three considerations formerly mentioned ; and that there may be some help to deliver them . especially , we may beleeve the first , when we see the jews , turks , papists , and that thing called a common-protestant ( the worst of the four ) keeping so tenaciously those opinions ( i would not call them principles , unless catachrestically , and as to them ) which they sucked in with their mothers milk ; for which , never an one of them can give any better reason then the other , nor any one of them , what becomes a reasonable man , no more then those who receive their forms of religion ; and so also of politicks later , and from older teachers , with as little demonstration , but with as much obediential weakness , as the childe receives its mothers dictates , while it stands to be dressed at her knee . but no more of this : and i beg their pardon , that think this either too much , or too little to the purpose . i know it is necessary for some , and perhaps it may please others , i onely desire our conscientious presbyterians ( for to the factious ones , the scotch-acted ones , i have nothing to say , because i would say nothing in vain ) would look to themselves , and take heed they be not misled by their dark lanthorns , who understand not their own way : that they would but beleeve it is possible , they may erre and their guides too , whom they have chose to follow , and therefore prove all things , and with an acted reason , read over this scotch letter , and what will be said to it ; and that not onely in these few pages , but in such other as will take pains to prepare antidotes against these poysons propined by seeming friends : perhaps it may appear to them upon an unprejudiced examination , worthy their hate and abomination . now to the letter , which followeth . sir , the estates of the parliament of this kingdom , having received a letter , dated the 23. of may , signed by you as speaker of the parliament , and written in the name of the common-wealth of england ; which titles , in regard of the solemn league and covenant , and treaties , and the many declarations of the parliaments of both kingdoms , are such as they may not acknowledg . it is a thing most worthy the observation of any who will take notice of the wonderful acts of providence that are abroad in the world ( in the time of so great a catastrophe ) for the forming of his judgment to a right prognosis of events , or direction of his practice , into ways of safety to himself , that no man hath suffered , or fain , or been any way unhappy , or unsuccessful in any of his endevors , but he hath been instrumental to it , and that generally by precipitating themselves into such actions , in the pursuit of a false or mistaken interest ; which most spectators , though but of common foresight could discern , would prove funest and dangerous . follow this beginning of these men to the end ; and take thence another example of this rule . how necessary is it to have no interest in our pursuit , but that of god ? and how easily doth he attain the end of his designes , that designes onely to be subservient to the will of god , as he shall be led into it by the evidence of the divine revelation ? he that walketh uprightly , walketh safely ; but he that perverteth his ways , shall be found out . that foulest hypocrisie that ever the sun looked upon , far beyond that of the temple of the lord , the temple of the lord : or , we have abraham to our father , cannot but have heavily provoked the omniscience of the divine purity , and an heavy judgment must needs attend them ; which that it may come upon them with effect , and finde them naked , and without defence ; see how they blow up their own bulwarks , and cast away whatsoever should uphold them ; and must needs do it with the pre●ence of their common subject of all their gross hypocrisie , and provocation , the solemn league and covenant . are they so sure , they shall never more need the common-wealth of england , or the parliament here , that they may not acknowledg it ? and that by reason of the solemn league and covenant , the treaties , and declarations of both kingdoms ? can it be imagined , that these were ever made , or entered into , with an intention to give the scotish nation a power paramount over that of england ? what plaistered foreheads have this people , that can thus impudently still offer these things , which have been so often cleered by the parliament of england , and with light so stating in their faces , that they could never abide to look on them ! we know they never answered them , and believe they stand so convinced of the impossibility , that it will never be attempted . when they offer any thing in answer , it will not want a reply , if it can be worth it . for the treaties they speak of , it is believed here , there are none in force . they have most happily delivered us , by their barbarous , inhumane , and faedifragous invasion of this nation the last yeer , which was determined , promoted , carried on , and acted by authority of the parliament of scotland . sure they cannot say , that that invasion was also according to the treaty and covenant , and in pursuance of the ends thereof , impudence it self must acknowledg it a breach ; if so , how hath it been since made up ? it s true , acts may be done in a nation , by some of a nation against treaties , which are not thereby broken , but reparation and satisfaction may be made , and the treaty not suffer by it . but it is certainly an undeniable maxime , that an act cannot be done by a nation against a treaty ( by the supream authority ) but it dissolves the treaty , and can never be repaired , but by mutual consent . and therefore at this time , this nation is through the merciful dispensation of the wisest providence , as free from whatsoever relation or mutual obligation to the nation of scotland , by the treaties and covenant , as if they had never been made . and for declarations of this parliament , they binde no more then any other laws do , which the parliament hath power to repeal , as often as in their judgments they finde it good for the people to do so , and to do otherwise , were a breach of their trust , and neglect of their duty . if the scots make laws like those of the medes and persians ( which we conceive they do not ) much good may they do them ; we envy it not the parliament of england is more grave , then to dance after a bag-pipe . it were to be wished , we had not some others among us , more in love with their baubles . but who are like to loose most by this not acknowledging ? are we bound when they are free ? let them not over-value themselves ? may they not have need again of their neighbors ? have they made a solemn league and covenant also , with all the cavalierish party , with montross , and all his heathen mountainers ? let them make such a covenant , and with death , and hell too , either it shall not stand , or they shall fall by it . if they should need us again , ( and why perhaps may they not ? ) must they not eat their word , notwithstanding the solemn league and covenant ? it is very probable , that before the common wealth of england come to treat with them again , they will make them acknowledg them a common-wealth , or make them do that which some of them will think worse for them ; though perhaps it will not be really so for most . it might be as well for some among them , if they were a common-wealth too ; but it is not necessary they should be made happy against their wills ; and indeed , all men are not fit for it : some are fit to be free-men , and some delight to be slaves . they may remember the states of holland would not treat with the king of spain for their twelve years truce , till he owned them for free estates , and gave them the titles of high and mighty . and i hope this common-wealth will as well know how to be duly acknowledged , and as punctually exact it , though i believe they will not ( as they need not ) swell up to an appearance of greatness , by the putting on of those bubbles and bladders of empty and windy titles , which may very well be omitted , where it is resolved by the actions of justice , prudence , and fortitude , to lay a foundation for reputation and respect in the judgment and affections of men . one short question to the signall hypocrisie of this paragraph before i leave it . do they believe there is a god ? or that he is omniscient ? is he the searcher of hearts ? are they so tender of the covenant now , that they cannot acknowledg england a common-wealth , and yet last year , notwithstanding the covenant , could invade it with an army , and commit all manner of hostile acts in it , of the effects whereof many counties labour at this day ? for a close to this paragraph . let them remember they must recant , and they must acknowledg this a common-wealth . this were a hard task to some spirits , but their stool of repentance hath prepared them to such things , and indeed made them able to do any thing without blushing . if the winde grow high , they can lower their sayls , they use to rant it like knights errant when they have no enemy , but they are as submissive as spaniels , when well cudgelled . paragraph 2. as for the matter therein contained , those many things of just resentment , wherein satisfaction is demanded from this kingdom , are only mentioned in the generall , and therefore cannot so well receive a particular answer . but if by these generall expressions , the late unlawfull engagement against england be understood , they desire that their protestation against the same in parliament , and the opposition made thereunto by them afterward in arms ( which they never laid down , untill the garrisons of berwick and carlisle were restored unto the kingdom of england ) may be remembred , together with the letter of the house of commons to the generall assembly of this kirk , of the third of august , 1648. and that lieu. gen. cromwell , authorized from both houses of parliament , did upon the fifth of october last , represent to the committee of estates of this kingdom , the wrongs and injuries committed against the kingdom of england in that engagement , and thereupon did demand , that they would give assurance in the name of the kingdom of scotland , not to admit or suffer any who have been active in , or consenting to that engagement , to be imployed in any publique place , or trust whatsoever ; which was not only granted , and afterward confirmed in parliament , but all acts for prosecution thereof have been repealed , and all proceeding relating thereunto , publiquely disclaimed and if any other wrongs shall be made known unto us , we shall be ready to return such an answer , as may give just satisfaction . what those things of just resentment are , which the letters of the parliament of england mentions in generall , particular pens can take no notice of . they may know them in due time ▪ in reference to former , as well as later actions in england , and a seven years continued progresse in ireland , which they may assure themselves are not forgotten . as to the late unlawfull engagement , which they so readily confesse , and withall tell of their protestation against it ; but it is well known they said nothing against it , till they saw the army would be commanded by such as would not serve their turnes , nor carry on their interest , but the invasion was generally liked , and promoted by their boutefeu priests , till they saw they were out-witted by the fox hamilton , and when they saw the enemies of their kirk-government in power in the army , then indeed the engagement was unlawful , because it might have proved prelaticall , but had it been orthodox it had been lawful enough . they may take notice that it is not their protestation that will build again the houses they fired , store with plenty the countyes they wasted , restore to honor violated chastity , or recover the lives lost in resisting their covenanting invasion ; and therefore notwithstanding their protestation , the breach was national , and so must the satisfaction be ; and the common-wealth of england will expect a better then that which universally expiates all things there ; the wawling humiliations in the stool of hypocrisie . but besides , they say that they continued in arms till the garrisons of barwick and carlisle were delivered , and therefore they did more then protest ; it is true indeed they did , but that they were able to do so , let them thank that honorable lieut. general , who like a good disciple of the best master , had learned to forgive his enemies , and to render them good for their evil , who had a wretched countrey justly forfeited by their wicked invasion wholly at his mercy , as were also all that dissembling crew that then cried little less then hosanna to him , and who have since appeared again , what they then were , and what his honor was then told they then were , and what he would after finde them , ( viz. scots ) though the excess of his own candor , and the melting flowings of his christian spirit would neither suffer him to believe what he could not chuse but know , nor act as became their provocations ; but let that pass , perhaps the coals of fire he then heaped upon their heads , may be a more lasting torment to them then the execution of his sword . they say the lieut. general represented the wrongs and injuries committed against england in that engagement . he did not then revenge them or take reparation , he might have done the one as well as the other , or as well as he gave that subsistence they have . those forces who had beaten their numerous army in england , might without great difficulty have gathered their gleanings of men , and consumed all the heapes of their harvest , the time of year was proper to have distroyed it : had his horse stayed there to have eaten their oates , their men must have starved for want of food , for what they granted or repealed , which they boast in this paragraph , they may thank him who gave them a capacity to do it , and which they will finde they will not be able to maintain without some help more merciful to their necessities then any that will be solicited for them , by either montross , or forth , or cochram , or that shall be brought them by their so hastily embraced charls the second , the fates of whose house they have seemed with great affection to espouse ▪ and think with their bladders to buoy up his sinking ship . for the garrisons of barwick and carlisle , we shall not thank them for delivery of them , they would have cost them more to keep then the pay of the souldiers in those towns ; there were english forces among them which they were desirous might depart , lest their longer stay there might further discover their weakness and poverty , and increase it , and besides , perhaps they might have sowne among them some tares of error , heresie , and schism , which have troubled the presbytery to weede out of the kirk , a thing which they fear more then all the prophaness in the nation , for that they have a cathobian , the blessed stool : but for this other , the doctors are not yet agreed upon a recipe . and for their compliance with the lieut. generals demands , that none who had been in that engagement should have any employment in any publick place or trust , it adds nothing to their merit an obligation upon them by that demand , in establishing thereby their subsistence they had not been without that act of his ; the compliance wherewith they would have now so fain believed , was an effect of their own ingenuity and gratitude , dispositions perhaps which they are no more able to bring into act , then their whole wretched countrey is to give just satisfaction to the wrong which this nation hath within these ten years suffered by them . paragraph 3. if the bonds of religion , loyalty to the king , and mutual amity and friendship , betwixt the kingdoms be impartially considered , according to the solemn league and covenant , and the professions and declarations of both kingdoms ; the estates of parliament think that they have just cause to complain of the late proceeddings in england , in reference to religion ▪ the taking away of the kings life , and the changing the fundamental government of that kingdom ; against which , this kirk and kingdom , and their commissioners have protested , and given testimony , whereunto they do still adhere . if the principles of the common-freedom and justice , the rules and laws of nations , and of mutual amity and friendship with one another be considered , the common wealth of england may think they have just cause to complain of the scots , not onely for invading this nation with an army , but usurping with a ridiculous impudence , a power paramount to the supream power of england , assembled in parliament , upon all occasions , taking upon them , not onely to direct what they are to do with the king , and in the government , but they will needs make a religion , and impose that too . what state-religion is , which for political respects , is almost every where imposed upon the people , this is not a place to examine . but it would deserve their weightiest consideration , whether some thing be not done herein , by way of usurpation of the incommunicable throne . and while men cry out of prophaneness ( and justly too , perhaps it never more abounded ) commit the most horrible that ever was in compelling religion to dress it self in forms to serve their secular interests ; but hindering all they can the progress of it , in purity and power , to the promoting of it in that way , which needs not their help . have we not the scriptures in england , and in english too ? and are not they the rule of all things that are to be believed , and all things to be done ? may not we expect the divine discoveries and assistance , to such as humbly and duly seek to know the will and minde of god , as well as they of scotland ? may we not keep a smith in israel ? do we offer to impose ought upon them ? did not they think it an intolerable burthen , when their late tyrant , by the councel of his priests , would obtrude upon them a rule of worship , and state of government ecclesiastical ▪ and is it so sweet to do what they thought too hard to suffer , as it put them to the hazard of all to avoid it ? but perhaps they will say , that was a corrupt form of worship and government ; but this of theirs , is the best reformed . they should say , the best that they know ; and then we will desire them , to give leave to us to be free , that are not , perhaps , so fully perswaded of it . to beg the thing in question , is no good logick ; and may we not think it possible , they may miss it in their theologie too . for that of the kings life , the parliament of england hath published to all the world , the causes of their so proceeding with the late king of england . if he be a tyrant , oppress his people against the laws , which he tramples under foot , and puts his will in the place , levy war , and seek to make a conquest of the people , and god gives the people a victory against him , he falls into their hands ; they propound him terms for their future safety , he refuseth what they judg necessary ; they thereupon bring him to judgment , and condemn , and execute him as a tyrant : what hath scotland to do with this ? because the king of scotland will tyrannize england , therefore england must not secure it self , because scotland will not give it leave . how long hath this dependence been ? they cannot but remember it was wont to lie on the other side ; why was there so much care had else in penning the preface to the large treaty ? the breaking whereof , by their invasion , hath put things as they were . as to the change of the fundamental government , as they are pleased to call it ; who made them so well able to judg what fundamental government is with us , that they can so magisterially pronounce of it ? but what hath their kirk to do with it ? are they set up over nations , to pluck up , and to plant ? where is the jus divinum for it ? and how far doth their jurisdiction extend ? it may be it is as boundless as the sea : we are sure the sea bounds it not ( for they practise at that rate in ireland , as they pronounce here ) and , perhaps , if it should get a little more strength , it would shew its impudence further . but it doth well for its time , it hath not been long a growing , it made a good stop last yeer , to put it self out of pupilage , and commenced independent ; it was more then the old one could ever do , in the height of her pride and ruff. their protest herein , hath given sufficient testimony to all that observe ; that they are not much troubled with blushing ; that they are very forward to meddle with that they have nothing to do with ; and are heterogenial to that sort of people , who are of that kingdom , which is said not to be of this world ; they love so much to be espousing all secular interests , and mixing and immerging themselves in them ; and there is the less hope they will mend for the future , because they , still , at present , do so constantly adhere . but it is not impossible they may change their mindes ; there is one way to effect it . paragraph 4. and since it is apparent there hath been of late in england , a backsliding and departure from the grounds and principles , wherein the two kingdoms were engaged ; the parliament of this kingdom doth propound , that the late proceedings there , against covenant and treaties , may be disclaimed and disavowed , as the prosecution of the late unlawful engagement against england , and their former professions , may return to the same . vpon which grounds , they are content to authorise commissioners on behalf of this kingdom , to treat with commissioners from both houses of the parliament of england , sitting in freedom , concerning all matters of just complaint , which either nation may have against the other , and for redress and reparation thereof , and to do every thing that may further conduce , for continuing the happy peace and vnion betwixt the kingdoms , which can never be setled upon so sure a foundation as the former treaties , and the solemn league and covenant : from which , as no alteration , or revolution of affairs , can absolve either kingdom , so we trust in god , that no success , whether good or bad , shall be able to divert us . but as it hath been our care in time past , it shall be still our real endevor , for the future , to keep our selves free of all compliance with , or inclining to the popish , prelatical , and malignant party , upon the one hand ▪ or to those that are enemies to the fundamental government , by king and parliament , and countenance and maintain error , heresie , and schism , upon the other . i have no other thing in command from the parliament of this kingdom , but to take notice , that there is no answer returned to their letter of the fifth of march last , and so rests . many things may be apparent to you , which are not true , nor will appear so to those who have their souls exercised to discern good and evil , or who lie not under the pre-occupations of prejudice . it is not to us apparent that stand nearer , that there is any such back-sliding and departure from the grounds and principles , wherein the two nations were engaged ; of which , if they would convince , they should do well to enumerate what those grounds and principles were , that upon agreement in matter of fact , we might descend to the consideration of , whether they be principles , and then whether or no they be deserted , before they accuse of apostacy , and deserting of principles . if we consider what it was that stirred up either , or both the nations to engage in the war that hath been made against the late king , it will appear , it was the sense of the present tyranny and oppression , and a just fear of greater . that which was propounded by them in that engagement , can be no other , but the good of the nations in their just liberty ; which being the ultimate end propounded , must needs be the first principle of motion ; and onely that can deserve the name of a principle , and every thing else is a superstructure , and can onely stand in the relation and category of a means to that end ; and every means is to be made use of onely , so far as it is conducible to the end , and to be departed from when it deviates , and to be left behinde , and others taken up , when the former fall short . in the beginning it was hoped , it was wished , that the king might have seen , and owned ▪ and mended his errors , and that the good of the people might have consisted with the continuance of the king ; and there wanted not many addresses for it , and long expectations of it , nor overtures of such dangerous condescention , as we have cause forever to bless god , whose watchful providence kept us , in hiding from his eyes , the means of our ruine , which were by our idolatry of kingship put into his hands ; and at last discovering to us , how incommensurable that means was to our just end , and that there was an incompossibility of a coexistence of kingship , and the nations happiness , and the saedifragous invasion of england , by the nation of scotland , was not the worst colyriam for clearing our eyes , in this particular . the parliament of england therefore finding the former remedies not onely improper and invalid , but dangerous and destructive ; which at best would but have wrought a palliate cure , and induced a cicatrice upon the orifice of a fistula ; in discharge of their duty , they proceeded forward upon their first principle , to a fundamental cure ; and not onely to cure the disease in the present , and continuing cause , but to eradicate the original cause it self , and take away thereby , all common possibility of recidivation . and this hath not been to go backward , but to go forward : and if the scots be angry at the distance they finde between us , they may do well to inquire , whether it proceeds not from their standing still , and not pursuing their principle rather , then from our apostasie from it ; unless they will be ingenuous for once , and confess that they proceeded not upon the same principle , viz. the good of the people governed , but rather looked at some interest of the governors , and for so much they have done their share ; so as a king hath long been nominal onely among them , having had nothing at all to do in their legislative power , hath had no commissioners in their parliament , or kirk assembly , as formerly , nor any thing to do with his little revenue there ; only the name was necessary to be continued there , and nothing else , but his full power in england ; how else should they hope for the great offices at court , the opportunity of bribery in the bed-chamber , the prodigal , and accountless waste of the privy purse , for the relief of their beggery ; unto which , to compel their king , they know the best of all men , by their unblushing importunities : but , for the good of the governed , it is not yet apparent they have done any thing for their release from a miserable slavery , not much on this side that condition which our late tyrant ( setting before him a wel known pattern ) had designed us unto . they suffering their vassals ( for so they are pleased to honor their tenants ) to be in a condition , when their many chaldrons of victual-rent is once paid , in little better condition , then those whose livery is a canvas suite , and wooden shooes , with this difference , that for defect of wood , to make such provision , many there , especially of the other sex , are forced to go bare-foot . but to make these in any sort free , were to abate their own greatness , which hath no other foundation , then the miserable oppression which themselves put upon the people , for whose satisfaction , and to give them some content , their ministers tell the common people they are the happiest souls , and the purest kirk under heaven , for they are as perfectly freed from popery and prelacy , as they are from all things that are comfortably fit either to eat or wear . but the letter saith , their parliament doth propound , that the late proceedings here against covenant and treaties may be disclaimed and disavowed , as the late unlawful engagement against england hath been disclaimed and disavowed there , and that such as have departed from these principles , and their former professions , may return to the same , upon which gounds they are content to authorise commissioners to treat ; where was this done ? was it in the parliament house , or in the consistory ? had they not been lately imposing some pennance ? and now they cannot get out of that stile . the parliament sent unto them to offer their resentments of the injuries this nation received from them , and demanded satisfaction for them , and a way , if they thought fit to embrace it , for an amicable composure . the scots propound and obtrude previous conditions , which the parliament of england must yeild to , or they will not treat : in good time , who are like to have most use of it ? worse termes then that of nahash , the right eyes would have served him , yet that demand cost him dear ; but here nothing less then self-distruction ; we must return back to what we have left , cease to be a free common-wealth , suffer a scotish presbytery to be set up amongst us , submit to their king , and then , forsooth , they will authorise commissioners to treat with commissioners from the houses of the parliament of england , sitting in freedom , and will embrace us again , and be our dear brethren ; and when this is done , what shall we get by it , but as much as they , who hug a begger , and catch a louse . it seemes they account themselves very desirable , they require such conditions ; but they consider not what was told them in the beginning of this discourse , they may be hereby instrumental to their own sufferings , excluding all possibility of amicable composure , and put themselves hereby into an incapacity to be otherwise treated , then as enemies . but before we proceed further , we must aske their meaning of the word freedom , because they say their treaty must be with the houses of parliament , sitting in freedom ; what want of freedom is there in this parliament ? there is not two houses , what have they to do with that , who have but one themselves ; and they may be silent of alterations , all men know they have suffered alterations in their parliament ; the removal of their lords , of the articles , was as material a step to the eclipsing of their kings power , and restoring their people to their just liberty , as any alteration made with us in parliament ; but that they will say was necessary , and conducing to the good of the people there : we will not deny but it might , and will exercise no act of judgment upon it ; we say , what we had done , was also necessary , and conducing to the peoples good , and let them be desired to suspend their usurped paramount power , and not judg our actions , nor interpose in that , wherein they have nothing to do . but the house sits not in freedom , many members are kept away by force , and it sits under the power of the sword ; so it hath done for seven years past , as to the protection of it , or else it had not sate at all , it had fallen by the late kings sword , if it had not protected it self by its own . but let us ask , how sits their parliament , is there not something of a sword there ? did not some of those now in power ▪ when their army was destroyed in england ▪ raise an army in scotland , and with it forced their then parliament from edenbrough , and by the power of the sword ( which they were inabled to keep in their hand by that part of our army that marched into scotland with the honorable lieut. gen. a preserving favour , which they could then own , and give thanks for ) they called a new parliament , and gave rules previous to election , that none should be members that had been in the late engagement against england ; and upon this ground they still keep out what lords ( as well as others ) they fear wil divest them of their government . this is all very lawful with them , and the parliament very free ▪ and it writes this letter as believing it is so , and yet can upbraid us , because some were kept out by force ▪ which the parliament keeps out still , who perhaps were no great enemies to their late unlawful engagement ; and some perhaps there were , more their spies and agents , then became any trusted with an interest more contradistinct to theirs , then to admit of a coalition , much less exchange ; and who at this day hold such correspondencies with them , if they be not deceived , who think they have means to know , as may hereafter cost them very dear ; we are yet to learn , why the parliament of england may not keep out those , who are too good friends to a state , that invaded us with an army , as well as the present parliament of scotland will not admit of those who engaged against england , and would not suffer their party to command them in the expedition . t is true , all who are not now in the house , are not their friends ; some there are who know them too well , ever to entertain such terms with them , whose being in or out , or the cause of it , if i should meddle with , i should imitate them , which is something against my genius , interposing in that , in which i have nothing to do ; and which onely belongs to the judgment of the house . therefore i hope they will talk no more of freedom , but come to the next , which is , for the continuing the happy peace and union between the nations ; for they may please to take notice , that without their leave , the one of them is no kingdom , but a common-wealth ; but for the continuance , they cannot get out of their dreams : what was the invasion of england , a fancy onely , or an apparition ? sure some of them felt it otherwise , when they came to waken in the other world : are we still at peace ? doth the union hold ? by what bands ? have they not broken all that can unite humane society ? have they played the whore so shamefully , and is the marriage still good ? they invaded us with an army against all leagues , and treaties , they thereby set us loose : and there is no more tie between the nations , then there is between us and the transilvanian ; with whom , we have not , nor never had any league . yet we shall not certainly refuse a peace of neighborhood , when just , and due satisfaction for wrongs is made by them ; but no more dear brethren . this common-wealth so much exenterated for recovery of its liberty , and not least by them , will not be always able to bear the charge . peace in it own nature , is the most happy state of all below , and the dark shadow of the eternal state of rest : but peace may have conditions worse then war ; and for removal of which , a war may be justly , and necessarily undertaken . peace is not simply happiness , without compleating adjuncts ; but for their desire of union , we are to be excused ; though we cannot believe it a fruit of their piety , we may discern their interest through it ; and we discern it is ours to have no union with them ; nor is it indeed possible ; union is of homogeneals : we can never unite , nay , we can never conjoyn ; where conjuncture is made , there is continuity ; here is too much dissimilitude , will be too much incompliance . we may dwell quietly together , if they will ( and that will be all , ) if they will not , they may chuse . but let them set their hearts at rest for any more union ; and therefore they may be silent of the means , and not dispute of what is the surest foundation ; whether the former treaties , or any other : the former are dissolved , and if ever we make any more with them , i hope now they are better known , they will be better looked to . as to their dogmatizing , that no revolution or alteration of affairs can absolve either kingdom from the former treaties , and solemn league and covenant ( if they intend their relative which to reach to both ) we shall tell them , that all the doctors are not of that opinion ; and either they wrote this unconsulted the lawyers , or if they gave such an opinion , they were not jurisperiti . and for the covenant , it was an appendant to a treaty , and some that never took it , think it cannot stand by it self ( to say no worse of it ) and so let it go . for their trust , that no success either good or bad shall be able to divert them ; they must excuse us , if we have not that faith , truly we may be allowed to be thomists , when we have to deal with scotists . we beleeve a very little interest , a very little profit will do it , it is radicated ; the impulse of their genius will carry them to it ; and if their king had been able to have but touched that key , there had been a more harmonious close between him and their commissioners . yet it seems they would have been content to have come to an equation , if he would have contributed to the forming of a prosthaphaeresis . t is like they will take heed of popery and prelacy , because they act among them an higher degree of popery , properly so called ; but for malignancy , i will not be their compurgator : there is much variety of it , it is very possible there may be some kindes or degrees of it among them . for their joyning king and parliament in their own government , i would ask again , what influence he hath into it , more then barely a name ? as for this common-wealth , we must needs ask them again , what they have to do with it ? that they will not maintain error , heresie , or schism , we would take their words , if they were sure they could , tell what error , and heresie , and schism is . but perhaps they make a man of straw , and then fight with it ; or call that which is truth , by the name of error : for we cannot conceive them to be more then men ; and while they are but so , they may possibly erre , and erre in that very act , by which they judg of error ; and then for ought they can thus preassure us , they may maintain error , and condemn truth , as well as their pharisaical fore-fathers , who condemned truth it self ; and the same may be said of their heresie . we shall charge them with none , and desire them to consider , that is there more christian like for them to do the like by us . the best christians have been persecuted for such , by the whore of rome , with whom , if they have no affinity , it were to be wished they would not use her dialect . for the other hard word of schism , it signifies little . the protestants made a schism from rome , and calvin from the protestants . the old prelatical party that were calvinistical in their doctrine , yet accounted you as much schismatical for your government , as you do the independents for theirs ▪ and as they do the anabaptists , and others for depatting from them ; 't is a thing as they mean it , in order to their simple government , of no consideration ; they may be as tender of it as they will , he had little to do would trouble them about it , it help● their pittiful declamations , to fill up their hour with an use of reproof , which being a known common place , save their brains a stretch on the rack for invention , and for their sakes let them enjoy it . i shal not trouble them about it , nor with any thing further , then to desire them to take notice , that there have been severall peeces published by the parliament of england , out of which it seems they can draw nothing of advantage to themselves , nor out of themselves any thing that will serve as a just answer to them , all which are of an elder date , then that of the fift of march l●st , which therefore they shall do well to answer first , and after that take notice that their letter of the fifth of march is not answered : and withall , perhaps it were not a thing wholly imprudential , to think of a better answer to this last letter ; and consider , whether by some other they might have better consulted their own good ; perhaps hereafter ( this overture being thus magisterially rejected ) when their necessity shall put them upon a more becoming address , they may be told , we are now both of us grown wiser . finis . act and proclamation, that none come from ireland without sufficient testimonial. edinburgh, 22. february, 1661. scotland. parliament. 1661 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92471 wing s1037 thomason 669.f.26[67] estc r210943 99869691 99869691 163949 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92471) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 163949) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 247:669f26[67]) act and proclamation, that none come from ireland without sufficient testimonial. edinburgh, 22. february, 1661. scotland. parliament. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by evan tyler, printer to the kings most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1661. annotation on thomason copy: the second 1 has been crossed out and replaced with "1660" in both caption and imprint dates. reproduction of the original in the british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -foreign relations -ireland -early works to 1800. ireland -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2007-09 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion act and proclamation , that none come from ireland without sufficient testimonial . edinburgh , 22. february , 1661. forasmuch as it is informed , that many seditious and turbulent persons , ministers and others , in the kingdom of ireland , finding that the administration of his majesties authority and government , which is now happily established in that kingdom , doth not sute , nor will comply with their phanatick principles and factious practices , are comeing over into this kingdom expecting shelter , that they may be the more enabled to carry on their designs , in perverting the allegiance of the subjects , and subverting the peace of the kingdom : and the estates of parliament considering how much it doth concern the publick peace , that such wasps and unworthy persons , enemies to all lawfull authority , and to whom it is naturall to stir up sedition , and undermine the peace , wherever they are , and therefore cannot well be allowed in any well constituted government , should have no countenance in this kingdom : therefore the kings majesty , with advice and consent of his estates of parliament , doth hereby declare , that no persons whatsoever , coming from ireland without a sufficient passe and testimony in writ , from the lord iustices council , or any having power from them , or from the sheriff of the county , or mayor of the city where the saids persons lived , of their peaceable carriage and conformity to the laws , shall be allowed any residence , resset , or stay within this kingdom : but that it shall be lawfull to , likeas all sheriffs , magistrates and iustices of peace are required hereby to seaze upon , and imprison all such persons , wanting such testimony ; and who shall not willingly remove out of the kingdom within fifteen dayes after the intimation hereof unto them ( excepting from this clause all ordinary known trafficking merchants ) and his majesty , with advice aforesaid , ordains , that all such persons as shall come over with any such testimony , that within fifteen dayes after their landing , they make their appearance before the parliament ; or in case of their not sitting , before his majesties privy council , or such as shall be warranted by them , and make known the reasons of their coming hither , and give such surety as shall be thought fit , for their peaceable carriage ; otherwise , to remove off the kingdom within fifteen dayes : wherein if they failȝie , magistrates , sheriffs , and all others , publick ministers , are hereby ordained , as they will be answerable upon their duty , to apprehend , secure and imprison them , till such course be taken , as shall be thought fit , with such seditious and factious persons . and ordains thir presents to endure for one year , and longer , as shall be thought fit by the lords of his majesties privy council ; and to be printed , and published at the mercat-crosses of edinburgh , glasgow , air , irwin , wigton , kircudbright , and all other places needfull , where-through none pretend ignorance hereof . a. primerose , cls. reg. edinburgh , printed by evan tyler , printer to the kings most excellent majesty , 1661. a proclamation discharging correspondence and commerce with france. scotland. privy council. 1696 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05562 wing s1743 estc r226071 52529269 ocm 52529269 179017 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05562) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179017) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:6) a proclamation discharging correspondence and commerce with france. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1694-1702 : william ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to the kings most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1696. caption title. initial letter. intentional blank spaces in text. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the twenty first day of january, and of our reign the seventh year, 1696. signed: gilb. eliot cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng treason -scotland -early works to 1800. grand alliance, war of the, 1689-1697 -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign relations -france -early works to 1800. france -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-06 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-07 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-07 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation discharging correspondence and commerce with france . william by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france , and ireland , defender of the faith , to macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute ; greeting , forasmuch as , albeit the corresponding and keeping commerce with our enemies , against whom we are now in a state of war , is discharged by several laws and acts of parliament under the pain of treason , and particularly by the eight act of the third session of this our current parliament , all our subjects are expresly discharged to go to the kingdom of france , or any of the dominions subject to the french king , after the first day of june one thousand six hundred and ninety three years , or being already in the said kingdom of france , or countries foresaid to stay or abide therein after the first day of august in the said year , without express leave from us , or the lords of our privy council , under the pain of treason ; yet sundrie of our subjects presume to have commerce , and to correspond and keep intelligence with persons residing in the said kingdom of france , now in a state of war with us , or dominions thereto belonging , without authority foresaid : therefore , and to the effect , our subjects may know their danger in the premisses , if they shall for hereafter transgress in manner foresaid ; we with advice of the lords of our privy council , do strictly prohibit and discharge all and every one of our subjects within this our antient kingdom to correspond , keep intelligence , or have any commerce whatsomever with the said kingdom of france , or persons residing within the same , or dominions belonging to the french king , without authority foresaid , under the pain of being punished as corresponders with declared traitours , to the outmost rigor ; declaring hereby that this shall be without prejudice of any former acts made against treason , or treasonable correspondencies , or the punishment of such as have already incurred the pains thereof . our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly , and command , that incontinent , thir our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat cross of edinburgh , and remanent mercat crosses of the head-burghs of the several shires and stewartries within this our kingdom : and there in our name and authority by open proclamation , make intimation hereof , that none may pretend ignorance . given under our signet at edinburgh , the twenty first day of january , and of our reign the seventh year , 1696. per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot cls. sti. coneilii . god save the king. edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to the kings most excellent majesty , 1696. a letter to a friend giving an account of all the treatises that have been publish'd with relation to the present persecution against the church of scotland monro, alexander, d. 1715? 1692 approx. 85 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 17 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2007-01 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a51157 wing m2440 estc r6566 11966587 ocm 11966587 51725 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a51157) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 51725) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 817:35) a letter to a friend giving an account of all the treatises that have been publish'd with relation to the present persecution against the church of scotland monro, alexander, d. 1715? meldrum, george, 1635?-1709. 32 p. printed for joseph hindmarsh ..., london : 1692. reproduction of original in huntington library. attributed to alexander monro. cf. nuc pre-1956. attributed also to george meldrum. cf. dnb. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church of scotland. presbyterianism -early works to 1800. scotland -church history -17th century. 2005-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2005-10 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2006-06 taryn hakala sampled and proofread 2006-06 taryn hakala text and markup reviewed and edited 2006-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a letter to a friend , giving an account of all the treatises that have been publish'd , with relation to the present persecution against the church of scotland . lam. i. iv . the ways of zion do mourn , because none come to the solemn feasts : all her gates are desolate : her priests sigh : her virgins are afflicted , and she is in bitterness . and verse xii . is it nothing to you , all ye that pass by ? london : printed for joseph hindmarsh , at the golden ball , over against the royal exchange in cornhill , 1692. a letter to a friend , &c. sir , i don't much wonder , that the present state of the church of scotland should be a little surprising to you , at your return from your travels beyond seas , it being so very much changed from what it was some years ago , when you were last in scotland , that the bare reflection upon it must needs occasion grief and sadness to any who are endued with the least sense of religion or morality . the church was then in a flourishing condition , her authority and discipline in such force and vigour , that a sentence of excommunication was even terrible to the most wicked and prophane ; her pastors were men of judgment , learning , and prudence , and of such unblameable lives and conversations , that they quite stopt the mouths of their calumniating and malicious enemies . whereas now the scene of affairs is so much altered , that the church is made level with the ground , and her adversaries take pleasure in the rubbish thereof ; the apostolical order of bishops totally subverted , and the greatest part of the episcopal clergy barbarously driven from their respective churches , many of which are at present void and destitute of pastor , and their flocks left desolate , like sheep wandring without a sheepherd ; others of their churches are invaded by men who can lay no claim to that sacred function of the holy ministry , having never received ordination from those persons who are duly authorized to confer it : and their pretences for learning , and the other qualifications necessary for that office are so very little , that the greatest part of them have never had occasion to apply themselves to those studies , but have been all along trained up in mechanick employments , and have now leapt directly from the shop into th pulpit , where they exercise their gifts at such a rate , and entertain the●● auditors with such nauseous stuff * , ( sometimes intermixt with blasphemous sentences ) that instead of advancing the christian religion , 't is to be feared , they have propagated more atheism and irreligion in the nation , than many years will be able to root out . and since your curiosity prompts you to a strict enquiry into the ways and methods by which this surprising revolution was brought about , i shall , in order to your satisfaction , direct you to all those treatises that have been published on this occasion , where you may find an exact and impartial account of the present persecution raised against the church of scotland ; how it was at first contrived and set on foot , after the landing of the prince of orange here in england in the year 1688 , and how it has been managed and carried on even till this time , with all the fury and violence imaginable by the presbyterian faction in that kingdom . the first discourse , i think , which was published on this subject was , a memorial for his highness the prince of orange , in relation to the affairs of scotland ; together with the address of the presbyterian party in that kingdom to his highness , and some observations on that address . by two persons of quality . this memorial was wrote sometime before the prince of orange was proclaimed king of england , and the author's design in it , was to inform the prince , how seditiously and rebelliously the presbyterians in scotland had behaved themselves under the reigns of k. james vi. k. charles i. and k. charles ii. how in the reign of k. charles i. they overturned not only the government of the church , but usurped likewise that of the state , rescinded all the royal prerogatives , and murthered thousands of the king 's best subjects , besides the many other barbarities which they committed under the pretence of religion . and from hence the author takes occasion to shew the prince , how much his interest obliged him to suppress that insolent party , whose principles and practices were not only inconsistent with the monarchy , but even destructive of all human society ; and that on the contrary , episcopacy being necessary for the support of the monarchy , he ought to make it his chief care and concern to maintain and support it ; and the rather , because he had so solemnly engaged his honor for the defence thereof ; for having published in his declaration , that his design of coming over was to support the laws of the nation , he tells him , that he was therefore in honor bound to support episcopacy , it being confirmed by twenty seven parliaments of that kingdom . the observations upon the presbyterians address to the prince of orange are done by another pen : they sufficiently expose the contradiction and inconsistency that always appears in the actions of that party . in their address to the p. of orange , they complain heavily of their oppression and suffering under k. james's government , that they were lying in the mouth of the lyon , while refuge failed , and when they looked on their right and left hands , there was no man found to pity them , till the lord raised up his highness for their deliverance . and yet notwithstanding these heavy and grievous complaints , we find that in their address to k. james , they render him their humble and hearty thanks , for putting a stop to their long and sad sufferings for nonconformity ; and they acknowledg the receipt of favors from him , valuable above all earthly comforts . nay , so little reason have they to complain of persecution from him , that it 's known how the leading men of that faction were only caressed and cajoled by the then ministers of state to a very high degree , and preferr'd to places of great trust in the nation . and they themselves were then so sensible of these obligations , that out of gratitude they offered to use their interest for carrying on the designs at that time set on foot by the papists for promoting of popery in these dominions . it is very well known to any who were then in scotland , how eminently they comply'd with the dispensing power in taking an indulgence from the papists , how they magnifi'd k. james upon that account , as the best of kings that ever reigned ; and how active some of the most pragmatical men of that party were , in engaging all of their own persuasion to promote a relaxation of the penal laws , and in persuading such members of parliament as they could influence , to go along with the designs of the court therein . and this is so notorious , that one of their own preachers * was severely checked and rebuked by the party , because much about that time , in a sermon preached before their provincial assembly at edinburgh , he signified his dislike of these proceedings , and laid before them the dangerous consequences of the same , how fatal such methods would at last prove to the protestant religion in these nations . i could here entertain you with a great many instances of their behaviour under k. james's government , and of their ready complyances with all the popish designs then set on foot , but that i think it altogether superfluous , since one of their own party * has sufficiently exposed them to the world upon this account , and shewn how their practices at that time were directly contrary to their former principles , and that their behaviour was such , as did rather become sycophants and court parasites , than those who assumed the title of ministers of the gospel . and his accusation is so very true , that they have never as yet attempted to answer him , or to vindicate themselves from those many scandals and reproaches wherewith he so justly charges them ; nay , on the contrary , they are so conscious of their own guilt , that in their address to the p. of orange , they very very frankly own it , and make a long apology to his highness for it . the next thing that appear'd abroad with relation to our scotch affairs , was a short letter entituled , the present state and condition of the clergy and church of scotland . it gave us but a very short and brief , tho a true , account of the many affronts and indignities that were done to the episcopal clergy of that kingdom , by the presbyterians there ; but after having enumerated some few instances of their atrocious cruelties , such as the killing of one minister , the daubing of anothers face with excrements , and the inhumane usage of the wife of a third , tho in childbed , he at last concludes , that it was beyond the power of words to express their misery to that degree as they suffered it . this letter had not been very long publish'd , when there comes out a scurrilous pamphlet , under pretence of an answer to it ; it was call'd a brief and true account of the sufferings of the church of scotland , occasion'd by the episcopalians since the year 1660. being a vindication of their majesties government in that kingdom , relating to the proceedings against the bishops and clergy there . with some animadversions upon a libel entituled , the present state and condition of the clergy and church of scotland . the author of this pamphlet , instead of answering the letter , as he pretends , summs up , and highly aggravates the punishments that were justly inflicted upon the presbyterian dissenters by the civil government , for their frequent insurrections and rebellions against it , and charges the episcopal clergy as the authors of all their sufferings upon that account . the proceedings of the civil magistrate against this rebellious crew are sufficiently vindicated by a learned pen , as i shall afterwards inform you . and as for the behaviour of the episcopal clergy , with relation to the sufferings of these men , they were so far from being any ways the authors of them , that there may be many instances given , where the clergy have interceeded for their pardon , and actually saved many of them from the gallows , which they could not have escaped , had they been left to the due course of law : and yet these men did afterwards prove so ungrateful , that they were the chief instruments of all the sufferings and persecution which those clergy-men , to whom they owed their lives and fortunes , met with in this late unhappy revolution of our church affairs . and this is plain in the case of sir john riddel and mr. chisholm , minister at lisly , whom he was then prosecuting for his non-complyance ; and yet , at the same time , ingenuously confessed to him , before a good many witnesses , that he had been very much obliged to him , and protested he would never have treated him at that rate , if it had not been matter of conscience to him . this answer is all over stuff'd with so many groundless reflections and aspersions upon the clergy , and fill'd with such obscene and scurrillous language , without the least semblance of reason or argument , that the true way of answering it , had been to publish to the world a true and impartial history of the author's life and actions , that by comparing it with his writings , they might easily perceive what credit and authority they ought to have among all serious and sober men. i must confess , i 'm a great enemy to all personal reflections in whatever kind of writings , as knowing how prejudicial they of●en are to the merit of the cause , and how antichristian it is● for us to publish to the world the personal infirmities of our brethren , when the laws of religion oblige us rather to cover and conceal them , and to endeavour to reclaim them by a private and brotherly admonition ; yet when men do thus divest themselves of all morality and religion , as at this rate , without the least restraint of modesty or good manners , to bespatter the sacred persons of princes and prelates , i know no other way to deal with them , but either to oblige them publickly to recant their calumnies and aspersions , or at least to fight them with their own weapons , and to expose them to the world in their true colours , that the unwary and undiscerning multitude may not be bubbled into a belief of their malicious lies and calumnies . there was indeed a reply very soon returned to this answer , which , i suppose , did not a little discompose our author , it giving him a small tast of what treatment he might expect , if he should still continue to write at this extravagant and scurrilous rate . the title of it is , the prelatical church-man against the phanatical kirk-man , or a vindication of the author of the sufferings of the church of scotland . this is a short vindication of such of the clergy as our author had attempted to wound in their reputation , by his groundless and malicious aspersions . but much about this time , or a little before , there was a discourse publish'd , which , tho it was not design'd as an answer to this scurrilous pamphlet , it having been publish'd before it came abroad , yet contains such matters of fact as do fully answer all the calumnies of this accuser , and it relates the history of the persecution so impartially , as that it defies the contradiction of the most effronted adversary . it is called , an account of the present persecution of the church of scotland , in several letters . the occasion and design of this undertaking , was this . when the presbyterian par●y had barbarously and inhumanly treated the episcopal clergy of that kingdom , when their rabble had turn'd out of their churches by force and violence , above 300 ministers in the southern and western countries , and had driven them in the midst of winter , with their wives and tender children , from their houses and places of abode ; and when they had got such ministers , as their rabble could not reach , deprived of their livings by a sentence of their civil judicatories , and by this means had expos'd them to all the miseries of poverty and want ; yet all this was not enough to satisfie their implacable malice , but after they had thus cruelly treated their persons at home , they endeavoured to murther them in their fame and reputation abroad ; for here in england they industriously printed and dispersed papers , under the pretence of giving an account of the transactions in scotland at that time , which contain'd a number of malicious and bitter invectives against the deprived episcopal clergy of that nation , representing many of them to have been deprived for gross scandals and immoralities in their lives , and impudently denyed the many affronts and indignities that were done them by the rabble ; and by this method they thought not only to render our clergy odious to the english nation , but also to make the world believe there was no such thing as a persecution raised against them , and that all the noise about it was nothing else but the clamours and out-cries of a party disaffected to the government . the episcopal clergy therefore seeing that these malicious lies and calumnies gained credit daily with people in england , who were altogether strangers to these transactions , and being in a short time sensible how much they suffered in their fame and reputation upon this account ( than which nothing ought to be more dear and sacred to men of their prof●ssion ) ; found it altogether necessary to vindicate themselves from the aspersions cast upon them by their enemies , and to publish a true and impartial account of their sufferings , that the world might not any longer be imposed upon in the history of these transactions . and so they publish'd this account of the persecution in four letters , which do very fully and impartially r●late a great many matters of fact concerning the said persecution ; how it was at first begun by the rabble in the western shires , how they were animated and inticed thereto by their pastors and teachers , and how at last the presbyterians having got the government of the kingdom in their hands , did prosecute the episcopal clergy in their civil courts with such open partiality and injustice , as if they had seem'd resolv'd never to deny it . this treatise no sooner appear'd abroad , than people easily saw how much they had been imposed upon by former accounts , and being now fully convinc'd of the truth of the persecution , began to have some pity and compassion towards those reverend persons that were thus expos'd to the fury and blind rage of an opposite and bigotted faction . but the restless spirit of that party was still at work to run down this account of the persecution as false , and to persuade the world , that the matters of fact related therein had not the least shadow of truth in them . however , in a short time their impudence in denying so boldly these known matters of fact was soon baffled , and they themselves were quite confounded at the sight of another treatise which came out very shortly after the former , viz. the case of the present afflicted clergy in scotland truly represented . to which is added for probation , the attestation of many unexceptionable witnesses to every particular , and all the publick acts and proclamations of the convention and parliament relating to the clergy . by a lover of the church and his country . in this discourse we have some further account of the proceedings of the rabble and presbyterian governours against the clergy ; and most of the particular matters of fact , mention'd both in this and the other treatise , are so fully attested by many unexceptionable witnesses , that it gave satisfaction to the most scrupulous enquirers , and made the presbyterians themselves almost despair of cheating any more into a belief of their lies and aspersions . for here you 'll find among the collection of papers , particular declarations of the outrages and cruelties committed upon many worthy ministers and their families , owned and subscribed by themselves , and attested by many other persons of good fame , that had the misfortune to be eye-witnesses to many of their tragical sufferings . our author has likewise inserted all the publick acts and proclamations of the convention and parliament , relating to the clergy , by reading of which , you 'll in some measure perceive , with what open partiality and injustice they were treated by the presbyterian governours at that time , even those whose station and character did oblige them at least to put on an outward shew of executing righteousness and justice in the land. a further continuation of the history of this persecution we have under the title of a late letter concerning the sufferings of the episcopal clergy in scotland . this relates only to the persecution of such ministers as lived in the presbyterie of stranraver in the shire of galloway , of which the former treatise had promised us a fuller account , since it was only hinted at there . here we have a brief narrative of the condition of that place for some few years before this last persecution arose ; he tells us , in what peace and tranquillity they lived for a considerable time before the indulgence granted by k. james ; how that before the publishing of that , there were not above two dissenters in the whole presbyterie of stranraver , but all people went regularly and orderly to church , nay even the presbyterian ministers themselves were constant hearers of the episcopal clergy in their parish churches . but no sooner was this indulgence proclaimed , than the presbyterian ministers erected separate congregations , and by infusing seditious principles into the minds of the giddy multitude , did in a short time transform the country into a wilderness of savage beasts . he deduces their history in short till the commencement of the persecution against the clergy , and then informs us of a great many barbarities that were committed upon them by the rabble . i will not here trouble your patience with informing you of any of the tragical stories related both in this and the former accounts , but rather advise you to read the accounts themselves , where you 'll find the presbyterians charged , and that justly too , with such monstruous barbarities , as the most savage infidels would have been asham'd to commit . there are two other short treatises in print , which , tho they do not immediately concern the history of the persecution , yet since they have a reference to the principles and practices of our scotch presbyterians , i thought fit to send you this short account of them . the first , which was publish'd a considerable time before the discourse last mention'd , goes under this title , some questions resolved concerning episcopal and presbyterian government in scotland . our author's design in this discourse , is to prove that the presbyterian government was not by law setled for many years after the protestant religion had the legal establishment in that kingdom , and that it was never setled in the church of scotland , without restraint from tumultuous times ; all which he unanswerably proves from our records of parliament and our best historians ; and further shews , that even at present , it is very far from being agreeable to the inclinations of the people , the basis upon which it is now erected . he shews likewise that the principles of presbyterians allow no liberty of conscience to any that dissent from them , and clearly demonstrates that their principles are utterly destructive to the legal monarchy of that kingdom . he further proves that the penal laws in scotland against the presbyterians , had nothing of persecution in them , and he fully vindicates the episcopal clergy from being any ways concern'd in the sufferings which they so grievously complain of . he has likewise given us an account of the behaviour of the church of scotland , in reference to the designs of taking away the penal laws against papists , and shewn us how industrious and active the presbyterians were in promoting the designs for taking away the legal restraints against papists . so that in this treatise you may meet with a full and satisfactory answer to all the calumnies and aspersions which the presbyterians have in their pamphlets of late maliciously thrown upon our clergy . soon after the publishing of this , follow'd the other discourse entituled . the danger of the church of england from a general assembly of covenanters in scotland , represented from their principles in oaths , and late acts of assemblies , compared with their practices in these last two years , by a true son of the church . to the first of these discourses there was an answer published under this title , a vindication of the church of scotland , being an answer to a paper , intituled , some questions concerning episcopal and presbyterial government in scotland , wherein the later is vindicated from the arguments and calumnies of that author , and the former is made appear to be a stranger in that nation . by a minister of the church of scotland , as it is now established by law. in which the author pretends to prove , that the answers given to these questions by his adversary are altogether false and erroneous ; but the performance is very much disproportion'd to the strength and merits of the discourse he undertakes to attack , as you may easily discover by comparing them together . having thus far inform'd you of the discourses that relate the history of our scotch persecution , as it was acted by the laity , viz. the rabble and presbyterian governours : i come in the next place to acquaint you with those treatises which contain that scene of the persecution wherein the presbyterian clergy were the principal and only actors . it is true that in the former part of this tragical scene , their ministers were not bare spectators of the sufferings of the episcopal clergy ; nay on the contrary , they took occasion in all their publick appearances at that time , from their pulpits and elsewhere , to incite and stir up the rabble to the commission of all these cruelties and outrages upon the persons of those reverend and worthy men , by calling it the glorious work of reformation , and telling them , that they were carrying on the work of the lord , and that god would certainly reward them for the great services they were then doing to his church and kingdom . whereas it had been more for their personal credit and reputation , and more suitable to the character they assume to themselves , of being ministers of the gospel of peace , to have repressed the fury of the rabble , and to have restrained them from these insolencies and barbarities which they were acting in several corners of the kingdom . but in this later period of the persecution , the presbyterian clergy acted their part openly and barefacedly ; when they sat upon the bench as judges , and established iniquity by a law. the first discourse of this nature that was published , was an historical relation of the late general assembly held at edinburgh from october 16. to november 13. in the year 1690. in a letter from a person in edinburgh to his friend in london . and here our author has given us a very exact and impartial account of the proceedings of the presbyterian ministers against the episcopal clergy both in their general assembly , and likewise before the meeting thereof . the parliament after having abolish●d episcopacy , was pleased to lodge the whole government and management of church affairs in the hands of some few old presbyterian ministers , who in the year 1661. had been deprived for refusing to submit to the episcopal government then established by law. this was a presbyterian constitution , you may say , not very agreeable to their principles , which only allow an equal parity among all the ministers of the gospel ; but however the constitution being so much for their interest , it was not thought convenient to stand two nicely upon principles . these men who were now intrusted with the church government having met at edingburgh , and assumed into a share of the government such of the presbyterian minist●rs as they could intirely confide in , did first agree upon the method of constituting their next general assembly , and afterwards divided themselves into several classes and presbyteries , for examining and enquiring into the principles and qualifications of the episcopal clergy , and this in order to deprive them of their livings and preferments . one author gives us a great many instances of the partiality and injustice that attended the proceedings of these inferiour judicatories , and then continues his history to the sitting down of the general assembly , where he entertains us with an useful and pleasant account of what passed in that meeting . when the general assembly was dissolved , they appointed a commission for prosecuting the work of the reformation , and putting an end to what the rabble and assembly had begun . this commission was invested with a full power to cite before them , and deprive such of the clergy as they should judge unfit for enjoying their preferments in the church . and what the methods were which they used in turning out the episcopal ministers that as yet retained peaceable possession of their churches , what trifling crimes they were forced to invent against them , may be easily gathered from another discourse which the same author published not long after the former , viz. a continuation of the historical relation of the late general assembly in scotland . with an account of the commissions of that assembly , and other particulars concerning the present state of the church in that kingdom . in this treatise the author informs us what were the effects and consequences of the measures , which the general assembly had laid down for establishing and securing the presbyterian government . and besides many historical relations of considerable importance , which are contained both in this and the former treatise , he has likewise inserted here several original papers which add a great deal of light and authority to his history ; among which there are two letters from king william to the commissioners of the general assembly in scotland , wherein he requires them to receive into their communion such of the episcopal clergy as were willing to subscribe their confession of faith , and submit to the presbyterian government as then established by law. he further commands them , during his absence out of britain to stop all further processes against the episcopal ministers until they received further directions from him ; and withal he assures them of his protection , and that he will maintain the government of the church in that kingdom by presbytery , without suffering the least invasion to be made upon it . it is to be hoped that the worthy author of this historical relation of the general assembly will gratifie the world with a further continuation of the history of their proceedings , especially of what past at their last meeting of their general assembly . and this is the more earnestly to be wished for , since the two former parts were so very acceptable , and so very satisfactory to all that perused them . i come now to inform you of an answer to some of those discourses above mentioned , which after a long delay was at last published under this title , a vindication of the church of scotland , being an answer to five pamphlets . by the author of the former vindication in answer to the ten questions . the discourses which he pretends to answer are these . 1. an account of the present persecution of the church of scotland , in several letters . 2. the case of the afflicted clergy in scotland truly represented . 3. a late letter concerning the sufferings of the episcopal clergy in scotland . 4. a memorial to his highness the prince of orange in relation to the affairs of scotland , &c. 5. an historical relation of the late general assembly held at edinburgh from october 16. to nov. 13. anno 1690. the occasion the long delay of this pretended answer was this . the assembly , it seems , enjoyned this task of answering the historical accounts of the persecution to one * of their ministers , and recommended to him , to receive particular informations from the places of the kingdom , in which these cruel barbarities were acted ; but he , finding that the informations sent him did confirm the truth of most of the historical relations he was required to answer , and being a man of more honesty and ingenuity than many of his brethren , did , after he had for several months made a trial of the work , at last intirely decline it , because he saw these accounts could not be answered without justifying what the rabble had done , which , he ingenuously acknowledged , he was neither able nor willing to do . and therefore they were forced to pitch upon another † for this employment , whom , as it appears , being a man of a greater stock of boldness , and far less sincerity than the other , they found both fitter and readier for serving their designs . and he after a great many strugglings , what with the checks of his own conscience , and the difficulties he met with in guilding over and disguising these matters of fact , which are so faithfully and so circumstantially reported in these discourses he had undertaken to attack , at last appears abroad in the world , thinking by his bare confidence alone to impose upon the sense of mankind , and with a bold denial to confute those truths which have all the proof and attestation that a matter of fact can possibly bear . they are owned in publick and printed declarations , subscribed by the ministers upon whom these outrages were committed , and attested by many witnesses of unspotted fame and reputation ; nay further , the ministers who were the sufferers undertake , under the severest penalties , to prove the truth of these declarations before any judicial court , even to the conviction of their most obstinate enemies ; and what further proof can any reasonable man desire ? but to let you see how fully and beyond the possibility of contradiction these matters of fact are attested , i have subjoyned hereunto two declarations relating to this subject , the original copies of which are in my hands , subscribed by the ministers upon whom these cruelties were acted , and their subscriptions attested by very good witnesses . i send you these the rather , because they are not to be found among the collection of papers annexed to the case of the afflicted clergy in scotland , and one of them is a great deal more particular in the relation than any therein inserted : for in this declaration the particular days and months upon which these barbarities were acted , and the names of the particular persons that were actors of the tragedy are expresly mentioned , and three or four witnesses at least brought to prove every individual matter of fact that is there related ; and , if my memory don't very much fail me , a copy of this declaration was given in to the privy council at edinburgh , and the gentleman desired a redress of these grievances , and offered to prove before them the truth of all these particulars , if they thought them worthy of their cognizance ; so that i would gladly know what further proof and attestation can be brought for any matter of fact , than is here offered to evince the truth of these . here follow the declarations . declaration of mr. john arbuckell , minister of rickartoun , concerning the indignities done him by the rabble . i master john arbuckell , minister of rickartoun , declare to all whom it may concern , that first i was taken prisoner by the rabble , commanded by one william campbel , accompanied with alexander hillhouse , his brother john hillhouse , and the laird of allangreig was present with the rabble , to the number of forty or thereby , all in arms except allangreig ; and by them carried along to tarboltoun , being five miles from rickartoun , together with my eldest son under silence of the night , and there kept prisoner in the house of mr. james gillespie , minister of that place , and in the morning carried , together with the said mr. gillespie , to the church-yard , where his gown was torn , and a part of it laid on my shoulder , and the other part on his shoulder , i wanting a gown , in respect i was not at home ; and after a long discourse , previous to the tearing of the gown , they led us by the hand over the church-yard dyke , not permitting us to go over the stile ; required us never hereafter to preach or crave any of our stipends , and forbid all men to pay us under the highest peril ; and to finish the solemnity of that great action , they dismist us with a volley of shot . after this i was forc'd to fly the country , my wife and tender family continuing in the manse * of rickartoun till fasting's eve † or thereby , when she and her four children were turn'd out by violence on a saturday , the mercat-day at kilmarnock . it being snow in the time , she , with great difficulty , obtained liberty to stay in a stable till monday , upon this condition , that she should remove the rest of our household furniture which they had not thrown out , on that night before they returned from the mercat , which was not half a miles distance . in testimony of the premisses , i and my eldest son have subscribed these presents at edinburgh . april 16 , 1690. jo. arbuckell . james arbuckell . declaration of mr. gilbert muschet , minister at cumbernauld , concerning his barbarous usage by the rabble . i master gilbert muschet , minister at cumbernauld , do by these presents declare , that whereas i was orderly presented to the church at cumbernauld by john earl of wigtone , and received ordination and collation from alexander , late archbishop of st. andrews , then lord archbishop of glasgow , and continued there these twenty three years in the function of the ministry : yet nevertheless i have been of late excluded and expell'd by the rabble , both from the church , and from my manse and glebe , and i my self , and my wife , have been in great danger of our lives , having been hurt and wounded by my own parishioners and their associates . follow the particular wrongs done me by the rabble , and the parties and witnesses , if i could have a hearing . on christmas day , 1688. they took away all my books , together with my papers , to burn them at the trone . the parties were james mochrie , rob. allan , john kirkwood , john anderson , james rae , james , john , and alexander neilsons ; by order , as they alledg'd , from john carmichael chamberlaine , james carmichael , his son , and james fleyming , ground officer . witnesses were fergus lugie , hary logy , john baird , and robert boyd , younger . in january , 1689. they made me , by their threatnings , give back four petty poynds to the value of ten or twelve pounds scotch , that were long ago obtained in a fair legal way , by a decree before the sheriff , for payment to the reader and beddal . the parties were ja. brounlees , john ballach , john russel , of catecraig , and tho. smellie . witnesses , fergus lugie , will. cassils , ja. starke , and their two wives , and robert stark , kirk-officer . february 4th . they excluded me from the church , and sacrilegiously robb'd and took away the key of the church door , together with the vtensils of the church . they likewise broke open the doors of my house with a great hammer , rent my gown and burnt it , and laid violent hands upon my self and my wife , and the kirk officer . parties , ja. bailzie , ja. mochrie , rob. angus , ja. bresh , alexander harvy , ja. thomson , ja. rae , john gillespie , younger , agnes mochrie , and agnes steil . witnesses , john davy , rob. stirling , tho. buchanan , and john steil . march , 7. they came out with staves and battoons , and stop'd my plough , after i had till'd near three acres thereof , and threatned to beat the ploughmen , to cut the horse legs and plough-tackling , if they did not desist . parties , robert stirling , marion lamb , agnes mochrie , margaret moorhead , margaret miller , jean miller , margaret davy , and ja. buchanan . witnesses , john watson , david macklay , william cassils , younger , james machany , margaret colen , and mary stark . april , 30. they took possession of my glebe , being seven acres and a half of land , for the use of the meeting-house preacher ; they till'd the rest of it , and thereafter did sow and harrow it all , ( except one ridg which i had caused sow and harrow before ) . parties , robert boyd , ja. russel , ja. gilmore , john anderson , john young , james mochrie , william cassils , and ja. rae . and tho eight of them had promised to pay me for what i had tilled and sown thereof , yet they never performed the same . witnesses , john carmichael , james carmichael , james davie , and ja. jarvey . april 21. they violently , by force of arms , stopp'd my entry into the church , in order to read the convention's proclamation , and threw the proclamation in the ditch , and carried me prisoner to the town . parties , ja. rae , and john greenlees , armed , their associates , john kirkwood , william cassils , ja. mochrie , robert allan , james thomson , john anderson , john smith , james buchanan , and tho. dinn . witnesses , rob. bresh , james machany , john stark , robert , alexander , and john ewans , hugh templeton , with divers others . april 28. the entred the meeting-house preacher into the church by force of arms , tho he never read the convention's proclamation , nor obey'd the tenour of it then or since . parties , ja. mochrie , john kirkwood , william cassils , ja. thomson , ja. rae , john greenlees , thomas dinn , john smith , ja. anderson , ja. renie , john gillespie . witnesses , ja. russel , john young , john stirling , with divers others . may 2. they broke open the windows of my house , robbing me of several things to a considerable value , and charged me to remove the rest of my furniture within twenty four hours , otherwise they would throw it into the stone-quarry . parties , ja. mochrie , ja. rae , ja. gilmore , younger , and ja. buchanan , with others . witnesses , jo. kirkwood , ja. neilson , john gillespie , and ja. buchanan . may 3. they again , after opprobrious language , haled me prisoner to the newtoun , commanding me to deliver up the key of the manse , and three of them broke two of the doors in my own house within the newtoun of cumbernauld , beating my wife . parties , ja. mochrie , ja. rae , and james buchanan ; the first of these searched narrowly for me in my own chamber , threatning to kill me , where i narrowly escaped , and he thereafter pursued me upon the king's high-way . associates to the said three persons were , john gillespy , younger , ja. gilmore , younger , and james renie , together with john kirkwood , william cassils , and james thomson , john anderson , john greenlees , and john smith . witnesses , john young , hary luggie , ja. barrie , hugh templetone , and others at a publick wedding . may 20. mr. michael robb , the meeting-house preacher , extruded me from the glebe , as the rabble did from the manse , and caused his servant to beat the kirk-officer , when he was shearing a little grass for my horse , when he was taken away by the command of one lieutenant haddo , who took him along to the south and west countries twenty days , upon pretence of a commanded party . witnesses , john stirling , john bennie , john and tho. buchanans , jo. cowie , robert stark , alexander , robert , and john ewans . july 28. after ringing the first bell i entered the church , and read the convention's proclamation before an english captain and cornet , and john carmichael chamberlain , and having thereafter offered to preach in the forenoon , and to obey the tenour of the said proclamation , i was stopped by james rae and william cassils , the last whereof laid violent hands upon me in that sacred place , and hurled me by the shoulders through the church isle , and thrust me out at the door , tearing my coat and my gown . witnesses , ja. robb , james neilson , john gillespy , younger , james , john , and tho. buchanans , and ja. renie . august 6. they caused home of nineholes troop eat a whole night the grass of that meadow , which i paid duty for to the earl of wigtone , the hay thereof being worth ten marks scotch , was quite destroy'd , and they caus'd captain morton's horse eat a considerable quantity of my corn of that land i pay for yearly . parties , john carmichael , who quartered the said troop , mr. robb , and john cuy , his servant , who put them from the glebe to eat my meadow , witnesses , john and thomas buchanans , alexander and john ewans . september 20. they pursued me upon the high-way as i was convoying a cousin of my own , alledging that he and i had taken down the bell. they hurled us back prisoners to the town , and james rae ran at me with a halbard , it seems , with a design to have killed me . parties , john gillespy , younger , who wounded me in the head , john kirkwood , william cassils , james buchanan , john smith , david dabie , john russel . witnesses , john ker , younger , william grudlay , andrew currie , geo. mushet , john carmichael , john fleeming , john donaldson , and several others . the truth of the premisses is attested by my subscription of these presents at edinburgh , the eleventh day of april , 1690. before these witnesses , mr. richard scot , parson of aschott , and john falconar , master of arts. richard scot , witness to this subscription . john falconar , witness to this subscription . g. muschet . and now sir , i hope , you see with what evidence and clearness of demonstration , the particular instances related in the history of the scotch persecution are accompanied , and from this you may easily judg what a height of impudence men must needs arrive at , to deny so plain and so evident matters of fact , that have all the proof and attestation that the nature of the thing can possibly bear . and yet the author of this pretended answer is not in the least asham'd to put on such a degree of confidence in this matter , as no man besides a presbyterian is capable of . but to let you see a little of his disingenuity in managing this affair , he has collected together five discourses whieh he undertakes to confute , and then urges the number of the books he 's to answer , as an excuse why he cannot confute them all sufficiently , least he should swell his answer into too great a volume . what should have obliged this author to undertake to answer so many treatises at one time , i cannot readily conjecture , unless it were to have some plausible pretence for not being able to give a sufficient answer to any of them singly . i 'm sure the meanest of these treatises does far exceed the malice of his weak efforts , and the assembly enjoyn'd him but the first two discourses to confute , which , if he had done to purpose , he had better s●tisfy'd the commands of his superiors , and done greater service to his party , by vindicating them from those heavy crimes so justly charg'd upon them . but all the vindication he offers to bring for them , is in some cases with a daring boldness to deny point blank the matter of fact , without disproving the attestations brought to confirm it ; in others to alleviate it , by pretending the episcopal clergy had expos'd themselves to the hatred of the rabble ; but in most cases he acknowledges the truth of the relation , and then disowns the actors were presbyterians , and therefore the sober presbyterians , he says , ought not to account for those proceedings : whereas it 's notoriously known , that these persons whom he thus disowns and reflects upon , are the only true presbyterians , and act in a close conformity to their principles , while others , pretending to a little more sobriety and moderation , have evidently deserted the old cause , and degenerated into a mungrel constitution which they know not how to name . and notwithstanding that the author disowns the actors to be of their communion , yet in his vindication he is pleas'd to call them the zealous party , and represents them as pretty gentle , in that they made it their work only to deprive , and not to murder the episcopal ministers . in some particulars , the better to disguise and lessen the attested matters of fact of our late persecution , he has brought a few evidences and attestations of some witnesses , whom he looks upon as men of integrity and credibility ; but they are those very persons who were the principal actors of that horrid tragedy ; and how fair and candid dealing this is , i leave the world to judg . is it to be suppos'd , that men who had such a degree of malice to act these unheard of barbarities , will be at a loss for a little impudence to deny them ? and yet this you 'll find to be the whole of his vindication , after perusal of it , which i would advise you by all means to do , since , instead of answering , it rather confirms the truth of the accounts that have been given by the eye-witnesses and sufferers in that persecution . there are lately publish'd some remarks upon this vindication , which are printed with another book called , the scotch presbyterian eloquence , which i shall have occasion to mention afterwards . but the author of these remarks has taken the pains to collect several of this vindicator's falshoods and contradictions , with which every page of his book doth abound , and which may be sufficient to direct us in passing our judgment on the whole ; he shews , how in some places he justifies or excuses the greatest barbarities of the presbyterian rabble , and in other places disowns and condemns them ; so that he is not asham'd to contradict himself at every turn . it 's probable that ere long you may see this vindicator more severely chastis'd , as he truly deserves , and therefore i 'll trouble you with no further account of him at present , but leave him to the correction of those that are chiefly concern'd to take notice of his insolence , and shall conclude with this one remark . that if these men were in earnest to answer the historical relations of the persecution published by the episcopal clergy , the most effectual and satisfactory way of confuting these accounts , were to examin upon oath before an impartial judicatory , the witnesses that attest all these publick declarations printed in the case of the afflicted clergy ; and if they disown the truth of these relations , or if the ministers be not able to prove their several declarations by sufficient and unexceptionable witnesses , let them ever after be reputed as men infamous for lying and calumny . this , methinks , is a fair way of dealing , and such as that party ought not in reason to refuse , since they have the government of the nation in their hands , and may easily put it to a tryal when they please . and till they do this , they must excuse the world to believe these accounts of the persecution to be true and genuine relations , and to proceed neither from malice nor revenge . the next period of the history of our scotch affairs , relates to the visitation of the universities , and other inferior schools of learning . the presbyterian ministers never thought themselves secure , were never at peace and quiet till they got this brought about ; they lookt upon them as nurseries of such plants as would infallibly overturn their settlement and constitution ; and therefore it was still the subject matter of their sermons before the parliament , to press them to a speedy purging of the universities , that the youth of the nation might not any longer be poyson'd with loyal , episcopal , and suchlike antichristian principles . this was their constant topick for many months together , and there was nothing gall'd them more than the delay of so desireable a work ; but at last their importunity was gratify'd ▪ and an act of parliament publish'd , constituting a commission for visiting the universities and other schools and seminaries of learning within the kingdom . this commission divided themselves into several committees for visiting the particular universities , who were to make report to the general commission of the qualifications and behaviour of the professors and regents in each university . and what the methods of their proceeding in this visitation were , you may easily learn from the history of what they did in relation to the colledge of edinburgh . it goes under this title , presbyterian inquisition ; as it was lately practised against the professors of the colledge of edinburgh , august and september 1690. in which the spirit of presbytery and their present method of procedure , is plainly discovered , matter of fact by undeniable instances cleared , and libels against particular persons discussed . this discourse is a sufficient demonstration to the world , what injustice and severity the professors of this colledge met with from their presbyterian visitors . it would not satisfie their malice to strip them of their places and preferments , but they must likewise contrive some ways to ruin their fame and reputation , the better to palliate their own injustice . they invent libels , and deliver them into the visitors , no accuser produc'd to own the libel , * no witnesses brought to prove any particular of it , and yet these libels must be registred and kept upon record as authentick evidences , containing the crimes for which the professors were then deprived ; and all this with design to render them infamous not only in the present , but likewise to future ages . it was this sort of treatment that obliged the professors of the colledge of edinburgh , to publish a true narrative of the proceedings in their visitation , that they might vindicate themselves from the aspersions cast upon them by these libels , and let the world see , that the greatest crimes their adversaries had against them were their sallaries and revenues . in this account you have a general narrative of the proceedings of the committee against all the members of that colledge ; and particularly you have here inserted at large the whole trials of two of their number , viz. doctor monro principal of the colledge , and doctor strachan professor of divinity . there you may see all the articles libelled against these two doctors , to what necessity their accusers were reduced , in being forc'd to invent mean and trifling calumnies against men of an unblemished character ; you may see likewise their particular answers to the libels , wherein they have fully vindicated their innocence against all those silly aspersions , that the utmost effort of their adversaries malice could contrive . the author has likewise inserted in this treatise , the report of the committee to general commission in relation to these two doctors , and the commission 's sentence of deprivation against them , together with their several animadversions upon the report of the committee . and that none might doubt of their partiality in this affair , mr. andrew massie's libel is inserted , which , though notoriously true , owned and offered to be proved by persons of unquestionable credit and reputation , was not in the least enquired into , because he had declared himself to be of their party . all these things you 'll find fully related in this account , which in your reading will afford you matter of diverson as well as of instruction . these are , i think the chief discourses , that have been published by our episcopal divines , relating to the history of the persecution under which their church at present most heavily groans . but i must likewise beg leave to mention another treatise lately come from the press under this title , the scotch presbyterian eloquence , or the foolishness of their teaching discovered from their books , sermons , and prayers , and some remarks on mr. rule 's late vindication of the kirk . the occasion of publishing this tract , as i am inform'd , was this . you may observe that the presbyterians of scotland in all their vindications , endeavour to justifie their proceedings against the orthodox clergy with this topick , by pretending that a great many of them were turn'd out meerly for their ignorance and insufficiency . this was the great test by which the presbyterian teachers pretended to proceed in judging and depriving such of the episcopal clergy as condescended to appear before their assemblies . upon this account therefore , it seems , the publisher of this treatise thought it convenient , to inform the world a little of the qualifications and learning of our presbyterian doctors , and if it were possible , to make them sensible of their own infirmities , and for the future asham'd of their insolence , that they should pretend to deprive men for ignorance , who are so many degrees above the reach of their low capacities ; that they , who in their preachings and writings appear to be not only void of all manner of learning , but likewise destitute of common sense and reason , that that they should be so arrogant , as to think themselves fit judges of any man's qualifications for the office of the holy ministry . they might have acted perhaps more prudently , if they had set this topick aside , and made choice of another test for depriving the episcopal clergy , and that is , as they are pleas'd to call it , the want of grace ; then in all appearance , they had not given our author this occasion of proclaiming to the world their scandalous ignorance , and they would have acted more consonantly to their own principles and doctrines , when they run down all kind of human learning as a thing truly antichristian . and here , sir , i must tell you , that their particular despite against all manner of learning is so observable , that when you return to scotland , you 'll find your self deprived of the society of many of these learned and ingenious gentlemen , in whose company and conversation you were formerly wont to be so much edified , and so highly pleased . they have not only persecuted the clergy at that rate , as to make some of our most eminent divines leave the kingdom ; but have likewise extended their malice against the learned men of all other professions , and discouraged them to that high degree , that they have forc'd some of the most conspicuous of our lawyers , physi●ians and mathematicians , to desert their native country , and take up their residence among such as have a just value and esteem of their merit and desert . i could instance in all these particulars , but that you your self will be too sensible of it , and the instances are so well known , and so generally exclaimed against , that the presbyterians themselves begin to be somewhat asham'd of their proceedings towards them . and truly no wonder , if they consider with what abhorrence and indignation their posterity will remember them ; that they should have been such hostes patriae , such open and declared enemies to their native country , as by their violent proceedings to banish therefrom men who were the glory and ornament of their nation . this discourse is a collection of several remarkable passages taken out of the writings and sermons of the presbyterian pastors ; in which their gross ignorance in matters of learning , and their ridiculous and almost blasphemous way of worship is sufficiently described . the author has collected a great many instances of the madness and delusions of the presbyterian vulgar ; how they are passionately moved with a sermon of the greatest nonsense , if it be pronounced but with a loud voice and a whining tone ; how they contemn the creed , the lord's prayer , and the ten commandments , as childish ordinances , and far below their care or concern ; and how upon their death-beds they take it as a certain sign of salvation , that in their life-time they never heard a curate preach . these are such strong delusions and infatuations , that it 's easie to guess by what spirit they are thus acted . in the next place he describes the peevish and unconversible temper of their pastors ; how they have enslav'd themselves so wholly to the humors of their people , that to gratifie them , they must divest themselves of common civility , as well as christian charity . he shews that their pretences to learning go no further than to understand the doctrines of election and reprobation , and how by their indiscreet sermons upon this subject , they often drive many of the ignorant multitude into such a high despair of god's mercy , as to make them lay violent hands on themselves , and this they call the saving of souls . they infuse into the minds of their hearers sordid and low notions of the high and eternal god ; they represent him as a severe and unmerciful being , and have not the prudence to intermix god's offers of mercy with his threatnings . they not only force their followers into despair , but likewise sometimes encourage them in direct impieties , by telling them , that if they be among the number of the elect , they may be guilty of the greatest sins without hazarding their salvation . they talk of the greatest mysteries of religion in such homely , coarse , and ridiculous expressions , as are very unsuitable to the gravity and solemnity with which these sacred mysteries ought to be treated . and all these particulars the author of this treatise proves against them by such undeniable instances , that i believe they 'll hardly be so bold as to offer to confute them , least thereby they expose themselves to the greater scorn and derision . i think i need not caution you to read this discourse i here speak of , with a due regard and veneration to those sacred things you see thus polluted and prophaned ; and not to improve it to such a bad use , as i too much fear some of our open prophaners of all religion will be inclin'd to do . i know you have more just and adequate notions of the divine majesty , and of the mysteries of our holy religion , than to entertain the meaner thoughts of these holy and sacred things , because you see them prophan'd in this manner by the mouths of such sordid and silly creatures ; you know that pearls cast before the swine lose nothing of their intrinsick worth and value . i must therefore intreat you to improve the reading of this treatise to the true design for which it was publish'd , viz. that all good men , being rightly inform'd of the present misery and desolation of the church of scotland , and being sensible of the great detriment that accrues thereby to religion in general , may contribute their assistance , what by their prayers and other lawful means , for restoring that national church to its primitive and apostolical institution ; that religion may again flourish there as the palm-tree , and all manner of iniquity being depress'd , judgment may as yet run down our streets like a river , and righteousness like a mighty stream . is it a matter of no moment , to see a whole national church , with its apostolical government , quite overturn'd and destroy'd ? to see many hundreds of the ministers of god's word , together with their families , expos'd to the extreme necessities of poverty and want , and by that means to the contempt of the laity ? to see them thus sacrific'd to the fury and rage of a blind and bigotted party ? is it nothing to see religion in this manner abused and polluted by sordid and stupid men , who assume to themselves the name of pastors ? to see them prophane the sacred mysteries of our holy religion by their drollery and ridicule ? to behold many christians in a kingdom wandering to and fro , without any guide to direct them in the ways and means of salvation , or which is worse , having only such teachers as entertain them with nonsense and blasphemy , and infuse into their minds such seditious principles and doctrines as must inevitably tend to their ruin and destruction ? these are matters not of mere jest and diversion , but of great concern and importance , and will at last prove to be of far more fatal consequences than , i fear , many of us are aware of . if this deluge of atheism and impiety , which these men are too too likely to introduce into that kingdom , by venting such nauseous and ridiculous stuff in their prayers and sermons ; i say , if this deluge be not timely prevented , but be suffered to go on without any stop or hindrance , it will not be found very easie to rid the nation of the bad effects of it for many generations . having now gone through all the discourses that have been publish'd on both sides , concerning our late revolution in church matters , i think it may not be amiss to acquaint you with two or three other treatises , which , tho they principally relate to the civil affairs of our nation , yet do contain some things that concern likewise our church affairs . the first of them is entituled thus , the late proceedings and votes of the parliament of scotland , contain'd in an address deliver'd to the king , sign'd by the plurality of the members thereof , stated and vindicated . that you may rightly understand the occasion of printing this discourse , it is necessary to acquaint you , that after the convention of estates in scotland had devolved the government of that kingdom upon k. william and q. mary , they fell into great heats and animosities among themselves . what the causes of these divisions were , i am not at present concerned to enquire , but divided they were into several parties , one of which went ordinarily under the name of the club. it consisted of a great many members of parliament , who were most of them presbyterians , and zealously affected to the present government , haveing appeared very active and industrious in dethroning k. james , and advancing k. william and q. mary to the throne . this party combin'd together to obstruct and oppose all matters brought into the parliament , till they should first get their grievances against the former governments redress'd by this , according to their claim of right . they alledged k. william had refused satisfaction and redress to these points of the grievances which were most material , and that he was so far from performance , that both he and his ministers deny'd there lay any obligation upon them for that end ; so that in this revolution , they pretended the people did only observe a change of masters , but no ease of burden , or redress of laws . and this obliged them to send up an address to k. william , subscrib'd by the greatest part of the members of parliament of scotland , representing to him the grievances which they wanted to be redress'd in the present parliament . this address was deliver'd to him by the earl of annandale , the lord rosse , and sir james montgomery of skelmurly , at hampton court , the 15th . day of october , 1689. they were much dissatisfy'd with the ministers of state whom king william had received into his councils and service , alledging that he had made choice of those very men , who had been the instruments of k. james ' miseries and ruine , by advising him to these courses that had robb'd him of the hearts of his subjects . it was these ministers whom they blam'd as the authors of all the differences that had arisen betwixt k. william and his parliament in scotland ; they thought his delaying to gratifie their desires , proceeded merely from the sinister misrepresentations given him of their demands as illegal , and as encroachments upon the royal authority . and therefore , to justifie their actions , they publish'd this treatise and their address to king william , to shew , that what they desired therein was agreeable to all the rules of law , religion and policy . the author has inserted at large the several contested votes of parliament , to which k. william had refused his assent , and he endeavours to demonstrate the legality , reasonableness , and necessity of them , by proving them to be in all points agreeable to the antient laws and customs of that nation . this has produced us another discourse on the same subject , in answer to the former . it is call'd , an account of the affairs of scotland , in relation to their religious and civil rights . here our author undertakes to satisfie the world , that k. william had offer'd to the parliament in scotland all the satisfaction and redress of their grievances that reasonable men could expect ; and that the true source and fountain whence proceeded all the complaints of the discontented party , was , that some of their number were not advanc'd to such honourable and advantageous posts of the state , as they thought they had merited by their zeal for k. william , and the eminent services they had done him in advancing his interest in that kingdom . and to evince what he undertakes , he has set down at length the grievances themselves , and the redress offer'd them by king william in his instructions to his commissioner , and makes some reflections on both . if you encline to search any further into the history of these debates betwixt k. william and his parliament , you may consult the treatises themselves , to which i refer you . i suppose you may have heard how active and diligent the presbyterians in scotland have been ever since this late revolution , to exclaim against the injustice and severity of the former reigns , and particularly that of k. charles ii. ( under whose administration we enjoyed so much peace and tranquillity ) whom they charge with tyranny and oppression , cruelty and persecution against them and their adherents ; and reproach his ministers of state as subverters of the laws of the kingdom , and betrayers of the liberties and property of the subject . the bad impression which these clamours made upon strangers that were ignorant of these transactions , obliged sir geo. mackenzie , ( who had been advocate to k. charles ii. and was principally aim'd at in many of the reflections cast upon the government and its ministers ) to vindicate his majesty k. charles and his ministers of state , from these calumnies and aspersions so unjustly thrown upon them . and this he has very fully and satisfactorily done in a discourse publish'd after his death , and called , a vindication of the government in scotland , during the reign of k. charles ii , against misrepresentations made in several scandalous pamphlets . to which is added , the method of proceeding against criminals , as also some of the phanatical covenants , as they were printed and published by themselves in that reign . by sir george maekenzie , late lord advocate there . in this treatise we have a short narrative of the proceedings of that government in relation to the presbyterian dissenters , which alone is sufficient to undeceive persons that have been imposed upon by misrepresentations , and to confute all the malicious calumnies raised against the government . for when we consider the frequent rebellions and commotions which the presbyterians raised during the reign of king charles ii. we shall soon find that those acts of the government , which they tax with the greatest severity , savour of nothing but mildness and lenity , and that the government proceeded by the slowest steps imaginable to punish those who openly own'd their designs of subverting the monarchy . the authour has collected all the objections and instances of pretended cruelty against the government , which the malice of its enemies could contrive , and has answer'd them beyond the possibility of a reply . the publisher has subjoyned a collection of original papers publish'd by themselves , which contain an account of their avowed principles and practices , and from thence you may easily judg how consistent it is with the security of any government , to suffer the propagation of such wicked and seditious principles . but i think you cannot have a more impartial and true account of their principles , nor a fuller vindication of the proceedings of the government against this rebellious party , than from a book lately publish'd under this title , the history of scotch presbytery , being an epitome of the hind let loose , by mr. shields . with a preface by a presbyter of the church of scotland . it is epitome of a larger book published by mr. alexander shields , one of their most eminent preachers , and a zealous defender of the good old cause . here we have a true description of the temper and genius of the whole party , and it discovers the true spirit of the presbyterian gospel . there is none of them that b●tter understands the true tenets of the presbyterians , nor is more consequential to their principles ; for he fairly sets down their doctrines and opinions , and disowns none of the most absurd and pernicious consequences that naturally flow from them . he gives us an historical account of their many insurrections and rebellions against the civil government , and very frankly owns and justifies them all , together with several of their barbarous murders committed upon the archbishop of s. andrews , and some others , ; so that by a slight view of this book , you may easily judg , whether any government of whatever species can subsist where such principles and doctrines are suffer'd to be propagated among the subjects . and now , sir , i have satisfied your desire as fully as possibly i could ; i have given you an exact account of the most , if not all the considerable treatises that have been printed with respect to the present persecution of the church of scotland , and that you may be the better able to judge of the truth and certainty of it , i have set down the treatises published by both parties ; and likewise that you may the more easily procure any of them you are desirous to read , i have subjoyned to this letter a catalogue of them all with the names of the booksellers by whom they are to be sold . i think it is sufficiently evident from the foregoing collection , what sufferings the orthodox clergy in scotland have endured , and how unaccountable the proceedings of the presbyterians are towards them ; and which is most to be lamented , the present miserable state and condition of the whole national church , and the great prejudice that religion sustains by the overthrow thereof , is no less apparent . how much it concerns all sober and religious men to contribute their endeavours , for delivering that oppressed church from the miseries and calamities under which it at present groans , i hope we are all sensible ; and therefore i shall give you no further trouble but of this one request , which is , that you would be careful to inform all persons with whom you may chance to converse , of the present deplorable state of affairs in scotland , that every one may lend their assistance for rescuing the revered clergy of that kingdom from under their present sufferings and oppressions , that the rod of the wicked may lye no longer upon the back of the righteous , least they stretch forth their hand unto iniquity , and likewise that our national church may be restored to its primitive order and beauty . this is the earnest desire of june 1● . 1692. sir , your most affectionate and humble servant . a catalogue of books mention'd in the foregoing letter . a memorial for his highness the prince of orange in relation to the affairs of scotland , &c. london printed for randal taylor near stationers-hall . 1689. the present state and condition of the clergy and church of scotland . london printed . a brief and true account of the sufferings of the church of scotland occasioned by the episcopalians since the year 1660. &c. london printed anno 1690. the prelatical church-man against the phanatical kirk-man , &c. london printed anno 1690. an account of the present persecution of the church of scotland in several letters . london printed for s. cook anno 1690. . the case of the present afflicted clergy in scotland truly represented . london printed for j. hindmarsh at the golden ball over against the royal exchange in cornhill . 1690. a late letter concerning the sufferings of the episcopal clergy in scotland . london printed for robert clavel at the peacock in st. paul 's church-yard . 1691. some questions resolved concerning episcopal and presbyterian government in scotland . london printed , and are to be sold by randal taylor near stationers-hall . 1690. the danger of the church of england from a general assembly of covenanters in scotland . london printed for tho. bennet at the half-moon in st. paul 's church-yard , and john hovell , bookseller in oxon. 1690. a vindication of the church of scotland , being an answer to a paper , intituled , some questions concerning episcopal and presbyterian government in scotland , &c. london printed for tho. salusbury at the sign of the temple near temple-bar in fleetstreet . 1691. an historical relation of the late general assembly held at edinburgh , &c. london printed for j. hindmarsh at the golden ball in cornhill , near the royal exchange . 1691. a continuation of the historical relation of the late general assembly in scotland . london printed for sam. keeble , at the great turks head in fleetstreet , over against fetter-lane-end . 1691. a vindication of the church of scotland , being an answer to five pamphlets . printed at edinburgh , and reprinted at london , for tho. parkhurst at the bible and three crowns near mercers chappel in cheapside . 1691. presbyterian inquisition , as it was lately practised against the professors of the colledge of edinburgh . london printed for j. hindmarsh at the golden ball in cornhill . 1691. the scotch presbyterian eloquence , or the foolishness of their teaching discovered from their books , sermons and prayers , london printed for randal taylor near stationers-hall , 1692. the late proceedings and votes of the parliament of scotland , contained in an address delivered to the king. glasgow printed by andrew hepburn 1689. an account of the affairs of scotland in relation to their religious and civil rights . london printed , and are to be sold by richard bald●in in the great old baily near the black bull. 1690. a vindication of the government in scotland , during the reign of king charles ii. by sir george mackenzie late lord advocate there . london printed for j. hindmarsh at the golden ball in cornhill . the history of scotch presbytery , being an epitome of the hind let loose , by mr. shields . london printed for j. hindmarsh at the golden ball in cornhill . 1692. finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a51157-e170 * vid. the presbyterian eloquence lately printed . * dr. hardy , at edinburgh . * mr. shields in his remarks upon the presbyterian addresses to k. james , at the end of his hind let loose . * mr. alexander pitcairn . † mr. gilbert rule . * or pasonage-house . † shrove-tuesday . * and refused when legally required . the marqvesse of argyle, his speech concerning the king, the covenant, and peace or warre betweene both kingdomes also a letter to the parliament of england from mr. marshall, some votes past in scotland, and the particular parties which would engage against england, and who are against it. argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a25793 of text r22803 in the english short title catalog (wing a3667). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 9 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 5 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a25793 wing a3667 estc r22803 12061989 ocm 12061989 53264 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a25793) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 53264) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 49:15) the marqvesse of argyle, his speech concerning the king, the covenant, and peace or warre betweene both kingdomes also a letter to the parliament of england from mr. marshall, some votes past in scotland, and the particular parties which would engage against england, and who are against it. argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. marshall, mr. (j.) england and wales. parliament. [2], 6 p. printed by barnard alsop, london : 1648. letter signed: j.m. reproduction of original in thomason collection, british library. eng great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649. a25793 r22803 (wing a3667). civilwar no the marquesse of argyle his speech concerning the king, the covenant, and peace or warre betweene both kingdomes. also, a letter to the parl argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of 1648 1404 2 0 0 0 0 0 14 c the rate of 14 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2003-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-05 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-06 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2003-06 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-08 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the marqvesse of argyle his speech concerning the king , the covenant , and peace or warre betweene both kingdomes . also , a letter to the parliament of england , from mr. marshall . some votes past in scotland , and the particular parties which would engage against england , and who are against it london , printed by barnard alsop , 1648. the marquesse of argyles speech . concerning . the king , the covenant , and the present state of both kingdomes . my lords and gentlemen . the worke of reformation in these kingdomes , is so great a worke , as no age nor history can parallel since christs dayes , for no one nation had ever such a reformation set forth unto them , much lesse three kingdomes , so that this generation may truly think themselves happy , if they can be instrumentall in it . and as the work is very great , so it cannot be expected , but it must have great and powerful enimies ; not only flesh and blood which hate to be reformed , but likewise principalities and powers , the rulers of the darknesse in this world and spiritual wickednesses in high places . as the dangers are great we must looke the better to our duties , and the best way to perform these , is to keep us by the rules which are to be found in our nationall covenant , principally the word of god , and in its owne place , the example of the best reformed churches ; and in our way wee must beware of some rockes , which are temptations both upon the right and left hand , so that we must hold the middle path . vpon the one part , we would take heed , not to settle lawlésse liberty in religion , whereby , instead of vniformity , we should set up a thousand heresies and shismes which is directly contrary to our covenant . vpon the other part , we are to looke that we persecute not piety & peaceable men , who cannot through scruple of conscience , come up in all things to the common rule ; but that they may have such a forbearance as may be according to the word of god , may consist with the covenant , and not be d●structive to the rule it self , nor to the peace of the church and kingdome , wherein i will insist no further either to insist your lordships patience or judgements , who i doubt not will be very careful to do every thing according to our covenant . as to the other point , concerning the peace and union of the kingdoms , i know it is that which all professe they desire , i hope it is that all do aym at ; sure i am , it is that which all men doe study and endeavor , and i thinke it not amisse to remember your lordships of some former experiences , as an argument to move us to be wise for the future . if the kingdom of england in the 1640. yeere of god , then sitting in parliament , had concured , as they were desired against the kingdom of scotland , no question wee had been brought to many difficulties which blessed be god , was by the wisdome of the , honourable house apreuedted : so likewise when this kingdom was in difficulties , if the kingdom of scotland had not willingly , yea cherfully sacrificed their peace to concur with this kingdom , your lordships all know what might have bin the danger . therefore , let us hold fast that union which is so happily established betwixt us , and let nothing make us again two , who are so many wayes one , all of one language , in one island , all under one king , one in-religlon , yea one in covenant ; so that in effect wee differ in nothing but in the name , as brethren doe , which i wish were also removed , that we might bee altogether one , if the two kingdoms shal thinke fit ; for i dare say hot the greatest kingdom on the earth can prejudice both so much , as one of them may doe the other . i wil forbear at this time to speak of the many jelousies i hear are suggested , for as i do not love them so i delight not to mention them , onely one i cannot forbear to speak of , as if the kingdom of scotland , were too much affected with the kings interest . i wil not deny but the kingdom of scotland , by reason of the raign of many kings his progenitors over them , hath a natural affection to his majesty , whereby they wish he may be rather reformed then ruined , yet experience may tell , their personal regard to him has never made them to forget that common rule , the safety of the people is the supream law . so likewise their love to monarchy makes them very desirous that it may be rather regulated then destroyed , which i hope need not to mention further to your lordships , who i trust are of the same mind . a letter from a gentleman from edinburgh to his friend at london . sir , the convention of the estates of scotland are breaking up and the parliament meet on thursday next , the house is like to be full the first day , and great are the expectations of the people on all sides , and the rather because so little as yet is knowne concerning the buisinesse which the english commissioners come about which is wholly referred to the parliament , to whom their papers are directed , many bills are prepared in a readinesse to be passed when the parliament is convened , the marquesse of argyle ( with whom david generall de●●●●y also cideth ) and a great part of the clergie and honest peaceable presbyterians joyned in a declaration , that they disclaime to adhere to or associate themselves with malignants and disaffected persons in making any warre against england , to these there is a great party which would have had some respect to tender consciences yet it is reported here by malignants of which there are store that they shal have another day and that the king shall be brought again , &c. these are likewise the hopes of the remainder of those which the mar. of huntly commanded formerly , by which wee may perceive that for the present the division is great amongst these , so is it in their army ; some are for episcopacy , and setting up the king in as great power as ever he had heretofore ; others say , then to what purpose have we hazarded our lives , and entred into covenant , &c. thus are we as men in a maze what will become of these things ; especially , seeing some of our commissioners slighted , even by those which most favour their cause , but the rest have now very good reception , and are well accommodated . vpon the large report of the scots commissioners which were in england , wherein some of them wanted not words to make good their actions at london , and laying open the proceedings of the parliament to their best advantage , the convention of estates voted their approbation thereof : yet when the declaration and papers on the other side , come to receive a debate in a full house of parliament , where its like all things will be well pondered and laid in an equall ballance , it may happily prove otherwise ; at which the hamiltonians , and all those which are now puft up with hopes of division , would with shame hang down their heads . mr. marshall hath sent a letter to the parliament of england , to desire leave to returne again to london , which is all for the present from . your humble servant , j. m. imprimatur , g. mabbot . finis . a proclamation or act by the parliament of scotland, for the proclaiming of charles prince of wales, king of great brittain, franee [sic], and ireland, through all the market places in that kingdom. also the remonstrance of the navie to rhesupream [sic] power of the kingdom, the commons assembled in the parliament of england, and to his excellency the lord generall fairfax. febr. 12. 1648. imprimatur gilbert mabbott. scotland. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a92601 of text r203725 in the english short title catalog (thomason e542_8). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 28 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 9 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a92601 wing s1326 thomason e542_8 estc r203725 99863566 99863566 164931 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92601) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 164931) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 84:e542[8]) a proclamation or act by the parliament of scotland, for the proclaiming of charles prince of wales, king of great brittain, franee [sic], and ireland, through all the market places in that kingdom. also the remonstrance of the navie to rhesupream [sic] power of the kingdom, the commons assembled in the parliament of england, and to his excellency the lord generall fairfax. febr. 12. 1648. imprimatur gilbert mabbott. scotland. parliament. brooke, richard, capt. hadock, richard. [2], 14 p. printed at edenburgh by evan tyler, and reprinted at london by iohn clowes, london : [1649] signed on b3v: richard haddoke, vice-admirall [and 25 others]. date of publication suggested by wing. a reissue or reprinting of "the resolution and remonstrance of the navie, to the supream power of england, the commons assembled in parliament, and to his excellency, the lord generall fairfax; with the honourable councell of the army". the title page is probably a cancel; b3v and b4 are in a different setting, incorporating the proclamation. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng charles -ii, -king of england, 1630-1685 -early works to 1800. great britain -history -commonwealth and protectorate, 1649-1660 -early works to 1800. great britain -history, naval -stuarts, 1603-1714 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1649-1660 -early works to 1800. a92601 r203725 (thomason e542_8). civilwar no a proclamation or act by the parliament of scotland, for the proclaiming of charles prince of wales, king of great brittain, franee [sic], a scotland. parliament 1649 4690 7 0 0 0 0 0 15 c the rate of 15 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-04 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-06 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2008-06 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation or act by the parliament of scotland , for the proclaiming of charles prince of wales , king of great brittain , france and ireland , through all the market places in that kingdom . also the remonstrance of the navie to the supream power of the kingdom , the commons assembled in the parliament of england , and to his excellency the lord generall fairfax . royal blazon or coat of arms c r c r honi soit ovi mal y pense febr. 12. 1648. imprimatur gilbert mabbott . printed at edenburgh by evan tyler , and reprinted at london by john clowes . to his excellencie , thomas lord fairfax lord generall of the parliaments forces of all england and wales : and the honourable councell of the army . the humble petition , and tender , of captaine richard brook● , and divers sea captaines , and others . vvhereas the blessing is vniversall , such ought the gratulation to be , upon which account , we in the place , as the principall agent , give god the praise ; and next as the happy instrument to your excellencie and your army , for our present liberty redeemed , ( not without much colingtation , and losse of precious bloud ) from a long insolent , arbitrary , and oppressing tyranny , and since one of the sweetest flowres in the chaplet of liberty ( made , as by your late remonstrance it appeareth , the onely garland of your many and wonderfull victory ) and is jus suffragii . we are incouraged to present , as our sence of our hoped approaching happinesse , for our best conceptions and endeavours to compleat , and then conserve it . and since to your excellencie as captain general of the forces of all england , and the dominions thereof , both militias are united as well of the sea as land , then which an ampler expedient for publique , safety cannot be ; it is humbly desired between army and navy a happy correspond may be commenc't and maintayn'd , by meanes whereof all jealousies and mis-apprehensions in both , or either , ( mauger the most close and subtile fomentations of all malignant spirits ) may be prevented , or soone annulled ; and to this end , we shall humbly propose , that some agent , or agents , may be mutually and reciprocally in the behalfe of each , taken and received into each others debates , transactions , and conclusions ; that so upon all occasions , we may by undoubted intelligence , crave and have mutuall assistance and be impowered unanimously to ingage against the common enemy . and because they but vainely pretend health , who onely fortifie against the evils without , and not expell the peccant humours within ; with a better providence , but confining it to our owne sphere , humbly desire , that the dangerous practises , and abuses ( of longtime , and yet ) acted , and suffered , in , and about the navie , to the infinte dishonour and prejudice of the whole nation ; may in this happy juncture of reformation , speedily be ●●ken into consideration and redresse . to englands supream power & judicature . the commons assembled in parliament . the humble petition , and tender , of captain richard brooke , and divers sea captains , and others . right honourable , the commonality of a kingdom , though a great body , hath a quick sence , tyranny and oppressions presently felt , private aymes and self ambitions easily discerned ; whence true patriotts , whose affections square only with their trusts , redeeming generall freedom , and improving publique interest , cannot loose their deserved plaudit . and we no inconsiderable part of this kingdoms commonallty ( our vocation , as to use , reflected on ) in our sence of your late renownfull resolutions overcoming all obstructions and difficulties ) to settle the nation in a blessed posture of liberty and safety , humbly commensurate with the blessing : present this acknowledgement of our great thankfulnesse ; and whereas rumour not able to belye their desperate and implacable malice : loudly speaketh the common enemy , busie in soliciting and inciting forreign princes and states to an invasion , we with much joy resent your vigilance and timely circumspection for their repulsion and our defence , and more especially in your present preparation of a numerous and well appointed fleet ; whereunto moved by common piety and duty of devotion , we became thus bold to obtrude zeale , and in this glorious cause of restored freedom , against all malignant opposers , make this hearty dedication of our lives and services . and because they but vainly pretend perfect health , who only fortifie against the evills without , and not expell the pecan humours within , we with a better providence , but confining it to our own spheare , humbly desire that the dangerous practices and abuses ( of long time , and yet ) acted and suffered in and about the navy , to the infinite dishonour and prejudice of the whole nation , may in this happy juncture of reformation speedily be taken into consideration and redresse . 1. and first the improper and dangerous mode and custome in electing all sorts of officers , but more especially of captains and chief commanders of ships and pinaces in former times , by court favour and parasitisme , and under pretence of estate ( and indeed more frequently pretended then reall ) whence issued much disservice to the state in generall , and no publique pay stated ( excepting meerely allowance for the table , many subsequent cheates too many here ) but upon further discusse and oportunity ( to be enumerated in these latter times , by corrupt or indirect meanes , as bribing and insinuating into the secretaries clarkes , and the like ministers of committees , whence disaffected persons that would submit to such dishonest contracts accepted , and wel-affected that would not , excluded , have succeeded many defaults in our seas , and that the last years so foule defection and perrilous revolt . 2 that all , or most places and offices , in , or belonging to the navy , are by ancient custom tenanted , as it were , and to be possest for life , whereby much supinenes , neglect , and disservice hath , and cannot but accrew , for then a consciousness of being strictly observed , and if faulty , displast ; a more notable both reigne to dissolutenesse and spur to duty cannot be . 3 the great want of time , and consequently detriment to service , occasioned by the present custom in victualling the navy , every ship defaulking six weeks of the six months , she is bound forth , and not seldom lying , as many more wind-bound . 4 the most injurious , and no lesse pernitious ingrosing , committed by the former committees and commissioners of the navy , of all the imployment at sea , and impropriating it to their own shipping ; for thereby at farre greater rates then otherwise would have been , hath the state been long served with ships lesse serviceable , and undoubtedly , the will and power of the owners ( to bear all out reflicted on ) unexposeable to any hardship of fight and weather . 5. and lastly , the exiguity of pay for all sorts of persons engaged in , and attending on this kind of service , whereby much impoverishment to many particular families , and generall decay of the service it self , hath followed ; many otherwise able , for want of a competent support , either wholly declining or deserting it . and forasmuch as we conceive , it is no lesse eminently our duties , then our observations of defaults and grievances , to represent our judgements for their redresses , we humbly subjoyne as followeth . to the first . that the commanders of ships and pinnaces , be from henceforth made choice of , rather then a vaine pretence of estate ( bribery , parasitisme , or lordly favour ) by their abilities in navigation and sea service , in case they be , as only then apt , for so great trust , of religious life , and honest conversation ; whereby will ensue a greater compliance and love between them and the commanded sea-men ; and more service done in one yeare , then before this parliament in one and twenty . and in regard also that many enormities have been , and will be probably continued , without a timely and powerfull suppression in the trinity house , and all officers thereto belonging . we humbly move , that a free and uninterrupted liberty be granted ( and a declaration , if needfull , to signifie the same to all manner of persons to come and exhibite their complaints , and without any long tiresome attendance ( cousin german to injustice ) have a day certaine given them for producing their attestations , and that all such impartially , and without respect of persons ) as shall be found guilty of indirect and fraudulent practises , as selling of places , extortion of fees , bribery , or any other misdemeanours , in their respective offices and charges , may be with open disgrace ( as a happy caution to them that shall succeed them ) forthwith dismist of their respective places , and be ordered to make due compensation for the wrongs and dammages which in any kind have been sustained by them . and that the committee now constituted , may take order and provide , that no secretaries clarke , or any other minister whatsoever , officiating in the said trinity house , or to the committee , or commissions of the navy , be permitted to hold or execute any place , or charge , that hath in any sort been an abettor to the said revolt , or shall be lawfully proved guilty of apparant malignancy . 1. neither here will it be a muse to request indempnity be not so farre allowed to any person guilty of the late revolt , as others by their impunity may be animated to undertake like treasonable acts , and of so high a degree of treason , make an umbrage or protection for all their precedent delinquencies . and whereas the grandees of trinity house , gave so cleare a display of their imbosomed malignancy , and how strongly they were byast with affection to the said revolt , by not only delaying , and in a manner refusing their assistance to their reducement ; but by discountenancing that pious and so needfull devotion in others , and traducing them for it . we humbly move , that a due caution for ( non est bis erare in polemicis ) of all such insincere , and so obviously disaffected persons , and that not any of the said house , which cannot give an evident , manifest , or testimoniall of their good affection to , and cordiall complyance with , the reformed goverment , and present power on foote , be intrusted with any power or jurisdiction whatsoever , but that it be forthwith wholly transferred on , such as shall too securely stand on their own integrities & upright dealings , to need protection from great personages to that end sued unto ; and accordingly admitted into their fraternity , a course frequently practised , and but lately , though not succesfully ( as on some lords which we could instance in ) attempted on some collonels in the army , for as we hope they have refused it . and whereas charity inciteth us to take care , that the same good use be made of the chest-money for which it was intended , we can no longer content our selves with an implicite faith ; but ( having more then probable grounds to suspect the contrary . we desire that for future , what receipts and disbursments thereof , shall happen weekly be weekly printed , and on some place of the exchange and custome house affixt for the view and satisfaction of all . to the second . that from henceforth all places in and about the navy , of what nature or quallity whatsoever , be subjected to a yearly election ; that so fidility and vigilance in their severall charges and duties , may be in a better capacity to be preferred , to the great incouragement and advancement of the same , and the contraries , through the fear of an infamous displacing , be prevented , or the subjects of them for examples sake justly expelled . that no commander or other officer whatsoever , be permitted to enjoy at one time any more then one place , either in his own name or clandestinely in any others : by receiving all or any of the portion of the sallary thereto belonging ; and whosoever shall be truly detected of the same , be forthwith discharged of his proper place , and otherwise musted as the nature of the crime shall deserve . and if the tennor hereof extend to all offices , and places military and civill on the land , it will we conceive be of excellent use in it selfe , and very gratefull to the publicke ; but we shall not digresse , being so highly satisfied with the armies remonstrance , and petition of the 11. sept. last , that our hope to see all those provisions for the peoples freedom happynesse therein contained ; and wherein , we professe our concurrence shortly brought into act , we totally acquiesce . to the third . that every captaine who is appointed for command of shipps for convoyes , may have the victualling the shipp he so commands , having the same proportionable allowance that the victuallers now , or in consideration of the advance of price in comodities should have ; and that all other shipps who are ●●●ly appointed for guarding of the coast , may have their provisions provided in magazines in the severall ports , or some of them most convenient along the coast . and therefore it is desired , the certainty thereof occasioning no small inconveniency that these duties of guard and convoy be distinguisht , and certaine ships be more particularly named , to have the charge of the convoy in and out of marchants ships and goods ; that so trade may be as highly advanced by this meanes with us , as it is by the same with the hollanders , to our long impoverishment through default thereof . to the fourth . that no committee , or commissioners of the navy hereafter , be permitted to ingrosse , or impropriate service ( to their own ships , but that the proffers of others ( when as much or more conducing to the publick good ) according to common equity and liberty , may be accepted and preferred ; and that for future all committees of the navy may be admonished to let the doors stand open to receive all proffers and petitions sans fraud , or other sinister practises . to the fifth . that for the severall pay every captain thus employed for the convoying of ships , being suffered to victuall his own ship as aforesaid , be allowed 10 l. per mensem for his pay . and that every captain guarding the coast have also 10 l. per mensem and some allowance for his table , for the entertainment of strangers occasioned by councells , or the like , and that every master have 6 l. per mensem , and every cheif mate have 4 l. per mensem , and the other mates 3 l. 10 s. per mensem , the gunner boatswaine , carpenter , have 4 l. per mensem , and the cooke be allowed 3 l. per mensem , and no other officer belonging to the gunner , gun-roome or boatswaine , except each a mate be allowed above foure mast mens pay from the state ; but what the gunner or boatswaine shall allow out of their own meanes . that the steward , quarter-master , gunners mate , boateswain● mate , carpenters mate , be allowed 40 s. per mensem , fore mast men clear of all charges have 20 s. per mensem which severall sums though to some , as to our selves may seeme to large , yet if granted may prevent the multiplicity of cheates formerly amounting to much more , and induce those seamen fallen off to returne to your service . that the minister and chirurgion have such allowance as the state shall thinke fit . that every captaine with the approbation of the power electing him , may make choice of all his officers in the respective ships . that all captaines or masters of marchant men ships being commanders in chief , may have to the full value of twenty pounds of his own adventure , and his bill of portage , free of custome and excise . that all masters mates have 15 l. of their own adventure upon the said accompt . that all chirurgions , pursers , gunners , boatswanes carpenters and cookes , have ten pounds upon the same accompt . that all their mates with quarter-masters and of their quallitie have eight pounds upon the same accompt . that all fore mast-men have five pounds upon the same accompts . that all such as by sufficient testimony shall make it appear , they are not of ability either by charge of children , or losse otherwise , to make good their above-said adventurers accordingly , may be enabled to sell the same at the end of the voyage to him that will buy it , that thereby men may be incouraged to fight for defence of ships and marchants goods , ( this being but in liew of our ton custome free , formerly allowed , and since taken away . that the names of the severall captains , masters , mates , gunners , boat-waynes , carpenters , cookes , quartermasters ministers , and chirurgion , and four mast-men , with all other inferiour sea-men be with the names of the severall ships and pinnaces they serve in , inrolled , and the pay establisht , respectively paid them in whole , when in service , and halfe pay in the vacation thereof provided , they take no other imployment , whereby as they shall not be occasioned through the apprehension of want by fraud to provide in time of service for maintenance , when out of it : so upon the setting forth of any summers , or winters fleete , men in every degree fit for imployment , will be alwayes ready to man them . and if any in what place soever maymed or dying in this service of the state , shall leave , or have a wife and children , or either of them to slenderly provided for to give them convenient sustenance for their subsistance , aliment & education , and the state in a blessed imitation of the most flourishing common-wealths of old , and the netherlands at this instant , shall ordaine some certain provision for such maimed persons relict , or orphans sutable to their severall respective conditions and exigencies . it will be an act not only well pleasing to god , and worthy our profession of religion ; but for many demonstrable reasons of great utility in the mayne , such donatives being in effect , but as a scattering before a harvest , or as saloman hath it , a casting of bread upon the waters repayable in a little time with greater abundance . and whereas it is , and may be falsty suggested , that all disaffected persons being excluded . a sufficient number of common seamen for the service of the navy , cannot be raysd or found ; we are confident these our humble desires granted to the satisfaction of all wel-affected persons : there shall be no such necessity to indanger so principall a defence of the kingdoms peace and safety , as is the navy in the trust of such inveterate enemies to it ; but that it may be supplyed ( and had ; had we our desires on the 5. of july last in our first proposalls formerly ) with men of known affections and integrity to the state . in summe since shipping is of greatest concernment to this nation , one of whose , if not chief royalities , hath ever been the dominions of the seas , as deriving to it wealth and defence , either by letter of mart or trade , and we our selves dubble obliged by publique interest , as english , and particul●r vocation , as seamen , to our utmost abilitles to advance the same , have with as much brevity as we could , presented to this honourable assembly this expedient , humbly imploring as time and affaires shall admit maturity and seasonablenesse , freedom of enlargement . right honourable it hath been heard at least in parable , that a poor man by his wisdome hath preserved a city ; sure i am that it incomb● every one , of what capacity soever , to intend publick safety and the contribution of a mite , adds to the common treasury , so that incouraged , by the integrity of my ayme at generall good ( which is able to screen all other defects , and render my undertakings benignly accepted ; i humbly present this small body of observations : whence as from a perspective set to blear eyes , may be upon your maturer and more judicious scanning , deduces some more advantagious expediences for constituting and preserving a navie to the nations unspekable good , in securing it , and its trade , then hath yet been happily explor'd ) and the late act , touching regulating the officecrss of the navie , and customes , hath greatly incited me here , to while in many thing● concurring therewith , it hath anticipated the presentment though ( as it is well known to many ) not the draught of this humble petition , and tender , which hath past the discusse , and received the approved vogae of the most expert in my vocation , sea-men , of whom upon command , i can give a competent list , for any service at sea , the state can , or shall require ; but though all met in the centre yet ( selfeishnesse , that bane to the publick , raigning in most , i found some descriptions in running of their lines to the circumference of particular interest , not being impatient of longer obstructions by the want of harmony in circumstantialls onely . i have presumed , declining the ostentation of their subscriptions , to personate a publique part , and ( without injury to them , whilest in a zealous right to our common parent , our countrey ) in their names made this humble presentment . rich : brooke . that captaine richard brooke , the presenter hereof , may not be suspected to overshoot in his suggestions : we whose names are subscribed ( in our mutuall affections to the common government , which we conceive the precedent animadversions may notably advance ; humbly for our selves , and number of our friends , and fellow sea-men , addresse our desires , that they may be forthwith taken into consideration , thereupon , an exceeding advance of service to the state , whereto we shall faithfully , with our lives and fortunes , ever adhere against all opposers . richard haddoke , vice-admirall . capt. richard fermes . capt. henry west . capt. william bunducke . capt. thomas merryott . capt. george dakins . capt. thomas spalding . capt. richard ingle . capt. jonas reeve . capt. joseph jordaine . capt. william tadnall . mr. john jussif . mr. francis floyd . mr. william darkis . mr. john kent . mr. william beale . mr. william bunduck . junior . mr. john ewell . mr. deubers sotherne . mr. humphrey morris . mr. thomas downton . mr , john feeld . william godfrey . mr. jeremiah trevise . mr. robert hudson . william simkleere . god save the king . at edenburgh the fifth day of february , 1649. the estates of parliament presently conveened in this second sessions of the second triennall parliament , by vertue of an act of the committee of estates , who had power and authority from the last parliament , for conveening the parliament , considering ; that for asmuch as the kings majesty who lately reigned , is contrary to the dissent and protestation of this kingdom now removed by a violent death and that by the lords blessing there is left unto us a righieous heir & lawfull successour , charles prince of scotland , and wales , now king of great brittain , france , and ireland ; we the estates of parliament of the kingdom of scotland , do therefore most unanimously and cheerfully in recognisance and acknowledgment of his just right , title , and succession to the crown of these kingdoms , hereby proclaim and declare to all the world , that the said lord and prince charls is by the providence of god , and by the lawfull right of undoubted succession and dissent , king of great brittain , france , and ireland , whom all the subjects of this kingdom are bound humbly and faithfully to obey , maintain , and defend according to the nationall covenant , and the solemn league and covenant , betwixt the kingdomes , with their lives and goods , against all deadly , as their only righteous soveraign lord and king ; and because his majesty is bound by the law of god , and fundamentall lawes of this kingdome , to rule in righteousnesse and equity , for the honour of god the good of religion , and the wealth of his people : it is hereby declared , that before he be admitted to the exercise of his royall power , he shall give satisfaction to this kingdome in these things that concern the security of religion , the vnion betwixt the kingdomes , and the good and peace of this kingdom , according to the nationall covenant , and the solemn league and covenant ; for the which end , we are resolved with all possible expedition to make our humble and earnest addresses vnto his majesty : for the testification of all which , we the parliament of the kingdom of scotland publish this our acknowledgment of his just right ; title , and succession to the crown of these kingdoms at the marcket crosse of edenburgh , with all usuall solemnities in the like cases , and ordain his royal name , portract and seal , to be vsed in the publike writings and judicaturies of the kingdom , and in the mint-house , as was usually done to his royall predecessours , and command this act to be proclaimed at all the market crosses of the royall burghs within this kingdome , and to be printed , that none may pretend ignorance . god save king charles the second . fjnjs . at edinburgh the 13. day of september. 1644. act of the committee of estates, and the lord generall, the safe-guard of the lieges. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a92503 of text r212196 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.9[13]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a92503 wing s1132 thomason 669.f.9[13] estc r212196 99870842 99870842 161111 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92503) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 161111) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 245:669f9[13]) at edinburgh the 13. day of september. 1644. act of the committee of estates, and the lord generall, the safe-guard of the lieges. scotland. parliament. committee of estates. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by evan tyler, printer to the kings most excellent majestie, edinburgh : anno dom. 1644. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng soldiers -billeting -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a92503 r212196 (thomason 669.f.9[13]). civilwar no at edinburgh the 13. day of september. 1644. act of the committee of estates, and the lord generall, the safe-guard of the lieges. scotland. parliament 1644 305 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-07 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion at edinburgh the 13. day of september . 1644. act of the committee of estates , and the lord generall , for safe-guard of the lieges . forsameikle as there hes been divers complaints and grievances made to the committee of estates , by the lieges , from severall parts of the kingdom ; of the many insolencies and wrongs done upon them by foot companies and horse-troopes , their officers and souldiers , under pretext of taking quarters as they goe or come thorow the kingdom . for remeid whereof , and preserving the lieges in time-coming from the like ; the committee of estates , and the lord generall , hes statute and ordained , and by thir presents statutes and ordains ; that no officers nor souldiers , either in foot companies or horse-troopes , presume nor take upon hand at any time hereafter , in their passing thorow this kingdom , to commit or do any insolencies or wrongs to the lieges , but that they addresse themselves for quarters to those to whom by their warrants they are directed ; and that they leave their tickets of all that they receive in name of quartering : vvith certification to all such officers or souldiers as shall do in the contrary , that they shall be punished by death , or otherwayes , according to martiall law and discipline . and ordains thir presents to be published at the market-crosse of edinburgh , and others places needfull , and affixed on all landwart villages and towns , where-through none pretend ignorance of the same . ordered by the committee of estates , that this act be forthwith printed and published . edinburgh : printed by evan tyler , printer to the kings most excellent majestie . anno dom. 1644. an honourable speech made in the parlament of scotland by the earle of argile (being now competitor with earle morton for the chancellorship) the thirtieth of september 1641. touching the prevention of nationall dissention, and perpetuating the happie peace and union betwixt the two kingdomes, by the frequent holding of parlaments. argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a75556 of text r11252 in the english short title catalog (thomason e199_17). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 4 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a75556 wing a3654 thomason e199_17 estc r11252 99858967 99858967 111028 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a75556) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 111028) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 35:e199[17]) an honourable speech made in the parlament of scotland by the earle of argile (being now competitor with earle morton for the chancellorship) the thirtieth of september 1641. touching the prevention of nationall dissention, and perpetuating the happie peace and union betwixt the two kingdomes, by the frequent holding of parlaments. argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. scotland. parliament. house of lords. [2], 4, [2] p. printed by a.n. for i.m. at the george in fleetstreet, london : anno 1641. the last leaf is blank. printers' device on title page (mck. 251). reproduction of the original in the british library. eng speeches, addresses, etc., english -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1625-1649 -early works to 1800. great britain -politics and government -1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a75556 r11252 (thomason e199_17). civilwar no an honourable speech made in the parlament of scotland by the earle of argile (being now competitor with earle morton for the chancellorship argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of 1641 861 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2007-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-03 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-04 jonathan blaney sampled and proofread 2007-04 jonathan blaney text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an honourable speech made in the parlament of scotland by the earle of argile ( being now competitor with earle morton for the chancellorship ) the thirtieth of september 1641. touching the prevention of nationall dissention , and perpetuating the happie peace and union betwixt the two kingdomes , by the frequent holding of parlaments . london printed by a. n. for i. m. at the george in fleetstreet , anno 1641. my lords , what was more to bee wished on earth then the great happinesse this day wee enjoy , viz. to see his royall majesty our native sovereign and his loyall subjects of both his kingdomes so really united , that his majesty is piously pleased to grant unto us his subjects our lawfull demands concerning religion and liberties , and we his subjects of both nations cheerfully rendring to his majesty that dutie , affection , and assistance , which he hath just cause to expect from good people , and each nation concurring in brotherly amitie , unity , and concord , one towards the other . oh , what tongue is able to expresse the honour and praise due to that great and good god , who in these late commotions suffered not the counsels of either kingdome to despaire of the safetie of either common-wealth , but through his blessing to their painfull and prudent endevours hath wrought such an happinesse for us , that now after the great toyle and trouble which we have on both sides so long endured , wee may each man with his wife , children , and friends , under his own vine and fig-tree ( and all under his majesties protection ) refresh himselfe , with the sweet fruits of peace , which i beseech the lord of peace to make perpetuall to both nations . and to that end my earnest desires are , that all our best studies and endeavours may bee employed ( for some time ) in contriving and establishing such wholsome laws in both kingdomes whereby ( as much as in us lyes ) the opportunity and occasion of producing the like calamities as lately threatned both nations may for the future be prevented , if in any age hereafter such miscreants shall goe againe to attempt it . it is ( my lords ) notorious , that the late incendiaries that occasioned the great differences betwixt his majesty and his subjects took much advantage & courage by the too long intermission of the happy constitution of parliaments , in the vacancie of which they by false informations incensed his majesty against his loyall subjects , and by their wily insinuations extorted from his highnesse proclamations for to yield obedience to their innovations in the kirke , and patents for projects , whereby the poore subject was both polled and oppressed in his estate , and enthralled in his conscience : and thus by their wicked practices , his majestie was distasted , and his subjects generally discontented , in so much , that had not the great mercy of god prevented them , they had made an obstruction betwixt his majestie and his liege people , and had broken those mutuall and indissoluble bonds of protection and allegiance , whereby , i hope , his royall majestie , and his loyall and dutifull subjects of all his three kingdomes , will be ever bound together . to which let all good subjects say amen . my lords , the distaste of his majesty , nor discontents of his subjects , could never have come to that height they did ( nor consequently have produced such effects ) had not there bin such an interposition , by these innovators and projectors , betwixt his majestie our glorious sun , and us his loyall subjects , that his goodnesse appeared not ( for the time ) to us , nor our loyaltie and obedience to him . for no sooner was that happy constellation ( the parliament in england ) raised , and thereby those vaporous clouds dissipated , but his majesties goodnesse , his good subjects loyalty , and their treachery , evidently appeared . our brethren of england ( my lords ) finding the intermission of parlaments to be prejudiciall and dangerous to the state , have taken care , and made provision for the frequent holding of them : whose prudent example my motion is may be our pattern forthwith to obtaine his majesties royall assent , for doing the like here in this kingdome . by which meanes his majesty may in due time heare and redresse the grievances of his subjects , and his subjects ( as neede shall require ) chearefully aid and assist his majesty , and nor only the domestique peace and quiet of each kingdome bee preserved , but likewise all nationall differences ( if any happen ) may be by the wisdome of the assemblies of both kingdomes , from time to time composed and reconciled to the perpetuating of the happie peace and union betwixt both nations . finis . edinburgh, march 24th 1696. at a meeting of the subscribers to the company of scotland, trading to africa and the indies company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1696 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a80262 wing c5591 estc r230216 99896223 99896223 153874 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a80262) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 153874) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2385:6) edinburgh, march 24th 1696. at a meeting of the subscribers to the company of scotland, trading to africa and the indies company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh : 1696] reproduction of original in the newberry library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng company of scotland trading to africa and the indies -early works to 1800. scotland -history -17th century -early works to 1800. scotland -commerce -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2007-11 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion edinburgh , march 24th 1696. at a meeting of the subscribers to the company of scotland , trading to africa and the indies . the following resolutions concluded upon . 1. that a committee be chosen by the subscribers , of twenty persons out of their own number , to be joined to these nominate in the act of parliament , whereof seventeen to be a quorum , for making and laying down the needful rules and constitutions for the direction and government of this company with the times , ways and manner of the choise of the directors . 2. that every 100 lib. sterling subscribed for shall have one vote . 3. that wednesday the first day of april be the day for taking in the votes . the place for giving in the votes to be in the high council . house of edinburgh , from 9 in the morning to 12. and from 2 in the afternoon to 6 at night . 4. that this mark * be put to these nominate in the act of parliament , that none of them through mistake be put into the lists . 5. that any who shall subscribe before the first of april though they cannot be contained in the printed lists shall have a vote and may be chosed of the committee . 6. the method of giving in the lists is , that every subscriber for himself , or by his , her , or their deputations , or missive letter , shall give in the list of the persons they name for the committee , rolling it up . 7. that friday the 3d of april at three of the clock in the afternoon be a day for a general meeting for declaring the scrutiny and election , and other affairs of the company , in the laigh council-house of edinburgh . a letter from edinburgh, containing a true and perfite relation of all the passages and proceedings of the late army, raised in scotland by order of parliament: for the prosecuting of the ends of the league and covenant, concerning religion, libertie, and his majesties lawfull authority, by the well-affected subjects of that kingdom, showing the progresse thereof, from the beginning of the engagement: unto the end of that unfortunate expedition. written by an eye-witness, who was both an actor, and inspector of all mens carriages, in the march untill the deroute of the army. to a friend at london, for the better information of all those who desire to know the plain truth. eye witness. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a48055 of text r219251 in the english short title catalog (wing l1462). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 46 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 12 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a48055 wing l1462 estc r219251 99830746 99830746 35200 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a48055) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 35200) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2092:20) a letter from edinburgh, containing a true and perfite relation of all the passages and proceedings of the late army, raised in scotland by order of parliament: for the prosecuting of the ends of the league and covenant, concerning religion, libertie, and his majesties lawfull authority, by the well-affected subjects of that kingdom, showing the progresse thereof, from the beginning of the engagement: unto the end of that unfortunate expedition. written by an eye-witness, who was both an actor, and inspector of all mens carriages, in the march untill the deroute of the army. to a friend at london, for the better information of all those who desire to know the plain truth. eye witness. [24] p. s.n.], [edinburgh : printed 12 of november, 1648. place of publication from wing. signatures: a-f² . last page blank. reproduction of the original in the edinburgh university library. eng scotland. -army -history -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a48055 r219251 (wing l1462). civilwar no a letter from edinburgh, containing a true and perfite relation of all the passages and proceedings of the late army, raised in scotland; by eye-witness 1648 8838 2 0 0 0 0 0 2 b the rate of 2 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the b category of texts with fewer than 10 defects per 10,000 words. 2006-11 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2006-11 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-01 celeste ng sampled and proofread 2007-01 celeste ng text and markup reviewed and edited 2007-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a letter from edinburgh , containing a true and perfite relation of all the passages and proceedings of the late army , raised in scotland ; by order of parliament : for the prosecuting of the ends of the league and covenant , concerning religion , libertie , and his majesties lawfull authority , by the well-affected subjects of that kingdom , showing the progresse thereof , from the beginning of the engagement : unto the end of that unfortunate expedition . written by an eye-witnes , who was both an actor , and inspector of all mens carriages , in the march untill the deroute of the army . to a friend at london , for the better information of all those who desire to know the plain truth . printed 12 of november , 1648. sir , beeing now by the providence of god , got out of the reach of rigour , and fearing neither the doggednesse of a iaylour nor the voyage of barbadoes ; but enjoying the freedome of my former life , and the companie of my friends , knowing also how great a desire you have to hear of me , both in my own particular fortune , and successe of that late unfortunate army in the north , i acknowledge my self bound in duety to satisfie your longing , and give you a true and perfite relation of the progresse and event of that expedition , but shall remit the story of mine own adventures and return , unto another occasion , it beeing but of small moment , and the other so necessary to be known of every one who loves truth , of which i may freely say ; i can tell as much as any private person that was in the journey , for beeing an eye-witnes and actor from the first levying of the troupes , unto the day of the desaster , and having haunted the chief commanders for my better information of what past in the army , i can the more assuredly give you an exact accompt of the most materiall passages in that expedition , wherein i protest before god , i shall strip my self of all passion and partialitie , for the discharge of my conscience ; and defence of the truth , to give you this free and following narration , whatsoever malice may perhaps have blown abroad to poyson the seduced people with misreports . i shall not here insist upon the opposition made in the parliament of scotland against the levie , nor the jealousie that possest some , in the choice of the commanders , as perhaps beeing men who had their own ends , or aspired to that domination which others had long vsurped , and would be loath to lay down again , both parties still pretending the keeping of the covenant , and that jealousie was fomented by the ministrie , which every day preached against the engagement , there was also a partie , which not siding with any of the other two , pressed the calling home of the prince , so to decide all differences , & prevent heart-burning in the point of command , at which time also a black cloud in the west did threaten a deludge to destroy the good designe , but that was soon dissipate by the wisedome and valour of the earle of calander , leivetenant generall of the army , and middleton leivetenant generall of the horse at machlinmoore , by order from the lord duke hamilton . and not long after his grace receaved order from the committee of estates , to march speedily to the english border , for securing of carlile , and opposing of major generall lambert , mean while all the strong holds of the kingdom as edinburgh , sterling , dumbarton , and the rest were yet in the hands of the well-affected partie , ( as was supposed ) or might have been easily secured , but what difficulties were made concerning the forces in ireland , led by generall major george monro , for the finding of moneyes to pay and transport them , it beeing resolved they should be under the command of the earle of crawford lindsay treasurer , i need not to relate , and therefore to begin my journall , take it thus . about the beginning of july , his grace appointed a rendevous at annan ; where the small number that resorted at first made us stay some few dayes . upon the 8 we entered england , and quartered that night at rokliff , the next day the army marched by carlile , and quartered at thursby , there the generall receiving the keyes of the town , and castle , from sir philip musgrave , went up into the castle , and gave order our ammunition should be left there , though the custody of both was still in the hands of the english , for some few dayes , which showed how great confidence he had in them , at thursby diverse horse and foot of ours came unto us and we heard that some , both horse and foot were come over out of ireland , landed in galloway ; and marching toward dumfries , there also we saw sir marmaduck langdalls foot , and one troup of horse , which were all proper men , generall major lambert was then at penreth , toward which upon fryday the 14 we advanced , but were benighted & came short 2 or 3 miles , yet having got two horsemen prisoners , discovered the enemy , and so posing our guards it beeing very late , we quartered there . next morning early our cavalrie advanced ( the weather beeing very rainie ) and the foot following , found that lambert with his forces was retired that night towards appleby ( in which castle he had a garison , ) our intention was to overtake his rear , but we were informed that they were for certain at appleby , before we were two miles past penreth , which made us stay and quarter there that night , and the next day which was sunday , upou moonday setting forward toward appleby with our horse , we discovered a body of lamberts cavalrie , which being prest upon by some of ours , was forced to retire within the barricade near unto the bridge at appleby , which our folks could not force for want of the foot , whom the rain and waters did extreamlie hinder in their march ; the enemy having his foot at the barricade neither could our horse passe the river to reach lamberts army which was on the other side , by reason of the great inundation through excessive raines , in the evening some few foot came up to us , and we endeavouring to gain the bridge were prevented by night , some few of each side beeing killed and hurt , amongst whom colonell harison of theirs was wounded , and the earle of calander receaved a musquet shot upon his left side , that night our cavalrie remained on the fields , and sir marmaduck langdalls foot came up , but ours stayed at kirby-thure , that same night also lambert marched over stain-moore . leaving yet a garison in appleby castle , before which sir marmaduck with his foot , lay down till the surrender thereof , during which time , sir thomas tilsley had a commission given him , for the raising of forces in lancashire , out of furnis , and their-abouts , the next day the duke sent back freely a lievetenant to lambert who had been taken the day before , and disposing the horse into severall quarters we stayed there a fortnight waiting for our cannon ammunition and meall , while we stayed at kirby-thure , it was much prest that the irish forces might joyn with us , and the cannon be left behind which was not verie considerable beeing but 4 six pound balls , and 2 twelve , in the counsell of warre also it was debated whither the army should march into yorkshire , to follow lambert , or through lancashire , which was a plentifull country , and into which our ammunition might with greater safety come unto us , the other being wasted and spoiled by the enemy , at last it was resolved to march into lancashire , it was likewise propounded to put the kingdom of scotland in a posture of defence , by raising of an army to be commanded by the earle of lanrick . from kirby-thure we marched in two dayes to kendall , where generall major george monro a valiant and worthie commander ( whose courage and conduct in the warres of ireland , have with credit gained him an honourable name , ) came unto us , and the duke was again desired those forces from ireland might joyn with us , but what answer or order was given to monro , himself best knowes , howsoever he returned to his own forces , and we marched from kendall to hornby in lancashire , and there again upon debate of the quartering of the horse , which was extreamly straited , it was ordained they should march under the command of the earle of calander and middleton , leaving two brigades of horse , and the dukes own leiff-guard to remain with him , upon the rear of the foot : and the irish forces , with monro , were again urged to be joyned with the army , by showing what danger they might incurre , he marching by the enemies garisons and from skipton , if they should fall in betwixt him and us , which was of more consequence then the leaving of the cannon , we having found the wickednes of the way so troublesome for carriages , that night the cavalrie past by the town of lancaster , and quartered at garstang , which was upon the 13 of august , the next morning , i saw his grace , and the earle of calander , upon a hill , near lancaster , into which he had sent sir thomas tilsleys folk who were playing with their musquets upon the castle , and after conference , the earle of calander returned to his quarter at garstang . upon the 15 sir marmaduck langdall , gave notice to calander and middleton who were then quartered at blackburn of the enemies advancing toward skipton , and to the duke also , as calander likewise did , whereupon the next morning calander and middleton , meeting with sir marmaduck , at the earle marshalls quarter , some 5 or 6 miles above preston , he confirmed the intelligence of the enemies advance , and desired quarters nearer preston , which was granted , and order given to the lord levingston to remove his brigade , as he did , drawing into a field , where the foot was thought to have been , as was concluded before at hornby , that night middleton returned to blackburn , and calander going to finde the duke , whom he supposed to be at preston according as was resolved , by the way was informed that he was 3 miles short of it , and quartered at broughtoun with the foot , which should have been a preston that night , which fault was the main ground of all our misfortune , at last calander comming to the dukes quarter late , shew him of sir marmaducks drawing nearer preston , and of the order given to those regiments of the lord levingstouns brigade to do the like , and how his grace was expected there with the army , seeing the safety thereof , depended wholly thereupon , the horse being quartered on the other side , toward whiggin ( except those two brigades , were left with him , ) the duke answered that he could not get carriages for the ammunition , calander told him of the enemies advancing , & that some of them had been seen among their friends , as also by some parties of horse who were sent out to discover , the duke confest he had notice of it , but is was then late , and they should speak of it to morrow , but whither that securitie proceeded from a confidence , or weaknes , in a generall god knowes . next morning calander comming to him , asked where the armie was , he answered that they marched timely in the morning , and he thought by that time they were the length of preston ; ( where they should have been the day before ) afterward calander asked him where were these two brigades of horse which were left with him , he said hee had given them no orders , and that they were still lying in their quarters , not having sent any ordinance ruyters to receave order , whereupon i heard calander say , he much admired his grace had caused the foot to march , and not sent order expresse to the horse which marched with him , though they had been wanting in that point , seeing his own safety and the armies , was so deeply interest into it , and immediatly calander sent two expresse ( least the enemy should fall in betwixt them , as they did : ) with orders to those brigades , to march to preston , and joyn with the foot , which nevertheles , they could not , after breakfast the duke called for his horse , it beeing about nine a-clock , and as he was going to get up , sir marmaduck came , where i heard calander say , your grace is too far from your army , get on before he light , which he did , & so they saluted on horse-back riding towards the army , within twice twelve score , one came and told sir marmaduck , that the enemy was falling upon his rear , ( you must know that he had still marched upon our left hand , from his quartering at settle and sigelswyk ) and thereupon they all fell a galloping , untill they came near preston , to the entry of the lane upon the end of the moore , where they found leivetenant generall baylie , with the foot , drawn up in battle , and all the baggage by him , yet a little before we came to the foot , we were told it was but a mistake , though shortly after the enemy did appear , and fell a skirmishing with sir marmaducks rear , when calander baylie and colonell turner comming to the duke , after some discourse amongst them , order was given to the foot to passe the bridge , some of the enemies horse showing themselves upon the heath on our left hand . then the earle of calander desired the duke to send for middleton with the cavalrie , and whilst the foot were marching , the duke thought fit to leave three brigades upon the moore to favour sir marmaducks retreat , which calander desired his grace to consider , and that commanded musquetiers would be better in those narrow lanes , whereof the best both of officers & souldiours might be piked out , and so they were and calander commanded out 500 musquetiers to line the hedges and 600 more further down towards the end of the bridge , ( if the enemies horses should advance ) and a brigade consisting of the earle of roxburghs regiment , and colonell tours to favour sir marmaducks retreat , on the other hand two parties of horse were commanded out of those few troupes we had to discover the enemies advance which left but few remaining , by reason of a partie had been sent to sir marmaduck at his own desire , the two brigades not beeing come up , for the lord levingstouns brigade being prest by the enemy had past the water marching down on the other side towards preston bridge , where he came about two of the clock in the after-noon , and having sent before to receave orders the duke commanded one glasse who did the duety of quarter-master generall , to give out quarters for his brigade in such towns as he named , and that after sight of the billet hee should march to his quarter , there was likewise , afterward another hundred commanded which the earle of calander desired might stay untill they saw whether the enemy did advance toward the moore , in regard there were so few horse there ( the word and sign beeing then given ) but seeing none advanced , that hundred horse with the same officers was sent to sir marmaduck , besides 200 musquetiers which had been sent before ; though undemanded of him , but the scots foot and baggage were so long in marching and passing the narrow lane and bridge as spent much time , and ammunition , sir marmaduck sending twice or thrice for supplie of ammunition which he had , the duke remained still on the head of those few horse never visiting sir marmaducks post , but calander riding to and again , betwixt the horse and foot where the most eminent danger did appear , went up to sir marmaduck to know what he wanted ( though he had no interest in his army ) the other thanked him kindly and desired to know if the whole army was past , calander told him it was very near , whereupon sir marmaduck entreated him that he might know of it and calander assured him he should do it , thereafter it was my fortune to be near the duke , when calander came to him , his grace asked where he had been , and why he did not stay upon the head of the horse , he answered that he did not conceive the greatest danger to be there in regard the enemies horse did not advance . but let me here stay a little , while the foot and baggage are passing the bridge to consider the reasons given for this resolution , our cavalrie being far distant , and the enemie according to sir marmaducks intelligence , beeing said to have divided his forces , whereof some part was marched toward colne & manchester , was it not likelie that sir marmaduck was able to deall with them having betwixt 3 and 4 thousand foot , and 7 or 8 hundred horse , with the assistance of some of our horse which was marching towards us ? or say , was it fit to expose our foot having no horse but a handfull to the enemies whole cavalrie and foot , upon a flat campagne or moore if his intelligence was false ? his graces great judgement and long experience ( having been twice before a generall , by sea and land , at home and abroad ; together with his earnest desire of that command , notwithstanding the advice of his friends to the contrary , and the jealousie that possessed all men of him , which rather kindled then quenche the fire of his high spiritfull of his own sufficiency ) was no question capable to weigh any counsell in the scales of reason , whether it were of valour to be taken or not , and therefore i may say in all freedome who ever gave it , was no raw nor fresh-water souldiour , however the end proved , and now the foot and baggage beeing almost past the bridge , the earle of calander drew the troupes nearer unto it within the lane , where he and colonell turner ( i fortuned to be with them for the time also ) riding back to the townes end of preston toward the bridge , we found a troup returning from thence upon sight of us , whereat we wondered untill by their armes and sign , ( which was a green bough ) we perceaved them to be enemy ( for ours was white ) whereupon the earle of calander called to the musquetiers to give fire , which though they did not upon the order , yet the enemy hearing retreated within the lane , and himself advancing gave fire with his pistoll upon them and they faced about , so he and i parted about this time i was informed that captain watsone who commanded the dukes lieff-guard of horse doth affirm that he beeing on prestoun-moore perceiving the enemies horse to be drawing out of an narrow lane into the moore where they stood , he went to his grace who was close by and shew him of it beseeching him to give them leave to charge the enemy before they should be in order , hoping with that advantage , to give him an accompt of them , but contrair to his expectation the duke in passion commanded him not to loose a pistoll upon no pretext whatsoever , i riding afterward towards the bridge , heard a great noise behind me , the enemy turning again toward the town and all our people running , comming near i found some stragglers and baggage horse , and after a little while calander came alone , his horse much spent & wearied , who gave presently order to rally these stragglers and rode himself and brought kelheads regiment of foot which was upon the rear and said the musquetiers into some dry ditches near the bridge , the pikes he placed in the most advantageous ground , the enemy advanced presently but our men giving fire upon them they retired again to pursue the rest of our people , who had quited their ground , we not having any horse and baylie beeing with the foot upon a hill , half a mile distant from the bridge on the other side of the water , then came one to the earle of calander telling him that the enemy was passing the river , below the bridge at a church , whereupon giving order to kelhead to make good that post , promising to supplie him with fresh men , if it were needfull : and having sent before to baylie for 300 musquetiers he met them by the way as he was going to the church and sent leivetenant colonell halst with one hundred and fresh ammunition to the bridge , another hundred he left upon a little hill betwixt the bridge and the army , and the third he took along to the church where it was said that the enemy was passing , where beeing come he found no such thing , then leaving some to man the church-yard he and colonell turner , came back and heard that they were passing above which made them rerire to the leagger where they met the duke ( who told them how narrowly he had escaped , and almost been taken prisoner , in the town of preston ) and there they were again told of the enemies passing above , the earle of calander presently called fo● horse , it was long before any came : and these few only of the lord kenmoores , with which he drew down to the bridge to second the foot , but the third time beeing advertised that they were passing above the bridge , he drew towards the place , and sending out three horsemen before , followed with the rest , till on the way those three returning told him there was no such matter , but only some of our own stragglers passing which were routed on the other side , and comming back toward the bridge : he found that the enemy had forced it after a long and hard dispute through the advantage of the ground and cover of houses and hedges , whereas on our side it was very low and no shelter at all , and was pursuing of our folks toward the leagger , which made him cause a house bee set on fire in their way a little below the leagger , about a musquet shot , the day being near spent a small party of the enemy passing by the second bridge followed up the hill within a lane where the duke , calander , baylie , and many other officers were standing on the other side of the hedge within the foot leagger , the musquetiers having order to give fire , they presently retreated but we had no horse to follow ; kennioores regiment beeing retired behind the foot , then a counsell was called , where the duke , calander , baylie , colonell turner , the earle of dumfries , the lord bargeny , and many other officers were ( sir lewis dives was there likewise ) there calander enclyned to retire to a moore on this side of wiggan , where we might expect our horse and attend the enemy to fight them . but afterwards upon some consideration finding the impossibility of transporting the ammunition hee altered his opinion ( as i heard ) and though the most part of the votes run in that strain yet he upon more mature deliberation , disassented from it , protesting he would bear no blame if things did not succeed according to his wish and reall intention . the duke replyed it was concluded and too late to oppose , giving order to the regiments to send for as much ammunition as they pleased , and that calander should march presently with those few horse they had then there toward standish-moore , the night beeing very dark , and the lanes narrow and deep , a regiment of foot which was advanced before the horse rencountring , some of our own horse who had been quartered with middleton ( and by some of the foot stragglers were supposed to be enemy ; upon whom they gave fire ) took the alarm so hot that many quited their armes , whereupon calander advanced and found them to be our own , so he marched on to the moore where he halted till it was day , ( that night we left our ammunition ) but before that it was day the duke had past through the troupes and was gone to wiggan , where calander and the earle of traquair went to him there he asking for middleton , they told him they had no notice of him but that he was marched towards preston , and was in the rear , and that the foot were advancing into the moore , showing also how necessary his presence was to encourage the souldiours after so ill fortune and hard marches as they had , then he desired calander to draw them all up in battell upon the moore : & he would follow , which was straightway done , & after some time the duke came , leivetenant generall middleton according to his order advancing toward preston , and not finding the army retired after them , and the enemy falling upon his rear he repulsed them diverse times , and forced them to give back , carrying himself most bravely like a gallant man , and wise commander , and came to the moore about ten a-clock , where he found the foot , and those horse they had with them drawn up , the marques of argyles regiment and the dragoons were placed at the entry of the moore to favour his retreat , and staying there till two a-clock some small parties of the enemy skirmishing , it was resolved to march , the body of the horse first leavying upon the rear of the foot , generall major vandrosk , leivetenant colonell iames innes , and leivetenant colonell david lindsay with some troupes of horse , together with argyles regiment of foot , and colonell mills few dragoons , in this order the army marched , and the earle of calandar , middleton , baylie , and turner , stayed upon the moore , untill the most of them were marched into the lane , middleton then advancing to the horse , calander remained till the whole rear of the foot was entred the lane , at which time hee had notice given him of the enemies advancing upon the right hand to fall in betwixt the horse and foot , between there & wiggan , upon the advertisment he advanced to know the certainty , but it proved false in regard of some marish ground , and no appearance of enemy there , afterward comming to wiggan hee found the duke , ( of whom he went to receave orders ) at the further end of the town marching with the horse , but by the straitnes of the lane and narrownes of the bridge , together with the deepnes of the way , many of the foot which was extreamly wearied having before suffered hugely in the want of victuals was lost , and the horse were a long time in passing the water , so as night drew on when middleton hearing of the enemy upon the rear went back and there the officers of the commanded troupes of horse behaving themselves like brave men were most hurt and taken . the duke sending for calander told him hee should do well to march on with the cavalrie to warringtoun , where there was a passe and bridge of which he much feared the enemy should possesse themselves , and so bring the army into great inconveniences , a little after as he was marching , the duke sent him word he would yet speak with him so he let the troupes march on forward thorow the narrow lanes , ( it beeing moon-light ) and stayed till the duke and sir marmaduck came up to him , there the duke again showed him his apprehension of the enemies seazing upon that passe from the neighbour garisons , willing him to march without ever halting untill he had made himself master of the same , calander forth-with sending a partie before to discover the enemy , and save the stragglers , from plundering by reason of the night , ( some of sir marmaducks and our● also being gone out before ) when we were within a mile of warrington , we heard that the enemy had taken in the bridge , but upon the advance of our fore-troupes had again quited and was run away , before we entered the town , the duke and sir marmaduck came up , and there lighting his grace sent order to leivetenant generall middleton , & baylie , to advance thither , seeing the next day they were to march to white-church ; and so for the peak , calander gave order for the horse to rendevous the next morning at the bridge , the most part beeing quartered on the other side , but betimes newes was brought that the enemy had routed the foot , though the generall had not heard any thing from baylie , nor middleton , about eight a clock at the rendevous , we heard that the enemy was passing the river upon our left hand , whereupon calander sent out a partie to a foard , and a little after i saw the duke march by , to the top of the hill where sir marmaducks horse were , and but few of the scots horse were yet come to the rendevous , there i heard the earle of calander ask colonell mill , if any of his dragoons were come up , his answer was , none , by reason they were all dispersed in the evening before , by this time sir marmaducks troopes were marching off the hill , and calander with his own three troopes , and three of the earle of errolls , which were all verie weak retired to the top of the hill , where hee was told that orders were sent to the foot to make their own conditions , but let me here tell you , that i beleeve , if that had been propounded to calander hee would have been as refractary from it , as he was afterwards upon the like occasion concerning the horse , there he was likewise told that the duke was marched after sir marmaduck , and after some stay there , not hearing any thing hee marched after the duke , supposing the intelligence to be true , sir marmaduck marching still on the van , with his few horse , and his rear beeing pretty-well advanced before the scots horse , some few of the enemies foot lying at a passe sallyed out upon certain stragglers of the scots , but were presently beat back by the lord levingstoun ; and major drummond , down to their barricade , having lost some , and others hurt ; there calander made some troupers light from their horses , and force their passage , thinking that to be the way , which was not , and therefore we took to the left hand , and followed sir marmaducks troupes that were marched on with the duke , about four miles further at a halt , middleton came up alone , and after some conference returned , ( with great discontent ) to his troupes showing that the foot was yeelded up at warrington , we were that night to quarter at white-church , and upon the march i heard an officer of qualitie , propound to the earle of calander , the necessity of thinking upon a treaty , in regard of the souldiours long and wearisome marches , they beeing in great disorder and their horses tired , which if he and middleton would condescend unto , they put no question but the duke would likewise , but he absolutely refused to hear of it , saying , they were yet a considerable body of horse with which they might shortly recover an army of foot , and that they were within a day and a halfs marching , of a place where they might be in safety to refresh themselves and their horses , but upon the march we were so hindred with frequent , though false alarmes and halts , ( no enemy beeing near us , but garisons ) that we came short of white-church , 2 or 3 miles , and quartered in the fields that night near malpas , in chesshire , where sir marmaduck , calander , and middleton , attended the duke , resolving from thence to march to vtoxater and to so ashburn , in the peak , that night diverse officers left their troupes , and rendred themselves prisoners to the enemy , which did much dishearten the souldiours , diverse officers likewise of the foot , who would not accept of the conditions which leivetenant generall baylie made at warrington , came up to the cavalrie , the next day we marched about a mile beyond drayton , and quartered in the fields , upon the 12 of august we marched toward vtoxater , and comming near stone a troup of the enemies which lay there , drew out upon the hill on our left hand , we saw also more troupes from staffoord upon our right hand , there at a halt , what paines calander and middleton did take to get the disorderly troupes , ( whose discontent and disobedience upon their officers abandoning of them , had forgot all respect unto command ) into order , and bring them under their standards , can neither be expressed by me , nor imagined by those who have never seen the like mutiny , yet at length they brought them to it . but by the way between the bridge and stone , i saw calander and middleton come to the duke , who shew them a letter he had receaved from the committee of shropshire , brought by two committee men , the tenor of it was to give quarters to the duke , and his people upon laying down of their armes , whereat they both did much wonder , that a committee would offer any such thing to an army , they having no other forces but their garisons , ( but there was a whispering amongst the troupers , that a trumpet had been sent to the enemy ) sir marmaducks troupes having the van marched thorow the town , calander with his next , and middleton in the rear placing a guard on this side of stone , till all were past , the commissioners were appointed by the duke , to stay and dine in the town , upon a halt on the other side , i saw the duke , calander , sir marmaduck , & middleton , speaking together where there came a trumpet to them , from staffoord , who belonged to some of those who had rendred themselves prisoners the night before , here a trouper upon some question shot captain gray , and was pistold by publick order for it . so on we marched for utoxater , sir marmaduck in the van of all , the duke in the van of the scottish horse , calander in the middle , and middleton in the rear having marched about two miles in narrow lanes , ( it began to rain hugely ) the staffoord troupes beeing upon our rear , middleton gave order to charge them , but some troupers repining said it was nothing to bid charge , whereunto he replyed that it was not his custome to be sparing of himself upon any occasian that was needfull , and therewithall bid them follow him , and charged like a gallant man , and wise commander , thereby to animate his discouraged horsemen , and show them a good example , in such an extreamity , but beeing upon the side of a hill , and the ground exceeding slipperie thorow the great raines , his horse fell and he was taken prisoner , and the night drawing on , the enemy retired being prest by colonell lockhart , who was in the rear with him , the rest of the horse were drawn up upon a moore , where there came two countrey gentlemen to the duke , but from whence or what they brought , i could not learn . upon the notice of middletons beeing taken , calander faced about and marched to the rear , where speaking to the souldiours , he desired them now to do for the honour of their nation , which then had so much suffered , and the recovery of so gallant a man , swearing to them never to leave them if they would but perform their part , and with that resolution went on to rescue middleton untill he understood from colonell lockhart , that the enemy was retired , whereupon hee returned to the moore , where he halted untill the rear came up , before which time it was dark night , beeing then about 4 miles from utoxater , unto which by reason of the darknes and foulnes of the way , it was very late before the troupes did come , quartering most upon the fields and streets , next morning betimes calander , and sir matmaduck , attended the generall , who was a bed ( because of a pain in his leggs , ) there he having heard before that calander was marched away , with the most part of the horse told it him , but calander answered that he had not used to give any orders where his grace was , but such as he receaved from him , there it was debated what was next to be done , but then sir marmaduck shew the necessity of his marching when it was propounded to capitulate , and that hee could expect no quarter , calander also declared plainly that upon no tearms hee would consent to a capitulation , but such troupes or troupers as would march with him he would undergo the same hazard with sir marmaduck , and they might follow him , which the duke hearing , said that he would not stay behind , and therewith sir marmaduck and calander went to horse , and gave order to the troupes to draw out to a hill , about half a mile on the other side of the town beyond the river , yet it was long before any considerable number came to the place , and sir marmaduck sending to calander , to know if he was ready , my lord desired him to have a little patience , but he sent him back word that the day was well advanced , and hee was to have a long march he could not , and so marched away , which calander seeing spoke to the officers and souldiours , willing them to repair to their standards in order , but none almost or very few did , though he assured them that he would die with his armes in his hand , after such misfortune , rather then capitulate , yet what ever he said , was little regarded , and because the duke was absent no man obeyed , at last he told them , that such as had a minde to show themselves men , for the credit of their countrey , might march along with him , and those that were ill mounted and had a minde to treat , might stay with the duke , but few offered to stirre , so that he rode after sir marmaduck alone , to show him how things stood , and take leave of him , comming back he found some officers sent from the duke , to desire his return for consultation , and the duke gave order that a partie should be sent back to utoxater , whither the army might return , and there deliberate of what should be done , to that effect the lord levinstoun was sent , and calander visited all the avenues and barricaded them , posing guards every where , then orders beeing given , for all officers to repair to the duke , hee then desired calander to go and advise with them what was most expedient , thereupon calander asked him whither to march , or to fight , he was ready to obey , but if it were to capitulate he absolutely disclamed it , and so went to his quarter , where he instantly gave order to the dismounted men , and stragglers of the foot , to go to the church-yard , and that all officers that were quartered in the town , should bring thither such armes as could be found there , for arming of them these officers who were assembled by the dukes order having delivered there opinions , when calander came back , the duke told him they had found it fit to send a trumpet to the enemy , but calander replyed that he disassented from such a base way , and therefore would give no advice , nor adhere to their treaty , neither be included into it , but rather die like a man of honour , fighting if he could finde but ten men , to share in his fortune with him , the duke notwithstanding sent out a trumpet , and in a short while after , some troupers drew up on the markat-place before his lodging ( which certainly was not done without the knowledge of some chief officers , ) for when calander went out to speak to them , they were not so well instructed as afterwards , till putting them in minde of the oath he made unto them the night before never to leave them , if they would play the part of gallant men , but that he would upon no condition capitulate , choosing rather to run the uttermost hazard of his life with honour , then condescend to so base a way of treaty , if otherwayes he could not escape the hands of his enemies , at length they seemed to be a little satisfied , so he returned to the dukes lodging , and colonell lockhart was sent down to dismisse them , but toward the evening , their number increased and seasing upon calanders horse and armes , they would not suffer him to go out of the dukes lodging , but keept him there prisoner , nor were any of his servants permitted to come near him , but before that uproar began , assoon as it was concluded by the duke , and the other officers to send and capitulate , the trumpet beeing gone , major gib and another were sent as ostages . in the evening the trumpet came back , and one of the enemies with him , who found us in this posture of munity , and that encreasing hourly , ( it was then clear moon-shine ) when they rose to such a height that they releived the guards , which the leivetenaut general had posed , sent up 2 or 3 of their number to the dukes chamber , with their armes in their hands , as commissioners from the rest , which he seeing , declared to them that he had no minde to leave them , and spoke unto the whole body upon the market place , out at a window , the enemies trumpet who was in the next room heard all , calander incensed with that scurvy dealling , told that such base way of detaining him prisoner was not the meanes to get good quarters , beside the dishonour of it , whereupon some words past betwixt the duke and him , upon his averring of the same , as they sate down to supper , he still telling him he would not adhere to any treaty but die sooner , if he could not otherwise escape , and that they would repent and quite their posts if the enemy did once approach . at last after diverse false alarmes that night , toward the morning they had one for certain of the enemies advance , which made these mutiniers abandon the market-place , returning some of the earle of calanders horses , and armes unto his quarter , at which time the duke beeing in his naked bed , calander took horse with some few officers , and visited all the posts ; where there was yet no sight of the enemy , after having told the duke , that he would upon no condition capitulate , and that so often before , but particularlie when the lord kenmoore parted when it was also time for him to be gone , as any judicious man may think , seeing the duke had capitulate , and sent out ostages , and so with his nephew the lord levingfton , & some others he went away leaving the duke to his treaty , but as he came about a quarter of a mile from the town , he was told by certain officers , and some country people , that order was given from some officers at utoxater to barricade the end of the lane , whereby neither officer nor souldiour might escape that way , and drawing up those troupers that came with him , he again told them as before he had done , that all such as were ill mounted or had a minde to capitulate , might return to the duke , and though he had no guide yet notwithstanding holding fast to his first resolution he would take his hazard , and then riding on with the number of sixscore horse or thereabout , himself took the charge of one third part , giving another to the lord levingstoun , and the third to be commanded by colonell keyth , brother to the earle marshall , past through asburn , intending to follow sir marmaduck langdall ; but there he was informed of his disbanding of his people , and marching on further , came amongst hills , where the countrey people rose in armes upon him , and there by reason many horses lost their shooes with so long marching , diverse were taken prisoners , colonell keyth with the first , by some of the troupes of darby , but marching on still toward chesterfield , about the evening beeing within a mile and a half of the town , intending to have past through it , and there halting to know whether there were any of the enemy quartered , night fell on , and the countrey all about , firing to give notice of us , we were informed that some troupes were come there , and before we could get on horse-back , a partie of foot fell upon us , which we repulsed killing some , and so marcht away , ( it beeing very dark ) to the right hand toward bolsover , the lord levingstoun having the rear , with major drummond and other officers before we came near bolsover lost their way , we then halting upon a heath , and missing them , beeing very few in number , our horses extreamly wearied , the earle of calander marched back a mile , to see if he could learn any thing of them , whom not finding , ( and it beeing very rainie weather ) hee intended notwithstanding ( if he could ) to march to pomfret . but being misled by the guide he then had , those few officers which were remaining , assoon as it was day , ( the countrey beeing full of the enemies troupes ; ) thought it fittest every man to shift for himself , and so we parted , recommending one another to the protection of god , and i took my own way , not doubting but that same providence which had brought mee so far in an unfortunate journey , would yet bring me out of danger , bnt what befell me in my taking afterwards , and my prison , ( from which i am now by the grace of god got free ) before i found scots ground to go upon , shall bee the subject of your next entertaynment . and now , to conclude all our misfortunes , and end this tedious discourse , i shall briefly tell you , that after all the difficulties , oppositions , and delayes , in the levying of the army in scotland , our slow march at our entry into england , wanting provision , and waiting for the cannon and ammunition , the not joyning of the forces from ireland , and the dukes falling short of preston , ( giving the enemy a fair opportunity to fall in betwixt the horse and the foot ) then the leaving of the ammunition , was the losse of the foot , the tampering to capitulate discouraged the horsemen , and the dukes design to treat , after so many great oversights , together with the mutiny at utoxater , lost the horse shamefully , when they might have been saved to recover a new army of foot again ; and thus craving you pardon for my prolixity , and detaining you so long in a discourse which could not be contracted in fewer words , when the full and plain truth was to bee told , i here take my leave , what rests concerning my self , and our other friends , you shall hear at another occasion from , your servant . edinburgh , 2 of october . a proclamation for restoring the church of scotland to its ancient government by bishops: at edinburgh the sixth day of september, one thousand six hundred and sixty one years. laws, etc. scotland. 1661 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92699 wing s1904 estc r225540 45578441 ocm 45578441 172357 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92699) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 172357) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2627:11) a proclamation for restoring the church of scotland to its ancient government by bishops: at edinburgh the sixth day of september, one thousand six hundred and sixty one years. laws, etc. scotland. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.). printed at edinburgh, and re-printed at london by vv.g. for richard thrale, [london : 1661] signed: pet. wedderburne, cl. sci. concilii. imprint suggested by wing. imperfect: cropped with loss of imprint. reproduction of original in the bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church of scotland -government. scotland -church history -17th century. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688. broadsides -england -17th century. 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2007-09 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation for restoring the church of scotland to its ancient government by bishops : at edinburgh the sixth day of september , one thousand six hundred and sixty one years . c r honi soit qvi mal y pense the lords of his majesties privy council , having considered his majesties letter of the date at whitehall the fourteen●h day of august last , bearing , that whereas his majesty , by his letter to the presb●tery of edinbu●gh , in the moneth of august , one thousand six hundred and sixty years , declared his ro●al purpose , to mainta●n the government of the church of scotland setled by law : and the estates of parliam●nt of this kingdom , having since that time , not onely rescinded all the acts since the troubles began , rela●ing to that government , bu● also declared all those parliaments null and voyd , leaving to his majesty , the setling of church government : therefore , in compliance with that act rescissory , and in pu●suance of his majesties proclamation of the tenth of june last , and in contemplation of the inconveniencies that accompanyed and issued from the church government , as it hath been exercised these twenty three years past , and of the unsuteableness thereof to his majesties monarchical estate , and of the sadly experienced confusions , which during these late troubles have been caused by the violences done to his majesties royal prerogative , and to the government civil and ecclesiastical , established by unquestionable authority : his majesty having respect to the glory of god , and the good and interest of the protestant religion ; and being zealous of the order , vnity , peace and stability of the church within this kingdom , and of its better harmony with the government of the churches of england and ireland ; hath been pleased , after mature deliberation , to declare unto his council , his firm resolution to interpose his royal authority , for restoring of this church to its right government by bishops , as it was by law before the late troubles , during the reigns of his majesties royal father and grand-father of blessed memory , and as it now stands setled by law ; and that the rents belonging to the several bishopricks and deanries , be restored and made useful to the church , according to iustice and the standing law ; have therefore in obedience of , and conform to , his majesties royal pleasure aforesaid , ordained , and by these presents ordains the lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , pursevants and messengers of arms , to pass to the mercat cross of edinburgh and other royal burroughs of the kingdom , and there by open proclamation , to make publication of this his majesties royal pleasure , for restoring the church of this kingdom to its right government by bishops ; and in his majesties name , to require all his good subjects to compose themselves to a chearful acquiescence and obedience to the same , and to his majesties soveraign authority now exercised within this kingdom . and that none of them presume upon any pretence whatsomever , by discoursing , preaching , reviling , or any irregular and unlawful way , the endevouring to alienate the affections of his majesties good subjects , or dispose them to an evil opinion of his majesty or his government , or to the disturbance of the peace of the kingdom , and to inhibit and discharge the assembling of ministers in their several synodical meetings , until his majesties further pleasure therein be known ; commanding hereby , all sheriffs , baylies of bayleries , stewarts of stewartries and their deputes ; all iustices of peace , and magistrates and council of burroughs , and all other publick ministers , to be careful within their several bounds and jurisdictions , to see this act punctually obeyed : and if they shall find any person or persons , upon any pretexts whatsomever , by discoursing , preaching reviling , or otherways as aforesaid , failzying in their due obedience hereunto , or doing any thing in the contrary thereof , that they forthwith commit them to prison , till his majesties privy council , after information of the offence , give further order therein . and hereof the sheriffs , and others afore-mentioned , are to have a special care , as they will answer upon their duty and alleagiance to his majesty . and further , the lords of his majesties privy council do hereby inhibit and discharge all persons lyable in payment of any of the rents formerly belonging to the bishopricks and deanries , from paying of the rents of this present year , one thousand six hundred and sixty one years , or in time coming , or any part thereof , to any person whatsomever , until they receive new order thereanent from his majesty or his council . and ordains these presents to be printed and published as said is , that none may pretend ignorance of the same . extract . per me pet. wedderburne , cl. s ● . concilii . god save the king . the late proceedings and votes of the parliament of scotland contained in an address delivered to the king / signed by the plurality of the members thereof, stated and vindicated. ferguson, robert, d. 1714. 1689 approx. 121 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 31 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-11 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a70104 wing f746 wing f747 estc r36438 15690981 ocm 15690981 104412 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a70104) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 104412) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1592:31 or 32) the late proceedings and votes of the parliament of scotland contained in an address delivered to the king / signed by the plurality of the members thereof, stated and vindicated. ferguson, robert, d. 1714. 63 [i.e. 53] p. printed by andrew hepburn, glasgow : 1689. the difference between f746 and f747 is that on the t.p. of f747 the word "parliament" is spelled "parliamemt". contains errors in pagination. imperfect: print show-through with loss of print. reproduction of original in the huntington library and harvard university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745. 2004-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-08 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2004-08 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-10 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the late proceedings and votes of the parliamemt of scotland ; contained in an address delivered to the king , signed by the plurality of the members thereof , stated and uindicated . scilicet res ipsa aspira est , at vos non timetis ; sed inertia & mollitia animi , alius alium expectantes cunctamini ; videlicet diis immortalibus confisi , qui hanc rempubl . in maximis saepe periculis servavere . at non votis neque suppliciis muliebribus auxilia deorum parantur , vigilando , agendo , bene consulendo , prospere omnia cedunt : ubi socordiae tete atque ignaviae tradideris , nequicquam deos implores ; irati infestique sunt . cato apud salust . glasgow , printed by andrew hepburn , anno dom. 1689. the late proceedings and votes of the parliament of scotland , &c. to remain silent under the aspersions which some busy , but either weak or ill men , are endeavouring to fasten , not only upon the proceedings , but upon divers of the most honourable and loyal members of parliament , were to be no less treacherous to his majesty , than careless of the reputation of that whole illustrious body ; as well as of the integrity of those persons who are said to have so much influenced the transactions of it ; and whose chief crime ( with those that malign and traduce them ) is their having expressed so much affection and zeal for his majesty's person and service : and as the representing their actions in a true light , is all that is needful , both to justify and commend them ; so whosoever will be at the pains to examine them , will find them adjusted to all the rules of law , religion , and policy . and as it is not to be doubted , but that whensoever the parliament assembles , they will both vindicate their proceedings , in customary and legal methods , and exert that authority which is essential to them , over those of their own members , by whom they have been slandered ; so all that is now to be endeavoured in their behalf , is to vouchsafe unto the english nation ( to whom they have been misrepresented ) such a brief account of their transactions , with the occasions , reasons , and motives of them ; as may not only manifest the wisdom and loyalty of that parliament , but demonstrate beyond all contradiction , that the only design they have been pursuing , was to preserve and maintain his majesties honour , secure and establish him an interest in the love and hearts of his people , and make his throne firm and durable . it is too evident , either to be denied or apologized for , that all the laws , priviledges , and rights of the kingdom of scotland , have under the late reigns , been not only usurped upon and invaded , but subverted and overthrown . for by gradual inlargements of the prerogative , beyond what was allowed by the rules of the constitution , and the statutes of the realm , the legal and regular monarchy of the nation , was swelled into an arbitrary and despotick power . so that all the franchises and rights , which by original contracts and subsequent laws had been reserved unto the people , were either overthrown , or enjoyed precariously . and we are compelled to say , that the coalition of scotland with england , under one monarch , without a union between the two nations into one legislative body and civil government , hath given great advantages to our late princes of treating us with a rigour and loftiness , that our ancestors were not accustomed unto : and though a small acquaintance with the politicks might have instructed the english , that whatsoever received a first impression amongst us , would sooner or later obtain a second edition amongst them ; yet they seem'd either not to have foreseen , or at least not to have resented it , until the original of king jame's absolute power in scotland ( which all men were bound to obey without reserve ) was copied over in england , in his claim of soveraignty , in dispensing with those laws , that were the fence about their safety . it was from the unconcernedness , which the english have too often testified ; not to say the countenance they have given , in relation to the usurpation of our late kings over the laws and liberties of scotland , that those princes have despised the applications made unto them , as well by parliaments , as by the nobility and gentry , for redressing , their grievances ; and that the nation remained so long discouraged from relieving it self in those methods that were left it . and as the scots did for many years sadly feel and experience , into what excess their kings grew up in usurping upon their laws and liberties ; from a hope and confidence of being justified and supported in those invasions by the strength and treasure of england : so the english cannot be altogether insensible , how charles the second not only confronted their bill of exclusion in england , with an act in scotland for the hereditary succession of his brother , but what large breaches he was encouraged to make upon their rights and priviledges , after his having obtained an assistance of 22000 men , to be enacted and granted unto him by law in scotland , and those to be used in what places and upon what occasions he should please to imploy them . nor are we able sufficiently to express our obligations to his present majesty , who being extremly sensible , that our remaining disunited in our governments , and two distinct monarchies , though link'd together under one monarch , hath been one of the great occasions and chief sources of our common miseries and oppressions ; and being desirous both to redeem us from the illegal sufferings we have already felt , and to obviate those which might break in upon us under future reigns , hath therefore invited the nations to such an union of strength , councils and legislative authority , as may render them a defence to each other ; and not instruments and tools of enslaving one another , and a mutual prey . which as all wise and good men do earnestly long for , so the common interest of the two nations obliges them speedily to endeavour . but we are forced to add , that besides the encouragement which our late princes have assumed unto themselves , of usurping upon the rights and liberties of scotland , from an expectation of being supported in it by the power and wealth of england ; there is another cause , unto which much of their invasion upon the scot's priviledges is to be ascribed , and unto which we are forced to resolve many of our miseries , as the spring whence they have flowed . for upon the succession of our kings to the crown of england , and their fixing their royal abode and regal seat in that kingdom ▪ they are thereupon fallen into a method of deriving their knowledg of scotish laws and customs , of being informed of the grievances of that nation , and of receiving impressions of persons and things from one or two ministers chosen to reside about them , and in order thereunto advanced into places of honour and trust ; and who too often have been found to want either the honesty , wisdom , or courage requisite in those upon whom so much comes to be devolved . surely the world hath had sufficient evidence in the ministry of the late duke lauderdale , what mischiefs a person in his post about the king may be instrumental in bringing upon the kingdom of scotland : for tho he was endowed with too much wit and courage , to be either hector'd or wheedl'd , to be any man's tool and property ; yet through lack of probity on the one hand , and excess of ambition on the other , he was easily prevail'd upon to become an instrument of ruining and enslaving his country . what may scotland then dread , if a person should be honoured with the character and trust of secretary for that kingdom , in whom all the qualifications for so considerable a station , were the sighing decently , the entertaining one with a grave nod , or if you please , a grimace instead of a sold reason ; the making those whom he judgeth court-favourites , his unerring oracles ; and learning the customs , rights and laws of his nation , from them that never did , nor were obliged to know them ; the recommending those to be privy-councellors to the king , who withstood his being so ; the favouring those in obtaining the office of prosecuting nocents , who stand accused for endeavouring to subborn witnesses for destroying the innocent ; and , as an addition to all those accomplishments , should be so swallowed up in the immoderate love of the world , that instead of having his thoughts exercised about the service , grandeur , and safety of his master , should be wholly imploy'd how to ingross the considerable places of the kingdom , for inriching his family . into what inconveniences may the best prince be easily drawn , if his secretary be unable to advise him what he may legally do , and what he may not ? with what facility is a weak and easy person in that post , misled by an english minister of state , who has a mind to be revenged upon scotland for rejecting episcopacy ? how may a crafty and treacherous courtier , that hath a purpose to play an after-game for the late king , influence a scots secretary , unskilled in the politicks , to imbroil his present majesty with his people in scotland ; and all for this , that the abdicated monarch may have a new throw for his crowns again ? suppose but one person in office about the king for the affairs of scotland , and him to be extreamly timerous , what fatal councils , under the fear of the whip , may he be prevail'd upon to suggest and give ? hence it is evident what disadvantages those of that nation lie under , of having both their persons and actions misrepresented , and their rights and liberties undermined and invaded ; and that as well by reason of the king 's residing constantly at so great a distance from them , as because of his having no more counsellors usually about him , in reference to their affairs , than who ( as a french king was pleased to express it ) may all ride upon one horse . now as it was the oppression and slavery under which we had been brought , that rendred his majesties undertaking in coming into these kingdoms with an armed force , in order to redeem them , both honourable and just : so it was the hope of being delivered by him from misery and bondage , that encouraged us first to invite , and then to co-operate with him in the prosecution and accomplishment of his glorious design . it was the invasions upon our laws that we complained of , and from which we desired and endeavoured to be relieved ; nor had we any quarrel with the late king's counsellors , save as they were advisers unto , and instruments of overthrowing them . so that if what the parliament of scotland desires to have redressed , be not something wherein their laws have been invaded , and their rights violated , they are to blame for insisting upon it as a claim of right ; and should rather crave it as an act of grace , if they find the want of it prejudicial to the nation . but if what is required do either appear to have been wrested from the nation , or that through their not obtaining it , they will be upon all occasions obnoxious to be oppressed and inthralled , we may then assure our selves , that his majesty is too just , as well as good , to deny them . for as his majesty doth generously acknowledg in his declaration emitted at the hague , for the restoring of the laws and liberties of the kingdom of scotland , that they who are concerned in the laws , liberties and customs established by lawful authority in a nation , are indispensibly bound to endeavour to preserve and maintain the said laws , liberties , and customs ; so he doth in the same declaration , sacredly promise , that upon being prosper'd in what he was then undertaking , he will not only free that kingdom from all hazard of popery and arbitrary power for the future , and deliver it from what at that time did expose it to both , but settle it by parliament upon such a solid basis , as to its religious and civil concers , as should most effectually redress all the grievances under which it had groaned . and therefore as we are not to imagine , that a parliament , which in the whole course of its proceedings hath testified so much love , loyalty and zeal for his majesty , both in advancing him unto , and maintaining him in the throne , will abridg and lessen any of the just and legal prerogatives of his crown ; or challenge any priviledg , right or immunity , which their ancestors have not been possessed of under the best and most glorious as well as ancient reigns ; so it were unpardonable to think , that a prince of so much wisdom , goodness , honour , justice and truch , as his majesty is known to be , should either insist upon the detaining from his people , what some of his predecessors have by fraud and violence ravished from them ▪ or should so far depart from his princely and sacred word , as to frustrate the expectations of his leiges of having those grievances redressed , which his parliament have condescended upon as necessary to be remedied . but as his majesties delaying to gratify the desires of his people , is not the effect of choice and inclination , but the result of a force put upon him through the sinistrous representations given him of their demands , both as illegal , and as incroachments upon the royal authority : so we do not wonder that the same person should misreport the actions of a parliament , and insinuate into his master unjust and false glosses of their votes , who hath had both the impudence and treachery to endeavour to possess the king with disloyal characters of his most dutiful , best and useful subjects . and seeing his capacity both as a lawyer , and his majesties advocate , hath not served to instruct him of the danger , nor to restrain him from leasing-making ( which is treason by the law of scotland ) it is to be hop'd that the persons whom he hath criminally slandered , will have the courage to impeach him ; and that the parliament will have the justice to condemn him to the punishment that the law adjudgeth him unto . nor can it be matter of astonishment to any , to find a person imposing upon his majesty in reference to the laws , rights , and castoms of his country , who has had the impudence as well as malice , to brand those for republicans , by whose power , zeal , and interest , the crown came to be conferr'd upon the present king. but they must be persons of a very short prospect , who do not perceive , that they who are endeavouring to restore king james , account it expedient to blast those in his present majesties esteem , under the reproachful name of republicans , who have the loyalty and courage to venture their whole for his crown and dignity , and to withstand those ill men in what they are about . and i will venture to say it freely , that as it is not names , but things which wise men seek and pursue : so there is no more required to the freeing both scotland and england from the common-wealths men , and from all republican principles , but that his majesty persevere in preserving unto his people their rights and liberties ; esteem parliaments as well his great council in arduous affairs , as the suppliers of him in his necessities with mony ; and that he make the known laws the measure and standard of his government . while on the contrary it is in the power of ill ministers ( if his majesty hearken unto them ) to withdraw nine parts of ten of the people in six months from their love of monarchy , and to force them upon wishing for a common-wealth . and had it not been for the view which the nations under the last reign had of their royal highnesses the prince and princesse of orange , and the assurance they entertained of enjoying their laws and priviledges , under their government and authority , the methods which the late king took , and the counsels he followed , would instead of the translation of the crown to their present majesties , have put an end to the monarchy . nor can any thing so affright considering persons from addictedness to monarchy , as the leaving the nations under the power , conduct and authority , of those very men , by whose counsels and management the late king came to forefault his crown ; seeing some will be so peremptory as to imagine , that it cannot be upon personal liking that they come to be used , but because the nature of the government requires them , or at least persons of their principle , and political complexions . but forasmuch as the present embarrass of his majesty with his parliament of scotland is wholly caused by the advocate 's abusing his majesty in the account he hath given him , both of the rights and jurisdictions of the estates in parliament assembled , and of the laws and customs of the kingdom ; i shall therefore in order to the disparaging of him , with all the wise and loyal part of mankind , and the debarring him the king's ear , and attracting upon him the royal indignation ; publish the principle upon which he builds all the advices he communicateth to his master , and with which he seeks ▪ to poyson and corrupt his royal mind . and this is , that the king hath a separate interest from his people , which he ought to pursue in distinction from theirs : and this we may be sure he doth not fail of insinuating , either immediately unto his majesty , or at least to those about him ; seeing he had the folly , as well as the impudence , both to assert and to seek to justify it in open and full parliament . now whosoever gives himself the trouble of examining the tendency of this principle , will find the natural consequences of it to be , that the prince and people must not only live in a constant jealousy and dread of one another ; but must always be imbark'd in an intestine war. nor is it to be avoided , unless either by the king 's arriving at the height of tyranny , and the peoples sinking into the abyss of slavery , or by the subjects grasping the whole power and authority , and leaving unto the king an empty name . yea , it is a destroying of the very end for which government was ordained of god , and submitted unto by men ; seeing that was nothing else , but that the whole society , comprehending ruler and ruled , might have but one common political interest ; for the defence and security whereof each of them were to have their respective duties allo●ted unto them : nay , the very prerogative acknowledged to belong unto the king , is nothing save a power ▪ trusted with him , in relation to some cases that may emerge , by which he may be the better enabled to preserve the safety of the community , and to provide for the benefit of the publick . nor could sir j — d — le take a more effectual course to supplant the king in the hearts of his people , and to possess them with a horror of , and an alienation from his government , than by his proclaiming within the parliament walls , that the king hath a separate interest from that of his people , and by consequence that he is to promote and maintain it , with the neglect if not the ruine of theirs ; neither is there any thing more propable than that the advocate vented it in treachery to his majesty , whom out of a love to the late king , and a desire to have him restored , he seeks to undermine and betray . for he hath hereby so alarm'd the people in reference to his majesties government , and fill'd them with those dismal apprehensions of what they are to expect , in case the king have a separate interest from theirs , that it will be difficult either : to allay their fears , or to recover them to an intire trust in his majesties justice and goodness , without removing that man both from about his majesties person , and out of his councils , who hath given them that frightful idea of his ensuing reign . however from this of the advocate , as well as from innumerable observations to be made from the present behaviour and conduct of those who are received into his majesties councils and service ; after they had not only ministered to king james through the whole course of his reign , but co-operated with him in most , if not all the methods of his tyranny ; we may rationally venture at this reflection , ( to wit ) that they are either endeavouring to justify the former reign , by seeking to expose and disgrace this , or that they are studying to cover themselves from what they are obnoxious unto , for their crimes under the last government , by reacting and repeating the same under the connivance and indulgence of the present . and as by the first , they evidently shake his majesties throne ; so by the second , they not only abuse the mercy of the government , but despise its justice : by the last , they render the government vile and cheap ; and by the former they pursue its subversion : it must with all lay a great prejudice upon the opinion of those that disswade his majesty from gratifying his people in these demands , about which so much noise has been made here , as well as there , that they were judged necessary for his interest as well as the kingdoms safety , by , in a manner , the unanimous vote of the whole parliament ; and of which it may be modestly said , that it is not only one of the wisest , but constituted of the most considerable persons for quality , estate , and esteem in their country , that ever scotland had : for even the vote about the lords of the session , which is most censured and stumbled at , pass'd the whole house without any more dissenting voices than barely four ; and of those sir j. d — ple , who was the leading man amongst them , sensibly biassed by the consideration , that , if the vote obtained , his father would have been excluded from the honourable , and to him beneficial place of president , to which he is now advanced . is it not more likely that these few should act without regard to the king and kingdom 's interest , and depart from the laws , rights and customs of the realm , th●n that the whole body of the parliament should be unacquainted with what the constitution , as well as the common safety of prince and people , authorize them to claim ? and that they should exceed the measures of law , justice , and equity , in what they demand ? nor was the parliament under the influence of such motives for encroaching upon the king's prerogative , as these gentlemen were for betraying both the jurisdiction of parliament , and the priviledges of the nation . for having sacrificed all the laws and rights of the kingdom , under the late reign , to the lust and will of one arbitrary and despotical monarch ; they could do no less , both by the rules of policy and uniformity , than endeavour to vest his present majesty in the robberies of former princes ; there being no such way for thieves to escape at the bar , as to prevail with the judg to receive and harbour their stolen goods . and for the king to rely upon being informed by sir j. d — pie , what is the prerogative of the crown ? and what are rights and jurisdictions of parliament ? is as if king james's attorney-general were to be made the oracle of the court , in reference to what crimes and offences peers and gentlemen were to be condemned and executed for ; and for what failures and miscarriages cities and corporations were to forefault their charters , and to be deprived of their franchises . could the parliament have been guilty of so impudent , as well as criminal a thing , as to incroach upon the just prerogatives of the crown , and to rob his majesty of his legal rights , it would have been more for their profit and interest to have effectuated it in relation to the disposal of offices of state , and of military commands , than to claim meerly a right of interposing ; and that only in the case of a total vacancy of the session , about the approving of persons nominated by his majesty to judicial places ▪ for whereas the former would look like the putting themselves into a condition of giving check to their prince , whenever a caprici● should take them , and they should fancy themselves agrieved ; all that can be aimed at , or possibly compassed by the latter , is to have justice equally administred according to the known laws , which is no less his majesties interest than his duty , to make wise and careful provision for . in a word , it would seem to command as well as to bespeak belief that a whole parliament , who in all other proceedings , have acted with the highest prudence , temperance and justice ; and where there are so many persons of vertue , honour , probity , and knowledg of the laws and customs of the nation , should be more regardful of voting justly , and challenging nothing but their legal rights , than that only four men should be found insisting upon what is right ; and they , such as most of them , have been tools and instruments in the breaches made upon the rights and liberties of the nation . and as the whole blame is to be intirely lodged upon a few ministers about his majesty , both as to the delay that hath been given to redress any of the scots grievances , and as to the disputing of the equity and justice of actually relieving them from some ; so besides the confidence that all good men are possessed with , from the consideration of his majesty's wisdom and goodness , that all will be at last accommodated to the king's honour , and the peoples universal satisfaction ; the concessions his majesty hath lately granted , with reference to the articles , even against the opinion of his ministers , is as an earnest and pledg what his people may exspect in reference to the rest , if it can be made appear , that what is further insisted upon , and humbly desired of him , is the relieving of his subjects , and not the robbing of himself ; the being kind to his people , and not unjust to the crown ; and the exercising mercy to all , without being cruel and unrighteous to any . so that we are become obliged , in point of duty to his majesty , before whom our demands and claims lie , and from the respect we owe to the english nation , among whom these matters are both publickly discoursed , and differently represented and censured : and finally , by the justice we account due to the parliament of scotland , whose moderation is not only questioned by reason of their demands , but also their loyalty : i say , we are become obliged , by all these motives and inducements , to enter into a detail of the several particulars in controversy , between some of his majesty's ministers , and the parliament of scotland ; and not only to state with what distinctness we are able , the several heads subjected to debate , but to give all that support & enforcement from reason , law and custom , to the expediency , as well as equity of them , that we judg to be requisite ; and that we can dispatch in the narrow room which we have confined our selves unto . in pursuance of which undertaking , we will begin with the vote to which the royal assent is not given ; that referreth to the disabling and precluding persons from publick trusts and imployments . and this we the rather do , both because we can discharge our hands the soonest of it , and because it is the most censured by some of the english , from an apprehension that what of this nature passeth into an act at edinburgh , may be drawn into president at westminster . but that every one may judge of it , and what shall be offered in the vindication of the necessity and justice thereof , i shall present the reader with a transcript of the vote : the king and queens majesties considering that the estates of this kingdom , have by their vote , declared their sense and opinion , that such as have in the former evil government been grievous to the nation , or have shewed disaffection to the happy change , by the blessing of god now brought about , or have been retarders and obstructers of the good designs of the said estates in their meeting , are not fit to be imploy'd in the management of the affairs of this kingdom ; do with advice and consent of the estates of parliament now assembled , statute and ordain , that no person of whatsomever rank or degree , who in the former evil government have been grievous to the nation , by acting in the incroachments , mentioned in the articles of the claim of right , which are declared to be contrary to law , or who have shewed disaffection to the happy change , by the blessing of god now brought about , by acting in opposition thereunto , since the time that the king and queen now reigning were proclaimed , or who hath been a retarder or obstructer of the good designs of the said estates ; viz. the securing the protestant religion , the setling the crown , the establishing the rights of the leiges , and the redressing their grievances , by acting contrary to these good designs , since the time that they became publick by votes , and acts of the meeting , be allowed to possess , or be admitted into any publick trust , place , or imployment , under their majesties in this kingdom . i suppose the reader by this time surprized at the unreasonableness of the age we live in , that there should be men found so void of sense and understanding , as to spy out any thing here , that deserves to be clamour'd against , or which is worthy to be complain'd of : every line breathes of that lenity and moderation , that it savours rather of a defect of justice , than of any excess of it ; and the utmost hereby designed , is only a disabling a few wicked men from ruining us for the future , and not a punishing of them for what they have done ; for as there are none excepted as to life , so the few designed to be debarred from offices , are described and charactered after such a manner , that the very employing them will dishonour his majesty , and disgrace his government . there is no abridging his majesties mercy , only an endeavour to maintain the justice of his undertaking in coming to deliver us . for having charged the late king 's evil counsellors , and them only , with the crimes upon which he grounded both the righteousness and the necessity of his expedition : whosoever is so villanous as to advise him to use them , can design no less than deriving an aspersion upon his wisdom , justice and sincerity . and if the nations be not delivered from those against whom he declared , how shall we be able to answer his enemies , who accuse his coming hither , to have been upon another motive ? for what his friends affirm to have been bestowed upon him as the reward only of his expedition , and of the deliverance he wrought out for us ; his adversaries will be encouraged both to believe and say , was the principal , if not sole end of it : nor is it meerly needful in order to the vindication of his majesties glorious undertataking in coming into brittain , that they who were the instruments of our slavery and oppression under the former government , should be precluded from all share of the administration under this ; but it is also necessary for the reconciling the love and obedience of the people to his majesties person and authority . courtiers may fancy , that if one be able , he is qualified , without other ingredients , to be a minister of state : but the most part of mankind do always look for some degrees of honesty in those advanced into the chief offices in the government . nor will people easily believe , that they who betrayed their laws , rights and priviledges , under one reign , will ever administer justice equally , or defend them in their properties under another . men may have present ease ▪ but they will be always in fear whilst they remain in the hands of their old oppressors . it is impossible to keep up in the minds of the vulgar , honourable thoughts of king william's government , if he will chuse to work with king james's tools . whosoever counsels his majesty to employ those that were the instruments of the former tyranny , must intend to bring him under a suspicion , both of approving that , and of designing the like . no man envieth his majesties pardoning the worst of his and the kingdoms enemies ; but we cannot avoid pitying him , and bewailing our selves , that he is persuaded to use them ; yea the royal forgiveness ought to confine it self to limits ; and much more should a prince set bounds to himself in the honours and preferments which he is pleased to bestow . now having mentioned his majesties grace , i 'll venture to say , that after all the mercy he hath exercised towards his own and his peoples enemies , there is not one either converted to his interest by it , or that reckons himself obliged to him for it . but instead of attributing their impunity to his majesties grace , they ascribe it to the pusillanimity of the government ; and in the room of being brought over to serve him , they are emboldened to go on in their conspiracies against his person and dignity . nor will they ever account themselves indebted to his mercy , till he hath made some of them the objects of his justice . but to return to what i am upon ; should not such an easy animadversion be inflicted upon those who have oppressed us , as the being shut out from trusts and imploys in the government , we should both tempt them and others to repeat the same crimes upon the first opportunity that is offer'd unto them . yea , if instead of falling under such a gentle mortification , they should be preferred to the chief places of honour and profit in the kingdom , villainy will be committed in order to merit ; and men of brutal and profligate principles , will seek to exceed in unjustice and treachery , that they may be thought to excel in desert . and though through the moderation , goodness , wisdom and justice of their majesties , we may escape the consequences of such a method during their reign , ( which i pray god may be long ) yet posterity will lose most of the benefit of this revolution , for want of adjudging those to punishment , that have been traytors to societies , and cannibals to mankind in this age , whereby to deter others from being such in the next . the counsel given to princes by the supream sovereign by whom they reign , is , that they should punish exorbitant offenders , to instruct others to fear and forbear doing wickedly : but the advice thrust upon his majesty by some ill men about him , is , that he should cherish and advance them without regard to the effects that may attend it . what a strange idea will it give the world of our government , if the rewards of vertue be made the recompences of crimes ? and how shall we lift up our faces to god or men , if the malefactors under the last reign , not only escape under this without chastisements , but inherit the preferments and emoluments of it . if what i have said be not sufficient to justifie both the expediency and equity of the forementioned vote , i hope the experience the king hath had of that sort of people , since he received them into his particular favour , and principal service , will reconcile him unto a better opinion of it , and shew him the necessity of turning those out of office whom his parliament would have prevented his taking in . both the nations are sensible of his majesties being betray'd , both in his councils , and in his affairs ; and it is very easy to guess by whom it is done . for none so likely to undermine his throne , as they who endeavoured to hinder and obstruct his ascending to it : nor can any man be traytors to this king , but they who were the instruments of the last king's tyranny . the cobler's auls and ends are unsuitable furniture in the painter's shop . neither will they ever serve this king with faithfulness in his vindicating the kingdoms into liberty , who were the sworn vassals to his predecessors despotical will , and his tools for oppressing and enslaving the nations . besides the damage they have brought upon the nations , and the treasure they have unprofitably wasted , they have been the occasion of losing his majesty more honour in one year , than all his foreign campaigns ever did since he first commanded armies , and presided in councils ; and should he be prevailed upon by the adulation and artifice of any about him to trust the conduct and management of his affairs in the same hands for one other year , it may be easily foretold , without consulting the stars , that we shall not be in a condition on the third to save either him or our selves . and as we have no distinct interest from his majesties , so all we desire is , that he would vigorously espouse and assert his own , upon which we shall both believe and proclaim our selves happy . for the vipers durst not hiss but for the warmth they receive through being lodg'd in his bosom . but to conclude this head ; i am extreamly mistaken , if they who have occasioned and promoted the quarrelling at the forementioned vote , do not find that they have consulted worse for themselves , than was designed or intended by those who they account for their enemies for this parliament will undoubtedly at their next assembling , be so far from departing from what they have voted , that instead of acquiescing there , and being contented with the having the betrayers of their laws , the oppressors and murderers of the leiges , and the obstructors of the king and kingdoms establishment , only debarr'd and excluded from places of preferments , profit and trust in the government ; that they will be justly provoked , and see it to be indispensibly necessary to impeach and proceed capitally against some of them . their despising as well as refusing of lenity , will derive upon them the severities their crimes at first deserved , but which that prudent , temperate , and indulgent senate , were will●ng to have mitigated by exchange of them into milder . and as we are fully assured , that so wise and good a prince as his majesty , can never entertain either mean or distrustful thoughts of a parliament , that hath given him so many and eminent testimonies of their loyalty , much less be prevailed upon to dissolve them , while the nation is in so distressed and unsetled a condition ; an armed enemy in its bowels , and the ferment every where so high , that nothing can allay it , but their being continued , and being allowed to meet at the appointed day to which they are adjourned ; so we are no less assured , that they who are said to be the zealots in this parliament , and to have the chief conduct of , and the prevailing sway in all business and affairs that come before it , can neither miss being chosen into , nor have less interest and esteem in another . so long as persons of fortune , quality , and interest , continue to assert the laws and rights of their countrey , and to pursue the joint interest of the king and kingdom ; the obloquies cast upon them by such as dread and dislike their courage and integrity , will only increase their reputation , and oblige all those senators and members of parliament , that are honest , to put the more value upon them . but to supersede all fear of this parliaments being d●ssolved , without both assembling , and dispatching business , the king by a law , to which the royal assent was given the last session , abridged himself of all power in that matter . for in the act that past the first of july , whereby prelacy and the superiority of any office in the church above presbyters , is abolished , it is declared , that the king and queen's majesties , with the advice and consent of the estates of this parliament , will settle by law , that church-government in the kingdom , which is most agreeable to the inclinations of the people . so that whosoever shall have the impudence to advise his majesty to dissolve this parliament , before there be by law some government erected in the church , doth both tempt him to violate his faith , and to trample upon one express statute , to which himself hath given the royal assent . the next contested vote that we are to address our selves unto , and whereof we are to demonstrate the legality , reasonableness , and necessity , is that which relates unto the privilege of the estates of parliament , in nominating and appointing committees , of which i do here subjoin an authentick copy . forasmuch as the meeting of the estates of this kingdom , did by their vote of the eleventh of april last , represent among other grievances , that the committee of parliament called the articles , is a great grievance to the nation , and that there ought to be no committees of parliament , but such as are freely chosen by the estates , to prepare motions and overtures that are first tabled in the house : therefore their majesties with the advice and consent of the estates of parliament , do enact and declare , that it is the undoubted privilege of the three estates of parliament , to nominate and appoint committees of parliament of what number of members they please , being equal of every estate ▪ and chosen by the respective estates ; viz. the noblemen by the estate of the noblemen , the barons by the estate of the barons ; and the burroughs by the estate of the burroughs , for preparing motions and overtures that are first made in the house , or that the house may treat , vote , and conclude upon matters brought in plain parliament , without remitting them to any committee , if they think fit : or that the house may appoint plurality of committees for any motions or overtures that need to be prepared or digested for them : declaring hereby , that no officers of state are to be members , except they be chosen . and hereby rescinds the first act of the third session of the first parliament of king charles the second , and all other laws and customs , establishing the manner of election , and power of any committees of parliament , in so far as they are not conform to this act. so sensible was the meeting of the estates , that the committee of articles was according to late custom , regulation , and practice , an intolerable grievance to the kingdom , and a high incroachment upon the liberty and jurisdiction of parliament ; that before the disposal of the crown to their present majesties , they made their being relieved from it , one of the stipulations , and an article of contract , upon which their majesties had the crown conferred upon them , and upon which the people agreed to yield them obedience and subjection . for among several things which they covenanted as well as provided , for the redressing of , when in the name both of themselves , and of the whole people of scotland , whom they represented , they yielded up , and conveyed over the crown of that kingdom to william and mary : this was the first grievance that they mentioned , and made it a matter of bargain and compact , as well as of petition and desire to be eased from it . the words that were proposed and read to their majesties in the banqueting-house , upon that solemn occasion of presenting them with the instrument of government , are as followeth . the estates of the kingdom of scotland do represent , that the committee of parliament , called the articles , is a great grievance to the nation , and that there ought to be no committees of parliament , but such as are freely chosen by the estates to prepare motions and overtures that are first made in the house . what ill men must they now be , that durst advise a prince of that honour , veracity , and inviolable faith , as his majesty is universally known and acknowledged to be , to delay or clog the satisfying of his people in the foregoing particular : seeing the meer procrastinating and adjourning the giving them contentment in it , hath a visible and natural tendency , if possible , to the weakning their faith and confidence both in his truth and goodness . it would appear , that some have a mind to make their master seem faithless , to justify their being truly such themselves· or else they have a design to vindicate king james's breach of all stipulations and promises , by persuading king william to do the same . or , which is extreme likely , they would by his present majesty's departure from that seeming compact , upon which he received the crown , reflect folly and injustice upon the parliaments deposing the late king , for his violating the original contract . but that we may discourse intelligibly of that committee called the articles , it will be needful to give some brief account both of what it originally was , and what by degrees it grew up , or rather degenerated into , till it became at last an insupportable grievance to the nation , and rendred parliaments either wholly useless , or mere instruments for pursuing and executing the king 's will. now by what appeareth either from our history , records or statute-books , there was no such thing anciently as a committee , or lords of articles , but every thing was as well originally moved as debated and concluded in full parliament . for the first mention we meet with in our records , of lords of the articles , is in the year 1466. under the reign of king james the third : where we find , that upon the convention of the estates of parliament , they not only chose so many from among themselves , to be judges in civil and criminal causes , who are styled domini ad querelas , there being then no judicial court , save what the parliament constituted from time to time out of their own body : but that they also elected three persons for the clergy , three for the barons , and three for the burgesses , to consider of , and prepare matters fit and needful for the house to bring into debate , and to come to votes and resolutions about . by which it seems that this committee of the articles had no auspicious beginning , having its rise under one of the worst of all our kings , and who came to the most unhappy and unfortunate end : however there appears no such thing here , as that the officers of state were to be supernumerary to those chosen by the parliament ; or that the king , either by himself , or by one representing him , chose any of them ; but it is evident from the record , that they were wholly and entirely elected by the states themselves in parliament assembled . and though the being an officer of state , was never esteemed a ground disabling and incapacitating a person from being a member of the committee of articles ; yet upon a perusal of the records , i do not find that any officers of state made a part of the lords of the articles , until the year 1567. and their being then of that number was not ratione officii , but by reason of the parliament's having elected them into that station . for whosoever consults the records of parliament of the years , 1467. 1475. 1524. 1526. 1528. 1537. 1542. 1543. will find that the officers of state were so far from being supernumerary in the committees of the articles , that they were not so much as elected into that trust , nor had any room or place allowed them there ; though it appears by the records of all those parliaments , that there were members chosen by , and out of the respective estates , sometimes in larger , and sometimes in lesser numbers to make up and constitute such committees . yea , i cannot but add , that our not meeting with any mention of the lords of articles of the parliaments assembled , and held 1469. 1471. 1474. 1481. 1483. 1488. 1489. 1491. 1493. 1505. 1515. 1522. 1535. 1540. 1546. 1551. is an undoubted evidence , that the having committees of the articles was not a thing of indispensible necessity , or to which parliaments were legally obliged ; but that it was a matter of arbitrary pleasure , and that they were chosen or omitted , as the house thought to be most useful and convenient for the management and dispatch of their affairs . and though it cannot be denied , but that after the year 1567. some of the officers of state were now and then thought worthy by reason of their moral and intellectual abilities to be chosen among others for lords of the articles , as in the parliaments held in the years 1581. and 1593. yet it is most evident , that they were not elected into that committee by virtue and reason of their offices , much less sat there as supernumerary to those chosen by the estates ; forasmuch as in other parliaments , particularly in those held in the years 1587. 1592. and 1594. there is no intelligence , report or remembrance of them , in the registers and lists of those of whom the forementioned committees were made up and constituted . and that which puts it beyond all possibility of being controuled ( save either by ignorant , or by impudent and self-condemned men ) that no officers of state had right anciently to be of the committee of articles , unless previously chosen by the estates of parliament , is the 37. act of parl. 11. of james the sixth : where provision being made by law about the number whereof that committee should be constituted ; it is , without the least mention or suggestion of those officers of state , enacted and ordained , that the number of the lords of articles be equal in each estate , and that the ' fewest number of every estate be six , and the greatest number ten. yea so far were those , styled lords of articles , from having originally the sole power of preparing matters , and of bringing in motions and overtures , to be considered and debated in parliament ▪ exclusive of other members of the house , who were not of that committee ; that both at first , and for a long tract of time afterwards , they were not so much as a committee of articles of , and to that parliament by which they were chosen , and of which they were sitting and actual members ; but were only so in reference to the next parliament that should succeed ; against whose meeting they were to prepare such things as they should judge to be most fit and expedient to be then taken into consideration ; but still with a right as well as with a liberty reserved to that future parliament , not only to receive or reject what should be thus maturated and offered unto them ; but to admit whatsoever overtures they pleased , that should be made unto any of the members of their own house . it was the ancient custom and practice of scotland , that the sitting parliament antecedently to its dissolution and separating , elected so many from among themselves , who were in the interval betwixt that and the next parliament , to make inquiry into the necessities of the lieges , and into the state of the kingdom ; and accordingly to draw up and prepare such overtures , as should carry that relief and remedy in them , which might give a redress unto grievances , be a mean● of preserving the nation in safety , and of promoting the prosperity of the subjects . now from this harmless beginning of the committee of articles , it hath , through the usurpation of our kings , especially after their succession to the crown of england , and the remove of their royal abode thither , and through the officiousness of publick ministers to the prince , and treachery to their countrey , grown up at last to that exorbitancy , that it is not only become burthensome , but intolerable . for by reason of the parliaments coming at last to commit the inspection into all affairs , and preparing all remedies unto grievances , into a few hands , and those to be unchangeable during a whole session ; our late monarchs obtained such a handle whereby they might incroach upon the jurisdiction of parliaments , and the liberties of the people , that they soon improv'd it to the eluding of all the good that the kingdom was to expect from parliaments , and to the making those who were designed to be the means of our safety , become the instruments of our ruin. for the accomplishment whereof , and the more effectual rendring the lords of articles , vassals unto the monarch's will , and tools for executing his pleasure , they first prevailed to have the officers of state admitted into that committee as supernumeraries , and that , without being nominated and elected by the estates in parliament , they should have a right to sit there ratione officii , by vertue of the imployments they held in the government . for king james the sixth , being by the adulation of the english bishops , brought intirely over to their interest , as well as to their opinions , about church discipline and worship , and having a mind in requital to the church of scotland , for all the kindness they had expressed to him , both in his infancy and riper years , to obtrude upon them the english ceremonies , he did in order to the more easie effectuating of it , flatter , cajole , and bribe , as well as huff , and awe the parliament anno 1621. to allow the officers of state to sit as supernumeraries , without being chosen in the committee of articles . and thus he forced those innovations , commonly known by the name of the five articles of perth , upon the poor church of scotland , having by those supernumerary officers , not only so moulded the committee of articles , as to pass and present them , but thereby laid the foundation of their being ordained and enacted in the house . and to make the lords of articles yet more grievous and intollerable . king charles the first , ( whose invasions upon the rights and liberties of his people , proved fatal both to him and them ) overthrew the ancient method of their elections , and brought the choice of them into such a channel , as could issue in no less than tyranny in the soveraign , and slavery in the subjects . for whereas by law and custom , the lords were to choose the lords , and the barons to choose the barons , &c charles the first did in his parliament held anno 1633. when he was in the heigth of his greatness , change and innovate this method , and having divested the whole respective estates , of choosing severally their respective commissioners he assumed a power to himself , with a right of consigning it over to his commissioner in parliament , for chusing eight bishops consigning to the said eight bishops , a power of chusing eight noblemen , and restraining to the said eight noblemen , together with the aforesaid eight bishops , a power of choosing eight barons , and eight burgesses ; and that these in conjunction with the officers of state as supernumeraries , should be the whole and sole lords of articles , exclusive of all others . finally , to render that committee yet more insupportable , the sole right as well as liberty of bringing in motions , of making overtures for redressing wrongs ; and of proposing means and expedients , either for the relief or the safety and benefit of the subject , is intirely restrained unto , and lodged wholly in this committee : neither is it by our late practice lawful for any member or members , that are not of that packt club and society , to make the least proposal or motion , either for the repealing of an ill law , or for the enacting of a good . so that i would now hope , that the meer representing of this committee of articles , as it is now transformed and degenerated from what it formerly was , is enough to justify the vote of the present parliament , about the having that grievance redressed , and to vindicate them from the obloquie they have lain under , for insisting upon having parliaments loosened from those fetters . for where is the liberty of speech , and voting , essential to a legislative body , if parliaments must be thus muzled ? how-is a kingdom eluded out of all the good that they expect from any parliament , if their representatives may neither lay open their sores , nor offer plaisters in order to their cure ? how miserably would things have proceeded in the late meeting of estates , if nothing was to have been before them , but what a committee , where eight scotch bishops were to have the electing of eight noblemen , and they together the chusing of the rest , with king james's officers of state supernumerary , that should have prepared overtures for that great and illustrious assembly ? i dare say , that the being bound up to such a method , would have more effectually secured the throne to king james , than all the swords of his partizans . nor can parliaments be designed for any thing , under such a constitution of a constant committee , with the officers of state supernumerary , but to enlarge the prerogative of the crown , and to levy money from the people . but blessed be god , his majesty wants not inclination to deliver his people from this , and from all other grievances , but only wants persons about him , to set them in that light that he may discern them . therefore we complain not of his majesty for the delaying the satisfaction that his people waited for ; but we complain of those ill men , who told him , that to part with the lords of the articles , was to throw away the brightest jewel of his crown . whereas it appears from what hath been said , that there is nothing desired , whereby his majesty's legal prerogative can be diminished and lessened , but that all which is humbly craved , is the redeeming his parliament and people from an ignominious and burthensom yoke ; and their being reliev'd from the invasion and usurpations made upon their laws and customs , by the craft and violence of some of their monarchs . nay , the very contending for the continuing the officers of state as supernumerary in their committees , without the being elected unto them by the estates in parliament , in both an aspersion upon the wisdom of the parliament , as if they knew not how to pay the respect and deference due to those officers , till compell'd unto it ; and a reflection upon their loyalty , as if no persons could be tender or regardful of his majesties interest among the committees of parliament , unless received into the king's immediate service , and brought under the influence of honours and emoluments . but whosoever suggests this unto the king , must be one that is accustomed to draw other mens pictures by his own original ; and who by acting in all things himself as a mercenary , strives to represent the rest of mankind , as equally base and villanous . nor can that advice insinuated into his majesty , of having the officers of state supernumerary in the committees of parliament , be supported by any reason , but what borders upon treason ; which is the king 's having and being obliged to pursue a separate interest from that of his people ; and as nothing would more universally lose his majesty the hearts of his people , than the being wrought into a belief of it ; so whatsoever is likely to tempt them into such a persuasion , is at all times , but especially at this , to be industriously avoided by the king. the only thing remaining , wherein his majesty's parliament of scotland seems to be misunderstood by him , is their vote concerning the nomination of the ordinary lords of the session , and the election of the president . for that which they propose , both as required by , and agreeable unto their laws , and as necessary in order to the equal administration of justice , is , that the ordinary lords being in a total vacation nominated by the king , they are to be tryed , and admitted or rejected by parliament ; and that in a particular vacation , being likewise nominated by the king , they are to be tryed and admitted or rejected by the other lords of session ; and that in both cases the president be chosen by the lords of session themselves . now this being the great matter wherein his parliament is represented unto him , as endeavouring to encroach upon , and subvert his royal prerogative ; and it being the particular , in reference unto which he hath been prevailed upon to exert an authority to that height and degree , that there seems no room left for any expedient , but that either the parliament must depart from their vote , or that his majesty would be pleas'd to part with those , who through abusing his goodness , have misled him into an exercise of royal power which the laws cannot justifie . it will be absolutely needful , that the reader , in order to his being inabled to form a right and impartial judgment of this perplexed and intangled affair , should be first made acquainted with the vote it self , as well as afterwards be informed of what is to be said in the vindication of it . the words therefore of the vote are as followeth ; the king and queen's majesties considering , that by the laws of the kingdom , when the place of an ordinary lord of the session doth vacate , it is to be supplied by the king's nomination of a fit and qualified person for the said office , and presenting him to the rest of the lords to be tryed , and admitted or rejected by them : and that there is now a total vacancy of the lords of the session , by the happy change through the blessing of god now brought about , so that there can be no such tryal by the lords ; and that when such total vacancies have fallen out , the lords were either nominated by king and parliament jointly ; or if they were nominated by the king , the nomination was approved , and the lords so nominated , were admitted by the parliament ; therefore their majesties do declare , that they will nominate fit and qualified persons to the said offices , and present them to the parliament to be tried and admitted or rejected by them : like as their majesties with the advice and consent of the estates in parliament , statute and ordain , that in all time hereafter , when any such total vacancy shall occur , the nomination of the lords of the session shall be by the king or queen for the time being ; and in case of their minority , by their regent , they nominating fit and qualifiad persons to the said offices , and presenting them to the parliament to be tryed , and admitted or rejected in manner aforesaid . like as their majesties with the advice and consent aforesaid , ratify and approve the 93 d act of the sixth parliament of king james the sixth , anent the admission of the ordinary lords of session , and reformation of certain abuses therein : and the 132 d act of the twelfth parliament of king james the sixth anent the jurisdiction , presentation , qualities and age of the lords of the session , in the whole heads , clauses and articles thereof , and particularly the clause contained in the said two acts , declaring that in all times thereafter , when any place should be vacant in the session , that his majesty should nominate and present thereunto a man fearing god , of good literature , practick judgment and vnderstanding in the laws , of good fame , having s●fficient living of his own , worth twenty chalders of victual of yearly rent , and who can make good expedition and dispatch in matters touching the lieges of the realm ; and likewise that clause contained in the 93 d act of the sixth parliament of king james the sixth , declaring that the president of the college of justice shall be elected by the whole senate thereof , being a man of the conditions and qualities above-written , for chusing and electing of whom the king's majesty and estates dispence with that first part of the institution of the college of justice anent the election of the president , declaring that in case of the absence of the chancellor and president for the time , it shall be lawful for the lords to chuse and elect any one of their own number , whom they think qualified and worthiest , who shall be called vice-president for using of the said office , ay and while the return of the said chancellor and president . like as their majesties , with advice and consent aforesaid , statute and ordain , that the whole qualifications abovementioned , be duly observed in the admission of the lords of the session , in all time coming , and that as well in the case of a total , as of a single vacancy . this being the vote so declaimed against , and in contempt whereof , and in opposition whereunto , some persons having surreptitiously and fraudulently obtained warrant , countenance and authority from the king , are so vent'rous as to dare to act : we shall , both with all the loyalty and modesty that becomes a subject , and an honest man , and yet with that freedom and plainness , which one who hath no other design , save to serve god , his king , and his country , with uprightness and integrity should value himself upon , endeavour to vindicate the wisdom , as well as the justice of the parliament in the forementioned vote . in the performing whereof , with all that exactness which brevity will allow , i shall begin with an account of the first administration of civil justice in the kingdom of scotland that we meet with in our records . for the college of justice consisting of those called the lords of the session , not having been institute till the reign of king james the fifth , anno 1537. the administration of justice was before that time , not only ambulatory and itinerant , but was discharged and executed by such members of parliament as the estates of the kingdom , in their several sessions elected from among themselves , and authorized thereunto . nor had they only their whole authority from the estates in parliament , but to speak properly , they were committees of parliament authorized to such a work and office , and accountable to parliaments for the discharge of the trusts committed unto them ; for the domini electi ad causas , whom we so often meet with in the records of parliament , particularly in those of the years 1524. 1526. 1528. were such members as every respective parliament elected from within their own walls , for the administration of justice between the king and his lieges , and between one subject and another . from whence it appears , that it not only appertained unto the parliament to see that justice was duly administred , but that the right was originally in them of nominating and ordaining the administrators of it . which makes it very improbable , that after rheir having been possessed of such a right , authority and jurisdiction for so long time , they should so wholly part from , and intirely surrender it as upon no occasion or emergency whatsoever to leave unto themselves a share , or reserve a concern in it . let us add to this , that when the college of justice came to be instituted , anno 1●37 . parl. 5 king james the 5 th . act 36. though it was established and ordained by the legislative authority of the king and estates joyntly , and not by an exertion of meer royal prerogative , yet the estates in parliament then assembled , both took upon them ▪ and were allowed the nomination and choice of the president , as well as of all that were then called forth and advanced to be lords of the session , or college of justice , as appears by the 39. and 41. acts of the aforementioned parliament . yea it is further evident from the records of parliament , that the estates of the kingdom did often in succeeding parliaments nominate , choose and impower , those very lords that were actually of the session , to continue in the administration of justice , which sheweth beyond all rational contradiction , that they could much less ●nter upon the office at first without their being chosen and approved by the estates 〈◊〉 ●arliament . thus anno 1542. being the first of mary , we find the president with the rest of the lords of session chosen and impowered a new , as auditores ad causas , for the hearing and deciding civil and criminal causes . and again we find the parliament of the second of mary , anno 1543. not only ratifying by the legislative authority of the queen and estates , the institution of the college of justice , but we find the estates alone nominating and choosing ad causas , the president cum caeteris dominis sessionis & collegii justitiae . but forasmuch as there was a change given afterwards by laws to this course and method , and a new regulation ordained by subsequent statutes of the college of justice , wherein both the qualifications of those that are to be chosen lords of the session , and the manner of their approbation are required and appointed : we are therefore obliged in the next place to look into those laws , and to examine whether they detract from the prudence , and weaken the justice of the parliament , in their fore-mentioned vote ; or whether they not only countenance and suppport , but justifie and vindicate them . and we 'll begin with the 93 act 6 parliament james 6 ▪ where it being acknowledged , that the nomination of the lords of the session belongeth unto the king , and that he ought to name such as have the qualifications there required , which are already specified in the aforesaid vote ; it is further added , that in all time coming , when an ordinary place becomes vacant in the session , the person nominated thereunto by the king , shall be sufficiently tryed and examined , by a sufficient number of the ordinary lords of the college of justice , for whom it shall be lawful to refuse the person presented unto them , and that the king in that case shall present another , and that so often until the person presented be found qualified . but seeing this act may be said to have passed in the minority of king james , and the force of it be thereupon endeavoured to be eluded , we will therefore consult act 134. parl. 12. james 6. wherein , besides a repetition and a confirmation of all that is mentioned and ordained in the former act , there is further added , that none shall be received to any place of senator in the college of justice , unless he be sufficiently tryed by the whole college of justice . now as those are the laws relating unto , and regulating the nomination , examination and approbation of the ordinary lords of the college of justice , the practice hath been in all times conformable thereunto . so that the first parliament of king charles the second , which through the prevailing of the like folly and madness in scotland , which then reigned in england , rob'd the kingdom of many of its rights and privileges , to increase and inlarge the prerogative of the crown ; yet they were so ●ender of making any innovations in his particular , that by their second act of that parliament they ordain , the nomination of the lords of session to remain as in former times , preceding the year 1637. and accordingly we find , as there have been several , who upon single vacancies in former reigns had been rejected by the lords of the college of justice , though nominated by our kings : so there was one sir william ballanden , whom charles the second had nominated and recommended , who upon examination by the rest of the lords was refused and rejected , as a person not qualified according to the statutes of the realm . is it not therefore unreasonable to be imagined , that the king , who upon a single vacancy cannot constitute one judg , till he be examined and approved , should nevertheless be esteemed impowered to constitute the whole bench of the college of justice , without a previous examination and approbation ? how improvident were our parliaments , and how weak and ridiculous are our laws , if all that is provided for , be only the restraining the king from making one judg that is unqualified ; and at the same time to allow him a power and authority of making fifteen that are unqualified , for such they are to be esteemed , till they have been tried and approved ? there can be nothing more unquestionable , than that they who are nominated by the king to be judges , ought , according to the laws of scotland , to be tried and approved before they be accounted or authorized to sit and act ; and therefore , there being upon a total vacancy , no lords of the college of justice to try , examine and approve those whom the king hath nominated and recommended , it would seem to be uncontroulable by all persons pretending to reason , and acquainted with our laws and customs , that the right of examining , and of admitting or rejecting them , comes to be devolved upon the parliament ; which is the whole that is desired in the forementioned vote . nor is there any mean , but that they either must ascend the bench without undergoing a tryal , or receiving an approbation , which is openly to affront the laws ; or else the power and right of approving , and of accepting , or rejecting , must be acknowledged to reside in the estates of parliament . nor was this ever denied them in the case of a total vacancy under the worst of the foregoing reigns . which makes it the more doleful as well as amazing , that through the subornation and crafty , but false insinuations of evil men , there should be an endeavour of wresting it from them under the reign of so gracious and temperate a prince , whom they with so much affection and zeal called and invited to the throne ; not only in gratitude for his having delivered them from popery , but out of a hope and prospect of his relieving them from all their other grievances . it hath been already proved beyond the p●ssib●lity of a reply , that the fi●st institution of the college of justice , and the nomination as well as approbation of those that were then advanced to be lords of session , was by the estates assembled in parliament . and i do now fur●her affirm , that in the two total vacancies , which are all that have since occurred , besides this that hath now fallen out upon the late happy revolution , the estates in parliament were indisputably allowed the right of admitting , or rejecting those of whom the college of justice was to be freshly ●onstituted ; for upon the total vacancy in the year 1641 , which was the first that had been from the institution of the lords of the session , the parliament not only challenged the approving , but they took upon them the joynt nomination with the king , of all the persons that were to be admitted into , and created members of the college of justice . but this example and p●esident , i will not insist upon , seeing there was something unjust and illegal in it , as well as something just and legal . for not being satisfied with the right of admitting , to which law and reason gave them an unquestionable title , they usurped upon the crown , and took upon them the power of nominating , which had been granted by former laws unto the king. let us therefore see what was done upon that other total vacancy , which occurred at the restauration of charles ii. when nothing would have been departed from by the king , that he could have with held without the highest injustice ; nor any thing either claimed or accepted by the parliament that they could have sacrificed or surrendred without becoming obnoxious to eminent dangers ; and yet even then the king having nominated those whom he designed for the lords of session , the approbation of them was submitted unto the parliament ; and the esta●es having in full parliament consider'd them , they admitted and received them . it is true that the parliament did not bring them single before them , and there try and examine them , not because they might not have done it , but because there was no need of it , being all of them of that eminency , as to be universally and notoriously known to have all the qualifications required by the statutes . yea though that parliament was abundantly officious towards the crown , and loyal to that excess to the king , as to be disloyal to their countrey ▪ and unfaithful to their constituents ; yet in the second act of their first session , by which they restore to the king what had been wrested from him in the parliament 164● , they allow him no more in reference to the lords of the college of justice , but the right of nomination as the crown had enjoyed it , preceeding the year 16●7 . but i hear there are some , who finding his majesty unalterably resolved not to depart from the known and just laws of the land in the governing of his people , have therefore , to elude the force of what hath been here represented , and to divert his majesty from hearkning to the humble desir●s of his parliament in this matter , been guilty of the treachery as well as the impudence to suggest unto his m●jesty , that there is not now a total vacancy , there being of the fift●en nominate by his majesty for lords of the session , three that were antecedently such ; and that it belongeth unto them three to try and approve the others ; and that what the parliament pretends unto , being only in the case of a total vacancy , is here wholly superceded ; and that for any to insist upon it , is an incroachment upon the prerogative of the king , and a robbing of the lords of session , of a privilege vested in them by law. now tho all that is here insinuated , be rather the offering an affront to our understandings , than the accosting us with a reasonable objection ; yet we will so far condescend to the weakness of those that are ignorant of the laws and customs of scotland , as to return such a reply unto it , which may not only convince all mankind of the im●ertinency of it , but expose those that are the authors of it , to be either loathed as ill men , or ridiculed as silly . for first , supposing that s — , n — , and m — , who are all that can be referred unto in the pretended objection , did still remain lords of the college of justice , by reason of their having formerly been so : yet they are too few to constitute a session , which they ought to be , before they take upon them to try and approve such as are recommended unto them by the kings nomination . the quorum of which a session ought to consist , before it can exercise any legal authority , should be nine , which i think no arithmetick will make three to be . nor will my lord s — , and his son sir j. d — , find that success in their attempts against the first and self-evident principles of natural sciences , and of the mathematicks , that they have had in undermining and subverting the laws of their countrey . secondly , for any person named by the king in order to the being received as a lord of the session to be examined and approved by three , tho granted to be actual and sitting lords of the college of justice , is expresly repugnant to an act of the session it self , confirmed by the king's letter , an. 1674. it being provided by that act , that when any new lords of session shall be presented by his majesty for tryal of their qualifications , that they shall be present one day in the outer-house , where they are to inspect a process that shall be carried to interloquitor , and from thence make report of all the points therein contained , to the whole lords of session ; and then for compleating their tryal , shall sit another day in the inner-house ; and after the bringing the dispute of some point of law to a period , shall give their opinion about it in presence of all those lords of which that house doth then consist . now as this order and rule is appointed to be observed constantly in all time coming , about the tryal of lords nominate by the king , and to be admitted , and hath been accordingly observed and practised ever since , till the present vacancy ; so it is evident to all who have not renounced common sense , that the regulation , order , and method of tryal , prescribed by the foregoing act , is altogether impracticable , where the lords that are to be the tryers , and examinants , are to be three . but then thirdly , it is the most absurd thing imaginable to fancy , that because three of the lords now nominated by the king , were heretofore lords of session , that therefore there hath not been a total vacancy upon this late and happy revolution . i am sure that in the parallel case , anno 1661. the parliament in the preface unto the statute , by which they admitted those to be lords of the session whom the king had then named , they call it a new and intire nomination , which they neither could nor would have done , if they had not judged the vacancy to be total , and yet three of the lords then nominated by charles the second , viz. h — c — and l — had been lords of session , and had sate in the college of justice before that nomination . fourthly , if s — n — and m — 's having been once lords of session be enough to hinder the late vacation of the session from being total ; then i challenge all the world to tell me what can either make a single , or a total vacancy ; yea , if those gentlemens places were not voided after what had befallen them , and the placing others for several years in their room , i do much question whether their death can make their places vacant , and whether they may not be as well said ●o remain lords of the session , when they are rotting in their graves , as to have continued so in the state they were , before his majesties late nomination of them . for as they all had their commissions during pleasure , so s — 's and n — 's were recalled and reassumed by king charles , of whom they had received them . and i take it for an undoubted maxim , that he who hath power and authority to give , and giveth not during life , may by the same authority take away at pleasure , what he hath given . and as for m — who had his commission from king james , if his place be not rendered vacant by his masters having forefaulted the crown , nothing will or can render it so . fifthly , if these gentlemens having been heretofore lords of the college of justice , hindreth the late vacancy from being accounted total ; then his majesties nominating them afresh , was not only superfluous in it self , but an injury unto them . for it was the bringing them to hold that by a new title , which they had a claim unto , and ought to have been accounted possessed of by an ancient right . nor are they obliged for their places to his majesties grace and bounty , but to his justice . sixthly , the very form of the presentation by which their nomination is signified , shews that the vacancy was taken to be total . for it being the constant custom in all single vacancies , that the name of the person succeeded unto , as well as his who is to succeed , be equally expressed in the presentation , and there being no such form , but the contrary observed in these gentlemens case , it is an argument that his majesty took the vacancy to be total , whatsoever his president , secretary and advocate do . seventhly , in all cases where the vacancy is not universal , the presentation of those named by the king , is directed to tho college of justice , or the actual lords of session , and so our laws ordain and provide it should be . but the presentation of those now named to be received and advanced unto the administration of justice , or at least of most of them , was directed to the earl of c — who never was a lord of the session , nor yet is : which is an evidence , that the holding the late vacancy not to have been total , was not an opinion they were led into by truth , but by necessity , and that they have only espoused it to justifie what hath been illegally done . it is yet further alledged by these cunning men , that have first endeavoured to mislead his majesty , and now seek by what pretences they may best defend that which they have done ; that though , by the ancient laws , the king was only trusted with the nomination of the lords of the session , and the tryal and approbation of them was lodged elsewhere ; yet that by act , 11. parl. 1. charles the second , the sole choice and appointment of the lords of the college of justice is given unto and setled upon the king. but surely they who make the exception must be men either of very weak understandings , or of very bad consciences , and they must think they have to do with a very credulous sort of people , whom they may bubble into the belief of any thing , though never so false and unreasonable , otherwise they would never talk at so ridiculous and impertinent a rate . for , first , there is nothing granted unto the crown by that act , but what was its ancient and undoubted right : instead of setling any new prerogative upon the king , the parliament does only there declare what was anciently the inherent privilege of the crown , and an undoubted part of the royal prerogative of the kings of that kingdom : which i am sure that the trying , approving , and accepting or rejecting those nominated for lords of session never was , that having been by so many preceding acts of parliament , which we have mentioned , setled and vested in other hands . secondly , whatsoever can be supposed to be granted unto the crown by act 11. parl. 1. charles the second , it doth as much affect a single vacancy as a total ; the words being , that it is an inherent privilege of the crown , and an undoubted part of the royal prerogative of the kings of scotland to have the sole choice of the lords of session . which can import no more , save that they have the sole nomination of them , but not the tryal of their qualifications , seeing all along since , both in that reign , and in the next that ensued , the examination and acceptance or refusal of those that were recommended by the two last kings upon emergent vacancies to be lords of the college of justice , were always certified to the actual and sitting lords of session , to be by them tryed , and admitted or rejected as they should see cause . thirdly , what the gentlemen who make this exception would give the crown with one hand , they take away with the other . for while they would preclude the parliament from taking notice of the qualifications of those , who upon a total vacancy are nominated by the king , under a pretence that the sole choice of the lords of session , is by the forementioned statute declared to be an inherent priviledge of the crown : they at the same time seek to skreen and vindicate themselves from the violation of the other laws that prescribe the method of trying and approving those who are nominated now by his majesty for lords of the college of justice , by alledging , that s — n — and m — are both in a capacity through having been formerly judges , and are commissionated to try and approve them . fourthly , all that some apprehend to be contained in the 11 act parl. 1. charles the second , is wholly narratory , and no part of it statutory , at least so far as our concernment lies in it , and as we are therein referred unto other acts for the knowledge of what is statuted and ordained : so upon our application unto , and consulting of act 2. parl. 1. charles 2. all we find there enacted is , that it is an inherent privilege of the crown , and an undoubted part of the royal prerogative of the king , to have the sole choice and appointment of the officers of state and privy counsellors , but that he hath only the nomination of the lords of session , as in former times preceding the year 1637. and what that was we have already shewed , and do find it to be so far from interfering with , or derogating from what the parliament doth now insist upon and demand , that it both warrants and justifieth it . i may fifthly subjoyn , that upon supposition that the act 11. par. 1 charles the second were statutory , which it no ways is ; yet there is a later act pass'd in the said first parliament of king charles the second , though unprinted , yet upon record in our registers of parliament , and which was purposely made for the regulation of the college of justice , and about the admission of the lords of session , as the very title and rubrick bears ; wherein all that we find enacted , is , that the king , instead of having the sole choice of the lords of session , shall only have the nomination of them , as the crown stood possessed of it in times before the year 1637. and that their admission in all times to come shall be according to the laws and acts which were in being before the year which we have already mentioned . so that fancy what they will beyond this , granted unto the king by act 11. yet it is all withdrawn , and reassumed from him by this later act of april the 5 th . all that now remains to be further added on this subject , so far as concerns the controversial part , is to inquire whether the king hath at all times the sole power and right of chusing and appointing the president of the session ? and we presume with all humility to say , that by the laws of the kingdom , and according to ancient practice and custom , he hath it not , nor can he legally lay claim unto it , seeing by act 93. parl. 6. james 6. anno 1579. it is statuted and ordained , that the president of the college of justice shall be always chosen by the whole senators of the said college . which statute is confirmed by act 134. parl. 12. james 6. wherein it is expresly declared , that the king with advice of the estates , doth ratifie and approve all the acts made either by his majesties predecessors , or by his highness himself before , upon the institution of the college of justice , and the reformation of the abuses thereof . nor can it be denyed , but the appointing that the president should be chosen by the whole senators , was designed as the reformation of an abuse in the college of justice , which either had not been provided against , and obviated in the first institution of the session , or which had crept in afterwards . and as this was the law about the election of the president , so the practice was always conformable thereunto , until that my lord s — came to be constituted president by king charles the second , and was illegally obtruded upon the lords of session , without the being either chosen or approved by them . for from the time of the making the act until then , there was not one that had ever sate president , but who had been chosen by the lords of the college of justice , except sir john g — , who upon being nominated and recommended by the king in the case of the total vacancy anno 1661. was approved and confirmed by the estates in parliament . but for the lord p — , the lord u — , the lord c — , sir robert s — , and the lord d — , who were all that had been presidents from 1579. until 1661. they were every one of them chosen and admitted by the lords of session . nor is it unworthy of remark , that the lords of session , upon every election they made of a president , declared that they did it in conformity unto , and in pursuance of the act of parliament . and as king charles's departing from the law in this particular , was one of the first steps towards arbitrary power , so it was both in order to farther incroachments upon our laws and rights , and prepared the way for most of the tyranny that he exercised afterwards . and as s — assuming the office of president , upon the illegal choice of the aforementioned king , was both an affronting , and betraying of the known laws of the kingdom ; so his whole behaviour in that station was of one piece and complexion with his entring upon it , being a continued series of oppression and treachery to his country . for besides that all his verdicts between subject and subject , were more ambiguous than the delphick oracles , and the occasion of the commencement of innumerable suits in place of the determining of any ; he was the principal minister of all l — 's arbitrariness , and of king charles's usurpations . nor was there a rapine or murder committed in the kingdom under the countenance of royal authority , but what he was either the author of , the assister in , or ready to justifie . and from his having been a military commander , for asserting and vindicating the laws , rights , and liberties of the kingdom against the little pretended invasions of charles i. he came to overthrow and trample upon them all in the quality of a civil officer under charles ii. nor is there a man in the whole kingdom of scotland , who hath been more accessary to the robberies and spoils , and who is more stained and died with the bloody measures of the times , than this lord s — , who his majesty hath been impos'd upon to constitute again president of the college of justice . and as an aggravation of his crimes , he hath perpetrated them under the vail of religion , and by forms of law ; which is the bringing the holy and righteous god to be an authorizer and approver of his villanies , and the making the shield of our protection to be the sword of our ruin. but there being some hopes that the world will be speedily furnished with the history of his life , i shall say no more of him , but shall leave him unto the expectation and dread of what the famous mr. robert d — foretold would befal them him in his person and family , and of which having tasted the first fruits in so many astonishing instances , he may the more assuredly reckon upon the full harvest of it . and the method he hath lately begun to steeer is the most likely way imaginable to hasten upon him and his , what that holy , and , i might say , prophetical man denounced against them . for whereas the nation would have been willing upon his meer withdrawing from business , and not provoking their justice by crouding into the place in which he had so heinously offended , to have left him to stand or fall at the great tribunal , and to have i●●●mpnify'd him as to life , honour and fortune here , upon the consideration of his having co-operated in the late revolution , and of his having attended upon his majesty in his coming over to rescue and deliver the kingdoms from popery and slavery : he seems resolved to hasten his own fate , and through putting himself by new crimes out of the capacity of mercy , to force the estates of the kingdom to a punishing of him , both for them and for the old . but to return to what we are upon , about the right of electing a president of the colledge of justice : it is excepted , to what hath been said , in proof that the power is by law in the lords of session to choose their own president ; that sir john g — , was , upon king charles the second's nomination , approved and confirmed in parliament , anno 1661. which was a divesting of the lords of session of it , and a vertual rescinding all the laws by which that power had been settled upon them : to which i have several things to reply , that will discover both the impertinency of the objection , and the treachery of those who have insinuated it to the king. first , it is acknowledged in the very exception , that the sole choice of sir john g — as president , was not in king charles , seeing the parliament had the approving , allowing and admitting of him , which makes that case to differ very much from the present in which the choosing of the president is not only taken away from the lords of the session , but the approving and admitting of him is denyed to the estates of the nation in parliament assembled . secondly , what was done in ordaining sir john g — president , was not a repealing of the laws , by which the choosing of the president is vested in the lords of the session , but was at most only a dispensing with them in that extraordinary case of a total vacancy , and in reference unto a person of a most unspotted integrity , and unpa●allelled knowledge in the laws . nor will any man , pretending to acquaintance with parliamentary customs and proceedings , reckon that a law is therefore rescinded and abrogated because the parliament hath seen reason to supersede it in a single instance , and in a particular case . laws once enacted and established are never accounted to be abrogated , unless by particular future laws formally repealing them , or by posterior general statutes inconsistent with , and destructive of them . nor do two or three particular instances , varying from , and repugnant unto them , bring them so much as into disuse and desuetude ; but even in order to that , there must be immemorial prescription against them , and that without being disallowed or complained of in parliament . thirdly , what the parliament did , anno 1661. in the case of sir john g — , it was not properly done by them in their legislative capacity , but as a part of the supream authority of the kingdom , concurring with the king in an act and deed of the supremum imperium , and illimited power of the government , which the appointing of judges for the equal administration of justice came to be at that season and conjuncture , by reason of the total vacancy ▪ and the impossibility that thereupon ensued of choosing and ordaining the lords of session , whereof the president is always one , in the ordinary legal and established methods . what the king and the estates of parliament did in the case of that vacancy of the colledge of justice , was much of the nature of , and parallel unto , what the estates alone have done upon the late vacancy of the throne ; wherein they acted not in the way of a legislative body , but in the vertue of that illimited power which resided in them , as representatives of the whole people , and who knew no other measures whereby to act , but what lay most in a tendency to the publick safety . fourthly , the king 's having a right to choose the president of the session , is disclaimed and ridicul'd by those very persons that have advised him to challenge it : for my lord s — , in whose favour , and in pursuance of whose advice , his majesty hath claimed a right , and exerted an authority of appointing a president , hath , by the method of his entring upon that office and station , renounced the legality of his majesty's acting in that particular , and declared that he holds not his place by vertue of the king's choice and designation . for after he had prevailed upon the king to elect and send him down president of the session , the first thing he did at their meeting , and that in order to the throwiag the blame upon his majesty of all that had been transacted before , was to wheedle that over-aw'd and pack'd bench , to choose him for president of the colledge of justice : which as it shews the disloyalty and treachery of the man , so it testifieth and publisheth his folly. for how could they be in a capacity as lords of session to choose him for a president , that were not antecedently , legally , tryed and approved themselves ? and who knowing their own unqualifiedness , both as to literature and good fame , made his majesty's having nominated them , an excuse from their undergoing a tryal . for though it be both required by the laws , and was accordingly given out all along here , that they should be tryed ; yet five of them being conscious unto themselves how little they answered the qualifications prescribed in the statutes , refused to submit to be examin'd , under a pretence that they would not thereby weaken his majesty's right and authority in his having elected them . and thus the king's authority is doubly exposed , by those who call themselves the ordinary lords of session , in excusing themselves from a tryal , which was never designed they should do , seeing s — , m — and n — , were both appointed , and said to be in a capacity to examine them : and then by him who is stiled president , through its being made a stale for his obtaining the name , and renounced for the choice of the bench , as that which alone must give him a legal title . whereas if the king's choice of him be not according to law , and sufficient to justifie his entrance upon his office , why did he abuse his majesty in telling him that it was ? and if it be the king 's right , and a part of his prerogative , to elect the president , why hath he sacrificed his majesty's honour , and given away his legal power , in the submitting to hold the office by any other tenure ? howsoever we are come to be gainers by this carriage of s — , how much soever the king is a looser by it . for his surendring from the king the right of choosing a president , is a vindication of the justice of the parliaments vote and demand . besides , here is an end put to that pretence which they have been endeavouring to sham upon the world , viz. that s — was only restored to the presidency of which he was violently dispossessed , and that he was not chosen unto it as unto a place whereunto he had not a right . so that either the choice made at edinburgh overthrows the plea used at london , about his beeing meerly restored ; or else that whereby they do here seek to justifie his majesty's proceedings in reference to s — 's being president , condemns what the proteus hath there betaken himself unto , of being elected by those called the lords of the colledge of justice . to which i shall only add , that as he was never legally president before , so he is as little president now . his assuming the office then , when he was not chosen by the bench , as the law ordains , made him an usurper ; and his entring upon the place again , upon the choice of those that are not judges , by reason of their not being tryed as the statutes appoint , leaves him under the same crime and imputation . so that having now dispatched , all that is either historical or argumentative about the several heads in difference between the parliament of scotland , and a few unadvised or ill designing men about his majesty : i shall shut up this discourse with some political reflections upon the whole . whereof the first is , that it is not the having barely a good king that renders a people happy , but much of it must arise from his having good ministers about him . for no nation had ever a better prince than we at present have , and yet we find there is cause of complaint , by reason of the ill counsellors that possess his ear . we do not think that he entertains them out of choice , yet that will not give his people ease , though it may for a while suppress their murmurings . his majesties being so little acquainted with men at his first coming over , might lay him open to be misled in the choice of his officers : but to continue to use them after he hath had sufficient means as well as opportunity of knowing their characters , will leave an imputation not only upon his goodness , but upon his wisdom . for as the people have no other way of judging of the goodness of their prince , but by finding his officers and chief ministers to be such : so if these be not , they may possibly acknowledg william to be a good man , but they will never beleive that the king is so . and machiavel's observation , that a wise king will always find wise ministers , is no more than what every man is perswaded of upon the first principles of reason , and of common sense ▪ i do acknowledg , that ill men have ways of thrusting themselves upon princes , which they that are vertuous think too unworthy and below them to use . for whereas the later are always modest , and seek no recommendations but from their own merit ; the former are importunate , & can both flatter & bribe favorites to speak well of them . it was a severe prediction as well as observation , which the late prince of conde made upon the news of king charles the second's death , and of his brothers succeeding him , viz. that he was like to be well served , through having none about him , but his own fools , and his predecessors knaves . how many wise men then imagine his present majesty is like to be served , who though he hath not the fools of the last reign about him , yet he hath both the knaves of that and of the former ? nor is it of any great advantage at least to scotland to be delivered from the fools of the last government , seeing there are weak men enough besides those , and some of them trusted with the chief conduct of the scotch affairs . for how else could it be , that of all the publick orders remitted thither , there hath not been one , which either the meeting of estates , the parliament , or the privy council have not voted to be illegal ? in reference unto which , as we do acquit the king from all blame , seeing he cannot be supposed to be acquainted yet , either with the scotch laws , or with their forms , and does only sign what others pepare for , and offer unto him ; so we are not willing to ascribe it so much to the treachery and malice of his minister , as to his simplicity and weakness : who though he may possibly be an honest man , and indifferently versed in common affairs , yet he hath no great knowledge of the laws , and is but a puny in the politicks , by reason of which he comes to rely upon other mens advice , who instead of instructing and assisting him to serve the king , make him a tool for promoting ends and designs directly opposite to his majesties service and interest . but then i should observe , secondly , that one illegal stop doth lead to many : nor is one arbitrary thing to be supported but by another . it hath been hitherto taken for an undoubted truth , that though the estates assembled in parliament have not alone a legislative power , so as to enact laws without the king , yet that they have the supream and uncontrovertible power of declaring the meaning , and sense of those laws that are already enacted and established . so that when the parliament hath once declared the sense and meaning of any law , all courts of judicature , as well as particular persons , are bound to acquiesce in their explanation of that law. and to divest the parliament of this , is to strip them of one of their chiefest priviledges , and to detract from and diminish their authority , which is treason by the law of scotland . for it is expresly declared by act 130. parl. 8. james 6. that whosoever in time coming shall take upon him , to impung the dignity and authority of the three estates , or shall seek or procure the innovation or diminution of the power and authority of the three estates , or of any of them , shall be guilty of treason . yet when the present parliament had declared the sense of the ancient laws to be , that the king in a total vacancy could not appoint judges without their being admitted by parliament , the advance that had been made against our laws , in his majesties assuming a right of electing and authorizing them , hath been seconded with an impugning , despising , and subverting that authority of parliament which we have been speaking of . nor hath the invasion upon parliamentary rights and priviledges terminated here , but there hath been a further assault made upon them , both by the councils assuming the cognizance of that , which was lodged before the parliament , and by their actings determining in it contrary to the vote , and declaration of the estates , who are the supream judicature , and in conjunction with the king , the one legislative body of the kingdom . for it is an unquestioned maxim , that when a matter is once brought and tabled before the parliament , so as they have laid their hands upon it , it is not afterwards to fall under the cognizance , or determination of the council , or of any inferior judicature , unless remitted expresly unto them by the parliament it self . and therefore the parliament having given a stop to the opening of the signet , and to the sitting of the session , till the king 's further pleasure was made known to them , and until that matter should be brought to such an accommodation , as was consistent with the preservation of the laws of the kingdom , it was a high invasion upon the authority and jurisdiction of the parliament , for the council to meddle in it . but this they were aw'd unto by those who had given the king advice to chuse the lords of session and president , and who knew no way to justifie one illegality but by another . yea , our ministers , in order to make the first act of invasion upon the laws which they had thrust the king upon successful , and to prevent their receiving a baffle upon their first setting out on the road of arbitrariness , sent menacing letters to those that were nominated lords of session , threatning them with ruin if they did not sit at the time that they were appointed ; and had it not been for those letters , several had forborn to act , as knowing they could not lawfully do it . and as the sending those letters sheweth that the ministers here were convinced that they had counselled the king to an illegal thing , but which was to be supported in the same manner : so these gentlemen of the long robe , who contrary to their own judgment , were influenced to sit , and to transgress known laws , have declared how unworthy and unqualified they are to be received and approved by parliament , as lords of the college of justice . and to crown all these miscarriages in government with one more , his majesties ministers being fully sensible , that they whom they call lords of session , were neither legally appointed , nor could legally meet and sit , they therefore resolved forcibly to support what they had unjustly begun and done ; and accordingly , against the day and time those gentlemen were to sit , they ordered all the forces , which were drawn in unusual numbers about edenburgh , to be in a readiness upon beat of drum , that what they had arbitrarily begun , might be violently maintained . which as it was an applying , and using of his majesties troops , upon a much differing design , than that for which the parliament had consented to their being raised and paid : so it had been much more for his majesties honour , and the benefit of his kingdom , that they had been all imploy'd against cannon , who is still making inroads , and committing robberies upon several of his majesties loyal subjects ; and who by the ill conduct and treasonable counsel of some of his majesties ministers , seems to have been connived at and forborn , since the last defeat that was given him , for no other reason , but that there may be a stand for other rebels in due time to go unto . but that which i would observe , thirdly , and in the last place , is , that his majesty for his own honour and safety , and for the peace and welfare of his people , ought to make some change and alteration of his ministers . for it is evident , that they who are imployed as instruments of oppression , rapine and murder , under an ill government , can never be of use unto , nor for the reputation of a good . it is evident , that he is betrayed , nor is it so difficult to know by whom , and how . for things speak , when men either dare not , or will not . and advices are not to be judg'd of by the quality and profession of the persons that give them , but by the tendency of the counsels that are given . for example , they cannot design well unto his majesty , who tell him , that he must not make haste to conquer his enemies , until he have first screw'd up his prerogative ; and that he is to improve the dread his people are under of king james , for wresting from them what he can , before he attack him . again , they cannot intend his majesties interest , who would have him overlook the crimes and treasons that are daily committed against him , seeing the conniving at rebels can only be to incourage rebellion . again , they who advise him to be king only of a party , and not of the whole people , have a mind he should be king of none . and to counsel him either not to use those in his service who are both willing to serve him , and would do it with the utmost fidedelity ; or to use those whose carriage speaks them to be in the interest of his enemies , it is to have him betrayed instead of being served . nor can they be for his continuing upon the throne , who would have hindred his ascent unto it . and whosoever embarrasseth him with his parliaments , and by it retards succours for the support of the war , can mean no less than that his majesty and his kingdom should become a prey to king james , and to his brother of france . and they who counsel him to go on where his predecessor left off , have a mind to see a new abdication , though they were not for the old. but what might be said upon this head , requireth rather an intire discourse , than to be confined unto a short remark . and therefore all i shall add is , that as his majesty must be infallibly lost , without a speedy change as to some of his ministers , so he needs not to fear them , if they be but once thrust out of his councils ; seeing all the hurt that they are able to do him , is through their being there . and if he will but own himself , and assert his own interest , he will have enough of those to stand by him , who have no interest but what is his . finis an address sign'd by the greatest part of the members of the parliament of scotland , and deliver'd to his majesty at hampton-court , the 15 th . day of october , 1689. to the king's most excellent majesty : the humble representation of the lords and commissioners of shires and burroughs of the kingdom of scotland , under subscribers , and members of this current parliament , now adjourned till the eight of october next . nothing save the great and general surprize of this long distressed and at present unsettled kingdom , upon the late adjournment of your most loyal parliament for so long a time , and in so critical a season , with the deep concern of your royal interest therein , could possibly have induced us to this so necessary a petition . but the visible consternation and discouragement of thousands of your good subjects , delayed in the relief and comfort which at this time they assuredly expected , with the advantages that we apprehend your majesties enemies , both within and without the kingdom , may think to reap by such an interruption , being our only motives , we cannot , we dare not be silent . and therefore to prevent these evil consequences , we in the first place most solemnly protest and declare , in the presence of god and men , our constant and inviolable fidelity and adherence to your majesties royal title , right and interest , so frankly and chearfully recognosced by us in this current parliament , wishing and praying for nothing more under the sun than your long and prosperous reign , as that wherein the security of all our lives and liberties , and also of our holy religion , more dear to us than both , is infallibly included . it was the perswasion we had of the justice , as well as the necessity , of your majesty's heroic undertaking for the delivery of these kingdoms , with the conviction of the divine confirmation that appeared in its glorious success , that moved most , if not all of us , to endeavour and concur most heartily in the late meeting of estates , for the advancement and establishment of your majesty upon the throne , when some discovered their disaffection , and were too open retarders and obstructers of that good design : and it is from the same true affection and zeal , that we do now most heartily make the above-mentioned protestation , to obviate all the misconstructions your enemies may make in this juncture . nor are we less assured of your majesties most sincere and gracious intentions , to perform for us to the utmost , all that the estates of the kingdom have either demanded , or represented as necessary and expedient for securing the protestant religion , restoring their laws and liberties , and redressing of their grievances , according to your majesties declaration for this kingdom . neither can it be imagined , that so wise and just a king as your majesty , will ever be perswaded , that so loyal a parliament as this , can be induced either to wish or design any prejudice to , or diminution of your true interest and prerogative ; but such as have slavishly served and flattered arbitrary power and tyranny , will be always studying for their own sinister ends , to state a separate interest betwixt king and people , a practice which we are confident your majesty abhors . but that we may clear our selves upon this present occasion to your majesty's full satisfaction , and refuting of all misrepresentations we can incur on any hand , we shall briefly rehearse to your majesty , the votes pass'd in this present parliament , to which the royal assent is not given , with such short reflections , as we hope may tend to the better vindication of all concern'd . the first act upon which the vote of parliament has pass'd , is , that declaring the priviledge of the estates of parliament to nominate and appoint committees , as they shall think fit ; and excluding therefrom the officers of state , unless they be chosen : and omitting what the parliament hath already represented to your majesty as reasons of their vote ; it is humbly conceived , that this act is exactly framed to the extent of that grievance , which together with the rest , is desired in the instrument of government , to be redressed unto us in parliament . the second , was an act abrogating the act of parliament 1669 , asserting the kings supremacy over all persons , and in all causes ecclesiastical ; and this act is so exactly conform to the second article of the abovementioned grievances ; and the foresaid act of supremacy in it self is so dangerous to the protestant religion , as well as inconsistent with the establishment of any church-government , that we doubt not your majesty will ever approve all that voted to it . the third , is an act anent persons not to employed in publick trusts ; and all the ruins and distresses of this kingdom , have so certainly flowed from the persons therein noted , especially , such as by their contriving of , and concurring in the dispensing power , have thereby eminently indangered our religion , and overturned all the fences of our liberties and properties ( which we have good ground to believe the parliament would have extended but to few persons ) and your majesty in your declaration , hath so justly charged the same upon evil and wicked counsellors ( the only persons pointed at in this act ) that we are perswaded that you will find it absolutely necessary for attaining all the ends of your majesty's glorious undertaking for our relief . the fourth , is an act concerning the nomination of the ordinary lords of session , and the election of the president , to wit , that in a total vacation they be tryed , and admitted or rejected by parliament , and in a particular vacation they be tryed and admitted , or rejected by the other lords : and that the president be chosen by the lords themselves , conform to our old practique and express statute . and this act is so agreeable to practique laws and acts of parliament , and so necessair for the true and equal administration of justice ( the great security of all kingdoms ) that your majesty will unquestionably approve it . the fifth and last is an act ordaining the presbyterian ministers yet alive , who were thrust out since the first of january 1661 , for not conforming to prelacy , and not complying with the courses of the time , to be restored . and this act is in it self so just and so consequential from the claim of right , and agreeable to your majesties declaration , that less in common equity could not be done . and here your majesty may be pleased to consider , that tho' prelacy be now by law abolished , yet these few ministers , not exceeding sixty , ( tho' restored , as they are not , for want of the royal assent to the foresaid act ) would be all the presbyterian ministers legally established and provided for in scotland . it is not unknown to your majesty what have been the sad confusions and disorders of this distressed country under prelacy , and for want of its ancient presbyterian government ; and now the whole west , and many other parts of scotland , are at present desolate and destitute , having only ministers called by the people upon the late liberty , without any benefice or living , or convenient place to preach in . it is also certain , that there are many hundreds of forefaulted and sined persons who are yet waiting to be restored and refounded , according to the claim of right , and your majesties gracious instructions thereanent . it is true , the last thing proposed by your majesties commissioner in parliament , was a supply of money for maintenance of the forces so necessary for our present defence ; and we should have proven our selves ungrateful to your majesty , and false to our own interest and security , if we had absolutely refused it : but there being a sufficient and certain fund to maintain all the forces , and support all other incident charges of the government for some months ; all that we demanded was , that some things visibly necessair for satisfaction of the country , and the better enabling and disposing them to pay the said supply , might be first expeded . we are confident that the vote of parliament , which was only for a short delay , will not give your majesty the least ground of offence . and now having presumed to lay these things before your majesty with all humble submission , purely out of duty for preventing the evil constructions of your majesties enemies , and for our own just vindication ; we most humbly beseech your sacred majesty graciously to consider what is here represented ; and in prosecution of your majesties acceptance of the claim of right , and your declaration emitted for this kingdom , to take such courses as you in your royal wisdom shall think fit , for passing the foresaid acts of parliament , and redressing all our other grievances . and we your majesties most humble petitioners and faithful subjects , shall , as in duty bound , every pray for your long and prosperous reign over us. finis . address to his majesty, by the parliament,. scotland. parliament. 1698 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92524 wing s1178a estc r233222 45578436 ocm 45578436 172354 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92524) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 172354) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2627:8) address to his majesty, by the parliament,. scotland. parliament. scotland. sovereign (1694-1702 : william ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.). s.n., [edinburgh : 1698] "subscribed at edinburgh the 5th of august 1698. in name, presence, and by warrant of the estates of parliament. seafield j.p.d.p." reproduction of original in the bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-07 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion address to his majesty , by the parliament , we your majestie 's most loyal and faithfull subjects , the nobelmen , barons , and burgesses , conveened in parliament , do humbly represent to your majesty , that having considered a representation , made to us by the council-general of the company trading to africa and the indies : making mention of several obstructions , they have met with , in the prosecution of their trade : particularly by a memorial presented to the senate of hamburgh , by your majestie 's residents in that city , tending to lessen the credit of the rights and priviledges granted to the said company , by an act of this present parliament . we do therefore , in all humble duty , lay before your majesty , the whole nations concern in this matter ; and we do most earnestly entreat , and most assuredly expect ; that your majesty , will in your royal wisdom , take such measures as may effectually vindicate , the undoubted rights , and priviledges of the said company : and support the credit , and interest thereof . and as we are , in duty , bound to return your majesty most hearty thanks ; for the gracious assurances , your majesty has been pleased to give us , of all due encouragement , for promoting the trade of this kingdom ; so we are thereby encouraged at present , humbly to recommend , to more special marks of your royal favour , the concerns of the said company ; as that branch of our trade , in which we , and the nation we represent , have a more peculiar interest . subscribed at edinburgh the 5th of august 1698. in name , presence , and by warrant of the estates of parliament . seafield j. p. d. p. a proclamation against importing of irish cattel, or resetting thereof scotland. privy council. 1698 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05457 wing s1590 estc r183330 53299260 ocm 53299260 179994 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05457) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179994) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2810:19) a proclamation against importing of irish cattel, or resetting thereof scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1694-1702 : william ii) 1 sheet ([2] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh, : anno domini 1698. caption title. imperfect: torn, dark with slight loss of text. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng animal industry -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. foreign trade regulation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign economic relations -ireland -early works to 1800. ireland -foreign economic relations -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-12 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 scott lepisto sampled and proofread 2009-01 scott lepisto text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation against importing of irish cattel , or resetting thereof . william by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith : to _____ macers of our privy council , messengers at arms our shireffs in that part conjunctly and severally , specially constitute greeting : forasmuchas , by the fourteenth act of the parliament holden in the year one thousand six hundred eighty six , it is expresly enacted and ordained , that no horse , mare or cattle whatsomever shall be imported from ireland to this kingdom , under the pain and penalty of forefaulture of the horse , mares or cattel that shall be imported , and further of paying the sum of one hundred merks scots for each beast , that shall be so imported , the one half of both the beast and fines , to belong f●… the seizer and discoverer , and the other half to his majesty , as likewise , that no person within this kingdom reset or buy any horse , mares or nolt , that they know to be imported out of ireland , under the pain of one hundred merks scots , for each beast , besides the forefaulture of the beasts themselves , the one half to belong to the discoverer , ( he alwise pursuing and instructing the importation within six moneths after ) and the other half to his majesty : and we being resolved , that due and exact obedience shall be given to the foresaid act of parliament for the time to come , and that the same shall be execute , with all rigour against such as transgress the same . therefore , we with the advice of the lords of our privy council in pursuance of , and conforme to the foresaid act of parliament , strictly prohibite and discharge the importing of any horse , mares , cows or other cattel from ireland into this kingdom , either by the natives thereof or inhabitants in ireland , or any other forraigners whatsomever , and all persons to buy or reset any horses , mares or nolt , that they know to be imported out of ireland , after the day and date hereof under the pains above-mentioned respective , contained in the foresaid act of parliament , for importing buying or resetting any horse , mares or nolt imported from ireland contrary thereunto . likeas , we with advice foresaid for the more effectual execution of the premisses , require and command all collectors , surveyers , waiters or others imployed in uplifting and collecting our customs and forraign excise , at the several sea-ports of this kingdom , and all officiars of the law whatsomever , to seaze upon all horse , mares and cattel whatsomever imported from ireland after the date hereof , or bought or reset by whatsomever person or persons within this kingdom who knew the same , to have been imported , and to detain and confiscat the same , comform to the foresaid act of parliament , and to pursue and exact from the several persons who shall import , buy or reset , any horse , mares or any other cattle imported from ireland contrair to the foresaid act of parliament , the sums and penalties respectively above-mentioned , incurred by them through the foresaid transgression , the one half thereof to be applyed for his majesties use , and the other half to be detained by themselves , in manner specified in the said act. our will is herefore , and we charge you straitly and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and to the mercat crosses of the several head-burghs and sea-port-touns within this kingdom , and make publick intimation thereat of our pleasure in the premisses , that none may pretend ignorance . and ordains these presents to be printed ; and our solicitor to transmit copies thereof to the shireffs of the several shires and stewarts of the stewartries , their deputs or clerks , and to the magistrats of the several sea-port-tounst , to be by them published accordingly . given under our signet at edinburgh the eleventh day of may one thousand six hundred ninety and eight years , and of our reign the tenth year . per actum dominorum secreti concilii gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to the king' 's most excellent majestay , anno. domini 1698. the scottish mist dispel'd: or, a cleare reply to the prevaricating answer of the commissioners of the kingdome of scotland, to both houses of parliament; upon the new propositions for peace. and the foure bills sent to his majesty, 1647. by an english covenanter english covenanter. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a58835 of text r203524 in the english short title catalog (wing s2096a). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 109 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 13 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a58835 wing s2096a estc r203524 99825258 99825258 29636 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a58835) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 29636) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2112:04) the scottish mist dispel'd: or, a cleare reply to the prevaricating answer of the commissioners of the kingdome of scotland, to both houses of parliament; upon the new propositions for peace. and the foure bills sent to his majesty, 1647. by an english covenanter english covenanter. [1], 6, 6-14, 17-24 p. printed by m.s. for henry overton at the entring out of lumbert-street into popes-head alley, london : 1648. a reply to: scotland, parliament. the answer of the commissioners of the kingdome of scotland, to both houses of parliament, upon the new propositions of peace, and the foure bills to be sent to his majestie. reproduction of the original in the union theological seminary library, new york. eng scotland. -parliament. -answer of the commissioners of the kingdome of scotland, to both houses of parliament, upon the new propositions of peace, and the foure bills to be sent to his majestie -controversial literature -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a58835 r203524 (wing s2096a). civilwar no the scottish mist dispel'd: or, a cleare reply to the prevaricating answer of the commissioners of the kingdome of scotland, to both houses english covenanter 1648 18950 33 0 0 0 0 0 17 c the rate of 17 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2006-11 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2006-11 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-11 john latta sampled and proofread 2008-11 john latta text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the scottish mist dispel'd : or , a cleare reply to the prevaricating answer of the commissioners of the kingdome of scotland , to both houses of parliament ; upon the new propositions for peace . and the foure bills sent to his majesty , 1647. by an english covenanter . london , printed by m. s. for henry overton at the entring out of lumbert-street into popes-head alley . 1648. the scottish mist dispeld . it was a good saying of solomon , that he that walketh uprightly , walketh surely , but he that * perverteth his waies shall bee knowne . sincerity sits upon the lips of many ; but her competitresse keeps her out of the hearts of most : pretence of piety in keeping covenant , was absoloms policie to raise a warre what our scotch brethren mean by their late papers intituled , the answer of the commissioners of the kingdome of scotland to both houses of parliament upon the new propositions of peace , and the foure bills to be sent to his majesty , is as much our wonder as the papers themselves : neither can we judge it any other than a designe , to prepossesse the people of england with scandalous prejudices against their parliament , calculating their scriblings for the meridian of fooles , which makes no observation of by-gone transactions , but are presently charm'd into their northern net , by the guilded language of their devout chantings , as if the kingdome of england ( like some of the indies ) was a rich , pleasant , and golden island , but the inhabitants thereof men in statute , but children in understanding , ignorant of the value of their owne commodities , willing to sell their english treasures ( and that upon trust ) for scottish toyes , receiving nothing in hand , but two credulously presuming upon very faire and devout promises , and a solemne covenant that their trading with them , will be all for their good in the latter end . brethren though the naucious vapours of a scotch mist be sum'd up into the braines of some of our weake brethren of our owne countrey , rendering them a little light-headed , and making them speake like englishmen on the otherside tweed ; yet are wee not infected therewith : we have read your papers , and shall let you know that we ken the difference between plaine juggling and plaine dealing , and that others may see as well as our selves ▪ let impartiall ingenuity examine your papers , and judge of the case . in the first place you tell the parliament of england by your scratching pen , and the people in print , with what patience you have in pursuance of the solemn league & covenant , and treaties betwixt the kingdomes , used your best endeavours for the setling religion , and a happie peace . if you haue used your best endeavours to these ends , it was in pursuance of the covenant , and so you were bound to it , neverthelesse we thanke you for it being concern'd in it : onely remember solomons counsell , let another man praise thee and not thine owne mouth , a stranger and not thine owne lips . prov. 27. 2. but what you meane by setling religion , is past our kenning : if by religion you meane discipline ( for that 's all the religion some men mind ) then you know we have many religions contended for amongst us : we have the kings religion , and that is episcopacy : we have the parliaments religion ( we meane in the sense delivered , though wee are confident they do not place their religion in discipline ) and that is presbitery : we have the scotch religion , and ( to give its proper name ) that is independencie ; for they call upon us like oracles from heaven to heare them , though they themselves will be independent as to us . which of these religions have you used your endeavours to setle amongst us ? if any of you ( after moses example ) have been taken up into the mount of god , and have talked with our lord and master mouth to mouth , and immediatlie received the law of church government , from the hands of christ written by his finger in tables of stone , and have comission from him to charge the people to hearken to you , upon pain of being cut off from the people ; we shall acknowledge your peculiar favour with the most high god , and that you are the onely independent people of god in the world , and that all israel must hearken to god , we repent of our former deafnes , and shall henceforth submit to your judgments for conscience sake ; but if it hath never bin with you after this manner ; we have no cause to fear the guilt of rebellion , though we say to you as was said to moses who made you rulers over us ? it is not our ambition to subject our selves to a rod of iron , a golden scepter will better please us , your scotch independency is as distastfull to us , as that in england or amsterdam . if you say it is the covenanted religion , according to the word of god , and the example of the best reformed churches : we wait with patience , and hearty prayers , and hands lifted up to the most high god , for the speedy-setling of that amongst us ; but assure your selves , except you will impose your scottish sense upon our english words ( intollerable slavery ) we resolve to be , according to our solemne league and covenant , english presbyterians , and not scotish independents . if your endeavours have been in truth for the setling not onely of religion , but a happy peace , you will take heed of wrangling with your peaceable brethren , we have no minde to fight , nor yet to be beaten , and therefore we obtest you ( your own words in your severall letanies ) by the coniunction and parity ( that word stickes , except with an english interpretation ) of interests , by the treaty between the kingdomes by the solemne league and covenant , by all your promises , professions , and declarations , by the dreadfull threatnings of gods judgments upon trucebreakers , by the anatomizing of all your hearts at the great day , by the just retribution of the righteous judge to every man according to his wayes , by the everlasting seperation between the upright & the hypocrite in the day of the lord , by the indeliable blot that will fall upon you and your posterity , by the scandall of religion , & the just vindication of the dishonour of god , by the prejudice of the gospel , by the grief of the godly , by the intollerable consequences of the enemies blasphemie , by the offence of the jewes , by the rejoycing of the turks , by the animation and encouraging of antichrist , by the cry of all the blood that hath been shed in the just defence of this kingdomes interest , by all the bonds of truth and righteousnesse , that you do not engage us in another warre . you tell us in the front of your papers , that propositions were agreed on , anno. 1644 with advice and consent of the parliaments of both kingdomes , presented to his majesty at oxford , by commissioners of both , and treated upon at uxbridge , 1645. that you did earnestly and frequently presse the sending of these propositions again to his majesty , wherein the houses would not concurre with you : but on the contrary , after very long delay , thought fit to make severall alterations therein , which were principally in matters that did concern the neare union of the kingdomes . propositions were sent to the king long before the time you speak of , so that surely the parliament of england did endeavour the peace of the kingdome before our scotch brethren put them upon it , you would make us beleeve that you alone minde the peace & safety of the kingdome of england , as if your own interest was forgotten , and ours remembred , pure love , unmixed friendship , if the houses would not so suddenly concurre with you to send the propositions again , we do presume they had reason for it ; neither do we conceive that the scotch commissioners have cause of offence , if the houses did not presently act upon their first motion , being not commissioners to direct the parliament of england , if they thought fit , to make severall alterations ; we think fit to acquiesce in their judgements , having chosen them to judge for us , neither can we presume their least neglect of those matters which do near concern the union of the kingdomes , though perhaps with reason enough their judgment and yours may not concurre in those things ; it is likely they were carefull to maintain a distinction , and prevent a confusion of both kingdomes interest : they would avoid an occasion of your claming from the new propositions something like a negative voyce and right of joynt consent with this kingdome in all things in relation between the king and the kingdomes of england and ireland , which heretofore you have taken from the covenant , and treaty . brethren , religion teacheth contentednesse , and the doctrine of community is reckoned in england among the novelties , for which we beleeve there will be no tolleration . it may be the two kingdomes may not think fit that though we are all of one language under one king , in one religion , yea in one covenant , yet that we might be altogether one , as was once the wish of one of your honest and honourable commissioners , would you not have the honour of the kings of england preserved in their royall title to two kingdomes of england and scotland , and not that two should become one ? although we heartily desire to be one with you , one in religion , one in affection , and one in assistance , yet let us remaine two kingdomes , though we hold parity of interests in things spirituall and desire to be one with you in christ , and one in the spirit , yet like united israel , covenanted israel of old , ( in their dividing of the land of canaan among their tribes ) let you and we rejoyce in our distinct portion , love one another , cleave together , and be content : let tweed divide , but nothing else . brethren may be brethren without community in each others patrimonie . again , you urge , that it was agreed upon betwixt the kingdomes , that the same propositions should be presented again to his majestie at his comming to holdenby ; the performance wherof being delayed by the houses for divers moneths , you did wair patiently , yet upon a sudden they did appoint a peremptory day for sending the propositions to his majesty . first , you had notice of the day , and were earnestly prest unto the thing , and the cause of your delay , your owne consciences can tell better than we , whether it was not by way of designe ; yet neverthelesse before you charged the parliament with delayes , now you blame them for their haste : why should brethren be so froward ? such relations inhebits wranglings . secondly , did not both parliaments agree , that those very propositions that were sent to newcastle , should againe be sent to the king . if so , what shew of reason can be imagined , why you should not ( though upon the sudden ) concurre with the sending them , since they could not be altered ? brethren le ts have fair play above board . again , in the same page you affirm thus , that finding no successe in that way of sending propositions to the king , and insisting upon his positive answer thereunto , without giving any reason for the justice of our desires , or hearing any proposition from his majesty , we did in november last propose to the honourable houses , and with much earnestnesse desire that their might be a personall treaty with his majesty here at lond. it being in all probability the best meanes to obtain a peace . first , whereas you appropriate the successelesnesse of sending propositions to the king , to your not giving reasons for the justice of yours desires , we demand , did not one of your selves rally a whole army of arguments and reasons against the kings refusall to signe the propositions at newcastle in a rhetoricall speech before him to that purpose , professing ( among many other motives ) that upon his majesties refusing the propositions , both kingdomes will be constrained ( for their mutuall safety ) to agree and settle religion and peace without him . and moreover , there was added , if your majesty reject our faithfull advice , and lose england by your wilfulnesse , your majesty will not be permitted to come and ruine scotland . further pressing him thus : we know no other remedy to save your crown and kingdomes , than your majesties assenting to the propositions . yet now you are pleased to say , that not any reason hath been given for the justice of your desires . if your desires were not just , why did you press him to grant them . but secondly , is the case thus indeed ? you were not alwayes of this opinion , as you confesse , page 6. brethren , let 's make a little use of this : we see now what reason there is of a brotherly forbearance of varieties of judgment , yea and of the same persons , though changing their judgments over and over , yea even in things civill , much more religious , being more enigmaticall than these by farre : you were against the kings personall treaty with the parliament at london now you are for it . suppose the parliament of england hath not yet attained to your new light , beare with them a while , till your reasons prevail . you tell us , that indeed heretofore his maiesties presence might have bred divisions , and continued our troubles ; and when his maiesty desired to come hither from oxford , with freedom and safety , it was thought unfit , and denyed by the houses , and the commissioners from scotland : but that argument now hath no force at all ; for the case of affaires , the kings condition and ours ( which were given for reasons in that answer to his maibsty ) are quite altered from what they were , then the king had armies in the fields , and garrisons , and strong holds to returne unto : now he hath none of these . brethren , were these all the reasons then given , why you could not admit of a personall treaty with his majesty at london ? viz. because then the king had armies in the field , and garrisons and strong holds to returne unto ? had it been our assertion as it is yours , we should have feared that divine hand of justice which met with ananias and saphira , acts 5. and that all might see your dealings herein , we have here added your owne words . concerning the personall treaty desired by your majesty , there having been so much innocent blood of your good subiects shed in this warre by your maiesties commands and commissions , irish rebels brought over into both kingdomes , as also forces from forreigne parts , &c. there being also forces in scotland against the parliament and kingdome by your majesties commission ; the warre in ireland fomented and prolonged by your majesty , whereby the three kingdomes are brought neer to utter ruine and destruction . we conceive that untill satisfaction and secvritie be first given to both your kingdoms , your majesties comming hither cannot be convenient , nor by us assented unto . now let god , angels , and men judge of your proceedings in the present case ; brethren , your lines doe seem to carry a christian dialect , and you oftentimes seem to be serious with us , give us leave to be serious with you ; is this suitable to your exellent straines and expressions of zeale for the glory of god , the blessed reformation , the solemne league and covenant , your pathetick pretences , and devout exhortations to the parliament of england , to give testimony , and beare witnesse to the truth , and not deny it , remembring that whosoever shall give testimony to christ and his truth , by confessing him before men , he will also confesse them before his father which is in heaven ; and whosoever will deny him before men , them will he deny before his father which is in heaven . is this your zeale against superstition , heresie , schisme , and all such scandalous doctrines and practices , which are contrary to the known principles of christianity , or the power of godlinesse , which you so devoutly desire should bee supprest by an act of parliament , pag. 26. of your answer , what ? one while to confesse the name of christ before his majestie , to deale plainly with him in telling him in so many words ( to the affecting of the hearts of all your brethren , ministers and others which did see your zeale ) that untill his majestie had given satisfaction for the bloodshed , and security to both kingdomes in relation to peace , his majesties comming to london , could not by you be assented unto ; and now to tell the people that the reason why you could not formerly yeild unto his majesties comming to london , was because then his majestie had armies in the field , garrisons and strong holds to return unto , now he hath none ; yea & to say that this was the reason which you formerly gave , pretending to nothing else ? brethren , what doe you make of religion , a meere piece of state-policie , or somewhat else ? brethren , we would perswade you that integrity and uprightnesse are jure divino , and that brethren ought to speak the truth from their hearts each to other . shall we minde you of some other zealous passages concerning his majestie ; see and review what is said by the generall assembly of the kirk of scotland , approved by those that imploy you and by you sent to the king . the troubles of our hearts are enlarged , and our feares encreased , in your majesties behalfe , perceiving that your peoples patience is above measure tempted , and is like a cart pressed downe with sheaves , and is ready to break , while as besides many former designes and endeavours to bring desolation and destruction upon us , &c. our countrey is now infested , the blood of divers of our brethren spilt , and other acts of most barbarous and horrid cruelty excercised by the cursed crew of irish rebels , and their complices in this kingdome , under the conduct of such as have commission and warrant from your majestie ; and unlesse we prove unfaithfull both to god , and to your majestie , we cannot conceale another danger which is infinitely greater than that of your peoples displeasure : therefore we the servants of the most high god , and your majesties most loyall subjects , in the humilitie and griefe of our hearts fall downe before your throne , and in the name of our lord and master jesus christ , who shall judge the world in righteousnesse both great and small ; and in the name of this whole nationall kirk which we represent , we make bold to warne your majestie freely , that the guilt which cleaveth fast to your majestie , and to your throne is such , as ( whatsoever flattering preachers , or unfaithful counsellours may say to the contrary ) if not timely repented , cannot but involve your selfe and your posterity under the wrath of the everliving god , for yovr being gvilty of the shedding of the blood of many thovsands of yovr majesties best svbjects , &c. how did the glory and lustre of these plaine , honest , and christian proceedings dazell the eyes of your english brethren , who did much rejoyce therein ? how did your zeale provoke many to plead your cause against those which did but whisper jealousies of you ? can we thinke that reverend assembly did not speake the truth in christ from their hearts and soules , and lyed not ( as the apostle saith ) in these their addresses to his majesty ? and can we suppose they will owne with you this answer of yours , wherein you tickle the hearts of the malignant party , plead for their designe a personall treaty , and that at london , without any mention of satisfaction for blood and security to the kingdomes ? wee cannot conceive so irreverendly of them untill we have better reasons than yet we perceive , neither will we indulge the least jealousie , that the noble men , barons , gentlemen , burgesses ministers , and commons of your owne kingdome should ever so farre decline from their first principles of zeale for god , righteousnesse , and justice , against all offenders , without respect of persons , and of love , friendship , and amity to this kingdome , whereof god , angels , and men are witnesses , and will concurre with you in these expresses ; how will the firre-trees howle , if such cedars should fall , if this should bee once told in gath , and published in askelon , how will the daughters of the philistins rejoyce , and the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph ? and therefore to you wee speake , and not unto your nation . brethren , was his majestie blameable in the spilling of so much innocent blood of his best subjects in his three kingdomes yea or no ? if no , why is it charged on his score , representing him in such horrid , black , and bloudy colours , in the eyes of his subjects ? if he be guilty as the words have expressed , what satisfaction for blood , what security hath beene given as yet ( at least to the two kingdomes , for what you may call saisfaction , we know not . ) brethren , wee say no more but this , the integrity of the upright shall guide them : but the perversenesse of transgressors shall destroy them . whereas you quote the parliaments answer to his majesties message of the 11th of september , wherein they desired his majesties comming to london , as being the only meanes of any treaty between his majesty and them , with hope of successe ; thereby insinuating the mutability of the parliament from their present aversenesse to a personall treaty , compared with this answer . we give you to know that we have perused his majesties message , and the parliaments answer , and stand amazed that such a profession of zeale for god should ever bee found in conjunction with such unfaithfulnesse amongst brethren , for thus stands the case ; the king ( having set up his standard at notingham , set out severall proclamations and declarations , whereby the parliaments actions were declared treasonable , and their persons traytors ) did send a message to his houses of parliament , 25 august 1642. for a personall treaty , whereunto the two houses of parliament sent an answer , which because it is short and pertinent to the present case , is here set downe verbatim . the answer of the lords and commons to his majesties message of the 25. of august , 1642. may it please your majesty , the lords and commons in parliament assembled , having received your majesties message of the 25. of august , doe with much griefe resent the dangerous and distracted state of this kingdome , which we have by all meanes endeavoured to prevent , both by our severall advices and petitions to your majesty , which have been not onely without successe , but there hath followed that , which no ill counsell in former time hath produced , or any age hath seene , namely , those severall proclamations and declarations against both the houses of parliament , whereby their actions were declared treasonable , and their persons traytors ; and thereupon your majestie hath set up your standard against them , whereby you have put the two houses of parliament , and in them this whole kingdome out of your protections ; so that untill your majestie shall recall those proclamations and declarations , whereby the earle of essex and both houses of parliament , and their adherents and assistants , and such as have obeyed and executed their commands and directions according to their duties , are declared traytors , or otherwise delinquents : and untill the standard , set up in pursuance of the said proclamations , be taken downe , your majestie hath put us into such a condition , that whilst we so remaine , we cannot by the fundamentall priviledges of parliament , the publique trust reposed in us , or with the generall good and safety of this kingdome , give your majestie any other answer to this message . john brown , cler. parliam . h. elsing , cler. parl. d. com. this answer of the parliament occasioned severall expresses mutually to passe betweene the king and the parliament , and amongst the rest , this answer to his majesties message of the 11th of septemb. 1642. as appeared in the 586. and 587. pages of the booke of declarations printed by authority : in which very answer they doe professe themselves in no capacity to treat with the king whilst his standard was up , his proclamations and declarations unrecalled , whereby the parliament is charged with treason ; and having humbly advised him what he should doe upon the performance whereof they invite him to his great councell , being the only meanes of a treaty with hope of successe ; and in pursuance of that very resolution of theirs , not to treat with his majesty untill he had recalled his proclamations and declarations against his parliament , they have made that one of the foure bills which were sent to be signed by his majesty in order to a treaty : now let heaven and earth , god and man judge of your unfaithfulnesse in the businesse in hand : you tell the people that the parliament was once for a personall treaty with the king , why should they now be against it , and hide from the people the termes upon which they were for it ; have the parliament forsook their primitive principles , or your selves ? hath the king recall'd those proclamations and declarations , yea or no ? hath hee given satisfaction for blood and security to the peace of the kingdome , yea or no ? if not , would you have the parliament betray their trust , break their covenant , treat as traytors ? doe the parliament forsake their principales ? no : though israel play the har lot , yet let not judah offend ? we know your objection , the parliament did admit of a treaty since that time , it is true , but have you not read what david did in a case of necessity when hee was a hungry ? the shew-bread , which at other times was unlawfull for him to eare , was lawfull then ? the life of the kingdome then in danger , provoked the love of the parliament to forget themselves to save the nation : but is the case now as it was then ? piety & humanity will allow a man to treat ; yea begge for his life at the hand of his enemy in power to destroy him ; though the principles of either will not admit the like submission in another case . again , though they did treat , yet did they not forsake the principles of humanity , or the rules of justice , rather then they would betray their trust , break their covenants , enslave our just liberty into the hands of tyranny ; they broke up the treaty , and resolving to sacrifice themselves in the kingdomes service , committed themselves to gods providence , who succeeded their desires acccordingly for gods love , courage and constancie in a good cause . you tell us there are some things which properly concerne the kingdom of england , their rights , lawes , and liberties . but why do you stop there ? why do you not proceed in declaring your resolutions not to intermeddle with such things ? why do you notwithstanding this acknowledgment interpose in things concerning the kingdome of england , their rights , lawes and liberties ; as in the disposall of the kings person , while remaining in this kingdome , in the 7th page of your papers concerning the covenant and treaty , in the kings negative voyce , page the 18th of this answer , in the businesse of the militia , page the 20. in the disbanding of our armies , page 21. in conferring titles of honour , page 22. the revenews of the crown , page 5 , &c. nay why have you cast such glosses , senses , and interpretations upon the covenant and treaty , which being granted , confounds the interest of england , with the kingdome of scotland ? for these are your words in the 5th and 6th pages of your papers concerning the covenant and treaty . vnlesse we lay aside the covenant , treaties , declarations of both kingdomes , and three yeares conjunction in this warre , neither the one kingdome nor the other must now look back what they might have done singly before-such a strict union : but look forwards what is fittest to be done by both joyntly for the common good of both , &c. and again pag. the 7. of these papers ; if the disposall of the kings person mentioned in the vote of both houses be intented for the good , peace and security of both kinghomes , then it should not be done without the mutuall advice and consent of both . by the first of these expressions do not your argument stand thus ? if we must not lay aside the covenant , treaties , declarations of both kingdomes , and three yeares conjunction in this warre ; neither the one kingdome nor the other singly , but both joyntly , must heareafter act for the good of both . but we must not lay aside the covenant , &c. therefore neither the one kingdome nor , &c. thus you would argue us into a confusion of interests . againe , by the other expression quoted from your papers , page 7. doe you not argue thus ? whatsoever is intended for the good , peace , and security of both kingdomes ; must be done by the mutuall advice and consent of both kingdomes . but the disposing of the kings person , while in this kingdome , ( and upon the same ground the disposing of all the militia , forts , castles , townes , and forces by sea and land , all offices and places of trust , yea all our estates and interests , ) are intended for the good , peace , and security of both kingdomes . therefore these must be disposed of by the mutuall advice and consent of both kingdomes . brethren : confident we are , you will sooner beate out english mens brains , than force that argument into their heads ; surely god hath given us a better stocke of reason and humanity than thus to be charmed into bondage and slavery ; we have read your owne words declared by you , 1641. viz. that neither by your treaty with the english , nor by seeking your peace to be established in parliament nor any other action of yours , you doe acknowledge any dependency upon them , or make them iudges to you or your lawes , or any thing that may import the smallest prejudice to your liberties . are you so tender of the mint and cummin of scotlands liberties , that you will not admit of the smallest prejudice thereof ; and shall the parliament of england , the grand trustees of the kingdomes liberties , dispence with the great things of englands interest ? betraying their trust , and breaking their covenant ; yea , and bringing upon them the guilt and cry of so much bloud as hath been shed in the just defence of the kingdomes interest ? brethren , did you come to free us from slavery by others , that you might enslave us ? to save us from rods , that you might whip us with scorpions ? to deliver us from the little finger of the king , that we might feele the loynes of the scot ? doubtlesse , brethren , though we thankfully acknowledge , that your help was seasonable in the day of our trouble , which we hope we shall never forget ; yet were we not so profane , as to contract the parting with our birthright for that scottish pottage , and therefore remember your promise , page 4. that you woùld not stretch your selves beyond your line , and that which is within the expresse condition of your solemne league and covenant , the duty of your allegeance , the treaty and declaration between the two kingdomes . and before we leave this , we pray againe remember the word expresse , and doe not presse us with an extorted sense , for we shall never abide it . in the next place you begin methodically to speak unto two heads : first , of the best and most probable meanes to procure a good agreement with the king for setting religion , and a lasting peace . and next , of the propositions , which are to be the foundation of the peace and safety of both kingdomes . we shall not take upon us to speak unto every particular expression of yours , wherein you seeme to reflect upon the parliament , our daily imploiments , and busines of our callings , not affording us those opportunities of knowing and understanding the severall transactions which it is very likely have passed between the parliament and you , and we doubt not but an answer to satisfaction will be given by that honourable assembly whom you have blemished by your writings , and the publication thereof ; but such things which are of most plaine and obvious observation ( whereof there is plenty sufficient to take away those scandals which are cast upon the parliament ) are these that we shall insist upon : first then in your method you begin with that which you call , the best and most probable meanes to procure a good agreement with the king for the setling religion and a lasting peace ; and you say , it is still your opinion and judgement , that it must be by a personall treaty with the king ; and that his majesty for that end be invited to come to london with honour , freedome and safety . if you are of that opinion , we pray you tell us , what satisfaction for bloud , and security as to peace , you have received from his majesty , that this kingdome ( if possibly ) may be of your opinion : have you concluded a peace with his majesty , without the parliament of england ? then have you broken your treaty : if you have not , say so . you know they are not of your opinion for a personall treaty : but we would gladly weigh your reasons for it ; we can better beare your reasons then blowes : you tender us your reasons by the halfe dozen . let us see your position , and your reasons : your position is this : the best way to procure a well-grounded peace , is , by a personall treaty with the king at london . here we are to consider first the thing , a personall treaty , secondly the place , at london . we shall looke upon your reasons with reference to both . first for the thing , your first reason is ; the sending of propositions without a treaty , hath been oftentimes assayed without successe , and the new propositions are lesse advantagious to the crown than the former were . 1. what if propositions have been successelesse heretofore ? doth it follow they will be so still ? english spirits ( to speake without vanitie ) are more noble and generous , then to despaire because of repulse . so many garrisons had not been taken by some , and so few by others , if this argument had prevailed with all , as it hath with some . 2. these foure bills were so model'd , as might have administred hopes of his majesties concurrence , being in order to a treaty , had you not anticipated by charging the new propositions to be lesse advantagious to the crown than the former were ; and which we have cause to suspect , hath made this last addresse to his majesty , through your means , as successelesse as the former hath been , contrary to the hopes and expectations of many . and the truth is , his majesties answer and your lines doe so consimilate , that a man would thinke that sir john cheisly was the scribe to both . your next reason is this , the kings removall from the parliament , was the cause of the warre : therefore his returne may be the means of peace . 1. that may not follow , especially as the case now stands , when pretended friends change principles for self-ends , and forgetting their solemne league and covenant , decline the parliament and the kingdoms interest , and turn royalists . 2. was not this reason as valid when you did concurre to send propositions ? your third reason is this , in a personall treaty , the commissioners of both kingdomes may give reasons of their desires ; but propositions without a treaty , may be esteemed impositions . 1. we make no question but the parliaments propositions carry their reasons in their foreheads , and may be easily discerned by an english eye . and doe not you know , that the king of england is bound by his oath to grant the just desires of his parliament ? 2. were they not impositions as well when you did concurre to send propositions , as when you did dissent ? the king may have some just desires to move for the crowne , and for himself ; as that be may have his revenues , &c. 1. it is true , the crowne aod revenues goe together in england , however it is in scotland ; neither doe we presume any propositions shall be sent by the parliament , in prejudice to the crown or crown-revenues , both being for the kingdoms honour and safety . 2. was not this likewise as good a reason when you did concurre ? your next reason a personall treaty with the king , is the best way to beget a mutuall confidence , &c. 1. that is as the treaty may be managed , and so may propositions as instructions be given . 2. and was not this likewise as good a reason when you did concurre ? your last reason is this , we cannot expect his majesty will grant in terminis , whatsoever propositions shall be sent unto , &c. neither will the houses of parliament give full power to commissioners to make altrrations as they shall see cause . he is to passe bills in terminis , why not propositions , being matter for bils ? confident we are , had he wrested the sword out of the parliaments hands , as it is wrested out of his hands , they should have had such propositions as he would have judged fit for traitors , it may be the axe in stead of the halter , heading in stead of hanging : for traitors hath he proclaimed them without recalling it to this day . 2. was not this also as valid when you did concurre , as now it is ? thus your weighty reasons for the thing , a personall treaty , vanish into the aire . let us now examine your reasons for the place , at london ; for there lies the emphasis of your motion , and perhaps designe . 1. propositions have been often essayed without successe , and therefore the personall treaty must be at london . 2. the kings removall from london was the cause of the warre , and his returne , or presence may be a remedy : ergo , the treaty must be at london . thirdly , in a personall treaty things may be mutually debated ; for that is the summe of your reason : ergo , the treaty must be at london . fourthly , the king may have some desires to move for the crowne : ergo , the treaty must be at london . fifthly , a personall treaty is the best way for giving and receiving satisfaction : ergo , the treaty must be at london . sixthly , it cannot be expected his majesty will grant all the propositions , neither will the houses give full power to their commissioners to make alterations , as they see cause , upon debate : ergo , the treaty must be at london . brethren , we shall not so much prejudge the weaknesse of our countreymen , as to shew them the difficiencie of these starved suggestions . englishmens eyes are in their heads , and they need no spectacles to see mountaines , only we would gladly know your meaning by the advantage of the crown , and motions of the crown , which ever and anon you hint out to us ( if our judgements faile us not ) as possibly they may ; ( for we are no statesmen , but as the late times have made us all enquire into state-cases , ) we say , if our judgements be right , both the king and the crown , and all things belonging unto them , as such , are for the kingdomes advantage , and for no personall interest whatsoever in prejudice of that , we have had many things which they call aphorismes , divulged amongst us , as that the safety of the people is the chiefest law , the king is above every particular mam , but lesse than the whole kingdome , that the king is the kingdomes , but the kingdome is none of the kings , ( except with a distinction ) and twenty more such sayings , which are our ordinary discourse , and we thinke there is a great deale of equity , justice , and reason in them , and a light to instruct us to give unto the magistrates their due , and to preserve our selves from tyranny , and by these things were we rallied by the parliament together , to maintain the truth of these sayings , and we have paid for our learning , it hath cost us deare , and we would not quickly forget all like dunces , untill we are knockt into our former lessons : your talking so much of the advantage of the crown , and motions for the crown , seems to us to interfier with these sayings . having exhibited your reasons , ( such as they are ) for a personal treaty , you fall into invectives with the parliament of england , thus , if they were esteemed enemies to the parliament , and peace of the kingdome , who advised the king to withdraw from his parliament , what estimation will the world have of them who will not suffer him to returne to his parliament , when he offers to cast himselfe into their arms ? the plaine english whereof is this , to insinuate into the people , that the parliament of england being against the kings treating at london , are the kingdomes enemies , and so to stirre up the people against their parliament : is this like commissioners of state ? would you suffer such things in your owne kingdome ? is this according to your solemne league and covenant ? is this your brotherly love ? your zeale for the parliament of england , and the interest thereof ? we say no more but better is a neighbour that is near , than a brother that is farre off . but secondly , if the parliament be the kings enemy , because they will not admit of a personal treaty at london ; what were you when you refused the same things ? doe not you give a just occasion for the cavaliers to call you enemies all-a-row ? having dispatcht the first particular in your method , viz. the readiest meanes for a lasting peace , which you say is , a personal treaty with the king at london ; you fall to the second , viz. the consideration of the propositions which are to be the foundation of peace : and therein , first , to consider and remove the differences , which you divide into three heads , which are , 1. matters of religion . 2. the interest of the crown . 3. the union and joynt concernment of the kingdomes . first , you begin with that of religion , and hint it in one of your biting parenthesis , as a most flagitious neglect , that it is put by the parliament amongst the last of these new propositions . 1. you know brethren , that that may be primum in extentione , which is ultimum in executione , we use to make our hedge , before we plant our garden . 2. religion was not the first of those propositions which were sent to new-castle with your consent , as appeares in print , but now you are more zealous than before . 3. the best sort of english-men loves religion in the bottome , to have it in designe , as well as pretence , to make religion the end and not the means unto their intentions . 4. we have generally observed that the emptiest zelots are the greatest advocates for the circumstances of religion , time , and order , mighty matters in some mens eyes . you commend the king for mentioning religion in the first place in his addresse to the parliament , and to charge the parliament with profanesse for post-poning religion . but wherein doth the piety of the king so much consist ? is it in asserting the episcopacy , or the toleration of all sorts of religions , only prohibiting the masse , and the publishing of atheisme and blasphemy , or wherein else ? is it true that the king ( whom your generall assembly so deeply charged with guilt of the shedding the bloud of many thousands of his best subjects ) hath passed through the valley of bacha , weeping and lamenting with ashes upon his head , and sackcloth on his loines for his former wayes , exhibiting his repentance as a doore of hope , that his three kingdomes will be happy in him , notwithstanding all that is past ? have you heard that his heart is tender , that it hath melted before the lord for all his abhominations , that he hath cut downe the groves , broken the altars , destroyed the images which were a provocation to the eye of jealousie ? hath he given satisfaction for bloud , and security for peace ; untill which , you once professed you would never assent unto his comming to london to treat ; hath he recall'd his declarations and proclamations against his subjects english and scotch as traitors and rebels , & c ? is it thus indeed , or * are you like men that dream , as once you were , that you applaud the king for his zeale for religion , putting the reformation of that in the first of his proposals to the parliament , at the best and chiefest foundation of peace . if the cause be thus ; deferre not our joy : your very feet would be beautifull to us , would you bring us these glad tidings ? it would be unto us as the resurrection from the dead ? but if you have no such newes to cheere us with all ; no such fruit from the tree of life to revive our hearts sicke through our hopes deferred ; what 's your meaning of this royall applause ? do you thinke your consciencious brethren , presbyterian or independent , will commend you for this ? having done with the order , you now come to the materiall differences and alterations concerning religion , which you branch out into the parliaments errour of omission and difficiency , and into that of commission and excesse . the first thing you complaine of under the head of omission , is no lesse than the solemn league and covenant ; and here you abound with your pathetick interogations , to affect the hearts of those whose eyes are in their bowels , whose understandings are drown'd & swallowed up in their passions , after this manner . and shall the covenant which is as solemne a vow as creatures on earth can make to god in heaven , & c ? and againe , shall the covenant for the preservation of &c. and againe ( like the papists , which holds up their idolatrous eucharist in the eyes of the people , that they may fall down and worship it ) shall the covenant which both houses recommended to the assembly of , & c ? yet againe , ( as if here lay all your baite to catch gudgins ) shall our mutuall and solemne league and covenant subscribed by the parliaments of both kingdomes , & c ? once more yet ( for if this springe failes , all our sport will be lost ) shall the covenant even with those that tooke it to be already out of date , &c. to all which we reply . first , what if the parliament thinke it ●●● fit to trouble his majestie with pressing the covenant in the propositions for peace ? was it not your owne reason * for the altering your judgements about sending propositions ? will you not give the same allowance to others which you assume to your selves ? are you all for having ? will you give nothing ? secondly , if the covenant be laid aside , out of date , deleted , as your words are , your perverting it hath beene the occasion of it ▪ did we promise to take the covenant ; and after to submit to what sence thereof our brethren of scotland would please to impose upon us ? hath not the covenant been so perverted , that many covenanters are ready to enter into a new covenant against the sence that is put upon the old ? brethren , we haue taken the covenant in a true , proper , plaine english sense as well as your selves , and stand unto 〈…〉 . thirdly , whereas you 〈…〉 that the covenant is brought in by the parliament in the 7th ▪ qualification of the 14. p●●position , only as a hooke to catch some into the notion of delinquency : we reply , that if any 〈◊〉 on this side tweed should have said the covenant was made a hooke to catch men into delinquency , you would have marked him with an m. or an s. for a malignant or sectary ; we will not say the covenant was first intended as a booke to catch men into the notion of delinquency ; though you are so bold and peremptory to charge this upon our parliament to their very teeth , and that in the face of the kingdome , tempting their civility and patience above measure , the like affronts we presume were never offered to any nation by commissioners of another state : yet we wish it had not been used as a hooke to catch not a few , but even the parliament and kingdome of england into a new designe , by introducing another nation to be one of the estates of this kingdome , and to have a negative voice in all things concerning their welfare . you tell the parliament from their omission of the solemne league and covenant to your very much wonder , that they are so liberall in the matters of god , and so tenacious in what concernes themselues . your zeale for the covenant is your zeale for god , that is , your zeale to introduce your nation to be one of the estates of this kingdome , and to have a negative voyce in all things concerning our welfare . your zeale to intermeddle with the militia of england , with disbanding our armies , with conferring titles of honour , with the revenue of the crowne ; with all our goods by vertue of the solemne league and covenant : is your zeale for the matters of god , and the parliaments care in their preservation of the pure and unmixt interests of this kingdome according to their solemne league and covenant , without suffering you to intermeddle therewith ? is their prophane tenaciousnesse in that which concernes themselves ? see my zeale for the lord , was iehu's tone , when the tune of his heart plaid another game . as for the king you are pleased to tell us ; though his maiesty shall not come up to the full length of your desires , yet we must never depart from our covenant . it seemes you have a royall sence to bestow upon his majestie , but vae pauperibus , woe to the poore , they must abide the fire of this purgatory ; is it true here also , no penny , no pater-noster ? is there no allowance for tender consciences except it be of kings and princes ? you say your zeale for the covenant doth not abate or diminish your loyalty and duty to the king , though he cannot come up to the full length of your desires , &c. that is , take the covenant . your zeale for the covenant and his majestie runs together , though his majestie and the covenant are a great way asunder , your loyalty and allegeance will suffer you to indulge the king in his refusing to subject to the matters of god : the solemne league and covenant ; and yet your brotherly affection and honesty will admit of quarrelling with the parliament of england , for not haling , urging , and pressing him to come to the full length of their desires , viz. to take the covenant . the commissioners of scotland can give a dispensation , but the parliament of england must not so much as appeare to favour him upon paine of dispensing with the matters of god , asham'd of christ , denying him before men ; and his denyall of them at the great day of the lord . it seemes you would make us younger brethren , not only in the matters of the world , but in matters of god too . thus farre for the businesse of the covenant , the primum mobile of all other motions , and therefore ever and anon you refer unto that . the next thing omitted by the parliament is , the proposition for confirming the ordinance concerning the calling and sitting of the assembly of divines . the calling and sitting of the assembly of divines , was not intended in sempiternum : neither do we beleeve but an authoritative dismission of that revered assembly , especially for a season , would be as acceptable to thems●… as serviceable to the respective places whereto they belong , for the weeding up of those tares of errour and prophanesse , which the enemy hath sowne in their absence ; and it is no parradoxe to affirm that the sitting so long of so many learned and godly ministers together for the suppression of errour . heresie , and wickednesse , and advancing the affaires of jesus christ , hath been an occasion through their absence from their people of more errour , heresie profanesse and prejudice to the affaires of christ than did appeare before ; men erre , not knowing the scriptures ; and how can men but erre , when their teachers are long removed into corners . the next thing omitted was the proposition for reformation of religion in england and ireland according to the covenant . according to the covenant ; that implies that the covenant must first be taken , and then the reformation must be setled according to the covenant ; you have said enough to the parliament for their prophane neglect to presse the king to the covenant , that they should omit no lesse then the solemne league and covenant : though you can dispence with him , but will you have the king to settle religion in england and ireland according to the covenant , and not take the covenant ? then would you have him settle a religion against his conscience , and is that reasonable ? a blind sacrifice is not acceptable . the next thing omitted , was , the proposition for setling unity and uniformity in matters of religion betweene the churches of both kingdomes , according to the covenant . the reply to the last might well serve for a reply to this also , according to the covenant is the burden of your song , and it seemes the life of your game ; by the churches of god in both kingdomes , do you not meane the two nationall churches , that is , the two nations themselves ? ( for it concernes us now to know your meaning ) if you interpret that which you call matters of religion , as you have done the solemne league and covenant ( for you have an excellent facultie of interpretation . ) you may call community and parity of interests matters of religion ? and if so , it may be the parliament may thinke fit to omit the proposition for setling unity and uniformity in matters of religion betweene the churches of god in both kingdomes , according to the covenant : and one kingdome at least is engaged to them for it . but secondly , why do you make the solemne league and covenant the unicum necessarium , the ballance of your sanctuary , and the golden reed to measure your temple , you have not a tittle of the word of god ; but all your crie is the solemne league and covenant instead of the word of god ; the jew hath his talmud , the turke his alkeron , the papist his masse-booke , the prelate his service-booke , and must we have the solemn league and covenant instead of the oracles of heaven , the word of god ? better it is that this brazen serpent should be broken to pieces , and ground to powder , then that men should fall down and worship it , though formerly a healing benefit was received from it ; it was the hypocriticall pharise's pretending to heaven , though minding the earth , who making void the law of god , did teach for doctrine the traditions of the elders . let us not put up mans posts the covenant , by gods posts the holy scripture ? having done with the parliaments omissions in matters of religion , you fall upon their commissions and excesse ; the first thing you complaine of under that head , is , that instead of the propositions which they have omitted , so farre as concernes religion , you find nothing but a meere shadow of presbytery government : and instead of uniformity of religion , a vast deformity , or multiformity of heresies and sects . a liberty granted for all sorts of service and worship of god , an opening a doere to atheisme , to all religions , to liberty of conscience , being indeed liberty of errour , scandall , schisme , heresie , dishonouring god , opposing truth , hindering reformation , and seducing others . first , do you find no more in the propositions as concerning discipline and religion , but a meere shadow of presbyterian government ? we have no reason to thinke but the parliament supposeth it such a presbiterian government in the very substance thereof , as they can imagine , to be most agreeable to the word of god , and according to our solemne league and covenant ; if you can informe them better , confident we are their eares are open ? shall they receive the patterne of the house of god from their scotch brethren , for the word of god ? if they see but the shadow , they are not far from the substance ? if they honour the shadow , which is all they see , what will they do to the substance when their eyes are open ? is it not better that they should doe as they see , and see what they doe ; than to drive a great trade of confidence about the will of god in discipline , with a small stocke of scripture to maintaine the same ? did all men truly see what they act , and act what they see , we should have more love , and lesse wrangling , more truth , and lesse shew , men would not be so forward in pretence of zeale for government in the house of god , with the neglect of the government of their owne tongues and pens , in reproaching and slandering whole states and kingdomes : you see little but the meere shadow of government in the parliament ; we see little but the meere shadow of religion in some others . secondly , perhaps the kingdome sees little as yet , but the meere-shadow of presbiterian government , and so are fit for nothing more ; let them be first instructed , and then commanded . the parliament are english men themselves , who know the disposition of their own country-men to be such , that they will freely run when they are drawne with the cords of men , viz. reason and love : but are extreame head-strong in case of compulsion , they could never endure the bramble should raigne over them ; when the kingdome is taught in the substance of presbytery , its likely the meere shadow will flie away . thirdly , it may be the parliaments designe may be first to feed the kingdome with substantials of religion , the finest of the flower , the milke and honey of the land of canaan , viz , the great doctrines of faith towards god , and repentance from dead works ; and untill the time of some proficiency therein , the shadow of discipline may be sufficient , the substance whereof is but a meere shadow in comparison of these , our late prelates , whilst they so hotly contended for discipline and government in pretence of suppressing a deformity , and multiformity of heresies and sects , errour , scandall , &c. did destroy and crucifie religion and her children ; when they bowed the knee to discipline , crying haile master , and kissed it , we hope the parliament will not permit such a faction againe . whereas you say , the parliament hath granted in their propositions a liberty to all sorts of service and worship of god , an opening a doore to atheisme , to all religions , to error , scandall , schisme , heresie , &c. we reply . brethren , your language reflects upon your descent , and your expressions do disparage your honourable employment as commissioners of state ; your pens seeme to be rather steered by the hands of some of the late scandalous pamphlet writers , then of the scotch commissioners . you callumniate boldly , but will any thing stick ? let 's observe your charge ; the parliament you say desires the settlement of a vast deformity or multiformitie of heresies , and sects , and grants a liberty for all sorts of service , and worship of god , yea and the opening a doore to liberty of errour , scandall , schisme , dishonouring god , opposing the truth , bindering reformation , and seducing others : and all this is aggravated ; in so much as it is done , after a most sacred and solemne league and covenant , to suppresse all these according to the word of god , and the example of the best reformed churches . brethren , two things you should have done before you can make this good ; you know that religion and the covenant requires the suppression of these things , according to the word of ●od , and the example of the best reformed churches . first then you should have shewed by the word of god what are these errors , heresies , scandals &c. which you say the parliament desires a settlement of . secondly , you should have proved the methods and waies , the rules and directions of the word of god for the suppression of these , and the parliaments practice in opposition to that , and then put it unto the judgement of ingenious men to determine the case ; have you done this in the eye of the kingdome , before whom you have slandered the houses of parliament , if not , were you not commissioners of state , we would tell you more plainly your deserts : but for the present we say no more but this ; if any man among you seeme to be religious , and bridleth not his tongue ( much more his pen ) but deceiveth his owne soule , this mans religion is in vaine . be it known unto you that we verily beleeve that the things you speake of , much more the toleration of them , and most of all the setling the same , are the first-borne of abominations unto our present parliament : and in the meane while we clearely discerne , that while you pretend to plead with such imparalleld zeale against errours , heresie , &c. you sticke not to abuse the repute , and blemish the good name of a whole representative kingdome at once ; violating the most plaine , evident , and obvious rules , shall we say of christianity ? yea , of common justice and honesty : and therefore we tell you as you tell the parliament , and take notice of it : certainly 〈…〉 mocked . you tell us page 7th , that it is far fr 〈…〉 ions that pious and peaceable men should be troubled , because in every thing 〈◊〉 cannot conforme themselves to presbyterian government : for you say you did never oppose such an indulgen●e to their persons as is agreeable to the word of god , may stand with the publique peace , and is not destructive to the order and government of the church ; yet you do from your soules a●hor such a generall and vast toleration as is exprest in the proposition , &c. who shall judge of pious and peaceable men in england , the parliament of england , or the scotch commissioners ? againe , who shall determine what kind of iudulgence is agreeable to the word of god , may stand with the publique peace , and is not destructive to the order and government of the church established in england ? the parliament of england , or the scotch commissioners ? what meane you by indulgence to their persons ; such a kind of indulgence of their persons , as pious and peaceable men may have in spaine , rome , turkie , among even infidels themselves , or of a better consideration ? if we may plough with your owne heifer , we may quickly expound your riddle ; you would not have a toleration of any sectaries , and we see who they are by your large schedule , page 12 anabaptists , antinomians , arminians , familists , erastians , brownists , separatists , libertines , independents , nullifidians , seekers , and the new sect of shakers : can any man in the least degree withstand your presbytery , and not be rankt among these sectaries , except the episcopalians , for which it seemes we shall have a toleration , cum privilegio scotico . brethren , we are not yet baptized into the spirit of scotch presbytery : there we are anabaptists , we cannot submit unto the lawes thereof ; there we are antinomians holding that we have power and liberty of will therein ; here wee are arminians , neither doe wee judge it sinfull , though we should act contrary to your presbytery , there we are familists , perhaps we judge that there is not so plaine and cleare a forme of church-government , and rule of discipline to be found out in the word of god , as some do suppose ; and therefore do hold that christian magistrates may establish such a discipline , ( it being not contrary to the word of god ) as they shall judge meet , and that we ought to submit unto it ; here we are erastians : and yet wee judge that we ought to come out of babylon , and decline corrupt and superstitious worshipping of god , there we are brownists and separatists : judging our selves free from receiving the law of church government from the scotch oracle ; here we are libertines : neither will we depend upon your judgements as infallible , here we are independents : extreamly doubting your judgements therein , not questioning our salvation , though we have no faith therein ; here we are nullifidians : being extreamly in the dark , not understanding your wayes , here we are seekers . and if the lord in mercy doe not afford us more liberty and indulgence in the quiet enjoyments of our priviledges and interests in things civill and religious , then , for ought we see you would afford us , we may be quickly reckoned amongst the new sect of shakers : you would make us tremble under your hands ; from which condition libera nos domine . brethren , such sectaries in the sense delivered , the parliament may well desire to tollerate : but your assertion of the parliaments sinfull tolleration of the sectaries of your catalogue , is a scandalous , false , & an unbrotherly aspersion . for have they not in terminis declared against the tollerating of popery , masse , service book , it is not the property of a brother to be the accuser of brethren . that next religion , wherein you differ in judgment from the propositions , is , concerning the interest and power of the crowne , being obliged by our solemne league and covenant , allegeance and duty of subjects , not to diminish , but to support the kings just power and greatnesse . you should have added , in our severall places and callings , a passage in the covenant which ever and anone doth flye in your faces . next , you come to the question , wherein the kings regall authority , and just power doth consist : and you answer it in the first place , that it is chiefly in making & enacting laws ; and upon this principle you document the parliament of england about the kings power in making laws , &c. what have you to do to busie your selves in such things which meerly concerns another kingdome ? but since you thus take upon you ( confident we are ) beyond your commission , we desire you in your next , to declare faithfully the power of the king in making laws in the kingdome of scotland , & how valid his negative voice is there . but in the mean while , why doe you professe ignorantium & facti & juris alieni , and yet interpose in the power of making laws in the kingdome of england ? brethren , remember that golden passage in the covenant , our places and callings , and doe not stretch your selves beyond your line . it is not the property of wise men to bee medling . againe , if the king hath a negative voice in making lawes , hath he not the same in repealing lawes ? and if so , farewell presbytery and directory . in the next place you intermeddle with the militia of the kingdome , to that wee pray you , hands of , would we suffer you to feize upon that , for ought we know , the honour of englishmen would bee quickly contained in the court complement , your humble servants ; and the catholick titles and tearms of dominus dominantium , and servus servorum , would soon be divided between the scot and the englishman : englishmen are better soldiers than to part with their weapons , and militia of their kingdom , and suffer another nation to intermeddle with that . we have not the patience to admit of a word of discourse of your medling with the militia of england . the next thing you complain of under the head of commission , and excesse , is the standing of our armies : to that you tell us , you thinke fit that neither king nor parliament ought to keep up an army in the field when the war is ended . you give your judgement before it is demanded : we think fit you should forbeare intermedling , untill it appears within your vocation and calling , according to the solemne league & covenant . brethren , we do not interpose nor busie our selves about your army in scotland , or affairs particularly belonging unto that kingdome , neither do we envie your mountains , but are contented with our own vallies . as for our army , they are only englands charge , why should they bee the commissioners of scotlands trouble ? it is very true , the charge of the army is great , but whether needlesse , as you tell us , the judgement of our p●rliament , and not the scotch commissioners , must determine for us ; a hand of mercy to our distressed kingdome , did at first gather them , a hand of power hath hitherto been with them , and a hand of providence hath kept them together to preserve the interest of their native country intire & whole from the violence of those that would be fingring therewith . and though it be true , that the sea is our bulwark by gods mercy from forrain enemies , which are beyond it ; yet you know very well , that our late wars have been fomented by our own natives ; for sometimes brethren prove unnaturall , and paul joynes his perills among false brethren , with his perils at sea . if you doe indeed condole the griefs of the people from the charges of our army , you will take heed that wee be not troubled with any from forrain parts : for confident we are , the whole kingdome will never abide it , no , though they should enter into a soleme league and covenant , that they would only help us to disband our armies , and ease the people of the oppressions therof . you tel us , if the houses had according to your earnest desires of the 3 of march , 1644. when they model'd their army , made choice of such officers as were known to be zealous of the reformation of religion , and of that uniformity with both kingdomes , are obliged to promote and maintain , &c. and put in execution their severall declarations , as that of the 20. of sept. 1643. as also the 15. of feb. 1644 ordering all officers under sir thomas fairfax , to take the covenant , &c. it would have prevented a world of inconveniencies and evils which have ensued upon the neglect thereof . we judge ourselves to have cause to bind the sacrifice with cords to the hornes of the altar , and praise the name of the lord for his wisdome and goodnes in modelling the army even as he did , though contrary to the advice of the scotch commissioners ; ( yet we plead not at all for any errour or evill of judgement or practice either of the army , or any therein . ) 't is true , we heare of all religions in this army , and of no religion in another ; of error of judgement here , of error of practice elsewhere ; of quartering upon the countrey by this army , of quartering the countrey by another : of officers and soldiers , that through scruple of conscience cannot t●ke the covenant in this army , and of officers and soldiers that can both take the covenant with hands lifted up to the most high god , and yet strike hands with death and hell by cursing and swearing , plundring and stealing in another army . it is no pleasure to us to dabble in the mire of another army : neither can we endure that the scotch commissioners should bespatter our army . if the houses had according to your earnest desire the 3. of march 1644 when they model'd their army , made choice of such officers as were known to be ze●lous of the reformation of religion , and of that uniformity which both kingdoms are obliged to promote and maintain : that is , if they had made choice of such officers as you would have preferred , viz. zealous hardy men out of the north , whose judgement about the covenant and treaty had concurred so , as to introduce your nation to be one of the estates of this kingdome , to have a negative voyce in all things concerning our welfare , who would have pleaded your co-intrest with the parliament of england in the militia of the kingdome , disposall of places and offices of t●ust , in all our particular and proper goods , we are confident with you , that it would have prevented a world of inconveniences upon the king and his party his armies in the fields , strong holds and garrisons , which have ensued upon the neglect thereof . the last thing you speak unto under this head , is , viz , the interest of the crowne , that is , touching the conferring titles of honour , which you call the flower of the crown , and wherewith kings doe use to recompence the vertue and merits of their good subjects , &c. did you not formerly consent to the making voyd of the titles of honour confer'd by the great seale , after it was carried away from the parliament ? have you better considered of the matter , and changed your thoughts touching the vertues and merits of those who have assisted the king against the parliament ? is this your zeale against the common enemy of both kingdoms , according to the solemn league and covenant ? is this that just and condign pnnishment wherunto you engaged your selves to bring them ? what that might be rewarded for their helping the king against the parliament ( as we heare your secretary was , ( as is supposed ) for his care and pains in this your writings against the houses ) with titles of honour . having finished the particulars of the second head , viz the interest of the crown , you fall upon the third , the union and joynt interest of the kingdoms , where you complain . first , that the houses have omitted the covenant in these propositions . we have given you an answer to that once and again ▪ you do so tosse the covenant , that it 's thought you will quickly bring it out of date ; the word covenant is your shiboleth : but we can both pronounce , and nnderstand it as well as your selves . secondly you adde , that the houses have rejected all that concerns-unity and uniformity in matters of religion . it is but a temporary suspension , because of their former successesnes ( your own answer for your rejecting propositions , & pressing for a treaty contrary to your promise ) and not a rejection of those things : did they presume the religion of scotland in the principles thereof to justifie your practices in abusing our parliament as your papers have done , they would have reason enough to reject all that concerns unity and uniformity with you in matters of religion . but confident we are , as they have no reason , so the least jealousie thereof is not within the confines of their thoughts . next you complaine of the omission of severall things even in heapes , all which you summon up in this , that generally throughout the propositions all expressions of joynt interest are left out . if by joynt interest you meane such a joynt interest as is according to the expresse letter of the solemn league and covenant , and treaties between the kingdoms , we cannot presume such an omission ; though there may be a prudentiall suspension at present of some particulars thereof , though we know no such thing . secondly , if by joynt interest , you mean such a joynt interest as you would extort from the solemn league and covenant , and treaties between the kingdomes , as the sence thereof , which was never intended ; nay , abhor'd , as that the militia by sea and land in the kingdoms of england & ireland , the power of making peace and war with forraine states , the kings consent in the enacting of any law , the conferring of great places of honour and trust , making of peers of parliament , conferring of titles of honour , what revenue the king is to have in england & ireland , and how to be disposed , &c. cannot be transacted and concluded upon , without the joynt advice and confent of the kingdome of scotland . if such a kinde of sense & meaning only of the solemn league & covenant , and treaties between the kingdoms , will serve your turn , and the expres letter of these , is too short for your satisfaction , the parliament of england have reason upon reason , that generally throughout the propositions , all expressions of joynt interest should be left out . yea , if we may be understood in the observation of our due distance from , and obliged duty to them , we obtest them by all their vowes , covenants & promises , by all their votes , orders & ordinances , by all their declarations , proclamations & protestations , by all our bloud , blowes & battles , by all our vexations , contributions and taxations , by all our monies , horse and plate , by all our servants , apprentizes and journey-men , by all our wounds , sores and scares , by all the rents , rapes and ruines , by all the plunderings , burnings and sackings , by all our widdows , fatherles and friendles , by all our sayings , doings and sufferings for our kingdomes interests , by the sad effects of tyranny and slavery , by the great trust committed to their charge , by our confidence of their faithfulnes therein , by the honour of english men , by the stain of their posterity , kindred and progeny , by their principles of humanity , justice and integrity , by their great account at the last day , that they doe preserve our rights , lawes & interest , our priviledges , liberties and immunities intire , distinct and whole , and that they neither sell them , give them , nor grant them , nor yet suffer them to be sold , given , or granted by any compact covenant or treaty ( as we are most assured hitherto they have not ) to any nation , kingdome , or people ; and more particularly , that in all their transactions between themselves and our scotch brethrē , they maintain the distinct interest of england , without confounding it with the interest of scotland ? and that in all their neighbourly , friendly and brotherly associations for the jojnt benefit of both kingdomes , they never associate in that which is their several distinct and particular rights . whereas you complain that formerly propositions of both kingdoms were drawn up together in one body ; now for separating the interests of the kingdoms , the propositions for england are drawne , up apart , upon the observation whereof , with other things you desired a conference and it would not be granted . we reply . first , what mean you by one body ? mean you the commissioners of both kingdoms , making that up one body ? or secondly the parliament of england in conjunction with the scotch commissioners ? doubtles we cannot thinke that the parliament of england and scotch commissioners were ever known yet to be one body ? we hope that never such a monster shall be seene in england ; neither can we imagine that the commissioners of both kingdomes in one body were to draw up propositions for peace ; therefore mean you thirdly , that this one body was not made up of men , but of propositions ; and though they were propositions of both kingdomes , yet they were sent together in one body ; this doth not argue but that care was had by the parliament that though the propositions were sent in one body or paper ; yet there was a distinction , and no confusion of interests : we perfectly know , that as it would be contrary to the parliaments trust , so is it against their jugdements and consciences to confound the interest of england with the interest of scotland ; we trust they will never be sowred with the leven of levelling ; but in the promotion of unity , they will beware of the doctrine of community . secondly , what if propositions for peace were formerly drawne up together in one body , must all other propositions whatsoever , which the parliament of england will please to tender to the king , be drawn up together in one body with scotlands propositions ? no , it is time now to seperate all colour of interest of the kingdomes , and not to suffer the least appearance , or occasion of scruple , that the parliament of england did ever intend participation of interests with the kingdome of scotland , though propositions of both kingdoms were formerly sent in one body of writing ; yet now their wisdomes may think fit not to administer so much as a paper advantage , or the smallest ground of jealousie and mistake about their intentions concerning the intire preservation of the kingdoms distinct interests , and therefore our obligations are the greater unto our parliament , for that they would not so much as grant a conference with you about this busines , that the confusion of interests between england & scotland , should never procure so much advantage as the grant of a conference would administer unto it . and had the principles of an unlimited prerogative power , been as timously obviated and declared as your present principles of confounding interests are now by our parliament , it had as probably prevented the sad calamities and miserable consequences of our late wars , as their present care we hope will doe ; if the fault be not your owne , which if it happen ( as god forbid ) we make noe question but all english men of honour and interest , and common ingenuity , will joyn together as on man , and so preserve the interest of their native countrey distinct and whole , as that all the guilded species , and devout pretences of piety and love which shall be used by the deceitfull enemies of the kingdoms interest , will never delude us , nor i' th least divide us . your grand objection is the expres letter of the eight article , wherein it is provided that no cessation , nor any pacification or agreement for peace whatsoever shal be made by either kingdome , or the army of either kingdome without the mutuall advice and consent of both kingdoms , or their committees in that behalf appointed , &c. first , this eight article you flourish about like the sword of saul , presuming it will not returne empty , though it proves to you like the sword of goliah serving only for your owne overthrow ; for who was the enemy with which no cessation , nor any pacification or agreement for peace whatsoever should be made by either kingdome , or the armies of either kingdome , without the mutuall advice and consent of both kingdomes , or their committees on that behalfe appointed ? was it not the king and his party ? if his party is supprest by conquest , and no peace is made with them by compact , then the only enemy that stands out can be no other but the king ? was not the dutch embassadour ( as you say ) sent hither to mediate between the king and parliament as the chiefe parties at variance ; doe not all the expresses , proclamations and declarations both from the king and from the parl. relate to the differences between the king , the parl. the king and his people , &c. did not the king proclaim the parliament , and the army under them , rebels , traytors , enemies , & c ? did not the parl. declare that the king had set up his standard against his people , and therby put his parl. and kingdome out of his protection ? what can imaginably ▪ then be the meaning of this article ; but that no cessation , nor any pacification , or agreement for peace whatsoever can be made with the king by either kingdom , or the armies of eithers kingdom , without the mutuall advice and consent of both kingdoms , or their committees in that behalfe appointed ; hath the parliament ever secretly or openly , made any cessation , pacification , or agreement for peace whatsoever ; or in the least degree closely tamper'd with the king without the mutuall advice and consent of both kingdomes ? did they ever directly or indirectly by themselves or others invite him to their army , and upon his comming pretend to admire the wonderfull providence , professing astonishment and amazement , and that they were like men in a dream ? did they ever accept of titles of honour , either at new-castle or isle of wight , exhibiting so much as the least jealousie unto our brethren of scotland , of any compliance , much lesse agreement or pacification with the king without their mutuall advice and consent ? have they broken their articles of treaty , or your selves ? no , let not such a stain and blot be found upon any english men of honour or interest , much lesse upon the high court of parliament of england , the representative body of the whole kingdom ; and we once more obtest you , brethren , commissioners of scotland , by the jealousie and wrath of the most high god ▪ by all your professions and declarations , by your soleme league and covenant which you have made with god , the parl. and kingdome of england ; by the eight article of the treaty betwixt the kingdoms , by the dreadfull demerits of covenant-breakers , treaty-breakers , false brethren , deceitfulnes of friendship , dissimulation with god and men , that you neither directly or indirectly , secretly or openly make any cessation , pacification or agreement for peace whatsoever with the king without the mutuall advice and consent of both kingdoms . and we desire almighty god to blesse and prosper the parliaments and commissioners of both kingdoms according to their faithfullnes in keeping covenant on treaties , that it may please him to blesse them , or either of them in their faithfull endeavours to execute judgement and justice upon great and small , fulfilling the whole minde and wil of god without respect of persons among men ; that it would please him to keepe up the spirit of the honourable lords , commons , and army of england , without declining from their late resolutions , in a steady , constant , and faithfull intention and purpose , without feare or favour , and that they may not start aside like a broken bow from their present righteous and just intentions , and that it may please him to incline the hearts of all the people of the land to joyne with them to promote righteousnesse , judgement and justice , and to keepe the interests of both kingdoms in their proper distinctions without confusion , to heare the cries , and hasten the remedies of the many oppressions , sorrowes and grievances of the kingdome ; and that it might please him to incline the hearts of the honourable city of london , and all the inhabitants thereof , to throw by all unhappy differences and jealousies whatsoever , and to joyne together in the wayes of god , and to give them light from his word , and power from his spirit , in a due and gospel way , to suppresse error , heresie , blasphemy , and whatsoever is contrary to sound doctrin , and to maintain in their several places and callings the undoubted interest of their native kingdome ; for all which with simplicity and integrity of heart , quaesumus audias nos domine : but to returne to answer our brethren . if the king be not the only man with whom the peace is to be made ; what other adversary doth appeare at all ? and indeed you often tell us that now the war is ended , pag. 10. againe , the war is ended , p●g . 21. there is no enemy to sight with , ibid. againe , the war is at an end , and no visible enemy in the kingdome . againe , now armies are no more usefull , ibid. then it will follow . first , that the parliament hath not broken their treaty in any pacification or agreement with the enemy without you , the peace being got by the sword , and not by a treaty ; therefore you ought to recant your charging them in this particular . 2. if the war be ended , we have no more to do with the scotch commissioners ; for we know no covenant , treaty , or compact with them , that they should intermeddle with us in the government of our kingdom , nor we with thē in the government of theirs . we thank you for your help ( for we shal remember our own duty to acknowledge you , and leave it to your ingenuity to remember both our ancient and late respects unto you ) we have given you 200000. l. ( besides all other things , we need not name them ) in part of payment : 200000 pounds more we are to give you ; we pray your christian and brotherly forbearance with us , you shall find us honest , and without guile in our dealings with you . the next thing you complaine of is the omitting the proposition concerning the city of london , &c. the city of london ( to speak without vanity ) hath not come far short of the kingdom of scotl. in their deserts from the parl. of england , and we make no questiō , but upō the faith●ul cotinuance of their due respects to the parl. of engl. and the interest thereof , whereof we have hopes ( if but from this time , god blesse their eares from the guilded rhetorick of pretended devot ō and deceitfull tongues , that they do not neglect their owne interest ) the parl. of engl. will not forget their labour of love , and their perseverance therein , nor yet remember every character of humane frailty that hath been upon them ; the best parliament hath had its spots , as well as the best city . next , you complain of the proposition for taking away the court of wards , &c. hath not the king consented to that ? and is not this beyond your line ? touching the proposition for the sale and disposal of the lands of deans & chapters . you have some what to say , which is only this ; that you have alwayes heard that those lands were reserved by the houses for the maintenance of ministers ; and the disposall of it otherwais would discourage faithfull pastors , and give occasion to the people ( where minsters are wanting for lack of maintenance ) to follow after sectaries , and tub preachers . it seems you are very inquisitive about the disposall of lands in england : we are not so dim sighted but we see and observe how quick you are of hearing , and diligent in harkning after matters of that nature . the disposal of the lands of deans & chapters otherwise thē for the maintenance of ministers , would discourage faithful ministers , perhaps no more then the disposall of b●shops lands have done , which are security for monys for our brethren of scotland : and if the dean and chapters lands had been so disposed of , we beleeve you would have given us no occasion to have spoken to this point , it is the desire and longing of our very souls , that some effectuall course might be speedily thought upon by the parliament for the comfortable incouragment and maintenance of faithfull pastors , yea and their widows and children , that they may be delivered from that snare of dependence upon the benevolence and charity of their dull hearers , and sometimes vitious patrons and benefactors . but we referre the matter wholly to the parliament , and heartily desire their most possible expedition in that good work . but before we leave this , we desire you tel us the original and meaning of that profound word tub preachers ; we have formerly presumed if it had its rice in england , it was from some of those learned ballad singers in dishonour of pulpit preaching , who were bred up in the university of newgate . should english commissioners in scotland have made any mention in their addresses to their parliament , of the opprobrious tearms of red-shanks , or blew-caps , it had reflected no smal disparagement upon those that employed them . such light expressions ( to say no more ) we did never observe to proceed from commissioners of state before , neither do we beleeve that commissioners of the indies , bred up in wigwams , did ever use such scurrilous terms in all their motions to the magistrates at bostonbay in new-england . for the conclusion of all , you see down most of your desires , and tender them unto the parliament . if you have any desires concerning your own kingdome , wherein the parliament of england may gratifie you without prejudice to the proper interest of england , you may do well to tender them ; but we sh●ll not trouble you to mediate for us with our own parliament ; we desire you brethren , once more before we leave you , that you would remember that peace preserving passage in the covenant , our severall places and callings : you are ex●ream apt to forget it , therefore are we so bold to put you in mind so often of it : you have set downe most of your desires , but not all , keepe the rest within you , perhaps it is better ( at least for us ) that your desires should bee in your hearts , then in your hands . as for your intermedling with the four bils sent by the houses unto the king ; we say no more , but had you been mindful of the bounds and limits of our solemn league and covenant , viz. our severall places and callings , you had spared your paines in that busines , and your fig. leaves to cover that nakednesse , hath been totn from you by a better hand . here we had thought to have taken our leaves , but before we part , we have three or four queries to propound unto you , and one request to make , wherein if you will satisfie us in your next , it will be an addition to our former engagements . first , whether that your publishing to the people the transactions between the parliament and your selves , without the parliaments consent , nay contrary to their expresse commands concerning printing and publishing ; yea , with maligne reflection upon them , be not contrary to the practise of all publique ministers , yea and directly repugnant to all principles of common justice , and infinitely unworthy that profession of love , friendship , and brotherly respects which you have so solemnly made in the face of heaven and earth unto them ? secondly , tell us , bona fide , whether you think in your consciences ( for you pretend to be very religiously conscientious ) that the parliament of england , & people therof , did ever intend any such sense of the solemne league and covenant , either concerning the interest of the kingdom , or government of the church , as you have endeavoured to extort from it in your severall papers , or that they did intend ( when they took it ) any otherwise by it , than the promotion of holinesse in the general ( though with difference of judgement about discipline ) and the uniting us together in our mutuall assistance against , and the discovery of the common enemies of both kindomes ? thirdly , tell us , bona fide , whether you desire , or rather would permit that the king should have the same power in scotland , the same negative voyce , the same absolute command and authority every way , as you would he should have in england , especially if he should refuse to take away episcopacy to establish presbytery , to recall those proclamations and declarations whereby you are declared traytors and rebels , to give satisfaction and security to your kingdome , yea , or whether upon the performance of these things , you would let him have such a power yea or no ? fourthly , whether you think in the secrets of your hearts , it be agreeable to the principles of religion , rules of equity , justice and policy , an acceptable sacrifice in the sight of almighty god , and comfortable for his people , to advance the king , in statu quo prius , untill he hath according to the pious advice , and christian exhortation of the generall assembly of the kirk of scotland , viz. fallen down at the footstoole of the king of glory , acknowledging his sinnes , repented of them , and made his peace with god in jesus christ , whose blood is able to wash away his great sinnes . and whether you thinke in your consciences he is a changed man , yea or no ? fifthly and lastly , whether it would not be most agreeable to the will of god , the declarations , protestations , promises and professions of love betwixt the two kingdoms , the true intent of the solemne league and covenant , and most conducing to the glory of god , and the mutuall support , security , safety and benefit of the two nations united together , that you and we be true , faithfull , constant , and single hearted each to other , assisting each other according to our severall places and callings , in the preservation of each others peculiar , proper , and distinct interest : and whether it would not be as great a dishonour to god , scandall to the gospell , scorne to religion , rejoycing of the wicked , grieving of the godly , gratifying the devill , and the affaires of his kingdome among jewes , turks , infidels , papists , prelats , and all sorts of prophane men , that you and we should be at variance ? should we not make our selves therby an abomination to the lord , a hissing to all nations , a prey unto our enemies , obnoxious to the wrath and curse of god and men , and bring upon our selves swift destruction : for the prevention whereof , let us both bow our knees to the father of our lord jesus christ night & day , that we being rooted and grounded in love , may grow up together in christ , perfecting holinesse in the feare of the lord ; and by all christian forbearance and wisdome , may keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace . our request is onely this , that you would either giue a reply unto the answer of the commons assembled in parliament to the scotch commissioners papers of the 20. and their letter of the 24. of october , 1646. or else to cease any further to trouble englands eares with what you call the sense and meaning of the solemne league and covenant , treaties , &c. for if you doe , you will but sow the winde , and reap the whirlwinde for your paines . valete . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a58835e-160 p●ov. 10. 9 * ●● turneth them upside down . 2 sam. 15 , 7. 8. pag. 3. by figure , but the first in order . reply reply . vide , the answer of the commons in parliament , to the scotch commissioners papers of the 2d of octob 1646 pag. 1● . the marquis of a●giles speech to the grand committee of both houses , iune 25. 164● . page 4. page 3. reply . ☞ page 3. reply . see the chancellor of scotlands speech to the kings majesty at newcastle . reply . page 6. page 9th . 2 sam. 1. 20. prov. 11. 3. page 6. reply . vid. the book of declar . pag. 580. hosea 4. 15. at vxbridg . page 4. reply . page 5. page 5. reply . 1 reason reply . 2 reason . rep●y . 3 reason . reply . 4 reason . reply . 5 reason . reply : 6 reason . 1 reason 2 reason . page 6. reply . prov. 27. 10. page 6. reply . page 7. reply . page 14. see the remonstrance of the generall assembly of the kirke of scotland , sent by the commission of both kingdomes , iune 12. 1645. to oxford . see the parl. answer to his majesties message to two letters , the 26 and 29. of decemb. 1646 , page 5. * see the letter from the commissioners of the parl. of scotl. to the commissioners of the parl. of engl. concerning his majesties comming to the scotch army may 5. 1646. ibid. reply . * page 3. see the parl. answer to the scotch papers of the 20. of octob , 1646. page 9. reply ▪ 2 kin. 10. 16. page 10. ibid. reply . page 17. reply . ibid. reply . lev. 22. 22. ibid. reply . page 11. page 18. reply . iam. 1. 21. reply . pag. 17 , 18 reply . pag. 19 , 20 reply . page 21. reply . page 22. page 21. 2 cor. 11. 26. reply . reply . page 2● . reply . reply . page 23. reply . see the answer of the commons to the scotch commissioners papers of the 20. and their letter of the 24. of octob. 1646. page 11. pag. 23. reply . page 25. reply . ibid reply . ibid. reply . page 25. reply . see indepency of england , &c. lately set forth , pa. 18 , 19. the declaration of duke hamilton, concerning his engagement against england, and his coming in with the king of scots. and, his speech and confession made to divers officers of the army, upon his death-bed; with the protestation and resolution of the citizens of vvorcester concerning the present government. also, the old dutchesse of hamilton's prophesie (grandmother to the foresaid duke) concerning the routing of the scots army, and the extirpation of the family of the stuarts. together, with the copy of a letter from edenburgh in scotland, communicating the transactions of affaires in that nation. hamilton, william hamilton, duke of, 1616-1651. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a86999 of text r202514 in the english short title catalog (thomason e641_17). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 5 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a86999 wing h487a thomason e641_17 estc r202514 99862767 99862767 165945 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a86999) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 165945) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 98:e641[17]) the declaration of duke hamilton, concerning his engagement against england, and his coming in with the king of scots. and, his speech and confession made to divers officers of the army, upon his death-bed; with the protestation and resolution of the citizens of vvorcester concerning the present government. also, the old dutchesse of hamilton's prophesie (grandmother to the foresaid duke) concerning the routing of the scots army, and the extirpation of the family of the stuarts. together, with the copy of a letter from edenburgh in scotland, communicating the transactions of affaires in that nation. hamilton, william hamilton, duke of, 1616-1651. [2], 6 p. printed by robert wood, london : 1651. annotation on thomason copy: "sept. 26.". reproduction of the original in the british library. eng scotland -history -1649-1660 -early works to 1800. great britain -history -commonwealth and protectorate, 1649-1660 -early works to 1800. a86999 r202514 (thomason e641_17). civilwar no the declaration of duke hamilton, concerning his engagement against england, and his coming in with the king of scots.: and, his speech and hamilton, william hamilton, duke of 1651 1227 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2008-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-08 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the declaration of duke hamilton , concerning his engagement against england , and his coming in with the king of scots . and , his speech and confession made to divers officers of the army , upon his death-bed ; with the protestation and resolution of the citizens of vvorcester concerning the present government . also , the old dutchesse of hamilton's prophesie ( grandmother to the foresaid duke ) concerning the routing of the scots army , and the extirpation of the family of the stuarts . together , with the copy of a letter from edenburgh in scotland , communicating the transactions of affaires in that nation . london , printed by robert wood , 1651 sept. 16. . duke hamilton's declaration concerning his coming into england with the king of scots . sir , i make no question , but you have had a large account given you of the battle which was fought here in this city , wherein the mercies of god were very eminent towards us , and is as a crown to all those blessings which the lord hath vouchsased us formerly . this city is indeed become a sad spectacle and was very noysome , by reason of the multitudes of dead carcasses , both of man and beast , ( for the fight was very fierce , and the slaughter of the enemy great ) till care was taken for their removal ( by gods blessing ) to prevent infection . we hope the malignants of this place will learn by the present calamities , to see into their own follies , and behold the hand of god upon them in those miseries which they have drawn upon themselves , by their former and later compliances with the enemie ; their remissenesse in government , their murmuring and complaining of wants ; for , under that pretence , in our greatest extremity , the day before the scottish armie entred the city , not five pounds could be raised among them for present supply , though now their plunder be rated at an extraordinary value . his excellency the lord general hath been very noble in all things , and hath infinitely won the hearts of the inhabitants of this city , who repent them of their former malignancy , and protest hereafter to be faithful to the parliament , & to live and die in defence of the present government . duke hamilton is dead of the wounds which he received in the late fight ; a little before he dyed , lying in great extremity with the pain of his leg , and every hour expecting to be dissolved , he declared before several officers of the army , and divers gentlemen of quality who were present with him , that he was heartily sorry that ever he engag'd against the parliament ; and that he was confident his coming into england was contray to the will of god ; wishing that he had been admonished by his grandmother , who prophetically told his father in the year 1648. when he came with that numerous scotch army into england , which was routed in lancashire , that if he did engage against england , it would be the ruine of him and his posterity ; saying further , that she was confident that the army would be totally routed , and the family of the stuarts would in very few yeares be utterly extirpated both in england and scotland . whose words hitherto have proved oracular ; for his father being taken prisoner , was beheaded at westminster , and the son mortally wounded in the late fight here , dyed yesterday of his vvounds in this city ; he seemed very sorrowful for his sins , and earnestly desired those about him to joyn in prayers with him to the lord , that he might find mercy and forgivenesse . the commissioners of the militia are disbanding their militia forces , and with some endeavours of satisfaction to them , answerable to their willingnesse in the parliament's service ; and that in so great a number . they are likewise careful in ridding the country of straglers ; also in seizing and securing the persons and estates of such as adhered to the scottish king , most of which were papists of this country ; and in summoning the country to level the new vvorks and fortifications about the city . worcester , sept. 13. the copy of a letter from edenburgh in scotland , relating the state of affaires in that nation . sir , lievrenant gen. monk is now master of the field in this nation , all parts falling down before the power of the parliament of england ; yet there is a malignant spirit in many , they are not to be trusted , onely with an hand of awe over them . the old cavalier party curse the presbyterians , and say that they and their pride and insolency hath been the cause of all this evil that hath befaln their king and his friends ; and the presbyterian party accuse the old royalists for being so heady to run with their king so fast in his own way : but we say it is the wickednesse of the one , and perfideousnesse of the other hath provoked the lord to humble them . the lord grant they may make a right use of it . here is old ( or rather new ) howling among the ladies in scotland , for their husbands , fathers , sons , friends , that are flam and taken in england and scotland , and it seems some of them ( like pilats wife ) gave their husbands warning , begging of them not to go out in this vvar. the marquesse of arguile would fain make pretence that he hath not been guilty of the late transactions , though he had too great an hand in the treaty with the king , and something since . indeed he had so much discerning it seems into the scots kings designs , that he justly began to fear , that if he prospered , he should find the same feward that montrosse had from him and his party , and therefore he so far obstructed that party that he saw designed to undermine him , that the very common souldiers have jusled him and abused him , as he went along the streets , before the scots king marched into england . the scots gentry lay much fault upon their ministers , that they preached to them as if the english designes were far otherwise then they find them : but we find much falsenesse in this nation , yet some we hope are godly . we have fallen upon severall parties in scotland , where they were respectively , and every day almost some prisoners are brought in , or some place reduced ; so that the power of the lord hath wonderfully appeared for us , montrosse and aberdeen have submitted . captain hume doth some mischief by robing , but we have sent some parties to find him out . edenburgh , 14. sept. 1651. finis . two discourses concerning the affairs of scotland, written in the year 1698 fletcher, andrew, 1655-1716. 1698 approx. 112 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 54 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a39787 wing f1298 estc r6685 12416869 ocm 12416869 61705 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a39787) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 61705) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 666:6) two discourses concerning the affairs of scotland, written in the year 1698 fletcher, andrew, 1655-1716. 50, 54 p. [s.n.], edinburgh : 1698. written by andrew fletcher. cf. wing. cf. also publications (edinburgh bibliographical society). edinburgh, 1896-1935. v. 4, p. 126-128. first edition. reproduction of original in cambridge university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1689-1745. 2007-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-06 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-08 robyn anspach sampled and proofread 2007-08 robyn anspach text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion two discovrses concerning the affairs of scotland ; written in the year 1698. edinburgh , 1698. the first discourse . no inclination is so honorable ▪ nor has any thing bin so much esteemed in all nations , and ages , as the love of that country and society in which every man is born . and those who have placed their greatest satisfaction in doing good , have accounted themselves happy , or unfortunate , according to the success of their endeavours to serve the interest of their country . for nothing can be more powerful in the minds of men , than a natural inclination and duty concurring in the same disposition . nature in most men prevails over reason ; reason in some prevails over nature : but when these two are joined , and a violent natural inclination finds it self owned by reason , requir'd by duty , encouraged by the highest praises , and excited by the most illustrious examples , sure that force must be irresistible . constrained by so great a force , and the circumstances of my affairs not allowing me to be otherwise serviceable to my country , i have in the following discourse given my opinion concerning divers matters of importance ; which probably may be debated in the approaching session of parliament . i shall be very well satisfied , if any thing i say do afford a hint that may be improved by men of better judgment to the publick good. i hope i shall not be blamed , for giving my opinion in matters of publick concernment ; since 't is the right and duty of every man to write or speak his mind freely in all things that may come before any parliament ; to the end that they who represent the nation in that assembly , may be truly informed of the sentiments of those they represent . besides , we are now no more under those tyrannical reigns in which it was a crime to speak of publick affairs , or to say that the king had received bad counsel in any thing . if in this discourse i argue against some things , which perhaps may not be proposed in the ensuing session of parliament ; they are nevertheless such , as persons in publick trust have in their conversation given just cause to think they were designed . 't is probable that the parliament before they proceed to any other business , will take into consideration a transaction , which having passed since the last session , may , if it be not abolished , import not less than the infringing the freedom of this and all subsequent parliaments ; i mean , the farming of the customs to the state of burroughs . corruption is so entirely disowned by all men , that i may be allowed to say , when i name it , that i name the blackest of crimes ; and when i name any guilty of it , i name a very odious criminal . but corruption is more or less dangerous in proportion to the stations in which corrupt men are placed . when a private man receives any advantage to betray a trust , one , or a few persons may suffer ; if a judg be corrupted , the oppression is extended to greater numbers : but when legislators are bribed , or ( which is all one ) are under any particular ingagement , that may influence them in their legislative capacity , much more when an intire state of parliament is brought under those circumstances , then it is that we must expect injustice to be established by a law , and all those consequences , which will inevitably follow the subversion of a constitution , i mean , standing armies , oppressive taxes , slavery ; whilst the outward form only of the antient government remains to give them authority . i confess i have been often struck with astonishment , and could never make an end of admiring the folly and stupidity of men living under some modern governments , who will exclaim against a judg that takes bribes , and never rest till he be punished , or at least removed ; and yet at the same time suffer great numbers of those who have the legislative authority , to receive the constant bribes of places and pensions to betray them . but we shall have less to say for our selves , if we suffer the votes of the whole state of burroughs to be at once influenced by the farming of the customs . for in other places the impudence of bribery has gone no farther than to attack single persons ; but to endeavour at once to bribe a whole state of parliament , is an attempt of which it seems we only are capable . yet to show how far i am from suspecting any man of the least bad design , without a cause , i shall say , that as i know this business of the farm above-mentioned was first moved without any design to influence the votes of the burroughs in parliament ; so i am willing to believe that few of those who have since acted in this affair had any such design . but if any man , after due consideration of the evil consequences which must follow , and are inseparable from such a farm , shall still persist in endeavouring to continue it , he cannot but be an enemy to the liberties of his country . this is so bold an attempt , and so inconsistent with the freedom of parliament , that till it be removed 't is to be presumed they will not proceed to any other business : but this obstruction once taken away , we may hope they will begin with that affair which presses most , and in which the nation is so universally concerned , i mean that of the african and indian company . i know some will exclaim against this method , and propose that the business of the army may be first taken into consideration , as of more general concernment to the nation whether it stand or be disbanded . they will not fail to say , that before all other things the king's business ( as their stile runs ) ought to be done . to this i answer , that he who makes a distinction between the business of the king and that of the country , is a true friend to neither . and if it be consider'd , that the ships of the company are sailed ; that scotland has now a greater venture at sea than at any time since we have bin a nation ; that the accidents and misfortunes to which an enterprize of this nature is subject , are so many and so various , either by the loss of ships from the ordinary hazards of the sea , or hurricanes ; by sickness of the men , who for the most part are neither accustomed to such long voyages , nor to climats so different from their own ; by the death of one or more of those to whom the conduct of this affair is principally entrusted ; by being disappointed of fresh provisions when those they carry with them are spent ; by being attack'd at sea or at land , before they have fortified a place for themselves , or a thousand other accidents , ( for all things are extremely difficult to the first undertakers ) i say , if it be consider'd , that provisions , or the smallest things necessary , falling short but by a few days , have often bin the ruin of the greatest vndertakings , and chiefly of those of this kind ; there cannot be any more urgent affair than that of providing incessantly a supply for the necessities of so many men as are on board those ships , who may be brought under extraordinary sufferings by a delay , whilst our standing forces are living at ease . especially since the nation has so great a concern in this enterprize , that i may well say all our hopes of ever being any other than a poor and inconsiderable people are imbarked with them . the reputation and power of this nation was formerly very considerable as long as armies were composed of those numerous militia's of the barons . our ancestors have often seen 60 , 80 , or 100 thousand men under their ensigns , which then might well bear the motto , that none should provoke them unpunished . since that time , the face of things is quite changed throughout all europe ; and the former militia's being altogether decay'd , and no good ones any where established , every country is obliged to defend it self in time of war , and maintain its reputation by the force of mony ; that is , by mercenary troops , either of their own , or of other countries both by sea and land. but such a vast expence , the riches of no country is able to support without a great trade . in this great alteration our case has been singularly bad and unfortunate : for partly through our own fault , and partly by the removal of our kings into another country , this nation , of all those who possess good ports , and lie conveniently for trade and fishing , has bin the only part of europe which did not apply it self to commerce ; and possessing a barren country , in less than an age we are sunk to so low a condition as to be despised by all our neighbours , and made uncapable to repel an injury , if any should be offered : so that now our motto may be inverted ▪ and all may not only provoke , but safely trample upon us . to recover from such a condition , what would not any people do ? what toils would they refuse ? to what hazards would they not expose themselves ? but if the means by which they are to recover , are not only just and honorable , but such as with restoring honor and safety to the nation , may give encouragement to that excellent , tho now suppressed and almost extinguished spirit of our people , and gratify every man in the eases and pleasures of life : is it not strange that there should be found men amongst us capable to oppose those things ; especially at a time , when , i may say , by no contrivance of any man , but by an unforeseen and unexpected change of the genius of this nation , all their thoughts and inclinations , as if united and directed by a higher power , seem to be turned upon trade , and to conspire together for its advancement , which is the only means to recover us from our present miserable and despicable condition ? for hitherto our convenient situation and good harbours , our rich seas and lakes have bin unprofitable to us ; no care has bin taken to set the poor at work ; and multitudes of families for want of employment by trade and manufactures , go yearly out of the kingdom without any intention to return . in such a state and condition of this nation , it seems these men find their account better , than if our country were filled with people and riches , our firths covered with ships , and they should see every where the marks of what good government and trade are able to produce . but i shall be told , that i go upon a mistake ; and that no scots man is an enemy to the african company : that those who approach his majesty ; know most of his mind , and are most entrusted by him in the government of this nation , and such as are influenced by them , would only have the parliament to consider the streights and difficulties his majesty would be put to , if he should in an extraordinary manner encourage this trade , by reason , that being king of england ▪ and stat-holder of the vnited provinces , our interest in this point may come to interfere with that of those nations . the people of those countries solicit , each in favour of their own companies : will not these men so much as advise the king to distribute impartial justice , and to let every one have the proportionable reward of his industry ? o but we have an immunity from customs for many years ▪ which neither the english nor dutch enjoy . i shall not say , that when the english nation shall come to a perfect knowledg of their interest , they will be convinced that riches in scotland will be beneficial to england , since the seat of the monarchy is there . i need not say that the english and dutch are free people , and may surely procure for themselves as great advantages as scotland : but that scotland offered to both nations a share in that advantage which they had obtained for themselves only ; and to england an equal share . i know the parliament of england took the thing warmly at first ; but when upon due consideration they found that we had not given them the least just ground of offence , but on the contrary , made them the fairest offer we could ; it was then let fall , and has not been mentioned in the last session . so that what these gentlemen alledg of his majesty's difficulties to satisfy the english in this point is false , unless by the english they mean those who having for many years oppressed the english colonies in america , are afraid that if any settlement should be made in that part of the world by us , under a free constitution , the english planters removing to it , might occasion a strict inquiry into their crimes , and their punishment for them . i do not hear that the dutch have presented any memorial to his majesty against our company , and cannot imagine in what terms any such address , either from them or the english , can run . should it be , that his majesty ought not to protect us in our just rights and privileges ? that he should break the laws , and violate his oath by our destruction ? or undermine us as the court did the fishing company in k ▪ c's time , and frustrate this second as well as that first great attempt to make the nation considerable ? that there have bin underhand dealings ( tho without his majesty's knowledg , as we ought to believe ) the affair of hamborough dos sufficiently demonstrate ; and likewise that his majesty's ministers abroad , paid by the crown of england , are no more to be looked upon as ministers for the crown of scotland . since we are separate kingdoms , and have separate ministers at home , we ought to have separate ministers abroad ; especially in an affair wherein we may have a separate interest from england , which must always be in matters of trade , tho never so inconsiderable . neither ought we to have separate ministers only upon the account of trade , but upon all occasions , wherein the honor or interest of the nation is concerned . that we have not had them formerly , since we were under one king with england , was , i suppose , to save charges , and because we trusted to the impartiality of such as we judged to be the ministers of the king of great britain : but now we are undeceived ▪ and sure the nation could never have bestowed mony better , than in having a minister at the late treaty of peace , who might have obtained the reestablishment of the nation in the privileges they had in france , which was totally neglected : and notwithstanding the great and unproportionable numbers of sea and land soldiers that we were obliged to furnish for the support of the war , yet not one tittle of advantage was procured to us by the peace . now these gentlemen , at the same time , would perswade us to pay almost as many forces in time of peace , as we did in time of war ; and like pharaoh's tax-masters would have us make brick without allowing us straw . and all , that these forces ▪ and the regiments , which to the consuming of our people , we recruit in holland , in case of any rupture abroad upon the account of the english or dutch trade , may be employed in their defence . to obviate then part of so many shameful things , 't is my opinion , that in place of laying a land tax upon the kingdom for maintaining forces to defend the english and dutch trade , we should raise one for the carrying on of our own : and ( since the nation is so generally concern'd in this indian trade , that the ruin of it , which , god forbid , may very probably draw along with it that of the whole trade of the kingdom ▪ and a perpetual discouragement from ever attempting any thing considerable hereafter ) that a twelve-months cess should be levied for the support of it ; and that whatsoever may be the product of that mony , by the trade of the company , shall go to the easing of the nation from publick burdens , whenever they shall make a dividend of clear profit . for 't is but reasonable that , since the company has bin unjustly hinder'd of that supply of mony which they expected , and might have had from strangers , they should have recourse for redress to the parliament , who if they shall think sit to take such a resolution , the company will be able immediately to procure an advance of ▪ mony upon the credit of the cess . it will be also sit , that the company petition the parliament to address his majesty , that the three small frigats , lately built at the expence of this nation , may be appointed for a convoy to the next ships they shall send out . the parliament having provided for this pressing affair , will ( no doubt ) proceed to the business of the forces , and to consider whether a standing army shall be kept up in time of peace , as in time of war ; for the arguments used to continue them for a year , may be improved to keep them up for ever ; especially since we have at this time a stronger argument against them , than i hope shall ever be alledged hereafter ; i mean that of the nation 's being exhausted of mony by a three years scarcity next to a famine : but how long this may continue god only knows . a long and tedious war , which has cost this nation much blood , is at length ended in a peace . our expence of treasure has bin inconsiderable by reason of our poverty through want of trade ; yet have we contributed our part , if the smalness of our stock be considered . but in the loss of our people , which is an expence of blood and riches too , we have paid a treble proportion . seven or eight thousand of our seamen were on board the english fleet , and two or three thousand in that of holland : we had twenty battalions of foot , and six squadrons of dragoons here and in flanders . besides , i am credibly informed , that every fifth man in the english forces was either of this nation , or scots-irish , who are a people of the same blood with us . all these , by a modest computation , may amount to thirty thousand men . this i only mention to answer the reproaches of those who vilify us as an inconsiderable people , and set a mean value on the share we have born in this war. i am unwilling to speak of the returns that have bin made to us for our assistance , by refusing to our soldiers the donative given to those who had served no better than they , and by pressing our seamen , contrary to the law of nations . now tho resenting the last of these during the war , would have mark'd us out for disaffection and jacobitism ; yet we ought to hope it may be mentioned at this time without offence . but some will say , that the blessings of peace are so great , that not only the calamities of war , but even affronts and injuries from our neighbours , ought to be forgot and drowned in the joys , which the hopes of ease , tranquillity and plenty must needs produce . and indeed i should be contented , that all resentments were sacrificed to such charming hopes , if they had any real foundation . but we have a peace , and yet must not reap any benefit by it ; a poor country is to maintain almost as many forces as they did in time of war ; a nation endeavouring to set up manufactures , and to advance trade , must still see their people consumed , by continuing on foot mercenary forces . i shall not insist upon the arguments that may be brought against standing forces , nor go about to show how inconsistent they are with liberty . i shall not mention the examples of almost all the nations of europe , who by keeping up such forces in time of peace are become slaves . this has bin fully made out by divers treatises which have bin lately published , and are in the hands of most men . perhaps also it will be said , that i am not to insist upon the point of right in this case , since there is no article in our claim of right to declare the keeping up of a standing army in time of peace , without consent of parliament , to be against law. yet those who are of that opinion should consider , that the estates of this kingdom have made the keeping up of a standing army , in time of peace , without consent of parliament , an article in the forfaulture of the late king james . but it seems we must use more modest arguments than such as naturally arise from the hazard our liberty may run , by allowing standing forces , or from any right we have to pretend that 't is against the constitution of our government to impose them upon us , and be obliged to bring all our reasons from our necessities and inability to maintain any . indeed , as this is the most modest , so surely 't is the strongest argument ; for such forces are not to be maintained , without increasing the poverty of this country , and reducing it at length to utter desolation . 't is hard if the charges of a government should be the same in time of peace , or even come near the expence that was perhaps requisite to be made in time of war ; such a nation can never hope to be in a flourishing state . now as our condition will not permit us to keep up these forces , so i can see no reason why we should do it if we could . there is no protence for them , except only to keep a few wretched highlanders in order ; which might be easily done by a due execution of our old laws made for that purpose , without the help of any fort or garison . we are at a great distance from any other enemy , and cannot justly fear an invasion from beyond so great a sea as must be passed to come at us . and tho during the late war we were sometimes under the apprehensions of such an invasion , yet the enemy was not so imprudent to put it to the hazard . but some will say , that the late king james has still many partizans in this nation , that we have always bin , and still are a divided people , and that there are many ill men amongst us : they have also the confidence still to tell us of an invasion upon scotland by the french king ; who to cover this probable design , has delivered up such vast countries , and places of such great importance . why do they not also say , that as a man every day after he is born , is nearer to his end , so are we every day after the peace nearer to a war ? the party of the late king james was always insignificant , and is now become a jest . if the government will encourage good men , they will need no standing forces to secure themselves from the bad . for of what use can any militia be supposed to be , that is not sit to preserve the quiet of a country remote from enemies in time of peace ? those of the presbyterian perswasion should , i think , be the last of all men to establish an army ; for whatever they may promise to themselves , 't is certain that either upon his majesty's death , or upon alterations of measures , and changes of dispositions in the minds of the members of future parliaments , it will be always a sure rod for the backs of those who have so many enemies . but men are blind in prosperity , forgetting adversity and the vicissitudes of human affairs . and it were but reasonable that those of that perswasion , who in the late king james's reign made so false a step as was like to have proved fatal to our liberties , should now think of making some amends , and showing that they have profited by their error , and are not ( as they express themselves ) time-servers . but to discover the true reason why standing forces are designed to be kept up in this nation in time of peace , we need only look back on the use that was made of them during the late war. for after the reduction of the highlands they served only for a seminary to the forces of this nation that were with his majesty in flanders , the best of their men being drawn out yearly for recruiting those forces . this also proves that his majesty knew very well , that there was no hazard from the invasions i mentioned before : for if there had bin any real danger of that kind , he would not have weakned the forces in this kingdom so considerably . i am very far from disapproving his majesty's conduct in that affair ; i do on the contrary highly commend his wisdom in it , and think it to have bin the best use that could be made of forces in this country , whilst the war continued . but must we in time of peace be taxed beyond measure to maintain forces , which upon occasion are to serve for the defence of two of the richest nations in the world ; nations that have manifested their unwillingness to let us into the least copartnership with them in trade , from which all our riches , if over we have any , must arise ? this is to load a poor nation with taxes , and to oppress them with soldiers in order to procure plenty and riches to other countries , of which they are not to have the least share . rich and opulent nations are to enjoy the benefits of the peace , and we are to suffer , that they may enjoy them with security . therefore i am of opinion , that since we can expect no advantages from our neighbours or allies , we do our selves right , by refusing to maintain any standing forces for their behoof , because we need none for our own defence , and that our militia may be sufficient on all occasions where force is necessary . eighty four thousand pounds , which is the sum proposed for the yearly maintenance of standing forces , is as much mony to us , as two millions five hundred and twenty thousand pounds is to england , since we cannot pretend to above the thirtieth part of their wealth . and yet that nation allows but three hundred and fifty thousand pounds for the forces they keep on foot ; of which sum 12000 pounds is more than the thirtieth part . if it be said that england allows more for their fleet than for their land forces ; i answer , it ought to be considered that england with all its riches maintains only five millions and half of people , and that scotland upon a thirtieth part maintains a million and half . eighty four thousand pounds laid out yearly in husbandry , manufactures and trade , may do great things in scotland , and not only maintain ( tho in a different way of living ) all those officers and soldiers , of which these forces are designed to consist , but also vastly enrich this nation ; whereas great numbers of soldiers produce nothing but beggery in any place . people employed in manufactures , husbandry and trade , make consumption as well as soldiers , and their labour and industry is an overplus of wealth to the nation , whilst soldiers consume twice as much as they pay for , and live idle . 't is not the least misfortune of this country , that the younger sons of the nobility and gentry , have in all times had their inclinations debauched to an idle , for the most part criminal , and almost always unprofitable sort of life ; i mean that of a soldier of fortune . their talents might have bin much better employed in trade and husbandry to the improvement of their country , and increase of their patrimony . let us begin to come off from such ruinous ways of living ; and if we design to carry on a great trade , let us employ men capable to manage it . from all these considerations i say , that the keeping up of any standing forces in time of peace is not only useless , but destructive to the well being of this nation . if it be objected , that this would take away even the ordinary guards ; i answer , that whilst we had a king residing in scotland , he had no other guard than forty gentlemen ; and now when we have no king amongst us , we must have a squadron of horse and two battalions of foot , with the title of guards . but i would know what guards they are we must keep up . are they those who yielded up the rank of the nation and dignity of a crown , if it have any preheminence above a commonwealth ? i am far from pleading for mutiny against a general , or disobedience to a king ; but when the meanest officer thinks himself injured in his rank , he demands his pass , and will serve no more ; neither is he blamed by any prince for so doing . if the officers of that body would have done as much for the honour of their country , sure they would have merited his majesty's esteem , and deserved rewards from the nation . but how they can pretend to be kept up after an action that our ancestors would have thought to deserve not only breaking , but a decimation to precede it , i cannot imagine . i know there are many brave gentlemen among them who were much grieved at the thing , but they had a bad example from the then commanding officer ; and 't is to be feared that his advancement to the place of the greatest military trust and importance in the kingdom , may by his majesty's enemies be imputed to that action . but after all we are told , that if we will keep up standing forces we shall have an act of habeas corpus . this would be a wise bargain : here is a price for our liberty ; sure we may expect an immense sum , and a security without exception . no , no , but you shall have an act of parliament for the freedom of your persons , tho there be never so many standing forces in the kingdom ; that is , we shall have the law on our side , and another shall have the force , and then let nature work . if there be no danger that standing forces should violate the law , there is no danger from them . there is no pretence to speak of a cess or land-tax for maintaining forces , before the business of the army be taken into consideration ; and one would think , if the army be disbanded , it should not be mentioned at all . yet 't is certain that such men as would recommend themselves by a pretended loyalty , will not fail to tell us , that we ought to be at the least as liberal to his present majesty , who has redeemed us from popery and slavery , as we were to king james , who would have brought us under both : and tho they now pretend that a cess for life will not be so much as mention'd in the approaching session , we know very well their conduct in that affair will be regulated upon the disposition they sind in the parliament to grant or refuse it ; and that if they conceive any hopes of obtaining so considerable a jewel to the crown , they will be sure to bring in that affair when least expected . the giving his majesty a land-tax during life , and so great a one as that granted to the late king james , with the revenue already settled on him for the same term , makes it impossible for the subject to give more , and consequently is of all those affairs that can come before any parliament the greatest , and of the highest importance ; since it tends to the making parliaments less necessary , and consequently to the abolishing them , with the antient constitution of government in this nation . those who have the honour to advise his present majesty , if they be true lovers of the monarchy , ought to have a care of treading in the former footsteps , and above all shun to advise him to desire those things of the parliament which king james desired and obtained . it were their duty by all means , to endeavour a fair understanding and a continual good correspondence between king and people , which certainly is the only true support of monarchy . now there are no occasions of entertaining and increasing that confidence , and those mutual good offices that should , like regular tides , ebb and flow between king and people , greater than those of parliaments . endeavours to take away the frequency of parliaments , are endeavours to take away those frequent good offices between king and people . the king stands in need of mony , the people of good laws , which their representatives and his great council offer to him , that they may have his sanction , and that he may provide for their due execution . mony may be given at once , for a long time , or for ever ; but good laws cannot be so enacted , the occasion and necessity of them discovering it self only from time to time : and if the one go without the other , the mutual good offices , and consequently the mutual confidence between king and people ceases . it may be farther considered , that the king has the power of calling parliaments ; and that by giving him for life all that we can give , we shall make parliaments unnecessary to him . if any man suggest that it is a crime to suspect that so good and just a prince as his present majesty is , will not always do what is for the good of his people ; i answer , that i have all the deference , respect and esteem for his majesty that any subject ought to have ; but it were a fulsome piece of flattery for any man to say , that he cannot be influenced by bad counsel , or that he is not subject to those frailties of mistake and prejudice , from which no mortal was ever free , and princes always most subject to through the suggestions and bad offices of men about them . but let us suppose that his present majesty will never make the least bad use of this tax , who shall secure as his successor will not ? if it be said that 't is only for his present majesty this tax is desired , and that it is in the power of the parliament to refuse it to the successor ; i say , with what probability will it , and with what face can it be refused to him ? these men desire it for his present majesty because king james had it , tho he made bad use of it ; the successor shall desire it because his present majesty had it , and made good use of it ; i think his argument is stronger . so that tho this be said to be only for the life of his present majesty , yet upon the matter it is for ever . and then i need not tell you the consequence , our parliaments shall be abolished , our kings shall become tyrants , and we of subjects , slaves . but if we look more nearly into this demand , i doubt not it will appear very gross . during the late war , land taxes were only demanded from year to year , and we gave them chearfully , in hopes that a few years would put an end to that charge . when we had undoubted reasons to believe there would be a peace , they were demanded to be given for two years ; and now god has blessed us with it , if they be demanded during his majesty's life , will not this look as if we were to have a standing army during the same time ? a land tax during his majesty's life , is a french taille for that time . and we ought not to forget that we are beginning , to the great advantage of the nation , to make some small progress in trade ; but if it be not incouraged , and much more if it be nipt in the bud , there is an end of all our hopes . one of the greatest things in trade , is to incourage exportation ; and 't is known that the greatest commodity of this kingdom is corn : if there be a land tax on those whose chief riches consist in corn , they cannot sell it so cheap to the merchant , that he can make any profit by exporting it . as for the arguments of those who are for this tax , i need answer none of them ; they are , to save the trouble and expence of frequent parliaments ; and because the nation did trust king james with this tax , who made bad use of it , ( a modest and a sensible argument ! ) are they not afraid it should be said , that those who advise the king to ask the same trust king james had , may advise him likewise to the same things , for which king james demanded it ? sure i am , that many who plead for this now , are the same persons who did the like for king james : and as for the expence occasioned by frequent parliaments , i believe there is neither shire nor borough but will find persons very willing to represent them , without putting them to any charge . i know 't is commonly said in this kingdom , that parliaments do more hurt than good ; but it is because they are never called unless to impose mony : will it mend the matter to lay on at once , and for life , as much as the nation is able to pay ? we were getting some good laws for our mony , but then we shall be excluded from that benefit . in a word , our forefathers had two securities for their liberties and properties , they had both the sword and the purse : the sword antiently was in the hand of the subject , because the armies then were composed of the vassals who depended on the barons . that security is gone ; shall we throw the other after it , and thereby i may very well say , dissolve the constitution , and the monarchy ? for a government is not only a tyranny , when tyrannically exercised ; but also when there is no sufficient caution in the constitution that it may not be exercised tyrannically . when the parliament has put an end to the affairs beforementioned , it were to be wished that this being the first session since the conclusion of the peace , and after so long a war , they would pass some act to ease the minds , and take away the fears and apprehensions of many men who are still obnoxious to the law , of whom the greater part are abroad ; and all of them both at home and abroad , for want of an act of indemnity , made desperate , and only sitted to involve others in the same uneasy and distracting circumstances under which they themselves live . but acts of indemnity are the worst and most pernicious of all laws to the well being of any government , unless the most notorious offenders be first punished ; and in such cases only incouragements to new transgressions , destroying the real security of all government , and effect of all laws , by giving an intire impunity to the attempts against both . so that there seems to be an absolute necessity , both of making an example of the notorious enemies to the liberties of this country , and giving a general pardon to the rest ; if we will either secure the government for the future from endeavours to introduce arbitrary power , cut up the party of the late king james by the roots ; or quiet the minds of the people , and remove the animosities that may remain in a nation wherein two or more parties have bin inflamed against each other , to the ruin of the publick liberty ; and extinguish the memory of those factions for ever . when 't is confess'd and acknowledged , that there have bin bold attempts and treacherous practises to destroy the religion , overturn the constitution of government , and suppress the liberty of a nation , and yet no example made of the advisers , and those who have bin eminently subservient to such designs ; such a people has as much laid the foundation of their own ruin , as if they had declared that those who shall hereafter ingage themselves in the like attempts , need fear no punishment . vpon a revolution followed by a war , circumstances of affairs may be such , that till the war be at an end , 't is not sit to punish great offenders . but there was no reason , nor any well-grounded political consideration , why immediatly upon the late revolution , the most notorious of those offenders should not have bin punished ; by which means we should have bin delivered from our worst men , who have since bin very bad instruments in affairs , and have terrified the rest by their example : we might then have quieted the minds of the people by an indemnity ; brought the nation to a settlement , and prevented the war which ensued in this country . yet ( because in matters of prudence men are of different sentiments ) tho it should be granted , that during the war it was not fit to make any examples , what pretence can there be now of exempting from punishment those who have bin notoriously criminal , both under the late reigns , and under this ? which when it is done , what conjuncture of time can be so proper for applying the healing remedy of an act of indemnity and oblivion to the rest , as the present , by reason of the peace ? before the revolution , the court had bin in a formed conspiracy against the religion and liberties of this nation ; nor was there any art to introduce arbitrary power , or subvert our religion , for which the late reigns wanted willing instruments ; and many endeavoured to signalize themselves in the ruin of their country . yet no man has bin made an example , to deter others from the like crimes . it will i know be thought hard to mention the punishing of offences committed so many years ago , when many of the offenders are dead ; and some men will judg it fitter to bury all in a general act of oblivion . to this i answer , that having bin highly to blame for neglecting hitherto to punish the enemies of our liberty , this ought to oblige us the rather to make an example of those who are still living . and to convince us of this necessity , we need only to consider what crimes those men would not have punished , nor the least example made of any that have bin guilty of them ; and whether the suffering them to pass unpunished , will not bring a guilt upon the nation which may not easily be expiated . publick and private injuries are of a very different nature ; and tho we are commanded to forgive the last , yet those who have power and right , are required , under the greatest penalties , to punish the other , especially where the crimes are enormous . but if the parliament should follow the advice of those men , they are not to punish any violent proceedings , illegal and arbitrary imprisonments , fines , banishments , and murders under pretext of law , that were set on foot , encouraged , and committed by those evil counsellors mentioned in his majesty's declaration , in order to alter the religion and government of this nation , and in place of them to introduce popery and slavery . they are not to punish those , who to recommend themselves to the late kings , by their interest , power , and credit in the parliament , got to be enacted most cruel and unchristian laws , for persecuting a great part of this nation upon the account of their religious opinions , which they could not quit without violating their consciences : they are not to punish those privy counsellors who went further than those very laws would allow them , in a thousand arbitrary and illegal proceedings , issuing out orders to invade such as dissented from them only in religious matters , with an army composed for the most part of barbarous highlanders , who hunted them from hill to hill , to force them to take arms , that they might have a pretext to destroy them utterly . they are not to punish those who gave orders to impose illegal and unwarrantable oaths upon all persons , even on silly women that might be found travelling in the ordinary road , and to shoot them immediately dead , if they should refuse the same . nor are they to punish those who put them in execution . do presbyterians in particular imagine , that if they neglect their duty in punishing these men , they will avoid the guilt of the innocent blood shed in those times ? are such things to be pardoned as private injuries ? the making our courts of justice , particularly that of the session , to be the instruments of subjecting all men to arbitrary power , are things to be passed over in silence , and no account to be taken of them . those who advised and drew a proclamation , declaring the late king james his absolute power in express terms , are not to be questioned for it . if the parliament pass over these things without making any example of the offenders , they make a precedent for abolishing the punishment of all enormous crimes for ever , since there never can be greater than these . shall there be no examples made of criminals for enormities of such a general influence and concernment , in a nation where a poor man for stealing a little food , is for examples sake ( let what i say be considered ) is for examples sake punished with death ? if there can be no stop put to the least of crimes , but by the punishment of some of those that are guilty ; can there be any remedy against the abettors of arbitrary power , if no example be made of them ? can that government be said to be secure , where there is no punishment , but rewards for conspiracies against its constitution ? 't is true that it may be fit to overlook some crimes , wherein extraordinary numbers of men are concerned , but not extraordinary crimes , nor the most guilty of the criminals . it was thought sit to forbear the punishment of the evil counsellors mentioned in his majesty's declaration for some time : that forbearance has lasted to this day ; and we have so little hopes of seeing any discouragement put upon those who shall promote arbitrary government in time to come , by an exemplary punishment of the most notorious offenders under the late reigns , that notwithstanding many new provocations , and reiterated treasons under this , they have not only hitherto escaped punishment , but have bin also encouraged . for not long after the revolution , the most considerable of them ( i do not speak of those who took arms ) entred into new conspiracies against their country , to betray it again to the late king james , and took the oaths to this king , that they might have the better opportunity to bring back the other . yet after all this his majesty was advised to put some of them into the most important places of trust in the kingdom . what are we then to expect , if we shall not now proceed to make some examples , but that they , and men of the like principles , will insinuate themselves into all the places of trust ; and have the power as well as the will to throw us into prisons , and by their pernicious counsels to betray his present majesty into the same misfortunes that were brought upon the late king ? is it not enough , that the punishment of those who endeavoured to enslave us under the late reigns , has bin delayed till now ? because they have renewed the same practices under this , must it still be delayed , to the end that ( as they have already done in the affair of glenco ) they may continue to give his majesty the same bad counsel with which the late kings were poisoned ? now , to pardon them we have this encouragement , that having passed over former crimes , we embolden them to commit new , and to give fresh wounds to that country which has already so often bled under their hands . when the greatest offenders are punished , an act of indemnity will be as necessary to the well-being of this nation as peace it self , since there can be no ease or quiet without it . but so little hopes have we of this , that whilst the evil counsellors , against whom his majesty did so justly declare , live at ease ; an act ( as we are told ) is to be brought into the parliament for banishing during pleasure , many thousands of inconsiderable people who cannot be charged with crimes any way comparable to theirs ; and some of them free of the least appearance of any . what construction would the advisers of these things , have even those who are best affected to the government put upon them ? one might reasonably think that such things may be sit to keep up the party of the late king james , and fright the nation into a belief of the necessity of continuing a standing army , that they may be sit to lead men of estates , or those who have any thing to lose , into snares both at home and abroad ( particularly in france , where the late king james is still suffered ) by pretending correspondence or conversation with such as may be obnoxious to the law : but no man can suspect the worst of counsellors of such designs . and therefore i confess i am at a stand ; for such vast numbers of people were never yet banished for crimes of state : nor dos the multitude ever suffer for them , except only in barbarous countries . if it be said that ill men may have designs against his majesty's life , and therefore ought to be banished ; i answer , nothing is more likely to draw on such a mischief , than extraordinary severities used against them . for nothing dos so much sit a man for such an attempt , as despair ; against which no distance of place can long protect . my opinion therefore is , that an act of indemnity ( exceping only assassins and other notorious criminals , whom we cannot at present reach ) is more sutable to our present condition , than an act of banishment : and that to procure the nation so great a blessing , the parliament should proceed , without delay , to the punishing of the greatest criminals , both of this and the last reigns , without which an oblivion will be one of the greatest injuries that can be done to us . i shall only add , that there is ground to believe some men will endeavour to perswade the parliament to take this affair into consideration before all others ; because it was the first thing done in the last session of the english parliament ; and the bill having past there almost without debate , they will make use of that as an argument why it should do so here . what the considerations were which moved that parliament to do so , i will not presume to determine , neither is it my business : circumstances of affairs may be different in different nations : sure i am , that in this particular they are different , that a greater number of men , in proportion to the people in each nation , will fall under uneasy circumstances by such an act in scotland , than has bin found to have done in england . the second discourse concerning the affairs of scotland , written in the year 1698. the affairs of which i have spoken in the preceding discourse , are such as the present conjuncture makes a proper subject for the approaching session of parliament : but there are many other things which require no less their care , if the urgent and pressing distresses of the nation be consider'd . i shall therefore with all due respect to the parliament offer my opinion concerning two , which i presume to be of that nature . the first thing which i humbly and earnestly propose to that honourable court is , that they would take into their consideration the condition of so many thousands of our people who are at this day dying for want of bread. and to perswade them seriously to apply themselves to so indispensible a duty , they have all the inducements which those most powerful emotions of the soul , terror and compassion , can produce . because from unwholsom food diseases are so multiplied among the poor people , that if some course be not taken , this famine may very probably be followed by a plague ; and then what man is there even of those who sit in parliament that can be sure he shall escape ? and what man is there in this nation , if he have any compassion , who must not grudg himself every nice bit and every delicate morsel he puts in his mouth , when he considers that so many are already dead , and so many at that minute strugling with death , not for want of bread but of grains , which i am credibly informed have bin eaten by some families , even during the preceding years of scarcity . and must not every unnecessary branch of our expence , or the least sinery in our houses , clothes or equipage , reproach us with our barbarity , so long as people born with natural endowments , perhaps not inferior to our own , and fellow citizens , perish for want of things absolutely necessary to life ? but not to insist any more upon the representation of so great a calamity , which if drawn in proper colours , and only according to the precise truth of things , must cast the minds of all honest men into those convulsions which ought necessarily to be composed before they can calmly consider of a remedy ; and because the particulars of this great distress are sufficiently known to all , i shall proceed to say , that tho perhaps upon the great want of bread , occasioned by the continued bad seasons of this and the three preceding years , the evil be greater and more pressing than at any time in our days , yet there have always bin in scotland such numbers of poor , as by no regulations could ever be orderly provided for ; and this country has always swarm'd with such numbers of idle vagabonds , as no laws could ever restrain . and indeed when i consider'd the many excellent laws enacted by former parliaments for setting the poor to work , particularly those in the time of king james the sixth , with the clauses for putting them in execution , which to me seemed such as could not miss of the end , and yet that nothing was obtained by them , i was amazed , and began to think upon the case of other nations in this particular , perswaded that there was some strange hidden root of this evil which could not be well discovered , unless by observing the conduct of other governments . but upon reflection i found them all subject to the same inconveniences , and that in all the countries of europe there were great numbers of poor , except in holland , which i knew to proceed from their having the greatest share in the trade of the world. but this not being a remedy for every country , since all cannot pretend to so great a part in trade , and that two or three nations are able to manage the whole commerce of europe ; yet there being a necessity that the poor should every where be provided for , unless we will acknowledg the deficiency of all government in that particular , and finding no remedy in the laws or customs of any of the present governments , i began to consider what might be the conduct of the wise antients in that affair . and my curiosity was increased , when upon reflection i could not call to mind that any antient author had so much as mentioned such a thing , as great numbers of poor in any country . at length i found the original of that multitude of beggars which now oppress the world , to have proceeded from church-men , who ( never failing to confound things spiritual with temporal , and consequently all good order and good government , either through mistake or design ) upon the first publick establishment of the christian religion , recommended nothing more to masters , in order to the salvation of their souls , than the setting such of their slaves at liberty as would embrace the christian faith , tho our saviour and his apostles had bin so far from making use of any temporal advantages to perswade eternal truths , and so far from invading any man's property , by promising him heaven for it , that the apostle paul says expresly , in what ever condition of life every one is called to the christian faith , in that let him remain . art thou called being a slave ? be not concerned for thy condition ; but even tho thou mightest be free , chuse to continue in it . for he who is called whilst a slave , becomes the freeman of the lord ; and likewise he that is called whilst a free-man , becomes the slave of christ , who has paid a price for you , that you might not be the slaves of men . let every one therefore , brethren , in whatever condition he is called , in that remain , in the fear of god. that the interpretation i put upon this passage , different from our translation , is the true meaning of the apostle , not only the authority of the greek fathers , and genuine signification of the greek particles , but the whole context , chiefly the first and last words ( which seem to be repeated to inforce and determine such a meaning ) clearly demonstrate . and the reason why he recommends to them rather to continue slaves ( if they have embraced the christian faith in that condition ) seems to be that it might appear they did not embrace it for any worldly advantage , as well as to destroy a doctrine which even in his days began to be preached , that slavery was inconsistent with the christian religion ; since such a doctrine would have bin a great stop to the progress of it . what the apostle means by saying , we ought not to be the slaves of men , i shall show hereafter . this disorder of giving liberty to great numbers of slaves upon their profession of christianity , grew to such a height , even in the time of constantine the great , that the cities of the empire found themselves burden'd with an infinite number of men , who had no other estate but their liberty , of whom the greatest part would not work , and the rest had bin bred to no profession . this obliged constantine to make edicts in favour of beggars ; and from that time at the request of the bishops , hospitals and alms-houses , not formerly known in the world , began to be established . but upon the rise of the mahometan religion , which was chiefly advanced by giving liberty to all their slaves , the christians were so molested by the continual rebellion of theirs , that they were at length forced to give liberty to them all ; which it seems the church-men then looked upon as a thing necessary to preserve the christian religion , since in many of the writings , by which masters gave freedom to their slaves , 't is expresly said , they did so , to save their own souls . this is the rise of that great mischief , under which , to the undoing of the poor , all the nations of europe have ever since groan'd . because in antient times , so long as a man was the riches and part of the possession of another , every man was provided for in meat , clothes and lodging ; and not only he , but ( in order to increase that riches ) his wife and children also : whereas provisions by hospitals , alms-houses , and the contributions of churches or parishes , have by experience bin found to increase the numbers of those that live by them . and the liberty every idle and lazy person has of burdening the society in which he lives , with his maintenance , has increased their numbers to the weakning and impoverishing of it : for he needs only to say , that he cannot get work , and then he must be maintained by charity . and as i have shown before , no nation except one only ( which is in extraordinary circumstances ) dos provide by publick work-houses for their poor : the reason of which seems to be , that publick work-houses for such vast numbers of people , are impracticable except in those places where ( besides a vast trade to vend the manufactur'd goods ) there is an extraordinary police : and that tho the hollanders by reason of the steddiness of their temper , as well as of their government ( being a common-wealth ) may be constant to their methods of providing for the poor ; yet in a nation , and under a government like that of france , tho vast publick workhouses may be for a while kept in order , 't will not be long before they fall into confusion and ruin . and indeed ( next to plato's republick , which chiefly consists in making the whole society live in common ) there is nothing more impracticable than to provide for so great a part of every nation by publick work-houses . whereas when such an oeconomy comes under the inspection of every master of a family , and that he himself is to reap the profit of the right management ; the thing not only turns to a far better account , but by reason of his power to sell those workmen to others who may have use for them , when he himself has a mind to alter his course of life , the profit is permanent to the society ; nor can such an oeconomy , or any such management ever fall into confusion . i doubt not , that what i have said will meet , not only with all the misconstruction and obloquy , but all the disdain , fury and outcries , of which either ignorant magistrates , or proud , lazy and miserable people are capable . would i bring back slavery into the world ? shall men of immortal souls , and by nature equal to any , be sold as beasts ? shall they and their posterity be for ever subjected to the most miserable of all conditions ; the inhuman barbarity of masters , who may beat , mutilate , torture , starve or kill so great a number of mankind at pleasure ? shall the far greater part of the commonwealth be slaves , not that the rest may be free , but tyrants over them ? with what face can we oppose the tyranny of princes , and recommend such opposition as the highest virtue , if we make our selves tyrants over the greatest part of mankind ? can any man , from whom such a thing has once escaped , ever offer to speak for liberty ? but they must pardon me if i tell them , that i regard not names , but things ; and that the misapplication of names has confounded every thing . we are told there is not a slave in france ; that when a slave sets his foot upon french ground , he becomes immediately free : and i say that there is not a free man in france , because the king takes away any part of any man's property at his pleasure ; and that , let him do what he will to any man , there is no remedy . the turks tell us there are no slaves among them , except jews , moors , or christians ; and who is there that knows not , they are all slaves to the grand signor , and have no remedy against his will ? a slave properly is one , who is absolutely subjected to the will of another man without any remedy : and not one that is only subjected under certain limitations , and upon certain accounts necessary for the good of the common-wealth , tho such an one may go under that name . and the confounding these two conditions of men by a name common to both , has in my opinion bin none of the least hardships put upon those who ought to be named servants . we are all subjected to the laws ; and the easier or harder conditions imposed by them upon the several ranks of men in any society , make not the distinction that is between a freeman and a slave . so that the condition of slaves among the antients , will upon serious consideration appear to be only a better provision in their governments than any we have , that no man might want the necessities of life , nor any person able to work be burdensom to the commonwealth . and they wisely judged of the inconveniences that befal the most part of poor people , when they are all abandoned to their own conduct . i know that these two conditions of men were confounded under the same name , as well by the antients as they are by us ; but the reason was , that having often taken in war the subjects of absolute monarchs , they thought they did them no wrong if they did not better their condition : and as in some of their governments the condition of slaves was under a worse regulation than in others , so in some of them it differ'd very little , if at all , from the condition of such a slave as i have defined . but i do not approve , and therefore will not go about to defend any of those bad and cruel regulations about slaves . and because it would be tedious and needless to pursue the various conditions of them in several ages and governments , it shall be enough for me to explain under what conditions they might be both good and useful , as well as i think they are necessary in a well-regulated government . first then , their masters should not have power over their lives , but the life of the master should go for the life of the servant . the master should have no power to mutilate or torture him ; that in such cases the servant should not only have his freedom ( which alone would make him burdensom to the publick ) but a sufficient yearly pension so long as he should live from his said master . that he , his wife and children , should be provided for in clothes , diet , and lodging . that they should be taught the principles of morality and religion ; to read , and be allowed the use of certain books : that they should not work upon sundays , and be allowed to go to church : that in every thing , except their duty as servants , they should not be under the will of their masters , but the protection of the law : that when these servants grow old , and are no more useful to their masters , ( lest upon that account they should be ill used ) hospitals should be provided for them by the publick : that if for their good and faithful service , any master give them their freedom , he should be obliged to give them likewise wherewithal to subsist , or put them in a way of living without being troublesome to the commonwealth : that they should wear no habit or mark to distinguish them from hired servants : that any man should be punished who gives them the opprobrious name of slave . so , except it were that they could possess nothing , and might be sold , which really would be but an alienation of their service without their consent , they would live in a much more comfortable condition ( wanting nothing necessary for life ) than those who having a power to possess all things , are very often in want of every thing , to such a degree , that many thousands of them come to starve for hunger . it will be said , that notwithstanding all these regulations , they may be most barbarously used by their masters , either by beating them outragiously , making them work beyond measure , suffer cold or hunger , or neglecting them in their sickness . i answer , that as long as the servant is of an age not unsit for work , all these things are against the interest of the master : that the most brutal man will not use his beast ill only out of a humor ; and that if such inconveniences do sometimes fall out , it proceeds , for the most part , from the perverseness of the servant : that all inconveniences cannot be obviated by any government ; that we must chuse the least ; and that to prevent them in the best manner possible , a particular magistrate might be instituted for that end . the condition of such a servant is to be esteemed free ; because in the most essential things , he is only subject to the laws , and not to the will of his master , who can neither take away his life , mutilate , torture , or restrain him from the comforts of wife and children : but on the other hand , for the service he dos , is obliged to ease him of the inconveniences of marriage , by providing for him , his wife , and children , clothes , food , and lodging : and the condition of a baschaw , or great lord , under arbitrary government ( who for the sake , and from a necessity of what they call government , has joined to the quality of a slave the office of a tyrant , and imagins himself a man of quality , if not a little prince , by such preeminence ) is altogether slavish ; since he is under the protection of no law , no not so much as to his life , or the honour of his wife and children ; and is subjected to stronger temptations than any man , of being a slave to men in st. paul's sense , which is a worse sort of slavery than any i have yet mentioned . that is , of being subservient to , and an instrument of the lusts of his master the tyrant : since if he refuse slavishly to obey , he must lose his office , and perhaps his life . and indeed men of all ranks living under arbitrary government ( so much preached and recommended by the far greater part of churchmen ) being really under the protection of no law , ( whatever may be pretended ) are not only slaves , as i have desined before , but by having no other certain remedy in any thing against the lust and passions of their superiors , except suffering or complyance , lie under the most violent temptations of being slaves in the worst sense , and of the only sort that is inconsistent with the christian religion . a condition ( whatever men may imagine ) so much more miserable than that of servants protected by the laws in all things necessary for the subsistence of them and their posterity , that there is no comparison . i shall now proceed to the great advantages the antients received from this sort of servants . by thus providing for their poor , and making every man useful to the commonwealth , they were not only able to perform those great and stupendous publick works , high-ways , aqueducts , common-shores , walls of cities , sea-ports , bridges , monuments for the dead , temples , amphitheatres , theaters , places for all manner of exercises and education , baths , courts of justice , market-places , publick walks , and other magnificent works for the use and conveniency of the publick ; with which egypt , asia , greece , italy , and other countries were filled ; and to adorn them with stately pillars and obelisks , curious statues , most exquisite sculpture and painting : but every particular man might indulge himself in any kind of finery and magnificence ; not only because he had slaves to perform it according to his fancy , but because all the poor being provided for , there could be no crime in making unnecessary expences , which are always contrary , not only to christian charity , but common humanity , as long as any poor man wants bread . for tho we think that in making those expences , we employ the poor ; and that in building costly houses , and furnishing them , making fine gardens , rich stuffs , laces and embroideries for apparel , the poor are set to work ; yet so long as all the poor are not provided for , ( tho a man cannot reproach to himself in particular why it is not done ) and that there is any poor family in a starving condition , 't is against common humanity ( and no doubt would have bin judged to be so by the antients ) for any man to indulge himself in things unnecessary , when others want what is absolutely necessary for life , especially since the furnishing of those things to them , does employ workmen as well as our unnecessary expences . so that the antients , without giving the least check to a tender compassion for the necessities of others ( a virtue so natural to great minds , so nicely to be preserved and cherished ) might not only adorn their publick buildings with all the resinements of art , but likewise beautify their private houses , villa's and gardens with the greatest curiosity . but we by persisting in the like , and other unnecessary expences , while all the poor are not provided for ( example , vanity , and the love of pleasure , being predominant in us ) have not only effaced all the vestiges of christian charity , but banished natural compassion from amongst us , that without remorse we might continue in them . this explains to us by what means so much virtue and simplicity of manners could subsist in the cities of greece , and the lesser asia , in the midst of so great curiosity and resinement in the arts of magnificence and ornament . for in antient times great riches , and consequently bad arts to acquire them , were not necessary for those things ; because if a man possessed a moderate number of slaves , he might chuse to employ them in any sort of magnificence , either private or publick , for use or ornament , as he thought sit , whilst he himself lived in the greatest simplicity , having neither coaches nor horses to carry him , as in triumph , through the city ; nor a family in most things composed like that of a prince , and a multitude of idle servants to consume his estate . women were not then intolerably expensive , but wholly imployed in the care of domestick affairs . neither did the furniture of their houses amount to such vast sums as with us ; but was for the most part wrought by their slaves . another advantage which the antients had by this sort of servants , was , that they were not under that uneasiness , and unspeakable vexation which we suffer by our hired servants , who are never bred to be good for any thing , tho most of the slaves amongst the antients were . and tho we bestow the greatest pains or cost to educate one of them from his youth , upon the least cross word he leaves us . so that 't is more than probable this sort of servants growing every day worse , the unspeakable trouble arising from them , without any other consideration , will force the world to return to the former . among the antients , any master who had the least judgment or discretion , was served with emulation by all his slaves , that those who best performed their duty , might obtain their liberty from him . a slave , tho furnished with every thing necessary , yet possessing nothing , had no temptation to cheat his master ; whereas a hired servant , whilst he remains unmarried , will cheat his master of what may be a stock to him when married ; and if after his marriage he continue to serve his master , he will be sure to cheat him much more . when the antients gave freedom to a slave , they were obliged to give him wherewithal to subsist , or to put him into a way of living . and how well and faithfully they were served by those they had made free , ( whom from a long experience of their probity and capacity , they often made stewards of their estates ) all antient history dos testify . now , we having no regular way to enable a servant to provide sufficient maintenance for his family , when he becomes independent on his master , his bare wages ( out of which he is for the most part to provide himself with many necessaries for daily use ) not being enough for that purpose , and no way left but to cheat his master , we ought not to expect any probity or fidelity in our servants , because , for want of order in this point , we subject them to such strong temptations . i might insist upon many other advantages the antients had in the way they were served , if to perswade the expedient i propose , i were not to make use of stronger arguments than such as can be drawn from any advantages ; i mean those of necessity . there are at this day in scotland ( besides a great many poor families very meanly provided for by the church-boxes , with others , who by living upon bad food fall into various diseases ) 200000 people begging from door to door . these are not only no way advantageous , but a very grievous burden to so poor a country . and tho the number of them be perhaps double to what it was formerly , by reason of this present great distress , yet in all times there have bin about 100000 of those vagabonds , who have lived without any regard or subjection either to the laws of the land , or even those of god and nature ; fathers incestuously accompanying with their own daughters , the son with the mother , and the brother with the sister . no magistrate could ever discover , or be informed which way one in a hundred of these wretches died , or that ever they were baptized . many murders have bin discovered among them ; and they are not only a most unspeakable oppression to poor tenants , ( who if they give not bread , or some kind of provision to perhaps forty such villains in one day , are sure to be insulted by them ) but they rob many poor people who live in houses distant from any neighbourhood . in years of plenty many thousands of them meet together in the mountains , where they feast and riot for many days ; and at country weddings , markets , burials , and other the like publick occasions , they are to be seen both men and women perpetually drunk , cursing , blaspheming , and sighting together . these are such outragious disorders , that it were better for the nation they were sold to the gallies or west-indies , than that they should continue any longer to be a burden and curse upon us . but numbers of people ▪ being great riches , every government is to blame that makes not a right use of them . the wholsomness of our air , and healthfulness of our climat , affords us great numbers of people , which in so poor a country can never be all maintained by manufactures , or publick work-houses , or any other way , but that which i have mentioned . and to show that former parliaments strugling with this , otherwise insuperable , difficulty , have by the nature of the thing bin as it were forced upon remedies tending towards what i have proposed : by an act of parliament in the year 1579. any subject of sufficient estate is allowed to take the child of any beggar , and educate him for his service , which child is obliged to serve such a master for a certain term of years ; and that term of years extended by another act made in the year 1597 , for life . so that here is a great advance towards my proposition ; but either from some mistake about christian or civil liberty , they did not proceed to consider the necessity of continuing that service in the children of such servants , and giving their masters a power of alienating that service to whom they should think fit . the reason for the first of these is , that being married in that sort of service , their masters must of necessity maintain their wife and children , and so ought to have the same right to the service of the children as of the father . and the reason for the power of alienation is , that no man is sure of continuing always in one sort of employment ; and having educated a great many such children when he was in an employment that required many servants , if afterwards he should be obliged to quit it for one that required few or none , he could not without great injustice be deprived of the power of alienating their service to any other man , in order to reimburse to himself the mony he had bestowed upon them ; especially since the setting them at liberty would only bring a great burden upon the publick . now what i would propose upon the whole matter is , that for some present remedy of so great a mischief , every man of a certain estate in this nation should be obliged to take a proportionable number of those vagabonds , and either employ them in hedging and ditching his grounds , or any other sort of work in town and country ; or if they happen to be children and young , that he should educate them in the knowledg of some mechanical art , that so every man of estate might have a little manufacture at home which might maintain those servants , and bring great profit to the master , as they did to the antients , whose revenue by the manufactures of such servants was much more considerable than that of their lands . hospitals and alms-houses ought to be provided for the sick , lame and decrepit , either by rectifying old foundations or instituting new . and for example and terror three or four hundred of the most notorious of those villains which we call jockys , might be presented by the government to the state of venice , to serve in their gallies against the common enemy of christendom . but these things , when once resolved , must be executed with great address , diligence , and severity ; for that sort of people is so desperately wicked , such enemies of all work and labour , and , which is yet more amazing , so proud , in esteeming their own condition above that which they will be sure to call slavery ; that unless prevented by the utmost industry and diligence , upon the first publication of any orders necessary for putting in execution such a design , they will rather die with hunger in caves and dens , and murder their young children , than appear abroad to have them and themselves taken into such a kind of service . and the highlands are such a vast and unsearchable retreat for them , that if strict and severe order be not taken to prevent it , upon such an occasion these vagabonds will only rob as much food as they can out of the low-country , and retire to live upon it in those mountains , or run into england till they think the storm of our resolutions is over , which in all former times they have seen to be vain . nor indeed can there be a thorow reformation in this affair , so long as the one half of our country , in extent of ground , is possessed by a people who are , all gentlemen only because they will not work , and who in every thing are more contemptible than the vilest slaves , except that they always carry arms , because for the most part they live upon robbery . this part of the country being an inexhaustible source of beggers , has always broke all our measures relating to them . and it were to be wished that the government would think sit to transplant that handful of people , and their masters ( who have always disturbed our peace ) into the low-country , and people the highlands from hence , rather than they should continue to be a perpetual occasion of mischief to us . 't is in vain to say , that whatever people are planted in those mountains , they will quickly turn as savage , and as great beggers as the present inhabitants ; for the mountains of the alps are greater , more desert , and more condemned to snows than those of the highlands of scotland , which are every where out by friths and lakes , the richest in fishing of any in the world , assording great conveniences for transportation of timber and any other goods ; and yet the alps which have no such advantages are inhabited every where by a civiliz'd , industrious , honest , and peaceable people : but they had no lords to hinder them from being civilized , to discourage industry , incourage thieving , and to keep them beggers that they might be the more dependent ; or when they had any that oppressed them , as in that part of the mountains that belongs to the swiss , they knock'd them on the head . let us now compare the condition of our present vagabonds with that of servants under the conditions which i have proposed , and we shall see the one living under no law of god , man or nature ▪ polluted with all manner of abominations ; and tho in so little expectation of the good things of another life , yet in the worst condition of this , and sometimes starved to death in time of extraordinary want . the other , tho sometimes they may fall under a severe master ( who nevertheless may neither kill , mutilate , nor torture them , and may be likewise restrained from using them very ill by the magistrate i mention'd ) are always sure to have food , clothes and lodging ; and have this advantage above other men , that without any care or pains taken by them , these necessaries are likewise secured to their wives and children . they are provided for in sickness , their children are educated , and all of them under all the inducements , encouragements and obligations possible to live quiet , innocent and virtuous lives . they may also hope , if they shew an extraordinary affection , care and sidelity in the service of their master , that not only they and their families shall have their intire freedom , but a competency to live , and perhaps the estate of the master intrusted to their care . now if we will consider the advantages to the nation by the one , and the disadvantages arising from the other sort of men , we shall evidently see , that as the one is an excessive burden , curse , and reproach to us , so the other may inrich the nation , and adorn this country with publick works beyond any in europe , which shall not take the like methods of providing for their poor . this proposal i hope may be a remedy , not only to that intolerable plague of idle vagabonds who infest the nation ; but by providing a more regular maintenance for them , go a great way towards the present relief of other poor people who have bin oppressed by them . that which follows is calculated to remove the principal and original cause of the poverty which all the commons of this nation lie under , as well as those straitning difficulties in which men of estates are by our present method of husbandry inevitably involved . the causes of the present poverty and misery in which the commonalty of scotland live , are many , yet they are all to be imputed to our own bad conduct and mismanagement of our affairs . 't is true , trade being of late years vastly increased in europe , the poverty of any nation is always imputed to their want of that advantage . and tho our soil be barren ; yet our seas being the richest of any in the world , it may be thought that the cause of all our poverty has bin the neglect of trade , and chiefly of our own fishing : nevertheless were i to assign the principal and original source of our poverty , i should place it in the letting of our lands at so excessive a rate as makes the tenant poorer even than his servant whose wages he cannot pay ; and involves in the same misery day-labourers , tradesmen , and the lesser merchants who live in the country villages and towns ; and thereby influences no less the great towns and wholesale merchants , makes the master have a troublesome and ill paid rent , his lands not improved by inclosure or otherwise , but for want of horses and oxen sit for labour , every where run out and abused . the condition of the lesser freeholders or heritors ( as we call them ) is not much better than that of our tenants : for they have no stocks to improve their lands , and living not as husbandmen but as gentlemen , they are never able to attain any : besides this , the unskilfulness of their wretched and half-starved servants is such , that their lands are no better cultivated than those laboured by beggerly tenants . and tho a gentleman of estate take a farm into his own hands , yet servants are so unfaithful or lazy , and the country people such enemies of all manner of inclosure , that after having strugled with innumerable difficulties , he at last finds it impossible for him to alter the ordinary bad methods , whilst the rest of the country continues in them . the places in this country which produce sheep and black cattel , have no provision for them in winter during the snows , having neither hay nor straw , nor any inclosure to shelter them or the grass from the cold easterly winds in the spring ; so that the beasts are in a dying condition , and the grass consumed by those destructive winds , till the warm weather , about the middle of june , come to the relief of both . to all this may be added the letting of farms in most part of those grazing countries every year by roop or auction . but our management in the countries cultivated by tillage is much worse , because the tenant pays his rent in grain , wheat , barly or oats : which is attended with many inconveniences , and much greater disadvantages than a rent paid in mony. mony rent has a yearly balance in it ; for if the year be scarce , all sorts of grain yield the greater price ; and if the year be plentiful , there is the greater quantity of them to make mony. now a rent paid in corn has neither a yearly , nor any balance at all ; for if a plentiful year afford a superplus , the tenant can make but little of it ; but if the year be scarce , he falls short in the payment of his corn , and by reason of the price it bears , can never clear that debt by the rates of a plentiful year , by which means he breaks , and contributes to ruin his master . the rent being altogether in corn , the grounds must be altogether in tillage ; which has bin the ruin of all the best countries in scotland . the carriage of corn paid for rent , to which many tenants are obliged , being often to remote places , and at unseasonable times , destroys their horses , and hinders their labour . and the hazard of sending the corn by sea to the great towns , endangers the loss of the whole . the master runs a double risque for his rent , from the merchant as well as the tenant ; and the merchant making a thousand difficulties at the delivering of the corn if the price be fallen , the bargain sometimes ends in a suit at law. the selling of corn is become a thing so difficult , that besides the cheats used in that sort of commerce , sufficient to disgust any honest man , the brewers , bakers , and sometimes the merchants who send it abroad , do so combine together , that the gentleman is obliged to lay it up , of which the trouble as well as loss is great . this causes him to borrow mony for the supply of his present occasions , and is the beginning of most mens debts . we may add to this , that by a rent in corn , a man comes to have one year 1000 l. rent , and the next perhaps but 600 , so that he never can make any certain account for his expence or way of living ; that having one year 1000 l. to spend , he cannot easily restrain himself to 600 the next ; that he spends the same quantity of corn ( and in some places where such things are delivered instead of rent ) hay , straw , poultry , sheep and oxen , in a dear , as in a plentiful year , which he would not do if he was obliged to buy them . now the tenant in a plentiful year wasts , and in a scarce year starves : so that no man of any substance will take a farm in scotland ; but every begger if he have got half a dozen wretched horses , and as many oxen , and can borrow corn to sow , pretends to be a tenant in places where they pay no other rent than corn. i know there are many objections made to what has bin said concerning the advantages which a rent paid in mony has above one paid in corn ; but certainly they are all so frivolous , that every man upon a little restections may answer them to himself . for the chief of them are , either that the tenant will squander away mony when he gets it into his hands ; or that the master can get a better price for the corn by selling it in gross to merchants in the adjacent towns , or else by sending it to be sold at a great distance . to the first i answer , that no substantial man will squander away mony because he has got it into his hands , tho such beggers as we now have for tenants might be apt to do so . and to the second , that the hazard of sending corn from one place of the kingdom to another by sea , and the prejudice the tenants suffer from long carriages by land , do in part balance the supposed advantage ; besides , if those wholesale bargains were not so frequently made , nor the corn so often carried to be sold at the great towns , the merchants would be obliged to send to the country markets to buy , and the prices in them would rise . in short , the changing of mony-rent into corn , has bin the chief cause of racking all the rents to that excessive rate they are now advanced . and upon reflection it will soon appear , that the turning of mony rents into rents of corn , has bin the invention of some covetous wretches , who have bin the occasion that all masters now live under the same uneasiness , and constant care , which they at first out of covetousness created to themselves ; and all to get as much as was possible from poor tenants , who by such means are made miserable , and are so far from improving , that they only run out and spoil the ground , ruin their neighbours by borrowing , and at length break for considerable sums , tho at first they were no better than beggers . the method of most other countries is ; that all rents are payed in mony ; that masters receiving a fine , grant long leases of their grounds at easy rents : but this supposes the tenant a man of considerable substance , who cannot only give a fine , but has wherewithal to stock , and also to improve his farm. but in scotland no such men are willing to take farms ; nor in truth are the masters willing to let them , as they do in other countries . and tho the masters may pretend , that if they could find substantial tenants , they would let their grounds as they do in other places ; and men of substance , that if they could have farms upon such conditions , they would turn tenants ; yet we see evident marks of the little probability there is that any such thing can be brought about without a general regulation . for in the west and north countries where they let land in few ( or fee ) the superiors are so hard , that besides the yearly few-duty , they make the fewer pay at his first entrance the whole intrinsick value of the land : and the people , tho substantial men , are fools and slaves enough to make such bargains . and in the same countries , when they let a small parcel of land to a tradesman , they let it not for what the land is worth , but what both the land and his trade is worth . and indeed 't is next to an impossibility to alter a general bad custom in any nation , without a general regulation , because of inveterate bad dispositions and discouragements , with which the first beginnings of reformations are always attended . besides , alterations that are not countenanced by the publick authority , proceed slowly ; and if they chance to meet with any check , men soon return to their former bad methods . the condition then of this nation , chiefly by this abuse of racking the lands , is brought to such extremity , as makes all the commonalty miserable , and the landlords , if possible , the greater slaves , before they can get their rents and reduce them into mony. and because this evil is arriv'd to a greater height with us , than i believe was ever known in any other place ; and that , as i have said , we are in no disposition to practise the methods of most other countries , i think we ought to find out some new one which may surmount all difficulties , since in things of this nature divers methods may be proposed very practicable , and much better than any that hitherto have bin in use . i know that if to a law prohibiting all interest for mony , another were joined , that no man should possess more land than so much as he should cultivate by servants , the whole mony , as well as people of this nation , would be presently employed , either in cultivating lands , or in trade and manufactures ; that the country would be quickly improved to the greatest height of which the soil is capable , since it would be cultivated by all the rich men of the nation ; and that there would still be vast stocks remaining to be employed in trade and manufactures . but to oblige a man of a great estate in land to sell all , except perhaps 200 pounds sterling a year ( which he might cultivate by his servants ) and to employ the whole mony produced by the sale of the rest , in a thing so uncertain as he would judg trade to be , and for which 't is like he might have no disposition or genius , being a thing impracticable : and also to employ the small stocks of minors , widows , and other women unmarried , in trade or husbandry , a thing of too great hazard for them ; i would propose a method for our relief , by joining to the law prohibiting all interest of mony , and to the other , that no man should possess more land than so much as he cultivates by his servants , a third law , obliging all men that possess lands under the value of 200 pounds sterling clear profits yearly , to cultivate them by servants , and pay yearly the half of the clear profits to such persons as cultivating land worth 200 pounds sterling a year , or above , shall buy such rents of them at twenty years purchase . the project in its full extent may be comprehended in these following articles . all interest of mony to be forbidden . no man to possess more land than he cultivates by servants . every man cultivating land under the value of 200 pounds sterling clear profits a year , to pay yearly the half of the clear profits to some other man who shall buy that rent at twenty years purchase ; and for his security shall be preferred to all other creditors . no man to buy or possess those rents , unless he cultivate land to the value at least of 200 pounds sterling clear profits yearly . minors , women unmarried , and persons absent upon a publick account , may buy or possess such rents , tho they cultivate no lands . by the first article , discharging all interest of mony , most men who have small sums at interest , will be obliged to employ it in trade , or the improvement of land. by the second , that no man is to possess more land , than so much as he cultivates by his servants , the whole land of the kingdom will come into the hands of the richest men ; at least there will be no land cultivated by any man who is not the possessor of it . and if he have a greater estate than what he cultivates , he may lay out mony upon improvements ; or if he have bought a small possession , tho he may have no more mony left , he may , by selling one half of the rent , procure a sum considerable enough , both to stock and improve it . so that in a few years the country will be every where inclosed and improved to the greatest height , the plow being every where in the hand of the possessor . then servants , day-labourers , tradesmen , and all sorts of merchants , will be well paid , and the whole commons live plentifully , because they will all be employed by men of substance : the ground by inclosure , and other improvements , will produce the double of what it now dos ; and the race of horses and black cattel will be much mended . by the other articles ; that no man cultivating land under the value of 200 pounds sterling clear profits yearly , can purchase rents upon land from any other man ; but is obliged to pay yearly the half of the clear profits , to such persons as shall buy them at twenty years purchase ; and that only those who cultivate land worth at least 200 pounds sterling a year , can buy such rents ▪ the men of great land estates having sold all their lands , except so much as may yield 200 pounds sterling yearly , or so much above that value as they shall think sit to cultivate , may secure , if they please , the whole mony they receive for their lands , upon those rents which the lesser possessors are obliged to sell . and so those who had formerly their estates in lands ill cultivated , and corn-rents ill paid , as well as the other three sorts of persons excepted from the general rule , and mentioned in the last article , will have a clear rent in mony coming in without trouble , for paiment of which they are to be secured in the lands of the said lesser possessors before all creditors . the reason of excepting the three sorts of persons before mentioned from the general rule , is evident ; because ( as has bin said ) it were unreasonable to oblige minors , or women unmarried , to venture their smal stocks in trade or husbandry : and much more that those who are absent upon a publick account , should be obliged to have any stock imploy'd that way , since they cannot inspect either . the small possessors by this project are not wrong'd in any thing ; for if they are obliged to pay a rent to others , they receive the value of it . and this rent will put them in mind , not to live after the manner of men of great estates , but as husbandmen , which will be no way derogatory to their quality , however antient their family may be . the method to put this project in execution is , first to enact ; that interest for mony should fall next year from six per cent. to five , and so on , falling every year one per cent. till it cease : and to make a law , that all those who at present possess lands under the value of 200 pounds sterling clear profits yearly , should cultivate them by servants , and sell the half of the clear profits at twenty years purchase to the first minor , woman unmarried , or person absent upon a publick account , who should offer mony for them ; and in default of such persons presenting themselves to buy , they should be obliged to sell such rents to any other persons qualified as above : and likewise to make another law , that whoever possesses lands at present to the value of 200 l. sterling clear profits yearly , or more , should at least take so much of them as may amount to that value , into their own hands . this being done , the yearly falling of the interest of mony would force some of those who might have mony at interest , to take land for it : others calling for their mony , would buy estates of the landed men , who are to sell all except so much as they cultivate themselves : and the prohibition of interest producing many small possessors , would afford abundance of rents upon land to be bought by rich men ; of which many might probably be paid out of those very lands they themselves formerly possessed . so that all sorts of men would in a little time fall into that easy method for their affairs , which is proposed by the project . what the half of the yearly clear profits of any small possessors may be , the usual valuation of lands , in order to publick taxes , which because of improvements must be frequently made , will ascertain . but it will be said , that before any such thing can every where take place in this nation , all teinds ( or tithes ) and all sorts of superiorities , must be transacted for , and sold ; that the tenures of all lands must be made allodial , to the end that every man may be upon an equal foot with another ; that this project , in order to its execution , dos suppose things , which tho perhaps they would be great blessings to the nation upon many accounts , and in particular by taking away the seeds of most law-suits , and the obstructions to all sorts of improvements ; yet are in themselves as great and considerable as the project it self . indeed i must acknowledg , that any thing calculated for a good end is ( since we must express it so ) almost always clogged with things of the same nature : for as all bad , so all good things are chained together , and do support one another . but that there is any difficulty , to a legislative power ( that is willing to do good ) of putting either this project , or the things last named in execution , i believe no man can show . sure i am , that it never was nor can be the interest of any prince or commonwealth , that any subject should in any manner depend upon another subject : and that it is the interest of all good governments at least to encourage a good sort of husbandry . i know these proposals , by some men who aim at nothing but private interest , will be looked upon as visionary : it is enough for me , that in themselves , and with regard to the nature of the things , they are practicable ; but if on account of the indisposition of such men to receive them , they be thought impracticable , it is not to be accounted strange ; since if that indisposition ought only to be considered , every thing directed to a good end is such . many other proposals might be made to the parliament for the good of this nation , where every thing is so much amiss , and the publick good so little regarded . amongst other things , to remove the present seat of the government , might deserve their consideration : for as the happy situation of london has bin the principal cause of the glory and riches of england , so the bad situation of edinburgh has bin one great occasion of the poverty and uncleanliness in which the greater part of the people of scotland live . a proposal likewise for the better education of our youth would be very necessary : and i must confess i know no part of the world where education is upon any tolerable foot . but perhaps i have presumed too much in offering my opinion upon such considerable matters as those which i have treated . since i finished the preceding discourses i am informed , that if the present parliament will not comply with the design of continuing the army , they shall immediately be dissolved , and a new one called . at least those of the presbyterian perswasion , who expect no good from a new parliament , are to be frighted with the dissolution of the present ( which has established their church-government ) and by that means induced to use their utmost endeavours with the members for keeping up the army , and promoting the designs of ill men : but i hope no presbyterian will ever be for evil things that good may come of them ; since thereby they may draw a curse upon themselves instead of a blessing . they will certainly consider , that the interest which they ought to embrace , as well upon the account of prudence , as of justice and duty , is that of their country ; and will not hearken to the insinuations of ill men who may abuse them , and when they have obtained the continuation of the army , endeavour to perswade his majesty and the parliament , to alter the present government of the church , by telling them , that presbyterian government is in its nature opposite to monarchy , that they maintain a rebellious principle of defensive arms , and that a church government more sutable and subservient to monarchy ought to be established . now if at this time the presbyterians be true to the interest of their country , all those who love their country , tho they be not of that perswasion , will stand by them in future parliaments , when they shall see that they oppose all things tending to arbitrary power : but if they abandon and betray their country , they will fall unpitied . they must not tell me , that their church can never fall , since it is the true church of god. if it be the true church of god , it needs no crooked arts to support it . but i hope they will not deny that it may fall under persecution ; which they will deserve , if they go along with the least ill thing to maintain it . finis . a most noble speech spoken by the lord cambel of lorne, one of his majesties most honourable privie counsell of scotland. moving the lords house in scotland, in his maiesties presence, for the prevention of such advantages; whereby incendiaries may in the vacancy of parliaments, any way extort from his highnesse proclamations, to inforce the bringing in of innovations into the kirke; or confirming of monopolies, that so all oppressions may be removed from his majesties subjects of both kingdomes. as also, an honourable reply made by the lord lowden, against such, who objected against his former speech. argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a75560 of text r11251 in the english short title catalog (thomason e199_15 e199_16). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 3 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a75560 wing a3662 thomason e199_15 thomason e199_16 estc r11251 99858966 99858966 157514 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a75560) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 157514) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 35:e199[15], 35:e199[16]) a most noble speech spoken by the lord cambel of lorne, one of his majesties most honourable privie counsell of scotland. moving the lords house in scotland, in his maiesties presence, for the prevention of such advantages; whereby incendiaries may in the vacancy of parliaments, any way extort from his highnesse proclamations, to inforce the bringing in of innovations into the kirke; or confirming of monopolies, that so all oppressions may be removed from his majesties subjects of both kingdomes. as also, an honourable reply made by the lord lowden, against such, who objected against his former speech. argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. loudoun, john campbell, earl of, 1598-1663. scotland. parliament. house of lords. [8] p. printed by b. alsop, london : 1641. lord cambel of lorne = archibald campbell, future marquis of argyll. signatures: a⁴. the second speech is identified as thomason e.199[16]. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng great britain -politics and government -1625-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1625-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -religion -17th century -early works to 1800. a75560 r11251 (thomason e199_15 e199_16). civilwar no a most noble speech spoken by the lord cambel of lorne, one of his majesties most honourable privie counsell of scotland.: moving the lords argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of 1641 918 0 0 0 0 1 0 109 f the rate of 109 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the f category of texts with 100 or more defects per 10,000 words. 2007-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-04 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-05 jonathan blaney sampled and proofread 2007-05 jonathan blaney text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a most noble speech spoken by the lord cambel of lorne . one of his majesties most honourable privie counsell of scotland . moving the lords hovse in scotland , in his maiesties presence , for the prevention of such advantages ; whereby incendiaries may in the vacancy of parliaments , any way extort from his highnesse proclamations , to inforce the bringing in of innovations into the kirke ; or confirming of monopolies , that so all oppressions may be removed from his majesties subjects of both kingdomes . as also , an honourable reply made by the lord lowden , against such , who objected against his former speech . london , printed by b. alsop , 1641. a most noble speech spoken by the earle of argile , lord of lorne , &c. competitour for the chancellor-ship . my lords , what was more to bee wished for on earth , then the great happinesse , this day wee enjoy ? viz. to see his royall majesty , our native soveraigne , and his loyall subjects of both kingdomes , so really reconciled , and united : that his maiesty is piously pleased to grant unto us his subiects , our lawfull demands concerning religion and liberties , and wee his subjects of both nations , cheerfully rendring to his maiesty , that duty , affection , and assistance , which he hath just cause to expect from good people , and each nation concurring in a brotherly amity , unity , and concord , one towards the other ? o what tongue is able to expresse the honour and praise due to that great and good god , who in those late commotions , suffered not the prudent counsels of either kingdomes to despaire of the safety of either commonwealth : but through his blessing to their painfull and prudent endeavours , hath wrought such a happinesse for us , that after the great toyle and trouble , wee have so long on both sides endured , we may now each man , with his wife , children , and friends , under his owne vine , and figtree ( and all under his maiesties gracious protection ) refresh himselfe with the sweet fruits of peace : which i beseech the lord of peace make perpetuall to both nations . now my earnest desire is , that our best studies and endeavours , may be spent in contriving , and enacting such wholesome lawes ; whereby ( as much as in us lyes ) the opportunity and occasion of producing such calamities , as lately threatned to fall upon both nations , may be prevented , if in any age hereafter such miscreants shall goe about to attempt it . it is notorious , that the late incendiaries that occasioned the great differences , betwixt his maiesty and his subjects , tooke much advantage and courage , by the too long intermission of the happy constitution of parliaments . in the vacancy of which , they by false information , incensed his maiesty against his loyall subiects ; and by their vile insinuations extorted from his highnesse proclamations , for obedience to their innovations in the kirk , and pattents for proiects : whereby the poore subiect was both polled , and oppressed in his estate , and enthralled in his conscience . and thus by their wicked practises , his maiesty was distasted , and his subiects generally discontented : in so much , that had not the great mercy of god prevented them , they had made an obstruction betwixt his maiesty , and his liege people , and had broken those mutuall & indissoluble bonds of protection and allegeance . whereby j hope his majesty , and his loyall subjects of all three kingdomes , will be ever bound together : to which let all the subiects say , amen . my lords , the distaste of his majesty , nor discontents of his subiects , could never have growne to that height they did ( nor consequently have produced such effects ) had there not bin such an interposition by those innovators and projectors , betwixt his majesty our glorious sunne , and us , his loyall subjects : that his goodnesse could neither appeare to us , nor their disloyalty and our obedience to him . for no sooner was that happy constellation , the parliament in england raised , and those vaporous clouds dissipated ; but his maiesties goodnesse , his subiects loyalty , and their treachery evidently appeared . our brethren of england finding the intermission of parliaments , to be prejudiciall and dangerous to the state , have taken a course for the frequent holding of them ; whose prudent example , j desire may be our patterne : forthwith to obtaine his maiesties royall assent for the same . by which meanes , his maiesty may in due time , heare , and redresse the grievances of his subjects , and his subjects cheerefully ( as need shall require ) ayd and assist his maiesty : and not onely the domestique peace , and quiet of each kingdome preserved ; but likewise all nationall differences ( if any happen ) by the wisedome of the assemblies of both kingdomes , from time to time , reconciled and determined , to the perpetuating of the happy peace , and vnion of both nations . a letter from the meeting of the estates of the kingdom of scotland to the king of england, in answer to his majesties letter, direct to them ... edinburgh, march 23. 1689. scotland. convention of estates. 1689 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92573 wing s1281 estc r43920 42476327 ocm 42476327 151321 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92573) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 151321) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2255:1) a letter from the meeting of the estates of the kingdom of scotland to the king of england, in answer to his majesties letter, direct to them ... edinburgh, march 23. 1689. scotland. convention of estates. 1 sheet ([1] p.). [s.n.], edinburgh : printed in the year, 1689. concerning the preserving the protestant religion and a proposal of union. reproduction of original in: william andrews clark memorial library, university of california, los angeles. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -foreign relations -great britain -early works to 1800. great britain -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. great britain -history -william and mary, 1689-1702. scotland -history -1689-1745. broadsides -london (england) -17th century. 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-07 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a letter from the meeting of the estates of the kingdom of scotland , to the king of england , in ansvver to his majesties letter , direct to them . may it please your majesty , as religion , liberty and law are the dearest concerns of mankind , so the deep sense of the extream hazards these were exposed to , must produce suitable returns from the kingdom of scotland to your majesty , whom in all sincerity and gratitude , we acknowledge to be under god , our great and seasonable deliverer ; and we heartily congratulat , that as god has honoured your majesty to be an eminent instrument for the preservation of his truth , so he hath rewarded your undertakings with success , in the considerable progress which you have made in delivering us , and in preserving to us the protestant religion . we return our most dutiful thanks to your majesty , for your accepting the administration of publick affairs , and conveening the estates of this kingdom ; and we shall with all convenient diligence , take your gracious letter into our consideration , hoping shortly , by the blessing of god , to fall upon such resolutions , as may be acceptable to your majesty , secure the protestant religion , and establish the government , laws and liberties of this kingdom upon solid foundations , most agreeable to the general good and inclination of the people . as to the proposal of the union , we doubt not your majesty will so dispose that matter , that there may be an equal readiness in the kingdom of england to accomplish it , as one of the best means for securing the happiness of these nations , and setting a lasting peace . vve have hitherto , and still shall endeavour to avoid animosities or prejudice , which might disturb our councils , that as we design the publick good , so it may be done with the general concurrence and approbation of the nation : in the mean time , we desire the continuance of your majesties care and protection towards us in all our concerns , whereof the kind expressions in your gracious letter , have given us full assurance , signed in name of us the estates of this kingdom of scotland , by our president , may it please your majesty , your majesties most humble , most faithful and obedient servant , hamilton p. edinburgh , march 23. 1689. edinburgh , printed in the year , 1689. a perfect description of the people and countrey of scotland weldon, anthony, sir, d. 1649? this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a65394 of text r33573 in the english short title catalog (wing w1277a). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 13 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 12 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a65394 wing w1277a estc r33573 13523605 ocm 13523605 99948 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a65394) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 99948) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1559:17) a perfect description of the people and countrey of scotland weldon, anthony, sir, d. 1649? howell, james, 1594?-1666. [2], 21 p. printed for rich. lownds, london : 1659. variously attributed to weldon and to james howell. reproduction of original in the harvard university library. eng scotland -anecdotes. a65394 r33573 (wing w1277a). civilwar no a perfect description of the people and countrey of scotland weldon, anthony, sir 1659 2527 2 0 0 0 0 0 8 b the rate of 8 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the b category of texts with fewer than 10 defects per 10,000 words. 2004-11 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-12 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2005-01 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2005-01 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a perfect description of the people and countrey of scotland . london . printed for rich. lownds . 1659. a perfect description of scotland . first for the country , i must confess it is good for those that possess it , and too bad for others , to be at the charge to conquer it . the air might be wholsom , but for the stinking people that inhabit it . the ground might be fruitful , had they wit to manure it . their beasts be generally smal , women only excepted , of which sort there are none greater in the whole world . there is great store of fowl too , as foul-houses , foul-sheets , foul-linen , foul-dishes and pots , foul-trenchers , and napkins ; with which sort , we have bin forcaed to say , as the children did with their fowl in the wilderness . they have good store of fish too , and good for those that can eat it raw ; but if it come once into their hands , it is worse than if it were three days old : for their butter and cheese , i will not meddle withal at this time , nor no man else at any time that loves his life . they have great store of deer , but they are so far from the place where i have been , that i had rather believe , than go to disprove it : i confess , all the deer i met withal , was dear lodgings , dear horse-meat , and dear tobaco , and english beer . as for fruit , for their grandsire adams sake , they never planted any ; and for other trees , had christ been betrayed in this country , ( as doubtless he should , had he come as a stranger ) judas had sooner found the grace of repentance , than a tree to hang himself on . they have many hills , wherein they say is much treasure , but they shew none of it ; nature hath only discovered to them some mines of coal , to shew to what end he created them . i saw little grass , but in their pottage : the thistle is not given them of nought , for it is the fairest flower in their garden . the word hay is heathen-greek unto them ; neither man nor beast knows what it means . corn is reasonable plenty at this time , for since they heard of the kings comming , it hath been as unlawful for the common people to eate wheat , as it was in the old time for any , but the priests , to eat shew bread . they prayed much for his comming , and long fasted for his welfare ; but in the more plain sense , that he might fare the better : all his followers were welcome , but his guard ; for those they say , are like paraoh's leane-kine , and threaten dearth wheresoever they come : they could perswade the footmen , that oaten-cakes would make them long-winded ; & the children of the chappel they have brought to eat of them , for the maintenance of their voyces . they say our cooks are too sawcy , and for grooms & coachmen , they wish them to give to their horses , no worse than they eat themselves ; they commend the brave minds of the pentioners , and the gentlemen of the bed-chambers , which choose rather to go to taverns , than to be alwaies eating of the kings provision ; they likewise do commend the yeomen of the buttery and cellar , for their readiness , and silence , in that they will hear 20 knocks , before they will answer one . they perswade the trumpetters , that fasting is good for men of that quality ; for emptiness , they say , causes wind , and wind causes a trumpet to sound well . the bringing of heraulds , they say , was a needless charge , they all know their pedegrees well enough , and the harbengers might have been spared , sit●ence they brought so many beds with them ; & of two evils , since the least should be chosen , they wish the beds might remain with them , and poor harbengers keep their places , and do their office , as they return : his hangings they desire might likewise be left as reliques , to put them in minde of his majesty ; and they promise to dispense with the wooden images , but for those graven images in his new beautified chappel , they threaten to pull down soon after his departure , and to make of them a burnt-offering , to appease the indignation they imagined conceived against them in the brest of the almighty , for suffering such idolatry to enter into their kingdom ; the organ , i think will find mercy , because ( as they say ) there is some affinity between them and the bag-pipes . the shipper that brought the singing men , with their papistical vestments , complains that he hath been much troubled with a strange singing in his head , ever since they came aboard his ship . for remedy whereof the parson of the parish hath perswaded him to sell that prophane vessel , and to distribute the money among the faithful brethren . for his majesties entertainment , i must needs ingeniously confess , he was received into the parish of edenburg ( for a city i cannot call it ) with great shouts of joy , but no shews of charge for pageants ; they hold them idolatrous things , and not fit to be used in so reformed a place ; from the castle they gave him some pieces of ordinance , which surely he gave them , since he was king of engl. and at the entrance of the town , they presented him with a golden bason , which was carried before him on mens shoulders to his palace , i think , from whence it came . his majesty was conveyed by the younkers of the town , which were about 100 halberds , ( dearly shall they rue it , in regard of the charge ) to the cross , and so to the high church , where the only bell they had , stood on tip-toe to behold his sweet face ; where i must intreat you to spare him , for an hour i lost him . in the mean time to report the speeches of the people , concerning his never exampled entertainment , were to make his discourse too tedious unto you , as the sermon was to those that were constrained to endure it . after the preachment , he was conducted by the same halberds , unto his palace , of which i forbear to speak , because it was a place sanctified by his divine majesty , only i wish it had been better walled , for my friends sake that waited on him . now i will begin briefly to speak of the people , according to their degrees and qualities ; for the lords spiritual , they may well be termed so indeed ; for they are neither fish nor flesh , but what it shall please their earthly god , the king , to make them . obedience is better than sacrifice , and therefore they make a mock at martyrdom , saying , that christ was to dye for them , and not they for him . they will rather subscribe , than surrender , and rather dispence with small things , than trouble themselves with great disputation ; they will rather acknowledge the king to be their head , then want wherewith to pamper their bodies . they have taken great pains and trouble to compass their bishopricks , and they will not leave them for a trifle ; for the deacons , whose defects will not lift them up to dignities , all their study is to disgrace them that have gotten the least degree above them ; and because they cannot bishop , they proclaim they never heard of any . the scriptures , say they , speak of deacons and elders , but not a word of bishops . their discourses are full of detraction ; their sermons nothing but railing ; and their conclusions nothing but heresies and treasons . for their religion they have , i confess they have it above reach , and god willing i will never reach for it . they christen without the cross , marry without the ring , receive the sacrament without reverence , dye without repentance , and bury without divine service ; they keep no holy-days , nor acknowledge any saint but s. andrew , who they said , got that honour by presenting christ with an oaten cake , after his forty days fast . they say likewise , that he that translated the bible , was the son of a maulster , because it speaks of a miracle done by barley loves , whereas they swear they were oaten-cakes , and that no other bread of that quantity could have sufficed so nany thousands . they use no prayer at all , for they say it is needless , god knows their minds without pratling ; and what he doth , he loves to do it freely . their sabbaths exercise , is a preaching in the forenoon , and a persecuting in the afternoon ; they go to church in the forenoon to hear the law , and to the crags and mountains in the afternoon to louze themselves . they hold their noses if you talk of bear-baiting , and stop their ears , if you speak of a play : fornication they hold but a pastime , wherein mans ability is approved , & a womans fertility discovered ; at adultery they shake their heads ; theft they rail at ; murther they wink at ; & blasphemy they laugh at ; they think it impossible to lose the way to heaven if they can but leave rome behind them . to be opposite to the pope , is to be presently with god ; to conclude , i am perswaded , that if god and his angels , at the last day , should come down in their whitest garments , they would run away , and cry , the children of the chappel are come again to torment us , let us flie from the abomination of these boys , and hide our selves in the mountains . for the lords temporal and spiritual , temporizing gentlemen , if i were apt to speak of any , i could not speak much of them ; only i must let you know , they are not scottishmen , for assoon as they fall from the breast of the beast their mother , their careful sire posts them away for france , which as they pass , the sea sucks from them that which they have suckt from their rude dams ; there they gather new flesh new blood , new manners , and there they learn to put on their cloaths , and then return into their countries , to wear them out ; there they learn to stand , to speak , and to discourse , and congee , to court women , and to complement with men . they spared for no cost to honour the king , nor for no complemental courtesie to welcom their country-men ; their followers are their fellows , their wives their slaves , their horses their masters , & their swords their judges ; by reason whereof , they have but few laborers , and those not very rich : their parliaments hold but three days , their statutes three lines , and their suits are determined in a manner in three words , or very few more , &c. the wonders of their kingdom are these ; the lord chancellor , he is believed ; the master of the rolls , well spoken of ; and the whole councel , who are the judges for all causes , are free from suspition of corruption . the country , although it be mountainous , affords no monsters , but women , of which , the greatest sort , ( as countesses , and ladies ) are kept like lions in iron grates ; the merchants wives are also prisoners , but not in so strong a hold ; they have wooden cages , like our boar franks , through which , sometimes peeping to catch the air , we are almost choaked with the sight of them ; the greatest madness amongst the men , is jealousie ; in that they fear what no man that hath but two of his sences will take from them . the ladies are of opinion , that susanna could not be chast , because she bathed so often . pride is a thing bred in their bones , and their flesh naturally abhors cleanliness ; their breath commonly stinks of pottage , their linen of piss , their hands of pigs turds , their body of sweat , and their splay-feet never offend in socks . to be chained in marriage with one of them , were to be tyed to a dead carkass , and cast into a stinking ditch ; formosity and a dainty face , are things they dream not of . the oyntments they most frequently use amongst them , are brimstone and butter for the scab , and oyl of bays , and stave-sacre . i protest , i had rather be the meanest servant of the two of my pupils chamber-maid , than to be the master minion to the fairest countess i have yet discovered . the sin of curiosity of oyntments , is but newly crept into the kingdom , and i do not think will long continue . to draw you down by degrees from the citizens wives , to the country gentlewomen , and convey you to common dames in sea-coal lane , that converse with rags ▪ and marrow-bones , are things of mineral race ; every whore in houndsditch is an helena ; and the greasie bauds in turnbal-street , are greekish dames , in comparison of these . and therefore to conclude , the men of old did no more wonder , that the great messias should be born in so poor a town as bethlem in judea , than i do wonder , that so brave a prince as king james , should be born in so stinking a town as edenburg , in lowsie scotland . finis . [act] and order of council, for sequestrating the rents of such as are in rebellion against their majesties at edinburgh, the 3d day of january, 1690. acts. 1690 scotland. privy council. 1690 approx. 10 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92630 wing s1391 estc r226019 99896346 99896346 154347 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92630) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 154347) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2413:2) [act] and order of council, for sequestrating the rents of such as are in rebellion against their majesties at edinburgh, the 3d day of january, 1690. acts. 1690 scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, by order of privy council, edinburgh : anno dom. 1690. steele notation: and archibald and. copy filmed at umi microfilm early english books 1641-1700 reel 2413 torn at top left corner, affecting title. reproduction of original in the folger shakespeare library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng rent -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 pip willcox sampled and proofread 2009-01 pip willcox text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion 〈◊〉 and order of council , for sequestrating the rents of such as are in rebellion against their majesties . at edinburgh , the 3d day of january , 1690. the lords of his majesties privy council considering , that by the laws and acts of parliament of this kingdom , and particularly by the 2d . act , 12. parl : k : ja. 2. it is expresly provided and declared , that where any person or persons are suspected or scandelled of treason , that they be taken and remain in firmance , and their goods under sure borrows , untill they suffer an assize , and be tryed , whether they be guilty or not ; and that the persons afternamed , viz. john earl of melfort , sir archibald kennedy of cullean , collonel _____ cannon , john late viscount of d●ndee , _____ earl of dumfermling , _____ earl of buchan , _____ viscount of frendraught , _____ lord dunkell , mr. colin m ckenzie uncle to the earl of seaforth , sir john drummond of machany , sir william wallace of cragie , sir james hamilton of eliston , _____ of archarach , _____ crawfurd younger of ardmillan and _____ crawfurd his brother , mr. david graham brother to the late viscount of _____ dundee , _____ robertson of strouan , _____ stuart of ladywell , _____ ogilvy of clova , james edmiston of newtoun of down , _____ grant of balindalloch , sir ewen cameron of lochel , _____ camero● his eldest son , sir donald mcdonald of slait , _____ m cnauchton of dundorow , major _____ middleton , ensign _____ winster , captain _____ charters , captain john ramsay , son to the late bishop of ross , major william grahame of boquhaple , captain patrick blair , lately captain in the earl of dunmores regiment of dragoons , _____ cleiland of foskin , halyburton of pitcur , _____ grant of glenmoristoun , _____ frazer of foyer , _____ blair of glessclune , archibald m cdonald of largie , _____ m cdonald his brother , alexander m callister of loup , _____ m cilvernock of oib , donald m cneil of galochellie , hector m cneil his cousin german , john m cnauchton uncle to the laird of m cnauchton , _____ m cnauchton his two sons , stuart of appein , john stuart of ardsheil , stuarts his brethren , alexander stuart of innernahyle , james stuart of fasnacloich , john stuart fiar thereof , alexander m cdonald alias m cean of glencoe , m cdonalds his two sons , m cdonald of auchatrichaten , sir john m cclean , laird of m cclean , hector m cclean of lochbuy , _____ m cclean of kingarloch , _____ m cclean of kinlochhalin , mr. alexander m cclean , late commissar of argyle , _____ m cclean of coll , _____ m cclean of tarbet , _____ m ccleans three sons , to charles m cclean in arros , _____ m cclean of ardgour elder , and _____ m cclean of ardgour younger , his son , _____ m cclean grand child to the said laird of ardgour elder , john cameron of glendishorie , _____ cameron his brother , _____ cameron of callort , _____ m cmartin alias cameron of latterfindlay , _____ cameron his eldest son , _____ cameron of glenivish , _____ m cquar of uluva , _____ m cdonald captain of clanronnald , _____ m cdonald of glengarie , m cdonald of ochterraw , _____ m cdonald of ferset , _____ m cdonald of benbecula , _____ m cdonald of keppoch , major duncan menzies _____ stuart of ballachen elder , alexand●r stuart his brother , farquherson of inverrey , mr. robert stuart late minister at balquhither , andrew clerk feuer in down , m cdonald younger of slate , robert stuart brother to _____ stuart of annat , _____ grahame of duntruin , william livineston of kilsyth , captain james murray , lieutennent james murray , captain lieutennent _____ crichton , lieutennent collonel donald m cgreigor , _____ m cgreigor of braikley , _____ chisholm of strathglass , _____ chisholm his uncle , patrick stuart alias vic domachie , m cinteirn wodsetter in athole , john stuart wodsetter of salichan , dougald stuart of ach. 〈◊〉 , alexander stuart wodsetter in baloch , dougal stuart of auchicon , mr. archibald m ccalman of ●rivain , john m ceanroy , alias m ccoll , and ewen his eldest son , john m ccoll , portioners of glasdrum , john reid alias m cnaughton feuar of finchocken in lismore ; have been in actual rebellion , and in arms against their majsties government and laws , or at least accessory to , and art and part of the crimes of treason and rebellion , and many of them are yet continuing to perpetrat and carry on their wicked designs against their majesties interest , and for disturbing the publick peace of the kingdom ; and it being requisit and necessary , that these persons , and the successors of such of them as are dead , should be disabled from the prosecution of such rebellious practices , by withholding from them their maills and duties , debts , sums of money , and others due to them ; therefore the saids lords of his majesties privy council , do hereby in their majesties names require and command , the sheriffs of the whole respective shires within this kingdom , and the stewarts of the stewartries of kirkcudbright and orkney , and their deputs or clerks of court , and in case of their absence or neglect , the town clerks of the head burghs within the said shires and stewartries , immediatly upon receipt hereof , to cause messengers at arms , or sheriff officers , conjunctly and severally , pass , and in their majesties name and authority , by vertue hereof , fence , arrest , and sequestrat in the hands of the vassals , tennents , cottars , feuars , fermors , or any other person or persons whatsomever , subject and lyable in payment , or adebted and resting , owing to the forenamed persons , rebels , or the successors of them that are dead , all and sundry the maills farms , kanes , customes , casualities , profits , duties , goods , gear , and others whatsomever , due , adebted , resting and owing by them to the forenamed persons , who are , or have been in actual rebellion against their majesties authority , and laws , or accessory to , or art and part of the crimes above-specified , by bond , word , writ , promise , paction , condition , or any other manner of way whatsomever , and that for the year of god , 1689. and in time coming , and the rests of preceeding years ; and likewise , all other debts , sums of money , and others whatsomever , due , adebted , and resting , owing by them , to the forenamed persons any manner of way whatsomever , wherever or in whose hands soever the same can be apprehended , to remain under sure fence and arrestment , ay and while the lords of his majesties privy council or thesaury shall give order , how the same shall be disposed of for their majesties use , in manner following , viz. where there is tutus accessus in the hands of the foresaids persons personally , or at their dwelling-places , by delivering to every one of them a short copy , subscribed by the saids messengers , or sheriff-officers ; and where there is not tutus accessus , by crying of three several oyesses , open proclamation and publick reading thereof at the mercat-crosse of the head-burgh of the saids shires and stewartries where they live , or where their lands and estates lies , and affixing and leaving a just double upon the saids crosses , containing upon the end thereof , a copy of the said general arrestment , signed by the messenger : and also to make strick inquiry after all persons in whose hands the foresaids arrestments should be made , and lay on the same accordingly , and with all convenient diligence , after so doing , to return to sir william lockhart his majesties sollicitor , both the particular executions made in the foresaids persons hands personally , or at their dwelling-places , and the general ones made at the mercat-crosses , as they will be answerable ; for doing of all which , this to the sheriff principal , their deputes , clerks of courts , messengers , sheriff officers , and all others concluded , shall be a sufficient warrant . and ordains thir presents to be printed , and published accordingly . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save king william and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , by order of privy council , anno dom. 1690. proclamation, discharging persons to be brought from the netherlands without passes. scotland. privy council. 1694 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05570 wing s1753 estc r219059 52528950 ocm 52528950 179021 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05570) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179021) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:10) proclamation, discharging persons to be brought from the netherlands without passes. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to their most excellent majesties, edinburgh : 1694. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. intentional blank spaces in text. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the sixth day of september. and of our reign the sixth year, 1694. signed: gilb. eliot, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng international travel regulations -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign relations -netherlands -early works to 1800. netherlands -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-09 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-09 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion proclamation , discharging persons to be brought from the netherlands without passes . william and mary by the grace of god , king and queen of great-britain , france and ireland , defenders of the faith ; to _____ macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as , the merchants and skippers , and others trafficking and passing betwixt this our antient kingdom , and the provinces of the netherlands do presume , to bring into this kingdom , persons obnoxius to our laws , and notourly disaffected to our government : as also , deserters from our forces in the said parts , for remeed whereof , we with advice of the lords of our privy council , have thought fit , hereby strictly to prohibite and discharge all merchants , masters , skippers , or mates and mariners , and passengers , in any ships ; barks , or vessels ; to bring home into this kingdom , or any of the poris , or coasts thereof , any person or persons from the said netherlands , unless they have passes in manner following , viz. every one of the saids persons not being a souldier , a pass from the secretaries of this kingdom , or their deput attending our person in the said netherlands for the time ; and every souldier or other person who have served in our armies , a pass from the colonel of the regiment wherein they served , or a superiour officer ; which passes are to be presented to the conservator of the priviledges of this our kingdom , residing in the said provinces , or his deput in his absence , who is to make a list of the saids persons , having and producing their passes , as said is , and to deliver the same subscribed with his hand , to the master or skipper of the ship , for his warrand , to bring home the persons named therein : as also , the said master or skipper at his arrival within the river of forth , or any port or creik thereof , shall , before he suffer any of the persons contained in the said list , to go a-shore out of his vessel , present the foresaid list to our advocat or sollicitor , at edinburgh for the time , or in their absence , to one or other of the lords of our privy council , and receive his order , for setting of the said persons a-shore ; and if the vessel shall arrive at any other port , or coast within the kingdom , then the skipper shall present his said l●st , to a magistrat of the next burgh-royal , who shall be obliged either to take caution of the persons contained therein , that they shall present themselves , when called , by the lords of our privy council : or at least , if they cannot find caution , they shall enact themselves , both , under a reasonable penalty , to present themselves , as said is : which bonds and acts , the said magistrat , is to transmit with all diligence , to the clerks of our privy council , within a fourthnight at farthest , after receiving of the same : and the saids magistrats having taken the saids bonds or subscriptions , are then to give order for the persons coming a-shore ; certifying the said merchants , masters , skippers , mates , mariners , and passengers , and magistrats above-mentioned , that if any of them fail in the premisses , they shall be lyable in the penalty of five hundreth merks scots , each of them , toties , quoties , to be payed to our receiver-general , for our use : and farther , requiring our solicitor , to use exact diligence , to see thir presents execute , and the foresaid penalties , when incurred payed . our will is herefore , and we charge you straitly and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and to the mercat-crosses of the remanent head-burghs of the several shires within this kingdom ; and also to the several sea-ports towns within the same , ( and appoints the sheriffs of the several shires , to see thir presents published at the several sea-towns within their respective jurisdictions ) and there , by open proclamation , make publication of the premisses , that none pretend ignorance . and ordains thir presents to be printed . given under our signet at edinburgh , the sixth day of september . and of our reign the sixth year , 1694. per actum deminorum secreti concilii . gilb : eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save king vvilliam and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew and●●●●● , printer to their most excellent majesties . 1694. the scout of cockeny st. serfe, thomas, sir, fl. 1668. 1661 approx. 11 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 4 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-01 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a62082 wing s6321c estc r220103 99831532 99831532 35995 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a62082) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 35995) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2046:8) the scout of cockeny st. serfe, thomas, sir, fl. 1668. 7, [1] p. for the company of stationers at earls-ferry, [printed at cockenay [i.e. edinburgh] : [ca. 1661]] by sir thomas st. serfe. caption title. imprint from colophon; actual place of publication from and date conjectured by wing. with a final advertisement leaf. reproduction of the original in the harvard university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1660-1688 -humor -early works to 1800. 2000-00 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2001-11 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2001-12 tcp staff (michigan) sampled and proofread 2001-12 tcp staff (michigan) text and markup reviewed and edited 2002-01 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the scout of cockeny . neptune being puffed up with the flatterers of the greek and latine scriblers that skirts the hadriatick and mediterian sea , had the vanity to swagger in the ocean , and range about strange coasts to increase the number of his poetical parasits , so with his fish knight errantry , he rushed through the straits , and turned his snout towards the north , where in half a dayes swiming he reached the coast of portugal , without any mischance , except a slender crack in his lerbord finn that he got as he passed by the birling islands ; this did not at all startle him from his course to the artick pole , but most jocundly held on till he came to the bay of biscay , where indeed his godship was discovered to be mortall ; for the billowing of these waves set his watery stomack a tottering , and if there had not been a quack in the navy that comforted him with one of buchursts pectorall loranges , he was fair to have gasped his last , with great difficulty he rolled through that raging gulffe , and no sooner came into smoother water , but he prickt up his ears , streacht his crist , brandished his triton with as dreadfull and huffing an aspect as the ale-house hectors will tosse notched belboes in presence of their countrey kindred ; in this posture and rate he sneered away , seeeking for the mouth of the channell , when straight he was discovered by a welch man of war , who no sooner came within distance , but our bold brittish gallyfoyst conceived by his snotty beard , that he was a hollander come from malago , drunk with peettersemin , and to chastise his intemperance , because it was not done with metheglin , he immediately from his fore castle snuffed a cast of culverins , which did so smite the aquatick monster upon the weather jaw , that he was forced to turn his tail to that thundering storm , and by a great fa●t which was their appointed signe of retreat , he and the rest of his briny mirmidons run towards the coast of france , where it was the fortune of his vice admiral , that was a fidler of flushing mounted on a mar-maid to spend his bowspreet upon the cardinal islands , and if happly monsiur de fonquets gallies of bell-isle had not come to his rescue , the flegmatick rodomontado had lost that musick which makes the burgamasters annakies of amsterdam yawn after rope dauncers . from sunny-side . one of our philosophers wives according to the custome of the coast-side gossips , last night skimmered away to bourdeux to swill of the new wine , upon her return she touched at goree where opdam lies ; she reports that at her being there , one doctor abraham kesse wrought a speedy cure on opdam , both as to his gout and flux , the one he stopped with a new discovered cheese made of geese milk , the other he disolved with a cataplasm composed of fish guts : but the physitian had but a slender reward for not prolonging the cure , there being now no shift left to shelter his shamefastnesse at sea : in the mean time , this cloven mercury hath brought a shrewd jealousie upon her self , for making all that voyage in 24. hours , and it 's without all peradventure to be expected the first oyster boat that 's cast away , but her winding-sheet will be converted into a tar barrell , else the world is much mistaken of the discretion of their justice of peace . from lochquaber . there is a norway adventurer come here to innerlochy loadened with figs and frontiniack , and which is strange , of the countreys natural growth , and all this is produced from the industry of their accademicks ; the place that yeelds these fruits is the valeys of stravangle , and they say they cultivat the ground with no other dung but that of solin geese , and italian becca ficki , which by a wonderfull artifice , a little mixed with a charme they bring upon the place , and very orderly each first munday of the month they squat according to their tribes in the parts appointed by the surveyer of the plantation . from tinto-tope . the deputies appointed by the mineral committee of virtuosi in this place are returned from braids craigs , and bennichi , they have found as much gold in the one as will make a pick-tooth to the king of fairy , and as much silver in the other as will make a thimble to his queen ; they were very painful in their sinking search , and they conclude by many pregnant symptomes that there is both gold and silver , but before they can arrive at the right vain , they must dig within 13. inches of the antipods , which will scarcely be enterpized , unlesse persons of publick spirits will advance money to defray the expense of materials . buck-haven . one of our second rate adventurers is safely arrived from the straits , most part of her loadening is of the new sort of hooks made of venice glasse , except some furres for lynning our aldermens bulfangers . all the newes that was currant on the realto at venice , was a great report of a water combat twixt the bottle beer barge above london bridge and the bucentaure ; if it be upon a shrove tuesday about four in the evening , and the thames bottome manned by prentises , and governed by dray-men , the magnificoes and pantolonies will be at a damned losse , and they will sooner make bowling-greens of the dardanelloes than gain any thing by that bargain . from prestoun-pans . you have here an extract of a letter from our oyster consul at zurex sea , viz. that after the hogginmoggin had sleept sufficiently after a plentifull carrouse , their prudentials led them to this cautious result ( that their navy till the summer shall be disposed into several harbours , but such places as are in a capacity to steel their white livered soules with aqua-fortis and gunpouder , in order to which reer admiral bublikins is come to this place , his squadron are as followeth ; the pontius pilate of amsterdam , the simon magus of dort , the soutterkin of skeulin , the mareswin of middelburgh , the flunder of flushing , the cabaleu of camphire , the haddock of harlem , the lobster of leydan , the goliah of gorkum , the whale of workum , the buttered eggs of egmont , the salt eale of enchusen , the punck of putta , the skaite of skeedam , the oyster of oyster-capell , the whyttin of wester-capell , the mackerell of mastensleuse , the geck of gorre , the grains of brewers haven , the stock-fish of halvert sluce , the bread and cheese of beverweek , the butter of bonkes-slote , the haire-groat of horne , the beens and bacon of broad-wood . a fire ship called the brandy of the brill , two pinks , the elder and younger cutts built of rotterdam and skarlaw ; this is the true number of bublikins fleet , his historingrapher who is a redoubted classick poet in holland , under the name of iacob-vander-hogge , gave the names to all this spungy gallantry , for which he was rewarded with two barrels of pickled herring to entertain his wife who was a cast-away bloom-berry hackney ; yet the jade has turned so fruitfull there , that she frequently brings forth litters of souterkins . it s much to be feared that the heat of an english broad-side will make this wretched generation of pickled pilchers dissolve like anchoves upon a choffin-dish . killimure . the provests daughter of this place hath been labouring this two years of a most consuming green-sicknesse , but now she is most miraculously cured by the pyper of clovo ; for with half a dozen of bends of a drink stoured upon straw , he hath restored her both to stomack and complexion : this same instrumentall virtuoso is largely as well known in the mathematicks , as in medicine ; for with the drone of his pype , he makes greater discoveries in the moon , then sir sydrafall doth with his telescope : for those who tryed it , saith , they not only discover hills , woods , and rivers , but towns and castles , and those fortified in the modish manner , with bastions ravellings , half moons , counterscarps , and hornworks , and steeples with sun-dials : al italiano in point of physick , he operateth much by glisters without any other conveyance but his towl . advertisements . there is strayed out of inch-keeth a turky cock thirty inches high with vervails of purc-leen , bearing the armes of prester iohn ; who ever brings notice to iohn purdie oyster dregger in rotton-raw , shall have three skelps with a skait rump till he skyt dumplings like green geese in may. the history of cyprus , by don pantalion priapontado , with a commentary of peter aretins upon the oecominy of the queens family . the leep frog , a merry play , composed by visiguncus revell warden of the grand signiors mal retiro . if any person be so foolish as to think there is nothing contained in this gazet , or so serious , that there 's something he may be mistaken in both ; however , if any can find out the right key , our worshipfull senat of cockeney does promise to recommend him as a qualified wit , to be aenigmatical professor in any of the new established seminaries for strange discoveries . printed at cockenay for the company of stationers at earls-ferry . a proclamation concerning the coyn proclamations. 1681-03-05. scotland. privy council. 1681 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a58723 wing s1723 estc r220964 99832347 99832347 36820 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a58723) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 36820) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2058:4) a proclamation concerning the coyn proclamations. 1681-03-05. scotland. privy council. charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson [prin]ter to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom [1681] date of publication from wing. "given under our signet at edinburgh, the fifth day of march, one thousand six hundred eighty and one, and of our raign, the thretty [sic] three year." imperfect; torn at foot affecting imprint. reproduction of the original in the aberdeen city charter room. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng coinage -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-09 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-09 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation concerning the coyn. charles by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith , to _____ our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers , pursevants , or messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as by our royal prerogative , we have power to establish , or alter the matter of coyn , either native or forraign within our dominions , from time to time , as we shall find fit for the good of our subjects ; and our royal ancestors having been in constant use to raise and exalt the extrinsick value of the coyn of this kingdom , according as the neighbouring kingdoms and states have done their standarts ; and in some measure , to bear such a proportion with our neighbours , as that the coyn of this kingdom might not be exported : and whereas the value of the ounce of coyned silver hath been raised from time to time , as particularly in the year 1591. the value of the ounce of coyned silver was appointed to be fourty two shilling scots , being of eleven denier fine , which continued from that year to the year 1691 , and was then raised to three pounds ten pennies , and two sixth parts , and which has continued ever since at that value : albeit in the neighbouring kingdoms and states , the ounce of coyned silver is valued considerably above the same , which has been one great occasion of the exporting of the greatest part of the stock of our own coyn , and whereof merchandise has been , and is still made ; and the same species melted down by forraign mints and goldsmiths , and imported again in forraign species , much below our own coyn , both in weight and fineness , whereby our authority has been contemned , our people cheated and abused , and the trade and commerce of this kingdom highly prejudged ; and if the same be not timously remeided , the remnant of the stock of our own coyn will in a short time be carryed out , and nothing left but forraign species of baser monies . and some of the most considerable of the merchants of this our kingdom , having made their application to our privy council , and proposed as a fit expedient , that our four merk peices might be appointed to be current proportionally to the intrinsick value thereof , and the best of the forraign current coyn ; who having had the same ūnder serious consideration , and having received from the officers of our mint , an exact account of the intrinsick value thereof , and of all other forraign species of coyn , tollerated to be current ; and finding , that at the rate of the ounce of silver now current in other countreys , it is fit that our coyn be in some proportion with theirs in the extrinsick value . we therefore , with the advice of the lords of our privy council , do ordain and appoint , that in time coming , the ounce of our own moneys shall be in value , three pounds four shillings scots money : and to that effect , do ordain , that the four merk pieces , which are now current at fifty three shillings four pennies , shall hereafter be current at fifty six shillings , and the inferiour species of that coyn , viz. the two merk , merk , half merk , and fourty-penny-piece proportionably . and whereas it is most just , that now seing we have advanced the value of our coyn , as aforesaid , the merchants ought to have enccuragement to bring in their bulzeon with greater chearfulness , we do ordain , that whereas they did receive for each ounce of silver , payed in by them , as bulzeon of eleven denier fine , fifty five shillings nine pennies scots ; the master of the mint is now to pay out to them , for every ounce of eleven denier fine , given in by them as bulzeon , fifty eight shillings scots . and ordains all forraign species of coyn to be current as formerly ; and that these presents be printed , and published at the mercat cross of edinburgh , and other places needful , that none pretend ignorance . given under our signet at edinburgh , the fifth day of march , one thousand six hundred eighty and one , and of our raign , the thretty three year . per actum dominorum secreti concilij . wil. paterson . cl. sti. concilij . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew ander●●● 〈…〉 ter to his most sacred majesty , anne dom 16●● act of council, for burning the solemn league and covenant, and several other traiterous libels. at halyrudhouse, the fourteenth day of january, 1682 orders in council. 1682-01-14 scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1682 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92637 wing s1449 estc r230211 99899460 99899460 153552 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92637) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 153552) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2370:17) act of council, for burning the solemn league and covenant, and several other traiterous libels. at halyrudhouse, the fourteenth day of january, 1682 orders in council. 1682-01-14 scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) scotland. privy council. aut 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1682. arms 232; steele notation: majesolemn published. reproduction of original in the folger shakespeare library, washington, d.c.. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng solemn league and covenant (1643) -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion cr 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 qui mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms act of council , for burning the solemn league and covenant , and several other traiterous libels . at halyrudhouse , the fourteenth day of january , 1682. forasmuch , as albeit by the seventh act of the first session of his majesties first parliament , and the second act of the second session of that same parliament ; that oath and combination commonly called the solemn league and covenant , is condemned as treasonable , and the taking and renewing thereof by any of the subjects , is declared to be high-treason : yet in the year 1666 , and since , several desperate and incorrigible traitors , have taken upon them to renew and swear the said covenant , and to emit and publish several treasonable and scandalous libels , founded thereupon , as particularly these treasonable declarations published at rutherglen and sanquhair , the libel called cargil's covenant , and the late declaration published at lanerk upon the twelfth of this instant , entituled , the act and apologetick declaration of the true presbyterians of the church of scotland . his royal highness , his majesties high commissioner , and lords of h●s majesties privy council , to evidence the great abhorrence they have of these treasonable libels , do ordain , that upon wednesday next , being a mercat day the saids treasonable libels , viz. the solemn league and covenant , the rutherglen and sanquhair declarations , the libel called cargil ' s covenant , and the late treasonable declaration at lanerk , be publickly burnt at the cross of edinburgh , by the hand of the common hangman . and ordains the provost , bailiffs , and council of edinburgh , to be present , and to see the same solemnly done the said day , betwixt eleven and twelve hours in the forenoon , and to report an account of their obedience to the council , the next council day thereafter . and that these presents be printed and published . extracted by me , will. paterson , cl. sti. concilij . god save the king . edinbvrgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty . anno dom. 1682. his highness the prince of orange his speech to the scots lords and gentlemen with their address, and his highness his answer. with a true account of what past at their meeting in the council-chamber at whitehall, jan. 1688/9. his highness the prince of orange having caused advertise such of the scots lords and gentlemen, as were in town, met them in a room at st. james's, upon monday the seventh of january at three of the clock in the afternoon, and had this speech to them. william iii, king of england, 1650-1702. 1689 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a96572 297426215 wing w2481d 297426215 ocn 297426215 137421 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online text creation partnership. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a96572) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 137421) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2538:11, 2929:16) his highness the prince of orange his speech to the scots lords and gentlemen with their address, and his highness his answer. with a true account of what past at their meeting in the council-chamber at whitehall, jan. 1688/9. his highness the prince of orange having caused advertise such of the scots lords and gentlemen, as were in town, met them in a room at st. james's, upon monday the seventh of january at three of the clock in the afternoon, and had this speech to them. william iii, king of england, 1650-1702. 1 sheet ([2] p.) s.n.], [edinburgh : printed in the year 1689. caption title. place of publication suggested by wing (2nd ed.). date of publication taken from colophon. copy at reel 2929:16 is a replacement for incomplete w2481d on reel 2538:11. cf. wing (2nd ed.). imperfect: print show-through with some loss of text. reproductions of originals in: harvard university. library (reel 2538:11) and national library of scotland (reel 2929:16). created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. great britain -history -william and mary, 1689-1702 -early works to 1800. broadsides -england -17th century. 2007-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-06 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-07 jonathan blaney sampled and proofread 2007-07 jonathan blaney text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion his highness the prince of orange his speech to the scots lords and gentlemen ; with their address , and his highness his answer . with a true account of what past at their meeting in the council-chamber , at whitehall , jan. 1688 / 9. his highness the prince of orange having caused advertise such of the scots lords and gentlemen , as were in town , met them in a room at st. james's , upon monday the seventh of january at three of the clock in the afternoon , and had this speech to them . my lords and gentlemen , the only reason that induced me to undergo so great an undertaking , was , that i saw the laws and liberties of these kingdoms overturned , and the protestant religion in eminent danger ; and seeing you are here so many noblemen and gentlemen , i have called you together , that i may have your advice , what is to be done for securing the protestant religion , and restoring your laws and liberties , according to my declaration . as soon as his highness had retired , the lords and gentlemen went to the council chamber at white-hall , and having chosen the duke of hamilton their president , they fell a consulting , what advice was fit to be given to his highness in this conjuncture , and after some hours reasoning , they agreed upon the materials of it , and appointed the clerks , with such as were to assist them , to draw up in writing , what the meeting thought expedient , to advise his highness , and to bring it in to the meeting , the next day in the afternoon . tuesday the eighth instant , the writing was presented in the meeting , and some time being spent in reasoning about the fittest way of conveening a general meeting of the estates of scotland : at last the meeting came to agree in their opinion , and appointed the advice to be writ clean over , according to the amendments . but as they were about to part , for that dyet , the earl of arran proposed to them , as his lordships advice , that they should move the prince of orange , to desire the king to return , and call a free-parliament , which would be the best way to secure the protestant religion and property , and to heal all breaches . this proposal seemed to dissatisfy the whole meeting , and the duke of hamilton their president , father to the earl , but they presently parted . wednesday the ninth of january , they met at three of the clock in the same room , and sir patrick hume took notice of the proposal made by the earl of arran , and desired to know if there was any there that would second it : but none appearing to do it , he said , that what the earl had proposed , was evidently opposit and inimicous to his highness the prince of orange's undertaking , his declaration , and the good intentions of preserving the protestant religion , and of restoring their laws and liberties exprest in it . and furth●● desired th●● the meeting should decl●●e this to be their opinion of it . the lord cardross seconded sir patricks motion ; it was answered by the duke of hamilton , president of the meeting , that their business was to prepare an advice to be offered to the prince ; and the advice being now ready to go to the vote , there was no need that the meeting should give their sense of the earls proposal , which neither before nor after sir patricks motion , any had pretended to owne or second ; so that it was fallen , and out of doors ; and that the vote of the meeting , upon the advice brought in by their order , would sufficiently declare their opinion : thus being seconded by the earl of sutherland , the lord cardross , and sir patrick did acquiesce ; and the meeting voted unanimously the address following . a vindication of the government in scotland during the reign of king charles ii against mis-representations made in several scandalous pamphlets to which is added the method of proceeding against criminals, as also some of the phanatical covenants, as they were printed and published by themselves in that reign / by sir george mackenzie ... mackenzie, george, sir, 1636-1691. 1691 approx. 141 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 34 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-08 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a50913 wing m213 estc r11146 13115516 ocm 13115516 97748 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a50913) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 97748) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 427:3) a vindication of the government in scotland during the reign of king charles ii against mis-representations made in several scandalous pamphlets to which is added the method of proceeding against criminals, as also some of the phanatical covenants, as they were printed and published by themselves in that reign / by sir george mackenzie ... mackenzie, george, sir, 1636-1691. 66, [2] p. printed for j. hindmarsh ..., london : 1691. "licensed, sept. 19, 1691. rob. midgley"--p. [2] at end. advertisements: p. [1] at end. reproduction of original in cambridge university library. "the declaration and testimony of the true-presbyterian, anti-prelatick, and anti-erastian, persecuted-party in scotland" (p. 54-57) signed: al gibson and will. paterson. "a blasphemous and treasonable paper, emitted by the phanatical undersubscribers, on may 1, 1681": p. 57-66. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng covenanters -scotland. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688. 2004-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-04 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-06 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2004-06 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-07 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a vindication of the government in scotland . during the reign of king charles ii. against mis-representations made in several scandalous pamphlets . to which is added the method of proceeding against criminals , as also some of the phanatical covenants , as they were printed and published by themselves in that reign . by sir george mackenzie , late lord advocate , there . london , printed for i. hindmarsh at the golden ball in cornhill . 1691. a vindication of the government in scotland during the reign of king charles ii. against mis-representations made in several scandalous pamphlets . the design of this paper is neither to seduce others into faction , nor to make an apologie ; the one being too malicious , and the other too mean : but because many honest and sincere men have been abused by some late misinformations , whereby the charity and vnity of protestants amongst themselves are much weakened ; therefore this paper comes to set things in their true light , by a bare narrative , which will be sufficient to reclaim those who are abus'd , and to confute those malicious authors , who have endeavour'd to reproach a whole nation with villanies , of which none but these authors themselves could have been guilty . because the civil government in scotland was never bigot in that king's reign , therefore we shall not run back to consider episcopacy or presbyterie , otherways than as they may concern the civil government . neither should we run so far back as to the government of king charles i. were it not to prove , that these of the same persuasion , who now complain , were the first aggressors ; and consequently , what was done against them deserves rather the name of self-defence than persecution . for clearing this , it is necessary to represent , that in the year 1637 , we liv'd under the most pious and orthodox prince of the age , and yet a rebellion was form'd against him , as a papist , and a tyrant , by which all the fundamental laws were shaken , and all honest men ruin'd . neither needs there any other proof for this assertion , than the records of parliament , general assemblies , and iustice court. from the records and acts of parliament it is undeniable , that the power of nominating judges , counsellors , and all officers of state ; the power of levying war , and raising taxes , were usurp'd by the people ; covenants were entred into by a part of the subjects , and by them impos'd imperiously upon the rest ; leagues and covenants were entred into with england ; ambassadours were sent to foreign princes and states ; and even to france ( tho' little less terrible then , than now ) exclaiming against the injustice of the king , justifying their taking arms against him ▪ and therefore intreating the french aid and assistance : the king himself was inhumanely deliver'd up to his enemies , and thereafter the army that went in to defend his precious life , were declared rebels , all which was uncontravertedly inconsistent with the laws of the kingdom then standing . from the acts of the general assembly it is clear , that the assembly , 1639. refus'd to rise , when dissolv'd by the king's commissioner , and most of the following assemblies did both sit down and rise without his warrand . this assembly threw out the bishops , and abrogated episcopacy without authority of parliament , tho' the bishops were always the first of the three estates of parliament . a new oath was invented , called , the covenant , without the king's authority ; and all men women and children , that were above ten years of age , forc'd to take it ; and such as took it not , were excommunicated , upon which all their moveables or chattels were confiscated , and they themselves being declar'd disobedient to the laws , were forc'd to fly . the king 's negative voice was declared illegal , and the acts made for assisting him in the year forty eight , were declar'd void and null , by an unparallel'd invasion , the general assembly , ( imitating in this , as in many other things , the church of rome ) raised themselves above king and parliament . from the records of the iustice court we find that the estates made advocates or attorney generals by their own authority ; who prosecuted to death such as defended their own houses by vertue of express commissions from the king , and such as rose in arms for his defence , tho' they had both his commissions , and remissions , though the iudes that condemned them , sat by vertue of that very king's commission . they not only borrowed vast sums by meer force from private men , whom they never payed ▪ but also they were the first that brought in free and dry quarter , cess , excise , and all these publick burthens afterwards so much complain'd of ( when they were continued upon necessary exigencies , by lawful authority ) we having neither formerly known oaths , nor publick burthens under our gentle kings , against whom they so much exclaim'd as tyrants , because forsooth they kept them from being such : all these proceedings were not only condemn'd by the general opinion of both protestants and papists abroad , but stand yet condemned by express acts of parliament , and by many acts in the like cases in scotland , and england , and so nothing which can be alledged in justification of them , deserves or needs an answer . king charles the second being restored by almost the universal consent of all the people , the worst of whom grew weary of their villanies : the parliament of scotland being called , they enquired very seriously into the occasion of such disorders , and soon found that they were all to be charged upon the solemn league and covenant , and those who adhered thereto ; and therefore they endeavoured to perswade the presbyterians to disown the covenant , all favour being promised to them upon that condition : but finding that the presbyterians generally thought themselves bound to own the covenant , the parliament concluding that the same men , owning the same principles , would be ready upon occasion to act over again the same things , therefore they by vote ( which may be called unanimous , seeing only four or five dissented ) restored episcopacy , and that so much the rather , because that government had in no age nor place forced its way into the state by the sword , but had still been brought in by the uncontraverted magistrate , without ever thrusting it self in by violence , and yet the government did sustain episcopacy as a part of the state , but never as a hierarchy wholly independent from it , the presbyterian preachers had all along taught the people , that as their government was iure divino , so the people might thereby be obliged to defend them and it , under pain of eternal damnation , even ( when episcopacy was established by law ; ) and accordingly some of the people who retained that principle , frequented the conventicles at which these ministers preacht ; whereupon the state fearing that the old humour might ferment again into a rebellion , discharged under some small penalties any above five strangers to meet in a conventicle , leaving thereby at once the free exercise of their conscience in their families , and yet securing the state against such a total defection , as might involve us in a new civil-war , which without doubt was all the state design'd : but to elude these penalties for house-conventicles , some preachers ( amongst whom were some of those who had been formerly banished ) gathered the people together in the fields ; they bringing arms with them to secure their ministers , came at last to have such an opinion of their own strength , that they formed themselves into an army , and were defeated at pentland hills , novemb. anno 1666. yet within a short time of that , the state indulged them so far as to allow them their own ministers , settling them in churches , and allowing them the enjoyment of the benefices in many places . this did not satisfie these people , because the ministers so indulged acknowledged the king and council's authority ; and they , with some of their violent preachers railed as much against these indulged ministers , as against the bishops , and regular clergy , and call'd them council curates , and separated from them . the state considering that by the laws of all nations , rising in arms is to be accounted rebellion , and that a preacher's presence could legitimate the action no more than a priest could transubstantiate the elements ; they declared by several acts , field-meetings to be the rendevouzes of rebellion : notwithstanding all which , these dissenters proceeded , as from house to field-meetings , so from field-conventicles to publish proclamations , declaring that the covenant was the original contract betwixt god , the king , and the people ; and therefore king charles the second having broken it , forfaulted his crown , and being to be considered only as a private subject , and enemy to god , they had declared a just war against him , and that it was lawful to kill him , and all who served him , following as was pretended the noble examples of phineas and eliud ; and in consequence of this doctrin they murthered the arch-bishop of st. andrews , and several others ; to defend these murtherers an army was gathered by them , which was beat a bothuel-bridge , anno 1679. but yet the king to reclaim them , granted both an indemnity and indulgence ; notwithstanding of which , a new plot was entred into , and it was contrived in a meeting of the scots at london , that 20000 men should be raised in scotland , and that the garrisons of berwick , and carlile , and all the officers of state should be seized , which was likewise seconded by monmouth , and argyle's rebellion , anno 1685. whereupon the parliament finding that the preaching up of rebellion in private conventicles had occasion'd all this danger to king and people , and that nothing could be secure whilst every thing might be preacht , they enacted , that the ministers who preacht at conventicles should be capitally punished ; but by vertue of this act , no man was ever punished , much less executed . this being the true progress , and these the occasions of making those acts , it is admired why the government is taxed with so much cruelty , and the acts themselves reproached as diabolical : for first , these against house-conventicles are the same with the laws in england , and less severe than those made against dissenters in queen elizabeths time , or than those now standing against the calvinists in sweden , or those made , and now executed by the presbyterians and independents in new-england ; but much more gentle than those our presbyterians made when they govern'd . 2. whatever might be said against such acts in countries where dissenters never entred into a war , yet in this isle , where they upon the same principles overturned the government and laws , and were upon every occasion again attempting it , so small a caution cannot be accounted severe . 3. this caution was much more just in scotland , than even in england ; because the dissenters in scotland were more bigotted to the covenant , which is a constant fond for rebellion . 4. the posteriour acts made against field-conventicles , were the necessary product of new accessional degrees of rebellion ; and were not punishments design'd against opinions in religion , but meerly against treasonable combinations , which exceeded what was attempted in england , or elsewhere ; and the governours ( for the time ) can truly and boldly say , that no man in scotland ever suffer'd for his religion . but if any will pretend , that religion obliges him to rise in arms , or to murder , this principle ought neither to be sustain'd as a defence , nor the obviating of it to be made a crime ; and as the covenanters laughed at such a defence when propos'd for them , who assisted king charles i. meerly for conscience sake , so they cannot deny , but they zealously prest sir iohn dalrymple , then advocate , to hang mr. renwick a field-preacher , for field-preaching , where some of his hearers were arm'd , because he was like to divide their church , after they got an indulgence from king iames , against the accepting whereof , renwick and his party exclaim'd highly ; and that so much the more plausibly , for that many of them , who now accepted an indulgence from a king professedly popish , had rejected and preacht against those who accepted of one when offer'd by a king of the protestant profession . i must also ask them , if any should now rise in arms in defence of episcopacy , and alledge conscience for so doing , would they sustain that as a just defence ? 5. when ever any man offer'd to keep the church , former fines were generally remitted , if timeous application was made ; and more indulgencies and indemnities were granted by this king ▪ than by any that ever reign'd ; and generally no man was executed in his reign , who would say , god bless the king , or acknowledge his authority ; an unusual clemency , never shewn in any other nation , and such as was not practised by those , who now cry out against the severity of that government .. the reader will be astonished , when we inform him ; that the way of worship in our church , differed nothing from what the presbyterians themselves practised , ( except only , that we used the doxologie , the lord's prayer , and in baptism , the creed , all which they rejected . ) we had no ceremonies , surplice ▪ altars , cross in baptisms , nor the meanest of those things which would be allowed in england by the dissenters , in way of accommodation : that the most able and pious of their ministers , did hear the episcopal clergy preach , many of them communicated in the churches , and almost all the people communicated also ; so that it cannot be said that they were persecuted , and forced to joyn with an vnsound , much less heretical church , as the french protestants are . from all which , it follows clearly , that the complainers ▪ were the aggressors , that the government proceeded by slow steps , to punish even those who had forced it into a resentment , and that all pains were taken to reclaim rather than punish . any reasonable and unprejudiced man must allow , that the state had reason to be jealous that the same men who had invaded and overturned the government under king chales i. retaining still the same principles as sacred , and bursting forth into the same excesses under king charles ii. were still to be kept in awe , and within the barriers of law , and that by their own principle of salus populi , better some few of the society should perish than that the whole should go to ruin . vnitas , non unus , as was said by them in the e. straffords case ; and if two states of parliament without the king , were thought the best , and necessary judges , of what was salus populi in those days ; much more should it be acknowledged , that the king and three estates , in many subsequent parliaments , agreeing cordially together , should be acknowledged to be the true judges of what was salus populi in our government , especially when what they did was founded on a series of uncontraverted laws , and upon long and deplorable experience of the mischiefs occasion'd by that pary . whereas they who condemn our proceedings , must , and do acknowledge before they condemn us , that they consider themselves as a people coming into a country where there were no laws , and so might take any new laws they thought fit , for the present exigent : a liberty which we ( poor slaves ! ) durst never take , foolishly conceiving our selves over-ruled by our statute-books , ancient customs , and oaths , regulating our duty and conscience . for answering the objections which are made against the government , i shall class them into these general enormities with which the government is charged , and into the particular instances of its pretended cruelty . the first general objection is , that the severe laws made against conventicles were yet more severely put in execution by sir iames turner , and sir william ballantine , and others , which occasion'd the insurrection at pentland-hills , and it is alledged that these conventiclers came only to petition the council , not to overturn the government . to this it is answered , that all rising in arms upon any pretext whatsoever , is declared rebellion in this and all other nations ; and if any should rise now in arms because free-quarter is taken from them against law , they would find this government so to take it . nor can it be pretended that justice was denied to private petitioners ; but on the contrary , turner and ballantine were laid aside , which is all the state could do , it being impossible to answer for all the extravagancies of soldiers , even under the most just government . from this likewise it necessarily follows , that because this was no just war , therefore the learned and worthy sir iohn nisbet , then king's advocate , and the criminal iudges were unjustly reproached for refusing to allow the defence founded on giving quarter , that being only to be allowed in iusto bello : and it is to be remembred , that this defence was not allowed to the worthy president sir robert spotswood , son to the famous archbishop , in anno 1645 , tho' the war was just on the king's side , and he acted by vertue of a commission from that very king ▪ by whose authority the parliament that condemned him was called ; and it could not be proved by those that were taken at pentland-hills , that quarter was granted them ; whereas it was clearly proved , that the council in general had discharged granting of quarter upon the foresaid account . we pass under silence here , the dreadful slaughter of several hundreds killed after free quarter given , and surrendring of the castle of dunvileigh , ( which made lieutenant general leslie , who then commanded the army , threaten to lay down his commission , ) notwithstanding of a violent sermon made before him upon these words , 1 sam. chap. 15. v. 14. what meaneth then this bleating , &c. * as to the sending away people to the plantations , it is answered that none were sent away , but such as were taken at bothuel-bridge , or in argyle's rebellion ; and the turning capital punishment into exile , was an act of clemency ; not of cruelty . as to torture , it is allowed not only by the law of our nation , but of all nations except england , and founded on the foremention'd maxims , salus populi , &c. pereat unus , potius quam vnitas ; nor was it ever inflicted , but where the person tortured was evidently proved to be guilty of accession to the crime , and that he knew the accomplices ; it being still left in his power to secure himself against torture , by confessing who were his accomplices , or by clearing himself by his oath , that he did not know them , which oath was required to free , not to bind the deponent ; because his knowledge of the matter was first proved , and it was still previously declared by act of council , that nothing he was to depone should prejudge him ; and those who had been in that government were very sorry that when torture was declared a grievance in the last convention , matters of high importance relating to the government , were still excepted , which expos'd the subjects to as much danger as formerly . as to the imprisoning free leidges without giving any reason , and detaining them in prison for many years ; it is answered , that we have no act for habeas corpus in scotland , and so these things may be accounted severe , but not illegal ; and they were introduced in the late vnhappy presbyterian rebellion , where thousands were kept in prison a great many years , without any crime or hopes of releasment ; but the true reason of the frequent imprisonments , during k. charles the 2 d's government , should only be charged on those who were accessories to the plots and rebellions which occasion'd them ; and no men wish'd more than we did , to see those peaceable times which might allow an act of parliament for habeas corpus . another thing which occasioned these long imprisonments , was , that the persons imprisoned refus'd to acknowledge the king's authority , without which they could not have been set at liberty , when there was a clear probation against them . but can this be objected to vs , by those who have since imprison'd more in one year than we did in five ? as to the bringing in the highlanders on the western shires , and taking free quarter there ; it is answered , that many thousands had gather'd in field conventicles with arms for several years ; and when these conventicles which used to meet in several places , pleas'd to join in one , they could easily form an army . to prevent which , the council wrote a letter to these western-shires , entreating them to fall upon some course for security of the peace ; they returning for answer , that the peace could not be secured there without abrogating episcopacy . the king and council consider'd this as a sacrificing the laws to the humours and passions of private men , and such too , as they had reason to think , could no more be satisfied with that concession than their predecessours were , who proceeded to ruin king charles i. after he had parted with the order of episcopacy to please them ; and therefore the highlanders were sent in , to secure the peace ; and because mony could not be provided in haste , the council declar'd by their act , that those on whom they were quartered should be paid out of the first and readiest of the fines owing there , and the superplus should be paid by the king ; nor have those who were then in the government , clamour'd so much now for a years free quarter as these people did then for a fortnights , and even during that fortnight most men pay'd for their quarters ; nor was there any more surety sought , at least from masters and heretors , than the ordinary surety of law-borrows , by the very style whereof , any private man may force another by the law to secure him against all prejudices from his men , tennents and servants , and others of his command , out-hounding and ra●ihabition . and that the king had great reason to be jealous of their breaking the peace , appears fully from the reasons above represented , and when this surety was thereupon approv'd by parliament , by which it was enacted , that masters should be liable eithr to remove their tennents from their lands , or to present them to iustice : it prov'd a most advantageous remedy for settling the nation , to the great advantage both of master and servant ; this alternative securing the master from many hardships , and ingaging his servants to obey him , as he was obliged to obey the king ▪ and keep the peace . as to the cumulative iurisdiction so much complain'd of , because it gives the king a power to name sheriffs , and other inferiour iudges , who may have an equal share in the administration with those who had the sole heretable iurisdiction formerly , whereby it is pretended the property of the subjects was invaded . it is answered , that heretable iurisdictions are of themselves very little to be favour'd , because the heir must be a iudge both in matters of life and fortune , though he want probity or knowledge in the law , and the interested superiours or over-lords had thereby the unfortunate poor vassals absolutely at their devotion , and therefore by an old law in k. iames the 2 ds time , there was an act made , discharging all heretable iurisdictions without consent of parliament ; and sir iohn nisbet upon these and many other good reasons , advised , that all the other heretable iurisdiction ( because almost all granted since that time ) should be repealed ; and yet , though these heretable iudges refus'd to concur in putting the laws against field-conventicles , and armed insurrections in execution , or conniv'd at them , whereby they grew very formidable , the council unwilling to take away these iurisdictions totally , chose rather to name others to sit with those iudges , or to supply their absence if they refused to come ; but there-after s. g. m. succeeding as advocate , to prevent all debate , advis'd the bringing this point to the parliament , to the end , that that procedure of the king's council might be either vncontravertedly legal if acquiesc'd in , or let fall if refus'd ; and accordingly the parliament having pass'd it into an act ; it seems great malice and ignorance to call this illegal ; and it being founded upon such just and solid reasons , it seem'd as strange , why it should be thought severe , and never lawyer spoke against it except those who had heretable iurisdictions . it were unreasonable that the king should complain of what he consented to in parliament in favours of his subjects ; and so it must be likewise concluded unreasonable that the subject should complain of this point which they have granted to the king , especially seeing it is more in favours of the subjects than of him , it being a strong bulwark against great mens oppressing of their vassals and inferiours ; and therefore i cannot see why the inferior sort should be so dull or unreasonabe as to complain of it . but notwithstanding of this clamour , and abstracting even from this act , it is still maintain'd by the advocate , that all lawyers , and particularly our learned craig in his book de feudis , assert , that the superiour has still an accumulative iurisdiction with his vassal as to the point of iudging ; for tho' he delegate a jurisdiction for his conveniency , yet that is not exclusive , that being a quality which still adheres , as craig says ; † however sir george makenzee , advocate , advis'd to stop all clamours , that the heretable iudge might still have the casualties , so that his property could not be said to be invaded ; and lest this might be drawn to the session , as is ridiculously pretended , the act is only made relative to iurisdictions given by his majesty to his good subjects , which can in no sense fall under the cognizance of the session , i. e. the iudges . as to the act made in council , allowing souldiers to kill such as refused to own the king's authority ; it is answer'd , that there being many proclamations issued out , by the dissenters , declaring , that the king had forfaulted his right by breaking the covenant , and that therefore it was lawful to kill him , and those who serv'd him : many accordingly being kill'd , it was thought necessary by some ( upon the fresh news of murdering some of the king's horse-guard at swyn-abbey in their beds ) to terfy them out of this extravagancy , by allowing the soldiers to use them as in a war , in which , if any call , for whom are you ? and the others owning that they were for the enemy ; it is lawful then to kill : and thus they felt their folly , and the necessary effects of their principle ; and yet still it was ordered , that none should be kill'd except those who were found in arms , owning that principle of assassination , and refusing to clear themselves of their having been in accession to the declaring of war , which they had then begun ; nor were these kill'd but when their deliberate refusal could be proved by two witnesses . but that it may plainly appear , that no more was in all this intended by the governours , than to secure the publick peace , by terrifying those assassines who had so manifestly invaded it ; secret orders were given , that this should not last above a fortnight , and that none should be kill'd except those who were found in the publickly printed list of declar'd rebels , who may be kill'd by the laws of all nations ; and but very few , even of those rebels were kill'd , tho' this has been made the foundation of many dreadful lies . this mischief was intolerable in it self , and we desire to know how it could have been otherways remedied , for the law must find cures for all mischiefs , and these who occasion'd them , should of all others , be least allow'd to complain . after the terrour of that procedure had much cooled the zeal of assassination for a time , it took new fire , and several proclamations for disowning the king's authority , and murthering his servants were posted upon all church doors , and mercat-crosses , so that no man who served the king could know whether or not his murtherer was at his elbow , and they had reason to look upon every place as their scaffold : whereupon the advocate being desired to raise processes against some who owned those pernicious principles , he prevailed with the council to ask the opinion of all the iudges upon this quaery , viz. whether any of his majesties subjects being questioned by his majesties iudges or commissioners , if they own a late proclamation in so far as it does declare war against his sacred majesty , and asserts that it is lawful to kill all those who are employed by his majesty , refusing to answer upon oath , are thereby guilty of high treason , and are airt and part of the said treasonable declaration , salus populi requiring that every one should contribute what was in his power to the preservation of the society ; and as none of the kings servants without this could know if he was secure of his life , so it was very easie for the person accused to clear himself if he was innocent : they consider'd likewise that law in general , for the good of the people , did accommodate its self to what probation could be allowed , and therefore invented presumptive probation upon that account , whereof there are so many instances to be seen in all laws , that it were childish to insist on them , and no man has been so just as to produce one law or reason to convince us of the illegality of this opinion ; and there is an express act of parliament penned by the learned sir iohn nisbet , whereby for the same reason , such as are prosecuted for conventicles are obliged to swear whether they were innocent or guilty , which does run yet higher than this opinion . there is another opinion given by the judges much challenged , viz. that some having gone about amongst the people , demanding fifty pound sterling from each as a contribution for the earl of argyle then forfaulted , they from whom that mony had been asked , and conceal'd it , were found guilty of treason , because this was so far beyond private charity , that it would have amounted to a greater sum than any parliament had ever granted the king : and whereas the proposal of any assistance to a rebel is treasonable , the concealing of it by our law , and by the law of nations is undoubted treason . if the matter of fact in these answers had been represented to the late convention , it cannot in reason be thought they would have condemn'd them ; and if any man will compare these opinions of the judges , with that grievance pretended in the late convention , and that again with the act of parliament , they will find the matter of fact variously represented in all the three . we must likewise inform the world , that no man died upon either of these opinions ; and to cut off all debate , both these forenamed opinions of the judges are expresly ratified by parliament , and consequently are the sense of the nation . before we enter upon private processes , we must complain , that tho' k. ch. having by act of parliament , added five of the learnedst of all his iudges to his iustice general and iustice clark in place of two advocates , who were generally but young or mean , because they had only fifty pounds salary , and that seldom pay'd ; that yet every ignorant scribler should presume to reproach their sentences , and shou'd take upon them to judge the deepest controversies in point of law ; and should dogmatically-write of criminal sentences , tho' they never saw a criminal court , and be applauded in things which every servant about that court knew to be nonsence : particularly , ' as that the advocate , threatned iuries ; whereas all he did , was to protest for an assize of error , which the laws command , and which all advocates ever did , and to this day doe . again , it is as foolishly pretended ; that the advocate prosecuted men without order ; whereas indeed , he never prosecuted any , until he was commanded by the council , who are our grand iury upon oath , and all their orders are registrated ; the court likewise , was so very favourable to these criminals , that they did ordinarily name ( those of their own profession ) presbyterians to pass upon their jury , and sent ministers of their own perswasion , to reclaim them ; and these iurors and ministers , seldom fail'd to condemn them as much as the judges did . the capital sentences in that court , were founded generally upon actual rebellion ; and even as to those , there was not one of a thousand executed : nor in all argyle's rebellion , was any executed by their sentence , except one or two , who were pitched upon as examples to terrifie others . nor did there dye upon any publick account , twelve , in all that reign so exclaim'd against , as bloody ; and not one dyed for any principle in religion , unless it be thought a religious principle to dye for actual rebellion ; as to such , there needs no particular defence , the very light of nature , the common interest of societyes , and the laws of nations , declaring it a crime to justifie them . it is pretended , that tho' the crimes had been legally founded , yet the probation was suspect in those times , because the depositions of witnesses were previously taken , whereby witnesses being once ensnared , were forced to stand by their depositions . to which it is answered , that in all nations abroad , depositions are previously taken , as is uncontroverted by all their criminal writers , and this is very necessary for the good of the subjects , lest they should be prosecuted groundlesly , and this is as fit for the good of the king , or kingdom , lest such as are guilty of atrocious crimes against the whole society , should escape without being punished , because tryed when the formal and full probation is not ready ; yet to prevent all mistakes , the advocate interceeded that this trust of examining witnesses , should not be left to the king's advocate , as it ever formerly had been , but should be lodged in the judges , and that lest their depositions should be any tye upon them , the judges with consent of the advocate , ordered that the depositions should be torn before they deposed in iudgment , and they were allow'd either to correct or pass from their former depositions as they pleas'd ; and whereas formerly the king's advocate had the naming of the jury , it is now lodged by act of parliament in the judges . nor was there ever any witnesses suspected , except only in chesnock's case , wherein the depositions were true ; and albeit the witnesses afterwards asserted upon oath on their knees , that their first deposition was very true , and that they were only frighted and confounded in the second ; yet the council would not resume the process , and thereupon he was absolv'd : in the rest the probation was but too clear , for beside all the legal probation , most of those who died , owned and gloried in their crimes when they died , exhorting others to imitate them , in their disowning the king , and rebelling against him : and many of them exhorted the people , to kill all such as oppos'd their principles , assuring them , that to kill malignants was acceptable to god. strangers would likewise be pleas'd to be inform'd , that our law allows the party accused , a liberty to call in witnesses , who may depose upon oath for him against the king , which the law of england does not , and this kind of exculcapation was never allow'd till the reign of king charles ii. the first act which was the warrant thereof , having been made by sir iohn cunningham , and sir george mackenzie , when they were criminal iudges : and this was never refus'd to the persons accused , albeit they brought in frequently witnesses , who took very great latitudes , to save those of their own principles by swearing ; for instance , that tho' they saw a person very like the pannel or party accus'd , yet they could not depose it was he , because it might have been a vision , albeit at the same time , they had known him formerly very well , and that they talkt with him that time in arms , at the distance of ten or twelve paces , for half an hour together ; and at other times , they did positively refuse to depose that they saw him have a sword , tho' they owned that they saw the hilt and scabbard : notwithstanding of which , and many such ridiculous evasions , the party accus'd , was alwaies acquitted . to descend to particular processes : it is clamoured , that mitchill the famous assassine , was executed after he confessed the crime upon promise of life ; to which it is answered , that mitchill having upon the high-street of edinburgh , shot at the arch-bishop of st. andrews , with a design to murther him , he wounded the bishop of orkney with that shot , of which he never recovered , and being thereafter apprehended , confessed the crime , but continuing still to glory in it , and very famous witnesses having deposed , that mitchill was upon a new plot to kill the same arch-bishop ; mitchill was brought to a tryal , and his defences were , that the earl of rothes , to whom he confest it , had promised to secure his life , or that the privy council had afterwards promised the same ; for clearing whereof , the said earl , and all who were upon the committee , together with all such members of council as he desired to be cited , were fully examined , upon all his interrogatories : and the registers of council were produced , but not the least mark of a promise was made to appear by either , so that nothing remain'd , but that the lord high chancellour , and lords of the privy council ( as they alledged ) perjured themselves , and that the registers of council were vitiated ; and how it 's possible to imagine that all this villany was committed to take so inconsiderable a fellows life ; i leave the world to judge ? however , he also died glorying in his crimes , and recommending to others the sweetness of such assassinations . george lermonth is alledged to have been unjustly executed , because he was condemned for being present at a field-conventicle , with a rod only in his hand : whereas the truth is , that he was condemned for being art and part , that is to say , accessory to the death of a soldier , who was killed upon that place , and that he commanded those who killed him as an officer , of which a man may be guilty in law , without having a sword ; and therefore the iustices most legally repelled the defence founded on his not having a sword. hamilton of monkland was not found guilty because he went into the rebels to seek his son , as some falsly suggest : but because being there , he sollicited a committee of the rebels to make his servant an officer ; and accordingly he being made one , he came back within some few days , and stayed several months with monkland , a point of law so clear that his own advocates could make no reply to evade it . there were indeed two women executed , and but two in both these reigns , and they were punished for most hainous crimes which no sex should defend . their crimes were , that they had recepted and entertained , for many months together , the murtherers of the archbishop of st. andrews , who were likewise condemned traitors for having been openly in rebellion at bothwell-bridge , whereupon they having been prosecuted , declined the king's authority , as being an enemy to god , and the devil's vicegerent . and tho' a pardon was offered to them upon their repentance , they were so far from accepting it , that they own'd the crimes to be duties ; and our accusers should remember that these women were executed for higher crimes , than the following montross's camp , for which fourscore women and children were drowned , being all in one day thrown over the bridge at linlithgow by the covenanters , and six more at elgine by the same faction , all without sentence , or the least formality of law. baillie of iervisewood was executed for being accessory to , and concealing of a design of raising twenty thousand men , and siezing the garrisons of berwick and carlisle , and the officers of state. nor would the advocate raise an indictment until sir george lockhart , and one of the learnedst of the present judges ; did declare that the point of law and probation were both most clear , and thereupon concurred in the process ( concealing of treason is beyond all debate punishable as treason in our law ) and some of the witnesses were his own relations , who swore plainly and positively against him . the e. of argile's process deserves to be more largely clear'd ▪ and since this last parliament has rescinded it , we shall without any justification represent the matter of fact , which stands thus . the test being enacted to be a bulwark to the protestant religion , as upon the event it prov'd , the e. was not oblig'd , but would needs take it with this caution , i take it as far as it is consistent with it self , or with the protestant religion ; and i declare , that i mean not to bind up my self to wish or endeavour any alteration i think to the advantage of the church or state ; whereupon the council observing , that the test by one part of this his declaration appear'd ridiculous , and by the other it became ineffectual to all the intents and purposes for which it was design'd ; for so every man's opinion became the rule of his own loyalty , and no man thereby oblig'd to be further loyal than he himself might think convenient . they therefore interposed earnestly with the earl to pass from this his declaration , but he refusing to disown it in the least , and copies of it being industriously spread abroad , it was represented to him , that by acts of parliament , all such as put limitations upon their allegiance were guilty of treason , for beside , that men are not obliged to dispute the reasonableness of acts of parliament after they were once made ; it is apparent that this act was made upon most just and necessary motives , for the foundation of the rebellion in the last age , was , that by the covenant the subjects were not further obliged to own the king's interest , than in so far as it agreed with the word of god , and the laws of the land , of which every private breast made himself the iudge ; and if this be allow'd , no oath of allegiance can bind , and so all society must be dissolv'd . notwithstanding all which , the earl still persisting , and the duke then high-commissioner , being assured by one of the best lawyers in the nation , that the paper imported treason , ( tho' the advocate scrupled to prosecute him from a principle of personal kindness to the earl ) he was thereupon prosecuted , and found guilty after a full debate , wherein eight or nine of the best lawyers of the nation , by a positive command from the council , did assist the earl it is here also very observable , that no malice could be design'd against the earl ; because he was earnestly entreated to pass from the paper containing his declaration before the process should commence ; and after all , the captain of the castle was allow'd not to keep him strictly , and as it is undeniable , that the king allowed the earl's estate to his creditors , and that his children got a far larger share of it , than if he had dy'd in his bed ; so it can be prov'd it was fully resolv'd , that he should not die , nor did he die till he had invaded his native countrey by open war , whereby the parliament being convinc'd by this open act , that he had very clearly design'd by the former caution in his explicatory declaration of the test , to reserve to himself a power to rise in rebellion when he thought fit ; as was argued in the former process ; they therefore ratified the process of forfaulture ( nemine contradicente ) and added their authority to that of the iustice court , and because 't is wonder'd why he was not prosecuted upon this new rebellion ; it is answer'd , that by the laws of all nations , and by the laws especially of scotland and england , no man can be try'd for the very same crime for which he stands convicted , tho' he may for a crime which deserves a greater punishment , for the law has exhausted its revenge by the first sentence ; but yet where a new notorious aggravation superveens , which is so clear , that it can admit of no debate , nor needs no probation ; it were very unjust that the law should not here be put in execution , tho' the first sentence had been thought too severe to deserve it . we conclude then this process with this reflection , that a government can in no sense be call'd severe , where the person accus'd has liberty ( and is entreated ) to retract his crime , where his children and creditors get all his estate , and where he himself does not suffer , until he made it manifest by his invasion of his native countrey , that the design of his explaining the test in a paper under his hand , was to reserve to himself a power to rebell , and till he had aggravated highly his former guilt . but why do they reproach us with this one decision , who do yet sustain those abominable ones , that were executed without the least shadow of justice against the marquess of huntley and montrose , president spotswood , haddo , and seven hundred gentlemen more , who died by their justice court , when their covenant over-rul'd law and equity : and against four hundred and fifty gentlemen and commons who died by the justice-court of argyle , beside the many thousands who died in the civil war , ( of which they must be guilty , who raised it , and who never yet made the least profession of repentance for it . the parliament , 1685 , being inform'd of monmouth and argyle's invasion , and being convinc'd that argyle had reserv'd that power in his explicatory paper of the test , meerly that he might invade his countrey and its laws ; and reflecting on the treasonable principle of the covenant of defending the king , only in defence of religion , and the late limitations of owning no king , except he had taken their covenant ; they therefore ( not by a recognising act , but in the narrative only of the act relating to the excise ) offer'd their lives and fortunes , without reserve ; which clause was inserted by the parliament , not to introduce a blind slavery , as some maliciously pretend , but meerly to exclude these rebellious limitations of obedience invented by the covenanters , which were inconsistent with former standing laws , and by which the people had been highly debauch'd in the late civil war ; for in that very parliament they enlarged the peoples liberties , and ratified all laws in favours of the protestant religion ; and the very same persons in the next parliament refus'd to take away the penal statutes , whereas , if an absolute slavery had been design'd , all the former acts establishing our liberty and property , and all the concessions granted to us by our kings for securing our lives and fortunes , should have been expresly ▪ enumerated and abrogated ; and so the words in the narrative of that act could be no warrant for the proclamation , disabling the laws against toleration as some would have us believe : and they who now complain , were the only persons who then took the benefit of that stretch of the prerogative . we could wish that our accusers would be careful , that in being too rigid censurers of us , they do not expose all governments , and even the present to reproach ; for it would seem to some who are now by-standers , as they then were , that though they cry'd out against us for torturing , when it was warranted by our uncontroverted law ; yet the expediency of government , or some other reason makes them do it , after they had declar'd it a grievance , and had rail'd against it as inconsistent with all humanity . nor do i see that the reserving it only to king and parliament answers this objection ; for the parliament by their authority cannot make that fit , which is inconsistent with humane nature , or that convenient which was declar'd to be incapable to produce the true effect for which it was design'd : and the making torture then only a grievance , when inflicted without a cause ( as is pretended ) seems to satisfie as little , since every man can easily pretend that what he does is done upon just motives . the imprisoning many , and keeping them long , can hardly be objected to us , since the present government find themselves obliged to do both ; and the last parliament , in their great wisdom , thought it fit to reject a bill for habeas corpus , when it was press'd as suitable to one of the grievances : nor can we yet discover why the forfeitures of those should be rescinded by the current parliament , who were sentenc'd for having taken up arms at pentland-hills , and bothwell-bridge ; or those who were forfeited for the proclamations at sanquhar , and elsewhere , wherein king charles was declared to have lost his right to the crown , for having broke the covenant ( that tripartit and fundamental contract betwixt god , the king , and his people ) and wherein it is declared a duty to kill him , and all who serv'd him , and to throw off the race of the stewarts , as constant enemies to god : * as also how the forfeiture of the duke of monmouth , and all who adher'd to him , and that of the earl of argyle were repealed in cumulo ; for if it be lawful for subjects to rise in arms upon the single pretence of conscience , no king , nor no government can be secure : if a considerable part of the nation should now rise for liberty , property and episcopacy , upon the same pretext , would the parliament find this defence good ; some are also found who reproach the present government for suffering ministers to be thrown out by the rabble without any previous tryal or reparation afterwards , and many other things which afford but too great ground for satyr and complaint , if i were inclined to either . the necessity of state is that supereminent law to which upon occasion all particular acts must bow ; what else can be alledged to justifie the throwing out the first estate of parliament , the passing by the magistrates then in possession in making of their elections ; and allowing some who had been sentenced for treason to sit and vote in parliament , without ever examining the grounds upon which they had been condemned : these who think that the necessity of state can justifie such proceedings , ( which must be their only plea , ) ought to be very careful how they blame their predecessors for severities , which some mens ungovernable humours necessitated them to . we must also be allowed to admire how those who so eminently comply'd with the dispencing power in taking an indulgence from the papists , and who magnified king iames upon that account as the best of kings that ever reign'd , should so snarle at us , who in a parliament ( at which not one of them assisted ) refused to take away the penal laws made against popery , whilst many of us resign'd our places willingly in defence of those laws ? or how those who did sit in parliament and judicatures with us , consenting to and approving what was done in those reigns , should now countenance such reproaches against us ; it being most undeniable that there 's but very few who deserved any employment , or had any sence , who did not concur in most of those things for which we are now so severely censured , and there are very few of any note or consideration either in the last convention , or present parliament , who have not been accessory to many of the things now complain'd of . we do therefore in the last place recommend to all disinteressed men , to consider that the men of the greatest quality , learning , experience , parts , and estates being then in the government , and upon oath , it is to be presumed that love to the salvation of their souls , respect to their honour , and care of their families and posterity would have obliged them to shun and avoid all those severities with which they are now most unjustly charged , and in common charity to believe , that what was then done by those in power , was design'd only for the security of the protestant religion , against those factions and schisms , and to preserve the country from those civil wars and distractions which had destroyed both in the last age ; and threatned to do the like in this ; notwithstanding all the pains and care that was taken to reduce the authors of those mischiefs to live peaceably and quietly . we foreseeing very clearly , that one months civil war would occasion more ruine and destruction to the country , than possibly the severities of a whole reign could do . the only design of this paper being to defend our selves , without offending others , and rather to cement than widen differences , we wish that all sides may busie themselves so much in setling their native country , that they may forget injuries , which the most impartial cannot think so great in the reign of king ch. the second , as those that were committed by the complaining party in the reign of k. ch. the first , and we should be sorry they had been ballanced . but sure they will be most unpardonable , who begin again upon a new score ; for after that nothing can be expected , but that all parties will run in an endless circle of severities . which god of his infinite mercy avert . a true account of the forms us'd in pursuits of treason , according to the law of scotland : by which the justice of that nation may be known to mis-informed strangers . written anno 1690. it is much to be admired , that such as never read our law , revis'd our records , nor were ever employ'd as iudges or advocats in our criminal courts , should adventure to condemn the proceedings of those , who for many years have made that part of our law their constant study , who were upon oath , and knew that their posterity should be judged by their decisions . but to inform all men more particularly , and to set things in their true light ; i shall represent the legal way of procedure in cases of treason , which is the only crime to which this jealousie may reach ; and then prove that the king's advocat cannot prejudge the party accus'd in any step of the process . treason may be pursued either at the instance of a private informer , or at the instance of the king's advocat , who is ratione officii , calumniator publicus : if a private person inform , then his name must be exprest , to the end he , nor none of his relations may be us'd as witnesses , he must find surety that he shall prove , and that he shall insist , as being liable in * poenam talionis , if he fail in proving the crime . when the pursuit was to be carried on for the publick interest , the king's advocat examined the witnesses alone ; but sir george mackenzie thinking the advocat might have been jealous'd , as too interested , prevail'd to get this examination referr'd to the iudges , who in all nations enquire into the grounds whereupon pursuits are to be rais'd , and after the depositions were taken , and sign'd by the iudges and witnesses , the advocat presents them to the privy council ; and if , after reading them , and a full debate upon them ( many of the learned lawyers of the nation being privy counsellors ) it be found by vote of council , that there is sufficient ground from the evidence to raise process of treason , then there is an act of council drawn , ordering the king's advocat to insist ; but in this tryal , the advocat , tho a counsellor , never votes . the reason why this previous examination is allow'd , is to secure the subjects against their being rashly and unwarrantably pursued or prosecuted without sufficient grounds : but left a witness might have lookt upon himself as pre-engaged by this previous deposition ; therefore these first depositions were always torn , and the witnesses declared free from whatever they had formerly depos'd . to strengthen the security of the defendant or party accused , sir george mackenzie us'd to interpose with the officers of state , before the depositions were brought into the council , and to represent to them his own scruples : and if the officers of state continued still of opinion that a process was to be rais'd , or the party accused to be proceeded against , then he desired the ablest advocats of the nation to be called , before whom the depositions were read , and if they concurr'd with the officers of state in their iudgment of the matters being criminal , then these advocats were ordain'd also to concur with him in the pursuit . and many of the most learn'd and most popular advocats did concur with him in the most intricate cases ; as in argyle's , iervis wood's , &c. which is not to be imagin'd they would have done , had they thought their pleading in these cases any guilt or fault . tho by the laws of england and other nations , the defendant is allowed no advocats to plead for him in criminal cases , but especially not in treason , except where the iudges can see debateable points of law , yet lest the defendant may by ignorance or confusion omit to represent those matters of fact , from which new points of law may arise , therefore our law allows always advocats to the defendant , and forces any whom he does name to accept the employ . act 91. parl. ii. i. 6. tho by the laws of some nations no witnesses are allow'd to be produc'd for the defendant , but such as do appear voluntarily , yet when sir george mackenzie was a iudge in the criminal court , which answers to the king's-bench in england , he ordered for the good of the people the remedy of exculpation , whereby the defendant representing that he has some defences , a warrant is giv'n to force the witnesses whom he names to appear , under severe penalties ; and such time is granted to him and them , as may be sufficient for their appearance , and these witnesses when compearing are examined upon oath , and the iury is obliged to believe any two of them ( tho no witnesses are allowed to swear against the king in england ) this order was thereafter turn'd into an act of parliament . act 16.3 sess. parl. 2. ch. 2. article ii. and also to take off all possibility of packing iuries in edinburgh , where generally the juries are chosen , 't was ordered by the iudges , at sir george his earnest request , that the town of edinburgh should give up a list of all their housekeepers who were able to pass upon iuries , and that all these should be named per vices , according to the situation of the place where they liv'd . because the defendant did not know what witnesses were to be produced against him by the king's advocate , and so could not have witnesses ready to prove his objections against them , therefore sir george prevailed with the parliament that the king's advocate should be for ever after obliged to give with the indictment a list of what witnesses or members of inquest were to be used by them ; and an order is given for citing any witnesses the defendant pleases , with a competent time for bringing them . fifteen days being still the least time allowed by our law , for preparing the defendant in all such cases . when the day of tryal or appearance comes , the witnesses who were present at the giving the citation are obliged to depose upon oath , that they truly saw the citation given : thereafter the king's advocate produces his warrant : nor did ever sir george mackenzie prosecute any man until he was commanded by the council , and till he produced his warrant , ( as still appears from the records of the council and criminal court , to both which he solemnly appeals ; ) and then the indictment is read , after which the advocates for the defendant , dictate to the clerk his defences ; to which the king's advocate dictates his replies , the defendants advocates again their duplies , &c. and that to the end the iudges may the better consider what is said , and may stand in awe of posterity . after the debate is closed , the king's advocate and all others retire , and the iudges having read fully the debate , they argue the case amongst themselves , and thereupon they by their interlocutory sentence find such and such points to be relevant , that is to say , well founded in law , and they sign this interlocutory sentence or iudgment , which is imposed as a further tye upon the iudges , for the security of the people ; nor are witnesses allowed to be examined upon any thing , but what they have found thus to be legal . the advocates for the king and defendant being both called in before the court , the defendant hears the sentence read , and then the forty five iurors are called , and the defendant's objections against them are discussed ; and tho' of old the king's advocate had the naming of the iury , as being presumed disinteressed , yet sir george mackenzie prevailed to get an act of parliament , whereby the nomination of the iury was referred to the iudges , fifteen of these forty five only are admitted as a sufficient iury , and the defendant is allowed to challenge or reject , without giving any ground or reason for it , any thirty that he pleases of that number , and the fifteen who remain make up the jury , and are set by the judges . the iury being thus constituted , in the next place all the witnesses are called in before the court one by one , and not allowed to hear what one another say ; and after the objections against such witnesses are fully debated in writ and upon record , the witnesses are either admitted or rejected , as the judges find ground in law and equity : if admitted , the president of the court examines only upon what is found legal or relevant in the indictment . and in the next place he is examined upon any interrogatory that is moved either by the defendant , or any of the iury for him , and then the whole deposition is dictated by the president of the court , and is fully read in the hearing of the witness , and of the defendant and his advocats ; and if they desire any thing to be corrected , it is accordingly done , if the witness agree with them in the correction ; and in the last place , the deposition is signed by the president and the witness that gave it . all the depositions being thus taken , the advocats for the king , and defendant speak to the iury in a full harangue ; but because the publick interest was still to be preferr'd to private mens , therefore our law allowed the king's advocat to be the last speaker in all criminal cases , till sir george prevail'd with the parliament to give the last word to the defendant in all cases except that of treason , because ordinarily the greatest impression was supposed to be made by the last pleading . the debate and examinations thus ended , the iury are enclosed , and get in with them the whole debate , interlocutory sentence and depositions in writing , signed by the iudges , clerk , and witnesses . this instructs them fully how to proceed ; and after they have chosen a chancellour ( or foreman ) and a clerk , they read all the process , and debate fully upon it ; and to the end every iuror may stand in awe of posterity , it is marked by the clerk in the verdict , who absolved , and who condemned ; and as no witness can be examined but in presence of the party indicted , so if any man speak to any of the iury after they are enclosed , the defendant is for ever free. and tho of old the clerk of the court was used to be enclosed with the jury for their direction ; yet sir george mackenzie procured , that , because the clerk had some dependance upon the crown , he might be excluded from going in with them , and that they might chuse their own clerk ; which they use accordingly to do since that act. art. 8. of the foresaid act. 16. by this it appears , that no nation is more nice in securing the subject , or have ever shewed more judgment in processes or proceedings of treason , than scotland has . in the next place i must observe , that no nation has ever blamed a king's advocat for assisting in criminal processes , nor lies there any action or scandal against him any where on that account ; as can be proved from many hundreds of citations of the best laws and lawyers ; but he darkens his own cause , when just , who uses these to ignorant people ; and he lessens his own esteem , who thinks he needs them amongst men of better sense : the law trusts him entirely as a publick servant , who manages these pursuits by virtue of his office , and not by malice . the king's advocat must either have a negative over the king and all the iudicatories , by refusing to concur , by which he might make the justest pursuit useless ( for tho he should lay down his employment , yet it would give an ill impression even of the best cause ) or otherways he must be obliged to concur ; in which case he can do no prejudice , because iudges are presum'd to be learned , and the advocat is still to be consider'd as too interested , to have any dangerous influence : nor can he abuse the iury with any misrepresentation in point of law , for they are only allow'd by our law to consider what is meer matter of fact , and whether the precise point of law referr'd to them by the judges , be prov'd by these depositions of the witnesses which lye before the jury in writing . iudges may err in point of law , and juries in point of fact , but neither of these are entrusted to the advocate , so that poor people are abus'd extreamly when they are informed that the king's advocate occasioned any mans death . sir george might here likewise represent , that in the rebellion against k. ch. i. many noblemen and gentlemen were pursued for rising in arms by that same king's commission by whose authory their iudges did sit ; and yet none of the advocats of these times were ever quarrel'd with or mis-represented for debating even against their master's commission and remission , as will appear by the processes of haddo , president spotswood , marquess of huntley , montross , and hundreds of other gentlemen , but sir geo. needs justifie himself by no such precedents . in the third place , sir george mackenzie may unanswerably urge , that no man who endeavoured so to lessen the power of the king's advocats by acts of parliament and regulations , can be thought to have had any inclinations to stretch it ; as also he may value himself for refusing to accept the king's advocate 's place , till his predecessour resign'd it under his hand ; that he never informed against any man , nor suggested any pursuit ; that when a pursuit was motioned , he pleaded as much in private for the defendant , if the case was dubious , as any of his advocates did thereafter in the process ; nor did he ever shew any vehemence in the process , except when he was jealous'd of friendship to the defendant , or of love to popularity , because he had so pleaded in private : and no age did ever see so many thousands pardoned , nor so many indemnities granted , as was in his time , which as it must be principally ascribed to the extraordinary clemency of the kings he served , so it may be in some measure imputed to the natural byass which sir george had to the merciful hand . there is great reason to believe that poor people are only misled by mis-informations , since some in their pamphlets clamour against the advocate for threatning the iury with a process of errour , whereas all that he does is to protest for a process of errour , which is a duty imposed upon him by our law. they accuse him also for having occasioned great expences to the countrey , for keeping witnesses unexamined , whereas it appears fully from our statutes and practice that the examination of witnesses is no part of his duty , for the sollicitor presents them , and the iudges only can examine them . the bulk of all the processes raised in k. charles 2. and k. iames 7. reigns , were against such as rose in actual rebellion at pentland-hills , bothwell-bridge , and argyle 's invasion ; the first were pursued by sir iohn nisbet , one of the best lawyers and country-men that ever pleaded ; and sir george mackenzie did but copy his libels in pursuing men in the other two rebellions , these indictments were founded upon the laws of all nations , and particularly of scotland , declaring that subjects taking arms against the king and his authority were traytors . all the nobility and gentry , almost all who are in the present government rose against them with their swords in their hands , and so were more guilty ( if that must be called guilt ) than any judge ; these proceedings were justified by many parliaments , and all the iudicatures ; and england still continues to think that monmouth's invasion was a rebellion ; so that the succeeding king's advocates could not be blamed for pleading in defence of what others fought for , and judged . there were other two classes of men prosecuted in those times , the one was of the murderers of the arch-bishop of st. andrews , the other was of such as in publick rendezvous of rebellion , * as at sanqhuar , wherein they declared k. ch. 2. to have forfeited his right to the crown , because he had broken the covenant , which was the fundamental contract betwixt god , the king , and the people , and therefore they declared war against him , and that it was lawful to kill all who served him . now it is left to any indifferent reader to judge whether there needed any eloquence to prevail with iudges or iurors to condemn such rebels . but to shew the clemency of the government , strangers would be pleased to consider that tho' above 20000 had been guilty of publick rebellion , yet 200 died not by the criminal court , and above 150 of these might have saved their lives , by saying god bless the king ; not that the refusing to say this was made a crime ( as is villainously represented ) but that this easie defence was allowed under this g●ntle king , whose clemency we wish may be imitated by those who cry so much out against his cruelty ; and amongst the many thousands that rose with argyle , only two notorious rebels were pitched upon by the criminal court to die for the example and terrour of others . and i may safely say , that there died not six in all the the time that sir geo. was advocate , except for being in actual rebellion , and for being guilty of assassination clearly proved ; nor did the earl of argyle himself die till he had actually invaded his native country : nor george lermonth , till it was proved , that ( tho' he wanted arms ) yet he commanded those who were in arms to fall upon the king's souldiers , and so they were killed by his command . and what eloquence is requisite to perswade judges or juries to condemn in such crimes ? to the reader . when we inform strangers of the seditious principles of the scotch presbyterians , they are justly surprised that such villanies can be practised , where humanity and christianity are not openly and plainly renounced , and therefore some of their own authentick papers are here subjoined , which contain the natural consequences of their covenant and principles , by which we leave the world to iudge whether sir george mackenzie has not treated them with all modesty and tenderness , and whether any form of government can possibly subsist , where such wicked and pernicious fooleries are propagated . the solemn league and covenant . wee noblemen , barons , knights , gentlemen , citizens , burgesses , ministers of the gospel , and commons of all sorts in the kingdoms of scotland , england and ireland , by the providence of god living under one king , and being of one reformed religion , having before our eyes the glory of god , and the advancement of the kingdom of our lord and saviour iesus christ , the honour and happiness of the kings majesty and his posterity , and the true publick liberty , safety , and peace of the kingdoms , wherein every ones private condition is included ; and calling to mind the treacherous and bloody plots , conspiracies , attempts , and practices of the enemies of god , against the true religion , and professors thereof in all places , especially in these three kingdoms , ever since the reformation of religion , and how much their rage power and presumption are of late , and at this time increased and exercised ; whereof the deplorable estate of the church and kingdom of ireland , the distressed estate of the church and kingdom of england , and the dangerous estate of the church and kingdom of scotland are present and publick testimonies ; we have now at last ( after other means of supplication , remonstance , protestations and sufferings ) for the preservation of our selves and our religion from utter ruine and destruction , according to the commendable practice of these kingdoms in former times , and the example of god's people in other nations , after mature deliberation , resolved and determined to enter into a mutual and solemn league and covenant : wherein we all subscribe , and each one of us for himself , with our hands lifted up to the most high god , do swear : 1. that we shall sincerely , really , and constantly , through the grace of god , endeavour in our several places and callings , the preservation of the reformed-religion in the church of scotland , in doctrine , worship , discipline and government , against our common enemies ; the reformation of religion in the kingdoms of england and ireland , in doctrine , worship , discipline , and government , according to the word of god , and the example of the best reformed churches ; and shall endeavour to bring the churches of god in the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and vniformity in religion , confession of faith , form of church government , directory for worship and catechising ; that we and our posterity after us , may , as brethren , live in faith and love , and the lord may delight to dwell in the midst of us . 2. that we shall in like manner , without respect of persons , endeavour the extirpation of popery , prelacy ( that is , church government by archbishops , bishops , their chancellours and commissaries , deans , deans and chapters , arch-deacons , and all other ecclesiastical officers depending on that hierarchy ) superstition , heresie , schism , prophaneness , and whatsoever shall be found to be contrary to sound doctrine and the power of godliness ; lest we partake in other mens sins , and thereby be in danger to receive of their plagues ; and that the lord may be one , and his name one in the three kingdoms . 3. we shall with the same sincerity , reality , and constancy , in our several vocations , endeavour with our estates and lives mutually to preserve the rights and priviledges of the parliaments , and the liberties of the kingdoms ; and to preserve and defend the kings majesties person and authority , in the preservation and defence of the true religion , and liberties of the kingdoms ; that the world may bear witness with our consciences of our loyalty , and that we have no thoughts or intentions to diminish his majesties iust power and greatness . 4. we shall also with all faithfulness endeavour the discovery of all such as have been , or shall be incendiaries , malignants , or evil instruments , by hindering the reformation of religion , dividing the king from his people , or one of the kingdoms from another , or making any faction or parties amongst the people , contrary to this league and covenant , that they may be brought to publick tryal , and receive condign punishment , as the degree of their offences shall require or deserve , or the supream iudicatories of both kingdoms respectively , or others having power from them for that effect , shall judge convenient . 5. and whereas the happiness of a blessed peace between these kingdoms , denyed in former times to our progenitors , is by the good providence of god granted unto us , and hath been lately concluded , and setled by both parliaments , we shall each one of us , according to our place and interest , endeavour that they may remain conjoined in a firm peace and union to all posterity , and that iustice may be done upon the wilful opposers thereof , in manner expressed in the precedent article . 6. we shall also according to our places and callings in this common cause of religion , liberty , and peace of the kingdoms , assist and defend all those that enter into this league and covenant , in the maintaining and pursuing thereof ; and shall not suffer our selves directly or indirectly by whatsoever combination , perswasion , or terrour , to be divided and withdrawn from this blessed vnion and conjunction , whether to make defection to the contrary part , or to give our selves to a detestable indifferency , or neutrality in this cause , which so much concerneth the glory of god , the good of the kingdoms , and honour of the king ; but shall all the days of our lives zealously and constantly continue therein , against all opposition , and promote the same according to our power , against all lets and impediments whatsoever ; and what we are not able our selves to suppress or overcome , we shall reveal and make known , that it may be timely prevented or removed : all which we shall do as in the sight of god. and , because these kingdoms are guilty of many sins and provocations against god , and his son jesus christ , as is too manifest by our present distresses and dangers , the fruits thereof , we profess and declare before god and the world , our unfeigned desire to be humbled for our own sins , and for the sins of these kingdoms , especially that we have not , as we ought , valued the inestimable benefit of the gospel , that we have not laboured for the purity and power thereof , and that we have not endeavoured to receive christ in our hearts , nor to walk worthy of him in our lives , which are the causes of other sins and transgressions so much abounding amongst us , and our true and unfeigned purpose , desire , and endeavour for our selves and all others under our power and charge , both in publick and in private , in all duties we owe to god and man , to amend our lives , and each one to go before another in the example of a real reformation ; that the lord may turn away his wrath , and heavy indignation , and establish these churches and kingdoms in truth and peace . and this covenant we make in the presence of almighty god the searcher of all hearts , with a true intention to perform the same , as we shall answer at that great day when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed ; most humbly beseeching the lord to strengthen us by his holy spirit for this end , and to bless our desires , and proceedings with such success as may be deliverance and safety to his people , and encouragement to other christian churches groaning under , or in danger of the yoke of antichristian tyranny , to joyn in the same , or like association and covenant , to the glory of god , the enlargement of the kingdom of jesus christ , and the peace and tranquility of christian kingdoms , and common-wealths . west-kirk the 13. day of august , 1650. the commission of the general assembly , considering that there may be just ground of stumbling from the kings majesties refusing to subscribe and emit the declaration offered unto him by the committee of estates , and commissioners of the general assembly concerning his former carriage and resolutions for the future , in reference to the cause of god , and the enemies and friends thereof ; doth therefore declare that this kirk and kingdom do not own nor espouse any malignant party or quarrel or interest , but that they fight meerly upon their former grounds and principles , and in defence of the cause of god and of the kingdom , as they have done these twelve years past : and therefore as they do disclaim all the sin and guilt of the king and of his house , so they will not own him , nor his interest , otherwise than with a subordination to god , and so far as he owns and prosecutes the cause of god , and disclaimes his and his fathers opposition to the work of god , and to the covenant , and likewise all the enemies thereof ; and that they will with convenient speed take in consideration the papers lately sent unto them from oliver cromwel , and vindicate themselves from all the falsehoods contained therein , especially in those things , wherein the quarrel betwixt us and that party is mis-stated , as if we owned the late kings proceedings , and were resolved to prosecute , and maintain his present majesties interest , before and without acknowledgement of the sins of his house and former ways , and satisfaction to gods people in both kingdoms . a. ker. 13. of august , 1650. the committee of estates having seen and considered a declaration of the commission of the general assembly anent the stating of the quarrel whereon the army is to fight , do approve the same , and heartily concur therein . tho henderson . a true and exact copy of a treasonable and bloody paper , called , the fanaticks new covenant : which was taken from donald cargill at queens-ferry , iune 3. 1680. one of their field-preachers , a declared rebel and traitor . together with their execrable declaration published at the cross of sanquhair , upon the two and twentieth day of the said month of june ; after a solemn procession and singing of psalms , by cameron , the notorious ringleader of , and preacher at , their field-conventicles , accompanied with twenty of that wretched crew . we under-subscribers , for our selves , and all that join with us , and adhere to us , being put to it by god , our consciences , and men ; do bind our souls with a solemn and sacred bond , lest on the one hand we should be carried away with the stream of the apostacy and defection of the church in this time , and on the other hand , lest we should ( not being so engaged ) evanish in vanity , and be without a right rule in good designs : we have judged it our duty again to covenant with god , and one another , and to publish this declaration to the world of our purposes , that men may know our most inward thoughts , the rules that we walk by , and the outmost ends that we have before our eyes for this intent , that those who are lovers of god , zealous of his reigning in glory , and desirous of reformation , and the propagation of his kingdom , may have occasion no more to be jealous of our intentions , and others may have no ground to load us with odious and foul aspersions ; but , that all knowing the truth of us , if they shall strive against us , and truth with us , shall do it without excuse , and against conviction ; and that those who shall join with us , may do it upon solid and undoubted grounds , and both they and we may expect grace from him , faithfully to persevere , and happily to be successful in so good purposes . it is true , we are not ignorant of the great unmindfulness , failing , counteracting , and mocking that has been in our former vows and covenants with god , and of the great iudgments that hath , and are like to follow such impious and sinful dealing with god in such weighty matters , ( for which we both ought and desire to be humbled before him , ) which cannot but make us with great trembling of heart enter into new ones , knowing both our own weakness and readiness to relapse , and the great hazard and danger of such relapses ; yet , the desire of recovering and preserving a remnant , and the conviction of this , as the most convenient mean , the zeal to gods glory , and christs reigning , ( which is the highest and most acceptable duty man can perform to god , ) hoping for his mercies ( who is witness to the integrity of our hearts and rightness of our intentions ▪ ) that he will instruct , direct , accept , and prosper us , we go forward , declaring , that nothing else but what we here express is our design . i. we covenant and swear , that we take the only true and living god , father , son , and holy ghost , to be our god , and betakes our selves to the merits and righteousness of his son , as the alone righteousness that can justifie us before god ; and that we take his scriptures and word to be the object of our faith , and rule of our conversation in all things ; and that we shall give up our selves to him , to be renewed , instructed , and in all things ruled by his spirit , according to that word ; and shall earnestly endeavour by his grace , to render to him that love , worship , and obedience , that his word requires , and his goodness engages us to . ii. that we shall to the outmost of our power , advance the kingdom of christ established throughout the land , ( if at any time hereafter god shall give us this opportunity ) righteousness and the true reformed religion , in the truth of its doctrine , in the purity and power of its worship and ordinances , and its discipline and government , and free the church of god from the thraldom , tyranny , incroachment , and corruption of prelacy on the one hand , and erastianism on the other . and we shall to our power , relieve the church and subjects of this kingdom , ( we being called thereto , by his giving of us power , power being gods call to do good ) of that oppression that hath been exercised upon their consciences , civil rights and liberties , that men may serve him holily , without fear , and possess their civil rights in quietness , without disturbance . iii. that we shall endeavour to our outmost , the extirpation of the kingdom of darkness , and whatsoever is contrair to the kingdom of christ , and especially idolatry and popery in all the articles of it , as we are bound in our national covenant ; and superstition , will-worship , and prelacy , with its hierarchy , as we are bound in our solemn league and covenant ; and that we shall with the same sincerity , endeavour ( god giving us assistance ) the overthrow of that power that hath established that prelacy and erastianism over the church , and exercises such a lustful and arbitrary tyranny over the subjects , seeking again to introduce idolatry and superstition in these lands , contrair to our covenants : and in a word , that we shall endeavour the extirpation of all the works of darkness , and the relicts of idolatry and superstition , ( which are both much enlarged and revived in our times , ) and execute righteous iudgments impartially ( according to the word of god , and degree of wickedness ) upon the committers of these things , but especially blasphemy , idolatry , atheism , sorcery , perjury , uncleanness , prophanation of the lords day , oppression and malignancy , that being thus zealous for god , he may delight to dwell among us . iv. seriously considering , that the hand of our kings has been against the throne of the lord , and that now for a long time , the succession of our kings , and the most part of our rulers with him , hath been against the purity and power of religion and godliness , and freedom of the church of god , and hath degenerate from the vertue and good government of their predecessors , into tyranny , and hath of late so manifestly rejected god , his service and reformation , as a slavery , as they themselves call it in their publick papers , ( especially in these last letters to the king , and duke of lauderdale ) disclaiming their covenant with god , and blasphemously inacting it to be burnt by the hand of a hang-man , governed contrary to all right laws divine and humane , excercised such tyranny and arbitrary government , opprest men in their consciences and civil rights , used free subjects ( christian and reasonable men ) with less discretion and justice than their beasts ; and so not only frustrate the great end of government , ( which is , that men may live godly , holily and peaceably under them , and might be maintained in their rights and liberties form injury and wrong ) but hath also walked contrary to it , so that it can no more be called a government , but a lustful rage , excercised with as little right reason , and with more cruelty than in beasts , and they themselves can be no more called governours , but publick grassators , and publick iudgements , which all men ought as earnestly to labour to be free of , as of sword , famine , or pestilence raging amongst us ; and besides , hath stopped ( instead of punishing ) the course of law and iustice against idolaters , blasphemers , atheists , murderers , incestuous and adulterous , and other malefactors ; and instead of rewarding the good , hath made butcheries and murthers on the lord's people , sold them as slaves , imprisoned , for faulted , banished and fined them , upon no other account , but for maintaining the lords right to rule consciences , against the usurpations of men , for fulfilling their vows , and repelling unjust violence , which innocent nature allows to all ; of all which , and more particulars , we can give ( we speak as before god ) innumerable and sure instances : neither can it be thought that there is hope of their returning from these courses , having so often shewed their natures and enmities against god and all righteousness , and so often declared and renewed their purposes and promises of persevering in these courses . and , suppose they should dissemble a repentance of these evils , and profess to return to better courses , being put to straits , or for their own ends , ( for upon no other account can we reasonably expect it ; ) and though it might be thought , that there might be pardon for what is done , ( which we cannot yet see to be , without the violation of the law of god , and a great guiltiness on the land , from which guiltiness the land can never be free , but by executing of god's righteous iudgements upon them , for omitting of so greatly deserved , and so necessarily requisite a justice ; ) yet they cannot be believed , after they have violated all tyes that humane wisdom can devise to bind men ; and beside , there will be something of folly found , to think to bind a king that pretends to absoluteness : and our fathers , or rather our selves , at first judged it not warrantable to receive him , without consenting to , and swearing of the covenant : and if so , the renouncing and disclaming thereof , we ought at present to judge to be a just and reasonable ground of rejecting him upon these grounds , being assured of god's approbation , and mens , whose hearts are not utterly byassed , and their consciences altogether corrupted , and knowing assuredly , that the upholding of such , is to uphold men to bear down christ's kingdom , and to uphold satans , and the depriving of men of right government and good governours , to the ruining of religion , and undoing of humane society . we then seeing the innumerable sins and snares that are in giving obedience to their acts , on the other hand , seeing if we shall acknowledge their authority , and refuse obedience to their sinful commands , the endless miseries that will follow , and siding with god ( who we hope will accept and help us to a liberation from their tyranny ) against his stated and declared enemies ; do reject that king , and those associate with him , from being our rulers , because standing in the way of our right , free and peaceably serving of god , propagating his kingdom and reformation , and overthrowing satans kingdom , according to our covenant ; and declares them henceforth to be no lawful rulers , as they have declared us to be no lawful subjects , upon a ground far less warrantable , as men unbyassed may see ; and that after this , we neither owe , nor shall yield any willing obedience to them , but shall rather suffer the outmost of their cruelties and injustice , until god shall plead our cause , and that upon these accounts ; because they have altered and destroyed the lord's established religion , overturned the fundamental and establish'd laws of the kingdom ▪ taken altogether away christ's church and government , and changed the civil government of this land ( which was by king and free parliament ) into tyranny , where none are associate to be partakers of the government , but only those who will be found by justice to be guilty of criminals , and all others excluded , even those who by the laws of the land by birth had a right to , and a share in that government , and that only , because not of the same guiltiness and mischievous purposes with themselves : and also , all free elections of commissioners for parliaments , and officers for government , are made void by their making those the qualifications of admission to these places , which by the word of god , and the laws of this land , were the cause of their exclusion before , so that none can look upon us , or judge us bound in allegeance to them . unless they say also we are bound in allegeance to devils , they being his vicegerents , and not gods. v. we then being made free , by god and their own doings , he giving the law , and they giving the transgression of that law , which is the cause that we are loosed now from all obligations , both divine and civil to them , and knowing that no society of men that hath corruption in them , ( which always is ready to beget disorders and do injuries , unless restrained and punished by laws and government ) can be without laws and government , and withal desiring to be governed in the best way that is least lyable to inconveniencies and tyranny : we do declare , that we shall set up over our selves , and over all that god shall give us power , government , and governours , according to the word of god , and especially according to that word , exod. 18. v. 21. moreover , thou shalt provide out of all the people , able men , such as fear god , men of truth , hating covetousness ; and that we shall no more commit the government of our selves , and the making of laws for us , to any one single person , and lineal successor , we not being tied as the iews were by god , to one family , government not being an inheritance , but an office , which must be squared , not to the interest and lust of a man , but to the good of the commonwealth , and this kind of government by a single person , &c. being most liable to inconveniencies , ( as sad and long experience may now teach us , ) and aptest to degenenate into tyranny . moreover , we declare that these men whom we shall set over us , shall be ingaged to govern us principally by that civil or judicial law , given by god to his people of israel , especially in matters of life and death , and in all other things also , so far as they teach , excepting only that law , ( viz. anent slaves , ) which does not agree with that christian liberty established in all christendom , ( only violated by our tyrants , and some others of late , ) and that of divorces and poligamy ; the one being not a law , but a permission granted upon the account of the hardness of their hearts , the other being a sinful custom contrair to the first institution of marriage , crept in into the church : we know that men of malignant and perverse spirits , that has not a higher god than a wicked king , which suits only with their lustful licentiousness , and it may be others with them that seemed to be of better principles , will raise an ignorant clamour upon this , that it is a fifth-monarchy ; and we fifth-monarchy-men , and will labour to amuse the people with strange terms , and put odious names on good things to make them hateful , as their way is ; but if this be their fifth-monarchy , we both are , and ought to be such , and that according to his word . vi. it being the work of the ministers of the gospel , to preach , propagate , and defend the kingdom of god , and to preserve the doctrine , worship , discipline , government , liberties and priviledges of the same , from all corruptions and incroachments of rulers , and all others . and seeing ▪ that the ministers of the church of scotland , ( at least the greatest part of them before ) not only were defective in preaching and testifying against the acts of these rulers , for overthrowing religion and reformation , abjuring our covenant made with god , establishing a government in the church , which that king calls his own government , ( and so not god's , ) contrair to our covenant ; against inacting of that blasphemous ( so calvin calls that supremacy of henry the eighth , upon which this prerogative is founded , and from which it is derived , and is no less , if not more jnjurious to christ , and inslaving to his church , ) and sacrilegious prerogative given to a king over the church of god , and against the other acts and incroachments of his church , and hindred others also who were willing ▪ and would have testified against them , and censured some that did it , ( for which , together with the other causes in their trust and administration , we may say , god hath left them to do worse things ; ) but also hath voted in that meeting , ( which they are pleased to call an assembly of ministers , but how justly , let men judge , ) an acceptation of that liberty , founded upon , and given by vertue of that blasphemously arrogated and usurped power ; and hath appeared before their courts to accept of that liberty , and to be enacted and authorized there as ministers , and so hath willingly ( for this is an elicit act of the will , and not an act of force and constraint ) translated the power of sending out , ordering , censuring , ( for as they accept of their liberty ▪ from them , so they submit to their censures and restraints , at least all of them who were yet tried with it , and others of them appeared and acknowledged before their courts , that they would not have done these things that they were charged with , if they had thought it would have offended them , ) ministers departing from the court of christ , and subjection to the ministry , to the courts of men , and subjection to the magistrate , ( which had been impious and injurious to christ and his church , though they had been righteous and lawful rulers , ) and by their changing of courts ( according to common law ) hath changed their masters , and of the ministers of christ are become the ministers of men , and bound to answer to them as oft as they will ; and as by the acceptation of this liberty in such manner , they have translated the power , so they have given up and utterly quit the government , and a succession of a presbyterian ministry ; for as these were not granted them of their masters , so they exercise their ministry without them , and so by this , as the ecclesiastick-government is swallowed up in the civil , ( if the rest had followed them ) the ministry should have also been extinct with themselves , and the whole work of reformation had been buried in oblivion , not so much as the remembrance of it kept up : these , together with the other of their commissions in preaching , the lawfulness of paying that tribute declared to be imposed for the bearing down of the true worship of god , ( which they falsly termed seditious conventicles , ) and their advising these poor prisoners to subscribe the bond , and consequently could not but so advise all others , if put to it , ( for the hazard that men were in , will not make a real change of the morality of that action , ) and beside , the rest may be put to it upon the same hazard , and so if the one should advise , ( which consequently they must do , ) and the other should subscribe , this would altogether close that door which the lord hath made use of in all the churches of europe , for casting off the yoke of the whore , and restoring the truth and purity of religion and reformation , and freedom of the churches , and should have stopped all ingress for men , when once brought under tyranny , to recover their liberty again . these ministers then , not being followers of christ , who before pontius pilate , gave a good confession , which was , that he was a king ; and no king , if he have not power to order his house and subjects , and they not following him , nor his ministers , if not asserting and maintaining of this kingly power , against all incroachers and usurpers of it ; and besides , we being commanded , if any brother walk disorderly , from such to withdraw ; and although in the capacity we now are in , we neither have , nor assume to our selves authority to give our definite and authoritative sentences of deposition and suspension against these ministers ; yet we declare , which is proper for us to do , that we neither can , nor will bear preaching , nor receive sacraments from these ministers that hath accepted of , and voted for that liberty ; and declares all who have encouraged and strengthened their hands , by hearing and pleading for them , all those who have traffiqued for an union with them , without their renouncing and repenting of these things , all those that do not testifie faithfully against them , and after do not deport themselves suitably to their testimonies , and all who joyn not in publick with their brethren , who are testifying against them ; we declare , that we shall not hear them preach , nor receive sacraments from them , at least , till they stand in judgment before these ministers , and be judged by them who have followed the lord , and kept themselves free of these defections : and as our hearts hath cleaved to these ministers , while they were on the lord's side , and subjected our selves to them , so we shall still cleave to those that abide following him , and shall be subject to them in the lord. vii . then we do declare and acknowledge , that a gospel-ministry , is a standing ordinance of god , appointed by christ , to continue in the church , until the end of the world ; and that none of us shall take upon him the preaching of the word , or administring the sacraments , unless called , and ordained thereto , by the ministers of the gospel : and as we declare that we are for a standing gospel-ministry , rightly chosen , and rightly ordained , so we declare , that we shall go about this work in time to come , with more fasting and praying , and more careful inspection into the conversation and holiness of these men that shall be chosen and ordained , the want of which formerly , hath been a great sin , both in ministers and people , which hath not been the least cause of this defection . the declaration and testimony of the true-presbyterian , anti-prelatick , and anti-erastian , persecuted-party in scotland . it is not amongst the smallest of the lords mercies to this poor land , that there hath always been some who hath given a testimony of every course of defection which we were guilty of , which is a token for good , that he does not as yet intend to cast us off altogether , but that he will leave a remnant , in whom he will be glorious , if they ( through his grace ) keep themselves clean still , and walk in his way and method , as it hath been walked in , and owned by him in our predecessors ( of truly worthy memory ) their time , in their carrying on our noble work of reformation , in the several steps thereof , from popery and prelacy , and likewise from erastian-supremacy , so much usurped by him , who it is true ( so far as we know ) is descended from the race of our kings ; yet he hath so far deborded from what he ought to have been , by perjury and vsurpation in church matters , and tyranny in matters civil , as is known by the whole land , that we have just reason to believe , that one of the lords great controversies against us is , that we have not disowned him , and the men of his practices , whether inferiour magistrates , or any others , as enemies to our lord and his crown , and the true-protestant ▪ and presbyterian interest in their hands , our lords espoused bride and church . therefore , although we be for government and governours , such as the word of god , and our covenants allows , yet we for our selves , and all that will adhere to us , as the representatives of the true presbyterian church , and covenanted nation of scotland , considering the great hazard of lying under such a sin , do by these presents disown charles stuart , who hath been reigning , or rather ( we may say ) tyrannizing on the throne of scotland , or government thereof , ( for faulted several years since by his perjury and breach of covenant with god and his church , ) and usurpation of his crown and royal prerogatives therein , and many other breaches in matters ecclesiastick , and by his tyranny and breach of the very leges regnandi in matters civil ; for which reasons , we declare , that several years since he should have been denuded of being king , ruler , or magistrate , or having any power to act , or to be obeyed as such : as also , being under the standard of christ , captain of salvation , we declare war against such a tyrant and usurper , and all the men of his practices , as enemies to our lord jesus christ , his cause and covenants , and against all such as have strengthened him , sided with him , or any ways acknowledged him in his usurpation and tyranny , civil and ecclesiastick , yea , and against all such as shall strengthen , side with , or any ways acknowledge any other in the like usurpation and tyranny , far more against such as would betray or deliver up our free reformed mother church , into the bondage of antichrist , the pope of rome . by this we homologat the testimony given at rutherglen , the twenty ninth of may , 1679. and all the faithful testimonies of those that have gone before us , as of those also that have suffered of late ; and we do disclaim that declaration published at hamiltoun , iune 1679. chiefly , because it takes in the kings interest , which we are several years since loosed from , because of the foresaid reasons , and others , which may after this ( if the lord will ) be published . as also , we disown , and by this resents the reception of the duke of york , a profest papist , as repugnant to our principles and vows to the most high god , and as that which is the great ( though alace too just ) reproach of our church and nation : we also , by this , protest against his succeeding to the crown , and whatever hath been done , or any are essaying to do in this land ( given to the lord ) in prejudice to our work of reformation . and to conclude , we hope none will blame us for , or offend at , our rewarding those that are against us , as they have done to us , as the lord gives the opportunity . this is not to exclude any that hath declined , if they be willing to give satisfaction to the degree of their offence . given at sanqhuair , iune 22. 1680. these are the true and exact copies of the fanaticks new covenant and declaration ; collationed with the originals , which are kept amongst the records of his majesties privy-council ; and attested by al. gibson , cl. sti. concilii . and will. paterson , cl. sti. concilii . a blasphemous and treasonable paper , emitted by the phanatical undersubscribers , on may 1. 1681. according to the original lying in the hands of the clerks of his majesties most honourable privy council . we undersubscribers , now prisoners for the truth in the cannongate tolbuith , though most vile , yet it pleased the holy ghost to work on our spirits of a time past , in clearing causes of wrath , and shewing us duty from day to day , that now in some time past we are , and have been called mad men and devils , and now there is none in the kingdom , in prison , or out of prison that we can converse with as christians . and yesterday being the 26 day of the 5 th moneth , it seemed good to the holy ghost and to us , to take out of our bibles the psalms in meeter for several causes mentioned afterwards , for the book of the revelation says , if any man should add unto these things , god shall add unto him the plagues which are written in this book ; and we did burn them in our prison-house , and sweep away the ashes . likewise , in the holy scriptures , we renounce chapters and verses , and contents , because it is only done by humane wisdom , and the changing of the books after the holy ghost had placed them : we being pressed to this work by the holy ghost , do renounce the impression and translation of both the old and new testaments , and that for additions put unto them by men , and other causes ; as first , putting in horrid blasphemy , making a tyrant patron of the church , when the scriptures holds of none but of god , and needs no patronage from any king , prince , or rulers , and the writing of that blasphemous , sacrilegious , ( as some call it ) the epistle dedicatory , filled with such language , as dread sovereign highness , most high and mighty , most sacred majesty ; and likewise the horrid unparallell'd blasphemy , making a triangle with these hebrew letters in it thus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 iehovah , representing the trinity ; and likewise putting in horrid pictures in several places of the holy scripture , and likewise drawing scores betwixt the books of the bible , and other superfluous traditions . likewise we renounce the catechisms larger and shorter , and confession of faith , against which we have many causes ; one cause is , in the 23 chap. for the scripture proofs that they cite , proves the contrary of that they write . we renounce the acts of the general assembly , and all the covenants , and acknowledging of sins and engagement to duties , and that which they call preaching books , and all their works , way , form , and manner of worship , doctrine , discipline , and government , and the studying on their books , the thing they call their preaching , for instead of going to god for his mind to the people , they go to their books , and so makes their books their god and their leader , and so all following that way , go to hell together : the cause of this is , we find none of their works but they are like themselves , carnal and corrupt , according to that scripture , hate the garment spotted with the flesh. we renounce the limiting of the lord's mind by glasses , and their ordination of men only learned , and their saying , that learning is the essential of a minister without grace . likewise , we renounce their manner of renewing covenants , pressing mens consciences to take a covenant , and by so doing has filled the kirk and state with tyrants and incarnate devils , as we find this day , they knew the men to have no marks of grace , but on the other hand , to be prophane , as them they call king and rulers , captains and comanders in state and armies , and all kirk officers whom we call tyrants and iudas's , for by so doing they have corrupted both kirk and state , as this day kirk men and states men , whom we call iudas's and tyrants , are studying in opposition to holiness and the work of reformation , who entred in by these same covenants , are now pursuing our lives for a christian walk . and likewise , we renounce the covenant taken at queensferry , commonly called cargil's covenant , and likewise hamiltown declaration , yea , and sanquhare declaration , because they may and has owned these , and are owning these , who are enemies to holiness , and were enemies to us , as some of them said , we should suffer kirk censure for giving over the old apostat ministers to the devil , and some of them counted us their enemies for the truths sake , and sent us word they would protest against us , and so we justifie our lord in breaking them at airds moss , we justifie the lord likewise , in taking away that they call field-preachings , or mockings , because they were nothing but rebellion against the high lord , as we find now when our lord is come to the cross , there is neither minister nor people to bide by him , of the many thousands has flocked to the thing they call preachings or mockings , and therefore now all are found void of saving grace , and so we see that word is accomplished , strait and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life , and few there be that find it : and that other word , many shall strive and shall not be able . we finding all former actions to be such as devils has and can creep in at ( as declarations and covenants ) and get the name of saints : therefore , this day it seemed good to the holy ghost and to us , to renounce and burn the former covenants and declarations , because they are not strait enough according to scripture , and all their works such like , and therefore we will own none of their works , till it please the lord to give us teaching from himself . by this all may know and understand , we overturn , and formally burns all the former works of the clergy of scotland , and throughout all the whole world , that are in opposition to holiness , dated the 6 th day of the week , being the 27. of the 5 th month , 1681. about mid-day . we renounce and decline all authority throughout the world , and all that are in authority , and all their acts and edicts , from the tyrant charles stuart , to the lowest tyrant , and burns them the same day , being the 6 th day of the week , the 27 day of the 5 th month , 1681. at cannongate tolbuith iron-house . we renounce the names of months , as ianuary , february , march , april , may , iune , iuly , august , september , october , november , december . sunday , monday , tuesday , wednesday , thursday , friday , saturday . martimas , holydays , for there is none holy but the sabbath day . lambmas day , whitsunday ▪ candlemas , beltan , cross stones , and images , fairs named by saints , and all the remnants of popery , tool or christmas , old wives fables and by-words , as palmsunday , carlinesunday , the 29 th of may , being dedicat by this generation to prophanity , peacesunday , halloweven , hogmynae night , valentins even ; no marrying in the month they call may , the innumerable relicts of popery , atheism and sorcery , and new years day , and hansell-monday , dredgies and likewakes , valenteins fair , chappels and chaplains : likewise sabbath days feastings , blythmeats , banquetings , revelling , pipings , sportings , dancings , laughings , singing prophane and lustful songs and ballads , table-lawings , monk-lands , frier-lands , blackfrier-lands , kirks and kirkyards , and mencat crosses , fount-stones , images , registers of lands and houses , register bonds , discharges , and all their law-works , inhibitions , hornings , letters of adjudications , ships-passes , prophanity and all unchast thoughts , words and actions , formality and indifferency , story-books and ballads , romances and pamphlets , comedy-books , cards and dice , and all such like , we disown all of them , and burns them the 6 th day of the week being the 27 th day of the 5 th month , 1681 , at the cannongate , tolbuith iron-house . we renounce all the customs and fashions of this generation , their way and custom of eating and drinking , sleeping and wearing , and all our own former ways , as well religious as moral , in so far as they have been squared and casten in this generations mould , and all our iniquious courses , lightness and unconcernedness with the glory of god , the only end wherefore we were sent into the world the 7 th day of the week , being the 27 th of the 5 th month. we renounce all that are now in prison-houses or correction-houses , men and women ; for none of them are with us in this work , and when we sent them a copy of this our renounciation , they called us devils . the copy of this we burnt instead of the books and works of this apostate generation , and buried the ashes in our and covered it with dust . notwithstanding of our burning covenants and declarations , and renouncing of them and their works ; be it known to all , that we do neither vindicate the cursed murderers of their bloodshed on fields , and scaffolds , and seas , and other horrid cruelties , such as torturings , imprisonments , pillagings , banishments , scourgings , stigmatizings , &c. nor condemn we the worthy martyrs , and the sufferings of others , only we give the lord justice , and vindicats his tarrying , for now the furnace has brought forth a more pure cause which we term , holiness to be built upon the word of god. that all may know and see our innocency , and know our end is and was the glory of god in all we did , though we came far short ; and in the months past we could get none to shew us kindness for meat or lodging , though we could pay for it our selves : that word in malachy , ye are cursed with a curse , for ye have robbed me , even the whole nation . and likewise in deut. we seeing the land all thus cursed , and all justifying themselves in that iniquity , were afraid to eat , or drink , or sleep under a roof with them : though there were many that would have shelter'd us , yet we could not eat , drink , converse , or pray with them , lest we had come under the curse , so many times our beds has been in the open fields , and we have come to houses and they would not sell us meal to make potage of , and we have found meal and water a rare dish , because the curse was off it , and it was blessed to us , according to that scripture , the blessing of the lord maketh rich. we are not murmuring in this , but when the weather has been worst , winds and rain , cold frost and snow , and when we had fasted most , we were best satisfied , according to that scripture , all shall work together for their good , that truly seek the lord ; when we had outward straits , then we had most inward peace , we had joy in the holy ghost , so the things the world calls the worst of our life , as reproaches , imprisonments , nakedness , hunger , and cold , &c. we had rather be suffering for our lords sake , than be kings of the whole earth , for our joy no man can take from us , and our prison is so pleasant through our lord , that we care for no company , for we know no company but all are cursed , and we know not what it is to be weary , but according to that scripture , eat and drink my beloved , yea eat and drink abundantly , we are rather in paradise . these things were cleared to us when fasting and praying , and we were pressed to do this by the holy ghost , we had many fasts about this thing , and this week we took some milk and bread in the third day of the week in the morning being the 24 after the 5 th month 1681. and tasted neither meat nor drink , nor any other kind of living , till the 6 th day of the week at 4 ▪ day of noon ( and then we took a little milk and bread ) for to find out the causes of his wrath we have wandred , mourned , wept , many a night and day in houses and fields , for we have and has had no other end but his glory , that the elect such as should be saved might be brought in , and it is only conscience that keeps us from giving men reverence in word and behaviour , though some call us dumb devils , and unlearned bruits , and one of us when coming before them they call rulers , was called a block-head , notwithstanding of all that came on us , we know and are taught by the holy scriptures , to give honour unto whom honour is due , and to salute one another , but it has been our work of a time to renounce the filthy vile imbracings , salutations , and complements of this generation , which they call court-breeding , our carriage , professing to follow the lord jesus , should be steed and circumspect according to that scripture , let us walk circumspectly , not as fools , but as wise men , as it is written in matthew , let your light so shine before men , that they may see your good works , and glorifie your father which is in heaven . cursed are they that says peace to a land , who are in the place of watchmen , when the lord says no peace , which practice , we silly unlearned creatures renounce , for we bless him he has keeped us from resting till the ark rest , and as for these they call watchmen , that cries peace or keep silence , we shall refer them to the prophet ezekiel , which ye may read at leisure , which we think shall be scotland . doom , for we have heard tell of few of them they call ministers , but they have all said peace , when brought before the enemies to witness their practice , being most unconscionable on hill sides , and moor sides , before several thousands , they called them tyrants , and intollerable oppressors , and their government tyranny and oppression , and that the crown of supremacy that charles stuart had usurped over the kirk , would weigh him down from the throne , and all that race with him , and when they are brought before them , and into prisons , nothing but in with the other supplication , to the honourable lords of his majesties secret council , beck and beinge , and please your lordships grace , &c. and now they are all at peace with his enemies , save one whom we disown , and so or long the enemies shall curse them , when the lord awakens their consciences , ( though we confess we have had some special witnesses of ministers ) and we think or long , the malignants shall pursue these ministers to death for unfaithfulness , for the vilest creatures in the land high and low , rich and poor , noble and ignoble , must give account for works done in the flesh ; then the dogs , sorcerers , whoremongers , and murderers , and idolaters , false-swearers , cursers , sabbath-breakers , idle loose livers , and all that are unchast in thoughts , words , and behaviour , and all that makes no conscience of their way , and whosoever loveth and maketh a lye , shall tremble that day when they shall enter into eternity ; when it shall be said as it was to dives , thou in thy lifetime hadst thy good things , and lazarus his bad things : for except a man be born again , he can in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven . we take up the book of the holy scripture at the lords command , and for a testimony of our dissatisfaction , at the abounding corruptions , both of translators and the press , and likewise for a testimony of our desires and intentions for a new translation and impression , free of the foresaid and other abuses , we to our power reform our own books , and sayes , that the word of god needs no humane art ; we hold that the word of god is laid the foundation of this new building , and shortly it shall become the head corner stone of the building , over both kirk and stater kirk-men , and states-men ; so that scripture towards the end of the rev. of iohn shall be fulfilled ; and i saw heaven opened , and behold a white horse , and he that sat upon him was called faithful and true , and in righteousness he doth iudge and make war , his eyes were as a flame of fire , and on his head were many crowns , and he had a new name written that no man knew , but he himself , and he was cloathed with a vesture dipt in blood , and his name is called the word of god. and first , to shew that we take the word of god in every point to be our rule , the sum and end of our so much reproached and mocked at exercise ( fasting and prayer ) will be found in the book of psalms ; be thou exalted , o god , above the heavens ; and let thy glory be above all the earth . it is written in the acts of the apostles , it seemed good to the holy ghost and to us : but they usurping supremacy , says , by the authority of the general assembly allows these psalms to be sung in congregations , &c. which we renounce : and more , we think the psalm book in meeter , and no other thing ought to be within the broads of the bible , but the simple scriptures of truth ; the psalms may be had in a book by themselves . we are so reproached and calumniate , that we are forced to make our defence , and shew that we have mourned , fasted , and prayed many a day , and many a night this last winter , many times in the open fields , in frost and snow , while our cloaths were frozen upon us , and our feet frozen in our shooes , as the town of cursed borronstonness can witness , and all this to find out the causes of our lords tarrying , when those who are now calling us devils , were turning themselves upon their ivory beds , like a door upon the hinges , eating the fat and drinking the sweet at their own ease : and when we were driven thence by persecution , we took our selves to the fields , holding still by our duty , where many women did offer themselves to the work , with whom our spirits was many a time burdened , whom we could not put away ( as our blessed lord dealt with iudas whom he knew would betray him ) without manifest causes : we stayed not with them but on solemn days , such as sabbaths , and appointed times for publick meeting , but when they took their rest betwixt hands , we continnued still in fields , nights and days , fasting and praying for two or three days together several times , and it was always their fear we should propose some question to try them for separation , and that night before we was taken , we warned them that the soldiers would come , and told them to use their freedom : we saw them also a mile off , an hour before they came , and none of them would go away ; and after we were brought in hither , after some several days fasting and prayer , we being warned by the holy ghost , followed esther's advice , and continued from eight a clock of the morning the 24 day of the 5 month , till the 27 at four afternoon , fasting and praying ; we sent them word likewise to fast and pray , and when we sent them the answer of our prayers in the writ , they called us devils : thence we fasted till the 28 day at night , and thence till the 30 at night , waiting still to see if they would recover , but they waxed still worse , and we were forced to write this to vindicate our carriage towards them . walter ker. iohn gibb . david iamison . iohn young. this is exactly compared and collationed with the principal copy , by me wil. paterson , cl. sti. concilii . finis . a catalogue of some books printed for io. hindmarsh at the golden-ball over against the royal-exchange in cornhill . the antiquity of the royal line of scotland farther cleared and defended , against the exceptions lately offer'd by dr. stillingfleet , in his vindication of the bishop of st. asaph . by sir george mackenzie , his majesty's advocate for the kingdom of scotland . the moral history of frugality with its opposite vices , covetousness , niggardliness , prodigality , and luxury . written by the honourable sir george mackenzie , late lord advocate of scotland . a memorial for his highness the prince of orange , in relation to the affairs of scotland : together with the address of the presbyterian-party in that kingdom to his highness ; and some observations on that address . by two persons of quality . an account of the present persecution of the church in scotland , in several letters . the case of the present afflicted clergy in scotland truly represented . to which is added for probation , the attestation of many unexceptionable witnesses to every particular ; and all the publick acts and proclamations of the convention and parliament relating to the clergy . by a lover of the church and his country . an historical relation of the late presbyterian general assembly , held at edinburgh , from october 16. to november 13. in the year 1690. in a letter from a person in edinburgh to his friend in london . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a50913-e110 vid. cargil and sanchars covenant at the end . * that is , this noise of prisoners yet preserved alive . so the preacher applied his doctrin . the truly learned advocate for the king. † illud tamen generaliter observandum , quod iurisdictio nunquam privative sed cumulative delega●i potest , non est quasi transitio juris de un● persona in aliam sed tantum mandata , jurisdictio quod non obstante delegatione adhuc remanet in delegante . considering the violent and cruel temper of their enemies . * compare this with the sanchar declaration , and cargil's covenant at the end of this paper . notes for div a50913-e7240 * that is , the same punishment which the law provides against such a criminal . art. eod . ii. art. 3. ejusdem . art. 10. act 92. ses. ii. iac. 6. * vid. cargils covenant and sanchar . declaration . a proclamation ordered by his majesties privy council of scotland upon the horrid murther of james, late lord archbishop of st. andrews, primate and metropolitan of all and one of his majesties most most honourable privy council of that kingdom scotland. privy council. 1679 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a58762 wing s1962 estc r6314 13703970 ocm 13703970 101453 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a58762) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 101453) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 848:60) a proclamation ordered by his majesties privy council of scotland upon the horrid murther of james, late lord archbishop of st. andrews, primate and metropolitan of all and one of his majesties most most honourable privy council of that kingdom scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) by tho. newcomb, reprinted at london : 1679. "at edenburgh, sunday the fourth of may, 1679." reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng sharp, james, 1613-1679. scotland -proclamations. broadsides -england -london -17th century 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-10 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-12 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-12 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation ordered by his majesties privy council of scotland , vpon the horrid murther of james late lord archbishop of st. andrews , primate and metropolitan of all scotland , and one of his majesties most honourable privy council of that kingdom . at edenburgh , sunday the fourth of may , 1679. charles by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. to our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers , or messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally specially constitute , greeting : we being fully and by legal proofs assured of the late horrid and bloody murther committed upon saturday last , being the third day of may instant , by ten or eleven fanatick and execrable assassinates , upon the person of the most reverend father in god , james late archbishop of st. andrews , primate of all scotland ; which barbarous and inhumane assassination will ( we doubt not ) spread horrour and amazement in the hearts of such as believe that there is a god , or a christian religion ; a cruelty exceeding the barbarity of pagans and heathens , amongst whom the officers and ministers of religion are reputed to be sacred , and are by the respect born to a deity whom they adore , secured against all such bloody and execrable attempts ; a cruelty exceeding the belief of all true protestants , whose churches have justly stigmatized with the marks of impiety all such as defile with blood those hands which they ought to hold up to heaven ; and a cruelty equal to any with which we can reproach the enemies of this true and reformed church ! by which also not only the principles of humane society , but our authority and government ( the archbishop of st. andrews being one of our privy council ) is highly violated , and example and incouragement given for murthering all such as serve us faithfully according to the prescript of our laws and royal commands : daily instances whereof we are to expect whilst field-conventicles , those rendezvouses of rebellion , and forgers of all bloody and jesuitical principles , are so frequented and followed , to the scandal of all government , and the contempt of our laws ; and which murther is as far as is possible rendered yet more detestable by the unmasked boldness of such as durst openly with bare faces in the midst of our kingdom , at mid-day assemble themselves together , to kill in our high-way the primate of our kingdom , and one of our privy council , by so many strokes and shots , as left his body as it were but one wound , and many of which being given after they knew he was dead , were remarkable proofs they were acted by a spirit of hellish and insatiable cruelty : have therefore , with advice of our privy council , thought sit hereby to command and charge all sheriffs , stewards , bayliffs of regalities and bayliaries , and their deputies , magistrates of burghs , and officers of our standing forces , to search , seek , take , and apprehend the persons guilty of the said horrid murder , or any suspected by them , until they be brought to justice ; and all our good and faithful subjects to concur in the taking and securing ( as far as is in their power ) those assassinates . and in respect there is a company of vagrant and skulking ruffians , who , to the great contempt of all government , do ride through this our kingdom , killing our soldiers , deforcing such as put our laws in execution , and committing such horrible murders , who might be easily discovered , if all such , amongst whom they converse , did , according to their duty , endeavor to apprehend them , or give notice of their residence . we have therefore thought fit , conform to the 144 act of parliament 12 , king james 6. to command and charge all our subjects , that whenever any unknown men or vagabonds happen to repair amongst them , that they with all possible speed certifie any of our privy council , officers of our forces , or any having trust under us thereof ; with certification to them , that if they omit the same , they shall be punished with all rigor , conform to the said act. and since several of the said assassinates are known to have been tenants in the shire of fiffe , whose faces will be known to such of the witnesses as were present . we hereby require and command all the heretors and masters of the said shire of fiffe and kinrosse , to bring their tenants , cottars and servants , living in the respective presbyteries , upon the several days , and to the places following , viz. to st. andrews , &c. there to be seen by the said witnesses , and to continue there until they be examined ; with certification to such of the said tenants , cottars and servants as shall be absent , they shall be reputed as accessory to the said crime ; and the masters , if they produce them not , or if hereafter they harbor any that shall not compeer , they shall be reputed as favorers of the said assassination ; and whereas there are several persons under caption and intercommuning in the said shire for several causes , and left persons , who are innocent , may be thereby debarred from appearing , we have thought fit hereby to sist and supersede all execution upon any letters of caption or intercommuning , or any other warrant , for securing of persons for the space of forty eight hours , after the said diets of appearance . and to the end the said cruel murder may be the more easily discovered , we do hereby offer and give full assurance of our indempnity to any one of the said assassinates , who shall discover his complices , and such as hounded them out , and present payment of the sum of ten thousand merks to any who shall inform who were the said assassinates , if upon his information they , or any of them can be apprehended , that they may be brought to condign punishment . and we ordain these presents to be printed and published at the market-cross of edenburgh , and other places needful . given under our signet at edenburgh , the fourth day of may 1679 and of our reign the one and thirtieth year . god save the king . reprinted at london by tho. newcomb . 1679. at a council-general of the company of scotland, trading to africa and the indies, holden at edinburgh the 18th day of october, 1699 company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1699 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a80256 wing c5584 estc r231851 99897627 99897627 137256 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a80256) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 137256) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2510:5) at a council-general of the company of scotland, trading to africa and the indies, holden at edinburgh the 18th day of october, 1699 company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh : 1699] imprint from wing cd-rom, 1996. reproduction of original in the john carter brown library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -17th century -early works to 1800. scotland -commerce -early works to 1800. broadsides 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion at a council-general of the company of scotland , trading to africa and the indies , holden at edinburgh the 18th day of october , 1699. upon reading and considering the contents of an abstract of the covrt of directors proceedings ; with relation to the said company 's colony in caledonia , since the 18 th of july 1698 ; together with a particular account in writing , of what they thought fit to be done , at this extraordinary juncture : resolved , ( nemine contradicente ) that this council-general do approve of what the directors have done , and ordered to be done , towards the supplying and supporting the colony , and recruits sent to caledonia , upon this emergency . resolved , ( nemine contradicente , ) that the further proportion of two pounds ten shillings sterling per cent , of the company 's stock ( formerly laid on , tho' not call'd for ) be now call'd in , and made payable to the company 's cashier , at or before martinmass next to come : and that the further proportion of two pounds ten shill . ster . per cent more , of the said stock , be laid on , and made payable to the said cashier , at or before candlemass next to come ; with interest , for both , after the said respective terms of payment . resorved , that all the deficiencies of the five pounds sterl . per cent , of the said stock , which was laid on , and call'd for , by an act of this council-general , of the 30 th of march last , be likewise now call'd in , and made lyable to pay interest , after the term of martinmass aforesaid : with certification &c. ordered , that the several resolutions abovementioned be forthwith printed and published . tweeddale j. p. c. g. proclamation for the convention of estates scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1666 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b02123 wing c3462 estc r171281 52612094 ocm 52612094 179375 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b02123) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179375) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2786:36) proclamation for the convention of estates scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. scotland. convention of estates. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by evan tyler, printer to the kings most excellent majesty, edinbvrgh : 1666. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. printed in black letter. dated at end: given at our court at whitehall, the twenty fifth of october, one thousand six hundred and sixty six, and of our reign the eighteenth year. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -convention of estates. anglo-dutch war, 1664-1667 -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion c r honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms proclamation for the convention of estates . charles , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. to all and sundry our good subjects whom these presents do or may concern , greeting . the great care we have of the honour and safety of that our ancient kingdom , moved vs some moneths ago to give order for the raising of such forces , both horse and foot , as we conceived necessary to prevent a sudden invasion ; and seing that just and necessary war in which we are engaged doth still continue , we do think it necessary to keep up these forces , for the defence of that our kingdom , as long as the present danger from foreign enemies remains . therefore , to the end , the easiest and most regular way of their maintenance may be agreed upon , we have thought fit to call a convention of the estates of that our ancient kingdom , to meet at edinburgh upon the ninth day of january next to come ; and do hereby require and command all archbishops , dukes , marquesses , earls , viscounts , bishops , lords and officers of state of that our kingdom , to be present and attend that dyet ; and also we do require all our sheriffs in the several shires and their deputies , that if there be any new elections made for this year of commissioners to parliaments or conventions , they make timous intimation to those commissioners to keep this meeting : but if there be no elections already made , that then they forthwith call and conveen all the free-holders in the respective shires , that according to the laws and acts of parliament , elections may be made of fit persons to be commissioners for this convention , and that our royal burroughs make choice of commissioners accordingly , and that they , and all other persons having interest , attend this convention of our estates , under the pains contained in our laws made thereanent . and that all our good subjects may have notice of this our royal will and pleasure , we do hereby command our lyon king at armes , and his brethren heraulds , macers , pursevants and messengers at armes , to make timous proclamation hereof at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and at the mercat-crosses of the head burroughs in the several shires of that our kingdom . given at our court at whitehall , the twenty fifth of october , one thousand six hundred and sixty six , and of our reign the eighteenth year . edinbvrgh , printed by evan tyler , printer to the kings most excellent majesty , 1666. a proclamation ordering the whole militia benorth the river of forth, to be in readiness with fifteen dayes provision, when called out, &c. england and wales. sovereign (1660-1685 : charles ii) 1684 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a58763 wing s1964 estc r6503 13704234 ocm 13704234 101466 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a58763) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 101466) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 848:61) a proclamation ordering the whole militia benorth the river of forth, to be in readiness with fifteen dayes provision, when called out, &c. england and wales. sovereign (1660-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : 1684. reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng proclamations -great britain. scotland -militia -proclamations. broadsides -scotland -edinburgh (lothian) -17th century 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-10 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-12 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-12 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation ordering the whole militia benorth the river of forth , to be in readiness with fifteen days provision , when called out , &c. charles , by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith ; to our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers of our privy council pursevants , or messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch , as severals of the inhabitants of the western and southern shires , of this our ancient kingdom , notwithstanding of the great peace , tranquillity and plenty , wherewith god hath blessed them , under our royal government , the justice , and equity of our administrations , and of our great care of preserving the protestant religion , in its truth and purity ; have at several times ; and on several occasions , not only moved sedition , and run into many irregular , and illegal tumults , but likewise , having casten off all fe●r of god , all duty to us , all affection to their native countrey , and all regard to the laws , divine and humane , did , at divers times , rise in open rebellion , and to that height of boldness and impiety , that they have , by open force , attackt our armies , disclaimed our royal authority , excommunicate our sacred person , and did as far as in them 〈◊〉 throw these happy nations into the miseries of war and ruine ; by so much the more dreadful then former rebellions , that these who carryed on the recent seditions , have far out-done all others , in demonstrating , the villanies of their principles , by their practices ; and have at length come to these hights of wickedness , the blasphemy , treason , assassination , murders and robberies are own'd by them , as the highest principles of their religion , and the best practice of their morals ; and albeit god in his great mercy hath blessed our government with such success , that both by the force of our arms , and the regular procedors of our judges , their attempts have been on all occasions defeat , and many of their persons brought to condign punishment : yet so far hath their execrable principles transported them , that neither these judgements of god , the severity of our laws , the steddiness of our justice , nor the many reiterated acts of our unparalelled clemency , prevailed so far as to bring them to duty : but on the contrary , as they were obdure● , to their utter destruction , severals of them do continue to own publickly their hellish principles , and upon all opportunities , to practise their abominable murders and assassinations upon our good subjects : and finding likewise , to our great regrate , that people guilty of such principles , and practices , are not only not pursued by the inhabitant of the shires where they appear , but to the astonishment of all good men , are concealed , harboured , intertained and comforted , contrary to what law and duty required of all our subjects ; and which being so dangerous to religion , government , the publick peace , the lives and fortunes of our people , that it is not consistent with our justice or honour , not to use the utmost remedies against so inveterat and pernicious mischiefs . and we having resolved to imploy our royal power to these ends , by these methods and procedurs , which hath been formerly used by our royal predecessors , on all such occasions , do therefore by this our royal proclamation , command and charge all the officers of our militia , both horse and foot , benorth the river of forth to put themselves , and all under their command , in present readiness , with fifteen days provision , well armed , and sitted for our service , to march whither we , or those commissionated by us , shall direct them , on six days warning . and that all commissioners of excise supply , and militia give all speedy and possible concurrance , for promoting this our service , as they will be answerable at their highest peril . and ordains these presents to be published at the mercat cross of edinburgh , and all other mercat crosses of the shires of this kingdom , and to be read by the several ministers from their respective pulpits , immediatly after divine service in all their churches upon a sabbath day , that all persons concerned may have notice thereof ; the which to do , we commit to you , conjunctly and severally , our full power , by this our letters , delivering them by you , duly execute , and indorsed again to the bearer . given under our signet at edinburgh , the twenty and second day of july , one thousand six hundred and eighty four . and of our reign , the thirtieth and six year . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . will. paterson , cl. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1684. a letter from his excellency sir tho: fairfax, to the honorable william lenthal esq; speaker of the honorable house of commons. fairfax, thomas fairfax, baron, 1612-1671. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a84770 of text r210614 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.11[67]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a84770 wing f176 thomason 669.f.11[67] estc r210614 99869396 99869396 162716 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a84770) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 162716) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 246:669f11[67]) a letter from his excellency sir tho: fairfax, to the honorable william lenthal esq; speaker of the honorable house of commons. fairfax, thomas fairfax, baron, 1612-1671. lenthall, william, 1591-1662, correspondant. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed for edward husband, printer to the honorable house of commons, london : august 24. 1647. with decorative border. the disavowed rudeness of some soldiers, in denying lord lauderdail access to the king, and detaining mr. chiefly at newcastle, ought not to be made a national matter. orders have been sent to give mr. chiefly a free passage. the house orders that this letter be communicated to the commissioners for scotland, and assure them of the house's good will -cf. steele. fairfax's letter dated: 20 august 1647. order to print and distribute dated: die sabbathi, 21 augusti, 1647. signed: h: elsynge, cler. parl. d. com. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng great britain -militia -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a84770 r210614 (thomason 669.f.11[67]). civilwar no a letter from his excellency sir tho: fairfax, to the honorable william lenthal esq; speaker of the honorable house of commons. fairfax, thomas fairfax, baron 1647 364 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2007-09 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-11 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-12 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2007-12 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a letter from his excellency sir tho: fairfax , to the honorable william lenthal esq speaker of the honorable house of commons . sir , i received your letter , and another inclosed from the commissioners of scotland , expressing their sence of injuries offered to them by some of this army ; first to my lord lauderdail , in denying him access to the king , and next to mr. chiesly , in detaining him at newcastle in his passage to scotland ; to both which i thought fit to return this answer , that no man is more unwilling to suffer any thing to be done by any under my command , that may be dis-satisfaction to that nation , then my self ; nor shall any be more willing to do all things which tend to keep a right understanding , and to preserve the happy union between the two kingdoms , then i : but i hope the rudeness of soldiers disavowed , will not be made of national reflection , which is all in the case of the earl of lauderdail : and as to that of mr. chiesly , i have sent to the governor of newcastle to give him a free passage into scotland , which , i hope , is done already ; for hearing of it formerly , i sent to him to that purpose ; and shall in all things be ready to observe your commands , and rest , your most humble servant , t. fairfax . kingston , 20 august , 1647. die sabbathi , 21 augusti , 1647. ordered by the commons assembled in parliament , that sir henry vane , sir gilbert gerrard , sir robert pye , and sir arthur haslerig , do communicate this letter to the commissioners of scotland , and acquaint them from this house with their desire and resolutions of doing all things that may preserve the union and good correspondency between the two kingdoms . h : elsynge , cler. parl. d. com. london , printed for edward husband , printer to the honorable house of commons . august 24. 1647. his majesties gracious proclamation, concerning the government of his ancient kingdom of scotland. england and wales. sovereign (1660-1685 : charles ii) this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription b02071 of text r173763 in the english short title catalog (wing c3039b). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 b02071 wing c3039b estc r173763 52612067 ocm 52612067 179352 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b02071) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179352) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2786:13) his majesties gracious proclamation, concerning the government of his ancient kingdom of scotland. england and wales. sovereign (1660-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by christopher higgins, in harts close, over against the trone-church, edinburgh : anno dom. 1660. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. text printed in black letter. proclamation dated: the second day of august, in the year, one thousand six hundred and sixty; ordered to be printed by the council of the city of edinburgh on the seventh of august, 1660. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. eng scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. b02071 r173763 (wing c3039b). civilwar no his majesties gracious proclamation concerning the government of . . . scotland charles ii 1660 321 1 0 0 0 0 0 31 c the rate of 31 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2008-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-05 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-06 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2008-06 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal blazon or coat of arms c r honi soit qvi mal y pense his majesties gracious proclamation , concerning the government of his ancient kingdom of scotland . charles r. charles by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france , and ireland , defender of the faith . to all our loving subjects of our kingdom of scotland , or others , whom these do , or may concern , greeting . forasmuch as it hath pleased almighty god , to remove that force and armed violence , by which the administration of our royall government among our people there , was interrupted ; and we being desirous to witnesse our affection to , and care of , that our ancient kingdom ( of whose loyalty we have had many testimonies ) have resolved , that until a meeting of parliament ( which we are presently to call ) the government shall be administrate by vs , and the committee of estates , nominate by vs and our parliament , in the year , 1651. and therefore do hereby call and authorize the said committee , to meet at edinburgh upon the twenty third day of august instant : and we do hereby require our heralds , pursevants , and messengers at arms , to make publication hereof at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , that our royal resolution may be known to all our good subjects there . given at our court at whitehall , the second day of august , in the year , one thousand six hundred and sixty , and of our reign the twelf●● edinbvrgh the seventh of august , 1660. the council of the city of edinburgh , ordains his majesties gracious proclamation to be forthwith printed and published . ja. vvright . edinbvrgh , printed by christopher higgins , in harts close , over against the trone-church , anno dom. 1660. by the king. a proclamation for calling a convention of estates. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1665 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b02112 wing c3319 estc r171272 53981623 ocm 53981623 180161 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b02112) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180161) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2819:15) by the king. a proclamation for calling a convention of estates. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by evan tyler, printer to the king's most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1665. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. text in black letter. dated at end: given at our court at whitehall, the second day of june, one thousand six hundred and sixty five, and of our reign the seventeenth year. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -convention of estates. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-08 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion c r honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms by the king . a proclamation , for calling a convention of estates . charles , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. to all and sundry our good subjects whom these presents do , or may , concern , greeting ; the large and real testimonies , which our good subjects of our ancient kingdom of scotland have given of their fidelity and affection to our person , authority and government , do daily confirm the resolutions we have taken to be very tender and carefull of their concerns , and to improve all occasions which may tend to their happiness and peace ; and upon that account , have been hithertills sparing to put them to any charge for carrying on this war , wherein we are now engaged , with the inhabitants of the united provinces , for the maintainance of our own honour , and the peace and trade of our kingdoms : yet , being confident of their readiness to hazard their lives and fortunes in this just quarrel , wherein our honour and service , and their own interest , is so much involved , as to the issue and event thereof ; and that they may witness their zeal and resolutions to maintain the same , by a national supply and taxation , as has been formerly granted to our royal ancestors , when their occasions required the same . therefore we have thought fit , to call a convention of estates of that our ancient kingdom , to meet at edinburgh upon the second day of august next to come : and do hereby require and command , all archbishops , dukes , marquesses , earls , viscounts , bishops , lords and officers of state , of that our kingdom , to be present , and attend that diet . and also we do require all our sheriffs of the several shires , and their deputes , that if there be any new election , made for this year , of commissioners to parliaments or conventions , they make timeous intimations to these commissioners , to keep this meeting : but , if there be no elections already made , that then they forthwith call and conveen all the free-holders in their respective shires , that according to the laws and acts of parliament , elections may be made of fit persons to be commissioners for this convention , and that our royal burroughs make choice of commissioners accordingly ; and that they , and all others having interest , attend this convention of our estates , under the pains contained in our laws made thereanent . and that all our good subjects may have due notice of this our royal will and pleasure , we do hereby command our lyon , king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers , pursevants , messengers at arms , to make timeous proclamation hereof at the mercat cross of edinburgh , and at the mercat crosses of the head burroughs , in the several shires of that our kingdom . given at our court at whitehall , the second day of june , one thousand six hundred and sixty five , and of our reign the seventeenth year . god save the king . edinbvrgh , printed by evan tyler , printer to the king 's most excellent majesty , 1665. edinburgh, the 17th, day of april, 1696. at a general meeting of the company of scotland, trading to africa and the indies my lord tarbat chosen præses. company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1696 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a80259 wing c5587 estc r221846 99896122 99896122 153873 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a80259) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 153873) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2385:5) edinburgh, the 17th, day of april, 1696. at a general meeting of the company of scotland, trading to africa and the indies my lord tarbat chosen præses. company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh : 1696] reproduction of original in the newberry library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng company of scotland trading to africa and the indies -early works to 1800. scotland -history -17th century -early works to 1800. scotland -commerce -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion edinburgh , the 17th , day of april , 1696. at a general meeting of the company of scotland , trading to africa and the indies . my lord tarbat chosen praeses . the constitutions , agreed upon , and presented by the committee , being read , were with some amendments , unanimously approved of , and consented unto , by this general meeting . ordered , that the said constitutions be forthwith printed and published . resolved , that upon thursday , the 7. day of may , next , at the high town council-house , of edinburgh , from nine , to twelve ; and from two a clock in the afternoon , to six ; every subscriber by himself , or by his , her , or their deputations , or missive letter , shall give in a list , by order of alphabet of twenty five subscribers , to be directors of this company . resolved , that upon tuesday , the twelfth day of may , following , there shall be a general meeting of the subscribers at the laigh-council-house in edinburgh , for declaring the election and scrutiny , and other affairs of the company . resolved , that the government and direction of this company , shall be in the present committee , untill the directors be chosen . ordered , that compleat lists of all the subscribers in scotland , to tuesday next , inclusive , be forthwith printed and publish'd . ¶ those concerned are to take notice , that none of the persons nam'd in the act of parliament are to be directors , unless they be chosen . and none can be chosen in this election , who are not subscribers in scotland . his majesties gracious proclamation concerning the government of his ancient kingdom of scotland proclamations. 1660-08-07 scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a79221 of text r231322 in the english short title catalog (wing c3039a). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a79221 wing c3039a estc r231322 99899853 99899853 136983 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a79221) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 136983) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2457:17) his majesties gracious proclamation concerning the government of his ancient kingdom of scotland proclamations. 1660-08-07 scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by a [sic] society of stationers, edinburgh : in the year, 1660. dated at end: edinburgh the seventh of august, 1660. reproduction of original in the folger shakespeare library, washington, d.c. eng scotland -history -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. a79221 r231322 (wing c3039a). civilwar no his majesties gracious proclamation concerning the government of his ancient kingdom of scotland. scotland. sovereign 1660 307 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2008-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-06 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-07 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-07 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion c r honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms his majesties gracious proclamation concerning the government of his ancient kingdom of scotland . charles r. charles , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france , and ireland , defender of the faith . to all our loving subjects of our kingdom of scotland , or others whom these do , or may concern , greeting : forsamuch as it hath pleased almighty god to remove that force and armed violence , by which the administration of our royal government among our people there was interrupted ; and we being desirous to witnesse our affection to , and care of that our ancient kingdom , ( of whose loyalty we have had many testimonies ) have resolved , that untill a meeting of parliament ( which we are presently to call , ) the government shall be administrate by us and the committee of estates nominate by us and our parliament in the year , 1651. and therefore , do hereby call and authorize the said committee to meet at edinburgh upon the twentieth third day of august instant . and we do hereby require our heraulds , pursevants , and messengers at arms , to make publication hereof at the market crosse of edinbvrgh , that our royal resolution may be known to all our good subjects there . given at our court of whitehall , the second day of august , in the year , 1660. and of our reign the twelfth . edinbvrgh the seventh of august , 1660. the council of the city of edinburgh , ordains his majesties gracious proclamation to be forthwith printed and published . ja. wright . edinburgh , printed by a society of stationers , in the year , 1660. a proclamation, for preventing of false mustures [sic] scotland. privy council. 1689 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05668 wing s1888 estc r183523 52615085 ocm 52615085 176113 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05668) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 176113) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2762:56) a proclamation, for preventing of false mustures [sic] scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, by order of secret council, edinburgh, : anno dom. 1689. title vignette. caption title. initial letter. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -militia -recruiting, enlistment, etc. -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation for preventing of false mustures . at edinburgh , the twentie ninth day of november , one thousand six hundred eighty nine years . the lords of his majesties privy council , taking to their serious consideration , how much it doth concern the interest of his majesties service , as well as the security and honour of the kingdom , that all false mustures be discharged , which , not with standing of all the care taken , hath not hitherto been effectually prevented : they do therefore , in their majesties name and authority , prohibite and discharge all the officers of his majesties forces , al 's well horse , foot , as dragoons , and commanders of garrisons , from making any false mustures , and from giving up to any muster-master-general , or any other person who shall be appointed by the saids lords , or by him , to musture the forces , the names of any as soldiers , who are not true men , and who does not attend the company , and perform the constant ordinary duty of a soldier , or the names of any servants , with certification to the contraveeners , that they shall not only be cashired with infamy , but likewise shall be ly●●●● 〈◊〉 resound to the lords of the thesaury , and general receivers , what they have so unjustly uplifted on the account of those men they have so falsely given up and mustured , and shall be imprisoned until they make payment thereof accordingly . and the saids lords , do in name and authority foresaid , prohibite and discharge all persons whatsomever to be imployed at any such false musture , under the certification of being whipped , and burned in the cheek . and the saids lords , do hereby in their majesties name and authority foresaid , command and require all the captains of the whole forces , as well horse , foot , as dragoons , and commanders of garrisons , to give in under their hands , lists of all the soldiers of the several troops and companies under their command , to their majors , where they are regimented , who with the saids captains where they are not regimented , shall be obliged to give in the saids lists , both to sir thomas moncrieff , clerk to the thesaury and exchequer , and to the muster-master-general , and keep another double thereof for themselves , to be renewed quarterly , which they appoint to bear an account where the soldiers were born , out of what place of the countrey they were levied , and of what trade and imployment they were before their engagement , to the effect , that the saids lords may cause examine and try in these places , whether they be actually in the service or not ; and they hereby discharge the muster-master-general , or any other person who shall be appointed for mustering of the forces , to muster any who does not attend the company , and who perform not the ordinary duty of a soldier , or any servants : and likewse they discharge him to allow any officers or soldiers on foreloff , or on parties , as true men , unless the captain of the company , or troop , or in his absence the next commanding officer thereof , at granting the foreloff , or sending out of the party , give in under his hand , to the commanding officer of the place , the names of these officers and soldiers , that are out on a party , and to what place they are gone , and in what houses they were formerly quartered , and for what time these persons are out on foreloff : and they ordain the said commanding officer to keep a list of the persons , to whom foreloffs were granted , or who are sent out on parties , with the principal note given in by the officers of the troops or companies , or garririsons , to the effect , that strict inquiry and disquisition may be made thereanent ; declaring hereby , that whosoever shall give such list or note , if the same shall be found to be false , tha the shall incur the former certification of being cashired with infamy . and for encouragement of such as shall discover and prove the same , or who shall discover and prove any such false musture , the saids lords of his majesties privy council , do hereby promise and ensure to any lieutenant , coronet , or ensign , who shall make discovery of either of the particulars above mentioned , whether in the troops or companies wherein they serve , or any other company or troop within the regiment , and prove the same , that they shall have a commission in place of these who shall make such false mustures , or grant such false declarations , as to soldiers pretended to be on foreloff , or sent out on parties ; and they do likewise promise and ensure a reward of five hundred merks to be given to any serjeant , or corporal , and the sum of two hundred merks to a soldier , who shall make either of the discoveries , and prove the same ; besides that , they shall have a pass out of the company , if desired , or liberty to serve in that , or any other company , or regiment . and ordains these presents to be printed , and published by macers of privy council . messengers at arms , sheriffs in that part , at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and at the remanent mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the whole shires within this kingdom , and to be read upon the head of the regiments , troops , or companies , the time of the mustering thereof , that none may pretend ignorance . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot , cls. secreti concilii . god save king william and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , by order of secret council , anno dom. 1689. an historical relation of the late general assembly held at edinburgh from octob. 16, to nov. 13 in the year 1690 in a letter from a person in edinburgh to his friend in london. cockburn, john, 1652-1729. 1691 approx. 207 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 41 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a69769 wing c4809 estc r5062 12499874 ocm 12499874 62662 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a69769) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 62662) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 310:6 or 348:6) an historical relation of the late general assembly held at edinburgh from octob. 16, to nov. 13 in the year 1690 in a letter from a person in edinburgh to his friend in london. cockburn, john, 1652-1729. [2], 78 p. printed for j. hindmarsh ..., london : 1691. attributed to john cockburn. cf. nuc pre-1956. "licensed april the 20th, 1691" reproduction of original in huntington library. "a proclamation anent a solemn national fast and humiliation": p. 78. imperfect: p. 65-68 are lacking on reel 348. includes bibliographical references. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church and state -scotland -history -17th century -sources. scotland -church history -17th century -sources. 2007-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-03 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-09 john latta sampled and proofread 2008-09 john latta text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an historical relation of the late general assembly , held at edinburgh , from octob. 16. to nov. 13. in the year 1690. in a letter from a person in edinburgh , to his friend in london . licensed april the 20th . 1691. london , printed for j. hindmarsh , at the golden-ball in cornhill , near the royal-exchange . mdcxci . a letter from edinbvrgh . to one in london , &c. sir , i received yours , and do not think it strange , that those of england are so desirous to know the acts and proceedings of our general assembly in scotland ; for not only curiosity but interest may prompt them thereto : i will readily serve you in this matter , and intended , though you had not required it , to have given you an account of it , that you might have occasion of gratifying your worthy friends and acquaintance . it 's true , i was not eye-witness of what past ; for you know my circumstances would not allow that ; and the brethren ( as they call themselves ) endeavoured to keep out all that were not of their own party , or who might tell tales ; forbidding the keepers of the door to admit any without a leaden ticket in the shape of a heart , which was the pass given them , which was not so easily obtain'd , except for their particular friends ; and if any of the episcopal party were discovered , there was a cry presently , conformists are here ; and the officers were sent to thrust them out . however notwithstanding of this strictness , there were always two or three discreet and intelligent persons of my acquaintance present at every session , from whom i have what i write to you . and i assure you that you may trust the ingenuity and faithfulness of the relation . but before i come to the assembly it self , there be some things previous to it which you ought to be informed of ▪ a general assembly in scotland ( you know ) is much of the same nature with the convocation in england , or a national council ; and of no less authority here : nay , our presbyterians exalt the authority of their assemblies aboue that of king or parliament ; and there be some standing acts of their assemblies against acts of parliament , and which discharge obedience to them : whereupon our presbyterians being not content with what the parliament had done for them , nor thinking their authority sufficient for setting up their government ; they required a general assembly , by whose authority ( which with them is supreme , and next to that of jesus christ ) their government might be firmly established , and all their actings and proceedings ratified and approved by it . yet they knew that a free assembly of the clergy and laity throughout the kingdom would rather defeat than advance their designs ; therefore they consider'd how they might prevent that by some method , which would exclude all who were not well affected to their interest , or zealous for the good old cause . in order hereunto they prevailed with the parliament , to lodge the whole government and management of church affairs in the hands of those few old preachers who went off when episcopacy was reestablished an. 1661. and such as should be admitted and approved by them . when these ministers off the episcopal perswasion who had complied with the present civil government heard this , they thought themselves injured , and therefore addressed to the parliament to be admitted to a share of the government , or at least not to be absolutely subjected to them , who were their stated and professed enemies . this they claimed as due to them , not only upon the account of their being lawful ministers of the gospel , but also upon the account of the publick faith , which promised them protection upon their compliance with the civil government : notwithstanding which , their petition was disdainfully rejected , and the act continued as before , in favour only of the above-mentioned presbyterian preachers . by which means all the present episcopal clergy and such of the laity as favoured their interest , and had complyed with them , were rendred incapable of bearing any office in the kirk , and of sitting and voting in their meetings . this the episcopal party justly complained of , and said ; that though episcopacy was abolished merely upon an unjust and false pretence , that that government exercised tyranny over the church , yet now a real presbyterian tyranny was established , that instead of fourteen bishops sixty were set up , who would lord it over their brethren more imperiously than they either did or pretended to do ; and that presbyters were subjected to them who own'd themselves to be no more than presbyters , which had no precedent in the catholick church , but also they who could not be denyed to be lawful ministers were excluded from any share of the discipline and government of the church ; which was contrary to the very principles and tenets of the presbyterians themselves ; who make every private minister to be invested with the authority of ruling as well as of teaching ; and who affirm it unlawful for any minister to part with that right ; and who therefore were wont to exclaim against bishops , because they seemed to usurp it wholly to themselves . all the excuse made for this was , that they could no otherwise make their government sure , and that the episcopal party deserved to be thus treated for their apostacy , in betraying and renouncing the true rights and interests of the church by complying with episcopacy . hence it was inferr'd that presbyterians do juggle both with god and man : for whereas they would have the world believe , that their model of government and forms of discipline are so much of divine right that they can submit to no terms of composition with men about them ; so when it makes for their interest , they can without any scruple introduce essential alterations thereof : for parity ( which they make the institution of christ ) was now taken away , and out of the pretended exigence of the church nine hundred ministers were suspended from one half of that power given them by christ , which at other times is said to be so essential to them that they cannot be ministers of the gospel without it . shortly after the passing that act of parliament , for setting up the presbyterian government , and committing the care and management thereof to these few surviving presbyterian ministers , who had not complied with episcopacy ; there was a meeting at edinburgh of presbyterian ministers and lay-elders to advise about the affairs of the kirk , and to lay down methods how a general assembly should be call'd and constituted ; because ( as i have observed ) one could not be had according to their minds , after the old manner and standing rules of general assemblies . by virtue of the act of parliament , none had the right to meddle with the government and affairs of the church but such ministers as had been removed by the restoration of episcopacy ; and certainly these men were greatly overseen when they parted with that privilege , and admitted others to share with them before they had setled the church according to their minds : for by these means they were overpower'd and outvoted , and forced to yield to other things than what they first intended ; but they were not sensible of this their errour till it was past remedy . first , the remnant of the remonstrator party , who had been actually deposed in the time of presbytery , and some of them for scandalous and gross crimes , came to sit in this meeting ; they were very active and useful , and therefore it was thought fit to receive them ; but some being sensible of the irregularity of admitting persons lying under the sentence of deposition by their own kirk , it was therefore moved that the sentence of deposition might be first taken off : but the debate was laid aside and supprest , because these men urg'd and pressed that their sentence of deposition might be declared void and null , being done clave errante , by a factious party ; wherewith some of the old publick resolutioners were pricked , and therefore proceeded to defend themselves , and particularly one mr. alexander pitcarne protested against their proceedings , and threatned to print his protestation , and to declare their meeting unlawful , while such incapacitated members were allowed to sit in it : but such early heats being unseasonable and prejudicial , they prevail'd with him to take up his protestation and to forbear the publishing it . into this assembly also were received all these younger brethren , who had been admitted to the ministry clandestinely in the time of the last reign , or avowedly and openly since the receiving their indulgence from king james . these were hurried on with more fierceness and zeal than the former , who indeed wanted not sincerity and concernment enough for the cause . — gelidus tardante senectâ sanguis hebet , frigentque effoetae in corpore vires . the old men thought that they ought to rule , and bear the greatest sway because of their age and experience , and that the act of parliament was especially in their favours ; but the younger brethren would not be impos'd upon , seeing parity was the constitution of their government . and it was said that one mr. webster told mr. gilbert rule very bluntly , that tho he was a younger man he merited more than he , having taken the ministry upon him in the time of persecution , when no temporal * interest did encourage him to it ; whereas the other entred into it in the time of peace , and deserted it in time of trouble . mr. gabriel cunningham was chosen moderator of this meeting , which was extraordinary as to its nature , neither was there a proper name for it ; for it was neither session , presbytery , provincial , nor diocesan synod , nor general assembly , nor commission of the kirk , which are all the church judicatures ever have been since the reformation ; but ever since it bears the name of the general meeting . here they appointed ministers for the several corners of the country , divided them into presbyteries , prescrib'd the rules of trying episcopal ministers , and ordained that where the presbytery consisted but of four or fewer , the next presbytery should be joyned to it , which yet in many places made not a competent number for so weighty a business , as the examining and censuring ministers for their doctrine and manner : for the two presbyteries of hidingtoun and dumbar , where ( you know ) there be near thirty parishes , consisted but of five presbyterian ministers . there was the like number in the presbyteries of dunse and churnside , where there were about as many parishes . in the presbytery of aughterarder there was but one presbiterian minister , and when the next was joyn'd to it , they made but three ; so that when it was debated in the assembly , whether one of them , to wit mr. william spence ( of whom you will hear more afterward ) should go for angus ; they pleaded against his going , because that without him they could not have a quorum in the country where he then lived ; and at the same time sir colin campbell and ardbruchill stood up and said , in the face of the assembly , that for twenty miles westward of perth , there were but two or three ministers , meaning these of the presbyterian perswasion , which shews how little agreeable either their persons or government are to the people . here also they laid down the method and manner of constit uting the next assembly , which was to sit in october , viz. that where a presbytery consisted of eight ministers , they should send four ministers and three ruling elders to the assembly ; where they were under eight and above four , three ministers and two ruling elders ; four should send two ministers and one ruling elder ; and where there was but one , that one and a ruling elder should come : by which you see that the old method of constituting general assemblies was quite alter'd , and that as many parts of the kingdom were not allowed representatives in that assembly , so others were not represented equally , nor could they bear a sutable proportion therein ; but the smalness of their number was admitted as a defence for this irregularity . at this meeting they appointed a general fast before the sitting down of the assembly , to be kept on sunday the 5th . of october , which was the third fast had been observed on sundays within the space of a year , which is neither agreeable to the nature of the day , nor the practice of the primitive times ; but our presbyterians are above these things ; they have more regard to the practice of their own predecessors , than either to reason or antiquity ; and you know it was the custom of the old presbyterians to keep all their fasts on the lords day : at this time also we had another instance , whereby they shewed themselves the true sons of their fathers , who did not confine themselves to matters purely ecclesiastical , but who also were always catching ▪ at the power of the magistrate ; whose priviledg it is in this kingdom to license books , and in their licences to grant the monopoly of them : this privilege was assumed by the general meeting ; for they order'd an old treatise of ruling elders to be reprinted by the heirs of andrew ▪ anderson , and discharged any other to meddle therewith ; this is the form of their licence word for word . the general meeting of ministers and elders of this church have appointed this treatise of ruling elders and deacons to be printed by the heirs of andrew anderson and none other . extracted by john spalding , clerk. this was a small beginning , however the privy council thought fit to take notice thereof , and to give a check to these encroachments on the civil power , and therefore order'd the copies to be call'd in , and the licence to be torn away ; so that after the first day all the copies were sold without the imprimatur ; and two friends of mine ( who otherwise cared not for the book ) were forced to pay a triple rate for one with the forementioned licence , which was a new proof of the presbyterian usurpation . after the meeting the brethren went home , and fell to their work with all their might , according to the instructions given them in their general meeting . it was expected that they would first have planted the churches made vacant by the council and the rabble , which were more than could be supplied by all the ministers of that perswasion : but they were not so zealous to plant , as to pluck up what was already planted ; they would not begin to build , until what was already built was overthrown to the ground . more than a third part of the churches in the kingdom wanted ministers , and the most of them for more than a year . but as if that was only a small matter , it was overlooked ; and all pains and care laid out in emptying these churches where the episcopal ministers continued to preach . their beloved west was destitute of ministers , the churches there and in galloway were almost all shut up . so that when the assembly met , two ministers declared before them , that where they liv'd there was not so much as the face of a church , there being no ministers but themselves and one other : yet none were sent thither , but they shew'd greater inclination to seat themselves in the lothians and south , which is indeed a better country , but where there was less room for them , and where they were not so acceptable to the people . many were indeed astonished at this , nor could they either justify it , or well understand the politick thereof . strange ! there were already more churches vacant , than there were presbyterian ministers to put in them , and yet so many more were aimed at , and coveted . it was sad and lamentable to see so many desolate congregations in all parts of the land , such multitudes of people without the gospel , and without the direction of pastors , and yet they would endeavour to deprive them of this blessing , who by the good providence of god had it still continued with them . however they did this either to force the people to joyn with them when none other could be had , or being conscious of their own ignorance and inability , they thought it neither fit , nor their interest to tolerate them who were more judicious , and who would accustom the people to sense and solid discourses , which held forth the true nature and design of the gospel , and which armed people against sanatical delusions . when some were ask'd why they studied to cast out all the episcopal clergy , seeing they could not yet supply their churches , and why they would preach in a meeting-house , where there was an episcopal minister unblameable in his life and doctrine , and draw the people from him , rather than go to another parish which wanted a pastor altogether . it was answered , that there was less prejudice both to church and people by the want of preaching , than by the preaching of men of episcopal principles and persuasions : and mr. frazer of bray said in a sermon before the parliament , that it was better that the temple of the lord , did lie sometime unbuilt and unrepair'd , than be rear'd up by gibeonites and samaritans . but to return , nothing came before the presbyteries , except citations and libels against episcopal ministers , and to make the greater dispatch , they sat every week . the presbyteries were a perfect inquisition , who sent out spies to inform them not only of the publick sermons and open practices of the episcopal clergy , but also what they spoke and did in private ; neither did they search only into their present behaviour , but also they made enquiry into the former actions of their lives , and if they upon diligent search made any discovery of any little blemish or failure , though before forgotten , it was made a part of their indictment . mr. c. an old man of eighty years at lady-kirk , was libell'd among other things for drunkenness , alledging an instance fifteen or sixteen years ago , who as he prov'd the alledg'd instance to be false , so he said very well , that seeing a latter instance could not be produc'd , it did appear , that he was neither scandalously drunken , nor guilty of the habit thereof . there was a form'd design of disgracing the episcopal clergy , and of rendring them infamous for immorality ; but it will be much for their advantage , that after earnest desires and endeavours to blacken them , there was little or nothing made out against them ; when any real scandals were found , they were loudly talked of , and publickly proclaim'd , and laid to the charge of the whole party , as if it were a matter extraordinary to find some unworthy persons among nine hundred or a thousand : the least defects of behaviour were heightened and aggravated as if they had been gross crimes , and what was no fault was made one by a perverse and sinister interpretation and uncharitable construction . when more heinous crimes were wanting , the libels were stuff'd and swell'd with articles , which of themselves amounted to nothing ; but accumulated together , were by them look'd upon and sustained as amounting to a great guilt . and when nothing could be devised against the minister himself , he was accused for his elders and parishioners , if they could be tax'd for any real or apparent crimes ; for then it was said , that he prophaned the holy ordinance of the lords supper , because he was assisted by such elders , in the administration of it ; and that he admitted such persons , whereas yet neihter the one nor the other were under church censure or legal conviction . the libels were generally so frivolous and impertinent that they ought to have been rejected with scorn ; but whatever was offered by the bygots was admitted , and all care and caution us'd not to discourage them . the great scandals of mr. couper and mr. graham ministers at dumfermline were the admitting persons promiscuously to the sacrament ; the profaning the lords day in suffering people to bring in kail , and fan barly for the pot that day ; and by allowing their children to play with others , though they were very much under that age , which even in the opinion of jewish doctors was obliged to the strict observation of the sabbaoth . another minister was design'd to be libelled for plucking a few pease on sunday ; but that being so parallel to the case of the disciples , which our saviour defended , it was not permitted to be made use of . one was accused because he sometimes whistled ; and another because one time playing at bowls , he broke an innocent jest , which none could have construed prophane , but they who were impure . if any had at any time publickly or privately express'd any zeal for episcopacy , or reflected on the covenant , and the principles and practices of the presbyterians , who now always assume the names of the godly , and the peculiar people of god , or if it could have been alledged , that they had any ways , tho never so indirectly , or even in obedience to the magistrate , been the occasion of any trouble or uneasiness to them , this was never omitted ; but was sure to be made a main article of their libel . thus mr. crawford ( the old gentleman mentioned before ) was accused for calling the covenant a band of rebellion . mr. heriot , minister at dalkeith was libelled , as calling monmouth and argyle rebels and traitors , because he read the proclamation set forth against them , and which was appointed to be read in churches * by the king and council . and a certain great man was so picqu'd at him upon this account , that he would neither hear his defences against the other articles of the libel , nor yet interpose his authority ( which was then the highest in the state ) for keeping him in the exercise of his ministry , though it was desired by the generality , and the best of his parish . mr. wood of dumbar was charged in his libel with cruelty , and a persecuting spirit , because he persuaded a friend of his to put away a servant who would not keep the church , and thereby made both her self and her mistress liable to the law : he was also accused for saying to one who exprest his fears , as if the liturgy of the church of england would be introduced among them , god send us no worse ; and that he had never exprest his thankfulness to god , for the deliverance of the land from popery and prelacy . to the first he reply'd , that he was indeed sorry if any such expression had dropt from him , because he was sensible it was too mean for so great and so glorious a church as that of england : to the other he said , that he thanked god heartily for any deliverance that the land had from popery , but he could not do so for the overthrow of prelacy , unless he either acted the hypocrite , or was convinced that presbytery was the greater blessing , and the more ancient and apostolical government ; which he never yet saw made out . mr. graham ( whom i mentioned before ) had in his libel imputed to him , the taking the oaths of allegiance and canonical obedience , which , they said , shewed him incorrigibly episcopal . mr. couper had added to his libel his taking the oath of the test . mr. johnstone of salin was accused for being too much affected to the episcopal government , and for recommending superstitious and erroneous books to the people , as they were pleas'd to call the whole duty man , which was expresly mentioned . another mr. johnstone minister of burnt island was libell'd , for conversing with some persons whom they alledg'd to be no friends to the government either of church , or state ; and for using the doxology , &c. which , &c. could only refer to the creed and lords prayer . the minister of abbots-hall was accused for neglecting the catechism of the westminster divines , and using that which was first set forth by the synod of edinburgh , and afterwards enlarged by the reverend and pious bishop scowgal : the catechism ( i must tell you ) is as well as the whole duty of man much spoken against , and severely condemn'd as erroneous ; but what are the particular errours of it which make it so dangerous , i could never learn , nor do i believe you could guess them , except they were told you . by these instances you may understand the nature of our presbyterian libels ; i forbear to give you more , because i suppose there will be a collection of them published : but you must know that they would never give any of the episcopal clergy the title of minister , but only that of incumbent . mr. graham complain'd of this , and demanded a reason , who was told by way of answer by one that preach'd at innerkeithing that there were no true ministers but presbyterian ministers ; and as they denied them the title of ministers ; so to take away their right to their respective parishes , one article of their libel was , their entring by presentation from a patron , and by ordination , collation , and institution of the bishop , contrary to the word of god ; the constitution of this church , acts of assemblies , and the lands solemn engagements . when the leading men of that party were upbraided for making episcopal ordination a ground of a libel ; they excus'd themselves and laid the blame of it upon the people ; but in this they shewed their hypocrisie and deceitful dealing . for it was well known that the presbyterian ministers were always consulted in the forming of the libels , and many of them were drawn up by themselves , and that all them were every where of the same strain , which makes it evident that it was a concerted business among them , to beget in the peoples minds an aversion to episcopal ministers , as not true ministers , nor entring in at the right door ; though they were also careful to foist in some other thing to excuse their censures with the more judicious , who could not be so easily deluded and imposed upon . as the articles of the libels were for the most part frivolous and impertinent , so the manner of their process was neither legal nor reasonable ; for seldom did they let the minister accused know his accuser , and so he might have been made a witness against him , which is contrary to the laws of all nations : beside , they always received the libel , and sustained the validity of it , before he was heard , and not regarding what defences might be opponed , caused him to be cited to hear and see himself deposed : nor was he suffered to be present at the examination of the witnesses ; but in many places , if not every-where , the witnesses were allowed to be present all together , when they gave in their evidence : by the civil and canon law , and the reasonable practise of all nations , they who bear hatred , malice , or have discovered any prejudice against the accused , cannot witness in judgment against him ; but this was wholly neglected and past by , and the most avowed , profest , and open enemies received as witnesses , and such also allowed to sit as judges . thus mr. calderwood a profest , and bitter enemy of mr. heriot minister of dalkeith , who was the chief if not the only informer against him , sat and judged him in the presbytery in the quality of a ruling elder ; and when the said mr. heriot desired that he might be removed , it was utterly refused him . so when mr. george purves minister at glencorse appeared before the same presbytery at dalkeith , he objected against some of the witnesses as carrying heart-malice and ill will towards him ; they having sometime before assaulted him in the pulpit with swords and staves , and taking him by the throat , had gone near to have strangled him , if he had not got present relief ; therefore ( said he ) they ought not to be allowed as witnesses against me , for they that did so , what will they not do to procure my ruin ? upon which the very reverend and worthy matthew selkirk , who is now setled minister at crighton , rose up and spoke to the moderator ; that if these men had done so out of malice and personal prejudice , they ought not to be received as witnesses ; but if they had done it for the glory of god , he saw no reason why they might not be admitted . if one part of the deposition seemed to prove the libel , or any article of it , though the other did exculpate the minister or extenuate his fault , the first was marked , and the other left out ; so i was told of one who is since dead , who was accused for saying ▪ that women wanted souls ; the witness declar'd he had heard him say so , but that he only deliver'd as the opinion of another , and yet upon this the article was look'd upon as proved : when the witnesses cleared the minister or asserted his innocence , they were dismiss'd as knowing nothing of the matter ; but such were greatly encouraged and cherished as shewed themselves earnest and forward to divest him of the character of a faithful , pious and upright pastor : and when they passed the sentence of suspension or deposition against any , at the intimation of it , from the pulpit in his own church , the whole libel was read , though several of the articles were so frivolous and trivial as not censurable by law , and others of them that contained matter of scandal were no way proved . as for the episcopal clergy , some of them disown'd their authority , and would not appear ; others appeared , and gave in their defences ; and some perceiving the partiality of the particular presbyteries appeal'd to the next general assembly , hoping to meet with greater moderation there , or at least that before that time the civil government would put a stop to these rigid and unreasonable proceedings . thus matters went till the sitting of the assembly , and by these proceedings the presbyterians not only encreas'd the prejudices of those who differed from them , but they also disgusted many of their friends . the presbyterians you know were much inferiour to the episcopal party in number , quality , learning or good sense ; and i assure you , that now they have lost much even of that interest which they had in this nation , many who thought well of them while they were kept under , are now ashamed of them , and have deserted them : i am told that many ( even in the west ) abominate them : it is most certain that in other places of the kingdom , they are fear'd and dreaded as a plague to mankind , just as the jesuits are . when the time of the assembly drew near , the several presbyteries set about the chusing commissioners for it , and things were so laid , that the most bigotted and hot-headed were generally chosen , and those of a more moderate temper put by . if there had been any respect to the qualifications of men , none in that part of the country he lived in would have been preferr'd to honest dr. hardy ; but because heretofore he had kept correspondence with the episcopal party , and still prest moderation towards them , he was excluded . in like manner mr. alexander pitcairn of dron was put by , because of his carriage at the last general meeting , though he is said to have more learning than the most of them ; and there were but three others in the presbytery with him , and none of them , of these old men to whom the government of the church was entrusted by the late act of parliament : he indeed came to the assembly , sat in it , and interposed his judgment , but was no member of it , and so consequently had no vote . when these measures were perceived , it was concluded , that mr. george campbel should be also shuffled out of the assembly ; but that would have made their designs too apparent , there being none of his presbytery whom they could bring in competition with him , as also they had not much reason to fear any opposition from him because of his modesty and quietness , which makes him averse to contests and jangling . he hath indeed the character of a learned , good , and discreet man ; and by his moderation at first he did very much displease his brethren , which ( as i am informed , but am loth to believe ) hath obliged him for removing their jealousies to express himself of late more severly against the episcopal party than he us'd to do formerly . as for lay-commissioners , such were pick'd out as either were most bygottedly affected to their interests , or whom they desir'd and design'd to make fast friends to their party . in the presbytery of churnside the laird of — was chosen , and in dunse the competition lay betwixt the laird of lanton and m. the last was like to have carried it , but some one suggested to the moderator , that it would very much reflect upon them to have both the commissioners for the merse stain'd with the scandal of adultery ; upon which the commission was giv'n to lanton , and the other was put by , whom yet they would fain have obliged , he being one who has at present a considerable place in the kingdom . the king you know ought to have a commissioner at every assembly , to see that affairs of state be not medled with by the brethren , who indeed still retain the strong inclinations , which they as well as the church of rome have always shewed to meddle with them , pretending they only do this in ordine ad spiritualia . every one look'd that the earl of crawford should have been the person , whom the king should have honoured with that employment , and his lordship himself rejoyced in expectation of it : but ( to the surprizal of all ) some few days before the assembly sat , a commission came down for my lord carmichael , which made the zealous brethren hang down their ears : and my lord crawford gave an indication of his secret grudg at the disappointment , by his entertaining every body who came to see him with protestations , that he did not desire it , and with reasons and excuses why he would not have accepted of it , if it had been offered to him : but we may justly suspect that his lordship would not have refused it , seeing he frequented the assembly , and officiously meddled in all the concerns of it , even before he was made a member ; and upon carmichael's advancement , there were letters immediately dispatched to procure a commission for his lordship from some burgh or other , because a commission from a presbytery had been neglected , upon an expectation that his lordship should have represented the king himself in the assembly : his lordship was so humble , that having miss'd of the highest station , he would rather serve in the meanest , than not have an hand in advancing the good cause ; or be deprived of the occasion of perfecting what he had so zealously begun : he had indeed merited the highest honour in the kirk , but all except the very bygots of that side approved the king's choice as best and wisest for himself , and the interest of the state. for my lord carmichael was look'd upon as a man of good sense , and he had lately giv'n proofs of his discretion and moderate temper , at the visitation of the colledg of glasgow ; whereas my lord crawford kept within no bounds of moderation at the visitation of the university of s. andrews , and was much taken notice of for his rough usage of the masters , particularly the reverend old dr. weemse dean of s. andrewes , and principle of s. leonard's college , who had been a master in the said university for the space of 45 years , under whom my lord crawford studied philosophy , and to whom he was then particularly obliged ; the dr. had also been a zealous assertor of the protestant religion , and design'd to have made the university his heir ; notwithstanding all which , my lord would not suffer him to have favour of a seat , when he attended that visitation , and when the honest gentleman's age and infirmity obliged him to rest himself on the step of a stair in the room , because other conveniency was deny'd him ; his lordship sent an officer and raised him ; such roughness and incivility you may think incredible , but i had it from the old gentleman himself ; of the which , with all other particulars of that visitation , as also of the visitation of the other colleges , i am told that the world may expect a full account . but to return from whence my respect to my lord crawford carried me . all the members of the assembly being duly couven'd on the appointed day , viz. the 16th . of october , they went to the high church where mr. gabriel cunninghame moderator of the last general meeting did preach on s. john 2. 17. and his disciples remembred that it was written , the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up . in which the old man gave a greater proof of his memory than his judgment , for the same sermon had been preach'd on the same text by mr. oliver bowlis , an . 1643. before the lords and commons assembled in parliament at lond. i have seen the printed sermon compared with the notes of what was preach'd , and i assure you mr. gabriel made an exact repetition , and followed his authour verbatim so far as was fit for his purpose , only he left out some things in the close of mr. bowlis's sermon , and added some bitter reflections on the episcopal party . there was a parallel carried on betwixt presbytery and that miracle of our saviour in whipping the buyers and sellers out of the temple ; the setting up presbytery at this time was compared to the work of the reformation , and was made a more wonderful and signal act of providence . the episcopal party were called formal and nominal protestants , who professing to retain the fundamentals , did pervert and corrupt the very doctrine and all the ordinances of jesus christ . the presbyterians you know can never have their fill of preaching , and therefore a single sermon was not thought sufficient to open their assembly , but they returned in the afternoon , where mr. patrick simson preached , on 3. zach. 7. thus saith the lord of hosts , if thou wilt walk in my ways , and if thou wilt keep my charge , then thou shalt also judg my house , and shalt also keep my courts , and i will give the places to walk among these that stand by . when his matter and expression were considered , no body thought his sermon was borrowed as that in the forenoon had been , for it was presbyterian stuff course enough . he ascribed to their meeting a supremacy absolute and immediate next under christ . after both sermons they went to the place appointed for the assembly ; mr. gabriel cunninghame opened the meeting with a prayer , after which he made a complement to the king's commissioner , and desired that his commission might be seen and read . the commissioner having produc'd his commission , he desired that every one might also shew theirs ; which occasioned a confused jangling for some time . the next thing they fell upon was the chusing of the moderator , for mr. gabriel could no longer preside , it being against their principles to allow a constant moderator . for persons were in nomination , the first was mr. george campbel minister at drumfries , whose character i have given you before ; the next was mr. gilbert rule , who formerly pass'd under the name of dr. rule because of his practising medicine ; he sat in the asembly as commissioner from the colledg at edinburgh ; where he was lately installed principal , in the room of the reverend and learned dr. monro . in the last times of presbytery he was an independent , but now he seems to own no such thing , but presseth the presbyterian government as of divine institution : he is of great authority among his party , and is reckoned by them a learned and judicious man ; but first he seems not to have the latine tongue , for he oft woundeth priscian , and hath so little command of that language , that he dare not extend his prayers before the students above two or three sentences , which when observed made one wish that all the presbyterians were obliged to pray in latin , and then they would not be so tedious , nor vent so much nonsense in their prayers , as most of them now use to do : again , the things he hath published discover no small ignorance ; witness , his silly gloss on that expression of s. jerome ; quid facit episcopus , exceptâ ordinatione , quod presbyter non faciat : where he maketh ordinatio to be the ordering of the meetings of the clergy . * he also published a pamphlet , wherein he represented the principles and practices of presbyterians ; which is a very weak and empty paper full of contradictions , wherein the scripture is grosly wrested , and wherein several things are obtruded as certain and of great importance , which have no foundation either in scripture , reason , or antiquity . as by this it appears that his learning is not great , though he hath had the boldness to enter the lists with dr. stillingfleet , so he hath often in his sermons vented himself bitterly against the episcopal party . a third person was mr. meldrum once minister at aberdeen , but who hath preach'd at a meeting-house in the west ever since the indulgence granted by king james . he indeed entred the ministry in times of presbytery , but he also complied with episcopacy when it was restored . he at first together with mr. john menzies professor of divinity at aberdeen , did hesitate upon the oath of canonical obedience ; which bishop mitchel of aberdeen would by no means allow ; so that they both ran a risque of being depriv'd . but afterwards upon a conference at s. andrews with the archbishop of that see , who it seems dealt somewhat smoothly with them , they both subscribed the oath of canonical obedience , and were sent back to the bishop of aberdeen with recommendatory letters from the primate ; upon which they were admitted to their places , which the one kept till his death , and the other till the oath of the test . i am told that mr. meldrum denies the matter of fact , and will not acknowledg that ever he took the oath of canonical obedience , but the thing is too notorious to be denyed ; for as the primate of s. andrews assur'd the bishop of aberdeen of it by a letter under his hand , of which mr. meldrum himself was the bearer ; so the bishop of aberdeen to make their compliance as publick and exemplary as he thought their demurring and refusal had been scandalous , before he remitted them to the exercise of their ministry , caused a publick intimation of their subscription to be made in the old church of new aberdeen , which intimation was made by dr. keith afterwards professor of divinity at edinburgh , which certainly would not have been done , if the matter of fact had not been certain : especially if it be consider'd that they themselves , tho present , did not offer to contradict it . when this rigorous proceeding of the bishops against them was in ordinary discourse complained of , he defended himself by an old scotch proverb , which is , that a fidging mare should be well girded : and it has been told me the subscriptions both of mr. menzies and mr. meldrum are still extant . however mr. meldrum payed true canonical obedience , as much as any other minister , to the bishop of aberdeen , and lived in particular friendship with bishop scowgal , who succeeded in that see : he frequented the presbyteries and synods , submitted to their acts , and assisted several times when the bishop ordained , and so far deserted the principles of the covenant and our scottish presbiteryans , that he swore and subscribed the declaration , when he was admitted rector of the marishal college of aberdeen . it cannot be denied but that he carried himself well , and gained the good opinion of all , while he kept his place , and even after he had left it for not taking the test , he did not desert the church , nor renounce communion with the episcopal party , until the time that king james discharged the taking of oaths , and suspended the laws which enacted them , and then because he was not permitted to return to the exercise of his ministry at aberdeen , tho he was allowed to go any where else , he became so picqu'd and offended at the bishops , whom he apprehended were the cause thereof , that he presently struck in with the presbyterians , and either to make his change appear the more sincere , or because he had really alter'd his judgment and the principles he formerly profess'd , he hath broke of all correspondence with the episcopal party , though some of them were his most intimate acquaintance , and as occasion offer'd vented himself as bitterly and severely against them , as any presbyterian whatsoever . and when he was last at aberdeen , tho he was kindly and civilly invited by his old colleagues to take their pulpit , yet he would never preach for them , nor so much as hear them ; but chose rather to go preach in the meeting-house , where he exhorted the people to thankfulness for the deliverance of the land from prelacy , and to be earnest in their prayers that it might never return again . in him we have an apparent instance , how great a temptation even to a judicious man picque and interest and popularity do oftentimes prove . at first he pretended that he would only attempt to reclaim the deluded people of the west from their errors and extravagancies , who ( he said ) had been lost for want of good and knowing ministers amongst them ; but it was plainly foretold by a person of quality and great worth , that it would appear he could not work upon them , but that they would insnare him , and bring him over to all their fooleries . the fourth and last person was one mr. hugh kennedy , who is usually called father kennedy by the phanaticks here , and by others bitter beard : he is of a little stature , but such a one as has made a great bustle in his time ; he was a ring-leader of the remonstrator-party , and with the scottish army at newcastle , when they delivered up king charles i. and received a part of the price of his blood , as is commonly reported six thousand marks . in the year 1660 he was deposed by a synod of presbyterians for several crimes ; especially for being a firebrand among his brethren , and for a book entituled the causes of gods wrath upon scotland , which sentence of deposition was never taken off , till the last day but one of this assembly , as you shall hear afterwards . these were the four persons nominated to preside in the assembly ; when it came to the vote , mr. gilbert rule had four or five ; mr. geo. meldrum one ; mr. george campbel forty eight ; but the most were in favour of mr. hugh kennedy , and so the chair was assign'd to him , who came short of the rest in learning , yet surpassed them in subtilty and malice . having chosen a moderator , the next thing requisite was a clerk , they appointed mr. john spalding , who had been clerk to the general meeting , to officiate in the interim till they should chuse one , but he continued all the time of the assembly , for there were so many competitors for the clerkship , and each of them had such interest by their friends in the assembly , that they durst never put it to the hazard of a vote , for fear of dividing the assembly ; the competitors were as we heard , mersington , corsrigge , two lords of the session ; park hay , the famous james stewart , and one kerr . in this assembly there was an hundred and eighty persons , clergy and laity . there were no commissioners from the shires of angus , merns , aberdeen , or any of the more northern parts of the kingdom ; and even several places on the north side of tay had none ; only here and there in a corner , where the presbyterians had seated themselves , and assumed the name of a presbytery , there were one or two chosen and commissionated to represent them in the assembly . none of the universities or colleges had any representatives there , save that of edinburgh , whom mr. gilbert rule represented ; so that this was no more a general assembly of the church of scotland , than that of trent can be called a general council of the catholick church ; nor did any other spirit rule in the one than what prevailed in the other , i mean a spirit of faction , interest and prejudice , as will appear by the consideration of their proceedings , though there were prayers enough put up for another spirit , if they had been disposed for it . the presbyterians of scotland have always contested with kings about the power of calling , adjourning and dissolving assemblies . they pretend to an intrinsick power in themselves in this matter , to which ( as mr. rule says in his representation , &c. ) that of the magistrate is cumulative , and not privative . the adjusting of this matter therefore was the first difficulty brought before the moderator , and no small tryal of his skill ; for as in the one hand they had all the reasons in the world to complement and gratify the king ; so on the other it is well known the presbyterians are very tenacious of their pretended rights , and very jealous of encroachments upon them , which makes them cautious of giving precedents . now this difficulty he resolved thus , he suffered the commissioner to appoint the time of their meeting , and without taking notice of what the commissioner had done , he himself adjourned them to the same time ; sometimes also to complement the commissioner be would so cunningly smooth the business , as when he had resolved upon the time of their meeting , he would first ask the commissioner if his grace could attend them at such a time , and then adjourn to the said time ; so they always agreed about the time of their meetings , and by this means the debate betwixt them and the king was waved , and never decided . there happened a pleasant passage to this purpose , which i must not omit ; mr. gabr. cunninghame presiding one day in the absence of the ordinary moderator , he asked the commissioner what should be the next time of their meeting ; but whether it was out of forgetfulness that he did so or not , he corrected himself in his prayer . for he began with an acknowledgment of christ jesus being supreme head and governour of the church , and then said these words , thou knowest , o lord , that when we own any other , it is only for decency sake . the next day they met , and only heard the king's letter read , and appointed some persons to draw up an answer . we expected to have seen both in print , as is usual , but neither of them has been as yet published , because , as is supposed , there was something in the king's letter a little checking , which they would not have every one to know , viz. that he favoured their government , because he was made to understand it was most agreeable to the inclinations of the people ; that he would have them very moderate in their proceedings , and do nothing which might displease their neighbour church : this last did not go down well with them , for it troubled them to be made in any ways accountable to a church , which in all their discourses they exclaimed against as superstitious and idolatrous , and into which they are designing to introduce their glorious reformation . neither was the first very acceptable , for if the inclinations of the people were the motive of setting up presbyterian government , when it should ( as it very easily might ) be represented , that the inclinations of the people were against presbytery , and the spirit and ractice p of the present presbyterians , his majesty might be moved to remove this , and set up another government . therefore in their answer they asserted that their government was not only suteable to the inclinations of the people , but also most agreeable to the word of god , and that this might not be looked upon merely as the flourish of an epistle , they design'd to back it with the authority of an act ; which should declare their government both of divine right , and also the true legal government of this church , which they pretended had never suffered any alteration , except in time of usurpation , tyranny and great oppression . but the commissioner apprehending the consequences of such an act , thought it not fit to let the same pass , without advice from court ; and therefore desired a copy of it to send to the king his master , who it seems did not approve of it : for it never more appeared here , at which the brethren have not a little murmured . and if it had passed , as it would not have contributed much to the establishment of their government , it being the act of so inconsiderable an assembly ; so it would only have discovered their ignorance , falshood and impudence : for it is clear from our histories ( as was declared in a late discourse ) that presbytery heretofore was never setled but in times of rebellion ; and what enemies our scottish presbyterians have been always to kings , and how much they were wont to encourage rebellion king james vi. has from his experience fully and plainly declared , in his basilicon doron , where he cautions his son against them as the most barbarous , treacherous and perfidious sort of people , who are less to be trusted than the thieving borderers , or the wildest uncivilized highlanders . the argument also , which sir james montgomery of skelmorly used for presbytery in the parliament , shews how much it favours monarchy and kingly power , which was this , that it was the peoples only security against the encroachment of kings , and a proper curb to restrain their insolence and extravagancy ; and indeed when they are encouraged , they so restrain them as to make them signify nothing , as appears by their behaviour to king james vi. before he went to england , and what they did to king charles i. whom they persecuted and pursued to death . as to the moderation which his majesty required of them , they promised with a solemn attestation , that they would shew all the moderation that his majesty could expect ; which when considered was not a very great obligation on them ; for if the king understand them aright , his expectation will be very small , moderation being very rarely to be found among presbyterians . it being an old custom of general assemblies to ease the ministers of the place where they meet from preaching , they ordered this day who should preach the following sunday , and when they were appointing preachers for the rest of the churches and meeting-houses in edinburgh , one † stood up , and said ; it was fit to send ministers to the conformists kirks too : but the moderator perceiving the commissioner displeased at the proposal , replyed ; that they sought none of their help , and they should get as little . the first that preached in the high church before the commissioner , was mr. geo. meldrum , whose text was philip. 4. ver. 5. the sermon was framed to please the various humours of men , and to recommend himself to persons of different tempers , for the general drift of it seemed to be for moderation , which both the court and all good discreet people called for ; yet he caution'd it with such restrictions and exceptions as that he might justifie himself with the more rigid , and prevent their jealousies and suspicions of him : he who preached the sunday following ( if my memory fail not ) was one hamilton , who was somewhat singular in his reckoning the years during which we of this nation have been deprived of the gospel ; for whereas the rest of the presbyterians reckon but 28. viz. from the restauration of the royal family and episcopacy , he ran ten years farther backward , and made it 38. leaving people to guess his reason , and when the matter was enquired into , it was found that he dated the want of the gospel from the year 1652. because since that time they never had a general assembly , and then too they were not suffered to sit , for the english governor here raised them , because they had no warrant from cromwel , and carried them out surrounded with guards to bruntsfield-links , where he dismissed them with a severe threatening , if any three of them should be found together . it would be tedious to give you a particular account of all the sermons which were preached here in the time of the assembly , but in general i assure you they were very nauseating to all rational persons , for except one or two preached by mr. carstairs and mr. robert wyllie , they were either miserably flat and dull , or else full of bitter zeal against the episcopal party ; instead of the doctrins and duties of christianity , the excellency and divine institution of their government was the subject of their discourses , and when they happened on any necessary or weighty point of religion , they treated them in such a manner , as if they had design'd to burlesque religion , and render it ridiculous , which gave a great advantage to atheistical and profane men : so it is observed that religion doth suffer more now by the setting up of the presbyterians , than it did or was like to have suffer'd in this nation by the attempts of the jesuits and other papists a little while ago ; for then it fell out that people search'd and considered the points of their religion , and they that were ignorant of the truth or dis-believed it , came to understand it , and to be convinced of it , and were resolved to be stedfast in the defence of it , whereas now the contest being about forms of government , and discipline , which generally people look upon as matters of lesser moment , all enquiry into the important points is laid aside , and seeing there is such hypocrisie and ignorance among these very men who set up themselves for the peculiar people of god , and that they who would be thought as it were inspired , or at least of all others most acted by the spirit of god , are guilty of base and unworthy actions ; this tempts people to think all religion a sham and cheat . on monday the twenty fifth they met at eight a clock of the morning for prayer only . some say eight , others ten , and some that eleven prayed successively : one told me he stayed till five of them prayed , however they continued to pray from eight to twelve . the moderator began , and when he ended he named the person who should pray next , and every one did the like till dinner time . among others who were desired to pray there was an old man who at first declined it , pretending a bodily indisposition , but when it was voted he should pray , he fell to it , and prayed longer a great deal than any of the rest . this exercise of long and continued prayer was so unusual , that it became presently the talk of the town , and people had different sentiments about it , and put various constructions upon it : some said they were practising what our lord condemned , s. matth. 6. considering that their prayers generally are but babling and vain repetitions . others that they were imitating the * popish masses . some dreaded the effects of these prayers when they called to mind the custom of their predecessors , who used to usher in some villany by fasting and such solemn prayers , as tacitus reports of nero , that when he solemnly consulted the gods , it was a certain sign that he intended some cruel and bloody enterprize : but the more probable seemed to be that this was to pray themselves , if possible , into a moderate temper , as the king's letter required , or to vindicate their want of it , as being more agreeable to the mind of god , seeing it was deny'd them after so many prayers . to this purpose one of them had a very remarkable expression in his prayer ; for , having in compliance with the rest put up some petitions for moderation , at last he concludes with these words , but , o lord ! to be free , it would be better to make a clean * house . this week they appointed committees for the several affairs that were before them , which sat at their own convenience , and now and then they met in full assembly , but they pass'd away the time without doing any thing considerable , so that some began to apply to them , parturiunt montes , &c. the moderator laid the blame of it on the ill attendance of the members of the assembly , and the slow proceedings of the committee ; but the true reason was , that they were restrained by the instructions sent from court , and the fears of encreasing the clamours and prejudices of the country , as also they were somewhat retarded by the unskilfulness of their brethren in managing affairs of this nature . the old men having for a long time been disused , and the younger sort wanting experence ; there were besides some little differences among the brethren , tho the moderator did all he could to smother them ; for when there was any appearance of the least jar , he referred the matter which was like to occasion it , back to the committee to be further considered , and then as on all other occasions in his prayer he thanked god for the oneness that was among them . for they endeavour'd to make the world believe that there was great harmony in their assembly which they talked of with a great deal of fondness and vanity , especially when the cameronian party joyn'd themselves to them , tho it may be justly said that matters were rather hudled up betwixt them , than any true union effected , and if the cunning of the moderator had not prevented it , the breach was like to have been wider ; for the two persons that appear'd for the cameronians , viz. mr. shiels , and mr. linnen gave in two papers , one of overtures , and another defending their practices as being most agreeable to the practices of the true presbyterians , and upbraiding the rest as deserting and apostatizing from them , which reflected on all that sat there , and yet they offered in the face of the assembly to make good and justifie the same . at first the moderator checkt and rebuk'd them , but perceiving they would not submit themselves , they were first sent out , and then after some time call'd in again , and taken by the hand and desired to sit down with the rest , without entering upon any debate . he told them upon their second appearance , that he knew they meaned well , and had done them service , and that they did expect good from them , tho at first he said they were rash young men , who had done much hurt to the church . the sunday following both the cameronians at restalridge , and the other brethren in the pulpits of the town , preach'd upon this agreement and union of the parties . the latter gave god thanks for it , and the former justified themselves , and declared that thereby they had neither condemned their own former practices , nor yet approved of the corruptions that were among their brethren . the cameronians in the country having got information of this union , sent some of their number to the assembly with some papers , who were not allowed to come in before the assembly , but some of the brethren were sent out to confer with them , who received their papers , and giving them fair words , dismissed them . the papers having never been publickly produc'd , the contents of them were not known . as to the affair which came before the assembly , the first thing remarkable was the business of mr. gabriel simple which took up some days ; he had received a call ( as the word is ) both from the people of jedburgh , and also from those of killpatrick , and each of them petition'd the assembly for him , because of spiritual sibness and pastoral relation which they had to him ; at the same time there was an address read from no less than twelve parishes in northumberland , as was pretended , desiring that the said mr. gabriel might not be taken from them , he having taken compassion on them when they lay weltering in their blood , and no eye to pity them , and shewing that england was over-gone with briars and thorns which would over-run scotland too if mr. gabriel did not weed them out , that by mr. gabriel's care twelve parishes were well provided , which could not be so well done by any ordinary man ; that he had been twenty four years among them which was sufficient to found a pastoral relation . mr. gilbert rule seconded this address , and pleaded for those of northumberland , that they might have the benefit of mr. gabriel ; alledging , that it was charity to plant the gospel in england , and he declar'd thaet he knew not only twelve parishes , but that for fifty miles they wanted the word of god ; for ( said he ) betwixt berwick and new-castle there was less practice of piety , than amongst papists , or heathens , and therefore it was fit to send ministers among them , he concluded his discourse thus , that as we ought to plant the gospel where-ever we can , so the presbyterians of england having now a liberty granted them by king and parliament they might very well call back such as had been driven in amongst them in time of persecution . to this last the moderator reply'd , mr. gilbert , what if they should call you ? and when he answer'd , that perhaps he would then go , he said to him , mr. gilbert , i do not think you so great a fool. but as to mr. gabriel the moderator and the generality of the assembly were for calling him back to scotland , alledging that charity began at home , when they had reason'd a long while upon the matter too and again , mr. kirkton stood up and said , what needs this ado ? for he had heard that mr. gabriel durst not return to northumberland , there being an order from several justices of peace to apprehend him , which mr. gabriel confess'd to be true . this decided the matter as to northumberland , and shewed that mr. gabriel would have had his forc'd return coloured with a solemn invitation ; and when it came to be consider'd , whither jedburgh or killpatrick should have him ; he discovered his own inclinations before it came to a vote , telling that kirkpatrick had no manse for him , neither could he maintain a horse at it , when the votes were a stating mr. gabriel cunningham desired the moderator to pray for drowning the noise of the assembly . but mr. kirktoun answered , what needs all this fool praying , it was not the custom to pray at every thing , so they past immediately to voting , and the votes carried it for jebburgh , which no doubt was according to mr. gabriel 's own desire . the next great affair was the removing mr. george campbel from being minister at drumfries to be professor of divinity at edinburgh , which was made vacant by the visitation of the college , for that dr. strachan could not comply with the terms requir'd in the act of parliament . the magistrates of edinburgh being patrons of the place gave a call to mr. campbel , which was backed by the earnest invitation of some others about the town . he indeed deserves the place better than any of that party having qualifications of learning and modesty beyond what is usual to be found amongst them . but as the people of drumfries were not willing to part with him , so neither was he willing of himself to settle at edinburgh in his old decaying years , especially when he perceived such strong prejudices against the presbyterian party to encrease . the matter was referr'd to the assembly where it was long and hotly debated . the necessity and importance of training up youth was alledged for his coming to edinburgh , but he on the other hand said , he was more capable of doing good at drumfries , and had stronger ties and obligations to that place , and at last added that he not only had not the inward call to accept of the profession of divinity , but did find in himself an inward aversion and backwardness thereto , which he thought should not be slighted ; for there was in it not only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which occasion'd the matter of the inward call to be considered and debated . mr. rule said , that it consisted in the internal qualifications for the place , and the outward harmonious call of the church , and that as they were judges of the first , so the last would be known by putting it to a vote : adding , that the spirit of god was a harmonious spirit , and that the spirit of the prophets was subject to the prophets . mr. campbel reply'd , that he put a wrong gloss on the place , but however he would not debate it now . it was referred back to the committee and considered again in a full assembly , and at last th● matter was put to a vote , having before they collected th● votes prayed for direction therein . by the votes it was carried that he should come to edinburgh ; tho it was observed that the more judicious part were against his coming , being prevail'd upon by the weight of his own arguments . however after they had resolved upon his coming , they allowed him till lammas following to remove himself and his family ( as some say ) as others would have , that he might in this time bring his mind to close with the call of the assembly , because he had said , he would leave the kingdom rather than obey . a day or two after the decision of this business concerning mr. campbel , there came a commission from the town of s. andrews to my lord crawford to represent them in the assembly : the moderator usher'd it in with a great commendation of his lordship , and the manifold obligations which they had to him , and regreted he had not been a member of their assembly sooner , and that he had not his commission from a presbytery ; for which , he said , the presbytery of couper particularly should be rebuked , in that they had neglected him . but the reason was , ( as i told you before ) that it was expected he should have been commissioner for the king. when this commission was read , my lord crawford , ( whose joy for which was to be seen in his countenance ) stood up , and made a discourse about the weight and importance of that trust , and of his unworthiness to be a member of that venerable assembly , and desired that they might allow him the favour which they had granted to mr. george campbel , which was to have till lammas next to advise on it : his lordship not knowing well what to say , but thinking he was obliged to say something , fell on this impertinence ; which moved the spleen of the assembly , and made them spoil the gravity of their meeting : and indeed who could forbear laughing , to hear one make a scruple of acting by commission , when he had made none to act without one ; officiously attending the several sessions of the assembly , and particular committees , and giving his opinion in all the matters that came before them . and what a ridiculous thing was it , to ask nine months time to advise whether he should be a member of a meeting which was to be intirely dissolved within a fortnight . after they had sat ten or twelve days , they received a petition from two persons , the one was called smith , the other grieve , in name of the town of dundee . in the petition , which was drawn up according to their usual canting stile , they complain'd of their want of the ministry there , and desired that some might be sent to them to preach the gospel ; upon this the commissioner asked if the episcopal ministers of that place were legally turned out ; and it being replyed that they were deprived by the privy council a year ago ; the moderator was suffered to proceed in the business , who pressed it with great earnestness , telling the assembly , that he knew that not only in dundee , but that in all angus the gospel was not preach'd , and that there was no true minister there , tho he and all the world besides knew , that except one or two churches all the rest of that shire have ministers setled in them , who daily exercise their functions , but indeed they are episcopal ministers ; whom neither he , nor others of that party make any account of , for on all occasions they so express themselves , as if the gospel and ministry were confin'd to the presbyterian kirk . but to return to the business of dundee and angus , mr. andrew bowie , and one mr. reiel declared to the assembly , that they had been in that country already by an order from the general meeting , but that they had no incouragement from that people , on the contrary they had met with great discouragements , and perceived that they were so averse and indisposed for receiving the gospel , that it was needless to send any to them ; for they would not get an auditory except in a kirk , and the people would not give them the keys of the kirk doors , nor admit of them except they were compell'd by authority . to which the moderator replyed , brethren , as you have made an offer of the gospel to them in the name of the general meeting , so you must now go and offer it in the name of the general assembly ; and added , that they would recommend the affair to the privy council , who would certainly see to their encouragement , and to have the keys of some kirk or other given them . as for dundee , which was said to be generally refractory , the moderator said , they could and would plant ministers and elders therein , whether the town council would or not . which if it be not an intrusion , let the world judg : when it was desired that some others might be added to these two brethren , mr. william spence sometime minister of glendoven was named by several , which was opposed by others , because the removing of him would leave the presbytery of aughterarder without a quorum , as i mentioned before ; however after some debate , it was carried he should go : and other three also were appointed to be in readiness upon advertisement of the success and encouragement of these brethren . as for this mr. william spence , one of the apostles for angus he served some years under episcopacy , but having desired an augmentation of his stipend , and it being refused ; he conceived a picque at the bishops , because they gave him not ( as he judged ) due assistance before the commission of the kirk , which he first vented by passing severe reflections upon them , and afterwards he grew to that height , that he dispersed papers bespattering both them and the government , and addressed to the presbytery for a reformation : his fellow presbyters endeavoured to reclaim him , and to suppress his libels , but their attempts being in vain , the matter was carried before the bishop and synod of dumblane , who finding him obstinate deposed him , and afterwards upon his further contumacy and disobedience excommunicated him , which censure was never yet taken off , because he never shewed any repentance , neither made any application about it . shortly after the receiving of this petition from dundee , there came a letter to the assembly from aberdeen subscribed by some phanaticks there ; who , i assure you , in that place are neither considerable for number , nor quality . the letter was to the same purpose , desiring the assembly to send them ministers , and complaining that they had wanted the gospel for thirty years . mr. george meldrum was present when this letter was read , and neither contradicted the assertion nor qualified it ; but suffered it to pass without any reflection or censure . which silence of his was admired by those that knew him , neither could they excuse it , considering that he both knew the place particularly , and could not but be convinced that the gospel had been preached there , in as great purity as in any place in the kingdom : for not to speak of the present ministers of that city , who have the approbation of all wise and judicious persons , both for preaching and other qualifications . mr. david lyall , now at montross , was a long time minister there , and is esteemed to have a good talent of popular preaching . mr. john menzies professor of divinity , who was ever esteemed an eloquent preacher , as well as a learned man , continued in the exercise of his ministry there , till the year 1684 , and mr. meldrum himself was twenty of these years minister there also ; and dr. garden who succeeded him must be acknowledged to be both a knowing man and an able preacher ; one who teacheth the truth in sincerity , without respect of persons . so that mr. meldrum's new interest must have strongly perverted his judgment , or he may be justly charged with hypocrisie and cowardice ; seeing , for fear of displeasing a party , he would not own the truth on so fair an occasion . the presbyterians speak much against a sinful silence , and certainly such was his at this time . some alledged , that the sending of this letter was a device of his own , to get himself sent back to aberdeen ; for one would have thought that the assembly would rather have sent him than another , because he might be supposed to know both the place and the people best where he had been so long minister ; but the assembly took no notice of him , and appointed two to go thither to preach the gospel , of which one was mr. shiel a cameronian . so that as mr. meldrum fell off from the episcopal party because he was not permitted to return to his place at aberdeen , for the same reason he should now desert the presbyterians , seeing they would not restore him unto it . upon some other occasion it was proposed by the moderator to send some other persons to make an offer of the gospel to the rest of the northern-shires ; accordingly an act past , appointing several ( i know not the exact number ) who were commended to the council for their viaticum , as the moderator worded it , which mr. fraser of brae found fault with as sordid , and then he wisht them to call it maintenance or provision , or what they pleased , for they knew his meaning well enough . but that which is most remarkable , is , that in this as well as the two former instances , persons were commissionated to preach and make an offer of the gospel ; for in these very terms it was proposed , stated , voted and determined , as if they were going to convert pagans and infidels ; this shews their ignorance and uncharitableness , and is to some a just ground ( tho there were no other reason ) for separating from them , and refusing communion with them , because they divide from the catholick church in all ages , they pervert and alter the nature of the gospel , and teach another gospel than what is to be found in scripture . indeed they cannot justifie their present proceedings , and all this noise they make in setting up themselves , unless their way ( as they use to speak ) be of equal importance with the gospel it self ; but if the gospel be in the scripture , the episcopal party have preached it more plainly and purely than they . and if they teach another gospel than what has been taught by the former , they must leave the scriptures , and with the papists have recourse to vain and uncertain traditions , or to the more vain imaginations of enthusiasts . before i relate to you any more of their acts , i 'll divert you with an account how the assembly dealt with such ministers as had appealed to them upon the hope of milder treatment and greater justice than what had been found in the particular presbyteries . if you had seen the last letter they sent to the king , as it was first presented to the assembly to be approved and subscribed , you would have concluded that all grievances had been redressed , and that the episcopal clergy had received a reparation of all the wrongs which they had complained of , for the letter expresly contain'd so much , but the libel was so gross that it could not pass tho the moderator urged it , wherefore the amendment of it being referred to mr. gilbert rule and mr. robert wyllie , they made it run thus ; that the same was recommended to the commissioners of the assembly , and several synods to be redressed . how true even this is , i cannot tell , time will shew , but sure i am 't was not done by the assembly , for they shifted off the examination of these appeals , saying it was injurious to the presbyteries to question the justice and legality of their proceedings , and pressed that the complainants might be referred back to the particular presbyteries and synods from which they had appealed , which was done , and that was equivalent to the approving all that was done , because none would condemn their own proceedings . the affair of peebles is an evident proof that the assembly was not willing to canvass the actings of any presbytery , far less to renverse their orders and sentences . the duke of queensberry being not only patron , but also a very considerable heritor of the parish , was as well as others both in point of honour and interest concerned to have the matter discussed ; and mr. knox who was called to be minister there righted . wherefore the duke recommended the business with great earnestness to the commissioner , that it might be brought before the assembly , being confident that the assembly would not take upon them to approve the proceedings of the presbytery , who had governed themselves neither by reason , justice , nor equity in the matter ; as was made appear in a printed information which i have herewith sent you ; whereupon the commissioner interposed so far as to get it one day proposed in a full assembly ; but when the clark took up the process to read it , there was such murmuring among the brethren , that what he read could neither be heard nor understood , and some two or three whispered the moderator in the ear ; so that before the clark had read six lines , he stood up , and addressing to the commissioner told his grace , that it was fit to wave this affair for the present , that the brethren were displeased that it was brought in so abruptly before the assembly , when it had not been considered in the committee , that they were not ripe enough as yet to take cognizance of it , and that there were several particulars in that affair which were not fit to be spoken of in publick ; to which the commissioner yielded either out of too much good nature , or out of fear that the stubborn and forward men would have baffled his authority if he had offered to oblige them to do any thing against their will. to save his credit in yielding to the assembly , he required them peremptorily to fall upon it at the next meeting ; the moderator promised it , but there was never a syllable more of it , nor it seems did the commissioner think sit to start it again . before i leave this matter , i must tell you a remarkable passage in mr. veatch his answer which he publish'd to that printed information which i spake of before : that whereas it was objected that he had not a popular call to the parish of peebles . this , saith he , ought not to militate against me ; for if by such a call be meant an unanimous call of all , or the greatest part of the parish ; it can be expected but in very few places of the country ▪ to a presbyterian minister , and never at all , saith he , to be hoped for in the parish of peebles . this indeed is a certain truth , but it was thought strange to see a presbyterian so plainly confess it , seeing hitherto they would have the king , and all the world believe , that both their persons and government were most agreeable to the inclinations of the people ▪ mr. veatch had not his wits about him when he let fall this declaration , and it seems was more intent upon his own particular , than the general interest of the party he belongs to ; for hereby he gives a lie unto the parliament , lover turns the ground whereon the government was built , and plainly intimates that he and his brethren are , and must be intruders , seeing they cannot have the call and consent of the people . the want whereof was charged heavily on the episcopal clergy in the west by mr. george meldrum in a sermon before the parliament , who thought it so heinous a crime , that he said , before he obtruded himself upon a people against their own will , he would chuse rather to beg his fraught and go to america : it were to be wished that all his brethren were of that mind , for then the nation would be soon rid of them ; and i assure you they might have their fraught without begging it ; for both gentry and commons would pay that more chearfully than their stipends . now if it was a crime in the episcopal clergy to take the cure of a parish without the express formal consent of the people , what may it be thought in a presbyterian to come in upon a people when they expresly declared and protest against him . i know no other way of justifying this , but by asserting the doctrine which one of their laicks raised from ver . 6. psal . 119. while he was lecturing to the neighbour-hood , viz. the people of god may sin , but the wicked must not sin , and there is a heavy vengeance waiting them if they do ; but we will leave this , and return to the point we were upon . the assembly was just so puzzled with the appeals of the episcopal clergy , as their ancestors the pharisees were with the question about john's baptism ; for on the one side they feared the court who desired and required them to be moderate , and indeed they perceived that it was their interest at this time to make some shew of moderation . but on the other hand it was against their interest to condemn the proceedings of the presbyteries , nor could they do it because they were agreeable to the rules concerted and prescribed by the general meeting ; so following the policy of the pharisees they waved the difficulty by remitting all to the commission and particular synods . by this means they secured what was already done from being renverst , and also freed the assembly from the blame of any injury or injustice done , or to be done ; for then these things might be charged on particular persons , and not on the whole party . however they ventured upon three or four processes , and by them you may guess what they would have done with the rest . the first was , that of mr. lesk minister of turreff within the diocess of aberdeen , whose church was claimed by one mr. arthur mitchell by vertue of that act of parliament , which restored the old presbyterians to their churches whether they were vacant or possessed by others . mr. lesk first made application to the council , and thought to have suspended mr. mitchell , as not being comprehended within the act of parliament , which only was designed in favour of these , who had left their ministry for not complying with episcopacy ; whereas mr. mitchell was deposed , and deprived long before that time : but that not taking effect , the matter was brought before the assembly , where mr. lesk instructed , that mr. arthur mitchell was never legally settled minister of turreff ; that about the year 1655. he was actually deposed , and that tho he continued to preach there by means of a prevailing faction of remonstrators under the usurper , he was never look'd upon as minister of the place : and that in the year 60. the synod of aberdeen being freed of the force and restraint that was formerly upon them , did ratifie the former sentence of deposition . and as for himself he pleaded that he had been legally setled minister according to the laws of the land , that he had submitted to the present civil government , which had promised protection to them who did so ; and that the heritors , and people of his parish were for his continuance among them , and altogether averse to mr. arthur mitchell . to prove this last , he produced a declaration and petition subscribed by the gentlemen and others of the parish . mr. mitchell alledged that one or two of the subscriptions were not genuine , and therefore that the whole ought to be neglected as a forgery . mr. lesk replyed , that he laid not the stress of this cause on that paper , that he only produc'd it as an adminicle , that he had not gone about seeking subscriptions , for he looked upon that as below the character of a minister ; but that it was given him by honest men , and therefore he had reason to believe the subscriptions genuine . and if they laid any stress on the inclinations of the people , if a competent time were allowed him , he would easily prove that they were for him ; but at present it was to be considered whether he was legal and rightful minister of that place . after two days debate it came to a vote ; and the vote was not whether mr. lesk or mr. mitchell should be continued minister at turreff ; but whether mr. mitchell was not rightful minister anno 1661. and only turned out by the unjust courses of the times , and whether he was not now to be looked upon as rightful minister there ; which vote was carried in the affirmative , and mr. lesk being called in , was told that the assembly had deprived him , and ordained mr. arthur mitchell to be minister at turreff . he asked the reasons of their sentence , which were refused ; but what ever might have been pretended , the true reason was , that they were glad of any pretence for casting out episcopal ministers , who were always in their sermons and discourses called the priests of baal . by virtue of that act of parliament i just now mentioned , all the churches were taken from the episcopal ministers , to which any presbyterian had the least pretence , tho the former had complyed with the civil government , and the other were setled in other places which they were not resolved to leave . so for instance , mr. james kirkton who hath a meeting-house in edinburgh , and is called to be one of the ministers of that city went out to the parish of martine , where he had been formerly minister , and forced away mr. andrew meldrum present minister without allowing him time to dispose of his goods ; and after he had performed this noble and heroick exploit , and preached a sunday or two to get a right to the stipend , he returned to his charge at edinburgh , and turned his back upon that in the country , as if there had been no more to be feared , seeing the curate was driven away . the next appeal which i suppose was considered , was that of mr. sleery from the presbytery of linlithgow , he was a minister of the west , who had been rabbled out of his own church , and thereafter was desired by the minister of falkirk to serve his cure during his sickness , which he did ; and when that minister died , the heritors and people of the parish upon the experience they had of him , desired that he might continue to preach to them , promising that when the government was setled , they would take care to get him a legal title to the parish : but it being firmly resolved on by all possible means to put out and disable all episcopal ministers ; the presbytery of linlithgow caused the said mr. sleery to be cited before them , who compeiring , was interrogated by what authority he preached at falkirk , and how he came to use the doxology . the last , he said , was the custom of the place , and that he did the first at the desire of the people . the presbytery not being satisfied with his answers to these , and some other questions , discharged him from preaching there any longer , and declared the church vacant , to which sentence he refused to submit , and appealed ; therefore it was necessary to interpose the authority of the assembly , for dispossessing him of that church which was the reason why he was called upon . when he compeired , the moderator askt him if he acknowledged the civil government , and if he would submit to that of the church , to both which he answered affirmatively ; but when it was askt him if he repented of his compliance with episcopacy , he said , if it was a sin he would repent of it . his answer did neither please nor satisfie them ; for the moderator told him it seemed he yet doubted whether it was a sin or not . so finding by this and some other things , that he was not yet a through convert , they deprived him of his church , and discharged him the exercise of his ministry . a third person brought before the assembly was one mr. forseith minister at st. ninians , he was accused for marrying a man to his first wives neice , which he confessed before the assembly ; and also that he had been informed of the relation , and diswaded from doing it by the episcopal clergy , amongst whom he lived . all his excuse was , that he was not much himself when he did it , being in great confusion and consternation because of the rabble that was then up , and who continually threatned him as they had fallen upon his neighbour ministers . and he further alledged , that it was the only miscarriage he could be charged with in thirty five years exercise of the ministry , and therefore he desired the assembly to pardon him , and to restore him . this they refused , and confirmed the sentence of his deposition , which was very just , and the only justifiable act of the assembly from its sitting down to its rising . a fourth affair which the assembly had before them , was that of mr. john mekenzie at kirkliston . i suppose you have seen an account of his process before the presbytery of linlithgow , for he carried it up with him to london to shew it to his friends there . but in case you have not met with him , nor received an account of the whole matter , take it in short thus . when rabbling was practised and in fashion here , he amongst many others of his brethren had the church doors shut against him , and by this means was hindred from the exercise of his ministry in that parish ; but having complyed with the civil government , he made an interest by his friends to maintain his legal right and title to the said church , which vexed and gall'd the presbyterians , who by this means were kept from setling a minister of their own perswasion there . all endeavours were used to remove him : first , they set him upon him to dimit voluntarily , which he refusing , they next threatned to force him to it upon articles of scandal . but his innocence , and unblameable conversation being sufficient proof against that ; they at last pursued him before the presbytery of linlithgow , upon the pretence of deserting his people . he appeared before them , and defended himself , declaring he was always ready and willing to exercise his ministry if the rabble would have suffered him , and allowed him access to his church , and therefore the fault did not lie at his door . upon this he was blamed for speaking contemptibly of the rabble who were said to be the necessary preliminaries to the government both of church and state , and from that they would have been infering his secret disaffection to both . the presbytery were forced to vindicate him from all imputation of scandal , and for a mark of their singular and extraordinary favour , they said they would give him recommendatory letters to put him in capacity of being elected minister of another parish ; but still they urg'd his quitting of that of kirkliston : and when he perceived that they had firmly resolved to declare his church vacant to gratifie the rabble , and some few other unreasonable persons who were dissatisfied with him , he appealled from them to the king , and the next lawfully called general assembly . this being the tenor of his appeal , many of the assembly spake against the receiving or sustaining it , alledging that it was not to them he appealed , for his expression did imply that this assembly was not lawfully called , seeing it was called before he appealed , and yet he made no particular reference to it . besides , said they , it 's clear he means an episcopal assembly by his appealing to the king joyntly with the assembly ; for these episcopalians do make the king the head of the church , whereas we cannot own any such thing . my lord arbruchel desired the assembly to be favourable to him , for he knew him to be well affected to the government , and that he had served the king abroad for the space of seven years . to which one replyed , that he was as well paid for it : he served him for wages , and so would he have done the turk too . they were much irritated by his going to london to represent their proceedings , and to clamour against them ; every man took occasion to vent his passion and pique at him ; some said he was scandalous , and called him a drunkard and swearer ; some called him one thing , and some another , and one said he should be deposed because he was a proud , stubborn and insolent fellow . the commissioner apprehending there would be little justice where there was so much pique and prejudice , desired the moderator to delay the affair , and to allow the young man time to appear and answer for himself : but the moderator replied , that it was best to proceed now , and more for the young man's reputation , for if he were present they would be obliged to take notice of some crimes , and scandals which now they would pass over without inquiring into them , forgetting that the presbytery had acquitted him of all such guilt , and that he himself had given him a good ▪ testimony when the affair was first brought before the assembly . the commissioner still urging that they would deal tenderly and gently with him ; indeed ( replied the moderator ) your grace shall find that we will use great tenderness towards the young man , and we shall be very discreet , for we shall only take his kirk from him , which they did immediately . so that you have a sample of the presbyterian tenderness , which i think is very near a kin to the tender mercies of the wicked , which solomon declareth to be cruel ; for when they deprive one of his livelihood and good-name , they call it tenderness ; and if it be so , i pray god save us from their cruelty . except these four , i heard of no other processes wherein the episcopal clergy were concerned , that were revised and discussed before the assembly , there were indeed one or two more mentioned , by the interest made by the persons concerned : ‖ as the business of mr. heriot in dalkeith , and mr. wood in dumbar , but they with the rest were referred back to particular synods and presbyteries . all this while the presbyterians had been intent upon the emptying of churches , now at last they began to consider how churches should be filled , and vacancies supplied . they wanted labourers for their harvest , and therefore they first passed an act , for calling home such of their party as were serving in other places abroad ; and appointed the drawing up , and directing of letters for acquainting those in holland particularly with the mind of the assembly and the necessity of the church : it happened that of these who were spoken of , one was dead , and another detained prisoner in dunkirk . wherefore one said at the reading of the letter , that the assembly needed the power of miracles , for bringing back the one , and that they ought to address to the french king to obtain the other . in the next place for the encreasing the number of the brethren , they appointed some to search out , and to give in lists of such as were thought fit to be called to the ministry . and indeed they may come to have enough of them , by the measures and methods which they lay down and follow ; but they are not like to have many learned and knowing men ; for they set light of learning and knowledg , and do often run it down : zeal for the good cause is the chief qualification , and serves instead of learning and other accomplishments . the episcopal candidates are thought as dangerous as those who are actually in office : therefore instead of these who have been several years fitting themselves for the holy ministry by proper and useful studies , they are putting others upon the design who never studied at all , neither have any competent measure of learning for it . brewers and illiterate tradesmen are setting up to be ministers . not to trouble you with other instances ; one russel a coalgrieve in fife is made minister at kennaway : what talent of learning he has you may easily guess , when you may understand that he is altogether ignorant of the latine : when he was passing his tryals before the presbytery , they according to their custom prescribed him a latine exercise in some head of divinity , which he earnestly declined ; and when they would needs keep up the formality , he complained for obliging him to pray and preach in an unknown tongue : having miserably bungled through the discourse , when it came to the disputes , mr. mitchel at leslie proposed an argument by way of enthymema , and he denyed the major , having been at pains to conn the terms major and minor before he came there , and his instructer having forgot to tell him the different ways of argumentation : then mr. mitchel putting his terms in the ordinary form of an hypothetick syllogism , fancying he might understand that : when the syllogism was repeated he said to the proponent explica terminos minoris , which was sed verum prius . having gotten this specimen of his learning , the presbytery acknowledged that he indeed wanted gifts , but he had grace , and that was sufficient ; and therefore they approved of him and received him into the ministry . mr. russel hearing that he was so much upbraided with ignorance , to wipe off that stain , he offered to make some ostentation of learning in a sermon , by the repetition of a latine verse . the verse he chose was this common one ; regis ad exemplum , &c. but alass , the way he took to save his reputation ruined it for ever , for he blundered it thus , regos ad exemplas totis componitur orbos . and as their clergy are at present without learning , so it cannot be expected that their successors ( if they shall have any ) will be any whit better , ; for they have laid , our colleges wast , driven away our learned men , and have not qualified persons of their own party to put in their places . the university of s. andrew is altogether laid wast , there is neither principal nor regent there , and those who have succeeded to the vacancies in the colleges of glascow and edinburgh are known to be persons neither skilled in books , nor any part of good and useful learning : so that they are not capable of directing the studies of the youth which resort thither ; nor is it to be supposed the youth will much regard their advices , when 't is evident that the chief of them have need to be put back to learn their grammar . the narrowness of the presbyterian spirit is an enemy to knowledg , and will obstruct all learning ; for they not only count it impiety to call their commonly received principles into question , but also they reckon a free and rational inquiry into the grounds and reasons of them to be very dangerous : they are no less friends to implicite faith , than the church of rome , and do not regard the advice of s. peter , which is , that we should be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh a reason of the hope that is in us . you may easily guess how squeamish they are about points of divinity , when they make the cartesian , and other systems of new philosophy to be gross and damnable heresies . so that if presbyterianism prevail , all freedom of spirit , all improvements of reason and knowledge will be banish'd , and the world must be condemned again to hear both in schools and pulpits impertinent chat , a clutter clutter of words and canting phrases which cannot be understood . they are great enemies to mr. gregory the learned professor of mathematicks in this place , they seek by all means to turn him out , and say that these sciences are not only useless but dangerous : and indeed they have reason , for they are no friends to ignorance and nonsence their peculiar properties . but the want of kindness to mr gregory , and the mathematicks is somewhat more excusable in them ; but that they should slight the knowledge of the hebrew , and other orientall tongues is a little strange , and cannot be justified seeing the right understanding of the scripture does so much depend thereupon . they have thrust out mr. alexander douglass the professor of these languages here , who as he was a person of a most peaceable disposition , so he was an ornament to the society he lived in by his skill and knowledge in these matters : he cannot have a true successor here , for he hath scarce his equall in this kingdom , nor perhaps are there many in other places who do exceed him in the thing he professeth . but perhaps the jewish synagogue would have been found so favourable for episcopacie , and therefore it is fit and wisely done to keep both clergy & laity in ignorance of it . their kindness for the dead is as smal as for the living , & they encourage learned books as little as learned men . the trade of books is fallen so low since the presbyterian reign was set up , that our stationers are thinking either to quit their employments , or to go and live elsewhere , for they have not made the rent of their shops these two years . the episcopall are not in circumstances for buying and the other crave no other books then durham on the canticles and revelation , dickson and hutcheson , dyar and gray , these are their classicall authors and the standard of their learning : and 't is from those that they take the heads of their sermons , and the instructions which they tender the people . but tho' learning be not the talent of a presbyterian , yet they have arrogated to themselves the gift of preaching ; they have the name of powerfull soul-searching-preachers : whereas the episcopall ministers are only named dry moral lecturers , and under this name slouted and abused both in sermons and pray●rs . so vain were they of this gift of preaching that for some time we had a new sermon published by them every week ; they thinking thereby to gain and proselite the whole nation , but the stratageme failed them , nay it prov'd to their prejudice ; for thereby peoples curiosity was diverted from hearing them in the churches , where they could not expect other than noise and nonsense , seeing there was so much babble & in their printed , & consequently more deliberate discourses . an acquaintance of yours hath made a rare collection of notes of their sermons both printed and unprinted . to which i refer you for instances to prove the truth of what i have been saying : the last sermon that was published came forth the first week of the ass . the author is one mr. james clark who preached in the meeting house at dumbar . it was a sermon ad clerum ; preached , as was said , at the deposing of the parson of old-hamstocks , which being an extraordinary occasion , something better then ordinary , was expected : but there never appeared a more silly and empty discourse , nor is it possible that you can conceive so meanly of it , as it deserves . it was even far below mr. andrew gray's sermons . the very presbyterians whose gust craves no fine things , were ashamed of it . my lord czawford to excuse it laid the blame on the printer and complained of him at the councill table , for offering to publish it without a license , alledging also that it was without the authors consent , and that the copy was an imperfect uncorrect one , which some ignorant or malicious person had taken from the authors mouth : but when the printer was examined , he produced an authentick copy from the author himself , and declared that he revised the sheets as they came from the press , so the printer was free of the faults that were in it ▪ and they could be only charged on mr. clark , who it 's believed shew'd all the learning and eloquence he was master of . but it is fit now we return to the ass . and give you an account of what acts they pass'd for regulating the discipline of the church for the future . the first of this kinde and the first also of any other that passed in the ass . was an act against marriages without publick proclamations ; as also against the private administration of the two sacraments , baptisme and the lords supper . mr. gilbert rule press'd that the sacrament of baptisme might not at all be administred but in publick and after sermon , and called the private administration not only superstitious but also sorcerie and charming , and said further that the same was contrary to scripture and antiquity . mr kirkton took him up briskly and said that was disputable , that he could buckle him , or any man upon that point , but would not debate it now . he added that by their rigorous imposition of indifferent things he had lost five men of considerable note the last week , and concluded tho ▪ there were a thousand acts against it , he would rather baptize in private then suffer the children to go to the curates . some highland ministers crayed that they might not be lyable to that act because it was impossible to bring all the children of their parishes to the kirks by reason of the vast distance some of their people lived at from them ; but whether they intend to give a dispensation was not expressed . the moderator to excuse their own practises heretofore said , there was a distinction both of times and places , for , said he , in times of persecution i think an honest minister riding on the way , may go into a mans house , baptize a bairn and come out and take his horse again . tho' while they were under restraint , they made no scruple of baptizing privately the children of those of their own perswasion , yet now they refuse to baptize any except in publick ; nor will they do it but when there is a sermon : and they are so strict upon the point that they suffer the children to dye rather then slacken their rigour . in the country the benefit of baptisme can be only had on sundays because then only there is preaching ; and if children cannot live so long they must take their hazard of departing without that sign and seal of their salvation . i know a parish where two or three persons importuned the minister to baptize their children publickly or privately as he pleased : but he peremptorily refused to do it on a week-day , tho' they who intended to have been present at the baptisme would have made a competent number for an ordinary country sermon , and before sunday two of the children dyed : we had lately in this city a more notable instance of the stiffness of their humour in this particular . a certain citizen designed to have his child baptized on a week day at the ordinary time of sermon : he with the gossips came in time enough to the church , but because the child was brought in about the close of the sermon , neither mr. kennedy who preached , nor mr. erskine the minister of the parish could be prevailed with to administer the sacrament to the infant , but they caused it to be carried home again without baptism . the people generally take this very ill , and are very much displeased with the presbyterian ministers on this account . wherefore to justify themselves , they frequently preach against the necessity of baptism , and to talk of it as if it were an ordinance neither necessary nor much to be regarded , and do account the esteem and value which is ordinarily put upon it , and earnest desires the people have after it , to be the dregs and reliques of popery among us . when a child was brought to mr. kirkton he took occasion to shew the superstition of that ceremony , and said to the people , you think it necessary to have your children baptized , but i tell you ( said he ) i know a good godly minister who lived till he was fourscore that was never baptized all his life time . in the next place , they renewed an act of a generall assembly appointing pedagogues , chaplains , preachers , and students to take and subscribe the confession of faith ; and further they commissionated some to draw up a list of all these acts of assemblies which were fit to to be observed and put in use , wherein they acted very cunningly , for tho' it be well known that they receive all the acts of assemblies as if they were scripture , and pay no less regard to them ▪ yet because some of these incroach upon the power of the civil magistrate , therefore to prevent the jealousies of the king they would not make a generall act ratifying and approving them in cumulo , nor yet would they condemn or censure any of them . but they enforced such as were proper and suitable to the present state of affairs , and waved the declaration of their sentiments concerning the rest . fourthly , because the ass ▪ could not sit so long as was necessary to determine all particulars and to give rules and measures for the setling of the church in this juncture , nor was it sit it should do it ; therefore they resolved to chuse a committee who might sit after the dissolution of the ass . who should have full and supream power to act in all things that related to the church . it 's said , that this overture was first made by the moderate men , who thought by this means to reduce affairs to a better temper then the ass . was like to do , by reason of the many rigid and indiscreet men who were in it . therefore six were proposed to be a part of this committee , and to name the other persons of whom the committee should consist . four of these six went under the character of moderate men , the other two were of another temper , and were joyned to them on purpose to prevent suspition : but the high flown brethren soon smell'd out the design , and therefore they first voted two more of their own side , and because that only put them in aequilibrio , they again got four more to be added , so that they were double the number of the other , and by this means the committee consisted most part of the strictest and most rigid presbyterians , their names are as follow , for the south . ministers . john veith gab. simple gilbert rule m. james kirkton john spalding michael bruce gab. cuninghame william erskine william weir alex. pitcairn m. richard howison james veitch patrick simpson mathew crawford george campbell james laurce archibald hamilton m. patrick peacock rob. duncauson john balandine william ker patrick venier m. john hutchison william eccles neil gitless m. andrew morton thomas forrester william violin m. david blair samuel nairn elders . earle of crawford earle sutherland visc . of arburthnet la. halleraig laird of ormestone sir john hall sir james riddel balife muir lairds balife macklurg george stirling coltness glanderston lammington [ air john muir provost of hamilton of grange for the north. ministers . john law hugh kennedy m. will. crighton john anderson alex. forbes william legget robert rule m. james frazer goe . meldrum edward jenuson james rymer thomas ramsay m. robert young william mack andrew buey elders . ia. ardbruchill green know naughton meggins lewchatt afterwards it being represented that the visitors for the north were too few , there were added these following ministers . james stewart james vrquhart m. alex. dumbar alex. frazer thomas hog hugh anderson william machay m. walter denune geo. meldrum at glasse arthur mitchel william ramsay m. francis melvil john maccullork elders . brodie grant grange dumber eight colloden dalfolly parkhay sir john monro sir george monro embo sir david frazer m. john campbell of moye this committee was appointed to keep quarterly sessions viz. on the third wednesday of january , and the third wednesday of april , and to appoint afterwards their meetings as often as they shall think fit . that a quorum should be ten ministers and five ruling-elders , and they were allowed to choose their own moderator , and clerk. the instructions prepared for them by the committee for overtures , were first read and debated on thursday before the ass . rose , but they were not agreed to till the tuesday thereafter . on munday they were read with some alterations : but mr. kirkton and a great many more adhered to the exceptions which they made at the first reading , and said , that the alterations were not considerable . he alledged also , that what was then read was not a true copy of that which the committee had agreed to , and offered to the moderator a true double of it , but the moderator refused it , saying , he knew nothing of the matter : and because the ass . was not like to come to an agreement at that time , therefore the matter was referred back again to the committee , and all who had any thing to say about it were appointed to attend them . the next day it was brought back again to the ass . and concluded ; mr. kirkton and some others who press'd alterations being absent . to satisfy your , and my own curiosity i used means to procure a copy of the instructions , and got them with some difficulty which i here set down . instructions for the committee or commission of the kirk . first , they are to take into their cognizance all references and appeals not discuss'd in the assembly and such matters as have been stated before the ass . and referred to them , and to discuss and determine the famine . secondly , they are to give their advice to all synods and presbyteries when required , and tho' not required , yet upon information of any irregularity or precipitancy of proceedings in presbyteries they are to interpose their advice for sisting processes till the next synod or ass . when this 2d . article was read , some asked if the commission had power to call before themselves any business , and to take the same out of the hands of presbyteries . to which the moderator answered , no ▪ but they are only to give their advice , and said he , i think no presbytery will refuse it , which if they do , it must be cum periculo , and the church of scotland will be free from any imputation of their actings . thirdly , they are to have power to visit all ministers in presbyteries as well presbyterian as others . fourthly , they are to purge out of the church all who upon due tryall shall be found insufficient , scandalous , erroneous or supinely negligent . it was moved that the words supinely negligent might be left out , but the same was refused . fifthly , they are to be carefull that none be admitted by them to ministerial communion , or to a share in the government , but such as upon due tryall ( for which the visitors shall take a competent time ) shall be found to be orthodox in their doctrine , of competent abilities , having a pious , godly and peaceable conversation as becometh a minister of the gospel , of an edifying gift , and whom the commission shall have ground to believe will be faithfull to god and the government , and diligent in the discharge of their ministerial duty , and that all who shall be admitted to the ministry or shall be received into a share of the ●overnment shall be obliged to own and subscribe the confession of faith , and to profess their submission and willingness to joyn and concur with the presbyterian church-government . at first it was presbyterian communion , and only faithful to the government . mr. kirkton said that this article was a matter of very great consequence , and desired it might be well considered , for in hoc vertitur fortuna scotia , and complained that there was not one word of the scandal of conforming , which he said was the greatest of all scandals . mr. frazer of brae proposed that the clause of repentance might be inserted ; the moderator answered , that in effect it was there already , if they look't upon the commissioners as discreet and judicious men ; for so ( said he ) they will admit none without repentance , for without that they cannot have ground to believe that ever they will be faithfull to the government . mr. kirkton replyed , that they could never be sure of episcopall ministers , for many of them ( says he ) has changed three or four times already , and they will do it at every turn : mr. william weir moved that they might be obliged to declare that they should neither by advice nor any other way endeavour the alteration of the presbyterian government . sixthly , that they be very cautious in receiving in informations , and forming libels against the late conformists , and present incumbents , and that they proceed in the matter of censure very deliberately , so as that none may have just cause to complain of their rigidity , yet so as to omit no means of information , and that they shall not proceed to censure but ▪ upon relevant libels and sufficient probations . seventhly , that this commission do not meddle in publick affairs or in any thing not expressed in their commission , which is hereby declared to be given them in hunc finem only & pro presenti ecclesiae statum . eightly , they shall be answerable , and censurable by the next generall assembly , and shall continue till the first of nov. next , if there be no generall ass . before that time . by these instructions it appears that the committee was mainly designed against the episcopal clergy , who as yet kept their places because of their compliance with the civil government ▪ presbyterians can never be brought to have true kindness for episcopal ministers had they never so many recommendations for their parts , piety , or their interest in the favour of great men . but on all occasions they do draw back from them , and do refuse to concur with them in advancing even the common ends of religion and truth . and at this time they not only had an aversion to them on the account of their different principles , but also they were afraid to receive them into their communion , and especially into a share of the government , because the episcopal clergy was double their number , and therefore it was dangerous to admit them , lest by the plurality of their number on some fit occasion they should forge a change of the government . they considered that the compliance and submission to presbyterian government , which such would give at this time , would not be free and willing , but only out of a necessity to serve the present turn till they should be better stated : wherefore either to revenge themselves upon the enemies of their government , or the better to secure it , it was from the very first resolved upon to lay aside all episcopal ministers , unless they evidently testified a change of mind as well as of outward behaviour . but how to compass this was the difficulty , for a direct act for this would make their design plain and shew their malice bare fac'd , it would encrease the clamours and prejudices of the people , nor could the state in equity suffer it to pass . the only expedient then was , to do it by some indirect by-blow , by putting something to them which they could not do ; & by this means render them lyable to their censures , or which , if they did , would prostitute their reputation with the people , & turn them odious as men of no principles , honesty , or stedfastness . and as they envyed them their reputation and favour , so they thought if they could bring them to forfeit that , there would be little difficulty in turning them out , neither needed they fear the doing of it as occasion offered . it was observed that the fasts formerly appointed went ill away with the episcopal clergy ; some ministers would not observe them at all , others would not read the proclamation appointing them , because of some insinuations which reflected on episcopacy , and those who complyed with it , and generally the people censured those who read & observed the same . another fast therefore more plain and particular then the former was thought the fittest stratagem for procuring the ruine of the episcopal clergy . the motion was no sooner proposed then entertained , and a committee appointed for the drawing up the reasons of it , which were publickly read in the assembly novemb. 11th . when the clerk had done , the moderator said , brethren , this is a savoury paper , indeed it is a most savoury paper , and worthy to be heard over again . after a second reading , mr. frazer of brae asked who was to observe the same , whether presbyterian ministers or curates also brother , said the moderator , that is not timely stated , for we must first consider the thing , and conclude that , and then we shall consider the persons who shall observe it . others said , that what mr. frazer had proposed ought first to be considered . when they had for some time exercised their wit about the reasons of the fast , and the way of wording it , the moderator ask'd the commissioner if his grace had any thing to say about it , who answered , yes , and therefore desired it might be delayed till the next day , which was accordingly done : the next day being the 12th . of nov. the business of the fast was again brought before the ass . and the paper containing the reasons of it read with this alteration , that the declaration , oaths of allegiance , supremacy , and test , and some such particulars were left out : it would seem that the commissioners refused to suffer it to pass if these had been expresly mentioned : wherefore to get the commissioner to condescend to the thing , they dasht out the names : but he is an ignorant reader , and has little skill in spelling who doth not perceive that they are all couch'd & implied . so this day the reasons were approved , and an act pass'd , requiring all persons throughout the kingdom whether in kirks or meeting houses punctually to observe the same . i should detain you too long , if i should give you an account of the reasons here , and pass observations thereon . i chuse rather to send you the paper it self that you may see it and consider it with your own eyes , and at the first view of it you may be convinced how choaking it will be to the episcopal clergy , who can neither in credit or conscience observe it ; nor can any who are less interessed in the episcopal government go along with it , unless they could be perswaded that episcopacy , is not only unlawfull but the cause and occasion of much wickedness and impiety , and the setting it up is to apostatize from god , & to make defection from the truth . none can observe this fast for the reasons enjoyned , but at the same time they must condemn the church of england and other protestant churches , nay the catholick church of christ from the apostles days down to calvin . the ass . understood well enough how contrary the design and reasons of this fast were to the sentiments of those who were commanded to observe it , & that they could not keep it without being guilty of the greatest hypocrisy and mocking of god : and therefore for them , for their own particular ends to require men thus to mock god and play the hypocrite , was a horrid and most unjustifiable voice of villany , this shews that they fast for strife and envy , and not to please god , but to ensnare men not to avert the divine judgements but that they may have occasion of executing their wrath and malice under the colour and shaddow of zeal against sin. with the act of the ass . for the fa●● i have sent you also the act of councill annexing the civil sanction to it procured by my lord crawford's means : and i desire you to take notice of the close of it , where the observation of the fast is urged out of fear of gods wrath , and after that is subjoyned the highest perils from them , which some said was like the proclamations of one borthwi●k sometimes a bayliff in this city , which were wont to be under the pain of death , and fourty pound besides . the mentioning of these printed acts brings to my memory a passage of the printer ; some in hopes of getting gain thereby petitioned the ass . for the gift of publishing their acts. mrs. anderson claim'd the priviledge by vertue of a gift from the king to print all publick acts and proclamations ; and withall she might have deserved such a savour from them having ever heretofore favoured their party , and allowed them the use of her press for publishing their pamphlets , and even such as durst not be well avowed . but either because they would have a printer of their own distinct from the kings , or that they would not shew kindness to her , who had accession to the guilt of the late reigns , by printing their sinfull acts and proclamations : for one or both these reasons they denied her the favour , and bestowed it on george mosman who represented in his petition , that he was not only always a true friend to their interest , but also a sufferer for the cause . and it 's true he was ever whig enough , but what his sufferings were it is not well known , seeing he ever lived peaceably at edenburgh , and had the freedome of a good trade , whereby he is become fat every way . other men lose by their sufferings , but they gain by theirs even in this life . so mr. johnston died two thousand pound sterling rich who was not worth forty or fifty pound when he left his charge . tho' mrs. anderson was repulsed by the ass . yet she would not give over , but next tried her interest with the councill , that at least she might have the printing of those acts which had the civil sanction added to them , they being comprehended within her gift . crawford who thinks all the acts of the presbyterians should be like the laws of the medes and persians stood up for mosman , others pleaded mrs. andersons right , it not being in the power of the councill , far less of the ass . to take away their right and property or any part of it . but one said smartly , that the case should be stated not betwixt mrs. anderson and mosman , but betwixt the king and the ass . whether the king should yield to the ass . or the ass . to the king my lord crawford thought the first no absurdity , and offered to produce instances of it in former times . but the rest of the councellors thought they were obliged in civility to prefer the king , and so mrs anderson carried it . i believe i may have wearied you with the length of my letter , i crave pardon only to add two or three particulars more , and i shall close . the first was , their appointing an answer to be made to the printed accounts of the persecution of the episcopal clergy in this kingdom . at the generall meeting it was laid on mr. meldrum who declin'd it . then it was recommended to mr. alexander pitcairine who did nothing in it . he excused himself before the ass . in that he knew not the matters of fact and the true information was not sent him . the ass . ordered him again to go on in it , and appointed mr gilbert rule , and some others to assist him in the work , and required all the members to furnish them with instructions proper for it . mr. meldrum in a sermon before the ass . offered to justify the barbarities of the rabble , and the ill usage which the episcopal clergy met with , alledging that their errors , vices and scandals deserve no better at the peoples hands : but what justification & defence will be made by those who are appointed to do it , in name of the ass : i do not know , but this i am confident , that they will never prove any material circumstance in matter of fact to be false . a second particular i am to make you acquainted with , is an act for taking off the sentence of deposition which was pronounced against some ministers , especially those of the remonstrators party anno 1660 i told you before that it had been proposed at the general meeting , but was then laid aside by reason of the mistakes that were like to arise among the brethren about it now the moderator who was mainly concerned in the business finding himself a little better stated made an overture of it to the ass ▪ the day it was dissolved : and to obtain it the more easily , he brought it in by way of a surprize : brethren , said he , you may remember there were once some unhappy differences among us , which some carried so high as to proceed to inflict the sentence of deposition upon some on that account ; now i think it sit before we part , that this sentence be revoked ; that as we are all one mans bairns so we may be all alike stated . mr. gilbert rule replied , that he judged it better to bury these matters in oblivion , that they could not pass a generall act for reponing these men without re-examining their processes , which was no ways fit ; & perhaps they would not be found all alike , for some might be deposed for scandall and other crimes , and not only for these unhappy heats and differences . the moderator answered him , brother there is no need of condescending or particulars , and i believe they will be found all alike , and that they are all very honest men that are concerned : so he named mr. wier and some others , and among the rest himself in the third person , saying , there is one mr. hugh kennedy , whom i warrant you ken all well enough . to conclude , the act passed , the sentence of deposition lying upon these persons was made void , and they declared to be true and lawfull ministers . and herein truly the moderators wit fail'd him , for instead of righting himself which he designed , he raised objections against himself which otherwise would have been forgotten ; and by this act brought an indelible tash both upon his own publick ministry these two three years , and also upon the present ass . in that the moderator and many of its members were both legally and canonically incapable . now that they hear this , they pretend that the sentence was taken off formerly , and that the ass . only ratifyed and confirmed what was formerly done in these mens favour , and that it was usuall to ratify in the first generall ass . the acts of inferiour judicatories . but as they cannot instance the time nor the meeting in which these persons were reponed , so they never had any proper or avowed meeting for such a business till the indulgence granted by king james ; and we never heard it so much as proposed before in any of their avowed meetings till the last general one as was already declared ; and either the sentence lying upon these persons was valid or not : if it was not , then what needed such a solemn annulling of it by an act of the generall ass . but if it was valid , then the ass , approved of men who were contumatious to the discipline & government of their own church ; for they received such to be members of the ass . and also choosed one of that gang to pr●side in it , whatever may be said as to the deposition of these men , if it was found expedient that the ass . should pass a verdict on it , it had been prudent and proper to have done it before their admission as members ; and if the credit of the ass . had been regarded , they would not have chosen a moderator against whom there was such a considerable exception ? certainly a less reason may invalidate the authority of the ass . render it unlawfull and unworthy to be owned and submitted to . the last particular i shall trouble you with is about the choosing commissioners to go from the ass . to the king to make a true representation of their proceedings , to intreat the continuance of his favour , and to vindicate themselves from the aspersions of their enemies . it 's said that mr. carstairs whom the king had sent down with letters of instruction to the ass . expected that they would have honoured him with that trust , but whether it was out of any jealousy of his conduct or faithfullness or if it was to gratify others who might have had particular designs of their own they passed by mr. ●arstairs , and gave the employment to mr. gilbert ride and mr. david blair . the first i have often had occasion to mention , the other preached in a meeting house here ; he is said to be not so course but something better polished than other common presbyterians : he is son to mr. robert blair minister at st. andrews , who was famous for many things but especially his civility to king charles the 2d . when he made him a visit at his own house . mr. blair when the king came in was sitting in a chair , and it seems at the time under a bodily infirmity which both kept him from rising and excused it , when mrs. blair ran to to fetch a chair to the king , he said , my heart do not trouble your self , he is a young man he may draw in one to himself . at last i come to the dissolution of the assembly , which was talked of severall days before , and actually concluded and resolved upon nov. 13. their last sederunt was in the afternoon , and continued till it was night . there they debated the calling of another ass . and the time of its sitting ; some were for one month , some were for another , and there were few months of the year but was favoured by one or other as sittest for an ass . in the midest of these debates among themselves , the commissioner ( whose advise they never sought in the affair ) stood up and dissolved them in the kings name , and by the same authority called and appointed another to meet on the first of nove. next to come , 1691. the assembly was surprized with this , but it would seem they thought not fit to call it in question , therefore they submitted : and all was concluded with a prayer and psalm : the psalm they sung was the 133. thus ended our famous assembly : an account whereof i have given you as fully and exactly as i could : i was not overhasty to believe any information till i found it confirmed by two or three others : if i be mistaken in some small circumstances , which the best historians may erre in ; i am sure no material falshood can be charged upon me , let it be no prejudice against the truth of my relation , that i sometimes appear no friend to the party ; but tho' i be not , i will not willingly and wittingly lye upon them . i need not assure you of my ingenuity who knows that i hate to utter a lye , either for advancing the best cause or destroying the worst . but i confess i can hardly bridle my passion when i consider the errour and injustice , the unreasonableness and hypocrisy which these people are guilty of , who if you will take their word for it are the only true godly , and who only have a sense of religion and the practise of it : but i am confident neither church nor religion will prosper till that spirit be cast out which possesses them . i pray god convert them , and let out much of his spirit upon them , and all others , that our land may have peace , and that the divisions of our church may be healed ; that our confusions may be wholly removed , and order and good government restored , and that the worship of god may be duly and decently performed as may best tend to the advancement of his glory , and the good and edification of the souls of his people , with this prayer for the church , and my hearty wishes for your self , i take my leave at this time . december 1690. finis . information for the heritors , elders . &c. of the parish of peebles ; against m r. william veatch . the late mr. john hay minister of the gospel at peebles , being by bodily pain and sickness utterly disabled for the publick exercise of his ministry , and apprehending the time of his departure to be approaching ; out of a deep concern for his flock , after the example of good and faithful pastors in all ages , resolved to look out for a successor ; and for that effect , wrote to the duke of queensbery , ( then undoubted patron of the parish of peebles ) to nominate some able and godly minister , who might assist him as a helper during his life , and to whom he might recommend and leave his charge at his death . his grace being well satisfied with so pious a desire , remits the choice to himself , whereupon he calls and invites mr. robert knocks , one of the ministers of the city of glasgow , who having accepted the call , and to the great comfort of the pastor and people , served the cure for sometime : the sick man had his peaceable exit in the lord , solacing himself in this ; that he had not left his flock as sheep without a shepherd ; immediately after whose decease , the heritors , elders , and parochioners , did apply themselves to the duke's factor , to petition the duke then at london , and to acquaint him , that they unanimously desired mr. robert knocks to be their minister , in place of the deceast mr. john hay , which accordingly the duke agreed to , and ordered mr. knox to continue in the exercise of his ministry there . and thereafter upon the 17th of november 1689 , being the lord's day after sermons , the session being sitting , and the duke's letter read unto them , the whole heritors , elders , and parochioners then present , did unanimously and cheerfully receive the said letter and nomination , and promised to mr. knox all the encouragement that could be expected from a dutiful people ; and the session did order the lairds of haystoun , and halkshaw , william plenderleith , john hope , and john gevan , late provosts of peebles , to wait upon the duke at his return , and give him thanks in all their names for his care of them . after which time mr. knox having all the right to be minister at peebles , which the state of the church could then admit of , viz. designation and appointment of the patron , with the consent and concurrence of the heritors , elders , and by far the greatest and most substantial part of the people , and wanting only the formality of an induction or institution , in regard there was no legal ecclesiastical judicatory then in being to confer it on him , continued in the free and peaceable exercise of his ministry , until the sixteenth of february 1690 , when some violent interruption being offered unto him by a company of unruly people , as he was coming to the church on the lord's day in the morning ; the heritors , elders and people as aforesaid , were so much concerned , that by an express obligation subscribed under their hands , they declare their resolution to adhere to the said mr. knoks as their minister ; and commissioned some of their number to pursue that high riot , before the most honourable lords of their majesties privy council ; upon whose complaint and application , the lords of council finding mr. knox to have good right to serve the cure at the church of peebles , did justly punish the author of the tumult , and oblige the magistrates of peebles , to take such care of the peace , that there might be no interruption offered to him for the future , and thereafter he enjoyed his ministry comfortably and peaceably , until the presbytery having as would seem by all their posterior acts , resolved to thrust him out , and obtrude another on the parish , did by their act of the 24th of july last at kirkurd , without ever examining his right and title , or giving him any citation , proceeding upon a false supposition , as if he had possest himself wrongously of the church , required him to forbear preaching , till he should be allowed by them . the extract of which act , being delivered to him by the present provost of peebles most unseasonably upon the lord's day thereafter , just as he was going to the pulpit ; he taking it as the act plainly bears , to be only a temporary restraint , till such time as he should apply himself to the presbytery for their allowance , did patiently and pleasantly obey it , taking his seat among the auditors , while the provost fetcht a minister from the meeting-house to preach in the church , who after sermons by an order ( as he said ) from the presbytery , surprized the parish , by declaring the church to be vacant , for the supply of which pretended vacancy , the said presbytery sent mr. robert eliot one of their own number , upon the 24th of august being the lord's day , to preach and hold a meeting for the calling of one mr. william veatch ; which meeting being called after sermons , the heritors , either by themselves , or their proxies , together with all the ordinary elders of the parish , and the generality of the whole people , compeered and protested against the calling of mr. veatch , appealing from the presbytery to the next provincial , or general assembly that should happen to be , promising to give in the double of their protestation and appeal , with the reasons thereof to the presbytery the first day of their meeting ; whereupon they took instruments . the said mr. robert elliot in a strange and unbecoming heat and transport , insolently presuming to take instruments against them in the name of jesus christ , and without any regard to their protestation , he with his associates proceeded to nominate so many pretended commissioners , to go the next day with mr. william russel who was sent by the presbytery , and in the name of the parish of peebles , to offer a pretended call to the said mr. veatch , among which commissioners the notorious villain beatty , who occasioned the former tumult , was one , who for his horrid prophanation of the lord's day , and villanous attempt thereupon against mr. knox , had been lately and deservedly punished by the privy council , to which call , albeit only signed by cardronno , who has but small interest in the parish , and two or three mean heritors who have but two aikers of ground a piece almost , mr. veatch cordially imbracing , came and presented it to the presbytery of peebles , at and within the chappel thereof upon the 〈◊〉 day of september following ; the which day and place , the heritors &c. by themselves and their proxies , compeared and gave in their protestation and appeal in writing , with the most grave and weighty reasons thereof , viz. that the church could not be reputed vacant , mr. knox who had beside possession , a good right and title thereto , and to whom they were firmly resolved to adhere , not being either deposed , or deprived , but only inhibited for a time , by the act of the presbytery , and his right not examined , and discussed either by the presbytery , or any other competent judicatory ; and suppose the church had been vacant , as it was not ; yet the said pretended call of mr. veatches was ipso facto void and null , in regard of several essential defects and informalities of it , such as the call had not been made in a regular way by a publick meeting of heritors , elders , and town council , but by private subscriptions , which the magistrates of peebles by menaces and promises had secretly collected from a multitude of persons legally uncapable of any vote in the election ; some of them having no interest at all in the parish . that there were none of the elders consenting thereunto , and of a multitude of considerable heritors in the parish , only two or three petty and obscure ones consented . all which reasons are more fully exprest in the appeal , whereupon they took instruments , but the whole presbytery ( except an old grave man who dissented all along ) taking no notice thereof , nor to vouchsafe in the least any answer thereto , accepted of and sustained the aforesaid pretended call , exhibited unto them in favours of mr. veatch , ordering an edict to be serv'd for him the next lord's day ; which edict being returned to the presbytery , upon the 17th of september , and called at the chappel door , compeared again the heritors , elders , &c. and declared their adherence to their former protestation and appeal , with the whole reasons thereof , and subjoyning some more pregnant reasons thereto ; viz. that the said mr. veatch was a person utterly unknown to them ; and that they ought not to be constrained with an implicite faith , to intrust the care of their souls to a man of whom they had no competent knowledge ; yea , that he was a stranger to the presbytery it self , and that they had never been at the pains to hear him preach ; that they might judge of his qualifications for so eminent a place ; that the little tryal the parish had of him in two or three sermons , they were in their private judgement of discretion not well pleased with his way of preaching , for several grave and weighty exceptions which they had ready to produce . that for the prospect of a more lucrative place , he had by indirect methods got himself loosed from other calls , that he might force himself in upon the parish of peebles . and finally , that the presbytery had in many instances behaved themselves very partially in this whole affair , for all which reasons more amply enlarged by them at that time , and contained in their instruments ; they did de novo protest and appeal against any further procedure of the presbytery upon the said edict , giving in a copy of this their new appeal , with the reasons of it , and taking instruments thereupon , in contempt of which repeated appeals , with the most irrefragable reasons thereof ; the presbytery having determined before hand to institute mr. veatch ; and for that effect ingaged mr. robert elliot to preach at his institution , proceeded the very next day , being the 18th of september , actually to institute him , in most illegal and disorderly way , contrary to an express act of the general assembly , holden at glasgow , december 17. 1638. whereby it is expresly provided , that no person be obtruded into any office in the kirk , contrary to the will of the congregation . at which pretended institution , there were none of the heritors of any worth , or esteem , nor of the standing eldership of the parish , ( and excepting the present magistrates , ) none of the substantial parishioners ; yea , in proportion of the body of the parish , few at all to accept of or imbrace him ; in so much that it 's informed , mr. elliot publickly expressed his grief , that there were so few honest men in the parish to receive their pastor . in respect of all which , and that the heritors consenting to mr. veatch his call , are but very few , and against severals of whom there are competent and relevant exceptions ; viz. that some of them are not heritors , and others by promise of case of their stipends , and some by threatnings if they did not consent ; and that the heritors who have protested against the said call , are not only the most considerable heritors , and have the most considerable interest in the parish , but are double the number of the other , beside the whole eldership . it is therefore hoped , that his grace , his majestie 's high commissioner to the assembly , the right reverend moderator , and the reverend brethren of the general assembly of the kirk of scotland now sitting , may examine , and take into their grave and godly consideration , the whole progress of this affair , together with the parishes protestations and appeals , which they humbly crave may be publickly read , hoping by their pious wisdom , to have their lawful pastor restored unto them ; and in order thereunto , to be relieved of such an illegal intruder , who upon many accounts has rendered himself unfit to be continued in such a charge , particularly , because being conscious to himself of the weakness and insufficiency of his call , partly by his own solicitations , partly by other undirect motions , he did influence some few heritors of note , to sign it after an edict had been served thereupon ; again to shake himself loose from the calls , which were referred to the synod of kelso , he had prevailed with some of his friends , to represent his call to peebles , as the effect of an immediate and extraordinary providence , which they did so flourish out in the several circumstances , that it might appear equivalent to a voic● from heaven , which he ought not to disobey . whereas it can be evinc'd , by clear evidences , that it was a draught and design of men , carried on underhand for a considerable time . and it is left to the assembly to judge what a gross hypocrisie and abuse of the sacred name of providence , it is to pretend an immediate hand of god , to the cobweb-plots and contrivances of sinful men ; sure , for as well as this providence was painted forth to gain this point before the synod , there were some of that meeting , who could see thorow the vanity of that pretence ; and in special , one grave and wise member , could not let it pass without a tart reflection on it ; siklike , upon the day of his admission , he was not afraid publickly to take god to witness , that no prospect of a great benefice had induced him to come to peebles , whereas it transcends the comprehensions of the most vast and extensive charity , to fancy what other motive could prevail with him , to reject calls of people that were zealous and unanimous for him ; and thrust himself in upon a parish who desired him not , and can expect no spiritual comfort from his ministry . and finally , he has since that time imposed conditions of admitting children to baptism in that parish , which neither the law of the land , nor the late general meeting of this church has warranted him to do ; whereupon several persons were necessitate to take their children to be baptised by others , and some have taken instruments against him . and not a few infants have been in apparent danger of dying without baptism , to the great grief of their parents ; among whom were weak twins belonging to one of the late magistrates . all which can clearly be proved against him , together with several other articles which they have to produce , and can prove , competent time being allowed unto them for the citation of witnesses , but which they have hitherto forborn to make use of , out of tenderness to his character , and will always forbear till they be constrained to take this last remedy . this is the exact copy of the information and petition given in by mr. heriot , minister of dalkeith , in print , to the privy council at edenburgh . information for mr. alexander heriot , minister at dalkeith . in relation to the label against him , before the presbytery at dalkeith , and the sentences thereon . and petitions to the lords of their majesties privy council . the appeal given in by the said mr. alexander heriot to the synod of midlothian , containing a short information of the progress of that process , to that time , is as follows . moderator , being conscious of my innocence , and finding my self wronged , and injured , i here appeal from this synod , to the first general assembly , when it shall meet ; and in the mean time to their majesties protection , for justice and relief ; and since the law allows the liedges a competent time to give in the reasons of their appeals , i here protest within twenty four hours , to give in the reasons of this my appeal to your clerk ; and withall , i protest that this be recorded by him . and upon all i take instruments . the reasons of appeal of mr. alexander heriot minister at dalkeith , from the synod of midlothian , to the next lawful general assembly , and to their majesties protection for justice , and relief in the mean time . there being an indictment given in to the presbytery of dalkeith against the said mr. alexander heriot , and the libel bearing it to be given in in the name of the parochiners , the said mr. alexander heriot and parochiners compeered , and craved that his accusets might be named to him , and that they might subscribe their charge against him ; and that in regard that the said heritors and parochiners did not only viva voce , but by a writ under their hands disclaim and disown it , except alexander calderwood , and a few others , ex faece populi . and albeit no libel ought to be admitted without a pursuer ; yet the presbytery refused to condescend upon the ingivers of the libel , or to ordain them to own and subscribe it . like as , none had the confidence to own it , except the said alexander calderwood , who sat among them as one of the ruling elders , and who is notourly known to be the said mr. alexander heriot's declared enemy ( although without cause ) and who invented and reported most false calumnies against him , of which when he was challenged , his answer was , that whether they were true or false , he had thereupon taken two hundred of the parochiners from his communion ; mr. heriot declined him as judge in this matter , wherein he both informed and accused ; which not only consisted in the knowledge of the presbytery ( who had no other information but his ) but which was likewise offered to be proved by his oath ; yet notwithstanding thereof , against all law , reason , and good order , the presbytery would not remove him , but allowed him to fit as one of mr. heriot's judges , and appointed him one of the examinators of the witnesses : and he forgetting that station , informed and tampered with some of them , and threatned others , as to what they should depone ; and the witnesses being overawed and interrupted in their examinations , and not allowed to declare the whole truth in complext matters of fact , whereby the depositions may be lame and weak , and carry a quite contrary meaning of the truth , of what the witnesses offered to depone ; and some of the witnesses having desired that they might see and read their own depositions before they subscribed them , the same was absolutely refused , with this expostulation ; what ? do you distrust us ? and do you question our clerk's honesty ? and thus they caused these witnesses subscribe what was written , so that there may be left out the material parts of their depositions , which cleared their ministers . and not only are there several articles of the libel , which are not upon these heads , to which the trial of the regualr clergy is restricted by act of parliament , and which are in themselves alterius sori , but likewise there was an additional libel raised against the said mr. alexander , and without any citation given to him thereupon , or copy , sight or notice given to him thereof ; witnesses are examined , than all which there can be nothing in judicial procedures more partial , pernicious , and unjust . and mr. alexander heriot having appealed from the presbytery to the general assembly , the presbytery notwithstanding thereof proceeded , and found the libel valid , and proved ; and therefore , and in regard of mr. heriot's contumacy ( as they termed his appeal to the general assembly , which sat in october last ) they suspended him from the ministry , and referred him for further censure to the general assembly . but the general assembly having found no contumacy in the appeal , they referred him back again to the synod . and now the said mr. alexander does again appeal from the synod , and from any sentence they shall give in this matter , to the next lawful general assembly , and in the mean time , to their majesties protection for justice and relief . for thir grounds and reasons . first , there being a petition given in by the heritors and parochiners of dalkeith to the synod , attesting , the said mr. alexander his faithfulness in the ministry , and his innocency as to the things libelled against him ; and craving , that according to the act of parliament , the depositions of the witnesses might be made parent , that they might be the better redargued ; yet the synod suffered not the said petition to be read . secondly , the said mr. alexander having represented to the synod the foresaid procedure of the presbytery against him , and having craved that the depositions of the witnesses , might be read before him , and that he might have a copy of the aditional libel , which he had never seen ; and that conform to the act of parliament , the depositions of the witnesses might be made patent to him , to the end that he might have a copy thereof , to the effect he might the better clear himself , from any thing that may seem to be deponed against him ; yet notwithstanding thereof , ( and contrare to law ) the same was also refused by the synod , and undoubtedly for this reason , that the probation was weak , and might not abide the light nor trial , for veritas non quaerit angulos . thirdly , the said mr. alexander represented to the synod , that he was informed that one of the articles deponed against him , was , that he should have danced about a bonfire the 14th of october 1688 ; and that the same was the only article proved against him , which he instantly redargued , for the said 14th day of october 1688 fell upon a sunday , and that the witnesses and whole inhabitants of dalkeith cannot but declare , that there was never bonfires at dalkeith upon a sunday , so that they deponed flalsly . and the dancing about a bonfire being so publick an act , that not only the witnesses that have deponed it , but likeways many others would have seen it , and all the inhabitants of dalkeith would have heard of it , if it had been true : yet notwithstanding thereof , all the neighbours to that bonfire , and whole inhabitants of dalkeith will declare and depone , that they neither saw nor heard of their minister dancing at that , or any other bonfire ; yet notwithstanding of that clear conviction , and redarguing of that article , the synod had no regard thereto , affirming that there was no help for it now , it being so deponed , which is no other thing than as if they had said , that they were not concerned tho' it were false , for it was so deponed ; and which is so consequential to a clear and positive redarguing , and improbation of the article , and probation thereof , that the prejudice and design of the synod to proceed against the said mr. alexander upon whatever was alleadged , altho' without probation , or upon a redargued probation , is evidently manifest . 4thly . the said mr. alexander represented to the synod , that he had formerly appealed from the presbytery , and that it was but too evident from what is above narrated , that they were party against him . and which was further demonstrate from this , that the said presbytery and alexander calderwood , did in face of the synod not only interrupt the said mr. alexander when he was speaking ; but likeways debated and reasoned against him as his opposite parties , so that it could not be expected , but that they would do more when he was removed out of the synod , and therefore the said mr. alexander declined the presbytery , and alexander calderwood as his judges , and craved that they might not sit to judge him ; yet notwithstanding thereof , against all law and justice , they were not removed . 5thly . several members of the synod interrupted the said mr. alexander , while he was vindicating himself , in the face of the synod , and craving a sight of the additional libel , and deposition of the witnesses ; and cried out , that the same should not be granted to him , as if every one of them had had a decisive voice , and which is without example in any judicatory , for any of the judges to interrupt the defenders speaking , and to cry out their opinion , or rather sentence , before the defender be removed ; and which openly discovers their prejudice , design and resolution of proceeding against the said mr. alexander , altho' without just cause . 6thly . the prejudice and design of the synods proceeding against the said mr. alexander , on the said lame , weak , and null probation , is evident , in so far as several members of their number did speak and deal with him to demit , or that otherways they would depose him . and there is nothing more certain , than that they would never have dealt with him to demit , if the probation against him had been good ; their malice to the regular clergy being such , as that they would rather depose them for immoralities , and errors in doctrine , to expose them , than suffer them to demit , and get off without stain , when they are guilty of the same . but mr. alexander being conscious of his own innocency refused to demit , but rather to suffer their extremity , from which he hoped god in his good time would vindicate him . and therefore it being evident from the grounds foresaid , that the synod has behaved themselves most partially , and against all law and form : the said mr. alexander does therefore protest against the synods further proceeding in the said matter , and appeals from them , and from any sentence they shall give therein , to the next lawful general assemblie ▪ and to their majesties protection , for justice , and relief in the mean time ; and protests , that the said libels , and witnesses depositions taken thereupon , may be preserved , and not put out of the way , that so the ●●me ( and not copies thereof ) may be produced to the next general assembly ; or to any their majesties shall be pleased , out of their royal authority , to appoint to consider the same : and that as the said mr. alexander will publish and disperse his appeal , and his answers to the first libel ; which he only did see for his own vindication from any sentence that shall follow hereupon ; so he expects , and earnestly desires , that the said synod may print both the libels against him , and depositions taken thereupon , for vindication of their justice , ( if they can conceive they have done right : ) but which mr. alexander hopes will rather vindicate his innocency . and further , mr. alexander craves , and protests , that this his appeal may be insert in the books of the synod . notwithstanding of the appeals foresaid , the synod proceeded , and deposed the said mr. alexander from his ministry , and thereupon the eldership of the parish was invaded , and some few ( severals of them scarce worth to be noticed as residenters ) have usurped the power of electing elders , and have elected many moe than the number formerly used , purposely as they think , to make the greater figure ; altho' but of the most inconsiderable of the parish ; and of design to call , impose , and obtrude a minister upon the rest against their will , contrary to the laws of charity , practices of christian churches , and profession of presbyterians . notwithstanding that the said mr. alexander heriot his appeal does in law preserve his right , and keeps all in statu quo , the time of the appeal , while it be discust . whereupon , not only the said mr. alexander heriott , but likewise the heritors and parishioners of dalkeith have given in a petition to the lords of their majesties most honourable privy council , that they may be pleased to forbid the calling of a minister until the appeal be discust ; and that in the mean time , he may be restored to the exercise of his ministrie . and that the presbytery of dalkeith ; and others who had the libels given in against him , and depositions of the witnesses , may make the same known to him , as law appoints ; that he may know what is libelled , or may seem to be proved , to the effect he may the better clear himself of the same , which is nothing but false lies and calumnies : and whereof several of the presbyterian ministers , who have seen the libels and depositions , affirm , that there is nothing pretended to be proved , but the dancing about the bon-fire ; which is not only clearly redargued to be false as said is , there being no bonfires either on the foresaid day , nor for several months either before or after ; but likewise if the persons who have deponed it were known , and re-examined , it will be found , they have deponed falsly ; and that they have been dealt with so to depone ; and that this falshood may not be discovered , not only are the depositions kept up , contrary to express law and acts of parliament ; but likewise , no notice can be gotten who were the persons who have deponed it , that they may be insisted against . whereas it is pretended , that the lords of their majesties privy council , are not judges competent to the sentences of ecclesiastick courts , and that as they cannot put in ministers in churches , so they cannot meddle with sentences of depositions . it is answered , that by the 1. act 8 parl. ja. 6. it is statute and ordained , that his majestie , and council shall be judges competent , to all persons spiritual and temporal , in all matters . and to pretend , that the council is not judge competent to sentences of ecclesiastick courts , is no other them to affirm , that these courts have an arbitrary power , and may do wrong at their pleasure without remeed or control . for it is evident , that mr. herriott is most unjustly pursued and deposed . and it is also evident , that if it be not redressed by the council , he will never be restored by those ministers , who have dealt so unjustly with him . and whereas , it is alleaged , that as the council cannot put in ministers , so they cannot meddle with sentences of deposition . it is answered , that the council has not the power of admission and ordination of ministers . but if a minister having a lawful call , the presbyterie should refuse to admit and ordain him , albeit they have nothing to object against him , upon application to the council or session , letters will be directed to charge the presbyterie , to admit and ordain him , but multo magis in this case , where a minister is deposed from his ministrie , as likewise from his benefice , ( which is his livelyhood and maintenance ) and yet most unjustly , and without ground or reason ; the council is most proper judges , for restoring him against the foresaid oppression , injurie , and unjust sentence . and for a further evidence of this unjust sentence , it is humbly desired , that the lords of their majesties privy council will be pleased to take notice , that in the first libel there are many articles which are not to be admitted in law ; and it is said , that there is none of them proved , but the dancing about the bonfire : and yet the presbytery by their sentence , found the libel relevant and proved , which must be understood as to the whole articles of the libel complexlie , than which there is nothing more false , as will appear by the libels and depositions , if they were produced . and yet thereupon mr. heriott is first suspended by the presbytery , and referred by them to the general assembly for further censure , as if great immoralities in life , and errors in doctrine , had been proved against him . and the synod ( to which the assembly remitted him ) following the steps of the presbytery , deposed him . now when presbytery and synod , have acted thus contrary to express law , and have done open and manifest unjustice ; ( and whereof all that heard of it are convinced and sensible ) and having stated themselves parties against him , there can be no remedy expected from the said unjustice , injury , and oppression , unless the lords of their majesties privy council interpose their authority . if it be alleaged , that the late act of parliament , the act of supremacy in church matters is repealed ; it is answered , that the act of parliament 1669 is rescinded , which extended the supremacy , to the ordering and disposal of the external government and policy of the church , and to the enacting of constitutions , acts , and orders in the church . but the foresaid act of k. ja. 6. his 8 parliament , is not rescinded , which is only as to the judging of ecclesiastick persons in matters complained upon ; and which power is inherent in the crown , otherways there should be regnum in regno ; and church judicatories should have arbitrary power , without redress or control , as said is . in regard whereof , the lords of their majesties privy council are judges competent , to this injurie , vnjustice and oppression ; and the desire of the petitions ought to be granted . act of the general assembly , anent a solemn national fast and humiliation , with the causes thereof . at edinburgh , november 12. 1690. postmeridiem , sess . 25. the general assembly , having taken into their most serious consideration , the late great and general defection of this church and kingdom , have thought fit to appoint a day of solemn humiliation and fasting , for confession of sins , and making supplication to our gracious god , to forgive and remove the guilt thereof : in order whereunto , they have ordained the confession of sins , and causes of fasting following , to be duly intimat and published ; recommending it most earnestly to all persons , both ministers and others , that every one of us may not only search and try our own hearts and ways , and stir up our selves to seek the lord ; but also in our stations , and as we have access , deal with one another , in all love and tenderness , to prepare for so great and necessary a duty , that we may find mercy in god's sight , and he may be graciously reconciled to our land in our lord jesus , and take delight to dwell among us . although our gracious god hath of late , for his own names sake , wrought great and wonderful things , for britain and ireland , and for this church and nation in particular ; yet the inhabitants thereof have cause to remember their own evil ways , and to loath themselves in their own sight for their iniquities . alas ! we , and our fathers , our princes , our pastors , and people of all ranks have sinned , and have been under great transgression to this day : for though our gracious god shewed early kindness to this land , in sending the gospel amongst us , and afterward in our reformation from popish superstition and idolatry ; and it had the honour , beyond many nations , of being after our first reformation , solemnly devoted unto god , both prince and people , yet we have dealt treacherously with the lord , and been unstedfast in his covenant , and have not walked suitably to our mercies received from him , nor obligations to him : through the mercy of god this church had attained to a great purity of doctrine , worship , and government , but this was not accompanied with suitable personal reformation , neither was our fruit answerable to the pains taken on us by word and work ; we had much gospel-preaching , but too little gospel-practice ; too many went on in open wickedness , and some had but a form of godliness , denying the power thereof ; many also who had the grace of god in truth fell from their first love , and fell under sad languishings and decays ; and when for our sins the anger of the lord had divided us , and we were brought under the feet of strangers , and many of our brethren killed , others taken captive and sold as slaves , yet we sinned still , and after we were freed from the yoke of strangers , instead of returning to the lord , and being led to repentance by his goodness , the land made open defection from the good ways of the lord : many behaved as if they had been delivered to work abomination , the flood-gates of impiety were opended , and a deluge of wickedness did over-spread the land , who can without grief and shame remember the shameful debauchery and drunkenness that then was ? and this accompanied with horrid and hellish cursing and swearing , and followed with frequent filthiness , adulteries , and other abominations , and the reprover was hated , and he that departed from iniquity made himself a reproach or prey . and when by these , and such like corrupt practices , mens consciences were debauched , they proceeded to sacrifice the interest of the lord jesus christ , and priviledges of his church to the lusts and will of men ; the supremacy was advanced in such a way , and to such an height , as never any christian church acknowledged ; the government of the church was altered , and prelacy ( which hath been always grievous to this nation ) introduced , without the churches consent , and contrair to the standing acts of our national assemblies , both which the present parliament hath ( blessed be god ) lately found ; and yet nevertheless , of the then standing ministry of scotland , many did suddenly and readily comply with that alteration of the government , some out of pride and covetousness or man-pleasing , some through infirmity or weakness , or fear of man , and want of courage and zeal for god , many faithful ministers were thereupon cast out , and many insufficient and scandalous men thrust in on their charges , and many families ruined , because they would not own them as their pastors . and alas ! it is undenyable , there hath been under the late prelacie , a great decay of piety , so that it was enough to make a man be nicknam'd a phanatick , if he did not run to the same excess of riot with others . and should it not be lamented , for it cannot be denyed , there hath been in some a dreadful atheistical boldness against god , some have disputed the being of god , and his providence , the divine authority of the scriptures , the life to come , and immortality of the soul , yea and scoffed at these things . there hath been also an horrid prophanation of the holy and dreadful name of god , by cursing and swearing : ah! there hath been so much swearing and forswearing amongst us , that no nation under heaven have been more guilty in this than we ; some by swearing rashly or ignorantly , some falsly , by breaking their oaths , and imposing and taking ungodly and unlawful oaths and bonds whereby the consciences of many have been polluted and seared , and many ruined and oppressed for refusing and not taking them . there hath also been a great neglect of the worship of god , too much in publick , but especially in families , and in secret . the wonted care of religious sanctifying the lord's day is gone , and in many places the sabbath hath been , and is shamefully prophaned . the land also hath been full of bloody crimes , and cities full of violence , and much innocent blood shed , so that blood touched blood ; yea , sodoms sins have abounded amongst us , pride , fullness of bread , idleness , vanities of apparel , and shameful sensuality filled the land. and alas ! how great hath been the cry of oppression , and unrighteousness , iniquity hath been established by a law , there hath been a great perverting of justice , by making and executing unrighteous statutes and acts , and sad persecutions of many for their conscience towards god. it is also matter of lamentation , that under this great defection there hath been too general a fainting , not only amongst professors of the gospel , but also amongst ministers ; yea , even amongst such , who in the main things did endeavour to maintain their integrity , in not giving seasonable and necessary testimony against the defectons and evils of the time , and keeping a due distance from them , and some on the other hand managed their zeal with too little discretion and meekness . it is also matter of humiliation , that when differences fell out amongst these , who did owne truth , and bear witness against the course of defection , they were not managed with due charity and love , but with too much heat and bitterness , injurious reflections used against pious and worthy men on all hands , and scandalous divisions occasioned , and the success of the gospel greatly obstructed thereby , and some dangerous principles drunk in : and after all this , there were shameful advances towards popery , the abomination of the mass was set up in many places , and popish schools erected , and severals fell to idolatry . and though the lord hath put a stop to the course of defection , and of his great mercy given us some reviving from our bondage ; yet we have sad cause to regrate and bemoan , that few have a due sense of our mercy , or walk answerable thereto , few are turned to the lord in truth , but the wicked go on to do wickedly , and there is found amongst us to this day shameful ingratitude for our mercies , horrid impenitency under our sins , yea , even amongst those who stand most up for the defence of the truth : and amongst many in our armies , there is woful prophaneness and debauchery . and though we profess to acknowledge , there can be no pardon of sins , no peace and reconciliation with god , but by the blood of jesus christ ; yet few know him , or see the necessity and excellency of the knowledge of our lord jesus christ ; few see their need of him , or esteem , desire , or receive him , as he is offered in the gospel ; few are acquainted with faith in jesus christ , and living by faith on him , as made of the father unto us , wisdom , righteousness , sanctification and redemption ; and few walk as becometh the gospel , and imitate our holy lord in humility , meekness , self-denial , heavenly-mindedness , zeal for god , and charity towards men : but as there is even until now , a great contempt of the gospel , a great barrenness under it ; so a deep security under our sin and danger , a great want of piety toward god , and love towards men , with a woful selfishness , every one seeking their own things , few the things of christ , or the publick good , or one anothers welfare : and finally , the most part more ready to censure the sins of others , than to repent of their own . our iniquities are increased over our heads , and our trespasses are grown up into the heavens , they are many in number , and hainous in their nature , and grievously aggravated , as having been contrair to great light and love , under signal mercies and judgments , after confession and supplication , and notwithstanding of our profession , promises and solemn vowing , and covenanting with god to the contrair . have we not then sad cause of deep sorrow and humiliation ? and may we not fear , if we do not repent , and turn from the evil of our ways , and return to the lord with all our hearts , that he return to do us evil , after he hath done us good , and be angry with us , until he hath consumed us ? let us therefore humble our selves by fasting and praying , let us search out our sins , and consider our ways , and confess these , and other our sins , with sorrow and detestation ; let us turn unto the lord with fasting and weeping , and with mourning ; let us firmly resolve and sincerely engage to amend our ways and doings , and return unto the lord our god , with all our heart , and earnestly pray , that for the blood of the lamb of god , our sins may be forgiven , and our back-slidings healed , and we may yet become a righteous nation , keeping the truth , that religion and righteousness may flourish , and love , and charity abound , and all the lord's people may be of one mind in the lord : and in order to all these , that the word of the lord may have free course , and be glorified , and that the preaching of the word , and dispensing of the sacraments , may be accompanied with the wonted presence , power and blessing of the spirit of the lord ; that the lord would preserve and bless our gracious king and queen , william and mary , and establish their throne by righteousness and religion , and grant to these nations , peace and truth together ; and for that end , bless and prosper his majesties councils , and forces by sea and land , and those of the princes and states his allies , for god and his truth , that inferior rulers may rule in the fear of god , and judges be clothed with righteousness , and that many faithful labourers may be sent out into the lord's vineyard , and they who are sent , may find mercy to be faithful , and be blest with success , that families may be as little churches of christ , and that the lord would pour out his spirit on all ranks of people , that they may be holy in all manner of conversation , and god may delight to dwell amongst us , and to do us good . and while we pray for our selves , let us not forget our brethren in forreign churches , with whom , alas ▪ we had too little sympathy ; nay , let us pray , that all the ends of the earth , may see the salvation of god ; and that he would bring his antient people of the jews to the acknowledgment of jesus christ ; and that he would hasten the ruine of romish babylon , and advance the reformation in christendome , and preserve and bless the reformed churches ; that he would pity his oppressed people , the french protestants , and gather them out of all places , whither they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day ; and that he would be the defence , strength and salvation of any of his people , who are in war or danger by infidel or popish adversaries , in europe or america . and in particular , that the lord would be gracious to ireland , and sanctifie to his people there , both their distress and deliverance ; and perfect what concerneth them , that he would convert the natives there to the truth , and reduce that land to peace ; and appoint salvation for walls and bullwarks to brittain . for all these causes and reasons , the general assembly hath appointed the second thursday of january next , to be observed in all the congregations of the church and nation , as a day of solemn fasting and humiliation , and prayer ; beseeching and obtesting all , both pastors , and people of all ranks to be sincere and serious , in humilitation and supplication , and universal reformation , as they would wish to find mercy of the lord , and have deserved wrath averted , and would obtain the blessing of the lord upon themselves and posterity after them ; and that the lord may delight in us , and our land may be as married to him . and ordains all ministers , either in kirks or meeting houses , to read this present act publickly from the pulpit , a sabbath or two before the said day of humiliation : and that the several presbyteries take care , that it be carefully observed in their respective bounds . and where , in regard of vacancies , the day hereby appointed , cannot be observed , the assembly appoints the said humiliation , to be kept some other day with the first convenient opportunity : and appoints the commission for visitation , to apply to the council , for their civil sanction to the observation thereof . extracted out of the records of assembly , by jo. spalling . cls. syn. national . a proclamation anent a solemn national fast and humiliation . william and mary , by the grace of god , king and queen of great britain , france , and ireland , defenders of the faith ; to macers of our privy council , or messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch , as the general assembly of this church , by their act , of the date the twelfth day of november instant , hath appointed a solemn national fast and humiliation , to be observed in all the kirks and meeting-houses of this our antient kingdom ; and appointed their commission for visitation , to apply to the lords of our privy council , for our civil sanction , to be interposed thereto ; and they having applyed accordingly : therefore we , with advice of the lords of our privy council , do hereby command and enjoyn , that the said solemn fast and humiliation be religiously observed , by all persons throughout this kingdom , both in kirks and meeting-houses , at the dyets , and in the manner as by the above-mentioned act of assembly , hereto prefixed , is appointed ; and that the same be read by all the ministers , in manner therein mentioned . and to the end that so pious and necessary a duty may be punctually performed , and our pleasure in the premisses fully known : our will is herefore , and we charge you straitly , and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and the remanent mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the several shires and stewartries , within this kingdom , and in our name and authority , make publication of the premises , that none may pretend ignorance . and we do ordain our solicitor to dispatch copies hereof to the sheriffs of the several shires and stewarts of the stewartries , or their deputs , or clerks , to be by them published at the mercat-crosses of the head-burghs , upon receipt thereof , and immediately sent to the several ministers , both in kirks and meeting-houses , to the effect they may read and intimat the same from their pulpits , and may seriously exhort all persons , to a sincere and devout observance thereof , as they regard the favour and blessings of the almighty god , the safety and preservation of both church and state , and would avoid the wrath of god upon themselves and their posterity , and as they will be answerable at their peril . and ordains these presents to be printed with the said act of assembly , and these presents to be published in manner foresaid . given under our signet at edinburgh , the twenty first day of november . and of our reign , the second year , 1690. per actum dominorum sti. concilii . gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save king william , and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to the king and queens most excellent majesties . 1690. finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a69769-e230 * except the contributions of the sisters , which were something to one who knew no other ways how to live . * at th● end of this le●ter , vid● inform●tion giv● in by m● heriot ●● the priv● council . * this exposition of the fathers words you may find in the 169 p. of his pretended answer to dr. stillingfleet's vnreasonableness of separation . † coliness . * ten or twelve of which are said in a morning one after another . * that is to turn all the episcopal clergy out of the church . vide the first paper . ‖ vid. second paper . vide the last paper . his maiesties declaration to all his loving subiects of the kingdome of england and domininion of vvales. charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a79196 of text r211335 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.16[17]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a79196 wing c2981 thomason 669.f.16[17] estc r211330 estc r211335 99870060 99870060 163174 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a79196) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 163174) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 246:669f16[17]) his maiesties declaration to all his loving subiects of the kingdome of england and domininion of vvales. charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [s.l. : 1651] imprint from wing. dated at end: given at our royall campe at woodhouse, neere the borders, the 5. of august, 1651. promises oblivion before entering the kingdom. will settle religion according to the word of god and the example of best reformed churches. parliament to have freedom; he will govern by its advice. all subjects are to come in. an act of oblivion and indemnity will be passed, excepting only oliver cromwell, henry ireton, john bradshaw, john cooke their solicitor, and the regicides. provisions are to be bought for the scots army. there shall be no plundering, and the service being done, the scots army will retire and the others disband -cf. steele. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng charles -ii, -king of england, 1630-1685 -early works to 1800. great britain -history -commonwealth and protectorate, 1649-1660 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1649-1660 -early works to 1800. a79196 r211335 (thomason 669.f.16[17]). civilwar no his maiesties declaration to all his loving subiects of the kingdome of england and domininion of vvales. charles ii, king of england 1651 986 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2008-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-09 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion his maiesties declaration to all his loving svbiects of the kingdome of england and dominion of vvales . charles r. wee shall not rip up the causes of unhappy differences betwixt our royall father and the two houses of parliament . it shall be our studie that they be for ever buryed , and that our subjects of england may returne to their obedience they owe us , as their lawfull king , and to the ancient and happy government of this kingdome by king , lords , and commons , ( wherein they and their ancestors have lived so long , so happily ) without the effusion of more blood . with these thoughts we are now entering into our kingdome of england , with an army , by the blessing of god able to protect our loyall subjects , who shall joyne with us , and assist us in doing justice upon the murtherers of our royall father , and to defend us from the violence of such as will continue the exclusion of us from our just rights , the sub-version of the lawfull government of this kingdome , and the oppression of our good subjects , by armies and exorbitant impositions : and before we enter the kingdome , we have thought fit by this short declaration to let our good-subjects there know , that our desires are not more to be restored to our owne rights , than to maintaine and procure to them their freedom . and as we have given full and entire satisfaction to our subjects of scotland both in what might concerne religion , their lawes and liberties , ( which god willing we shall inviolably preserve to them ) so it shall be our studie , ( and would be our greatest joy ) that we might attayne the same happynesse in england . and because we think our selves bound to looke more to the glory of god , then our owne interest , we doe in the first place declare , that we shall faithfully endeavour in our station and calling , as we are bound by covenant , to settle religion , in doctrine , worship , discipline and government , according to the word of god , and the example of the best reformed churches . we shall also endeavour that parliaments may be restored to their freedome , and priviledges , by whose advise , we doe declare our resolutions are to governe and settle all differences and distempers , that our people may enjoy their liberty , and property , free from army , quarterings , or illegall impositions . these being our cleare intentions and resolutions , we doe expect and invite all our good subjects of england , and dominion of wales , to concur with , and assist us according to their duty and allegeance : and such as are in armes either in scotland , or in england , under oliver cromwell , presently after knowledge hereof , to lay them downe , or to come in and joyne with us in our army , where they shall receive protection , and full assurance of satisfaction in their arreares . and to evidence how far we are from revenge , or continuing the unhappy differences betwixt us and our subjects , we doe declare and engage our selfe to give our consent to a full act of oblivion and indempnity for the security of all our subjects of england , and dominion of wales , in their persons , freedomes , and estates , for all things done by them relating to these wars these seven yeeres past , and that they shall never be called in question by us for any of them . provided that immediately after knowledge of this our gracious offer and declaration , they desist from assisting the usurped authority of the pretended common wealth of england , and returne to their obedience to us , excepting onely from this our gracious offer , oliver crumwell , henry ireton , john bradshaw , john cooke , their pretended solicitor , and all others who did actually sit , and vote in the murther of our royall father . and since in this service , we have made use of the affection and assistance of our loyall subjects of our kingdome of scotland , who cannot possibly maintaine their whole army in england , wee doe require some of quality , or authority , in each county , where we shall march , to come to us , that necessary provision may be regularly brought in to the army : and we doe declare , that the counties from which such shall come , shall receive no other prejudice , except such as doe oppose us . and because it shall be our maine endeavour , that the subjects of england and wales may be safe in their persons , free in their goods , and as little burthened as possible can be : this we are resolved , to permit no plundering , or rapines , or taking any mans person , ( who is not in actuall opposition of us ) which we shall not with all severity punish : so if our army should be forced to be more burthensome to some places and persons then to others , it shall be our endeavour , that as soone as is possible they may receive proportionall satisfaction , and the burthen be made equall . and lastly , we doe declare that the service being done , the scottish army shall quickly retire , that so all armies may be disbanded , and a lasting peace setled with religion and righteousnesse . given at our royall campe at woodhouse , neere the borders , the 5. of august , 1651. a continuation of the historical relation of the late general assembly in scotland with an account of the commissions of that assembly, and other particulars concerning the present state of the church in that kingdom. cockburn, john, 1652-1729. 1691 approx. 206 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 39 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-11 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a33543 wing c4805 estc r2774 12131178 ocm 12131178 54716 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a33543) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 54716) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 887:7) a continuation of the historical relation of the late general assembly in scotland with an account of the commissions of that assembly, and other particulars concerning the present state of the church in that kingdom. cockburn, john, 1652-1729. 75, [1] p. printed by b. griffin, for samuel keble ..., london : 1691. reproduction of original in union theological seminary library, new york. attributed to john cockburn. cf. nuc pre-1956. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church of scotland. -general assembly. scotland -church history -17th century. 2003-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-06 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-08 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2003-08 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-10 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a continuation of the historical relation of the late general assembly in scotland , with an account of the commissions of that assembly , and other particulars concerning the present state of the church in that kingdom . they know not , neither will they understand ; they walk on in darkness , psal. 82. 5th . licens'd , november 14th . 1691. london : printed by b. griffin , for samuel keble , at the great turk's-head in fleetstreet , over against fetter-lane-end . 1691. a continuation of the historical relation of the late general assembly in scotland , &c. it is in writing as in building , when once a man engageth him self in it , before he hath done he is necessitated to carr●y it on further than what he first thought on . the historical relation of the late general assembly in scotland , was at first extorted from me by the curiosity of a private friend , who afterwards prevailed to have it published : when i yielded to it , i thought my business was done , and expected no further trouble , but now i am made to believe , that there lies an obligation upon me , to continue the history of our presbyterians in scotland , because my former relation hath increased in many a curiosity to understand more and more , of the genius and actings of that party , and because what i have done , will be incompleat if i do not add to it an account of the commission of that assembly , for the south and for the north of scotland . i know that by such enterprises , i expose my self to the malice and aspersions of a party , of whose revenge and calumnies we have frequent instances , but seeing i have already dipt my hand in the affair , i will proceed in it , for what ever prejudice it may be to my self , it may be an advantage to posterity to lay open the errors and miscarriages of those , who , to the destruction of many , have set themselves up as the true lights of the world. the false opinion which the world had of the presbyterian party , has twice been the occasion of shipwrack to the church of scotland , and it may be expected , that the shewing them such as they are , may both prevent it a third time , and also help to recover it for this , for i hope people will not be so mad as to suffer themselves any more , to be led blindly by such guides as they see have not knowledge enough to qualifie them for the office ; and who while they pretend to be the purest part of christians , commit such things as even heathens would scruple at . since the publishing of the historical relation of the general assembly , they have printed the principal acts of the general assembly , with an index or table , of such acts as were not thought fit to be published . by this , the truth of many particulars in my former relation is confirmed , only i find a mistake in one or two acts i made mention of , as also one or two more which were altogether omitted . in the 52d page of the historical relation of the general assembly , it was said that pedagogues , chapla●ns and students , were appointed to own and subscribe the confession of faith , but i find in the first article of that act , intituled , an act approving several overtures , which relates to that matter . that probationers licensed to preach , intrants into the ministry , and all other ministers and elders received into communion with them in church government , are obliged to this , and no mention of pedag●gues , chaplains , and students ; but i am assured , that they were named in the first draught of the act presented to the assembly , and those who informed me , did not advert to the alteration of it , which was caused by the commissioner , who knew that otherwise it would occasion no little disturbance in this country , for as there were many pedagogues and chaplains , who would have refused it , so the families , in which they are , would have been disgusted with the government , if they had been obliged to part with them . again , it was said , page 61. that mr. gilbert rule was joined to mr. alexander pitcairn , for writing an answer to the printed accounts of the persecution of the episcopal clergy , and that the latter had excused himself for not doing it sooner , by the want of due information of matter of fact , but it appears now from the index of their imprinted acts , that this task is wholly committed to mr. gilbert rule : and mr. pit●airn declared lately to one of my acquaintance , that he refused that employment altogether at the assembly , because by some informations that had been sent to 〈◊〉 , he saw these accounts could not be otherwise answered than by justifying of the rabble , which he neither would , nor could do . my authors do not remember , that they heard such free and plain language at the assembly , and certainly it was too remarkable not to be taken notice of● but because mr. pitcairn saith it , i make no doubt but this hath passed in some private committee , where he hath expressed himself so freely upon this head , that they found him too honest and ingenuous for serving their designs , and have thought mr. gilbert rule a fitter tool by far for their purpose . the time of the sitting of a new assembly doth approach , to which he is obliged to give an account of his diligence , and yet nothing of this nature has appeared from him , from which we may conclude , that he finds the task very hard for him , and that he is much puzzled both at once to save his honesty , and to excuse his party . if he be the author of that pamphlet , intituled , a vindication of the church of scotland ( which is an answer to the ten questions about presbyterians ) as is commonly reported and believed , we may easily guess how , and after what manner he is to answer these accounts , viz. first , by an impudent denial of the truth . secondly , by extenuating the sufferings of our clergy , in comparison of what they suffered ; for it 's said there , that all the instances alledged are false , and that any one of many amongst them , suffered more than all the episcopal clergy . his ingenuity in the first , appears from what i have said of mr. pitcairn , who refused to make any reply to these printed accounts , because the information sent to him confirmed the truth of them : and as to the other , tho it were true that they suffered as much , or more , yet that is no reasonable excuse for the present sufferings of the episcopal clergy ; as the common proverb is , two blacks make not a white : nor will it justifie the ills and grievances of the present times , that in former times there were as great and as many . if they had had a due sense of their sufferings , or if they had rightly improved them , this would have prompted them to mercy and compassion . the spirit of christ teacheth us as to bear the cross , when it is on our selves , patiently and chearfully , ●o to prevent it in others , as much as is possible , and when it falls upon them , to ease and relieve them all we can : it maketh men gentle and meek , and to deal tenderly with one another , but it seems they are acted by another spirit , viz. a spirit of bitterness , cruelty , and revenge , which makes them forward to render others miserable , and to take pleasure when they see them afflicted . but it is not true , that either any or all of them suffered so much as the episcopal clergy have in this revolution . indeed , by the act of glasgow , which proved fatal both to church and state , a good many ministers were laid aside , or rather they made a pretext of it to lay themselves aside , thinking by their number to render the government odious , or to oblige it to revoke that act , which required their submission to episcopacy ; but this is nothing comparable to the treatment our ministers met with from the rabble . they were forewarned by the act of glasgow , and had several months allowed them to deliberate upon it , and were suffered , even after the expiring of the term prescribed by that act , to possess their houses , and to take up their stipends ; nay , very many continued still in the exercise of their ministry , and were con●ived at by the government till the year 1683. and a great many also of those , who were actually turned out , were again indulged by the clemency of the king and government , to go to other parishes , which was the occasion of a schism among them , for they who had not the benefit of the indulgence , envied them who had it , and divided from them , and uttered bitter words against them , which obliged them to make a vindication of themselves in a book , intituled , a review of the history of the indulgence ; but the treatment of our ministers was summary , and the proceedings against them very cruel and severe . the rabble surprised them , assaulted them in the night , allowed them not the least respite , but barbarously thrust them , their wives and children , instantly out of doors . nor had they time given them to dispose of their goods , to gather in their debts , or provide necessary sustenance for themselves and families : so , many who might have otherwise lived well enough , are at present in a starving condition , and are necessitated to receive alms , that they and their families may not quite perish . besides , some have sustained the loss of their wives , others of their children , and some of both , occasioned by the inhumane usage of the rabble . and whatever the episcopal clergy have suffered at this time , they have suffered meerly upon the account of episcopacy , whereas in the late times , none ever suffered meerly upon the account of presbytery . see sir geo. mackenzie's defence of the reign of king charles the 2d . some of them indeed were hanged , as king , and kid , and two or three more , very deservedly , because they were guilty of sedition and rebellion against the government . there was never any severity shewed towards them , till they were found ploting , and then indeed the security of the government did oblige our rulers to have a strict eye over them , and by all means to curb them . and what government would not be severe to men of their principles , who hold it lawful to deth●one and kill kings , and to murder those imployed by them , if they do not act agreeably to their minds ; and who have put those principles in practise as often as they had occasion ? the acts which were omitted were , first , that whereby john blair was elected to be agent for the church . this person serveth the kirk as the kings sollicitor serveth the state ; he conveyeth the orders of the general assembly and commission , to particular presbyteries and synods ; pursueth all the causes wherein the kirk is concerned ; and that the civil authority may assist that of the kirk , he takes out letters of summons from the council against such as contravene , and refuse obedience to their acts : nay , in his name , some have been charged only 〈◊〉 not complying with the civil government . this the sollicitor takes ill , and considereth it as an encroachment on his office , which hath made him put a stop to some of the letters of summons that were thus issued out ; but if presbytery prosper , the sollicitor may come to pay for this , and be made sensible that their agent is his equal , if not his superiour , for they will not acknowledge their power subordinate to that of kings . it 's allowable enough in the agent to assume a part of the sollicitors office , when his masters taken upon them to manage and direct the supreme civil power it self . in the reigns of k. charles and k. iames , the laws sometimes put ministers on the invidious imployment of giving up lists of dissinters and dis●ffected persons within their parishes , for which the presbyterians accused them , as having a persecuting spirit ; but let it now be considered , who may most truly be charged with it , whether the episcopal party , who did what they did with great reluctancy , by force and compulsion of the law , and who , as is well known , endeavoured to save all they could , or the present presbyterians , who willingly , and without law , dela●e and accuse such as they think obnoxious to the government ; and who have established an office , and installed a person in it , on purpose to search out such as might be thought guilty , and who at their instigation has caused summon and charge several , whom the government conni●ed at and passed over ; but this is conform to the fourth article of the solemn league and covenant , which binds every man to be a spy and an informer , even against his dearest friends , and nearest relations . another thing passed over , is a declaration of the moderator , that this assembly would depose no incumbent , simply for their iudgment anent the government of the church , nor urge re-ordination upon them . i do not remember to have heard of this before , and now we have it only in the table of their unprinted acts. if this had been set down at length , we could have understood it better , and that it has not been fully printed , but hudled obscurely in amongst the unprinted acts , which few read over , makes me suspect that there is some trick in it . when the moderator made this declaration , it was then , as it seems , designed to shew their moderation , and seeing they would not have it known to all men , it is a sign that they are now ashamed of it . however , we may observe , that this 〈◊〉 act of the assembly , but only a declaration of the moderator , which cannot bind synods and presbyteries , for if any objection should be made to them about it , they can easily reply . that he had done it of his own hend , and not by any order of the brethren . an instance of the like treatment we have in mr. lyon of kinghorn , he was suspended by the presbyt●ry of 〈◊〉 , from whom 〈…〉 to the general assembly , which appointed a committ●● ●or ●ons●●●ring his 〈◊〉 ; this committee found nothing material for inflicting such a censure upon him , and therefore gave their advice that he should be reponed , which was done ; but since that time , a synod in fife will have him again laid aside upon the former indictment , telling him , that the private judgment or advice of a particular committe , did not oblige them , seeing the assembly made no act in his favour . ` again , it is said , that they will not depose them simply for their judgment about the government of the church , that is , for this thing only ; but withal , it implies , that this may be one reason , and we see it is often made a principal one , for they lay such stress upon it , that for this cause they set spies on persons actions , and search out all that can be said to render any odious , who differ from them in this matter . it is evident , that persons principles , together with the places which they held , has been the great motive of prosecuting them hitherto ; but what is most remarkable is , that it s said they will not urge re-ordination upon them , for not to urge a thing , certainly imports this much , that they may require it , tho for grave and weighty reasons they will also dispense with it . it was advisedly done to make this only a declaration of the moderator , for it would not probably have passed into an act ; for tho there be none other in the world , who call in question the lawfulness and validity of episcopal ordination ( boxter himself believed it so necessary , that he would needs be ordained by a bishop ( if i remember aright 't was bishop hall ) after he had received the ordination of presbyters ) yet the most of them at present , carry things so high , as to deny the lawfulness of it , and there are some instances of re-ordination in the former times of presbytery ; so little do they regard the ordination and ministerial authority of episcopal men , that it has been declared frequently in their sermons , that all the time of episcopacy , people have been without a ministry , and without sacraments . some two or three years ago , there was one who preached up this doctrine so warmly , in and about the lead-mines of hopton , that , as was reported , he prevail'd with many to suffer themselves to be re-baptized , and re-married , and had twelve pence from each of them for so doing . and one mr. cassine in fife , when he was admitting elders in the kirk of flisk , caused them before the congregation , to renounce their baptism , and all the sacraments and ordinances , which they had received from curates , as he called episcopal ministers by way of contempt . this is so true , that the heritors and parishioners of abdie , did upon this very head protest against mr. cassine , his coming amongst them ; but notwithstanding this , the presbytery of couper admitted him , so that it seems they have not look'd upon that as any fault or errour . now what jugling and hypocrisie is it ? how do they play at fast , and loose with us , when sometime they tell us , that they will make no difference on the accounts of mens judgments , and sentiments , about matters of government ; and yet never check or censure such gross and wild extravagancies ; nay , so far from it , as to encourage such as are guilty of them , and to be forward to settle them in churches , while others more moderate are slighted and neglected : as mr. alexander orrok , who ( as all that know him say ) has more sense and learning than the most of them ; and yet , for all the vacancies , they have never bestowed one church upon him . and they joyned with mr. rymer , to keep him out of st. andrews , to which he had a call , from the presbyterian party there , and where he himself desired to be : and all this , because he is somewhat moderate , as to the distinguishing principles , and entertains some favourable sentiments of many of the episcopal clergy . and as they do not encourage their own , unless they be rigid and severe about their modell of government , and discipline ; so they give all discouragement to such as have served under episcopacy , but are willing to submit to presbytery , and to live peaceably with them , mr. william hamilton , offered himself with such submission , that they had no shadow of excuse , for refusing to admit him into their communion ; but they deny him all other kindness and favour , they neither offer to repone him to either of the churches out of which he was rabled , nor do they encourage any call to any other ; for they have so concerted it among themselves , as that none shall invite him to preach , or any wise imploy him . he had lately an invitation to serve the cure at curry , in the absence of another mr. hamilton , who is settled minister there ; at first the presbytery of edenburgh agreed to it , but afterwards mr. hugh kemedy revoked the order , and dashed it out of the minuits of the presbytery with his own hand . he had also another call to the kirk and parish of lauder , subscribed by the magistrates of the town , and the most of the heritors and parishoners ; which when he presented to the presbytery they rejected it , and preferred another made by five weavers . we have another late instance of their want of moderation towards these , who differ from them , in point of church government , which if it do not expresly contradict the abovementioned declaration of the moderator of the assembly : yet , it clearly sheweth , that the inferiour judicatures of synods and presbyters are not of that mind , nor , resolved to bind themselves up to these measures . mr. iohn miller a licentia●e under episcopacy , who lived with that reverend and good man mr. laurence charters , and sometimes officiated for him , when he was under any bodily indisposition . this person was no ways scandalous , nor had he maleversed in any manner , nor was any crime or fault objected to him ; yet the presbytery of hadington did prohibite him to preach any more within their bounds . and tho he has at divers times , addressed to them for a licence to preach , at such times only , when mr. charters sickness and infirmity disabled him for that exercise : nevertheless , they peremptorly refused it , and do continue the former restraint , meerly because after conference , they do find him not such a 〈…〉 presbyterian as themselves , as is manifest from the final 〈◊〉 , which he had from the moderator of the presbytery in present●a , which was as follows . for as much as your answer is the same that it was the last day , and after further deliberation , you seem to be more confirmed in it , and are not clear simply to say , that you wish the conti●ance of the present church government , and to declare your approbation of it , and y●ur preference of it to all others , we do think fit to continue the restraint formerly laid upon you by the presbytery . whilst i am shewing my own omissions , i may be excused if i give an account of an omission of the clerk or recorder of the assembly : who had forgot to set down an act said to be made by them , either amongst the printed acts , or in the list of the unprinted ones ; and i confess , for his excuse that i cannot meet with any person , who remembers to have heard it once mentioned in the assembly : so that we owe the knowledge thereof , only to the presbytery of dalkeith , who lately declared it , upon this occasion . they sent one or two of their number sometime ago , to the parish of inverask , which lyeth within four miles of edinburgh ; to entreat them to choose a minister ; and because this people unanimously shewed their aversion to a presbyterian ( for of three or four thousand in that parish , there are only some twenty , or thirty that incline to that party ) therefore there was a promise made them , that if they made choice of any good or pious man , who would submit to the civil government , he should be accepted of , whether he were a presbyterian or episcopal ; whether the person who promised this , spoke ingenuously his own sentiments , or the mind of his brethren ; whether it was said only to dispose the people to be more favourably enclined towards the presbytery of dalkeith , or because they saw it impossible to to get their consent to a presbyterian minister , i shall not enquire . but the parish laid hold on this promise , and accordingly did commissionate some of their number to wait upon the presbytery of dalkeith , with a list of seven or eight persons , episcopal ministers , who had submitted to the civil government , and to entreat their allowance , for their preaching to them , according to the promise which was made that such of them as pleased the parish best might be called to be their , ministers . when this was first proposed , the moderator huffed and grew angry , and asked , if they came to abuse and reproach the brethren ? the gentlemen replyed , they designed not to abuse any ; that what they alledged was true , and they were ready to prove it , or they would appeal to the persons themselves , who had said it . then the moderator told them , that if any brother had said or promised so , he had done it rashly of his own head , and would receive a reprimand from the presbytery for it , that the presbytery could allow of no such thing for there was an act of the , assembly forbiding episcopal incumbents to preach out of their own churches , or people to give them a call . so under the shadow of this invisible act , and , in all appearance , of their own devising , they shifted the promise made to the parish of inverask . it was said at that time , that there was no such act in all the history of the assembly : to which it was replyed , that if it was not printed , it would be printed very shortly , which i have done , lest the honest man should fail in his word . before i leave their acts , it will be fit to take notice of the reasons of an act , which was mentioned in the historical relation of the assembly viz. an act which prohibiteth private use and administration of the sacraments , on any account whatsoever . the reasons of this act are worthy to be remarked . the first of them is , that by the authority of this church , in her former assemblies , the private use of them hath been condemned : which brings to my remembrance the character , that the reverend and pious bishop leighton , was wont to give of the presbyterians , viz. that they made themselves the standard of opinions and practices , and never looked either abroad into the world , to see what others were doing , nor yet back into the former times , to observe what might be warranted or recommended by antiquity ; and as by this means , they become singular in many things , so in the point in hand , they differ from all other churches in the world. all the reformed churches abroad allow the use of the lords supper to sick and dying persons , which they have peremptorily prohibited ; as there was nothing more ordinary in the primitive times , which might be made appear from several instances . it was from this practice , that it received the name of viaticum ; and seeing our blessed lord did institute this holy sacrament , for the commemorating his death , and for the conveying the blessed effects of it , to strengthen our faith and hope , and to assure us of the pardon of our sins , and of a victory over death and hell , through our lord jesus christ : it may be truly thought great cruelty , to deny this sensible consort to sick and dying persons ; because they stand most in need of it ; for then it is they have the deepest sense of their sins , and the greatest fears of death and its consequences . the other reason given by them for this prohibition , is that by allowing the private use of the sacraments in pretended cases of necessity ; the superstitious opinion is nourished , that they are necessary to salvation , not only as commanded duties ; but as means without which salvation cannot be contained . therefore the assembly discharges the administration of the lords supper to sick persons in their houses , and all other use of the same , except in the publick assemblies of the church ; and also do discharge the administration of baptism in private ; that is , in any place , or at any time , when the congregation is not orderly called together , to wait on the dispensing of the word . in which we may take notice of these particulars . first , that they deny the comfort and benefit of christ's own ordinances to some , because others entertain wrong notions of them , which may be more safely removed by publick and private instruction . secondly that they restrain the use of christs ordinances , to times and places without any divine warrant , for the same ; and yet mr. rule hath laid it down as a principal ( representation of the presbyterian government , page 2. ) that christ as head of the church hath given forth laws , by which the affairs of the church should be managed ; and hath not left any nomothetick power in the church to make laws , for her self ; her work being to declare and ex●●ute the laws of christ : thirdly that they have no regard to what our lord says , math. 18. 20. where two or three are gathered together in my name , there will i be amongst them ; otherwise they would not prohibit the private administration of the sacraments in cases of necessity and great conveniency ; in which they use only to be desired ; and even then they were never wont to be administred , but in the presence of a greater number than that our saviour speaks of . fourthly , this act of theirs about baptism proceeds from a mistake of math. 28. 19 : as if thereby teaching or preaching , were appointed to go before baptizing ; whereas the word in the original signifies not to preach ; but to make disciples ; and if their sense were true , none ought to be baptized , but such as were first taught ; and consequently infants ought not to be baptized at all , because incapable of being taught . fifthly we may gather hence , their wrong notion of p●eaching and dispensing the word , as they call it : for as baptism was never used to be administred , even in private , among us in scotland , without the word , that is , without some previous discourse of the nature of the sacrament , of the covenant of grace , of our redemption through jesus christ , and other points per●inent to that occasion , so their prohibiting the administration of baptism , without the dispensing of the word , ( which is done with respect to the practice of the episcopal clergy ) clearly shews , that they do not think the gospel is preached , or the word dispensed , but when one takes a text , divides it , raises doctrines and uses from it , and runs 〈◊〉 into firstlys , secondlys , and thirdlys , until they come to twelf●hly and twentiethly beloved . finally tho the stream of this act runs 〈◊〉 as if the sacraments could not in any case be lawfully or duly administred in private , yet in the conclusion it is said that this be carefully observed , when and wherever , the lord giveth his people peace , liberty , and opportunity for their publick assemblies ; which is added , to prevent the casting their own practices in their teeth , and to justifie their private administrations , if they shall happen to be reduced to the state , in which they were before this revolution ; for they are pretty dextrous at binding and loosing themselves . and it is further to be observed , that when they want peace and liberty , it is happier for their children ; for then they may have the benefit of baptism in any place and at any time ; whereas now they suffer them to die without it , unless they can wait their leisure in the publick assemblies , which falls out but once a week , except it be in some cities . i must not let pass , how they have recorded the dissolving of the assembly , and the appointing of another . as was said in the former relation , both these were done by the commissioner in the kings name , to which at the time they submitted ; but yet they intended so to record it , as if the same had been done by the simple authority of the assembly it self ; for they had it thus . this assembly thought fit to dissolve it self , and to call another ; which when it was read , the commissioner found fault with it , and desired , that it might be said , that he in his majesties name had done it , to whom the moderator replyed , your grace needs not be offended ; these things are but words , and we will not stand upon them : but the commissioner pressing a change of the first form ; they have at last worded it thus . this assembly being dissolved , and the next general assembly appointed to be held at edinburgh the first day of november next to come , the members were dismissed with prayer , neither did this please the commissioner , but they would not make any express mention of the kings authority or of the commissioner representing him , lest it should prove an ill president . they were careful to leave nothing upon record , that might make against the soveraign supremacy , which they claim . this being all that is needful to be added to the former relation of the general assembly , i therefore proceed to give an account of what has passed since , and to shew the effects and consequences of the measures laid down in the assembly for the establishing and securing the presbyterian government . to keep the order of time ; the first thing to be taken notice of , is the synod of lothian and twedal , which sate down at edinburgh on tuesday the second of december , mr. areskin , who preached in the trone church of edinburgh , was chosen moderator of it ; in that synod there was an early proof , that either moderation was not seriously recommended by the assembly , to the particular synods and presbyteries , or that they had no disposition to obey : for mr. alexander heriot minister of dalkeith , being referred to this synod by the general assembly , they were so far from redressing him , that instead of relaxing him from the sentence of suspension , pronounced by the presbytery of dalkeith ; they added to it the sentence of deposition and deprivation . they concluded the affair without calling upon him , or hearing his defences , and his first appearance was to hear himself deposed after the formality of reading his libel or indictment . mr. heriot was much surprised with this method and manner of proceeding , and complained of it : he told them , there was nothing more unjust than to condemn a man unheard , to let his parties and enemies ( meaning the presbytery of dalkeith , and particularly mr. calderwood there ) sit his judges , and to refuse him the liberty of vindicating himself , and of clearing his innocence ; he shewed them , that the libel or indictment , upon which they were going to pronounce sentence , differed from that which was given to himself , which was not fair dealing ; that a double of the particulars , which were added , should have been delivered to him , and time allowed him to answer them ; but all these things availed nothing ; for they were resolved to have him out per fas & nefas : but having told them , that as the only gross thing laid to his charge was the dancing about bonfires , october , 14 th . 1688. so it was evident , that he was charged with this falsly and maliciously ; and that if any had sworn it , they were perjured ; for the 14 th . of october in the year 1688 , happned to be a lords day , on which there never were any bonfires , upon the hearing of this the synod was surprised , and kept silence for a while , and sta●ed one upon another in the face ; but at last mr. areskin the moderator answered , that the thing had been proven by deposition of witness ; that if there was any errour or mistake , it lay at the witnesses door , and if they had sworn falsly , let them , said he , look to that , we are not to blame for it ; you may seek reparation from them : but in the me●n time they refused to tell him , who the witnesses were , that he might prosecute them ; yet the starting of this made them delay the depriving him at that time , until they should try , whether he would willingly dimit his charge ; and for that end they appointed some of their number , both laicks and ministers , to wait upon him and confer with him . they told him that the church of dalkeith was a conspicuous place , and the presbytery seat ; and therefore they could not suffer it to be in the possession of one of his circumstances , that is , of one who had served under episcopacy ; but if he would dimit , they would pass from the libel and recommend him to some other vacant church , which he peremptorily refused , because he thought a voluntary dimission seemed to infer an acknowledgement of the guilt ; therefore the next day they overcame all difficulties , and formally deposed him , thereby shewing , that they would commit the greatest injustice , and betray the g●ossest partiality , rather than not obtain what they would be at . and therefore in respect to justice and equity , all the members of that synod , who consented to the sentence of deposition against mr. heriot , o●ght to be exauctorated and declared for ever incapable , and ought to have some stigma of infamy fixt upon them . this one instance might make the whole party bl●sh , if they were capable of blushing at any thing : but as the scots proverb is , shame is passed the shed of their hair . mr. heriot being so much injured , by this synod ; appealed from it , to the first lawful g●neral assembly , and in the mean time to their majesties protection , for justice and relief , and in pursuit of this appeal , he addressed to the lords of the privy council , intreating their lordships to right him , and 〈◊〉 all further proc●dure against him , as appears from the information anne●ed to the historical relation of the general assembly ; but the council were unwilling to meddle with the kirk , for fear of clashing together ; to examin what they had done , and to oblige them to alter or revoke the sentence was to assume th● supremacy abolished in parliament , which was not rashly to be attempted ; wherefore all that the council did for him , was to pass an act for delivering up the depositions of the witnesses , and for recognizing the affair in the next synod ; neither of which has yet been done : both the witnesses names and their depositions are still concealed and kept up from mr. heriot . and as if he had been justly and legally deposed , they have proceeded to plant another , in the church of dalkeith , notwithstanding both he himself , and almost all the heritors and parishoners protested against it . some of the heriters and parishoners in name of the rest , went to the presbytery , and desired them to consider , that mr. heriot's affair was still depending , and his appeal not discussed , so that they could not admit of another minister , and as they thought themselves obliged to own mr. heriot , as their lawful pastor , whom they knew to be innocent and greatly injured ; so they objected against mr. mean ( so the old man is called , whom they have put into the church of dalkeith ) and shewed that he had not the call and consent of the people ; for they had almost all of them declared against him ; and to prove this , they produced a paper under their hand to this purpose . after this they went to mr. mean himself , and repeated the same to him , who answered , that their prejudice against him was groundless , that he was misrepresented as a very severe and rigid man , but he would prove otherwise ; for such as came and heard him , should be welcome , and they who did withdraw should be let alone , and have their liberty to go whither they pleased : so to facilitate his entry , he gave smooth words , and dissembled both his own temper , and the spirit and genius of his party . but tho his discourse shewed , that he desired to be settled at dalkeith , upon any terms and conditions , because it was a good and convenient living , yet at his admission , he professed publickly , a great reluctancy and aversion to it , and that it was meer constraint that made him accept of the charge . this was so gross , that several who were present , could not hear it with patience , but at the very time exclaimed , and charged him with impudence , hypocrisie , and mocking of god ; for it was well known , that he had for a long time a great desire to that place , and himself knew , that he got it against the will and inclinations of the people ( a very few excepted ) . if this be not intrusion , i know not what may be called so . the next thing which falls under our consideration , is the observation of the fast , appointed by the assembly ; the act and reasons for this , which was enjoined to be read by all the ministers in kirks and meeting-houses , and the civil sanction enforcing it , were published with the historical relation of the general assembly . this fast was long and much discoursed of before the day of keeping it . they who smell political designs , in all the presbyterian fasts , said , that the intent of it was not to pay devotion to god , or to conciliate his favour , by a general humiliation , throughout the kingdom , as was pretended , but that it was a contrivance to ruine the interest of the episcopal clergy , that those who should observe it , might be look'd upon as men of no conscience , and that whosoever should slight it , might become obnoxious to the censure of the government . a gentleman told me , that some time before the sitting of the assembly , he and some others were pleading for the minister of that parish , whom they designed to turn out , and that when the presbyterian ministers , and lay-elders ( among whom there was a present lord of session ) were deliberating what answer to give , he over-heard one say , we may grant the gentlemen their request at this time , for the assembly is to sit shortly , in which there will be an act made , which will turn out all the curates very easily . the gentleman , at the time , could not understand of what nature that would be , but afterwards , when the fast was enjoyned , he concluded , that was it which was designed to give so severe and universal a blow to the episcopal clergy . it is certain , that something of this nature was designed from the beginning , for as they were resolved not to admit any episcopal minister into communion without some acknowledgment ; so understanding , that enjoyning every one to do pennance in particular , for his defection from the covenant , and complying with prelacy , would be obstructed , therefore they thought a general humiliation would be a fitter expedient , which was equivalent upon the matter . whosoever had read and considered mr. rule 's representation of presbyterian government , might have foreseen this , for in his answer to that objection ( which is the seventh ) that if presbyterians got power , they would force all to make publick repentance who have owned bishops , taken the test , or other oaths which they dislike . he saith , our principle is , that publick scandals ought to be publickly rebuked , yet there are cases , in which the strictness of discipline , in this matter , may , and must be relaxed : as first , when the matter of offence is controverted , and the sinful practise is from the mis-information of the conscience . and secondly , when the fault is universal , and either the w●ole , or the greater part of the church is guilty , and so he concludeth , that a general humiliation of the whole church , may be instead of particular application of censures . the presbyterians gave out , that this fast was a reconciling thing , and that whosoever duly observed it , would be taken in upon very easi● terms ; but the episcopal clergy were mightily offended with it , and nothing gravelled them more than the civil sanction , for they would not have much regarded the act of the assembly , if that had not been added to it , but seeing that was added , they were puzled how to excuse themselves from a contempt of the civil government , if they did not keep the fast , as they found it difficult to keep up their reputation , among the people , with the observation of it , for the people were no less disgusted with it than the clergy , looking upon it as an unchristian act , to impose such a task upon the ministers of the episcopal perswasion ; and on all occasions they plainly said , that none but ●ordid compliers would observe it , for , in truth , the presbyterian fasts are not so taking now , as they were formerly in the reign of the covenant , for it is observed , that mountebanks never thrive so well the second time they set up , in any place , as the first . this time there were several papers emitted , containing reasons why the episcopal clergy would not observe that fast , because they could not own the authority of the assembly that enjoyned it , as a lawful representative of this church ; that by the laws of god and the church , the ministers of the presbyterian perswasion had no right to impose commands upon those of the episcopal , seeing the essential constitution of their government , which is parity , gives them no jurisdiction over the brethren ; and consequently , their acts cannot bind them without their consent , which cannot be p●etended to here , seeing they had no delegates , or representatives in the assembly . it was again argued , that the reasons of the fast were very ambiguous , and not easily understood ; that if by the general defection , and taking of unlawful oaths , they meant the compliance with prelac● , and swearing allegiance , and the test , the episcopal clergy could not profess repentance and humiliation for these , without a horrid profanation of the name of god , while in their consciences they were not convinced of the unlawfulness of these compliances , and that it shewed the little regard the presbyterians had for the sacred offices of religion , to enjoin their observance of this , when they knew what their judgment and sentiments were , as to these things . but amongst all the papers which came abroad on that occasion , there was none more diverting than the burlesque poem on the fast , which one witily called the present state of scotland , for it not only gave a lively picture of the presbyterian party , but also it wittily represented the humours and characters of the several parties within the kingdom , and of many particular persons , so that even those concerned , thought their neighbours part was well done ; however , displeased they might be with their own . when the time of observing the fast drew near , the clergy of the diocess of aberdeen , took occasion to communicate their thoughts together , and found themselves obliged , both in conscience and reputation , not to observe it : those of angus , perth , and some other places , followed their measure ; , so that it was kept by very few in the northern parts . the episcopal clergy in the south , had not such opportunity of meeting , and therefore were not so unanimous , either in their sentiments or practises . some few made no scruple , either of keeping the fast , or of reading the assemblie's reasons for it . some others kept the fast , but would not read the paper appointed by the general assembly , and what perswaded them to this , was a report that the court had given assurance , that they who observed the day should not suffer , tho they had no regard either to the authority or reasons , of the general assembly . and to make this the more probable , there was a paper handed about amongst them , concerted and agreed to ( as was said ) at london , by some bishops and others there , to be read instead of that appointed by the assembly ; i shall set it down , ●ut i know none who made use of it . a copy of a paper , appointed to be read instead of that set forth by the assembly about the fast. forasmuch as a fast is appointed by their majesties most h●nourable privy council , to be observed throughout this kingdom , upon the second thurs●ay of january next , and the great and many crying sins of this nation , and especially the sad d●solation of this poor church , and the common want of zeal , which appears in this land , for the truth and interest of the gospel ; together , with the great intestine divisions and commotions among us , that at once shake both our religion and the civil government , do call aloud to all ranks and degrees of people , seriously to humble themselves before almighty god , and to supplicate his divine majesty , that in the midst of that wrath , which this nation deserves , he may remember mercy , that he may heal the breaches that are made in the walls of his sion , and pour out the spirit of meekness , charity and moderation , upon all men , particularly upon these that serve at his altar . and finally , that he may graciously preserve the sacred persons of king william and queen mary , our dread soveraigns , and prosper them in the defending their kingdoms from the common enemy , that all their subjects may had a quiet and peaceable life under them , in all godliness and h●nesty : therefore you of this parish , hereby are earnestly exhorted to draw near to god , in this his house , upon the foresaid thursday , being the next ensuing , and to come with a holy and religious preparation of soul and bedy , for offering up the sacrifices of broken and contrite hearts and spirits , to the father of mercies , that so his iudgments , that are so hanging over our heads , may be diverted , and by the pious groans and interc●●●ions of our humbled souls , he may , through the mediation of his only son , our redeemer , be prevailed with yet , to make us a blessed people , in the happy continuance of our protestant religion , in settling his church so amongst us , as may most tend for the glory of his name , and for advancing all the great ends of our most holy faith. and lastly , in establishing peace and prosperity , under our most gracious soveraigns , so as both we , and our posterity after us , may reap the comfortable fruits of them . some being perswaded that there were but too many reasons for a fast , and considering too , that there were particular reasons given for this fast , by the assembly , who enjoyned it , which were in every bodies hands , therefore they thought themselves obliged , not only to observe a fast , but also to take notice of these reasons , and so they read the assemblies paper , and commented upon it , and by an excess of charity , made the assembly speak what they ought to have done , rather than what they actually did . the ministers of east lothian , and , i suppose , some from the mers , met at haddington , the week before the fast , to take joynt measures for the observation of it : it was soon agreed to , that they could neither in reputation nor conscience observe it , as it was enjoyned by the assembly , and therefore it was first resolved to do it with a protestation ; accordingly the following protestation was composed , which each of them was to take a copy of , and to read it from the pulpit , both on sunday , at the intimation of the fast , and on thursday , the eighth of ianuary , which was the day appointed . a copy of a protestation , which some ministers offered to make , at the intimation of the fast , that was kept upon the 8th . of january 91. if some of their brethren of the presbytery , where they have their residence , would have joyned with them in it . whereas their majesties most honourable privy council , by their act and proclamation , of the date november 21 — 90 , hath ratified and approven an act of the general assembly , of the date november 12. that same year , appointing a solemn national fast and humiliation to be observed in all the churches and meeting-houses within this kingdom , the 2d . thursday of this instant . we declare , that we judge our selves obliged to give obedience to the foresaid act of council , in so far as that is consistent with good conscience , and the duty we owe to god and his truth ; and that we are most desirous to joyn with all others within this nation , in the publick and solemn confession of our sins , deprecating the wrath of god , and supplicating for his mercy , and in all the other pious and religious exercises , proper for that day of humiliation and fasting . but being that there are several causes and reasons expressed and specified in the said act of the general assembly , which do manifestly contradict our principles and opinions , and some things affirmed and asserted , irreconcileable to truth and charity , and other christian duties ; and lest our observance of that fast , should be interpreted the homologating of these , or a sordid or deceitful compliance against our consciences , we judge ourselves bound to declare , as hereby we do declare , that we intimate and publish this fast , and will observe it , for these reasons and causes only that are consistent with our opinions , which we have owned by solemn oaths , and with the charity , and other duties , incumbent on us , by the laws of the gospel ; and do renounce all grounds , reasons and causes , contrary unto , or inconsistent therewith : and in particular , we do protest 1. that by keeping of this fast , we do not own or acknowledge , the power and authority that the foresaid assembly does arrogate over us , in so far as that is contrary to the word of god , and never heard of in the christian church before this time , to wit , that presbyters should have a power of government and jurisdiction over other presbyters , who are of the same office and degree . 2. we do protest , that we do not approve of these words , that the supremacy was advanced in such a way , and to such a height , as never any christian church acknowledged , being we know , and are ready to prove , that they are false , and being , tho the supremacy is taken away by the law , as unsuitable to the present circumstances of affairs ; yet it is not declared a sinful prerogative of the crown , neither do we esteem it as such . 3. we do protest , that we do not own or assent unto that reason of the fast , that the government of the church was altered , and prelucy , which hath always been grievous to this nation , introduced without the churches consent , and contrary to the standing acts of our national assemblies , &c. being we certainly know , that episcopacy was never more grievous to the nation than presbytery , and that it was settled with the churches consent , in free general assemblies , after the reformation , and was afterward received and submitted to , by the church , in free meetings and assemblies : and , in particular , we do assert , that the assembly held at glasgow 1610. which established and settled episcopacy , was as lawfully convocated , and of as undoubted authority , as the assembly held at glasgow 1638. which turned it out ; as also that episcopacy was restored by a lawful parliament , an. 1661. and approved by the subsequent actings of the church , in so far as that was necessary , in referenc● to a government , formerly settled by acts of parliament , and assemblies of more unquestionable authority , than any that had abolished the same . 4. we do protest , that we do not approve of these words , that prelacy was introduced contrary to the standing acts of our national assemblies , being it doth imply , that the king and parliament canno● make any law , anent the external government and polity of the church , if contrary to any act of a general assembly ; which is to give an absolute and uncontroulable power to church men , and is inconsistent with the undoubted right and power the state hath for reforming abuses in the administration of church-government and discipline , and disposing of that as may best serve the ends of religion , and the peace of the kingdom . 5. we do protest , that we do not approve of these words : an● yet , nevertheless , of the then standing ministry of scotland , many ●did suddenly and readily comply with that alteration of the government , some out of pride and covetousness , or men pleasing , some through infirmity and weakness , or fear of man , and want of courage and zeal for god , many faithful ministers were thereupon cast out , and many insufficient and scandalous thrust into in their charges , &c. for these do necessarily imply the divine right of presbyterian government , that ●no humane authority can alter it , and that submission unto , or compliance with any other is sinful ; and that submission to episcopacy restored , an. 1662. did proceed from vitious causes ; as also they do imply an uncharitable censure of many faithful ministers , as men pleasers , wanting courage and zeal for god , and the like , which we think very opposite to the temper and disposition wherewith the duties of fasting and humiliation should be performed . 6. we do protest that we do not approve of these words , that there hath been under the late prelacy a great decay of piety , so that it was enough to make a man be nick named a phanatick , if he did not run to the same excess of riot with others ; for tho we do grant there hath been much impiety under the late prelacy , and do mourn for it , yet we do affirm , that it abounded as much under presbytery , and it is not agreeable to the sincerity of our confessions , on a day of solemn humiliation , or at any time , to be partial in the rehearsal of our sins , or to distinguish our selves from others , as if we were more righteous , and to confine religion and godliness to a party . 7. we do protest , that we do not approve of that reason of the fast , that the nation hath been guilty of breaking their oaths , and imposing and taking ungodly and unlawful oaths and bonds , &c. in so far as these may signifie the oaths of allegiance , supremacy , and the test , which oaths , as we swore in judgment , righteousness , and truth , so we do still acknowledge the equity and obligation of them . 8. we cannot approve of that reason of the fast , the wonted care and religious sanctifying of the lords day is gone , &c. and of that petition we are required to send up unto god , that the preaching of the word , and dispencing of the sacraments , may be accompanied with the wonted presence , power , and blessing of the spirit of the lord : in so far as they may imply , that the power of the word and sacraments is restrained and true godliness decayed under episcopacy , and that they abounded under presbytery ; which is to make the life of religion depend upon opinions and outward forms of government , or to have the persons of men in admiration , and favours of that spiritual and pha●isaical pride , which will render all our solemn humiliations hateful to god. 9. we do protest , that these words , we have sinned notwithstanding of promises and solemn vowing and covenanting with god to the contrary , are not understood by us with any reference to the solemn league and covenant , which some do apprehend to be the meaning of the general assembly . all these and the like reasons and causes of the fast , tho not here exprest , that are inconsistent with our declared opinions are renounced and disowned by us . and we do protest , that our observance of this fast shall not be interpreted as the approving and homologating any of these ; and we do desire and intreat all that are of the same principles with us , as they will avoid the sin of hypocrisie and mocking of god , and would be accepted of him , that they carefully separate betwixt these grounds and reasons of the fast , that are agreeable to , and these that are contrary to their duty and good conscience , and that they joyn with us in this our protestation , openly owning and declaring their judgment anent the same : we do also earnestly exhort all , in the love and fear of god , that laying aside all prejudices , malice , uncharitableness , and indiscreet and irregular zeal , lying , and slandering ; that they may unite together in confessing the sins they are guilty of ; and humble themselves in the sight of god , for their sins , and the sins of their fore fathers , without any partial respect to the opinion , that hath occasioned some divisions and differences in present and former times ; and that they send up their fervent prayers to almighty god , that he would be pleased to bestow , of his grace and spirit upon all orders and ranks of people , that they may live as becomes the gospel , and shew forth the praises of him , who has called them from darkness to his marvellous light ; and in particular that they would pray , that it may please our most merciful father , to inspire all the members of his church , with the meek and loving spirit of our blessed lord and saviour jesus christ , and that every one may seek after these things that make for peace , and whereby they may edifie one another ; that there may be a mutual forbearance of one another , as to the opinions anent the government of the church , which hath occasioned so much disquiet and disorder to this church and kingdom ; and that none be forced or tempted to declare or do against their consciences , and that amidst the differences of opinions , there may be a chearful concurrence , in all things that have a respect unto the glory of god , and the advancement of true godliness . finally we do exhort all ( as we our selves do resolve by divine assistance ) religiously and devoutly to observe the fast for all these ends and purposes , and in the manner specified in the act of the general assembly , in so far as that is consistent with this our protestation , and is allowable by the laws of the gospel . but upon second thoughts , it was concluded , that the protestation might give greater offence than the total neglect of the fast , and so at last it was agreed , that none should observe the fast in any wise . but one mr. d. who was not present , being advised , that it was safest to make some observation of it , that he might not be singular , he prevailed with the minister of haddington , and one or two more , to break off from that general resolution , and to keep the fast with him . in edinburgh it was only observed by mr. wilkie in the tolbooth , and mr. craig in the lady yesters church : but no mans behaviour in this affair was so worthy to be remarked , as that of the reverend mr. charters heretofore professor of divinity in the colledge of edinburgh , and at present minister of dirleton . all who have any acquaintance with him , know that he is a person both of great learning and piety , whose charity prompted him to think all the good of every one that can be reasonably conceived . he was convinced , that there were too many reasons and causes , which called for fasting , mourning , and humiliation , but as he well knew the practices of presbyterians in former times , so it seemed evident to him , that at this time they were endeavouring to carry on their own selfish ends under the colour of religion and had appointed this fast to be a snare , whereby the weak and ignorant might be drawn unawares to own and acknowledge their false and narrow principles , and which might afford a fair opportunity of inflicting ecclesiastical censures and other punishments upon others who would not so sordidly desert their principles , nor debase their former character and profession . he had such an impression of this base dealing , of the scandal and prejudice , which religion suffered by it ; and of the danger , which threatened the best part of the church , that he thought every one obliged to testifie against this act of the assembly , and to do all he could to prevent the peoples being deceived . and because a bare forbearing a fast in his judgment was not a sufficient remonstrance , 〈…〉 to be read the assembly's act and reasons , publickly in the congregation , and afterwards he spoke to the people to this purpose . ye have heard the causes of the fast , as they are represented by the general assembly ; they have recommended it to pastors and others to be serious and sincere in the confession and acknowledgment of their own and the nations transgresions , and to be earnest in the●r supplications for such favours from god , as the present condition and circumstances , in which this and other reformed churches are , do call for . i hope after the hearing of so long a paper , you will have a little further patience , while i sincerely represent to you somethings concerning the sins we are to confess , and the mercies for which we are to supplicate . all who are wise and have a right sense of true religion and christianity , cannot but see , that there hath been a great defection amongst us . this defection hath not been from the truth , or from the fundamental articles of the christian faith , but from the life of god and the power of religion , and from that temper and conversation , which the gospel requires in us , so that i doubt not but we and all good men will joyn with the assembly , in acknowledging the sins and defection of the nation . but whereas the assembly seems to represent episcopacy as a principal and capital point of the defection , and as introductory into further degrees of corruption ; i find my self obliged to declare my sense in this affair upon this ocasion . i do not take my self to be bound to endeavour to justifie the manner of the introduction of episcopacy into this church an. 1662. nor the manner of election and nomination of persons to that office , which was in use among us , nor the legal establishment , nor the laws , by which it was established among us , nor the conduct of those who were in office ; and i will not say but some who were in the office of episcopacy and that complied with that government , might have been in some measure accessary to the corruptions , by their bad example or connivance , and neglect of the true exercise of discipline . but yet i cannot think that the settling of an imparity of the officers of the church , is to be looked upon as a defection , or that it is a thing in it self unlawful , or that it is of it self introductory of the abounding of wickedness and scandals in the church . this i may with the greatest confidence affirm , that religion never flourished more in the world , than it did when and where there was an imparity among the officers of the church and this i know , that some famous protestant churches , do allow episcopacy , and continue till this day under that form of government ; and i am sure that most of the wise , pious , and learned men abroad , tho they live where the goverment is not episcopal , have not such bad thoughts of it as our brethren here have . and whereas they charge many of the then standing ministry with compliance with the alteration of the government . i do not see that the continuance of pastors to serve god and the church under the late settlement , is to be look'd upon as a defection , for which they are to repent ; divers of them having continued to serve in the ministry , neither out of pride , nor covetousness , or fear , or weakness , or want of courage , but out of conscience , and a fear to offend god , by refvsing their service in that station , when there was no insuperable stop , or bar put in their way , as they thought there then was not . and the like may be said of many others , who entred afterwards into the pastoral office , under the the late government . but notwithstanding of what we have said of this matter , we cannot but acknowledge , that there has been a great defection among us . men generally have shaken off the yo●e of christ ; and exprest none of that respect , which we all owe to his laws , and have abandoned themselves to their lusts , and corrupt inclinations , so that iniquities and immoralities of all sorts have abounded , and generally men of all ranks have corrupted their ways . covetousness , fraud , oppression , injustice , sensuality , drunkenness , and divers kinds of uncleannesses , cursing , swearing , atheism , neglect of the worship of god , and other sins , besides these reckoned in this paper have abounded . the assembly acknowledges , that there have been some disorders , among those of their perswasion : which , they say is matter of humiliation , such as , scandalous divisions , injurious reflections against worthy men , and some dangerous principles drunk in . they say , it should be lamented , t●at some of their way , who in the main things did endeavour to maintain their integrity , did not give seasonable and necessary testimony , against the defections and evils of the times , and did not keep a d●e distance from them . if they do mean hereby ( and i know not what else can be understood by it ) that it is to be lamented , that some of their way did not separate from such as complied with the government , but did joyn in worship with them : this will not appear to any others , besides some of themselves , to be matter of lamentation . it is rather matter of lamentation , that so many of them did behave themselves so schismati●ally , and refused to joyn in worship on such slender grounds , with these who were not of the same perswasion with them concerning the government . they seem to appropriate to those of their way , that they endeavo●●ed to keep their integrity in the main things , and that they did own 〈◊〉 , and bear witness against the co●rse of defection ; but i know that not a few amongst those who complyed did endeavour to maintain the integrity of the main things , and did own all the necessary and fundamental truths of the gospel ; and did bear faithful witness against the course of the true and reall defection from truth and righteousness . they confess , as i understand it , that all of whatsoever perswasion , generally do not receive christ , nor imitate him , &c. but , they have passed over many sins of these of their way , which all other people see , whereof some are almost proper to them ; how many of them are proud , fierce , content●lous , turbulent , seditious and ungovernable ; many of them presume to judge and censure , reproach , revile and traduce such as are not of their way , tho magistrates and ministers . not a few seem to place all religion in a zeal for their proper opinions , and in running separate courses from those who are not of their perswasions ; many of them are of a factious , schismatical and uncharitable temper , and have by their bitter and indiscreet zeal , been prompted to such inhumane , barbarous and cruel actions , which have been so much the more scandalouss as being acted under colour and pretence of religion . these and such like should be confessed ingennously , and mourned for : and o that it might please god to make us all sensible how far we have declined from that spirit , and temper , and that behaviour and conversation , which the gospel requires in us , and to dispose us to reform and amend . as to those things for which we are desired to pray , we have all reason heartily to joyn with them . there is only one expression which i have observed , in which i fear they mean , something for which i cannot joyn in prayer with them . the expression is , tha● all the lords people may be of one mind in the lord ; if they mean by it as they should do , that they may all agree in the fundamentals of religion , and may with one mind and one mouth glorifie god , and may live in love , peace and concord together ; and joyntly pursue the attainment of everlasting life : it is a very fit petition , and we are all earnestly to pray for it . but if they mean , we are to pray that all may have the like sentiments with themselves , about the government of the church , and may consider presbyterran government to be of such concern and importance , as themselves take it to be ; i cannot joyn with them in it . that opinion being the source of most of the distractions , which abound among us , and depriving them who hold it , of what they owe to all , who hold the fundamentals of the christian faith , and walk agreeable to the laws of the gospel . it incapacitates them who hold it for performing all offices of love , to these , who are not of their perswasion , and prompts them to behave themselves towards all such as enemies to god and religion ; it makes them look with an evil eye upon these protestant churches , which have not such a model of government , and begets in them , a neglect , dislike , and aversion from these churches . i use not to speak so much of these things in such an auditory , nor had i now spoken of them , if we had been so discreetly dealt with as not to be driven to it . this was said on sunday . on thursday , which was the fast day , he added as follows , this day is set a part for fasting , and humbling our selves under the sense of our sins , and the sins of the church , and nation , of which we are members , and to deprecate the wrath and heavy judgments , which our sins deserve , and to beg mercy from god , &c. and indeed it is evident that we are all highly guilty before god , and have grievously provoked him to wrath , and indignation against us ; we have disobeyed and despised the gospel , and almost universally under the profession of the christian religion , have lived as heathens ; and whereas the gospel teaches us to live righteously , godlily and soberly ; unrighteousness , ungodliness , uncharitableness , and intemperance have abounded among us , it is fit , that we confess these things with grief and sorrow . the assembly in that paper which was read to you the other day , tho they lay open the sins of others , yet are too sparing , in confessing these of their own way . they say among other things , that episcopacy was introduced , many faithful ministers were cast out , and insufficient and scandalous men thrust in on their charges ; but there was not a word in all the paper of not a few faithful pastors cast out by some of their way , in a disorderly and tumultuous manner , they being private persons and without authority . i wish the vacancies they have made may not be supplied by scandalous persons , or such as are weak and insufficient , and destitute of a right sense and understanding of religion . this much may suffice of the behaviour of episcopal men ; as to the presbyterians thems●lves , to be sure , they kept the fast with a great deal of fervour and zeal ; but as if it had been only appointed for confessing the errours of episcopacy , and the sins of episcopal men : they spent the whole day upon this : their sermons and prayers were nothing else , but so many invectives against the episcopal clergy , and the former reigns , which was done partly to satisfie their revenge , because they could do no more at present ; and partly to enflame the peoples rage ; and to render them more keen upon their destruction . only mr. wilkie in the meeting house of the canon-gate , thought he would be too partial , if he should only reckon up the sins of others ; wherefore in the afternoon , he resolved to confess his own sins and the sins of his party , and so he instanced among other peccadillos , their taking an indulgence from a popish king , which was only granted to make way for popish priests and iesuits , who sought the ruine of the protestant religion : we knew this , said he , well enough ; but self interest byassed us : and the same principal of self interest made us guilty of sinful silence ; for all that time , we never preached against popery , fearing that we might lose that liberty , if we did . and none said he , was more guilty than my self ; for mass was said daily at my lugg , and yet i never opened my mouth . indeed these men were very cautious then , and careful to abstain from every thing , that might be supposed to give the least offence ; by which , they shewed that they had their tongues under great command ; for before they were wholly addicted to railing against popery , and every thing , which they fancied to be like it . yet they could tie themselves up instantly , when they apprehended it might do them hurt . this cautiousness was very observeable , one day in mr. geo. iohnson , who preached in the same meeting-house of the cannongate . he had in his prayers unwares , contrary to the concerted measures , let fall these words , o lord confound the land of graven images , which no sooner passed from him , than he instantly checked himself , and with the same breath , cryed out , but o god save our king. thus i have given a full account of the fast , which occasioned as great variety of sentiments and practices , as any one thing that ever was enjoyned . it is evident , that from the beginning of this revolution , the presbyterians have had the turning out of the episcopal clergy wholly in their head , at least , more than any other thing : revenge , as as well as interest and security , prompted them to this , for they concluded it hard , if not impossible , to preserve the interest and reputation of their great diana presbytery , or to oblige people to a superstitious worshipping of this goddess , by which they have their wealth , while there were so many , who thought and taught , that there was no divinity in it ; and consequently , both their craft would be in danger to be set at nought , and their diana should be despised , if these men were not removed from amongst them . and to compass this , they tryed various methods : first , as demetrius raised an uproar in ephesus , against st. paul , so they began with a rabble in the west ▪ and some places of the southern borders , in which they succeeded according to their mind ; for , in a short space of time , they emptied all these churches to the number of about three or four hundred . but this method was only proper for these places , where the ignorant bigots , and partisans of presbytery are , it could not be attempted in other parts of the kingdom , where the people were better instructed , not so rude and barbarous , and who generally were very well pleased with the ministers of the episcopal perswasion , whom they preferred every way , and in all things , to the presbyterian preachers . if it were narrowly examined , it would be found , that even this method , in the west , is no demonstration of a total aversion , in the people there , to the episcopal clergy , as it was given out to be ; for there was not a general insurrection of the parishes of that country , but a certain rabble combined together , and run up and down , thrusting out ministers , the parishes being no less surprised with it than the ministers themselves , and in many places the parishes would have defended the ministers , if either they had been forewarned , or sufficiently armed , to make resistance . but however , they could not gain their point in the rest of the kingdom , by these means , wherefore their only recourse was to the civil authority , which was very favourable to them at the time , so that they resolved to improve the occasion diligently , not knowing how long it would last . here the e. crafurd was very useful to them , for his zeal caused them to search out all that might be attacked upon the head of difference from the civil government , and he held councils for several months together , only for depriving such . oversights , omissions of little formalities , and small escapes , were aggravated as if they had been willful and heinous crimes . the gaining and encouraging compliance with the civil government , was so little studied , that all discouragement was given , that the episcopal party might thereby be incapacitated , and consequently the danger prevented , which the presbyterians feared from their number . there was no place for repentance , nor could second thoughts be of any use , every one was judged by his first resolution ; and if there were but the least flaw in ones compliance , he was dealt with as if he had not offered any compliance at all . by these means a great many more of the episcopal clergy were laid aside , and the presbyterians would have been glad to have had all turned out this way , for then they thought the odium would not lye upon them . but this method failed at last too , for the council became weary of it , as they had reason ; so the next thing resolved on , as was reported , was to procure an act of parliament , for declaring all the churches within the kingdom vacant : the pretence was , that the present incumbents were all obtruded upon the parishes , and therefore it was fit that the people should have their free choice , and be allowed to call ministers suitable to their own inclinations ; but they were advised not to propose this , as that which would be very far from serving their design , because upon calculation it would be found , that most of the parishes within the kingdom would call back their own ministers , or other episcopal ones , for by this time the people were every where shewing their disgust both at presbytery , and the present presbyterians , and by manifold instances it appeared , that neither of them were acceptable to the greater , and better part of the nation . seeing therefore they could work no more by other mens means , the presbyterian clergy resolved to do the work themselves , howsoever invidious it may seem to be , and for this end they got the government of the church , and all ecclesiastical iurisdiction , by act of parliament , put into their own hands . when the covenant was in force , they found good service of itinerant committees or commissions , and they judged it would be of no less use now , to set them up again ; and so , before the rising of the assembly , two were appointed , one for the south , and an other for the north , with full power to visit all ministers , and to purge out of the church such as should be thought insufficient , scandalous , erroneous , or supinely negligent . the names of the persons appointed for these commissions , together with an abstract of their instructions , are set down , page 53 , 54 , and 55. of the hi●●orical relation of the general assembly : the giving them instructions seemed to limit them , but in truth , they have all the power of a general assembly it self , and are so much freer , that they have not one from the king to check and controul them . i shall begin with the committee or commission for the south , which , according to appointment , sate down at edinburgh , the 21st . of ianuary , 91. being the third wednesday of that month. several ministers up and down the country , received citations to appear before them , and among the rest , mr. alexander malcolm , mr. iames hutchison , mr. iohn farqhuar , three ministers of edinburgh ; mr. kay at leith , mr. samuel nimbo minister of collinton , mr. andrew lumsden minister at dudduston , and mr. iohn monro minister at sterline . there was also many others , whose processes had been referred to them , either by the general assembly , or some particular presbyteries . the three ministers of edinburgh , received the citation on saturday , the 10th . of ianuary , betwixt nine and ten a clock at night , which both the ministers , and others , constructed to be done on design to discompose them for preaching the day following . at this very hour also , they sent a summons to dr. robe●●son , minister of the gray-frier-church in edinburgh , who had been sick for a long time , and whom all the city knew to be then in articulo mortis , as indeed he died some few hours after . the tenor of the summons was this , to compeir before the commission , upon the twenty first of january , to be tryed in life and doctrine , and discharge of the duties of the ministerial function , and censured by the said commission as they shall think iust. mr. alexander malcolm , mr. iames hutchison , mr. iohn farqhuar , mr. samuel nimbo , and mr. andrew lumsden , met , and all of them resolved to take the same joint-measures , seeing they were all in the same circumstances . accordingly , on the 21st . day of ianuary , to which they had been cited , mr. iames hutchison presented himself before the commission , and in his own name , and in name of the other four , he desired of the commission a special citation , containing , and expressly naming , their crime or crimes , for which they were to be tryed and censured , the accusers and witnesses names , and a competent time for preparing such defences as were legal and just ; but all this was flatly denied . the next day mr. malcolm compeired and proposed , in his own name , and in the name of his brethren , the same things , and had the same answer , for mr. kennedy , the moderator , said , that the commission was not bound to give an account why they summoned them , nor to tell who were their accusers , nor for what they were accused , or who were to witness against them , but that being cited , they were obliged to answer instantly to what should be asked of them , and if they refused , he told them the commission had power to censure them , and would do it . to which mr. malcolm replied , that it was illegal to summon any super inquirendis , that he and his brethren were not bound either by civil laws , or ecclesiastical cannons , to regard or obey general citations , and that none of them would answer , except they got citations which were special and particular . he added , that they were more unjust than festus , a heathen judge , for he thought it unreasonable to send a prisoner to caesar , and not withal to signifie the crimes laid against him , but ( saith he ) we are here convened before you , and you 'll not tell us for what cause . upon this he was ordered by the moderator to remove . ianuary the 23d , these five ministers , to free themselves of farther trouble from the commission , resolved to disown and decline their authority , and so they sent one mr. french as proctor for them , with the following declaration , which he delivered , and took instruments upon the delivery of it . we under-subscribers , mr. alexander malcolm , james hutchison , john farqhuar , ministers of edinburgh , mr. samuel nimbo minister of collinton , and andrew lumsden minister of duddiston , being continued in the peaceable exercise of our ministerial function , notwithstanding of the alteration of the church-government , by act of parliament , and being under the protection of their present majesties , by our submission and obedience to authority ; and we being , nevertheless , cited to compeir before the commission of the late general assembly , to hear and see the iudgment of the said commission , given anent us , and our session books and records , and to hear and see such tryal taken of our life , doctrine , and discharge of the duties of our function , as the said commission shall think iust. we having all of us , considered the import of the said compeirance , upon the citations given us , do hereby declare , that we have no freedom in our consciences to compeir , or subject our selves , to any tryal whatsoever , before the said commission , and that by reason of our known principles , and former engagements to episcopacy ; and this we own to be our iudgment , with all due deference and submission to authority . in witness whereof , we have subscribed these presents with our hands , at edinburgh , january 21. 1691. sic subscribitur alexander malcolm , james hutchison , john farqhuar , samuel nimbo , andrew lumsden . this being the first declinature from their authority which any had made , therefore the commission resolved to put some severe censure upon it . some proposed immediate deprivation and deposition , others were for excommunication , and , as was said , the first carried it over the last , only by two votes , which was intimated in the several churches the very next lords day . as the commission was censured by some , for their rigid and summar proceedings against these ministers , and never offering to treat with them in any gentle manner , so these five ministers were blamed by others , for their precipitancy in declining the commission ; for it was said , that having so far owned them as to appear before them , and formerly to give up their session books , when they were asked of them , it was no ways agreeable now to give in a declinature : and as their practices were disagreeable and inconsistent , so they had thereby much wronged themselves , for by this means they had occasioned their own deprivation and deposition , whereas , if they had taken an other course , compeired before the commission , and suffered them to accuse and lead probation , as they would have been obliged to do , they might have continued in their offices a longer time and perhaps defeat the commission altogether , because it would have been very hard to have proven any thing , that might have deposed any of them ; and if they had only appealed , when the commission was about to do them some palpable injustice , they then might have expected protection and redress from the civil authority ▪ but these ministers answered thus for themselves , that some of them had never any ways owned the presbyterian government as yet , and others of them but very little , and that that little acknowledgment which they had made , could neither infer that they had renounced their former sentiments about episcopacy , nor yet entirely submitted to presbytery , and that they had good reason to decline or disown the commission , considering the injustice and illegality of their proceedings , which was both contrary to scripture , the canons of the church , and the acts of assemblies , owned by themselves ; for as in scripture it is commanded , first to tell men their faults in private , and not to receive any accusation against an elder of the church , but before two or three witnesses . so by an act of the assembly at perth , march 1. 1596. none ought to be summoned , super inquirendis , without instancing the names of the accusers , and the crimes and faults they are accused of . and by an other act of a general assembly at st. andrews , april 24. 1582. it is appointed that ministers within the kingdom should have forty days allowed them , whereas only ten had been given them . they said further , that they had reason to disown the commission , and to refuse to appear before them , considering how they had treated others , and how partial they were ; that they were not iudges properly , but parties and enemies , who had resolved upon their ruine before ever they met , and , who had not only determined to have them out , quovis modo , but had also assigned their several churches to particular persons , viz. the grayfrier church to mr. gilbert rule , the old church to mr. blair , and the tolbooth church to mr. kirkton , which was indeed commonly talked long before , and it proving true , was a demonstration that there was a laid and formed design of turning out all the ministers of edinburgh , by one means or other , though they themselves were the occasion of the more speedy execution of it . notwithstanding the act and sentence of the commission , these five ministers were resolved to continue the exercise of their ministry , unless they met with violence from a rabble , or that the civil magistrate concurred with the commission . many thought the civil magistrate would not meddle in the matter , and a rabble was not much feared in edinburgh . these who frequented the episcopal churches , were resolved to defend their ministers , if they met with any disturbance , but on saturday and sunday mornings , the provost of edinburgh sent to mr. malcolm , mr. hutchison , and mr. farqhuar , forbidding them , upon the highest peril , to attempt preaching , or to be seen about their churches that day , so they kept their houses ; and the episcopal party being disappointed , came back from the churches both in discontent and rage , and if their temper were as much enclined to tumults , as the presbyterians are , a little matter would have occasioned one that day : and indeed , the provost feared it , and upon the apprehension of it , ordered the captain of the town guards to have all his men together in readiness , for preventing any such thing . all the ministers of edinburgh were now laid aside , either by the council , or the commissions , except mr. wilkie in the tolbooth church , who was also at this time turned out by a cunning trick , which had no parallel then , and indeed none but the presbyterians are capable of giving any ; but if they continue we may come to have enough such instances ; for mr. craig of the cannon gate , his case is much like it , as shall be related afterwards . upon dr. robertson's death , mr. wilkie was appointed by an act of the town council , to go to the gray frier church , to be colleague to mr. hutchison there , because no presbyterian would joyn either , and because by putting them together , they saved a church , for the use of one of their presbyterian ministers ; who keep at as great distance from these that are episcopal , as ever their predccessors the pharisees did from heathens and publicans , whom yet our saviour often preferred to them : when mr. wilkie was advertised of this by two of their numbe● , viz. george hume bailiff , and iames crawford apothecary , sent to him for this end ; he replied , that he would very readily obey the good town , provided his legal right , as one of the ministers of edingburgh , was not thereby prejudged or obstructed : and then it was told him , that he needed not fear that , for there was no design to wrong him , by transplanting him . this was on the 23d . of ianuary , and on the 25th . mr. kirkton was brought to the tolbooth church , and settled minister in it , without the call or consent of the parish , the formality of an edict , or any thing of that nature , usual in the admission of a minister : but while mr. wilkie was thinking to take possession of the gray friers church , the lord provost sends for him , acquainting him , that the commission had appointed mr. david williamson to preach in the gray frier church , for intimating the sentence of deposition against mr. hutchison , wherefore his lordship desired to forbear that day , for mr. david craved both forenoon and afternoon , and he assured him , that he should sustain no prejudice by it , to which mr. wilkie also yeilded , being very desirous to please them , and gain their favour . some other excuse was invented for shifting the next sunday to , and so on for two or three sundays , till mr. wilkie turned impatient at their delayes to settle him in the gray friers church , when he had so easily parted with the tolbooth church : and he was not a little apprehensive of some disingenuous t●i0ck , when it was told him , that they who preached in the gray friers church used to pray for the reverend brother abroad , whom that parish belong'd to : this mr. wilkie concluded was not himself , as indeed it was meant of mr. gilbert rule , who was then in england about the affairs of the kirk . then private entreaties could no more prevail with mr. wilkie , so that they were forced to interpose the authority of the whole town council , to which mr. wilkie only consented , for some two or three dayes , as appears by the following act , given under the town clerks own hand . edinburgh , the 13th . day of february , 1691. the which day the lord provost , bailiffs ▪ council and deacons of crafts , being convened in council , having considered their act , transplanting mr. tho. wilkie from the tolbooth-church to the gray-friers , they do appo●nt some of their number to commune with the said mr. thomas wilkie , and to represent to him , for several weighty considerations , that it is necessary the said mr thomas wilkie should forbear preaching for some lords days , which the said mr. thomas wilkie , in obedience to the councils commands , consented he should forbear preaching for three lords days , only providing the said forbearance do not prejudice his legal title as one of the ministers of edinburgh . extracted by me aeneas mackland . but when pretences and dissimulation could no more be used , it was plainly told him , that the gray frier church was to be otherwise bestowed , notwithstanding he had not only the private promise and assurance of the provost and other magistrates , but also the publick faith of the town council , by an act of theirs dated . ianuary 23 , which was the condition on which he parted with the tolbooth church , tho mr. wilkie might have guessed this from the first time that they desired his forbearance to preach ; and tho he was forewarned by several persons , that a trick was designed him , yet he could not keep himself from being mightily surprised and troubled at this final answer and resolution : the loss of his living vext him , and the manner of taking it away was matter of more vexation , than if it had been done by the formality of a sentence , tho never so unjust . it galled him exceedingly , that he should have been so simple as to trust men of no ingenuity , and that by currying the favour of those , who designed him a cheat , he had suffered himself to be trickt on t of his ministry without citation or process , and while he was under no sentence or censure , neither was accused of any crime or maleversation , which might have deprived him . he made great complaints , but they had no success . the good lord provost and bailiffs excused themselves in that the ministers would not quit the possession they had got , and the ministers on the other hand , told him , that his business was with the magistrates , for they had not meddled with him ; he had not consulted them , when he dimited the tolbooth church , and as they were not to enquire upon what terms he did it , so he could not blame them for taking possession of churches that were vacant . thus betwixt the two he was kept out of his just rights , and all the defence that can be made for it , is , that the presbyterians had now declared open war with the episcopal party , and their allies , and all that had been in confederacy with them : and in war men use not much to regard the points of justice and ingenuity ; if the enemy be defeated and weakened , it is no matter by what means , whether by giving fair and open battle , or by secret ambuscades ; the cities or castles which are once in possession are kept , tho they have been won not by force or generous valour , but by baseness and treachery . after much importunity to silence his clamour , they first proffered him mr. kirtons meeting house , in the castle hill , which he refused , because it was an uncertain thing , and none of the legal churches of the city , to one of which he had an undoubted right . then at last they bestowed on him the lady yesters church , which he has accepted of , and seems to be contented with at present : but it will be found , that they are still befooling him ; for besides that the earl of twedale debates with the good town the right of planning that church , it has no parish annexed to it , and the magistrates of edinburgh , when they find their opportunity , may have many pretences , for the shutting it up again . but it was believed , and not without reason , that the giving this church to mr. wilkie , was done not so much to repair the injury he had received , as to be a pretext for turning out mr. craig and his people , that having no other place to go to , they might find themselves under a kind of necessity , of uniting with the presbyterian congr●gation in the connon-gate . because i have mentioned this case of mr. craig , and that it hath some resemblance to that of mr. wilkie , i will give some short-account of it here , tho it was posterior to the other in time , by several months . this mr. craig is one of the ministers of the cannon-gate , and has had the whole charge of that parish these two or three years , because mr. burnet , the other minister , was deprived by the council . this parish of the cannon-gate had the use of the lady yesters church , from the town of edinburgh , until such time as a new-one of their own should be built . when this new one was finished , which was only in summer last , the presbytery of edinburgh appointed another mr. wilkie , who preached in the meeting-house to take possession of it , and with his elders to choose another minister , as if there had been a total vacancy , never regarding mr. craig's right to be a minister there . mr. craig , and those of the episcopal perswasion in that parish , which are in proportion more than three of four , when they heard this they addressed the presbytery for the maintenance of their rights and priviledges , and receiving no satisfactiun from them , they brought it before the lords of the council , where also the presbyterian party prevailed ; for the council , ratified and approved the orders of the presbytery , and so mr. craig was shuffled out of his right , tho he was willing to submit to presbytery , and to joyn with mr. wilkie the presbyterian , and had condescended not only not to pretend to any priority and preceedency , as the elder minister and possessour , but even also to yield the precedency to mr. wilkie , and to serve only as second minister . mr. craig being thus kept out of the new church of the cannon-gate , resolved to continue preaching in the lady yesters church , and his wonted hearers were also resolved to wait still upon him there ; but that being considered as dangerous to the presbyterian interest in the cannon gate , and a too great occasion of withdrawing the people from mr. wilkie the presbyterian , therefore the magistrates of edinburgh were advised to give the lady yester-church to mr. thomas wilkie , who had been minister of the tolbooth church , by which means mr. craig has no church at all to preach in , and is forced to take refuge in an old chappel , lying near the water-gate , in the foot of the cannon-gate . but to return to the commission of the general assembly , who were busie about their work of purging , the church : great endeavours were used to fix some scandal or other upon mr. iohn monro , minister of sterlin , and mr. kay , minister of south leith , that the commission might , take occasion to deprive them , and by that means , get those two conspicuous churches into their possession ; but both of them appeared for themselves , and defended themselves so shoutly , that the commission could gain no ground . mr. monro upbraided the presbyterian party , to their face , with ingratitude towards him , for he shewed how kind he had been to them in former times ; that some of them he had visited and relieved while they were in prison , and that he had even been instrumental in saving some of them from the gallows ; and yet , for a requital , they were designing not only to deprive him of his livelihood and ministry , but also of his good name , which is dearer to one than his life . when they perceived that sufficient probation could not be laid against him , they tryed to work him up to a voluntary dimission . the chief accuser and leader on of the process , came to him one day , and told him , that if he would dimit , they would pass from the libel , and give an ample declaration of his innocence . this past in private , and being for his reputation , to have some publick and undoubted evidences of the same , he went presently to the commission , and told the moderator the proposal that had been made to him , and made the person to own it publickly before them ; for it was so recent , that he had neither a face to deny it , nor yet time to consider the inconveniency of acknowledging it . and mr. monro says , that this man confess'd before them all , that the libel was not true , and they were only desirous to be rid of mr. monro , that by his removal they might get a minister of their own persu●sions : upon which mr. monro took occasion to reason his case with the commission , and to convince them how much he was injured : but the moderator would not be rash in as●oiling him . anothe● day there fell out a remarkable passage , which shews what an honest witness a presbyterian will make . while mr. monro was pleading his case before the commissi●n , he had a nephew attending him without doors , who fell a discoursing with a countryman , whom he perceived very curious to know what the commission was a doing ; disguising his own sentiments , he asked the countryman , what was his business , he told him he was come in to help away the wicked curates : then the other said the curate of sterlin was presently before the commission , that it would be for the glory of god and good service done to the church to have him out , but that they wanted witnesses ; and so he asked if he would go in and witness against him , to which the fellow replyed , that indeed he knew him not , but for the glory of god and the good of the church he was very ready and willing to do it : just as he was saying this one of the presbyterian ministers passes by , and overhearing it , cryed to the fellow to take heed to himself , for he was amongst his enemies ; and he added that he ought not to witness falsly upon any account , that it might not be thought that they approved of such things . but in truth there are too many instances which prove that the presbyterian clergy look at truth as little as their witnesses that are adduced before them : for they do not receive the exculpation of any episcopal minister so readily and willingly as they do a libel or indictment against them : they mark punctually what has a tendency to render him odious or criminal , but nothing which makes for his vindication , or the clearing of his innocence . so this very commission , having charged mr. key of south-leith with drunkenness ; none of the witnesses could prove it ; and one of them was so far from doing it , that he evidently proved the contrary : upon which mr. hugh kennedy the moderator , bad the clerk write , nihil novit in causa . the witness understanding latin , replyed , sir , how can you say so , for i know very● much of the matter ; i have declared and made it evident to you , that mr. key was not drunk at that time you speak of : upon which another brother rose up and spoke in passion , sir , you were brought hither to witness against your minister , and not to clear him or plead for him . whence it is evident , that it was not the truth they were seeking ; and all the reason they had to conclude mr. key drunk at that time , was , because he had baptized two children in one day , and was at both their entertainments , as if one could not be witness to a feast without running to excess . during the sitting of this commission , the 30 day of ianuary , returned , which is the anniversary of king charles the first 's martyrd●m . the observation of it last year was opposed by the presbyterian clergy , they both refus'd to preach upon the subject matter and argument of the day ; and also to delay the going to sermon till ten a clock , which was desired , that the lords of council and session , and others of the nobility and gentry might come to church more solemnly as the day required . and because they were so strict upon their hours , the only remedy was to keep back the clock , which was made to strike eight only when it was ten by the course of the sun , because that is the ordinary hour of beginning their weekly sermons . it was mr. hugh kennedy's turn to preach , and tho the pulpit and all the rest of the church was hung with black , yet the little old fox came up in a gray cloak , and held forth his hour without touching the occasion directly or indirectly , either in his sermon or prayer : he durst not condemn the thing , because most people in the church knew he was an accessary to it . and i know a gentleman , who made haste to see him in the pulpit , saying , he thought the pulpit should break , or the black fall of while kennedy was in it , as well as the corps used to bleed at the presence of the murtherer . to which it was answered , that miracles were wrought to detect secret and hidden murthers , but not to attest those which were known and transacted in the face of the sun. this year , to get this anniversary duly observed , the court of session was adjourned for that day , and both lords of council and session sent some of their number to wait upon the commission , and to desire that they would appoint one to preach to them a sermon for the day ; sir colin campbel of arbruchell was one of them who was sent after he had delivered the request of the council and session , which all others think in such cases to be equivalent to a command : the moderator said to him , my lord , we are very busie and have much to do , and should not be hindered : and you and the rest all know well enough that it 's not agreeable to our persuasion to keep days . to which it might have been replyed , that none of them make any scruple of keeping days , which bring them in money , for they preach very frankly at the anniversary of george heriot in edinburgh , by which an hundreth marks scots come to the preachers pocket . the commission was so civil as to deliberate about the request : but the result was , that they could not obey it ; which the lords of council and session were highly offended with , as being an affront to their authority ; and therefore sent them word , that unless they did obey them , they would not suffer them to have any other sermon that day . the lord provost had orders to see that their will in this was observed ; who therefore forbad ringing of bells to the ordinary weekly sermon , but forgot to call for the keys of the church doors , so that they caused the trone church to be opened , whither they went and set up mr. shields to preach , which was interpreted a greater contempt of the authority of council and session , than if it had been any other person ; because this mr. shields in a book of his , entituled , the hind let loose , doth expresly defend and justifie the murther of king charles the first , and the assassination of the archbishop of st. andrews . in the beginning of his sermon he said , it may be expected that i should speak something of that man that dyed forty years ago : he either dyed justly or unjustly : if unjustly , it was the better for himself : if justly , we need not trouble our selves more about him . the rest of his sermon was stuffed with invectives against bishops , and the episcopal clergy and the church of england ; and he held forth , that it was very unlawful to keep any confederacy with papists and idolaters . this mr. shields is one of the three cameronians , who addressed to the assembly , as was said before in the historical relation thereof : since that time he hath published a pamphlet , called , an account of the methods and motives of the late union and submission to the assembly : in which all the steps of his and his two brothers proceedings are narrated , and the larger paper published ; which the assembly thought to have suppressed altogether , because it contain'd some reflections on the members of the assembly . when all is considered , the coming in of these cameronians appears a kind of mystery which cannot be well understood , for there seems not to be a true union , but only a kind of truce for present conveniency ; or if there be any union , the condescendence is upon the assembly's side ; so that it may be said , the assembly has turned cameronian : for mr. shi●lds and his two brethren declare , that they have not retracted any thing they said or did formerly ; and as they would not condemn their own principles and practices , so they have laid heavy and grievous things to the charge of those in the assembly , inconsistent with the principles of true covenanted presbyterians ; which , as mr. shields observes , the assembly has not contradicted nor refuted . and as their silence is a tacite confession of their guilty , which they also acknowledge in general terms , in the act and reasons for the fast , so the receiving men into their communion without check or censure , who teach publickly in their sermons , and maintain in their books , tenets , and positions , which are both scandalous to religion , and also destructive of human society : i say this is an evidence that they are of the same mind , and have no abhorrence of such scandalous and pernicious principles , as those men have vented . but though the assembly and mr. shields , mr. linning , and mr. boide have made an agreement , without coming to particulars ▪ or expressing the mutual terms or conditions ; yet the other cameronians refused to patch up a peace so easily ; they require express and particular declarations from the other presbyterians , and desire that what mr. shi●lds and his two brethren did , may be considered as their own private deed , and not the deed of the whole party : and it is said the breach is rather wider than it was before . mr. howston , who now heads the cameronians , refused to submit his call to the kirk of kilsyth , to the presbytery of glasgow ; and when one who was sent from that presbytery to preach there , possessed the pulpit , it 's reported , that he went up to a loft or gallery in the church , and instead of instructing the people , they fell soul upon one another : whatever be of this , it 's certain the parish was divided upon this head , and one part followed the one , and another the other . to such a height is this difference arrived , that it canbe decided by no meaner person than the king ; so that mr. howston went to flanders that king william might interpose his authority for repairing the injury he had received ; and i am told that he not only complained of his own treatment , but also represented to his majesty , that the assembly and other presbyterians took measures that were not good either for church or kingdom . thus , though they will not acknowledge the king to be the head of their kirk , yet they , as well as others , will have recourse to him on occasion . he succeeded so well , that he procured two letters from the king in his behalf , one to the council , another to the presbytery of glasgow : he delivered the first to my lord crawford , and went with the other to glasgow : the presbytery received it ; and to prevent any protestation he might make for their not obeying it , they said to him , that some of the brethren should be appointed to confer with him ; and in the mean time they dissolved the meeting and did nothing . upon this he returned to edinburgh to be redressed by the council ; but when he came there he found that his letter had never been produc'd , and crawford , to whom he had delivered it , had taken journey for london , so that he is still where he was : and by this it appears , that kings recommendations avail but little with some men. this howston has a brother , who also will not unite with our assembly men ; but goes up and down drawing people from them , as they were wont to do from the episcopal ministers : being found in edinburgh , he was shut up in prison , and detained several months ; till of late with difficulty he hath procured his enlargment . so little reason is there to talk of their harmony and union , except it be in the opposition , which both make to the episcopal party , that the cameronians , to distinguish themselves the better from the other presbyterians , have taken up a new name , viz. that of the society ; they do not add , of iesus , lest they should be taken for the disciples of ignatius loyola . those of this sect sometimes begin their meetings at ten or twelve at night , or at the dawning of the morning , and they use to be well armed with swords and staves ; and i 'm told there have been hard blows given betwixt them and the other presbyterians in the southern and western shives , as happened in the late times : so now we may expect variety of sects and opinions , which will ruin religion , as well as disturb the publick peace and quiet . for fanaticism is a spiritual vertigo ; which makes people reel and stagger from side to side , and run about till they fall into atheism and gross impiety . to return to the commissi●n , which sat down again upon wednesday the fifteenth of april : when they were met , sir william leccart the king's sollicitor came and presented to the moderator a letter from the king , which was not received with that respect which was due . the moderator , without rising from his seat , bad him give it in to the clerk , telling him , that there was very much noise of that letter : for indeed it was not only talked of , but also several copies of it were spread up and down both city and country . then the moderator turn'd to the clerk , and said , man take off the scab of the wamb of it , and see what 's within it , for so , as is said , he called the king's seal upon it . this letter was the effect of that address , which those commissionated by the episcopal clergy , who were still in place , made to the king before his going to flanders ; whither also two of them followed him , viz. dr. canaries and mr. lesk , that they might even there negotiate the affairs of their party , and get that stop put to the proccedings of the presbyterians ; which was promised them , but which could not be presently given , because of the king's haste to go beyond seas . this is a true copy of the letter . to the right reverend and our well-beloved ministers and elders , commissioners of the general assembly of the church of our ancient kingdom of scotland . right reverend and well-beloved , we greet you well : whereas there hath been humble application made to us , by several ministers , for themselves and others , who lately served under episcopacy in that our ancient kingdom , we have thought good , as well for the good and advantage of that church , as the publick iustice and welfare of the nation , and the interest of our government , to signifie our pleasure to you , that you make no distinction of men , otherwise well qualified for the ministry , who are willing to join with you , in the acknowledgment of , and submission to the government of church and state , as it is by law now established , though they have formerly conformed to the law introducing episcopacy ; and that ye give them no vexation or disturbance for that cause , or upon that head ; and that in regard many of these ministers are turned out summary , without any sentence or order of law , if such shall be called to be ministers of any congregations , by plurality of heritors and elders , we judge it reasonable that you admit them , where there is no just cause to the contrary , without making any difficulty . whereas some of these ministers complain of severities and hardships by several sentences pronounced against them , we think fit to give you opportunity to review what cases shall be brought before you , that your selves may give such just redresses as the matter requireth , before we take any further notice of these complaints . we will assure you we will protect you , and maintain the government of the church , in that our ancient kingdom , by presbytery , without suffering any invasion to be made upon it : and therefore we will expect ; that you will avoid all occasions of divisions and resentments , and cordially unite with those that will agree with you in the doctrine of the protestant religion , and own the confession of faith , which the law hath established as the standard of the communion of that church . and it is our pleasure , that during our absence out of britain , until we give our further directions , that you proceed to no more process or any other business , and dispose your selves to give out your best means , for healing and reconciling differnces ; and apply your selves to give impartial redresses upon any complaints that shall be offered unto you , against sentences already past , that we be not obliged to give our selves any further trouble thereanent . so we bid you heartily farewel . given at our court in the hague , feb. 13. 1690. and of our reign the third year . sic subscribitur , by his majesty's command , jo. dalrymple . when this letter was read , the anger and displeasure of the brethren was to be seen in their countenances : one said that there was no regard to be had to it , because the king's hand was not at it . another replied , that whether it had come only from the secretary himself , or been sent by the order of the king , there was no reason to take any notice of it , or be concerned with it ; for it proceeded from a mistake and mis-information , as if they had turned out any summarly , without any sentence or order of law , whereas they were conscious of no such thing . it is reported of the moderator , that when the contents of this letter were first imparted to him , he said , if the king had not so many men at his back , he would make two of it : but a person of honour assured me , that when he was speaking to him of it , his answer was , that the king would be as wise to let these matters alone . after much deliberation , it was resolved to write an answer to the king , and to send two of their number to negotiate their affairs with his majesty , and to remove the prejudices he might have conceived against them by false representations . the persons who were thought fit to be sent , were mr. iohn law , and mr. david blair . the letter which they were to carry with them , was but once read publickly ; nor did the moderator suffer any at the time , to propose his judgment about it ; for he said , that there was a private committee appointed for that matter , and so he desired every one to come in apart by himself , and there to declare his mind , what he would have added to it , or taken away from it : which was done either to keep the thing more secret , or that the draught of the letter , which the moderator and other leading men had made , might pass more easily without any change . the king's letter required two things : one was to redress the grievances which the episcopal ministers complained of : the other was , to forbear the proceeding any more against them , so long as the king was absent from britain . they had no mind to grant the first at all ; but in compliance with the last , they thought it convenient to stop a little , that they might not give their adversaries occasion to irritate the king against them , and to withdraw his favour , which was their only present support . the yielding to this , was only a delaying their affairs , till they were better stated , which afterwards might be ea●ily compensated ; and by doing so , they would dispose the king's mind for receiving their defences for what was already done . so leaving all things as they were , the commission was adjourned till the next qarterly sessi●n . but it must not be forgot , that they left particular presbyteries and synods , to act their part in the mean time , for they issued out no order to stop them , neither made they any intimation of the king's letter , or of his will and pleasure therein unto them ; so that when it was objected by any episcopal minister , they still pretended ignorance . this month the synod of lothian and tueddale met at edinburgh , and concluded a monthly fast to be kept for some time : for this end , the secret council was addressed to , that they might ratifie and approve the same by an act : which indeed they did ; but duke hamilton would admit of no other reason for the fast , than that of the present war , and the king's expedition to flanders . this did not a little displease the brethren , who , to delude and amuse the people , and to serve their own particular ends , had heap'd up a number of such reasons , as the assembly gave for the former fast : wherefore , because the council would not accept of , and agree to the act and reasons as they were drawn up by them , they resolved to shew no regard to what the council had done : so at the intimation of this new fast , they did take no notice of the act of council or proclamation published by them ; but enjoyned it in the synod's name and authority , reading to the people the act and reasons of the synod for it . particularly mr. kirkton in the tolbooth church of edinburgh , said , that they ought to look to this paper which came from the synod for their direction , in the end and nature of this fast , and not to that other which was selling up and down the town ; by which he meant the act and proclamation of the council . the earl of crawford and two more of the council were present . one of them said , that the council could not sit with this , nor let it pass without censure ; for their authority was baffled and affronted : but it seems it was found convenient to take no notice of it , lest they should be more baffled and affronted , by medling with these peremptory and stubborn kirk-men , who are like an imperious wife , that will both have all her own will , and a part of her husbands . about the middle of iuly , the commission met again . some few days before , the two ministers they had sent over to flanders , returned , of whose reception by the king , there were various reports : but in answer to that letter which they carried from the commissioners , there came a second letter from the king , which was ordered to be delivered to the two ministers , if they returned before the meeting of the commission : but if they were late a-coming , another was appointed to give it to the commission at its first sitting down . so the night before mr. iames elphinston went with it to mr. iohn law , and mr. david blair , who presented it to the commission the next day , with an account of their negotiation and diligence . a copy of the second letter from the king to the commission of the general assembly . to the right reverend and our well-beloved ministers and elders , commissioners of the general assembly of the church of our ancient kingdom of scotland , w. rex . right reverend and well-beloved , we greet you well . by the letter presented to us from you , by mr. john law , and mr. david blair , ministers , your two commissioners , we do perceive you sufficiently understood our intentions contained in our letter , directed to you from the hague ; and we are well-pleased with what you write , both as to your own unanimous inclinations to redress those , who may be lesed , and to unite with such of the clergy , who have served under episcopacy , and fallen neither under the qualifications of the act of parliament , nor the terms of our letter , and that you are sufficiently instructed by the general assembly to receive them : from all which , we do expect a speedy and happy success ; and that ye will be so frank and charitable in that matter , that we cannot doubt but that there shall be so great a progress made in this union betwixt you , before our return to britain , that we shall then find no cause to continue that stop , which at present we see necessary ; and that neither you , nor any commissioner church-meeting , do meddle in any process or business , that may concern the purging out of the episcopal ministers : and we do not restrain you a● to other matters relative to the church or your selves ; nor did we ever intend to protect any in the ministry , who were truly scandalous , erroneous , or supinely negligent ; and therefore we did propose their subscribing the confession of faith , as the standard of the church-communion , which takes off the suspicion of errour : and as for those who are really scandalous , insufficient , and supinely negligent , if such shall apply , either by themselves or with others , though they were willing to acknowledge our authority , and to join with you , we do not oblige you to receive such ; and in that case where there is just cause , you may proceed to a fair impartial inquiry , in order to their being received in the government of the church , but not in relation to the turning them out of their benefices and ministry : as the act of our parliament has left them to our further orders , we will not doubt of the sincere performance of what you have so fairly promised in your letter , whereby you will best recommend your selves to us , and answer that trust reposed in you , by the act of our parliament . so we bid you heartily farewel . given at our court at aprebrux , the ●● / ●● of june , 1691. and of our reign the third year . by his majesty's command , sic subscribitur , jo. dalrympe . ever since this revolution , the kingdom of scotland has been divided about the government of the church . the episcopal party have been upon the defensive side . first , they studied to preserve the government of episcopacy it self ; and for that end addressed to the parliament , which proved altogether in vain . in the next place , when presbytery was established by act of parliament , the episcopal clergy petitioned for a share of the government of the church , or at least to be secured from the iurisdiction of the presbyterians , who had declared themselves a stated party against them . but neither was this harken'd to . then , as their last refuge , they considered how to save themselves , their personal rights and priviledges , that they might sustain no prejudice , upon the account of their private sentiments and perswasion . and for this cause , they resolved to address king william himself , seeing the applications made to others were so ineffectual : therefore dr. canaries was sent from some of the clergy , on the south-side of tay ; mr. mac gill , and mr. small from angus ; dr. gaider , mr. leisk and mr. fobess from the diocess of aberdeen . this last design succeeded better than any of the former ; for the king thought their request reasonable , and promised them his protection in this matter ; and in both his letters to the commission of the assembly , he required this , as that which was most just and equitable . nay , the refusing it was judged so unreasonable , that it is said , that those presbyterian ministers , who were sent up from the rest , did expresly promise to receive such episcopal ministers , not only into communion , but into the government , as could not be excepted against , either for life or doctrine . and which is yet more , it appears from king william's second letter , that the commission has given some such thing under their hand . wherefore to try their sincerity , it was thought fit to put them to it , by making some of the episcopal clergy address to them . the nature and form of the address was drawn up , and concerted at london , and sent down to scotland with mr. mac gill and mr. small ; for it was judged requisite they should address all after the same manner ; the tenour of which is as followeth . to the reverend the ministers and others by law impower'd to establish the judicatories of the church of scotland : the humble petition of the ministers of the episcopal perswasion , humbly sheweth , that whereas episcopacy is by law abolished in this kingdom , we who have in the most dangerous times manifested our zeal against popery , are now ready to give all the assurances that are or can be by law required of us , of our aversion to popery , of our firmness to the protestant religion , of our duty and fidelity to their majesties , king william and queen mary ; we are further ready and willing in our respective charges and stations to do every thing that is incumbent on us , as ministers of the gospel , for advancing the power of religion , or repressing of scandal and vice , and for the securing the peace and quiet of their majesties government , and to act in church-judicatories for carrying on of these ends , without any regard to the difference of persuasion in matters that are not fundamental . we do therefore humbly and earnestly desire , that in order to these ends , we may be suffered to act as presbyters in this church , in our several precincts and paroches . this being proposed to the episcopal clergy , several arguments were used to persuade the subscribing it ; which some declined fo● one reason , and some for another . some guessing the success from the presbyterian temper , thought it would be a prostituting their reputation to offer a thing which would not be accepted : others apprehended that to be yielding of the episcopal cause to the presbyterians , and therefore would not do it . but in the diocess of aberdeen , the most part condescended , and gave a commission to mr. leisk , to wait upon the commission at edinburgh so soon as it should sit , and in their name to address them as above ; which he did : but the moderator said to him , that they could not receive it ; for there was a particular commission appointed for all on the north side of tay ; and if the ministers of these places had any thing to say , they ought to say it to them . mr. leisk replied , that there was no commission sitting in the north at that time ; that he was moderator of both commissions , and he judged it all one which of them he applied himself to ! that the king's letter was directed to them , which required them to receive such as should make application unto them ; and if they refused it , he would protest , and take instrument . the moderator bad him do what he pleased ; and so after protestation , he removed . mr. small went along with mr. leisk ; and while mr. leisk was talking with the moderator , one of the brethren rises from his seat , came towards mr. small , took him by the shoulder , and with a most frowning countenance said to him , ye are a pack of prophane raskals , and deserve no pity , neither ought to be received . after which , he returned to his seat , leaving mr. small surprized with his discretion and civility in such a place , and at such a time . the same day , or the day following , mr. tho. wood , minister at dumb●r , and mr. william denune , went and offered to the commission the same address subscribed by about a dozen of parsons ; which being done by ministers on the south-side of tay , they had not the former pretence for rejecting it . they craving an answer , the moderator said to them , sirs , ye 're very hasty● you took time to draw it up , and you must allow us time to answer it : and so he put them off for some days . at their next application , they were desired to explain some parts of the address , as what they meant by acting as presbyters ; whether they meant the acting separably by themselves independently on them ; or if it was to 〈◊〉 understood of their joint concurrence with them . to this it was answered , that they had it not in their commission to make any explications , and therefore could not do it . so upon the 22d of iuly , they had this answer given them . the commission for visitations on the south-side of tay. appointed by the late general assembly of this church , having considered a petition presented to them by mr. thomas wood , and mr. william denune , signed by them and twelve other ministers , who call themselves of the episcopal persuasion , do find that some of these petitioners are deposed , some suspended , both of them for gross immoralities ; others of them are in processes referred by the general assembly to this commission , and some declared contumacious by the presbyteries of the bounds , where they have their residence ; and some live without the bounds committed to the inspection of this commission . they do also find , that not only these petitioners do not look upon this commission as a judicatory of this church , but also do mistake their work , by ascribing to them a power to establish the judicatories of this church , which is not committed to them by the general assembly ; and though the commission be satisfied to hear of their zeal against popery , and firmness in the protestant religion , duty and fidelity to their majesties ; yet they find , that seeing the petitioners have not offered to own and subscribe the confession of faith , which by law is made the standard of the doctrine of this church , they give no security against errours ; nor do they offer to submit and concur with the present established government of this church , according to the instruction of the general assembly , much less to acknowledge it , as is required by his majesty's gracious letter : and whereas in the petition , the petitioners seem to desire an allowance for setting up a government separate from , and independent upon that which is established by law , and have refused , when desired by the commission , to explain either for their brethren , or for themselves , this or any other expression that seemed dark and doubtful to the commission ; declaring also expresly , that they had no further to say , than what was contained in the petition , and that they could do nothing separately by themselves without their constituents , therefore on these grounds the commission cannot grant this petition , as it stands in terminis , however willing they be to receive such of them as personally shall be found duly qualified according to the instructions of the assembly , and his majesty's grac●ous letter mr. wood and mr. denune having got this last answer , they made a protestation against the commission , for refusing them the favour which the king's letter required of them . some blamed both the ministers and the commission ; and thought that neither of them acted so candidly as did become them ; for while both pretended a willingness to unite , each of them kept at a distance , and studied what might hinder , rather than what might fu●ther the union . it was said , that the ministers did needlesly offend the commission by the title of their address ; for seeing they made no scruple of addressing to the commission , they might have made as little of giving them their due title : and it was either mere nicety to refuse it , or it was done with a design to pique them , that they might not accept of the address . again it was said , that they were very unreasonable in refusing to explain the ambiguous terms of the address , and that they gave the commission a good pretext for denying their request , when they would not tell what was the nature and import of it ; for the commission could not be obliged to grant what they did not understand . on the other hand , the answer of the commission was found fault with very much , and it was said , that by it , they clearly shewed that they were no wise willing to receive episcopal ministers , whatsoever they had professed or wrote to the king. the very addressing to them was thought such a condescendence in episcopal ministers , as to deserve a better and more kindly reception than that which it met with . and the commission was censured not only as very indiscreet , but as most unjust , for giving them these odious epithets in the beginning of their answer ; for there was but one or two , whom they had any shadow or p●e●ence to name so ; and even these two offered to vindicate themselves , if they were allowed a fair hearing . the greatest part of those , who subscribed , were neither under process nor censure , nor had they been at any time libelled ; so that the answer was unjust to them , whatever it might be to the rest . further , it was very unjust , to reject the address , because the confession of faith was not offered to be subscribed ; for though this was not expressed in terminis , yet it was clearly enough implied , and it was then only time to make that objection , when the confession was put to them and refused . finally , though the ministers keep to generals , and refused to explain what they meant by acting as presbyters ; yet that was thought no just or sufficient reason for denying their request : for if they could not grant it in the largest extent , it was in their power to set limitations to it . they might have been sure that episcopal ministers would not be received at all , if not under the notion and character of true and lawful presbyters , without being obliged to receive new ordination : and in this sense they ought to have interpreted the petition , unless the ministers had , in express terms , craved more . and as they could not be blamed for refusing to allow them to act independently ; so their not admitting them as presbyters , and not consenting to their having the power and privilege of such , which was all that seemed to be required , is a clear demonstration that either they did not own them to be presbyters , or that they did not desire to join with them . they had so few ministers of their own party , that it might been thought , they would have been glad to have received any that were willing to come over to them ; but , in truth , they chused rather to want , than to admit of any who had served under episcopacy ; and thought the one a less inconvenience than the other , as appears from the treatment , which some ministers , who were called anti-testers , met with . five of these who refused the test , viz. mr. lundy , mr. craig , mr. paterson , mr. marchiston , and mr. carmichael made application to them , both at their last s●ssion in april , and this in iuly : they thought their case more favourable than that of other episcopal ministers ; and it was said that they designed to go a very great length : i cannot tell positively what it was they would have done ; for they resolved to deliver their mind by word of mouth , and not to give any thing under their hand , but they would not so much as give them access ; they would neither hear them nor take their case into consideration . thus it is evident , that they were resolved not to admit any ministers of the episcopal persuasion , nor any who had heretofore served under the episcopal government : for though the king had required this in his letter ; yet by their instructions they were enjoined to receive none , but such as they had ground to believe would be true and faithful to the government . and it was concluded , that none could be trusted to , who did not renounce their former sentiments , abjure episcopacy , and cry peccavi for their complyance with it . but it might be reasonable enough to trust to them who did this , because such would be so much abhorred by the episcopal party whom they deserted , that they would then find it their interest to keep up presbytery . this was expresly required of mr. thomas wilkie , minister of the tolbooth church : for when he humbly supplicated them to be received , making great promises of an entire submission to their government ; the moderator ask'd if he had no more to say , and pressed him to declare himself more fully . to which mr. wilkie replyed , that he thought he had said enough , and given a sufficient declaration of his mind . and indeed perhaps he had said more upon the head than could be well justified . yet nothing would satisfie them unless he would say that his compliance with episcopacy was a sin : and because he made a scruple of that , they obstructed his business , as was related before , and refused to receive him . but upon these terms they admitted one mr. menzies , mr. hugh nisbet and mr. arrot minister of ginglekirk , who are the only persons that have gone entirely over to the presbyterian party , and the episcopal party have sustained no loss by their desertion . for mr. hugh nisbet has the character of being ignorant , insufficient and scandalous ; mr. arrot , besides that he is ignorant , he is so sordidly covetous , that he is not ashamed of any base thing , if it will bring in filthy lucre : to save himself from the rabble , he , at the very beginning , went to the pulpit with invectives against the episcopal government , and was not short of the wildest cameronian in raillery and vile expressions : and that he might oblige the presbyterians to let him keep his possession , he offered to put on sackcloth and to do penance in as may churches as they pleased . and as for mr. menzies ; he was first a hill-preacher ; next he submitted to episcopacy , and received a church under that government ; which afterward he deserted , and run again to the hills , and was in the rebellion at bothwell-bridge , which rendred him obnoxious to the laws : and that he might escape the due punishment of his crime , he surrendred himself to the mercy of the government , and took and swore the oath of the test. by these instances it doth appear what qualification is requisite to recommend one to the favour of the commission . and as we have seen one part of the king's letter disobeyed ; so neither was the other regarded , which required the redressing the grievances which the episcopal ministers complained of . no censure was abated , no process revised ; nor did they recal the sentences of suspension and deposition pronounced by particular presbyteries and synods against ministers , whom all the world knew to be innocent . but whether the censures were inflicted justly or unjustly , they continued them . and to make it evident that some episcopal ministers had reason to complain of partiality and injustice , i shall , instead of many instances , which would make me tedious , narrate fully the case of mr. simon cuper minister at dumfermlin , and mr. george iohnson , minister of brunt-island . but first i will divert the reader with an account of something which happen'd in fife while this commission was sitting . the noise of the king 's two letters spread abroad , and the intimation of his favourable inclinations towards episcopal ministers who would own his government , both alarm'd and awaken'd the presbyterian party , and put them upon divers inventions how to prevent what they so little desired , and what they thought would prove prejudicial to them at the last . this was thought the best expedient , which might keep the episcopal clergy from owning and submitting to the civil government , because it was upon the hope and promise of this that so much favour was procured to them . and to effectuate this , it was resolved to make use of their common stratagem ; that is , to let the rabble loose upon such ministers as they would be rid of , and to fright them from a compliance . indeed they have not prosecuted this design ; but the attempt upon the minister of kemback in fife is a sufficient proof of it : an account of which i have from one who was present , who upon a mistake was near to have suffer'd for the other ; and it is as followeth : on iuly the 22 , 1691. about twelve a clock at night there came two men and knocked at the gate , of the minister of kembock's house , desiring a servant to direct two strangeer gentlemen , who had lost the road through the darkness of the night . a short while after , they came up to the chamber window , and asked the same favour in the name of one andrew clepan , a near relation of the laird of kembock , and who belongs to major balfour's troop , which was lying at st. andrew's some four miles distant . the minister himself was not at home , for he had gone the day before to angus , to visit his father who was sick , and there was only a deprived minister lodging at his house at the time . this stranger made them no answer at first , apprehending they were rogues who were come to rob the house . when therefore their lyes and fair language proved ineffectual , they began more plainly to discover themselves , calling at the window to open in the king and council's name , threatning , if it was not done , to pistol the minister , and fire the house about him . then the stranger answer'd from within , your design cannot be just , seeing ye have twice made use of lyes ; the minister of kembock , whom you pretend to seek , is not at home ; i am unknown to you , and you do not pretend to search for me , and therefore i entreat you to be gone . upon this answer they beat up the windows , fired pistols into the chamber and thrust in their swords , which made the stranger leave his bed and run naked out of the chamber ; for his cloaths were so near the window , that he durst not go to fetch them . finding the lowest windows well barred with iron , they scaled the house , and attempted to get in at the upper windows : but being disappointed there too , they next batter'd the door of the house with great stones , and at last , by frequent pushing with a long tree , or pole , which they found in the closs , loosed the bands , broke the lock , and forced open the door : but nevertheless they durst not venture forwards at first , fearing that he who was within had laid some snare for them , or that he was in readiness to kill the first who advanc'd . this made them with great oaths and strong asseverations , promise safety to his person , which somewhat encourag'd him . but as soon as they found him , they dragg'd him in his shirt to the gate , abusing him with most opprobrious language , as hell-hound , s●ul-murdering dog , &c. he assured them he was not the minister of the place , whom they pretended to seek , but acknowledged that he was a minister deprived by the council ; and they still supposing otherwise , twelve of them in country cloths , with drawn swords and cocked pistols , made him twice kneel , swearing that they would allow him but one minute for prayer ; and that all of them were resolved to have the honou● of taking his heart blood. but while he was in this sad case , expecting the worst , a boy , whom they called guide , when he perceived they were in earnest , cryed out vehemently and bitterly , that man is not the minister of this place , for , said he , i know the minister very well . ten of them upon this went aside to consult the matter , and return'd with a resolution to let him go , if he would swear never to preach again . he asked if ever any of them had oaths forced upon them ? two of them answering yes ; he asked in the next place , if they did keep them ; and they saying , that they thought they were not bound to do it : then he replyed , why would you impose an oath upon me , which your selves acknowledge one is not bound to keep ? after some communing , they agreed to accept of his oath never to preach under king william , nor to pray for him , nor to accept of any allowances from the general assembly ; assuring him that it was resolved that king william 's letter should never do any good to an episcopal soul-murdering hell-bound . though they spared his life , yet they pulled his shirt twice or thrice over his head , and beat his naked back and breast with the buts of their musquets : and before they parted with him , they sent some of their number to find out the schoolmaster , and church-beddel , whom they also threatned and treated barbarously , to make them deliver the keys of the church , and swear never more to officiate in it . the beddel hesitating a little , one of them advanc'd to pistol him : and would certainly have done it , if the pistol had not by a happy providence misgiven . then the fear of death made both him and the schoolmaster do , what was required of them ▪ they declared that they were put upon this by persons of the greatest quality in the kingdom , and that they were obliged to give account of their diligence to the assembly , that the one half of their company was gone to the next preaching episcopal minister , and that it was resolv'd none should escape . as they were parting , one of them said , it is my iudgment you should not let this fellow pass so easily : complyers and non-complyers should be treated alike . upon which a part of them return'd ; which the minister perceiving , went and hid himself in a field of corn till they were gone , being all the while in his shirt , for they never allowed him time to put on his cloaths . what hindred the other party , or what stop either of them met with is not known ; but afterwards they came not near any other minister . a true representation of mr. simon cupar , and mr. james graham , ministers of dumfermlin , their case ; with the pretended presbytery of dumfermlin . upon the third of september , 1690 , the ministers at dumfermlin were cited to compeir before the presbytory there , the tenth instant , to hear and see themselves deposed . the ministers being certainly informed that no libel had at that time been offer'd against them to the presbytery , nor any warrant given by the presbytery for citing them ( mr. frazer of brae , their moderator , having declar'd to the laird of pitliver , and mr. george gray , minister at beath , that he knew nothing of a libel against them , nor of any order for citing them ) thought not themselves obliged to answer that illegal citation , order'd by some private cabal , probably the compilers of the libels that were to be given in . whereupon the heritours of the parish , and magistrates of the burgh formed a representation , and gave it in by some of their number to the presbytery , complaining of the injury done them and their ministers , craving that they would be pleased to give the authors such rebuke as the matter deserved ; and withal desiring that if there were any particular libels offer'd against their ministers , or any of them , the presbytery would be pleased to impart the same to them , to the effect that they might give due information concerning their ministers , of their life , conversation , and deportment in their charge . mr. iames graham , one of the ministers , went also to the presbytery , and in his own and his collegue's name , complained of encroachment made on the presbytery's authority , and the injury done to them , desiring , that at least they would declare that citation void and null : after some consultation , the presbytery returned answer to the heritors and magistrates , that they sustained the citation , and accordingly caused call the ministers at the church-door : none of them compeired : a little after they sent their officer , desiring the ministers to come to the presbytery . mr. graham went ; the moderator told him , the presbytery had sustained the citation ; mr. graham pleaded that it could not be sustained , being both informal and illegal given without any order from the presbytery , appealing to the moderator himself , who had lately declared that he knew nothing of a libel against the ministers of dumfermlin , nor of their being cited ; and , producing the citation it self , shewed that it was in prima instantia , to hear and see the sentence of deposition passed . the moderator confessed that he had said so , but now he remembred , there had been a motion before them at their last meeting concerning the m●nisters of dumfermlin : the draught of the citation he acknowledged was informal , the first citation being only to answer to the relevancy of the libel . mr. graham is removed , and , after a little while , called ; the moderator told him , that though they sustained the citation , yet , in his favours who had compeired , they passed from it , and gave him the eighth of october to answer to the relevancy of his libel : he pleading the same favour to his collegue , it was absolutely refused . that day mr. simon cupar , the other minister , is cited to compeir before the presbytery the seventeenth instant , to hear and see probation led against him ; the which day the heritors and magistrates went to the presbytery and insisted on their former representation , and pleaded that the first citation might be declared null . notwithstanding of which , the presbytery proceeded and called mr. cupar before them ; the moderator told him , that by his not answering the first citation , he had forfaulted the benefit of objecting against the relevancy of the libel ; that the presbytery had judged it relevant , and that now he was called to hear and see probation led . mr. cupar answered , that he had not forfaulted the benefit of being heard on the relevancy of his libel , seeing it had been sufficiently represented to them by his collegue the last day , that that first citation was informal and illegal ; that his collegue had compeired , not as answering that citation , but as a plaintiff in both their names : that the citation was previous to any libel offered to , or considered by the presbytery , and without any iudicial order , or warrant granted by them , that the citation was to hear and see himself deposed , and not to answer to the relevancy of a libel ; and therefore he ought as yet to be heard on that head . the moderator answered , that they acknowledged the informality of the first citation , but sustained the legality of it , seeing it had been proved before them , that there was a motion the day before of citing the ministers of dumfermlin . mr. cupa● urged , that a motion was not a sufficient ground , except a libel had been presented , considered , and warrant given thereupon , &c. he is removed , and , after a little space , called on . the moderator makes return , that the presbytery sustained that first citation , and were resolved now to proceed to the examination of the witnesses . mr. cupar pleaded , that before they proceeded to examine witnesses , he might be allowed to see the libel , and to give in his answers to it , because his answers might perhaps prevent the necessity of putting any to their oaths ; and if any thing should be deponed , which he could disprove , he behoved either to be debarred from just defence , or an occasion must be given to contradictory oaths . this was absolutely refused him , only a double of the libel is given him ; and the moderator told him , that though immediately after the deposition of the witnesses , they might proceed to sentence , yet he should have the eighth of october to hear the depositions , and make answer . the heritors pleaded , that , conform to an act of parliament , mr. cupar might be present at the examination of the witnesses , ( which being denied , alledging that act reached not church-iudicatories , ) they protested and took instrument . then pleading that they might be present : this also was denied . notwithstanding several who were not members of the iudicatory , were admitted . the witnesses , about thirty , were called ; five only compeired at that time ; against whom mr. cupar objected not : they are sworn ; the rest of the witnesses answered , some that day , some on the morrow ; mr. cupar was not called , nor enquired if he had any thing to object against them : one robert mody , who had an hand in forming the libel , officiates as clerk at the deposition of witnesses ; whose depositions were not read over to them , nor they required to subscribe the same . upon the second of october mr. graham is cited to the eighth , to hear and see probation led against him , and receives a double of his libel , notwithstanding the presbytery had allowed him that day to be heard on the relevancy of his libel : an evidence that the citations were not ordered by the presbytery , but by the libellers . october the eighth , the heritors and magistrates made a second address to the presbytery , complaining of their procedure against their ministers , and bearing an ample testimony of their life , conversation and deportment in the exercise of their ministry , &c. notwithstanding of which they proceeded to call mr. cupar . the moderator proposed two questions to him : first , by what authority he could presume to exercise any ministerial office independent upon them , seeing the power by which he was installed , was dissolved ? secondly , whether or not he owned their authority ? and by another minister it was proposed that he should be charged with his absence from the several dyets of the presbytery , since their sitting at dumfermlin . mr. cupar answered , that he came to hear the depositions of the witnesses , and to make his defence , but understood not the design of these questions , seeing by the laws of the land he was in bona fide , to exercise his ministerial function , and had not hitherto declined their iudicatory . hereupon the heritors gave in another paper ; in which , narrating their former representation , and their address that day , with the presbytery's slighting of both , they protested against the presbytery's further procedure ; and did appeal from them to the general assembly ensuing : upon several grounds therein contained , which being read , and instruments taken . mr. cupar did in his own name also appeal from them to the said assembly , upon the reasons contained in the heritor's appeal , and others , which he reserved liberty to himself more largely to propose . about an hour after they sent for mr. cupar ; the moderator told him , the presbytery had considered his process , and had referred the same to the general assembly ; and in the mean time they did prohibit him to exercise any ministerial office , until the meeting of the said assembly , without giving any ground on which they founded such a censure . mr. cupar told them , he thought strange of that step of their procedure , that after appeals and the process referred by themselves , they should proceed to sentence . about six a clock mr. graham is called ; he complained that though the presbytery had given him that day to be heard on the relevancy of his libel ; yet he had received a citation to hear and see probation led . the moderator disown'd that citation , and offered to burn it . tomorrow at nine a clock is assigned him , and the witnesses are apud act a cited to the same dyet . after he had been heard on the articles of his libel , the relevancy of it is referred to the general assembly , and he apud act a summoned to the same , the witnesses were dismissed unexamined . the libel against mr. cupar . that , first , he has been a great persecutor of the godly , such as through tenderness of conscience could not go along and join with him in his apostacy , by sending of his elders in the year 〈◊〉 to inform against them , to the judges appointed for that effect , at cupar of fiffe , whereby great trouble did arise to many good persons , as fining , imprisonment , &c. secondly , that he has been supinely negligent , contrary to 1 tim. 3. 2. as , 1. that he doth not visit families ministerially . 2. hath not privately and personally stirred up the people to the duties of holiness . 3. in neglecting to visit the sick. 4. that he omits to lecture or explain the scriptures , according to an order of the general assembly for that effect . thirdly , that he hath horribly profaned the ordinance of the lord's supper , by his admitting of unclean persons to that holy ordinance , &c. that he admits and keeps on his session , ungodly scandalous elders , some of which are drunkards , tiplers , others swearers , and the most part ignorant , and neglecters of the worship of god in their families , profaners of the sabbath . fourthly , that he hath not brought several scandalous persons , such as adulterers and others , nor so much as endeavoured to bring them to repentance , nor to undergo just censures in order thereto . fifthly , that he hath sacrilegiously robb'd the poor of the charitable offerings of the people ; which is aggravated by this , that he hath bestowed the same to carry on persecution against poor , well-meaning , godly people ; for the proof of which , the session-book is required . additional article : that he entred and hath been admitted to the charge of the parioch of dumfermlin , by presentation of the patron , collation , and institution of the prelate , and that against the consent of the generality of the godly and serious persons within the said parioch ; and that he hath in all things joyned and complied with , and assisted prelacy , contrary to the word of god , established law of the church , and the lands solemn engagements thereto ; and by taking the oath of the test , has manifested his incorrigibleness : for which , and the fore-named scandals , the generality of the serious and godly in this place never accepted of him , or received him as minister , but have been groaning under his persecutions upon that account . his answer . to the first and fifth articles , bearing his persecuting dissenters , by his sending elders to inform against them , and his sacrilegious robbing the poor to carry on his persecution . this is utterly false , and is not so much as probable , that the elders should be sent on that errand , or that they would go . the only ground of this is , that in the year — all the elders were summoned to cupar of fi●●e , to give informations to the porteous roll , in order to the circuit court held at sterlin . the elders complained of this burden ; and application being made to some then in power , that they might be freed of that trouble , it was answered , that the ordinary course of such jud●catories required it ; but that two or three might go in the name of the rest : which being represented to the elders three are condescended on , viz. iohn cupar , thomas steinson , and iohn main , the rest , each one contributing eight shillings scots to defray their expences . to the second , the parioch of dumfermlin extends on every side , two miles from the town , in some corners three : it consists of above two thousand seven hundred examinable persons ; every family in the town is visited ordinarily once a year , and twice examined : the landward is divided into upwards of twenty districts . these are visited twice a year , and all persons capable are convened to be examined on the principles of religion , the duties of holiness , and relative duties are particularly recommended , besides on all accidental occasions of baptism , marriage , difference in families or between neighbours , &c. they are particularly treated with in private . the sick , upon notice given , are carefully attended , and the scriptures explained , sometimes in larger , sometimes in lesser portions . to the third and fourth , all due endeavours are used to debar scandalous and notarly vicious persons from the lord's supper : the elders are men of as unquestionable integrity as any of their quality in the parioch ; at least nothing to the contrary , of either communicants or elders , was ever privately or publickly signified to him . discipline has been carefully and impartially exercised . to the sixth , his entrance to the charge was by presentation of the heretors and magistrates , the then undoubted patrons ; his admission was legal and approved , by the favourable reception of the parioch ; his ministry countenanced by all ( a few excepted ) being ordinary attenders on the publick worship , and partakers of other ordinances of religion under his ministry . indictment and libel against mr. james graham , incumbent at dumfermlin ; given in against him to the presbytery of dumfermlin , the twentieth of august , 1690. that whereas by several acts of the general assemblies of this church , and consonant to the word of god , and in particular by act of the late general meeting , ratified by an act of this present current parliament , all scandalous , erroneous , persecuting , and supinely negligent ministers are to be cognosced upon , and censured according to their demerits , by the respective presbyteries in which they live . and it being of verity , that the said mr. iames graham is guilty of the scandals , enormities , and transgressions following , viz. as , first , that he hath entred and been admitted to the charge of the parioch of dumfermlin , by presentation of the patron , collation , and institution of the prelate , and that against the consent of the generality of the godly and serious persons within the said parioch ; and that the said mr. graham has in all things joyned and complied with , and assisted prelacy contrary to the word of god , establish'd laws of this church , and the land 's solemn engagements thereto , and his taking of declarations and canonical oaths , has testified his incorrigibleness . secondly , that he hath been supinely negligent , contrary to 1 tim. 3. 2. as , 1. that he doth not visit families ministerially . nor , 2. hath not privately and personally stirred up the people to the duties of holiness . 3. in neglecting to visit the sick. 4. that he omits to lecture or to explain the scriptures , according to the order of the general assembly for that effect . 5. that he catechises not , according to the larger and shorter catechisms . 6. that he takes no notice of quakers in his parioch , who exercise all the duties of their religion without control . thirdly , that he hath horribly prophaned the ordinance of the lord's supper , by his admitting of unclean persons to that holy ordinance . 2. that he hath admitted and keeps on his session very scandalous elders , some of which are tiplers , others swearers , and the most part ignorant , and neglecters of the worship of god , in their families , prophaners of the sabbath . fourthly , that he takes no notice of persons publickly prophaning the sabbath-day , in the town and about it , by dighting of their beer to the pot , bringing in of water and kail , and their walking , drinking , and caballing ; children's playing ( and his own among the rest ) and that in a constant course ; which is not unknown to him , at least should not be , being so publickly acted . fifthly , that he hath not brought several scandalous persons , such as adulterers , fornicators , and others , nor so much as endeavoured to bring them to repentance , nor to undergo just censure in order thereunto ; for proof of which , the session-book is required . for all which , and sundry others not express'd , he is justly censurable ; and therefore it is humbly craved , that the brethren of the presbytery of dumfermlin would take cognisance of the same ; and being found guilty thereof , that the presbytery may inflict such censures , as in their godly wisdoms they shall think meet : and that he may be examined upon his doctrine and sufficiency , is desired by andrew rolland of gask , and william smith , in dumfermlin , in name of several presbyterians in dumfermlin . the life and conversation of these two ministers , were so innocent and exemplary , that there was not the least pretext of charging any immorality upon them , nor any crime , but what was forged by ignorance and malice : wherefore their libels were adduced as a special and particular proof , to shew how unjust and ridiculous the presbyterian clergy are towards such as are of another persuasion ; especially when it was requir'd to try mr. graham in his doctrine and sufficiency ; a person whom all know to be an able divine and an eminent scholar . it happened that some carried these libels to london , where the matter was represented to a certain person of quality , a great friend and prop to the presbyterian party and interest ; and he was so set upon for this , that he thought himself obliged to write to the leading men of his party in scotland , to meddle no more with the ministers of dumfermlin , because it was made a great objection against them . this was the cause why the process against mr. graham was let fall : but though there was the same reason to right mr. cupar , yet because the sentence was already past against him , they would not re-call it , as if all their acts were of the nature of the laws of medes and p●rsians . the general assembly referred them to the commission ; and from one session of the commission , he was put off to another , with this excuse only , that they had no leisure , for other business , to consider his case . at last , mr. cupar being wearied with so long and so frequent attendance , and finding his parioch grudging the want of his ministry , at their importunity he has returned to the exercise of his ministry , the presbyterians not being able to oppose or hinder it , unless by the french method of dragooning the parioch . mr. george johnston his case represented . information to the presbytery of kirkaldie , against mr. george johnston , pretended minister of brunt-island . it having been humbly represented to the reverend presbytery , that the said mr. geo. iohnston ought to be tried by them ; and by their sentence deprived of , and removed from his pretended ministry at brunt-island , upon these grounds and others to be added , as there shall be occasion . first , as to the said mr. george his entry to his pretended ministry . it was by episcopal ordination , presentation , and collation , and which obliged him to take declarations , oaths of allegiance , supremacy , and canonical obedience , which are contradictory to our national engagements , and inconsistent with presbyterian p●inciples , which hath involved in them persecutions and bloody cruelty , that hath been exercised upon presbyterians , these by-gone years , nor have we heard ever of any resentment he ever had or hath thereof till this day , whatever length he may now come to , to secure his benefice ; yea , we are obliged to judge him the same man he was , seeing he keeps at his old forms of singing the doxology , &c. nor can there any change be seen upon him from what he was : and how in this case presbyterians can submit to his ministry , we cannot see . secondly , as to his entry at brunt-island , it then gave great g●ound of jealousie , that he was a man of bad principles , and jesutically inclin'd ; for having bee● curare at fala , and having been deserted of that people , and they deserted of him , he was dispensed with by the earl of perth , chancellor , and others of our arbitrary rulers , anent the test that time imposed ; and the said earl of perth , and that cabal , then being his patrons , they did by the earl of melford , procure for him a presentation to the benefice of brunt-island ( being then vacant , and the king patron ) till a more eminent place should be provided for him ; which at that time gave great offence to all sorts of people here ; and which yet more encreaseth this jealouse , not only of the presbyterian party , but even of his own brethren , the curats of their meeting at kirkaldie : for without acknowledging that meeting , upon his obtained presentation , he received his institution from one single neighbor curate ( by what authority is unknown to us ) who came and gave him the keys of the church-doors and bell-tows , as symbols of possessing his benefice ; which was so received by that meeting , that they then judg'd his practice irregular , and this man who used it , to be of bad principles ; for which they resolv'd to disown him for a brother , and ( for any thing known to us ) they continue in the same mind still , having hitherto heard nothing of their further brotherly correspondence ; so that at his entry here , he was under a very bad character . thirdly , the jealousie mentioned ( not without just ground ) of his unsound principles and practices , is so universally entertain'd , and hath taken such impression amongst all that are presbyterian in that congregation , that there can be no ground to expect that his ministry can do good in that place , though it were submitted to ( as it never will be ) by the presbyterians in that parish . it must therefore certainly be very inconvenient ( if not unjust ) to force him upon us , or to require or expect our submission in this case to a man's ministry we have such resentments of , and reluctancy against , as is exprest . fourthly , since his settlement here , his negligence in his ministerial work hath been visible to all : for except upon invitation to visit sick persons , we know no ministerial work he hath performed , except his custom●●y preaching , which he must perform for his hire ; and in those visits , be the persons never so ignorant , he seldom ( if eve● ) fails to find them in that good case , as to assure them of heaven , and so sooths them in their sins , &c. but as to any other part of the ministerial work , in visitation of families or examination ( though he hath been near two years incumbent here , ) there is no shadow of account can be given , until the act for settling of presbyterian government was past ; wherein he and his adherents finding his supine negligence in this would readily meet him . to prevent this hazard , he goes about to take up a roll in the parish in order to examination : and even in this last he hath made some discovery of himself : for in his circuit of his coming to some of the presbyterian's house to enquire their names , and interrogating if they used to come to church . it was answered , they did not ; for being presbyterians , they waited on the ordinances of the meeting house ; which he affirmed was their great sin : and it being replyed to that , that they judged it no sin , but a duty : he asserted it to be their greatest sin , and so left them : and if what is said infer not insufficiency , we know not what will. fifthly , his unconcernedness in matters of scandal seems also to infer , both negligence and scandal against him ; whereof providence hath lately afforded us a sufficient instance while he was curate in fala . a scandal of an adultery in the parish of dalkeith , pursu'd before the session there , and the persons guilty , being contumacious , it was by a reference brought to their presbytery ( such as it was ) where he was a member ▪ and from them to the bishop and his synod , where he was a witness to the whole process , which is very dextrously conducted , and the guilt fully and clearly instructed ; so that the scandal was manifestly notair to him . but so little was his zeal and tenderness , that though the adulterer , hath as a stranger being valetudinary , lived in brunt-island ever since mr. iohnston came here , unknown to any person but to him ; yet he never made discovery of him to any person , but suffered him of late to be m●rried ( though under suspicion also to be married to another woman at london ) without any intimation of the scandal : but a little after , upon an emergent , the magistrates of brunt-island , finding it their duty to enquire after that scandal , and making their application to the incumbent at dalkeith , he gave them a full account of the process , and produced very freely to them the session and the presbytery books ; where they saw the process very clearly instructed , where that incumbent did exceedingly marvel , that mr. iohnston , that had been a witness to this whole process , had past over this matter ; and did then write a letter or declaration anent that business , and directed it to the magistrates and ministers of brunt-island to be looked after , which was delivered to mr. iohnston by the magistrates , and he urged to publish the same by them , that the people might be upon their guard and know how to carry towards him ; which with the advice of his adherents he refused to do . sixthly , the presbyterian party here ( as in other places ) having for conscience sake been fined , persecuted , and born down for non-complyance with prelatical courses , carried on by such instruments these years by-past ; and having had this yoke of bondage thus wreathed about their necks , could not but in all reason and justice expect , that when the lord should return to have mercy upon zion , and put the government of his house in the hands of his own servants , to manage the affairs of his church , that we should be eased of this unsupportable burthen . and can it be supposed any feigned submission mr. iohnston can now give for this world's sake , can either satisfie our consciences , or persuade us of his sincerity in this matter , whose principles have been to follow courses to maintain that wicked hieratchy ? nor can it be suppos'd the reverend presbytery , who have it in their power to ease us of this burthen , will instead thereof wreath this yoke yet upon our necks , and thereby sink us under it , and make our bondage yet more grievous to be born . seventhly , the presbyterian party in the parish are all unanimous never to submit to mr. iohnston's ministry , nor to own him in that station , whatever may be the event ; and if the gratifying of him and his adherents in this matter be the way to secure and settle presbyterian government , it may easily be conjectured , when it is considered , that there is no person for him who is not an enemy openly declared in judgment and practice against presbytery ; which but corresponds to mr. iohnston's own declaration and judgment in his case ; for when summons were given him to appear before this reverend presbytery , he did even then disown their authority , affirming he would not appear before them , having another presbytery of his own , to whom he would answer , but not to them ; or he would answer to the council . eighthly , it is not to be doubted but a disappointment in this matter , will occasion such a rupture amongst us , as will not be easily healed ; and what the end or event of that may be , who can tell ? nor can it be expected or judged just , to impose upon us the keeping up of a meeting-house to prevent other inconveniences , since there is a legal maintainance due to the faithful ministers there , in whose ministry the presbyterians there pretend the largest share . ninthly , how can it be supposed that this man is of presbyterian principles , or a friend or well-wisher to the late happy change in the government of church and state , since all his familiarity is with such as are well known to be friends to neither ; nor have we an instance of any thing done by him to signifie his satisfaction with the change , except his praying for k. w. and q. m. which is not doubted was done by advice to keep off a present stroke : and it was observed , and generally talked of , when he was ordered to read that proclamation for praying for their majesties , he did read it , but with that contempt in his reading , sitting on his bottom and mu●●ering it , that his manner of reading of it made many think there was more contempt in doing thereof , than if he had forborn it . and such like there having been a sol●mn day of thanksgiving appointed to be kept , and a proclamation issued out from the convention of estates for that effect ; for his own security , he preached one sermon that day , but spoke not one word to the occasion of it . as also , there being of late a solemn day of humiliation to be kept , by appointment of parliament and general meeting of ministers , for happy success in the king's expedition for ireland , &c. he preached that day , but was so general and unconcerned , as no hearer could have judged , by his discourse , one sentence in his sermon relating to the occasion , which cannot but give a discovery of the man's spirit and principles by which he is led , whatever he may pretend to the contrary : and it is no wonder to see him contemn authority , who affirms neither church nor state to be right . tenthly , how true a friend he is to the protestant religion and protestants for its sake , may be conjectured by his charity to the poor banished protestants , who were lately forced to fly from ireland : for there having been a publick collection appointed to be gathered for their necessary supply , he not only neglected to intimate the appointment to his hearers , and press them to that duty of charity ; but it was commonly said , he used all the means he could to dissuade such as he had influence upon to contribute any thing in that charitable supply ; and the event was answerable to his design and desire , for nothing was collected in that church for that use ; nor did any person , within his association , contribute one farthing thereto . from what is said , it may appear what just grounds there are for trying mr. iohnston anent his pretended ministry , and the exercise of it at brunt-island ; which is left to the reverend presbytery's consideration , and their definite sentence for his removal from amongst us , as to his pretended ministry , is humbly expected and waited for . this is given with protestation to add further , as there shall be occasion : and beside all that is said , mr. pitcairn was called to the ministry of brunt-island , and appointed by the synod of fife to serve there long before mr. iohnston's intrusion amongst us , so that mr. iohnston can have no just pretence . sic subscribitur , tho. nairn . remarks upon the foresaid libel , given in against mr. geo. johnston . the first article will be confessed , and none , except the ignorant composers of the libel , will have the worse opinion of mr. iohnston on that account . as to the second , it may be said , that mr. iohnston might as well take a presentation from k. iames , who was undoubted patron of the church of brunt-island , as the presbyterians an indulgence from the same king ; the one is no crime , the other cannot be well justified , because contrary to standing laws , and because they knew the design was to make way for popery , which mr. iohnston is less a friend to , than the presbyterians are . whereas it was said , that he was deserted of the people of fala , the contrary is very well known , for that people had a great love to him , and he was in good esteem amongst them : they expressed a great deal of regret when he parted from them ; and if there were any who ran to the presbyterian meeting-house while he was there , they were very few , and very inconsiderable . his manner of institution to the church of brunt-island , was not singular , nor yet irregular , according to the practice of the church , and can be no reasonable prejudice against him . nor is it true , that the other ministers of that presbytery disowned him ; for they always did , and still do , entertain a brotherly correspondence with him . as to the third , it might have been true , that the presbyterians entertained a jealousie of him ; and their groundless jealousie might have raised a prejudice against his ministry : but notwithstanding of that , mr. iohnston is very capable of doing good in that parioch , because the presbyterians are not near the number of the people of another persuasion , who love mr. iohnston's person , and are so very well pleased with his ministry , that they have testified a great deal of concernment for him . as to the fourth , all that know mr. iohnston , know that he maketh conscience of discharging the duty of a minister ; so that he cannot be liable to censure upon this head ; except amongst ignorant and malicious persons , his omissions will be found very pardonable : and what is there given as an instance , is to be ascribed to the confusion of the times ▪ rather than to any neglect of his . it is indeed a little strange to see an episcopal minister accused by presbyterians , for encouraging persons with assurance of heaven , without pressing repentance upon them ; for the presbyterian ministers are known to be much more guilty of this : and the only reason why the vulgar use to be more affected with the visits of presbyterian ministers , than with the visits of episcopal ones , is , that the discourses of the one goes all upon comfort , and the other mostly on duty : it is the practice of the episcopal clergy , first , to press faith , repentance , and obedience to the laws of god , and to give hopes of heaven only upon these terms ; which , being somewhat hard to flesh and blood , therefore some choose the presbyterian way of it , which is more easie , but certainly not so safe . as to the fifth , the scandalous person there spoken of , was living in brunt-island before mr. iohnston came to it , and had joyned himself to the presbyterian meeting-house , so that he was never under mr. iohnston's cure ; and considering the indulgence given , then to those of that persuasion , there was no obligation on mr. iohnston to take notice of one who belonged not to his congregation . the banns of marriage , were proclaimed in the meeting-house , and he was married by the presbyterian minister ; and therefore , if the suffering him to be married was a fault , it cannot be charged upon mr. iohnston . the emergent which , they say , put the magistrates of brunt-island upon their duty to enquire after this scandal , was only some difference that fell out betwixt them and him ; whereby it is evident , that their prosecuting of scandal proceeds more often from a pique , than from any sense of the sin. the sixth article is trueblue presbyterian , and if it be admitted as relevant , the whole episcopal clergy must be dismissed . as to the seventh , whatever be the resolutions of the presbyterian party , it is the concerted resolution of the episcopal party to own mr. iohnson , and to adhere to him . it is no more just to satisfie the one than the other , and it is reasonable that the lesser number yield to the greater . the eighth is very unjust , for the accidental inconvenience which some bring upon themselves , is no good reason for the taking away ones legal rights and just possession . there is nothing in the other remaining articles but uncertain sur●ises and uncharitable constructions ; and therefore this very libel is a great demonstration of mr. iohnston's innocence . for when no real crime could be objected against him , by these whose m●lice prompted them to do it , if 〈◊〉 had been● the least ground for it , it is evident , that his depo●●ment : and ministry were unblameable ; and consequently the presbytery most unjust who suspended him , and the commission of the general assembly no less , who refused to repone him , and redress the wrong● he ha●● met with . the commission res●●ing to right mr. iohnston , the parish of brunt-island being very sensible of the injury which both he and they received , resolved to do themselves right ; and so they met , gave mr. iohnston a new call , and put him in possession again of the church , declaring that they will maintain him in it by a strong hand . and there can be no reason given why this way of possessing ministers should not stand and be justified as well as the dispossessing and turning them out by a rabble . the presbyterians fret very much at this , as they have reason , because it shakes one of the pretended pillars of their kirk , viz. the inclinations of the people ; and therefore they have taken out council-letters , requiring them to deliver up the keys of the church . the end of the first part. proclamation for adjourning the parliament. scotland. privy council. 1699 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05630 wing s1825 estc r226100 52529294 ocm 52529294 179062 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05630) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179062) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:51) proclamation for adjourning the parliament. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1694-1702 : william ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to the kings most excellent majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1699. caption title. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh the last day of august, and of our reign the eleventh year 1699. signed: gilb. elliot cls. sti. concilii. adjourning the parliament "from the said twelvth day of september next to come, to the eight day of november next thereafter." reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2008-08 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion scottish thistle, french fleur-de-lis and tudor rose proclamation for adjourning the parliament . william by the grace of god , king of great-britain france and ireland , defender of the faith : to our lyon king at arms and his brethreen , heraulds , macers of our privy council , pursevants , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuchas , we by our proclamation , of the date the ninth day of june last by past , did adjourn this our current parliament to the twelvth day of september next to come : and whereas the present state of our affairs , does not require the meeting of our parliament so soon as the said day to which it was adjourned : therefore we with advice of the lords of our privy council are resolved to continue the said adjournment from the said twelvth day of september next to come , to the eight day of november next thereafter ; and that the members of our said parliament be not put to unnecessary trouble and charges before that time ; we do hereby with advice foresaid continue the adjournment of our said parliament from the said twelvth day of september to the said eight day of november next to come : and we do hereby order and require all the members of our said parliament , to attend the said eight day of november next at edinburgh , in the usual way , and under the certifications contained in the several acts of parliament made thereanent . our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and to the mercat crosses of the remanent head-burghs of the several shires and stewartries of this our antient kingdom , and there by open proclamation make intimation , that our said parliament is adjourned to the said eight day of november next to come : and ordains these presents to be printed . given under our signet at edinburgh the last day of august , and of our reign the eleventh year 1699 . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . elliot cls. sti. concilii . god save the king edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson ' printer to the kings most excellent majesty , anno dom. 1699. unto his grace, the marquess of tweeddale, his majesties high commissioner, and the remanent [sic] honourable estates of parliament. the petition of the heretors, fewars, liferenters and tennents of the shyres of inverness, ross, cromarty, elgin, nairn, bamff, aberdeen, merns, perth, fyffe, angus, kinross and stirling, and burghs within the samen. 1695 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b06364 wing u100c estc r185881 52529054 ocm 52529054 179183 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b06364) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179183) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2779:18) unto his grace, the marquess of tweeddale, his majesties high commissioner, and the remanent [sic] honourable estates of parliament. the petition of the heretors, fewars, liferenters and tennents of the shyres of inverness, ross, cromarty, elgin, nairn, bamff, aberdeen, merns, perth, fyffe, angus, kinross and stirling, and burghs within the samen. tweeddale, charles hay, marquis of, 1667-1715. scotland. parliament. committee of estates. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh : 1695] caption title. imprint suggested by wing. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -army -appropriations and expenditures -early works to 1800. scotland. -army -equipment -early works to 1800. reparation -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-02 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-08 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion vnto his grace , the marquess of tweeddale , his majesties high commissioner , and the remanent honourable estates of parliament . the petition of the heretors , fewars , liferenters and tennents of the shyres of inverness , ross , cromarty , elgin , nairn , bamff , aberdeen , merns , perth , fyffe , angus , kinross and stirling , and burghs within the samen , humbly sheweth , that where your petitioners , in complyance with the several proclamations of privy council emitted , did furnish several baggage horses , when leiutenant-general mckay , and the forces under his command went to lochaber , and to major-general livingstoun , and the forces under his command went to cromdail , and which horses were never sent back , nor returned : and we having , conform to several acts of privy council , given in our accompts , resting to the several shyres and burghs upon probation taken before the commissioners of supplie to the lords of privy council ; they have allowed the corn , straw , meal and other necessary provisions , furnished by your petitioners to his majesties forces , but refuses to allow any pryce for the baggage horses , though the loss thereof is of more value to them , than what they otherwise have got for corn , straw , and other necessary provision furnished by them . may it therefore please your grace , and the honourable estates of parliament , to take your petitioners case to consideration , and to allow them payment for the saids baggage horses , furnished as said is , conform to the commissioners of supply of the several shires their report , and that out of the pole-money : and your petitioners shal ever pray by the king. a proclamation, indicting a parliament, to be held at edinburgh, the 28. day of july, 1681 proclamations. 1681-06-08 scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1681 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a79357 wing c3520 estc r231354 99897026 99897026 136994 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a79357) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 136994) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2457:37) by the king. a proclamation, indicting a parliament, to be held at edinburgh, the 28. day of july, 1681 proclamations. 1681-06-08 scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : 1681. dated at end: given at our court at whitehall, the eighth day of june, one thousand six hundred and eighty one, and of our reign, the thretty and third year. arms 232; steele notation: england, deputs head; this edition signed at end: 'morray.'. reproduction of original in the folger shakespeare library, washington, d.c. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. 2008-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-08 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion by the king. a proclamation , indicting a parliament , to be held at edinburgh , the 28 , day of july , 1681. charles r. charles the second , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. to all and sundry our good subjects , whom these presents do , or may concern , greeting : whereas upon divers weighty considerations , of great importance to our service , and to the peace and tranquillity of our ancient kingdom of scotland , we have thought fit to call a parliament of that our kingdom , to meet at our city of edinburgh , upon the twenty eight day of july , next ensuing the date hereof ; we do therefore require and command , all arch-bishops , dukes , marquesses , earles , viscounts , bishops , lords and officers of state , of our said kingdom , to be present , and attend that diet. and we do also require and command , all our sheriffs , in the several shires , and their deputs , that if there be any new elections made for this year , of commissioners to parliaments or conventions , they give timeous intimation to such commissioners , to keep this meeting ; but if there be no elections already made , that they forthwith call and conveen all the free-holders in the respective shires , to the end , that according to the laws and acts of parliament , elections may be made of fit persons , to be commissioners for this parliament . and we do likewise require and command , our royal burroughs , to make choice of commissioners accordingly , and them , and all persons having interest , to attend this our parliament , under the pains contained in our laws made thereanent . and to the effect , all our good subjects may have notice of this our royal will and pleasure , we do hereby command our lyon , king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers , pursevants , and messengers at arms , to make timeous proclamation of these presents , at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and at the mercat-crosses of the head burroughs in the several shires of that our kingdom . and ordains these presents to be printed . given at our court at whitehall , the eighth day of june , one thousand six hundred and eighty one , and of our reign , the thretty and third year . by his majesties command , morray . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1681. a publication of the royal authority of the most serene, most mighty and most august monarch james the seventh by the grace of god king of scotland. scotland. privy council. 1685 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a58767 wing s1994 estc r32977 09606124 ocm 09606124 43806 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a58767) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 43806) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1339:38 or 1949:19) a publication of the royal authority of the most serene, most mighty and most august monarch james the seventh by the grace of god king of scotland. scotland. privy council. james ii, king of england, 1633-1701. england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) 1 sheet ([1] p.). edinburgh, printed by the heir to andrew anderson ...; and reprinted at london by tho. newcomb, for susanna forrester, [london] : 1685. includes "by the king," james ii's letter of authorization, dated feb. 6, 1684/5. item at reel 1949:19 identified as wing j406. reproductions of original in the bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng james -ii, -king of england, 1633-1701. scotland -history -1660-1688. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a publication , of the royal authority , of the most serene , most mighty , and most august monarch , james the seventh , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. the earl of perth , lord high chancellor . the lord archbishop of st. andrews . the duke of queensberry , l. high treasurer . the lord arch-bishop of glasgow . the lord marquess of athol , lord privy seal . the lord duke of hamilton . the lord marquess of douglas . the earl of drumlanrig . the earl of wintoun . the earl of linlithgow , lord justice-general . the earl of southesk . the earl of panmure . the earl of tweedale . the earl of balcarras . the lord yester . the lord kinnaird . l. president of the session . l. register . l. advocat . l. justice-clerk . l. castlehill . general lieutenant drummond . drumelzeer . abbotshall . colonel graham of claver-house . gossfoord forasmuch as it hath pleased the almighty god , to call charles the second , our late soveraign lord , of glorious and ever blessed memory , from a temporary crown , to inherit an eternal in the heavens ; whereby the undoubted right of succession , to him , in the imperial crown of this , realm , was immediately devolved on the sacred person of his royal , and dearest brother , our present sacred soveraign ( whom god long preserve . ) therefore we , the lords of his majesties privy council , authorized in that capacity , by his majesties royal letter , bearing date at whitehall , the sixth day of february instant , do , with the concurrence of several other lords , spiritual , and temporal , barons , and burgesses of this realm , hereby declare , and proclaim to all the world , that our soveraign lord james the seventh , is by lawful and undoubted succession and descent , king of scotland , england , france , and ireland , and , the dominions there-unto-belonging , defender of the faith , & c. ( whom god preserve and bless with a long , glorious , happy life and prosperous reign ) and whom we shall humbly obey , dutifully and faithfully serve , maintain and defend , with our lives and fortunes against all deadly , as our only righteous king and soveraign , over all persons , and in all causes , as holding his imperial crown from god alone . and for testification whereof , we here , in presence of the almighty god , and great number of his majesties faithful people , of all estates and qualities , who are assisting with us , at this solemn publication , of our due , humble , and faithful acknowledgement of his supream soveraign authority , at the mercat cross of the city of edinburgh , declare and publish , that our said soveraign lord , by the goodness and providence of almighty god , is of scotland , england , france , and ireland , and dominions thereunto-belonging , the most potent , mighty , and undoubted king . and hereby give our oaths , with up-lifted hands , that we shall bear true and faithful allegiance , unto our said sacred soveraign , james the seventh ; king of great-britain , france , and ireland , defender of the f●●●h &c. and to his lawful heirs and successors , and sha ; ll perform all duties , service , and obedience to him , as becomes his faithful , 〈…〉 al , and dutiful subjects . so help us god. per actum dominorum secreti concilii . will. paterson , cls. sti. concilii . god save king james the seventh . by the king. james r. james the seventh , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith , & c. to all and sundry our good subjects whom these presents do or may concern , greeting . whereas it hath pleased god this day to call out of this life , from the possession of an earthly diadem , to the fruition , of an eternal crown of glory , his late majesty our royal and most dearly beloved brother charles the second ; we have thought fit to publish our royal pleasure , that all our officers of state , privy-councillors , magistrates , and all other officers whatsoever , both civil and military within our ancient kingdom of scotland , do , and they and every one of them respectively , are hereby authorized and required to act in all things conform to the late commissions and instructions they had from his said late majesty of blessed memory , until new commissions from us can be prepared and sent down to them . and for their so doing , this shall be to them , and every one of them respectively , a full warrant . given under our royal hand , at our court at whitehall , the sixth day of february 1684 / 5. and of our reign the firs year . by his majesty's command , to. drummond . edinburgh , the 10 th of february , 1685. ordered by his majesties privy-council of scotland , that this proclamation be forthwith , printed and published . extracted by me colin mekenzie , cls. sti. concilii . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty ; and reprinted at london by the newcomb , for susanna forrester , 1685. charles by the grace of god, king of great britaine ... forsomuch as we and the estates of our parliament presently conveened, remembring that at the first institution of the colledge of justice ... scotland. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) 1633 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a11704 stc 21994 estc s2323 23273282 ocm 23273282 26486 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11704) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 26486) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1803:25) charles by the grace of god, king of great britaine ... forsomuch as we and the estates of our parliament presently conveened, remembring that at the first institution of the colledge of justice ... scotland. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) charles i, king of england, 1600-1649. 1 broadside. r. young, [edinburgh : 1633] second pt. of title from text. imprint suggested by stc (2nd ed.). "given under our signet at edinburgh the twentie eight day of june, and of our reigne the ninth year. 1633." reproduction of original in the town house (aberdeen, scotland). charter room. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng taxation -scotland. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649. scotland -proclamations. 2007-08 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms charles by the grace of god , king of great britaine , france , and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. to our messengers , our sheriffs , in that part , conjunctly and severally specially constitute greeting . forsomuch as we and the estates of our parliament presently conveened , remembring that at the first institution of the colledge of justice , and divers times thereafter in parliaments ratifying the same ; our royall ancestors and estates of our realme then assembled , found the erection of that honourable consistorie , which is a biding monument of the glorie of their reignes , not onlie to be usefull for royall service , but also necessarie and profitable for the peace of this our kingdome , and to the seene good and comfort of all our subjects ; and considering that the provision allowed of before to the lords of session was no wayes sufficient for defraying of their charges ; and that through their continuall attendance , their private affaires are neglected , and great losses thereby sustained by them : therefore , and to the effect , the said senators and lords of our session , present and to come , may be more encouaged to go on , and to persist as they do , in their zeale , and affections to our service , and in faithfull ministration of justice , to the generall weale of this our realme and our lieges ; the said estates , with our speciall approbation , and gracious good-liking , have most freelie condescended , statute , and enacted , that a taxation be presently imposed upon their lands and means , which with our consent foresaid , they ordaine to be collected and payed to the effect , in maner , and at the termes following : that is to say , the duke , marquesses , earles , vicounts , lords , and commissioners of shires for the temporall estate , have granted that there shall be vplifted of everie pound land of old extent within this our kingdome pertaining to dukes , marquesses , earles , vicounts , lords , barons , freeholders , and fewers of our proper lands , the summe of ten shillings money at every one of the four tearms following , viz. the summe of ten shillings money at the feast and tearm of martinmasse next to come in this instant year of god , 1633. the summe of other ten shillings money at the feast and tearm of martinmasse , in anno 1634. the summe of other ten shillings money at the feast and tearm of martinmasse , 1635. and the summe of other ten shillings money at the feast and tearme of martinmasse , 1636. and for the spirituall men and burrowes parts of the same taxation , that there shall be uplifted of all archbishoprickes , bishoprickes , abbacies , pryories , and other inferiour benefices , and of every free burgh within this our kingdome , at every one of the foure tearms abouespecified ; the just taxation thereof , as they have been accustomed to be taxed in all time by-gone , whensoever the temporall lands of this our kingdome were stented to tenne shillings the pound land of old extent . and for inbringing the tearms payment of our burrowes parts of the same taxation , our other letters are direct , charging the provest , and bayliffs of each burgh to make payment of the taxt and stent thereof to collector generall , appointed for receiving of the same taxation , or to his deputs & officers in his name , having his power to receive the same , at the feast & tearm of martinmas , in the year of god one thousand six hundred thirtie years , under the pain of rebellion & putting of them to our horn : for whose reliefe , our will is , and we charge you straitly and command , that incontinent these our letters seene , yee passe , and in our name and authoritie command and charge the councell of that our burgh of to conveene with you the said provest and bayliffs , and elect certaine persons to stent their neighbours ; and the same election being made , that ye charge the persons elected to accept the charge upon them , in setting of the said stent upon the inhabitants of that our said burgh : and to conveene and set the same , and to make a stent roll thereupon as effeiris , within twentie foure hours next after they be charged by you thereto , under the paine of rebellion , and putting of them to our horn . and if they failye , the said twentie foure hours being by-past , that ye incontinent thereafter denounce the disobeyers our rebels , and put them to our horne , and escheat and inbring all their moveable goods to our use for their contemption . and likewise the said stent roll being made and set downe as said is , that ye in our name and authoritie command and charge the burgesses , indwellers , and inhabitants within that our burgh , to make payment of their said stent to you our said provest and bayliffs , conforme to the taxt roll to be made and given out thereupon , within three dayes next after they be charged by you thereto , under the paine of rebellion , and putting of them to our horne . and if they failye therein , the said three dayes being by-past , that yee incontinent thereafter denounce the disobeyers our rebells , and put them to our horne , and escheat and inbring all their moveable goods to our use , for their contemption . and if need be , that ye our said provest and bayliffs poynd and distrenyie therefore , as ye shall thinke most expedient , according to justice , as ye will answer to us thereupon . the which to doe , wee commit to you conjunctly and severally , our full power , by these our letters , delivering them by you duely execute and indorsed againe to the bearer . given under our signet at edinburgh the twentie eight day of june , and of our reigne the ninth year . 1633. per actum parliamenti . reasons for which the service booke, urged upon scotland ought to bee refused 1638 approx. 12 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 4 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2005-12 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a11745 stc 22038 estc s107570 99843269 99843269 7986 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11745) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 7986) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1559:10) reasons for which the service booke, urged upon scotland ought to bee refused gillespie, george, 1613-1648, attributed name. [4] p. printed [by g. anderson], [[edinburgh] : in the year of god. 1638] sometimes attributed to george gillespie. caption title. place of publication and printer's name from stc; publication date from colophon. signatures: a² . this edition has a1r catchword: english. probably intended to be issued with stc 22026, but often found bound with stc 22030, 22056, and other items (stc). reproduction of the original in the bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng episcopal church in scotland. -book of common prayer -controversial literature -early works to 1800. scotland -church history -17th century -early works to 1800. 2003-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-05 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2005-04 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2005-04 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-10 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion reasons for which the service booke , urged upon scotland ought to bee refused . 1. it cònteineth divers points and directions , vvhich vvould breed a change in some articles of that doctrine and discipline of the church of the said kingdome , vvhich is both vvarranted in scripture & approved by parlament : and it seemeth to be as vvell against state wisedome as against religion , to change any thing either in the matter or forme of the sayd doctrine and discipline , vvithout first shewing both some evill or defect in the things to bee changed , and what good & benefit it is that the said service booke vvill afforde more to the edification of the church , or true vvorship of almightie god , then the points of doctrine & discipline , vvhich the said service booke vvould breed a change of ? 2. in the pretended communion , it hath all the substance and essentiall parts of the masse , and so brings in the most abominable idolatrie that ever vvas in the vvorld , in vvorshipping of a breaden god , and makes vvay to the antichrist of rome , to bring this land under his bondage againe , as may bee seen at large by the particulars of that communion , wherein some things , that were put out of the service booke of england , for smelling so strong of the masse , are restored , and many other things , that vvere never in it , are brought in , out of the masse booke , though they labour to cover the matter . it hath the commemoration of the dead : the table set altar wayes : the oblation of the bread and wine to god before the consecration : it hath the popish consecration , that the lord would sanctifie by his words , and by his holy spirit , those gifts and creatures of bread and wine , that they may be unto us the body and blood of his sonne , and then repeat the words of institution to god , for that purpose . it hath an oblation of it againe , after it is consecrat , the consumation by the priest , kneeling before the consecrate bread and wine . it takes avvay the eating and drinking by faith , mentioned in the english liturgie . it hath the patin challice , two paternosters in english , before the masse , and severall other particulars , that vvould take a long time to rehearse and confute . 3. though they vvould take avvay the idolatrous masse out of it , yet it hath a number of popish superstitions and idolatrous ceremonies : as , 29 holy dayes , vvhereof 22 are dedicated to saints , two of them to the virgin mary , the one vvhereof is called , the anuntiation of our lady , so shee is made a lady to christians , not being on earth , shee must be a lady in heaven : is not this to make her a goddesse ? it hath 14 fasting dayes , and some vveekes . it hath also the humane sacraments of crosse in baptisme , laying on of the bishops hand in confirmation : a ring for the outward seall in mariage : a sanctified font , holie vvater , holinesse of churches and chancels : private baptisme , private communions , ceremonies for buriall of the dead , and purification of vvomen after childbirth , the priest standing , kneeling , turning to the people , and consequentlie from them , speaking vvith a loud voice , and consequentlie sometimes with a lowe voice . peoples standing at gospels , at gloria patri , & creeds : their ansvvering to the minister , & many such-like , in number above 50. besides any religious ornament , that the king , or his successours , shall prescribe , and ceremonies that bishops shall determine , or that shall bee conteined in bookes of homilies to bee set foorth heereafter . 4. and though they would take out of the booke , both the masse & all those superstitious ceremonies , yet it hath a number of other materiall errours : as , leaving unread about a 120 chapters of gods worde , and putting this reproach upon them , that they are least edifying , & might best bee spared , and reading sundrie chapters out of apocrypha , under the stile of holy scripture of the olde testament . it hath a letanie more like conjuring then like prayers : it hath some places out of vvhich papists may prove , that sacraments are absolutelie necessarie to salvation , in apointing baptisme in private , vvith such haste , that , if necessitie require , he that baptizes needs not so much as to say the lords prayer , and out of vvhich they may proove , that sacraments giue grace by their vvorke vvrought , in saying , children baptized , have all things necessarie to salvation , & be undoubtedly saved . it hath other places out of which they may proue moe sacraments then tvvo , vvhich they say euerie parishoner , who is alreadie baptized , shall communicate , & shall also receave the sacraments , and that sacraments two , are generally necessarie to salvation , as if there vvere others , eyther not so generall , or not so necessarie . it hath other places out of vvhich they may proue universall grace : saying , god the father made mee , and all the world , and god the sonne redeemed mee , and all mankinde : one collect pretends to begge from god , that vvhich they dare not presume to name , and a number others of this sort . 5. though likevvise they amend all those errours , and that there were no materiall errour in it at all : so they read nothing at all but scriptures , yea , and that all their prayers & exhortations vvere nothing but vvords of scripture , yet such a liturgie vvere not lawfull to be made the onlie forme of gods worship in publike : for , though a formed liturgie may bee to serve for rule to other churches & monuments to posteritie what formes are used , or that it may lead the way , or bee a direction to those that are beginning in the ministrie , yet it is not by reading of prayers and exhortations that the lord appoints his servants of the ministerie to vvorship him , or edifie his people , but hee hath given gifts to them to exhort , pray , and preach , vvhich they ought to stirre up and use , and though they may in their private studies take helpe of other mens gifts , yet it is not lawfull for a man to tie himselfe , or bee tyed by others , to a prescript forme of vvords in prayer and exhortation , for these reasons : first , such a prescript forme is ●gainst the glorie of god , in stinting to him such a daylie measure of service , and so hindring the many spirituall petitions and pra●ses that otherw●se would be , if gods gifts were used . secondlie , it is against the dignitie of christ , in making his gifts needlesse : for , though hee send downe no gifts at all , they can serve themselves with the booke , without them . thirdlie , it quenches the holy spirit , because hee gets no employment . fourthly , it hinders the edification of gods people , they may as well stay at home , and bee edified by reading the booke themselues . fiftly , it is against the conversion of those that know not god : will ever a rat ●yme of words sayd over without feeling or blessing , worke upon an unrenewed heart ? sixtly , it will never serve to convince an hereticke , to check a prophane person , or to waken a secure soule : they may long goe on or such a service byte upon them : yea , it ●osters people in a presumptuous conceit , that they are well enough if they be present , and say their part of service . seventhly , it fosters a lasie ministrie , and makes way for putting downe preaching : they need take no paynes , and therefore needs no stipend : yea , they may come from the ailhouse , or a worse place , and step to and read their service , without eyther check or preparation . eyghtly , it may all be done by a boy of 7 yeares olde , and so every private man that can read , yea , a turcke if he can read , may be such a minister . ninthly , it cannot expresse the severall needs of all people to god , or deale with them , according to their severall estates , that will alter otherwise then any prescript forme can be aplyed to . tenthly , if any one stinted liturgie had beene good , or needfull , no doubt but christ would have set one downe to us . 6. though a prescript forme of liturgie were lawfull , yet there is no warrand for imposing of one : for , might not able ministers ( at least ) make a prescript forme to themselves , which would fit them and their people best ? but if it were lawfull to impose one , then there is one in this countrie already . ought not that rather be imposed , then any other , seeing it is already established by parlament , now of a long time ? but now , if a new one ought to be imposed , then it ought to come in by a lawfull maner : by a generall assemblie , and men chosen to make it that are knowne to have the gift of prayer themselves , and not the masse booke , translated into english , urged by antichristian prelats , upon gods people , without consent of any generall assemblie or parlament , against the will of all men , & with no small offence & scandall to the minds and consciences of such , as thinke all liturgie unlawfull , that is either in the masse way , or inconsistent with the practise & peace of the reformed churches of scotland hitherto , and against the hearts of such as know many things in the english liturgie and canons , which the practise of , neyther hath warrand in gods word , nor can bring any such adition , to the profit , honor , or power of the king , that is able to compense the losse hee may make of his good subjects affections , by commanding such a change , as the urged liturgie would bring to the peace of our church , and respect due to the acts of parlament and long custome , whereby our church discipline , order , and government hath beene established . printed in the year of god. 1638. old english blood boyling afresh in leicestershire men: occasioned by the late barbarous invasion of the scots. as appears by this letter from my lord grey, to major generall skippon. groby, thomas grey, baron of, 1623?-1657. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a85691 of text r40522 in the english short title catalog (thomason e461_7). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 4 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a85691 wing g1969b thomason e461_7 estc r40522 99872585 99872585 162162 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a85691) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 162162) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 73:e461[7]) old english blood boyling afresh in leicestershire men: occasioned by the late barbarous invasion of the scots. as appears by this letter from my lord grey, to major generall skippon. groby, thomas grey, baron of, 1623?-1657. [2], 4, [2] p. printed by h. for giles calvert, at the black spread-eagle, at the west end of pauls, london : 1648. identified as wing s5190 on umi microfilm early english books reel 1671. annotation on thomason copy: "aug ye 28'. reproductions of originals in the university of illinois library (early english books) and the british library (thomason tracts). eng skippon, philip, d. 1660. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign relations -england -early works to 1800. a85691 r40522 (thomason e461_7). civilwar no old english blood boyling afresh in leicestershire men:: occasioned by the late barbarous invasion of the scots. as appears by this letter groby, thomas grey, baron of 1648 951 1 0 0 0 0 0 11 c the rate of 11 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-11 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-11 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-01 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2008-01 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion old english blood boyling afresh in leicestershire men : occasioned by the late barbarous invasion of the scots . as appears by this letter from my lord grey , to major generall skippon . london , printed by h. for giles calvert , at the black spread-eagle , at the west end of pauls . 1648. old english blood boyling a fresh in leicestershire men : occasioned by the late barbarous invasion of the scots . sir , because your ancient and well approved faithfulnesse speakes it selfe through the kingdome ; i have thought good to communicate the state of our affaires in this county unto you : which is thus . when wee understood that our proclaimed enemies ( the scots ) were drawing towards us , even to fall upon this nation when it was weak ; as hee did , on his brother ( and this esa is edom , red and bloody ) or as those brethren in iniquity , did upon the shechamites , when they were sore . we thought all lay at stake , and the god of our mercies awakened us here , to see what might be done for our safety ; wee tryed what volunteers would appear , which were not a few , that tendred themselves and their own horses , and those that wanted wee horsed upon those that were dissenters ; insomuch that ( by the blessing of god ) wee have mounted a considerable number for so inconsiderable a county , and shall be able to march with a good strength very suddenly : and this course we have and doe propound with all earnestnes to all our neighbouring counties ; not waiting upon the customary way of pay and quarter , which would retard us , and such a work as this . wee had our men so willing to goe forth as if they should finde theit wages in their worke ; yea , though in the highest of their harvest , and this unseasonable weather ; at our meeting a march being propounded , they cryed , one and all . sir , wee are prest forwards hereunto by the violent call of necessities surrounding us ; nor can wee be blamed for neglecting some punctilioes , since selfe-safety , and our present preservation admit no delay . it would rejoyce our hearts to see english blood stirring in the veignes of men at this juncture ; professing to your selfe that your honourable carriage in order to the good of this poor shattered nation makes us to assure you , we can ( through mercy ) readily live and dye with you upon your pious and noble principles . i have inclosed sent you a copy of the last from lancashire , whereby you may judge of the inhumane temper of the enemy , and the sad condition of our friends . i wish every tribe in israel had this laid at their doors . alas ( sir ) did these men bring to us more holines , justice ▪ truth , and faithfulnesse , or rather did they not undermine that gospel , they say they come to settle ; wee would meet them with open armes and bended knees : but i wish their inviters hither doe not feel to their cost the ill consequence of the bargaine . sir , ( with our worthy neighbours in the easterne association , or any others like minded ) wee resolve ( by gods help ) rather to dye free english men , then to live hewers of wood , and drawers of water to base men whose mercies are cruelties . our horse appearing last munday at our rendezvouz , were neer three thousand , all of this county ; who expressed much forwardnesse in this service , ambitiously desiring to be in action , waiting only upon a call , which we daily expect from our friends in the north , and for which wee making our selves ready upon an hours warning . my request unto your selfe , and all honest english hearts is , that you send us all the help you can through your prayers ; and i beseech you to continue to improve your interest in heaven and earth to preserve a kingdome , that must be saved against its will , for which god hath so immediatly and even miraculously spoken from heaven within three or 4 months last past , in curbing the malice of men , appearing in such desperate tumults every where : the great monnuments whereof remain in these places , viz. london , norwich , south-wales , kent , bury , willoby , kingston , needs , hereford , shropshire , stafford , nottingham , woodcraft , scarborow yarmouth , tinmouth , cumberland , bristall , isle of weight , chester , exceter , north-wales and cambridge , &c. oh that men would see these wonders , and bow before the lord that hath smiten them , and tremble before his foot-stool . to whose grace i commend you , and all the faithfull with you . i remain sir , yours really to serve you thomas grey . august 24. 1648. post-script . sir , since i degan to write the scots are beaten , twelve thousand prisoners are taken ; their army broken : three thousand horse of theirs where duke hambleton is , we are this morning pursuing with my forces , who bend towards the north : but are in desperate confusion , wee hope to give agood accompt of them . yours , thomas grey . die sabbathi, 14 novemb. 1646. a declaration of the lords and commons assembled in parliament, for payment of our brethren of scotland two hundred thousand pounds in maner and form following, and they to depart this kingdom england and wales. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a82671 of text r212312 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.9[72]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a82671 wing e1410 thomason 669.f.9[72] estc r212312 99870949 99870949 161170 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a82671) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 161170) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 245:669f9[72]) die sabbathi, 14 novemb. 1646. a declaration of the lords and commons assembled in parliament, for payment of our brethren of scotland two hundred thousand pounds in maner and form following, and they to depart this kingdom england and wales. parliament. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed for edw. husband, printer to the honble house of commons, london : [1646] order to print signed: h:elsynge, cler. parl. d. com. publication date from wing. with engraved border. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng england and wales. -parliament -appropriations and expenditures -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a82671 r212312 (thomason 669.f.9[72]). civilwar no die sabbathi, 14 novemb. 1646. a declaration of the lords and commons assembled in parliament, for payment of our brethren of scotland two h england and wales. parliament. 1646 246 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2007-11 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion die sabbathi , 14. novemb. 1646. a declaration of the lords and commons assembled in parliament , for payment of our brethren of scotland two hundred thousand pounds in maner and form following , and they to depart this kingdom . be it declared by the lords and commons in parliament assembled , that the first one hundred thousand pounds which shall be raised , either by the sale of bishops lands , or by the credit of the ordinances which are passed for that purpose , shall be paid to our brethren of scotland , upon the marching of their army and forces out of this kingdom , at such time and place as shall be agreed upon ; and the next fifty thousand pounds so raised , at the end of three moneths after the former payment ; and fifty thousand pounds more raised as aforesaid , at the end of nine moneths after the first payment : but in case the latter one hundred thousand pounds shall be with more speed procured , the same shall be sooner paid unto them , although there be no ingagement for a more speedy payment , then at the times formerly expressed . ordered by the commons assembled in parliament , that this declaration be forthwith printed and published : h : elsynge , cler. parl. d. com. london : printed for edw. husband , printer to the honble house of commons . his majesties proclamation against a traiterous band contrived in the north scotland. privy council. 1646 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a78966 wing c2540 thomason 669.f.9[57] estc r212290 99870928 99870928 161155 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a78966) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 161155) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 245:669f9[57]) his majesties proclamation against a traiterous band contrived in the north scotland. privy council. charles i, king of england, 1600-1649. scotland. parliament. 1 sheet ([1] p.) by evan tyler, printer to the kings most excellent majestie, printed at edinburgh : 1646. a proclamation of the privy council of scotland against the marquess of montrose and his "band against god and his covenant." dated at end: given under our signet at edinburgh the 5 of april, and of our reign the 22 yeer 1646. at end of document: per actum dominorum commiss. predict. arch. primerose cler. reproduction of the original in the british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng montrose, james graham, -marquis of, 1612-1650 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. 2008-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-04 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-05 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-05 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion his majesties proclamation , against a traiterous band contrived in the north. charles , by the grace of god , king of great britain , france , and ireland , defender of the faith. to our lovits our lion king at arms , and his brethren heralds and pursevants our sheriffs in that part , greeting . whereas the committee of estates of our kingdom of scotland , being most carefull , according to the trust committed to them , to use all means for advancing the cause of god , setling the publike peace , and for preventing the practises of such as would in any wise hinder or oppose the same . and seeing a paper emitted under the title of an humble remonstrance , yet being in effect , a band against god and his covenant , us and our authority , and this our native kingdom and its peace and happinesse , tho covered with the specious pretences of pietie and publike liberty , have found themselves oblieged in dutie to take notice thereof , and to undeceive our good subjects by unfolding the wickednesse and treachery of the same , which evidently appears , the persons who have speciall hand therein being formerly under the like guiltinesse of banding , contrary to the nationall covenant which themselves had sworn ; and having since by severall bands and oaths to be seen under their hand writings joyned themselves to the rebellion of that excommunicate traitour james grahame and his irish associates , with whom they have corresponded this time past , have now ( as it seems ) by his advice entred into this band ( the naturall issue of those consultations and meetings they have kept together of late ) without the knowledge of the publike judicatories of our kingdom , contrary to the law of the land , and acts of parliament expresly made in that behalf : and that they may the more easily inveigle the simpler fort , they have usurped to themselves the flourishing titles of lovers of religion , our royall authority , and our kingdoms peace ; their paper notwithstanding clearly evidencing their intentions to be contrary to all these , by their changing and omitting severall essentiall articles in the covenant , which are at length discovered by the commissioners of the kirk in their declaration ; by their slighting and contemning the wayes proposed by both our kingdoms , in sending propositions to us , for attaining a safe and well-grounded peace : and presumptuously taking upon themselves to prescribe other wayes , and to be arbitrators of the present differences betwixt us and our people : by their traducing the publike proceedings of that our kingdom , in their seeming regrait of the silence of the civil judicatories , which by the plague of pestilence and present rebellion ( fomented by the remonstrants themselves , who despised the maine orders given to them by the publike judicatories for suppressing thereof ) hath been so long occasioned , and is now happily provided for by the care of our parliament , which hath appointed these judicatories to meet at the ordinary time , if they be not letted by the indirect practises of thir banders , and such others , who under fair pretexts studie the continuance of the present troubles , and by their open withholding their assisting , and secret resisting the resolutions of the kingdom , do what in them lies to weaken the strength thereof , and render it a prey to forreign powers : as also by their large enumerating the publike burdens , which have been so necessarily laid on for preserving our kingdom from ruine , and are so much the heavier on these parts , that these who now complain most , have by their complyance with the rebels , and refusall to joyn against them , been altogether free thereof as yet : and which have been so sparingly imposed and providently disposed of , that no just occasion of complaint can be made thereof , as will appear by the publike accompts at length perused by the estates of our parliament ; and yet extant to the view of the world . and last , these banders finding no readier mean to dishearten our good subjects in the pursuance of this cause , make large expressions of their sense of the distressed condition of the countrey , whiles they themselves by their by-gone correspondence and present banding with declared traitours and bloodie irishes who have invaded this our kingdom , do really witnesse their intentions to continue , and ( so far as they are able ) increase the troubles and distresses thereof , and seare the bowels of the same . for which purpose they labour to weaken the confidence ●nd union betwixt our kingdoms of scotland and england , which are so firmly joyned in the solemne league and covenant , that no respects can make them forget their mutuall ingagements , or withhold their assistance from others , as the condition of affairs shall require . all which being at length considered by the committee of estates , and they finding this band to be destructive to the covenant , and ends conteined therein , illegall , and against the laws of our kingdom , prejudiciall to the publike peace ( now drawing towards a happy close , if not interrupted by such treacherous plots ) and divisive for fomenting of jealousies and continuing the bloody wars within our kingdoms , have declared they will proceed against the same accordingly : and therefore our will is , and we charge you straitly and command , that incontinent thir our letters seen , you passe , and by open proclamation hereof at the market crosses of edinburgh , stirling , glasgow , dundee , perth , forfar , aberdeen , innernesse , and other places needfull , in our name and authority command , charge , and inhibit all our good subjects , that none of them presume nor take upon hand , to acknowledge or signe the said band , nor joyn themselves with the subscribers thereof in pursuance of the same , under all highest pains which by the law or practise of this our realm can be execute upon such unlawfull and seditious bands . and yet because possibly some of our good subjects have been through mis-information , fear , or other means insnared and drawn to joyn herein , without any ill intention of themselves ; and we being willing to reclaim all such , do therefore declare , that whosoever hath signed or joyned in this band , and will betwixt and the fifteenth of may next to come disclaim and quit the same , shall be free of all censure therefore . the which to do , we commit to you our full power by thir our letters . given under our signet at edinburgh the 5 of april , and of our reign the 22 yeer 1646. per actum dominorum commiss . predict . arch. primerose cler. printed at edinburgh by evan tyler , printer to the kings most excellent majestie . 1646. a letter sent from the parliament of scotland to the severall presbyteries within the kingdome. scotland. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a92581 of text r210769 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.12[23]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a92581 wing s1289 thomason 669.f.12[23] estc r210769 99869526 99869526 162816 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92581) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 162816) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 246:669f12[23]) a letter sent from the parliament of scotland to the severall presbyteries within the kingdome. scotland. parliament. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [london : 1648] imprint from wing. desires the goodwill of the presbyteries -cf. steele. with engraving of royal seal at head of document. dated at end: edinburgh, 11 may 1648; signed: alex. gibson, cler. regist. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng church and state -scotland -17th century -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a92581 r210769 (thomason 669.f.12[23]). civilwar no a letter sent from the parliament of scotland to the severall presbyteries within the kingdome. scotland. parliament 1648 793 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-07 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-08 pip willcox sampled and proofread 2007-08 pip willcox text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion honi soit qvi mal y pense diev et mon droit royal blazon or coat of arms a letter sent from the parliament of scotland to the severall presbyteries within the kingdome . right reverend , the many scandals that are thrown on our actions by the favourers of sectaries , and haters of the person of our king and monarchicall government , invite us to this extraordinary addresse to you ; conjuring you , as you will answer to the great god whose servants you are , not to suffer your selves to be possest with unjust and undeserved prejudices against us and our proceedings , who have since our late meeting in parliament preferred no earthly thing to our duties to religion , and the promoting of all the ends of our covenant , and have constantly used all reall endeavours to have carried on those duties to the satisfaction of the most tender consciences ; and especially by our great compliances with the many desires from the commissioners of the generall assembly : we have proceeded to greater discoveries of our resolutions , in the wayes and meanes of managing this present service then possible in prudence we ought to have done , having so neare and active enemies to oppose us : neither can it be with any truth or justice in any sort alleadged , that we have in the least measure wronged , or violated the true priviledges and liberties of the church , or any wayes taken upon us the determination or decision of any matters of faith or church discipline , though we be unjustly charged with taking an antecedent judgement in matters of religion ; under pretence whereof great encroachments are made on our unquestioned rights . for what can be more civill then to determine what civill duties we ought to pay to our king , or what civill power he ought to be possessed of ? and if we meet with obstructions and opposition in carrying on those duties , are not we the only judges thereunto ? is there any other authority in this kingdome , but that of king and parliament , and what flowes from them that can pretend any authoritative power in the choice of the instruments and managers of our publick resolutions . it is a subject for the dispute of church judicatories , whether his majesty hath a negative voice in parliament or not ? these certainly cannot be pretended to by any kirk-man , without a great usurpation over the civill magistrate , whereof we are confident the church of scotland , nor any judicatory thereof will never be guilty , nor fall into the episcopall disease of medling with civill affaires : and if any have already in these particulars exceeded their bounds , we expect the ensuing generall assembly will censure it accordingly , and prevent the vilifying and contemning the authority of parliament by any of the ministery , either in , or out of their pulpits , or who shall offer to stir up the subjects of this kingdome to disobey , or deny to give civill obedience to their lawes ; it being expresly prohibited by the 2. and 5. acts of ja. 6. his 8. parliament , in anno 1584. that none of his majesties subjects , under paine of treason , impugne the authority of parliament . and therefore seeing the cause is the same for which this kingdom hath done and suffered so much , and that we are resolved to proceed for the preservation and defence of religion , before all other worldly interests whatsoever ; and to carry on sincerely , really , and constantly the covenant , and all the ends of it , as you will finde by our declaration herewith sent to you : we doe confidently expect , that as the ministers of this kingdome have hitherto been most active and exemplary in furthering the former expeditions , so now you will continue in the same zeale , to stir up the people by your preaching and prayers , and all other wayes in your calling , to a chearefull obedience to our orders , and engaging in this businesse ; and that you will not give so great advantage to the enemies of presbyteriall government , and bring so great a scandall on this church , as to oppose the authority of parliament , or obstruct their proeeedings in their necessary duties for the good of religion , the honour and happinesse of the king and his royall posterity , and the true peace of his dominions . signed by order of parliament . alex. gibson , cler. regist. edinburgh , 11 may 1648. a catalogue of the nobility of england, scotland, and ireland with an addition of the baronets of england, the dates of their patents, the seuerall creations of the knights of the bath, from the coronation of king iames, to this present. collected by t.w. most exact catalogue of the nobilitie of england, scotland, and ireland walkley, thomas, d. 1658? 1630 approx. 84 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 23 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-01 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a14671 stc 24974 estc s101308 99837124 99837124 1434 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a14671) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 1434) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 979:08) a catalogue of the nobility of england, scotland, and ireland with an addition of the baronets of england, the dates of their patents, the seuerall creations of the knights of the bath, from the coronation of king iames, to this present. collected by t.w. most exact catalogue of the nobilitie of england, scotland, and ireland walkley, thomas, d. 1658? [2], 14, [28] p. printed [by eliz. allde] for t. walkley, london : 1630. t.w. = thomas walkley. printer's name from stc. printer's device (mckerrow 310) on title page. another edition of stc 24973.5, published in 1628 with title: a most exact catalogue of the nobilitie of england, scotland, and ireland. reproduction of original in the british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng heraldry -great britain -early works to 1800. england -nobility -registers -early works to 1800. scotland -nobility -registers -early works to 1800. ireland -nobility -registers -early works to 1800. great britain -nobility -early works to 1800. 2002-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2002-03 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2002-04 tcp staff (oxford) sampled and proofread 2002-04 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2002-05 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a catalogve of the nobility of england , scotland , and ireland . vvith an addition of the baronets of england , the dates of their patents , the seuerall creations of the knights of the bath , from the coronation of king iames , to this present . collected by t. w. london , printed for thomas walkley , and are to be sold at his shop at the signe of the eagle and child at brittaines bursse . 1630. a catalogue of the nobiliti● of england . duk●s . george villers duke , marque●se , and earle of buckingham , and couentry , viscount villers , baro● of whadden , i●fra atatem . marquesses . iohn pawlet marquesse of winchester , earle of wiltshire , and lord st. iohn of basing . earles . thomas howard earle of arundell and surrey , earle marshall of england , and knight of the garter . robert vere earle of oxford , viscount bulbec , lord samford , and vadilsmere . henry percy earle of northumberland , lord poy●ings , fitz-payne , and brian , knight of the garter . george talbot earle of shrewesbury , lord talbot● furniuall , verdon , and strange of blakemere . henry gray earle of kent , lord ruthin . william stanley earle of derby , lord stanley , strange of knoking , and of the i le of man , knight of the garter . henry somerset earle of worcester , lord herbert of chepstow , ragland , and gower . francis mannors earle of rutland , lord ros of hamelake , beluoir , and trusbut , knight of the garter . francis clifford earle of cumberland , lord clifford● westmerland , and vesey . edward radcliffe earle of sussex , viscount fitz-wal●er , lord egremont , and burnell . henry hastings earle of huntington , lord hastings hungerford , botreaux , moeles , and molyns , edward bourchier earle of bath , and lord fitz-warin . thomas wriothesley , earle of southampton , and baron wrioth●sley of titchfield . francis russell earle of bedford , and lord russell . philip herbert earle of pembroke and montgomery● baron ●erbert of cardiffe and shirland , lord parre and roos , of kenda● , marmion , and st. quintin , lord cham●erlaine of his maiesties houshold , and knight of the gar●er . william seymour earle of hartford , and baron beauchamp . rob●rt deuereux earle of essex , viscount hereford , and bourchier , lord ferrers of chartly , bourchier , and louayne . theophilus fynes earle of lincolne , and lord clinton . charles howard earle of nottingham , and lord howard of e●●ingham . earles made by king iames . theophilus howard earle of suffolke , lord howard of walden , and knight of the garter . edward sackuile earle of dorset , and baron buckhurst , knight of the garter , and lord chamberlaine to the queenes maiestie . william cecill earle of salisbury , viscount cramborne , and baron cecill of essinden , knight of the garter . william cecill earle of exceter , baron burghley , knight of the garter . robert carr earle of somerset , viscount rochester , and baron of branspath , knight of the garter . iohn egerton earle bridgewater , viscount brackley , and baron ellesmere . robert sidney earle of leicester , viscount lifle , and baron sidney of penshurst . spencer compton earle of northampton , baron compton of compton . robert rich earle of warwicke , and lord rich of leeze . william cauendish earle of deuonshire , and baron cauendish of hardwicke , infra aetatem . iames hamilton earle of cambridge , marquesse of hamilton , earle of arran , baron of euen , and aberbroth , master of the horse to his maiestie . iames stuart earle of march , duke of lenox , lord aubigny , baron of leighton , bromeswold , lord darnley , mertiuen , and st. andrews . iames hay earle of carlile , viscount doncaster , lord hay of sauley , and knight of the garter . william fielding earle of denbigh , viscount fielding , and baron of newenham-padox . iohn digby earle of bristoll , and baron digby of shirborne . leonell cranfield earle of middlesex , and baron cranfield of cranfield . charles villers earle of anglesey , lord dauentrey . henry rich earle of holland , baron kensington , of kensington , capt. of the gard , and knight of the garter . iohn hollis earle of clare , lord houghton of houghton . oliuer st. iohn earle of bullingbroke , lord st. iohn of bletso . mildmay fane earle of westmerland , lord le de-spencer , and burghwash . earles made by king charies . william knowles earle of banbery , viscount wallingford , and lord knowles of grayes , knight of the garter . henry montague earle of manchester , viscount mandeuile , and lord kymbolton , lord priuy seale . thomas howard earle of barkeshire , viscount ando●ner , and lord charlton , knight of the garter . thomas wentworth earle of cleueland , lord wentworth of nettelsted . edmond she●●ield , earle of mulgraue , lord she●field of butterwick , and knight of the garter . henry danuers earle of danby , lord danuers of dantzy . robert cary earle of monmouth , lord cary of lepington . henry ley earle of marleburgh , and lord ley of ley. edward denny earle of norwich , and lord den●y of waltham . thomas darcie earle riuers , viscount colchester , and lord darcie of chich. robert bartu earle of lindsey , and lord willoughby of eresby , lord great chamberlaine , knight of the garter . william cauendish earle of new-ca●tell , viscount mansfield , lord boulfouer , and ogle . henry cary earle of douer , viscount rochford , and lord hunsdon . iohn mordant earle of peterborough , lord mordant of turuey . henry gray earle of standford , lord gray of groby , bonuille , and harington . elizabeth finch countesse of winchelsey , and viscountesse maidstone . robert perpoint earle of kingston vpon hull , viscount newarke vpon trent , and lord perpoint of hobnes perpoint . robert dormere earle of carna●uan , viscount asco● , and lord dormere of wing . mount-ioy blount earle of newport , lord mount-ioy of thurueston . philip stanhop earle of chesterfield , and lord stanhop of shelford . nicholas tufton earle of the i le of thanet , and lord tufton of tufton . richard de burgh earle of st. albons● and clanrickard , viscount tunbridge , and galloway , baron of somerhill , and imanuey . viscounts . anthony browne viscount montague of cowdrey . viscounts made by king iames . iohn villers viscount purbecke , lord of stoke . william ●ines viscount say and seale , lord say , and seale . viscounts made by king charles . edward cecill viscount wimbleton , and baron cecill of putney . thomas sauage viscount rock sauage . edward conway viscount conway , and killultagh , and baron conway of ragley , lord president of his maiesties priuie councell . paul baynening viscount baynening of sudbury , and lord baynening of hookesley . edward noell viscount camden , baron noell of ridlington . dudley carleton viscount dorchester , and lord carleton of imbercourt , principall secretarie . thomas wentworth viscount wentworth , baron wentworth of wentworth , wood-house , new-march , and ouer●ley . bishops . george abbot , archbishop of canterbury . samuel harsnet , archbishop of yorke . william laude , bishop of london . iohn howson bishop of durham . richard neile , bishop of winchester . thomas doue , bishop of peterborough . francis godwine , bishop of hereford . iohn thorneburgh , bishop of worcester . iohn buckridge , bishop of ely. thomas morton , bishop of couentry and lichfi●ld . lewes baily , bishop of bangor . iohn bridgeman , bishop of chester . theophilus field , bishop of st. dauids . iohn williams , bishop of lincolne . iohn dauenant , bishop of salisbury . robert wright , bishop of bristoll . godfrey goodman , bishop of gloucester . f●ancis white , bishop of norwich . io●uah hall , bishop of exeter . william murray , bishop of landaffe . richard mountagu , bishop of chichester . walter curle , bishop of bath and wells . richard corbet , bishop of oxford . barnabas potter , bishop of carlile . iohn owen , bishop of st. ashaph . iohn bowle , bishop of rochester . barons . henry clifford , lord clifford elde●t sonne of francis earle of cumberland . henry neuill lord abergauenny . maruin touchet lord awdeley of highleigh . algernon percie , lord percie , eldest sonne of henry earle of northumberland . iames stanley , lord strange , eldest sonne of william earle of derby . charles west lord delaware , infra aetatem . g●orge barkeley , lord barkeley of barkeley castle . henry parker , lord morley and montegle . richard lennard , lord dacres of hurst-monseux . henry stafford , lord stafford of stafford , infra ●tat●● . edward sutton , lord dudley of dudley castle . edward stourton , lord stourton of stourton . iohn darcie , lord darcie , and mennell . edward vaux , lord vaux of of harrowden . thomas windsor , lord windsor of bradenham . thomas cromwell , lord cromwell of ockha● . william eure , lord eure of whitton . philip wharton , lord wharton of wharton . william willoughby , lord willoughby of parham● william paget , lord paget of beaudesert . dudley north , lord north of carthlage . george bridges , lord shandos of sudley , infra ●ta●●● . barons made by king iam●s . william peter , lord peter of writtell . dutton gerard , lord gerard of gerards bro●ley . william spencer , lord spencer of wormleighto● . charles stanhop , lord stanhop of harrington . thomas arundell , lord arundell of wardour . christopher roper , lord tenham of tenham , infra aetatem . edward montagu , lord montagu of kimbolton , eldest sonne of henry earle of manchester . basell fielding , lord newnham paddocks , eldest so● of william earle of denbigh . robert greuill , lord brooke of bea●champ court. edward montagu lord montagu of boughto● . william gray , lord gray of warke . francis leake , lord denicourt of s●tton . richard roberts , lord roberts of truro . edward conway , lord conway of rag●ey , eldest sonne of edward visco●nt conway . barons made by king charles . horace v●re , lord vere of ti●bury , master of the ordnance . oliuer st. iohn , lord tregoze of highworth . william crauen , lord crauen of hamsteed marsh●ll . thomas bellassise , lord falconbridge of yarom . richard louelace , lord louelace of hurley . iohn pawlet , lord pawlet of hinton st. george . william h●rny , lord herny of kidbrooke . thomas brudenell , lord brudenell of stouton . william maynard , lord maynard of estaines . thomas couentry , lord couentry of alesborough , lord keeper of the great seale of england . edward howard , lord howard of est●ricke . richard weston , lord weston of ●eyla●d , lord high treasur●r of england , knight of the garter . ●eorge gor●ing , lord goreing of hurstperpoint . iohn mohun● lord mohun of o●●hampton . iohn sa●ill● lord sauill of pomfret . iohn bu●ler , lord butler of bram●ield . f●ancis l●igh , lord dunsemore . william h●rbert , lord powys of powys . edward herbert , lord herbert of chierbury . a catalogue of the dukes , marquesses , e●rles , viscounts , and barons of scotland . dukes . iames stuart duke of lennox , earle of march , lord da●ley● methuen , st. andrews , and aubigny , and ad●irall and chamberla●ne of scotland by inheritance . marqu●sses . iames hamiltone marquesse hamilton , earle of arran , and cambridge , lord auen , inordaill , and aberbroth , master of the horse to his maiestie . george gordoun marquesse huntley , earle of enzy , and lord strathbolgie . earles . william douglas earle of angus , lord douglas , and t●ntallon . archbald campbell earle of argyle , lord lorne , and kintine . george lindesey earle of crauford , lord glenesh , and fineuin . francis hay earle of erroll , lord hay of slains , con●table of scotland by inheritance . william keith earle mar●hall , lord dunoter , and marshall of scotland by inh●ritance . iohn gordon earle of sutherland , lord strathn●uer , and dunrobin . iohn erskeine earle of ma●r , and carioch , lord erskeine● and breichin , trea●u●er of scotland . iohn grahame earle of menteeth , lord , &c. iohn lesley earle of rothes , lord lesley , and ba●breigh . william douglas earle of morton , lord dalkeith , and aberdour . iames grahame earle of montros , lord kincairne , and mugdock . alexander seton earle of eglenton , lord mountgomery . iohn keneday earle of cassils , lord keneday . george st. claire earle ca●teynes , lord b●rredaill . alexander cunnighame earle of glencarne , lord kilmauris . iames erskeine earle of buchan , lord aughter●ous . iames stuart earle of murray , lord donne , and st. columb●inch . iohn mu●ray earle of athole , lord , &c. earles made by king iames . robert maxwell earle of ni●hisdale , lord maxwell , and cartauerock . george setone earle of wintoun , and lord setone . alexander leuinstone earle of linlithgou , lord kalendar . iames hume earle of hume , lord dungals . iohn drumond earle of perth , lord drumond , and hobhall . charles setone earle of dunfermeline , lord fyuie , and vrquarte . fl●iming earle of vigtoune , lord cumber●●rd . iohn layon earle of kingorne . iames hamilton earle of abercorne , lord dasley , iames kere earle of louthian , lord heubotill . patrick murray earle of tullibardine , lord murray . robert kere earle of roxbrugh , lord c●ssfing . thomas erskeine earle of kelly , viscount fentone , lord diriltone . walter scot earle of buckcleuch , lord , &c. thomas hamilton earle of hadingtoune , lord byning , and byris , lord priuy seale . alexander stuart earle of galloway , lord garleis . collen mac-enzie earle of seafort , lord kintaill . iohn murray earle of anandill , viscount anan , lord lochmabine . iohn maitland earle of lauderdale , viscount maitland , and lord thirilstone , and lethingtone . iames stuart earle of carrick , lord kincleuine . viscounts . henry carey , viscount falkland . henry cunstable , viscount dunbar . dauid murray , viscount stormouth , lord scone . william crightone , viscount aire , lord sanquhair . george hay , viscount dupleine , lord hay of kinfauns , lord high chamberlaine of scotland . iohn gordon , viscount melgum , lord aboyne . william douglas , viscount drumlanrick , &c. barons . lindesay , lord lindesay . iohn forbes , lord forbes . ab●rnete , lord saltoun . andrew gray , lord gray of fouils . iames stuart , lord vchiltrie . ca●hcarte , lord cathc●rte . lord caruill● iohn hay lord yester . iames semple , lord s●mple . henry st. clair , lord st. clair of rauensheogh . maxewell , lord heries . alexander elphingstone , lord elphingstone . lawrence oliphant , lord oliphant . simon foaser , lord lo●at . iames ogiluey , lord ogiluey . borthwick , lord borthwick● robert rosse , lord rosse . thomas boyde , lord boyde . sandelius , lord torphichen . alexander lindesay , lord spynnie . patrick lesley , lord londoers . cambell , lord loudon . thomas bruce , baron kinlosse . iohn elphingstone , lord balmerinoch . iames colueill , lord colueill . iames stuart , lord blantyre . robert balfour , lord burleigh . adam bothuell , lord holyrudehouse . iohn drumund , lord madertie . iames elphingstone , lord cooper . iohn cranstone , lord cranstone . ogiluey , lord deskford . robert melueill , lord melueill . dauid carnagay , lord carnagay . iohn ramsay , lord ramsay . carr , lord iedbrough . campbell , lord kintyir . naiper , lord naiper of marcheston . thomas fairfax , lord cameron . edward barret , lord newbrough . walter aston , lord forfare . iohn weymes , lord weymes . elizabeth richardson , baronesse of craumond , wife to sir thomas richardson , chiefe iustice of his maiesties court of common pl●●s . iohn stuart , lord traquair . donald macky , lord rae . robert dalzell , lord dalzell . a catalogue of the earles , viscounts , & barons of ireland● george fitz-gerald earle of kildare . walt●r butler earle of ormond . henry obri●n earle of thomond . richard burgh earle of clanricard . mernen to●chet earle of castell-hauen . richard boyle earle of corke . randall mac-donell earle of antrim . richard nugent earle of westmeath . iames dillon earle of roscomman . thomas ridgway earle of london derry . william brabazen earle of eastmeath . dauid barry earle of barrymore , & viscount ●o●teuant . gorge fielding earle of desmond & viscount callon . iohn vaughan earle of carbury , and lord vaughan of mol●ingar . william pope earle of downe , and baron bealterbert . luc●s plunket earle of ●inga●le , & lord of killene . viscounts . i●●ico p●eston viscount of gormanston . d●●id ●●che viscount of fermoy . richard ●●tler● viscount mo●ntgarret . richa●d wing●ield viscount powerscourt . o●●●er st. iohn viscount grandison . charles wilmot viscount wilmot of athlone . henry poore viscount of valentia . garret moore viscount of drogh●da . chris●opher dillon viscount dillon of costellagh-galni● nicholas netteruill viscount netteruill of dowthe . hugh montgomery viscount montgomery of the ardes . iames hamilton viscount clanhughboy . adam loftus viscount loftus of ely. thomas beaumont viscount beaumont of swords . anth. mac-enos alias magennis , visc. magennis of euagh . thomas cromwell viscount l●cale . edward chichester viscount chichester of carigfergus . dominick sarsfield viscount sarsfield of roscarbery . robert neede●am viscount kilmurry . thomas somerset viscount somerset of cassell . edward conway viscount of killultagh . nicholas sanderson vis●ount of castl●towne . thomas roper viscount of baltinglas . theobald burgh viscoun● of maio. lewes boyle viscount boyle of kynalmeaky . roger iones viscount of rannelagh . george chaworth viscount chaworth of ardmagh . barnham swift visco●●t carlingford . thomas sauile viscount sauile of castle-bar . iohn scudamore , baron scudamore of dromore , and viscount scudamore of sligo . robert cholmundeley visco . cholmundeley of kellis . thomas smith viscount strangford . richard lumley viscount lumley of waterford . richard wenman viscount wenman of tuan , and baron wenman of kilmanham . iohn taffe viscount corine , and baron of ballimote . william mounson viscount mounson of castle-mayne , and baron mounson of bellinguard . charles mac-carty viscount of muskry . richard mulenux viscount mulenux of mariburgh . thomas fairfax viscount fairfax of emmely . thomas fitz-william viscount fitz-william of meryung , and baron fitz-william of thorne-castle . perce butler viscount kerine . barons . richard bermingham , lord bermingham of athenry . iohn courcy , lord courcy of kinsale . thomas fitz-morrice , lord of kerry , and lixnawr . thomas fleming , lord of slane . nicholas st. lawrence , lord of hothe . patrick plunket , lord of dunsany . robert barnwell , lord of trimleston . edmund butler , lord of dunboyne . teige mac-gilpatrik , lord of vpper o●sery . oliuer plunket , lord of lough . iohn power , lord corraghmore . morrogh obrien , lord of inchequin . edmund burgh , lord burgh of castle-connell . thomas butler , lord of cahir . mont-ioy blunt , lord mont-ioy of mont-ioy fort. oliuer lambert , lord lambert of cauan . theobald burgh , lord burgh of britas . andrew steward , lord of castle-steward . iames balfoure , lord balfoure of clan-awley . henry folliet , lord folliet of ballishenam . william maynard , lord maynard of wicklogh . edward gorges , lord gorges of dundalke . robert digby , lord digby of geshell . william heruy , lord heruy of rosse . william fitz-william , lord fitz-william of liffer . william caufield , lord caufield of charlemont . henry docwray , lord docwray of culmore . edward blany , lord blany of monagham . francis aungier , lord aungier , of long-ford . lawrence esmond , lord esmond of lymerick . dermond omallum , lord omallum of glan omallum . william br●rton , lord brerton of laghlin . edward herbert lord herbert of castle-iland . george caluert , lord baltimore . hugh hare , lord colerane of colerane . william sherard , lord sherard of letrim . roger boyle , lord boyle , baron of broghill . brian mac-guier , baron of iniskillin . francis ansley , lord mount-norris . the names of baronets made by king iames and king charles , at seuerall times ; as followeth . anno 9. & 44. iacobi regis , 1611. sir nicholas bacon of redgraue , in the county of ●●●●folke knight , created baronet the 22. day of may , anno praedicto . sir richard molineux of se●ton in the county of lancaster knight , created baronet the 22. day of may , anno praedicto . sir thomas maunsell of morgan , in the county of clamorgan knight , created baronet the 22. day of may anno praedicto . george shyrley of staunton , in the county of leicester esquire , created baronet the 22. day of may , vt supra . sir iohn stradling of st. donates , in the county of glamorgan knight , teste vt supra . thomas pe●ham of lawghton , in the county of sussex esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir francis leake of sutton , in the county of derby knight , teste vt supra . sir richard houghton of houghton-tower , in the county of lancaster knight , teste vt supra . sir henry hobart of intwood , in the county of norfolke knight , teste vt supra . sir george booth of dunham massie in the county of chester knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir iohn peyton of hisman , in the county of cambridge knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . lionell talmache of h●mingham , in the county of suffolke esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir i●ruis clifton of clif●on , in the county of derby knight , created baronet , teste v● supra . sir thomas gerrard of brim in the county of lancaster knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir walter aston of titfall , in the county of stafford kn●ght , created baronet , teste vt supra . philip kneuet of bucknam esquire , in the county of norfolke , teste vt supra . sir iohn s● . iohn of lediard tregos , in the couty of wilts knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . iohn shelly of michelgroue , in the county of sussex esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir iohn sauage of rock-sauage , in the county of chester knight , created baronet the 29. day of iune , anno 9. & 44. iacobi regis , anno praedicte . sir francis barington of barington-hall , in the county of essex knight , created baronet the 29. day of iune , v● supra anno praedicto . henry berkley of wymondham , in the county of l●icester esquire , created baronet the 29. day of iune , anno praedicte . william wentworth of wentworth woodhouse , in the county of yorke esquire , created baronet the 29. day of iune , vt ante an . praed . sir richard musgraue of hartley-castle , in the county of vvestmerland knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . edward seimoure of bury-castle , in the county of deuon esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir miles finch of eastwell , in the county of kent knig. created baronet , teste vt supra . sir anthony cope of harwell , in the county of oxford knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir thomas mounson of carleton , in the county of lincolne knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . george griesley of drakelow , in the county of derby esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . paul tracy of stanway , in the county of glocester esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir iohn wentworth of g●ffield , in the county of essex knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir henry bellassis of newbrough , in the county of yorke knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . william constable of flambrough , in the county of yorke esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir thomas legh of stoneley , in the county of vvarwicke knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir edward noell of brooke , in the county of rutland knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir robert cotton of connington , in the county of lincolne knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . robert cholmondeleigh of cholmondeleigh , in the county of chester esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . iohn molineux of teuershalt , in the county of notting●am esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir francis wortley of vvortley , in the county of yorke knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir george sauile the elder of thornehill , in the county of yorke knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . william kniueton of mircaston , in the county of derby esquire , created baronet , ●este vt supra . sir philip woodhouse of ●imberley-hall , in the county of norfolke knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir william pope of vvilcot , in the county of of oxford knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir iames harrington of ridlington , in the county of rutland knight , created baronet the 29. day of iune , anno praed . sir henry sauile of metheley , in the county of yorke knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . henry willoughby of risley , in the county of derby esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . lewis tresham of rushton , in the county of northhampton esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . thomas brudenell of de●ne , in the county of northampton esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir george st. paul of snarford , in the county of lincolne knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir philip tirwhit of s●amefield , in the county of lincolne kight , created baro●et , t●ste vt supra . sir rog●r da●lison o● laughton , in the county of lincolne knight , created baronet the 29. day of iune , anno pred . sir edward carre of sleford , in the county of lincolne knight , creat●d baro●et , teste vt supra . sir edward h●ssey of henington , in the county of lincolne knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . le strange mord●nt of massi●gham parua , in the county of nor●●lke esquire , created baronet the 29. day of iun● . anno pred . thomas bendish of steeple bumsteed , in the county of essex esquire , creat●d baronet the 29. day of iune , anno predicto vt supra . sir iohn winne of gwidder , in the county of carnaruon knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir william throckmorton of t●rtworth , in the county of gloucester knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir richard worsley of appledorecombe , in the county of southampton knight created baronet , teste vt supra . richard fleet-wood of cakewish , in the county of stafford e●quire , created baronet , teste vt supra . thomas spencer of yardington , in the county of oxford esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir iohn tufton of hothfield , in the county of k●nt knight , created baronet the 29. day of iune , anno praedictae . sir samuel peyton of knowlton , in the county of kent knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir charles morrison of cashiobury , in the county of hertford , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir henry baker of sissinghurst , in the county of kent knight , created baronet , teste v● supra ● roger appleton of southbemsteet , in the county of essex esquire , created baronet , teste vt sup . sir william sedley of ailesford , in the county of kent knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir william twisden of east-peckham , in the county of kent knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir edward hales of woodchurch , in the county of kent knight , created baronet the 29. day of iune , vt william monyus of walwa●sher , in the county of kent esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . thomas milemay of mulsham , in the county of essex esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir william maynard of easton parua , in the county of essex knight , created baronet the 29. day of iune , anno praedicto . henry lee of quarrendon , in the county of buckingham esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . these last baronets which be in number 52. beare date all 29. day of iune , anno supradicto . and the other 18. which be first , doe all beare date 22. day of may , an. supradicto . anno 10. & 45. iacobi regis , 1612. sir iohn portman of orchard , in the county of somerset knight , created baronet the 25. day of nouember , anno pred . sir nicholas saunderson of saxby , in the county of lincolne , created baroned the 25. day of nouember the an. praed . sir miles sandes of wilberton within the i le of ely knight , created baronet , teste vt surra . william gostwicke of willington , in the county of bedford esquire , created baronet the 25. day of nouember anno praedicto . thomas puckering of weston , in the county of hertford esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir william wray of glentworth , in the county of lincolne knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir william ailoffe of braxted magna , in the county of essex knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir marmaduke wiuell of custable-burton , in the county of yorke knight , created baronet , the 25. day of nouember , anno pred . iohn peshall of horsley , in the county of stafford esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . francis englefield of wotton basset , in the county of wilts esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir thomas ridgway of torre , in the county of deuon knight , created baronet , teste vt supra william essex of bewcot , in the county of berkeshire esquire , created baronet the 25. day of nouember , anno praed . sir edward gorges of langford , in the county of wilts knight , created baronet the 25. day of nouember , anno praed . edward deuereux of castle bramwitch , in the county of warwicke , esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . reginald mohun of buckonnock , in the county of cornwall esquire , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir harbottle grimstone of bradfield , in the county of essex knight , created baronet , teste vt supra . sir thomas holt of aston iuxta byrmingham , in the county of warwicke knight , created baronet the 25. day of nouember , anno praed . sir robert napar alias sandy of lewton-how , in the county of bedford knight , created baronet , teste 24● day of september , anno pred . paul bayning of in the county of essex esquire , created baronet the sir thomas temple of in the county of buckingham knight , created baronet the day of thomas peneystone of in the county of sussex esquire , created baronet the anno 13. & 48. iacobi regis 1615. thomas blackston of blackston , in the county and bishopiicke of durham , created baronet the 8. day of iune , anno praed . sir robert dormer of wing , in the county of buckingham knight , created baronet the 10. day of iune , anno praed . and created baron dormer of wing , the thirty of iune , anno praed . anno 15. & 50. iacobi regis , 1616. sir rowland egerton of egerton , in the county of chester knight , created baronet the 5. day of aprill an pred . roger towneshend of rainham , in the county of norffo●ke esquire , created baronet the 16. day of aprill , anno praed . simon clerke of sulford , in the county of warwicke esquire , created baronet the first day of may , anno pred . anno 15. & 51. iacobi regis , 1617. sir richard lucy of broxborne , in the county of hertford knight , created baronet the 11. day of march , anno praed . anno 16. & 51. iacobi regis , 1618. sir mathew boynton bramston in the county of yorke knight , created baronet the 25. day of may. an . praed . thomas littleton of fr●nkley , in the county of worcester esquire , created baronet the 25. day of iuly , anno praed . anno 16. & 52. iacobi regis , 1618. sir francis leigh of newneham , in the county of warwicke knight , created baronet , the 24. day of december , anno praed . george morton of st. andrewes milborne , in the county of dorset esquire , created baronet the first day of march , an . praed . anno 17. & 52. iacobi regis , 1619. sir william heruy knight , created baronet the 31. day of may , an . praed . thomas mackworth of normanton , in the county of rutland esquire , created baronet the 4. day of iune , an . prad . william grey esquire , sonne and heire of sir ralph grey of chillingham in the county of northumberland knight , created baronet the 15. day of iune , an . praed . william villiers of brookesby , in the county of leicester esquire , created baronet the 19. day of iuly , an . praed . sir iames ley of westbury , in the county of vvilts knight , created baronet the 20. day of iuly , an . pred . william hicks of beuerston , in the county of leicester esquire , created baronet the 21. day of iuly , an . pred . anno 17. & 53. iacobi regis . sir thomas beamont of coleauerton , in the county of leicester knight , created baronet the 17. day of september , an . pred . henry salisbury of leweny , in the county of denbigh esquire , created baronet the 10. day of nouember , an . pred . erasmus driden of canons ashby , in the county of northampton esquire , created baronet the 16. day of nouember , an . pred . william armine esquire , sonne of sir william armine of osgodby , in the county of lincolne knight , created baronet the 28. of nouember , an . pred . sir william bamburgh of howson , in the county of yorke knight , created baronet the first day of december , an . pred . edward hartoppe of freathby , in the county of leicester esquire , created baronet the 2. day of december , an . pred . iohn mill of camons-court , in the county of sussex esquire , created baronet the 31. day of december , anno pred . francis radcliffe of darentwater , in the county of cumberland esquire , created baronet the 31. day of ianuary , an . pred . sir dauid foulis of ingleby , in the county of of yorke knight , created baronet the 6. day of february , an . pred . thomas philips of barrington , in the county of somerset esquire , created baronet the 16. day of february , an . pred . sir claudius forster of bambrough-castle , in the county of northumberland knight , created baronet the 7. day of march , an . praed . anthony chester of chicheley , in the county of buckingham esquire , created baronet the 23. day of march , an . praed . sir samuel tryon or layre-marney , in the county of essex knight , created baronet the 28. day of ma●ch , an . praed . anno 18. & 53. iacobi regis , 1620. adam newton of charleton , in the county of kent , esquire , created baronet the 2. day of aprill , an . pr. sir iohn boteler of hatfield-woodhall , in the county of hertford knight , created baronet the 12. day of aprill , an . pred . gilbert gerrard of harrow super montem , in the county of middlesex esquire , created baronet the 13. day of aprill , an . praed . humfrey lee of langley , in the county of salop esquire , created baronet the 3. day of may , an . praed . richard berney of park-hall in redham , in the county of norffolke esquire , created baronet the 5. day of may , an . praed . humfrey forster of aldermaston , in the county of berke esquire , created baronet the 20. day of may , anno praed . thomas biggs of lenchwicke , in the county of vvorcester esquire , created baron●t the 29. day of may , anno praed . henry bellingham of helsington , in the county of westmerland e●quire , created baronet the 30. day of may , an . praed . william yeluerton of rougham , in the county of norfolke esquire , cr●ated baronet the 31. day of may , anno praed . iohn scudamore of home lacy ● in the county of hereford esquire , created baronet the first day of iune , anno praed . sir thomas gore of stitman , in the county of yorke knight , created baronet the 2. day of iune , an . praed . iohn packington of alesbury , in the county of buckingham esquire , created baronet the 22. day of iune , an . praed . raphe ashton of leuer , in the county of lancaster esquire , created baronet the 28. of iune , an . praed . sir baptist hicks of campden , in the county of glocester knight , created baronet the first day of iuly , anno praed . sir thomas roberts of glassenbury , in the county of kent knight , created baronet the 3. day of iuly , anno praed . iohn hamner of hamner , in the county of flint esquire , creat●d baronet the 8. day of iuly , anno praedicto . edward osborne of keeton , in the county of yorke , esquire , created baronet the 13. day of iuly , anno praedicto . henry felton of playford , in the county of suffolke esquire , created baronet , the 20. day of iuly , an . praed . william chaloner of ginsborough , in the county of york● esquire , created baronet , the 21. day of iuly , an . praedicto . edward fryer of water-eaton , in the county of oxford esquire , created baronet the 22. day of iuly● an . praed . sir thomas bishop of parham , in the county of sussex knight , created baronet the 24. day of iuly , an . praed . sir francis vincent of stockdawe-barton , in the county of surrey knight , created baronet the 26. day of iuly , anno praed . anno 18. & 54. iacobi regis , 1620. henry clere of ormesby , in the county of norfolke esquire , created baronet the 27. day of february , an . praed . sir baniamin titchbourne of titchbourne , in the county of southampton knight , created baronet , the 8. day of march , an . praed . anno 19. & 54. iacobi regis , 1621. sir richard wilbraham of woodhey , in the county of chester knight , created baronet the 5. day of may , anno praed . sir thomas delues of duddington in the county of chester knight , created baronet , the 8. day of may , an. praed . sir lewis watson of rockingham castle , in the county of northampton knight , created baronet , the 23. day of iune , an. praed . sir thomas palmer of wingham , in the county of kent knight , created baronet the 29. day of iune , anno praed . sir richard roberts of trewro , in the county of cornwall knight , created baronet the 3. of iuly , an . praed . iohn riuers of chafford , in the county of kent esquire , created baronet the 19. day of iuly , an . praed . anno 19. & 55. iacobi regis , 1621. henry iernegan of cossey , alias cossese in the county of norfolke esquire , created baronet the 16. day of august , anno praed . thomas darnell of heyling , in the county of lincolne esquire , created baronet the 6. day of september , an . praed . sir isaack sidley of great charte , in the county of kent knight , created baronet the 14. day of september , anno praed . robert browne of walcot , in the county of northampton esquire , created baronet the 21. day of september , an . praed . iohn hewet of headley-hall , in the county of yorke esquire , created baronet , the 11. day of october , an . praed . sir nicholas hide of albury , in the county of hertford knight , created baronet the 8. day of nouember , an . praed . iohn philips of picton , in the county of pembroke esquire , created baronet the 9. day of nouember , an . praed . sir iohn stepney of pr●ndergast , in the county of pembroke knight , created baronet the 24. day of nouember , an . prad . baldwin wake of cleuedon , in the county of somerset esquire , created baronet the 5. day of december , anno praed . william masham of high-lauer , in the county of essex , created baronet the 19. day of december , anno praed . iohn colbrond of borham , in the county of sussex esquire , created baronet the 21. day of december , an . praed . sir iohn hotham of scorborough , in the county of yorke knight , created baronet the 4. day of ianuary , an . praed . francis mansell of mudlescombe , in the county of carmarthen esquire , created baronet the 14. day of ianuary , anno pred . edward powell of penkelley , in the county of hereford esquire , created baronet the 18. day of ianuary , an . praed . sir iohn garrard of lamer , in the county of hertford knight , created baronet the 16. day of february , an . praed . sir richard groseuenor of eaton , in the county of chester knight , created baronet the 23. day of february , an . praed . sir henry mody of garesdon , in ●he county of welts knight , created baronet the 11. day of march , anno praed . iohn barker of grimston-hall in trimley , in the county of suffolke esquire , created baronet the 17. day of march , an . praed . sir william button of alton , in the county of wilts knight , created baronet , the 18. day of of march , anno praed . anno 20. & 52. iacobi regis 1622. iohn gage of ferle , in the county of sussex esquire , ●reated baronet the 26. day of march , anno praedicto . william goring esquire , son and heire of sir henry goring of burton , in the county of sussex knight , created baronet the 14. day of may , anno pred . peter courten of aldington alias aun●on , in the county of worcester esquire , created baronet the 18. day of may , an . praed . sir richard norton of rotherfield , in the county of southampton knight , created baronet the 23. day of may , anno praed . sir iohn leuenthorpe of shinglehall , in the county of hertford knight , created baronet the 30. day of may , anno praed . capell bedell of hamerton , in the county of huntington esquire , created baronet the 3. day of iune , anno praed . iohn darell of westwoodhey , in the county of berke esquire , created baronet the 13. day of iune , an . praed . william williams of veynoll , in the county of carnaruon esq. created baronet , the 15. day of iune , an . praed . sir francis ashley of hartfield , in the county of midlesex , knight created baronet the 18. day of iune , an . praed . sir anthony ashley of st. giles wimborne , in the county of dorset knight , created baronet , the 3. day of iuly , anno pred . iohn couper of rocbourne , in the county of southampton , created baronet the 4. day of iuly , an . praed . edmund prideaux of netherton , in the county of deuon esquire , created baronet the 17. of iuly , an . praed . sir thomas heselrigge of noseley , in the county of leicester knight , created baronet the 21. day of iuly , an . praed . sir thomas burton of stockerston , in the county of leicester kni. created baronet the 22. day of iuly , anno praed . francis foliambe of walton , in the county of derby esquire , created baronet the 24. day of iuly , an . praed . edward yate of buckland in the county of berke esquire , created baronet the 30. day of iuly , an . praed . anno vicesimo & 56. iacob regis . george chudleigh of ashton , in the county of deuon esquire , created baronet the first day of august , anno praed . francis drake of buckland , in the county of deuon esquire , created baronet the 20. day of august , anno praed . william meredith of stanstie , in the county of denbigh esquire , created baronet the 13. day of august , anno praed . hugh middleton of ruthyn , in the county of denbigh esquire , created baronet the 22. day of october , anno praed . gifford thornehurst of ague-court , in the county of kent esquire , created baronet the 12. day of nouember , anno praed . percy herbert sonne and heire of sir william herbert of red-castle , in the county of montgomery knight , created baronet the 16. day nouember , an . praed . sir robert fisher of packington , in the county of warwicke knight , created baronet the 7. day of december , anno praed . hardolph wastneys of headon , in the county of nottingham , created baronet the 18. day of december . anno praed . sir henry skippwith of prestwould , in the county of leicester knight , created baronet the 20. day of december , anno praed . thomas harris of boreatton , in the county of salop esquir● , created baronet the 22. day of december , anno pred . nicholas tempest of stella , in the bishopricke of durham esquire , created baronet the 23. day of december , anno pred . francis cottington esquire , secretary to the prince charles , created baronet , the 16. day of february , anno praed . anno vicesimo primo & 56. iacobi regis . thomas harris of tong castle , in the county of salop , serieant at law , created baronet the 12. day of aprill , anno praedicto . edward barkham of southacre , in the county of norfolke esquire , created baronet the 28. day of iune , anno praedicto . iohn corbet of sprowston , in the county of norfolke esquire , created baronet the 4. day of iuly , anno praed . sir thomas playters of sotterley , in the county of suffolke knight , created baronet , the 13. day of august , anno praedicto . anno secundo caroli regis . sir iohn ashfield of nether-hall , in the county of suffolke knight , created baronet the 27. day of iuly , an . praed . henry harper of calke , in the county of derby esquire , created baronet the 8. day of september , anno praed . edward seabright of besford , in the county of worcester esquire , created baronet the 20. day of december , an . praed . iohn beaumount of gracedieu , in the county of chester esquire , created baronet the 29. day of ianuary , anno praed . sir edward dering of surrenden , in the county of kent knight , created baronet the first day of february , anno praed . george kempe of pentlone , in the county of essex , esquire , created baronet the 5. day of february , an . praed . william brereton of hanford , in the county of chester esquire , created baronet the 10. day of march , anno praed . patrick curwen of workington , in the county of cumberland esquire , created baronet the 12. day of march , an . praed . william russell of witley , in the country of worcester esquire , created baronet the 12. day of march , an . praed . iohn spencer of offley , in the county of hertford esquire , created baronet the 14. day of march , an . pred . sir giles escourt of newton , in the county of vvil●s knight , created baronet the 17. day of march , an . pred . anno t●rtio caroli regis . thomas aylesbury esquire , one of the masters of the court of request , created baroned the 19. day of aprill , an . pred . thomas style esquire , of wateringbury , in the county of kent , created baronet the 21. day of aprill , an . pred . frederick cornwallis● in the county of suffolke esquire , created baronet the day of an . pred . william skeuington , in the county of stafford created baronet the anno pred . drue drury , in the county of norfolke esquire , created baronet the an . praed . sir robert crane of chilton , in the county of suffolke knight , created baronet the day of may , an . pred . anthony wingfield of goodwins , in the county of suffolke esquire , created baronet the 17. day of may , an . praed . william culpepper of preston-hall , in the county of kent esquire , created baronet the 17. day of may , vt supra . iohn kirle of much marcle , in the county of hereford esquire , created baronet the 17. day of may , vt supra . giles bridges of wilton , in the county of hereford esquire , created baronet the 17. day of may , vt supra . sir humphrey stiles of becknam , in the county of kent knight , created baronet the 20. day of may , an . pred . henry moore of falley , in the county of berke esquire , created baronet the 21. day of may , anno praed . thomas heale of fleet , in the county of deuon esquire , created baronet the 28. day of may , anno pred . iohn carleton of holcum , in the county of oxford esquire , created baronet the 28. day of may , anno praed● thomas maples of stowe , in the county of huntingdon esquire , created baronet the 30. day of may , anno praedicto . sir iohn isham of lamport , in the county of northhampton knight , created baronet the 30. day of may , an . praed . her●y bagot of blithfield , in the county of stafford esquire , created baronet the 30. day of may , anno praed . lewis pellard of kings nimpton , in the county of deuon esquire , created baronet the 31. day of may , anno praed . francis mannock of giffordes-hall , in stoke neere neyland in the county of suffolke esquire , created baronet the first day of iune , an. praed . henry griffith of agnes burton , in the county of yorke esquire , created baronet the 7. day iune , an . praed . lodowick deyer of staughton , in the county of huntingdon esquire , created baronet the 8. day of iune , anno praed . sir hugh stewkley of hinton , in the county of northhampton knight , created baronet the 9. day of iune , an . praed . edward stanley of biggarstaffe , in the county of lancaster esquire , created baronet the 26. of iune , an . praed . edward littleton of pileton-hall , in the county of stafford esquire , created baronet the 28. day of iune , an . praed . ambrose browne of bestworth-castle , in the county of surrey esquire , created baronet the 7. day of iuly , an . praed . sackuile crowe of lanherme , in the county of carmarthen esquire , created baronet the 8. day of iuly , anno praed . michael liuesey of eastchurch , in the i le of sheppey , in the county of kent esquire , created baronet the 11. day of iuly , an . praed . simon bennet of beuhampton , in the county of buckingham esquire , created baronet the 17. day of iuly , anno praed . sir thomas fisher of the parish of st. giles , in the county of middlesex knight , created baronet the 19. day of iuly , an . praed . thomas bowyer of leghtborne , in the county of sussex esquire , created baronet the 23. day of iuly , anno praed . buts bacon of milden-hall , in the county of suffolke esquire , created baronet the 29. day of iuly , an . praed . iohn corbet of stoke , in the county of salop esquire , created baronet the 19. day of september , an . praed . sir edward tirrell of thorneton , in the county of buckingham knight , created baronet the 31. day of october , an . praed . basill dixwell of terlingham , alias gerelingham , in the county of kent esquire , created baronet the 28. day of february , anno praed . sir richard young knight , one of the gentlemen of his maiesties priuy chamber , created baronet the 10. day of march , an . prae . anno quarto caroli regis . william pennyman the younger of maske , alias marske , in the county of yorke esquire , created baronet the 6. day of may , an . praed . william stonehouse of radley , in the county of berke esquire , created baronet the 7. day of may , an . praed . sir thomas fowler of islington , in the county of middlesex knight , created baronet the 21. day of may , anno praed . sir iohn fenwick of fenwick , in the county of northumberland knight , created baronet the 9. day of iune , an . praed . sir william wray of trebitch , in the county of cornwall knight , created baronet the 30. day of iune , an . pr. iohn trelawney of trelawney , in the county of cornwall esquire , created baronet the 1. day of iuly , an . pr. iohn conyers of norden , in the bishopricke of durham gentleman , created baronet the 14. day of iuly , an . praed . iohn bolles of scampton , in the county of lincolne esquire , created baronet the 24. day of iuly , an . pr. thomas aston of aston , in the county of chester esquire , created baronet the 25. day of iuly , an . pr. kenelme ienoure of much dunmore , in the county of essex esquire , created baronet the 30. day of iuly , anno praed . iohn price of newtowne , in the county of montgomery knight , created baronet , the 15. day of august , an . praed . sir richard beaumont of whitley , in the county of yorke knight , created baronet the 15. day of august , an . pr●d . william wiseman of canfield-hall , in the county of essex esquire , created baronet the 29. day of august , an . praedicto . thomas nightingale of newport pond , in the county of essex esquire , created baronet the first day of september , an . praed . iohn iaques of in the county of middlesex , one of his maiesties gentlemen pentioners esquire , created baronet the 2. day of september , an . praed . anno quarto caroli regis . robert dillington of the i le of wight , in the county of sout●ampton esquire , created baronet the 6. day of sept●mber , anno praed . francis pile of compton , in the county of berk● esquire , created baronet the 12. day of september , anno praed . iohn pole of shut , in the county of deuon esquire , created baronet the 12. day of september , vt supra . william lewis of lang●rs , in the county of brecknock esquire , created baronet the 14. day of september , anno praed . william culpepper of wakehurst , in the county of sussex esquire , created baronet the 20. day of september , anno praed . peter van loor of tylehurst , in the county of berke esquire , created baronet the 3. day of october , anno praedicto . sir iohn lawrence of iuer , in the county of buckingham knight , created baronet the 9. day of october , an . praed . anthony slinges by of screuin , in the county of yorke esquire , created baronet the 23. day of october , anno praed . thomas vauasor of hesskewood , in the county of yorke esquire , created baronet the 24. day of october , anno praed . robert wolseley of morton , in the county of stafford esquire , created baronet the 24. day of nouember , an . praed . rice rudd of abersline , in the county of carmarthen esquire , created baronet the 8. day of december , an . praed . richard wiseman of thundersley , in the county of essex esquire , created baronet the 18. day of december , anno praed . henry ferrers of skellingthorpe , in the county of lincolne esquire , created baronet the 19. day of december , an . praed . iohn anderson of st. iues , in the county of huntingdon esquire , created baronet the 3. day of ianuary , anno praed . sir william russell of chippenham , in the county of cambridge knight , created baronet the 19. day of ianuary , anno praedicto . richard euerard of much waltham , in the county of essex esquire , created baronet the 29. day of ianuary , an . praed . thomas powell of berkenhead , in the county of chester esquire , created baronet the day of ianuary , an . praed . william luckin of waltham , in the county of essex esquire , created baronet the 2. day of march , an . praed . anno quinto caroli regis . richard graham of eske , in the county of cumberland esquire , created baronet the 29. day of march , an . praed . george twisleton of barlie , in the county of yorke esquire , created baronet the 2. day of aprill , an . praed . william acton of the city of london esquire , created baronet the 30. day of may , anno praed . nicholas le strange of hunstanton , in the county of norfolke esquire , created baronet the 1. day of iune , anno praed . edward aleyn of hatfield , in the county of essex esquire , created baronet the 28. day of inne , an. praed . richard earle of craglethorpe , in the county of lincolne esquire , created baronet the 2. day of iuly , anno praed . iohn holland of quidenham , in the county of norfolke esquire , created baronet the 15. day of iuly , an. praed . robert ducy alderman of london , created baronet the 28. day of nouember , an . praed . anno sexto caroli regis . sir richard grenuile knight and colonell , created baronet , teste apud westmonasterium , decimo nono die aprilis , anno regni nostri sexto . knights of the bath , made at the coronation of king iames . sir philip herbert now earle of montgomery . thomas barkley , lord barkley . sir william euers , now lord euers . sir george wharton , after lord wharton . sir robert rich , now earle of warwicke . sir robert carre , of the bed-chamber of his maiesty . sir iohn egerton , now earle of bridgewater . sir henry compton , third brother to william earle of northampton . sir iames erskine , sonne to the earle of marre . sir william austuddur . sir patricke murray . sir iames hay lord yster . sir iohn lynsey . sir richard preston , after earle of desmond . sir oliuer cromwell of huntingtonshire . sir edward stanley of lancashire . sir william herbert of montgomery , now lord powys . sir foulke griuell , after lord brooke . sir francis fanne , after earle of westmerland . sir robert chichester , of deuonshire . sir robert knowles of bershire . sir william clifton of nottinghamshire . sir francis fortescue of deuonshire . sir richard corbet of shropshire . sir edward herbert , now lord of castle-iland in ireland , and baron chirbury . sir thomas langton of lancashire . sir william pope of oxfordshire . sir arthur hopton of somersetshire . sir charles morison knight & baronet of hartfordshire . sir francis leigh of warwickeshire . sir edward mountagu , now lord mountagu of boughton in northamptonshire . sir edward stanhop of yorkeshire . sir peter manwood of kent . sir robert harley of herefordshire . sir thomas strickland of yorkeshire . sir christopher hatton of northamptonshire . sir edward gri●fin of northamptonshire . sir robert beuill of huntingtonshire . sir edward harwell of wostershire . sir iohn mallet of somersetshire . sir walter aston of staffordshire , knight and baronet . sir henry gawdy of essex . sir richard musgraue of westmerland , kni. & baronet . sir iohn stowell of somersetshire . sir richard amcots of lincolneshire . sir thomas leedes of suffolke . sir thomas iermyn of norfolke . sir ralph harre of hartford . sir william forster of buckinghamshire . sir george speake of somersetshire . sir george hide of barkeshire . sir anthony felton of suffolke . sir william browne of northamptonshire . sir thomas wise of essex . sir robert chamberlaine of oxfordshire . sir anthony palmer of suffolke . sir edward heron of lincolneshire . sir henry burton of leicestershire . sir robert barker of suffolke . sir william norris of lancashire . sir roger bodenham of herefordshire . knights of the bath made at the creation of henry prince of wales . henry vere earle of oxford . george lord gordon , son to marquesse huntley . henry lord clifford , son to francis earle of cumberland . henry ratcliffe , lord fitz-water , sonne to the earle of sussex . edward bourcher , now earle of bath . iames lord hay , now earle of carlile . iames lord erskin , sonne to the earle of marre in scotland . thomas windsor , now lord windsor . thomas lord wentworth , now earle of cleueland . sir charles somerset , son to edward earle of worster . sir edward somerset , son to the said earle of worster . sir francis stuart , son to the earle of murray . sir ferdinando sutton , eldest son to the lord dudley . sir henry carey , now earle of douer . sir oliuer st. iohn lord st. iohn , now earle of bullingbrooke . sir gilbert gerrard , after lord gerrard of gerrard bromley . sir charles stanhop , lord stanhop of harington . sir william steward . sir edward bruce , after lord kinlosse . sir robert sidney , lord sidney , now earle of leicester . sir ferdinando touchet , eldest sonne to george lord audley , earle of castle-hauen in ireland . sir peregrine bartey , brother to the now earle of lindsey . sir henry rich , second brother to the earle of warwicke , and now earle of holland . sir edward sheffeild , son to the lord sheffeild , now earle of mulgraue . sir william cauendish , after made viscount mansfield , and now earle of newcastle . knights of the bath made at the creation of charles duke of yorke . charles duke of yorke . sir robert barty lord willoughby of eresby , now earle of lindesey . si● william compton , lord compton , after earle of northampton . sir grey bridges , lord shandos . sir francis norris , lord norris of rycot , after earle of barkeshire . sir william cecill , now earle of salisbury . sir allan percy , brother to henry earle of northumberland . sir francis mannors , now earle of rut●and . sir francis clifford , son to th● earle of cumberland . sir thomas somerset , now viscount somerset of castile in ireland . sir thomas howard , second son to the earle of suffolke , now earle of ●arkeshire . sir iohn harrington , sonne to iohn lord harrington of exton . knights of the bath , made at the creation of charles prince of wales . iames lord matrauers , eldest son to thomas earle of arundell . alg●rnon lord p●rcy , eldest son to the earle of northumb●rland . iames lord w●iothesley , eldest son to henry earle of southampton . theophilus lord clinton , now earle of lincolne , eldest son of thomas earle of lincolne . edward seim●r , l●rd b●a●●hamp , grand child to edward earle of h●r●fo●d . george lord barkley , now lord barkeley . h●nry lord mordant , now earle of peterborough . the master of f●nton , now lord fenton . sir henry howard now lord matrauers . sir robert howard , fift sonne to thomas earle of suffolke . sir edward sackuill , now earle of dorset . sir william howard , sixth son to thomas earle of suffolke● sir edward howard seuenth sonne to thomas ea●●●●f suffolke , now lord howard of est●ricke in y●●● of shire . sir montagu bartu , sonne and heire to robert earle of lindsey , now lord willoughby . sir william stourton● sonne to the lord stourton . sir william parker , after lord mor●ey and montea●le . sir dudley north , now lord north. sir spencer compton , now earle of northampton . sir william spencer , now lord spencer . sir rowland st. iohn , brother to oliuer e●rle of bullingbrooke . sir iohn cauendish , second sonne to william earle of deuonshire . sir thomas neuill , son to henry now lord abergaueney . sir iohn roper , after lord tenham . sir iohn north , brother to dudley , now lor● north. sir henry cary now viscount faulkland . knights of the bath , made at the c●ronation of king charles . george fielding , viscount callon second sonne to william earle of denbigh , now earle of desmond . iames stanley , lord strange , eldest son to william earle of derby . charles cecill , lord cranborne , eldest sonne to william earle of salisbury . charles herbert , lord herbert of shurland , eldest sonne to philip earle of montgomery . robert rich , lord rich , eldest sonne to robert earle of warwicke . iames hay , lord hay , eldest sonne to iames earle of carlile● bazell fielding , lord fielding , eldest sonne to william earle of denbigh . o●iuer st. iohn , lord st. iohn , eldest son to oliuer earle of bullingbrooke . mildmay fane , now earle of westmerland . lord henry pawlet , younger son to william marquesse of winchester . sir edwa●d montagu , eldest sonne to henry viscount m●ndeuill , now earle of manchester . sir iohn cary , eldest sonne to henry viscount rochford , now earle of douer . sir charles howard , eldest son to thomas viscount andouer , now earle of barkshire . sir william howard , second sonne to thomas earle of arundell . sir robert stanley , second son to william ea. of derby . sir pawl●t st. iohn , second sonne to oliuer earle of bulling●rooke . sir francis fane , second son to francis earle of westm●rland . sir iames howard , eldest son to theophilus lord walden , now earle of suffolke . sir william cauendish , eldest sonne to william lord cauendish , earle of deuonshire . sir thomas wentworth , eldest sonne to thomas lord wentworth , now earle of cleueland . sir william paget , son to william lord paget of bewdesert , now lord paget . sir william russell , eldest son to francis lord russell , now earle of bedford . sir henry stanhope , eldest son to philip lord stanhope of shelford , now earle of chesterfield . sir richard vaughan , eldest son to iohn lord vaughan of molengar in ireland . sir christopher neuill , second sonne to edward lord abergaueney . sir roger bartu , second son to robert lord willoughby , now earle of lindsey . sir thomas wharton , second sonne to thomas lord wharton . sir saint iohn blunt , brother to mountioy blunt , lord mountioy , now earle of newport . sir ralphe clare of worcestershire . sir iohn maynard of essex , second brother to the lord maynard . sir francis carew of deuonshire . sir iohn byron of nottinghamshire . sir roger palmer of sussex , master of the kings household . sir henry edmonds , sonne to sir thomas edmonds , treasurer of the house-hold . sir ralph hopton of somersetshire . sir william brooke of kent . sir alexander ratcliffe of lancashire . sir edward scot of kent . sir christopher hatton of northamptonshire . sir thomas sackuill of sussex . sir iohn munson of lincolneshire , sonne to sir thomas munson . sir peter wentworth of oxfordshire . sir iohn butler of hartfordshire . sir edward hung●rford , of wiltshire . sir richard lewson of kent . sir nathaniel bacon of calford in suffolke . sir robert poyntz of glocestershire . sir robert beuill of huntingtonshire . sir george sands of kent . sir thomas smith of weston-hanger in kent . sir thomas fanshaw of warparke in hartfordshire . sir miles hobard of plomsted in norfolke . sir henry hart of kent , son to sir perciuall hart. sir francis carew , alias throgmorton , of bedington in surrey . sir iohn backhouse of berkshire . sir mathew mynnes of kent . sir iohn stowell of somersetshire , sir iohn iennings of hartfordshire . sir stephen ha●uey of northamptonshire , son to iudge haruey . finis . certeine matters concerning the realme of scotland, composed together the genealogie of all the kings of scotland, their liues, the yeeres of their coronation, the time of their reigne, the yeere of their death, and maner thereof, with the place of their buriall. the whole nobilitie of scotland, their surnames, their titles of honour, the names of their chiefe houses, and their mariages. the arch-bishopricks, bishopricks, abbacies, priories, & nunries of scotland. the knights of scotland. the forme of the oth of a duke, earle, lord of parliament, and of a knight. the names of barons, lairds, and chiefe gentlemen in euerie sherifdome. the names of the principall clannes, and surnames of the borderers not landed. the stewartries and baileries of scotland. the order of the calling of the table of the session. the description of whole scotland, with all the iles, and names thereof. the most rare and woonderfull things in scotland. as they were anno domini, 1597. certaine matters composed together monipennie, john. 1603 approx. 208 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 47 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-07 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a07623 stc 18018 estc s100061 99835913 99835913 146 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a07623) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 146) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1281:3) certeine matters concerning the realme of scotland, composed together the genealogie of all the kings of scotland, their liues, the yeeres of their coronation, the time of their reigne, the yeere of their death, and maner thereof, with the place of their buriall. the whole nobilitie of scotland, their surnames, their titles of honour, the names of their chiefe houses, and their mariages. the arch-bishopricks, bishopricks, abbacies, priories, & nunries of scotland. the knights of scotland. the forme of the oth of a duke, earle, lord of parliament, and of a knight. the names of barons, lairds, and chiefe gentlemen in euerie sherifdome. the names of the principall clannes, and surnames of the borderers not landed. the stewartries and baileries of scotland. the order of the calling of the table of the session. the description of whole scotland, with all the iles, and names thereof. the most rare and woonderfull things in scotland. as they were anno domini, 1597. certaine matters composed together monipennie, john. [92] p. printed by a. hatfield, for iohn flasket dwelling at the signe of the blacke beare in pauls churchyard, london : 1603. originally published in 1594? as: certaine matters composed together. the words "the genealogie .. things in scotland." are printed in two columns on title page. signatures: [a]² (-a2) b-m⁴ n¹ (=[a]2). the last leaf of text and the title page were printed together as a half-sheet. reproduction of the original in cambridge university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by 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was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -kings and rulers -early works to 1800. scotland -nobility -early works to 1800. scotland -description and travel -early works to 1800. 2003-02 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-03 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-05 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2003-05 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-06 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion certeine matters concerning the realme of scotland , composed together . the genealogie of all the kings of scotland , their liues , the yeeres of their coronation , the time of their reigne , the yeere of their death , and maner thereof , with the place of their buriall . the whole nobilitie of scotland , their surnames , their titles of honour , the names of their chiefe houses , and their mariages . the arch-bishopricks , bishopricks , abbacies , priories , & nunries of scotland . the knights of scotland . the forme of the oth of a duke , earle , lord of parliament , and of a knight . the names of barons , lairds , and chiefe gentlemen in euerie sherifdome . the names of the principall clannes , and surnames of the borderers not landed . the stewartries and baileries of scotland . the order of the calling of the table of the session . the description of whole scotland , with all the iles , and names thereof . the most rare and woonderfull things in scotland . as they were anno domini , 1597. london , printed by a. hatfield , for iohn ●lasket dwelling at the signe of the blacke● beare in pauls churchyard . 1603. a cronologie of all the kings of scotland , declaring what yeere of the world and of christ they began to reigne , how long they reigned , and what qualities they were of , according as they be set foorth and imprinted with the great booke of the statutes of the realme of scotland . fergvs , the first king of scotland , the sonne of ferquhard , a prince of ireland , began to raigne in the yeere of the world 3641. before the comming of our sauiour iesus christ , 330. yeeres : in the first yere of the 112. olympiade : and in the 421. yeere of the building of rome : about the beginning of the 3. monarchy of the grecians , when alexander the great ouerthrew darius codomannus the last monarch of persia. he was a valiant prince , and died by shipwracke , vpon the sea-coast of ireland , neere vnto craig-fergus , in the 25. yere of his raigne . 2 feritharis , brother to fergus , began to raigne in the yere of the world , 3666. in the yeere before the comming of christ 305. he was a good iusticiar . in his time there was a lawe made , that if the sonnes of the king departed , were so young , that they could not rule , that then in that case , the neerest in bloud should raigne , being in age sufficient for gouernment : and then after his death , the kings children should succeed : which law continued vnto kenneth the third his daies , 1025. yeeres almost . he was slaine by the meanes of ferlegus , fergus his brothers sonne , in the fifteenth yeere of his raigne . 3 mainus , king fergus sonne , succeeded to his fathers brother , in the yeere of the world , 3680. and in the yere before the comming of christ , 290. he was a wise and good king , and maried the king of picts daughter , that did beare him two sonnes . he died peaceably in the 29. yeere of his raigne . 4 dornadilla succeeded to his father mainus , in the yeere of the world , 3709. in the yeere before the comming of christ , 262. a good king . he made the first lawes concerning hunting . he had two sonnes , and died peaceably in the eight and twentieth yeere of his raigne . 5 nothatus succeeded to his brother dornadilla in the yere of the world , 3738. & the yeere before the comming of christ 233. hee was a greedy and a cruell tyrant . he was slaine by doualus , one of his nobles , in the twentieth yeere of his raigne . 6 reutherus , dornadilla his sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 3758. in the yeere before the comming of christ , 213. he was a good king , and died peaceably in the sixe and twentieth yeere of his raigne . 7 reutha succeeded to his brother reutherus , in the yeere of the world , 3784. in the yere before the comming of christ , 187. a good king. hee of his owne accord left the kingdome , and liued a priuate life , when he had ruled foureteene yeeres . 8 thereus , reutherus sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 3798. in the yeere before christ , 173. he was an vnwise and cruell tyrant . hee was expelled and banished the realme , in the twelfth yeere of his raigne , by his nobles : and conanus , a wise and graue man , was made gouernor of the land . he died in exile in the city of yorke . 9 iosina succeeded his brother thereus , in the yeere of the world , 3810. in the yeere before christ , 161. he was a quiet and good prince , a good medicinar and herbister , or skilfull in physicke and the nature of herbs . he died in peace , in the foure and twentieth yeere of his raigne . 10 finnanus , iosina his sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 3834. in the yeere before christ , 137. a good king. he was much giuen to the superstitious religion of the druydes . he died in peace , in the 30 yeere of his raigne . 11 durstus , finnanus sonne , succeeded to his father in the yeere of the world , 864. in the yeere before christ , 107. a cruell and trayterous tyrant , slaine by his nobles in battell , in the ninth yeere of his raigne . 12 euenus the first , succeeded to his brother durstus , in the yeere of the world , 3873. in the yeere before the comming of christ , 98. a wise , iust and vertuous prince . he died peaceably in the ninteenth yeere of his raigne . 13 gillus , euenus bastard sonne , succeeded to his father , in the yeere of the world , 3892. in the yeere before christ , 79. a crafty tyrant , slaine in battell by cadallus , in the second yeere of his raigne . 14 euenus the second , donallus sonne , king finnanus brother , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 3894. in the yeere before the comming of christ , 77. a good and ciuill king. he died in peace , in the 17 yeere of his raigne . 15 ederus , sonne to dochamus , that was sonne to durstus the eleuenth king , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 3911. in the yeere before the comming of christ 60. a wise , valiant and good prince . he died in the eight and fortieth yeere of his raigne . 16 euenus the third , succeeded to his father ederus , in the yeere of the world , 3959. in the yeere before the comming of christ , 12. a luxurious and couetous wicked king. he was taken by his nobles , and imprisoned , and died in prison in the seuenth yeere of his raigne . 17 metellanus , ederus brothers sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 3966. foure yeeres before christs incarnation . a very modest and good king. he died in the 39 yeere of his raigne . in his time there was peace at home and abroad , and our sauiour iesus christ was borne , and suffered death in his raigne . 18 caractatus , the sonne of cadallanus and of eropeia , which was daughter to metellanus , began to raigne in the yeere of the world 4005. in the yeere after the birth of christ , 35. he was a wise and valiant king , and raigned twenty yeeres . 19 corbredus 1. succeeded to his brother caractacus , in the yeere of the world 4025. in the yeere of christ 55. a wise king , and a good iusticiar , or executor of iustice. he died in peace in the 18 yeere of his raigne . 20 dardannus , nephew to metellanus began to raigne , in the yeere of the world 4042. in the yeere of christ 72. a cruell tyrant . he was taken in battell , and beheaded by his owne subiects in the fourth yeere of his raigne . 21 corbredus 2. surnamed galdus , sonne to the former corbredus , began to raigne in the yeere of the world 4046. in the yeere of christ , 76. a valiant and worthy king : for he had many warres with the romanes , and was oft victorious ouer them . he died in peace , in the 35. yeere of his raigne . 22 lugthacus , succeeded to his father corbredus the second , in the yeere of the world 4080. in the yeere of christ , 110. a lecherous bloudy tyrant . he was slaine by his nobles in the third yeere of his raigne . 23 mogallus , sonne to the sister of corbredus the second . he began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4083. in the yeere of christ , 113. a good king and victorious in the beginning of his raigne : but in the end of his life , became inclined to tyranny , lechery and couetousnesse , and was slaine by his nobles in the 36 yeere of his raigne . 24 conarus succeeded to his father mogallus , in the yeere of the world , 4119. in the yeere of christ , 149. a lecherous tyrant . he was imprisoned by his nobles , and died in prison in the 14 yeere of his raigne , and argadus a noble man was made gouernour . 25 ethodius the first , sonne to the sister of mogallus , began to raigne in the yeere of the world 4133. in the yeere of christ 163. he was a good prince . he was slaine by an irish harper , whom he admitted to lie in his chamber , in the 33 yeere of his raigne . 26 satraell succeeded to his brother ethodius the first , in the yeere of the world , 4165. in the yeere of christ , 195. a cruell tyrant . he was slaine by his owne courtiers in the 4 yeere of his raigne . 27 donald 1. the first christian king of scotland , succeeded to his brother satraell in the yeere of the world 4169. in the yeere of christ 199. a good and religious king. he was the first of the kings of scotland that coined money of gold and siluer . he died in the eighteenth yeere of his raigne . 28 ethodius the second , sonne to ethodius the first , began to raigne in the yeere of the world 4186. in the yeere of christ 216. an vnwise and base-minded king , gouerned by his nobles . he was slaine by his owne guard in the sixteenth yeere of his raigne . 29 athrico succeeded to his father ethodius the second , in the yeere of the world 4201. in the yeere of christ , 231. a valiant prince in the beginning , but he degenerated and became vicious : and being hardly pursued by his nobles for his wicked life , slew himselfe in the twelfth yeere of his raigne . 30 nathalocus , as some write , sonne to the brother of athrico , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4212. in the yeere of christ , 242. a cruell tyrant , slaine by his nobles , and cast away into a priuy , in the eleuenth yeere of his raigne . 31 findocus , sonne of athrico , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4223. in the yeere of christ , 253. a good king and valiant , slaine by fained hunters , at the instigation of donald , lord of the iles , his brother , in the eleuenth yeere of his raigne . 32 donald the second , succeeded to his brother findocus , in the yeere of the world 4234. in the yeere of christ , 264. a good prince . he was wounded in battell , and being ouercome , died for griefe and sorrow in the first yeere of his raigne . 33 donald the third , lord of the iles , brother to findocus , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4235. in the yeere of christ , 265. a cruell tyrant , slaine by crathilinthus his successor , in the twelfth yeere of his raigne . 34 crathilinthus , findocui sonne , began to raigne in the yere of the world 4247. in the yeere of christ , 277. a valiant and a godly king. he purged the land from the idolatrous superstition of the druides , and planted the sincere christian religion . he died in peace in the foure and twentieth yeere of his raigne . in his time was constantine the great emperour of christendome borne in england . 35 fincormachus , sonne to the brother of the father of crathilinthus , began his raigne in the yeere of the world , 4271. in the yeere of christ , 301. a godly king and valiant . he was a worthy furtherer of the kingdome of christ in scotland . he died in peace in the seuen and fortieth yeere of his raigne . 36 romachus , brothers sonne to crathilinthus , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4318. in the yeere of christ , 348. a cruell tyrant , slaine by his nobles , and his head striken off , in the third yeere of his raigne . 37 angusianus , crathilinthus brothers sonne , succeeded to romachus in the yeere of the world 4321. in the yere of christ , 351. a good king , slaine in battell by the picts , in the third yeere of his raigne . 38 fethelmachus , another brothers sonne of crathilinthus , he began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4324. in the yere , of christ , 354. he was a valiant king : for he ouercame the picts , and slew their king. he was betraied to the picts by an harper , and slaine by them in his owne chamber , in the third yeere of his raigne . 39 eugenius the first , fincormachus sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world 4327. in the yeere of christ , 357. a valiant , iust and good king. he was slaine in battell by the picts and romanes in the third yeere of his raigne and the whole scottish nation was vtterly expelled the ile , by the picts and romanes , and remained in exile about the space of foure and forty yeeres . 40 fergus the second , erthus sonnes sonne to ethodius , eugenius the first his brother , returning into scotland , with the helpe of the danes and gothes , and his owne countrey-men , who were gathered to him out of all countries where they were dispersed , conquered his kingdome of scotland againe out of the romanes and picts hands . he began his raigne in the yere of the world , 4374. in the yeere of christ , 404. he was a wise , valiant and good king. he was slaine by the romanes in the sixteenth yeere of his raigne . 41 eugenius the second , sonne of fergus the second , succeeded to his father in the yeere of the world , 4390. in the yeere of christ , 420. he was a valiant and a good prince . he subdued the britons , and died in the two and thirtith yeere of his raigne . 42 dongardus succeeded , to his brother eugenius the second , in the yeere of the world , 4421. in the yeere of christ , 451. a godly , wise and valiant prince . he died in the fifth yeere of his raigne . 43 constantine the first , succeeded to his brother dongardus , in the yeere of the world , 4427. in the yeere of christ , 457. a wicked prince . he was slaine by a noble man in the iles , whose daughter he had defiled , in the two and twentieth yeere of his raigne . 44 congallus the first , sonne of dongardus , began to reigne in the yeere of the world , 4449. in the yeere of christ , 479. a good and quiet prince . he died in peace in the two and twentieth yeere of his raigne . 45 goranus , or conranus succeeded to his brother congallus the first , in the yeere of the world , 4471. in the yeere of christ 501. a good and wise prince . he died in the foure and thirtith yeere of his reigne . 46 eugenius the third congallus sonne , succeeded to his father and vncle , in the yeere of the world 4505. in the yeere of christ 535. a wise king and a good iusticiar . he died in the three and twentith yeere of his raigne . 47 congallus the second , or conuallus , succeeded to his brother eugenius the third , in the yeere of the world , 4528. in the yeere of christ 558. a very good prince . he died in peace in the eleuenth yeere of his raigne . 48 kinnatillus succeeded to his brother congallus the second , in the yere of the world , 4539. in the yere of christ , 569. a good prince . he died in the first yeere of his raigne . 49 aidanus , sonne of goranus , the forty fifth king , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4540. in the yere of christ , 570. a godly and good prince . he died in the fiue & thirtieth yeere of his raigne . 50 kenethus the first , surnamed keir , congallus the second his sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4575. in the yeere of christ , 605. a peaceable prince . he died in the first yeere of his raigne . 51 eugenius the fourth , sonne of aidanus , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4576. in the yeere of christ , 606. a valiant and a good king. he died in the sixteenth yeere of his raigne . 52 ferquhard , or ferchard 1. succeeded to his father eugenius the 4. in the yeere of the world , 4591. in the yeere of christ , 621. a bloudy tyrant . he slew himselfe in the prison , whereinto he was put by the nobles of his realme , in the twelfth yeere of his raigne . 53 donald the fourth , succeeded to his brother ferquhard the first , in the yeere of the world , 4602. in the yeere of christ , 632. he was a good and religious king. he was drowned in the water of tay , while he was fishing , in the foureteenth yeere of his raigne . 54 ferquhard , or ferchard 2. succeeded to his brother donald the 4. in the yeere of the world , 4616. in the yere of christ , 646. a very wicked man. he was bitten by a woolfe in hunting : of the which ensued a feuer , whereof he died in the 18. yeere of his raigne . 55 malduine , sonne to donald the fourth , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4634. in the yeere of christ , 664. a good prince , strangled by his wife , who suspected him of adultery , in the twentieth yeere of his raigne . she was therefore burned . 56 eugenius the fift , malduine his brothers sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4654. in the yeere of christ , 684. a false prince , slaine by the picts in battell , in the fourth yeere of his raigne . 57 eugenius the sixt , sonne to ferquhard the second , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4658. in the yeere of christ , 688. a good prince . he died in peace in the tenth yeere of his raigne . 58 ambirkelethus , sonne of findanus , sonne of eugenius the fift , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4667. in the yere of christ , 697. he was a vicious prince , and was slaine by the shot of an arrow in the second yeere of his raigne . the shooter thereof is vnknowne or set out in historie . 59 eugenius the seuenth succeeded to his brother ambirkelethus , in the yeere of the world , 4669. in the yeere of christ , 699. he died in peace in the seuenteenth yeere of his raigne . a good prince . 60 mordacus , ambirkelethus sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4685. in the yeere of christ , 715. a good prince . he died in the sixteenth yeere of his raigne . 61 etfinus , eugenius the seuenth his sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4700. in the yeere of christ , 730. he died in peace in the one and thirtieth yeere of his raigne . 62 eugenius the eight , mordacus sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4771. in the yeere of christ , 761. a good prince in the beginning of his raigne : and then after , degenerating from his good life , he was slaine by his nobles in the third yeere of his raigne . 63 fergus the third , etfinus sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4734. in the yeere of christ , 764. a lecherous prince , poisoned by his wife in the third yeere of his raigne . 64 soluathius , eugenius the eight his sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4737. in the yeere of christ , 767. a good prince . he died in peace in the twentieth yeere of his raigne . 65 achaius , etfinus sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4757. in the yeere of christ , 787. a peaceable , good and godly prince . he made a league with charles the great emperour , and king of fraunce , which remaineth inuiolably kept to this day . he died in the two and thirtieth yeere of his raigne . 66 congallus , or conuallus , achaius fathers brothers sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4789. in the yeere of christ , 819. a good prince . he died in the fifth yeere of his raigne . 67 dongallus , soluathius sonne , succeeded in the yeere of the world , 4794. in the yere of christ , 824. a valiant and good prince . he was drowned , comming ouer the riuer of spey , to warre against the picts , in the seuenth yeere of his raigne . 68 alpinus , achaius sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4801. in the yeere of christ , 831. a good prince . he was taken in battell , and beheaded by the picts , in the third yeere of his raigne . 69 kenneth the second , surnamed the great , succeeded to his father alpinus , in the yeere of the world , 4804. in the yeere of christ , 834. a good and a valiant prince . he vtterly ouerthrew the picts in diuers battels , expelled them out of the land , and ioined the kingdome of the picts to the crowne of scotland . hee died in peace , in the twentieth yeere of his raigne . 70 donald the fifth , succeeded to his brother kenneth the second , in the yeere of the world , 4824. in the yeere of christ , 854. a wicked prince . he slew himselfe in the fifth yeere of his raigne . 71 constantine the second , sonne of kenneth the second , began to raigne in the yere of the world , 4829. in the yeere of christ , 859. a valiant prince . he was slaine by the danes in a battell , stricken at carraill in fife , in the sixteenth yeere of his raigne . 72 ethus , surnamed alipes , the sonne of constantine the second , succeeded to his father in the yeere of the world , 4844. in the yeere of christ , 874. a vicious prince . he was imprisoned by his nobles , where he died in the second yeere of his raigne . 73 gregory , surnamed the great , sonne of dongallus the second , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4846. in the yeere of christ , 876. a prince valiant , victorious & renowmed through the world in his time ; he died in peace in the eightteenth yeere of his raigne . 74 donald the sixt , sonne of constantine the second , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4863. in the yeere of christ 893. a valiant prince . he died in peace , being loued of his subiects , in the eleuenth yeere of his raigne . 75 constantine the third , sonne of ethus , surnamed alipes . began to raigne in the yere of the world , 4874. in the yeere of christ , 904. he was a valiant king , yet he prospered not in his warres against england , and therefore being wearie of his life , hee became a monke , and died after he had raigned fortie yeeres as king. 76 malcolme the first , sonne of donald the sixt , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4913. in the yeere of christ , 943. a valiant prince , and a good iusticiar , or executor of iustice. he was slaine in murray , by a conspiracy of his owne subiects , in the ninth yeere of his raigne . 77 indulfus , sonne of constantine the third , beganne to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4922. in the yeere of christ. 952. a valiant and a good prince . he had many battels with the danes , whom he ouercame ; but in the end he was slaine by them in a stratageme of warre , in the ninth yeere of his raigne . 78 duffus , the sonne of malcolme the first , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4931. in the yeere of christ , 961. a good prince , and a seuere iusticiar , or executor of iustice. he was slaine by one donald at forres in murray , and was buried secretly vnder the bridge of a riuer beside kinlosse ; but the matter was reuealed , and the murderer and his wife that consented thereto , seuerely punished . he raigned fiue yeeres . 79 culenus , indulfus sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4936. in the yeere of christ , 966. a vicious and effeminate prince . he was slaine at methuen , by radardus , a noble man ( whose daughter he had defiled ) in the fourth yere of his raigne . 80 kenneth the third , duffus brother , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4940. in the yeere of christ , 970. a valiant and a wise prince : but in the end he became cruell , and slew malcolme his brothers sonne : and in gods iudgement , who suffereth not innocent bloud to be vnpunished , he was slaine , as some say , by a shaft or arrow , shot by a deuice or sleight , out of an image fixed in a wall , at fetticarne , by the meanes of a noble woman there , called fenella , in the foure and twentieth yeere of his raigne . 81 constantine the fourth , surnamed calvus , culenus sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4964. in the yeere of christ , 994. an vsurper of the crowne . he was slaine in battell , at the towne of crawmond in louthian , in the second yere of his raigne . 82 grimus , duffus sonne , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 4966. in the yeere of christ , 996. a vicious prince . he was slaine in battell by malcolme the second , his successor , in the eighth yeere of his raigne . 83 malcolme the second , sonne of kenneth the third , began to raigne in the yere of the world , 4974. in the yere of christ , 1004. a valiant and a wise prince , who made many good lawes , of the which a few are yet extant . he was slaine by a conspiracie of his nobles at the castell of glammes , who after the slaughter , thinking to escape , were drowned in the water of forfar : for it being winter , and the water frozen and couered with snow , the ice brake , and they fell in , in the righteous iudgement of god. he reigned thirtie yeeres . some write , that after a great victorie in battell , hee did giue much of his lands to his nobles , and they agreed that he should therefore haue the wardship and custodie of their heires , as long as they were vnder the age of one and twentie yeeres , and the profits of all their lands , ouer and aboue their charges for education , and the disposing of them in marriage , and the money that should be giuen for their mariage : and that he first did giue vnto his nobles sundry seuerall titles of honor. which wardships , mariages , times of full age , and reliefes , and maner of liueries of their lands out of the kings hands , be in scotland , very much agreeing to the lawes of england , as many other parts of the lawes do . 84 duncane the first , sonne of beatrix , daughter of malcolme the second , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 5004. in the yeere of christ , 1034. a good and a modest prince . he was slaine by macbeth traiterously , in the sixth yeere of his raigne . 85 macbeth , sonne of douada , daughter of malcolme the second , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 5010. in the yeere of christ , 1040. in the beginning of his raigne he behaued himselfe as a good and iust prince , but after , he degenerated into a cruell tyrant . he was slaine in battell by his successour malcolme the third , in the seuenteenth yeere of his raigne . 86 malcolme the third , surnamed cammoir , sonne of duncane the first , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 5027. in the yeere of christ , 1057. a very religious and valiant prince : he maried margaret , daughter to edward surnamed the out-law , sonne to edward surnamed yron-side , king of england , a very good and religious woman , according to those times , who bare vnto him sixe sonnes and two daughters . the sonnes were edward the prince , edmond , etheldred , edgar , alexander , dauid : the daughters were mathildis or maud , surnamed bona , wife to henrie the first , surnamed beauclearke , king of england , the sonne of william the conqueror of england : of her vertues there is extant this old epigram : prospera non laetam fecêre , nec aspera tristem ; prospera terror ei , aspera risus erant : non decor effecit fragilem , non sceptra superbam ; sola potens humilis , sola pudica decens . that is : prosperitie reioiced her not , to her griefe was no paine ; prosperitie affraied her alas , affliction was her gaine : her beautie was no cause of fall , in royall state not proud ; humble alone in dignitie , in beautie onely good . she founded the church of carleill . the other daughter was marie , wife to eustathius earle of boloigne . king malcolme builded the churches of durehame and dumfermeline . he was slaine with his sonne the prince edward , in the sixe and thirtieth yeere of his raigne , at the besieging of anwicke , by robert mowbray , surnamed pearce-eie , and was buried at tinmouth ; but after , he was remoued to dumfermeline . 87 donald the seuenth , surnamed bane , vsurped the crowne after the death of his brother , in the yeere of the world , 5063. in the yeere of christ , 1093. and was expelled in the first yeere of his raigne , by duncane the second , the bastard sonne of king malcolme the third . 88 duncane the second , vsurped the crowne , in the yeere of the world , 5064 , in the yeere of christ , 1094. a rash and foolish prince . he was slaine by makpendir the thane or earle of the meirnes , when he had raigned little ouer a yeere , by the procurement of donald the seuenth . donald the seuenth , made king againe in the yeere of the world , 5065. in the yeere of christ , 1095. and raigned three yeeres . he gaue the west and north iles to the king of norway , for to assist him to attaine to the crowne of scotland . he was taken captiue by edgar , his eyes put out , and died miserably in prison . 89 edgar , the sonne of malcolme the third , began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 5068. in the yeere of christ , 1098. he builded the priory of coldingham . he was a good prince . he died at dundie without succession , and was buried at dumfermeline , in the ninth yeere of his raigne . 90 alexander the first , surnamed fearce , succeeded to his brother , in the yere of the world , 5077. in the yeere of christ , 1107. a very good and valiant prince . he builded the abbacies of scone and of saint colmes-inche . he maried sybilla , daughter to william duke of normandie , &c. he died in peace , without succession , at striuiling , in the 17 yeere of his raigne , and was buried at dumfermeline . 91 dauid the first , commonly called s. dauid , the yongest sonne of king malcolme the third , succeeded to his brother in the yeere of the world , 5094. in the yeere of christ , 1124. a good , valiant and religious prince , according to those times . he builded many abbacies , as haly-rude-house , kelso , iedburgh , dun-dranan , cambus-kenneth , kin-losse , mel-rosse , new-bottle , dumfermeline , holme in cumberland , and two religious places at new castle in northumberland . he erected foure bishopricks , rosse , brechin , dumblane and dunkeld . he maried maude , daughter of woldeofus earle of northumberland and huntingdon , and of iuditha , daughters daughter to william the conquerour , king of england , by whom he had one sonne named henrie , a worthie and good youth , who maried adama , daughter to william earle warren , who bare vnto him three sonnes , malcolme the maiden , william the lion , and dauid earle of huntingdon , and two daughters , adama wife to florentius earle of holland , and margaret wife to conanus duke of britaine . he died before his father . s. dauid died in peace at carleill , in the 29 yeere of his reigne , and was buried at dumfermeline . 92 malcolme the fourth , surnamed the maiden ( because he would neuer marrie ) succeeded to his grand-father dauid 1. in the yeere of the world , 5123. in the yeere of christ , 1153. a good and meeke prince . he builded the abbay of cowper in angus , and died at ied-burgh , and was buried at dumfermeline in the twelfth yeere of his raigne . 93 william , surnamed the lion , succeeded to his brother malcolme the fourth , in the yere of the world 5135. in the yere of christ , 1165. a good and a valiant king. he maried emergarda , daughter to the earle of beau-mount . he builded the abbacy of aber-brothok , and she builded the abbacie of balmerinoch . he died at striuiling in the 49. yeere of his raigne , and was buried at aber-brothok . 94 alexander the second succeeded to his father william , in the yeere of the world , 5184. in the yeere of christ , 1214. a good prince . he maried ieane , daughter to iohn , king of england , by whom he had no succession . after her death he maried marie , daughter to ingelrame , earle of coucey in fraunce , by whom he had alexander the third . he died at kernery in the west iles , and was buried at mel-rosse in the 35. yeere of his raigne . 95 alexander the third succeeded to his father , in the yere of the world , 5219. in the yeere of christ , 1249. a good prince . he maried first margaret , daughter to henry the third , king of england , by whom he had alexander the prince , who maried the earle of flāders daughter , dauid & margaret , who maried hangonanus , or as some call him , fricus , son to magnus 4. king of norway , who bare to him a daughter , named margaret , commonly called , the maiden of norway , in whom king william his whole posteritie failed , & the crowne of scotland returned to the posteritie of dauid earle of huntingdon , k. malcome 4. and king william his brother . after his sonnes death ( for they died before himself without succession ) in hope of posteritie , he maried ioleta , daughter to the earle of dreux in fraunce , by whō he had no succession . he builded the crosse church of peibles . he died of a fall from his horse , vpon the sands , betwixt easter and wester king-horne , in the 37. yeere of his raigne , and was buried at dumfermeline . after the death of alexander the third , which was in the yeere of the world , 5255. in the yeere of christ , 1285. there were sixe regents appointed to rule scotland : for the south side of forth , were appointed robert , the arch-bishop of glasgowe , iohn cummin , & iohn the great steward of scotland . for the north side of forth , mak-duffe , eare of fife , iohn cummin earle of buchan , and william fraser , arch-bishop of saint andrewes , who ruled the land about the space of seuen yeres , vntill the controuersie was decided betwixt iohn ballioll and robert bruyse , grand-father to robert bruyse the king of scotland , who did come of the two eldest daughters of dauid earle of huntingdon : for henry hastings , who maried the yongest daughter , put not in his sute or claime with the rest , and therefore there is little spoken of him . 96 iohn ballioll was preferred before robert bruyse , to be king of scotland , by edward 1. surnamed longshanks , king of england , who was chosen to be the iudge of the controuersie : which preferment was vpon a cōdition , that iohn ballioll should acknowledge king edward the first , as superiour : which condition he receiued . he began his raigne in the yeere of the world , 5263. in the yeere of christ , 1293. he was a vaine-glorious man , little respecting the weale or common-wealth of his countrey . he had not raigned fully foure yeeres , when he was expelled by the said edward the first , king of england : and leauing scotland , he departed into the parts of fraunce , where he died long after in exile . and so scotland was without a king and gouernment the space of nine yeeres : during which space , the said edward the first , surnamed longshankes , cruelly oppressed the land , destroied the whole auncient monuments of the kingdome , and shed much innocent bloud . 97 robert bruyse began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 5276. in the yeere of christ , 1306. a valiant , good and wise king. in the beginning of his raigne , he was subiect to great miserie and affliction , being oppressed by england : but at length , hauing ouercome and vanquished edward the second , king of england , commonly called edward of carnaruan , at the field of bannock-burne , he deliuered scotland from the warres of england , and set it at full libertie , all englishmen by force being expelled out of the land . he maried first isabel , daughter to the earle of mar , who bare vnto him mariory , the wife of walter , the great steward of scotland , from whom , and the ofspring of the stewards , the king now ruling is descended . after her death , he maried isabel , daughter to haymerus de burc , earle of hultonia or hulster in ireland , who bare vnto him dauid the second , margaret the countesse of sutherland , and maude that died yong . he died at cardros , and was buried at dumfermeline , in the foure and twentieth yeere of his raigne . 98 dauid the second succeeded to his father , robert bruise , in the yeere of the world , 5300. in the yeere of christ , 1330. a good prince , subiect to much affliction in his youth , being first after the death of thomas ranulph his regent , forced to flie into france , for his owne safegard , and then returning home , was taken at the battell of durhame , and was holden twelue yeeres almost , captiue in england : but after , he was restored to his liberty . he maried first ieane , daughter to edward the second , king of england : and after her death , he maried margaret logie , daughter to sir iohn logie , knight , & died without succession at edinburgh , in the fortieth yeere of his raigne , and was buried at haly-rude-house . 99 edward ballioll , sonne to iohn ballioll , vsurped the crown of scotland , being assisted by edward the third , king of england , in the yeere of the world , 5302. in the yere of christ 1332 but he was expelled at length by dauid the 2. his regent , and dauid the second established king. 100 robert the second , surnamed bleare-eie , the first of the stewards , sonne to walter steward , and margery bruyse , daughter to k. robert bruyse , succeeded to his mothers brother , in the yeere of the world , 5341. in the yeere of christ , 1371. a good and a peaceable prince . he maried first eufem● , daughter to hugh earle of rosse , who bare vnto him dauid earle of strathern , walter earle of athol , and alexander earle of buchan , lord badzenoth . after her death , for the affection he bare to his children begotten before his first mariage , he maried elizabeth mure , daughter to sir adam mure , knight , who had borne vnto him iohn , after called robert the third , earle of carrict , robert earle of fife & menteith , and eufeme , wife to iames earle of dowglas . he died at dun-donald the 19 yeere of his raigne , and was buried at scone . 101 robert the third , surnamed iohn farne-zeir , succeeded to his father , in the yeere of the world , 5360. in the yeere of christ. 1390. a quiet & a peaceable prince . he maried anabel drummond , daughter to the laird of stobhall , who bare vnto him dauid the prince , d. of rothesay , that died in prison of very extreame famine at falkland , and iames 1. taken captiue in his voiage to france , and detained a captiue almost the space of eighteene yeeres in england . he died of griefe and sorrow at rothesay , when he heard of the death of the one sonne , and captiuity of the other , and was buried at paisly , in the 16 yeere of his raigne . robert earle of fife and menteith gouerned scotland , in the yeere of the world , 5376. in the yeere of christ. 1406. he died in the 14 yeere of his gouernment , iames the first being a captiue in england . murdo steward succeeded to his father robert earle of fife , in the gouernmēt of scotland , in the yeere of the world 5390. in the yeere of christ , 1420 , and ruled foure yeeres , iames the first being yet a captiue in england . both the father and the sonne walter , were executed after , for oppression of the subiects , by king iames the first . 102 iames the first began to raigne in the yeere of the world , 5394. in the yeere of christ , 1424. he was a good , learned , vertuous and iust prince . he maried ieane , daughter to iohn duke of summerset & marques dorset , sonne to iohn of gaunt , the 4. sonne to edward the 3. the victorious king of england : who bare vnto him , iames the 2. and sixe daughters , margaret wife to lewes the 11. the daulphine , after king of france , elizabeth , dutches of britayne , ieane , countesse of huntley , eleanor , dutches of austria , marie , wife to the l. of camp veere , and anabella . he was slaine at perth trayterously by walter earle of athole , and robert grahame , & their confederates , in the 31. yeere of his raigne , if we count from the death of his father ; and in the 13. yeere , if we count from his deliuerance out of england , and was buried at the charter house of perth , which he builded . 103 iames the second succeeded to his father , in the yeere of the word , 5407. in the yeere of christ , 1437. a prince subiect to great troubles in his youth , he maried mary , daughter to arnold , duke of geldre , daughter to the sister of charles surnamed audax , the last duke of burgandy , &c. who bare vnto him three sonnes , iames the third , iohn earle of mar , alexander duke of albany , & mary , wife first to thomas boyde , earle of arrane , and after his beheading , to iames hammilton of cadzou . he was slaine at the siege of roxburgh in the 24 yeere of his raigne . 104 iames the third succeeded to his father in the yeere of the world , 5430. in the yeere of christ , 1460. a prince corrupted by wicked courtiers . he maried margaret , daughter to christianus 1. surnamed diues k. of denmarke , norway and sweden . he was slaine at the field of bannock-burne , in the 29 yeere of his raigne , & was buried at cambus-kenneth . 105 iames the fourth succeeded to his father , in the yeere of the world 5459. in the yeere of christ 1489. a noble and couragious prince . he maried margaret , eldest daughter to henry earle of richmond , king of england , and of elizabeth , daughter to edward 4. k. of england , in whose two persons , the two houses of lancaster and yorke were vnited , and the bloody ciuill wars of england pacified . he was slaine at flowdon by england , in the 25 yeere of his raigne . 106 iames the fift succeeded to his father in the yeere of the world , 5484. in the yeere of christ , 1514. a iust prince and seuere . he maried first magdalene , daughter to frances 1. king of france , who died shortly thereafter without succession . after , he maried mary of lorayne , dutches of longevile , daughter to claude , duke of guise , who bare to him two sonnes , that died in his life time , and one daughter , named mary , mother to our soueraigne lord the king iames that now is . he died at falkland , in the 29 yeere of his raigne . he was buried at halyrude-house . 107 mary succeeded to her father iames 5. anno mundi , 5513. anno christi . 1543 , a vertuous princesse : she maried first frances 2. dolphin , after king of france : then after his death , returning home into scotland , she maried h. stewart duke of albany &c. lord darley , sonne to mathew , earle of lennox , ( a comely prince , pronepnoy sonne , the daughters daughter of henry the seuenth , king of england ) to whom she did beare iames the sixt . she was put to death in england the eighth of febr. after eighteene yeeres captiuitie . 108 iames the sixt , a good , godly and learned prince , succeeded to his mother in the yeere of the world , 5537. in the yeere of christ , 1567. he maried anna , daughter to fredericke the second , king of denmark , &c. and sophia , the daughter of vlricus the duke of mekelburgh , who hath borne vnto him already , henry frederick the prince , the ninteenth of februarie , 1593. and elizabeth , the ninteenth of august , 1596. margaret , 1598 , the 24 of december . charles , d. of rosay , the 19 of february . he is now in this yeere of our lord iesus christ 1603. not only king of scotland where he hath raigned 36 yeeres , but also king of england , france and ireland , after the decease of our late most gracious soueraigne ladie , elizabeth our queene , who died the 24 of march now last past . miracano : soloccubuit , nox nulla secuta est . finis . the earles of scotland , their svrnames , titles of honovr , their mariages , and names of their chiefe houses . lodouicke steward , duke of lennox , maried the second sister of iohn ruth-vene , earle of gowry that now is . his chiefe house , cruikstone . earles . iames hammilton , earle of arran , vnmaried : his chiefe house , hammilton castell . 2 william douglasse , earle of angusse , maried the eldest daughter of laurence , now lord olephant : his chiefe house , the castell of douglasse . 3 george gordon , earle of huntley , maried the eldest sister of lodouicke , now d. of lennox , his chiefe house strath-bogy . 4 colene camphell , earle of argyle , lord iustice generall of scotland , maried a daughter of william dowglasse , now earle of morton : his chiefe house , inuer-aray . 5 dauid lyndesay , earle of crawfurd , maried the sister of patricke , now lord drummond : his chiefe house fyn-heauin . 6 francis hay , earle of arroll , constable of scotland , maried the daughter of william , earle of morton : his chiefe house , slaynes . 7 iohn stewart , earle of atholl , maried the sister of iohn , earle of gowry , his chiefe house , blayre-athole . 8 george keyth , earle of marshell , maried the sister of alexander , lord home , his chiefe house , dunnotter castell . 9 francis steward , earle bothwell , maried the sister of archbald , earle of angus : his chiefe house , creichton . 10 andrew leisly , earle of rothes , maried the daughter of sir iames hammilton : his chiefe house , bambreich . 11 iames stewart , earle of murrey , vnmaried : his chiefe house , tarneway . 12 alexander cunningham , earle of glencarne , maried the eldest sister of camphell of glonorchy , knight : his chiefe house , kilmawres . 13 hugh mont-gomery , earle of eglinton , yong , vnmaried : his chiefe house , ardrostan . 14 iohn kenedy , earle of cassils , vnmaried : his chiefe house , dun-vre . 15 iohn grahame , earle of montroze , maried the sister of patrike , lord drummond that now is : his chiefe house , kincardin . 16 patrike stewart , earle of orknay , yoong , vnmaried : his chiefe house , kirk-wall . 17 iohn erskin , earle of mar , maried the second sister of lodovicke , now duke of lennox : his chiefe house , erskin . 18 william dowglasse , earle of morton , maried the sister of the earle of rothes that now is : his chiefe house , the castle of dalkeith . 19 iames dowglasse , earle of buquhan , yoong , vnmaried : his chiefe house , auchter-house . 20 george sincler , earle of caithnes , maried the sister of the earle of huntly that now is : his chiefe house , girnego . 21 alexander gordon , earle of sutherland , maried the fathers sister of the earle of huntly that now is : his chiefe house , dunrobene . 22 iohn grayme , earle of monteith , maried the sister of campbel of glenorchy , knight : his chiefe house , kirk-bryde . 23 iohn ruthvene , earle of gowry , yong , vnmaried : his chiefe house , ruthven . 24 the earle of march. the rents thereof are annexed to the crowne . the lords of scotland . alexander , lord home , maried the eldest daughter of william , earle of morton that now is : his chiefe house , home castle . 2 iohn fleming , lord fleming , maried the daughter of the earle of montroze : his chiefe house cummernauld . 3 iohn stewart , lord innermaith , yong : his chiefe house , red castle . 4 iames hay , lord zester , maried the daughter of marke , now l. of newbottle : his chiefe house , neydpeth . 5 iohn maxwell , l. maxwell , maried the sister of archebald , earle of angusse : his chiefe house , loch-maben . 6 william maxwell , now l. harreis , maried the sister of mark , now l. of newbottle : his chiefe house , terreglis . 7 thomas boyd , l. boyd , maried the sister of the sherife of aëre that now is , called campbell , knight of lothiane : his chiefe house , kilmarnok . 8 allane cathcart , l. cathcart , maried the sister of the knight of bargany a kennedy : his chiefe house cathcart . 9 robert semple , l. semple , maried the daughter of hugh , earle of eglinton : his chiefe house , castle-semple . 10 alexander leuingston , l. leuingston , maried the sister of francis , now earle of arrol : his chiefe house , callender . 11 iames lyndesay , l. lyndesay , maried the daughter of the earle of rothes : his chiefe house , byris in lothien . 12 robert seyton . l. seyton , maried the daughter of hugh earle of eglinton : his chiefe house , seyton by the sea. 13 iohn abirnethie , lord salton , yong , vnmaried : his chiefe house , rothe-may . 14 robert elpheston , l. elpheston , maried the daughter of the knight of stobhall , called drummond : his chiefe house kil-drymmy . 15 iohn lyon , l. glammis , vnmaried : his chiefe house glāmis . 16 patrik gray , l. gray , maried the sister of the earle of orknay that now is : his chiefe house , fowlis . 17 iames ogilbie , l. ogilbie , maried the sister of the knight of bonitoun : his chiefe house , boshayne . 18 andrew stewart , lord ochiltrie , maried the daughter of the knight of blarwhan , called kennedy : his chiefe house , ochiltry . 19 henry sincler , lold sincler , maried the sister of the lord forbesse : his chiefe house , rauins-heuch . 20 hugh someruell , lord someruell , vnmaried : his chiefe house carne-wath . 21 iohn fraser , lord louat , maried the knight of mackenzies daughter : his chiefe house , bewly . 22 robert rosse , lord rosse , maried the daughter of hammilton of roploch : his chiefe house , hakket . 23 robert chreichton , lord sanquhar , vnmaried : his chiefe house , the castle of sanquhar . 24 laurence olephant , lord olephant , maried the fathers sister of frances now earle of arrol : his chiefe house , duplene . 25 patrike lord drūmond , maried the knight of edgles sister , called lynsay : his chiefe house drymmen . 26 iohn forbes , lord forbes , maried the sister of seyton of towch : his chiefe house , drummenor . 27 iames borthuike , lord borthuike , maried the sister of the lord zester that now is : his chiefe house , borthuike castell . lordships newly erected , since the yeere 1587. 28 iohn maitland , lord thirlestane , chancellour of scotland , maried the fathers sister of the lord fleming that now is : his chiefe house , the castle of lawder . 29 alexander lindesay , lord spyny , maried the daughter of iohn , lord glammisse , chancellor for the time of scotland : his chiefe house , the castle of spyny . 30 claud hammilton , lord paisly , maried the sister of robert , lord seyton that now is : his chiefe house , halsyde . 31 robert keyth , lord altry , maried the heretix of benholme : his chiefe house benholme . 32 alexander seyton , lord vrquhard , president of the colledge of iustice , maried the daughter of patrike , lord drummond : his cheife house , vrquhard . 33 marke , lord of newbottell , maried the sister of the lord harreis : his chiefe house , preistons-graynge . the bishoricks of scotland . arch-bishops . saint andrewes . arch-bishops . glasgow . orknay . caithnes . rosse . murray . abirdene . brechin . ilis . dunkell . dumblane . galloway . argyle . the abbacies , priories , and nunries of scotland . abbacies . ferne . kinlosse . deir . abirbrothok . cowper . scoone . lundores . balmerynnoch . s. colmes inche . dunfermeling . culrosse . inche-chaffray . straphillane . cambuskinneth . manwell . hallyrud-house . newbottle . kelso . melrosse . dryburgh . iedburgh . paislay . kilwinning . corsragwel . salsett . sweet-heart , or new abbay . dundranane . glenluce . priories . bewly . monimuske . s. andrewes . pettenweeme . portmooke . inche-mahomo . coldinghame . s. mary i le . haly-wood . blantyre . pluscarden . nunries . hadington . north berwick . s. bothanis . ekkillis . cauldstreame . the sisters of seynis . the names of the knights of scotland . sir robert stewart of straichtdone , knight . sir robert stewart of largis , knight . sir alexander stewart of dalswintone , knight . sir iames stewart of done , knight . sir william murrey of tillibarne knight . sir william dowglasse of hawyk , knight . sir patrik houstone of that ilk , knight . sir iohn maxwell of neather pouok , knight . sir william leuingstone of kylsith , knight . sir iohn muir of cauldwoll , knight . sir robert drummond of carnoch , knight . sir iames home of sunlawis , knight . sir iames streueling of keir , knight . sir william ruthuene of bandane , knight . sir hugh someruell of lynton , knight . sir alexander stewart of garleis , knight . sir iohn gourdoun of lochinuar , knight . sir iames wemis of that ilk , knight . sir walter scot of branxholme , knight . sir patrik hepbrowne of lufnes knight . sir simon prestoun of that ilk , knight . sir dauid holme of wedderburne , knight . sir robert lawder of popell , knight . sir iames schaw of sawquhy , knight . sir iohn ed●●stou● of that ilk , knight . sir william sinclair of roslyne , knight . sir iohn colhoune of the lusse , knight . sir iames cokburne of skirlyne , knight . sir archebald neper of edinbelly , knight . sir iames forrest of corstarfin , knight . sir iames dunbar of mochrom , knight . sir iames stewart of cragihall , knight . sir iohn ormistoun of that ilk , knight . sis thomas young of old bar , knight . sir iohn carmichell of that ilk , knight . sir iohn campbell of lauers , knight . sir iames iohnstone of dunwiddie , knight . sir iames meluill of auld-hill , knight . sir alexander stewart of garleis , knight . sir robert ker of sesford , knight . sir walter scot of brank-sholme , knight . sir thomas kennedy of cullaine , knight . sir iames scrymgeor of duddop , knight . sir duncane campbell of glenorquhy , knight . sir iames scot of ballwery , knight . sir robert gordoun of glen , knight . sir patrik gordoun of auchindoun , knight . sir george ogilby of dunbog , knight . sir iames chesholme of dundorne knight . sir mathew stewart of minto , knight . sir george balquhannan of that ilk , knight . sir iames edmestoun of duntreth , knight . sir alexander home of symbie , knight . sir george stewart of innerketoun , knight . sir dauid lyndesay of edgell , knight . sir thomas stewart of garntully knight , sir alexander bruce of arthe , knight . sir walter ogilby of finlater , knight . sir patrik bannantine of kna , knight . sir iohn meluill of grantoun knight . sir andrew murray arngosk , knight . sir robert meluill of murdocarny , knight . sir robert maxwell of spottis , knight . sir iohn maxwell of nether-pooke , knight . sir robert maxwell of dunwiddie , knight . sir richard cokburne of clerkingtoun , knight . sir iames lyndesay of pitroddy , knight . sir michael balfoure of balgaruy , knight . sir robert meluill of bruntyland , knight . sir iohn hammilton of lethrisk , knight . sir dauid lyndesay of the mont , knight . sir george home of prymroknow , knight . sir iohn anstruther of that ilk , knight . sir hugh carmichell of westone , knight . sir iohn lyndesay of wodheid , knight . sir iames saundelands of slammanno mure , knight . sir william cokburne of skeirling , knight . sir iohn kar of hersell , knight . sir thomas gourdoun of cluny , knight . sir iohn gourdoun of pitlurg , knight . sir william lawder of haltoun , knight . sir george dowglasse , knight . sir andrew stirling of keir , knight . sir william stewart of kaberstoun , knight . the othe of a duke . yee shall fortifie and defend the true and christian religion , and christs holy euangell , presently preached in this realme , and shall be leill and true to our soueraigne lord , the kings maiesty : and shall defend his highnes realme & lieges , from all allieners & strangers , at the vttermost of your power : so helpe you god , and by the othe that ye haue else made . the othe of an earle . yee shall fortifie and defend the true & christian religion , & christs holy euangel presently preached in this realm , and shal be leill & true to our soueraigne lord the kings maiesty : and shall defend his highnes realmes and lieges from all allieners and strangers , at the vttermost of your power : so helpe you god , and by the othe that ye haue else made . the othe of a lord of parliament . yee shall giue due and faithfull counsell to our soueraigne lord , the kings maiesties weale , publikely in parliament , as in all other places needfull , and secretly according to your knowledge , for the preseruation of his realme , and common weale thereof : and shall neuer hide nor conceale anie point of treason or crime of leismaieste , that shall appeare to be conspired against his said royall person , but shall incontinent with all possible diligence reueale the same : so helpe you god , and by the othe that ye haue else made . the othe of a knight . 1 i shall fortifie and defend the christian religion , and christs holy euangel , presently preached in this realme , to the vttermost of my power . 2 i shall be loiall and true to my soueraigne lord , the kings maiestie , to all orders of chieualry , and to the noble office of armes . 3 i shall fortifie and defend iustice at my power , and that without fauour or feud . 4 i shall neuer flie from my soueraigne lord , the kings maiesty , nor from his highnesse lieutenants in time of mellay and battell . 5 i shall defend my natiue realme from all allieners and strangers . 6 i shall defend the iust action and quarrell of all ladies of honour , of all true and friendlesse widdowes , of orphelings , and of maidens of good fame . 7 i shall doe diligence wheresoeuer i heare there are any murtherers , traytors , ormasterfull reauers , that oppresse the kings lieges , and peure people , to bring them to the law at my power . 8 i shall maintaine and vphold the noble estate of cheualry , with horse , harnesse , and other knightly habiliments : and shall helpe and succour them of the same order at my power , if they haue need . 9 i shall enquire and seeke to haue the knowledge and vnderstanding of all the articles and points contained in the booke of cheualrie . all these premises to obserue , keepe , and fulfill , i oblesse mee : so helpe mee , god , by mine owne hand , so helpe mee god , &c. the names of the barons , lairds , and chiefe gentlemen in euery sherifdome . innernes . macloyd of the lewis . macloyd of harrich . donald gormesoun . mackneill of barray . mulcalloun of rosay . iohn mudzart captaine of the clanrannalts . the laird of glengarry . the l. of kneydart . mackenzie . l. of garloche . l. of balnagowne . l. of fowles . sherife of cromartie . dumbeith . forsse . otansceale . mackye . neill huchesoun in assent . macken-tosche . captaine of the clanchaniroun . l. of glenewes . raynold mack-raynald of keppache . narne . laird of caddell . baron of kilrawake . l. of parke . dolesse of cantrey . dolesse of budzert . elgin and fores. the sherife of murray . iames dumbar of tarbert . robert dunbar of grangehil , alexander dumbar of kilboyake . the l. of innes . the l. of innermerkie . the l. of duffus . alexander innes of crumby . the l. of brodie . the l. of altrie . the l. of densyde . the l. of cowbin . l. of pettendreigh , dowglasse . the l. of mayne . the baron of vrtane . the l. of grant. patrik grant of ballindalloche . bamff . the laird of findlator . the l. of boyne . george ogiluie of dunlugus the l. of durn . the l. of ley , abircromney . the l. of ratie . the l. of pettendreight , of that ilk . iohn ogiluie of glashanthe . walter ogiluie of baldanie . walter ogil . of carncowsies . iohn ogil . of auchannany . the l. of auchannaquhy . adame gordon of auchindowne . alaster gordon of beldorny . abirdene . the laird of fyuie . thomas meldrum of eden . the l. of delgatie . the l. of vrie . the l. of petslégo . the l. of fillórth . troupee . the l. of pettindrum . new forrest . mueske . the l. of boquhollie . the l. of towie . l , of vdache . the l. of garnestoun . the l. of geych . the l. of petlurge . the l. of lesmoir . craig of achindoir . the l. of abirgeldie . the l. of clunie , gordon . iohn gordon of carnborrowe . iohn gordon of anachie . robert gordon of halhead . iohn gordon of kennartie . alexander gordon of knoke-spak . george gordon of auchmenzie . master william gordon of dulpersie . george gordon of creichie . the l. of corfindá . the l. of bruix . iohn forbes of towy . the l. of corse . the l. of asslow●ne . the l. of cragular . master duncane forbes of monimusk . iohn forbes of poffling . the l. of mekle frasyre . the l. of carndauie . the l. of petféchie . the l. of achinhoofe . the l. of auchlossin . the l. of cushuie . the l. of skene . the l. of thamestoun . the l. of tulligownie . patrik gordon of bracanch . the l. of portestoun . the l. of caskyben . patrik keyth of harthill . william keyth of lyklyheid . the l. of balquhane , leslie . the l. of warderis . the l. of petcapill . the l. of leslie . andrew leslie of new leslie . patrik leslie of kincragy . alexander leslie of dyce . the l. of glake . the l. of meldrum . seyton . the l. of stralóth . the l. of toquhone . the l. of ondney . the l. of essilmont . cheyne . the l. of arnaigé . the l. of petmeddun . the l. of dumbrek . the l. of haddó . the l. of tibbertie . the l. of lesk . the l. of feuerne . the l. of colestoun . the l. of auchinhampers . the l. of tullet . l. of fendraucht , creichton . the l. of kelty . the l. of culter . the l. of sanquhin . the l. of echt. the l. of glenkindy . the l. of wattertoun . the l. of tillemorgund . iames , king of barrauch . william blakehall of barrauch . the l. of randeistoun . the l. of gartly . the l. of achmacoy . kincardin or the mernes . the laird of glenberuie , dowglasse . the l. of petarro , wishert . the l. of lawrestoun . the l. of arbuthnot . the l. of thornetoun , balbegenot wood. the l. of hakerton , falconer , kelhyll . archibald wood of witston . robert keith of canterland . l. of matheris . l. of morphie . allerdes . balmayne . bry. halgreene . the l. of muchales . dulyward . monbodo . cair . the l. of benholme . iohn moncurre of slaines . forfaire . the l. of dun. the l. of balnamone . colloss . the l. of balzordy . the l. of edzell , lyndesay , the l. of kinnaber . the l. of craig , keyth . the l. of vllishauen . the l. of dysert . robert guthré of lownane . andrew gray of donynad . robert guthré of emblathmont . the l. of bonnytoun . the l. of kinnard● . arrot . auld-bar . l. of guthré . hilton . the l. of kilcadrum . halkerton guthré . l. of gardin . the l. of lyes . the l. of kelly . the l. of innerquharratie , clouay . the l. of balfour , ogiluie . the l. of powrie , ogiluie . duntrune the l. of balumbrée . the l. of grainge , durham . lawes . westhall . strikmartine . l. of teling . the l. of lundie , campbell . the l. of auchinlecke . the l. of carmylie . strathauchin of claypots . constable of dundie , skrimgore . the l. of powrie , fothringhame . the l. of fintrie , grayme . the l. of clauerhous , grayme l. of innernitie , creichton . andrew gray of lowrie . brigtoun . cossumes . thorneton of that ilk . lyon of wester , ogyll . fenton of easter , ogyll . the l. of casse , reynd . melgund . logywischert . l. of drumkilbo , tyrie . duncany . logie mekle . cowtie . alexander lindsay of vaine . dauid lindesay of barnyard . kingany . vnnaquhy . gagy . thomas ogiluie of westcraige . iohn ogiluie of innerkeillour . archibald ogiluy of lawton . balmly . the l. of rossie of that ilke . perth , and stewartries of stratherne and monteith . the laird of petcur . the l. of ruthuene . the l. of banff , ogiluie . george creichton of camnay the l. of balgilbo . gormotre . ardblair . the l. of drumlochie . george drommond of blair . the l. of lethintree , herring . mekillour . rettray of craighall . l. of murthlie , abircrombie . the l. of moncur . inchesture . the l. of inchemartyne . the l. of kynnard . william bruce of fingask . patrik gray of belligarnó . patrik drummond of abirnethie . euillilke . the l. of kilspindie . peter hay of moeginche . l. of leyis . l. of hill. murey . petfour . segydén . the l. of kilfawnes , lyndesay . the l. of bathyóke , blayre . the l. of balhou●ie . the l. of ballindayne . the l. of cultmalondie . moncreif of that ilk . easter monctreif . baron of fingask , dundas . the l. of cragie . patrik murray of tibbermure . tibbermallauch . kinuaid . l. of innernytie , creichton . the l. strathurde . loncardie . l. of glennurquhy , campbel . the l. of weym . the l. of garntullie . the l. of glenlyoun . baron of fandowy . l. strowane , robertson . arntillie . fastcalzé . baron read. baron ferguson . baron cunyson . baron of monnesse . innermytie , petcarne . balmamo , aflek . l. of duncrub , rolloc . l. of keltie . l. of tullibarden . l. of abircarnie . strowane . patrik murray of auchtertyre . george drummond of ballot l. of innerpeffré . iohn drummōd coquholzé . baron of bordland , drummond . l. of perkellony , drummond . cultiuragane . l. of comrie . cromlix . l. of laweris , campbell . monyware . monzé . cultoquhay . gorthie , lundy . l. of inchbrachy . l. of keir . l. of kippanrosse . l. of knokhill . l. of laeny . l of glennegeis , haddan . blair of bagray . alexander ruthuen of frélands . george norrie of boquhoppill . fyfe . l. of mukdrum . l. of baluaird ; murray . l. of casche . l. of rossie . l. of halhill , meluill . iohn arnot of woodmill . l. of perbroth , seyton . l. of culermie , barclay . iohn aiton of drummure . l. of creich , betone . l. of fairnaie . sir alexander lindsay of the mont , lyon king of armes . sir robert meluill of murdocarnie . francis tullos of hilcarnie . l. of monquhany , balfoure . l. of nauchtane , creichton . l. of kenneir . l. of forret . iohn leslie of parkhill . l. of carselogie , claypen . l. of wilmerstoun . l. of dersy , learmont . kembake . brachmont , nydie . l. of sandfurde , haye . l. of sandfurde , narne . dauid balfoure of kirktoun . cullochie . l. of erlishall , bruce . l. of reres , forbesse . alexander inglis of stratyrum . l. of inglis tarbet . craighall . patrik kinninmont of callinche . blaebó . lathóccar . balfoure of lambilaethame . kinkell . l. of petmylie . l. of ardrie , lummisdayne . l. of balcomye , learmont . l. of barnys . l. of saegy . l. of camnó . randerstoun . l. saint monanes , sādelands . l. of anstruther . l. of carruber . l. of ardrós . sanfurd , dudingstoun . gordonishall . l. of balkaskie , strang. l. of largo , wode . kincraig . giblestoun . innerdeuat . l. of lundie , lundie . l. of durie , durie . l. of bafoure , beton . l. of balgonie . l. of lorrie , wardlaw . further , petcarne . kirkfurther . peter balfoure of bandone . l. of cletty , ramsay . gondlane . l. of ramornie . lathriske . orky . william skringeour of the myres . arnot . stratherney . auchmowtie . l. of easter wemes , coluill . l. of wester wemes , weymes . l. of abats hall , scot. l. of raith , meluill . l. of balwerie , scot. l. of bamowtow , boswell . l. of seyfeild . orroke . iohn beton of capildrá . balram . walter lesly of otterstoun . aytoun . martyme . l. of pettincreif . l. of petfirrane . l. of rossythe , stewart . l. of dowhill . l. of cleische , coluill . kinrosse . l. of lochleuen , dowglasse . l. of burlie , balfoure . clackmannan . l. of clackmannan , bruce . l. of tulliallane , blacater . l. of sawchy . bruce of kennet . l. of maner . striuiling . l. of garden . l. of arthe , bruce . l. of carnoke , drummond . l. of carnoke , bruce . l. of plean . goodman of kersie . goodman of throske . archibald bruce of powfowles . dauid bruce of kinnaird . thomas bruce of barbarschels . m. dauid rollok of powes . l. of skemure . l. of denneuay . l. of donipace , leuingston . l. of haning . l. of pentasken . l. of castelcarie . l. of kerss , monteith . l. of polmaiss . l. of towch , seyton . l. of leckie . l. of gargunnoke , seyton . l. of randifurde . iohn buchannan of arnpriour . iohn shaw of broiche . linlithgow . sheriffe of linlithgow , hammilton . l. of dundas , dundas . l. of cragiehall , stewart . l. of barnebowgal , mowbray . iames dundas of newliston . alexander drummond of medope . robert hammilton of inchmachane . mungo hammilton of pardonen . iohn hammilton of the grainge . l. of ballinhard , cornwell . l. of ricarton , hepburne . durhame of duntervie . bathcart , hammilton . edinburgh principall . l. of cawder , sandelands . l. of halton , lawder . l. of pumphraston , dowglass . hirdmanschelis . l. barbachlaw , cochran . lennox . l. of stanypéth . l. of dalmohoy . l. of ricarton , drummond . l. of currihill , wardlaw . l. of colingtoun , fowlis . l. of reidhall , otterburne . l. of cowmistoun , fairlie . l. of costorphin , foster . l. of brade , fairlie . l. of marchistoun , neper . l. of innerleith , towris . l. of laureistoun of that ilk . l. of pilrig , monipenie . l. of restalrig , logane . l. of cragmiller , preston . l. of edmiston of that ilk . l. of nuderie , wachop . hill of that ilk . l. brunstoun , creichton . edmeston of wowmet . hay of mounktoun . l. shiref-hall , gyffert . l. of langton . bellendyne of leswade . l. of dalhousie , ramsay . l. kokpen , ramsay . whytehill , preston . poultoun . l. of rosling , sincler . l. of pennicuke of that ilk . l. newhall , creichton . l. southhouse . elphingston of schank . constabularie of haddington . l. fawsyde of that ilk . l. elphingston , iohnstone . l. prestoun , hammilton . l. of langnederie , dowglasse . l. of ormestoun , cokburne . l. of hirmedstoun . l. of blansse . l. of samelstoun , hammilton . l. of newtoun . l. newhall , cockburne . l. of clerkintoun , cockburne . l. of colstoun . l. of talló , hay . l. of benestoan . l. of stanypéth . l. of whittinghame , dowglasse . l. of cosfurde , acheson . l. of wauchton , hepburne . hepburne of gylmerton . hepburne of smeton . hepburne of kirklandhill . l. of sydserff . l. of congilton . l. of knowes . l. of scowgall . sincler of whytekirk . l. of bas , lawder . l. of spot , dowglasse . l. of innerwike , hammilton . l. of broxmouth , home . alexander home of northberwike . robert home of the hewch . l. of waddalie . hartrem wood. berwike and lawderdaill . l. of wederburne , home . l. of blacatour , home . l. of aytoun , home . l. of coldenknowes , home . l. of polwart , home . home of manderstoun . l. of huton hall , home . l. of langton . l. of cockburne . l. of billie , renton . l. of blanerne , lummis-dayne . l. of cumleche , aflek . l. of edingtoun . slychthous . butterdayne . hoprig . easter nisbet . west nisbet . wedderlie . thorniedykes . l. of spottiswood . cranston of thirlstanemaines . corsbie . bemersyde . mertoun . l. swyntoun . l. redpeth . greenlaw . lochurmacus . l. gammilscheilis , home . wyliclewcht . roxburgh . l. of cesfurde , ker. l. of lilteldane , ker. l. of greynheid , ker. l. of corbet , ker. gradon , ker. ker of gaitshaw . mow. haddane . shiriffe of teuiotdail , dowglasse . tympenden . hundeley . hunthill . edzarstoun . bedreull , turne-bull . mynto . wawchop . william turnebull of barnhils . george turnebull of halreull . hector lorane of harwood . grinyslaw of little newton . mader of langton . mungo bennet of cheftis . ouertoun , frasier . riddale of that ilk . l. makkayrstoun , makdowgal . andrew ker of fadownsyde . l. of backcleuch , scot. raph haliburton of mourhouslaw . thomas ker of cauers . howpasloth , scot. baron gledstanes . langlands . william ellot of torsly hill . scot of sintoun . scot of eydschaw . walter vaich of northsintoun . scot of glaeke . l. of chesholme of that ilk . l. of cranstoun . kirktoun of stewartfield . l. of linton , ker. ker of ancrum . carncors of colmissie . selkirk . murray of fawlahill , sheriffe . scot of tuschelaw . scot of thirlstane . scot of aikwood . turnebull of phillophauch . ker of the shaw or dalceiff . hoppringle of galloscheilis . hoppringle of whytebank . hoppringle of torwodley . hoppringill of blindley . hoppringill of bukholme . hoppringill of newhall . peibles . the knight of traquair , stewart . ● of pyrn , cranston . l. of horsburgh . l. of greistoun . l. of cardrono . l. of henderstoun . l. of smeythfield , haye . winkistoun , twedie . l. of blackbarrony , murray . bernys . cauerhill . fowllaeche , stewart . l. of drummelzear , twedie . dawik . pobinde . frude . halkshaw . glengirk . geddes of rachane . inglis of langlandhill . l. of straling . hartire . romannos . prettishoill . meluingsland . ormestoun . bonytoun . posso , nasmyth . iohn hammilton of coltcote . lanerk . captaine of crawfurde castle , carmichell . l. of carmichael . l. of lamington , baillie . l. of bakebie . l. of symontoun . l. of cultérmaines . flemming of carwood . dowglasse of todholes . west-hall , grahame . baillie of the hilles . menzeis of culterrawes . l. of westraw , iohnestone . l. of annestoun . l. of cobingtoun , lyndesay . crimpcramp . hammilton of crawfurde-iohne . l. of ley. l. of cleghorne , barclay . l. of corhouse , bannatyne . ierverswod , leuingstoun . bonytoun , cunninghame . blackwood . staniebyres . auchtyfardill . weir of kirktowne . l. cambusnethan , someruel . l. of carphin , baillie . cleland . murdeistoun . ieruestoun . ernoke . lawchope . steuingstoun . hammilton of roploch . hammilton of hagges . hammilton of lethame . hammilton of orbestoun . hammilton of nelisland . hammilton of stanehouse . l. of siluertonhil , hammilton . l. of dunrod . l. of calderwood , maxwell . l. of castelmylk . l. of mynto , steward . l. of gilbertfield . renfrew . cathcart . ouer-pollok . neather-pollok , maxwell . l. of stanelie . l. of iohnstoun , wallace . l. of ellerslie , wallace . l. houstoun . newerk . l. caldwell . shaw of grenoke . crawfurd of cartisburne . cunninghame of waterston . l. craganis . walkinschaw . barrochane . l. biltries , semplo . barscube . l. boghall , stewart . bishoptoun . cardonald , stewart . foulwood . thirdpart . wheitfurne . scottistoun . ardgowane . balgarrane . ramfurley . porterfield of that ilke . raálstoun . dumbretoun . l. of lusse . l. of cowgrane . l. of ardardane . l. of arnecapill . l. of kilmahòw . bullull . manis . balney . noblestoun . camstródane . darleith . hammilton of cochnó . craigernalt . gloret . striueling of letrer . lucas striueling of baldorrane . edmistoun of balewin . l. of bardowie . l. of kincaid . l. of woodhead . l. of blairshógill . l. of ballykinrane . l. of auchinloche . l. of kilsythe , leuingston . l. of baddinheth , boyd . bord. drumry , hammilton . l. of kilcrewch . gartskeddane . gartschoir . l. of mackferland . l. of buquhannane . l. of drummakcill . tarbert . l. of auchinbrek . l. of archinlais , campbell . l. of lawmont . l. of macklawchlane . macknachtan . skippinche . ottir . duntrune . straquhir . mackowle of lorne . iohn stewart of appin . mackondoquhy of inneraw . mackoneil of dunniveg and glennes . macklane of dowart . macklane of cowle . macklane of lochbwy . macklane of arndnamurchy . bute . the sheriffe of bute , stewart . the l. of camys . aere and bailleries of kyle , k●●rik and cunninghame . l. of kilburnie . l. of crawfurdland . l. of ladyland , barclay . auchnamys . l. of kerrisland . l. of kelsoland . trierne . l. of glengarnoke . l. of cunninghame heid . l. of auchinharuie . l. of aiket . cunninghame . l. of clonbaith . montgomerie . l. of longshaw . l. of heslet . giffin . stane . braidstane , montgomerie . l. of blair . l. of portincorsse . l. of huncarstoun . l. of fairlie . l. of dreghorne . l. of perstoun , barclay . l. of rowallane , mure. l. of montgrenane . l. of robertland , cunninghame . cunninghame of towrlands . cunninghame of the hill . sheriffe of air. cesnockle . skeldoun . campbell of glenoske . campbell of kinzeclewcht . gastoun , s●ewart . halrig . hammilton of sanquhair , sornebeg . l. of bar. l. of craggie-wallace . carnell . wallace . sewalton . wallace . dundonald . adamtoun . gairgirth . chalmers . lefnoreis . crawfurde . kerst . crawfurde . doungane . william crawfurde of clolynane . dowglasse of penieland . cunninghame of lagland . l. of caprington . cunninghame . cunninghame of poquharne . shaw of glenmure . l. of eutirkin . dunbar . l. of scankistoun . campbell . l. of barkymmem . stewart . l. of auchinlek . boswell . l. of bargany . kennedie . l. of blairquhane . kennedie . kennedie of giruanmaynis . kennedie of skeldon . l. of carmichaell . goodman of ardmillane . goodman of dromnellane . kennedie of the coist . balmaclennochane . l. of kelwood , currie . l. of carltowne . cathcart . kennedie of knotidaw . kennidie of bramestoun . boyde of penkill . boyde of the throchrig . l. of dundaffe . l. of kilkerane . l. of kilhenzie . kennedie of tornagannoch . schaw of halie . schaw of germet . wigtoun . l. of garlies , stewart . l. of mochrum , dumbar . l. of garthland , makdowgall . agnew shirefe of wigton . l. of kynhylt . l. of ardwell , makculloch . killassyre . laerg . l. of maerton , maggeé . l. of maerton , mackulloch . l. of barnbarrawch , vaus . l. of craichlaw , mure. kennedie of barquhome . kennedie of vchiltré . campbell of arie. dumfreis , with the stewartries of kirkenbright , and annandail . l. of lochin-war , gordon . l. of troquhayne , gordon . l. of barskeoche , gordon . l. of airdis , gordon . sheirmaes , gordon . gordon of the cule . l. of broghton , murray . l. of dalbatie . l. of portoun , glendonyng . l. of bumby , mackclellane . mackclellane of maerton . l. of cardenes . lidderdaill of s. mary i le . lindesay of barcloy . heries of madinhoip . l. of mabie , heries . macknaucht of kilquhanatie . glenduynning of drūrasche . maxwell of the hill. sinclair of auchinfranke . maxwell of the logane . maxwell of dromcoltrane . stewart of fintillauche . leuingston of little ardis . l. of drumlanrig , dowglasse . dowglasse of gashógill . creichton of carco . creichton of liberie . mackmath of that ilk . dowglasse of daluene . menzies of castelhill . menzies of auchinsell . l. of auchingassill , maitland . l. of closburne , kirk patrik . kirkmichaell . goodman of frier , kersse . l. of lag , greir . l. of amysfield , charterhouse . maxwell of gowhill . maxwell of porterrake . maxwell of tynwald . maxwell of conhaith . maxwell of carnsallauch . maxwell of the i le . browne of the lawne . cunninghame of kirkschaw . l. of craigdarroch . l. of bardannoch . kirko of glenesslane . ballaggane . l. of iohnestoun . l. of wamfrá , iohnestone . l. of eschescheiles . l. of corheid , iohnestone . l. of corry . l. of newbie , iohnestone . l. of graitnay , iohnestone . iohneston of craighop-burne iohneston of newton . iohneston of kirkton . l. of apilgirth , iarden . l. of holmends . l. of cock-poole , murray . l. of moryquhat . l. of wormondby . l. of knok . goodman of granton . boidisbyke . the names of the principall clannes , and surnames on the borders not landed , and chiefe men of name amongst them at this present . east march . brumfieldes . iohn brumfield , tutor of greynelawdeyne . adame brumfield of handaikers . brumfield of pittilesheuche . alexander brumfield of eastfield . alexander brumfield of hasilton maines . iames brumfield of whytehouse . the laird of toddorike . alexander brumfield of gordon maines . trotter . the laird of pentennen . william trotter of fouleschawe . cuthbert trotter in fogo . tome trotter of the hill . diksons . the goodman of buchtrig . the goodman of bolchester . dikson of haffington . dikson in new bigging . ridpeths . thomas ridpeth of crumrig . alexander ridpeth of angellraw . haitlies . the goodman of lambden . iohn haitlie of brumehill . george haitlie in hordlaw . laurence haitlie in haliburton . gradenis . iasper graden in ernislaw . youngs . iames young of the cri●●e . will young of otterburne . dauid young of oxemsyde . williā scot of feltershawes . dauisons . roben dauison of symeston . iok dauison of quhitton . iames dauison of byrnirig . george dauison of throgdā . pringils . iames hoppringill of towner . wat hoppringill of clifton . iohn hoppringil of the bēts . dauid hoppringill of morbottle . tates . will tate in stankfurde . dauid tate in cheritries . dauid tate in bair-ers . will tate in zettane . middlemaists . robin middlemaist in milrig . burnes , dauid burne of ellisheuch , raph burne of the coit . dagleschis . iok dagleisch of bank. robert dagleisch in wideopē . gilchristis . hugh gilchrist called of cowbene . will gilchrist in cauertoun . middle marches . hall. iohn hall of newbigging . george hall , called pats geordie there . andrew hall of the sykes . thom hall in fowlscheils . pyle george pyle in milkheuch . iohn pyle in swynside . robeson . raph robeson in prēderlech . rinzean robeson in howstō . anislie . william anislie of fawlaw . lancie anislie in cxnem . oliuer . dauid oliuer in hynhācheid will oliuer in lustruther , george oliuer in clareley . laidlow . ryne laidlow in the bank. iohn laidlow in sonnyside . liddisdail . the laird of mangerton . the lairds iok . chrystie of the syde . quhithauch . the laird of quhitauch . ionie of quhitauch . sym of the maynes . merietoun quarter . archie of west burnflat . wanton sym in quhitley side . will of powderlanpat . ellots . redhench . robert ellot , and martyne ellot . thoirlishop . rob of thoirlishop , arthure fire the brays . gorrumbery . archie keene , will of morspatriks hors . parke . ionie of the parke , gray will. burnheid . gawins iok , adé cowdais . welshaw . will colichis hob , hob of bowholmes . niksons . iohn nikson of laiest burne . georgies harie nikson . cleme nikson , called the crune . crosers . hob croser , called hob of ricarton . martine croser . cokkis iohn croser . noble clemeis croser . hendersons . rinzian henderson in armiltonburne . ienkyne henderson in kartley , debaitable land. sandeis barnes armestrangs . will of kinmonth . krystie armestrang . iohn skynbanke . lardis rinzians gang . lairdis rinziane . lairdis robbie . rinzian of wanchop . grahames . priors , iohn and his bairnes . hector of the harlaw . the griefes & cuts of harlaw . ewisdail . armestrangs of the gyngils . ekké of the gingils . andrew of the gyngils . thome of glendoning . scots . thome the flower . anfe of the busse . ellots . iohn the portars sonne . will of deuislies . will the lord. eskdail . battisons of cowghorlae . dauid batie . hugh batie . mungoes arthurie . adame of the burne . batisons of the scheill . nichol of the scheill . androw of zetbyre . iohn the braid . wat of the corse . iohnes . iohn armstrang of hoilhons . iohn armstrang of thornequhat . wil armestrāg of ternsnihill . littils . iohn littill of cassoke . thome littill of finglen . ingrahames archy littill . anandail . irwingis . edward of bonschaw . lang richies edward . iohn the young duke . chrystie the cothquhat . willie of graitnayhill . bellis . will bell of alby . iohn bell of the tourne . mathie bell called the king. andro bell called lokkis . androw . will bell reidcloke . carlilles . adame carlile of bridekirk . alexander carlile of egleforhame . grahames . george grahame of reupatrik . arthour grahame of blawoldwood . richie grahame called the plump . thomsons . young archie thomson . sym thomson in polloden . romes . roger rome in tordoweth . mekle sandie rome there . gassis . dauid gasse in barch . iohn gasse , michaels sonne in rig. the shriefdomes and shriefs of scotland . orknay , the shriefe thereof heritable , earle of caythnes . innernes , the earle of huntlie . cromartie , vrquhart of cromartie . narne , iohn campbell of lorne . elgene and forress , dumbar of cumnok . abirdene , the earle of huntlie . kincardin , the earle of marshall . forfar , the lord gray . perth , alias saint iohnstone , the earle of gowry . fyfe , the earle of rothosse . kynross , the earle of morton , of lochleuin and dalkeyth , clackmannan , the knight of the karss . sterling , the prouost of the towne for the time . dumbarten , earle of lennox sterling-shire , extra burgum , the earle of mar. tarbart , the earle of mar. laynrik , the earle of arran , lord hammilton . renfrew , the lord sampill . aere , campbell , knight of lowdon . wigton , patrik agnew , of that ilk . drumfreis , lord sanquhat . pebles , lord zester . selkirk-murray , of fallahill . roxburgh , dowglasse of cauers , called sherife of tiuidaill . barwik lord home . edinburgh , the prouost of the towne for the time . lothien , the earle bothwell . the cunstabularie of hadington , the earle bothwell . lithgow , hammilton of kenneill . the stewartries of scotland . stratherne . monteith . the lord dr●mmond . kircudbricht . annandaill . the lord maxwell . the bailleries of scotland . kyle , the knight of cragy wallace . carik , the earle of cassils . cunninghame , the earle of eglinton . the order of the calling of the table of the session . munday . redemptions of lands . reductions of all kinds . transferrings . losse of superiorities . for making , sealing , and subscribing of reuersions . tewsday . recent spoiles without the time of vacants . acts of aiurnall . wednesday . the common table of the foure quarters of the realme , by order , euery one after another , as is diuided in the acts of the institution , in the print books of parliament . thursday . the same table . friday . the kings actions , strangers , the poore . saturday . the lords of session , and members thereof , the prelates , payers of contribution , and the common table foresaid . and vpon the wednesday and thursday , to cal common priuileged matters , such as hornings , free-persons , euidents , fortalices , warnings , letters conforme to rolements , decreits , arbitrailes , taks , pensions , ordinarie letters , gifts , registring of contracts , actions to become ciuill or prophane , double poindings , billes , supplications , and their last actions to be called of new by ordinance of the lords of session , for expedition of causes . the shires of scotland . the shires of the first quarter as followeth : that is to say , forfair , kineardin , banff , elgin , forres , narne , innernes , and cromartie . the shires of the second quarter , edinburgh , lynlythgow , selkirk , roxburgh , peblis , berwick , and hadington . the third quarter , striuiling and renfrew , lanerk wigton , dumfreis , kilcudbright , and annandaill . the fourth quarter , perth , clackmannan , argyle , and bute . the senators begin their sitting and rising as followes . they begin to sit downe in edinburgh , on the morne after trinitie sunday , while the first day of august , and after to be vacant while the first day of nouember next ensuing ; and then to begin and sit , while the xix . day of march next , & then to be vacant , while the morning after trinitie sunday , as aforesaid . the names of the free bvrrowes , subiect to pay extent and subsidie within scotland . sovth . edinburgh . sterling . lithgow . rothsaye . dumbarten . renfrew . ruglen . aere . irwing . glasgow . kircudbricht . wigtoun . whithorne . laynerik . iedburgh . sel-kirk . peblis . north . abirdene . dundie . saint iohnston , aliâs perth . banffe . dumfermeling . carraill . forfar . brechin . mont-rosse . elgene . innernes . arbrothe . saint andrewes . cowpar . cullane . fores. the kings palaces and castels . haddington . north-barwick . dumbar . drumfreis . narne . thaine . dysert . kirkady . palaces appertaining to the king. the palace of halyrud-house , beside edinburgh in lothien . 2 the palace of dalkeyth , reserued for the vse of the prince , with the orchard , gardens , banks , and wood adiacent thereunto , within foure miles of edinburgh . 3 the palace of lithgow , within the towne of lithgow , in lithgow-shire 4 the palace of falkland , and the towne of falkland adiacent thereunto , with the parke : in fyfe . castels appertaining to the king. desert . the castell of roxburgh , now demoleist by the lawe , and by the commaundement of the king , and three estates : in teuiotdaill . the monuments yet stand to this houre , but desert . the castell and fortalice of dumbar , a house of great strength : till within these late yeeres , it was demoleist by iames earle of murray , regēt of scotland . in lothien . desert . 1 the castell of edinburgh , inhabited by iohn earle of mar. 2 the castell and strength of of blacknes in lothien , inhabited by sir iames sandelands . 3 the castel and strength of sterling , inhabited by iohn earle of mar , and his deputies . 4 the castell of dumbarton , inhabited by iohn lord hammilton . 5 the castell of lochmaben in annandaill , occupied by the lord maxwell . 6 the castell of kirkwall , in orknay , appertaining to the king , inhabited by the earle of orknay . a true description and diuision of the whole countrey of scotland : of the situation , distance and commodities in euery part thereof . scotland is diuided from england , first , by the high hilles of cheuiot , and where the hilles doe end , by a wall called , the marchdike , made in our time ; and then by the waters , esk and seloua . by north , those borders from the scots sea to the ireland sea . the countries lie in order as followeth : the maers ( wherein stands the towne of barwicke , at this present possessed by england ) lies vpon the north side of tweed , which is compassed by the firth of forth on the east , by england on the south : westward on both the sides of tweed lies teuiotdail , taking the name from the water of tiot , diuided from england by the hilles of cheuiot . next vnto teuiotdail , lie countries that are not great : liddisdail , ewisdail , and esdail , taking their names from three waters , liddall , ewis , and esk. the last is annandail , which also hath the name from the water of annan , diuiding the countrey almost in two , and runnes after solo●● , into the ireland sea . now let vs returne to forth . the countrey of lothian is compassed by it at the east . coeburnspeth , and lamermure , diuides it from the maers , and then turning somewhat westward , it ioynes with twedaill , and lawderdaill : tweddaill taking the name from the riuer of tweed , which runnes through the same , and lawderdhill from the towne of lawder , or rather from the water of lider , running through the countrey . liddaill , nithisdaill , and clyddisdaill , march with tweddaill at the south and west parts thereof : nithisdaill taking the name from the water of nith , running through it into the ireland sea. lothian , so named from loth , king of pights , is bordered on the south-east by forth , or the scottish sea : on the northwest by clyddisdaill . this countrie in ciuilitie , and aboundance of all other things necessarie for the vse of man excelles very farre , all the rest of the countries of scotland . there runne fiue waters through it . tyne and esk , ( which both runne in one at the foote of the wood of dalkeith , before they enter into the sea ) leith and almon. of those waters , some spring out of lamermure , and some out of pentland hils , and runne into forth . the townes of lothian , are dunbar , hading , commonly called hadington , dalkeith , edinburgh , leigh . linlithgow lieth more westwardly : clyddisdaill lies on both the sides of clyde , which for the length thereof , is deuided in three shires . in the ouerward , there is an hill , not to call hich , out of the which , spring riuers running into three sundry seas : twede into the scottish sea , annand into the ireland sea , and clyde into the great ocean . the chiefe townes of cliddisdaill are , lanark , and glasgow : north-west from cliddisdaill , lies kyle : beyond kyle lies galloway , which is diuided from clyddisdaill by the water of cloudan . all galloway almost declines to the south , the shire whereof incloseth all the rest of that side of scotland : it is more plentifull in store , than cornes . the waters of galloway , vxe , dee , kenne , cree and losse , runne into the ireland sea : there is almost no great hilles in galloway , but it is full of craggie knolles : the waters gathering together in the vallies betwixt those knolles , make almost innumerable loches , from whence , the first flood that comes before the autumnall equinoctiall , causeth such aboundance of waters to runne , that there come foorth of the said loches , incredible numbers of eeles , and are taken by the countrimen in wand creeles , who salting them , obtaine no small gaine thereby . the farthest part of that side , is the head , called nonantum , vnder the which , there is an hauen at the mouth of the water of lussie , named by ptolome , rerigonius . in the other side of galloway oueragainst this hauen , from clyddis-forth , there enters another hauen , named commonly lochryen ; and by ptolome , vidogora : all that lieth betwixt these two hauens , the countrie people call the rynns , that is , the point of galloway : who also call it nonantum , the mule , that is , the beck . the whole country is named galloway : for gallovid , in the ancient scottish tongue , signifies a man of gallia : vnder lochrien at the backe of galloway , lies carrik , declining easily till it come to clyddisforth . the waters of stenzear , and greuan deuide carrik : vpon the cruiks of those waters , there are many prettie villages . carrik , betwixt the waters , where it riseth in knolles , is firtill of beastiall , & reasonable good ground for corne. the whole country of carrik , both by sea and land , hath aboundance , not only sufficient for themselues , but also largely to support their neighbours . the water of dunes , deuides carrik from kyle . dune springs out of a loch of the same name , in the middest whereof , is an yle , on the which is builded a little tower. next vnto carrik , lies kyle , marching vpon the south with galloway , vpon the southeast with clyddisdaill , vpon the west with cunninghame , separated from thence by the water of irwing . the water of air runnes through the midst of kyle : at the mouth of the water , stands the towne of air , a notable market stead : the countrey generally , is more aboundant of valiant men , then of corne and cattell , the ground being but poore and sandie , which sharpens the mens industrie , and confirmes the strength of the minde and body , by scarcenesse of liuing . from kyle northward , lies cunninghame , renewing clide , and reducing it to the quantity of a reasonable riuer . the name of this countrey is dens , signifying in that language , the kings house : whereby it appeares that the danes haue beene sometimes masters thereof . next vnto cunningham eastward lies renfrew , so named from a little towne , wherein they vse to keepe session of iustice to the countrey . it is commonly named the barronie , and is diuided in the midst by two waters , both called carth. after the barronie , followeth clyddisdaill , lying on either side of clyde , which in respect of the quantitie thereof , and landes of glasgow , is diuided in manie iurisdictions . they that dwell vpon the landes of glasgow , haue their owne iustice seat within the towne of glasgow . the most notable waters of clyddisdaill , are eruenne and douglasse running into clyde , vpon the south side thereof , and vpon the north side there is another called auenne , which cuts lothian from striueling shire . these two waters haue gotten their names of walter at the beginning , instead of proper names , as also the water of auone in walles hath done , with a little difference for the propriety of the language sake . auenne deuides sterling shire from lothian at the south : the firth or forth at the east , which peece and peece becomes narrow , till it growe to the quantity of a reasonable riuer , neere vnto striueling bridge . there is but one water worthy to make account of , that runnes through it , named carron , neere vnto the which there are some ancient monuments vpon the east side of carron . there are two little earthen knolles , builded as may appeare by men , commonly called duini pacis ; that is , the knolles of peace . two miles downward vpon the same water , there is a round building without lyme , made of hard stone , in such sort , that one part of the vppermost stones is indented within the stone that lies directly vnder it : so that the whole worke , by this coniunction mutuall , and burthen of the stones , vpholds it selfe , growing narrow by little and little , from the ground to the head ; where it is open like a doue-coat . the common sort of people , following there owne fantasies , haue deuised sundry authours of this worke , and that the same was appointed for sundry vses , euery man appropriating an vse according to his owne deuise : and i led by coniecture , was sometime indeed of opinion , that this was the chappell of the god terminus , which as we read , was appointed to be open aboue . the two knolles duini pacis , lying so neere it , doe somewhat fortifie this my coniecture ; as , that peace had beene concluded there , and this worke set vp in the memory thereof ; and that the same should be the border of the romane empire . i could not be drawne from this opinion , vntill i vnderstood , that there are sundry workes in a certaine i le , like vnto this chappell in all things , except that they are broader and wider . in which respect , i am compelled to suspend my iudgement farther , than to thinke that these haue beene monuments of things done , and especially of victories gotten , and set vp in those places , as it had beene out of the world , the rather to be kept from the iniuries of enimies : but truely , whether they be monuments of victory , or ( as some beleeue ) sepulchers of noble men , i trust they haue beene monuments to continue in eternall memory , but builded by rude and vnlearned men , like to this chappell standing vpon carron : there is a peece of ground at the right side of carron , plaine almost round about , growing to a knoll : neere midway , betwixt the duini pacis and this chappell , into the which , at the turning of the corner , appeares at this day , the roomes of a pretty towne : but by labouring of the ground where it stood , and taking away of the stones , for building of gentlemens houses thereabouts , the foundations of the walles , and description of the roomes cannot be discerned . beda , the english writer , disertly names this place guidi , placing the same in the very corner of seuerus wall. many notable romanes haue made mention of this wall : heereof as yet remaine sundry apparances , as stones gotten , bearing inscriptions , containing testimonies of safegard receiued of tribunes and centurions , or else of their sepulchers . and seeing that from the wall of adrian , to this wall of seuerus ( as the grounds of both doe witnesse ) it is little lesse then an hundred miles , the ignorance of them that haue written the english matters , was either great , not vnderstanding the latine writers who intreated of them , or else their ouersight that so confusedly handled that , which was so cleerely written . howsoeuer the matter be , if they be not worthy to be reprooued for this their deed , at least , i thinke them worthy to be slightly admonished thereof , specially , for that of the records foresaids , and of the history of beda , the english writer ; it is certaine , that there was sometime the bordour betweene the bryttaines and the scottes . they that tell that camelot stood heere , alleadge also , that this chappell before mentioned , was the temple of claudius caesar , and both the one and the other is a vaine lier : for that camelot is a colonie of the romanes , three hundred miles distant from this place , if trueth may be giuen to ptolomeus , or itinerarium antonins . and cornelius tacitus maketh this errour with the rest of the whole narratiue , most knowen ; chiefly in that he writeth , that the romanes , after they had lost camelot , fled for their owne preseruation , to the temple of claudius caesar : and ( whether this chappell was the temple of terminus , or a monument of any other thing wanting a doore , whereof presently it hath neither signe or token , being the height of a stones cast ) yet it could neuer couer ten armed men of warre , or scarsely containe so many within the walles thereof . besides this , after claudius caesars iourney , almost fortie yeeres , iulius agricola was the first romane that euer entred in those parts . also was it not fiftie yeeres after agricola , that adrianus made a wall betwixt tyne and esk , to be the border of the romane prouince , whereof to this present in diuers places signes do remaine ? septimius seuerus , about the yeere of god 210 , entred into britannie , and beyond this border appointed by adrian , 100 miles , he made a wall from the firth of clyde , to the mouth of euen , where it entreth into forth . of this wall , euen at this day , there are many and cleare demonstrations . moreouer , we neuer finde in the ancient monuments , that camelodonum was the chiefe seat of the pights : but that their regall seat was in abirnethie , as also the metropolitane seat of their bishop : which afterwards was transported to saint andrewes . if it were inquired , what mooued the romanes to bring a colonie there , or how they susteined the same in so barraine a ground ; and , as things were at that time , wilde and vnmanured , and subiect to the dayly iniuries of most cruell enemies : they will , as i suppose , answere , ( for i can not see what other thing they can say ) that they furnished it by sea , what time ships sed to passe vp garron , euen to the towne wall . if this were ●e , of necessitie the ground of both the banks of forth , was then ouerflowed by the great ocean , and so was barren : & yet now , that is the only ground that is supposed to be plentifull of cornes in those parts . there is another question somewhat more difficill . if both the bankes of forth were drowned with salt water , why ended not the romanes their wall rather at that part , then with superstuous laboures , to drawe it further in length by many miles ? beyond striuiling-shire , lieth the lennox , deuided from the barrony of renfrew , by clyde : from glasgow , by the water of heluin : from striuiling-shire , by hilles : from teth , by forth : and then ends in the hils of grangebean ; at the foote whereof , loch-lomond runnes downe a lowe valley , foure and twentie miles of length , and eight of bredth , hauing moe then foure and twentie islands within the same . this loch , besides aboundance of other fishes , hath a kinde of fish of the owne , named pollac , very pleasant to eate . the water of leuin runneth out of loch-lomond southward , which water hath giuen the name to the countrey . leuin entreth into clyde , neere to the castle of dumbarton , and towne of the same name . the westmost of the hilles of grangebean , make the border of the lennox . the hilles are cutted by a little bosome of the sea , named for the shortnes thereof , ger-loch . beyond this loch , there is a farre greater loch , named from the water that runneth in it , loch-long : and this water is the march betweene lennox and couall . this couall , argyle ( or rather ergyle ) and knapdaill , are deuided in many parts , by many narrow creekes , that runne out of the firth of clyde into them , whereof there is one most notable , named loch-fyne , from the water of finne that runneth into it . this loch is threescore miles of length . in knapdaill , is loch-haw , and therein a little island , with a strong castle . the water of aw runneth out of this loch , and is the onely water of all that countrey , that doth runne into the deucalidon sea. north-west from knapdaill , doth lie kentyir , ( the head of the countrey ouer-against ireland , ) from which it is deuided by a little sea. kyntyir is more long then broad , ioyning to knapdaill by so narrow a throate , that it is scarce one mile in bredth , and the same throate is nothing else but very sand , lying so lowe , that mariners drawing their ships ofttimes through it , make their iourney a great deale shorter , then it would bee , keeping the common course . lorne , lying vpon ergyle , doth march with it , vntill it come to haber , a plaine countrey , and not vnfruitfull . the countrey where the hilles of grangebean are , are most easie to be trauelled , named broad albin , and that is to say , the highest part of scotland : and the highest part of broad albin , is called drunnalbin , that is , the backe of scotland , so tearmed , not altogether without cause : for forth of that backe , waters do runne into both the seas , some vnto the north , and some vnto the south . forth of locherne , the water of erne runneth north-east , and entreth into tay , vnder sainct-iohnstoun three miles . the countrey that lieth on each side of this water , taking the name from it , is called in the ancient scottish language , straitherne . straith , of olde , in that tongue , was called a countrey lying along a water side . betwixt the hilles of this countrey and forth , lieth teth , taking the name from the water of teth , running through the middest thereof . the hilles called ochels , march with teth , which for the most part , ( as also the ground , lying at the foot of them ) are accounted to be of the stewardrie of straitherne . the rest of that countrey to forth ( through ambition ) is diuided in sundry iurisdictions , as in clackmannan-shire , culros-shire , and kinros-shire , from which all the countrey that lies betwixt forth and tay , eastward , like a wedge in a narrow point of the sea , is called by one name , fyfe , abundant within the selfe in all things necessarie to the vse of man. it is broadest where lochleuin diuideth it : from thence it becommeth narrow , vntill it come to the towne of carraill . there is but one water to make account of , in all fyfe , named leuin . there are manie prety townes vpon the coast in three sides of fyfe . the towne of saint andrewes , for the study of good learning . the towne of cowper standeth almost in the middest of fyfe , which is the sherifes seat for administration of iustice . vpon the march betwixt it and stratherne , standeth abirnethy , of olde the chiefe citie of the pights . neere it , erne runneth into tay. the water of tay commeth forth of loch-tay , in broadalbin . the loch is foure & twenty miles of length . tay is the greatest riuer in scotland , which turning course at the hilles of grangebean , ioynes with atholl , a fertile countrey , situate in the very wildernesse of the same mountaines : at the foot whereof there is a part of atholl , lying plaine , named the blair , which word signifies a ground proper for wood . vnder atholl , vpon the south side of tay , stands the towne caledon , which onely retaines the ancient name , commonly called dunkeld , that is , a knoll full of nut-trees . the nut-trees growing in that vnmanured ground , and couering the earth , with the shaddow of the boughs thereof , haue giuen the name , both to the towne , and people . caledones indeed , or caledonij , were sometime one of the most renowmed people of brittaine , and made the one halfe of the kingdome of pights , whom ammianus marcellinus diuideth into caledones , and vecturiones , of whome at this day , scarcely doth remaine any memoriall of name . twelue miles vnder dunkeld , in the same right side of the riuer of tay , stands saint iohnestone : vpon the north side of the water , eastward from atholl , lies gowrie , a firtill ground for corne , and vnder it againe , betwixt tay , and esk , lies angusse , or as the ancient scots call it , eencia . some men also are of opinion that it was named horrestia , or according to the english phrase , forrestia . in angusse are the townes of cowper , and deidoun ( the gift of god , as boetius , to gratifie his countrey , ambiciously names it ) but i trust , the ancient name of the towne was taidunum , from the word dun , called the taw , or knoll , that stands vpon tai : at the foot whereof this towne is builded . fourteene miles north from tai , right by the sea side , standes abirbrothock ' , otherwise named abrinca : from thence yee may perfitly see the redde head a farre off . south-east cuts angusse euen in the middest , and north-east diuides it from the maernis . the maernis for the most part is a plaine ground , till it passe fordoun , and dunnotter , the earle marshels castle , and come to the hilles of grangebean , which begin there to decrease and end in the sea. north , from the maernis , is the mouth of the water of deuá , or deé , commonly named , and about a mile from deé northward , the mouth of the water of done. at the mouth of deè standes abirdene , renowmed for the salmond fishings thereof : and at the mouth of doné , the bishops seat , and common schooles flourishing in all kinde of science of liberall artes . i finde in some olde monuments , that the towne neerest to the south , was called abirdee , but now , both the one towne and the other , is called abirdene , deuised onely to the words old and new , as new abirdene , and old abirdene . at this narrow point , lying betwixt these waters , the countrey of mar beginnes , growing alwaies wider and wider , till it be 60 miles in length , & come to badzenoch . the countrey of badzenoch , hath as it were a backe , running out through the midst of it , which spouts forth waters into both the seas . habre marcheth with badzenoch , tending by little and little towards the deucalidon sea : a countrey as aboundant of commodities both by sea and land , as any countrey within scotland is . first , it is good for corne , and store : the shaddowes of the woods , the riuers and the springs , make it very pleasant : and it hath also great plenty of fishes , as any countrey within scotland : for besides the aboundance of fresh water fishes , produced by a great number of waters , the sea runnes within the countrey , in a long channell , and being narrow at the mouth , the water kept in betwixt two high bankes , and spreading wide inward , makes the forme of a stanke or rather of a loch , from which it hath gotten the name abre , by the countrey men , that is in their language , a place where ships may lie as sure as in a hauen . the same name is giuen to all the countrey that lies round about : such as speake the english tongue , name both the creeke of the sea , and the countrey , lochabre , but altogether without reason , and indecently . these three countries , habre , badzenoch , and marre , comprehend the breadth of scotland , betwixt the two seas . next vnto marre , northward lies buquhan , deuided from marre by the water of dune . this countrey runnes farthest in the germane sea , of all the countries of scotland ; fertill in store , and increase of the ground , and in it selfe , sufficient to satisfy for all other commodities necessary for the countrey . there is abundance of salmond fish taken in all the waters thereof , except rattry , wherein to this houre , was neuer seene any salmond . vpon the coast of buquhan , there is a caue , the nature whereof is not to be forgotten . from the crowne of the caue , there drops downe water , which water , vpon the instant , is turned into little round stones . if the caue were not from time to time cleansed by mans labour , it would in short space be filled to the head . the stone that is ingendered of this water , is of nature halfe stone , halfe ice , fresh and neuer growing solide , as the marble doth . when i was in tollosse , about the yeere of god , 1544. i vnderstood by credible men , that there was a caue , into the pireneé mounts , neere vnto the place of their habitation , like vnto this caue in all things . boyne and enzeé lie from buquhan , northward to spey , which deuides them from murray . spey springs forth of the north-side of the mountaines of badzenoch , whereof we haue made mention ; and not farre from the spring thereof is a loch , forth of the which , comes the water of lute , running into the west sea . by report , there was at the mouth of this water , a good towne , named innerluther , from the name of the water . surely , if we will consider the nature of the people that dwell thereabouts , the commodity of sailing and portage by sea , this is very proper for an hauen . the ancient kings allured by these commodities , sometime dwelt there , in the castle of enone , which castle , many at this time ( sinisterly informed ) suppose to be dunstaffage : for the ruines and signes of dunstaffage , euen to this day may be seene in lorne . there are some small countries cast in betwixt buquhan and the westsea , which ( hauing no notable thing worthy of memory within them ) we ouerpasse . murray lies betwixt spey and naes , sometime named , as some suppose , verar . the germane sea running betwixt these two waters backeward , makes the shire narrow , and yet for the quantity , it is wealthy in corne and store , and is the first country of scotland for pleasure and commodities of fruitfull trees . there are two townes in it , elgin , vpon the water of loxi , keeping at this day the ancient name ; and innernes , vpon the water of naes . naes comes forth of a loch 34 miles of length , named loch-naes . the water of naes is almost alwaies warme , and at no time so cold that it freezeth : yea , in the most cold time of winter , broken yce falling in it , is dissolued , by the heat thereof . west from lochnaes , there lies eight miles of continent ground : and that small peece is the onely impediment that the seas ioine not , and make the remanent of scotland an iland : for all the land that lies betwixt the strait and the deucalidon sea , is cutted by creeks and loches of salt water running into the land . the countrey that lies by north naes , and these straits , is commonly diuided in foure prouinces , nauern , or , as the common people name it , stranauerne , from the water of narn . from the mouth of naes , where it enters into the germane sea , north , lies rosse , shooting into the sea , in great promontories or heads , as the word it selfe expresseth : for rosse in scottish , is called , an head . the countrey of rosse is of greater length , then breadth , extended from the germaine to the deucalidon sea , where it riseth in craggy and wilde hilles , and yet in the plaine fieldes thereof , there is as great fertility of corne , as in any other part of scotland . there is in rosse , pleasant dales with waters , and loches full of fishes , specially loch-broome . it is broad at the deucalidon sea , and growes narrow by little and little , turning south-ward . from the other shore , the germane sea ( winning the selfe an entry betwixt high clints ) runnes within the land in a wide bosome , and makes an healthfull port and sure refuge against all tempests and stormes : the entry of it is easie , and within it , is a very sure hauen , against all iniuries of sea , and a hauen for great nauies of ships . next vnto rosse north-ward : is nauarn , so named , from the water of nauarn , which the common people ( following the custome of their countrey speech ) calleth , stranauerne . rosse-marches with stranauerne at the south . the deucalidon sea , at the west and north , runnes about it , and at the east it ioines with caithnes . sotherland , is so cast in amongst these countries , that it is neighbour to them all , and marches with euery one of them at some part . at the west , it hath stranauerne : at the east , rosse : and at the north , caithnes , lying ouer against it . the countrey people , in respect of the nature of the ground , are more giuen to store then to corne. there is no singular thing in it that i know , except the hilles of white marble : a rare woonder in cold countries , and seruing for no purpose , because that ouer-great delicacie , the curious caruer of such things , is not entered in that country . caithnes , where it marches with stranauerne , is the furthest north countrey of all scotland . and those two countries draw the breadth of scotland into a narrow front . in them are three promontories or heads : the highest whereof , is in nauernia , named by ptolomie , orcas , or taruidum . the other two , not altogether so hie , are in caithnes , veruedrum , now named hoya ; and berubrum , vntruely by boetius called dume , now commonly called dunnesbey , or by some , duncans-bey . of this word ( as appeareth , some letters taken away ) the word dunsbey is come . at the foot of the hill , there is a prety creeke , which they that trauell from orknay by sea , vse for an hauen . creeke is commonly called a bay. this creeke then being named by such as dwelt thereabout duncans-bey or dunnachis-bey , the common people ioyning both the words in one , haue ( in their fashion ) made the word dunsbey . in this country ptolomie places carnauij , of which names , there remaine yet some signes : for the earle of caithnes chiefe castle is named gernigo . it appeares , that the people named by ptolomie , cornauij , were called by the britaynes , kernici : for indeed , not onely in this countrey , but also in the furthest place of this i le , that is in cornewales , he places the people , named cornauij , and they that speake the britayne tong , call the same people , kernici . it may be , that he should not iudge amisse , that should esteeme cornewales to be spoken for kernice-wales , taking that name from the frenchmen , called kernici . it appeareth likewise , that some signes of this name , although obscure , remained in the middest of the i le : for beda writes , that the beginning of seuerus wall , was not far from the abbay of kebercurnike ; but in these places now , there is no appearance of any abbay . yet there is in that part , a castle of dowglasses , ruinous and halfe decaied , named abircorne . whether one of these words , or both , be corruptly driuen for kernici , i leaue the reader to iudge . of the iles of scotland ingenerall . now resteth it to speake somewhat of the iles , the part of all the brittaine history , inuolued in greatest errours . we will leaue the most ancient writers , of whom we haue no certaintie , and follow that which men of our owne time , more truely and clearely haue written . they diuide all the iles , ( which , as it were , crowne scotland ) in three classes or ranks , the west iles , orkenay iles , and shetland iles. they call them west , that lie in the deucalidon sea , from ireland almost to orknay , vpon the west side of scotland . they that either in our fathers daies or ours , haue written any thing of brittayne , call these iles hebrides , ( a new name indeede ) whereof they bring neither ground , nor euidence from the ancient writers . some writers haue placed aebudae , aemode , or acmode , in that part of that sea : but so diuersly , that they scarcely agree , either in the number , the situation , or names . strabo ( to begin at him , as most auncient ) perchance may be pardoned , for that in his time , that part of the world was not sufficiently explored , and he therefore hath but followed the vncertaine brute . mela reckoneth seuen aemodae ; martianus capella also many acmodae ; ptolomeus and solinus fiue aebudae . plinius seuen acmodae and thirtie aebudae . we will retaine the name that is most frequent and common amongst the ancients , and call all the west iles aebudae , and shew their situation , the nature of euery one of them , and commodities therof , out of recent authors , that haue lately written , as most certaine . first , we will follow donald munro , a man both godly and diligent , who trauelled all these iles vpon his feet , and saw them perfectly with his eies . they lie scattered into the deucalidon sea , to the number of 300. and aboue . of olde , the kings of scotland kept these iles in their owne possession , vntill the time of donald , brother to king malcome the 3. who gaue them to the king of norway , vpon condition , that he should assist him , in vsurping of the kingdome of scotland , against law and reason . the danes and norway people kept possession of them for the space of 160. yeeres : and then king alexander the third , ouercomming the danes and norway men in a great battell , thrust them out of the iles : yet afterward they attempted to recouer their libertie , partly , trusting to their owne strength ; and partly , mooued by sedidions in the maine land of this countrey , creating kings of themselues , as not long agoe , iohn ( of the house of clandonald ) did vsurpe the name of king , as others had done before . in food , raiment , and all things pertaining to their familie , they vse the ancient frugalitie of the scots . their bankets are hunting and fishing . they seeth their flesh in the ●ripe , or else in the skinne of the beast , filling the same full of water . now and then in hunting , they straine out the blood , and eate the flesh raw . their drinke is the broth of sodden flesh . they loue very well the drinke made of whey , and kept certaine yeeres , drinking the same at feasts : it is named by them , blandium . the most part of them drinke water . their custome is to make their bread of oates and barly , ( which are the onely kinds of graine that grow in those parts : ) experience ( with time ) hath taught them to make it in such sort , that it is not vnpleasant to eate . they take a little of it in the morning , and so passing to the hunting , or any other businesse , content themselues therewith , without any other kinde of meat , till euen . they delight in marled clothes , specially , that haue long stripes of sundrie colours : they loue chiefly purple and blew . their predecessors vsed short mantles , or plaids of diuers colours , sundry waies deuided : and amongst some , the same custome is obserued to this day : but for the most part now , they are browne , most neere to the colour of the hadder : to the effect , when they lie amongst the hadder , the bright colour of their plaids shall not bewray them : with the which , rather coloured , then clad , they suffer the most cruell tempests that blowe in the open field , in such sort , that vnder a wrythe of snow , they sleepe sound . in their houses also , they lie vpon the ground , laying betwixt them and it , brakens , or hadder , the rootes thereof downe , and the tops vp , so prettily laid together , that they are as soft as feather-beds , and much more wholsome : for the tops themselues are drie of nature , whereby it dries the weake humours , & restores againe the strength of the sinewes troubled before , and that so euidently , that they , who at euening go to rest sore and wearie , rise in the morning whole and able . as none of these people care for feather-beds and bedding , so take they greatest pleasure in rudenesse and hardnesse . if for their owne commoditie , or vpon necessitie , they trauell to any other countrey , they reiect the feather-beds and bedding of their hoste . they wrap themselues in their owne plaids , so taking their rest : carefull indeed , lest that barbarous delicacie of the maine land ( as they tearme it ) corrupt their naturall and country hardnesse . their armour wherewith they couer their bodies in time of warre , is an iron bonnet , and an habbergion , side , almost euen to their heeles . their weapons against their enemies , are bowes and arrowes . the arrowes are for the most part hooked , with a barble on either side , which once entered within the body , cannot be drawne forth againe , vnlesse the wound be made wider . some of them fight with broad swords and axes . in place of a drum , they vse a bag-pipe . they delight much in musicke , but chiefly in harps and clairschoes of their owne fashion . the strings of the clairschoes are made of brasse-wire , and the strings of the harps , of sinewes : which strings , they strike either with their nailes , growing long ; or else with an instrument appointed for that vse . they take great pleasure to decke their harps and clairschoes with siluer and precious stones : and poore ones , that cannot attaine heereunto , decke them with christall . they sing verses prettily compound , containing ( for the most part ) praises of valiant men . there is not almost any other argument , whereof their rimes entreat . they speake the auncient french language , altered a little . the iles lying abovt scotland , that speake the ancient language , called the vvest iles , are these that follow . the first of them all , is the i le of man , vntruely by some men named mon : by the ancients called dubonia , by paulus orosius , menenia , or rather maenante , and in the old countrey speech , manium . before this time , there was a towne in it , named sodora , wherein the bishop of the iles had his seat . it lies almost midway betwixt ireland and cumbir , a countrey of england , and galloway , a countrey of scotland , 24 miles in length , and 18 in breadth . next vnto man , is ailsay , into the firth of clyde : an hard high craig on all sides , except at an entrie . it is neuer occupied by any man , but that at sometimes there come a great number of boats there to fish keeling . there are many conies and sea-fowles in it , specially of that kinde , which wee call solayne-geese . it hath carrik vpon the north-east , ireland vpon the north-west almost , and kyntyre vpon the south-east . foure and twentie miles from ailsay , lies arrane , almost direct north , 24 miles of length , and 16 of breadth . all the whole iland riseth in high and wilde mountaines . it is manured onely vpon the sea side . where the ground is lowest , the sea runnes in , and makes a well large creeke into it : the entries whereof are closed by the iland molas , the hilles rising on all sides , and breaking the rage of the windes , in such sort , that within is a very sure hauen for shippes : and in the waters , which are alwaies calme , such abundance of fish , that if there be more taken than the countrey people thinke should serue them for a day , they cast them in againe into the sea , as it were in a stanke . not farre from arrane lies the little ile flada , fertill of conies . farther in it , is situate the i le of bute , within the firth of clyde , eight miles of length , and foure in breadth : distant from arrane , as is said , eight miles south-east , and from argyle south-west , little more than halfe a mile from cunnynghame , which lies by-east of it , sixe miles . it is a low countrey , commodious enough for corne and store : in it is a towne of the same name , and therein is the olde castell of rosa. there is another castell in the middest of it , named cames , in their owne language , in greeke kamcos : that is , verie crooked . the i le mernoca , a mile of length , and halfe a mile of bredth , lies lowe south-westward , well manured and fertill for the quantitie . within the firth of clyde , lies little cambra , and great cambra , not farre distant one from another . great cambra is fertill of corne , and little cambra of fallow deere . from the mule of kyntyre littia , more then a mile , is porticosa auona , getting that name from the creeke of walter , that kept the danes nauie there , at what time they had the iles in their handes . from the same mule north-west , ouer against the coast of ireland , lies rachuda : and from kyntyre foure miles , the little ile caraia : and not farre from thence , gigaia , sixe miles of length , and a mile and a halfe of bredth . twelue miles from gigaia , lies iura , foure and twentie miles of length . the shoreside of iura is well manured , and the inward part of the countrey is cled with wood , full of deere of sundry kinds . some thinke that this i le was named of olde , dera , which worde in the gothicke tongue signifieth a deere . two miles from iura , lies scarba , in length , from the east to the west , foure miles , and a mile in bredth : in few places occupied . the tide of the sea betwixt this i le and iura , is so violent , that it is not possible to passe it , either by saile or aire , except at certaine times . at the backe of this i le , are many vnwoorthie little ilands scattered heere and there . ballach , or genistaria , gearastilla , longaia , the 2. fidlais , the 3. barbais , distinguished by their owne proper names , culbremna , dunum , coilp , cuparia , beluahua , vikerana , vitulina , lumga , seila , scana . these three last iles are indifferent fertill of corne and store , and pertaine to the earles of argyle . next vnto them is sklata : so named , from a sklait quarre that is in it . then naguisoga and eisdalfa , and skennia , and that which is named thiana , from an herbe hurtfull to the cornes , called guld , not vnlike to the herbe lutea , but that it is somewhat more waterish coloured . vderga , and the kings iland : then duffa , that is , blacke : and the iland of the church , and triaracha , and then the iland ardua , hun●lis , viridi● , and ericca . item , arboraria , capra●ia , cunicularia , and it , that is named the iland of idle-men : and abridica , and lismora , wherein sometime was the bishops feate of argyle : it is eight miles of length , and two in breadth . in this iland , besides the commodities that it hath common with the rest , there are mynes of mettalles . then ouilia , the iland traiecte , the iland garna ( that is sharpe ) the iland of the stane . gressa , and the great iland , ardiescara , musadilla , and bernera , sometime called the holie girth , notable by the tree taxus , which growes in it . molochasgia , drinacha , full of thornes and bourtree , ouer-couered with the ruines of old houses . wrichtoun , fertill of wood . item , ransa , kernera . the greatest iland , next vnto iura , westward , is yla , 24. miles of length , and sixteene of bredth , extended from the south , to the north , aboundant in store , cornea , deere and lead . there is a fresh water in it , called laia , and a creeke of salt water , and therein are many ilands : in it also , is a fresh water loch , wherein stands the iland , named fulnigania , sometime the chiefe seate of all the iles-men . there the gouernour of the iles , vsurping the name of a king , was wont to dwell . neere vnto this iland , and somewat lesse then it , is the round iland , taking the name from counsell : for therein was the iustice seate , and fourteene of the most woorthy of the countrey , did minister iustice vnto all the rest , continually , and intreated of the waightie affaires of the realme , in counsell , whose great equitie and discretion kept peace both at home and abroade , and with peace , was the companion of peace , aboundance of all things . betwixt ila and iura , lies a little iland , taking the name from a cairne of stones . at the south-side of ila , doe lie these ilands : colurna , muluo●is , os●una , brigidana , corskera , the lowe iland , imersga , beathia , texa , ouicularia , noasiga , vinarda , caua , tarsheria . the great iland auchnarra , the iland made like a man , the iland of iohn slakbadis . at the west corner of ila , lies ouersa , where the sea is most tempestuous , and at certaine houres vnnauigable . the marchants iland . and southwest-ward from it , vsabrasta , tanasta , and nefa . the weauers iland . eight miles from ila , somewhat towards the north , lies ornansa . next vnto it , the swines iland . halfe a mile from ornansa , colnansa . north from colnansa , lies the mule , twelue miles distant from ila . this i le is foure and twentie miles of length , and as much in bredth , vnpleasant indeed , but not vnfruitfull of cornes . there are many woods in it , many heardes of deere , and a good hauen for shippes : there are in it two waters , entring into the sea , ouer against the dowe iland : and there are two waters , well spred of salmond fish , and some strippes not altogether emptie thereof . there are also two loches in it , and in euerie one of the loches an iland , and in euerie iland a towre . the sea running into this iland at foure sundrie parts , makes foure salt-water loches therein , all foure abounding in herring . to the north-west lies calumbaria , or the dowe iland : to the south-est , era : both the one and the other profitable for bestiall , for cornes , and for fishings . from this iland , two miles , lies the iland of sanct-colme , two miles of length , and more then a mile of bredth , fertill of all things , that that part of the heauen vseth to produce : renowmed by the auncient monuments of that countrey , but most esteemed for the sincere holinesse and discipline of sanct-colme . there were in this iland , two abbies , one of monkes , another of graie fryars : a court , ( or as it is tearmed at this time ) a parish church , with many chappelles , builded of the liberalitie of the kings of scotland , and gouernours of the iles. when as the english men had taken eubonia , and therein the auncient seate of the bishops of the iles , they placed their seate into the old cloister of sanct-colme . there is as yet remaining amongst the old ruines , a buriall place , or church-yard , common to all the noble families of the west iles , wherein there are three tombes , higher then the rest , distant euerie one from another a little space , and three little houses situated to the east , builded seuerally vpon the three tombes : vpon the west parts whereof , there are stones grauen , expressing whose tombes these were , which stand in the midst , bearing this title : the tombs of the kings of scotland . it is said there were 48. kings of scotland buried there . the tombe vpon the right side , hath this inscription : the tombes of the kings of ireland . it is recorded , that there were foure kings of ireland buried there . it , that is vpon the left side , hath this inscription : the tombes of the kings of norway . the report is , that there were eight kings of that nation buried there . the notable houses of the iles , haue their tombes in the rest of the church-yard , euery one seuerally by themselues . there are about this iland , and neere vnto it , sixe little ilands , not vnfruitfull , giuen by the auncient kings of scotland , and gouernours of the iles , to the abbey of sanct-colme . soa is a very profitable ground for sheepe , albeit the chiefe commoditie of it consists in sea-fowles that build therein , specially of their egges . next vnto it , is the i le of wemen . then rudana . neere vnto it , bernira : and from that , skennia , halfe a mile distant from the mule. it hath a priest of the owne , but the most part of the parishioners dwell in mule. the sea sides of it abound in connies . fiue miles hence , lieth frosa : all these iles are subiect to the monkes of saint colmes abbey . two miles from frosa , lieth vilua , fiue miles of length , fruitfull for the quantitie of corne and store . it hath a commodious hauen for gallies or boates . vpon the south side of it , lieth toluansa , the ground whereof is not vnfruitfull . there is a wood of nut-trees in it . about three hundred paces from this iland , lieth gomatra , two miles long , and one mile broad , extended from the north to the south . from gomatra foure miles southward , lies 2. staffae , the one and the other full of hauening places . foure miles south-east from staffa , lie two ilands , named kerimburgae , the more and the lesse , enuironed with such shore , high , and furious tide , that by their owne naturall defence , ( supported somewhat by the industrie of man ) they are altogether inuincible . one mile from them , lies an iland , whereof the whole earth almost is blacke , growne together of rotten wood and mosse . the people make peates of it for their fire : where-from it is called monadrum : for that kinde of earth , which in the english language is called mosse , in the irish is called monadrum . next vnto this i le , lieth longa , 2. miles of length , and bacha halfe as much . from bacha 6. miles lies tiria , eight miles in length , and three in breadth . most fertill of all the ilandes , in all things necessarie for the sustentation of man. it aboundeth in store of cornes , fishings , and sea-fowles . in this iland , there is a fresh-water loch , and therein an olde castle . it hath also an hauen not incommodious for boates . from this iland two miles , lies sunna , and from sunna as farre lieth colla , twelue miles of length , and two miles of bredth , a fertill iland . not farre from it , is calfa , almost all full of wood . and then two ilands , named meekle viridis , and little viridis . item , other two of the same names . ouer against the mules head , and not farre from it , lie two ilandes , named glassae , and then ardan-eidir , that is , the high iland of the rider . then luparia , or the wolfe iland : and after it a great i le , lying north from the iland colla , extended east and west . then ruma , sixteene miles in length , and sixe in bredth , rising high in strait hilles , full of woods , and scrogges , and for that cause , it is inhabited in very fewe places . the sea-fowles laie their egges heere and there , in the ground thereof . in the middest of the spring time , when the egges are laide , any man that pleaseth may take of them . in the high rockes thereof , the sea-guse , whereof we spake before , are taken in aboundance . from this iland , foure miles north-east-ward , lies the horse iland ; and from it halfe a mile , the swine iland , for the quantitie fruitefull ynough in all things necessarie . the falcon buildeth in it . it hath also an hauen . not farre from it , lies canna and egga , little ilands , fertill ynough . in egga are solan-geese . soabrittella , more profitable for hunting , then for any other commoditie necessarie for man. from this iland the i le of skye , greatest of all the ilands that are about scotland , lies north and south , 40. miles in length , and eight miles broad in some places , and in other places 12. miles , rising in hilles , in sundrie places full of woods and pastorage . the ground thereof fertill in corne and store : and besides all other kindes of beastiall , fruitfull of mares , for breeding of horse . it hath fiue great riuers , rich of salmond , and many little waters , not altogether bare thereof . the sea running into the land on all sides , make many salt-waters , three principall , and 13. others , all rich in herring . there is in it a fresh-water loch , and fiue castles . the i le , in the old scottish tongue , is called scianacha , that is , winged : because the heads , betwixt the which the sea runneth into the land , spreadeth out like winges : but by common custome of speech , it is called skie , that is , a wing . about the skie , lie little ilands , scattered heere and there . oronsa , fertill in corne and store . cunicularia , full of bushes and connies . paba , infamous for throate-cutting . for that in the woods thereof , robbers lie in ambushments , to trap them that passe that way .8 . miles south-west from it lies scalpa , which , ( besides sundry other commodities ) hath woods full of troopes of deere . betwixt the mouth of zochcarron and raorsa , lies crulinga , seuen miles of length , and two of breadth : there is a sure hauen in it for ships . there are in it also , woods of bucke , and deere in them . halfe a mile from crulinga , is rona , full of wood , and hadder . there is an hauen in the innermost loch thereof , perillous for robbery , to them that passe that way , because it is a meete place to hide ambushments in . in the mouth of the same loch , is an iland of the same name , called for shortnesse , ger-loch . from rona sixe miles northward , lies flada : two miles from flada , euilmena . vpon the south side of skie , lies oronsa : and a mile from it knia , pabra , and great bina : and then fiue little vnworthy ilands . next vnto them is , isa , fertill in cornes . beside it , is ouia , then askerma , and lindella .8 . miles from skie southward , lies linga , and gigarmena , benera , megala , paua , flada , scarpa veruecum , sandara , vatersa : which , besides many other commodities , hath a hauen , commodious for a number of great ships , whereinto fishermen of all countries about , conuene certaine times of the yeere ordinarily . these last nine ilands , are subiect to the bishop of the iles. 2. miles from vatersa , is barra , running from the north-west , to the south-east , 7. miles in length , fruitfull of cornes , and profitable for fish . there runneth into it , a loch , with a narrow throat , growing round and wide within . in it there is an inch , and in the inch a strong castle . vpon the north-side of barra , there riseth an hill , full of hearbes from the foot to the head , vpon the top whereof , is a fresh water well . the spring that runneth from this well , to the next sea , carries with it little things , like as they were quicke , but hauing the shape of no beast , which appeare ( although obscurely ) in some respect , to represent the fish , that we call commonly , cockles . the people that dwell there , call that part of the shore , whereunto these things are carried , the great sandes : because , that when the sea ebbes , there appeareth nothing but drie sandes , the space of a mile . out of these sandes , the people digge out great cocles , which the neighbours about iudge either to grow ( as it were ) of that seede , that the springs doe bring from the well , or else indeed , to grow in that sea . betwixt barra , and wist , lie these little ilands following : oronsa , onia , hakerseta , garnlanga , flada , great buya , little buya , haya , hell saea , gygaia , lingaia , foraia , fudaia , eriscaia . from these ilands , vistus lies northward , 34 miles of length , and 6 miles of bredth . the tide of the sea , running into two places of this i le , causeth it to appeare three ilands : but when the tide is out , it becommeth all one iland . in it are many fresh water loches , specially one , three miles long . the sea hath worne in vpon the land , and made it selfe a passage to this loch , and can neuer be holden out , albeit the inhabitants haue made a wall of sixty foote broad , to that effect . the water entreth in amongst the stones , that are builded vp together , and leaues behinde it , at the ebbe , many sea-fishes . there is a fish in it , like to the salmond in all things , except , that with the white womb , it hath a blacke backe , and wanteth skailes . item , in this iland are innumerable fresh-water loches . there is in it caues couered ouer with hadder , that are very dennes for knaues . in it are fiue churches . 8 miles west , from it lies helsther vetularum , so named , ( as i beleeue ) because it appertaineth to the nunnes of the i le of ione . a little further north , riseth haneskera : about this iland , at certaine times of the yeere , are many sealches , they are taken by the countrey-men . south-west , almost sixty miles from haneskera , lies hirta , fertill in corne and store , specially in sheepe , which are greater then the sheepe of any the other ilands : the inhabitants thereof are rude in all kinde of craft , and most rude in religion . after the summer solstice , which is about the seuenteenth day of iune , the lord of the iland sendeth his chamberlaine to gather his dueties , and with him a priest , who baptizeth all the children that are borne the yeere preceeding : and if it chance the priest not to come , then euery man baptizeth his owne childe . the tenants pay to their lordes , certaine number of sealches , of reisted wedders , and sea-fowles . the whole iland passeth not one mile in length , and as much in bredth . there is no part of it , that can be seene by any of the other ilands , except three hilles , which are vpon the coast thereof , and may be seene from high places of some other ilands . in these hilles are very faire sheepe , but scarsely may any man get to them for the violence of the tide . now let vs returne to wistas . from the north point thereof , is the iland velaia , one mile of bredth , and twise as long . betwixt this point , and the iland harea , lie these ilands following , little of quantitie , but not vnfruitfull : soa , stroma , pabaia , barneraia , emsaia , keligira , little saga , great saga , harmodra , scarua , grialinga , cillinsa , hea , hoia , little soa , great soa , isa , little seuna , great seuna , taransa , slegana , tuemen . aboue horea , is scarpa , and halfe a mile towards the west , equinoctiall from the lewis , lie seuen little ilands , which some name flananae , some holy places of girth and refuge , rising vp in hilles that are full of hearbs , but vnlaboured of any man. there is neuer almost one foure-footed beast in them , except wilde sheepe , which are taken by hunters , but they serue of no purpose for eating , because in stead of flesh , they haue a kinde of fatnesse : and if there be any flesh vpon them , it is so vnpleasant , that no man ( vnlesse he be very sore oppressed with extreme hunger ) will taste of it . further north , in the same ranke , lies garn ellan : that is , the hard i le . lamba , flada , kellasa , little barnera , great barnera , kirta , little bina , great bina , vexaia , pabaia , great sigrama , cunicularia , so named from the plentie of conies that are there , little sigrama : the iland of the pigmeis . in this iland is a church , wherin the pigmeis were buried ( as they that are neighbours to the iland , beleeue . ) sundrie strangers digging deepely in the ground , sometimes haue found , and yet to this day doe finde verie little round heads , and other little bones of mans bodie , which seemes to approue the trueth , and apparance of the common brute . in the north-east side of the iland leogus , there are two loches running foorth of the sea , named the north and south loches , wherein at all times of the yeere , there is abundance of fish for all men that list to take them . from the same side of the loch , somewhat more southerly , lies fabilla , adams iland , the lambe iland , item hulmetia , viccoilla , hanarera , laxa , era , the dow iland , tora , iffurta , sealpa , flada , senta : at the east side whereof , there is a passage vnder the earth , vaulted aboue a flight shoot of length , into the which little boates may either saile or rowe , for eschewing of the violent tide , raging with great noice and danger of them that saile betwixt the iland and the head that is next vnto it . somewhat eastward , lies an iland , named old castle , a roome strong of nature , and sufficient enough to nourish the inhabitants in cornes , fish , and egges of sea-fowles that build in it . at that side where lochbrien enters , is situate the iland eu , all full of woods onely meet to couer theeues , who lie in wait for passengers comming that way . more northerlie , lies the iland grumorta , and it is likewise full of woods , and haunted by throat-cutters . the iland , named the priests iland , lies that same way , profitable for pastourage of sheepe , and full of sea-fowles . next vnto it is afulla . neighbour to afulla , is great habrera : then little habrera , and neere vnto it , the horse-ile : and besides that againe , the iland marta ika . these last mentioned ilandes , lie all before the entrie of lochbrien , and from them northward , lie haray and lewis , 16 miles of length , and 16 of bredth . these three make an iland , which is not diuided by any hauen or port of the sea , but by the seuerall lordships of the heritours thereof . the south part , is commonly named haray : in it sometime was the abbey named roadilla , builded by maccleude hareis . it is a countrey fertill enough in cornes , but yet the increase commeth rather of digging , and deluing , than by earing with the plough . there is good pastourage for sheepe in it , chiefly a high hill ouer-couered with grasse , to the verie top . master donald monro , a learned and godly man , sayth , that when he was there , he saw sheepe ( as olde as that kinde of bestiall vseth to be ) feeding masterlesse , perteining peculiarlie to no man , the commoditie whereof is the greater , for that there is neither woolfe , foxe , or serpent seene there : albeit that betwixt that part , and lewis , there be great woods full of deere , but they are of stature low , and not great of bodie . in that part also of the iland , is a water , well stored of salmond fishes . vpon the north side of it , it is well manured vpon the sea side . there are in it foure churches , one castle , seuen great running waters , and twelue lesse , all ( for their quantities ) plentifull of salmond fish . the sea enters within the land in diuers parts of the iland , making sundrie salt water loches , all plentifull of herring . there is in it great commoditie of sheepe , which feed at their pleasure vpon the hadder , and amongst the bushes and craigs . the inhabitants gather them together euery yeere once , either within some narrow roome , or else within some flaik foldes , and there conforme to the ancient custome of the countrey , they plucke off the wooll of them . the most part of the hie land hereof , is moory ground : the superfice whereof is blacke , congealed together by long progresse of time , of mosse and rotten wood , to the thicknesse of a foot , or thereabouts : the vpper scruffe is cast in long thicke turffes , dried at the sunne , and so wonne to make fire of , and burnt in stead of wood . the next yeere after , they mucke the bare ground , where the scruffe was taken away , with sea ware , and sowe barley vpon it . in this iland is such abundance of whales taken , that ( as aged men report ) the priests will get of small and great together , 27 whales for their tenth . there is also in this iland , a great caue , wherein the sea at a low water abides two faddome high , and at a full sea , it is more than foure faddome deepe : people of all sorts and ages sit vpon the rockes thereof , with hooke and line , taking innumerable multitude of all kinde of fishes . south-east from lewis , almost threescore miles , there is a little iland lowe and plaine , well manured , named rona , the inhabitants thereof , are rude men , and almost without religion . the lord of the ground limits certeine number of households to occupie it , appointing for euery householde , few or many sheepe , according to his pleasure , whereon they may easily liue and pay him his rent . whatsoeuer rests at the yeeres end , more than their necessary sustentation , they send the same yeerely to lewis to their master . the rent for the most part which they pay , is barlie meale , sewed vp in sheepe-skinnes in great quantitie , ( amongst them growes no store of any other kinde of graine . ) mutton , and so many sea-fowles dried at the sunne , as they themselues leaue vneaten at the yeeres end , are sent to their master . and in case , at any time the number of persons increase in their houses , they giue all that exceed the ordinary number , to their master ; so that in my opinion , they are the onely people in the world that want nothing , but hath all things for themselues in abundance , vncorrupt with lecherie or auarice , and are indued with innocencie and quietnesse of minde ( which other people with great trauell seeke out by the institutions and precepts of philosophie ) purchast to them by ignorance of vice , so that they appeare to want nothing of the highest felicitie that may be , except only , that they are ignorant of the commoditie of their owne condition . there is in this iland , a chappell , dedicated to saint ronan : wherein ( as aged men report ) there is alwayes a spade , wherewith , when as any is dead , they finde the place of his graue marked . in it , besides diuers kindes of fishings , there are many whales taken . sixteene miles west from this iland , lies suilkeraia , a mile in length , but in it growes no kinde of hearbe , no not so much as hadder : there is only blacke craggie hilles in it , and some of them couered with blacke mosse . sea-fowles lay their egges in sundrie places thereof , and doe hatch . when they are neere their flight , the inhabitants of leogus , next neighbours vnto it , saile thither , and remaine there eight daies , or thereabout , to take and gather the fowles , drying them at the winde , and load their boates with the dried flesh and feathers thereof . in that iland is seene a rare kinde of fowle , vnknowen to other countries , named colca , little lesse in quantity , then a goose. these fowles come there euery yeere in the spring time , hatch and nourish their young ones , till they be able to liue by themselues . about that same very time , they cast their fethers , and become starke naked of all their body , and then they get themselues to the sea , and are neuer seene againe , till the next spring . this farther is notable in them : their feathers haue no stalke , as other fowles feathers haue , but they are all couered with a light feather , like vnto doun , wherein is no kinde of hardnesse . the iles of orkenay in the north of scotland . now follow the iles of orkenay , lying scattered , partly in the deucalidon sea , partly in the germaine seas , towards the north parts of scotland . the ancient writers , and the late writers , both agree sufficiently vpon their name ; but yet neuer man ( so farre as i know ) hath giuen any reason of the same , neither yet is it sufficiently knowen , who were the first possessors thereof . all men notwithstanding , alledge their originall to be from germany , but of which countrey they are discended , none hath expressed : vnlesse we list to coniecture from their speech they sometime spake , and yet speake the ancient language of the gothes . some are of opinion , that they were pights , chiefely perswaded heereunto , through their deuision by the sea named perth , and firth from caithnes , who likewise suppose , that the pights were of their originall saxons , mooued heereunto by the verse of claudian , taken out of his 7. panegericke : maduerunt saxone fuso orcades , incaluit pictorum sanguine thule , scotorum cumulos fleuit glacialis ierne . but these mens errors may be easily confuted , partly by beda , an english saxon himselfe , who affirmes , that god was praised in seuen sundry languages amongst the britaines : and that the pights language was one of them , may well appeare ; for if that at that time the pights had spoken saxon , ( which was then the vncorrupted speech of the englishmen ) hee would then haue made no diuision betwixt the saxons , and the pights language : and partie also confuted by claudian himselfe , who in the very same verses , disertly noteth the pights , a seuerall people from the saxons , affirming , the countrey of the one nation to be orknay , and the countrey of the other , thule : from which country soeuer they be descended , at this day , their language differs both from the scottish and english tongues , but not much differs from the gothes . the common people to this day , are very carefull to keepe the ancient frugality of their predecessors , and in that respect they continue in good health for the most part , both in minde and body , so that few die of sicknesse , but all for age . the ignorance of delicacie , is more profitable to them , for preseruation of their health , then the art of medicine , and diligence of mediciners is to others . the same their frugality , is a great helpe to their beauty and quantity of stature . there is small increase of cornes amōgst them , except of oates and barley , whereof they make both breade and drinke . they haue sufficient store of quicke goods , neat , seepe and goates , and thereby great plenty of milke , cheese and butter . they haue innumerable sea fowles : whereof ( and of fish , for the most part ) they make their common food . there is no venemous beast in orknay , nor none that is euill fauoured to looke vpon . they haue little nagges , little worth in appearance , but more able & mettelled for any turne , then men can beleeue . there is no kinde of tree , no not so much as a sprig in orknay , except hadder : the cause heereof , is not so much in the aire and ground , as in the sloth of the inhabitants . this may be easily prooued by roots of trees that are taken out of the ground , in sundry parts of the i le . when wine comes there in ships forth of strange countries , they geedily swallow it , till they be drunken . they haue an old cup amongst them , which ( to the effect their drunkenesse may haue the greater authority ) they say did appertaine to saint magnus , the first man that brought the christian religion into that countrey . this cup exceeds farre the common quantity of other cups , so as it appeares to haue beene kept since the banquet of the lapithes . by it they trie their bishop first , when he comes amongst them . hee that drinkes out the whole cuppe at one draught , ( which is seldome seene ) is by them extolled to the skies ; for heereof , as from a blyth presage , they conceiue with themselues , increase in their goods , the yeeres following . heereupon , we may easily coniecture , that the frugalitie whereof i speake , proceeded not so much from reason , and care to bee frugall , as from pouertie and scarcitie . and the same necessitie ( that was mother of this frugalitie at the beginning . ) kept her daughter long after amongst the ofspring of that i le , till such time , as the countries lying neere vnto it , ( luxurie increasing ) being corrupted , the auncient discipline by little and little deformed , they likewise gaue themselues to deceitfull pleasures . their traffique also with pirats , was a great spurre to the decaie of their temperancie . the pyrats fearing to frequent the company of them that dwelt in the continent land , got fresh water foorth of the iles , made exchaunge with the inhabitants thereof , giuing them wines , and other sleight marchandise for fresh riuers , or taking the same vpon slight prices from the people : who being a small number without armes , and lying so wide one from another , in a tempestuous sea , staying and impeding their incurrence for mutuall defence , and finding themselues vnable to withstand those pyrats , considering also their owne securitie , ioyned with aduantage and pleasure , were contented , not altogether against their willes , to receiue them ; at least , they opponed not themselues directly vnto them . the contagion of maners began not in the simple people , but it did both begin and continued in the wealthie men , and priestes . for the common sort at this day , keepe some remembrance of their accustomed moderation . the orkenay sea is so tempestuous and raging , not onely in respect of the violent windes , and aspect of the heauens ; but also in consideration of the contrarious tides , running headlong together from the west ocean , that the vessels , ( comming in anie strayt betwixt two landes ) can neither by saile nor oare , once releeue themselues of raging tides , and whirling waues of the seas . if any dare approach the strait , they are either violently brought backe into the sea , by the rage thereof , broken vpon rockes , and driuen vpon skares , or else by the sworle of the seas , sunke in the waues thereof . these straits may be passed at two times of the tyde , when the weather is calme , either at a deepe neep , or at a full sea . at these times , the great ocean , offended with contentious tides ( whose force raised huge contrary waues ) sounds ( as it were ) the retreat , in such sort , that the surges of the seas , oft before raging , returne againe to their owne camps . writers agree not vpon the number of these iles of orkenay . plinius saies there be 40. iles of them . others thinke there is but 30. or thereabout . paulus orosius accounting them to be 33. in number , iudgeth the neerest the truth . of these there be 13. inhabited , the remanent are reserued for nourishing of cattell . there are also some little ilands amongst them , of so narrow bounds , that scarcely ( albeit they were laboured ) are able to sustaine one or two labourers . others are but either hard crags bare , or else crags couered with rotten mosse . the greatest of the orkenay ilands , is named by many of the ancients , pomona : at this day , it is called , the firme lande , for that it is of greater quantitie then any of the rest : it is 30. miles of length , sufficiently inhabited . it hath twelue countrey parish churches , and one towne , named by the danes ( to whose iurisdiction these ilands were sometimes subiect ) cracomaca , but now the name being corrupt , it is called in scottish kirkwaa . in this towne there are two little towers builded , not farre the one from the other : one of them appertaines to the king , the other to the bishop . betwixt these two towers , stands one church , very magnifique for such a countrey . betwixt this church and the towers on either side , are sundrie buildings , which the inhabitants name , the kings towne , and the bishops towne . the whole iland runnes out in promontories or heads , betwixt which , the sea runnes in , and makes sure hauens for ships , and harbours for boats . in sixe sundrie places of this i le , there are mines of as good lead and tynne as is to be found in any part of britayne . this iland is distant from caithnes 24. miles or thereabouts , deuided from thence by the pights sea , of whose nature we haue already spoken . in this sea are diuers ilands scattered here and there , of whom stroma for the quantitie , lying foure myles from caithnes , is one , and that not vnfruitfull : but because it lies so neere to the continent land of britaine , and that the earles of caithnes haue alwaies bene masters and lords thereof , it is not accounted amongst the iles of orknay . from this iland northward , lies south ranalsay , which is distant from duncan-bey , ( or rather dunachis-bey ) sixteene miles , and may be sailed with tide , although there bee no winde , in the space of two houres , the course of that sea is so vehement . ranalsay is fiue miles long , and hath a commodious hauen , named after saint margaret . from it , somewhat eastward , there lie two little vnoccupied ilands , meete for pastouring of cattell , called by the orkenay men , in their originall language , holmes ; that is , plaine grassie ground vpon water sides . toward the north , lies burra ; westward lie three ilands , euery one of them besides another ; suna , flata , and fara , and beyond them , hoia , and walles , which some men thinke but one iland , and others esteeme it two : for that at the time of the equinoctials , the spring tydes are verie great and high ; and at the dead neap , the sands are bare , ioyning them together at one straight throat , making one iland of both : yet when the tyde turnes and filles the straight againe , they appeare to be two ilands . in these iles are the highest hilles that are in all orkenay . hoia and walles are ten miles of length , distant from ranalsay eight miles , and more then 20. miles from dunkirk in caithnes . by north of it , is the i le granisa , situate in a narrow firth , betwixt caithnes and pomona . the west side of pomona lookes to the west sea directly : into the which , so farre as men may see , there is neither iland nor craig . from the east point of pomona , lies cobesa ; and vpon the north side , it is almost inuironed by the iles adiacent thereunto . siapinsa turning somwhat east , lies 2. miles from kirkwaá , euen ouer against it , 6. miles of length . right west from siapinsa , are the two little ilands , garsa and eglisa , 4. miles of length : in this iland they say , saint magnus is buried . next vnto it , and somewhat neerer the continent land , is rusa , 4. miles of length , and 3. miles of breadth in some places , well peopled . a little west-ward lies the little iland broca . besides all these iles , there is another band of iles , lying to the north , the east-most whereof , is stronza , & next it , linga , fiue miles of length , and two of breadth : then sundrie ilands , named holmes . the haá fiue miles of length , and two of breadth . by east of it , lies fara : and north from fara , wast●á , running out into the sea in many heads and promontories . aboue stronza , at the east end of etha , lies sanda , northward , ten miles of length , and foure of bredth , where it is broadest . sanda is most fertill of corne , of all the ilands of orknay ; but it hath no kinde of fire within it selfe ; so the in-dwellers are compelled to make exchange of their victuals for peits ( a kinde of blacke mosse ; whereof , almost all the north-parts of scotland make their fire ) with their neighbours the ethanes . beyond sanda , lies north rannalsaá , two myles of length , and two of breadth . no man may passe it , but in the middest of summer , and that , what time the sea is very calme . vpon the south-side of pomona , lies rusa , sixe myles of length : and from it eastward , eglisa , wherein , as is reported , saint magnus is buried . from eglisa south , veragersa : and not farre from it , westraá : from which , hethland is distant 80. myles , and papastronza lies 80. myles from hethland . in the midway betwixt , lies fara , that is , the faire iland , standing in the sight of orknay , and hethland both : it riseth in three high promontories or heads , and shore craig round about , without any kind of entrance , except at the south-east , where it growes a little lower , making a sure harborow for small boats . the in-dwellers thereof are very poore : for the fishers that come out of england , holland , and other countries , neere vnto the great ocean , yeerely to fish in these seas , in their passing by this iland , they spoile , reife , and take away at their pleasures , whatsoeuer they finde in it . next vnto this iland , is the greatest ile of all hethland , which in respect of the quantitie , the in-dwellers name , the mane-land , 16. miles of length . there are sundry promontories or heads in it , amongst which , there are onely two to make account of : the one long and small , runnes north : the other broader , as in some part 16. miles , runnes northeast . it is inhabited for the most part vpon the sea-coast . within the country , there is no kind of quicke beast , except the fowle flying . of late the labourers attempted to manure farther within the country then their predecessors were accustomed to doe , but they reported small aduantage for their paines . there is very good fishing round about the whole country , and so their commodity stands by the sea . from this land 10. miles northward lies zeall , 20. miles of length , and eight miles of bredth , so wild a ground of nature , that no kind of beast will liue in it , except they that are bred in the same . they say that the bremes marchants come thither , and bring to them all forraine wares they need , in abundance . betwixt this iland and the maine land , lie these little ilands : linga , orna , bigga , sanctferri : 2. miles north-ward from these , lies vnsta , more then 20. miles of length , and sixe miles of bredth , a plaine country , pleasant to the eie , but it is compassed by a very tempestuous sea . via and vra , are cast in betwixt vnsta and zeall . 2. ilands , skenna & burna , lie westward from vnsta , balta , hunega , fotlara , seuen miles long , and 7. miles eastward from vnsta , 8. miles from zeall : ouer against the sea that deuides zeal from vnsta , lies fotlara , more then 7. miles of length . there are diuers vnwoorthy ilands lying vpon the eas●side of the maine land : mecla , the three ilands of east skennia , chualsa , nostvada , brasa , and musa . vpon the west side lie west shemniae , roria , little papa , venneda , great papa , valla , trondra , burra , great haura , little haura , and so many holmes lying scattered amongst them . the hethlandish men vse the same kind of food that the orknay men vse , but that they are somewhat more scarce in house-keeping . they are appareled after the almaine fashion , and according to their substance , not vnseemely . their commoditie consisteth in course cloth , which they sel to norway men , in fish , oile , & butter . they fish in little cockboats , bought from the norway men that make them . they salt some of the fish that they take , and some of them they dry at the winde . they sell those wares , and pay their masters with the siluer thereof . a memoriall of the most rare and woonderfull things in scotland . among many commodities , that scotland hath common with other nations , it is not needfull to rehearse in this place , in respect of their particulars , declared at length before : it is beautified with some rare gifts in it selfe , wonderful to consider , which i haue thought good not to obscure ( from the good reader ) as for example . in orknay , besides the great store of sheepe that feede vpon the maine lande thereof , the ewes are of such fecunditie , that at euery lambing time , they produce at least two , and ordinarily three . there be neither veneme us or rauenous beastes bred there , nor doe liue there , although they be transported thither . in schetland , the iles called thulae , at the time when the sunne enters the signe of cancer , for the space of twenty daies , there appeares no night at all ; and among the rocks thereof , growes the delectable lambre , called succinum : where is also great resort of the beast called the mertrik , the skins whereof are costly furrings . in rosse , there be great mountaines of marble , and alabaster . in the south of scotland , specially in the countries adiacent to england , there is a dog of maruellous nature , called the suth-hound ; because , when as he is certified by wordes of arte , spoken by his master , what goods are stolne , whether horse , sheepe , or neat : immediatly , he addresseth him suthly to the sent , and followeth with great impetuositie , through all kind of ground and water , by as many ambages as the theeues haue vsed , till he attaine to their place of residence : by the benefit of the which dogge , the goods are recouered . but now of late , he is called by a new popular name , the slouth-hound : because , when as the people doe liue in slouth and idlenesse , and neither by themselues , or by the office of a good herd , or by the strength of a good house , they doe preserue their goods from the incursion of theeues and robbers : then haue they recourse to the dogge , for reparation of their slouth . in the west , and north-west of scotland , there is great repairing of a fowle , called the erne , of a marueilous nature , and the people are very curious and solist to catch him , whom thereafter they punze off his wings , that he shall not be able to flie againe . this fowle is of a huge quantitie : and although he be of a rauenous nature , like to the kind of haulks , and be of that same qualitie , gluttonous ; neuerthelesse , the people doe giue him such sort of meate , as they thinke conuenient , and such a great quantitie at a time , that he liues contented with that portion , for the space of fourteene , sixteene , or twentie daies , and some of them for the space of a moneth . the people that doe so feed him , doe vse him for this intent : that they may be furnished with the feathers of his wings , when hee doth cast them , for the garnishing of their arrowes , either when they are at warres , or at hunting : for these feathers onely doe neuer receiue raine , or water , as others doe , but remaine alwaies of a durable estate , and vncorruptible . in all the moore-land , and mosse-land of scotland , doth resort the blacke cocke , a fowle of a marueilous beautie , and marueilous bountie : for he is more delectable to eate , then a capon , and of a greater quantitie , cled with three sorts of flesh , of diuers colours , and diuers tastes , but all delectable to the vse and nouriture of man. in the two riuers of deé and done , besides the maruellous plentie of salmon fishes gotten there , there is also a marueilous kinde of shel-fish , called the horse-mussell , of a great quantitie : wherein are ingendred innumerable faire , beautifull and delectable pearles , conuenient for the pleasure of man , and profitable for the vse of physicke ; and some of them so faire and polished , that they bee equall to any mirrour of the world . and generally , by the prouidence of the almightie god , when dearth and scarcitie of victuals doe abound in the land , then the fishes are most plentifully taken for support of the people . in galloway , the loch , called loch-myrton , although it be common to all fresh water to freeze in winter , yet the one halfe of this loch doth neuer freeze at any time . in the shire of innernes : the loch , called loch-nes , and the riuer flowing from thence into the sea , doth neuer freeze : but by the contrary , in the coldest daies of winter , the loch and riuer are both seene to smoake and reeke , signifying vnto vs , that there is a myne of brimstone vnder it , of a hot qualitie . in carrik , are kyne , and oxen , delicious to eate : but their fatnes is of a wonderfull temperature : that although the fatnes of all other comestable beasts , for the ordinarie vse of man , doe congeale with the cold aire : by the contrarie , the fatnesse of these beasts is perpetually liquid like oile . the wood and parke of commernauld , is replenished with kyne and oxen , and those at all times to this day , haue beene wilde , and all of them of such a perfect wonderfull whitenesse , that there was neuer among all the huge number there , so much as the smallest blacke spot found to be vpon one of their skinnes , horne , or clooue . in the parke of halyrud-house , are foxes , and hares , of a wonderfull whitenesse , in great number . in coyle , now called kyle , is a rock , of the height of twelue foot , and as much of bredth , called the deafe craig , for although a man should crie neuer so loud , to his fellow , from the one side to the other , he is not heard , although he would make the noise of a gunne . in the countrey of stratherne , a little aboue the old towne of the pights , called abirnethie , there is a maruellous rocke , called the rocke and stone , of a reasonable bignes , that if a man will push it with the least motion of his finger , it wil mooue verie lightly , but if he shall addresse his whole force , he profites nothing : which mooues many people to be wonderfull merry , when they consider such contrarietie . in lennox , is a great loch , called loch-lowmond , being of length 24. miles , in bredth eight miles , containing the number of thirtie iles. in this loche are obserued three woonderfull things : one is , fishes very delectable to eate , that haue no fynnes to mooue themselues withall , as other fishes doe . the second , tempestuous waues and surges of the water , perpetually raging without windes , and that in time of greatest calmes , in the faire pleasant time of summer , when the aire is quiet . the third is , one of these iles , that is not corroborate nor vnited to the ground , but hath beene perpetually loose : and although it be fertill of good grasse , and replenished with neat ; yet it moues by the waues of the water , and is transported sometimes towards one point , and otherwhiles toward another . in argyle , is a stone found in diuers parts , the which laid vnder straw or stubble , doth consume them to fire , by the great heat that it collects there . in buquhan , at the castle of slains is a caue , from the top whereof distilles water , which within short time doth congeale to hard stones , white in colour . in this countrey are no rottons seene at any time , although the land be wonderfull fertill . in lothien , within two miles of edinburgh , southward , is a wel-spring , called , saint katherins well , which flowes perpetually with a kind of blacke fatnesse , aboue the water : whereof dioscorides makes mention . this fatnes is called bitumen aquis supernatans . it is thought to proceed of a fat myne of coale , which is frequent in all lothien , and specially of a sort of coale , called vulgarly the parret coale : for as soone as it is laid in the fire , it is so fat and gummy , that it renders an exceeding great light , dropping , frying , hissing , and making a great noise , with shedding and diuiding it selfe in the fire , and of that marueilous nature , that as soone as it is laide in a quicke fire , immediately it conceiues a great flame , which is not common to any other sort of coale . this fatnes ; is of a marueilous vertue : that as the coale , whereof it proceeds , is sudden to conceiue fire and flame , so is this oile of a sudden operation , to heale al salt scabs and humours , that trouble the outward skin of man , wheresouer it be , frō the middle vp , as commonly those of experience haue obserued . all scabbes in the head , and hands , are quickly healed by the benefit of this oile , and it renders a marueilous sweet smell . at abirdene is a well , of marueilous good qualitie to dissolue the stone , to expell sand from the reines and bladder , and good for the collicke , being drunke in the moneth of iuly , and a few daies of august , little inferiour in vertue to the renowned water of the spaw in almanie . in the north seas of scotland , are great clogges of timber found , in the which , are marueilously ingendred a sort of geese , called clayk-geese , and do hang by the beake , til they be of perfection ; ofttimes found , and kept in admiration for their rare forme of generation . at dumbartan , directly vnder the castle , at the mouth of the riuer of clyde , as it enters into the sea , there are a number of claik-geese , blacke of colour , which in the night time do gather great quantitie of the crops of the grasse , growing vpon the land , and carry the same to the sea . then they assemble in a round , and with a wondrous curiositie , do offer euery one his owne portion to the sea-floud , and there attend vpon the flowing of the tide , till the grasse be purified from the fresh taste , and turned to the salt : and lest any part thereof should escape , they labour to hold it in , with labour of their nebbes . thereafter orderly euery fowle eates his portion . and this custome they obserue perpetually . they are verie fatte , and verie delicious to bee eaten . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a07623-e27550 the borders in order . the causes of their denominations . the townes of lothian . the chiefe townes of clyddisdaill . g●lloway described . carrik described . kyle described cunninghame described . renfrew described . clyddisdaill . two ancient monuments . the countrey people doe call it arthours ouen . a fertill soile . atholl dunkeld . gowrie . angusse . this towne is now called by all men in the vulgar tongue , downdee . abirdene . abirdene , an vniuersity . flourishing in all kinde of artes . marre . badzenoch . habre . the broadnesse of scotland . buquhan . a strange . thing . boyne & enzeé . murray . a loch of a strange nature . rosse : the descriptiō thereof . nauarne . sotherland . hilles of white marble . caithnes . the desdiuided . the numbers of the scottish iles are 300 iles and aboue . the maner of their bankets . their drinke . their attire , coloured garments . their maner of lodging . their armour in time of war. an ancient castle . iura . lutea . taxus , a tree not vnlike to the fir-tree , but the fruit thereof is venemous . iland like a man. iland of weauers . buriall places of the kings of scotland . kings of ireland . kings of norway . horse-iland . swine-iland . a strange kind of fish . a barbarous people . iland of pigmeis . adams iland . horse-ile . whales . a happie people . a miracle . a strange kinde of fowle , haunting in the i le of suilkeraia . a healthfull countrey . no venemous beast in orknay . their horse . s. magnus bicker . dangerous seas . the ancient and new name of the chiefest towne in orkenay . mynes of lead and tynne . an iland wherin no kinde of she-beast will liue 24 houres together , except ky , ewes , conies and such beasts , as may be eaten . at edinburgh, the 9th day of july, 1696. the court of directors of the company of scotland trading to africa and the indies ... company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1696 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b02305 wing c5592b estc r174191 52614578 ocm 52614578 175807 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english 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(eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b02305) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 175807) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2751:26) at edinburgh, the 9th day of july, 1696. the court of directors of the company of scotland trading to africa and the indies ... company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh : 1696] title from caption and first line of text. initial letter. place and date of publication suggested by wing (2nd ed.). signed at end: rod. mackenzie, secrty. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng trading companies -scotland -17th century -sources. scotland -commerce -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-08 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion at edinburgh , the 9 th day of july , 1696. the court of directors of the company of scotland trading to africa and the indies , finding that the nature and course of their trade , will always require considerable sums of money to be in their demand ; and considering how profitable , easie and convenient it will be to the proprietors of the joynt-stock , as well as beneficial to the trade , credit and improvements of the said company , to have the greatest part of the money advanced by the proprietors thereof , to be unto them a quick and living stock , and always at command ; the said court of directors do hereby resolve , agree and declare , that the several proprietors of the said joynt-stock , upon their respective bills or other obligations payable in three months , shall always have credit upon their respective stocks in the said company , for any sum not exceeding two third parts of the money severally pay'd in by them , paying only for the same an interest at the rate of four per cent. per annum : and such sums may be repay'd to the company , in part , or in whole ; and the interest thereof , shall only be reckon'd for the days that such sums , or parts thereof shall happen to remain unpay'd , and for no longer time . published by order of covrt , rod. mackenzie , sect ry act for a new imposition upon english commodities. at edinburgh, the twenty one of august, one thousand six hundred and sixty three. scotland. parliament. committee of estates. 1663 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b06077 52612233 wing s1081 estc r183888 52612233 ocm 52612233 179538 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b06077) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179538) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2793:10) act for a new imposition upon english commodities. at edinburgh, the twenty one of august, one thousand six hundred and sixty three. scotland. parliament. committee of estates. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by evan tyler, printer to the kings most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1663. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. imperfect: stained with some loss of text. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng tariff -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -commerce -england -early works to 1800. england -commerce -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion c r honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms act for a new imposition upon english commodities . at edinburgh , the twenty one of august , one thousand six hundred and sixty three . the estates of parliament considering , how much it concernes the credit and wealth of the kingdom , that our own native commodities be manufactured amongst our selves , and that the endeavours of such persons as are setting up manufacturies and trades have been , and are much retarded , by the importation of such forreign commodities as may be made within the kingdom . therefore , and for their due encouragment , the kings majesty , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , statutes and ordains , that from and after the first day of september next , twelve pounds scots upon ilk ell of broad english cloath ; six pounds upon ilk ell , of york-shire and all narrow cloath ; two pounds eight shillings upon ilk ell of searge ; thirty shillings upon ilk ell of castilians ; fourty eight pounds upon ilk beaver-hat ; twenty four pounds upon ilk demy beaver 〈◊〉 vigon ; and three pounds upon the piece of ilk common hat ; thirty six pounds upon the 〈…〉 four pounds upon the dozen of stag-gloves ▪ , and 〈◊〉 pounds upon the dozen of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , c 〈…〉 s , kid or shiverings ; and twenty four shillings upon ilk pound of tobacco imported either for sale or private use into this kingdom from england , all scots money , be exacted , levied and collected and fourscore per cent . upon all other sorts of commodities imported into this kingdom from england , and not particularly named in this act , and upon all the growth and manufactury of that kingdom , though imported from any other place , and that over and above all other impositions put upon the same already . and to the effect this present act may be the more exactly put to execution , it is statute and ordained , that all goods imported from england , or of the growth and manufactury of england , not above particularly exprest , shall be valued , after sighting , by two skilfull honest men upon oath , to be nominate by the dean of gild or his assessors , or magistrates of the burgh , or next adjacent burgh to the custom-office where the saids g●●●● are entered , or by the oath of the party to whom the saids goods belongs , and accordingly pay the said f●●●●score per cent . and the lords thesaurer and thesaurer-depute , and lords of his maiesties exchequer , are hereby required to take an oath , and bond with sufficient caution , from the farmers or collectors of the saids impositions , that they shall exactly collect the same , without any abatement thereof , directly or in directly ; and that they shall not suffer any of the saids goods to pass or be conveyed away un-entered , and that under the penalty of the worth of the saids goods , if the contrary shall be made appear , the one half thereof to his maiesties use , and the other half to the informer , and under the pain of forfaulting their lacks and commissions , and being declared incapable to farm or collect , in any time thereafter , any custom , excise , or other imposition whatsoever within this kingdom . and if any of the foresaids goods or commodities shall be informed and made appear to be brought in , or shall be seized upon , not being entered in the custom-office , or any other office appointed for that effect , then the same to be wholly confiscate , the one half to his maiesties use , and the other half to the first informer or seizer thereof . and ordains these presents to be printed , and published at the mercat cross of edinburgh , and other places needfull , where-through none may pretend ignorance of the same . edinbvrgh , printed by evan tyler , printer to the kings most excellent majesty , 1663. the charge of the scottish commissioners against canterburie and the lieutenant of ireland together with their demand concerning the sixt article of the treaty : whereunto is added the parliaments resolution about the proportion of the scottish charges and the scottish commissioners thankfull acceptance thereof. scotland. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a31762 of text r11362 in the english short title catalog (wing c2061). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 61 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 28 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a31762 wing c2061 estc r11362 13117858 ocm 13117858 97774 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a31762) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 97774) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 411:3 or 2331:3) the charge of the scottish commissioners against canterburie and the lieutenant of ireland together with their demand concerning the sixt article of the treaty : whereunto is added the parliaments resolution about the proportion of the scottish charges and the scottish commissioners thankfull acceptance thereof. scotland. parliament. england and wales. parliament. house of lords. [3], 53 p. printed for nath. butler, london : 1641. part of the negotiations conducted by representatives of the parliament of scotland and the english house of lords at the end of the 2nd bishops' war, leading to the treaty of ripon (1641). wing numbers c2061 and c4201l are cancelled; replaced by s1001ad. reproduction of original in the henry e. huntington library. eng laud, william, 1573-1645. strafford, thomas wentworth, -earl of, 1593-1641. scotland -politics and government -1625-1649 -sources. great britain -politics and government -1625-1649 -sources. a31762 r11362 (wing c2061). civilwar no the charge of the scottish commissioners against canterburie and the lievetenant of ireland. together with their demand concerning the sixt scotland. parliament 1641 11354 2 0 0 0 0 0 2 b the rate of 2 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the b category of texts with fewer than 10 defects per 10,000 words. 2002-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2002-02 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2002-03 tcp staff (oxford) sampled and proofread 2002-03 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2002-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the charge of the scottish commissioners against canterburie and the lievetenant of ireland . together with their demand concerning the sixt article of the treaty whereunto is added the parliaments resolution about the proportion of the scottish charges , and the scottish commissioners thankfull acceptance thereof . the lord is knowne by the iudgement which he executeth . the wicked is snared in the workes of his owne hands . london , printed for nath. butter . 1641 the charge of the scottish commissioners against the prelate of canterbury . novations in religion , which are universally acknowledged to bee the main cause of commotions in kingdomes and states , and are knowne to bee the true cause of our present troubles , were many and great , beside the bookes of ordination , and homilies , 1. some perticular alterations in matters of religion , pressed upon us without order , and against law , contrary to the forme established in our kirk . 2. a new booke of canons and constitutions ecclesiasticall . 3. a liturgie or booke of common-prayer , which did also carry with them many dangerous errours in matters of doctrine . of all which we chalenge the prelate of canterbury , as the prime cause on earth . and first , that this prelate wes the author and urger of some particular changes , which made great disturbance amongst us , wee make manifest : 1. by fourteen letters subcribed , w. cant. in the space of two years , to one of our pretended bishops , bannatine , wherein hee often enjoyneth him , & other pretended bishops , to appear in the chappell in their whites , contrary to the custome of our kirk , & to his promise made to the pretended bishop of edinburgh , at the coronatiō , that none of them after that time , should be pressed to weare these garments , thereby moving him against his will to put them on for that time , wherein he directeth him to give order for saying the english service in the chappel twice a day , for his neglect shewing him that hee wes disappointed of the bishopricke of edinburgh , promising him upon his greater care of these novations , advancement to a better bishoprick , taxing him for his boldnesse in preaching the sound doctrine of the reformed kirkes , against master mitchell , who had taught the errors of arminius , in the point of the extent of the merit of christ , bidding him send up a list of the names of councellours and senatours of the colledge of iustice , who did not communicate in the chappell in a forme which wes not received in our kirke , commending him when he found him obsequious to these his commands , telling him that hee had moved the king the second time for the punishment of such as had not received in the chappell : and wherein hee upbraideth him bitterly , that in his first synod at aberdein , hee had onely disputed against our custome of scotland , of fasting sometimes on the lords day , and presumptuously censuring our kirk , that in this we were opposite to christianity it selfe ; and that amongst us there were no canons at all : more of this stuffe may be seene in the letters themselves . secondly , by two papers of memoirs and instructions from the pretended bishop of saint androis , to the pretended bishop of rosse , comming to this prelate for ordering the affaires of the kirk , and kingdome of scotland , as not onely to obtaine warrants , to order the exchequer , the privy counsell , the great commission of surrenders , the matter of balmerino's processe , as might please our prelates , but warrants also for sitting of the high commission court once a week in edinburgh , and to gain from the noblemen , for the benefit of prelates , and their adherents , the abbacies of kelso , arbroith , s. androis , and lindors : and in the smallest matters to receive his comands , as for taking downe galleries , and stone-walls , in the kirks of edinburgh , and saint androis , for no other end but to make way for altars , and adoration towards the east , which besides other evills , made no small noise , and disturbance amongst the people , deprived hereby , of their ordinary accommodation for publique worship . the second novation which troubled our peace , wes a booke of canons , and constitutions ecclesiasticall , obtruded upon our kirk , found by our generall assembly to be devised for establishing a tyrannicall power , in the persons of our prelates , over the worship of god , over the consciences , liberties , and goods of the people ; and for abolishing the whole discipline , and governement of our kirk , by generall and provinciall assemblies , presbyteries , and kirk sessions , which wes setled by law , and in continuall practise since the time of reformation ; that canterbury wes master of this worke , is manifest . by a booke of canons sent to him , written upon the one side onely , with the other side blanke , for corrections , additions , and putting all in better order , at his pleasure ; which accordingly wes done as may appeare by interlinings , marginalls , and filling up of the blanke page with directions sent to our prelates ; and that it wes done by no other then canterbury , is evident by his magisteriall way of prescribing , and by a new copy of these canons , all written with saint androis owne hand , precisely to a letter , according to the former castigations , sent backe for procuring the kings warrant unto it , which accordingly wes obtained ; but with an addition of some other canons , and a paper of some other corrections : according to which the booke of canons thus composed , wes published in print , the inspection of the bookes , instructions , and his letters of joy , for the successe of the worke , and of others letters of the prelate of london , and the lord sterling , to the same purpose ; all which we are ready to exhibite , will put the matter out of all debate . beside this generall , there be some things more speciall worthy to be adverted unto , for discovering his spirit . 1. the 4. canon of cap. 8. for as much as no reformation in doctrine , or discipline can be made perfect at once in any church ; therefore it shall , and may be lawfull for the church of scotland , at any time to make remonstrance to his m. or his successors , &c. because this canon holdeth the doore open to more innovations , he writeth to the prelate of rosse his privy agent , in all this worke , of his great gladnesse , that this canon did stand behind the curtaine , and his great desire that this canon may be printed fully as one that wes to be most usefull . secondly , the title prefixed to these canons by our prelates . canons agreed upon to be proponed to the severall synods of the kirk of scotland , is thus changed by canterbury ; canons and constitutions ecclesiasticall , &c. ordained to be observed by the clergy . he will not have canons to come from the authority of synods , but from the power of prelates , or from the kings prerogative . thirdly , the formidable canon , cap. 1.3 . threatning no lesse then excommunication against all such persons whosoever shall open their mouthes against any of these books , proceeded not from our prelates , nor is to be found in the copy sent from them , but is a thunderbolt forged in canterburies own sire . 4. our prelates in divers places witnesse their dislike of papists . a minister sal be deposed if if hee bee found negligent to convert papists . chap. 18. 15. the adoration of the bread is a superstition to be cōdemned , cap. 6. 6. they call the absolute necessity of baptisme an errour of popery , chap. 6.2 . but in canterburies edition , the name of papists and popery is not so much as mentioned . 5. our prelates have not the boldnesse to trouble us in their canons , with altars , fonts , chancels , reading of a long leiturgie before sermon , &c. but canterbury is punctuall , and peremptory in all these . 6. although the words of the tenth canon chap. 3. be faire , yet the wicked intentions of canterbury and ross , may bee seen in the point of justification of a sinner before god , by comparing the canon as it came from our prelats , and as it wes returned from canterbury , and printed , our prelates say thus : it is manifest that the superstition of former ages , hath turned into a great prophanenesse , and that people are growne cold , for the most part , in doing any good thinking there is no place to good workes , because they are excluded from justification , therefore shall all ministers , as their text giveth occasion , urge the necessity of good workes , as they would be saved , and remember that they are via regni , the way to the kingdome of heaven , though not causa regnandi , howbeit they be not the cause of salvation . here ross giveth his judgement , that hee would have this canon simply commanding good workes to be preached , and no mention made what place they have or have not in justification . upon this motion , so agreeable to canterburies mind , the canon is set down as it standeth without the distinction of via regni , or causa regnā●● , or any word sounding that way , urging onely the necessity of good works . 7. by comparing can. 9. chap. 18. as it was sent in writing from our prelates , and as it is printed at canterburies command , may be also manifest , that hee went about to establish auricular confession , and popish absolution . 8. our prelates were not acquainted with canons for inflicting of arbitrary penalties : but in canterburies book , wheresoever there is no penalty expressely set down , it is provided that it shall be arbitrary , as the ordinary shal think fittest . by these and many other the like , it is apparant , what tyrannicall power he went about to establish in the hands of our prelats , over the worship , & the souls and goods of men , over-turning from the foundation , the whole order of our kirk , what seedes of popery hee did sow in our kirk , and how large an entry hee did make for the grossest novations afterward , which hath beene a maine cause of all their combustion . the third and great novation wes the booke of common prayer , administration of the sacraments , and other parts of divine service , brought in without warrant from our kirk to be universally received , as the only forme of divine service , under all highest paines both civill and ecclesiasticall ; which is found by our nationall assembly , beside the popish frame , and formes in divine worship , to containe many popish errors , and ceremonies , and the seeds of manifold and grosse superstitions , and idolatries and to be repugnant to the doctrine , discipline , and order of our reformation , to the confession of faith , constitutions of generall assemblies , and acts of parliament , establishing the true religion : that this also wes canterburies worke , wee make manifest . by the memoirs , and instructions sent unto him from our prelates ; wherein they gave a speciall account of the diligence they had used , to doe all which herein they were enjoyned , by the approbation of the service booke sent to them ; and of all the marginall corrections , wherein it varieth from the english booke , shewing their desire to have some few things changed in it , which notwithstanding wes not granted : this we find written by saint androis owne hand , and subscribed by him , and nine other of our prelates . by canterburies owne letters , witnesses of his joy , when the book wes ready for the presse , of his prayers that god would speed the worke , of his hope to see that service set up in scotland , of his diligence to send for the printer , and directing him to prepare a black letter , and to send it to his servants at edinburgh , for printing this booke . of his approbation of the proofes sent from the presse . of his feare of delay , in bringing the worke speedily to an end , for the great good , ( not of that church , but ) of the church . of his encouraging rosse who wes entrusted with the presse , to go on in this peece of service without feare of enemies . all which may be seene in the autographs and by letters sent from the prelate of london to rosse , wherein as he rejoyceth at the sight of the scottish canons ; which although they should make some noise at the beginning , yet they would be more for the good of the kirk , then the canons of edinburgh , for the good of the kingdome . so concerning the leiturgy he sheweth , that rosse had sent to him , to have an explanation from canterbury of some passage of the service booke , and that the presse behoved to stand till the explanation come to edinburgh , which therefore he had in haste obtained from his grace , and sent the dispatch away by canterburies owne convaiance . but the booke it selfe as it standeth interlined , margined and patcht up , is much more then all that is expressed in his letters , and the changes and supplements themselves , taken from the masse book , & other romish ritualls , by which he maketh it to vary from the book of england , are more pregnant testimonies of his popish spirit , and wicked intentions , which he would have put in execution upon us , then can bee denied . the large declaration professeth , that all the variation of our booke , from the book of england , that ever the king understood , wes in such things as the scottish humour would better comply with , then with that which stood in the english service . these popish innovations therefore have beene surreptitiously inserted , by him without the kings knowledge , and against his purpose . our scottish prelates do petition that something may be abated of the english ceremonies , as the crosse in baptisme , the ring in marriage , and some other things . but canterbury will not only have these kept , but a great many more , and worse superadded , which wes nothing else , but the adding of fewell to the fire . to expresse and discover all , would require a whole booke , we sall onely touch some few in the matter of the communion . this booke inverteth the ordour of the communion , in the booke of england , as may be seen by the numbers , setting downe the orders of this new communion , 1. 5. 2. 6.7.3.4.8.9 . 10. 15. of the divers secret reasons of this change , we mention one onely , in joyning the spirituall praise and thanksgiving , which is in the booke of england , pertinently after the communion , with the prayer of consecration before the communion , and that under the name of memoriall or oblation , for no other end , but that the memoriall and sacrifice of praise , mentioned in it , may bee understood according to the popish meaning . bellar. de missa , lib. 2. cap. 21. not of the spirituall sacrifice , but of the oblation of the body of the lord . it seemeth to bee no great matter , that without warrand of the book of england , the presbyter going from the north end of the table , shall stand during the time of consecration , at such a pairt of the table , where hee may with the more ease and decencie use both hands ; yet being tried , it importeth much , as , that he must stand with his hinder pairts to the people , representing ( saith durand ) that which the lord said of moses , thou shalt see my hinder pairts . hee must have the use of both his hands , not for any thing he hath to doe about the bread and wine , for that may bee done at the north end of the table , and bee better seen of the people ; but ( as we are taught by the rationalists ) that he may by stretching foorth his armes to represent the extension of christ on the crosse , and that hee may the more conveniently lift up the bread and wine above his head to be seen and adored of the people , who in the rubrick of the generall confession , a little before , are directed to kneel humbly on their knees , that the priests elevation so magnified in the masse , and the peoples adoration may goe together , that in this posture , speaking with a low voyce , and muttering ( for sometimes hee is commanded to speake with a lowd voyce , and distinctly ) hee bee not heard by the people , which is no lesse a mocking of god , and his people , then if the words were spoken in an unknowne language . as there is no word of all this in the english service ; so doth the book in king ed. time , give to every presbyter his liberty of gesture , which yet gave such offence to bucer , ( the censurer of the book : and even in cassanders own judgement , a man of great moderation in matters of this kinde ) that he calleth them , nunquam satis execrandos missa gestus , and would have them to be abhorred , because they confirme to the simple and superstitious ter impiam & exitialem missae fiduciam . the corporall presence of christs body in the sacrament , is also to be found here : for the words of the masse-book serving to this purpose , which are sharply censured by bucer in king ed. leiturgie , & are not to be found in the book of england , are taken in here ; almighty god is incalled , that of his almighty goodnesse he may vouchsafe so to blesse and sanctifie with his word and spirit , these gifts of bread and wine , that they may bee unto us the body and bloud of christ . the change here is made a work of gods omnipotencie : the words of the masse , ut fiant nobis , are translated in king edwards booke , that they may be unto us , which are againe turned into latine by alesius , vt fiant nobis . on the other pairt , the expressions of the booke of england at the delivery of the elements of feeding on christ by faith , and of eating and drinking in remembrance that christ died for thee , are utterly deleated . many evidences there bee in this pairt of the communion , of the bodily presence of christ , very agreeable to the doctrines taught by his secretaries , which this paper cannot containe . they teach us that christ is received in the sacrament , corporaliter , both objectivè and subjectivè . corpus christi est objectum quod recipitur , & corpus nostrum subjectum quo recipitur . the booke of england abolisheth all that may import the oblation of any unbloody sacrifice , but here we have besides the preparatorie oblation of the elements , which is neither to be found in the book of england now , nor in king edwards booke of old , the oblation of the body and bloud of christ , which bellarmine calleth , sacrificium laudis , quia deus per illud magnopere laudatur . this also agreeth well with their late doctrine . we are ready when it shall be judged convenient , and we shall be desired , to discover much more matters of this kind , as grounds laid for missasicca , or the halfe messe , the private messe without the people , of communicating in one kind , of the consumption by the priest , and consummation of the sacrifice , of receiving the sacrament in the mouth , and not in the hand , &c. our supplications were many against these books , but canterbury procured them to be answered with terrible proclamations . wee were constrained to use the remedy of protestation ; but for our protestations , and other lawfull meanes , which we used for our deliverance , canterbury procured us to be declared rebels & traitors in all the parish kirks of england : when we were seeking to possesse our religion in peace , against these devices and novations , canterbury kindleth warre against us . in all these it is known that he was although not the sole , yet the principall agent and adviser . when by the pacification at berwick , both kingdomes looked for peace and quietnesse , he spared not openly in the hearing of many , often before the king , and privately at the counsell-table , and the privy iointo to speak of us as rebels and traitors , and to speake against the pacification as dishonourable , and meet to be broken . neither did his malignancie and bitternesse ever suffer him to rest , till a new warre was entred upon , and all things prepared for our destruction . by him was it that our covenant , approven by nationall assemblies , subscribed by his m. commissioner , and by the lords of his m. counsell , and by them commanded to be subscribed by all the subjects of the kingdome , as a testimony of our duty to god , and the king , by him was it still called ungodly , damnable , treasonable ; by him were oaths invented , and pressed upon divers of our poore countrey-men , upon the pain of imprisonment , and many miseries , which were unwarrantable by law , and contrary their nationall oath . when our commissioners did appeare to render the reasons of our demands , he spared not in the presence of the king , and committee , to raile against our nationall assembly , as not daring to appeare before the world , and kirkes abroad , where himselfe and his actions were able to endure tryall , and against our just and necessary defence , as the most malicious and treasonable contempt of monarchicall government that any by-gone age had heard of : his hand also was at the warrant for the restraint and imprisonment of our commissioners , sent from the parliament , warranted by the king , and seeking the peace of the kingdomes . when we had by our declarations , remonstrances , & representations , manifested the truth of our intentions , and lawfulnesse of our actions , to all the good subjects of the kingdome of england , when the late parliament could not be moved to assist , or enter in warre against us , maintaining our religion , and liberties , canterbury did not onely advise the breaking up of that high and honourable court , to the great griefe and hazard of the kingdome , but , ( which is without example ) did sit stil in the convocation , and make canons and constitutions against us , and our just and necessary defence , ordaining under al highest paines , that hereafter the clergy shall preach 4. times in the yeare , such doctrine as is cōtrary , not only to our proceedings , but to the doctrine & proceedings of other reform'd kirks , to the judgement of all sound divines , & politiques , and tending to the utter slavery and ruining of all estates and kingdomes , & to the dishonour of kings & monarchs . and as if this had not been sufficient , he procured six subsidies to be lifted of the clergy , under paine of deprivation to all that should refuse . and which is yet worse , and above which malice it selfe cannot ascend , by his meanes a praier is framed , printed , and sent through all the paroches of england , to bee said in all churches in time of divine service , next after the prayer for the queene and roiall progeny , against our nation by name of trayterous subjects , having cast off all obedience to our anointed soveraigne , and comming in a rebellious manner to invade england , that shame may cover our faces , as enemies to god and the king . whosoever shall impartially examine what hath proceeded from himselfe , in these two books of canons and common praier , what doctrine hath beene published and printed these yeares by past in england , by his disciples and emissaries , what grosse popery in the most materiall points we have found , and are ready to shew in the posthume writings , of the prelate of edinburgh , and dumblane , his owne creatures , his neerest familiars , and most willing instruments to advance his counsells , and projects , fall perceive that his intentions were deepe and large against all the reformed kirks , and reformation of religion , which in his majesties dominions wes panting and by this time had rendered up the ghost , if god had not in a wonderfull way of mercy prevented us : and that if the pope himselfe had beene in his place , he could not have beene more popish , nor could he more zealously have negotiated for rome , against the reformed kirks , to reduce them to the heresies in doctrine , the superstitions and idolatry in worship , and the tyranny in government , which are in that see , and for which the reformed kirks did separate from it , and come furth of babell . from him certainely hath issued all this deluge which almost hath overturned all . we are therefore confident that your lordships will by your meanes deale effectually with the parliament , that this great firebrand be presently removed from his majesties presence , and that he may be put to tryall , and put to his deserved censure according to the lawes of the kingdome , which sall be good service to god , honour to the king and parliament ; terror to the wicked , and comfort to all good men , and to us in speciall , who by his meanes principally have beene put to so many and grievous afflictions , wherein we had perished , if god had not beene with us . we do indeed confesse that the prelates of england have beene of very different humours , some of them of a more hot , and others of them , men of a more moderate temper , some of them more , and some of them lesse inclinable to popery , yet what knowne truth , and constant experience , hath made undeniable , we must at this opportunity professe , that from the first time of reformation of the kirk of scotland , not only after the comming of king iames of happy memory into england , but before , the prelates of england , have beene by all meanes uncessantly working the overthrow of our discipline , and governement . and it hath come to passe of late , that the prelates of england having prevailed , and brought us to subjection in the point of governement , and finding their long waited for opportunity , and a rare congruity of many spirits , and powers , ready to cooperate for their ends , have made a strong assault upon the whole externall worship , and doctrine of our kirk . by which their doing they did not aime to make us conforme to england , but to make scotland first ( whose weaknesse in resisting , they had before experienced , in the novations of governement , and of some points of worship ) and thereafter england conforme to rome , even in these matters , wherein england had seperated from rome , ever since the time of reformation . an evill therefore which hath issued , not so much from the person all disposition of the prelates themselves , as from the innate quality and nature of their office , and prelaticall hierarchy , which did bring furth the pope in ancient times , and never ceaseth till it bring furth popish doctrine and worship , where it is once rooted , and the principles thereof fomented and constantly followed . and from that antipathy and inconsistency of the two formes of ecclesiasticall governement , which they conceived , and not without cause , that one iland united also under one head , and monarch , wes not able to beare : the one being the same in all the parts and powers , which it wes in the times of popery , and now is in the roman church : the other being the forme of governement , received , maintained , and practised , by all the reformed kirks , wherein by their owne testimonies , and confessions , the kirk of scotland had amongst them no small eminency . this also wee represent to your lordships , most serious consideration , that not only the firebrands may be removed , but that the fire may be provided against , that there be no more combustion after this . finis . the charge of the scottish commissioners against the lieutenant of ireland . in our declarations we have joyned with canterbury , the lord lieutenant of ireland , whose malice hath set all his wits and power on work , to devise and doe mischiefe against our kirke and countrey . no other cause of his malice can we conceive , but first his pride and supercilious disdaine of the kirk of scotland , which in his opinion declared by his speeches , hath not in it almost anything of a kirk , although the reformed kirks , and many other divines of england , have given ample testimony to the reformation of the kirk of scotland . secondly , our open opposition against the dangerous innovation of religion intended , and very farre promoved in all his majesties dominions ; of which hee hath shewed himselfe , in his owne way no lesse zealous then canterbury himselfe , as may appeare by his advancing of his chaplain , d. bramble not onely to the bishoprick of derry , but also to be vicar generall of ireland , a man prompted for exalting of canterburian popery , and arminianisme , that thus himselfe might have the power of both swords , against all that should maintaine the reformation ; by his bringing of d. chappell , a man of the same spirit , to the vniversity of dublin , for poysoning the fountaines , and corrupting the seminaries of the kirk . and thirdly , when the primate of ireland did presse a new ratification of the articles of that kirke , in parliament for barring such novations in religion , hee boldly menaced him with the burning , by the hand of the hang-man , of that confession , although confirmed in former parliaments . when hee found that the reformation begun in scotland , did stand in his way , he left no meanes unessaied to rub disgrace upon us , and our cause . the peeces printed at dublin , examen conjurationis scoticanae , the ungirding of the scottish armour : the pamphlet bearing the counterfeit name of lysimachus nichanor ; all three so full of calumnies , slanders , and scurrilities against our countrey , and reformation , that the jesuits in their greatest spite , could not have said more ; yet not onely the authors were countenanced and rewarded by him , but the bookes must beare his name , as the great patron both of the worke and workman . when the nationall oath and covenant warranted by our generall assemblies , was approved by parliament in the articles , subscribed in the kings name , by his majesties high commissioner , and by the lords of privie counsell , and commanded to be sworne by his majesties subjects of all rankes : and particular and plenary information was given unto the lieutenant , by men of such quality , as hee ought to have beleeved , of the loyalty of our hearts to the king , of the lawfulnesse of our proceedings , and innocency of our covenant , and whole course , that he could have no excuse : yet his desperate malice made him to bend his craft and cruelty , his fraud and forces against us . for first , he did craftily call up to dublin some of our country-men , both of the nobility and gentry , living in ireland , shewing them , that the king would conceive and account them as conspirers with the scots , in their rebellious courses , except some remedy were provided : and for remedy , suggesting his own wicked invention , to present unto him and his councell , a petition , which he caused to be framed by the bishop of raphoe , and was seene and corrected by himselfe , wherein they petitioned to have an oath given them , containing a formall renunciation of the scottish covenant , and a deep assurance never so much as to protest against any of his majesties commandements whatsoever . no sooner was this oath thus craftily contriv'd , but with all haste it is sent to such places of the kingdome where our countrey-men had residence : and men , women , and all other persons , above the yeares of sixteen , constrained either presently to take the oath , and thereby renounce their nationall covenant as seditious and trayterous , or with violence and cruelty to be haled to the jayle , fined above the value of their estates , and to be kept close prisoners , and so far as we know , some are yet kept in prison , both men and women of good quality , for not renouncing that oath , which they had taken forty yeares since , in obedience to the king who then lived . a cruelty ensued which may parallell the persecutions of the most unchristian times : for weake women dragged to the bench to take the oath , died in the place , both mother and child : hundreds driven to hide themselves , till in the darknesse of the night they might escape by sea to scotland , whither thousands of them did flye , being forced to leave corne , cattel , houses , and all they possessed , to bee a prey to their persecuting enemies , the lieutenants officers . and some indited and declared guilty of high treason , for no other guiltinesse but for subscribing our nationall oath , which was not onely impiety & injustice in it selfe , and an utter undoing of his majesties subjects , but was a weakning of the scots plantation , to the prejudice of that kingdome , and his majesties service , and was a high scandall against the kings honour , and intolerable abuse of his majesties trust and authority : his majesties commission , which was procured by the lieutenant , bearing no other penalty then a certification of noting the names of the refusers of the oath . but this his restlesse rage and insatiable cruelty , against our religion and country , can not be kept within the bounds of ireland . by his meanes a parliament is called , and although by the sixe subsidies granted in parliament not long before , and by the base meanes which himselfe and his officers did use , as is contained in a late remonstrance , that land was extreamly impoverished , yet by his speeches , full of oathes and asseverations , that we were traytors and rebels , casting off all monarchiall government , &c. he extorted from them foure new subsidies , and indicta causa before wee were heard , procured that a warre was undertaken , and forces should be leavied against us as a rebellious nation , which was also intended to be an example and precedent to the parliament of england for granting subsidies , and sending a joynt army for our utter ruine . according to his appointment in parliament , the army was gathered , and brought downe to the coast , threatning a daily invasion of our countrey , intending to make us a conquered province , and to destroy our religion , liberties , and lawes , and thereby laying upon us a necessity of vast charges , to keepe forces on foot on the west coast to waite upon his comming . and as the warre was denounced , and forces leavied before wee were heard . so before the denouncing of the warre , our ships , and goods on the irish coast were taken , and the owners cast in prison , and some of them in irons . frigats were sent forth to scoure our coasts , which did take some , and burne others of our barkes . having thus incited the kingdome of ireland , and put his forces in order there against us , with all haste he commeth to england . in his parting , at the giving up of the sword , he openly avowed our utter ruine and desolation , in these or the like words . if i returne to that honourable sword i shall leave of the scots neither root nor branch . how soone he commeth to court , as before he had done very evill offices against our commissioners , cleering our proceedings before the point ; so now he useth all meanes to stirre up the king and parliament against us , and to move them to a present warre , according to the precedent , and example of his owne making in the parliament of ireland . and finding that his hopes failed him , and his designes succeeded not that way , in his nimblenesse he taketh another course , that the parliament of england may be broken up , and despising their wisdome and authority , not onely with great gladnesse accepteth , but useth all means that the conduct of the army , in the expedition against scotland , may be put upon him ; which accordingly he obtaineth as generall captaine , with power to invade ; kill , slay , and save at his discretion , and to make any one , or moe deputies in his stead , to doe , and execute all the power and authorities committed to him . according to the largenesse of his commission , and letters patents of his devising , so were his deportments afterwards ; for when the scots , according to their declarations sent before them , were comming in a peaceable way , farre from any intention to invade any of his majesties subjects , and still to supplicate his majesty for a setled peace , he gave order to his officers to fight with them on the way , that the two nations once entred in blood , whatsoever should be the successe , he might escape tryall and censure , and his bloody designes might be put in execution against his majesties subjects of both kingdomes . when the kings majesty was againe enclined to hearken to our petitions , and to compose our differences in a peaceable way , and the peeres of england conveened at yorke , had , as before in their great wisedome and faithfulnesse given unto his majesties counsels of peace , yet this firebrand still smoaketh : and in that honourable assembly , taketh vpon him to breath out threatnings against us as traytors , and enemies to monarchicall government , that we be sent home againe in our blood , and he will whip us out of england . and as these were his speeches in the time of the treaty , appointed by his maiesty at rippon , that if it had beene possible , it might have beene broken up . so when a cessation of armes , was happily agreed vpon there , yet he ceaseth not , but still his practises were for warre , his under officers can tell who it was that gave them commission to draw neere in armes beyond the teese , in the time of the treaty at rippon . the governour of barwicke and carlile can shew , from whom they had their warrants for their acts of hostility , after the cessation was concluded . it may be tryed how it commeth to passe , that the ports of ireland are yet closed , our countrey-men for the oath still kept in prison , traffique interrupted , and no other face of affaires , then if no cessation had been agreed upon . we therefore desire that your lordships will represent to the parliament , that this great incendiarie upon these , and the like offences , not against particular persons , but against kingdomes , and nations , may be put to a tryall , and from their knowne , and renowned justice , may have his deserved punishment . 16 decemb. 1640. the scottish commissioners demand concerning their sixt article . concerning our sixt demand , although it hath often come to passe , that these who have beene joyned by the bonds of religion , and nature , have suffered themselves to be divided about the things of this world ; and although our adversaries , who no lesse labor the division of the two kingdomes , then we doe all seeke peace , and follow after it , as our common happinesse , doe presume that this will be the partition wall , to divide us , and to make us lose all our labours taken about the former demand , wherein by the helpe of god , by his majesties princely goodnesse , and iustice , and your lordships noble , and equall dealing , we have so fully accorded , & to keep us from providing for a firme and weell grounded peace , by the wisdome , and justice of the parliament of england , which is our greatest desire expressed in our last demand . we are still confident , that as we shall concerning this article represent nothing but what is true , iust , and honourable to both kingdomes ; so will your lordships hearken to us , and will not suffer your selves , by any slanders , or suggestions , to be drawne out of that straight and safe way wherein yee have walked since the beginning . it is now wee suppose knowne to all england , especially to both the honourable houses of parliament , and by the occasion of this treatie , more particularly to your lordships , that our distresses in our religion , and liberties , were of late more pressing then we were able to beare , that our complaints and supplications for redresse , were answered at last with the terrours of an army ; that after a pacification greater preparations were made for warre , whereby many acts of hostilitie were done against us , both by sea and land ; the kingdome wanted administration of iustice , and wee constrained to take armes for our defence ; that we were brought to this extreame , and intollerable necessity , either to maintaine divers armies upon our borders against invasion from england , or ireland , still to be deprived of the benefit of all the courts of iustice , and not onely to maintaine so many thousands as were spoiled of their ships , and goods , but to want all commerce by sea , to the vndoing of merchants , of saylors , and many others who lived by fishing , and whose callings are vpholden from hand to mouth by sea trade : any one of which evils is able in a short time to bring the most potent kingdome to confusion , ruine and desolation , how much more all the three at one time combined to bring the kingdome of scotland to be no more a kingdome : yet all these behoved wee either to endure , and vnder no other hope , then of the perfect slavery of our selves , and our posterity in our soules , lives , and meanes ; or to resolve to come into england , not to make invasion , nor with any purpose to fight , except we were forced , god is our iudge , our actions are our witnesses , and england doth now acknowledge the truth , against all suspitions to the contrary , and against the impudent lyes of our enemies , but for our reliefe , defence , & preservation which we could find by no other meanes , when we had essayed all meanes , and had at large expressed our pungent , and pressing necessities , to the kingdome , and parliament of england . since therefore the war on our part ( wch is no other but our comming into england with a guard ) is defensive , and all men doe acknowledge , that in common equity , the defendant should not be suffered to perish in his just and necessary defence , but that the pursuer , whether by way of legall processe in the time of peace , or by way of violence , and unjust invasion in the time of warre , ought to beare the charges of the defendant . we trust that your lordships will thinke that it is not against reason for us to demand some reparation of this kind , and that the parliament of england by whose wisdome and iustice wee have expected the redresse of our wrongs , will take such course , as both may in reason give us satisfaction & may in the notable demōstration of their iustice serve most for their owne honour . our earnestnesse in following this our demand , doth not so farre wrong our sight , and make us so undiscerning , as not to make a difference betweene the kingdome , and parliament of england , which did neither decerne nor set forward a warre against us , and that prevalent faction of prelats and papists who have moved every stone against us , and used all sorts of meanes not onely their counsells , subsidies and forces , but their kirk canons , and prayers for our utter ruine , which maketh them obnoxious to our just accusations , and guilty of all the losses , and wrongs , which this time past wee have sustained : yet this wee desire your lordships to consider , that the estates of the kingdome of scotland being assembled , did endeavour by their declarations , informations , and remonstrances , and by the proceedings of their commissioners , to make knowne unto the counsell , kingdome , and parliament of england , and to forewarne them of the mischiefe intended against both kingdomes , in their religion , and liberties , by the prelates , and papists , to the end , that our invasion from england might have beene prevented , if by the prevalencie of the faction it had beene possible . and therefore wee may now with the greater reason , and confidence presse our demand , that your lordships , the parliament , the kingdome , and the king himselfe may see us repared in our losses at the cost of that faction by whose meanes we have sustained so much dammage , and which , except they repent , will find sorrow recompenced for our griefe , torments for our toyle , and an infinite greater losse for the temporall losses , they have brought upon a whole kingdom , which was dwelling by them in peace . all the devices and doings of our common enemies were to beare downe the truth of religion , and the just liberties of the subjects in both kingdomes . they were confident to bring this about one of two wayes : either by blocking us up by sea & land to constraine us to admit their will for a law both in kirk , and policy , and thus to make us a precedent for the like miserie in england , or by their invasion of our kingdome to compell us furiously , and without order , to break into england , that the two nations once entred into a bloody warre , they might fish in our troubled waters , and catch their desired prey . but as wee declared before our comming . wee trusted that god would turne their wisedome into foolishnesse , and bring their devices upon their owne pates , by our intentions , and resolutions to come into england as among our brethren , in the most peaceable way that could stand with our safety , in respect of our common enemies , to present our petitions for setling our peace , by a parliament in england , wherein the intentions and actions , both of our adversaries , and ours might be brought to light , the kings majesty , and the kingdome rightly informed , the authors , and instruments of our divisions , and troubles punished , all the mischiefes of a nationall , and doubtfull warre prevented , and religion , and liberty with greater peace , and amity then ever before established , against all the craft and violence of our enemies . this was our declaration before wee set our foot into england , from which our deportments since have not varied . and it hath bin the lords wonderfull doing , by the wise counsels , and just proceedings of the parliament , to bring in a great part to passe , and to give us lively hopes of a happy conclusion : and therefore wee will never doubt , but that the parliament in their wisedome and justice , will provide that a proportionable part of the cost , and charges of a worke so great and so comfortable to both nations bee borne by the delinquents there , that with the better conscience the good people of england may sit under their owne vines , and figtrees , refreshing themselves , although upon our greater paines and hazard , yet not altogether upon our cost and charges , which we are not able to beare . the kingdome of england doth know and confesse , that the innovation of religion and liberties in scotland , were not the principall designe of our common enemies , but that both in the intention of the workers , whose zeale was hottest for setling their devices at home : and in the condition of the worke , making us whom they conceived to be the weaker for opposition , to bee nothing else but a leading case for england . and that although by the power of god , which is made perfect in weaknesse , they have found amongst us greater resistance , then they did feare , or either they or our selves could have apprehended ; yet , as it hath beene the will of god that wee should endure the heate of the day ; so in the evening the pretious wages of the vindication of religion , liberties , and lawes are to be received by both kingdoms , and will enrich wee hope to our unspeakable joy , the present age , and the posteritie with blessings that cannot bee vallued , and which the good people of england esteeme more then treasures of gold , and willingly would have purchased with many thousands . wee doe not plead that conscience and piety have moved some men to serve god upon their owne cost , and that justice and equity have directed others , where the harvest hath been common to consider the paines of labouring , and the charges of the sowing , yet this much may we say , that had a forraine enemy , intending to reduce the whole island into popery , made the first assault upon our weaknesse , wee nothing doubt , but the kingdome of england , from their desire to preserve their religion , and liberties , would have found the way to beare with us the expense of our resistance , and lawfull defence , how much more being invaded , although not by england , yet from england , by common enemies , seeking the same ends , wee expect to be helped and relieved . wee will never conceive that it is either the will , or the well and honour of england , that wee should goe from so blessed a worke after so many grievous sufferings , bearing on our backs the insupportable burdens of worldly necessities , and distresses , return to our countrey empty , and exhausted , in which the people of all rankes , sexes , and conditions , have spent themselves . the possessions of every man , who devoted himselfe heartily to this cause , are burdened , not onely with his own personall , and particular expense , but with the publike , and common charges ; of which if there bee no reliefe , neither can our kingdome have peace at home , nor any more credit for gommerce abroad : nor will it bee possible for us , either to aide , and assist our friends , or to resist and oppose the restlesse , and working wickednesse of our enenemies : the best sort will lose much of the sweetnesse of the enjoying of their religion , and liberties , and others will run such wayes , and undirect courses ; as their desperate necessities will drive them into . wee shall be but a burthen to our selves , a vexation unto others , of whose strength we desire to be a considerable part , and a fit subject for our enemies to worke upon for obtaining , their now disappointed , but never dying desires . wee will not alledge the example of other kingdomes , where the losses of necessarie and just defence had been repaired by the other party , nor will wee remember what helpe wee have made according to our abilities to other reformed kirks , and what the kingdome of england of old , and of late hath done to germany , france , and holland , nor doe we use so many words , that england may be burthened , and we eased , or that this should be a matter of our covetousnesse , and not of their justice , and kindnesse ; justice , in respect of our adversaries ) who are the causes of the great misery and necessity , to which wee have been brought : kindnesse , in the supply of our wants , who have beene tender of the welfare of england as of our own , that by this equality and mutuall respect , both nations may be supported in such strength , and sufficiencie , that wee may bee the more serviceable to his majesty , and abound in every good work , both towards one another , and for the comfort and reliefe of the reformed kirks , beyond the seas , that we may all blesse god , and that the blessing of god may be upon us all . the english peeres demand concerning the preceeding articles . whether this be a positive demand , or onely an intimation of the charge , thereby to induce the kingdome of england , to take your distressed estate into consideration , and to afford you some friendly assistance . the scottish commissioners answer to this demand . wee would be no lesse willing to bear our losses if wee had abilitie , then wee have beene ready to undergoe the hazard ; but because the burthen of the whole doth farre exceed our strength , wee have ( as is more fully conceived in our papers ) represented to your lordships , our charges , and losses , not intending to demand a totall reparation , but of such a proportionable part , as tha . wee may in some measure beare the remanent , which wee conceive your lordships ( having considered our reasons ) will judge to bee a matter , not of our govetousnesse , but of the said justice , and kindnesse of the kingdome of england . proposition of the peeres to proceed to the other demands during the debate of the scottish losses . that in the interim whilst the houses of parliament take into consideration , you demand of losses , and dammages , you proceed to settle the other articles of the peace , and incourse betwixt the two kingdomes . answer to the peeres demand . wee have represented our losses , and thereby our distressed condition ingenuously , and in the singlenesse of our hearts , with very great moderation , passing over many things which to us are great burthens , that there might be no difficulty , nor cause of delay on our part , hoping that the honourable houses of parliament , would thereby be moved at their first conveniencie to take the matter to their consideration . we doe not demand a totall reparation , nor doe we speake of the payment , till wee consult about the setling of a solid peace , at which time the wayes of lifting and paying the money , may be considered ; wee doe onely desire to know what proportion may be expected . that this being once determined , and all impediments , arising from our by-past troubles , removed , wee may with the greater confidence , and more hearty consent on both sides proceed to the establishing of a firme and durable peace for time to come . it is not unknowne to your lordships , what desperate desires , and miserable hopes our adversaries have conceived of a a breach upon this article ; and we doe foresee what snares to us , & difficulties to your lordships may arise upon the postponing and laying aside of this article to the last place . and therefore that our adversaries may be out of hope , and we out of feare , and that the setling of peace may be the more easie : we are the more earnest , that as the former articles have bin , so this may be upon greater reasons considered in its owne place , and order . your lordships upon the occasion of some motions made heretofore of the transposing of our demands , doe know , that not onely the substance , but the order of the propounding of them , is contained in our instructions . and as we can alter nothing without warrand , the craving whereof will take more time then the houses of parliament will bestow upon the consideration of this article , so are wee acquainted with the reasons yet standing in force , which moved the ordering of this demand . and therfore let us still be earnest with your lordships , that there be no halting here , where the adversaries did most , and we did least of all , by reason of the iustice , and kindnesse of the houses of parliament expect it . answer of the parliament to the preceding demand . resolved upon the question . that this house thinke fit , that a friendly assistance and reliefe shall be given towards supply of the losses , and necessities of the scots , and that in due time this house will take into consideration the measure and manner of it . the scottish commissioners answer . as wee doe with all thankfulnesse receive the friendly , and kind resolution of the parliament concerning our sixt demand , and doe therein acknowledge your lordships noble dealing , for which wee may assure that the whole kingdome of scotland will at all occasions expresse themselves in all respect , and kindnesse , so doe wee entreat your lordships to represent to the parliament our earnest desire , that they may bee pleased , how soone their conveniencie may serve , to consider of the proportion , wishing still , that as wee expect from our friends the testimonies of their kindnesse and friendly assistance , so the justice of the parliament may be declared , in making the burden more sensible to the prelats , and papists ( our enemies , and authors of all our evills ) then to others , who never have wronged us ; which will not only give unto us , and the whole kingdome of scotland , the greater satisfaction , but will also ( as wee doe conceive ) conduce much to the honour of the kings majesty and parliament . wee doe also expect that your lordships will bee pleased to report unto us the answer of the parliament , that wee may in this , as in our former articles , give accompt to those who sent us . the peeres demand upon the above written answer . vvee desire to understand , since ( as wee conceive ) the particulars are like to require much time , whether wee may not from you let the parliament know , that ( whilest they are debating of the proportion , and the wayes how their kinde assistance may bee raised ) you will proceed to the agreeing of the articles of a firme and durable peace , that thereby both time may bee saved , and both sides proceed mutually with the greater cheerfulnesse and alacrity . the scottish commissioners answer to the preceding demand . as we desire a firme peace , so it is our desire that this peace may bee with all mutuall alacrity speedily concluded . therefore let us entreat your lordships to shew the parliament from us , that how soone they shall be pleased to make the proportion knowne to us , that wee may satisfie the expectation of those who have entrusted us , ( which we conceive may be done in a short time , since they are already acquainted with all the particulars of our demand ) wee shall stay no longer upon the manner and wayes of raising the assistance , which may require a longer time : and yet wee trust will be with such conveniencie determined , as may serve for our timous reliefe , but remitting the manner and wayes to the oportunities of the parliament , shall most willingly proceed to the consideration of the following articles , especially to that which wee most of all desire , a firme and blessed peace . ianuar. 16. resolved on the question ? that this house doth conceive , that the summe of three hundreth thousand pounds is a fit proportion for that friendly assistance and reliefe , formerly thought fit to bee given , towards the supply of the losses and necessities of our brethren of scotland . and that this house will , in due time , take into consideration the manner how , and the time when , the same shall be raised . answer of the scots commissioners . vve intreat your lordships , whose endeavors god hath blessed in this great work , to make knowne to the parliament , that we doe no lesse desire to shew our thankfulnesse for their friendly assistance and reliefe , then we have been earnest in demanding the same . but the thankfulnesse which we conceive to be due , doth not consist in our affections or words at this time ; but in the mutuall kindnesse , and reall demonstrations to bee expected from the whole kingdome of scotland in all time comming : and that not onely for the measure and proportion , which the parliament hath conceived to bee fit ; and which ( to begin our thankfulnesse now ) we doe in name of the whole kingdome cheerfully accept of , but also for the kinde and christian manner of granting it unto us , as to their brethren , which addeth a weight above many thousands , and cannot bee compensed but by paying their reciprocall love and duty of brethren . and for the resolution to consider in due time of the raising of the same for our reliefe , which also maketh the benefit to be double . this maketh us confident that god ( whose working at this time hath been wonderfull ) hath decreed the peace and amity of the two kingdomes , and will remove all ●ubbes out of the way , that our enemies will at last despaire to divide us , when they see that god hath joyned us in such a fraternity . and that divine providence will plentifully recompence unto the kingdome of england , this their justice and kindnesse , and unto scotland all their losses , which shall not by these and other means amongst our selves be repaired , but by the rich and sweet blessings of the purity and power of the gospell , attended with the benefites of an happy and durable peace under his majesties long and prosperous reigne , and of his royall posterity to all generations . finis . an enquiry into the causes of the miscarriage of the scots colony at darien, or, an answer to a libel entituled, a defence of the scots abdicating darien submitted to the consideration of the good people of england. 1700 approx. 220 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 61 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-05 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a45906 wing i213 estc r12945 12716045 ocm 12716045 66218 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a45906) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 66218) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 358:12) an enquiry into the causes of the miscarriage of the scots colony at darien, or, an answer to a libel entituled, a defence of the scots abdicating darien submitted to the consideration of the good people of england. ridpath, george, d. 1726. [9], 112 p. [s.n.], glasgow : 1700. authorship uncertain; has been attributed to george ridpath. cf. bm; nuc pre-1956. "defence of the scots abdicating darien" has been variously attributed to james hodges, walter harris, and archibald foyer. reproduction of original in union theological seminary library, new york. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng hodges, james. harris, walter, 17th/18th cent. foyer, archibald. defence of the scots abdicating darien. darien scots' colony, 1698-1700. scotland -commercial policy. scotland -history -1689-1745. panama -colonization. panama -discovery and exploration. 2002-12 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-02 olivia bottum sampled and proofread 2003-02 olivia bottum text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an enquiry into the causes of the miscarriage of the scots colony at darien . or an answer to a libel entituled a defence of the scots abdicating darien . submitted to the consideration of the good people of england . — paries cum proximus ardet res tua tunc agitur . — glasgow . 1700. the introduction . the just horrour that all honest men conceiv'd at the harsh and unneighbourly treatment of the scots colony at darien , laid the gentlemen who have been most active against it , under a necessity of blackening the reputation of those concern'd in that settlement . this they thought necessary , in order to prevent any enquiry , that perhaps might be made : why a neighbouring nation united to the kingdom of england by situation , government , interest , religion , affection , and constant inter-marriages , should be provok'd and trampl'd upon in such a manner , contrary to their own laws and original constitution , and which may pave the way in time for treating our neighbours in the same manner . to prevent any such enquiry , those gentlemen that have been pleas'd to signalize themselves as much by their hatred to the scotish nation , as the latter have signalized their valour and affection , for our common liberty and religion , have been at pains and expence to save the libeller h — s from the gallows , by putting a stop to his trial , and filling his pockets with money , on condition that he would bespatter the reputation of the scots colony and their masters . the crime is indeed unnatural for a man to turn renegado and a traitor to his country ; none but a monster like h — the surgeon could have entertain'd such a thought : he sold his god in the last reign , by turning papist , and therefore 't is no great wonder he should sell his country in this , and solemnly renounce his going northward for ever , provided he might be secur'd against going westward for once . this being the case of the doughty evidence , that the faction have produc'd against the scots colony ; we leave it to the world to judg what credit ought to be given to his testimony , since it appears that he hath giv'n it in to save his life , to gain money , and to give vent to his malice . the latter he owns in the beginning of his book , and repeats it again p. 161. where he says he took this way to right himself , because of the scots here in town being on his top , and of some other harsh usage which he receiv'd at the hands of the scots company . the very manner of giving in his evidence lays him open to the lash of the english law ; and it is to be presum'd that his train of blasphemies , and constant ridiculing the text , would have been taken notice of e're now by a certain court at the west end of paul's , but that he is protected by some gentlemen belonging to a court at the west end of the town . his invenom'd malice is demonstrable , by the sport he makes to himself throughout his libel at the calamities and misery of his fellow-creatures and countrymen ; so that never did any man more exactly fill up the character of a renegado than himself : for as those miscreants stab an image of our saviour to the heart , as a proof of having absolutely denied him ; h — s hath in the same manner done all he could to stab the reputation of his native country , as a certain evidence of his being turn'd a monster in nature ; for which even they that imploy him must needs abhor him , except they love to see the image of their own crimes in his lovely features . we have not enter'd upon the detail of his malicious lies with which he hath stuff'd his book , but have only pointed at the chief of them which are so very notorious , as may well put his suborners to the blush that they should not have either taught him his lesson better , or have seen he had conn'd it more exactly ; for they are such gross contradictions either to common sense or to what he himself had advanc'd in his libel , that none but one who had swallow'd transubstantiation could be guilty of the like . it 's needless to enlarge upon his character , since it 's impossible to conceive a worse idea of him than all men of sense will immediately form to themselves , when they know he is a traitor to his country . he was was formerly a surgeon in the fleet , and made some interest amongst the officers , by female mediation , which was allow'd him by his last religion ( for his book shews that now he has none . ) hence it is , that he expresses himself so readily in the dialect of his office , and talks of bullying kings in his dedication , to shew us that he was acquainted with b-dy-house rhetorick , and they that know his friends in little — b — n , say he has convey'd his libel to the world through a very proper channel . whilst he was a surgeon in the fleet , his ill nature having condemn'd him to perpetual broyls , he had the impudence to draw upon his captain ashore , who wounded him so as 't was thought might have put a period to his infamous life , upon which his captain was confin'd , but the wound not being morral , the gentleman was set at liberty , and returning on board , a council of war was held , by which h — s was like to have had an exit more answerable to his desert , at the yard-arm ; but that one of our country-men who commanded in the place , sav'd him out of pity , and whilst he was sculking at london to avoid this prosecution ; others of them out of compassion hir'd him to go along with their fleet , for which he hath made his country such a grateful reward , as hath verify'd the proverb , that save a r — gue from the gallows he shall be the first that will cut your throat . we leave his suborners to think on 't . his captain being thus disappointed of having justice executed , was forc'd to content himself with pricking him run , that he might not have any claim to his wages ; but since his return from darien , and engaging in the honourable service of reviling and belying his country , his suborners out of their innate bounty and gratitude , have got him deliver'd from all farther prosecution , entitled him to his wages , and given him the opportunity to value himself upon his corespondence at the court end of the town , so that now he thinks himself sure of a patent for life , and that he shall never be oblig'd to go up holborn-hill except his important occasions call him now and then that way , to enable him to pay his present debts , when some of his brethren , pass that road to pay their last . it had been easie for us to have given such a history of his life as would have put his suborners to the blush , but we reserve that to make use of as we shall see occasion ; what 's said is enough to let them know how much they are to trust to his evidence , if they think fit to make further use of him , either by libelling his country , or accusing any of those great families he threatens in his dedication . an inquiry into the causes of the miscarriage of the scots colony at darien . the main design of h — s and his suborners , is to charge the miscarriage of the scots colony upon their own country , to clear some gentlemen that perhaps may be found within the verge of white-hall , from having any hand in it , and to evince the necessity of those proclamations publish'd against the scots in the west-indies , so as no person or party in england may seem justly chargeable with the ruin of that colony ; a certain evidence that the crime is very black , and that they are put to a miserable shift , when those gentlemen are at such expence of contrivance and pains to wipe off the imputation , and so ready to fall in with any tool that they think can assist them in so doing . enough has been said already to demonstrate that the evidence of such an infamous person as h — s , and so circumstantiated , would not be admitted in any court of judicature in europe , especially against such an honourable society as the company of scotland for trading to africa and the indies , which consists of the very flower of the nation , and perhaps has more persons of illustrious birth , quality and merit in it , than any trading company that ever yet was erected in the world. the directors particularly , whom h — s and his masters have condemned to the halter , p. 46. are most of them persons of that quality , estate , worth , and untainted honor , as the accusation of no one particular person , tho of never so good repute , could in justice or decency be admitted against them , and much less the malicious calumnies of a renegado . but to set this mater in a clearer light : whereas we have only h — s's own word for what he asserts in vindication of his friends and suborners ; we shall demonstrate against him and them too from undeniable matter of fact , that some people in england are justly chargeable with the ruin of that colony . we shall begin with the opposition made to the scots act by the parliament of england , ( to whom the matter was misrepresented ) the answer they obtain'd from the king , and the prosecution they commenc'd and threatned against english natives , and scots-men residing in england , that should subscribe to the scots company . in the next place we alledg the english resident's memorial at hamburgh , against that governments suffering any of their subjects to subscribe to the scots company . it is likewise well enough known that the influence and example of the english court hinder'd the subscriptions of our neighbours in holland . nor can it be denied but this continued thread of opposition from the court of england , must needs hinder the subscriptions of a great many in scotland , who could not but foresee that a storm was threatned by so many clouds . to this we may add , that the kingdom of scotland have not yet forgot the discourting of the marquiss of tweddale ( who was known to be an able statesman , and a true patriot to his country ) because of his touching that act , when he had the honor to represent his majesty on the throne . nor was it the least of our misfortunes , that we lost such an able and faithful minister of state as secretary iohnston , and that too upon the account of his affection to his country in this matter . we are very well satisfied that his majesty , who advanc'd him to that post for his merit , and was so well satisfied with his ability and care , would scarcely have parted with a minister of that gentleman's faithfulness and penetration , but by the intrigues of some people at court. before we proceed any further with the narrative of the opposition made to us , we shall obviate one objection which some persons may possibly make , viz. that all we have said hitherto is nothing to the purpose , because it does not regard our colony , but the company . to which we reply : 1. that this is so far from being an excuse to our opposers , that it highly aggravates our charge against them , as being a plain demonstration , that they were resolv'd to obstruct our trade in every respect , and whatever it should be , without any exception . 2. that the opposing of the company was the direct method to prevent our ever having a colony ; and by the laws of god and man , those who endeavour to destroy the embrio , are chargeable with a design of preventing the birth . but we shall come closer to the point in a little time , and resume the thread of our narrative after one or two observations upon what we have said already , viz. ( 1. ) that the greatest of those difficulties and disappointments which h — s says in his book , the company met with as to their subscriptions , payments , &c. may justly be charg'd to the account of that opposition made us from the court of england . ( 2. ) that there is so little reason to upbraid us , that our efforts were not greater , that it is rather to be wonder'd at that the company was not dash'd to pieces and crush'd in the bud ; and much more that ever they should have been able to weather out the storm of so much indignation , overcome all those difficulties , find mony enough to build ships , equip out a fleet , and make a settlement in america , when neither england , nor scots-men residing there , hamburgh nor holland , shall dare to assist them without incurring his majesty of england's displeasure . but to come directly to the narrative of the opposition made to our colony . it is well enough known that the kingdom of scotland , as many other parts of europe , hath suffered much for three or four years past by bad harvests , which rendred them uncapable of providing bread for their people at home , and much more of sending supplies to their infant colony abroad : this was very manifest to some people about white-hall , and care was taken we should have none for our mony from england , tho that nation could have spar'd it , and perhaps we might have pleaded it as our merit , when in parliament we voted his majesty a standing army , upon his royal word that it was necessary , tho we had more need to have sav'd the mony to have bought bread for thousands of our people that were starving for want , afforded us the melancholy prospect of dying by ●●●als in our streets , and have left behind them a reigning contagion , which hath swept away multitudes more , and god knows where it may end . tho our country was reduced to this deplorable state , that a generous enemy would have shew'd us compassion , yet the malice of our court adversaries did not rest here , nor with having follow'd us into holland and germany , but pursues us into america ; and with angry proclamations forbids the subjects there , on pain of his majesty's displeasure , to afford any manner of assistance to the scots at darien : so that we are starv'd at home and abroad by our enemies at court , who having by this means dispossess'd us of our colony at darien , and knowing that the good people of england had reason to cry shame upon them , and might perhaps take their own time to resent this inhuman treatment of their neighbours in scotland ; therefore they found it necessary to suppress a book wrote in defence of the scots settlement , and to hire a scots renegado surgeon to varnish over the matter , and to represent his countrymen as knaves and fools , that so they might fall unpitied . to return again to the opposition made us in america : it is not enough that we are starv'd out of darien , but when we come from thence , and so leave what the proclamations suppose to be the dominions of their allies , yet we must not be supplied in the english plantations , nor have provisions in exchange for our effects , tho our men be dying for want , on pain of incurring the displeasure of the court ; and therefore those who are willing to relieve us , must put their inventions on the rack to find out a way to do that with safety , which common humanity , and much more christianity , obliges , them to do to a turk or a jew in the like circumstances . nay farther , tho notwithstanding our distress at home , we make shift to send a convoy to our colony abroad , because our future hopes depended so much upon it , they shall not have leave to put in to any english port to refit , refresh , or stay for any of their company that may be separated from them by storm ; and yet our friends who were so instrumental in obtaining and publishing those proclamations , must bribe a renegado to declare to the world in print , that they were no way accessary to the blood of his country-men that were starved to death at darien . it will appear plain that the ruin of the colony is chargeable on the proclamations , if we consider the consternation that must needs be among them when they saw themselves condemned , as having invaded the dominions of his majesty's allies ; so that they had all the reason in the world to think that they were not only precluded from all possibility of having any further supply or assistance from home , but in danger of being attack'd by his fleet , as they that advis'd the emitting of those proclamations must needs think his majesty was oblig'd in honour and justice to order , if he was of opinion that the scots had broken the alliance betwixt him and spain . let any reasonable man consider what anguish and perplexity these considerations , join'd to their pinching wants and other circumstances , must occasion in the minds of those poor men , and whether it might not give a handle to those of them that were unwilling to stay , to mutiny against the rest , and put all into disorder , which might be fomented by other ill persons amongst them ; for we are not to suppose that with 11 or 1200 men , there went no other ill man but h — s , since it 's not improbable that they who opposed our company so much from the very beginning , might be prompted by the same malice to send spies and traitors amongst our men on purpose to defeat their design . if it had not been that they were thus discouraged and brought to their wits-end by those proclamations , they would certainly have had so much conduct as to have sent away a great part of their men to iamaica , or any of the english plantations , where they might have subsisted till the arrival of a convoy from scotland ; and so with those provisions that were sufficient to carry them as far as new-york , and a great deal further if they had not been retarded by tempests , might have maintain'd a competent number of their men to keep possession of the colony till supplies had arriv'd : but the proclamations disabled them from taking this method , and by consequence are chargeable with the ruin of the colony . in the next place it is undeniable that those proclamations must needs have incouraged the spaniards and other enemies in their opposition against our colony , and animated them to go on with their preparations to drive us out . so that had they deserted upon no other account but the noise of the great preparations making against them by the spaniards at carthagena , porto-bello , &c. as sir william beeston seem'd to insinuate in his letter ; it makes the proclamations directly chargeable with the ruin of the colony , since they had good reason to remove from thence when their own prince had forbid all commerce with them , and when their enemies were making formidable preparations against them . it is likewise plain that those proclamations must necessarily prevent their having any supplies from the dutch at curassaw , if they had any to spare : for since the influence of ours and the dutch court prevented our company 's having any incouragement in holland , it is reasonable to believe it would have the same influence in reference to our colony , in the dutch plantations . we have likewise all the reason in the world to conclude , that the influence of those proclamations might hinder the natives from giving our colony those supplies that it was in their power to have done ; for there 's no doubt but they had information of 'em industriously sent them by some of our adversaries , when capt. long was so malicious as to endeavour at our first arrival to possess them with an opinion that we were nothing but pirats , and that the k. of great britain would disown us ; and indeed by the event it would seem he had instructions so to do . it is true that at first the natives seeing our men have a competency of all sorts of provisions , might not believe his report ; but they must needs have been confirm'd in the truth of it afterwards , when they saw them dying for want , and deceiv'd as to their expectation of further supplies ; and upon that account might think they had sufficient ground to withdraw their assistance from them , and not further provoke the spaniards in favour of a people that they found were not able to do any thing for themselves , and by consequence uncapable to protect them , which was the thing they were to expect from their alliance . having thus made it evident that the opposition our company met with from court at first , and the proclamations issued against our colony at last , are justly to be reputed among the principal causes of the miscarriage of that design , we come in the next place to consider his majesty's answer to the address of the commons of england on that head , and the proclamations issued out against us in his name in the west indies . we are sorry that ever there should have been any occasion for such an ungrateful piece of work ; but think it a duty incumbent upon us , and what we owe to the constitution of our country , which we have reason to believe is industriously conceal'd from his majesty , to write freely on this head , that the world may see what just cause we have to complain . his majesty's answer , that he had been ill serv'd in scotland , &c. is such , as our ancestors ( if we may believe our historians ) would have thought inconsistent with the trust reposed in a king of scots , a manifest reflection upon the justice and fidelity of the nation , and a discovery of their arcana imperii to those that were quarrelling with them . we are not to suppose that his majesty would give an answer to an address of this importance without counsel : if he consulted with our dutch or english opposers , it was the same as if he had consulted our profess'd enemies ; if he consulted with scots-men , and was advis'd to this answer by any of them , they are traitors to their country , and have betray'd its soveraignty : for they ought to have advis'd him to answer , that as king of scots he was not to give an account to the english for any thing transacted in that kingdom ; but if they found themselves any ways aggriev'd , or thought their trade endanger'd by the scots act , he should be willing to have the matter debated and adjusted by commissioners of both nations , as became the common father of both . this could not justly have been look'd upon by the english as a refractory or stubborn answer , but must have been imputed to his braveness of temper , and fidelity to his trust. but at once to give up the soveraignty of scotland , without demurring upon it , argues that his majesty was advis'd to this answer by enemies to the scotish nation . our parliaments have originally a greater power than that of england ; for what the states of scotland offer'd to the touch of the scepter , their kings had no power to refuse ; or if they did , the resolves of the states had the force of a law notwithstanding . thus our reformation was established in 1560. by an act of the states ; and tho our queen mary then in france , and her husband the dauphin , afterwards francis i. refus'd to give their consent , it remain'd a firm law ; which q. mary , when she return'd to scotland , was so far from offering to dispense with , tho she was a great asserter of her prerogative , that she was oblig'd to intreat of the states so far to dispense with it themselves , as to suffer her to have mass in her own family . we might go further back to the reign of robert ii. who was check'd by the states for making a truce with the english without their consent , it not being then in the power of our kings either to make peace or war without the states . but the truth of that maxim laid down by our historian , that the supreme power of the government of scotland is in the states , is so obvious to every one that reads our history , that it cannot be denied ; and hence it is that our old acts of parliament are often call'd the acts of the states , and say , the three states enact , &c. for by our original constitution the king is none of the states , but only dux belli , and minister publicus ; which was well understood by our viceroy the e. of morton , and the other deputies from the states of scotland , when they acquainted q. elizabeth in their memorial , that the scots created their kings on that condition , that they might , when they saw cause , divest them of that power which they receiv'd from the people , which we have now reasserted in making our crown forfeitable by the claim of right at the last revolution : and perhaps that 's none of the least causes why our ruin is now endeavour'd by the abettors of a growing prerogative . it were easy for us to enlarge on this , and to shew from our histories and acts of parliaments , that our kings , according to our antient constitution ( which those rapes committed on our liberties in some of the last reigns can never overturn ) were inferior to their parliaments , who inthron'd and dethron'd them as they saw cause , made them accountable for their administration , allow'd them no power of proroguing them without their own consent , nor of hindering their meeting when the ardua regni negotia requir'd it . they could not make peace or war without them , nor so much as dispose of their castles , but by their consent . their councils were chosen and sworn in parliament , and punishable by the states : nor had they any revenue , but what their parliaments allow'd them . these and many more were the native liberties of the people of scotland , as may be seen in our histories , the acts of all the iames's , the protestation of the states of scotland in 1638. and their representation of their proceedings against the mistakes in the king's declaration in 1640. and therefore his majesty had no reason to say he was ill serv'd by the passing of an act offer'd by the states of scotland . the ignorance of those things hath often occasion'd our being misrepresented by the english historians , and other writers , as rebels , and what not , when we really acted according to our own fundamental laws . and not only they , but even our own princes since the union of the crowns , have either been kept ignorant of our constitution , or so incens'd against it by the abettors of tyranny , that they have all of 'em , his present majesty excepted , endeavour'd our overthrow , as well knowing it to be impossible to bring arbitrary government to perfection , whilst a people who had always breath'd in a free air , and call'd their princes to an account when they invaded their properties , were in any condition to defend themselves , or assist others against such princes as design'd an absolute sway. but the pill being too bitter to be swallowed by it self , there was a necessity of taking priestcraft into the composition . and to gild it over with the specious pretext of bringing the scots to an uniformity in religion . the court knew that this would arm the zealots against us , and that it could never be effected without the ruin of our kingdom , whose religion was so interwoven with our civil constitution , that there was no overturning of the one , without subverting the other . this will appear plain to those that know , that besides the sanction of acts of parliament , the church of scotland is defended by a full representative of the clergy and laity of the kingdom call'd a general assembly ( which preserves us from being priest-ridden , as our parliaments do from being prince-ridden ) where the king by law had no negative voice , no more than he formerly had in our parliaments . this in effect is the representative of the nation as christians , as the parliaments are our representatives as men ; and as to the laity , many of them are the same individual persons that sit in parliament . so that those assemblies being a second barrier about our liberties , it was thought fit to run down the constitution of our church , as not suted with monarchy . the case being thus , we dare refer it to the thoughts of our neighbouring nation , who have gallantly from time to time stood up for their own liberties , whether it were not more generous for them to unite with us than to suffer us to be oppress'd and enslav'd . there 's nothing can be objected to this , but that all these glorious privileges were swallow'd up by those acts of parliament that exalted the prerogative to such a height in the reign of k. charles ii. to which we answer , that the privileges of a nation cannot be giv'n away without their own consent ; and we are morally certain , that the constituents even of those pack'd parliaments did never give any commission to those that represented them , to give away those liberties . slavery is repugnant to human nature ; so that it cannot be supposed the nation exalted the prerogative on purpose to put themselves in a worse condition than before , or that when they find it applied to another use than that which they gave it for , they may not reduce it to its antient boundary . the necessity of affairs did sometimes oblige the romans to entrust their dictators with an extraordinary and absolute power ; but when the occasion ceas'd , they recalled it , and kept to their antient and rational maxim , that salus populi is suprema lex . in the like manner the enemies of our old constitution may know , if they please , that we have retrieved the main point of making our crown forfeitable by the claim of right ; and therefore if they push us too far , it 's a thousand to one but we may renew our demands to the rest , or oblige them to cast them into the bargain . but to return from this digression . tho we had no such peculiar privileges belonging to us ; why might not we expect that his majesty should be as kind to us as to our brethren in england ? he hath once and again declared to them in parliament , that he never had , nor never will have an interest distinct from that of his people . then why should not the interest of the people of scotland be the same with the interest of the king of stots ? and if the people of scotland met in parliament agreed upon it as their interest to have that act past for incouraging their trade , how was it possible that the king of scots could be ill serv'd by the passing that act in scotland ? our enemies , and h — s's suborners have put a sort of an answer to this in his mouth , viz. that the said act was obtain'd viis & modis ; but the falshood and malice of that insinuation will appear to the world by the previous act of 1693. for incouraging of foreign trade , by which it was statuted , that merchants more or fewer may contract and enter into such societies and companies for carrying on trade , as to any subject of goods or merchandise , to whatsomever kingdoms , countries , or parts of the world , not being in war with his majesty , where trade is in use to be or may be follow'd ; and particularly , besides the kingdoms and countries of europe , to the east and west indies , the straits , and to trade in the mediterranean , or upon the coast of africa , or elsewhere , as above . which societies and companies being contracted and entred into upon the terms , and in the usual manner as such companies are set up — his majesty with consent aforesaid did allow and approve , giving and granting to them and each of them , all powers , rights and privileges , as to their persons , rules , and orders , that by the laws are given to companies allowed to be erected for manufactories : and his majesty for their greater incouragement , did promise to give to those companies , and each of them , his letters patent under the great seal , confirming to them the whole foresaid powers and privileges , with what other incouragement his majesty should judg needful . these are the very terms of the act of 1693. and in pursuance of this act our nation being willing to form a company for trading to africa and the indies , this act which hath met with so much opposition in the world , was past iune 26. 1695 , which was two years after . then with what effrontery can h — s and his suborners suggest , that it was obtain'd viis & modis , by surprize or in a surreptitious manner ? but something they must say to justify their unreasonable treatment of us , and to blind the eyes of the world. thus we see then that the parliament of scotland went on deliberately to advance their trade , and to make this act : by which it's evident that they who advis'd his majesty to say that he was ill serv'd in scotland , impos'd upon him , have laid a foundation of division betwixt him and his parliament , which are the two constituent parts of our government ; and if they be dash'd against one another , the whole frame of it must of necessity be dissolv'd . hence also it is evident that those counsellors , if scots-men , ought by our old constitution to be call'd to an account by the parliament according to the 12 th act of parl. 2 iames 4. and if they be englishmen or dutchmen , we have a right to demand justice against them , as having meddled in our affairs contrary to the laws of nations . the soveraignty of our nation , and the independency of the k. of scots upon the crown of england , being tacitely giv'n up by this answer ; and the parliament of england being possess'd by our enemies with a false notion of our design , they put a stop to our taking subscriptions from any residenters in england ; tho our offering to take in the english as sharers , was a plain demonstration of the uprightness of our intentions towards that nation . this made it apparent , that we had no design in the least to supplant them in their trade , but on the contrary to make them partakers in ours , in order to lay a foundation for a closer union , and greater amity betwixt the two nations ; which if it had taken effect , our trade had not been nipp'd in the bud , as now it is by the frowns of the court , but might by this time have been improv'd to the advancement of the glory and strength of the island : whereas by the opposition made to that noble design , the nations are more alienated from one another than before , lessen'd in their strength and trade , and scotland for ever lost as to their friendship , usefulness , and joining with england on any occasion whatever , unless proper measures be taken to make up the breach , and retrieve our lost honour and advantage . all that can be said to excuse so false a step in such a wise nation as england , is , that they were impos'd upon by those that are enemies to the true liberties of both nations , and by some of their traders and ignorant pretenders , to give advice in matters of trade , who out of a sordid principle of self-interest , preferr'd their own private gain to the general advantage of their country . this would have quickly been seen , had his majesty and the parliament of england , instead of that violent opposition which they made to the scots act , desir'd a conference betwixt a committee of the parliaments of both nations ; then it would soon have appear'd what our true design was , and that it was neither our interest nor intention immediately to follow an east-india trade , the apprehensions of which did so much alarm the kingdom of england . that it was not our intention is evident from our rejecting the proposals of our countryman mr. douglas , the east-india merchant , with which h — s upbraids us , by which at the same time he discovers his own folly and dishonesty ; his folly in arguing against the interest of england , which he pretends to espouse ; and his dishonesty in proposing our following a trade , which his new masters ( who have paid him so well for his false evidence ) look upon to be destructive to theirs . that it was not our interest immediately to think of an east-india trade is evident from this , that it would have exported our mony with which it 's known we do not abound , and ruin'd the linen manufacture of our country , upon which so many of our poor depend . this we think the city of london may be sensible of in a good measure , by the multitudes of their own silk-weavers , that are starv'd for want of imployment ; and also by the unsuccessfulness of their own linen manufacture in england , by reason of the great quantity of silks , mullins , calicoes , &c. brought from the east-indies : from whence some wise men have been and are still of opinion , that an east-india trade of that sort tends to the general impoverishment of europe , tho it may enrich particular persons . these considerations , together with some jealousies that mr. douglas might have been put upon making us that proposal , on purpose to divert us from our other design of an american trade , were the true reasons of our not hearkening to mr. douglas's advice . this our neighbours might have known , had they proceeded with us in such a friendly manner as we had reason to expect , when we were so kind as to offer them a share in the benefits of our act. and the government at the same time might soon have been satisfied , that the sinking of their customs by our one and twenty years freedom from that duty , was a meer bugbear pretence . it is evident that we could not have spent much east-india goods in scotland , and therefore must have exported them . if we had brought them to england , they were liable to customs there . if we had offer'd to run them over the border , they could as well have prevented that , as the stealing over their own corn and wool : and if we had exported them to any other places of europe , the english by their draw-backs could have done it in effect as cheap as we . by all which it appears , that there was no solid foundation for any of those pretended reasons , why the government in particular , or the english in general , should have oppos'd us : and we wish that upon due inquiry it may not be found to be the effect of dutch councils ; for that people being jealous of their trade , and rivals to england on that account , cannot be suppos'd to have sat still and done nothing , when they saw we had obtain'd such an act , and were resolv'd to take in the english to partake in our trade , which if suffer'd to go on , might endanger theirs , and enable the english to outrival them indeed , besides the present loss they foresaw of our custom , the scots having most of their east-india goods from holland . this we have the more reason to suspect , first because tho the english have formerly suffered in their trade by the incroachments and intrigues of the dutch , but never by the scots ; yet they have made no application to his majesty , for preventing the like in time to come . if it be said that he is but stadtholder there , whereas he is k. of scots : we can easily reply , that it appears by what has been said already of our true constitution , that the kings of scotland were as much accountable to the states of that nation , as the dutch stadtholder is to the states of holland . the 2 d reason we have to suspect the influence of dutch councils in this affair , is this , that 't is their interest to keep us and the english from uniting , and if possible of forcing us by that means into an alliance with themselves , to prevent their own ruin , if england should after this come to fall out with them upon the account of trade or otherwise , and likewise to have their privilege of fishing in our seas continued , which they know to be of such vast advantage to them , that they are shrewdly suspected of having by bribes , or other indirect methods , prevail'd with some great men , to supplant us as to the benefits we had just reason to expect from the act of 1661. incouraging our fishery , the privileges granted by which , are very considerable , and to continue for ever : nay to put it out of all doubt that they are join'd in this matter against us , h — s owns it as beforemention'd . being upon this subject , we cannot but take notice of the difference betwixt the spanish memorials about darien , and of those late memorials presented by them to our court against their meddling with the succession of that monarchy , or the cantoning it out into several parcels in case the king of spain die without issue . the former , tho insolent and huffing enough , were procur'd by our court , therefore calmly digested ; and the desire of them effectually answer'd , to the ruin almost of the scotish nation : but the latter was no sooner presented , than the spanish ambassadors are disgrac'd in england and holland , and forbid both courts . it may therefore deserve the inquiry of our neighbours , what this regulation about the succession of spain , and the dismembring of their monarchy is , that occasion such outragious memorials : for there must needs be something in it that touches the spaniards more sensibly than the business of darien , and which they did not complain of till they were put upon it ; and in like manner touches our court more sensibly to the quick than any memorials about that affair , tho they had not been of their own procurement , were capable of doing . perhaps upon a narrow scrutiny into this affair it will be found , that this keen and uninterrupted opposition made to the scots settlement at darien , does not proceed from any foresight of damage that it could do to the trade of england , tho that be the specious pretext , but from a cause which touches some people more nearly , crosses their project of dismembring the spanish monarchy , and of having that important post to their own share ; they know that they have a natural as well as political interest in some great courtiers , and make little doubt of obtaining the preheminence before either of those nations that compose the empire of great britain . it concerns our neighbours so much the more to inquire into this , because it is visible from the resentments of it by the spanish court , that this matter is more like to affect the advantageous trade that england drives with spain , than our settlement in america was ever like to do ; which tho it be made a sacrifice to his catholick majesty , and perhaps on purpose to make him digest the other project with more ease , is like to be of as little advantage to england , as was the sacrifice of the great sir walter raleigh formerly , tho it may be infinitely more to their damage . if our neighbours have a mind to be fully inform'd of this matter , they know who were imploy'd in those negotiations , and how to speak with them . we come next to consider the opposition made to our subscriptions at hamburgh by sir paul ricaut the english resident there , in conjunction with his majesty's envoy to the court of lunenburg , who deliver'd in a joint memorial to the senate of hamburgh , threatning them with the heighth of his majesty's displeasure , if they join'd with the scots in any treaty of commerce whatsoever . this we shall not need to make any reflexions upon , the petitions from the company to his majesty and his privy council in scotland being sufficient for that end . their first to the king was dated iune the 28 th , 1697. and is as follows . to the king 's most excellent majesty , the humble address of the council general of the company scotland , trading to africa and the indies . may it please your majesty ; whereas by the 32 d act of the 4 th session , and by the 8 th act of the 5 th session of your majesty's current parliament , as well as by your majesty's patent under the great seal of this kingdom , this company is established with such ample privileges , as were thought most proper and encouraging both to natives and foreigners to join in the carrying on , supporting , and advancement of our trade : the most considerable of the nobility , gentry , merchants , and whole body of the royal burrows , have upon the inducement and publick faith of your majesty , and act of parliament , and letters patent , contributed as adventurers in raising a far more considerable joint stock , than any was ever before raised in this kingdom for any publick undertaking , or project of trade whatsoever ; which makes it now of so much the more universal a concern to the nation . and for the better enabling us to accomplish the ends of your majesty's said act of parliament , and letters patent , we have pursuant thereunto appointed certain deputies of our own number to transact and negotiate our necessary affairs beyond sea , and at the same time to treat with such foreigners of any nation in amity with your majesty , as might be inclinable to join with us for the purpose aforesaid . in the prosecution of which commission to our said deputies , vested with full power and authority according to law , we are not a little surprized to find , to the great hindrance and obstruction of our affairs , that your majesty's envoy to the courts of lunenburgh , and resident at hamburgh , have under pretence of special warrant from your majesty , given in a joint subscribed memorial to the senate of hamburgh , expresly invading the privileges granted to our company by your majesty's said acts of parliament , and letters patent , as by the herewith transmitted copy may appear . by the which memorial we sustain great and manifold prejudices , since both the senate and inhabitants of the said city of hamburgh are thereby , contrary to the law of nations , expresly threatned with your majesty's displeasure , if they or either of them should countenance or join with us in any treaty of trade or commerce whatsoever , which deprives us of the assistance which we had reason to expect from several inhabitants of that city . for redress whereof we do in all duty and humility apply to your majesty , not only for the protection and maintenance of our privileges and freedom of trade , but also for reparation of damage conform to your majesty's said acts of parliament , and letters patent . and we further beg leave humbly to represent to your majesty , that tho by the said acts of parliament and letters patent , we conceive our selves legally and sufficiently authorized to treat even with any soveraign potentate or state in amity with your majesty for the support and advancement of our trade ; yet we by our said deputies have only treated with particular and private merchants of the said city of hamburgh , without ever making any the least proposal to the senate thereof : and this we humbly conceive to be the natural right and privilege of all merchants whatsoever , even tho we had wanted the sanction of so solemn laws ; and without some speedy redress be had therein , not only this company , but all the individual merchants of this kingdom , must from henceforward conclude , that all our rights and freedoms of trade are and may be further by our neighbours violently wrested out of our hands . we therefore , to prevent the further evil consequences of the said memorial to our company in particular , do make our most humble and earnest request to your majesty , that you would be graciously pleased to grant us such declarations as in your royal wisdom you shall think fit , to render the senate and inhabitants of the said city of hamburgh , and all others that are or may be concerned , secure from the threatnings and other suggestions contain'd in the said memorial , as well as to render us secure under your majesty's protection , in the full prosecution of our trade , and free injoyment of our lawful rights , privileges , and immunities contained in your majesty's acts of parliament and letters patent above-mentioned . signed at edinburgh the 28th day of june 1697. in name , presence , and by order of the said council general , by may it please your majesty , your majesty's most faithful , most dutiful , most humble , and most obedient subject and servant , sic subscribitur , yester p. the king's answer to the above written address , by the right honourable the earl of tullibardin , &c. and sir james ogilvie , principal secretaries of state. my lords and gentlemen ; we are impowered by the king to signify unto you , that as soon as his majesty shall return to england , he will take into consideration what you have represented unto him , and that in the mean time his majesty will give orders to his envoy at the courts of lunenburgh , and his resident at hamburgh ; not to make use of his majesty's name or authority for obstructing your company in the prosecution of your trade with the inhabitants of that city . signed at edinburgh the 2d day of august , 1697. sic subscribitur , tullibardin . ja. ogilvie . the company finding that the said resident did notwithstanding this answer continue his opposition , and deny that he had any orders to the contrary , petitioned his majesty's privy council afresh as follows . to the right honourable the lord high chancellour , and remanent lords of his majesty's most honourable privy council ; the humble representation of the council general of the company of scotland trading to africa and the indies . may it please your lordships , 't is not unknown to your lordships , how that in several successive sessions of this current parliament , his majesty's instructions to his respective high commissioners , and their several speeches pursuant thereto , have bin full of repeated assurances of his majesty's good inclinations for incouraging the trade and manufactories of this nation : and whereas accordingly by the 22 d act of the fourth session , and the 8 th act of the fifth session of the said parliament , together with his majesty's patent under the great seal of this kingdom , our company is established with such ample privileges and immunities as were thought most proper for encouraging both natives and foreigners to join in the carrying on , supporting , and advancement of our trade ; we in pursuance , and upon the publick faith thereof , not only contributed at home a far more considerable joint stock than ever was yet rais'd in this nation for any publick undertaking or project of trade whatsoever , but have also had all the promising hopes and prospect of foreign aid that our hearts could wish , till ( to our great surprize ) the english ministers at hamburgh have , under pretence of special warrant from his majesty , put a stop thereto , by giving in a memorial to the senat of that city , threatning both senat and inhabitants with the king 's utmost displeasure , if they should countenance or join with us in any treaty of trade or commerce , as by the annexed copy thereof may appear . upon due consideration whereof , we have in all duty and humility addressed his majesty in iune last for redress thereof ; in answer to which address his majesty was then graciously pleased to signify by his royal letter , that upon his return into england he would take into consideration the contents of our said address , and that in the mean time he would give orders to the said ministers at hamburgh not to make use of his royal name or authority for obstructing the trade of our company with the inhabitants of that city . in the full assurance of which we rested secure , and took our measures accordingly , till to our further surprize and unspeakable prejudice , we find by repeated advices from hamburgh , that the said resident continues still contumacious ; and is so far from giving due obedience to his majesty's said order , that upon application made to him by our agent in that city , with all the respect due to his character , he declared , that as yet he had got no such order on our behalf ; which by a further address we are now to lay before his majesty . but whereas we humbly conceive your lordships to be more immediatly , under his majesty , the guardians of the laws and liberties of this kingdom , we think it our duty to represent to your lordships the consequences of the said memorial , both with relation to our company in particular , and the privileges , interest , honour , dignity , and reputation of the nation in general . your lordships very well know of what concern the success of this company is to the whole kingdom , and that scarce any particular society or corporation within the same can justly boast of so solemn and unanimous a suffrage or sanction , as the acts of parliament by which this company is established . so that if effectual measures be not taken for putting an early stop to such an open and violent infringement of , and incroachment upon the privileges of so solemn a constitution , 't is hard to guess how far it may in after ages be made use of-as a precedent for invading and overturning even the very fundamental rights , natural liberties , and indisputable independency of this kingdom , which by the now open and frequent practices of our unkind neighbours , seem to be too shrewdly pointed at . and should this company ( wherein the most considerable of the nobility , gentry , merchants , and whole body of the royal burroughs are concerned ) be so unhappy ( which god forbid ) as to have its designs rendered unsuccessful through the unaccountable evil treatments of our said neighbours ; most certain it is that no consideration whatever can hereafter induce this nation to join in any such other publick stock , tho never so advantageous an undertaking , as not doubting but to meet with the like or greater discouragements from those who give such frequent and manifest indications of their designs to wrest our right and freedom of trade out of our hands . for which cause we humbly offer the premises to your lordships serious consideration , not doubting but you will ( in your profound wisdom and prudence ) take such effectual measures for redress thereof at present , and to prevent the like incroachments for the future , as may be capable to remove those apprehensions and jealousies , which the bare-faced and avowed methods of the english do now suggest , not only to our company in particular , but even to the whole body of this nation in general . signed at edinburgh the 22d day of december 1697. in name , presence , and by order of the said council general , by , may it please your lordships , your lordships most obedient , and most humble servant , sic subscribitur francis scot p. and therewith they join'd another to the king , as follows . to the king 's most excellent majesty , the humble address of the council general of the company of scotland trading to africa , and the indies . may it please your majesty ; by a former address of the 28 th of iune last , we have humbly represented to your majesty , that your majesty's envoy to the court of lunenburgh , and resident at hamburgh , did , under pretence of special warrant from your majesty , give in a memorial to the senat of the said city of hamburgh , contrary to the law of nations , and expresly invading the privileges contained in the said acts of parliament and letters patent , by which our said company is established ; copies of which address and memorial , we have for your majesty's better information hereto annexed : in answer to which your majesty was then graciously pleased to signify by your royal letter , that upon your majesty's arrival in england , you would take the contents of our said address into consideration ; and that in the mean time you would give orders to your said minister not to make use of your majesty's name or authority for obstructing our company in the prosecution of our trade with the inhabitants of the said city of hamburgh . in the full assurance of which we rested secure , and took our measures accordingly , till , to our further surprize and great disappointment , we find by repeated advices from hamburgh , that your majesty 's said resident continues still contumacious ; and is so far from giving due obedience to your majesty's said order , that upon application made to him for that effect , with all respect due to his character , he pretended , that he had never as yet got any such order on our behalf : which we thought fit , in all duty and humility , to lay before your majesty , renewing withal our most humble and earnest request , that your majesty would be now graciously pleas'd to take the contents of this and our said former address into consideration , and , in your royal wisdom , order some speedy and effectual redress of our grievances therein mentioned , and a just reparation of the manifest damages which our company has already sustain'd by reason of the said memorial : and grant us a declaration under your royal hand , to render the senat and inhabitants of the city of hamburgh , and all others with whom we may have occasion to enter into commerce , secure from threatnings and other false suggestions contained in the said memorial , as well as to render us secure under your majesty's protection , in the free enjoyment of our lawful rights and privileges contained in your majesty's acts of parliament and letters patent above mentioned . signed at edinburgh the 22 d day of december 1697. in name , presence , and by order of the said council general , by may it please your majesty , your majesty's most faithful , most dutiful , most humble , and most obedient subject and servant , sic subscribitur francis scot p. notwithstanding all this humble application , there was no stop put to that opposition : so that the hamburghers dar'd not venture to subscribe ; and the company , after great loss of time , and money , and leaving two ships unfinish'd , to the great dishonour , as well as disadvantage of the nation , were oblig'd to recal their agents , after having spent 30000 l. and not receiv'd one farthing there , tho the hamburghers were so willing to join , that they were sorry there was not room left for subscribing more than 200000 l. the company finding themselves thus injuriously dealt with , made application to the parliament of scotland for redress . upon which the parliament presented the following address to his majesty . an address to his majesty , by the parliament . we your majesty's most loyal and faithful subjects , the noblemen , barons , and burgesses convened in parliament , do humbly represent to your majesty , that having consider'd a representation made to us by the council general of the company trading to africa and the indies , making mention of several obstructions they have met with in the prosecution of their trade ; particularly by a memorial presented to the senat of hamburgh by your majesty's residents in that city , tending to lessen the credit of the rights and privileges granted to the said company by an act of this present parliament : we do therefore , in all humble duty , lay before your majesty , the whole nations concern in this matter : and we most earnestly do entreat , and most assuredly expect , that your majesty will in your royal wisdom take such measures as may effectually vindicate the undoubted rights and privileges of the said company , and support the credit , and interest thereof . and as we are in duty bound to return your majesty most hearty thanks for the gracious assurances your majesty has been pleased to give us of all due encouragement for promoting the trade of this kingdom ; so we are thereby encouraged at present , humbly to recommend to the more special marks of your royal favour , the concerns of the said company , as that branch of our trade , in which we , and the nation we represent , have a more peculiar interest . subscribed at edinburgh the 5 th of august 1698. in name , presence , and by warrant of the estates of parliament . seafield i. p. d. p. by all this it is evident , that the whole kingdom of scotland was unanimous in this matter , and proceeded deliberately in it , as that which highly concern'd their interest : yet we see that all their endeavours were to no purpose ; for our enemies were so resolute in opposing our trade , that rather than it should succeed they will not only trample under foot the laws of scotland , but the laws of nations , and exactly follow the pattern set them by the french , in huffing and tyrannizing over their neighbours , when at the same time they pretend to make war upon lewis xiv . for practices of the same nature ; and whilst they cry out upon the decisions of the chambers of brisac and mets , and of the parliament of paris as tyrannical and unjust for invading the rights of neighbouring princes and nations , they set up a cabal at whitehall to do the like by scotland and hamburgh . then let the world judg , whether the king of england had not less reason to say that he was ill serv'd in scotland , than the king of scots had to say that he was ill serv'd in england , since one single address from the parliament of england prevail'd with their king to forbid all his subjects to join with the scots ; whereas the repeated supplications of the company of scotland , the address of their parliament , and the authority of law , and his own letters patent could not prevail with the king of scots to do justice to his own subjects . we wish these gentlemen would consider this , who were so very angry at the author of the defence of the scots settlement , for saying that the king of scots was detain'd prisoner in england . it is very certain , that never any king of scotland before the union of the crowns , dar'd thus to trample upon their laws , or to oppose the general interest of the nation ▪ or if they attempted to do it , they were quickly made sensible of their being inferior to the law , and the states of the nation assembled in parliament , who till the accession of our princes to the english throne remain'd in an undisputed possession of calling their kings to an account for male-administration , and of disposing of their lives and liberties as they saw cause . we need not go so far back for evidence to prove this , as eugenius the 7 th , who was brought to his tryal on suspition of having murder'd his own wife , and acquitted upon discovery of the real murderers ; or of iames iii. whose minions , by whose counsel he governed , were taken out of his own bed-chamber by the nobles , and hanged over lauder-bridg ; and he himself persisting in those courses , was killed in flight , after being defeated in battle by the states , and in the next parliament was voted to be lawfully slain . we have a later instance , and the power of our nation on that head was largely asserted and accounted for by the earl of morton then regent of scotland , in that noble memorial he delivered in to q. elizabeth and her council in defence of our proceedings against q. mary whom we dethron'd , and in her stead set up her son : so that it is not the principle or practice of any one party of our nation ( tho it has been of late fix'd upon the presbyterians as peculiar to them ) but was an hereditary right conveyed to us all by our ancestors , practised by papists before the reformation , and justified by those of the episcopal perswasion since , particularly by the earl of morton beforemention'd , who was the first that introduc'd bishops into our church after the reformation . those things are not insisted upon with any design of applying them to his present majesty , or of incensing the people of scotland to do so , but only to inform those that put his majesty upon such courses , that they are his greatest enemies , and do what in them lies to destroy him . it is the common right of mankind to be protected by those they set over them , and to complain of governors when they find themselves aggriev'd , and their privileges torn from them by violence . this generation has prov'd it beyond possibility of reply , that the greatest pretenders to submission to princes , and the most zealous patrons of passive obedience , will resist and dethrone their kings too , when they find themselves oppressed by them . they that maintain the contrary , are nothing but mean-spirited flatterers , or such as temporize with courts , because of their own private advantage ; and be their quality what it will , are far from being so noble and brave as that poor woman who told philip of macedon , that he ceas'd to be king when he refus'd to hear her petition . upon the whole it will appear , that the author of the defence of the seots settlement , made the best apology for his majesty that could be made , when he said that he was a prisoner in england , and therefore forc'd to act thus against the interest and dignity of his crown as king of scots . it is demonstrated thus : if his majesty were in scotland , and another person upon the throne of england , it is certain his majesty would have encouraged the trade of scotland , and resented such practices in the king of england , as contrary to the laws of nations , and the soveraignty of his crown : if he did not , he would be look'd upon to be mean-spirited and not fit to wear it ; and if he took part with the king of england against the dignity of his crown , and the interest of his kingdom , he would not only be looked upon as an enemy to his country , but as felo de se. from all which it is plain , that as it is the best apology that can be made for the king of scots when he acts thus , contrary to the honour and interest of himself and his country , to say , he is a prisoner in england ; so it is a sufficient justification of the people of scotland to refuse obedience to what he commands by the influence of the english , or other councils , in opposition to their interest , because they are the commands of a captive , and not of the king of scots . if our enemies say he is no captive , but at liberty to go to scotland if he pleases , it is so far from making his case better , that it makes it ten times worse ; for if his affections be captivated , we are without remedy , except we either sue for a divorce , as in case of wilful desertion , and denying conjugal duty , or withdraw from under his roof , and remove to another family , as god and man will allow one sister to do that is oppressed , and denied the privileges of paternal love and protection , whilst another is caressed and dandled , and has her fortune raised by diminishing that of the neglected sister . the iamaica proclamation against our colony at darien comes next to be considered , and is as follows . by the honourable sir william beeston knt. governour and commander in chief for his majesty in the island of jamaica , and of the territories and dependencies of the same , and admiral thereof . whereas i have received orders from his majesty by the right honourable iames vernon , one of the principal secretaries of state , importing that his majesty was not informed of the intentions and designs of the scots in peopling darien , which is contrary to the peace between his majesty and his allies , commanding me not to afford them any assistance : in compliance therewith , in his majesty's name , and by his order , i do strictly charge and require all and every his majesty's subjects , that upon no pretence whatsoever they hold any correspondence with the scots aforesaid , or give them any assistance with arms , ammunition , provision , or any thing whatsoever , either by themselves or any other for them ; nor assist them with any of their shipping , or of the english nation 's , upon pain of his majesty's displeasure , and suffering the severest punishment . given under my hand and seal of arms , the 9 th of april 1699. and in the 11 th year of the reign of william the 3 d , king of england , scotland , france and ireland , and lord of iamaica , defender of the faith. it contains a heavy charge against the scots company as having settled in darien without informing his majesty , and having thereby broke the peace betwixt his majesty and his allies . as to their not informing his majesty with their design , there was neither any need of it , nor had they reason to do it : that there was no need of it , is plain enough from the act of parliament impowering them to settle any where in asia , africa , or america , upon places not inhabited , or any other place , with consent of the natives , and not possess'd by any european potentate , prince or state : so that they were under no obligation to acquaint him where they design'd to settle , provided they kept to the terms of the act. and that they had no cause so to do , is evident from that unreasonable opposition that a faction at court had prevailed with him to make to them all along , which gave them just cause to expect the like treatment in time to come . then as to the breach of the peace betwixt his majesty and his allies by the settlement , they had no reason to think themselves guilty of any such thing , and so much the less , that dampier , wafer , and all others that wrote of the country gave an account of the natives being in possession of their liberty , and almost in continual wars with the spaniards . besides , it was a rul'd case in england , since capt. sharp was by law acquitted in k. charles il's time , not only for having marched through darien in a hostile manner , but for attacquing places that were really in possession of the spaniards , as st. maria and panama , because he acted by virtue of a commission from those darien princes . this , together with their not finding a spaniard or spanish garison on all that part of the isthmus , was enough to justify the fairness of the scots settlement there , and to have put a stop to this hasty sentence till both sides had been heard . but instead of that , the advisers to this proclamation take upon them , in a very magisterial manner , to declare the scots guilty of a breach of the peace betwixt his majesty and his allies : which is so much the more remarkable , that this proclamation is publish'd in the west-indies , before ever it was known what the scots could say in their own defence ; and sent away before the presenting of the spanish memorial , which was on the third of may 1699. and the proclamation bears date april 9 th 1699. the unfairness of this proclamation is evident from this , that at the very same time it is publish'd in the west-indies , the lord president of the sessions , and his majesty's advocate for the kingdom of scotland were sent for from hence to see what they could say to justify their pretensions to darien ; which they did by such arguments as have not yet been answer'd . we leave it then to the impartial thoughts of the good people of england , whether we have not occasion to say that our king is in the hand of our enemies , since we are thus condemn'd without a hearing , and our nation put to the trouble and expence to send lawyers out of the kingdom to defend themselves before those that had already condemned them . and since this is a visible effect of the union of the crowns , by which we are every day more and more oppressed ; let them speak their consciences , if we have not all the reason in the world to dissolve that union , except the nations be more closely united , and upon a better footing . that we were so treated in former reigns , we had no great cause to wonder , when the court was engaged in a conspiracy against our religion and liberties . and our nation being inferior to none in their zeal for both , it was but natural to think that we should be the first sacrifice : but to be treated thus by a prince who hath ventur'd his life to save us from popery and slavery ; a prince who for courage in war , and conduct in peace , is not to be match'd in story ; a prince who is under god the great champion of our religion , and the bold asserter of europe's liberty ; a prince whose family we revere , and whose person we adore ; a prince for whom we have so chearfully ventur'd our lives , and lost so much of the best blood in our veins ; to be so treated by such a prince hath some thing cutting beyond expression , and proves that our disasters are no way to be remedied , but either by a total separation , or a closer union of the two kingdoms . we cannot be so unjust to his majesty's character as to think a prince of his magnanimity could be guilty of so mean a thing as willingly to subject the crown of his antient kingdom which he received free , to that of another . we cannot once suffer it to enter into our thoughts , that he who dares to out-brave death in the field a thousand times a day , should act so unworthy a part as first to condemn , and then to try us . these and all other things of that sort we must needs charge to the account of our enemies about him , who misrepresent us , and therefore surprise his majesty into any thing he does against us . as to that positive sentence of our having acted contrary to the peace betwixt his majesty and his allies , we have all the reason in the world to complain of it . is our kingdom then become so mean and contemptible , that what is transacted according to the acts of our parliaments , and patents of our kings , is liable to be annull'd , or declared illegal , by any person that has the hap to be made an english secretary of state , governor of one of their american plantations , or a member of their council of trade ? if it be so , his majesty's dignity , as king of scots , is well defended in the mean time , when it is liable thus to be trampled upon by his own servants as king of england . this does indeed verify what has been said , that our kings since the union leave their antient kingdom to the disposal of their servants : but whether this be agreeable to the coronation oaths of our kings , let them determine that are concern'd to enquire ; and perhaps it may be worth the consideration of our neighbours , whether since we have been govern'd by servants , they have not for the most part been subject to minions , and that the one does naturally pave the way for the other . so that they are no great gainers by the bargain . if it be answer'd , that the proclamations are issued by his majesty's authority , and that therefore our sentence proceeds from his bar : we answer , 1. that there are shrewd suspitions that a certain gentleman or two who have affected all along to shew their zeal against the scots in this affair , have push'd this matter beyond their instructions ; for there 's no man that knows his majesty's justice and wisdom , can admit a thought that he would condemn us before we were heard . 2. we don 't at all question his majesty's authority as king of england , to forbid his english subjects to give any manner of assistance to the scots at darien ( tho we might say it was unkind ) but we absolutely deny that he has any authority as king of england to condemn the proceedings of the subjects of scotland for any thing they transact without the dominions of england . if it be otherwise , his majesty , as king of scots , is bound to appear at the king 's bench-bar in westminster-hall for what he hath done as king of scots , upon the lord chief justices summons ; and of what consequence this may be to himself or his successors , may be easily judg'd . had oliver , and the other regicides , bethought themselves of this , it had been more for the honour of england , and would have taken off a great deal of the odium that is charg'd upon them for cutting off king charles , had they search'd for something criminal in his conduct toward the english nation as king of scots , and condemned him for that . tho they did not think upon this , perhaps others may ; and then the english will be able to justify themselves as not having cut off their own king , but their enemy the king of scots , as there 's no doubt they would have done by king charles ii. had he not made his escape after the battle of worcester . this may perhaps deserve the thoughts of his present majesty and others concern'd in the succession , and so much the more that the dependence of the crown of scotland upon that of england hath been lately asserted by some english historians , and indirectly hinted at in a pretended answer to the defence of the scots settlement at darien , p. 24. but to satisfy that gentleman and others , who please themselves so much in vilifying the scotish nation , they may turn to the reigns of edward i. ii. and iii. and they will quickly find that sir william wallace , k. robert bruce , iames lord douglas , thomas randolph earl of murray , and others that we could name , did so gallantly defend the soveraignty of scotland against those bold pretenders to a superiority over us , that their successors have had no great stomach to pursue their claim to it since : so that if ever they had any , it is forfeited by prescription . oliver's imaginary conquest so much insisted on by the dull answerer of the scots defence , and others , will be of no use to the faction in this matter , since that was no national quarrel , nor did the english pretend to any such thing as a conquest of us , but immediatly withdrew their forces upon the restoration . so that oliver's conquest , as he calls it , was only the victory of one party over another in a civil war , it being well known that he had friends in scotland as well as england , which ( if that wise author will have oliver's victories to be conquests ) he had conquer'd too before ever he came near scotland . we don't insist upon this with any design to derogate from the valour of the english nation , which is known all over the world , but to stop the mouths of those pitiful scriblers , and to give a caveat to those gentlemen about court , who talk so big of conquering scotland upon this present occasion . but we wish them to consult beforehand how england in general stands affected to such a design , and how they will justify the lawfulness of it , lest it fare with them as it did with k. charles i. and his cabal , who not only in council advis'd , to reduce us to our duty by force rather than give way to our demands , as may be seen in the representation of the states of scotland in 1640. but rais'd money , and levied a formidable army to carry on their design ; and yet the hearts of these bravos fail'd them when they came in view of the scots , who repuls'd them twice with shame , the first time when they encamp'd their great army near barwick , and the next when we charg'd them at newburn . and at last the best of the nobility and gentry of england thought fit to put a stop to those dangerous proceedings , and follow'd his majesty with a protestation against them , as well knowing , that if scotland were once subdued , the liberties of england could not be long liv'd . that it is the interest of england now to prevent the ruin of scotland , as much as it was then , will appear by the following arguments . 1. that the present juncture of affairs makes it necessary for the kingdom of england rather to strengthen themselves by making new friends than by procuring new enemies . they are not ignorant that they have a controverted title to their crown entail'd upon them , and that the pretenders against those in possession are in the french interest , and under their protection . nor can they be ignorant , that to the old national hatred betwixt france and england , the french have added that of the protestant religion . of late years they have declared themselves the most implacable enemies of it ; and their king in all his triumphs has that ascrib'd to him as his greatest exploit , that he hath quelled the monster of heresy . the case being thus , it must needs be against the interest of england to suffer any froward and headstrong faction to embroil them with scotland , or to ruin that kingdom ; the consequence of which will be the exposing themselves as an easier prey to the conquest of the french or any other enemy . that the french had a hand in fomenting our late civil wars , and made use of their firebrands in all parties , is beyond dispute ; and that it is now more their interest to divide us than ever , is so palpable that it cannot be denied . nothing in human probability could have stop'd the impetuous current of their arms , but the interposition of great britain ; and therefore it concerns them , both in point of interest and revenge , to dash us against one another : and if the ill usage that we meet with from the court of england should force us again into a french or other alliance , the world cannot blame us ; since the laws of nature and nations are for us . put the case that a smaller number of christians should be unjustly attack'd by a greater , whom nothing will satisfy but the utter ruin of the former : could any man in conscience blame the weaker party to call in the assistance of iews and pagans to preserve their own lives ? is it not the same case with the scots ? have they not ever since the union of the crowns been oppressed and tyranniz'd over by a faction in england , who will neither admit of an union of the nations , nor leave the scots in possession of their own privileges , as men and christians ? was it not a party in england that impos'd upon us first in matters of religion ? did we send first to oblige them to submit to the geneva disciplin , as they call it ; or was it they that first imposed their ceremonies and forms of prayer upon us ? was it we who first invaded them with an army to subvert their civil and religious liberties , or did not they first invade us ? was it we who first made acts against their trade , or they who made acts destructive of ours ? did we issue proclamations against their colonies , or have they done so by ours ? in the name of god then let them declare what they would have us to do . they will not unite with us , nor suffer us to live by our selves : nor must we have any share of their trade , or carry on a trade by our selves . is it not plain then that the faction oppress us ? and yet we must not complain of this sort of treatment . 2. if the state of affairs in ireland be consider'd , it will appear to be such , as may make it dangerous to suffer the scots to be oppressed and provok'd in this manner . it is well enough known that the people of ireland are not very well pleas'd with their treatment by some in england . this , together with the great numbers of scots in the north of that kingdom , who bear a natural affection to their country , and would be very uneasy to see its ruin , may prove of dangerous consequence , in case of a rupture with scotland . 3. it will further appear to be the interest of england not to suffer the scots to be so much run down , if they consider the posture of their own affairs at home . the divisions and animosities betwixt the several parties in england are well enough known : so that besides the sport it would afford to the common enemy of our religion and country , to see those two nations engaged in war , the enemies of the present government would be sure to improve it , and watch for an opportunity to avenge themselves for what has been done against the late k. iames , and his friends . it is well enough known what hopes they and some people beyond sea conceive from the differences that this treatment of the scots may probably occasion ; and as they have an irreconcilable hatred against our nation , because we declar'd so generally against the late king , and are so zealous for his present majesty , there 's no doubt but they will foment our divisions as much as they can , and insinuate themselves with both parties , in order to set them together by the ears . they know that so many as fall in england of those who adhere to the present constitution , and so many as fall in scotland for supporting the trade and freedom of their country , so many enemies they are rid of ; therefore there 's no question but they promise themselves a plentiful fishing in such troubled waters . it likewise deserves the consideration of our neighbours , that they don't stand at present in very good terms as to matter of trade with france , holland , and flanders ; nor is it well known what the issue of the present controversy with spain about regulating their succession may be . the impending differences betwixt the northern crowns may perhaps in a little time imbroil them with one or other of them , and affect their trade also on that side . all which being consider'd , it would seem to be the interest of england , to assure themselves of the friendship of the scots , by treating them in a kind and neighbourly manner . 4. it will appear in particular not to be the interest of the dissenters and sober churchmen , that the scots should be thus run down , because their own ruin will be the unavoidable consequence of it . this they may soon be convinc'd of if they will give themselves leave to consider how they were treated in k. charles the first 's time , when the court did swell with so much rage against the kingdom of scotland for asserting their liberties then , as they do now . all those church of england-men that could not conform to the innovations brought into the church by laud and his party , were treated as puritans and schismaticks ; and those that appear'd for the liberties of the nation against the ship-money and other arbitrary impositions of the court , were treated as rebels and traitors . if they look into the two last reigns , it will appear as plain as the sun , that when scotland was oppress'd , and their liberties wrested from them , the dissenters and moderate church-men in england were brought under the lash : the former were depriv'd of their religion and liberties , and the latter expos'd to destruction by sham-plots , &c. because of their appearing for the laws of their country . we need mention no more instances to put this out of controversy , than those deplorable ones of the earl of essex and lord russel ; to which we may add the shameful and barbarous treatment of the worthy mr. iohnson chaplain to the latter , because he so excellently defended with his pen the birth-right and freedom of all true englishmen . from all this it will appear that england in general must suffer by the ruin of scotland , and that those who have all along stood up for the english liberties , must lay their account to come under the lash , if once our necks come under the yoke : therefore we dare appeal to the sober men of the church of england , whether it be their interest that a nation which agrees with them in all the articles of their church , those about discipline excepted , should be destin'd to ruin , because we believe with most of the reformed churches , that there is no office superiour to that of a presbyter of divine institution . must we be denied the privileges of men and christians , because we think that the discipline of the church may be more safely intrusted , and more faithfully administred by the joint indeavors of the minister and the heads of his congregation , by an association of neighbouring ministers , and the heads of their parishes , and by delegates both of the clergy and laity of those associations in a general convocation , than by another model ? but enough of this subject . let any man peruse the learned archbishop vsher's treatise of presbytery and episcopacy reconcil'd , and there they will find that the difference is not so great as some people have made it their business to make the world believe . but if nothing less than our destruction will serve those gentlemen , because our church is of a different constitution from that of england , and that our political principles and original constitution are diametrically opposite to arbitrary power , let the dissenters of england , and all those church-men that concurr'd in the late revolution , look to it . when their neighbour's house is on fire it's time for them to prepare their bucket's . if this digression be thought impertinent , h — s and the answerer of the scots defence must bear the blame of it . they would insinuate to the world that the affair of our trade and colony is a presbyterian project , on purpose to render it odious and suspected to the church of england ; therefore it was necessary to obviate that false and malicious suggestion , and to acquaint our neighbours that the company make no difference as to the matter of perswasion : and let it be put to the test when they please , it will be found that those of the episcopal opinion are as zealous for the thriving of our trade , and the honour of our nation ( both of which are concern'd in this affair ) as any of the other . to wind up this matter , if any party in england entertain suspicions of us , the better way to prevent us is to treat us kindly , and enter into an union with us on such terms as his majesty and the parliament of both kingdoms shall agree , and so as the civil and religious liberties of both people may be preserved . that will be easier and safer than to relie on the hopes of an uncertain conquest ; or if they don't think fit to do so , it 's but reasonable they should leave us in the undisturb'd possession of our own liberties : but if they will do neither , let them no more accuse those that complain of this treatment as incendiaries , but seriously examine whether they themselves mayn't with more justice be accounted oppressors . part ii. being a more particular answer to h — s's libel . we come in the next place to take a survey of h — s libel , intituled , the defence of the scots abdicating darien ; and shall speedily shew to how little purpose his suborners have spent their pains and mony on him . the first line of his performance is a banter upon his majesty , whom he charges with investing our company with immense privileges and immunities by his octroy of 1695. there 's no man can be answerable for more sense than god has given him ; but tho h — s understood no better , his masters at white-hall , of whom he brags so much , ought to have taken care that he should not run into nonsense , and an invective against his majesty at first dash : to talk of granting us immense privileges , is to impeach his majesty's wisdom , as if he had done a thing without parallel , which is directly to incense the kingdom of england against him , as some bad people indeavour'd to do , when by a misrepresentation of our design , they stir'd up the house of commons against it . but had the surgeon or his suborners look'd into the privileges of 21 years freedom from all manner of taxes granted to the dutch east-india company by the states of holland , and the vast immunities granted by the french king , the danes and brandenburghers to their companies for trading to the east-indies , or even to those granted to the english east-india company at first , they would have found there was no reason to charge his majesty with granting us such immense or unparallel'd privileges , or ascribing it to his not well knowing what he did for the noise of the guns at namur , as this petulant scribler does . dedication , pag. 9. but if h — s and his suborners exclaim against our privileges as immense , they are resolv'd to diminish the authority by which they were granted , and call it only by the name of an octroy , which signifies no more than a patent ; whereas our privileges were granted us by an act of parliament , which are greater and more sacred than all the octroys in europe : thus thro ignorance or malice they think fit to vilify his majesty's conduct and authority , which they pretend to defend . their malice is further demonstrated by the parenthesis ( to be presum'd ) in the 2 d page of the decation , where they speak of his majesty's promise to interpose his royal authority to do us right in case of disturbance , and that at the publick charge ( to be presum'd ) of his antient kingdom . there might possibly have been some need of their presumption , had all mankind been indow'd with as little sense and honesty as h — s and his suborners ; for no other body could ever presume it to mean any thing else , since our acts do not oblige england : tho if they had presum'd that our enemies would take care that the said promise should not be kept , the refusal of lending our company the 3 men of war built at the charge of our own nation , would soon have convinc'd the world that they had presum'd too true . we have accounted for rejecting mr. douglas's proposal elsewhere ; nor shall we take notice of h — s's scurrilous reflections on mr. paterson , which only discover his own temper , but do that honest man no hurt . as to his charging us with squandring away 50000 l. on 6 hulks at amsterdam and hamburgh , purely to make a noise of our proceedings , &c. we would desire him and his suborners to reconcile it with what they say from p. 14 , to 20. where they own themselves that the dutch and hamburgers were both mightily pleas'd with the design , p. 14. that the dutch were tickled with the conceit that they should be sharers in the scots trade ; and p. 16. they say , that that which gave the dead stroke to the scots design , was the east and west-india companies running open mouth'd to the lords of amsterdam , shewing what was hatching by the scots commissioners in their city to ruine the trade of the vnited provinces . p. 17. they tell us , that the hamburgers thought it the more their interest to embrace the project , the more that the dutch oppos'd it : p. 18. that our affair was generally favour'd by the burgers of hamburg ; and p. 21. that the government of england sent the senate of hamburgh a caution by sir paul ricaut to take care how they suffer'd their burghers to embark with us . so that here we condemn them from their own mouths : it being plain from those concessions , that we did not idly squander away our money at hamburgh and amsterdam ; but that both those trading cities approv'd our design , and would have engag'd in it , had not the court of england and the dutch oppos'd it ; and therefore what loss of mony we sustain'd in those places , must be charg'd to their account ; so that h — s hath verified the proverb , that liars have need of good memories . this is not the only instance wherein those of h — s and his suborners have giv'n them the slip ; for in the 4 th page of the dedication , they upbraid the company with their blind project , at which the trading part of the world stand amaz'd ; yet p. 17. they tell us that the project was reasonable both on the scots and hamburghers side ; and the reasons they give are these , that the river on which that city stands is navigable for 200 miles up into germany for flat-bottom'd vessels of 70 or 80 tuns , which gives them an opportunity of serving all the north parts of the empire , &c. all that they can say to salve this contradiction is , that the hamburghers knew nothing of darien , but builded altogether on ships laden with india goods ; but that 's a notorious falshood , for the hamburghers were actually told that our design was on the isthmus of america , and therefore could not be disappointed in their expectations of an east-india trade if they had a mind to have follow'd it , since they could not be ignorant that they had thereby an opportunity of shortning the voyage from darien to the east-indies . but at the same time it is much to be question'd whether the hamburghers were so intent upon an east-india trade , as h — s alledges , since it must visibly prejudice their own manufacture of linen . we shall conclude this of hamburgh and amsterdam with one observation , viz. that he tells us , p. 14. that one of the reasons why the dutch were so much taken with our east-indian trade , was our exemption from duties for 21 years ; which serves only to discover his own folly and malice , since every body must necessarily know , that exemption from duties was only in the scotish ports ; so that if they were exported from thence into any other country , they must pay the same duties in those countries , as if they had been directly imported from the east-indies . the inconsistency of h — s and his suborners is further demonstrated , p. 4. by supposing our buying a couple of second-hand ships in the thames , and dispatching them to india with a sutable cargo . as to the buying of second-hand ships , the company made that experiment ; but found themselves losers by it , and that it cost them more to sit up a second-hand vessel for their purpose , than it would have done to have bought a new one . but with what front can they upbraid us with not buying of ships in the thames for carrying on an east-india trade , when they own , p. 7. that the house of commons baulk'd us of our subscriptions , and reprimanded the subjects of england for their foolery ? how is it possible then that they would have suffer'd our buying ships in the thames for carrying on an east-india trade ? we have another proof of his ingenuity and truth in that same page , where he tells us , that if our blind project ( meaning that of darien ) should miscarry by our own ill management , it is not fair me should snarl at our neighbours , who have no other hand in our misfortune , than that they would not be accessary to any all which the world might judg felonious , and wherein they could not join without engaging themselves in an unreasonable war , and in the end to assist us with weapons to break our own heads . we wish his masters much joy of their advocat and evidence , for we believe they could not have found such another if they had searched through all the island : he just now own'd that our neighbours opposed our subscriptions at home and abroad , before they knew any thing of what he calls our blind project , and made us squander away 50000 l. to little purpose , which certainly must be a misfortune , and that wherein our neighbours had no small hand , tho the world could not judg our taking subscriptions in that honourable manner to be any way felonious . we have moreover sufficiently proved it elsewhere , that they have had a hand in our misfortune by down-right opposition , and unaccountable proclamations for which they had no authority ; we hope that this will be allow'd to be something more than refusing to be accessary to an act that neither he nor his suborners will ever be able to prove felonious , and which we have already told him , the laws of england have in a parallel , nay much worse case , judg'd to be honest and righteous . so that all this author hath got by his charging us maliciously with felony , is to prove himself a wilful felon , for he tells us at the end of his book of a long dispute betwixt himself and sir i. stewart his majesty's advocat for the kingdom of scotland , about the title of the spaniards to darien ; and if we may believe h — s , he baffled the advocat , and prov'd the right of the spaniards : which proves himself to have engaged in a design that he thought felonious , for we do not find , by his own relation , that he left the place from remorse of conscience , but only on the account of a malladie imaginaire , and want of provisions ; so that we thank him for telling the world , from his own mouth , that his evidence against us is that of a felon . as to their engaging themselves in an unreasonable war , and assisting us with weapons to break their own heads ; we did not desire they should engage in a war for us , but think it very unreasonable the english court should have engaged so far as they have done against us : it had been sufficient for them to have denied us their assistance , without having condemn'd us as guilty of breach of alliance , which , as all the other parts of the opposition made to us , we are satisfied is not the act of the english nation , and therefore can create no misunderstanding betwixt them and us , but perhaps may prove a weapon in time to break the heads of h — s and his suborners . in the 5 th page , that his book may be all of a piece , he advances a forg'd obligation upon us , from the union of the crowns , which is , that we are thereby deliver'd from the daily feuds and bloody little wars that rag'd amongst us for 1900 years , which unnatural massacres our native princes were unable to suppress , &c. this is down-right falshood in matter of fact ; for those feuds , as he calls them , ceas'd in the lowlands long before the union , but continue still in the highlands , which we can scarcely think is unknown to our author who was born so near that country as dumbarton . the macdonalds have been several times in arms against the earl of argile since the restoration , and there 's a feud now depending between the frazers and the murrays , or rather the family of athol . nor did we ever hear of any thing that look'd so like an unnatural massacre in scotland as that committed since the revolution upon the inhabitants of glenco , which had it not been for the union of the crowns , would not have been suffer'd to go unpunished . but admitting it to be true , that the union had deliver'd us from those little feuds , we are no gainers by the bargain , since it hath occasion'd greater ; particularly that unnatural feud which rag'd so long betwixt the episcopal party and presbyterians , and had its rise altogether from the union of the crowns ; the very prospect of which , was the sole cause why the earl of morton ( when regent ) set up the first protestant bishops in scotland . into what couvulsions that imposition threw the nation is well enough known ; and how besides the bringing down k. charles i. with 30000 men against our kingdom , and contributing to engage the nations in a civil war , it occasioned king charles ii. to plunder the west of scotland , first by sir iames turner , which gave rise to the insurrection at pentland ; and twice afterwards by the highland host , which occasion'd that of bothwel-bridg : and afterwards the oppression run so high , that it forc'd some of the presbyterians into unaccountable actions , which gave occasion to oppress the whole party ; so that it was made punishable by death for any of their ministers to preach , or for the people to hear them . from this indeed , we were totally delivered by the revolution , tho our freedom in that respect was partly begun by the late king iames's declaration . but our enemies , unwilling that our nation should be long at ease , have found other methods to set our court against us : and because they know that his present majesty has too great a soul to persecute any man on the account of conscience ; our enemies have chang'd their battery , and instead of pointing their cannon at our religion , they level them against our civil liberties . the powder they prime their artillery with , is , that we are enemies to prerogative : but because this would not go down with the good people of england , who are strenuous assertors of liberty and property , they must gild it over with the specious pretence , that we have a design to undermine their trade , and have unjustly invaded the spanish dominions . this is the design of h — s and his suborners ; and therefore they insist so much on our clandestine declarations , as they call them , that we publish'd in the english plantations , on purpose to drain them of their people ; but unhappily overthrow what they advance at the same time , when they tell us , that the jamaica sloops were witnesses that we had neither provisions , nor money for the sustenance of our own people , pag. 148. and therefore it cannot reasonably be suppos'd that we had any such design as he maliciously charges us with , to draw over the people from the english plantations , since we had not wherewith to support our own ; but more of this anon . our author learn'd the maxim of calumniare audacter & aliquid haerebit , when he was a papist : and if he and his suborners can be any way instrumental to set the nations together by the ears by this method ; or if that fail , if they can but raise animositys between them , they know it will be a good pretence for some people to put his majesty upon pressing for a standing army , and perhaps for having it enlarg'd , it being necessary , say they , to overaw the scots , but in reality to protect such evil counsellors from being brought to justice , that have advis'd to such measures as visibly tend to the disadvantage of both nations . it may perhaps be worth the enquiry of our neighbours whether this be not the real meaning of this intolerable oppression exercis'd upon our nation as to their trade both at home and abroad , viz. that knowing our praefervidum ingenium , as they are pleas'd to call it , to be impatient under tyranny , the faction think thereby to provoke us to a resentment that may give occasion for raising an army against us ; which if it have the good hap to subdue us , or force us to digest our oppression without any more to do , shall be made use of afterwards to chastise themselves , and bring them to better manners , then to limit their monarchs in their grants , and leave them no other troops but their garisons and guards . it was the observation of the earl of shaftsbury , whom his enemies will own to have been a great statesman , that scotland is a door to let in good or evil upon england ; which is verified in the latter at least by the whole course of our history since the union : for when k. iames i. succeeded in trampling upon us , he quickly began to huff his parliaments in england ; and notwithstanding all the remonstrances of church and state , would needs have a popish match for his son , tho he should sacrifice the great sir walter rawleigh , his own daughter the queen of bohemia , and her children , together with the protestant interest in germany , to make way for it . when charles i. obtain'd footing for his impositions on the church and state of scotland , it 's well enough known what methods he took with england , and how he sacrific'd the protestant interest in france , whilst he eagerly pursued an arbitrary sway at home . when charles ii. got his prerogative exalted , and an army at his call allow'd him in scotland , it 's too late to be forgotten how he trod under foot the liberties of england , seiz'd the charters of their cities , cut off whom he would by sham-plots , and pav'd the way for popery and arbitrary power . when k. iames ii. did by his absolute power and unaccountable authority cass and annul all the laws establishing the reformation in scotland ; it was not long e're he suspended the laws , imprison'd the bishops , and fill'd with papists his council , army , and universities in england . from all which it is evident that our neighbours have reason to look to themselves when we are oppress'd ; for in all probability their acts of parliament will not be long regarded , when ours are annull'd and made void by the intrigues of the courtiers , and west-india proclamations . the very advocats of tyranny make use of this as their herculean argument , that the people having once resign'd their privileges to the crown , have no more right to demand them ; which tho we will not allow to be any ways concluding , yet we may very well make use of it ad hominem , that a pari ratione , when once a prince has touch'd with his scepter a law for the benefit of his subjects , it is not in his power to revoke or counteract it ; or if he do , by the same power that he absolves himself from his obligation to protect and defend his subjects , he absolves them from all obligation to pay him any revenue or allegiance . this is the birth-right of all scots-men ; and if our neighbours in england have a mind to sit still , and see us bereft of it , all the benefit they can expect from it , is to have the privilege of being devour'd last . the rest of his banter upon his native country serves only to lessen his own credit , and to make even those that set him at work , curse him in thought , not only as a monster in nature , but as dishonest to them , by depriving them thus of the benefit of his evidence , for which they have paid him so well ; since no body in the world can think a man will have any regard to truth , that in such an impudent manner breaks thro all the ties of nature ; and as a just judgment for so enormous a crime , is so far depriv'd of his reasoning faculty , that he is not fensible of his cutting his own throat , by contradicting himself almost in every paragraph . he upbraids us in one page with not having dar'd to descend into the plains , and that those gallant men our ancestors durst not assemble for worship before the union , except in a house whose wall was twelve or 14 foot thick , or to whisper their prayers or carrols thro the cliffs of the mountains : in the next page he tells us he has no inclination to offer any thing in opposition to the gallantry of our ancestors ; and in some pages following he impertinently ridicules the valour of our country in the story of baliol , which he perverts in such a manner , as no man but himself is capable of . we don't think it worth while to answer him according to his folly , but shall once for all let him know , that the most invective of the english historians , that wrote in the heat of the war , do us more justice than this unnatural renegado . there 's no nation in europe , where we have not given proofs of our valour , nor is there a court in christendom where scots-men are not valued on that account . sam. daniel , one of the best of the english historians , owns that never any people of the world did more gallantly defend their liberties than we did in that very instance of baliol , when we were without a head ; and from thence infers , what was it we could not have done , had we been then under the conduct of such a leader as k. robert bruce . speed , one of the gravest of the english historians , does generously own , that few great actions have been perform'd in europe , where the scots have not been with the first and last in the field . we could easily give a proper reply to the impertinent romance which he brings about baliol , that would tend as much or more to the dishonour of edward i. ii. and iii. than any thing that he and his suborners have suggested can tend to the dishonour of our nation ; but we forbear it , having no design to reflect upon our neighbours , notwithstanding the rude treatment and provocation that we have had from h — s , and others on this occasion . we can , without thinking our selves injur'd , own that the english are as brave men as any in the world , and are satisfied , that such of our neighbours as are men of honour and reading , will allow us the same character . we perceive it is the design of this libeller and others to represent the english nation as enemies to us in this matter , on purpose to set us together by the ears ; but we are satisfied of the contrary , as well knowing that not a few of our good neighbours are much surpriz'd and displeas'd with our treatment , and look upon the same to be the effect of such councils as are destructive to the interest of both nations . we shall conclude this point with one observation more upon h — s's ignorance and malice , in denying that the scots expell'd baliol from the crown , when such a noble monument of the truth of it , as the original letter of the states of scotland , is still to be seen in the university of oxford , and exemplify'd by dr. burnet now bishop of sarum , in his history of the reformation ; and since it is also plain that our ancestors chose robert bruce king during baliol's life-time , and that baliol at last resign'd all his pretensions , confess'd his fault in subjecting the crown of scotland to that of england , own'd that he was deservedly thrust from the throne for it , congratulated his kinsman robert bruce's advancement , and that he had restor'd the crown of scotland to its antient honour . we take no notice of his profane and atheistical banter upon the religion of our country , as being satisfied that that will do his cause no good amongst thinking men , tho it may please those that he is only fit to converse with . as for his malicious charge on presbyterians , that they maintain it as their principle , that dominion is founded on grace ; it 's of a piece with the rest of his evidence . he and his suborners will be very hard put to it to quote one of their authors to prove the assertion , and therefore they may well reject it as a slander ▪ but we must tell him that if this be the principle of the presbyterians , they have not well answer'd it by their practice ; for whenever they had any such thing as dominion at their disposal , they seldom had the good hap to confer it upon those that had grace enough to answer the ends of it . we forbear instances , because it 's too well known both in france and great britain . we come next to examine his charge upon our colony on purpose to render them odious to the english nation , and all the world , and shall transcribe it verbatim , that the reason of our observations upon it may be the more obvious . his words are these . if your colony has left darien for reasons not as yet public to the world , 't is your fault , right worshipful gentlemen , in undertaking to manage a project you so little understood , and not of the english nation , whose interest it is to advance and preserve their own colonies , and to keep them from being render'd desolate by the clandestine artifices of yours , who industriously and tacitely spread their declarations over all the english islands and plantations , making use of the king of great britain's name , to give more authority to the thing : and by those indirect manifestos , such profits , or rather plunders were insinuated , that if the government of england had not taken early measures to prevent the ill consequences , it 's to be question'd whether the greatest part of the english west indies had not e're now quitted their settlements , and been decoyed into your colony , under a cover'd notion , that you had a patent from the king to pick a quarrel with the spaniard , and to divide the spoil of mexico and peru amongst the servants and adventurers of the company . this indeed is something to the purpose , and might deserve the suborners mony , were there no possibility of proving it false ; but we shall see anon what ground there is for this bold accusation , after observing , that perhaps some gentlemen at the west end of the town may find at long-run that their evidence has blab'd out something more in this paragraph than it 's for their interest the world should know . we will only ask mr. h — s some civil questions : what are those reasons not as yet publick to the world , for which our colony left darien ? sir william beeston's letter acquainted us that it was for want of provisions , and for fear of the great preparations by the spaniards : the letters we have had since from new-york say , that it was for want of provisions , and because they were brought to their wits end , and did not know what to think of their case by reason of the english proclamations . then since the very first of these , and much more all of them together , were reason sufficient , and are publick to the world , what other private reasons can mr. h — s give us for it ? we know he boasts of his interest in those that are concerned in the secrets of the west end of the town : did they tell him then that the government of england took early measures to prevent the ill consequences of our colony ? if they did so , pray what were those measures ? was the sending of capt. long thither to debauch our men , traduce us to the indians as pirats , and to tell them his majesty of great britain would not protect us , one of those early measures ? was not their solliciting a foreign minister to present a memorial against our colony as soon as ever the news of it arriv'd , another ? and was not this the reason why they put it upon that minister , and not upon the spanish ambassador , that the latter had been forbid coming to court , because his catholick majesty would not admit of schonenburg the the iew as envoy from the dutch ? were not the enemies of the scots company so zealous in promoting that memorial , that they could not have patience till orders came from madrid , but put the envoy upon it of themselves ? and when a controversy happen'd about receiving it signed or unsign'd because of the difference betwixt the two courts , did not our enemies agree to it as an expedient , that one of both sorts should be presented ? was not this abominable trifling upon a point of honour , when they were plotting to bereave the kingdom of scotland of their honour , men , mony , and colony all at once ? were not these more clandestine and indirect artifices to destroy our colony , than any he charges upon us to destroy the english colonies ? having ask'd mr. h — s more questions than he and his suborners dare positively answer , we come next to deny his charge upon our colony , as being malicious and absolutely false ; for which their own declaration shall be our evidence , and is as follows . caledonia : the declaration of the council constituted by the indian and african company of scotland , for the government and direction of their colonies and settlements in the indies . the said company pursuant to the powers and immunities granted unto them by his majesty of great britain , our soveraign lord , with advice and consent of his parliament of scotland , having granted and conceded unto us and our successors in the government for all times hereafter , full power to equip , set out , freight , and navigate our own or hired ships , in warlike or other manner , from any ports or places in amity , or not in hostility with his majesty ; to any lands , islands , countries , or places in asia , africa , or america ; and there to plant colonies , build cities , towns or forts , in or upon the places not inhabited , or in or upon any other place , by consent of the natives or inhabitants thereof , and not possest by any european soveraign , potentate , prince , or state ; and to provide and furnish the aforesaid places , cities , towns , or forts , with magazines , ordinance , arms , weapons , ammunition and stores of war ; and by force of arms to defend the same trade , navigation , colonies , cities , towns , forts , plantations , and other effects whatsoever ; and likewise to make reprizals , and to seek and take reparation of damage done by sea or by land ; and to make and conclude treaties of peace and commerce with soveraign princes , estates , rulers , governours or proprietors of the aforesaid lands , islands , countries , or places in asia , africa or america . and reserving to themselves five per cent. or one twentieth part of the lands , mines , minerals , stones of value , precious woods , and fshings , have further conceded and granted unto us , the free and absolute right and property in and to all such lands , islands , colonies , towns , forts and plantations , as we shall come to , establish , or possess in manner aforesaid ; as also to all manner of treasures , wealth , riches , profits , mines , minerals and fishings , with the whole product and benefit thereof , as well under as above the ground , as well in rivers and seas as in the lands thereunto belonging ; or for or by reason of the same in any sort , together with the right of government and admiralty thereof ; as likewise that all manner of persons who shall settle to inhabit , or be born in any such plantations , colonies , cities , towns , factories , or places , shall be , and be reputed as natives of the kingdom of scotland . and generally the said company have communicated unto us a right to all the powers , properties and privileges granted unto them by act of parliament , or otherwise howsoever , with power to grant and delegate the same , and to permit and allow such sort of trade , commerce and navigation unto the plantations , colonies , cities , and places of our possession , as we shall think fit and convenient . and the chief captains and supream leaders of the people of darien , in compliance with former agreements , having now in most kind and obliging manner received us into their friendship and country , with promise and contract to assist and join in defence thereof against such as shall be their or our enemies in any time to come : which , besides its being one of the most healthful , rich , and fruitful countries upon earth , hath the advantage of being a narrow isthmvs , seated in the heighth of the world , between two vast oceans , which renders it more convenient than any other for being the common store-house of the insearchable and immense treasures of the spacious south seas , the door of commerce to china and japan , and the emporium and staple for the trade of both indies . and now by virtue of the before-mentioned powers to us given , we do here settle , and in the name of god establish our selves : and in honour and for the memory of that most antient and renowned name of our mother kingdom , we do , and will from hence-forward call this country by the name of caledonia ; and our selves , successors , and associates , by the name of caledonians . and sutable to the weight and greatness of the trust reposed , and the valuable opportunity now in our hands , being firmly resolved to communicate and dispose thereof in the most just and equal manner for increasing the dominions and subjects of the king our soveraign lord , the honour and wealth of our country , as well as the benefit and advantage of those who now are , or may hereafter be concerned with us : we do hereby declare , that all manner of people soever , shall from hence-forward be equally free and alike capable of the said properties , privileges , protections , immunities , and rights of government granted unto us ; and the merchants and merchants ships of all nations , may freely come to and trade with us , without being liable in their persons , goods or effects , to any manner of capture , confiscation , seizure , forfeiture , attachment , arrest , restraint or prohibition , for or by reason of any embargo , breach of the peace , letters of mark , or reprizals , declaration of war with any foreign prince , potentate or state , or upon any other account or pretence whatsoever . and we do hereby not only grant and concede , and declare a general and equal freedom of government and trade to those of all nations , who shall hereafter be of , or concerned with us ; but also a full and free liberty of conscience in matter of religion , so as the same be not understood to allow , connive at or indulge the blaspheming of god's holy name , or any of his divine attributes ; or of the unhallowing or prophaning the sabbath day . and finally , as the best and surest means to render any government successful , durable , and happy , it shall ( by the help of almighty god be ever our constant and chiefest care that all our further constitutions , laws , and ordinances , be consonant and agreeable to the holy scripture , right reason , and the examples of the wisest and justest nations , that from the truth and righteousness thereof we may reasonably hope for and expect the blessings of prosperity and increase . new-edinbvrgh , decemo . 26. 1698. by order of the council , hugh ross , secretary . we dare refer it to the scrutiny of the nicest observers , whether this declaration infer any such thing as plunder , or a patent from the king to pick a quarrel with the spaniards , and to divide the spoil of mexico and peru ; what clandestine artifices are here to be found to drain the english plantations , and wherein does it interfere with the interest of england , any more than all free ports must of necessity interfere with their neighbours ? we wish that our author would inform us how publick declarations according to act of parliament can be call'd clandestine artifices , and defy him and his suborners with all their art to find any thing pretended to in this declaration , but what the colony has a right to by act of parliament . the only thing this malicious scribler can wrest to his purpose in the declaration , is the colony's publishing that all manner of persons , of what nation or people soever , &c. should be equally free , and alike capable of the same privileges with themselves , &c. which are the express words of the act of parliament ; and therefore supposing that the said declaration should have influenc'd some people to come over to them from the english plantations , the colony could not be any ways blam'd for it . qui utitur jure suo nil damni facit , is a known maxim in law. the libeller's malice is not satisfied with reflecting upon our colony , but flies on the face of the greatest part of the english in the west-indies , as if they had so little honour or love for their native country , as to lay their own plantations desolate , and run over to ours . indeed if most of them be such persons as himself , there might be some ground for the reflection ; but till it appears to be so , we must beg mr. h — s's leave to have a better opinion of them . no man fo sense can believe that those who found themselves at ease in the english plantations , would be fond of removing to a new colony ; but if others who are at their freedom had a mind to do so , we know of no reason they should be hinder'd . the subjects of england are a free people , and not confin'd to their own dominions , but have liberty to trade and live elsewhere , if they find their account in it . there 's no man can blame the scots for publishing their declaration throughout the west-indies , the thing being absolutely necessary in it self , and the natural practice of all new settlements to acquaint the world with the nature of their design , and on what terms they may have commerce with them . we hope our author and his suborners will not say that the subjects of england might not have traded with them for their own advantage , provided their title had been unexceptionable : and seeing the scots had reason to think it so , it was no act of unkindness in them to let the english plantations know that they should be very welcome to trade to darien ; and how this could be done so properly , and with so much effect as by declaration , our author would do well to acquaint us . the gentleman and his friends are very angry that we should have made use of the king of great britain's name to give the more authority to the thing . we would very fain know their reasons , why it is not as lawful for the scots to make use of that name as the english ; and at the same time must take leave to tell the renegado and his whitehall friends , that all this venom they have spit at the scots colony is a virulent invective against his majesty . he impower'd them to do what they accuse them for by act of parliament : and because our antagonists have a mind to say that this octroy , as they call it , was destructive to the trade of england , they find themselves oblig'd to make an excuse for the king , viz. that the honest gentleman meant no harm at the granting of it ; for it is to be believ'd , that he could scarce bear what was whisper'd for the noise of the namur guns , which is in plain english , he gave his consent to he knew not what . a noble defence , for which his majesty is oblig'd to them ! but banter and blasphemy they were fully resolv'd on ; and so they had but a subject , they car'd not what . nor adam , nor david , nay nor the almighty himself shall escape them ; but his commission to the hebrews when they departed out of egypt , must come in to make up the profane jest : thus heav'n it self shall be charg'd at last with founding dominion upon grace , and giving the elect a divine right to the goods of the wicked , after its being first thrown as a killing reflection at the heads of the poor presbyterians . h — s will needs insist upon it in his dedication , that our project on darien was so secretly carried on , that it was not known to england till the same wind that brought the news likewise inform'd the nation that the scots were march'd over to panama , and had planted 80 guns against it ; but unhappily forgets himself , and tells us , pag. 7. of his book that paterson communicated it to some select heads in england that were able to bear it . and we can tell him further , that it was so well known to some in england , that they sent capt. long the quaker on purpose to prevent us , and to do us all the mischief he could ; and accordingly he was on that coast a month before us , tho he did not land any men till afterwards . as for the news of the scots having planted 80 cannon against panama , it 's the first time we ever heard on 't , and therefore must charge it upon the author amongst the rest of his forgeries . there was indeed a report brought over by the dutch gazetts , which we suppose was inserted on purpose by our good friends in holland to render us odious , that we had plundered panama ; but that was a long time after the news of our arrival at darien , and fram'd on purpose , as we have reason to believe , to justify the proclamations that some gentlemen at the west end of the town had sent to the west-indies against us ; for we know they can have what they please put in the dutch gazetts , and that perhaps may be one main reason why they have been altogether silent as to the matter in their own . but that which sufficiently discovers the falshood of this malicious insinuation , as if we had a design to attaque panama , or any other place belonging to the spaniards , is , mr. paterson's letter to his friend at boston in new-england ( and sent us thence in print ) dated at fort st. andrew in caledonia , february 18. 1698 / 9. above fifteen weeks after the arrival of our colony ; wherein he acquaints that gentleman , that they had written to the president of panama , giving him an account of our good and peaceable intentions , and to procure a good vnderstanding and correspondence . the letter it self is as follows . an abstract of a letter from a person of eminence and worth in caledonia to a friend at boston in new-england . i have received your kind letter of the 26th of december last , and communicated it to the gentlemen of the council here ; to whom your kind sentiments and readiness were very acceptable . certainly the work here begun is the most ripened , digested , and the best founded , as to privileges , place , time , and other like advantages , that was ever yet begun in any part of the trading world. we arrived upon this coast the first , and took possession the third of november : our situation is about two leagues to the southward of golden-island ( by the spaniards called guarda ) in one of the best and most defenceable harbours perhaps in the world. the country is healthful to a wonder , insomuch that our own sick , which were many when we arrived , are now generally cured . the country is exceeding fertil , and the weather temperate : the country where we are settled , is dry , and rising ground , hills but not high ; and on the sides , and quite to the tops , three , four or five foot good fat mould , not a rock or stone to be seen . we have but eight or nine leagues to a river , where boats may go into the south-sea . the natives for fifty leagues on either side are in intire friendship and correspondence with us ; and if we will be at the pains , we can gain those at the greatest distance . for our neighbour indians are willing to be the joyful messengers of our settlement , and good disposition to their country-men . as to the innate riches of the country , upon the first information , i always believed it to be very great ; but now find it goes beyond all that ever i thought , or conceited in that matter . the spaniards , as we can understand , are very much surprized and alarm'd , and the more that it comes as a thunder-clap upon them ; having had no notice of us , until three days after our arrival . we have written to the president of panama , giving him account of our good and peaceable intentions , and to procure a good vnderstanding and correspondence ; and if that is not condescended to , we are ready for what else he pleases . if merchants should once erect factories here , this place will soon become the best and surest mart in all america , both for in-land and over-land trade . we want here sloops and coasting vessels ; for want of which , and by reason we have all hands at work in fortifying and filting our selves ( which is now pretty well over ) we have had but little trade as yet ; most of our goods unsold . we are here a thousand one hundred men , and expect supplies every day . we have been exceeding unhappy in losing two ministers who came with us from scotland ; and if new-england could supply us in that , it would be a great and lasting obligation . fort st. andrew , february 18th , 1698 / 9. a farther proof of the falshood of this insinuation is capt. pennicook's journal sent to the company over england , and dated decem. 28 th , almost two months before this letter to new-england , wherein they give an account of the information they had from several hands , that the spaniards were marching with 900 men from panama to attacque them by land , whilst their men of war were to attacque them by sea ; upon which they did all they could to put themselves in a posture of defence against them , so far were they from any design of marching towards panama . the matter being so , h — s's suborners have lost their argument from this topic also , to justify their proceedings against us . he goes on to tell us , that england had no reason to go to war with the spaniards on the score of our company , who besides all the loss of their trade , must throw away more english pounds ( thrice over ) than there 's scotch in our capital stock ; and he will leave it to any man of half an ounce of politicks to find out the iest on 't , save this hot-headed author of our colony's defence . mr. h — s and his suborners may please to know , that we neither desir'd nor expected that england should go to war with the spaniards on the account of our company ; and had as little reason to expect that a faction in england ( for we will not be so unjust as to charge it upon the nation ) should go to war with us on account of the spaniards , before we could be heard in our own defence ; we mean that proclamations should have been publish'd in the west-indies , inferring that the king of england has a power to declare that to be a breach of the peace that is done by the authority of the king of scotland ; that they should thereby forbid their subjects of england to entertain any commerce with us , refuse us provisions for commodities in our distress , except we will bring our ships under the guns of their fort at new-york ; punish their subjects for entertaining commerce with us , and threatning to lay the commanders of our ships in irons if they offer to put in for refreshment , or to refit after a storm , as they did to capt. iamison at nevis . that this wants very little of going to war with the scots , we believe most thinking men are very well satisfied ; but whether it be so or not , we will venture to tell the renegado and his suborners , that by this kind of procedure against the scots , as if we were servants and subjects to england , some gentlemen in and about white-hall have giv'n the spaniards just occasion to make war upon england if they were able , or at least to make reprisals upon the english for the damage they pretend to have suffer'd from the scots , whom the english court by this sort of treatment have declar'd to be their subjects ; whereas if they had not invaded the soveraignty of scotland , the spaniards could have had no such pretence . now whether men that had been endow'd with a quarter of an ounce of politicks would have been guilty of such a false step as this , let our author's suborners determine . and besides , we must tell them , that the men whom capt. long had set ashore with capt. diego in the gulph of darien , committed the first hostility on the spaniards , and kill'd seven of them , with a design , for any thing we know , to trapan us into a war with the spaniards , since one of the same fellows came to our colony afterwards for powder and shot , which our men wisely deny'd them , and told them they had done what they could not justify . the author of the defence of the scots settlement dos no where advise the english to a war with spain on the score of our company ; but gives such arguments to prove that they had no reason to dread the effects if spain should make war with them on that account , and that it was the interest of england to have supported the scots in that settlement , as have not yet been aswer'd , and therefore we shall say nothing farther of it here . our author and his friends are pleas'd to call our apprehensions of the places being possess'd by the french bugbear stories , because the french have another game to play at present with spain , or might have secur'd carthagena when they had it in their power ; and that if france or holland had any such design , they may go sit down within a league of either side of our colony with as good a title as ours . but that the french are generally wiser than to lay out their mony upon such tools as this author appears to be by his way of arguing , one would be apt to think he had touch'd some leuidor's . does he conceive that the french understood their interest so little during the war that threatned their ruine , as to settle a colony in the west-indies at a time when they stood in more need of them at home to defend their own country , and cultivate their ground and vineyards ? is it not known that their design was on the spanish plate , in order to enable them to continue the war , and not on the spanish plantations , which they were in no capacity to defend against the spaniards and their allies if they had at that time seiz'd any of them ? does our author and his suborners think that l. xiv . did not understand his interest better than to offer at a settlement in the spanish west-indies , especially at a place of such importance as carthagena , and thereby have given the english and dutch an opportunity of settling there themselves by coming to drive him out ? could he think that the two nations of europe that have the greatest naval force , and were most concern'd of any to reduce him to reason , would sit still and suffer him to seize the spanish treasures , and by that means enable himself to bring all europe under his yoke ? it is impossible such a thought could ever enter into his mind ; and therefore he had very good reason to forbear keeping possession of carthagena , since 't would have been the ready way to have spoil'd his future pretensions to the west-indies in case of the k. of spain's death , which every body then expected daily . and whenever it happens , if he die without issue , as there 's great odds he will , we stand in need of better guarantees than h — and his suborners , that the fr. king will not seize the spanish west-indies and darien into boot ; against which there are those who have studied politicks as much as our author , who are of opinion that the settlement at darien might have been no contemptible barrier . the scribler takes upon him to pass his word for his majesty that the scots crown will receive no blemish or disreputation by his wearing it . we believe his majesty will scarcely thank him for his security , and we are satisfied our nation will as little rely on it . but at the same time we must tell this gentleman and his suborners , that we had as little reason to suspect that k. charles i. who was a native of scotland , would have dishonour'd our crown so far as to order it to be brought to england ; and therefore it is not impossible for princes to be over-perswaded by ill council , to do such things as are inconsistent with the honour of their crowns . and thus some will venture to say , that the crown of scotland was no ways honour'd , when the dutch troops took place of the king of scots's guards ; and when the king of england takes upon him to condemn by proclamations what the king of scotland has approv'd by act of parliament and letters patent . the scribler comes next to give us a taste of his skill in the brittish history he brags of so much , by telling us the fate of some great scots families that swell'd beyond their proportion . his instances of the cummins and gouries sufficiently discover his ignorance of the scotish history . the former was indeed a very great family , but are an inauspicious instance for him and those of his kidney , their ruin not being occasion'd by their greatness , but by joyning with the enemies of our nation as this renegado does . as for his application of his instances , it serves to discover the malicious designs of himself and suborners against the two greatest families that are now left in scotland . the kind treatment this author met with from one of these great men upon his arrival , after having deserted our colony , would have oblig'd any but a monster of ingratitude to have forborn such a causeless and invenom'd reflection , which nothing but ingrain'd malice can suggest . we come in the next place to take a view of the book it self . in the very first page he owns he is no friend to the scots company , and alledges he has more reason for it than those skeletons that are starved to death . this we hope is sufficient to shew what credit is to be given to his narrative , wherein tho he promises to keep close to matter of fact , he abounds with blasphemous and impertinent digressions : one of the first we shall take notice of , is his unmannerly reflection on the city of london , pag. 3. as a place where matter is never wanting to exercise plodding heads . which is so near a kin to the language of the faction that in the late reigns aim'd at the destruction of that noble emporium , which deserves to be the mistress of the universe , that we cannot in the least doubt but it proceeds from the same spirit . of the same nature is his reflection , pag. 7. upon the london subscribers , who came in so fast to the scots company , that he thought himself the happiest man that could get his name first down in our books : which is a plain demonstration that those eager subscribers thought the design no way prejudicial to the interest of their country ; for upon enquiry it will be found , that most of them were such as had zealously appear'd for its liberty in former reigns . his malicious reflection in that same page , as if the company had promis'd 20000 l. to paterson , smith , and lodg , to engage subscriptions in england and the hans-towns , is notoriously false : they had not one farthing promis'd them , tho to be sure the company would have rewarded them for their pains and service , as it was reasonable they should ; besides , it appears by the eagerness of the english and hamburgers to subscribe , until they were prevented by their respective governments , that there was no occasion for such a bribe to bring in subscriptions . his reflection , pag. 8. of our printing the address of the commons at edinburgh , but not the king's answer , admitting it to be true , is so far from being criminal , that it rather argues the greatest respect imaginable for his majesty , whom we would not lessen in the esteem of the people of scotland , who knew they had a natural right to claim and expect his protection . his owning in that same page , that the company 's books had not been long open'd in edinburgh till 400000 l. was sign'd , and that all sorts of people ( whom he is pleas'd to express under the scurrilous denomination of poor , blind and lame ) crouded in with their subscriptions , serves to confute his foregoing and following reflections , that the company was obliged to promise 20000 l. to procure subscriptions , and to go where the money lay , viz to holland and the hans towns ; especially since he owns himself , p. 10 , 19. that they were baulk'd of their subscriptions in england and holland , and had not one groat of the hamburgers money . his reflection upon mr. paterson , pag. 8. whom he blasphemously calls the man paterson , alluding to the apostles calling our saviour the man christ , is altogether false : he always propos'd the paying half the subscriptions , and most of the subscribers were resolved to pay the whole ; as it appears they have already a considerable part of it , by their having sent away three convoys , and being busy in preparing a fourth . his irreligious and atheistical temper appears further by his reflecting upon their expecting good returns by the old cant of god's blessing , as if it were possible to look for success in any thing without the divine benediction , or ridiculous to express our dependency on it . but it seems his suborners are resolv'd that our nation shall be huff'd , banter'd , and blasphem'd out of all their rights as men and christians . his next reflection , p. 9. of our sending persons to build six ships of fifty guns a piece at amsterdam and hamburgh , to prepossess the dutchmen with a kind opinion of the company , and thereby make it appear how willing we were to extend the warm rays of our octroy to people who deserv'd it better than our ungrateful neighbours , is malicious to the highest degree . he and his suborners very well know , that we could neither build nor buy in england , because of the opposition made to us there ; and since 't is known that they can build cheaper in hamburgh and holland than in england , our offering first to lay out our money with our neighbours , and not going beyond sea till we were compell'd to it , is a proof from his own mouth , that we had no other but friendly intentions towards the english nation . his insinuation of the difference betwixt the kirk and church parties , about each of them imploying their own instruments , shews more malice than wisdom ; since admitting people of different perswasions into companies is practised in all trading parts of the world , and particularly in england , where the dissenters have no small share in all their funds and companies : but by this they may see what fair treatment they are to expect , if h — s and his suborners could get their wills . the old popish maxim would soon be brought into practice , that no man should have leave to buy or sell , but he that is of the public religion . his next story of our debate about entrusting any man that was fed on english beef and pudding with 20000 l. for the use of our delegates abroad , is equally scurrilous and false . we trusted no man but mr. paterson with that money , and did not think it fit that every subscriber , but that only a special committee should know how that money was to be imploy'd . nor can this be charg'd upon us as a piece of foolish considence in mr. paterson , whom the scribler owns p. 4. to have been intrusted with laying the foundation of the bank of england , tho ill rewarded for it . his malicious calumny , that mr. paterson did afterwards form the darien project to be reveng'd on the english nation , is sufficiently falsified by his and our first offers to take in the english as joint subscribers , after the said project was actually form'd , and imparted to some select heads , as he himself owns p. 7. as to smith's cheating us of 8500 l. it was our misfortune , not our crime , as is manifest from our diligence in recovering 4500 l. of it . this renedo's saying p. 11. that smith deservedly bubled us , argues himself to be as great a cheat as smith ; and there 's little reason to doubt , but he defrauded the company as far as opportunity would allow him , when instrusted as purser with their stores from hamburgh , and elsewhere , which he seems to own himself when he boasts of his bringing home as much gold-dust from darien , as any of the counsellors , p. 149. his assertion p. 14. that capt. gibson was cheated of the 2 per cent commission money , is a shameless falshood ; the captain was satisfied , and rewarded to his own content . the next proof we have of the ingenuity of this renegado and his suborners , is p. 15. where he tells us that paterson being in drink , babbled out a secret of the company at camphire , viz. that their act empowered them to give commissions to any kind of people ( without asking their nation ) to trade to the indies under scots colours ; and that such people might dispose of their india goods where they pleas'd , providing they made a sham entry in scotland . to say that this was a secret of the company , and in the same breath to inform the world that mr. paterson said , they were impowered to do so by their act , which was every where publick , and in print , is like the rest of the libeller's inconsistencies : but his suborners and he were so far transported with malice , that they resolv'd to dress our act of parliament throughout in the disguise of a cheat , and charge it upon the company as secret intrigues , without ever considering that the act it self would discover their falshood and malice . the clause of the act is as follows : and that the said company may , by virtue hereof , grant and delegate such rights , properties , powers and immunities , and permit and allow such sort of trade , commerce , and navigation into their plantations , colonies , cities , towns , or places of their possession , as the said company shall from time to time judg fit and convenient . these being the very words of the act , the dutch could not be impos'd upon in that manner by mr. paterson , if he had been so minded ; or had he been drunk , as the libeller says , when he told the story , they must have been very weak men , that would offer to sign upon the words of a drunken man , without seeing the act it self . it is not to be doubted but this clause impowers the company to allow such a trade as h — s mentions ; and therefore it might be proper enough for mr. paterson to urge it as an argument to engage subscribers : but that he could do it in these terms that h — s here sets down , there 's no ground to believe ; and therefore his answer to those that would not sign but on that bottom , that the company had no occasion to make use of that power at present , was very proper . the story of the sham entry in scotland , paying 3 per cent. to the company , and thereby underselling the english and dutch 17 per cent. is so void of all sense , that it would seem the libeller and his suborners were drunk when they suggested it . the act does indeed oblige such ships as were imploy'd by the company to break bulk in scotland , but lays no such obligation upon those that they might impower to trade to their colony : and considering what has been already said of the drawbacks , that the cargo of the said ships was custom-free no where but in scotland , and that by his own concession they were to pay 3 per cent. at least to the company , how was it possible they could undersel the english and dutch 17 per cent. especially considering the vast quantities that those two companies buy at a time , and by consequence were like to have the prime cost easier than our infant company ? after all this sham story , he happens to tell the main reason of the miscarriage of our design in holland , and perhaps of its doing so in england . the dutch east and west india companies , says he , complain'd to the lords of amsterdam that the scots commissioners were designing the ruin of their trade . which by the way shews that the project of an american trade was discours'd of by the commissioners ; which the libeller , it 's probable , would not have mention'd , had not his memory given him the slip , and that he forgot he had formerly told us that the darien project was still kept secret . why then should the dutch west-india company be so much concerned at our taking subscriptions there , but that they knew we had a design on the isthmus of america ? and therefore their east-india company knowing also , that we being once masters of a good settlement there , it would have abridg'd the way , and made voyages speedier to china , iapan , the philippine islands , &c. where their trade lies , they thought it might in time be dangerous for them , if that isthmus should be possess'd by the subjects of great britain . so that there 's no reason to doubt but they found interest enough at the west end of the town to lay as many rubs in our way as was possible to be done . p. 17. the libellers give us another evidence of their candor and ingenuity , when they tell us , the hamburghers knew nothing of darien , but builded altogether on ships laden with india goods , whereof their city and port was to be the receptacle and mart , whilst paterson wanted only mony to raise forces to overrun mexico and peru. but our author and his suborners ought to have consider'd , that since they have told us of the fears of the dutch west-india company , we could easily infer , that the project of the isthmus could not be long conceal'd from the hamburghers : that the act it self would satisfy the subscribers there , that the company 's ships must break bulk in scotland ; and therefore they could not expect to be the receptacle and mart of our stores : whatever they might hope for as to conveying the merchandize to the inland places of germany , they could not but think that we had shipping of our own to carry our goods to the ports on the baltick and german sea. in that same page they give us another hint to confirm our suspicion that it is more from the apprehensions of our lessening the dutch than the english trade , that the court have so violently oppos'd us , viz. that the hamburghers by joining with the scots had a prospect of worming the hollander out of a good part of the german trade . which admitting to be true , the hollanders had none but themselves to blame for it , since we offer'd to take them in as joint subscribers before we made any proposal to the hamburghers ; nor is it any ways unreasonable in it self that germans should have the preference of other nations in trading with germany . after a great deal of prophane banter and ridiculing the sacred text , he tells us that the human reason of our disappointment was an unnecessary paragraph in our octroy , which occasion'd a great many english and holland speculations , viz. that in case the company should be interrupted in their trade , &c. the king had ingaged to interpose the royal authority to do them right , and that at the public charge ; which , says he , paterson and the rest insinuated in all companies , that the king was to assist and defend them with his ships of war , or otherwise , if there was occasion , and that out of his own pocket , which they did not question to be english coin. there 's no reasonable man will think it unnecessary that a prince should protect his subjects in their trade , either by his men of war or otherwise ; and therefore this being a clause of the act of parliament , it was no ways unnecessary to be put into the patent : and we will adventure to tell h — and his suborners that they who advis'd his majesty to refuse our company the three men of war built at our own charge , when they offer'd to be at the expence of maintaining them , have advis'd him to act contrary to the trust repos'd in him as king of scots , and to contravene this very act of parliament , and that which order'd those ships to be built for defence of trade ; than which there cannot be a more false step in government : for when once people perceive that princes have no regard to the laws made for the protection and welfare of the subject , they will naturally think themselves absolv'd from such as require their allegiance , and support of the soveraign . that mr. paterson , and the scots company should insinuate from the octroy that we were to be assisted or defended by english men of war or money , is nothing but a mixture of falshood and malice . the libeller owns that the words of our act cannot bear it , and the world knows that our parliaments never pretend to dispose of english ships or mony ; and therefore no man of sense will believe this renegado , when he says the scots company put that gloss on the text for their own advantage , since that had been directly to expose themselves . for we are not to suppose they could think the dutch and hamburghers so weak , as not to peruse the act it self , which would soon have undeceived them : therefore all those reflections , which he pretends the english traders to india made upon it , must vanish of course , as having no manner of foundation . much less can they serve to justify the memorial given in at hamburgh by sir paul ricaut against our taking subscriptions there : which memorial , tho minc'd by our libeller , yet ev'n as he represents it , is against the law of nations , and indeed scarcely reconcileable to good sense ; in the first place to call our agents private men , who acted by the company 's authority , and according to act of parliament ; and in the next place to suppose that the hamburghers could possibly join with us in hopes of english protection , when the opposition made to us by the court of england was known all over europe : nay the scribler himself owns , p. 17. that the more opposition the english and dutch offer'd to the project , the more the hamburghers thought it their interest to embrace it . this is sufficient to convince the suborners that the next time they hire a scribler to belie the scots company , they must be sure to pitch upon one that has a better memory . his next reflections p. 22 , 23. that our ships were neither fit for trade nor war , that our cargo was not proper , that our main design was the buccaneer trade , that above 10000 l. was deficient of the first payments , and most of the subscribers not able to raise their quota , are equally false with the rest . the ships for their burden and size , are as fit either for trade or war as any in europe . the cargo of cloth , stuffs , shoes , stockins , slippers , and wigs , must needs be proper for a country where the natives go naked for want of apparel , and fit to be exchanged for other commodities , either in the english , dutch , french , or spanish plantations . for bibles we suppose our libeller would rather we had carried mass books ; yet others will be of opinion , that 1500 of 'em was no unfit cargo : our own colony might have dispens'd with that number in a little time ; nor were they unfit to have been put into the hands of such of the natives , especially of the younger sort , that might learn our language . for hoes , axes , macheet knives , &c. they were absolutely necessary for our selves , and a commodity much valued by the natives . fifteen hundred square buccaneer pieces , and proportionable ammunition , was no such extraordinary store for eleven or twelve hundred men : and whereas he maliciously insinuates that buccaneering was our main design , the event hath prov'd it to be false ; had that been our intent , we might easily have invaded the spanish plantations at both ends of the isthmus ; sancta maria , nor panama it self , could never have been able to withstand such a force , when a few undisciplin'd buccaneers did so easily take them . it 's well enough known there was a parcel of as brave men that went with our fleet as perhaps great britain could afford , many of 'em inur'd to war and fatigues , and knew how to look an enemy in the face without being daunted . they had giv'n proofs enough of that in flanders , where no men alive could fight with more bravery and zeal than they did for the common cause , tho some people have since thought fit to starve them . that there was above 10000 l. of the 100000 l. not paid in , is false ; there was not above 2000 l. wanting . for those great men that thought their countenance enough , and therefore refus'd to pay in their subscriptions , he shall have our leave to name them ; but perhaps his suborners will not care to have their friends so much expos'd . that most of the subscribers were unable to raise their quota , is demonstrably false , by our sending away two convoys since , the thirds being greater by far than the first , and that we are now preparing a fourth . as to the companies charging 25 per cent. advance on every article of the 19000 l. stock , it 's well enough known that so much advance is thought nothing in a west-india trade ; it was all the profit the company was to have , and only charged in the books by way of formality , that the colony might know what they were indebted to the company . his story , p. 23. of its being propos'd in the company to sell off their ships and cargo , and divide the product amongst the subscribers , is nothing to our dishonour , nor at all to be wondred at , considering the unreasonable opposition we had met with from court. that we rejected it as inglorious , argues still that we are not so mean-spirited as he elsewhere represents us . his base reflections , p. 24. on the company , as if they had despair'd of the design , and sent their men to sea on purpose to perish ; and on drummellier , that he order'd the colony to get mony honestly if they could , but be sure to get it ; and if they came home without it , then the devil get them all , serve only to discover his own temper , and that he thinks all men act and speak like himself . we have said enough already to demonstrate the honesty of both company and colony : had their design been to get mony without regard to honesty , they would not have been starv'd to death by the proclamations , and other opposition made them at court ; they could quickly have possessed themselves of the spanish mines , which the scribler owns , p. 164. were within twelve leagues of them , and with much more ease of the 40000 l. that was sunk in the french ship. but he serves the suborners for their mony much at the same rate he did the scots company . his reflection p. 25. that mr. stratford was oblig'd to arrest our ships at hamburgh for 800 l. flemish , as they were fitting out , serves only to discover his own malice and folly ; mr. stratford had very good security for 800 l. flemish when he had four ships in port not yet fitted out ; and his receiving his mony in a fortnight or three weeks , as the libeller owns in the same paragraph , shows he had no ill paymasters to deal with . it were well for england if all those that have been imployed in the royal navy could say as much by his suborners and their friends . as for our discharging mr. stratford to be any longer our cashier , there 's no need of assigning any other cause for it , but that sr. paul ricaut's memorial render'd it needless ; and to that same account we must charge the two ships that were left there to rot in their ouse . but at the same time we will tell him we had no great reason to be satisfied with mr. stratford's conduct , and believe we have less now than ever since this libeller defends him . his story p. 26. of mr. henderson's arresting another of our ships for 3000 l. is sufficiently answer'd by himself , when he tells us , that he and his partners fail'd in their subscriptions , which was a just debt due to the company , and therefore they had reason to demand and expect it , especially he being a scots-man : yet the company dealt very kindly with him on that account ; and so much the more , that they consider'd his being a residenter in holland , where he was liable both to the english and dutch court , to whose account the libeller must also charge this affront , and the loss we sustain'd at amsterdam . what he says of our seamen , p. 27 , 28. is a manifest untruth . they were immediately paid , extreamly well satisfied ; and we had such choice of able seamen who were willing to go in the expedition , that we turn'd several ashoar after they had embarqu'd , as having no occasion for them . as to his reflection on mr. robert blackwood for pinching them of their wages , and p. 46. for cheating them as to their provisions ; that gentleman is now at london , where we leave h — s and him to account for it . we doubt not but mr. blackwood may have justice done him in westminster-hall if he thinks fit to sue for it ; but so much we think our selves oblig'd to say in his vindication during his absence , that he was never charg'd with any such thing by the company . his next reflections on the transfer , p. 29. by which he would impose on the world as if it had been a trick of the company to cheat the seamen of their wages , are so much the less to be credited , that he himself is a party , and commenc'd the suit he talks of in doctors commons ; which tho that court may perhaps have determin'd in his favour , because the bargain was made with him in london , and those that made it were on the spot , and for other causes best known to themselves , it is nothing at all to the matter in hand ; our courts have no reason to take them for a precedent , and our company has as little to allow the libeller any wages . but to come to the transfer , which he so foully misrepresents . it was so far from being a clandestine practice , that it was agreed on in publick council , and but highly reasonable that the colony should be accountable to the company for the stock they intrusted them with . the libeller only betrays his own folly and malice , and imposes upon his suborners , when he says the gentlemen who gave their joint bond to the company for 70000 l. were not worth so many english pence ; for , admitting they had not been worth one penny of personal estate , they were intrusted by the company with 19000 l. cargo , and ships , provisions , &c. to make it up 70000 l. which was not charg'd upon them as their personal debt , but upon the colony as a corporation , till the same was paid . what he says as to the seamen is a malicious untruth . it was indeed agreed that the colony should pay them ; but if they did not , the company was to do it : and besides , the two months advance which the libeller owns was paid them , the company was to pay to them , or to those that had their powers , or letters of attorny , a month in six , and have accordingly paid them . as to the seamens being made believe that assoon as they had set the landmen on shoar , they were to proceed on a trading voyage , and return to scotland to be paid , it is equally false , they being to stay out whilst the company pleas'd . then as to the transfer in general , it was so far from being clandestine , or a trick , that the company was impower'd to make it by the act of parliament which gave them their original , as any person may see by turning to the act it self , which authorizes them to transfer their joint stock , or capital fund , or any estate real or personal , ships , goods , &c. belonging to the company , under such restrictions , rules , conditions , &c. as the said company shall by writing in and upon their books , &c. appoint . as to the landmen , whom he will also have to be impos'd upon , they knew what they had to relie on , and were very well satisfied with it ; and as to the companys levying souldiers under the notion of planters , without asking leave of the privy council , admitting it to be true , they are not at all to be blam'd for it , since they had no reason to think that the faction at court , which had contraven'd acts of parliament by opposing their subscriptions , and denying them the men of war built for the protection of our trade , would allow them to levy souldiers under that name . but the truth of the matter is this , they were really design'd for planters , and not at all for military business ; tho it was highly necessary the colony should have as many officers and disciplin'd men as they could , that they might be the more able to defend themselves in case of attaque : and therefore his railing against the colony for offering to punish deserters and other criminals , pag. 31. only discovers his own ignorance and malice ; for by the act of parliament they had the whole power , civil and military , conferr'd upon them , and accordingly might exercise their power upon all persons belonging to the company as they saw cause ; so that this is again a libelling of the act of parliament thro the company 's sides . his representation of the seven men chosen for counsellors , page 34. is false and malicious to the highest degree . the liberty given to add other six to those seven , was not , as he spitefully insinuates , for english or french-men of substance that should join them from the west-india plantations , but for such of their own number as they might think fit to assume afterwards . it cannot once enter into the thoughts of any man of sense , that the colony should at first entrust foreigners , and especially french papists in their government , or that the company had any design they should do so ; but he and his suborners think it their interest to make us odious to the english and french , by accusing us of a design to drain their colonies . as to mr. paterson , whom he hath all along abus'd , he happens now thro inadvertency to vindicate him from his own calumnies ; he formerly charg'd him as being partner with smith in cheating the company of 8500 l. and now he tells us that mr. paterson was brought to this dilemma , either to go aboard the fleet bound for caledonia as a volunteer , or to go to prison at edinburgh for debt ; which , had he cheated the company of so much mony as this libeller pretends there had been no occasion for , he might have paid his debts , and gone where he would : and besides , the scribler vindicates the company at the same time from his former charge of their being bewitch'd by paterson's golden dreams , &c. for had they relied ▪ so much upon him as the libeller alledges , they would never have shew'd that indifference for him which here he ridicules him with . such has been the hard fate of the suborners , that their tool has not the sense to make his evidence consistent , but every where cuts his own throat by self-contradictions . to sum up the matter according to the libeller's own evidence . in the council there were some men of quality , that had been bred to the sword and the law , others had been officers both by sea and land , and some that had gain'd experience in merchandizing , and several trades . his banter on the death of the ministers and blasphemous abuse of scripture , p. 37. smell so rank of the atheist and libertine , and do so evidently prove that he hath lost all sense of humanity and religion , that we are satisfied it will do his masters and their cause more hurt than service ; and therefore we pass it over . the next proof we have of his falshood and malice , is his long story about mr. wafer , from page 38 to 45 , wherein he does so blend truth with falshood , as shews he had a mind at any rate to bespatter the reputation of the committee of the company : the said committee knew nothing of those gentlemens treating with wafer at london , till they acquainted them with it , and it was only upon their recommendation that they sent for him : as to their collecting any guineas at pontack's for mr. wafer , it is altogether false . the articles were drawn by mr. iames campbel the merchant , now in london , and wrote by mr. fitz gerald an irish merchant , who both can testify that this matter is foully misrepresented ; for mr. wafer had an alternative propos'd to him , which he agreed to , viz. to have so much if the company thought fit to imploy him , and so much for his trouble and pains if they did not ; the company was so far from standing in any need of his book , that they had a manuscript of it before ever they saw him , which was altogether unknown to the gentlemen that treated with him at london ; this he himself knows to be true , and that to his no small surprize , they repeated several passages out of it to him , and indeed the manuscript is more particular than his book , whatever cause he hath since had to make any alterations in it we know not . the company upon the whole , finding that he could inform them of no thing considerable more than what was in the manuscript , and that he could do them no great service , left him at his liberty to publish his book when he pleas'd , gave him about 100 l. first and last for his pains and expence , with which he was very well satisfied , and hath declared several times since that the company dealt very honourably with him , tho mr. h — s took a great deal of pains to make him publish a memoire to the contrary , which by his honest friend mr. fitz gerald's advice he desisted from doing . as to the libeller's malicious insinuation that they had no further service for him when once he had discovered the place where the nicaragua-wood grew , it is absolutely false , for the manuscript they had was very particular in that . this mr. wafer knows to be true , and if he have but a just resentment , he is equally concern'd to vindicate himself ; for , the libeller reflects as much upon him as upon the company , when he charges him with putting a cheat upon them , as to their nicaragua-wood , p. 44. which h — s says he and others went in search of for several miles along the ceast , but could find none ; and yet he magnifies wafer's freedom , and being ingenious by informing them so particularly , as to the place where the nicaragua-wood grew , p. 41. so perpetually does this malicious libeller contradict himself . — as to the other parts of his story of mr. wafers being conceal'd near haddington , and afterwards at edinburgh ; it was no more than what prudence would have directed any men to do in the like circumstances : the company not knowing till after having discours'd him whether he could do them any service or not ; it was not their wisdom to expose him to publick view ; and having sound that he could not serve them , it was equally prudent in them to keep him at an uncertainty as to their design ; they being under no obligation to acquaint him with it . as to the story of admiral bembo's waiting their motion ; if they did say so , the event hath made it but too probable ; he hath waited so long in those parts till our colony hath left darien : what orders he had concerning it , or what part he hath acted in it , time must determine ; but if all that we have heard of large bills being return'd him , and of his offers by his sloops to draw our men from our colony be true , there 's reason to suspect that he was sent thither with no design for our advantage : however that may be we know not ; but this we know , that if our enemies at court had been as zealous to protect us as they have been to ruin us the admiral would certainly have had orders to have made reprisals on the spaniards for detaining capt. pincarton his ship and men , contrary to treaty with the king of great britain , when forc'd a-shoar by a storm under the walls of carthagena . he tells us , p. 45 , that two thirds of the provision were spent e're the fleet sail'd , that there was none to be had in scotland at that time , and if there had , there was no money ; the 100000 l. being sunk , and the company 's credit not worth 2 d. and that they had stuck there , had it not been for some few pillars of the scots company who mortgag'd their estates ; for which the company made over three of their ships to them for their security . that there was no provisions to be had then in scotland , will readily be allow'd him , is sufficient to answer all his malicious clamour against the company , and to confute his own objection , p. 155. in defence of his masters , against the company , for not sending them provisions . that there was no money , and that the company 's credit was not worth 2 d. is confuted by himself , when he owns that a few of the pillars rais'd 5000 l. and took three of the company 's ships for security . for that a few of the pillars could raise 5000 l. and the company have three new ships , one of them of 70 guns to give for security ; and yet the company 's credit not to be worth 2 d. is a palpable contradiction . that any of the company mortgaged their estates to raise money , is false ; they advanc'd it on their own credit , as they might well do , it being well known there are several of them who have as much yearly estate as the sum he speaks of : nor did they desire the company 's ships in security , but only a bond which it was reasonable they should have . he comes next to give us an account of the shortness of the provisions , p. 46. and of his own honesty in the mean time , in not acquainting the commadore with it till they were three days at sea ; perhaps he had embezel'd them himself , or pocketed some of the money , for he own that he had some time before been concerned in the victualling part , and therefore dar'd not to say any thing of it on shore , left it might have been prov'd upon him ; but however that is , this we are sure of , that the company had letters from their ships at the mideras , that they had twelve months provisions of all sorts , at sharp allowance , and that if any thing fell short , it was likely to be their bread : that they thought this to be true , may be reasonably concluded from his own narrative , where he says the council upon his representation , design'd to send an express from the orkneys , to acquaint the company with the shortness of their provisions , which to be sure they would have done , had they been sensible that they were so short as he alledges : besides , he owns they had full eleven months allowance of stock-fish at four days in the week ; whence it is probable that they had other things in proportion . the reason why they had no more beer but ten tun , was that the seamen could not depend on the beer because it spoils , they had great store of very good water , and a very great quantity of brandy which the libeller takes no notice of . as for the company 's promising them credit at the maderas , it is false ; nor was there any need of it , they had pipe staves and other goods , which were thought proper for the maderas , but if it did not answer so well as 't was expected , 't was but the common misfortune of merchants , who many times meet with such disappointments . nor is it to be expected that a nation of so little experience in trade as ours , should at first setting out , be free from mistakes or mismanagement , especially since we have such invective enemies to deal with , who make it their business to get ill men amongst us every where , on purpose to break our design . his next reflection is on the small allowance of ready money , which is sufficiently answer'd when we tell him their cargo was reckon'd instead of it , and as has been already said , must needs be conceiv'd to be very proper for a country where people go naked for want of apparel . they had a great deal of butter , and excellent beef , of scots breed , by which we gain'd an experiment contrary to the common notion ; for upon trial it was found to be better than the irish , and therefore our men resolv'd to keep it last . his objection as to its having been eighteen months in salt is frivolous . seamen think nothing of that , when they can carry beef to the east indies and back again , and keep it good all the while . his charge upon drummelier as having bought damnified wheat for their bread , and put the money in his poket , is malicious and false : there 's no man but one of the renegadoes temper that can suspect that worthy gentleman to be capable of any such thing . besides , the bread was extraordinary good . his story , p. 50. about crab-island , is false ; the company gave no positive orders to leave any men there , and it s equally false that the danes prevented our taking possession of it , our men were there before the danes came from sr. thomas , the governour of which suspecting our design , upon the arrival of the vnicorn there , sent an officer and fifteen men to assert the king of denmark's right , after our men went off from the place , they saw the danish sloop in another bay of the same island call'd french-man's bay , and a tent ashore with danish colours on it ; upon which captain pennicook landed again , told them we were possessed before them , against which they offer'd their protest to please the court of denmark , but wish'd with all their hearts we might settle there , for we should be a good bulwark to them against the spaniards of porto-rico , who are very troublesome neighbours . it is false what he says p. 54. that captain andreas , after looking upon us at first landing , did not come near us in three or four weeks , for he came aboard us at first with some of his men on the 2d of november , and brought his travelling wife with him on the 3d of november , when he came on board again , and was very well satisfied with us : and on the 10th of the same month , he and his son , wife and sister , din'd on board us . and on the 30th of november he was invited on board , handsomly treated , and after having given a rational vindication of himself , as to the matter suggested against him by the other darien captains or princes ; and being inform'd of our real design , which before he suspected to be piracy , he desir'd a commission from us , which was readily granted and cheerfully accepted ; and he solemnly promis'd to defend us to the last drop of his blood. that his commission was left behind him in the locker of the round-house , cram'd in amongst empty bottles , we have nothing but this renegado's word for it : but admitting it to be so , it does not therefore necessarily follow , that it was left there by andreas , or his order ; it is not to be suppos'd that a person of his note , could creep into the round-house undiscover'd : and perhaps it may be no unreasonable conjecture , to think that it was stole from him , and lodg'd there by this renegado ; for he owns that it was himself that found it , and he knows the proverb , he that hides knows best where to find . his story about andreas's exit , p. 60. that he fell , or was thrown down the main hatch-way of the caledonia in the night time , after a quarrel with ambrosio , the greatest of those indian captains , has such an air of malice and falshood , that it requires better evidence than that of a self-contradicting libeller , before it can obtain belief with any rational man , or allowing it to be true , that he was actually tumbled down the hatch-way in the night time , it looks more like the practice of such a quarrelsome ill natur'd person as himself , than of any body else . they that know his behaviour to his own captain , when he was surgeon on board one of the king's ships , his quarrelling with captain pennicook , commadore of our ships that went to darien , and the whole tenor of his conversation , cannot think this any uncharitable reflection . his unnatural rancor against his native country , and unbounded malice against the scots company , make it probable enough that he might do such a thing on purpose to render the natives enemies to the colony , which he deserted himself about a month after : and this is so much the more probable , because he exclaims against those on board , for not taking care of andreas , nor letting him blood after his fall , since none was so proper to do it as himself , who was a surgeon , and on board the ship at the time . it is needless to insist any further on his train of falshoods and inconsistencies in his account of the country , which being contrary , not only to all that have wrote of it , but also to the journals and letters sent from our colony . we have better reason to say , that his description is calculated to the humour of our enemies , and his suborners , than that the colony's and mr. wafer's accounts were calculated to the meridian of the scots company . to put this matter out of all doubt , we stall here subjoin the first letter sent from caledonia by the council of the colony to the company , which is the testimony of six against one . right honourable , ovr last to you was from the maderas , of the 29th of aug. and sent by the several ways of holland and portugal , to the contents whereof we now refer , and in particular to the state of provisions therewith sent , and which we now find doth considerably fall short even of what was then computed , by reason of the badness of the c●●k . the account of the remaining part of our voyage , together with the most material transactions since , you may know by the enclosed iournal or diary of our proceedings . we now send you our letters and dispatches by mr. alexander hamilton merchant , who takes the opportunity of passing to you by the way of jamaica over england , to whom we desire you would order forty shillings sterling to be paid weekly , towards his expences , during the time he shall stay with you negotiating our affairs . the wealth , fruitfulness , health and good situation of the country proves for the better , much above our greatest expectation , which god almighty seems to have wonderfully reserv'd for this occasion , and now to have prepar'd our way , and disposed the indies to that purpose . in our passage hither several of our number have been taken from us by death ( whose names we have herewith sent you ) and whereof the loss of our two ministers is the most sensible to us . we therefore intreat you would use your utmost endeavours with the general assembly , for procuring others so supply that great want : as to the country , we find it very healthful ; for although we arriv'd here in the rainy season , from which we had little or no shelter for several weeks together , and many sick among us , yet they are so far recover'd , and in so good a state of health as could hardly any where be expected among such a number of men together ; nor know we any thing here of those several dangerous and mortal distempers so prevalent in the english and other american islands . in fruitfulness this country seems not to give place to any in the world : for we have seen several of the fruits , as cocoa-nuts , whereof chocolate is made , bonellos , sugar-canes , maize , oranges , plantains , mangoe , yams , and several others , all of them of the best of their kind any where found . nay there is hardly a spot of ground here but what may be cultivated : for even upon the very tops and sides of the hills and mountains , there is commonly three or four foot deep of rich earth , without so much as a stone to be found therein . here is good hunting and fowling , and excellent fishing in the bays and creeks of the coast ; so that could we improve the season of the year just now begun , we should soon be able to subsist of our selves ; but fortifying and building will lose us a whole years planting . by the want of sloops , or small coasting vessels , we have hitherto had no opportunity of disposing any part of the cargo , or doing other needful things . since the loss of the french ship mentioned in the iournal , we understand that the captain had an underhand correspondence , in tampering with some of the natives whom he intended to carry away with him , which hightens our iealousy that the french have a design upon this place , or at least to make a settlement hereabout . and we heartily wish that our most gracious king were truly informed of what consequence it will be both to his greatness and security , to countenance and encourage us his loyal and dutiful subjects here , that our prince and country be not only depriv'd of so valuable a iewel , but least the same should fall a prey to some of our rival neighbours . this will be the companies part to notice after these dispatches shall come to hand , you have inclosed a list of several goods and merchandises vendable and proper for this place ; our situation being incomparable for the trade of the coast , where ( besides our inland trade ) there is commonly but 2 or 3 , or at most but 8 or 10 days sail to the best places of trade upon the coast , and to the outmost considerable islands adjoining . and we desire that particular merchants in scotland , and elsewhere , may be incouraged to trade and correspond hither ; in which we hope they will sufficiently find their account . we have also sent you a state of what supplies of provisions , stores , and merchant goods are absolutely necessary for the present support of the colony ; referring it to the company to determine what reasonable consideration they will have for the sums that shall be advanced for that purpose : and we entreat , that all possible expedition may be us'd in sending us these needful supplies ; for without that we shall not only be incapable of making you suteable returns , but this hopeful vndertaking , together with our selves will run no small risque of being inevitably lost . but however it be ( by the help of god ) we shall not fall to do our utmost in making speedy and suteable returns ; and shall always account it our greatest honour to expose our persons , and all that 's most near and dear unto us , in promoting this hopeful design , as not only promising profit and glory to the company , and all who are concern'd with them , but as being the likeliest means that ever yet presented towards the inabling our countrymen to revive , recover , transmit to posterity , the virtue , lustre , and wonted glory of their renown'd ancestors : and to lay a foundation of wealth , security , and greatness to our mother kingdom for the present and succeeding ages . in which we can no way doubt of your most hearty concurrence and utmost support . so praying almighty god would bless and prosper the company in all their vndertakings . we remain , right honourable , your most humble servants , robert jolley . j. montgomery . dan. mackay . rob. pennicook . rob. pincartone . will. paterson . caledonia , new edenburgh , december , 28th 1698. p. s. we intreat you to send us a good ingineer , who is extreamly wanted here . this place being capable of being strongly fortified . you 'l understand by ours from maderas , the danger as well as the tediousness of our passage north about , so that if the ships can conveniently be fitted out from clyd , it will save a great deal of time in their passage , and be far less hazardous . this being from men who knew the misrepresentation of the affair , must needs issue in their own ruin , cannot be suspected the disingenuity ; and therefore must certainly over-balance the evidence of a renegado , who owns that he writes out of malice . the first defence he puts in the company 's mouth is , their being baulk'd of foreign subscriptions , which made them lose time and money , whereby they could not send out such a number of men and quantity of provisions as the project would have required . this is litterally true , let h — s and his suborners answer it if they can . as for his question , why did they prodigally throw away 50000 l. in holland and hamburgh , purely to make a bluster there ; and why did they trust to another man's purse till such time as they are sure of it ? we shall answer by asking him another question , viz. since he pretends to know the secrets of the west end of the town , why did our government oppose our taking foreign subscriptions , since they had impowered us by acts of parliament , and letters pattent to take them , and since 't was such a thing as the like perhaps was never done ; what reason had we to suspect being baulk'd of our foreign subscriptions ? he himself own'd that the hollanders and hamburgers were fond of our project , till our government oppos'd us ; and therefore , by his own confession , they are to blame for those disappointments . as to our taking subscriptions in hamburgh and holland . we had reason to engage as many of our protestant neighbours in the design as we could , that we might be the more able to defend our selves in case of opposition ; which is neither ill policy , nor inconsistent with honesty . the 2d defence he puts in their mouth , that their ships were man'd , no provisions to be had in scotland , more were providing abroad , and no more money to be had from the subscribers till once the ships were sail'd , is such as he and his suborners will never be able to answer ; what could the company do more , than take care to have provisions abroad , when none were to be had at home ? and if the subscribers would pay no more money till the ships put to sea , there was a necessity of sailing . his objection as to the shortness of their provisions , we have answer'd already , and shall add which he maliciously conceals ; that we sent a ship with provisions after them , which was cast away in ianuary , for which we cannot be answerable ; and he himself owns we sent another convoy in may ; then since the colony sent us advice from the maderas , dated aug. 29. that they had still 8 months large , and twelve months short allowance : the company cannot justly be accus'd of supine neglect , when they sent away one ship with provisions four months after this notice , and two more in five months after that , considering that they had no provisions in scotland , as the libeller himself owns ; and that the colony had a cargo which might have bought them provisions either from the natives , if they had any to spare , which we could not doubt of by mr. wafer's description , or from the english colonies , had it not not been for the proclamation , which we had no reason to suspect would be issued at all , and much less in such a manner , in the name of our own prince , who was oblig'd to protect us . to the causes he assigns for the sailing of our fleet without a greater quantity of provisions , we shall add one more , viz. that we had reason to fear that our enemies might prevent us ; which captain long 's being on those coasts a month before us , shews was not without ground ; no more than our suspicion , that endeavours were used to surprize us into a war with the spaniards , by long 's men killing seven of them , as hath been already mention'd ; and of his doing all he could to make us odious to the natives , by telling them we were pirates , and disobliging both ambrosio and diego , by sordid little actions of his own , as captain pennicook gave us an accoun in his journal . a grave member of the committee of trade can give a more full account of this , if he pleases ; and when his hand is in , he would do well to assign us a reason why that barbarous murder committed by long 's men , was never yet taken notice of by the spaniards , since they have published such angry memorials against us , who committed no hostilities upon them . his objection to the third and fourth reason relating to the honesty of our design , and the cargoes not being proper , we have answer'd already . as for that of our goods being seizable in iamaica and other english plantations , by the act of navigation , it 's one of the hardships we justly complain of , that was put upon us by the enemies of our nation in charles ii's reign . but allowing it to be reasonable , it cannot have so much equity in it , as the laws which make it punishable by death , to rob and murder . yet the execution of those are many times dispenc'd with in favour of criminals , by his majesty ; and indeed a power to dispence with the execution of law sometimes , to save the life of a subject , is one of the most innocent branches of the prerogative ; but we had much more reason to have expected a dispensation in this case , to save the lives of so many of his subjects , who had generously venter'd them for himself . his owning , p. 148. and 154. that a cargo of provisions brought by two iamaica sloops , was bought by the colony , besides as many turtle as came to 100 and odd pounds ▪ for which he owns the colony paid 'em ; not only contradicts what he says almost in the same breath , that there was neither money no moneys worth to be had in the colony ; and that they laid out all their stock of ready money for wine at maderas , p. 48. but may , together with their having both provisions and money when they came to new york , justly confirm our suspicion , that there was a mismanagement of the provisions ; since two sloop's cargo of provision , 27 pipes of wine , 100 pounds worth of turtle , the fish plantains , bonanoes , potatoes , indian corn , sojours , or land crabs , which he says were plentiful at first ' added to their former provisions which they own'd they had at the maderas ; together with the decrease of their number of men by death was not enough to keep their colony from starving for nine months . we have still the more reason to suspect this , because the letter from new york , which brought us the first certain account of the disaster of our colony , hinted as if there might be some work for the hangman . that there were more ill men in the colony than h — s is probable enough : and particularly that pennicook was brib'd to raise divisions in the colony , and put all in disorder by his insolence : which falling in with the proclamations that were concerted for our destruction , gave a handle to other ill men to foment the divisions , and compleat the ruin of the colony by a total desertion . his insinuation , p. 154 , that two iamaica sloops with provisions return'd from the colony without breaking bulk , because there was neither money nor market goods there ; deserves better evidence than his own before it obtain credit . we have indeed heard of one vessel with provisions , which insisted on such extravagant rates , that the colony would not incourage them to do the like in time to come ; and therefore would not deal with them : hoping that their own convoy might speedily come up ; but this was before they knew any thing of the ploclamation , which cut off all their future hopes , ev'n from scotland . we have also letters from new york , that the government of that place seem'd to intend them no good ; of which their desiring our ships to come and anchor under the guns of the castle , is a clear proof ; and the reason of this unkind treatment is also explain'd to us , viz. that they suspected our men had a design to return back as soon as they got provisions . nay , we have had advice , that their gold dust was actually refus'd at iamaica , because of the proclamations which we have reason enough to believe : since we cannot think that the inhabitants there would be willing to incurr the height of his majesty's displeasure to oblige the scots . that our men had gold dust from the natives for powder , shot , and speckled shifts : the libeller owns himself , p. 149 , and there he brags of it , that he brought off more himself at 3 l. 10 s. per ounce , ( how he came by it , is worth the inquiry ) than most of the councellors that are come home since ; and by letters from new york , we have heard there was money amongst them : by all which 't is evident , that want of money or goods was not the sole cause of their being denied provisions from the english plantations . his insinuation , that the french and dutch islands would have supplied us if we had had money or goods , is ridiculous ; when the government of both those nations had so expresly declared themselves against us . his allegation in that same page , that his majesty knew nothing of the colonies settlement at darien , but what he had at second hand , &c. till the spanish ambassadur told him from his master , is so notoriously false , that none but a person of his forehead could have advanced it , when the world knows that the proclamation against us was publish'd in the west-indies in april , and the spanish memorial was not deliver'd till may following . we should indeed be very glad to find that his majesty knew nothing of those proclamations ; and that his name was made use of without his consent ; as some say his grandfathers was in the irish massacre : for then we might reasonably expect speedy justice upon those bold offenders , who dar'd to publish such proclamations in his majesty's name , wherein we are condemned ; as having invaded the spanish dominions before ever it was heard what we could say for our selves , or without giving us any notice of those proclamations , that we might have taken care to have preserv'd our men from being starv'd to death by them : by which they have made our prince to act more like our declared enemy , than one that we had constantly lov'd and rever'd as father of his country : and that which is yet more cutting ; they still prevail to mislead him , so as he continues his unnatural opposition to us : for besides the proclamations formerly mentioned , another has been since publish'd against us in barbadoes , dated sept. 15 , which is so much the more unaccountable ; considering the memorial given in by our president and advocate , justifying our pretensions which the spaniards have never yet offered to answer . by means of this proclamation , the st. andrew was denied relief when she fell in with admirel bembo , who told her , tho they should all starve he could allow them none , and the like answer they had from the governor of iamaica , tho they offer'd goods in exchange ; the like opposition is also continued against us at home ; for tho the company have address'd his majesty , yet 't is without effect . after a full representation of their losses , they did wisely and dutifully desire the parliament might meet , that being the properest way to have the sinking honour of the company supported ; but his majesty instead of granting their reasonable desires , was prevail'd upon by those who are enemies to our country , to prorogue it further at the very time when they knew the address was coming up , and all the answer thought fit to give them , is , that his majesty is sorry for the loss of his ancient kingdom and of the company , that they shall have the same liberty to trade to the west-indies as formerly ; and that he will call the parliament when he thinks the good of the nation requires it , or to that effect . it may easily be judged , that this answer could be no way satisfactory to the company in such a juncture : nor are we to wonder , if instead of cheering their spirits , it struck them dumb , and fill'd them with amazement . we wish that those who advise his majesty to such a conduct towards the people of scotland , who have never been backward in testifying their loyalty and affection to his person and government ; would consider that this is a downright violation of our constitution . it 's certain that none are so proper to give his majesty advice , when a parliament is necessary as our own nobility gentry and burrowghs , who are most of them concern'd in our company : and therefore their address ought to haye been more regarded than the advice of any particular persons . this false method of government hath ruin'd many of our princes , and we wish that those who put his majesty upon such measures , may not have his ruin in prospect . it is certain they can be none of his friends , who put him upon disobliging of the whole kingdom of scotland in this manner . we come next to the libeller's defence of the spanish title to darien , p. 163. his first argument , that the spaniards title to that country was never hitherto disputed by any prince or state , is a downright falshood . the darien princes themselves controverted it always , and their plea was allow'd to be good by the judges of england , as we have been forc'd to tell this renegado and his suborners again and again . the title of the spaniards as conquerours to any part of america , is not only doubted by the bishop of cheapo , don bartholomew de los casas , mention'd in the defence of the scots settlement , but strenuously argu'd against and maintain'd to be unlawful , in his propositions concerning the title of the king of spain to america , propos'd to the consideration of the king of spain himself . in his ninth proposition he asserts , that when christian princes apply their endeavours to propagate the faith , they ought to have no consideration for any thing but the service of god — or if they can do any thing for the advantage of their dominions while they augment the kingdom of christ : it ought to be without any considerable prejudice to the infidels or the princes that govern them — prop. 10. he asserts , they have their own lawful kings and princes , who have a right to to make laws , &c. — for the good government of their respective dominions , so that they cannot be expell'd out of 'em , or depriv'd of what they possess , without doing violence to the laws of god as well as the law of nations . prop. 26. seeing the spaniards have not been supported either by the authority of their prince , or any lawful reason to make war against the indians , who liv'd peaceably in their own countty , and had done the spaniard no wrong ; all such conquests that have been or may hereafter be made in the indies , are to be accounted unjust , tyranical and null , being condemned by all the laws of god and men. it s true he supposes the k. of spain to have a title to the soveraignty of the indies , by the popes grant ; but it is with such restrictions as those he mentions ; and in his 16 proposition says the pope , has power to revoke it , if it be found prejudicial to the establishment of the faith ; and he expresly declares throughout his book , that all the methods taken by the spaniards were such , so that here 's one strond evidence of their own against them . — dominicus de soto ; the k. of spain's confessor at the time seems by his summing up the dispute betwixt this bishop and dr. sepulveda to have been of the same opinion ; and sepulveda ▪ books , maintaining the contrary were suppress'd by the emperor charles v. of the same opinion , and indeed more express against the methods , by which the spaniards acquir'd their dominions in the indies , is , franciscus a victoria , chief professor of divinity , in the university of salamanca , ( whom the emperor charles v. consulted in cases of conscience , and in this amongst others ) as may be seen in his relectiones , theologicae , relectione 5. de indis where he argues the point at large , and in relect. 7. de jure bell , lays down this as a maxim , that an injury receiv'd is the only just cause of making war. so that it being plain from matter of fact that the indians did no manner of injury to the spaniards ; their war upon them must of necessity by this argumnt be unlawful . more has been said already in vindication of our title , in the defence of the scots settlement , than the renegado and his suborners can answer ; therefore we shall wind up this matter in a few words more . his alledging we might as well land in iamaica , where the wild negroes have deserted their masters , or in tobago , &c. serve only to discover his own folly. there 's no unconquer'd natives , who have their own princes to govern them in either of those islands , nor are the titles of the english , and d. of curland , to those places question'd . the irish having admitted french troops into their kingdom is as little to the purpose , since they have had no shadow of government or sovereignty , left them for several ages , have from time to time submitted to the government of england , and admitted those troops in defence of the late k. iames's title , which he derives from hen. ii. that conquer'd them . besides , the libeller himself owns , p. 54. that the natives themselves were pleas'd with the hopes of being restor'd by us to their ancient liberty and greatness ; and p. 55. that ambrosio one of their greatest captains , was at war with the spaniards before our arrival . his alleaging that cap. andreas was a spanish captain at the time of our landing , needs better proof than his assertion : that he might be then at peace with the spaniards , and have some respect for them because of his being bred among them , as h — says he was , p. 60. and that they then gave him a commission as a captain , does not at all argue that he was in the spanish interest when we landed , or any way subject to the crown of spain ; if he himself promised subjection , it does not divest his subjects of their right , and that andreas's successor and they were no friends to the spaniards , is evident from the libeller's own story , that they gave our colony notice of the spanish party that came to view them , and led them to the place where they were : we have likwise the testimony of all that have writ of this place , against the renegado , besides that of the journals of our own colony , which give an account that ambrosio had engag'd all his neighbouring princes in a league against the spaniard , before our arrival . finis . a proclamation, ordaining all persons in publick trust to sign the certificat and assurance scotland. privy council. 1690 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05717 wing s1960 estc r183575 53299298 ocm 53299298 180028 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05717) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180028) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2810:53) a proclamation, ordaining all persons in publick trust to sign the certificat and assurance scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh, : 1690. caption title. title vignette; initial letter. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng loyalty oaths -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-04 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-05 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-05 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , ordaining all persons in publick trust to sign the certificat and assurance . william and mary by the grace of god , king and queen of great-britain , france , and ireland , defenders of the faith ; to our lovits , macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting ; whereas by an act of the second session of our current parliament of this our antient kingdom of scotland , we with advice and consent of our estates of parliament , have enacted , statuted and ordained , that all persons , who in law are obliged to swear and take the oath of allegiance to vs , shall also subscribe the certificat and assurance mentioned in , and subjoyned to the said act of parliament , under the certification therein contained ; and we judging it just and reasonable , that the said act of parliament should be put to execution , and receive due obedience , to the effect it may appear , what persons are of integrity , and dutifully affected to us , and our government , and that such as are otherwayes inclined , may be discovered ; we therefore , with advice of our privy council , ordain and appoint , all the sheriffs , commiss●●●●●● , stewarts , baillies of royalties , bailliaries and regalities , to sign and subscribe the said certificat and assurance hereunto subjoyned , in presence of one of the lords , or others of our privy council , being within , or near to their jurisdiction for the time , and failȝying thereof , in presence of one of the commissioners of our current parliament , who have taken , or shall first take the same themselves , or in presence of a meeting of the commissioners of supply ; and all magistrats of burghs within their own fenced courts , and the deputs , clerks , and clerk-deputs , and fiscals of the whole courts above-named , and justices of peace , and all others in trust and office , who by law are obliged to take the oath of allegiance within this kingdom , in presence of any of the persons above-named , or the sheriffs , or their deputs , and that betwixt and the days following , viz. these on this side of the water of tay , and shire of forfar , betwixt and the twenty day of august current ; and all be-north the famine , betwixt and the first day of september , and these in orknay and zetland , betwixt and the twenty ninth day of september next to come ; and to record the same in their respective books , and to transmit to the clerks of our council , extracts thereof under their clerks hands , betwixt and the days following , viz. these on this side of the water of tay , and shire of forfar , betwixt and the first of september next ; and these be-north the same , except orknay and zetland , betwixt and the tenth day of september , and these in orknay and zetland , betwixt and the fifth day of november next to come , under the certification contained in the foresaid act of parliament . and to the effect our pleasure in the premisses may be known , our will is herefore , and we charge you straitly and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass , and in our name and authority , by open proclamation , make publication of the premisses , at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and at the whole mercat-crosses of the head-burgs of the shires and stewartries , and also at the mercat-crosses of the whole burghs-royal , of the bailliaries and regalities within this kingdom , that none may pretend ignorance . and appoints the sheriffs of the several shires , to cause publish the premisses , at all the mercat-crosses of the burghs royal , bailliaries and regalities . and ordains these presents to be printed . given under our signet , at edinburgh , the fourth day of august , 1690. and of our reign , the second year . per actum dominorum sti. concilii . d a : moncreiff , cls. sti. concilli . follows the certificat and assurance . i do in the sincerity of my heart , assert , acknowledge and declare , that their majesties , king william and queen mary , are the only lawful vndoubted soveraigns , king and queen of scotland , al 's well de jure as de facto , and in the exercise of the government ; and therefore i do sincerely and faithfully promise and engage , that i will with heart and hand , life and goods , maintain and defend their majesties title and government , against the late king james , his adherents , and all others enemies , who either by open , or secret attempts , shall disturb , or disquiet their majesties in the exercise thereof . god save king william and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to their most excellent majesties , anno dom. 1690. a proclamation for the exercise of the government in his majesties name only. scotland. privy council. 1695 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05697 wing s1930 estc r183554 52529310 ocm 52529310 179095 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05697) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179095) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:84) a proclamation for the exercise of the government in his majesties name only. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1694-1702 : william ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to his most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1695. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the second day of january. and of our reign the sixth year, 1695. signed: da: moncrieff, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -sovereign (1694-1702 : william ii) scotland -kings and rulers -succession -17th century -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-10 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-12 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-12 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation for the exercise of the government in his majesties name only . william by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith ; to our lyon king at arms , his brethren heraulds , macers of our privy council , pursevants , or messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch , as it hath pleased almighty god to remove by death , our dear consort , queen mary ; so that the sole and full right of the crown and royal dignity of this our antient kingdom , as well as the exercise of the said royal power , is now in our sole person , and to be exercised by us , for hereafter , in our name only : therefore we , with advice of the lords of our privy council , have thought fit to intimat and declare , that for hereafter the foresaid royal power is to be exercised in our name only , and that all letters , gifts , patents , and other writs whatsomever , which heretofore were in use to pass in the name of vs , and the said queen mary , are for hereafter to be directed , and to pass in our name only . and further , that the oath of alledgance is hereafter to be sworn , and the same , and the assurance subscribed by all concerned to swear and subscribe the same to us , and in our name only : siklike , and in the same manner as they were in use before to be subscribed and sworn to us , and the said queen mary joyntly . our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly and command , that incontinent thir our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and remanent mercat-crosses of the whole head burghs of the respective shires , and stewartries within this kingdom , and there in our name and authority , by open proclamation , make publication hereof , to the effect all our liedges may regulat themselves accordingly ; and ordains these presents to be printed . given under our signet at edinburgh , the second day of january . and of our reign the sixth year , 1695. per actum dominorum secreti concilii . d a : moncrieff , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to his most excellent majesty , 1695. proclamation prorogating the dyet, for in bringing and prescribing the method of settling of the accompts of arrears due by the forces to the countrey. scotland. privy council. 1695 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05723 wing s1971 estc r183580 52529000 ocm 52529000 179110 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05723) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179110) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2777:3) proclamation prorogating the dyet, for in bringing and prescribing the method of settling of the accompts of arrears due by the forces to the countrey. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1694-1702 : william ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to his most excellent majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1695. caption title. royal arms in ornamental border at head of text; initial letter. intentional blank spaces in text. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the twenty second day of january, and of our reign the sixth year, 1695. signed: gilb. elliot. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -army -finance -law and legislation -early works to 1800. requisitions, military -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-05 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-06 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-06 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal blazon or coat of arms proclamation . prorogating the dyet , for in bringing and prescribing the method of stateing of the accompts of arrears due by the forces to the countrey . william by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france , and ireland defender of the faith ; to macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as , by sundry former proclamations emitted by vs , with advice of our privy council , certain days were prefixed to our subjects , for bringing the the several accompts due by our forces within this kingdom to them , stated and verified in manner mentioned in the saids proclamations : and we being resolved that none of our good subjects should be cut short , and desappointed of the payment , of vhat is justly resting to them by any of our forces , by their not having given in their accompts to the clerks of our privy council , before the days prefixed in the former proclamations : therefore we with advice of the lords of our privy council , have thought fit to prorogat the time for verifying , and giving in of the saids accompts to the clerks of our privy council , until the fifteenth day of march next to come , and do yet allow , and ordain the landlords , and others , to whom there are any accompts resting by our forces , before the first day of february , one thousand six hundred ninety one years ; to repair to the commissioners of assessment , or any who of them , within the respective shires where the saids accompts are resting , and there state & verifie by writ , oath or witnesses , how many souldiers were quartered on the saids landlords , or other persons creditors , that they advanced of meat , or drink to the souldiers themselves , or forrage to their horses , or what they advanced of meat , , drink , meal , or malt to our garisons : or what sums of mony , either to our forces , or garisons for their subsistance , preceeding the said first day of february , one thousand six hundred ninety and one : and we with advice foresaid , ordain the saids landlords , or other persons creditors , to give their oaths , that no part of what they claim as due by our forces , is payed to them , and require them to instruct their accompts fully and clearly before the saids commissioners , by condescending particularly upon the time , when the accompts were furnished . and also upon the company , or at least the regiment , or troop , to whom the souldiers , or troopers did belong , and to insert all the articles due by every regiment , in a paragraph , or separate accompt by itself though the same was upon the english establishment , whose arrears and debts to the countrey , are to be stated in accompts , differently from these upon the scots establishment ; and we with advice foresaid , require and command all and sundry our good subjects , to whom any debts are due by our forces , and garisons , for the causes above-written preceeding the day above-mentioned , to transmit the same with the verifications thereof , and report of the commissioners of supply thereupon , clearly and distinctly instructed , and verified in manner above exprest , to the clerks of our privy council , betwixt and the said fifteenth day of march next to come , to the effect , that when ever the foresaids accompts upon the scots establishment , hereby ordered to be brought in , shall be revised and approven , by the lords of our privy council , to whom we earnestly recommend , to dispatch the same with all diligence possible : then the lords of our theasury are with all one convenience , to give precepts to the shires , and burghs and other creditors in the saids accompts , upon the receiver of our crown-rents , for payment to them , of the respective sums that shall be found due by the lords of our privy council , in manner foresaid , out of the lack duty of the pole-mony , appointed to be payed to him at candlesmass and whitsundy next , and our said receiver is to make punctual payment of the saids precepts , after the foresaids terms , as he shall be ordered by the saids lords of our treasury : and that the debts of these upon the english establishment being so stated , and distinctly cleared , may be transmitted to vs ; that we in our royal wisdom may order such course to be taken for satisfying the same ; as we shall think just . owr will is herefore , and we charge you strictly , and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and remnant mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the several shires within this kingdom , and there in our name and authority , by open proclamation , make intimation hereof , and ordains these presents to be printed . given under our signet at edinburgh , the twenty second day of january , and of our reign the sixth year , 1695 . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . elliot god save king william . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to his most excellent majesty , anno dom. 1695. scotland against popery being a particular account of the late revolutions in edenborough, and other parts of that kingdom, the defacing popish chappels, and palace of holy-rood-house; the levelling to the ground of the chancellor's chappel and house, &c. and all other popish chappels; with the opposition, which occasioned the loss of five hundred men on each side; with the duke of gourdon's seizing the castle of edenborough for the papist interest, and the protestant nobility and citizens beseiging it. in a letter from a merchant in edenburgh, to his friend in london. 1688 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a49575 wing l42a wing s2013a estc r179224 99827871 99827871 32294 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a49575) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 32294) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1852:25; 1939:6) scotland against popery being a particular account of the late revolutions in edenborough, and other parts of that kingdom, the defacing popish chappels, and palace of holy-rood-house; the levelling to the ground of the chancellor's chappel and house, &c. and all other popish chappels; with the opposition, which occasioned the loss of five hundred men on each side; with the duke of gourdon's seizing the castle of edenborough for the papist interest, and the protestant nobility and citizens beseiging it. in a letter from a merchant in edenburgh, to his friend in london. l. l., attributed name. aut 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [london : 1688] attributed by wing to l.l. an account of events occurring in march, 1688; wing has publication dates: [1680] (l42a) and [1689] (s2013a). copy filmed at the henry e. huntington library and art gallery closely trimmed with some loss of text at foot. reproductions of the originals in the lincoln's inn library, london (reel 1852) and the henry e. huntington library and art gallery (reel 1939). created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng edinburgh (scotland) -history -early works to 1800. scotland -history -revolution of 1688 -early works to 1800. 2007-12 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion scotland against popery , being a particular account of the late revolutions in edenborough , and other parts of that kingdom , the defacing popish chappels , and palace of holy-rood-house ; the levelling to the ground the chancellor's chappel and house , &c. and all other popish chappels ; with the opposition , which occasioned the loss of five hundred men on each side ; with the duke of gourdon's seizing the castle of edenborough for the papist interest , and the protestant nobility and citizens besieging it . in a letter from a merchant in edenburgh , to his friend in london . no sooner had the news of the kings private departure arriv'd at the city of edenburgh , but all parties look'd on the general settlement of the kingdom , to be so far shaken , that it was high time for each of them to make an early provision for their future security : but the prince of orange's speedy advance to london , being once publish'd , the papists began to look on their cause as wholly desperate , if not already undone ; nor were they in the least mistaken ; for as if the signal had been generally , though privately , given the rabble from all parts immediately gather together ; and first , declaring for the protestant religion in general , next for the prince of orange , they lastly resolve unanimously to take this opportunity of rooting both popery and papists out of the city and kingdom , protesting with oaths they would no longer suffer under the apprehension of that slavery which they had long since , to their sorrow , seen growing too fast upon them : whereupon , after many shouts , being arm'd , some with clubs , some with swords , and others , to a great number , with pistols , carbines , and muskets , they marcht directly to holy rood-house , where , after some violences offer'd to the out-parts ; the governor , who commanded there at that time , one captain wallis , a roman catholick , came upon them with his guards , without either demand of the meaning of their assembly , or the least admonishment to desist , he fires upon them , and kills several of them ; the multitude being much more enraged than allay'd , by this proceeding , run with fierceness and resolution on the guard , slaying and wounding every man , not without the loss of abundance of their own , tho' the council then sitting had sent to the captain to forbear on any account to come to extremities with the rabble , well imagining , and fearing the consequences likely to ensue ; but he , as is suppos'd being too zealous in his own cause , and relying on his little authority , presum'd rather to endanger the safety , or peace of the kingdom , than submit to a present necessity ; for which he dearly paid , being himself , as was suppos'd , mortally wounded , and his company quite overthrown : the multitude , in the mean time , remaining victorious , march'd with loud huzza's to the lord chancellor's house , which they in a moment pull'd down to the ground , not sparing both reproaches and wounds on his person ; some reproaching him with his designs to betray his country to popery and slavery , others casting in his teeth private injuries , and all reviling him as a base , malicious , and unjust man : by this time the council and lord preast , had order'd the militia to endeavor the suppressing these irregularities , who , upon their first approach us'd fair words and entreaties , but that not prevailing ( the rabble being extreamly exasperated for the loss of their fellows ) they were forc'd to be rough , tho' before they could be dispers'd , there were above five hundred of both sides kill'd : the duke of gourdon , in this juncture , thought it the safest way to retire into the castle , and has declar'd his resolution to defend and keep it against any opposition whatsoever : what the result will be is uncertain , tho' the better part of the nobility and gentry , and all the commonalty in general , have declar'd their resolution to stand by the prince of orange , in defence of the protestant religion , as by law established : the said prince's declaration ( for restoring the religion , laws , and liberties of scotland to their ancient grandure ) having bin publickly read in edinburgh , and several other parts of scotland , with acclamations of joy. the general expectation , at this present writing , is the affair of the duke of gourdon , ( who , if he persists in keeping possession of the castle , ) you may expect a particular account in my next , of the siege of that important ( i had almost said impregnable ) fortress . sir , your ready friend , and humble servant . salus populi suprema lex, or, the free thoughts of a well-wisher for a good settlement in a letter to a friend. 1689 approx. 26 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 5 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2005-12 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a61235 wing s516 estc r220613 13623175 ocm 13623175 100853 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a61235) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 100853) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 801:15) salus populi suprema lex, or, the free thoughts of a well-wisher for a good settlement in a letter to a friend. stewart, james, sir, 1635-1713. 8 p. s.n.], [edinburgh : 1689. added on t.p. of microfilm copy: by iames stewart. not to be confused with the work by clement barksdale appended to his aurea dicta, 1681. place of publication from wing. reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -politics and government -1689-1745. 2005-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2005-06 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2005-07 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2005-07 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-10 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion salus populi suprema lex , or , the free thoughts of a well-wisher , for a good settlement . in a letter to a friend . by iames stewart printed in the year 1689. salus populi suprema lex , or , the free thoughts of a well-wisher , for a good settlement , &c. sir , the settling of our government , in this extraordinary meeting of the estates , is a matter of that importance ; that i cannot but wish i were as able to assist in it , as i am perswaded it is the duty of every man to contribute his best endeavours : and seing it is like to be the grand question , whether we should call back the present king , or , at least , in his absence resolve on such a regency , as may consist with the continuance of his right ; or rather plainly declare the thron to be vacant , and supply it after englands example . you shall have my opinion as free from passion , as from particular intrest , which i think is as little as any mans can be . i therefore humbly conceive , that the estates may , and ought , to declare the thron to be vacant , and at the same time supply it , by setting up the prince and princess of orange , after the example of england without variation . and my reason is one , and most evident , and demonstrative , viz. because the thron is de facto vacant , as being deserted , and that god from heaven , presents to us , and the highest necessity determines us , to embrace their highnessess as the only persons that can , and ought possess it . i know it was the method of england , first to take notice of the king's malversations , and thereupon , and upon his deserting . to find that he had abdicat , and thereby rendered the thron vacant : but , tho' all good men must perpetually regrate , the king 's fatal addiction to the romish religion , and the excesses it hath caused him to commit , and that now undoubtedly is the season to provide against these , and all other errors in the government . yet seing that some may be ready to affirm , that by our late laws we have too amply impowered , & by our complyance , too manifestly encouraged him in these very courses , to make these his majesties charge : and that it is more becoming the respect due to soveraign majesty in all events , and likewayes more easie to our old and national kindness to the ancient race , and line ; to forbear such direct and extraordinary accusations . ( leaving these to others ) i rather choose , and fix upon the medium of the kings deserting as that , which in our case is yet more palpable and clear then in that of england , and abundantly conclusive of all i would inferr from it . and that the king hath deserted the thron , and us , is so apparent from that visible state of anarchy , under which we have laboured these months by past : that certainly all considering men , in place of making it a matter of doubt , do rather admire , and praise the good providence of the almighty , who hath so graciously kept our peace , and prevented these ruining mischiefs , to which such a lawless condition , joyned to our former intestine distempers , and divisions . did exposeus . our kings it 's true have of a long time resided in england , personally absent from us , and some may say , that his going to any other of his dominions ought not to alter the case : but the desertion we speak of , being not a simple non-residence , and personal absence , but a manifest abandoning , leaving us far more negligently , then he did england , without all cause , care , or concernment ; cannot be covered with this pretence . if upon that great , and sudden pressure in england , that moved him to take such surprising measures ; it had pleased his majesty , to give any account of them , with what orders he might have thought necessary , to his privy-council in this kingdom ; something might be alledged to colour the dereliction : but when nothing of this nature was done , but the government quite given up , in our greatest exigence , to the conviction and amazement of his own privy council , and all his officers ; who only encreased the common consternation , by following their master's example , the thing is but too certain . and therefore i shall only sum up its evidence with these two remarks . first , that the king 's leaving us , as he did , in his , and our then circumstances , is so unaccountable in all other reasonings ; that it seems plainly to say , that it was his majestie 's good mind toward us , that we should follow england's fate , whatever it should prove . and next , that there appears so much of the divine soveraignty , over-ruling the king in the course he took in his departure ; that it cannot but intimat to all serious observers , that thereby god thought good , to prepare the way for the happy choice , that he now presents . if then the king hath deserted the kingdom , and its government , the thron is necessarly vacant : and if the thron be vacant , nothing can hinder to declare it to be so , unless men do prefer confusion , and ruin to order and safety . but because the oaths of allegiance , and test , with other engagements , seem to many , to be still binding ; i shall resume the matter more particularly , in order to their liberation and relief . and therefore must , and do affirm from the most obvious evidence of things , that the desertion we ly under is not only total , and absolute ; but withall so causless or rather pretenceless , beyond the case of england , without the least shaddow of constraint , or reason ; that a more notable and clear breach of the fundamental contract , whereon all government , as well as ours , subsists , can hardly be imagined . i cannot here digress , to prove the beeing , and nature , of this fundamental contract : all men of sense , do easily apprehend , that government is a matter of trust , and not of property or absolute dominion ; and that , tho' the ordinance in it self , as also that of marriage , be of god , yet the establishing of it in this or that form , and upon this or that person , and familie , is , after the parallel of the same example , of mans free choice and agreement : it being impossible to imagine , how either the hostility of conquest should terminat , or the vain old world pretence of paternal power , the presumptive force of prescription , or the true and genuine vertue of a surrender , take place to introduce government , without the supposition of this mutual consent , and contract , either implyed , or expressed . and thus indeed , it is , and no other wayes , that the powers which in the first sense , and in the abstract are by the apostle paul truely said , to be of god ; are yet in the second sence , and in the concret , justly called , by the apostle peter , the ordinances of man. we have too long been inured , by men of corrupt designs , and practices , to a certain false cant , that the king holds his crown immediatly from god almighty alone . but now , blessed be god , all men not wilfully blind , do see , and the very authors of this language , begin to confess , that it is otherways ; and that government is founded in consent , and truely and only best bound by this fundamental contract . whereof the essentials viz. that a king should rule , and protect , and the people obey , and submit , in righteousness , for the glory of god , and the good of the common-wealth , need no record , more then the necessary duties of man and wife in the contract of marriage , as being in both cases inseperable from the very beeing of the ordinances . and for the naturals and accidentals , as lawyers speak , of this contract of government , they may be seen , and read , in the perpetual consuetude , and other laws of the kingdom ; and are all confirmed by the mutual stipulations , promises , and oaths customary , specially at coronations , betwixt king and people . our king then , as all others , being king by contract , acknowledged by his accepting of the government , and requiring of us the oaths of allegiance , and other engagements ; which express our part of the contract , and no less necessarly suppose his : it is evident as the meridian light , that if he either renounce , abdicate , or totaly desert , he wholly breaks his part , dissolves the contract , and looses us , from our part , and all the promises , oaths , and tests by which we can be thereto bound . the compact of marriage is certainly the most divine , and binding , known amongst men ; and here god is said to joine , and in such a manner , that neither of the parties tho most free contracters , and both consenting , may separate without his warrand : yet if one of the parties , specially the unbelieving , depart the apostle pronounces distinctly from the nature of the contract , and gods mind in its institution , let him depart the other partie is not in bondage in such a case , either to his conjugal promise , or to any other supervenient oath , that may have interveened ; but is as free from the law of the departer , or deserter , as if he were naturally dead : if then it be so in the business of marriage , can any man hesitat , but it must be much more so in the case of government ; the tye whereof , in the acknowlegment of all , falls many degrees short of the formers obligation : but so it is that the king hath deserted causelesly , totally , and absolutely , as hath been declared , and therefore in all law , reason , and revelation , the thron is vacant , and we are loosed from his law , and all other supposable engagements . but you may say , in the apostles words , to the same purpose , but god hath called us to peace , and therefore we ought neither to be hasty , nor peremptory , but seing we know his majesties departure was not his free choice , and that after this little secession rather then desertion , he purposes to return , as he hath signified by his letters , we ought to wait for him ; and not so lightly throw off our allegiance , to which we are by nature , and religion , so strictly bound . i answer , that what ever was the manner of the kings departure from england , yet , as to us , it was a free choice , which hapening in such a juncture , and exposing us so dangerously to all the miseries of a dissolution , is really irreparable : specially seing that by the same default of his , res non est integra . but the kingdom being oblidged by the most binding law , to wit , salus populi suprema lex esto , and the most cogent necessity of self preservation , to fly and betake it self to his highness heavens-sent protection ; it is impossible for us to retreat from it , without a most ungrate perfidie toward the prince , and damnable folly toward our selves , in rendring the whole kingdom obnoxious to a greater forfeiture , than can be secured against , by any offered pardon and indemnity , in our present circumstances . admitting then , that his majestie purposes to return ; yet i say he must excuse us , since his offer is too late . but more especially because , as all good men hear , and understand with regrate , he makes the offer by his letters , in such a manner , as promises nothing , save a threatning invasion of perfidious and cruel french and irish papists , to destroy our religion , and make britain a field of blood , and an utter desolation . wherefore i must conclude , by way of retortion , that seing both god , and the king , have loos'd us from our allegiance , by his majesties desertion , as hath been proved ; and god , as you say , doth also call us unto peace : we should undoubtedly shew our selves , the most nottorious contemners of this sweet and heavenly call , if after so great a deliverance , we should again bring back the king , with such a sevenfold worse attendance and thereby unavoidably render our last estate infinitly worse then our first . but you may still urge , why so peremptory , and severe , you resisted , and opposed king charles the first , with arms , and yet , even in the hottest of the warr , when you entered into a league and covenant for its more effectual prosecution , you reserved his majesties soveraignity , and just rights . why then should the kings simple departure , be now accounted worse , to inferr a dissolution , and justify a rejection , than what was reckoned in his father to be a hostile invasion . it 's answered , not to touch upon any invidious comparison of their persons , nor yet upon his majesties woful defection from the true protestant religion , whereby he hath too visibly brought on himself , the curse that his grand-father did , in this case leave , and entail on his posterity , i say , the kings desertion doth inferr a dissolution , and warrand a rejection , albeit his fathers supposed invasion was not carried that length ; because our warrs with the father were but an incident unhappy quarrel , amongst our selves , as well as with our king ; wherein , as it could not be said , that he had deserted the kingdom , or yet hostilly invaded it , by a foraigne force ; so we had all reason to reserve his soveraignity and just rights , in the probable prospect , of a good composure , and peace . whereas our present kings desertion is not only causeless , total , and absolute , leaving the thron vacant , to the evidence of every mans sense ; beyond all control , or excuse of reason , in the same manner as if he had been removed by death , but in the just construction of law , it imports such a voluntary dereliction , as frees us from our former allegiance , and layes on us an indispensible obligation of providing for a new establishment . si rex enim imperium abdicavit , aut manifeste habet pro. derelicto , says grotius , in eum post id tempus , omnia licent quae in privatum . having thus cleared the nature and import of the kings desertion , and that the thron being de facto derelinquished , we are in the same manner loosed from the law , and oaths of our allegiance , as if he were naturally dead , and his race extinguished ; specially when we cannot now think of his return , had his reign been ten times more justifieable , without the horrour of all the fatal consequences of blood , confusion and desolation ; it is evident that for the estates to declare the thing as it is , and to proceed to a new and necessary settlement , is not attended with the least difficulty . and therefore i go on to the second point viz. that in this state of things , the estates of the kingdom ought to supply the vacancy of the thron , by setting up their highnesses the prince and princess of orange , after england's example without variation . and the reason i gave for it , was because , that god from heaven presents them to us , and the highest necessity determines us to acquiesce in his good pleasure . and that god presents them , if there be any voice or language , in his providences , as certainly there is , it amounts in our case to a manifest declaration . when after king solomons death , the lord so ordered the matter in the treaty betwixt rehoboam , and the people , that by his imprudent answer , he provock'd the ten tribes to reject him ; the lord , by a prophet , commands judah to sit still , and desist from fighting , for , says he , the thing is from me . can any man then doubt , that in the concurrence of the many signal providences ( more remarkable both for number , and weight , then can be instanced from all our histories ) which at present surround us to shew us the way , the persons , whom god thus designs , ought to be chosen and embraced . it was an inspiration from god , that moved his highness , and all the protestant princes in germany to resent so cordially the distress of the protestant interest abroad , and it's danger here with us . it was also another effect of the same divine influence ; that excited his highness raising up the righteous man from the east , and prevailed upon the cautious and warry estates of the united provinces , to set about so great , and incredible an undertaking , wherein a man may justly doubt , whether the vastness of the expence , the hazard of the seas , season , and tempests , or the preparations and forces of the adversary , were more discouraging . but that god , should have so happily conducted thorow all these difficulties ; turned , almost as one man , the hearts of all the people of britain ; and caused all the feared opposition to melt away , as snow before the sun , so that his highness was without battel , brought to london only with joy & triumph . this , this is the lord 's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes ! nor are the succeeding passages of his work , tho' not of so great a lustre , of less significancy and moment , as to our present purpose : that his majesty left england once and again so obstinatly ; neglected and ●●rgot scotland totally ; made the french king , that enemy of god , and man , his only refuge , and set up all his remaining hopes on tyrconnel and his irish papists ; that the meeting of the estates in england , did so readily and unanimously settle the soveraignity upon their highnesses . and lastly that our country-men , going to london , with such different interests , and designs , should yet have carried along with them , so much of the spirit and sense of the nation , as to agree , almost as one man , to address to his highness , to take on him the government and call the present convention : all these , i say , laid together and recommending none other to us , then the very next in blood to the king that hath forsaken us , must , after the vacancy of the thron above demonstrate , appear to every one , that regards the work of the lord , and considers the operation of his hands , to be nothing less then so many lines from gods soveraign power , and wisdom , concentring to point out their highnesses as the only persons that ought and can possess it . i grant for all that hath been said , that providences of whatsoever kind and number are no rule of duty ; nor do i here pretend to adduce them as such ; but it being already cleared , that thorow the kings desertion , the thron is vacant , the government dissolved , and the kingdom brought under the necessity of a new establishment ; i can hardly believe that any will be found so refractory , as not to acknowledge , that such leading and perswasive providences , are the best designations of the persons on whom we ought to fix . yet , lest such there may be , i shall farther consider the last part of the argument , and that is , that even the highest necessity determines us to follow england's example in this affair , without variation . and this , i think may easily be illustrat , as well from the inconveniences , and mischiefs on the one hand , if we divide : as from the advantages on the other , if we joine intirely with them . and for the inconveniences , the long and bloody troubles , and calamities , that this kingdom suffered in its divided estate from england , are yet too fresh in mens remembrance , to suffer any to desire a relapse into it , unless it may be in this only prospect , that , according to the great change hapned in our circumstance , some may thereby now hope , for a speedy conquest , as in any terms more desireable , than our best separat condition . the conjunction of the two kingdoms , under king james the sixth , was a blessing so long lookt for , and acceptable , that when he applyed to it , that saying , quos deus conjunxit nemo separet , he but spoke the true sense , and wish of both nations : shall we then , when things are so much altered to the worse , be so unhappy as to aim at this unluckie separation ? specially when it is most certain and visible , that the least apparent difference , betwixt england and us , at this time , would be a great encouragement to enemies & discouragment to friends , particularly our distressed brethren in ireland : and that if we do not directly call back the king ( whereof i am sure the inevitable evils above represented do raise in every honest man an extreme horror ) we can take no other course distinct from that of england , without laying our selves open to all their dangers , with very small assurance of their assistance . i know the boiling of our scots blood , upon a little stirring of the old emulation , industriously practised by papists , and such as affect them , may readily throw up , what ? are not we a free kingdom , and much more ancient than that of england ? why should we then be tyed to their measures ? specially to reject totally our king , who , as to us , in respect of the english , is , as it were , of our blood and kindred . but first , after the recalling of the king , which is indeed the point that all the promoters of this humour aim at , there is no mids betwixt it , and an absolute rejection , that is not attended with most deterring circumstances , as hath been already declared . next , what doth all this vain talk signify ? doth it add any thing to our strength , for preventing , or resisting , the abovementioned inconveniences , which is the point that all sober men ought mostly to heed ; or is it not rather just like unto the thistles elevation , in king joash his parable , which after it had compared it self to the cedar , was trode down by a wild beast that passed by , which infallibly would be our fate , in attending to such empty counsels . whereas on the other hand , if we go along , and hold with england in this re-establishment , we have god to be our guide and leader , as hath been shewed , and in the next place we may be assured , that as we are already threatned by the same hazard , and also rather more exposed to them , then they , so the holding the same course with them will always procure us ready , and effectual assistance ; greatly animat all our well-wishers , specially our brethren in ireland , and prove a happy introduction to the long desired union of both kingdoms , which last motive of a good and perpetual union , is of itself sufficient , to all considering men , to preponderat all can be said on this head : it being indeed the only thing wanting to compleat the happiness , and security of both kingdoms ; and that which seems reserved to the prince of orange , as the man of god's right hand , able to surmount , and adjust all the difficulties of so great a work , and worthy to bear its glory . thus you have my opinion , and the lord give all concerned a true , and right understanding . if bare infidelity or difference in religion were here adduced as causes , to make void the king's title and authority ; the westminster confession ( tho' well enough cautioned , by the qualities of just and legal to exempt us from the late imposings ) might yet occasion some to scruple : or if malversations were the only ground , these might , as i have said , make the enquiry more uneasie , and the conclusion less unquestionable . but when the king himself hath loos'd us , by such a manifest , and irreparable desertion : and god from heaven points out to us so desireable and excellent a choice . and lastly when the most powerful necessity of the preservation of all that can be dear to us , oblidges us to imbrace it : what can possibly demurr true protestants , and rational men , to agree to it . neither ought we to be alarmed at the backwardness , and refractoriness of some whose ill consciences of their former oppressions and violences , may desperatly drive them to a more avowed opposition . since beside that it must be in it self contemptible , nothing can more effectually defeat it , and all our other vain fears , then our resolute and unanimous concluding and adhereing to such a just , necessary , and happy re-establishment . adieu . a proclamation for calling out heretors and free-holders to attend the kings host edinburgh, the seventh day of june, 1679. scotland. 1679 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a58742 wing s1847 estc r26231 09398497 ocm 09398497 42961 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a58742) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 42961) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1315:11) a proclamation for calling out heretors and free-holders to attend the kings host edinburgh, the seventh day of june, 1679. scotland. scotland. privy council. 1 broadside. printed by the heir of andrew anderson, edinburgh : 1679. reproduction of original in the harvard university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -politics and government -1660-1688. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-03 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation , for calling out heretors and free-holders to attend the kings host . edinburgh , the seventh day of june , 1679. forasmuch as the insurrection in the western shires , is grown to an open rebellion , and that the number of these desperate rebels do increase so , that all his majesties loyal subjects in their several shires , ought timeously to look to their own security , and put themselves in a posture to defend . the kings authority , and to oppose all attempts of desperate and wicked rebels ; and albeit his majesties privy council have already issued forth their orders for drawing forth the militia forces , horse and foot in several shires , and appointed particular days of rendezvous , and upon such occasions may require all sencible persons , betwixt sixty and sixteen , to rise for suppressing of these rebels ; yet at this time , they have thought sit only to call out and require the regiments of the foot militia , in the shires aftermentioned ; and all heretors and free-holders , who are sencible persons , and their servants and followers , to come out upon horse-back ; and for this cause , to forbear to require the militia-troups , in these shires under-written , at this time , notwithstanding of the orders already issued forth , in so far as concerns the horse militia alanerly : and do hereby require and command all heretors and free-holders , who are sencible persons , with so many of their servants and followers as they can bring on horse-back with arms , within the shires of edinburgh , linlithgow , and peebles , haddingtoun , stirling and clackmannan , berwick , roxburgh and selkirk , fife , perth , forfar , kincardin and marischals part of aberdeen , bamff ; and errols part of aberdeen , ross , elgin , forres , nairn , and this side of ness , to conveen at the places and times after-mentioned , and to receive their orders , and to be under the command of the persons under-written , viz. edinburgh to meet at the links of leith upon the eleventh day of june instant , and to be under the command of the lord collingtoun ; linlithgow and peebles to meet at the links of leith the eleventh day of june instant , and to be under the command of general dalyell ; the shire of haddingtoun to meet at beinstoun-muire , the eleventh day of june instant , and to be under the command of the viscount of kingstoun ; stirling and clackmannan to meet at the town of stirling , and from thence to march to the links of leith upon the eleventh day of june instant , and to be under the command of the lord elphirgstoun ; berwick to meet at fogo-muire upon the eleventh day of june instant , and to be under the command of the earl of home , and in his absence , his brother charles home ; roxburgh and selkirk , to meet at ancrum-bridge upon the sixteenth day of june instant , and to be under the command of the lord elibank , and the laird of stobbs , who are to command according to the devision of the militia troups ; fife to meet at coupar . the twelfth day of june instant , and to be under the command of the lord newark ; perth to meet at perth , the thirteenth day of june instant , and to be under the command of the marquess of montrese , and such persons under him as he shall appoint ; forfar to meet at forfar , upon the thirteenth day of june instant , and to be under the command of the earl of southesk ; kincardin and marischals part of aberdeen , to meet at aberdeen links upon the nineteenth day of june instant , and to be under the command of the earl of aboyn ; bamff and errols part of aberdeen , to meet at turress upon the nineteenth day of june instant , and to be under the command of the earl of kintore ; elgin , forres , nairn , and this side ness , to meet at forres upon the twentieth day of june instant , and to be under the command of the earl of murray , and in his absence the lord duffus ; ross to meet at chanry the twenty third day of june instant , and to be under the command of the earl of seaforth ; and ordains all the heretors and free-holders of the shires benorth forth , to march immediatly after the rendezvous to the bridge of stirling ; and all the heretors and free-holders of the shires on the south side of forth , to march after the rendezvous to the links of leith , there to continue till further order : with full power , to them to seize upon all disaffected persons , and in case of resistance , to use them as enemies , within their respective bounds , or such as shall be suspected to be going out of the shire to the rebels : with power likewise to the saids commanders to appoint officers under them , to command in the several divisions of the shires above-mentioned ; ordaining hereby the respective commanders aforesaid , to cause publick proclamation and intimation to be made hereof to the respective shires under their command , at the several places already appointed for the first dayes rendezvous of the militia , that the saids meetings may be punctually kept : cerrifying hereby , all such heretors and others foresaid as shall not come out upon horse-back themselves with their best horses and arms , with so many of their servants and followers as they can bring out upon horse-back , they shall be lyable to the pains and penalties provided by the acts of parliament , against such as do not attend the kings host , or desert the same , and looked upon as disaffected persons , and savourers and compiyers with rebels , and pursued and punished accordingly . and ordains these presents to be printed , and published at the mercat cross of edinburgh , and other places foresaid , that none pretend ignorance . tho. hay , cl. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1679. at the general-sessions of the peace, held at st. johnstone the first tuesday of may, 1656. / by his highness the lord protectors justices of peace for perth-shire. perthshire (scotland). justices of the peace this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription b04692 of text r181696 in the english short title catalog (wing p1672a). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 12 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 b04692 wing p1672a estc r181696 52614834 ocm 52614834 176024 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b04692) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 176024) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2759:6) at the general-sessions of the peace, held at st. johnstone the first tuesday of may, 1656. / by his highness the lord protectors justices of peace for perth-shire. perthshire (scotland). justices of the peace 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by christopher higgins ..., edinburgh : 1656. caption title. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. eng justices of the peace -scotland -perthshire -early works to 1800. law -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. great britain -history -commonwealth and protectorate, 1649-1660 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. b04692 r181696 (wing p1672a). civilwar no at the general-sessions of the peace, held at st. johnstone the first tuesday of may, 1656. by his highnesse the lord protectors justices of [no entry] 1656 2012 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2008-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-04 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-06 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2008-06 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion at the general-sessions of the peace , held at st. johnstone the first tuesday of may , 1656. by his highnesse the lord protectors justices of peace for perth-shire . the justices of his highnesse peace for the said shire , in pursuance of that trust reposed in them for on carrying , preserving and maintaining the peace there , do judge it their duty to make the acts and resolutions of this and the former sessions known to all the shire , that such as transgresse , and commonly plead ignorance , may be inexcusable . and because provoking sins undetected and punished will undoubtedly prove a continual trouble of our peace . therefore it is ordained , that the clerks of the kirk-sessions of ilk paroch within the shire , in all time coming , aswell as since the first of january , 1651. give a true extract to the clerk of the peace , of the names of all persons in the paroch convict of blasphemy , incest , adultery , fornication , swearing or cursing , breach of the sabbath , reproaching or mocking of piety , drunkennesse , tipling or such like crimes , that every transgressor since that time , who hath not been censured conform to the instructions by the judicatories competent , may be punished , and such wickednesse ; supprest and crusht for the future . that the overseers ( who are to be the most pious and understanding men in the paroch ) and constables , give up to the clerk of the peace a list of every alehouse-keeper who sell ale or strong waters , &c. at unlawful times , or who keep not good order in their houses , or who harbour or entertain lewd , profane , or idle men or women , sturdy beggars , tinkers , gamsters , or masterless people ; that all such ale-sellers , &c. may be punished as the cause requires . that all persons who are not in present service with a master , or who are not land-labourers , or who have not a trade , calling , or revenue to maintain them ; be reputed vagabonds , and their names sent by the overseers and constables in ilk paroch , to the next justice , or to the clerk of the peace , that they may be presently punished as such . that no housekeeper whatsoever , recept , harbour , give or send entertainment to any vagabond , thief , gypsie , unknown and suspect person , under the pains and penalties contained in the acts of parliament anent resetters . that if any paroch wherein a robbery is committed , do not answer the hue and cry raised on committing thereof , and follow the constable on the pursuit till he return , such paroch shall be liable in payment of the robbery . that all overseers take strict care not only to put all such beggars or poor people who belong not to the paroch , and want a sufficient passe or testimonial out of the paroch , but also to keep all such out , by sending such as return , to prison ; and presenting those who either harbour or give them any entertainment , that they may be punished therefore . that no person make any linnen-cloath to sell under an ell in breadth , if the price of the ell be above ten shillings ; and under three quarters in breadth , if the price of the ell be under ten shillings : and that no person bleitch any linnen with lime , under the pain of forfeiting all the cloath of lesse breadth , or so bleitch't : the one half whereof to any who after midsummer 1656. discovers the same . that no person take salmond , or their fry , with an angle-wand in another mans waters , without the owners leave , under six pound scots ilk fault . that as the general-sessions for the peace are to be kept the first tuesdayes of february , may , august , and the last tuesday of october yearly ; so , special sessions are to be kept in ilk sub-division of the shire , the first tuesdayes of march , june , september and december yearly , where all differences betwixt masters and servants , and such other things as may be judged out of the general-sessions will be determined ; and every master who rests any fee to his servant , will at the general sessions be compelled to pay the same , if the servant sue therefore . that during the scarsity of money and cheapnesse of victual , no person give or take more fee or wages then what is after-specified , to wit , a common able man-servant , nine merks scots termly , with a pair of double-soal'd shoes , two ells of scots grays , and three ell of hardin , as his bounteth ; or in stead therof , one pound four shillings for the shoes , one pound four shillings for the hardin , and one pound sixteen shilling for the grays . a common able lad-servant , four merk and a half termly , with the like bounteth , or money proportionably therefore . a common able woman-servant , four merk and a half termly , with a pair of double-soal'd shoes , three ell of plaiding , three ell of hardin , and one ell of linnen , as her bounteth ; or in stead thereof one pound for her shoes , one pound seven shillings for the plaiding , one pound four shillings for the harden , and twelve shillings for the linnen . a common able lasse-servant is to have two merk and fourty penies termly , with the like bounteth , or money proportionably therefore . the harvest-fee of the able man shearer is not to exceed six pound , or six shillings ilk dayes work : and the able woman-shearer four pound , or four shillings for ilk dayes work . that all servants give their masters a quarters warning before their removal ; and that no servant pane out of , or come in to any paroch , without a testimonial under the minister and overseers hands of the paroch where they last dwelt , under the pain of being punished as vagabonds , besides fining their resetters . that no servant leave his master at the whitsundayes term , if his master be willing to keep him till the mertimasse following upon the former terms conditions , unlesse such servant show lawful cause for his departure , to some uninterested justice in that division where he dwelleth . shomakers are not to exceed two shillings six penies the inch of measure for the pair of double-sol'd shoes from eight inches upward ; and two shillings the inch from eight inches downward : and for the pair of single-soal'd shoes , one shilling six penies the inch above eight inches of measure ; and one shilling four penies the inch from eight inches downward : providing alwayes the leather be well tann'd , and the shoes sufficient mercat ware . weavers are to weave ilk ell of linnen , for one peny half-peny out of ilk twelvepence that the ell of green linnen is worth : plaiding for an half-peny the ell , with a peck of meal to the stone : grays and secking for twelve penies the ell : tycking and dornock napery for two shillings the ell ; and dornock table-cloath for four shillings the ell. wackers are to take for the ell of hosen , one shilling four penies only : and for ilk ell of grays or plaiding , four penies the ell only , and no more . masons , slaters , and wrights , are not to exceed a merk scots without , and half a merk with meat , for the dayes work , from march first to october first ; and thereafter to abate in their dayes hire proportionably , except they work with candle-light . taylors and shoe-makers are not to exceed four shillings a day and their meat , when they work abroad for daily hire . malt-makers are not to take above one peck of malt for making the boll of beer in malt. makers of peny-bridals are not to exceed eight shillings a-piece for the ordinary of ilk man and ilk woman , at dinner or supper . that as thir rates , fees and prices , &c. are not intended in the prejudice of those masters who usually hire their servants , and have their work wrought cheaper ; so all other persons are to conform themselves to the foresaid prices , under the pain of paying a terms fee , or ten dayes hire , the one half to the discoverer , and the other half to prisoners and the poor in the paroch . that the constables at ilk general sessions faithfully present all contraveeners of any of the above-written acts ; all forestallers or regraters ; all keepers of , or sellers with false weights , mets or measures ; and all other misdemeanors that shall come to their knowledge betwixt the sessions . that whatever person assists not the paroch-constables in executing their offices ; and whatever constable , overseer , or other person assists not , and gives obedience to the high-constable of ilk of their sub-divisions , in the execution of any orders of session directed to him , shall be imprisoned and fined as the justices think fit . that all overseers give notice to the next justice in that division where he dwelleth , before the first of june yearly , of such highwayes or bridges within the paroch as are out of repair , or fit to be made , that the same may be mended and made that summer , as the special sessions the first tuesday of june shall direct , under the pain of six pound scots for ilk failye . that any person who shall inform against the breakers of any of the above-written acts , and make it appear that the person or persons informed against , are guilty , shall be sufficiently rewarded for ilk discovery : and if it be made appear that any constable or overseer shall connive at , or compound with any transgressor of the foresaid acts , such constables and overseers shall be forthwith imprisoned , and fined , as the justices think meet . that as the dues of the clerk of the peace here , are not to exceed those of the clerks of the peace of mid-lowthian and fise-shires : so the dues of the justices clerks here are only : for all the recognizances written in one action , twelve shillings scots , payable by the party succumber : for all warrants or summons to compear anent one action , six shillings only , payable by the party aforesaid : for writing ilk witnesses deposition , two shillings , payable by the party aforesaid : for every absolvitor before a particular justice , six shillings : and for every mittimus , eight shillings scots . that correspondence be kept with our neighbour shires , for the joynt oncarrying of the work of the peace , and punishing all contraveeners of the acts and ordinances made in any of the said shires . that the constables cause read thir presents at every paroch kirk in the shire , after the first sermon ; and thereafter affix and set up the same on the most patent door thereof . extracted out of the registers for the peace of perth-shire . by robert andrews , clerk of the peace . edinbvrgh , printed by christopher higgins , in harts-close , over against the trone-church , 1656. the kings majesties letter, directed to the committee of estates of his kingdome of scotland. and his majesties proclamation for disbanding of all forces within this kingdom raised by his authority, and not allowed by parliament, secret councell, or committee of estates. england and wales. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription b02015 of text r173695 in the english short title catalog (wing c2386a). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 8 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 2 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 b02015 wing c2386a estc r173695 52528753 ocm 52528753 178718 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b02015) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 178718) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2768:7) the kings majesties letter, directed to the committee of estates of his kingdome of scotland. and his majesties proclamation for disbanding of all forces within this kingdom raised by his authority, and not allowed by parliament, secret councell, or committee of estates. england and wales. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) charles i, king of england, 1600-1649. 1 sheet ([1] p.) by evan tyler, printer to the kings most excellent majestie, printed at edinburgh : 1646. caption title. imprint from colophon. letter dated 19 may 1646; proclamation dated 20 may 1646. also includes reply from committee of estates dated 23 may 1646. imperfect: torn and stained with slight loss of text. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. eng great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -sources. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. b02015 r173695 (wing c2386a). civilwar no the kings majesties letter, directed to the committee of estates of his kingdome of scotland. and his majesties proclamation for disbanding england and wales. sovereign 1646 1374 2 0 0 0 0 0 15 c the rate of 15 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-02 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-07 olivia bottum sampled and proofread 2008-07 olivia bottum text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the kings majesties letter directed to the committee of estates , of his kingdom and his majesties proclamation for disbanding of all forces with 〈◊〉 raised by his authority , and not allowed by parliament , secret councell , or committee of est●●● charles r. right trustie and right welbeloved cousins and councellors , right trustie and right welbeloved cousins , trusted and wel●●●●ved councellors , and trustie and welbeloved ; we greet you well . after so long and sad an interruption of the happy understanding betwixt us and our good subjects of our kingdom of scotland ( which hath exceedingly afflicted us ) and lest the sad effects thereof may have alienated the affections of many of that kingdom from us , and preferring nothing to the love of our subjects , on which our safety and greatnesse most depends , and without which we propose not to our selves any happinesse ; we have thought fit to labour to dispossesse them of all prejudice , rather by shewing them our present resolutions , then remembring them of our former differences , having come hither with a full and absolute intention to give all just satisfaction to the joynt defires of both our kingdomes , and with no thought either to continue this unnaturall war any longer , or to make a division bewixt the kingdoms , but to comply with our parliaments and these intrusted by them in every thing , for settling truth and peace . your commissioners have offered to us divers papers in your name , expressing your loyall intentions towards us , for which we cannot but returne you hearty thanks , and shall study to apply our selves totally to the councells and advices of our parliaments : we have alreadie sent a message to the two houses of our parliament of england , and your commissioners at london , which we hope will give satisfaction ; we have likewise written to all such within our kingdom of scotland as have any commissions from us , to lay down armes , disband their forces , and render their garrisons ; and have written to our agents and ministers abroad for recalling all commissions issued forth by our authority to any at sea , against any of our subjects of either kingdoms ; and have sent letters to the governour of our citie of oxford , to quit that garrison upon honourable conditions , and disband our forces there , which being granted to him , we have resolved presently to give the like order to all our other garrisons and forces within this kingdom . and that the truth of all these our reall intentions may be made known to all our good subjects in scotland , we desire the inclosed proclamation may be printed and published together with this letter , at all convenient places ; hoping none will beleeve but that this is our voluntary and cordiall resolution , and proceeds from no other ground , then our deep sence of the bleeding condition of our kingdoms , and that our reall intentions are ( with the blessing of god , and his favourable assistance ) to joyne with our parliaments in settling religion here in purity ( after the advice of the divines of both kingdoms assembled at westminster ) and our subjects of both kingdoms in freedom and safety : so expecting your councells and advices in every thing wherein we shall be concerned , we bid you very heartily farewell . from newcastle the 19 of may 1646. his majesties proclamation charles r charles , by the grace of god , king of great britain , france , and ireland , defender of the faith . to our lovits our lion king at arms , and his brethren heralds and pursevants , our sheriffs in that part , greeting . whereas nothing hath been more grievous to us then the sad effects have flowed from the unhappie differences betwixt us and our good subjects ; for the remedy whereof we are resolved to leave no means unassayed , which may bring a happy understanding betwixt us and them : and for that end , to comply with the desires of our parliaments and those intrusted by them , in every thing which may contribute to the speedy settling of truth and peace in all our dominions ; that with gods assistance , we may see our subjects happinesse under our government , equall to the best times of our royall progenitors : and that all marks and signes of differences betwixt us and them may be removed , and all acts of hostility may cease , and none cover or shelter themselves under the pretence of any power or authority from us ; we have resolved to recall and discharge , like as hereby we do recall and discharge , all commissions by sea or land , issued forth by us , to any person or persons , under what pretence soever , within our kingdom of scotland . and therefore our will is , and we charge you straitly and command , that incontinent thir our letters seen , you passe , and by open proclamation hereof at the market crosses of edinburgh , stirling , glasgow , dundee , perth , forfar , aberdeen , innernesse , and other places needfull , in our name and authority , command and charge , all persons , of whatsoever quality or degree within our said kingdom of scotland , who are now in arms by vertue or warrant of any commission or authority flowing from us , which is not allowed by our parliament , or committee of estates , or secret councell there , under what pretence soever , that they and every one of them , forthwith after the publication hereof , lay down arms , disband their forces , and render their garisons to any whom the committee of estates of our kingdom of scotland shall appoint ; with certification , that if any person or persons , of what quality or condition soever , shall refuse , or delay to lay down arms , disband their forces , render their garisons ; or that shall hereafter , under pretence of our service , or of any former commission from us , commit any hostile act or acts , shall be immediatly pursued and proceeded against by all manner of wayes , without mercy . likeas , hereby we disavow and disclaim all acts of hostility that shall be done hereafter , by any person or persons whatsoever , under pretence of our service , or of any such commission or warrant from us , which is not approven by our parliament , secret councell , or committee of estates of that kingdom of scotland . the which to do , we commit to you our full power by thir our letters . given under our signe manuall at newcastle , the 20. day of may , and of our reign the 22. year . 1646 edinb. 23. may . 1646. the committee of estates of the kingdom of scotland , having read and considered his majesties letter and proclamation above written , do with all dutie and thankfulnesse acknowledge his majesties gracious goodnesse , in giving such large expressions of his resolution to comply with his parliaments and these intrusted by them , for settling truth and peace in all his dominions . and that the same may be known , to the satisfaction of all his good subjects , the committee , according to the warrant , of his majesties letter , ordains the said letter and proclamation to be printed , and published at the market crosses of all the royall burrows of this kingdom : and that the burrows and others his majesties good subjects witnesse their thankfulnesse therefore by ringing of bells , putting on of bonefires , and others expressions of joy formerly used in cases of the like kinde . arch. primerose printed at edinburgh by evan tyler , printer to the kings most excellent majestie . 1646. scotlands publick acknowledgement of gods just judgement upon their nation for their frequent breach of faith, leagues, and solemne oathes made to their neighbours of england, in former ages, to gratifie their treacherous confederates of france. recorded in their own publick liturgie, printed at edenborough by thomas bassandine, anno. dom. 1575, page 54, 57, 58, und this title, prayers used in the churches of scotland in the time of their persecution by the frenchmen (in the year 1560) from whose tyranny and vassalage, they were then delivered by the free brotherly assistance and forces of the english, to whom they had been formerly persidious. published to prevent the like breach of solemn leagues, oaths, and covenants between both nations now (for fear of incurring the like, or a worse judgement,) by a well-wisher to both kingdomes. prynne, william, 1600-1669. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a91260 of text r210628 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.10[90]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a91260 wing p4060 thomason 669.f.10[90] estc r210628 99869408 99869408 162623 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a91260) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 162623) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 246:669f10[90]) scotlands publick acknowledgement of gods just judgement upon their nation for their frequent breach of faith, leagues, and solemne oathes made to their neighbours of england, in former ages, to gratifie their treacherous confederates of france. recorded in their own publick liturgie, printed at edenborough by thomas bassandine, anno. dom. 1575, page 54, 57, 58, und this title, prayers used in the churches of scotland in the time of their persecution by the frenchmen (in the year 1560) from whose tyranny and vassalage, they were then delivered by the free brotherly assistance and forces of the english, to whom they had been formerly persidious. published to prevent the like breach of solemn leagues, oaths, and covenants between both nations now (for fear of incurring the like, or a worse judgement,) by a well-wisher to both kingdomes. prynne, william, 1600-1669. 1 sheet ([1] p.) for m.s., printed at london : 1646. a well-wisher to both kingdomes = william prynne. annotation on thomason copy: "[illegible] th". reproduction of the original in the british library. eng england -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign relations -england -early works to 1800. a91260 r210628 (thomason 669.f.10[90]). civilwar no scotlands publick acknowledgement of gods just judgement upon their nation for their frequent breach of faith, leagues, and solemne oathes m prynne, william 1646 705 4 0 0 0 0 0 57 d the rate of 57 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the d category of texts with between 35 and 100 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-07 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-08 pip willcox sampled and proofread 2007-08 pip willcox text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion scotlands publick acknowledgement of gods just judgement upon their nation for their frequent breach of faith , leagves , and solemne oathes made to their neighbours of england , in former ages , to gratifie their treacherous confederates of france . recorded in their own publick liturgie , printed at edenborough by thomas bassandine , anno dom. 1575 page 54. 57. 58. under this title , prayers used in the churches of scotland in the time of their persecution by the french-men ( in the year 1560. ) from whose tyranny and vassalage , they were then delivered by the free brotherly assistance and forces of the english , to whom they had been formerly so perfidious . published to prevent the like breach of solemn leagues , oaths , and covenants between both nations now ( for fear of of incurring the like , or a worse judgement , ) by a well-wisher to both kingdomes . but now , o lord , the dangers which appeare , and the trouble which increaseth , by cruell tyranny of forsworne strangers , compelleth us to complain before the throne of thy mercy , and to crave of thee protection and defence against their most unjust persecution . that nation , o lord , for whose pleasure , and defence of whom , we have offended thy majesty , and violated our faith , * oft breaking the leagues of unity , and concord which our kings and governours have contracted with our * neighbours , that nation , o lord , for whose alliance our fathers and predecessours have shed their blood , and we ( whom now by tyranny they oppresse ) have oft sustained the hazard of battaile , that nation finally , to whom alwaies we have been faithful , now after then long practised deceit , by manifest tyranny doe seek our destruction : worthily and justly may thou , o lord , give us to be slaves unto such tyrants ; because , for the maintenance of their friendship , wee have not feared to break ovr solemn oathes , made unto others , to the great dis-honour of thine holy name ; and therefore justly mayest thou punish us by the same nation , for whose pleasure we feared not to offend thy divine majesty . in thy presence , o lord , we lay for our selves no kinde of excuse , but for thy deare sonne jesus christ his sake , we cry for mercy , pardon , and grace ; thou knowest , o lord , that their crafty wits in many things have abused our simplicity : for , under pretence of the maintenance of our liberty , they have sought , and have found the way ( unlesse thou alone confound their councells ) to bring us in their perpetuall bondage , &c. this text needs no commentary : the summe of it is : nationall perjury will certainly 〈◊〉 punished with nationall misery ; and those who break their solemn oathes , and leagues wi●● their neighbour brethren , to gratifie any other nation or party , shall by divine justice bee betraed , enslaved , or endangered to be destroyed by that very nation and party , for whose ends they th●● violated their oathes and covenants . a strong engagement both to our brethren of scotland and us , to take heed of covenant breaking one with another , least thereby we expose our selves to heavens vengeance , and to th●tyranny and slavery of the common enemy . amos 1. 9. 10. thus saith the lord ; for three transgressions of tyrus , and for foure , i will not turn away the punishment thereof , 〈◊〉 they delivered up the whole captivity to edom , and remembred not the brother● covenant . therefore will i send a fire on the wall of tyrus , which shall devoure the palaces thereof . printed at london for m. s. 1646. notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a91260e-30 * see tho. walsingham , hist. ang. an. 1383 p. 133. & antiquitates , eccles. brit. p. 295. 296. * to wit , of england . note . the intentions of the army of the kingdome of scotland, declared to their brethren of england, by the commissioners of the late parliament, and by the generall, noblemen, barons, and others, officers of the army scotland. army. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a11669 of text s100070 in the english short title catalog (stc 21919). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 30 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 10 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a11669 stc 21919 estc s100070 99835922 99835922 155 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11669) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 155) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1291:06) the intentions of the army of the kingdome of scotland, declared to their brethren of england, by the commissioners of the late parliament, and by the generall, noblemen, barons, and others, officers of the army scotland. army. henderson, alexander, 1583?-1646, attributed name. scotland. parliament. 19, [1] p. by robert bryson, and are to be solde at his shop at the signe of jonah, printed at edinburgh : 1640. sometimes attributed to alexander henderson. bryson's device with monogram (mckerrow 358) on title page. signatures: a-b⁴ c² . reproduction of the original in the union theological seminary (new york, n.y.). library. eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a11669 s100070 (stc 21919). civilwar no the intentions of the army of the kingdome of scotland, declared to their brethren of england, by the commissioners of the late parliament, scotland. army 1640 5622 9 0 0 0 0 0 16 c the rate of 16 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2004-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-03 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-04 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2004-04 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-07 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the intentions of the army of the kingdome of scotland , declared to their brethren of england , by the commissioners of the late parliament , and by the generall , noblemen , barons , and others , officers of the army . rb printer's or publisher's device printed at edinburgh by robert bryson , and are to be solde at his shop at the signe of ionah . 1640. ¶ the intentions of the army of the kingdome of scotland , declared to their brethren of england : by the commissioners of the late parliament , and by the generall , noblemen , barons , and others , officers of the army . the best endeavours , and greatest workes wherein the hand and providence of god have been most evident and sensible , and the hearts and intentions of men called to be the instruments most pious and sincere , though they found approbation with the wiser sort , and such as are given to observation , yet they have ever been subject to be misconstrued by blind suspition , to be reproved by cavilling censure , which maketh place for it self to enter where it findeth none , and to be condemned of the ignorant , and of such as are at ease , but most of all of the malicious , who can not be pleased even when god is best pleased , and when men seek to approve themselves to eevery ones conscience ; but in their hearts wish rather that the temple should not be built , religion never reformed , and they themselves coutch betwixt the two burdens , then that they should be in their worldly projects or possessions opposed or troubled . the deliverance of the people of god of old from the egyptian servitude ; the redemption of the kirk by the son of god , and the planting of christian religion by his servants , and the vindication of religion from romish superstition and tyranny , which are the greatest and most wonderfull works of god , have been most bitterly calumniated , and spitefully spurned against by the wicked . the nature and quality of this great work , wherein the lord hath honoured us to be agents , and the experience which we have found of continuall opposition , since the beginning , may teach us , if we be not as the horse and muse which have no understanding , that we are to expect the gainsaying of sinners ; and that nothing can be hatched in hell by satan , or prompted by his supposts on earth , which will not be produced to make us and the cause of god , which we maintaine odious to all men , but most of all to our neighbours and dearest brethren . when we shall now enter into england , it will be layed to our charge , that we minde nothing but invasion , and that no lesse hath been intended by us from the beginning , then under the pretext of seeking our religion and liberties , to enrich our selves with their possessions and goods : but our peaceable carriage many yeares past , before the time of those late troubles , our informations , declarations , and remonstrances published to the world , wherein we have cursed all nationall invasion , and our willingnesse when we were in armes , to lay them downe upon the smallest assurances of enjoying our religion and liberties , will be conceived by the wise and well affected , to bee more plaine and sure evidences of our meaning , then all that malice can devise , or calumnie can expresse against us . neither have any new emergents altered , but rather confirmed our former resolutions . for although both before and since the late pacification , wee have beene highly injuried by some papists , and prelats , and their adherents there , who have beene , and are still seeking no lesse then that wee should no more bee a kirk or a nation , and therefore themselves can not thinke , but we must accompt of them as gods enemies and ours ; yet above all the favours wee have received from the good people and body of the kingdome of england , one there is , which hath highly honoured them before the world , and endeered them unto us more then before , which shall never be forgotten by us , and wee hope shall be thankfully remembred by our children , and childrens children after us , to all generations ; that when upon mis-information , the councell of england had concluded to use force against us , when the parliament of ireland had offered their persons and estates for supply against us , when all plots and policies were set on work , and publick declarations by authority were made , and the parliament called for this very end , when we had been traduced and proclaimed as traytours and rebels at every paroch kirk ▪ yet so wise , so grave , so just was that high court of parliament ( to their everlasting honour be it remembred ) that no threatnings , nor feares , nor promises , nor hopes , could moove them to decerne a warre , or grant any subsidie for a warre against us ; but rather by their speeches , complaints , and grievances paralell to ours , did justifie the cause which we defend . this rich and recent favour doth so binde our hearts , that were our power never so great , we should judge our selves the unworthiest of all men , and could look for no lesse then vengeance from the righteous god , if we should moove hand or foot against that nation , so comfortably to us represented in that honourable meeting . in this our than full acknowledgment , wee desire that the city of london may have their owne large share , as they well deserve by the noble proofes they have given of their constant affection to religion , and the peace of both kingdomes , notwithstanding the continuall assaults of the mis-leaders of king and court living amongst them , and alwayes sounding the trumpet of sedition in their eares : and if this which doth so convince us , shall not be thought sufficient to satisfie all the good people of england , vvee now before god and the world , make offer in generall , and will make offer to so many of them as will require it in particular , of the strongest and most inviolable bond of our solemne oath and religious attestation of the great name of god , who is our feare & our dread , & from whom we hope for a blessing upon our expedition , that we intend no enimitie or rapine , and shall take no mans goods , nor ingage our selves in blood by fighting , unlesse we be forced unto it , which we may look for from the papists , prelats , and others of that faction ; but that any such thing shall come from godly men , or good patriots who love the trueth of religion , or the kings honour , and their owne libertie , both the rule of charity , which entertaineth no suspition , where there is no evill-deserving , and the rule of wisedome , which teacheth , that both nations must now stand or fall together , doe forbid us to apprehend . all the designe of both kingdomes is , for the trueth of religion , and for the just liberty of the subject ; and all the devices and doings of the enemy are for oppressing of both , that our religion may bee turned into superstition and atheisme , and our libertie into base servitude and bondage : to bring this to passe , they have certainly conceived , that the blocking up of this kingdome by sea and land , would proove a powerfull and infallible meane : for either within a very short time shall wee through want of trade , and spoyling of our goods , bee brought to such extreamity , poverty , and confusion , that we shall miserably desire the conditions which wee now despise and declyne , and bee forced to embrace their will for a law , both in kirk and policie , which will bee a precedent for the like misery in england , taught by our example to be more wise . or upon the other part , we shall by this invasion bee constrayned furiously , and without order , to breake into england , which we beleeve is their more earnest desire , because a more speedy execution of their designe : for we doubt not but upon our comming , clamours will bee raysed , posts sent , and proclamations made through the kingdome , to slander our pious and just intentions , as if this had been our meaning from the beginning , to stirre up all the english against us , that once being entered in blood , they may with their owne swords , extirpat their own religion , lay a present foundation with their own hands for building of rome , in the midst of them , and be made the authors both of their own and our slavery , to continue for ever . but in this admirable opportunity of vindication of true religion and just liberty , if divine providence bee looked upon with a reverent by , and men fearing god , and loving the kings honour , and peace of both kingdomes , shall walke worthy of their profession , although the enemies have obtained so much of their desires , as by coards of their own twisting to draw us into england , yet may their maine designe be disappointed , the rope which they have made , brought upon their owne necks , and their wisedome turned into foolishnes , which we have reason to hope for from that supreame wisedome and power , which hath in all the proceedings of this vvork , turned their devices upon their own pates that plotted them . in our informations , remonstrances , and the true representation of our proceeding ; since the late pacification , we have so farre expressed the wrongs which wee have sustained , and the distresses which wee suffer , as may make manifest our pressing necessity , to take some other course for our present relief , then such petitions , supplications , and commissions , as we have used before , with lesse successe , then could have beene expected of a kingdome from their own native king . before we stirred so much as with a petition , wee endured for many yeares , not onely the perpetuall opposition of the trueth and power of religion by prelats and papists , but also the violation of all our liberties , and almost the totall subversion of our religion , which was our comfort in the sight of god , and the glory of this nation in the sight of other kirkes , who by the testimony of their divines , made our reformation the measure of their wishes , and would have redeemed it with their greatest worldly losses . when grosse popery was notoriously obtruded upon us in the books of canons and common prayer , without consent or knowledge of the kirke , and the plot of the prelats and papists wholly discovered , how to settle it in both nations , wee added to our former sufferings , no other armes but prayers and teares unto god : and petitions unto our king , which were utterly rejected ; the books and corruptions against which we petitioned , highly exalted , and by the insolent advice of those who governe now his councells , and labour to establish their own evill acquired greatnesse , upon our oppression , and the ruines of our religion and liberties , we were forbidden to insist , under the pain of high treason . when wee found our selves thus opposed and borne downe , still insisting in our humble desires , we solemnely renewed our nationall oath and covenant , for preserving of our religion and liberties , and of his majesties authority , knowing the violation of that oath , to bee the guiltinesse which had procured our woes , and that our repentance and turning to god , were the meanes by his blessing for good successe . vvhen contrary to our deserving and expectation , his majesty was moved by wicked counsell , to march toward us with an army , we were very soon pleased , and choosed rather to neglect such courses , as might serve for our humane safety , then to fall in seeming disobedience to our king , or to give the smallest distaste to our dear brethren in england : and therfore disbanded our forces , delivered all holds which were craved in testimony of our obedience : and so farre complyed with his majesties pleasure , that notwithstanding the determination of our lawfull former assembly called by his majesty , we were contented that a new free assembly and parliament should be appointed , where all things both concerning our religion and liberties , might again be considered and established . vvhen matters ecclesiasticall were determined in the assembly , according to the constitutions of the kirk , in the presence , and with the consent of his majesties commissioner , and the parliament was conveened for perfecting the vvork , although we walked therein so warily , that no just provocation was given to his majesty , yet contrary to the lawes and custome of this kingdome , the parliament so certainly promised , when his majesty was free of those bad counsellours , was by their evill advyce prorogued ; which , to shew our invincible obedience , we were content to suffer , and did sent up our commissioners to london , to render the reasons of our demands . when our commissioners and petitions of the parliament , called by his majesty , were so farre rejected , that they were never seen nor heard , we send up our commissioners again with our propositions , which contained nothing but what was necessary for the good and peace of the kingdome , and was granted unto us before , under his majesties hand , yet could they finde no answer at all , which will be wondered at , and hardly beleeved by so many as are strangers at court , and know not that the bishop of canterbury , and the lievtenant of ireland , with the assistance of the too too powerfull faction of the papists , labour to show their zeale for his majesties greatnesse , by the oppressing the just liberties of the subjects , and the reformed religion in all the three kingdomes . but in place of the gracious answer which we expected , our commissioners were restrained , and one of the noblemen imprisoned ; garrisons of strangers set over our heads , in an insolent and barbarous way , exercising their cruelty even against women and children ; our ships and goods taken and sunke , and the owners stripped naked , and more inhumanely used at the commandement of abused authority by the subjects of our owne king , then by turkes and infidels . and great armies prepared against us , with a terrible commission to subdue and destroy our selves , our religion , liberties , lawes and all . in this extreamity for us to send new commissioners or petitions , were against sense and experience ; those that governe the kings counsels being far from any inclination or intention to satisfie the just desires and grievances of the subjects , as they have made manifest by breaking up of the parliaments in both kingdomes . to sit still in senselesnesse and stupiditie , wayting for our owne destruction at the discretion of our mercilesse enemies ( which were it not at this time joyned with the cause of god , would move us the lesse ) is not onely against religion , but nature ; teaching and commanding us to study our own preservation . to endure continuall threatnings , and so great hostility and invasion from yeare to yeare , which is the professed policie of our enemies , is impossible ; and when wee have examined our own strength , more then we are able to beare . we have therefore after much agitation and debating , with , and amongst our selves , resolved to have our proceedings , which have been canvassed by so many , and brought to some point of determination in our own parliament , to be better known to the kings majesty , and the world , and especially to the kingdome of england , that against all false and artificiall relations , they being nakedly seen to be what they are , wee may obtaine a better grounded and more durable peace , for enjoying of our religion and lawes : and as wee desire the unworthy authors of our troubles , who have come out from our selves , to be tryed at home , and justice to be done upon them , according to our owne lawes : so shall wee presse no further processe against these pernicious counsellours in england , the authors of all the miseries of both kingdomes , then what their own parliament shal decerne to be their just deserving . when we look back upon this work of reformation from the beginning , and perceive the impressions of the providence of god in it , wee are forced in the midst of all our difficulties and distresses , to blesse god for his fatherly care and free love to this kirk and kingdome , and to take courage and spirit to proceed in patience & perseverance , whither he shall goe before us , and leade us on . when the prelats were growne by their rents & lordly dignities , by their power over all sorts of his majesties subjects , ministers , and others , by their places in parliament , councell , colledge of justice , exchequer , and high commission , to an absolute dominion & greatnesse , and setting their one foot on the kirk , and the other on the state , were become intollerably insolent , even then did the work begin , and this was the lords opportunity . the beginnings were small , and promised no great thing , but have been so seconded and continually followed by divine providence , pressing us from step to step , that the necessity was invincible , and could not be resisted . it cannot be expressed what motions filled the hearts , what teares were powred forth from the eyes , and what cryes came from the mouthes of many thousands in this land at that time , from the sense of the love and power of god , raysing them as from the dead , and giving them hopes after so great a deluge and vastation , to see a new world , wherein religion and righteousnesse should dwell ▪ when wee were many times at a pause , and knew not well what to doe , the feares , the furies , the peevishnesse , and the plots also of our dementat adversaryes , opened the wayes unto us , and taught us how to proceed ; and what they devised to ruine us , served most against themselves , and for raysing and promooving the worke . although neither councell , nor session , nor any other judicature , hath been all this time sitting , and there have beene meetings of many thousands , at some times , yet have they been keeped without tumult or trouble , and without excesse or ryot , in better order , and greater quietnesse , then in the most peaceable times hath been found in this land . vvhen we were content at the pacification , to lay down armes , & with great losse , to live at home in peace , our wicked enemies have been like the troubled sea when it cannot rest , whose waters cast up mire and dirt , and will have us to doe that which it seemeth the lord hath decreed against them . the purity of our intentions f●rre from base and earthly respects : the bent and inclination of our hearts in the midst of many dangers : the fitting of instruments , not onely with a desire and disposition , but with spirit and ability to overcome opposition , and the constant peace of heart accompanying us in our wayes , which beareth us out against all accusations and aspersions , are to us strong grounds of assurance , that god hath accepted our worke , and will not leave us . vvee know that the lord may use even wicked men in his servic● , and may fill their sailes with a faire gale of abilities , and carry them on with a strong hand , which should make us to search our hearts the more narrowly : but as this ought not to discourage his own faithfull servants , who out of love to his name , intend his honour , walk in his wayes , finde his peace ▪ comforting them , his providence directing them , and his prefence blessing them in their affaires ; so it cannot be any just ground of quarrelling against the work of god . yet all those our encouragements , which have upholden our hearts in the midst of many troubles , could not make our ●ntry into england warrantable , if our peace , which we earnestly seek and follow after , could be found at home , or elsewhere . where it is to be found , we must seek after it ; and no sooner shall we finde it , but by laying down our armes , and by the evidences of our peaceable disposition , wee shall make it manifest to the world , and especially to the kingdome of england , that we are seeking nothing else , and that our taking up of armes , was not for invasion , but for defence . no man needeth to plead by positive law for necessity : it is written in every mans heart by nature , and in all nations we find men have received it by practise ; that necessity is a soveraignitie , a law above all lawes , is subject to no law , and therefore is said to have no law : where necessity commandeth , the lawes of nature and nations give their consent , and all positive lawes are silent and give place . this law hath place sometimes to excuse , sometimes to extenuat , and sometimes to justifie and warrand actions otherwayes questionable . and no greater necessity can be , then the preservation of religion which is the soule ; of the countrey which is the body ; of our lyves who are the members , and of the honour of the king who is the head : all those at this time are in a common hazard , and to preserve and secure all , wee know no other way under the sunne ( and if any man be so wise as to know it , wee desire to heare it , and shall bee ready to follow it ) but to take order with our common enemies , where they may be found , and to seek our assurance where it may be given . the question is not , whether we shall content our selves with our own poverty , or enrich our selves in england , that question is impious and absurd . neither is the question whether we shall defend our selves at home , or invade our neighbours and dearest brethren , this also were unchristian and unreasonable : but this is the question , whether it be wisdome and piety to keep our selves within the borders till our throats be cut , and our religion , lawes , and countrey be destroyed : or shall wee bestirre our selves , and seeke our safeguard , peace and liberty in england : whether we shall doe or dye ; whether we sha●l goe and live , or abide and perish : or more largely to expresse all , whether we who are not a few privat persons , but a whole kingdome , shall lye under the burden of so many accusations , as scarcely in the worst times have beene intended against christians , receive the service booke , and the whole body of popery , embrace the prelats , and their abjured hierarchy , renounce our solemne oath and covenant , so many times sworne by us , lose all our labours and paines in this cause , and forget our former slavery and wonted desires of redemption at the dearest rate , tickle the mindes of our enemies with joy , and strengthen their hands with violence , and fill the hearts of our friends with sorrow , and their faces with shame , because of us , deserte and dishonour the sonne of god , whose cause we have under-taken , whose banner wee have displayed , and whose trueth and power hath been this time past , more comfortable unto us , then all that the peace and prosperity of the world could have rendered , and draw upon our selves all the judgements which god hath executed upon apostates since the beginning ; or shall we fold our hands , and waite for the perfect slavery or our selves , and our posterity , in our soules , bodies , and estates , and ( which is all one ) foolishly to stand to our defence , where we know it is impossible ; or shall wee seeke our reliefe in following the calling of god , ( for our necessity can bee interpreted to be no lesse and entering by the doore which his providence hath opened unto us , when all wayes are stopped beside ? our enemies at first did shroud themselves so farre with the kings authority , that they behooved to stand and fall together , and that to censure them , was treason against the king . but we have showne , that the kings crowne is not tyed to a prelats mitre ; and that the one may be cast unto the ground , and the other have a greater lustre and glory then before . now they take themselves to another starting hole , and would have men thinke , that to come in to england , and to pursue them , although legally , is to invade the kingdome where they live ; as if the cutting away of an excrescence , or the curing of an impostume , were the killing of the body . let them secure themselves under the shelter of their own phantasies ; but we are not so undiscerning , as like mad men , to run furiously upon such as they first meet with , and come in their way . for although it cannot bee denyed , but the wrongs done unto us ; as the breaking of the late peace , crying us down as rebels and traytours , the taking of our ships and goods , the imprisoning of our commissioners , the acts of hostility done by the english in our castles : had they beene done by the state or kingdome of england , they might have beene just causes of a nationall quarrelling : yet since the kingdome of england , conveened in parliament , have refused to contribute any supply against us , have shown themselves to be pressed with grievances like unto ours , have earnestly pleaded for redresse and remedy , and a declaration made , that his majesty our of parliament will redresse them , which might be a cure for the grievances of particular subjects , but nationall grievances require the hand of the parliament for their cure ▪ for preventing whereof , the parliament was broken up and dissolved . neither doe we quarrell with the kingdome for the injuries which we sustain ▪ nor can they quarrell with us , for taking order with that prevalent faction of papists & prelats , the authors of so many woes to both nations , let all who love religion & their liberty joyn against the common enemies , and let them be accursed who shall not seek the preservation of their neighbour nation , both in religion and lawes , as their own , as knowing that the ruine of one , will prove the ruine of both . and as we attest the god of heaven and earth , that those and no other are our intentions ; so upon the same greatest attestation doe we declare , that for atchieving those ends , we shal neither spare our pains , fortunes , nor lyves , which we know cannot be more profitably & honorably spent : that we shal not take from our friends & brethren , from a threed even to a shooe latchet , but for our own moneyes , and the just payment , that wee come amongst them as their friends and brethren , very sensible of their by-past sufferings & present dangers , both in religion and liberties , and most willing to doe them all the good we can . like as wee certainly expect , that they from the like sense of our hard condition , and intollerable distresses , which hath forced us to come from our own countrey , will joyne and concurre with us , in the most just and noble wayes , for obtaining our just desires : and when our own moneyes and meanes are spent , we shall crave nothing but upon sufficient surety of repayment , how soon possibly it can be made , what is necessary for the entertainment of our army , which wee are assured so many as love religion , and the peace of both kingdomes , will willingly offer , as that which they know we cannot want , and in their wise fore-sight will provide the way to furnish necessaries , and to receive the surety . this course being keeped by both sides , will neither harme our brethren , for they shall bee satisfied to the least farthing ; nor our selves , who look for a recompence from the rich providence of god , for whose sake we have hazarded the losse of all things . the escapes of some souldiours ( if any shall happen ) we trust shall not be imputed unto us , who shall labor by all means to prevent them more carefully , & to punish thē more severely , then if done to our selves , & in our own country . our professed enemies the papists & prelats , with their adherents , & the receipters of their goods & geir , we cōceive wil be more provident , then to refuse us necessary sustentation , when they remember what counsell was given by them , for declaring all our possessions to be forfeited , & to be disposed of to them , as well deserving subjects . we shall demand nothing of the kings majesty , but the settling and securing of the true religion , and liberties of this kingdome , according to the constitutions and acts of the late assemblies , and parliament , and what a just prince oweth by the lawes of god and the countrey , to his grieved subjects , comming before him with their humble desires and supplications . our abode in england shal be for no longer time , then in their parliament our just grievances and complaints shall be heard and redressed , sufficient assurance given for the legall tryall and punishment of the authors of our evills , and for enjoying of our religion and liberties in peace , against the invasion of their countreymen . our returning thereafter shall be with expedition , in a peaceable and orderly way , farre from all molestation ; and wee trust the effect shall be against papists the extirpation of popery , against prelates the reformation of the kirk , against atheists the flourishing of the gospel , and against traytours and fire-brands , a perfect and durable union and love between the two kingdomes : which , he grant who knoweth our intentions and desires , and is able to bring them to passe . and if any more be required , god will reveale it , and goe before both nations ; and if he goe before us , who will not follow , or refuse to put their necks to the work of the lord ? finis . act anent deficients of the levy, one thousand, six hundred and ninety five. edinburgh, 5th january, 1697. scotland. privy council. 1697 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05294 wing s1392 estc r182966 52528894 ocm 52528894 178914 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05294) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 178914) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2774:53) act anent deficients of the levy, one thousand, six hundred and ninety five. edinburgh, 5th january, 1697. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to his most excellent majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1697. caption title. initial letter. signed: gilb. eliot cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -army -recruiting and enlistment -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-12 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 megan marion sampled and proofread 2009-01 megan marion text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion act anent deficients of the levy , one thousand , six hundred and ninety five . edinburgh , 5th january , 1697. the lords of his majesties privy council considering , that several of the shires within this kingdom have not furnished their proportions of the levy appointed by the act of parliament one thousand six hundred and ninety five ; have therefore appointed , and do hereby order and appoint the sheriff of the shires deficient as said is , and as they shall be advertised by sir patrick hume his majesties solicitor , by transmitting to them an extract of this act , with the particular number of their deficient men thereto subjoyned , to conveen the commissioners of supplie within the same ; and signify to them , that it is their lordships perremptory command , that they take an effectual course , for furnishing and putting out their respective numbers of men wanting , with all diligence : and that tho it may happen , that in some of these shires , different methods have been taken from these prescribed by the said act of parliament ; yet they must still make good their number : and if in the method of the said act. lots have been drawn for persons out of the kingdom , which ought not to have been done , these liable in the respective shires where the same was done , must supplie them , if not returned : and the saids commissioners are to deliver their deficient men to the officers appointed , to receive them at the head-burgh of their shire upon the respective days following , viz. for the shires on this side of tay , the twenty fifth of january instant , and for the shires be north tay , the tenth day of february thereafter . and farder , the said sheriff and commissioners are to certify such as are liable to put out the said deficient men within their bounds , that if they failzie to do the same , the lords of council will decern them to pay the sum of two hundred merks for each man deficient to the saids officers that should have received them ; and that letters upon a simple charge of six days , at the instance of his majesties solicitor , shall be direct against them for that effect . and the sheriffs and commissioners of supply , in all shires are hereby appointed to inquire diligently anent all deserters , and whether any of the men put forth by them be returned , and reset within their bounds ; and for encouragement of such as shall apprehend these deserters , to be brought up with the said deficients , at the foresaid day and place ; the sheriffs are to give advertisement , that the officers will be careful to pay them liberally . as likewise they are to certify on the other hand , that all guilty of reset , shall be prosecute for the paying of the hundred pounds , and other pains contained in the proclamation of council against resetters , of the date the fourth of april , one thousand six hundred ninety four with all rigour . and the lords of his majesties privy council , do hereby require and command the foresaids sheriffs to give an particular and exact account of their diligence in the premisses to the clerks of council , betwixt and the twenty fifth day of february next to come , that further course may be taken therein , as their lordships shall judge needful for his majesties service ; certifying the saids sheriffs , that if they failzie in the premisses , either as to due returns , or exact diligence , they shall be called and conveened before the privy council , to be punished according to their demerit . and ordains these presents to be printed , and to be transmitted bhe solicitor to the several shires . extracted by me gilb . eliot cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to his most excellent majesty , anno dom. 1697. an account of the scotish atlas, or, the description of scotland ancient & modern by his sacred majestie's special command to be published presently by sir robert sibbald d.m. his majestie's physician in ordinary, and geographer for his ancient kingdom of scotland. sibbald, robert, sir, 1641-1722. 1683 approx. 38 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 7 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2006-02 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a60180 wing s3720 estc r9801 13111287 ocm 13111287 97663 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a60180) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 97663) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 779:7) an account of the scotish atlas, or, the description of scotland ancient & modern by his sacred majestie's special command to be published presently by sir robert sibbald d.m. his majestie's physician in ordinary, and geographer for his ancient kingdom of scotland. sibbald, robert, sir, 1641-1722. 9, [4] p. printed by david lindsay, mr. james kniblo, josua van solingen, and john colmar, edinburgh : 1683. reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng sibbald, robert, -sir, 1641-1722. -scotia illustrata. scotland -description and travel. scotland -description and travel -early works to 1800. 2005-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2005-06 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2005-07 simon charles sampled and proofread 2005-10 apex covantage rekeyed and resubmitted 2005-11 simon charles sampled and proofread 2005-11 simon charles text and markup reviewed and edited 2006-01 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an account of the scotish atlas , or the description of scotland ancient & modern , by his sacred majestie' 's special command to be published presently , by sir robert sibbald d. m. his majestie' 's physician in ordinary , and geographer for his ancient kingdom of scotland . edinburgh , printed by david lindsay , mr. james kniblo , josua van solingen and john colmar . m.dc.lxxxiii . mark alexander boyds verses in commendation of scotland translated out of latine by j. b. a noble place near the pole artick lies , which on each side the sea with waters plies . yet is it not sore pinch'd with winter-frost , nor do the sun 's hot fiery beams it rost . to which both name and honour scota brings a noble branch of the egyptian kings . their granaries she fill'd with store of corn ; laws and religion stablish'd , them t' adorn . their vales with corns , pastures with flocks abound ; store of rich metals in their mines are found . nor doth this plenty make them idle sit : artificers they have of skill and wit. though gentle-natur'd , soon they fly to arms ; not more devout , than causing hot alarms . an account of the work designed , or the scotish atlas to be published . amongst the many sciences , which perfite and adorn the mind of man , geography is worthy of all praise : because it both affordeth matter of much delight , and likewise is of much use for the life of man. this world being a theater , whereupon each act their part , and by the several personages , which they represent , very much demonstrate the marvellous wisdom , power and goodness of god , who hath contrived all for the perfection of the universe his great work , and by his never erring providence bringeth all about to the accomplishment of his good will and pleasure : man , who is the lesser world and abridgement of the greater , cannot but find the advantages of geography , by which we see all the parts of this great machine , even which are most remote from us , and look upon these who are absent , as if they were present with us . what delight must it give us , when we learn by it the situation of countreys , towns and rivers , as well as if we had viewed them with our eyes ! it is certain that most of men have a great desire to travell , and it is certainly an inexcusable fault to be ignorant of what concerneth our own countrey : yet many , because of their poverty or want of health , are deprived of these advantages . and therefore we are much beholden to geography , by which all the face of the world is exposed to us , and we can even sitting at home view the whole earth and seas , and much sooner pass through them in our studies , than travellers can do by their voyages ; and so may , without the hazard of being infected by the vices of forreiners , improve our minds and reap all other advantages from them . not to mention here , how the policy of each place , the studies of theology , of natural philosophy , history and several arts may be improved by this knowledge . i shall only instance in merchandising , navigation and the pactice of medicine . and for merchandising , ( which with navigation is the great support of corporations ) it can hardly be entertained without the knowledge of the countreys and their products , of the nature and manners of the inhabitants and rodes that lead to them , which the maps and descriptions joyned to them inform us of ; and by the maps the mariners come to know the situation of the countreys they intend for , the rout they are to follow and the dangers they are to be aware of . as for the practice of medicine , hippocrates hath abundantly proven , that a physician , who would practise aright , must first know the place . now considering these great uses of geographical descriptions , many complained that there was so little done , as to the description of our countrey : for the theater of scotland published by bleau , for all its bulk ( except it be the description of some few shires by the learned gordon of straloch , and some sheets of his of the scotia antiqua ) containeth little more than what buchanan wrote , and some few scrapes out of cambden , who is no friend to us in what he writeth . and in respect that there are many islands around this ancient kingdom of scotland ; and many impetuous and contrary currents and tides , and in several places the coast is full of rocks , or banks of sand , which ought to be exactly described for the security of trade . and because the face of the country , by the peace and quiet we enjoy under his majestie 's happy government , is quite changed from what it was of old ; and now for stately buildings , parks , fertile fields , we begin to contend with the happiest of our neighbours : therefore a new and full description was much desired by all ingenious persons . for these considerations his sacred majesty , the father of his countrey , and gracious and wise provisor of all that may be for the profite and honour of it , hath commanded and ordained , by his letters patent under the seal , sir robert sibbald one of his phisicians in ordinary and his geographer for his ancient kingdom of scotland , to publish an exact description of scotland ancient and modern , with the maps . and , that the maps may be exact and just , the lords of his majesties privy council in scotland gave commission to john adair mathematician and skilfull mechanick , to survey the shires . and the said john adair , by taking the distances of the several angles from the adjacent hills , hath designed most exact maps , and hath lately made an hydrographical map of the river of forth geometrically surveyed , wherein , after a new and exact way , are set down all the isles , blind rocks , shelves and sands , with an exact draught of the coasts , with all its bayes , head lands , ports , havens , towns , and other things remarkeable ; the depths of the watters through the whole firth , with the courses from each point , the prospect and view of the remarkable islands , head-lands , and other considerable land-marks . and he is next to survey the shire of perth , and to make two maps thereof , one of the south-side , and another of the north. he will likewise be ready to design the maps of the other shires , that were not done before , providing he may have sufficient allowance therefore . and , that these , who are concerned , may be the better perswaded thereto , there is joyned with this account the map of clackmanan-shire taken off the copper-plate done for it , where may be seen not only the towns , hills , rivers and lochs ; but also the different face of the grounds , which are arable , and which moorish : and by convenient marks you may know the houses of the nobility and gentry , the churches , mills , woods and parks &c , in obedience to his majesties command , the said sir robert sibbald printed queries for obtaining the information that was necessary for the description of each shire ; and hath been at the pains to collect several manuscripts ancient and modern , which may illustrate the said work ; and hath recovered several ancient inscriptions , which were never published before ; and hath now made that advance in the work , that if the rest of the informations from the shires be sent in shortly , and these few shires be designed , which are not yet done , this description in english ( whereof this is the account ) may be very soon ready for the press . for the further encouragement of these , who may be subscribers for the copies , it is fit there be some account of it given , which is as followeth . the said atlas scoticus or description of scotland ancient and modern is to be in two volumes ; the one in latin , the other in english . the atlas in latine may contain about an hundred printed sheets of large lumbard-paper , in the great letter the atlas is usually done upon : & it will contain some seventy maps , whereof there are upwards of twenty more than are in the theatrum scotiae done by j. bleau ; and of these several are exactly surveyed . in this latine copy the scotia antiqua will take up more than twenty sheets of print , and is done exactly from the greek and roman authors , and the best manuscripts and ancient records . the contents of the several books are set down in the latin account premised . the scotia moderna likewise is done in latin , according to the account given there , so it remains that there be ane account given of the atlas in english , which is to be published first . the atlas of scotland in english may contain eighty sheets of printed large lumbard paper , and about seventy maps . it is divided into two parts , the general and the special part . the general part containeth the general description of scotland , where there is a short description of britain and ireland . then albanie or ancient scotland is briefly described , where the names and the reason of them are given ; the condition of the countrey from its first discoverie and possession till the coming in of the romans ; whence they came , where the first inhabitants are shewed and the several nations that frequented it then ; and the customes , manners , religion and government of the state under that period are made known . then the condition of the kingdom , while the romans were here , how far they prevailed , what monuments they left , the division of the countrie and names of the people then , the condition of the picts till their overthrow , and the planting of the christian religion in scotland is manifested ; the state of religion and government from thence till malcom canmore , in whose time the english tongue , and the titles , manners , customes of living , which is now , was introduced . there is an account also of the forreigners , that invaded us during this period . to ancient scotland belong these maps . albion and ireland , with the lesser adjacent islands . the map of the british islles , done by ortelius . a new table of albania or the most ancient scotland . ancient scotland , done by robert gordon of straloch . then scotland , as it is now , is described , where is shewed the extent and the bounds of it , the latitude of it , the figure of it , under what climate and parallels ; the length of the longest day there ; the division of scotland into three peninsulae , the south one , the middle one and the north one , the rivers upon each side running far into the countrey are separated by a small tract of land from meeting , else they would make three islands of the continent of scotland . it is also divided by the mountains , and by the qualitie of the soil , and nature of the inhabitants and their different manner of life , into the high-lands and low-lands , and the highlanders and low-land-men . and by the several jurisdictions it is divided into shires , stewartries , baileries , bishopricks ; which are shewed , with the counties under them . formerlie it was divided into two kingdoms ; that of the scots , and that of the picts , beside the roman province . the islands about scotland are shewed , and there is an account given of the nature and quality of the soil , and the natural products of it : viz. the grains , pot-herbs and fruits , and other usefull plants ; the animals ; four-footed beasts domestick and wild , the fouls , the fishes , the insects ; the metals and minerals , the substances cast up by the sea , the mineral waters ; the advantages by the sea for trade and fishing ; the great rivers forth , clide and tay , with their firths , of each of which there are particular maps , with full descriptions of them ; the lochs and the rare properties of some of them . there is an account of the air of scotland , where the winds are treated of , and the advantages and disadvantages the countrey hath by them . the nature of the countrey hilly and and mountainous ; how these hillsruns through the countrey . of the woods and forrests , heaths or moors , and mosses . an account of the ancient inhabitants , their diet , drink ; their exercise , cloathing ; their arms , discipline of war , their valour , strict justice , learning and arts ; their trade , nature of their government before the kings ; their ancient religion ; of the druides ; their ancient burials , and the dignities in use amongst them ; the rise of their property . the history of the alliance betwixt the scots and the french begun in the time of charlemaigne and achaius , and continued to our times . the advantages and priviledges the scots got in france , the establishments of the scots in other countreys . the many scots families setled abroad . the nature and qualities of the present inhabitants . their diet , exercises , recreations and games . their apparel , their language , their humour . of their trade ; the commodities exported . the nobles , their several degrees ; the names of them according to the order of the parliament-rolls . the clergy ; the several orders of them . the archbishops and the bishops their dignity , their chapters , their jurisdiction ; exent of their dioceses ; their courts . the gentry ; the severall ranks of them , whereof the ancient order of the thistle . the commons , and the several orders of them the royal burroughs ; the list of them , their priviledges . the religion of scotland under the several periods . many of old famous for their sanctity . the universities and colledges of scotland ; their constitution . the scots famous for all sort of learning and arts , for several new inventions . many of the nobility and gentry educate abroad ; many famous for their valour and conduct ; many of them general officers abroad . a list of the bishops and archbishops of sanct-anrews since the time of the picts , an account of sixty of the pictish kings out of a manuscript . an account of the kings of scotland . the state of the governement done by his majestie 's advocate . of the king and his prerogative ; the succession to the crown , ancient dominion . the revenue of the king of scotland . the power of the king of scotland . of the officers of state. the officers of the crown . of the courts of scotland and the constitution of them . of the high court of parliament : where of the electors , the members , the solemnity at the riding of the parliament , the ranking of the members . how they sit in parliament ; the manner of procedure in parliament . of the lords of the articles . what the parliament cognosceth . the convention of estates ; the nature of it . the privy council ; the power of it . the session : the number of the lords and clerks , their habits . the outerhouse , inner-house matters that come before them . the law of scotland . the time the session sits . the justice-court ; the constitution of it . the court of exchequer ; the nature of it , the court of admirality ; the priviledges of the high admiral . the high constables court ; its nature . the court of regality ; its constitution . the sherif-court ; the constitution of it . the stewart's court ; the nature of it . the baron's court ; the nature of it . the commissary court ; the nature of it . the lyon's court ; its nature . the royal-burroughs their constitution . the burrough-courts their constitution . where of the convention of burroughs . its nature . of the burghs of regality their nature . of burghs of baronie their nature . of the justices of peace their power . the forces , where of the military government . of the mint , where of the money of scotland . the government of the church . where of the several ecclesiastick courts ; of their nature . of the kirk session . the presbyteries , their number ; the synods . the highest court , the convocation . the number of the parishes in scotland . of the commission for teynds and plantation of churches . of the commission for the fishery , these make up the first part , viz. the general description of scotland . the second part of the scotia moderna is the special , wherein the shires and counties , and the islands are particularly described . scotland is divided into the continent and the isles . the continent most conveniently is divided into three penninsulae by the three isthmi or narrow necks of land. the first is the south-part , which towards the south is divided from england by the river of tweed , and , where it faileth by a line drawn from solway-firth ; towards the north from the rest of the continent by the firth and river of forth , and a short line from thence to clide , by which and its firth it is divided from the north-west-part of scotland . of this part there is a new map , the counties contained in this part ( of all which there are maps ) are these . mers . lauderdale . west-lothian . teviotdale . mid-lothian . east-lothian twadale . lids-dale . eus-dale and esk-dale . adnandale . nides-dale . all galloway . sherifdome of wigtoun . the countrey betwixt the water of dee and cree . the stewartrie of kircudbright . south part of carrick . north part of carrick . kyle . cuninghame . the upper ward of clids-dale . the nether ward of clids-dale . renfrew . sterling-shire . the middle part of the continent hath , to the south , the firth and river of forth , and the line betwixt it and the river and firth of clide ; to the west and east , the sea ; and , towards the north , it is parted from the rest of the continent of scotland by the water and loch of lochty in lochaber , and a line from the foresaid loch through a short neck of land to the rise of the loch and river of ness . you may see it in a new map thereof . it containeth these following counties and shires whereof there are particular maps . all fife . the west part of it . the east part of it . angus . the south part of perth-shire , where are strathearn , bequhider , strathallan and menteith . the water of earn is done in the map of tay , and with it there is a plan of the roman camp at airdoch . the north-part of perth-shire , where are braid-albin , athole the rannoch , glen-lyon , the over and lower gourie . calckmanan shire . lennox . the sherifdome of argyle , or innerara , where are knapdale , kintyre . cewal , lorn . knapdale . lorn . kintyre . aberdeen and bamf-shire . braid-albin , athol , brae of mar , badenoch , spey and lochaber . lochaber . mernes . murray . the northern part of the continent hath , to the south , the water and loch of lochty , and a short line from thence to loch-ness and the water of ness ; to the west and east , it hath the sea ; and to the north , the sea. it may be seen in the map intituled extima scotiae septentrionalis ora , and containeth these countreys , ross , sutherland , strathnavern , caithness ; that part of lochaber on the north side of lochty water , and loch edir , chilis and assin . the countreys , of which there are maps , are these ; ross . sutherland . strathnavern . caithness . and this is for the continent of scotland . the isles are divided into the west isles , the north-isles and the isles lying to the east . the islands lying to the east are these , which ly in the firth of forth , and may be seen in the map of forth and are described with it . the west-isles are these called hebrides and aebudae , and of them there are these following maps . aebudae , or the west-isles . aran. boot . lews and harris . lews , harris and sky in a map together . ila . jura . viste . mulla . the lesser islands rumm , canna , egg , muck. the north-islands , as these of orckney and schetland ; and the maps of them are these . a map of orkney and schetland . a new map of orkney , with the roads and harbours . a most exact new map of orkney , with the forelands , rocks and dangerous places marked , done mr. by james wallace minister of kirckwall in orkney . a new map of schetland . besides these there is a hydrographic map of the sea-coast from the island of cocket to orkney . the second part of the scotia moderna . in this second part , which containeth the descriptions of each shire and the countries in it , and of the islands , there is also an account given of the names , situation , bounds of each countrey ; the nature of the countrey , and these products nature hath formed in it are shewed . the forrests , woods , parks ; the springs , rivers , lochs , with their various properties . what mountains , valleys , caves most remarbable , that it may be known what in every place abounds and may be communicate to other countreys ; and what is wanting , that it may be carried in to them in order to trade . the plants , animals , metals , substances cast up by the sea. as to rivers , the rise of them and their emboucheurs are shewed , and in the adjacent sea the roads , bays , ports and harbours are described ; the roks and sholes on the coast , and the time of the moon that causeth high water is marked . the ancient monuments , forts and camps , inscriptions , graved and figured stones ; the singularites of nature or arte , that are there , or have been found there . the great battels that have been there fought , and the memorable actions or accidents there . the towns of note in each shire , especially burroughs royal ; their magistracy , the trade of the town . their publick buildings , their iurisdiction , their hospitals and work-houses . the market-towns in each shire . the monasteries , cathedral churches , ancient churches , colledges and publick schools . the manners and customes of the inhabitants in each shire , their manufactures . the government of each shire and countrey ; in what diocese it is ; who is sherif , stewart or bailie there . who commands the militia there . the castles , forts , woods , forrests , parks belonging to his majesty there . what places give title to noblemen there ; and the seats of the noblemen and most considerable gentrey . there is ane account likewise of the temperature of each countrey , the ancient inhabitants of it . and , for illustration of the work , the dignities and priviledges of several noble families , and the rise and branches of them are shewed . the constitution of the royal burghs , their priviledges , and their longitude and latitude is shewed . the constitution of the universities , their priviledges , their foundations , bibliothecs and rare instruments are recorded . and whatsoever of these occurreth in the islands is shewed in the description of them . printed books and manuscripts not yet come to my hand , which i entreat may be sent to me : and after i have made use of them for the work , they shall be restored . 1. the navigation of king iames the fifth around his kingdom , with the maps ; whatever language it be in , and whether manuscript or printed . 2. cornelius hibernicus . 3. veremundus . 4. joannes à campo bello , or cambell . 5. turgot . 6. liber sconae . 7. liber pasletensis . 8. liber pluscartensis . 9. william elphinhstoun bishop of aberdeen his treatise of the scotish antiquities . 10. the history of scotland done by dempster and mentioned in his apparatus ad historiam scoticam . 11. andersonus de sanctis scotis . 12. the history of the family of the gordons . 13. the government of scotland , written by straloch . 14. remarques , done by one who travelled through most of the west-isles . 15. the new map of shetland , with the exact description thereof . and what else in manuscript or print may be for the further advancement and embellishment of the work , is humbly desired ; and there shall be an honourable acknowledgment of these persons , who transmit the manuscripts or printed books with assurance that they shall be returned to them again . the work being a publick work and so much for the honour of the nation , it is hoped , that all ingenious persons will contribute the necessary information in answer to the general queries conjoined with the proposal and there shall be a due commendation of them set down in the work. it is earnestly desired , that the informations anent the several countreys , towns and universities may be sent to the author betwixt and martimass ensuing : for that it is resolved ( if so be there be a sufficient number of subscribers to encourage the work ) they shall begin god willing , to print the atlas of scotland in english once in january next 1684. relations given in for the work . 1. ane account of the governement and the laws , done by sir george mackenzie his majesties advocate 2. ane account of rona and hirta by the lord register , sir george mackenzie of tarbat . 3. observations by the same noble person . 4. account of the metals and minerals in scotland by collonel borthwick . 5. the honours and priviledges of the high constable of scotland . 6. answers to the general queries concerning caithness , given by mr. william dundass of wester kincavile advocate . 7. some account of sutherland , and of the family of suther land given in by mr. douglas . 8. a relation of the most considerable things observable in orknay by mr. mathew mackaile , who stayed several years there . 9. ane account of the current of the tydes there by the same . 10. observations of several remarkable things in caithness by the same . 11. memorandum of the minerals in scotland , containing the places where they are found by collonel borthwick . 12. ane description of shetland , and of the fishing there made upon the place . 13. ane account of the burgh royal of hadingtoun from the magistrates thereof . 14. ane account of the miraculous cure of mad people , at saint mackassac well in stratherne , extracted from the tryal the presbitery of sterling made thereanent . 15. a description of the north east part of aberdeen shire , by the right honourable the present countess of erroll . 16. ane account of the leakies in the river of forth by the reverend mr. wright minister at alloway . the proposals for the printing the scotish atlas . whereas david lindsay is to undertake the printing of this description of scotland , ancient and moderne , in the english and latine languages and is with all possible diligence to proceed thereto . and for many considerations is to make use of the paper the acts of parliament were lately printed on , for the description , the lumbard paper amounting to a greater expence then most of the curious , will be at the charge of the said david lindsay , will find sufficient security to deliver to the subscribers for the english copy ( which will consist of upwards of one hundred sheets , folio , in a greater letter then that the acts of parliament are done upon ) one copy in sheets against the middle of january 1685. which is to contain the description without the mapps , each subscriber paying for the said copy twenty shillings sterling , whereof ten is to be advanced presently , and the other ten to be payed at the delivery of the said copy in english . and he likewise will find sufficient security at the same time of january 1685. to deliver 69 mapps general and particular of scotland to each subscriber who shall pay twenty five shillings sterling more , whereof twelve shillings and six pence is to be advanced at the subscribing ; and the other half at the delivery of the said book of mapps , which is to be in the ordinary lumbard paper , without descriptions . he likewise will find sufficient security to deliver against the middle of january 1686. a copy of the scotish atlas in latine , ( which will contain the scotia antiqua and moderna in upwards of six score of sheets , and is without mapps , folio , in the paper the acts of parliament were lately done upon , but a greater letter ) to each subscriber therefor , who shall pay twenty five shillings sterling , whereof twelve shillings and six pence is to be advanced at the subscribing , and the other half at the delivery of the book . and he will find security to deliver against the same terme of january 1686 a copy of the 69 mapps ( lumbard paper as before ) to each subscriber , who shall pay twenty five shillings sterling , whereof twelve shillings and six pence at the subscribing , and the other moyetie at the delivery of the book , that is to be without descriptions . these volumes will be dearer to these who subscribe not : and the subscribers will be first furnished with the books , they calling timely for them . and because that this work will be very costly to the said david lindsay ( there being many mapps to be graven new , such as were never done before , or not right done ) he will find sufficient security to dedicate the said maps to be insert in this atlas scoticus to such who shall advance five pounds sterling , and their name and coat of armes shall be graven upon the map condescended upon . the money is to be payed in to john melvill merchant in edinburgh , who will find security for the performance of what is undertaken . the said john melvill will be found at his shop over against the crosse upon the north-side of the street : and he will depute some to receive the money and give security in other places . that the work may be the sooner finished , it is humbly desired that the subscribers may presently pay the money above-specified . finis . the forme of the subscription for the copies . we whose names are underwritten , well approving and highly commending the design of david lindsay , do for his encouragement subscribe our selves for one or more copies of the said book , and do recommend so noble and useful a design to all ingenious persons throughout his majesties dominions . appendix to the former account of the scotish atlas . 1. the shires of selkirk , kinrosshire , innerness , nairn , cromartie , elgin , bamf , ross and the shire of tayne were done joyntly with other mapps . but if the sheriffs and others concerned in these several shires desire that they may be done apart , they may be so drawn , they paying for each shire five pounds sterling to john adair ( who is commissionat by the right honourable the lords of his majesties privy council for surveying the several shires ) and five pounds sterling more to david lindsay for the graving of them upon copper plates with their coat of arms and the dedication to them . 2. the right worshipful sir george mackenzie his majestie 's advocate is pleased to grant his manuscript-treatise done by himself , wherein all the most considerable families of the nobility and gentry in scotland are digested in the order of the alphabet , and the stock of each family , its rise and the branches of it are set down from the original records ; the registers of the abbacies , and the charters of the said families ; the coat of arms they bear , as it is blazoned by the lyon herauld ; and likewise the plates with the coats graven upon them . 3. the several coins in gold and silver coined in scotland done from the copper-plates , which sir john falconer master of the mint caused to be made for them . 4. as likewise the plans of the ancient monasteries done by direction of master sletcher his majestie 's engineer for the kingdom of scotland . all which are to be joined with the description of scotland in english . 5. in the ancient scotland in latine are done the plans of several ancient camps , the altars , sepulchres and other ancient monuments of the copper-plates made for them . 6. there is an account of the constitution of the session , by the right worshipful the lord pitmedden . 7. an account of the admiralty-court , by sir patrick lyon judge of the said court of admiralty . 8. a manuscript and large account of the noble and ancient family of seton . 9. a full account of all that is observable in the town of aberdeen , given by mr. skeen late bailie there and delivered to me by bailie walter robertson . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a60180-e290 lib. de aëre , aquis & locis . two speeches spoken at a common hall octob. 27. 1643 1. by sir henry vane, 2. by master marshall; wherein is shew'd the readynesse of the scots to assist the kingdome and parliament of england to the vtmost of their power. vane, henry, sir, 1612?-1662. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a65191 of text r8959 in the english short title catalog (wing v78). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 22 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 9 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a65191 wing v78 estc r8959 12090511 ocm 12090511 53861 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a65191) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 53861) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 240:e74, no 7) two speeches spoken at a common hall octob. 27. 1643 1. by sir henry vane, 2. by master marshall; wherein is shew'd the readynesse of the scots to assist the kingdome and parliament of england to the vtmost of their power. vane, henry, sir, 1612?-1662. marshall, stephen, 1594?-1655. 14 p. printed for peter cole ..., london : 1643. reproduction of original in thomason collection, british library. eng scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649. great britain -history -charles i, 1625-1649. a65191 r8959 (wing v78). civilwar no two speeches spoken at a common hall octob. 27. 1643. 1. by sir henry vane. 2. by master marshall. wherein is shew'd the readynesse of the s vane, henry, sir 1643 4153 10 0 0 0 0 0 24 c the rate of 24 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2004-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-10 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-11 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2004-11 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-01 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion two speeches spoken at a common hall octob. 27. 1643. 1. by sir henry vane . 2. by master marshall . wherein is shew'd the readynesse of the scots to assist the kingdome and parliament of england to the vtmost of their power . london printed for peter cole , and are to be sould at his shop near the royall exchang . anno 1643. sir henry vane his speech . my lord major , and worthy aldermen , and the rest of the gentlemen of the citie , in obedience to the commands of both houses , we that are lately come out of scotland , and have been eye witnesses ( from the first time of our going over thither ) of the affection of that nation to this cause and of the deep sence they have of the present state of affaires here in this kingdome , are willing at this time to make the same report , and give the same accompt to you of it , as hath been done to the parliament , that you may take a right measure of the trueth of those things , and not be caried away with misapprehensions , and misinformations from those that disaffect the cause , and would willingly abuse your thoughts , and beleife herein ; and therefore as shortly as i am able , i shall be willing to give you the accompt of those things which i know , and which i have seen there , and which this other gentleman , a rever●nd minister , of your owne acquaintance , and of knowne integritie , hath been privie to , that i doe not doubt , what he likewise shall deliver in this businesse you will very readily give credit too , it being nothing but what will be found to be the trueth . for the affection of that nation , we have had many experiences of it , and of their readie and cheerefull compliance with the desires of this kingdome , even when they were in their greatest distresses and calamities : when we first came over there , the affaires then of this nation , were in a much lower condition , then now ( by the blessing of god ) we find them to be ; yet notwithstanding though that nation had many invitations from those , who as they were forward to promise , so were they able to have bestowed great matters vpon them , and though there were many secret practises among themselves to make them set loose from the cause of this kingdome , yet so sensible they were , of the danger of religion here of the near relation that they had to their breethren of england , and of that common calamitie threatned to overrun both kingdomes , that they were readie to breake through all difficulties , and to expose themselves to all dangers , to take us by the hand , and to joyne cordially with us in the maintaining of this cause ; they did not only expresse this in their words , and outward professions , but we have seen since from time to time , and by severall steps , how they have put it into action : as soone as ever the the covenant which was taken here , and solemnly sworne by the parliament , was come to their knowledge , and sent over unto them , the committee of estates there , and the commissioners of the genreall assembly resolved presently for to take that covenant ▪ with an vnanimous and chearefull consent , as a meanes which under god , they thought would vnite both nations , in this common cause , and make them a bulwarke against the common enemie : they did not only resolve to take it themselves , but enjoyned it throughout the whole kinghome , and by this time we doe beleive , that it hath been vniversally taken by the whole nation . they did enjoyne it in such a manner , as that the greatest and powerfullest enemies of it amongst them durst not shew their heads to oppose it , that is , they enjoyned it upon the penalties , that those that should not take it , or should deferre it , should be esteemed enemies to religion , to his majesties honour , and to the good of the two kingdomes , that they should have all their rents and profits confiscate , that they should brooke , nor enjoy any office , or benefit in that kingdome , that they should be cited to the next parliament , to answer the not taking of it , and to be proceeded with there as enemies to the estate , and to relegion , and to receive such further punishement , as by the king and parliament ●●●uld be put upon them , by which meanes they have so vnited the affection of that whole kingdome ▪ that as one man they are readie to come forth to defend the religion , the liberties of both nations , and to dye in this common cause . they have not only proceeded thus farre , which is a happy foundation to so great an enterprize as is now in hand , but they have formed their armie , all their officers from first to last they have setled , they have likewise prepared their artillerie , and have it in readinesse , at the rendevouze at leith : they likewise have all the men that are to be of the armie designed out throughout the whole shires , the persons are knowne , and at 48. houres , they are ready for to march , they are as sensible as your selves of the great burthens and extremities that this nation doth at this time groan under : they know as well too , what vast expenses you have been at to maintaine your owne armies , and yet they are not ashamed , that you should know also that their nation hath not been without troubles , as you have been , and that they are not yet without great wants and difficulties , for this storme did begin with them : they have not been without great charges and burthens that hath layen vpon them and particularly even for the advantage of the affaires of this kingdome , of late they have been at very vast expenses for the maintenance of their scotch armie in ireland , which was set out by them for the service of this kingdom at the request and desire of the parliament , by which meanes they are very much disinabled to doe that , which otherwise they would be very willing to doe for our present assistance . they have made it apparent by severall particulars , that before this armie intended for the present service wil be brought to the rendevouze upon english ground , one way or other , it will stand them in very neare a hundred thousand pound , which must be at their owne charge and expence , over and above what they desire from us : they likewise have let us know , that they desire not to presse vs beyond our strength in matter of monies , but only so much as may render the service in them feasible which we expect from them : they know very well if they have not monies at the beginning , to encourage and strenghen the hand of the souldier , in the businesse they undertake , it wil be very disadvantagious to our affaires , therefore they expect we should send them a considerable summe of monie , to make their armie march , which they have in readinesse for that purpose , as soone as we shall send it to them , and doubt not in a very short time to advance very farre in those northern parts even this winter , it is that therefore which is expected from us , and that which will ( through gods mercy ) be a foundation of releife and recoverie of this kingdome , from the oppression and tyranny with which it is ready to be overwhelmed , that we should apply our selves to send them some considerable summe of mony , for a speedy marching of this armie . upon our comming hither , we find there hath beene a great deale of paines taken in it . and we likewise discerne that much is to be atributed to the cheerefull affections of this famous city , which under god hath been the meanes that hath not only supplied our affaires at home , but hath likewise contributed to those that are abroad ; not-with-standing that which hath hither-to come in , is not as yet so much as will fully doe this worke ; if we could within some few daies be able but to compasse one twenty thousand pound more ? we doe not doubt but we should be able ( with what we have already ) to put the affaires of scotland in such a posture , as you shall not only quickly heare a very good account of them , but see the fruit of them , to your greate comfort and encouragement . and therfore it is that , that now is recommended to you , that you would be pleased from the knowledge that things are in this readinesse that they are , and that nation so willing in themselves to come to our assistance ( as this i might have added ) that if any thing lay in their power , either by the morgaging of their owne private estates , or if there were money sufficient in scotland that they could render themselves masters of , they would be willng to contribute any thing of their owne for the necessities of this kingdome , so much they are affected with this cause : therfore seeing they are so sensible themselves of our condition , it becomes us to be so too , and to put to our helping hand that since so small a summe as this ( for the present ) is that that will be able ( through gods blessing ) to carry on this worke , that we may with cheerefulnes apply our selves to the compassing of the same : those that have been willing hitherto , we are to acknowledg thankes to them , and the houses have thought of an ordinacce that the burthen shall not lie upon them , but those that are unwilling and disaffected , are by that ordinance compell'd to that which others out of their good affections are ready to doe ; so as it is recommended to you , that since the houses have thought fit by an ordinance to compell others to doe it , that those that are willing would take an incouragement from thence , and goe on readily in their contributions to this worke , that if it were possible we might be masters of this summe within few dayes ; it is that which upon this occasion is thought fit to be offered to you : and because there is an other gentleman to speake , mr. marshall who what ever i have omitted wil be able to make vp , whose words i doubt not , but will take farre deeper impression with you , and all of greater weight then any thing i can say , and i shall give place to him to impart unto you what he shall thinke fit and esteeme worthy of your farther knowledge . finis . master marshals speech , spoken at guild-hall , london , on friday octob. 27. 1643. my lord major , and worthy aldermen , and gentlemen of this city , god has shewed me that mercy to bee an eye witnesse , and an eare witnesse of all the maine carriages of the nation of the scots , in relation to our afflicted condition , since it pleased the two houses to send me thither , to bee assistant to their honourable commissioners ; and i am most willing ( being as i am now called thereunto ) to give you an accompt of what i have observ'd . but this noble gentleman hath already declared it so fully , that there is not much left for mee to relate , though i were fitter to speake then i am at this present . onely this i beseech you believe , that i am able ( as in the presence of god ; to attest the truth of ( i thinke ) every particular hee hath delivered to you , concerning the good affections of that nation , their tendring our cause , their willingnesse and readinesse to live and die with us in it ; and since the lord made mee able to judge of any thing ; i never beheld so much unanimity and consent in so much deepe sense of the afflictions of brethren and neighbours , as i have beheld there , both in the generall assembly , and convention of estates , and in multitudes of other well-affected persons , ●aying our miseries to heart , i believe , as much , if not more , then wee our-selves have done . you have heard the substance of all from sir henry vane ; you may please from me to receive a few things in way of confirmation of what hath beene already delivered unto you : hee told you , what they have d●ne to help to sustaine the army of scots in ireland , who have beene imployed there seventeene or eighteene moneths in our service , since they received any pay ( our distresses at home , having hindered us from doing what else we would and ought to have done ) how that they have laid out a very great summe . i adde , they have made it apparant to us , that they have expended in meale , clothes , and other necessaries , no lesse then foure score thousand pounds this last yeere , toward the subsistance of that army , which else had perish't before this time ▪ yea , that in that part of scotland where we were , about lowthian ▪ that there was scarce any on nobleman or gentleman of any considerable estate , but hee was this last yeere out of purse one full yeeres revenue , as if hee were worth 100 , 200 , or 300. pound , sterl. per annum , hee hath disburst so much for the irish army . and as to that which sir henry declared as a demonstration of their willingnesse to assist us , that they have already charged themselves to the value of 100000. pound . i adde , they have beene so ingenuous and cleere in it , that they have given us a particular to bring with us , which is in the hand of this noble gentleman : so that any man who desires to be satisfied ▪ may see the particulars of the charge which they are put to , but to bring their army upon english ground ; and indeed , they so cleerely see the bleeding condition of religion and libertie in both kingdomes , and are so sensible of our great exhaustions , that i have heard many of their worthy nobles and others , whom god hath stirr'd up to bee active and excellent instruments in this time of common danger and calamitie , solemnly to protest ; that were they able to come in , and carry on the worke without putting us to any charge at all , they would do it most gladly ; yea , i am able yet further to say , and have leave to speake it freely , that if money can be found in christendome , to carry on this work , they are ready not onely to engage the publike faith of their kingdome with ours , ( as you have already received ) but that if either the bonds or the mortgages of the lands of any of the well-affected nobility or gentry throughout that kingdome , will bee taken for security , they are ready to give it ; yea further yet , so deepely are they affected , that they are willing ( i had allmost said ) to plunder their owne kingdome to save ours ; being ready , if necessity require it , to call throughout all the kingdome , each man to declare upon his oath , what money , or victuall he hath ; that they may therby know what proportion to set out for the maintenance of this cause . and lest any suspitions , or malignant men should surmise , that all this forwardnesse is but to get themselves into some strength in a countrey , better then their owne , i beseech you know , that the honourable commissioners , my self , and others , who have beene attending this service with them , have received that abundant satisfaction of their integrity and justice , that what articles are , or shall be agreed upon betweene them , and the two houses of parliament , wee verily believe they will not breake one article of the agreement , to gain the kingdom of england : their affections to this cause are as your hearts could wish : it is onely necessity compels them to desire your assistance towards the maintenance of their army when they are come in ; for should they come in , and monies faile them , so that for want of provision ( for you will easily conceive that the northerne countries may bee much wasted by the enemie when they are readie to come ) they should be compelled to disband , or turne to plunder the countries for want of subsistance , how scandalous , yea how destructive it might prove to both the kingdomes you your selves are able to judge . they are ready and prepared to come , and i hope it will not bee long before you heare that they are advanced , willing to live and dye with you in this cause of god , and will endevour ( by gods assistance ) speedily to settle our peace ; and as willingly ( according to their agreement ) to returne home into their owne scotland , knowing well , that to enjoy peace with god in their owne poore countrey , will be better , then under colour of helping us to usurpe upon ours , though far the richer . sir henry vane related further unto you , what care they have taken , and how roundly they goe to work in putting on the covenant , give me leave to adde , that ( beside what the commissioners of the convention of estates have done , in injoyning it under paine of being esteemed and punished as enemies to religion , his majesties honour , and peace of the kingdomes , and to have their goods confiscate for the use of the publike , &c. ) the commissioners of the generall assembly , according to the power given unto them by the said assembly , have ordained , that particular account shall be taken by the severall presbyteries , of all who shall refuse , or shift to sweare and subscribe , and that they bee proceeded against with the censures of the church , as enemies to the preservation and propagation of religion . beside , what this noble gentleman hath further related concerning their temptations or allurements to desist from this worke , and the other difficulties they are like to meet with in carrying it on , i have nothing to adde , unlesse i should tell you how deeply they are affected with the cessation in ireland , and the great danger threatned to both nations from it ; and the utter ruine of the remainder of our poore brethren yet preserved from slaughter in that miserable kingdome : for by this cessation , they , and all others see , that these bloody rebells , who have shed so much innocent blood , who boast that they have slaughtered 100000 protestants , and that they will not leave one protestant alive in that and this , kingdome , and who have committed the most out ragious and most barbarous cruelties that have ever beene heard of in christendome , are now ( notwithstanding all this ) without any either repentance or submission , acknowledged to be his majesties subjects , and have leave to keepe and hold what they have ; to enjoy free passage , intercourse , commerce , and trafficke , with all other his majesties good subjects by sea and land , and no interruption to be made to any ships which shall furnish them with armes , ammunition , or any thing whatsoever ; their prisoners released , and such as are indicted for any capitall offence to be set at liberty upon baile ; they may send to his majesty such agents as they please ; yea they have authority to prosecute all in that kingdom who shall stand in opposition to this agreement , and all this to last for a whole yeare : in which time , our brethren in scotland easily discerne how these inhumane and bloody wretches , may from all other popish kingdomes be furnisht , both to root out the remainder of our distressed brethren of that nation , and enabled to come over and exercise the like butcheries upon our selves and them . in a word , they looke upon it as the most cleare stating of the question and intention of these warres , to be betwixt papists and protestants : and againe , i say they apprehend extreme danger from this cessation to both these nations , unlesse some speedy supply be sent over to enable the scottish army there to give checke to their proceedings , upon whom they will be ready to fall as a torrent ; and when once they have devoured them ( which god forbid ) we may be sure they will endeavour the like against our selves . in all these our troubles hitherto , our greatest supplies have been drawne , or rather flowed willingly from this honourable city , and it troubles mee to thinke that i should bee force to use any rhetorick ( if i had it ) to draw more disbursements of money from you , who to the admiration of all this part of the christian world have ( under god ) upheld this great cause ▪ and ( i know ) are resolved to live and dye with it : i onely beseech you to consider , that if timely supplies may be found , this crop that hath beene swept off from us , will grow againe with greater abundance , and wee may yet sit every one under our owne vine , and under our owne fig-tree ; and , which is much sweeter , enjoy the fruit and benefit of the gospel of iesus christ , which now we contend for , and which these wicked instruments would deprive us of . but if god for our sins should deliver us into the hands of those that have thus desperately plotted our ruine , i thinke none of you would desire to swim when this cause should sinke ; or be vvilling to have either gold , silver , or plate , or any thing found in your houses , vvhen they should come to be possest by these men , vvhose tender mercies would bee more bitter then bloudy cruelties . i beseech you therefore consider of these motions vvhich have been made unto you , and accept of this unfained relation , which we are able to call god to vvitnesse is nothing but the truth . and for my owne part , i did see more , and doe beleeve more , and my heart hath much more satisfaction concerning the integrity of that nation , their fellow-feeling of our miseries , and their willingnesse to helpe us , then my tongue is able to utter . this is the sum of vvhat i had to say , the lord direct you in vvhat you are to doe . finis . a letter from mr. marshall and mr. nye, appointed assistants to the commissioners of scotland to their brethren in england, concerning the successe of their affaires there, partly concerning the covenant. marshall, stephen, 1594?-1655. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a52039 of text r18194 in the english short title catalog (wing m759). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 4 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a52039 wing m759 estc r18194 13410795 ocm 13410795 99413 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a52039) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 99413) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 466:9) a letter from mr. marshall and mr. nye, appointed assistants to the commissioners of scotland to their brethren in england, concerning the successe of their affaires there, partly concerning the covenant. marshall, stephen, 1594?-1655. nye, philip, 1596?-1672. [2], 4, [1] p. printed for john bellamy and ralph smith, london : 1643. first edition? one of two editions published. reproduction of original in huntington library. eng england and wales. -parliament. -house of commons. scotland. -parliament. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -sources. a52039 r18194 (wing m759). civilwar no a letter from mr. marshall, and mr. nye, appointed assistants to the commissioners of scotland: to their brethren in england, concerning the marshall, stephen 1643 1115 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2004-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-10 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2004-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-01 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a letter from mr. marshall , and mr. nye , appointed assistants to the commissioners of scotland : to their brethren in england , concerning the successe of their affaires there , partly concerning the covenant . published by the order of the house of commons . london , printed for john bellamy and ralph smith . 1643. a letter from mr. marshall , and mr. nye , appointed assistants to the commissioners of scotland . reverend friends , wee cannot but communicate unto you the good hand of god with us in the worke we are imployed in , our commissioners have most indefatigably followed their businesse night and day , having scarcely allowed themselves time to eate or sleepe , and have had to doe with the convention of states , and assembly of divines , ( both which we found happily sitting at the time of comming ) the gravest and wisest that we have seene , and who we thinke are more sensible of our condition than we are our selves , the leading men both of the convention and assembly , and ( as farre as we can understand ) even the whole body of the nation looking upon it as the cause of christ , and that they cannot but be ruined if we perish ; we are fully and confidently perswaded they are generally resolved to live and die with us in this quarrell against the popish and episcopall faction , and for the reformation of religion according to the word ; we know multitudes are prejudiced against them as if we might expect no helpe from them but for their owne ends , but if you dare give any credit to our faithfulnesse and most diligent inquisition and observation ; ( having opportunity of conversing with the holyest of our brethren their ministers that are in the kingdome ) let us prevaile with you to beate downe all such unworthy thoughts and jealousies of them , they are guided by god in this worke , & we are perswaded will bring glory to christ and requitall of all our former love to them . some select men have debated with us of the most ready way to stirre up their people to come in readily , and they suggested and made it apparent that the joyning in a covenant to be subscribed would take them all , and a forme was agreed upon , which when you see , you will easily discerne , hath beene drawne up with that warinesse as to expresse their desires as well as ours , that there might be no bogling at it . and when our commissioners and the commissioners of the convention and assembly had on wednesday at night agreed upon the forme , it was the next day brought into the generall assembly , where we were present , and eye witnesses of what was done , where as a good introduction to it , the letter from our assembly was first read , and entertained with great acceptation , ( the moderator solemnely professed that it deserved oft to be read amongst them ) & then the businesses of the covenant was propounded , and the forme read twice over . there were present betweene twenty and thirty of their prime nobility , we thinke neer a hundred noble men and divines spoke to the businesse before it was voted , no man speaking against it , except the kings commissioner , who was answered and dealt with , with that wisedome , freedome , and resolution both by nobles and divines as your heart can thinke , though he professed that as a private man he liked it , and said after the voting he heard a joyfull sound . in fine it was voted and agreed to be entered into ( for substance , for it was by the moderator declared it was the substance intended and not expressions or words ) assoone as they heard their brethren in england agree upon it ; we say their brethen , not limiting it to the parliament , which possibly may not be fitting . and when you have agreed it ( as we hope you will ) we are perswaded the body of the kingdome of scotland will live and die with you , and we doubt not but they will be preparing speedily upon expectation of the covenants passing amongst you . we scarce ever saw so much of christ for us as this day in the assemblies carrying of this businesse , such weeping , such rejoycing , such resolution , such patheticall expressions , as we confesse hath much refreshed our hearts , before extremely sadded with ill newes from our deare countrey ; and hath put us in good hope that this nation ( who set about this businesse as becommeth the worke of god and the saving of kingdomes ) shall be the meanes of lifting up of distressed england and ireland . we are perswaded that the most dejected and sad heart amongst you would have the same thoughts we are now possessed with , if they were with us ; we thinke twenty thousand of them will come to your helpe rather then faile . and againe we say we hope you will quickly see a good army with you ; yea , something done before , or as soone as these letters come at you : continue with all earnestnesse as you were wont in seeking god , and be not discouraged , or suffer your spirits to languish ; surely the arme of the lord in this assistance extends it selfe towards you , in the mount the lord will be seene . some of these reverend and godly ministers are comming to our assembly ; we shall not neede to intreate you to give them the right hand of fellowship , nor will we relate in what a hearty respectfull way we have beene received by them both in publike and private . we forbeare to write any more because this bearer will acquaint you with our affaires , ( and distribute our respects amongst you ) and his hast alloweth us no more time , but to commit you to the grace of god , and subscribe our selves . from edenburgh , aug. 18. 1643. your most affectionate and deare brethren , stephen marshall . philip nye . the letters we brought with us from some brethren , melted the assembly beyond measure , and have beene of great use , blessed be god . a proclamation anent the rendezvouses of the militia, for the year 1683 proclamations. 1683-03-23 scotland. privy council. 1683 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92666 wing s1684 estc r230232 99895953 99895953 153563 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92666) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 153563) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2370:28) a proclamation anent the rendezvouses of the militia, for the year 1683 proclamations. 1683-03-23 scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1683. at end of text: given under our signet, at edinburgh, the twenty third day of march, one thousand six hundred eighty and three: and of our reign, the thirtieth fifth year. steele notation: arms 232 faith; giment pre-. reproduction of original in the folger shakespeare library, washington, d.c.. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. scotland -militia -mobilization -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion cr royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation anent the rendezvouses of the militia , for the year 1683. charles , by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith ; to macers of our privy council , or messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch , as by reason of the not timous intimation of the dyets of the general rendezvouses of the militia of this our kingdom the last summer , there was no general rendezvouses thereof keeped ; and we finding it necessar for our service , that the said rendezvouses be punctually keeped for this year , and hereafter ; have with advice of our privy council , thought fit to appoint the said rendezvouses for this year , to be at the dyets and places after-specified , viz , the two regiments of foot , and two troups of horse of the shires of fife and kinross , to beat edinsmoore , the twenty two day of may next : the two regiments of foot , and two troups of horse of the shire of perth , to be at perth , the twenty third day of the said month : the regiment of foot and two troups of horse of the shire of forfar , at forfar , the twenty fourth day of the said month : the regiment of foot and troup of horse , of the shire of kincardine and marischals part of aberdene , at aberdene , the thirtieth day of the said month : the regiment of foot of the shire of bamff , and err●ls part of aberdene , and two troups of horse there , at turreff the first day of june next : the regiment of foot and troup of horse of the shires of elgin , nairn , and part of inverness , at elgin the fifth day of the said month : the regiment of foot and troup of horse of the earl of seaforth , and lord lovits part of inverness , at inverness , the seventh day of the said month : the regiment of foot and troup of horse of the shires of ross , sutherland and caithness , at dornoeh the tenth day of the said month : the regiment of foot of the stewartry of orknay at kirkwall , the fifteenth day of the said month : the regiment of foot and troup of horse of the shires of linlithgow and peebles , at celem-moore , the first day of the said month : the regiment of foot of the town of edin●urgh , at the links of leith , the second day of the said month : the regiment of foot and troup of horse of the shire of edinburgh , at musselburgh , the fifth day of the said month : the regiment of foot and troup of horse of the shire of hadingtoun , at beinstoun moore , the sixth day of the said month : the regiment of foot and troup of horse of the shire of berwick , at f●ggomoore , the seventh day of the said month : the two regiments of foot and two troups of horse of the shires of roxburgh and selkirk , at ancrum bridge , the eighth day of the said month : the regiment of foot and troup of horse of the shire of dumfreis , the twelfth day of the said month : the two troups of the shire of wigtoun , at milntoun of orr , the thirteenth of the said month : the three troups of horse of the shire of air and part of the shire of renfrew , at air , the fifteenth of the said month : the rest of the shire of renfrew at renfrew the eighteenth day of the said month : the three troups of the shire of lanerk , at hamiltoun , the twenty two of the said month : the regiment of foot and troup of horse , of the shire of strivling and clackmannan , at sauchen-foord , the twenty sixth of the said month : the regiment of the shires of argile , bute and dumbarton at dumbartoun , the ninteenth day of the said month , for the shire of dumbarton and bute , and at inverara the twenty fifth of the said month for argile shire . and we ordain the whole officers of foot and horse to attend their charges , at the saids dyets of rendezvouses , and the heretors and other out-reikers of the sojors , to have their men present ; ( habile ) according to law ; with certification to the saids officers and heretors , if they neglect their duty herein , they shall be proceeded against , and fined conform to the laws and instructions made thereanent . and appoints the muster-master general , by himself or his deputs , to be present at the several rendezvouses , and to return an account to our council , of the absents and deficients , that they may be proceeded against according to law. our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly and command , that incontinent , these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat cross of edinburgh , and several mercat crosses of the head burghs of this kingdom , and burghs of regality , and several paroch kirks within the same , upon a sunday after divine service , and other places needful ; and there , in our name and authority , by open proclamation , make publication of the premisses , that none pretend ignorance . and we ordain the sheriffs of the respective shires , to cause duly publish these presents . given under our signet , at edinburgh , the twenty third day of march , one thousand six hundred eighty and three : and of our reign , the thirtieth fifth year . wil. paterson , cls. sti. concilij . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1683. presbyterian inquisition as it was lately practised against the professors of the colledge of edinburgh, august and september, 1690 in which the spirit of presbytery and their present method of procedure is plainly discovered, matter of fact by undeniable instances cleared, and libels against particular persons discussed. monro, alexander, d. 1715? 1691 approx. 253 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 55 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2005-12 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a70609 wing m2443 estc r5724 11348523 ocm 11348523 47542 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a70609) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 47542) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 699:18, 1466:14) presbyterian inquisition as it was lately practised against the professors of the colledge of edinburgh, august and september, 1690 in which the spirit of presbytery and their present method of procedure is plainly discovered, matter of fact by undeniable instances cleared, and libels against particular persons discussed. monro, alexander, d. 1715? [2], 106 p. printed for j. hindmarsh ..., london : 1691. testimony of alexander monro in answer to charges of misconduct of office and popery. errata: p. 106. reproduction of originals in the union theological seminary library, new york, and university of illinois (urbana-champaign campus). library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng presbyterianism -early works to 1800. scotland -church history -17th century. scotland -history -1689-1745. 2005-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2005-05 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2005-07 rachel losh sampled and proofread 2005-07 rachel losh text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-10 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion presbyterian inquisition ; as it was lately practised against the professors of the colledge of edinburgh . august and september . 1690. in which , the spirit of presbytery and their present method of procedure , is plainly discovered , matter of fact by undeniable instances cleared , and libels against particular persons discussed . for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me , they have spoken against me with a lying tongue : they compassed me about also with words of hatred , and fought against me without a cause . ps . 109. v. 23. licensed , nov. 12. 1691. london , printed for j. hindmarsh at the golden-ball in cornhill . 1691. advertisement . when the reader considers what 's said in the following sheets , he will find the title exactly agreeable to the book ; and if that seem odious , it 's not to be imputed to the author of this narrative , but to one of the visitors ; who in the face of the court , declared , that their method of procedure was an inquisition ; and the plain truth is , he was so happy in the choice of the word , that it would have been unreasonable to have chang'd it . the reader is also desired to take notice , that by the witnesses mentioned in the last paragraph of the preface ; are to be understood , only such as were examined against those masters of the colledge , whose tryals are not yet published ; for all the art and industry of the party , could not so much as procure one witness to appear against the two doctors , whose libels , answers , and sentences , are here related . the preface . i was present at edinburgh when the university there was lately visited by the presbyterian party , and was witness to all that past at the tryals of the principal and other masters ; and the accounts of it having since fallen into my hands , and i knowing them to contain nothing but matter of fact and down right truth , thought fit now to publish them ; not to continue , or excite faction or revenge , but to vindicate innocent men , from the calumnies and slanders that have been of late charged upon them . if the presbyterians had not industriously propagated abroad , the idle and impertinent stories they invented at home , these papers had never seen the light : it is indeed with great reluctancy , that i give the transactions of that late visitation any room in my memory ; but since the clamours of a factious party constrain men to defend themselves : it is but just to return such answers as may undeceive well meaning people , and expose the injustice of that inquisition : it being so easie a thing to make it appear , that the masters of that universities greatest crimes , were their places and preferments . because in the following papers , mention is often made of a new test , that the parliament appointed for all university men ; it may not be improper once for all here in the beginning , to tell what that test was ; for this then let it be remembered : that the 17 act parl. 1. sess . 2. july 4. 1690. earl melvil commissioner , appoints ; that no master or professor in any colledge or school , shall be allowed to continue in the exercise of his function , but such as do acknowledge and profess , and shall subscribe the confession of faith * , ratified and approved by this present parliament ; and also , shall swear the oath of allegiance to their majesties ; and withal , shall be found to be of pious , loyal , and peaceable conversation , and of good and sufficient literature , and abilities , for their respective employments ; and submitting to the government of the church now setled by law — and are well affected to their majesties , &c. again , by act 38. sess . 2. parliament . 1. gulielm . & mari. july 22. 1690. melvil commissioner , all persons who are bound to swear the oath of allegiance , are also obliged to subscribe this assurance , as they call it . i a. b. do in the sincerity of my heart , acknowledge and declare , that their majesties king william and queen mary , are the only lawful , undoubted soveraings , king and queen of scotland , as well de jure , as de facto , and in the exercise of the government : and therefore i do sincerely and faithfully , promise and ingage , that i will with heart and hand , life and goods , maintain and defend their majesties title and government , against the late king james , his adherents , and all other enemies ; who , either by open or secret attempts , shall disturb or disquiet their majesties in the exercise thereof . these were the instructions which the parliament by their acts gave to the visitors ; and a considerable number of them being presbyterian ministers , were not wanting in their diligence to screw up every thing to the greatest height , against the episcopal masters , and to make them feel the severe effects of presbyterian power and malice ; as appeared by a printed warrant , or rather proclamation , in their own names , in which , they require and command , messengers to pass to the mercat cross of edinburgh , upon a mercet day , betwixt ten and twelve a clock in the forenoon , and immediately thereafter , to the most patent gate of the university of edinburgh , and sicklike to pass to the mercat crosses of edinburgh , hadingtoun , duns , green-law , and lawder , jedburgh , selkirk , peebles , linlithgow , and stirling , and there at after open proclamation , &c. to summon , warn , and charge , the principal , professors , regents , and all others , masters of the university of edinburgh , and schoolmasters teaching latin in the said town , &c. — to compear before the committee of the said visitors , &c. — the 20 day of august next to come , at ten a clock in the forenoon , to answer and satisfie the said committee , &c. and likewise the said commissioners , do hereby require the said messengers , at the same time and place , and in the same manner , to summon , and warn , all the leidges , who have any thing to object against the said principal , professors , regents , masters of the said universities , and school-masters — to compear before the said committee , the said day and place , to give in objections against the principal , professors , regents , and others aforesaid — requiring in like manner , the messengers , executors of this present warrant , not only to read publickly the same , and the citation to be given them , at the said mercat crosses and colledge gate ; but also to leave printed copies thereof , affixt upon the mercat crosses of the head burghs , and upon the most patent gates of the said colledge . lastly , requiring the said messengers to return the same , with formal executions and indorsations thereof , duely subscrib'd by them before subscribing witnesses — for doing of all which , these presents shall be their sufficient warrant . given at edinburgh , july 25. 1690. and ordains these presents to be printed , extracted forth of the records , by me tho. burnet . 1. here you see a vast deal of pomp and parad , to usher in this inquisition ; open proclamation was made at mercat places , a sufficient indication of what might be expected afterwards from them : alt the leidges are warned , and summoned to come in , and make what objections they can , against the masters ; sure if the visitors want men to accuse these masters , it cannot be ascribed to their want of industry to procure them . 2dly . the great zeal these commissioners had to purge the universities from malignants * , made them upon all occasions stretch the words of their instructions , far beyond their ordinary and usual signification . when some enquired whether by that part of the test , which requires to submit to presbytery , were meant only , a quiet and peaceable living under that government , or if it imported any thing farther : some of the commissioners plainly told , that by that clause of the test , was also meant , that every master should tbereby declare the presbyterian government , to be preferable to any other whatsoever , and the only government left by christ and his apostles in the church , and warranted by scripture . by the same spirit of prebyterian moderation , some of the commission declared ; that by the acknowledging and subscribing the westminster confession of faith ; is not only meant an owning of it , in so far as it is a system of theologie conform to the holy scriptures , and one of the best designed for distinguishing the reformed church , from these hereticks and schismaticks that now disturb it ; but that it also imports , an absolute owning of every particular article thereof , as the only and most perfect confession , that hath been or can yet be composed ; and that therefore it was to be acknowledged , professed , and subscribed , without any limitation , restriction , or reservation whatsoever . the visitors might have been well assured , that no master or professor of any conscience , who had been episcopally ordained , or acquainted with the primitive constitution of the church , could any ways comply with conditions so rigid and severe . it had been soon enough then , for the presbyterians to have fled to their old experimented way of libelling , when the masters had stood their ground against that new test , which originally had no end , but to make vacant places . but the preachers of that party ( members of the visitation ) judged it more convenient , boldly and indefatigably to calumniate the professors , lest if they had been turned out for mere and just scruples of conscience , the people should have murmmured and complained ; the body of mankind often believe the first and loudest reports , few of the people being capable , willing , or at leisure to examine the truth of things , and since now the faction had got the uppermost , and had power in their hand , they enquire into all things that might make the professours odious to the city or nation , and thought fit to let them feel the effects of their rashness , if in all their life time , they had been once spoke against the imposture or enthusiasme of that sect. the presbyterian preachers ( who earnestly wished to be employed in the toyl and drudgery of this affair ) made it their business to search into all the actions of the professors lives , especially such as were capable to be transformed into a libel ; and having the assistance and zeal of some of the new magistrates of edinburgh , to second their endeavours , it was easie to foresee what quarter they might expect , who differed from them : and this was no difficult province for presbyterians to mannage , considering the nature of their discipline , and their present constitution ; the most innocent things have two handles , and some men industriously seize the worst : but because they pretended to be most accurate reformers , they would therefore do their work thorowly , and strip their opposers as bare of their reputation and good name , as of their livelyhoods and preferments ; and having now got the church's jurisdiction and revenues into their hands , it was not safe for them to want the government and psssession of the seminaries of learning : and therefore the presbyterians that preached before the parliament , never forgot to exhort such as were in power speedily to reform the universities ; which is no less in their language , than to plant them with presbyterians ; to accomplish this , it was necessary to represent the masters of universities under the episcopal constitution , as very ill men , enemies to the godly , socinians , papists ; now the people could not discern when they spoke contradictions , for tho' socinianism , and popery , be two opposite points of the compass , yet some of their emissaries scrupled not , among the gossoping sisters , and at other more publick meetings , * to accuse one and the same person of both . when the government of the city of edinburgh , was lodged in the hands of the first and best order of citizens and gentlemen ; the masters of the colledge had all the encouragement that they themselves could wish ; they lived in all tranquility and freedome during the administration of sir magnus prince and his predecessour , sir thomas kennedy : they made it ( both of them ) their business to preserve the order , fabrick and revenues of that house ; they omitted no occasion of supporting the honour and reputation of its masters ; as well as of discouraging what ought to be reproved , and timously amended ; whenever there was the least ground for it . the masters of the college in that period , had nothing to do but carefully to look after the manners and proficiency of their students ; for the countenance of the magistrates and their generous inclinations to propagate learning , did so secure and guard the professors , against the little efforts of censorious and talkative fanaticks , that they could not contrive how to be more happy in their stations : for these gentlemen knew what an ornament their university was to the city and whole kingdom , how necessary freedom , contentment , and retirement are to the attainment of learning : and therefore they were so far from vexing and disturbing them , that they heaped upon them all marks of honour and regard . others ( shuffling themselves into the magistracy under the covert of such commotions as necessarily attend all great revolutions ) had not the same view of things , they thought their business was to reform , tho' they knew not what ; and this reformation was regulated by such oracles as managed their councils , and the responses were always given by interest : hence they seemed to mind nothing so much as the disturbance of that seminary : sometimes they thought that they might manage the discipline of the house , without considering the masters ; sometimes they thought they might by themselves , without the king * , or any formality of tryal , remove and displace them at their pleasure ; sometimes they pick'd quarrels with the students , of purpose to accuse their masters : sometimes they would contrive odd and phantastick schemes of discipline , and it is not easie to imagine into what freakish humours , silly conceits , and little tricks this fancy metamorphosed it self in the space of two years . but those attempts served only to make citizens of the best sense and quality , some of them to laugh , and others to lament , that the professors of the liberal sciences should be so treated by such illiterate busie-bodies . for generally the citizens of edinburgh are not only affable , kind and courteous to the masters of that college , and to learned men in general ; but also very forward to promote the interest of that house ; the original erection whereof is owing to their charity ; and they have frequently since the first foundation , augmented its revenues , books and curiosities : and there are but few of them but retain a tender esteem of its great worth and advantage , and the escapes and preposterous dealing of some of them ; in this critical juncture , is not at all to be laid to the charge of the body of the people , who have always valued the masters of the college as they did the education of their children , than which nothing is of greater consequence to themselves , or the societies in which they live : the presbyterian ministers , finding the endeavours of their magistrates too slow to serve their ends ; and that they were frequently baffled in those little skirmishes with the masters , importuned the leading men of the party , to procure such an act of parliament as might best serve their designs against the universities , * and lest the masters should comply with the civil government , a new test was so ordered , that none but presbyterians could comply with it , and even such , if ever they had but submitted to episcopacy , were not allowed to hold their places , but in a most precarious manner . the masters of universities complain justly of two things . first , that they were obliged to take oaths that the rest of the clergy of the nation were not bound to take . whereas any legal test should reach all or none . secondly , that this test should contain not only their allegiance to the civil authority , but also their hearty submission to the presbyterïan government and the new model of it in scotland * . thus the presbyterians were very sure , that if they did not thrust them out by the first , they could not fail to send them packing by the second , especially since the last clause of the new test obliged them to submit to presbytery , which is no lese than to give themselves up to all the decisions of the consistory . it was not to be expected but that the presbyterians would quickly possess themselves of the universities , since the ecclesiastical government was lodged in the hands of a few of them , by an heteroclite kind of prelacy never before known in the church * . yet it may be fairly presumed , that for their own honour and interest , they should have vacated the seminaries of learning at least by degrees ; and not have pull'd them down all at once : but the fiery spirit of that faction endures no delays . yet lest the people should find sault with their precipitancy , they were to manage their game with some plausible pretences : if any of the masters were observed to have had but any kindness for the order and rites of the primitive church , or ever to have but spoke slightingly of their new discipline ; such were to be expelled the college with disgrace , cloathed first in beast-skins , and then exposed to the rabble : their places and preferments were sacrific'd to presbyterian covetousness and sacriledge , and their honour and good name , to their vanity , pride and revenge ; it was not enough to have them removed , unless it was with ostentation and triumph . they would fain perswade the present generation , that they value the other world more than their neighbours do , but yet they never neglect any methods , right or wrong , to secure the interests of this . it was not unpleasant to some spectators to behold at what pains the presbyterian preachers were to patch up libels against the masters , going from house to house , from one company to another , enquiring into the most minute actions of their former lives . some of the masters , * they were so keen against , as to run back the inquisition , as far as their childhood , entertaining persons of quality with the opinions and erroneous conceits they alledged them then to have had . and besides that , they had the true art of transforming the most laudable practices , into suspicious designs ; they pretend to pry into the secrets of their hearts , accusing them as reprobate and wicked men , popishly affected , enemies to the godly , friends of the idolatrous liturgy of the church of england , and despisers of all true piety and devotion ; for that to be sure is the monopoly of their own gifted and select tribe . this is the mischievous and usual effect of bigottry , it changes the soul ( the luminous part of man ) into a dungeon of passion , and self-conceit , it debases the generous spirit of christianity , into servility and superstition , it blocks up all the avenues of the mind ; you may as well preach to the river of forth to stop it's current , as desire them to listen to calm reasonings , to weigh the justice or injustice of what they do against these of a different opinion ; nor is there any sect upon earth in whose actions the sad effects of prejudice and imagination are so legible as in this last edition of presbytery in scotland . they complain of all degrees of power when it is not in their own keeping : the most innocent commands of their lawful superiours are insupportable grievances , * and the canons of the universal church , are but superstitious encroachments upon tender consciences : they declaim perpetually against arbitrary power , and yet nothing escapes their cognizance ; and they only are judges of the punishment that every little offence deserves ; nay frequently , the most commendable actions are made offences , for there is nothing so remote from ecclesiastical censure , but what is hooked in by them , in ordine ad spiritualia . this needs no explication to such as have lived where their discipline prevails ; when religion and its doctrines are made subservient to the tyranny and caprice of self-designing men , it loses its natural beauty and use ; the greatest blessings of heaven , are by the wickedness of men changed into curses , and the light of the gospel made to truckle under the designs of darkness : the passions of pride and revenge that it designed to mortifie , are advanced and encouraged , but the wisdome that is from above , is first pure , and then peaceable , gentle , and easie to be entreated , full of mercy , and of good works , without partiality , without hypocrisie ; 't is sad to consider how much the people are diverted from considering , believing , and contemplating , the pure and undisguised design , faith , and morality of the new testament , by fooleries and novelties , that have no natural tendency , but to divide christendome , and corrupt the simplicity of that faith once delivered to the saints , and instead of that beautiful worship , by which our ancestours in the primitive and purest ages did adore the creator of heaven and earth , there is now introduced a new scenical incoherent rapsodie ; and all this under the pretence of a more illuminated state , and progress of the reformation : just so the donatists of old destroyed the power of godliness , as well as the ancient forms . and canons of the catholick church , under the popular pretence of reformation . by the following sheets , the reader will clearly see a most remarkable and undeniable instance , of the partiality and injustice of the presbyterian party , and that they were fully determined right or wrong , to find such of the masters guilty as were not of their way ; a plain evidence of this , is the report they made to the general commission of the visitation , in which the reader will see their affected mistakes , and malicious method of arguing ; particularly in their report concerning dr. strachan professour of divinity , in the colledge of edinburgh ; they insinuate , that the doctor did either believe transubstantiation or consubstantiation , both which determine positively the manner of our saviour's presence in the holy eucharist , because the doctor had sometimes said with durandus , praesentiam oredo , modum nescio , but of this more in its proper place . it had been a much more creditable , compendious , and ingenuous method , to have turned out the masters of the episcopal perswasion , by one general act , it being once determined that they should be ejected , than by so much noise and ceremony , first to bring them upon the stage , then to kick them off with all the affronts and indignities they could heap upon them ; for malice it self could have done no more , as you may easily see by some of the malicious , triffling , and false things , objected against the masters . i cannot guess , why the masters of the colledge of edinburgh , should be treated otherwise than the professours of other colledges were : it 's true , that city is the centre of the nation , and the schools there are most frequented , and if they had not at first apply'd their utmost force against that place , they could not so easily have removed them afterwards , at least such a delay would have put them to the pains of gathering new libels ; therefore they were to push their business with all diligence and vigour , nothing else but the force of interest and malice could have made reasonable men venture upon such scurrilous methods as they used and here are narrated ; long libels formed against the professours , but no informer or accuser made known , a practice peculiar only to courts of inquisition : and which , the pagan emperour trajan , thought so inhumane and barbarous , that he forbid this method of tryal against the christians , whom yet the persecuted ; and therefore he ordered plinius secundus the proconsul , to admit no such unsubscribed libels against the christians , because that this was a custome of the worst example , unaggrecable to the reign of trajan , and to the common forms of justice received in all nations * ; for the accused ought certainly to know his accuser , lest he , or his malicious associates , should shift the scene and turn witnesses ; the accuser ought also to be obliged to prove his libel under a penalty * ; it is very hard , to leave men of credit and reputation to the mercy of every little informer , who can slip his collar when he pleases . i know nothing that can so disjoint and embroil humane societies , as this unworthy sneaking practice ; for this kind of inquisition , is much more grievous than that of the romanists , this only great difference being remarkable , that the severity of the popish inquisition is tempered with canons , and this of ours , only regulated by the boundless humour of a few imperious rabbies , whose actions know no law but the covenant , and that no other end , but their ecclesiastical tyranny . it was easie to guess what the sentence would be , when some of those presbyterian ministers who were judges , drudged so much to procure libels : it is true , the committee for the colledge of edinburgh , was for the most part more deeply engaged to the interest of presbytery , than they who were sent to visit other universities , yet some of them did so abhor this harsh and preposterous violence ; that persons of honour and integrity amongst them , ( soon perceiving their assessors upon this committee , were not to be guided by common forms of justice ) left their meetings , and seldome or never again appeared ; such were the earl of louthian , lord secretary dulrimple , l. raith , sir john dempster , &c. when once they retired , the masters were left to wrestle with all the chicane , and affected mistakes and prejudices of then sworn enemies ; and because some of them did insist upon the same arguments afterwards at london , which they had made use of at edinburgh , therefore those objections are represented in their own words , and their most plausible and successful topicks fairly examined : and since the masters were not allowed sufficient time to make their defences , but forced to precipitate their answers to many particulars which were jumbled together against them , and which they never heard of until they were sisted before these tribunals : i will therefore take care to pick up all the exceptions that came to my hand ; and now , since the answers must be made publick , where i judge them defective or obscure to strangers , i will enlarge and explain them , and that so much the rather , because they thought these libels of such weight as to keep them upon record in their publick registers . indced , if the reputation of innocent men had been assaulted , only by spreading reports and scattering idle stories among the people , no man needed to have been at the pains to answer such whispers as flie only the in dark : innocence , and the good nature of the citizens of edinburgh , would have sufficiently defended the masters against secret reproaches and calumny , but now that they are allowed a place in the publick records , it is but a piece of innocent self-defence , to expose the weakness of those arguments they laid such stress upon , when the presbyterian preachers , who alone were most active in such libels , practised such an arbitrary inquisition upon the theatre of the nation , what is to be expected from them in the remote corners of the country ? where their meetings are not overawed with the presence of persons of quality , where there is no check upon them , nor any witnesses of their extravagance , but the lay elders , those grave noddies of their own erection , a new set of presbyters of their special invention , without mission or ordination . if the presbyterian government in our nation , had been tempered by a modest dependance upon the state , there had been less place for such unreasonable oppressions and irremediable confusions as are now too visible : nor is it possible to preserve the peace of the nation ; if there lie no appeal from the ecclesiastical consistory : this was the most insufferable piece of popery that christian princes groaned under before the reformation , and therefore they shook off this yoke too grievous to them , and to their ancestours : this independent discipline as it is managed by our innovatours , is founded upon such ambition , and arrogance , as is inconsistent with reason , and the innocent freedome of humane life , and the prerogative royal of kings , and instead of promoting piety and peace among christians , increases only mutual censurings , factions , hatred , and division , and what else is most opposite to the spiritual tendency , charity , and purity of our holy religion . but when they themselves look back upon all the steps and pageantry of that visitation , they cannot but acknowledge they have missed some considerable part of their design ; for the masters they were most violent against , are as much beloved and esteemed by their former friends in the city of edinburgh and elsewhere , as ever : they did not think to keep their places in defiance of the present law , nor do they complain so much of the illegality of the sentence against them , being there is now such a law , as they could not comply with , but they have reason to complain , that there was such a law made on purpose to turn out some particular persons , as the contrivers threatned twelve months before that tryal , they hoped ( if they were not treated like christians and scholars ) they might be allowed the civilities due to humanity , and the common forms of justice ; now being this account carries with it the undeniable evidence of particular matters of fact ; the reader may by it discern somewhat of the spirit of presbytery , and of that partiality and hypocrisie , that animates their most solemn proceedings . it is not intended by this preface to insinuate , that all the nobility and gentry , who were named to visit the universities , by act of parliament , were equally inclined to faction and injustice : it is certain , that many of them were averse from such severities , and particularly my lord carmichael president of the committee for glascow , treated the principal dr. fall , and subordinate masters there , with all the civilities due to their merit and character ; for tho' the cameronians in that place had prepared libels against the regents , yet my lord carmichael rejected them with indignation . and tho' the masters of the university of st. andrews have been examined with all rigour and severity ( all the vintners and their servants , and other rabble at st. andrews , being summoned to appear before the committee , and made to declare upon oath , all things that ever they heard or knew of the masters of that university ) yet no masters were treated as malefactors , but the professors of the colledge of edinburgh . it 's true , nothing but civility and discretion could be expected from a gentleman of my lord carmichael's honour , integrity and good breeding . and that any persons of quality were so ridiculously zealous as to glory in their severities against men of learning and piety , is , i hope , to be ascribed rather to the prejudices of their education , than to any perverseness in their nature . the spirit of presbytery hath in it so much meanness and insolence , when it is attended with force and the secular arm , that it cannot so much as counterfeit civility ; wherefore it 's hoped that the nation will speedily shake off this yoke , which neither they nor their forefathers could ever bear . our gentry are men of good sense and education ; and tho' in the western shires some of them are byassed towards this new and pedantick tyranny , yet it is not possible to keep even them so much in the dark , as not to see the novelty and vanity of presbyterian pretencies : and therefore since presbytery began to appear in its true colours , they have lost the greatest part even of such of them , as they had formerly deluded . the presbyterians from abroad have always spoke and written of the episcopal constitution with respect and veneration , because they found that the bishops and their adherents ( especially in england ) have been always the glory and defence as well as first promoters of the reformation . but the through-pac'd western presbyterians , have lost all thoughts of any other concern but of their own model ; and tho' it never prevailed in its full force and tendency in any other church upon earth , yet they must measure all mankind by that standard . there is scarce a little ruling elder * in the west of scotland , but expounds the darkest prophecies in ezekiel , daniel and the revelation , with relation to the covenant and the reformation wrought by it . this is the great secret of their religion , the original spring that sets all their endeavours in motion . they are a covenanted people , i.e. linked and confederated together to advance and propagate their faction and discipline , which they upon all occasions , blasphemously call the kingdom of jesus christ . it is true , the roman domination is intolerable , but then to make the people bow under the weight of it , they pretend to infallibility : the presbyterians should follow them in this pretence , as they do in the severity of their procedures , that at least they might be consequential ; for they are as impatient of contradiction as the jesuits , from whom they have borrowed most of their beloved tenets , and arguments by which they endeavour to support them ; especially their opinion concerning kings , and the independance of clergymen upon the secular powers . and because without extraordinary appearances of sanctity and devotion , the people cannot be wheedled into a belief of their godliness and honesty ; they confine the name of the godly only to themselves , as papists do the name of catholick to them : and i have heard some of them say , that it was not possible the power of godliness should prevail , but under presbytery : if it be so , the world is much mistaken ; i wish with all my heart we had better evidences of their piety , than of late we have discerned : i am sure , and no less sorry , that some who advance and support their fuction at present in scotland , are remarkably profligate sensual and scandalous debauchees . had we no other evidences of their unchristian and immortified temper , but their late injustice towards the episcopal clergy , we might be sufficiently convinced of their ill nature . their hypocrisie was never acted with less disguise , they are so bare-faced in their illegal proceedings , they leave off to counterfeit : they abuse the power which is put in their hands , to that degree , that their partiality is become the talk of many of their own adherents . tho' the perverse inclinations of the people , be no good argument ( nay , that which christianity is designed to subdue ) yet really they have as little foundation in the affection of the people , as they have in scripture and reason ; and this will appear upon the least search even into those places of the nation where they boasted that there was none to contradict them ( i don't mean the west ) but some of the most eminent and populous counties and parishes even be south forth , what do they think of the shires of the mers and teviotdale , of the parishes of peebles , dalkeith , musselburgh and aberlady , &c. and which is yet more troublesome to their wisdom , they are all convenient livings , and not far from edinburgh . as for the northern country , we know what esteem they are like to have there , by their late reception at aberdeen , when they want to offer the gospel * there , for since they must be attended with troops , it is no good argument , of their having any great foundation in the affection of the people ; but indeed , the weapons of their warfare are only known to be mighty , because they are felt to be carnal . two arguments i find lately insisted upon by some patrons of that party , to prove that the general inclination of that kingdom is for presbytery . they are to be seen in p. 32. of a late pamphlet , entituled , a further vindication , &c. the first is , that the bishops durst never venture upon the calling of a national synod , even in that period that episcopacy stood by law , lest some of the clergy might assault the very order of bishops , tho' most of them had received orders from their own hands . to this i answer , that , if the author of this pamphlet is is perswaded , that the most part of the episcopal clergy are for presbytery , why then does he not influence the presbyterians , to receive them into the government , especially since he acknowledges that the ministers cannot lawfully part with their share of ecclesiastical power to any other . the factions in the state , rather than the inclinations of the clergy , was the reason why the bishops did not call a national synod . and if the author thinks that the scotish clergy are for presbytery , how inexcusable is it in the presbyterians to prosecute them so violently when they have nothing to object against them , but that they complyed with episcopacy , since the first covenanters were as liable to this accusations as any of the present clergy . his next argument is , that there was a necessity to maintain an army to suppress the insurrections of the western shires when the government was episcopal . this is rather a threatning , than an argument , and we know very well , that since ever that sect thrust up its head above the ground , they were troublesome to authority , and will continue so as long as there is any matter for faction and revenge to work upon , for they preach to their people that they may advance their own way , whether the prince will or will not . but i leave it to the author to judge what the consequences should be , if the episcopal clergy ( who are now so cruelly trampled upon by their insolence and injustice ) should preach to the people of their communion the same very doctrines that are propagated by the covenantors , if they preached up assassinations and rebellions as their enemies do , i suppose a more considerable army would be necessary ; for it is certain , that the people that adhere to the episcopal clergy can fight much better than the western covenanters , and 2000 men can keep these shires very quiet at any time . but in stead of those lame topicks which he fancies demonstrations , i think a better expedient were to put it to the poll of the whole nation , which i know the presbyterians will never be for . the author is much mistaken if he thinks that the plurality of the scots clergy are presbyterians , though they are content , to joyn with presbyterians in church judicatories in all those duties that are uncontroverted . his book is rather an advice to the presbyterians , than an apology for them : for as long as the constitution is such , as that it may be wrested , it 's certain they will use it not for edification but destruction , and the question in our present circumstances is not what belongs to the civil , and what to the ecclesiastical power , but what the presbyterians have formerly done , what they do now , what 's likely they will do hereafter upon their own principles , and whether or not they can ever be perswaded to profess their repentance for what they have done . the author indeed deserves thanks that he offers them a more moderate scheme , and that he acknowledges their former extravagancies , but in all the book i see no proper remedy for our present confusions , and the truth is , there are many of his thoughts very just ; yet the true remedy is not to offer advice , but to pull out the teeth of our oppressors , and then ( and not till then ) every man may sit under his own fig-tree . however i intend this author no unkindness , who ( i think ) understands the world very well , and much better than he does some places of st. paul's epistles , and the acts of the apostles : which i have no mind to examine fully in this preface . only let him be advis'd not to alledge for presbytery that place of st. paul to the corinthians , the spirits of the prophets are subject unto the prophets . for tho' this text should be chang'd unto all shapes and figures , it can yield nothing to his purpose ; for it lignifies no more , than that the prophets inspired by god were lest in the exercise and possession of their reason , when they uttered their prophesies , and this distinguished them from the exstaticks and enthusiasts who were possesed by devils , and delivered their oracular responses in fury and transport . for the other mistake of the apostolick character , pag. 4. it is no more than what is ordinarily said in all presbyterian systems , but when he examines it a little more accurately , he will find by this especial character which he appropriates to the apostles ( and by which he distinguishes the apostles from other ministers ) that the seventy disciples are as much apostles as the twelve . i hope the author of that pamphlet will pardon this digression . his book may be examined more seasonably in another treatise . when ever he perswades the brethren of his way to act like reasonable men , they will meet with less opposition , and he himself will deserve the just commendations of prudence and modesty . they have hitherto gloried in their extemporary prayers ; i love not at any rate to play with things sacred , i know that men in private and in their closets ought not be tied to words or forms that are prescribed ; for if we can fix our attention on god himself , and the things agreeable to his will , and suitable to our necessities , we need not words , if we have but strong and fervent desires for all things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do ; but when we go into the house of god , it 's long since solomon advis'd to go with reverence , for he is in heaven and we are upon earth ; our words should not only be few , but very well weighed , and apt to beget in the hearers , an awful sence of his presence , and of the inconceivable distance between him and the workmanship of his hands : therefore the wisdom of the christian church , thought fit in all ages to put words in the mouths of her children when they approach the most high god in his house of prayer : for it is very odd that we dare come into his house with less preparation , than we do when we address to any of our considerable neighbours : yet with the saddest regret it must be acknowledged , that the presbyterians of late have to the disgrace of christian religion , and of the solemnity of its worship , changed the devotion of the christian church , into incoherent rapsodies and fopperies . i am confident ( not to mention the blasphemies for twenty two years , and the new of montross his armies ; with which they were wont to run their glasses ) if their prayers but since the late revolution , within the city of edinburgh , and the places next adjacent to it , were but printed and exposed to publick view , all the protestant churches would abhor their way ; as the ready means to introduce and strengthen atheism and irreligion among the people . the pulpit blasphemies that have lately been belched out against heaven in this nation , cannot be related without horrour and indignation : nor was god ever so much dishonoured by the vanities of the pagan idolatry , as by the pretended inspiration of our new reformers , every little trifling occurrence that 's suggested to their fancy , or casually tumbles in their memory , is immediately cramb'd into their prayers . but i have digressed too far , now then to return to my particular theme . the visitors put themselves indeed to extraordinary toll in examining the masters of the colledge of edinburgh : and yet the particulars they insisted upon were such , as they themselves knew , neither to be material , nor possible to be proved . they could not but think that the most remarkable steps they made in this affair would readily come to light , and yet they were not so wise as to temper their proceedings with the least discretion ; so difficult a thing it is to hide what has got the ascendant over all their passions . a calmer method and temperament would have served the design of their government to better purposes , if their discipline may be called a government , that 't every where attended with so many complaints , so much confusion and anarchy . but i am not to teach them how to strengthen and propagate their party ; for none can deny them the two principal supporters of faction and schism , impudence and industry . they may think this language something course and severe , but it is hard to change the propriety of words . if we must speak of them and of their actings , the keenest satyrs come short of their oppressions and falshoods . they had the confidence at london to deny that some of the people of aberdene had their ears nail'd to the pillory lately at edinburgh , because they testified their respect to their own episcopal ministers , and would not suffer the inquisitors to deprive them of the blessing of their doctrine and presence . as also they deny boldly , that the ministers in the west were drove out by the rabble which they hounded out ; or that any ministers were deprived in scotland , who were willing to comply with the state. they might have even as well said that the sun has not shined in that kingdom since the covenant was abandoned by it , for these other things they assert are as universally known to be false as that is . there is no fear that ever their party shall prevail where men retain the love of liberty and humanity ; for tho' that poor nation be at present run down by the most arbitrary and licentious practices of the kirk ; yet the common concern of liberty , morality and society , may awaken men at length to fix , and again to establish something that may become the civilized part of mankind , and upon which the superstructure of religion may be happily raised . when our feaver is abated , and the nation calmly considers its true interest and advantage . it 's not to be thought , that they will suffer an inconsiderable company of pedants , to continue dictators either to the church or the universities . in their late books , they promise to disprove the just ( but lame ) account given to the world , of the cruelties and oppressions the episcopal clergy hath met with in the western shires of scotland , but this amounts to no more than that they are resolved to employ some of their emissaries to make contrary stories , and to varnish them over with all the little shifts and artificial disguises they can invent , * when their barbarities are already known over the greatest part of christendom , and when the reform'd churches are all ashamed of them , and scandalized by them . if the gentry and nobility who were commissionated to visit the universities , had come alone without their chaplains , the masters had not met with so much rudeness : for there are but very few of them so deeply sowred with the leaven of presbytery . and if some may have forgot their character , it is because they have nothing to recommend them , but the implicit faith they pay to the consistory . and now i have nothing more in order to the following memoirs , to advertise the reader of , but only that the method of them is natural , easie and distinct ; for first , the author sets down the unsubscribed libel , as it was prepared and given in to the court , and to which the masters were made to answer upon the first hearing of it without the least delay . secondly , the answers made by particular masters to those libels . thirdly , in their own very words is set down the report of the committee to the commission concerning the masters . fourthly , the animadversions on that their report . and now to conclude this preface , let not the reader forget , that tho' hundreds of witnesses have been summoned and examined against those masters whose trials are hereafter related , yet nothing was proved of the least consequence against any of them , only such things as they avowedly owned themselves , and for which they were rather to be commended than reproved . i heartily pray god the nation may enjoy more peace , religion , order and unity , than can reasonably be expected from its present model of presbytery , and that our country be no more imposed upon by such open and bare-faced injustice , and oppression , under the pretence of reformation . presbyterian inquisition , as it was practised by the visitors of the colledge at edinburgh , in their proceedings against some of the masters there , in august and september , 1690. the act of parliament for visitation of universities , colledges , and schools , passes the vote of the house , july 4. 1690. and by the said act , the visitours were appointed to meet at edinburgh , the 23d of july , for the first dyer , that they might divide themselves into several committees , and lay down common rules for regulating the manner of trying the several universities within the nation , according to the instructions and injunctions then agreed upon , as you may see more at length in the act it self . accordingly , a sufficient quorum of them , met upon the 23d of july , 1690. and divided themselves into several committees , as follows . for the university of st. andrews . earl crawford . earl morton . earl cassels . earl kint●● . master of burley . sir thomas burnet . sir francis montgomery . mr. james melvil . laird of balconie . laird of nungtown . laird of meggins . mr. henry rymer . mr. william tullidaff . mr. david blair . mr. james m'gill . mr. james rymer . for the university of glascow . duke hamilton . e. argile . v. stairs . l. carmichael . sir george campbel . sir robert st. clare . sir john maxwell . laird of craiggenns . john anderson of dowhill . mr. james smalle● . laird of lewchatt . mr. gabriel cuninghame . mr. george meldrum . mr. william violent . mr. george campbell . mr. john oliphant . for the university of aberdeen . e. of marshall . v. arbuthnet . l. cardros . l. elphingsston . master of forbes . sir george monro . laird of brodie . laird of grant. laird of grange . moncrife of rydie . mr. alex. pitcairn . mr. hugh anderson . mr. alex. forbes . mr. william mitchel . mr. robert willie . for the university of edinburgh . e. of louthian . l. reath . l. ruthven . master of stair . l. mersington . l. crosrig . sir patrick hume . l. hall craig . laird of pitlivier . sir john hall. sir william hamilton . mr. edward jamison . mr. hew kennedy . mr. john law. mr. james kirton . mr. gilbert rule * when they had thus divided themselves into committees , they agreed upon the following rules , by which they were to regulate their tryal . at edinburgh the twenty fifth day of july , 1690. instructions from the commissioners appointed by act of parliament , to visit universities , colledges , and schools , to the committees delegate for that effect . imprimis , that the committee enquire and take exact tryal , of the masters , professours , principals , regents , &c. if any of them be erroneous in doctrine , and as to popish , arminian , and socinian principles , which is to be searched from their dictates , or to receive information from other persons who have been conversant with them , or have heard them . 2 o. to enquire and take tryal , if any of the masters , &c. be scandalous , or guilty of imoralities , in their life and conversation . 3 o. to try if any of the masters be negligent , and to enquire how many conveniendums * they keep in the day , and what time they meet , and how long they continue these meetings , and how the masters attend and keep them , and what discipline they exercise upon the scholars for their immoralities and none attendance ; and particularly to enquire at the masters , anent the office of hebdomodaries , and how faithfully that is exercised , and how oft they examine the scholars on their notes : and to take tryal , what pains they take to instruct their scholars in the principles of christianity ; and what books they teach thereanent for the subject of these sacred lessons , and what care they take of the scholars keeping the kirk , and examining them thereafter . 4 o. to enquire into their sufficiency , and that their dictates be searched , and if they be suspect of insufficiency to ask questions and examine them , as the committee shall think fit . 5 o. to enquire and take tryal what has been the carriage of the masters since the late happy revolutions , as to their majesties government , and their coming to the crown ; and to enquire into their dictates or papers emitted by them ; what are their principles as to the constitution of the government , by king and parliament . 6 o. likewaies , to call for the foundations and laws of the universities , and to consider how they are observed , and to try how they have managed their revenues , and especially anent the money given for buying books to their libraries , and any mortifications , stents , and collections , and vacant stipends , and other moneys given on any account to the said colledges , and if the * mortifications for the several professions be rightly applyed . 7 o. to enquire and try the professours of divinity , what subjects of divinity they teach , what books they recommend to the theologues , and if they be remiss and careless in causing their theologues have their homilies and exercises , and frequently disputes on points of divinity , as it is required . 8 o. to enquire at the said hail masters , &c. if they will subscribe the confession of faith , and sware , and take the oath of allegiance to their majesties , king william and queen mary ; and to subscribe the certificate and assurance , ordained to be taken by an act of parliament in july 1690. and if they will declare , that they do submit to the church government , as now established by law. 9 o. that the committee appoint such of the masters as they shall find cause , to attend the next general meeting of the commission , which order shall be equivalent , as if a citation should be given to them for that effect . having agreed to those rules of tryal , they appointed the several committees to meet at the respective universities , on the 20th of august , thereafter ; accordingly the committee appointed to visit the university of edinburgh , met in the upper hall , and sir john hall was chosen praeses ; the masters met in the library , and waited there about an hour and a half , till they were called to appear ; and upon their appearance , the praeses told the principal , that they would delay the tryal of the masters till that day seven-night ; because they were in the first place , to dispatch the schoolmasters , who were at some distance from the town , and could not therefore so conveniently give their attendance : but the true reason was , that the libels against the masters and professours , were not then so fully ready , as they designed them . upon the 27th of august the committee met , and spent some time in reading the libels , before the masters were called to appear : a little after , they were pleased to call in the principal dr. monro ; upon his appearance , sir john hall desired him to answer to the several articles contained in his indictment which he commanded their clerk then to read openly , in the face of the court and spectators . accordingly , the clerk read the first and second articles , to which the dr. answered ut infra , but finding that the paper contained a great many articles , he pleaded , that he was not obliged to answer an unsubcribed libel ; that , he should know his accuser , and that this method of tryal was new , unjust , and illegal : that men should be obliged to answer so many questions ex tempore . a certain member of the committee told the dr. that it was no libel , but an information . the principal answered , that a slanderous information , containing so many calumnies , to the ruine of a man's reputation and good name , was to him the self-same thing with a libel : at least that he was not lawyer enough so nicely to distinguish them ; but that he was sure the one had the same effects with the other ; and since the thing was the same , he was not concerned by what name it was called . the committee-man told him , it was to have no effect till it was proved ; ( a favour which they do not always grant ) the principal replied , that there was a double effect , that of deprivation , and the loss of his good name ; and tho' the first was not attained without proof ; yet the last was sure to follow upon such a malicious charge , since the people were but too apt to believe what was publickly informed , tho' it were not proved ; and so that which he called an information , would have the effect of a libel , even in the worst sense that it could be taken . the principal , wearied with jangling about a word , and conscious of his own innocency , was willing to hear the worst they could say , and so the clerk proceeded to other articles : and after having read one paper , another far more impertinent and ridiculous was put into his hand to heighten the libel ; the articles whereof follow . articles of inquisition against dr. monro , to which he was made to answer before the committee upon the 27 th of august , 1690. i. that he renounced the protestant religion in a church beyond sea , and subscribed himself a papist . ii. when mr. burnet the regent being suspected to be a popist , entered to the second class , most of the parents of the children that were to enter to the said class , enclined to put them back to the first class , for fear of there being tainted with popery ; but dr. monro made on act in the colledge , that none should go back , particularly bailzie gram's son , who had entered to the first class , was made to enter to the second : likewise , dr. monro went and told the earl of perth his diligence and care of mr. burnet , whom the said earl thanked kindly , for his love to any that went under that character . iii. that he set up the english liturgy within the gates of the colledge , a form of worship never allowed of in this nation since the reformation ; and tho' it were tolerated , yet no toleration allows any of different form of worship from the state , to enjoy legal benefices in the church or charge in universities . iv. the act for visitation of colledges requires , that none carry charge in them , but such as be well affected to the government both of church and state : but so it is , that it is known by all , that know dr. monro , that he is highly disaffected to both , as appears by a missive letter written by him to the late archbishop of st. andrews , dated the 5th day of january 1689. and which may also appear by his leaving the charge of the ministry to shun praying for king william and queen mary : and his rejoycing the day that the news of claverhouse * his victory came to town . and how much he dislikes the present government of the church , may appear by the bitter persecuting of all that persuasion to the utmost of his power . and particularly the breaking up of mr. james inglish his chamber door in the colledge , and turning him out of the same , notwithstanding he had been in peaceable possession thereof for many years , and paid rent for it : and all this betwixt terms , and the said mr. james inglish was willing to part with the chamber at the term. and this be did only because the said mr. james inglish preached in a meeting-house in his own parish , being called to it by them ; and when the said doctor was challenged for this ; he said , he would suffer none of such principles to be within the colledge . and when mr. gourlay was licensed to preach by the presbyterians , the students of mr. kennedys and mr. cunninghame's classes beat up his chamber door , and windows with stones ; and pulling off his ▪ hat , cloak and periwig ; and reproaching him with phanatick , &c. they forced him to remove from his chamber which he had possessed peaceably before , and when this abuse was complained of , and the boys names given up to the principal , there was no redress given . v. at the late publick * laureation , he sat and publickly heard the confession of faith , after it had been approven in parliament , rediculed by dr. pitcairn ; yea , the existence of god impugned , without any answer or vindication . vi. he caused take down out of the library , all the pictures of the protestant reformers , and when quarrelled by some of the magistrates , gave this answer , that the sight of them might not be offensive to the chancellor , when he came to visit the colledge . vii . when mr. cunninghame had composed his eucharistick verses on the prince of wales , he not only approved them , but presented them to the chancellor with his own hand . viii . that the said dr. is given sometimes to cursing and swearing , an instance whereof is , be said to one of the scholars , god damn me , if it were not for the gown , i would crush you through this floor , or to the like purpose . ix . that the doctor is an ordinary neglecter of the worship of god in his family . x. that on saturday last he baptized the child of mr. james scott in the parish of the west kirk , without acquainting the minister thereof . answer to the articles given against doctor monro , upon the 27th of august , 1690. my lords and gentlemen . i return you my humble thanks , for giving me a copy of the unsubscribed articles , given in against me upon wednesday last : and by their being such , i find my self under no obligation to take notice of them : yet i make bold to intreat your lordships favour and patience for some minutes , to hear a more particular answer to that paper , than that which i then gave , resolving to trouble your lordships with none of the little shifts and niceties of form that are usual on such occasions . i. that i renoimced the protestant religion , and subscrib'd my self a papist , beyond sea. this is a spiteful and malicious calumny ; for as it is libelled , it is not supposable that it can be true ; for any thing i know , the papists require no subscriptions of such as go over from the protestants to their party . if i had inclinations to popery when i was in france , it is more than the libeller knows , and more than he will be able to prove ; and being now for twenty years past , by all the evidences by which one man knows another , * of the protestant religion ; any man will see the impertinence of this suspition : it is not worth the while to give a particular account of my life , but i allow them to make the inquisition as narrow as they can . and therefore if your lordships think it worth the while , mr. reid , the present serjeant of the town company ( who knew me all the time i was in france ) may be examined particularly upon this head , or upon any other thing relating to my life , and behaviour . but your lordships will consider i hope the impertinency of this accusation , since it is not possible to be ordained a presbyter of our church , without renouncing of popery ; and our ecclesiastical superiors , who ordained priests and deacons , according to the forms of the church of england , always since the restitution took care ( i hope ) to distinguish papists and protestants , by the most solemn oaths and national tests . next let it be considered , whether i endeavoured to advance the doctrines and designs of the roman-church , since i entered into the ministry , what good evidences for my being inclined to popery ? had i not a fair opportunity to take off the mask some years before the revolution ? was it any of the sermons i preached against popery , in the high church of edinburgh and in the abby of holyrood-house , when our zealous reformers were very quiet : to all which some hundreds of the best quality of the nation , were witnesses . and the libeller knows this article is set in the front , to make up the muster , and for no other end , since he dares no more appear to make good this , than the other triffling particulars . was it my swearing the oath of the test once and again , or my recommending to the scholars ( the first year i came here ) such books as i judged most proper to discover and confute the superstitions of the roman church . had it not been far easier for the libeller ( who hath no regard to truth or probability ) to have cast into this paper more odious crimes ? but i was in france , and therefore behoved to be a papist , * and this is enough for this triffling lybeller ; i am very sure none of the papists ever thought me one . the second article , is a confirmation of the first , mr. burnet , was suspect of popery when he came here , and i did all i could to get scholars to his class , * particularly i spoke to bailey grahame for his son , and the chancellour thanked me for the care i took of mr. burnets concern , and such as he was . the then magistrates of edinburgh , several of the learned colledge of physicians , and all the professors of this university will bear me witness , that i left no stone unturned to keep mr. burnet out of this colledge : and yet the libeller hath the honesty to accuse me , that mr. burnet was suspect of popery ; was this my fault , or was it truly a fault in mr. burnet , that he was suspect of popery ? the lord archbishop of glascow and sir thomas kennedy , then protest , will vindicate me in this particular : for it is very well known how much i opposed mr. burnet's entry here ; a gentleman of known parts and integrety , one of the professors of philosophy in the old colledge of st. andrews , was the man i wished to fill up the vacance that happened by the death of mr. lidderdale ; * but mr. burnet being once thrust in upon us , ( more by the duke of gordon than the earl of perth ) what could i do with him ? my care of this house obliged me to make him as useful as i could : he lay under the suspicion of being popish , but i knew this to be a calumny ; and if i had not endeavoured to get him some scholars , we should have wanted one entire class in the colledge : this is the true reason why i spoke to bailzie grahame to send his son to mr. burnet , and procured an act of the faculty ( for i could make none as the libeller impertinently suggests ) that such as were mr. lidderdale's scholars the preceeding year should be taught for that year , in no other class but mr. burnet's who succeeded to his charge . this was no arbitrary stretch of mine , but a just defence of the current and usual customes of the house ; for mr. burnet having the second class , could expect none else but the students that were taught in mr. lidderdale's class the preceeding year ; but it is added , i did all this , because i favoured popery , and the chancellour thanked me for it . but this is a down right lye , for i never entertain'd the chancellour with discourses of mr. burnet , besides , for any thing i know , the chancellour had no value for him . iii. the next , is that formidable one , of reading the english service in my family , in that interval , when there was no national church government here . but the libeller forgets , that this quite frustrates his first attempt ; they must be odd kind of papists that read the service of the church of england , upon the 5th of november ; but the libeller adds , that the book of common prayer was never allowed here since the reformation ; does he mean that the service of the protestant church of england was used here before the reformation ; but to let this go , the book of common prayer was read in many families in scotland , ever since the restitution of king charles ii. and publickly read in the abbey of hollyrood-house , in the reign of king charles the first , and i hope the tolleration by king james did not exclude the english prayers : but upon enquiry it will be found , that they were the first prayers that were read in scotland after the reformation ; for * buchannan tells us expresly , as you see in the margin , and buchanans testimony is the more remarkable , that the confession of faith was ratified in parliament that very year , so that we have not only the private practice of a few great reformers , wisheart , and several others , to justifie the english liturgy ; but also the solemn concession of the whole nation , who thought their confession then ratified , had in it nothing contradictory to or inconsistent with the book of common prayer , rites , and ceremonies of the church of england : and such as plead for their separation from the church of england , from the practices of the first reformers here , go upon an unpardonable mistake in our history . but the plain matter of fact , is this , when i left off preaching in the high church : i advised with some of my brethren , and the result was , that we should read the book of common prayer , and preach within our familes , per vices , since most of them were acquainted , somewhat , with the liturgy of the church of england . neither did we think , when quakers and all sects were tolerated , that we should be blamed for reading those prayers within our private families , which we prefer to all other forms now used in the christian church : neither had we any design to proselite the people to any thing they had no mind to , else i might have read the liturgy in one of the publick schools within the colledge . and it must not be said we were afraid to venture upon the publick exercise of it because of the rabble , for during the session of the colledge , it is very well known in the city , that the mobile durst not presume to give us the least disturbance : however , the matter succeeded beyond what we proposed or looked for ; we preached to the people upon the sundays , they came by hundreds more than we had room for , and very many became acquainted with the liturgy of the church of england , and perceived by their own experience , there was neither popery nor superstition in it ; and when the libeller knows it better , he will forbear his violence and foolish cavilling . but your lordships will not think i make all this apology , as if i were diffident of the intrinsick excellency of common prayer , or that i had done something that needs an excuse ; for i look upon the church of england , as the true pillar and centre of the reformation ; and if her enemies should lay her in the dust , ( which god forbid ) there is no other bulwark in britain , to stop or retard the progress of either popery or enthusiasme : and i wonder men should retain so much bitterness against the church of england , valued and admired by all foreign churches , and whose liturgie ( as it is the most serious and comprehensive ) so it is the most agreeable to the primitive forms ; but if there was no law for it , there was none against it ; there was no national church government here then , and why might not we read the prayers of that church from which we derive our ordination to the priesthood , since the restauration of the king charles the 2d . iv. but i am ( as it is said ) highly disaffected to the government in the church and state , as appears by a letter to the arch-bishop of st. andrews , dated january 5. 1689. intercepted by hamilton of kinkell . but the libeller should remember , that the letter is of a much older date than the present government either in church or state , and that at that time , things looked rather like a total interregnum , than any setled government ; and if that letter ( written in the time of the tumuks ) retain any vestiges of fervour and impatience , your lordships will impute that , partly to the troubled state of things , and partly to the hard and unchristian oppression of the clergy of the western shires : and let not the word phanatick be extended to signifie a presbyterian , further than the presbyterians verifie the name by their practices : for i think there may be a presbyterian , who may not deserve that name , such as have been in france , and are in holland . as to that sentence , informing my lord st. andrews of a certain clergy man who had groaned under episcopacy , i had it by mis-information , i wrote it hastily , and now i retract it , and am glad i have the opportunity to do so : i remember when the letter was delivered to your lordships , i was chafed into some degrees of passion , that hamilton of kinkell should have used me so unworthily , as to break open my letters ; for no honest man will break open other mens letters , without order from the publick ; and then i said , all the ill offices that ever i did him , was to hinder once and again , letters of * caption against him ; and lest i should be said to upbraid hamilton of kinkell with the kindness i never did him , let mr. alexander monro ( who was then attorney agent for the new colledge of st. andrews ) produce the letters i wrote him in favours of kinkell , six or seven years ago , notwithstanding that he , the said mr. alexander monro , had orders to use diligence against the said kinkell , and to recover what was owing by him to the new colledge : but this gentleman's ingratitude to persons of greater quality , who sav'd him from the gibbet , is very well known over all the nation . a second instance of my being disaffected to the government of the state , is , that i dimitted my charge in the high church , lest i might be obliged to pray for king william and queen mary , &c. let the libeller consider the paper by which i dimitted my office in that church , and see if there be any such reason for my dimission inserted in that paper . i could name other reasons for my dimission , besides those mention'd in that paper ; but the libeller is very confident of his guesses , without the least evidence to found them upon ; and i do not believe that the presbyterians were angry with me on that head ; that i left off preaching in a church , which they were so very fond to have in their own possession ; and tho' the labeller was very well pleas'd with my dimission then , yet he can take it now by another handle , when he thinks to do me harm by it ; but such ill-natur'd impertinencies should not be answered . the next is , that i rojoyced upon the news of my lord dundee his victory . this is pleasant enough : for he could name no outward sign or expression of it ; he thinks i rejoiced , and therefore sets it down as a ground of accusation ; so , my lords , it was impossible for me to shun this , unless i had been dead some time before the victory ; for this libeller names his conjectures , dark consequences , and remote probabilities , for sufficient evidence ; for any thing he knew , this joy appeared no where but on the inward theatre of my mind ; but to make the story pass , why did he not name the usual and extravagant frolicks that attend such mirth ? where was it ? and with what company ? was he invited to this merry meeting himself ? but this is no part of his business , to circumstantiate things as common sence and justice would require in accusations : this brings to my mind , the legend of mother juliana , that was said to smell souls , and at a good distance to discern whether they were in the state of grace , or under the power of sin. i have answered once already , that it was an impudent and impious thing to pretend to omniscience , and that i had some relations in mackays army , for whom i was extraordinary solicitous : the libeller does not think i rejoyced at the fall of my lord dundee , i assure him of the contrary , for no gentleman , souldier , scholar , or civiliz'd citizen , will find fault with me for this ; i had an extraordinary value for him ; and such of his enemies , as retain any generosity , will acknowledge he deserved it . and he should consider , that the victories obtained in a civil war are no true cause of joy : our brethren , friends , acquaintances , and fellow christians must fall to the ground . the pagan romans knew better things , than to allow of public shews of triumph upon such occasion . bella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos . but the libeller may prove more successful in his next attempt . that i prosecute all the presbyterian party to the utmost of my power , but this is like all the rest of his bold calumnies : i thank god i have no such presbyterian temper , for i never hated any man for his opinion , unless by it he thinks himself obliged to destroy me and mine ; and such truly i consider as the tyrannical enemies of humane society . but he would have acted his part more skillfully , if he could have named some dissenters in the parishes of dumfermling , kinglassie , or weems ( where i was once minister ) that i had prosecuted before the secular judge for nonconformity , which i might have easily done , had i been so very sierce as the libeller represents me , having easie access to the greatest men of the state at that time . but i give him and all his associates open defiance upon this head ; not that i blame them that did otherways in obedience to the laws of the nation , for their extravagant tricks did frequently require and extort it from some ministers . the next instance is , that i broke open mr. james inglish his chamber door , and ejected him out of the colledge , for preaching in a meeting house in perth-shire . but if mr. james inglish be a presbyterian , it is more than i know . i heard that he was a behemenist , i heard his testificate from oxford did bear that he was much devoted to the church of england : and i know , that for his habitual lying , and slandering of his brethren in the presbytery of perth , he was deposed ( after an orderly and exact process ) by the right reverend doctor bruce , then bishop of dunkeld , and that the oath of the test was never offered to mr. james inglish ; altho' to ingratiate himself with the presbyterians at this revolution , he pretends to be deposed on meerly for not complying with that . but to my purpose , i think , about three years ago ( the colledge then being very throng ) several gentlemen importuned me to procure chambers for their children within the colledge ; at which time mr. inglish had no use for a chamber within the colledge , being for the most part absent : i sent the janitor to him , and ordered him to tell mr. inglish that we were very throng , and i would take it for a great complement , if he would part with that chamber ; yet i ordered the janitor to treat the said mr. inglish with all civility and discretion , and not to straiten him . the janitor went as he was ordered : mr. inglish returned answer , that now indeed he had no use for a chamber in the colledge , but since he understood there was a design another should have it , he would not part with it , and he would keep it in spite of my teeth : some days after , as i was going through the upper court , i met with some marks of incivility from him . the next news i hear of mr. inglish is , that he had raised letters of * law-barrows against me , and offered himself to swear before the lords of session , he dreaded me bodily harm . but the then lord president lockart rejected the letters , with indignation , without my interposal or knowledge . for i knew nothing of this malicious diligence against me , until some of my friends sent me the letters of law-barrows rejected in praesentia ; i gave this account of the whole affair to sir thomas kennedy , then lord provost of edinburgh ; he immediately sent his officers to discharge mr. inglish from the colledge , who when they came , they did not break open his door , nor was his furniture cast out ; but after all this provocation , i gave him all the days he sought , for ordering his things conveniently , and peaceably to retire . so much of mr. inglish his persecution for being a presbyterian : and i beg your lordships pardon , that i have kept you so long upon this particular . but the libeller adds , i was challenged for this , and returned answer , i would suffer none of mr. inglish his principles to continue within the house . that i was challenged for this , is an untruth , and consequently i made no such answer . if by principles he mean faction , contention , and sawciness , i confess i did not love these qualities ; but if by principles , he means the new opinions and fancies , which denominate a man a presbyterian , i behoved to extrude several of the students , who are likely to adhere more tenaciously to their tenets , than mr. inglish can be supposed to do ; but some even of them so principled will bear me witness , that i treated them with the same civility i did others , according to their good behaviour . the next man i persecuted for being presbyterian is mr. gourlay , and his persecution did so exactly meet with the time of his being licensed to preach by the presbytery ; mr. cuninghame and mr. kennedy's scholars drove him from his chamber , and no redress of all this . the libeller is certainly very critical and exact in this part of his inquisition ; for there was no mark of contempt put upon mr. gourlay here ( says he ) until he preached , and until he was licensed to preach by the presbyterians ; this is wisely observed , for if i could have gotten mr. gourlay out of the colledge i had accomplished a great design for episcopacy ! it is not enough for the libeller to represent me as an ill man , but he must have me thought an idiot . but the matter of fact , as to this trifle , is , that mr. gourlay , some years before i came to the colledge , attempted to teach the * semy class , in mr. kennedy's absence : but the boys then found him quite out of his element , and drove him out of the schools with snow-balls to the foot of the colledge lane. my lords and gentlemen , i appeal to you , if , after this affront , it was ever possible for little gourlay , in so numerous a society , to recover his reputation , unless it be supposed , that so many boys in health and vigour , should want all degrees of petulance and levity : i am sure he that tries them next , when i am gone , will find he has no utopian common-wealth to govern : and yet i think they are as obedient and regular as so many youths in any part of the world. when mr. gourlay came to me , i went with him , and i was so forward to punish the youths , that before i heard them plead in their own defence , i fin'd some of them in a pecuniary mulct . but the students finding that they were thus treated by gourlay , they presently caball'd themselves into a more numerous combination , of which i knew nothing ; and then it was that gourlay found it convenient to retire . but as to this second assault made upon him , no complaint was ever entred , no names were ever given up to me . and i again beg your lordships pardon , that i have spent so many lines on this impertinence . and mr. gourlay will pardon me , if i do not set down the particular acts of imprudence , open folly and ignorance , by which he made it impossible for him to live here without a guard. why the students in mr. cuninghame and mr. kennedy's classes should only be named , the libeller and i both know a very good reason for it ; but because it would seem malicious , i now wave it . v. the next accusation is , that i heard dr. pitcairn at the late publick commencement , treat the confession of faith at westminster , in ridicule , and impugn the existence of a deity , without answering him . my lords , my patience is quite tired with this impertinence : i was not in the desk , nor bound to preside at those exercises , and so not concerned to answer : but my good friend , dr. pitcairn , is more able to answer for himself and me both than i am . only , the sneaking libeller is grosly ignorant and malicious , for the doctor did not impugn the existence of a deity , he endeavoured fairly , like a true philosopher , to load some propositions in the thesis with this absurdity ( hoc posito sequeretur illud ) the most sacred fundamentals in religion are thus , disputed in the schools , not with a design to overthrow them ( as he ignorantly fancies ) but to establish and set them in their true light , that they may appear in their evidence : is it necessary to answer the silly conceits of such a libeller , who should not be suffered to enter the publick hall , if he must censure and mis-represent the most exact and usual methods of all schools in christendom ? yet i foresaw that some ignorant or malicious people would mis-represent this argument , and therefore i desired the doctor to let it fall , and without any more he did so . vi. the next crime is , i removed some pictures of the first reformers , for a day or two , out of their place in the library , and that i was challenged for this by the magistrates . to this i answer , that the magistrates never challenged me for it ; for they knew well enough there was no hazard of my running away with them : but i gave the true and satisfactory answer to this article , to sir john hall , provost of edinburgh , upon wednesday last , and it needs not be made publick unless he please . and i am not very sollicitous whether ever the libeller be satisfied about it , i hope the nobility and gentry , who sit here , will. vii . the next is , that i presented on eucharistick poem , composed by mr. cuninghame , upon the birth of the prince of wales , to my lord chancellour with my own hand . where the libeller had the word [ eucharistic ] i know not ; it is his misfortune that some of his darling expressions discover him more frequently than he 's aware : it seems he had read upon the frontispiece of the poem , tetrastic , and he stumbled as near as he could , by setting down eucharistic , but by what propriety of speech he knew not ; i am sure the bonefires , illuminations , glasses , and wine flung over the cross , were all of them as eucharistic as the poem , and the town of edinburgh should answer this , not i : nay , the council of scotland complemented the king on this occasion : yet it may be the libeller had some other design , by chusing some word near the eucharist , that mr. cuninghame and i might be thought to advance the doctrine of transubstantiation . but that i gave the poem to the chancellour , beginning trino nate di● , is acknowledged by me . viii . the next is a horrid and impious curse against my self , when i threatned one of the scholars . my lords , i did look for some such accusation ; for it is not usual for the presbyterians to load men of a different opinion from them with ordinary escapes : they must represent them as abominable , and as sinners of the first rate ; for all that are not of their way can have no fairer quarter , yet i could not easily guess who should first invent this prodigious calumny , a lye so notorious , that it could not come out of the mouth of an ordinary sinner . the story of this scholar , and the true original of the slander is this . in the beginning of nov. 1688. i found that robert brown the plunderer ( who was then mr. kennedy's servant ) had been for a good while practising upon some of the students , to enter into tumults , break all order and discipline , and to burn publickly some mock effigies of the pope : this certainly would have ruined the peace and order of our society , many bad consequences did frequently attend it : not only were the students debauched from their books , but their lives exposed every moment to hazard by the tumults : besides , that our colledge had felt the bad effects of it some years before . upon the account of this , and some other notorious villanies , i procured robert brown to be imprisoned , however , at the same time i gave him a piece of money to serve him that night , upon the marrow i pleaded he might be set at liberty , upon his promise of amendment , which was done accordingly ; but the villain grew worse and worse , till at last he became captain of the rabble ; and in requital of my forbearance towards him , he writes and fixes a placade upon the colledge gate threatning to kill the regents , ordering me to r●cant my sermon against the tumults , and charging me with all the blood-shed at the abbey * ( this placade is still in my keeping ) notwithstanding of all this , i forbore to extrude him upon plausible considerations , at the intreaty of some , and still he went on in his wicked course , and all the robberies committed upon poor people were laid at our doors , as if our scholars were to be blamed for his extravagancies : at last he committed an out-rage , which might have hanged a hundred . there was a woman in my lord president 's house , whom this brown caressed and frequented , and she had a quarrel with another maid-servant who was popish ; immediately brown is imployed by his godly mistress to banish the popish maid from the house . he willingly undertook the service , gathered his troop , and entered the house ( my lady being in child-bed , and my lord president himself at london ) brown thus invading the lord president 's house , my lady was almost frighted to death ; and we that were masters of the colledge thought our selves so disgraced , that the house of our great and learned patron should be thus rifled in his absence , by one of our scholars , when his lady was lying in : and when we thought that my lord president could not but be highly offended , to hear that we had thus requited him for many favours he had done to this university , i confess , i could no longer forbear , i went to the class where brown was , and called him to the upper gallery , and gave him all his most proper names , and threatned him , if he did not immediately beg my lady lockart's pardon , i would break his bones , all those big words i said to him , and the day thereafter extruded him with the usual swore : upon which he frequently swore he would be revenged ; and told the under janitor , robert henderson , that he had bought a pair of pistols to shoot me ( one might have served ) i beg your lordships pardon for this tedious and unpleasant story ; for none else but robert bown , or some of his associates would ever have accused me of such an impious curse . and when the libeller will be ingenuous ( which i do not expect ) he must confess the original of this impudent slander to be just as i have related it , and let him consult , as much as he pleases , brown for more materials to make up a libel ; for i assure him i think my self disgrac'd if he , or any of his accomplices , speak good of me . xi . the next is , that i ordinarily neglect the worship of god in my family . sometimes i am accused for having too many prayers in my family , and now that i ordinarily neglect prayers ( for 〈◊〉 guess , by the worship of god , he only means that part of it ) but this is a common place , and all of the episcopal perswasion must be represented as atheists and scandalous , void of all devotion and piety : but very few of any sense or quality will believe this impertinent slander , either in the country , or the city of edinburgh where we are known ; therefore i thought it not worth any answer . x. the next is , i baptized upon sunday last mr. james scot his child , without acquainting the minister of the west-kirk . when mr. patrick hepburn , who is the lawful minister there ( tho' he be of the episcopal persuasion , as yet is neither censured nor deposed ) will find fault with what i have done , i shall indeavour to make amends ; but i need not fear any trouble this way , since i had his leave before : but the libeller means mr. david williamson , the presbyterian mininister , who hath no legal claim , either to the benefice or ministry there : this is a piece of the ordinary modesty of the libeller , who is not concerned to enquire into this matter , nor do i decline to give a reasonable account of what i have done , to any body that asks it , no , not to mr. williamson , if he will but prove himself the legal minister of that place , and withall make good the new paradox , wherewith he hath lately blessed the world , in his sermon before the parliament , viz. that our saviour died a martyr for the presbyterian government , then i acknowledge my self obliged , ●ure divino to beg mr. williamson's pardon : however , the child is baptized according to the form of the catholick church , and i hope they do not undervalue ceremonies of divine institution so much , as to re-baptize him . my lord provost , i was interrogate wednesday last upon some other things , that i do not find in the copy of articles given me , as first , that i frequently preached unfound doctrine , but this is an impertinent and indefinite accusation ( there is no doubt but the libeller would have preached otherways than i did , had he been in the pulpit ) by this the visitors may see , that the libeller had no other design in his head , than to gather together such articles as he thought would make me most odious . what is sound , or un-sound doctrine , he as little knows , as he does the secret of the philosophers stone . then again , that i thought my self independent on the town of edinburgh ; but i gave a full anser to this the last day . then , that i went on to laureat , the last class , without acquainting the magistrates of the town , or the treasurer of the colledge . the provost knows the first part to be a lye ; besides , that it is not practicable , for this civility and deference to the magistrates runs in course , and cannot be omited . that i did not wait upon the treasurer , is become a fault only since we had a treasurer that mistook his figure , for when he knows himself and the colledge better , he will forbear such impertinencies . the next was , that i did not punish the scholars for whoring and drinking . there was not one scholar , since i had the government of the colledge , convict of either , nor so much as complained of ; but it is naturally impossible for him to forbear calumny ; the viper must either burst or spit his poison . i was then again interrogate about the bursars of theologie and philosophy ▪ to which i gave a full answer on wednesday last . upon thursday the 18th of sept. 1690 , the inquisitors sat and some of the presbyterian ministers having look'd over the publick records , thought they had discovered a dangerous plot 〈◊〉 the occasion whereof was this by king james's proclamation for indulgence we could not impose the former oaths upon our students , when they commenced masters of art , and therefore , lest they should go oft without any ingagement , the former oath was comprized into this short promise pollicemur in deum fidem inviolabilem , in religions christiana reformata perseverantiam erga serenissimum dominum regem obedientiam , &c. but it fell out so that the word [ reformata ] was left out in some place , by which they would conclude either that the promise was indefinite , or that there was a blank left to be filled up upon occasion with a word , in favours of some other religion different from the reformed . if the first be intended , it is no new thing to find the students here sworn to oaths as indefinite , as this is ; for the puritas and veritas evangelii , in the oath imposed by dr. golvil , is coincident with the christian religion , mentioned in the form now challenged ; for i never understood by the protestant religion any thing but christianity unmixt . but if this be said to be too general , look the records , ann. 1662 , and ye shall find that there is not the least mention of religion in the oath imposed . if the second be said that there was a blank left on design , it is humbly desired to know what the design could be ; the bibliothecarius is ready to depone that he never intended a blank , nor was he ever ordered a blank ; and the rest of the masters may be interrogate , whether ever they knew of any such design . so that this phrase , religio christiana , without the word [ reformata ] once varied , is purely the result of chance , and no design . at the doctors first appearing , it was talked of with that warmth and concern , that he thought the gun-powder-treason was in the belly of it ; so that the bibliothecarius his deposition , who swore that he wrote nothing in the book , but by order ▪ is not to the purpose , unless he acknowledge a bla●●●●●gned by him in that manner of writing , and ordered by the doctor or some of the masters ; all this bustle comes to nothing , unless the christian religion in the formula of promise now challenged , signifie the anti-christian religion ; and if that be , i have no more to say in his defence . the report of the committee , concerning doctor monro . at edinburgh , september , 23 , 1690. the committee considering that doctor monro princicipal of the colledge of edinburgh , did judicially refuse to comply with the qualifications required by the act appointing the visitation of colledges , except as to his subscribing the confession of faith ; as also it appears by his written answers , read and given judicially by him , that such as were mr. lidderdale's scholars the preceeding year , should be taught that year in no other class , save mr. burnets , ( who he confesses lay under the suspition of being popish ) under pretence of making a gap in the colledge , and for other reasons known to the primar himself , as the act bears ; and he does not alledge , that he used means to cause master burnet purge himself of the said suspicion : and further , that he did take down the pictures of the protestant reformers out of the bibliotheque , at a time , when the earl of perth , the late chancellour , came to visit the colledge , without any pretence or excuse , but that the late provost of edinburgh did advise him thereto ; and that on the 23d of august last , he baptized a child in the parish of the west-kirk , without acquainting of the minister of the parish , or license from him ; which is contrare to the rules of the established church government ; as also that he acknowledged , that he had no publick dictates one whole year , but only catechizing ; and that it appears by the publick registers of the magistrand laureation ; that whereas , from the year 1663 , and till the year 1687. the magistrands were alwaies sworn to continue in the verity and purity of the gospel , or in the christian religion reformed according to the purity of the gospel ; yet in the year 1687 and 1688. when doctor monro was principal , he takes the magistrands obliged only to persevere in the christian religion ; and this blank is found three several times in the book , viz. at two publick laureations , and a private one ; and the doctor having laid the blame on the bibliothecarius his negligence , and craving the bibliothecarius might be examined thereupon ▪ he being accordingly sworn and examined , depones , that what he wrote in the magistrand books , was either by direction of the primar or of one of the regents , and in presence of a faculty , or of a quorum of them ; and that what he did write , was alwaies read over in the presence of the masters and the scholars ; and particularly the alteration of the promise made at the graduation , in the year 1687 , as also the committee considering , that at the two last laureations , in the year 1689 and 1690 , neither oath nor promise was required at the graduation . it is therefore the opinion of the committee , that doctor alexander monro , principal of the colledge of edinburgh , be deprived of his office , as primar there ; and that the said office be declared vacant . there is a letter written by the said doctor , and directed to the late arch-bishop of st. andrews , dated jan. 5. 1689. owned and acknowledged by the doctor to be his hand write , the consideration whereof is remitted to the commission . the sentence of deprivation against dr. monro . at edinburgh , september 25 ▪ 1690. the lords and others of the commission appointed by act of parliament , for visitation of universities , colledges , and schools , having this day heard and considered the above written report of the committee of the colledge of edinburgh , anent doctor monro primar of the colledge of edinburgh ; deposition and other instructions produced , and also doctor monro being ask'd , if he was presently willing to swear the oath of allegiance to their majesties king william and queen mary , and to sign the same , with the assurance , and the confession of faith , ( which formerly he had offered to sign before the said committee ) and if he would declare his willingness , to submit himself to the present church government , as now establish'd ; the said doctor monro , did judicially in presence of the said commission , refuse to sign the said confession of faith , and to take the said other engagements , required to be done by the said act of parliament : and also did judicially acknowledge his written answers produced before the committee ; and did confess , he caused remove the pictures of the reformers out of the library : therefore the said commission , approves of the foresaid committees report , and finds the same sufficiently verified and proven ; and hereby , deprives the said doctor alexander monro of his place , as primar of the said colledge of edinburgh , and declares the said place vacant . sic subscribitur crafurd , p. a review of the above-mentioned report of the committee , appointed to visit the colledge of edinburgh , concerning doctor monro . the report . the committee considering , that doctor monro principal of the colledge of edinburgh , did judicially refuse to comply with the qualifications required by the act appointing the visitation of colledges ; except , as to the subscribing the confession of faith. review . first ; it cannot be denied , but that the doctor did once and again , deliberately , plainly , and openly , refuse to comply with the new test , appointed by the late act of parliament for masters of universities ; but then it is necessary for strangers to know what this test is , and then they will see , upon what design it was invented , and why it was imposed upon masters of universities , and not upon the whole clergy of the nation . first , all masters of universities , were required to sign the westminster confession of faith in every article , and to hold every article de fide , without any limitation , explication , restriction , or latitude : when the doctor gave in his answers to the committee , he was that afternoon asked , if he would comply with the act of parliament ; he told them , he had considered the act of parliament , and he could not comply with it : for , said he , it is needless to insist on particulars , though i should agree to it in some instances , i cannot comply with it in its full extent ; and , in our language , this is molum ex quolibet defectu ▪ bonum ex integra causa ; thus he answered once , so he had reason to expect , they would never give him any trouble about this question . but the committee upon the 〈…〉 day of august , would needs ask him again , whether he would sign the westminister confession of faith ; the doctor thought this question was asked to satisfie their private curiosity , not at all with regard to the report they were to make to the general commission ; since he positively told them before , that he would not comply with the new test ; therefore he yielded so far to their importunity , as to tell them he had no great scruples against the confession of faith , and that if the westminster confession of faith , was imposed , as vinculum unitatis ecclesiasticae , and nothing else required , he might be induced to comply with it very chearfully ; he was then removed , and in the interval of his absence before he was called again , one of the ministers desired , that no more questions should be asked , for in case , said he , ( he should comply with the other particulars of the test , where are we then ) i had this from a person of honour who was present , a member of the visitation : but as long as the test stood as now it stands , mr. kennedy , if he be the man , needed not be so much afraid of the doctor 's compliance : this confession , as to the confession of faith , is by their sentence , made to contradict his publick refusal to sign it before the commission ; as if every article of that book should be received as infallible truth ; was it not enough , that he was content to sign the confession of faith , with that freedome and latitude , the protestant churches used to impose confessions upon their members : but the earl of crawford , praeses of the general commission , asked the doctor when he was sisted before them , whether he would sign the westminister confession of faith , without restriction , limitation , explication , or any reserve whatsoever ; to this , the doctor answered plainly and resolutely , he would not ; nor are confessions thus imposed in any protestant church upon earth ; they look upon them as secondary rules , and consequently to be examined by the word of god : and the most accurate humane composures , may afterwards be found in some one instance or other , to have swerved from the infallible and original rule of faith ; but the presbyterian severity may appear in this , that they read the scriptures with design to defend their own dictates ; whereas , others read all dictates with an eye to the holy scriptures : the doctor was content to defend and assert upon all occasions , all these articles in that book that were uniformly received in all protestant churches ; nay more , he was content never openly and contentiously to dispute against any of the doctrines contained in that book , so as to advance faction or parties ; but to sign the confession of faith in all articles , and to hold every one of them to be de fide , he thought not consistent with the freedome of universities and schools : they might have learned to be a little more modest , from the practice of the united dissenters in and about london , who allow any man to be an orthodox christian , and fit to be received into their own refined communion , if he hold the doctrinal part of the 39 articles of the church of england ; but the presbyterians , tho' they have no standard of unity , yet they are mightily rigorous in their impositions ; and it is a little odd , that they should have mentioned this , concerning the confession of faith , in their report , since the doctor once and again , told them before the committee , that the condition that qualified men by law for their places in universities , was a complex thing , which he could not comply with ; such a rigorous imposition was never intended by the parliament : they thought it necessary for masters of universities to sign it , as vinculum pacis ecclesiasticae ; but the ministers were to comment upon the act , and extend it as was most subservient to their design : the presbyterians are against infallibility in the theory , but will not allow their own dictates to be disputed ; yet when this confession first appeared , they themselves did not receive it without restrictions and explications ; but if there be so much mischief in impositions ; ( as sometimes they would make us believe ) it is in those of this kind , where our understandings are captivate to believe the lesser niceties and decisions of dogmatick men , to be de fide ; which ( with leave of the presbyterians ) i reckon a far greater and more spiritual bondage , than bowing of my knees when i receive the holy eucharist : if men were so wise , after our endless and foolish disputes , as not needlesly to multiply the articles of our faith ; how quickly might the christian church be united on its apostolical center , of unity and simplicity ; the papists will not part with one barbarous word , nor the presbyterians with the least iota of their orthodox stuff ; though they plead the tenderness of their consciences very loudly , when they are only bid do things in their nature indifferent , to preseve external peace and uniformity . the next branch of this test , was , the oath of allegiance to king william and queen mary . one great piece of policy , which the presbyterians manage against the episcopal party , is , never to require obedience to the civil authority , without the mixture of some presbyterian test ; when this severity is complained of , they clamourously alledge , that the episcopal party are enemies to king william and queen mary , and openly in the coffee-houses at london vent , that there was none of the clergy of scotland , met with any ill usage , but merely upon the account of their disloyalty to king william and queen mary : upon the whole matter , i have no more at present to say ; but that the presbyterians are never so much out of humour , as when they know their opposites heartily complie with the civil government : then they find it a little more difficult to turn them out , tho' this trouble amounts to no more than the forming of a libel of scandals , and judging them that are libelled , by the same men that accuse them . but the presbyterian hypothesis ( when its consequences are duely considered ) allows no true allegiance to any king upon earth ; if after all , there lies no appeal from the ecclesiastical court to him , to whom i swear allegiance ; for two co-ordinate supreme powers in one state , is a contradiction ; and therefore , whenever i am required to swear allegiance to the king ; the first thing i humbly crave , is , to be delivered from that presbytery , which will supersede that allegiance upon occasion ; for it is not enough to tell me , that the power of the presbyterians is spiritual , and the other is secular ; for i feel their spiritual power meddles with all my temporals ; that tho' i hear the voice of jacob , i am oppressed by the hands of esau : and tho' it is an easie thing for them to tell me , they only meddle in ordine ad spiritualia ; yet , that is but a word , and but a foolish one too ; for by the same logick , they may cut my throat , as well as turn me out of my house and living , and both may be said to be in ordine ad spiritualia : but every man knows , how inconsistent the presbyterian principles are with the royal prerogative of kings : and it is very hard to leave the episcopal clergy to their mercy , who , by their hopes of heaven , are sworn to destroy them in the solemn league and covenant , which is still the standard ; and tho' they think it not time all of them again to renew it ; yet they magnifie it on all occasions , and act exactly conform to it . the next branch of the new test , is , the certificate or assurance , which you may read in the act of parliament : if allegiance , naturally imply an affectionate and sincere resolution to serve the king , against all others upon all occasions ; then some will say , this additional tye of fidelity , is superfluous ; i am sure that many in england who will endeavour to serve the government with all chearfulness , and zeal , could not be made to subscribe any such declaration as this is : but let it be remembred , that when this act passed in parliament , very few either of the nobility or gentry were present . the fourth article of the test requires , that they should submit to the presbyterian kirk government ; for if they had complyed with the former three , this was a sufficient reserve for the presbyterian interest ; every thing the masters did or said , good or bad , might be turned into a libel , and they were judges of what every libel deserved : their discipline is a bottomless abyss ; the masters behoved to be tenants at will , if once they submitted to their government : it was an easie thing for the presbyterians to from libels : nay , rather it is impossible for them not to form them ; for so many of them desiring to be thrust into these places , it was folly to expect any peaceable possession . and if there were no other reason to refuse the test now appointed ; but that it required submission to presbytery , i think any knowing and ingenuous man might be excused for his non-compliance . now you have seen the test in all its branches , and strangers will be surprized , to hear that there are no oaths at present required in scotland of any clergy man , but only of the masters of universities . the reason is this , the presbyterians intended speedily to plant themselves in these places , and for the rest of the clergy they doubt not quickly to dispossess them of their livings , by the power of their government , upon such pretences as they can easily devise and suggest against them . such of the presbyterians as entered into the universities took the oaths ; but it was thought sit to impose no oaths upon the whole body of the presbyterians , that the kirk might preserve its independency upon the state ; so this law was not made for the saints , but for wicked men and malignants . they know they may dispatch the rest of the clergy by methods , such as are frequently complained of : for who can stand before the force of presbytery ? sternit agros , sternit sata laeta , boumque labores praecipitesque trahit silvas . like an impetuous torrent that runs all down before it . report . as also it appears by his written answers read , and given judicially by himself , that he made an act of the faculty , that such as were mr. lidderdale's scholars the preceeding year , should be taught that year in no other class , than that of mr. burnet's ( who he confesses lay under the suspition of being popish ) under pretence of making a gap in the colledge , and for other reasons known to the principal himself , as the act bears . and he does not alledge that he used means to cause mr. burnet purge himself of the said suspition . review . there are here a great many things jumbled together , and therefore they must be explained more particularly . but it was not possible for the ministers that drew up this report , to have contained more non-sence and malice in so few words . and some persons of quality , who were members of this visitation , doe confess that the doctor did nothing in mr. burnet's affair , but what they would have done , if they had been in his circumstances : but the matter of fact is this : there fell a regents place vacant in the colledge of edinburgh , by the death of mr. lidderdale : mr. burnet had his eye upon this place a good while before mr. lidderdale died , and so prevented the diligence of all competitors : he was recommended very strongly to the provost , and other magistrates of edinburgh who are patrons . the doctor , upon the death of mr. lidderdale , fixed his eye on mr. james martin , professour of philosophy in the old colledge of st. andrews , his particular friend and acquaintance , who had taught philosophy several years in that famous university , with great success and applause ; and did recommend him with all the zeal imaginable to the magistrates , that he might be chosen in the room of mr. lidderdale , now deceased ! several divines and physicians , men of unquestionable learning and reputation , in the city , know that the doctor used all means to keep mr. burnet out of the colledge : but mr. burnet ( being recommended by the duke of gordon , and his friends at edinburgh being pre-ingaged to lay hold upon this advantage as soon as there was occasion , ) prevailed in this competition , notwithstanding the doctor , and several other friends , did with all vigour interpose in favours of mr. james martyn . mr. thomas burnet had emitted some theses , in which were some positions favourable to the absolute power of kings , and particularly the king of scots : it seems this was magnified by the person of quality that recommended him to the town of edinburgh ; several people did upon this suspect him either to be a papist , or not far from popery , if any strong temptation did assault him ; and this was industriously propagated by some against him ; so that many were determined to keep back their children , either from his class , or from the colledge for good and all . the doctor found that the colledge was at a disadvantage by such reports , as were founded on slight surmises , and therefore he was at the pains to undeceive some citizens and others , that mr. burnet was no papist ; and this he had good reason to do , because mr. burnet , as soon as he entered regent in the colledge of edinburgh , offered chearfully to sign the test , and renounce all popery and phanaticism . and therefore the doctor ( having nothing in his view , but the publick advantage of the house , and that there might be an even ballance betwixt the four professours of philosophy ; and that none of them might make a monopoly , either of the scholars that came to be taught , or of the profits got by them ) took all possible care to make mr. burnet as useful as he could , tho' he was thrust into that colledge against all the endeavours the doctor could use to keep him out of it . if he had done otherways , and suffered such reports to flie abroad , the country would have concluded all the masters in the house were popishly affected , and so withdrawn their children from the seminary . the fear that many would absent themselves from the colledge on this occasion , touched the doctor to the quick , and made him struggle with all possible industry to keep up the reputation of that house , especially since the government of it was committed to him , and that it had flourished for many years before he entered under the inspection of his learned predecessours . and lest some other professours might take advantage of the misfortune mr. burnet lay under , he procured that an act of the faculty should pass , that the scholars who had been in the preceeding year taught their greek in mr. lidderdale's class should be admitted to no other class , for that year , but mr. burnet's , who was orderly brought into his place . this was the current uninterrupted practice of the house , and of all other philosophy colledges in the nation : here was no arbitrary stretch , nor no statute of the house violated , and no member of the faculty was forced to vote otherwise than they pleased . this account of the act that passed in the faculty , in favours of mr. burnet , is in it self reasonable , just , and true ; how then can the inquisitors pretend there was another design , than what is alledged by the doctor ? they 'll tell you there was another design ; the doctor favoured papists , mr. burnet was a papist , and that was the reason why the doctor wished many scholars to be taught by mr. burnet . it is natural for such as never designed well in their life , and never with regard to the publick advantage , to suspect the most laudable and innocent actions to proceed from the worst principles and designs ; did mr. burnet truly teach any popery ? or did the doctor recommend to him to teach popery ? did any of his scholars ever hear him teach any thing that looked like popery ? no , that cannot be alledged ; but it was fit for the presbyterians to say so , and tho' they could bring no proof for what they say , yet they impudently insist on it . if they had not lost all sence of common modesty , they might have learned more discretion . but let us examine more narrowly the reasonings of this part of their report . they tell us , in the first place , that the doctor made an act of the faculty : this is an impertinence ; for tho' he presided in the faculty when it met , he could by himself make no act. the reasons , perhaps , he alledged for the act , might determine his brethren to vote , as he did in that juncture . they tell us next , that the doctor confesses that mr. burnet lay under the suspicion of being popish . it is true , that in the second article of the libel formed against the doctor , the presbyterians say , that mr. burnet lay under the suspicion of being popish . those words of their own libel , the doctor repeats in his answer to the second article ; and this repetion of their own words , they make to be the doctors confession . this must needs proceed from , either unpardonable malice , or stupidity . for in what sence can it be said , that the doctor confessed that mr. burnet was suspected of popery ? was it any fault of his , that mr. burnet was suspected , or can mr. burnet himself be blamed that he was suspected ? the least mistake may occasion one to be suspected , and yet he may be very innocent ; notwithstanding of all the suspicions that may be to the contrary : this is a malicious and foolish way of reasoning ; for the most publick spirited , and most innocent men may be suspected and libelled too by malice and envy , and yet continue in their integrity . let me expose this way of reasoning a little more familiarly . a very eminen , member of the pretended general assembly , is suspected to have inriched himself with a part of the money given by the sectarian army to the presbyterians , when the king was delivered up at new-castle : is the general assembly to be blamed , because they did not oblige this man to vindicate himself from this suspicion , before he sat in the assembly ; or was that member himself to be blamed , because he was suspected of it , unless there can be some evident proof brought , that he did actually receive a considerable sum of money from the sectarian army , upon the former consideration : i believe neither that member , nor the general assembly , will allow of this way of reasoning , when it is applied to their own case . i 'll make it more clear yet , by one or two instances . another great reformer in fife , is suspected of being accessary to the murder of dr. sharp , lord arch-bishop of st. andrews , and it may be this suspicion is founded upon better reasons than the other , of mr. burnet's being a papist ; do they therefore think it reasonable to treat him as if he were a murtherer : there is no doubt they will be more merciful , if they remember his service to their cause . there is one urqhart who is suspected to have spoken contemptuously of the lords prayer , and our blessed saviour , for having composed it , and of doing this in the most blaspemous expressions ; do they therefore think he should be ston'd to death , upon the account of this suspition ? for my part i do not think suspition a just reason against any man. our saviour himself was said to be a wine-bibber , a friend to publicanes and sinners ; and all the innocence of heaven , and lustre of his divinity , could not keep him from being censured by the pharisees ; so i hope we need no more insist upon this : when the doctor is turned out , and when they consider seriously , they may perhaps acknowledge they ought to have reasoned better . but we are told , the favour done to mr. burnet , was under pretence of making a gap in the colledge ; so it is insinuated , that , what-ever the doctor pretended , the true design was to advance popery ; at this rate it was not possible to do , or say any thing , no , nor to look to any quarter of the colledge , but what might be suspected of having some popish plot in it . but was the doctor observed to keep company with mr. burnet more familiarly than he did with other masters ; no , this is not , nor cannot be alledged , for to tell the plain truth , he never treated any man in his life so roughly , as he did mr. burnet sometimes , for which he blamed himself afterwards ; then in the name of common sense and modesty , tell me , where lay the popish plot : if the doctor had not obviated the lying reports that went abroad , of mr. burnet's being a papist , one of the four classes had been wanting in the colledge ; and if this had truly fallen out by his laziness ; had it not been a great disadvantage both to the town and colledge , and to the doctor 's own reputation ? would it not been said , that the colledge flourished formerly , but now , since it had a governour that understood not the interest of it , it decayed in its number , order , and splendor ? this would have been the just consequence , if mr. burnet had not been vindicated from the suspition of being a papist ; and they that now manage the argument against the doctor , would have been the first and loudest accusers of his conduct ; but it seems , that they thought it no prejudice to the colledge to want one intire class : it 's true , the doctor might have suffered mr. burnet to sink or swim , without his assistance ; and perhaps he would have done so , if there had been nothing in it , but master burnet's private interest ; but when the reputation of the colledge was in hazard , any man of common sense would excuse the doctor , to interpose in that affair with all vigour and application ; it may be , they have no notion of the principal 's office ; but , that he must be some grave un-active thing , that must be thought wise , because he cannot speak , and a prudent governour , because he dares not meddle with their disorders : but we are told , that the act runs thus ; that the doctor procured the act , in favour of mr. burnet , for several reasons known to himself ; the doctor does not deny , but that when the act of the faculty was made , some such expression might have drop'd from him , that such an act was necessary for several reasons , not fit to be insisted on particularly in that conference ; and when the reader considers the reasons that are already given , he will find there was just cause for that you to make such an act ; tho' no reason ( at all can be given for compelling the masters to give such a particular account of their administrations in so trifling an occurrence . but they insist on another argument , to prove that the doctors concern in this , had in it some one popish design or other ; because the doctor does not alledge , that he used means to cause master burnet * purge himself of the said suspition of being popish . here is modesty with a witness ; how could the doctor alledge in his own defence , what he enjoined mr. burnet to do in order to his vindication : unless the inquisitors had given the doctor a particular occasion to tell , whether he did oblige mr. burnet to vindicate himself or not ; did ever any of them that were members of that committee ask that particular question , whether he ordered mr. burnet to take all just and reasonable methods , to vindicate himself from the suspicion of being popish ? or did ever the doctor refuse to give a plain answer to all the questions , that were asked ? but the inquisitors would have the doctor ( such is their ingenuity and candor ) answer all possible questions , as well as those that were proposed ; why did not they ask the question in particular ? if they had , the doctor would have answered , that sir thomas kennedy then lord provost of edinburgh ; and he himself too , did enjoin mr. burnet to receive the sacrament of the lords supper , with the very first occasion , in the gray-frier church , from dr. robertson , that the people might see , that the rumours of his being popish , were groundless and fictitious ; and accordingly mr. burnet did so , and ingaged all his friends through the city , to vindicate him every where , from the calumnious suspitions vented against him . now if the inquisitors had asked particular questions , they would have met with particular answers ; but they must blame the doctor for not answering the questions they might have started , as well as those that were asked ; and if they are not as yet satisfied by this account of things , they may satisfie themselves by some hundreds of witnesses in edinburgh : but there needs no such appeals be made to the citizens of edinburgh , since the testimony of sir thomas kennedy alone ( a person of so much honour and integrity ) is instead of a thousand evidences . and i think we have enough of this impertinence . report . and further , that he did take down the pictures of the protestant reformers out of the bibliotheque , at a time when the earl of perth , the late lord chancellour , came to visit the colledge , without any other pretence or excuse , but that the then provost of edinburgh did advise him thereto . review . this is the argument by which they seem to triumph over the doctor , and which they managed with all art and industry . nothing pleased the gossiping sisters so much as this story , for they hugged and embraced each other at the hearing of it : some said the doctor did take away the pictures out of the colledge : no , sister , said another , he sent them away down to the abbey of hollyrood-house , and there they were burned by the papists . and this being the last and most odious story , prevailed ; and if any body offer to contradict it , they were ready to fly in his face , as an enemy to the good old cause : but before i come to tell of the matter of fact in particular , let us view the report in truth and ingenuity . therefore let me ask one question , did ever the earl of perth , lord high chancellour , come to the colledge of edinburgh in person , to visit the said colledge , all the time that the doctor had the government of that house ? this must be answered negatively , because the chancellour never came to the colledge ; for the visitation sat in the upper rooms of the parliament house , not in the colledge . and it is not easie to guess how they could be so impertinent , as to name the lord chancellour on this occasion . you have seen the doctor 's answer to this article of the label before ; but then he thought that he needed not make it more publick nor more particular ; but since they must have all come to light , the matter of fact is this : when the committee came to that article of the libel against the doctor , that he had removed the pictures of the reformers out of the bibliotheck , and asked him what he had to say to it : he told them that there was a gentleman concerned , whose name and person he honoured , and he behoved to name him , if he was obliged to give a particular answer to that part of the libel ; and tho there was nothing done , but what deserved applause and commendation ; yet it was not very good manners to toss the name of any worthy person before courts and judicatures needlesly ; therefore he desired that one of their number might be commissioned to hear his answer in private ; and if that person was satisfied with the answer , they might trust him so far , as to make no further inquiry into this matter ; but if he was not satisfied , then the doctor was ready to make the answer as publick and as plain as they required . the committee yielded to this overture , and asked the doctor whom he would communicate his answer to , he said he would give it gladly to sir john dalrumple , then lord advocate ; and he named him , because he knew him to be a person of sense and good manners . sir john asked the doctor whether he would not communicate the answer to sir john hall , then preses of the committee . the doctor answered that he was content to do so ; he thought in discretion he could not refuse him , since he was once named : then sir john hall withdrew from the table , and went to a window in the upper hall of the colledge , to hear what account the doctor would make of it in private . then the doctor told sir john thus , that he could not give a particular answer to the libel , without making mention of sir thomas kennedy's name ; this he thought would have been great rudeness , where there were so many spectators ; but the true and plain account of the matter was this . that sir thomas kennedy , then lord provost of edinburgh , did expect that the visitation , which was appointed by king james , in the year should sit in the colledge library , and he feared that some of them who were in the retinue of persons of quality might take occasion , from the sight of the pictures of the first reformers , to begin some one discourse , neither so pleasing to the protestants , nor yet so fit to be heard in that house . and therefore that no such occasion might be given to them , and that all such debates might be waved at that time , sir thomas ordered and advised the pictures of the reformers , which hung in the library , might be removed , for some few days , out of their usual place , and so soon as this occasion was over , they might be hung up again where they were . sir john receives this answer from the doctor , and returns again to the table , and gave some general answer , with which all of them seemed to be satisfied at that time , for ought i know , now let me examine their discretion and sincerity in this particular , either sir john was satisfied with the answer that he got in private , or not ; if he was satisfied himself ( the thing being revealed to him under secresie and confidence ) how came he to make it publick , for the committee having allowed the doctor one of their number to hear his answer in private , did plainly yield , that if the answer satisfied that particular trustee , they were no more to insist upon it ; if he was not satisfied why did he not plainly declare his dissatisfaction when he returned to the table ; then the doctor would have given the full and plain answer himself , without any disguise or reserve : sir john hall being provost of edinburgh , should have defended the authority of his predecessour ; and he knows very well that he himself did frequently and impertinently interpose his authority about the colledge , in things that had no such tendency , either as to its preservation , or honour , as what sir thomas kennedy , in that interval , did intend . but it seems the committee thought fit to examine sir john hall upon oath , what it was that the doctor told him in private : this was not fair , for they might oblige the doctor himself to tell all that he had to say upon this head : for if they obliged him to make a publick answer , it was as good he should do it by himself , as by another . but the most pleasant part of the story is this , that sir john deposes upon oath , that the doctor told him in private , that it was by sir thomas his advice . but did the doctor intend to exclude his order , when he alledged his advice in his own defence ; or does the learned committee think , that the serious and prudent advice of a person invested with authority , hath not the usual force of an act of jurisdiction . but they condemn the doctor , because he did it by advice ; but did not the doctor , before the commission it self , alledge sir thomas his order , as well as his advice ? and might not his just defence be heard at the higher court , as well as the lower ? and if he was not so full and accurate in his defences to sir john in private , why might he not be allowed to give one more full in publick ? when the e. of crawford examined him about this particular , whether he confessed that he removed the pictures of the reformers by sir thomas kennedy's advice ? the doctor answered , that what he did in that affair , was by his advice and order too . the earl gravely shook his head , and told , that sir john hall was upon oath , and that sir john did not make mention of any order . truly one would have thought this was nothing to the purpose ; for if what the doctor said was true in it self , it was as fit to be alledged in his defences before the commission , as before the committee , or sir john. therefore the doctor pleaded that sir thomas kennedy might be examined upon this particular ; but that was denied , for it was no part of their business to find the doctor in the right . sir john hall declared , that the doctor said , he had removed the pictures by sir thomas kennedy's advice , so it was fit for them to conclude , he had no order for what he did . now if such non-sence pass in the eye of the nation , what must the ministers expect in some corners of the country , where ruling elders , shoomakers and weavers , are their ordinary judges . but why all this mighty noise about this trifle ? is it a sin to remove pictures for two days , from one corner of a room to another : they 'll tell you , i believe , it was no sin in it self ; but it was done with a bad design . but sir thomas kennedy , and the doctor , will say it was done with a good design , where then are the evidences that there was a bad design in it ? it 's true , there is no evidence ; but since it is capable of a misconstruction , it is as impossible for them to take it by the right handle ; as to bring any solid proof , there was any bad design in it , from the first to last . but since i have said , that sir thomas ordered what was done in this affair , let me subjoyn his own declaration upon the whole matter . being informed that the reverend dr. alexander monro , principal of the colledge of edinburgh , is charged with causing take down some pictures of luther , calvin , buchanan , and others of our first reformers from popery , which hung in the bibliotheck there : and his so doing is represented as an argument of his disaffection to the reformers , i find my self obliged in duty and honour to declare , that what he did in that particular , was done at my desire and appointment , i be-being prevost of edinburgh at that time ; which was intended and done by me upon no other motive , and for no other end , but that there being a visitation of the colledge immediately to ensue , where i had reason to suspect several romish priests and jesuits might be present , i thought a prudent caution was to be used , for saving these pictures of our worthy reformers from being abused , or ridiculed : this made me think it convenient , that for some few days these should be removed , as accordingly they were ; and how soon this occasion was over , they were immediately hung up in their former places again . at the same time i took care to have kept out of the view of such priests , whatsoever might prove tempting or inviting about the colledge , to kindle their endeavours for getting it a seat or seminary for them or their religion , and i gave the necessary orders accordingly , which is well known to several of the masters of the colledge . i am sorry to be obliged to give this declaration , but that i find it necessary , both for mine own , and the reverend principal ( whose firmness in , and publick sermons for , as well as his abilities to assert and defend our holy religion , are so notour in this city ) his vindication , when what was so well and honestly meant for the honour of our religion , and to save the worthy and eminent reformers thereof from being exposed or ridiculed , should be so grosly mistaken , and groundlesly , not to say maliciously , inverted and misrepresented as a crime . given at edinburgh the 7th day of octob. 1690 , before these witnesses , william reid , my servitour , and hector monro , writer in edinburgh . sic subscribitur . w. reid , and h. monro , witnesses . tho. kennedy . report . and that on the twenty third of august last , he baptized a child in the parish of the west-kirk , without acquainting the minister of the parish therewith , or license from him , which is contrary to the rules of the established church government . review . it is true that the doctor did baptize mr. james scot's child , without acquainting of mr. david williamson therewith , with , who at that time had no title to be minister of the west-kirk . for mr. patrick hepburn was then minister , and of the episcopal persuasion , and no sentence against him ; and if his infirmities did confine him to his house , it was so much the greater charity to officiate in his parish , especially when the parent of the child ( unless i mistake him ) is determined never to have any of his children baptized by mr. williamson . but i believe the doctor is so far from being a penitent in this instance , that if it were to be done again , he could venture upon it without any fear or remorse , and then there was no restraint upon him ; and i believe many of the nobility and gentry that sat upon the commission , will think this as impertinent an accusation , as that which follows next to be examined . report . as also , that the doctor acknowledges he had no publick dictates one whole year , but catechizing . review . i must give the history of this particular in the plainest manner : for i think the records of all nations , and histories will not parallel this accusation ( all things being duly considered ) the several committees had order from the general commission , to look carefully into the dictates that were taught the scholars in all schooles and universities : pursuant to this order , the committee , appointed to visit the colledge of edinburgh , ordered dr. monro , upon the 25th . of august , within two or three days after , to give up to the clerk of the committee a copy of his dictates . the doctor told them what the themes were , upon which he had his publick praelections , viz. de deitate christi , de ejusdem sacrificio , de adventu messiae , de natura , ortu & progressu religionis christianae , &c. and so they needed not be inquisitive after them , for they were not likely to find in them those opinions , that they were most zealous against . but withal he added , that he himself wrote a very ill hand , that the papers that lay by him were in many places blotted and interlined . but he promised where ever he could find a copy among the students , he would deliver it up to their view . for the copy they wrote was more just than any he had in his keeping ; for in the very time of the publick praelection , he did add , change , and alter as he saw convenient . this did not satisfie , but one of their number pleaded , that he should give up his dictates immediately , and that the apology he made , was a shift and downright contempt of the committee : i think it was hume of polwart that reasoned thus , with some degrees of warmth against the doctor : the doctor was content to undeceive them as far as was possible , and therefore he desired they might name some of their own number to examine his dictates , and that he would wait upon them , and read the dictates to them himself , since he presumed none else could read them so well . it seems they found this overture reasonable ; for after that offer made by the doctor , he heard not one word more of the dictates , they never inquired after them . however , the doctor procured a legible copy of his dictates , de sacrificio christi , from one of the students , and gave it to the clerks , that they might give it to whom they pleased . it fell out , that when they were speaking very hotly about the doctor 's dictates , that he told them himself , that for one year he had changed his publick dictates into chatechetio conferences . the reason was this , that he perceived that it was not possible to order any publick lesson , equal to the capacity and advantage of all the students ; for some of them being but so very young , that they were but learning their latine and greek ; others of them being advanced so near the degree of masters of art , most part of the youth , within the colledge , could not be thought capable to understand theological controversies , which were the ordinary theams of such publick praelections . therefore the doctor advised with some of the masters , what way the publick lecture , upon the wednesdays , might be made universally useful to all the students within the colledge . and the result was , that he told the students he would not put them that year to the toil of writing any , but ordered them to convene frequently on the wednesdays , and he would explain to them the apostolick creed , one article after another , viva voce , this he did for that year : the students were better satisfied , much more edified , and less wearied , than when they were obliged to write ; for now they came to the school freely of their own accord , without constraint ; whereas formerly they neither writ what was dictated , nor were all the masters able to drive them to the publick hall , when they had strained their authority to the greatest height . and perhaps some of them who were most concerned then to magnifie every shaddow of an objection against the doctor , have found by their proper experience , that the publick dictates are no more regarded than their character : this then was the doctor 's fault that he changed a publick lesson , that served no end , but that of form and useless solemnity , into a profitable , useful , and serious exercise . by his imployment , he was obliged to teach the youth the first principles of christian religion ; what more proper method could he devise , than go through the articles of the apostolick creed , and explain them , partly from scripture , partly from the assistance of natural reason , partly from the universal tradition of the church , and partly from such concessions of pagan authors , as might either illustrate or confirm what was believed among the christians : this was the method he took : but was the doctor obliged , by any statute in the house , never to vary the former custom of praelections ? no , that is neither pretended nor alledged ; wherein then was he to be blamed , that he taught his own scholars in the manner he judged most proper for their edification ? perhaps , when elias comes he 'll tell us where the fault lay , and not till then shall we ever know . let me ask one question , and so i 'll leave this argument : did all the doctor 's predecessours so superstitiously observe this way of dictating , without change or alteration of the method ? no , for the truly learned and pious dr. lighton , bishop of dumblain , when he was principal of the colledge of edinburgh , did never oblige them to write one word from his mouth : but instead of those dictates , recommended to them , viva voce , the most excellent truths of the christian religion , in the most unimitable strains of piety and eloquence . and mr. adamson his predecessour did catechise , as you may see by the printed copy of his catechism ; nor is there any restraint upon the principal of the colledge , either from statute or custom , why he may not change his method , as oft as he sees convenient : yet to make a mighty muster of arguments against the doctor , his catechetick conference , must be made a part of his crime : i think one mr. law had the honour of making this discovery , but i am not very sure of it . report . and that it appears by the publick registers of the magistrand laureation , that whereas , in the year 1663 , till the year 1687 , the magistrands were always sworn to continue in the verity and purity of the gospel , or in the christian religion reformed , according to the purity of the gospel ; yet in the year 1687 and 1688 , when dr. monro was principal , he takes the magistrands obliged only to persevere in the blank christian religion , and this blank is found three several times in the book , viz. at two publick laureations , and a private one , and the doctor having laid the blame on the bibliothecarius his negligence , and craving the bibliothecarius might be examined thereupon . he being accordingly sworn and examined depones , that what he wrote in the magistrand book , was either by direction of the primar , or of one of the regents , and in presence of the faculty , or of a quorum of them , and that what he did write in the said book , was always read over in presence of the masters and scholars . and particularly the alteration of the promise made at the graduation , in the year 1687. as also the committee considering that at the two last laureations , in the year , 1689 , and 1690 , neither oath nor promise was required at the graduation : it is therefore the opinion of the committee , that dr. alexander monro , principal of the colledge of edinburgh , be deprived of his office , as primar there ; and that the said office be declared vacant . there is a letter written by the said doctor , and directed to the late arch-bishop of st. andrews , dated the 5th . of january , 1689 , owned and acknowledged by the doctor to be his hand writ , the consideration whereof is referred to the commission . review . here it at last some dangerous plot discovered : to make the account of it as short and easie as is possible , let me first explain some words that are peculiar to our country . by the magistrands is understood that particular number and society of students , that are ready to commence masters of art ; by the laureation is understood the publick solemnity of conferring this degree ; the particular answer to this objection , is given before ; but i will unfold the whole matter , by proposing some queries relating to it : the first , is , did the doctor administer the current oath , that was ordinarily sworn by masters of art , all the time he was in the colledge , until there was a proclamation , feb. 1687. by king james , forbidding all discriminative oaths ? yes he did . but how can that be made evident ? yes it may be made evident by the following transcripts of the publick registers , that all who commenced masters of arts since the doctor entred , were made to swear the current oath of the house , until the proclamation of indulgence did forbid all such discriminative oaths ; and therefore the * reader will be at the pains to read as follows , anno 1686. de disciplina magistri herberti kennedy sollinne formulae sponsionis & juramenti accademici edinburgeni praescripti nos quorum subsequuntur nomina cordicitus subsignamus . so you see , that all that received the degree that year , did sign the oath , 3 junii 1686. eidem s. s. juramento praescripto subscripserunt gulielmus baird , & joannes monro . another was graduate , 9th of july 1686. another , july 20 , 1686. another , july 26 , 1686. another , upon the 24 august , 1686. another , upon the 31 august 86. another , upon the 22d of sept. 86. another , upon the 22d of october , 86. another , upon the 23d of december , 86. and all of them did swear , and sign the same oath that was formerly sworn . then it is alledged in the doctor 's defence , that the current oath of the house was administred , until all such oaths were prohibited by the proclamation , feb. 1687 ? yes that is alledged , and no change observed , until the 4th of april 87. but did other masters of other universities , particularly in the universities of st. andrews and glascow , forbear the imposing of all such discriminative oaths after the proclamation , feb. 87. as well as the doctor ? yes , that they did : were they ever challenged for this , by any committee sent to examine their behaviour ? no , not at all , not one of them was challenged for it : what is it then that the doctor is blamed for ? he is blamed for this , that in stead of the former oath which he would ( but durst not ) impose , he required a general promise of persevering in the christian religion : but is not the word , reformed religion , never to be met with in that publick promise , required of the students , instead of the former oath ? yes , i told you before , that the first alteration that is observable , is , upon the 4th of april 87. and then the promise was , to persevere in the christian religion : but this being thought too general and indefinite ; in the month of june thereafter in the same year , as may be seen in the publick registers ; the words run , pollicemur in puriore religione christiana perseverantium : did the doctor at any time thereafter , in private or in publick , with or without the knowledge of the masters , order the bibliothecarius to leave out the word puriore ? no , that he never did ; have we no other evidence for that , than the doctors bare assertion ? yes , as you may see by the bibliothecarius his declaration , subjoined to this dialogue , upon the word of a christian , that he was never enjoined , either by the doctor or any of the regents , to leave out the word ( puriore ) or ( reformata ) but did not the bibliothecarius leave a blank , as the inquisitors alledge ? the bibliothecarius will answer that question in the declaration himself : but are there no other instances preceeding the doctor 's time , even when there was no publick proclamations , forbidding discriminative oaths ; in which , the masters of edinburgh took the liberty to change the publick formula of the oath ? yes , several instances may be given of such changes , if any man will be at the pains to peruse the registers ; i 'le name but one , it is in the year 1662 , and the students , when they commenced masters of art , had an oath administred to them ; in which , there is not the least mention of any thing relating to religion ; and therefore the inquisitors date the custome of swearing this oath , from the year 1663 ; for they evidently saw , if they had gone further back , they would have met with a formula , in the year 1662 , much more loose , general and indefinite , than that for which the doctor is challenged ; and lest he might have any such precedent from the publick registers in his own defence ; they that drew up the report , fraudulently passed it over in silence ; so they concluded , it seems , that no religion was better , than the christian ; for some of them that sat judges in that committee , did commence master of art that very year , 1662 , in the colledge of edinburgh ; when the general oath imposed , only obliged them to continue , fautores academiae edinburgenae ; and some members of the committee , scrupled not to say , that the formula in the year 1662 , was better than the promise required by the doctor after the proclamation : but what was it that the doctor blamed the bibliothecarius for ? he might perhaps blame him , that he did leave out the word puriore , at sometimes , after it was insert into the formula , since he himself declares , he was never enjoined to do so ; but the plain truth in cold blood is , that this was no trick nor design in the bibliothecarius , but a most innocent inadvertence : when this affair was toss'd before the committee , they discoursed of it , with that warmth and confusion , that it was not possible to know , what they would have been at ; therefore the doctor desired , that the bibliothecarius might be interrogate upon oath , whether he knew of any popish or heretical design , intended or contrived by the masters , when they required this publick promise of the students ; instead of this , they enquire whether he wrote this formula by any order from the masters , as if the crime lay in the formula it self , and not in any bad design about it : this was another impertinence , for the bibliothecarius was never accused to have invented the formula of himself , for that had been a piece of forgery with a witness ; of which mr. henderson the bibliothecarius is not capable , being a youth of such modesty and ingenuity ; it may be , he might be blamed for leaving out a word , or for writing carelesly . from the answers i have given to these several queries ; the reader may see , what was the occasion of this change in the publick formula , after the proclamation ; and it is so much the more wonderful , that they blame the doctor for obeying that proclamation , that first warmed the phanaticks into their present strength and confidence : but before i set down the bibliothecarius his declaration ; let me inform the reader , that when the doctor was sisted before the commission , several questions were asked at him , and five or six times he was removed , and the report of the committee was but once read in his hearing ; it was not possible , for an hour together to give an answer , to all the particulars they had heaped together in their report ; the doctor endeavoured to give a true account of the formula which was challenged ; he desired , that mr. gregory , professour of the mathematicks , and mr. cunninghame professour of philosophy , who knew the registers much better than he did , might be examined , but this was denied : if mr. gregory , and mr. cuuninghame , had been examined , they would quickly have explained any thing that was dark or intricate about it ; but the earl of crawford would not hear any defence or explication of that formula ; he alledged that it obliged them only to be christians , and that the papists were christians ; the doctor answered that by the protestant religion , he never understood any thing , but unmixed christianity , and that the papists , as such , were no christians , i. e. popery is no christianity , for tho' they were baptized , and so members of the catholick church , yet their popery is no part of their christianity , else the protestants are obliged immediately to turn papists , unless they renounce their christianity . and therefore tho' we allow the papists to be christians , and some of them excellent men too ; yet the errours which are mixt with their christian belief , and which obliged the protestants to separate from them , is no part of the christian religion ; and if the students did continue firm in the christian religion , i hope it had no tendency to make them papists : but there is a sect of men amongst us , who value the nicest punctilio's of the covenant , more than they do the fundamentals of christianity . it is time now to leave this , and to insert mr. robert henderson the bibliothecarius his declaration . a declaration of mr. robert henderson , bibliothecarius and secretary to the colledge of edinburgh , relating to the report of the committee against dr. monro . at edinburgh , the 18th , of october , 1690. i mr. robert henderson , bibliothecarius and secretary to the colledge of edinburgh , hereby declare upon the word of a christian ; that whereas i have deponed before the committee appointed for the visiting of the said university , that what i wrote in the magistrand book was by order of the primar , or some of the regents , yet notwithstanding of my said deposition ; i declare that the manner of writing was entirely left to me , and that i never intended a blank , and that i was never enjoyned by the primar or regents , to leave a blank , but that the promise being drawn up into three articles , the second article being so much longer than the line , the remaining words were placed below towards the middle for ornament , there being scarce half an inch of distance on both hands : and hereby i further declare that i was never enjoyned to leave out the word puriore or reformata , and that i never perceived any design thereabout . and that the classes of the two last laureations , in the years 1689 and 90. were ingaged by the same promises , to which the former classes were obliged , in testimony whereof i have signed these presents , before mr. gregory professor of the mathematicks , in the university of edinburgh , and john smith , student therein , and servitor to the said mr. gregory ; day and date foresaid , sic subscribitur . dr. gregory , and j. smith , witnesses . rob. henderson . articles against doctor strachan , professor of divinity . i. that in the new kirk of edinburgh , in a publick sermon before the diocesian synod , be preached reconciliation with the church of rome , adducing the instance of the two brethren , called reynolds ; who in dispute , the one being a protestant was turned papist , and the other being papist turned protestant ; and yet , said he , they were both good men ; and for any thing i know , they both went to heaven . what need then is there of all this din betwixt protestant and papist ? he also holds consubstantiation , saying , the church of rome holds transubstantiation , but i hold consubstantiation . ii. that he is commonly * repute to be an arminian , and he preached and maintained arminian and pelagian principles and tenets in the trone-church , and was opposed herein by mr. trotter his collegue ; and particularly had one expression , that without special grace renewing the mind and heart , a man might believe and repent ; and that having believed , he might still continue , or not , as to the exercise of grace and believing ; or words to this purpose . iii. that he has innovate the worship of god , in setting up the english service , which was never allowed nor in use in this church ; and suppose it were tolerated , yet no toleration allows any to enjoy legal benefices and charge in the church or universities , who in doctrine and worship does not agree with the church in her present establishment . iv. his negligence of his duty , in teaching lessons to the students , is evident in that , for the first two years his prelections went no further then his harangue . v. that since the establishment of the government , be hath baptized children without any testimony from the minister , to whose congregation they belonged : and also has without proclamation , in a clandestine way , married several persons ; as for instance , mr. alexander chaplain's daughter , to mr. john king , apothecary , taking a guiny for his pains , which should have been given to the poor of edinburgh . vi. his dissatisfaction with the government , both in church and state , is evident hereto , both by the verbal expressions , in censuring and condemning both these grounds whereupon be then left the ministry , are sufficient for turning him out of his present station . vii . that the said doctor does ordinarily neglect the worship of god in his family . an answer to the articles given in against doctor strachan , professor of divinity , in the colledge of edinburgh . to these articles or libel i am not in law obliged to give any particular answer , unless it were owned and subscribed by my accuser , and witness adduced for the probation of the particulars lybelled ; for since the accuser is so conscious to himself of his gross prevarications and notorious falshoods alledged in his libel , that he dare not subscribe the same ; yet since i know my intire innocence , as to many of the particulars libelled against me ; ( for some of them i do not acknowledge to be faults ) i shall not decline to give a particular answer to each of them , being glad that the lybeller has not had the confidence to charge me with any immorality in my life and conversation , reserving therefore all other defences competent in law. i. to the first i answer , that in a sermon before the most reverend father in god , my lord arch-bishop of glasgow , then bishop of edinburgh , in his diocesian synod , i did from phil. 4. and 5. recommend to my auditors , and to all christians of whatsoever perswasion , that christian duty of moderation , ( of which i wish we had more at present ) the want whereof is the occasion of the lamentable schisms and divisions that are in the christian church : but as for reconciliation with the church of rome , as it is now constitute , i was so far from pressing it ( though to wish a true union among all christians were no crime ) that i did highly blame the romanists for going so far to the extream , in points controverted betwixt us and them , so as to obstruct a desirable reconciliation , as it is to be regretted some protestants , on the other hand , run too far to the other extream , to put a bar thereto : so that we owe it to the want of moderation amongst the fiery zealots of the different perswasions , that the same is rendered so impracticable . but as to that expression , what needs this din ( or rather noise ) betwixt protestant and papist , i never had such an expression . as for that of the two brethren named reynolds , i did adduce that as an instance of the imbecility and weakness , mutability and changeableness of our judgments and humane understandings ( while we dwell in these houses of clay , and the dust of mortality not blown out of our eyes ) upon the account whereof , we ought to have charity one towards another , and compassion one of another ; and that they might have been both good and learned men , and might have been both saved , i know nothing to the contrary ; yea , and in the judgment of charity i am bound to think so , if they lived and died in the christian faith , owning the fundamentals of the christian religion , whatever preterfundamental errors any of them might have been intangled in . as for my alledged saying , that the papists hold transubstantiation , but i hold consubstantiation , it is so impudent a calumny , and such a notorious lye , that as i am confident the accuser , whoever he be , dare not say he heard it , so neither can be adduce any famous witness , that can depone the same ; the contrary is so well known , that my judicious auditors can bear me witness that i preached both against the transubstantiation of romanists , and consubstantiation of the lutherans , and said it had been good , and had tended much to the peace of christendom , that the different parties had never taken upon them , peremptorily to determine the manner of our blessed lord's presence in the holy eucharist , but that they had contented themselves with that modest expression of the old schoolman , durandus , vterbum audimus motum sentimus modum nescimus praesentiam credimus ; with which also accords that known distich , corpore de christi lis est de sanguine lis est . deque modo lis est non habitura modum . i might adduce several testimonies of learned divines of the reformed church , to this purpose , but i shall content my self , at present , with that one of judicious calvin , in tractatu de coena domini . blasphemia est negare in coena domini offerri veram christi communicationem , pani & vino corporis & sanguinis nomen attribuitur , quod sint veluti instrumenta quibus dominus jesus christus nobis ea distribuit . panis in est figura ●●da & simplex sed veritati suae & substantiae conjuncta panis merito dicitur corpus cum id non mod● representet verum etiam nobis offerat intelligimus christum nobis in caena veram propriamque corporis & sanguinis sui substantiam donare panis in hoc consecratus est ut representet nobis corpus domini , &c. 2. as to the second , that i am generally reputed an arminian , &c. i know not how i may be reputed , but i desire the lybeller may condescend when , or to whom i said i was so ; did i ever subscribe their confession ? it's known they were presbyterians , and i am none . and i suppose that may now be reputed to be my greatest crime ; for if i were , it 's probable these things would not be laid to my charge . it has been always my principle and practice not to espouse the particular tenets of any party , but as the ancient philosopher said , amicus plato , amicus socrates , sed magis amica veritas . so say i , amicus calvinus , amicus arminius , amicus lutherus , sed magis amica veritas , being always ready to embrace truth by whomsoever it be maintained . that i preached and maintained arminian and pelagian tenets in the trone-church , in which i was opposed by my umqhaill collegue mr. trotter . the lybeller ought to prove it by famous witnesses , and not simply to alledge , si accusare satis sit quis erit innoceus . for i peremptorily deny , that ever i used such expressions as my accuser alledges . my then collegue being now at his rest , i desire not in the least to reflect on his memory ; what his designs were , in being the first aggressor in reflecting in his pulpit were best know to himself . though he were in vivis , his allegation could be no probation ; wherein he wronged me , i forgive him , and i hope god hath forgiven him . 3. my third accusation is , that i have innovated the worship of god , &c. to which it is answered , that i have indeed made use of the english service in my family , as judging it to be the way of worship most consonant and agreeable to the word of god , and the practice of the whole catholick church , even in its purest times , it being a most devout and serious way of offering up our prayers and praises to almighty god , and tending most to edification . and against this , i know no standing law , more than against the french service , which is so publickly made use of in this place , and not in the least quarrelled : and that the english service was not more in use in this church , it 's too well known to whom we owe that unhappiness , and what unchristian and barbarous courses were taken to prevent its orderly establishment here , when that royal martyr of blessed and glorious memory was endeavouring it for the good of this church and kingdom , which by the unjustifiable practices of the opposers was then made an aceldama , or field of blood. 4. in the fourth article the accuser challenges me for negligence of my duty in teaching of lessons to the young students , and alledges it's evident , in that for the first two years , my prelections went no further than my harrangue . i answer , that were it so as he alledges ( which whether so or not i cannot call to mind now ) i could not be challenged of any negligence upon that account . the subject of my harrangue being so copious that it might have furnish'd matter of dictats for several years . for it was de theologia in genere de ejus dignitate , authore , objecto , fine , &c. which subject i inlarged upon , in dictating further than i had in that harrangue : whereas some eminent professors have spent several years dictating upon one point of controversie ; but whensoever it was finished , i simply deny that either it or any thing else i dictated contain'd any unsound doctrine as the lybeller was pleased to alledge . as for passive-obedience , and non-resistance , i yet own them to be sound points of divinity , duly stated and qualified ; besides , that could be no evidence of negligence in regard the frequent returns of other exercises , viz. homilies , exe●esies , and disputes among such a number of students were such as at some times i could scarce have allowed me above six or seven diets in dictating the whole half year . so that considering the few dyets of dictating and how ill they were attended by the students who were desirous rather to read what was already published , than to be put to the toil of writing , i kept those papers in loose sheets , not having designed them for publick view , but it was always my judgment that if there were less writing , and more reading and meditating on what 's already published , it might tend more to the advancement of learning , and the better education and improvement of youth in the study of divinity ; and therefore i chose to recommend to them such books as i judged most proper for them ; by which method , and the lords blessing upon their pains and endeavours , many have given great proofs of their proficiency in the said studies , and others great grounds of hope of their being serviceable to god in the holy ministry , when he thinks fit in his wisdom to imploy them therein . 5. as to some baptisms and marriages in the fifth article , i knew no restraint upon me , nor any in my station , hindering me to grant the desires of the respective parents , when duly invited by them to the performance of such duties . but since the promulgation of the late act , i have forborn any thing of that nature . as for the instance of mr. alexander chaplain , his liberality to the poor of edinburgh , and others , is very well known . if he had given me a guiney for the use of the poor of edinburgh , i should not have defrauded them thereof . the gentleman himself can declare as to that matter , for i was never so mercenary as to ask any thing for my pains . 6. as for the expressions mentioned in the sixth article , they ought to have been condescended on , and proved ; which not being done , i can give no answer thereto . i never left the ministry , nor do i design to desert my present station here ; but if i be thrust from the one , as i have been from the other , upon the account of my conscience , that cannot comply with the conditions required , i must patiently submit , and cast my self , and my numerous family , on god's good providence ; being resolved never to put my worldly interest in ballance with the peace of my conscience , which i have endeavoured hitherto to keep void of offence towards god and man. and to follow that apostolical rule , which i always recommended to others under my charge , to obey god rather than man. 6. lastly , i am charged , that i ordinarily neglect the worship of god in my family , which is so notorious a falshood , that i challenge the libeller , or any he can adduce to make it good , and appeal to all that have been in my family , as witnesses of the contrary . but it seems the libeller has forgot the third article of his accusation , or thinks , to use the english service , is not to worship god : to whom , for all these calumnies , i refer him . the report of the committee , concerning doctor strachan . at edinburgh the 23d . of sept. 1690. as to doctor john strachan , professour of divinity in the colledge of edinburgh ; the committee considering his answers to the articles given in against him , for his preaching reconciliation with rome , and anent transubstantiation , and consubstantiation : that he acknowledges he has often preached presentiam credo modum ignoro : and that it had been good that that had not been in dispute , but kept in the ancients words : and albeit he denied his being arminian ; yet he not only refused to subscribe our confession of faith in the complex , but also declared , he was not clear to give a present answer , whether or not the articles about free-will , and the first article about justification , were agreeable to the word of god , and if he owned the same ; yet he promised to give an answer in writing , which he hath not done : and being at the giving in of his written answers , desired to give a particular answer , if he would assent to these articles , as they stand in the printed confession of faith , and if he would subscribe the same ? he answered , that each of these articles were complex , and that he was not clear to subscribe or sign the same ; as also considering his negligence in dictating to his scholars : that he acknowledges he would scarce have dictate above six or seven times in a whole half year , and excuses the same with the returns of other exercises , such as homilies , exegeses , and disputes : as also considering that he refuses to qualifie himself conform to the act of parliament : it is therefore the opinion of the committee , that the said dr. john strachan , professor of divinity in the colledge of edinburgh , be deprived of his office in the said colledge , and that the same be declared vacant . the sentence against doctor strachan . at edinburgh the 25th . of sept. 1690. the lords and others of the commission appointed for visitation of colledges and schools ; having heard , read , and considered the above written report of the committee for visiting the colledge of edinburgh , anent dr. john strachan , professor of divinity within the said colledge : and the doctor being called in , and having heard the within report read over in his presence , and he being asked if he did acknowledge that the matters of fact , contained in the said report were true , he did judicially acknowledge the verity of the matters of fact therein contained : and also he refused to swear the oath of allegiance , and to sign the same with the assurance : and also refused to sign the confession of faith , or to declare his submission to the present church government , as now establisht : therefore the said commission approves of the report above written ; and do hereby deprive the said dr. john strachan , professor of divinity in the said colledge , of his said place , as professor foresaid , and declares the said place to be vacant . crawford p. animadversions on the report of the committee appointed to visit the colledge of edinburgh , concerning doctor john strachan , professor of divinity there , sept. 23. 1690. and on the commission 's approbation and ratification thereof . edinburgh , sept. 25. 1690. doctor strachan being cited to appear before the general commission , that was to sit , sept. 25. 1690. at nine a clock in the morning ; after a tedious attendance of about four hours , was called before them , and being wearied himself , he resolved to give them very little trouble ; for he had determined to make his process as short as was possible ; for he could not reasonably think , he should meet with any favour from that bench ; especially , since he knew how his colleague , doctor monro , was treated by them that forenoon ; being no less than five or six times call'd and remov'd , with no other design , than to wrest and misinterpret what he answered for himself : and having no time allowed him to clear the trifling objections made against him ; great endeavours were us'd to intangle him in his answers ; therefore the doctor took care to give them as little ground against him , as was possible . when he was call'd in before the commission , the above written report of the committee , was once read over to him by the clerk ; my lord crawford enquired at him , if he acknowledged the things contain'd in that report , to be true ? he answered , that he thought the report , as to the main substance of it , was true ; but having heard it but once read over , he could not peremptorily say so of all circumstances relating to it : my lord crawford ask'd again , if he did own and adhere to that written copy of answers given in to the committee in his name ? to which the doctor replied very pertinently ; that if any person would own and subscribe the libel given in against him to the committee , he should then answer it particularly . my lord crawford praeses , said there was no libel , the act of parliament made mention of none , it was but an information , and any body might inform ; the doctor replied , it was materially a libel what ever word they pleased to express it by ; and that in equity and common justice , he ought to know his accuser . the praeses replied , there was no accuser , neither did the act of parliament appoint any , and therefore , he ( the proeses ) required the doctor to give a positive answer , whether he owned these written answers , or not , ( a copy of them being offered to him to view them ) the doctor answered , that he did own them and adhere to them . after which , the lord crawford asked the doctor , if he would qualifie himself according to the act of parliament for his place in the colledge , by swearing the oath of allegiance to king william and queen mary , and subscribing the declaration of assurance , the confession of faith at westminster , and heartily submitting to the presbyterian government . the doctor answered he could not with a good conscience comply with the legal test so propos'd , and that therefore he adhered to his former answers before the committee , whereupon he was ordered to remove , and within a little while he was called again before them : the former report of the committee was again read over to him , and the commissions sentence of deprivation following thereupon ; after the reading of both , the doctor said no more , but that he thanked god he received their sentence with great peace of conscience , and tranquility of mind , which he could not have promised to himself , if he had done any thing against his convictions to avoid that blow . many of the gentlemen and others who were permitted to be present at the reading of the report and sentence , not having heard the doctor 's answers read , nor known what past in the committee , might conclude upon the bare hearing of that report drawn up by the presbyterian ministers , that they had found him guilty of propagating several heterodox opinions in the colledge , and that for such doctrines he was deprived . yea , some of the members of the commission it self , before whom the doctor 's written answers were never read ( as he is credibly informed ) did entertain the same thoughts upon the hearing of such words as reconciliation with the church of rome , consubstantiation , transubstantiation , &c. therefore it was thought convenient to undeceive well meaning men , and expose the malice of his accusers in this particular . 1st . the committee did consider his answers to the articles of his libel , but they do not plainly declare what it was in those answers that they did consider ; we know very well they did consider his answers , and it was not possible for them to find in them either vntruth or impertinence ; it 's true , they accuse him that he preach'd reconciliation with the church of rome , but they thought it no part of their business to prove it , no nor so much as to examine one witness that ever heard the doctor utter the least expression that might favourably insinuate a syncretisme with the roman church ; so it is very odd that the committee's consideration of his answers should be named as one ground of the sentence which past against him , before the general commission of the visitation . 2dly . they considered his answers concerning transubstantiation and consubstantiation , &c. but is it possible for a man at one and the same time , to hold both those opinions ? or can a man preach reconciliation with the church of rome , if he himself hold only consubstantiation , and yet recommend to the people that the doctrine of the romanists may be complied with , who say that there is no such thing as bread in the holy eucharist after consecration . it seems the libeller thinks there is no great difference between the lutherans and the romanists ; had he listned to an impartial monitor , lysimachus nicanor , in time of the late troubles , he would have found that it is much more easie to reconcile popery and presbytery than the lutherans and romanists . 3dly . but the doctor acknowledges , that he had preached praesentiam credo , modum nescio ; and that it had been good for the peace of christendom , the manner of our saviour's presence had never been so hotly disputed , but kept in the words of the ancients . this is a piece of logick that the doctor cannot understand : must he that says , praesentiam credo , modum nescio , necessarily believe transubstantiation , or consubstantiation , one or both . i think the church of england will not say so , for it holds the real , effectual spiritual presence , and yet denys both transubstantiation and consubstantiation . and did not the doctor say plainly modum nescio , how then can they affirm that he had any kindness for either of those opinions , since the fault of both is so plainly disowned by the doctor : he believed the presence , but the manner of the presence he did not know . but since those words in his answers , praesentiam credo , was so greedily laid hold on by the presbyterian ministers , members of that committee , that when they heard them they desired the clerk to note that especially , it will not be amiss over and above what is represented in his written answers , to put those gentlemen in mind that they should read mr. calvin more frequently , whom they have deserted shamefully in many things , and in his tract de caena dom. after the words formerly cited by the doctor , they will meet with the following words , fatemur omnes , nos , cum juxta domini institutum fide sacramentum recipimus , substantiae corporis & sanguinis domini vere fieri participes . quomodo id fiat alii aliis melius definire & clarius explicare possunt . ne vis sacro sancti hujus mysterii imminuatur , cogitare debemus id fieri occulta & mirabili dei virtute . do they allow of this saying of calvin ? if they do , i am sure the doctor said less than what may be deduced from them by necessary consequence , if they were contentiously insisted on . and how can they be so captiously querulous , as to dream of chimera's and monsters in the doctrine so currently taught in the most famous schools amongst the protestants ? it may be mr. calvin ' s treatise de coena dom. is not so easily had as his book of instit . which i think very few of the presbyterian ministers want , then let me entreat them to look to the following testimony from mr. calvin , in which he writes so religiously and reverently of that sacred mystery of the eucharist , quanquam autem cogitando animus plus valet , quam lingua exprimendo : rei tamen magnitudine ille quoque vincitur & obruitur , itaque nihil demum restat nisi ut in ejus mysterii admirationem prorumpam , cui nec mens plane cogitando nec lingua explicando par esse potest : and par . 10. of the same chapter , summa sit non aliter animas nostras carne & sanguine christi pasci , quam panis & vinum corporalem vitam tuentur & sustinent : neque enim quadrare tanalogia signi nisi alimentum suum animae in christo reperirent , quod fieri non potest nisi nobiscum christus , vere in unum coalescat nosque reficiat carnis suae esu , & sanguinis potu . etsi autem incredibile videtur in tanta locorum distantia penetrare ad nos christi carnem , ut nobis sit in cibum , meminerimus quantum supra sensus omnes nostros emineat arcana spiritus sancti virtus & quam stultum sit ejus immensitatem modo nostro velle metiri . quod ergo mens nostra non comprehendit , concipiat fides , spiritum vere unire quae locis disjuncta sunt , &c. and paragr . 32. ab initio . porro de modo si quis me interroget fateri non pudebit , sublimius esse arcanum , quam ut vel meo ingenio comprehendi , vel enarrari verbis queat , atque ut apertius dicam experiar magis quam intelligam , &c. several other testimonies might be gathered together from many other reformed divines ; but that is not the design of this paper , it is enough by one or two authentick testimonies to expose the silliness of such men as find fault with every body that does not follow their words as well as their sentiments . i think the learned bishop andrews understood the doctrine of the church of england sufficiently well , who in his answer to cardinal bellarmine , hath these words , dixit christus hoc est corpus meum : non hoc modo , hoc est corpus meum . nobis autem vobiscum , de objecto convenit , de modo lis omnis est . de , hoc est , fide firma tenemus quod sit : de hoc modo est ( nempe transubstantiato in corpus pane ) de modo quofiat at sit , per , sive in , sive cum , sive sub , sive trans , nullum inibi verbum , & quia verbum nullum merito a fide procul ablegamus , inter scita scholae ponimus , inter fidei articulos non ponimus . and after he had instanced the saying of durandus , cited by the doctor , he adds , praesentiam credimus , nec minus quam vos , veram . de modo praesentiae nil temere definimus , addo , nec anxie inquirimus , non magis quam in baptismo nostro , quomodo abluat nos sanguis christi , non magis quam in christi incarnatione , quomodo naturae divinae humana in eandem hypostasin uniatur . notwithstanding of all this , the doctor did not believe , assert , or recommend , the corporal and carnal presence of our saviour in the eucharist ; but he lov'd to express his reverence of that mystery , otherways than the presbyterians do ; who , for the most part show so little regard unto it , that in the west of scotland , their greatest zealots , did not administer the sacrament , of the lord's supper for twenty years together . the next thing those sharp-sighted inquisitors , did consider in the doctor 's answers , is , that tho' he denyed his being arminian , yet he not only refused to subscribe their confessions of faith , in the complex , but also declared , he would not then give a present answer whether or no he thought the article about freewill , and the first article about justification were agreeable to the word of god , and whether he owned the same . in what sense the doctor denyed himself to be arminian , may be seen in his answers to the libel ; of the rest take this following account . when they asked him , if he would subscribe the westminster confession of faith , he answered that he would subscribe no confession composed by fallible men , but so far as it might be agreeable to the word of god. for since those gentlemen at westminster were not divinely inspired , their dictates might be fairly examined , and that his subscription to any confession did necessarily imply this reserve and limitation . then the doctor was desired to instance those articles in the westminster confession , he thought not agreeable to the word of god. to this he replyed , he was not obliged ; it was enough that he gave them this plain and positive answer , he would not subscribe the westminster confession , without the former restriction : for he never made it much his business , since this visitation began ; especially , to look so narrowly into the presbyterian books ; and for the particular articles about which they desired to know his judgement , it was needless for them to be so inquisitive , for if he refused any one part of what was required by the present law , he was sure to be deprived , so it was not worth the while to satisfie the curiosity of the committee-men in their little punctilios . yet he promised ( saith the report ) to give a particular answer in writ concerning those articles of freewill , and justification , and here they plainly insinuate him guilty of breach of promise ; it is true , the doctor did promise if the libel had been subscribed and owned by any informer , to return a particular answer to all the articles that were contained therein ; but to give them an account of his private judgement in the articles of freewill , and justification was needless , for every man's conscience did plainly convince him , he had free-will , else he could not see how the remorse of conscience could be understood , which makes the remembrance of our willful sins so uneasie to us . next they will have the doctor guilty of negligence , because he did not oblige the students to write his dictates so often as the visitors would have had him , though the frequent returns of other exercises , ( much more useful ) made this impossible to him . but this is an impertinence not worth considering , and the same exception hath been sufficiently answered in the former tryals . besides , since most of the students of divinity are obliged once a year to sustain publick disputes , and that the professor is allowed but two dyets a week , it was not convenient he should dictate above seven or eight times a year , else he could not but hinder the freedom and solemnity of their publick disputes and other exercises . now in the last place , they mention the doctor would not qualifie himself according to law , it is certainly true , that he will never prostitute his conscience so far as to do any thing wilfully against his convictions in a matter of so great consequence : and it might be expected by such as did not well know the ministers that sate in that committee , that they , who pretended so much to a tender conscience , would have taken more pains to inform the doctor , than presently to insert in their report to the commission , ( without acquainting him ) what they had snatcht from his mouth upon surprize . the presbyterians in the year 1638 were truly more civil , and took some pains in the beginning to inform such as differ'd from them , tho' their methods afterwards became very severe . but the plain truth in this matter is , that the suspicion of being arminian , ( especially his reading the liturgy of the church of england ) was it that made his enemies implacable , because that in the third article of their libel against him ▪ they seem to pass sentence against him , upon this very head before he was heard , for ( say they ) none can legally enjoy benefices in the church or universities , who differ from the church of scotland in her present establishment in doctrine or worship . next , he was examin'd more particularly about the english liturgie ; they ask'd , whether he used that service in his family , before the revolution ? to which he answered , he did , tho' not so frequently ; yet he did not so constantly tye himself to that form , but that he used conceived prayer ; upon the hearing of this , one of the ministers said , that it was not usual for such as were accustomed with that service , at any time to use extemporary prayers ; neither did he think that such could pray after that manner ; and therefore the doctor , making use thereof , was a schismatick from the church of which he was a member ; so saucily do they talk , when they themselves are schismaticks from the vniversal church ; yet they venture to brand all others that differ from them with that infamous character ; they think none can pray as they do ; and the plain truth is , that , in some sense , it 's very true ; for it 's very difficult to reconcile so much boldness and indiscretion , as is observable in their prayers , either to the fear of god , or christian humility . they then ask'd the doctor , who concurred with him in that worship ? he answer'd , that of late , since the church was pull'd down , a great many of good quality did frequent it . at which they were greatly nettled , and asked him again , who had pulled down the church ? to which the doctor replied , he was not obliged to give any particular answer , it was evident enough , that a national church establish'd by law was pull'd down . to which one of their number said , that that was pretty indeed , if the pulling down of fourteen * carles , was the pulling down of the church . this gentleman should have remembred that there was many more than fourteen pull'd down by the rabble , and more since by presbytery ; but out of kindness to him , i shall make no particular answers to what he said in his passion . he was next desired to answer positively whether he was an arminian ? the doctor answered , that the arminians were presbyterians , and he was none . the same person ask'd again what the doctors judgment might be of the five controverted articles ? to which he answer'd , that he was not obliged to declare his private judgment in those controversies . if they thought arminianism a crime that deserved deprivation , they might accuse him , and prove it against him , for he was not obliged to accuse himself . at last , one of the ministers expresly required him to declare his opinion about the doctrine of freewill and justification , to which the doctor replied as before . sometime before the doctor once ask'd the committee whether they were a civil or ecclesiastick judicatory ? if a civil , how came the presbyterian ministers to sit there , who clamour'd perpetually against the bishops for being members of parliament , since now themselves acted by a commission from the parliament ; and if ecclesiastical , he wish'd to know from whom they had their power ? thus the doctor was tossed and wearied with their endless trifling and insidious questions . when i look back upon all the steps of dr. strachan ' s tryal , it brings to my mind one of the fables we were taught when we were boys . the wolf and the lamb met at a fountain , as soon as the wolf saw the lamb he lybelled , and accused him , first that he troubled the waters ; for the wolf alledged he could not drink them ; the lamb answered that he could not trouble the waters , he stood much lower than the fountain . this accusation being removed , the wolf told him that six months ago he heard the lamb curse him . the lamb answered that he was not six months old : so the second accusation was as calumnious as the first . then the wolf told him , if you did not , your father did curse me : there was no answering the third article of the libel , so the lamb was worried . reader , thou hast now heard how the presbyterian inquisition proceeded against these two doctors , with the same rigour and severity they persecuted all such as they judged to be of the episcopal perswasion in that colledge , and in all the colledges of the mother university at st. andrews : one instance more of the presbyterian partiality in judging , i must not here omit , and it 's this . they admitted and sustained libels against all the masters that they thought episcopal , without the least shaddow of any accuser or informer , when themselves also knew the article to be most false ; yet if any of the masters who were presbyterians , or who had insinuated themselves into their favour ; i say any such were informed against , tho' the indictment was subscribed by men of undoubted reputation ; and contained many things that justly deserved deprivation ; yet the matter was huddled up , without examining any one article . as in the case of mr. andr. massie , against whom an information was given in , subscribed by two gentlemen of great learning and reputation , the one a doctor of medicin , the other a master of arts in edinburgh ; but the inquisitors knew that these informers were not of their gang , nor had any liking to their cause , and therefore they took no notice of the charge , which is as follows . information against mr. massie . there being a commission granted by their majesties and estates of parliament , to some noblemen , gentlemen , and ministers , for visiting the universities of this kingdom ; the said visitors are earnestly desired to consider and examine the behaviour and management of mr. andrew massie , regent in the colledge of edinburgh , who these several years has been an useless and unfit master of the said university . 1. the visitors are desired to consider mr. massie's base and indirect ways to procure scholars to himself , which is thus , while he was a regent in old aberdeen , during the whole vacance , he used to travel up and down the country , and where ever he heard there were any young boys , without any introduction , he would impudently address himself to their parents and friends , and assure them that the boys were fit for the colledge , albeit , very often they did not understand a word of latin ; and if any of their parents or friends did object to him , their children not being qualified , he did promise to make up the same , by extraordinary pains and care by himself , which he never did yet , being the most superficial and unconcerned master that ever was in an university , as will appear afterwards . when he came to the colledge of edinburgh , and found that way not so practicable here , his method was , and is , to spread confidently abroad , that none of the courses were necessary , which preceeded that which he taught for the time ; so that he never fail'd to have semies , bauchelours , and magistrands , who were never at any colledge before , and he admitted them to be scholars , without offering them to be examined by the principal or masters . and this he did so frequently , that there was a publick process intended against him , in anno. 1684. and as this is not our and known to the whole university , so the same can be proven by particular witnesses . 2. the visitors are desired to consider his way and manner of teaching his scholars , which is so trifling and superficial , that there can be no excuse given for it . for , 1. he never explains his notes , but unconcernedly reads them shortly over , without ever making any digression or commenting upon them , so as to make his scholars to understand them . 2. there are many in his class , at whom he will not ask one question in the whole year , nor once examine them . 3. he takes no notice of the absents ; since many of them will be absent for some weeks , and yet he never misses nor calls for them , neither does he fine or punish them for their absence ; and the effect of this , the time he taught his last course was , that the trafficking priests and jesuits did debauch more of his scholars then of all the other students in scotland beside . 4. he takes as little notice and care of his scholars when present ; for albeit his class be numerous , yet there will not be eight or ten taking notice of what is said or dictated , while the rest in his presence are talking , tossing , and fighting together in the school : and an effect of this is , that there is more expence for mending the glass windows of his school , than of all the other schools besides . 5. he gives very ill attendance ; for all along . and particularly the last session of the colledge , he never entered the colledge till half an hour after eight in the morning , and near eleven in the forenoon ; and this was so well known to his scholars , who did not expect him sooner , that it made them either stay from the colledge altogether , or so disturb it , that it was hardly possible for other masters to keep their meetings at these times . 6. he has very few meetings with his scholars on the lords day , and takes no care that the scholars attend , since of seventy or eighty , of which his class may consist , there will not be above eight or ten present . 7. he altogether neglects the office of hebdomader ( which was the most useful attendance in the colledge , for preventing of tumults ) in so much that the scholars did ordinarily brag , that massie's week was near ; and that then they should be reveng'd of one another . 3. the visitors are desired to examine his care anent the library , which should be very dear to all the masters ; and yet mr. massie took no care to make his scholars pay their dues at their matriculation , and laureation ; and particularly this last three years there were to the number of 58 of his scholars , whom he would not bring to matriculation , notwithstanding he was desired thereto by the principal ; and the catalogue of these scholars names the biblothecar can exhibit to the visitors if required . 2. it is evident by the journal books of the library , that in the year 1680 , or 1681 , there was taken out of the money belonging to the library twenty pounds sterling , or thereby , for uses unknown to any of the present masters , for which mr. massey gave his ticket , and which ticket , without paying the money , he did again take up from mr. robert henderson the biblothecar , or his father ; who can give the best account of these affairs , and his other dealings anent the library . 4. the visitors are desired to consider what he teaches , or rather what is contained in his notes , ( which for the gross of them he copies from those of mr. john strachan , who was a regent when he entered to the colledge of aberdeen , and afterward turned jesuit ) and they will find in the questions , wherein there is occasion of differing from others ; that his doctrine is either such as tends to scepticism , and uncertainty of all things , or such as inclines to atheisme : as when he asserts that a creature may create its own self , and that even as the principal and efficient cause ; or such as favours popish transubstantiation , as his doctrine concerning the bilocation of bodies ; or such as favours arminianism , as his doctrine de scientia media ; or such as inclines to superstition , and the diabolick art , as the doctrine of judiciary astrology , and particularly de genituris , which , contrare to the example of all christian schools , he inlarges upon and exemplifies ; or such as is pure incomprehensible non-sence , as when he says the diagonal of a square is not really longer than the side ; and for his publick appearances , his maintaining of theses in the common school on the saturdays , amounts to no more than giving of the jesuits answers to evident truths , viz. that the contrair is the opinion of some doctors , and consequently probable , and may be safely followed ; and on the last saturday of march last in the hearing of all the masters , and some of the english gentlemen who were accidentally present , he stuck not to say in express words , that deus non justè punit peccatores . and always at these publick disputes he falls out in such passions , when any thing is reasonably urged against him , that the students cannot forbear to hiss at him . 5. albeit , for the time the visitors be not troubled with an account of his gross hypocrisie , covetousness and the immoralities of his life : yet it is not amiss that they know his merits in relation to the present established government of church and state ; it 's true , he was bred presbyterian , and did take all the oaths , and lies under all the obligations that were at those times imposed when he was bred , and first entered in publick employment , from the year 1647 to the year 1660. but it 's as true , that without any scruple , he broke all these bonds , took the declaration and all oaths of course in king charles's reign , and conformed and complied as much as any man. and when he came to be regent in the colledge of edinburgh , he owned his dislike of the students burning of the pope in the year 1680 ; and in the year 1681 he took and swore the oath of the test ; and again in the year 1685 in the late-king james's reign , he swore the same oath again on his bended knees before the then bishop of edinburgh . his courting of the popish priests was so often and barefac'd , that ( beside his conniving at their seducing and perverting his scholars to the romish religion ) in the year 1687 at the publick laureation in the common school , he , as a praeses , invited , and had with him in the pulpit , father reid , as he called him , a dominican fryar , and a trafficking papist . after the battel of gillicrankie , he went to complement a popish lady on the victory : and frequently this summer he has averred that the church of england is the best constitute church , and that the scots episcopal clergy are the honestest men in the world. it 's true , he will take all the oaths that can be put to him , but the visitors would consider that he hath already broken all the ingagements by which he was tyed to the presbyterian interest : neither can the government ever be secure of him , since beside his practice , he teaches in his notes , that potest dari dominium duorum in solidum in unam & eandem rem per notabile aliquod tempus . so that tho' he swear that king william is king de jure , yet , according to his principles , king james may be so too . warrant by the commissioners for visiting of universities , for citing of parties before their committee at edinburgh . the lords and others commissioners , appointed by act of parliament for visiting of universities and schools within this kingdom , do hereby require and command messengers to pass to the mercat cross of edinburgh , upon a mercat day , betwixt ten and twelve a clock in the forenoon , and immediately thereafter , to the most patent gate of the university of edinburgh , and sicklike to pass to the mercat crosses of edinburgh , haddingtoun , duns , greenlaw and lauder , jedburgh , sclkirk , peebles , linlithgow and stirling , and thereat , after open proclamation , and publick reading of the said act of parliament , herewith sent , appointing the saids visitors , and this present warrant , to summon , warn , and charge the principal , professors , regents , and all others masters of the university of edinburgh , and school-masters teaching latin in the said town , at the mercat cross of edinburgh . and colledge gate thereof , and all other schoomlasters , teaching latin within the shires of edinburgh , haddingtoun , berwick , roxburgh , sclkirk , peebles , linlithgow and stirling , at the mercat-crosses of the head-burgs of the respective shires , within which they live , upon fifteen days warning , to compear before the committee of the saids visitors , delegat by them conform to the said act of parliament , to the effect therein specified , at edinburgh , in the high-common-hall of the colledge thereof , the twenty day of august next to come , at ten a clock in the forenoon , to answer and satisfie the said committee , upon the points contained in the said act of parliament , conform to the instructions given by the saids commissioners to them : and likewise , the saids commissioners do hereby require the saids messengers at the same time and place , and in the same manner , to summon and warn all the loidges , who have any thing to object against the said principal , professors , regents , masters of the saids universities , and school masters teaching latin within the bounds of the said shires , to compear before the said committee , the said day and place , to give in objections against the said principal , professors , regents and others foresaid ; and also requiring the saids messengers , at the said time and place , to make intimations to the magistrats of the burghs-royal , within the saids bounds , that they send in subscribed lists of the school masters , teaching latin within their respective burrows royal , and to the sheriffs of the shires above-named , that they send in lists of such school masters , within their respective shires , out with the burrows-royal ; which subscribed lists are to be sent to the clerks of this commission , or their deputs appointed for that committee , which is to meet at edinburgh , and that betwixt and the said twenty day of august next , to which the saids principal , professors , regents , and others masters are cited , as the saids sheriffs and magistrats will be answerable ; requireing in like manner the messengers executors of this present warrant , not only to read publickly the same , and the citation to be given therein at the said mercat-crosses and colledge-gate , but also to leave printed copies of the said act of parliament , and copies of this present warrant , and of the citation thereof , affixt upon the mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the saids shires , and upon the most patent gates of the said colledge : requiring lastly , the saids messengers , executors of these presents , to return the same with formal executions , and indorsations thereof , duly subscribed by them , before subscribing witnesses , to the saids clerks or their deputs , betwixt and the said day of the said committees meeting at edinburgh : for doing of all which , these presents shall be their sufficient warrant . given at edinburgh , the twenty fifth day of july , one thousand six hundred and ninety years . and ordains these presents to be printed . extracted forth of the records , by me tho. burnet , cls. reg. finis . errata pag. 5. line 1. for been , r. but. pag. 7. l. 23. for not only , r. over and above . l. 24. del . but also . pag. 12. l. 14. r. in the. notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a70609-e310 * westminster confession . * as they are pleased to call all episcopal men . * viz. dr. monro . * altho' the ordering of colleges be , as themselves acknowledge , an inherent prerogative of the crown . * vid. acts parliament , pag. 1. & 2. * which differs vastly , not only from all presbyterians abroad , but from all their own former constitutions . * vid. act of parliament , sess . 1. gul. & mar. appointing 60 presbyterians instead of 14 bishops — to govern the church of scotland : by an arbitrary power , whence there was no appeal , no , not to the king himself ; * viz. d. m. * when k. c. ii. immediately after their murther of arch-bishop sharp , and rebellion at bathwel bridge anno 1679. granted them such an ample indulgence , as even to enjoy ecclesiastical benefices , only upon the condition of but living peaceably ; for which they were to find surety under penalty of about 330 pound ster . those few who embraced the king's goodness in this , were declaimed against by the whole faction , as deserters of god and his cause , and a book was printed and published that same year , ( by the approbation of the whole party , as the author says ) to prove that to engage in or observe such a condition , is inconvenient , scandalous , and sinful . they pretended the state could neither make peace nor war , without the interposal of the kirk , for it fell under their consideration , as a case of conscience : act and declaration against the act of parliament : july 28. anno 1648. * sine auctore vero propositi libelli nullocrimine locum habere debent , nam & pessimi exempli , nec nostri saeculi est . trajan . plinio ep. 98. inter ep. plin. cicil . 2d . * so both the civil and the scots law require . * a ruling elder is a scripture word , but the thing signified by it in the presbyterian language is not to be met with in the scriptures , a late invention obtruded upon the world. witness mr. black. vide spotswood . j. f. * their own phrase , for no less distinction must be made between them and those that differ from them , than that which is between good christians and unbaptized heathens . * mr. rules , now prima●● 〈◊〉 of the colledge at edinburgh being supposed to have the best hand among them for disguising truth , is appointed for that work by the general assembly as appears by one of their unprinted acts to that purpose . and now that he is engaged in the work i would advise him to write in latine , for his reculiarities in that language may tempt some people to read it , otherwise his book may be buried under the same deserved contempt and obscurity , which was the fate of his trifling pamphlets against some doctors of the church of england , which no body designs either to read or answer ; no more than he himself or any of his party believes what he asserts concerning the church of scotland , in his last squib against episcopacy . notes for div a70609-e7800 * now possess'd of the principal 's place . * that is , meetings for teaching their scholars . * donations . * lord duudie . * graduation . * this mr. reid was examined with all severily and diligence ( but still in private ) threatned and cajoll'd but the man being of more honesty then fear , told them what he knew , and that rather incensed their envy , than satisfied their design . * this article was let fall , for after all their industry , they could saynothing upon the head , no report made of it to the commission of the general visitation . * auditum admissi risum te●nea●is amici . * ja. martin . we shall hear more of this in the report of the committee , where its impertinencies will be more particularly examined . * xix book , an. 1567. regnante jacobs sexto . scotiante aliquot annos anglorum auxiliise servitute gallica liberati religionis cultui & ritibus cum anglis communibus subscripserunt . see spotswood also , beginning of the 3d book . this answer to the 3d article of the doctor 's libel , did exasperate the presbyterians to the highest degree , and they to whom it was recommended to view and examine his answers , thought they discovered strange consequences in this . but some of the nobility who were present when this was toss'd , would not suffer such fooleries as were then objected to be inserted in their report , partly that the presbyterians might not be exposed ; partly , that they might not be witnesses to such palpable impertinencies ; and partly , that none might say the ministers , to whom the government was committed , were such fools as to flie in the face of the church of england , in this juncture . this article was let fall , and no report made of it to the general commission . what esteem the most learned and best natur'd divines in foreign churches had of the church of england , its learning , piety , constitution , and primitive order ; may be gathered from hundreds of authentick testimonies ; i will only here insert one , from the venerable du moline , it is in his 3d epistle to bishop andrews , inter opuscula quaedam posthuma episcopi wint. egone malè vellem ordini vestro , de quo nunquam ●●cutus sum sine honore , ut pote qui sciò instaurationem ecclesiae anglicanae , & evers●●nem papism● , post deum & reges deberi praecipuè episcoporum doctrinae & indust●iae . quorum etiam nonnulli martyri● coronati sangnine suo subscripserunt evangelio ? q●rum habemu scripta & meminimus gesta ac zelum nulla ex parte inserio em zel● praestantiss●●norum dei servo um quos vel gallia vel germania tulit . hoc qui negat , oppo●tet vel sit improbè vecors , vel dei gloriae invidus vel cerebrosa soliditate stupens caliget in clara luce ; hanc igitur suspicionem a me amotam volo : maximè cum videam calvinum ipsum & beza● quos solent quidam suae pervicaceae obtendere , mustas scripsisse epistolas ad praesules angliae , eosque affari ut fideles dei servos , & bene meritos de ecclesia : nec sum usque adeo oris duri ut velim adversus illa veteris ecclesiae lumina , ignatium , polycarpum , cyprianum , augustinum , chrysostomum , basilium , gregorios , nissenuni , & nazianzenum , episcopos ferre sententiam , ut adversus ho●ines vitio creatos vel usurpatores muneris illiciti , plus semper apud me poterit veneranda illa primorum saeculorum antiquitas , quam novella cujusquam iustitutio . desigillatio epistolarum crimen falsi . we shall hear more of this letter in the report of the committee . * an order from the publick to imprison . elian. spart . in vita severi . sed triumphum respuit ne videretur de civili triumphare victoria . we bear no more of this article . since of orkne● , a person who , for his great learning , piety , and prudence , all good men justly esteem . * which among the scots signifie such writs as oblige any man to secure the peace under the pain of imprisonment . * second . i believe mr. rule , now that he hath had the government of that house in his hand for some time , will not think the extravagance of some boys a sufficient reason to deprive the principal , e●se he must expect the next visitation may conclude he has lost the spirit of government . it is not difficult to guess his informer , nor his inveterate prejudice against those professours . difficile satyrum scribere , this is the objection they insisted most upo● ; and the whole story of it is related in the animadversions upon the report of the committee in the following pages . no report made of this article to the general commission of the visitation . * vpon munday 10 dec. 1688 , where there were 36 either killed or wounded . no report of this article , no witnesses examined ; no not brown himself after all their industry with him in private ▪ this part of his answer was directed to sir john hail , a man so little obliged to the vniversities , that the masters could not reasonably look for any kindness from him . too inconsiderable a man to be any further chastised , h. f. we shall hear more of this in the report of the committee . heads of agreement , by the vnited ministers , head 8 , of a confession of faith. vide acts of the general assemb . 1646. rin●eit . a presbyterian minister . * this word in the phanatick language signifies the vindication of one from calumny and slander . tho' the doctor did this by order , yet he needed no order for it , it being in his power to remove and set up pictures , or any other furniture as he pleased . * publick registers . this declaration , contradicts the report in three material instances . notes for div a70609-e20920 * i.e. reputed . so much the greater shame , a method was taken not allowed by any act of parliament , and contrary to the common forms of justice over all nations , to receive libels , and to conceal the informer ; and when those scurrilous papers had in them the nature , design , and materials of a defamatory libel , then to pretend there were no libels given against them , because my lord crawford , was pleased to call the libels informations , and is it consistent with reason to receive informations , or libels , before solemn courts of judicatory , and still to conceal the informer , a practice so infamous , that as it never had a precedent in that nation : so i hope posterity shall never imitate it . lib. 4. cap. 17. sect. 7. of this many instances may be given in the time of the late troubles , though it be a part of the constant nourishment of christ's family upon earth , till he return to judge the quick and the dead . nor could it be reasonably thought he came there to be examin'd by such pedagogues . * old fellows . charles by the grace of god, king of scotland ... forsameikle as out of the royall and fatherly care which we have had of the good and peace of this our ancient and native kingdome ... scotland. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) 1638 approx. 11 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a11710 stc 21999 estc s123150 23273816 ocm 23273816 26490 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11710) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 26490) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1803:28) charles by the grace of god, king of scotland ... forsameikle as out of the royall and fatherly care which we have had of the good and peace of this our ancient and native kingdome ... scotland. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) charles i, king of england, 1600-1649. 1 broadside. by robert young ..., imprinted at edinburgh : [1638] second pt. of title from text. date of imprint suggested by stc (2nd ed.). "cum priuilegio." "given under our signet at glasgow the 29 of november, and of our reigne the fourteenth year. 1638." dissolves the general assembly. reproduction of original in the bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to 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variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649. scotland -politics and government -1625-1649. scotland -proclamations. 2007-08 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2009-01 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal coat of arms charles by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith. to our lovits heraulds , pursevants , our sheriffs in that part conjunctly and severally specially constitute , greeting . forsameikle as out of the royall and fatherly care which we have had of the good and peace of this our ancient and native kingdome , having taken to our serious consideration all such things as might have given contentment to our good and loyall subjects : and to this end had discharged by our proclamation the service book , book of canons , and high commission , freed and liberate all men from the practising of the five articles , made all our subjects both ecclesiasticall and civill lyable to the censure of parliament , generall assembly , or any other judicatorie competent , according to the nature and qualitie of the offence : and for the free entrie of ministers , that no other oath be administrate unto them then that which is contained in the act of parliament : had declared all by-gone disorders absolutely forgotten and forgiven : and for the more full and cleare extirpating all ground and occasion of fears of innovation of religion , we had commanded the confession of faith , and band for maintenance thereof , and of authoritie in defence of the same , subscribed by our deare father , and his houshold , in anno 1580. to be renued and subscribed again by our subjects here : like as for settling of a perfect peace in the church and common-wealth of this kingdome , we caused indict a free generall assembly to be holden at glasgow the xxi . of this instant , and thereafter a parliament in may , 1639. by which clement dealing , we looked assuredly to have reduced our subjects to their former quiet behaviour and dutifull carriage , whereto they are bound by the word of god , and laws both nationall and municipall , to us their native and soveraigne prince . and albeit the wished effects did not follow , but by the contrary , by our so gracious procedure they were rather emboldened , not only to continue in their stubborne and unlawfull wayes , but also daily adde to their former procedures acts of neglect , and contempt of authoritie , as evidently appeared by open opposing of our just and religious pleasure and command , exprest in our last proclamation anent the discharge of the service book , book of canons , high commission , &c. protesting against the same , and striving by many indirect meanes to withdraw the hearts of our good people , not only from a hearty acknowledgement of our gracious dealing with them , but also from the due obedience to those our just and religious commands , notwithstanding we had been formerly so oft petitioned by themselves for the same . by their daily and hourely guarding and watching about our castle of edinburgh , suffering nothing to be imported therein , but at their discretion , and openly stopping and impeding any importation of ammunition , or other necessaries whatsoever to any other of our houses within that kingdome : denying to us their soveraigne lord that libertie and freedome , which the meanest of them assume to themselves ( an act without precedent or example in the christian world ) by making of convocations and councell tables of nobilitie , gentrie , burrows and ministers within the city of edinburgh , where not regarding the lawes of the kingdome , they without warrant of authoritie conveene , assemble , and treat upon matters , as well ecclesiasticall as civill , send their injunctions and directions throughout the countrey to their subordinate tables , and other under ministers appointed by them for that effect . and under colour and pretext of religion exercing an unwarranted and unbounded libertie , require obedience to their illegall and unlawfull procedures and directions , to the great and seen prejudice of authoritie , and lawfull monarchicall government . and notwithstanding it was evidently manifest by the illegall and unformall course taken in the election of their commissioners for the assembly , whereof some are under the censure of this church , some under the censure of the church of ireland , and some long since banished for open and avowed teaching against monarchie , others of them suspended , and some admitted to the ministerie contrary to the forme prescribed by the lawes of this kingdome , others of them a long time since denounced rebels , and put to the horne , who by all law and unviolable custome and practique of this kingdome , are , and ever have been incapable , either to pursue , or defend before any judicatorie , far lesse to be judges themselves ; some of them confined , and all of them by oath and subscription bound to the overthrow of episcopacie . and by this and other their under-hand working , and private informations and perswasions , have given just ground of suspicion of their partialitie herein , and so made themselves unfit judges of what concerneth episcopacie . and al 's it was sufficiently cleared by the peremptorie and illegall procedures of the presbyteries , who at their own hand by order of law , and without due forme of processe , thrust out the moderators lawfully established , and placed others , whom they found most inclinable to their turbulent humors , associate to themselves for the choosing of the said commissioners for the assembly , a laick elder out of each paroch , who being in most places equall , if not moe in number then the ministerie , made choice both of the ministers , who should be commissioners from the presbyteries , as also of a ruling elder , being directed more therein by the warrants from the foresaid pretended tables , then by their own judgements , as appears by the severall private instructions sent from them , far contrary to the lawes of the countrey , and lowable custome of the church : by which doings it is too manifest , that no calme nor peaceable procedure or course could have been expected from this assembly , for settling of the present disorders and distractions . yet we were pleased herein in some sort to blinde-fold our own judgement , and over-look the saids disorders , and patiently to attend the meeting of the said assembly , still hoping that when they were met together , by our commissioner his presence , and assistance of such other well disposed subjects who were to be there , and by their own seeing the reall performance of all that was promised by our last proclamation , they should have been induced to return to their due obedience of subjects : but perceiving that their seditious disposition still increases , by their repairing to the said assembly with great bands and troupes of men , all boddin in fear of warre , with guns and pistolets , contrary to the lawes of this kingdome , custome observed in all assemblies , and in high contempt of our last proclamation at edinburgh the xvi . of this instant : as also by their peremptory refusing of our assessors , authorized by us ( although fewer in number then our dearest father was in use to have at divers assemblies ) the power of voting in this assembly , as formerly they have done in other assemblies ; and by their partiall , unjust and unchristian refusing , and not suffering to be read the reasons and arguments given in by the bishops , and their adherents to our commissioner , why the assembly ought not to proceed to the election of a moderator without them , neither yet to the admitting of any of the commissioners of the saids commissioners from presbyteries , before they were heard object against the same , though earnestly required by our commissioner in our name . and notwithstanding that our commissioner under his hand , by warrant from us , gave in a sufficient declaration of all that was contained in our late proclamation and declaration , the same bearing likewise our pleasure of the registration of the same in the books of assembly for the full assurance of the true religion to all our good subjects ; and yet not resting satisfied therewith , lest the continuance of their meeting together might produce other the like dangerous acts , derogatorie to royall authoritie , we have thought good , for preveening thereof , and for the whole causes and reasons above-mentioned , and divers others importing the true monarchicall government of this estate , to dissolve and break up the said assembly . and therefore our will is , and we do discharge and inhibit all and whatsoever pretended commissioners , and other members of the said pretended assembly , of all further meeting and conveening , treating and concluding any thing belonging to the said assembly , under the pain of treason , declaring all and whatsoever that they shall happen to do in any pretended meeting thereafter , to be null , of no strength , force nor effect , with all that may follow thereupon : prohibiting and discharging all our lieges to give obedience thereto , and declaring them , and every one of them , free and exempt from the same , and of all hazzard that may ensue for not obeying thereof . and for this effect we command and charge all the foresaids pretended commissioners , and other members of the said assembly , to depart forth of this city of glasgow within the space of xxiiii ▪ houres after the publication hereof , and to repair home to their own houses , or that they go about their own private affaires in a quiet manner . with speciall provision alwaies , that the foresaid declaration , given in under our commissioners hand , with all therein contained , shall notwithstanding hereof stand full , firme and sure to all our good subjects in all time coming , for the full assurance to them of the true religion . and our will is , and we command and charge , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye passe , and make publication hereof by open proclamation at the market crosse of glasgow , and other places needfull , wherethrough none pretend ignorance of the same . given under our signet at glasgow the 29. of november , and of our reigne the fourteenth year . 1638. sic subscribitur hammiltovn , traquaire , roxburgh murray , linlithgow , perth , kingorne , tullibardin , hadintoun , galloway , annandaill , lauderdaill , kinnoull , dumfreis , southesk , belheaven , angus , dalyell , j. hay , w. elphinstoun , ja. carmichael , j. hammiltoun . imprinted at edinburgh by robert young , printer to the kings most excellent majestie . cvm privilegio . the tryal and process of high-treason and doom of forfaulture against mr. robert baillie of jerviswood traitor by his majesties special command ... mackenzie, george, sir, 1636-1691. 1685 approx. 118 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 16 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2006-06 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a50863 wing m207 estc r19066 12375616 ocm 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(eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a50863) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 60584) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 817:20) the tryal and process of high-treason and doom of forfaulture against mr. robert baillie of jerviswood traitor by his majesties special command ... mackenzie, george, sir, 1636-1691. baillie, robert, d. 1684. england and wales. privy council. [2], 33-61 p. printed by the heir of andrew anderson ; by tho. newcomb, edinburg : reprinted at london : 1685. reproduction of original in huntington library. attributed to george mackenzie. cf. nuc pre-1956. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng trials (treason) -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1660-1688. 2005-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2005-11 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2006-01 john latta sampled and proofread 2006-01 john latta text and markup reviewed and edited 2006-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the tryal and process of high-treason and doom of forfaulture against mr. robert baillie of jerviswood traitor . by his majesties special command , as a further proof of the late fanatical conspiracy . edinburg , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , and reprinted at london , by tho. newcomb , 1685. the tryal and process of high-treason , and doom of forefaulture against mr. robert baillie of jerviswood traitor . cvria justiciariae s. d. n. regis tanta in praetorio burgi de edinburgh vigesimo tertio die mensis decembris 1684. per nobilem & potentem comitem georgium comitem de linlithgow , dominum livingstoun , &c. justiciarium generalem totius regni scotiae , & honorabiles viros , dominos jacobum foulis de colintoun justiciariae clericum , joannem lockhart de castlehill , davidem balfour de forret , rogerum hoge de harcarss , alexandrum seaton de pitmedden , & patricium lyon de carss , commissionarios justiciariae dicti . s. d. n. regis . curia legitime affirmata . intran mr. robert baillie of jerviswood prisoner indited and accused , that where notwithstanding by the common law of this , and all other well governed nations , the conspiring to overturn the government of the monarchy , or of the established government of this kingdom , or the concealing , and not revealing of any treasonable design , project , or discourse tending thereto ; or the assisting , aiding , or abaiting such as have any such designs , does infer the pains and punishment of treason . and by the third act of the first parliament of king james the first , the rebelling openly against the kings person : and by the thretty seventh act of his second parliament , the resetting , maintaining , or doing favours to open , or notour rebellers against the kings majesty , is declared treason , and punishable by forefaulture . and by the hundred fourty and fourth act of the twelfth parliament of king james the sixth , it is declared treason to reset , supply , or intercommune with traitors . and by the first act of the first session of his majesties first parliament , it is declared , that it shall be high treason for the subjects of this realm , or any number of them , less or more , upon any ground , or pretexi whatsomever , to rise , or continue in arms , to make peace or war , without his majesties special approbation . and by the second act of the second session of his majesties said first parliament , to plot , contrive , or intend death , or destruction , or to put any restraint upon his majesties royal person , or to deprive , depose , or suspend him from the exercise of his royal government , or to levy war , or take up arms against his majesty , or any commissionated by him , or to intice any strangers , or others , to invade any of his majesties dominions , or to write , print , or speak any thing that may express or declare such their treasonable detentions , it declared treason , and punishable as such . likeas , by the second act of his majesties third parliament , it is declared high treason in any of the subjects of this realm , by writing , speaking , or any other manner of way to endeavour the alteration , suspension , or diversion of the right of succession , or debarring the next lawful successour . nevertheless , it is o● verity that the said mr. robert baillie of jerviswood , shaking off all fear of god , respect and regard to his majesties authority and laws ; and having conceived most unjustly , a great and extraordinary malice and harted against his majesties person and government , and having designed most traiterously to debar his royal highness , his majesties only brother , from his due right of succession , did amongst many other traiterous acts , tending to promove that wicked design , endeavour to get himself elected one of the commissioners for negotiating the settlement of a colony of this nation in carolina , in one or other of the days of the moneths of january , february , march , april , or may , one thousand six hundred and eighty three years ; and that he might thereby have the sreer and better access to treat with the earls of shaftsbury and essix , the lord russel and others , who had entered into a conspiracy in england against his majesties person and government , and with colonel rumsay , walcot , west , and ferguson , and others who had likewise conspired the murder of his majesties sacred person , and of the person of his royal highness ; and finding that he could not get himself elected one of the said commissioners , he resolved to go to london upon his own expenses , and declared to severals ( whom he took great pains to draw in to be his accomplices ) that his design was to push foreward the people of england , who did nothing but talk , that they might go on effectually ; and after he had settled a correspondency here , he did go up to london in one or other of the saids moneths , with sir john cochran and commissar monro , and did then , and there , transact with the saids conspirators , or one or other of them , to get a sum of money to the late earl of argile , a declaired traitor , for bringing home of men and arms , for raising a rebellion against his majesty , and invading this his native countrey ; and so earnest was he in the said design , that he did chide those english conspirators , for not sending the same timcously , and lamented the delayes used in it ; and perswaded the late earl of argile and others in his name to accept of any him , rather than not to engage : and amongst the many meetings that he had at london , for carrying on the said traiterous design , there was one at his own chamber , where he did meet with the lord melvil , sir john cochran , and the cessnocks elder and younger , and amongst others , with mr. william veatch a declared traitor , and there he did treat of the carying on of the said rebellion , and of the money to be furnished by the english for argyle , for buying of armes . and that if the scots would attempt any thing for their own relief , they would get assistance of horse from england ; and from that meeting , he or ane , or other of them did send down mr. robert martin to prevent any rysing , till it should be seasonable for carying on of their designs , which mr. robert , after he came to scotland , did treat with palwart and others , for carying on of the said rebellion , by securing his majesties officers of state , his castles and forces , and by putting his correspondents here , and there associates , in readiness , to assist the late earl of argyle ; and after the said mr. baillie had engadged many of his countrey-men in england , and had assured his correspondants here , that the english were resolved to seclud his royal-highness from his due right of succession , thereby to encourage them to concur in the said rebellion , and exclusion , he flew to that hight , that he did particularly and closly correspond with mr. robert ferguson , sir thomas armstrong , collonel rumsay , and walcot , who were accessory to that horrid part of the couspiracy , which was designed against the sacred life of his majesty , and the life of his royal-highness , and did sit up several nights with them , concerting that bloody massacer : at least the said mr. robert baillie of jerviswood was , and is guilty of having correspondence with the late earl of argyle , and mr. william veatch declared traitors , and of being art and part of an conspiracy , for assisting of these who were to rise in arms against his sacred majesty , and for exclusion of his royal brother , and of concealing and not revealing the accession and proposals of others for that effect . wherethrow he has committed , and is guilty of the crymes of high treason , rebellion , and others above specified , and is art and part of the famine , which being found by ane assize , he ought to be punished with forfaulture of life , land and goods , to the terror of others to commit the like hereafter . his majesties advocat produced an act , and warrand from the lords of his majesties most honourable privy council , for pursuing , and insisting against the said mr. robert baillie of jerviswood , whereof the tenor follows : edinburgh , the twenty two day of december , one thousand six hundred and eighty four years . the lords of his majesties privy council , do hereby give order and warrand to his majesties advocat , to pursue a process of treason and forfaulture , before the lords of his majesties justiciary , against mr. robert baillie of jerviswood , to morrow at two a clock in the afternoon preceisly , and the said lords do hereby require and command , sr. george lockhart of carnwath , and sr. john lauder advocats , to concur , and assist in the said process with his majesties advocat , from the intenting until the end thereof , as they will be answerable upon their alledgance . extract by me , sic subscribitur . colin mckenzie , cls. sti. concilij . pursuers . sir george mckenzie of roshaugh our soveraign lords advocat sir george lockhart sir john lauder . advocats . procurators in defence . sir patrick hume . mr. walter pringle . mr. james graham . mr. william fletcher . mr. william baillie . advocats . the pannals procurators produced ane act of his majesties privy council , in their favours , whereof the tenor follows : edinburgh , the twenty third of december , one thousand six hundred eighty four years , the lords of his majesties privy council having considered ane address made to them , by mr. robert baillie of jerviswood , now indited at the instance of his majesties advocat ; before the lords commissioners of justiciary , of treason , do hereby require and command sir patrick hume , mr. walter pringle , mr. james graham , mr. william fletcher , mr. james falcouer , mr. william baillie advocats , to consult , compear , and debate for the petitioner , in the process of treason , mentioned in his address , without any hazard , as they will be answerable at their peril ; extract by me , sic subscribitur . william paterson , cls. sti. concilij . after reading of the inditement ; the lord justice general required the pannal to make answer thereto . the said mr. robert baillie pannal pleaded not guilty . mr. walter pringle advocat , as procurator for the said mr. robert baillie of jerviswood pannal , alleadges that he ought not to pass to the knowledge of an assize ; because he had not got a citation upon , fyfteen days , or at least on a competent time , which is usual , and absolutely necessar in all actions , and much more in criminal pursuits , especially , seing , if a competent time be not allowed to the pannal , he is precludit of the benefit of ane exculpation , without which he cannot prove his objections against witnesses , or assyzers , or any other legal , or competent defences ; and by the late act of parliament concerning the justice court , all pannalls are allowed to raise precepts of exculpation , and thereupon to cite witnesses , for proving the objections against witnesses , and assyzers , which necessarily presupposeth , that a competent time must be allowed to the pannal to execut his diligence , or otherwise , how is it possible he can prove an defence of alibi , or any other just defence : and as this is most consonant to that clear act of parliament , and to material justice , and to the rules of humanity , so this point has been already fully and often decided , and lately in the case of one robertson in july 1673. the instance whereof , is given by his majesties advocat in his book of criminals , and title of libels , where the lords found , that albeit robertson got his inditement in prison , yet he behoved to get it upon fifteen dayes . his majesties advocat oppons the constant tract of decisions , whereby it is sound , that a person incarcerated may be tryed upon twenty four houres ; and the late act of parliament is only in the case where a summons or libel is to be raised ; but here there is no libel or summons , but only an inditement ; nor was any exculpation sought in this case , before the tryal , which is the case provided for by the act of parliament . the lords , justice-general , justice-clerk , and commissioners of justiciary , repell the defence , in respect the pannal is a prisoner , and that it has been the constant custom of the court , and that the pannal made no former application for an exculpation . sir patrick hume for the pannal , alleadges ( alwas denying the libel , and whole members , and qualifications thereof ) that in so far as the libel is founded upon harbouring , maintaining , and intercommuning with the persons mentioned in the dittay , the pannal ought to be assoylzied , because it is res hactenus judicata , he having been formerly pursued before the lords of his majesties privy council for the same crimes , and fined in an considerable sum ; and therefore that crime cannot now be made use of as a ground of treason against the pannal . his majesties advocat answers , that he restricts his libel , to the pannals entering in a conspiracy , for raising rebellion , and for procuring money to be sent to the late earl of argile , for carrying on the said rebellion ; and for concealing , and not revealing ; neither of which is referred to his oath ; and consequently was not res judicata , there being nothing referred to his oath ; but his converse and correspondence with some ministers , and others within the kingdom , and his own gardiner , and his writing letters to my lord argile ; and oppons the decreet of council it self , and restricts the libel to all the crimes not insisted on in the decreet . sir patrick hume replyes , that as to ▪ the corresponding with the late earl of argile , at any time since his foresaulture , was expreily proponed as an interrogator to the pannal in that pursuit , at his majesties advocat's instance against him , before the lords of his majesties privy council , and that not only his own correspondence by himself ; but also by major holms , mr. carstares , robert west , thomas shepherd , richard rumbold , and collonel rumsay , as the interrogator bears , as appears by a double of the act of council , written by the clerk of councils servant , and is offered to be proven by my lord advocats oath : and as to any correspondency with mr. veitch ; it is not relevant , since he was not declared rebel . sir john lauder for his majesties interest , answers , that he oppons the decreet of privy council , where no such interrogator was put to the pannal , and the decreet must make more faith than any pretended scroll , and cannot be taken away by his majesties advocats oath , to his majesties prejudice ; and for mr. william veitch , he stands expresly forefault in anno 1667. and the doom of forefaulture , is ratified in the parliament 1669. sir patrick hume oppons the reply , that as to the corresponding with mr. veitch , it does not appear , that he is the person mentioned in the act of parliament ; and albeit he were , as he is not , he having thereafter come home to scotland , all the punishment inflicted upon him was banishment , not to return under the pain of death , which did take off any former punishment ; and it was no crime in any person to intercommune with him , especially in another kingdom ; and by the late act of council in anno 1683. even the conversing , and intercommuning with declared traitors , is restricted to an arbitrary punishment . his majesties advocat oppons the standing doom of forefaulture against veitch , and the proclamation , or act of council it self . the lords , justice-general , justice-clerk , and commissioners of justiciary , having considered the libel , pursued by his majesties advocat , against mr. robert baille of jerviswood , with my lord advocats declaration , whereby he restricts the same to the crimes not insisted on in the decreet of council formerly pronunced against the pannal : they find the same relevant as it is restricted , to infer the pain of treason , and remits the same to the knowledge of the assize , and repells the remnant defences proponed for the pannal , in respect of the decreet of council produced , bearing no such thing as is alleadged , and of the answers made by his majesties advocat thereto . assisa . the earl of strathmore . the earl of belcarras . sir george skeen , provost of aberdene . sir james fleming , late provest or edinburgh . sir john ramsay of whitehill . adam hepburn of humby . andrew bruce of earleshall . john stuart , tutor of alpin . alexander miln of garrin . mr. jams elies of stenhopsmilus . sir william drummond of halthornden . major andrew white , lieutennent of edinburgh-castle . mr. david grahame , sheriff of wigtoun . colin mckenzie , collector of ross . david burnet , merchant . the assise lawfully sworn , no objection of the law in the contrary . his majesties advocat for probation adduced the witnesses and writs aftermentioned ; and first , walter earl of tarras . sir patrick hume procurator for the pannal , objects against the earl of tarras , that he cannot be a witness , because he is socius & particeps criminis ; and it is clear by the 34. chap. stat. 2. rob. 1. concerning these that are excluded from bearing of testimony that socij & participes ejusdem criminis , vel incarcerati & vinculati , cannot bear testimony : as also , the earl of tarras being presently under an inditement of high treason , and under the impressions of fear , and death , no person in his circumstances can be admitted a witness , as is not only clear from the foresaid statute , but from the common law. his majesties advocat answers , that it is an exception from that rule , both by the common law , and ours , that in the crime of lese majestie , and especially , that branch thereof , which we call a conspiracy , socius criminis may be a witnes , and which is introduced very reasonably by lawyers , to secure the common interest of mankind , which is the chief of all interests ; and because conspiracies cannot be otherwayes proved , and not to allow this manner of probation , were to allow treason , since no man can prove a plot , but he that is upon it , and how can a man object against him as a witness , whom himself trusted with his life , his fortune , and their common plot , nor is the intenting of the lybel any stronger qualification , since every man that is socius criminis , is under the same impression , and it would rather seem the greater and nearer apprehensions a man has of death , he will be the more sincere and faithful ; nor has the earl of tarras , nor did he ever seek any security , in order to his deponing . and this has been constantly , and latlie , conform to the common law , as may be seen in the hundreds of citations set down by mascard , de probationibus , vol. 4. conclus . 1318. num 21. and the contrary citations prove only , that regularly socius criminis cannot be a witues . sir patrick hume replyes , that the statutes of robert the first is opponed , and non est distinguendum ubi lex non distinguit , and not only was he socius criminis , which is acknowledged , but he is incarceratus , and lying under an indytment of high treason , and has thrown himself on the kings mercy , and it is not proper he should be a witness , seeing he is in the kings mercy , who may give him his life or not , and there was never a person in these circumstances , that ever was admitted a witness . mr. walter pringle adds , that the earl of tarras , is not only in the case of a person who stands lndyted for high-treason ; but must be look'd upon , as a person condemned for the said cryme , seeing he fully , and amply confest the cryme : & confessas habetur pro convicto , and never any lawyer asserted , that damnatus criminis loesae majestatis could be admitted as a witnes , and there is nothing more clear , then that by the common law , and the law of all nations , this objection ought to be sustained , for the civil law is clear , leg . 11. cod . de testibus and matheus in his title de probationibus , cap. de testibus , doth assert positivlie , that the cryme of lese majestie , heresie , and generally all these crymes quae sine sociis non possunt facile admitti , are not excepted . aud he asserts , that the lawyers , viz. gomesius , & decianus , who are of another opinion , do acknowledge , nominatum a reo damnandum non esse , and that they contravert only , an nominatio rei fit indicium sufficiens ad torquendum nominatum . sir george lockhart repeats , and oppons the answer , and the cryme lybelled , being a conspiration of treason , which of it's own nature is manadged , and caryed on by secrecie and contrivance ; and which is only known to the complices of the treason , and which cannot be commited sine sociis , the law of this kingdom , and of all nations , do allow socios criminis to be testes habites , and not only are they admitted in the case of such conjurations , but generally in omnibus criminibus exceptis , amongst which the crime of perduellion , and lese majestie is the chief , and it is absolutly impossible , that plots , and conspirations of treason can be otherways proven , then per socios , and such as are participes criminis , and which is the common opinion of all lawyers , as may appear by farin . quest : 45. and the authorities cited by him , and which is the inviolable practique of this kingdom : and as to that pretence , that the earl of tarras is under a process of treason , and has submitted to his majesties mercy , and that confessus habetur pro convicto , it imports nothing , and infers no more then that he is socius criminis , and is still a habil witnes , as to conjuration of treason socius criminis hoc ipso , that it is acknowledged , or proven , being still under the hazard of process , or condemnation , which law regards not in regard of the secrecie involved in the nature of the crime , that either witnesses neque actu neque habitu , can be present , so that the objection amounts to no less then that conjurations of treason cannot at all be proven : and as to the law cited from the majestie , it imports no more then that the objection regulariter procedit , in crimes , which of their own nature are not perdifficilis probationis , and are not inter crimina excepta such as the cryme of conspiracy and treason is . mr. williom fletcher oppons the objection , and reply , and further adds , that albeit crimen loesae majestatis be reckoned inter crimina excepta , and so have some priviledge , as to the qualification of witnesses , yet it cannot be denyed , but there are some objections competent against witness adduced for proving conspiracies , and treason , verbi causa , that a witnes is a capital enemy , or that he is sub potestate accusatoris , and the objection now pleaded , being taken complexlie , viz. that the earl of tarras is not only socius criminis , but also , that he is publico judicio reus , upon the same crime , and that as means to procure his majesties savour , he has submitted himself , and come in his majesties mercy , by an acknowledgment of the cryme , before the dyet of citation , he is obnoxious to a most just objection , viz. that he is sub potestate , and by the submission , and confession , his life and estate is now in his majesties hands , so that he is not only in the case of a reus confessus , but in the case of a witnes , who does absolutely depend upon his majesties advocate the pursuer ; and as a private accuser , could not addace his own servants to be witnesses , because they are testes domestici , and depend upon him , so far less ought a witnes to be adduced , who not only depends , as to his estate , but as to his life , and the law gives a very good reason , and which is mentioned by paulus , lib. 1. receptarum sententiarum , cap. 12. parag . ult . in these words . dese confessus , non est audiendus ut testis , ne alienam salutem in dubium deducat qui de sua desperavit ; and as to the pretence that a conjuration is a cryme so occult , that it must either be proven by such witnesses , or otherways the guilty person will escape . it is answered , that in this case . his majesties advocate had an easie remedie , for he might have pursued the pannal , before he pursued the witness , and the terror and appreheasion of the event of a process for treason cannot be constructed otherways , then to have influence upon the deposition of the witnes ; and as to the citation out of farinacius , it is only in the case of socius criminis , but when he comes to treat de teste accusato vel carcerato . quest . 56. articulo 4 to . he sayes , regula sit in accusato quod is pendent● accusatione à testimonio repellitur . and be the 2d . rule of the same article , he sayes , it is a principle quod carceratus testimonium ferre prohibetur , and he gives this reason , quia praesumitur , quod salsum testimonium diceret pro aliquo qui ei promiserit se liberare a vinculo , and limits this rule , that he must be carceratus propter crimen . sir patrick hume adds , that it is a certain principle , that any person that is guilty infamia juris , cannot be a witness , no more than a person that is convict , and condemned of treason ; and if he were convict , and condemned of treason , he could not be a witness , even in the case of treason : so neither can the earl of tarras in this case be received a witness , for he being adduced a witness after he received his inditment , and confessed the crime , is equivalent , as if he had been actuall convict ; and whatever may be pretended , that testes infames may be admitted ; yet it was never asserted by any lawyer , that a person convict of treason can be admitted a witness . the lords repelled the objection against the earl of tarras , and ordains him to be received a witness . walter earl of tarras , aged fourty years , married , purged , and sworn ; being interrogat , if about the time that sir john cochran , and commissar monro got their commission from the carolina company for london , the pannal mr. robert baillie of jerviswood did not desire the deponent to speak to commissar monro , to try if he could get him the said pannal added to that commission , depones affirmative . being interro●at , if the said jerviswood , the pannal , did not tell the deponent that he was resolved to go to london however upon his own expenses , and that his and their going about the carolina bussiness , was but a pretence , and a blind ; but that the true design was , to push foreward the people of england who could do nothing but talk , to go more effectually about their bussiness , depones affirmative . depones that the pannal did settle a correspondence with the deponent whereby he was to give an account to the deponent of what should pass betwixt the countrey party in england , and the scots men there : and on the other hand , the deponent was to write to him what occurred here , depones that the pannal did say to the deponent , if the king would suffer the parliament of england to sit , and pass the bill of seclusion , that that was the only way to secure the protestant religion . depones that the pannal said to him , that the king might be induced to do so , if the parliament would take sharp or brisk measures with him , or the like . depones these words were spoke to him by the pannal , since the holding of the last session of this current parliament ; and before the pannal and commissar monro went for london . depons that after the pannal went to london , he did give the deponent an account by letters , that things were in great disorder there , and that he hoped there would be effectual courses taken to remeid them . depones that mr. robert martin did come to mr. pringle of torwoodlies house in may 1683. or thereby , and brought a letter to the deponents lady unsubscribed , but the deponent knows it was jerviswoods hand-writing , who was then at london , and that mr. martin told the deponent , that things in england were in great disorder , and like to come to a hight , and that the countrey party were considering on methods for securing the protestant religion . and that archibald , sometime earl of argile , was to get ten thousand pounds sterling , whereas thirty thousand pounds sterling was sought by the scotsmen at london , which was to be sent over to holland to provide arms ; and that the late earl of argile was to land with these armes in the west-highlands of scotland , and that the deponents friend jerviswood the pannal , was to be sent over with the money . depones that philiphaugh and he went to gallowshiels house , where they met with polwort and gallowshiels , and that it was talked amongst them there , that in case those in england should rise in arms , that it was necessary in that case , that so many as could be got on the borders should be in readiness to deal with straglers and seize upon horses , and that thereafter they should joyn with those that were in arms on the borders of england . depons that in the case foresaid , it was said , it was convenient the castle of stirling , berwick , and some other strengths should be seiz'd upon ; and it was likewise spoke amongst them , that some persons should be employed to inquire what arms was in that countrey . depons , that it was spoke then , that the best time for argyle was to land in the west when there was a stur in england , or scotland , or words to that purpose . depons , that every one desired another to speak to such particular persons as they could trust , by letting a word fall indirectly upon supposition , in case of the rising in england concerning the affair for preparing of them : and that he was told by philiphaugh thereafter , that there was a word and sign to be used amongst them , viz. the sign was by loosing a button on the breast , and that the word was harmony . depons , the pannal spoke to the deponent to advertise torwoodlie , that he might acquaint mr. william veitch a forfault traitor , who was in northumberland , that he might keep himself close , and be on his guard , lest he should be catch'd ; which was since the pannal was prisoner in the tolbooth of edinburgh . and this is the truth , as he shall answer to god. sic subscribitur , tarras , linlithgow . i. p. d. alexander monro of bear-crofts , aged fourty five years , or thereby ; solutus , solemnly sworn and purg'd . depons , that the earl of tarras proposed to the deponent , that jerviswood might be made one of the commissioners for the affair of carolina , for that he could not safely stay at home ; and that the deponents answer was that he had no interest in the affair , and so could not be a commissioner . depons , that the pannal did wait for the deponent at wooller , and did go alongst with him to london , and that by the way he heard him regrate his own hazard and others , because of blackwoods sentence ; and that he heard him regrate the hazard our laws , and liberties , and the protestant religion were in . depons , that the pannal spoke to the deponent and others , more then once at london for getting of money from the english to be sent to the late earl of argile , for bringing home arms for the said earls use , as he understood , for carrying on an insurrection , and rebellion in scotland . depons , that at the time libelled , in jerviswoods chamber in london , mr. william veitch a forfault traitor was present ; and that sir john cochran did at that meeting expressly speak of money to be sent to argile for bringing home arms for invading the kingdom of scotland ; and that at another occasion he heard some of them say , that there would be twenty thousand men in scotland who would assist the rebellion , and that he heard sir john cochran and jerviswood speaking of it , but cannot be positive which of the two said it . depons , that at the meeting he heard jerviswood speak , but did not hear him oppose that treasonable proposal , or contradict the overture proposed by sir john cochran . depons , that mr. robert martin was sent down from that meeting which was at jerviswoods chamber , to scotland , to try what the people of scotland would do for their own safety : and that it was understood that the people of scotland should not rise till there should be a rising in england , and that the commission was granted to mr. robert martin by all the persons present , whereof jerviswood was one , and that there were present the lord melvill , sir john cochran , cessnocks elder and younger , mr. william carstares , mr. william veitch , jerviswood , and the deponent ; and depons they did contribute money for mr. martius journey . depons , that at his return he meeting with the deponent , told him , that matters were in that condition in scotland , and that the countrey was in such a condition as little would kindle the fire in order to the rebellion . and this is the truth , as he shall answer to god. sic subscribitur , alexander monro , linlithgow , i. p. d. james murray of philiphaugh , aged 30. years , married , purged and sworn , produces sour leaves of depositions , emitted by him before the lords of the secret committie , and all written and subscribed with his own hand , which being publickly read , in presence of the justices , and assize , he adheres thereto , in all points , whereof the tenot follows . upon the day of may , 1683. upon a letter from mr. pringle of torwoodlie , i came to his house in the morning , and he presently led me to a chamber , where i found mr robert martin , who was lately come from london , with whom we stayed a little , and discoursed of the news , and about the present condition , and temper of england , and in particular of london , which mr. martin said , was much irritated through some attemps upon their priviledges , either as to the concern of the sheriffs , or their charter , but that all honest men were of good heart and very brisk , and after some general discourses to this purpose , torwoodlie , and i left him , and walked out a little , and he told me , he was expecting the e. of tarras presently , for he had sent to him ; and mr. martin had a letter to him from jerviswood , then he told me that there were great matters in agitation at london , and that mr. martin had come down with a commission from our friends there , ( i do not remember he named any ) but that i behoved not to expect , he would impart his instructions to me , for he was to communicat them only to polwart and himself , ( at least for these shyres ) and they were to pitch on such as they thought fit to intrust with the affair , whereupon he assured me , that he had great confidence in me , and his kindness to me oblidged him to send for me , to acquaint me that matters were now come to a crisis , and that he had reason to think england would shortly draw to arme , and stand by them , till they were satisfied anent the bill of exclusion , and what other security they could propose for the protestant religion , and their liberties , and that it was no project of any inconsiderable party but a design through the kingdom , and that many of the finest men , and of the greatest interest and credit there , had adjusted almost every thing necessar for the purpose , and had concerted matters with our friends there , in order to concurrence from this , and had agreed to advance money for furnishing arms here , ( i do not remember he told me more particulars at this time ) but said , polwart would be at gallow-shiels that night , and it would be necessar that the e. of tarras and i should confer with him fully , on the business , about this time the e. of tarras lighted , and torwoodlie having left us for a little time , being gone to bring mr. martin , the e. of tarras asked me , what news , i told him of mr. martins being there , but that he had given me no account of the design of his down-coming , which perhaps he would acquaint him with , but by what i had heard from torwoodlie , i understood it to be , to engadge us to rise in arms shortly , whereat the e. of tarras hummed , and said , he would look ere he leapt , such a leap , or some such expressions , presently mr. martin came , and the e. of tarras and he retired a little , after the reading an letter , he gave him , the contents whereof was ( as the e. of tarras informed me ) only an order from jerviswood , to deliver some money to the bearer , which he had left with him , and the e. of tarras called for his servant , and bad him bring up the money ; in the mean time , torwoodlie asked me , if i had acquainted the e. of tarras with what he spoke to me , and i told him , i had let something of it fall to him , but it was not to be thought , that persons of sense and quality would engadge in such designs at random ; so torwoodlie said , that ( though mr. martin would not commune with us upon his commission directly ) yet he thought it would be fit , we conferred , and without taking notice of his commission , discoursed of things upon suppositions , and as our own privat notions , abstract from any prospect of a present design , so after dinner , we four went to a chamber , and after some general discourses , of the discontents of both kingdoms , these suppositions following were discoursed ( and as i remember ) mr. martin started them all , or the most part ) viz. what if the countrey party in england should have thoughts of going to arms ( whereof he knew nothing but only supposed such a thing , for discoursing a little freely , and to know our sentiments , what we thought could be expected here in such a case ) would it not be expedient to have a settled correspondence betwixt that party there and here , and might not matters be so adjusted , that both kingdoms should draw out in one day , and might not as many be expected to undertake in these shires , and about edinburgh , as would serve to surprize , and seize our rulers ( i do not remember any named , but the then chancellour and treasurer ) and some to joyn with these on the english borders , to assist them to surprize berwick , and if for that effect , any horse , or dragoons , that should be in the bounds might not be surprized , that their horse and arms might be gotten to furnish the country people , and stirling castle ; and if argile should at the same time land in the west , and raise that countrey , would not these measures contribute much to the advancement and security of the interest of that party here , since thereby the government would be disordered , and such steps would encourage all that had an inclination to the countrey party , to draw to them frankly , and fear many of the other side to act against them , and so they might have leasure to joyn from all places ; and might it not be expected , there would be as many in this kingdom , as would be able to deal with the forces here , at least divert them from troubling england . this is the sum , as i remember , of what was proposed , and discourst of , though i cannot distinctly say , it was in this method , and expression , nor was all moved at once , but droped now and then , as the discourse seem'd to give rise to it ; and though i cannot fully re count all that was spoke on these heads , and tell distinctly , what this and that man said ; yet i remember these following answers were giving , and ( as i judged ) acquiesced to by the whole company ; and they were certainly the e. of tarras , his sentiments and mine , and every one that spoke , used this or some such precaution , that if they were concerned , or to give counsel in any such case , ( as they were not , &c. ) 1. as to the settling a correspondence , it was confest to be very convenient for those of a common interest ; but the present circumstances of affairs were such ( as we thought , ) that none could be found here who was fit to mannage it , and would undertake it . 2. as to the trysting at the same time , it could not be done without the devulging the design to all ranks of people , which none would undertake , except these already in desperat circumstances , and they could not have generally much influence . 3. the thing was not at all adviseable for this kingdom , since if any of englands own measures miscarried , they would not stur for any such trust ; and the spring of their motions being always at london , there might happen an interruption near the appointment , whereof these here could have no timous notice , and so might keep tryst , whereby they would be exposed a prey ; and if they should subsist any time , or prevail ( which was hardly possible ) the multitude that must be imployed , are tainted with such wild and unruly principles , that if once they got the sword in their hands , they would never be brought to order without a greater force to over-awe them ; neither would any expectation of argiles landing , be a just ground for such a tryst , considering the uncertainty of sea-voyages ; and if argile were to be the head , undoubtedly many people would conclude that he were to be suspected of private designs , and that restoring him , might lay him aside : as also , that dispair might blind his usual prudence , ●nd prompt him to unsolid , and undigested methods ; and so it was to be expected , that few of the gentry ( except such as he had special influence on , or such as were under hard circumstances ) could embarque with him , 4. as to the surprising rulers , &c. it was inveigh'd against , as an action not to be thought of amongst protestants ( especially when the very design of it was pretended , to secure that religion , which taught its professors to abhor and detest such principles as popish , yea un-christian ) since it could not be effectuat without blood-shed of people , secure in peace , which being by all approven , divines and casuists condemned as unlawful , and meer assassination ; it was not to be doubted , that as such a practice would cast a blot upon the whole affair , and quite take off any pretence of defensive arms , so it would scar many from joyning . these things were reasoned again and again : but i do not remember there was any formal conclusion made , but the discourse was let fall ; and mr. martin told us , if any of us had a mind for a suit of armour , he could provide as many as we pleased , from one who had made a great many lately , to honest men at london , of a new fashion , very light , and at an easie rate ; so torwoodlie and i gave him our measures , e. of tarras told he had a suit already ; then torwoodlie said to the e. of tarras and me , we would meet polwart at gallowsheils , and desired we might commun with him , anent what we had been discoursing , so we hasted away , that if possible , we might both get home that night , it being saturnday , and we unfurnished , for staying abroad , and torwoodlie whispered me just as i was mounting ( as i think ) that he was not clear we should commun before gallowshiels , for he was sometimes too much good-fellow , or the like ; so the e. of tarras and i rod away together , and upon the way we were both of opinion , that the suppositions we had discoursed of , were in effect propositions , and resolv'd , if they were insisted on by polwort , as we suspected , we would adhere to the former answer , and would undertake nothing in these methods ; when we came to gallowsheils , the laird was abroad , and polwort was not come , so we had thoughts to go away , being both damped with what had passed , and inclining to be free of farder medling ; but the lady would by no means hear of our going till her husband came , who , she assured us , was about the doors , and she having sent to call him , he would be in presently ; yet it was so late ere he came , that the e. of tarras could hardly have day enough to go home with ; so gallowsheils would not let him go , and he would not stay , unless i stay'd , so we both stayed , and not being resolv'd to discourse with gallowsheils on what passed , we we it to the tavern , on pretence i might call the baillie , and seek horses or lime , and stay'd there till polwort came ( which seemed unknown to gallowsheils ) then we returned to gallowsheils house , and after supper polwort whispered the e. of tarras and me , and enquired if we had seen mr. martin ; and we having told him we had , he enquired , if we were free to commun on the affair before gallowsheils , we told , as he thought fit , for we could trust him ; then he whispered gallonsheils , and ( as i understood afterwards ) asked if he was free to commune on matters of great secrecy and importance with that company , to which he assented , then we sat down closs together , and as i remember , polwort began the discourse : but since i am not able to follow exactly the method of our conference , or keep the very expressions used , or repeat all that was spoke , or to tell distinctly what was every mans part of the discourse ; i shall set down the heads , and most remarkable passages thereof , that i remember in some articles following ; 1. polwort signified that he was credibly informed ( but i do not remember he named his informer ) that the countrey party in england would draw to the fields shortly , as he heard before lambass , wherewith gallowsheils seem'd visibly surprized ; and being asked , if his heart fail'd him already , he said he did love it better truly to be walking in his own parks in peace , and quiet , than to be medling in such matters ; however he assured the company , that if there came anytroublesome world , he would joyn with them firmly ; and the e. of tarras said , he wondred to hear of any such resolution in england , for he took it for a principle amongst that party there , that they should make no stir in the kings life ( which the whole company owned to be their opinion and desire ) because that might strengthen the dukes interest ; and he suspected it was the project of the common-wealths men , with whom he believed , few scots gentlemen would joyn ; and he was almost perswaded the d. of monmouth would not concur in any rising during the kings life , to which it was answered by polwort , that he had indeed heard that principle had been generally agreed to , but it seem'd they found , they behoved either to do their business now , or lay aside hopes of doing it hereafter , which might be , that if the charter of london were let fall , they would not only lose all safe opportunity of digesting matters ; but a great part of their strength , and he heard all things were concerted mutually , betwixt monmouths friends and the heads of the commonwealth party ; and tho he heard monmouth was shy on that account , yet it was hop'd he would engage , for otherways he would be deserted by that party . 2. polwort told us the suppositions above-written as overtures concerted betwixt our friends at london , and the principal men of that party there ; so the e of tarras and i renewed our former answers also above-written , and maintained them with all our vigour , wherein gallowsheils joyned forwardly with us ; and polwort asserted , we went on very good grounds , and he was fully of our opinion , if things were entire but referr'd it to be considered , whether it were better to comply with some of these methods , tho not so proper and justifiable as were to be wish'd , then to disappoint the business totally , which might be of the best consequence to all the party , yet we did not condescend as i remember to undertake any of these methods . and there was a further argument adduced against the trysting above-written , viz. that it was talked there was a day appointed in england latly in shafisberry's time , which did not hold , so they were not to be relyed upon . 3. it was proposed to be considered what methods were most proper in the companies opinon for scotland to follow in case of englands rising , whereanent it was said , that all that could be expected or desired from scotland , was , that upon the certain news of englands being in the fields , those in the southern shires who would own that party , should presently rise , and ( how soon they could get as many conven'd as would be able to deal with stragling parties , or any sudden rising in the countrey ) march to joyn them , and that it would be fit these in the northern shires of england waited near the borders for such , and that they had officers trysted there to command , and that then it would be seasonable for argile to land in the west , and these parties on the borders might divert the forces till he had time to put himself in a posture . these things seem'd to be the sentiments of the whole company , but were not finally determined till the opinion of others who were to be communed with by polwort were known : and it was represented , there behoved not to be any wilful and obstinate adhering to our own thoughts of things , ( but an mutual condescendance to others concerned , ) otherwise it were not possible to bring a publick design to any good issue . 4. all the company seem'd to agree , that they should undertake nothing or move in that affair , till they had a full and certain account what england proposed , what methods they resolved to follow there , who were to be their heads , and that if they design'd any attempt on the kings person , or overturning monarchy , they would not be forward or clear to joyn : and it being here insinuated , that the most they could do ( at least for which there could be any plausible pretence to justifie ) was to draw together , and without any act of hostility , send addresses to his majesty for redress of the present abuses of the government , and for obtaining sufficient security against the hazard they apprehended to their religion and liberties . it was said by polwort that he was apt to think , that was their very design , for he had heard it was generally believed by that party in england , that if once they were in a body , the king would be prevailed with to quite the duke , to be tryed for popery , correspondence with france , and accession to the popish plot , and then if the king were once free from the influence of the dukes counsels , they were confident he might be moved to reform their abuses , and secure their religion and liberties for the future to their contentment . 5. it was resolved , that till we got the foresaid account from england . and were satisfied thereanent , and knew others here ( who were to be communed with ) their sentiements of what methods were most proper for us , in case we should undertake , we should not meddle further ; only it was left to the earl of tarras and me , if we thought fit to acquaint sir william scot younger with some of the matter of this conference overly , without taking notice of our informers , or such an conference ; and it was recommended to all to be enquiring ( at such as they had some trust in ) indirectly about the affection of our neigbours , and what arms there was amongst them ; that if we should get an satisfying account , and resolve to joyn , we might know where to seek men and arms suddenly : here it was said by polwort , as i think , that if the e. of tarras , torwoodlie , gallowsheils , and i once took horse , he thought the most part of the west end of tiviotdale and selkirk shire would soon come to us , especially , when they heard england was risen , then we trysted to meet there against midsummer fair , betwixt and which the forsaid account was expected , but in case it came to any of our hands sooner , we promised to advertise the rest , that we might meet , presently , if the case required ; this is the substance and sum of what passed at the forsaid conference , that i can now remember ; but i remember , i was likewise told these following particulars in privat , by polwart , or torwoodlie , ( which of them , i cannot distinctly tell ) the day of the forsaid conference , or within a short time after . 1. that polwart keeped the correspondence with our friends at london , i remember not positively of any of them that was named , to be on the entrigue there , except my lord melvil , sir john cochran , jerviswood , and commissar monro ( for i hardly knew any of the rest ) and as i think , commissar monro was call'd his correspondent there . 2. that the money to be advanced by the english partie to scotland was ready , when mr. martin came from london , and it was expected , that within few days after , it would be dispatched with some confident to holland , ( whither by bills , or in cash , i cannot say ) it was call'd ten thousand pound sterlin , and was to be imployed ( as i was told ) by that confident , at argyles sight , for buying arms , providing ships to transport them with argyle , to the west here , and such other charges . 3. that how soon our friends at london got notice of the safe arrival , of the confident forsaid , and all other things were finally concluded there ( which was expected would be about the middle of june , as i remember ) they would come home , and as they passed , would give them , or one of them , an particular account of all resolutions taken to be communicat to the rest , that it was not to be expected by letters , that behoved to be under figures , and dark expressions , and as i remember , they were , written as it were about the carolina business , or some houshold furniture , as i was told , for i never remember i saw any letter , either direct to london , or sent from it on that head . 4. i was told there was a sign , and a word agreed on by that party , so that men might know with whom they might use freedom , the word , as i remember was harmony , and the sign , the opening two buttons in the breast coat and shutting them presently ; this i communicat to the earl of tarras , but does not mind i ever saw it used , except when i visited park-hay here in town , about the end of june ; we discoursing a little freely , he asked if i had the word and sign of the carolina men , and i having given them , he said something to this purpose , that he was afraid that the carolina business did not go well , for there had been some of the managers expected here ( as i think he named jerviswood or commissar monro ) these eight days past , but there was none come , nor could he learn that any of their friends had heard from them for several posts . polwart , torwoodlie , and i met at gallowsheils , on midsummer fair , but i mind nothing passed but private whisperings . dated september 15. 1684. and subscrived thus , james murray . edinburgh , december 23. 1684. the deposition above-written being read to the said james murray of philiphaugh , in presence of the justices and assizers , he adheres thereto in all points upon oath . sic subscribitur , james murray . linlithgow , i. p. d. the said james murray further depons , that at their meeting at gallowsheils , it was resolved , that they should keep up their cess unpayed till their next meeting at midsummer , which was to be at gallowsheils , and should deal with all these they had influence upon to do the like , and that upon the supposition mentioned in his oath given in . it was spoke amongst them that the troupers horses should be seized upon , when they were grasing . and this is the truth , as he shall answer to god. sic subscribitur , james murray . linlithgow , i. p. d. hvgh scot of gallowsheils , aged 36. years , married , purged , &c. and sworn . depons , that the earl of tarras and philiphaugh did come to the deponents house , in may , 1683. and polwart came likewise there , where there were discourses and proposals , that if the english would rise in arms , their friends in the south shires should rise with them ; and that they should seize the horses belonging to the kings troops where they grased ; and the town of berwick , and the castle of stirling : and likewise it was there discoursed anent the late earl of argiles coming to invade scotland , but because of the uncertainty of sea voyages , there was not much stress laid upon it . depons , it was also proposed , that some of the south countrey whom they trusted in should be acquainted with it , and that endeavours should be used to learn what arms was in the countrey . depons , there was some such discourse there , as that the earl of tarras , philiphaugh , torwoodlie , polwart , and some others should draw to horse with the first when the rising should be in readiness , that it might be expected that the south parts of teviotdale and selkirk shire would joyn with them . and this is the truth , as he shall answer to god. sic subscribitur , hugh scot. linlithgow , i. p. d. his majesties advocat produc'd other depositions , emitted by gallowsheils before the lords of the secret committee , whereof the tenor follows . edinburgh , the 14 of september 1684. gallowsheils depons , that the e. of tarras and philiphaugh , being in his house in may 1683. discoursed of an intended rising in england , and of proposals made to scots men , to rise with them , and of london in particular , and that polwort was present at that meeting , and told he was sure the englishmen intended so , and that it was discoursed at that meeting amongst them , that it were fit to seize berwick and stirling ; and that it was talked amongst them of bringing the duke of york to tryal , and that the king would abandon him . sic subscribitur , hugh scot. perth , cancel . queensberry george mckenzie . jo. drummond . george mckenzie . edinburgh , october 29. 1684. sederunt . lord chancellour . lord secretary . lord president . lord advocat . the laird of gallowsheils , prisoner in the tolbuith of edinburgh , being call'd and examin'd upon oath , depons , that in the moneth of may 1683. the e. of tarras , hume of polwort elder , and laird of philiphaugh , came to the deponents house , himself being absent , at his coming home , they were speaking of the security of the protestant religion ; and of a party in england , who would secure , or seize the king or duke , and that if any should rise in arms to defend them , or to rescue the king and duke : there was another party who would rise in arms against them , it was proposed , that some countrey men should be spoken to , to try their resolutions , and that the resolutions , of england should be told them , to see if they would concur . but the deponent does not remember that this proposition was approven , or undertaken to be done by any present ; nor does he remember who manag'd the discourse . it was likewise propos'd , to seize the officers of state , especially the chancellour and thesaurer , and the said , sir john cochran was to come to the west from england , for advancement of the design ; and that the earl of argile was to land in the west highlands , and to raise that countrey . of these matters , all these who were present discoursed , as of an affair that they were agitating , and wherein themselves were particularly concerned , though at that time they did not conclude what their carriage should be ; the reason why the deponent cannot be more particulars is , because he was sometimes going out , and sometimes walking up and down the room ; and though the deponent cannot be positive of the very words ; yet he is positive they were either these words , or words to that purpose . sic subscribitur , hugh scot. perth cancellarius . edinburgh , december 23. 1684. hvgh scot of gallowsheils being solemnly sworn in presence of the justices and assize , adheres to the depositions within , and above-written in all points , sic subscribitur . hugh scot. linlithgow , i. p. d. his majesties advocat in fortification of the former probation , adduces the printed copy of mr. william carstares depositions , emitted before the officers of state , and other lords of privy council , and leaves the same to the assise , and uses it as an adminicle of probation ; for though it was capitulat , that he should not be made use of as a witness ; yet it was agreed , that the deposition should be published : and likewise produces the principal deposition signed by himself , and the said lords . the lords , justice-general , justice-clerk , and commissioners of justiciary , admit the paper produced as an adminicle , and refers the import thereof to the inquest , and ordains the printed paper as it is collationed , to be taken in , and considered by the inquest . sir william paterson , and mr. colin mckenzie , clerks of his majesties privy council being interrogat , if they heard mr. william carstares own the depositions read , depons they saw and heard him swear , and own the same upon oath , and they collationed the printed copie with the original formerly , and now they heard it collationed , sic subscribitur , will. paterson . colin mckenzie . the deposition of mr. william carstares , when he was examined before the lords of secret committee , given in by him , and renewed upon oath ; upon the 22. of december 1684. in presence of the lords of his majesties privy council . edinburgh castle , september 8. 1684. mr. william carstares being examined upon oath , conform to the condescention given in by him , and on the terms therein-mentioned ; depons , that about november , or december 1682. james stuart , brother to the laird of cultness , wrot a letter to him from holland , importing , that if any considerable sum of money could be procur'd from england , that something of importance might be done in scotland : the which letter , the deponent had an inclination to inform shepherd in abb-church-lane , merchant in london of ; but before he could do it , he wrot to mr. stuart above-nam'd to know from him , if he might do it ; and mr. stuart having consented , he communicat the said letter to mr. shepherd , who told the deponent that he would communicat the contents of it to some persons in england ; but did at that time name no body , as the deponent thinks : sometime thereafter , mr. shepherd told the deponent , that he had communicat the contents of the letter above-named , to colonel sidney , and that colonel danvers was present , and told the deponent , that colonel sidney was averse from imploying the late earl of argile , or medling with him , judging him a man too much affected to the royal family , and inclin'd to the present church-government ; yet mr. shepherd being put upon it by the deponent , still urg'd , that one might be sent to the earl of argile ; but as mr. shepherd told him , he was suspected upon the account of his urging so much ; yet afterwards he press'd , without the deponents knowledge , that the deponent being to go to holland however , might have some commission to the earl of argile , which he having inform'd the deponent of , the deponent told him , that he himself would not be concern'd , but if they would ▪ send another , he would introduce him ; but nothing of this was done : upon which the deponent went over , without any commission from any body , to holland , never meeting with james stuart above-named : he was introduc'd to the earl of argile , with whom he had never before conversed , and did there discourse what had past betwixt mr. shepherd and him ; and particularly , about remitting of money to the said earl from england ; of which the said mr. stuart had written to the deponent , namely of 30000 pounds sterling ; and of the raising of 1000 horse and dragoons ; and the securing the castle of edinburgh , as a matter of the greatest importance : the method of doing this was proposed by the deponent , to be one hour , or thereby , after the relieving of the guards : but the earl did not relish this proposition , as dangerous ; and that the castles would fall of consequence , after the work abroad was done . james stuart was of the deponents opinion for seizing the castle , because it would secure edinburgh , the magazines and arms ; as to the 1000 horse and dragoons , my lord argile was of opinion , that without them nothing was to be done ; and that if that number were rais'd in england to the said earl , he would come into scotland with them ; and that there being so few horse and dragoons to meet them , he judg'd he might get the country without trouble , having such a standing body for their friends to rendezvous to ; and the said earl said he could show the deponent the conventient places for landing , if he understood ; and as the deponent remembers , where the ships could attend . the deponent remembers not the names of the places . the deponent spoke to the lord stairs ; but cannot be positive that he nam'd the affair to him , but found him shy : but the earl of argile told him , he thought stairs might be gain'd to them : and that the earl of lowdoun being a man of good reason , and disobliged , would have great influence upon the countrey , and recommended the deponent to major holms with whom the deponent had some acquaintance before , and had brought over a letter from him to the earl of argyle ; but the deponent had not then communicate any thing to the said holms , james steuart laid down a way of correspondence by cyphers and false names , and sent them over to holms , and the deponent , for their use ( which cyphers and names , are now in the hands of his majesties officers , as the deponent supposes , ) and did desire the deponent earnestly to propose the 30000. pound sterling abovenamed to the party in england , and did not propose any less ; for as the earl told the deponent , he had particularly calculate the expence for arms , ammunition , &c. but james steuart said , that if some less could be had , the earl would content himself , if better might not be ; but the earl always said , that there was nothing to be done without the body of horse and dragoons above-mentioned . during the time of the deponent his abode in holland , tho he had several letters from shepard , yet there was no satisfactory account , till some time after the deponent parted from the earl of argyle , and was making for a ship at rotterdam to transport himself to england . james steuart wrot to him that there was hopes of the money . the next day after the deponent came to england , he met with sir john cochran , who , with commissar monro , and jerviswood , was at london before he came over ; and depons , that he knows not the account of their coming , more then for the perfecting the transaction about carolina : and having acquainted sir john cochran with the earls demands of the 30000 pound sterling and the 1000. horse and dragoons , sir john carried him to the lord russel , to whom the deponent proposed the affair , but being an absolute stranger to the deponent , had no return from him at that time ; but afterwards having met him accidently at mr. shepards house , where he the lord russel had come to speak to shepard about the money above-named , as mr. shepard told the deponent . the deponent ( when they were done speaking ) desired to speak to the lord russel , which the lord russel did , and having reiterate the former proposition for 30000. pound sterling , and the 1000. horse and dragoons , he the lord russel told the deponent , they could not get so much raised at the time , but if they had 10000. pound to begin , that would draw people in , and when they were once in , they would soon be brought to more ; butas for the 1000. horse and dragoons , he could say nothing at the present , for that behoved to be concerted upon the borders . the deponent made the same proposal to mr. ferguson , who was much concerned in the affair , and zealous for the promoving of it . this mr. ferguson had in october or november before , as the deponent remembers in a conversation with the deponent in cheapside , or the street somewhere thereabout , said , that for the saving of innocent blood , it would be necessary to cut off a few , insinuating the king and duke , but cannot be positive whether he named them or not , to which the deponent said , that 's work for our wild people in scotland , my conscience does not serve me for such things ; after which the deponent had never any particular discourse with ferguson , as to that matter ; but as to the other affair , ferguson told the deponent that he was doing what he could to get it effectuate , as particularly that he spoke to one major wildman who is not of the deponent his acquaintance . ferguson blamed always sidney , as driving designs of his own . the deponent met twice or thrice with the lord melvil , sir john cochran , jerviswood , commissar monro , the two cessnocks , mongomery of landshaw , and one mr. veitch , where they discoursed of money to be sent to argyle , in order to the carrying on the affair , and tho he cannot be positive the affair was named , yet it was understood by himself , and as he conceives by all present , to be for rising in arms , for rectifying the government . commissary monro , lord melvil , and the two cessnocks were against medling with the english , because they judged them men that would talk , and would not do , but were more inclined to do something by themselves , if it could be done . the lord melvil thought every thing hazardous , and therefore the deponent cannot say he was positive in any thing , but was most inclined to have the duke of monmouth to head them in scotland , of which no particular method was laid down . jerviswood , the deponent , and mr. veitch , were for taking money at one of these meetings . it was resolved , that mr. martin , late clerk to the justice court should be sent to scotland , to desire their friends to hinder the countrey from rising , or taking rash resolutions upon the account of the council , till they should see ▪ how matters went in england . the said martin did go at the charges of the gentlemen of the meeting , and was directed to the laird of polwart and torwoodlie , who sent back word that it would not be found so easie a matter to get the gentrie of scotland to concur : but afterwards in a letter to commissar monro , polwart wrote that the countrey was readier to concur then they had imagined , or something to that purpose . the deponent , as above-said , having brought over a key from holland , to serve himself and major holms : he remembers not that ever he had an axact copy of it , but that sometimes the one , sometimes the other keeped it , and so it chanced to be in his custody when a letter from the earl of argyle came to major holms , intimating , that he would joyn with the duke of monmouth , and follow his measures , or obey his directions . this mr. veitch thought fit to communicate to the duke of monmouth , and for the understanding of it was brought to the deponent , and he gave the key to mr. veitch , who as the deponent , was informed , was to give it and the letter to mr. ferguson , and he to shew it to the duke of monmouth ; but what was done in it , the deponent knows not . the deponent heard the design of killing the king and duke , from mr. shepard , who told the deponent some were full upon it . the deponent heard that aron smith was sent by those in england to call sir john cochran , on the account of carolina , but that he does not know aron smith , nor any more of that matter , not being concerned it it . shepard named young hamden frequently as concerned in these matters . signed at edinburgh castle , the 8. of september , 1684. and renewed the 18 of the same month. william carstares . perth cancell . i. p. d. edinburgh castle 18 september 1684. mr. william carstares being again examined , adheres to his former deposition , in all the parts of it , and depones he knows of no correspondence betwixt scotland and england , except by martin before named ; for those gentlemen to whom he was sent , were left to follow their own methods . veitch sometimes , as the deponent remembers , stayed sometimes an nicolson , stabler's house , at london-wall ; sometimes with one widow hardcastle in more-fields . the deponent did communicate the design on foot to doctor owen , mr. griffil , and mr. meed , at stepney , who all concurred in the promoting of it , and were desirous it should take effect ; and to one mr. freth in the temple , councellor at law , who said that he would see what he could do in reference to the money , but there having gone a report , that there was no money , to be raised , he did nothing in it ; nor does the deponent think him any more concerned in the affair . nelthrop frequently spoke to the deponent of the money to be sent to argyle , whether it was got or not , but the deponent used no freedom with him in the affair . goodenough did insinuate once , that the lords were not inclined to the thing , and that before , they would see what they could do in the city . the deponent saw mr. ferguson , and mr. rumsay , lurking after the plot broke out , before the proclamation , having gone to ferguson , in the back of bishopsgate-street , at some new building , whether he was directed by jerviswood , who was desirous to know how things went. rumsay was not of the deponent his acquaintance before , but they knew as little of the matter as the deponent . this is what the deponent remembers , and if any thing come to his memory , he is to deliver it in betwixt the first of october . and this is the truth , as he shall answer to god. william carstares perth , cancell . i. p. d. at edinburgh , the 22. of december , 1684. these foregoing depositions , subscribed by mr. william carstares deponent , and by the lord chancellor , were acknowledged on oath by the said mr. william carstares , to be his true depositions ; and that the subscriptions were his , in presence of us undersubscribers . william carstares . perth cancell . queensberry . athol . david falconer . george mckenzie , his majesties advocat for further probation , adduces the examinations of mr , shepard , taken before sir leolin jenkins secretary of state for england , with the information or deposition of mr. zachary bourn , relating to the plot , sign'd by him and secretary jenkins , of which depositions the tenors follow . the examination of thomas shepard of london merchant , taken upon oath before the right honourable sir leolin jenkins knight , his majesties paincipal secretary of state , the 23. day of december . 1683. the deponent saith , that ferguson told him on , or about the moneth of april last , that an insurrection was intended both in england and in scotland , and that for the settling that affair betwixt the two nations , mr. baillie , mr. monro , sir john cochran , sir hugh and sir george campbels , with some others ( whose names this deponent heard not ) were come to london . that the deponent had some acquaintance with mr. baillie , mr. monro , and sir john cochran , and none at all with sir hugh and sir george campbels ; that mr. baillie told the deponent , that the earl of argile demanded thirty thousand pounds of the english to capacitat him to begin the business effectually in scotland , and that he ( the said baillie likewise told the deponent , that having concerted things with the lord russel and others , he the said baillie found an impossibility of raising that sum ; after which the said baillie had acquainted the deponent , that they were certainly promised ten thousand pounds , which sum was agreed to be payed into the deponents hands , in order to be remitted into holland , for the providing of arms ; and that the said baillie told the deponent at divers times , that the said sum , or at least one half of it would be payed such a day , and such a day ; and sometimes asked the deponent , if he had received any part of the said money , to which the deponent replyed that he had not , and that he the deponent scarce thought any would be payed . and the deponent also saith , that having had some little conversation with sir john cochran , he remembers well , that both of them did sometimes lament the delays in not paying in the money , and said , that although the said ten thousand pounds were pay'd in , they , the said sir john cochran and mr. monro , fear ▪ d it would be too little ; and this deponent further sayeth not , as to any new matter . ▪ but the deponent being asked , to explain what he thought was meant by the words above-written , viz. to capacitat him ( the earl of argile ) to begin the business , he , this deponent sayeth , that he did understand by the word business , an insurrection in scotland . sic subscribitur , thomas shepard . jurat coram . l. jenkins . the information of zachary bourn of london , brewer , taken upon oath , the tenth day of december 1683. before the right honourable mr. secretary jenkins . the informant deposeth , and sayeth , that mr. baillie set up one night , if not two , with mr. ferguson , and went several times in the evening with him to the duke of monmouth , and the chief mannagers of the conspiracy ; that ferguson told the deponent , that he the said baillie was the chief man for the scots , next to the lord argile ; that the said baillie did sit up the greatest part of one night , with the said ferguson ; at which time this deponent believeth they were busie in preparing the intended declaration , which the deponent has the more reason to believe , in as much as the said ferguson did go about to show him the deponent , such a paper , wherein the said ferguson was hindered by the coming up stairs of some person , to speak with the said ferguson , that the said ferguson told the deponent , that the main business of the said baillie , in meeting the saids conspirators , was in order to get from them the ten thousand pounds , promised for the buying of arms , for the insurrection intended in scotland . that the deponent saw mr. william carstares come often to the lodgings of the said ferguson ; but that the said ferguson never told the deponent of any discourse held by him with the said carstares : and further this deponent saith not ▪ sic subscribitur , zac. bourn . jurat coram . l. jenkins . his majesties advocate likewise produced several warrands , and papers to prove , that those depositions are sign'd by sir leolin jenkins . his majesties advocate also produced the books of adjournal , bearing mr. william veitch to be a forefault traitor , and the act of parliament whereby the forefaulture is ratified , his majesties advocat's speech to the inquest . my lords and gentlemen , you have now a conspiracy against his mejesties sacred person , and royal government , so fully discover'd , that they must want reason as well as loyalty , who do not believe the discovery ; and they must be enemies to sincerity , as well as to the king , who do not acknowledge it . beside , that the councils of all the three nations , thought the proof sufficient , for indicting a general thanksgiving through all these nations ; and that the judges of england thought the same strong enough to infer forefaulture of life and estate , against some of all ranks there ; you have a discovery made here from the late e. of argiles own letters , and the confession of his own emissaries , the two surest proofs that law ever invented , or the nature of humane affairs can allow ; and i am this day to add to all this , a new sort of proofs in the process that i now lead against this pannal , from the confessions of noblemen and gentlemen , who have been engaged in this wicked conspiracy ; and who from a sense of their guilt , are content freely to depose against their nearest relation , and their most intimate friend , in which having thus cleared to you , that there was really such a conspiracy , i shall , in the next place , proceed to prove this pannals accession to it . it cannot be imagined , that we would willingly involve our countrey men in it , without a conviction stronger then our kindness to scotland ; nor did his majesties servants accuse this pannal , without the opinion of the ablest lawyers of the kingdom , who did , with them concur , to think that there was not the least occasion of doubting left , to the most indifferent inqueist of his guilt , after they had seriously , and with reflection , read over , and pondered the probation now laid before you . the person accused of accession to this cryme is the ring-leader of all those , who in this kingdom concurr'd with the english conspirators , as you may see by the testimonies of all who have deposed ; and it was indeed fit and just to begin with the most guilty , so that if he be not convicted , there should no man be punished for this conspiracie ; all the noise we have heard of it , is but a cheat , the kings judges have been murderers , all the witnesses have been knaves , and such as dyed for it have been martyrs . the accession charged on the pannal , is not an accidental escape , nor is it proved by witnesses , who can be suspected of unkindnes to his person , or his cause , for it is a long tract of a continued design , gone about with the greatest deliberation and concern imaginable , and proved by his nearest relations , and persons so deeply engadged in that cause , ( for which he suffers , ) that they were content with him to venture their lives and fortunes in that quarrel . he is not accused of a crime that can amount only to a single murder , though that be a dreadful cryme , but a rebellion , which was to draw upon us a civil war , that murder of murders , in which hundreths of thousands were to fall ; and to crown all , he was to 〈◊〉 , and to be the 〈…〉 of a rebellion , in which one of the first steps was to kill his sacred majestie , and his royal brother ; and one of the chief witnesses which i have led against him , is bourn , which bourn confessed that he was to kill the king , and who confesses the pannal sat up several nights with ferguson , the other contriver of the kings murder , and so familiar was he with him , that bourn depons , that the said pannal had been with ferguson , at the drawing of the manifesto , whereby he was not only to be an actor , but to be the justifier of that horrid villanie : and therefore bourns depons , that ferguson , ( the best judge in that case ) looked upon him as the chief man , next to argyle ; but because no man is presumed to go to such a hight , without previous inclination and motives , i shall to convince you , that this gentleman was very capable of all that was lybelled against him , remember you , that he is nephew , and son in law to the late waristoun , bred up in his family and under his tutory ; about the time of this plot it was undenyably known , and is now sufficiently proved , by two present witnesses , the earl of tarras and commissar monro , that he thought himself desperat , knowing himself to be guilty of treason by blackwoods case ; and as it 's presumable , that a man that 's guilty of one point of treason , will commit another ; so when a man is desperat as to his life and fortune , he is capable of any thing ; he was likewise animated to commit this cryme , by the intelligence he had that there was a plot in england , carryed on by men of so great parts , fortune and influence , and by the too probable hopes , that they would get all the western shires to joyn with them here , because of the common guilt , in which they had engadged themselves , by their late extravagances , they made an account of an assistance of twenty thousand men ; and by philiphaughs deposition , that these gentlemen expected the concurse of the southern-shires ; and thus , i am to prove to you a cryme , which is in it self , so probable and liklie , that it should need little probation , tho i have adduced for your conviction sufficient evidences , albeit the cryme were in it self very unliklie . the crymes which i hope i have proved , are , that jerviswood the pannal transacted for money to the late earl of argyl , a declared traitor . 2. that he designed to raise a rebellion . 3. that he intercommuned with the earl of argyl and mr. veitch declared traitors . 4. that he was present , where it was treated either that argyle should have money from the english and assistance from scotland , or that a rebellion should be raised , and that he did not reveal the samine ; and all these being sound relevant separation it is sufficient for me to have proved any one of them . and if a gentleman was lately sound guilty of high-treason , by the opinion of all the lords of session , for not revealing , that sir john cochran sought fifty pound sterling from him , though he refused the same , and tho he believed , it was sought for a charitable subsistance to , preserve him from starving ; what deserves this pannal , who sought thirty thousand pound sterling , to buy him arms , to invade his native countrey ? that jerviswood was designing to carry on a rebellion , or at least was accessory , or ( as our law terms it ) was art and part thereof , is clearly prov'd ; but that in this occult and hidden crime , which uses not to be prov'd by clear witnesses ; i may lead you thorow all the steps of the probation , which like the links of a chain , hang upon one another . you will be pleased to consider , that 1. it is proved that he desired a blind commission to go to england , not to manage the assairs of the carolina company , as he confess'd , but to push the people of england to do something for themselves , because they did only talk and not do ; and what he would have them to do , appears too clearly , because he tells the earl of tarras it was probable , that if the king were briskly put to it by the parliament of england , he would consent to exclude the duke from the succession : here is not only a treasonable design , ( though a design be sufficient in treason ) but here are express acts of treason proved , viz. the treating with the earl of tarras upon this design , the settling a correspondence with him for the prosecution of it , and the writing letters from london to him concerning it , and the sending down mr. martin to compleat it by a general rising ; as he design'd to push on the english , so he prosecutes closely 〈◊〉 design upon all occasions . on the road he complains cunningly and bitterly , that our lives , laws and liberties , and the protestant religion were in danger , the stile and method of all such as design to rebel ; after he arrives at london , he engages the conspirators there to assist the late earl of argile , a declar'd traitor , with money to buy arms ; this was indeed to push the english to do the most dangerous things by the most dangerous man , and in the most dangerous methods . he enters also in a strict correspondence with ferguson the contriver , with shepard the thesaurer , and carstares the chaplain of the conspiracy . alexander monro another present witness , proves that he argued with him , that it was necessary to give argile money expressly for carrying on the rebellion , and that they did meet at jerviswoods chamber where this was spoke of , and from which mr. robert martin was sent to their friends in scotland to know what they would do ; and though the silly caution was , that they sent him to prevent their rising , yet a man must renounce common sense , not to see that the design was to incite them to rebellion , and to prevent only their doing any thing in this rebellious design , by which the , might lose themselves in a too early and abortive insurrection here , till things were ready in england . for , 1. this commission was given him in a place , and by a company who had been themselves treating immediatly before of sending money to the late e. of argile to buy arms , and certainly those arms were to be bought for men , and not for a magazine . 2. they were treating how many men could be raised in scotland . 3. carstares deposition bears , that martin was sent to hinder rash resolutions , till they saw how matters went in england , and the return to their embassy bore , that it would not be an easie matter to get the gentry of scotland to concur ; but afterwards better hopes of their rising was given , which could not have been , if the true commission had not been to raise scotland . 4. that sir john cochran made a speech to that purpose , is expressly prov'd , and that jerviswood spoke to the same purpose , is prov'd by a necessary consequence ; for since it 's prov'd that he spoke , and that he did not speak against it , it must necessarily follow that he spoke for it , though the witness is so cautious , that he cannot condescend upon the words now after so long a time ; and it is against sense to think , that jerviswood who in privat press'd the same so much upon commissar monro , and who was the deacon-conveener here , and who , as mr. martin their envoy declared , was the person who was to be sent for the arms , should not himself have been the most forward man in that design , but above all exitus acta probat , this commissioner , ( who being a meer servant , durst not have proposed any thing from himself , being a mean person , and being one , who , as the earl of tarras deposes , would say nothing , but what was in his paper : ) does expresly declare , that he came from jerviswood and others ; and in the meeting with him , a rebellion is actually formed , and it is resolved , they should seize the king's officers of state , garisons , and forces , and that they should joyn with the late e. of argyle , and put their own forces in a condition to joyn with these forces that were to come from england , and they gave a sign , and a word , which uses only to be done in actual war ; so here is treason clearly prov'd , by two present witnesses , from the first design to it's last perfection . nor can it be objected , that they are not concurring witnesses , but testes singulares upon separat acts , for in reiterable crimes , witnesses deposing upon different acts ; do prove if the deeds tend to the same end ; as for instance , if one witnes should depose , that they saw a traitor sit in a council of war , in one place , and in another place , they saw him in arms , or that one saw him assist at a proclamation in one place , and saw him in arms in another ; or that one saw him writ a treasonable paper , and another saw him use it ; these witnesses are still considered as contestes , or concurring witnesses , and ten or twelve inqueists have so found , and upon their verdict , rebells have been lately hang'd . the learn'd judges of england being all met together did expresly find , that one witnes proving , that a. b. said , that he was going to buy a knife to kill the king , and another deposing , that he saw him buy a knife , without telling for what , that these two witnesses were contestes , and prov'd sufficiently the cryme of treason , yet there the one witnes , prov'd only a remote design , and the other an act , which was indifferent of it's own nature , and became only treasonable by the connexion ; but no witnesses ever deposed upon things so coherent , and so connected together , as these do , for they depose still upon the same person , carrying on the same design of a rebellion ; as to which , in one place , he is exciting his own nephew , and telling him his resolutions , and settling a correspondence with him , at another time , he presses commissar monro to the same rebellion . at a third , he holds a meeting at his own chamber , and speaks concerning it , and from that meeting , he sends a trusty , who formes the rebellion . besides all this , tho two witnesses be sufficient , i have adduced mr. william carstares chief conspirator , and who choos'd rather to suffer violent torture , than to disclose it , he likewise deposes upon all these steps , and connects them together , and this his deposition is twice reiterated , upon oath , after much premeditation . and i likewise adduce two depositions taken upon oath , by sir leolin jenkins , who was impower'd by the law of england , and at the command of the king , and the council of england , upon a letter from his majesties officers of state here , in which deposition , shepard , one of the witnesses , deposes , that baillie came frequently to him , and desired him to advance the money , and lamented the delays , and that there was so little to be advanced ; and who should be better believed then one who was his own trustie , and a person who was able to advance so great a sum ; bourn , another of the witnesses , deposes , that ferguson told him , that the pannal spoke frequently to him concerning the same money , and that he sat up several nights with ferguson upon the said conspiracy ; and who should be better believed then fergusons confident , and one who was so far trusted in the whole affair , that he was to take away that sacred life , which heaven has preserv'd by so many miracles . against these three depositions , you have heard it objected , that non testimonia sed testes probant , especially by our law , in which , by an express act of parliament , no probation is to be led , but in presence of the assise and pannal . to which it is answered , that these depositions are not meer testimonies ; for i call a testimony , a voluntar declaration , emitted without an oath , and a judge ; but these depositions are taken under the awe of an oath , and by the direction of a judge . 2. shepard was confronted with the pannal himself , and he had nothing to say against him ; whereas the great thing that can be objected against testimonies ( and by our statute especially ) is that if the party who emits the testimony had been confronted with the pannal ; the impression of seeing a person that was to die , by his deposition , would have made him afraid to depose laxly ; and the pannal likewise might , by proposing interrogators and questions , have cleared himself , and satisfi'd the judges in many things depos'd against him : but so it is that mr. shepard having been confronted with the pannal , before the king himself , who is as far above other judges , in his reason and justice , as he is in his power and authority ; he deposes that the pannal was the chief mannager of this conspiracy , next to argile , and that he was so passionate to have this money to buy arms , that he lamented the delays ; and can it be imagined that mr. shepard whom he trusted with his life and his fourtune , and whom all their party trusted with their cash , would have depos'd any thing against him that was not true , especially when he knew that what he was to depose , was to take away his life and his fortune ; or that if the pannal had been innocent , he would not when he was confronted with mr. shepard , before the king himself , have roar'd against mr. shepard , if he had not been conscious to his own guilt . there is a surprise in innocence , which makes the innocent exclaim , and it inspires men with a courage , which enables them to confound those who depose falsly against them ; and in what occasion could either of these have appear'd , more than in this , wherein this gentleman was charg'd to have conspir'd with the greatest of rascals , against the best of princes ; and that too in presence of the prince himself , against whom he had conspir'd ; but guilt stupifies indeed , and it did never more than in this gentlemans case , whose silence was a more convincing witness than mr. shepard could be . mr. carstares likewise knew when he was to depone , that his deposition was to be used against jerviswood , and he stood more in awe of his love to his friend , than of the fear of the torture , and hazarded rather to die for jerviswood , than that jerviswood should die by him : how can it then be imagin'd , that if this man had seen jerviswood in his tryal , it would have altered his deposition ; or that this kindness , which we all admir'd in him would have suffer'd him to forget any thing in his deposition , which might have been advantageous in the least to his friend : and they understand ill this hight of friendship , who think that it would not have been more nice and careful , than any advocate could have been : and if castares had forgot at one time , would he not have supplyed it at another ; but especially at this last time , when he knew his friend was already brought upon his tryal : and that this renew'd testimony was yet a further confirmation of what was said against him ; and albeit the kings servants were forced to engage , that carstares himself should not be made use of as a witness against jerviswood ; yet i think this kind scrupulosity in carstares for jerviswood , should convince you more than twenty suspect , nay than even indifferent witnesses ; nor can it be imagined , that the one of these witnesses ; would not have been as much afraid of god , and his oath at london , as at edinburgh ; and the other in the council chamber in the forenoon , as in the justice-court in the afternoon . 3. the statute founded on , does not discharge the producing of testimonies otherways than after the jury is incloss'd ; for then indeed they might be dangerous , because the party could not object against them : but since the statute only discharges to produce writ , or witnesses , after the jury is inclos'd ; it seems clearly to insinuat , that they ought to prove when they are produc'd in presence of the party himself , as now they are . and though the civil law did not allow their judges to believe testimonies , because they were confin'd to observe strict law ; yet it does not from that follow ; that our juries , whom the law allows to be a law to themselves , and to be confin'd by no rule , but their conscience , may not trust intirely to the depositions of witnesses , though not taken before themselves , when they know that the witnesses , by whom , and the judges , before whom these depositions were emited , are persons beyond all suspition , as in our case . but yet for all this , i produce these testimonies , as adminicles here only to connect the depositions of the present witnesses , and not to be equivalent to witnesses in this legal process ; albeit , as to ▪ the conviction of mankind , they are stronger than any ordinary witnesses . when you , my lords and gentlemen , remember that it is not the revenge of a privat party , that accuses in this case ; and that even in privat crimes , such as forgery , or the murder of children , &c. many juries here have proceeded upon meer presumptions , and that even solomon himself ▪ founded his illustrious decision , approv'd by god almighty , upon the presum'd assertion of a mother ; i hope ye will think two friends deposing , as present witnesses , adminiculated and connected by the depositions of others , though absent ; should beget in you an intire belief , especially against a pannal , who has been always known to incline this way , and who , though he was desired in the tolbooth to vindicate himself from those crimes , would not say any thing in his own defence , and though he offers to clear himself of his accession to the kings murder , yet sayes nothing to clear himself from the conspiracy entered into with the late earl of argile , for invading his native countrey , which is all that i here charge upon him , and which he inclines to justifie , as a necessary mean for redressing grievances ; i must therefore remember you , that an inquest of very worthy gentlemen did find rathillet guilty , tho there was but one witness led against him , because when he was put to it , he did not deny his accession : and two rogues were found guilty in the late circuit at glascow , for having murdered a gentleman of the guard , though no man saw them kill him ; but the murderers having been pursued , they run to the place out of which the pannals then accused were taken , none having seen the face of the runaweys ; and the pannals being accus'd : and press'd to deny the accession , shun'd to disown the guilt , but desired it might be proved against them . this may convince you that there are proofs which are stronger then witnesses ; and i am sure that there were never more proving witnesses then in this case , nor were the depositions of witnesses ever more strongly adminiculated . remember the danger likewise of emboldening conspiracies against the kings sacred life , and of encouraging a civil war , wherein your selves and your posterity may bleed , by making the least difficulty to find a man guilty by the strongest proofs that ever were adduced in so latent a crime as a conspiracy is . and i do justly conclude , that whoever denys that a conspiracy can be thus prov'd , does let all the world see that he inclines that conspiracies should be encouraged and allow'd . our age is so far from needing such encouragements , that on the other hand in this , as in all other crimes , because the guilt grows frequent and dangerous , the probation should therefore be made the more easie , tho in this case the king needs as little desire your favour , as fear your justice . and i have insisted so much upon this probation , rather to convince the world of the conspiracy , than you that this conspirator is guilty . thereafter the lords ordained the assize to inclose , and return their verdict to morrow by nine a clock in the morning . edinburgh , december 24. 1684. the said day , the persons who past upon the assie of mr. robert baillie of jerviswood , return'd their verdict in presence of the saids lords ; whereof the tenor follows . the assize , all in one voice , finds the crimes of art and part in the conspiracy , and plot libelled ; and of concealing , and not revealing the same , clearly proven against mr. robert baillie the pannal , in respect of the depositions of witnesses and adminicles adduced . sic subscribitur , strathmore chancellor . after opening and reading of the which verdict of assyze ▪ the lords , justice general , justice clerk , and commissioners of justiciary ▪ therefore , by the mouth of james johnstoun dempster of court , decerned and adjudged the said mr. robert baillie of jerviswood to be taken to the mercat cross of edinburgh , this twentie fourth day of december instant , betwixt two and four a clock in the afternoon , and there to be hanged on a gibbet till he be dead , and his head to be cut off , and his body to be quartered in four , and his head to be assixt on the nether-bow of edinburgh , and one of his quarters to be assixt on the tolbooth of jedburgh , another on the tolbooth of lanerk , a third on the tolbooth of air , and a fourth on the tolbooth of glasgow ; and ordains his name , fame , memory , and honours to be extinct , his blood to be tainted , and his arms to be riven forth , and delate out of the books of arms , so that his posterity may never have place , nor be able hereafter to bruik , or joyse any honours , offices , titles or dignities , within this realm in time coming ; and to have forfaulted , ammitted and tint all and sundry his lands , heritages , tacks , steadings , rooms , possessions , goods and gear whatsoever , pertaining to him , to our soveraign lords use , to remain perpetually with his highness , in property , which was pronunced for doom . sic subscribitur . linlithgow . james foulis , j. lockhart , david balfour , roger hog , al. seton , p. lyon. extracted forth of the books of adjournal , by me mr. thomas gordon , clerk to the justice court , sic subscribitur . tho. gordon . in pursuance of which sentence , his majesties heraulds , and pursevants , with their coats display'd ( after sound of trumpets , ) did publickly , in face of the court ( conform to the custom , in the sentences of treason ) in his majesties name and authority , cancel , tear and destroy the said mr. robert baillie his arms , threw them in his face , trampl'd them under foot ; and ordain'd his arms to be expunged out of the books of herauldry , his posterity to be ignoble , and never to injoy honour and dignity in time coming : and thereafter went to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and solemnly tore and cancelled the said mr. robert baillie his arms , and affixed the famine on the said mercat-cross reversed , with this inscription ; the arms of mr. robert baillie late of jerviswood traitor . finis notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a50863-e120 nota , that the earl of tarras depon'd nothing against jerviswood but what the other two witnesses depon'd against himself before the tryal , and upon which thereafter they being renew'd , the earl was forfaulted ; so that there could be no ground of suspicion from , his circumstances . an account of the present persecution of the church in scotland in several letters. 1690 approx. 184 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 39 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-05 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a51353 wing m2722 estc r6062 12986866 ocm 12986866 96227 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a51353) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 96227) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 393:2) an account of the present persecution of the church in scotland in several letters. morer, thomas, 1651-1715. sage, john, 1652-1711. monro, alexander, d. 1715? [5], 68 p. printed for s. cook, london : 1690. consists of four letters, the first by thomas morer, the second and third by john sage, and the fourth by alexander monro. cf. halkett & laing (2nd ed.). reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng episcopal church in scotland. scotland -church history -17th century. scotland -church history -sources. 2002-12 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-02 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2003-02 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an account of the present persecution of the church in scotland , in several letters . london : printed for s. cook. 1690. good christian reader , by the help of a very little natural logick , thou mayst easily observe how far some mens specious pretences are out-done by their actions ; their principles ( to which they ought to stand in the opinion of their great master hobbs ) exceeded and bafled by their practice , since those very persons who lately addressed for liberty of conscience , in words full of flattery , do now usurp , tyrannize over others , and deprive them not only of their freedom in religious concernments , but of their possessions ; and ( that no barbarity may be omitted , ) even of their precious lives , only for adhering to that holy doctrine which was once delivered to the saints , and often established by sundry laws in that kingdom . and it will be no hard matter , after the perusal of the following sheets , to perceive the vast difference between an english and a scotch persecution , ( as some call it ) how gently and orderly the church of england proceeded against the dissenters , in comparison of the kirk ; who by their clubs and batoons ; have come near to , if not outdone the merciless fury of french dragooning . and here it may be worthy remark , how dangerous it is for the best constituted established government to connive at , not to say encourage , the profane vulgar in their riots . a number of wild beasts , let loose , have as much conduct , less malice , and cannot do half the mischief : the noise of the waves , the raging of the sea , may as soon be stilled , as the madness of the people ; it is a work only for a power almighty : that many headed beast ought to be carefully looked after , and watched . but further , methinks , it is also very clear by the subsequent tract , that in some parts of the world there are a company of resolute christians , that dare lay down their lives for the truth of those doctrines which they have formerly taught ; and that in those places there may be a large history written , not only of the doctrine , but real practice of passive obedience , in the sufferings of those men , who contrary to the new maxims of government , pay obedience where they can have no protection . and now christian good reader , if thou shalt be convinced of the verity of these foregoing deductions , by the subsequent undenyable truths ; i have but one thing to request from thee , and that is no more than what thy profession will oblige and command thee : i mean to put on bowels of mercy and compassion to the poor , afflicted , distressed , to help them as much as thou art able with thy substance , and to extend that charity which is already gone over the alps , and hath assisted the protestants in france , hungary , and piedmont , to thy neighbouring brethren , and of thy communion in scotland : and if thy circumstances are too mean to assist them with thy purse , be sure to let them have thy charity for their sufferings , in thy hearty prayers for a happy and sudden deliverance from those , who so cruelly , and despightfully use them . farewel . the first letter . my lord , some instance of my duty to your lordship may be justly expected , though at this distance , and none i think more seasonable and proper from this place , than the present condition of the church of scotland ; which though your lordship may more fully understand from some other better able to give it , yet that consideration is no apology for my silence , in so important an affair ; and this use at least will be made of my attempt , to testifie to your lordship , how ready i shall be to give an account of other transactions not so well known at london . the church of scotland is at this time under the claw of an inraged lion ; episcopacy abolished , and its revenues alienated , the clergy routed , some by a form of sentence , and others by violence and popular fury ; their persons and families abused , their houses ransack'd , their gowns torn to pieces , with many other injuries and indignities done them , which i forbear naming , that i may not martyr your lordships patience by the bare recital of them . my post in the army as it has carried me unto many places of this kingdom , so it has given me as many opportunities to see and lament their condition . the occasion of all these disasters , is the prevailing strength of the cameronian party , a faction here taking its name from one cameron formerly their leader , and who was slain in his rebellion : they are a sort of rigid presbyterians , or rather fifth monarchy-men ; valuing neither k. william nor k. iames , any further , than as these princes happen to please them ; some designing heads in the council and parliament , have made use of those mens hands to bring their ends about , whose weakness otherways was too discernable . from these disorders they represent abroad the inclination of the people to the presbyterian government , and alledge the popular zeal ; when it is highly suspected they are only tumults of their own making , otherways upon the complaints and petitions of injur'd persons , redress might be obtained , which however they are so far from , that after such remonstrances they fare the worse , and have this aggravation to their miseries ; that they are unpitied by those who ought to protect them : nay now at last the government it self is become a party against them ; and where before good neighbourhood and well affected persons , screned their ministers from the dissenters barbarity ; now they suffer by a form of law , acts of council , and are themselves reputed malignants , and suffer as a discontented factious people . and yet the church party , both for number and quality was predominant in this nation : the nobles and gentry are generally episcopal , and so the people especially northward , where to my own knowledge they are so well affected , that it would be no hard task to bring them , cultui & ritibus cum anglis communibus subscribere , as buchanan saith the ancient scots did when they stood in fear of the french , and desired england's assistance against them ; my frequent reading of our service , and preaching in their churches to the auditories satisfaction , the caresses of the gentry , and respect of the ordinary people , whenever i met them , infers so much , and plainly discovers that they neither abhorred me nor my way of religion . at perth i was readily admitted into the church and pulpit , though the magistrates refused the same favor to the lord cardross a privy counsellor , and the lord argyle in behalf of two cameronian preachers ; and though the former of these , forced his way thither upon one sunday , yet the lord provost was better provided against another , and took the same method , i mean the strength of the city to oppose and baffle the latter ; and when it was urg'd by both these lords , that that liberty they desired , was granted to me some sundays before , the magistrates excus'd themselves with an order to that purpose from sir iohn lanier . even at edinburgh it self , the faction was so weak , that they were forced to send privately to the west for assistance , before they durst attempt any violence against the regular clergy : but the college of justice being informed of their coming , armed themselves and their friends , and so were secured both they and their ministers , until an order was obtained for laying down their arms again ; indeed at glasgow the faction is stronger , and this town may be said to be the warmest nest of the cameronians , and yet to my knowledge , the most considerable , and persons of the best quality are very well affected , and would prevail , were it not for the assistance of the mountainers which the malignants , have sometimes brought privately into the town to assault and overawe the others . but then it is a wonder the adversary succeeded so well , and that they have got to such an ascendancy as to ruin the church ; if it be supposed that the church was so strong to have acted in her own safety , yet it is not to be much admir'd at , if this be considered : that in the beginning of this revolution ; the episcopal party in scotland , not knowing at that time how far things would go , judg'd it safest for them to keep at a distance , and having a deep impression of their allegiance to king iames , they appeared a little too tender and unconcerned in the election of members for the convention . by which means the discontented and presbyterian party , as they are in themselves always very active , so upon this occasion they became more numerous , and carryed it against those few gentlemen , that shewed themselves for the church and old constitution . the first instance and discovery of their new strength , was their carrying the vote for the committee about controverted elections ; a point not obtained with difficulty , as the convention was then composed , and the consequence was , that no episcopal gentlemen should be admitted in case of a competition , let the number of electors in shire or borough be never so unequal : nay many were allowed to be members of that convention , who were uncapable to sit by the most ancient laws of the kingdom , either in convention or parliament ; and especially such as were not infeoft in their estates , of which instances might be given . the episcopal party finding this , most of the nobility withdrew themselves both from convention and parliament , and if my lord dundee had lived ( who was a great patron of this clergy ) none doubts but that he had changed the whole state of affairs in this nation : and having mentioned that gentlemans name , i insert one word concerning the troubles of which he seemed to be the whole occasion in this country , but did no more i think than what a great many others would have done , on the same reason of self preservation . it appears then , that in the beginning he sat in the convention , and intended so to do , till he heard of a design on foot , to assassinate his person , he complained of this to the convention , and desired their protection : but no notice was taken of it , he repeated his complaints , and offered to prove the attempt ; and declared , that without the assistance of their authority , he held it not safe to attend any longer . but all this to no purpose ; the only answer he had , was , that his non-attendance would be no great loss to them ; hereupon he withdrew himself to the mountains , and being a person of great spirit and good conduct , he was resolved not only to defend himself , but call them also to an account , whom he found so much incensed and set against him , and it is generally believed here , he would have gone no further . — but enough of this . the only means , my lord , to remedy all this is the dissolution of this parliament , and then it is not to be doubted , but the episcopal party will shew their own strength , and concern themselves more in a new election , then they did in that before ; for their eyes are now sufficiently opened , and they see , though somewhat late , their former omission and mistake ; but withal see no possibility to retrieve themselves , if this parliament continue . indeed they wonder , that his majesty can be very fond of keeping it a foot , since they have taken away so eminent a branch of his prerogative , as to deny him a sovereign interest here , in what is debatable in parliament , they wonder that his majesty is not sensible , how little they value the promoting of his service , that notwithstanding the great necessity of his affairs , they have not thought fit to give him a penny : they wonder how the presbytery of the church can sute monarchy in the state , and that one ruler should give incouragement to the setting up of many ; they wonder how it comes to pass , that the clergy of scotland should be by a form of law turn'd out of their benefices , for not praying for king william and queen mary in terminis , when the intruders themselves , as i have observed , refuse to do it in their usurped pulpits , and it is equally strange , that even these gentlemen that have complyed in that particular , and in reading the proclamation , are notwithstanding dismist their charges by some other libel , or in case any be wanting to set the rabble to work to out them . so that seeing no obedience can secure them , but that they are destin'd for sacrifices to those wild people ; this is the reason , why as yet they have made no address to the king , nor think themselves encouraged to do it , since their inveterate and implacable enemies have his majesties ears so much , as to make such an attempt of no effect to them : and , my lord , they also wonder , that the church of england endeavours not to interpose , and ●●ve the king to pity them in their present calamity ; since the violent party in scotland will certainly inflame the discontented in england , for they are sworn by their covenant , to reform england upon their model ; and to purge the neighbour-land from popery and superstition . my lord , i have had the honour and happiness to converse with the clergy here of the first form , and i find them very reverend , and as far as i can judge very learned and judicious gentlemen , they are exceedingly wronged by the faction , when they are called ignorant and scandalous ; it 's an unjust calumny to say they would have betrayed the laws , which were made for the defence and security of the protestant religion ; when all the bishops of scotland , two excepted , were unanimous against the repeal of the penal laws against the papists in my lord murray's parliament 1685. and as great is the popular mistake concerning the bishops revenues , which they will have to be one arbitrary stipend from the crown , which makes them precarious and subservient to the princes will ; whereas their incomes are as independent in that respect , as the bishopricks of england , and have their several localities , as they are here called , or tythes and mannors to support them : these and the like objections against them and the regular clergy , are only inventions to countenance some mens resolutions right or wrong to ruin them ; and indeed that they are so resolved not only against the bishops , but all the episcopal clergy , is evident from hence , that notwithstanding they have those qualifications , which are even now requisite for the exercise of their ministry , as praying for the king , &c. — yet some other objection is rais'd against them , and this now is a very influencing one , that if all the rest of the parish be church people , and well disposed to their minister , and but one single dissenter among them , it is a sufficient reason to eject and deprive him , how industrious soever the others are to continue him with them ; as in the instances of the ministers of mousegard , collingtoune , kirkneutoun , and kirklistoune , not to mention several hundreds , that have been routed by the rabble , and yet are never restor'd to the purpose , nor have opportunity to shew whether they will comply or no. my lord , if the perfect knowledge of these things has made some impression on me , it 's no wonder upon the account of common christianity . i am sorry for the distress of this church , and in compassion to it , i wish i were able to contribute any ways to the relief and recovery of it . this is all i can do in order to that , to give your lordship the best account i can of her present circumstances ; and what hopes she has in prospect upon the dissolution of this parliament . what interest your lordship has with their majesties , is a thing well understood ; here i humbly recommend the matter to your lordship ; i beg pardon for this interruption given your lordship , by one who desires at all times to shew himself , though he may fail in the manner of it . my lord , your lordships most obedient . curate and servant glasgow octob. 12. — 89. post-script . we are hastening to the sea-side , to be transported into ireland , an expedition no way suited to a man of my constitution , but i submit to my lot and humbly intreat your lordship to consider me . the second letter . sir , i received yours of the date , &c. wherein as you express a mighty concern for the distress'd episcopal clergy within this kingdom ; so you prescribe me a task , which will not be so easily perform'd as ye imagine : you tell me , strange representations are made of them by their enemies , and disseminated through the whole kingdom of england ; you therefore require me to give you a just and true account of their present state and persecutions ; assuring me , it is not so much to satisfie your curiosity , as to enable you for their vindication . this i say is a very hard task ; for to digest an account of that nature to purpose ( in my opinion ) would require the diligence of a great head , the expense of much time , and a considerable volume ; for 't is hardly possible to set their circumstances in their due light , without deducing their affairs from the very reformation , and dipping in matters of state all alongst , as well as of ecclesiastical concern ; so closely have the two interests bee ▪ still linked together in this kingdom : without that , strangers will never understand sufficiently , either our constitution , or the grounds on which the clergy have been obliged to go in many transactions : neither will they be able to perceive how unjust and calumnious the representations be , which are made by their adversaries ; nor how partial they are in their accounts , nor how carefully they take all things by the wrong handle ; industriously presenting the dark side of things to the world , where there is any intricacy ; and many times blackening even that which is truly fair and beautiful , when it makes for their purpose . such a work as that , i am hopeful , ye may see ere long ; for i have good reason to believe , some abler pen than mine will be imployed that way by and by : and therefore , i was once inclined to have referred you intirely to it : but calling to mind again , what earnestness ye express , to have if it were but some overly notice of our case ; and withal considering , that herein you may be gratified without prejudice to that more full and large account : and likewise , that perhaps a present account ( though never so short and rude ) may have its proper usefulness ; i have prevailed with my self , to cast together what follows . i will use as few words as i can , and perhaps i shall not be careful to observe exact order and method ; but i hope your goodness will pardon that , upon my promising to tell you nothing , but what can be made appear to be true , beyond all contradiction . i take my rise from the death of that great prince king charles ii. he left this church of scotland in more peaceful condition , then it had been of a long time before ; it was united to a very desirable degree : generally all scotchmen were of one communion ; for those of the popish perswasion were scarcely one to 500. the quakers were not one to 1000. the presbyterians a good time before , were divided into two sects , one ( but by far the smaller ) was against all indulgences given by the king ; the other had taken the liberty , which he had several times granted , but was then retracted . this party had for the most part returned to the churches unity ; their preachers were generally become our hearers , attended duely our publick assemblies , and many participated of the same sacraments with us . there were no separate meetings kept ( at least publickly , ) but very rarely , and only by that other party , now commonly known by the name of cameronians , from one mr. richard cameron , who ( being sometimes school-master at falkland , and turn'd out of that imployment for insufficiency ) betook himself to the trade of field preaching , became wonderfully admired of the giddy multitude , was killed at last in open rebellion , at airds-moss , and so commenced martyr anno 1680. this is that party with whom these sharp methods were taken , which are complain'd of in the p. of o. his declaration for the kingdom of scotland , and hugely aggravated by the paper called the scotch inquisition . but had his highness known their practices ; ( how they ( by their manifesto's ) rejected k. c. as their sovereign , made many declarations of war against him , excommunicated him , and ( when they had opportunity ) murthered those , who ( in their stations according to their duty , ) any ways supported his government , especially bishops , ministers , and soldiers ; pretending it was done in a just war , and they had commission from king iesus for it , &c. ) i doubt he would never have made the treatment they met with a grievance : and if the world knew it ( as perhaps it may , sooner or later ) certainly it would have but a very mean opinion of the author of that most scurrilous pamphlet : i only said their practices , for all presbyterians ( at lest in scotland , as will appear in the sequele ) have really the same principles : the only substantial difference is , the cameronians are the more ingenuous party ; the rest the more subtle . these own their principles when they think it seasonable ; those , ( like the honester men ) upon all occasions ; by these cameronians ( i say ) conventicles were only then kept ; and they were condemned for it by the rest of the presbyterians , who at that time ( in pretence at least ) had fallen in love with moderation . when king iames came to the throne , monmouth in england , and argyle in scotland ( you know ) raised a formidable rebellion . argyle gave out his manifesto's , and made many specious pretences , &c. it appeared he was earnest to have had the presbyterians joyn with him ; but his conditions did not please the cameronians ; and the rest continued still as formerly in the kings and churches peace . this made us all hopeful , they had once resolved seriously never to divide any more , and weaken the protestant interest , by rending the church in pieces : but it seems they went then on other principles . they found argyle's attempt desperate , and their party weak , and they had smarted lately for enterprises of that nature ; therefore they found it convenient to wait a sitter opportunity . when that rebellion was quasht , king iames , being a roman catholick , turn'd serious to have some ease granted to those of his own perswasion ; so the business of the penal statutes came to be manag'd : for this end , it was resolved the parliament should meet , and before it sate , several persons of greatest note within the kingdom were called up to london ; the duke of hamilton , sir george lockart ( the greatest lawyer in the kingdom ) then president of the session , &c. their errand was to concert matters , and make way for the king's inclinations in that particular : amongst the rest , the arch-bishop of st. andrews , and the then bishop of edinburgh , now archbishop of glasgow : they made a condescension too , which afterwards was very much talked of ; but i can assure you sir , it was nothing so odious in it self , as it was represented to be : i have seen it and considered it , it did not go the length ( by far ) of pensionary fagels letter ; and to tell the truth freely , so far as i can comprehend things , they had great reason to go so far as they went ; and i doubt not it shall be sometimes published to the world , and fully vindicated . but i go on . the parliament met ; all the members were qualified according to law , they took the test , &c. but the court-designs prevailed not ; the penal statutes were still kept on foot by that episcopal parliament ( pardon the phrase , 't is ordinary in this kingdom ) and some of the bishops too were active in the matter . this , to let you see whether the episcopal party in this kingdom can be said to be inclin'd for popery . this disappointment irritated his majesty ; wherefore , the next great step was , the suspending , stopping , and disabling all the laws against dissenters , and granting a toleration to christians of all perswasions . this was done by publick proclamation ; the first edition was dated feb. 12. 1686 / 7. the presbyterians , as much as any men , stood amaz'd at the dispensing power at first , and seem'd to see clearly the ill consequences of a breach in that juncture . this themselves frankly confess'd at the beginning ; and i know it was therefore once very near to a general resolution amongst them , never to take the benefit of it : this all know , that for some months after the publication of it , no considerable breach was made ; they still continued in the same communion with us . ye will easily believe ( i think ) this grated the popish party ; for they saw evidently , if the unity of our church was not broken , their interests would advance but very slowly ; so pains were taken with the presbyterians to make them separate . and because perhaps they might scruple at the oath contained in the first edition of the toleration , a second edition , without that oath , was obtained and published . whether the arguments which were made use of to engage them , prevailed with them ; or by that time , the second edition came out , ( which was iune 28. 1687. ) they had considered the strength of their party , and found they would be able to make a figure ; or , they had then got secret instructions from holland , to comply with the dispensing power , in subserviency to the ensuing revolution ( for which i know there be very strong presumptions ) i shall not readily determine . this is certain , they closed presently with the second edition . 't is true , they pretended the terms in the first were too grievous ; and that considerable mitigations were made in the second ; so they could not any longer be disobedient to the divine providence , ( you cannot quarrel the expression , when ye know that according to their divinity , providential occurrences make a considerable part of the rule of faith and manners ) nor neglect so blest an opportunity : although 't is evident to any who compares the two proclamations , that there are no material alterations . 't is certain the second was design'd to carry on the same interest with the first ; and it had altogether as much of the dispensing power in it : both alike required , that whoever would have the benefit of the toleration , should own the king 's absolute dispensing power , by which it was granted ; only the oath contained in the first , was left out in the second : but even in the first it was not absolutely required ; for the proclamation says no more , but that , instead of all former oaths required by law , that only should be taken and sworn , by all his majesties subjects , or such of them , as he or his privy council should require so to do : and moreover it was intirely dispensed with by the king's letter to his council , dated march 31. anno 1687. so that it can never be pretended as a reason , why they did not separate for three months hereafter . thus the great schism began amongst us ; the toleration was it's parent , and that was the child of the dispensing power . but before i proceed to shew how it was carried on , let me remark one thing : it is , whatever now they may pretend , it was no ways any principle of conscience , which made them separate from us , on that occasion . my reasons are these ; they had lived in communion with us , for some years before the first edition of the toleration : they continued so , even for some months after that edition , viz. till they got the second ; at least very few broke off in that interim . while they lived in communion with us , they acknowledged their consciences allowed them ; indeed , what sort of christians had they been , if it had not been so ? many ( i can find their names if i be put to it ) thanked god , that they were reconciled to us , and frequently protested all the world should never again engage them in the schism . nay some of the ablest of their preachers , ( within a very few weeks before they embraced the toleration ) said to some of the regular clergy , they should never do it ; they were resolved never to preach more in their life time . further yet , some of them , even after the second edition , continued for a long time resolved never to engage in it ; and it cost their brethren much pains , before they could overcome that resolution : yea they tell us , to this very day , if they were deprived of their liberty , they could return to us again . can there be clearer evidences for any thing , than these are , that it was not conscience , but some other interest , that involved them in such a general apostacy from one of the greatest concerns of christianity , the unity of the church ? indeed , how could ever conscience be pretended in the matter ? we had not the least sinful condition in our communion : we still maintain'd what themselves , the same articles of faith ; we worshipp'd god after the same manner : there is no imaginable difference between them and us , in the administration of sacraments ; if the orders of the church of england be valid , so are ours . all that was ever controverted amongst us , was the point of church government ; 't is true we use the lord's prayer and the doxology , and commonly require the creed in baptism , which they do not ; if these can justifie a separation , we are guilty : but if they can , let the world judge . and now these things being so , i would further ask any man this question ; whether , when they make such clamours now concerning their by-past sufferings , it can be said , that ever they suffered for conscience sake ? this by the way . so was the schism circumstantiate , as i have said , and being once begun , it was wonderful to see how soon it came to a considerable height ; within a few weeks , meeting-houses were erected in many places ; especially in the western shires , ( the great nests of fanaticism ) and the churches were drain'd ; altar was set up against altar , and the pretended presbyter against the bishop . all arts were used to increase their party , and render the regular incumbents contemptible ; people were not left to their own choice , to joyn or not joyn with them : but all methods of compulsion , except down-right force were taken to engage them ; if any man went to church ( whither all had gone very lately ) he was forthwith out of favour with the whole gang ; if he was an husbandman , his hap was good if his neighbours cattle were not fed amongst his corns in the night time ; if he was a tradesman , no imployment for him ; if a gentleman of an estate ( a laird as we call them ) his own tenants would abuse him to his face , and threaten him twenty violences : in short , nothing was left untryed , that had the least probability of weakning our hands or strengthening their own . on the other hand , never a more thankful people to his majesty . addresses you know , were then much in fashion , and none more forward than they ; witness , that famous one entituled , to the king 's most excellent majesty , the humble address of the presbyterian ministers , in his majesties kingdom of scotland ; and at the foot , subscribed in our names , and in the names of the rest of the brethren of our persuasion at their desire , in which address , they his majesties most loyal subjects , from the deep sense they have of his majesties gracious and surprizing favour , in not only putting a stop to their long sad sufferings for nonconformity , but granting them the liberty , of the publick and peaceable exercise of their ministerial function ; as they bless the great god , who put it in his royal heart , so they do withal find themselves bound in duty to offer their most humble and hearty thanks to his majesty . then they make vast protestations in behalf of their loyalty , his majesty is but just to them when he believes them loyal : and by the help of god they will so demean themselves , as his majesty may find cause rather to enlarge than diminish his favours towards them ; and they humbly beseech , that all who promote any disloyal principles or practices ( as they do disown them ) may be looked upon as none of theirs whatsoever name they may assume to themselves . and indeed for a good time , ( even till they had made a good party , and the p. of o. was coming ) they continued moderate and thankful to a miracle ; for tho by vertue of that same toleration , swarms of popish priests were let loose through the whole kingdom , infinitely active to gain converts , compassing sea and land to make one proselyte , yet seldom so much as one word against popery in any meeting-house : whether it was that they thought it indiscreet , to fall on their brethren who stood upon the same bottom with themselves ; or they had receiv'd it amongst their injunctions from the court party , not to meddle with these of the roman church ; or they did not understand the controversies ( which seems the most probable , ) and so found themselves obliged in prudence to let them alone ; i am not concerned to determine . 't is certain it was so de facto ( for once to make use hereof that term ) and i have twenty times heard it confess'd by their constant auditors . nay to this very day ( though now they may make bold with popery , without the hazard of giving the present court a displeasure , and it might be expected they should do it , for very obvious reasons ) they very rarely meddle with it . their great work is to batter down antichristian prelacy and malignancy , prelacy has been the cause of all the calamities this nation has groaned under , god knows for how many years ; king iesus has been banished , the gospel has not been preached in this land these 27 years by-past . upon my word i 'm serious sir , there 's nothing more ordinary in their sermons then such cant ; and though their texts be commonly taken from the old testament , yet they are all pat and home to the purpose : i could easily give you a great many good notes of their prayers , as well as their sermons ; and condescend upon the particular persons , &c. but perhaps ye may see that sometimes done by it self . while in these conventicles , popery was so kindly forborn ; in our churches these controversies were our most frequent subjects ; especially in these places where priests were setting up . this is well known all over the kingdom ; some suffered , and many were terribly threatned for it , i could give you part of their names and histories if it were needful . such was the broken state of our church from iuly 87. till october 88 , when the late great revolution began to cast up ; and his highness the prince of orange was said to be coming to britain , to deliver us from popery and slavery , and restore our religion , laws and liberties : you know that was an extraordinary enterprise ; britain had not been invaded by any foreign prince , for an hundred years before . therefore it was expedient his highness should forecast , for as kindly a reception as was possible ; to this end he gave out his declarations for both kingdoms . it seems that either his highness , has been diffident of the regular clergy in scotland , and dreaded they would not so readily embark with him , as the presbyterians were likely to do ; or he has had none , or very few of the scotch nation then about him , but such as were of that persuasion . for the declaration for the kingdom of scotland , we found to be purely presbyterian : i 'm confident doctor burnet did not pen it ; otherwise the act of glasgow had not been put into it as a grievance : he knows very well upon what reasons it was made , and if he pleases , can easily justifie it ; neither had the clergy of the west ( for they must be the men ) been so generally pronounced scandalous and ignorant : he was better acquainted with many of them than so ; i had rather think , the doctor had never seen that declaration until it was published . but what though he had ? and for reasons of state , thought fit to let it go as it was ? 't is no great matter . as i said , it was down-right presbyterian , and presag'd no good to us : but god be thanked , it found us generally in good preparation for suffering persecution , for we had cast up our accounts before , and foreseen that possibly we might be expos'd to tryals : though we had not much reflected , that it was to be by the hands of protestants . we were confirmed further yet in our suspicions , when we found that those who were engaged in the presbyterian interests , were flocking up to london , and making the most numerous , as well as active appearances about his highness's court ; that they only had his ear , and seem'd to be the chief persons , who ( upon his majesties retirement ) transferr'd the government of this kingdom upon him . by these steps , we began to see further too into the politicks of our brethren , and upon what designs they had carried on the schism so vigorously the year before ; yet we never dreaded that such horrid barbarities would be our lot , as afterwards were put in execution . and so i am introduced to the main part of my work , which is to give you a brief account , a taste as it were of our present sufferings ; which were they represented fully , and in all their proper colours , perhaps they would not obtain belief among strangers : nor will i make it my work at present to do it ; both for that i intend brevity , and am unwilling to give to the world such a disgust at my native country , as the barbarities we met with , fully laid open , must needs produce in all those , who have any sense either of christianity or humanity . in short then : it pleased almighty god ( to whose providence it becomes us humbly to submit in all conditions ) to permit that we should have a tryal of the cross ; whereof god forbid we should ever be ashamed ; and , for that end , to give us up to the malice of our enemies , that they might thrust us into the furnace . for carrying on which glorious work , this was their opportunity ; when the certain accounts came of the prince of oranges's resolutions , to come into england , all our standing forces were called thither : so that this kingdom was left destitute of such means as were necessary to secure the peace , if any disturbance should happen to arise amongst us . when that prince landed , king iames being deserted by his army , and soon after disown'd by his subjects ; was put upon the necessity of leaving britain : and here in scotland his council very soon dissolv'd , of its own accord , so that in effect the nation was in a manner without government , by whose fault i am not now to inquire . upon this his majesties sudden abdication , and voluntary dissolution of his council , our brethren found it seasonable for them to turn serious with us . but it was expedient to project how their game might be successful , before they began to play it : therefore a stratagem was contrived ; a general massacre of protestants was pretended , and alledged to be intended by the papists . but how to be effectual ? seeing their numbers were so very few , especially on the south-side of the forth , which was to be the chief scene of the tragedy ? for that , this salvo was at hand : so many thousands of irish-men were landed in galloway , had already burnt the towns of kirkhudbright all to ashes , and put all to the edge of the sword , young and old , male and female , only three or four persons ( like iob's nuncio's ) had escaped ; and these savages were posting hard , to be over the whole kingdom , &c. this story flew at the rate of a miracle ; for within twenty four hours or so , it was spread every where through the greater half of the kingdom . no body doubts now , but people were appointed at several posts , to transmit it every where at that same time , for it run like lightning ; and wherever it went , it was so confidently asserted to be true , that he was forthwith a papist , and upon the plot who disbeliev'd it . at first we all wondered what it might mean ; but it was not long before we learned by the effects , what was the politick ; for immediatly in the western shires ( where the fiction was first propagated ) tumultuary rabbles knotted , and went about , searching for arms , every body's house whom they suspected as disaffected to their interests : the pretext was , that the country might be in a posture of defence against the irish ; but the real purpose was that all might be made naked , who were inclinable to retard them , in the prosecution of their designs upon the clergy . especially they were sure , no minister should have sword or pistol ( as indeed few had any ) or any other weapon , that might be useful for his defence , if an attempt should be made on him . when they had thus made their preparations for the work ( and you would wonder to hear how speedily , and yet how dexterously it was done ) they fell frankly to it . it was on christmas day ( that day which once brought good tidings of great joy to all people ; ) that day which once was celebrated by the court of heaven it self , and whereon they sung , glory to god in the highest , on earth peace , and good will towards men : that day which the whole christian church ever since has solemnized , for the greatest mercy that ever was shewn to sinful mortals ; that day i say it was ( to the eternal honour of all , especially scotch , presbyterians ) on which they began the tragedy ; for so were matters concerted amongst them , that upon that same very day , different parties started out in different places , and fell upon the ministers : particularly about five or six of the clock at night , mr. gabriel russel minister at govean , was assaulted by a number of fellows ( most of them , as i am told , his own parishioners , to whom he had sometimes done considerable kindnesses ) in his own house : they beat his wife , his daughter , and himself too , so inhumanely , that it had almost endangered his life ; carried off the poor's box and other utensils of the church , and threatned peremptorily if he should ever offer after that to preach there , he might assure himself of more severe treatment . that same night about eleven of the clock , another party came to the dwelling-house of mr. finnie minister at cathcart ; he was from home himself : the season was not only then naturally cold , but a most vehement frost prevail'd ; yet ( behold their humanity ! ) they thrust his wife , with four or five small children out of doors , about midnight ; threw out all his furniture , and ( till after more than half an hours intreaty ) would not suffer the poor gentlewoman with her tender babes , to have lodging that night , so much as in the stable , nor a fire of her own walls to keep the young ones from the severities of the weather . the weak tender children , ( and no wonder , when expos'd to such a rigour ) almost all sick'ned thereafter : but whether any of them dyed , i know not . that same night mr. buyd minister at carmunnock , his family was as rudely treated ; and in many other places , it was solemnized after the same manner . but i am not at this time , to give you a particular inventory of all the incredible barbarities , which were either on that , or many subsequent days committed : that would make this letter hugely swell beyond its primary design ; for what work would it require to represent particularly how they took mr. robert bell minister at kilmarnock , from his chamber on a very frosty day , kept him four or five hours bare-headed , exposed to the cold ; caused his own sexton to tear his gown in pieces from his shoulders ; took the english liturgy from his pocket , and burnt it with much ceremony in the market-place ; calling him papist , and it the mass-book in english , &c. how they came upon mr. simpson minister at gastown , took him out bare-headed also , caused his sexton carry his morning gown , to the most publick place of the village , ( for he had put his canonical gowns and cassicks out of the way , and it was necessary a gown should be torn ; that was an essential formality , ) where they caused him to put it on , and then rent it in pieces . how thereafter they carried him to a river , forced him to wade through it , at one of the deepest places , then turn'd his face northward , saying to him , get you gone to your own country , and see for your life you never look southward or westward again . how they carried mr. miln minister at cawdir , his gown , being from home himself , in procession to the church-yard , made a long harangue , concerning their zeal for god's glory and the good old cause , after that a long prayer , then rent the gown ; and concluded the solemnity with a volly of shot , &c. could there be greater dishonour done to iesus christ and his holy religion . how they smote mr. white minister at balingtre , on the face with the butt of a musket , for speaking to them with his cap on , as they worded it , though it was in his own house , and the fellow that said and did so , was a mean pedler . how they thrust at his heart with a naked sword ; so that both his cloaths and skin were pierced , though , such was the good providence of god , what through the throng that was in the room , and what through the distance the miscreant stood at , who made the thrust , the wound was not dangerous ? and how they beat his wife most rudely , though at that time she was so big with child , that she had past her reckning . how in a mighty storm of frost and snow , they took mr. brown minister at kells in galloway , then residing at newtoun , carried him to the mercat place about four of the clock in the morning , tyed him to a cart , set his face to the weather , &c. in which posture he had certainly died , if a poor woman , whose heart it seems was made of softer mettal , had not cast some cloaths about him . how they came on mr. francis ross minister at renfrew , and threw out his wife the third day after she was brought to bed , together with her tender infant . how they treated mr. guthrie minister at keir , in a stormy rainy day , turning all his family and furniture out at doors , although three of his children were dangerously sick , one of a feaver , the other two of the small pox ; and how two of them dyed upon that treatment . how by their rudenesses to mr. skinner minister at daly , they first frighted his daughter , a young gentlewoman aged about twenty , into a feaver ; and then returning after five or six days , while she was in the rage of it , how they turn'd her out of her bed , pretending to search for arms , though it was very well known the whole country over , the good mans genius lay never that way , and so disturbed her , that she dyed raving , amongst her last words repeating these over and over , o! these wicked men will murther my father . how they contrived and carryed on the tumults at edinburgh and glasgow . what letters were sent to some ; what citations in name of the rabble to others , commanding them to remove from their churches and manses under the highest penalties . what work would it require , i say , to digest all these and the like instances fully and particularly ? perhaps the world may sometimes see it done : but it is enough for my purpose at present , to tell you , that these were their common methods , and by such means , in a very short time , more than two hundred were thrust from their churches and dwellings . do not think i am imposing on you ; what i have affirmed can be so attested , that greater moral evidence can be had for nothing . when ye have read thus far , and when your surprise and first horrors are over , and , as your temper is , you fall a pondering what i have told you ; i am apt to apprehend , a great many things may offer themselves to your consideration ; such is your humanity , that , i know , you will be casting about for topicks and apologies to alleviate this heavy charge , i am giving in against our persecutors . what ? ( so may you think ) certainly no applications have been made to those in power ; for what person in the world bearing the name of a magistrate , would not have found himself obliged in credit and honour , as well as duty , to fall on speedy remedies for stopping such an impetuous current of bare-faced wickedness ? or , at most , they have been but pure rabble , the scum and refuse of the people , who acted these barbarities ; and they have been so numerous , so fierce and uncontrolable at that time , that authority has been too weak for them ; for it is not possible that any of the nobility or gentry , and much less , that any of the presbyterian preachers , could allow of , or have an hand in such villanies : or , if these in power were acquainted with such things , and yet gave no protection : and if the rabble had encouragement from any persons of better quality ; you can hardly miss to conclude , that these clergy-men who were so treated , have been the most profligate rogues in the world ; wretches , who deserv'd to be swept from off the face of the earth , without pity , and with all the solemnities of disgrace and contempt ; for what else can be imagined to justifie such proceedings ? thus ( i say ) perhaps , sir , you may reason with your self , when you are making your reflections on what i have already told you : be pleased therefore to have a little patience , and consider what i am to tell you further . no sooner did these outrages begin , than such applications were made , as you your self ( i 'm sure ) will judge sufficient . such of the peers of the kingdom , as were privy counsellors , and had not gone for london were addressed , but they could bring us no relief : our next work therefore was to send up private accounts to london , as we had interest or acquaintance , with those of our nobility and gentry who were there . but our enemies had well foreseen all that , and had their instruments ready to run down all private letters , as the blackest lies and forgeries ; and we were called all the infamous things that could be : our design was to work mischief , and breed disturbances . we were popishly affected ; and the politick of such reports was to hinder the settlement of the peace , and establishment of the government : in a word , we were mortal enemies to the prince of orange , and all his glorious designs for securing the protestant religion , &c. they received letters to the quite contrary ; sure they were , their correspondents were men well acquainted with whatever passed ; and besides , they were men of conscience and undoubted integrity : they would not conceal the truth , far less would they write lies and falshoods ; yet their accounts bore daily , that there were no such persecutions of ministers , no tumults , no rabbles , &c. the kingdom was in a most profound peace , and every man had all imaginable security , especially the clergy . with such bold affirmations as these , they perswaded his highness , on whom was transferred the government of this kingdom , that all our accounts were most false and villanous , and he ought not to believe them ; only by them he might judge what a pack we were , &c. this we were advertised of by some of our friends : wherefore , to give his highness convincing evidence , if it was possible , the brethren of the seven presbyteries , ( that you may not be scandalized at the word , be pleased to know that according to the constitution of our church , the presbyters of the same diocess , are commonly combined into several consistories or fraternities : these consistories meet usually once in three or four weeks for discipline ; lesser matters they dispatch , and the greater they prepare for their bishop ; and these consistories or fraternities with us , are commonly called presbyteries ) of glasgow , hamilton , lanerk , air , irwiny , paisley and dumbartoun , on whom the persecution came first , and lay most heavily , communicated counsels , and concluded to send up one of their number , well instructed , to acquaint his highness with their circumstances . accordingly dr. scott dean of glasgow was sent to london : he had with him , an humble petition for protection , to be presented to his highness , and a commission to himself to present it ; each of them subscribed by twelve or fourteen hands : besides these two papers , that the evidence might be yet more unquestionable , he had likewise particular accounts of the injuries and violences done to the brethren of these several presbyteries , from their respective deputies , who met with power to send him , subscribed with their hands ; and wherein they undertook to make good what they represented , upon their highest perils . what more could be required to make faith ? to make the truth of our complaints appear beyond all exception ? yet when the doctor came to london with these instructions , the good party continued to have the forehead to contradict all , and run him down with noise and clamour . however , his highness was convinced then , of the western barbarities , and seem'd willing to contribute for the protection of the clergy : so a declaration was ordered for the preservation of the peace of this kingdom , dated feb. 6. 1688 / 9. and , though dr. scott was earnest to have had some clauses put in it , which had been very proper and useful , but could not obtain their insertion , it cannot be denyed , but it seem'd favourable to the regular clergy . but would ye know what success it had ? you may learn that from the tumult , which happened at glasgow after it's publication . upon the protection promised , and the keeping of the peace commanded by that declaration , at the desire of many people of the best quality within the city , upon the 17 th of feb. the parson of glasgow ventured to the pulpit ; but was forced to escape for his life before sermon was ended ; for instantly , upon notice given that sermon was in the cathedral , ( by the instigation of their preachers as i am told ) all the meeting-houses emptied , and forthwith went to arms , came to the church , discharged several guns through the windows , then made open the doors by force , &c. in summ , many were wounded , several gentlewomen were stript almost naked , and most rudely treated ; but you must expect the full account of this from some other hand . so likewise master iames litle minister at trailslat , upon the authority of the same declaration , resolved to have repossess'd himself of his pulpit ; but was exercised to purpose by a rabble of females , who tore not only his coat , but his very shirt from him ; and ( such was their modesty ) had well nigh done the like with his breeches , had he not cryed to them over and over , that it would be shame for them to look on a naked man , &c. so little was his highness's declaration noticed ; and when it was objected to these hero's and heroins of the reformation ; their answer was ready : that declaration was but a sham-paper ; they knew his highnesses mind and resolutions better than so ; they would go on in their work , and take their hazard . then began we to see further into the presbyterian intrigues than we had done before ; for it required no great skill either in logick or politicks , to conclude , that they had got their instructions from their agents at london , to continue in their laudable zeal , notwithstanding that declaration : but of this more afterwards . in the mean time , an account of that tumult at glasgow was forthwith sent to his highness , by an express : but no notice was taken of it further , than to refer it to the meeting of estates , which was to set on the 14th of march : but before i come to that give me leave once more to return to that declaration , and take notice of one thing : because the interests of the clergy were concerned : it is , it 's commanding all then in arms ( except the garisons of the fortresses , and the company of foot entertain'd by the town of edinburgh ) within the kingdom , instantly to disband ; and it 's discharging all persons in time coming to take arms , or to continue in arms upon any pretence whatsoever , &c. there was an intrigue in this which perhaps ye have not remarked . when the work had gone on so successfully in the west , especially in glasgow , by the first tumult , which was there on the 17th of ianuary , the presbyterian party in edinburgh , ( animated thereto by their brethrens success and solicitations ; for constant correspondence was kept amongst them ) were upon the resolution of falling upon the clergy of that city likewise : and that it might be done to purpose , the western zealots were coming to the town in troops daily . this the magistrates had notice of ; wherefore considering what tumults had been raised in the city before , how unfixed the mobile was , and how much led by wild-fire and humour ; and so , being diffident of the fidelity and forwardness of their ordinary guards : they invited the college of justice to take arms , and assist them in defending the ministers and securing the peace of the city . that college ( consisting intirely of gentlemen , and persons of liberal and generous education ) readily complyed with the invitation , form'd themselves into a regiment , and kept guard for several days according to the military discipline . one would think there was nothing here amiss . on the contrary , it was certainly a most generous action , an undertaking becoming good patriots , ( thus to appear against tumults and rabbles , the greatest plagues of society , and enemies to the peace of mankind ) and deserves to be transmitted to posterity with the highest encomium's : yet as generous as it was , and as much of equity as it had on it's side , it gall'd the presbyterians exceedingly ; for thereby their designs were disappointed ; they durst not fall upon the regular clergy : knowing what good affection these gentlemen had for them , and that if any tumult should arise , they would undoubtedly behave themselves according to their character . wherefore , they presently sent up hideous accounts to london to their correspondents , of that matter , who ( having then most of the princes ear ) easily gave him a wrong notion of it , and thereby got that clause put into the declaration . nay sir , such a deep grudge did that behaviour of these gentlemen , beget in the hearts of the party , that ( notwithstanding they disbanded immediatly upon the publication of that declaration ) there were designs on foot since , to have called them to a strict account for it : but why do i say it was design'd ? the council , i think in iune or iuly last , actually appointed a committee to try them ; and several advocates were cited to appear before them , and examined concerning the matter : but it seems ( whether it was for shame , or some other cause , i know not ) they thought fit to let it fall ; for they have not yet proceeded further : yet on the other hand , the western rabbles were never called in question ; on the contrary , they were still encouraged ; as you shall hear incontinent . and so i return to the meeting of estates ; you know they met on the 14 th of march , and ( as i said ) to them the troubles of the clergy were referred : perhaps for your making a distinct judgment of our affairs , it might be requisite , that you should have a full and just account , how that meeting was called ; how many of the nobility were absent from it ; what scruples the best and most judicious of the gentry of the nation had about it ; how thin the meetings of the smaller barons were in many shires , when the commissioners were chosen ; how industrious the presbyterian party was to have all members elected of their own gang ; what methods were taken with the simpler members , to impose upon them ; what partiality was used in the matter of controverted elections ; what violences were threat'ned to some ; particularly several noblemen , &c. and what snares were laid for them : these i say , and twenty other things might perhaps be necessary to be punctually and particularly related to you , before ye can have an exact understanding how things went amongst us . but i have resolved all alongst to keep close to the treatment of the clergy : and never to meddle with the state , but so far as they are concerned ; and therefore if ye are curious to know these things , ye must either make your application to some other person , or at least wait till another occasion . the first thing done by the meeting , which could comprehend the clergy was an act that passed on the 16 th day of march ; whereby they voted themselves a full and lawful meeting of the estates ; and that notwithstanding of any thing that might be contain'd in king iames's letter , which that day was presented to them , they would continue undissolved , until they should settle and secure , the protestant religion , the government , laws and liberties of this kingdom . this act , when it passed gave those of the ejected ministers , who were then at edinburgh , occasion to refresh themselves with the hopes , that presently their case would be considered ; for they were as good protestants as their neighbours ; and they had rights and liberties , asserted by law , and which ( by consequence ) ought to have been settled and secured , as much as the rights and liberties of any other subjects . but alas ▪ these hopes lasted not long : for not only was their case never so much as mention'd in the meeting for a good time ; but , with no good aspect to them , upon the 28 th of march , when several of the bishops , many of the nobility , and not a few of the barons and burgesses had deserted the house ; the thanks of the meeting were given to that very same rabble , which had turned out the ministers : 't is tr●● indeed , the complement was not made them , under that reduplication ; but i say , they were generally the same persons ; and that appearance they made , and for which they were thanked , was as illegal , though not so barbarous as the other . but though that was disheartening enough , it was not the worst on 't : that wounded the poor sufferers , but indirectly ; but the next step was downright for their ruin. it was that famous proclamation dated april 13 th . and entituled a proclamation against the owning the late king iames , and commanding publick prayers to be made for king william and queen mary . famous , ( amongst many other reasons , ) for keeping and turning out of their churches and livings , the better as well as greater half of the clergy within the kingdom . and therefore let me give you the history of it a little more fully . on the 4 th of april , the meeting of estates , by their vote , declared that king iames had forfeited the right to the crown , and the throne vacant . on the 11 th a proclamation was published , declaring william and mary , king and queen of england , to be king and queen of scotland : but all this time , notwithstanding the meeting had sitten very near to a month , the rabble were as busie as ever ; and that same week , had fallen on mr. stewart minister at ratho . he represented it , and gave in his petition for protection , on the 13 th day , being saturday . this gave them occasion to talk of the clergy indefinitely , and of the troubles many of them had met with . but what should be done in relation to them ? it was moved , and the motion was entertain'd , that a proclamation should be ordered , requiring them to disown king iames , &c. and promising protection to all that should give dutiful obedience . but then another proposal was made , by his grace the duke of hamiltoun , president of the meeting , viz. that those who had been thrust from their stations , might be likewise comprehended , commanded home to their respective churches , and promised protection upon their compliance . this was vigorously opposed by several of the members ; particularly sir iames montgomery of skelmorly , said , that was downright to take the whole west on their top ; it would disoblige all the presbyterians ; and might have very fatal consequences : therefore the meeting must not look so far back ; it would be enough if protection were promised to those who were in the actual possession and exercise of their ministry , which reasoning prevailed ; so it came to a vote , and carried , that the proclamation should run so , as it was afterwards published . however plain the case may appear to be between k. iames and our present king william and queen mary , which was the main subject of the said proclamation ; yet at this time i shall only tell you what effects it produced upon the clergy . it distributed them ( as is evident to any who reads it ) into two classes : those who on that 13th . of april were ( as it words it ) presently in the possession and exercise of their ministry ; and these who before that day , had been expell'd by the rabble : to the former it grants a conditional , to the latter no protection at all , but entirely excludes them from their churches and livings , and the benefit of the government . i 'll dispatch what i have to say concerning these of the latter class first , because their case is so very singular , and will make the distinctest figure , when all is subjected to one view , contracted into one body . i have already given you a taste of the violences done them . i have likewise taken notice , that you may be apt to impute all that was done , merely to the mobile , and believe , none of the heads of the presbyterian party were any ways accessory to such barbarities . i have also insinuated such arguments already , as may convince you that you are in a mistake , if ye think so : particularly , the pains were taken to run down all accounts that were sent to london ; ( to what purpose , if these agents were not on the plot ? ) the no notice taken of the prince's declaration for keeping the peace ; but the rabble's turning more insolent after its publication ; ( unaccountably sure ; if they had not their secret instructions from their correspondents at court , to go on vigorously , notwithstanding that declaration ) and the business of the colledg of justice . these seem to me to be unquestionable proofs , that they were the heads , the politicians of the party , who plotted and encouraged all the tumults , and the persecutions of the clergy : they were the projectors , and at the bottom of all , and the mobile was nothing but the base instrument . if it were needful , i could give you plenty of further arguments , to make it yet more clear and evident : for ( to omit what i have often heard from persons of no contemptible worth nor intelligence , viz. that there were letters sent from london , which gave life to the irish plot mentioned before , and first set the rabble in motion : and that the lord stair , now president of the session , was one author ( as perhaps can be made appear ) , i could tell you , that i have been assured by people of undoubted credit , that they have heard some who were then very active in rabbling the clergy , confess since , that the course was unchristian and horrid ; that they had never attempted it , if they had not been put upon it by persons of influence ; that they were made to believe , there was no other way to introduce the presbyterian government ; that they now heartily repented , they had been so forward ; and if it were to do again , it should never be done . i could tell you further , that even after the 13th . of april , the earl of crawford wrote letters to the leaders of rabbles , encouraging them to persist in their laudable atchievments ; and this so very certain , that the duke of hamilton produced one of them in iune or iuly last , before the council , and put the earl to it , and he could not deny it ; and that it made a great noise , not only at that table , but through the whole city . and monroe of towlis , one of the members of parliament , seeing one day a minister in his gown in the parliament-court , pointed at him , crying , behold antichrist ! will no body tear the gown from him ? the minister ( a pretty bold fellow ) replyed , but , sir , you are the beast ! which made the spectators laugh ; and so he escaped : for you your self would have sworn he spoke truth , had you ever seen the man. further yet ; to this very day , not one presbyterian preacher , has ever been heard condemn these methods from his pulpit . on the contrary , i could name more than two or three , who actually approved them ; commended the zeal that put people upon them ; encouraged them to proceed ; and in the new church of edinburgh ( de iure , the bishops cathedral , de facto , now a presbyterian meeting house ) it self , where now the great concourse is of all the nobility and gentry , who follow the new guises , it was told them in a sermon , that such shakings as these ( it is the very words ) were the shakings of god , and without such shakings , his church was not in use to be setled . once more yet ; notwithstanding rabbling has been all along in fashion , and continues to this moment ; and many complaints have been made ; yet never hitherto , so much as one proclamation taking notice of it in form , that is , bearing a narrative to this purpose , whereas such violences have been done , &c. never yet , i say , so much as one proclamation of that nature , never so much as one person punished for such violences . on the contrary , the two or three west-country regiments , who pass under the name of cameronians , seem to have been sent of purpose to quarter in the shires of perth and angus ( where the people have still been peaceable and affectionate to their ministers ) that they might persecute the clergy ; for , wherever they go they do it , and they are never discharged , nor taken any notice of . you would wonder to hear what a wild pack these are ; i dare not ( dreading prolixity ) enter upon a full particular description of them : but i cannot forbear to tell you one fancy which made me laugh , lately when i was told it : it was , that they will not obey their very officers , but when they please , especially in point of exercise , when they are bid do this or that , two days together , they will not do it for any authority or perswasion ; and when they are challenged for it , they tell , they are not for set forms . this by the way . by these things , methinks , you may see pretty clearly now ( tho nothing more could be adduced ) who acted the rabbles : but , in truth , i needed not have been at the pains of collecting these arguments ; for , by that proclamation of the 13th . of april ( to which i now return ) all the antecedent deeds of the rabble are clearly justified , and fair permission , or rather fresh encouragement is given them to persevere in their course . the clause is as plain as it is wonderful ; these are the very words , and the estates do prohibit and discharge any injury to be offered by any person whatsoever , to any ministers of the gospel , either in churches or meeting-houses ( tho these meeting-houses and the conventicles kept in them , were most directly contrary to law ; and the states by their forementioned act , dated march 16. had declared they would sit till they should secure the laws and liberties of this kingdom ) who are presently ( n.b. ) in the possession and exercise of their ministry therein : whereby , all forced from their churches before that day , were entirely excluded the protection of the government . if you doubt that that was the sense and purpose of the clause , i have to produce another proclamation , which will make an excellent commentary ; it is that which is dated august 6. 1689. and entituled , a proclamation anent the ministers ; whereof the narrative runs thus , whereas the estates of the kingdom did prohibit and discharge any injury to be offered by any person whatsoever to any minister of the gospel , either in churches or meeting-houses , who were then , viz. on the 13 th . of april last in possession and exercise of their ministry . and thus in the mandatory part ▪ therefore the lords of their majesties privy council , in their majesties name and authority do strictly command and charge , that none of the leidges take on hand to do any violence or injury to any of the ministers of the gospel , whether they be preaching in churches or meeting-houses , and that all such as were in possession and exercise of their ministry , since the 13 th . of april last , be allowed to continue undisturbed , and that such ministers as have been removed , dispossessed , or restrained , without a legal sentence in the exercise of their ministry , since the 13 th . day of april last , shall be allowed to return , &c. are you satisfied now ? but i have yet more to give you . it is a passage in that address , said to be signed by the greatest part of the members of the parliament of scotland , and deliver'd to his majesty at hampton-court , the 15th . day of october 1689. the words are , it is not unknown to your majesty what have been the sad confusions and disorders of this distressed country under prelacy , and for want of its ancient presbyterian government ( what scope for commenting here ! if it were my present business ? ) and now the whole west , and many other parts of scotland , are at present desolate and destitute , having only ministers ( it seems you own these ministers to be no ministers ; otherwise , having them , how can the west , and these other parts , be said to be desolate and destitute ? ) called upon the late ( k. iames's ) liberty , without any benefice or living , or convenient place to preach in . there are a thousand things here quereable , if a body had inclination to be nice ; for example , who knows not that these ministers were so wise as to make secure bargains with the people who called them , before they would set up their meeting-houses amongst them ? who knows not that these eight or nine months by past , they have possess'd themselves of all the churches of the west , and lately of many elsewhere too ? how then can they be said to want convenient places to preach in ? and for what reason can the late liberty be mentioned ? was it a sufficient or a legal warrant for the people to call these ministers , and these ministers to embrace such calls ? or was it not ? if it was , there was law for the dispensing power , by consequence king iames is injuriously treated ; if it was not , how comes that people and these ministers now to be so kindly dealt by ? did they not comply with the dispensing power ? did they not what they could , by their complyance , to assert it , and give it countenance ? for my part , i think , reason would say , they deserved as well as any , to be comprehended in the third vote , which that address mentions : but you may interpret this a digression ; be it so : this i 'm sure is home ; you see the addressers tell their king , that now the whole west is desolate and destitute . what if he had answered , how comes it to be so ? were there not ministers establish'd there by law ? what is become of them ? what ( can you imagine ) could they return to that , besides one of these two , viz. either again to address his majesty for restoring and repossessing those who had been thrust out ? ( an overture , which i readily believe , got never footing amongst their inclinations ) or to own that they justified what was done to these ministers ? and indeed the air of their language , in that passage , imports not only that , but likewise , that they take it for granted , that their king will readily justifie all too ; tho i am confident he neither can nor will. would you have more yet ? as on christmas day , anno 1688. the rabble first fell upon the clergy of the west , as i have said ; so on christmas-eve , anno 1689. the council did interpose their authority , and have discharged all the inferior judges within the kingdom to pass decreets in favors of any ministers who were not in possession and exercise of their ministry on the 13th day of april , anno 1689. for the said years revenue ; adducing for their reason , that often mentioned act and proclamation , inferring thence , that no judicature can determin in the case , except a parliament . thus , sir , you may briefly understand the state of those ministers who were thrust from their churches by lawless force and violence : poor people ! it would extort compassion from any breast not altogether stone , to see what sad circumstances many of them have been in this good time by gone ; having had little or nothing to maintain themselves with , and ( in many instances ) their numerous families , but the charity and benevolence of some good christians : for generally our scottish benefices are but small ; and the most part of the western clergy had got little ( till very lately ) of their stipends for the year 1687. and nothing of the 1688. and by what i have said last , you may guess what they may expect of the year 1689. can any history shew a president for their case ? were ever christian ministers so treated in a christian kingdom ? will this pass with after-ages for good service done to the protestant interest ? — but 't is now time to pass over to the other class , consisting of those who escaped the hands of the rabble , till that mysterious 13th . day of april was over : they had indeed a certain sort of protection promised them by the proclamation : but perhaps such an one , as you shall hardly find its like under any government ; tho i have set down the clause in part already ; yet i will repeat it over again fully , that you may the better understand it : and the estates do prohibit and discharge any injury to be offered by any person whatsomever , to any minister of the gospel , either in churches or meeting houses , who are presently in possession and exercise of their ministry therein ; they behaving ( n. b. ) themselves as becomes , under the present government : that is , if they shall read the proclamation , and pray for k. william and q. mary , as king and queen of scotland ; let no violence be done them : but if they shall not ( be it upon whatsoever reasons and necessities ) to your task rabble ; you shall not be question'd for it : is it not an excellent government ( think ye ) where rabbles are constituted judges , and executors of laws ? was not that brave protection , at a juncture , when the great statesmen and casuists of both nations , were making protection and allegiance reciprocal ? yet verily sir , considering the posture of affairs then , no man ( without doing violence to his own sense ) could put a better gloss upon it . nay , what i have said , is the least that can be collected ; for in many mens opinion , these words [ they behaving themselves as becomes , under the present government ] were designed to comprehend more than reading and praying , and were put in of purpose to expose those to the mercy of the rabble , who ( tho they should obey that proclamation ) should at any time thereafter , refuse obedience to any thing . that a presbyterian meeting , council or parliament , should enact or determin ; certainly the words will go so far easily , and without stretching : 't is as certain the rabble herefrom took new encouragement , and kept up the persecution as hot as ever ; and for my part i can see no other thing like law for turning out some ministers afterwards , who had both read and prayed , for not observing the late fast : but of that more anon . such was the nature of the protection granted by that proclamation : i proceed next to as wonderful effects . it required the ministers within the city of edinburgh , under the pain of being deprived , and losing their benefices , to read it publickly from their pulpits , upon sunday next , being the 14th . at the end of their forenoons sermon ; and the ministers on this side of the river of tay , upon the 21st . and those be north the said river , on the 28th under the pains aforesaid . you see what expedition it required of the ministers of edinburgh : it was voted and enacted in the meeting on saturday about twelve of the clock , it was late before it came from the press , it came not to their hands till it was much later : some of them were in bed before they heard of it : some received it not till the next morning : some ( as i am told ) never saw it till they were in the pulpit . to be sure , none of them had time to consider it throughly , examine the great matters contained in it , or deliberately satisfie their consciences about it . the seven english bishops , the year before , by their example , had taught the world that ministers were not to read proclamations fide implicita , and in a blind obedience . the present english parliament , had given several months to the clergy of that kingdom to deliberate in , before sentence was to be past against them , for not complying with the present revolution . if i am not mistaken , no church man in england is deprived to this day ; but you know that better than i. sure i am , this our proclamation contain'd things of as great consequence as that which these seven bishops found so choaking , that they rather choosed to run the greatest hazards , than enjoyn their clergy the reading of it : or as that law either , upon the account of which so many of the english clergy are now under suspension : yet the clergy of edinburgh must read and pray the very next day , and upon so short advertisement , or be instantly deprived : nor can the inclinations of the people be pretended for so quick dispatch ; for i am told , ( and i know it to be certain ) that when the gentleman who preached that day in the new church , had refused to read it , and the clerk ( after the blessing pronounced ) fell a reading of it ; the whole congregation ( which that day was very frequent ) run so hastily out of the church ( such was their indignation ) that before he had half done , there was not so much as one to hear him . so went matters in that church . in other churches of the city , some gave obedience , and some did not . these who did it not met with pretty quick justice , for the very next week they were cited to appear before the committee of estates . the first who appeared , was one doctor strackan , professor of theology in the university , and one of the ministers in the trone church , an ingenuous man , and a truely primitive christian : he made a defence for himself , which many thought so reasonable then , that i cannot yet forbear to give you an account of it . it was this for substance , that the estates had found ( in their claim of right ) that none can be king or queen of scotland till they have sworn the coronation oath : for this reason they had declared that iames , by assuming the regal power , and acting as king without ever taking the oath required by law , — had forfeited the right to the crown : that all the estates had yet done , was only to nominate pp : william and mary , as the persons to whom the crown should be offered ; but they had not yet actually made the offer ; far less had pp . william and mary accepted of it : it was possible they might refuse it , but though they should not , yet they could not be king and queen of scotland till they had solemnly sworn the oath , which was not yet done ; therefore he did not see how he could pray for them as king and queen of scotland ; nor how the estates , in reason , or in consequence to their own principles , could require it of him . i am told the whole committee was silent ; perhaps it has been for want of a ready gift : yet , for all that , ( and though he had in family twelve or thirteen children ) there was no mercy for him . his defence ( though it could not be answered ) was not sustained ; no further time to deliberate , was granted ; but upon his confessing he had not obeyed , he was forthwith deprived , and made the first sacrifice . nay , some other ministers there were , who after they had used the same defence , told moreover , they were willing to pray for them as king and queen , so soon as they had taken the oath ; but this availed not neither : they had not obeyed as the states had enjoyned ; and so they were sentenced . thus proceeded that committee , and in two or three weeks deprived betwixt twenty and thirty : and all too before pp . william and mary had sworn the oath ; or ( which is all one ) before accounts came from london that they had done it : for upon their assuming the royal power ( you know ) the execution of the law belonged to them and their council , and so there was no more place for that committee . pp . william and mary took the coronation oath , at white-hall , the eleventh of may 1689. then they named their counsellors for this their ancient kingdom . they were , for the greater part , persons who had never sate at that table before : they came in upon a new found ; they had new , and untryed rules to walk by , new designs to carry on : in a word , they had as it were , a split new systeme of government , to temper and establish . besides , there were great varieties of humors at that time in the nation . armies were in the fields , and a parliament was to sit : so the council had a vast ocean of business before them : and so for some weeks , they had not leisure to fall upon the clergy ; that is , till about the middle of iuly . till which time leave we them , and return to the rabble , to see what they were doing in the country . and indeed they were making clean work wherever they came ; i dare scarcely say , it was all one to them , whether the ministers they fell on , had complyed or not complyed : for now the complyers were meeting with the sharpest measures . after the proclamation came out , for a while they remitted something of their eagerness : they hoped the proclamation ( considering how deeply all who had taken the test , were sworn , never to disown king iames as their sovereign ) would ease them of their labour ; but when they found that severals were winning over their oaths , and giving obedience to the estates orders ; it gave them new provocation . if such should be suffered to possess their churches peaceably , and securely , the presbyterian interest should still be at a loss : a great many , of episcopal principles , would still be in office , which afterwards might breed disturbances : besides , if we may believe the rabblers themselves , it irritated them to see any man give complyance , upon this head , that they look'd upon them , as perjur'd , and men of no conscience . whatever the cause was , a good many found the effects : such as mr. mac math , minister at laswade , ( on whom three or four fellows , came one night , as he was going betwixt edinburgh , and his own house , stab'd him with awls and bodkings , so that he had ten or twelve wounds in his belly ; filled his mouth , till they had almost choaked him , with the dung of horses , and then left him in that sad condition ▪ ) master burgess , minister at temple , ( though he was so earnest to read and pray , that when he saw the proclamation was not like to be sent to him by authority , against the day appointed , he was careful to provide a copy for himself , and read it very faithfully , ) mr. mac kenzie , minister at kirklistoun , ( who had for some years been chaplain to major general maccay's regiment in holland , and was actually with him under the same character at the battle of gillychranky , ) mr. hamiltoun , minister at kirknewtown , mr. nimmo , minister at colingtown , mr. donaldsone , at dumbartown , &c. nay ▪ i could instance in a whole presbytery in galloway ; for upon the news that such a proclamation was ordered ; these brethren met , and consulted what was to be done ; and in brief the resolution was , that all should give obedience , and all truly did it ; ( as , who could blame them , seeing besides the authority of the estates , they had the votes of their own consciences for it ? ) but within a few days not one of them escaped rabbling : they were as indiscriminately turned out , as they had unanimously transferred their allegiance from king iames , to king william and queen mary . twenty more such instances might be adduced , if it were needful : but there are three so very remarkable , that i cannot pass them by . one is , mr. mac gill , minister at killsyth , within the presbytery of glasgow : all his neighbour presbyters had been turned out before ; he alone , of that fraternity , was spared till the 13. of april was past . the good man loved his religion ; and upon the precise day , gave obedience . but the very next sunday a rabble convened to interrupt him . it is true , they were that day repulsed with loss ; for many of the people of the parish appeared for him ; and one of the rabble was killed in the scuffle . the poor minister ( no blood-thirsty man ) had fled for his life to the earl of kilmarnock's house , who lived at no great distance ; and knew not how the fray was ended : but one master maxwell , the lord kilsyth's factor in these parts , seeing the man was dead , took journey straight for edinburgh ; that he might be the first , for acquainting the lords of the committee with what had happened . he told them , the minister had given obedience to the proclamation ; so that he had a right to the protection promised in it ; that therefore when the rabble came upon him , a good many people found themselves obliged to defend him , not only out of respect they had for him as their pastor ; but also for their own security , for if they had not done so , they might have been lyable to the law , which obliges the several parishes within the kingdom to protect their ministers ; otherwise to be answerable for his losses . he told them likewise , that one had lost his life in the quarrel . the lord ross was then preses of the committee : when the gentleman had thus far told the story , his lordship told him gravely , he wished the rabble had not been opposed ; such people cared not what they did ; it had been better to have yielded to their humour ; he was truely sorry that blood was shed ; but in such a case , it would be hard to get the actor punished . but my lord ( said the gentleman ) he was none of ours , he was of the rabble who was killed : what do you say ( replyed his lordship ) one of the rabble ! that may draw deeper than you are aware of . this to let you see the humour which then prevailed amongst our leading men in the government ; and it brings me in mind of a scotch proverb i have heard , viz. that halkertons cow is a very old beast . but how ended the matter ? the next day , after they had buryed the man who was killed , the whole company fell upon mr. mac gill's house , rifled it , broke and tore all his furniture to pieces , destroyed all his books and papers , carried off about 15 or 20 l. sterling of mony , plunged his hats and periwigs in the churn amongst some milk , and pounded them with the churn-staff , emptied all his meal out of its repositories , and then the chamber-box amongst it ; in a word , you have hardly read or heard of such barbarous tricks as they played : the poor gentleman sustained of loss to the value of 150 l. ( a good stock for a scotch minister ) and to this day has got neither reparation nor protection . the other two instances shall be mr. craig , and mr. buchannan , both ministers within the presbytery of dumbartoun : i do not adduce them for any thing that was odd , and singular , in the treatment they had from the rabble ; for so far , they received only the common measure : but to let you see how little it avails men not only to have complyed but to have done good services , if they have once owned episcopacy . these two gentlemen are barons in stirlingshire , that is , they hold such lands of the king in capite , as gives them the priviledge of voting at the choosing commissioners for parliament , or being such themselves ; if they should be chosen . now , when the members were a choosing for the late meeting of estates : the gentlemen of that shire of stirling were almost equally divided about the persons to be elected for their representatives . four were listed , two downright malignants , cavaliers , who would have been clear for king iames his interest ; and two who were as clear for that , of the prince of orange : when it came to be determined , the votes ran equal , till it came to the two laird-ministers who were last , so they had the casting of the ballance , and both did it in favours of the new states-men : what could they have done more for the prince of orange ? their votes made ( and by consequence were equivalent to , two votes of ) two members of the meeting for him ; besides ( not being turn'd out before the 13. of april , ) they did all duty , read and prayed , &c. yet now that they are rabbled , no more protection for them , than for the rottenest iacobite in the kingdom . these are the advantages of complyance amongst us ; not one of all those whom i have named ( and as i said , it were easie to name as many more ) has protection to this day , none of them dares venture to their churches , few or none to their houses . by this you may see what were the circumstances of the clergy , during the interval between the conventions being changed into a parliament , and the middle of iuly , to which i now return . what was the cause which made the council intermit so long the deprivation of the non-complying ministers , i am neither able nor careful to know : but it seems such delays were extremely unpleasant to the presbyterian preachers : wherefore they thought it convenient to give them the spur to purpose . the parliament was then sitting ; so they gave in a long address to it : wherein , having thanked god for the great deliverance wrought by his instrument , the pious and magnanimous william , then prince of orange , now , by the good hand of god , their gracious sovereign ; complemented the commissioner , and the rest of the lords of parliament ; and miscalled episcopacy , and bishops , and all that own them , as very ill things ; they come to their demands , where appears in the van , the freeing this poor oppressed church from such oppressors and oppressions . there are many other things in it worthy of your notice , particularly their petitioning that the church government may be established in the hands of such only who by their former carriage , and sufferings , have evidenced that they are known sound presbyterians — ( this is nothing like prelacy ) and , their requesting that the church thus established may be allowed by their lordships civil sanction , to appoint visitations for purging out insufficient , negligent , scandalous , and erroneous ministers , ( and what apostle , if ye give him a prebyterian jury , shall not come within the comprehension of one of these four ? ) this address , i say , was given in to the parliament : and what wonder though the council was awakened by it ? and , indeed , immediately , they fell to work , the inquisition revived , and summons were issued out , at the kings advocates instance , against a good many ; but before i come to their success , there is one thing i must not forget to tell you . every man knows , and the commonest equity requires , that publick edicts or proclamations , ( especially when they are peremptory in their diets , and positive in their sanctions ) ought to be very carefully and authentically transmitted to those they do oblige . yet never less care taken since the world began , of the just and regular conveyance of any thing , than there was of that proclamation to the ministers : there were hundreds of ministers to whose hands it came not till the days prefixed were expired : particularly in the shire of fife , there are betwixt seventy and eighty parishes ; yet i am credibly told , only six copies came to the sheriff clerks hand , who was ordered to distribute them : and there was no such clause in the proclamation , as allowed , far less required them to obey it any sunday thereafter : for what i remark this , you will know instantly . summonds were issued out , as i have said , and the council ( that they might shew a suitable zeal , and be every whit as forward as the party would have them , or as 't is possible for the ecclesiastical visitations themselves to be , sit when they will ) proceeded as summarily as could be desired . the person cited heard a long libel read , concerning the irreligion , the ingratitude , the contempt , &c. of his disobedience . after that , the president of the council asked him , if he had read the proclamation upon the day prefixed , and if he had ever since prayed publickly for king william , and queen mary : ( it was added sometimes by name and surname , when the earl of crawford was president ) as king and queen of scotland ? if he answered [ no ] to both ; no mercy for him . but i must be a little more particular on this head. be pleased to know then that there was one clause which in thirty or forty libels , was never omitted . this , word for word : whereas the ministers , by a proclamation dated the thirteenth of april , were commanded and required to read the same upon the respective days therein contained , and pray — yet when the said proclamation of the estates was sent to him ( the person accused ) at least came to his hands , or of which he had knowledge ( mark the gradation , and the equity of the several steps , especially the last ) he was so far from testifying his gratitude , and giving due obedience thereunto , that , &c. and who could stand before such an indictment ? and indeed few were able . for if the minister pleaded , that the proclamation had never come to his hands , and was ready to swear it ( as many might have done with a good conscience ) it profited him nothing ; he was guilty , by the third step of the gradation , just now taken notice of . and it was all one , whether he had prayed for king william and queen mary , or not , if he had not read : e. g. mr. guild , minister at north berwick , told the council , he had prayed for them from the very first day he had heard they were proclaimed king and queen , and none in the kingdom was more joyful than he , that a protestant king and queen were set on the throne , ( i have half a dozen more of instances of the same nature ) yet he was deprived . if he had both read and prayed , yet if it was not done on the precise days , there was no escaping . so it fared with mr. hay , minister at kinsongahair , hunter at stirling , young at mony-vaird , and many others , especially mr. aird , minister at tory-burn , ( an old , grave , serious man ) who , tho he brought a certificate from the sheriff of the shire where he lived , bearing , that he had read the proclamation on the sunday immediately after he received it , was yet deprived without remedy . one thing was remarked all alongst , viz. that the question was never put whether they would give obedience thereafter . no , there was no place for repentance . and i remember to have heard , that some of the magistrates of the town of perth , aliàs s. iohns-town ) after both their ministers were deprived , came to the earl of crawford , and insinuated to him , that they were hopeful . one mr. anderson ( a good natured man , and a very good pastor , and who had been one of the ministers of the said town ) perhaps might be induced to comply yet ; and that he would be extremely acceptable to the people , if he were reponed , &c. but presently his lordship turned huffy ; and told them , that was not so much as once to be mentioned . so they were forced to let fall their design . indeed his lordship is a most zealous reformer , and as fit for being president at a board , for turning out episcopal clergy-men , as could have been fallen upon . i remember a certain minister who had been a good time of his lordships acquaintance , went to him , thinking to have prevailed with him , to have got the diet deserted ; and they had a very pleasant conversation . his lordship asked whether he used publickly to pray for king william , and queen mary . he answered , he prayed as the apostle directed ; and cited 1 tim. 2.1 , 2. well ( says my lord ) that 's enough for us to deprive you . after some more discourse , the minister said , he was sorry for the desolations of the church . and his lordship answered very quaintly : but so am not i. the work had never gone on so successfully , if he had not been on the top of it . for many times they had enough to do to get a quorum of the council ( which can consist of no less than nine ) on these days that were set apart for the clergy : ( in effect , it was no wonder tho ordinary stomachs had some kind of loathing to it ) and then his lordship was in a strange pickle , and you would have seen strange running of macers through the city , calling them from their lodgings . but let me return to my thread again . within a few days , the council found it would make tedious work to have them all cited at the advocates instance , therefore they took a shorter method ; it was the inviting and allowing the parishioners and hearers of such ministers as had not obeyed , to cite them before the council . this is the great purpose of that proclamation dated august 16. mentioned before . the clause is this : as also that such ministers who have not read the proclamation , and prayed — may be deprived of their benefices . — the lords of his majesties privy council do invite and allow the parishioners and hearers of such ministers — to cite them before the privy council , &c. this proclamation served two purposes ; first it made quicker dispatch , and then , by it , opportunity was given to every malicious person to frame what libels they pleased against their ministers . both ends were served pretty successfully ; deprivations were more expedite , and more numerous than they had been before ; and many crimes and scandals were libelled against several ministers . 't is true , the council never examined witnesses , nor sustain'd themselves judges concerning any thing but what was contained in the grand proclamation , viz. reading and praying . and they frequently declared , ( when the persons calumniate , craved , that these scandals and immoralities might either be tryed , or put out of the libel ) that they were not to insist against them on these heads : yet the libels with these things in them stand still on record ; and i hear full accounts of them are sent to london , and daily printed there , and making good company in the coffee-houses . no body ever doubted but there was something insidious and base in the design . who knows but the ecclesiastical visitations , when they sit , will sustain all these libels as sufficiently proven already , seeing they were before the privy council , and sentence followed upon them ? and god knows what other fruits the keeping of them may produce ! but certainly it had looked much liker to fair dealing , it had been more generous , and worthy of gentlemen , if the council , ( seeing they were not to dip in these matters ) had discharged them to be libelled , and suffered no more to be brought before them , than what they were to try and judge of . one would think , now the course was quick enough against the clergy ; yet within some other few days , it was found not to be expedite enough neither . in many parishes there were none who would pursue their ministers ; and besides , it was somewhat expensive for the lieges to raise summons before the council : wherefore a further step was made , a third proclamation was ordered , intituled , for citing ministers , who have not prayed for their majesties , and dated august 22 : whereby ( that with the greater expedition , and the least expence to the lieges , the former proclamations might attain their intended design and effect ) invitation and allowance were again given , not only to the parishioners and hearers of the disobedient ministers , but also to the heretors of these parishes ( tho living at never so great distance ) and the sheriffs and their deputes , and magistrates of burghs , and the members of the current parliament within their respective bounds , to cause cite such ministers before the council , and warrand was granted to messengers at arms , for citing them , and such witnesses as were necessary ; and that the expedition might be greater yet , a messenger 's delivering a copy of this proclamation , either in print or writ , signed by his hand , to each minister that should be cited by him to any tuesday or thursday , ( these two days of every week were set apart intirely for that purpose ) six days after the citation , for all on this side the river tay , and fourteen days for all beyond the said river , &c. and further it was declared , that the said proclamation was without prejudice of any citations already given , or to be given , either upon the former act of council , or upon warrands from the council-board . have ye not enough of expedition now in all conscience ? yet to make all surer still ; and because they were finding , that severals had complyed , whom they were willing to have turned out , but had no shadow of law to do it by ! at the instigation of the presbyterian ministers , elders and professors ( as it self words it ) upon the twenty fourth of august , forth comes another proclamation for a general fast , to be kept on two lord's days , viz. on this side the tay , sept. 15. on the other side , sept. 22. no question it was designed for a choaking morsel ; for perhaps you never saw any thing like it . that it required christians to fast on the lord's day , ( tho that was harsh enough , no ways fitted for a tender stomach , and would have gone very ill down with tertullian himself , as much as he was for fasting ) was the thing least nauseous about it , except the bad grammar , and the good stock of great nonsense that was in it . for in effect ( besides what was relative to the present state of affairs ) it not only unministered , but even unchristened , the whole regular clergy , and these who owned them ; and expressly bore , that god for a long time ( since the restitution of episcopacy , no doubt ) had restrained the presence of his spirit , in the conversion of souls , &c. and this proclamation was to be read twice , and the fast to be kept once , in every church and meeting-house within the kingdom . now to the success . what wonder tho these twin-proclamations ( for so i may call them , considering how short the interval was between their dates ) wrought strange feats amongst the poor clergy ? as indeed they did . for many who ( with hard gripings ) had got the proclamation of the thirteenth of april digested , could not yet get that for the fast , forced over their throats , particularly i could name two of the ministers of edenburg , who the very next week were deprived for it . and the other proclamation was pretty good at citing those who had refused to give obedience , as you may guess by its nature . yet i must confess it has not done all the skaith it might ; as you shall hear anon ; although it wrought wonders , of a right strange address . for by virtue of it , when some ministers , far north , in murray , or bamf , or somewhere thereabout , were cited , and compeared ; but were like to find the diet deserted , because no accuser appeared against them : by virtue of it ( i say ) upon that occasion , the laird of brody , one of the privy council , being a member of the current parliament , representing that shire where these ministers liv'd , came to the bar where they were standing , and smil'd , and told them , he would be their accuser , and was as good as his word ; and then stept into his seat at the table again , and voted for their deprivation . and so i come to the end of my history , when i have told you that thus it stands with the scottish clergy at present . all our bishops are turn'd out , and their order abolished by act of parliament , dated iuly 5. their whole benefices for the year 1689. are taken from them by publick proclamation . the number of presbyters within the kingdom , may be about 900 and 40 or 50 , or so , of these about 300 are turn'd out by tumult and rabble ; and their expulsion is ( as to the most part ) justified and ( as to the rest ) conniv'd at by th●● government : about 200 are deprived by sentence of the privy council . those who continue in their stations ( being the lesser half ) may be subdivided into two categories . a great many have giv'n no obedience yet , and have escap'd , by the distance they live at , from edinburgh and fanaticism ; or because no body has delated them ; what may be such mens fate ( if the present methods continue ) is easie to imagine . the rest have complyed ; but how far that may secure them , god only knows ; but ( if i may give my conjecture ) i think i may tell them : they have not done the half of what will be necessary to save them ; and i think i have plausible grounds to say this on . for not only can i give them a certain minister by the hand , to whom a certain nobleman ( a privy counsellor , who makes a considerable figure at present , and who is presbyterian enough too ; though it seems he has more than the ordinary ingenuity of the party ) said , he was truly glad , that minister had made no compliances ( they were cousins ; perhaps that made him speak more freely ) and assur'd him , the present compliance would save no man ; for the resolution was , that none of the episcopal clergy should be spared . this i know to be of certain truth : besides , the council lately were beginning to let so much out : for when some ministers in argyle-shire ( who preach in irish , by consequence , whose places cannot be so easily supplyed , whom therefore they were not earnest to lay aside for altogether ) were before them ; though they made them the gracious offer , made to few or none before , that they should be continued in their ministry , upon their yet obeying the proclamation , yet they would not allow them their own churches : the secret of the matter is , all must be once out , none must enjoy their benefices , by virtue of a presentation from a patron , and a collation from a bishop ; if any shall be permitted hereafter to bear office ; they must come in upon the new found , that 's to be erected after the presbyterian model . this i am told the statesmen are clear for : but then the kirk-men must have their terms too , and what they may be , i am not he who can divine . presbytery , presbytery in folio must be one ; perhaps the covenant may be another : and god knows what purgative doses , those who have ever liv'd under episcopacy must take , before they can be admitted into such a pure society : i doubt it would puzzle mr. salathiel stiff-collar himself , your famous english mountebank , to tell beforehand what the recipe may be : this is certain , no compliances any of the conform'd clergy have yet made , have brought them so much as one inch nearer to a reconciliation with the presbyterians : some have been at work enough to get their countenance ; particularly doctor robinson , and mr. malcome , two of the ministers of edinburgh : they have preach'd once and again , against the pride of prelates , and the corruptions of the church , &c. ( especially the doctor , whose great complaint it has been of late , that he has groan'd these twenty seven years by-past under the yoke of episcopacy ; although at the restitution of the government , he did not think his mission good , having had only presbyterial ordination ; and therefore was reordained by a bishop . ) they have sent once and again to the presbyterian clubs , in treating they might be admitted into their fellowship , and to sit in their presbyteries : and they have used all arts for gaining belief , that they are in earnest ; for instance , they are both prebendaries of the cathedral of edinburgh , and the bishop pays to each of them ten pound sterl . per annum : through the long surcease of justice that has been in the kingdom , till of late ; his lordship had got none of the revenue for the year 88 , and wanted not reason to doubt if ever he should have it ; so their fees for that year were resting : wherefore in august or september last , they pursued him jointly , before the bailiffs of edinburgh , ( no competent judges ) merely to cast dirt upon him , that thereby they might ingratiate themselves with the godly : yet all has not prevail'd , they find the party inexorable . by what is said , methinks you may now make a tolerable judgment of the treatment the scottish clergy have met with hitherto , or are like to meet with hereafter . one thing remains yet to be done , viz. to say somthing in vindication of these episcopal clergy-men , who have been so treated , and to account some way for their lives and abilities : i know there are strange things talk'd of them in england ; for besides that the prince of orange last year , declared them generally scandalous and ignorant ( as was noted before ) the good party have long had , and still have their instruments busie , printing and publishing odd stories of them . so that perhaps sir , you may be as earnest to understand what can be said on that head , as any thing i have yet dispatched : but i might with good reason disappoint you , and make that the shortest part of my task ; indeed two or three sentences might serve : for it might be sufficient to say , that general indictments ought still to go for calumnies , and the proper defence is to tell , they are broad lies . let their enemies condescend upon the particular persons , and the particular crimes ; that 's the way to find guilt ; and whoever believes there is any , till that is done , is near of kin to an unjust judge . dare they for their hearts pronounce all ignorant ? or all scandalous ? or all negligent ? or all erroneous ? or all of a persecuting temper ? if they dare , i hope they are bound to make it good , against every individual ; and let them try that when they will. if they dare not ( as certainly they dare not ; even machiavel himself , their master for that politick , were he alive durst not ) then , who sees not the iniquity of these indefinite aspersions ? where were christians taught to mix the innocent with the guilty , so indiscriminately ? this , sir , methinks might pass for sufficient antidote against all these bold slanders ; but lest it may not satisfie you , i have more to say , and god be thanked , i can say it confidently , because i know it to be true : i can say , the church of scotland , since the reformation , was never generally so well provided with pastors ; as at the beginning of the present persecution : 't is true , she has sometimes had some sons ; ( such as doctor forbes , doctor baron , &c : ) more eminent for learning , than perhaps any of the present generation will pretend to : but what church is there in the world , wherein every day , extraordinary lights are to be found ? it cannot be denyed neither , that there are amongst us some of but ordinary parts ; but in what church was it ever otherwise ? it would be an odd thing , if the poor cold climate of scotland could still afford a thousand augustines or aquinas's ; perhaps too there may be some , who are not so careful to adorn their sacred office with a suitable conversation , as they ought to be : but what wonder , when our saviour himself had one , a devil , of twelve in his retinue ? what country is it where all the clergy-men are saints ? and therefore , i say it over again ; the church of scotland was never so well planted , generally , since the reformation as it was a year ago . this is a proposition which i confess cannot be demonstrated so , by a private man , sitting in his chamber , as to convince the obstinate , or give full satisfaction to strangers . but so far as things of that nature can be made appear plausible , and at a distance ; i think this may be done very briefly , in answering the charges commonly given in against them . the first is ignorance ; but what 's the standard to judge by , whether men have such a competency of knowledge , as may ( caeteris paribus ) qualifie them for the ministery ? till that be condescended on , i might very well bid them put up their objection in their pocket , till they can make palpable sense of it ; at least , till that be done , this pretended ignorance cannot be sustain'd , as a sufficient argument for justifying the present persecution . but how can the scotish clergy be so very ignorant ? no man ( since i remember ) was ever admitted to the ministery , till he had first pass'd his course at some university , and commenc'd master of arts : and generally none are admitted to tryal for being probationers , till after that commencement , they have been four or five years students in divinity . the method of that tryal is commonly this , the candidate gets first a text prescrib'd him , on which he makes a homily before some presbytery : then he has an exegesis in latin , on some common head , ( ordinarily some popish controversie ) and sustains disputes upon it . after this he is tryed as to his skill in the languages and chronology : he is likewise obliged to answer ( ex tempore ) any question in divinity , that shall be proposed to him , by any member of the presbytery . this is called the questionary tryal ; then , he has that which we call the exercise and addition ; that is , ( as it is in most presbyteries ) one day , he must analize and comment upon a text , for half an hour or so , so shew his skill in textual , critical , and casuistick theology ; and another day for another half hour , he discourses again by drawing practical inferences , &c. to show his abilities that way too : and then lastly , he must make a popular sermon ; ( i believe you have scarcely so severe tryals in england ) all this done , the presbytery considers whether it be sit to recommend him to the bishop , for a licence to preach ( and many have i known remitted to their studies ) if they find him qualifyed , and recommend him , he gets his licence , he commences probationer for the ministery , and commonly continues such for two , three , four , or more years thereafter , till he is presented to some benefice : then he passes over again through all the foresaid steps of tryal , and more accurately , before he is ordained : what greater scrutiny would you desire , as to point of knowledge ? but besides that , i have somthing more to tell you ; it is , that generally , since the restitution of episcopacy , our divines have had better education , &c. been put on better methods of study , than ever they were before . they have learned to lay aside prejudices , and trace truth ingenuously , and embrace it where they find it . with our predecessors , especially in the times of presbytery : the dutch divinity was only in vogue . their common-place-men were the great standards , and are so still to that party , and whoever stept aside one hairs breadth from their positions , was forthwith an heretick . but the present generation , after the way of england , take the scriptures for their rule ; and the ancients , and right reason for guides , for finding the genuine sense of that rule ; by which method in my opinion , they are come to have their principles and thoughts far better digested . for evidence of this , be pleased to know sir , that upon the restitution of episcopacy anno 1662. there were six hundred good , who kept their stations and conformed . these were not only generally of presbyterian education , but likewise for the most part , the ablest men who were then in office : there are many of these men yet alive . now , if this experiment were made , if these men who had that presbyterian education , were examined upon their skill and principles in divinity ; and if again , those who have had the posterior education were likewise tryed , i could lay an even wager , if i were much provok'd , i would venture three to one , all ingenuous and impartial judges , should determine in favours of the latter sort , and confess that they have clearer and more distinct idea's of things , and understand the christian philosophy better . in a word , i 'll affirm it confidently , that philosophy was never understood better , nor never preached better in scotland , than it has been these twenty years by-gone . i must confess , it was never less practised : but for that we may thank the presbyterians : do not think this a slander ; for if they ( during their twenty four years usurpation , i. e. from thirty eight till sixty two inclusive ) had not made many things , such as rebellion and presbytery jure divino ; if they had not baffled peoples credulity , by making all the extravagances of the late times , god's own work , and the cause of christ , &c. and if they had not made it their chief work ever since ; to create and cherish divisions and schisms among us , and keep up a party for themselves , by all means possible : i doubt not , the gospel ( with god's blessing ) would have had more desirable success , than it has had in this kingdom . what a pernicious thing is it , needlesly to break the unity , and disturb the peace of a church ! i have often thought on that saying of irenaeus lib. 4. adver . haeres . cap. 62. nulla ab iis ( schismaticis ) tanta fieri potest correptio , quanta est schismatis pernicies ; and the more i think on it , i find still the more of important truth in it : and believe it sir , if ever there was a sect , since christ came into the world , to whom that fathers words in that same chapter , were applicable , they are , ( only one thing excepted ) to our scotch presbyterians . suam utilitatem potius considerantes , quam unitatem ecclesiae ; propter modicas & quaslibet causas , magnum & gloriosum corpus christi conscindunt & dividunt , & quantum in ipsis est interficiunt ; pacem loquentes ( here it only fails ) & bellum operantes ; vere liquantes culicem , & camelum transglutientes . by their divisions , they have still kept up such rancours and animosities amongst us ; that the meek , calm , gentle , peaceable spirit of christianity , could get no footing . and how can the religion flourish without that ? and by their bold entituling all their unaccountable freaks , in the late times ( as i said ) to god's authority , and abusing his holy word to justifie them ; they lost all the credit of the ministery . for so soon as peoples eyes opened , and they began to see what legerdemain had been play'd in the pulpits ; especially under such high pretensions to godliness , they look'd upon the sacred office of the ministery ( and continue to do so ever since ) as a mere imposture ; so that though we are at never so much pains to perswade and convince ; yet our labours are not regarded , and if they be not that , how can they be successful ? i know you 'll think this a digression . be it so , i could not help it , i have such strong impressions of the truth of the thing , that i could not forbear to tell it you . what i have said methinks , may pass for a good enough account of the abilities of the conform'd clergy ▪ yet i have one thing more to add , i will not recriminate , nor go to tell our presbyterian brethren back again , that of all men alive they ought to have been the last , for charging us with ignorance . but this i will undertake for ; let them out of their whole number within the kingdom , chuse five , six , seven ; or what number they please , and the episcopal clergy shall be content that even out of the diocess of glasgow , ( that diocess which so much pains has been taken to make infamous for its ignorance ) the like number be chosen , for debating all the points in controversie between us , before any sufficient and impartial judge in christendom : and is not this enough ad homines ? but i have dwelt too long upon this first charge ; and must make amends in what follows . the second thing is immorality , we are generally scandalous as well as ignorant : but i doubt , if amongst all the episcopal clergy in scotland , they shall find a match for their own mr. williamson : let them shew me a man that played such tricks while a minister , and was so little challeng'd , as he is , by his brethren . not to mention how ( for all his lewdness ) he is now a leading man of the party , and was lately one of their commissioners at london . indeed , sir , what greater pains can be taken either to keep or to purge out scandalous men from being of the clergy , than our constitution prescribes ? after any man is presented to a benefice , before he is either collated , or put in orders ; an edict is read publickly , before the whole congregation , in the church where he is to be settled ; requiring and inviting the heretors , or any within the parish , who have any thing to object against his life , to do it on such a day , before the bishop , or some deputed by him ; and if any blemish be found that way , he is rejected : and for those who are once in the ministery ; i believe there is hardly a sharper discipline any where , than in scotland . the least crime proven against any has its punishment : e. g. one act of drunkenness clearly made out , will suspend him ; and two ( though some years intervene betwixt them ) are sufficient to depose him , and deprive him for ever . but i need not dwell on these things : your bishop of salisbury , dr. burnet , if he pleases , can tell the world ( i 'm sure he has told it in many things as unseasonably ) that when dr. lighton was commendator of glasgow , and he himself professor of divinity there ; the clamour about the ignorance and immoralities of the clergy of that diocess was such , that the said commendator turn'd very earnest to have it purged : that for this end , he allowed and invited all people to accuse their pastors , and give in what indictments they pleas'd against them ; that this was not done scrimply neither , nor out of mere form ; but if there was any partiality , it was against the minister : and yet after all that how many were found worthy of deposition ? only one ( as i am told ) of some hundreds ; and he too , not without great suspicions of injustice . dr. burnet , i say , can tell all this if he pleases ; for no man was deeper in that inquisition then himself , being one of the commendators chief counsellors and instruments . and after all , when both had done what they could , they were forced to confess , the clergy were injur'd , and it was nothing but the spirit of fanaticism , which made the people so unkind to them , and raise such calumnies against them . indeed it would have been hard enough for the greatest confidence , not to have acknowledg'd so much ; for if he pleases , he can likewise tell , what pains were taken , to bring the best men , and best preachers from all corners to the west ; to try how the people would be pleased with them , such as mr. nairn , mr. aird , &c. and how he himself went about as an evangelist , shewing his gifts every where ; particularly in the church of fennick ; where he distributed a great many bibles , and some money too , being earnest by all means to gain the people : and yet for all that he and all the other evangelists were laught it ; and the people told that if they must needs have curates , they would not change their own , for any of them . this work was fifteen or sixteen years ago ; and such was the condition of that diocess then : and yet though the clergy in it , had deserved the epithets of scandalous and ignorant then , by what consequence can they be applicable to them now , when perhaps the third man is not there now , who was there then ? but to go on . the third thing is negligence ; but how can that be either ? theer 's no such thing as non-residence , or pluralities in use in scotland : every presbyter is censurable , who is two sundays together from his church , without licence from his ordinary ; and generally we preach twice every lords day , through the whole kingdom . but negligence is like ignorance ; it will be hard to find that definition of negligence , which will be able to justifie such a general persecution , as i have already accounted for . the fourth is error : but how shall that be tryed ? but i think , i can easily give you satisfaction , sir , as to that matter ; it is by telling you , that i know not so much as one amongst us , who could not live in communion with your church of england , and subscribe her thirty nine articles . 't is true indeed , there be many , who are no ways inclined to be every day talking to their people of god's decrees , and absolute reprobation , and justification by faith alone in the presbyterian sense , and such like doctrins ; they think their hearers may be much more edifyed by sermons , that explain the true nature of evangelical faith , the necessity of repentance , and the indispensibility of a gospel-obedience , &c. and what error is there here ? but the last thing is that we have been great persecutors ; grant it to be true , sure i am , by this time we are payed home pretty well in our own coin ; and god of his infinite mercy grant unto us all , that we may exercise a true christian patience , under our present sufferings : and that they may work a better temper in us , than it seems their pretended persecutions have wrought in our adversaries . sure i am , 't is no where written in the gospel , that suffering for christ may laudably end in malice and revenge , and the horridest barbarities . but how can it be proven , that we were such persecutors ? dare any man say , that the severities against the presbyterians , since the restitution of episcopacy , have been near so great , as the severities against the episcopal party were , during the reign of presbytery ? dare any man say , that the presbyterians have suffered any thing for conscience sake , these twenty seven years by-past ? remember what i told you , not far from the beginning of this letter . 't is true indeed , the state found there were a number of people of such seditious and ungovernable tempers , that they could not be well kept from breaking out daily into open rebellions : therefore they made laws for keeping them low , and curbing them ; and who can blame this ? 't is also true , some of these laws obliged the clergy to give an account of those of that temper , who lived or haunted in their parishes : and could they top with the government and disobey law , when the obedience required , was so reasonable ? besides , believe it sir , the clergy did as little that way , as was possible for them ; and i can make it good , when ever i am put to it : that where one was pursued upon their informations , twenty were befriended by their intercessions : a signal instance whereof i learn'd not long ago ; it was in september last , when the deprivations for non-compliance were very frequent . amongst the rest one mr. chisholm minister at lilsly , was cited at the instance of one sir iohn riddel of the minister had given no obedience , and so was very soon discuss'd : and when sir iohn and he were just a coming from the bar ; where he had stood his accuser , and heard his sentence ; he told him , before a good many witnesses , that he confess'd he held his life and fortune of him ; and protested he would never have treated him so as he had done , if it had not been matter of conscience to him . what do ye think of a presbyterian conscience ? i could give you an hundred more such instances , for indeed it has been observed generally all alongst , that those have been the greatest enemies to the clergy , to whom they had done the best offices . but it would require a great deal of work , to make you understand this head of persecution fully , and therefore i 'll break it off : and tell you only briefly that if ever you come to understand the state of our affairs distinctly , you will find , our ignorance lies mainly in our being unacquainted with the principles of sedition , and the ius divinum of presbytery ; our scandal , in our being so generally look'd upon as nothing fond of change and revolution : our negligence , in parting with our benefices rather than our consciences ; our erroneousness , in adhering so stubbornly to the principles laid down in scripture , and maintain'd by the primitive christians ; and our itch for persecuting dissenters to lye chiefly in our inclinations , to live and behave as becomes good subjects ; or , if ye would have it shorter , we are ignorant , scandalous , negligent , erroneous , insufficient , persecutors ; and whatever men please to call us , because we are not presbyterians . that 's truly the matter ; and therefore we are now made to suffer so severely , not only by being so treated in our persons and privileges , as i have briefly accounted ; but also by being so robb'd of our reputations , and loaded with reproaches : and all this too , under pretence to secure the protestant religion , and make these kingdoms happy . i dare not tell you , how much i am tempted , when i reflect on all together , to ask you some unfashionable questions , such as these : is that to secure the protestant religion , when men must either suffer , or part with the most distinguishing characters , and most undoubted principles of the protestant religion ? is the rendering so many protestant ministers , useless and miserable ; because they will not play iesuitish tricks , the way to secure protestant religion ? is there no other way to secure the protestant religion ; but to transaccident it ( pardon the word , 't is as good as transubstantiate ) into a pretence for justifying all the injuries can be done to our spiritual fathers ? is there no other way to make a kingdom happy , but by making downright havock of the clergy in it ? cannot a kingdom be happy unless god's portion be either turn'd out of their functions in it , or run the hazard of being turn'd out of his favour , and excluded his eternal kingdom ? these and twenty more such questions , i say , i am strongly tempted to ask you , but i forbear : only before i conclude , as i said before , i will not recriminate with our presbyterian brethren , i will not go to tell them back again , that they are ignorant or scandalous , &c. i will not treat them so uncivilly as to throw back their dung in their own faces : i am not fond of such retaliations . but this i will say , if they plant the church of scotland , so well as it was planted , when the prince of orange came to england , so long as he lives ; if , for all their pretensions to the spirit , the gospel be preached so purely , so rationally , and so disinterestedly under their government , as it has been by the episcopal clergy these many years by-gone ; if ever the state have peace , or the church come to a settlement ; if ever our king sit securely on his throne , or caesar have the things that are caesars : if ever the church of england ( as little as she has been concerned hitherto in her sisters afflictions ) want a horn in her side , or be secur'd against attempts for her ruin ; and if ever there be peace , or order , or desirable concord ; if ever animosities , divisions , contentions , and such other plagues of humane society , and christian unity be wanting at home , so long as their dagon stands in the temple ; experience has deceiv'd me , and i have mistaken my measures . thus , sir , you have a brief prospect of the present state of the scottish clergy , fuller by much than at first i intended , perhaps then you are pleased with , and ye may think it tedious : but i acknowledge i have that weakness ; i have not the faculty of dispatching things so smoothly , and so shortly , as possibly your palate would require : but my apology is ready ; i have omitted an hundred things , proper to have been inserted ; if i am tedious , it is in telling truth , and if the length of this weary you , you shall not be so troubled again : for these reasons expecting your pardon , i am &c. the third letter . sir , i told you in the conclusion of my last , that i had omitted many things , proper to have been inserted : i could easily justifie it , by giving you another every whit as long and full of matter of fact as it was . particularly i could give you a great many more instances of ministers , who received hard measure from the council : such as pitcairn of logie , who was deprived , though these eight or ten years by-gone , he has been intirely disabled for the pulpit , through old age and infirmity , and has been obliged to maintain an assistant . ionkine at abernethy , upon his not appearing , the very minute he was first called , though he kept the day precisely , to which he was cited , and was present about twelve of the clock , and had the forth to cross that morning : and the council at that time used to sit as well after , as before noon , for depriving ministers . falioner , a minister in murray , notwithstanding he pleaded for himself , that the lord dundee was his hearer that day on which the proclamation was ordered to be read ; that it was easie to conjecture what might have been his hazard , had he read it in his hearing : that after that he had prayed publickly for king william and queen mary . that if the council should yet enjoyn him , he would read the proclamation ; and that for his part , he believed presbytery was as agreeable to the word of god , and as subservient to the ends of christianity , as episcopacy , and therefore was as willing to keep his ministry under the one , as the other : but there was original sin in him ; he was a bishops son , and so no mercy for him . but moncrief , minister at herriot , his case is prettiest of all , he has done all duty , and made all complyances , yet his church is disposed of , and a presbyterian preacher , actually and formally admitted to it . twenty other instances might easily be collected . i could likewise tell you what severities have been used in turning ministers out of their dwellings , this winter , after their deprivaon : as in the case of mr. galbraith , minister at iedburgh , a very reverend and worthy person . all the gentlemen within the parish addressed to the council in his behalf ; protested they were sorry that he was deprived : supplicated that he might be permitted to live this winter in the manse , i. e. parsonage-house , for no body was making pretensions to it ; no presbyterian preacher was settled there ; and it was a thatcht house , it would be endamaged , if it were not inhabited , if fire were not kept in it , &c. but for all that , the good parson was forced to remove by the councils order . the same was also the case of mr. millar , minister at mussleburgh , and very many others . nay ( i know not if they have got their secret instructions renewed for it ) the rabbling work is revived in the west lately , and now they will not suffer the poor afflicted ministers , ( who were thrust out a year ago ) to stay so much as in that country ; though they have no mony to transport their families with , being refused payment of their by-gone stipends . so it has fared within these few days with mr. hamilton , minister at kirkoswald , and irwine at kilbride , and i am told there is a design to banish from that town all who live in dumfries , and those in glasgow dread the same likewise . i cannot forbear neither , to tell you , what has happened lately at edinburgh : there are five or six of the episcopal clergy in that city , who have given all obedience ; so they still possess their churches . each of these churches has its own utensils , basons , lavers , chargers , chalices , communion-table-cloaths , &c. all dedicated long ago by private persons , who lived in the respective parishes . a church-treasurer is chosen yearly by the church sessions , to whom these utensils are concredited , and to these sessions he is accountable for them at the years end . this has been one immemorial custom in that city ; yet the present magistrates ( all rank presbyterians ) would needs have these utensils delivered up to them ; particularly , they required them of him who this year bears the office of church-tresurer , or , which is all one , who is the elder or church-warden , to whom the utensils of that church for this year are entrusted , for that which is commonly called the tolbooth church : he refused to surrender them ( and why should he have done it ? they were not so much as dedicated by the publick , and they were that churches property . no magistrates had ever demanded the like before , and the present magistrates are no more concerned in them , than in any private citizens furniture ; ) for this he was thrust into prison ; but he made application to the lords of session , who found the thing so infinitely illegal , that they forthwith ordered his liberation , and discharged such proceedings for the future . perhaps you may think this is but a trifle , but there is more in it than you are aware of : for , besides that sir iohn hall , present provost of edinburgh , is a privy counsellor , and consequently is not to be supposed to have attempted such a thing without first consulting crawford , and some others who sit at that table ; there is this at the bottom of it : in each of these parishes there is a presbyterian meeting-house , and the preachers ( though they stand on no other found , but king iames his toleration ) hold themselves for the rightful pastors of these parishes , and so pretend that the use of these utensils belongs to them , and they ought to have them in their custody : this was that which put the magistrates upon the foresaid course . innumerable such things as these i could easily collect , and weary your patience with them , but methinks by this time , you have got taste enough of the episcopal parties troubles on the one hand , and the prebyterian parties temper on the other , to make you understand both competently ; and that was all i intended . only there are two things perhaps , which you may be desirous to have some further satisfaction about ; and i will try if i can give it . the first is , that possibly ye may apprehend , i did not in my last sufficiently take off these aspersions which are thrown upon the episcopal clergy by the phanatick news mongers , in their malicious papers , and pamphlets , which they are printing and dispersing so confidently every day at london . to tell the truth , sir , we only hear of these papers ; at least for my part i have seen none of them ; they come not ordinarily to scotland , and i believe their authors are no ways inclined they should , ( it requires a great deal of forehead to tell lies where they can be easily discovered ) and not coming to our hands , how can we detect or expose their falsities ? i am sure , i said enough in the general to fortifie you , or any sober man , against them ; especially as to all these ministers deprived by the council ; for , ( as i said there ) the council never took notice of any thing but reading and praying . but what though malicious men tell false stories with a great deal of confidence ? are you such a stranger to the world , as not to know that lying has ever been one of the chief artifices by which that party have carried on their purposes ; it is no new politick of theirs . i could tell you some of the oddest stories that ever you heard since you was born , concerning their dexterity in that art , in the late times : but i will trouble you only with one at present ; indeed the whole world should know it , it has such peculiarities in it . you know how anno 1638. at the assembly of glasgow , they not only pretended to depose the bishops , but even to excommunicate many of them : amongst the rest , that most reverend and worthy prelate , spotswood , arch-bishop of st. andrews . the sentence of deposition and excommunication passed against him , was ordered to be read publickly after the forenoons sermon , in all the churches within his diocess ; and , in it , a great many horrid immoralities , ( such as incest and adultery , &c. ) were amassed . amongst many others , it was read particularly in the church of kilrinny in fife , by mr. coline adam , then minister there ; beaton of balfour was in the church at the time , he was not a little amazed , at hearing such strange things charged upon the arch-bishop . he had lived many a year in his neighbourhood . he had been frequently in company with him ; but had never discovered such crimes about him , so that he was exceedingly surprized : but that was the least on 't . in the progress of the sentence he heard himself named as one of four witnesses , who had been examined upon oath , and by their testimonies had proven these things against him : this astonished him quite , for it was not only notorious to all the neighbourhood , that during the whole time that famous assembly sate , he was not at glasgow , but still at home ; but no body knew it better than mr. adam himself , for he had not only been his constant auditor every sunday , but he had seen him ( or might have done it ) every day ; there being but a very short distance ( perhaps not two hundred paces ) betwixt their dwellings . in effect it put the gentleman in such disorder , that he had well nigh stopped the ministers reading any further , if his father , who was by him , had not hindered him , telling him he would ruin himself . however , after they came out , he challenged the minister , who easily confest he knew it was a lie , but pretended he behoved to read it , in obedience to authority . and what might he not have done after that ? tell me sir , was not this a well assured wickedness ? this passage i have from persons of great integrity , yet alive , who told me , they had it twenty times from beaton's own mouth ; and it is but one of a thousand , as good , if i could be at the pains to collect them . piae fraudes ( talk we what we please ) have done good service , and been excellent christian tools in their time , for carrying on the good old cause . but it was not scarcity that made me go so far back for proofs of presbyterian honesty : these twelve or fourteen months by-gone afford variety enough in all conscience . thus to instance but in two or three things . what effrontery was used last year at london , for running down all the accounts , were sent up , concerning the persecution of the western clergy , as i told you before ? such ingrain'd impudence ( had it not been seen and felt ) i had believed , could neither have come from hell nor it , the two grand staple-ports for that commodity . what relations of oaths , what confident assertions , what printed papers had we for king iames his being dead at brest in march last ? i remember the present earl of argile , one day disturbed a whole meeting-house , with a forged letter about it . with what shamelessness did the news go up first , and then come down again from london in september last , and pass current here : that the streets of edinburgh were thronged with the heads or chieftains of clanns , coming in dayly to take the benefit of king william's indemnity , that was published after dundee's death ? though all the kingdom knows , not so much as one has come in to this very day ? and what strange tales have been told of the wonderful feats of iniskilling men ? i remember some gentlemen about two months ago , went in one afternoon to a presbyterian coffee-house , called for the news book , cast up the account of the irish killed by them , and after computation , found the number amounted to above 48000. these are but their ordinary tricks , and with us they have now ceased to be scandalous ; for by custom we are come to reckon it no more strange to find that party lie , than to see danes drink , or englishmen eat pork or pork-pudding : so that indeed sir , i pity you heartily , if your charity towards the episcopal clergy in this kingdom can be in the least shaken by the boldness of these miserable scriblers . i will only add one thing more upon this head , and that is , that whatever may be published that way , must needs be false upon this account , that ( as very many have observed ) since ever the deprivation-work began ; all the favour shown , has been to those who least deserved it ; and if there was any less knowing , less circumspect in their lives , or any ways less qualified for continuing in the ministery , they are the men , who have hitherto escaped deprivation . the politick is no more damnable than understood ; for as the shewing some favour to such , with less discerning persons , may chance to pass for an argument of the councils moderation : so under this cover they have the opportunity of doing a great deal of mischief ; they ruin more securely , and with less observation , those of unquestionable lives , and abilities , and disable them for being remora's hereafter , either to the settling or securing presbytery , which they are affraid they might have been , after the present ferment is over , had they continued in their stations ; and hereby they hope to ruin their reputations too , with people who think little , and strangers , who cannot know all the intrigues of their business ; for such may readily conclude they have deserved worse , seeing these are deprived , while others are preserved : and then , besides all this , to these least deserving , the seeming favour , of sparing them at present , is shewn , upon this design , in all likelyhood , that afterwards they may be ruined and disgraced with the greater contempt and ignominy ; for , being the weaker men of the episcopal side , they foresee , they will not only not be able to make a suitable resistance to the zealous gang , when it shall be in circumstances to dispute it with them ; but also it will be easie for the ecclesiastical visitations to depose them : and not only so , but their fall when it comes , may be readily improven into an heavy reflection , on all of episcopal principles : and phanaticks will have in readiness to say , that the whole party was still such , and by these , it may be judged what all the rest either were or are . this is truely the politick , sir : but by this time i think i have insisted too much on this purpose . the other thing perhaps is more material ; for when you have considered all i said in my last , perhaps ye may think it strange , that you have found nothing concerning the inclinations of the generality of the people : and such a general persecution of the episcopal clergy on the one hand , and so deep a silence concerning the resentments of the people on the other , may perchance seem to you a demonstration of the truth of that article in our new claim of right ( for we may thank our stars , we have once gotten an original contract betwixt king and people ) which affirms , that prelacy , and the superiority of any office in the church above presbyters , is , and hath been a great and insupportable grievance , and trouble to this nation , and contrary to the inclinations of the generality of the people , &c. but the truth is sir , as from the beginning i was unwilling to fall foul upon the state ; so i thought that did not come so naturally in my way ; for my design was only to acquaint you with the treatment of the clergy ; and not to canvass every assertion , that has been boldly obtruded on the world by their persecutors . but seeing that article makes such a noise , and i hear some of your english pamphleteers are taking notice of it , and talking confidently that it is true. i am content to trouble you with a dozen of lines , or so , about it : and in the first place ; perhaps it might be sufficient to say no more ; but , what then ? what tho the generality of the people were so enclined ? will it follow , therefore , episcopacy ought be abolished in scotland ? if i mistake not , i have heard as good arguments answered with a non sequitur . but if i am mistaken , and the argument is good , then all you gentlemen , the divines of england , are most miserably affronted ; affronted , i say , by the scotch meeting of estates , tho there was not so much as one divine amongst them , when they voted their claim of right : you have been wretchedly out all this while , in your disputes with the papists , tho you made a great noise with them ( and they were too weak for you ) these four or five years by gone . you have never hit upon the true rule of faith and manners ( shall i call it ) or the judg , the infallible judg of controversies ; that honor was reserved for the scotch laicks , they are the men who have been the true students of the disciplina arcani , and have fallen upon the knack ; the inclinations of the generality of the people ( tho god knows what a rule it would have made in our saviours time ) are the thing ; they are rule or judg , or whatever you please to call them ; and what more would ye have ? lord what a field has a man here , if he pleased to be wanton ! but i must cut short , and therefore let me return to be serious : why then , to tell you in a word , sir , if i may say it without giving the lye to the convention . there 's not a falser proposition in the world , than , that the inclinations of the generality of the people of scotland are against episcopacy ; or that they look upon it as a great and insupportable grievance and trouble to the nation : and let us have a poll for it when they will , and you shall quickly see the demonstration : if this does not satisfie you , i have more yet to say . i can affirm , with a well grounded assurance , that , if by the people you mean the commonalty , the rude , illiterate vulgus , the third man through the whole kingdom is not presbyterian ; and if by the people , you mean those who are persons of better quality and education ( whose sense in my opinion , ought in all reason , to go for the sense of the nation ) i dare boldly aver , not the 13th . for notwithstanding all the clamors that are made on that head , 't is well known to all the kingdom , that fanaticism has all alongst had little footing in that far wider half of the kingdom , which lies on the north of the tay. and tho the party has been infinitely earnest and active to encrease and multiply their numbers every where ; yet in all that country , they could never get above three or four meeting-houses erected , and these too , very little frequented or encouraged . nay , even on this side the tay ( except in the five associated shires in the west ) the third man was never engaged in the schism . for convincing you of this , i 'll ask no other postulate , than what i suppose you and all considering men will readily grant , and that is , that phanaticism is more apt to spread and prevail in towns than in the country ; so that by them we may best judg of the numbers of the party . it would make an intolerable work to go through all ; let me only instance in some of them , where the experiment has been remarkably made , not many months ago ; and by these ye may judg of the rest . at perth ( or s. iohnstown ) where now a presbyterian minister is most illegally possessed of the church , the tenth man does not go to hear him , and particularly , not one of the magistrates , tho they were elected by poll. at cowpar in fife , the presbyterian preacher ( now possessed of the church ) sometimes has not forty of fifty people in his congregation . the great body waits all upon the regular clergy , who have there got a meeting-house . 't is much the same at s. andrews . at sterling and burnt-island , the magistrates were likewise chosen by the poll , but all malignants , as they call them . at sterling ( as i am told ) the prebyterian votes were not one to six . at burnt-island they were but one to three . 't is true indeed , the privy council has turn'd out these magistrates in both towns , and put presbyterians in their stead . some admire how arbitrarily it was done : but i am only concerned for the inclinations of the generality of the people . at mussleburg more than eighteen of twenty parts have once and again ( since their pastor was deprived ) supplicated the council , that during the vacancy , they might have regular clergy-men to officiate amongst them . i could instance also , in dumfermling , dysert , weems , leith , iedburgh , kelso , and many other places . nay , even in edinburgh , the churches where the episcopal clergy ( who have complyed ) preach , are more thronged , and better frequented , than the churches usurped by the presbyterians : not to mention , that every sunday there are five of six several meetings of men , who are not very well pleased with either presbyterians , or complying episcopalians . shall i tell you further yet , what i am credibly told , concerning even glasgow it self ? i am told , sir , that even in that city , which has been so famous for phanatick zeal , and wherein on christmass last , for a demonstration of it , the rabble ( with the present earl of argyle on their head ) burnt , with the pope , our two archbishops in effigie ; i am told , i say , that even in that city , the greater number of citizens of the best quality are of episcopal principles . indeed , sir , whatever number of friends they might have had a year or two ago , i am confident this day it is diminished by a third : for besides that peoples eyes are now beginning to open , and see the inconsistency of their principles and practices , with the common rules of nature , as well as christianity , they are beginning to have enough of their cant , and to be weary of their sermons . and here i cannot forbear to relate to you a passage , which i had lately from a very ingenious gentleman ; he had had a conversation with another gentleman of good quality , and good abilities , but who had been engaged by his interest to go to the presbyterian assemblies ; in their conversation they came to talk concerning the presbyterian preachers , and that gentleman told my author , he had now heard them for two months , or so ; but he had observed , that he had never so much as heard one criticism at the explication of a text , never one citation out of father , poet , or philosopher , never one passage either of civil or church history . what ? ( replyed my author ) it seems then ye get nothing but pure scripture , clean gospel , but tell me , do ye get any great abundance of good sense ? to tell the truth ( he answered ) even as little of that too as any man could wish . * but what needs more ? they themselves are beginning now to be sensible , that they are by far the smaller party : and if i pleased , i could name a certain person , a statesman , who had a great hand in the late revolution , and has yet in the present government , who confessed lately to another certain person , that now he was persuaded ( tho he never believed it before ) that the episcopal was not only by far the greater , but even the better part of the nation . but after all this ; perhaps you may start the difficulty ; how came it then to pass , that that article was put in the claim of right , and the presbyterian party prevailed so far in the convention and parliament ? i could easily give you abundant satisfaction as to that too ; but it would require a fuller deduction than i am willing to fall upon at present ; only in a word , when the members for the convention were a chusing , the kingdom generally was in a perfect confusion ; vast numbers of people there were whose opinions would not allow them to give any countenance to the then transactions , they having many scruples in their heads concerning the lawfulness of that whole procedure . on the other hand , the presbyterians ( fond of the opportunity of getting a king deposed , and their diana set up ) were infinitely diligent . so , many elections were very far from being what they would have been , had the loyal and episcopal party bestirred themselves as they might : neither yet would that have done the business , in all probability ; for even as elections passed , when the members first convened at edinburgh , had any interest espoused by them been subjected to a vote , affairs had gone far otherwise than they did . but the presbyterian party foreseeing that , industriously projected delays , and protracted time ; and in the interim were infinitely vigilant to biass the members ; so that before either the forfeiture of the king , or that article of the claim of right , i am now concerned in , were voted , many of the nobility , all the bishops , and a great number of barons and burgesses had deserted the house ; and not a few of those who stayed , had ( what through fear , and weakness , and the like infirmities ) changed their principles , which their electors supposed were in them , and they brought to edinburgh with them . this is the true way that matters went : i could easily give you an account of the topicks were made use of , for inveigling these members who were imposed upon : it was impossible the protestant religion could be otherwise secured ; england was a wise nation , they had set the crown on king william's head already ; if scotland should dissent , it would ruin the nation ; the english were satisfied presbytery should be established here ; and king william was earnest for it , ( which , to tell you by the by , i never or very hardly could perswade my self to believe ) and a great many more to the same purpose . these and twenty things more i could deduce more largely , if it were needful ; but my paper is now very near spent , and so you must content your self with what you have got at present . thus , sir , in two long letters i have endeavoured , in part , to satisfie you concerning the present estate of the scottish clergy . if my account is lame , it is no wonder , for i am none of the most observing men in the world ; and i was obliged for very good reasons to forbear consulting others , and use only such materials as my own observation could afford me . but this i can say over again , tho you have not all , yet you have nothing but truth ; and tho it be not well digested , it is as well as i could , considering my conveniences . and so i bid you heartily farewel : being , &c. postscript . i was once minded to have told you fully too , what bitter reflections our presbyterians are daily casting upon your church of england ; how they condemn her clergy for deserting the principles of passive-obedience and non-resistance , they were wont to glory so much in ; how it is their common talk , that king william loves episcopacy as ill in england , as in scotland , and would be content to have it away ( they believe , to make way for the dutch model ) if he could get it done ; and twenty other such stories . but i believe , 't is only their hatred to your constitution , makes them talk so . yet this is certain , we have here reprinted a pamphlet , called the ceremony-monger , and ( as i am informed ) at the command of some great person . i am afraid , that possibly , i may have been injurious to the privy council , in giving a partial account of their act passed on christmass eve last , for i find many people are of the opinion , that it is not to be limited to the year 89 , but may comprehend former years also , for which reason , and because in its narrative , it brings some further light ( tho it needed no more ) to what i had asserted concerning their being refused the protection of the government , who were turned out of their churches by the rabble , before the thirteenth of april , i have subjoined the act here word by word , as it stands in the register . and 't is thus : at edingburgh , decem. 24 , 2689. the lords of his majesties privy council considering , that by the act of the meeting of the estates of the date the thirteenth of april last , there is a difference made betwixt the ministers then in possession and exercise of their ministery at their respective churches , and those who were not so ; and that the case of the ministers who were not in the actual exercise of their ministerial function the thirteenth day of april last by-past , lies yet under the consideration of the parliament ; and lest in the mean time they may call and pursue for the stipend alledged due to them , or put in execution the decreets and sentences already obtained at their instance , for the same , before the estates of parliament can meet , and give their determination as to that point . therefore the said lords of privy council , finding that the case foresaid , depending before the parliament , is not obvious to be cognosced , and decided upon by the inferior iudges , but that the samine should be left intire to the decision of the parliament , have thought fit to signifie to all inferior courts and ministers of the law , that the matter above mentioned is depending before the parliament : to the effect they may regulate and govern themselves in the iudging of all processes to be intended before them , upon the said matter , or in executing sentences already pronounced thereupon as they will be answerable . sic subscribitur , crafurd j. p. d. s. lon . i have just now ( after my sheet was ended ) learned a passage , which is put for the confirmation of that which has a cross at it , and on the margin refers to the postscript . it is that a presbyterian minister in edinburgh confessed ( with regrate ) to a gentleman , this same very week , that within this half year by-gone their party has lost a great many thousands ; 't is true , he called them 40 , but i must beg his pardon : for i doubt if they could ever reckon , by so great numbers , in the whole kingdom ( i still except the five western shires , where yet there 's as little religion , as in any part of christendom . ) he said further , that tho patronages were a great corruption , and the church would never be well constitute , till they were abolished , and popular elections advanced in their stead ; yet they are not inclined , that that matter should be determined the ensuing session of parliament , because they find as the present inclinations of the generality of the people go ; were the settling of ministers referred to popular elections , they would chuse all either cameronians , or of prelatical principles : i suppose his meaning was , in the often mentioned five western shires , cameronians would be chosen , and episcopal clergy-men through the rest of the kingdom generally . by this ye may judge , whether i had reason to say , that their party is very much diminished , and themselves are very sensible of it . the fourth letter . edinb . ian. 11. 1690. sir , i wish you a good new year : when i parted with you lately at london , i found your tenderness and compassion enclin'd you to lament the sad condition of our church , and i remember you ordered me then to let you know whether the truth of things would justifie the reports that went current there , of the sufferings of the clergy ; i found that the half was not told you then of what is commonly known in this place . no history can parallel the tragical disasters the clergy have met with since the beginning of this revolution ; it is very surprising , the present governours should make it their business to sacrifice the episcopal clergy ( by law established ) to the fury and blind rage of an opposite faction ; strangers will wonder at it , and it is not easily accountable what can be the politic to imbitter so considerable a body . it is shameful for the judges to be so partial , as plainly and openly to avow , they do not intend their obedience , but their ruin. to give you a particular account of the disgraces and affronts put upon the clergy since the beginning of 1689. would fill a volume : how they have been driven in the midst of winter , with their wives and tender children , from their houses and residence : nor is this to be imputed so much to the barbarous executioners , as to the bloody and enthusiastick company that inspir'd them . there is no safety for some men , but in the universal shipwreck of church and state ; the shaking of the nation was so terrible , that all the scum got uppermost , our state and our church were at once levelled with the earth , and the protestant religion lost its former signification ( when we understood by it unmix'd christianity free from superstition and enthusiasm ) and now it is no more than every mans fantastic humor , new models of government , and a liberty to pull down the things that are most ancient and most sacred . will not the protestants in england wonder , that some of our ministers have been deprived for not reading a proclamation for a fast , the narrative whereof implyed no less , than that the episcopal clergy were destitute of the assistance of god's spirit in the exercise of their ministry : you may see the paper when you please , and i believe a coarser you never saw in print . not to mention here , that the art of all mankind could not make sense of a certain paragraph in it . and is it not as odd , that when they were sifted before the council , they were not so much as once asked , why they did not read that extraordinary paper , concerning the late king ; nor whether they will comply with the present government for the time to come . i know , if this paper be seen abroad , their impudence will contradict it , but a matter of fact so publickly known , defies calumny it self . i have spoke with many of the clergy here , and with a great many of the laity ; and i never heard of any thing more bitter and persecuting . how unworthily the ministers of edinburgh particularly have been treated in this affair , the world may judg by this one instance . the said paper pass'd in the convention of the estates upon friday , it comes from the press late at saturday , and the ministers within the city upon half an hours advertisement on sunday morning were enjoyned to read it , under pain of deprivation . i remember you once blamed the clergy for not addressing the present court for protection : they made their application from the beginning , but to no purpose , tho they were furnish'd with all necessary evidence of their bad usage . you know that presbytery is to be established here by the next session of parliament ; and you know that the roman inquisition is not half so rigid as that will be when they are once in the saddle : to what purpose then should they beat the air , when their ruin is thought by many to be a part of the bargain . there is nothing so inconsistent with presbytery , as toleration of any that differ from them in the least iota : it is true , they are against the apostolick doctrin of non-resistance , but they will not be resisted themselves . and since the episcopal clergy here know they are given up as a prey to their enemies teeth , they had rather sit silent under their malleur , than struggle with the stream when it is so violent and impetuous . the present faction endeavour by all art and industry , to perswade king william , that the flower and multitude of the nation is for presbytery : it were an easie thing for him to put this to the tryal . let the west-country people , who are so brave and generous in tearing ministers gowns , reduce the highlanders now in arms for king iames , and then let it be granted , that they are the men they pretend to be : and unless they are able to do this , we must judge of them as a clamorous and inconsiderable faction , whose nature it is , to cross and resist every creature that 's but called a king. and it is very wonderful , that all the civil magistrates in christendom do not banish that supremacy of the kirk from off the earth , being equally subversive of all republicks , as it is indeed inconsistent with monarchy . the protestants in the beginning of the reformation , thought they did christendom good service , when they discovered and exposed the tyranny of the popish supremacy over christian magistrates ; but the very same doctrin of rome is here hugg'd , as the great palladium of the protestant religion . and to be short , let them swear allegiance to all the kings in christendom , it must be in subordination to this great article , that all persons and councils must strike sail to omnipotent presbytery ; they are taught by their hopes of heaven , to resist the king , when he either counteracts or contradicts the decisions of the general assembly , which general assembly may and ought to meet when and where they please , without or against the king's express will : these are not imaginary consequences fasten'd on them and their doctrin by art and ill nature ; but the plain history of what they have done here , and by their principles are obliged still to do . a liberty to tyrannize over all not of their stamp is the idol they adore ; the kirk supremacy is by so much the more mischievous , by how much it is more inquisitive , precipitate , and confused than the pretended authority of the bishop of rome ; but i have digressed too far . if the disasters under which the clergy groan , were confined to what they have suffer'd in their own nation , it may be they would endure it with greater patience . but when the faction have hired some scurrilous scriblers to defame them abroad by weekly libels , it cannot but excite indignation and pity . there appear'd a pamphlet lately called plain dealing ; if the author had been considerable for any thing , he might be sufficiently exposed for his lyes ; but being but newly put upon writing of books , he must be excused , if he cannot otherwise support the faction , but by calumny ; when he is more expert , he will defend them with plausible and artificial stories . it is not worth your while to go thorough the several inconsistences and whining impertinences that are in that pamphlet . it is enough to glance at one , by which you may guess at the man's impudence , viz. that in the parliament 1685. all the bishops , except three , were for repealing the penal laws against the papists , when it is known to the whole nation , that all of them almost were determined to vote against the repealing of those laws , if ever that affair was offer'd in parliament : and such of them as might be thought to favor the design of repealing those laws , did sincerely judg their method in their circumstances at that time , to be the best fence and shelter against popery , and all their concessions did not amount to min heer fagel's famous letter , which contained the sentiments of the present court. when the faction had ruined the clergy at home , they were afraid they might be pityed abroad ; and to justifie their sacriledg and villany , they endeavour to cover them all under libels and invectives , and represent them to other nations , as vitious and illiterate . for the information of strangers , i will consider both parts of the accusation ; first , as to the immoralities alledged against the clergy , there cannot be a more atrocious and spiteful calumny : it is not possible for them to convince credulous strangers by an open , fair , and visible tryal , that this is a lye ; for they have no fence against the malice and activity of their enemies , but their patience and their prayers ; if their learned and compassionate brethren in england would interpose so far with the present court , as to have this affair examined before any impartial judicature ; then such as were found guilty , should be derpiv'd of the honor of the priesthood , and not suffered to continue stumbling-blocks to the people ; but let me acquaint you plainly , that there shall never be such a judicatory erected , and that it is not the method of their enemies , to have things fairly and calmly enquired into : and therefore the clergy beseeches all generous strangers to stop their ears against such wicked and indefatigable calumniators . they give their enemies open and publick defiance upon this head ; it is enough that they are banished , rifled , and plundered in the most savage manner , tho they be not robb'd of the compassion of strangers . it is true , that in the records of council , relating to the deprived clergy , there is a column containing immoralities libelled against some of them ; but it 's as true , that tho they are recorded ( to make the world believe them guilty ) yet they were never examined fairly ; the artifice of their enemies is mean , as it is wicked ; first , to invent calumnies and slanders , and then leave them unexamined , boldly to vent them amongst strangers , when they had not the confidence at home to give one instance of such immoralities amongst so many hundreds that have been deprived . how easily and how sadly might they recriminate upon this head ; but that 's not so pleasant in it self , nor will it serve the designs of christianity : but shortly there shall be a more full , free , and particular answer given to those scandalous reports , in a treatise ready for the press . the persecutions of the clergy here are beyond any parallel . i cannot forbear to give you one instance of it , mr. iohn mowbray , minister of strachbrock , complyed with the present government in all its steps ( a place not above eight miles from edinburgh ) ; yet upon the 12th of iuly 1689. a company of fanaticks who were sufficiently taught how to behave themselves , entered his house in a hostile manner , tore hi gown , threatened his life , beat his daughter , and frighted his wife to death ; when their fury was a little over , he ventur'd once again to officiate ; but my lord cardross , patron of the said church , and one of the privy-council , caused lock the church doors , and sent his minister a packing , tho he defies the severest tryal for life or doctrin ; and all this for no other reason , but because he had episcopal ordination ; for my lord's conscience did not allow him to hear any such . as to the other accusation of their being ignorant , i would gladly know , who are these learned gentlemen among the scotch presbyterians that found them so after tryal ; this is a thing they dare not so much as whisper at home , except it be amongst those good women that sell tripes at the cow-gate . there could not be any thing thought on more comfortable to the clergy here , than that there were some learned and grave english church-men sent hither to enquire into the literature and sufficiencies of both the contending parties . but this proposal will never be heard , it 's enough that they are once run down with clamor , violence , and noise : but it is no part of their business to have things put to a fair , serious , and open tryal , they dare not attempt it , and therefore i allow you to defie the accusers of the clergy upon this head also , and to convince strangers how improbable this calumny must be , let them consider how much the oppressed clergy was and is favored by the honorable and learned society of the college of justice , who are the best judges in this case . the blasphemies and fooleries that are heard at present from the pulpits of edinburgh , make up the entertainment of most companies , they discourse of the mysteries of christianity so coarsly and familiarly , as they do of the meanest and vilest things in nature . but it is not possible that the regular clergy can be so ignorant as their enemies represent them : for the steps of their tryal are various and difficult , before they are allowed to preach in publick : and when they are presented to a church , they undergo the same tryals over again in theology , languages , and preaching . i never heard that the presbyterian genius was very fond of too much learning , especially among the scotch cameronians , a kind of people so wedded to their own peculiar and nonsensical whimsies , that they are now become antipods to mankind in their language , behaviour , morals , and intellectuals . there cannot be any thing imagined more fantastically foolish than the education of their preachers , when they have so much latin as to understand a dutch system , they are thought profound , and more learned than is necessary , and very few of them arrive at this . lately one of them who had spent much of his time in selling buttur and cheese , would turn a minister , and being asked it he understood greek and latin , answered no , he could read the english bible , and that was enough . it is the saddest oppression to be run down with clamor , and no probability of being heard : but let the enemies of the clergy remember the jewish proverb , that he that pulleth a stone out of the temple , ere it be long the dust will fly in his eyes . the ruin and disgrace of so many clergy-men , one would think , cannot be a good foundation for a new government . but this is not all , when the clergy are thrust from their houses and livelihoods . it seems there is a further design to starve them , as appears by a late act of council promoted by the presbyterian party , discharging all judges within the nation , to pass sentence in favors of the clergy for the by-gone tythes yet unpaid and due to the episcopal ministers , until the parliament take that affair into their consideration . i have sent herewith a double of that act , make what use of it you please : i do not encline it should be printed ( tho this should ) for that would reflect too much upon the honor of our nation . what to with either , i cannot advise you at this distance . farewel . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a51353-e6530 * see the postscript a proclamation for citing ministers vvho have not prayed for their majesties scotland. privy council. 1689 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a58746 wing s1857 estc r6285 13698808 ocm 13698808 101452 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a58746) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 101452) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 848:55) a proclamation for citing ministers vvho have not prayed for their majesties scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, by the order of his majesties privy council, edinburgh : 1689. "edingburgh, august 22, 1689." reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church and state -scotland -early works to 1800. dissenters, religious -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -religion -17th century -sources. broadsides -scotland -edinburgh (lothian) -17th century 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-03 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation , for citing ministers vvho have have not prayed for their majesties . edinburgh , august 22. 1689. whereas by an act of council , of the sirth of this i●stant , in pursuance of an act of the meeting of the estates of this kingdom , of the thirteenth of april last , the parochioners and hearers of such ministers as have neglected and slighted the reading of the proclamation therein mentioned , and the praying for king william and queen marry , are invited and allowed to cite such ministers before the privy council , which act of council grants warrand for citing and adducing ministers ; and forasmuch as the design of the said act , is , that such ministers who have disobeyed the said act of the meeting of the estates , may conform thereto by a legal sentence be deprived ; therefore that the said act of the meeting of the estates , and the act of council pursua●t thereof , may attain there intended design , and effect with the greater expedition , and least expenses to the leidges , the lords of his majesties privy council , in their majesties flame and authority . do invite and allow , not only the parochioners and hearers of such ministers as have disobeyed ; but also the heretors of these parochins , and the sheriffs or their deputs , and magistrats of burghs respective , and the members of this currant parliament , within there respective bounds , to cause cite such ministers before the privy council , and hereby grants warrand to messengers at arms , for citing them , and such witnesses as are necessary , they delivering a copy of these presents , either in print or in writ , signed by their hand , to each minister that shall be cited by them to any tuesday or thursday , six dayes after the citation , for all on this side the river tay , and fifteen days for all beyond the said river , that such ministers who have not given obedience to the said act of the meeting of the estates , may be a legal sentence be deprived according thereto ; and appoints the returns of these executions to be inrolled by the clerk of privy council , and called before the lords at their respective dayes of compearance ; declaring that these present are but prejudice of any citations already given , or to be given , either upon the former act of council , or upon warrands from the council-board . and ordains these presents to be printed , and published by the officers of prive council at the mercat-crosse of edinburgh , that none may pretend ignorance . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save king william and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , by order of his majesties privy council , anno dom. 1689. the lord strange his demands propounded to the inhabitants of the town of manchester concerning a pacification and laying down of armes : with the valiant answer and resolution of the commanders and souldiers in denying and withstanding the said demands : also the names of the scots elders and ministers chosen by the commissioners of scotland to be sent to the assembly of divines appointed by the parliament to be holden at london for the setling of religion. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a35718 of text r20496 in the english short title catalog (wing d1091a). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 5 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a35718 wing d1091a estc r20496 12293548 ocm 12293548 58945 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a35718) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 58945) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 248:e121, no 25) the lord strange his demands propounded to the inhabitants of the town of manchester concerning a pacification and laying down of armes : with the valiant answer and resolution of the commanders and souldiers in denying and withstanding the said demands : also the names of the scots elders and ministers chosen by the commissioners of scotland to be sent to the assembly of divines appointed by the parliament to be holden at london for the setling of religion. derby, james stanley, earl of, 1607-1651. [2], 6 p. printed for th. cook, london : october 8, 1642. reproduction of original in thomason collection, british library. eng derby, james stanley, -earl of, 1607-1651. scotland. -parliament. westminster assembly (1643-1652) manchester (england) -history -siege, 1642. a35718 r20496 (wing d1091a). civilwar no the lord strange his demands: propounded to the inhabitants of the town of manchester, concerning a pacificction [sic], and laying down of a [no entry] 1642 1001 1 0 0 0 0 0 10 c the rate of 10 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2006-09 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2006-09 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2006-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2006-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2007-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the lord strange his demands : propounded to the inhabitants of the town of manchester , concerning a pacificction , and laying down of armes : with the valiant answer and resolution of the commanders and souldiers , in denying and withstanding the said demands . also the names of the scots elders and ministers chosen by the commissioners of scotland to be sent to the assembly of divines appointed by the parliament to be holden at london for the setling of religion . london , printed for th. cook . october 8. 1642. the lord strange his demands of the inhabitants of manchester . also a catalogue of th●se elders and ministers that were chosen by the commissioners of the generall assembly of scotland , to be sent to the assembly of divines in england . the late lord strange , now earle of darby , having strongly besieged the towne of manchester in the county palatine of lancaster , and lien before it with his forces , to the number of two thousand foot and six hundred horse , with 8. or 9. peeces of ordnance , from the four and twentieth of september to this present , since which time many shot have been discharged on both sides ; the lord strange planted his ordnance in two severall places , and plaid very fiercely upon the towne , and so hath continued night and day ever since , but hath done very little or no harme ! his musketiers have made many furious assaults against the town , and were as bravely withstood by those of the towne , who most couragiously defended their works , & made good their quarters against the enemy , beating them off , and killing above an hundred of them ( among which were some commanders of note ) without the losse of one man . his lordship seeing that by force he could not prevaile against the towne , hee sent a messenger to desire 〈◊〉 parley with the inhabitants of the towne , but they would not condescend unto it , till after foure or five messages from his lordship , and then they agreed that there should bee a cessation of armes on both sides , from tuesday in the afternoone , till seven of the clock the next day ; in the mean while the l. strange propounded these demands following : 1. that they would lay downe their armes , and deliver them up to his lordship . 2. that he might march through the town with his army , which were both denied . 3. that they would deliver him a thousand pound in money . 4. then he demanded but two hundred muskets . 5. seeing none of these would be granted , rather then be frustrate in all his demands , in his last message he desired but fifty muskets , and he would raise his siege and leave the town . after some debate and serious consultation concerning these demands between the commanders and common souldiers , a peremptory and resolute answer was returned his lordship by the unanimous consent of them all , that he should not have so much as a sword . the towne hath now held out a complete fortnight , and still continues with an undaunted resolution to stand it 〈◊〉 against him . many of his souldiers run away , and confesse they have neither meat nor money , but what they get by robbing . captain bradshaw hath behaved himselfe most valiantly , to his everlasting renown . the enemy have discharged their ordnance above three hundred times , and the musketiers have done what they could , and yet have we not lost one person in the fight , but a boy unarmed standing upon a stile , but the townsmen have killed above a hundred , and taken eighty prisoners of the enemies . a catalogue of the elders and ministers of scotland appointed by the commissioners to be sent to the assembly of divines in england for setling of religion . certain letters are sent from scotland to the parliament , and read in the house of commons , directed to the lord and commons now assembled in the high court of parliament of england , in manner of a remonstrance , wherein they did declare the sense that they have of the great distractions and distempers of this kingdome , tending to the subversion of the long established government thereof , and the confusion of the whole state , and in the end would prove the distruction of that their kingdome of scotland ; and therefore the lords and commons of that kingdome are resolved to present a petition to his majesty , with such reasons as they conceive may move him to an accommodation of peace & agreement with both his houses of parliament ; but if the same should be rejected , they are resolved to assist the parliament with force of armes , to defend their just cause , and to bring all delinquents and incendiaries that have disturbed the peace of the kingdome , and caused these troubles , to condigne punishment , which the house with great joy and much thankfulnesse accepted of . the parliament seeing distractions 〈◊〉 divisions , and schismes to be crept into the church , have made choice of an assembly of divers reverend and learned divines for the setling and reforming of religion : and the commissioners of the generall assembly of scotland have made choice of three elders , and six ministers to be present at the assembly of divines here in england . the elders are the earle of cassells . lord maitland . sir archibald johnston the scots ministers are , m. henderson . m. douglasse . m. rutherfurd . m. bayly . m. gelaspe . m. borthvicke . finis . historicall collections of ecclesiastick affairs in scotland and politick related to them including the murder of the cardinal of st. andrews and the beheading of their queen mary in england / by ri. watson. watson, richard, 1612-1685. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a65265 of text r27056 in the english short title catalog (wing w1091). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 277 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 116 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a65265 wing w1091 estc r27056 09626751 ocm 09626751 43862 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a65265) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 43862) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1345:18) historicall collections of ecclesiastick affairs in scotland and politick related to them including the murder of the cardinal of st. andrews and the beheading of their queen mary in england / by ri. watson. watson, richard, 1612-1685. [11], 210, [2] p. printed by g.d. for john garfield, london : 1657. reproduction of original in the union theological seminary library, new york. eng mary, -queen of scots, 1542-1587. scotland -history -16th century. scotland -church history -16th century. a65265 r27056 (wing w1091). civilwar no historicall collections of ecclesiastick affairs in scotland and politick related to them, including the murder of the cardinal of st. andre watson, richard 1657 45803 512 10 0 0 0 0 114 f the rate of 114 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the f category of texts with 100 or more defects per 10,000 words. 2003-12 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-02 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-04 olivia bottum sampled and proofread 2004-04 olivia bottum text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-07 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion historicall collections of ecclesiastick affairs in scotland and politick related to them , including the murder of the cardinal of st. andrews , and the beheading of their queen mary in england . by ri. watson . sanguis sanguinem tetigit . hosea chap. 4. ver. 2 by swearing , and lying , and killing , and stealing , and commiting adultery they break out , and bloud toucheth bloud . london , printed by g. d. for iohn garfield , and are to be sold at his shop at the sign of the rolling-presse for pictures , near the royal exchange in corn-hill , over against popes-head-alley . 1657. to the right reverend father in god , and religious assertour of christs catholick church , john lord bishop of rochester . my lord . the certain hazard of all one hath , or is , in these uncertain times , annexed to the nicessity of a strict account , to be rendred in the porch or passage unto eternity , of the managing all affairs and offices , relating either to obligation , or restitution in this world ; puts me upon a serious review of mine own concernment , wherein , among many instances of chief regard , i find one of my great engagements unto your lordship with the impresse or character of holy orders , into which i receiv'd my entrance by the imposition of your sacred hands , unto whom i take my self , in some degree of duty to stand responsable for what i act by that commission , or write with any reflexion upon the doctrine or discipline of our church . the historical observations , i here humbly present your lordship with , are inseparable from that title in respect of both . the sect of schismaticks i describe , having , according to the tradition i am guided by , in a phrenetick fury from the beginning , thrown the price of their estates at their false apostles fe●t , and they with them cast souls and bodies into the fire of a raging persecution , by impious cruelties when predominant by opprob●ious calumnies when unarmed , and by civil wars , when their plough shares and pruning hooks could at any time be fashioned into swords or axes , for the cutting down not onely superfluous innovations in the habit , but the very body and existence of that apostolick rule and worship to which pattern we pretend . i pursue them but to the period of their first domestick insolencies , drencht in the bloud of that famous queen . whom their best poet , but one of her majesties worst subjects , once thought worth this distich ; quae sortem antevenis meritis , virtutibus annos , sexum animis , morum nobilitate genus . what latter attempts they made , when they marched over their borders to reform according to the mysterious model of their new cove ▪ nant , that whereunto their old enormous practices ought rather to have been conformed , is declar'd and historiz'd by that royal pen ▪ which hath registred to their eternal infamy their cutting in sunder the common tie● of nature , soveraignty , and bounty ; their forgetting speciall fresh obligations wherewith their active spirits had been gratified , not without some seeming diminution to , or depr●ssion of the doners interest and honour ; their inroad with an intent to confirm the presbyterian copy they had set , by making our church to write after them , though it were in bloudy characters . how infatuated they were in those counsels , how by providence defeated in their most desperate wicked e●ds , the unpittied spectacle of their downfal demonstrates to all the world . yet my lord , this is not to raise a trophee out of their miseries , or to trample on their dejected persons . if , by pourtrai●ing the horrid actio●s of their ancestours , i can excite their guilty consciences to compare the copy with the original , and repent effectu●lly for the transcend●ncie of their own rebellions , i shall have great complacency in the assurance that i have outrun , or outwrit my hopes . howsoever in what proportion i may expect credit to be given unto my care , which was not little , in the collection , and what resignation by the impartial reader unto the naked truth of the contents . i shall not doubt but hereby i may , in the same , confirm all pious and humble hearts in the preferring the ancient and univ●rsal successive government of the christian church before the new genevatizing bloudy discipline of some heady scots ; and perswade all moderate and quiet minded men to acknowledge one supremacy over both estates , by trusting the same hand with christs scepter here on earth , which himself doth with it and the civill sword . but this endeavour may seem impertinent , if not impudent , in the face or memory of that most reverend heroick prelate , whose greater eminency in authority , and interest in the same country hath with much more advantage , particularly and amply satisfied the world by a grearer volume , for the suppressing which so many subtilties and violences had been used , beside the power of a forraign magistrate , for a surprisal of the secretarie in his preparing it to the presse that nothing could be a surer evidence , than such self-confessing guiltinesse , against that party , nor ought else , after the grace and reverence of the renowned authour , put a greater estimate and opinion upon the book , at least if publisht as he writ it . may it please your lordship therefore to believe upon my word ( who am invested with the second order to make it valid ) that this treatise was designed long since in a preparatorie antecedence unto the other , and to that purpose , with more ingenious confid●nce than worldly prudence , trusted in the same hand which was to print and reap the profit of his grace's work , from which , after the dilatory pretences of some judgement to be made by a view to be taken of it , or rather after the printers turn was served in dispersing the greater copies , it was returned with this sentence , delivered by a person ( whose name i had not ) of much learning , honour , and integrity , upon perusal of it , that there was too much gall in the ink wherewith it was wrote , and supposed that an enemy was the collector , for that through the sides of those the design is against , our own mother is wounded . my lord , if the name of that severe person , with a particular of his exceptions , had been sent me , i should have endeavoured his satisfaction , or if theirs could have been otherwise effected whom i serve in it , and mine own reputation preserved , who have made implicite reference to this in another book ( a sharp reply to which i am yet to expect ) perchance i might have chosen rather to lose my pains , than give such a person scandal or confront his censure , professiing in the words of my learned collegue heretofore , now a most singularly devout and acute divine , in the case of like question , and appeal unto your lordship , that i would rather dye , than either willingly give occasion or countenance to a schism in the church of england ( i mean that church of england which conform'd her self to the ancient latin and greek church ) and i would suffer much evil before i would displease my dear brethren ( i adde such as keep close to their due principles ) in the service of jesus and in the ministeries of that church : wherefore my lord , if any thing of that nature have pass'd my pen , in the vacancie of a synod . i submit to any canon of retractation or penance shall be prescribed me by your reverence , together with that joint primitive oracle , and most worthy person , who● the doctor took ( and i do by his wary precedent ) for the other pillar of his sanctuary ▪ the lord bishop of sarum , whose countena●ce and favour i some years since was honoured with , more i presume for the integrity of my principles , than any meritorious pregnancie in my parts . but my lord if some timorous or superstitious ca●t●le in my grave censour , would keep me so far from rome , as to thrust me into the precincts of geneva , i confesse to him and all the world , that upon demonstrative reasons , i am much more affraid in christianities behalf of the leman lake , than tiber , and look with more horrour on the rebellions sprung , and reprobatory damnation denounc'd from thence , than on any encroachment upon kings , or indulgencies unto the people , so prodigally made by , and defused from the papal see . in fine my lord , the glosses are not many i have upon points controverted between the church of rome and us ▪ if those few be so short as to render my sense suspected , i will enlarge them when call'd upon , to the full state i have made of them deliberately unto my self . for the gall in my ink , i shall say onely with your lordships leave , i know not where more commendably or excusably , i may affect to give it a deeper black , than in the relation of their proceedings , whose souls were as red as scarlet , and the issue of all their enterprises died in bloud . i may be no lesse concerned to anticipate an after c●nsure , incident from persons of another rank i mean such of the scotch nobility , or related to them , whose faith and gallantry hath effaced such their ignoble progenitours impeachments in their coates , and yet may conceive their names and families purposely tainted by my pen , where i make a blot in some branch of their pedigree or descent . to whom i professe i searched not their heraldry for a distinction ▪ but as i intended no man injury or disrepute , so i preferred necessary truth to his or their vulgar honour in my design . which being in that respect a case of conscience , craves likewise your lordships cognisance , though as it regards the rule of prudence , i must answer it at my hazard . for the rest , my lord , til it appear by more than an obscure single suffering that i have infringed the canon of christian charity , or deviated from the doctrine and practice of the ancient church . i humbly crave your lordships favourable protection of this essay , and of my name in that communion into the ministery whereof your ordination introduced me , which no new discoveries nor discourses , in forreign parts have obliged my reason to desert , nor doth any self-conviction discourage me in my subscription as that churches , and my honoured lord , caen aug. 27. 1657. your lordships most humbly obedient son and servant ri. watson . historicall collections . if the sacred oracles and records , which christ with his apostles , evangelists , disciples , delivered unto the ears , and deposited in the hands of the primitive-church , had been at large in every particular , preserved , and by the same authority successively transmitted , whereby that smaler volume of their writings hath been manifested to our knowledge , and commended to our belief ; the errours and abuses in christianity had been fewer , or refomation whensoever necessary , more regular ; such a standing rule giving sudden evidence against the least obliquities which schism and heresie could transgresse in ; and being a bar against the boldness of those spirits , which , when the letter of scripture is not ( as it never but is in the sense ) clear and powerfull to confound them , rather multiply than rectifie things amisse , upon their pretended priviledge of prophesie or revelation . the mystery of gods providence in withholding this succour from his people , is not so much to be repin'd at , as his mercy to be magnified in administring the remainder of those helps , which is compleat to the support and satisfaction of any moderate inquirer after the general of doctrine , and particulars of discipline , the explication of the former , and enlargement of the latter being ever taken into the power of the catholick-church , which in its orginal purity , so studied a visible communion of saints , that either by expresse dispensation , or indulgent connivance , many national , provincial , yea , in●eriour corporate or collegiate congregations , had that latitude of difference , and singularity of profession or practice● , for which any proper 〈◊〉 pretence could be produced before a general council , or in lesse matters , before their patriarch and bishops , vested with authority to such purpose , as wherein their content and complacency kept all devout well-meaning christians from schism and a scandalous separation . others whose pride , ambition , or covetousnesse , carried them beyond the canon of moderation and peace , were severely censur'd , curs'd , excommunicated , cut off from christs body , which like rotten members they might otherwise have corrupted and gangrand , having no re-admission or re-union to that holy , sound continuity , without serious and open repentance , humble submission to the high authority of the church , which if they persisted obstinately to contemn or neglect , the power of truth subdued their doctrines , the storm of gods wrath dispersed their conventicles , the sword of his vengeance executed their persons in some exemplary temporal death , if it pursued them not to eternal damnation . how far the visible church , whether romane or greek , made at any time a general defection from her self , in a manifest detortion of , or declention and deviation from her own canon , is neither my design nor duty ( in reference to my present undertaking ) to search , no more than to condemn or vindicate particular churches in their separate condition . the sum of what i intend in this my treatise is , to shew how the scotch-presbyterian kirk , which when time was , would have fain been accepted as the pattern of purity , and clearest extraction of christian religion , began reformation upon no deep sense , no deliberate examen how corruption crept in ; nor proceeded according to any other rule than the anomalie of a prejudicate fancy or premeditated malice , which intended rather the destruction of persons , than composition of minds ●o a due temper and sobriety in worship ; having no other commission but what was given out by the spirit of disobedience and errour ; nor the countenance of any precedent beside what might be cited from the unhappy successe in the attempts of rebellion and schism . the first sect of preparatory reformers their history pretends to , were the lollards of kyle , who in the reign of king iames the fourth , about the year 1494. becoming numerous and troublesome both to church and state , were accused to the king not onely as hereticks , but rebels . the chief points or articles insisted on , which i am concerned to observe were these . that it is not lawful to fight for the faith , nor to defend the faith by the sword . knox ( to save the reputation of his own proceedings ) adds , if we be not driven to it by necessity , which is above all law . by the former clause the sword is taken out of the kings hand , who must be no military defender of the faith : by the latter it is given to the people , whose safety having a supremacy above the law , may frame an arbitrary necessity to rebell . that christ ordained no priests to consecrate as they do in the romish church , these many years . the sense whereof is best interpreted by another . that every faithfull man and woman is a priest . so that every one consequently ( even of either sex ) may administer the sacrament of the altar , or at least , that no ordination is necessary to endow or qualifie him that consecrates . or lastly , that no particular form of words proceeding from his mouth , have , by christs institution , any speciall efficacy to the transmutation of the common elements into mystical and sacramental essences , conferring grace upon , or operating it in the worthy receiver . that tythes ought not to be given to ecclesiastical men , as they were then called ( to them that since are called classical , i think they are not due ) to wit , wholly , saith knox , but a part to the poor , widow , or orphans , and other pious uses : and good reason surely ; for if the widow hath them , these pharisaical hypocrites know whence to fetch them , and under what pretence to devour the houses where they are . as great impiety may be cloaked under the name of pious uses , when the principal must be supposed the advancement of the discipline , toward which if a chargeable rebellion be found necessary , not onely the tenth but the whole stock must be piously imployed , and the poor with the orphan set out of the way . that christ at his comming hath taken away all power from kings to judge , and that the unction of kings ceased at the comming of christ . of this knox is ash●med and will therefore needs have the article not to be the lollards their ancestors , but the venemous accusation of the enemies , whereas both in his time and ours howsoever disguised , according to this doctrine hath proceeded the whole practice of the presbytery against their princes . that the blessings of bishops are of no value , which passeth onely with this charitable animadversion by the same hand ( of dumb dogs they should have been styled . ) that the excommunication of the kirk is not to be feared . that in no case it is lawfull to swear . that true christians receive the body of iesus christ every day by faith . so no need of the sacrament . that after matrimony be contracted and consummate , the kirk may make no divorcement . that faith should not be given to miracles ; so that it should seem christ was mistaken in his means to propagate the gospel . that we are no-more bound to pray in the kirk than in other places . that they which are called princes and prelates in the church are thievs and robbers . these men knox calls the servants of god , whose merciful providence he magnifies in preserving the register of their tenents , who without publick doctrine ( he means by the authority of a general assembly ) gave so great light to the kingdom of scotland . the importunity used by some of their faction about the king prevailed for their pardon , the rather because some ridiculous apertnesse in their answers rendred them , men not of depth to carry on a design , and this discovery was thought enough to awe them , and the check they had from court to restrain them ; for many years after was little controversie had about religion , untill patrick hamilton abbot of ferne , a man though devout , yet of an hot and violentspirit , discontented at home , passeth over into germanie , where at wittenberg meeting with luther and melancthon , as he encreased his dislike of the doctrine he left professed in scotland ; so he did his animosity against the persons of bishops and such as had the government of that church . the zeal of gods glory ( as knox writeth ) did so eat him up , that he could not long continue to remain there , but to ease his stomack he returns into his country , and as if he had been vested with apostolick commission , he solicites , disputes , and with too much virulen●y declaimes against the divinity of the times , taking the reformation both of pulpit and schools into his care . the sound hereof comes soon to the ears of the archbishop of s. andrews , the particulars were chiefly debated by cambell a dominican frier and learned thomist , with whom he had disputed at large , and being somewhat pleased that he had as he thought , and the other professed , made him his convert , he was ▪ beyond expectation , by the same man accused of heresie , and upon his articles condemned to be burnt , for trifles ( as knox saies ) viz. pilgrimage , purgatory , prayer to saints , and for the dead : yet as great a martyr as he was , his printed work shewes him to have been a more subtil sophister , than orthodox divine . to omit the great discouragement he gives to christian endeavours , by this assertion in terminis , the law bindeth us to do that which is impossible for us , and the cold water he casts upon practick obedience by this , the law doth nothing but command thee , explaining it to be onely to inform our knowledge , god not requiring nor expecting performance , putting off that obligation upon christ : his perverting the sense of many texts in scripture , from which he draws two ungrounded licentious conclusions , faith onely saveth , increduli●y onely condemneth , whereby good works are cashir'd , and a salve is found for all bad ones , the world , the flesh , the devill can suggest to : his bold enlargement of the apostles assertion , excluding from our iustification charity , which is the work of the gospell , which we act by the benefit of christs passion , and by the assistance of his grace , because he exempts the works of the law : his sophistry in an antithetical argument , no works make us righteous , ergo , no works make us unrighteous , whereas s. paul saith , that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven , and he declares such unrighteous , as do the works of the fl●sh . mism●k●ng works onely characters of a good or evil man , and the reward to bear , by consequence , no proportion unto them , which is contrary to the evangelicall doctrine . that god will reward every man according to his works : beside that through the whole series of his wri●ing , he makes christianity an idle speculative profession , a mere perspective of the passion of christ . for all which i impute not to him the guilt of heresie , nor excuse them that executed him as such . the reverence that had been paid him for his strictness of life and ability of parts , according to the learning of that age , was much augmented by a constant resolution at his death , which put the younger students and novices upon a combination for maintaining his tenents , and the breach they made , let out some friars to rail against the abuses of the bishops . the patronage of mr. gawin logie and mr. iohn maire added some reputation to these actions , and a reformation was attempted by some more unworthy instruments upon their credit . the light pulpit discourse of friar arithe with his gossips catched some slight people in a jest , while other graver men by more serious arguments , multiplied consider●ble proselytes in good earnest , insomuch as the archbishop of s. andrews , according to the rigour of his religion , began to call for more fire and faggots , but was stopt a little by the witty advice of mr. iohn lindsey , who told him , my lord : if ye will burn them , let them be burnt in hollow cellars , for the smoak of mr. patrick hamilton hath infected as many as it blew upon , some touch of it was thought to have tainted alexander seton a black friar and conf●ssor to king iames the fifth , who presuming upon the opportunity of his privacy , endeavoured to withdraw the kings affections from the bishops , and his conscience from some part of his religion , which by more prevalent counsell of ecclesiastical persons about the court , made him be discharged of his office , and his dread of the fire , carried him out of the realme . from berwick by letter he appeals to the king , whom notwithstanding he accuseth to himself of weakness and ignorance , being very invective against the churchmen who at that time , as well as the presbyters since , waved in many things their due subjection , and in the name of christ took upon themselves , the authority of the king . i finde no mention of any answer returned , but i do of his progresse from thence to london , where at s. pauls crosse he retracted some of the new divinity he had published . after this for ten years space these violent oppositions in religion were interrupted , the civil warres making other disputes and partizans upon temporal principles among the scots . in which time began a reformation in england , from king henry the eights differences with the pope , whether the pillage of abbies , and demolishing other religious places , easily invited the scotish labourers , who would alwayes be found at leisure for such work . about the year 1534. began a new inquisition in scotland , wherein was eminent the perverse demeanour of one david straton an ignorant gentleman , though in the catalogue of their martyrs ▪ of whom when the bishop of murray , prior of s. andrews , demanded the customary tythe of his fish , his answer was , if they would have tythe of that which his servants wan in the se● , it were but reason that they should come and receive it where they got the stock , and so ( as it was constantly affirmed ) he caused his servants to cast the tenth fish into the sea . the processe of cursing laid against him by the church being encountered with his contempt was re-enforced by a summons to answer for his heresie , to maintain which having hitherto no pretense , but the perversness of his will , the laird of dun arskin very lately illuminated in the point lends him his lamp to look out some better reason , and because he could not read , bids him hearken , which he did with more diligence than devotion , desirous to meet with what might colour the affectation of his errours , to which purpose the laird of lawristons field-lecture conduced luckily , chancing to be rather out of s. matthew than the prophet malachy , where the pharisaical tything of mint and cummin being taxed might serve his turn to slight all christian decimations as publican-extortions , and no weighty matters of the law . though that was not the text that brought the spirit of prayer upon him , but another on which he might have made a better comment by his repentance than unwildy resolution ; and known , that the denial of tenths is the denial of god in his institution before men , and may perhaps be retaliated before the holy angels by his sonne . sentence of death being passed , he asked grace of the king , which knox saith , he willingly would have granted , but the bishop proudly answered , [ no more proudly than the presbyters more than once since then ] that the kings hands were bound in that case , and that he had no grace to give to such as by their law were condemned . notwithstanding the severity exercised upon him and many other , the reformation ( for precedents unto which by this time their merchants and mariners had traffiqued in forreign parts ) makes its way into the cloysters , and by friar killors contrivance ( which iohn knox seems to approve of very well ) shews it self upon the stage in a satyrick play , and that on a good-friday morning the subject whereof was the passion of our saviour christ , most envious paralels being made between the iewish priests and the scotish bishops . this gave the occasion of a more close search into the friars opinions , which being found such as suited not with the present profession and government of the church , sent him with many other too zealous reforming complices unto the fire . not long after george buchanan laid his cockatrice egge , not onely of iudaisme , which himself hatched in a lenten meeting at the eating of a paschal lamb , but of schisme and rebellion , which his majesty endeavoured to crush upon the first discovery , notwithstanding the trust he had reposed in him of instituting some his natural children . he was by the kings special order ( as they say ) committed to prison , whence he made an unhappy escape , to the ruine almost of that kingdome by his writing . all this while the royal reformers in england marched furiously , so as king iames had no minde to meet them at york , nor give king henry there the interview he desired . this , though imputed to his clergy , was taken as a discourtesie from himself , which set the english jealousie on fire , and that at last burnt out into a warre . king iames was not so absolute at home as to cement at pleasure the scotish intestine divisions , where the equality of power did so mi-party his thoughts , that he knew not wch side to head , nor had he alwaie● the liberty of his choice . his distrust of both made him enter into secret counsel with his clergy , by whose advice and assistance he levied on a suddain a v●ry numerous army , the design whereof was scarcely thought of in england , when it actualy entred upon the borders . but such scruples were scatered by some disaffected persons to the church and crown , as made most of the souldiery dispute the justce of the quarrell when they were to handle their armes , or without consulting their conscience , leave them in the field . the loss of this army so troubled the king that he cast off all care to recruit it , and measuring the shortnesse of his daies by the extremity of his grief , he becomes too true a prophet of his death some six dayes before his queen was delivered at linlitquow of a daughter , whom iohn knox , very civ●lly calls , the scourge of that realm , as her mother , one that brought continuing plagues upon the same , and that h●r whole life declared h●r to be such . no lesse did his brethren spare the deceased king , but call'd him murtherer , and rejoyced at the taking away of such an enemy to gods truth . in the kings last will were four protectors o●regents of the kingdome appointed ; the cardinall of s. a●drews , the earls of huntley , arguyle and murray , but these were men , especially while in the cardinals company , very unlikely to promote the new religion , or the more unjustifiable ends of the pretended reformers of the church . the young earl of arran was found a fitter subject to work on , the facility of his nature rendring him very flexible to their desires , and the narrownes of his judgment admitting , in no latitude , an abilitie to counterplot at any time their designs , or a discovery of their purposes , but what they laid directly in his sight . his pretence of the second place in succession to the crown gave him colour , and the lord grange furnished him with courage , to claim the government during the minority of the queen ; which that faction of the nobility soon bestowed upon him , who had more will to rule with him , than reason to suppose that in his hands lay the best security for her person . yet to enable him for that , or some other more secret ends , were presently delivered up to him the kings treasure , jewe●ls , plate , horse , &c. which notwithstanding they scarcely give him liberty to look on , before they set him to study controversies in religion , and tutor him as well in the polemick divinity , as politicks of that party . and to point the bluntness of his nature by some new animosity of spirit , they shew him his own name , among others , in a private schedule of the k. being a memoriall of such as of whose disaffection to his person , government religion , good notice being taken , as good care might be had to prevent the ●ll effects of that humour , which they suggested to be a destination of them unto ruin . this was called the bloudy scroll , and the discovery of it , a great deliverance of gods , which some godly men , as they term'd themselves ( that is , such as whose guilt made them conscious how much concerned they were in it ) fearing the execution of their ends and intents thereof , being left to the cardinal as a legacy by the king , pressed the governour to ●ake notice of , to betake himself for what pu●pose god had exalted him to that honour , and how great expectation was had of him . the principal of their meaning , being to depose the cardinal for their own security , he understood not , and therefore they put upon him one guilliame a lapsed friar , with some others to be priviledged in the preaching down superstition , a word of as great extent in those times as since , from which was taken as much advantage for a licentious and violent reformation . but the friars arguments being more powerfull to draw the people into sedition , than the bishops to a dispute : one of their servants thought to rime down the ridiculous part of the practice in a ballad , for which he had like to have lost his life , as the cardinal his liberty , who for some time was their prisoner in dalkeith and seaton ; but this project being advanced , and another pass'd the vote in parliament about a marriage between prince edward of england and their queen , whether by command or connivance of the governour , or intercession of the queen mother , to which they adde the bribing of his keeper the l●rd seaton , and lethington , he was soon after set free . about this time they obtained with some difficulty the use of the bible in the vulgar tongue , not to lea●n out of it the duty of obedience to the supreme magistrate , not to study the sincere doctrine and sense of the holy word ; but to have the same advantage with the hereticks of old , to wrest the authority of sacred writ out of the hands of the catholick church , and to serve their purposes at any time , rend the letter from the meaning of the holy spirit . for this they cited the pattern of primitive christians , whom they never meant to imitate , and the authority of some fathers , who countenanced that indulgence to humble holy men ; but in canvasing the question , i finde not them calling upon tertullian , who spake his minde too freely , adjudging them for hereticks , who came short of them in pertinacy and errour , and excluded all that were so from any benefit of the bible in their oppositions unto the church . the first good use they made of it was the garnishing their libells and rebellious pamphlets ; and the first fruits of the new amity between england and them , was the l●berty of getting thence in great numbers , the most angry treatises penned in favour of king henries fury against the church . the contract of marriage was made solemnly in the abbey of hallirud-house , to the confirmation of which , howsoever the governour was prevail'd with to have christs sacred body b●oken between him and mr. sadler the ambassadour from england ; yet the queen and cardinal and what they call the faction of france , which was the principal nobility , are confessed to have no consent in it , upon which the commissioners were afterward questioned for their proceedings , but being maintained by the great politick patriot , the pretended parliament , it mattered not what the holy spiritual father , or natural mother had to say against them , the young queen must be disposed of as they thought fittest , and the great seals of both kingdomes , for a second ratification , interchanged . but soon after came out of france i. hamilton , the abbot of paisly , and mr. david painter afterward bishop of rosse , men formerly cried up by the reformers for their learning , life , religion ; and expected by them to become pillars of the new temple they were building ; but their private instructions directed them to the court , with new advice to the governour , to consider whither his petty counsellors were carrying him ; what the consequences might be of the alterations in religion ; what commodity in continuing the ancient league with france ; and what hazzard of his own ●ightful succession to the crown under the displeasure of the pope , who legitimated his birth by favouring the marriage of his mother after the divorcement of his father from elizabeth hume then alive , although he might have had security , as to the last , from the reformers , who acknowledged afterward they would with their whole force have fortified him in the place that god had given unto him , and would never have called in question things done in time of darkness . so it seems they can digest the popes dispensations when they serve their turn . the abbots counsel being observed to make impression in the governor , some of the courtiers took courage to confront his zealous party , and one let flye a desperate speech . that neither he nor his friends could ever be at quietness , till a dozen of those knaves , that abus'd his grace were hanged . some of them about him that had deserved it , disliked the liberty taken to speak so much truth , and secretly withdrew themselves . friar guilliame being inhibited his licentious preaching , went for engand , others had their dismission , and the lord governour betook himself unto the cardinal , & lords better affected unto the q. this was call'd renouncing the profession of christ iesus holy gospell , as if the christian creed were then confined to the cabinet , as since to the consistory . but this impetuous calumnie forc'd not through his resolution , nor did his rash oath , lately taken to the english ambassadour oblige him to withstand the counsell of breaking the imperfect league , the onely difficulty was how to raise mony for preparations requisite to a defensive warre ▪ which they must now expect from king henry of england , whose will in woing , though for his sonne , must not be checked without ●evenge . toward this the clergy , upon the motion of the cardinal , who made it a case of conscience in the vindication of religion , raised great contribution , , and an opportunity of breaking the league offer'd it self , when the hostages for the observance of conditions were to be delivered , the denial of whom was seconded with the stay in scotland of some noble personages late prisoners in england , who had their liberty but on parole or bail , none returning to custody but the earl of cassils , who stood more upon his honor , & word passed unto king henry , then his duty to serve his queen and country , for which singular instance of adhering unto his promise , and for the hopes king henry had that being gratified with his liberty , he might gain him to some future service , he commended his fidelity , rewarded him and sent him home ; but being deceived in the rest , and by the governour in the contract , he seiz'd upon all the scotish ships with●n his ports , and proclaim'd a warre , yet made no haste to it that summe● , but us'd the prudence and industry of his ambassadour before he recall'd him , and afterward of the party he had in scotland , to regain the governours faith in the performance of his word . in the mean time comes from france the young earl of lenox , who setting aside the custom the governour had by the popes cherishing the divorce , was reputed to have a near●r relation unto the crown , and so far said to be justified in his pretences by the deceased king , as that he had intended to declare him succ●ssor in default of heirs . much contrivance is charged on the queen dowager and the cardinal in and after the earls coming over , somewhat whereof may be not improbable , to keep the governour more firm to them , to the title of whose estate , as well as honour , the earl was rival , and ready to step into all , if the importunity of that par●y he first headed had ●ecovered him from the court , which prevailing not , the earl thereby frustrate of his hopes , and the amarous addresses he made to the queen dowager not so entertained as to correspond with his ambition of a royal marriage , he takes livery and s●isin of what was left him , the forlorn party of reformers , joyning his with their counsells and discontents . his interest added somewhat to the number they got together out of anger against the cardinal , and now revenge against the governour , whom they took to be a creature of their own making , and thought he would have continued to acknowledge their soveraignty while he did wear the badge of honour they bestowed upon him . those who on other reasons , were of a faction for england came in to them . having modell'd their army , they send a challenge to the cardinal at edenburgh , undertaking to give him , and whatsoever forces would come out against them , battail between that and leith . this the cardinal seemed not to decline , yet prudently judging the medley of those bravadoes could not be kept long together , and that he might have a greater necessity ere long to use a better army against the english than he had yet in readiness ; put the appointment off from day to day , whereupon the more impatient part deserted them , and some other by good conference received good s●tisfaction ; to that their general the young earl became jealous of the remainder , and thought it better policy to resign himself , and pass over voluntarily , than to stay till he were fetched by his enemies , or delivered up by his despairing friends . thus perswaded , he goes to edenburgh , where he was entertained with a lit●le more cu●tesie in the city than he would have been in the field ; yet he liked not the complement so well as to trust to it , but by the advice of some friends , withdrew in the night to glascow , and from thence having garison'd the bishops palace , to dunbarton some offers were made of an accommodation between the governour and the earl , but the jealousies on both sides were such as could not be concentred in a point of mutual satisfaction , and so multiplied into counter designs and perturbations of publick p●ace . this civil discord hastened king henries preparations ▪ who in the beginning of may 1544. poured forces into scotland by sea and land , which troubled many the great ones there little , as sr. george douglasse , who being taken out of prison upon their approach , said in meriment ; i thank king henry and my gentle masters of england . and indeed he had so many fellow servants devoted to the english , that the governour and cardinal could not raise a sufficient power of loyal subjects to make resistance . so the army , having sacked and burn'd edenburgh , wrought their pleasure at leith and other places adjacent , returned home . after this , the earl of lenox sends an expresse into france with as advantageous pretenses as he could contrive , for his proceedings in scotland ; but king francis , who advised his going th●ther to some better purpose than upon a private quarrell he had against the protector to raise a power against the crown , would vouchsafe his messenger no hearing , nor his letters reading , but set such a guard upon him as made him doubt whether he had the liberty of his person , at least fear to hazard it by giving intelligence to his lord about the counsels of that court . this straitned the earl in the necessity he was reduced to of seeking some protection for himself : in the midst of which distraction the governour , after few dayes siege , took the castle of glascow , and left no secure sanctuary for the earl but england , which he soon resolved on having promises of his welcome , yet could not take his leave without attempting some revenge upon a territory belonging to the hamiltons , wherein he gratified his passion more than justified his prudence , or satisfied his friends , who were so sensible of the losse sustained by it , that he could not prevail with them to engage again ; yet having an affected fondnesse to keep up the reputation of a party against the malignity of fortune , they importuned the earls retirement to dunbarton castle : but his own courage being conquered , he thought no place inexpugnable , and so weather-beaten at land he put himself upon the mercy of the sea and king henries kindness , who furnished a pillow for his disquiet and dejected thoughts , the breast of lady margaret douglasse his fair n●ece , whom he propounded acceptably unto him for a wife . the headlesse company he left behinde him fearing more the extremity of rigour from the hamiltons , which by their rashness they had merited , than knowing how to protect themselves , like desperate persons stood prepared to do mischief , though with no hopes to survive it . upon consideration of whose perversness , or compassion unto their persons , the queen mother rescued them from their enemies and themselves , taking them under her particular command and care ; and so preserved their lives against their hopes , if not their wills , but could ●ot secure their goods , which by their incensed enemies were seized on and set to sale . several incursions were made afterward by the english , with such successe that at last the nobility ( some of whom were not so sensible of the publick dishonour and detriment done to their countrey , as of the damage themselves suffered in their private possessions , which could not well be secured in a common devastation ) applied themselves more obsequiously to the governour , uniting their strength , and compromising their counsels , which helpt them to a little victory , and that after their chasticement invited some auxiliaries from france , commanded by monseiur montgomery de lorge , who had instructions to enquire after the disorders unnecessarily caused by the earl of lenox and his party , and to rebuke them as well as cherish others who had shewed more conscience in continuing loyal , than curiosity in searching reasons and opportunity how or why they might not be so . the countenance of these french forces much hastened the scotch levies , so that in a short time was raised an army of 15000. men , with which they marched to the borders of england , where in the spoil of the countrey they quitted some old scores , and might have made a farther inroad , if not divided in their counsels ; but they returned home with the reputation and booty they had gotten , as soon after did de lorge into france . the late successe against the publ●ck enemy , upon whose preparation or approach scotland was never free from intestine tumults and disorders , gave the governour and cardinal opportunity for a progresse and visitation through the countrey , to compose the ruptures in the ecclesiastick and civil body ; to encourage the hearts of such as were any way inclinable to peace and duty , and to castigate persons whom they found refractory against the law and establishment of the kingdom : wherein though some of their proceedings may be censur'd for too much rigour , yet somewhat must be indulged to humane infirmity , that not alwaies in rulers , whether temporal or spiritual , is guided by the sweet influence of christian charity , the perfection whereof is not onely to pardon , but to do good for evil , at least in judicature not to be over ballanced by the sense of any personall affronts , so as to recompence them with revenge , and make the sword of justice to execute more by the authority of their passion than the law . beside , whatsoever were the abuses crept into religion , when they finde improper persons and uncommission'd for that purpose , not onely lopping off the superfluous boughs , but laying the axe unto the root of all , with design to plant nothing of the word of god that they pretend to , but wilde fancies of their own , and not onely to argue out works , but fight up their faith , and claim by their doctrine a propriety in all possessions , whose owners submit not to it ; what prevention is used , especially by persons in present government , may in charity be hoped to ensue as well from a godly zeal to maintain the better part , as a barbarous cruelty and perversness to keep up the worse , which being all the apology i intend for them , passing my word and promise , that howsoever prejudiced i will relate no circumstance partially , much lesse falsely , to the disadvantage of the reformers , i will briefly instance the proceedings against such p●rsons as occur most notorious in their story . somewhat before this time , in the year 1540. one sr. iohn borthwick , commonly called captain borthwick , was in the cloisters of s. andrews before a multitude of the principal clergy and nobility process'd and condemned though absent and out of reach the articles are publish'd , but because too succinctly , and it may be not indifferently ; or impartially , by his accusers and judges ; i conceive it no injury to him , to lay down , for his sense and the substance of that he scattered before ; what i collect from the answers himself framed afterward , and commended to his friends . the first article was , his levelling the pope of rome with any other bishop or prelate whatsoever . where , as he might have enlarged h●s christian moderation to the allowance of some precedence and priviledges granted him by the submission and canons of unsuspected councils , and given him , for s. peters sake a patriarc●ate at least : so much more might he have abstained from comparing the whole communion of that religion to common thieves and robbers , having the pope for their captain ; and b●cause they called him holy father ( a title from antiquity rendred to the dignity not only of that , but other sees ) affixing to the persons of all successively invested with it the guilt of treason , murder , rapine and all kind of such evils . a branch of the third article ( for i omit all wherein he is to be commended for asserting the truth , or not condemned for speaking modestly and prudently his own opinions ) that i say , was concerning the lawfulness for all bishops to be coupled and joyned in matrimony . in answer to which , his business was not onely to exclaim against the practice of the romane church for prohibiting their clergy marriage , who cannot have the confidence to deny that a greater enlargement was left to them by s. paul whose doctrine he chiefly urgeth ; and by the cannons of the christian church a long time after , which themselves have not expunged in their editions ; but rather ingeniously to clear this point and scruple . whether saint paul having said ; that all things which are lawfull are not convenient ; whensoever the governours of a church finde inconvenient what they know lawfull they may not innocently lay a restraint upon that liberty , since they force no man unto the function , but simply make it a condition obliging any man that will enter in , who upon conscience of his infirmity , hath room enough to bestow himself otherwise in the world . and those who since pleade for sir iohns , are to frame some distinction between that general canon of the romane church , and those particular statutes or laws in divers or all the reformed , which oblige , beside individuals , several colledges and corporations of people to an unmarried life , who make a forfeiture of their preferments and profits , whensoever they enter into that state . secondly , sir iohn citing the doctrine of s. paul , was to take notice of his advice to all men , to be as he was , which argued a possibility they might be so ; much more that out of all men a selected number might be called to serve god at his holy altar , with pure hands and hearts , and after to make up the lambs speciall train which st. iohn tells him were virgins not defiled with women , redeemed from among men , being the first fruits unto god , and to the lamb . as to that sr. iohn pretended , that s. paul where he described the perfect image of a good bishop , did reckon and account marriage amongst the other good gifts which he required to be in them : yea , that he numbred matrimony among the principal vertues pertaining unto a bishop , it is very ridiculous , the most thereby imported being a toleration to such as cannot lye alone , or will not trust a steward with their accounts , and unworthy a reply . in his answer to the fourth , calling the pope antichrist , among them which made him pro-christ by succession and vicar general of the church , whatsoever in the eyes of some men , it had of truth ▪ undeserving the imputation of schism ; it had little of prudence , nor could it produce lesse than a condemnation by those judges , whose religion and interest was to keep up the tradition of their fathers . in the fifth , preferring his particular faith before that of the whole national clergy , yet rendring no account of it but in the destructive part of what he disliked : nor declaring of what other communion he was , primitive or modern , but rather that he mean'd to be of none by his crying down material temples and chapels ( wherein the papists puting an image or crucifix will not excuse him ) he savours of too much insolence and self-conceit , sending every man to a separate subsistence by himself ▪ for which god in his holy scripture gives no authority unto any : beside that , it dissenteth from the article which the apostles put in their creed . to the sixt article about the temporal iurisdiction of the clergy , he might have so far condescended as to permit it where their spiritual function was not interrupted by it ; or if it were , where the king supreme in spiritual and temporal , dispenced with it , their office being supplied by others : as likewise where the cases of conscience were so involved with the points of propriety , interest and profit , that any difficulty arising required the resolution rather of a priest than lawyer , such as which are to be found in deut. 17. the places he cites against it implies onely a singular humility , without ambition or vain-glory , to be enjoyn'd them , and may as well be used against the composing any differences , the greatest act of christian charity , as judging controversies and suits in law . in the seventh , about the kings sequestring the revenues of the church , whatsoever may be the royall power in reserved cases , to assume , or transfer the whole from one name to another , as from priests to ministers ( if the name must be so reformed ) from convents to colledges ; yet to rend in pieces the wills and testaments of the dead , and to take their legacies from a lazy clergy , to throw them upon a luxurious laity , hath not hitherto been so approved by god in a blessing upon the persons or posterity of them that gaped for this holy morsel , but that many instances have been made of prodigious ends , taking away the possessors , ruining their families , with an insensible losse of such lands and inheritances as more justifiably descended on them . what comparison sr. iohn makes between the priests of baal , or iezabel , and those of rome , sparkles out from the fervency of his zeal , which too much transports him when he pretends to the same commission with daniel and elias . upon the ninth , about the power of the church in making canons , he ●aies too much restraint or rather indeed nulls it in pretending it onely declarative of what was made by god for the nation of the iews , or what was published by christ to his apostles sent among them and the gentiles , whereas the abolishing most part of the former , left room for a new law to be inserted in its place ; nor when christianity had entred onely into private houses , was it proper to have so many orders issued out , as when it should after spread it self openly throughout the world . the authentick limitation which he fancieth out of 23. iohn , may give a greater liberty than the church of room hath yet taken ; for granting him what he may expect , but calls not for , that the seventh verse bringeth all intended within the compass of the morall law ; yet that , as to the practice both in the first and second table , brancheth it self into several parts of the positive , as well sacred as judicial then proper for that nation , which since being abolished by christ , some evangelical constitutions were to succeed , whereof all the texts in the gospel against traditions do not deprive the church . the conditions he annexeth to the levites priviledge , malachy 2 ▪ reach not unto the christian priests , unlesse he can demonstrate them as compleatly furnished out of the 4. evangelists , which rather represent ( and that but very briefly , even when they are drawn into an harmony ) the state and discipline of the church at that time , than make provisional cannons in all cases , for all christian congregations in succeeding ages . as to what power the prophets had universally which he saith , is so very lively d●scribed , ezek. 33. that they should hear the word out of gods own mouth and declare it unto the people . when he can prevail with god to speak viva voce , as lively to christian priests , or but whisper to them in dreams , or shew them hieroglyphicks of his pleasure in frequent visions ; it may be the church of rome will lay down her necessity of calling councills , and suspend the execution of her cannons . the summe of what passed between christ and his apostles , as to matter of faith , he might believe to be comprehended in the history of the new testament , whereupon no question the apostles did more dilate in their dispertion than is preserved for our reading , and the like was done by their successors in the institution of the church . but as to matters of practice , considering how many years christ conversed with them , sir iohn could not but conceive many particulars unregister'd , or fallen short of his age ; nor had they been , if preserved , applicable to all times , according to the variety of which , and other circumstances the decretalls multiplied , and so will ecclesiasticall canons increase in number , or be alterable for necessity or decency unto the end . what presseth most in the tenth article , sir iohn declineth , and therefore no wrong is done him , if he be thought imprudently to have said , &c. that religion ( that is to say , so much of it as henry 8. turn'd off ) was to be abolished and destroyed as then in england , where ( whatsoever good reformation hath since been made ) a great deal of murder , rapine and injustice was acted , and countenanc'd , by what king , and to what purpose the world knowes : and the cardinal with his clergy had good reason , beside private interest ▪ to prevent so passionate and sacrilegious a change in scotland . some moderation s●r iohn shews in permitting s. augustines monks to stand , for not whom alone , but others of ancient institution as much may be pleaded , if s. basils rule and the historical passages of s. hierom and other holy fathers be duly read , whose convents were made no brothel houses nor swine-sties , nor was their worship such , as to devote them unto the devill , and yet much reverence they gave unto the reliques of christian martyrs . they that afterward made counterfeits , for gain of proselytes or money , may the better sort dispute the point of pi● fraus with his knightship and the worse with his hypocriticall corrupted sectaries , who pretend to as great miracles , in having gods spirit at their call , and the power of all his ancient prophets in their night-caps . the habits of monk● ( which he excepts against ) were in the purest times impos'd upon them , and fitter it may be were they for a cloyster , than those by which the tribe of precisians will since be distinguished in the chu●ch . yet am i not so angry with sr. iohn borthwick for his separate singularity in opinion as to justifie the sentence pass'd upon him to be executed in effigie , while absent and in person , when he could be chatched , my portion being not with them that condemn hereticks to fi●e and faggot ; but if he did ( as commonly such unquiet spirits do ) under the pretence of conversion , instigate the people against the government of that kingdome , because not of his religion , i referre him to the la● , and should no otherwise have wisht his pardon than upon a serious acknowledgement of his fault . what fol●ows in fox's acts , of a conference between the bishop of dunkelden and dean thomas , a canon of st. colmes inch , i cannot judge of finding little or nothing about it in their own historians ; nor can i credit one particular of the bishops stout saying , i thank god i never knew what the old and new testament was , howsoever rise the proverb which he pretends to be so common in scotland , ye are like the bishop of dunkelden , that knew neither new nor old law no more than the like in buchanan , that upon a strict enquiry at dundee after the readers of the new testament most of the priests , who sure were licensed , profest so much ignorance of the book , as they contentiously averr'd it to be written by martin luther , thereupon rerejected it and required the old. and somewhat to be suspected is that which comes after : that the dean with six other friars and a gentleman were burn'd principally upon these articles , of the deans preaching every sunday on the epistles and gospels , and their eating of flesh in lent , for which more moderate penance to my knowledge is inflicted in other catholick countryes at this day , and that ancient canon is not wantonly abused upon reasonable causes dispensations , without any great difficulty are obtained . and therefore another story of like nature , countenanc'd by buchanan , and most passionately laid forth by knox , of four hanged in st. ionhstons for eating one poor goose on a friday ( which could not afford each of them a leg and a wing ) hath little of my belief , and indeed the lesse because i find them conceal what fox , out of no meaning i ghess , to deal more impartially , inserteth , their hanging up the image of st. francis , nailing rams horns to his head ▪ and a cows rump to his tail : and some of them interrupting friar spense in his sermon , maintaining the established doctrine of those times , the necessity of prayer to saints , whereupon followed such a tumult of the people , as hazarded his life , which murder would have been more unjustifiable before god and man , than the hanging up four or four hundred of them for attempting that on the person of one , which might and did draw after it the destruction of many , not in halters upon a legal sentence , but by the sword rebelliously imployed , as well aga●nst their prince as their fellow subjects , which will appear too evidently in the sequel of this story . i shall not follow every little martyr to the st●ke ▪ ●et not any of them is there but i sh●uld heartily commisera●e if i were as we i pers●aded , as some historians seem to be , that he suffered clearly for the tender●ess of his consci●nce , or by the merciless cruelty of his m●licious judges . but when i discover in most the●r pr●a●hing , praying , disc●ursi●g , designing , c●unselling , such a ●●irit of virulency aga●nst their romane adversaries , which must ●e censur'd incompetible with that christian charity which the best patte●ns , the most exemplary sufferers in the primitive times dec●●red , principally at their death ; when very few of them can be so justified in their strictness of religion , as they are most evidently to be condemned for sedition ; whatsoever indirect proceedings may be observed in their tryalls ; whatsoever accumulative articles were by mistake or wilfull injury , cast upon them ; i cannot so commend them for their vertues , as to flatter posterity by the example into their errours . therefore passing by a multitude of petty saints ▪ whom knox and buchanan canonize as they go , some of whom may be feared to deserve no other red letters in the calender than themselves , whose names are deeply dyed in the bloud , which is not little , shed upon the rebellious practices they prescribed : i will discuss onely the passages about one more signal than the rest , out of whose ashes the scotish reformation was raked , and beside the murder of the cardinal , a consequent rebellion advanced chiefly upon the reputation of his name , though i will not alledge it as apparently founded in his doctrine . the man i mean is mr. george wisheart of b●nnets colledge in cambridge where he is famed to have lived a very studious and religious life , yet not without some such singular eccentrick motions from the custome of other honest men in his time , as gave some part of his piety the character of melancholy , and the impress of cruelty to some , severity in his discipline . an instance of the former in his wearing and sleeping in canvas , which his sheets and shir●s , freez-mantle and other habits weekly , or monthly , or quarterly , as his fancy serv'd he bestowed upon the poor . his having a tub of water nightly by his bed-side , wherein he by moon-shine bath'd himself , to allay some heat that troubled him in his rest . and by the latter he so exasperated the young spirits of his pupills , that the desperate part of them complotted his murder to obtain their deliverance ; his apprehension whereof might be the reason that brought him back into his country with the scotish treaters that came from england , who when they had him at home magnified him for a prophet , and sent him up & down under colour of religion to draw the people to their party . what town soever rejected h●m he denounced against it fire and sword by the spirit , which judgement they prepared as gods instruments to fulfill . he began at montrosse , and thence passed to dundee , where an inhibition was given him in the queen and governours name , and they that brought it were told by him that they chaced from them the messenger of god . the lord marshall and other noble men , whose part he acted , would have maintained him in the place , or have taken him along with them , but some other spirit di●ected him to the westland where the bishop of glascow was fain to raise a great party to dispute with mr. george's disciples for the church , which the earl of glencarne and dive●s gentlemen of kyle would have made good for him , but that he thought it as good mustering his men at the market-crosse , as he did otherwhile about a mole-hill , or some other little piece of rising ground in the fields . this itenerant doctor thus travelled from place to place , and wheresoever he lodged thither the devoted gentry of that quarter address'd themselves , with their armed vassals and tenants to receive orders rather for the managing the great design , than instructions for the amendment of their lives . if any were so addicted to their old religion or alleageance , or so disposed to their quiet , that they made no appearance worthy mr. georges preaching or presence , he would run from his tet into an invective for an hour or two , still brandishing his threats of fire and sword , as at haddington , because he could not take from his pulpit an account of an hundred auditors in the church ; after which vehemency so dejected in spirit , having it may be , some other intimations of his being at the end of his prophetick race , that the last part of his speech was like a testament at departure , and his good-night a taking leave for ever of his acquaintance : which howsoever he meant it proved proper enough , being seized on before morning at ormeston , by order from the governour with the cardinals advice , as a person dangerous , for his sowing the tares of sedition among the seed of his new evangel . the earl bothwel with a guard of house was imployed in surprising him , or else he had not been taken , nor was he without some resistance and articling with the earl , having some armed proselytes in the house , who observe no orders , obey no commands but when they cannot help it , who would not have surrendred him , but that they saw themselves over-power'd . what promise ( if any ) the earl bothwell had passed for his protection , was not judged so obligatory , as his alleageance to deliver him up to justice , which he did after some better satisfaction , than what knox most ambiguously and maliciously instanceth , the cardinals gold , or the queens undertaking to favour him in all lawfull suits to women : edenburgh was not thought so fit a place for his imprisonment as the castle of st. andrews , whither he was shortly sent , and soon after brought unto his tryall , although the bold opportunity of one david hamilton , the speaker for him and his partisans , by a mixture of advice , intreaty , terrour , had wrought the governour into some uncertainty of allowing the proceedings . about the end of february 1546. the iudges ecclesiastical and civill sitting in the abbey church , mr. wisheart was sent for to answer divers articles alledg'd against him , who going into a pulpit , according to the custome of that place ( after one father lawder a priest , who was to manage the accusation , had read the articles against him ) began an oration , making entrance and advancing what he could into the mindes of his auditors , under the glorious canopy of the word of god , which onely , and that purely and sincerely he pretended to have taught , and nothing in the mother-tongue beside the ten commandements , the twelve articles of the faith , and prayer of the lord , and at dundee the epistle of st. paul to the romans , where i do not find he insisted long upon the 13. chap. at least in the sense the holy apostle intended it , though i censure him not to have deserved the unhandsome titles put upon him by lawder at the beginning of every article ; thou false heretick , runnagate , traitor and thief , &c. which is not a form prescribed against any person brought before that justice , added little force to the sequell of his accusation , part of which as to the substance , he might christianly and honourably have acknowledged , i mean that wherein the latter tenents of the roman-church superinduced to that purity her great apostles planted in her , carry more weight in the ear , than the genuine stalk is able to support . but where the accusation was justly laid in behalf of the government under which he l●v●d , or the authority of the church delivered to her by christ and his apostles and their incorrup●ed successors , i must elevate mr. georges answers , and leave the rest to the restriction or relaxation of mens ●i●●vate opinions in the world . to the first , which chargeth him with preaching at dundee , after the governour had commanded him to desist , and again after the bishop of brechen had excommunicated for cont●macy of that kinde ; he in v●in claims the liberty taken and given , but not in that latitude by the apostle in the acts , we shall rather obey god than men , which qualifies not every man with a mission that pretends to it of his own head ; nor with a remission of his passive obedience to higher powers ; else every bold heretick , rightly so called , may assume as much . nor can he wrest that of the prophet malachy , i shall curse your blessings , and blesse your cursings , saith the lord , against the after excommunication in the christian church , which duly regulated , the romanes may challenge and justifie to be valid in fit cases . nor as to the ninth article will st. iohn and st. peter countenance him in laying hands of ordination upon himself , when the one saith , he hath made us kings & priests , & the other , he hath made us a kingly priesthood , any more than they will another man in setting the diadem on his head which he thinks fitter for it than the kings ; or taking that scepter into his hand , which he supposeth an infirm potentate cannot hold . for the eleventh article , about the lawfulness of eating flesh on fryday aswell as sunday , as to the purity of dayes ( which bears proportion to the passion and resurrection ) or indifferency of meat● , abstracting from all superiours rational commands , and in pious people an humble commemoration of christs suffering , by their suffering somewhat weekly at that time , st. paul may justifie him in his answer ( though they were other dayes he meant ) but yet ▪ by his favour , not in reversing the statutes or canons composed in piety and prudence , w●ich encounter no principles of religion , nor deny fit supplies to the necessity of nature , or moderate desires of a regular appetite in due season . but that which betrayed his ignorance extreamly , or an insolent arrogance of singular extraordinary indowments from god for the interpretation of his word ; or where that in practicals and circumstantials is silent , for the intelligence of his pleasure ; was his answer to the 15. article which charged him with denying to obey provincial or general councils , whereof he owned no knowledge , as if the history of gods church in the purest times of christianity had not been worth his search , nor the exemplary endeavours of the ancient doctors and fathers , who confounded heathen and hereticks by their writings ; with joyn'd hands rais'd an edifice of religion , according to the most exact model they , at so near a distance traditionally received from christ and his apostles ; deserv'd his review , nor what they sealed with their bloud , so much of his reverence as to consider , wether so many did , and himself but one could not , erre , especially when the very bible , to which he appealed for the authority of his doctrine , had been for its own integrity and incorruption of words and points , and consequently of sense ( whether their glosses and commentaries be admitted or no ) and could be commended to him by no more powerful testimony than their canons , neglected and scorned by him , for the introduction of what knox & he , a prety pair to be paralled with representative christianity in the majestick sessions of emperours and bishops ▪ had for seditious ends concluded in a corner . whether his singularity in these or any other exorbitant opinions , proceeded from passion or perswasion i shall not determine ; nor can i clear his judges in their sentence of condemnation unto death , unless his sedition were so manifest & dangerous ( which it might be ) that no security could be given for the publick peace , but by his removal . the manner of it as it lies in the vulgar story , was with more pomp and curiosity than became the gravity or charity very requisite in cardinals , bishops , or inferiour clergy ; mr. georges behaviour near the time of his execution such , in many particulars , as became an humble , pious and couragious christian , as appears by divers prayers and discourses ; yet his popularity , and debasing prelacy , had not quitted him the very day he was to suffer , when he beseeched the brethren and sisters , those epi●oen priests of his making , to exhort their prelates to the learning of the word of god , &c. to tell them , that if they would not convert themselves from their wick●d errour , there should hastily come upon them the wrath of god , which they should not eschew ; very prophetick , and positive , and prevalent no question , from such mechanick mouths . and though he forgave the hangman , when about to do his office , yet he had not so much chari●y for the cardinal , against whom this angry martyr denounceth the sentence of a violent death , revealed to him , more likely by iohn lesly , melvin , and carmichel ( if it were not the overflowing of his own bloudy heart concurring in the design ) whose hands were to act it , than by any oracle from heaven , where no such murders are forged , his last words being these , as his own friend hath recorded them : he who in such state from that high place feedeth his eyes with my torments , within few dayes shal be hanged out at the same window , to be seen with as much ign●miny , as he row there leaneth in pride . the credit of the new gospel had been crackt , if the prediction of this great prophet had not been hastily accomplished , which his principal disciples took presently into their care , whose stomacks were so full of indignation against the cardinal , that their meat could not down before they had declared it at their tables , that the bloud of mr. george should be revenged , or else it should cost life for life . the most proper instruments for such a purpose must be men of metal , whose spirits being exasperated by a sympathy with their late deceased friend , or a passive sense of some late injury apprehended from their great enemy , that lived against as many of their wishes as there accrued minuts unto his time , were predisposed to any desperate attempt . three or four such were pitched upon to surprise babilon ( so they call'd the castle of the cardinal of st. andrews ) upon whom they speedily executed the work 't is their own language , that is , they wickly murdered him in his chamber . in which act iohn lesly and peter carmichael being too hasty , they were rebuked by iames melvin the more sedate reformer of the three , and told , this work and judgement of god ought to be done with greater gravity . he presents to him the point of the sword , saies , repent thee of thy former wicked life , that is , stopping the godly brethren in their course , strikes him twice or thrice through with a stog sword , and so he fell . all honest christians were astonished at so horrid and execrable an act , but the meek disciplinarians did not onely , saith buchanan , approve it , but came to gratulate these authors of their publick liberty , others ventured life and fortunes with them for the future ; libertatis authores , so it should seem the cardinal had tied up their hands , till this stog sword cut the knot and set them at liberty to do mischief uncontrouled afterward . iohn knox is so tickled with the business that he becomes very witty , and because he would not lose his jest , tells his reader expresly , he writes merrily about it : but by this time he knows ( if he chang'd not his mind ) that the end of that mirth is heavinesse , i believe . that his heart and he might not keep at distance , the easter following he goes to live with the murderers in the castle , and not long after from the cry of this bloud takes his call to the ministry , which was the greatest vengeance that ever god sent to that kingdome . for this first thriving plant of the discipline being set by the sword and cherished by * license and lust , the soil prepared by the cardinals bloud , grew up on a sudden to branch it over all civill magistrates and laws , and in short space over-topt royal authority it self , some comfortable assurance whereof he gave to the brethren in his first sermon upon dan. 7.24 , &c. and another king shall rise after them , and he shall be unlike unto the first , and he shall subdue three kings , and shall speak words against the most high , and think that he can change times and laws ; and they shall be given unto his hands until a time and times , and dividing of times . but the judgement shall sit , and they sh●ll take away his dominion , to consume and to destroy it unto the end . so great a scholar might easily prove that the prophet daniel spake this directly of the scots , which the laird of nydrie , a man fervent , so ●arre i believe him , not when he addes , and upright in religion , so well understood , that he told some body ( you may ghesse whom he meant ) we would counsel you and them to provide better defence than fire and sword , for it may be that else you may be disappointed : men now have no other eyes than they had then . a multitude of disciples by such good doctrine had knox drawn to him at st. andrews ; the bishops complain to the queen and councill , they are willed to be quiet and promis'd remedy ere long . the reformers with all might and main endeavour to prevent the marriage of the young princesse with the dolphin of france , being yet too weak , they rail at the parliament that made it , account it a matter of sale in the governour , and prophesie she shall become a plague and punishment to gods people . at length the rest of those uncleanly birds of babilon ( now truly call'd so ) the cast●e of st. andrews , was thrown out , care ▪ being taken that iohn knox should be cag'd and carried away with them for france . here the gospel was at a stand for some time , till iohn flutter'd homeward so near out of danger as he could ; lighted first at barwick , thence flew to newcastle : there was no chirping yet for him in scotland : he takes a new flight to l●nd●n , where having muted as much mischief as he could upon the death of king edward the sixt , he passeth to geneva , staies there till he had a new call by the congregation assembled at frankford , where he found not all birds of his feather , yet sets up his tune to as high a note of treason as he could , and in an admonition to england calling the emperour little inferiour to nero , and the queen more cruel than iezabel , being accused he gets away in the dark , shrouds himself for a while under the wings of geneva , thence to deep , and thereafter to scotland , where in the interim had been several alterations of state , though little as yet in religion ; the queen dowager being in the year 1554. made regent ( much importunity or rather a visible necessity constraining the governour to resign ) had the crown put upon her head , as seemly a sight saith iohn knox in the new gospel language as to put the saddle upon the back of an unruly sow . at this change the brethren creep in , first harlow a simple and weak man , then willock under the cover of some commissions from the dutchesse of embden , and at last to beat down the idol masse , comes iohn knox with his hammer . at first he falls to work in the night with the earl of glencarne , earl of marschel and henry drummond , whom he forms into so good a conceit of a godly exhortation he made , that they are earnest with him to send a letter to the queen regent that might move her to hear the word of god . i shall not recite all the arguments and good language he used to that purpose , by some few passages expressed may the reader be able to judge of the rest . vnlesse in your regiment and in using of power your majesty be found different from the multitude of princes and head rulers , this preheminence wherein ye are placed shall be your dejection to torment and pain everlasting , ( that is in plain english , except she gives way to the discipline she shall be damned . ) an orator and gods messenger might justly require of you now ( by gods hand promoted to high dignity ) a motherly pitty upon your subjects , a justice inflexible to be used against murderers and common oppressors ; a heart void of avarice and partiality ; a minde studious and careful for maintenance of that realm and common-wealth ( above whom god hath placed you ) and by it hath made you honourable , with the rest of vertues , which not onely gods scriptures , but also writers ( illuminated onely with the light of nature ) require in gods rulers . but vain it is to crave reformation of manners , where religion is corrupted . so that the queen being not reformed is a merciless mother , an unjust countenancer of murderers , &c. a covetous and most partial creature , a negligent or wilfully destructive governesse , void of all vertue required , and , being desperately vitious , unfit to govern . — except ye speedily repent , ye and your posterity shall suddenly feel the dispersing hand of him who hath exalted you , ye shall be compelled will ye or not , to know that he is eternal against whom ye addresse the battell , and that it is he that moderateth the times , and disposeth kingdomes , ejecting from authority such as be inobedient , and placing others according to his good pleasure ; that is , iohn knox and his complices shall depose you , as it proved . but here iohn over-reached , and laid himself with his gospel flat upon the ground , whence he had been taken up with a witness , if he had not scrambled away again to geneva , after which escape he was burn'd in effigie at edenburgh crosse . yet like to two buckets , of which one , to be sure is up , if the other be down , iohn willock returns the second time from embden , who preaches the nobility into secret conventions and close counsels , which brake out into sedition at edenburgh , where by a zealous brother , iames chalmers of geitgyrth the queen was personally affronted , churches pillaged and in part demolished , for which the brethren assemble , ( in what manner ye may judge , for all their singing psalms and praying ) so that ( see the power of their notes ) the proudest of their enemies were , they tell us , astonished . in the mean time they have their mountebanks that dispatch by poyson most of the nobility and bishops that went to the young queens marriage in france , because there were murders enough otherwise to be done at home , that which might be more religiously wrought , iohn knox is sent for back from geneva by glencarne , lorne , &c. advises the rest to work their deliverance from the aegyptian bondage upon what hazard soever , or by whatsoever opposition , be it against kings , or emperours . hereupon the first covenant is entered into by the new nam'd lords , &c. of the congregation , and soon after is made the first oration and petition of the protestants of scotland to the queen regent , wherein they style themseves , a part of that power which god had established in that realm to defend their brethren from cruel murderers ; propound a reformation to be made , such as they think fit to prescribe , and seem at that time content ( which those of their race since disavow ) that not onely the rules and precepts of the new testament , but also the writings of the ancient fathers , and the godly and approved laws of iustinian the emperour might decide the controversie betwixt them . to this petition they received a gracious answer from the queen , liberty of conscience restrained in nothing but from publick assemblies in edenburgh and leith : for which her majesty had in return the dutifull character of crafty , dissimulate and false thinking woman , that made her profit of both parties . hath a querulous letter directed to her , and the parliament against her clergy , whom they reproachfully call , place-holders of the ministers of the church ; with a protestation limiting the supream power in deputing judges for civil affairs , and menacing , that if any tumult or uproar should arise among the members of the realm , for the diversity of religion , & if it shall chance ( as they intended it should not , having certainly determined ) that abuses be violently reformed , that the crime thereof be not imputed to them , who most humbly do now seek all to be reformed by an order . the earl glencarne , &c. second this in a private addresse , and forewarn the queen of the inconveniences that were to follow . to prevent which , and give what satisfaction could be reasonably desir'd , she summons all their preachers to sterling , and they according to their never-failing accustomed manner , all the puritane gentry , &c. to accompany them , and this they call'd , the peoples giving confession with their preachers . iohn knox casually arriving at the same time repairs to dundee , and craves leave ( which was not difficult to be obtained ) to accompany the brethren , and give confession of his faith with them , who instead of appearing before the queen , according to the grace of god granted to him ( they are his own words ) carries them to st. iohnston , and so exhorts them , that they there fall to the pillage of the monasteries , destroying the charter-house , wherein was the tombe of king iames the first , whereat the queen taking just indignation , and complaining to her nobi●ity about it , the brethren send her majesty a smart letter , beginning meekly with as heretofore with jeopard of our lives , and yet with willing hearts , we have served the authority of scotland , and your majesty now regent in this realm — but soon after tell her , they shall be compelled to take the sword of just defence against all that shall pursue them for the matter of religion and their conscience sake , which ought not , nor may not be subject to mortal creatures ( the queen regent was a mortal creature , ergo ) further than by gods word man is able to prove that he hath power to command them ( that is further than they have a mind to be commanded ) upon the queens approach they send for more auxiliaries to st. iohnston . to some noblemen that declin'd them , or had a desire to be neuters , they write , that if in this time of their trouble they lookt through their fingers , and joyn'd not themselves to them , as of god they were reputed traitors , so they should be excommunicated from their societie , and from all participation with them in the administration of the sacraments . their number of the new supply prov'd not so great , but that they were fain to make an appoinment with the queen , and quit the town after iohn knox had exhorted them to constancie in a sermon , that is , to meet again so soon as handsomly they could , which they did to a second covenant at perth , whereof one clause was , that they should not spare labo●rs , goods , substance , bodies and lives , in maintaining the libertie of the whole congregation , and every member thereof , against whatsoever person ( no queen excepted ) shall intend the said trouble for cause of religion , or any other cause d●pending thereupon ▪ or lay to their charge under pretence thereof , although it happen to be coloured with any other outward cause . so that they might murder , steal , or break any civil law of the realm , and the congregation must defend them , if prosecu●ed or questioned by the magistrate , that being but a colourable outward cause to trouble their religion . whereupon several outrages being acted by them that now began to be called , keepers of libertie , as seizing upon the irons of the coyning-house , because of the impression in the images they stampt , and a late pretence of appeal made from the queen regent unto their young queen and dolphin of france , her husband . a proclamation of restraint is sent in their names to be publisht at edenburgh crosse . yet notwithstanding upon some conference with the regent , she condescended to give them liberty of religion , provided , that wheresoever she was , their preachers should cease , and her majesties be maintain'd . but this would not passe , because it put to silence gods true messengers , that is , restrained them from railing down the queens own religion to her face . the queen , to get rid of her trouble , if she could , not long after at edenburgh caus'd such an agreement to be made , as could not be denyed by them that pretended to any peace or quietness at all . accordingly articles on both sides were drawn , agreed , sign'd and proclaim'd . these shrewdly troubled the brethren in black , who meant nothing less than a peace . and perceiving some of their party so conscientious as to keep faith and make so great a relapse to their duty , as to go to the queen at her call , they convene and subscribe a third bond at sterling , whereof this is a link , — as we tender the maintenance of true religion , that none of us shall in time coming pass to the queen dowager , to talk or commune with her , for any letter or message sent by her unto us , or yet to be sent with consent of the rest , or common consultation thereupon : which was so religiously observed by knox , that he returns the queens letters upon her hands , and would not give them to the lords , as was by her majesty required . but now must a new quarrell be pickt to fetch in the lords and rest of the brethren that adhered to the agreement at edenburgh ; and this was by the queens fortifying the town of leith , which , though but intended for a place of retreat in case she should be overborn by their strength , which now made appearance in several places , and many times nearer approaches than she liked , was notwithstanding vogued to garison her townes with the french , and to have in design by them , the conquest of the kingdome . by way of charge and declinatour pass'd divers letters and proclamations on both sides ; from hence mounted the brethren to admonitions , from admonitions to votes about deprivation , upon justification thereof by willock and knox the prime of the clergy ; from votes to articles and the act of suspention together with the banishment of her person , allowing her majesty but 24. hours to prepare for her passge into france . but the walls of leith were not to be blown down by this breath , nor was it strong enough to fill the sails for her passage into france : a stronger wind blew out of the town , which so dispelled the congregational brethren , that glad was he who could shelter himself ; and many grew desperate of the cause . but iohn knox by power of the spirit , when but a spark or two of rebellion was left , could ever blow it up into a flame , which he began now at sterlin in a sermon upon the 80. psalm v. 4 , 5 , 6 , 7. and encreased it in another afterwards some where else upon iohn 6. exhorting the congregation that they should not faint , but that they should sti●l row against the contrarious blasts , till that iesus christ should come ( so that onely the day of judgement is to put an end to the presbiterian commotions ) but nothing can be done without a covenant , which an. 1560. was entred at edenburgh . that what person soever will plainly reject their godly enterprises , and will not concur as a good and true member of their common-wealth , they shall fortifie the authoritie of council to reduce them to their duty , &c. the issue of this , as of all their covenants , was to put many quiet conscientious people to the choice of either extream , without the priviledge of a detestable neutrality : do as we do , rebel or perish ; whereby they never faild of an army that should guard the gospell with an unparalell'd villany , and resist the queen regent unto her death , which fell out very opportunely while they lay at the siege before leith , being , if not procur'd by their means , very evidently hastened by their malice , denying her majesty the benefit of some drugs , for which she sent to her apothecary and chyrurgeon , and in her inrecoverable condition not indulging her free speech with some lords joyntly though of their own faction , and what curtesie they granted , being clogged with the ungrateful presence , and more unpleasing discourse of iohn willock , brother-rebel-preacher with knox , who was sent on purpose to set the queens conscience on the rack , and torture it to despair if he could . by all these unchristian proceedings , having speeded on their impatient wishes , and fretted open a passage for that royal soul to expire , they become soon lords not onely of the congregation , but countrey , and having eleven points of the law ( their young queen and her husband being absent in france ) upon advantage enough they capitulate with their majesties for the twelfth . in which pacification the deputies from france would not medle with the matter of religion , but agreed that a certain number of noblemen should be chosen in the next convention and parliament to be sent to their majesties , to whom they shall expose those things that shall be thought needful for the state of that business . in the interim , the brethren i 'le warrant you were not idle , but after publick thanksgiving at edenburgh for their deliverance , that is to say , for the death of their queen , upon whom they heap ( though they name her not ) a heavy load of calumnies in their prayers : a committee sits to distribute ministers , and so knox is made primate of edenburgh , or in it rather of scotland , that being the fountain head from whence all future rebellion must stream , by goodman to st. andrews , by heriot to aberdeen , by row to st. iohnston , &c. and though they will have no bishops , they 'l have over-seers {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , spotswood for lothian , winram for fife , &c. and now to work they go to drive the stray-doctrine and discipline of the countrey , into the parliament pound at edenburgh . please your honours comes presently from the supplicant barons , gentlemen and burgesses ; a confession of faith with a more imperious preface or title from the presbytery out of matth 24. and this glad tidings of the kingdome shall be preached through the whole world for a witness unto all nations , and then shall the end come ; that is , the presbyterian scot shall pull down all government in the world , establish the kingdome of iesus christ upon the earth , and then the end shall come , the work is done , 't is fit then the wages should be paid , especially since by this new engine they draw christ into their covenant , chap. 11. rebellion into the fifth commandement under the notion of saving the life of innocents , and repressing tyranny ; resisting authority if they take it to passe the bounds of the magistrates office , not suffering innocent bloud to be shed if they may gain-stand it , ch. 14. likewise they dash all moral vertues at a stroak , restrain the power of gods grace from effecting due obedience to his law , ch. 15. confine the catholick church to themselves , and such as shall communicate with them , denying all other christians the undeniable benefit of their baptism , ch. 16 , 18. which they say notwithstanding , ch. 21. was instituted of god to make a visible difference betwixt his people , and those that are without his league . pretend to reconcile these contradictions , making both true at a time . this church is invisibly known onely to god , who alone knoweth it , whom he hath chosen , &c. ch. 16. and yet the notes , signs and assured tokens , whereby the immaculate spouse of christ iesus is known ( to whom ? ) from the horrible harlot the church malignant we affirm are , &c. defraud antiquity and lineal descent in an undivided continuity the reverence rendred by the primitive fathers of the church , & to be paid by us for the first knowledge & benefit of the gospel : and yet at the same time running to the ancients for strengthening the authority of the canon . for the doctrine taught in our churches ( say they ) is contained in the written word of god , to wit , in the books of the new and old testaments , in those books we mean which have been reputed ( by whom but bishops and episcopal doctors ? no pre●byterian ) canonical : depriving the church of her just priviledge in interpreting the scriptures under a pretence of bestowing it upon the spirit , distracting christians hereby in matter of opinion , without extraordinary divine revelation , as in the point of justification , wherein st. paul and st. iames seem to differ ; and in matters of practice by the example of st. peter and st. paul , gal. 3. all this in one ch. viz. 18. frame a plausible excuse for negligence in , or after the receiving the sacrament of the lords supper , ch. 21. exclude all but preachers , though priests or deacons , from the efficatio●s administration of the sacraments , annexing the power and vertue of the same to divine revelation or operation of a sermon , and so defrauding many that have had legitimate imposition of hands , call'd ordination , of the character & exercise of that power justifie such as resist supream powers , doing that which appertaineth not to their charge , ch. 24. so taking away the glory of christian humility , patience and the crown of martyrdome it self . ret●act in part ch 15. what they professed , chap. 18. about the notes of the church , and so take gods name in vain , making a formal conf●ssion of his truth to no purpose . this pretty pageant fram'd in a schismatical assembly , was brought into the packt parliament to be voted the true representative of the doctrine of christs church , which the bishops suffered quietly to pass by without spoiling any of the pastboard or guilding , because they durst not ( writes knox ) say any thing to the contrary ; and very likely when they knew it would be to no purpose , and were well assured they should pay their ecclesiastical benefices , if not their lives , for a syllable of any such contradiction , the bretheren having petitioned that they might be compelled to answer to former accusations , and to other likewise they had yet to lay to their charge , which were such no doubt as wanted no weight of further delinquence to press them down to the depth of any parliamentary vote . this confession of faith very liberally suffrag'd , was sent into france by the lord st. iohn to be ratified by their majesties . by which act of pretended submission to the supremacy of their princes , we may interpret the true meaning of all the rest , and take a sure essay of the presbyterian subjection , whatsoever otherwhere they pretend , which i desire the reader diligently to observe , and have in mind whensoever afterward shall occur their hypocrisie in dutifull expressions , for saith no less author than mr. knox ; no ratification brought he [ the lord st. iohn ] unto us but that we little regarded or yet do regard ; for all that we did was rather to shew our dutiful obedience , than to beg of them [ the king and queen ] any strength to our religion , which from god hath full power , and needed not the suffrage of man [ wherefore then was it put to the vote in parliament ? ] but in so far as man had need to believe it , if that ever he shall have participation of the life everlasting . such obedience as this shewed the souldiers to our saviour when they bowed the knee before him and mocked him , saying , hail king of the iews . buchanan acknowledgeth it was sent to the queen without hope of grant , onely to discover the nakedness of her thoughts ; as good an argument of the modesty , as the other was of loyalty of the brethren . but this was not enough to make the assembly magisterial , who themselves must stoop as low as any lay-brother in doctrine and confession of faith . it is the discipline that must hold up the rod ( at least , if not the axe too ) bind their kings in chains , & their nobles in links of iron . to the framing of which , immediately after this parliament dissolved , commission was given to mr. iohn winram , sub-prior of st. andrews , mr. iohn row and iohn knox , mr. iohn spotswood , iohn willock , mr. iohn dowglass rector of st. andrews : all iohns and beloved disciples , that had laid their heads on christs breast , and knew his heart about the reglement of his kingdome . yet their letters of credit were not so good as to obtain the reception of ambassadors from heaven , though they pretended their message was in every point consonant to the word . the lord erskin as great a professor as he was , and the major part of the nobility refused this new model , knox imputes it to the care of his kitchin , and 't is not unlikely he and the rest thought their title as good to the church lands , that they might eat the fat , and be cloathed with the wooll of the lambs which themselves as well the clericall iohns , had taken the pains to worry and slay . or it may be they had a care of their eyes which already began to swell with fatness , and if they yielded this , they would go on with the psalmist , being hold●n with pride and overwhelmed with cruelty , they would then do even what they lust . yet this curtesie they did the discipline , to call it , a book of devout imaginations , that is , zealous whimzies , which might run the round in the name sakes noddles , but if they once got ab●oad with power to captivate the thoughts of other men which were to be kept in a more reasonable service and obedience of christ , they were to be cast down by the apostles command , like high things that exalt themselves against the knowledge if god ; yet argile , glencarn , and the whole private pack of conjur'd rebels subscribe the book , and promise to set it forward at the uttermost of their power , whose names were enough to write nobility in the front , and hold it out with the approbation of the honourable to the people . but to accomplish the work , behold the hand of god appears through this cloud , and scatters morning roses in the way of the r●formers . here ( saith knox ) was joy to scotland , and matter of thanksgiving for the wondrous work and inestimable benefit of the lord . and what is this but the death of an innocent young king francis the second , husband to the queen of scots ? who because no friend to the brethren , and so a robber , &c. knox cannot but brand his memory in the forehead with , he was suddenly stricken with an apost●me in the deaf ear that nev●r would hear the truth of god . his glory perished , and the pride of his stubborn heart vanished in smoak . upon notice hereof was a new convention of the nobility at edenburgh , wherein the book of discipline was again perused in favour of some that pretended ignorance , who when they heard it were not so taken as to own it by subscription , or adde to the authority of it by their vote , yet to prepare the way for the people to be acquainted with it , twelve things call'd superintendents are ●ut out , chipt and fashioned , just after the pattern in the book . and because all must run in the name , iohn spotswood is appointed for lowthian , and as the leading man is in the printed form and order of the election march 9 1560. in which form i shall onely intimate two or three things as i go . first , that the election of him [ not onely approbation ] is in shew devolv'd upon the people , who promise obedience to him as their pastor no longer than he remains faithfull in his office . this election of the people is styl'd , the call of god in them [ who it should seem miraculously moves their hearts , and directs them to the summoning of iohn ] this iohn must professe , that the life of angels relates to christ as head and mediator of his church , that is , if any thing , christ came to redeem as well angells as men , and either summon'd part of those lapsed spirits out of hell , or recovered others that never had been condemned so low . this iohn must further profess himself subject to the wholesome discipline of the church , and , to avoid ambiguity , the discipline of the same church by which he is now called to this office ; so that the people that call iohn are infallibly the church , and this the churches discipline , though it hath not yet an establishment by the law . farther , as a note of true christian liberty , it is left at large to the people to require of him what other conditions or qualifications they think fit . after which in recompence for all this kindness and priviledge , they are to oblige themselves to take what he shall preach for gospel , and to maintain iohn — against all such as wickedly would rebell against god and his holy ordinance ; that is , they are to make a tumult when iohn holds up his finger and fight against the queen her self as a rebell if , though never so deservedly , she suspend him from the exercise of his superintendence or over seeing , as they call it . at last , god is mocked in a prayer , and blasphemously craved his benediction and assistance in this work begun , which shall appear by and by to be nought else but the sin of witchcraft , a rebellion against his own annointed their soveraign queen . but all this while somewhat else was in hand beside the superintendence of iohn . the lord iames is sent into france , but with such limited instructions from the black brethren , that he must by no means condescend that the queen should have either the publick or private exercise of her religion [ this is christian liberty too : ] this would be to betray the church of god , and expose the reformation to danger , who making this reply , she may have it secretly in her chamber , who can stop her ? no body 〈◊〉 i , though every body meant it , they all shewed the danger , and let him go . but before his return , a little to stop the violence of these furious reformers , comes over an ambassador from france with three demands , the last of which was , that the bishops and churchmen should be restored in their former places , and be suffered to intermit with their livings . the council were not very ready to give him answer , but put him off to the parliament in may , and then having no stomack to sit , feigned a dilatory pretence , that they would wait the certainty of the queens pleasure , whereof the bishops having assurance good enough held a meeting at sterlin , and the loyal nobility were busie in executing her majesties comands , the end whereof the prophetical brethren not liking very well , rub'd up their invention and fram'd a jealousie of the queens authority to be usurped , and their alleageance moved them ( tender-hearted men ) to meet as numerous as they could at edenburgh , to prevent it . after this , as a most certain token of rebellion at hand , comes a new supplicate from the assembly of the church to the parliament ( met at length ) most humbly beseeching their honors , that such order may be taken that they have not occasion to take again the sword of just defence ( 't is not the sword of the spirit they mean ) which they had willingly ●esigned over into their hands this wrestled so well with the civil authority , that hereby , writes knox , got satan the second fall after he had begun to trouble the state of religion . now returns lord iames with letters from the queen desiring the lords to entertain quietness , and to suffer nothing to be attempted against the contract of peace made at leith , till her own home-coming . in obedience whereunto , having dismissed the french ambassadour with a negative to all he brought , they divide themselves into several squadrons , burn and ruin all the monasteries and religious houses they come near , and this in such a trice , that they accounted it little lesse than a miracle , and bragg'd that god wrought potently with them by his hand . it was time now for the queen her self to come over , these masters of mis-rule keeping no better order , whose sudden arrival surprised the brethren , but upon several grounds and reasons drew a great confluence to her court . the reformers seem'd as officious as the best , wipe their mouthes and supple them into as smooth language as oyl , and drop nothing but honey at the lips , which the good queen requited with all fair concessions of their liberty in religion , reserving onely the priviledge of her family ; but this was against the lord iames's instructions , to testifie their adherence : whereunto , her devotions disturb'd , and had not some better temper ( that is a stronger hand ) interposed , her chappel had been in all likelihood raz'd unto the ground , for the book of discipline affords it no singular indulgence , which the preachers vehemently exhorted to have ectablisht by an act and publick law [ of the sword , ] affi●ming , that if they suffered things to hang in suspence when god had given unto them sufficient power in their hand , they should after sob for it , but should not get it . in order whereunto , the earl of arrane protests against the queens proclamation , that gods law having pronounced death to the idolater — he would have it universally observed . vniversal includes all particulars , and so the queens not exempted , but the meaning is , if she say her prayers according to the perswasion of her c●nscience , she must dye . to enforce this , iohn knox preacheth a most violent sermon , enveigheth against idolatry , addes , that one masse ( he confesseth there were no more suffered at first ) was more fearful unto him than if 10000. armed enemies were landed in any part of the realm of purpose to suppr●sse the whole religion : and because he improved not the mystery of this clause into an actual rebellion , he professed himself a very formal penitent afterward , that he had not spoke his meaning plainer ; that he had not directly animated them to put their hands to the work of the lord [ that is , execute his law against idolaters , and murder the queen for maintaining a single masse . ] the good queen for all this admits him to her presence , reasons mildely with him about the point , wherein she so accutely and judiciously acts her part , that she makes him maintain all the absurdities incident thereunto . opposition to supream majestrates by the sword : that the israelites in aegypt , daniel and his company in babylon , and any of the children of god otherwhere , would have made resistance by the sword , if god had given them the power and the means . to the proof of which , in behalf of the primitive christians , i wonder he cited not this of tertullian , vrbes , insulas , castella , municipia , conciliabula , castra ipsa , tribus ▪ decurias , palatium , senatum , forum impleverunt , they were numerous enough , yet no knoxes among them , nulli inter illos albiniani , nulli nigriani , nulli cassiani . the dispute being ended , he gave this manerly character of the queen ; that there was in her a proud mind , a crafty wit , and an indurate heart against god and his truth . after this the matter of religion for the queen and her family was more publickly agitated between the nobility and ministry , neither party convinced ▪ and so each to other made opposite conclusions . many lords retracted their subscription to the discipline , and drew into question the expedience of assemblies . this put them upon offering the discipline to the queen , which her majesty absolutely refused . hereupon the state of the question is altered , and burrowes a bold fellow , is set in the front of a seditious party , to put up articles about maintenance for the ministry of the reformation . for quietness sake to this purpose , the bishops relinquish the third part of their revenues , to settle which , commissioners are ordered , and to satisfie any of the discontented faction , proclamation is made , that it shall be dispatched with all possible speed . some makes jests upon it , as the earl of huntley bids good morrow to the lords of the two parts . but knox who gap'd at the whole , said in earnest ; that the spirit of god was not the author of it , for he saw two parts freely given to the devil , and the third must be divided between god and the devil . the regret at this so sticks in the stomachs of him and his assembly brethren that they are fain to have recourse to their usual remedy , and disgorge it in a filthy supplicate to the queen , part of the contents were these : gods hands cannot long spare in his anger to strike the head and the tayl , the inobedient prince and sinful people — they presse the queen again to forsake the practice of her religion , and revile it as the fosterer of whores , adluterers , drunkards blasphemers of god , &c. threaten that the obstinate maintenance of it shall in the end be to her destruction of soul and body , if she rep●nted not — declare they could no longer keep silence , unlesse they would make themselves criminal before god of her bloud , perishing in her own iniquity , and they plainly admonish her of the danger to come — they humbly require that bishops may not be set up again , to empire above the people of god , for they fear that such usurpation of their former estate will be neither in the end pleasant to themselves , nor profitable to them that would place them in that tyranny — that if the papists think to triumph where they may , and to do what they list , where there is not a party able to resist them , that some will think , that the godly must begin where they left . but the equity and civility of tendring such language was discussed between secretary lethington and the brethren , who advised them upon any grievance to make complaint and appeal to the law . here one mends the matter and saith , if the sheep shall complain to the wolfe [ the queen ] that the wolfes whelps have devoured the lambs , the complainer may stand in dange● , &c. after such cautious reasoning , as knox calls it , the supplication was left to the secretary to review , who moderated the language , but not so as to gain a grant from the queen , nor indeed did the brethren expect it , but took advantage hereby to pursue their design to stirre up the people by certain emissaries s●nt from the assembly , of whom the great incendiary knox must be one , whose gospel had the usual successe in kyle and gallowoy , the chief professors meeting at ayre , where they covenanted to maintain the ministers of the evangel against all persons , power and authority , that should oppose themselvs to the doctrine propounded — so that whosover should hurt , molest or trouble any of their bodies , should be reputed enemies to the whole — except he submit to the government of the church then established [ they say not by whom . ] at the next assembly were great complaints made about the churches lacking ministers ▪ and ministers their stipends , &c. for redress hereof some thought of a new supplication , others mentioned that no answer had been given to the former . so that for such things which could not be done without the queen , they ●eem'd to express themselves dutifull subjects in waiting her pleasure , the rest that could , they did by themselves , not craving her consent or approbation , unless in mockery to make sport . but because the law kept not pace with the brethrens haste , nor , as they thought , the queen with the law , they take an easie occasion for a quicker dispatch . having discovered some priest that said masse at easter , avow'd by the bishop of st. andrews contrary to the queens proclamation , they take justice into their own hands , clap him up in prison , whose pardon the queen could scarcely obtain with abundance of tear● : punish others , and give int●mation to the abbot of cosragnel , the parson of sangohar , &c. that they should neither complain to the queen nor council , but should execute the punishment that god had appointed to idolaters in his l●w , by such means as they might wherever they should be apprehended . this incensed the queen , yet put her not beside a temper'd discourse with iohn knox ( whose you may be s●re had been this bloudy advice ) to whom her majesty propounds this question : will ye allow that they shall take my sword in their hand ? who answered , the sword of justice is gods — and they that in the fear of god execute judgement where god hath commanded , offend not god , altho●gh kings do it not ; neither yet sin th●y that bridle kings to strike innocent men in their rage . the queen yielded not to his reason , she did to his power with her poor deceived lieg people : and so strickt she was in observing her laws made against her own interest , that she suffered the bishops and d●vers other priests to be summoned before the earl of argile , accus'd and committed to prison . in requital for which act of impartial justice writes iohn knox , all this was done of a most deep craft , to abuse the simplicity of the protestants , that they should not presse the queen with any other thing concerning matters of religion . a good encouragement for princes to grant any thing to the presbytery , when by their largest concessions they shall obtain nothing but the character of politick deceivers , gain neither upon their affection nor duty . indeed the more reasonable part of the nobility and people did somewhat reverence the queen for her great largeness , and decl●n'd for some time being further importunate instruments of her trouble , or the clergies imperious tyranny upon her conscience , which made an absolute breach between the earl of murray and knox , who denounced gods judgements upon him for his coldness in his service : the like he did publickly in a sermon to the rest that should consent to the queens marriage with an infidel ( for such are all papists with the presbytery , though they hold the same creed ) which he said was to banish christ iesus from the realm . these and other his ex●travagancies were such as disliked both parties , who concurred to have him question'd by the queen , which , poor lady , she could not do ( according to his desert ) for the passionate cries and tears which , this tiger confesseth , burst out in such abundance , that her page could scarcely furnish her with handkirchiefs enough to dry her eyes . to whom all the apology he makes is , his moderation used out of the pulpit , a falsehood , as may be evid●nc'd by his other discourses and letters , as likewise in that he said , he was not master of himself , but must obey him who commands him to speak plain , and to flatter no flesh upon the face of the earth . the queens grief had so prevail'd with her , that he was commanded to wait a time in the next chamber , where , to testifie his compassion and sense of those royal tears , he entertained merry discourse with the court ladies , jeering them about their beauties and apparel . at last he had liberty given him to depart , and that ( according to the queens good nature ) without a c●nsure . in recompense of which kindness , two felons armstrong and cranstone being to undergo the tryal of the law , iohn knox , ( to whom , by his own acknowledgement , the charge was given to make advertisements whensoever danger should appear , because zealous brethren ) summons in by letters the countrey to their rescue , for which the master of maxwell , his old friend ; discharged himself of a rebellious familiar , and never would own him more . he was again brought before the queen and council , but dismissed as formerly , though as impudently as ever he maintained all his rebellious doctrine , and blaspemously abused scripture to confirm it . in december 1563. was another general assembly , and several petitions of ministers presented , but their dutiful demeanor had not been such , as to win a speedy answer and grant of their demands . they complained of some such speech given them . as ministers will not follow our counsel , so will we suffer ministers to labour for themselves , and see what speed they come . to which the whole ▪ assembly made this modest reply : if the queen will not we must . some dispute there was between the lord secretary lethington and the brethren ▪ go●dman being their speaker , for iohn knox was sullen and musty at that time , having lashed out so far , that some even of the protestants themselves said , what can the pope do more than to send forth his letters and require them to be obeyed . at length he made a speech , wherein he desired to have his actions justified and owned by the whole assembly , or else he threatned he would never in publick , nor private , as a publick minister open his mouth in doctrine or reasoning . the brethren trembling at this immediately voted and avowed his fact to be the fact of the whole assembly . but this with the rest , alienated the affections not onely of the queen and court , but of rational lay-protestants from their ministers , whereat they , hating the name of dumb dogs ( which was the insepar●ble title of the bishops ) barked aloud every day in their pulpits , but as it happened this was no time to bite . in the next assembly 1564. their words were scan'd , some advocates they found , but more accusers . here , as in the other , was a publick schism● among the reformers , divers lords and ministers withdrawing themselves , and transacting many things about the church : at length they were drawn together to the hear●●g of knox's cause , which was very largely discussed between the lord secretary lethington and him . the propositions maintained by knox were these five . 1. that subjects have delivered an innocent from the hands of their king , and therefore offended not god . 2. that subjects have refused to strike innocents , when a king commanded , and in so doing denyed no just obedience . 3. that such as struck at the commandement of the king , were before god reputed murderers . 4. that god hath not onely of a subject made a king , but also he armed subjects against their natural king , & commanded them to take vengeance upon him according to his law . 5. and lastly , that gods people hath executed gods law against their king , having no farther regard to him in that behalf , than if he had been the most simple subject within the realm . to the proof of these , holy scripture and ecclesiastick history is shamefully wrested ; all the extraordinary precedents in the old testament forced to justifie the new practice of the schismatical scots , and iohn knox made as familiar with god , and as private to his most secret counsels , as any of the prophets or apostles in the bible . these are to this day the doctrines of the disciplinarian brethren , by which kings and princes may see how much concerned they are to beware of , and by an indispen●able coercive power , when they have it , to restrain them : and all good subjects are to abandon utterly their opinions and practice , lest the devil possesse them , as from the beginning he hath done these swine , and cast them down headlong into hell . at the end of this dispute , much ado there was about the votes of the assembly , but their divisions being many , they at last advised knox to send for the opinions of calvin and other eminent divines in the reformed churches , which he cunningly declin'd , pretending he was assured he had them all on his side ( a pretty credit for the forreign reformation ) and would not so wrong his cause as to call it in question before any of them . and so , re infecta , the assembly brake up . not long after the banished earl of lenox had leave to return into scotland , and was graciously received by the queen . in favour of whom , that he might be restored to his lands , her majesty intended to call a parliament , but desired the earl of murray that nothing about religion might be mentioned ; he said , he could not promise it , for the precise ministry , as they were now called , did not use to stand to the queens curtesie in church aff●irs . nor did they now forbear , although they knew her pleasure , but gave in again their old factious articles , and ordained many things in their assembly about the church . now begins the queens affecti●on to shew itself toward the young lord darley , and secretary lethington is dispatched into england to signifie to queen elizabeth , that she minded to marry him . whether in reference to this or no i know not , but pope knox's bulls are dispersed abroad , and the brethren of edenburgh , dundee , fife , &c , summon'd to come in and arme themselves to make a new supplication to the queen , which was presented in very dutiful manner ( no question ) by the superintendent of lowthian , wherein her majesty was advised to take heed of the matter , if any idolatry and superstition were used at easter following . the poor queens task was hard , having two popes to please , but this nearer home threatening greater mischief to her crown and person , must be served first , and accordingly prohibitions were sent out to all suspected places and persons , especially to the bishop of st. andrews and aberdeen , not to use masse . and that they should not do any such thing as was feared by the protestants , or convene any council , &c. this stopt not the strickter inquisition of the precisians , who intercepted sir iames carvet upon the road , having it should seem , been at some private masse , revested him with his garments , carried him to the market-crosse at edenburgh , bound the chalice to his hand , and him to the crosse , let him stand there an hour or two for the boyes to throw egges at , which they called , serving him with his easter egges . this popular piece of justice was approved afterward , and seconded by a grave censure to the same punishment at the assize , onely for some solemnity , he had appointed to him the attendance of the hangman . the queen sent a serious letter to the provost & bayliff , to proceed legally with the seditious executioners of justice , but hereof was little notice taken beside setting sir iames and his company at liberty upon her majesties special command . in the month of may following some of the precise nobility and clergy being angry that they failed of a design they had against the earl bothwell ( whom they summon'd to edenburgh , but he diverted toward france ) turn'd their law-court into an ecclesiastick assembly , and , without any authority from the queen , sate down to consult about maintaining of religion , but her majesty knowing by custome that would end in a rebellion , cites them all to sterlin about her marriage with the lord darley , and to subscribe a writ about obedience to him as their soveraign , which the brethren that bent themselves every way to cross her , caused the earl murray to refuse , till some conditions about religion were consented to on her part , and a convention ordered to be at st iohnston to that purpose . a day for which being prefixed , that a business of that consequence might be the more sedately and peaceably deliberated on , the principals of the precisians summon in what strength they could out of the countrey , which her majesty fore-seeing was to force her consent to whatsoever they would propound , put off the day till she had advised with her council , after which the 23. of iune following was appointed , but the queen being by that time too well guarded agai●●t the intended violence , the brethren had no stomack to assemble ; and to divert the earl of murray , who ●as going thither , feign a formal sto●y of a design upon his person . that the lord darley should discourse with him and draw him into a dispute , whereupon david rizio ( of whom more shall be said hereafter ) was to strike in , and with some other assistants that were in readinesse , murder him . to colour the earls absence , was given out that he was taken with a flux , and lay sick at lochlevin , where he remained till the queen came to edenburgh . in the interim , there is held a general ass●mbly of the church iuly 24. by this time the brethren had mustered their strength , and were resolved to capitulate to the rigour with the queen , six very modest articles are drawn up , and sent by five commissioners to be ratified by her majesty in parliament . the first and fifth of which were to have her sign her own death , in case she altered not her religon , for the papistical and blasphemous masse , with all papistical idolatry , &c. must be abolished throughout the realm , not onely in the subjects , but also in the queens own person , with punishment against all persons that should be deprehended ( her majesty expresly named in the former , and not excepted in the latter , and the punishment appointed for idolaters is death , as they every where mention ) the queen having received this pleasing message departs privately to dunkeld , whither she is persecuted by this commission , prevail'd with for audience , and importun'd for a dispatch . in her answer she delayes them for eight dayes , after which she intended to be in edenburgh with her council . to gain her majesties concession the brethren arm themselves and assemble at st. leonard crag . the queen saw it was now high time to speak her mind , which she did in a particular return to the six articles . to the first , she onely demanded of her subjects what she freely gave to them , liberty of conscience in the exercise of religion : hoped they would not press her to receive any religion against her conscience , which should be unto her a continual trouble by remorse , and a perpetual unquietness . and to deal plainly , her majesty neither will nor may leave the religion wherein she hath been nour●shed and brought up . but the brethren still prosecute the religious cause , and to prepare it the better for the parliament approaching ▪ the earls of a●gile and murray , &c. meet at sterlin to consult . the queen takes this ill ; s●nds her two advocates mr. spense and mr. crichton , who c●uld by no means perswade them to come to edenburgh . the queen p●orogues the parliament to the fi●st of september , preparing by letters and proclamations to be in as good a military posture of defence as they could . upon the 18. of iuly proclamation was made for obedience to be rendred to the lord darley as king , the next morning he was married to the queen , notwithstanding such disturbance intended as the queen was fain to raise an army to secure her in her marriage . the precise lords had appointed the rendezvouz for their forces the 24. of august , and a countermand issued out from their majesties to attend them at linlithgow the same day . but upon the 19. day of that month iohn knox preacheth before the king at edenburgh upon isa. 26.13 . o lord our god , other lords besides thee have had dominion over us , but by thee onely will we make mention of thy name . he declaims against tyrants and wicked princes , saith expresly , that god sets in that room ( for the offences and ingratitude of the people ) boyes and women — that god justly punishe● ahab and his posterity , because he would not take order with that harlot iezabel . the king knew whom he meant , and forbore his dinner out of anger . knox was summon'd before the council , and wisht to abstain from preaching for some few day●s ; he answered , that he had spoken nothing but according to his text , and if th●church would command him either to speak or abstain , he would abstain so far as the word of god would permit . so the kings command must give way to the churches , and iohn knox regulate the churches too according to the word , the lords range up and down the countrey to encrease their strength , but find not what success they hop'd for . this makes some divisions in their councils , murray and glencarne were for an accommodation ; the hamiltons put no confidence in peace , pretending the enmity of kings was implacable , no other way to be extinguished but by their death . this harsh advice took place with none but such as adhered to them upon a mystical reason , their nea●●itle to the crown : and many others looking upon the quarrel as prosecuted upon private interest , more than the publick good , which was pretended , deserted their party , and so infirmed their strength . the remnant sent a letter to their majesties , flattering their persons , but enveighing against their council , putting in some caution for religion , and menacing a hard market for their blood , if sought . the princes guessing this might be to gain time , remitted no whit of their military care , but made hard marches , the weather being very bad . at st. andrews proclamation was publish'd to inform the subjects about the true state of the difference , demonstrating to them that nothing lesse was mean'd than religion most pretended ; how hardly they were used , according to mr. knoxs's doctrine , like boyes and gyrls in their pupillage , the lords appointing their council as their guardians . the ministers all this while were no cyphars , but knowing their majesties were somewhat necessitated for money to pay their army , which was come to a considerable number of 18000 men , thought it the fittest time to supplicate for their meanes . this piece of impertinency was easily swallowed among greater troubles , their authority being not such at this time as to stand upon termes , and expostulate at length the holy lords of the congregation being confiscate and banish'd : therefore they fall to their prayers for patience , comfort , and constancy to the exil'd , which iohn knox did not without honorable mention of them as the best part of the nobility , the chief members of the congregation . but prayers and tears were not wont to be the onely arms of this new church , and though they had no other at present , yet some course must be taken to reduce them into possession of such a power . this cannot be done without the exil'd lords return into the countrey , for which their letters and missive supplicates not prevailing , enquiry was made about the principal obstruction , the common current of the queens favour and mercy diffusive enough . requiring naught of the most delinquent subject , but to take the paines to stoop and taste it as he pleased . this was found to be david rizio her secretary , who by the excellency of his parts , and fidelity of his service , in these many turns of treachery and falsehood , had rais'd himself to an intimacy with the queen , much beyond the quality o● his birth , or place in her court . the brethren had no such free accesse to the retirements of the royal palace as afforded them an opportunity to commit such a rape on majesty as this : nor could there be they thought , a better hand than the king to rend in sunder the queens heart , and rifle thence , by prerogative priviledge , the counterfeit of her dearest servant , whom they were resolved to have thrown out of the world , that she might never more have benefit by his counsel , nor content by his presence and attendance . but such transcendent wickedness as this requires supream providence to guide it , nor can any miraculous mischief be wrought but by the plenipotence of heaven . to this purpose a fast is proclaimed by the assembly , and observed , no fast for strife and debate , nor to smite with the fist of wickedness ; such a fast , no doubt , as the lord had chosen , to undo the heavy bu●thens , to break the yoak , and to let the oppressed go free . the kings head is daily possessed by convenient instruments with variety of jealousies about his queen : her privacies with david rizio are suggested as no arguments of her matrimonial fidelity ; and the precedence of her name before his ( her paramours invention ) did derogate as much from the due authority of an husband , as from the majesty of a king . naught but david rizio's removal can make way for the future innocency of the queen : and very just is it thought that his heart blood should blot out his hands error in the writs . but bare-fac'd murder is not so beautiful as to draw a tender conscience to embrace it . religious mask may hide somewhat of the horror , and necessity of state animate , an adventure to take it by the hand , which the lords of this black council weighing with themselves , propound three atticles to the king . establishing the religion . recalling the banish'd lords , and in the rear of these , the murder of david rizio . his royal word might vanish into ayr , and be no standing evidence for the security of the actors , who presse for a subscription by his hand . the discourse alone upon this is enough for an after-claim to his consent , and the counterfeit of his name to give his disavowing majesty the lie . howsoever if his engagement were any , the reverence of a father that advised brought him half way upon the misse-taken borders of his duty , and old patrike ruvens resurrection , who had for many moneths been bed-rid : but skipped very lively into this action , might impose on his youth as an oracle from the dead . upon the saturday before the tuesday prefixed by the queen for the attainder of the lords , this cripled assassin in the company of the earl morton , lord ruthuen , lord lindsay , &c. broke into the presence , and in her majesties sight who was then great with child , carry violently away her servant of greatest secresie and trust , and within a chamber or two by fifty three stroaks with their whingers or daggers , murder him for the advancement of the discipline , which work now goes on a pace , the earl murray and the banish'd lords returning to the court upon a pretended summons from the king these with the murderers sit in council , desire the queen to take the act for good service , because hereby were so many noblemen restored . the poor queen was fain to be silent in what she could not help , and not knowing how soon her own turn was to come , as an essay of their intentions , desired the armed guard might be dismissed , for granting which the cruel brethren count the king uxorious and simple , the earl murray facile , and the other lords too inclinable to submit . her majesty though good natur'd , was neither stupid , nor partial when indued with exercive power . the blood of rizio called upon her for justice more then the memory of his good service , or her own affection did incite her to revenge . this opportunity she took to summon her loyal subjects to dunbar , whither her majesty privately withdrew . the guilty lords did not like to have any armed assemblies appear but their own , and accounted it an entrenchment on their priviledge for the queen to act any thing but by their counsel . at the same time and * place where they should have answered to their charge , they convene to protest against the q. proceedings , yet wanting that which was wont more then either their authority or innocency to spirit their dispute , they disperse themselves to seek each a single sanctuary in a corner . the king and queen in march were attended with a strong guard to edenburgh , his majesty having before by proclamation quit himself , not onely of the guilt , but all fore-knowledge of the murder ( which is not inconsistent with what was said of an article propounded , so they acquainted him not upon his refusal with their designe ) search is made by order after the actors and partizans , care being taken that the brethren which so zealously prayed and fasted for poor rizio's death , should not surfeit at their leisure on his blood . the common hackney-interruption of every royal enterprize or process was the humble and lamentable complaints of her highnesses poor oratours , the superintendents and ministers , &c. who still want 〈◊〉 meanes , and at this time , it may be a reward for their late service . but here they fetch their breath short , and cannot lengthen out their supplicate as heretofore , to abolishing the mass , & antichristian bishops , the temporal sword was wanting which should strengthen their weak hands , and confirme their feeble knees . the queen gratified their present modesty with a promise , although the assembly was nice in owning her gracious performance afterward , for the writ of maintenance subscribed by her majesty being publickly presented , they take time to deliberate about acceptance of it from her hand , and answer very gravely , that it was their duty to preach to the people the word of god truly and sincerely , and to crave of the auditors the things that were necessary for their sustentation , as of duty the pastours might justly crave of their flock ; and further it became them not to have any care . which plain contradiction can ad●mit of no other salve but this . that they wanted not the subsistence , for which they so frequently and importunately petition'd , nor had they any desire to be answered by a grant ; but this colourable pretence they could ever make use of to usher in their more peevish demands , upon denial whereof , or ( which they made ever equivalent ) delay , the publick commiseration of their poverty who laboured in the gospel melted the peoples loyalty into a tumult . about this time comes matter of joy for all , though upon several grounds , and different hopes of advantage to be made by it , the birth of a prince , of whom if the brethren can get the godly education , and mold the new d●scipline into his creed , there can be gospel enough beside knox's book against the empire of women , or else club law , which is better to prevail with the queen for a surrender of the crown and scepter into his hand . in reference hereunto , after thanks and praises , are made many supplications to god , and wishes ( more powerfull perswasions being wanting ) that he might be baptized according to the manner of the reformed churches in the realm . but the bishop of st. andrews is thought to have a more authentick mission then the brethren , and the sacrament efficacious from his hand though none but boyes could be got to bear torches at the solemnitie of the christening . this check to the discipline seemed ominous , and if the future removes in the princes education should be answerable , the brethren saw they might be mated in the end . the king had either taken no impression by their counsel about rizio , or retain'd very little of it after his dispatch . he had been so uxorious as to put the bloody lords to shift for themselves , and being given to his sports might possibly leave the yong child wholly to the queens disposal ; at the best he was but a cypher in religion , and fill'd up the room of a more significant figure , a regent , or protector of the prince . the strong reports of his engagement against rizio hath wrought a visible suspicion in the queen , and that will be enough to draw a popular jealousie upon her self , though murray and his complices be the true politick assassins that act a second trajedy in the murder of the king . howsoever this bloody businesse was contrived and executed , the corps of the murder'd king was thrown into a garden , and one of his servants strangled with him , the house where he lay in edenburgh blown up in triumph for the designe taking effect , or as a signal to the brethren to blaspheme god by their midnight thanksgiving . now was the poor queen once again reduced to her solitude , without the comfort or assistance of a husband , in greater haz●rd of her peace and security then ever by what she foresaw would be act●d against her by the reformers under the umbrage of her son . to prevent what she well could of this mischief she casts her self upon the despe●ate adventure of a sudden marriage . the experience she had of earl bothwels trust , and the clear opinion the world had of his courage led her nuptial affection unto his comely person by the hand . the intended divorce between the earl and his lady upon the lawfull ground of too near consanguinity would assuredly set him at liberty for her purpose , and her majestie thought religion as well as policy might be had to justifie his help , being then at leisure , in supporting of a crown , she presum'd on her innocency to quit her from the slander of the brethren about her former familiarity with the earl , and upon the justice of the law to wash his hands in the sight of the world from the murder of the king . what other inevitable difficulty , she must encounter , she left to providence and the fortune of war . and if by all the faire meanes to be used the precise mouths could not be stopt from shooting bitter words , and sharp arrows against her person or government , she saw no way left but to hold their hands , and ●ut their venemous tongues out with the sword . but the brethren were never wont to be backward , to raise a rebellion in their own defense as they call'd it , and much more unlikely is it they should be now when a young prince was committed by heaven unto their charge . the fountain-head for sedition was most commonly at edenburgh , which now had for a conduit iohn craig the minister , who declaimed fiercely against the divorce and marriage , and as boldly as could be maintain'd his discourse when he was question'd for it before the council . hence tumults beginning , the queen thought to seize the castle of edenburgh to suppresse them , which she demands of the old earl of marre , who , though sick at sterling ▪ advis'd by his confessours would make no surrende● , and exchange he would for no les● then the person of the prince . the condition was hard , ●et at length consented to by the queen , who might have saved some part of her future trouble it may be her head , if when she kissed and shook hands with her babe , she had taken off her crown , and thrown it into the cradle , for now we hear of no more supplicates , and humble addresses to her ; they had now a royal infant in their hands , whom as young as he was , they had taught to speak far better language then his mother , and to act ( with good authority and judgement no question ) their hearts desire in behalf of the d●scipline . the queen may now proclaim what she please , as she did , they say , large favours towards the poor protestants , she mistakes her self , they are no such men as mean to live on her almes , having got her onely jewel in possession , and will have very shortly her crown ; but they had not hands enough yet to remove it , being like a nail fastened in a sure place of female magnanimity , and innocency , and the throne had by late marriage acquir'd a stout champion to protect it ; nothing now but sl●under and violence can get it into their power , and they must be sure to coyn the former of good mettal , whereby to purchase an effectual assistance in the latter . they set up shop at sterlin , and hammer out a conceit that the queen and earl of bothwell had an undoubted resolution to murder the young prince , and next a band or covenant to protect him . but argile one of the banded lords , could not sleep well with this shackle about his conscience , and the next day reveals the conspiracy to the queen . she hath many of the lords that adhere to her , & a daily access of strength from the common people but her majestie makes first approaches by her goodness ▪ before she moves toward the conspirators with her power . having proclaimed a grant of their demands for religion , she doth the like to the other article of policy , and passeth her royal promise to be hereafter guided by the advice of her nobles . this they thought was to direct a way to sterlin , where having yeilded all , it might be taken for reason or a civil favour to gratifie her with the restitution of her son . to intercept her in this hast they besiege her majestie and the earl at borthwike castle , where nothing was wanting to the surprisal of their persons but the earl of athols men to stop a passe , by which they both escaped to dunbar . the rebells thus defeated in their plot , make what hast they can to edenburgh , where they found no hard entrance into the city , and they pretended to some underhand favour from balfour governour of the castle ; yet as guilt is prone to suspicions and fears , they confide not so much in their friends or strength , but that divided in their counsels the prevailing party inclin'd to a disbanding and shifting for themselves ; but the queens army drawing near , despair of mercy made them resolute , and united their factions to hazard all at once . musselburgh field was the place where both armies met , and being ready to joyn battail ▪ mon. croke the french agent unhappily interposeth for a treaty ; gets the queen to promise pardon , and then offers it in her name to the lords of the conspiracy ; they had no mind to take her word , nor his , and the earl of glencarn very majestickly told him , they came not thither to take , but to give pardon at their pleasure . the queens yeilding to this parly put a jealousie into her army that she had no great faith in the good fortune of the battail , and glencarns bold answer spake a too fixed resolution in their enemies . this , and some treachery that was acted in the dark , made a great party declare against the business for which they came into the field . the queens passion , running too quick a division upon intreaties and menaces , evidenc'd to them the distraction of her m●nd , which at length brought her to a precipice , & threw her into a ruine , she sends to treat personally wth the l. kirkaldie of grange , with whom he holds a discourse while the earl bothwell of late made duke of orkney was out of present danger . afterward her majesty goeth with him to the rebels , by whom she was at first received with as much reverence as hypocrisie could counterfeit , which being only a false paint upon the van or front of the army , when she had made a little farther entrance , she heard a loud cry , burn the strumpet , and parricide , burn the strumpet and parricide , this courtesie pursued her untill she was welcom'd by a pageant , a fair banner displayed , wherein was pictur'd k. henry , ( the lord darley ) that was dead , and a little infant ( the young prince ) at his prayers to god for revenge upon the murderer . this was carried by two soldiers between two spears , and which way soever the queen turn'd her face . as maliciously as might be , this was presented to her . when the poor innocent lady fainted not under the burden of her guilt , but impatience of this most unchristian reproach , they held her upon her horse , and the banner still displayed on purpose it may be ( there being more yet undiscovered of the designe ) to affright her royal soul into her body , if it attempted to spring out . being somewhat recovered , they hurrey her toward edenburgh , but her faintness of spirit , after the late torture , declining so great hast , a common souldier was instructed to cry out , you linger to no purpose ; the hamiltons are not at hand here for your rescue . when they had brought her to the city , they thrust her into an inne , where if she look't but out at window , to weep at that liberty , as the tears trickled down with the sad sound of her sighs , & the pitty of some tender hearted people ascended in a whisper , she was sure to have that cursed banner a fresh presented , which forced her to this choice , a perpetual rack , or close imprisonment , yet the rebell● fearing the effects of such still conference between a distressed queen , and her commiserating subjects , post her the next day to a castle in the isle of lochlevin ▪ where a proud harlot insults and tra●ples upon her calamitous person , while her ambitious bastard playes the part of a pretender to the crown . and now it was high time for the godly ministers to meet in an assembly , and with the seal of the spirit make good all these proceedings ; which they did , and farther service , for the hamiltons had got a strong party of the nobles , and as great an army as the brethren . to these and to diverse n●utrals were sent several conscientious letters from the cl●rgie , to summon them in for the setling of gods true worship in the church , beside a spiritual quaternion of iohn knox ▪ dowglas , row , and craig are deputed commissioners with instructions to like purpose , in expectation of whose return was the assembly prorogued . but so much time was lost , for neither soothing letters , nor supling language could prevail for their company . this summons , though rejected , was sufficient to authoriz● the faction at edenburgh , to combine in the maintenance of some such articles as these . that all crimes and offences against god should be punish'd according to gods word , &c. but they make no particular mention , as that doth , of witchcraft and rebellion . that they would protect the young prince , against all violence , ( his imprisonment at present they counted none . ) that he should be committed to the care of four wise and godly men . the first time , i have heard of a clerical assembly chusing lords protectors , that they would set up and further the true worship of god , — and all that may concern the purity of religion , and life . and for this to take arms if need require . they should have added , where need requires another pretense , they would take that for taking arms , or if it please them , take arms without any . that all princes and kings hereafter in this realm before their coronation shall take oath to maintain the true religion , which if they do , to be sure theirs is out of protection . this being done , the assembly brake up . but all this while they were troubled how to r●d their hands of the queen , who , though a prisoner , had yet such authority at liberty as prevented the brethren from being absolute in their power . in consultation about her , some were for a conditional restitution , others for a legal tryal , deposition , and condemnation to perpetual imprisonment ; but knox and the meek-sp●rited assembly-men , upon some holy inspiration publish'd this mercifull censure in their pulpits , to have her divested of royal authority and executed , which took effect in the end , although not in so short a time , nor by the same hands they then hastily desired . queen elizabeth of england , whose royal dignity did rather cherish her in , then exempt her from , an eager emulation , which is very inseperable , ( in some cases happily incident ) to her sex , partly by that , and partly upon a conscientious care to preserve and enlarge what is call'd in the mass , the protestant religion , the sincerity of which was ever pretended , but never mean'd nor practis'd by the presbytery in scotland ; and farther upon the jealousie she had of the great reputation , and growing power of her successor , had from time to time recruited the strength , and supported the fainting spirits of that faction ; yet at such opportunities , and upon such politick advantages , as gave all her actions the countenance of justice , and her self the honour of being as bitter to theirs : but when by the help of her sword they had cut out their way , and got the royal scepter in their reach , like perfidious rebells , ungratefull and cruel murderers , as she call'd them , they turn'd the point upon her self , would stand no more to the courtesie of her imperious mediation ; denyed her ambassador accesse to their queen , and sent him back with a french proverb in his mouth , il perd le jeu , qui la isse , la partie , to bid her have a care to continue a friend to their party , lest having got the fore-game for them , she lose an after-game , more considerable , when she playes it for her self . in the interim the lords lindsey and ruthuen were sent to the queen to have two wri●s signed ; one for the renunciation of the crown and royal dignity ; the other to ordain the earl of murray regent ▪ during the princes minority . they having by their hard usage brought upon her majesty some infirmity of body , did her the courtesie to put her in mind of that as a fair pretense , why she gave up her crown and government , but to ballance that , they threatned her with death if she refused . whether her majesty set her hand or no , is not so certain , as that it was proclaim'd she had , at the market-cross of edenburgh ; and soon after the young prince crowned king at sterlin , where iohn knox sanctified his inauguration with a sermon , and earl morton , one of them that kill'd his father , with lord hume that mean'd as much unto his mother , when he besieged her in borthwike castle , took the oath in his behalf , that he should constantly live in the profession of the true religion , and maintain it , &c. it 's no matter whether the king knows it to be true or false he swears to . the next solemnity was to proclaim the regent , who was returned out of france , whither he had cunningly diverted to avoid the discovery about the murther of the king , and his personal appearance in the deposit●on of the queen . after eleven moneths imprisonment ( in all which time she was not once permitted the sight of her son , which she earnestly desired , ) her majesty by the help of george douglas , broth●r to the regent , makes an escape out of the castle , and island of lochlevin , and within ten dayes got an handsome army , and fought a battail for the recovery of her right ; but her friends that were stronger in their affections then arms , were unfortunately dispersed , and her self narrowly escaped to the borders of england . afterward , having sent a letter to queen elizabeth to crave protection in her kingdom , as apprehending some danger in her stay where she was , prevented the queens answer by her coming to carliste . what passed before queen elizabeths commissioners at york and herself at london , whither the regent came , being only a discussion of the scotch factions on all sides , and including title of the clericall proceedings , i purposely omit . the regent being returned into scotland , meets with new commotions , rais'd by the opportunity of his absence ; and afterward was overtaken by that which pleas'd him worse : three desires from queen elizabeth in behalf of the banished queen . 1. that she might be restored to her former authority , and place . or , 2. that she might be joynt regent with her son , aad her name as well as his in all publick acts and writings , yet so as murray should bear all the sway untill the king came to seventeen years of age : or , 3. that , if the queen of scots liked of it , she might enjoy her peace in a private condition , and with it what honour should not be prejudiciall to the royal dignity of the king ▪ beside , the queen of scots sent 〈◊〉 letter to demand a fair judicial hea●ring about the businesse of her marriage with earl bothwell , that if 〈◊〉 were found illegal , she might have the benefit of a divorce , and be qui● of that engagement . these were referred to a parliament at perth , where the last of queen elizabeths propositions were yeilded to , upon hopes to get her within the limits of their power , when she could have no pretense to raise a party , being divested of all her royalties , and to be acknowledged as no other then a private person , and subject to the rigor of their laws , by which within a very short time she might be reduced to her former condition in the castle of lochlevin . to the queen of scots letter they make exceptions upon her assuming the title of queen , &c. and when offer was made that that should be amended , and urged as a strange paradox that they which had so much pressed the illegality and impiety of that marriage , would not now ye●ld unto a cognizance of the businesse ; they made many frivilous demurs , as to have 60 dayes given for the summons of earl bothwell , who was now in denmark ▪ &c. and at last spake plainly , that they would have her send to the danish king to take his head off , and then she was at liberty to marry whom she pleased . queen elizabeth not liking the perth parliaments answer , nor the young messenger that brought it , they call'd another at sterlin , and from thence sent pelkarn with a subtile enlargement about ▪ their declining the two former of her three propositions ; but because they saw so long as the exil'd queen had the countenance of queen elizabeth , she had oppo●tunity to encourage , and some means to assist their enemies , which now began to be somewhat potent ; they take a sure way , to set the two queens at variance by severall suggestions , wherein what was true , had been done by murray's advice , if not fi●st procurement , the private overture of a marriage between the queen of scots , and the duke of norfolk : and what was false , they were sure would incense queen elizabeth , and prevent all possibility of farther mischief from the south ▪ of this nature was that she had passed away to the d. of andyn her right to the crown of england , that she and the duke of norfolke intended to cut off the present royall poss●ssours of both kingdomes , which plot● must be discoverd by providence just at pelcarnes coming to the english court , whereupon the queen and duke were presently secured . after this the regent murray goes on with less opposition , and better success in scotland , ye● in the midst of his victories was rewarded for his murders , rebellions and falsehood , being shot at lithgow in the belly upon a private revenge , and so prevented of dispatching the young prince , which may be very fairly guessed by his proceedings to be intended , his mother boasting her self to have been the wife , not the harlot of iames the fifth , and so this her son the lawfull inheritor of the crown . the holy brethren would fain had murray cannoniz'd for a saint and martyr in the cause , and his bloud reveng'd they car'd not upon whom , so any of the queens dutifull subjests might be cut off . to bring such upon tryal as stood most in their way , were many popular supplicates presented , and what reason was rendred for deferring the enquiry , at least till the assizes , if not rather till the next assembly in may , they either take for a close compliance of their peers with the queens , or an impolitick yielding advantage to their enemies . at length some of the wisest began to put in questions by what authority they could proceed to this or any other execution of laws , the queen being deposed , the king in his non-age , and no legal establishment to be made of a successor to murray in his regency of the kingdome . fain would they have made use of an old by grant extorted from the queen , but that they found null by the former election of murray , and if now taken up for authentick , might be thought a recalling her majesties authority from the dead . this not holding good , they leave all their sawcy french proverbs behind them , and come fawning upon queen elizabeth in english ; she denies them as well advice as assistance , having before made plausible promises of both to the queen of scots , though her prisoner , the rebe●l● were sensible what ground the qu●ens party daily got by their anarchy , & though their necessities hastened them toward a conclusion of somewhat , yet , not knowing what , they were to seek by what means , and in what method to effect it . queen elizabeth , who seem'd not full● satisfied with the thing , must not be disgusted by the person . the earl of lenox , the young king's grandfather is pitcht on for several reasons looking that way ; and first upon some assembly revelation he was chosen an interrex or interloping king , which soon after by some divine counter-light was discovered to be a monster in government , suspected for saturnes unnatural stomack , that might possibly devoure the young king and iesus christs scepter to boot , which the presbytery had given him to play with in his hand . to avoid this danger they divest him of his intercalary kingship , and having no law upon earth to impower them , they furnish him with a regency from heaven . and now in his time no question all parliamentary as well as assembly authority may plead to be by divine right , and their proceedings are justified by this extraordinary providence of god . upon this patent the new regent reforms what he could by the sword , according to the true sense of the discipline . the poor captive queen in compliance with the principles of nature , and likewise in discharge of her civil duty ( who had the trust though not possession of a kingdome ) by submisse , yet enough majestick , requests in england ; by a mediation from france and spain , agitates what she can for her liberty , and this for stopping farther effusion of christian bloud in her countrey , and preventing the progresse of oppressive tyranny over her party . queen elizabeth sensible of these unchristian proceedings , by her arbitrary power sometimes orders a truce between the scots , gives fair answers as well to her prisoner as forein ambasdours that interceded for her : adviseth with her council , wherein some were mis lead by too facile credulity of false informations from the north ; others , not improbably , corrupted ; all too much ad●cted to their own interests , and an overweening solicitude about the peace and security of england . this begat an overture too high and imperious for a magnanimous free-born princesse to yield to ; put new thoughts and designs into the pope , spaniard , and french ; enlarged the breach between her english subjects , ( for they had been divided and some unsatisfied in the proceedings relating to the scotch queen ) reviv'd and multiplied conspiracies at home . into all these did the northwind blow the sparkles of the disciplinarian rebellion , which more or less encreased the flame where they lighted , if upon matter ready to fire with a touch . queen elizabeth finding her self environ'd with danger , and apprehending no possible security but in a perfect composure of the scotch differences , in order to it calls upon the presbyterian division for a new account about the deposition of their queen . they exhibit a large remonstrance upon it , stuffed with so much pride and barbarous insolence , as left no place for religion , reason , or law , although they were great pretenders to the last , pleading ancient priviledge of the scotch peoples superiority to their prince . this ( for which their reformed brethren may thank them ) they fortified with calvins authority , and in some cases enlarged it to imprisoning and deposing kings what , or wheresoever . they not onely justified their censure but magnified their own lenity to their queen , as to the pa●doning of her life , to the succession of her son , who being in their power , and standing onely by their pleasure , no marvail if in this years assembly and parliament , all acts and statutes made before by him and his predecessors annext the freedom and liberty of the true kirk of god , a●e ratified by his name , whenas yet he could not superscribe them with his hand . queen elizabeth saw and disliked the drifts of these antimonarchical maxims and practises , yet not resolute enough to trust providence with the preservation of her person . at the next meeting in the lord keepers house , persists in one of her principal demands from the queen of scots commissioners to have , beside the delivery up of two strong castles , the duke of castle herault , the earles of huntl●y , argile , humes , h●ris , &c. to be pledges or hostages for the good behaviour of their queen . this was to change one pri●oner for more , to disarm the scotch queen and turn her into a wilderness of wolves , or more savage beasts , ready every minute to devour her . the bishop of ross and her other delegates , lookt over queen elizabeths shoulder and her councils to see the black assembly men vying hard for the honour of this fatal invention ; returned a modest answer to her majesty , , that this could not be yielded in christian prudence , nor mercy to their miserable mistresse , wch was repelled by the l. keeper with that sharp reply , which , if any thing , cut off all mutual confidence in the queens , that the kingdome , princes , nobles , castles , and what soever else was valuable in scotland , could be no considerable pledge for the security of england . while matters were thus carried on there , both parties in scotland by queen elizabeths order , enter into a truce which the disciplinarians kept according to the articles of their faith , putting to the sword what persons of quality they wished out of the way , wherein the murder of their late king , and a feigned design to poison this now in being , served them very plausibly for a disguise ; they seized upon what castles and forts they could get by fraud or stratagem , without any great noise of armes ; among the rest , that on dunbriton frith , where the fury of the meaner sort being slacked by customary murder , the wrath of the regent and his sanguinary chaplains must have a solemn holy sacrifice to appease it , which was the archbishop of st. andrews , whom they found in that castle . he craved the ordinary justice of the law , but the fear of queen elizabeths mediatory letters , or any other prevalent possibility to save him , carried him the shorest way by a council of war , to be , as he was , dispatched at the gallows . but divine vengeance not ●ong after found the regent out at sterlin , sitting secure , as he thought , in his parliament of rebolls , where by the hands of some on the queens party , he paid the due debt of his bloud to the innocence of that holy martyr whom he murder'd . and now the good brethren haing divers months since , out stript the rebellious precedents of their ancestors , by leaping over the letter , and all pretentions of law and authority in the election of their regent , find themselves safe on this side all scrupulous trouble , and so without any more addresses into england , or home disputes about stating their power , commit their cause to the protection of iohn erskin earl of marre , whose first ominous repulse before edenburgh , and mild temper inclining toward a composure , together with his impardonable endeavours to bring in again archbishops and bishops , drew such swarms of contentious presbyters about him , that after thirteen moneths strugling with his own conscience and their unconscientious proceedings , he dyed through extremity of grief . in this time , by the good managing of the brethren , a proposition was made by the members of parliament in england , that if the queen of scots acted any thing against the known laws of the land , upon advantage given by her contract of marriage with the duke of norfolk , she should be proceeded against as a wife to one of the peers of the realm . but for royal majesties sake queen elizabeth interposeth by her power , and would not suffer it to be put to the vote of the house , or at least not enacted as a law . after all this jugling and under-hand contrivance , the disciplinarian faction in scotland perceiving trouble and hazard increasing upon them at home , and potent enemies multiplying abroad , resolve now to cut up root and branch of all that hindred the growth of their dominion , and having but blunt instruments in scotland , make bold with the highest authority , and sharpest ax of england to effect it , wherein as part of the work is easie with some rotten boughs , which , having no intrinsecal conjunction nor continuity with that body whereof they had been arms and members , were broaken off at pleasure by the hand of justice : so the knotty pieces were , not without some difficulty wrought off by the strength of malice , and acuteness of subtilty in the too partial industrious journey-men for the cause . the bishop of rosse , the queen of scots greatest agent and advocate , fencing under the umbrage of the publick embassie , saved his life , but not his liberty to do her service , felion , story , barnes , mather , &c. were at several times arraigned , and executed , but these were taken to be at too great a distance to give warning to their captive queen . the duke of norfolk was her principal adhearent they aim'd at , the most likely champion to have justified her title ; who , though at his death he protested his chiefest endeavours had been to reestablish the oppressed queen , and suppress the rebellious practises in her kingdom ; yet , because his plot was laid in the dark , and his complices abroad such as , for their own ends , kept not within the compass of his designs , but wrought the ruine of england into their hopes , met with law enough to condemn him by his peers , and after four moneths reprieve by the queens singular favour , inexorable justice to behead him upon the scaffold . this much heightened the assembly men in scotland , who wiping their eyes to behold , with much consolation of spirit , by what a slender thread their successes had hung the ax over their imprisoned queen , endeared each other by the mutual assurance they gave , it could not be long before her head too must off , and then the discipline they thought would take place with the unquestionable succession of the king . not ten dayes passed after the dukes death , before they wrought by their agents , that commissioners were sent , lord de l' amour , sadler , wilson , and bromley , to expostulate with the queen of scots about her treasonable practises against the crown of england , and to ring the knell of the dukes destiny in her ears . the french , more earnestly than before interceding for her liberty , are silenced with instances of their own cashiering their kings , childerike by pipin , charls of lorraign by hugh capet , imprisoning the queens of lewis , philip the long , and charls the fair , successively . the cases of henry the second of england , alphonsus of castile , and charls the fifth of spain , and scicilie are produced as precedents for taking the crown , their mothers surviving ; and the honourable restraint of the queen of scots pleaded a favour beyond her desert , or on this side her guilt , and onely for the security of queen elizabeth and her kingdom , yet room was left for the queens ingenuity to acknowledge that the former extraordinary and extrajudicial examples were not drawn cleer off from their lees , nor justifiable in every circumstance that accompanied them . after this the duke of momorancie ambassador from the king of france presseth a cessation of arms in scotland , a free parliament , or at least delegates from both sides to treat at london with the like deputed by the queen of england , and french king ; but this could not be hearkened to , and the aversion of lord grange with his garrison in edenburgh castle from peace , upon hopes of supplies out of france , is made the only barr against a general accord . since the earl of marre's death , there had been no regent in scotland , but christs viceroies in black took the care of both swords , and passed assembly acts at pleasure , authentick , no question , so long as the young king breathed in the country , who must pay the church tribute for his life by an innocent compliance to enact what they list , to which purpose they kept him , and would not part with this jewel to england , nor france , though both desired to have him out of the noise and danger of their wars : but this look'd like a monarchy divinely limited by the boundaries of the discipline , which might sweeten their liberty by degrees to a silent desertion of all future government by a king . queen elizabeth therefore , who was in a manner perpetuall protectrice calls upon them to go about the election of a regent . the earl morton was the man they made choice of , whereby they seem'd both to gratifie the queen , and provide a mercenarie creature to their purpose , he having not long before delivered up the earl of northumberland who had fled to scotland for refuge , and for a piece of mony unworthily ( as to the point of personall honour ) betrayed an obliging friend , who had fed and harbour'd him in his exile . the late earl of marre had broak the assemblies instructions in his regency by offering at some restraint unto the church , which had been better doubted upon the infant person of the king , and therefore his son might well be opposed in his hereditary priviledge to have the young king in his custody , especially his own minority requiring rather to have than to become a guardian , yet conditions being made , the charge was conferr'd upon him , for to secure the main good order was taken by the new regent , that no papist nor factious person ( under which were comprised all loyal subjects ) should have accesse unto the king . an earl with onely two servants attending him ; a baron with one ; all others single and unarmed . the queen of scots deplorable condition in england discouraged her principal abettors at home ; the duke of castle herald and huntley are drawn in to acknowledge the king and his regent ; the lord grange , humes , and lidington maintain their loyalty so long as they can in edenburgh castle , which after a siege laid to it by queen elizabeths forces ( which she lent the regent out of kindness hastened by her jealousie of the french , from whom the queens royalists in scotland expected succour ) was resigned , and according to the disciplinarian mercy , the first was hanged , the second scarcely pardoned , at queen elizabeths intreaty ; the third , having sometime been a friend , sent to leith , and yet upon-after-thought , because of a subtile and active headpiece , supposed very probably to be poison'd , by which christian proceedings the presbyterian rebells become absolute masters , rule king and country without contradiction . and now their work being done , they turn their pack-horse souldiers to grass , some of whom get new entertainment in swedeland , others agree better with the imployment in france , and the low-countries . the cessation of armes in scotland gives the restless brethren some respite to bethink themselves how to work mischief abroad . the bishop of rosse , though a prisoner in england , had his head at liberty to devise , and too many hands in readiness to execute what he should command upon any visible advantage against them . their importunity being not able to prevail for injustice , and cruelty enough to put him to death , they accept of his exile out of england , though they foresee that will not quit them of their fears . morton the regent craves a league with england of mutual defense against all forraign forces , and would have a large pension for himself and some scots his devoted guards against the pretended attempts to depose him ; but that would not be hearkened to ; somewhat else with lesse charge , and slight proofs did accumulate gu●lt upon the queen of scots for contriving a dangerous match between a scotch earl of the blood , the kings vnkle , and the lady elizabeth candish the countess of shrewsburies daughter , for which her mother and divers ladies were imprisoned . soon after the good old earl of castleherault having taken no great content in changing sides , and forsaking his quond●m pupill and queen , by the mod●rate way of disciplinar●an dispatch was vexed into a sickness , and dyed . in the year 1577 was discovered don iohn of austria's designe to marry the queen of scots , which the brethren fores●eing , would imply the liberty of her person , and confusion of their cause , were not wanting in d●ligence to quicken information , and aggravate prejudice to the queen of england . the don●ailing of strength and assistance to carry on this , and other vast youthfull designes , the next year , as 't is thought took no other pestilent infection then grief , which brought him to his grave . in the year following the face of government in scotland was alter'd earl mortons covetous converting that publick treasure to his temporal use , which should maintaine christs ecclesiastick kingdom in luster , brings upon him the damnation of the discipline , in deposing him from his regency , being scarcely afforded the favour of communion with his peers . the king yet but twelve years of age was apprehensive enough of the tyranny he had been under , and in capacity to accept any courteous tender as well of his liberty as of his crown . it was found convenient to trust him with the title of governing , but that he might be sure not to surfeit upon the power , he had his twelve godfathers to passe upon him for every year one . earl morton was kept in to instruct the rest rather how to give in verdict , upon his majesties actions then counsel to his person , and had the cunning to keep himself fore-man of the jury ; but unadvisedly endeavouring to improve his interest to the retroduction of detestable regency , split his own with the twelve members superintendency in pieces , and to little purpose secur'd the king in the castle of sterling , there being a regal power pretended abroad that gave the earl of athol commission to leavy an army to meet him in the field . sir robert bowes the english ambassador composed the publick difference at present , after which a better expedient was supposed to be found , to prevent by poyson all further martial attempts of athol , while earl morton betook himself more unto his privacy than innocency at home . the first salley of regal government under the pretended personall conduct of the king put the assembly brethren in mind to strengthen their incroachment upon the church , to which purpose follows a discharging of chapters with their election of bishops ; the titular bishops are warned to quit their anti-christian corruptions , in particular was instanc'd their receiving ecclesiastick emoluments , so that , notwithstanding all former acts and agreements for life , their known assignation of benefice must be as well extinct , as their jurisdiction and office : yet to please the young king , who beyond his years had a discretive judgement , and held episcopacy in a reverend esteem , that they might seem to leave them somewhat to do , they make them itinerant visiters of their hospitals , themselves being the sacrilegious collectors of the rents . beside this , they heave hard to obtain an establishment of the policy in the second book of their discipline , but as that , yet could not be got to be incorporated with other parliament acts ; at this time two french noblemen raise fears and jealousies in abundance , the duke of alanson in england by endeavouring a marriage with queen elizabeth , with whom he held private conference , but was suspected to aime at restoring the queen of scots , lord aubignie in scotland , who was become the only favorite of the king . the consequences of the marriage were debated by the lords in council , and their opposite possibilities or conjectures represented to the queen . the new humours of esme stuart , lord d' aubignie , whom the king had ●arely c●eated duke of lenox , was a business undoubted to be of ecclesiastical cognizance , and therefore taken into consideration by the assembly , the christian result of whose counsels was this . to set up against him an emulous rival , iames stuart of the ochiltrie family , call'd earl of arran , which title he attained by cession from one of the hamiltons not well in his wits , to whom he had been guardian ; but these two were soon reconciled by the king ▪ and the assembly brethren defeated in their plot . they can soon find means to be revenged , and make the king hear of his misdemeanour . a large complaint is sent up to queen elizabeth , which being sweetned with the discovery of a feigned designe to conveigh the captive queen out of rison , laid to the charge of the duke of lenox rellisheth well in the court and council of england , from whence come endeavours and embassies to degrade him from favour if not his honour , and dem●nds to have him bani●●ed out of scotland . the young king had now quit himself of his pupillage , and with that of his custome , to return suppliant answers by his regent according to the instructions that ever accompanied the demands . sir robert bowes the agent was admitted to deliver his message , but not with his condition to have lenox removed from the council , and therefore went grumbling home without audience . humes was sent with a complement after him , and had the like reception in england , where he was turn'd over to lord treasurer burleigh , and could have no admission to the queen . lord burleigh at large expostulated with him about the miscarriage of some in the scotch kings council . the queen of englands succesfull endeavours were magnified , and her tender care in preventing many eminent mischiefs from the french ; some sharp language was used , which was hoped would cut off the kings affection to the duke of lenox , and make way for mortons restitution to favour ; but the issue was otherwise , morton was question'd for many great enormities , especially the murder of the kings father , randolph is sent to intercede somewhat magisterially , and hinder the proceeding against him for his life . the king adhears to his laws , by which he answers he is bound to submit delinquents to justice . randolph by the help of the assembly brethren makes a strong faction of lenox's enemies and mortons friends , draws argile , angus , and many other of the nobility to the party , but their different interests caus'd division in their counsels , made them quit the engagement , and leave morton , after proof and his own confession of the murder , to pay his head ●o the justice of the law . in this time passed many arrogant . acts in their general assemblies : one among the rest did confine the holy kirk of iesus christ in that realm to the ministers of the blessed evangel , and such as were in communion with them , excluding all the episcopal party , and de●iv●ring them up to satan as being members of a kirk divided from the society of christs body . they professed , that there was no other face of kirk ▪ no other face of religion , then was presently at that time established , which therefore is ●ver stiled gods true religion , christs true religion , the true and christian religion , admi●ting , it seems , no other religion to be so much as christi●n but that . beside th●s , other acts there were ent●enc●ing upon the civill authority , whereupon the king by letter required the assembly to abstain from making any innovations in the policy of the church , and from prejudging the decisions of the state by their conclusions , to suffer all things to continue in the condition they were ▪ during the time of his minority ; they regard not his letter ; send a committee to striveling to contest with his majesty , and sit down again about the ordering their discipline ; set iohn craig a presbyter about framing a most rigid * negative confession of faith ; never let his majesty have quiet , untill himself and his family subscribe it ; wrest a charge from him to all commissioners and ministers to require the like subscriptions from all , and upon this authority , taken by violence , play the tyrants over the consciences of the people they censure the presbytery of striveling for admitting montgomery to the temporallity of the bishoprick of glascow , and him for aspiring thereto , contrary to the word of god , and acts of the kirk . while they are thus fencing with the spirituall sword in scotland , their pure brethren in england execute their commission by the pen , where the marriage between qu. elizabeth and alanson , new duke of anj●u , being in a manner concluded , they set out a virulent book with this title , the gulf wherein england will be swallowed by the french marriage , but the author , iohn stubbs of lincolns-inne , a zealous professor , as he must needs be who was brother-in-law to cartwright , and one william page , who dispersed the copies , soon after had their hands cut off on a scaffold at westminster , and play'd their parts no more at that weapon . but the civil sword must have its turn , and what no menacing bulls of the assembly , nor any pointed calumnies of mercenary pens can keep off , must by a stratagem be declined at first , and yet the same afterward authorized by strength . the long disconsolate captivity of the queen , and despair of ever obtaining her liberty , had withdrawn her thoughts from her scepter on earth , and rais'd them to an higher kingdom than the scots , whereon that they might be fixed without any diversion , she resolves to divest her self of the other interest , and confer freely her royal title upon her son . the assembly brethren have intimation hereof , do not like to have their king become absolute , or reign by any other title than what he had before received on courtesie from them . the duke of lenox , and earl of arran are two good friends to his majesty , not to be instrumentall in promoting so just an advancement to his crown , and therefore it is the presbyters tasks to preach them out of all favour with the people , and then an opportunity is fairly taken in their absence from court for the earls gowry , marre , lindsey , and others , to invite his majesty to the castle of ruthen , and by the laws of displinarian hospitality , detain him prisoner , dismiss his retinue , deny him the liberty to stir abroad but at his peril . nor indeed could he well be at leisure to walk for the perpetuity of business they found him within doors , forcing him first by a writ to recall earl angus from england , whither the guilt of his late rebellion had carried him ; by another after the imprisonment of his majesties dearest friend , to command the duke of lenox into france , who being in possession of dunbriton castle , might have disputed the freedome of that royal command , if his clear awfull spirit had not dreaded the thought of the least disloyal averseness to obey ; and by a slight of singul●r cunning tyranny in a third , fram'd into a letter to queen elizabeth of england ▪ to justifie their act , and contract the guilt of that unnatural sin in laying violent hands upon himself ; by a fourth to authorize the convention of states indicted by them . all acts of such transcendent rebellion , that george buchanan , their never-failing advocate before , could be wrought neither to advise by his council , nor justifie with his pen ; nay , 't is said he turn'd penitent upon it , retracted with tears what he had writ before in their cause , and wished he could wash out all the spots , the black calumnies he had dropt upon royal majesty with his blood , yet further , he would have writ retractions , if being so old , he could have hoped such a conversion would not have been interpreted an act rather of dotage then devotion . the queen of scots much affected with this treasonable surprisal of her son , complains at large to queen elizabeth in a letter , appeals to her conscience for justice , and summons her to her plea about the differences between them before the highest tribunal of heaven ; yet very charitably imputes the obstruction of intercourse between her and her son for a twelvemoneth before , as likewise queen elizabeths long silence , notwithstanding some former importunate letters , not unto her self , but some malignant disposition in her council . queen elizabeths blood and thoughts had many quick motions upon this querulous writing , many ebbs and flows of resolutions and fears ; at length mr. secretary deale , an austere man , and no friend at all unto the royal prisoner , was joyn'd in commission with the earl of shrewsbury to expostulate the business with the captive queen , and yet treat with her about articles of enlargement : but the disciplinarian scots being called in about what concern'd them , raised new spirits of division , by interposing ungrounded jealousies of one father holt a iesuit , and some other emissaries lately come over , as they alledged , on purpose to plot the invasion of england , and therewith a violent rescue of their queen . as little truth as there was in this calumny , there was sophistrie enough to prevaile with queen elizabeth to lay aside the complaint of her prisoner , and to imploy her two agents in scotland , bowes and davison in vying courtship with two other from the french , to gaine upon the affection of the king . the news of the duke of lenox's death at paris , though accompanied with that which confounded his enemies , who thought they had undone him by traducing him for a papist , puts life into the kings banded jailers , who take assurance by this they had him prisoner during pleasure , but his majestie escapes soon after to the castle of saint andrews makes them curse the lying spirit in their prophets , and desperate enough to become executioners of themselves , but the good king , repriev'd them by his mercy , offering pardon unto all that could find confidence to ask it ; but this appear'd in none but earl gowrie , who corrupted the benefit of it unto his bane , the rest , not long after , being banish'd , went some into ireland , others into france , only angus ask'd and had a confinement unto his earldom . queen elizabeth sends sir francis walsingham to the king , not so much to gratulate his liberty , as to instill some sententious counsel how to use it . he meets with a greater luster and gallantry in the scotch court then he expected , and a young king as grave a politician as himself . he was entertained better than his carriage to the captive queen had deserved , and returned with an answer no less modest than majestick . though many acts had passed the assemblies of late derogatory to the safety and royal authority of the king , yet none more than the justifying the late treason , requiring the ministers in all their churches to commend it unto the people , and threatning excommunication to such as subscribed not , though against their conscience , to the unjust judgement of the assembly . and in the year 1582 ▪ the assembly at saint andrews proceeded violently against one montgomery bishop of saint andrews , cutting off the appeal he had made unto the king , rejecting both his letter and messenger sent on purpose to inhibite them . the late treasonable justification voted by the assembly , though nipt in the bud by the kings unexpected escape , and all the leaves scattered by the breath of his displeasure into several corners of the world , began now to sprout again in a second conspiracy , many of the traitors being at that time appointed by gowry return'd again , and under the colour of care and courtesie to the king , attempting a second surprizal of his person . but the earl of arran , whom they had not now time or opportunity to secure , seizeth upon gowrie at dundee , and the kings martial appearance , suddenly affrights his complices out of the castle of sterlin , which they had taken . queen elizabeth , whose court because the cathedral of religion , was ever abused as a sanctuary after a scotch rebellion , had now a new address to make by mediation unto their king ; and her secretary walsingham , by the ( no justifiable ) priviledg of his place issued out writs in her majesties name , though without her knowledg , for their admission into the holy island . the letters were not obeyed by earl hunsdon , who d●sputed the secretaries single separate authority , nor was the queen hearken●d to otherwise then by yeilding a legal tryal , which cost gowrie h●s head , for all the promises he had of better success from o●e maclen a w●tch whom he had consulted in the case . to ballance this somewhat must be done by the disciplinarian undertakers in england , who frame divers l●tters in the name of the queen of scots , and some english fugitives conveigh them into the papists houses , and then make discovery of a plot . hereupon , as slight and improbable as the proofs were ▪ the earls of northumberland and arundel were confined , his lady imprison'd , divers examin'd , and the lord paget scarcely by h●s prudent innocency protected . queen elizabeth though facile in hearing their complaints , was not so barbarous as to execute the cruelty of their counsels , but called her judges to account for their extream serverity against the papists , granting indemnity and liberty to many iesuits and priests . yet mendoza the spanish ambassador was sent home ; and throckmorton , whom he was said to have encouraged in an intricate conspiracy ▪ being neither constant in denying , nor clear in confessing , nor at all , cunning in concealing or disguising his guilt , was hang'd . a new treaty between the two queens is now commenc'd , and sir william wade imployed in an overture unto the queen of scots ▪ but the agitators of differences between them , renew their division by unseasonable jealousies and fears , and wade falls to pasting father creyghtone the iesuits torn papers together , neglecting a far more christian and honourable artifice ▪ which he might ha●e s●ewed by cementing the unhappy rupture in two so royal and magnanimous ladies hearts . this new discomposure gave the scottish partizans in england a colourable pretense to enter into an association for queen elizabeths security from danger , which was managed by the policy of the earl of leicester : the queen of scots took hence an alarum o● her ruine , yet chose rather to submit somewhat of her spirit , then in an humour sacrifice her life unto their malice . she sends her secretary nave with articles so near queen elizabeths demands as had wrought undoubted reconcilement , if it had been consistent with the discipline of the kirk ; but this the scotch ministry declared to be otherwise in their pulpits ; call out for help , as if both kingdoms had been on ●ire , and christian religion in danger to be consumed by the flames , inve●gh bitterly against their queen , king , and his council ; slight the kings summons to answer ; stand upon their ecclesiastical exemption , and presbyterian privilege of immunity from his censure . the king began from hence to apprehend it better for his safety , and more agreeable with his honour to restore the mi●er to the church , then cast away his crown to a mungrel lay-clerical assembly . hereupon he recalls bishops to their primitive jurisdiction and dignity ; inhibites all presbyteries and their synods , together with the popular parity of ministers , and among other acts pas●eth this in the eight parliament●olden at edenburgh may 22. 1584. which alone cuts off all their vaine ●retences to this day . for as much as some persons being ●ately called before the kings maje●ty , and his secret council , to answer ●pon certain points to have been enqui●ed of t●em , concerning some treaso●able , seditious , and contumelious ●●eeches , uttered by them in pulpits , ●chools , and otherways to the disdain ●nd reproach of his highness , his pro●enitors , and present council , con●●mptuously declined the judgement of ●is highness and his said council in that behalf , to the evill example of others to d● the like , if timely remedy be not provided : therefore our s●veraigne lord , and his thre● estates assembled in this present parliament , ratifieth and approveth , and perpetually confirmeth the royal power and authority over all estates , as well spiritual as temporal within this realm , in the person of the kings majesty , our soveraigne lord , his heirs and successors : and also statuteth , and ordaineth , that his hign●ss , his heirs and successors by themselves , and their councils , are , and in time to com● shall be judges competent to all person his highnesses subjects , of what estate degree , function , or condition so 〈◊〉 they be , spiritual or temporal , in 〈◊〉 matters wherein they or any of the● shall be apprehended , summoned , 〈◊〉 charged to answer to such things 〈◊〉 shall be enquired of them by our 〈◊〉 soveraigne lord and his council and that none of them which shal● happen to be apprehended , called , 〈◊〉 summoned to the effect aforesaid , pr●sume to take in hand to d●cline 〈◊〉 judgement of his highness , his heirs and s●ccessors , or their council in the premises , under the pain of treason . this act puts many of the assembly birds upon the wing , who , i●n●cent d●●es , take none but a virgin breast for their refuge . queen elizabeth , whose too industri●us infirmi●y it was to keep up her popular interest with all , as well as to enjoy the honour and more clear content of an impartial conscience within her self , although she gave no ear to their querulous remonstrances in private , nor permitted their publick libelling in her churches , yet cherished their persons , and very unproperly imployed their endeavours to preserve religion from innovations , which made no such real impressions in scotland , as some untrue aggravating relations had in the time●ous minds of her reformed english subjects and her self . this practise of her majesty being observed by those who looked ou● of the scotch kings court , put the earl of arran upon a forward tender of his service to meet her majesties desires , and her agent the lord hunsdon upon the borders : but before the time the sterlin fugitives , whom she had protected , were prescribed , and at it charged by the earl with their treason against the king . the complement he left of his real intentions at parting , took place until patrike grey came with another embassie and particular articles from king iames . but the ill offices , it was suspected , he did at the same time , to the captive queen , gain'd him no reputation with her party ; and put her upon some such extraordinary courses , as betrayed her into a new prison under more restraint , and l●icester , 't is said , upon murderous designes , who would not hear of her liberty , lesse of her succession to the english crown . to cover whose private spleen and malitious attempts , new fears are fetched from the romane catholicks , and their designes magnified in a mist unto the people , whereby a sharper edge is set upon the severity of the laws . this alteration encouraged some of the precise scottish religion to pursue the queens commands for pressing in parliament to have the bishops reformed , and to others , as may be not improbably conjectur'd to murder the earl of northumberland in the tower , because a known friend to the queen of scots , though they left the pistol wherewith they acted it in his chamber , and the opinion of self-assasinate at his door . not long after was sir edward wotton sent ambassador into scotland , to renew a league , and present the king with his english retinue , which the regents in his minority had neglected or pawned for auxiliary support of their power . while conditions about this and a marriage with the king of denmarks daughter were making at court , some others were broken at a meeting upon the borders , where , though the usual oath for mutual security was taken , the earl of bedford was slaine , and though by whom not known , yet the lord fernihurst governor of the middle borders was accus'd and imprisoned , because a firm adherent to the queen of scots , and the earl of arran c●nfined , b●cause a favorite of the kings . the charge was fiercely prosecuted by the english , who in the name of the queen demanded to have their persons delivered , which not obtain'd , the e●rl of angus , marre glames , and other presc●ibed fugitive● , are sent home , who have no sooner set foot in scotland , but by the advice and assistance of the assembly brethren , they summon all ●n the kings name to them for defense of the evangel , removing ill counsellors from the king , and conserving the old amity with the english . being got into a body of 8000 at fankirk , arran transgresseth the rules of his confinement to expres●e a more considerable duty to the king , unto whom he accuseth patrike grey of this treason ( which he cunningly declines , ) and fortifies sterlin in d●fense of the king ; but the work was not done when the rebells drew near , and began to set their scaling ladders to the walls . the earl of arran knowing his p●rson was principally aim'd at , ( for lord fernihurst was lately dead in prison ) conveighs himself and one servant away privately by a bridge , and then the town-garrison retreat unto the king in the castle . the rebells display their banners in his sight ; lord grey is sent out to demand the reason of their coming ; receives a meek answer , to kiss the kings hands . the king expresseth no liking of their armed love , offers restitution of all their goods if they will depart . they will have the interest of admission to his presence , and when they have it , capitulate for his castles and chief holds , which , there being no remedy , are granted , with the delivery up of divers noble-men , earls montross , crawford , rothsay , &c. their pardon signed , and the treaty for a league with the queen of england renewed . one article whereof , had it be●n sooner agreed on , had preserved both kingdoms in better security , & fetter'd the unruly di●cipline to its duty , viz that neither prince should for time to come afford assistance or favour to any traytor or rebell , or any that had made a publick defection ; nor suffer them to be relieved by others ; nor harbour them publickly or privately in their dominions , &c. and had another been omitted , which , when before care had been taken for defense of the christian and catholick religion , draws in the rea●m of the pure reformation , which the catholick romans interpreted by the scotch negative confession : and the catholick protestants by the many . assembly acts condemning and branding the sacred episcopal order and jurisdiction , as antichristian , happily the persons of both princes had not been engaged in such after-hazard , nor had such designes been prosecuted for the invasion of their kingdoms . for this treaty was no sooner concluded , but a most desperate conspiracy in england broak out , supposed to be long since laid by the too zealous consistory at rome , but took life now , being hastily hatched by some preternatural scotch assembly● hear in this agreement . the chief actors in it were father ballard a priest of the seminary at rhemes , babington a a young ingenious , and learned gentleman , of a good extraction and family in darby-shire ; sarisbury of derbigh-shire ; tichbourne of hampshire , with ten other gentlemen of good quality , all which were afterward hanged , and some dismembred alive in st : giles's fields , the common place of their meeting . their designe was to have kill'd queen elizabeth ; set at liberty the queen of scots , and by the help of for●eign strength to have altered the face of religion in both kingdoms . the q. of scots though suspected to be private unto all three , in the general , yet p●ofess'd to her death that she encouraged none but that , which nature suggesting and justifying , conduced to the liberty of her injured person , and half restitu●ion to ●er crown . her two secretaries nave and curle were brought in by walsinghams cunning , if not corrupted rather by his cost very unnaturally to accuse her ; who , as from the beginning , he daily instructed a false brother with as much hypocrisie and perjury as could be , to carry on this fatal contrivance : so 't is not certain whether by him , and other polit●ck instruments he had , he discovered or made more of what was desperate in the plot . before the queen of scots came to her tryal , several judgements passed upon her in private , anticipating the enquiry after better evidence , and the●r soveraigns prerogative in granting pardon at her pleasu●e . they whom neither the fury of disciplinarian zeal , nor any private malignant spirit had possessed , deliliberately sounding the shallowness of her guilt , and computing the shortness of her life by her sickness , adjudged her only to a stricter confinement , and adventu●'d to have the possibilities of ●ischie● prevented by the p●udence of the state . others who had been lighted to a religion that made murder and innocence consistent , did not care if some wickedness were invented to d●spach her quickly any way , so by the law leicester as otherwise , so desirous to become voluptuous in revenge , ●n●used his sentence in a cup of ling●ing poyson , that he might take at leisure his delight in the preassurance of her death ; and wanting an help to discourse at his feast , invited walsingham to accompany him in judgement , and sent a presbiterian divine to prepare his conscience by a classica●l indulgence , but he pretends he had refused a less courtesie to morton , who it may be to ballance the guilt of both kingdoms , had advised to have her sent into scotland , and executed on the borde●s , yet having compromised his vote as the major part should determine it , begins to rectifie their method , and puts them upon debate by what law they should proceed . there were but two cited for their purpose , one of 25 edward 3. the other 27 eliz. the latter was concluded the more proper , because in effect confessed to be made upon designe , and so more naturally operative for the end it was intended to . those of the iuncto knew what arguments were most prevalent with the queen to signe a writ of delegacy for enquiry , wherein a multitude were nominated , who must not deny to serve up their honours , and sacrifice their conscience in appearance unto their queens name , but indeed to some more passionate impotency in her council . most of these were sent unto fotheringham castle , where the queen of scots was prisoner to sir dru drurie and sir amias pawlet , she looking upon her iudges , and their commission in their papers , thought the sight of their names did antidate her doom ; yet made no except●on against their persons , onely stood upon her majesty as a queen , and chose a thousand deaths rather than descend to the capacity of a subject . the late association , and act of parliament ensuing upon it , with the neglect had of her in the league , she put out of her way in discourse , with as much scorn as she left charity in the room to forgive the injury she thought done he● by them . she thought her cause deserved the theater of the world , and a diet of princes fitter than the subjects delegated by any one to decide it : yet a free parliament her majesty accounted no contemptible arbitrement , and hoped there her innocency should not be pinion'd by a party , but left to the liberty of defense . at length the lord treasurer telling her somewhat harshly , that if she would not ye●ld her presence before the delegates , her absence and contum●cy should be no barre to them in executing their commission , she charged him and the rest home enough with this poinant answer : then sift your consciences , have a care of your honors , ●nd god reward you and your heirs according to the iustice you administer to me . the next day she sends for some of the delegates , and putting in caution that her submission might not derogate from the honour of her predecessors , nor prejudice any way her successors in their right , her majesty professed that by sir christopher hattons perswasions she was resolved to condescend to queen elizabeths desires in a publick justification of her self . in the time of her tryal iustice gawdies narration was more particular than the rest , out of which he concluded , that she had conspired with ballard and the rest of his complices , approv'd assented , promis'd aid , and pointed out the way to effect their designe ballard and babington she protested she knew not ; acknowledged that many indeed unknown to her had offer'd su●h service as to which she gave no encou●agement ; and how far they proceeded she neither knew , nor being in prison could hinder . what confessions were made by those who had suffered , she did impute to the sense or fear of their tortures ; and what her own secretaries produced , she i●terpreted rather their cunning than malice , to shift off from themselves what they thought would never be questioned in her . yet their hopes fail'd , or else her charity mistook , for their evidence cast her , though but made out of their papers , and such as nave in an apology disclaimed . such as it was they transmitted from fo●heringham castle to westminster , where a full parliament voted up to the sense of the principal delegates , some out of zeal , others for feare , a third sort in rev●rence of , and implicite credulity in their state policy , and skill of the laws ; all out of hopes to please queen elizabeth , by removing the object of her jealousie and emulation yet the sentence passed , the queens signing keeps at a distance , having a long p●ocession of demurrs and apologies between , and when her hand came to take hold of the justice , security , necessity , which in this case was tender'd to her in the name of her subjects , it seemed not to have confidence enough to own any commission from her heart . the king of scots did the part of a son , to preserve his mother , and measur'd not his affection and duty by the length of the league , nor confin'd his endeavours to the circle of the english crown he must look for . it is certain there was an unhappy conjuncture of his mothers fate with his late surprisal at sterlin , which made him as unfit to expostulate , as the assembly ministers were backward to pray , who disobeyed his majesties commands to recommend the safety of their queen his mother in their publick devotions to god . the scotch nobility , that were of the eldership did as their black brethren inspir'd them , and made patrike grey forget his message which he had from the king , to deliver in place a proverb made by the synod , and often inculcate in queen elizabeths ears , that a dead woman could not bite this made her thoughts become somewhat sententious , being often heard to whisper to her self , wth a sigh , endure or strike , and then after som● respite , strike , lest thou beest strook . the last it should seem left the imp●essi●n , and signed the bill for execution , which committed to secretary davison with a mixture of com and remands , was posted away by one beale a zealous professor , and effected with more hast then pretended good liking-davison being call'd into the starr ▪ chamber for acting according to a right or w●o●g understanding of her maj●sties meaning , and fined ten thousand pounds with imprisonment during the pleasure of the queen ▪ with wh●t courage and true christian resolution that royal and magnanimous princess entertained her death ; may be read at large in the histories of those times , which i will not go abou● to contract , lest i commit sacriledge on a saint . i shal onely among other circumstances intimate how the disciplinarian malice pursued her soul with a sharper edge than the ax had , that but at two stroaks divide● her head from her body , denying her last conscientious request , to have a priest of her own religion to converse with , and her execution being out of the assembly jurisdiction , an impertinent deane was procured to spin out a long prayer as near the prescript of the discipline as he durst . in the midst of this tyranny upon her soul , she perform'd the office of a royal priest unto her self , and having blessed her friends , and forgiven her enemies , she assum'd majestick confidence enough to demand justice in the distribution of her legacies . all being done her majesty intended , virgin-iustice ( if not deflowred by the violence of this act ) with a faint boldness imploying the ax which she scarcely had in her power , her scales dropt down , and with shame enough she held her trembling hand before her eyes . finis . books printed and sold by iohn garfield at the rolling-presse for pictures , near the royall exchange , in cornhill , viz. rhanodaeus medicinal dispensatory ▪ containing the whole body of physick , discovering the natures , properties , and virtues of the plants , minerals , and animals , the manner of compounding medicines , with the way how to administer them : methodically digested into five books of philosophical and pharmaceutical institutes ; three books of physical materials , both galenical and chymical , with a perfect apothecaries shop : and a physical dictionary adjoyned with the said dispensatory , explaining all the hard words and terms of art in the said dispensatory . ochinus his dialogue of poligamy and divorce : wherein all the texts of holy scripture and arguments from reason and the laws and customes of nations that have been , or can be brought for , or against poligamy , are urged and answered interchangably , by two persons . daphnis and chloe , a most sweet , amarous and pleasant pastoral romance for young ladies : translated out of greek by george thornly , gentleman . a physical dictionary , or an interpretation of such crabbed words and terms of art , as are derived from the greek or latin , and used in physick , anatomy , chirurgery , and chymistry : with a definition of most diseases incident to the body of man ▪ and a description of the marks and characters used by doctors in their receipts . the wise mans crown ▪ and the way to blisse two books of chymical and rosie-cra●ian physick , will be published for the benefit of posterity , by iohn heydon a servant of god , and secretary of nature . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a65265e-190 g. buchan epig. ad mariam illustriss . scotorum regina● {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . cap. 13. archbishop spotswood . at schidam in holland . ' dr. ier. taylors epist. ded. before his further explic. of the doctr. of orig. s●n . notes for div a65265e-1020 h. scripture more at large had been the best rule to reform by . that we have suffi●ient . the supplement from the catholick church which is indulgent enough to keep all in a christian communion . gods judgement and hers upon schismaticks and separatists . the defection and division of churches not here handled . the scotch reformation irregular and impious . k. iames 4 ▪ the lollards . accus'd for rebels . against war , priests consecrating . tythes . episcopal benediction . excommunication . sacrament of the l. supper . divorce . miracles . praying in churches . prelates . k. iames 5. 1657. the king pardoned them , patrick hamilton goes for germany . returns to reform scotland . is accused by cambell . false doctrine in his bo●● abou● t●e law . faith . iustification . works . 1 cor. 6.9 . gal. 5.19 . mat. 16.27 . speculative christianity . some young students and friars his sect●ries . logie . maire . friar arithe . lindseys advice to the archbishop of s. andrews . al. seton the kings confessor p●t from him . his letter to the king . hi retraction . the reformation interrupted in scotland . begins in england . 1534. straton denies tyth-fish . is anathematized . instructed to maintain his errou● by dun arskin . mat. 10.33 . mar. 8 38. matth. 23.23 . matth. 10.33 . david straton executed . fri●r killors play . he and others burnt . g buchanan encourageth schism and rebellion : 1539. escapeth out of prison . k. iames de●lines an interview with k. hen. 8. a war between them . the scotch army defeated . this discomfiture w●s called gods fighting agai●st pride for his own little flock . knox saith god as ev●dently here fought against k. iames as k b●nhadad bu●●n his parralell he findes out noth●ng for the detect●on of the nobles out of distast at the general chosen by the king the king dies . 1542. q mary a protector or r●gen●s by the kings will . they are rejected by the reformers and the earl of arran declared governour . the kings treasur● , &c. delivered to him . they set him to study controversies . shew him the bloudy sc●ol● , and instruct him by it . friar guilliame a pointed to preach down superstition . a ballad made against his doctrine by witsow servant to the bishop of dunkell . the cardinal of s. andrews imprisoned . set free . the bible in the vulg●r tongue . the ill use made of it . — qui estis ? quando , & unce venistis ? quid in meo agitis non mei ? — mea est possessio , ol●m possid●o prior possi●eo ........ ego sum haeres apostolorum .... vos certe exhaeredaverunt semper & as dicaverunt ut extraneos ut inimicos . de praescr . c. 37. the contract of marriage between prince edward of england and q mary celebrated . the commissiners questioned for it . the abbot of paisly and mr. d. painter come from france with advice to the governour . the courtiers conf●ont the reformers . fr. guilliame forbid to preach he and others banisht . the governor lesse resolved than formerly . prepares for war with england . an opportunity to break the le●gue . earl of cassils kept parrole . the scotch ships seiz'd on in england . a w●r proclaimed . earl of lenox comes from france . his pretences against the governour . his address to the q. dowager . his heading with the reformers . they challenge the cardinal . the earl leaves them and resigns himself . yet withdraws again and garrisons . the english invade scotland . having a party there . earl lenox sends his apology into france to no purpose . castle of glascow taken by the governour . earl lenox makes a rash attempt upon the hamiltons flies into england , where he mar●ies k. h. niece . q. mother protects the party he leaves behinde . the scotch nobility weary of their english friends . de lorge brings over french forces . they with the scots march to the borders and return with booty . the governour and cardinal make a ●rogress to set all in order . a moderate sense of their proceedings . sr. jo. borthwick proc●ss'd and condemned when absent . he is unjust as to the pope , and uncharitable to the best of that religion . his answer for bishops marriage not very apposlic . 1 cor. 6 12. a question put in behalf of the romane church . the reformed churches restrain from marriage . 1 cor. 7.7 . s. paul misinterpreted . sir john impetuous against the pope . a separation from all churches . in some cases spiritual men may have temporal jurisdiction . a limitation in sequestring church revenues . an unchristian comparison . the church hath power to make canons the reasons why . the reformation in england no good pa●tern for scotland . monks in the primitive church . and reverence given to relicks . my opinion of the senten●e against sr. j●h● borthwick . vnlikely stories about the bishop of dunkelden . the priests at dundee . dean thomas and six friars . 4. hanged in st iohns town . the reformers abuse the image of st. francis and raise tumults . an impartial censu●e of the r●formed martyrs . knox and buchanan a ●loudy couple . the scotch reformation raked out of mr. george wishearts ashes . his course of life at cambridge . his return to scotland . where he passed for a prophet . inhibited to preach . divers noblemen encourage him . the gentry flock to him . he envies and threatens where they do not . he is seiz'd on by earl bothwel . and imprisoned in the castle of st. andrews . he is brought to his tryall . he makes an apologetical oration . with what moderation he might have demeand himself . he cannot pretend to the same liberty with the apostles . chap. 5.29 . chap. 2.2 . nor to self ordination . rev. 1.6 . 1 pet. 2.9 . the abstinence and feasts of the church to be observed . his extream insolence in renouncing obedience to general councils , and professing his neglect to read their canons . what reason his iudges might have to condemn him . yet they are to be blamed for the pomp . and he for popularity and want of charity at his execution . his disciples make great haste to murder the cardinal . they do it barbarously . melvins grave speech in the act . — non solum factum probarunt , sed & gratulatum ad liberta●is publicae auctores venerunt , quidam etiam vitam ●ortunasque cum illis conjunxerunt . knox professeth himself merry at it . prov. 14.13 . 1547. he goes to live with the murderers in the castle . his calling to the ministry . * these blessed authors of liberty saith buchanan , while they continued in the castle tanquam armis p●cta licentia , in stupra & adulteria ali●q , hominum otio abundantium vitia profusi , jus & aequum . he might have inserted ▪ & religionem sua libidine metiebantur knox's first sermon . the laird of nyrde's advice upon it . the bishops complain . the refomers angry . the castle of st. andrews taken from them , they in it sent for france . knox's various fortune in his travails to and fro . in his admoniinto to england , he abuseth the emperour , queen and q. dowager . who is made regent . the reformers creep again into scotland . knox chiefly undertakes the work . his most impudent letter to the queen regent . knox flies away to geneva . willock returns in his place . sedition and sacriledge the effects of his doctrine . and poisoning some of the nobility in france . knox sent for . who draws them into a congregational covenant . after which they petition . the queens gracious and christian answer . their unchristian ingratitude . a querulous letter against the rom. catholick clergy &c. the peoples giving confession , &c. knox arrives . monasteries pillaged , &c. a sharp letter sent to the q. regent . excommunication threatned the neutral nobility . their second covenant . they seize on the coining irons . a proclamation from the young queen and dolphin . an agreement at eden●urgh . a third bond . strictly observed by knox . from the q. regents fortifying leith th●y take occasion to traduce . admonish , deprive . banish her . all in vain . the brethren disperse . are recollected by knox . another covenant at edenburgh . an army raisd by it . q. regent dieth . their inhumanity toward her . they capitulate with the young queen and king . a thanksgiving . ministers distributed . over-seers . a confession of faith . the contents of it . quod apud multos unum invenitur , non est erratum , sed traditum . tertul. lib. de praesript ▪ c. 28. hoc est verè proprié●ue cathol●cam — si sequamur universitatem antiquitatem consencionem vincent . lyrin . cap. 3. multum necesse est propter tantos tam var●i erroris anfractus ut prophetae & apostolicae interpretationis linea secundum ecclesiastici & catholici sensus norma dirigatur . vincent . lyr. c. 2. it is voted in parliament . the bishops not hindring it . their abominable hypo●risie in sending it over to be ratified in france . their confess'd independency on kings and queens . mat 27 29. john 19.3 . magis & ejus animum nuderent , quam quod quicquam impetrare sperarent . lib 17 the book of discipline fram'd refus'd by most of the nobi●ity . psal. 73. 2 cor. 10.5 . subscribed by some . great ●oy among them at the death of k. fr. 2. knoxes uncharitable judgement of it . the book of discipline perused . superintendents elected . brief observations upon their elections . the l. iames sent into fra. the queen to be denied the e●er●ise of her re●igion . an ambassador from ●rance . he is delayed by the council . the loyal nobility busie . they are interrupted by a menacing supplicate . lord iames returns with monitory letters from the queen . the french ambassador denied all , and dismissed . the reformers burn and spoyle . the queen comes over . cannot obtain the priviledge of her private chapell . nor be secure of her life if she e●ercise her religion . knox's sermon . repented of , because not enough seditious . the queen reasons with him and confounds him . his revenge in an insolent character of her majesty . the nobility and ministry divided about the queen and discipline . burrows's articles . the bishops give up a third part of their revenues . huntlies jeer . knox's censure . he and his brethren supplicate with wonted impudence . 1562. secretary lethington discourseth with them . a covenant a● ayre . complaints about ministers , &c. decem. 25. 1562. a p●iest seiz'd on for saying masse . encouragement given to punish such without leave from queen or council . the queen expostulates with them about it . suffers much against her interest . for which she is scarcely thanked . e. murray and knox at difference . knox question'd by the queen . his apology ▪ he is dismiss●d . summons the country to rescue armstrong and cranstone . for which the master of m●xwel quits his acquaintan●e . a general assembly where the ministers petition . knox ou● of humour . thre●etns the ass●mb●y . the ministers disliked by most . a s●hism among the reformers . a dispute betw●en l. se. lething●on and knox , who maintains strange doctrine . scripture and history wrested to prove it . a caution to princes and subjects concerning the presbyterians . their opinions and practices intended to be counten●nced by the reformed churches . e. of lenox returns into scotland . a parliament call'd in favour of him . the assembly rigid about church affairs . the queen declares her intent to marry the l. darley . knox summons the country to arms and a suppl●cate . the queen complices with their desires . sir iames carvet intercepted after mass and expos'd to mockery and violence at edenburgh crosse . this justice allowed and again appointed at the assize . 1565. the precise nobiilty and clergy assembling about religion , are summon'd by the queen unto her marriage . e murray refuseth . a convention at st. iohnston . put off by the queen . and let fall by the brethren , who divert e. murr●y's going thither by a feigned story . a church assembly held . very insolent articles sent by commissioners unto the queen . who departeth to dunkeld , whither they follow her . and appear in arms at st. leonard crag . the queens answer to their articles . argile and murray meet . the parliament prorogued . l. darley proclaim'd king . the queen disturbed in her marriagr . knox's sermon . displeas'd the king . the lords divided in their councils . a letter sent from that party to their majesties . a proclamation at st. andrews ▪ the ministers petition unseasonably for their meanes . they pray for patience , having not power enough to fight . enquiry made about the obstruction of their supplicates . d. rizio pretended to be it , whose murder they designe , and at●●mpt to draw the king into the plot . a fast procla●med for successe , isai 58. suggestions unto the k●ng against the queen , and d. rizio . three artices propounded by the lords unto the king . d. rizio hurried from the queens presence , and murder'd . the queen desired to take this for good service . she is jealous of the like violence intended to her person . yet calls the lords &c. to account for the murder . * edenburgh , tolboth . they protest against her proceedings . but disperse . the king quits himself by proclamation of all guilt . search made after the actors . an interruption by the ministers supplicates . the demur upon acceptance of the quee●s grant . of whose denyal they could have made better us● . iac. 6. iune 1566. a prince born . and against the brethrens mind baptized by the arch-bishop of st. andrews . this they take ill from the king . a regent o● protector thought more proper for their occasions . whereupon the king is obscurely murder'd , and one of his servants strangled . the queen again in solitude . thinks of marrying e. bothwel . having forecasted all difficulties to be encountred . iohn craig declaims against it , and excites the people to rebellion . the queen demands edenburgh castle , and obtains it on an hard condition , for the person of the prince , the original of her ruine . they address now no more supplicates . isai. 22.23 ▪ their malitious calumnie of the queen , and e. bothwell's resolution to murder the young prince . the queen raiseth an army . yet proclaims great concessions . they besiege her majesty at borthwike-castle . thence they go to edenburgh . yet incline to disband , but are prevented by the queens approach . an unfortunate treaty by the french agents means . the queens army discouraged . her majesties discourse with l. kirkaldic of grange , while e. bothwell slips away . her horrid entert●inment in the rebells army . she is thrust into an inne at edenburgh , and guarded . thence posted away to the isle of lochlevin . the ministers ●ssemble . four commissioners deputed by them to summon in the hamilton's , &c. articles agreed on by the rebells . they are yet p●rplex'd in their thoughts what to do with the queen . queen elizabeths emulation ▪ &c. made her countenance some of their proceedings . their ingratitude and scorn return'd upon her . the queen moved to q●it her crown , and permit murray to be regent . k iames 6. the prince crowned at sterlin . k. iames 6. murray returned out of france , and proclaimed regent . the queen escapes out of prison . her last ill success in battail . she escapes to england for protection . queen elizabeth's three desires unto the regent . queen of scots demands a hearing about her last marriage . all discussed in the parliament at perth . whence the two queens reeeive little satisfaction . they demurre about e. bothwell . pelkarne sent with their apology to queen elizabeth . their subtilty in making a diff●rence between the two queens by much falsehood mixed with little truth . q. of scots and d. of korfolk s●cured . regent m●rray kill'd . the brethren prosecute revenge . a sc●upulous question put to them . t●eir applicatlons to q. eliz. rejected . they confer regall power upon the earl of lenox . divest him again of it , and make him regent . q : of scots by all means endeavours her liberty . queen eliz : giveth fair answers to her , and her intercessors . q. e●izabeths councill how affected at this time . k. iames 5. they involve her in a multitude of difficulties . she calls the scots to accoun● about the deposition of their queen . they exhib●te a large remonstrance rebellious and antimonarchiall enough . k iames 6. 1571. queen eliz : dislikes it . yet persists in her high demand from the qu : of scots commissioners . their modest answer . l : keepers sharp reply . k. iemes 5. a truce between the divided parties in scotland , made by q : eliz. the regent and his do notwithstanding what they please . they hang up the ar●h-bishop of st : andrews . k iames 6. revenge taken upon the regent . they make the e of marre his successor , who is so vexed by them , that he shortly dies with gr●ef . the parliaments fierce proposition to q eliz. about the queen of scots . rejected . a resolution taken by the rebells in scotland fatall to the queen and her party . divers executed in england . the duke of norfolk beheaded . the brethren well-pleased at the successe of their designes , and approach of the ax so near their queen . to whom commissioners are sent to expostulate . the french interceding , are answered with instances from their own and other nations . momoranchies propositions not hearkened to . the assemblies domineer while no regent in scotland . q. elizabeth calls upon them to chuse one , they take e : morton as fittest for their purpose . the young e : of marre becomes guardian to the king . orders made by the new regent . the queens party in scotland faint . edenburgh castle taken by the help of the english forces . the scotch army disbanded . bishop of rosse banish'd england upon the scots importunity . morton cannot obtain a league &c. with england . queen of scots a●cused of cont●●ving a match . e castleherault dies with grief . don iohn of austria faileth in his design to marry the q. of scots . and dyeth . morton deposed from his regency . twelve appointed to assist the king in governing , morton one of them , but defeated in his purpose to do all . the king begins to shew himself to the terror of the assembly . preserves the bishops in some part of their rights and revenues whereof the other would deprive them . 2 b : of discip. cannot ye● pass in parliament d : of alanson attempts a marriage with q : eliz. d. of lenox , and e : of arran set at difference by the assembly . reconciled by the king . then they accuse lenox to q : elizabeth . who demands to have him banish'd . the king will not part with him . humes his agent hears of this from the l : treasurer in england . morton questioned . randolphs sent to intercede , but prevails not ▪ arrogant assembly acts. 1579. no christianity allowed but in scotland , and where is a conf●rmity in religion unto the kirk . th k : checks th●m . they contest with him by a committee . and extort his subscription to the negative confession , with a c●mmand of the like from all . * this is that craig , and this that confession which k : iames reflects upon in hampton-court conference , saying , that with his , i renounce and abhor his detestations and abrenuntiations he did to amaze the simple people , that they not able to conceive all those things , utterly gave over all , falling back to popery , or remaining still in their former ignorance , yea if i , saith his majesty , should have been bound to his form , the confession of my faith must have been in my table-book , not in my head . a publick stratagem practis'd by the brethren . the queen of scots directs her thoughts to an higher kingdom and means to resign all up to her son . whereupon the brethren put all into confusion . the king invited to the castle of ruthen , and detained prisoner . they press him most insolently to do their business . buchanan deserts them , and repents of what he had done heretofore . queen of scots complains to queen eliz. queen eliz : very uncertain what to do . sends two commissioners to the queen of scots . the disciplinarians make new jealousies about fa : holt. qu : eliz : by her agents courts king iames kindness . d : lenoxs's death . king iames makes an escape . offers pardon to all that ask it . sir francis walsingham sent to counsell him . the assemblies justifie their late treason . and commit new . gowrie &c ▪ attempt again the surprisal of the king . but himself is seised on , &c. walsinghams letters not observed by e : hunsdon . e : gowrie beh●aded . letters feigned in the n●me of the queen of s.o.s. vpon whi●h divers nobles are questioned . and the iudges for their severity against papists . throckmorton hanged . a reconciliation between the two queens prevented : an ●ssociation in england . queen of scots sees a necessity of complying with q : eliz : the scots presbytery foreseeing the effect of it , declaim ●gainst her , their king● and council in the pulpit . vpon their flighting the kings summons they are inhibited , and episcopacy setled . the kings supr●macy established by act of parliament . hereupon ●ivers mi●isters take their flight . q eliz : restrains ●heir violence ▪ but counten●nceth them too much . earl of arran offers a meeting with l : hunsdon upon the borders the fugitives proscribed patrike grey sent ambassador for england . qu : of scots practises too much for her self . and leicester against her and her party . queen eliz : requires a reformation of scots bishops . earl of northumberland , ●urdered in the tower . sir edward wotton sent ambassador into scotland . e : of bedford slain at a meeti●g u●on the borders . l : fernihurst imprisoned . e : of arran confined . qu : eliz demands their persons , is denyed . she sends home the scottish fugitives . a rebellious army raised by them . e : of arran accuseth p : grey of treason . is besieged , and narrowly escapes . the rebells answer to l : grey . they capitulate and h●ve what they ask of the ki●g . a league renewed with england . a considerable article had it been agreed and kept heretofore . another about religion , the ambiguity whereof doth more hurt than good . a conspiracy in england discovered . many executed for it . the queen of scots how far concerned in it . walsingham and her own secretaries charge more upon her then she owns . she is prejudged too soon by persons uncommission'd . the more prudent , yet as loyal grue milder censures . leicester wo●l● have her poi●on'd . walsingham not prevailed with to consent . yet d●rects the contrivers to a methodical proceeding . queen elizabeth yeilds to their perswasions for signing a writ o● delegacy . the queen of scots prudent d●meanour reward the delegates at fotheringham castle . lord treasur●r rigid wit● her . her majesty answ●rs him accordingly . submits to a tryal , but on condition . iustice gawdies too particular n●rration . the queen protests against it . nave disclaims his p●pers . the english parlia●ent passeth sent●nce according to the sense of the delegates . but q : eliz : makes no hast to signe the bill . king iames endeavours to pre●erve his mother , but ●ann●t . commands the ministers to pr●y in p●blick for her , who deny him and her that respect . pa●rike greys proverb to qu , e●iz . who is troubled in mind about her execution . v●certain instructions given to davison with the feigned bill . he is fined and imprisoned for g●ing be●ond t●e meaning of them . the queen very reso●ute and ●eligious at her death . a priest denied her . fletcher dean of peterburgh . iustice blushed when she suffered . modus litigandi, or, form of process, observed before the lords of council and session in scotland by sir james dalrymple of stair, president of the session. stair, james dalrymple, viscount of, 1619-1695. 1681 approx. 159 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 23 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-01 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a61250 wing s5179 estc r13544 13586992 ocm 13586992 100573 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is 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(eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a61250) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 100573) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 851:15) modus litigandi, or, form of process, observed before the lords of council and session in scotland by sir james dalrymple of stair, president of the session. stair, james dalrymple, viscount of, 1619-1695. 44 p. printed by the heir of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh : 1681. reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the 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text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -court of session. process -early works to 1800. process -scotland -early works to 1800. civil procedure -early works to 1800. civil procedure -scotland -early works to 1800. 2000-00 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2001-11 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2002-03 tcp staff (oxford) sampled and proofread 2002-03 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2002-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion modus litigandi , or form of process observed before the lords of council and session in scotland . by sir iames dalrymple of stair , president of the session . edinbvrgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1681. modus litigandi or form of process before the lords of covncil and session . a process comprehends the instruments and order of procedour in the administration of justice . by instruments are meant writs and testimonies , as oaths of parties , witnesses , &c. processes are brought in before the lords divers wayes : some in the first instance , some in the second . in the first instance , the most ordinary way was , of old , by ordinary summons , which were drawn up by the writers to the signet , without any bill or warrant from the lords , because the stile and nature of them was current and known , in the same manner as the brieves of the chancery . but where there was any thing singular or extraordinary , it behoved to proceed by special warrant of the lords : whether it were different from the common stile , in relation to the diets or endurance of the citation , or in relation to the table and roll by which summons were to be called , or in relation to the mater it self . and therefore a bill was presented to the lords and pass'd ; and the summons thereupon bears ex deliberatione dominorum concilii , which the ordinary summons bear not . now most part of summons are rai●ed upon bills . processes also come in upon naked supplication without a libel passing the signet , in some causes , especially if they concern advocats , clerks , writers , agents , and other attendants of the house ; which the lords call ( upon complaint ) by the macers summarly , and thereupon grant processe . and now since the discussing of causes by a roll is established by act of parliament , the lords for dispatch of complaints of smaller moment , upon special consideration represented by bill , do grant warrant to macers or messengers , to cite persons in ●dinb●rgh or the suburbs upon 24. houres , to answer before the ordinary upon the bills , who discusseth the same summarly , without any signetted libel , and so without abiding the course of the roll. they do also upon complaint of any contempt , as if parties proceed to execution where stops of execution are granted , summarly give warrant by a deliverance on the bill of complaint , to cite the persons complained upou wheresoever they dwell : which is summarly discuss'd by the ordinary upon the bills . processes do likewise come in by letters of horning without an antecedent ●earing of parties : especially where horning is ordained to proceed summarly by act of parliament , or ancient custom . so letters are granted for the king`s revenues , and likewise for the charges of commissioners of parliament , for reparation of kirks and kirk-yards , and for removing from gleebes designed for ministers , &c. these are called general letters , because they bear not warrant to charge any particular person , but generally all and sundry concern`d , as heretors , li●erenters , wad●etters , tenents , and possessors , &c. and therefore such charges differ litle from other summons , and are easely suspended : because the party or messenger has power to make the application . but they require no diet or continuatìon : and yet the party charged ( or defender ) ere he can be heard , must suspend and sind caution . all other general letters of horning are prohibited , where either the thing charged for , is not specially express'd , or the names of the persons charg'd : except as to benefic'd persons , to serve for an intimation of their provisions , but not to denounce any party . par. 1592. cap. 240. yet oftimes general letters in other cases pass of cou●se : but thereupon escheats fall not , though caption doth follow . for preventing whereof the lords by act of sederunt . iune 8.1665 . did prohibite the writers to draw , or clerks of the bills to write upon any general letters of horning either as to benefices or modified stipends , untill the incumbent produ●e a de●reet conform in his own person , although he produce one in the person of his predecessor . ordinary actions may pass without bill , or by bill , both passing the signet . the s●iles and tenors of ordinary summons , and of most part of priviledged summons passing by bill , as now become fix'd and ordinary , are commonly known and observ'd by the writers to the signet , and are contained in their stile-books , which they are obliged , and every session enjoyn`d punctually to observe . and they will be censured by the lords if they transgress , not only in the stile of summons without bill , but also in presenting common bills of course ( without special notice of the lords ) upon trust of the writers , and servants in the bill-chamber who write the deliverance upon the back of the bills . the like , if the stile be altered in general letters or other letters , of horning , diligence , and executorials . all these warrants of the lords contain a command to messengers , or sherisjs in that part , to cite and charge the parties . and in ordinary summons the citation is to a day , which is left blank that the obtainer thereof may make use of any day he pleases , within a year after the summons are rais`d . most part of summons formerly , did abide continuation : that is , the defender being cited and the day of compearance past , the clerk marked the summons as being called and continued till such a day : albeit in reality they they were not called , because the defender was not obliged to answer , till he was cited again● which was by letters pass`d under the signet , making mention of the first summons , of the citation , and continuation of the summons , and commanding messengers to cite the party to the second diet , which also was left blank that the obtainer might use it any time within a year after their obtaining thereof . such summons were not continued as were instantly verified by writ , or needed no other probation than the summons it self , as being negative or presumed in law to be true . but if the summons behoved to be proven by the oath of the defender , or by witnesses the same was then to be continued except in some few priviledged causes as in actions of recent spulzie , ejection , and others . and though summons upon bills by the deliverance of the lords bare expresly , to proceed without continuation ; yet that passing of course , was but periculo petentis , and the summons behoved to be continued . the act also of continuation behoved to be extracted before process could proceed . but now by the act of par. 1672. cap. 6. acts of continuation and second summons are discharged . and it is ordained , that in cases where second summons were before required there shall now be one summons with two diets , in which the executions to the first diet may be given by any person as being sheriff in that part constitute by the letters . but after the day to which the party is fi●st cited , the second citation must be given to a new diet by messengers , when any point is re●err'd to the defender's oath , with certification if he compear not and depone , he shall be holden as confess'd . after the last day of compearance is past , if the pursuer insist not ; the defender may compear and produce a short copy of the citation given to him , which being delivered to a sub-clerk , he will thereupon call the pursuer , of course , before the ordinary comes out . and if no advocat compear for the pursuer , the clerk will admit protestation : so called , because the defender's advocat doth either really compear or is reputed to do so , and to protest , that his client being cited to such a day , and that day past , ( the pursuer not compearing to insist ) he may not be obliged to answer till he be summoned of new again . which protestation the clerk admits , and extracts a sentence of the lords , bearing them to have admitted the said protest●tion : which is a kind of sentence absolvitor from that instance , and any thing done thereafter till new citation will be null . if any advocat compear for the pursuer , the clerk will assign him a day to produce his summons : and then will call again upon the copy● and give him a short diet more , to produce , with certification that protestation will be admitted . and then calling the third time , the ordinary will admit protestation unless the process be produced . upon which protestation the defender may raise a summons against the pursuer to insist , with certification if he insist not , never to be heard again . wherein if the pursuer of the principal cause appear , he will get a day to produce and insist : at which time certification will be admitted . or if at the first , the defender compear not , the day of compearance being past , if the pursuer of the principal cause appear , he gives in his summons to a sub-clerk who calls the same after the day of compearance is past , though there be no judge present . and if none appear for the defender , the clerk writes thereupon , and either decerns or assigns a day to prove as the procurator demands , or grants certification . but if the cause be not ordinary and obvious , the clerk must advise with the lords : who will consider the relevancy of the summons , and the sufficiency of the probation , and either give act or sentence as they see just ; or otherwise forbear , if the libel be not relevant and proven . in ordinary cases the clerk extracts the decreet or act , as if it were done upon special notice of the lords . if any compearance be made for the defenders , the clerk then marks upon the summons or act of continuation the names of the pursuer's advocat and defender's in these terms , actor such a man , alter such a man to see . after which there can be no further procedure till the process be seen by the defender's advocat . and if there be several advocats for several defenders , the process is marked to be seen in such a mans house , where they should either conveen to consult their several interests , or borrow the process for that effect , and return it . but the pursuer doth more safely , when he takes back the process from the first party , and gives it to be seen severally to the rest . for otherwayes they will delay him when they come to the dispute , and will at least get liberty to see the process in the clerks hands till the next calling , that in the mean time they may borrow the process from the clerk ( upon their receipt ) and see the same . processes were accustomed not only to be seen and called once every session , and if they were not marked by the clerks so called , there could be no process till a summons of wakening was raised : for they were not only said to be asleep in the mean time , but also the defender's advocats were not obliged to answer , unless they had seen the process that same session . but since the act of regulation , a process being once seen is not to be seen again , unless there be alterations in the summons , or new productions . yea when the process hath not been called for a whole year , and that thereupon there be a citation upon a wakening , the cause goes on as it stood in the roll before , and is only seen with the wakening in the clerks hands . the pursuer's advocat when he gives out the process to be seen , writes upon the back thereof , given out by &c. to &c. to be seen , and subscribes the same . and after two or three dayes calls for the process back . he doth also ordinarly write an inventary of the process apart , or upon the back of the summons and the defender`s advocat by accepting of the summons , is presumed to have received the same the day mentioned upon the back of the summons , and to have received the peeces of the process mentioned in the inventary : because if these be not truely set down , he may refuse to accept of the process . if then the defender`s advocat deliver back the same , he must write upon the back , that they are seen by him and subscribe his name . which if he refuse to do , and to give back the process , the pursuer by a ticket may complain to the president , or ordinary upon the bills , who will call the defender's advocat and amerciat or fine him , till he produce . or otherwise the pursuer upon a copy of the summons , may cause the sub-clerk call the defender's advocats to reproduce the process , with certification that if he do not , his copy will be holden as a principal , and holden as proven , whereupon the defenders will be decerned . which certification being admitted , a decreet for not reproduction may be extracted , which will have all execution as any other decreet in absence : and albeit it be more easily suspended , yet not ordinarly without caution . but for the security of parties , that they may not be wronged by the clerks , all that passes every day , is mentioned in the minute book : which book is read in the outer-house every day after twelve a clock , and nothing can be extracted till it be read in the minute book and twenty four hours thereafter ; that in the mean time either party may compear and produce , or take up the process and get the decreet delet out of the minute book , and oftimes at the very reading of the book , they compear and get it delet . if the pursuers after the process is seen , make any alteration therein by production of new writs , and altering or mending of the summons ; the defender must see of new again the peeces of the process , or the pursuer's title , where there is any required to be produced , ( which is in most causes ) and which instructs the pursuer's right , as the summons , or charge , with the executions acts of process , and writs produced for probation . processes allowed to be seen in the clerks hands being kept up beyond the time appointed , upon complaint from the clerk , they are ordained to be delivered the next day under a certain penalty , as ten or twenty dallers . and upon the second complaint , warrant is given to debar advocats from coming within the barrs , and to incarcerat agents and servants , till the process be reproduced and the fine payed . processes being thus seen and ready for dispute , the same are inrolled according to the dates of the return marked upon the backs thereof ; he who is first ready being first to be discuss'd , without preference of the parties : except the kings causes , which after fight may be called without inrolling , at any time upon 14. dayes intimation to the defender's advocats , wherein donatars processes are not comprehended . which rolls being affixed on the walls of the outer house parties and advocats may inform themselves , to be in readiness to dispute without surprisal , or tergiversation . ordinary actions after they are seen , returned and inrolled are called by the roll. if the pursuer compear not to insist , the defender may crave protestation upon his copy . but ordinarly the pursuer compears , and relates the cause shortly , if it be an ordinary summons , the tenor and nature whereof is fixed and known ; which therefore he needs not relate , but only mention the summons and crave decreet , if there needs no further probation : and if there do , he then craves a day to prove . but if the cause be upon a libelled summons , not having a particular known stile , the pursuer doth more fully relate , not only the tenor of his summons , but the merits of his cause , to inforce the justness and equity of the cause in particular : unless the lords upon hearing the relation of the summons stop him , till it appear whether the defender controvert the relevancy thereof , yea or not . for it is an improfitable spending of time , for the pursuer to inforce the relevancy of the summons , if the defender controvert not the same . in the next place , the defender if he resolve to dip upon the merits of the cause , or to adhere rigorously to exact form in the order , then he relates the merits of the cause , and odiousnesse of the pursuit , and thereupon proceeds to his defenses . defenses do not only comprehend exceptions properly so called , but all objections against the relevancy of the summons , order , and interest . and therefore the defender propones his defenses against the order of the process ; and first , that the day of compearance is not yet past . and because the day of compearance in the summons and letters by negligence is left blank , the defender uses to score the same , or to fill up a wrong day , and to object thereupon . but if the day of compearance be mentioned in the execution , it will be sufficient , albeit the blank be scored : and if it be wrong filled up , the ordinary will sometimes cause the clerk immediatly mend it , and so proceed . and at other times doth as he seeth the cause favourable , or not . the second defense is upon the dayes of citation : wherein the common rule is , that against persons without the kingdom , citation should proceed at the ●iercat cross of edinburgh and peer and shoar of leith , upon threescore daye● for the first summons , and fifteen dayes for the second ; and for persons within the kingdom upon twenty one dayes for the first and six for the second . from this rule are excepted summons upon recent spuilzie , ejection , intrusion , or succeeding in the vice of persons against whom decreet of removing is pronounced , which are priviledged by statute to proceed upon a citation of fifteen dayes . and by custom removings , causes alimentary , exhibitions summons for making arrested goods or sums furthcoming , transferrings , wakenings , poindings of the ground , special declarators , suspensions , prevento`s , and transumpts are commonly priviledged by the lords deliverance upon six dayes . and the second citation when it is needful is always upon six dayes except against the inhabitants of edinburgh , and the contiguous suburbs thereof , where the second citation may be upon twenty four hours which is declared by act of sederunt . iune 21. 1672. concerning priviledged summons . and the writers to the signet are prohibited to insert any other priviledge . the third defense is , that the summons hath not two citations conform to the act of parliament 1672. for clearing whereof it is to be considered , that the reason of double citation is , that the defender may have more citations before any process be sustained against him , not only to give him competent time to propone his defenses , but to ascertain him of the citation , which is some times clandestinely done , but not so easily when there are reiterat citations . some times causes are priviledged to proceed upon one citation by law and custom , and sometimes by the lords deliverance . the law allows no continua●ion of recent spuilzies , r●movings , and actions accessory to the lords decreets , as special declara●ors ; unless the cause be of the greatest importance , as reductions , daclarators of property , and declarators of expyring of rev●rsions . for though ●hese require no further probation either by writ or oath of party ; yet because of their importance they must be continued . and so must all summons which are to be proven by the defender's oath of ve●ity , or by witnesses . the fourth defense is upon the tenor of the executions . as first , if the pursuer crave the defender to be holden as confess`d , then the de●ens● is , that he was not personally apprehended by a messenger at arms , or that the execution bears not that a copy was delivered : but if it bear a copy delivered it will be sufficient , albeit it bear not personally apprehended , because it doth import it . secondly , if the defender was not cited personally but at his dwelling-house , the execution will be null if it bear not , that the executer gave six knocks at the most patent door or entry of the defender's house , designing the same , and that he either delivered a copy to the wife , ●●irns , or servants ; or that he affixed a copy upon the most patent door or gate . it must also contain two wi●nesses at least : and it mus● be stamped . if any of th●se be omitted the execution will not be sustained . but the pursuer may take up his summons and mend the executions , abiding by the verity thereof : and it must be seen again by the defender . the fi●th defense useth to be upon the pursuer`s title , whereby the defender alledgeth , no process , because the pursuer produced no sufficient title in initio li●is . as if an heir pursue without production of his retour , an executor without a c●nfirmation or licence , an assigny without an assignation , &c. and almost in every process , that does not meerly consist in facto , a title in writ must be produced in initio litis : whereupon there ariseth much debate , ( and very divers and different , ) what writs must be produced as the title in initio litis , which were too tedious here to relate . the sixth defense is upon the interest of the defenders not cit●d : whereby the defender alledgeth , that all parties having inter●st are not called . as i● a pupil were called without his tutor's being called , at least in general , at the mercat cross where the pupil dwells : or if a vassal be called in the reduction of his right , or in a declarator of property and cognition of his marches , without calling of his superior . but this yeelds no defense for principal debitors , or for cautioners bound conjunctly and severally as principals : for one of them may be called withoue the rest . the seventh defense is , the order of discussing : whereby the defender alledgeth , no process against him till such other parties be discussed . as cautioners not being bound conjunctly and severally as full debtors , are not liable till the principals be discuss'd . and so cautioners for tutors or executors are not lyable , till the tutors or executors be discuss'd . so heirs-male , till the heirs of line be discuss'd ; nor heirs of tailzie , till the executors , heirs of line , and heirs-male be discuss`d . the eighth defense is , that the libel , or some member thereof , is not relevant : for clearing whereof it is necessary distinctly to understand what the relevancy is , which is so frequent and important a term in our law. relevancy is a relevando , to relieve or help : and therefore a thing is said to be relevant , when , if it be true and proven , it would relieve the pursuer or complainer , and give him the remedy which he infers and concludes in his libel , and craves to be done as due by justice . for every sufficient libel contains an argument or ratiocination , sometimes in form of a syllogisme , when the point of law is fi●st deduced , as the major proposition ; and then the matter of fact is related , as the minor or subsumption : and thence the conclusion is inferred as consequent in justice , applying the law to the fact subsumed , and craving the remedies of that law to be applyed to this fact , for the help or remedy of the pursuer in his complaint . and therefore in the libel he is called complai●er . but more frequently libels are framed as an enthimeme wherein the matter of fact is deduced as the antecedent : and it is thence inferred that in justice such remedy should be adhibited . where sometimes , after the matter of fact is deduced , and before the conclusion or remedy craved , the law is mentioned : either generally , that the fact related as done or omited by the defender , is contrary to law , equity , reason , or justice ; or specially , contrary to such points of law. or otherwise it is subjoyned to the conclusion , that upon the matter of fact libelled , it ought to be declared or decerned as is libelled , according to law , equity , or justice : or particularly according to such points of law. so then the relevancy of the libel or complaint , is the consequ●nce of the conclusion of the libel , from the premisses thereof . or it is the iustice of the libel , or the sufficiency and goodness of the plea. and the probation is the verily or truth of the libel . so that the remedies of law proceed upon justice and truth . the effect is the same● in suspensions and reductions , though the form be different . for the conclusion or remedy of law is first proposed : and the premisses are subjoyned , as reasons for adhibiting the remedy proposed . every reason being a several syllogisme or enthimeme inferring the proposed remedy , and in effect a several libel . if the libel be instantly verified , and require no further probation , as when the law presumes it to be true , or when it is instructed by writ ; or when the defender is craved to be holden as confess'd ; or there is any other certification containing a presump●ive probation , as that , if writs be not produced , it is presumed to be because they dare not abide tryal , but would be found false or null , therefore if they be not produced , they are declared to be holden as false or null ; in these cases , if the libel be instructed , there is nothing can be controverted but the relevancy , inference , or justness of it . and therefore the defense , that the libel or such a member of it is not relevant , imports this , that the conclusion craved is not just , or that there is no sufficient ground for it in law or equity . and therefore the pursuer must condescend upon what ground o● law or equity he foundeth , unless it be clear and evident to the judge . in which case , without putting the defender to answer , he sustains the libel : that is , he finds that if the fact related be true , the remedy craved is just . and if he find the libel relevant , and instantly verified , he decerns : either simply in all points according to the libel , or in part , finding ●ome members of the conclusion just , but others not just ; or qualificate , when he finds the conclusion just , but not in the way that it is demanded , and grants it as it ought to be demanded . which is ordinarly done in favourable cases : nor will the decreet be quarrellable as ultra petita , or disconform to the libel . but if the case be unfavourable , he may forbear to qualifie the conclusions , and assolzie a libello ut libellatur : which will not exclude new summons , where the conclusion is rightly qualified : as neither will an absolvitor in a reduction , exclude a reduction in the same cause , upon new reasons upon different points of fact , or differently qualified . but it is not so in suspensions : where the decreet suspended not having taken effect by execution , the suspender remains in effect defender , and the charger who obtained the decreet , is still pursuer to get his decreet put to execution . and there●ore whatever reasons were competent and omitted in the first suspension , are not receivable in any posterior suspension . but if the libel be simply relevant , the judge doth simply assolzie . if the libel be not instantly verified , the pursuer craves no decreet , but a term to prove . and the question will still remain , whether the libel be relevant , that is , whether if it were proven to be true , it would also be just . for frustra probatur quod probatum non relevat . relevancy comes to be debated , not only as to summons and libels , but as to exceptions , replys , duplys , triplys , or quadruplys , &c. which will not be sustained or admitted to probation , if they be irrelevant , and would not relieve or avail the proponer . it is to the same effect when the dispute is , whether the defense , reply , &c. be good or sufficient . for the goodness or sufficiency thereof is the justness , or relevancy of it . but the term relevancy is most formal and frequent with us , and more than with any other nation . the roman law , and the nations that follow that law , do but seldom mention it : and the english know it not . but their dispute to the same purpose , is of the sufficiency or goodness of the plea , or defense , &c. yet we do never adhibite the term relevancy , but to a matter of fact proven or to be proven , whether in the libel , exception , reply , or duply , &c. but when the alledgence is only an objection , we do not debate whether the objection be relevant . as when writs are adhibited to instruct a libel ab initio , the ordinary will hear the dispute upon the writs produced , and the objections made against the same . wherein the terms are not , that the writs are not relevant , but that they instruct not , or that they are not to be respected for such reasons : and the pursuer endeavours to inforce the same , and answer the objections . in all which it is improper to mention relevancy . the ninth defense is upon the competency , whether the suit be competent hoc ordine . for albeit the libel be relevant , yet it may not be competent . exceptions , so properly called , are not founded upon the defects of the pursuit , but are founded upon some positive right or fact , distinct therefrom , exclusive thereof : and that either for a time , or for ever . those exceptions which exclude the defense but for a time , are therefore called dilators : those which elide the cause for ever , are therefore called peremptors , quia perimunt seu destruunt causam . and albeit dilators may assolzie the defender ab instantia aut lite , yet never ● causa . and therefore some dilators are more properly termed peremptoriae instantiae . to make both clear by example ; in the most frequent pursuits , as in actions for debts , if the defender alledgeth that the pursuer cannot insist for payment of the debt , because the debitor by his promise or writ is engaged not to seek the sum for a time , or hath renounced or discharged action or sentence ; if the time be not very long to come , sentence will be pronounced , suspending execution till that time : which qualifies the sentence , and is dilatory as to the execution . but if there be an absolute paction upon the debitor's part de non petendo , or that the defender hath his discharge or renounciation of the debt , or if the defender alledge payment or compensation ; these excep●ions are peremptory , which if proven willassolzie the defender for ever . and though commonly all defenses , whether they be exceptions or objections , are called dilatory , if they do not absolutely determine the cause : yet it is clear what difference is betwixt an exception and objection : the objection being only the alledging of a defect and nullity in the pursuit , and therefore are partes judicis , which if he do accurately notice , although there were no defender , he would not decern . as if there were an act or sentence craved before the day of compearance were come , or if the summons were not upon the dayes requisit by the law , or if the executions were defective in the requisits ordained by law , or if the libel were not relevant , or any member thereof , or were not competent in such a process : all which reasons are negative , and require no further probation . but proper defenses are positive and are not proper to the judge to supply : and are not founded upon deficiency of the process , but upon some positive right or fact competent to the defender . dilators must be instantly ve●ified , and there can be no term assigned for proving thereof . secondly , they are not competent to be proponed a●ter proponing of perempto●s . thirdly , all dilators must be proponed together , or at least at the second calling , that they may not be drawn in length . as to the first , that dilators must be instantly verified , the reason is because they do not determine the cause , and to run a course of probation for instructing a dilator , were tedious and expensive , and not worthy of the work . therefore defenders are to prepare themselves , and have in readiness the writ or witnesses to inctruct the dilator , which will be received without any citation or diligence , but being instan●ly called by a macer will be admitted . for instance , if a tenent be pursued to remove , and alledge , all parties interessed are not cited , viz. his master , to whom he is tenent by payment of maill and duty before warning : this is a dilator , and it must be verified instanter , that the person he condescends upon was his master before the warning : which may be done either by production of his master`s discharges , or by witnesses , if they be in readiness . yet in some cases a term may be granted to instruct a dilator , as if the defender have a supersedere of the pursuer for a considerable time , or a probable cause for which he hath not the writ in his own hand : if he make faith de calumnia , he may get a short time cum onere expensarum . which is most fully performed without assigning a term or diet to instruct the dilator , but repelling it as not instructed , yet superse●ing the extract of the act or decreet for some short time , that if in the mean time he de●ender produce the same , it may be received . if a dila●or be sustained , the defender may extract the sentence thereupon , which in effect is an absolvitor from that ins●ance . and if the pursuer do not mend the executions and libel before it be extracted , he will not be heard thereupon till new citation . as to the peremptory exceptions this is a rule , that exceptio falsi est omnium ul●ima . and after improbation is proponed the defender can return to no other defense , unless i● be emergent , o● new come to his knowledge . but where improbation is not by exception , but by way of action joynt with reasons of reduction , the reasons of reduction and improbation may be insisted in together , and probation allowed in both joyntly , or severally , because they are but two lib●ls in one process . when a peremptory is proponed , the dispute then runs first upon the compet●●c● ●h●reof , and next upon the relevancy ; both which are the objections agai●st th● exception , and are not replys . for as the exception is upon some right or fact positively alledged , eliding the libel , albeit defective in nothing ; so is the reply to the defense , and the duply to the reply , &c. as to the competency of defenses , the chief objection is , that such an alledgence is not receivable by way of exception without reduction . as if any person be pursued upon a bond , and alledge minority and laesion , or alledge interdiction , or that the bond was granted by his predecessors in lecto aegritudinis ; these will be repelled as incompetent . much more , if in any pursuit upon a real right , it should be alledged to be a non habente potestatem . so also nullitates facti upon clauses of failzie , bearing that in such and such cases such rights should be null , are incompetent by way of exception , even albeit the clause bear that the same shall be null without declarator : for the lords notwithstanding , will not sustain the same without a preceeding declarator . if these provisions be penal , the lords will also allow the parties to purge the failzie , by performance at the bar , in the declarator : and therefore not sustain such alledgences by exception , or by suspension ; but by reduction , or declarator : especially in heritable rights , and matters of great moment . though in matters of small moment , when the parties are poor , they will indulge that favour , which is competent to them by the eminency of their office , whereby they are not altogether straitned by the limits of ordinary form. for albeit the act of parliament 1621. against fraudulent alienations make them null by exception , or reply ; yet the lords do not sustain it , in regard that no infeftment can be taken away , without the superiors and authors be called . but nullities in law , whereby there is a visible defect in the solemnities requisit to a writ or right , which requires not the calling of a third party ; are competent by way of exception , or suspension : and in effect are rather objections , than exceptions . as , that a writ is null by the act of parliament 1540. because it wants witnesses : or because , the witnesses , or writer , or both are not designed : or because , being a writ of importance , it is subscribed by one notary , and not by two notaries and four witnesses . against the defense of nullity upon the want of witnesses , this reply is relevant , that the writ is holograph , all written and subscribed with the granter`s own hand ; which is probable by witnesses : not only if they prove , that they saw the writ subscribed ; but if they positively affirm , and clearly cognosce , that it is the ordinary hand-writ of the party , both as to the body and subscription . against which reply , this objection is competent ; that the point to be proven , is concerning the date , or time of the subscription : which the writ cannot instruct , albeit it be proven holograph . yet the lords will sustain the same , if it be proven by other adminicles , and witnesses who saw the writ subscribed of the date it bears ; or who saw the writ before the time in question : but such witnesses must be above all exception . as when a discharge granted by a cedent , is excepted on , against an assigny ; who if he alledge , that it is null , as wanting witnesses , and the defender in fortification of his defense offer to prove , that it is holograph : and the pursuer yet objects , that it cannot prove the date ; the defender in fortification of his defense offering to prove by writs relating to the discharge , or witnesses above exception , that they saw the discharge as it now stands , before the intimation of the assignation ; the lords will sustain the defense , if so fortified . which albeit it appear to include a duply , and quadruply ; yet it is but a complex defense : seing as to the members thereof , there interveens no reply , nor triply , but only two objections : which the lords upon advising , might supply , albeit not objected by the party . as if in a reduction of a bond against an assigny , as being payed before the intimation , or assignation ; if the defender be absent , and a holograph discharge be produced , the lords , if they advert to it , will not find the reasons proven ; unless the pursuer prove it holograph , and instruct the date thereof to be true , or at least anterior to the intimation . the nullity of the want of the writer`s name insert , or the witnesses , is elided by condescending upon the writer , and his designation , and upon the witnesses : seing thereby the intent tf the act of parliament is fulfilled , which is that there may be means to improve such writs if questioned . all these hold not in writs that are regulat by the law of nations , and not by the proper law of our country , in which the consuetude of nations is sufficient to astruct the writ : as bills of exchange , orders , letters of advice , accompts , and receipts amongst merchants , which do require no such solemnities . and in like manner writs not made in scotland but abroad . secundum consuetudinem loci , are valid without these solemnities , and take effect in scotland . but the custom of that place's observing , or not observing such solemnities , must be instructed . as writs subscribed by one tabellion , in france , and germany ; and writs sealed and delivered , in england , or ireland ; prove , though the writer be not mentioned , nor the witnesses designed . but in these two kingdoms , if the writ bear only to be signed , but not to be sealed and delivered ; it doth not yet prove , till it be approven by the oaths and testimonies of the witnesses . in proponing of exceptions , the defender ought not to give reasons for the competencie , or relevancy thereof , unless the judge call for them : as when they are not ordinary , and appear not to him relevant and competent , though there were no answer made . otherwise , having repeted his defense , he should be silent , untill he see if the pursuer object against the competency or relevancy thereof ; or whether he propone a proper reply , to elide the exception , without further debate . in which the dispute goes over to the reply , and so unto the duply , untill the point be discuss'd . the defender may also propone several defenses , which , if found relevant and competent , he will be heard upon all . and what he omits , that was then competent , will not be receivable in the second instance , by suspension , or reduction : nor will be admitted after litis contestation , unless it be then instantly verified , or be emergent , and new come to knowledge . the reason is , that process be not drawn in length , to the vexation of the people in their rights , by perpetuating of uncertainty of plea. which was alwayes used as necessary in ordinary actions ; and now of a great while , also in suspensions : the reason being alike in both . exceptions are so various and many , that it is not proper here to enumerat , much less to explain them : what we intend by this , being but to give a short view of the forme and not of the matter of process . it shall suffice to name some few most common and most ordinary . besides what hath been said of defenses before , and besides the obvious exception of satisfaction , payment , or discharge , and the personall exception against persons being rebells , and so not having personam standi in judicio ; which will exclude the pursuer , till it be elided by relaxation , or till the rights and process be assigned , for then ( it being personal ) it will not follow the assigny : which is also competent against the defender , whom though the pursuer hath called to appear , yet he may hinder him by horning , but cannot hold him as confest , if he will not suffer him to depone : for albeit the king`s officers might exclude him , yet horning being but a civil rebellion ; it is against reason , that he that provokes him to judgment , should exclude him from it . wherein neverthelesse , pursuers will sometimes be so cruel as to crave the defender to be holden as confest ; albeit they wil not suffer him to compear , and depone , which the lords do not admit . i say , besides these , there are further the common exceptions of praescription , renounciation , innovation , transaction , and the exception rei judicatae , and litis contestatae . praescription was once as large as exception , till it was appropriat to this chief kinde of exception . we have many praescriptions in scotland . as 1. of a year : and so tutors of law not serving themselves within a year , their interest praescribes , and there is place for a dative . 2. of three years : so inquests can not be called in question by summons of error , so as to inferr any prejudice against the persons of inquest after three years . recent spulzies , as to their speciall priviledge of summar process , oath in litem , and violent profits , praescribe , not being intented within three years after the warning . so also actions for house-maills , servants-fees , and merchants compts , praescribe , as to the manner of probation by witnesses , if not intented within three years : and are then only probable scripto , vel juramento . so the preference of the creditors of the debitor , to the creditors of the heir in affecting the estate of the defunct , by the act of parliament praescribes in three years . 3. in four years , the action of reduction upon minority and laesion prescribes , after the partie's majority . 4. in fiue years , the right of any holden and repute heritable possessors , ( & so possessing for five years , ) praescribes so in the case of forfaulture , that if the possesor be forfaulted , & the king succeed ; all other parties rights are excluded , unless they have interrupted the possession , and raised process within five years before the forefaulture . 5. the effect of infeftments of property , and possessory judgments thereupon , praescribe by the defender`s possessing seven years , by vertue of an infeftment , or tack , from a third party : so that thereby actions for maills and duties , or removings , are excluded , and the defender`s right cannot be taken , away but by reduction , being clad with seven years lawful possession . 6. the legal reversion of apprisings which did expire or praescribe , by seven years after the date of the apprising doth now expire and praescribe by the course of ten years , from the deducing thereof . and of adjudications , the legal expires in five years , if they be special ; and if general , in ten years . 7. summons of error , or reduction of retours deduced since 1617. do praescribe , if the summons be not intented within twenty years after the service . 8. and lastly , heritable rights● and all other rights praescribe , if not pursued , nor possessed by , during the space of fourty years . the exception of praescription of 40. years , is elided first by the reply of minority , because that praescription runs not against minors : and therefore there must be 40 years , besides the years of their minority . 2. all praescription are elided by improbation , because the case of falshood is excepted . 3. the praescription of three years as to the quarrelling the persons of inquest , runs not against minors , or absents foorth of the countrie . neither doth the praescription of the legal of apprisings , run against minors . and if a major succeed to a minor , he hath a year after his succession to redeem . 4. and last of all , praescriptions are elided by interruption , in the manner prescribed by law : whether the interruption be by natural possession , or civil by intenting competent process , or by legal acts or instruments . renounciation is a common exception : whereby the pursuer renouncing the right or action , he ( or any representing him , ) is thereby excluded therefrom but in real rights , singular successors will not be excluded by renounciation , unless there had been a process against the partie renouncer , whilst he had right , whereby the matter became litigious , which is vitium inhaerens , descending to singular successors . but in all personal rights , the renounciation of him who hath right for the time , is valid , not only against his heirs , but against singular successors . innovation is also a common exception : whereby any new right is given , not in security or corroboration , but in full satisfaction of a former right ; whereby that former right is extinct and there can be neither action nor defense thereupon . transaction is also a common peremptory defense : for thereby the former right is either taken away in whole , or in part , and in so far only is the defense peremptory . for there can be no transaction , ( properly so called , ) but where the right transacted is either innovat , or simply renounced , or quit for a sum of mony , or an onerous cause , or at least abated . exceptio rei judicatae , is where the same cause now pursued , hath been judged before , and decerned . for there is no new process therea●ent can be sustained : else there could be no end of pleas. but this exception is elided by several replyes . as if the pursuit be indeed for the same effect , but not super eodem medio : as when the person pursuing , pursues as executor for a debt , and the defender alledging that the debt is heritable , be as●olzied ; if the pursuer thereafter enter heir , and pursue super hoc titulo , the absolvitor will not exclude him . and sometimes , though the medium be the same , and have been referred to the defender's oath , and he thereupon be assolzied ; yet if writ after be emergent , that doth not infer perjurie , or contradict the oath , but proveth more nor what the defender knew , or remembred ; it will not be excluded by an absolvitor upon the oath : especially if the deponent was not positve , but to his knowledge and remembrance . the exception of litiscontestation is rather a dilator , than a peremptor exception , because thereupon the cause is not determined . but the pursuer may be thereby excluded from any other process , without prejudice to him to insist in that wherein lis est contestata : unless the new pursuit be different from the former , at least super diuerso medio . all the foresaid common exceptions are aswel competent by way of reply duply , triply , or quadruply , as by exception ; and may be libelled upon , as good reasons of suspension , reduction , or declarator . in all processes whatsoever whether in ordinary actions , or in reductions , and sometimes in suspensions , litiscontestation may be made . which is done when those points which are to be proven or either part , are discuss'd and determined , as to the relevancy , and competencie ; and that is put to probation which will end or carry the cause , for the pursuer or defender , according as the point shall be proven , or secumbed in . whereupon there is an act extracted , deducing the process , and points sustained and admitted to probation , and likewise those that are repelled : which doth contain the libel , or suspension , the compearance of the parties , and the production , and the dispu●e of all parties compearing , and the interlocutor of the lords . but when all is instantly verified , or needs no further probation , there is no litiscontestation : which is sometimes in ordinary actions , and frequently in suspensions and advocations , when the ordinary doth at once , judge the relevancy and probation . but probation after litiscontestation , must be advised by the whole ●ords . litiscontestation may be against the defender absent , and then the libel is only admitted to the pursuer's probation . wherein , if he do cautiously libel , he will libel that which may take off the objections , compe●ent in law , against his titles : as if they be holograph , or ancient and past prescription ; that they are preserved by minoritie , or interruption , particularly libelling and proving the same . otherwise the lords may stick to give him sentence : or if by inadvertency they do , the sentence will be easily suspended , or reduced , unless supplied as aforesaid . and therefore if the defender appear not , the pursuer will call for the libel , and insert what is necessary to make it effectuall , and make litiscon●estation , and probation accordingly . when litiscontestation is made parte comparente , sometimes the whole objections and defenses of the defender are repelled , and the summons is found relevant , and admitted to the pursuer's probation . sometimes the defender`s peremptory exceptions , one or more , are found relevant , and admitted to his probation : which when they do import the verity of the libel , the pursuer is liberat from probation thereof . otherwise the defender propones his defenses , denying the libel , or denying the quan●●ties and prices libelled . in which case , by the act of litisconte●tation the pursuer is ordained to prove his libel , and the defender his exceptions . for instance , if the pursuit be for payment of a debt , if the defender propone his defense upon a general discharge , not relative to any particular debt , or if he do propone compensation ; he doth not acknowledge the truth of the libel , and so he may deny the same : and if he prove either of his defenses , or the pursuer fail in proving the libel , the defender will be assolzied . but if the defender propone an exception of payment , it doth acknowledge , that the debt was due : and therefore the pursuer needs not prove his libel , but the defender is to prove his defense ; wherein if he succumbe , the pursuer will prevail , without further probation . in like manner , in a pursuit of spuilzie , if the defender except upon lawful poynding , he doth acknowledge the libel , as to intromission with the particulars in his exception ; but he may deny the rest , or he may deny the prices libelled , which therefore the pursuer must prove . but if the defender omit to protest , that he acknowledges not the qu●ntities and prices , the pursuer will not be put to the proving thereof : but the defense will be holden as affirming the libel . and if the defender succumbe , he will not be heard to quarrel the prices or quantities libelled , for want of probation thereof . as the exception doth sometimes acknowledge the libel , and sometimes not ; so doth the reply sometimes acknowledge , or not acknowledge the exception , as to the quantities or prices ; and the proponer will yet be put to the proving thereof . and the duply is in the same case , as to the reply , &c. so that sometimes the pursuer will have to prove his libel and reply , and the defender his defense and duply . for instance , in a pursuit for debt due by bond , if the defender except upon compensation , and the pursuer reply upon a discharge of the debt compensed on , and the defender alledge , that he hath right to the sum ( wherewith he would compense , ) as assigny , and if any such discharge was , it was posterior to his intimation ; there the libel , exception , reply , and duply , must all be proven . and if the pursuer succumbe in proving his libel , whatsoever be done in the rest , the defender is assolzied . if the pursuer prove the libel , and the defender succumbe in proving his exception ; albeit the pursuer faill to prove the reply , he carries the cause . if the pursuer prove the libel and reply , and the defender prove not both the defense and duply , the defender will be decerned . in discussing of processes before litiscontestation , the ordinary hears the advocats on both sides debate , and if the point be clear , according to law and custom , he decides . but if it be dubious or new , then he adviseth with the lords . if he decide , the terms he useth are , sustains the order , or the title , or libel : or otherwise , sustains the alledgences against the same . and if the libel be irrelevant , or the title insufficient , he assolzies simpliciter , or ut libellatur . if he sustain the libel , and proceed to the defense , and find the same relevant ; the terms are , sustains the defense , or otherwise repells the defense . and if he find the reply relevant , and presupposing the defense ; then he repells the defense in respect of the reply . and if the defense did also acknowledge the libel , he assigns a term to the pursuer to prove the reply , and not the libel . or otherwise , he assigns a term to prove the libel and reply . or if the reply be elided by a duply , presupposing the truth of the reply , ( as the former points did of the preceeding , ) then he assigns only a term to the defender to prove the defense and duply : and so forth of the rest . and if he resolve to advise with the lords , his term is , you shall have the lords answer : which he will seldom refuse , if the matter be doubtful ; especially if the defender offer a daller to be forefault , as an amande , if his alledgence be not sustained . before an interlocutor be reported , the process is brought to the ordinary , who peruseth the same , and prepares it for the lords . and either party give their informations to the lords containing the deduction and favour of the cause , and the dispute , which they may inlarge by reasons in their informations as much as they please : but may alledge no matter of fact , by way of defense or reply , but what was proponed at the bar. the ordinary doth the next day , or soon after , relate the cause , and repete the dispute to the lords . and if he find any matter of fact in the parties informations , which was not proponed at the bar , he either hears them again upon it , or he reports and shows to the lords , that it was not proponed . and if they find any thing weighty therein , they will desire him to hear the parties upon it , either before interlocutor , or after , as they see cause . upon report of the dispute , the points that any of the lords think material , are stated and ordered , and any of the lords reason thereanent . and if they be not unanimous , the points whereupon they differ , go to the vote . and then the ordinary causeth call the parties in the outer-house , and reports the interlocutor , ( which is minuted by the principal clerk , ) and declares what the lords sustain or repel . and immediatly after , ordains the defender to insist in his further defenses , or the pursuer in his replys : and so proceeds from day to day , to new interlocutors , until the cause be fully discuss'd , either by decreet , or protestation , or litiscontestation . and if either party have omitted any thing , upon their application to him , before the sentence or act be extracted , while he sits without , he will hear them . and thereafter , if by bill they represent any new matter of moment , the same of course is appointed to come to the ordinary , and he will hear them thereupon . and if he refuse them , the lords upon hearing of the bill , if they find cause , will ordain the ordinary , or some other , to hear it . each ordinary doth also order the extending of acts , whereof either party gets a scroll before they be extracted . and if they differ , the ordinary determines the same according to the minuts , and meaning of the lords . in all which hardly can any party get hurt , but by their own negligence , or the fault of the clerks , who if they extract any thing unwarrantably , the lords will mend the same , even after it is extracted . in discussing of processes , it is ordinary for parties not called , to compear for their interest : but they will not be heard , till their interest be produced ; and then they will be heard in the same manner , as if they had been parties in the cause . there ariseth oftimes upon this occasion , the competition of many rights , which are mutually interchanged , and every one of the parties admitted for their interest , must see the productions of all the rest . in which case , the lords do frequently ordain all parties , to produce such writs as they will make use of in the cause , with certification that they shall not be heard to produce any thereafter : which nevertheless extends only to such writs as they then have in their power . and then the principal cause proceeds , and is either referred to some of the lords to be heard in the afternoon : or otherwise , the ordinary sees and compares the productions of the parties , and at the calling of the cause , he declares what he finds evident and clear , as to the preference . and then ordereth the parties to dispute , allowing the second right to be first dispute , with that which he finds preferable ; and which of them prevails , the rest in order , to compete therewith untill all be discussed , and one only be preferred : or otherwise , some of them jointly , or some of them primo loco , and others secundo loco , &c. competition of rights , doth also come in by double poinding : and that either by way of suspension , or action ; whereby the several parties are cited to produce their rights , and to hear and see , it found and declared , who hath the best right ; that thereby the parties liable , may be out of hazard . the action of double poinding , proceeds on a simple summons , on six dayes . the suspension is like other suspensions , but that it suspends the right of all parties till it be discuss'd . this is the ordinary way of discussing of processes , by premitting the point of iusti● or relevancy , and then admitting the point of verity to probation , according to what is found just : and not till it be found just , for frustra probatur quod probatum non relevat . in the probation , the benefit or burthen thereof is ordinarly assigned to one party , without joint probation . whereupon ariseth the frequent debate , who shall be preferred in probation : especially where the alledgences are contrary . as if one offer to prove violently spuilzied and taken away by force , the other party alledgeth voluntarly delivered and taken away by consent ; the question will be , who shall be preferred in probation ? wherein the common rule is , that where the defense is contrary to the libel , he that is in libello is preferred . but even there , and in all cases , the most special and pregnant probation is preferred . as in spuilzies , the pursuer libels violence , the defender offers to prove lawfully poinded , which is contrary ; yet being to be proven by writ , ( viz. by the executions of the poinding ) the defender is preferred . thereafter , the parties are ordained particularly to condescend on the circumstances , and sometimes on the witnesses names , that the most special condescendence , and the most unsuspect ● witnesses may be preferred . but in several cases the lords premit the probation to the discussing of the relevancy : and therefore , before answer , ordain witnesses ex officio to be adduced . and where they see it dubious , who ought to be preferred in probation , they use before answer to the dispute ; to ordain witnesses to be examined hinc inde , and such writs and evidents to be adduced , as either party will make use of . and then they advise the relevancy and probation together : and must not admit new probation or new alledgences in fact , competent before the act ; but the act before answer stands , as an act of litiscontestation , in all points , and hath the same terms to prove , with litiscontestation . in acts of litiscontestation , not only the points to be proven are determined , but also the manner of probation : which is either by presumption , writ , oath of party , or witnesses . presumptions are not put to probation in the future , but are cogno●ced in the very act , and instantly verified ; though from the probation it self , presumption may arise . and therefore the manner of probation is ordinarly appropriat to writ , witnesses , and oath of party , and that which is presumed , is said to need no probation . presumptions are of three sorts , either juris & de jure , or juris , or judicis . praesumptio juris & de jure , is that which the law determineth and presumeth upon the point of right : which is so strong , that it is a full proof , and admits no contrary probation . unto which is reduced fictio juris , that which the law , for utilities sake , presupposeth to be , and holdeth to be true , though it be not . so the heir is presumed to be one person with his predecessor , and the defunct's possession is esteemed the heir`s possession , whereby whatever was possessed by the defunct , if it was not effectually transmitted , is repute as possest by the heir , though he exercise no possessory act either of body or mind thereanent . most of our certifications are founded upon such presumptions : as a writ is improven for not production , upon this presumption , that the defender keepeth it up , because he knows it is forged ; and therefore it is declared to be forged . which presumption doth not admit contrary probation . so a partie`s being holden as confess`d is founded upon the presumption , that by his oath , he could not deny the truth of what is alledged . so the using of false writs proprio nomine , without protestation , expressing the way how the vsers came by them , is a presumption of their being accessory to the forgery . praesumptio juris , is when the presumption is acknowledged in law , but admitteth contrary probation . so dispositions of moveables , tacks , &c. made to a rebell`s bairns , friends , or servants , are presumed by act of parliament to be fraudulent , and to the behoof of the rebel : yet so as the contrary may be proven , if any equivalent cause be instructed . in like manner dispositions of lands , &c. made by persons bankrupt , or insolvent , are presumed by act of par. to be fraudulent , and in prejudice of creditors , without an equivalent onerous cause . and albeit in themselves , they bear expresly an onerous cause , either generally , or particularly for sums of mony , or deeds done ; yet when granted in favour of conjunct and confident persons , they are presumed to be without a true onerous cause , and the rights themselves , bearing the same , are not trusted : albeit the contrary may be proven , by instructing the onerous cause , for which they were granted . praesumptio judicis , called also praesumptio hominis , is that presumption which is not expresly in law , but the just deduction or consequence , admitted by the judge . this presumption doth more easily admit contrary probation : and therefore such presumptions are said , to transfer the onus probandi ; that is to say , they prove sufficiently for the adducer , unless the contrary be proven , in which case , presumptio cedit veritati , in comparison whereof it is said to be but veri similitudo , verisimilis veritas , or conjectura . and yet it is not necessary , that either of the two alledgences of the parties , must be true ; but that which ought to be , is presumed , albeit it be not certain : according to the maxime of law , quod inesse debet , inesse presumitur . in all summons and acts , as there is a will , or command of the judge ; so there ought to be a certification , certifying what the judge will do , if his command be not obeyed , as the sting in all processes , without which they would be long of coming to an issue . for if nothing could be done , but the charging , denouncing , and incarceration of the party , ( if he were found , ) until he gave obedience , or declaring him fugitive , or denouncing him rebel , or outlaw for his contumacy ; litle benefit would thence arise to the other party , and the contumacious party might long stand out . and therefore more expedite certifications are invented , of which we have as many , as apposite , and as effectual as any nation whatsoever . of which we shall adduce the prime instances . the first and most general certification is , that the lords will proceed to do justice . whereupon when defenders appear not , they do proceed to litiscontestation , and do admit probation , and give sentence , as if the defender did appear . the romans had no such certification , and therefore unless the defender were compearing willingly , or by compulsion , they could do nothing , but ( in some cases ) put the pursuer in possession . neither can the english give any sentence against a partie absent : but if he compear not , they do no more , but give out an outlawry against him , declaring that since he will not obey law , he shall not have the benefit of law , in any case . as judges in criminal causes in scotland commonly do , if the defender compear not , they declare them fugitive , which is out-law : whereby his escheat falls . but our civil certification is more equal and apposite : seing thereby the lords in contumacious defenders absence , do the same that they would if they were present . the next general certification is , either in summons or acts , against parties cited to give their oaths , with express certification , that if they compear not and depone , they shall be holden as confess`d : that is , as if they compeared and confessed that which is alledged against them . which is a most usual certification , and concludes more processes than all the other . it is also very important , and will be hardly rescinded : and therefore it is not sustained , unless it be particularly expressed , and unless the party be cited by a messenger of arms , and be personally apprehended , that so his contumacy may be palpable . the third ordinary certification is , against parties ( who have intented any process , ) to insist , with certification , that if they insist not they shall never be heard thereafter . which is of great use ; for thereby defenders put themselves to certainty , and are not obliged still to attend the motion of the pursuer , who may readily wait his opportunity of the infancy , or evil condition of the defender`s heir , and insist against him when he is least able to defend himself ; and letting the process sleep , may so continue it , were it never so long . in opposition whereof , either this certification , or a declarator of right may be intented by the defender , to determine the cause , whilst he finds himself in a capacity . there is another certification in the case , when the lords by hearing any debate , do before answer , ordain the writs by which either party will prove what they have alledged , to be produced ; with certification , that they shall not be heard thereupon thereafter : and that their alledgence shall be holden as not proponed . and more generally , at the entry of several causes , especially in the competition of many ●arties , and many rights , the lords ordain all the parties to produce such writs as they have in the cause , with certification , that they shall not be heard thereafter . but in regard the terms of production are not granted so frequently , and so large as in other cases ; the lords do extend the certification no further , than as to such writs as the parties have in their hands , the time of ●he certification . whereupon they do sometimes ordain the parties to depone , and if not , if any party produce and alledge upon a writ , not produced before the certification was admitted ; if the certification be alledged against the same , it will be rejected . but if the producer offer to make faith , he had it not the time of the certification , it will be admitted . sometimes no particular certification will be exprest , but the act bear , with certification , &c. and the effect thereof is , that the lords do admit thereupon such certification as is just , and ordinary in such cases . but if there be no ordinary certification in such cases , the act is ineffectual . as also other acts wherein , through negligence , no certification is exprest ; unless the fulfilling the desire of the act concern the pursuer . in which case he will get no process , till he fulfil the same : which is equivalent to certification . in stead of certification , the law sometimes allows protestation : which differeth from certification in this , that the certification which is exprest in the summons , or act , besides that which is not ordinary nor proper to be so insert , is sometimes admitted by way of protestation . and albeit it be free for every party to protest for what he pleaseth , yet only a few protestations use to be admitted ; such as protestations at the instance of defenders , upon the short copies of suspensions or summons : wherein albeit there be no certification , that if the pursuer compear not to insist the defender shall be freed from the instance ; yet the defender`s protestation , as being just and ordinary , is instantly admitted , as effectually as if there had been a certification in the summons , that if the pursuer did not insist , he should fall from that instance . such is the protestation lately introduced in favour of the pursuer , whereby upon the large copy of the summons , if the defender refuse to produce the process , the pursuer protests , that the copy may be holden as a principal , and that the same may be holden as instructed , and proven , and decreet pronounced . which protestation the lords admit , in respect of the contumacy of the defender's advocate , who refuseth to produce the pursuer`s process . such also is the protestation of the pursuer after probation , at the conclusion of the cause , whereby when the defender has produced his writs , or witnesses , conform to the act of litiscontestation , he protests , that he may be admitted to produce no more , and that the cause may be holden as concluded : which protestation the ordinary admitteth , whereby the cause is concluded ; and neither party can use further probation regularly . so the lords will advise whether the points whereupon litiscontestation was made , be proven , or not proven . in other cases either party may protest what they please : but their protestation receives no present answer . the greatest use it hath is , that it be not presumed those who protest , do acquiesce by their silence : nam qui silet consentire videtur . and therefore when one of the parties makes any such protestation , the other party useth ordinarly to protest in the contrary : and there is no answer given to either of their protestations : but they use to be insert , unless they be clearly contrary to law ; in which case they will not be suffered to be in●●rt . as if the parties should protest , at the sentence of the lords , for remede of law , or should protest , that the lords should not proceed ; these , being against their supreme iurisdiction , will not be insert : but other protestations will. as if any reason of suspension be repelled , as incompetent in a suspension ; the suspender may protest , the same may be without prejudice to him to use reduction . or if any defense be repelled , as incompetent in the first instance ; the defenders may protest , that it be without prejudice to them , to make use thereof in the second instance● by suspension , or reduction . or if any right be reduced , or redeemed ; the defenders may protest , that it be without prejudice to them of any other right , whereby they may brook the lands , or thing in controversy . which , is especially done when the lords do not express in the sentence such reservations , as oftimes they do ; and though they be omitted they are implyed in the nature of the thing . but least the silence of the parties might import , they pretend no further , they may for their further security protest . protestations are only competent , where certifications , defenses , replys , or duply's are not competent . and therefore protestations upon copies as aforesaid , and at the conclusion of the cause , and upon incompetency of defenses , replys , duplys , &c. are only competent . for if these other were competent , prote●tations were neither proper , nor effectual . as if when the defender`s defenses , or some of his reasons of suspension are discuss'd ; if protestation were made , that the defender might be heard upon other defenses , or upon the reasons not discussed ; this protestation , albeit insert , would be of no effect , because contrary to law , which obliges all parties to propone all the defenses and reasons , that they have , before litiscontestation . and therefore in the second instance , new ones are repelled , as competent and omited . so that to protest for liberty to omit , or add in a posterior instance , is against law : and those alledgences being competent in the first instance , ought to be proponed , not protested for . processes come in before the lords in the second instance , by advocation or suspension : and both in the first and second instance by reduction . for reductions of decreets or acts are in the second instance : but reductions of rights , whereupon no decreet or sentence hath followed , are in the first instance . of these therefore in order . the original of advocations is this . of old , parties were allowed to appeal from inferior , to superior courts , when they conceived themselves to have gotten wrong , which was called falsing of dooms . and so there lay an appeal from barons to sheriffs , and from sheriffs to the kings ordinary council , in whose place the colledge of iustice succeeded , and the senators of which are therefore designed lords of council and session , from whom there is no appeal to king or parliament . by these appeals , processes did stop , till the appeals were determined or deserted . and the superior court to which the appeal was made , did first determine the appeal , whether bene vel malè appellatum . the cause was remitted to the judge appeall'd from , unless the appeal were sustained ; in which case the judge appeall'd unto , proceeded in the principal cause : as is yet accustomed in most nations . but appeals have been of a long time excluded in this kingdom in any case , and a far better remedy introduced in their place , by advocation . for by appeals processes were stopt , at the option and fancy of private parties , which could not but increase animosity and clamour . advocations proceed upon supplication to the lords , containing the special reasons for which the inferior judge is incompetent , unequal or unjust : and concluding that therefore the cause ought to be advocat , or called from him , and determined by the lords , or other competent and unsuspect judges . which supplications do not pass of course , but are specially advised by the ordinary upon the bills , who considers not only the relevancy of the reasons of advocation , but the instructions thereof . for seing the party complaining , hath another remedy , by suspension , and reduction ; advocation is not to be granted , unless the reasons be not only relevant , but instructed . in which the testificates of known persons of reputation , will be sufficient to obtain advocation , though not to determine the cause . as if the defender alledge , that he is not within the jurisdiction , or that the judge is of such relation to the other party , or that there is open enimity betwixt them : and in all cases of difficulty , the ordinary adviseth with the lords . and if any party appear , he will get a sight of the bill of advocation , and be heard thereupon : and oftimes the lords will warrant the reasons of advocation to be discuss`d upon the bill , and sometimes the principal cause . the lords do sometimes prohibite any advocation to pass , but in presentia , during the sitting of the session , or by three lords met together in vacance , especially near the close of the session : that justice be not delayed , or the inferior judge discouraged , or prejudged . the same reasons , that were of old for appeals , are now for advocations . as first , that the cause belongs not to the inferior court`s jurisdiction : as when causes are advocat from commissaries , as not being consistorial ; or when any inferior court is proceeding to determine declarators of property , or other important rights , or the competitions or nullities thereof . secondly , when the complainer is not within that judge's iurisdiction , but hath his domicile and residence elsewhere . thirdly , when the complainer is exempted from that judge`s jurisdiction , or hath the priviledge of advocation by office , ( as the members of the colledge of justice have by statute , because of their attendence on the session . ) and sometimes upon gross inequality and injustice , exemptions are granted to the persons injured , not to be conveenable before that judge . fourthly , if the judge be nearly related to the other party : whereof the degree is not determined , but in arbitrio judicis . it is certain if he be father , or brother to the party , he may be declined : and if he repell the declinator , advocation will be granted , both upon incompetency and iniquity . for by act of parliament , the lords are declined , if they be of any of those relations to the other party . fifthly , if the judge be a party , or have any interest in the cause . sixthly , if he have showen any malice , or enmity against the complainer . seventhly , if he have committed any iniquity , by repelling any relevant or competent alledgence , or sustaining that which is irrelevant , or incompetent , against the complainer . these , or like reasons of advocation , being found relevant , and instructed ; letters of advocation are pass'd under the signe●● commanding the inferior judge to proceed no further , but to send the process and all that hath been done therein , to the lords : for which a term is assigned . which being past , the pursuer of the principal cause , and defender in the advocation , gives in to the clerk a short copy of the advocation , and craves protestation and remit : which is admitted of course by the clerk , if none compear to produce the advocation . but if any appear , some dayes after are assigned to him to produce , which is marked by the clerk upon the copy : and being again called , with certification , that if he do not then produce , protestation will be admitted , and the cause remitted to the inferior judge ; at that time , if he produce not , protestation will be admitted . if the principal advocation be produced , the same is given up to the defender : against whom , if he do not return it within four dayes , together with the clame before the inferior judge , protestation is admitted . but if he return it , the same is inrolled in the roll of advocations , according to the date of the return . and when it comes to be called by the ordinary , the pursuer of the principal cause produces his clame , with the copy of the advocation , which was returned ; and craves protestation , and remit : which ( if the raiser of the advocation do not compear , or insist not in his advocation ) is accordingly granted . but if the raiser of the advocation compear , and insist , the advocate for the pursuer of the principal cause , doth briefly relate the cause , and before what inferior court it was pursued , and craves it to be remitted : and the advocate for the raiser of the advocation , repetes his reasons of advocation , for which he alledgeth the cause ought to be advocat to the lords ; which stand mainly in the points before adduced . the reason of advocation , upon incompetency of the judge , is most ordinary : and that either in regard of a personal priviledge of the party conveened , as in the case of the members of the colledge of justice , who by act of parliament have the priviledge , that they may advocat their causes from any inferior court , to the lords ; or in regard of the matter : so no inferior judge is competent to discuss the nullities of any right , neither are they competent to declarators of escheat , and several other actions . the reason of incompetency may also be founded upon the parties not being within the iurisdiction . all these reasons of incompetency are elided , by the partie`s compearing and proponing any defense , except it were a declinator . for by proponing any other defense , he acknowledges and homologates the authority of the judge : and therefore cannot question the same , upon the point of incompetency . but if the incompetency arise upon the matter in question , which did not not appear at first , but appeared thereafter , upon the debate of the parties ; as if the cause dipped upon the discussing and competition of different heritable rights ; or if there arise a debate upon the nullity of any right : in these ca●es , compearance , and acknowledgement of the auctority , will not exclude the reason of advocation . the reason of advocation upon suspition of the judge , as too much interessed in the one party , or too much unfriend to the other ; stands much in the arbitrement of the lords : the precise degree of consanguinity or affinity , or the acts of enmity , not being determinat in law. and it is the same in the case where there are more judges , and the reason meets but with some of them : or only with the deputes , or some of them , or only with the clerk. when the reasons of advocation are dubious , sometimes the pursuer of the principal cause , and sometimes the ordinary , will offer to the raiser of the advocation , to advocat of consent ; provided the pursuer of the principal cause , will dispute the cause instantly , or otherwise will dispute the same without further sight of the principal process , or extracting an act of advocation . for when otherwise the parties advocat of consent , they are to do it when the clerk calls : and there must be an act extracted upon the consent . if the cause be advocat upon the relevancy of the reasons , the same must be instantly instructed : and if they consist in facto , as the residence of the party , the affinity or enmity of the judge ; the raiser of the advocation ought either to have witnesses instantly ready to prove , or at least testificaets of persons above exception , and known to the lords . for there the question is not , for deciding of the principal cause . advocations are hardly sustained , after litiscontestation before inferior courts , unless it be upon the reason of iniquity , which is alwayes sustainable , and doth sometimes with one breath , determine both the advocation and principal cause . the cause being advocat , either of consent , or by authority of the judge , the principal cause advocat , being seen by the raiser of the advocation , ( thereby become defender of the cause ) together with the act of advocation extracted ; then it comes in as an ordinary cause , in the first instance . but the defender will be reponed , and heard upon any defense , which was unj●stly repelled to him , by the inferior court , and upon any other he pleaseth : because one being unjustly repelled , he was not obliged to propone any further . the order in discussing of suspensions is thus . the charger against whom the suspension is obtained , after the day of compearance in the suspension is past , gives a short copy of the suspension to a clerk , and causeth call it in the outer-house . if none compear for the suspender , protestation is admitted of course . if an advocate compear for the suspender , then the clerk assigns a short day to him to produce the principal suspension : and at that same time the charger may give him out the charge , being the decreet , or sentence , obtained . the first diet being come , the clerk calls the copy again , and assigns a second shorter time , with certification , that if he produce not , protestation will be admitted . and then calls the third time , and if the principal suspension be not produced , with the charge ( if it was given out in time ) protestation is admitted . all which is marked by the clerk , on the back of the copy , and being put in the minut-book and read , it may be extracted the next day . but during that time , the production of the principal , with the charge to the party , clerk , or keeper of the minut-book , will stop the protestation . the which order is also used for getting back of advocations , and seing the principal cause , if it be given out when the copy is first called . the charger's advocate , at the giving out of the charge , writeth on the back thereof , the d●y that it was given out , and sets his name thereto : and is not obliged to receive the suspension , unless the suspender mark on the process , that he hath seen and returned the same ; but may take out his protestation , as if the principal were not produced . according to the date , of the return of the charge , the suspension is inrolled : and when it comes to be discuss●d , the cause being called , the charger produceth the copy marked by the clerk , as aforesaid , and thereu●pon craveth a protestation from the ordinary , which he obtains , if the suspender●s advocate produce not . yet sometimes , the charger`s advocate will hold the copy for a principal , and the suspender will repete his reasons of suspension : which though they be not admittable upon a short copy , in strict form , ( because all reasons of suspension , both principal and eked , ought to be set down in writ , and given to the charger to see ; ) yet frequently , the charger will rather dispute the cause , than take a protestation , which is easily suspended again : and therefore will answer to the reasons , as verbally repeted . but if the suspender compear , and the charger do not insist , he may produce the principal suspension , and crave the letters to be suspended ay and while the charge be produced : which puts him in tuto , that no protestation can be taken upon the copy , till the charge be produced . yea , if the suspender extract and produce the charge , and refer his reasons to the lords ; they will advise the same : and if they find the reasons relevant , and proven , will suspend the letters simpliciter . in which case , the decreet of suspension is as other decreets in absence ; and may be reduced upon a summons of reduction : wherein the lords will reconsider the reasons , and hear the parties debate thereupon ; and may recall what they formerly did , albeit super eisdem deductis : which they cannot do in decreets upon compearance . but when the defender is absent , the lords do not so accurately consider the cause , seing there is a remedy : and likewise because , albeit they find the reasons relevant , as before ; the party may elide the same by relevant answers and duplys . if the charger compear , and also the suspender , and the principal suspension is produced ; then the charger doth briefly repete his charge , or decreet suspended , and declares what he insists in . and if there be any thing general , he useth to give in a condescendence in writ , at the beginning , to be seen with the charge ; which therefore is called the special charge . and if the charge have in it many members , he declares what points he insists in primo loco : and if he do not , the suspender may insist upon any reason of suspension he pleaseth , against any of the points . the suspender in repeting his reason , should condescend by the number , what reason it is ; and whether it be libelled or eked . for suspenders may add or eke to their libelled reasons , if they will. so that if the reason they repete , be neither eked nor libelled , in strict form , it may be repelled : or if the eked reason hath not been at first produced , and seen , with the suspension , it ought not to be received . yet many times the ordinary will indulge that favour , and cause the charger either answer it instantly , or take it up till a day , to see : which he may do , without expunging of the cause out of the roll ; but may call the cause again at the day appointed . and if the charger hath seen the reason , may proceed . in like manner , reasons of suspension ought to be instantly verified by writ , unless they be referred to the partie`s oath : in which case , the charger's procurators , to hasten the process , will take a day to produce the charger to give his oath . but if the reason of suspension be founded upon a writ , which is not the suspenders own writ ; as when cautioners suspend upon discharges granted to the principal debitor : the suspender will get a term to prove ; as he will , when the reasons of suspension consist in facto , and are to be proven by witnesses . the first point of debate in suspensions is , upon the relevancy , and verification of the reasons . the next point is , upon the competency of the reasons . for many reasons are competent by way of reduction , that are not competent by way of suspension ; because suspension stops the execution of a decreet already obtained : and therefore the execution should not be delayed , except upon reasons relevant , and a short probation ; but the execution ought to proceed . and if the decreet whereupon execution pass'd , be reduced ; all that hath been taken away by the execution , will be recovered . so a reason upon minority and laesion , is not receivable by way of suspension , but by reduction . neither a reason upon inhibition , interdiction , iniquity , nullity ; or upon any clause irritant , not being declared ; ( albeit it bear to take effect without declarator ) except in few cases . if the reason of suspension be sustained , then the charger propones the answer to the reason ; which is so termed , to difference it from defenses proponed in ordinary actions : because the reason of suspension is a defense in the principal cause , and the answer is a reply thereto . the answer being proponed , is first debated as to the relevancy , and competency thereof : but it needs not be instantly verified , because the charger may delay himself . many things are not competent by way of answer , which are relevant : as upon interdictions , inhibitions , minority , and most nullities , and clauses irritant , and failzies ; which require reduction . but if the suspender have a reduction , and will hold the production thereof satisfied ; he may repete the reasons by way of answer , if coincident with his reasons of suspension . if the answer be sustained , the suspender may propone his reply , which doth not consist in any alledgence against the relevancy or competency of the answer ; but in some distinct writ , clause , or fact , eliding the answer , in the same way as the answer did elide the reason : and so the charger insists in his duply , and the suspender may insist in his triply , and the charger in his quadruply , &c. albeit the suspender be obliged to verifie his reasons of suspension instantly , yet he needs not instruct his reply : because that ariseth upon the charger's answer , and he will get a term to instruct the same , or his quadruply . some reasons of suspension , do not conclude to suspend the letters simpliciter , and so take away the decreet suspended for ever , but to suspend the same for a time ; and then the decreet of suspension bears , the lords suspend the letters a● and while , &c. otherwise ( when the reasons conclude so , and are sustained ) the lords suspend the letters simpliciter . if in discussing the suspension , there be nothing admitted to be proven in the future , then the de●reet of suspension follows : which is the common name both of decreets in favour of suspenders , and of decreets in favour of chargers , whereby the lords find the letters orderly proceeded , either simply , or ay and while such a thing be done . and sometimes the lords suspend the letters for a part , and find the letters orderly proceeded for the rest . if any point be admitted to be proven , either of the reasons of suspension , reply , duply , &c. whether it be in favour of on of the parties only , or of both , when they have different points to be proven ; then litiscontestation is made , and an act must be extracted , which is an act of litiscontestation . but ordinarly in suspensions there is a present decreet . in all reductions there are several things different from ordinary processes : for thereby decreets , acts , or other rights are craved to be reduced or rescinded either upon nullities therein , or upon reasons in facto , or other rights eliding the same , albeit of themselves they be not null . so that whatsoever is competent as a reason of suspension , is much more competent as a reason of reduction : albeit many things be not competent by suspension , which are competent by reduction . and therefore when that occurrs , suspenders use with the suspension to raise a reduction , that when the suspension comes to be discuss'd , those things that are not competent by suspension , may yet be received in the suspension , because of the reduction . especially if the reduction be seen , and the pursuer hold the production satisfied by the charge . then repeting his reason of suspension and reduction as coincident , he will get the same terms in both . but if he will not hold the production satisfied by the charge , then he must debate the reason of suspension alone : and if they be not found competent , and sufficiently instructed ; the letters will be found orderly proceeded in the suspension , reserving the reduction as accords . and if the reduction be seen , and be probable to be soon ready , and upon relevant grounds ; then the decreet upon the suspension will be suspended to be extracted for a time , that in the mean while the suspender may insist in his reduction : which sometimes is prorogat upon supplication as the lords see cause . and when the decreet of suspension is extracted , if there be reduction depending ; the suspender doth oftimes obtain a second suspension , that he may conclude his reduction , but the giving or extracting the second decreet of suspension is seldom delayed upon a reduction , which was either not rised , or not ready , the time of discussing the first suspension . in reductions the will commanding the defender to be cited , is put in the first place ; and then the writs called for to be reduced , in the next : and last , the reasons of reduction , ( which with the writs called for , are left blank ordinarly at the raising of the reduction , and filled up afterwards , before it be given out to be seen ) containing such reasons as the pursuer knows , relating in partic●lar to the writs called for , and such other general reasons as commonly may be alledged against any writ ; as wanting witnesses , or the designation of them , or wanting the designation of the writer , or being vitiat in the date , or other substantials ; which are libelled , mainly , to compell the defender to produce : because he is obliged to produce no writ , but such against , which there is a reason libelled . but after the writs called for are produced , the pursuer useth to cut the summons , and to libel such reasons as he sees thence emergent : whereupon the dispute follows . but because certifications upon reductions alone , do only conclude the writs called for , to be reduced ay and while they be produced , which will be sufficient until the decreet of reduction be reduced , and till in the reduction the writs reduced , be produced , ( for till that time , no use can be made thereof , against that right whereupon they were reduced ; ) and because the certification in improbations is far more absolute , and strong , bearing that the writs called for shall make no faith in iudgement , but shall be repute as false and fenzied , because they were not produced , therefore in the same libel , reduction and improbation are frequently joyned , whereby all the writs called for , have a general reason of falshood libelled against them . which reason of falshood may not be eiked in the reduction , but the improbation must be libelled upon a bill pass'd with the concourse of his majesties advocat as in crimine falsi . the calling upon the copy of reductions , and obtaining protestations by the defender , is alike as in other process . and when the pursuer compears , if the defender be absent , the clerks calling the summons of reduction , do admit certification of course : and if compearance be made , the reduction with the titles , grounds , and instructions thereof , are given out to the defender's advocat . and if they be not returned in due time , the pursuer causeth call upon the large copy , to reproduce the process , against such a day , and then assigns another day , with certification ; and then admits certification . which may be extracted within twenty four hours after it is read in the minute-book , unless the process be reproduced . and that decreet is the strongest of any of that kind , because decreets of certification in reductions and improbations , require no probation , but are granted upon the contumacy of the defender , who refuseth to produce . and therefore that certification is intended to force them to produce , since otherwise the right will be reduced and improven , and be holden as false and fenzied . when reductions are seen , returned , and inrolled , at the calling thereof by the ordinary , the pursuer`s advocat doth shortly relate his title , and the writs he calls for to be reduced , and improven generally , or particularly , and then craves certification contra non producta . the defender`s advocat may also relate the cause , and doth then propone his defenses against the executions , the pursuers title , or upon the interest of either party , or alledgeth , that all parties interessed are not called , and urgeth the pursuer particularly to condescend on the writs called for , and debates whether he hath interest by his title produced , to call for them , either for reducing , or improving of them . where there ariseth many important debates , which being discuss●d , the defender takes a term to produce , and sometimes the term is assigned reserving all the defenders defenses against the interest of the party , and the alledgences against the production : which reservation continues till all the terms of production be run . and when certification is granted contra non producta , if the defender produce any thing , he will then be heard to dispute . why he ought to produce no further : and that not only from the interest of the pursuer , whereby he cannot call for any other writ than what is produced ; but also upon the ground , that the defender hath produced sufficiently , to exclude all rights produced by the pursuer . in which case the lords will sometimes hear the parties debate their rights , even before the production be closed : albeit it be more ordinary , and regular , that the defender should produce what he can upon his hazard , and certification should be granted against the rest . so that all the writs whereby the defender can defend himself , being in the field , the dispute may be clear , and intire : which otherwise may be drawn out into a very long endurance . seing the defender , if it be found that he hath not produced sufficiently , may still drop in one single writ , and renew the debate thereupon , and alledge he hath now produced sufficiently , and make as many disputes as he hath single writs , contrary to the intent of this kind of process , which is to force defenders to produce all they have , before they begin to dispute . but the defender will not be heard after the first additional production , before certification : but if what he then produceth , doth unquestionably elide the pursuers production , he will be assolzied . but if the matter remain any wayes dubious● the lords will rather observe the ordinary form , by concluding the production first , and then falling upon the reasons of reduction . before the act of regulation there were two terms allowed in reductions and four in improbations for production of the writs called for . after the first term of production was come , and the act extracted , the pursuer's advocats caused the clerk call thereupon , to satisfie the desire of the act , and he upon calling it , assigned a day for that purpose : and after that called the second time , and assigned some diets more , with certification . but he could go no further , till the act was called by the ordinary , who assigned a second term , whereupon a second act was extracted . the ordinary upon calling the second act in the same manner as the first , was accustomed to assign a third term , which being come , and a third act extracted and called as aforesaid , if the matter were of consequence , and concerned the right of many lands , and that the defender would take a fourth term to close the production of his own consent , the ordinary did give him it : otherwise he would grant certification contra non producta conditionally , that what the defender produced betwixt and such a day should be received . which favour was only granted least the parties and advocats should be surprised . but since the act of regulation , there are only two terms to produce in improbations , and one in reductions : which must be assigned by the ordinary . reductions , unless when they are coincident with suspensions , are to be discuss'd as to the production in the outer-house : but because of their importance , they are priviledged only to be discuss`d in the inner-house , as to the reasons of reduction , unless the lords upon supplication grant warrant to the ordinary to hear and discuss the same . and therefore when the production is closed , and the certification concluded , either by the pursers holding the production satisfied with what is produced , or by extracting the certification contra non producta ; the cause is again called . but the defender may propone his defenses against the production , which were reserved in initio litis , before certification be extracted , or if he insist not therein , when the pursuer repetes his reasons of reduction , the defender will refer the same to the lords . and unless there be a warrant to hear the cause extra , the ordinary will only make a great avisandum to both parties to be ready , to dispute the reasons when the lords call : and in the mean time , ordain the defender to see his own production in the clerks hands , as he will be served . but if there be a warrant to hear the cause , he will give the defender some time to revise his own production in the clerks hands , and be ready at the next calling . this is called a great avisandum in opposition to the ordinary avisandum , whereby the ordinary upon any dubious point returns ●his answer to the advocats , that he will give the lords answer , that he will advise with the lords . the main defense competent in reduction besides those which are common to all other actions , upon the executions and order , are first , upon the pursuers title and production , that it cannot give him any interest to reduce , or improve any of the writs called for . and if his interest be sustained , then the defense runs upon registrat writs . if they be registrat in the books of council and session , ●he defender alledgeth , no certification , because he condescends upon the time of the registration , whereby the pursuer is obliged to search the register , and to insist against the clerks to produce the principal writs r●gistrat . but if they be registrat in inferior courts , certification will be granted , unless the clerk of the court be called . but if he be called , his not compearing , or not producing , is upon the hazard of the defender : and the condescending on the date of the registration , will not be sufficient in that case ; but the defender upon his own peril , must search for the principal , and produce them . but if the writs alledged registrat in the books of session , be not found therein , according to the condescendence ; certification will be admitted against the same . there is also an ordinary defense against the production of apprisings , that the charter and seasin following thereupon , are produced ; and that before the year 1624. apprisings were left at the signet , as warrants thereof : so that no certification can be granted against such . neither will certification be granted against the executions of warnings , or other executions of summons , which are small inconsiderable papers , easely lost ) if reduction or improbation be intented long after obtaining of decreets . but the registration of seasins will not stop certifications against them , because the principal seasin is not left at the register . the like holds in reversions , assignations and fikes the●eto , and in writs registrat during the vsurpation , when the principals were given back to those that registrat them . but the chief debate anent production is , about the general clause , whereby it is craved that the defender may produce all writs and evidents made and granted by the pursuer`s predecessors and authors of , and concerning the lands and rights in question , as to which it is alledges , no certification against writs made by the pursuer , and his authors , unless his right and progress from these authors be produced : which is sustained , and the certi●ication so qualified . albeit it be sometim●s debated that the pursuer being infeft , and in possession of the lands ; especially if he can alledge , that he hath produced a progress of fourty y●ars time , which by the act of prescription 1617. if clad with possession uninterrupted during that time , maketh an absolute right , against all deadly ; it seems to give interest to all for , and reduce the opposit rights made by whomsoever , whether the pursuer show that he hath right from the authors thereof , or not : especially since the act of parliament 1617. it useth also to be alledged , no certifi●ation against writs made to the defenders , and their authors , unlefs these authors , or some representing them , were called : which the lords will sustain , because no man is obliged to dispute his author 's right , unless he be called . but it will s●ffice to call his apparent heir : and the rights belonging to the defenders may be produced , al●eit they be not actually entered heirs , or infest . and therefore the general clause is sustained as to all writs and rights granted to the defenders and their predecessors to whom they may succeed jure sanguinis , or against all writs granted in favours of their authors , and in favours of these that their ●uthors might r●present jure sanguinis , if the authors , or any that do , or might represent them be called . but certification will not be admitted against writs granted by the pursuer's predecessors , except such predecessors to whom he is actually served heir , immediately , or by progress . it useth also to be alledged , that no certification can be granted against the writs called for , but such only against which a reason is libelled : which is taken off when improbation is included . because that reason , that all the writs called for , are forged false and fenzied , reacheth all : and where improbation is not libelled , the common alledgence upon nullities , or the like , useth to be insert . and if a reason be libelled that may reach them , the pursuer is not obliged to dispute , whether the reason be relevant ot not . and therefore as the nullities upon the subscription of original rights , so generally nullities of registrat writs are libelled , as being acts or decreets extracted contrary to the warrant of the judge . there uses also incident diligences to be raised , and produced to stop certification . which incident diligences are summons of exhibition against the havers of any of the writs called for ; especially against the defenders superiors , authors , and others . for albeit the superior , and other authors might be called ; yet if they compear not , the defenders compearing ought not to lose their rights . and therefore law allows them time to use diligence for recovering of their rights , not only during the terms of produ●tion , but also ay and while the incident be discuss'd . but the incident will seldom be sustained , for recovering the defenders own writs : because without consideration of the dependence of the process , he had sufficient interest to pursue the exhibition , and delivery of these ; unless they were common writs , of the defender's lands and rights , and of other lands and rights , the custody whereof did not belong to the defender , by the agreement of parties , or because he hath the lesser interest : or unless the defender be , or hath been minor , and the writs in the hands of his tutors , or curators . so as it is the defenders fault that he hath not his own writs : and therefore cannot thereby delay the pursuer , but must content himself with the ordinary terms of production . if the terms of compearance in the incident be not past before the term of production in reductions , or the first term in improbations ; it will not be sustained , nor stop the course of the action . but if the incident be raised and execute debito tempore , and all solemnities and formalities exact therein , it will be sufficient : but in the mean time the ordinary terms will proceed , not only for the writs for which the incident is sustained , but specially for all other writs called for . for it were against reason , that after the incident is ended , any terms of production as to these writs should then be demanded . in discussing the reasons of red●ction there is litle singular from ordinary a●●ions . for the reasons are in effect the libel , and as in any particular libels concluding either against divers w●●●s , or against the same right super diuer●●s ●ed●●● . and therefore the defender's ex●cep●ions against the reasons● are not designed an answer as in a suspension , but ● defense whereunto the pursuer replys , the defender duplys , &c. until the points be discuss'd and litiscontestation be made . the pursuer may insist against any writ he pleaseth , primo loco : and upon any reason may make litiscontestation , and may obtain decreet ; and thereafter may insist agai●st the rest of the rights . but if he make no preference , the defender may propone his defenses against any of the reasons of reduction , he pleaseth to choise first . upon the discussing of the reasons of reduction , litis●on●●station is never made for proving any thing by writ , as the progress of any right : because the certification contra non producta , cuts off all other writs , but such as are produced . so that whatever can be alledged upon writ is instantly verified . yet litiscontestation may be made for proving points of fact , as the proving of minority , interruption by possession , deeds of homologation , and offers , which may be proven by oath of party , or by witnesses . thus litiscontes●ation is cleared in all kinds of processes : and it is the main point in all of them , fixing the same , and ordering , not only the ●atter to be proven , but the manner and terms assigned for probation . after acts of litiscontestation are extracted , both parties are in tuto till the term pass : if they do take out diligences for proving the points admitted to their probation ; whether it be for exhibition of writ , for proving of points found probable by writ , or for citing the parties to compear and depo●e upon points referred to their oaths , with certification to be holden as co●fess●d , if they compear not . for albeit in discussing of suspensions or advocations● chargers do not put suspenders , or raisers of advocation , to ●ake terms to cite them , which would give them delay , but their advocat● do take the shortest terms they can , to produce them to depone ; yet in other cases , when any p●int is referred to a partie's oath , he must be cited by ● messenger at arms , personally apprehended , with certification to be holden as ●onfest . and if the point to be proven be by witnesses , diligences are granted , to compell the witnesses to compear . for which there were many terms granted , and more to the pursuer ( who wa● not presumed to delay himself ) than to the defender ; which were in the way of letters of four forms● the first being only a citation to compear and bear witness , the second a citation with certification that letters of horning would be direct , the third a horning , the fourth a caption● but now these being long out of use in any case , there are only two diligences granted against witnesses , either for the pursuer or the defender ; the first by horning , the second by caption . the diligence for production of writs to prove , are either ordinary or incident . ordinary diligences are competent to part●es , even for recovering of their own writs● but incident diligences are for recovering of writs belonging to others● at least are in the hands of t●to●● a●d curators . for when parties are to prove by other ●ens writs they have no title● 〈…〉 them exhibit the same● but incident●● as they may be made use of in ●●oces●●● . and therefore they are called i●●ident diligen●es , being in the tenor of an exhibition of writs for in●tructing any point of right , or fact. incident diligences were formerly most tedious , expensive , and wearisome to parties . for the user thereof might , for proving that the party cited had the writs he called for , make use of witnesses ; and thereby had four terms to cite the witnesses . and if thereby he obtained decreet of exhibition , he had terms against the havers , by horning and caption , and several terms also against magistrats to put the caption in execution . all which defenders were ready to pretend necessary , when they knew there was nothing to be found , and did it only to procure delay . but by the act of regulation these delays and pretences are much cut off . for as the subjects in every society are oblieged to promove justice , by bearing witness upon their oaths , so are they oblieged to depone , whether they have any writs that may prove the thing in controversie , and if they acknowledge the having thereof ; they ought to exhibite them ad modum probationis . therefore incident diligences do now proceed by horning against the alledged havers , charging them to appear and depone whether they have the writs called for , and to produce them in so far as they have them : and if they obey not the charge of horning , letters of caption are direct to incarcerat them , till they depone , and exhibite what they acknowledge . there be three sorts of oaths : oaths of verity , oaths of calumny , and oaths in litem . oaths of verity do affirm or deny , the truth of the point refered rhereto : wherein if the deponent deny , he may either do it simply , or qualifica●e , so far as he knoweth or remembers ; in which case his oath will not exclude other probation . but if his oath be affirmative , he may not so qualifie the same . oath of calumny doth only require the party to depone , that he doth not calumniously alledge any point , knowing it not to be true : but that he believes it to be likely . and if by this oath , he do not so assert the point offered thereto , or be holden as confest for not deponing ; it is a sufficient probation against him . there is not so much consideration to be had in the oath of calumny , of the iustice of any point , which the judge should determine● but of the partie's opinion of the verity thereof . for by our custom oaths of calumny are not taken , till the lords sustain the relevancy . nor are pu●suers put to depone de calum●ia upon the whole libel , before it be discuss●d . if the party be present , whose oath is craved upon the libel , or alledgance , he must either depone , or be holden as confest : and if absent , he may be cited by a messenger , with that certification which goeth on as a distinct process . advocats are also put to depone de calumnia , that they do not invent their alledgances , but were truely so informed . when witnesses are allowed to prove , the act bears , those points in which they are allowed to prove , to be pr●●●● pr●●● at ●●rt . for by our law , witnesses are not ad●itted to prove matters of importance , where writ ●●eth● and may be interpo●●d to secure again●t ●erjury , and as a penalty upon the negligence of these who might have ma●e ●fe of write , and did not . as the roman● did exclude naked pactions , without stipulation ; so witnesses cannot prove the lending or delivery of mony , above an hundred pou●● scots . and they can in no case prove promises , commands , or warrants . neither can witnesses be taken to take away writ , except as to delivery of victual . the terms of probation being come , and bygone , either party against whom any point is to be proven , causeth the clerk call the act of litiscontestation , and the advocats therein mentioned , and intimats to the parties to satisfie the desire of the act ; and thereafter the act is called by the ordinary , before other causes be discuss'd . the act having been first intimat by the clerk , and thereafter called by him before the ordinary , the advocats therein mentioned are called to the bar , and then the pursuer's advocat craves , that the term may be circumduced : and oft-times much time is spent in relating of the cause , and tenor of the act ; especially by the defenders advocats , who many times have need to bring themselves in remembrance of the cause by speaking of it : for avoiding whereof , the sub-clerk who calls the act should peruse it , and be in readiness to relate to the ordinary in a word , what is the point to be proven : which may be done without so much as repeting the process , but only the kind of the action , and then whether the same , or a defense reply , or duply was admitted , reading the interloqutory words of the act , which expresses what was admitted to probation . the ordinary terms accustomed in such cases are , that the advocats who cause call the act craves , that the term may be circumduced , or that certification may be granted , or specially , that the party may be holden as confest , if that be the certification . likewise the pursuer causeth call the act when any defense , duply , or quadruply is admitted to the defender's probation . in which case he craves , the term to be circumduced against the defender . as also , if the pursuer be to prove the point by the defender's oath , then he causeth call the act and craves , the defender to be holden as confest . if the point , whether it be the reply , or triply , be to be proven by the pursuer , then the defender calls the act and craves , the term to be circumduced against the pursuer . or if the defender be to prove any thing by the pursuer's oath , then he craves , the pursuer to be holden as confest . but if there be points to be proven hinc inde , as if the defence do not acknowledge the libel ; then if the pursuer call the act , albeit the defender call not at the same time , yet he will alledge , that certification cannot be admitted , until the pursuer prove his own libel , and prove the quantities , or prices : which will be either granted , or at least no decreet can be granted , till the pursuer's part be proven ; and whatever the defender produceth medio tempore , will be admitted : but regularly certification should not be admitted . the same holds in other points of the process , to be proven by the defender , when the defenses do not acknowledge the points to be proven by the pursuer . but if the defense acknowledge not the libel , nor the reply the defense ; then if the pursuer call , and renounce probation as to his libel , he may crave the term to be circumduced for not proving the defense , though he prove not the reply , that being only necessary to be proven in case the defense be proven . as if the defense be compensation ● and the reply be recompensation or discharge of that debt , whereupon the compensation is called ; if the pursuer prove the debt , he may crave the term to be circumduced against the defender for not proving the debt , whereupon he craves compensation , albeit the pursuer prove not the reply . in this case also the defender may crave the term to be circumduced against the pursuer , for not proving of his libel , albeit the defender prove not his defense . but if the pursuer adduce probation , or use diligence for proving of the libel , the defender cannot crave the term to be circumduced against the pursuer , for not proving his reply , till the defender prove his own defense . the like holds in the duply , or in any other point . the term may be circumduced , and yet no decreet pronounced . as if the pursuer have adduced probation of his libel , quantities , and prices not acknowledged by the defense , and renounced probations , he may crave the term to be circumduced against the defender ; to the effect the cause may be concluded and advised . in circumduction of the term , or granting of certifications , the ordinary useth to do it conditionally , that what shall be produced betwixt and such a time , shall be received : ( especially if the defender's advocat declare , that the writs called for , are not at present in his power , but that he expects the same ) the time of which qualification is in the discretion of the ordinary , who will give longer time , if any impediment or hinderance appear . item if the point be to be proven by oath of party , and at calling of the act , the advocat for the party who is to give his oath , produce testificats of his sickness or infirmity , or other necessary obstacle or impediment : and therefore craves a further term , or commission , which will be granted , if the testimony be upon conscience from known persons ; especially ministers , and physitians . especially if that obstacle was not known to the partie's advocat , when litiscontestation was made , but emergent , and new come to knowledge . and though it be not sustained , yet if there be any probability therein , the term will be circumduced conditionally to such a time , that the party holden as confest may compear and depone . and these conditional circumductions the lords , upon supplication , do oftimes prorogat , as they see cause . in posterior diligences , there is only warrant granted to cite such witnesses as were in the former diligence , unless there be a warrant for it by the lords , upon the emergency of the notice of further witnesses , or the death , or removal of others before cited : and regularly no more than twenty four witnesses can be adduced for the same points . witnesses will be received upon the very day of compearance assigned for them : and they are brought judicially to the bar , and the parties being also called to the bar , their oaths are taken by the ordinary , who may hear and discuss the objections made against them , or may refer the objections till the afternoon , to be received by those who receive and examine the witnesses . who , if any debate arise upon any objection , will ordain the witnesses to attend the next day , and in the mean time will advise with the lords thereane●t . in some cases , also witnesses are sequestrat , that neither party may have access to them , that so they may be more free , and their testimonies without corruption . objections against witnesses as all other dilators , must be instantly verified ; witnesses not being obliged to attend , till the verity of the objection be proven . nor are two litiscontestations admittable , regularly , in one cause . therefore reprobators have been sometimes protested for , but the effect thereof hath been very rare . requisites of witnesses are , that they be famous , equal , and inconcerned in the ●arties , or cause . hence arise the objections : 1. that the witnesses are infamous , as being so cognosced and declared by the sentence of a judge competent , as by the counsel and session , and justice general . 2. upon the same point of infamy , persons known to the lords to be debauch'd , or in no reputation , ( albeit they be not so judicially declared , ) will be excluded : and such as are not worthy the kings vnlaw . upon which ground it is , that beggars are excluded . 3. witnesses are excluded upon their interest in the adducer● and that either by consanguinity , affinity , or service . by consanguinity , cousin-germans , or of a nearer degree , are excluded . and where there is not penuria testium , sometimes witnesses adduced of a further degree , will be excluded , as in penuria testium , degrees regularly prohibite , will be admitted . the degrees of affinity are not so clearly determined . but , unless there be penurie , the same degree is likewise to be observed in affinity as is consanguinity . but there is no affinitas affinitatis : and therefore a man will not be admitted in the cause of his wif`s brother and sister , but he may be witness in the cause of his wif`s sister`s husband ; because that is but affinitas affinitatis . much more in cases more remote . as interest in the adducer , so prejudice or enmity with the other party , may exclude witnesses : who in that case are not presumed to be equal and impartial . and likewise upon the point of interest , not only domestick servants , but moveable tenents , who may be removed at the arbitriment of the adducer , having no standing tack , nor infeftment ; are not ordinarly admitted : but vassalls , and tenents having a tack are . witnesses are also excluded upon inequality , if they have given partial counsel , in prejudice of the party against whom they are adduced ; or have received , ( or accepted a promise of ) any benefit or good deed , for bearing testimony , other then the ordinary expences allowed to witnesses . and therefore albeit these be not objected agai●st the party , the lords use to cause witnesses purge themselves of partial counsel , which they explain to them , not only of their partiality by good deed , whereby they may be presumed to have promised , and intended not to be exact in the truth of their testimony ; but also if they have stirred up the party to the plea , and promised to bear witness for him , and advised him how to mannage it . the point of inter●st in the cause excludes witnesses , not only if they may tine or win in the cause , as being sharers therein ; sed si ●oveant consimilem causam , whereby they may be suspected to give their testimony so , as may advantage the interest of the like cause , wherein they are concerned . but in all cases , there is much in the arbitriment of the lords : wherein they ponder the moment of the cause , the antiquity , and capacity of witn●s●es , whereby sometimes vvitnesses who by their circumstances , appear to be ne●essary vvitness●s , are admitted contrary to the ordinary exceptions . and albeit in civil cases , the lords do not admit vvomen ; yet in some cases , wherein they are necessary vvitnesses , they will be adduced even in matters of greatest moment . as if the question be concerning the return of tocher , or the enjoyment of a joynture , and if it be alledged , that al●eit the marriage was dissolved within year and day , yet there was a living child born and heard cry and weep ; in this case , the mid-wife , and other vvomen who were present at the birth of the child , will be admitted vvitnesses , as being necessary , seing men use not to be present at that time . sometimes also the lords will admit vvitnesses cum nota : and generally , when vvitnesses are examined ex nobili officio , all vvitnesses whatsoever are admitted , and the lords consider how far to make use of their testimonies , at the advising thereof . the probation being closed , the cause comes to be concluded . vvhich is two wayes : for either the pursuer renounceth probation , and refers the cause to the lords ; or otherwise , if the defender have adduced probation , and have no more terms current , or competent , then the pursuer doth protest , that the cause may be holden as concluded , which also will be admitted . at the conclusion of the cause , when vvrits are produced , the producer is not obliged to dispute that the vvrits produced will prove , or not ; yet it must appear , that the vvrits have contingency with the points to be proven : for the production of any vvrits , is not sufficient , and will not stop the circumduction of the term ; but notwithstanding thereof , if they make nothing to the points to be proven , the term will be circumduced . vvhen commissions are granted to examine vvitnesses in the countrey , the term will be circumduced if the report be not produced . and if it be produced , but contain no testimony of vvitnesses , but the procedure of the commissioners ; there the dispute arises , whether he who was to report the commission , or the other party have failed or not : for if they have failed , the term will be circumduced . and therefore they alledge these reasons to purge their failzies . 1. that the commissioners , ( one or more ) necessary to have proceeded , kept not the dyet , or that having kept it , they refused to examine the vvitnesses in respect of the other parties not compearance , upon any question arising , whether the witnesses were receivable , yea or not : wherein the commissioners are to follow the common rules o● exceptions against witnesses as aforesaid : and if any extraordinary objections be alledged , they may mention the objections , and receive the witnesses ; but they may not reject the witnesses , but ought to leave it to the lords consideration , what use they will make of the testimony . and therefore if they reject the witnesses without the ordinary exceptions , the party grieved will alledge , that the commission ought to be renewed to them , with order to receive these witneses which they have refused ; or to other commissioners ; or that the witnesses ought to be called before the lords . or if the commissioners refuse to examine the witnesses , upon the interrogators proposed , if the lords find these interrogators pertinent , they will grant a commission and ordain the witnesses to be examined thereupon . or if any accident hath befallen the party , who was the adducer of the witnesses , or other considerations occur , moving the lords , they will either grant commission de novo , or otherwise a term to adduce witnesses before themselves . when any party craves commission to adduce witnesses in the countrey , it is upon their peril of moving the witnesses to appear . for in that case they are not to expect terms , and several diligences , as if they adduced them before the lords : the very demanding of a commission importing a passing from the ordinary terms , if the same be granted . causes being concluded in manner foresaid , there ought to be an act extracted thereupon . after which it comes to be advised . the saturday ordinarly is spent in advising concluded causes : and either party may protest to be heard , at the advising of the cause , as they think fit . but whether parties do protest or not , the lords doth always call them , and hear them . if the probation be by writ , or by oath , containing any quality . but if the oath be simple and plain , the lords will advise without calling the parties . or if the probation be wholly by witnesses , the testimonies are not published unto the parties : and therefore the lords advise the same with closs doors . if the probation be by writ they are heard , whether the same prove or prove not , and the whole writ , or the clauses in question , are read in audience of the parties . in like manner objections are competent against nullities of the law , which are visible in the writs adduced : as want of witnesses , or writer , or witnesses not designed , or as vitiat in substantialibus . yea not only objections are competent , but exceptions that may elide the writ produced , are also competent ; especially if in the act there be a reservation to alledge a contra producenda . and if the alledgence doth elide the writ produced , it should be such , as could not have been known the time of the litiscontestation . but the alledgence ought to be instantly verified , except in singular cases , in which there will be a new probation admitted , which makes an exception from the common rule , that there cannot be two litiscontestations in the same cause . there are also frequent debates upon qualified oaths , whether the quality adjected be competent , or not . wherein this a general rule , that whatsoever the alledgence referred to oath , relates to any writ , fact , or deed wherein the alledger pitches upon what makes for him , admitting the other points and circumstances , when it is proper for the deponent to express the whole tenor of the writ , bargain , promise , or fact , as well that makes against him as for him . and these are called intrinsick qualities : because the qualifications or conditions are inherent in the same fact , or right . as if a party be pursued on an alledged bargain for delivery of victual , or ware , at the prices libelled ; if he depone , it was true the bargain was made , but with this condition , if the mony was not delivered against such a time , the bargain should be void ; and that it was not delivered , nor offered at that time ; this is a competent quality . in like manner , if one be pursued for a debt , or for a promise made , or goods delivered ; as the libel , if it be referred to oath , will not be relevant , except the subsumption bear , that the same is resting , owing , or unperformed , so the deponent doth properly and plainly depone , both upon the truth of the debt , promise , or receipt , and also that the debt is not resting , but was payed and received , either by the other party himself , or others by his direction , and warrand . nor will he be obliged to produce or prove these : seing his obligation is not proven by writ , or witnesses . in which last cases , the presumption of not-payment , and not-performance being negative , transfers the onus probandi : and therefore payment or performance must be proven . but there are other qualities extrinsick , and unproper , which will not be admitted by way of quality , to be proven by the deponent's own oath : but ought to have been proponed and proven by exception . as if a party being pursued for a debt , acknowledge the same , but depones● that the pursuer was owing him as much : this is extrinsick , and resolves in an exception of compensation . and therefore will not be regarded in the oath , but the defender will be decerned , reserving his action for that other debt as accords . yet if it be dubious , whether the quality be competent or not , the lords will sometimes find it relevant as an exception , and assigne a term for proving thereof , or will decern , and preserve that alledgence contra executionem , by way of suspension . at the advising of the cause , many times new defenses and alledgences are proponed , which are received , if instantly verified , but not otherwise , though emergent or new come to the proponer●s knowledge , unless he have raised reduction of the act of litiscontestation thereupon , or upon nullities : as if it hath been extracted contrary to the minutes , or meaning of the lords . but such alledgences emergent , or new come to knowledge , may be reserved by way of suspension , or reduction : for thereby the other party gets decreet , and may use inhibition , or other real execution thereupon , and get caution before he be put to dispute these points . vvhen the lords proceed to advise the cause , they either find the points referred to probation proven , or not proven . or otherwise they find thè same proven simpliciter , or they find the same sufficiently proven ad victoriam ca●sae , that albeit all that was offered to be proven , be not fully proven , yet that as much is proven as alone would have been relevant . if the lords at the advising of the cause , find some points not clear , they will ordain such further probation to be adduced by either , or both parties , as they see fit . if they find semplenam probationem , they will , ex officio , take the oath of either party for their further evidence of the truth . and after this will proceed , ●ill they advise the cause de novo . after all that the lords ●ind necessary for a finall sentence , is done and they have advised the cause , they pronounce decreet cond●●natory , or absolvatory , according as they find proven or not proven by the probation . against which , till it be extracted , either party by snpplication may represent what they desire : which the lords will take in consideration , and the supplication aud interlocutor thereupon , will be insert in the sentence . the decreets of the lords ( being ●he supream ordinary judicatory in all civill causes ) is unquarrellable upon point of iniquity : and therefore nothing that was proponed and repelled , will be admitted in the second instance super e●sdam deductis . whereby it is not meant that those sentences are not quarrellable , unless there be new considerations or reasons in jure alledged ; but that unless there be new reasons and new matter in facto . neither is that receivable in the second instance , which was competent in the first instance : but what is emergent and was not competent the time of the litiscontestation . the lords are not so ready to reduce or suspend their decreets upon points and reasons not emergent : but it being alledged , that either the matter of fact is new come to knowledge , or at least the writs or evidents for proving thereof , ( it being hard to instruct what was , or now is in the knowledge of the partie ) the common rule is , praetextu nov●rum instrumentorum non retractantur sententiae . yet the lords will sometimes , when they see it is without all suspition of fraud or negligence , admit what is new come to the parties knowledge , though not emergent . neither will the lords recall decreets upon certification , or circumduction of the term , especially certifications in improb●tions ; neither any other but upon singular reasons impeding the party to keep the term , or otherwise upon emergent writs , instructing that wherein the party succumbed , or new come to knowledge , without any suspition of fraud , or the partie 's designing to delay . this is the ordinary form of process before the lords of council and session : then which there can be nothing more rational , more regular ; every form being the product of long experience , from clear reason and necessity . for the lords are still supplying and perfiting , as they see cause : and whatsoever seems convenient at first , if it prove afterward inconvenient , is laid aside . so that what is retained , is that which hath for a long course been found rational and convenient . but besides the ordinary form , many things are incident , in processes , which are extraordinary , and fall not under the ordinary points of process ; at least , in the ordinary way : which therefore are offered to the lords by supplication , and proposed in the time of the dispute verbo , not comprehending any defense , reply , or duply . such as the sequestration of goods in question , or the sequestration of mails and duties of lands , or naming factors for unlifting the same medio tempore : the taking of the oath of parties , or witnesses , to remain in retentis , before the ordinary time , if they be sick , or going out of the country , or very old : yea when persons are near the point of death , the lords will ordain them to be examined upon supplication , although the process be not so much as called . such are also the production of writs , or exhibition of things in question : the sequestra●ion o● r●-ex●mination of witnesses : and many such desires as neither came within the comp●ss of reply , or duply . in like manner points emergent , or new come to knowledge , are represented by a bill at any time during the dependence , and are then admitted . and also whatsoever hath been forgotten , the lords will receive , before the ac●s , or sentences be extracted : and before these are extracted they will rectifie the same , upon supplication , if they have been extracted otherwise then according to the minuts of process , and meaning of the lords ; especially when the complainers advocat hath not seen the scroll , before extracting , or his objections thereanent have not been considered . but nothing should come in by bill ( which is an extraordinary remedy ) where an ordinary remedy is competent : and therefore , whilst a cause is in discussing , parties are ordained to make their address to the ordinary , and ought not to trouble the lords with bills . but if the ordinary`s time be past , and the act or sentence not extracted ; if they have negl●cted any point , they may represent it to the lords , by ●ill , which the lords of course will refer to the ordinary , who heard the cause : who comparing the bill with the process , if he find any thing new therein , will hear the parties thereupon . but if the supplicant rest not satisfied , b●t urge that he may have the lords answer upon the bill ; the ordinary upon an am●undae , will not r●●use it . reprobators also , may be used during the dependence of process , for rejecting of wi●n●s●es , or their tes●imonies . for seeing no exception against the hability of witnesses is receivable , unless it be instantly verified , when they are examined ; parties may raise summons of reprobator , even before the witnesses are examined , when they suspect such witn●sses as are cited against him ; to the effect that thereupon they may cite vvitnesses to prove their grounds of reprobator , at the term assigned for the vvitnesses to appear . or they may protest for reprobators , when the vvitnesses are examined , and raise , and insist in the same , before decreet be extracted : which is the most p●●per way of reprobators , and whereupon the lords will supersede to advi●● the testimonies ( if they see probable evidence of the inhability of the wi●nesses ) till the reprobation be first advised . but if parties neither raised summons before the examination of the vvitnesses , nor do then protest ; they are presumed to acquiesce in the hability of the vvi●nesses , unless the vvitnes●es be adduced in absence . but even after sentence , reprobators are competent , though far less favourable , ( and after a considerable time ought not to be admitted ; ) because if they be insisted in , sho●tly after sentence , the adducer of the vvitnesses , if any of their testimonies should come to be rejected upon inhability , might adduce more vvitnesses for the same point , unless by the probation he were found accessory , to the corruption of the vvitnesses . reprobators cannot proceed upon pretence of the falshood of the testimony , but upon the incapacity , or inhability of that party to be witness in that cause . vvhich will not be excluded , because the vvitnesses have deponed , either generally , or particularly , concerning their hability ; whether upon the motion of the judge , who ordinarly purgeth all vvitnesses of partial counsel , or upon the alledgence of the party referring any objection to their oath . the reason of the difference is , because the testimony in the cause could not prove , unless there were other vvitnesses concurring : but as to the hability , there is no such concourse , every vvitness deponing for himself . but if the ground of reprobature be referred to the oath of the adducer of the vvitnesses , it will be most favourable , and sustained ; except the adducer be alledged author of , or accessory to the corrupti●● ; which could not only be criminal , but capital : and therefore he is not obliged to depone thereanent , after sentence , when the corruption hath become effectual . the main ground of reprobators , is the corruption , or prevarication of the vvitnesses . for if before the testimony quarrelled , they have sworn inconsistently therewith , it will canvel the testimony upon prevarication , and infer infamy ; but no oath emitted thereafter , will weaken the former testimony . especially post sententiam qua jus est acquisitum parti . albeit in re-examinations , recently taken , if there be prevarication , and inconsistency ; the lords proprio motu will reject the testimony . giving or promising good deed , besides the ordinary expenses , and prompting , and instructing vvitnesses how to depone , or threatning them if they do not so , or so , depone ; are pregnant grounds of corruption and reprobature . civing partial counsel by instigating the parties to the plea , and promising to depone for him likewise a relevant reason of reprobature . and likewise the infamy of the witnesses . as being before condemned for an atrocious crime , or declared infamous . and likewise interest in the cause : whereby the witnesses may have a considerable gain or loss . but there be many other exceptions which might exclude a witness before examination , that will not be sustained by way of reprobature after : in which there is a latitude in arbitrio judicis . as if the witness were cousin german to the adducer , or were not accompted a vertuous person , or had given his opinion to the party how to proceed , or been present at consultations . or if the witness , before he were adduced , had declared to the par●y what he would depone , without any pro●ise , or assurance , so to depone ; or instigating the plea thereby . for after process are intented , though persons express what they know in the matter , it will will not amount to proditio testimonij . when reprobators are sustained , to be proven by witnesses , they ought to be condescended upon , and be above all exception . otherwise reprobators may get run round , and leave causes to a perpetual incertainty . upon the decreets of session , all manner os executorials do proceed in course , by letters under the signet . as for arresting the moveable sums , or goods to be made forthcoming for satisfying the decreet : which cannot be loused upon caution , except in singular cases . inhibition , hindering the party decerned against , to dilapidat his lands or heritage . horning , for charging him to make payment , and for denouncing him rebel if he fail . poinding , for distraining of his moveable goods . apprising , or adjudication of his lands and heritable rights in satisfaction . and caption for incarcerating the person of the party decerned , if being denouned to the horn , he have not performed . all which executorials may proceed jointly or severally , except only , that if the creditor possess by vertue of apprising or adjudication , he cannot detain the debitor in prison . but this imprisonment , as its last remedy , admits of liberation super cessione bonorum , proceeding upon humanity , and mercy . for albeit many nations do allow the selling , or using the debitor as a slave ; yet our incarceration is designed but to compell him to do all things , in his power , to satisfie the debt . and therefore when he dispones all that he hath , heritable , or moveable , to his creditors , and delivers the same and the evidents thereof ; he is set at liberty , and is ●ecure against all creditors whom he hath cited for that purpose , as to his personal freedom . yet without prejudice to them , to use real execution against any goods that he shall thereafter acquire . and this decreet doth no longer protect him , then he wears for his outmost garment , the habit appointed by the lords for bankrupts , in which he must come out of prison , unless this be dispensed with upon special consideration , of the manner how he broke , if it was without fraud or prodigality , ( as in the case of merchants ) if it were by shipwrack , or insolvency of debitors , or by fire , robbery , or other accident . against this cessio bonorum , there are only two defenses accustomed : the one is , that the bankrupt hath dilapidat some part of his estate , since his incarceration , further then his necessary aliment . the other , if the creditors offer to aliment him in prison : which can be but a dilator defense , till they may have time to discover what latent rights ha ●ath , or what fraudulent rights he hath made , before or after his incarceration . and is with express condition , that they pay him for his aliment , so much as shall be modified weekly , and if they faill one week , he will be se● at liberty . finis . a proclamation for adjourning of the parliament, from the 20 december to the 1 of march thereafter. scotland. privy council. 1689 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05622 wing s1811 estc r183487 52528973 ocm 52528973 179056 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05622) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179056) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:45) a proclamation for adjourning of the parliament, from the 20 december to the 1 of march thereafter. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, by order of privy council, edinburgh : anno dom. 1689. caption title. dated: given at edinburgh, the fourth day of december, one thousand six hundred and eighty nine years. signed: gilb. eliot cls. sti. concilii. imperfect: creased and stained with some loss of text. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation for adjourning of the parliament , from the 20 of december to the 1 of march thereafter . forasmuch as the lords of his majesties privy council , by their proclamation of the date , the first day of october last by past , in obedience to , and by vertue of , his majesties special command and authority , did in his majesties name adjourn this current parliament , from the eighth day of october then ensuing ( to which day the parliament was formerly adjourned ) until the twentieth day of december instants , and diverse great and weighty considerations moving his sacred majesty to continue the said adjournment from the said twenty day of december , to the first of march next , in the year one thousand six hundred and ninety ; and that the members thereof may not be put to the trouble and charge of meeting upon the said twenty day of december , his majesty hath by his royal letter , of the date at holland-house , the thirty day of november last by past , authorized and required the saids lords to issue forth a proclamation in his name , continuing the adjournment of this current parliament to the first day of march next ; and if his majesty shall find it necessary that the said parliament meet sooner , he will signifie the famine by a proclamation to anticipat that dyet : therefore the saids lords of privy council do in his majsties name , and by his special command and authority , declare the said parliament current , and continue the adjournment thereof until the said first day of march next ensuing the date of the present ; and require and command the lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers of privy council , pursevants , messengers at arms , sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , that incontinent these presents seen , they pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and the remanent mercat-crosses of the head burghs of this kingdom , and there in his majesties name and authority foresaid , by open proclamation , make intimation of the continuation of the said adjournment , from the twenty day of december instant , to the first day of march next ; requiring hereby all the members of parliament to attend that day , in the usual way , and upon the accustomed certifications declaring hereby , not with standing of the present adjournment , that if his majesty shall find it necessary , the parliament should meet before the said first day of march next , he will be favourably pleased to signifie the famine , by a proclamation for anticipating that dyet : for doing of all which , the saids lords commit to them conjunctly and sseverally , his majesties's full power by these presents , delivering the famine by them duly execute and indorfaragain to the bearer . given at edinburgh , the fourth day of december , one thousand six hundred and eighty nine years . per actum dominorum sti. concilii . gilb . eliot cls. sti. concilii . god save king william and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , by order of privy council , anne dom 1689. an appendix to the history of the church of scotland containing the succession of the archbishops and bishops in their several sees from the reformation of the religion until the year 1676, as also the several orders of monks and friers &c. in scotland before the reformation : with the foundation of the universities and colledges, their benefactours, principals, professours of divinity and present masters : and an account of the government, laws and constitution of the kingdom. middleton, thomas, 17th cent. 1677 approx. 225 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 29 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2007-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a50800 wing m1990 estc r29541 11168754 ocm 11168754 46492 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a50800) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 46492) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1426:16) an appendix to the history of the church of scotland containing the succession of the archbishops and bishops in their several sees from the reformation of the religion until the year 1676, as also the several orders of monks and friers &c. in scotland before the reformation : with the foundation of the universities and colledges, their benefactours, principals, professours of divinity and present masters : and an account of the government, laws and constitution of the kingdom. middleton, thomas, 17th cent. [4], 47 p. printed by e. flesher for r. royston ..., london : mdclxxvii [i.e. 1677] preface signed: thomas middleton. reproduction of original in the harvard university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng universities and colleges -scotland. scotland -church history. scotland -history. 2005-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2006-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2006-03 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2006-12 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2007-01 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2007-01 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2007-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an appendix to the history of the church of scotland . an appendix to the history of the church of scotland ; containing the succession of the archbishops and bishops in their several sees , from the reformation of religion , until the year 1676. as also the several orders of monks and friers , &c. in scotland , before the reformation : with the foundation of the vniversities and colledges , their benefactours , principals , professours of divinity , and present masters : and an account of the government , laws and constitvtion of the kingdom . london , printed by e. flesher , for r. royston , bookseller to the king 's most sacred majesty , anno domini mdclxxvii . the preface . i may be justly ashamed to appear in print near so great an authour , whose work is received and entertained with such universal applause , that it comes to be reckoned among the patterns of historie . but many do still complain of one defect , that his historie being written chiefly for his own countrie , those things that relate to the constitution and government there , are rather hinted , and supposed to be understood , then fully opened . this has made many desire a clear account of those things ; and the humour of writing the present state of kingdoms being now common to most nations , many have wished to see the present state of scotland . therefore the quick sale of this excellent historie encouraging the bookseller to give the world a fourth edition of it , he was earnest with me , to write such an appendix to it as might adde somewhat to its value and sale . he was importunate to find out one who would write a continuation to it : but i knew well , that both my abilities in writing and my informations were too defective to adventure on such a work. and the bookseller receiving a full satisfaction to his design in the memoires of the duke of hamilton , ( from which , though it be not a full history of all that passed , yet it is hoped the world will receive more light about the late troubles then has been yet published , ) there remained nothing to be done , but to give the succession of the bishops from the time where the former history ends , with the account of religious orders and houses , the foundations of the universities , and the learned men that flourished in them , together with the true state of that kingdom in its government , laws , and supreme courts . which i have endeavoured to doe as fully as seemed needfull . i did not adventure on so hardy a work without communicating it to learned and knowing persons , by whose directions i have now finished these sheets . i have long searched into those things , and have used all the endeavours that were possible , to get any mistakes that might have crept in with such a variety of informations rectified : so that i am very confident there are no considerable errours in matters of fact in the account that follows . i once intended to have published a collection i have made of the noble families in scotland : but hearing there was a person of quality ingaged in it , who intends to write from very authentical grounds an account of the nobility and gentry of scotland , i have stifled that part of my collection . if my style or way of writing be not according to what the reader expects ; as i need great allowances for my defects , so i know upon what disadvantages i appear after such a grave and masculine writer . so that , as when one comes out of a very lightsom place , where his eyes were filled with brightness , into a darker room , it appears quite dark unto him ; i have no reason to wonder , if after so clear a light , all my informations look like night and darkness . thomas middleton . i may be justly ashamed to appear in print near so great an authour , whose work is received and entertained with such universal applause , that it comes to be reckoned among the patterns of history . but many do still complain of one defect , that his history being written chiefly for his own country , those things that relate to the constitution and government there , are rather hinted , and supposed to be understood , then fully opened . this has made many desire a clear account of those things ; and the humour of writing the present state of kingdoms being now common to most nations , many have wished to see the present state of scotland . therefore the quick sale of this excellent history encouraging the bookseller to give the world a fourth edition of it , he was earnest with me , to write such an appendix to it as might adde somewhat to its value and sale . he was importunate to find out one who would write a continuation to it : but i knew well , that both my abilities in writing and my informations were too defective to adventure on such a work : therefore all that i could undertake was onely to give the succession of the bishops from the time where the former history ends , with the account of religious orders and houses , the foundations of the universities , and the learned men that flourished in them , together with the true state of that kingdom in its government , laws , and supreme courts . which i have endeavoured to doe as fully as seemed needfull . i did not adventure on so hardy a work without communicating it to learned and knowing persons , by whose directions i have now finished these sheets . i have long searched into those things , and have used all the endeavours that were possible , to get any mistakes that might have crept in with such a variety of informations rectified : so that i am very confident there are no considerable errours in matters of fact in the account that follows . if my style or way of writing be not according to what the reader expects ; as i need great allowances for my defects , so i know upon what disadvantages i appear after such a grave and masculine writer . so that , as when one comes out of a very lightsome place , where his eyes were filled with brightness , into a darker room , it appears quite dark unto him ; i have no reason to wonder , if after so clear a light , all my informations look like night and darkness . the contents . a list of the kings nobility arch-bishops and bishops of scotland . the first chapter containeth the succession of the archbishops and bishops , in their several sees , from the reformation of religion , to the year 1676. the second chapter containeth the several orders of monks and friers and other religious persons that were in scotland , with a catalogue of their convents and founders . the third chapter containeth the erection of vniversities , the foundation of colledges , with a catalogue of the benefactours , principals , professours of divinity , present masters and professours therein , and learned writers . the fourth chapter containeth an account of the government , laws and constitution of the kingdom ; with a catalogue of the peers , shires , burroughs , lords of his majestie 's privy council , senatours of the colledge of justice , officers of state , &c. whereunto is added a catalogue of the lord chancellours of the kingdom , writers of the scotish history , and high commissioners . with a compleat catalogue of all the arch-bishops and bishops . an appendix to the history of the church of scotland . chap. i. containing the succession of the bishops , in their several sees , from the reformation of religion , to the year 1676. archbishops of saint andrews . after that cardinal david beaton was murthered in his castle of saint andrews by normand leslie and his complices , james hamilton , duke of chattelrault , governour of the realm , did nominate his base brother john hamilton , abbot of pasley , to the place ; who thereupon was elected by the canons , and soon after confirmed by pope paul the third : who , fearing that scotland would follow the example of england , in casting off the yoak of the roman see , was glad to gratifie the governour in that particular . about this time , the estimation of the clergy began to decrease , because of their corrupt lives and gross ignorance ; which induced divers of that number to relinquish their order , and to make open profession of the truth : multitudes also of monks and friers , leaving their cloisters , began to exhort the people to renounce the romish fopperies and superstitions , and to submit to the doctrine of christ , every-where crying out against the corruptions of the church . the prelates , in stead of composing matters calmly , took the contrary course , exercising great severity against them , and cruelly burning such of the new religion ( as they termed it ) as fell into their hands : those who fled they prosecuted with the highest censures of the church , burning them in effigie , and cursing them by book , bell , and candle . but all this cruelty served to no purpose ; for the death of walter mill ( who was the last martyr that suffered for religion ) was the very bane of popery in scotland ; mens minds being now wholly alienated from the clergy , and their consciences convinced , that the doctrine of jesus christ did neither allow such cruel principles , nor countenance such bloudy practices . to return then to archbishop john hamilton , who was attainted of treason under the government of the earl of murray : he lurked a while amongst his friends in the west of scotland ; but finding little security there , he betook himself to the strong castle of dumbarton , whereof the lord fleming was then governour . but this fort be●ng negligently kept , was afterwards surprised by three companies of foot sent thither by the earl of lennox , then regent , commanded by three captains , ramsay , crawford , and hume ; who seising upon the prisoners , sent them to sundry places , and the archbishop with a strong guard to striveling , where he was publickly hanged on a gibbet erected for that purpose , 1570. he was the onely bishop that suffered by form of justice in this kingdom . at this time the rents of this bishoprick were by the regent conferred upon the earl of morton for some years , as a recompence of his great charges in his embassy to england . that earl , that he might enjoy them legally , made choice of john douglas , provost of the new colledge of saint andrews , ( before a carmelite frier , and chaplain to the earl of argile , ) to be titular bishop ; who was , with much opposition of the presbytery , ( for at that time there was no chapter , ) admitted and installed , 1572. this bishop sate little above two years , and died at saint andrews , 1575. after his death , the earl of morton , then regent , did prefer patrick adamson , his chaplain , to the bishoprick of saint andrews . this bishop was sorely vexed by those of the kirk-party , who prosecuted him with the highest censures of their church , and excommunicated him ( very informally ) for not submitting to their judicatory : but the business was afterwards compounded , and the bishop relaxed . he was a man of great learning , but an ill administratour of the churche's patrimony . he sate fifteen years , and died at saint andrews , 1591. hereupon the see continued void , and the profits thereof were by king james the sixth bestowed on the duke of lennox , till the parliament 1606. wherein the temporalties of bishopricks ( in former times annexed to the crown ) were restored ; the want of which had rendered the bishops of unserviceable both to church and state. about this time , george gladstanes , bishop of cathnes , was translated to saint andrews ; a man of ready utterance , and of great invention , but of an easie nature , as appears by his being induced so easily to lease out his benefice for so many ages to come , to the great detriment of his successours . but in this he was not singular , for the rest of the clergy , both papists and protestants , did let leases of their benefices , to their friends and others , for hundreds of years , and that for a pitifull pittance . which extravagancy was afterwards restrained by the wisedom of king james , when he was of age : for he enacted , that bishops should let leases for nineteen years , rectours , &c. for their life-time and three years , and other beneficed persons for their life-time and three years , with consent of their patrons . bishop gladstanes governed the see ten years , and dying at saint andrews 1615. was interred in the south-east isle of the parish-church . upon his death , john spotiswood , archbishop of glasgow , was translated to saint andrews ; who procured to this see ( whose rents were almost wholly alienated by his predecessours ) the revenues of the priory of saint andrews , then in lay-hands , as also the restauration of three hundred pounds of english money per annum , of a long time swallowed up in the crown-rents . the office of the chancellary in the state , conferr'd upon him by that glorious martyr king charles the first , he discharged to the satisfaction of his royal master , and the churche's advantage . he was a person of rare endowments , and in all things compleatly qualified for his imployment . yet did he not escape the hard measure which other loyal subjects afterward tasted of ; for by the covenanters he was forced to retire into england , where he met with entertainment more suitable to his worth . he ended his days in a good old age , and was honourably interred in westminster-abby , anno 1639. after he had governed the see twenty four years . about this time our long peace , and the plenty which did accompany it , made us wanton , our prosperity puft us up with pride , we were enemies to our own welfare , weary of our present estate , too much desirous of revolutions , and greedy of novelties . our private discontents begat jealousies and animosities , which ( since they could be no longer smothered ) must needs burst out into a flame . we were afraid of we knew not what ; nothing but the preservation of religion must be the pretext , and the cloak to cover the knavery which was afterwards acted : and notwithstanding the satisfaction given unto us by the best of kings , in laying aside the book of common-prayer , book of canons , and high commission ; yet still we continued dissatisfied . all the favours conferr'd upon us by the best of princes could not ingage us to continue in our duty and allegeance to him. all the good fruit we brought forth was , our ingaging in a most desperate and horrible rebellion , such as former ages could hardly parallel . like aesop's envious dog , we would neither be at rest our selves , nor suffer our neighbours , and such who continued firm in their allegeance to his majesty , to be at quiet , and live in peace . alas ! we metamorphosed our plough-shares into swords ; the son rose up against the father , brother against brother ; parishes were divided , shires went into factions ; yea , the whole kingdom was divided against it self , sheathing the sword in its own bowels . which way soever we look'd , we saw nothing but that which might consume our eyes , and grieve our hearts . if towards the church , 't was rent by schism ; the bishops , and many of the reverend clergy , were thrust out , imprisoned , plundered , and banished ; the house of prayer made ( in the most literal sense ) a den of thieves . if towards the state , we saw the anointed of the lord imprisoned , arraigned , and , under colour of justice , most barbarously murthered , by those who slew him , like the heir in the gospel , that they might seise on his inheritance . alas ! when church and state were come to this pass , the case of the poor land must needs be deplorable . we saw the loyal subjects , under the names of malignants , traitours , and rebels , imprisoned , banished , and miserably butchered ; their estates and lands forfeited and sold ; their houses garrisoned , plundered , and burnt ; and their posterity almost reduced to poverty and misery . alas ! how quickly did our after-games of loyalty vanish through our own divisions ? was there any possibility of prospering , so long as we continued traitours to our selves ? when we had almost ruined our selves by our own intestine divisions , we became a prey to a tyrannical crue of usurpers : and to compleat our miseries , our estates , our friends , yea our very consciences groaned under the grievous burthen of that insupportable yoak , which our own sins had prepared , and other mens sins had put on . nine years did we groan under the tyranny of these usurpers ; till it pleased almighty god to remember us in mercy , and to free us from the house of bondage , blessing us , after so many calamities and miseries , with peace , by the miraculous restauration of our most sacred sovereign to the throne of his ancestours ; whom god long preserve , for the good of this church and kingdom . now the face of affairs began to change , and his majesty , that he might settle the kingdom , summoned his first parliament to meet at edinburgh , january the first 1661. giving a commission under the great seal to john earl of middleton , to represent his person therein . in the first session , the solemn league and covenant was condemned , as an unlawfull and wicked oath , imposed on the subjects by a prevailing faction , contrary to authority ; the pretended triennial parliaments from 1640. to 1649. with the assembly of glasgow 1638 , &c. were annulled ; the unjust transactions at newcastle 1646. and 1647. condemned ; duke hamilton's ingagement 1648. approved ; the pretended forfeitures of the marquesses of huntly and montross , the earl of forth , barons of glengarey , haddo , dunerub , delgaty , harthill , and others , who had suffered for their loyalty , and all acts made in prejudice of lawfull authority , were rescinded . in the second session , the hierarchy was restored , which had suffered an eclipse for twenty four years . dr. james sharp , professour of divinity at saint andrews , ( who had been professour of philosophy in saint leonard's colledge , ) was preferred archbishop of saint andrews , primate and metropolitan of scotland , who now governs the see. the present chapter of saint andrews ( the old one being dissolved with the priory in the time of the reformation ) had its beginning anno 1606. by act of parliament , and consists of the persons following : the prior of portmollock , dean ; the archdeacon of saint andrews ; the vicar of saint andrews ; couper ; craill ; dysert ; kircaldy ; pittenweem ; lewchars ; kinkell ; dearsie ; fordun ; kennoway ; merkinch ; abercromby ; forgund ; fowlis ; rossie ; balmerino ; longforgund ; the vicar of eglisgreig ; and others , to the number of twenty four . the cathedral , which was an ancient and magnificent fabrick , was demolished with the priory ; since which time the parish-church serves for one . the diocese of saint andrews contains the whole country of fife , part of perthshire , and part of angus and mernis . the coat of arms belonging to the archiepiscopal see of saint andrews , is saphir , a saltier ( being the cross of saint andrew the apostle ) pearl . bishops of edinbvrgh . the bishoprick of edinburgh was founded by king charles the first of glorious memory , about the year 1633. and by him amply endowed . the first bishop thereof was william forbes , doctour of divinity , one of the preachers in edinburgh , ( before , principal of the marischal colledge of aberdene , ) a very worthy person . his works shew him to have been a man of vast learning and sound judgment . he sate but a little while , and died at edinburgh about the year 1634. upon his death , david lindsay , bishop of brichen , was translated to edinburgh . the fury of the rude multitude fell heavy upon this bishop , even to the manifest danger and hazard of his life , upon the first reading of the book of common-prayer in edinburgh , july 1637. he was thrust out , with the rest of the bishops , by the covenanters , 1638. george wishart , doctour of divinity , was , upon the restitution of the hierarchy , anno 1662. promoted to the bishoprick of edinburgh . this worthy man was 1638. preacher at leith , and for his loyalty had very hard measure from the covenanters , being thrice plundered of all that he had , and thrice imprisoned in a filthy stinking gaol . but being delivered from thence , he went beyond sea with the marquess of montross 1646. he was a person of great integrity , and well seen in history . having in his time seen many changes and alterations , from better to worse , and from worse to better , he had his nunc dimittis in peace , at edinburgh , anno 1670. upon his death , alexander young , archdeacon of saint andrews , was preferred to the bishoprick of edinburgh , who now governs the see. the cathedral-church is that of saint giles , ( of old a collegiate church , ) a vast and magnificent structure . it is at present divided into four partitions , three whereof are allotted to god's publick worship . the diocese of edinburgh containeth the shires of edinburgh , linlithgow , and berwick , the constabulary of haddington , and bailiary of lawderdail . bishops of dvnkeld . after the death of bishop robert creighton , james patton was preferred bishop of dunkeld , anno 1572. how long he sate i know not . after whose death , the bishoprick had one or two titulars , lay-men ; but i cannot recover their names . about the year 1606. james nicolson , parson of meigle , was preferred to the see. to whom succeeded alexander lindsay , ( brother to the baron of evelick , ) rectour of saint madoe . this bishop being threatned with the censures of the assembly of glasgow , did abjure episcopacy , and submitted to presbyterian government , 1639 , and betook himself to the charge of a particular parish . anno 1662. george halyburton , preacher at perth , was preferred to the see ; a very worthy person : he sate little above two years . upon his death , henry guthry , rectour of — was promoted to the bishoprick of dunkeld , who died in the year 1676. the chapter of dunkeld consists of the persons following : the rectour of kinelevin , dean ; tibbermure , cantor ; couper , archdeacon ; lethindy , chancellour ; dunkeld , thesaurer ; the parson of rattray , subdean ; the rectour of fungart ; the parson of ruffill ; kepit-mack in athol ; the rectour of inch-mack-grannoch ; logy-alachie ; the parson of moneidy ; the rectour of blair in athol ; eliot ; the prebendary of fearn ; menmure ; aberdaigy . i can give no account of the cathedral-church , in what condition it stands at present , seeing i never saw it , nor had any information concerning it . the diocese of dunkeld contains the most part of perthshire , part of angus , and part of west-lothian . bishops of aberdene . the bishoprick of aberdene suffered very much by bishop william gordon ; for he alienated the profits thereof , and in a short time brought the revenues of that see almost to nothing . and indeed this benefice was at his death scarce worth the accepting . about the year 1579. david cunninghame , parson of saint nicolas , was preferred to the see. this bishop was a grave , learned , and wise man ; imployed by king james the sixth in an embassy to the king of denmark , and the princes of germany , wherein the bishop did faithfully discharge his trust , to his great commendation . he died about the year 1603. unto him succeeded peter blackburn , rectour of saint nicolas , who governed the see about twelve years , and dying anno 1615. was buried in saint nicolas church in new aberdene . upon whose death , alexander forbes , ( of the house of ardmurdo , ) bishop of cathnes , was translated to aberdene . he sate little above three years , and dying anno 1618. was buried in the cathedral-church . to him succeeded , upon king james's nomination , and the chapter 's election , patrick forbes of corse . this worthy man , at the earnest importunity of the bishops of aberdene and murray , did enter into orders in the forty eighth year of his age , an. 1612. and was preferred to the benefice of keath in strath-yla ; in which station he continued six years : and after the death of bishop alexander forbes , at the importunity both of the clergy and laiety , he did accept of the bishoprick of aberdene . he was in great esteem and favour with king james and king charles , being privy councellour to both kings . in his old age he was much troubled with the palsie . seventeen years did he faithfully and wisely govern the see , and died in his house in old aberdene 1635. in the seventy first year of his age , being interred in the south isle of the cathedral-church , near the sepulchre of bishop gawan dumbar . his commentary upon the revelations , and a discourse of the ministerial office , do shew his learning and judgment . upon his death , adam bannatyn , bishop of dumblane , was translated to aberdene , who being thrust out by the covenanters , retired into england , where he died shortly after . his house in old aberdene , for magnificence in all things like a palace , was plundered by a regiment of the covenanters , and afterwards quite demolished by the english usurpers . several learned and worthy men , in the diocese of aberdene , were at this time thrust out of their livings . the most considerable were , john forbes of corse , doctour and professour of divinity in the king's colledge of aberdene ; robert baron , doctour and professour of divinity in the marischal colledge of aberdene ; william leslie , doctour of divinity , principal or warden of the king's colledge of aberdene ; alexander scroggie , doctour of divinity , minister in old aberdene ; patrick dune , doctour of physick , principal of the marischal colledge of aberdene ; alexander ross , doctour of divinity , parson of saint nicolas ; james sibbald , doctour of divinity , minister in aberdene ; john forbes , parson of auchterless ; andrew logie , parson of rayne ; john ross , parson of birse ; john gregory , rectour of drummaok ; john logie , rectour of raphan ; thomas thoires , minister at vdny . after the restauration of the hierarchy , his most sacred majesty , king charles the second , preferr'd david mitchel ( one of the prebendaries of westminster ) to the bishoprick of aberdene . this worthy man was anno 1638. one of the preachers of edinburgh ; and being thrust out by the assembly of glasgow , retired into england . he lived not a whole year after his consecration : he died in old aberdene , and was interred in the south isle of the cathedral-church , 1663. to him succeeded alexander burnet , rectour of — in the county of kent ; who sate little above a year , being translated to glasgow , which was then void by the death of archbishop fairfoul . upon this translation , anno 1664. the reverend patrick scougal , parson of salton , was promoted to the bishoprick of aberdene ; who is yet alive , and governs the see wisely and piously . the chapter of aberdene consists of the persons following : since the rectory of saint machar was annexed to the king's colledge , the principal thereof is dean ; the parson of auchterless , cantor ; rayne , archdeacon ; birse , chancellour ; daviot , thesaurer ; the rectour of saint peters , subcantor ; the parson of kinkell , who is the patron of seven churches , kinkell , drumblait , monkeigie , kintor , kemnay , kinnellar , and dyce ; the parson of morthlick ; the rectour of monimusk ; kincairden of neill ; the rectour of turreff ; belbelvies ; banchory-devoneif ; logie-buchan ; the parson of clatt ; methlick ; innernochty ; the rectour of coldstane ; the parson of oyn ; crowdan ; tillinessill ; forbes ; phillorth ; lonmay ; the prebendary of deir ; ellen. the cathedral of aberdene , dedicated to saint macbar , was founded by bishop kinninmouth , who died before the work was raised six cubits high , anno 1370 , bishop leighton , 1430 , built saint john's isle , laid the foundation of the great steeple , and of the two lesser steeples , and advanced the fabrick mightily . the roof was laid on , and the floor paved with free-stone , by bishop lindsay , anno 1445. bishop spence adorned the chancel with many brave ornaments 1460. bishop elphingston did perfect the great steeple , ( which was a mark for sailours in those days , ) and furnished it with costly and tunable bells , 1489. bishop dumbar did perfect the two lesser steeples , cieled the church , and built the south-isle , 1522. and his successour , bishop stewart , built the consistory-house anno 1539. this glorious structure ( being near ninescore years in building ) did not remain twentie years in its integrity , when it was almost ruined by a crue of sacrilegious church-robbers : for anno 1560. the barons of mernis , accompanied with some of the towns-men of aberdene , having demolished the monasteries of the black and gray friers , fell to rob the cathedral , which they spoiled of all its costly ornaments and jewels , and demolished the chancel . having shipped the lead , bells , and other utensils , intending to expose them to sale in holland , all this ill-gotten wealth sunk ( by the just judgment of god upon sacriledge ) not far from the gridle-ness . the body of the cathedral was preserved from utter ruine by the earl of huntly . afterwards , an. 1607. the church was repaired , and covered with slate , at the charge of the parish , and so continues yet in pretty good repair . the diocese of aberdene contains the shire of aberdene , most part of bamff-shire , and part of mernis . bishops of mvrray . after the death of bishop patrick hepburn , this benefice was conferred upon alexander lindsay , lord spinie , who possessed it many years ; so that the see continued vacant till about the year 1606 , at which time alexander douglas , parson of elgin , was promoted to the bishoprick . how long he sate , i cannot learn. his successour was john guthry , one of the preachers in edinburgh ; in whose time fell out our second reformation . most of the bishops left their bishopricks , having wisely withdrawn themselves into england , to avoid the storm which threatned them ; whereas this bishop stay'd at home till his bishoprick left him . being thrust from his benefice by the covenanters , he retired to his ancient inheritance of guthry in angus , where he lived very contentedly and hospitably , exercising his charity amongst the poor . he died much lamented , during our civil wars . anno 1662. murdo mackenzie , rectour of elgin , was preferred bishop of murray , who now governs the see. the cathedral-church of elgin , founded by andrew bishop of murray , 1230. was one of the rarest monuments that this kingdom afforded , equal almost to saint paul's in london ( as i am informed ) in length , but surpassing it in breadth . it was demolished at the reformation , yet some of the stately ruines are still to be seen and admired . the parish-church , dedicated to saint peter , was ( as i am informed ) founded by george the second earl of huntly , about the year 1490. the diocese of murray contains the shires of elgin , nairn , and part of innernes and bamff-shires . bishops of brichen . bishop sinclair's successour in the see of brichen was one campbell , cousin to the earl of argile , about the year 1567. how long he sate , i cannot learn. anno 16 — andrew lamb , rectour of burnt-island , was preferred to the see , and afterwards translated to galloway , then void by the death of bishop william cowper . upon this translation , anno 1619. david lindsay , parson of dundee , was promoted to the bishoprick of brichen : he was translated to edinburgh 1634. unto whom succeeded walter whitfurd , ( of the house of milnton , ) rectour of — who was outed by the covenanters 1639. and his house plundred . anno 1662. david straughan , parson of fettercairn , was preferred bishop of brichen , he sate nine years , and dying 1671. was buried in the cathedral-church . his successour was robert lowry , dean of edinburgh , who now governs the see. the cathedral-church of brichen is a pretty handsom fabrick : it hath on the south-side a small steeple , not unlike the monument on fish-street-hill , london , save that it is broader at the top then at the bottom ; by whom built , i cannot learn. the chancel was demolished by our first reformers . the diocese of brichen contains part of angus and mernis . bishops of dvmblane . about the year 1572. andrew grhame , uncle to the earl of montross , was preferred bishop of dumblane . — and translated to orkney 1615. to whom succeeded adam bannatyn of kilconqhuar , rectour of fawkirk , who governed the see till anno 1635. at which time he was translated to aberdene , then void by the death of bishop patrick forbes . his successour was james wedderburn , professour of divinity in saint andrews , who was thrust out by the covenanters 1639. anno 1662. robert leighton , principal of the colledge of edinburgh , was promoted to the bishoprick of dumblane . he was a man of singular and wonderfull piety , of great learning ; and in him most of the eminent vertues we admire in the primitive bishops seemed to be revived . his life was most exemplary and severe , he preached constantly , and seemed like one in heaven when he preached : his humility was astonishing ; his meekness and charity were extraordinary ; his expence on himself very small , but all he had he laid out on the poor : he was very tender of all the concerns of his clergy , and by his excellent deportment , and heavenly discourses , did much edifie and instruct them all : and he studied by the most gentle methods possible to overcome the peevishness of the schismaticks ; but all was in vain , for they became more insolent and stubborn . he was translated to glasgow 1670. upon which translation , james ramsay , dean of glasgow , was preferred to the see , now living 1676. the bishop of dumblane is always dean of the king's chappel royal. the diocese of dumblane contains part of perth and striveling-shires . bishops of ross . john leslie , doctour of the canon law , and one of the senatours of the colledge of justice , ( before canonist in the king's colledge , and official of aberdene , ) was , upon the death of bishop sinclair , preferred to the bishoprick of ross 1564. he was a person of great integrity , and a faithfull servant to queen mary in the time of her troubles . he wrote the history of his nation , together with a description of the kingdom . he died at bruxels in flanders 1596. to him succeeded anno 1599. david lindsay , ( of the house of edyell , ) preacher at leith , a worthy , pious , and learned prelate . he sate — years , and dying 161 — was buried in the parish-church of leith . after his death , patrick lindsay , parson of saint vigens in angus , was preferred to the see , who being translated to glasgow , anno 1635. left for his successour john maxwell , one of the preachers of edinburgh , a very learned man , a great preacher , and of excellent parts ; but was generally censured for meddling too much in civil affairs , and for being too violent , which was thought a great occasion of the troubles that followed . he was thrust out by the covenanters anno 1639. and afterwards much prosecuted by them as an incendiary . anno 1662. john paterson , preacher in aberdene , was promoted to the bishoprick of ross , who now governs the see. the cathedral of chanonry ( where the bishop of ross his seat is ) was demolished by our first reformers ; some part whereof ( as i am informed ) is lately rebuilt . the diocese of ross hath under its jurisdiction the shires of tayn , cromarty , and the greatest part of innernes-shire . bishops of cathnes . after the death of bishop robert stewart 1586. the see continued vacant till the year 1599. at which time george gladstanes , preacher in saint andrews , was preferred bishop of cathnes . he was translated to saint andrews about the year 1606. unto whom succeeded alexander forbes , rectour of fettercairn in mernis , who was translated to aberdene , then void by the death of bishop peter blackburn , 1615. upon this translation , john abernethy was promoted to the see , a learned and worthy prelat , thrust out by the covenanters 1639. upon the restitution of hierarchy , 1662. patrick forbes was preferred to the see , now living , 1676. the diocese of cathnes ( whereof dornoch in sutherland is the bishop's seat ) contains the shires of cathnes and sutherland . i can give no account of the cathedral , having neither seen it , nor received any information concerning it . bishops of orkney . about the year 1565. adam bothwell was preferred to the bishoprick of orkney , and deposed 1568. for marrying queen mary to the earl of bothwell , but was the year after restored . he exchanged his bishoprick of orkney ( with robert stewart , one of the base sons of king james the fifth , ) for the abby of holy-rood-house ; by which means he became a senatour of the colledge of justice , and a temporal lord , being the ancestour of the lord holy-rood-house . upon this exchange , robert stewart became bishop of orkney , and afterwards ( upon the forfeiture of james hepburn earl of bothwell , and the obtaining of these isles for a temporal estate , ) sole lord of the country , being created earl of orkney 1581. about the year 1606. james law was bishop of orkney , and translated to glasgow 1615. to bishop law succeeded andrew grahame , bishop of dumblane . how long he sate , i cannot learn. george grahame was after him preferred bishop of orkney . this bishop being terrified with the censures of the assembly of glasgow , did abjure episcopacy , and submitted to presbyterian government , betaking himself to the charge of a particular parish , 1638. hereupon king charles the first did promote robert baron , doctour and professour of divinity in the marischal colledge of aberdene , to the bishoprick . this learned and worthy man having incensed the covenanters , by expressing his loyalty so publickly in the disputes between the doctours of aberdene , and mr. henderson , mr. dickson , and mr. cant , the three great champions for the covenant , was forced to flee to berwick , where he died shortly after , before his consecration . anno 1662. thomas sydserfe , bishop of galloway , the onely bishop then alive of all those who had been outed by the covenanters , was translated to orkney . he sate but a few years , and died anno 1663. unto whom succeeded andrew honniman , a learned and pious man , and a good preacher . this bishop accompanying the archbishop of saint andrews at edinburgh , received a wound in the arm by pistol-shot , aimed at the archbishop by an obscure fellow , 1668. he died anno 1676. and was buried at kirkwall in the cathedral-church . the diocese of orkney hath under its jurisdiction all the northern isles of orkney and schetland . archbishops of glasgow . upon the death of archbishop gawin dumbar , anno 1552. james beaton , of the house of balfour in fife , was preferred to the see. this prelat , being attainted of treason , went into france , carrying with him all the ornaments , plate and writings of the church of glasgow , which he put into the hands of the carthusians in paris , to be restored when scotland became popish again . anno 1572. james boyd , of trochrig , was promoted to the bishoprick ; a wise , worthy and religious prelat . he died 1578. and was interred in the sepulchre of bishop dumbar . unto whom succeeded robert montgomery , preacher at striveling ; who being much vexed by the kirk-men , was glad , for peace sake , to betake himself to the charge of a particular parish in kile , 1587. resigning his bishoprick in favour of william erskine , parson of campsey , who injoyed it but a short time : for archbishop beaton was by king james the sixth restored . he was a person honourably disposed , faithfull to queen mary , while she lived , and to king james , whose embassadour he was , a lover of his country , and liberal , according to his means , to all his country-men . he died 1603. a full jubilee of years from his consecration . after his death , john spotiswood , parson of calder , was preferred archbishop of glasgow . he sate twelve years , and was translated to saint andrews , 1615. hereupon james law , bishop of orkney , was translated to glasgow , who dying anno 1635. patrick lindsay , bishop of ross , was preferred to the see , and outed by the covenanters anno 1638. the first archbishop after the restitution of the hierarchy was andrew fairfoul , preacher in dunce , who sate little above a year . upon whose death , anno 1664. alexander burnet , bishop of aberdene , was translated to glasgow , and outed 1669. and robert leighton , bishop of dumblane , preferred to the see , who resigning anno 1674. archbishop burnet was restored , and now governs the see. the cathedral of glasgow , a very magnificent structure , was built by bishop john achtian 1135. it oweth thanks to the memory of king james the sixth for its preservation from utter ruine . for the ministers of glasgow persuaded the magistrates to pull it down , and to build two or three churches with the materials thereof : the magistrates condescending , a day is appointed , and workmen ready to demolish it . the crafts or tradesmen , having notice given them of this design , convene in arms , and oppose the magistrates , threatning to bury the workmen under the ruines of that ancient building . whereupon the matter is referred to the king and council , who decided the controversie in the tradesmens favours , reproving the magistrates very sharply . the diocese of glasgow contains the counties or shires of dumbarton , ranfrew , air , lanerick , part of the shires of roxburgh , dumfreis , peeblis and selkirk . bishops of galloway . about the year 1606. gawin hamilton was bishop of galloway , a very worthy person . his successour , anno 1614. was william cowper , preacher at perth , a learned and pious prelat : he died 1619. of whom see the former history , page 540. upon whose death , andrew lamb , bishop of brichen , was translated to galloway . how long he sate , i cannot learn. after him , thomas sydserfe was preferred to the see , a learned and worthy prelate : he was outed by the covenanters 1638. and upon the restitution of the episcopal estate , anno 1662. translated to orkney . about which time james hamilton , rectour of cambusnethan , was promoted to the bishoprick . unto whom succeeded anno 1674. john paterson , dean of edinburgh , who now governs the see. the diocese of galloway hath under its jurisdiction the shire of wigton , stewartry of kirkubright , regality of glenluce , and part of dumfreis-shire . bishops of argile . after george laird of balcomie , ( who is the last bishop of argile mentioned by our reverend authour in his second book , ) i meet with some who have been bishops before the reformation . the first was robert montgomery , one of the sons of hugh the first earl of eglington . then , one campbell , who spoiled the benefice , about the time of the reformation . after the reformation , there was one kerswell bishop of argile : how long he governed the see , i cannot learn. to him succeeded — boyd . [ see the addenda . ] to whom succeeded james fairley , who was thrust out by the covenanters 1638. and afterwards renounced his bishoprick , and accepted a private charge . anno 1662. — fletcher , rectour of — was preferred to the see ; who dying anno 1665. william scrowgie , parson of rapban in aberdene-shire , was preferred to the place . he governed the see nine years , and died at dumbritton anno 1675. unto him succeeded arthur ross , parson of glasgow , who now governs the see. the diocese of argile contains the countries of argile , lorn , kintire , and lochabyr , with some of the west isles , such as lismore , &c. bishops of the isles . about the year 1606 , andrew knox , rectour of pasley , was preferred to the see. how long he sate , i know not . his successour was john knox , rectour of — how long he governed the see , i cannot learn. anno 162 — john leslie was bishop of the isles , and after translated to the bishoprick of rapbo , in the province of armagh in ireland . to him succeeded anno 162 — neil campbell , rectour of — who was thrust out by the covenanters 1638. since the restauration of bishops , robert wallace , rectour of barnwell in the sheriffdom of air , was made bishop of this see. he governed it seven years , and died an. 1669. and the see hath been void ever since . every bishop hath under him an official or commissary , who is judge of the spiritual court within his diocese . unto this court are referred matters of testaments , bastardy , divorce , tithes , perjury , &c. and many civil cases . it sits in the months of november , december , january , february , june , and july . commissaries of scotland . sir david falconer of glenfarqbuar , henry fowlis , james aikenbeid , john wishart , commissaries of edinburgh . john lindsay , official of saint andrews . sir william fleeming , official of glasgow . john stewart , commissary of dunkeld . john scougall , commissary of aberdene . alexander mackenzie , official of murray . george paterson , commissary of ross . james straughan , commissary of brichen . james innes , official of cathnes . — monro , commissary of — william scrougie , commissary of argile . the officials of dumblane . galloway . orkney . the isles . having given an account of the succession of the bishops in their several sees , let us take a short view of the several courts , subordinate to them , wherein is exercised ecclesiastical discipline . the first and lowest ( which is in every parish ) is called the session . it consists of the chief and most grave men of the parish , who are termed elders and deacons . in this small court ( whereof the minister is president ) all fornicatours , adulterers , blasphemers , swearers , prophaners of the lord's-day , &c. are convented , and put to make publick confessions of their sins , and professions of their repentance , according to the degree or hainousness of them . for fornication , they make publick confession in the church three several lord's-days ; in the last of which they receive absolution . for an adultery , they make their profession of repentance , for half a year , every lord's-day ; and for six lord's-days they stand in sackcloath at the church-door half an hour before morning-prayers : and then in the end receive absolution . and for other faults , they doe penance according to their several degrees . the deacon's office is , to collect the money for the use of the poor , to delate delinquents , &c. and that of the elder is , to be carefull of the fabrick of the church , to assist in the censuring scandalous persons , and to wait on the minister at the celebration of the lord's supper , &c. this court sitteth once a week . the number of the parishes in scotland is uncertain : i conjecture them to be about a thousand . the next court is called the presbyterie , consisting of twelve or twenty ministers , more or less . that sits once in two or three weeks . the moderatour or president thereof is chosen by the bishop . in this court are discussed appeals from sessions , and other difficult cases . here are convented all those who refuse to submit to church-discipline , and all such as apostatize to popery or quakerism ; who , if they remain obstinate , are prosecuted with the censures of the church . here also all such as enter into holy orders are examined , and an account taken of their learning , and other qualifications , in a course of many several trialls ; as making homilies , sermons , and common-places ; which hold two or three months : and then they are returned to the bishop well qualified , who upon that proceeds to ordain them . presbyteries of scotland . the presbyteries of dunce , chirnside , kelso , ersilton , jedburgh , melross dumbar , haddington , dalkeith , edinburgh , peeblis , linlithgow , perth , dunkeld , auchterardor , striveling , dumblane , dumfreis , penpont , lochmabane , middlebie , wigton , kirkubright , stranraver , aire , irwing , pasley dumbarton , glasgow , hamilton , lanerick , biggar , dunnune , kinloch , inneraray , kilmoir , skye , saint andrews , kirkaldy , cowper , dumfermling , meegle , dundee , arbroath , forfair , brichen , mernis , aberdene , kincairden , alford , gareoch , deir , turreff , fordyce , ellon , strathbogy , abernethie , elgin , forress , aberlower , chanrie , tayne , dingwell , dornoch , week , thirso , kirkwall , scalloway , colmkill . a third court ( whereof the bishop is president ) is the provincial assembly , or synod . in this court are discussed all appeals from presbyteries , and all other difficult cases . from hence are issued warrants for visiting of churches . here also the lives of scandalous ministers are tried , who , if found guilty of crimes laid to their charge , are either deposed , suspended , or excommunicated . the sentence of excommunication cannot be pronounced against an obstinate person but after a long process of near a years continuance , and many citations , and much pains to bring the scandalous person ( against whom onely it is denounced ) to a due sense of his sins , and a willingness to submit to the censures of the church : and then it must be ratified and approved by the bishop . the provincial synod meets twice in the year , in april , and october . the highest ecclesiastical court is the general assembly ; which , as its constitution and authority was settled in king james's minority , was made up of two ministers commissioners from every presbytery , and one lay-elder , a commissioner from every royal burrough , one from every university , and one from the king. these had the supreme authority about all church-matters ; and how much trouble they bred king james , the former history has fully discovered . a shadow of this still remains : for the supreme ecclesiastical court is declared to be a national synod made up of bishops and deans , and two members from every presbytery , one of whom is of the bishops nomination , and a commissioner from every university . but nothing is to be proposed but by the king or his commissioner : nor can any thing that they doe be of any force , till it be ratified by the king. but as the calling of this synod is wholly in the crown , so there is little need of it , since the king's supremacy is so large , that he needs not their concurrence , to adde their authority to any thing that he shall think fit to doe about church-affairs . the bishops of scotland take their places thus : saint andrews , glasgow , edinburgh , galloway ; the rest according to the seniority of their consecrations . chap. ii. containing a short account of the several orders of religious persons in scotland , together with a catalogue of their convents , suppressed at the reformation . in the infancy of christianity , when persecution was grown so hot , that most cities and populous places were visited therewith , many godly men fled into desarts , there to live with more safety , and serve god with less disturbance . these were called monks . from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , solus , because living alone by themselves . their houses were either caves , grots , or little cells ; what would hide and heat , cover and keep warm , served them for cloaths ; herbs and roots were their diet , and water their drink . in these solitary places they spent their lives constantly in prayer , reading , meditating , and such like pious employments . they vowed no poverty , chastity , or obedience . thus continued they during the heat of persecution ; and when peace was restored , they returned to their former dwellings , resuming their callings , which they had not left off , but for a time laid aside . afterwards there sprung up another sort of monks leading a solitary life , when no persecution forced them thereunto . these considering the inconstancy of humane affairs , that though they had prosperity for the present , it might be soon changed into a contrary condition , if either the restless endeavours of satan took effect , or sinfull christians were rewarded according to their deserts , and prompted also thereunto by their own melancholick dispositions , chose a lone life , and lived in desarts . afterwards they were gathered together to live under one roof , because their company would be chearfull in health , and needfull in sickness one to another . they sustained themselves by their labour , ( for every one had a calling whereby to gain his livelihood , ) and relieved others by their charity ; and very strict were they in their lives and conversations . but afterwards , monks having sufficiency turned lazie , then getting waxed wanton , and at last endowed with superfluity became notoriously vicious ; and so they continued till they were finally extirpated . thus much concerning their original : proceed we next to their several orders . the first are the benedictines or black monks , so called from saint benedict or bennet , an italian , ( who flourished about the year 500 ) . first father and founder of that order . the benedictines and augustinians came into scotland about one time . their convents . 1. the abbey of icolmkill , in the isle jona , founded by saint columba , about the year 590. 2. the abbey of dumfermling , in fife , founded by saint david the first , king of scotland , about the year 1130. the church whereof was built by king malcolm the third , and was , for several hundreds of years , the sepulchre of the scotish kings . this abbey was , at the reformation , annexed to the crown . 3. the abbey of saint colme , in inch-colme in the river forth , founded by king alexander the first , about the year 1120. 4. the abbey of aberbrothock or arbroath , in angus , founded by king william , 1178. this was the richest of our scotish abbeys . at the reformation it was conferred upon james , duke of chattelrault and earl of arran , who gave it to his second son lord john hamilton . at this day it is in the possession of the earl of panmure , and the stately ruines thereof are yet to be seen . 5. the priory of vrqhuart , in murray , founded by king alexander the third , 126 — a cell belonging to dumfermling . 6. the priory of coldinghame , in the mers , founded by edgar king of scots , 1106. a cell belonging to durham in england . 7. the monastery of south-berwick , founded by king david the first . 8. the monastery of three wells , or trefontana , in lamermoor on the borders of lothian , founded by the countess of march. a cell belonging to south-berwick . 9. the monastery of kilconqhuar , in galloway , founded by ethred ( or rather fergus ) lord of galloway . the cluniacks are benedictines sifted through a finer fearce , with some additionals invented and imposed upon them by odo abbot of clugny or cluni in burgundy , who flourished anno 913. their convents . 1. the abbey of pasley , in ranfrew-shire , founded by alexander the great steward of scotland , 12 — . the monks whereof wrote a history of the nation . at the reformation it was bestowed upon claud hamilton , third son to the duke of chattelrault . 2. the abbey of rewls-cross , or corsraguel , in carrict , founded by thomas earl of carrict , 126 — . the cistercians are so called from robert abbot of cisteaux in burgundy , who anno 1088. did the second time refine the drossie benedictines . their convents . 1. the abbey of sanudell , in kintyre , founded by saint coule milicora . what this founder was , i know not . 2. the abbey of souls-seat , sedes animarum , in galloway , was founded by fergus lord of galloway . 3. the abbey of dundrennan , in galloway , was founded by fergus lord of galloway . 4. the abbey of melross , in teviotdail , founded by king david the first . 5. the abbey of newbottle , in lothian , founded by king david the first . 6. the abbey of culross , in clackmannan-shire , founded by malcolm mackduff , earl of fife . 7. the abbey of glenluce , in galloway , founded by rolland lord of galloway . 8. the abbey of sweet-heart , dulcis cordis , or new abbey , in galloway , founded by dornogilla , daughter of alan lord of galloway , and wife to john balliol . 9. the abbey of balmerino , in fife , founded by emergards , wife to king william . 10. the abbey of deir , in buchan , founded by william cummin earl of buchan , 1218. 11. the abbey of cowper , in angus , founded by king david the first . 12. the abbey of kelso , in teviotdail , founded by king david the first . 13. the priory of machlein , in kile . a cell belonging to the abbey of melross . 14. the monastery of elcho , in strath-jern , founded by david lindsay , ancestour to the earls of crawfurd . the monks of the order of the valley of reeds , vallis caulium , are a branch of the reformed cistercians , whose institutions , both in habit , diet , divine offices , &c. they punctually observe ; but with greater strictness , confining themselves to much narrower bills . they possess very mean revenues , being wholly intent upon their devotions ; and may not goe without the bounds of the monastery , it being onely lawfull for the prior and one of the order to goe abroad upon necessary occasions , and to visit the monasteries under their charge . they are daily imployed in dressing the gardens of fruits and herbs , which are within the bounds of the monastery , and improved for the use of it . this order had four convents in scotland . 1. the priory of ardehattan , in lorn , founded by duncan mackowle of lorn . 2. the priory of lismehago , in clidisdail , founded by fergus lord of galloway . 3. the priory of bewley , in ross , founded by john lord bisset . 4. the priory of pluscardy , in murray , founded by king alexander the second : the monks whereof did write a scotish chronicle . it was afterwards turned into a convent of black monks . the augustinians are older in europe then the benedictines . these do observe the institutions of saint augustine bishop of hippo , who was saint bennet's senior by sixty years . the augustinians are also called regular canons . their convents in scotland were , 1. the abbey of jedburgh , in teviotdail , founded by king david the first . 2. the abbey of holy-rood-house , in lothian , adjoyning to the canon-gate in edinburgh , founded by king david the first . this abbey is now one of the king's palaces . 3. the abbey of cambuskeneth , in striveling-shire , founded by king david the first . 4. the abbey of inchassray , in strath-jern , founded by gilbert earl of strath-jern . 5. the abbey of scoon , in gowry , founded by alexander the first , king of scotland . 6. the priory of crusa , in the west isles , founded by saint columba . 7. the priory of omistai , in the west isles , founded by saint columba . 8. the priory of holy-cross , at peeblis in tweedail , founded by fergus lord of galloway . 9. the priory of saint mary isle , in galloway . a cell pertaining to the abbey of holy-rood-house . 10. the priory of saint colonor's isle , in menteith , founded by edgar king of scotland . 11. the priory of saint andrews , in fife , founded by king alexander the first , 1122. it is annexed to the archbishoprick of saint andrews . 12. the priory of may , in the mouth of forth . a cell belonging to saint andrews . 13. the priory of pittenweem , in fife . a cell belonging to saint andrews . 14. the priory of monimusk , in mar. a cell belonging to the priory of saint andrews . 15. the priory of restennot , in angus . a cell belonging to the abbey of jedburgh . 16. the priory of straphillan , in athol , founded by king robert the first , 132 — . 17. the priory of blantyre , in clidisdail . a cell belonging to the abbey of jedburgh . 18. the priory of port-mollock , in loch-leiven in fife . a cell belonging to the priory of saint andrews . it is annexed to saint leonard's colledge . 19. the priory of loch-tay , in broad albain . the order of the praemonstratenses was founded by norbert , born at colein , and afterwards , as is said , archbishop of memberg . he is said to have done it at the command of the blessed virgin , who appear'd to him ; whereupon with some companions he retired into a desolate place called praemonstratum , ( thence comes the title of the order ; ) where they settled their society , anno 1120. they are under the rule of saint augustine , which they tell us norbert in a vision immediately received at the hand of saint augustine himself . the habit of their order is a white garment , and over that a white cloak or mantle , with a cowl upon their head of the same colour . the monks of this order had five convents in scotland . 1. the abbey of tungland , in galloway , founded by alan lord of galloway . 2. the abbey of holy-wood , in nithisdail . 3. the abbey of dryburgh , in teviotdail , founded by hugh morvil , high constable of scotland . 4. the abbey of ferne , in ross , founded by ferqbuard earl of ross . this abbey is annexed to the bishoprick of ross . 5. the priory of whiteborn , in galloway , founded by fergus lord of galloway . the tironenses ( as i conceive ) are not a distinct order of monks , but rather young novices , or fresh-water monks . in a catalogue of the religious houses in scotland , which i have by me , i find some styled or termed ordinis tironensis ; which if it were written turonensis , it would relate to tours in france ; and the rather , because there is in france a conventus turonensis of augustinian monks : but wherein , or whether they differed from others , i know not . but leaving that to the reader 's farther inquiry , let us take a view of their convents . 1. the abbey of kilwining , in cunninghame , founded by hugh morvil , constable of scotland . 2. the abbey of lindoris , in fife , founded by david earl of huntington , brother to king william . 3. the priory of fyvie , in forumarten . a seminary belonging to the abbey of arbroath . we proceed next to the monks of the order of saint antony , whose original was from saint antony an egyptian , who about the time of the later persecutions , not long after decius , retired into the desarts , where he lived the best part of an hundred years , and became the father of an eremitick life , wherein he educated all those disciples that resorted to him . after whose example other orders were set up . about the time of the wars in palestine , his body was translated from constantinople to mota , ( now called saint antony ) a town in the province of viennoys in france , where it was honourably laid up in a church built to his memory , and became famous for miraculous cures . among which , gasto , a nobleman of that province , and his son girond , being heal'd of a mortal plague , dedicated themselves and all that they had to saint antony , wholly devoting themselves to the curing and attending of the sick that came thither . to whom shortly after eight more joyned themselves , who combined into a society . this was about the year 1121. their order was confirmed by several popes , especially ▪ boniface the eighth , anno 1297. who prescribed unto them rules , and conferred upon them their privileges . they observe the rule of saint augustine's order , and as the peculiar and distinguishing badge of their order , wear about their necks the letter t in gold or silver hanging upon their breasts , and carry a little bell about with them . the monks of this order had onely one convent in scotland , at leith , but who was the founder thereof , i cannot learn. the carthusians were instituted by saint bruno , a native of colein , who being a parisian doctour of divinity , and a canon of rheims , abandoned the world , and with six associats began his austere eremitical course of life on the carthusian mountains , in the diocese of gratianopolis , with the licence of hugh then bishop thereof . this bruno flourished under pope vrban the second , and died anno christi 1101. king james the first did bring the carthusians into scotland , and built them a convent in perth , ( known afterwards by the name of charter-house , ) about the year 1430. from monks we proceed to friers . these were differenced from monks , in that monks were confined to their cloisters ; whilst more liberty was allowed to friers to go about , and preach in neighbouring parishes : as also monks had nothing in propriety , but all in common ; friers had nothing in propriety nor in common but being mendicants , begg'd all their subsistence from the charity of others . but they met with very bountifull benefactours ; and in scotland , when their nests were pull'd down , were too rich to profess poverty . the dominicans , or black friers , called also praedicatores , preaching friers , were instituted by saint dominick , a spaniard , anno 1206. and confirmed by pope honorius the third , anno christi 1216. the dominicans had their convents at 1. wigton , 2. air , 3. glasgow , 4. edinburgh , 5. perth , 6. dundee , 7. striveling , 8. monross , 9. cowper of fife , 10. aberdene , 11. elgin , 12. innerness , 13. saint andrews , 14. haddington , 15. jedburgh , 16. dumfreis , 17. cowper of angus , 18. innerkeithing , 19. dysert , 20. linlithgow , 21. kinghorn , 22. forres , 23. selkirk . the franciscans , or gray friers , called also minorits , were instituted by saint francis , an italian , about the year of our lord 1198. and confirmed by pope innocent the third . his rule prescribed chastity , obedience , poverty , much fasting , and other austerities , to all that should be admitted of that order . the franciscans are , minores tam observantes , quàm conventuales . the conventuals had their houses at 1. ronburgh , 2. dumfreis , 3. haddington , 4. innerkeithing , 5. lanerick , 6. dundee . the friers observant had their monasteries at 1. edinburgh , 2. striveling , 3. air , 4. glasgow , 5. saint andrews , 6. perth , 7. aberdene , 8. elgin , the carmelite friers had their beginning at , and name from , mount carmel in syria , being instituted by almerieus patriarch of antioch , anno 1122. they are also called white friers , and had their convents at 1. dumbar , 2. linlithgow , 3. tillilume , 4. queens-ferry , 5. aberdene , 6. irwing , 7. bamff . the trinity friers , or mathurins , follow . these were also called robertines , and de redemptione captivorum , whose work was to beg mony of well-disposed people for ransoming of christian captives from the slavery of the turks . these friers had their houses at 1. falle , 2. houstoun , 3. dornoch , 4. cromarty , 5. scotland-well , 6. aberdene , 7. peeblis . i can give no account concerning the several orders of nvns in scotland . their convents were , 1. the priory of north-berwick , in lothian , founded by duncan earl of fife . 2. the priory of haddington , in lothian , founded by ada countess of northumberland , wife to prince henry , onely son of king david the first . 3. the priory of saint bothans , in lammer-moor , founded by christiana countess of march. 4. the priory of manuel , in lothian , founded by king malcolme the fourth . 5. the priory of coldstream , in mers , founded by the countess of march. 6. the priory of ecclis , in mers , founded by king david the first . the gray sisters had their houses at 1. dundee , 2. aberdene , 3. sheens near edinburgh . what kind of monks were in the following monasteries , i have not as yet learned . 1. the monastery of abernethy , in strath-jerne , founded by caranachus , the — king of the picts . 2. the monastery of saint andrew de beugh , founded by king constantine the second . 3. the abbey of soutre , in lothian , founded by king malcolm the fourth . 4. the priory of cannabie , in eskdail . 5. the priory of star-inch , in lewis , founded by maclewid baron of lewis . 6. the priory of rowadill in harrigh , founded by maclewid baron of harrigh . 7. the priory of inchmahomo , in perth-shire . 8. the monastery of elbottle , a cell belonging to south berwick . 9. the priory of gulane , in lothian , a cell belonging to south berwick , founded by king david the first . 10. the priory of aberdowr , in fife . thus much concerning monks and friers . besides the convents of regulars , there were colledges erected for secvlar priests , and amply endowed with revenues . the chief person of the colledge of secular canons was called the provost , and the colledge it self the provostry . let us take a view of them . 1. the colledge of bothwell , in clidisdail , founded by archbald the first , earl of douglas . it was before a cloister of nuns . 2. the colledge of linclowden , in nithisdail , founded by the same archbald . 3. the colledge of bothans , in lothian , founded by william hay baron of yester . 4. the provostry of minniboll , in carrict , founded by sir gilbert kennedy knight . 5. the colledge of dumbar , in lothian , founded by george , earl of march. 6. the colledge of carnwath , in clidisdail , founded by thomas lord summervile . 7. the colledge of methuen , in strath-jerne , founded by walter stewart earl of athol . 8. the provostry of dalkeith , in lothian , founded by james douglas , the second earl of morton . 9. the provostry of fowlis , in angus , founded by andrew gray of fowlis . 10. the colledge of kilmund , in cowal , founded by sir duncan campbell knight . 11. the provostry of dirlton , in lothian , founded by sir walter haliburton of dirlton . 12. the colledge of rosseline , in lothian , founded by william sinclair earl of orkney . 13. the provostry of dunglas , in mers , founded by alexander hume lord hume . 14. the king's colledge of striveling , founded by king james the third . 15. trinity colledge in edinburgh , founded by mary , widow of king james the second . 16. the provostry of restalrig , in lothian , founded by king james the fourth . 17. the provostry of seaton , in lothian , founded by the lord seaton . 18. the provostry of costorphine , in lothian founded by the baron of costorphine forrester . 19. the colledge of creighton , in lothian , founded by the earl of bothwell hepburn , 20. the provostry of sempill , in ranfrew-shire , founded by the lord sempill . 21. the colledge of kilmawers , in cunninghame , founded by the earl of glencarn . 22. the colledge of hamilton , in clidisdail , founded by the lord hamilton . 23. the colledge of dumbarton , in lennox , founded by one of the countesses of lennox . 24. the provostry of tillibarden , in strath-jerne , founded by the baron of tillibarden murray . 25. the provostry of tayne , in ross , founded by king james the fourth . 26. the provostry of abernethie , in strath-jerne , founded by one of the earls of douglas . the chief church in great towns was a collegiate-church ; as saint giles in edinburgh , &c. last of all follow the knights templars . this order was instituted by pope gelasius , about the year of our lord 1120. their office and vow was , to defend the temple and the holy sepulchre at jerusalem , to entertain christian strangers that came thither for devotion , and to guard them in safety when they went to visit the places of the holy land. their habit was a white cloak , with a red cross , and a sword girt about them . they were suppressed by pope clemens the fifth , about the year 1310. and their lands were ( by a general council held at vienna ) conferr'd on the knights of the order of saint john of jerusalem , called also joannites , and after knights of the rhodes , and lastly of malta , where they live at this day . the templars and their successours ( spoken of before ) had onely one house in scotland , which was the hospital of saint germans in lothian . this house was dissolved anno 1494. and the greatest part of its revenues by king james the fourth conferr'd upon the king's colledge of aberdene , then newly founded by bishop william elphingston . though i cannot give an account in what year every particular monastery in scotland was founded , yet their general dissolution was about the year 1560. there was also a convent of red friers at the mouth of teviot near kelso ; but by whom built , i cannot learn. chap. iii. the universities of scotland . there are four universities in scotland , saint andrews , glasgow , aberdene , edinbvrgh . the vniversitie of saint andrews was founded by bishop henry wardlaw , anno christi 1412. it is endowed with very ample privileges . the archbishops of saint andrews are perpetual chancellours thereof . the rectour is chosen yearly , and by the statutes of the universitie he ought to be one of the three principals . his power is the same with that of the vice-chancellour of oxford or cambridge . there are in this universitie three colledges ; viz. saint salvator's , saint leonard's , new colledge . saint salvator's colledge . james kennedy , bishop of saint andrews , founded this colledge , built the edifice , furnished it with costly ornaments , and provided sufficient revenues for the maintenance of the masters and professours . persons endowed at the foundation were , a doctour a bachelour a licenciate of divinitie ; four professours of philosophy , who are called regents ; eight poor scholars , called bursars . benefactours . i can give little or no account of the benefactours . the earl of cassils hath founded a professour of humanitie to teach the latin tongue . george martyn cieled the great hall. present professours . george weemis , doctour of divinity , provost . james rymer , professours of philosophy . george thomson , professours of philosophy . edward thomson , professours of philosophy . james strachan , professours of philosophy . the arms of saint salvator's colledge are the globe and saint salvator's cross . saint leonard's colledge was founded by john hepburn , prior of saint andrews , anno 152 — . persons endowed are , a principal or warden , four professours of philosophy , eight poor scholars . benefactours . of these i can give no account . the priory of portmuck is annexed to this colledge . and lately , the parsonage of kinkell in aberdeneshire . present professours . james weemis , doctour of divinity , and dean of saint andrews , principal . william sanders , professours of philosophy . alexander skene , professours of philosophy . alexander grant , professours of philosophy . new colledge was founded by james beaton , archbishop , anno 153 — . the professours and scholars endowed are of divinity ; for no philosophy is taught in this colledge . present professours . walter comrie , doctour and professour of divinity , principal . david faulconar , professour of divinity . there was lately founded in the universitie of saint andrews a professour of mathematicks . the present rectour of the universitie is andrew bruce , doctour of divinitie , archdeacon of saint andrews . the short and bad account which i have given of this universitie proceeds meerly from want of information . learned men and writers . john mayor , provost of saint salvator's , a person , according to the learning of those times , very famous . his history of the scotish nation is not so much esteemed , being very short , and in the style and way of writing scholastical and quodlibetical . he wrote also on the master of the sentences : but see his character page 68. he flourished about the year 1520. andrew melvill , professour of divinitie in the new colledge , a man well seen in the hebrew language and the rabbinical writings . he was the first who kindled the great combustions in this church , by introducing the discipline of geneva amongst us , as may be more fully seen in the foregoing history . john baron , doctour and professour of divinitie in the new colledge , was a person of great worth and learning , and of great candour . he died in the time of our late combustions . sir john wedderburn was a professour of philosophy in this universitie ; but that was too narrow a place for so great a person , who became since so celebrated for his great learning and skill in physick : and though his infirmities and great age forced him to retire from publick practice and business , yet his fame attracts all the nation to him , and his noble hospitality and kindness to all men that are learned and vertuous makes his conversation no less loved then his advice is desired . samuel rutherfurd , professour of divinitie in the new colledge , was very famous in those times , for quickness and subtilty in disputing and writing . he was judged to be very devout : he wrote exercitationes de gratia , and disputationes de providentia : he was a wonderfull assertour of the supralapsarian hypothesis : he wrote also many books in english ; some controversial , as the divine right of presbytery , others pieces of devotion and sermons : he wrote also a seditious book , condemned by law , about the power of the king , and the priviledges of the people , called lex rex . he died 1661. alexander colvill , doctour and professour of divinitie in the new colledge : he was before professour at sedan . he was learned in the hebrew , and was a great textuary , and well seen in divinitie . he died about the year 1664. james wood , professour of divinitie , and provost of saint salvator's , was a person both judicious and wise , as also of considerable learning : he wrote a book against independency : he died about the year 1664. john johnston , professour of divinitie in the new colledge , wrote a paraphrase of the psalms , and other most excellent poems , and for his skill in the latin tongue and poesie was second to none in his time : he flourished about the year 1610. david calderwood , a man of great reading and study , but very unhappy in his way of expressing himself , both which appeared in his altare damascenum . he was at first very factious , and banished the kingdom by king james ; yet was afterwards much neglected by that violent party , who judged him too moderate , though from his book none would imagine him guilty of it . james durham , a gentleman of a good family and learned , was bred in this famous university : he wrote a judicious book of scandal , with good learning in it : there are also expositions of his upon the revelation , and on the song of solomon , and the ten commandments , all published since his death . george gillespie was also bred here , who was a very pregnant young man , had great freedome of expression and much boldness , which raised him to make a very considerable figure among the covenanters . he had some good learning , but was very factious : he wrote against the ceremonies , and many pieces against the erastians . he died an. 1649. james gregory , professour of the mathematicks in this university , was a person of most extraordinary learning in those sciences . he had a strange faculty of resolving the hardest problems , and seems to have found a non plus ultrà in geometry . he was fellow of the royal society , and much admired both in england , france and italy , where he travelled ; but lost both his eyes , and soon after died , 1674. in this universitie many of the chief nobility are bred , among whom none has done greater honour to saint leonard's colledge , where he was bred , then his grace the duke of lauderdail : to whom as learning seemed entailed , ( his family for four descents having been most famed for learning of any of their quality ; ) so he received those impressions in this universitie , that , being since much improved , have rendered him so eminent for learning ; of which onely my subject leading me to speak , i shall say nothing of his other extraordinary qualities . archbald lord napier of merchiston was a profound scholar , and of great worth . his logarithms have rendered him famous throughout the whole world : he wrote also an exposition on the revelation . he died 162 — . sir robert murray , a great promoter and fellow of the royal society , was a person of wonderfull abilities , vast apprehensions , great depth of judgment , and universally knowing in every thing , but more particularly in the mathematicks . he was a great ornament to the age he lived in , and an honour to his country . he died anno 1674. the vniversitie of glasgow was founded auspiciis , pietate & benignitate eximii principis , jacobi secundi , scotorum regis serenissimi ; indulgentiam faciente , & jus ac facultatem studii generalis sanciente , nicolao quinto , pontifice romano ; ejus erectionem & constitutionem magno labore & sumptibus procurante reverendo antistite gulielmo turnbullo , episcopo glasguensi . the words of the bull are , vt studium generale vigeat tam in theologia ac jure canonico & civili , quàm artibus & qualibet alià facultate ; quódque doctores & magistri ibidem omnibus & singulis privilegiis , libertatibus , honoribus , immunitatibus , exemptionibus , per sedem apostolicam vel alios quomodolibet magistris , doctoribus & studentibus , in studio nostrae civitatis cononiensis concessis , gaudeant & utantur . the persons founded were , a rectour , a dean of facultie , a principal or warden , who was to teach theologie , three professours to teach philosophy . afterwards some clergy-men professed the laws here , being invited to that profession rather by the commodity of a collegiate life , and the immunities of the universitie , then by any considerable salary . king james the sixth , anno 1577. did establish twelve persons in the colledge ▪ viz. a principal , three professours of philosophy called regents , four scholars called bursars , an oeconomus or provisor , who furnisheth the table with provisions , the principal 's servant , a janitor , and a cook. benefactours . the kings of scotland have been great benefactours to this universitie . king james the second , the founder of it , did bestow considerable revenues , and endue it with many privileges and immunities . the words of the letter under the great seal 12. kal. maii 1453. are , omnes & singulos rectores qui pro tempore fuerint , facultatum decanos , procuratores nationum , regentes , magistros & scholares in hac vniversitate studentes , sub nostra firma pace & custodia , defensione & manutenentia suscipimus ; eosdemque rectores , &c. ab omnibus tributis , exactionibus , taxationibus , collectis , vigiliis , custodiis , eximimus , & postea eximendos statuimus . the same privileges were confirmed by king james the third , anno 1472. by king james the fourth , 1509. by king james the fifth , 1522. and by queen mary , 1547. about the time of the reformation , the universitie was almost brought to desolation , and had been ruined , had not king james the sixth , in his minority , restored it by his royal bounty and munificence . he confirmed all its privileges , and bestowed upon it the tithes of the church of govan , anno 1577. afterwards he ratified all the former acts made in favour of the universitie , and made some new donations , anno 1617. king charles the first did ratifie all the old privileges , and bestowed money for repairing the fabrick . king charles the second , by the advice of the estates of parliament , gave also money for the same purpose . bishop william turnbull , by whose procurement the pope's bull was obtained , was very liberal to the colledge , bestowing upon it both lands and revenues ; and so were several of the bishops and archbishops who succeeded him . the citie of glasgow were also benefactours to the colledge . the ground on which the colledge stands , with a field adjacent thereunto , was the donation of james lord hamilton . since the reformation , sundry private men have given considerable summs of money towards the maintenance of poor scholars or bursars ; as william struthers , zachary boyd , thomas crawford , ministers . others have bestowed money for repairing the fabrick , as alexander boyd , matthew wilson , ministers . james law , archbishop of glasgow , was very bountifull to the colledge ; for he much augmented the revenues thereof , and bestowed many choice books , which are in the library . william earl of dundonald , anno 1672. gave about 1000 pounds sterling towards the maintenance of bursars . john snell hath of late bestowed 6000 marks scotish for enriching the library , and adorning the fabrick . the archbishops of glasgow are perpetual chancellours of the universitie . the rectour is chosen once every year . david cadyow , canon of glasgow , was the first rectour ; and william elphingston , official of glasgow , afterwards bishop of aberdene , was the first dean of facultie . principals . 1454. david bineb first principal . his successours are not known , because the old records and registers of the colledge were either destroyed or taken away at the reformation . 1577. andrew melvin . 1580. thomas smeton . 1600. patrick sharp . 1615. robert boyd of trochrig . 1622. john cameron . 1626. john strang , doctour of divinitie . 1650. robert ramsay : he lived but a month after his instalment . 1653. patrick gillespie . 1660. robert bailie . 1662. edward wright , present principal . professours of divinitie . the principals taught theologie till anno 1640. at which time there was a salarie settled for maintenance of a professour of divinitie . 1640. david dickson . 1649. robert bailie . 1660. john young. 1668. gilbert burnet . 1674. david liddell , present professour of divinitie . there is not a coat of arms peculiar to this universitie , but they use the arms of the citie of glasgow . present professours . sir william fleming of ferm , rectour . doctour matthew brisban , dean of facultie . edward wright , principal or warden . david liddell , professour of theologie . william blair , thomas nicolson , john tran , john boyd , professours of philosophy . learned men and writers . john sharp , doctour and professour of divinitie , a man well learned , and a good textuary . john cameron , principal , of whom i need say no more , but that he was the great cameron so well known to the world by his excellent prelections on the new testament . he acquired so much fame in france , where he was professour of divinitie in saumur , that king james brought him to scotland , hoping that his learning and worth would have had some effects on the puritans : but he finding them untractable , went back to france , where he lived and died in great esteem . robert boyd , principal , was a very excellent person , and of considerable learning : he wrote a large commentary on the ephesians . john strang , doctour of divinity , principal , a man of great parts , extraordinary subtilty , and of a most solid reason , as appears by his excellent books de voluntate dei in actibus humanis , and de scriptura sacra . david dickson , professour of divinitie , a man wonderfully esteemed and reverenced for his piety by the covenanters , not unlearned : he wrote a commentary on s. matthew's gospel , on the psalms , and the epistles to the romans and hebrews ; also a book of practical divinitie , called therapeutica sacra , which he wrote in latin. robert bailie , professour of divinity , and afterwards principal , a learned and modest man : though he published some very violent writings , yet those flowed rather from the instigation of other persons , then his own inclinations . he has left a great evidence of his diligence and learning in his opus chronologicum . alexander nubet and james ferguson , two ministers much esteemed , were bred in this university : they wrote each of them commentaries on some of the epistles . george hutchinson was also bred here , who was accounted one of the greatest preachers of the presbyterian party , and was a learned man : he wrote on the twelve minor prophets , on job , and on the gospel of saint john. he died anno 1674. george buchanan was a person that deserves a higher character then i can give him : but it is done to such advantage in the foregoing history , that i must referre the reader to it , page 325. the vniversitie of aberdene . in the reign of king alexander the second , anno 121 — there was a studium generale in collegio canonicorum , where there were professours and doctours of divinitie , and of the canon and civil laws , and many learned men have flourished therein . king james the fourth , and william elphingston , bishop of aberdene , procured from pope alexander the sixth the privilege of an universitie in aberdene , anno christi 1494. it is endowed with as ample privileges as any universitie in christendom ; and particularly the foundation relates to the privileges of paris and bononia , but hath no reference to oxford or cambridge , because of the wars between scotland and england at that time . the privileges were afterwards confirmed by pope julius the second , clement the seventh , leo the tenth , and paul the second ; and by the successours of king james the fourth . the bishop of aberdene is perpetual chancellour of this universitie , and hath power to visit in his own person and to reform abuses : and although he be not a doctour of divinitie , yet the foundation gives him power of conferring that degree . the office of vicechancellour resides in the official or commissary of aberdene . the rectour , who is chosen yearly , with the assistence of his four assessours is to take notice of abuses , &c. in the universitie , and to make a return thereof to the chancellour . if one of the masters happen to be rectour , then is his power devolved upon the vice-chancellour . the colledge was founded by bishop william elphingston , anno 1500. and was called the king's colledge , because king james the fourth took upon him and his successours the special protection of it . persons endowed were , a doctour of theologie , who was principal ; the canon law ; the civil law ; physick ; a professour of humanity to teach grammar ; a subprincipal to teach philosophy ; a cantor ; a sacrist ; six students of divinitie ; three students of the laws ; thirteen students of philosophy ; an organist ; five singing-boys , who were students of humanitie . benefactours . bishop william elphingston , the founder , built most part of the fabrick , furnished the great steeple with ten bells , gave many costly ornaments , as hangings , books , &c. king james the fourth bestowed upon the colledge the rents of the hospital of saint germans in lothian , whereof the tithes of the parishes of aberluthnot in mernis , of glenmuik and glengairden in mar , are a part ; as also the tithes of the parishes of slanes and furvie in buchan . king james the sixth bestowed upon it the rents of the carmelite friers of bamff , the chaplainries of westhall and fallowroull . king charles the first gave to the colledge two parts of the revenues of the bishoprick of aberdene , so long as the see should remain vacant , anno 1641. upon which donation , eight bursars more were endowed , and the universitie was called the caroline universitie . king charles the second , by the advice of the estates of parliament , did bestow upon it , anno 1672. the stipends of all those churches which should happen to be vacant within the dioceses of aberdene , murray , ross , and cathnes , and that for seven years following the date of the act. gawin dumbar , bishop of aberdene , built the south-quarter of the colledge , and the houses belonging to the prebendaries , and did perfect whatsoever bishop elphingston left unfinished . william stewart , bishop of aberdene , built the library , chapter-house , vestry-house , a school , and chambers for the chaplains . duncan sberar , parson of clat , gave certain lands towards the maintenance of bursars . nicolaus hay , professour of the civil law , and official of aberdene , gave maintenance to bursars . robert maitland , dean of aberdene , procured the annexation of the deanry to the colledge , 1579. walter stewart , principal , procured the annexation of his rectory of methlick to the colledge . sir thomas burnet of leyis endowed three bursars . james wat , rectour of snaith in yorkshire , gave certain lands towards the maintenance of a student of divinitie . alexander reid , doctour of physick , left in legacy to the colledge two hundred pounds of english money : he also left his books to the library . john forbes , doctour and professour of divinitie , did purchase two houses , and left the one for the accommodation of his successours professours of divinitie , and the other for the use of the cantor . the following persons left their books to the library . andrew strachan , doctour and professour of divinitie . george clerk , a minister . thomas garden . george anderson . sir francis gordon . alexander blackball , student of divinitie , resident at london . thomas mercer , burgess of aberdene . principals . 150 — . hector boeth , or boyes , ( descended from the boeths of panbride in angus , ) born in dundee , and bred up in letters in the universitie of paris , was the first principal . besides his history of the scots , he wrote the lives of the bishops of aberdene . 153 — . william hay , subprincipal , was his successour . 1552. john bissait continued six years , and resigned his place ( because of his infirmitie proceeding from long sickness ) to 1558. alexander anderson , subprincipal , who was also parson of tyrie , and vicar of kinkell . this man was a great scholar , and a subtil disputant , but no great friend to the colledge . for the hatred he bare to the reformed religion , he alienated some of the colledge-revenues , destroyed many of its writings and evidences , whereby many lands and other rents belonging to saint germans are quite lost ; sold the ornaments , books , and other furniture belonging to the colledge . commendable he was in one thing ; for when some of the reformers would have taken away the lead and bells , repulit vim ferro . he was afterwards turned out , and the place conferred upon 1569. alexander arbuthnot , ( brother to the baron of arbuthnot , ) parson of arbuthnot and logy buchan , a modest , learned , and pious divine . 1584. walter stewart , subprincipal , was his successour , a very hopefull person , taken away in the thirty-sixth year of his age . 1593. upon his death , david rait , ( of the house of halgreen in the mernis , ) sub-principal , was preferred to the place . he continued principal fortie two years . 1634. to him succeeded william leslie doctour of divinitie , subprincipal , a man of great learning . in his time , anno 1634. a storm of wind beat down the top of the great steeple , which afterwards was built more stately , consisting of four arches supporting a crown with a globe and cross . principal leslie was for his loyalty thrust out by the covenanters , and in his room was elected 1640. william guild , doctour of divinitie , minister in aberdene and one of the chaplains to king charles the first ; a learned and worthy person . he built the tradesmens hospital in aberdene , left considerable legacies to the poor , and bequeathed his books to the library of saint andrews . anno 1649. the general assembly gave a commission to some ministers and lay-elders to reform the colledge , and to expell the malignants . persons thrust out . doctour william guild , principal ; alexander middleton , subprincipal ; patrick gordon , george middleton , professours of philosophy . persons put in . the commissioners at that time did not unanimously agree whom to put in ; and considering ( winter drawing near ) that the colledge could not be well governed , unless there were a principal or subprincipal , therefore they ordered the subprincipal to continue , till his place were supplied by another . shortly after , the masters restored the principal ( in despite of all opposition ) to his place . but anno 1651. general monk , sent five colonels to reform the coledge ; colonel fenwick , moseley , owen , disborough , and smith . at this reformation both principal and subprincipal were again turned out : gilbert rewle was substituted in the room of the latter , and the place of the former was conferred upon 1652. john row , an independent minister in aberdene , a person well seen in the latin and greek languages , and not ill in the hebrew . in his time , anno 1657. was laid the foundation of the new work in the north-east corner of the colledge , of six stories high , consisting of twenty four chambers with chimneys and conveniences , a school , and a bulliard-house . the money that built it was given by the masters , and other well-disposed persons , whose names are written in a register called album amicorum collegii regii aberdonensis . mr. row continued principal till anno 1661. at which time william rait , minister at brichen , was preferred to the place . he stayed onely a year , and returned to brichen . 1662. alexander middleton , minister in old aberdene , and subprincipal , of whom before , succeeded him . professours of divinitie . the professour of divinitie was founded by the bishop , synod , and colledge of aberdene , anno 162 — . the first professour was 162 — . john forbes , doctour of divinity , a most pious , peaceable and learned divine . he continued till the year 163 — . and being by the magistrates of aberdene chosen to be one of the ministers of the town , left for his successour 1634. andrew strachan , doctour of divinity , who lived little above a year after his instalment . 1635. doctour forbes was chosen professour again , and continued till for his loyalty he was thrust out by the covenanters , anno 1639. shortly after he went over into holland , where he published his instructiones historico-theologicae , and returning home died in his house of corse , anno 165 — . 164 — . william douglas , minister at forgue , succeeded doctour forbes . he died anno 1665. 1673. henry scongal , parson of achterless , was after some years vacancy preferred to the place . the election of the rectour , dean of facultie , professour of the oriental languages , professours of philosophy , janitor , &c. is by the major part of the masters : but the principal and the rest of the prebendaries are chosen not onely by the major part , but also by four procuratores nationum . in all the elections the foundation gives the principal one great privilege : volumus enim ut in omnibus hisce electionibus , principalis habeat vocem nominativam , electivam , & conclusivam : which seems to be a negative voice inherent in him . if a place be vacant , a bursar ( alumnus ) is to be preferred before any other , if he be sufficiently qualified . if a vacant place be not filled within one month , then it falls to the chancellour jure devoluto , who presents one for that time . the procuratores nationum their having a voice in the elections , imports the like to be in the scholars , from whom they derive their power of voting . the scholars are divided into four classes , according to the number of the dioceses or provinces wherein they live . the provinces are these . 1. provincia aberdonensis contains the shires of aberdene and bamff . 2. provincia moraviensis includes all those countries that lie on the north side of the river spey . 3. provincia angusiensis contains angus and mernis . 4. provincia landoniensis comprehends ( besides lothian ) all the rest of scotland . the students of each province do chuse a procuratour to give up their vote in the election . every michaelmas , the masters convene after ending of the ten weeks vacation , and a probleme is affixed on the colledge-gates , inviting young scholars to come and dispute for a burse , ( which is their maintenance at the colledge . ) to these are prescribed exercises or themes to make , then latin authours in prose and verse to expound : and the first four ( for so many burses are void at every commencement ) who are reckoned to be the best scholars , are preferred . in october the students begin to convene . they wear a red or scarlet gown with hanging sleeves ; but those who are bursars , a black gown with a girdle . their time of continuance at the universitie is four years . they are ranked into four classes . to those of the first class is taught the greek language . the students of the second class do learn logicks and metaphysicks . those of the third class ( who at the year's end are bachelours of arts ) do learn ethicks and general physicks . the fourth and highest class do compleat their course with special physicks and mathematicks . the time of the commencement of masters of arts is in july ; the manner thus . before the day appointed , those who are to receive their degree do publish their theses , inviting all learned men and scholars to come and dispute . at the day appointed , great preparation is made , the candidati are apparelled in black , with black gowns , and at ten of the clock all go into the publick school , where the professour of philosophy or regent , who is to conferre the degree , makes a long speech ( beginning with a prayer ) to the auditours : which being ended , the disputes begin , and continue till four or five of the clock . then they take a little refreshment , and so return to the graduation , ( laureation . ) the regent doth tender to the candidati the following oath : ego , a.b. coram omniscio & omnipotenti deo , religionem & fidem , unicam & solam orthodoxam , in ecclesia scoticana palàm propositam , professurum me , & ab omnibus pontificiorum & aliorum quorumcunque haeresibus longè abhorrentem , spondeo , voveo , juro . insuper , universitati buie , almae parenti , cui banc ingenii culturam debeo , liberaliter relaturum me nutritiam quam potero , eâdem fide solenniter promitto . quòd si fidem sciens & volens fefellero , arcanorum cordis recessuum scrutstarem deum , ultarem & vindicem non recuso . ità me adjuvet deus . after the oath one of the candidati ascends the desk , and the regent taking into his hand a hat or cap , with these following words doth give him his degree . ego eâdem authoritate , quam summi ac potentissimi principes almae buic vniversitati amplissimam indulsêre , te a.b. in artibus liberalibus , & disciplinis philosophicis , magistrum creo , proclamo , constituo , renuncio : tibíque potestatem do , legendi , scribendi omniáque id genus alia committendi , quae bîc , aut ubivis gentium , artium magistris concedi solet . et in signum manumissionis tuae , caput tuum hoc pileo ( putting the cap on the scholar's head ) adorno : quod ut tibi felix faustúmque sit , deum optimum maximum precor . insuper , librum hunc tibi apertum trado : ut ingenii tui aliquod specimen coram celebri hoc coetu edas , rogo . then the graduate hath a short speech to the auditours , and so the ceremony is ended with clapping of hands , founding of trumpets , shouting , &c. thus are all the candidati graduated one after another . the same way almost is used in all the universities of scotland . concerning the graduation of bachelours and doctours of divinitie , law , and physick , i can give no account . present masters and professours . john menzeis , professour of divinitie in the marischal colledge of aberdene , rectour . doctour lewis gordon , dean of facultie . alexander middleton , dean of aberdene , principal . henry scougal , professour of divinitie . george nicolson , professour of the laws . patrick vrqhuart , doctour and professour of physick . andrew massie , subprincipal . patrick gordon , professour of humanitie , and of the oriental languages . robert forbes , george middleton , john buchan , professours of philosophy . there are also a student of divinitie , fifteen bursars of philosophy , a cantor , who is master of the musick-school in the town , an oeconomus , a janitor , a cook , a gardener , and other inferiour servants . learned men and writers . hector boeth , principal according to the learning of the times he lived in , was very considerable : for whose character see page 68. in the foregoing history . john leslie , canonist in the king's colledge , and official of aberdene , was a very worthy person , and of great learning in those days he lived in : he suffered much for his loyalty to his princess queen mary . john forbes , doctour and professour of divinity . all i shall say to this great man is , that he was one of the best scholars that ever our kingdom bred , as will apppear to all that ever read his instructiones historico-theologicae , which these unhappy times suffered him not to finish , to the great regret of all learned men . his irenicum does also shew both his learning and moderation . but his piety and devotion was so signal , that his name will be alwaies remembred there with great honour . william guild , doctour of divinity , principal . he wrote commentaries on several books of the old testament , a systeme of divinity , and many treatises against the papists . he had a fair estate , which he left wholly to pious uses . arthur johnston , doctour of physick , and rectour of the universitie , was an excellent poet. william douglas , professour of divinity , a man of great industry : he wrote some little treatises . there were also three brothers descended from a noble family , duncan , thomas , and gilbert burnet , who were bred here , and were in great esteem . the first was a doctour of physick , and practised in norwich : he was a learned , holy , and good man. the second was of the same profession , and likewise in great esteem in braintrey , where he practised physick . the third was a professour of philosophy , first at basil , then at montaubon ; and was in such esteem there , that a national synod of the protestants in france appointed his philosophical writings to be printed at the expence of the clergy . but he dying before his manuscripts were put in order , onely his book of ethicks was printed . they all three flourished about the year 1630. george middleton , doctour of physick , was once a professour of philosophy here ; a man of considerable parts , of good learning , and well skilled in the practice of physick . he died very lately . william gordon , doctour and professour of physick here , was a very worthy person , of great judgment , and well seen in that science . he died anno 164 — . james sandilands , doctour and professour of the laws here , and official of aberdene , was a learned man , and a great civilian . he died anno 164 — . many other learned men have been professours here , besides those who have had their education in this colledge . the marischal colledge of aberdene was founded by george keith earl marischal , anno 1593. persons endowed were , a principal , three professours of philosophy . since that time there have been added , a professour of divinitie mathematicks , a fourth professour of philosophy . twenty four poor scholars , benefactours , george earl mariscbal , founder , gave towards the maintenance of the professours certain lands lying near aberdene , and at bervie in mernis . the town of aberdene built most part of the edifice . thomas reid left an annual salary to a library-keeper . bernard cargill gave a considerable summe of money towards the maintenance of a professour of divinitie . duncan liddell , doctour of physick , left a considerable summe of money towards the maintenance of a professour of mathematicks . sir alexander irwing of drum left in legacy towards the maintenance of poor scholars , or bursars , of philosophy and divinity , a thousand pounds sterling mony . king charles the first bestowed on the colledge the third part of the rents of the bishoprick of aberdene , so long as the see should continue vacant , anno 1641. alexander reid , doctour of physick , left in legacy to the colledge and grammar-school two hundred pounds of english mony . alexander ross , doctour of divinity , minister in aberdene , william guild , doctour of divinity , minister in aberdene , patrick dune , doctour of physick , each of them gave mony to maintain bursars . several of the benefactours left their books to the library . principals . 1593. robert howy , first principal . 159 — . gilbert gray . 160 — . andrew aidie . 161 — . william forbes , doctour of divinity , afterwards bishop of edinburgh . 162 — . patrick dune , doctour of physick . 1639. william moir . 1663. james leslie , doctour of physick . professours of divinity . 162 — . robert baron , doctour and professour of divinity afterwards bishop elect of orkney . 164 — . john menzeis . present professours . george meldrum , minister in aberdene , rectour . james leslie , doctour of physick , principal . john menzeis , professour of divinity . duncan liddell , professour of mathematicks . robert paterson , george peacock , john farqbuar , john paton , professours of philosophy . the earl marischal is the onely patron of this colledge . learned men and writers . william forbes , doctour of divinity , principal , was a person of rare endowments , vast learning , and a celebrated preacher . he was the first bishop of edinburgh , and indeed a most holy person , of whom all that ever knew him give this character , that they never saw him but they thought his heart was in heaven . he was indeed a fit pattern to all that should come after him . robert baron , doctour and professour of divinity , was a person of incomparable worth and learning . he had a clear apprehension of things , and a rare facultie of making the hardest things to be easily understood . he is well known by his book de objecto formali fidei , and his metaphysicks and other small treatises : there are many other excellent manuscripts of his that are not yet published : and he bare the greatest share of that famous debate anno 1638. between the doctours of aberdene and the covenanters . alexander reid , doctour of physick , was bred here : he grew very famous in london , and left a great part of his estate to pious uses in and about the places of his education . duncan liddell , doctour of physick , was a person much esteemed for his learned writings , as his book de febribus , and several other books which he wrote . but since i have named some physicians educated in aberdene , i must not pass over sir alexander fraser , his majesties's first physician , whose great learning and happy practice of physick , as they have raised him to such esteem and dignity , so his constant loyalty and high generosity do answer that noble race of the frasers from whom he is descended . the vniversity of edinbvrgh was founded by king james the sixth of blessed memory ; for anno 1580. upon the magistrates of that citie 's supplication and address to him for that effect , he granted to them a charter under the great seal , allowing them the full liberty and privilege of an university within their town . but the foundation was not perfected till anno 1582. the privileges of this university are the same with those of any other university in the kingdom . the dignity of chancellour and vice-chancellour doth reside in the magistrates and town-council of edinburgh , who are the onely patrons . i do not find that ever the dignity was conferred upon any single person . the persons founded were , a principal or warden , a professour of divinitie , four masters or regents ( for so they are called ) of philosophy , a professour or regent of humanitie ( humanarum literarum and philologie . since the first foundation , the town hath added a professour of hebrew , anno 1640. and doctour conradus otto , a learned jew , was the first professour : and a professour of mathematicks , preferring james gregory , fellow of the royal society , to the place , anno 1674. benefactours . king james the sixth , founder . the colledge was built , and the masters and bursars are maintained , by the publick and private benevolence of the citizens of edinburgh . some donations have been by others , but not considerable . all the benefactours names are inserted in the books of the town-council , and in the register of the library ; and are also drawn in gold letters upon several places on the walls of the library , together with their several donations ; and also at the time of the publick commencement ( which is once every year ) they are recited ( vivâ voce ) in the hearing of all . the library was founded by clement litle , one of the officials or commissaries of edinburgh , anno 1635. since which time it is much increased , both by donatives from the citizens , as also from the scholars , who are more in number here then in any other colledge in the kingdom . principals . 1583. robert rollock , one of the ministers of the citie , who was likewise professour of divinity , ( for all the principals here are primarii professores theologie , ) was the first principal , and rectour of the universitie . 1600. henry charters . 1620. patrick sands . 1622. robert boyd . 1625. john adamson . 1653. robert leighton , who was afterwards preferred to be bishop of dumblane . 1662. william colvil . 1675. andrew cant. professours of divinitie . 162 — . andrew ramsay . 1630. john sharp , doctour of divinity . 1650. david dickson , 1664. william keith , doctour of divinity . 1675. lawrence charters . present professours . andrew cant , principal . lawrence charters , professour of divinity . alexander dickson , hebrew professour . james pillan , john wishart , john wood , william paterson , professours of philosophy . gilbert mackmurdo , professour of humanity . william henderson , library-keeper . no professour of mathematicks since mr. gregorie's death . there is no coat of arms peculiar to this universitie ; but the magistrates allow them to use the arms of the city . learned men and writers . robert rollock , principal a person of great worth and learning . he wrote commentaries on the psalms and some of the prophets : some sermons and pieces of devotion were also published by him : but of him see the former history , page 454. henry charters , principal , a person of great modesty and humility , and well seen in theological learning . patrick sands , doctour of divinity , principal , a man very learned in the mathematicks . john adamson , principal , a man of great learning , and of very quick parts . alexander henderson , rectour of the universitie , and one of the ministers in the city , the greatest ring-leader of the covenanters , and often employed by them in the affairs of church and state , both in scotland and england , was a person of great gravity and composedness , and of considerable learning . that debate between his late majesty and him at newcastle 1646. about church-government , and the occasion he then had of knowing that blessed martyr , wrought much upon him , so that he went bak to scotland much changed in his principles ; and it was believed , that if he had lived , he would have been very instrumental in the king's service ; but he died soon after , and was much lamented , being the most universally-esteemed man of all the party . william colvil , principal , a man of very moderate temper . he was deposed by the covenanters , and yet he would never accept preferment , though divers bishopricks were profered to him . he wrote divers pieces , which are printed , in english , and ethica christians in latin. william keith , doctour and professour of divinity , a man of great learning , who had diligently studied both the fathers and schoolmen , and was a great master of languages , being very well skilled in the hebrew and rabbinical learning . he was wholly mortified and denied to the world , and led a most severe and ascetical kind of life . he died anno 1674. i forbear to mention those learned professours in the four universities who are yet alive ; and therefore i leave it to those who shall follow , to celebrate their fame to posterity . chap. 4. of the government and laws of scotland the kingdom of scotland hath been governed by kings in as long a succession as any nation in the world . the king is an absolute and unaccountable monarch , and ( as the law calls him ) a free prince , of a sovereign power ; having as great liberties and prerogatives by the laws of this realm , and privilege of his crown and diademe , as any other king , prince or potentate whatsoever . so that it is delivered as a maxim in the heads of our law , that all jurisdiction stands and consists in the king's person , by reason of his royal authority and crown , and is competent to no subject , but flows and proceeds from the king having supreme jurisdiction , and is given and committed by him to such subjects as he pleases . the crown of scotland descends by inheritance , the heir female not being excluded ; and the undoubted right to it has been for above three hundred years in the family of the stewarts , and is now in the person of king charles the second , whom god long preserve . upon the death of a king , the next heir is presently king and the coronation is onely a solemn instalment in that which was his right before . all the difference between our kings before and after their coronation is , that they hold onely conventions of estates , but no parliaments , before they are crowned : of the distinction of which an account shall be given afterwards . when a king is crowned , he swears the oath appointed to be taken at the coronation , which before the reformation was no other then the oath set down in the roman pontifical to be sworn by kings ; for there is no provision made about it in our laws : but at the reformation it was enacted , that all kings at the time of their coronation should make their faithfull promise by oath , &c. which oath is to be found in that act , and to it the reader is referred . the prerogatives of the crown are great ; the power of peace and war , the power of raising and arming the subjects , the power of the mint , the nomination of all officers , both of the state , and of war and justice , ( except some sheriffs that are such by inheritance , ) the power of calling , adjourning , ( prorogation is not in our law ) and dissolving of parliaments , the giving the votes of parliament the authority of laws , the executing of the law , and the pardoning of offences , are clearly and onely in the crown . but to these , other great additions have been made in the two parliaments held since his majestie' 's restauration . for whereas the supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs was always in the crown since the reformation ; yet in the reign of king james the sixth the power of the general assembly was raised very high by law , which was the chief foundation of the late troubles ; it being pretended , that it was contrary to law for the king to introduce any thing into the church without the consent of a general assembly . it was therefore enacted in parliament , that the external government and polity of the church was wholly in the king's power ; and that his orders sent to the privy council , and published by them , about all ecclesiastical matters , meetings and persons , were to be obeyed by the subjects , any law or practice to the contrary notwithstanding . so that in all matters that relate to the chuch-government the king's power is absolute . the second point is about the militia . by the ancient laws of scotland , a all the king's subjects were to assist him in his wars . upon which a great enlargement of the king's prerogative was grafted of late by two b acts of parliament ; the kingdom of scotland offering to the king , to raise and arm twenty thoussand foot and two thousand horse , and to furnish them with forty days provision , to march into any of his majestie 's dominions of scotland , england or ireland , for suppressing any foreign invasion , intestine trouble or insurrection , or for any other service wherein his majestie 's honour , authority or greatness may be concerned . and these forces , by another act , are to give due obedience to all such directions as they shall receive from his majestie 's privie council . a third point is the ordering and disposing of trade with forein nations , c and the laying of restraints and impositions upon forein imported commodities ; which is declared a prerogative of the crown . with these sacred rights is the crown of scotland cloathed . the king's revenue consisted anciently most in the crown-lands which could not be alienated but by act of parliament , and in the wards and marriages of the vassals of the crown . but most of these have been of late years given away , and most of the tenures of lands are changed , although there has been no general law for taking away the wards . the revenue is now raised out of the customes and the excise . the last is given to this king for life , but the former is in the crown for ever . the rest is raised out of what remains of the crown-lands and the wards . the persons nearest in bloud to the king are , first , all the issue of king james and king charles ; which are so well known to every one , that they need not be repeated . next to them are all that are descended from the daughter of king james the second , ( since whom , till the queen of bohemia , no collateral branch sprung from the royal family of whom any issue remains , ) who was married to james lord hamilton , and had issue , first , james , created earl of arran , whose son was the duke of chastelberault , from whom by two sons and two daughters are descended the families of hamilton and abercorn , and the families of huntly and launderdail . and by an act of parliament , signed by all the three estates , ( the original whereof is yet extant , ) in the reign of queen mary , the duke of chastelberault's family is declared , next the queen and her issue , the rightfull heir of the crown . the sister of king james the third bare likewise to the lord hamilton a daughter , married to the earl of lennox , from whom descended the family of lennox . there is no other branch of the royal family , since it was in the line of the stewarts , except the earl of cassils his family , whose ancestour , the lord kennedy , married king james the first 's sister , from which mariage that family is descended . and so much of the royal family . the chief and supreme court is the high court of parliament , which is made up of three estates . the first is the ecclesiastical , that of old consisted of the bishops and mitered abbots , but since the reformation consists onely of archbishops and bishops . the second estate is the nobility , who were anciently divided into the greater barons and the lesser , ( for every man that holds lands of the crown with a privilege of holding a court , much like the lord of a manour in england , is called a baron , ) and all were obliged to appear personally in parliament , ( for proxies were never allowed by the law of scotland , ) and give the king counsel . this proved a very heavy burthen to the small barons , upon which they desired to be excused from their attendance in parliament : and this was granted to them as a favour in king james the first 's reign . and though by that act they might have sent two or three , or more , to represent them from every shire ; yet they made no use of that for above 150 years : but king james the sixth , to balance the nobility , got them restored to that right ; so that ever since there are two sent from every shire , who are commissioners for the shires . the third estate is the burroughs , every one of which chuseth one commissioner ; onely the city of edinburgh , as the metropolis , chuseth two . the parliament is summoned by proclamation made at the head-burrough of every shire 40 days before they meet ; upon which the shires and burroughs meet about their elections . every man that holds lands of the crown , that in the rolls of the taxation ( the ancient name of subsidies or assessments ) are valued at 40 shillings scotish mony of taxation to the king , which will be in real value about ten pounds sterling a year , is an electour , and may be elected , so he be rightly vested in the land , or ( according to the scotish terms ) infeoft and seised , and be not at the king's horn , ( that is , under an outlawry . ) the electours subscribe the commissions they give , and so their commissioner is returned : and if there be cross elections , the parliament is the onely judge . in the burroughs the common-council of the town makes the election . when the day comes in which the parliament is to be held , the regalia , the crown , sceptre , and the sword of state , which are kept in the castle of edinburgh , are brought down in state to the king's palace , and are to be carried by three of the ancientest earls that are upon the place , bare-headed , before the king or his commissioner . in the great court before the king's palace all the members of parliament do mount on horseback with foot-cloaths , &c. the burgesses ride first , the commissioners of the shires next ; then the lords , viscounts , and earls , in their robes , the last of whom do carry the regalia , the lion herauld , with some heraulds and pursevants riding before the honours ; last of all , when the king is present in person , rides the lord chancellour , bearing the great seal : but this is not done before a commissioner . after these rides the king or his commissioner , with the high constable ( who is by inheritance the earl of arroll ) on his right hand , with a white batton on his hand ; and the great marischal ( who is also by inheritance the earl marischal ) on his left hand , with a silver batton in his hand . if the king be present in person , the marquesses and dukes ride after the earls ; but if his commissioner onely be there , they follow him at some distance . at the outward gate of the parliament-house they all alight off their horses , and the earl marischal receives and conducts the king to the inner gate , where he is received by the high constable , and led into the house where the parliament is held . the throne is raised six steps high , with a state over it ; and there the king , or the commissioner in his absence , sits . and in the first step under him , on a bench , sits the lord chancellour , with other officers of state on both hands of him . in the next step under these sit the lords of session , or judges . on the right hand of the throne is the bishops bench , that rises up three steps and rows of benches . on the highest the two archbishops sit , and in the lower steps sit the bishops according to the dignity of their sees . on the left hand of the throne there is another great bench of three steps and rows of benches , on which sit the nobility according to their precedency . in the middle of the floor there are two tables ; on the one of them the regalia are laid , and in two great chairs by them sit the constable and the marischal : at the other table sits the lord clerk of registers with his deputy-clerks , who are the clerks of the parliament . there are also fourms placed on the floor : those on the right side are for the commissioners of the shires , and those on the left hand are for the commissioners of the burroughs . when all are placed , the parliament is fenced ( as the phrase is ) in the king's name . then the king speaks to them , ( if he be present , ) sitting in his robes , with the crown on his head , all standing up bare-headed : but when a commissioner represents him , he is in an ordinary sute , and stands and speaks also bare-headed , ( nor is the commissioner covered but when there is pleading at the bar , but continues bare-headed , as all the members are , ) and tells them the reason for which they are called together ; which is enlarged upon by the lord chancellour . then they goe about the chusing of the lords of the articles , who are eight for every state , who have been chosen in different ways . sometimes the bishops did chuse the eight lords of the nobility , and the nobility eight for the bishops ; at other times the bishops did chuse their own eight , and the nobility their eight : but now it is settled by an act of parliament , that the king or his commissioner names eight of the bishops , the lords chuse eight for themselves : and those sixteen do chuse eight commissioners for the shires , and as many commissioners for the burroughs . these thirty two are the committee of parliament to prepare matters . when a bill is drawn by them , it is brought into the parliament . and anciently all these bills were brought in the last day of parliament , on which the members ride in the same state as they do the first day : and the bills being read , they were put to the vote of parliament , and either were approved , or not : and then being approved , were presented to the king , who by touching them with the sceptre gave his assent to them , which also is done by his commissioner in his absence ; if he refused to touch them , they were of no force . but of late times matters have been at full length and freely debated in parliament . they sit all in one house , and every one answers distinctly to his name , and gives his vote , which is in these terms , i approve , or not : onely those who are not satisfied one way or another . say , non liquet ; which is a great ease to those who are consciencious , and a common refuge to the cunning politician : the major vote carries it . no dissents or protests are allowed in publick acts , but are accounted treasonable ; but in private acts , that relate to mens properties and rights , any one may protest for his interest . after all business is ended , the king or his commissioner makes a speech to them , and dissolves them . a convention of estates is made up of the same members that constitute a parliament , but can make no laws ; onely that can lay impositions on the subjects : they do not sit in state , and have been most used before the kings were crowned . the lord chancellour is president in both these courts , and the votes are taken and numbered by the clerk of registers . and whatever acts are passed in parliament or convention , are to be proclaimed soon after their dissolution at the publick mercat-cross of edinburgh , by the lion herauld , ( who is at present sir charles erskin of cambo , ) with a great deal of state and ceremony ; after which they are obligatory on the subjects . and so much for the parlaiment and the three estates , whose authority is supreme : and it is enacted , that none of the lieges shall presume to impugn the dignity and authority of the three estates , or to seek or procure the innovation or diminution of the power and authority of the same three estates , or any of them , in time coming , under the pain of treason . the government of the kingdom being wholly in the crown , the king administers it by his officers of state and privy council . the officers of state are eight . the first is the lord chancellour , who is keeper of the great seal , and president in all courts where-ever he is , except in the exchequer . this office is now in the person of the right honourable john leslie earl of rothes . the second officer is the lord high treasurer , who governs the revenue , and presides in the exchequer . this office is now in commission . the third officer is the lord privie seal , who is at present the marquess of athol . these three take place of all the nobility . the fourth officer is the lord secretary , who keeps the signet , and is a lord by his office , and takes place of all of his rank . the office of secretary is executed by his grace the duke of lauderdail . the fifth officer is the lord clerk of registers , who has the charge of all the publick records , rolls and registers , and names all the clerks of parliament and session , and the keepers of publick registers . the sixth officer is the king's advocate , who is also called the lord advocate . he is commonly a judge , except in causes in which the king is concerned ; and in those he pleads in the king's name . the present advocate is sir john nubet of dirlton . the seventh officer is the lord treasurer deputy , who is assistent to the lord high treasurer , and is a check upon him , and presides in the exchequer in his absence . this office is executed by sir charles maitland of hatton . the eighth officer is the lord justice clerk , who assists the lord justice general in criminal causes . the present justice clerk is sir thomas wallace of craigie . all these have the title of lord , and the precedency of all under noblemen and their eldest sons . the privy council is chiefly employed about publick affairs , and judges of riots and any disturbance given to the peace of the kingdom . anciently the lords of the session were the king's council , and so are still called the lords of council and session : but the power of the privy council has been most raised since king james got the crown of england , that by reason of the king 's necessary absence from scotland , the king hath lodged much of his power with the privy council . lawyers do plead the causes of riots before them ; and when sentence is given , every privy councellour gives his vote , and the major vote carries it . lords of his majestie 's privy council . john earl of rothes , chancellour of the kingdom , lord president of the privy council . james lord archbishop of saint andrews his grace . john duke of lauderdail his grace . alexander lord archbishop of glasgow his grace . william marquess of douglas . john marquess of athol . archbald earl of argile . john earl of errol . george earl marischal . william earl of morton . alexander earl of murray . charles earl of mar. — earl of linlithgow . john earl of wigton . patrick earl of kinghorn . alexander earl of kelley . david earl of weemis . james earl of airley . william earl of dundonald . george lord ross . sir charles maitland of hatton . sir james dalrymple of stair . sir john nisbet of dirleton . sir thomas wallace of craigie . sir james fowlis of collington . sir william sharp of stainibill . sir william scot of ardross . sir george kinnaird of rossie . sir john wachop of nidrie . sir gerge monro of culkairn . lieutenant general thomas dalyell . the supreme court of judicature about the property of the subject is called the colledge of justice , or the session ; which was anciently an ambulatory court , but was settled as it now is by king james the fifth , anno christi 1532. to consist of fourteen , who are called senatours of the colledge of justice , or lords of councill and session , and a president ; to whom are added the lord chancellour , and four extraordinary lords , who are of the chief nobility . the extraordinary lords have no salary , and are not obliged to attendance ; but when they come , they have a vote . this court sits from the first of june till the last of july , and from the first of november till christmas-eve , and from the first of january till the last of february : they sit from 9 a clock in the morning till 12 , all the days of the week except sunday and monday . there is an outer house , and an inner . in the outer there is a bench , where one of the senatours sits a week , ( and all of them except the president have their turns in it , ) who hears all causes originally ; and where the case is clear , he gives sentence : but if it be difficult , or if either party desires it , he reports it to the rest of the senatours ; who either send out their answer by him , or if it be very intricate , and the parties or either of them desire it , do appoint it to be heard before themselves . this is a court of great dispatch . but besides the judge on the bench , there is a side-bar , to which one of the judges comes out weekly by turns , as in the former , and receives and answers all petitions and bills . the inner house , where all the rest of the senatours sit , is a court of great state and order . the senatours sit in a semicircle in robes : under them sit their clerks , who write the most material heads of all that is pleaded at the bar , where the pleadings are long and very learned . when the senatours have ( after all the parties are removed ) reconsidered their arguments , they give their sentence , and the major vote carries it . their final sentence determines the business , there lying no appeal from them , ( onely the parliament , as the supreme court , may review and repeal their sentence : ) and they are called decreets , from the latin decreta . senatours of the colledge of justice . sir james dalrymple of stair , president . sir john nubet of dirleton . sir thomas wallace of craigie . sir charles maitland of hatton . sir james fowlis of collington . sir robert nairn of strathurd . sir david nevoy of nevoy . sir peter wederburn of gosfurd . sir john baird of newbyth . sir john lockart of castlehill . sir richard maitland of pitrichie . sir david balfour of forret . sir thomas murray . sir james fowlis of — sir david falconar of newton . the law of scotland is made up of the municipal and civil laws . the municipal consists either of acts of parliaments , or of the customes and practicks of the colledge of justice , which are held of no less force then acts of parliament : and where neither of these contradicts the civil law , the roman law is of force . this makes our lawyers generally great civilians ; for they goe either to leiden , poictiers , or bourges , and study the civil law , in which some are learned to a high degree . the law of scotland is easie and regular , by reason of our registers , which are so full , that titles are much more easily cleared here then can be done where those registers are not : which may appear from the following instances . no man can have a right to any estate but by his being seised of it , which is done by the delivery of earth and stone ; upon which an instrument is formed called a sasine , and this must be registred within 60 days , otherwise it is of no force : by which means all secret conveyances are cut off : for if no sasine be passed upon them , or if these be not put in the publick registers , ( which every one may search , ) the conveyance is of no force . all bonds have a clause in them for inserting them in the publick registers ; and they being registred , without any farther action , by a charge of six days the debitor must make payment , otherwise writs called letters of horning , caption and poynding , are given out : by the first of which the party is under outlawry and rebellion , and forfeits to the king his personal estate ; and if he continues a year under it , the life-rent of his real estate : in which the creditor is to be preferred for his interest , the rest goes into the exchequer . by the letters of caption the party is seised on , and put in prison : nor is his house a place of security , but may be searched for him . by the letters of poynding the debitor's goods may be distrained , where-ever they can be found . a third instance , to which i shall adde no more , is , that any creditor may serve a writ on his debitor , called letters of inhibition , by which he can make no disposition of his goods or estate , till the party be satisfied ; and all is null that he does after that , if these letters be returned and registred within 21 days after they are served , otherwise they have no force . the next supreme court is the justice court , where all criminals are tried . it consisted anciently of a lord justice general , and a lord justice clerk , who was his assistent . the earls of argile had this office by inheritance : but king charles the first agreed with the earl of argile , and gave him the hereditary justiciarship in the high-lands , for which he laid down his pretensions to the other . the justice general is not bound to serve in person , but might doe it by deputies , and he commonly named two : but the parliament changed this anno 1669. and appointed four of the judges to sit in this court with the lord justice general and the lord justice clerk. all trials for life are in this court , which sits every friday in the time of session in the afternoon . here all the subjects , peers as well as commons , are tried : nor is there any difference between the trial of a peer and of a commoner , but that the greater part of the peers jury ( called by the scotish law an assize ) must be peers . fifteen make a jury . the foreman , who is called the chancellour of the assize , gathers and reports their votes : the major vote determines the matter . the present justice general is the earl of murray . the next supreme court is the exchequer . that consists of the lord treasurer , ( or the commissioners of the treasury , when it is in commission , ) the lord treasurer deputy , and some assistents , called the lords of exchequer , who have little power , the lord treasurer and the lord treasurer deputy carrying all matters in it as they please . here all the king's grants , pensions , gifts of wards , letters patents , and such like , are to be passed . and these are the supreme civil courts . the seat of those courts is edinburgh , which has been long the chief seat of the government : and though the making of circuits for giving justice has been oft begun ; yet the charge it puts the country to is found a greater inconvenience , then the bringing up all their affairs to edinburgh . next to these supreme courts there are other inferiour courts . and , first , there are many regalities in the kingdom , where the lord of the regality has a royal jurisdiction within his grounds , and power of life and death , besides many other great immunities and privileges . this began chiefly in church-lands ; for all the bishops and most of the abbots had these regalities granted them : some of the ancient and great peers likewise got the same power bestowed on them , but many more have lately got their lands erected into regalities . the judge is called the bailif of the regality , who sits as often as there is cause . most of the bailifs of the bishops are so by inheritance ; for these were given by the king , since a church-man cannot give a commission in causa sanguinis . there are also in all the shires of scotland sheriffs , who are the judges in all matters of meum and tuum , in thefts , and in all lesser crimes , as likewise in murthers , if the murtherer be taken in hot bloud , as they call it , when the person is newly slain . but though there lies no appeal in any court in this kingdom , yet there is somewhat equivalent to it ; for the supreme courts by a writ called an advocation may take any cause out of the hands of inferiour judges , and order it to be brought before themselves . most of the sheriffs were anciently such by inheritance : and it being in this kingdom no matter of charge , but of profit , it gave the hereditary sheriffs so great a power in their shires , that our kings of late have thought sit to agree with many of those sheriffs for their rights , by which it comes to pass that divers of them are now in the king's gift . the sheriffs may either sit and give judgment themselves , or doe it by a deputy ; which they most commonly doe , except in some greater cases . shires or counties of scotland , and their sheriffs . shires . sheriffs . the shire of edinburgh containeth middle lothian . sir charles maitland of hatton . the shire of berwick containeth mers . the earl of hume . the shire of peeblis containeth tweeddail . the earl of tweeddail . the shire of selkirk containeth the forrest of etterick .   the shire of roxburgh containeth teviotdail , lidisdail , eskdail , ewsdail , &c. duke of buckleugh . the shire of dumfreis containeth nithisdail , and annandail . earl of queensbury . the shire of wigton containeth the west part of galloway . sir patrick agnew of lochnaw . the shire of aire containeth kyle , carrict , and cunninghame . earl of dumfreis . the shire of renfrew containeth the barony of renfrew . earl of eglington . the shire of lanerick containeth clidsdail . duke of hamilton . the shire of dumbritton containeth lennox . duke of lennox . the shire of bute containeth the isles of bute and arran , &c. sir james stewart of — the shire of innerara containeth argile , lorn , kintyre , the most part of the west isles , as ila , jura , mull , wyist , terife , coll , lismore , &c. earl of argile . the shire of perth containeth athol , goury , glenshee , strath-ardel , braid albain , rainach , balwhidder , glenurqhuay , stormont , menteith , and strath-jern . marquis of athol . the shire of striveling lieth on both sides of the river forth . earl of mar. the shire of linlithgow containeth west lothian . earl of calendar . the shire of clackmannan containeth a small part of fife lying on the river forth towards striveling . sir david bruce of clackmannan . the shire of kinross containeth so much of fife as lieth between loch-leiven and the ochell hills . earl of morton . the shire of cowper containeth the rest of fife . earl of rothes . the shire of forfar containeth angus with its pertinents , as glen-ila , glen-esk , glen-prossin , &c. earl of south-esk . the shire of kincairden containeth mernis . earl marischal . the shire of aberdene containeth mar with its pertinents , as birse , glen-taner , glen-muik , strath-dee , strath-don , bray of mar and cromar , most part of buchan , forumarten , gareoch , and strathbogie-land . earl of dunfermline . the shire of bamff containeth a small part of buchan , strath-dovern , boyn , enzie , strath-awin and balveny . sir james baird of auchmedden . the shire of elgin containeth the eastern part of murray . robert dumbar of — the shire of nairne containeth the west part of murray .   the shire of innerness containeth badenoch , lochabyr , and the south part of ross . earl of murray . the shire of cromarty containeth a small part of ross lying on the south side of cromarty firth . sir john vrqhuart of cromarty . the shire of taine containeth the rest of ross , with the isles of sky , lewes , and harrigh . earl of seaforth . the shire of dornoch containeth sutherland , and strath-navern . earl of sutherland . the shire of weik containeth cathnes . earl of cathnes . the shire of orkney containeth all the isles of orkney and schetland .   the constabularie of hadington containeth east lothian , and lauderdail . duke of lauderdail . stewartries . stewards . strath-jern , earl of perth . menteith , earl of menteith . annandail . earl of annandail . kirkubright containeth the east part of galloway . earl of nithisdail . bailiaries . bailiffs . kile .   carrict . earl of cassils . cunninghame . earl of eglington . besides these , every man that holds a barony of the king has a baron-court , in which lesser matters are also judged , and they may fine and distrain . anciently these baron-courts might judge of life and death ; but that is now out of use . for all the other particulars that relate to the regalities , superiorities , and other things of the law of scotland , such as are curious may find full satisfaction in that most learned work of craigs de jure fendali , written in latin , and printed at edinburgh in folio . the military government in scotland of every county is not lodged in one person , but the regiments of foot are commanded by colonels , and the troups of horse by captains , named by the king , without any dependence upon one lord lieutenant : nor are there deputy-lieutenants , but the lieutenant-colonels and other officers are named by the king , as is usual in an army . the court of admiralty sits in leith , the chief sea-port of this kingdom ; but has not much business , except in times of war to judge of prizes . the present high admiral is his royal highness , james duke of york . the burroughs of scotland are of three sorts ; either royal burghs , burghs of regality , or burghs of barony . the former have commissioners in parliament , and besides are a state apart , for they meet yearly in a convention called the convention of burroughs , to which a commissioner comes from every one of them . there they make laws for themselves about trade , and other things relating to their corporations . they hold these meetings in a circuit around the chief , or , as they call them , the head burghs : and at the end of one convention , they name the time and place for the next . in these burghs there is a provost , who has the chief power ; and there are four bailiffs that are next to him in the government : there is also a dean of gild , who is the chief judge among the merchants , likewise a treasurer , and a common council ; the one half of which is chosen yearly by the merchants , the other half by the tradesmen ; who have likewise a court of their own , in which there is one from every trade , who is called the deacon of the trade , and a deacon conveener , who is their president , and calls a meeting of them when he pleases . those deacons are chosen yearly by all the freemen of their trade , and have a little jurisdiction over them . there are in most burghs great animosities and factions between the merchants and tradesmen . the burghs of regality are the towns where these lords hold their courts . the chief magistrates are named by the lord , the rest they chuse themselves . they have also great freedoms , little inferiour to the royal burghs ; onely they have no commissioners in parliament . the burghs of barony are mercat-towns , where the lord of the barony names some of their magistrates , and the corporation chuses the rest . in all these burghs the magistracy is no matter of burthen nor charge , but of power and advantage ; from whence arise great factions almost in them all . a catalogue of the free corporations or royal bvrghs in scotland . edinburgh , in lothian . linlithgow , in lothian . hadington , in lothian . north-berwick , in lothian . dumbar , in lothian . saint andrews , in fife . cowper , in fipe. dunfermlin , in fipe. kirkaldy , in fipe. craill in fipe. anstruther , in fipe. pittenweem , in fipe. dysert , in fipe. earles-ferry , in fipe. kinghorn , in fipe. burnt-island , in fipe. culross , in fipe. clackmannan , in fipe. queens-ferry , in fipe. dundee , in augus . montross , in augus . forfar , in augus . brichen , in augus . arbroath , in augus . kirkubright , in galloway . wigton , in galloway . whithorn , in galloway . stranraver , in galloway . glasgow , in clidisdail . lanerick , in clidisdail . elgin , in murray . nairn , in murray . forres , in murray . ranfrew , in ranfrewshire . pasley , in ranfrewshire . ruglen , in ranfrewshire . aberdene , in mar. kintor , in mar. bamff , in boyn . cullen , in boyn . innerness , in ross . tayne , in ross . air , in kyle . irwing , in cunninghame . rothsay , in bute . dumbarton , in lennox . innerara , in argile . jedburgh , in teviotdail . peeblis , in tweeddail . selkirk , in forrestshire . striveling , upon forth . dumblane , in menteith . innerkeithing , in fife . dornoch , in sutherland . annand , in annandail . dumfreis , in nithisdail . sanqbuar , in nithisdail . bervie , in mernis . innerowrie , in gareoch . the people of scotland are naturally candid and honest , stout and resolute , which makes them so much valued beyond the seas , the onely school of war to them since the happy conjunction of this island under one king. they naturally love their king. the nobility have great power , chiefly in the high-lands , where their families ( commonly called clannes ) depend absolutely upon the head of the name , whom they commonly call their chief . but the great power of the nobility of late years is much abated , yet they are still very considerable . the property of the subject is fully secured by law : and though the king has great prerogatives , yet the people have also great liberties and freedoms . the commissioners that have represented our kings since k. james was settled on the throne of england were as follows . king james the vi. john grabame , earl of montross , commissioner , 1604. george hume , earl of dumbar , commissioner , 1606. george keith , earl marischal , commissioner , 1609. alexander seaton , earl of dunfermlin , commissioner , 1612. james hamilton , marquess of hamilton , commissioner , 1621. anno 1625. king charles the i. crowned anno 1633. james hamilton , marquess of hamilton , commissioner , 1638. john stewart , earl of traquair , commissioner , 1639. james grahame , marquess of montross , governour , 1644. anno 1649. king charles the ii. crowned anno 1651. john middleton , earl of middleton , commissioner , 1660. john leslie , earl of rothes , commissioner , 1663. john maitland , duke of lauderdail , commisioner , 1669. a catalogue of the chancellovrs of the kingdom , since the year 1198. collected out of histories . 1198. william malvoisin , bishop of glasgow . 1220. william de boseo , bishop of dumblane . 1226. matthew kinninmouth , bishop of aberdene . 1239. william babington , bishop of glasgow . 1247. — abbot of — 1248. richard of innerkeithing , bishop of dumblane . 1259. gamelinus , bishop of saint andrews . 1273. william wishart , bishop of glasgow . 1280. william fraser , bishop of saint andrews . 1298. maurice , bishop of the isles . 1363. adam , bishop of brichen . 1372. patrick , bishop of brichen . 1380. john lyon , lord glammes . 1390. gilbert grimlaw , bishop of aberdene . 1409. william lawder , bishop of glasgow . 1434. john , bishop of brichen . 1436. sir william creighton of creighton . 1444. james bruce , bishop of dunkeld . 1448. patrick lyon , lord glammes . 1453. william sinclare , earl of orkney . 1463. george shorswood , bishop of brichen . 1474. john lang , bishop of glasgow . 1476. andrew stewart , lord evendail . 1484. william elphingston , bishop of aberdene . 1494. archbald douglas , earl of angus . 1497. george gordon , earl of huntlie . 1502. james stewart , archbishop of saint andrews . 1512. alexander stewart , archbishop of saint andrews . 1518. james beaton , archbishop of glasgow . 1526. gawin dumbar , archbishop of glasgow . 1534. william stewart , bishop of aberdene . 1539. cardinal david beaton , archbishop of saint andrews . 1561. george gordon , earl of huntlie . 1563. james douglas , earl of morton . 1567. george gordon , earl of huntlie . 1570. james douglas , earl of morton again . 1572. archbald campbell , earl of argile . 1575. john lyon , lord glammes . 1578. john stewart , earl of athol . 1579. coline campbell , earl of argile . 1584. james stewart , earl of arran . 1591. john maitland , lord of thirlstane . 1598. john grahame , earl of montross . 1604. alexander seaton , earl of dunfermlin . 1622. george hay , earl of hinnoule . 1635. john spotiswood , archbishop of saint andrews . 1641. john campbell , earl of lowdoun . 1660. william cunnighame , earl of glencairn . 1665. john leslie , earl of rothes , present lord high chancellour of scotland , 1676. writers of the scotish history . cornelius hibernicus . veremundus , a spaniard , archdeacon of saint andrews , wrote the history of the nation from its original till the reign of king malcolm the third . joannes à campo bello , or campbell . turgot , prior of durham , and bishop of saint andrews , wrote the lives of king malcolm canmoir and of his queen margaret . liber sconae , a chronicle written by the monks of scoon . liber pasletensis , the black book of paislay , a chronicle written by the monks of paislay . liber pluscartensis , a chronicle wriiten by the monks of pluscardy . one blind henry wrote the history of sir william wallace in scotish meeter . john barbour , archdeacon of aberdene , did write the life of king robert bruce in scotish meeter . john major , provost of saint salvator's colledge in saint andrews , wrote the history of the nation . william elphingston , bishop of aberdene , wrote a treatise of the scotish antiquities . hector boeth , or boyes , principal of the king's colledge of aberdene , wrote the history of the nation till the reign of king james the first ; continued till the reign of king james the sixth by john ferrerius a piemontoise , a monk of pluscardy . john balenden , archdeacon of murray , did translate boyes history into english . george buchanan , schoolmaster to king james the sixth , wrote the history of the nation till the year 1572. robert johnston wrote a continuation of the scotish history from the year 1572. to the year 1628. in latin , folio . john leslie , bishop of ross , wrote the history of the nation till the year 158 — . raphael holinshed , wrote the history of the nation till the reign of king james the sixth , centinued by francis thin . william cambden wrote a description of the kingdom . john dempster wrote an introduction to the scotish history . david chalmer wrote a treatise of the scotish saints . david hume of godscroft did write the history of the earls of douglas and angus . william drummond of hawthornden , did write the lives of the five king jameses . william sanderson wrote the lives of queen mary , king james the sixth , and king charles the first . john spotiswood , archbishop of saint andrews , did write the history of the church of scotland , from the first plantation of the christian faith therein , till the death of king james . george wishart , doctour of divinity , did write the actions of james marquess of montross . robert gordon of stralogh did write the theatrum scotiae , being a description of the whole kingdom , with the maps of every particular country , printed by john janson bleaw at amsterdam ; a very excellent work. the mercenary printer did him a double injury . first , in printing with his book , buchanan's seditious pamphlet de jure regni apud scotos ; it being sufficiently known that the authour was of no such principals , but always loyal . then , in dedicating that work to the usurper o. cromwell ; whereas the authour sent over to the printer , a dedication of his book to his most sacred majestie , at that time prince of wales : and the copy of that dedication , written with his own hand , is yet in the custody of his son , the reverend james gordon , parson of rothinay . thus much i thought fit to say in vindication of that worthy gentleman , who was one of the most learned persons of the age he lived it . dempster , in his apparatus to the scotish history , has promised a great many things to the world which he never performed : some have thought , that he onely amused people by the undertaking he mentions in that book : others believe that he knew of a great many scotish manuscripts beyond the seas , which were carried thither by monks and friers at the reformation . in most religious houses there was a chronicle written of the times , divers of which i have seen , that yet remain in scotland , some written in rithme , english and latine , some in prose : but there cannot be much made out of them , they being full of legends and idle stories . there are besides , very considerable manuscripts in scotland , that relate to private families ; but give an account of several publick transactions : as , the history of the families of the drummonds , the gordons , &c. but for a publick history of the kingdom , there is little more to be expected of past times , then what hath been already published : for as when edward the first conquered scotland , he carried the records and registers of that kingdom with him to london , so in the late invasion , cromwell thought it a very valuable pledge of the scotish nation to send up to the tower of london , all the publick records , rolls , and registers of the kingdom , which lay there till his majesty's happy restauration : after which , by the king's orders , they were sent down by sea , to be laid up in the castle of edinburgh ; but the ship that was loaded with them was cast away near the holy island . so they were all irrecoverably sunk and lost : therefore we must rely upon the credit of our ancient historians , since there are no means left to correct them by . a compleat catalogue of the bishops and archbishops succeeding each other in their several sees . bishops in scotland before its division into dioceses . 277. 1. amphibalus 370. 2. regulus 450. 3. ninian 460. 4. palladius 490. 5. hildebert 606. 6. columba 520. 7. servanus 650. 8. colman 669. 9. adamannus 689. 10. wiro 681. 11. plechelmus 700. 12. bonifacius 700. 13. macharius 700. 14. glacianus 700. 15. gervadius 496. 16. trevanus . 600. thomianus chromonus dagamus bathanus bishop bishops and archbishops of saint andrews . 840. 1. adrian 872. 2. kellach 896. 3. malifius 904. 4. kellach 2 d. 939. 5. malmore 6. malifius 2 d. 7. alwinus 8. maldwin 970. 9. tuthaldus 10. fothadus 1010. 11. gregorius 12. edmundus 1063. 13. turgot 1098. 14. godricus 1110. 15. eadmerus 1114. 16. robert 1159. 17. arnold 1161. 18. richard 1178. 19. hugo 1188. 20. roger * 1202. 21. william malvoisin , lord chancellour . 1231. 22. david benham 1251. 23. abel 1253. 24. gamelinus , lord chancellour . 1274. 25. william wishart 1280. 26. william fraser , lord chancell . 1300. 27. william lamberton 1328. 28. james bane 1332. 29. william landels 1385. 30. stephen 1386. 31. walter trail 1401. vacat sedes annis . 13. 1409. 32. henry wardlaw 1444. 33. james kennedy * 1466. 34. patrick grhame , first archbishop * . 1478. 35. william sbevez 1497. 36. james stewart * 1503. 37. alexander stewart * 1513. 38. andrew forman 1522. 39. james beaton , lord chancell . 1539. 40. david beaton , chardinal and lord chancellour . 1545. 41. john hamilton 1572. 42. john douglas 1575. 43. patrick adamson 1591. vacat sedes annis 15. 1606. 44. george gladstanes 1615. 45. john spotiswood , lord chanc , 1639. vacat sedes annis 23. 1662. 46. james sharp . bishops of dvnkeld . 1130. 1. gregorius 1172. 2. richard 1176. 3. cormacus 1180. 4. walder de bidden 1186. 5. john scot 1206. 6. richard provand 1213. 7. john leicester * 1217. 8. hugo de sigillo 1226. 9. matthem , lord chancellour . 1236. 10. galfride liverance 1249. 11. richard 1250. 12. richard of jennerkething , lord chancellour . 1272. 13. robert sutevile 1300. 14. matthew 1312. 15. william sinclare 1338. 16. duncan 1364. 17. michael of monimusk . 1376. 18. john peeblis 1396. 19. robert carden 1436. 20. donald macknaugtan 1437. 21. james kennedy * 1439. 22. alexander lawder 1441. 23. james bruce , lord chancellour . 1447. 24. john ralston 1450. 25. thomas lawder 1476. 26. james levington 1484. 27. george brown 1514. 28. gawan dowglas * 1522. 29. george creighton 1572. 31. robert creighton 1572. 31. james patton 1603. 32. peter . 1607. 33. james nicolson 34. alexander lindsay 1662. 35. george haliburton 1665. 36. henry guthry bishops of aberdene . 1010. 1. beanus 1040. 2. bornotius 1082. 3. cormachus 1121. 4. nectanus 1154. 5. edward 1163. 6. matthew kinninmouth . 1197. 7. john 1206. 8. adam 1227. 9. matthew , lord chancellour . 1228. 10. gilbert striveling 1239. 11. radolph 1246. 12. peter ramsay 1256. 13. richard pottock 1269. 14. hugh benham 1281. 15. henry cheen * 1329. 16. alexander kinninmouth 1341. 17. william deyn 1351. 18. john rait 1357. 19. alexander kinninmouth 1380. 20. adam cunninghame 1390. 21. gilbert greinlaw , lord chancellour . 1424. 22. henry leighton 1441. 23. ingram lindsay 1457. 24. thomas spence 1480. 25. robert blaceader 1484. 26. william elphingston , lord chancellour . 1514. 27. alexander gordon 1518. 28. gawan dumbar 1532. 29. william stewart , lord chan. 1546. 30. william gordon 1579. 31. david cunninghame 1603. 32. peter blackburn 1615. 33. alexander forbes 1618. 34. patrick forbes 1635. 35. adam ballanden 1662. 36. david mitchel 1663. 37. alexander burnet 1664. 38. patrick scougal bishops of mvrray . 1150. 1. william 1171. 2. simon 1184. 3. richard 1203. 4. brieius 1227. 5. andrew 1247. 6. simon 1256. 7. archbald 1303. 8. david murray 1330. 9. john pilmore 1367. 10. alexander barre 1397. 11. william spinie 1406. 12. john innes 1414. 13. henry leighton 1424. 14. columba dumbar 1434. 15. john winchester 1448. 16. james stewart 1450. 17. david stewart 1464. 18. william tulloch 1469. 19. andrew stewart * 1488. 20. andrew forman 1513. 21. james hepburn 1528. 22. robert schaw 1530. 23. alexander stewart * 1537. 24. patrick hepburn 1573. vacat sedes annis 33. 1606. 25. alexander douglas 26. john guthry . 1662. 27. murdo machenzie . bishops of brichen . 1260. 1. edward 2. turpinius 3. rodolphus 4. hugo 5. gregorius 1275. 6. william 1311. 7. john 1363. 8. adam , lord chancellour . 1372. 9. patrick , lord chancellour . 1384. 10. stephen 1414. 11. walter forrester 1434. 12. john , lord chancellour . 1463. 13. george shoreswood , lord chancellour . 1483. 14. john 1500. 15. walter meldrum 1542. 16. john hepburn 1556. 17. henry sinclare 1567. 18. — campbell 1606. 19. andrew lamb 1619. 20. david lindsay 1634. 21. walter whitfurd 1662. 22. david straughan 1671. 23. robert lowry bishops of dvmblane . 1160. 1. jonathus 1203. 2. simon 1210. 3. abraham 1218. 4. william de boseo , lord chan. 5. osbert 1233. 6. clement 1256. 7. robert 8. alpin 9. nicolaus 10. maurice 11. william 1363. 12. walter cambuslang 1400. 13. finlaw 1419. 14. william stephen 15. michael ochiltrie 16. robert lawder 1471. 17. john hepburn 1508. 18. james chisholme 1534. 19. william chisholme 1572. 20. anhrew grhame * 1615. 21. adam ballanden 1635. 22. james wedderburn 1662. 23. robert leighton 1671. 24. james ramsay bishops of ross . 1132. 1. gregorius 2. reynaldus 1213. 3. andrew murray 4. robert 1274. 5. matthew 6. thomas dundie 7. roger 8. alexander 9. thomas vrqhuart 10. alexander kilbuines 11. william bullock 12. thomas tulloch 13. henry cockburn 14. james woodman 15. thomas hay * 16. john guthry 17. john fraser * 18. robert cockburn 19. william elphingston 1481. 20. james hay * 1534. 21. robert carncross 1544. 22. david panter 1550. 23. henry sinclare 1564. 24. john leslie 1597. 25. david lindsay 1614. 26. patrick lindsay 27. john maxwell 1662. 28. john paterson bishops of caithnes . 1066. 1. s. darrus 1110. 2. andrew 3. john 4. adam 1223. 5. s. gilbert murray 1245. 6. william 1261. 7. walter 1271. 8. archbald 1288. 9. andrew 1301. 10. ferqbuard 1328. 11. david 1348. 12. thomas fingask 1360. 13. alexander 1404. 14. malcolm 1421. 15. robert strabock 1440. 16. john innes 1448. 17. william mudie 1460. vacat sedes annis 24. 1484. 18. andrew stewart 1517. 19. andrew stewart * 1542. 20. robert stewart * 1586. vacat sedes annis 13. 1599. 21. george gladstanes p606 . 22. alexander forbes 1617. 23. john abernethy 1662. 24. patrick forbes bishops of orkney . 1390. 1. william 1450. 2. william tulloch 1468. 3. william 4. andrew 1498. 5. edward 1530. 6. robert maxwell 1546. 7. robert reid 1559. 8. adam bothwell 1569. 9. robert stewart * 1606. 10. james law 1615. 11. andrew grhame * 12. george grhame 1639. 13. robert barron elect. 1662. 14. thomas sydserfe 1665. 15. andrew honniman bishops of edinbvrgh . 1633. 1. william forbes 1634. 2. david lindsay 1662. 3. george wishart 1671. 4. alexander young bishops and archbishops of glasgow . 599. 1. s. mungo 1129. 2. john achaian 1146. 3. john 4. herbert 5. angelramus , lord chancel . 6. joceline 7. eugenius 8. hugo , lord chancellour . 9. william malvoisin 1200. 10. florentius * 1207. 11. walter 1234. 12. william babington , lord chan. 1261. 13. john de chyan 1268. 14. nicolas mossat 1270. 15. william wishart , lord chancel . 1274. 16. robert wishart 1316. 17. john lindsay 1325. 18. stephen dundie 19. john wishart 20. william rae 1367. 21. walter wardlaw , cardinal . 1387. 22. matthew glendunning 1408. 23. william lawder , lord chanc. 24. john cameron 1446. 25. james bruce 26. william turnbull 27. andrew moorehead 28. john lang , lord chancellour . 1481. 29. robert blaccader , first archbish . 1500. 30. james beaton 1522. 31. gawan dumbar , lord chanc. 1552. 32. james beaton 1572. 33. james boyd 1581. 34. robert montgomery 1587. 35. william erskine vacat sedes james beaton restored 1603. 36. john spotiswood 1615. 37. james law 1634. 38. patrick lindsay 1662. 39. andrew fairfoul 1664. 40. alexander burnet 1670. 41. robert leighton 1674. alexander burnet restored bishops of galloway . 450. 1. s. ninian 681. 2. pleehelmus 740. 3. frithwaldus 768. 4. pethumus 778. 5. ethelbert 6. radulpbus 7. john 1440. 8. thomas spence 9. david 10. alexander 11. henry 12. george 1550. 13. andrew dury 1557. 14. alexander gordon 15. gawan hamilton 1615. 16. william cowper 1619. 17. andrew lamb 18. thomas sydserfe 1662. 19. james hamilton 1974. 20. john paterson bishops of argile . 1200. 1. evaldus 2. william 1240. 3. william 1350. 4. david 1425. 5. finlaw 6. george learmouth 7. robert montgomery 8. — boyd 9. — campbell 10. — kerswell 1636. 11. james fairlis 1662. 12. david fletcher 1666. 13. william scrowgie 1675. 14. arthur ross bishops of the isles . 277. 1. amphibalus 518. 2. macilla 3. michael 1203. 4. nicolas 1217. 5. reginald 1257. 6. richard 1289. 7. onacus 8. mauricius 9. marcus , lord chancellour . 1606. 10. andrew knox 11. john knox 1630. 12. john leslie 13. neil campbell 1662. 14. robert wallace vacat sedes . those bishops who have been the sons of kings , &c. or noblemen , are marked with an asterisk * . addenda . pag. 4. after the bishops of edinburgh , adde , the arms of the see of edinburgh are , azure , a saltier argent , in chief a miter of the second , garnished or. pag. 8. after the bishops of ross , adde , the arms of the bishoprick of ross are , argent , a bishop standing on the sinister , habited in a long robe close girt , purpure , mitred and holding in his left hand a crosier or , and pointing with the right to s. boniface on the dexter side , clothed , and both his hands placed on his breast , proper . pag. 10. after the bishops of galloway , adde , the coat armorial belonging to the see of galloway is , argent , s. ninian standing full-faced proper , cloathed with a pontifical robe purpure , on his head a miter , and in his dexter hand a crosier , or. ibid. in the bishops of argile , adde , then was — boyd promoted to this see , an. 162 — who , as he was descended from one of the noblest families in the kingdom , being brother to the lord boyd , so he was a very extraordinary person : he found his see full of ignorance and barbarity , scarce any churches or schools in it ; and in many places the very name of christ was not known : he set himself wholly to the work of the gospel , and planted many churches : he resided constantly in his diocese . and was a great example of piety and vertue . and for all the prejudices that are in these parts against that order , yet he is never named among them to this day but with great honour as an apostolical person . ibid. after the bishops of argile , adde , the arms of the see of argile are , azure , two crosiers disposed in saltier , and in chief a miter , or. the end . a catalogue of some books reprinted , and of other new books printed since the fire , and sold by r. royston , viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the works of king charles i. defender of the faith. with the history of his life : as also of his trial and martyrdom . books written by h. hammond , d.d. a paraphrase and annotations upon all the books of the new testament in folio . fourt edition . the works of the said reverend and learned authour , containing a collection of discourses chiefly practical , with many additions and corrections from the authour 's own hand ; together with the life of the authour , enlarged by the reverend doctour fell , dean of christ-church , in oxford . in large folio . books written by jer. taylor , d.d. and late lord bishop of down and connor . ductor dubitantium , or , the rule of conscience , in five books , in fol. the great exemplar , or , the life and death of the holy jesus , in fol. with figures sutable to every story , ingrav'd in copper : whereunto is added , the lives and martyrdoms of the apostles , by will. cave , d.d. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or , a collection of polemical discourses addressed against the enemies of the church of england , both papists and fanaticks , in large folio . third edition . the rules and exercises of holy living and holy dying . the eleventh edition , newly printed , in octavo . books written by the reverend dr. patrick . the christian sacrifice : a treatise shewing the necessity , end and manner of receiving the holy communion : together with sutable prayers and meditations for every month in the year ; and the principal festivals in memory of our blessed saviour . in four parts . the third edition corrected . the devout christian instructed how to pray and give thanks to god : or , a book of devotions for families , and particular persons , in most of the concerns of humane life . the second edition , in twelves . an advice to a friend : the third edition , in twelves . a friendly debate between a conformist and a nonconformist : in octavo , two parts . jesus and the resurrection justified by witnesses in heaven and in earth : in two parts , in octavo , new. the works of the learned mr. joseph mede , in folio . the fourth edition . memoyres of the late duke hamilton , or , a continuation of the history of the church of scotland , beginning in the year 1625. where bishop spotswood ends , and continued to the year 1653. fol. new. the lives of the apostles in folio alone : by william cave , d.d. chirurgical treatises ? by r. wiseman , serjeant-chirurgeon to his majesty , fol. new. xxxi . sermons , by charles gibbes , d.d. prebendary of saint peter's westminster , in quarto , new. the end of the catalogue . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a50800-e1020 an. christi 1546. 1556. 1558. 1571. 1637. 1660 1662 3. sess . 1. par. car. 2. notes for div a50800-e29480 15. par. jac. 5. c. 25. title 8. by sir john skeen . 1. parl. jac. 6. c. 8. anno 1567. act 1.2 . par. held by the duke of lauderdail . a the laws of alex. 2.1 . par. jac. 1. cap 4. 13. par. jac. 2. cap. 57. b 1. parl. car. 2. third session , act 25. 2. par. car. 2. act 2. c 1. parl. car. 2. third session , act 26. parl. 7. c. 101. parl. 11. jac. 6. c. 113. par. 8. jac. 6 cap. 130 proclamation appointing twenty shillings to be payed for every boll of foreign victual that shall be imported scotland. privy council. 1696 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05546 wing s1711 estc r226077 53299275 ocm 53299275 180008 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05546) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180008) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2810:33) proclamation appointing twenty shillings to be payed for every boll of foreign victual that shall be imported scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1694-1702 : william ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh, : 1696. caption title. initial letter. title vignette: royal seal with initials w r. intentional blank spaces in text. imperfect: sheet creased with slight loss of text. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng excise tax -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign economic relations -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion w r diev et mon droit honi soit qui mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms proclamation appointing twenty shilling to be payed for every boll of foraign victual that shall be imported . william by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith. to macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part conjunctly and severally , specially , constitute greetings ▪ for as much as , by sundry acts of the lords of our privy council , and proclamations formerly emitted by us ; foraign of the continuing dearth of victual in several places of this kingdom , and of the want and distres many of our good subjects ly under there-through ; and that the unseasonableness of the weather threatning a late harvest may make the straits and wants of many , especially of the poorer fort . insupportable before they can be relieved by the present cropt we have resolved to give all incouragement to any who shall import victual to this kingdom from any foraign country during the space after-mentioned . therefore , we with advice of the lords of our privy council , do hereby grant license , and full liberty to all persons whatsomever , foraigners or natives , to import victual or corns of all sorts , either by sea or by land from any other kingdom or country whatsoever , until the first day of october next to come , and that free of custom , excise , or other impossition for all that shall be imported after the day and date hereof during the time foresaid ; and recommends it to the commissioners of our theasaury to discharge the exacting of any such custom , excise , or imposition for the said victual so to be imported , notwithstanding of any act of parliament , or book of rates imposing the same ; and for a farther encouragement , and invitation to all such who shall import and bring into this kingdom , either by sea or land betwixt and the day foresaid , victual or corn of any sort , except malt , we with advice of the lords of our privy council , do hereby appoint , and ordain the sum of twenty shilling scots for each boll of the said foraign victual ( excepting as said is ) to be imported after the day and date hereof , and betwixt and the said first of october , to be given and payed out of our customs to the importer thereof , upon his oath of verity , of the number of bolls imported by him , taken in presence of any of the sheriffs of the several shires of this kingdom , baillies of bailliaries or regalities , stuarts of the stewartries or their respective deputs magistrats of burghs or any of the commissioners of supply , or justices of peace within the same , and subscribed with his hand , and attested by the foresaids judges , and also by the collector of the next adjacent custom-house ; and of which twenty shilling scots , we with advice foresaid require and command the tacksmen and farmers of our customs , and their collectors and other receivers at the respective custom-houses to make present and immediate payment for each boll of foraign victual imported by sea or land to the importer thereof upon his receipt to be given upon the back of the foresaid subscribed oath of the number of bolls imported ; and which receipt we with advice foresaid declare , shall be a sufficient exoneration to the saids tacksmen and farmers of our customs and their collectors of their said tack-duty , and be allowed to them in the fore-end thereof protanto , certifying such of the saids collectors , or other persons imployed to receive money at the respective custom-houses , by the tacksmen and farmers of our saids customs ; that if they shall fail to make due and punctual payment of the said twenty shilling scots for each boll of imported victual , ( excepting as said is ) postpon or delay the importers thereof in the ready payment of the said sum when the said subscribed oath and receipt is offered to them . they shall not only be declared , and ipso facto thereby become incapable to serve , or be imployed by our saids farmers in any office or trust under them in uplifting our saids customs , but be farther lyable in what penaltie and dammages to the party , the lords of our privy council shall think fit to inflict upon them . our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly , and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinhurgh , and to the remnant mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the several shires and stewarties within this kingdom ; and their in our name and authority make intimation hereof , that none pretend ignorance : and ordains these presents to be printed . given under our signet at edinburgh the seventh day of august , and of our reign the eight year . 1696 ex deliberatione dominorum secreti concilli . gilb . eliot cls. sti. concilii . god save the king. william r ▪ edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to his most excellent majesty , anno dom. 1696. the number and names of all the kings of england and scotland, from the beginning of their governments to this present as also how long each of them reigned, how many of them came to untimely ends, either by imprisonments, banishments, famine, killing of themselves, poyson, drowning, beheading, falling from horses, slaine in battells, murthered, or otherwise / written by john taylor ... taylor, john, 1580-1653. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a64190 of text r10068 in the english short title catalog (wing t492). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 40 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 17 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a64190 wing t492 estc r10068 11815302 ocm 11815302 49530 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a64190) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 49530) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 552:2) the number and names of all the kings of england and scotland, from the beginning of their governments to this present as also how long each of them reigned, how many of them came to untimely ends, either by imprisonments, banishments, famine, killing of themselves, poyson, drowning, beheading, falling from horses, slaine in battells, murthered, or otherwise / written by john taylor ... taylor, john, 1580-1653. 32 p. [s.n], london : 1649. reproduction of original in bodleian library. eng great britain -kings and rulers -early works to 1800. scotland -kings and rulers -early works to 1800. a64190 r10068 (wing t492). civilwar no the number and names of all the kings of england and scotland, from the beginning of their governments to this present. as also how long eac taylor, john 1649 6790 108 0 0 0 0 0 159 f the rate of 159 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the f category of texts with 100 or more defects per 10,000 words. 2000-00 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2001-00 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2001-08 tcp staff (michigan) sampled and proofread 2001-10 tcp staff (michigan) text and markup reviewed and edited 2001-11 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the number and names of all the kings of england and scotland , from the beginning of their governments to this present . as also how long each of them reigned , how many of them came to untimely ends , either by imprisonments , banishments , famine , killing of themselves , poyson , drowning , beheading , falling from horses , slaine in battells , murthered , or otherwise . written by john taylor , at the signe of the poets head , in phoenix alley , neer the middle of long aker , or covent garden . london , printed in the yeare 1649. noverint vniversi . be it known unto all men &c. history hath such sorce and vertue that it wil make a man a traveller that never went 10. miles from home ; it will describe unto him cities , countries , manners , lawes , customes , fashions , wars and peace both at sea and land , it will give him admittance to speake with his hat on to the greatest emperours , princes , and poten●ates , and all sorts of people and nations that have inhabited the whole world : all this , true and well written histories will furnish a man withall in his owne chamber . and because great bookes are of great prices , and our large chronicles are of such high rates , that all men cannot reach to , i have at , mine owne cost , written and caused this briefe to be printed . many writers do make doubts whether this land had ever any king called brute ; but the most authours do affirme , that when troy was spoyled by the greekes , that prince aeneas fled into italy , and there he was married to a daughter of latinus , king of tuscany , now the dukedome of florence , by which lady he had a son named ascanius , who was the father of silvius posthumus , and that silvius was the father of brute ; brute being but 15 years old , unfortunately as he in a forrest was hunting , slew his father silvius with an arrow as he shot into a thicket , thinking he hadshot at a deere , for which he was banished from that countrey , and shipping himself with a good , or great , number of his followers , he landed here , and was the first king of this land . this is the opinion of many grave writers , but divers learned men do oppose those authors . for my part , i am sure that one king or other did reigne here when this land was first a kingdome , and because it beares the ancient name of brittain or brutaine , i do hold with su● . authours , as for brute do hold with me . anno mundi 2858. yeares before christ 1108. 1 brute raigned 24. yeeres : to his 3. sonnes locrinus , camber , and albanact , hee gave to the first england , to the second wales , to the third scotland . 2 locrine raigned 20. yeers ; he beat the hunns ( or hungarians ) hence , who would have invaded this land , and their king was drowned in humber . 3 queene guendoline ( wife of locrine ) raigned 15 yeers , beloved and honored for her just and vertuous government . 4 madan raigned 40. yeeres , was eaten by wolves , as he was hunting● he was fierce and tyrannous : he built doncaster . 5 mempricius , the son of madan , raigned 20. yeers , and at last ( like his father ) was devoured by wolves . 6 ebrank , built yorke , and reigned 21 yeeres : he had by 21. wives , and other females , 20. sonnes , and 30. daughters : he lived in the times of k. david and k. solomon . 7 brute 2. raigned 12. yeers , buried at york . 8 leile raigned 25. yeers , built carlile , and some say chester . 9 rudhudibras raigned 29. yeers , built canterbury , winchester , and shaftsbury . 10 bladud raigned 20. yeers , built bathe , brake his neck in practising to flie . 11 leire raigned 40. yeers : he built leicester , before christs birth 830 yeers . 12 cordelia , the daughter of leire , raigned 5. yeers : kild her selfe in prison . 13 morgan and cunedague were brothers , and grandchildren to leire : they ruled together , but cunedague slew morgan at glamorgan in wales , and raigned 33. yeers . 14 rivallo raigned 46. yeers : it rained bloud 3. dayes in his time : rome was built out of the putrefaction of the bloud that fell : it bred swarms of hornets and horseflies , that stung many folks to death ; insomuch that with famine , and other calamities , there died so many that they which lived were not enough to bury the dead . 15 gurgustus raigned 38. yeers : a most vicious drunkard , and his brother , 16 sicilius raigned 49. of both which our histories make no good mention . 17 iago raigned 25. yeers : a wicked prince : he died of a sleepy le●hargy . 18 kimmarus raigned 54. yeers . 19 gorbo●ug raigned 63. yeers , as some write and some write but 42. let the reader beleeve as he pleaseth . 20 ferex and porex were brethren : they were the last princes of the race of brute ; porex killed ferex ; to revenge which their mother kild porex , by which meanes this land was without a king , and at division many yeares , and shared into 5. petty kingdomes . some say ferex and porex raigned 50. yeers , and others write but 5. 21 m●lmutius donwallo raigned 40. yeers : hee was the sonne of a cornish duke , named clotton : he brought this land againe into one monarchy , and was the first king that wore a crowne of gold . 22 belinus and brennus were brethren , and shared this land betweene them ; but ( disagreeing ) brennus was forced from hence into france , from whence hee went and wan italy , ransackt rome , and at a siege of delphos in greece , he slew himselfe : belinus raigned 26. yeers : he builded the port called belingsgate . 23 gurguintus raigned 19. yeeres , hee overcame the danes , hee sent many scattered and distressed spaniards to inhabite ireland . 24 guinthelinus raigned 26. yeeres : hee built warwicke . 25 cecilius raigned 7. yeers , and was buried at caerleon in wales . 26 kimarus raigned 3. yeers : a wicked king , kild by a wild beast in hunting . 27 elanius raigned 9. yeers : histories make little mention of him . 28 morindus raigned 8. yeers : he fought with a ravenous sea-monster , which had devoured many people , who also devoured the king , but hee killed the monster afterward , for he was found dead with his dagger in his hand , in the belly of his devourer . 29 gorbomanus raigned 11. yeers : a good king , built cambridge and gra●ham . 30 archigalo , ●lidurus , vigenius , and peredurus , 31 were crowned and deposed again , and with 32 shusfling fortunes these 4. kings raigned 28. yeers . from the time of elidurus to king lud , there reigned in this land 33. kings , of whom historians doe make very various , or little mention , i will therefore but only name them . gorbonian raigned 10. yeers , morgan 14. emerianus 7 , deposed . ival 20. rimo 16. geruncius 20. catillus 10. hee caused all oppressors of the poore to be hanged . but since that time they have increased much . coylus raigned 20. yeers , ferex 5. chirimu 1 he kild himselfe with excessive drinking . fulgon raigned 2. yeers , eldred 1. androgius 1. eliud 5. dodamius 5. gurginius 3. merianus 2. blodunus 2. capenus 3. quinus 2. sillius 2. bledgabredus 10. rodianus 2. archemalus 2. eldalus 2. redargius 3. samullius 2. penisellus 3. pirhus 2. caporus 2. dinellus 4. helius ( or elius ) 1. from this king the i le of ely had its name . of these kings , 24. of them had very short times of either lives or raigns ; 4 of them raignd but 4 yeers , ( that is to say , each of them raignd but one yeere ) and in that course 11 of them reigned 22 yeares ( to years each , as many years as eares ) 4 reigned each three yeares , and one reigned 4 years ; 3 had the happy , or unhappinesse to beare the royall toile , hazard and slavery each 4 years . but although records and histories are burnt , lost , and falsified , by the injury of warres , alteration of times , and partiality or flattery of writers , that there is no mention made by what meanes all these kings did come to their long homes in so short a time . it is more then conjecturable , that they died not all in their beds . 64 king lud reigned 11. yeers : he named troy-novant , ( or this city of new troy ) kair-lud , or lu●stowne : hee enlarged the building of london , from ludgate ( which he founded for freemen to lie in bondage ) to london stone , which stone was set up in memory of lud , 60. yeeres before the incarnation of our saviour . 65 cassibelane raignd 17. yeers : the 2. sonnes of lud and cossibelane fild this land with blody contention , that whilst they strived for the mastry , julius caesar came in and mastred them . 66 theomancius the son of lud raigned 22. yeers : all that i can write of him is , that in memory of his father and himselfe , his statue is on ludgate . 67 cimbelinus raigned 21. yeers : in his raigne the heavens did raine the showres , flouds , innundations of gratious love and favour to most miserable mankinde ; for in this kings time our blest redeemer jesus christ was borne . 68 guiderius raigned 21. yeers : in his time our saviour suffered ; then tiberius caesar was emperour of rome , and commanded the knowne world . 69 a●viragus 28 yeares , a valiant man ; he founded and built gloucester . 70 marius reigned 53 years , he did much for the repairing of the citie of chester ; in his time , it is written , that good joseph of aramathea came hither , and taught the people christianitie at glastonbury in somersetshire ; some writers say that he was buried there , in a chappell of his owne erecting , of which i saw the ruines and rubbish remaining in the yeare of grace , 1649. 71 coylus the second reigned 55 years ; he built coylchester , and was interred at york . 72 lucius was the first king , of any land a christian , by the meanes and perswasion of godly men whom elutherius bishop of rome sent hither , the king and people were brought from paganisme to christianity : lucius cast downe 28 heathen temples , and erected churches for gods service . he reign'd 12 years , buried at glocester , anno christi , 194. 73 severus was an emperour of rome , he reign'd 18 years , he made a strong wall between england and scotland , to secure us from the invasion of the scots , the wall was 112 miles in length , from the river tyne to the scottish seas . hee was slaine 78 years of age . 74 bassianus reigned 6 years , he was emperour of rome , and son to severus . 75 ca●rasius reign'd 7 years , slaine by alectus our first english martyr ( saint alba● suffred martyrdome in his time . 76 alectus was a bloudy tyrant , reign'd 3 year killed by asclepiodates . 77 asclepiodates reign'd 2 yeares , as some do write , others relate 30 years ; he was all slain by coyle duke of colchester . 78 coyle duke of colchester reign'd 14 years , h● married hellen who was the mother ● the emperour constantine , she beautifie●jerusalem , with many faire buildings an● churches , and she also walled london an●colchester , where coyle was buried , an. 315● 79 constantius reigned 4 years , a good king , buried at york . 80 constantine the great was an english m●●orne , he was emperour of the christia● world ; he was the founder of constant●nople , which was an old ruin'd towne called bizantium , he was zealous for god glory , for which he was honoured o● earth , and doubtlesse eternally glorified● he raigned 22. yeers . 81 constantinus raigned 5. yeers , and his brothe● 82 constantius 3. yeers : these were the sonnes●● the great constantine : they raigned together , and together by the eares they fell , and never agreed till death made an end of the quarrell . 83 octavius ( as some do relate ) raigned 54. yeers : he was duke of windsor ; hee was slaine by traherus who succeeded him . 84 traherus raigned 6. yeers , an. dom. 353. 85 constantius 2. raigned 1. yeer , slain by gratia● . 86 maximinianus raignd 1. yeer , slain by gratian . 87 gratian reigned not one full yeer , was slain : this land at this time shook off the roman oppression , having beene vassalls and payd tribute to rome 483. yeers , an. do. 446 88 vortiger raigned 6. yeers : hee was an usurper , and by his murthering of his lawfull prince constans , ( the son of constantius 2. ) he gat the crowne , and the peoples inveterate hatred ; insomuch that he was forced to send for saxons out of germany to ayd him against his owne subjects ; which saxons not onely ayded , but invaded the whole land , and vortiger was deposed , and afterwards hee and his queene burnt to death , by firing of the house where they lodged . 89 vortimer the son of vortiger ; raignd 11. yeers ; he was victorious against the saxons , but was poysoned by his wife . 90 aurelius ambrose raigned 32. yeers ; a good king , yet was poysoned . 91 uter pendragon , ( which in welsh is a dragons head ) he cornuted a duke of cornewall , by corrupting the dutchesse igrene , on whom he begot englands & the christian worlds worthy ( arthur ; ●●er was poisoned by the saxons , after he had raigned 18. yeers . 92 arthur raigned 16. yeers : hee was king of england , denmark and norway . he beat the infidels and misbeleeving ●aracens in 12. great battels : he instituted the order of knights of the round table at winchester . he had a kinsman named mordred , who ( in arthurs absence ) usurped the crowne ; but arthur fought with the rebels , slew mordred their leader , and in the fight lost his owne life , and won the name and fame to bee one of the 9. worthies ; he was buried at glastenbury . an. dom. 541. 93 constantine , ( some have written him the 4. of of that name ) raigned 3. yeers , was kild by his successor . 94 aurelius conanus raigned 33. yeers : writers differ much in writing of this king , and the variation of times that were then : for this land was divided by the saxons into 7. kingdomes , and in the time of 500. and od yeers following , they had to each kingdome these kings under named ; and those lands , shires , and counties heerunto annexed . 1. kent , the first kingdome of the 7. divisions , had to its first king hengist , 2. esk , 3. octa , 4. ymerick , 5. e●helbert , a good christian king , he built st. pauls london , and st. peters at westminster , 6. eabald , 7. ercombert , 8. egbert , 9. lother , 10. edrick , 11. wi●hed , 12. edbert , 13. edelbert , 14. alick , 15. ethilbert , 16. cuthred , 17. baldred : these 17. kings raigned in kent 372. yeers . 2. the south-saxons kingdome was onely sussex and surry : it continued under 5. kings 113. yeers : and though histories doe not mention their deaths , it seemes they died naturally , because so few kings raigned so long in such cut-throat times as those were . 3. the third kingdome was the tumultuous , it endured 561. yeers : it had 17. kings , and contained the counties of cornewall , devonshire , somersetshire , wiltshire , hampshire , and berkshire . 4. the east-saxons , they raigned only over essex and middlesex ; they continued under 14. kings 281. yeeres . 5. northumberland had 23. kings : it consisted of 6. shires and counties ; namely , yorkeshire , durham , lancashire , westmerland , cumberland , and northumberland . it was divided into 2. kingdomes ; it lasted 379. yeers . 6. the east angles bounds , were suffolke , northfolke , cambridgeshire , and the isle of ely : under 15. kings it continued 353. yeers . 7. the seventh , last , and greatest , was the kingdome of the mercians , it had 20. kings : it continued 497. yeeres : it contayned 17. counties ; northampton , leicester , darby , lincoln , huntingdon , nottingham , rutland , cheshire , staffordshire , oxfordshire , worcestershire , glocestershire , shropshire , bedfordshire , warwickshire , hartfordshire , & buckinghamshire : all this while i finde that the welchmen held their owne ; for there is no mention that any of those wrangling petty kings had possession of so much as one village in wales . 95 vortiporus raigned 4. yeeres , an incestuous prince , with his wives daughter . 96 malgo raigned 5. yeers ; hee murthered his wife , and lived incestuously with his brothers daughter . 4. learned men were sent from rome hither , to convert the idolatrous heathen saxons , from paganisme to christianity : their names were augustine , melltius , john and justus . 97 careticus raigned 3. yeers , and being oppressed with the saxons , he fled for saie●y into wales , where he died . 98 cadwane raigned 22. yeers , he tamed the saxons of northumberland . 99 cadwallin raigned 48. yeers , a brave victorious prince : hee was buried in london at st. martins ludgate . 100 cadwallader raigned 3. yeers , a valiant and vertuous king : he was the last king of this land called britaine till his time , for then it was , and not till then , named anglia , and the men english men . cadwallader went to rome , and died there . 101 athelstane was a valiant noble prince : hee raigned 15. yeers , he brought this land to be but one kingdome againe , after it had beene divided into 7. neere 600. yeeres : he was crowned at kingstone , and buried at malmsbury , anno dom. 940. 102 edmund raigned 5. yeers : he was son to athelslane , slaine , and buried at glastenbury . 103 eldred raigned 9. yeers : the da●es were entred heer and opprest the people , and banished him : he was buried at winchester . 104 edwin raigned 5. yeeres , was crowned at kingstone ; he was deposed for being an incestuous ravisher of his own kinswoman , & murdring hir husband . 105 edgar raigned 16. yeers , he was brother to edwin , ( by birth , but not by nature ) edgar was crowned at bathe : he was a vigilant , a valiant , and a pious prince , he had a navie of 3000. ships ( as some have written ) to scowre the seas from enemies and pirats , hee built , and repayred of churches and religious houses , the number of 47. he took 8. petty kings of wales prisoners , and they rowed him in his barge on the river dee , to his parliament at chester : buried at glastenbury . 106 edward raigned 3. yeeres , crownd at kingstone , murdered by his mother in law , and his unnaturall brother etheldred , buried at shaftsbury . 107 etheldred raigned 38. yeers , he caused all the danes to be slaine , or expeld out of england , he was buried in st. pauls london . 108 edmond ( sirnamed ironside ) raigned 2. yeers , canutus king of denmarke came with a mighty power of danes , to revenge their nations being banished & kild in the time of k. etheldred , but edmond and canutus cōbated singly , with condition that the surving victor should have all the kingdom : the royall combatants fought gallantly , till through many wounds , & much blou● lost , they fell both downe in each others armes , and embraced : then they agreed , that the kingdome should be divided into halfes between them , and the longest liver take all ; which agreement they lovingly kept till a traytor named edricus , murdered k. edmond ; for the which the danish k. canutus , put edricus to death with most grievous exquisite torments . 109 canutus raigned 20. yeers , buried at winchester , an. dom. 1038. 110 harold the first raigned 3. yeers . 111 hardicanutus raigned 3. yeers : this king was given so much to excessive drinking , that hee dranke himselfe to death at lambeth : in joyfull memory wherof the merry hock mondaies were kept ye●rly , with dancing , and friendly meeting of neighbours , which some ( that have beene mistakingly thought wise ) have judged to be popery . 112 edward , called the confessor , raigned 23. yeers ; he freed this land from danish slavery , having no heire , gave his kingdome by will , to his kinsman william duke of 113 normandy , but harold● crownd himselfe king , and in the ninth month of his raign , duke william came , kild , and unkingd king harold . thus ended the raignes of the britaines , romanes , saxons and da●s in this land , from the yeer of the wo●lds cre●●ion 2858. before the birth of christ 1108. yeers , which was 1150. yeeres : then ( by deed of gift , some write by conquest ) william the first came hither , after a bloudy battell , neere hastings in sussex , with the slaughter of 70000. men on both sides , the norman duke was crowned an english king on christmasse day following : he had a troublous raigne 21. yeers . 115 william 2 ( sirnamed r●fus ) raigned 13. yeers , hee was slaine in newforrest in stead of a deere , as he was hunting , buried at winchester . 116 henry the first raigned 35. yeeres , in much vexation , he was buried at redding . 117 stephen raigned 19. yeeres , in continuall trouble ; buried at feversham . 118 henry 2. raigned 34. yeers , in much unquietnesse . one of his sonnes named jeffrey was troden to death in a throng at paris : also his son henry he caused to be crownd king in his own life time , which afterward vext him much : and ( to loade him with more afflictions ) his wife , with his sonnes richard and john , raysed armes against him ; he died in france , buried at fonteverard , 1189. 119 richard the first , called cor de lion , raigned 9. yeers , slaine . 120 john raigned 17. yeers , some have written that he was poysoned by a monke , others write , he surfeited with eating peaches . 121 henry 3. raigned 56. yeers , and after a long , tedious , and troublesome life , had the miraculous fortune to die in his bed . 122 edward the first raigned 35. yeeres . 123 edward 2. raigned 19. yeers , murdered at barklay castle . 124 edward 3. raigned 50. yeers , was buried at sheen● , 1378. 125 richard 2. raigned 22. yeers , murdered at pomfret castle . 126 henry 4. raigned 14. yeers , buried at canterbury . 127 henry 5. raigned 9. yeers , buried at westminster , 1422. 128 henry 6. raigned 37. yeeres , murthered in the tower . 129 edward 4. raignd 22. yeers , buried at winsor 130 edward 5. was never crowned , raigned o● murdered . 131 richard 3. raigned not 3. yeers , slaine . 132 henry 7. raigned 23. yeers , buried at westminster , 1509. 133 henry 8. raignd 37. yeers , buried at winsor . 134 edward 6. raigned 7. yeers , buried at westminster . 135 mary raigned 5. yeers , buried at westminst. 136 elizabeth raigned gloriously 44. yeeres . 137 james raigned 22. yeers , a learned man , a poet , a poets friend , and a peaceable king , buried at westminster . 138 charles raigned 24. yeers , beheaded . scotland began to bee a kingdome 339. yeeres before the comming of our savior : it hath been neere 2000. yeers under 108. kings . anno mundi 1641. years before christ 330. 1 fergus raigned 25. yeeres , he was a gallant spirited man , and was drowned by storm & shipwrack , neer carigfergus in ireland . 2 fe●harius raigned 15. yeers , murthered . 3 mainus raigned 29. yeers , he died in peace . 4 do●nadilla raigned 28. yeeres , lived and died peaceably . 5 n●●hatus raigned 20. yeeres , a wicked man ; he was killed . 6 reutherus raigned 26. yeeres , a good king . 7 reutha raigned 14. yeers , hee voluntarily left the crowne , and lived private . 8 thereu● raigned 12. yeeres , was banished by his subjects , died at yorke . 9 j●●●●a raigned 24. yeers , in peace . 10 ●●●●●●anus raigned 3● . yeers . 11 du●●u● raigned 9. yeers , a cruell tyrant ; he was slaine . 12 evenus raigned 19. yeers , a just king . 13 gillus raigned 2. yeers , he was bastard to evenus , was cruell , was slaine . 14 evenus 2. raigned peaceably 17. yeers . 15 ederus raigned 48. yeers , a good king . 16 evenus 3. raigned 7. yeeres , a wicked man , he died in prison . 17 metellanus raigned 39. yeers , a good king . 18 caractacus raigned 20. yeers , about this time our saviour was borne . 19 corbredus raigned 18. yeers , a good king . 20 dardanus raigned 4. yeers , he was by his own subjects beheaded . 21 corbredus 2. raigned 35. yeers , a good king . 22 lugtharus raigned 3. yeers , he loved bloudshed and lechery , and was murdred . 23 mogallas raigned 36. yeers , a good man at first , but turnd bad , and was murdred . 24 conarus raigned 14. yeers , a tyrant , was deposed , died in prison . 25 ethodius the first , raigned 33. yeers , murdered by an irish harper . 26 satraell raigned 4. yeeres , by his owne servants hee was murdred . 27 donald the first , and first christian king of scotland , in anno 199. he raigned 18. yeers . 28 ethodius the second , raigned 16. yeers , by his owne guard he was murdred . 29 a●hrico raigned 12. yeeres , a wicked king ; for his bad life his noble men did rise against him so furiously , that to escape them he kild himselfe . 30 n●●●alocus raigned 11. yeeres , a tyrant , and was murdred , and cast into a privy . 31 findocus raigned 11. yeeres , was murdered by counterfet huntsmen . 32 donald 2. raignd one yeer , he was slaine . 33 donald 3. raigned 12. yeers , he was a tyrant , and slame . 34 crathil●●hus raigned 24. yeeres , he delighted in goodnes , he advanced christian religion , he lived peaceably , and died in peace , anno 277. 35 fincormachus raigned 47. yeeres , hee was pious and couragious , died in peace . 36 r●machus raigned 3. yeeres , hee was a cruell tyrant , beheaded . 37 a●gusianus raigned 3. yeeres , a good king , and slaine in ●ighting with the picts . 38 e●●h●macus raigned 3. yeeres , murdered by treason of an harp●r . 39 eugenius the first raigned 3. yeers , slaine by the picts and roman● , in battell ; and all the scotch people were forced to forsake their country 44. yeeres . 40 vergus 2. raigned 16. yeers , he recovered his country valiantly fighting with romanes and picts , yet at last was slaine . 41 eugenius 2. raigned 32. yeers , he was a good king , and died peaceably . 42 dongardus raigned 5. yeers , a just couragious prince . 43 constantine the first raigned 22. yeeres , murthered by one of his lords , whose daughter he had ravished . 44 congalus the first , raigned 22 yeers . 45 goranus raigned 34. yeeres , a well governing prince . 46 eugenius 3. raignd 23. yeeres , a good king . 47 congallus 2. raigned 11. yeeres . 48 kinnatillus raigned one yeer almost . 49 aidanus raigned 35. yeeres . 50 kenelihus the first , raigned one yeer . 51 eugenius 4. raigned 16. yeeres . these 8. wèere good and just kings , and died naturall deaths : and among all the chronicles of scotland , so many kings successively had not the like fortune . 52 ferquard the first , raignd 12. yeer , a wicked man , he was cast in prison by his nobles , where he kild himselfe . 53 donald 4 raigned 14 yeers , a good king , yet by misfortune drownd in the river tay , as he was fishing for his recreation . 54 ferquard 2 raigned 18 yeers , a bad man , an● a worse king : he was killed by the biti● of a wolfe , as he hunted . 55 malduin raigned 20 yeers , his wife was je●lous , and strangled him , for which sh●e w● burnt . 56 eugenius 5 raigned 4 yeeres , slaine . 57 eugenius 6 raignd 10 yeeres , a good king● 58 ambirkelethus raigned little more then ● yeere , he was a vicious prince , and be● bad was badly used , murdred , anno 6●● 59 eugenius 7 raignd 17 yeers , a good king , ●● died in peace . 60 mordacus raigned 16 yeeres . 61 etsinus raigned 31 yeers , both good prince and died peaceably . 62 eugenius 8 raigned 3 yeers , he was good● first , but hee changing his maners , his nobles chāged their loyalties , & murdred hi● 63 fergus 3 raigned 3 yeers , as chast as a go● was poysoned by his wife . 64 salvathius raigned 20 yeers , a discreet kin● 65 achaius raigned 32 yeers , hee was a goo● king , charles the great being then emperour and king of france , this scottish king made a league with france , which league was never broken or crackt , although it be almost 900 yeeres old . 66 congallus raigned 5 yeers . 67 dongallus raigned 7 yeares , was drowned in the river of spey . 68 alpinus raigned 3 yeeres , beheaded by the scots . 69 kenneth 2 raigned 20 yeers , for his valour and other princely vertues , he attained the sirname of great , hee quite overcame and slew all the nation of the picts , and left his kingdome , ( as he died ) in peace . 70 donald 5 raigned 5 yeers , a bad life founda bad death , for he kild himselfe . 71 constantine 2 raigned 16 yeers , slaine , as he fought valiantly with the danes . 72 ethus raigned 2 yeers , a wicked prince , hee died in prison . 73 gregorius ( who by his prowesse wan the name of magnus ) raigned 18 yeers . 74 donald 6 raigned 11 yeers , a good king . 75 constantine 3. raigned 40 yeers , he was a valiant man , but hee left his crowne for a cowle , and died a religious monke . 76 malc●lme the first , raigned 9 yeers , a good king , yet murthered . 77 indulfus raignd 9 yeers , a couragious prince , slaine by danes . 78 dussus raigned 5 yeeres , was murthered , although a good king . 79 cudenus raigned 4 yeeres , a vicious princ● murthered . 80 kenneth 3. raigned 24 yeeres , a tyrant , h● was murdred . 81 constantine 4 raigned 2 yeers , an usurper , ●● was slaine . 82 grimus raigned 8. yeers , a lewd prince , ● was slaine . 83 macolme 2. raigned 30. yeers , he was a v●tuous prince , yet was murthered by ● chiefest courtiers , who flying away to g● over a frozen river called farfar , the l●● brake , and the murtherers were drown●● 84 duncan the first raigned 6. yeeres , a goo● king , murthered . 85 mackbeth raigned 17. yeers , a cruell tyrant killd . 86 macolme 3. raignd 36. yeers , a good king , slain● 87 donald 7. raigned not a yeere , expulst as a● usurper . 88 duncan 2. raignd one yeer , an usurper , slaine . 89 donald 8. raigned 3. yeeres , he was taken by egar , had his eyes put out , and died in prison lamentably . 90 edgar raigned 9. yeeres , a good king . 91 alexander the first , raigned 17 yeers , he was a valiant good prince , hee was called alexander the fierce . 92 david the first , raigned 29. yeeres , a worthy king , hee built 11. stately religious houses , died in peace at carlisle , buried at dumfermling . 93 macolme 4. raigned 12. yeeres , a maiden unmarried king . 94 william raigned 49. yeers , for his courage sirnamed the lion . 95 alexander 2. raigned 35. yeers , a good king . 96 alexander 3. raigned 17. yeers , died of a fall from a horse . 97 john baliol raigned 4. yeeres , edw. 1. king of england deposed him . 98 robert bruce raigned 24. yeeres , a wise , valiant prince . 99 david 2. raigned 40. yeeres , a good king , was a prisoner 12. yeers in england , 1310. at this time there was scuffling for the crown , robert baliol had the possession , and david the second expeld him , their raignes are uncertainely written . 100 robert 2. was the first king of the name of stuarts 1371. hee was a good king , raigned 19. yeeres . 101 robert 3. raigned 16. yeeres , a good king , whose life was full of affliction , hisonne prince david was famished to death by rebells in scotland , and his son james was 1● yeeres prisoner in england . 102 james the first , raigned 13. yeers , after hi● 18. yeers imprisoned in england , hee w● slaine by traytors . 103 james 2. raigned 24. yeeres , slaine . 104 james 3. raigned 29. yeeres , slaine at ban● nockburne field . 105 james 4. raigned 25. yeeres , slaine at ●lod●don field . 106 james 5. raigned 29. yeeres , a good king . 107 mary daughter to james 5. her raigne wa● sull of trouble , shee was beheaded at fo●●ringham castle , after 18. yeeres thra● dome . 108 james 6. raigned 36. yeeres in scotland , ● most learned peaceable king . england had 33 kings before scotland had any● the number of our kings were 138 , whereof 2 ; did not die naturall deaths ; for 7 were slain , 6 were murdered , 4 were poysoned , one was burnt , 2 fled the land , one was beheaded , one dyed with drinking , one was banished , and one● deposed . the kings of scotland were in number 108. whereof 21 were slaine , 19 murdred , 3 killed themselves , 4 died in prison , 4 beheaded , 3 drowned , 1 banish'd , and 3 deposed . thus of all the scottish kings , onely 50 dyed naturally , and 58 by casualties . by this short relation may bee perceived that the top of honour is slippery , and most unsure , where is not to be expected any sure footing , or endurance of standing . for the king of kings , being the great and only disposer of kings and kingdomes , hath in his just indignation ( for the peoples transgressions ) turnd and overturnd monarchies , principalities , states and common-wealths . the assyrian monarchy began with confusion , and mouldred away to the persian . the persian glory was swallowed in the ravenous gulph of a grecian conquest . the grecian ( like a violent blaze ) was no sooner in but out , was graspt into the hands of the triumphant caesars . the roman greatnesse overthrew it selfe , with its owne weight ; insomuch that whereas it formerly had all , it hath almost lost all . our england hath had his share in changings and alterations : first , by the britaines ; secondly , by the romans ; thirdly , by the saxons ; fourthly , by the danes ; fifthly , by the normans ; and now lastly , ( by the permission of god ) by our selves . there have beene commonwealths translated into kingdomes , as israel and judah , and kingdomes turnd into commonwealths ; italy is now divided into more then one , nam●ly venice , genoa , luca , pisa ; also the sw●zers , or helvetians , are a free state . so are● greatest part of the netherlands . and since it● the almighties unresistable will to change the nations rule and government , from a 5. or●● times changed monarchy , into a republiqu● i will not repine against divine providence , b● as i was a faithfull servant and subject 45. y● to two kings , ( who were good masters to m● so now i must obey the present government , ●● else i must not expect that i should live und● it , or be protected by it . finis . by the king. a proclamation. containing his majesties gracious pardon and indemnity proclamations. 1679-07-27. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1679 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a32392 wing c3278 estc r214875 99826928 99826928 31340 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a32392) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 31340) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1845:13) by the king. a proclamation. containing his majesties gracious pardon and indemnity proclamations. 1679-07-27. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) edinburgh, printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, anno dom. 1679. and re-printed at london, [london] : [1679] year of publication from wing. dated at end: the twenty-seventh day of july, one thousand, six hundred, seventy and nine. and of our reign, the threetieth-one [sic] year. reproduction of the original in the bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. 2008-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-08 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion by the king. a proclamation . containing his majesties gracious pardon and indemnity . charles r. charles the second , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. to all and sundry our good subjects whom these presents do or may concern , greeting : the just resentments we have of th● rebellious courses taken by some in that our ancient kingdom of scotland , by poisoning our people with principles inconsistent with true piety , and all humane society , as well as with our royal government ; and of the humorous factions of others , who ( under pretext of re-presenting grievances 〈◊〉 us ) have most unjustly , both in scotland and england ; defamed our judicatures of scotland , a●d thereby weakened our authority , therein represented ; all which , did not hinder us from endeavouring to quiet the one by our late proclamation ; and the other by a publick hearing and debate : and being most desirous to cover all the imperfections of our subjects , and to remove the fears and jealousies , whence they proceed ; we have therefore , by our royal authority , and the undoubted prerogative of our crown , thought fit ( with the advice of our privy council ) to indemnifie , remit and pardon ( with the exceptions after specified ) all such as have been at field , or house-conventicles ; all such as are guilty of irregular administration of the sacraments , and other schismatick disorders ; all such as have been ingaged in the rebellion , 1666. or the late rebellion this present year of god , 1679 all such as have spoken , written , printed , published , or dispersed any traiterous speeches , infamous l●bels , or pasquils ; all such as have mis-represented any of our judicatures , servants , or subjects , or have advised any thing contrary to our laws ; all such as have maleversed in any publick station , or trust : and generally , all such as are lyable to any pursuit , for any cause , or occasion , relating to any publick administration , by contrivances , actings , oppositions , or otherways preceeding the date hereof . declaring the generality of these presents , to be as effectual to all intents and purposes , as if every circumstance of every the foresaid delinquencies , or mis-demeanours were particularly and specially here inserted ; and as if every of the persons that might be challenged and pursued for the same , had a remission under our great seal , or an act of indemnity past in his favours . discharging any of our officers , or subjects , to pursue any person or persons upon any such accounts , either ad vindictam publicam vel privatam , or to upbraid them therewith . and comanding all our judges to interpret this our remission and indemnity , with all possible latitude and ●avor , as they will be answerable to us upon their highest perils , excepting such as are already forefaulted by our parliaments , or our criminal court , fined by our privy council ; and such who being fined by inferiour judicatures , have payed , or transacted for their fines , in so far as concerns their respected fines , so imposed : excepting also , all such heretors and ministers , who have been in the late rebellion , or were contrivers thereof , and such heretors as have contributed thereto , by levies of men and money ; and excepting likewise such as obeyed not our , and our councils proclamation , in assisting our host ; to be pursued for that their delinquency , according to law ; and such persons as have threatned , or abused any of the orthodox clergy , or any of our good subjects for assisting us , in suppressing the late rebellion ; and that , since our proclamation , dated the twenty-ninth day of june , last past : which indemnity we do grant to those who were ingaged in the late rebellion , provided that they shall appear before such as our privy council shal nominate , betwixt and the dyets following , viz. these that are within this kingdom , betwixt and the eighteenth day of september , and these that are furth thereof , betwixt and the thirteenth of november next to come , and enact themselves , never to carry arms against us , or our authority , and with express condition , that if ever they shall be at any field conventicle , or shall do any violence to any of our orthodox clergy , this our indemnity shall not be useful to such transgressors any manner of way ; as it shall not be to any for private crimes , such as murders , assassinations , thefts , adulteries , the fines and denunciations thereof , and such like as never use to be comprehended under general acts of indemnity ; and particularly the execrable murther of the late arch-bishop of st. andrews : nor to such as were appointed to be carryed to the plantations , by our letter , dated the twenty ninth day of june last , tho their lives be by this our royal proclamation also , secured unto them , in manner , and upon the conditions above-mentioned . but lest the hope of impunity shou'd embolden the malicious to future disorders ; we do hereby command our privy council , and all our other judicatoures , to pursue and punish with all the severity that law can allow , all such as shall hereafter threaten or abuse the orthodox clergy , murmure against our judicatures , or officers , as shall make , publish , print , or disperse lybels , or pasquils ; these being the fore-runners of all rebellions ; and which , by defaming authority , do disappoint all its just and necessary methods . and to the end , all our good subjects may have notice of this our royal will and pleasure , we do hereby command our lyon king at armes , and his brethren heraulds , macers , pursevants , and messengers at arms , to make timous intimation hereof , at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and other places needful . given at our court , at windsor-castle , the twenty-seventh day of july , one thousand , six hundred , seventy and nine . and of our reign , the threttieth-one year . by his majesties command , lauderdale . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1679. and re-printed at londo● . letters of intercommuning against several persons declared fugitives for not compearing to answer for conventicles, &c. scotland. privy council. 1676 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92644 wing s1511 estc r230214 99895947 99895947 153554 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92644) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 153554) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2370:19) letters of intercommuning against several persons declared fugitives for not compearing to answer for conventicles, &c. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1676. below imprint:cum privilegio. arms 232; steele notation: of ters seve-. dated at end: edinburgh, the third day of august, one thousand six hundred seventy and six years, and of our reign, the twenty eight year. reproduction of original in the folger shakespeare library, washington, d.c.. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng fugitives from justice -scotland -early works to 1800. revolutionaries -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion cr honi soit qui mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms letters of intercommuning against several persons declared fugitives for not compearing to answer for conventicles , &c. charles , by the grace of god , king of great britain , france , and ireland , defender of the faith , to our lovits , macers or messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting ; forasmuch , as upon the twenty fifth , twenty seventh , twenty eight , twenty ninth , and thirty days of july ▪ one thousand six hundred and seventy four years , the persons under-written , were at the mercat crosses of edinburgh , haddingtoun , lanerk , cowper , perth , dumfermling , stirling , glasgow , and linlithgow , successive and respective orderly denunced our rebels , and put to our horn , by vertue of letters of denunciation raised , used and execute at the instance of our trusty and well beloved councellor sir john nisbet of dirletoun knight , our advocat , for our interest , for their not compearing personally before the lords of our privy council upon the sixteenth day of july , 1674. to have answered and underlyen the law , for their keeping , and being present at house and field-conventicles , at the places following , and convocating people thereto , viz. at enderask , edmonstoun-chapel , volmet , corstorphine , megdalen-chapel , borthwick , kirklistoun , gladsmure , torwood , pitscottie-mure , ravensheuch , kinkell , balmerino , falkland , collessie , peth-head , of kirkcaldey , kinneswood , glenveal , sanfoord , moonsey , dumfermlin , dundee , pattenwyme , lathons , eastbarns , dumfries , and other places , or ane or other of them , or near to them : and for contemptuous invading , and intruding themselves in the pulpits , and churches of crawmond , forgund , kirkmahoe , and others , in the moneths of apryl , may and june , on thousand six hundred and seventy four ; contrare to the laws and acts of parliament made there-against , in manner at length , specified in the principal complaint raised against them thereanent , viz. mr. james kirktoun , mr. alexander lennox , mr. john rae , mr. david hume , mr. edward jameson , mr. robert lockhart , mr. john walwood , mr. john weir , mr. andrew donaldson , sometime in dalgettie , mr. thomas m cgill , mr. james wedderburn , in cowper , mr. thomas dowglas , mr. francis irving , mr. alexander bartrim , and mr. alexander wilson ; as the letters of denunciation duely execute and registrate , conform to the act of parliament produced in presence of our privy council bears : at the process of the which horn , the forenamed persons , have ever since lyen , and continued , taking no regard thereof ; nor of our authority , and laws ; and are encouraged to continue , in their rebellion , by the resett , supplie , and intercommuning which they have with several of their friends and acquaintances , to the high contempt of us , our authority , and laws . our will is herefore , and we charge you straitly , and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye passe to the mercat crosses of edinburgh , haddingtoun , linlithgow , lanerk , cowper , perth , dumfermling , stirling , glasgow , and other places needful ; and thereat in our name and authority , command and charge all and sundry our leiges and subjects , that they , nor none of them presume nor take upon hand to resett , supply , or intercommune with any of the foresaids persons our rebels , for the causes foresaids ; nor furnish them with meat , drink , house , harbour , victual , nor no other thing useful , nor comfortable to them ; or have intelligence with them by word , writ , or message , or any other manner of way , under the pain to be repute and esteemed airt and part with them , in the crimes foresaids , and pursued therefore with all rigor , to the terror of others : requiring hereby all sheriffs , stewards , bailies of regalities and bailiries , and their deputs , and magistrates of burghs , to apprehend and commit to prison any of the persons above-written , our rebels , whom they shall find in their respective jurisdictions , according to justice , as you will answer to us thereupon . the which to do we commit to you , conjunctly and severally , our full power ; by these our letters , delivering them by you duely execute , and indorsat again to the bearer . given under our signet at edinburgh , the third day of august , one thousand six hundred seventy and six years , and of our reign , the twenty eight year . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . al. gibson , cl. sti. concilii . god save the king. edinburgh , printed by the heirs of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty : anno dom. 1676. cum privilegio . a proclamation, for securing the peace of the high-lands england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) 1685 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a46569 wing j347a estc r20380 12117288 ocm 12117288 54340 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a46569) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 54340) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 869:42) a proclamation, for securing the peace of the high-lands england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) james ii, king of england, 1633-1701. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson ..., by e. mallet ... edinburgh : 1685 ; and reprinted at london : reproduction of original in huntington library. broadside. at end of text: given under our signet at edinburgh, the twenty day of july, 1685. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -politics and government -17th century. scotland -history -revolution of 1688. broadsides 2007-11 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion diev et mon droit honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , for securing the peace of the high-lands . james by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france , and ireland , defender of the faith , to our lyon king at arms , his brethren heraulds , macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly , and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as our dearest and royal brother , of ever blessed memory , having by his commission , dated the ninth day of august , one thousand , six hundred , eighty and two years , commissionated the persons therein-mentioned , for the districts therein-specified , to see the peace of the high-lands : and whereas , the said commission has not been renewed by us to them as yet , ( albeit we be fully resolved shortly to renew the same ; ) and understanding , that there are several attrocious crimes and riots committed in the high-lands , by dissolute and loose persons . we therefore , and for preventing thereof , and punishing the offenders and delinquents guilty of the same ; do hereby with advice of our privy council , revive and renew the commission of the ninth day of august , one thousand , six hundred , eighty and two years , and fully authorize , and impower the commissioners mentioned for the several districts therein-specified , to act and do conform thereto , every manner of way , until our further pleasure : and further to cognosce and determine anent any wrongs , injuries , thiefts , roberies or depredations , has been done by any of those high-landers , lately called out to our host , or who not having come out , have been guilty of the same , and to see the parties prejudged and wronged , redressed accordingly . and in regard ( by reason of the confusions occasioned in the high-lands by the late expedition agains the rebels ) thieves , sorners , and others have , or may take opportunity to thieve , rob , and spoil the country in their ordinary way ; we therefore , with advice foresaid , do hereby strictly require and command all sheriffs , and other magistrates , chieftains of clans , landlords , baillies , and others ( who are by our laws and proclamations answerable for the peace of the high-lands ) to secure the same , conform thereto , and under the pains and certifications therein mentioned . and that our pleasure in the premisses may be known , our will is , and we charge you strictly , and command , that incontinent , these our letters seen , ye pass to our mercat cross of edinburgh , mercat crosses of the head burghs of the shires of caithness , sutherland , innerness , cromarty , nairn , elgin , bamff , aberdeen , kincardine , forfar , perth , dumbarton , stirling , argile , tarbet , and other places needful , and there in our royal name and authority , make publication of our pleasure in the premisses , that our said commissioners may proceed and act conform to their said former commission , and this our royal proclamation ; and that all judges and magistrates concerned may give their concurrence , and assistance to them , and all our subjects may give due obedience accordingly ; as also , that ye cause read these presents at the several paroch-churches within the respective shires foresaids , upon the lords day , after divine worship , that the same may be more publickly known : and to that effect , the sheriffs , and other magistrates of the saids respective shires , are to see , and cause the same be done accordingly , as they will be answerable to their peril . given under our signet at edinburgh , the twenty day of july , 1685. and of our reign the first year . per actum dominorum secreti concilij . will. paterson . cls. sti. concilij . god save the king. edinburg , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , 1685. and reprinted at london by e. mallet , in black-horse-alley near fleet-bridge , the letter from the commissioners of the parliament of scotland to the commissioners of both houses, concerning his majesties coming to the scotish army dated at southwel the fifth of may. 1646. scotland. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a92458 of text r212295 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.9[61]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a92458 wing s1002h thomason 669.f.9[61] estc r212295 99870933 99870933 161159 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92458) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 161159) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 245:669f9[61]) the letter from the commissioners of the parliament of scotland to the commissioners of both houses, concerning his majesties coming to the scotish army dated at southwel the fifth of may. 1646. scotland. parliament. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by john field for laurence chapman, london : may 7. 1646. dated: southwel, may 5. 1646. signed: by the warrant and command of the commissioners for the parliament of scotland. lothian. with engraved border. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng charles -i, -king of england, 1600-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland. -army -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a92458 r212295 (thomason 669.f.9[61]). civilwar no the letter from the commissioners of the parliament of scotland to the commissioners of both houses, concerning his maiesties coming to the scotland. parliament 1646 349 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-07 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the letter from the commissioners of the parliament of scotland to the commissioners of both houses , concerning his majesties coming to the scotish army . dated at southwel the fifth of may . 1646. right honorable , the discharging of our selves of the duty we owe to the kingdom of england , to you as commissioners from the same , moves us to acquaint you with the kings coming into our army this morning ; which having overtaken us unexpectedly , hath filled us with amazement , and made us like men that dream . vve cannot think that he could have been so unadvised in his resolutions , to have cast himself upon us , without a real intention to give full satisfaction to both kingdoms in all their just and reasonable demands in all those things that concern religion and righteousnesse ; whatsoever be his disposition or resolution , you may be assured , that vve shall never entertain any thought , nor correspond with any purpose , nor countenance any endeavours that may in any circumstance incroach upon our league and covenant , or weaken the union or confidence between the nations : that union , unto our kingdom was the matter of many prayers ; and as nothing was more joyful to us , then to have it set on foot , so hitherto have vve thought nothing too dear to maintain it ; and vve trust to walk with such faithfulnesse and truth in this particular , that as vve have the testimony of a good conscience within our selves , so you and all the vvorld shall see , that vve minde your interest with as much integrity and care as our own , being confident you will entertain no other thoughts of us . southwel , may 5. 1646. for the right honorable , the commissioners of the parliament of england . signed by the warrant and command of the commislothian . published by authority . london , printed by john field for laurence chapman . may 7. 1646. a proclamation, appointing a rendezvous of the militia-regiments in several shires, & calling out the heretors, &c. proclamations. 1688-09-18 scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) 1688 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92668 wing s1697 estc r230233 99899464 99899464 153564 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92668) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 153564) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2370:29) a proclamation, appointing a rendezvous of the militia-regiments in several shires, & calling out the heretors, &c. proclamations. 1688-09-18 scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) james ii, king of england, 1633-1701. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1688. "militia to meet with best arms and 48 hours' provisions. ... all persons between 60 and 16 to repair to the rendezvous when beacons are fired." -steele. at end of text: given under our signet at edinburgh, the eighteenth day of september, one thousand six hundred and eighty eight years. and of our reign the fourth year. arms 237; steele notation: faith, of this. reproduction of original in the folger shakespeare library, washington, d.c.. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng military maneuvers -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. scotland -militia -mobilization -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion i●r honi soit qui mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , appointing a rendezvous of the militia-regiments in several shires , & calling out the heretors , &c. james by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith , to our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers of our privy council , pursevants , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch , as by the thirty second act of our first parliament , we were graciously pleased , for the ease of our people , to discharge the ordinary rendezvouzes of our established militia , during our royal pleasure . and now we having thought fit for the good of our service , and security of our royal government , that the foot-regiments of our militia of the town of edinburgh , mid , east and west-lothians , fife and kinross , perth , stirling , mers and forfar , should be rendezvouzed , at the times , and places , and under the commanders after-mentioned : therefore we with advice of our privy council , do hereby strictly require and command , that all persons lyable in outriek of the said militia-foot regiments , in the foresaid shires , do peremptorly send out their respective proportions , as formerly , with their best arms , and with fourty eight hours provision , viz. the regiment of our good town of edinburgh , at the links of leith , upon tuesday next , the 25 instant , at ten a clock in the forenoon , under the command of the lord provost of edinburgh , and in his absence , under the command of the first baillie ; the regiment of mid-lothian , at the said time and place , under the command of the earl of lauderdale ; the regiment of east-lothian , the said time , at the burgh of haddingtoun , under the command of sir james hay of linplum ; the regiment of-west lothian , the said time , at the burgh of linlithgow , under the command of the earl of linlithgow , our justice general ; the east regiment of fife , at the town of levin , the said day and time , under the command of the earl of belcarras ; the west-regiment of that shire , upon wednesday thereafter , the 26 instant , the said time , at the burgh of kirkcaldie , under the command of the said earl of belcarras ; the regiment of stirling-shire , at sauchenfoord , the 25 instant , at the above-written hour , under the command of the earl of callendar ; the regiment of berwick-shire , the foresaid time , at the town of dunce , under the command of the earl of hume ; the regiment of forfar , at the burgh of forfar , the said day and time , under the command of the earl of strathmore ; the west regiment of perth-shire , at auchterardor , the foresaid time , under the command of sir john drummond of machany , or in his absence , james grahame of urchle ; and the east regiment of that shire , at the same time , at the inch of st. johnstoun , under the command of the marquess of athole , lord privy-seal , or whom he shall appoint : and ordains the saids regiments to continue in the respective places above-written , in a body , for the space of 48 hours : in which time they are to receive further orders from us , or our privy council . hereby strictly charging and commanding all heretors , liferenters , leaders , and others , any manner of way lyable in out-reik of the said regiments , to give punctual obedience to this our royal will and pleasure , under the pains contained in the acts of parliament anent our militia : requiring also the saids persons now nominat by us , to send in exact accounts from their said first meeting , to our chancellor , what commissionar officers are wanting in their respective regiments , that we may supply the same , as in our royal wisdom we shall think fit ; hereby likewise requiring and commanding all persons , whether officers or souldiers of the saids regiments , to give cheerful obedience to those intrusted by us in this command , and that as they will be answerable at their highest peril , and appoints and commands the respective sheriffs and their deputs , to cause prepare beacons at north-berwick-law , gairlntoun-hill , st. abbs-head , coldinghame-moor , arthures-seat , dininicker-law , kellie-law , largo-law , easter-lowmont in fife , and the bass ; upon which places the respective sheriffs are hereby ordered to cause kindle beacons , how soon they see any considerable number of ships appearing on the coasts of this kingdom . and strictly requires and commands all fencible persons , our leidges in the saids bounds , betwixt sixty and sixteen , in their best arms , to repair to the respective places appointed for the rendezvous of the said shires , and that immediatly upon their having notice of the firing of the saids beacons , or either of them . and likewise hereby requiring all heretors , liferenters , and wodsetters , to be ready with their best horses and arms , to attend our host , whenever they shall be requi●●d tereto , and that under the pains and pe●alties contained in the acts of parliament anent absents from our host . and to the end our royal pleasure in the premisses may be made publick and known , our will is , and we charge you strictly and command , that incontinent , these our letters ●een , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and whole remanent mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the shires of this kingdom , and other places needful , and there in our name and authority , by open proclamation , make publication of our royal pleasure in the premisses . and recommends to the most reverend the arch-bishops , and right reverend bishops , to caus read this our royal proclamation in all the pulpits of this kingdom , upon the first next lords day , in the forenoon , immediatly after divine service , that none pretend ignorance . given under our signet at edinburgh , the eighteenth day of september , one thousand six hundred and eighty eight years . and of our reign the fourth year . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . will. paterson , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , prin●●r to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1688. the speech of patrick earl of marchmont, &c., lord high chancellor to the parliament of scotland on tuesday 21 may 1700. marchmont, patrick hume, earl of, 1641-1724. 1700 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 2 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-01 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a51917 wing m587 estc r33499 13419665 ocm 13419665 99497 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a51917) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 99497) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1552:22) the speech of patrick earl of marchmont, &c., lord high chancellor to the parliament of scotland on tuesday 21 may 1700. marchmont, patrick hume, earl of, 1641-1724. 1 sheet (3 [i.e. 2] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh : 1700. caption title. imprint from colophon. reproduction of original in the harvard university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -politics and government -1689-1745. scotland -history -1689-1745. 2002-09 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2002-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2002-11 chris scherer sampled and proofread 2002-11 chris scherer text and markup reviewed and edited 2002-12 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the speech of patrick earl of marchmont , &c. lord high chancellor to the parliament of scotland , on tuesday 21. may 1700. my lords and gentlemen , our soveraign lord the king , who has done so great things for this nation , as we have good reason ever to rejoyce of , and for which we ought to show our perpetual gratitude , by a constant readiness to do his majesty such services as will be acceptable to him ; has so plainly and kindly in his most gracious letter , expressed his firm resolution to make it the chief design of his reign , to do every thing that may tend to the advantage and good of his subjects , that i need say nothing to perswade you to rest assured of it , and to rely upon it . the commissioners grace , whom his constant fidelity to his majesty , zeal for the good of the countrey , and his other fit enduments , have justly induced the king to imploy in the great and important trust of representing his majesties royal person in this session of parliament ; and who is no doubt upon the mentioned considerations most acceptable to us all : haveing likeways expressed to you , his majesties good resolutions and intentions ; it seems not necessary for me to add to what you have heard upon that subject . my part , shall be then earnestly to invite you to the remembrance and consideration of the great and eminent danger this nation was in , as to all its most valuable interests , when it pleased god to put it in the heart of our king to appear for our rescue and deliverance , likeways of the great wisdom and prudence , conduct and courage , which have been eminently shown ; the great labours , travels and pains , which have been undergone and taken , the great and many dangers and hazards which have been encountered by his majesty , in the prosecution of his glorious undertaking for rescuing and establishing our religion , liberties and laws . but above all , to invite you to the remembrance and consideration of the wonderful mercies and goodness of god , who has been pleased to show his favour to this nation , in raising up for it so great a deliverer , and in countenancing and supporting him , and giving him so happy a success in his enterprizes ; that these things which seemed to be next to impossible ▪ are brought to pass to the unexpressible joy and comfort of all good people in the nation . an universal peace did terminat that war wherein most part of the princes and states in europe were deeply concerned and engaged , one of the greatest , most bloody and expensive that ever europe had seen , and of a long continuance , tho' this nation and its interests were all at stake in that war ; yet by the wise conduct of our king , we felt it not much : we were in peace at home , no eenemy to invade our houses , none to pluck the morsel from the mouths of our children ; nay , not so much as to drive our cattel from their pasture , excepting that short time , when our own unnatural countreymen , ravaged in , and harased the north of scotland to the great prejudice indeed of these honest hearted patriots there , who bravely-showed their zeal and concern for the support of the happy settlement then established . i hope to see the time , and t at it is not for distant , when the parliament of scotland will consider the great losses and prejudice sustained by their fellow subjects ; these worthy persons who then bore the burden , and endured the heat of the day , and will do it in such a manner , as may convince the sufferers how willing they would have been , and are , to partake with them in their losses , as well as they do in their benefites and advantages . but at this time , it is necessary for us to consider , that tho' we are at peace with forreign princes and powers ; yet the enmity of a multitude , natives of this kingdom , living in it , and injoying the protection of the government ; besides these who are abroad , is not at an end , they are not reconciled , they are still designing and hatching mischief , and waiting opportunities to put in execution . we may justly too take notice of the breach that is beginning among the protestant princes of the north , and of the warlike preparations which are made both for land and sea , by other neigbouring princes and states , which may at least lead us to bethink our selves , and to be so far upon our guard , as to provide for maintaining that tranquility within the kingdom , which we now enjoy . the king's majesty has told you , that he thinks it necessary for that purpose , that the forces be provided for ; and i am confident that no man who observes well , and considers justly , will differ from his majesties opinion . my lords and gentlemen , i cannot but tell you , that the penetrating wisdom of our king , has been so manifest in the course of his reign , as justly claims a great deference from you , that the care he has taken of your most important interests , and the great things he has performed for you , do justly claim an intire trust , and confidence to be lodged in him , all the proof of these which he expects at this time , is what may very well be expected from a parliament , which all along has evidenced so much good affection to him , and gratitude towards him ; let us not change our way , but with honest and generous minds , heartily , readily and unanimously go in to , and joyn with the sentiments of our prince to his satisfaction and comfort , when the doing it will so much tend to our own safety , peace and advantage : now is the time , and if we lay not hold upon the occasion , we will certainly repent it , and perhaps when it is too late , which i hope god in his goodness shall prevent , by guiding your hearts and blessing your endeavours . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to the king 's most excellent majesty , anno dom. 1700. three speeches of the right honorable, sir francis bacon knight, then his majesties sollicitor generall, after lord verulam, viscount saint alban. concerning the post-nati naturalization of the scotch in england union of the lawes of the kingdomes of england and scotland. published by the authors copy, and licensed by authority. bacon, francis, 1561-1626. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a71317 of text r17387 in the english short title catalog (wing b337). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 100 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 37 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a71317 wing b337 estc r17387 99860182 99860182 130509 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a71317) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 130509) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 35:e199[1], 35:e199[2], 35:e199[3]) three speeches of the right honorable, sir francis bacon knight, then his majesties sollicitor generall, after lord verulam, viscount saint alban. concerning the post-nati naturalization of the scotch in england union of the lawes of the kingdomes of england and scotland. published by the authors copy, and licensed by authority. bacon, francis, 1561-1626. [2], 58, 57-88 p. printed by richard badger, for samuel broun, and are to be sold at his shop in st. pauls church-yard at the signe of the white lyon and ball, london : 1641. the words "post-nati .. scotland." are bracketed together on title page. annotation on thomason copy: "july 20th". there exist two states of this edition. in state #1: the word "chancecellor" appears on page 1, line 5. in state #2: the word is spelled "chancellor". --cf. gibson, r.w. bacon. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng speeches, addresses, etc., english -early works to 1800. great britain -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. england -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign relations -england -early works to 1800. a71317 r17387 (wing b337). civilwar no three speeches of the right honorable, sir francis bacon knight, then his majesties sollicitor generall, after lord verulam, viscount saint bacon, francis 1641 18657 21 0 0 0 0 0 11 c the rate of 11 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2000-00 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2001-07 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2005-03 melanie sanders sampled and proofread 2005-03 melanie sanders text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion three speeches of the right honorable , sir francis bacon knight , then his majesties sollicitor generall , after lord verulam , viscount saint alban . concerning the post-nati naturalization of the scotch in england vnion of the lawes of the kingdomes of england and scotland . published by the authors copy , and licensed by authority . london , printed by richard badger , for samuel broun , and are to be sold at his shop in st. pauls church-yard at the signe of the white lyon and ball . 1641. 15. may . 1641. at a committee appointed by the honourable house of commons in parliament for examination of books , & of the licensing and suppresing of them , it is ordered that these three speeches or treatises be published in print . edward dering . the argument of s r. francis bacon knight , his majesties sollicitor generall , in the case of the post-nati of scotland , in the exchequer chamber , before the lord chancellor and all the iudges of england . may it please your lord-ships , this case your lord-ships doe well perceive to be of exceeding ' great consequence . for whether you doe measure that by place , that reacheth not onely to the realme of england , but to the whole iland of great-brytaine ; or whether you measure that by time , that extendeth not onely to the present time , but much more to future generations , et natinatorum , et qui nascentur ab illis : and therefore as that is to receive at the barre a full and free debate : so i doubt not but that shall receive from your lord-ships a sound and iust resolution according to law and according to truth . for my lords , though he were thought to have said well that said that for his word , rex fortissimus ; yet he was thought to have said better , evenin the opinion ofa king him selfe that said , veritas fortissima et pravalet . and i doe much rejoyce to observe such a concurrence in the whole carriage of this cause , to this end that truth may prevaile . the case no fained , or framed case ; but a true case betweene true partyes . the title handled formerly in some of the kings courts , and free-hold upon it : used indeed by his majesty , in his high wisedome to give an end to this great question , but not raysed : occasio , as the schoole-men say , arrepta non porrecta . the case argued in the kings bench by m. walter with great liberty , and yet with good approbation of the court . the persons assigned to be of counsell on that side , inferiour to none of their quality and degree in learning ; and some of them most conversant and exercised in the question . the iudges in the kings bench have adjourned it to this place , for conference with the rest of their brethren . your lord-ship , my lord chancellor , though you be absolute iudg in the court where you sit , and might have called to you such assistance of iudges as to you had seemed good : yet would not fore-run or leade in this case by any opinion there to be given ; but have chosen rather to come your selfe to this assembly , all tending ( as i sayd ) to this end , whereunto i for my part doe heartily subscribe , ut vincat veritas , that truth may first appeare , and then prevaile . and i doe firmely hold and doubt not but i shall well maintaine , that this is the truth , that calvin the plaintiefe is ipso iure by the law of england a naturall borne subject , to purchase free-hold and to bring reall actions within eugland . in this case i must so consider the time , as i must much more consider the matter . and therefore though it may draw my speach into further length ; yet i dare not handle a case of this nature confusedly , but purpose to observe the ancient and exact forme of pleadings , which is , first , to explaine or induce . then , to confute , or answere objections . and lastly , to prove , or confirme . and first for explanation . the outward question in this case is no more , but whether a child borne in scotland since his majesties happy comming to the crowne of england , be naturalized in england or no ? but the inward question or state of the question evermore beginneth , where that which is confessed on both sides doth leave . it is confest , that if these two realmes of england and scotland were united under one law and one parliament , and thereby incorporated and made as one kingdome , that the post-natus of such an union should be naturalized . it is confessed , that both realmes are united in the person of our soveraigne ; or ( because i will gaine nothing by surreption , in the putting of the question ) that one & the same naturall person , is king of both realmes . it is confessed , that the lawes and parliaments are severall . so then , whether this priviledge and benefit of naturalization be an accessory or dependancy up on that which is one and joint , or upon that which is severall , hath beene and must be the depth of this question . and therefore your lord-ships doe see the state of this question doth evidently lead me by way of inducement to speake of three things . the king , the law , and the priviledge of naturalization . for if you well understand the nature of the two principals , and againe the nature of the accessory ; then shall you discerne , to whether principal the accessory doth properly referre , as a shadow to a body , or iron to an adamant . and there your lord-ships will give me leave in a case of this quality , first to visit and open the foundations and fountaines of reason ; and not to begin with the positions , and eruditions of a municipall law ; for so was that done in the great case of mines ; and so ought that to be done in all cases of like nature . and this doth not at all detract from the sufficiency of our lawes , as incompetent to decide their owne cases ; but rather addeth a dignity unto them when their reason appearing as well as their authority , doth shew them to be as fine moneyes , which are currant not onely by the stampe because they are so received , but by the naturall metall , that is the reason and wisedome of them . and master littleton himselfe in his whole booke doth commend but two things to the professors of the law by the name of his sonnes ; the one the inquiring and searching out the reasons of the law , and the other , the observing of the formes of pleadings . and never was there any case that came in iudgement , that required more that littletons advice should be followed in those two points , then doth the present case in question . and first of the king . it is evident that all other common-wealths ( monarchies onely excepted ) doe snbsist by a law preceedent . for where authority is divided amongst many officers , and they not perpetuall , but annuall or temporary , and not to receive their authority but by election , and certaine persons to have voice onely to that election , and the like : these are busie and curious frames : which of necessity doe presuppose a law precedent written or unwritten to guide and direct them . but in monarchies , especially hereditary , that is when severall families , or ilneages of people doe submit themselves to one line , imperiall or royall , the submission is more naturall and simple , which afterwards by lawes subsequent is perfected and made more formall : but that is grounded upon nature . that this is so , it appeareth notably in two things , the one , the platformes and patternes which are found in nature of monarchies , the original submissions , & their motives and occasions . the platformes are three . the first is that of a father , or chiefe of a family : who governing over his wife by prerogative of sexe , over his children by prerogative of age , and because he is author unto them of being ; and over his servants by prerogative of vertue and providence , for he that is able of body , and improvident of mind , is natura servus ) that is a very modell of a king . so that is the opinion of aristotle , lib. 3. pol. cap. 14 , where he saith : verum autem regnum est , cum penes unum est rerum summa potestas : quod regnum procurationem familia imitatur . and therefore lyeurgus , when one counselled him to dissolve the kingdome and to establish another forme of estate , he answered , sir begin to doe that which you advise first at home in your owne house noting that the chief of a family is as a king ; and that those that can least endure kings abroad ; can be content to be kings at home , & this is the first platforme , which we see is meerely naturall . the second is , that of a shepheard and his flocke ; which zenophon saith , cyrus had ever in his mouth . for shepheards are not owners of the sheepe , but their office is to feede and governe : no more are kings , proprietaries , or owners of the people , for god is sole owner of people . the nations , as the scripture saith , are his inheritance : but the office of kings is to governe , maintaine , and protect people . and that is not without a mystery , that the first king that was instituted by god , david , ( for saul was butan untimely fruit ) was translated from a shepheard , as you have it in the 78. psal. et elegit david servum suum , de gregibus ovium sustulit eum , pascere iacob servum suum israel hereditatem suam . this is the second platforme , a worke likewise of nature . the third platforme is the government of god himselfe over the world , whereof lawfull monarchies , are a shadow . and therefore both amongst the heathen , and amongst the christians the word ( sacred ) hath beene attributed unto kings , because of the conformity of a monarchy , with the divine majesty ; never to a senate or people . and so you finde it twice in the lord cookes reports : once in the second booke , the bishop of winchesters case ; and his first booke . cawdries case , and more anciently in the 10. of h. 7. fo. 18. rex est persona mixta cam sacerdote ; an attribute which the senate of venice , or a canton of swisses , can never challenge . so we see there be presidents , or platformes of monarchies , both in nature and above nature : even from the monarch of heaven and earth ; to the king ( if you will ) in an hive of bees . and therefore other states are the creatures of the law ; and this state onely subsisteth by nature . for the originall submissions , they are foure in number : i will briefly touch them : the first is paternity or patriarchy , which was when a family growing so great as it could not containe it selfe within one habitation , some branches of the descendents were forced to plant themselves into new families , which second families could not by a naturall instinct , and inclination , but beare a reverence and yeeld an obeyseance to the eldest line of the ancient family , from which they were derived . the second is , the admiration of vertue , or gratitude towards merit , which is likewise naturally infused into all men . of this aristotle putteth the case well , when it was the fortun of some one man , either to invent some arts of excellent use towards mans life ; or to congregate people that dwelt scattered , into one place , where they might cohabite with more comfort ; or to guide them from a more barrenland to a more fruitful , or the like : vpon these deserts , and the admiration and recompence of them , people submitted themselves . the third , which was the most usuall of all , was conduct in warre , which even in nature induceth as great an obligation , as paternity . for as men owe their life and being to their parents , in regard of generation : so they owe that also to saviours in the warres , in regard of preservation . and therefore we finde in the 18. chap. of the booke of iudges , verse 22. dixerunt omnes ●iri ad cedeon dominare nostri , tu et filij tui , quoniam servasti nos de manu madian . and so we reade when it was brought to the eares of saul that the people sung in the streets , saul hath kild his thousand , & david his ten thousand of enemies ; he said straightwaies : quid ei superest nisi ipsum regnū ? for whosoever hath the military dependance , wants little of being king . the fourth is an enforced submission , which is conquest , whereof it seemed nymrod was the first president , of whom it is said , ipse caepit potens esse in terra , et erat robustus venator coram domine . and this likewise is upon the same root , which is the saving or gift as it were of life , and being , for the conqueror hath power of life and death over his captives , and therefore where he giveth them themselves , he may reserve upon such a gift , what service and subjection he will . all these foure submissions are evident to be naturall and more ancient than law . to speake therefore of law , which is the second part of that which is to be spoken of , by way of inducement . law no doubt is the great organ by which the soveraigne power doth move , and may be truly compared to the sinewes in a naturall body , as the soveraignty may be compared to the spirits , for if the sinewes be without the spirits , they are dead and without motion , if the spirits move in weake sinewes it causeth trembling : so the lawes with out the kings power , are dead ; the kings power except the lawes be corroborate , will never move constantly , but be full of staggering and trepidation . but towards the king himself , the law doth a double office or operation : the first is to entitle the king , or designe him ; and in that sense bracton saith well . lib. 1. fol. 5. and lib. 3. fol. 107. lex facit quod ipse sit rex , that is it defines his title , as in our law , that the kingdome shall goe to the issue female : that it shall not be departable amongst daughters : that the halfe bloud shall not be respected , and other points differing from the rules of common inheritance . the second is ( that whereof we need not feare to speake in good and happy times , such as these are ) to make the ordinary power of the king more definite or regular , for it was well said by a father , plenitudo potestatis , est pleuitudo tempest at is . and although the king , in his person , be solutus legibus ; yet his acts and grants are limited by law , and we argue them every day . but i demand , do these offices or operations of law evacuate or frustrate the originall submission , which was naturall ? or shall it be said that all allegiance is by law ? no more than it can be said , that potest potest●● patris , the power of the father over the child , is by law : and yet no doubt lawes do diversely define of that also ; the law of some nations having given fathers power to put their children to death ; others , to sell them thrice , others to disinherit them by testament at pleasure , and the like . yet no man will affirm , that the obedience of the child is by law , though lawes in some points doe make it more positive . and even so it is of allegiance of subjects to hereditary monarches , which is corroborate and confirmed by law , but is the worke of the law of nature . and therefore you shall finde the observation true , and almost generall in all states , that their law-givers were long after their first kings , who governed for a time by naturall equity without law ; so was theseus long before salo● in a●h●m : for was e●●iti●● and 〈◊〉 long before lycurgus in sparta . so was romulus long before the decemviri . and even amongst our selves , there were more ancient kings of the saxons ; and yet the lawes ran under the name of edgars lawes . and in the refounding of the kingdome in the person of william the conqueror , when the lawes were in some confusion for a time , a man may truly say , that king edward the first , was the first law-giver , who enacting some laws , and collecting others , brought the law to some perfection . and therefore i will conclude this point with the style which divers acts of parliaments do give unto the king : which terme him very effectually and truly , our naturall sove , raigne liege lord . and as it was said by a principall judge here present when he served in another place , and question was moved by some occasion of the title of bulleins lands : that he would never allow , that queene elizabeth . ( i remember it for the efficacy of the phrase ) should bee a statute queene , but a common law queen : so surely i shall hardly consent , that the king shall be esteemed or called only , our rightfull soveraigne , or our lawfull soveraigne , but our naturall liege soveraigne ; as acts of parliament speake : for as the common law is more worthy than the statute law : so the law of nature is more worthy than them both . having spoken now of the king and the law : it remaineth to speake of the priviledge and benefit of naturalization it selfe , and that according to the rules of the law of england . naturalization is best discerned in the degrees whereby the law doth mount and ascend thereunto . for it seemeth admirable unto mee , to consider with what a measured hand , and with how true poportions our law doth impart and conferre the severall degrees of this benefit : the degrees are foure . the first degree of persons , ( as to this purpose ) ●hat the law takes knowledge of , is an alien enemy : that is such a one as is borne under the obeisance of a prince or state that is in hostility with the king of england . to this person the law giveth no benefit or protection at all , but if hee come into the realme after war proclaimed , or war in fact , he comes at his own perill , hee may be used as an enemy : for the law accounts of him , but ( as the scripture saith ) as of a spye that comes to see the weaknesse of the land . and so it is 2. of ric. the 3 , fo. 2. neverthelesse , this admitteth a distinction . for if he come with safe conduct , otherwise it is . for then he may not be violated , either in person or goods . but yet hee must fetch his justice at the fountaine head , for none of the conduit pipes are open to him , he can have no remedy in any of the kings courts : but he must complain himselfe before the kings privy councell : there he shall have a proceeding summary from houre to houre , the cause shall be determined by naturall equity , and not by rules of law , and the decree of the councell shall be executed by ayde of the chauncery , as is 13. edw. 4. an this is the first degree . the second person , is an alien friend , that is such a one as is borne under the obeisance of such a king or state , as is confederate with the king of england , or at least not in war with him . to this person the law allotteth this benefit , that as the law accounts that the hold it hath over him , is but a tranfitory hold ( for he may be an enemy ) so the law doth indu● him , but with a transitory benefit , that is of moveable goods and personall actions . but for free-hold , or lease , or actions reall , or mixt : he is not inabled , except it be in auter droit and so it is 9 , e. 4 , fo. 7. 19. e. 4 ; fo. 6. 5. ma. and divers other books . the third person is a denizon , using the word properly ; ( for sometime it is confounded with a naturall borne subject . ) this is one , that is but subditus insitivus , or adoptivus , and is never by birth , but only by the kings charter , and by no other meane ; come he never so young into the realme , or stay he never so long . mansion or habitation will not indenise him , no nor swearing obedience to the king in a leete , which doth in-law the subject ; but only ( as i said ) the kings grace and gift . to this person the law giveth an ability and capacity abridged , not in matter but in time . and as there was a time , when hee was not subject : so the law doth not acknowledge him before that time . for if he purchase free-hold after his denization , he may take it ; but if he have purchased any before , he shall not hold it : so if hee have children after , they shall inherit , but if hee have any before , they shall not inherit : so as he is but priviledged à parte post , as the schoole-men say , and not à parte ante . the fourth and last degree , is a naturall borne subject , which is evermore by birth , or by act of parliament ; and he is compleate and entire . for in the law of england , there is nil ultra , there is no more subdivision or more subtile division beyond these : and therein it seemeth to mee that the wisdome of the law ( as i said ) is to be admired both ways , both because it distinguisheth so far , and because it doth not distinguish further . for i know that other lawes do admit more curious distinction of this priviledge ; for the romanes had besides 〈◊〉 civitatis , which answereth to naturalization , ius suffragii . for although a man were naturalized to take lands and inheritance ; yet he was not inabled to have a voyce at passing of laws , or at election of officers . and yet further they have ius petitionis , or ius honorum . for though a man had voyce , yet he was not capable of honour , and office . but these be the devises commonly of popular or free estates , which are jealous whom they take into their number , and are unfit for monarchies : but by the law of england the subject that is naturall borne , hath a capacity or ability to all benefits whatsoever ; i say capacity or ability . but to reduce potentiam in actum , is another case . for an earle of ireland , though he be naturalized in england , yet hath so voyce in parliament of england , except he have either a call by writ , or a creation by patent , but he is capable of either . but upon this quadripartite division of the ability of persons , i doe observe to your lordships three things , being all effectually pertinent to the question in hand . the first is , that if any man conceive that the reasons for the post-nati might serve as well for the ante-nati ; he may by the distribution which wee have made , plainly perceive his error . for the law looketh not back , and therefore cannot by any matter ex post facto , after birth , after the state of the birth ; wherein no doubt the law hath a grave and profound reason , which is this in few words , nemo subito fingitur ; aliud est nasci , aliud fieri : wee indeed more respect and affect thse worthy gentlemen of scotland whose merits and conversations we know : but the law that proceeds upon generall reason and looks upon no mens faces , affecteth and priviledgeth those , which drew their first breath under the obeisance of the king of england . the second point is , that by the former distribution , it appeareth that there be but two conditions by birth , either alien or naturall borne ( nam tertium penitus ignor amus . ) it is manifest then , that if the post . nati of scotland , be not naturall borne , they are alien born and in no better degree at all , than flemmings , french , italians , spanish , germans , and others ; which are all at this time alien friends , by reason his majesty is in peace with all the world . the third point seemeth to mee very worthy the consideration , which is , that in all the distribution of persons , and the degrees of abilities or capacities , the kings act is all in all , without any manner of respect to law or parliament . for it is the king , that makes an alien enemy , by proclaiming a war , wherewith the law , or parliament intermeddles not : so the king only grants safe-conducts , wherewith law and parliament intermeddle not . it is the king likewise that maketh an alien friend , by concluding a peace , wherewith law and parliament intermeddle not . it is the king that makes a denizon , by his charter absolutely of his prerogative and power , wherewith law and parliament intermedle not . and therefore it is strongly to be inferred , that as all these degrees depend wholly upon the kings act , and no wayes upon law or parliament : so the fourth , although it cannot by the kings patent , but by operation of law : yet that the law , in that operation , respecteth onely the kings person , without respect of subjection to law or parliament . and thus much by way of explanation , and inducement : which being all matter in effect confessed , i● the strongest ground-worke to that which is contradicted or controverted . there followeth the confutation of the arguments on the contrary side . that which hath beene materially objected may be reduced to foure heads . the first is , that the priviledge of naturalization , followeth allegeance , and that allegeance followeth the kingdome . the second is drawne from that common ground , cum duo jura concarrunt in una persona , aquum est , ac si essent in duobus ; a rule , the words whereof are taken from the civill law ; but the matter of it is received in all lawes ; being a very line or rule of reason to avoyd confusion . the third consisteth of certaine inconveniencies conceived to ensue of this generall naturalization ipso jure . the fourth is not properly an objection , but a preoccupation of an objection or proofe on our part , by a distinction devised betweene countries devolute by descent , and acquired by conquest . for the first , it is not properly to observe that those which maintaine this new opinion , whereof there is altum silentium in our bookes of law , are not well agree in what forme to utter and expresse that : for some said that allegeance hath respect to the law , some to the crowne , some to the kingdome , some to the body politique of the king , so there is confusion of tongues amongst them , as it commonly commeth to passe in opinions , that have their foundations in subtilty , and imagination of mans wit , and not in the ground of nature . but to leave their words and to come to their proofes , they endeavour to prove this conceipt , by three manner of proofes . first by reason , then by certaine inferences out of statutes , and lastly , by certaine booke-cases mentioning and reciting the formes of pleadings . the reason they bring is this ; that naturalization is an operation of the law of england , and so indeed it is , that may bee the true genus of it . then they adde ( that granted ) that the law of england is of force onely within the kingdome and dominions of england , and cannot operate , but where it is in force . but the law is not in force in scotland , therefore that cannot endure this benefit of naturalization by a birth in scotland . this reason is plausible and sensible , but extreamely erronious . for the law of england , for matters of benefit , or forfeitures in england , operateth over the world . and because it is truely said , that respublica continetur poena , & praemio . i will put a case or two of either . it is plaine that if a subject of england had conspired the death of the king in forraine parts , it was by the common law of england treason . how prove i that ? by the statute of 35. of h. 8. ca. 2. wherein you shall find no words at all of making any new case of treason which was not treason before , but onely of ordaining a forme of triall , ergo it was treason before . and if so , then the law of england workes in forraine parts . so of contempts , if the king send his privy seale to any subject beyond the seas , commanding him to returne , and hee disobey ; no man will doubt , but there is a contempt , and yet the fact enduring the contempt was committed in forraine parts . therefore the law of england , doth extend to acts or matters done in forraine parts . so of reward , priviledge or benefit wee need seeke no other instance ; then the instance in question , for i will put you a case that no man shall deny , where the law of england doth worke and conferre the benefit of naturalization upon a birth neither within the dominions of the kingdome , nor king of england . by the statute of 25. e. 3. which , if you will beleeve hussey , is but a declaration of the common law , all children borne in any parts of the world , if they be of english parents , continuing at that time , as liege subjects to the king , and having done no act to forfeit the benefit of their allegeance are ipso facto naturalized . nay if a man looke narrowly into the law in this point , he shall find a consequence , that may seeme at the first strange , but yet cannot well be avoided ; which is that it divers families of english-men and women plant themselves at middleborough or at roane , or at lysoone , and have issues , and their deseendents doe intermarry , amongst themselves without any intermixture of forraine blood ; such descendents are naturalized to all generations , for every generation is still of liege parents , and therefore naturalized . so as you may have whole tribes , and lineages of english in forraine countries . and therefore it is utterly untrue that the law of england cannot operate , of conferre naturalization , but onely within the bounds of the dominions of england . to come now to their inferences upon statutes . the firstis out of this statute which j last recyted . in which statute it is said , that in foure severall places , there are words ; borne within the allegeance of england ; or againe borne without the allegeance of england , which ( say they ) applies the allegeance to the kingdome , and not to the person of the king . to this the answer is easie : for there is not trope of speech more familiar then to use the place of addition for the person . so we say commonly the lyne of yorke , or the lyne of lancaster , for the lynes of the duke of yorke or the duke of lancaster . so we say the possessions of sommerset or warmick intending the possessions of the dukes of sommerset , or earles of warmick . so we seeearles signe , salisbury , northampton , for the earles of salisbury or northampton . and in the very same manner , the statute speakes , allegeance of england , for allegeance of the king of england . nay more if there had been no variety in the penning of that statute , this collect on had had a little more force , for those words might have beene thought , to have been used of purpose , and in propriety ; but you may find in three other severall places of the same statute , allegeange and obeysance of the king of england , and specially in the materiall and concluding place , that is to say , children whose parents were at the time of their birth , at the faith and obeysance of the king of england , so that is manifest by this indifferent and indifferent use of both phrases , the one proper , the other unproper , that no man can ground any inferēce upon these words without danger of cavillation . the second statute out of which they inferre , is a statute made in 32. of h. 8. ca. touching the policy of strangers trades men within this realme . for the parliament finding , that they did eate the englishmen out of trade , and that they entertained no apprentizes , but of their o vne nation , did prohibite that they should receive any . apprentize , but the kings subjects . in which statute is said , that in 9. severall places , there is to be found this context of words , aliens 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the kings obedience ; which is pregnant ( say they ) and doth imply that there bee aliens borne within the kings obedience . touching this inference i have heard it said q●i haeret in litera , baeret in cortice , but this is not worthy the name , of cortex , it is but muscus 〈◊〉 , the mosse of the barke . for it is evident that the statute meant to speake clearely and without equivocation , and to a common understanding . now then there are aliens in common reputation & aliens in precise construction oflaw , the statute then meaning not to comprehend irish-men , or ge●sie-men , or calize-men , for explanation sake , left the word alien might be extended to them in a vulgar acceptance , added those further words , borne out of the kings obedience ? nay , what if we should say , that those words according to the received lawes of speech , are no words of difference or limitation , but of declaration or description of an alien , as if it had beene said with a videlicet , aliens ; that is such as are borne out of the kings obedience : they cannot put us from that construction . but sure i am , if the barke make for them , the pyth makes for us , for the priviledge or liberty which the statute meanes to deny to aliens of entertaining apprentizes is denyed to none , borne within the kings obedience , call them aliens or what you will . and therefore by their reason a post-natus of scotland shall by that statute keepe what stranger apprentizes he will , and so is put in the degree of an english . the third statute out of which inference is made , is the statute of 14. e. 3. ca. solo , which hath been said to be our very case , and i am of that opinion too , but directly the other way , therefore to open the scope and purpose of that statute . after that the title to the crowne of france , was devolute to k. e. 3. & that he had changed his stile , changed his armes , changed his seale , ( as his majestie hath done ) the subject of england ( saith the statute ) conceived a feare that the realme of england might become subject to the realme of france , or to the k. as k. of france . and i will give you the reasons of the double feare , that it should become subject to the realme of france they had this reason of feare : normandy had conquered england ; normandy was feudall of france , therefore because the superiour seignery of france was now united in right with the tenancy of normandy , and that england , in regard of the conquest might be taken as a perquisite to normandy , they had propable reason to feare , that the kingdome of england might be drawne to be subject to the realme of france . the other feare that england might become subject to the k. as k. of france grew no doubt of this fore-sight , that the kings of england might be like to make their mansion and seate of their estate in france , in regard of the climate , wealth , and glory of that kingdome ; and thereby the kingdome of england might be governed by the kings mandates and precepts issuing , as from the king of france . but they will say what soever the occasion was , here you have the difference authorised of subjection to a k. generally , and subjection to a king , as k. of a certaine kingdome , but to this i give an answer three-fold . first , it preffeth not the question ; for doth any man say that a post-natus of scotland is naturalized in england , because he is a subject of the king , as k. of england ? no , but generally , because he is the k. subject . secondly , the scope of this law is to make a distinction between crown , and crown ; but the scope of their argument is to make a difference betweene crowne and person . lastly , this statute ( as i said ) is our very case retorted against them , for this is a direct statute of separation , which presupposeth that the common law had made an union of the crownes in some degree , by vertue of the vnion in the kings person ● if this statute had 〈◊〉 beene made to stop & crosse the course of the common law in that point , as if scotland now should be suitors to the king , that an act might passe to like effect , and upon like feare . and therefore if you will make good your distinction , in this present case ; shew us a statute for that . but i hope you can shew no statute of separation betweene england and scotland . and if any man say , that this was a statute declaratory of the cōmon law , he doth not marke how that is penned : for after a kind of historicall declaration in the preamble , that england was never subject to france , the body of the act is penned thus : the king doth grant and establish , which are words meerly introductive novae legis as if the king gave a charter of franchise , and did invest by a donative , the subjects of england with a new priviledge or exemption , which by the cōmon law they had not . to come now to the booke-cases which they put : which i will couple together because they receive one joynt answere . the first is 42. of e. 3. fo. where the booke saith : exception was taken that the plaintife was borne in scotland at rosse , out of the allegeance of england . the next is 22. h. 6. fo. 38. adrians case , where it is pleaded that a woman was borne at burgis , out of the allegeance of england . the third is 13. eliz. dyer fo. 300 where the case begins thus : doctor story qui notorie dignoscituresse subditus regni angliae . in all these three ( say they ) that is pleaded that the party is subject of the kingdome of england , and not of the king of england . to these bookes i give this answer , that they be not the pleas at large , but the words of the reporter , who speakes compendiously and narrative , and not according to the solemne words of the pleading . if you find a case put , that it is pleaded , a man was seized in fee . simple , you will not inferre upon that , that the words of the pleading were in fe●do simplici ; but sibi & haeredibus suis . but shew mee some president of a pleading at large of natus sub legeantia regni angliae ; for whereas mr. vvalter said that pleadings are variable in this point , he would faine bring it to that ; but there is no such matter : for the pleadings are constant , and uniforme in this point ; they may vary in the word fides , or legeantia , or obedientia , and some other circumstances , but in the forme of regni and regis , they vary not : neither can there , as j am perswaded be any one instance shewed forth to the contrary . see 9. eliz. 4. baggots assize , f. 7. where the pleading at large is entred in the booke ; there you have , alienigena natus extra legeantiam domini regis angliae . see the presidents in the booke of entries , pl. 7. and two other places ; for there be no more , and there you shall find still sub legeantia domini regis , or extra legeantiā domini regis . and therefore the formes of pleading , which are things so reverend , and are indeed towards the reasons of the law , as palma , and pugnus , conteyning the reason of the law , opened or unfolded , or displayed , they makeall for us . and for the very words of reporters in bookes , you must acknowledge and say , ilicet obruimur numera . for you have 22 ass. pl. 25. 27. 〈◊〉 . the pryor of ske●●es case pl. 48. 14. h. 4. f. 19. 3. h. 6. f. 35. 6. h. 8. in my lord dyer , fol. 2. in all these bookes , the very words of the reporters have the allegeance of the king , and not the allegeance of england . and the booke in the 24. of eltz. 3. which is your best booke , although while it is tossed at the bar , you have sometimes the word allegeance of england , yet when it comes to thorpe chiefe iustice to give the rule , he faith ; we will be certified by the role , whether scotland be within the allegeance of the king . nay that further forme of pleading beateth downe your opinion . that it sufficeth not to say , that he is borne out of the allegeance of the king , and stay there , but he must shew in the affirmative under the allegeance of what king , or state he was borne . the reason whereof cannot be because it may appeare , whether he be a friend or an enemy , for that in a reall action is all one : not it cannot be because issue shal be taken thereupon ; for the issue must arise on the other side upon indigena pleaded and traversed . and therefore it can have no other reason , but to apprise the court more certainly , that the countrey of the birth is none of those , that are subject to the king . as for the tryall , that it should be impossible to de tryed ; i hold it not worth the answering ; for the ovenire facias , shall goe either where the naturall birth is laid , although it be but by fiction , or if it be laid according to the truth , it shal be tryed where the action is brought , otherwise you fall upon a maine : rock , that breaketh your argument in pieces , for how should the birth of an irish-man be tryed , or of 2 gersie man ? nay how should the birth of a subject be tryed that is borne of english parents in spain or florence , or any part of the world ? for to all these the like objection of tryall may be made , because they are within no counties , and this receives no answer . and therefore i will now passe on to the second maine argument . it is a rule of the civill law , say they , cum duo jura , &c. when two rights doe meete in one person there is no confusion of them , but they remain still in eye of law distinct , as if they were in severall persons , and they bring examples of one man bishop of two seas , or one person that is rector of two churches . they say this unity in the bishop , or the rector doth not create any privity between the parishioners or dioceseners , more then if there were severall bishops , or severall parsons . this rule i allow ( as was said ) to be a rule not of the civill law onely , but of common reason , but receiveth no forced or coyned , but a true and sound distinction , or limitation , which is , that it evermore faileth and deceiveth in cases , where there is any vigor , or operation of the naturall person ; for generally in coporations the naturall body is but suffulcimentum corporis corporati , it is but as a stock to uphold and beare out the corporate body , but otherwise it is in the case of the crown , as shall be manifestly proved in due place . but to shew that this rule receiveth this distinction , i will put but two cases . the statute of the 21. hen. 8. ordaineth that a marquesse may retaine sixe chaplaines qualified , a lord treasurer of england foure , a privie counsellour three . the lord treasurer paulet was marqueffe of winchester , lord treasurer of england and privie counsellor all at once . question was whether hee should qualifie 13. chaplaines . now by the rule cum duo iura , he should ; but adjudged , he should not . and the reason was because the attendance of chaplaines concerned and respected his naturall person , he had but one soule , though he had three offices . the other case which i will put , is the case of homage , a man doth homage to his lord for a tenancie held of the mannor of dale , there descendeth unto him afterwards a tenancie held of the mannor of sale , which mannor of sale is likewise in the hands of the same lord . now by the rule cum duo jura , he should doe homage againe , two tenancies and two seignories , though but one tenant , and one lord , aequum est ac si esset in duobus . but ruled that he should not doe homageagaine : nay in the case of the king , hee shall not pay a second respect of homage , as upon grave and deliberate consideration it was resolved , 24. h. 8. and vsus scaccarii ; as is there said accordingly . and the reason is no other but because when a man is sworne to his lord , hee cannot be sworne over againe , he hath but one conscience , and the obligation of this oatli , trencheth betweene the naturall person of the tenant , and the naturall person of the lord . and certainly the case of homage and tenure , and of homage liege , which is one case , are things of a neere nature , save that the one is much inferiour to the other , but it is good to behold these great matters of state in cases of lower element , as the eclipse of the sun is used to be in a paile of water . the third maine argument conteyneth certain supposed inconveniences , which may ensue of a generall naturalization ipso jure , of which kind three have bin specially remembred . the first is the losse of profit , to the king upon letters of denization , and purchases of aliens . the second is the concourse of scottishmen into this kingdome , to the infeebling of that realme of scotland in people , and the impoverishing of this realme of england in wealth . the third is , that the reason of this case stayeth not within the compasse of the present case ; for although it were some reason that scottishmen were naturalized being people of the same iland and language , yet the reason which we urge , which is , that they are subject to the same king , may be applyed to persons every way more estranged from us then they are , as if in future time in the kings descendents , there should be a match with spaine , and the dominions of spaine should bee united with the crowne of england by one reason ( say they ) all the vvest-indies should be naturalized ; which are people not onely , alterius soli but alterius caeli . to these conceits of inconvenience , how easie it is to give answer , and how weake they are in themselves , i thinke no man that doth attentively ponder them can doubt ; for how small revenue can arise of such denizations , and how honourable it were for the king to take escheats of his subjects , as if they were forreyners ( for seisure of aliens lands are in regard the king hath no hold or command of their persons , and services ) every one may perceive . and for the confluence of scottishmen , i thinke wee all conceive the spring-tide is past at the kings first comming in . and yet wee see very few families of them , throughout the cities & boroughes of england . and for the naturalizing of the indies , we can readily helpe that , when the case comes ; for we can make an act of parliament of separation if we like not their consort . but these being reasons politique , and not legall ( and we are not now in parliament , but before a judgment seate ) i will not meddle with them , specially since i have one answer which avoids and confounds all their objections in law , which is that the very self-same objections doe hold in countreyes purchased by conquest . for in subjects obtained by conquest , it were more profit to indenizate by the poll , in subjects obteyned by conquest , they may come in too fast . and if king hen. 7. had accepted the offer of christopher columbus , whereby the crowne of england had obteyned the indies by conquest or occupation , all the indies had bin naturalized by the confession of the adverse part . and therfore since it is confessed , that subjects obteyned by conquest are naturalized , & that all these objections are common and indifferent , as well to case of conquest , as case of descent , these objections are in themselves destroyed . and therefore to proceed now to overthrow that distinction of descent and conquest . plato saith well , the strongest of all authorities is , if a man can alledge the authority of his adversaries against him selfe , we doe urge the confession of the other side , that they confessed the irish are naturalized , that they confesse the subjects of the iles of gersie and garnsey , and barwick to be naturalized , and the subjects of calice and tourney when they were english were naturalized , as you may find in the 5. e. in dyer , upon the question put to the judges by sir nicholas bacon lord keeper . to avoid this , they flye to a difference , which is new coyned , and is ( i speake not to the disadvantage of the persons that use it ; for they are driven to it tanquam ad ultimum refugium , but the difference it selfe ) it is i say full of ignorance and error . and therefore to take a view of the supports of this difference , they alledge foure reasons . the first is , that countreyes of conquest , are made parcell of england ; because they are acquired by the armes and treasure of england . to this i answer , that it were a very strange argument , that if i waxe rich upon the mannor of dale , and upon the revenue thereof purchase a close by it , that it should make that parcell of the mannor of dale . but i will set this new learning on ground with a question or case put . for j oppose them that hold this opinion with this question , if the king should conquer any forreigne countrey by an army compounded of english-men and scottish-men , as it is like whensoever warres are , so it will be . i demand whether this countrey conquered shall qe naturalized both in england and scotland , because it was purchased by the joynt armes of both ? and if yea , whether any man will thinke it reasonable , that such subjects bee naturalized in both kingdomes , the one kingdome not being naturalized towards the other ? these are the intricate consequences of conceits . a second reason they alledge , is , that countreyes won by conquest become subject to the lawes of england , which countries patrimoniall are not , and that the law doth draw the allegeance , and allegeance naturalization . but to the major proposition of that argument , touching the dependancy of aliegeance upon law , somewhat hath bin already spoken , and full answer shal be given when we come to it . but in this place it shall suffice to say , that the minor proposition is false , that is , that the lawes of england are not superinduced upon any countrey by conquest ; but that the old lawes remaine untill the king by his proclamation or letters pattents declare other lawes , and then if he will , hee may declare lawes which be utterly repugnant , and differing from the lawes of england . and hereof many antient presidents and records may be shewed ; that the reason why ireland is subject to the lawes of england is not ipso jure upon conquest ; but grew by acharter of k. john , and that extended but to so much as was then in the kings possession , for there arerecords in the time of king . s. 1 and 2 of divers particular grants to sundry subjects of ireland , and their heires , that they might use and observe the lawes of england . the third reason is , that there is a politique necessity of intermixture of people in case of subjection , by conquest to remove alienations of mind , & to securo the stato , which holdeth not in case of descent . here i perceive mr. 〈◊〉 hath read somewhat in matter of state , and so have i likewise , though we may both quickly lose ourselves in cause of this nature . i find by the best opinions , that there bee two meanes to assure and retaine in obedience countreyes conquered , both very differing , almost in extreames the one towards the other . the one is by colonies , and intermixture of people , and transplantation of families , which mr. walter spoke off , and it was indeed the romane manner but this is like an old relique , much reverenced and almost never used . but th'other which is the modern manner , and almost wholly in practice & use , is by garrisons and citadelles , and lists or companies of men of warre , and other like matters of terrour and bridle . to the first of these ( which is little used ) it it true that naturalization doth conduce , but to the latter it is utterly opposite , as putting too great pride , and meanes to do hurt , in those that are meant to be kept short and low . and yet in the very first case of the romane proceeding , naturalization did never follow by conquest , during all the growth , of the romane empire , but was ever conferred by charters , or donations , sometimes to cities , and townes , sometimes to particular persons , & sometimes to nations , untill the time of adrian the emperour , and the law in orbe romano , and that law or constitution is not referred to title of conquest and armes onely , but to all other titles ; as by the donation and testament of kings , by submission and dedition of states , or the like . so as this difference was as strange to them , as to us . and certainly i suppose it will sound strangely in the hearing of forreigne nations , that the law of england should ipso sacto , naturalize subjects of conquest , and should not naturalize subjects , which grow unto the king by descent ; that is , that it should conferre the benefit and priviledge of naturalization upon such , as cannot at the first but beare hatred and rancor to the state of england , and have had their hands in the bloud of the subjects of england , and should deny the like benefit to those that are conjoyned with them by a more amiable meane : and that the law of england , should conferre naturalization upon slaves and vassals ( for people conquered are no better in the beginning ) and should deny it to free-men : i say it will be marvelled at abroad , of what complexion the lawes of england bee made , that breedeth such differences . but there is little danger of such scandals ; for this is a difference , that the law of england never knew . the fourth reason of this difference is , that in case of conquest , the territory united can never be separated againe . but in case of descent , there is a possibility , if his majesties line should faile , the kingdomes may severe againe to their respective heires , as in the case of 8. h. 6. where it is said , that if land descend to a man , from the ancestor , on the part of his father , and a rent issuing out of it , from an ancestor , on the part of the mother , if the party dye without issue , the rent is revived . as to this reason , i know well the continuance of the kings line , is no lesse deare to those , that alleadge the reason , then to us that confute it . so as i doe not blame the passing of the reason ; but it is answered with no great difficulty ; for first the law doth never respect remote and forrein possibilities , as noteably appeared in the great case betweene sir hugh cholmley , and houlford in the exchequer , where one in the remainder , to the end to bridle tenant in tayle from suffering a common recovery , granted his remainder to the king , and because he would be sure to have it out again , without charge or trouble , when his turne was served ; he limitted it to the king , during the life of tenant in tayle . question grew whether this grant of remainder were good , yea or no . and it was said to be frivolous and void , because it could never by any possibility execute ; for tenant in tayle cannot surrender , and if he dyed , the remainder likewise ceased . to which it was answered , that there was a possibility , that it might execute , which was thus ; put case that tenant in tayle should enter into religion having no issue : then the remainder should execute , and the king should hold the land during the naturall life of tenant in tayle , notwithstanding his civill death . but the court una vate exploded this reason , and said , that monasteries were downe , and entries into religion gone ; and they must be up againe ere this could be , and that the law did not respect such remote , and forreine possibilities , & so we may hold this for the like ; for i think we all hope , that neither of those days shall ever come , either for monasteries to be restored , or for the k. line to faile , but the true answer is , that the possibility subsequēt , remote , or not remote doth not alter the operatiō of law for the present . for that should be , as if in case of the rent which you put , you should say , that in regard , that the rent maybe severed , it should be said , to be in esse in the meane time , and should be grantable , which is cleerely otherwise . and so in the principall cafe , if that should be ( which god of his goodnesse forbid ) cessante causa , cessat effectus , the benefit of naturalization for the time to come is dissolved . but that altereth not the operation of the law . rebus sic stantibus . and therefore i conclude , that this difference is but a devise full of weaknesse and ignorance : and that there is one , and the same reason of naturalizing subjects by descent , and subjects by conquest , and that is the union in the person of the king ; and therefore that the 〈◊〉 of scotland is as cleere , as that of ireland , and they that grant the one , cannot deny the other . and so i conclude the second part , touching confutation . to proceed therefore to the prooses of our part , your lordships cannot but know many of them must be already spent , in the answer which we have made to the objections . for corruptio unius , generatio alterius , holdes aswell in arguments , as in nature , the destruction of an objection begets a proofe . but neverthelefse , i will avoid all iteration , least i should seem either to distract your memories , or to abuse your patience ; but will hold my selfe onely to these proofs , which stand substantially of themselves , and are not intermixed with matter of confutation . i will therefore prove unto your lordships , that the post-natus of scotland is by the law of england nat●rall , and ought fo to be adjudged by three courses of proofe . 1. bi●●t upon point of favour of law . 2. secondly , upon reasons and authorities of law . 3. and lastly , upon former presidents & examples . favour of law , what meane j by that ? the law is equall , and favoureth not : it is true , not persons : but things or matters it doth favour . is it not a common principle , that the law favoureth three things , life , liberty , & dower ? and what is the reason of this favour ? this , because our law is grounded upon the law of nature . and these three things doe flow from the law of nature , preservation of life naturall , liberty , which every beast or bird seeketh and affecteth naturally , the society of man and wife , whereof dower is the reward naturall . it is well , doth the law favour liberty so highly , as a man shall infranchise his bondman , when hee thinketh not of it , by granting to him , lands or goods ? and is the reason of it , quia natura omnes homines erant liberi ? and that servitude or villenage , doth crosse and abridge the law of nature ? and doth not the selfe-same reason hold in the present case ; for my lords by the law of nature , all men in the world are naturalized one towards another , they were all made of one lumpe of earth , of one breath of god , they had the same common parents . nay at the first they were , as the scripture sheweth , unius labii , of one language , untill the curse , which curse ( thankes be to god ) our present case is exempted from . it was ciuill and nationall lawes , that brought in these words , and differences of civis and exterus , alien & native and therefore because they tend to abridge the law of nature , the law favoureth not them , but takes them strictly , even as our law hath an excellent rule , that customes of townes & burroughes shall be taken and construed strictly & precisely , because they doe abridge and derogate from the law of the land . so by the same reason all nationall lawes whatsoever , are to be taken strictly and hardly in any point wherein they abridge , and derogate from the law of nature . whereupon i conclude that your lordships cannot judge the law for the other side , except the case be luce clarius . and if it appeare to you but doubtfull , as i thinke no man in his right senses but will yeeld it , to be at least doubtfull , then ought your lordships ( under your correction be it spoken ) to pronounce for us because of the favour of the law . furthermore as the law of england must favour naturalization , as a branch of the law of nature : so it appeares manifestly , that it doth favour it accordingly . for is it not much to make a subject naturalized ? by the law of england , it should suffice , either place or parents , if he be born in england , it is matter no though his parents be spanyards , or what you will . on th'other side , if he be borne of english parents , it skilleth not though he be borne in spaine , or in any other place of the world . in such sort doth the law of england open her lappe to receive in people to be naturalized , which indeed sheweth the wisedome and excellent composition of our law . and that it is the law of a warlike and magnanimous nation , sit for empire . for looke , and you shall find that such kind of estates have been ever liberall in point of naturalization : whereas marchant-like and envious estates have bin otherwise . for the reasons of law joyned with authorities , i doe first observe to your lordships , that our assertion or affirmation is simple and plaine : that it sufficeth to naturalization , that there be one king , and that the party be , natus ad sidem regis , agreeable to the definition of littleton : which is . alien is he which is born out of the allegeance of our lord the king . they of th'other side speak of respects , and quoad and quatenus , and such subtilties and distinctions . to maintaine therefore our assertion , j will use three kindes of proofes . the first is , that allegeance cannot be applyed to the law or kingdome , but to the person of the king , because the allegeance of the subject is more large and spatious , and hath a greater latitude , and comprehension , then the law or the kingdome . and therefore it cannot be a dependency of that , without the which it may of it selfe subsist . the second proofe which i will use , is , that the naturall body of the king hath an operation and influence into his body politique , aswell as his body politique hath upon his body naturall , and therefore that although his body politique of king of england , and his body politique of king of scotland be soverall and distinct : yet neverthelesse , his naturall person , which is one , hath an operation upon both , and createth aprivity betweene them . and the third proofe is the binding text of five severall statutes . for the first of these i shall make it manifest , that the allegeance is of a greater extent , and dimension , then lawes or kingdome , and cannot confist by the lawes meerely , because it began before laws , it continueth after lawes , and it is in vigour where lawes are suspended , and have not their force . that it is more antient then law , appeareth by that which was spoken in the beginning by way of inducement where i did endeavour to demonstrate , that the originall age of kingdomes was governed by naturall equity , that kings were more antient then law-givers , that the first submissions were simple , and upon confidence to the person of kings , and that the allegeance of subjects to hereditary monarchies , can no more be said to consist by lawes , then the obedience of children to parents . that allegeance continueth after lawes , i will onely put the case , which was remembred by two great judges in a great assembly , the one of them now with god , which was : that if a king of . england should be expalsed his kingdome , and some particular subjects should follow him in flight , or exile in forreigne parts , and any of them there should conspire his death , that upon his rocoveryof his kingdome ; such a subject might by the law of england be proceeded with ; for treason committed and perpetrated at what time he had no kingdome , and in place wher ethe law did not bind . that allegeance is in vigour and force , where the power of law hath a cessation appeareth notably in time of warres , for silent leges inter arma . and yet the soveraignty , and imperiall power of the king , is so farre , from being then extinguished , or suspended ; as contrariwsse it is raised , and made more absolute , for then he may proceed by his supreame authority , and martiall law without observing formalities of the lawes of his kingdome . and therefore whosoever speaketh of lawes , and the kings power by lawes , and the subjects obedience , or allegeance to lawes , speake but of one halfe of the crowne . for bracton out of justinian doth truly define , the crowne to consist of lawes and armes , power civill and martiall , with the latter whereof the law doth not intermeddle , so as where it is much spoken that the subjects of england are under one law , and the subjects of scotland are under another law , it is true at edenborough or sterling , or againe in london , or yorke ; but if englishmen and scottishmen meet in an army royall before calice . i hope then they are under one law . so likewise not onely in time of warre , but in time of peregrination : if a king of england travaile , or passe through forraine territories ; yet the allegeance of his subjects followeth him , as appeareth in that not able case which is reported in 〈◊〉 , where one of the traine of k. ed. i. as be past through france from the holy land , imbezelled some silver plate at paris , and jurisdiction was demanded of this crime by the french kings counsell at law . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and demanded likewise by the officers of k. edw. ratione personae , and after much solemnity and contestation and interpleading , it was ruled and determined for king edward , and the party tryed and judged before the knight marshall of the kings house , and hanged after the english law , and execution in st. germaines meadovves : and so much for my first proofe . for my second maine proofe ; that is drawn from the true & legall distinction of the kings severall capacities ; for they that maintaine the contrary opinion , doe in effect destroy the whole force of the kings naturall capacity , as if it were drowned and swallowed up by his politique . and therefore i will first prove to your lordships , that his two capacities are in no sort confounded ; and secondly , that as his capacity politique worketh so upon his naturall person , as it makes it differ from all other the naturall persons of his subjects : so è converso , his naturall body worketh so upon his politique , as the corporation of the crowne utterly differeth from all other corporations within the realme . for the first i will vouch you the very words which i find in that notable case of the dutchie , where the question was , whether the grants of king ed. 6. for dutchy lands should be avoyded in points of nonage . the case , as your lordships know well , is reported by mr. plowden , as the generall resolution of all the judges of england , and the kings learned counsell , ruswell the solicitour , onely except , there i find the said words , comment . fol. 215. there is in the king not a body naturall alone , nor a body politique alone , but a body naturall and politique together , ●●●pus corporatum in corpore naturali , & corpus naturale in corpore corporato . the like i find in the great case of the lord barkeley set downe by the same reporter , comment fol. 234. though there be in the king two bodies , and that those two bodies are conjoyned ; yet are they by no meanes confounded the one by the other . now then to see the mutuall and reciprocall entercourse , as i may terme it , or influence , or communication of qualities that these bodies have one upon the other . the body politique of the crowne indueth the naturall person of the king with these perfections . that the king in law shall never be said to be within age ; that his blood shall never be corrupted ; and that , if he were attainted before , the very assumption of the crown purgeth it . that the k. shall not take but by matter of record , although he take in his naturall capacity , as upon a guift in taile . that his body in law shall be said to be as it were immortall , for there is no death of the king in law , but a demise as it is tearmed ; with many other the like priviledges , and differences from other naturall persons too long to rehearse , the rather because the question laboureth not in that part . but on the contrary part , let us see what oporations the kings naturall person hath upon his crowne and body politique : of which the chiefest and greatest is , that it causeth the crowne to goe by descent , which is a thing strange , and contrary to the course of all corporations , which evermore take in succession , and not by descent , for no man can shew mee in all the corporations of england , of what nature soever , vvhether they consist of one person , or of many : or whether they be temporall or ecclesiasticall , any one takes to him and his heires , but all to him and his successours ; and therefore here you may see what a weake course that is , to put cases of bishops and parsons , and the like , and to apply them to the crowne . for the king takes to him and his heires in the manner of a naturall body , and the word successours is but superfluous , and where that is used that is ever duly placed after the words heires . the king , his heires and successours . againe no man can deny but vxor & filius sunt nomina naturae . a corporation can have no wife ; nor a corporation can have no sonne ; how is it then , that it is treason to compasse the death of the queene , or of the prince . there is no part of the body politique of the crovvne in either of them , but it is entirely in the king . so likewise we find in the case of the lord barkeley , the question was whether the statute of 35. h. 8. for that part which concerned queene katherine pars joynture were a publique act or no , of which the judges ought to take notice , not being pleaded : and judged a publique act. so the like question came before your lordship , my lord chancellour , in serjeant . heales case : whether the statute of 11. of ed. 3 concerning the intayling of the dukedome of cornewall to the prince vvere a publique act or no ; and ruled likewise a publique act. why ? no man can affirme , but these be operations of lavv , proceeding from the dignity of the naturall person of the king : for you shall never find that another corporation vvhatsoever of a bishop or master of a colledge , or major of london , vvorketh any thing in lavv upon the vvife , or sonne of the bishop or the major . and to conclude this point and vvithall to come neere to the case in question , i will shew you where the naturall person of the king hath not onely an operation in the case of his wife and children , but likewise in the case of his subjects , which is the very question in hand : as for example , i put this case , can a scottishman who is a subject to the naturall person of the king , and not to the crowne of england , can a scottishman , i say , be an enemy by the lavv to the subjects of england , or must he not of necessity , if he should invade england , be a rebell , and no enemy not onely as to the king , but as to the subject ? or can any letters of marte or reprisall be granted against a scottishman , that should spoyle an english-mans goods at sea , and certainly this case doth presse exceeding neere the principall case , for it prooveth plainly , that the naturall person of the king , hath such a communication of qualities with his body politique ; as it makes the subjects of either kingdomes stand in another degree of privity one towards the other ; then they did before . and so much for the second proofe . for the five acts of parliament which i spoke of which are concluding to this question ? the first of them is , that concerning the banishment of hugh spencer in the time of king ed. 2. in which act there is contained , the charge , and accusation whereupon his exile proceeded . one article of which charge is set downe in these words . homage and oath of the subject is more by reason of the crowne , then by reason of the person of the king . so that if the king doth not guide himselfe by reason in right of the crowne , his lieges are bound by their oath to the crowne to remoove the king . by which act doth plain'y appeare the perilous consequence of this distinction concerning the person of the king , and the crowne . and yet j doe acknowledge justice , and ingeruously a great difference betweene that assertion and this , which is now maintained : for it is one thing to make things distinct , another thing to make them separable , aliud est distinctio , aliud separatio , and therefore j assure my selfe , that those , that now use and urge that diftinction dee as firmely hold , that the subjection to the kings person , and to the crowne , are inseparable , though distinct , as i doe . and it is true that the poyson of the opinion , & assertion of spencer is like the poyson of a scorpion , more in the taile then in the body : for it is the inference that they make which is , that the king may be deposed or removed , that is , the treason and dislayalty of that opinion : but by you leave the body is never a whit the more wholesome meare , for having such a tayle belonging to it : therefore we see that is locus lubricus , an opinion from which a man may ea●ly slide into an absurdity . but upon this act of parliament , i will onely note one circumstance more , and so leave it , which may adde authority unto it in the opinion of the wisest , and that is , that these spencers , were not ancient nobles or great patriots that were charged and prosecuted by upstarts and favourites : for then that might be said that it was but the action of some flatterers , who use to extoll the power of monarches to be infinite , but it was contrary ; a prosecution of those persons being favourites by the nobility , so as the nobility themselves which seldome doe subscribe to the opinion of an infinite power of monarches . yet even they could not endure , but their blood did rise to heare that opinion : that subjection is owing to the crowne , rather then to the person of the king . the second act of parliament which determined this case , is the act of recognition in the first yeare of his majestie , wherein you shall find , that in two severall places , the one in the preamble , the other in the body of the act , the parliament doth recognize , that these two realmes of england and scotland are under one imperiall crowne . the parliament doth not say under one monarchie or king which mought referre to the person , but under ono imperiall crowne , which cannot be applyed but to the soveraigne power of regiment , comprehending both kingdomes . and the third act of parliament is the act made in the fourth yeare of his majesties raigne for the abolition of hostile lawes , wherein your lordships shall find likewise in two places , that the parliament doth acknowledge , that there is an union of these two kingdomes already begun in his majesties person . so as by the declaration of that act , they have not onely one king , but there is an union in inception in the kingdomes , themselves . these two are judgements in parliament by way of declaration of law , against which no man can speake . and certainly these are righteous and true iudgements to be relyed upon ; not onely for the authority of them , but for the verity of them , for to any that shall well , and deeply weigh the effects of law upon this conjunction , it cannot but appeare , that although partes integrales of the kingdome ( as the philosophers speake ) such as the lawes , the officers , the parliament are not yet commixed ; yet neverthelesse there is but one , and the selfe-same fountaine of soveraigne power depending upon the ancient submission , whereof i spake in the beginning , and in that sense , the crownes and the kingdomes are truly said to be united . and the force of this truth is such , that a grave and learned gent. that defended the contrary opinion , did confesse thus farre : that in ancient times when monarchies ( as he said ) were but heapes of people , without any exact forme of policy , that the naturalization and communication of priviledges did follow the person of the monarch . but otherwise since states were reduced to a more exact forme : so as thus farre we did consent ; but still i differ from him in this , that those more exact formes wrought by time , and custome , and lawes , are neverthelesse still upon the first foundation , and doe serve onely to perfect and corroborate the force and bond of the first submission , and in no sort to disanullor destroy it . and therefore with these two acts doe j likewise couple the act of 14. ed. 3. which hath beene alleadged of the other side . for by collating of that act with this former too , the truth of that we affirme will the more evidently appeare , according unto the rule of reason : opposita juxta se posita magis elucescunt . that act of 14. is an act of separation . these two acts formerly recited are acts tending to union . this act is an act that maketh a new law , it is by the words of grant and establish , these two acts declare the common law , as it is , being by words of recognition and confession . and therefore upon the difference of these lawes you may fubstantially ground this position . that the common-law of england upon the adjunction of any kingdome unto the king of england , doth make some degree of union in the crownes , and kingdomes themselves : except by a speciall act of parliament they be dissevered . lastly , the 5. act of parliament , which i promised is the act made in the 42. of e. 3. cap. ● . 10. which is expresse decision of the point in question . the words are , item , ( upon the petition put into parliament by the commons , ) that infants borne beyond the seas in the seignories of callice , and elsewhere within the lands and seignories that pertain to our soveraign lord the king beyond the seas , bee as able and inheritable of their heritage in england , as other infants borne within the realme of england , it is accorded that the common-law and the statute formerly made be holden . upon this act , j inferre thus much , first that such as the petition mentioneth , were naturalized , the practice shewes ; then , if so , it must be either by common-law , or statute ; for so the words report , not by statute ; for there is no other statute , but 25. of e. 3. and that extends to the case of birth out of the kings obedience , where the parents are english , ergo it was by the common-law , for that onely remaines . and so by the declarations of this statute at the common-law . all infants borne within the lands and seignories ( for i give you the very words againe ) that pertaine to our soveraigne lord the king , it is not said , as are the dominions of england , are as able and inheritable of their heritage in england , as other infants borne within the realme of england : what can be more plaine ? and so i leave statutes , and goe to presidents ; for though the one doe bind more , yet the other sometimes doth satisfie more . for presidents in the producing & using of that kind of proofe , of all others it behoveth them to be faithfully vouched ; for the suppressing or keeping back of a circumstance may change the case , and therefore j am determined to urge only such presidents , as are without all colour or scruple of exception , or objection , even of those objections which i have , to my thinking fully answered & confuted . this is now , by the providence of god the fourth time that the line , and kings of england have had dominions & seignories united unto them , as patrimonies , and by descent of bloud ; foure unions i say there have bin inclusive with this last . the first was of normandy in the person of william commonly called the conqueror . the 2d . was of gascoyne , and guienne , and anjou in the person of k. hen. the 2d . in his person i say , though by severall titles . the 3. was of the crowne of france , in the person of k. edw. the third . and the 4th . of the kingdome of scotland in his majesty . of these i will set aside such , as by any cavillation can be excepted unto . first , j will set aside normādy , because it will be said , that the difference of countryes accruing by conquest , from countryes annexed by descent in matter of communication of priviledges holdeth both wayes , as well of the part of the conquering kingdome , as the conquered . and therfore that although normandy was not conquest of england , yet england was a conquest of normandy , and so a communication of priviledges between them . againe , set aside france , for that it will be said , that although the king had a title in bloud , and by descent , yet that title was executed and recovered by armes : so as it is a mixt title of conquest & descent , and therefore the president not so cleare . there remaines then gascoyne & anjou , and that president , likewise i will reduce and abridge to a time to avoid all question . for it will bee said of them also , that after they were lost and recovered in ore gladii , that the antient title of bloud was extinct & that the king was in upon his new title by conquest , & mr. walter had found a book case , in 13. of h. 6. abridged by mr. fitz-herbert , in title of protection , placito 56. where a protection was cast , ●uia profecturus in gasconiam with the earlo of huntingdon , and challenged because it was not a voyage royall , & the justices thereupon required the sight of the cōmission , which was brought before them , & purported power to pardon felouies , & treason , power to coyn money , & power to conquer them that resist , wherby m. walter finding the word conquest , collected that the kings title at that time was reputed to bee by conquest , wherein i may not omit to give obiter that answer , which law and truth provideth , namely that when any king obreyneth by warre a countrey , whereunto he hath right by birth , that hee is ever in upon his antient right , not upon his purchase by conquest ; and the reason is , that there is as well a judgement and recovery by warre and armes , as by law and course of justice ; for war is a tribunall seat , wherein god giveth the judgment , & the tryall is by battaile , or duell , as in the case of tryall of private right , and then it followes , that whosoever commeth in by eviction , comes in his remitter : so as there will bee no difference in countreyes whereof the right commeth by descent , whether the possession be obtained peaceably or by war , but yet neverthelesse , because i will utterly take away all manner of evasion , & subterfuge , i will yet set apart that part of time in and during , the which , the subjects of gascoyne & guyenne might bee thought to be subdued by a reconquest . and therefore i will not meddle with the prior of shellies case , though it be an excellent case ; because it was in that time , 27. of e. 3. neither will i meddle with any cases , records , or presidents , in the time of king h. 5. or king h. 6. for the same reason , but will hold my selfe to a portion of time , from the first uniting of these provinces in the time of king h. 2. untill the time of k. iohn . at what time those provinces were lost , and from that time againe unto the 17. yeere of the reigne of k. edw. 2. at what time the statute of proerogativa rogis was made , which altered the law in the point in hand . that both in these times , the subjects of gascoyn and guyenne , and anjou , were naturalized for inheritance in england by the lawes of england . i shall manifestly prove , and the proofe proceeds , as to the former time ( which is our case ) in a very high degree , a minore ad majus , and as we say , a multo fortiore for if this priviledge of naturalization remained unto them when the countreyes were lost , and became subjects in possession to another king : much more did they enjoy it , as long as they continued under the kings subjection . therefore to open the state of this point . after these provinces were through the perturbations of the state in the infortunate time ofk. iohn lost , and severed , the principall persons which did adhere unto the french were attainted of treason , and their efcheats here in england taken and seized . but the people that could not resist the tempest , when their heads and leaders were revolted , continued inheritable to their possessions in england , and reciprocally the people of england inherited and succeeded to their possessions in gascoyne , and were both accounted , ad fidem utriusque regis , untill the statute of proerogativa regis , wherein the wisdome and justice of the law of england is highly to be commended . for of this law , there are two grounds of reason , the one of equity , the other of policy . that of equity was because the common people were in no fault , but as the scripture saith in a like case , quid fecerunt oves iftoe ? it was the cowardise and disloyalty of their governours that deserved punishmēt , butwhat had these sheep done , and therefore to have punish't them , and deprived them of their lands & fortunes had bin unjust . that of policy was , because if the law had forthwith upon the losse of the countreyes by an accident of time pronounced the people for aliens , it had been a kind of cession of their right , and a diselaymer in them , and so a greater difficulty to recover them . and therefore we see the statute , which altered the law in this point , was made in the time of a weake king , that , as it seemed , despaired ever to recover his right , and therefore thought better to have a little present profit by escheats , then the continuance of his claime , and the countenance of his right by the admitting of them to enjoy their inheritances , as they did before . the state therefore of this point , being thus opened , it resteth to prove our assertion that they were naturalized ; for the clearing whereof , i shall need but to reade the authorities , they be so direct and pregnant . the first is the very text of the statute of praerogativa regis . rex habebit escaetas de terris normannorum cujuscunque feodi fuerint , salvo servitio , quod pertinet ad capitales dominos feodi illius , & hoc similiter intelligendum est , si aliqua haereditus descendat alicui nato in partibus transmarinis , & cujus antecefsores fuerunt ad fidem regis franciae , ut tempore regis iohannis , & non ad fidem regis angliae , sicut contigit de baronia monumetae , &c. by which statute it appeares plainly that before the time of king iohn , there was no colour of any escheare , because they were the kings subjects in possession , as scotland now is , but onely it determines the law , from that time forward . this statute if it had in it any obscurity , it is taken away by two lights , the one placed before it , and th'other placed after it , both authors of great credit the 〈◊〉 for antient , th'other for late times . the former is 〈◊〉 in his cap. de exception 〈…〉 , lib. 5. fol. 427. and his words are these , est etiam & alia exceptie quae tenenti competitex persona petentis propter defectum nationis , quae dilatoria est , & nonperimit actionem , ut si qnis alienigena qui fuerit ad fidem regis franciae , & actionem instituat versus aliquem qui fuerit ad fidem regis angliae , tali nonrespondeatur saltem donec terrae fuerint communes . by these words it appeareth , that after the losse of the provinces beyond the seas , the naturalization of the subjects of those provinces was in no sort extinguished , but onely was in suspence during time of warre and no longer ; for he saith plainly , that the exception which we call plea to the person of alien , was not peremptory but onely dilatory , that is to say , during the time of war , and untill there were peace concluded , which hee tearmes by these words , donec terrae fuerint communes , which though the phrase seeme somewhat obscure is expounded by bracton himselfe in his fourth booke , fol. 297. to be of peace made and concluded whereby the inhabitants of england , and those provinces might enjoy the profits and fruits of their lands in either place communiter , that is respectively , or as well the one as th'other : so as it is cleere , they were no aliens in right , but onely interrupted and debarred of suites in the kings courts in time of warre . the authority after the statute , is , that of master stamfords , the best expositor of a statute that hath bin in our law , a man of reverend judgment , & excellent order in his writings , his words are in his expositiō upon the branch of that statute which we read before . by this branch it should appeare , that at this time men of normandy , gascoyne , guienne , anjou , and brittaine were inheritable within this realme , aswell as english-men , because that they were sometimes subjects to the kings of england and under their dominion , untill k. johns time , as is aforesaid , & yet after his time , those men ( saving such whose lands were taken away for treason ) were still inheritable within this realme , till the making of this statute , and in the time of peace betweene the two kings of england , and france , they were answerable within this realme , if they had brought any action for their lands and tenements . so as by these three authorities , every one so plainly pursuing th'other , we conclude that the subjects of gascoyne , guienne , anjou , and the rest from their first union by descent , untill the making of the statute , of praerogativa regis , were inheritable in england , and to be answered in the kings courts in all actions , except it were in time of warre . nay more ( which is de abundante ) that when the provinces were lost , and disannexed , and that the king was but king de jure over them , and not de facto : yet neverthelesse , the priviledge of naturalization continued . there resteth yet one objection , rather plausible to a popular understanding , then any waies forcible in law , or learning , which is a difference taken between the kingdome of scotland , and these dutchies , for that the one is a kingdome , and th'other was not so , and therefore that those provinces being of an inferiour nature , did acknowledge our lawes , and seales , and parliament which the kingdome of scotland doth not . this difference was well given over by mr. walter , for it is plaine , that a kingdome and absolute dukedome , or any other soveraigne estate doe differ honore , and not potestate ; for divers dutchies , and countries that are now , were sometimes kingdomes ; and divers kingdomes that are now , were sometimes dutchies , or of other inferiour style , wherein we neede not travaile abroad since we have in our owne state so notorious an instance of the countrey of ireland , whereof king h. 8. of late time was the first that writ himselfe king the former style being l. of ireland and no more , and yet kings had the same authority before , that they have had since and the same nation the same marks of a soveraigne state , as their parliaments , their armes , their coynes , as they now have , so as this is too superficiall an allegation labour upon . and if any doe conceive , that gascoyne and guyenne were governed by the lawes of england . first , that cannot be in reason , for it is a true ground , that wheresoever any princes title unto any countrey is by law , he can never change the lawes , for that they create his title : and therefore no doubt those dutchies retained their owne lawes , which if they did , then they could not be subject to the lawes of england and next againe the fact or practize was otherwise , as appeareth by all consent of story and record : for those dutchies continued governed by the civill law , their tryalls by witresses and not by jurie , their lands testamentary , and the like . now for the colours , that some have endeavoured to give , that they should have beene subordinate to the government of england , they were partly weake , and partly such as make strongly against them , for as to that , that writs of habeas corpus under the great seale of england have gone to gascoyne , it is no manner of proofe , for that the kings writs which are mendatory and not writs of ordinary justice may goe to his subjects into any forraine parts whatsoever , and under what seale it pleaseth him to use ; and as to that , that some acts of parliament have beene cited , wherein the parliaments of england have taken upon them to order matters of gascoyne , if those statutes be well looked into , nothing doth more plainly convince the contrary , for they intermeddle with nothing but that that concerneth either the english subjects personally , or the territories of england locally , and never the subjects of gascoyne , for looke upon the statute of 27. of ed. 3. ca. 5. there it is said , that there shall be no fore-stasting of wines , but by whom ? onely by english merchants , not a word of the subjects of gascoyne , and yet no doubt they mighr be offenders in the same kind . so in the sixt chapter it is said , that all marchants , gascoyoes may safely bring wines into what part it shall please them , here now are the persons of gascoynes , but then the place whether● into the realme of england , and in the 7. chap. that erects the ports of burdeaux and bayonne , for the staple townes of wine , the statute ordaines that if any , but who ? english marchant or his servants shall buy or bargaine other where , his body shall be arrested by the steward of gascoyne , or the constable of burdeaux : true , for the officers of england could not catch him in gascoyne , but what shall become of him , shall he be proceeded with within gascoyne ? no , but he shall be sent over into england into the tower of london . and this doth notably disclose the reason of that custome , which some have sought to wrest the other way , that custome , i say , whereof a forme doth yet remaine , that in every parliament the king doth appoint certaine committees in the upper-house to receive the petitions of normandy , guyenne and the rest , which as by the former statute doth appeare could not be for the ordering of the governments there , but for the liberties , and good usage of the subjects of those parts , when they came hither , or via versa , for the restraining of the abuses and misdemeanors of our subjects when they went thither . wherefore i am now at an end . for us to speake of the mischiefes , i hold it not fit for this place , left we should seeme to bend the lawes to policy and not to take them in their true and naturall sense . it is enough that every man knowes , that it is true of these two kingdomes , which a good father said of the churches of christ : si inseparabiles insuperabiles . some things i may have forgot , and some things perhaps i may forget willingly ; for i will not presse any opinion or declaration of late time which may prejudice the liberty of this debate , but ex dictis , & ex non dictis , upon the whole matter i prove judgement for the plaintiffe . an atc [sic] approving of the good services done by the town of glascow [sic], shire of argyle and other western shires, in this conjuncture, with a return of the thanks of the estates to them. laws, etc. 1689-03-28 scotland. convention of estates. 1689 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92477 wing s1056 estc r231544 99896835 99896835 137062 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92477) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 137062) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2448:13) an atc [sic] approving of the good services done by the town of glascow [sic], shire of argyle and other western shires, in this conjuncture, with a return of the thanks of the estates to them. laws, etc. 1689-03-28 scotland. convention of estates. scotland. convention of estates. aut 1 sheet ([1] p.) : 2#20. printed at edinburgh, re-printed at london, by george croom, at the blue-ball in thames-street, near baynard's-castle, [london] : 1689. signed at end: ja. dalrymple, cls. reproduction of original in the bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2007-09 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an atc approving of the good services done by the town of glascow , shire of argyle , and other western shires , in this conjuncture , with a return of the thanks of the estates to them . at edinburgh , march 28. 1689. the meeting of the estates of this kingdom , taking into their consideration , that by the sending of the standing forces into england , the estates were destitute of that guard and defence , which was proper and necessary in this conjuncture ; and that several persons well affected to the protestant religion , at the diet of the meeting of the said estates , having repaired to this city of edinburgh , from glascow , the shire of argyle , and other western shires , did at the desire , and by warrand of the estates , put themselves to arms , and since have so continued watching and warding , under the command of the earl of levin , and demeaned themselves soberly and honestly , and been active and instrumental to prevent tumults , and to secure the peace and quiet of this meeting and place ; and there being now some scots regiments arrived here , under the command of major-general mccay , the estates do therefore hereby declare , that what is past , was good , acceptable and seasonable service , and do approve the same ; and hereby gives order to the said earl of levin to disband them , and allows them to return with their arms to their respective homes , and do return their thanks to the persons who have been employed . extracted out of the records of the meeting of estates , by me , ja. dalrymple , cls. licensed according to order . printed at edinburgh . re-printed at london , by george croom , at the blue-ball in thames-street , near baynard's-castle , 1689. act containing the tenour of the band for securing the peace of the kingdom. scotland. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a92482 of text r211183 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.13[74]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a92482 wing s1075 thomason 669.f.13[74] estc r211183 99869915 99869915 162970 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92482) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 162970) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 246:669f13[74]) act containing the tenour of the band for securing the peace of the kingdom. scotland. parliament. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by evan tyler, printer to the kings most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1649. signed: willliam scot, cler. parl. appointing a form of declaration to be signed by suspected persons acknowledging the authority of the parliament of 4 jan. 1649, and promising not to oppose it, assist its enemies, or conceal plots against it, or break the union with england. noblemen to find caution for 100,000 marks, barons 50,000, etc. -cf. steele. annotation on thomason copy: "jan. 20 1648"; 9 in imprint date crossed through. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng scotland. -convention of estates -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1649-1660 -early works to 1800. a92482 r211183 (thomason 669.f.13[74]). civilwar no act containing the tenour of the band for securing the peace of the kingdom. scotland. parliament 1649 771 1 0 0 0 0 0 13 c the rate of 13 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2007-09 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion act containing the tenour of the band for securing the peace of the kingdom . at edinburgh the twenty sixth day of january , the year of god one thousand six hundred and fourty nine years . the estates of parliament taking to their consideration the acts and precepts of the late committee of estates , for citing certain persons to give surety for the peace of the kingdom , according to the band presented to them ; and that several persons accordingly were conveened before them , and did give satisfaction thereanent . they do therefore ratifie and approve the saids acts , precepts and bands ; and what hath followed therepon ; and now considering that it is necessary towards the setling , and securing of the peace of the kingdom , that the like course be prosecute , they do therefore appoint and ordain precepts to be issued out , for citing such persons as were upon the late engagement , or others as they shall think expedient , to compeir before them or their committees , having power for that effect , to give surety and to subscribe the band and declaration , whereof the tenour followeth . whereas i _____ am conveened to finde surety for keeping of the peace of the kingdom , therefore to testifie my ready obedience to that which is so just and reasonable , and to witness my desire to hinder and prevent any danger or disturbance which may arise to this kingdom , and to clear my resolutions ; i declare , that i do acknowledge , the indiction , meeting , and constitution , the lawfulness , freedom , and authority of the parliament of this kingdom , conveened on the fourth of january one thousand , six hundred and fourty nine years ; and that i shall not any manner of way call the same in question . and i the said _____ as principall and _____ as cautioner and suerty for me , faithfully binde and obliges us conjunctly and severally , and our heirs , that i the said _____ shall neither directly nor indirectly , consult , or act in any thing tending to the diminution of the authority of the said parliament , or of the committees of estates that shall be appointed by them for the publick affairs : and that i shall not rise in armes , or in any hostile way oppose their proceedings , for the prosecution of the cause and covenant , or concur with , assist , keep intelligence or correspondence with any invaders of this kingdom , or risers in armes within the same , against the fore said proceedings of the forementionate parliament or committees . and if i shall hear or know of any thing which may derogate from , or prejudge them in any sort , i shall as soon as i can possibly reveal the same to some of their own number to be communicate to the rest . and that i shall neither by my self , nor others by my knowledge or direction do , or suffer any thing to be done that i can let or hinder , which may disturb the present quiet or peace of this kingdom , or proceedings of these judicatories as aforesaid , or which may prosecute the said late engagement and expedition into england , or break the union betwixt the kingdoms , under the pain of _____ consenting these presents be rgistrate in the books of parliament , or of the committee of estates , that all execution , personall , and reall may pass hereupon , which hath been ordinary in the like cases , or which the parliament or committee shall think fit , and to that effect constitutes _____ my pror . promitten de rato , &c. likeas , the estates ordains every nobleman ( being cited ) to give the surety foresaid , and to finde caution under the pain of an hundred thousand merks ▪ and every barron of quality under the pain of fifty thousand merks ad minimum , and other persons according to their severall degrees and ability . with certification , that whosoever refuse or fail herein , shall be holden and estimate as enemies to , and disturbers of the peace of the kingdom ; and to be proceeded against accordingly , as the parliament or their committees shall think fit . william scot , cler. parl. edinburgh , printed by evan tyler , printer to the kings most excellent majesty , 1649. bella scot-anglica. a brief of all the battells, and martiall encounters which have happened 'twixt england and scotland, from all times to the present. vvherunto is annexed a corollary, declaring the causes whereby the scot is come of late years to be so heightned in his spirits; with some prophecies which are much cryed up, as reflecting upon the fate of both nations. howell, james, 1594?-1666. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a86615 of text r15335 in the english short title catalog (thomason e435_25). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 51 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 12 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a86615 wing h3056 thomason e435_25 estc r15335 99859842 99859842 111941 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a86615) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 111941) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 68:e435[25]) bella scot-anglica. a brief of all the battells, and martiall encounters which have happened 'twixt england and scotland, from all times to the present. vvherunto is annexed a corollary, declaring the causes whereby the scot is come of late years to be so heightned in his spirits; with some prophecies which are much cryed up, as reflecting upon the fate of both nations. howell, james, 1594?-1666. [2], 19, 18-19, [1] p. s.n.], [london : printed in the yeare 1648. anonymous. attributed to james howell. place of publication from wing. variant: title has "hightned". annotation on thomason copy: "aprill 13th". reproduction of the original in the british library. eng england -military relations -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -military relations -england -early works to 1800. scotland -history -prophecies -early works to 1800. a86615 r15335 (thomason e435_25). civilwar no bella scot-anglica.: a brief of all the battells, and martiall encounters which have happened 'twixt england and scotland, from all times t howell, james 1648 8488 16 0 0 0 0 0 19 c the rate of 19 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-04 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 john latta sampled and proofread 2008-08 john latta text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion bella scot-anglica . a brief of all the battells , and martiall encounters which have happened 'twixt england and scotland , from all times to this present . vvherunto is annexed a corollary , declaring the causes whereby the scot is come of late years to be so hightned in his spirits ; with some prophecies which are much cryed up , as reflecting upon the fate of both nations . printed in the yeare 1648. bella scot-anglica . a briefe of all the battels and martiall encounters , which have happen'd 'twixt england and scotland , from all times to this present , &c. the proeme . the design of this short discourse , is to relate the quarrels , and sundry traverses of warre , which have passed from time to time between england and scotland , extracted out of the most approved and impartiall historians , as well scottish , as english , french , and others . out of which premisses are deduced these conclusions ; first , that scotland hath been alwayes apt and forward to apprehend any occasion to invade and visit her neighbour england . secondly , that when she was at the highest pitch of strength , and had the greatest advantages against her , when she had active and martiall kings for her generalls , and the french for her firm confederates , with other coadjutors and auxiliaries , she could never be a match no , not by many degrees , for england , whether you respect the int●insick power of the country , or the innated prowesse of the people : all which will clearly appeare by the circumstances and successe of divers battells and interchangeable exploits , which being indifferently ballanc'd it will be found ▪ that if scotland did sometimes beat england with the scabbard , england may bee truly sayd to have beaten her more often with the blade . i will not look back and rake the ashes of antiquity so far , as to speak of the sociall warre they entred into with the ancient brittaines and picts against the english , when they began to take first firme footing in england . nor , of that so famous battell 'twixt athelstan and them , at which time they had a great army of danes joyned with them ; when being above twice more in number then the english , king athelstan carried away a compleat victory by a kind of back-blow ( parthian like ) for the two armies being ready to joyne , the english made semblance to fly away , leaving all their baggage behinde , and much matter for booty , which as the scots and danes were sharing , the english suddenly wheeled about by the advantage of a woody hill , and finding them in disarray , and the souldiers laden with pillage , they rushed upon them with that resolution , that above fourty thousand of them fell , and as buchanan their prime chronologer recordeth , the flower of their nobility perished that day . but i intend not to involve my discourse in these mistie times , but will take my rise from the norman conquest , for indeed the historie of great brittaine being over clouded with so many incertainties , casteth but a dim light before those times , whereas since , she shines with such a lustre , that what stands upon record may be asserted for cleere and undeniable truth . at that time , i mean the time of the conquest , scotland did england a very good office by preserving the english blood-royall ( which not long after returned to the crowne in henry the second ) but it was casually : for prince edgar and his mother , with his two sisters , intending to goe for denmarke , ( some say for hungarie ) and being by distresse of weather driven upon the scottish coasts , they were hospitably received by malcoline , then king of scotland ; at which time civility with the english tongue took first footing in the scottish court , as the french did amongst the english . will . the second . the first dart of war that was thrown 'twixt england and scotland after the conquest was in will . rufus his raign , when the scots having made divers incursions into the english pa●e , moubray earle of northumberland was sent against them , who encountring their king malcoline with his eldest son in the field , they were both slain , and the whole army overthrown . afterwards the scots choosing the dead kings brother , king william went in person and depos'd him , causing edward the second , son of the slain king , to be crowned , and making him to sweare fealty and homage to england ; but the scots obtain'd the favour of king william , that neither english or norman should beare any office of state in scotland . king stephen . king stephen having oblig'd the scots by many high favours , by giving cumberland to david their king , and making his eldest son earle of huntington ; yet so ingratefull did they prove that they provok'd him to send thurston then archb. of yorke with such an army , that meeting with the king himselfe in the head of his forces , he utterly discomfited him , with the death of 10000. of his men . henry the second . henry the second , though the pulse of those times did beat high , and that he was distracted with a world of con●●●ions yet employing the york-shire knights , humphrey vile ; scutvill and vescy , they with their victorious armes tooke the scots king in the field and tendred him prisoner at northampton , whence king henry carried him along to attend him in his warres in france . richard the first . richard coeur de lion caused william king of scotland to carry the sword before him at his second coronation at his return from the holy land : at which time king rich. passed a royall charter , that whensoever the king of scotland was summond to the english court , the bishop of durham , and sheriffe of northumberland , should receive him at tweede , and accompany him to teis , from teis the archbishop of yorke should attend him to the borders of that county , and so the bish. and sheriffs of other counties , untill he came to the english court . king john . king iohn one of the weakest princes , and the most forlorne that ever england had considering how the pope and all the world did bandy against him , and what fearefull exigents he was reduced unto , yet finding alexander the second then king of scotland to give sanctuary to his fugitive clergy , and foment others against him , made an expedition thither himselfe but the two armies being ready to buckle , the scot seing fire and sword to gape upon him , submitted himselfe , and subscribed to such termes as the conqueror propounded . edvvard the first . now come i to the scourge , or , as his tombe in westminster tells me , the hammer of the scotts-men . edwardus primus scotorum malleus hic est . he causeth balioll to come to newcastle to sweare fealty and homage to him , who after flying to the french king , edward was so netled for this his defection , that though he had a farre greater arrand in france , yet he chose rather to employ edmund earle of lancaster thither , and to march himselfe to scotland in the front of a puissant army ; where the scots in farre greater numbers shewed their teeth only but durst not bite . king edward summons balioll to berwicke when he resubmitted himself with all the nobles in open parliament which he held there ; and for caution brought the king himselfe along with him , leaving the earle of surrey warden of scotland . not long after the scots revolted againe notwithstanding their king was in england , having one wallie for their ring-leader , who did much mischiefe on the frontiers . and their insolency grew to that hight , that besides their inrodes , they began to rhime upon him . what this edward with his land shanks ? but he payed them for their rhiming with a vengeance ; he goeth againe in person and at ●●nkirk battaile kild out right 200. of their nobles and gentry , with 40. thousand common souldiers . then he summons a parliament at edenburgh where all the nobles sweare him fealty againe ; he carrieth away the ragman roll , the blacke crosse , and the stone wherein they say the fate of their kingdome is fixed . then was there offer'd a third provocation , when le bruce was crowned king of scotland . the earle of pembrooke was sent against him , who utterly defeated him at iohnston . hereupon le bruce flyeth to the popes pantofle making him lord paramount of scotland , which moved king edward notwithstanding the menaces and fulminations of the pope who wished him to forbeare the scots ( because they were an exempt nation belonging to the roman chappell ) to make a fourth expedition thither where he constrained le bruce to fly to norway , where he blew on his nayles while k. edward lived . and ▪ so eager was this great king in pursuite of this action , that falling sickly upon the way , he said , if i die before i enter scotland , i charge you to go on couragiously , and carry my body round about the country ; but it pleased god to reprieve him untill he had done his businesse himselfe . edvvard the second . but here comes a cooling-card for the english , edward the second ▪ whose greatest honor was to be son to a peerles father , and father to an incomparable son , rosa spinam , spina rosam genuit . in his time all went to wrack especially in scotland . at bannocks battaile gilbert de clare earle of glocester , and 40 barons more , with 700 knights and gentlemen , and as some stories record above 40000. more were slaine . which defeat was imputed principally to the ill choice of ground the english had taken . the scots had behind them rocks , hills , and woods to fly into if necessity required , before them loughs , and moores , that the assailant could not march further . adde hereunto the pusillanimity of the king ( and the spirits of men are much raysed by their leader ) who was sayd to fly first : and better it is for a lion to lead sheepe , then for a sheepe to lead a company of lions . the scots hereupon were so agog that they enter ireland with an army under the conduct of edward bruce the kings brother , who landing at karig fergus ransack'd all the north parts , where he tooke such firme footing , that he proclaym'd himselfe king of ireland , though he had onely over-ranne ulster . at which time there was such a direfull famine , that in some places of ireland dead bodies were digged up , and their flesh boyled in their sculls to be eaten , as the story tells . but two yeares after , sir io. bremingham then chiefe justice , with the archbishop of armagh , went with such a power against this upstart king , that at dundalke they got a most compleat victory , one manpas as it seemed having kild the king hand to hand , for both their dead bodies were found together , and manpas covering the kings body . in england another army was sent against the scots , called the yorke army , which was also overthrowne at milton upon swayle . nevertheles the king would venture once more in person , and with a numerous army invaded scotland ; the scots fly into the woods , and places of fastnes ; and for want of provision in that hungry country , the english were forced to retire , but in the retraict they were so pursued that they lost all their ammunition , which was attributed to the treason of sir andrew harkley . but your criticall annalists ascribe it to the poverty of spirit in the royall head , who being become hatefull to god , and man first for perjury , by infringing the oath he made to his barons ; then by disobedience to his father who in his death bed charged him upon his blessing to abandon piers gaveston , whom nevertheless he still doted upon with the spencers , by whose counsels hee guided himselfe , and it was alwaies seen that princes of an ill destiny follow the worst counsells . edvvard the third . but here comes a spirit who will soundly vindicate his fathers affronts . edward the third , a prince that was the soonest a man , and the longest that lasted so of any in the whole catalogue of english kings ; yet being but young when the diadem first begirt his temples , after an encounter at stanhope park , where great multitudes of scots appeared , but vanished away like meteors , skulking in woods and mountains . in the parliament held at northampton , the king of scotland was released of his homage ; but some years after , when the young king began to understand himself , hee sent an army with balioll , whom he caused to be crowned at scone ; and afterwards there was a battell fought at hallidowne , where the english made the scots a bridge of gold to fly over , for they betook themselves all to their heeles . king balioll being thus restored , scotland became feuditary to england againe . but a few years after king ed. being deeply engag'd in his french wars , and thinking hoc agere , the scots presuming his absence would prove advantagious to them , make cursorie sallies out of scotland , and plunder all before them in the north , by the instigation of the french . but the queen and the lords of the north make such a levy of martiall forces , that they entred scotland like thunder , and at a mighty battell one copland takes the king prisoner , whom , pleading the law of arms he would not deliver the queen , untill the king had sent order from france . this overthrow was given upon saturday , and upon saturday six weeks before the battell of cressy had bin fought , with another against the duke of brittain ; in all which king edward prov'd victorious . and being triumphantly return'd from france , with the flower-de-luces upon his sword , and redoubted now by all the princes of the christian world having a triumverate of kings his prisoners , one would think the scot would have bin quiet but they still provoked him so far , that in the dead of winter ( and king ed. was a prince for all weathers ) he went thither in person himself , tooke berwick , and had all scotlond resign'd unto him , by the king himselfe , and the nobles who joyntly swore fealty and homage to him . richard the second . now the grand-childe of this great king ( who turn'd the wheele of his times every where up and downe the christian world as he pleased ) mounts the stage . the scots begin to infest the borders , and doe other acts of hostility being actually assisted by the french king , who sent thither his admirall with a 1000. men at armes , and 60. sayle with furniture to arme 10000. men more . king richard musters up an army worthy of a king , and rusheth into scotland like a whirle-wind as farre as dondee , and neither scot or french appeared to make oppos●tion . the scots ( as the french annales say ) not symbolizing with the humour of the french grew weary of them , and casheered them , but they kept jean de viene , the great admirall prisoner in a manner , untill the french king had payed his ransome , which he did , otherwise his admirall might have laine at dead anchor there all his life-time . but being returned to france , lest he should seem to shew no fruits at all of his voyage , he informs the king , that hee had pried into the uttermost intrinsique strength , both of scotland and england , and found that scotland was able to put in the field about 30000 men , and 5000. horse , and england 60000. foot , and 8000. horse , this relation induced charles the frantique to attempt the invasion of england the yeare following , with a formidable army , and fleet , which was to make sayle from the sluce , and for land-forces far exceeded the invincible armada of the yeare 88. but the admirals account was found false , and to have reckoned much without his host , for as the french historians report . king richard had levied neere upon 100000. foot and 20000. horse . henry the fourth . in hen. the fourth's time the tumultuous scot stirs againe , and pillers about the marches at last he composeth the body of an army , whom hen. hotspurre encountred , and kil'd more enemies then he had men in his own army . sir robert umphreyvile being vice-admirall , takes 14. great ships laden with corn , together with the great galeon of scotland , hard by lith , which so abated the price of corn , that hee was commonly called sir rob. mend market . a little after the young prince of wales hurld himselfe seven daies march into scotland , and did what he would . henry the fift . henry the fift that man of men , and mirrour of chivalrie ( and the strangest convert that ever was ) being come to the crown , he falls like a politician to worke in erecting forts on the frontiers of scotland , which he did without controule . after he took the young king james the first , prisoner , in a very hot incounter , and carried him up and down with him in the french warres . henry the sixt . henry the sixt for some gallant parts in the aforesaid young king james the first of scotland , married him to the lady lane , daughter to the earle of somerset his neece ; but he proved afterwards hatefully ingratefull , and perfidious to king henry , banding all his main forces against him but he was shamefully repell'd and beaten by sir ralph gray , and the knights of the north . edvvard the fourth . and no lesse ingratefull and treacherous was iames the third in edward the fourths time who desiring in mariage cicilia the kings daughter , it was condescended unto so farre that he had part of her portion advanc'd him ; yet he fell to acts of hostility and frames an army , which the duke of glocester with 15000 men ill favourdly beat ( though they were twice more in number ) and got berwicke againe . henry the seventh . now come i to that great magus of his dayes henry the seventh who was said to be hanted with walking spirits simuell warbecke , and perkins , whom hee chased away by sprinkling of bloud . the scots entertained warbecke , though they knew him to be an impostor , and raised an army for him . the earle of surry and bishop foxe , were sent against it , who drive the king and warbecke with the whole army before them six dayes march into the country , at last the scots king sent a defiance for a battell , which being to be fought the next day , the scot steales away the night before in a silent march . hereupon a peace was concluded , provided that warbecke should bee banished scotland , whom notwithstonding they furnished with ships , to goe to try his fortune with the cornish rebels . henry the eight . and now come i to the glory of his dayes ( especially two thirds of them ) henry the 8. for never did prince rise with a greater lustre in englands hemispheare , and set in a darker clowd . and being extreamly busied in the warres of france , who should disturb him but his own brothervin-law , iames the fourth , excited by the french , who contributed great summes of money towards the support of the warre ; the king sends presently from france to the earle of surry to make head against them ; at first the earle sent sir vvilliam bullmer with 200. archers upon the borders to observe their motion . the lord humes , entreth with 8000. men , and as he thought to returne with his booty , sir vvilliam bulmer having reinforced his 200 , to 1000. fell upon the 8000. scots , with that fury , that he kil'd 500. took so many prisoners , and intercepted the whole booty . this made the young kings blood boyle within him for revenge , and composing a royall army of the utmost strength of scotland went in the head thereof himselfe . the earle of surry was not idle , but raised an army of 26000 men , and his son then admirall came to him from newcastle with 1000. old sea souldiers . the two amies met in flodden , where after many hot incounters victory fluttered a long while with doubtfull wings , at last the king himselfe , with the archb. of st. andrews his brother , were slain , with 12. earles , and 14. barrons , and 12000 gentlemen and others , and there fell of the english but 1500. only , nor could the scots rescue the body of their king , but to mend the matter a little , gave out it was not the kings body , but one elfinston attired like to him , to encourage the army . but afterwards , though they acknowledged it was his body , yet would not henry the 8 , permit him to have the due rites of princely buriall , because he had so perjuriously violated his faith with him . some few years after the duke of albany rays'd an army , but he was prevented to do any hurt by the lord roos and dacres , who made bonefires of above 80. villages without seeing the face of an enemy , no sooner were they returned , but newes came , that the duke of albany had by this time in perfect equipage an army of 30000. men . hereupon the lord treasurer and admirall , were sent to finde him out , but both armies being come to sight of each other , the scots not enduring well the countenance of the english forces , ran away and shamefully disbanded , so that if the lord generall had had then commission ample enough , they might have given a fatall blow to scotland , as they themselves confessed , but by the intercession of the queen dowager , hen. the eights sister , they obtained truce . after this king hen. condiscended to meet iames the fift at york , but he fayled , sending certain commissioners , and so cunning was the scot , that their commission , and private instructions looked two wayes , and as they were treating , tydings came , that the scots had rushed into , and rifled the marches most barbarously . hereupon the earl of norfolke was sent with 20000. men , who for 8. daies did what he would within the bowels of the country . anothor army was sent undet the command of the lord dacres and wharton , who gave them such a mortall blow , that eight earls were taken prisoners , and 200. gentlemen , and 800. more , and the stories concurre , that there was scarce a souldier , but had at least his two prisoners , this was solmemosse battell . yet for all this such is the inclination of the english to bee at peace with their neighbours , that a match was concluded , and ratified by act of parliament , with a speciall instrument under the scots noble-mens hands between prince edward , and the young queen mary , yet by the cunning negotiation of the french , the scot fell off . hereupon old king henry , who could digest no indignities , sent 200. ships laden with souldiers to the frith , under the earl of hereford , who marched as far as edinburgh , burnt the town , and part of the castle , returning with revenge and rich bootie . a while after the scots understanding the king was gone to france , thought to serve themselves of that advantage , and to fall upon the borders , but the earl of hereford repelled them , edvvard the sixt . edward the sixt , though yet in his minority , seemed to be sensible of the affront the scot had put upon him for a wife , though his father had vindicated it pritty well , but as the case stood , nothing could concerne england more , then to hinder that the french of any in the world should have her . and now am i come to the last true battell that was fought 'twixt england and scotland since the conquest . the duke of sommerset was appointed generall , the earle of vvarwicke his lieutenant generall , the lord clinton admirall had 60. shipps of warre , which were to hold course with the land-forces . so from barwicke , with a sober army they entred scotland , consisting of about 13000. foot and 1200. men at arms , 2500. light horse , 16. peeces of ordnance , every peece having a guard of pioners , who came in all to 1400. they had marched as far as musselborough , far within the country , and with infinite pains did they surmount the naturall and artificiall difficulties of the wayes , three small castles they seized upon in their march without offering any act of violence to small or great . they understood the regent of scotland did far exceed them in number and there came recruits hourely to him , for the fire crosse was carried about by the heralds through all parts , which is two firebrands upon the point of a spear , that all above 16. and under 60 should resort to the generall rendezvous so that the historians on both sides leave the number of them indefinite to this day , but they all agree , that they were at least twice as many and they had twice as many ordnance , yet notwithstanding many other advantage it pleased god to give the english a compleat victory ( and victories are the decrees of heaven , when there is no tribunall on earth to determine the quarrell . this hapned precisely the same day that flodden field battell was fought 34. years before . there were 14000. slain out-right , whereof there were 3000. kirk-men ; fryars and monks , above 1500. taken prisoners , whereof young huntly , and other great lords were of the number ; the spoiles of the field 30000 jacks and 30. peeces of ordnance were shipped for england , and the english plundred the country up and down 5. daies march further . to these exploits at home may be added a smart blow the english gave the scots in ireland , in sir io. perrots government , for some 2000. redshanks being come over by the burks means , like a swarm of catterpillers they proll'd and pill'd up and down , sir ri. bingham then governour of connaught , made head against them , with a small contemptible number , and at the river of earne neer slego , slew them all out-right , so that not one soule escaped , to return to scotland with newes what became of the rest . touching these late traverses of warre 'twixt england and scotland 't is true that infortunate england hath drawne upon her selfe a great deale of dishonour in the opinion of the world abroad , specially among those who understand not the true carriage of things ; for these late rushings in of the scot cannot be so properly call'd invasions a●invitations , by some spurious and most unworthy degenerous englishmen , who from a long time had plotted the bringing of them in , and it was the most pernicious and basest treason that ever was practis'd against poore england : but to give a full and satisfactory relation of this warre , i will deduce the busines from the beginning . before this unlucky storme fell 'twixt england and scotland there were certain clowds issuing from the vapors of divers discontented braines , plainly discern'd to hover up and downe a long time in both kingdomes specially in that northerne region : the first which appeard was , when some yeers after his majesties accesse to the crowne , there was an act of revocation passed , where some things which had insensibly slipped away from the crowne , and other things which were illegally snatch'd from the church were resum'd , and reannex'd to both ; which lighting upon some of the great ones , they were over heard to murmure though this was done with as much moderation as possibly could be , and by the mature advice of the counsell of state there , with the free opinion of the approved'st lawyers of that kingdome , and from hence issued the first symptome of discontentment . not long after his majesty being inform'd of the meane and servile condition of the ministers of that kingdome , which have the charge of the conscience , and service of god , and make up a considerable part of the free borne subjects ; his majesty understanding what poore pittances they receiv'd for their subsistence , and for those small stipends also , or rather almes of benevolence , they depended upon the pleasure of the laiks , his majesty by a speciall commission to that end found away to augment and acertain that allowance , and free them from that slavish kind of clientele and dependency they had upon the seculars ; whence may bee inferr'd what monsters of ingratitude those men shew'd themselves to be afterwards , by exasperating and poysoning the hearts of the people against their soveraigne in their virulent and seditious preachments , and inviting them to armes . not long after , when the poore husbandman and owners of corn were bound to pay tithes to lay persons call'd there the lords of the ●rection , were much incommodated by them , because they could not take in their corn till the parson had fetch'd away his tithe , who sometimes to shew his power or spleen peradventure would defer of purpose the taking in thereof , whereby the whole crop , by not taking advantage of the weather , would oftimes suffer : his majesty for the redresse of this grievance , appointed commissioners who found a way to purchase those tiths , and bring the impropriators to take a pecuniary certain rent counterveylable unto them : hereupon the laie lords and gentlemen finding that the respect and dependency wherby the ministers and owners of corn were formerly oblig'd unto them to be hereby lessen'd did tacitly discover much animosity and displeasure : moreover his majestie when he went thither to be crown'd having conferr'd honours upon some whom he had found industrious to promote his service , envie ( which is alwayes the canker of honour ) began to raign among divers of them which did turne visibly afterwards to discontentments . these were the conceal'd and private grounds , now the open and avowed causes were the introduction of our liturgy , the booke of canons , ordination and consecration with the high commission court among them : and it hath bin found since that those things were introduc'd by the cunning of those discontented spirits , that thereby there might be some grounds to suscitat the people to rise , which plot of theirs tooke effect . adde hereunto that after the king of swedens death divers scots commanders came over , and made a florish in our english court , but being souldiers of fortune , and finding no trading here , they went to scotland and joyn'd counsells with those discontented spirits to beget a warre that they might be in action . the only pretence they tooke for their rising then , was our common prayer booke , hereupon his majesty sent a proclamation to be published wherein he declar'd that 't was not his purpose to presse the practise of that book upon any ones conscience , therefore he was willing to discharge them from the use and exercise of it , and to abolish all acts that tended to that end and that all things should be in statu quo prius . but this would not suffice , for they went on to fish in these troubled waters , having a designe to drayne all the episcopall sees in the kingdome , and turn them to laic land : hereupon they entred into a holy league which they term'd covenant , without his majesties privity , and this was point blank against an act of parliament 1585. which utterly prohibits all leagues , covenants or bands whatsoever without the kings consent : hereupon the body of an army was raised , and one lesley was made generall , so they marched to dunce hill within five miles of berwicke where the rendevouz was : they gave out they came with a petition to his majesty , though they brought it upon the pikes point . there were many noble english hearts which swell'd high at this insolency of the scot , and therefore went with wonderfull alacrity to attend his majesty to barwick , but there were others who were luke-warme in the businesse , and those of the greatest ones , which the scots knew wel enough , for there was nothing trans-acted or said in the kings cabinet counsell or bed-chamber , but there was intelligence given them : hereupon a pacification was shuffled up , and so both the armyes were dispersed . the king being returned to london , grew more and more sensible of these indignities of his subjects of scotland , and having called a parliament expresly for that purpose in england , some of the cheife members thereof were so intoxicated by the scot , that they did not only not resent this bravado he had done to england , but seemed to approve of his actions . his majesty finding the pulse of his parliament beat so faintly for enabling him to vindicate these indignities upon the scot , dissolv'd it , and propos'd the businesse to his privy counsell , who not only advis'd him , but supplyed him with noble summes to repaire his honour by war ; hereupon the former forces were rallied , and made up into the body of an army : the scot was not idle all this while , but reunited his former army , whereof there was a good part undisbanded ( contrary to article ) and choosing rather to make another country the theater of the war then his own , he got over the tweed , and found all passages open , and as it were made for him al the way til he came to the tine , & though there were considerable troupes of horse and foot at newcastle , yet they never offer'd as much as to face him all the way ; at nea●burg there was a small dispute , but the english infantry would not fight , so newcastle gates flew open to her inveterate enemy , without any resistance at all , where he had more freinds than foes , and the english generals rather then to be put to unworthy compositions retired in disorder : whither this happened either by secret faction , or want of affection in in the souldier , or by the faults of the generall , i will not determine ; but sure i am it was dishonourable enough to poor england , who was bought and sold in this expedition . this was the first entrance the scot made into england since these unhappy wars ; but this invitation was private , the last was publick , being voted by the english commons , and they rush'd in , in the dead of winter ; notwithstanding that his majesty had taken a toylsome journey not long before to sit amongst them himselfe in parliament , where he condescended to every thing they could imaginably desire , and they acknowledging his unparaleld grace , desired that act to be reviv'd whereby it was treason in the highest degree that could be , for any of the subjects of scotland of what degree or condition foever to levy any mlitary forces without his majesties expresse commission , and this they did to expresse their gratitude : as they said . but the yeare came scarce about before they had moulded another army , not only without , but expresly against his royall commission , and counter-command , and would intrude themselves to be vmpires twixt him and his english subjects whither he would or no ; so in they rush'd againe in dead of winter , and for martiall exployts , the little credit they got by storming of newcastle was nothing countervaylable to that which they lost before hereford , where the welsh-men bang'd them to some purpose from before the town , and made their generall to trusse up his pack and away , sending him a fat sow with pigs after her , and a blew bonnet upon her head for his break-fast . corollarie . thus have i run over , and faithfull related by collation of many authors , with their concurrent testimonies , those trave●es of warre which have passed betwixt the english and scots since the conquest , having omitted many circumstances which might have tended further to the glory of england , to avoyd prolixity , for i intended at first that this discourse should be like a skein of silke wound up close upon a small bottome , which a freer hand might put upon the loom and draw to a large peice . any man of a clear and unpassionate judgement will hence inferre that the scots have been alwayes farre inferiour to the english ( except in these latter unlucky invasions ) in poynt of true prowesse , and national power : in some examples you may finde how the english carryed away more captives then they were souldiers of themselves , driving them as sheep before them most of the battails they fought were in scotland herself , when the english had been tir'd with long marches , over uncouth , and strange places , being ignorant of the advenues , and advantages of them . indeed in edward the seconds reign they got three battails , and one at the fag end of hen. the 8. wherein sir ralph evers was slaine , but it was more by stratagem than strength , and besides the english might have been said to have fought rather against the heaven and elements then men , having wind and sun in their faces , but that might have been tearmed more properly a petty defeat then victory , for there fell not above 200. but what use did the scot ever make of those victories , though the north parts have many places of fastnesse , and tenable , yet i reade not of any place they kept except barwick ; all the rest of their warres were but tumultuary sallies , and predatory devastations , and pilfrings . but the english have taken foure of their kings captives , killed two of them in the field , carried away their crown ( which they give out to be greater and more weighty than that of england ) their ragman-roll , the blacke crosse , with other instruments of soveraignty , and did sundry acts equivalent to a conquest . they pierced the very heart of the kingdom , and the scot may be said to have onely trod upon englands toe , for they never came farther than the walls of yorke , till the reigne of this thing that cals it selfe parliament . but if one should aske me why the english having made such firme invasions from time to time into the very bowels of scotland , did not reduce it to a vassallage and perfect provincial obedience , as well as to make their kings fuedetary in which state they continued towards england near upon five hundred yeares ? my answer shall be the same that suetonius gives in behalfe of the romans , who notwithstanding they lorded over the rest of brittany four hundred and odde yeares , yet they never went about to conquer scotland , because they knew the prize would not have countervail'd the paines , by reason of the cragginesse of the countrey and incommodity of habitation , therefore they thought it enough that adrians wall which extended from tinmouth to solway frith , near upon fourscore miles should be the westerne bounds of their empire . out of the precedent examples we may also gather , that the scot hath been alwayes of a genius apt and forward to stir against england upon any the least occasion . for of those five and twenty kings and queens that have been since the conquest , onely five have been free of their insolencies : yet did england never begin with them till she was justly provoked thereunto , nor could alliances nor leagues , or any tyes of treaty confirmed by solemne oathes ( which are those religious bonds that passe 'twixt god and the soul ) detain the scotish kings from puzling and disturbing england , when her kings were most distracted in warres with france , and the better halfe of her strength imployed abroad , so that the scots may be said to have been from time to time as goads in englands sides , or a thorne in her toe ; and france leaguing meerly for his own advantage with them , may be said to have made use of scotland as the fox did of the cats foot to pull the apple out of the fire for his own eating : yet for all these eager and irrefragable combinations 'twixt the french and her against england , england ever bore up , and made her party good , and that in a victorious way against both , and for scotland she may be said to have given her blowes for phillips . but it seemes that italian was well versed in the scotishmens humours , who understanding of the late vnion between the two kingdomes , said that england had got no great catch by the addition of scotland , she had onely got a wolfe by the eares , who must be held very fast , else he will run away to france . some there are who much magnifie and cry up the scots of late yeares , for great souldiers , tacitly derogating thereby from the english , as if they should stand in some apprehension of fear of them ; but i cannot imagine upon what grounds they should do it ; true it is , that since the revolt of the hollander , and these seventy yeares tumults in the netherlands , some of them are much improved in the art of warre , and knowledge of armes from what they were ; they have also pushed on their fortunes in the warres of denmarke , sweden , russia , germany ; and france ; for poland , their profession there is to trusse packes rather than traile pikes . by reason of the quality of the soile and clime they have tough and hardy bodies , and it may adde to their courage that they venture for a better countrey , in regard they cannot go to a worse than their own . now it must be granted that the greatest advantage wherewith nature doth recompence a mountainous and sterile soile above a luxurious and easie , is , to make it produce suffering bodies ; which made the romans●e ninescore yeares conquering of spain , when they were but nine conquering of france . for the first , 't is answered , that if the scot hath made sallies abroad into other countries of late yeares , the english also have done the like , and are in some places in greater numbers , as in the low-countries , where at this day they treble the number of the scots , so that the netherlands may be said to be a military yard for the english as well : and he that is never so little versed in the moderne stories will finde that the foundation of that state hath been chiefly cimented with english bloud . for the east countrey , 't is true , there are many able scots leaders , and there are also many english of abilities and fame . to the second , if the scots are a hardy people because of their cragges and mountaines : i answer that the welch and cornish with them that dwell about the northerne alpes in england , are as mountainous as they , and i believe have as suffering and sturdy bodies ; which makes the world yield it for a maxime , that no prince of christendom hath a better choice to make souldiers of than the king of great britain . i will conclude with certain prophesies the scots do much speak of . the first is out of polychronicon , where the authour ranulphus cistrensis relates the words of a certain anchorite who lived in king egelbert his time , now near upon 900. yeares ago , and the words are these , angli , quia proditioni , ebrietati , & negligentiae domus dei dedit● sunt , primum per d●nos , deinde per normanos , tertiùm per scotos , quos vilissimos habent , conterentur : varium erit saeculum , & varietas mentium , designabitur varietate vestium . 1. the englishmen for that they wonneth themselves to treason , to drunkennesse , and wretchlesnesse of gods house ; first by the danes , then by the normans , and lastly by the scots , whom they holden least in esteem , shallen be overthrown , 't will be an instable age , and the variablenesse of mens mindes shall appear by the variablenesse of their vestments . the danish and norman conquest have happened since , and the third is to follow in the same manner , say they , not by succession , but by the sword . 2. the second are those prophesies of merlin , who much tampers with the single lion , and of the feats that he should do , which they say , is meant of their lion within a double treasure rampant , mars counterflowred . 3. then come they to the stone wherein they say , the fortune of their kingdom is fixed , which hath lain in westminster , now near upon five hundred yeares . ni fallat fatum , scoti quocunque locatum invenient lapidem regnare tenentur ibidem . if fate failes not , the scots , where ere they finde this stone , there they shall reigne and rule man-kinde . which they interpret also must be by the sword not by succession . 4. then do they apply to themselves a prophesie that the irish have very frequent amongst them , which is , that the day will come , when the irish shall weep over the englishmens graves . 5. lastly , that which is so common in the english mens monthes . [ lincolne was , london is , and yorke shall be ] which they say , shall be at last the seat of the british empire , to be erected there by them . but i am none of those that afford much faith to rambling prophesies , but will conclude with a late much cried up wise-man , ( sir w. r. ) that prophesies are as seeds sown in the vast field of time , whereof not one grain of a thousand comes to grow up : yet these prophesies may serve as so many prospectives for england , to behold , though a far off in a mist , the danger and destiny which may befall her , from this growing nation if not timely prevented . 6. hereunto may be added another very old and il-favoured one , which shall fore run her fall . gens tua te prodit , proh anglia , scotia rodit ▪ — o england , thine own people thee betray , and scotland makes of thee a prey . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a86615e-130 charles the 6. of france , called le phreatique . a proclamation for calling out heretors and free-holders to attend the kings host scotland. privy council. 1679 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a58743 wing s1848 estc r6230 13698726 ocm 13698726 101450 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a58743) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 101450) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 848:53) a proclamation for calling out heretors and free-holders to attend the kings host scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty ; edinburgh : and now re-printed at london, 1679. "edenburgh, the seventh day of june, 1679." reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -proclamations. broadsides -scotland -edinburgh (lothian) -17th century 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-03 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion honi soit qui mal y pense diev et mon droit a proclamation , for calling out heretors and free-holders to attend the kings host . edenbvrgh , the seventh day of june , 1679. forasmuch as the insurrection in the western shires , is grown to an open rebellion , and that the number of these desperate rebels do increase so , that all his majesties loyal subjects in their several shires , ought timeously to look to their own security , and put themselves in a posture to defend the kings authority , and to oppose all attempts of desperate and wicked rebels ; and albeit his majesties privy council have already issued forth their orders for drawing forth the militia forces , horse and foot , in several shires , and appointed particular days of rendezvous , and upon such occasions may require all sencible persons , betwixt sixty and sixteen , to rise for suppressing of these rebels ; yet at this time , they have thought fit only to call out and require the regiments of the foot militia , in the shires aftermentioned ; and all heretors and free-holders , who are sencible persons , and their servants and followers , to come out upon horse-back ; and for this cause , to forbear to require the militia-troops , in these shires under-written , at this time , notwithstanding of the orders already issued forth , in so far as concerns the horse militia alanerly : and do hereby require and command all heretors and free-holders , who are sencible persons , with so many of their servants and followers as they can bring on horse-back with arms , within the shires of edenburgh , linlithgow , and peebles , haddingtoun , stirling and clackmannan , berwick , roxburgh and selkirk , fife , perth , forfar , kincardin and marischals part of aberdeen , bamff and errols part of aberdeen , ross , elgin , forres , nairn , and this side of ness , to conveen at the places and times after-mentioned , and to receive their orders , and to be under the command of the persons under-written , viz. edenburgh to meet at the links of leith upon the eleventh day of june instant , and to be under the command of the lord collingtoun ; linlithgow and peebles to meet at the links of leith the eleventh day of june instant , and to be under the command of general dalyel ; the shire of haddingtoun to meet at beinstoun-muire , the eleventh day of june instant , and to be under the command of the viscount of kingstoun ; stirling and clackmannan to meet at the town of stirling , and from thence to march to the links of leith upon the eleventh day of june instant , and to be under the command of the lord elphingstoun ; berwick to meet at fogo-muire upon the eleventh day of june instant , and to be under the command of the earl of home , and in his absence , his brother charles home ; roxburgh and selkirk , to meet at ancrum-bridge upon the sixteenth day of june instant , and to be under the command of the lord elibank , and the laird of stobbs , who are to co●mand according to the devision of the militia troops ; fife to meet at coupar , the twelfth day of june instant , and to be under the command of the lord newark ; perth to meet at perth , the thirteenth day of june instant , and to be under the command of the marquefs of montrose , and such persons under him as he shall appoint ; forfar to meet at forfar ; upon the thirteenth day of june instant , and to be under the command of the earl of southesk ; kincardin and marischals part of aberdeen , to meet at aberdeen links upon the nineteenth day of june instant , and to be under the command of the earl of aboyn ; bamff and errols part of aberdeen , to meet at turreff upon the nineteenth day of june instant , and to be under the command of the earl of kintore ; elgin , forres , nairn , and this side ness , to meet at forres upon the twentieth day of june instant , and to be under the command of the earl of murray , and in his absence the lord duffus ; ross to meet at chanry the twenty third day of june instant , and to be under the command of the earl of seaforth ; and ordains all the heretors and free-holders of the shires benorth forth , to march immediately after the rendezvous to the bridg of stirling ; and all the heretors and free-holders of the shires on the south-side of forth , to march after the rendezvous to the links of leith , there to continue till further order : with full power to them to seize upon all disaffected persons , and in case of resistance , to use them as enemies , within their respective bounds , or such as shall be suspected to be going out of the shire to the rebels : with power likewise to the saids commanders to appoint officers under them , to command in the several divisions of the shires above-mentioned ; ordaining hereby the respective commanders aforesaid , to cause publick proclamation and intimation to be made hereof to the respective shires under their command , at the several places already appointed for the first days rendezvous of the militia , that the saids meetings may be punctually kept : certifying hereby , all such heretors and others foresaid as shall not come out upon horse-back themselves with their best horses and arms , with so many of their servants and followers as they can bring out upon horse-back , they shall be lyable to the pains and penalties provided by the acts of parliament , against such as do not attend the kings host , or desert the same , and looked upon as disaffected persons , and favourers and complyers with rebels , and pursued and punished accordingly . and ordains these presents to be printed , and published at the mercat-cross of edenburgh , and other places foresaid , that none pretend ignorance . tho. hay , cl. sti. concilii . god save the king . edenburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , and now re-printed at london , anno dom. 1679. his majesties gracious letter to the privy council of scotland william iii, king of england, 1650-1702. 1690 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b06604 wing w2336a estc r187843 52529099 ocm 52529099 179248 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b06604) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179248) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2781:15) his majesties gracious letter to the privy council of scotland william iii, king of england, 1650-1702. melville, george melville, earl of, 1634?-1707. england and wales. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, by order of privy council, [edinburgh : 1690] caption title. imprint from wing. signed and dated at end: given at our court at kensingtoun, the thirteenth day of february, 1689/90. and of our reign, the first year. by his majesties command, melvill. giving instruction to the privy council to issue a proclamation extending the adjournment of parliament in scotland from the 1st to the 18th of march 1690. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-02 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-03 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-04 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-10 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-12 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-12 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion his majesties gracious letter to the privy council of scotland . william r. right trusty and entirely beloved cousin and counsellor , right trusty and right well beloved cousins and counsellors , right trusty and well beloved cousins and counsellors , right trusty and well beloved counsellors , and trusty and well beloved counsellors , we greet you well . we have received yours , dated the 8th instant , wherein you invite us to be present the next session of parliament , in that our antient kingdom , which we accept of very kindly from you , and assure you , that as it was our resolution when we came over to britain , to deliver these nations from popery and arbitrary power , that the protestant religion , the laws , rights and liberties of the subject might be secured ; so when we were settled in the royal power , we endeavoured to perfect so good intentions , doing all things that we thought conduceable thereto , and though matters have not had the desired success , yet we are not discouraged , but with that firmness of resolution that formerly , we undertook this voyage into britain , we are determined by god's assistance , under whose divine protection we have cast our self , and all our concerns , to prosecute these great ends in settling both church and state upon the solid basis of law and equity , as may be most acceptable to our people , and secure this and succeeding generations , from the fears of former evils . and we conceiving that the meeting our parliament in person , might contribute most for accomplishing our designs , ordered you to adjourn the said parliament , from the eighth of october to the first of march successivè ; but many great and urgent matters , which concern the common good of the protestant interest , and the well of these our kingdoms , oblidging us to meet our people of england in a parliament here on the twentieth day of march necessitats us to continue the adjournment of the parliament in that our antient kingdom , for some longer time : therefore we require you to issue forth a proclamation in our name , for continuing the adjournment from the first of march , to the eighteenth day thereof , betwixt and which time , we are hopeful lay down such measures , and to give such instructions to our commissioner , till we can be present , as may give satisfaction to our people ; resolving alwayes to prefer their safety , to our quiet and repose , esteeming the ruling by law , and in moderation , the greatest , as well as the furest of all our prerogatives ; expecting in the mean time you will take all care for getting subsistence to the forces , and doing all other things that you judge necessary for the good of the countrey , and our service : for doing of which , this shall be your warrant ; and so we bid you heartily farewell . given at our court at kensingtoun , the thirteenth day of february , 1689 / 90. and of our reign , the first year . by his majesties command , melvill advertisement whereas his sacred majesty, by his patent, hath constituted sir robert sibbald, one of his physicians in ordinary, his geographer for his kingdom of scotland, and commandeth and ordaineth him to publish the description of the scotia antiqua & scotia moderna, and the natural history of the products of his ancient kingdom of scotland... sibbald, robert, sir, 1641-1722. 1682 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05868 wing s3721a estc r184238 52529324 ocm 52529324 179120 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05868) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179120) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2777:13) advertisement whereas his sacred majesty, by his patent, hath constituted sir robert sibbald, one of his physicians in ordinary, his geographer for his kingdom of scotland, and commandeth and ordaineth him to publish the description of the scotia antiqua & scotia moderna, and the natural history of the products of his ancient kingdom of scotland... sibbald, robert, sir, 1641-1722. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by john reid, at his printing-house in bells-wynd, edinburgh : anno 1682. title from caption and first lines of text. in double columns. imperfect: creased and torn with slight loss of text. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -historical geography -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-05 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-06 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-06 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion advertisement whereas his sacred majesty , by his patent , hath constituted sir robert sibbald , one of his physicians in ordinary , his geographer for his kingdom of scotland , and commandeth and ordaineth him to publish the description of the scotia antiqua , & scotia moderna , and the natural history of the products of his ancient kingdom of scotland : these are earnestly to entreat all persons , that they would be pleased freely to communicate their answers to these following queries , or any of them , directing them to the said sir robert sibbald at his lodging at edinburgh , or to master james broun at his house in harts-closs , who is deputed by the said sir robert sibbald , to receive and registrate them ; or to robert mean , post-master at edinburgh , to be sent to any of them : withall specifying in their letters , the place of their habitation , that they may be again written to , if occasion require ; and an honourable mention shall be made of them in the work , according to the importance of the information . general queries , to which answers are desired . i. what the nature of the county or place is ? and what are the chief products thereof ? ii. what plants , animals , mettals , substances cast up by the sea , are peculiar to the place , and how ordered ? iii. what forrests , woods , parks ? what springs , rivers , loughs ? with their various properties , whether medicinal ? with what fish replenished , whether rapid or flow ? &c. the rise of the rivers , and their emboucheurs ? iv. what roads , bayes , ports for shipping , and their description ? and what moon causeth high-water ? what rocks , and sholes on their coast ? v. what ancient monuments , inscriptions , graved and figured stones ; forts and ancient camps ? and what curiosities of art 〈…〉 have been found the●● ? vi. what great battels have been there fought , or any other memorable action or accident ? vii . what peculiar customs , manners or dispositions the inhabitants of each county or town have among them ? viii . what monasteries , cathedrals , or other churches have been there , and how named ? ix . what places give , or formerly have given the title to any noble-man ? as also , what ancient seats of noble-families are to be met with ? x. what the government of the county is ? whether sheriffdom , stewartry , or baillery ? xi . what towns of note in the county , especially towns corporate ? the names of the towns both ancient and modern ? whether they be burrows royal , of regality or barony ? the magistracy of towns corporated , when incorporated ? and by whom built ? with the return of parliament-men ? the trade of the town ; how inhabited , and their manner of buildings ? what publick or ancient buildings ? their jurisdiction ? & c. xii . in what bishoprick each county or any part thereof is ? who is sheriff , stewart or baily ? and who commands the militia ? what castles , forts , forrests , parks , woods , his majestie hath there ? & c. to the nobility . what sheriffdomes , bailliries , stewartries , regalities , baronies and burrows they have under them ? what command of the militia ? what special priviledge , dignity and heritable command they have ? the rise of their family , continuance , and their branches ? what forrests , woods , parks , loughs , rivers , mines , and quarries they have ? what fishing ? & c. what harbours they have ? what their titles are ? what memorable actions raised or aggrandized their family ? & c. to the clergy . what their priviledges and dignities are ? their erection ? the bounds of their diocese ? their chapter ? the number of their parishes in their diocese ? their jurisdiction , their foundations for publick ●●d pious uses their re 〈…〉 what lands hold of them ? their houses ? & c. to the gentry . what the rise of their family , their priviledge and dignity ? what baronies and burrows under them ? what harbours , what forrests , woods , parks ? their houses , the description and names of them ? the chief of the name and the branches ? the memorable exploits done by them , and the eminent men of the name ? their heritable command and jurisdiction ? & c. to the royal burrows . of what standing ? the constitution of their government ? their priviledges , jurisdiction and its extent ? their publick houses , churches , forts , monuments , universities , colledges , schools , hospitals , manufactures , harbours ? what their latitude and longitude is ? & c. to the universit 〈…〉 〈…〉 dges. what standing they are of ? their priviledges jurisdiction and its extent , their constitution ? the number of their professors , their names , what they teach ? their salaries , foundations , and their founders ? their revenue and dependencies ? their houses , churches and chappels , aedifices and monuments ? their libraries , curious instruments ? the a●count of the famous men bred there , or masters there ? what are the observations of the masters or students , that may be for the embellishment of this work ? the answers to these preceeding queries are to be registrate , and to be insert in their proper places . the answers to these queries is earnestly desired that no person may complain , if what concerns them be not insert : for the author is resolved to insert all that he is assured of the truth , and certainty of , as informed . imprimatur jo : edinburgen . edinburgh , printed by john reid , at his printing-house in bells-wynd . anno 1682. causes of a solemne fast, appointed by the commissioners of the generall assembly, to be kept in all the congregations of this kirk, upon the last thursday of april, 1646 church of scotland. general assembly. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a79704 of text r212292 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.9[59]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a79704 wing c4201d thomason 669.f.9[59] estc r212292 99870930 99870930 161157 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a79704) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 161157) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 245:669f9[59]) causes of a solemne fast, appointed by the commissioners of the generall assembly, to be kept in all the congregations of this kirk, upon the last thursday of april, 1646 church of scotland. general assembly. ker, a. 1 sheet ([1] p.) by evan tyler, printer to the kings most excellent majesty, printed at edinburgh : 1646. signed at end: a. ker. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng church of scotland -history -17th century -early works to 1800. fasts and feasts -church of scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. a79704 r212292 (thomason 669.f.9[59]). civilwar no causes of a solemne fast, appointed by the commissioners of the generall assembly, to be kept in all the congregations of this kirk, upon th church of scotland. general assembly. 1646 562 1 0 0 0 0 0 18 c the rate of 18 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion causes of a solemne fast , appointed by the commissioners of the generall assembly , to be kept in all the congregations of this kirk , upon the last thursday of april , 1646. i. besides the diverse causes of our former solemne humiliations , both for the evill of sin and of punishment , lying still in a great measure upon the whole land , wee should lay to heart the late shamefull backsliding and compliance of many with the enemies , in the houre of temptation . ii. it is to be lamented , though the lord our god hath taken pains to purge us by his judgments of sword and pestilence , yet there is no reformation of our lives , our scumme remains in us , many returning with the dog to their former profanenesse , neglect of gods worship in families , uncleannesse , drunkennesse , and other great provocations , as if they had been delivered to do all these abominations : have we not just cause to mourn and be afraid that the lord kindle the fire again , heap on more wood , and cause his fury to rest upon us ? iii. it is high time when the whole land is threatned with a new breach from the north , to acknowledge our great and senselesse ingratitude , who have no wayes rendred to the lord according to the benefits received , though the lord hath begun to draw back his hand in a sensible and unexpected delivery from the raging pestilence , and hath given us a little breathing from the cruell insulting enemie , yet all our promises and vows uttered in the day of our trouble , have proven to be as the early dew and morning cloud ; neither have we brought forth the fruits of righteousnesse , and amendment of our wayes , while the lord looked for them , after so gracious a delivery : so that it is just with our god to disappoint us of our expectation , when we look for healing to send new troubles , and to raise up in his wrath some , who have banded themselves together in the north , contrary to our solemne covenants . iv. seeing our god hears prayer , it is our duty to run to him in this day of trouble , and to wrestle with tears and su●plications , that our god in he might of his power would crush this cockatrice egge , that it break not forth into a fierie flying serpent ; that the insolent pride of the contrivers of this divisive and seditious bond , may be rebuked by the lord ; that the simple who have been mis-led , may be convinced and drawn out of the snare , that these who stand , may be stablished by grace in their stedfastnes , and strengthened with the spirit of unity and courage to oppose that divisive motion : lastly , that the work of uniformity in church-government may be finished , our armies blessed and compassed with gods favour , and a firme and well-grounded peace settled betwixt the kings majesty and parliaments of both kingdomes . a. ker. printed at edinburgh by evan tyler , printer to the kings most excellent majesty . 1646. a continuation of the answer to the scots presbyterian eloquence dedicated to the parliament of scotland : being a vindication of the acts of that august assembly from the clamours and aspersions of the scots prelatical clergy in their libels printed in england : with a confutation of dr. m-'s postscript in answer to the former ... : as also reflections on sir geo. mackenzy's defence of charles the second's government is scotland ... together with the acts of the scots general assembly and present parliament compared with the acts of parliament in the two last reigns against the presbyterians / will. laick. ridpath, george, d. 1726. 1693 approx. 181 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 72 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-05 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a57284 wing r1460 estc r28103 10409737 ocm 10409737 44963 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a57284) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 44963) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1389:4) a continuation of the answer to the scots presbyterian eloquence dedicated to the parliament of scotland : being a vindication of the acts of that august assembly from the clamours and aspersions of the scots prelatical clergy in their libels printed in england : with a confutation of dr. m-'s postscript in answer to the former ... : as also reflections on sir geo. mackenzy's defence of charles the second's government is scotland ... together with the acts of the scots general assembly and present parliament compared with the acts of parliament in the two last reigns against the presbyterians / will. laick. ridpath, george, d. 1726. xv, [1], 52 p. [s.n.], london : 1693. pages cropped with loss of print. defective union theological seminary library, new york copy spliced at end. reproduction of original in the british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng curate, jacob. -scotch presbyterian eloquence. church of scotland -controversial literature. scotland. -parliament. presbyterianism. 2002-12 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-01 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-02 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2003-02 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a continuation of the answer to the scots presbyterian eloquence , dedicated to the parliament of scotland . being a vindication of the acts of that august assembly , from the clamours and aspersions of the scots prelatical clergy , in their libels printed in england . with a confutation of dr. m — 's postscript , in answer to the former , proving , that it 's not the church of england's interest , to countenance the scots outed clergy . as also reflections on sir geo. mackenzy's defence of charles the second's government in scotland . and instances on record of sir george's subornation against sir hugh and sir george campbel , and the laird of blackwood , presbyterian gentlemen . together with the acts of the scots general assembly and present parliament ; compared with the acts of parliament in the two last reigns against the presbyterians . by vvill . laick . london , printed in the year 1693. to the states of scotland in parliament assembled . most noble patriots ; i presume , but with that profound respect which is due to such an august assembly , humbly to implore your protection to this rude and indigested , yet real effort of true love to my country , and to you worthy patriots in particular , whom all honest-hearted scotsmen look upon as the healers of our breaches , and restorers of our paths to dwell in : and therefore it is not possible for any man who has a drop of true scots blood in his veins , to hear your authority impugned , and your wisdom called in question , without resenting it to the utmost of his ability : and if , according to the common opinion of some of our neighbours , s●otorum ingenia sint praefervida , an affront of that nature is enough to make them boil over . hence it is , that in a former endeavour i could not forbear to besprinkle , scotico aceto , some degenerate monsters of our country , who exposed to contempt , as much as in them lay , whatever scotsmen account dear in things civil and sacred . had it been only a particular party , or some such pack'd clubs as disgraced the name of parliaments in former reigns , and enacted such laws as their present majesties , with your advice , have declared to be impious ; had it , i say been thus , the matter might have been the more easily digested ; but to have a lawful and a freely elected parliament of scotland , charged in a neighbouring kingdom with a deliberate and malicious lie , in an act so unanimously resolv'd on and duly canvas'd , as was that of your assembly , concerning the nation 's being first reformed by presbyters ; and that therefore presbyterian government is most sutable to the inclinations of our people ; i say , to have a lie of that nature charged upon you , is a piece of impudence that none but the party culpable could be guilty of . and yet , as if they had a mind to exhaust all the treasure of the bottomless pit at once , and to bankrupt the malice and falshood of hell for ever after , they go on to charge you further , with lodging the government of the church , in the hands of such blasphemous ignorant and immoral beasts , as asrica never produced the like ; and to aggravate your guilt , would make our neighbouring nation believe , that at the ●ame time you have turn'd out such a generation of ministers , as the primitive church would have been proud of for their sanctity , and ador●d for their learning . thus those common incendiaries , in their printed libels , treat the parliament of scotland ; which for the antiquity of its standing , and fulness of its power , gives place to none in europe . but it is not to be wondred at , most noble patriots , that that party should treat you thus , seeing they hate your being any otherwise than to serve as their drudges , and devour the best and most industrious part of the subjects ; by which both you , and that ancient kingdom which you represent , were well-nigh entomb'd in oblivion and disgrace . it was that party who changed a well-limited and regular monarchy , into an absolute and uncontroulable tyranny ; that durst arrogate , a power to cass and annul your firmest laws , and treat you with contempt as perfect slaves a . it was that party who robbed christ of his prerogatives royal , to be jewels in the crowns of their absolute monarchs b . it was that party which robbed the people of their consciences , to bring them to an absolute dependance on the prelatical mitres c : and not only deprived you of the property of your houses d , but denied you a safe retreat into your own hearts e . it was that party who rendred k. iames the sixth so much a prelatical bigot , as to the disturbance both of church and state , and contrary to his oath , to obtrude bishops upon the nation , and persecute the sincerest protestants , while at the same time he indulged the papists ; and in fine , had such an aversion for his native country , that instead of seeing it once in three years , for administring justice according to his promise , he never came to it but once after his succession to the crown of england ; and instead of favouring his church of scotland , which he pretended once so much to admire , he persecuted those who declin'd a conformity with the church of england . it was that party who influenced charles the first , though a native of scotland , to put such an intolerable affront upon the nation , as to demand their crown to be sent to england ; and afterwards to invade us with a formidable army , designing an absolute conquest , and in an unnatural manner to subject that nation to his newly acquired crown ; which his ancestors did so much disdain , that they maintain'd 300 years war upon that head with no small glory . and how the faction prevail'd with charles the second , to requite our nation for making themselves a field of blood in defence of his title , is so fresh , that it needs not be recapitulated ; and it is yet much more recent , how well k. iames the seventh rewarded us for owning his right of succession , when england had in a manner spued him out by the bill of exclusion ; he , i say , rewarded us , by publishing such despotical proclamations , as with an unparallel'd audacity , declared us slaves to the perpetual infamy of that generation of scotsmen , who were so tamely bereft of their liberty , which our noble progenitors maintained against romans , picts , britains , danes , saxons , normans and english , for twenty preceeding ages . so that i say , considering how the prelatical faction in●luenced those four monarchs to treat our nation , though they derived their being and honour from it ; and were otherwise in many respects , tantorum haud quaquam indigni avorum . the resolve of your august assembly , that prelacy was an insupportable grievance to that kingdom , deserves to be engraven in pillars of corinthian brass ; and that all scotsmen ( as no doubt many thousands will ) should not only whe● their pens , but their swords , in defence of it . it is that party , who in this reign , impugn your authority , by procuring letters from court to command such things to the assembly as by law they are not obliged to comply with ; and if they should have done it , could neither have been answerable to god nor your honours for it , to pull down with their own hands , that hedg which he in his providence , by your act , hath set about the church , in lodging the government upon themselves , which no doubt the wisdom of your august assembly judged to be the best expedient to secure the peace of the church ; and yet for noncompliance , how did they procure the dissolution and reproach of that assembly , to the manifest violation of your authority ; and that by the advice of some english courtiers and prelats , as if they had a mind to homologate the ancient pretensions of that crown and church over yours , and in the view of the world declare our parliament and general assembly not able to give advice in our own affairs , but fit to be over-ruled by a pack'd club of another nation : and shall they act thus impune to affront a parliament , which malice it self cannot say , as their party did formerly of the english parliament , that it is but a superfluous tumour or wen : for all who know our history , are sensible of the share which the scots parliaments have , from the first constitution of our government , been possest of , not only in the legislative , but the executive power : and , if our historians may be believed , laid the foundation , and have often-times since regulated and limited the power of our monarchy ; and to the eternal confusion of all those who would insinuate the danger thereof to kingly government , have , notwithstanding , preserved our monarchy in a longer and more uninterrupted succession than any nation of europe . it is not unknown to your august assembly what convulsions the prelatical party have thrown the kingdom into , since the first intrusion of their prelacy ; and how near the ruine both of our religious and civil liberties were effected , by their concurrence with the tyranny of the late reigns , represented in your claim of right ; and therefore the world cannot but justify your conduct in depriving them of any share of the government of the church , which they only seek , that they may undermine ; and tho they should comply with the terms required in law , yet their former perjuries and contradictory tests are but too shrew'd causes to suspect their future levity , which , together with the disaffectedness they have generally evidenced to the present government , demonstrates how dangerous it is to entrust them with the conduct of peoples consciences . and what may justly render them hateful to all honest scots-men , is the obloquy and reproach they have thrown here upon the whole nation ; and their under-hand dealing with the high-flown church-of england-party , who have a heart-hatred at our country and religion ; and have treated you with so much contempt , that tho you mov'd for an union , and his majesty was graciously pleased to back it , they disdain'd to give him any answer , as thinking you unworthy of a politick or temporal union ; and yet they would be at forcing you to an ecclesiastical and spiritual union , which if they could effectuate , the world must allow that they ought , in the next place , to beg us for fools , who could believe that they have a kindness for our souls , who have ●one for our bodies . yet this is the party that our prelatical country-men do so much court and make application to , while they slight scots-men who are authoriz'd to represent our affairs : so much have they divested themselves of all natural respect to their country , that if their prelacy live , they care not tho the name and fame of scotland die : and that they may effectuate their designs , there 's no doubt but they will be forming parties in your august assembly , and make many fair pretences of desiring liberty only to exercise what belongs to their pretended indelible character of pastors , and promise to undertake nothing to the disturbance of the publick tranquillity : but their worming themselves in by degrees in king iames the vith's time under fair pretences , and then overturning all when they had opportunity , is a sufficient caveat to beware of them , as inwardly ravening wolves , tho outwardly they appear in sheeps cloathing . your august assembly cannot so soon have forgot that the nation was almost totally ruined , your counties invaded by savage highlanders , your tenants murdered , and families impoverish'd , your houses plundered , your wives , daughters , and relations ravish'd , your selves and tender infants exposed to wandring , hunger , nakedness and cold , and all the miseries and oppressions which you groan'd under in the late reigns , both as to soul and body . i say your honours cannot certainly have forgot these things , so far as to be prevail'd upon by any insinuations whatever , again to deliver up your bleeding church and country into the hands of that faction , lest the latter end be worse than the first . there 's no cause to fear a rupture with england on that account . the good church-of england-laity , and not a few of their clergy , have incurred danger enough from their high-flown tantivies , and have smarted sufficiently under their doctrine of passive obedience , to make them cautious and willing to secure themselves from their fury , so far will they be from concurring with them against you . the chief arguments used here for re-admitting the prelatical clergy are , that it will contribute to his majesty's interest , and please the church of england , and supply the vacant congregations . as to the first , how it can promote his majesty's interest to disoblige the greatest part of scotland , and all the dissenters in england and ireland , is beyond the reach of mankind to determine . 2. how it can be supposed that a party , who have hitherto witnessed so much rancour against his majesty's person , family and government , as the scots episcopal clergy have done , is only to be answered by those who can swear contradictory oaths , as our curats did in their infamous tests , &c. as to the second , that it will please the church of england ; it may easily be answered , that we do not ow● them so much kindness ; and if we did , we must first know what that church of england is that we must oblige ; for hitherto she hath been an individuum vagum , that no body knows where to find , it being as difficult to define her , as to make a coat for the moon . her doctrinal articles are own'd by us , and all good protestants ; but that is not the characteristick of the church of england : for in the late reigns passive obedience and nonresistance were her shibboleth ; but now she hath renounced those doctrines , by acting diametrically opposite to them . and for a character of the church of england in this reign , we cannot certainly have it better than from a vote of the last house of commons , who resolved on an address of thanks to his majesty for the care he had taken of the church of england , in the alteration which was then made in the lieutenancy of london ; and that was , because by the ill advice of a certain prelate and others , the military power of the city was lodg'd in those who had surrendred her charter , and dipp'd their hands in the blood of my lord russel , colonel sidney , alderman cornish , &c. and contributed to the arbitrary methods of the late reigns : and because this is but one half of the parliament , let 's look into the higher house , and there you will find , that according to the opinion of none of the least church-of england-men , when the act pass'd for depriving the nonjurant bishops , it was look'd upon as a fatal blow to the church of england . so that in plain terms , the jacobite party is what that faction means by the church of england . and as a commentary upon the text , let 's but consider the main engine which they have made use of to quash the discovery of all plots against the government , and we shall find that it was by giving out those discoveries as the efforts of republicans and dislenters against the church of england ; and if we look nearer home , and consider how it comes to pass that such men are advanced to the highest places in the scots government , who were the contrivers , enacters , and bloody executioners of those laws which your august assembly hath declared to be impious , we shall find it to be done by the interest of that party in the church of england . if we consider further , whence it is that those who betray'd our army , murder'd our people , and plotted the destruction of your convention , escape unpunish'd , you will fin'd it to be by the procurement of the aforesaid party . now all these things being considered , it will easily appear , whether it be your interest to oblige this church or not . or , if we take her according to the general acceptation of bishops and ceremonies , the vote of your august assembly concerning prelacy , your act establishing presbytery as most agreeable to the word of god , and the opposition made to the ceremonies by our country in charles the first 's time , will speedily determine the case . and it will yet appear less reasonable to oblige that church , so taken , if we consider , that those of her own communion , and the best of them too , look upon both bishops and ceremonies to be indifferent , and not of divine institution , as may be seen by the writings of mr. hickeringil , counsellor stephens , and stillingfleet's irenicum . so that in effect , the best of the church-of england-communion are embark'd in the same bottom with your selves , and the common enemies of both call them presbyterians as well as you , and treated them accordingly in the late reigns : so that from that worthy part of the church of england , who are men of good lives , and keep firm to the doctrine of their church , you need fear no opposition ; for to do them justice , they are as zealous for the protestant religion as any , and never join'd in persecuting their brethren of a different opinion . to what they pretend of supplying the vacant churches , may speedily be replied ; the assembly hath declared their willingness to employ such of them as are godly and orthodox . and as for others , the good old way of our church in the reformation ( when ministers were scarcer than now ) of appointing men to preach by turns to those vacant congregations till they can be otherwise supplied , is the much safer and better expedient , than to entrust such men with the charge of other peoples souls , who have discovered so little care of their own , and whom in your wisdom you objected against as the great and insupportable grievance of the nation . nor have you any such encouragement from their former success to imploy them again : and if it shall seem good in your eyes to go on as you begun , and encourage a reformation , such of our country-men as are abroad , will be the sooner prevail'd with to come home ; and others to prosecute their studies , to adapt them for the ministry , and fill up the vacancies ; for it cannot be hid from your illustrious assembly , that the intrusting the chief enemies of the presbyterians in the government , is a great discouragement to all that wish well to our church or country● ; and administers but too just cause of suspicion , that we must either be imbroil'd in a civil war , or return to our former bondage , which nothing but your care , with his majesty's assistance and god's blessing , is able to prevent . your honours may perhaps be inclin'd to think , that there is too much gall in my pen against our prelatical clergy ; but such of your number as have been lately at london , cannot but know what an odium they have endeavoured to bring upon the country in general , and your august assembly in particular ; insinuating , that you are neither the true nor full representatives of the nation , and but a meer surreptitious faction got together by the opportunity of tum●ltuous times ; and that you neither acted from a principle of honour nor conscience , but did only what you thought would be pleasing to the prince of orange . and hence they have used their utmost endeavours to have you dissolv'd , by the interest of the high-slown prelatical english courtiers , to whom they represent you in the blackest colours , which their malice or wit can invent : and not only so , but they make use of your name , as the turkish slaves do those of their barbarous masters from whom they have escaped , to move those of the church-of england-communion to open their purses , pretending that you have turn'd them out in a barbarous and illegal manner , or that they have had such and such indignities and affronts put upon them . and thus they beg from one clergy-man to another , and spend what they get at taverns and ale-houses , or sitting up whole nights at cards , particularly at mills in westminster , or hutchinsons in the hay-market : and when their stock is spent , renew the begging trade , or else troop about the country , and with their stol'n sermons , or railing invectives against the government of scotland , both in church and state , insinuate themselves into the adorers of bishops and ceremonies ; for the latter of which , though they exclaim'd against them at home , they profess themselves to be mighty zealots abroad : and thus they disseminate their poison in our neighbouring nation , by their lying tongues and blasphemous pamphlets . so that hence your august assembly may have a sufficient view , whether it be safe to reintroduce such men into the church , who have given up themselves to all manner of villanies , and are become devotoes to those unscriptural ceremonies , which occasion'd the fatal war in charle●● the first 's time ; and have moreover evidenced such levity and unsted fastness both in imbracing & rejecting them at home , since the revolution , that it 's visible they are not acted by principle , but interest ; and that their interest has been always contrary to what your august assembly hath now espoused , both as to policy and religion , is so evident , that whoever casts but an eye upon the history ever since they were obtruded upon the nation , may soon be convinc'd of it : or by a shorter view , if they please but to read the grievances which you desired to be redressed by their present majesties , of which the bishops and clergy were for the most part contri●ers , promoters and actors . and we may the better be satisfied what those men who now sollicite for a share in the government of the church , do chiefly aim at , both as to that and the state , if we do but consider that their principal converse is with the jacobites in england , and that the chiefest of their friends are none of the best williamites in scotland . it 's not unlike that your honours may be accosted with this amongst other arguments , that admitting those men to a share of church-government , will gratify the king to whom you are so much obliged , which of it self is an impeachment of your wisdom ; for none can so well know the interest of scotland as a free chosen parliament , who are consequently fittest to give the king advice : and seeing the interest of all good kings , and their people , is one and the same , that ought to be most grateful to the king which is so to the people , and what that is you have already declared . it is obvious to those that know our history , that ever since the reformation , the church of scotland hath claim'd a right of calling and adjourning her own assemblies , pro re nata ; and what dismal consequences the invasion of that privilege hath been attended with , to those kings and grandees who have attempted it , is so well known , that it cannot easily be forgot . and whether king iames the sixth's curse hath not taken place upon those of his successors who invaded the church , the revolutions of the crown have sufficiently witnessed : and if the hand of god hath not been remarkably seen in punishing those great ones who were their tools , let the ruin of their families from time to time declare . nor hath the nation escap'd punishment for the treachery of their representatives , god having been justly provok'd to give them and their liberties to be swallowed up by those very men whom they would needs set upon his throne , and into whose hands they betray'd the liberties of the church , of which your own claim of right is a speaking monument : and seeing there is no doubt but your august assembly had valuable reasons for abolishing the supremacy , it 's an affront to your authority to demand its restitution : it s being possess'd by the church , can bring no damage to the crown ; for presbyterians are known to have as good , if not a better opinion of his present majesty , than any other of his subjects ; and all men of sense must needs take it for a proof of it , that they sollicite for such good laws in his reign , as may secure them from the danger of others . and seeing our church-men are subject to the laws , and never did refuse to assemble at the call of their kings , and to give an account of their affairs , it 's but equal to leave them in the possession of that liberty of calling assemblies , concerning their own matters , which the church was possessed of before ever there was a christian magistrate , if the 15th of the acts be the word of god. and certainly he who promised that kings should be nursing-fathers , did never intend that they should be step-fathers , to rob the children of what is their due . as for the calumnies of your church of england-enemies , it is easy to stop their mouth with argumentum ad hominem ; their carriage to k. iames the seventh , proclaims their unshaken loyalty . and for your own episcopal party , all the world knows that they and their kings together , did so tyrannize over your bodies and souls , that you durst scarcely plead a property in either . and if the church of england must be pleased , which is the achillean argument used by the party , we can justly answer the peevish lady , as the young crab did the old one , i prae mater & ego sequar . let 's see how careful she will be to testify her gratitude to his majesty , in taking off the test , and taking in dissenters to the church , which will but just make them even with us ; and then , and time enough then , because we are the oldest nation , we may think which way to make the next advance : for as we have got the precedency , it 's but reasonable we should keep it ; for i know so much by my self , that scotsmen love to go , but neither to be driven nor dragg'd . i cannot but acquaint your honours , that since the writing of what is above , the jacobites here are mightily elevated , and big with hopes of seeing you all in confusion , and the nation in a flame , by the designs which they give out to be on foot amongst you , of lodging the power of calling and dissolving church-assemblies in the magistrate alone , and depriving the people of the right of chusing ministers , by which means they are so bold as to say , that they hope not only to see prelacy gradually reintroduced , but their late monarch reinthroned : and that they may accomplish these designs , will insinuate themselves into both parties ; and are very confident , that the result will answer their expectation for a speedy reestablishment , of prelacy at least ; these measures , as they give out , being concerted with english prelats , who have form'd a party among you for their designs . but as they have hitherto reproach'd your proceedings , there 's no doubt but this is a calumny from the same forge , by which they would ridicule your authority , and represent you to the world as men of no principle nor solidity , but such as will make your self transgressors , in building again what you have already destroy'd . but may the god and father of our lord jesus christ direct your counsels , so as to issue in the comfort of his church , peace of the nation , and confusion of those your black-mouth'd enemies , who are engaged in an interest , not only distinct from , but altogether destructive of yours : of which there 's no room to doubt , if we consider the following address of the representatives of their church , which they have endeavour'd to perform on all occasions ; and as they have never yet revok'd it , we need not doubt but that the party are still of the same mind . the address of the archbishops and bishops of scotland to the late k. iames , upon the news of the prince of orange's undertaking , november the 10th , 1688. vid. gazette , numb . 2398. may it please your most sacred majesty , we prostrate our selves to pay our most devote thanks and adoration to the soveraign majesty of heaven and earth , for preserving your sacred life and person , so frequently exposed to the greatest hazards , and as often delivered , and you miraculously prospered with glory and victory , in defence of the rights and honour of your majesty's august brother , and of these kingdoms ; and that by his merciful goodness the ragings of the sea , and madness of vnreasonable m●● have been stilled and calmed : and your majesty , as the darling of heaven , peaceably seated on the thrones of your royal ancestors , whose long , illustrious and u●parallell'd line , is the greatest glory of this your ancient kingdom . we pay our most humble gratitude to your majesty for the repeated assurances of your royal protection to our national churoh and religion , as the laws have established them ; which are very sutable to the graci●u● countenance , encouragement and protection your majesty was pleased to afford to our church and order , whilst we were happy in your presence amongst us . we magnify the divine mercy in blessing your majesty with a son , and us with a prince , whom we pray heaven may bl●s● and preserve to sway your royal scepter after you , and that he may inherit with your dominions the illustrious and heroick vert●es of his august and most serene parents . we are amazed to hear of the danger of an invasion from holland , which excites our prayers for an universal repentance to all orders of men , that god may yet spare his people , preserve your royal person , and prevent the effusion of christian blood , and to give such succes● to your majesty's arms , that all who invade your majesty's just and undoubted rights , and disturb or interrupt the peace of your rea●●s , may be disappointed and clothed with shame ; so that on your royal head the crown may still f●ourish . as , by the grace of god , ●e shall pres●●ve in our selves a firm and unshaken loyalty , so we shall be careful and zealous to promote in all your subjects an intrepid and stedfast allegiance to your majesty , as an essential part of their religion , and of the glory of our holy profession , not doubting but that god in his great mercy , who hath so often preserved and delivered your majesty , will still preserve and deliver you , by giving you the hearts of your subjects , and the necks of your enemies . so pray we , who , in all humility , are , may it please your most sacred majesty , your majesty's most humble , most faithful , and most obedient subjects and servants . signed by the lord ar bp of st. andr●ws . the lord archbishop of glasc●w . the lord bishop of edinburg . the lord bishop of galloway . the lord bishop of aberdeen . the lord bishop of dunkell . the lord bishop of brechen . the lord bishop of orkney . the lord bishop of murray . the lord bishop of ross. the lord bishop of dumblane . the lord bishop of the istes . edinburg , nov. 3. 1688. pardon my freedom , most noble patriots ; god the searcher of hearts , knows what veneration i have for your august assembly , as representatives of the ancientest kingdom upon earth : i own that your wisdom and authority sets you above the reach of dictates ; nor is any thing here intended as such ; for if the case would admit it , i am far from the vanity of thinking my self able to do it , but cannot forbear to contribute my poor mite towards the vindication of what you have already done , and to put you in mind how much your wisdom is vilified , and your authority impugn'd amongst strangers , which i have the opportunity of knowing better than many of the members of your august assembly . and at the same time to inform your honours , that the authors are our prelatists , a set of men whom you voted to be the insupportable grievance of the nation ; and certainly not without very good reason , seeing they had in a great measure obscured the glory which our gallant ancestors had acquired by their noble defence of the liberties of their country from tyrants at home , and e●emies abroad , and particularly rome , both pagan and popish . may the god of heaven and earth pour out his best blessing● upon you in general , and incline your hearts , with of that your heroick soveraign , to what may be best for the good of the nation , and the glory of his name . the badness of the copy , and the distance of the author from the press , has occasion'd many errata's , the most considerable of which the reader is desired to amend , as follows , because they ma● the sense . page 17. line antepenult . dele so . p. 23. l. 7. read asperius . p. 27. l. 32. dele sense . p. 33. l. 33. read to make no s●ruple . ibid. l. 34. r. and therefore ought not to be believed . p. 34. l. ● . r. anot●er denies it . ibid. l. 7. r. friends . ibid. l. 19. r. and you apply it to all 〈◊〉 gross . ibid. l. 21. r. warily . p. 35. l. 24. r. lords of the iusti●iary . p. 36. l. 3. dele is . ibid. l. 7. r. and yet owns . ib. l. 23. r. and i am . p. 38. l. ● . dele your self . ibid. l. 17. r. inau●picious . p. 40. l. 27. r. would 〈◊〉 allow . p. 41. l. 9. r. disaffected , for dissatisfied . p. 51. l. 25. dele and. the contents . page 1 , 2 , 3. an apology for the sharpness of the s●ile , and instances , &c. in my last . pag. 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8. arguments to prove that it 's not the church of england 's interest to endeavour the subversion of presbytery in scotland ; and that the scots presbyterians don 't think themselves obliged to a forcible extirpation of prelacy in england by the covenant . page 9 , 10 , 11 , 12. the danger which moderate church-of-england men are in as to their religious and civil liberties from our scots prelatists , and their high-flown tantivies , whom they ought not to countenance in their designs against the church of scotland . ibid. the falshood of the doctor 's assertion , that the late governments were obliged to make such severe laws against us in their own defence . page 13 , 14. the moderate church-of-england men to blame in not making a publick protestation against the practices of their high-flown party in the late reigns , and this . ibid. instances of the disloyalty and ungovernable passion of d. m — o. page 15 , 16 , 17. answers to his calumnies and defence of the severities of charles ll's reign against the presbyterians , and proofs from his own concession , that we may justly accuse that government of cruelty . page 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24. the doctor 's objections from the cameronians , and his arguments from our practices in charles the first and second's time , answered and retorted . from page 25 , to 30. answers to sir geo. mackenzy's defence of charles the second 's government , with retortions , and proofs that either k. william and his parliament of scotland , or sir geo. mackenzy and our scots prelatists must be liars ; and the pr. of orange's vndertaking unjust , if charles ll's government in scotland can be defended . from page 30 , to 38. further answers to the doctor 's postscript , and his exceptions against my instances in the last . from page 38 , to 45. an account of sir geo. mackenzy's subornation and injustice against cesno●k , blackewood , &c. from thence to the end , a comparison between the presbyterian acts of their general assembly and parliament against the episcopalians in this reign , and theirs against the presbyterians in the late reigns . a further answer to the scotch presbyterian eloquence , by way of animadversion on dr. m. — as postscript in answer to the first . before i take the doctor to task , i think it necessary to answer the objections made by friends against my first essay ; which are , that the stile is too satyrical , the instances at the latter end too fulsome ; and that their book deserved no answer , as ●arrying its confutation in its forehead . i reply , that as to the sharpness of the stile , none who read , or consider what they wrote , can think they ought to be otherwise treated : so that i shall for once make use of the tinker's apology to a farmer , who quarrelled him for striking his dog with the sharp end of his staff , alledging that it had been sufficient to have beat him with the blunt. yes , says the tinker , when your dog runs at me with his blunt end , i shall use the blunt end of my stick ; but when he runs at me with his sharp end , give me leave to be as sharp with him . not that i would justify the rendring of railing for railing , which i acknowledg to be contrary to our saviour's command , but i submit it to the judgment of divines , whether answering lies with truth , and making the real infamy of him appear , who endeavours , by forg'd accusations , to take away my good name , be a breach of that divine precept ? so that while the matters of fact wherewith they are charged , hold true , the reflections upon them , and epithets given them , can never be justly quarrelled ; and therefore i would entreat my friends to be sparing of their censures : for while the memory of k. charles the second , or k. iames the seventh endures ; and till time , the consumer of all things , hath eat up their parliament-rolls , it will hold an undeniable truth , that the prelatical party of scotland are persecutors ; and that in denying the same , they have made themselves notorious liars . 2. so long as it appears by the same acts , that they imposed and took a contradictory test , so long will it hold that they are perjur'd themselves , and chargeable with the perjury of others . 3. so long as it remains in the records of council , that they ordered men to be killed , without any trial or colour of law ; or so much as with an exception , whether they resisted or not resisted ; so long will it hold that they are bloody murderers . 4. so long as the records of the last general assembly of the church of scotland remain , it will appear , by their evasions , answers , and disingenuous refusals , to declare their abhorrence of arminianism , socinianism and popery , that they are fire-brands in the church , and incendiaries in the state. 5. so long as any of their villanous libels , called the scotch presbyterian eloquence , exist , wherein they charge holiness with deformity , god with horrid decrees , and mock at seriousness and piety , so long will it be evident that they they are blasphemers . 6. so long as that s●urrilous address of their bishops against the prince of orange ; their opposing him in parliament ; their refusing to pray for him , or swear to him now he is king , and the legal procedure against them on the said accounts are on record , so long will it appear that they are rebels . 7. so long as their bloody acts of parliament , and barbarous execution of those acts against us , and our gentle acts of parliaments , and moderate execution of those acts against them are upon record , so long it will appear that they are infamous liars , in asserting , that we treat them more barbarously than they treated us . 8. so long as the west of scotland ( which was the principal scene of those bloody tragedies ) has a being , so long will it appear that they were barbarous . so that i hope all men of common sense , perceive that there 's no denying the consequence , without denying the precedent ; which they can never do so long as any records have a being in scotland ; and therefore i refer it to the impartial reader , whether they do not deserve to be sharply treated . to the fulsomness of the instances i reply , that indeed such things are not sit to be named amongst christians as a subject of conversation : but seeing they charge our ministers with impurity of life and doctrine , i hope it may be allowed in such a case to expose their really vitious practices , in opposition to what they have forged against us ; and seeing the thing is in a manner juridical , and they the first aggressors , it was but necessary for our own justification , to display them in their own colours . however , if any thing either in this particular , or others , be offensive , let the blame rest upon me alone ; for i solemnly declare , that i neither had the commission nor connivance of my party to write what i did , only some particular persons and laicks like my self , gave me most of the passages now found fault with . but e're i leave this subject , let me add , that i humbly conceive my foundation to be very solid , whatever blemish there may be in the superstructure , seeing the present parliament of scotland , when a convention , passed such a vote , that their bishops and clergy were the great and insupportable grievance of the nation , for which no better ground can be assigned than their profanity , persecution and want of piety . so that i have only made out by particulars , what they charged them with in general : and therefore seeing i only spoke the truth , to vindicate those who were falsly accused , and not to gratify the profane palat of the age , i hope i may have some grains of allowance , it never being reckoned a fault in any evidence , to repeat the blasphemies of the atheist , or the treason of the traitor : nor can religion be a sufferer by the exposing of those men , any more than it was by stigmatizing of the scribes and pharisees as hypocrites . as to the last objection , that it deserved no answer because confuted by it self ; i reply , that in scotland it 's true , but here we are not known : and being represented as the worst of men and greatest of barbarians to those of the church of england ; that atheistical vomit was greedily lick'd up , and by many believed ; so that their pamphlets spread , and were mightily hugg'd by such as are enraged at our abolishing prelacy , and by the jacobites who thence took occasion to re●lect upon his majesty for setling such a monstrous church in scotland , that they might render him odious to the church of england . i cannot mention it without concern , that those who are able to defend our church and country , are so unwi●●ing to write ; and when they do , that they let the adversary triumph so long before they reply . if it must be so , i wish that they would oblige some of their friends here with hand-granadoes , to keep tho enemy in play till they come up with their mortar-pieces . before i take the postscript in hand , i find it needful to make it evident to the world , that presbytery cannot be over-turn'd in scotland without the subversion of our religious and civil liberties ; and consequently that our scots episcopalians are enemies to the present government , and french incendiaries , or at least such a crew as would sacri●ice all that is dear to us , as men and christians , to their own private resentments . 1. it is very well known , and too lately transacted to be forgotten , that the states of scotland in their claim of right did demand the abolition of prelacy , as contrary to the inclination of the generality of the people ; on which condition , amongst others , their majesties accepted that crown ; and in pursuance of their promise have by act of parliament , abolished prelacy since , and established presbytery in scotland , as most agreeable to the world of god , as well as the peoples inclinations . then if their majesties should be prevailed upon ( which blessed be god there is no cause to fear ) to act contrary to their solemn oaths , and the claim of right , they must needs see that the people of scotland would have ground enough to plead a breach of the original contract ; nor could the church of england for shame condemn them , seeing they made use of the same plea in their convention and parliament against king iames. and in the next place , let them but consider , that upon the same ground this , or any other king may as well break with them , and invade the constitution of their church , which by the coronation-oath they have bound him to maintain : and whether charles the second , after he was by them perswaded to break his oath to the presbyterians in scotland , made any greater conscience of maintaining the civil and religious liberties of england , i● appeal to themselves . and therefore seeing by that excessive power which they gave their kings in things sacred , meerly to destroy the presbyterians , they found at last that they had put a rod in their hands to whip themselves ; i think they should be cautious how they play that game over again . i do not write this , as having any suspicion that their majesties are so weak as to be prevailed upon to alter the church-government in scotland , but meerly to let the world see , that they who sollicite them to it , are their greatest enemies , and design to shake their throne ; and that it is not the church of england's interest to countenance our scots prelatis●● , nor to importune their majesties on that head. if what is already said be not enough , i would earnestly intreat all sober church-of england-men to consider what were the consequences of their meddling in our affairs , and incensing king charles the first against the presbyterians , in favour of our runnagate prelates , and their hirelings . and seeing like causes may have the like effects , they would do well to beware . it is not unknown that scotland is a distinct nation , and ought to be govern'd by their own laws and councils ; and therefore it must needs be an invasion of the rights of scotland , for english ministers of state , and prelates to meddle , or give counsel in scotish affairs when not call'd to it . and i cannot but think that all reasonable men will easily grant , that the parliament , and general assembly of the church of scotland , are better judges of what is expedient for that nation , than a few english ministers of state , or prelates ; and that both of them have reason to reject what directions or injunctions come from such a mint . and i would put it to the consciences of all judicious church-of england-men , how they would take it if the king were in scotland , that any of the dissenting ministers who are really injured , as those who preached at st. hellin and hi●ley chappels in lancashire , or the whole of them , because denied a comprehension , should ●ly thither , and by their interest with scots presbyterian ministers of state and preachers , importune his majesty to have the constitution of the church of england overturned , and pro●ure orders to have such and such ministers planted in churches , tho they refuse to satisfy the law. i say , in such a case i appeal to their own consciences how they would take it , whether they would reckon themselves obliged to obey , or if they would not complain that their rights were invaded , and demand satisfaction of such ministers of state , &c. as incendiaries and dis●●●bers of the harmony between king and subjects ? i believe verily they would , and that not without good reason , tho i am sure the case is much stronger on our side still : for the dissenting ministers of england are all of them loyal to his majesty , willing to swear allegiance , and pray for him ; but so are not our scots prelatists . and besides , his majesty is really the head and fountain of all power in the church of england , who have not only their temporal baronies and honours from him , but are nominated to their bishopricks by him : but so it is not in scotland , where he hath divested himself of the supremacy , and neither bestows lands nor honours upon church-men . then the case being so , the golden rule , which commands us to do as we would be done by , should oblige english-men not to meddle with our church , no more than they would have us to meddle with theirs ; and if the parliament of scotland do pass over what of that nature is already done , it 's not to be supposed that the red rampant lion is become so much a calf as not to roar sometime or other , and make the fattest and proudest of the beasts in the field to tremble , as ers● of old ; but i hope and pray that god will avert both the cause and the effect . the english bishops did not gain so much by the the last bellum episcopale against us , that they need to be fond of another ; and we doubt not to find as much justice from the parliament of england now as we found then , and have no reason to doubt but king william would be as ready as charles the first , to deliver up his ministers to the law , if it should be made appear against them that they have been meddling too much in our affairs . i know that our scots prelatists possess the church of england , that we think our selves obliged to endeavour the extirpation of their hierarchy , and upon that account prevail with them to endeavour our subversion . but i would earnestly beg all moderate men to weigh the following answers . 1. that the reason of entring into that solemn league and covenant , was the fury which the english prelates evidenced at that time against the church of scotland , having excommunicated the same in all the churches in england , forced a service-book upon us more exceptionable than their own ; and in conjunction with papists , enabled charles the first to raise 30000 men against us , when the parliament of england refus'd to concur with him , insomuch that that expedition was called the bishops war. but blessed be god his present majesty is far from any such attempt , and the english bishops , the chief of them at least , are men of more moderation : so that there is no such cause for us to endeavour the overthrow of their hierarchy . 2. that the scots presbyterians do not at all think themselves obliged , by that covenant , to endeavour a forcible extirpation of the english prelacy , but in concurrence with the parliament of england : and therefore so long as they have not their call to the work , the english prelacy is in no hazard ; and the best way to keep so , is for the church of england to carry modestly , and neither to meddle with us , nor give their own parliament occasion to make such a vote against them , as the parliament of scotland made against our bishops , that they were the great and insupportable grievance of the nation : so that they have their safety in their own hand . but if they should be so infatuated to proceed as they began , in relation to the late general assembly of the church of scotland ; or if they be such fools , as to concur to the sti●ling of all plots against his majesty as hitherto , because so many of their own communion are concerned in them , let them blame themselves for what will be the unavoidable consequences , soon or late : for the church-of england laity are too good protestants and english-men , to be always led by the clergy , or continually hood-wink'd , and not discover the plots carried on against the state , under pretence of zeal to the church ; of which me-thinks the hot-headed clergy should take warning , seeing they may easily perceive how little ground their passive obedience had gain'd , when the honest church-of england laicks found themselves in hazard by k. iames , as to their liberties and religion . next i would earnestly beg , that they would consider how the faction , under a pretence of zeal for the church , and against presbytery , screw'd up the prerogative to such a height , that englishmen had very near lost their liberty and property . it was this mistaken zeal that threw out the bill of exclusion , surrendred the charters of corporations , enabled the king to pack parliaments , pick juries , and cut off whomsoever he pleased , under pretence of law. it was this mistaken zeal , that brought the late reign , and all the direful effects of it , which we have already felt , or are still impending upon us . it was this mistaken zeal which delay'd his present majesty's access to the throne ; gave the enemies opportunity to ruin ireland , raise a rebellion in scotland , and plot , as they do still , in england ; and shall we never be aware of it ? methinks that if the church of england compared things past and present , she might easily perceive that this intemperate heat against presbytery , doth naturally issue in popery and slavery ; and that she has much more reason to unite , for defence of the protestant interest , and her own doctrinal articles , with the church of scotland , than by espousing the cause of a few pro●●igate or traiterous clergy-men , because episcopal , run her self into unavoidable dangers . is it possible that a harmony in discipline should have more power to unite distinct interests , than a harmony in doctrine and agreement under one civil head , hath to cement those who drive the same interest ? it cannot be unknown to the church of england , if she believes either their majesties proclamations , or considers the procedure of his parliament , and other courts in scotland , that the prelatical party there drive at a design to restore k. iames. and with she yet entertain such vipers in her bosom as their outed clergy ; and not only so , but for their sakes entertain suspicions of his majesty , and sollicite him against the church of scotland ? can she say that we have ever made any address to him against the church of england ? and why should they be more zealous against us than we against them ? does she not know that arch-bishop vsher , and some of the greatest of her fathers , thought episcopacy and presbytery reconcileable , and the other things in controversy indifferent ? how is it then that she thinks her differences with king iames and the church of rome more reconcileable , as she must needs do if she fall in with her own high-flown tantivees and our scots prelatists ? but i hope , if no religious considerations will prevail , that the danger of their running the same risk with us may , they seeing both they and we have the same security , viz. the king 's accepting of the crown on such and such conditions , and consenting to acts of parliament accordingly : if he should break to one , he may do the same to both ; and though they may think that he will not overthrow their hierarchy , because the bishops depending on him , may be use●ul to him in the parliament-house ; yet at the same time he may , as charles the second did , invade their civil liberties , and then their religion , nor nothing else , can ever be secure . i must again beg the reader not to mistake me● as designing to create any suspicion of his majesty following such an unhallowed pattern , but meerly to set this as a beacon before the church of england , that they may beware of being shipwrack'd twice upon the same rock ; which will be unavoidable , if they should prevail wi●h any of their kings to break the original contracts , or call in k. iames , or set up any other pretender against his present majesty , and prosper : which , blessed be god , there 's no probability that ever they will , for never was king better beloved by subjects ; and let them try it when they please , they 'll ●ind he has in scotland twenty to one firm in his interest : and whatever noise they make ( to blind their own designs ) of our hazard from a republican faction ; if they will assure the nation of such governours as are now at helm , those whom they call republicans , will as cordially submit to them as any . but i foresee an objection as to scots affairs , that they only sollicit his majesty to dissolve the present parliament , and call another , which will restore episcopacy , and recognize his title . answ. 1. his majesty hath had too many proofs of the loyalty of presbyterians , and the treachery of episcopalians , to venture such an experiment ; or if he should , and they happen to recognize his title , he can never think that they submit from affection , but meerly from interest , when they see they can do no better : and in truth , whatever pretences of loyalty they make , it 's demonstrable enough , that as the country-man , when the london ●drawers baul'd out , welcome , sir , laid his hand on his pob , and said , i thank you my friend ; so may his majesty , when our scots prelatists pretend loyalty , put his hand to his side , and say , i thank you , my sword ▪ for no longer will they be his friend , than he is able to cudgel them . whereas it 's very well known , that the scots presbyterians declared for him before providence had determined their crown in his favour , and have beat into the prelatists whatever loyalty they pretend to have . nor is it to be thought , a prince so good and generous as his present majesty , will ever be so ungrateful to his friends , or act so much contrary to reason , and his own conscience , as to shake the present title he has to the crown of scotland , to buy the consent of the scots prelatists , who could not desend their darling k. iames , nor make any other effort to re-establish him , but by hectoring among the inaccessible hills , stealing cows and sheep , plundring the country , murdering the people by treachery and surprize ; and at last seising the insignificant rock , called the bass , where , if they please , they may send for him to govern the solon geese , and themselves , the greater of the two● but , 2. they will find themselves mistaken , if his majesty should gratify them so far as to dissolve this , and call another parliament ; the presbyterians have not lost but gain'd ground since the revolution , and they have smarted too severely under the prelates , to suffer themselves either to be hectored or kick'd out of their present settlement by any more pack'd clubs ; and knowing that instruments of cruelty are in the habitations of the prelats , will rather quit themselves like men , for the ark and people of their god , than be brought again under the philistin slavery . this is only to undeceive our prelatists , who promise themselves such an easy conquest : not that we can suspect a prince of our king's prudence , generosity and conscience , capable of so much weakness , as to disoblige the kingdom of scotland , those who preserved him the crown of ireland , and such as are his steady and useful friends in england , as he must needs do if he gratify the scots prelatists . they have not now an effeminate and luxurious prince to deal with , who , provided he might wallow in impure pleasures , was content to abandon all care of his subjects ; but one who knows his friends from his foes ; has been accustomed to government from his cradle ; outbrav'd the hector of france in his youth ; and therefore is not to be frighted by our scots prelatists , and the english tories , into such mean compliances , for fear of prelatical insurrections and tantivy grumblings ; he stis●ed greater serpents than those in his cradle , and carries a sword to cut off the hydras heads as fast as they multiply . but now to come to the postscript , or pretended answer to my last . one would have thought that our prelatists had bankrupt their treasure of lies , malice and blasphemy , in their late pamphlet , call'd , the scots presbyterian eloqu●nce : but the apologist and post-scribler demonstrate the contrary , and evidence , that their magazines are still full , and running over ; and i confess there is no cause to wonder at it , when we consider , that the bottomless pit , whence they are furnish'd , is an unfathomable source , and that the father of lies is not yet so superannuated , but that he can beget more of the breed . but to come to our author ; he tells you , in his very first page , that he could not read two lines of dr. rule 's book , without being provok'd unto the undecencies of passion ; and therefore it is no marvel that the reading of mine put him stark mad , seeing i treat the faction with some more roughness than the doctor did . pag. 1. after a very super●icial division of my book , he gives a sutable answer ; and that you may know he was blinded with passion , he begins with downright nonsense , and a notorious lie. i suppose there is scarcely any body but knows that the faction did brag of charles the second's peaceable restoration , as a miracle and demonstration that god own'd his title , ( nay , sir geo. mackenzie , vindic. p. 5. owns he was restored almost by universal consent ; ) and yet the scribler alledges that he , and our subordinate governors , were forced to make laws against the presbyterians of scotland in their own defence . now it is certain that none have any legislative power in scotland but the king and parliament ; and by subordinate governours , he must therefore , if he understands himself , mean the latter ; and if so , it is plain that the presbyterians at that time attack'd neither , but had sufficiently smarted under the usurper for maintaining the right of king and parliament by the sword , and refusing to abjure charles stewart , and the lords , who are a constituent part of our parliament ; so that neither of them being attack'd , nor threatned to be attack'd , in authority nor person , but on the contrary the presbyterians being sworn to maintain them , the pretence of a necessity to make laws in their own defence is a false excuse . but if our author would speak truth , he should say , that charles the second having a mind to break his oath , which he had taken solemnly , to maintain presbytery and the privilege of parliaments , and being secured , as he thought , in foro divin● , by the dispensation first of his popish and then of his episcopal priests , he must find some pretence to salve his credit in foro humano , and so with his pack'd parliament formed iniquity into a law. whether the said laws were gentle , as our author says , i leave it to the consideration of all thinking men , who please to peruse them as exhibited in my other book . it seems indeed that the prelates thought them too gentle , and not extensive enough for them , when they pressed conformity in so barbarous a manner beyond the extent of the said laws , in so much that they were forced to extort certificates from the people that they had been civilly used , because they knew they had exceeded the law , and were liable to be called to an account for it . one of the first laws they made , was an unlimited oath of allegiance , which swallowed up the privileges of the people , took away all the suffrage of parliaments as to the succession of the crown , and establish'd a despotical t●ranny , which this author calls the king's hereditary right : so infallibly true is it , that tyranny and our scots prelacy are inseparably connected , and such brethren in iniquity , that the one is always productive of the other ; and therefore as soon as he had deprived the people of their native rights , he made bold to invade their consciences , and contrary to his own oath and the peoples inclinations , brought in the abjured prelates , as knowing very well that tyranny could not subsist without them ; and so he supported them in their lording it over the peoples consciences : and they to requite their creator , preach'd up his divine right to tyrannize over their purses and persons . and thus did tyranny and prelacy , like two scabbed jades , nab one another , till they were both sent a packing by his present majesty . nor can i omit to take notice of the natural aversion which prelacy has to a lawful government , it being visibly seen that not only our scots prelates who were his majesty's personal enemies , but even the english prelates , most of whom pretended to be his friends , were and are jealous that the destiny of their hierarchy is at hand ; for every one knows how soll●citous the pillars of prelacy were to club at the devil-tavern to contrive means for the maintaining their hierarchy , and how to fetter his majesty with oaths not to touch it : and after they had got this assurance once , they were not satis●ied , but dunn'd his majesty as if he had been their debtor , for a repetition of his promises , till he took notice of it , and told them he was very willing to lay hold on every opportunity of renewing his assurance to maintain the church of england , or words to that effect . so that it is evident beyond exception , that prelacy is afraid when they see popery touch'd ; and that they are jealous that our dread soveraign , whom god has raised to break the horns of the antichristian carpenters , should also prove the bane of the pope's journey-men , the prelates ; and hence it is that they behold his majesty's glorious success with jealousy , which all the rest of the protestant world looks upon with joy. so that their convocation when assembled , were very loth to give his majesty thanks ; and when they did , could hardly be brought to thank him for what he had done for the protestant interest in general , but only for playing the bugbear to frighten away k. iames , who began to bring in their elder brethren the papists to be sharers of the fat with themselves ; and lest we should doubt what this church of england is , which they are so mightily tender of , they informed us in an address of thanks to the king for the care he had taken of the church of england in the alteration which was then made in the lieutenancy of london , and that was for putting in some of the bloody juries , and those who had betrayed the charter of the city , and were the tools to promote tyranny . now this being matter of fact and undeniable , the moderate church-of england-men see what they must expect if that faction get the ascendant once more : it 's not their agreement in government and ceremonies that will give them a true title to be sons of the church ; gibellins they are , and as gibellins they must die . the murder of my lord russel , alderman cornish , and many others , are sad proofs of what i assert ; and seeing the moderate church-of england-men and the presbyterians of scotland were fellow-sufferers in the late reigns , now that we have men advanced to the highest dignity of the church , whose repute for moderation did not a little contribute towards it , methinks it is but what their brethren in scotland might expect , that they should be so far from countenancing our runnagate episcopal clergy in their malicious clamours at court , that they ought to oppose them , especially considering that they were such implements as the late reigns found very subservient to their designs of bringing slavery upon us , under which they themselves smarted either in person or sympathy . and now that i am upon it , i cannot but take notice with regret , that notwithstanding of the almost indispensable nec●ssity of it , the sober church-of england-men in their ecclesiastical capacity , have never given any publick conjunct testimony against the tyranny of the last reigns , nor those of their communion , who were abettors of it , and at this day labour to re-introduce it . let them think what they will , their silence in this affair is no small incouragement to the jacobite party , who have hitherto baffled the discovery of all their plots , under a pretence of zeal for the church , which together with the ill example of the nonjurant bishops and clergy , hath been of more use to the french king , than an army of 60000 men : from this source it is that his majesty's affairs meet with so many rubs ; his friends are so far from being rewarded , that they are endangered and discouraged ; and yet our moderate ecclesiasticks have never made open and conjunct protestation against it . it was the saying of the god of truth , that the children of this generation are wiser than the children of light ; and our times furnish us with many sad instances of its undeniable verity . did not the pulpits in the late reigns thunder against all attempts of recovering our liberties , either in the parliament or in the field ? did not the church concur with her excommunications , to render dissenters uncapable of so much as chusing or giving votes for a sober church-of england-man , who would stand by the liberties of his country to represent them in parliament ? did not some of their bishops press the execution of their penal laws against dissenters , to keep them under hatches for that very reason ? and did not the clergy spend their consecrated lungs in bellowing out presbyterian plots to drown the popish ones ? and yet now they don't excommunicate their jacobites , notwithstanding of their conventicles and distinct form of worship ; their clubbing to chuse enemies to the government to represent them in parliament , even those who were violent enemies to the abdication ; as sir r. s. &c. who was chosen by by the university of c — ge . nor do the pulpits now sound with jacobite plots in this reign , as they did with presbyterian and whiggish plots in the late reigns ; which , together with the tenderness that hath been shewed towards their nonjurant bishops and clergy , and the opposition they make to abjuring the late k. iames , are sufficient evidences that it is his majesty's interest to keep up the presbyterians in scotland as a ballance , lest the scale turn on the side of k. iames , or his pretended son : and as for our scots episcopalians , their loyalty was sufficiently discovered after the defeat of the french by sea ; for none were so industrious as they to lessen our victory , when god had given it us . nor was their carriage less remarkable for disaffection upon the taking of namur , the first news from steenkirk , and when the intelligence came that charleroy was besieged ; which so elevated the spirits of dr. m — , the apologist , and sheelds the jacobite parson , ( lately in newgate for a conventicle ) that they were overheard to salute one another , in the park , with no less titles than that of my lord bishop of such and such a place , so big were they with hopes of the french conquests . pag. 86. our author not having time enough to recover himself ●rom the undecencies of his passion , continues his nonsense , and tells you very gravely , that if the presbyterian delusions did not upon all turns prompt them to overturn the government , they might live in scotland in all peace , as other dissenters did . i suppose our author to be speaking of the time past ; and if so , then he should have said , might have lived : and whether this blunder of grammar , in his own mother-tongue , be not as unpardonable in him , as are the blunders in latin which he falsly chargeth upon mr. rule , let any man judg ; and that he meant of the time past , needs no other demonstration , than to consider that the presbyterians do and can live at peace in scotland now , without being obliged to the prelatists . but nonsense is one of our author's least indecencies of passion ; for they who know him , inform me , that in his heat he cannot forbear swearing , notwithstanding of his doctoral scarf : and it can be proved on him , that when talking to a certain minister about the church of scotland , one of the good-natur'd doctor 's commendable expressions were , that if the episcopal party had it not , he car'd not if the devil had it . well , but to proceed , the doctor acknowledges , that other dissenters liv'd peaceably in scotland . now other dissenters we had none , but quakers and papists ; and that they liv'd peaceably we very well knew , and used to ask why they persecuted us more than them , seeing their difference in principles was much greater , if our episcopalians had been ( as they pretended to be ) good protestants . now i think every one knows the principles and practices of the papists to be dangerous in all protestant governments ; and that quakerism has too great affinity with popery : so that their kind treatment , while we were barbarously persecuted , is none of the best arguments to prove our episcopalians good protestants . and pray let our author in his next , give us an account , why popish recusants ( for denying the king 's ecclesiaslical supremacy ) were not dragoon'd to come to church , plundred , hunted , and hanged , as we were . but seeing i know he will not tell the truth , i 'le venture to tell it for him , in bishop carnerosse's words , the papists were their necessary friends : a king of their religion was dropping ripe to fall into the throne ; and every one knows , that under popery , bishops may grow cardinals and popes ; but under presbytery they cannot exist : and this is the rope which draws the inclinations of our hierarchical men so much towards rome , instead of drawing rome so much to them . if i be mistaken , let the advances which the church of rome made upon us , and the interest they obtain'd in court and else-where , under the warm wings of prelacy , in the reigns of both the charles's , and the last of the iames's bear witness . nay , our good-natur'd doctor was even so kind to mother-church , as to impose on his scholars an oath in k. iames's time , to maintain the blank christian religion , and to hinder the publishing of mr. iamison's book against quakerism ; yet his rancor against presbytery was so great , though the malice of the court seem'd to be asswaged , that when the presbyterians desired they might have the common hall of the college ( of which he was then principal ) to meet in , he answered , like a scurrilous and spightful villain , that his hall should never be a groping office. indeed , doctor , i am very well satisfied , that if any such things had been practis'd at our meetings , the episcopal clergy would never have been their enemies ; for very sure i am , that the greatest swearers , drunkards and whoremasters of the parish , were generally the greatest friends to the curats : and arch-bishop paterson , whose champion you are , may for ever stop your mouth , seeing megg patterson , with whom he had been base , own'd it before the court upon examination . and your other good friend , mr. hamilton , whom you are so careful to vindicate , would certainly have been a ●requenter of such groping offices , had there been any , seeing he was not ashamed , upon a certain occasion to declare , that he hated all words which ended in ism , except baptism and priapism . the doctor having dropt out a feeble and a faint lie , to justify the making of the laws against us , vices acquirit eundo ; and , ibid. tells you boldly , that the scheme of the presbyterian religion , wherein they differ from the episcopalians , is nothing but ungovernable humour and rebellion . well said , good-natur'd doctor , who is a separatist from good nature and the christian church now ? modest sir , i must b●g your pardon to say , that you are either an ungovernable passionate prelate , or the king and parliament are stark fools and knaves to have abolished episcopacy in scotland , where , according to you , they must have establish'd nothing but ungovernable humour and rebellion . certainly his majesty and the parliament are more concerned to preserve the soveraignty , than such fellows as you ; and if they had not been satis●ied that the presbyterians were better friends to it than the prelatists , they would never have establish'd them , and ejected the other . pray , sir , if your eyes be not blinded with passion , look upon the harmony of confessions , and see whether ours or yours ( if you know where to find your own ) be most agreeable to the reform'd christian church ; and then , if you please , look a little further into their discipline , and if it do not provoke you to indecency of passion , read 1 tim. 4. 14. 2 tim. 3. acts 20. 28 , 29. acts 15. titus 1. phil. 1. 1. and see which of us are the greatest separatists from the christian church , and whether those texts be chargeable with ungovernable humour and rebellion ; and so long as those texts make it evident that bishop and presbyter are the same in name and office , not so much as ordinatione excepta , if it be ungovernable humour and rebellion to believe so , we will be ungovernable and rebellious still . as for your citing the hind● l●t loose , ius populi , and naphtali , it 's altogether foreign to the purpose , all of them contain such arguments for the lawfulness of resisting t●yrannizing princes , as your party could never answer ; and for any thing particular in any of them , especially the hind let loose , which was writ against presbyterians as well as prelatists , none but one of your own kidney can charge them upon the presbyterians in general . but further , it 's mighty strange that this principle should be so criminal in us , and yet venial in the church-of england-men . wherefore do not you cite iulian the apostate , mr. hickeringil , or dr. burnet the bishop of salisbury's works , &c. to the same purpose : and pray let us know why the presbyterians are more chargeable with ius populi , &c. than the church of england are with those ? the author will not take notice of what has been so often told him and his party , that the horrid cruelties exercis'd upon the presbyterians in the west , as dragging them to hear the curates per force ; plundering them of all they had ; ravishing their wives , daughters and maids ; chasing them to the woods and mountains in the extremity of winter ; denying the poor children left at home , any other subsistance than what was left by the surfeited dogs ; the tying of gentlemen neck and heels , and rosting them before fires , without so much as allowing them a draught of water to quench their insupportable thirst ; forcing of bonds from them for such and such sums ; and extorting certificates , after all this , under their hands , that they had been civilly used . i say , the faction will not hear , when we tell them , that all this was done before they could charge us with any insurrection ; and yet are so disingenuous as to instance our pos●eriour efforts for self-defence , as the occasion of all severe laws : than which nothing can be more unjust ; and by the doctor 's own confession , pag. 87. that the king and his ministers of state , might more plausibly be accused of cruelty , if they made severe laws against the consequences of the presbyterian opinions . we have reason to charge the king and his ministers with cruelty : for such laws as were made before 1666 , were directly against the supposed consequences of our opinions , or nothing ; for we made no opposition by arms at that time against charles the second . nay , it is expresly own'd , pag. 5 , and 6 , by sir geo. mackenzie , that the laws were made against the consequences which they pretend to charge upon our principles . but to return again , p. 86. he alledges , that the presbyterians declar'd open war against the king in his own dominions ; preach'd to their hearers , that they ought to kill his servants ; that he had no right to the crown , because he had broken the covenant : than which nothing can be more false . it was but a small number of the presbyterians that appeared in arms in 1666 ; and they were so far from declaring war against the king , that they only desired a redress of those grievances which the episcopal souldiers had committed beyond law. nor would they have done it in arms , if it had been possible to have had access to the council otherwise : for those who appeared at bothwel-bridg , they were so far from declaring against the king , that they took his interest into their declaration ; and the party who oppos'd it , were so much di●relish'd , that multitudes deserted because they were concerned . nay , charles the second was so much convinc'd , that mr. iohn welch , and the majority of the presbyterians , were so far from disputing his title , that he granted an indulgence immediately after the suppressing of that insurrection ; and to my certain knowledg , offer'd a particular licence to the said mr. welch , to live and preach in any part of his dominions ; though our episcopalians had formerly incens'd him so much against him , that proclamations were issued , offering 500 l. to any that would bring him in dead or alive . so that the doctor has no foundation for his charge but the practice of a few cameronians , one of whose preachers excommunicated the king , and about twenty of the faction declared war against him at sanqhuar ; and such a little number did afterwards pretend to dethrone him : which will appear to all men but such as our author , to be contrary to presbyterian principles , seeing we allow not so much as excommunication of a private person without ●udicial probation , admonition , suspension , and the consent of the presbytery . and , by the covenant which they reproach us with as our only rule , we swear to maintain the privilege of parliaments , and the king 's just powerand greatness ; to which nothing can be more diametrically opposite , than for a few persons , without the consent and commission of the whole , to take upon them to exauctorate magistrates . and whatsoever this libeller may suggest , it 's known that mr. castares , sen. mr. blare , mr. iamison , mr. rule , mr. riddel , and other grave presbyterian ministers , fell under the obloquy of the cameronians for protesting publickly against the principles which they were driven unto by the furious tyranny of the late reigns . but if the doctor be not yet satisfied , i 'll give him argumentum ad hominem , thus . the viscount of dundee and his party declared war against king william , and all the bishops of scotland oppos'd his title to the crown : ergo , all the episcopalians in scotland declared war against him , and that he had no right to the crown ; and therefore by their own concession , the present government would be justified to enact as severe laws against them , as the late government did against the presbyterians . the premisses being undeniable , the conclusion cannot be avoided , if our author's way of arguing hold good . but supposing it true that all the presbyterians in scotland had declared king charles the second to have ●orfeited his right to the crown because he broke the covenant , it had been no more than what the church of england have declared against king iames , because of his breaking the original contract : and i would desire our gentleman to look upon the claim of right by both nations , and he will find that most of the infractions upon that contract were made by king charles ; so that if this be a crime , aethiopem albus , loripidem rectus derideat . but as for that malicious lie , that any of them preach'd that his servants ought to be killed , it 's so gross , that none but the author could invent it , nor any but his party believe it : for tho some of them did kill a. bp sharp , and others who were hunting for their lives , and took the same advantage of them that they did of others ; it will not so much as follow , that any of their ministers preach'd this as their duty , and much less that it was so to kill the king's servants as such . well , but this methodical doctor , who would sain perswade the world that he and his party have engrossed all reason and logick to themselves , comes with a hysteron proteron , and tells you of the presbyterians cruelty toward the episcopalians after the year 1637 , which ( mark the good-natur'd calm expression ) he says were unparallell'd in history , as they were diabolical in their nature . this is scots episcopal veracity . the doctor thinks he is dictating to his scholars ; and truly i must tell his doctorship , that if he ta●ght them no better philosophy , than he teaches us history , they had but a poor bargain on 't . but now , good doctor , did you never read of the massacres at paris , in the valtoline , and the duke of alva's butchery in the netherlands ? we shall not go so high as the ten persecutions , or those against the wicklevites , waldenses , &c. and tell me if what cruelties were exercised upon you about 1637 , aggravate them as much as you can do in any measure , come near them ; and if they do , as i am sure they cannot , i would know whether the modest , rational and religious doctor be not guilty of an immodest , irrational and irreligious lie ? and in the next place , seeing we must go back to 1637 , pray what did your party then suffer answerable to the persecution of the presbyterians by your high commission-court before that time ? or , did your sufferings come any thing near the horrid cruelty which montross with his highlanders , and the irish rebels , who join'd him after they had massacred the protestants in ireland , committed upon the country in defence of your prelacy ? but further , if your party did suffer any thing at that time , as it was impossible but they should when the exasperated people had taken arms against their invasions both of church and state , and the quarrel came to be decided by the sword , who was to blame for it ? they drew it upon themselves , they would not be satisfied that they had obtruded their domineering prelacy , but they must also impose a new form of worship , for opposing of which they incensed the king to raise an army of 30000 men to force it upon us . so that here was precedent enough according to the talion law , to force the covenant upon them , which yet we never did in that manner , tho the honest doctor has the confidence to assert , that we imposed it with greater tyranny , malice and violence , than the fathers of the inquisition ever practised . good mr. doctor , ( for you were very angry that i did not call you so in my last ) did your doctorship ever hear that we put the prelatis●s in dungeons to be eaten up with toads and serpents ? did we ever put any of them upon the rack ? did we ever thrust pieces of cloth down their throats to their very stomachs , and pull them up again ? did we ever burn them in habits painted with devils ? did we ever twist the muscles of their arms and legs with cords , which your fathers of the inquisition are known to have practised ? or , did we ever torture them with the boot , thummikins , or burning matches ( as your brethren of the prelatical inquisition did us ) to make them take the covenant ? i am confident your conscience , tho pros●ituted to a prodigy , flies in your face , and gives you the lie. well , but the doctor has not done yet , he tells you the covenant was imposed upon the children at schools . truly mr. doctor , to do you justice , i believe it was required of the little children that offered to take degrees of master of arts : and tho your doctorship was never nearer rome than 480 miles , as you say in your postscript , you have learn'd the art of equivocating as well as if you had been there ; for every one knows that men of thirty years old may truly enough be called children , and universities may as well be called schools : but if that was unlawful , how came your party to follow the example , and even your own doctorship to offer a blank oath to your scholars ? and why does the church of england impose oaths upon children at schools in oxford and cambridg ? pag. 87. he says there 's nothing in the first part of the answer to the scotch eloquence , but an ill-contriv'd abstract of the hind let loose . good doctor , i am afraid that the eyes of your head , as well as of your mind , were blinded with indecencies of passion , else you would have seen somewhat else , viz. frequent demonstrations , that you and others of your party are notorious liars , in asserting that our proceedings against you are more barbarous and cruel than yours against us , and that by authentick proofs , viz. your own acts of parliament . next the doctor tells us that the episcopalians publish'd a compendium of the hind let loose , that all men might see the principles , practices and humours of that sect whom they oppose● and that there cannot be a better defence of charles the second's government than the hind let loose . we have told the faction often enough that the said book is against presbyterians as well as episcopalians , and was writ in the height of a schism , and never own'd by the hundredth part of the presbyterians : but such is the unreasonableness of our prelatists , that they will charge it upon us , and would make the world believe that it is conseq●ential to the true presbyterian principles , though i have already demonstrated , that the excommunicating and exauctorating the king was contrary to our discipline and covenant . but to answer the disingenous man with argumentum ad hominem , i argue thus : there can be no better defence of the proceedings of the presbyterians against the prelatists , than dundee's declaration , their refusing to swear allegiance , and pray for king william and queen mary , seeing those who do so , act more consequentially to the prelatical principles of passive obedience and nonresistance , than those who comply . ibid. he tells us , that if the ministers of state under k. charles the second in scotland , have done nothing but what all wise , great and good men have done in the like cases , then the clamours of this party are rather an honour than an accusation . this is poor sophistry , doctor ; we deny your assumption , and by course your consequence must fall , which is an answer sufficient ; but to be plainer with you , if king charles and his ministers of state did nothing but what all wise , great and good men have done in the like cases ; then his present majesty and the parliament of scotland must , by this argument , be foolish , little and ill men , to disapprove their methods : so that we see how superlatively loyal and modest the doctor is . but yet further : we would have his doctorship to know that there was never such a case under heaven , and therefore the doctor will be at a loss to find good , great and wise men for precedents . ay , let him turn over all the histories of europe , give us a parallel , that any protestant prince should solemnly before god and the people , swear with his hands lifted up to heaven , that he would govern according to the terms on which he received the crown , viz. the preservation of the presbyterian government , and the privileges of parliament ; declaring that he was under no constraint to take the said oath , but that he did the same voluntarily and without mental reservation ; acknowledging the sins of his family , and promising a redress of grievances : i say , let him give us an instance of any protestant prince that ever perjur'd himself in such a manner , and requited subjects as he did us , tho we own'd his title , defended him against the usurper who had cut off his father's head , and exposed our selves to ruine for his sake : for reward of which , immediately after his restauration , he overturn'd our civil and religious liberty , cut off the earl of argile's head , who had set the crown upon his ; and afterwards enacted laws to make the people own the abjur'd prelates , and involve them in the same perjury with himself , and because they could not not in conscience do it , sent forces to take free quarter upon them , drive or drag them to church , destroy their substance , and treat their persons in that barbarous manner as before related , tho many of them advanced , and none of them opposed his restauration , nor threatned any disturbance to his government . but the truth of the case was , he and his ministers of state knew well enough that he had forfeited his right to the crown , and that the presbyterians could not but in heart abhor his perjury ; and therefore they were resolved to put them out of condition to demand the forfeiture , if ever they should happen to be so minded : which that poor people were so far from , that not one of those whom mere necessity had constrained to take arms at pentland , or bothwell-bridg , denied his title ; but on the contrary , still own'd him . and for that small inconsiderable number that acted otherwise at sanqhuar , &c. it 's already demonstrated , that they neither proceeded according to our principles , nor with our consent : and therefore , so long as there are any records in our nation , king charles the second's unparallell'd perjury , ingratitude to his subjects , and tyrannical government can never be justified . and as for the rebellions he charges us with under king charles the first , let any body peruse rushworth's collections , or even sir richard baker's chronicle ; and tho all the truth be not written there , it will be easy to perceive that the innovations made upon the church of scotland , and the invasions on the liberties of england , were the cause of that prince's misfortunes , who was misled by a popish wife , and misinformed by popish and prelatical ministers to his ruine . that unfortunate king put one affront on our nation ▪ mentioned by sir richard baker , that was enough of it self to have made them shake off his government , viz. the demanding of the crown of scotland to be brought hither for him to be crowned with , which argued such a degeneracy of spirit , and so much of an alienated mind from his native country , that 〈◊〉 a wonder how ever scots-men should have own'd him afterwards : the greatest monarch that ever sat upon the english throne ; would have gone as far as scoon , and thank'd us too , to have had the honour of it ; and for a scots-man so far to undervalue his native country , as to demand the poor , and almost the only remaining badg of their honour , antiquity and independency , to be brought into another nation , quis talia fando temperet a — ne quid aspersus dicam . certainly nothing but an exuberant loyalty and esteem for their natural prince , whom doubtless they considered as over-ruled by pernicious counsel , could ever have made that kingdom put up the affront . and therefore when he persisted to oppress and persecute them upon the account of their consciences , it was no wonder that they re-assum'd the spirit of their ancestors ; and let him know that the kings of scotland were never allowed an arbitrary power , nor did ever any of them usurp it , but it prov'd fatal to them or theirs : nor never was the nation so much degenerate but since the reign of our protestant prelacy , who were the creatures and supporters of tyranny ; for in the times of popery we had more grandees than we have now , that could tell how to put the bell about the cat 's neck on occasion , as archbald douglas , earl of angus , did to king iames the third ; but since the union of the crowns , the fall of our grandees , and the combination of the english and scots mitres , scots-men durst never say their head was their own but when they had the sword in their hand , except it be under this present government . and therefore the nation of scotland is mightily obliged to prelacy . ibid. he charges the presbyterians with enthusiasm . our prelat●sts are of late become as fond of this expression as is the cuckow of his known note ; and i can imagine no other reason why , than because they are so accustomed to swallow their liquor ; that as the lecher pleases himself with baudy stories , so do they with the very word enthusiasm , which is but a greek term signi●ying pouring in , and in this sense i 'll maintain it , that it 's more proper to be applied to our drunken prelatists , than in any manner to us . i always understood enthusiasts to be a sort of persons who pretended to other revelations than the written word for their rule , such as our quakers , and the old german anabaptists , or absit verbo invidia , our prelatists , who build more upon the uncertain and superstitious writings ascribed to some of the fathers , than on the writings of the apostles , who are the grandfathers ; or on the rationale of a durandus , or the poetical whims of any church devoto for their unscriptural ceremonies , than on divi●e revelation , which orders us to worship god as he commands , and not as we think good in our own eyes . then seeing the presbytérians do plead for a strict conformity to the scripture as the rule of faith and manners ; and that our prelatists admit of by-rules , for which no reason can be assigned , but the capricio of some fanciful bigot , or corrupted father ; let the world judg which party is most chargeable with enthusiasm . ibid. he says , that the acts of our general assemblies do sufficiently vindicate charles the second , and his ministers of state , from any shadow of rigour or cruelty . it were easy to answer the doctor in his own coin , that the knavish address of the scots bishops against the prince of orange , their opposing him in parliament , and the barbarities committed upon the presbyterians by the prelatists , as above related , are sufficient to vindicate us from any shadow of rigour or cruelty , which must , by all men who have not forfeited sense and reason , be allowed more than a sufficient answer . but further , the doctor would have done well to have cited those acts , and then a more particular answer could have been given : however , i 'le guess at his meaning , and suppose them to be such as declared against imploying malignants in places of power and trust ; which was the opinion of those called remonstrators : and if so , pray , good doctor , why is this more culpable than your church-of england . test , which excludes all dissenters from places of power and trust ; and that also against his majesty's desire , in his speech to the parliament , wherein he did rationally insinuate , that the taking off of the same , would unite his subjects in his service against the common enemy ? if the copy was bad , why does the church of england follow it ? or , do you not think that we had as much reason to keep out prelatists from places of power and trust , as you have to keep out presbyterians ? nay , i do verily believe , there is no true english-man , or protestant , who does not see the mischief which happens daily by the continuance of this test , which obliges his majesty to make use of such as do betray him continually . and whether the scots presbyterians were mistaken in their conjectures , that our prelatists , when admitted into trust , would betray our religion and liberties , let the late revolution , and the causes of it , testify . or , if there was any such act made or intended , by any assembly of the church of scotland , as disown'd charles stuart , the head of the malignants , because of his breach of covenant , and designs to enslave the nation ; it must 〈◊〉 be own'd , that they were too clear-sighted , and that the church of england do the same in relation to k. iames , who had as good a right to the crown , according to the prelatical principles , as ever his brother had ; and , if passive obedience be a true doctrine , ought as little to have been opposed as he . then supposing it true , that the remonstrators were against owning of him on the accounts aforesaid ; yet seeing they were not the majority of the presbyterians , and were willing to submit to his legal administration , swear allegiance , and live peaceably under his governm●nt , neither reason nor conscience will justify his proceedings against the presbyterians in general on that account ; or the making of laws on purpose to fret their consciences , and press the execution of them in such a barbarous manner as must unavoidably procure insurrections , when they submitted to him without the least opposition . sure i am , the church of england are more moderate to the jacobites , when they won't so much as admit of an oath of abjuration to be imposed on those in places of power and trust. pag. 88. he refers to sir geo. mackenzie's defence of charles the second's government , as unanswerable , though the same hath already been confuted , better than he can defend it . but the modest doctor goes on , and says , the objections against that government , are only little cavils and exceptions . no doubt , sir , k. william , and his present parliament of scotland , are but little cavilling fellows ; and the following grievances complain'd of by the convention of states , were but small exceptions , viz. disarming protestants , while papists were employed . imposing oaths contrary to law. giving gifts and grants for exacting money , without consent of parliament , or convention of estates . levying and keeping on foot a standing army in time of peace , and exacting free quarters without consent of parliament . imploying officers of the army as judges through the kingdom , &c. even where there were hereditary offices and jurisdictions ; who put many of the subjects to death without any form of law. imprisoning persons without expressing the reason , and delaying to bring them to trial. forfeiting several persons , on stretches of old and obsolete laws , as the earl of argile , to the scandal of the justice of the nation . subverting the right of royal burroughs , imposing magistrates and whole town-councils upon them , contrary to their charters , without pretence of sentence , surrender or consent . ordering judges to desist from determining some causes , and how to proceed in others . imposing extraordinary fines , exacting of exorbitant bail , and disposing of fines and forfeitures before sentence . forcing the subjects to make oath against themselves in capital crimes . using torture without evidence , or in ordinary crimes . sending an army in hostile manner upon several parts of the kingdom , in time of peace . imposing bonds without authority of parliament . suspending counsellors from the bar , for not appearing when such bonds were offered , contrary to law. putting garisons in private mens houses in time of peace , without consent of parliament . making it treason for persons to refuse giving of their thoughts , in relation to points of treason , or other mens actions . imprisoning and prosecuting the subjects , for petitioning the king and parliament to grant remedy by law. now whether these be little cavils and exceptions : whether charles the second was not guilty of these male-administrations : and if so , whether he deserved to be called a wise and peaceable monarch , let any body judg . and that they may do it the more impartially , i would wish them to consider , that there is a woe denounced against them who call evil good , and good evil. and i would pray the doctor to tell me , whether it was modesty in sir george , or is modesty in himself , to defend these things , which common sense must needs condemn , the representatives of the nation have adjudged as grievances , and the continuance in them as chiefly conducing to k. iames's forfeiture of the crown ? i confess i do not at all wonder that sir g. m. should defend a government which advanc'd and imploy'd him : these barbarous laws , and inhumane prosecutions , brought gri●t to his mill , and fill'd his bags ; for it will eternally hold , dul●is od●r lucri ex re qualibet , even from piss it self . and there is yet the less cause of surprisal , when we consider , that he was iohn white 's ( anglicè iack ketch 's ) journyman , or as he call'd himself , calumniator publicus , and the common libeller of the presbyterians ; so that of necessity he must represent them as monsters , else he must own himself a bloody butcher in prosecuting them at such a rate as he did . but further , sir george's arguments are all built upon a false narrative of matter of fact ; nor could a truer relation be expected from a man of his kidney , who prostituted his conscience , not only to different parties in the church , but contrary factions in the state : let not the scribler tax me as not generous for saying so , seeing it is true ; for it can be no more a crime in me to attaque sir g. after his death , than for him to attaque mr. rutherford and others , who are also in their graves . his subornation against sir hugh and sir geo. campbel , was charged on him to his face in open court , by the persons whom he had suborned . and in like manner it can be proved , that he suborned others against halside ; and did actually prosecute blackwood , for a pretended crime , whereof he himself was guilty , viz. conversing with mr. wilson a bothwel-bridg-man , for which he aim'd at the gentleman's life and estate : so that no reason will allow the testimony of one who was so much a party , and notoriously unjust , no more than we could allow the calumnies of bishop bonner against the protestants , whose blood he shed and thirsted after . nor are the presbyterian nurslings , as he calls them , so much gauled by sir george's book as he supposes ; and the unwary doctor himself owns what i asserted , that the reasonings in the treatise relate to the papers publish'd by the cameronians , which shows how unfairly sir george argued , to instance actions of men rendred mad by a barbarous execution of cannibal laws , to defend the making of those very laws . as for the honour he alledges i do the faction , in mentioning some great men as persecutors , much good may it do them : for if , according to the learned doctor 's argument , quality , sense and interest cast the ballance , then certainly nero , and iulian the apostate , were too heavy for the apostles and primitive christians ; and that great monster , lewis xiv . has much the better of his protestant subjects . well , but the doctor says afterward , they have reason to glory in their parts , honour and integrity ; which is none of my business to question . but the instances they are charged with , will come under none of those heads , and therefore the doctor 's panegyrick is foreign to the purpose . but we can easily answer , that their majesties and present parliament , have declared the very laws , which were yet more torelable than their barbarous execution , wicked and impious ; and i hope the modest doctor will allow , that they have quality , sense and interest enough to cast the ballance . i shall only add , that sir geo. mackenzie , by a concession , pag. 17. destroys his own hypothesis ; for there he owns that presbyterian ministers , who were sent to reclaim these criminals , and presbyterian jurors who were summoned to their trial , seldom failed of condemning them : so that from his own mouth he gives himself and the doctor both the lie , when they charge those principles upon the presbyterians in general , and consequently discover the falshood of that necessity , which they pretend the government was under , to make such laws against us in their own defence . pag. 13. sir george says , that the heretable iudges , i. e. hereditary sheriffs , refused to put the laws in execution against conventicles , by which they became formidable . which destroys two more of his and the faction's assertions , viz. that presbyterianism : was not popular , and that none but the rabble were their friends ; for those hereditary sheriffs are the best and most ancient families generally in every county : so that sir george wrongs his cause exceedingly by that concession , seeing those hereditary judges living upon the place , and being acquainted with the industry and honesty of the persecuted party , would not abandon their honour and conscience to become hangmen to their neighbours and tenants . and therefore the court being resolved to ruin the country , imployed bloody cut-throat papists , as the earl of airly and laird of meldrum , and their barbarous savages the popish highlanders . but according to the natural disingenuity of his faction , he takes no notice , that those military judges pull'd the hereditary sheriffs from off their benches , and would not let them proceed against the presbyterians according to the statute-law , because that was too mild in their opinion . one remarkable instance thereof was at selkirk , where meldrum pull'd philiphaugh , who is hereditary sheriff of the forest ( now a lord of the session ) out of his chair , when holding his court. another of sir george's defences are , the alledged severity to the cavaliers in charles the first 's time : which if true , though there 's no reason to take his word for proof , he could not but know the truth of that maxim , inter arma silent leges ; and that this could not justify the dragooning of people to church , and taking free quarter in time of peace . but sir george , accordin● to his wonted disingenuity , takes no notice of the case of that severity , if any such were , viz. that the persons so treated , harassed their native country with fire and sword , in conjunction with those who had cut the throats of protestants in ireland , filled the kingdom with bloody murders and barbarous villanies . i have neither time , nor is it consistent with my present design , to an●madvert any further upon his pretended unanswerable book ; but i think any honest reader will be satisfied that it needs no worse character , than to be stigmatiz'd as a flat contradiction to their majesties and the present parliament of scotland , being a sophistical and unfair relation of matters of fact , to make the world believe that all those grievances have been false , which the parliament complain'd of , his majesty declared against , and founded the justice of his expedition upon their redress : so that it will issue in this , either that sir george mackenzy is a liar , or that his majesty and the parliament of scotland are such ; and therefore , good mr. doctor , i am not afraid to appeal to the judgment of all disinterested persons , whether it be you or i that are most void of generosity , honour , modesty and common sense , of all which you deprive me in the 89 th page of your libel . so that tho the ass may vapour a while in the lion's skin , the ears of the dull brute will discover him at last . and thus our doctor has wounded his pretences to loyalty , by defending sir george's book . but allowing all to be true that sir george alledges as the cause of our persecution by charles the second ; i say still , that the faction deserves to be more severely treated by this government upon the very parallel , viz. thus ; they own passive obedience to be true doctrine , and were as much sworn to that as we were to the covenant ; so that if they believe that doctrine , they must needs look upon their present majesties to have no just title , and think themselves obliged to rebel . now malice it self could never fasten any such consequence upon the covenant as to charles the second's title : ergo , passive obedience must be more dangerous to this , than the covenant was to that government . but the doctor turns his back , and takes no notice of this argument , only magisterially tells you , that if there be no more in the case than passive obedience , the government needs not be afraid : tho every body but the faction , ●hose interest it is to dissemble the consequences of their principles , sees the contrary by demonstration from the practices of the nonjurant bishops , the high church-of england zealots , and the scots rebellions . 2. the episcopal party disown the presbyterian ministers , and won't hear them ; ergo , by sir george mackenzy's position , they should be dragoon'd to church , and with much more reason than they dragoon'd us ; for there 's nothing in our way of worship but what they practis'd themselves ; nor can they object against our form of government , for they had it in conjunction with their own episcopacy . then seeing we neither do nor desire that they should be persecuted on account of their dissent , whether are they or we most moderate ? all the difference is , that there are no laws against their nonconformity as there were against ours : which i grant to be true ; and hence we can demonstrate presbyterian moderation , that the parliament did not make any laws against the consequences of prelatical and passive-obedience-principles , tho the prelatists made laws against ours ; and sure i am , we had much more reason to have made laws against them , who did actually oppose and rebel against his present majesty while the parliament was sitting , and yet no such thing was ●ver moved . as for his allegation , that our moderation proceeds from the opposite biass of the nobility and gentry ; it shows his ingratitude : but all men of sense must needs be convinced that the parliament , who settled presbyteria● government , and that with so much care as to entrust none but the old presbyte●ian ministers , thrown out by the pr●lates , and such as they should admit , with any sh●re of the government , were not so much biass'd in ●avour of the episcopalians , as to restrain from making such laws on that account , if there were no other reason . pag. 91. he owns that the author of the scotch presbyterian eloquence has perhaps been unwary as to some stories , which need confirmation . well said , doctor , perhaps unwary , when i have made it evident from his own words that he contradicts himself ; but the inconsistencies i charge him with , you say you have no inc●ination to examine ; and truly i believe it , because you know they are true . and whereas you say there is not one good consequence in my book : pray let 's hear what you can say in your next to avoid the dint of the consequences there deduced , and here repeated , to prove your party in general , liars , persecuters , &c. but the good-natur'd doctor being sorry that he has done us so much fa●our as to grant that his friend was unwary as to some stories , retracts immediately , and tells you , there are multitudes of true stories against us of that nature , and believes that there was no injury done us in publishing that book . well argued , wary doctor ; you own that your friend was unwary in publishing stories which needed confirmation , tho he delivered them all as positive proofs , and yet say he did us no wrong . so that i perceive , according to your episcopal conscience , a breach of the ninth commandment is no injury . but doctor , seeing you have given your friend the lie , e'en box it among you till you box one another's ears . but in truth , doctor , he has no reason to be angry with you , seeing you give your self the lie as well as him : for pag. 91. you say that you believe the presbyterians had no injury done them by publishing that book . and yet pag. 93. you say , you do not believe those stories of mr. rule publish'd in that book ; so that the wary doctor must either grant himself a liar , or that to publish lies against a man is no injury , which makes him a blasphemer . now , good doctor , vtrum mavis elige , take your choice . the doctor goes on , and proves his argument thus : the printed accounts cited from their books are equal to the unprinted relations of their sermons and prayers : but takes no notice of the perverted propositions and false citations , which i have proved upon his friend from our printed books , nor of what i said in mr. rutherford's defence , but goes on to revile him , tho his works praise him , and make his memory precious . good doctor ! remember your own beloved apology of the kites , crows and jackdaws , and pray take in the cuckows , solemnizing a jubilee over the dead falcon ; and apply the other fable to your self , that the ass , amongst other beasts , kick'd and insulted over the dead lion. for sure i am , if mr. rutherford were alive , he would disdain to enter the lists with such an episcopal hawker as you , but would content himself to say , etiams●●tu poena ●ueras dignus , tamen ego indignus qui à te poenas sumam , which is in plain scots , he would scorn to foul his fingers with you . well , the doctor knows not whether to believe , or not believe ; and mark his civility to mr. rule , for you must know he will not allow him the title of doctor , that 's too much for a presbyterian : he tells you he has given you a couple of instances of greater ignorance and nonsense in mr. rule 's book than any that's to be found in the scotch eloquence ; and yet in the beginning of the 93 d page , he tells you he does not believe the instances in that book against mr. rule ; why , good doctor , it would seem you think them not nonsense great enough for mr. rule : but should not you believe your brother , the author of the presbyterian eloquence , as well as you would have him to believe you ? truly in his next pamphlet he had e'en best be quit with you , and use your own words , viz. that he will not believe what you say unless he have better authority . and last of all , doctor , seeing you own that his authority is not good ; pray , why are you angry with me for writing against him ? poor doctor ! remember that the false witnesses against jesus christ could not agree in their evidence : and seeing you and your comrade are at giving one another the lie , be not angry if i call you both liars . ibid. the doctor tells us , that the most blasphemou● story in the scotch presbyterian eloquence , can be proved by the most undeniable evidence , particularly those against mr. vrqhuart and mr. kirton : but he would do well to remember that he himself has already belied one of his evidence● , and we have no great reason to think that the rest are of any better credit . but further , i am sufficiently satisfied by those who have lately made an enquiry into the affair , that the whole is a malicious calumny . well , after a little more vomit , he tells you , that the absurd ludicrous sect metamorphose religion and its solemn exercises into theatrical scenes . commend me to the wary doctor ! what , not one page without contradicting your self , or your brother the author of the presbyterian eloquence ? he said that our preachers were whining fellows that drivell'd at eyes and mouth , and now your doctorship tells us that they are merry-andrews . well , doctor ▪ who 's the liar ? he says it 's you , and you say it 's he , and i say it 's both . pag. 94. the doctor seems content that he and his party be reckoned publicans and sinners , so he can but perswade the world that we are scribes and pharisees . pray , good doctor , dignify and distinguish your self and your party by what title soever you please , and observe the wise man's rule , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; but be charitable to your neighbours , and before you charge us with acting comedies , consider how you 'll reconcile your self to your brother , author of the scots presbyterian eloquence , who chose rather to represent us as personating tragedies ; and you and he both seem so very well acquainted with the customs of the play-house , that you had e'en best petition their majesties for mumford's place , and the other ( what do you call 'em ) that 's lately dead , and then we may not only sing but swear , that the pulpit and stage have corrupted the age. but one word more , doctor , and that 's this ; take your brother foster along with you , for he 'll make a special bully , and then you may sport your selves in your theatrical scenes , i had almost said obscenities , and act comedies , tragi-comedies and farces altogether ; and take my word for it , you need not doubt of visits from the same angels and ladies who are so kind to you now . pag. 94. the doctor breaths out such venomous reflections , and so remote from truth , that they must needs be inspired by hell it self : so that his doctorship may very well pass for a black enthusiast . but it is very strange the presbyterians should be such foolish and cominal preachers , as to make all religion ridiculous , and yet be preferred by king , parliament and country , when the episcopalians are rejected . pag. 95. he comes to invalidate my instances of the vitious lives , and ridiculous sayings of the prelatical clergy ; and truly , doctor , i agree , that it 's neither decent nor generous to wrestle with a scavinger , but it 's much less to attempt it and be foild . well , doctor , to your first topick , that this way of libelling is the true characteristick of our party . good sir , let 's join hands then , for really i did not know before that yours and ours were the same ; as they must of necessity be , if libelling be our characteristick : for that your party are libellers , needs no other proof than the catalogue in the frontice-piece of your apology ; the scots presbyterian eloquence , your apology it self , and the postscript , iam cuncti gens una sumus ; and pray , seeing it is so , don't disturb the repose of your prelatical friends at court any more , to patch up an union by force or fraud . but now i think on 't , there are a sort of literae mutabiles , which run from one side to another ; and i believe that 's the reason why characteristicks cannot be so easily distinguished ; for who can tell where to find a man that 's sometimes a protestant , sometimes a papist ; turns protestant again ; and from a cadee , become a curat ; then head of a college , and at last leaves his country for schism and disloyalty ? as for your story about spotswood , you would have done well to have cited your author ; for since , as i told you not long ago , you gave your self the lie , we have no reason to believe you . moreover , it 's but very natural for a cadee of dunbarton's regiment , which us'd to plunder people of their goods , and make no scruple to rob men of their good names , not to be believed . for your encomium on arch-bishop sharp , it 's no surprizal to me , his villany was so universally known , that no man but those of his gang will defend him ; and that 's no more than whitney , lately hang'd for robbe●y , may expect , and without doubt has from his quondam underlings . as for your charging the arch-bishop's murder on the presbyterian principles , 't is like your philosophy : mr. shields says it , ergo it's true . it were a sufficient answer to tell you , another denies , ergo it's false . and i tell you , again and again , that the hind let loose , was never the standard of our principles , nor approved by our party ; and i dare venture to say , mr. shields will not now own every thing in it himself : nor is it his disgrace , but honour , to retract what upon second thoughts he finds will not hold . and as for your allegiance , that there 's nothing worse in the morals of the iesuits : you do well to defend your friend , but i directed you before , where you might find as bad , nay worse , among our scots prelatists , who gave publick commissions to murder men without form of law ; which is more than a sudden intemperate fit of rage in a few men , who accidentally rencountring the prelat , who was actually pursuing them for their live● by his booted apostles , did inconsiderately deprive him of his . as for what i say against the church of england , it's what many of her sons own to be true : and whether the passive-obedience-men deserve any better treatment , i refer to the incomparable argument lately published by mr. iohnson . so that if there be any incivility to the church of england , it 's yours and not mine , for i distinguish whom i mean , and apply it to all in gross . pag. 101. he charges me with attaquing all our kings since the reformation . this is unwarily argued , doctor ; then i perceive , that according to you , king william is none of our kings , for sure i am i do not attaque him . but your doctorship may please to know , that i accused none of your kings , but what the parliaments have accused before me , and i think their copy may be writ after : nor do i know any reason why we should be more sparing of late , than former kings , if their male-administrations be alike , and that it may be done with equal safety . all histories , sacred and prophane , abound with the wicked lives of kings ; so that this prelatical maxim , of burying their publick faults in silence , never yet found , nor never will find encouragement from god or man ; and their contrary practice flows not from principle , but interest : nor do they spare kings more than others , when they thwart that ; witness heylin's reflections upon pious k. edward the sixth ; and the carriages of the whole party toward k. iames , when he granted the indulgence ; and to this we may add their continual invectives and rebellious practices against their present majesties . so that they h●ve forgot the somuch wrested text , which condemns speaking evil of dignities , they being the guiltiest of all men alive in that respect , as may be demonstrated from their clamours against all but monarchical government , though all powers that be are ordained of god ; and to which according to the divine command , we should always chearfully submit , whether to the king as supream , or other governours . magistracy in this respect being also called the ordinance of man ; because , though the genus be determined by god , yet the species is left to the determination of men ; else were it altogether unlawful for the subjects of republicks to own their governours , which no man , sanae mentis , will affirm . and herein god has evidenced his love to mankind , that he hath bounded all sorts of governments with one commission , which is , to encourage the good , and punish evil-doers : so far may they go , and no further . ibid. he says , that i charge them with such as were deposed for their immoralities , as dean hamilton and cockburn of st. bot●ens : whereas i only charge them with having protected those men from the punishment due to their impieties , and baffling their prosecutors : so that if those men were depos'd at last , it confirms my charge of injustice in the administration , which punish'd men for accusing those , whose guilt at last they themselves were forced to confess . as for your apology for arch-bishop paterson ; it is not much for your credit to be patron to a common stallion , whom all scotland know to be such ; and mag paterson ( a common strumpet ) did own before the lords of the session , but a few years ago , that she lay both with him and his brother : and one of the greatest ladies in scotlaud , took him in the very act of villany with one of the dutchess of york's maids of honour , upon the back-stairs of the palace . the modest doctor pretends to be very squeamish , and complains of my obscenity , alledging , that none but a devil can repeat , nor none but the author invent such instances as are there brought against the episcopal cle●gy . good sir , to use your own expression , the paltry eruption of your passion seems here ungovernable : if he be a devil that repeats them , what is he that acts them ? but why must he be more a devil that gives an account of episcopal debauches , than he that forges prophane stories against the presbyterians ? let any unblassed man read the scots presbyteri●● eloquence , and the answer , and certainly he must own , that if the latter was writ by a devil , the former must be writ by a beelzebub . your magnifying the arch-bishop's merit so much , who was imprison'd for disloyalty , shows your disaffection to the government . your defence of brown and cant , are so like a pedantick doctor , that they deserve no regard ; and what i write of them , are so far from being my invention , o● , as you most learnedly word it , is the exhalation of my most infectious breath , that i can bring you the authors to avow it to their faces . pag. 103. he says , it 's pleasant to see me accuse the church for the sayings of the presbyterians : you own that those who preach'd such ridiculous things , were guilty of blunderings after they conformed to episcopacy . truly , doctor , if there were any greater blunderers amongst them than your self , they must have been blunderers in folio ; for i cannot think they were guilty of a more palpable blunder than this , to call preachers , who comply'd with our scots episcopacy , presbyterians ; for , by that same argument , we may still call the doctor a papist , for such i am informed he sometimes was . as to dr. canaries , your testimony is not of validity enough to clear him of that accusation which i say still is upon record : and suppose it true that these presbyterian ministers and judicatories declared , they could make nothing of it , that will not amount to prove it false ; every one knows that crimes of that nature are very difficult to prove , especially when all the parties concern'd are link'd together in interest , and think it behoves them to retract what they formerly said , as i am very well assured by them , whose reputation is fairer than the doctor 's and yours both , that there is unexceptionable evidence of the woman's having declared the thing her self : and we have a very pregnant instance of a person of no mean note , whose accusation most in england are satisfied is true , and yet we see nothing can be made out , neither before the judges , nor the lords . as for your appeal to mr. spalding , that he should say , nothing could be made of it , it is absolutely false ; he only said it as to the baptizing part ; which yet , as i have already hinted , is far from proving it a lie. so that this topick , that nothing can be made appear of it that may justify the decrees of a court after so many years time , is not sufficient to acquit dr. canari●s . but suppose the thing to be altogether false , it argues a very great want of cleanly men amongst the episcopalians , th●t they should chuse such a man for agent , who lay under a flagrant scandal . the apostle's rule is clear , that a bishop ought to be blameless . the doctor 's next apology is for himself , and very angry he is that i said , [ commonly called doctor ] which now i hope i have made him amends for . but heark you , doctor , i had almost forgot to tell you of another lie you have given your self , and your brother-libellers , the authors of the scotch eloquence : for you all said , nemine contradicent● before , that the presbyterians were a proud , sowre , unconversible tribe , and that there was nothing like justice among them ; and now you own that the presbyterian privy-council , and a presbyterian synod , treated dr. canaries with special honour , acquitted him , and reproved his accusers . really doctor , this is somewhat odd : can any good thing come out of nazareth ? is it possible , that notwithstanding of all your clamours , that you have at last drop'd out a commendation of their honourable procedure ? truly , doctor , this is not warily done , pray reconcile this with what you advanced before , that we had no injury done us in the former book , tho therein we were said to be enemies to all good morals ? but , doctor , i beg your pardon , perhaps you intend our civility to dr. canaries as a proof of it ; for truly he was accused for no good morals . well , but what did i say of dr. m — o ? truly that it 's well known he rid in the pope's guards , and the doctor denies it , and says it 's known to none but presbyterians , who can discover plots in the moon . doctor , i wish it were as sure that there are none in your prelatical church . but give me leave , doctor , this impudent hint of denying the late prelatical plots against the government , shews you have need of a better purgation from the charge that you rode in the pope's guards than you own : for really , if that were as true , as that there have been and are plots amongst the prelatists , it 's true enough . but to satisfy your doctorship that it 's none of my invention , i tell you truly that i can bring you twenty who heard it of you before ever your eloquence or my answer was publish'd ; and if our friends make use of stories now and then which want confirmation , it 's no more than what you accused your brethren of just now , then veniam damus petimusque vicissim . and indeed , doctor , to be serious with you , i wish that the falshoods which have been mutually charged on one another , may oblige both to be more tender of publishing reports upon trust ; but seeing you are the first aggressors , blame your self for the consequences ; and i think that your doctorship particularly ought to have been a little tenderer of justifying such self-contradictions as the scots presbyterian eloquence , seeing i understand that when you were your self parson in — you were your self accused of villany with a woman among the corn ; truly , or otherwise , is not mine to determine : but seeing you publish'd random reports against us , we cannot be blamed to answer with what we have heard concerning you ; and truly , doctor , i am so far from being guilty of forgery , with which you charge me so often , that were i to speak my last , i can freely declare , that i do not know one syllable of what i write to be false , tho i know a great deal of it to be true , yet i never avouch'd all those instances of the follies and vices of your clergy as undeniable truths , as you and your vapouring brethren did yours in the scots presbyterian eloquence . for i scarce think it possible that at such a distance , so many stories can be transmitted on such a subject , and in so great haste , without mistakes : and yet i think there is no such great odds betwixt riding in the pope's guards , and being a cadee in dumbarton's reglment which guarded popery , and contributed so much to enslave europe : so that it was but an auspicious omen of being a good country-man , much less a pious protestant preacher , to be a volunteer in that regiment ; not that i would detract from the honour of their gallant colonel , who tho he was so unhappy as to be a papist , yet did truly inherit the noble soul of his family . nor yet would i derogate from the valour of that regiment , but i think these nations are pretty well satisfied how little we are obliged to them either for our civil or religious liberty : and i make bold to say it , they are as little obliged to their cadee . the feeble defence which in the next place you make for gray , hendry , hannan , &c. deserves no thanks from them , nor answer from me ; and for your abominable charge of a prostituted conscience , lodg your accusation nearer home ; and tho you have prostituted yours to churches and princes who drive distinct interests , i never did so with mine . and to conclude with your pitiful reserve to prove me a liar , because in the title page it 's said , printed by tho. anderson near charing-cross , 1693. it shews your cause was sinking , when you lay hold on the first thing comes to hand ; but to satisfy you further , i tell you 't is no lie , and charge you upon credit to prove it one , for affirmanti incumbit probatio . you have not scribled so much , but you must know that booksellers often put the date of the following year to books printed in michaelmas term , which was the only apparent falsity ; and for the rest it surpasses your skill to prove it a lie. instances on record of the notorious cruelty and injustice used in the time of the late prelatical administrations in the courts of iudicature against the presbyterians , in the persons of sir hugh and sir geo. campbel , and the la●rd of blackwood . as for the morality and vertue of the surviving grand patron of the faction , and their lately deceased invincible champion , sir george mackenzy , this following instance will set it in its true light. q — ry , tho douglas by sirname , yet envying the marquiss of douglas , the chief of the family , whom he hath a pique against , for refusing to take the cross-bar out of his arms , designed to revenge himself on his chief chamberlain , or steward , the laird of blackwood , a pious and worthy gentleman , by whose care the marquiss's estate is frugally managed , and that illustrious family chiefly enabled to maintain it self in what remains of its ancient splendor . q — ry , and sir george , not knowing which way to reach this gentleman , did on purpose procu●e an act to make converse with such as they were pleased to call rebels , or convers● with any that had converse with them , high treason . the marquiss having good part of his estate about douglas in the west , where a great many of his tenants were concerned in the insurrection at bothwell-bridg ; they thought that blackwood must unavoidably converse with some of them upon the marquiss's account , and so of necessity be catch'd ; hereupon they indicted him , and found it a hard matter however to prove any such thing upon him . but getting notice that there was one mr. wilson , an inhabitant of douglas , a man of considerable dealing with many of the noblemens chamberlains of the west , that had also dealt with blackwood ; and the said wilson was reputed a grand rebel , because one of those who had been forc'd to take arms by the tyranny of the then government . they set a great many of their implements at work to take him , which was no hard matter to effect , because he frequented most markets in that part of the country , and was often at edinburgh ; so having taken him , they brought him to sir george mackenzy , who threatned him terribly , and accused him with abundance of rebellious practices , which had rendred him obnoxious to the law , and liable to death ; and having , as he thought , allarm'd him sufficiently ; then he begun to ●latter him , that he should not only have a remission , but also a reward , if he would give evidence that he had conversed with blackwood , whom they had then in custody , and under process , which he altogether re●used . however , intercession being made to sir george on mr. wilson's account ; and some undertaking to perswade him to a compliance , he admitted him to bail , to appear such a certain day . q — ry having notice that sir george had let mr. wilson go , was so enraged at the disappointment of swallowing blackwood's estate , that being then in ● great power , he swore , that if sir g●orge did not get wilson again to hang blackwood , he should hang for him , because he himself had conversed with wilson , a rebel , and let him go . sir george being thus circumstantiated , sent in quest of mr. wilson before his day , but he could not be found . however , they proceed to trial , and , which was easy for them to effectuate , who were so dexterous at suborning of witnesses and packing juries , got blackwood condemned , which his advocates ( or counsel ) particularly sir george lockhart , were so angry at , that they offered publickly in court to prove sir george to be as guilty as he , viz. in conversing with mr. wilson , who not being able to deny , tho fain he would , he confessed it , and told them that he would go to his majesty and get a remission : whereupon all cry'd out shame upon him ! to prosecute a gentleman to death , for that whereof he was guilty himself . and blackwood's counsel insisted that he ought to have the benefit of a remission also . notwithstanding , q — ry and sir george hurried on toward execution , nor could they allow the gentleman time to prepare for eternity , but call'd for his accounts of the marquiss's estate , which the noblemen and others appointed to take , finding so just , and seeing the gentleman so grave and composed , they became intercessors for a remission , which was obtain'd , and the greed and malice of his enemies frustrated . however , we see by this instance the vertue , religion and morality of the grand pillars of our scots prelacy , which our pamphleteers do so much boast of . but this following instance will yet add a new varnish to their illustrious and refulgent vertues . the barbarous prelatical persecution , together with that unheard-of way of proceeding against blackwood , having alarm'd sir hugh and sir george campbel of cesnock , with other gentlemen who were presbyterians , or favourers of them , although they knew themselves innocent , yet thinking it not safe to stay in the kingdom , where sir george mackenzie could stretch the law , and make it reach the life and estate of whomsoever he would , they came for london , with a design to represent their grievances to k. charles the second : but that same hand which persecuted the presbyterians in scotland , falling upon the dissenters and moderate church-men in england ; those gentlemen happened to come hither when the earl of essex , my lord russel , &c. were committed on pretence of a plot ; and scots-men , because oppressed , being generally look'd upon as disatisfied , the said sir hugh and sir george campbel , were illegally taken up , without a warrant ; and having been divers times examined by the king and council , there could not the least ground of suspicion be found against them , saving what atterbury the messenger did falsly swear : and being made sensible of his perjury by the said gentlemen , he told them , that his oath could not harm them . which my lord melford and sir george mackenzie being aware of , they went to the duke of york . and my lord having a prospect of the gentlemens estates , they dealt with the duke to procure a warrant from the king to send them for scotland , where they would do their business . this was quickly granted ; and then sir george set about suborning of witnesses against them ; and the evidence was managed and instructed by sir w. wallace of craigy , my lord melford's brother-in-law ; hugh wallace of garits , chamberlain ( or steward ) to the said sir william ; and hugh wallace of ingilston . the evidence being prepared , sir hugh campbel was brought upon his trial , before the earl of perth then lord-justice general , ( or lord-chief-justice ) of scotland , who was very eager in the prosecution ; and having pick'd a jury for the purpose , they proceeded to call the evidence , viz. tho. ingram , tenant to hugh wallace of borland , cousin to sir william wallace the suborner ; daniel crawford , and one fergusson . the earl of perth having , according to form , administred the oath to the witnesses , which is always done with much solemnity and gravity in scotland , their consciences began to rebound ; and upon examination , they solemnly declared that they knew nothing against sir hugh campbel . which s●ruck sir geo. mackenzie and the court with confusion ; and all the spectator● shouted for joy , crying out , that it was the hand of god. wher●at sir george mackenzie being enraged , bellow'd out , that he never heard of such a protestant roar , but at the trial of the rebel shaftsbury . however , the jury being shut up , return'd in a little time , and brought the prisoner in , not guilty . his council pleaded , that according to law he might be discharged at the bar : which my lord-chief-justice and sir george mackenzie refused , the latter being the king's advocate , or attorney-general ; and alledging , that he should find both sir hugh the father , and sir george the son , guilty of high-treason in england . whereupon sir hugh was remanded to prison , and an indictment exhibited against both father and son , to appear before the parliament ; wherein the duke of queensbury was to be commissioner , who was as zealous for pursuing the prisoners as any . the next thing which the prosecutors took in hand , was , to bring down some of the english evidence , who pretended to discover the plot at london ; and accordingly they were sent down in one of the king's yachts . and by the artifice of the prosecutors brought into the company of the prisoners , who neither knew them nor their design . the evidence being examined before the secret council , and not being able to say any thing against the two gentlemen , they were sent for london again in the yacht . after this the duke of queensbury , earl of perth , sir george mackenzie , and others of the faction , tampered with the prisoners own counsel , to advise them to cast themselves upon the king's mercy , using for argument , that the parliament would condemn them , though innocent ; and that they knew there was no appeal from their sentence : and therefore if they would cast themselves on the king's mercy , they would be sure to procure a remission , and a good part of their estate . but sir george campbel absolutely refused to cast himself on the mercy of either king or parliament , because he knew it was sought for only to be an evidence of a plot , whereof they were altogether innocent . after which they separated sir george from his father , and shut him up without pen , ink , or paper ; and so kept him in close prison for ten days : but finding they could not prevail , they dealt with his father to perswade him ; and so returned him again to his father's room ; where being continually dealt with , by persons of quality , who were loth to see the family ruin'd , and did urge , that he would certainly bring his father , and himself both , to the block ; he answered , that he was willing to sacrifice his own life , so his father might be preserv'd . and finding that that could not be done , without casting himself on the king's mercy , he was prevail'd with to do it . and though their lives were saved , yet most , if not all their estates were ●eised . i cannot omit one particular more , viz. that the said sir g. ma●kenzie having a mind to ing●atiate himself with the said gentleman since the revolution , he did seriously tell him , that he swore the evidence three times ( on their knees ) in his chamber , that they should swear what they were taught against his father ; and hop'd god would forgive him . now i appeal to the reader , whether ever a piece of blacker injustice was transacted , for the kind , on this side hell ; and whether our prelatical adversaries have reason to boast of those mens vertue , worth , and piety , who were principally concerned ? and whether any credit can be deservedly given to sir george mackenzie's relation of matters of fact , from which he deduces arguments to justify the severity of the late reigns against us , wherein he himself was the prosecutor , and so deeply engaged , as appears by his own confession . now , i say , whether his defence of charles the second's government , writ since the acknowledgment aforesaid ; or the parliament of scotland , who in their claim of right complain of those things which he defends , ought to be best believ'd , let those who are unbyass'd judg . and seeing those two instances of his notorious injustice are matters of record , let the reader bear witness if i have not fairly disarm'd the scots prelatical party of their best weapon ; seeing to all which was told them of their barbarity to the presbyterians , they constantly oppos'd sir george mackenzies defence , as a buckler that could not be pierced . i have but one word more , and then i have done : i would have any moderate church-of england-man , answer from his conscience , whether he thinks those of his communion were faithful to his majesty , who constantly sollicited him , till he was prevailed with , to imploy some of those principally concern'd in the black acts of injustice above-mention'd , in the chief places of the government in scotland ; being moreover of the number of those evil counsellors whom he declared against at his first coming over . and seeing his majesty , who has been but a little while among us , and often called abroad , must needs in a great measure be a stranger to men and things : may the great god of heaven preserve his person and government , from such dangerous enemies as thus impose upon him , out of a pretended zeal for the church of england ; and in the mean time they have no reason to be offended at us and our parliament , if we witness as much true zeal for the church of scotland . proofs of the moderation of the scots presbyterians towards the episcopal party , from the acts of the general assembly held in the year 1690. that the world may be satisfied of the moderation of the presbyterians , and how little reason the doctor has to charge the cameronian principles upon them in general , i thought sit to exhibit in the words of the general assembly , held in an. 1690 , what they express concerning the large paper given into them by mr. line●ing , mr. shields , and mr. boyd , called cameronian preachers ; and the substance of their acts any way relating to the episcopal clergy . as to the first they enacted , that it contained several peremptory and gross mistakes , unseasonable and impracticable proposals , uncharitable and injurious reflections , tending rather to kindle contentions , than compose divisions ; and therefore the said paper was denied reading . and yet what is so heavily charged in that paper , is far short of those principles which the disingenuous doctor will needs fasten upon the presbyterians in cumul● . and as to the episcopal clergy , read what ●ollows . by their act of oct. 28. they recommend to the presbytery , to take notice of all ministers within their bounds , the late conformist incumbents or others , who shall not observe fasts and thanksgivings , indicted by the church , or shall be guilty of any other irregular carriage , &c. so that they are no severer upon the episcopal clergy , than their own , for all the clamours of the malicious faction . ●●●hat of 29 they enact , that all such who shall be received into communion with them in church-government , be obliged to subscribe the confession of faith , ratified in the second session of the parliament . there it 's plain that they arrogate no more power than what is given them by law ; and it 's obvious , that by this act , they neither exclude the prelatists ab officio , nor beneficio : so that the church-of england-men have no reason to complain , that their brethren are severely treated , for they have made no such steps towards a comprehension with the english dissenters , though his majesty desired it . and yet what a racket do they keep , because the scots episcopal clergy are only denied a share in the government of the church , which they designedly seek that they may undermine it , and are not ashamed to own it . in their letter to his majesty , novemb. 13. 1690. at the close of that assembly , they acquaint him with the instructions which they had given to those appointed for vi●itation , concerning the conformists , viz. that none of them shall be removed from their places , but such as are either insufficient , scandalous , erroneous , or supinely negligent ; and that those of them be admitted to ministerial communion , who upon due trial shall be found orthodox , able , godly , peaceable and loyal ; and that such who shall be found to have received wrong in any inferior judicatory of the church , should be duly redressed . yet what clamour , what lies , what obloquy and reproach have the poor presbyterians of scotland been loaded with , in blasphemous and virulent pamphlets , publish'd in london by hindmarsh , the late king's bookseller , and promoted and disseminated by that ungovernable faction . and what a clutter did the high-●lown courtiers keep about the scots general-assembly ; how industrious to misrepresent them to the king ; and how restless , till they had them dissolved , contrary to the laws , and at such a time as we were threatned with a rebellion at home , and an invasion from abroad ; that so his majesty having disobliged his only friends in scotland , might be totally deprived of any assistance from thence : but , blessed be god , who disappointed their designs : and i hope , that moderate and truly religious church-of england-men , will henceforth be more cautious in listening to the calumnies of our episcopal clergy , when they consider the moderation of the above-mentioned acts of the presbyterian general-assembly ; which they have no reason to think of such dangerous consequence as our pamphleteers would have them believe ; and as d — m — ro , in his papers lately seized by authority , would have further insinuated . and that they may have yet a further proof of their moderation , i would pray them to read the seventh instruction given by the said assembly , to the commissioners appointed for visitation , viz. that they be very cautious of receiving informations against the late conformists , and that they proceed in the matter of censure very deliberately , so as none may have just cause to complain of their rigidity ; yet so as to omit no means of information , and that they shall not proceed to censure , but upon sufficient probation . and that the world may be farther satisfied in their impartiality , in the fourth instruction they declared that the power of the visiters shall reach presbyterians as well as others : and in the second instruction , they gave them power to stop the precipitant or unwarrantable procedure of presbyteries in processes . if any proceedings can be more mild or regular , let the world judg : so that whether dr. m — ● and his fellow libellers , who impudently assert , that there is nothing like order , moderation , or justice among the presbyterians , be liars or not , let these acts determine . and if there were no other thing to stop the mouths of all cavillars , the assembly's declaration , that they would depose no incumbents simply for their iudgment concerning church-government , nor yet urge reordination upon them , were sufficient ; and if there be any ingenuity in the church-of england-men , it may for ever silence them as to their complaints against our administration , seeing those of their communion have been , and continue still to be so much guilty of a contrary practice towards dissenters . and further , this assembly , whom they branded as void of all moderation or humanity , made an act in favour of mr. couper , curat of humby , and recommended mr. cameron , one of the late conformists , to the privy-council for charity , which is more than ever was done by any episcopal assembly in favour of presbyterian ministers . having proved the falshood of the episcopal calumnies against our church as void of moderation , it remains that i do the same as to the state ; and tho it be already sufficiently done in my first answer , it will not be amiss to insist on it in this : and because contraria juxta se posita magis ●lucescunt , i shall exhibit a short epitome of their acts of parliament against us in the two last reigns , and of ours against them in this , that the world may see on whose side justice and moderation lies . acts of parliament by charles the second , and james the seventh , against the presbyterian government , and prebyterians in scotland . parl. 1. session 1. car. ii. they enacted the oath of allegiance , asserting the king to be the only supream governour over all persons , and in all causes ; and obliging the takers to the utmost of their power to defend , assist and maintain his majesty's said jurisdiction against all persons whatsoever , and that they should never decline his power and jurisdiction . parl. 1. sess. 1. act 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 11. an acknowledgment of the king 's vast and unlimited-prerogative was enjoin'd to be subscribed by all in publick trust over and above the oath of allegiance . octob. 1662. the council , not parliament , turn'd out 300 ministers without citation or hearing . parl. 1. sess. 1. act 7. sess. 2. act 2. they enacted , that the national covenant , and solemn league and covenant , should have no obligation ; and ordered them to be burnt by the hand of the hangman . sess. 2. act 3. they restored patronages . sess. 1. act 4. enacted , that none be masters in any university , except they take the oath of allegiance , and own prelacy ; and none should be school-master , tutor , or pedagogue to children without a prelate's licence . sess. 2. act 5. and sess. 2. act 3. enacted , that all in publick trust or office renounce and abjure the covenant on pain of losing their places , and privilege of trading . sess. 2. act 2. enacted , that all petitions , writing , printing , remonstrating , praying or preaching , shewing any dislike of the king 's absolute prerogative , and supremacy in causes ecclesiastick , or episcopacy , be punished as seditious : and that no meetings be kept in private houses . sess. 3. act 2. enacted , that all non-conformed ministers that presume to exercise their ministry , shall be punish'd as seditious persons . and that all persons in acknowledgment of his majesty's government ecclesiastical attend the sermons of the curats : noblemen and gentlemen refusing , to lose a fourth of their rents ; burgesses their freedom , and a fourth part of their movables ; and yeomen the fourth of their movables , and others 20 ● . a time , leaving the council at liberty to in●●ict further punishments , that if there were three above the family at preaching or prayer , it should be esteemed a conventicle ; and commanding lords of mannors , masters of families , and magistrates of buroughs to cause all under their charge to come to church . and for putting these laws in execution , a high-commission-court was erected by the king , contrary to act 13. parl. 10. iac. 6. with power to examine upon oath de super inquirendis . parl. 2. act 1. lauder da●e commissioner , enacted , that by virtue of the supremacy , the ordering of the government of the church doth proper●y ●elong to his majesty and successors , as an inherent right to the crown ; and that he may enact and emit such constitutions , acts and orders concerning church-administrations , persons , meetings and matters , as he in his royal wisdom shall think fit ; which acts , &c. are to be obeyed by all subjects , any law , act or custom to the contrary notwithstanding . sess. 2. parl. 2. enacted , that all who should be required do depone upon oath their knowledg of all meetings , or persons at them , on pain of fining , imprisonment , banishment or transportation . act 5. enacted , that all outed ministers found preaching or praying in any house but their own family , be imprisoned till they ●ind bond for 5000 marks , not to do the like again . every hearer , toties quoties , 25 ● . if a tenant , and 12 ● . if a sub-tenant . and that all who preach in the field , or in a house , if any of the people are without doors , shall be punished with death ; and those who can seize and secure any such minister dead or alive , shall have 500 marks reward . the magistrates of burghs to be sin'd at the council's pleasure for any conventicles held in their burghs , and they to be reimburs'd from the landlord of the house : and men to be ●in'd if their wives and children went to meetings . act 6. imposed fines from 100 ● . to 20 l. sterling a time , on such as had their children baptized at such meetings ; and servants to be ●ined in half their wages . act 11. sess. 3. the same fines were imposed upon them who should keep their children un-baptized for thirty days . and by act 7. that same session , they enacted 〈◊〉 fines on ●uch as absented from church for three days together . act 9. sess. 3. they declared all ordination since 1661. which had not been by bishops , to be invalid . in 1678 , a convention of states held by lauderdale , laid on a tax to levy forces for suppressing field-meetings , which was afterwards continued by the parliaments held by the dukes of york and queensberry . in 1681 , the d. of york being commissioner , without taking the oaths appointed by law , and against acts which rendred papists incapable , they doubled the fines for field-conventicles ; and ordered gentlemen to put away their tenants , and masters of families their servants , or sub-tenants , without warning , if they went to meetings . act 18. they enacted , that all jurisdiction doth so reside in his majesty , that he may by himself or commissioners take cognizance of , and decide any cases or causes which he pleased . act 6 , and 25. they imposed on all a self-contradictory test , which obliged them to stand by the confession of faith recorded in parl. 1. iac. 6. which disown'd the supremacy , and own'd the lawfulnes● of defensive arms , tho the contrary to both were sworn in the test without so much as a non obstante . parl. 1. iac. 7. d. of queensberry commissioner , act 3. allowing prisoners indicted for high-treason to be summon'd to make their defence in 24 hours time . act 4. that such as being cited for witnesses in cases of treason or conventicles , and refused to depone , should be liable to be puni●hed as guilty of the ●ame crimes . act 5. that giving or taking the national , or solemn league and covenant , or owning them obligatory , should be high-treason . act 7. making the concealment of any supply given to forfeited persons , tho the nearest relations , treason . act 8. that all who preach at house or field-conventicles , or such as hear at field-conventicles , should be punished by death and confiscation . act 13. re-injoining , and further extending the imposition of the test. act 23. making the refusing the oath of abjuration , high-treason . act 24. ordering all lords of mannors , &c. to insert a clause in all leases to their tenants , obliging them and their families to conformity under exorbitant penalties . act 25. ordering the cameronians to be pursued , and those who neglected it to be reputed equally guilty . acts of parliament by king william and queen mary against episcopacy in scotland . parl. 1. w. m. they enacted the oath of allegiance thus . i , a. b. do sincerely promise and swear , that i will be faithful , and bear true allegiance to their majesties k. william and q. mary . iuly 22 , 1689. act against prelacy , as a great and insupportable grievance to the nation . sess. 2. act 2. for restoring presbyterian ministers , ordering them to have immediate access to their own churches , if vacant , and to have the whole year's stipend ; but if there be an incumbent in their churches , he shall have right to the half year's stipend . act 5. ratifying the confession of faith and presbyterian government , as most agreeable to the word of god , and most conducive to the advancement of piety and true godliness , and establishing the peace of the realm , being received by the general consent of the nation to be the only government in the 114 act iac. 6. parl. 12. an. 1592. setling the government of the church on presbyterian ministers outed since ian. 1661. and such as they have received or shall receive . taking notice that many of the epis●opal ministers had deserted their flocks , and others were depriv'd for not reading the proclamation , and not praying for the king and queen . i●id . they authorize the presbyterian ministers to appoint visitors , and purge out scandalous and in sufficient ministers , and order those who are contumacious , and proven guilty , to be suspended and deprived . act 14. impowering the council to tender the oath of allegiance to suspected persons , or to secure them who shall be informed against on probable grounds , and to ●ine such as refuse in a fifth of their estate , and not to exceed one or two year's rent of them who are landed-men . act 17. about visiting universities , appointing professors in the faculties to take the oath of allegiance , and submit to the government of the church . act 35. against such ministers as being deprived for not praying for their majesties , do preach and pray elsewhere , and diffuse the poison of their disaffection , forbidding them to exercise any part of their ministerial function on any pretence whatsoever , until they swear allegiance , engage to pray for king william and queen mary , and disown king iames ; or to be proceeded against as disaffected . act 23. concerning patronages : the freeholders and elders of the parish , being protestants , are to have the 〈◊〉 of the minister : if the parish disapprove him , their reasons are to be judged by the presbytery ; and if the freeholders and elders do not apply to the presbytery for calling and choosing a minister in six months , the full power to be in the presbytery , tanquam jure devoluto . and the same act orders a compensation to the patrons for their right of presentation . act 38. for securing their majesties government , obliging all persons who in law are obliged to swear , to own their majesties as king and queen de jure , as well as de facto , and defend their title against king iames , &c. the refusers to be reputed disaffected , deprived of their offices , and be obliged to give security for their good-behaviour , as the government shall think fit , providing it extend no further than bond , caution , or personal imprisonment , securing of horse , arms , or putting garisons in their houses . there is also an act , but what number or session i cannot tell , ( being where i cannot get a sight of the acts ) abolishing the king's supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs ; for which we are mightily reproached by our enemies , who do not consider what has been writ unanswerably by mr. gillespy in his aaron's rod blossoming , and other books , against it . i confess my self but a mee● laick , and not skill'd in controversies , having never made them my study , any farther than to satisfy my self , that i did not give blind obedience . but the scripture telling us , that christ is head of his church , and that other foundations can no man lay , than what is already laid on the prophets and apostles : and common reason must needs inform me , that for any man , or party of men , to take upon them any other than a declarative power in church-matters , and that according to the word of god , must needs be an invading of christ's prerogative . and seeing he himself declar'd , that his kingdom is not of this world , that it should be govern'd by worldly monarchs , is humano capiti cervicem jungere equinam . and i cannot but wonder , that the church of england ●s late experience should not convince them of the unreasonableness of this doctrine : for i believe they were sensible under the late king , that a popish head was altogether inconsistent with the safety of a protestant church . and i am confident the christians in turky never dream'd that the grand signior was the head of the christian church : and this being a demonstration that it cannot belong to the chief magistrate , as such , he can lay claim to it no other way . especially , if we consider that the church , as in acts 15. did meet and declare the mind of god in church-matters , without either the call or consent of the heathen 〈…〉 and we have never yet had any divine revelation to recal it . then as for abolishing patronages , which occasions a further clamour : it 's plain that the parliament have made a very rational act on that head ; and it 's but equal that every one who has a soul , and evidences any real concern about it , should have a vote in choosing his minister , and not wholly rely on the choice of a patron , who perhaps is so wicked , that he takes no care of his own , and is very unfit to choose a minister for the souls of a whole parish . and as for the other acts , they are so plain , that any who will but take care to compare them with those of the late reigns , if they be not blinded , as our doctor was , with the indecencies of passion , we dare refer to them which are the most moderate ; or , whether the scots prelatists be not guilty of an audacious lie , in asserting , that they are more severely treated than ever we were ? and i would pray the reader to take this along with him ; that their laws , tho barbarous to a prodigy in themselves , were yet more barbarously put in execution beyond their extent : and that our laws , tho moderate in themselves , are yet more moderately put in execution . yea , and besides those acts of parliament , their council took upon them a parliamentary power , and made acts more bloody than those of their parliaments , enabling souldiers to examine any man they met , and to kill him without any further trial , if he did not give them satisfying answers to their questions ; of which any that pleases may be fully satisfied in my first answer . i had almost omitted taking notice of one remarkable thing which past in the convention of states after the revolution . they declared themselves a free and lawful meeting , whatever might be contain'd in the letter from iames the viith to dissolve them , or impede their procedure ; in which archbishop paterson and six other bishops , and the viscount of dundee concurr'd . now if this was not a manifest disowning of k. iames's authority , let any man judg ; and yet these men did afterwards exclaim against the convention and parliament as unlawfully called , because wanting k. iames's authority , and opposed k. william's coming to the crown . so that it 's evident , our scots episcopalians are men of the same kidney with those jacobite bishops in england , who join'd in sending for the prince of orange , and yet afterwards turn'd his enemies out of a pretended loyalty to k. iames. the faction have lately drawn up and dispersed amongst their friends a sort of manifesto from those of the episcopal perswasion in the north of scotland , full of invectives against the government , which , together with other monuments of their rebellious temper , &c. against their present majesties , may perhaps in a little 〈◊〉 see the light. finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a57284-e180 a k. james's proclamation . b act of supremacy . c act for f●riot confor●i●y . d by frequent making them garisons . e extorting your thoughts by torture , and then hanging you for them . proclamation for compleating the levy for the thousand men, for the year 1697. and in case of deficiency to poynd the leaders. scotland. privy council. 1697 approx. 9 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05651 wing s1859 estc r183509 53299287 ocm 53299287 180019 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05651) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180019) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2810:44) proclamation for compleating the levy for the thousand men, for the year 1697. and in case of deficiency to poynd the leaders. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh, : anno dom. 1697. caption title. initial letter. imperfect: stained, with slight loss of text. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -army -recruiting, enlistment, etc. -law and legislation -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-07 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2008-07 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion proclamation for compleating the levy for the thousand men , for the year 1697. and in case of deficiency to poynd the leaders . william by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith : to macers of our privy council , messengers at arms ; our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally ; specially constitute greeting ; forasmuch , as we by our proclamation , of the date the sixteenth day of december last by past , did require and command the commissioners of supply within the several shires of this kingdom , to have met upon the days , and at the places mentioned in the said proclamation ; and there and then to have designed and had in readiness in manner , and conform to the twenty third act last session of this current parliament ; and method therein set down ; the respective numbers of men particularly mentioned in the foresaid proclamation , or twenty four pound scots for each man not delivered to , or received by the officers sent by order of our privy council , or of collonel george hamilton collonel to one of our regiments of foot in flanders , at the head burghs of the several shires and stewartries of this kingdom , at the days particularly mentioned in the foresaid proclamation : and albeit officers did attend at the head burghs of the saids respective shires and stewartries at the time and upon the days prefixed in our former proclamation , to have received the men from the saids respective shires and stewartries which they were to furnish for this year , or twenty four pounds for each undelivered man , conform to the foresaid act of parliament : nevertheless in many shires , neither men nor money were delivered , to the great detriment of our service ; and disappointment of our officers , who thereby were to make the recruits necessary for our troops in flanders , and to the great expense of the saids officers and their needless attendance ; therefore we with advice of the lords of our privy council , require and command the commissioners of supply , of all the shires and stewartries within this kingdom , to meet , and timeously design leaders for the respective proportions of men to be furnished by their saids shires or stewartries ; and which leaders so designed for all the shires and stewartries upon this side of tay , we with advice foresaid , require and command to provide and have in readiness the respective numbers of men , which they as leaders are appointed to furnish ; or twenty four pounds scots for each undelivered man ; which men or money foresaid , are to be delivered or payed in by them , at the head burghs of the respective shires or stewartries , to such officers or others as shall be sent by the lords of our privy council , or the said collonel george hamilton , sufficiently impowered by written orders and warrands upon the twentieth day of this instant month of february . and the respective leaders for all the rest of the kingdom , to deliver or pay their men or money , at the respective head burghs of their shires or stewartries , to the persons to be sent and impowered in manner foresaid , upon the first day of march next to come ; with certification to the saids commissioners , who shall not design leaders within their respective bounds , they shall be lyable to the penalties for their failȝour therein , mentioned in the acts of parliament made anent the militia . and we with advice foresaid , certifie , declare and decern , that such of the leaders who shall faill to deliver the men , or pay the money to the persons so to be sent and impowered in manner foresaid , at the places , and upon the days respective above-mentioned , they shall be lyable to the saids persons impowered to receive the same , in the sum of one hundred pounds scots for each man that shall not be delivered , or the said sum of twenty four pounds scots in money payed for him , in manner foresaid ; which hundreth pounds is presently to be exacted and raised from the respective deficient leaders in manner specified , and appointed for deficiency in the outreicks to the militia , by the second act , second parliament king charles the second : conform whereunto , we with advice foresaid , authorize and impower the commissioners of supply , or any two of them , after tryal taken , that the respective leaders , or any of them have been deficient in the delivery of their men , or payments foresaids , to give order and warrand to any person whom they shall think fit , ( whom we hereby make and constitute our sheriff in that part to that effect allenarly ) to poynd and destrinȝie , the readiest goods and gear of the saids deficient leaders , wherever the same may be found ; appryse and make sale thereof towards the payment of the said hundred pounds for each undelivered man to be specified in the said warrant , and the charges and expenses of the poynding and apprysing , ( these charges always not exceeding the sum of ten pounds scots money for each hundred pounds , ) for which the poynding shall be used , with power to our said sheriff in that part , by vertue of that order , to poynd the goods , without necessity of carrying the same to the paroch-church , or mercat-cross of the head-burgh of the shire , or stewartry to be apprysed , and to do and act in the execution of the said order , sicklike as a messenger at arms may do by the law , in execution of letters of poynding and apprysing given under our signet : providing always , that the goods poynded be valued and apprysed by two honest sworn men , whose oaths , the said sheriff in that part , is authorized to take for that effect . and declares that it shall be leisum to the party , from whom the goods shall be poynded , to redeem the same within six days after the poynding , by payment of the sums for which the poynding shall be used , expenses of the poynding foresaid , and fourty shilling scots money for each day during the not redemption . and in case the goods be not redeemed within the space foresaid , declares , that it shall be lawful to the said person , officer , or other , to whose behove the goods are poynded , to retain the goods , or sell the same , he satisfying the party , from whom the goods were poynded , of the superplus price , if any be , after deduction of the third of the sum to which they were apprysed , and fourty shilling scots for ilk day during the space the party had power to redeem : and declares the said warrand , signed by two of the saids commissioners , to have the force and strength of a decreet ; and that there is no necessity of any precept , or charge to follow thereon ; but that the poynding and apprysing so used , by vertue of the said warrant is and shall be as lawful and valid , as if all the solemnities requisit and usual in poyndings , were observed conform to the foresaid act concerning the militia , in all points according to which , the numbers of men to be outreiked for our service in this present year , were to be furnished . our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and to the mercat-crosses of the remanent head-burghs of the several shires and stewartries within this kingdom , and there in our name and authority , by open proclamation , make intimation hereof , that none pretend ignorance . and we hereby ordain our sollicitor to transmit copies hereof to the several clerks to the commissioners of supply of the several shires and stewartries within this kingdom . and we require and command them to give advertisement in writing , to the several leaders within their bounds , of the days prefixed for delivery of their said men , or the said twenty four pounds scots , and of the certification and penalty above-set-down , in case of failȝie , with the execution to follow hereupon , for exacting thereof , as they will be answerable . and ordains these presents to be printed and published . given under our signet at edinburgh , the tenth day of february , and of our reign the eight year , 1697. per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to his most excellent majesty , anno dom. 1697. his majesties gracious letter to the lord provost, bailzies, and remanent magistrates, and town council of the city of edinburgh scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) 1685 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a46474 wing j194a estc r41408 31355295 ocm 31355295 110385 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a46474) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 110385) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1741:1) his majesties gracious letter to the lord provost, bailzies, and remanent magistrates, and town council of the city of edinburgh scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) james ii, king of england, 1633-1701. 1 sheet ([1] p.). s.n., [edinburgh? : 1685] place and date of publication from wing (2nd ed.). imperfect: cut at center fold, with loss of text. "given at our court at whitehall the 28. day of february 1684/5 and of our reign the 1st year. by his majesties command. drummond." reproduction of original in the harvard university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng edinburgh (scotland) -history -17th century. scotland -history -1660-1688. great britain -history -james ii, 1685-1688. broadsides -edinburgh (scotland) -17th century. 2007-11 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-08 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion j r honi soit qvi mal y pense god save the king royal blazon or coat of arms his majestie' 's gracious letter , to the lord provost , bailȝies , and remanent magistrats , and town council of the city of edinbvrgh . feb ● on k ch death the kings ans to the town of edinburghs addresse james r. trusty and welbeloved , wee greet you well . having received yesterday from our secretary lundin your very loyal and dutiful address , wee have thought fit to let you know , that it was very acceptable to us , and suitable to that zeal and loyalty you have at all times expressed in the reign of our late dearest and royal brother of blessed memory : and from these early and ample expressions of your duty to us , wee are so much perswaded of your sincere resolutions to continue the 〈…〉 to assure you , that upon all occasions wee will show our kindness to you and that our good town ; of whose concerns in every thing that may contribute to your and their welbeing wee will have a peculiar care ; assuring you withall , that wee are so sensible of your former services since you entred into the magistracy of that our good town , as wee think fit to return you our hearty thanks , and to assure you , that you shall meet with the good effects thereof when an opportunity shall be offered to us for the same . so not doubting your continuing to act faithfully and vigorously in our service , wee bid you farewell . given at our court at whitehall the 28 day of february 1684 / 5 ; and of our reign the 1 st . year . by his majesties command , drvmmond . answeres to the particulars proponed by his majesties commissionar 1638 approx. 10 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 13 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a73800 stc 665.5 estc s124181 99898570 99898570 173359 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a73800) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 173359) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 2036:11) answeres to the particulars proponed by his majesties commissionar hamilton, james hamilton, duke of, 1606-1649. [4] p. s.n., [edinburgh? : 1638] the answer of the scottish covenanters; the commissioner was james hamilton, duke of hamilton. caption title. imprint from stc. signatures: a² . in this edition, catchword on first page reads "es". reproduction of original in the folger shakespeare library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng covenanters -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. 2008-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-06 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-07 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2008-07 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion answeres to the particulars proponed by his majesties commissionar . having seriously considered with our selves that nothing in this world is so pretious , and ought to be so deare unto us as our religion , that the diseases of this kirk after long toleration did threaten no lesse than her owne ruine , and expiring of the trueth of religion at last . and that a free generall assembly was the ordinarie remedie appointed by divine authoritie , and blessed by divine providence in other kirks , and after a speciall manner in the kirk of scotland ; wee have often and earnestly supplicated for the same , and have laboured to remove what was objected , or what we could concieve to bee any hinderance to the obtaining of our desire , like as wee have now for the same good end resolved to returne this answer to the particulars proponed to bee performed by us before an assembly be indicted . the particulars proponed are either matters ecclesiastick or civil : ecclesiastick or kirk matters are , the first concerning ministers deposed or suspended by the presbyteries , since the first of februar last without warrant of the ordinar , that they bee reponed to their own places . the second concerning moderators of presbytrys deposed since the forsaid day to be reponed , and all moderators appointed by the said presbyteries without warrant forsaid to desist from executing the office of moderator . the third anent ministers admitted since the day forsaid that they desist frō exercising the function of the ministerie in that place to which they had beene admitted . these three particulars doe concerne the power , duetie and particular facts or faults of presbyteries where in wee have no power to judge and determine whether they have lawfully proceeded or not , far lesse can wee urge or command them to alter or recall what they have determined or done , in the suspending , deposing or admitting of ministers or moderators : they beeing properly subject to the superiour assemblies of the kirk , and in this case and condition of the kirke , to the generall assembly , where if they shall not after tryall justifie their proceedings from the good warrants of scripture , reason , and of the acts and practises of the kirk , they ought sustaine their owne deserved censure . and since upon the one side there be many complaints against the prelates for their usurpation over presbyteries in the like particulars : and on the other side there bee such complaints of the doings and disorders of presbyteries to the offence of the prelats . wee trust that his majesties commissioner will not esteeme this to bee an hinderance of the indiction of a generall assembly : but rather a powerfull and principall motive with speed to conveen the same , as the proper iudicatorie for determining such dangerous and universall differences of the kirke . neither doe wee heare that any ministers are deposed , but some only suspended during this interim , till a generall assembly for their erronious doctrine and flagitious life : so that it were most offensive to god , disgracefull to religion , and scandalous to the people to repone them to their places till they be tried and censured . and concerning moderators none of them ( as we understand ) are deposed , but some only changed , which is verie ordinarie in this kirk . the fourth , anent the reparing of parochinars to their own kirks , & that elders assist their minister in the discipline of the kirk , ought to bee cognosced and judged by the particular presbyterie to which the parochiners and elders are subject , since the cause may bee in the ministers no lesse than the parochinars and elders . and incase they find no redresse there , to ascend till they come to a generall assembly , the want wherof makes disorders to be multiplyed both in presbyteries and paroches . to the sixth , that ministers waite upon their owne kirks , & that none of them come to the assembly or place where the same is keeped : but such as shall bee chosen commissionars from presbyteries . wee answere , that none are to come to the place of the assembly , but such as are either allowed , by commission , or other-wise have such interest as they can approve to his majesties commissionar , and the assembly conveened . to the seventh , anent the appointing of moderators of presbyteries to be commissionars to the genertll assembly : only constant moderatours , who ceased long since , were found in the assembly 1606 ( which yet was never reputed by this kirk to be a lawfull national assembly ) to be necessarie members of a generall assembly . and if both the moderators , who if they bee necessarie members need not to bee chosen , and the chosen commissionars repare to the assembly : the assembly it self can judge best of the members where-of-it ought to bee constitute . to the nynth , that no laick whatsoever meddle with the choosing of commissionars for the presbyteries , and no minister without his owne presbyterie : wee say that according to the order of the kirk none but ministers and elders of kirks ought to have voice in choosing commissioners for presbyteries : and that no minister or elder ought to have voice in election , but in his own presbyterie . the rest of the particulars are civill matters , as the fifth , anent the paying of the rents and stipends of bishops and ministers : concerning which wee can say no further , but that the lawes are patent for them as others his majesties subjects . and that the generall assembly ought not to bee delayed upon any complaint of that kind . the eight , requiring that bishops and other ministers may bee secured in their persons : wee think so reasonable , that we will promise everie one of us for our owne parts they shall suffer no violence from us , and shall hinder others so far as we may , and if any trouble them otherwise , or make them any kind of molestation in that attendance , except by order of law : the parties are justly punishable according to the degrie of their fault as other subjects are . to the tenth , concerning the dissolving of all convocations & meetings and the peaceablenesse of the countrie : these meetings beeing keeped for no other end , but for consulting about lawfull remedies against such pressing grievances as threaten the desolation of this kirk and state , cannot be dissolved till the evills be removed : and we trust that nothing in these our meetings hath escaped us , which carryeth in it the smallest appearance of undutiefullnesse , or which may seeme to tend to the breach of the common peace ; but although our adversaries have heerein calumniated us , yet we have alwayes so behaved our selves as beseemed his majesties most humble and loyall subjects petitioning his majestie for a legall redresse of our just grievances . to the last , concerning the covenant : the commissioner his g. having many times and most instantly pressed us with that point . we did first by invincible reasons make manifest that we could not without sinning against god and our consciences , and without wrong done to this nationall kirk , and the posteritie , rescind or alter the same . and thereafter did at length cleare the same of all unlawfull combination against authority by our last supplication & declaration which his majesties commissionar accepted as the most readie and powerfull of all other meanes which could come within the compasse of our thoughts to give his majestie satisfaction . the subscription of this our confession of faith and covenant , beeing an act so evidently tending to the glorie of god , the kings honor , and happinesse of of the kingdome . and having already proven so comfortable to us in the inward of our hearts : it is our ardent and constant desire , and heartie wish that both his majestie , and all his good subjects may bee partakers of the same comfort : like as wee find our selves bound by conscience and by the covenant it selfe to perswade all his majesties good subjects to joyne with us for the good of religion , his majesties honour , and the quyetnesse of the kingdome , which being modestly used by us without pressing or threatning of the meanest , wee hope shall never give his majestie the least cause of discontent . seeing therefore according to our power and interest we are most willing to remove all hinderances , that thinges may bee carried in a peaceable manner worthie of our profession and covenant , doe ayme at nothing but the good of the kingdome , and preservation of the kirk , which by consumption and combustion is like to bee desperately diseased , except remedie some way bee speedily provided ; and delight to use no other meanes but such as are legall , and have beene ordinarie in this kirk since the reformation , we are confident that without further delaye for preventing of greater evills and miseries than wee can expresse our just desires shall bee granted . so shall we bee incouraged in the peace of our soules still to pray for his majestie all encrease of true honour and happinesse . finis . a proclamation, indemnifying such as have been in arms before the first of june last. scotland. privy council. 1691 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05708 wing s1942 estc r183566 52529316 ocm 52529316 179103 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05708) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179103) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:92) a proclamation, indemnifying such as have been in arms before the first of june last. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to their most excellent majesties, edinburgh : anno dom. 1691. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the twenty seventh day of august, 1691. and of our reign the third year. signed: gilb. eliot, cls. secreti concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng military deserters -legal status, laws, etc. -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -revolution of 1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-10 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-12 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-12 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation , indemnifying such as have been in arms before the first of june last . william and mary , by the grace of god , king and queen of great-britain , france and ireland , defenders of the faith ; to our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , pursevants , macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : whereas we did allow john earl of bradalbin , to meet with the highlanders , and others in arms against us , and our authority , in order to the reducing of them to our obedience , and by a representation made to us in their names , we understand their willingness to render themselves in subjection to our authority and laws , humbly asking pardon for what is past , and our assistance for accommodating some 〈◊〉 and funds , which do at present , and have very long troubled these places ; and we being satisfied , that nothing 〈◊〉 conduce more to the peace of the highlands , and reduce them from rapine and arms , to vertue and industry , than making away of the occasions of these differences and feuds , which prevail with them , to neglect the opportunities , to 〈◊〉 and cultivat their countrey , and to accustom themselves to depredations and idleness ; in order whereunto , we 〈◊〉 graciously to pardon , indemnifie , and restore all that have been in arms against us and our government , who shall take the oath of allegiance , prescribed by our act of parliament , before the first day of january next . therefore we , with the advice of our privy council , do indemnifie , pardon , and forgive all that have been in arms against us or our government , before the first day of june last , of all treasons , rebellions , robberies , depredations , seditions , leasing-making , hearing and not revealing of treason ; and generally , every thing that can be objected against any of the persons foresaids , for being in arms or rebellion , preceeding the date hereof : restoring and reponing , all and every one of the saids persons , who have been in arms against us , before the time foresaid , to their lives , estates , dignities , fame and blood , al 's fully and freely , as if they had never been guilty , or had never been condemned for the crimes foresaids , and al 's fully and effectually , as if each of them had particular remissions , containing a special enumeration of their crimes , duly and orderly expede under our great seal for the same ; upon this express condition always , that the persons foresaids , who have been to arms before the time foresaid , and shall plead and take the benefit of this our gracious indemnity , swear and sign the oath of allegiance to us by themselves , or the sheriff clerks subscribing for such as cannot write , and that before famous witnesses , betwixt and the first day of january next to come , in presence of the lords of our privy council , or the sheriff , or their deputs of the respective shires , where any of the saids persons live ; requiring hereby , and commanding the saids sheriffs , their deputs and clerks , before whom any shall swear the said oath of allegiance , for the benefit of this our indemnity , to transmit to the clerks of our privy council , exact lists of all persons by their ordinary designations , who shall subscribe the said oath in their presence , and take the benefit of our said indemnity , betwixt and the tenth day of the said moneth of january next , as they will be answerable at their highest peril . and we with advice foresaid , do assure and declare , all such persons who have been in arms before the first of june last , and shall betwixt and the first of january next , take the benefit of this our gracious indemnity , by swearing and signing , as said is , the said oath of allegiance to us , that they shall be altogether free , safe , and secure from all manner of punishment , pains and penalties , that can be inflicted upon them for open rebellion , or any other of the crimes above-specified , and that such as shall continue obst●at , and incorrigible , after this gracious offer of mercy , shall be punished as traitors and rebels , and other wayes , to the outmost extremity of law ; and we , with advice foresaid , require and command , all judges and ministers of our law , to interpret this present indemnity in the most favourable and ample manner ; prohibiting and discharging them to call in question any of the persons forsaids , who shall take the benefit hereof in manner abovementioned , for any of the crimes above-written , in time coming . our will is herefore , and we charge you straitly and command , that incontinent , these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and to the remanent mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of this our antient kingdom , and there in our name and authority , by open proclamation , make intimation of the premisses , as ye will answer to us thereupon . and ordains these presents to be printed , and published in manner foresaid : the which to do , we commit to you , conjunctly and severally , as said is , our full power , by these presents , delivering them by you , duly execute , and indorsed again to the bearer . given under our signet at edinburgh , the twenty seventh day of august , 1691. and of our reign the third year . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . et in supplementum signeti , gilb . eliot , cls secreti concilii . god save king william and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to their most excellent majesties , anno dom. 1691. a proclamation, declaring william and mary king and queen of england to be king and queen of scotland. edinburgh april 11. 1689. proceedings. 1689-04-11 scotland. parliament. committee of estates. 1689 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92599 wing s1321 estc r225323 99899835 99899835 135732 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92599) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 135732) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2468:2) a proclamation, declaring william and mary king and queen of england to be king and queen of scotland. edinburgh april 11. 1689. proceedings. 1689-04-11 scotland. parliament. committee of estates. england and wales. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by g. croom, at the blue-ball in thames-street near baynard's-castle, london : 1689. arms 265; steele notation: by king by. reproduction of original in the folger shakespeare library, washington, d.c. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. great britain -history -william and mary, 1689-1702 -early works to 1800. 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , declaring william and mary king and queen of england , to be king and queen of scotland . edinburgh april 11. 1689. whereas , the estates of this kingdom of scotland , by their act of the date of these presents , have resolved , , that william and mary , king and queen of england , france aud ireland , be , and be declared king and queen of scotland , to hold the crown and royal dignity of the said kingdom of scotland , to them the said king and queen , during their lives , and the longest liver of them ; and that the sole and full exercise of the regal power , be only in , and exercised by the said king , in the names of the said king and queen , during their joynt lives . as also , the estates having resolved and enacted an instrument of government , or claim of right , to be presented with the offer of the crown , to the said king and queen . they do statute and ordain , that william and mary , king and queen of england , france and ireland , be accordingly forthwith proclaimed king and queen of scotland , at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , by the lyon king at arms , or his deputs , his brethren heraulds , macers and pursevants , and at the head-burghs of all the shires , stewartries , bailliaries , and regalities within the kingdom , by messengers at arms. extracted forth of the records of the meeting of the estates ; by me ja. dalrymple , cls. god save king william and queen mary . licensed according to order . london , printed by g. croom , at the blue-ball in thames-street near baynard ' s-castle . 1689. a proclamation discharging the importing, vending, dispersing, or keeping seditious books and pamphlets scotland. privy council. 1688 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05585 wing s1770 estc r183452 53981735 ocm 53981735 180367 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05585) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180367) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2826:55) a proclamation discharging the importing, vending, dispersing, or keeping seditious books and pamphlets scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : 1688. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. majority of text in black letter. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the fifteenth day of august, one thousand six hundred eighty eight years. and of our reign the fourth year. signed: will. paterson, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng censorship -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion j r royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation discharging the importing , vending , dispersing , or keeping seditious books and pamphlets . iames by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith. to macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as we being informed , that there are many impious and scandalous books and pamphlets printed in holland , and elsewhere , inciting our subjects to murder and assassination , as well as rebellion , to the great reproach of the christian-religion , and the ruine of all humane society ; in which also our government , and the actions of our royal predecessors , and our own , are represented as cruel , barbarous , and tyrannical , and all such as have served and obeyed us , are railed at as enemies to god , and their native country : notwithstanding of the great care we have always taken to tollerate all different perswasions , and the clemency we have shown in pardoning the greatest criminals ; which books are brought home into this kingdom , and vended , and spread here ; and we being most desirous , on this , as on all other occasions , to prevent any of our subjects being brought into a snare . we have thought fit hereby to intimat , and make known , that if any of our subjects shall hereafter bring home , vend or sell , disperse or lend any of the books underwritten , viz. all translations of buchanan de jure regni , lex rex , jus populi , nephtali , the cup of cold water , the scots mist , the appologetical relation , mene techel , the hynd let loose , the treasonable proclamations issued out at sanquhar , and these issued out by the late duke of monmouth , and the late earl of argile , or any other books that are , or shall be hereafter written or printed defending these treasonable and seditious principles , they shall be lyable as if they were authors of the saids books ; and all other our subjects are hereby commanded to bring in any of the saids books they have , and deliver them in to any privy counsellor , sheriff , baillie of regality , or bailliaries , or their deputs , or any magistrats of burrows , to be transmitted by them to the clerks of our privy council , to the end the same may be destroyed , with certification , that whoever ( except privy counsellors ) shall be found to have any of the saids books , and not to have delivered them up , shall be fyned , for our vse , in such a penalty , as our council shall appoint , for each of the saids books , that he or they have not delivered up . and appoints the saids books and pamphlets to be brought in betwixt and the dyets following , viz. these in the town of edinburgh , and suburbs thereof , betwixt and the first tuesday of september next to come , and all others within this kingdom , betwixt and the first tuesday of november next to come . and to the end our royal pleasure in the premisses may be made publick and known , our will is , and we charge you strictly and command , that incontinent , these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and whole remanent mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the shires of this kingdom , and other places needful , and there in our name and authority , make publication of our royal pleasure in the premisses . and recommends to the most reverend the arch-bishops , and right reverend bishops , to cause read this our royal proclamation , in all the pulpits of this kingdom , upon some convenient lords day , in the forenoon , immediatly after divine service , that none pretend ignorance . given under our signet at edinburgh the fifteenth day of august , one thousand six hundred eighty eight years . and of our reign the fourth year . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . will. paterson , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , 1688. the speech of james duke of queensberry, &c. his majesties high commissioner to the parliament of scotland, on tuesday the twenty one day of may, 1700. queensberry, james douglas, duke of, 1662-1711. 1700 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a56875 wing q160 estc r33479 13390730 ocm 13390730 99362 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a56875) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 99362) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1554:19) the speech of james duke of queensberry, &c. his majesties high commissioner to the parliament of scotland, on tuesday the twenty one day of may, 1700. queensberry, james douglas, duke of, 1662-1711. 1 broadside. s.n., [edinburgh : 1700] imprint suggested by wing. reproduction of original in the harvard university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng great britain -history -william and mary, 1689-1702. great britain -politics and government -1689-1702. scotland -history -1689-1745. 2008-09 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-11 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 megan marion sampled and proofread 2009-01 megan marion text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the speech of james duke of queensberry , &c. his majesties high commissioner to the parliament of scotland , on tuesday the twenty one day of may , 1700. my lords and gentlemen , the care and concern which his majesty expresses in his letter , for the welfare and prosperity of this kingdom , must needs be satisfying to all of you : and as a further evidence of it , he had certainly held this session in person , if his other necessary affairs abroad had not deprived us of that happiness . his majesties accession to the throne was the most seasonable and acceptable deliverance , that ever happened to a nation ; and the maintaining those blessings he then procured us , has ever since been the chief design of his reign . you see his majesty is firmly resolved to preserve your religion , laws and liberties , and the presbyterian government of this church , as it is established ; and is desirous , not only that you fall upon the most effe●tual methods for preventing the growth of popery , and discouraging vice and immorality : but that you also provide , what may be further needful for the increase of piety and learning . the king gives you such convincing reasons for new supplyes , for maintaining the troops , that little needs be added to inforce so visible a necessity , most of his allayes are involved in the present commotions , and his and our enemies ready to lay hold on every opportunity : and therefore his majesty is confident , that you will chearefully continue that dutiful regard you have ever showen to his service and your own safety . his majesty is very sensible of the misfortunes and disappointments that has happened to us , in the matter of trade ; and therefore has instructed me , to concur in any thing that may promote and encourage trade in this nation : and i do so particularly know his majesties good mind , in this matter , that i can give you assurance of obtaining any thing that shall be reasonably proposed . you have likewise now the opportunity of making what new laws may be judged needful , for the better securing and settling your civil rights , as also for the encouraging of industry and manufacturies . relieving the poor , and supplving what else may be found wanting : so that his majesty having done so much on his part , it is not to be doubted , but that you will do all that 's proper on yours , to bring this session to a happy conclusion . my lords and gentlemen , it is his majesties pleasure , that i should have the honour to represent his royal person in this session of pa●liament . i am not insensible of my own unfitness , but the assurance i have of his majesties goods intentions towards this kingdom , and the assistance i confidently expect from you. who has given so great and constant proofs of your loyalty and zeal for his majesties service , encouraged me to undertake this weighty trust , which i am resolved to discharge with all possible firmness and fidelity to his majesty , and affection and integrity to my countrey . religions complaint to the honourable ladyes of scotland lamenting for the torne estate of that kirk and kingdome. p. m. 1639 approx. 9 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a06688 stc 17144.5 estc s1354 22140583 ocm 22140583 25143 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a06688) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 25143) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1731:21) religions complaint to the honourable ladyes of scotland lamenting for the torne estate of that kirk and kingdome. p. m. 1 broadside. j. wreittoun, [edinburgh : 1639?] in verse. signed at end: p.m. imprint suggested by stc (2n ed.). reproduction of original in the british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -church history -17th century -poetry. 2007-08 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-10 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2007-10 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion religions complaint to the honourable ladyes of scotland , lamenting for the torne estate of that kirk and kingdome . remark ( madams , ) remark my mourning mood , i am religion , who was borne in blood , in blood i grew , and as i first began , i feare my last gasp like the pelican shall bee in blood ; for at the worlds first houre , when on this earth there livde but only foure , ev'n then for my sake one of that small band , his blood cryde vengeance at my fathers hand : and then when men increasde and multiplyed , i was by mortalls basely vilifyed , for which it pleasde my father in his wrath , to send a flood that swallowed up the earth , eight persons only safe , ( o fearefull cace ) neglect of mee destroyde all humane race : and yet this hideous deluge in short space , was streight forgot by mortalls wanting grace . thereafter for my cause great warres began , that mercilesse and cruell hearted man did dreg the infants from their mothers wombes ▪ made sucklings cradles to become their tombes , ravishing women , wasting everie land , burning faire buildings against gods command , defacing temples , and monuments rare , acting all wrath without remorse or feare , and let mee ( tender ladyes ) make complaint , it calmes a wofull heart when woes get vent ) and let mee tell what wrongs , what injuries , what foule disgraces , and what calumnies which i have suffered , and all those that love my name ; to heare it , it would quickly move an heart of flinty stone to melt in teares , to retrograde it would compell the spheares , yea , it would cause the red sea part asunder , to heare my griefes , which doe surpasse all wonder : and you ( chast dames ) let teares fall from your eyes , to heare mee tell my dismall tragedies : when first from egypt i was put to flight , with six hundreth thousand warriours of might , i was persued by pharao ▪ where , if i , had not beene sav'd by god mirac'lously , i had beene perisht : yet in end i ●…and for cursed egypt a canaan land : then was i taken in a litle space by nebuchadnezer in most base disgrace , and kept in bondage as a lawfull pryse while zedechiah wanted both his eyes : then did antiochus ov'r mee tyrannize , dischargde my offrings , and my sacrifice . yea , my owne countrie-men the iewes , i meane , when as the saviour of the world was slaine , gave mee a deadly blow , and for that blow the romans did their kingdome overthrow , did make them slaves , and did them all disperse , like vagabounds throughout this vniverse . then after christ came arrius with his word , and in my bellie thought to have sheatht his sword , yea with the venome of his stinking breath , ( i meane his doctrine ) hee infect the earth , hee kindled such a great combustious fire , that kindoms against kingdoms did conspire , and altars against altars contradicted , and all that lovde mee were with death afflicted , so that in end i was perforc'd to flie from asia forfeare of crueltie to europe , where i did in heart suppose , to find safeguard to save mee from my foes , no sooner had i feeble footing got in europe , but i was constraind to trot , and for to pack mee hence with diligence , for the proud persians with all violence , the barbarous and bold arrabians the ethiopians and assyrians , this omne-gathrum rout of rudest rascalls , are cald saracens the turks damnde vassalls , they seazde upon mee under this pretence , to get renowne and high preheminence , to mahumet , and to his alcaron , to drowne my name in deepe oblivion . and had not god with godfrey tane my part , i had beene gone in despite of my heart : at length to scotland i betooke my self , where , for three hundreth yeares space and an half , i was most truely both profest and preacht , and to the people most sincerely teacht , while that rome with her filthie stinking puddle ( for which i still her anathem and wouddle ) polluted my faire sanctuaries all , and to blind superstition made mee thrall . vntill the time brave knox , my darling deare , brought from geneva reformation heere , and norman leslie , everiewhere renownd , gave beton for my cause a gasping wound , and ever since i have remainde among you , and for my sake no man had power to wrong you , and whiles the french with the italian , the switzer with the loftie proud alman , the turk with christians , africa with spaine the persian with the turk in high disdaine wag'd warre : yet still my all-protecting grace remaind with you in plentie and in peace : yet all those straits , and all those torturing tossings , which i have tryde , laught them ov'r as sportings ; but now alas , i 'me wounded to the death , since my defender charles , my life , my breath , hath taken armes against you for my sake , my swelling heart will quickly burst and breake , vnlesse i whisper in his gratious eares , that my meek soule abhorrs all jarrs and w●rrs : i doe not love mad vulcans reuthlesse thunders , nor yet no battells massacrizing hunders . an olive branch sent with a dove of peace , is all i beg most humbly from his grace : both land and people are his owne : and heere hee was begot , borne , bred for many a yeare , heere is the roote of all his royall race , heere rocked in his cradle was his grace , heere did your ladiships with tender hands , invest his highnesse in his swadling bands , and heere when as his grace began to weepe , with sweet balowes you lulld his eyes asleepe , and so it doth surpasse all sense and wit , to think his grace ●an his own soyle forget , and to storme-foorth his princely wrath on babies , on widowes , orphans , mayds and sakelesse ladyes ▪ the prudent heathen , ( as records imparts ) did love their countrie dearer than their hearts : creta , great iove did love above all lands , and iuno lyked samos fruitlesse sands , apollo did the flowrie tenedon despise : and al 's the zephyrus claron , but his sweet delos where latona lyes hee loves above all earth beneath the skyes , vlysses lov'd his mountaine highland soyle , ithace , where no pleasure is but toyle . as deare as creta was to iovè , wee knoe , as deare as samos was to rich iuno , as loving as the kindly delos bee to bright apollo : so the same are yee vnto your prince : or els i wish a rope who loves not , may prove their horoscope . then ( thou iehova ) who all kings commands ▪ ( for all their hearts are hammer'd by thy hands ) it 's thou that made them gods on earth , wee ken , yet thou hast said , that they shall die as men . teach him to fling romes frogs , my foes , away and pacifie his royall rage , i pray . by p. m. finis . a proclamation, for an anniversary thanksgiving, in commemoration of his majesties happy birth-day, being the fourteenth day of october, &c. scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) 1685 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a54556 wing p1827a estc r18754 99826829 99826829 31238 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a54556) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 31238) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1770:11) a proclamation, for an anniversary thanksgiving, in commemoration of his majesties happy birth-day, being the fourteenth day of october, &c. scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) james ii, king of england, 1633-1701. aut scotland. privy council. aut 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1685. dated and signed at end: edinburgh, the sixteenth day of september, 1685. will. paterson. cls. sti. concilii. identified film as wing s1424 (number cancelled). reproduction of the original in the henry e. huntington library and art gallery. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng james -ii, -king of england, 1633-1701 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. 2008-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion j2 r diev et mon droit honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , for an anniversary thanksgiving , in commemoration of his majesties happy birth-day , being the forteenth day of october , &c. james . r. forasmuch as it having pleased almighty god to set our most rightful , and re-doubted soveraign james the seventh , by the grace of god , of scotland , england , france , and ireland king , defender of the faith , &c. peaceably upon the throne of his royal ancestors , our most august and glorious monarch , notwithstanding of the hellish plots and machinations against the sacred person of our late king , ( of ever blessed memory , ) and our said present soveraign ( whom god long preserve ) and also notwithstanding of the desperat and ●rsiterous endeavours of those who lately , by armed force , invaded these our soveraign lords realms of scotland and england , of design , not only to have subverted his royal government , but even to have embrewed their wicked hands in the sacred blood of our said soveraign lord the king , and utterly to have destroyed all his majesties faithful and loyal subjects ; which traiterous attempts , by so 〈◊〉 and remarkable instances of the divine providence ; have been so miraculously defeated and confounded ; of all which , his majesties privy council beeing deeply sensible , they hereby , in his majesties royal name and authority , ordain and appoint the fourteenth day of october , being his majesties royal birth-day , to be solemnly kept and observed throughout this kingdom for this year , and yearly hereafter , as an anniversary day of thanksgiving for his majesties happy birth , and therein to comm 〈…〉 his most auspicious entry to his royal gov 〈…〉 and miraculous deliverances aforesaid ; and that all signs and demonstrations of joy , on such solemn occations , be performed by all his majesties subjects : and further recommends to the right reverend the arch-bishops and bishops , that they cause the ministers in their respective diocesses , for this year , and yearly hereafter , 〈◊〉 the said fourteenth day of october , with the people , at divine service in the church , devoutly give solemn thanks to almighty god , and celebrat his holy name , for his so signal goodness and protection , to our said gracious soveraign , and in him , to these his kingdoms ; and that all his majesties good subjects may have 〈◊〉 and be certified hereof his majesties privy council doth hereby require and command his majesties lyon , king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers of the privy council , pursevants , messengers at arms , forthwith to pass to the mercat cross of edinburgh , and there ( having his majesties coat of arms displayed ) by sound of trumpet , and open proclamation , in his majesties royal name and authority , make publication of the pren 〈…〉 and ordains the sheriffs of the several shirs of this kingdom , to cause publish the same at the mercat crosses of the head burghs of their shiers ; and the magistrats of burghs , at their mercat-crosses respective , as they will be answerable at their highest peril , that none may pretend ignorance : and the sheriffs aforesaid are hereby 〈◊〉 required to cause deliver to the ministers within their sheriffdoms respective , a printed copy of this act , that they may from their pulpits on the lords day , preceeding the said day of publick thanksgiving , after divine service in the forenoon , read the same to the people , and give them the necessary exhortations upon this occasion . extracted fourth of the records of his majesties privy council , by me sir william paterson , clerk to his majesties most honourable privy council . edinburgh , the sixteenth day of september , 1685. will. paterson , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anna dom. 1685. this may be re-printed by george croom , at the blue-ball in thames-street , over against baynard's castle . the copy of a letter from colonell francis anderson to sir thomas glemham, january 20, 1643, touching the invasion of scotland the copy of a letter from the marques of argyle & sir william armyne, to sir thomas glemham the 20, january 1643 : the copy of sir thomas glemhams letter in answer to the lord marquesse of argyl's, and sir william armyne's. anderson, francis, sir, 1615-1679. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a25354 of text r20037 in the english short title catalog (wing a3087). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 13 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 6 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a25354 wing a3087 estc r20037 12291303 ocm 12291303 58897 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a25354) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 58897) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 908:38) the copy of a letter from colonell francis anderson to sir thomas glemham, january 20, 1643, touching the invasion of scotland the copy of a letter from the marques of argyle & sir william armyne, to sir thomas glemham the 20, january 1643 : the copy of sir thomas glemhams letter in answer to the lord marquesse of argyl's, and sir william armyne's. anderson, francis, sir, 1615-1679. armyne, william, sir, 1593-1651. argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. glemham, thomas, sir, d. 1649. [2], 8 p. by leonard lichfield ..., [oxford] : 1643. reproduction of original in bodleian library. eng scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649. a25354 r20037 (wing a3087). civilwar no the copy of a letter from colonell francis anderson to sir thomas glemham, january 20. 1643. touching the invasion of scotland. the copy of [no entry] 1644 2220 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2006-02 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2006-04 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2006-06 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2006-06 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2006-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the copy of a letter from colonell francis anderson to sir thomas glemham , january 30. 1643. touching the invasion of scotland . the copy of a letter from the marqves of argyle & sir william armyne , to sir thomas glemham the 20. ianuary 1643. the copy of sir thomas glemhams letter in answer to the lord marquesse of argyl's , and sir william armyne's . printed at the desire of the members of both houses now assembled at oxford . edw. norgate . by leonard lichfield , printer to the vniversity . anno dom. 1643. the letter from colonell francis anderson to sir thomas glemham . sir , the last night i had notice that weltons regiment was quartered in warke barony at preston , leermouth , wark , and mindrum , it was twelve of the clock at night before the intelligence came to me , whereupon i immediatly caused the guards to be strengthned and doubled , my scoutes attending untill this morning for more perfect information , that i might advertise you of it ; it is now confirmed by one that was this morning amongst them , that there is six colours of horse , which were drawing out , and the drums beating for the calling out of some companies of foot , which also are come over , but the certain number of foot , i cannot as yet learne , but suppose them to be a part of the lord maltlands regiment , which lay at calstreame . i shall endeavour to keep my quarters hereabouts , untill i receive farther orders from you . i am now drawing my whole regiment into wooller , having heard for certain as i was now writing , that a great body of the enemies foot , and very many troopes of horse advanced over barwick bridge yesterday , and were as farre as haggeston ; it is conceived they will forthwith march towards bellforde , for they are quartered on the english side ; you will please to take these things into a present consideration , and afford a present answer to , sir , your very humble servant francis anderson . wooller . 20. ian : 1643. the copy of a letter from the marquesse of argyle and sr william armyne , to sir thomas glemham . gentlemen , although we justly presume , that the solemne mutuall covenant entered into by both kingdomes , hath long since come to your hands , and likewise that you have had notice of the raising of this army desired by the parliament of england for the prosecution of those ends therein expressed , viz. the preservation and reformation of religion , the true honour and happinesse of the king , and the publique peace and liberty of his dominions ; yet that it may appeare both to you and all the world , how unwilling we are to make a forcible use of those armes we have been constrained ( by the disappointment of all other meanes of safety ) to take up ; we the commissioners and committees of both kingdomes have thought fit , besides that declaration ( a copy whereof we herewith send ) lately emitted in the name of the kingdome of scotland for the satisfaction of the people , concerning the entrance of this their army , to take more particular notice of you the chiefe gentlemen and commanders , hoping likewise , that things of so great and considerable consequence will find with you , such entertainment as may answer the weight and importance of them . we will not so much wrong the cause we have undertaken , as to go about , after so many evident demonstrations of the necessity of our present posture , to dispute it with you , but rather instead of arguments , we think it reasonable to acquaint you with our well weighed resolutions , which are , through the assistance of that god in whose cause we are ingaged , and whose strength alone we trust in , with our utmost industry and hazard , to endeavour the prevention of that imminent danger not only of corruption but of ruine , which we see evidently intended to the true protestant religion by the popish and prelaticall faction , who never wanted will , but now think they want not strength and opportunity to accomplish it , as also the rescuing his maiesties person and honour so deeply and unhappily intangled in the counsells & practices of them , whose actions speak their ends to be little better then popery and tyranny , and the redeeming the peace and liberty of his dominions ; in which the irish rebellion , and the sad and unnaturall divisions in england have made so great a breach . to the accomplishment of these so iust and honourable designes , we have reason to expect the concurrence of all men who either owe or pretend a due love to their religion , king , and country , and shall be very sory to want yours ; but if mis-information , or any other unhappy grounds , shall so farre prevaile with you , as to reckon us in the number of your enemies ( which certainly we are not , if you be friends to those ends mentioned in our covenant ) and if instead of that concurrence with us , which we wish , and hope to deserve , we find from you opposition and acts of hostility . the law of nature , and your owne reason will tell you what you are to expect . we only adde , that though it will not a little trouble us , to see men withstanding not only us but their owne good and happinesse . yet it doth in good measure satisfie us , that we have not neglected this or any other meanes to the best of our power , or understanding , to prevent those inconveniences and mischiefes that may arise from those acts of force , which we shall be necessitated unto . subscribed at barwick , the 20th of ianuary , 1643. by the warrant and in the name of the committees of both kingdoms by us your friends argyll . w. armyne . sir thomas glemhams letter in answer to the marquesse of argyl's and sir william armyne's . my lord , i have this day received yours , together with one to the gentlemen of the countrey , and having communicated with them , we returne you this answer . that without the sight of that letter we could not have bin induced by any flying rumors to beleeve , that the scottish nation , or the prevailing party for the present in that nation , would have attempted an invasion of england : so contrary to the lawes of god , of nations , of both kingdoms , and especially to the late act of pacification : so opposite to their allegiance and gratitude to his majesty , to that neighbourly love which they pretend , to that discreet care which they should have of their own safety . we could not otherwise have imagined that they who by his majesties goodnesse enjoy a settlement of their church and state , according to their own desires , should needlesly and ingratefully imbroyle themselves in a businesse that concernes them not , forfeit their rights , disoblige his majesty , and hazard the losse of their present happinesse . no order of any committee or committees whatsoever of men or angells , can give them power to march into the bowels of another kingdome , to make offensive warre against their naturall soveraigne , upon the empty pretence of evill councellors , who could never yet be named . and for the english agents , we cannot believe them to be any commissioners lawfully authorized , either by the parliament , or by the two houses , or yet by the house of commons , whence so many of the members are expelled by partiall votes , so many banished by seditious tumults , so many voluntarily absent themselves out of conscience , where desperation or want of opportunity to depart , or feare of certain plunder , are the chiefest bonds which hold the little remnant together from dissipation , where the venerable name of parliament is made a stale to countenance the pernitious counsailes and acts of a close committee . for subjects to make forraigne confederacies without their soveraignes assent , to invade the territories of their undoubted king , to goe about by force to change the lawes and religion established , is grosse treason without all contradiction ; and in this case it argues strongly , who have been the contrivers and fomenters of all our troubles . no covenant whatsoever , or with whomsoever , can justify such proceedings , or oblige a subject to runne such disloyall courses . if any man out of ignorance , or feare , or credulity , have entred into such a covenant , it bindes him not , except it be to repentance . neither is there any such necessity , as is pretended , of your present posture , your selves cannot alleadge that you are any way provoked by us , neither are we conscious to our selves of the least intention to molest you . those ends which you propose are plausible indeed to them who doe not understand them , the blackest designes did never want the same pretences ; if by the protestant religion , you intend our articles , which are the publique confession of our church , and our book of common prayer established by act of parliament , you need not trouble your selves , we are ready to defend them with our bloud : if it be otherwise , it is plain to all the world , that it is not the preservation , but the innovation of religion which you seek , how ever by you stiled reformation . and what calling have you to reforme us by the sword ? we do not remember that ever the like indignity was offered by one nation to another , by a lesser to a greater , that those men who have heretofore pleaded so vehemently for liberty of conscience , against all oathes and subscriptions , should now assume a power to themselves by armes to impose a law upon the consciences of their fellow subjects . a vanquished nation would scarce endure such tearmes from their conquerers . but this we are sure of , that this is the way to make the protestant religion odious to all monarchs , christian and pagan . your other two ends , that is the honour and happinesse of the king , and the publique peace and liberty of his dominions , are so manifestly contrary to your practice , that we need no other motives to withdraw you from such a course , as tends so directly to make his majesty contemptible at home and abroad , and to fill all his dominions with rapine and blood . in an army all have not the same intentions , wee have seen the articles agreed upon , and those vast sums and conditions , contained in them , as if our countreymen thought that england was indeed a well that could never be drawn dry , and whatsoever the intentions be , we know right well what will be the consequents : if it were otherwise , no intention or consequent whatsoever can justify an unlawfull action . and therefore you do wisely to decline all disputation about it , it is an easy thing to pretend the cause of god , as the iewes did the temple of the lord , but this is farre from those evident demonstrations , which you often mention , never make . consider that there must be an account given to god of all the blood which shall be shed in this quarrell . the way to prevent it , is not by such insinuations , but to retire before the sword be unsheathed , or the breach be made too wide ; you cannot think that we are grown such tame creatures , to desert our religion , our lawes , our liberties , our estates , upon command of forreigners , and to suffer our selves and our posterity , to be made beggers and slaves without opposition . if any of ours shall joyne with you in this action , we cannot look upon them otherwise then as traitors to their king , vipers to their native country , and such as have been plotters or fomenters of this designe from the beginning . but if misinformation or feare , hath drawn any of yours ignorantly or unwillingly into this cause , we desire them to withdraw themselves at last , and not to make themselves accessaries to that deluge of mischiefe which this second voyage is like to bring upon both kingdomes . finis : the protestation of the noblemen, barrons, gentlemen, borrowes, ministers, and commons; subscribers of the confession of faith and covenant, lately renewed within the kingdome of scotland, made at the mercate crosse of edinburgh the 22. of september immediatly after the reading of the proclamation, dated september 9. 1638 henderson, alexander, 1583?-1646. 1638 approx. 43 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 14 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-08 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a11655 stc 21904 estc s100065 99835917 99835917 150 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11655) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 150) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1291:05) the protestation of the noblemen, barrons, gentlemen, borrowes, ministers, and commons; subscribers of the confession of faith and covenant, lately renewed within the kingdome of scotland, made at the mercate crosse of edinburgh the 22. of september immediatly after the reading of the proclamation, dated september 9. 1638 henderson, alexander, 1583?-1646. warriston, archibald johnston, lord, 1611-1663. aut [28] p. printed [by george anderson], [edinburgh] : in the year of god, 1638. drawn up by sir a. johnson of warriston and alexander henderson.--stc. a2r line 4 from bottom begins: 'liklie'; c2r line 1 begins '(if'. signatures: a-c⁴ d² . some print show-through. reproduction of the original in the union theological seminary (new york, n.y.). library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church of scotland. -general assembly -early works to 1800. great britain -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. 2004-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-03 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-04 olivia bottum sampled and proofread 2004-04 olivia bottum text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-07 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the protestation of the noblemen , barrons , gentlemen , borrowes , mini sters , and commons ; subscribers of the confession of faith and covenant , lately renewed within the kingdome of scotland , made at the mercate crosse of edinburgh the 22. of september immediatly after the reading of the proclamation , dated september 9. 1638. printed in the year of god , 1638. the protestation of the noblemen , barons , gentlemen , borrowes , ministers , and commons , &c. wee noblemen , barons , gentlemen , burgesses , ministers , and commons , his majesties true and loyall subjects , that whereas our continuall supplications , complaints , articles , and informations presented first to the lords of his majesties privie counsell , next , to his sacred majestie ; and last from time to time to his majesties commissionar , our long attendance and great patience this twelve moneth bygone in waiting for satisfaction of our most just desires , our zeale to remove all rubs out of the way , which were either mentioned unto us , or could be conceaved by us , as hinderances of our pious intentions , aiming at nothing but the good of the kingdome , and preservation of the kirk , which by consumption or combustion is liklie to expire ; delighting to use no other meanes but such as are legall , and have beene ordinarie in this kirk , since the reformation , and labouring according to our power and interesse , that all things might be caried in a peaceable manner worthie of our profession and covenant , our protestation containing a heartie thanksgiving for what his majestie in his proclamation from his justice had granted of our just desires ; and our protests and hopes for somuch as was not as yet granted . all these made us confidentlie to expect from his majesties royall and compassioned disposition towards this his native kingdome , that a free generall assemblie , and parliament should have beene indicted , as the ordinare and most proper remedies of our greevances , and did constraine us to renew our petition , earnestlie intreating , that his majesties commissionar , would be pleased to represent unto his majestie the condition of this kirk and kingdome , crying in an extreame exigencie for present helpe , with the lawfulnesse of the remedies prescribed by his majesties lawes , required by us , and presented to him in some particular articles , which his grace promised to recommend to his maiestie , and to doe his best indeavours for obtaining the same ; especiallie the first article , that there might bee indicted a full and free generall assemblie , without prelimitation , either in the constitution and members thereof , in the order and manner of proceeding , or in the matters to be treated : and if there should be any question or doubt about one of these , or such like particulars , that the determination thereof might bee remitted to the assemblie it self , as the only proper and competent judge . and now after so many suplications , complaints , articles , and informations , after our necessarie protestation , expressing the humble thankfulnesse and continued desires of our hearts , after so long expectation and so much dealing , having with open ears , and attentive mindes heard his majesties proclamation , it is our desire , purpose , and endevour so to proceede , that we may upon the one part still be thankfull to god , and the king , for the least blinke of his majesties countenance , and the smallest crums of comfort that fall unto us from his majesties royall hands , beseeching the lord , yet further to enlarge his majesties heart , for our full satisfaction , and rejoiceing to the honour of god , the good of this kirk and kingdome , and his majesties never dying fame and glorie , that his wife government & zeal to the service of god , may be a measure and patern of desires to all generations heereafter , when they shall bee wishing for a religious and righteous king. and on the other part , that christ our lord , the king of kings , through our neglect or lukewarmnesse , may want no part of his soveraignitie and dominion ; and that in our religion , which is more deare unto us then our lives , we deceive not our selves , with that which can not satisfie , and make up the breach of this kirk and kingdome , or remove our feares , doubts , and suspitions , of the innovations of religion : this hath made us to observe , and perceave , that his majesties proclamation doeth ascribe all the late distractions of this kirk and common-wealth , to our conceaved seares of the innovation of religion and law , as the cause and occasion thereof , and not to the innovations themselves , with which wee have beene for a long time , and especially of late heavily pressed and grieved , as if the cause were rather in apprehension and fancie , then in realitie and substance . that the service book and book of canons are not so far discharged by this proclamation , as they have beene urged by preceeding proclamations ; for this proclamation onely dischargeth the practice of them , and rescinds the actes made for establishing their practise , but doeth not rescinde the former proclamations , namely that of the 19. of februar , at stirling , and that of the fourth of julie at edinburgh , which give an high approbation to these books , as fit meanes to maintaine religion , and to beate downe all superstition , and withall , declares his majesties purpose , to bring them into this kirk in a fair and legall way ; and thus both our feares , that they may be introduced heereafter , must still remaine , and the libertie of the generall assemblie , by such a declaration of his majesties judgement , is not a little prejudged , in the mindes of so many as wisely consider , and compare the preceeding proclamations with this which we now hear , although others who looking upon one step , and not upon the whole progresse , run on rashly , and neither considering what they are doing , nor with whom they are dealing , may bee easily deceived , qui pauca videt , cito judicat , a short sight maketh a suddaine judgement . that it is declared in this proclamation , that his majestie neither intendeth to innovate any thing in religion or laws , or to admit of any change or alteration in the true religion alreadie established and professed in this kingdome : and withall , this is interposed , that the articles of pearth are established by the acts of parliament , and generall assemblie , and dispensation of the practice only granted , and discharge given , that no person be urged with the practice thereof ; and consequently , his majesties intention for the standing of the acts of the assemblie and parliament , appointing the articles of pearth , is manifest , which is no small prejudice to the freedome of the generall assemblie , that while the proclamation ordaineth all his majesties subjects to be lyable to the tryall and censure of the judicatories competent , and that none of them shall use any unlimited and unwarranted power ; likewise that no other oath bee administred to ministers at their entrie , then that which is conteined in the act of parliament , in both these articles the bishops are meaned , who are only thereby for the present curbed , against their exorbitancie and enormities , in exercing their office ; but the office of bishops is thereby not only presupposed as it questionable , but also so strongly established , that his maiestie declareth for the present his intention , to admit no innovation therein , which is more evident by the indiction of the parliament , warning all prelats to bee present , as having voice and place in parliament : and by the indiction of the assemblie , warning all archbishops and bishops ( for so are their diverse degrees and offices ecclesiasticall here designed and supposed ) to bee present ; as having place and voice in the assemblie , contrare to the caveats , acts of the kirk , and our declinator ; and thus a third and great limitation is put upon the generall assemblie . the proclamation by reason of these many reall limitations , and preiudices of the libertie of the assemblie in the very points , which have wrought so much woe and disturbance in this kirk and kingdome , and wherein the libertie of the assemblie is most usefull and necessarie at this time , can neither satisfie our grievances and complaints , nor remove our feares and doubts , nor can not without protestation bee admitted by us his maiesties subiects , who earnestly desire that trueth and peace may bee established , and that for the reasons following , 1. to keepe silence in any thing , that may serve for the good of the kirk , whether it bee in preaching , prayer , or in proposing , and voiceing in a lawfull assemblie of the kirk , is against the word of god , esai . 62. 6. yee that are the lords remembranceers , keepe not silence , and give him no rest , till he establish , and till hee make ierusalem a praise in the earth : 1 king. 18. 21. like the halting of the people betweene two opinions , and their not answering a word , when the lord called them to give a testimonie ; act. 20. 20. i have keeped backe nothing that was profitable unto you : and againe , 1 cor. 12. 7. math. 15. 18. rom. 1. 18. revel . 2. 14. 20. and 3. 15 , and therefore to keepe silence , or not to medle with corruptions , whether in doctrine , sacraments , worship , or discipline , in a generall assemblie of the kirk , conveened for that end , were the readie way to move the lord to deny his spirit unto us , and to provoke him to wrath against our proceedings , and might be imputed unto us for preiudice , for collusion , and for betraying our selves , and the posteritie . 2. this predetermination is against our supplications , and protestations , wherein wee have showne our selves so earnest for a free generall assemblie , contrare to every limitation of this kinde , so far preiudging the libertie thereof , is against the confession of faith , registrated in the parliament 1567. declaring , that one cause of the councels of the kirk is for good policie and order to bee observed in the kirk , and for to change such things as men have devised , when they rather foster superstition then edifie the kirk , using the same , and is against our late confession , wherein wee have promised to forbeare all novations till they bee tryed , which obligeth us to forebeare now , and to trye them in an assembly & by all lawfull meanes to labour to recover the former puriue and libertie of the gospell to which this limitation is directly repugnant , our libertie in agenerall assembly beeing the principall of all lawfull meanes serving to that end . 3 , this were directly contrarie to the nature and ends of a generall assembly , which having authority from god , beeing conveened according to the lawes of the kingdome , and receiving power from the whole collective bodie of the kirk , for the good of religion , and safety of the kirke ; what-so-ever maye conduce for these good ends in wisedome and modestie should bee proponed , examined , and determined without prelimitation , either of the matters to be treated , or of the libertie of the members thereof . it beeing manifest , that as farre as the assembly is limited in the matters to bee treated , and in the members to bee used , the necessarie ends of the assembly , and the supreme law , which is the safetie of the kirk , are as farre hindered , and prejudged . this limitation is against the discipline of the kirk , which booke 2. chap. 7. declareth this to be one of her liberties , that the assembly hath power to abrogate and abolish all statuts and ordinances concerning ecclesiasticall matters that are found noysome and unprofitable and agree not with the time , or are abused by the people , and against the acts of the generall assembly . like as the pretended assembly 1610. declareth for the common affaires of the kirke ( without exception or limitation ) it is necessare that there bee yearely generall assemblies , and what order can bee hoped for heere-after if this assembly indicted after so long intermission , and so many grosse corruptions bee limited , and that more than ever any lawfull assembly of the kirk was , when it was yearely observed . 5. it is ordained in parl. 11. act 40. k. iames 6. anent the necessare and lawfull forme of all parliaments that nothing shall bee done , or commanded to bee done , which maye directly or indirectly prejudge the libertie of free voycing or reasoning of the estates , or any of them in time comming . it is also appointed in parl. 6 : act 92. k. iames 6. that the lordes of counsell and session proceed in all civill causes intended or depending before them , or to bee intended , to cause execute their decrees notwithstanding any private wryting , charge , or command in the contrare , and generally by the acts of parliament appointing everie matter for its owne judicatorie , and to all judicatories their owne freedome . and therefore much more doeth this libertie belong to the supreme judicatorie ecclesiastick in matters so important as concerneth god's honour and worship immediatly , the salvation of the peoples soules & right constitution of the kirk whose liberties & priledges are confirmed parl. 12. k. iames. 6. parl. 1. k. charles . ▪ for if it be carefully provided by diverse acts of parliament , especially parl. 12. act 148. k. iames 6. that there bee no forstalling or regrating of thinges pertaining to this naturall life : what shall bee thought of this spirituall forstalling and regrating which tendeth to the famishing or poysoning of the soules of the people both now and in the generations afterward . 6. it were contrare to our protestations , proceedings and complaints against the late innovations . and it might bee accompted an innovation and usurpation as grosse and dangerous to us , and the posteritie , and as prejudiciall to religion as any complained upon by us , to admitt limitations , and secret or open determinations , which belongeth to no person or judicatorie , but to an asembly , or to consent to , and approve by our silence the same praedeterminations it were to be guiltie of that our selves , which we cōdemne in others wee maye easilye judge how the apostles before the counsell of ierusalem , the fathers bee fore the nicene councell , and our predecessors before the assembly ▪ holden at the reformation , and afterwards would have taken such dealing . that this proclamation commandeth all his majesties subjects for maintenance of the religion already established to subscribe and renew the confession of faith subscribed before in the yeere 1580 and afterward . and reqyreth the lords of privie counsell to take such course anent the same , and the generall band of maintenance of the true religion , and the kings person , that it may bee subscribed , and renewed throughout the whole kingdome with all possible diligence , which cannot now be performed by us . for although of late wee would have beene glad that our selves and other his majesties subjects had beene commanded by authoritie to sweare , and subscribe the generall confession of faith against popish errous , and superstitions : and now would bee glad that all others should joyne with us in our late couenant and confession , descending more specially to the novations and errours of the time , and obliging us to the defence of religion ; & of the kings majesties person , and authoritie , and for these endes to the mutuall defence everie one of us of another , yet can wee not nowe after so necessarie . and so solemne a specification returne to the generall for the reasons following . 1. no meanes have beene left unassayed against our late confession of faith and covenant so solemnely sworne and subscribed . for first wee were prest with the rendering and rescinding of our covenant . next an alteration in some substantiall pointes was urged , 3 , a declaration was motioned , which tended to the enervation thereof , and now wee finde in the same straine , that wee are put to a new tryall , and the last meane is used more subtile than the former : that by this new subscription our late covenant , & confession maye bee quite absorbed and buried in oblivion , that where it was intended and sworne to bee an everlasting covenant never to bee forgotten , it shall bee never more remembred , the one shall bee cryed up , and the other drowned in the noyse thereof , and thus the new subscription now urged ( although in a different waye ) shall prove equivalent to the rendering of the covenant , or what of that kinde hath before beene assayed . like as the reasons against the rendering of the covenant , doe militate directly against this new motion . 3. if we should now enter upon this new subscription , wee would thinke our selves guiltie of mocking god , and taking his name in vaine , for the tears that began to be poured forth at the solemnizing of the covenant are not yet dryed up & wyped away , & the joyfull noyse which then began to sound hath not yet ceased ▪ and there can bee no new necessitie from us , and upon our part pretended for a ground of urging this new subscription , at first intended to be an abjuration of popery upon us who are knowne to hate poperie with an unfained hatred , and have all this yeere bygone given large testimonie of our zeale against it . as wee are not to multiply miracles upō gods part , so ought wee not to multiplie solemne oathes and covenants upon our part , and thus to play with oathes , as children doe with their toyes , without necessitie . 3. neither would wee in giving way to this new subscription think our selves free of perjurie : for as wee were driven by an undeclinable necessitie to enter into a mutuall covenant , so are wee bound , not onely by the law of god and nature , but by our solemne oath and subscription , against all divisive motions to promove and observe the same without violation : and it is most manifest , that having already refused to render , alter , or destroye our covenant , nothing can bee more contrarie and adverse to our pious intentions and sincere resolutions , than to consent to such a subscription and oath , as both in the intention of the urgers , and in the nature and condition of the matter urged , is the readie waye to extinguish , and to drowne in oblivion the band of our union and conjunction that they bee no more remembred . in this case we are called to lay seriously to our hearts . 1 , that wee have sworne that wee shall neither directly , nor iudirectly suffer our selves to bee divided and with-drawne from this blessed & loyall conjunction , which consisteth not only in the generall confession but also in our explanation , and application thereof , but on the contrarie , shall by all lawfull meanes , labour to further and promove the same . 2. that our union and conjunction may bee observed without violation , ( and so without mutilation of our application ) wee call the living lord to witnesse , as wee shall answere to christ in the great day , &c. 4. this new subscription , in stead of performing our vowes , would be a reall testimonie and confession before the world , that wee have beene transgressours in making rash vowes , that wee repent our selves of former zeale and fordwardnesse against the particulars exprest first in our supplications , complaints , and protestations , & next abjured in our covenant , that wee in our iudgment prefer the general confession unto this , which necessarly was now made more speciall ; & that we are now under the fair pretext and honest cover of a new oath recanting and undoing that , which upon so mature deliberation wee have beene doing before , this beside all other evills , were to make waye and open a doore to the re-entry of the particulars abjured , and to repent our selves of our chiefest consolations , and to lie both against god and our owne soules . 5. it hath beene often objected , that our confession of faith , and covenant was unlawfull , because it wanted the warrants of publick authoritie , and it hath beene answered by us , that wee were not destitute of the warrant civill and ecclesiasticall which authorized the former covenant . and although wee could have wished that his majestie had added both his subscription and authoritie unto it , yet the lesse constraint from authoritie and the more libertie , the lesse hypocrisie , and more sinceritie hath appeared : but by this new subscription urged by authoritie wee both condemne our former subscription as unlawfull . because alleadged to bee done without authoritie , and precondemne also the lyke laudable course in the like necessitie to bee taken by the posteritie , 6. what is the use of merch-stones upon borders of lands , the like use hath confessions of faith in the kirke , to disterminate and divide betwixt trueth and errour : and the renewing and applying of confessions of faith to the present errours and corruptions , are not unlike ryding of merches and therfore to content our selves with the generall , and ro returne to it , from the particulare application of the confession necessarlye made upon the invasion or creeping in of errours within the borders of the kirke , if it bee not a removeing of the merch stone from the owne place , it is at least the hyding of the merch in the ground that it bee not seene , which at this time were verie unseasonable for two causes . one is ▪ because poperie is so pregnant , and powerfull in this land , as wee have learned of late . the other , because the papists who upon the urging of the service booke , and canons , 〈…〉 of our returne to rome , will upon this our subscription aryse from their dispareing of us , unto their 〈◊〉 presumption . none of us will denye , but the 〈◊〉 confessionn of faith registrated in the acts of parliament , doeth by consequence containe this short confession and abjuration : yet were it not sufficient against poperye to subscribe the one without the other . how then shall wee thinke that the more generall confession and abjuration at this time , when the urging of such popish books hath extorted from us so necessarie an application , and doth still call for a testimonie , to bee compleet eneugh without it . 7. the papists shall heereby bee occasioned to renew their old objection against us , annuas & menstruas sides de deo decernunt . that our faith changeth with the moone , or once in the yeere . other reformed kirkes might justly wonder at our inconstancie in changing our confession without any reall necessitie , & that in one & the same yere it commeth forth larger , & more particulare , then shorter , and more generall : and our adversaries will not faile to traduce us as troublers of the peace of the kirke and kingdome without anye necessar cause . 8. it will likewise prove a confirmation of their errour , who think they maye both subscribe the confession of faith , and receive the service booke , and canons , which is not onely a direct scandaling of them , but also a readie waye to put a weapon in their hands against our selves , who maintaine and professe that these and such other evills are abjured in the confession of faith. 9. it wee should now sweare this confession wee should bee obliged by our oath to maintaine perth articles , which are the innovations already introduced in the worship of god , and to maintaine episco pacie , with the civill places , and power of kirkmen . because wee are bound to sweare this confession by vertue of and conforme unto the kings command signed by his sacred majestie of the date september 9. 1638. ( these are the very words subjoined to the confession and band , and prefixed to the subscriptions ) and it cannot bee denyed , but any oath ministred unto us , must either bee refused ; or else taken according to the known minde , professed intention , and expresse command of authoritie urging the same : and it is most manifest , that his majesties minde , intention , and commandement , is no other , but that the confession bee sworne , fot the maintenance of religion , as it is alreadie or presently professed , ( these two being coincident , altogether one and the same , not only in our common forme of speaking , but in all his maiesties proclamations ) and thus as it includeth , and conteineth within the compasse thereof , the foresaids novations and episcopacie , which under that name were also ratified , in the first parliament holden by his maiestie . and where it may be objected , that the counsellours have subscribed the confession of faith , as it was professed 1580. and will not urge the subscription in an other sense upon the subjects . we answere , first , the act of counsell containing that declaration , is not as yet published by proclamation . secondly , if it were so published , it behooved of necessitie either be repugnant to his majesties declared judgement and command , which is more not to sweare without warrand from authoritie ( a fault although unjustly often objected unto us ) or else wee must affirme the religion in the yeare 1580. and at this time to bee altogether one and the same ▪ and thus must acknowledge , that there is no novation of religion , which were a formall contradiction to that we have sworn . 3. by approving the proclamation anent the oath to be administred to ministers , according to the act of parliament , which is to sweare simple obedience to the diocesan bishop , and by warning all archbishops and bishops to bee present ; as having voice and place in the assemblie : they seeme to determine , that in their judgement the confession of faith , as it was professed 1580. doeth consist with episcopacie , whereas wee by our oath have referred the tryall of this or any other question of that kinde to the generall assemblie and parliament . 10. this subscription and oath in the minde and intention of authoritie , and consequently in our swearing thereof , may consist with the corruptions of the service book and canons , which wee have abjured as other heads of poperie : for both this present proclamation , and his majesties former proclamations at linlithgow , striveling , edinburgh ; the lords of privie counsell in their approbation of the same ; and the prelates and doctors who stand for the service book and canons , doe all speake plainly , or import so much , that these bookes are not repugnant to the confession of faith , and that the introduceing of them is no novation of religion or law : and therefore wee must either refuse to subscribe now , or we must confesse contrarie to our late oath , and to a cleare trueth , that the service booke and canons are no innovations in religion . and , although the present bookes bee discharged by proclamation , yet if wee shall by any deed of our owne testifie , that they may consist with our confession of faith , within a very short time , either the same books , or some other like unto them , with some small change , may bee obtruded upon us , who by our abjuration ( if wee adhere unto it ) have fred both our selves , and the posteritie of all such corruptions , and have laide a faire foundation for the pure worship of god in all time coming . 11. although there be indeed no substantiall difference betweene that which wee have subscribed , and the confession subscribed 1580. more then there is betweene that which is hid , and that which is revealed . a march stone hid in the ground , and uncovered , betwixt the hand closed and open , betwixt a sword scheathed and drawn , or betwixt the large confession , registrat in the acts of parliament , and the short confession , or ( if we may with reverence ascend yet higher ) betweene the old testament and the new , yet as to scheath our sword when it should bee drawne , were imprudencie ; or at the commandment of princes , professedly popish in their dominions , after the subjects had subscribed both confessions , to subscribe the first without the second ▪ or at the will of a jewish magistrate , openly denying the new testament , to subscribe the old alone , after that they have subscribed both , were horrible impietie against god , and treacherie against the trueth : right so , for us to subscribe the former a-part , as it is now urged and framed , without the explanation and application thereof at this time , when ours is rejected ; and the subscribers of the former refuse to subscribe ours , as containing something substantially different , and urge the former upon us , as different from ours , and not expressing the speciall abjuration of the evils , supplicated against by us , were nothing else , but to deny and part from our former subscription , if not formally , yet interpretatively . old eleazar , who would not seeme to eat forbidden meat , and the confessors and martyres of old , who would not seeme by delivering some of their papers , to render the bible , or to deny the trueth , may teach us our duetie in this case , although our lives were in hazard for refusing this subscription : and who knoweth , but the lord ▪ may bee calling his people now , who have proceeded so farre in professing his trueth at this time , to such trials and confessions , as his faithfull witnesses have given of old ; that in this point also our doing may bee a document both to the succeeding ages , and to other kirks to whom for the present wee are made a spectacle . 12. if any bee so forgetfull of his oath ( which god forbid ) as to subscribe this confession , as it is now urged , he doeth according to the proclamation acquiesce in this declaration of his majesties will , and doeth accept of such a pardon as hath need to bee ratified in parliament , and thus doeth turn our glorie unto shame , by confessing our guiltinesse , where god from heaven hath made us guiltlesse , and by the fire of his spirit from heaven hath accepted of our service , and doeth depart from the commandement of god , the practise of the godly in former times , and the worthie and laudable example of our worthie and religious progenitours , in obedience whereof , and conforme to which wee made profession to subscribe : for there is no particular act required of us , to whom the pardon is presented in this proclamation , but this new subscription allanerlie . 13 , the generall band now urged to be subscribed , as it containeth many clauses not so fitting the present time as that wherein it was subscribed , so is it deficient in a point , at this time most necessarie , of the reformation of our lives , that we shall answerablie to our profession , be examples to others , of all godlinesse , sobernesse and righteousnesse and of every duetie wee ow to god and man ; without which we can not now subscribe this confession , least we loose the bands to wickednesse , seeme to repent of our former resolutions and promises , and chose to have our portion with hypocrites , professing and sweareing that we know god , but in our workes denying him , being abominable , disobedient , and unto every good worke reprobate . 14. since the narrative of the generall hand is now changed , and some lines , expressing at length the papists , and their adherents to be the partie from whom the danger to religion , and the kings majestie was threatned , are left out , and no designation made of the partie from whom the danger is now threatred , we are made either to thinke , that our subscription at this time is unnecessarie ; or to suspect that we who have supplicated and entered in covenant , are understood to be the partie ; especially since the lords of counsell have in the act september 22. ratifiing the proclamation , found themselves bound to use their best endeavours , that all his majesties good subjects may rest satisfied with his majesties declaration , since also we have beene ( although undeservedly challenged of disorders , distractions , and dangers to religion , and his majesties authoritie , and since in the forsaid act and in the missive directed to his majestie , the lords of councell offer their lives , and fortunes to his majestie , in repressing all such , as shall hereafter prease to disturbe the peace of this kirk and kingdome , which being expressed in a generalitie is by many applyed to us and interpreted of our adhereing to our covenant ; we should therefore , by our subscription of the covenant , as it is now conceaved , both do directly against our owne mindes , in condemning our selves , wherein we are innocent , and should consent to our owne hurt to the suppressing of the cause which we maintaine , and to the repressing mutually one of us of another , directly contrare , to our former solemne oath and subscription . 15. the subscribing of this confession by the lords of his majesties privie counsell , who by their place and high employment are publicke peace-makers , and by others who have not subscribed the late confession will make the breach wider , and the lamentable division of this kirk more desperate then ever before ; some haveing sworne to labour by all lawfull meanes to recover the former libertie , and puritie of religion ▪ and others maintaining that for puritie , which is already established , some believing and professing that the evils supplicated against , are abjured in that confession of faith ; and others maintaining the confession of faith , and these corruptions ( although for the present discharged by authority ) not to be inconsistent : and beside this many divisions and subdivisions will ensue to the dulefull renting of the kirk and kingdome , makeing way for the wrath and many iudgements of god often threatned by his faithfull servants , which all the godly ought to labour by all means to prevent . 16. wee represent also to the honourable lords of privie counsell to bee considered , that the doctrine , discipline , and vse of sacraments are sworn , and the contrare abjured , according to the word of god , and the meaning of the kirk of scotland , in the books of discipline , and acts of assemblies , and that in the oath there is no place left to the generality of any mans conception of the true faith and religion , nor to any private interpretation , or mentall reservation . for these and the like considerations , in our own name , and in name of all who will adhere to the late covenant , subscribed by us , and sealed from heaven , we from our duetie to god , our king , our native countrey , our selves , and the posteritie , least our silence import a satisfaction of our desires , and a stopping of our mouth , from necessarie supplication for things yet to bee obteined from his majesties just and gracious disposition , are constrained to declare and protest , first , that the cause and occasion of the distractions of the kirk and commonwealth , are no wayes to be imputed unto us , or our needlesse fears , but to the innovations and corruptions of religion , which against the acts and order of this kirk , and the lawes of the kingdome have beene pressed upon us the people of god , and his majesties loyall subjects ; who , although under great thraldome , were living in peace and quietnesse , labouring in all godlinesse and honestie to do our duety to god and man. secondly , we protest , that all questions and doubtes that arise , concerning the freedome of the assemblie whether in the constitution , and members thereof , or in the matters to bee treated , or in the manner and order of proceeding , be remitted to the determination of the assemblie it selfe , as the only proper and competent iudge ; and that it shall be lawfull for us , being authorized with lawfull commissions , as at other times when the urgent necessitie of the kirk shall require , so in this exigence to assemble our selves at the diet appointed , notwithstanding any impediment or prorogation to the contrare . and being assembled , against all qualifications and predeterminations , or presupposals , to propone , treat , reason , vote , and conclude , according to the word of god , confession of faith , and acts of lawfull assemblies , in all ecclesiasticall matters ; perteining to the assemblie , and tending to the advancement of the kingdome of christ and good of religion . thirdly , since archbishops and bishops have no warrand for their office in this kirk , since it is contrare both to reason and to the actes of the kirk , that any have place and voice in the assemblie , who are not authorized with lawfull commissions : and seeing both in commoun equitie , and by the tenor of this proclamation they are made lyable to the tryall and censure of the assemblie , wee protest , that they bee not present , as having place or voice in the assemblie , but as rci to compeere , for underlying tryall and censure upon the generall complaints alreadie made ; and the partiular accusations to bee given in against them ; and that the warning given by his majesties proclamation , and this our protestation , bee a sufficient citation to them , to compeer before the assemblie , for their tryall , and censure in life , office , and benefice . fourthly , we solemnly protest , that we do constantly adhere to our oath and subscription of the confession of faith and covenant , lately renewed and approven , with rare and undenyable evidences from heaven ; of the wonderfull workeings of his spirit , in the hearts both of pastors and people , through all the parts of the kingdome , and that we stand to all parts and clauses thereof , and particularly to the explanation and application , containing both our abjuration of , and our union against the particular evils and corruptions of the time , a duety which the lord at this time especially craveth at our hands . fifthly , we also protest , that none of us who have subscribed , and doe adhere to our subscription of the late covenant , be charged , or urged , either to procure the subscriptions of others or to subscribe our selves unto any other confession or covenant , conteining any derogation there unto , especially that mentioned in the proclamation , without the necessary explanation and the application thereof alreadie sworn by us for the reasons above expressed : and because , as we did in our former protestation appeale from the lords of his majesties counsell , so doe we now by these renew our solemne appeale , with all solemnities requisite unto the next free generall assemblie and parliament , as the only supreame nationall judicatories competent , to judge of nationall causes and proceedings . sixthly , wee protest , that no subscription , whether by the lords of counsell or others , of the confession , mentioned in the proclamation , and enjoined for the maintenance of religion , as it is now alreadie ▪ or at this present time established , and professed within this kingdome , without any innovation of religion or law , be any manner of way prejudiciall to our covenant , wherein we have sworne to forbeare the practise of novations alreadie introduced , &c. till they be tryed in a free assemblie , and to labour by all lawfull meanes , to recover the puritie and libertie of the gospell as it was established and professed before the foresaid innovations : and in like manner that no subscription forsaid be any derogation to the true and sound meaning of our worthie predecessours at the time of their subscription in the year 1581. and afterward . withall warneing and exhorting all men who lay to heart the cause of religion against the coruptions of the time and the present estate of things , both to subscribe the covenant as it hath been explained , and necessarely applied , and as they love the puritie and libertie of the gospell to hold back their hands from all other covenants , till the assemblie now indicted be conveined , and determine the present differences and divisions , and preserve this countrey from contrarie oathes . seventhly , as his majesties royall clemency appeareth , in forgiving and forgetting what his majestie conceaveth to be a disorder or done amisse , in the proceeding of any ; so are we very confident of his majesties approbation to the integritie of our hearts , and peaceablenesse of our wayes , and actions all this time past : and therefore , we protest , that we still adhere to our former complaints , protestations , lawfull meetings , proceedings , mutuall defences , &c. all which as they have beene in themselves lawfull , so were they to us , pressed with so many grievances in his majesties absence from this native kingdome most necessarie , and ought to be regarded as good offices , and pertinent duties of faithfull christians , loyall subjects , and sensible members of this kirk and common-wealth , as wee trust at all occasions to make manifest to all good men , especially to his sacred majestie for whose long and prosperous government , that we may live a peacable and quiete life in all godlinesse and honestie , we earnestly pray . whereupon a noble earle , iames earle of montrose , &c. in name of the noble men , master alexander gibson , younger , of durie , in name of the barons ; george porterfield merchant burges of glasgow , in name of the borrowes , master harie rollogue minister , at edinburgh , in name of the ministers , and master archbald iohnston , reader heereof , in name of all who adhere to the confession of faith and covenant , lately renewed within this kingdome , tooke instruments in the hands of three notars present , at the said mercat crosse of edinburgh , being invironed with great numbers of the forsaid noblemen ▪ barons , gentlemen , borrowes , ministers and commons , before many hundred witnesses , and craved the extract thereof : and in token of their duetifull respect to his majestie , confidence of the equitie of their cause , and innocencie of their carriage and hope of his majesties gratious acceptance , they offred in all humilitie with submisse reverence a copie thereof to the herauld . finis . by the king, a proclamation containing his majesties gracious and ample indemnity. england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) 1688 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a46541 wing j320 estc r43308 27154030 ocm 27154030 110012 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a46541) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 110012) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1721:49) by the king, a proclamation containing his majesties gracious and ample indemnity. england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) james ii, king of england, 1633-1701. 1 sheet ([1] p.). edinburgh, printed by the heir of andrew anderson ..., and reprinted at london by john wallis ..., [london] : 1688. "given at our court at white-hall the twenty fifth dayof september, 1688. and of our reign the fourth year. by his majesties command, melfort." reproduction of original in bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1660-1688. 2007-11 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 pip willcox sampled and proofread 2008-08 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2009-01 megan marion sampled and proofread 2009-01 megan marion text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal coat of arms by the king a proclamation , containing his majesties gracious ample indemnity . james rex , james the seventh by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. to all and sundry our good subjects , whom these presents do , or may concern , greeting : we having been graciously pleased , by our proclamation for indulgence , for the better uniting of the hearts of our subjects amongst themselves , and removing of all discords and iealousies , which the difference of religion , and of their several perswasions did occasion and foment amongst them , to allow to all our subjects , of whatsoever perswasions , the free exercise of their religion , upon the terms , and with the provisions mentioned in our gracious proclamation for indulgence : and we still persisting in our princely and fatherly care of the peace , quiet , and prosperity of all our subjects , and that we may at once extinguish all fears and iealousies , that any of our subjects may have deservedly incurred , by their crimes and delinquencies against our laws , and convince all our subjects , even the most obstinat and irreclaimable , of their happiness and security under the protection and benign influence of our most auspicious and most clement government ; therefore , we , of our unparalelled clemency and goodness , do , by vertue of our soveraign authority , absolute power and prerogative royal , and from the fulness , and plenitude of the same , pardon , remit , indemnifie , and for ever acquit all our subjects , of whatsoever quality , state , or condition , of all crimes , of perduellion , rebellion , treason , or concealing of treason ; harbouring , reset , supplying , corresponding and intercommuning with rebels ; and all other species's or kinds of laese-majestie , as well common , as statutory ; and of all crimes of leasing-making , depraving , or misconstruing of our laws , misconstructing of our proceedings , or misrepresenting to vs any of our subjects , or vs to our subjects ; with all other crimes , offences , delinquencies , or transgressions of whatsoever nature , or quality , committed , acted , or done by any of our subjects , by word , or writ , or any other acts of commission or omission , preceeding the date of these presents , which directly or indirectly , are , or may import , by any inference , or construction , the contravention of any law , act of parliament , custom , or constitution of that our ancient kingdom , or may infer any pain or punishment against any of our subjects ; to the prejudice of their lives , fortunes , estates , fame , or reputations , either ad vindictam publicam vel privatam ; or for damage and interest : all which , we , by vertue of our royal authority , and out of the plenitude , and fulness of our power , will , ordain and declare to be , and are hereby pardoned , acquitted , indemnified , and put in perpetual oblivion , for now and ever . declaring and ordaining , that this general pardon and indemnity , shall be as valid and effectual to all our subjects for their exoneration , and security in the premisses , as if every particular crime , offence , deliquency , or m●●●emeanor were herein particularly set down ; and as if remissions were past under our great seal for the same ; wherewith we , for our self , and our successors , have dispensed , and hereby do dispense for ever . likeas , we do hereby prohibite and discharge any of our ministers or iudges , to call in question , any of our said subjects , either criminally or civilly for the same in any time coming : and do declare and ordain , that this our general indemnity shall be interpreted in the most benign , favourable and comprehensive sense , the same can admit of , for the security of our subjects in the premisses . excepting always forth and from this our indemnity , all forfaultures and sentences or dooms thereof , and that as to the estates only thereby forefaulted , but without prejudice to the persons hereby indemnified , and their memories and posterities , against whom the said sentences or dooms were given , and pronounced ; as likewise , excepting all pecuniary fines or mulcts already paid or transacted : and generally , excepting all fines exceeding one thousand merks scots the fine , imposed upon heretors and liferenters , as to which fines , nevertheless not paid or transacted , and yet hereby excepted : it is our royal will and pleasure , that all execution , personal or real therefore be suspended , for the space of one year hereafter ; during the which time , we are resolved to take the same into our own gracious consideration . and further , excepting forth , and from this our indemnity , the murderers of james late arch-bishop of st. andrews , the murderers of mr. _____ pearson , minister at carsfairn , and of thomas kennoway , and duncan stuart at swine abbay ; as also , all murders , witchcrafts , assassinations , depredations , roberies , spulȝies , thefts and mutilations of private persons ; all which crimes , and those guilty thereof , are no way to be comprehended in , or have any benefit any manner of way , by this our pardon and indemnity : and likewise in particular , excepting the persons and estates of mr. robert ferguson preacher , patrick hume , sometimes called sir patrick hume , of polwart , andrew fletcher , sometime of saltoun , and mr. gilbert burnet , doctor of theologie : as also , coll m cdonald and his associats , who were accessory to the late opposition made to a party of our forces , under the command of the deceast captain m ckenȝie of suddy , lately in lochabor : as also , all false coyners , and all persons ●ow in prison for publick crimes , from all benefit of the same ; with which exceptions and restrictions 〈◊〉 , and no other , we hereby publish and declare our pardon and indemnity . and lastly , to the end all our good subjects may have notice of this our royal will and pleasure , we do hereby command our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers , pursevants , and massengers at arms , to make timeous proclamation thereof , at the mercat cross of edinburgh ; for all which , these presents shall be to all persons whatsoever , who may be therein any way concerned , a sufficient warrant . given at our court at white-hall the twenty fifth day of september , 1688. and of our reign , the fourth year . by his majesties command , melfort . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty : anno dom. 1688. and reprinted at london by john wallis in white-fryars , near the great gate . 1688. some thoughts concerning the affairs of this session of parliament. 1700 fletcher, andrew, 1655-1716. 1700 approx. 28 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 16 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a39786 wing f1297a estc r222664 99833811 99833811 38289 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a39786) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 38289) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2208:01) some thoughts concerning the affairs of this session of parliament. 1700 fletcher, andrew, 1655-1716. 30 p. s.n.], [edinburgh? : printed in the year m.dcc. [1700] attributed by wing to andrew fletcher. copy stained; with print show-through. reproduction of the original in the william andrews clark memorial library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. 2007-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-07 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-02 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion some thoughts concerning the affairs of this session of parliament ▪ 1700. — quis , eum ruat ardnus aether complos tenuisse manus . — printed in the year m. dcc . some thoughts concerning the affairs of this session of parliament , 1700. of all governments monarchy is the best , and least subject to inconveniences ; but because the monarch is a man subject to errors in judgment , and capable of being byassed in his affections , it was therefore necessary , that the common-wealth , as it gave him great power over them , so it should assigne him also the best helps , for directing both his will and judgement . the first help was law , which is the rule both to king and people . the second , were certain councills and counsellors with whom to consult in matters of most importance , as we see in the dyets of germany , the courts of spain , and the parliament of england , without which no matters of moment can be concluded . the romans had their senat , and the graecians their ephori . as we are happy in a limited monarchical government , so it has succeeded well with our kings when they have had vvise counsellours , and have been advised by their parliaments in things relating to the publick good. the nature of our parliament is explained in the 8. par. k. ja. 6. act 2. where it 's said ; that by the court of parliament under god , the kingdom hath been upholden ; rebellion , and traiterous subjects punished ; the good and faithfull preserved , and maintained , and the laws and acts of parliament ( by which all good men are governed ) are made and established , &c. this act was made whilst our king was yet amongst our selves , but no sooner did we loose him , than we dwindled all of a sudden into old age : and altho' the whole island has been christened by the name of great britain , the english only have reaped the honour and advantage of this union . henry vii . of england said to one of his counsellours , that the marriage between his daughter , and our king , would make scotland an accession to the crown of england , some vvay or other : nor could it be otherways , when our kings , ever since the union , have lived in england , and that the english being made secret to our nearest concerns have had the art to influence our counsells for their own interest . kingdoms are united either when they become the same people in subjection : ( such is our union with england ) or when they are united in laws and interest ; so that they become the same common-wealth : one head rules them , and all inferiour members conspire for the prosperity of the whole body . the last of these unions is good for both : whereas the first is neither lasting , nor can all parties be justly dealt with by the same master . we knovv portugall soon revolted from spain . if we are stated , that , as the poorer part of this island , vve are to enjoy nothing that the english may think of ill consequence to them ; the question is , whether we should prefer their interest or our own ? and surely , a just king who is father of both countries , must be put to it , by deliberate reflections upon the oaths he has taken to both kingdoms . our secretaries who have been obliged to attend at court , were the persons by whom the advice of the privy council concerning the affairs of this nation , has been communicated to our kings , and by whom their majesties have signified their will to the subject ; but it may be doubted whether the advice , followed by those kings , has been that of england , that of the secretaries , or that of the council here by the great trust our secretaries have , they ought to be guardians to their country ; that by their vigilant care and probity , subjects may find experimentally , that they are as much for their advantage , as they have power and dignitie . no privat advantage , no self-ends should move them to betray their charge ; no english dependence should dare them ; but by their virtue they should raise their character above the envy of wicked men . they should mind what tacitus says ; that tho' the deliberations of all other men do commonly consist in the considerations of utility , and profit , yet the state of a prince is such that he ought principalie to respect fame and reputation . it should be a great awe upon them to be honest ; that favorites of princes have been so often sacrificed to an oppressed people . plutarch sayeth that the counsellors of dionysius , phalaris , and apollodorus , were justlie tormented by the people ; because he who seduceth a prince deserveth no less to be abhor'd of all men , than one that should poyson a publick fountain , whereof all men should drink . henry viii . in the beginning of his reign , to satisfie his english subjects who importuned him for justice against emson and dudly for the evill council they had given to henry vii . in matters of exactions and impositions , delivered them to be punished according to law. vve might be liable to suffer , if we had no other to informe his majesty , about our ease and riches , than secretaries and courtiers , from whom must depend the character of every one in publick trust here . it 's our parliaments therefore that have taken notice of our concerns ▪ and it is to this parliament we have recourse for our present affairs ; seeing his majestie is for the present so occupied in managing the interests of england and holland , that he leaves tacitely to our honourable members of parliament , not only to call missinformers to an account , but to inform himself in every thing concerns our good. we would have been very happy to have had the presence of his majesty in this session of parliament , according to his royal promise , which has been allways necessary for us : that he might be informed at one view , what is fit to be done in every juncture of affairs , that he might know what part of his kingdom flourishes , and what part of it languishes : that he who is above all in honour and authority , would be likeways interessed for the benefit of the publick , and that he might have occasion to influence his people to their duty , by his piery justice , valour , clemency , and other princely qualities . noble was that speech of henry iv. of france , and worthy of so good a king , when he assembled the states of his kingdom at rouen 1596. which he ends thus . i have not called you to this place , as my predecessors have done , to oblige you blindly to approve of my will ; i have summoned you to receive , to believe , and to follow your councils : in a word , to make you my guardians . how acceptable would such a discourse be to this present parliament , from his majesty ? and what might we hope , but to be watched over ; our good , our ease , and wellfare , to be the end of his undertakings , and the happiness , strength , wealth , and honour of our country to be his joy and satisfaction . but it 's you , most honourable members , he makes at present judges of every thing is for the benefit of this nation , and in whose hands he depositates his royal care of the people . and surely his majesty , who has been our deliverer , will abominat that base and dishonourable method publick ministers had of corrupting our members of parliament , by places , money , or promises , to betray the interest of this nation . every one knows the plot was first hatched at court , of making or abrogating such and such laws : some favourit read the list of our members of parliament , and as they found a name for their purpose , they marked it with a capital letter . if the names marked did not exceed the remainder of the list , so much money was order'd to increase the number : and this was recommended to the management of the commissioner , and secretaries , who so soon as they arriv'd in scotland , set all hands to work for the imploying it to good purpose . may all our present members of parliament detest those ancient vices , and remember , rhat our king knows the reward belongs to merit ; knows the dutie of a good patriot , and the treacherie of one betrays his country ; let them all then lay to heart the good of this kingdom . a nobleman , as a nobleman , is obliged to imploy his powerful assistance to the publick , to maintain it with his wealth , his riches , and his blood ▪ he ought to be the supporter and pillar of his country , a defence to the poor and oppressed , and a check to the violence of wicked men. these were the qualities have made the predecessors of some of our nobility so famous in historie , and their memorie so dear to posteritie . a gentleman who 's a member of parliament , is to be faithfull to his trust , both out of principles of honour and interest ; for if we take away honestie from him , he will differ nothing from the refuse of society ; or by what other distinguishing character can we know him from the mob ? if he betray the liberties of his countrie , how can he hope to transmit his estate to his heirs , or secure his friends from slaverie and oppression ▪ and all members of parliament are to remember , that as they are the representativ●… of this nation , so they are the protectors of its priviledges ; who ought to examine the interest of the people , contribute to their wealth and security , be mediators between them and his majesty , endeavour to remove ill counsellours from him ; and they ought to act in every part , as men of probity : being bound to discharge their trust , both by duty and oath . nor let them degenerate from that boldness becomes every man stands up for his country ; but be couragious like helvidius priscus when he receaved a message from the emperour vespasian , not to appear in the senat , or if he came , not to interpose his opinion in a debate which was to be moved there ; sent back word , that his character of a senator required his attendance , nor would he baulk any thing that became him according to conscience and duty . vespasian , provoked with what he thought insolence in this reply , threatned to put him to death . to which second message he returned thus : did i ever tell the emperour that i was immortal ? his majesty , i suppose , will do his pleasure and i will do my duty ; it is in his power to put me to death unjustly , but it is in my power to die virtuously . the preferring the good of the common-wealth to any self-interest , is the greatest ornament of the soul ; and when all our actions are measured in respect of their objects , most noble are these which aim most at the publick good ; by which virtue the heathen heroes became the peoples gods ; whereas private interest has been allways the business of slaves . who is it deserves universal praise , but those who designe universal advantages ? those are deservedly called fathers of their country ; and it should be enacted a paricide ▪ to wound the reputation of such , whose ▪ fame shall be like medals , grow stil the more illustrious the older they grow . epaminondas is admired who was allways more busied in raising the glory of his country than in heaping pelf for himself . decius who threw himself amongst his enemies to gain a victory to his country shall live to eternity . and for the love of their country it was that aristides of athens , being sent ambassador with themistocles who was his enemie , willed him , at their departure out of town , that they might leave all their emulations . altho' the law of this kingdom hath attained to a great perfection by its few and clear statutes , nevertheless as the affairs of the world , and our own circumstances change , we must have parliaments to provide us with new laws . i doubt not but our parliament will take into their consideration ▪ our trade , our publick society's , our standing armie , and our publick treasurie . upon which separatly ▪ i shall make these following reflections . first , trade is necessary to any nation that either will have riches , or their poor imployed ; and this is a truth so well known , and all nations perswaded of it , that the thoughts of most men are turned that way . it will be happy for us , that it be carefully looked after ; especially the affairs of our company trading to america , and the colony they have planted in darian , in spite , both of forreign and domestick enemies ; our just title to which , of late , has been proved by unanswerable arguments ; so that it 's the nations honour for our parliament both to assist our directors with money , and authority to retrive their losses ; and to frown upon all their enemies ; as being no friends to this country . i 'm perswaded no tax will be more agreeable to the subject , nor more readilie payed , than for carrying on this project , that has made the name of our nation reign in all forraigne courts , after it has been in oblivion for almost this century ; and which has made us formidable to the spaniards , whose grand-fathers thought that scotland was a province of england . the profit that may arise to us from our colony , if it prosper , is evident to everie one knows the riches of the spanish plantations ; and let us but suppose , that we are only able to keep in our possession , the port of saint andrew in caledonia , it may serve to be a magazin for all our commodities in the west indies , and to manage a private trade with the spaniard , to the great advantage of this nation . but let us have a more noble end than gain alone ; the propagation of the christian religion ; and if this were the only motive , we ought to part with our money freely for the glory of god. to oppose our designs we have but one declared enemy , the king of spain ; who if he endeavour to drive us from our possession , honour obliges us to defend our selves . if the english or dutch oppress us , contrary to the laws of nations , i don't see what should hinder us to take protection wherever it may be found . it may be some people will object , that our darian business will occasion a war with spain ; or , that our directors have mis-managed . but in such objections there 's more humour , than love for the country ; because by the same argument we may be bullied out of any thing the spaniard , dutch , or any other nation has a likeing to ; and even be obliged at last , by another step of complaisance , to renounce the title of a free kingdom . if our directors have failed either by ignorance or negligence in their designs , that should not keep us from doing our duty , nor to contribute all that 's in our power , for recovering the losses of our companie ; otherways all advantageous projects may be balked , because ther 's allways knaves embarqued in them . if any body has the impudence to amuse us with fisheries and other usefull projects , it should be looked on as banter ; for when his majestie has discountenanced us to gratifie the english or rather the dutch , we don't know what more he will doe for his native country . 2 ly . society is a great support to trade , for great interprises can be better carryed on by the credit of many , than by one single family or person ; and it has been the practice of our neighbouring countries to establish companies , trading to different places of the world ; and severall societies at home to mind their manufactories , and have protected them with particu-laws and immunities . it 's by honesty and fair dealing that all societies flourish ; and vvell did the romans know that , when they punished the members of societies for frauds and supine negligence , with infamy . l. 1. ff . de his qui not . infa . § poen . inst . de poen . tem . litig . the nature of man is so prone to wickedness , and so easily led away by temptation , that if there be not some severe means taken to prevent all ill practices : ther 's no society but may be ruined , being exposed to the catch of everie miserable s●arper , and specially here where some merchants know better how to impose upon people that deal with them , than to preserve that candor which becomes every honest trader . therefore it 's advisable that it should be made death and forfeiture to every one who is found defrauding the society of which he is member ; and punishable for all other delinquences proportionably to their nature . the one half of the forfeiture should be added to the stock of the companie , and the other half given to him who accuses the said member ; by such laws ill men will be keep'd in their duty and honest men will not easily be imposed on . 3 ly . every well governed nation must be in a posture to defend her self , and upon good ground to assist her allyes abroad . had we therefore either fear to be attaked by our enemies ; or allyes to assist ; we should have all the reason imaginable to keep a standing armie : and i believe no subject would repine to be taxed for it's subsistence proportionably to his abilities . why should we be affraid for enemies abroad , when england which is the better part of this island thought it self secure immediatly after the peace ? and kept no more force than to secure the peace at home , and prevent all disturbances . what allyes have we to assist ? unless we are so officious as to call those of england and holland our allyes ; like the highland countrey-man who called all his master , s cousins his own . at the treatie of rysewyck , was ever the name of our nation mentioned any more than as one of his majesties titles ? did ever any bodie endeavour to recover our old priviledges from france ? or what have we reaped , for all that our country men shewed either in valour or adress , for obtaining an honourable peace ? we are neglected by all the world , when they don't stand in need of us ; contempt is our only reward for declaring warr against france , when we had not a ship to defend our little trai●e ; and our souldiers are sent home poor and mutilated , to eat our bread , till such time the dutch or english find service for them . is it not time to look to our selves when everie other nation minds their particular interest ; and either at present , to declare our selves mercenary fools , or to act as a wise & free nation ? let our parliament remember that mercy is to be used to the purse of the subject ; or , how dangerous standing armies have proved to france , denmark poland , and other countries ; nor do we know what influence our forces might have upon us at present , were they ill inclined . let our honourable members consider the poverty of our country , the decay of trade , and the great treasure our courtiers and pensioners carry every year from this to england . so accordingly may they inform their judgements about the necessitie of a standing armie . alltho ' it's absolutelie necessarie to disband the most of our troops ; yet justice and interest require , that all the well-deserving officers should be provided with pensions , to keep them in this countrie , that they may be in a readiness to serve when the common defence requires . wise men know that in time of necessitie good officers are ill to be got ; and the confoederats , in the beginning of the last war , found that all the advantages the french had over them were occasioned by the pawness of their officers . and it 's also remarkable that the french , who are absolute masters of war , set a great value upon experienced and brave commanders . in time of peace , were we to augment our force , it should be at sea , because everie countrie is to be guarded according to its situation . lastly , as advice is the head , so money moves the springs , & strengthens the nerves of every state ; by which it moves , acts , and is knit together . no orator is so perswasive upon the wills and affections of men ; nor no conqueror so successfull by force of arms , as a good treasure ; and such is the temper of most men , that they serve money with zeal , and obey it without grudging . it is our interest according to the custome of all wise governements , both to provide good funds , and to imploy the money arising from them to proper uses . there 's many ways to raise money from different funds : yet the ease of the subject is to be had in consideration , and all impositions so qualified that they may be laid upon persons proportionablie to their estates ; for it 's not just that all people should be levelled , where fortune hath made a vast difference ▪ it 's therefore that all excises upon meat , drink , cloaths , &c ▪ are equal for all ; every body being obiged to contribute according to their luxurie . if considerable taxes were laid upon moneyed men , they would be forced to apply their money upon trade , where they might have the greatest gain . poll and hearth-money should be avoided , being too heavie taxes for the poor . great duties should be laid upon everie forraigne commodity for which the subject has not an absolute necessity , or a way to vent it abroad ▪ and and it would be for the advantage of trade that the rates of his majesties customs were revised , and that no exported goods should pay custom . no custom , or taxes should be fermed , because we know by experience that they serve to enrich particular people , who have the art of jugling with these who are deputed to examine their accounts ▪ and what favours are given to the said publicans by his majestie it would be for the honour of the government , that they were given to the poor , who are never spared by the insolent tax men , publick collectors should be appointed for gathering all customs , and each collector ought to have a good salary to make him honest , and he obliged to find bail for his intromissions , so that the nation might be honestly served . to imploy the money arising from funds , to the advantage of this kingdom , our parliament is to take notice ; because all supplyes run in form of free gifts from the subjects to his majestie , for their own behoofe : now whither these gifts are applyed to the publick good , the members of parliament that gave them are most capable to judge ; and when ther 's a good understandiug between prince and people , i believe the parliament will do it's duty , that neither his majestie be imposed on , nor the people cheated out of their money and liberties by pensions . we have the exemple of this present parliament in england , to state the present defects of our treasury ; to examen the occasions exhausted it : and then to make the people sensible of the necessity of new supplies . a great many good laws are usefull to be made this session of parliament to prevent severall inconveniencies our constitution is lyable too , and which might secure both the authoritie of future parliaments and the liberties of the subject . all officers , or any body that depends upon court , ought to be declared incapable to vote in parliament , because such persons are supposed to move according to the inclination of the king , from whom they receave their bread immediatly ; and that they would doe little for the good of the subject when it happens that the interests of prince and people are not the same . this should be one of the preliminary votes , and no sooner is this vote stated but all pensioners become incapable to vote for themselves . we may learn by the english practice , and our own parliaments , how convenient it is that all ovetrures concerning the affairs of the people be voted and receave the royall assent before any supplyes be granted to his majestie . but what may we not expect from this parliament , for the meeting of which , we have so languished ? but that all grievances will be redressed that the interest of the subject will be minded ; and that every law will be made that can contribute to the glory and safety of this nation . then let us lay aside all animosities and confide in each other , aiming all at the publick good ; let everie member act as a man of honour and conscience : let our most noble high commissioner behave as above the frouns of fortoune , as one that 's mortall , whose fame must be transmitted to posterity ; never had any a greater opportunity of becoming universally beloved , or universally hated ; never had any such an occasion to shew his zeal for his country , or his love for his friends : nor ever did this nation stand in need of so vertuous a person ▪ let us all then concur with good wishes and advice for pos●erity to our selves , and for the floorishing of this kingdom . finis . rapta tatio the mirrour of his maiesties present gouernment, tending to the vnion of his whole iland of brittonie martiall. 1604 approx. 79 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 31 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a13394 stc 23705 estc s118166 99853375 99853375 18757 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a13394) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 18757) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1010:16) rapta tatio the mirrour of his maiesties present gouernment, tending to the vnion of his whole iland of brittonie martiall. skinner, john, sir, fl. 1604, attributed name. skene, john, sir, 1543?-1617, attributed name. douglas, n., attributed name. [64] p. printed by w. w[hite] for s. waterson, at london : 1604. variously attributed to sir john skinner, to sir john skene, and to n. douglas. see halkett & laing, 3rd ed., p. 164. printer's name from stc. signatures: a-h⁴. the first leaf and the last leaf are blank. b4 is a cancel in all copies. it is set in duplicate; recto line 8 ends (1) "friendes," or (2) "frindes,". reproduction of the original in the henry e. huntington library and art gallery. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng england -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign relations -england -early works to 1800. 2003-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-07 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-01 jonathan blaney sampled and proofread 2004-01 jonathan blaney text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion rapta tatio . the mirrour of his maiesties present gouernment , tending to the vnion of his whole iland of brittonie martiall . rumpatur quisquis rumpitur inuidia . at london , printed by w. w. for s. waterson . 1604. ignibus vnionis arden s. to the right honorable and famous cities london and edenborough , yorke in the way not vnsaluted ; and to their inhabitantes , and friendes of all conditions . because in you ( especially ) be the newses of all common-wealthes causes ; i choose you , to whom to dedicate the discourses vpon the vnion debated . of other natures are other recordes likewise interserted , as argumentes moderne in your dayly vses . bee you all strong friendes to this great good of your estates , and no partie shall be thought able to withstand you , and your followers . my selfe begge nothing of you , nor seeke to borrow vpon credite ; though i know you trust much ; and in so doing , giue it when you are not payde : but if i once see bonfiers in you for this new coniunction , yours wil be the chiefest benefite , mine a share of the comfort . that if it happen to be concluded , burne my bookes then , as part of ioyes fewell : if that misse good euent , and mine affection shall be suspected , or argumentes neglected , a badde birdes ill egge , i know , will not haue worse fortune . howsoeuer my zeale is such to you , and to this case , as i referre it and my selfe , humbly to your censures : willing to make my selfe better knowne , then when i shal be assured i can deserue well of you : till which time come , gladdest if it were quickly , i rest . euer at your commaunde , your country-man and a brittaine . the explanation of the title , and application thereof . when the romaines for continuance of their people and common-wealth , made vnion with their neighbours the sabines and the rest , by taking their daughters ( though against their willes at first ) to wiues , whom afterwardes proofe shewed , they could not better haue bestowed : the chiefest of the rest was reserued for tatius : the credite of whose name was of such authoritie , that not the very enemies would make resistaunce . that if they then yeelded to , for a noble mans fancie in his affection ; let a generall good now , be more powerfull for a kinges desire of a common-weale . hoc tantum inspice qui nobis paratur , an possit fieri vetus sodalis . the title . rapta tatio . haec facies testatur amorem . anagram . at at patior . nec facies placet cui gelasinus abest . vpon both . praeda datur tatio : mea miles vulnera porto : vt verè dicam dum potior patior . sed modicum patiar , quia nisus nomine tanto , et tanto fultus numine tutus ero . rapta tatio . hauing ( you great citties and your friendes and followers ) since i saw all vse of my poore endeuors spared , or rather found disabilitie in them to afforde vse to the state , or person of my dread soueraigne , or of his royall queene , or ishew ; sequestred my selfe from either sawcie intrusions or shamelesse suites ; i thought i should so haue been forgotten , and might also haue been suffered without offence to forget : but so full are all thinges euery where of his maiestie , as euen in my retiredest priuatenesse , by subiectes who could not iudge of ought , but what the subiect enabled them to ; neither take much ioy in any thing , but in haruestes , mariages , and holydayes ; nor speake for much more , then nature and the countries vocation giues direction for : i haue been assaulted with their welcome , yet vehement endeuours , of expressing their ioyes for him ; their comfortes in him ; their hopes from him , their dueties to him ; in deed their admiration , of not onely what they see , but what they feele themselues euen warmed and comforted by , not to all men in able iudgement visible , but euery where by some vertue or other sensible : no lesse then they professe his maiesties proclamations to their vnderstandings notable ; his caryage and manage of himselfe and his iudgement in treasons so little deserued , by subiectes no whit iustly agreeued , taken to mercy besides all law , but that which his owne heart and vnderstanding inuentes and affoordes ; not a little rare , yet very royall . aboue all it may be , ( for being last in memorie ) they seeme full of a speech his highnesse made in the beginning of the parliament : for place in such a session ; for vtteraunce , so delyuered ; vpon further suite and neede thereof so reitterated ; the argumentes , so gratious ; for vse , so necessarie ; seene euen before proofe so iudiciall ; as when they of their kind could finde vnderstanding to commende , fulnesse to vtter ; it so farre set on fire my spirit , to giue my selfe satisfaction about ; as whether scorne to be ouermatched by those in that argument , or new desire enflamed to apprehend so glorious a world , gaue the instigation i know not ; vp rose againe those spirits which had faythfully borne zeale ( and that without fault otherways ) to his highnesse , when communitie knew him not ; in dayes when nobilitie treated but sparingly of him ; and the time had kept him in breeding in a countrey fit to make him wise and hardy , as any of his auncestours ; lesse soft and delicate then many of his progenitors . pardonable then ( i hope ) it shall be esteemed , if to ioyne with the rest , or salute their gratulations to him first , what came from him , comes for him : the meditation of subiectes wishes , the vnderstanding of many their senses , directed to acknowledge how vnworthy they are so gratious & so good a king , who publikely professeth to thanke them for that , for which , god and he himselfe is to be thanked , in that he was borne , and refuseth not his ende for which : who professeth peace ; feareth no warre ; standeth stifly to religion with a prudent discretion ; seekes vnions for vnitie ; giues his owne for the common-wealthes cause the most , and yet accomptes to it for what he giues : doth all things as doubting which vpon tryall are surely placed . and though my selfe be too vnworthy to explaine what his maiesties hidden prouisions are , of those which haue open shew for his kingdomes good ; and know how neare flatterie and grosse adulation plaine deliuerie and trueth comes : yet since they be good desires in others , none ill in my selfe , which haue stirred me vp to this presumption ; and vertue may be as confident to challenge her owne , as vice is apt to borrow of insinuation ; i aske leaue that i represse not my thoughtes in silence , neither spare to lay them downe so insufficiently , in so able an age . but yet daring no further , you may be pleased , as dionisius made aristippus beleeue , that his eares were in his feete , to heare with your heeles : or if the worke be not worthy to be taken vp , it can not be vile enough , if it shall not be otherwise censured , hauing loue & duetie , zeale and care of countrey therein , to be trodden vpon . and here in what i shall discourse , as i haue caught it by vulgar relations , and remember it happely but vnfittingly for the vse should be made of it : so , if either i had had direction to write , instruction of occurrents , and priuitie to haue made right vse ; my paynes should haue been imployed to haue giuen that satisfaction to this cause , which now i ayme at : and but onely for the gladnesse of the popular duety to so gratious a soueraigne , i could not haue been thrust vpon . and herein i will not deale with my loue to them , as the sleeper did with the coniurer , who hauing told him , that a dreame of an egge signified treasure , sent him onely of siluer and gould ( whereof he had found some quantitie ) a portion of the siluer , and put him to aske for newes of the yolke numquid de vitello : for euen all the substaunce in my shell , is wholly this argumentes : and the more deuoutly , since with deiotarns our king is not building of citties at the thirteenth houre of the day : nor with crassus , at sixtie yeeres olde , beginning to march against the partheans : but euen at his first entraunce , doth so addresse himselfe to his gouernement , as all are proude at this instant , who spake well before , and they who see him now , find abilitie to speake for euer . it shall not be sayd of him , he beares his time well , as if somewhat were to be allowed to his new enteraunce ; but he vseth his time well . it was damasippus fault to giue cicero so much aduantage , hauing bidden him to supper , as by hauing kept his wine fourtie yeeres in his house , to be subiect to his guestes censnre , that it bore the age well . this kinges time came when it should be vsed , and is vsed when it is come : england allured not him to it , till it sent to him for it . he hath taken a state captiue , by gods prouidence , and his maiesties good vsage of his guifts ; was not taken prisoner , as policrates was by eurotes : therefore he pertakes gods blessinges not against the fates , but by direction of the heauens . before his highnesse is treasure , in his comming hither : some ( i hope ) will finde it behinde him , if god blesse the golden mynes in scotland . cefellius bassus applauded nero for being deere vnto the gods , as in whose time onely , gold long time hidde , came to light . there are ( i cannot denie ) who are so vnhappie , as to coniecture , that some that hath seene light , is gone that way to be hidde : but neither shall fayle the vse of this kingdome , if god blesse the ones finding , and graunt meanes to the others returning , since now the king hath propounded , that an vnion may be confirmed ▪ the only meanes to draw al vses from thence , to the good of vs heere , without our losse in any thing , which with the gaine by this cause , will not be well requited ; nor will it be long to the appearance thereof , when his maiesties subiectes shall be all conioyned , which are borne and inhabite within one continent , haue , and long may they haue the same soueraigne , suffer noe deuision , nor which euer did , other then what the diuell drew on for the punishment of both ; and it seemes gods sacred ordinance , to mooue the kings maiestie to affect the amendes of , for the good of either . they haue reason to follow , where their king is ; wee cause to imbrace them , who come with him . the countrey besides is honored in his highnesse , which bredde such a king , as liues to prooue ( hath not a bare testimonie of a thing forgotten ) more abilitie in him selfe , then darius on his tombe was commended for : i was a f●iend to my friends , an horseman and bowman excellent : i was best of huntsmen , and in my person could doe all thinges . and shall not cirus his counsaile to cambises his sonne , make vs more assured , to haue a scepter compacted of multitudes of friends , then of quantitie of gold. and how can we compact them , but to make them like niobees tombe , being the marble ? this tomhe hath no dead body ; this dead body hath no tombe : but the one is the other , and either is each . and if friendship be as senica saith , negotiatio quae ad comodum accedit : the king hath greatest cause ( if their ingratitude shall not giue him cause to be weary of both ) to ioyne them in strrct bandes of all comfortable all entire & equall loues betwixt them ; since the greatest profite which euer can come to either of them , must be in seeing the welfare , and enioying the lyfe of him alone . nor is it fitte that his friendes should not be vnited ( i presume to call his subiectes his friendes , as by a deare tytle , as well as humble ) ; since better it is the king were not of agreeing harmonie in himselfe , then where his friendes were naught , the king himselfe were of good disposition . and if the difference were any , for the exchange : some haue sayd procul a loue et a fulmine ; the conuersations of kinges haue euer been helde like the nature of the flames , warme further of , and burning neerer . the king shall better represse further off in this forme , by this meanes giue greater scope to the subiect neerer hand : by that course , his further people shal be made more ciuill ( i speake of the priuater of them ) , these not so great flatterers , ( i speake not much of the publicker of these ) whose so often kneelinges , his maiestie , it is sayd , hath so much forbidden , as if he had seene tiberius the emperour fall on his face , running away from a fellow , who hung vpon him kneeling . a woman did the like vpon this our king at royston , whose husband , that he might liue disorderly with his grey-hound , against the kings proclamation , left to liue orderly with his wife according to the institution of marriage . yet as for the one , i meane not altogether the men of the lues ; ( part of whose countrey i had hoped , that ere this time , the battered garrison of barwicke should haue had ) so i feare not much the other , who can onely alledge , offa me monet , the king hauing subiectes ( of whom his maiesties owne note is , that they were borne to haunt , shame , and starue himselfe ) of able meanes to reforme them , by cutting off allowaunces . the condition of those , i professe , to be more dangerous , who can amende mistakinges : and to the question quid brachium can reply , illud dicere volui femur , who can either turne an argument of strength into lasciuiousnesse ; or can alter with occasion , and flatter euen vice , if they could here find it . but while ill thinges ought not to be commended , ill men can be allowed no fitte praysers : seneca in his tractate of the honest lyfe , sayth : wee ought to be as much ashamed to be commended of bad men , as if we were praysed for ill conditions . reuerend and worthy men hath the king to heare , as euer king was serued withall , both graue and wise : and wise and stoute : such as of whom it can not be sayd , that they haue lesse of eloquence then of fayth ; being as excellent speakers , as carefull doers : neither lesse honor , then may commaunde duetie ▪ being many by him selfe aduaunced , others better then alwayes confirmed , or more then before increased . they are they to whom the law can not be vnpleasing , that amasis king of egypt made vti singuli apud praesides prouinciae ostenderent vnde viuerent . that is in england on capitall head of many manifolde vices , when men may liue by what meanes they can , onely answearing vnto publicke accusations ; whereas how they get , what they spende ; how they spende , what they get ; how they outface meaner magistracie ; how they blinde greater , in causes of danger how they find many , and the common-wealth few friendes ; how they shift causes , and the iudge neuer heates of them : for these , how much god is angrie ; their courses how easie it is in beginngs to preuent : if counsaile of counsellours finde other thinges more vrgent to their wisedomes , i remember what i wish the common-wealth should haue cause to thanke them for . these people will goe as neare iustice and lawes , and scape them , as domitian could shoote neare through by a boyes fingers , and misse them . this reuerend counsell , for hauing liued in coutts , may they be more honored , then to be reuiled in woodes ? so let them know their seruices rewarded in lyuing ; that dead , they be not abused by the lyuing : and if they may be amongst vs , who would be wise like them , let vs not put them from amongst vs , who haue more experience , and haue had more priuitie then wee . zenophones colophonius , who was called homeromastixe , in lamentation of his pouertie , told a king of cecely , that he was scarce able to keepe two seruantes : yet quoth the king , he whom you rayle vpon , feedeth 10000. being dead : so are worthy men by meane ones defaced ; so pratchantnesse knowes not it is sawcie ; so come faultie humours to be vnpunished , because not seene ; and not seene , because not regarded . in rome it is written , rutilius and scaurus had petition for a consulship , and at last rutilius gaue way to scaurus . scaurus accused rutilius of canuace , because in rutilius his tables was written a. f. p. r. which scaurus did interpret as signifying done by the fayth of publius rutilius , actum fide publij rutilij , as if rutilius had corrupted the voyces , and scaurus could not haue been made consull without rutilius had renounced vnto him : but rutilius made this interpretation , ante factum postea relatum , that first it was had , afterwards restored : as if scaurus had by his name framed his office , and he had been but the pronouncer of his reputation . caius caninius a romaine knight being on the part of rufus , notwithstanding held , that neither interpretation was true vpon those letters , but that they imported aemilius fecit plectitur rutilius , aemilius did it , and rutilius suffered for it ; that was , tooke the repulse . but i thinke both then : for neither are heere now . in that time , where was the curtesie passed betwixt largius and caelius , when they two spent the day so in commending one another , either for others worth to be elected dictators , that scarce either of them could be appoynted on the second day of their choyce ? where was then that humanitie which pompey shewed , who being appoynted vnto metellus his charge , because metellus was elder and more noble in glorie , would not accept his preferment appoynted vnto him , vnlesse metellus would desire his companie in taking share of his care ? this case had much other pleading when it was , and howsoeuer rutilius was stucke vnto , yet cicero gaue not all to that speaker ; but in decision of the cause , hauing iudicially delyuered , turned his countenaunce vpon a worthy man of his fauour , concluding directly in the behalfe of scaurus . more did not tully in any day shew himselfe maister of his eares , nor better at any time commaunde his tongue , to vtter his iudgement : yet was that tryall onely brought in to take experience of duetie , fully necessarie for greater causes soone after to be propounded : this onely being like alcibiades dogge , sent through the cittie of athens with his tayle cut off vpon purpose . that as it was to try what woonderors were there in that body , so this to discerne whether free tongues were walking , or not walking in your free cities ? but howsoeuer , had angustus his iudgement , been helde as good as claudius his benefite , the decision had found authoritie , not the authoritie decision . then might the souldier haue come to caesar to aske his rewarde of pleasuring him , in a fitter time , then after he had lost one of his eyes at munda . but it may be in times foregoing , it hath been thought , that cleane obseruance was more worth , then holy duetie , to be honored rather skilfully , then deuoutly coli scite quam sancte : yet doubt i , that word cleane , had drunke too lately in the low countries , and signified rather litle in the scite , then mannerly in the obseruaunce . or else as it befell , martiall would haue his rule of louing accept familiaritie , but admit no reuerence . tu vis coli sexte volebam amore , sed si te colo sexte non amabo . if otherwise , which i well beleeue , and you great cities may happely heare of that not want of particuler duetie , but care of generall good , makes refusall of that for the countries cause , wherein a kinges commaund had otherwise readely preuayled ouer his subiectes : while the euent of the ones desire , the others refusall stood vpon vncertaine successes ; and the fathers care might be thought impartiall touching his owne lawfull children , though issued from diuers venters ; what vigil could not scite virgill ; what watchman could not discerne day then in view , then to follow his collours with nil desperandum teucro duce et auspice teucro ? nor could it be sayd , o socij neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum , for of the contrarie wee haue had experience lamentable , of this which would haue yeelded comfort , such hath been our vnhappinesse , though the histories can tell you how sought , neuer occasion to any could wee take . better directions then happie directions , men can not receaue , such as either are affected to be followed for loue by hope , or men are wonne to imbrace by reason vpon ground . him examine by his owne , remember his life past so blessedly runne through , so mischieffously attempted ; take view of his estate present , of our hopes of blessednesse by him ; and thereby frame coniecture how fortunate his highnesse may be in these his desires not withstood , but submitted to , by those who must leese liberties as deare as life thereby . and should you not take him kingly , but philosophically ; the rule for his condition fittes him , as his scepter , for a king , becomes him . a body strong , fortunes ritch , the heart stoute , and braines learned , milesius thought to be the seate of happinesse . plato he platted fiue kindes of felicities : good counsell , good health , good fortune , good reputation , good and falsely esteemed , ( but neuer before other louers of wisedome , loued them better then philosophers ) aboue all goodes , goodes . i might add to make these goodes better , as greater for their qualitie , maketh not their price more then their quantitie aduaunceth their reputation , euen goodes hanging vpon ropes . of which kinde , to leaue the kinges maritine riches , in like whereof no prince in the world is knowne to equall him : i may truely say , as he is farre from taking aduantages vpon those from whose indiscreete and vnworthy vsages , the haynousnesse of their crimes haue giuen their states and safeties away , so might so much moderation in cause of iust anger , haue giuen true tryall of none ouer great violence in matter of affection . and were it not for the good of eyther , since hee hath charge of both , it would neither bee the draught of the one to what they seeke not , nor of the other to what they like not , that would make either fancies seeme faces , or reasons almost treasons . nor can i gesse whence no better satisfaction groweth , vnlesse opinion may be helde of the highest estate , to be as pliny writeth of fortune , that shee is the goddesse who in the whole world in all places , at all howers , with all voyces , alone is called out vpon , alone is named , alone is accused : who hath the onely guylt , the onely estimation , the onely prayse , the onely blame : and with inuectiues is worshipped , with slaunder cherished , in inconstancie thought constant : to whose charge is layde the maintayning the vnworthiest , the accompt of all expences , the catalogue of all receites , and the filling vp of each leaues either part in the blottes of all reckonings , and the setting vpon all audits . if not so , with reuerence and loue may i speake it to your cittie-assemblies , tables as you may thinke priuate and secure , be too little prouident ; no lesse was the frenches confidence , who to shew their not fearing alexander , could instaunce in nothing to giue them doubt , but in the heuens falling . yet certainely as abimelech being hurt by a stone from the castle , whereinto the israelites fledde , throwne downe by a womans hand , desired rather that a souldier would kill him , then that by so weake an hand he should perish : so is it euer to be feared , that greatnesse can no where suffer contradiction with content , where the cause is reasonable , and affection royall , in the vnderstanding . it may be neuerthelesse , that pompilius thought a circle scoared by a rod , could giue lymits to consultation , as intra hunc consule . the intendment of such circles , were to combine mens seates and endeuours by freedomes to assist euery one the most he could , not with liberties to forestall singular men peremprorily , those propositions which come but newly into consultation , being neither rashly , nor meanely commended . those ends had no celticke boldnesse appoynted to them ; they were not to be ioyned with contempt of safetie . there was not intended that with the blood of hanniball , should be made strong the league with rome . there was no priuiledge to engadge that offence which no memory could euer remit , if the after successes should accuse the then resolued iudgements . the scottish in this age , nor in those to come , shall in this kingdome get the best offices alone , feare ye not ; nor let others affright you therewith . but as the kinges maiestie contendes to haue the state generall , and publique weale of the whole iland , to which he is equally by god appoynted in best order ; so propounds he , that it may be free for the best man of those , who are his natiue subiectes , borne and inhabiting within the same continent , and none otherwise deuided by tweede , then others of his subiectes are by trent , may haue place for his goodnesse to serue the common-wealth in . such is his maiesties royall disposition , to chuse the best from the most , and to get it enacted , that the left hād , though not so much heretofore vsed , shall now bee knowne to bee a parte of the same body , & receiue the same nourishmēt by the same passages , and do naturall seruices , as none artificiall member . but why we should so much doubt them , see i not so much cause . in all men now liuing is not the appetite of diogenes deceased : he being asked what kinde of wine he wold gladliest drinke of ; answered , of another mans : for of those there are many wil not change their own setlings , & too many who haue pensions elswhere already , & some are going further for better profits : all of whome great offices in this kingdome doe not expect , nor wold they euer be suters for them to sit about them . yet do you thinke it better and lesse dāgerous to admit too great hopes at home , then safe for a common wealth to permitte too much certaintie of engagement abroad . this was it of which horace said , that the hornes had hey vpon them , flie those beastes , foenum habet in cornu , longè fuge . this frenchman is black , hunc tu britāne caueto . nay , i may tell you that this nation is so well traueld , hath so much addiction to see further , as it wil well ioin to draw your looser abroad , by encrease of strength ; your richer home , with support of wealth . and whether such dispositions are likely to hold , they who haue traueiled can best discern , who haue seen vs foraignly loue & take parte against all natiōs ech with other , when we liued domestickly scarce friends , & daily occasions giuen why we shold be more disjoyned . too much occasion hath ben geuē why secret remēbrances might hold ; some in act , some in fact : but so blessing of vs is god , so gracious to vs is our king , so prouidēt are they cā forsee this , as the storye moderne may now be corrected as martials epigrams might be amēded , which whē many interlineations , many scorings , could not perfit , vna litura potest , spongia sola potest : many apologies , many periuries , many simple denials , many beings out of the way , many facings to the teeth , many accusatiōs of his better subjects , many combinations of packes together , though all these shold be & many more , can neuer or not alwaies hold all in , or all men : only this asks pardō & saies nothing , this takes reuenge & doth good together . now let vs haue none aliens , none attainders , be al free as wee may bee , noble as wee shold be . let the same hād , which endeuored hurt or was mistaken , heal & be rightly vnderstood . if there be impedimēts outward , remooue them ; if imward , aduise them . licurgus being demaunded how the enemies forces might be abādoned ; answered , if they would continue poore , which this age yeelds no disposition to : & if they woulde lay by ciuill dissentiōs ; which is best done where singuralities are auoided , good only affected . but if the best should come , to the eagerest satisfaction : & yet it is lesse valew to defend then assault : lesse hability to deny , then to proue : & that very to do good is more suspected , then ill doing deemed faulty : the wisdome of pisistratus must yeeld to the wilfulnesse of his childrē , or else others must take aduātage by their debate . the story saith that whē as pisistratus had giuen right aduise vnto his children , & could not get theyr cōsent vnto it , & therby was vrged to stād in some question with them for their disobediēce ; finding his enimies reioiced therat , as hopeful that frō that dissētion som alteratiō might growe , hauing called his citisens together , he made thē publikly know , that true it was he had bin āgry with his childrē , for that they had not agreed to their fathers desires : but afterwards it seemd good to his fatherly piety to descēd into their opiniō ; therefore he would haue the city to take knowledge , that the issew of the king were accordāt vnto the wil of the father . so was that good pisistratus driuē rather to giue away his own interest , then to let others take auātage of their dissentiō . touching whō if the father shold haue said as diogenes answered the poticary , how shold he not beleeue that ther were gods , when he knew him enimy to them . why it shold not be feared that oppositiō to greatnesse , in a cause indifferent , might teache greatnesse how great it is in a cause that were iust , be you iudges quo iure quaque iniuria . but it may be in your great cityes and amongst your followers and friendes , there are diuersities of resolutiōs , though not quot capita tot sensus . for it may bee some cannot finde meanes of deliberation , vnlesse their respites of iudgement may be enlarged to quantum diutiùs cogito . others happily may fulfill you with so many reasons , as vpō some kinde of inditement might hang a subiect , had but half an one more ben added ; so fruitfull they seem to be of cōceits , though their reuenues of reasons , in this cause to be spent , would hardly maintaine an army , to fight with arguments an whole yeare in open battail against this vnion . but many had those need to be , could refuse a natiō so welcom , at an imbracement so necessary . why should we sticke vpon needlesse feares ? degeneres animos timor arguit . why should we , being grown into the peace of ireland , say , that anguis latet inter herbas odoriferas ? an wholsome country breeds no serpent : no fraud lurks in honest meaning . but these improuisions to this vnderstāding are to be attributed to late times foregoing : wherein the sexe could not by any indeuor meditate things so proper for the estate , as improper for their persons : neither were their opportunities alike , whose fortunes suffered enemies to their gouernment , as are his who is offered friends for his own sake , for his queens bloud , to his country nôw more respected . yet let vs admit the bounty of semiramis toombe , on which was in a written direction expressed that those who wanted mony might take there what they would : within notwithstanding was opposed , that vnlesse men were ill & vnsatiable of coin , they would neuer dig vp the coffins of dead persons for it : so keen they were in those dayes to intice the worlde to take out this lesson , that affection should not alwaies aduenture the vttermost , that liberty giues shewe to haue geuen allowance for . yet let calumny be set apart in your cities , & the matter not reuiled with the infamy of the worde , s. george shall not go so long on foote vpon this arraunt , that the most naturall english man shall finde him surbated in his journey . be not deceiued yee cityes & your friendes : for these are but sclender aydes offered to any , when their assistaunces makes only the furtheraunce , where the encrease brought addes nothing to the strength settled . who speakes in you , either finde your applause , or leaue their arguments helpelsse . your pleasing countenances , hauing made the first speech seem sound , the rest encrease , as hydraes heads multiplyed . hee , who sittes down amongst you , happily hath seriously thought vpon what he deliuers , & therinto hath wouen his affection and reason together : do not you approoue it , till you haue adiudged the one , disseuered the other . one man happily the good sound of his owne words well placed , another the mirth of his iest well formed , hath seduced in their iudgementes of their owne discourses , by whose errors shold your wisedōes be vndermined , it wold be said happily you were eyther cōcordant by clamor or allured for fancies . shal you who haue bōfir'd & pageāted for a king , are the glories of his state , now scāt him his honor in appointing your goods ? shal it be said of you , who haue so wel fashioned out this triūph hitherto , that you can not maintain your selues out , as incōstant , or for disability must in extremo actu deficere ? then bring the honest yong mā , the modest yong maid together , let them wooe , & their frends for them ; let them be made sure by a contract in forme ; let the cheer bee made ready , the day appointed , friends inuited , fidlers called , giue & take you parents & children on both sides ; eate , drink , dāce , court , & make more matches , til day & half night be spēt : then refuse your bridegroō , for what mariage was instituted . there are many deuises to blind good mening in these ages ; supposed catholikes may be attempted to be supposed puritanes ; a factiō in alliāce may make offer to arraigne an honest mās argument . with these be not you deceiued : but let your appetits be only your goods , your wils your weales . think fit that soueraigns in their weldoings should be pleased ; and not in theyr good affections diseased . know that a monarch is but one as alone ; the discourses and arguments brought into you , many . and wil not you expect , that so many wisedoms , as inhabite and ride vpon you , shall drawe one propositiō , framed for your good , to the content of him to whom the thankes is due ? shall not you like of a state framed to honor a king , who brings a king a true honor to a state ? tell them who dislike most , they shall haue more habilitie , and be better defended , when you shal be all your selues ; then now , when a few prime men , either in parts or partaking , seeme to nicke vp vpon their opinions the iudgements of so many graue and wise men as are said to hold consort with them in their voyage . can any men fear the king of englands place hereafter to be lost ; & not inough care for the king of britaines loue now to bee retained ? that , though for his constancy hee cannot withdraw , for his place he may not ; ought he not so to be regarded for it , as it may be retained in him with his comfort ? is it feared that by this appellatiue we shall be made fellows to the brittons the theeues ; rather are we not doubly by this meanes instiled of fraunce where dwell the canuascoats ? i call you to witnesse , wee put not stangatehole out of huntington shire , shooters-hill out of kent , nor other places of robberies out of english shires , nor our selues leaue to be called of that countrye if wee had birth , or haue landes in them , notwithstanding the robberies done vpon them , as odious as are the robbers . they who haue hability to speake against this vnion that it may not bee ; cannot they ( thinke you ) defend it when it is ? the inconueniency being all that is pretended , or disproportion of affection , the dishonesty nothing , the vnlawfulnesse not otherwise discerned then knowne as little . the vse of all things is all : the reason applied to any thing prooues , the affection loues , the sight beholdes , and offices perfourme their functions , not alwaies as order leades , but sometimes best so vsed as occasion serues . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the greekes call punctum temporis : which who so hittes , if either he do it suddenly , o quantum est subitis casibus ingenium ! or necessarily , sapit , necessitati qui probè se accommodat , et est rerum diuinarum atque humanarum conscius . can any perswade you who do the like honour to the king , how vnlike soeuer this dayes garments are to yesterdayes roabes , that the difference of an enstilement shall make him lose the honor of his place , the reputation of his nation ? true it is , where persons were vnknown , & kingdomes vnheard of , titles should haue reputatiōs as their wordes could signifie : but then they must so begin , as weapons were first found out , if you will beleeue horace , which was when men went together by the eares , first , vnguibus et pugnis , dein fustibus , atque it a porrò pugnabant armis quae post fabricauer at vsus . in this case where the kingdomes accompt cannot bee blemished , and almost the kinges woonder hath bene euery where euen adored , in that age let those who like not to giue him his due in a session or otherwise , find then he knowes what he is now : which god graunt alwayes to send , may encrease vpon him . slightly as i heare of argumentes tossed amongst you , so gladly desire i to settle you touching thē : leauing with you my protestation of reuerence humble , and loue faithfull , towards all such as with vnderstanding affection stād vnder any burthen for the good and honor of theyr mother earth , and her children . against which , if for flattery to the scotish i shall seeme to haue written , let my brybe be iudged of ; som of them hauing part of my liuing , others hauing torne in sunder my reputation : yet since my bane came from the english , they trespassed not in wisedom to take aduantage therof . and that mine hands may appear the cleaner , as yet my dread soueraignes haue not don ought for me , of much i dare boldly yet prostrately auow , i haue well deserued , & both fauor of lawes of court and country would assist me in right to . yet doubt i not theyr royall natures , nor misdoubt mine own patience , knowing it eyther well to becom my duety to expect their princely pleasures , or otherwise ready to credite their iudgements , touching me , rather then to giue scope to mine owne hopes of aduancement , or good from my soueraignes . but all else set apart , and freelie to deliuer mine impartiality in this cause , so safe i hold this for vs to obey our king in ; so comely to welcome the nation with ; so politike to close at this infolded imbrace ; as i suspect not but all will be best being best vsed : and of the rest , let them rather doubt , then we feare . many mēs turns haue bene already serued , the kings owne comfort is yet in petition : he ioyes not so much to be a king for his pleasure , as to be a good king for the states weal. his maiesty takes now the first opportunitie , the flyes are now not so busye : holesome counsel hath poured balme vpon opportunity in asking , magnificence in graunting . yet are many the pretences may draw kinges to be boūtiful : of which if you haue not elsewhere takē good view , you may here iudge of some , being parte of many thousāds . kings somtims are euen forced to grāt , not so much for their desire to bestowe , as their shame to denye : non tam studio quidem concedendi , quàm verecundia negandi . some haue vsed this argument , you know what my need requires , scis quid mihi opus sit : when there was more need of hoc opus est subito fias ut sidere mutus , that they had wayted as dombe as the stars do on the sun . some sayd regi hoc dare nō conuenit , a royall king must make his gift magnificent : when as nec cynios accipere de●ebat , beggers should haue ben no chusers . more suters fall on vpon kings : one who for his wisdom , quia rarissimè : another for his conceit , quia iucundisimè : a third who for his attendance , quia tū prādet et coenat cum alexādro videtur , seek for gifts : certain calisthenesses aduised by aristotle . others can often remember their seruices , praying rewards to be bestowed for those causes , and for that in no fortune they had ben from the kings person : sylas from agrippa . some haue asked , as more learned then their fellowes , for hauing giuē causes of things : as why the liōs deuoured not daniel . some for limping if the king limped : haukers & hūters , the fashiō of the ethiopes . some for sitting late vp by him in the night , and praysing his royall children : cato the younger from diotarus . som must take , lest they should be vnciuill in refusing : zenocrates from alexander : and they must be giuē to , to try their good manners in accepting . som for their softnes must beg ; hauing no fingers as may be supposed on theyr hāds , & therfore driuē to wear their rings in their ears : the seruāts of penus in penulus in plaut . som requited for their presēts : siloson with samum from darius . some must buy , because they offer deare , multis precibus , with much suite . som must be giuē to , though naughty persōs : mores miseratus non hominē , for pitty not of the man but of his māners . som boūtifully dealt with , though not frō a kings hart , nō homini sed humanitati , a gift bestowed vpō curtesie not māhood . al must be grāted by a king : for that he is as a god vpō the earth . dixi quòd dii estis , saith the psalmist , i haue saide yee are gods . and that is to imitate god to be bountifull . petitions were long since growne so vsual , as seraphion would not strike the bal to alexāder in the tēnis-court , vnles he begd it himself : non praebes saith alexāder ; immo nō petis saith seraphiō . yet in som times the gifts were but such as lupus gaue to martiall , whē as he writ that he had a whole cūtry bestow'd vpō him , lesse then was one in the bowpots in a corner of your neater citizēs windows : such a country , as in which a cabbage would make a whole wood , ouer which a grashoppers wings a tent , which to an ant was but a daies feeding , and might be crowned with a rose bud ; in which were two herbes onely growing , wherin a cucumber could not stād vpright , nor a snake ly at ease : which one mole could dig vp in a day , one mouse destroy as fearfully as the calidonian boare ; & hath many other descriptions in his epigram to lupus expressed , concluding that he had rather haue had a dinner then no deneer , prandium quàm praedium . nam quo tempore mihi praedium dedisti , mallem mihi prandium dedisses . in others , gifts had good fortune : as whē aristippus sayd of dyonisius the younger , that the king was safely bountiful and magnificent , because he saw plato send him back his gifts againe . in others they had good vse : as when fabius maximus bestowed on marsus , a valiāt souldier , no very great gifts , to keep in very great spirits . the antient boone of leuidense none begs : which was a warme but light , yet cōmon garment many now craue in many places ; not so much for want of sufficient , as because though they know some haue more then inough , yet they would bee loath to haue lesse then theyr fellowes : striuing as otacilius did to equall torquatus : of whom it is written that as the ox burst the toade , so the one of them would split in emulation of the other , vt bos ranam rumperat olim : sic puto torquatus rumpet otacilium . milesius was wont to say , there was no such way to make a man quietly suffer aduersity , as the knowledge that his enemy was in worse prosperity : and think you , that emulatiō , in this , works not as much , as , in the other , malice ? for this cause did the brethren of ioseph sell the son of iacob vnto the arabian merchants . for the other , did casselius find out , that a pyne tree nut was an apple , if it were to be thrown at vatinius his enimies head . horace bestoweth much description vpon those who wold haue none so great as thēselues and tels the tale of the toade , vituli pede pressus , who told her dam , when she saw her swell to be as great as the calfe , non si te ruperis , inquit , par eris . but though it were vnfit in kings causes , martials counsell to flaccus was vnhappy , which aduised to keep that to himselfe which hee had purposed amongst others ; when as the offence of many , who should not get , was dangerous , the bestowing vpon al burdensom . demeruisse duos votum est : offendere plures vix tutum : cunctis mittere dona graue . our soueraigne , as his goodnesse is great ; so his rewards , his gifts , his aduancements haue not bin smal . tully had not so great cause to brag of his quaestorship well discharged in sicily , when he came home to rome ; as some giue shew of our soueraigns bounty , who passe from one of you to another . howsoeuer , it may truly be said , it hath rather bin a royall king then an yeares magistracy yet performed , hath aduanced tully to salute roome ; so glorified from sicily , so enuyed at home . take it not ill then ( tully ) if no body at roome woulde talke to thee of thy quaestorship , of the news of thy cariage wherin thou thoughtst , to haue found all men full . and why should not such gifts , as they cary , be bestowed by him , who hauing long staied for power , ought now only to affect glory and good will ? priùs said antigonus mihi opus erat potentia ; nunc verò gloria et beneuolentia . what other humane indeauour hath this worthy king more seriously taken in hand , then the benifiting of his & the countries friends , the recōcilemēt & agreemēt of the enemies of both ? whereof the one , as they were made vp , partely by his loue to his country , his desire to honour it , to aduāce hir faln nobility , to requite such as had deserued best of her , to giue many more then theyr own , since the country had so gladly giuen him his own : partly by those he brought with him , who had some of them bin rescuers of his life , som extraordinary assistants of his estate , others such as he could not but reward here , for seruices performed there , where memory was the rewarde hee cold properly giue , & was all in their honors they would willingly take . so enimies to kings do oftnest grow , either by wāt of what ambition made them desire ; or for lacke of what expenses had drawn into waste : els some somtimes affect what blind zeal makes them think fit , or fals iudgement rather false harts will not let them see pertinent & proper . but as his maiesty hath , no more then was fit , rewarded the first ; vnlesse they can say to him as the yong man saith in terence , nescis quid mihi obtigerit , you cannot tell sir what hath lighted vpon me : so hath he mercifully spared the other ; insomuch that he hath neither cōfiscated them , as tiberius the emperor did the kings of spaine , sicily & greece , ob leue impudensque calumniarū genus : for any light or shamefull kind of slander : nor fined them as cassius did sylla , & calphurnius : from one of whom he took quinquagies sestertiū , & frō the other sexagies , himselfe , being for any riot he is addicted vnto , as free frō wāt either of ought belonging to himself , or for his couetousnes frō need of any thing others possesse . but either at pe titions of faire ladies , none offenders ; or for som respects laid before him by his wiser nobility ; either else for pure inclinatiō vnto mercy ; hath benefited sylla , been steward of his estate , kept others vp , who would haue kept others downe . thanks to so high discerning , which found that when soueraigntie could not represse liberty , benefits could more strictly then treason take it prisoner . nor hath hee yet inflicted so much as exile vpon any of them , knowing it a banishment that they forsooke his iustice . and that he detaineth them , is out of his mercy : for boulder were they , and of better countenāce could they be , when each had his discontent ; then now when they haue proofe in themselues , & the world sees it apparātly how vnworthily they had placed it . marcellus the ciuilian , wrighting vpon a booke of the digestes , shewes three kindes of banishment : either from certaine places ; or from al places , besides certain ; either else a cōfining to some iland . and though all these be vpon them , yet they had nothing of this punishment , did not one certaine place restraine them : & may they be confined to an ilād , if further mercy shall deliuer , & further occasion shal not imploy them , & that iland so prepared ; the one by their soueraignes grace , the other in his prudēce ; they are not only like to be inlarged to a country , but find their country inlarged to them . touching whome pittie is it they rather were not free for this argument , then bound by the other offēce . there are of them , whose births , courages , blouds , experiences , and conditions , as they were noble before they lost them ; so nobly could they haue spoken of this argumēt , & i hope by this time haue found much cause to bee much forward hereabout . yet is there one of thē wold bring much griefe vnto me , ( though i wish him all good , in his weldoing ) if he or his abettor , his steward or protector , or his faction , so many as are of the olde haunce for his cause should be able to preiudice me more for compassion : then i could draw safegard to my selfe , by refraining euill desart , laboring good merit . but howsoeuer these , some of them much vnhappy before , in this estate at this time haue all tryed the kings maiesties grace in their seuerall particulars : in that notwithstanding they haue beene absent from the true ioyes of their countrey , and from the affaires in hand , they may say as demetrius phalerius said , heu inquieta negotia actionesque nostras quorum causa hactenus tantum virū nosse non licuit . well hath hee spent his time in this time who ere he was , and worthily who wrote the tractate of the vnion , wherein hee hath performed his taske , and made his worke proue his title . many good lawes hath hee giuen vs to tye the vnion by : for besides what he writes like a philosopher lernedly , & of the kings goodnes multipliciously , let the soule of his common-wealth be tryed , and you may easily discerne whether iudgement can , or ought recommend his worke to a parliament , to be made an acte of : yet since he will needes trye his owne inference by his owne applications , wee will likewise examine his whole worke , by the rule of his owne inuention . and first what cōscience can beleeue , that he who could not be drawne to meddle with clannes in scotland , would be content to abet a faction in england ? these factions were of heate ; and as they drew bloud ; so sooner tēpted the bloud made the motiues more strong , the partakers more passionate ; wheras in factions cold discretiō can abide much pause , & the time giuen for respite giues it selfe a meanes for determinatiō of vprightnes . what conscience can beleeue that he who by the english bloud in a grand mother got three kingdoms , will not as much loue the english as the scottish , by whō he had but prefermēt to one ? what cōscience can perswade it self , that he who hath ad uāced many here without desart towards himself , will not continue his honors for daily seruices for his own behoofe performed ? what reasō can deny that the quiet we now enioy , & riches by that quiet , may not both be encreased , when our kingdom shall be abroad more feareful , & the more hāds shal bring the greater profits into the land ? what reason can pierce into that no reason hath diued into , to take gods prouidence away from cōtinuing , what only by his prouidence he hath setled . to a worke diuine adde not thoughts humane ▪ what reasō can discerne that men long combined , shall not rather holde together , thē men neare in oportunities held off farre , for sleight seeming respects ? and do any examples teach that richer subiects are not more fearefull of offending lawes ? teach any examples , that men by nature , fight , language , condition , & occasion vnited , are vnunited by vniō ? or teach any exāples that monarchies well setled , cannot represse any ils as they are growing ? wel hath he ther fore taught you to settle preuention , where domestiquely ye gouerne not . frāce & spaine haue their moments to be cōsidered , further thē into this our owne is to be looked . the one he tels you hath a custome , the other a pretext against englād : & shal england refuse aide against them & all others , whē god ordinarily & extraordinarily offers it not obscurely ? thē increase , none helps england ; be thou my countrey vnthankful ; care not if scotland stand as ireland fell ; disvnite wales , as not needing it ; seek abroad for friends , though they be turkes ; maintaine others quarrels to preserue your own safeties ; set vp garisōs againe ; make new lords of marches ; draw more from the rich , frō the poore what they only haue ; acte or exact , as if it were the last acte : liue as poore as spaine , yet haue none indies ; as vncertaine as italy , but lesse friended and fruitfull ; desire helpe one day , who may giue helpes now ; cry out then when your own haue lost you , & they who are vpō you , shall not know your language . then may you war like the switzers , when other countries , who haue imbraced what you refused , shall enioy with scorne of you , what you held , and might haue held before them , and them to either in dearenes , or at their deere rate . my natiue countrey , i craue pardon for my boldnesse , zeale hauing transported me as farre into passion of after successes to be doubted , if this stand thus doubtfull ; as i hope it is to their surmises euent , who deeme that for want of issue in this kings loyne , the two countries may againe be seperated , though this now be embraced . but let me be tryed whether i perswade honest things , & i hope my vehemency shall not be imputed faulty . soone do they breake vpon fit occasion , who are too soone repelled for no knowne cause . why should not we wish them so wel as our lawes ? why shuld we wish our selues so ill , as their not being one with vs ? many will be the marriages in time , to make our nations fully one : as many are the houses , they bring in with them of our own . what was it made the romans and the sabines friends , but the romanes getting to wiues the sabines daughters ? they tooke them by violence , these haue opportunitie for loue : and thinke you we shal spare to goe for marriages into scotland , when their daughters shall bee rich to maintaine vs in england ? thinke you many thousand occasions will not make vs enterchange , if this one occasion had but made the kings roade to the rest . be of courage therefore honourable cities , and your friends of all qualities , and bee what you are ; such an iland as were a world to you , knew you no part of the world besides . be what you are , and desire nothing rather to be quod sis esse velis nihil que malis : knowe this rather to be done , then intreaty , finished aboue , not imperfect beneath ; all else howsoeuer seeming , more vncertaine then this yet not appeared . let the honestie of this cause intice you , the honour moue you , the profit snatch you to it . then gratitude know nothing better ; the larger the iland , the nobler the nation ; and who knoweth not that concordia res paruae crescunt , discordia maximae dilabuntur , leaue not these faggot stickes out of your band , these arrowes out of your sheafe . better is that borne a great deale whereof men are ashamed , then that whereof they repent . if any should thinke it a shame to loose the name , let him know their helpe lost would make vs more repent : the people to be called by the name of the countrey is but cognatum vocabulum rei . now is this vnion on foote ; much hath beene said therein ; much written thereupon ; our kinges affection is setled thereto . all these will do hurt , if this now do not good . if any should ▪ gesse many the meanes which should debarre inconueniences to come , are now already taken from our good : he may haply fall into their opinion , who haue deemed either this should haue begun with the vnsetling of the rest ; or with the setling of this onely expedient , the other haue beene vnsetled hand in hand . they were onely the fpicures sect , who would neuer enter into any other profeson of philosophy : yet were the stoikes , and the academickes both more learned and lesse vitious . it is written of alexander , that when it was tolde him , that an handsome man had gotten his sister with childe , hee made aunswere , that it was to bee graunted him to enioy his kingdome too . this sister of alexanders , is not sought without leaue ; is not defiled without vertue ; hath her louer no lesse comely in parts and features . in aegypt it is written were great store of crocodiles , there the dogges for thirst driuen to drink , did euer so lap in nilus , as they were euer remouing . this iest was brokē vpō anthony , after the mu tine flight that he caried himself like the dogs of egypt . shal we then haue receiued this nation with applause ? honored thē in our high counsell of the kings estate , and of the estate of the kingdome ? admitted them dignities ? admitted them honours in titles , in possessions ? receiued them with loue into our houses ? crepte at their knees in the english court ? haue put our money into their pockets ? put them into our fortes , strengthes , & castles , and shall wee now make meū and tun̄ , the scottish & the english , our selues & thēselues ? nay , rather let vs speake as heartily as the kinde man did in terence , hos nisi mors nobis adimet nemo ; let vs in name and vertue be the same : let the good of both ioyne together , and the good of both put downe the ill of either . some who neuer iudged aright what it was to liue so vnited , may rashly say they had rather dye then bee vnited . he was but an young man in terence , who vsed that perswasion for his affection onely , emori malim : but an olde man gaue this counsell out of long experience , first learne what it is to liue ; if then that life displease , when thou knowest it , thou mayest bestowe this on thy selfe which thou now chusest . plato framed a definition of a man , that he was a liuing creature , going vpon two feete , and without feathers : which definition was mocked by shewe of a cocke , his feathers pulled off : but the authour of the tractate of the vnion , hath giuen this man , if you will hence deriue him , foure legges to walke on . so strongly therefore vnderset , hee aduentured that discourse , knowing belike , that the perswasion of iust thinges pleased the gods ; and that the people of athens would not kill phocion , if they repented a little . mildly they yet proceed , for they cal his iudgemēt his wit rather giuing a backward commendation of his labour spent , then the cause , vse of his arguments in behalfe thereof . sure hee was some great councellor who gaue the king that aduice , that he should not liue out of his countrey wherein he was borne , and from it ( that was not to let his numen be felt in it ) together . what , though hee hath pleasured many of that nation : ought the well doing of a few be his onely care ? is the rewarding of his seruants , all that falles into a kings studie ? for his cōmon wealthes good ? haue we had so much benefit by their comming , and shall we deny them share of that we enioy by them ? they haue bred vs a king , they haue brought him safe , they haue brought him euery way perfect ; of nature , good ; learning great , vertues many ; of issue fruitfull ; and on his head a crowne , before he came here : matched most royally for the qualitie of her bloud ; gallantly for her person ; and aboue all for the goodnesse residing in her royal self , & her happines in her sweet issue , descended from her : and shall we now vse scotland as an olde scabbard , or a kings cradle . vmditius a bond — slaue in rome , for preuenting only by relation vnto a cōsul , the treasons of the sons of treuitelij , and of brutus , was not onely made free ; but a law made for the freedome of all bondslaues , called lex vindicia : by which euer afterwards none of them could be taken by force , or haue violence offered to them by allowance : how much rather ought we to enact some memorable record vnto posteritie , whereby this great blessing from that nation may be acknowledged vnto it ? the rather they hauing demeaned themselues so honorably , as to giue vs iust satisfaction of their valours : an excellent cause now god will haue vs friends , why we should loue entirely . this is a course fitter for vs to embrace , then our strengths refused by other aduersities , to hope of our succours . but now rather to speake a little in behalfe , and for vse of our owne cōmon-wealth , then to perswade their particular good in it . as our lawes are the best , or we must say so of them , who liue vnder them , of all nations , whereby our kingdome is gouerned ; so the ciuill lawes being no such strangers vnto them , somewhat would soone be established ; whereby we might get the benefit of theirs , by the assent of ours , to the cōsent of both . which while it is in indeuor , they by precise looking into ours , wil get reformed some abuses crept in by time , custome , or misse-interpretation ; such as my lord chancellor in his integritie shewed daily , and diuers of the graue iudges , and chiefely the chiefest of them , as oportunities serue , for conscience sake , do amend as they apply them , and but by such an occasion as this , will hardly euer be moted vpon . of this argument , for agreement of both lawes , ( except i be deceiued ) a friend of mine ; and worthie to bee yours , hath very lately , verie shortly written : comparing the grandes , the titles , the rules , and right vse of both , ( as his occasion led him ) so learnedly , so fully , and so experiencedly together ; as the two common wealthes may soone bee taught , that there is nothing disagreeing in essence betweene them , nothing of the ones substance wanting to the other , ( the termes and practises onely hauing giuen the shewe of difference hitherto . ) but i cannot iudge whether hee will bee iudged woorthie any great imployments , since hanno was but vnthankfully dealt withall , who first tamed a lion. it were pitie a common-wealthes man should haue more encouragement in his trauell , then his conscience of well doing . to returne to my purpose ; if for many seene benefits , which wee cannot chuse but reape , besides the satisfaction of our soueraigne , no way were motiue to a heartie subiect , there should ingrowe any inconueniences ; the kinges desire standing in heede of the acte trimolius the true corinth , would take part against his owne brother , for the good of the common-wealth . but these doubtes stands like the mountaines anaxagoras was asked whether at the last they would not bee water ; whose aunswere was , in time they would , tempus edax rerum , &c. time doth worke what no man knoweth in the faithfull turtle doue . martial was very angrie with a fellowe , who would needes knowe thinges vppon supposalles , as how hee would behaue himselfe if hee were rich ; and shutting him off with this aunsweare ; if men can foretell how thinges shall succeede , how wilt thou behaue thy selfe , if thou becommest a lion ? quenquam posse putas , &c. isocrates was troubled with the vncertaintie of the time , how hee might behaue himselfe , when hee might haue a boxe on the eare ; for then ▪ and not else hee would weare a helmet . this cause great cities , and your friendes from story writers flying away so wilde , sits now as gently by vs , as tubero the pretors pye did , which came strangely to his hand , and of which the southsayers foretolde that much good would come with her , were shee accepted ; if otherwise , much ill to the pretor : her hee pulled in peeces , but not without his owne mischiefe . in phrigia and silenus was a great earthquake , which consumed many houses and mortalles ; the oracle saide , some rich thing must bee throwne into it : death of a kinges sonne onely stopped the gaping of the earth in those places . here is no earth-quake , but heauens shine : here is life and renowne to our kings sonne , our worthy prince , ours and many more kingdoms hope . the oracle sayes not , dye sonne ; but liue all friendly together . tully in the dreame of scipio saith , that all they who haue saued their countrey , haue helped their countrey , haue encreased their countrey , haue in heauen a place appointed them , where euerlastingly they shall ioy . that was the cause why the ambassadors of the carthagenians and the sirenenses were contented to make the condition of being buried quicke , where they challengd their bounds : so great was their loue to the inlargement of their countrey ; a desire euer prosecuted , and neuer but weakely by darius in quintus curtius his time only gaine-said , that a kingdome might be too great . on the other side remember but how themistocles dealt with zerxes , for the ouerthrow of al greece , because his countrey had ingratefully respected him . and had not artaxerxes hung vp my hamon , mardocheus had beene betrayed in his owne countrey beyond the kings disposition , but that did i beare , though it cost me deare . as i forgiue , so i forget , and returne to this : if the english haue not generall peace , which they shall not till they bee knowne generally strong ( for yet forreiners may bee suspected but to prye into our state , to breake or holde , resoluing neither but by the first instructions ) they will ere long grow so vnanswerable of taskes and subsidies , that the collectors shall finde them , as in another common-wealth was seene , playing in the streetes , a shrewd signe , that they be no money keepers . but if they once see our fortune sitting , they will then thinke she will so finde the benefit of her ease , as shee will euer be knowne where to bee found . now is our ground ready , what seede wee sow , we shall reape . this cause talkes nothing of inconuenience , yet the man , though good , though iust , though innocent , is feared , vir bonus , iustus , innocens timetur , pouertie is pretended , saith martiall . it is not pouertie to haue nothing . non est paupertas nestor habere nihil . the fault sure is this , the poore seekes friendships vnworthy affections , quòd colit ingratas pauper amicitias . nay they haue their peculiar riches where they are , in as large a maner as we make account of ours here . but this is to tennice freely , but not to denise kindly . many i see knowe how to counsell ; few finde i , who can tell how to make the consull . the king should haue long hands , as farre reaching as kent and kentile ; and would you haue the king feed with one gloue on , & another off ? it would be said of him , totus & in toto per totum totus & omnis , esse omnis dū vis incipis esse tuus : that he then beginneth to be his owne , when he will be all , and in all , and by all , and all euery where . and though some pretend fables , how the wolfe , by at the first getting an house to breede in , at the last hauing many litters , helde it by strength against the owner : yet what can these things moue in ordered cōmon wealthes , where no more interest is attained , then the lawes admit right to : tully in his pleading for roscius , shewes how many wayes the lawes punish those , whose demaundes are greater then the lawes doe allow . the like doth crassus in tully . our lawes will maintaine vs in our owne well enough ; though our conditions i hope will not make them pay so deare , as the english did when they went to fetch the king and queene from scotland . this may be giuen to the king for them ; indeede , to them for vs ; the rest they shall enioy , as the lawe will , for what they buy , by the law they may call their owne . demurre then no longer my great and deare friendes , vpon this argument , but returne this aunsweare , that neptune did by the raine-bowe terram esse communem . which though he durst not defend against iupiter ; yet you haue iupiter on your side , against whome to contend were madnesse , as with an equall doubtfull ; with an inferiour base . seneca sayth of power , that if it inuite to any thing , nay , if it intreate ought , it compelles it . easie it is not to write against him in his gouernment , who can score a man out of his gouernment : non facile est in eum scribere qui potest proscribere . fauorinus the philosopher , admitteth hadrian the better iudgement , because he commaunded thirtie legions . the matter then being euen , let vs not contend vnequally , for had not nature seated this kingdom within you , you might well haue helde it , without you . well had scipio emilian discharged this censorship , had the quirites giuen him a fellow pretoorr not giuē him one . think not vpō what cato saith , that it is not to be marueiled at , if what a man thinkes an excellent good , he be loath to share with another : but let plutarch teach you to gaine authoritie , and power with expedition : so neither smoake shall make the fire vnpleasant in the kindling ; nor enuie lay snares to impeach glorie by in the framing . if longer you stay vpon further deliberation , this businesse hauing beene determined by the comittee in heauen , scipio emilian must nedes tell the senate , that neither of the consules is fit for the seruice of the common-wealth : for seruius sulpitius galba was poore , and had nothing , and valerius could neuer thinke he had enough ▪ yet since the men on both sides are seruiceable , make their conditions as agreeing amongst themselues ; so fit for the common-wealth : let the one inioy more , the other couet lesse ; so shall both encrease apace , and rome be well serued . if any obiect their affections bee vnlike ours , that comes not out of nature , but custome . as the ayre is tempered , sayeth tully in his diuination ; so are the children spirited , their wittes formed , their maners , their minds , their bodies , and the actions of their life . looke in the english and scotchmens faces : see whether caucasus haue begot them vpon hard rockes . our climate is the same ; our temperatures alike ; if any thing within our gouernment make vs differ , it is but custome . they haue not so many cities as we ; they followe feeds which we do not ; yet finde i not , but we are prickers as well as they , and if it be obserued what store of ritters we haue got , it may be feared that two cheuallers , being not castor and pollux , may be driuen to one chiual , to ride on besides the saddle . but let herodotus write as much as he will of the kingdom of custome : for though darius could not get the grecians to eate their dead fathers for any golde ; nor the indians to burne theirs for any iron ; because of the contrarieties of their vses in both : yet assure i my selfe , this nation honours the king with so much zeale ; he is able to teach thē , with so much skill ; embrace vs with so much affection , especially if wee bee once vnited in indissoluble bounds ; as i knowe not any custome may be fit for them to leaue , shall not be discontinued , nor any new lawe to be put in vse , to which the first day shall not finde them accordant . si fingere me putas , istud salutemus . they do many of them vnderstand what was cyrus his counsell to leaue those mountaines countries , and descend into the plaines , there with the times to change the manners , as tully writes to atticus , where as the seedes are like the plants , the liues of men are like the countries . there shal they best learne to obey , where the king sits highest to rule : there shall they heare him clearely , where ille regit dictis animos & pector a mulcet . for this deede done none shall need to looke backe into his conscience with affrightment . for this name taken , none shall need to vnderstand the nation to be embased : for this kingdome inlarged , none shall finde their owne states impaired . as touching vnion with others and their abbetments , ye may there iudge of your aduices , among those who haue learnedly and grauely refuted that fourth question of the booke intituled vindictae contra tyrannos : wherein is discoursed , whether one prince may ioyne with the subiects of an other , who take vpon them armes for defence of defending religion . my purpose being to be short , shall rather insinuate my zealous wish of home-combining then forraine vses , the one naturall and politique ; the other politique alone if so much ; i aske your body but within your girdle ; your head couered onely with your hat ; your garment to be grauer then partie-coloured : and offer you fraunce and spaine for examples , limited by those bounds , nature her selfe hath appointed vnto them , the montes , perrenaei , the sea , the alpes , with the rest . nor is it constantly held , that our name of britans should bee deriued of brutus , rather some hold we are called prittons , of a word which signifies a marte or fayre ; of stuffe for which , this whole island , as well al parts as any one part , wales and cornwall , as england and scotland , is in one kinde or other replenished . nor ought that worde of marte seeme to haue lesse boundes then ciuitas ; which ( as aristotle writeth ) signifieth a whole common wealth . as for our priuate goods , thogh i could answere publica priuatis sunt anteponenda ; yet let the stories bee but searched , how our forteine conquestes haue bene hindred by the opportunities the scots haue taken in our absences ; and how iealousies haue onely made vs diuersely combine our selues ; they with fraunce ; wee with the house of burgondie , they shall finde how likely it is , that priuate mens marchandize may be lost in the wracke of the generall fleete . other obiections should i goe about to frame , such as pride or curiositie might suggest vnto me ; as much as i haue heard should i endeuour to answere , the necessary themes of some mens seeming wise ; i doubt much how i could swim from out their deluge . noahs arke , or chawcers trough being vnbuilt against such an inundation . steeples stand not vp here as in the drownd countries of our lowe neighbours . there are no sea-markes appearing to direct ; no castles , no forts , no citties to protect ; hilles and mountaines are here ouerwhelmed , and the solutions of these following , would be the dissolution of the time spent about them , and no resolution of any thing for the applying of gods blessings to our vses ; animo volenti nihil difficile : while we say all will be subuerted , the lawes ouerthrowne , mens states taken away , the nations honor lost , and our dish well serued in , sliced into a gallemawfrey , ouerpeppered and salt buttered : wee spread feares , doubtes , ( god grant not hatreds largely ) but discusse vpon inconueniences slowly . if to forward accordes the debate of this question happen , you will finde that neither the number of the scottishmen , forreiners from their countrey ; nor the ambition of the nobles , though by some thought to challenge antiquitie before ours ; neither the customes of the nation differing from ours in whatsoeuer , wil debarre this proceeding , or not admit time and will for fitnesse . the like said of our auncient statutes , of the stories auncient , of vs , of our reasonable affections as wee now stand for our goods , and i dare boldly say , eyther their intendmēts lesse needfull , or their applications more profitable , or alterations more beneficial , will make vs more enioy this mornings breakfast , then all last weekes dyet . for neither doth the king affect other then our goods ; or is himselfe vnable to iudge of them ; nor doubteth but that there ought much deliberation to bee taken in a cause so important , much circumspection touching the proportioning out the particulars . these reasons haue moued me seeing that the king is to be defended in his desire as a good father of the common-wealth ; hath spared the bloud of our good countreymen , turned ill ; hath incouraged the seruices of the well deseruing , shewes himselfe wise in his gouernment ; louing in his affection , and industriously carefull of the weale publike ; to take vpon me this license in writing , this zeale to my countrey in perswading . which if it happen to mindes affected to let lucilii pecus esse liberum & qua velit pasci , i hope with them mine endeuour shall finde fauour : for the rest , as it no waies becomes me to be vnciuill , as democrates was to philip : so if they shall thinke it rather an impotencie in me , not to spare mine affection to this argument ; then in themselues to afflict me by whatsoeuer meanes : their wisdomes are of force to giue themselues content ; and this being out and past from me , and dislikte , shall make me not like to passe out more to be submitted to censure . to conclude , long liue yee right honourable citties , keeping peace in you , fiers from you , and traffique with you ; so may you build your houses faire , keepe them neate , haue good store of money and bonds in your chestes ; your prentices grow free , your liueries aldermand , your wiues ladies , your children made gentlefolkes , and your cittie commodities be exchanged into the courtiers reuenewes ; as at this marriage if you will daunce , you make the contract sure , and till death depart : for though they and you lye in one an other of your houses ; nay should they and you lye with one an other of your wiues and daughters ; beleeue me non concubitus sed consensus facit matrimonium , say the ciuilians ; marry them and make the bond holy and vnuiolable , or expect no securitie that the grand-children in time to come , shall alwaies proue comfortable to the old folkes . catullus . hymen ô hymenaee hymen adest ô hymenaee . sir philip sidney . god hymen long your coupled ioyes maintaine . finis . a proclamation england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) 1687 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a46516 wing j253 estc r446 13653058 ocm 13653058 101000 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a46516) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 101000) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 791:52) a proclamation england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) james ii, king of england, 1633-1701. paterson, william, 1658-1719. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, and reprinted by thomas newcomb for s. forrester ..., edinburgh : 1687. at head of title: by the king. dated: 28 day of june, 1687. extends the king's proclamation of 12 february 1687 for further liberty of conscience in scotland. "extracted forth of the records of his majesties council by me sir william paterson, clerk to his majesties most honorable privy council." reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng liberty of conscience -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -church history -17th century -sources. scotland -proclamations. broadsides -scotland -edinburgh (lothian) -17th century 2007-11 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-08 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion j 2 r diev et mon droit honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms by the king , a poclamation . james r. james the seventh , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. to all and sundry our good subjects whom these presents do or may concern , greeting . whereas by our royal proclamation of the date the 12th day of february 1686 / 7. we were graciously pleased , for the causes , and on the terms therein mentioned , to grant our royal toleration to the professors of the christian religion therein named ; with and under certain restrictions and limitations ; all which are in the said proclamation more at length expressed . we now taking into our royal consideration the sinistruous interpretations which either have , or may be made , of some restrictions therein mentioned , have thought fit , by this our royal proclamation , further to declare , that we will protect our archbishops and bishops , and all our subjects of the protestant religion , in the free exercise of their protestant religion , as it is by law established , and in the quiet and full injoyment of all their possessions , without any molestation or disturbance whatsoever . and we do likewise , by our sovereign authority , prerogative royal , absolute power , suspend , stop ; and disable all penal and sanguinary laws made against any for nonconformity to the religion established by law in that our ancient kingdom , or for exercising their respective worships , religions , rites and ceremonies ; all which laws are hereby stopt , suspended , and disabled , to all intents and purposes . and to the end , that by the liberty thereby granted , the peace and security of our government , in the practice thereof , may not be endangered , we have thought fit , and do hereby straitly charge and command all our loving subjects , that as we do give them leave to meet and serve god after their own way and manner , be it in private houses , chappels , or places purposely hired or built for that use , so that they take care that nothing be preached or taught among them which may any ways tend to alienat the hearts of our people from us , or our government , and that their meetings be peaceable , openly and publickly held , and all persons freely admitted to them , and that they do signifie and make known to some one or more of the next privy counsellors , sheriffs , stewards , baillies , justices of the peace , or magistrats of burgs-royal , what place or places they set a part for these uses , with the names of the preachers . and that all our subjects may enjoy such their religious assemblies with greater assurance and protection , we have thought fit , and do hereby command , that no disturbance , of any kind , be made , or given unto them , under pain of our royal displeasure , and to be further proceeded against with the outmost severity ; provided always , that their meetings be in houses or places provided for the purpose , and not in the open fields , for which now , after this our royal grace and favor shown , ( which surpasses the hopes , and equals the very wishes of the most zealously concerned ) there is not the least shadow of excuse left ; which meetings in fields we do hereby strictly prohibit and forbid , against all which we do leave our laws and acts of parliament in full force and vigor , notwithstanding the premises ; and do further command all our judges , magistrats , and officers of our forces , to prosecute such as shall be guilty of the saids field conventicles , or assemblies with the outmost rigour , as they would avoid our highest displeasure ; for we are confident none will , after these liberties and freedoms we have given to all , without reserve , to serve god in their own way , presume to meet in these assemblies , except such as make a pretence of religion , to cover their treasonable designs against our royal person , and the peace of our government . and lastly , to the end all our good subjects may have notice of this our royal will and pleasure , we do hereby command our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers , pursevants , and messengers at arms , to make timeous proclamation thereof at the mercat-cross of edinburgh : and besides the printing and publishing of this our royal proclamation , it is our express will and pleasure , that the same be past under our great seal of that our kingdom per saltum , without passing any other seal or register . in order whereunto , these shall be to the directors of our chancellary and their deputs , for writing the same , and to our chancellor , for causing our great seal aforesaid to be appended thereunto , a sufficient warrand . given at our court at windsor the 28 day of june , 1687. and of our reign the third year . by his majesties command . melford . edinburgh , july 5. 1687. present in council james earl of perth lord high chancellor . john lord archbishop of glascow . the lord marquis of athol privy seal . duke of hamilton . duke of gordon , earl of arran . earl of linlithgow lord justice-general . earl of dumfermling . earl of strathmore . earl of landerdale . earl of southesk . earl of airly . lo. viscount tarbat . lo. viscount strathallan . lo. livingston . lo. president of session . lo. advocate . lo. justice-clerk . lo. castlehill . general leiutenent dowglas . niddrie . the above-written proclamation from his most sacred majesty , being read in his privy council of scotland , was in pursuance of his majesties royal commands ordered to be publised with all due solemnities . extracted forth of the records of his majesties council by me sir william paterson clerk to his majesties most honourable privy council . will. paterson . god save the king . edinbvrgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , and reprinted by thomas newcomb , for s. forrester , in kings-street westminster , 1687. a proclamation, against the resset of the rebels, and for delivering them up to justice proclamations. 1679-06-26 scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1679 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92654 wing s1616 estc r230219 99895949 99895949 153557 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92654) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 153557) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2370:22) a proclamation, against the resset of the rebels, and for delivering them up to justice proclamations. 1679-06-26 scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) edinburgh, printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, anno dom. 1679. reprinted for andrew forrester, in king-street vvestminster, [london] : [1679] at end of text: given under our signet at edinburgh, the twentieth sixth day of june, 1679. and of our reign the thirty one year. arms 254; steele notation: faith, their un-. reproduction of original in the folger shakespeare library, washington, d.c.. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng covenanters -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides -england -london broadsides -scotland 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion cr honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , against the resset of the rebels , and for delivering them up to justice . charles , by the grace of god , king of great brittain , france and ireland , defender of the faith , to all and sundry our leidges and subjects , whom these presents do or may concern , greeting : forasmuch as upon the first notice given to our privy council of the rising and gathering of these dis-loyal and seditious persons in the west , who have of late appeared in arms in a desperate and avowed rebellion against us , our government and laws , we did declare them to be traitors , and discharged all our subjects to assist , resset , supply , or correspond with any of them , under the pain of treason . and the saids rebels and traitors , being now ( by the blessing of god upon our forces ) subdued , dissipated and scattered ; and such of them as were not either killed or taken in the field , being either retired secretly to their own homes and houses , expecting shelter and protection from the respective heretors , in whose lands they dwell , or lurking in the country . and we being unwilling that any of our good subjects should be ensnared , or brought into trouble by them ; have therefore with the advice of our privy council , thought fit again to discharge and prohibite all our subjects , men or women , that none of them offer or presume to harbour , resset , supply , correspond with , hide or conceal the persons of robert hamilton , brother german to the laird of prestoun , john patoun in meadow-head , alias captain patoun , joseph lermont , alias major lermont , illiam cleeland , john balfour of kinloch whitfoord of bla quhan younger , meclellan of barscob , john wilson , son to alexander wilson town-clerk of lanerk , ross 〈…〉 , pretended major , thomas weir , brother to kirkfield , hackstoun of rathillet , carmichael , son to the earl of wig●on's chamberlane , cannon of mondrogat , mr. william ferguson of ketloch , james russel in kingsketle , george balfour in gilstoun , andrew and alexander hendersons , sons to john henderson in killbraichmont , andro guilan weaver in balmerino , george fleeming younger of balbuthy , robert dingwall , son to dingwall in caldhame , mr. samuel arnot , mr. gabriel semple , mr. iohn welsh , mr. iohn king , mr. donald cargil , mr. george barclay , mr. john rae , mr. thomas dowglas , mr. forrester , mr. robert muir , mr. lamb , mr. richard cameron , mr. davi● home ure of shirgarton , forrester of bankhead , john haddoway merchant in dowglas , james white writer the 〈…〉 cunninghame of mountgrenan , and mr. iohn cuninghame sometime of bedland , james and william cleillands , brethr●n 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to john haddoway merchant in dowglas , thomas bogle of boglehole , alias neither-carmile , gordons of ea 〈…〉 older and younger , medowgall of freuch , the laird of remenstoun , brother to the earl of galloway , the laird of 〈◊〉 stewart , brother to the said earl , gordon of craichlay turnbul of beuley , thomas turnbul of standh 〈…〉 hendry hall , george home of greddin , macky of cloncard , mr. john kae , somervel of vrats , mr. archibald riddel , brother to the laird of riddel , catcharts , two sons of the lord cathcart , blair of phinnick , murdoch , alias laird murdoch , r●lland ritchison fewar in gilmerton and his three sons . or any others who concurred or joyned in the late rebellion , or who upon the account thereof , have appeared in arms in any part of this our kingdom : but that they pursue them as the worst of trai●ors , and present and deliver such of them as they shall have within their power , to the lords of our privy council , the sheriff of the county , or the magstrates of the next adjacent burgh-royal , to be by them made forth-coming to law : certifying all persons , either heretors , tenents , or other men or vvomen , as shall be found to fail in their duty herein , they shall be esteemed and punished as favourers of the said rebellion , and as persons accessory to , and guilty of the same . and to the end , all our good subjects may have timeous notice hereof , vve do ordain these presents to be forthwith printed , and published at the mercat crosses of edinburgh , linlithgow , stirling , lanerk , air , rutherglen , glasgow , irwing , vvigton , kirckcudurgh , dumfreice , cowpar in fife , jedburg , perth , and remanent mercat crosses of the head burghs of the several shires of the kingdom , by macers or messengers at armes : and we do recommend to the right reverend our archbishop and bishops , to give order that this our proclamation be , with all diligence , read on the lords day in all the churches vvithin their several diocesses , that none pretend ignorance . given under our signet at edinburgh , the twentieth sixth day of june , 1679. and of our reign the thirty one year . al. gibson . cl. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1679. reprinted for andrew forrester , in king-street vvestminster . a catalogue of the present convention of estates now assembled in the kingdom of scotland, with others of the clergy, nobility, and commissioners for shyres and burghs, not therein assembled. scotland. convention of estates. 1689 approx. 14 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a78341 wing c1410 estc r219650 43077483 ocm 43077483 151542 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a78341) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 151542) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2264:6) a catalogue of the present convention of estates now assembled in the kingdom of scotland, with others of the clergy, nobility, and commissioners for shyres and burghs, not therein assembled. scotland. convention of estates. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed for j. partridge, m. gilliflower, s. heyrick, and sold by r. taylor, near stationers-hall, london : 1689. caption title. imprint from colophon. "licensed apr. 23. 1689." reproduction of original in: henry e. huntington library, san marino, california. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -convention of estates. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745. broadsides -london (england) -17th century. 2008-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-04 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-06 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2008-06 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a catalogue of the present convention of estates now assembled in the kingdom of scotland , with others of the clergy , nobility , and commissioners for shyres and burghs , not th●rein assembled . note that all those with this mark * before them are in the present convention . licensed apr. 23. 1●●9 . ja. fraser . clergy . archbisops . * s. andrews . * glascow . bishops . * edinbrugh . galloway . * dunkeld . * aberdein . * murray . * ross . * birchen . * dumblaine . * caithnes . * isles . argyle . * orknay . nobility . dukes . * d. of hamilton . d. of bŭccleŭgh . d. of lenox . d. of gordone . * d. of queensberrie . marquesses . * m. of douglas . m. of montrose . * m. of atholl . earls . * e. of argyle . * crawfuird . * erroll . * marishall . * sutherland . * marr. airth . rothes . * mortoŭn . buchan . * glencairne . * eglingtoŭn . * cassils . caithnes . nithisdaill . wintoŭn . * linlithgow . * home . pearth . * dumfermline . wigloŭn . strathmore . abercorne . roxbrugh . kellie . haddingtoun . galloway . seaforth . * lauderdale . * lothian . kinnoŭll . lowdoŭn . dumfreis . stirling . elgine . southesk . traquair . aucrŭm . weymes . dalhoussie . * airlie . findlator . carnwarth . * callender . * levin . * annandale . dysert . * paumŭir . * selkirk . * tweddale . northesk . * kincairden . * balcarras . * forffar . * tarras . midletoŭn . aboyne . newbrugh . kilmarnock . * dumdonald . dumbartoŭn . * kintore . braealbane . aberdene . melfort . viscounts . falkland . dumbar . * stormont . * kenmŭir . * arbutmet . frendraught . kingstoŭn . * oxenfoord . irving . kilsyth . dumblane . prestone . newhaven . * tarbat . tiviot . strathallan . * dundie . lords . the lord forbes . saltoŭn . gray . ochiltrie . cathcart . * sinclair . mordingtoŭn . sempill . * elphingstoŭn . oliphant . * lovat . borthwick . ross . * torphiche . spinnie . * lindores . * balmorinoc● * blantyre . * cardross . craustoŭn . burghlie . * jedburgh . mathertie . cowpar . * melvill . napper . cameron . crammond . rae . * forrester . pitshgo . kirkcudbright . frazer . * bargainy . banoff . elibank . * dunkeld . * belhaven . halkertoŭn . abercrombie . * carmichaell . * duffus . * rollo . * colvill . * ruthven . * rutherfoord . * ballenden . * newwark . nairne . eymouth . kinnaird . glassfoord . commissioners for shyres . the shyre of edinburgh , sir james foulis of collingtoun , sir john maitland of ravelrig . haddingtoŭn , * sir robert sinclair of stevenston , * the laird of ormistoŭn . berwick , * sir archibald cockburn of langtoŭn , * sir patrick home of polwart . roxburg , * sir william eliot of stobs , * sir patrick scott of aucrŭm . selkirk , * sir william scott jun. of harden , * george pringle of torwoodlie . peebles , * sir archibald murray of blackbarony , * david murray of stenhope . lanerk , * the laird of lamingtoŭn , * sir daniell carmichaell of malshe . dumfreis , * sir james johnstoun of westerraw . wigtoŭn . * sir andrew agnew of lochnaw , * william m'dougall of garthland , aire , * the laird of blair , * the laird of skelmorlie , dumbartoun , * claud hamiltone of burnes , * william colquhoun of craigtoun . bute , * sir james stewart , shirreff of bŭte , * david boyl of kelburne . reufrew , * sir john maxwell of pollock , * william cunningham jun. of craigens stuling , * sir charles erskine of alva , * john houstoŭn jun. of that ilb. linlithgow , * thomas drummond of rickartoŭn , * patrick murray of livingstoun . pearth , * john halden of glenegies , * james ramsay jun. of bamfe . kincairden , * sir thomas burnet of leys , * alexander arbuthnet of knox. aberdein , * sir john forbes of craigiwar , * james moir of stainewood . invernes , * the laird of grant , * duncom forbes of colloden . nairn , cromartie , argyll , * sir duncan campbell of auchenbreck . * john campbell captain of carrick . fyfe , * william anstruther jun. of that ilk. * john dempster of pithver . forfar , * sir george m'kenzie of newtyle , * david erskine of dŭn. baniff , * sir patrick ogilble of boyne , * alexander dŭff of braico . stewartrie of kirkcudbright , * hugh m'guffock of rusco . southerland , * john gordon jun. of embo , adam gordon of dalfolie . caithnes , elgine , * the laird of brodie . * thomas dumbar of grange . orknay , * william craigie of garsey , clackmanan , * david bruce of clackmanan . ross , double elections not yet discuss'd . kinross , * sir david arnot of that ilb. commissioners for burghs . edinburgh , sir john hall edinburgh , george stirling . pearth , rober smyth . dundee , james fletcher . aberdene , alexander gordone . stirling . hugh kennedie . linlithgow , william haigens . st. andrews , james smyth . glasgow , john andersone . aire , john nŭir . haddingtoun , john sleigh . dysert , david christie . kirkaldie , john bosswall . monross , james moodi● coupar , robert melvill . ausbrutheaster , david spence late bayly dumfreis , james kennau . juvernes , john cuthbert . bruntistand , alexander gedd . junerkerthen , alexander spittel . kinghorne , patrick wallace . brichen , mr. hendry mauld . irvine , mr. alex cunninghame . jedbrugh , adam ainsley . kirkcudbrugh , john ewart . wigtoun , william coltran . dumfermling , sir charles halket . pitten weym , george smyth . selkirk , mr john murray . dumbartoun , mr. james smollel . renfrew , mr. william cochran dumbar , james smyth . lanerk , thomas hamiltone . aberbrothock , patrick stevin . elgine , james stuart peebles , john mŭir . craill , george moncreif . tayne , william ross . cubross , mr. william erskine . benuff , walter stewart . whitehorne , patrick murdoch . forffar , john carnegie . rothsey , mr. robert stewart . nairne , john ross . forres , thomas cullock . rutherglen , john scott . north berwick , thomas stewart . ausbrutherwester . mr. robert cleilland cullen , mr. james ogilvie . lander , david maitland . kintoir , hugh wallace . annan , bryce blair . lochmaben , thomas kennedie sanquhar , mr. john boswall . new galloway , james gordone . kilrenny , george beaton . forterose , robert innes . dingwall , kenneth m ckenzie . dornock , george gordone . queen ferrie , mr. william hamiltone . junerarie , hugh brown. junerurie , john andersone . week , kirkwall , george traill . juverbervie , william beatie . stranrawer , sir john dalrymple . london , printed for j. partridge , m. gilliflower , s. heyrick , and sold by r. taylor , near stationers-hall , 1689. a proclamation, for dissolving the parliament scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1674 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b02115 wing c3332 estc r233124 52612087 ocm 52612087 179369 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b02115) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179369) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2786:30) a proclamation, for dissolving the parliament scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by andrew anderson, printer to the king's most excellent majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1674. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. dated at end: given under our signet at whitehall, the nineteenth day of may, one thousand six hundred seventy and four years, and of our reign the six and twentieth year. signed: al. gibson, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-04 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-05 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-05 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion cr royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , for dissolving the parliament . charles , by the grace of god , king of great brittain , france , and ireland , defender of the faith : to our lyon king at armes , and his brethren heraulds , macers , pursevants , messengers at armes , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch , as upon divers good considerations , relating to our service , and the good of our subjects : we did call the parliament of this our ancient kingdom of scotland , and did authorize our right trusty , and right intirely beloved cousine and councellor , the duke of landerdale , to be our commissioner during the whole currency thereof , which though the exigency of our affairs , hath been continued beyond our first intention : we being necessarily ingaged in a war with the states of the vnited neitherlands . and by the last act of the last session of that parliament , bearing date , the third day of march last ; our said parliament was by vs declared current , and adjourned to the fourteenth of october next ; the peace betwixt vs and the vnited provinces not being then perfected ; and that peace being now brought to its full effect , and seing the present condition of our affairs doth not require , that our good subject should be any longer burthened , with attendance in this parliament , we have resolve to dissolve the same : likeas , we , with advice of our privy council , do hereby dissolve the present current parliament of this our kingdom , and do declare the same to be dissolved . our will is herefor , and we charge you straitly , and commands , that incontinent these our letters seen ye passe to the mercat crosse of edinburgh , and other places needfull , and thereat , in our name and authority , by oppen proclamation , make publication of our dissolving the present current parliament of this our kingdom , and that the same is dissolved , that all our leiges may have due and timeous notice thereof . the which to do , we commit to you conjunctly and severally , our full power , by these our letters , delivering them by you duly execute , and endorsat again to the bearer . given under our signet at vvhitehall , the ninteenth day of may , one thousand six hundred seventy and four years , and of our reign the six and twentieth year . al. gibson , cl. s ti concilii . god save the king. edinbvrgh , printed by andrew anderson , printed to the king 's most excellent majesty . anno dom. 1674. a modest and free conference betwixt a conformist and a non-conformist about the present distempers of scotland now in seven dialogues / by a lover of peace. burnet, gilbert, 1643-1715. 1669 approx. 217 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 76 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a30390 wing b5834 estc r27816 10152305 ocm 10152305 44658 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a30390) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 44658) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1378:10) a modest and free conference betwixt a conformist and a non-conformist about the present distempers of scotland now in seven dialogues / by a lover of peace. burnet, gilbert, 1643-1715. the second edition. [11], 100, 32 p. s.n.], [edinburgh? : 1669. "published by order." attributed to gilbert burnet--wing and british museum catalogue. reproduction of original in the cambridge university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng dissenters, religious -england. scotland -church history -17th century. 2003-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-11 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-12 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2003-12 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a modest and free conference betwixt a conformist and a non-conformist , about the present distempers of scotland . the second edition . now in seven dialogues . by a lover of peace . gal. 5.15 . but if ye bite and devour one another , take heed ye be not consumed one of another . published by order . printed anno dom. 1669. the stationer to the reader . reader , all the account i can give of this book , or the author , is in the following letter which came to my hands a few dayes after i received these sheets , and is prefixed to them in stead of a preface . for the stationer . though these dialogues were brought to you by another hand than my own , yet since it is upon my motion that they came to be published , contrary to the authors design , and truly without his order : i think my self oblidged to say somewhat of the author and the book , and the rather that the author , not being forward to the publishing of it , will say nothing of preface himself ; but withall , i am resolved you shall be as ignorant of the writter of this , as of the author of the book . the author is a person of extraordinary moderation and peaceablness : he can allow any difference of opinion , but such as is incompatible with the peace and quiet of the church . and though there be some expressions in these dialogues that would appear tart ; yet it is meerly occasioned by the zeal he hath against that uncharitable spirit , which can allow of nothing that is not exactly of their own way . the occasion of writting in this way , was , that a book of the same title and nature , printed in england , came to the author's hands ; and he , being pleased with that familiar way of writting , thought presently of composing dialogues suitable to our differences here , as that was to the differences of that nation : if there be any thing in this coincident with that book , it is in such things as the humours of that unquiet spirit in both nations are the same . and the author designs not vanity by these few sheets , written , to my knowledge , in as few houres as they could hardly be transcribed ; but wisheth every one to see the weakness of those grounds upon which such specious structurs are built ; which when they come to be examined , prove but painted sepulchres . the great design of the author in this small book , is , to let some well-meaning people , who have a love to godlinesse , see that religion is not at all concerned in things wherein they do concern themselves very much , and that in contending for the shell we are like to loose the kernell of religion . the language and manner of writting , is accommodated to these meaner capacities , who are most apt to be abused , by such as care not , nay , which is very sad , but too true , wish not religion nor godliness to prosper in the hands of those who differ from them in opinion about externall things , vvhich are not of great moment : as may appear from their persvvading poor souls to take for a mark of zeal that which in al christian nations is lookt on as a very great mark of impiety , to wit , not going to church : by which people do shew , in the most signal manner they can , their not owning the worship and adoration of god. the author meaned no prejudice to any person in vvritting of it , nor is it published upon any such design , but in hopes that it may inform sincere people . and whoever reads it without prejudice , will i hope judge so of it . farewel . a modest and free conference betwixt a conformist and a non-conformist , about the present distempers of scotland . in six dialogues . dialogue i. con. you are welcome from the west . how are all things there ? non. never worse ; the glory is departed from that people : and the power of godlinesse is gone there . god pity that poor place , which was once so glorious . c. i perceive by your manner of speaking , that you are much concerned in these matters : but i pray you tell me wherein things are turned so much to the worse among you ? n. alas ! are you such a stranger in israel , as not to know these things ? are not our gracious ministers taken from us ? so that the work of god is much born down : the brave dayes of communions , preachings , prayers , are away ; and in stead of the fire was once there , there remain but a few sparks in some secret corners : for , the precious ordinances are gone . c. what you say upon the matter , i know well enough : but do not apprehend it to be of such importance , as you seem to do . n. what! do not you think it sad , that christ is not preached ? c. god forbid but he be ? i do not know how it is in your country , but i am sure with us christ is preached very faithfully , but i fear you consider not well what it is to preach christ ; do you think to tell us only of his death , is to preach him ? n. no , no , but oh how doth my heart melt within me , when i remember how sweetly i have heard the ministers there , clear up my interest in christ ? c. may be it was more sweetly then sincerly ; for to tell you of an interest in him , while you are strangers to his laws and gospel , is to deceive you : since you can have no interest in the blood of christ , till you have his spirit dwelling in you . n. blessed be god , i know no name to be saved by , but the name of christ : and i renounce mine own righteousnesse , and accept of his righteousnesse . c. it is very true , that we are saved by the blood of christ : but it is as true , that we must be purified by his spirit , else we are none of his . if by renouncing your own righteousnesse ; you mean , what you naturally can perform without grace , you are in the right , but if you lean so to christs righteousnesse , as to neglect to be righteous your self , you with iudas , kiss your master , while you betray him . and i fear your ministers studied more to convince you of the need of christs righteousnesse , then of having any of your own : for indeed it is a cheap religion , to lean so intirely to christ , that we do nothing our selves . n. we are far from thinking there is no need of good works : we only exclude them from justification , which is by faith only . c. truly your practices tell , you think there is as little need of them to salvation , as to justification , remember the gospel is plain and simple , and came not to teach men sophistry or logick : therefore i shall not contend with you about words or phrases : for as i believe , that christ came to lay down his life a ransome for our sins ; so if you believe , that without holinesse we shall never see the face of god , we are agreed in this matter . but i wish we all studied to live better , and then our differences would quickly end . n. yes , i hear some of you are still talking of holiness and peace , but you forget truth : which is so necessary , that without it holiness is but hypocrisie . c. i acknowledge that , if you speak of the fundamental articles of our faith. but all truths are not of equal certainty , nor of equal importance : now it is a certain and important truth , that there should be an unity in the catholick church ; which is not to be broken , but upon a matter of greater certainty and weight . n. one precious truth is worth all the world : therefore i will not quite one truth for the love of all men . not a hoof , said moses . c. if you were required to condemn or deny any thing you judged truth , i confesse you ought to obey god rather than man. but it is another case to quite the communion of the church ; because they are not , as you think , in the truth : unlesse that truth be of greater importance than is the article of your faith , the catholick church , and the communion of saints . and when you are as sure of your call to contend for these truths , as moses was of the will of god , you may use his words . let me then examine you a little , how do you know your opinions are truths ? n. who can doubt of it ? are they not the cause and interest of christ , his kingdom and crown , his glorious work , to which we are all bound by the oath of god taken in the covenant , whereinto even the children unborn are oblidged . c. if big words prove truths , you are full of them : but remember of whom the apostle gives this character , they speak swelling words of vanity . and there is no party but have the same language in their mouth : these are fine contrivances to lead away silly women captive , who would be ready to judge your blustering confidence , an evidence of truth , when a modester way of speaking is suspect of diffidence : whereas in right scales , the one looks like arrogant pride , and the other like the modest spirit of jesus christ. n. how can you deny , that what is now cried down , was the work of god ? c. i confesse it was so the work of god , as the prophet said , is there any evil in the city , and the lord hath not done it : but in the sense you take it , it was as far from it , as darknesse is from light . n. how can you speak so , was not sin strangely born down in our dayes ? c. i confesse you studied to represse some sins : so did the pharisees . but remember the apostle divides filthinesse , in that of the flesh , and of the spirit : and indeed , the latter proves a much subtiller and stronger opposition to the gospel , than the former . it is true , some of these were repressed by you ; though i must add , in a way , scarce suitable to the gospel : but for other sins , you were very gentle to them , nay , were guilty of them your selves : for they mingled in all you did . n. now you begin to rail , and i cannot endure to hear those glorious dayes so spoken of . is this the moderation you so much pro●esse ? c. i love moderation as much as any can , and declare to you once for all , that i have no quarrel at any , for their opinions in these matters : nor shall i labour to disgrace the leaders of your party , by searching into their private escapes ; a practice much used by you against us , your mouthes being ever full of bitter reproaches against some of our way : but it is directly contrary to the spirit of christ and his gospel , wherein we are put in mind to speak evil of no man. i shall therefore from your publick and avowed actions , and printed papers , shew how far you are out of the way of god. and first , what think you of your rebellion ? this was the soul of your whole work , and your covenant was a bond to cement you in this . n. call you fighting for god and his cause , rebellion ? c. it is yet under debate , whether it be the cause of god : suppose it were , shew me one place in either testaments , that warrands subjects fighting for religion ? you know i can bring many against it ; yea , though the old dispensation was a more carnal and fiery one , than the new one is ; yet , when the kings of iudah and israel made apostacy from the living god , into ●eathenish idolatry , some of the kings of iudah polluting the temple of ierusalem , as did ahaz and mannasseh , so that god could not be worshipped there , without idolatry , yet where do we find the people resisting them , or falling to popular reformations ? neither do the prophets that were sent by god , ever provoke them to any such courses . and you know the whole strain of the new testament runs upon suffering . n. the law of nature teacheth us to defend our selves , and so there is no need of scripture for it ? c. this is marvelous dealing , in other things you alwayes flee from reason , as a carnal principle , to scripture ; but here you quite scripture and appeal to it : but it seems you are yet a stranger to the very design of religion , which is to tame and mortifie nature : and is not a natural thing , but supernatural . therefore the rules of defending and advancing it , must not be borrowed from nature , but grace : the scriptures are also strangely contrived , since they ever tell us of suffering under persecution : without giving your exception , that we resist when we are in a capacity . and i appeal to your conscience , whether it be a likelier way to advance religion , fighting or suffering ? since a carnal man can do the one , but not the other . n. how can we neglect the interests of christ , and let them ruine , when we are in a capacity to defend them ? c. if there were not a god who governs the world , your reasoning might have force : but do you think that god cannot maintain his own right , but the wrath of man must work his righteousnesse ? nay , we see the contrary , for from the beginning , till this day , god hath made the sufferings of his people , the chief mean of propagating religion ; whereas fighting hath been ever fatal to it . and christ did begin the gospel with his suffering , though he could have commanded legions of angels for his defence . n. christ knew it was the fathers will that he must suffer . c. this shews how little you understand when you speak so : are not christs injunctions our rule . since then he forbade his disciples to draw a sword for him , with so severe a threatning , as whosoever will draw the sword , shall perish by the sword , this must binde us , and what he sayes to pilate on this ●ead , my kingdom is not of this world , &c. is so plain language , that i wonder how it doth not convince all . i know there are some pitifull answers made to those places : but they are so irrational , that they deserve not a serious reply , and i am not of an humour to laugh at them : only take notice of this , that if an ingenuous man speak plainly , much more must the god of truth : judge then whether these unworthy glosses , make christ likeer a nibling logician , then the true and faithfull witnesse . n. then you condemn our first reformation carried on by fighting . c. since you go to examples , rather begin with the ages that immediatly followed christ , in which for three hundred years the gospel was preached and propagated by sufferings , but never by fighting , though their number enabled them to it , and they were irritated by the cruellest provocations and persecutions : and it is to be supposed , that they who saw and conversed with the apostles , understood their meaning better than these who lived at so great a distance from them : i acknowledge there was force used in our reformation ; but so much the worse for that : and you know the enemy sowes his tares , even in that field , wherein the wheat is sowen . but never alledge to me the president of men , against the expresse word of god. n. what say you then to these who died sealing their opinion , fighting for religion , with their blood ? c. you put me to a hard lock , to rake amongst the ashes of the dead : as for those who died , i had that compassion for some of them , that i could willingly have redeemed their lives at the rate of mine own : and i doubt not but many sincerely followed their conscience in it . but i am far from thinking the better of the cause , because some died handsomly for it , otherwise i should be reconciled to atheism , and all heresies , who want not their pretended martyrs . but i need go no further then england , at his majesties restauration , where the murderers of the late king , died gallantly , ow●ing what they did as the cause of god. so the seal of a martyr's blood , is not alwayes the seal of god. n. well , but why do you remember bygones ? we are now all good subjects , and do bless god for his majesties restauration , and do pray for him more then you do . c. may be so , that he may be of your way ; but , if that be not , i doubt your love to him is very cool . i do not remember bygones to bring an odium upon you , but to shew that a course which was managed by a spirit of rebellion , was none of gods. as for your rejoycing at his majesties restauration , i scarce believe it , since you will not keep a day of thanksgiving for it . n. it is not that we scruple the thing , but because you make it a holy day . c. this is very nice , for by holy day we mean ●ot that the twenty ninth of may is a more sacred time , then other dayes : but that the day shall be devoted to holy exercise . n. this should not be enjoyned by the magistrate , but by the church , who ought only to order the worship of god. c. i shall not against this alledge the commands of david and solomon , since you may alledge they were extraordinary persons ; but you cannot say that esther and mordecai were such , who enjoyned the observation of purim , and call that feast a good day ; and the odds betwixt holy and good is not very great . and although there be no divine order for the feast of dedication , yet our saviour was at the feast , and in the temple : though you will not come to church on the twenty ninth of may. n. well then , all you can charge upon us is a little disloyalty , but for all that , our way may be the cause of god : for even the saints have their infirmities . c. truly this is so great a one , that i dare pronounce none a saint , who hath been guilty of it , till he repent of it : but i am far from being at the end of your faults , having but begun with this . the next thing perswades me of your evil way , is , your cruelty and rigour : did you not force all to take the covenant , severely punishing such as would not ? and did you not cruelly persecute all those who opposed you ? truly this hath so confirmed my aversion from your way , that i hope never to be reconciled to this part of it . n. that was a fault too , and many of us are very sensible of it . c. let not my soul enter into the secrets of bloody men : your very leaders , who if they had known any thing of the meek spirit , should have opposed these severities ; not only countenanced , but drave them on , and rejoyced in them . and if they think it a fault , how comes it that none of them offers to disclaim it ? yea , some of you in your confessions of sins , and causes of wrath , rather tax your courses of too great lenity . n. whoever may object that , you may be silent ; for what severity have we felt ? how many ministers are turned out , and people oppressed for not owning you ? c. i must in so far justify the rigour you have met with , as to show it is far short of yours . people are required to do nothing , but live peaceably , and joyn in worship ; whereas you made them swear to you : and the ministers are not made swear to maintain the present establishment , and to root out the contrary , as you did ; they are only required to concur in discipline , and to promise submission to episcopacy . n. do you not wonder at my patience , who hear you inveigh so bitterly against us ? but i let you see , a presbyterian can be calm : i hope you have done . c. not yet indeed ; i am not trying your calmness , but your conscience , and what i speak , is not to irritat , but to convince you . i shall next take notice of the great insolence and height was among you : i speak not of personal pride , though i coul● say enough on that head : i only tax your public actings . what insolence was it , to assume bi● names , of the godly party , and the people of god ●nd to call your way , the cause and kingdom o● christ ? whether looks this like the pharisees an● hypocrites , or not ? and in this you were punished with your own weapons : for the protester● wrung that from the rest of you , and the independants assumed it from you both . n. i am sure we were the godly party , compared to those we had to do with . c. this bewrayes your arrogance : though it were so , you ought not to bear witness to your selves , nor assume such titles . remember the pharisee , who said , i thank the lord that i am not like this publican . you know the loudest pretenders have not alwayes the justest title . n. i hope now you have done with your scolding . c. this is like all guilty persons , who take every modest representing of their faults to them , as scolding and bitterness ; so did the jews use st. paul. it shews the sore or disease is desperate , when the patient cannot be touched . i have not yet begun to scold , but i have not done with admonishing . next , how did your leaders complain of bishops their medling in matters of state : and yet when the scene turned , how absolutely did they govern ? church-men grew the advisers of all businesses , juntoes held in their houses . and how impudently did the church countermand the state , anno 1648. even in civil matters ? as were the levying of armies , and the paying of taxes . and after the tragical catastrophe of the unlawfully called unlawful engagement , they barred the nobility from their priviledges as peers , till they must be satisfied . n. all that was done in order to religion , which is in the churches care . c. this is the very plea of the pope : and indeed in politicks , the pope and the presbyterians agree in moe things than you think on . by this maxime all civil matters must come under ecclesiastical cognizance ; since every action can be reduced to one of the tables of the law. but particularly to medle with war , and matters of blood , hath been ever judged directly contrary to the pastoral duty , which obligeth to feed , and not to kill . but i shall add one thing more , which was your superstition . n. i had resolved to have objected that to you , and i am sure we cannot be guilty of it , since there is nothing we hate more ? c. you know not the true notion of it , and so are guiltier then you are aware of . superstition is an over-rating of things , as if god were more pleased with them , than indeed he is : and therefore to lay too great weight upon any thing , is superstition . he then that judgeth a thing of it self indifferent , to be necessary : and he that condemns it as unlawful , are equally superstitious . it were a long and tedious story , to let you see how great weight you laid upon many small matters , both in doing and forbearing . but i will leave particulars to your conscience ; and i protest in all i hav● said , i have no other design , but to teach you no● to have mens persons or wayes too much in admiration . n. you have now run out in a long and furiou● career against us : hear me next , reckon the excellent things were amongst us , and i doubt not yo● shall confesse our good did far preponderat ou● evil . c. i shall hear you with all my heart , but in th● mean time let us take a little refreshment an● respite . n. be it so . dialogue ii. ● . now let us again resume our discourse , and tell me what great goodnesse was it , which ●o commended your party ; for i love what is good , ●e where it will : and therefore though i be none ●f your party , yet i shall heartily rejoyce to hear ●ood of them . n. i fear you are either so carnal , as not to re●ish things that are spiritual , or so byassed , as not ●o set the due value upon us : but who can doubt we were the people of god , who remember how we bore down sin and wickednesse ? how much good preaching there was amongst us ? what fer●our was on peoples mindes , when they heard sermons ? what heavenly prayers we poured out to god ? but when i remember our fasts , and dayes of communion , my very heart breaks to think these sweet dayes are now gone : then what delight in scripture had we , that all our vulgar were acquainted with it ? how well was the sabbath observed amongst us ? and what order was there in families , morning and evening ? all this is now gone . alas for poor scotland ! that had once the light of the gospel so brightly shining in it ! but now , ah , ah , for the darknesse that hath overspread it ! had you but seen what i saw , your very heart would have been ravished with it . c. truly , i expected to have heard some great matter from you , of the self-denial , contempt of the world , resignation , humility , meeknesse , patience , obedience , charity , abstraction of minde , and the other great heights of christian religion ; but you tell me only of their external devotion , which how good soever it be , yet is far from being the character of a christian ; since the very pharisees were eminent in those things . n. i told you , you were carnal , and savoured not the things of god ; you look after morality , as the great matter : but we look after true christianity . c. if by morality , you mean the affecting a vertuous behaviour , without a dependance on god and christ , i have as low an account of it as any can have ; but if by morality , you mean a pure and holy conversation , i doubt it is the greatest and best part of religion : without which , the other parts are but hypocrisie and formality . but i shall examine all these things which seem to knit your hearts so much to that way : and shall begin with their diligence in repressing sin . i confesse they had a kind of discipline : but it was wholly different from the rules of the gospel , and far short of the ancient bishops discipline . n. i see you undervalue every thing we did , but i am sure you have no reason for it . c. first then , were not your church-sessions like birla-courts , where every one came and complained of wrongs , which belonged to the magistrate : for the church should only meddle with sins , as they are scandals , and not as they are injuries . next , dilations , according to our lords rule , should not be received , till the person be first privately admonished by the party offended ; next , by two or three ; and if he be obstinat , the church should be told : but you observed no such rule . next you imposed and exacted fines , which was the magistrate's work , whereas the church should take no money , but what is offered in charity . you also forced people to stoop to your discipline , for if they refused , you threatned them with the temporal sword : which by the unhappinesse of the times , was too much at your dispose . and this sheweth , that you did not carry on the gospel , by a gospel-spirit , though that was ever in your mouthes , but by secular wayes : for , offenders should come and offer themselves to discipline , and not be driven to it . the time wherein your pennance lasted , was also short : the ancient bishops did separate offenders , as many years , as you did weeks . it is also clear , you used discipline to put a temporal shame upon offenders : for you set them in a high place to be gazed upon , whereas they should have been rather set without the doors of the church . and to conclude , how wretchedly did you abuse this ? subjecting people to censure , for your triffling matters , when you knew they were acting a mock-penitence : and were more zealous to preach against oppositions to your courses , than against the oppositions to the everlasting gospel . n. now you tax us for what we were very free of : was ever sin so boldly reproved , as in our pulpits ? our ministers sparing no rank nor quality . c. i confesse some things , i say not sins , you reproved boldly enough : not sparing the lords anointed , whose pretended faults , you , like so many unnatural hams , were ready enough to publish , when your so doing , could have no other effect , but to irritate his subjects against him . how often was that sacred prince charged with popery , tyranny , and the massacre of ireland ? and that royal family termed , the bloody-house ? yea , after his accursed enemies had murdered him , when common humanity should have oblidged you to let the dead alone , and christianity should have taught you to have had more reverent thoughts of one who died so piously and devoutly ; yet you ceased not to persecute and tear his memorie , which in spite of your malice , will be glorious to all posterity : and that with the height of insolence and barbarity , in the very hearing and presence of his son , who now reigneth . this was your bold reproving of faults . but how little were you in secret reproving faults ? when you got to the pulpit , there indeed you triumphed , because you knew none were to oppose you . now it is certain , reproofs should be begun in private , and not brought to publick ; but upon the obstinate rejecting of private admonitions . and for what end were you often so bitter to absents ? this , and such other things could be upon no other design , but either maliciously to disgrace them , or to get a following among your party , and the name of faithfull , free , and zealous preachers . n. you speak with very great heat and passion , against better men then your self , and better preachers than ever any of your way will be . c. may be so , i wish both they and their gifts had been seven-fold better than they were : but if i shall judge of them , either by their printed sermons , or those i have heard , they are no extraordinary things . and first , the half of their sermons were upon publick matters : and what did these concern the souls of the poor people ? was not this for bread , to give them a stone ? next , for the solid practises of a christian life , i scarce ever heard them named , except overly . whom heard you preach against the love of the world , seeking of esteem , quarrelling , seeking of revenge , anxiety and passion ? vertue was little preached , and far lesse practised . n. i am sure we heard much spiritual doctrine from them ; for , these are common matters . c. read our saviours sermons , particularly , his longest upon the mount , and you shall finde these to be the great subjects of his discourse : i confesse they are common , but remember the commonest things are often most usefull . as for your spiritual doctrine , the true heights of spirituality were as little preached , as the living much in abstraction , silence and solitude , the being often in the still contemplations of god and christ , the becoming dead to all things else , spending dayes and nights in secret fastings and prayers , how seldom were these things spoken of ? n. what then make you of them , since you d● not allow them to be spiritual doctrine ? c. i shall not deny but they were spiritual , bu● i add , they were of a very low size and degree , an● such as could never carry on the auditors to an● great perfection , and most of them were practise● by the pharisees . you know they read the scrip● ture , and knew it so exactly , as no christians do their bibles : they observed the sabbath severly ▪ they prayed many and long prayers . so that these external things , are but the fringes of true religion . n. we heard christ and him crucified preached much . c. it was well if ye did , but let me tell you , i● christ was so preached , as to cry up a bare relying on him , without obedience to his gospel , as i fear too many did , this was a very antichristian● way of preaching christ. next , you got amongst you a world of nice subtilties , which you called cases of conscience , and these were handled with so metaphysical curiosities , that i know not what● to make of them : and the people that should ▪ have been driven out of these , into the great practices of a christian life , were too much flattered and humoured in them . i am sure our saviour , and the penmen of scripture had no such stuff . n. this still discovers your carnal heart : god help you who understand not the wayes of the spirit . c. never tell me of other wayes of the spirit , but holinesse , charity , and humility , &c. i do not deny but some devout people will be under doubtings and fears , but this is a weaknesse which ought not to be fed and humoured in them , and such scruples are to be satisfied in private . but to hear people , who lead but common lives , talk of such things , is unsufferable . i shall not here take notice of their strange methods , which they so much admired in preaching : though i could tell you how our saviour and the apostles used none of these : but i shall be sparing in this , it not being of so great , or necessary concernment . n. o but what powerfull sermons were theirs ! they made my very heart shake . c. i am glad it was so , but see that by power you do not mean a tone in the voice , a grimace in the face , or a gesture and action , or some strange phrases , these indeed affect the vulgar much : but considering people see through them , and value them little . the voice of god was a still voice , and christ was not heard in the streets . n. but there were many converted by the preachings , and then there was a great love to the word , people running far to hear it . c. truly i am so far from envy , that i wish from my soul , where one was converted by you , a thousand had been . but see that by conversion you do not mean only , a change in opinion , or outward behaviour , which might be done upon interest : and remember that there was a kind of proselytes , even to the service of god , who thereby became more the children of the devil , than they were . and see that you do not mistake every hea● in the fancie for a conversion ; one thing i mu● challenge you of , that you call alwayes you● preachings , the word of god , for to term them so and yet to confesse , you may be mistaken in them is a contradiction , since gods word is infallible ▪ your texts indeed are the word of god , but you● glosses on them , are but the words of fallibl● men : now this was a great art to conciliat ● hudge veneration and authority to your preachings ; for you called them the words of the lord and applied all the places of scripture that belonged to the inspired and infallible preachers , unto your selves , that so you might be rabbies in deed . n. i , but their lives was preaching , and the● looked like the gospel indeed . c. i am far from denying that there were ver● good men among you , and there are some of the● whom i know to have the fear of god before thei● eyes : but i must say , they seem to be little advanced above babes in christ. for your grea● men , how strangely did they involve themselve● in all businesses ? and truly a medling temper , look not like a devout one : but , what great spirituality appeared amongst most of them ? leaders o● churches and parties should be alwayes commending god and religion to people , and truly hear there is little of this in their mouthes ; shrewd presumption that there is not too much o● it in their hearts . n. alas ! you know us not , we seldom meet but , we expound scripture , and have spiritual exercise amongst us . c. i confesse you have enough that way , but that looks more artificial and formal , but in your discourse , how few of your words are seasoned with salt , ministring grace to the bearers ? which is a more genuine and native , and so a more convincing way of commending godlinesse to people . but what great things of devotion , or holinesse , appear amongst you ? who of you despise the world ? give away your goods to the poor ? who bear injuries without resentments and revenge ? who are willing to be set at nought ? who are mortifying themselves even in the lawfull pleasures of sense ? who bear crosses without murmurings ? and for the devotional part , who of you seem to live only to god , and consecrat your time and strength to divine exercises ? truly these things are as little among you as any party ● know : nay , one thing i cannot passe by , that you generally seem so desirous of being noticed i● your religion ; this is far from our saviour practice . n. this is all your prejudicat opinion again● us , but had you been ever with us at our communions , you would have been forced to confes● that god was amongst us . c. i never denied it , for i am far from being ● hidebound , as to affix god to a party , as you to confidentlie do . but for your communions , i a● not like to be much convinced by them , i cann● like your running so many miles to them , this ●umultaurie and disorderlie ; for if it be the sacrament it self you value , you may have it neare● hand : but this shews , you idolize men too much ● next , at your communions , all your businesse i● to hear and talk , whereas the truest preparation for that work , is , an inward stillnesse and recollection of mind ; and certainly much talk at that time particularly in the very action it self , doth bu● draw out , and disturb the mind : and by reason o● your crouds , you cannot have occasion of such retirement as is necessary at so solemn a time . and to speak plainly , i cannot think persons very devout , who love rather to hear one talk , were it never so good purposes , than to retire inwardly and commune with their own hearts , and with god. some of you will be many hours in publick worship , and perhaps not a quarter of an hour in secret devotions . it would look like● christ , to be many hours secret in prayer , and very short in publick . n. i see nothing among us pleaseth you , but we are never the worse for all that . c. truly i cannot admire what i judge but simple and mean. but another fault about your communions , was , that you had them so seldom , against the expresse practice of the apostles , who continued daily breaking bread : and the whole church in all ages and places , were frequent in this , which you brought to once a year . and who taught you to separate it from the rest of the solemn worship , and not have it every lords day ? n. that was , that by the unfrequency of it , it ●ight be the more solemn . c. then at length you confesse , you use your ●wn devices , to make the worship of god more ●lemn . but it had been much liker the apostles , ●o have celebrate frequently , but withall to have ●oticed well such as did receive . n. did you never observe the great devotion ● our worship ? c. truly i am sorry , i saw so little of it : what ●rreverence is it , that when prayer is in the ●hurch , most of you ●it on your breeches ? is this ●o approach unto god with the reverence be●omes dust and ashes ? notwithstanding of the ex●resse command of scripture , o come let us wor●hip , and bow down , and kneel down before the lord ●ur maker , and you cannot say this was one of moses rites . n. god looks not to the outward man , it is ●he inward bowing and kneeling of the soul he regards ; and it is your superstition to stand much ●t these outward things . c. but we are commanded to glorifie god , as ●ell with our bodies , as with our spirits . and ●ow unhandsome is it , that we will not testifie that reverence to god , we would shew to a man , were ●he but a few degrees above us ? beside , you who alwayes call for scripture , ought quickly to be convinced here ? most scripture-prayers being ●aid , either to be in that posture , or in that which comes next in reverence to it , to wit , standing . our saviour kneeled when he prayed to the father . st. paul , both at miletus and tyre knee● ed down , and prayed with the people : though ● tyre , it was upon the shore , a pretty inconvenie● place for kneeling . you know how much scri● ture i can bring , for kneeling or standing . n. but it is written , david sate before th● lord , and prayed . c. but is not this strange ; that you will brin● one practice , and follow that rather than the co● stant and universal practice registrated in scripture● beside , the word there doth not import that h● sate , but rather that he sifted himself before th● lord. and then you do not consider that praye● was private , and it is undoubted , more solemnit● is necessary in publick , than in the private worship . why then do you not kneel or stand in churches● since you do so in secret , and in your family-wor● ship ? and why not as well , if not rather in the one nor in the other ? truly this bewrayes both grea● weaknesse , and great irreverence . and beside th● irreverence of that wretched posture of ●itting it is so convenient for your ease , that we see mo● sold themselves to sleep in the prayers : and suc● as do not so , seem to listen to the prayer , as the● do to the sermon , without thinking they are t● joyn in it . and indeed to fit , is so grosse an abus● in prayer , unlesse some bodily infirmity impos● it , that i rather not see you come to our church● es , than come to them thus to give a bad example . n. but since you named family-worship , take but notice what order was amongst our families they looking like little churches : our masters of families praying , praising , and expounding scripture , with their families ; what , was not this a heavenly thing ? c. i do approve of a part of it , and think it a pious and a christian custome , to have families worshipping god together , providing the way of it be grave and regular : of which i shall speak afterwards . but for masters of families , their expounding scripture , it is intollerable , unlesse they be very intelligent persons . how patent a way otherwise may this prove , for venting and broaching errours , and heresies ? but i would not have you value this too much : otherwise i shall send you to the religious houses in the church of rome , where they have worship seven hours a day , in a word , those external things make not men good of themselves . n. but i hope you will not condemn private meetings , especially when a minister is with us for spiritual conference . c. truly the thing in it self looks fair and well , but since these secret assemblings have been much scandalized , since also they may be a cloak for hatching mischievous practices , and for debauching peoples minds into schism and faction , and to a contempt of the publick worship , they are not to be used . let people meet as oft as they will in church for worship : and what is not fit to be said in a church , is not fit to be said in a chamber full of people . such persons as desire resolution for their scruples , ought to ask it in private , and not in these thronged conventicles . since in su● matters the more private one be , the more li● he is to the lowly spirit : and the more talking be , he looks liker one that affects a name , and be thought somewhat . the gospel is a humbl● simple thing , whereas formal affected stuff , loo● like the spirit of pride , and pharisaical vanity , a● least it gratifies it too much . n. i see you will not allow us the praise w● truly deserve , but it is no matter , our record i● on high . the men in the world alwayes set a● naught the children of god , but at least you can● not deny us this glory , that were long in grea● unity . c. i love not the spirit of detraction , but i con● sess i wonder to see a party cryed up to the hea● vens for nothing ; since i can speak it with grea●● sincerity , i could never see any thing amongst you that could raise in me any great veneration so● you . and i am sure , what ever do it , your unity will never do it . it is true , as long as you had to● do with these , whom you most unchristianly , and malicióusly called the malignants , you were one , as simeon and levi were : but when ever that was done , you quickly broke amongst your selves and to let see how keen you were upon your contention , even though the ground of your first breach was soon taken out of the way ; yet you kept up your differences , with as much heat , as if they had been the great matters of christian religion . how fierce were you one against another , in your papers , sermons , and prayers ? ●ou had so inured the pulpit to scolding , that in ●any places it was the vulgar dialect of that place ; ●nd this you did publickly in the sight of the sun. ●ea , so hot were you on both sides , that you ●ould listen to no accommodation , nor to any ●lew ( they were very few ) who would have brought ●hings to a temper . n. this was our fault , but you exaggerat the ●natter too much . c. i do it but with truth , and to shew that the spirit moved among you , was so contentious , that when you had no bodie to contend with , you fought amongst your selves . yea , upon the happie revolution ; how hot was the partie among you which prevailed against the other , and was beginning snaply to depose them , till you were allarm'd that the bishops were coming in , and so left it to them ? n. now you are malicious , to inveigh so against us , you know i can repay you in your own coin . i will then go to , and examine your way next . c. i never doubt , but you can scold well , but we have had a sharp bout of it , we will therefore draw breath a little . dialogue iii. n. by all you have hitherto said , one shou● expect there were some extraordina● sublime thing among you ; but he that looks o● must consess , that all these defects you charge● us , are far more amongst you ; besides , you con● short of us , in what you acknowledge was go● amongst us . so that you have all our evil , a● none of our good : and you dare not deny , but our dayes scotland looked liker a christian churc● than it doth at this day . c. do not mistake me , as if i were so ingage● to any interest , or party , as blindly to defend i● which most of you commit . i am so far episc●● pal , as to love the order , and to live in peac● and submission under it . but i never swore sea● ty to any sect. my hearty wish , and daily earne● prayer to god , is , that all these distinguishin● names were buried , and out of head , that ● with united force we may all joyn to advance th● true and everlasting designs of the gospel . as fo● the sins many among us are guilty of , i abhor th● thought of patronizing them ; and , may be , som● of us , though we love not in publick to be eve● speaking of the times , whereby peoples mind are easily bribed to a contempt of the gover● nours ; a sin little noticed by you : yet in secre● mourn for these things as bitterly as any of you ●o . but remember you your selves are guiltier ● the present loosness , than perhaps you think . n. how can that be , since for as bitter as you ●re against us , you dare not charge us with coun●enancing of vice . c. but you make religion such a cloak to so ●any state-designs , that this makes too many ●mpiously to suspect religion to be but a design ●f it self . beside , you drove people to an out●ard compliance with you , in many of your forms , against their hearts , which hath made them nauseat ●t all religion : not being able to judge betwixt religion and these mistakes . but that which is of greatest weight , is , that our saviour knits the abounding of iniquity , with the waxing cold in love ; now , how faulty you are in this , i shall easily demonstrate . n. no peace , saith my god , to the wicked ; you ever charge our hating of sin , as uncharitableness : whereas this is but zeal for god and his truth . c. these are the false glosses you put on things , but take notice of the humour of your people , you are apt to judge us in these matters which are doubtful disputations , and think a man no good christian except he be of your party . next , you are ever listening to , and spreading a great many tattles of us , which are the great subjects of your discourse ; and what can be more uncharitable than this is ? you also carry sourly , and unkindly to us , as if we were of another religion , and shun all converse or friendship with us : you likewise cast very odious aspersions upon us , as apostates , changlings , time-servers , and th● like . and some of you rail at us , most petulantly : now whereas you alwayes talk of persecutio● truly it is more on our side than yours : for , t● an ingenuous spirit , if he be not much above a● these things , such usage chiefly when it is universal , is a far greater trial , than to suffer a little i● the world . n. truly i do not deny , but too much of tha● you speak is true , and i wish there were more charity on all sides . but , are not most of you apostates , changlings , and time-servers ? c. what invidious work is it for you to faste● that brand , which the christian church only stained those with , who fell off from christianity to heathenism , upon the leaving of a party ? looks not this like the spirit of the devil ? just as if one should apply all the places in the epistles against the horrid heresies and crimes of the gnosticks , to every little errour , which you are ready enough to do . and as for changing , except you make it a reproach for a man to grow wiser , it can be none for a man to see he was once mistaken . this generation was engaged by you , ere they could well consider things , to your way , and your oaths , and then you strive to keep them alwayes in a non-age , by telling them they must be stedfast , and that it is a snare after vowes to make enquiry . and what strange doctrine is it , to tax an obedience to the laws of the kingdom ( when in our consciences we can so do ) as time-serving ? nay , perhaps as i hinted before , you are the greater time-servers . n. well , though i owe charity to your per●ons , yet i owe none to your wayes , and i call what ●s black , black , therefore i can never be reconci●ed to your episcopacy . c. this head falls asunder in two things ; the one is , a general consideration of that government ; the other is , supposing it were as you think it , how far you ought to separate from what is ●misse . now , tell me what are your quarrels at episcopacy ? n. i cannot think that church-men should be called lords , and be great persons . c. this belongs not to the thing it self , but is an addition of the christian magistrates ; and , sir , ●or lord , and gentleman , and nobleman differ but in degree : since then a minister , were he never so meanly born , gets the temporal honour of a gentleman put upon him , why may not the temporal honour of a lord , be as well put upon a bishop ? surely this must not be considered by you . n. but they should not lord over gods heritage : therefore away with your lord bishop . c. if you understand all scriptures as you do this , you may write excellent commentaries : for , by lording , is meant a tyrannical domination , as the word clearly imports , and not a title . next , gods heritage , which you apply to the clergy , is not in the text. all in the greek , is ▪ not tyrannizing over your lots or divisions : and with whatever reason you put down bishops from being as noblemen , that same will prove , you ministers ought not to be gentlemen , excep● they be born such ; and i sear your leaders wi● have no minde to this . n. but this is not all : my chief quarrel again● bishops is , that they are a function of mans de● vising , and no where instituted by god. c. truly you may speak soberly here , for be● fore i meddle with this , i will shew in a few things that however you talked bigly of jus divinum yet you minded it as little as any could . you● lay-elders , though i deny them not to be a good institution , are founded on no scripture , as no● the most judicious of your party own : for whe● you urge , that because the apostle gives rules on● ly for bishops and deacons , that the other orde● of diocesan bishops must be shuffled out ; how a● that same time did you not see , that ruling elder● were not there ? and the places you alledge fo● them , are so abused , that it appears you fir● resolve to maintain them , and next to seek scrip● ture-proof for them . the brethren in the council of the apostles , proves too much , that the● are judges of doctrine ; which yet you will no● own . beside , it is absurd to think that was ● church judicature , as shall soon appear . tha● of ruling with diligence , is fond ; for there , is mad● an emuneration of christian duties , and if you mak● an office for all there , we shall i have more ranks o● church-men , then they of rome have . and it i● palpable , that by helps and governments , are meant● some extraordinary gifts . who would not pity men who build upon such sandy foundations ? n. but what say you to the elders that rule well ? c. truly this is far from instituting an office ; for , this speaks of an office then in being ; so , by some other place , you must prove their institution . there are five or six several glosses put on these words , but i protest , i think any of them appears more genuine then yours . that which i conceive the true sense of the words , is , let such among you as are fixt to rule particular charges , be doubly honoured : but especially those evangelists , who have no medling with rule , but labour in word and doctrine . thus you see how ●ill grounded your elders are . next , how want you deacons ? n. it seems you know our discipline ill , that know not we had deacons . c. i know very well you had somewhat called deacons , but this was only a name to deceive the people , who otherwise might have been startled , to have found deacons in their bibles , and not in your churches ; but i tell you , your deacons are ●o scripture-deacons , who were not as yours are , lay-persons , but ecclesiastick , and separate by the ●mposition of hands for that function , and so were ●o continue . beside , where was it ever heard of , ●hat a church-office was taken from any , without ● fault ? whereas you yearly altered your elders ●nd deacons . next , why wanted you diaconesses , ●nce the scripture is so particular about them , telling of their order , of their being received to it , of their qualifications , of their age , and of their imployment ? n. truly i have heard many of our ministers say , the want of them was a fault . c. next , why wanted you evangelists , since there are still men who have peculiar eminencies in preaching ? why should they be confined to one charge , and not to be made to preach over a countrey , as they shall be called ? n. that was an extraordinary thing , which was in the dayes of the apostles . c. this is well asserted : any thing in scripture that makes for you , call it ordinary , and what doth not please you , is extraordinary . but truly , since it is impossible to get a whole church served with such a ministery , as were to be desired , it seems to be necessary , even in those dayes , to have an office of evangelists . but further , in what place of scripture read you your classical subordination of sessions to presbyteries , & c ? this i acknowledge is rational and orderly , but founded upon no divine right . n. how did they of antioch send up to these at ierusalem ? and are not the spirits of the prophets subject to the prophets ? c. by the last place , it is clear , he is speaking of parochial churches , which subjection none deny ; but for the former , it is ridiculous to urge it , since it is certain they of antioch sent not up to ierusalem , either as to a church superior to it , or as to an oecumenick council , but to men there , who were immediatly inspired by god : as the iews consulted the high priest his u●im and thummim ; and if that was a council , then all councils may speak in their stile , which none but a papist can say . for to preface our acts , with , it seems good to the holy ghost , and yet to say , we are subject to error , is a contradiction . and thus the subordination of your courts was a meer humane device ; so that if the jus divinum be the rule , the independants had the better of you . but as for your discipline , what warrand of scripture have you for it ? n. the excommunicating the incestuous person , and the noting those that walk disorderly , &c. c. i do not deny , but there are clear grounds for separating scandalous persons from our worship ; but , why so many dayes ? and why in a place of repentance ? and why the use of sack-cloath sometimes ? is not this the device of men ? bring scripture for it ? n. sure the church hath power to do in these things , as shall tend most to order : and the dayes , place , and habit , are but external things . c. now i have you at a great advantage , though you understand it not . why may the church impose such dayes of penitence , and not as well order all for the sins of the year to be in penitence all the time of lent ? and why is one place made a part for penitents to be in , and may not another with as good and better reason be made the proper place for communicating ? and why may not a church-man officiat in a surplice , as well as a penitent put on sack-cloath ? since the one is a ceremony expressive o● repentance , as well as the other is of innocence : and both were equally practised under the law. n. i confesse , i did not think on these things , but i believe our ministers have answers to them . c. you may well believe , for you shall never see it , for there is no imaginable difference betwixt them : one thing i confesse , that a man once resolved not to believe a thing , if he have any subtiltie of spirit , will make a shift to say somewhat upon any thing . but i have not done with shewing your difformity with the scripture-pattern ; since then we were just now speaking of the council at ierusalem , why do you not observe that law ? n. because that was only to bury the synagogue with honour , and as for the meats offered to idols , st. paul takes that away . c. this is like you , still to devise fancies against expresse scripture ; where sayes the scripture , that was done to please the jews ? as for st. paul , consider that he wrote his epistle before he went to ierusalem , and yet st. iames tels him these things were still observed there ; which shews , that a thing may be obligatory in one place , and not in another : and so , that in these externals , commands are not intended for lasting obligations . next , why use you not washing of feet , since there is no sacrament set down more punctually in scripture ? the element is , water , the action , washing the feet , the institution , as i have done , so do ye , and ye ought to wash one anothers feet , and the spiritual use of it , is humility . why do you not therefore use this rite ? n. why do not you use it , since you cannot refuse the scripture more than we ? c. for all such matters , i have a clear answer , that in these externals , god intended no perpetual obligation ; and therefore in them i follow the practice of the catholick church . next , in your worship , why do you not kisse one another with a holy kisse ? why do you not anoint the sick with oyl , as st. iames commandeth ? n. it is clear , that was extraordinary , for he promises recovery upon the anointing . c. no such matter , it is upon the prayer of faith , that he promises recovery , he also promiseth forgivenesse , and since you pray by all , and do not say that it is more then a mean for their being raised up and forgiven ; why do you not as well anoint , since the scripture commands it ? but all this shews , that however , with women , and simple people , you talk much of your sticking to the word , and by your grave nods , and big words would perswade them , that it is so ; yet you are as far from it as any . i shall end all this with an instance of great importance , who taught you the change of the sabbath ? i am far from speaking against the church that did so , but you will read the bible long ere you finde it there ; that of their meeting on the first day of the week , sayeth not , that they antiquated the saturnday ; that of the lords day , saith yet lesse for it . n. well , what make you of all this ? it may well prove , our church was not perfect ; it never justifies you . or , do you mean to lay aside the scriptures ? c. it once checks your insolence , who pretend so big , upon so light grounds ; and it is certainly a directer opposition to scripture , to neglect what is expresly enjoyned , as you do , than to add in some lesser matters . all i say upon the whole matter , is , that the scriptures were designed by god , for the purifying the hearts and conversations of men ; and therefore it was not necessarie they should contain direct rules ; for the church-policy , which being a half civil matter , needs not divine warrands ; and therefore the common rules are in scripture , that there should be church officers , that those should be separate for that function , that they should be obeyed , that things should be done to order , edification , and peace . these are everlasting obligations , because the reasons of them are perpetual : but the other rules were accommodat to the then state of things ; which altering , they alter likewise . and this is so rational , that i can see nothing to be excepted against it , with any shew or colour of reason . nay , this looks like the christian liberty , for , whereas the old dispensation was bound up , and limited to the smallest matters , christ hath delivered us from that law of ordinances , and hath made us free . n. this is to take the crown off christs head , and to pull him off his throne , and to deny him king , which was the good confession he witnessed before pilate , and for which he came into the world ; this also makes him unfaithful , and inferiour to moses . c. these are fine devices to terrifie simple people , and with such talk you triumph among women , and in your conventicles . but , how little reason will suffice to let a man see through that canting ? i say then , christs crown , his throne , and kingdom , is an inward and spiritual one , and not of the world , nor as the kingdoms of the world : and a great part of his kingdom , is , the liberty whereto he hath called us , freeing us from the yoke of the former slavery and pedagogy . and since no allegory holds , it is ridiculous to argue , because offices in a kingdom are named by the king , therefore it must be so in the church ; since you may as well say , there must be coin stamped by christ. beside , what king will think his prerogative lessened , by constituting a corporation , to whom he shall leave a liberty to cast themselves into what mould they please , providing they obey the general lawes , and hold that liberty as a thing depending upon him ? christs faithfulnesse consisted in his discharging the commission given him by the father ; of which , whosoever doubts , let him be anathemae maranathae . but , who told you , it was in the fathers commission ? if you argue from moses , it will say more than you will grant , that all particulars must be determined : since then , as moses determines the dayes of separation for a legal uncleannesse , why doth not the gospel determine the separation ●o● spiritual uncleannesse ? nay further , consider moses instituted no church-government , in the way we use it ; for that of the tribe of levi , and house of aaron , was only typical , and to wait on the temple , and the worship to be performed there . beside which , they had synagogues all the land over , and wherever they had colonies in the world , and in these they had their rabbies , their scribes , and their rulers , and their chief ruler of their synagogues , which read their law , performed such worship as was not tyed to the temple at ierusalem , and they inflicted discipline upon offenders : and these might have been of any tribe , not only of that of levi ; and yet our saviour never challengeth this , but went in to the rulers of their synagogues ; the like you finde done by his apostles , and they never declame against it , as an humane invention . whence it must follow , that you must grant , either what they did , was founded on divine tradition ( which no christian will grant ) or that a form of government was devised by men , and yet no unlawful thing . and if the jews had such liberty , certainly the christian church is at least more free , as to these externals . and after all , since christ is the head of the world , as well as of the church , why did not he determine the order of the one , as well as of the other ? n. the odds is very great , for his church is dearer to him than all the world . c. why then doth he not determine how his church should be governed , as to the civil matter , since justice is a part of his law , as well as devotion ? and the civil peace , i hope , you will grant , is more necessary to the very being of the church , than is order in discipline ; and so it was determined in the old law , but yet it is left at liberty in the new . and though i should grant , the church , as church , is dearer to christ , then as they are men , a foolish and childish nicety : yet a king , though he looks most to what is dearest to him , he will have his authority acknowledged in all his dominions : whence it will , with the same parity of reason follow , that since christ is the king of the earth , there should be no offices in it , but of his appointment . n. i never loved this carnal reason , it is an enemy to religion : our ministers bring us to the bible for every thing they say , but you come on with your reason . c. truly you have good cause to be against reason , for it and you cannot both prevail . if by carnal reason , you mean a sober examining things , by the dictates of nature ; see that you condemn not that , which is indeed the voice of god in us , and therefor is to be received . and if you make this contrary to religion , you bring as great a stain upon religion , as an atheist could devise : but if by reason , you mean little pittiful nibling with some ill understood , and worse applied distinctions , out of aristotle and ramus , as is very frequent among you , that is justly called vain philosophy . and for scripture , do not think they build surest upon it , who are ever quoting it fastest ; the devil did that , and so do all sects . and thus if you can rightly weigh things , i have said enough to convince you , that in matters of government , the church is at liberty : but if you will still go to scripture , i can positively say , though in it nothing amounts to a demonstration ; there are fairer likelihoods for bishops , from that of the angels of the churches , than ever you shall find in it for presbytery : but i will not say more of this . next , let me tell you how soon this government was in the church . n. i will not deny , tares sprung very early in gods husbandry , but that will never convince me . to the law , and to the testimony ; for from the beginning it was not so . c. you do well to possess your self with a prejudice against these churches ; but think soberly , whether is it likelier , that those who lived so nigh the sacred time , understood the mind of the apostles better then we do , at the fagg end of an thousand and six hundred years ? as also , whether is it liker , that the church then , alwayes in the fire of persecution , was purer then she is now ? god bless me from the pride of comparing my self with these worthies , who were honoured to convert the world , and to die for the truth ? n. but bishops were not in the two first centuries , as our ministers say . c. they are grossly ignorant , or disingenuous , who say so , all history being against them : ignatius epistles are plain language . the apostolical canons ( a work of very venerable antiquity , at least the first 50 of them , though none of theirs perhaps ) all over , shew the difference was then betwixt bishops and presbyters , particularly the 40. can. the presbyters and deacons shall finish nothing without the bishop's sentence : for , he is intrusted with the people of god , and shall be required to give account of their souls . and the same thing was also enjoyn'd , syn. azel . can. 19. and in cyprian's time it is undenied , that their power was then well regulate and settled . for though that great saint and martyr tells , lib. 3. epist. 10. that he had decreed in the beginning of his bishoprick to do nothing without the advice of his presbyters , yet , ep. 9. of that book to rogatian a bishop , who had asked his advice concerning an affront he had received from a deacon , he sayes , that by his episcopal vigour and authority of his chair , he had power presently to punish him : and towards the end of that ep. he sayes , these are the beginnings of hereticks , and the rise and designs of shismaticks , to please themselves and contemn their bishop with insolent pride . and it is clear , presbyters at that time , even in the vacancy of a see , did not judge themselves sufficiently impowred for ecclesiastical administration , by what the presbyters and deacons of rome write to cypr. lib. 2. ep. 7. saying , that since a bishop was not at that time chosen , in place of the deceased fabian , there was none to moderate all things amongst them , who might with authority and advice take account of matters : sure they thought little of presbyters , being equal in power to their bishop , who write so of a church wherein the episcopal power might seem devolved on them . but , i believe , few of you know these writings . in the council of nice , speaking of the power of metropolitans , which was an additional thing to that of bishops over presbyters : the canon sayes , let the ancient customs be in force . now , how this excressing power should have crept into the whole church , and no mention when it came in , no temporal princes , nor universal councils to introduce it , and that at a time of persecution , when the church was least to be suspected of pride , no secular consideration being to flatter this power ; nay , on the contrary , they alwayes bore the first brunt of the persecution ; and how none opposed it , if this was not introduced by apostles , or apostolical men , passeth my divination . neither can any thing be alledged against this , but some few or disjoynted places of some authors , which at most prove , that they judged not the origine of bishops to be divine ▪ but none except aerius ( branded upon that account with heresie , both by augustine and epiphanius ) ●id ever speak against the difference was betwixt bishops and presbyters . and for the few places they alledge , should i reckon up all that from these same authors may be brought for it , i should grow too tedious . ierom is he for whom they triumph , but upon very small ground : for , beside that he being but a presbyter , might have exalted his own dignity to the height , and his fervent ( i had almost said fiery ) spirit , drives him along in every thing to an excesse ; as may appear from , not only his ingadgements with iovin . vigilan . and ruffin . but even with the incomparable st. austine : all can be drawen from his words , is , that the difference betwixt bishop and presbyter , was only of degree and not of office , and that the difference was not of divine , but ecclesiastical authority : but even he expresly confesseth , that presbyters did not ordain , and that the origine of the exercising power was in the dayes of the apostles , to prevent schisms ; for , he sayes , that from the dayes of st. mark , till denis and heraclas , there were constantly bishops in alexandria ; and he compares the bishop , presbyters and deacons in the church to aaron the high-priest , his sons the priests and the levites in the temple , and sayes that it was decreed through the whole world , that one presbyter should be set over the rest ; and to root out the seeds of difference , the whole care was laid upon one : for all this , see ier. ad euag. and upon titus : and from this you may see how little shew of ground there is from him or any other church-writter to reject the episcopal authority . n. but these bishops were not such as ours are . c. i confess they were better men , than either bishops , or presbyters alive are : but he knows little church-story , who knows not , that the presbyters did nothing without them , and that particularly , presbyters could never ordain without a bishop . n. well then , as it was good then , so it may be ill now , and there is our present case . c. i say still , it is a rational , just , and a most necessary thing , that the senior , and most approven church-men , be peculiarly incharged , as well with the trial of intrants , as with the inspection of the clergy : since no order of men needs so much to be regulated , as that of church-men . and therefore unless they be all equal in gifts , and parts , they ought not to be equal in power and authority . if the power of bishops be at any time abused , it is but that to which all humane things are lyable : nor can presbytery be freed of that , but let the common maxime in such cases be applyed to this , remove the abuse , but retain the use . dialogue iv. n you have said , i confess , a great many things , that i cannot well answer ; yet my conscience still tells me , that episcopacy is no good government ; and i cannot act against my conscience . c. you must remember , this is the plea of all hereticks , who still pretend conscience . i confess there is nothing in the world , wherein i desire to be more tender , than in offering the least violence to conscience , there not being a wider step to atheism , than to do any thing against the conviction of conscience . but see it be not humour , and wilfulness , that you scorn to change your opinion , or love to your party : whom you dare not displease : or vanity , that you may be noticed ; or faction ; or simple and blind following of your leaders , without clear convictions in your own mind ; all which , for most part , are the true reasons of schisms , though conscience be ever pretended . and remember , that god will not hold them guiltless , that take his name in vain , so you shall not pass unpunished , if you pretend conscience , and be not acted by it . n. how then must i examine any perswasion , to know if it be conscience , or not ? c. if you find in your heart a serious desire to please god in all things , together with a desire of obeying the laws of the kingdom , and of complying with the church , in what you judge lawfull , but out of grounds which appear to you founded upon the will of god , you are led to a perswasion , this is conscience : provided there be joined with it , a modest distrust of your self , with a charitable opinion of those that differ from you . and such as are of this temper , were their judgements never so bemisted , i reverence , and love : weigh the matter therefore in just scales , and i doubt you shall see , that at best , you are led by a blind and implicite obedience , for i will not uncharitably censure you as guilty of worse . n. you are so proudly blown up , with an opinion of your self , that you think all who are not of your mind , are ●lind and ignorant at best : whether is not this arrogance in you ? c. consider my grounds , ere you give a judgement against me . i say then , private persons have nothing to do with matters of government ; your business is , to submit in these things , and not to judge : for , whether think you , god in the great day , will call you to answer at his tribunal , if you were episcopal , or presbyterian ? as also , since the great design of the gospel is , to purify the heart ; these things which have no tendency to the purifying ▪ or blotting of the soul , are not matters of conscience : and these are two easie rules , whereby private persons might well examine their consciences . n. but if we think you are wrong , can we joyn with you ? c. first , i say , you can have no rational ground to think us wrong , in matters of religion : and since it is not a matter of religion , and salvation , you cannot without being schismatical , separate from us . but further , even every errour in religion , ought not to unty the bond of the unity of the catholick church , unless the errour be of greater importance , than the communion of saints is : a consideration which you never seem to weigh . how did the apostle st. paul become a iew to the iews ? though he tells us to do these things , out of an opinion of necessity in them , was to antiquat the crosse of christ. and let all men judge , whether to circumcise , and purify in the temple , were not greater compliances , in matters more justly to be scrupled , than what we contend about . nay , the free spirit of christianity , made st. paul see well that these externals were of themselves nothing ; so that either doing , or forbearing in them , might be acceptable to god ; as he clearly sheweth in his fourteenth chapter to the romans . yea , he carrieth this liberty further , even to an instance , which i confess , i should never have yeelded to , had not he determined in it ; that is , the eating in the idols temples , of their feasts , and eating meat offered to idols . now , if st. paul did this freely , both to jew and gentile , are not you bound to more obedience , when not only charity , but duty to the laws exact it ? this sheweth how far you are , both from the free and charitable spirit of st. paul. n. it is true , he complied in these things , but it was freely , and not when it was exacted , as you do of us . next , he avoided to do these things , when they occasioned scandal , which is our case . c. you in this bewray great simplicity ; for st. paul did not refuse compliance , because they were commanded by authority , which you do : but because certain false brethren came to spy out his liberty , to whom he gave place by subjection , no not for an hour . if therefore any require your compliance , as if it were necessary of it self , you have reason to stand fast in the liberty wherewith christ hath made you free . but it is unsufferable peevishness , to say , if the magistrate enjoyn a thing , declaring that it is still free in it self , and only necessary , because it is commanded , upon that score , to refuse obedience . and may not offenders as well refuse to undergo the discipline you enjoyn them , and say , though the thing be lawful , yet it is but indifferent , and therefore they cannot obey you , because you command things indifferent , which , as you reason , makes them necessary . as for the point of scandal , do not mistake it , as if the displeasing your party , were a giving of scandal , as many of you weakly think ; to give scandal then , is , to stretch your liberty , when that freedom of yours , may draw others to follow your practice , though they have not the same clearness in their mind . and hence it appears , that to avoid scandal , is only an abridging your liberty , for the good of your brother . if therefore you be not at liberty , but already restrained in it by the lawful command of authority , you ought not in that case to be disobedient , upon a pretence of avoiding scandal . but i shall yet examine the matter of conformity , more closly . and , first , why do not your ministers join with our courts for church-discipline ? n. they cannot do it , because they are no legal courts , the law that established them being taken away , so that now they are but the bishops deputies . c. i have before studied to convince you , that all that is divine in discipline , is , that scandalous persons be noted , and separated from worship ; but how this shall be administered , can be no matter of religion ; since , wherein are souls concerned , whether a court , acting in a parity , or with one over them , do this ; providing it be done ? but waving this , whether judge you the presbyters power for discipline is founded upon a divine law , or upon the act of parliament ? no doubt , you will say , the first : well then , can the abolishing that act of parliament take away your power ? if not , you ought to sit in these courts , and still do your duty . n. but this is to sit in a bishops court , which acknowledgeth his authority . c. i pray you , suppose the case , that the king should abrogate all laws for the worship of god , and declare , that all that assemble to worship god , shall be understood to worship mahomet , and thereupon oblidge all to meet ; though you meet not upon that command , yet i hope you will still meet to worship god ; let them interpret that as they please . so , i say , since a power of jurisdiction , is that to which presbyters lay claim , by a divine right , they ought to meet in these courts , let the law call it what it will. n. but the bishop is over them , and over-ruleth them as he pleaseth . c. but , suppose this were true , and that episcopacy is a tyranny in the church ; why ought you not to submit to them , as well as you did to the late tyrants in the state ? and why , as your ministers say , they will be content to take churches , and preach , but let discipline alone ; which is a quiting of some of their rights , that they may retain the greater ? may they not as well exercise discipline , though they cannot do it with all the liberty they desire ? sure , there is nothing but peevishness in this . n. do you think our ministers would quite their churches , and liberty of preaching the gospel , which is dearer to them than all the world , for any thing but conscience ? c. i am not so severe as to doubt , but in most of them it is conscience ; but i must adde , it is ill informed conscience . but what can you pretend , for your peoples withdrawing from our churches ? since our religion , in doctrine , worship and discipline , is the same : only a small alteration in the point of government is made . n. i am not for separating from you , as my practice tells , but much may be said for it ; therefore i will judge none that do it . c. truly i desire to be as sparing in passing judgements on people , as any can be : but since separation must be either a necessary duty , or a very great sin , being a forsaking the unity of the church : it can be no light matter to tear the body of christ , when there is scarce a colour of pretence for it . now , the schismatical humour among you , appears palpably in this , that you come sometimes to church , but seldom ; this seems indeed to be time-serving , that you may both evite the punishment of the law , and also retain your interest with your party ; for , if you come once in three moneths , you may come every lords day ; and if you may come , you ought to come ; otherwise you forsake the assemblings of the saints , and contemn what you call the ordinances . others of you also joyn with some of us , but not with others . now as to our publick transgressions ( if they be such ) we are all equally guilty , why then make you a difference ? others of you come to churches in the countrey , but do not so in the city : what doth this look like , but that you have freedom for the thing , but will not do it , for fear of being noticed ? which is to prefer the pleasing of men , to the pleasing of god. and finally , some of you joyn with us in the ordinary worship , but will not communicat with us , which bewrayes great solly ; for if you may pray and praise with us , which is the spiritual communicating : why do you not joyn in the eucharist , which is but solemn praise ? n. how can we acknowledg them our pastors , who are intruders , and are in the places of our faithful shepherds , whom you have torn from us ? c. supposing it were as you assert , yet that will never warrand your separating from them : since , although by the law of moses , the eldest of the house of aaron was high priest ; and the romanes by force driving them from their right , exposed this most sacred function to sale , so that the high priests not only invaded the right of others , but also obtained their office by the most horrid simony imaginable ; yet caiaphas , as high priest , prophesied ; our saviour also answered at his bar , and gave confession , when he authoritatively adjured him , in the name of the living god. st. paul also acknowledged annanias . and though the pharisees were wretched teachers , guilty both of greater crimes and heresies , than you dare charge on us ; yet our saviour saith , hear them , for they sit in moses chair . this is so convincing , that nothing in reason can be alledged against it : yea , it was the doctrine of your own teachers . finally , what cruelty is it , if a minister be put from his place , be it justly or unjustly , that the people should be starved ? it shews your ministers can have no love to their flocks , if they desire it should be so . n. but your curats are naughty men and weak preachers . c. this is an excellent piece of religion in you , to take up , and use reproachful names of your pastors . for though the name curat , be a designation , no minister ought to be ashamed of ; it signifying one that hath the care of souls ; yet ye use it as a term of contempt : and this is your obedience to st. pauls rule , honour them that are over you in the lord : which , as he addes , is for their works sake , and not for their persons sake , as you do . as for their persons and gifts , where is christian charity , that should make you slow to take up a bad impression upon slight grounds ? but if your grounds be good , where is your charity to the church ? since you do not make it known , that they may be cast out . beside , it will open a very wide door to separation , if you say , that upon the personal failings , much more weaknesse of a preacher , you may separate . this is to ty the good of church worship to him that mannageth it . and further , it seems , you think to hear sermon , all you go to church for : but the chief reason of our meeting , is solemnly to acknowledge god , and that we are members of his church : which we can do , be the minister what he will ; and hear good scriptures read , and sing good psalms . besides , let me tell you , you are not so zealous for good preachings , as you would make the world believe . for , are there not many of your preachers , who , while they were in place , were of no esteem , nor following ; and are undoubtedly men of weak gifts , yet now are crouded to by you ? and the church sermons are deserted , and their conventicles frequented . all the reason for this is , because they rail against the church and state ; which is the only way to make a man popular amongst you . n. you have pretended to answer a great many things , but one thing remains , wherein our chief strength lieth , and that you shall never be able to unbind ; which is , the covenant : wherein the whole nation , and the generations to come in their loins are engaged ; and , can such sacred and solemn vowes be broken , without shameful perjury ? c. this you alwayes bring out as your goliah , to defy the armies of the living god. but as sampson's strength lay in his hair , without which he was as other men ; so upon a full survey , it appears that the covenants strength consisted in the armies that fought for it , and not in any inward or innate vigour . and , first , what a ridiculous fancy is it , to say , children can be bound by their fathers oath ? is not this to make us the servants of men , and to give them authority over our consciences ; which is gods peculiar power ? alas , what kind of souls have you , that can be led into such conceits ! n. doth not the fathers debt oblidge the son ? why not also his oath ? c. a mans debt affects his estate , which if the son get , he is bound to pay the debt . but if the son get no estate by his father , then i hope you will not say he is bound to pay his fathers debt . and this shews that the fathers promises binde nothing upon the sons conscience . n. but are not we bound to duty to the king , because of the allegeance our fathers swore , even though we never swear it our selves ? c. not at all , because they swore allegeance , but because the right of the crown is in the kings person , and therefore we are born his subjects . n. but how was adam oblidged for his posterity , if parents cannot binde their children ? c. this is strange dealing , to apply a mysterie of our faith , which we cannot well comprehend , to your triffling matters . but take notice , that adam did not binde his children , by his undertaking for them , but by a secret transaction of gods ; who covenanted with him , as with the common head of mankind . and if parents can bind duties upon their children , they may as well bind sins upon them . and this is new doctrine unheard-of in the church , which never acknowledged any original sin , but that derived from adam . n. how then do parents vow for their children in baptism ? and are not they bound by the baptismal vow , taken by the father , in their name ? c. the parent binds for the childe , as a tutor in legal matters for his pupil : that is , they bind for their interest . the childe is indeed tyed by his baptism , not as it was his fathers vow , but because by the command of god , he was baptized into the likenesse of christ. n. how then is saul charged , and his children punished for killing the gibeonites ? c. it was not because he had falsified the oath , the princes swore : which is no where said but these gibeonites , by that oath , got a right to their lives ; and so were excepted , when god ratified it , from the general command of cutting off the canaanites : therefore , to kill them , wa● cruelty , and not perfidy . and saul is not taxe● of perjury , but of blood . for although the second of samuel make mention of the oath swor● to them , that is , only to reminde the reader o● the history set down in joshuah : but doth not at all say , the oath was still binding , as appears from the words . thus i have taken more pains tha● was needful , to shew the ridiculous fondnesse o● this absurd notion : and have met with all ca● be said for it . n. well , for all this , ye cannot deny but th● covenant binds these who took it . c. i will , ere i come to that , let you see ho● little noise you made in the breaking it in som● things . when then the tyrant had murdere● the king , enslaved this nation , antiquated th● covenant , discharged general assemblies , inhibited praying any more for the king , who the● stood up for the covenant ; or clamoured , a● you now do , of apostacy , tyranny , and perjury i know , a few spoke somewhat , but it was so se●dom , so faintly , and so disguisedly , that it was fa● from the thundering that was in some of you● pulpits before you were silenced , and as at thi● day is in your conventicles . the true reason was ye knew the tyrant would made no bones of ma●king heads fly , or sending you in shipfuls to barbadoes : but you presume upon the king's clemency . and you know what a trip some made , when upon a threatning of taking their stipends ●rom them , they passed from what , in a printed paper , they had owned as their duty , both from scripture and their covenant . n. it is uncharitably done of you , to rake into these things : but if we were faulty in some particulars , that is ill corrected , by becoming so gross , as to renounce all . c. i medle with none of your private escapes , but such as were publick : and do it not , as i have often said , to reflect upon you ; but to let you see , you are but as other men , and not such wonders , as you would have the world believe . i shall next tell you , what monstruous faults you committed in exacting the oath , not returning upon what was hinted , dial. 1. that it was a bond of rebellion , against the lords anointed . as for your national covenant , what a cruel imposing upon consciences was it , to make a nation swear an oath , which they could not understand ? for you made them therein renounce all the articles of popery ; amongst the rest , opus operatum , a latine word , and abstruse conceit ; with many other niceties , which you could not but know , your women and simple people did not understand . and was it not a contradiction , to make them swear against worship in an unknown tongue ; and yet in that very oath so to use it ? for swearing is an act of worship . yea , you made them preface all this with a gre● lye , that it was after full and mature considerat●on of all particulars ; when you knew they we● not capable of considering them . and wha● strange tyranny over consciences was it , t● make people swear in these matters , some wher● of might be disputable ; so that a man could no● be of your communion , except he were in you● opinion in all things ? a rigour never befor● practised but in trent . then , what a tr●pane was it , to make the nation swear the cov●nant , and by an after-game to declare that epi●copacy was abjured in it ? next , what violen● used you to oblidge all to bow to this idol● church-men were not only deposed , who refuse it ; but both church-men and lay-men were ex●communicated , if they did not submit to you● tyranny . what man of common sense can thin● this was the cause of god , which had such mo●struous errours in its first conception ? n. all you can say upon this head , may we● prove , there were some faults in imposing it but it still doth bind , since he shall dwell in go● holy hill , who swears to his own hurt , and chan●eth not . c. i confess , oaths , when the matter is lawfull , do oblidge : but if the nature of thing● change , so the matter grow unlawful , you th● cannot say the oath binds . in a word , a man , or society can only bind themselves , in things tha● are left to their power , and are in their own 〈◊〉 : but if the matter be not in their power , ●hen their oath cannot bind them . n. that is not our case , since you acknow●edge the thing to be of it self indifferent . c. i confess , if you take the thing abstractly in ●t self , it is indifferent : but as the case now ●tands , it is not so : for , by the command of god , we are oblidged to obey the magistrate in all things lawful : so that all just laws oblidge our consciences : and this is a tye before all oaths . and as by no act of ours , we can be bound to break the commands of god ; so , no more can we oblidge our selves to do any thing in prejudice of anothers right ; such as is the soveraign's authority . therefore , no covenant can bind us to deny obedience to the king's laws , because they are in a measure , the laws of god ; ●nd it is his right to command us , from which , ●o act of ours can exclude him . therefore , since the king and parliament have annulled the covenant , and required us to submit to episcopacy , it can no more bind us . n. this is good doctrine , to teach that we should obey man , rather than god. c. this is gross ignorance in you , it is , that we should obey god rather than our selves : for , the just laws , are the mediate commands of god ; whereas our oaths were a voluntary deed of our own , to which we were not bound by any command of god. now , if you comprehend not this clear demonstration , it is because you are a stranger to common sense . n. wherein could episcopacy have been mor● for the good of scotland ? or what could th● kings reason be , for preferring it to presbytery at least for judging it fitter for us ? c. this is like all mutinous subjects , to b● judging and censuring the actions of their princes , unlesse they be on all their secrets , and kno● what all their reasons , and designs are . go● hath given kings the authority to command● and hath left us the glory of obedience ; whic● we ought to do without further inquiry : provided what they enjoyn be against no comman● of god. but we need not seek to rifle the ca●binets of the king , and his councellors , ther● being many apparent cogent reasons , to have en●forced the change . you know what work you● leaders occasioned , both to his royal grandfather , and father , and to himself . you had in●volved the nations in blood ; and not satisfie● with this , after you got all the security yo● could demand , you engaged with his enemie● in england , against him ; you opposed the de●sign of delivering his father , anno 1648. in word , what jealousies had you justly raised in th● hearts of princes , of your government ? an● your tyranny ( 1649. ) against the nobility , ha● justly irritated them against you . next , you ha● divided shamefully amongst your selves , on● great party amongst you , being such , that you● selves sound it necessary to turn them out ; the● maxims being inconsistent with all order and government . and of these that are outed , i● ●s clear , that more than three parts of four , are of that party . why then are ye so blind as to ●sk a reason for the change was made , as if at ●oon one should ask where were the sun ? n. sure you are an enemy to godlinesse , who ●ave an heart so to rail at us . c. i am such a lover of true piety , that for ●ll this drosse that is amongst you , such of you , ●s live well , and walk conscientiously , i still love ●nd value ; and the searcher of hearts knoweth , ●hat i daily pray he may finde a way to re-unite ●s all again ; and to bring such of your leaders , ●s are sensible of their errours , in these great ●scapes , to a capacity of serving him in the church . but it is strange you should take such ● liberty , both in discourses , conventicles , and ●rinted writings , or rather libells , to inveigh ●gainst us ; and then , if we but say a little for ●ustifying the king , the lawes , and our consci●nces , and for undeceiving the people of these ●ists you would cast over their eyes , then you ●●ry out , that we are uncharitable , bitter and malicious . sure you who are so much for de●enfive arms , may , at least , allow us to defend the truth , the law , and our selves , with our tongues and pens . dialogue v. n. i confesse you have much shaken me in the matter of the bishops , though i never find in my heart to love them . but one thing stil● sticks , they are great friends to the common ▪ prayer-book , which i cannot think upon in patience ; and therefore i cannot joyn with them . c. truly if that be your chief quarrel agains● them , it is as well grounded as the rest . n. how ! do not you think it a great matter , to take from us the pure and spiritual worship of god , and in stead thereof , set up a dea● and formal liturgy ? c. i perceive you are still abused after on● manner , your leaders put big words in you● mouthes to make you stick stiffl●y by them ; you● government , they taught you to account the interest and kingdom of christ ; they also woul● make you believe your worship to be the onl● spiritual one , and all others but carnal . now , ● will let you see the great fallacy of this prayin● by the spirit , as you understand it . to pra● by the spirit , is , when out of a deep sense of ou● misery and need , and firm confidence in god , w● draw near to him , to offer up our prayers , an● praises to him , through jesus christ. our heart● being moulded in this frame , we pray by th● spirit ; use we words , or not , the same , or di●ferent expressions . nay , it will appear , w● are carnal , when we need to have our devotion tickled , and provoked with new words . n. now , i clearly see the rottennesse of your heart , and your superstitious cold formality . c. this is great arrogance for you thus to judge of things ye understand not . consider then , the will is the supream power of the soul , and the fancy is a lower faculty ; the true and spiritual devotion therefore , must be that which lies in the will , and not in the fancy : now , the varying of one thing into several shapes , is only a gratifying of fancy : and all the devotion can be raised by such chimes , is only sensible , whereas one of a deep and stedfast spirit , is equally affected with a thing , though still in the same dress . since then , for instance , our petition for pardon of sin , is fully comprized in this , have mercy upon me , o god , doth it not shew , that the thing , and not the words , affect him , who with the newnesse of affection , can make that prayer , though an hundred times repeated , at every return , new ? whereas he must have a lower minde , who needs a new phrase to renew his servour . and thus you see , it expresseth a more spiritual temper , to be able to worship god in simple and constant forms . n. i never thought to have heard the liturgy-worship called spiritual , and the conceived one , carnal . you that are schollers make any thing of any thing with your logick , but you will never make me think but our ministers prayed by the spirit . c. it needs but a very little knowledge of our selves , and none of logick , to make you comprehend this : for , do you think , the heating of the fancy cannot make wicked men pray without the spirit , as to appearance very spiritually ? finally , words , and all the heat begot by words , gesture , voice , or phrases , or the like , are but a false fire in the natural powers of the soul , which may well heat the brain , draw forth tears , seem to wring the heart ; and all this , is but a sensible fervour , which ( as the temper raised by musick ) amounts to nothing , but to a present tickling ; whereas the true devotion of the heart , is , an inward , still , humbling and melting thing , and so equable , that it is above these frisking fits of the fancy . and it is certain , to pray by the spirit , must be the immediat work of the spirit of grace : since then we see , that the praying in words depends most upon memory , fancy , eloquence , confidence and custome ; he that abounds in these , is like to excel in it ; whereas one , defective in all these , so that he cannot pray in a variety of words , yet may understand interior prayer and spiritual converse with god , better than any other . n. this is new doctrine to me . and i cannot understand nor believe it . c. consider then , that the sublimest way of prayer , is in the simplest acts : such as these ; thou art my god , and i am thine . and in such breathings , a devout minde will persist long , with great sweetnesse : and in this , god hath strangely shapt religion , so that the highest strain of it , is , what the simplest minde can most easily reach . nay , perhaps multiplicity doth lead out the minde from pure and still devotion . and thus extemporary prayer , cannot be called praying by the spirit , except by spirit you understand the animal or natural spirits : for , if it be by the spirit , it must be infallible , since all that is dictated by the spirit of god is so : yet your people do not assert their prayers as such . further , let one with a short-hand , follow that mans prayer , who you say prayes by the spirit ; then , may not that prayer be read and used over again ? or , is the spirit in the prayer so volatile , that it evaporats in the saying , and the prayer becomes carnal when it is repeated ? finally , if praying by the spirit , be a praying in new words , then only he that conceives the prayer , prayes by the spirit : since they who hear and joyn with him , are tyed to his words . n. the words were dictated by the spirit to him that conceives them . c. then to the people it is not necessary , the words be new : since to them it is all one , if it were once dictated by the spirit . but why do you not believe the prayer composed by the church , to be of the spirits dictating , as well as that of your ministers ? and , since the people can joyn and pray by the spirit , though the words be not of their framing ; why may not the minister pray in the spirit , though he use words framed by others ? all this shows how weak and ill grounded a notion , that of praying by the spirit , in the sense you understand it , is . and it clearly appears , that the dresse of the prayer in words , and the life begot by them , is but sensible and low . n. but doth not the spirit help our infirmities , and teach us to pray ? c. if you consider the words aright , they speak out a thing very far different from what you would draw from them . the spirit teacheth us to pray , for what we ought , that is the matter of our prayers ; and as we ought , that is the manner , to wit , the temper of our hearts . for , that words are not meant , appears from what follows , and maketh intercession for us with groannings that cannot be uttered : or literally , which cannot be worded . n. but though the renewing of words were a lower way of devotion ; yet , we in this inbodied state , need to have our souls stirred up by the commotion of our fancies . c. then at least , this must convince you , that such a way of praying , is not so sublime , and therefore ought not to be called praying by the spirit . and you must acknowledge , such as can worship god devoutly in a set form , to be of a higher size : as being above these gratifications of nature and fancy . i will next convince you of the evil of extemporary forms . in such then , i must long exercise my attention to consider what he who prayes , intends ; that i may judge , whether i can joyn with him or not : now this strangely draweth out the minde from devotion : for , two powers of the soul cannot be vigourously acted at one time . the attention therefore must put great stops to the progresse of the devotion : and the mind being so prone to wander in worship ; this opens a wide door to it . but he who knoweth already what the prayer is , runs along in his devotion , without anxiety , or wavering . hence i have heard devout men say , they were ever much troubled , while they joyned in extemporary worship , to keep their minde from distraction ; which they found wholly remedied , when they were where god was worshipped in set forms . n. what sort of devout men could these be ? sure they knew not what devotion meant . c. this is like all weak people , to censure what is above them , and they do not understand . but judge whether it be fit , i blindly join with one in the worship of god , when i know not how he is to mannage it : and you cannot deny , some may pray things you dare not join in . shall i not trust a man in any matter , without understanding how he will discharge it ? only in my devotions to god i will blindly trust so great a concernment , to one who saith he doth not know how he will mannage it himself . it is not enough to say , you join not in these things to which you cannot say amen ; for , at least to others you seem so to do . and this will keep you still in some anxiety , when in your heart you may say amen , and when not : and indeed this way of praying , was the best could have been devised , for spreading of errour , or sedition : for ministers prayed over their sermons ; so that what in the discouse seemed the words of man , in the prayer was called the dictate of the spirit . and this was an excellent device , to make all go down , had it been of the worst stuff . n. all things may be abused , but by your own rule , this should not strike against their use . c. things of themselves good , falling into abuse , ought not for that to be taken away ; except the abuse be greater than the goodness of the thing : but , if a thing , not of it self good , be grossly abused , then there is ground to change the use of it . now , since we speak of abuses , i might run out in a long career , and tell of the redious length , the scurrilous expressions , the involved periods , the petulant and wanton affectations , and other great abuses in extemporary prayer : with which , no doubt , you your self hath been often much troubled ; but i bear that tender respect to every thing that hath any relation to god's service , that i love not so to scoff at any thing looks that way : but you know these are sad truths . whether then , is it not necessary to redress these abuses by a regular form ? n. you know we had a directory of the things we should pray for . c. and why may not you have a directory for words , as well as things ? since the spirit rather helps in things than in words . but it was clear you brought up that directory meerly to cozen the world ; which otherwise might have been startled , to have seen you without all form , or rule for worship : for , even your leaders quickly wearied of it , and regarded it not . and one thing clearly followed , that the preaching was the great matter of the worship : all the prayers and psalms relating to it . but the constant acts , wherein the church should adore god , were thought too homely . to conclude , the least evil of extemporary forms , is , that a minister is ready to pour out his soul to god , in such devotions as are then most in his own spirit : suppose he be mourning for sin , under affliction , rejoicing in god , or the like ; he is apt to pray in these strains . but these being his private exercises , are not fit for publick worship , which , as it ought to be grave and solemn ; so , it should be general and comprehensive . n. i see you are for set-forms : but what reason have you for them ? sure the apostles used them not . c. you are not so sure as you imagine , for i cannot doubt but they used our saviours prayer , he taught them ; for whereas , at first , in his sermon on the mount , he had given it as a pattern of prayer , they afterwards , as is clear by the series of the gospel , came and asked a form of him , as st. iohn had given his disciples : and then he doth not say , as he formerly said , after this manner pray , but when you pray , which clearly sheweth , he intended it as a practice , as well as a pattern . nay further , the jews at that time had a liturgy , and their hours of prayer , which our saviour never reproves , as a formal thing : but , on the contrary , he takes his prayer , word for word , out of it , as may be seen , if you will read their liturgy . and this shews how foolish that exception against the liturgy of england is , that some of its prayers are translated out of the roman missall or breviary . but though the apostles and persons immediatly inspired , might pour out extemporary prayers , thence it will not follow , that every one may assume the same liberty . beside , you see by the worship of the corinthians , they used hymnes of their composing , as well as prayers : now i could never comprehend why you will allow the spirit to be restrained in praising , as to words , and not in praying , since both are duties equally spiritual ; nay , perhaps praising , is the most sublime of the two . n. because the plalms are a collection of praises dictated by the spirit of god for worship . c. this is all you can say upon the matter , but never were more absurdities crouded in less bounds . and first , it is clear , we may worship in the spirit , and yet be restrained as to words ; since you acknowledge god hath done it in praising . next , the psalms are full of acts that are prayers , as well as thanksgivings ; why may we not use these for constant prayers , as well as the other for constant praises ? nay , since we use to sing these prayers , why may we not for instance use the 51. psalm , in plain words , with a plain voice , as prayer , as well as in hobling ryme , with a tune ? sure you will find no difference in this , since you cannot say we are bound to use the psalms in meeter , or with tunes : for nothing proves we ought to use them with vocal tunes , but will conclude as strongly for all davids instruments . besides , who told you that all david's psalms were to be constantly used in worship ? it is clear , most of them was not intended for constant use : they relating to particulars of david's history and victories , which belongs not to us . and it is hard to say , we ought to sing his imprecatory psalms : as also , many things are in the psalms which we cannot sing , because we do not understand them : and it is clear , we ought to praise god with our understandings ; and not above twenty of the psalms were used by the jews in worship . to conclude , why may not the christian church compose new hymns , as they of corinth did ? for which they are approven by st. paul. and this is the more necessary , because from david's psalms , we are not furnished with such full and clear hymns , upon the great mysteries of the christian belief , as were needful . and what kind of reasons can you have , who plead so much for a liberty in prayer , and yet allow none in making of hymns ? why then do not ye use the glory to the father ? n. because it is not in the scripture , and is but a device of men . c. who would not be sick with such pitiful folly ? show me a reason why you may make prayers , and not praises ? beside , are not your meeter psalms a device of men ? and they recede from the text , as i can trace it in an hundred places , as much as the doxology doth from scripture words . and you understand musick little , if you do not know that the psalms in prose may be sung as well , and as musically , as they can be in ryme . besides , since the mystery of the s.s. trinity , is not so clearly in the old testament , nor in any psalm , why may not the church use an acknowledgement of it , in the end of their singing , as well as in the end of prayer , is ordinarily said , to the father , son , and holy ghost , be glory for ever and ever ? such childish weakness makes me sometimes doubt whether your rational faculties be not troubled : since what difference can you pretend betwixt singing and saying ? but i will return to prayer . consider next , how hosea the prophet prescribes a form , when he saith , take with you words , and say , &c. our saviour also prayed thrice , and though the third time was more fervently , yet it was in the same words : which shows , that fervour consisteth not in a varying of the phrase next , it is clear , that in the church they used forms very early ; since in the council of laodicea , it was decreed , that the same liturgy of prayer should be used morning and evening . it● is true , there was not an universal liturgy then agreed to , but bishops had their several liturgies : so we have the liturgies of st. basile ▪ st. chrysostome , and st. ambrose ; not to mention those of st. iames , and st. mark. but never were extemporary heats used in the church : and all the reformed churches have their liturgies ; so we had ours at our first reformation . n. but we are a purer church than any of them : and therefore we are not to learn of them . c. i know you were made believe , that all the world were wondring at you , but this was a cheat upon you , like that of your alledged prophetess ; for , i can assure you , there was no such thing true . one thing is strangely inconsequential amongst you , you will not pray in a liturgy , and yet you alwayes bless the people in a set form . do you think prayer for a blessing , is not a prayer ? or do you think , the spirit is not stinted when the form is short , but only when it is long ? sure these things shew you are not governed by reason . n. what then conclude you from all this ; is it that the english liturgy be brought in ? c. it is , that you consider better how you ought to worship god. as for the english liturgy , i do not say any thing is absolutely perfect , but god ; yet till i see a better liturgy compiled , which i never hitherto did , pardon me to think it an excellent rule for worship , although your deep , but groundless prejudices against it , have rendred you so uncapable of receiving good by it , that such is your soveraign's princely tenderness , and your superiours discreet prudence , that they do not obtrude on you while you are but babes this stronger food , but are willing to let you be doing with your milk . n. this is easie way for men to read their prayers off their books ; god keep us long from it . c. truly , if by easiness , you mean what is pleasant to a man , it is far from it ; for certainly the natural man would be much better pleased , to be running out with his own conceptions , and to have all the worship depending upon his lips this is indeed to be rabbi . but to use the form of the church is a more simple , and a more humble way of worship . n. i begin to think you can have no piety , who are so in love with that dead and dull worship . c. would to god you and i had more of it than we have : but it is perhaps your stupidity , that makes you dead and dull in it . and i know godly people , who protest , they never in their lives worshipped god with more pure and simple devotion , than when they joined in the english liturgy-worship : therefore in such matters speak more modestly . n. but what vain repetitions are in the liturgy ? how often redouble they , lord have mercy upon us ? c. i have not yet asserted , that it is in all things perfect ; but truly , i can think that no fault , except you will also quarrel with the psalms , particularly with the 136. in which is repeated 26. times , for his mercy endureth for ever , it being in every verse . but in the true sense of vain repetitions , i fear there is ground to say , many of ●our prayers may be censured for them . n. but what a confusion is it , that all say some of the prayers together , and use amen ? c. it seems you have read the scripture well , else you would have found , acts 4. how a whole company there , lifted up their voice to god with one accord , and said , &c. and st. paul plainly intimates that there was a custome of saying amen , at the giving of thanks . why then do you not in this follow the express scripture-rule ? and what imaginable ground is there that the people shall all with their voice join in the psalms , and not also in the prayers ? n. well , i see you are zealous for that service-book , but should you speak till to morrow , you should never perswade me to join in it : but are you as keen for the ceremonies ? c. i verily believe , your prejudice against it , though ill grounded , yet is so deep , that no reason will overthrow it : but perhaps , if you saw that worship gravely managed , you should be more reconciled to it . as for the ceremonies , i will medle with none , but such as were commanded here , well known by the name of the five articles of perth . and for these , if you can hear ●nd understand reason , i doubt not to convince ●ou , they were both lawful , and most of them ●oth useful and necessary . i begin with confirmation . n. well , is not this a popish sacrament which you would bring into the church ? c. i confess , if it had been introduced as a sacrament , you had reason to except against it but you know no such thing was ascribed to it , and it was only designed for a solemn renovation of the baptismal vow . now since children are baptized , and so in baptism do not ingage fo● themselves ; can any thing be more rational , than that when they come to the years of discretion , they do it themselves ? and this rite wa● very ancient in the church , and with great show of reason , the laying on of hands mentioned wit● baptisms , heb. 6. was expounded of it : and yo● know most reformers were for it . n. but why must it be done only by a bishop ▪ as if it were beyond baptism ? c. that was only to conciliat the more veneration for it , by making it the more solemn and therefore it hath been generally appropriated to the bishop . yet i shall not contend about that , since st. ambrose , or rather hilary saith that in egypt , the presbyters in the bishop's absence did confirm . and st. ierom saith , that ● bishop did nothing , except the ordination , whic● a presbyter did not likewise . the next articl● was private baptism . n. this was another piece of popery , to mak● the sacraments necessary to salvation . c. it is rather gross superstition , to confir● the sacramental actions to the walls of a church for it is the assembly of the faithful that makes ● church . our saviour said , where two or three are gathered together in my name , i will be in the midst of them . as for the necessity of the sacraments , none calls them simply necessary to salvation ; but since they were commanded , they ought to be used , unless some more cogent reason stop the use of them , than is the want of a dedicated house . and who should expect , that they who are so much against reverence to sacred houses , should likewise be against private sacraments ? as for baptism , what a cruel thing is it , to oblidge children ; especially when they are tender , to be brought , perhaps in the coldest season , many miles , rather than go and baptize at their houses ? this looks liker heathenish barbarity , than the christian tenderness . and for communion , why should not sick persons receive on death-bed , when all the reasons of receiving are most strong ? their faith and love needs then to be most quickened ; never is the death of christ more to be remembred , than when they are to pass through the valley and shadow of death ; and never is it more fit , that they declare their communion with the church , and their love to the brethren , than when they are entering upon their last pangs : and it is well known how early a practice this was in the church of god. iustin martyr tells , that they sent of the eucharist to them that were absent : and by the famous story of serapion , about the 200. year , it is apparent how necessary the christians then thought it was to be guarded with this holy viaticum . private sacraments then are not proposed as necessary , but as highly expedient : which i think i have made appear they are . n. but what can you say for kneeling in receiving ? sure this looks like superstition and idolatry . c. i confess this is the article of them all , i have the least fondness on : but it is great uncharitableness to call it idolatry , when such as do so , declare they neither believe christ to be corporally present , nor do they intend any worship to the bread and wine , but direct their worship to god and christ , for that death which is therein shewed forth . n. but why do not you sit ? since our saviour did institute this rite in the table-gesture ? c. since you do not exactly follow christ , you ought not to stand at this : none therefore should alledge this , but such as communicat leaning , and after supper , and in an upper room . and though the passover was ordained to be eaten by the jews standing with their loins girt , and their shooes on their feet , yet without any written warrand , they changed that posture into the ordinary eating posture , and did eat the passover leaning , in which our saviour conformed to them . and if the jews , against an expresse● precept , without any countermand , may chang● the posture ; sure the christians who are lesse restrained as to outwards , may change the gesture● especially there being no command for it : and but a lame example , since our saviour did not sit , but lean . and perhaps more veneration is due to that action , now that our saviour is exalted , than he could have allowed of in his humiliation . n. what can you say for holy dayes ? can any man make dayes holy ? c. if by holy dayes you mean , portions of time so sacred , that in these dayes , our services are more acceptable to god than on other dayes ; or that of their own nature they are holy , so that of it self it is a sin not to be particularly devout on these dayes , you have reason to say , none can make a day holy . and this was never asserted . but it is another thing to keep peculiar dayes of thanksgiving , for the great and signal mercies of the gospel-dispensation . i confesse i am so dull , as not to be able to apprehend what evil can be in such customs . and it is undoubted , that in all ages and places of the church , christians have had a peculiar veneration for these dayes . st. paul saith of the legall holy dayes , he that regardeth a day , to the lord he doth regard it ; and , if moses his feasts might have been kept holy to the lord , much more may these be which the church hath instituted . beside , you know the observation of easter and pentecost , are according to clear history derived from apostolical practices . and it appears , st. paul hasted to be at ierusalem to keep the feast of pentecost there . and , from all this i may assume , that your dislike of these festivals and the other articles of perth , is ill grounded . dialogue vi. n. i see we have no reason to hope for any good from you , who are so fierce against u● ▪ ●u● god be thanked , an ill-willed cow hath fro●●●orns . c. if by fiercenesse you mean a desire to see you ●uined and destroyed , you mistake me quite ; since there is none living , mo●● a verse from fierce and violent ●ourses than my self . i love all christians , who live according to the rules of the gospel ▪ and i pity such as i judge mistaken , knowing how subject i am to errour my self . i quarrel with no man for his opinion in these matters ▪ which are , as the 〈◊〉 incomp●rable king in his divine work call● them , but the ski●● and suburbs of religion . and as all the thoughts of that divine book bew●ay an augustnesse , which spe●ks the author a king indeed ▪ so his mode●a●ion in these matters looks like the paternal clemency which becomes the father of a countrey ; he then adviseth his son , our gracious sovereign , thus , beware of exasperating any factio●s , by the crossnesse and asperity of some men● passions , humours , or private opinions , imployed by you , grounded only upon the differences in lesse● matters , which are but the ski●s and suburb● of religion : wherein a charitable connivance● and christian-●oller●tion often dissipa●● their strength , wh●●●ougher opposition fortifies ; and puts the despised and oppressed party into such combinations , as may most enable them to get a full revenge on those they count their persecutors , who are commonly assisted by that vulgar commiseration which attends all that are said to suffer under the notion of religion . and a little after , take heed , that outward circumstances and formalities of religion , devour not all , or the best incouragements of learning , industry , and piety . thus that great and glorious prince . n. by this it seems you are a latitudinarian , and i have heard much ill of these new sort of people . c. truly i own no name , but that of jesus christ , in which i was baptized ; and these are invidious arts , to coyn names of parties , and to affix them on such as disown them ; i am , and desire to be a sincere christian , but of no party nor sect. but if by latitude , you mean charity , truly i must tell you , i glory in it , which is no newer way , than the new commandment which our saviour gave to his disciples , to love one another , as he loved them . n. i confesse they say you live very good lives , but you have dangerous and loose principles . c. are you not strange people , who fasten such characters on men whose conversations you cannot disprove ; for , what can you call an atheist , but a man of dangerous and loose principles ? these are uncharitable aspersions , as if not to be so hidebound and starcht on every trifle as you are , were to be loose and dangerous men . n. some say you are strong witted people , and so they suspect you of atheism . c. it seems they are weak witted people who talk so ; since though some foolish pretenders to wit , are atheists , yet no sort of men discover their folly , as well as wickednesse , so much as these do . and that cursed pest is hated by none more than us , who perhaps can give better and more convincing accounts of these principles of religion , that there is a god , a life to come , and that the scriptures are the word of god , than these who so charge us . but what unchristian work is it , thus to disgrace us ? n. many of you are suspect of socinianism , for you all magnifie reason , and are often telling how rational a thing christian religion is , which they also do . c. indeed if to call religion a rational worship , or reasonable service make a socinian , w● are such , and so was st. paul : but as for the horrid errours of socinus his school , touching th● trinity , christs satisfaction , gods prescience , & ● ▪ these we condemn and anathematize : and w● judge it most suitable to reason , that in these sublime mysteries , divine revelations should b● our rule . but notwithstanding of this , we wi●● be very loath to deny that christian religio● both in its articles of belief , and precepts ● practice , is highly congruous to the dictates ● right reason : and we judge to propose them s● shall be a convincing way to commend them all clear-witted men . and certainly , god having created man rational , the highest accomplishment of his nature , which is religion , must not be contrary , but suitable to his supreme faculty . n. it seems you are sound here , but i fear you latitudinarians are papists , at least cassandrians . c. you are resolved to charge us with one heinous thing or another , and when one fails you , you catch hold on another . we are far from that height of uncharitablenesse which some of you own , of damning all papists ; since they hold the foundation jesus christ , though they build upon it wood , hay and stubble : neither will we stifly say , that all things controverted betwixt the reformed churches and them , are matters of salvation ; yet in the greater controversies with them , we condemn them : such as are the popes supremacy , the churches infallibility , the corporal presence , the worshipping images , saints , angels , purgatory , prayer for the dead , withholding the chalice , worshipping in an unknown tongue ; these with many moe we disprove and dislike as much , and perhaps on clearer grounds than you do . yet we are such lovers of the unity of the catholick church , that we much honour and esteem all who have studied to bring things to a temper , though they have not come up to the desired length . n. but how comes it , that amongst all the articles of popery , you never reckon the merits of good works , nor justification by them ; since these are their chiefest errours ? c. i have not given a full enumeration of all that is wrong in that church ; but , for good works , though many of them , particularly the j●suits , have written very harshly in that matters ; and before the reformation , generally all the preachers did intollerably extol , not so much morally good works , as the superstitious and tyrannical injunctions of the stepdame of rome ; yet now it is clear , the more sober of them expound merits , in a sense which no protestant can disown , to wit , that they are actions so acceptable to god , that he who is faithfull in his promises , will certainly reward them . though i have no fondnesse on the term merit , which way soever expounded , it still sounds somewhat too high for a creature in reference to his creator , much more heartily do i reject the term condign . n. what ●ay you of justification by faith only ? sure this is a fundamental matter . c. there is nothing in scripture more clearly set down than the doctrine of justification ; but as it is generally explained , there is nothing more nice or subtill : justification and condemnation are two opposite legal terms , relating to the judgment shall be given out at the last day ; for though we are said to be now justified , as the unbelieving are said to be condemned already , this is only that we are now in the state of such as shall be solemnly justified or condemned . now at ●he great day we must give 〈◊〉 ●●ount of our actions , and we must be judged accordingly ▪ but since all must be condemned , if god enter in judgement with them , therefore god gave his son to the death for us , that thereby we might obtain ▪ salvation ; and all iudgement is by the ●●ther committed to the son : and jesus christ hath proposed ●ife through his death to as many 〈◊〉 receive his gospel , and live according ▪ ●o it . and as that which gives us ●●title to the ●●vour of god , is the blood of christ , so that which gives us an interest in his death , is faith , with ● life conform to the rules of his gospel , and the ●oo● of this new life , is a fai●h , which worke●h by love , purifyeth the heart , and ! overcom●●● the world ; and therefore justification is ascribed ●o● it in scripture . now , judge but a little what 〈◊〉 is to have a righ● apprehension of things ▪ si●●e ● have in a few plain words told you ●hat which with much nice●y swells amongst you to volume● ▪ and as this ascribes all to christ , through● whom it is that our sins are pardoned , our services ●●cepted , and grace and glory conveyed to us● ▪ so also the necessity of a holy life is clearly declared ▪ as being that whereupon we shall be solemnity judged , justified and absolved at the last day . n. i think this is very clear , but why do not you use the terms of the protestant● church ? this looks like a humour of singularity amongst you , that you will not speak like other men . c. whether do you think it fitter in the mysteries of ●aith to keep close to ●●rms of scripture or not ? since these , as they are the truest , so are the fittest and most expressive : but if we will speak in the language of men , i think the stile of the catholick church is to be chosen , rather than modern and scholastical expressions , which are too too horridly abused , as well by antinomians , as by carnal christians , who love well to hear of salvation by the death of christ , provided they be bound to do nothing themselves , that they may be saved . n. you have sufficiently vindicated your self of popery , but are you not arminians ? c. truly i believe both you and i may be good christians , and not understand a word of these controversies . and certainly the great itch of multiplying and canvassing subtile questions in matters of religion , hath proven one of the chief pests of the church ; it is good to be sober-minded . as for gods soveraignty in all things , but more especially in the conversion of souls , and the gracious influence of his spirit , i do firmly believe it : i as firmly believe , that god is infinitly good and holy , and think i may well take his own oath for it , that he takes no pleasure in the death of sinners : but how to reconcile these his attributes , i confesse is beyond my capacity . god is an unfathomable abysse , and imperscrutable to any but himself : therefore as i do not doubt there are three persons in one god , though i cannot reconcile that to aristotles logick ; so i believe , god is soveraign and absolute , as well as holy and just , though i cannot answer all objections . in a word , let this whole matter be thus transacted , and no article of faith is violated ; let none of our good be ascribed to our selves , and none of our evil be imputed to god. n. i see if you have any errours , you have so much legerdemain , that you are not easily discovered . but , our ministers are more jealous of some of this new way of the latitude , than of any body ; for , often in our conventicles they bid us beware of wolves in sheeps cloathing : and this is meant of you . c. iudge of the tree by its fruits , said our saviour ; do not therefore upon jealousies and misrepresentations passe judgments ; for , who art thou that judgest another mans servant ? but i am now weary with wrangling , it being a thing much against my genius ; i will therefore leave these dry and arid matters , and talk a little with you on better subjects . n. i will hear you in these with all my heart ; for though you have said many things that do much displease me , yet as uncharitable as you think me , i am full of kindness for you ; and i love to hear good spoken by any body : therefore we will dispute no more . c. ah , how strangely is the world mistaken in matters of religion ! some placing it wholly in debates , others in external forms ; others in some private devotions , and others in a regulation of the outward man ; but true religion is power and life , and far above all these shadows . the kingdom of god is not meat and drink , but righteousness and peace , and joy in the holy ghost ; it doth not level at externals only , but secretly insinuats it self into the soul ; whereas a divine seed it propagates , diffusing its vertue through the whole man : in a word , religion was given of god to transform a man into the divine likeness , and to a real participation of the divine nature . n. what then is the great scope and design of christian religion ? c. god's method in clearing up this day of salvation was indeed wonderful : many ages after the creation , the world was overspread with darkness , and wrapped up in blind idolatry , only as the 〈◊〉 reflection of the moon , with the twinklings of a few stars , do give some radiance in the furthest absence of the sun , so these darkest ages had still some of the remains of natures light ; and the holy patriarchs were burning and ●hi●ing lights : but darkness still covered the face of the earth . at length there was a dawning ●p●●ed by moses , whose greatest splendor was c●ast upon it , by the approaching sun , the messia●s : indeed the old dispensation was a great ●idd● for all was managed then with great ●errour , po●p and state : their call out of egypt , and the pro●ulging of the law were dreadfu● , their temple , worship and ceremonies were majesti●k and solemn ; but by none of these the doer could be made perfect : at length came the sun of righteousness , as a light to lighten the gentiles , and the glory of his people israel , and brought to light life and mortality through his gospel ; the great designs whereof are , to beget in a man such apprehensions of the divine majesty as might both possess him with the holy reveren●● becomes his great name , and inspire him with a love and delight in him , that so man might be brought to a more free converse with god , and might be swallowed up in divine contemplations . the next thing in the gospel , is to propose to us that stupendious contrivance of the redemption of the world through jesus christ , that we may adore him as the author and finisher of our faith . beside , the gospel came to mould us into such a lively conformity to jesus christ , that we may imitate him in all things , chiefly in his holiness , meekness , and humility : and further , the gospel was designed as a cement and bond of perfection , to unite us all more clossly , even beyond the natural tyes , with those of brotherly-kindness and charity . n. what then are the methods to be used by one that would lead a spiritual life ? c. this ought to be the great design of our lives ; for , wherein shall it avail us , if we shall gain the whole world , and lose our own souls ? the way then to purify our souls , is , not barely to affect a little vertue , or morality , but to apply our minds to god , that by frequent and deep contemplations of his glory , his excellent perfections may be derived into our souls . be therefore much in stillness and abstraction of mind , that you may become of a thinking temper : give up with passions , designs , and humours , and use much inward recollection ; this at first will prove ●inful to you , but when once you have brought your mind into a serene and not easily agitated temper , you shall after that enjoy great quiet in divine converse . n. what mean you by this converse with god ? c. you shall feel such a belief and sense of the divine perfections in your soul , as shall make the thoughts of god familiar and easie to you : your converse with him shall not only consist in prayers , and acts of worship , but you shall be often admiring him in his attributes of power , wisdom , and goodness , and chiefly his love to you in christ ; which sense of god shall be as a fountain of living waters , ever jetting up divine thoughts into your mind : and these will not be crabbed , curious , or subtill speculations , but humble adorations , and divine imbraces , in such acts , as , thou art my god , my good god , i am thine , i will love thee above all things , and none but thee ; thou art my joy and only delight . thus the more you converse with god , your acts will grow the simpler and the purer : it will not only be at some returns , morning or evening , or in publick worship , that such thoughts will stir in you ; but your heart will be full of them , and swiming in them , and they will rise natively in you . hence will gush in upon your soul much inward sweetness of mind ; you will be ever well pleased , because you will see god in all things , and you will see all he doth is good ; you will therefore not only practise submission , but complacency and delight in all his wayes ; you will also rejoyce in the divine attributes , and glory in your interest in heaven . oh , how sweet will your hours then grow to you ! but debates and opinions and every thing that leads out the mind from that inward stillness , will become sapless to you . n. wherein consists that sweetness you say is to be found in divine converse ? c. in the stillness wherewith the mind is overflowed , the clearness in the judgement , the stedfastness of the will , and calmness of the passions ; and then indeed a man lives in the perfection of his nature . but , beside these , there are some divine touches , wherein the soul is carried , as it were , out of her self , into most sublime heights , which cannot be uttered . but as for the affections of the sensible part , these may be very high in an impure mind ; for the natural devotion , especially if the person be melancholick , a woman , or histerical , will mount very high , but this devotion doth not humble nor purify the minde . now , persons so divinly acted , are nothing in their own eyes , and willing to be nothing in the account of all the world , and all the world is nothing to them , their god is their all : they resign all to him , and are willing he dispose of them , and every thing else , as seems good in his eyes ; so they are not sollicitous , nor disturbed , however squares go in the world . finally , by the elevation of this spiritual life , they are made to think not only placidly and serenly of death , but to long for it , accounting that the worst office death can do them , is to free them of a vile body , and to give them enterance into their heavenly kingdom , this is the union of the soul to god. n. but how must we enter into that state of divine union ? c. truly the gate is low , and the passage strait , we must be dispossessed of self-love , and of all intense affections to created objects ; we must ●now and abhor our bygone escapes , we must by the humble applications of our souls to jesus christ , presse in by violence into this heavenly state ▪ to which the passage is so narrow , that we must be stript of all the bulksome farthingales and trains of vanity ere we can enter : but when we shall be divested of these , the path of life will prove easie . oh! how shall these pangs be recompensed , when we have broke thorow , and got into the blessed shades of the garden of god ? and , how infinitely more shall they be swallowed up , when getting beyond the dark regions of mortality , we shall arrive at the uncreated light , which without a cloud or vail , shines above ? then our glorified bodies , with our no lesse purified souls , being made like unto angels , yea , unto a greater than angels , shall be incessantly imployed in exercises , services and adorations , so far elevated beyond , and disproportioned to our highest a●chievements and enjoyments here , that in this imperfect state we cannot so much as frame suitable apprehensions of that unconceived glory ! now we who have the possession of so great a joy , and the hope of a greater blesse●nesse proposed to us , have we not all reason vigorously to set about the duties of a christian life , not intangling our selves with thorny and harsh debates , which will but retard our progresse to sublimer states , and higher and undisturbed regions ? n. is this all then that is required to accomplish a christian ? c. this is but the basis and roo● of a christian life , which is never barren nor unfruitfull : he then whose heart is thus fixed on god , his life and actions quickly declare that he hath not only the form but the power of godlinesse in him : he lives above the world , in such a contempt of it , as discovers he hath greater riches and treasures in his design , than these a●e ; he hates the base and impure pollutions that abound in the world through lust , and underva●●●eth even the lawfull pleasures and enjoyments off sense : he sets no value on things in themselves , riches and poverty , shame and contemp●a●e equally welcome to him , the one doth not sink him , nor can the other swell him : his actions and discourses have that candor , ingenuity and goodness in them , as convince all , that the fear of god is before his eyes . finally , he li●es in the world , as out of the world , and above the world ▪ his humility also testifieth , that in no●hing the doth , he seeks or regards himself ; he doth not hang out his piety nor good actions to publick view , but wraps them up in unaffected self-denial . he courts not applause , nor is he fretted with contempt , but is willing that none but god , for whom he doth all , know his actions , and with a virginal modesty shuns and rejects the praises which are undesired , as well as undeserved : he flyes the crouds and publick scenes , that in corners he may find that which by venting in a throng , is often evaporat and lost . and as he doth not cowardly stoop to mean things , so he doth not stubbornly refuse the poorest office god calls him to : he peaceably obeyeth the publick father of his countrey , and the ghostly fathers of his soul : he undervalueth none but himself , neither are his ears pained with applauses given to others , nor itching for them to himself . his charity also appeareth in his readiness to do good to all men , looking on that as one of the greatest conformities to the divine nature : he relieveth the poor with his goods , the perplexed with his advice , the oppressed with his assistance , the disconsolat with his sympathy ; and all with his prayers . he judgeth rashly of none , he doth not easily believe , but quickly pardoneth an injury : he is not soon irritated , but readily pacified : he confineth not his charity to a party , but extendeth it to all christians . this is a rude character , containing some of the fairer lines of a christian-life ; by which you may see wherein christian religion consists , and how far even those who pretend most loudly to it , recede from it . n. what say you of his devotions , both private and publick ? c. in his secret retirements he often revieweth and examineth his actions , that discovering what hath been defective and amiss in him , he may be humbled for it , and quickened to new vigour and alacrity in divine services : he begs the divine love through jesus christ , by whom he makes all his addresses to the throne of grace ; he offers up himself to god by pure and free resignations , that he may dispose of him as pleaseth him ; he imploreth the divine grace , and assistance for mortifying all sins , overcoming all temptations , and advancing in every thing that is acceptable and well-pleasing to god : he also offers up his praises to god for all his mercies , chiefly for that unvaluable one of the redemption of the world through jesus christ : he prayeth also for the catholick church , his king , countrey , and friends . this he performs not as an homage or vassalage which he must do , but out of pure delight in god and divine exercises : neither doth he rest on these , as all he owes god ; but besides , he orders all he doth for his glory , and is often bending his minde to an application to god in all his wayes : and this is his secret and inward devotion . he worships god in publick , that he may avowedly own his dependance on him , and his union with his church : he goeth to the holy place , not out of custome or formality , but that he may jointly with others , acknowledge and adore his maker and his redeemer ; and gives no● only an external concurrence with the worship in voice , gesture , or presence , but his hear● saith amen to his lips and profession . n. i confesse i finde it much more pleasing and edifying to talk on these heads , than on ou● doubtful disputations ; and therefore i will bi● an endlesse farewell to them . c. i was to have desired that of you : fo● though my affection to you hath at presen● drawn from me a great deal of contentious discourse ; yet i finde no pleasure in it ; and therefore as i seldom in my thoughts remind● these matters , so here i put a point , and wil● never resume them again . let us therefore provoke one another to charity and good works ● we have a better exercise for our tongues , wit● them we are to blesse god even the father ; le● us not therefore utter any thing with them that may seem to curse man , that was made after the similitude of god. n. yet your pains are not wholly lost : fo● though i am not altogether changed as to 〈◊〉 principles ; yet you have brought me to a grea● temper in things wherein i must confesse i wa● unmeasuredly furious : but i will henceforth study to draw in my minde from every distraction , and more vigorously pursue the great en● of my being . c. if this be your temper , you and i cannot disagree , did our thoughts , as to other things , differ never so widly : and i pray god keep you and me both in this temper long , but now we must part for a while , it is like we may shortly meet again , if not on earth , at least in heaven : so i bid you heartily adiew . postscript . these dialogues were the hasty product of some idle hours , wherein the author thought fit to gather in a few words , the matters which now creat us so much trouble , and to represent the arguments of both parties candidly ; which he hopes he hath done . he protests he hath no design to wrong either party or person , but meerly to propose these matters to others , in the same light wherein they appear to himself : had his design been to disgrace persons or wayes , he would have done it at another rate ; but he abhorreth such a thought . if these papers grow publick , and be of use to any , he desires no thanks as he expects no rewards : and for the censures of persons concerned , he will shroud himself from these with the vail of one unconcerned . finis . a pindarick ode upon contentions in matters of religion , by a friend of the authors , and a zealous promoter of all designs for peace and love. i. shall that which was design'd to end our toils , increase our flames , and raise new broils ; and must we triumph in our brethrens spoils ? women are said by contraries to walk , so now religion which heaven intends to quiet minds , all hearts to quarrel bends ; and to contentious talk . and as the feuds of brethren hottest are , ( where concords ought to be , there harshest proves the jarr ) so nations christned into unity , and twisted in fraternal tyes , yet do these sacred bonds despise : and the endearing names of brethren all bely . ii. great were disorders which at babel sprang , each did his mothers tongue forget ; brother to brother spake a stranger dialect , and new coin'd words only the ear did wound . in vain it was to speak , and all grew mutes , and man seem'd to descend to rank of bruits . the gospel came to heal this breach , and canaans hallowed stile mankind did teach : at first all seem'd made of a piece ; one heart and soul them did inspire , free was the peaceful company from warlike ire , when charity was all their fire . the heavenly dew still moistened the fleece . while they sought only how to propagate their kind , ' midst all their hymns no discord could one find . but when the wretched arts of humane policy , mingled with primitive integrity , they by unhallowed tools began to build their fabriques , and by laws of state religion did adulterate . then did incensed heavens 'gainst them rage , and put an early period to the golden age : all in disorder ravel'd out , the church grew a tumultuous rout . and all with cloven tongues did speak : fierce wrath prevail'd , and gospel force grew weak ▪ and all its harmony died in a groan : oh strange ! even paradise becomes a to●ride zone . iii. iesus blest names were not their only stiles , they left his standart , and were rang'd in files , vnder the banners of dividing names , and quench't in angry heats were divine flames , some quarel'd only about doubtful words , but to decide the matter , used swords : others 'bout logick niceties did contend , yet such poor stuff put to their love an end : and while some plea'd the practice of small forms , did their unformal pleas occasion storms . wondrous metamorphose ! st. james counts lust the source of warre , but now religion proves the cause of jarre . inverted chymistry ! which turns the gold to base allay . must rome be damn'd as antichrist , because it to unerring chair pretends ; and forth as oracles its dictates sends ? while each 'mong us to that height raise their creast , and do expect that all to them submit , conceiting that to errour proof's their wit. but once a woman did usurp that chair , that stain wipe off could never any care : yet now 'gainst us that sex conspires , and to our crown with insolence aspires . each dame a sybill grows , and doth refuse to stoop to wisest sort , and our just yoke abuse . the names of factions are infus'd in harmless infancy , which early thus abus'd , retains the venome it from breast derives , all roads are block't by which the truth arrives , fond prejudice doth so bemist , trepaning custome doth so twist their minds to errour , that it vain and bootless labour proves them to regain . iv. disputing is as oyl to raging flame ; they glory in their sufferings pompous name , and by resisting do increase their fame . all gentleness they think a cheat , and dread the enemy most when he doth treat . god bless me , what disease is this , whose cure all medicines do miss ! they 'r wanton if we cordials use , sure , goodness they abuse ; or if to abate the feverish heat , some noisome blood we would let out ; then grows the madness of the frantick rout . if fines as medicines their bowels drain , then they aloud of grinding do complain . this strange distemper doth all skill defy ▪ physicians hopes still falsify . but as a joynt which gangrene doth corrupt , must be cut off from the sound lump● better the body grow a stump , than by such members bankerrupt . yet often doth this hydra multiply when cropt , one head to seven will fructify . or as a tree which with new force doth spring , when lopt by pruner is its over spreading wing ; so doth this poysonous weed still further spread , and as the camomine , grow the more it's tread . the cockle still with wheat will blend , till winnowing flames to mixture put an end . good grains with tares may chance to be pull'd up , delay their doom till brimfull be their cup. then chaffed justice shall the chaff devour , and angel-reapers bring the just to heavens floor . finis . a continuation of the former conference . dialogue vii . c. i am heartily glad of this opportunity of meeting with you again , and will be more glad to find our last conference producing the effect design'd by it ; which was to beget in you a true sense of religion , that you may walk worthy of your high and holy calling ; for , i can have no greater joy than to see you walking in the truth . n. i thank you for being so concerned in the welfare of my soul : and , by the grace of god , i shall make it my daily work to be perfecting holinesse in his fear : but , i must be on my guard when i converse with you ; since you publish our private discourses , which i do not take kindly ; for , you take advantage from my weakness , and , by running me down , make the whole party suffer . c. the true reason why i consented to the publishing of our conference ( for i candidly assure you , i did no more but give my consent to him , who , being pleased with the written account of it , desired to make it publick ) was , since i thought i had allayed a great deal of the heat i met with in you upon these matters , i presumed it might produce the like good effect in others . if in any thing i seem to take too great advantage against you , it is with reason : neither is it an humour of drolling or insulting , that makes me sometimes a little pleasant ; since in all dialogues you will find the transitions sweetned with somewhat of that , even when the gravest matters are treated of . n. some charge you with socinianism , others with popery , others with arminianism , and others with quakerism . i confesse their grounds seem'd to me , very slender , but they say it is very clear , and tell their followers to shun you as a pest . c. god forgive their malice , i pray god it be not laid to their charge at the last day , that they so falsly and injuriously reproach me . i know the arts of some well , they will tell their people that we are unsound and heterodox , and back their hard words with grave nods and wry faces ; and the poor people , too inured to implicit faith , give an undoubted credit to what they say : but do they understand things , who charge a man with socinianism , who believeth that christ is the eternal son of god , and hopes for salvation only through his blood ? and they are as well versed in popery , who charge me with it ; for , can he be heretical in justification , who ascribes all we receive in this life and in that to come , to the love and grace of god through jesus christ ? and you know all that calvin and his followers aim at in the matter of arminius his points , is , that all ou● good be ascribed to god : how then can he be erroneous in this matter , who asserts that ? but as for quakerism , the grounds on which they tax me of that , are so ridiculous , that i am ashamed to name them ; and , i assure you i am so far from inclining to quakers , that i look on that sect , as one of the subtillest devices yet broached for the overthrow of christian religion . but , if that spirit be not the womb , from whence all these sects and errours have sprung amongst us , let all that look on , judge ; none falling to them in this country but such as were formerly most violent in their way . and though i am sure , they are far enough from being quakers , yet their principles have a natural tendency that way : whence , think you , have they suckt their rejecting of all forms and order ( under ● pretence that the spirit is not to be prelimited ) but from your notions against liturgies and for extemporany heats ? next , the liberty you take to medle in matters too high for you , and judge of every thing , without thinking you are bound to reverence either the present or antient church , ( i plead not for implicit faith ) opens a wide door for their pretensions to a liberty of the spirit ; which at once renounceth all modesty and humility . next , your humour of separation , begets that giddiness in people , that , no wonder , they , being shaken from the unity of the church , also stagger through unbeleef . as also , many of you cherish in your followers a dejection of mind too much , as if religion , which gives a man a right to the purest joyes , should become a life of doubting , and this introduceth a spirit of melancholy , which clearly makes way to that pretended enthusiasm . and thus you may see who are to be blamed for the progresse that way makes amongst us , you having prepared the people so to it . but still i assure you , though i cannot but see the faults , too many amongst you are guilty of , i am far from hating or despising you , god knowes i pity and love you with all my heart . n. but every one doth not judge so favourably of you ; in a word , you are called ● petulant profane and malicious person , and ● scoffer at true piety ; under a pretence of it labouring to defame the cause and work o● god , which shall have a sweet savour to al● posterity , when your memory will rot : yo● pretend to moderation , but art the most immoderat of any : this is the vulgar sense 〈◊〉 that book , and of its concealed author , who , they adde , doth well to conceal his name from such a work of darknesse . c. i hope you know my temper better , than to think these things will much move me : i will learn to live through good report and ill report , and am so far from being angry with those who thus traduce me , that if i knew how to do them a good office i would infallibly do it . yea , if my heart deceive me not , i could die to do them service . i have no anger , god knoweth , at their persons nor their wayes , further than i think they are destructive of the unity of that body , whereof christ is the head : and consequently obstruct the advancement of religion . i alwayes classe them in two divisions , the one is , of such as are indeed differing from us in their opinion , but withall are sober and modest , not rash in their censures , nor bitter in their passions : and such i honour and love , and doubt not but there are grave and pious persons of that persuasion , whom i also honour the more , because of their first founder calvin ( take not this as a jeer ; for , i assure you , the first being ever presbytry had , was in calvius brain . ) but others , besides their opinion in the matter of church-government , are of foure tempers , condemning such as differ from them , judging all who are not as violent as themselves , placing salvation in these matters , and thus confining their charity within the narrow circle of their own opinion : as for such , they get but their true name , when they are called fanaticks , and though i will be loath to judge them as to the state of their souls ; yet , whatever good christians they might prove in a cell , or in a desart , i assure you , they are not shap't for societies ; their maximes being inconsistent with peace , order and unity : and they are as unfit to govern , as uncapable of being governed ; and , for these do not quarrel me , if i speak severly of them : but remember what one of your own deservedly esteemed preachers sayeth ( it is like occasioned by the differences then , when they were forced to represse the insolence of the protesting party ) on iob 17. verse 10. doct. 4. albeit godlinesse teach men modesty and sobriety , and to be tender of the reputation of others ; yet that doth not hinder them to tell men , what they are , when they are called to it in the defence of truth : and that they may give a check to their proud conceit of themselves : these words are so clear and comprehensive that they need no further explication , and serve as a compleat apology for any sharpnesse i might have used . i should indeed be very injurious to the presbyterian party , did i charge them with all the humours and follies that are among you : the english presbyterians are far beyond you in their moderation , as is notour to all that know them , and may appear from mr. baxter's disputations on church-government : yea , in the late treaty , all they desired , was , to be conjoined with the bishops in the exercise of discipline , which you refuse , though it be offered and pressed upon you . next , before the late disorders , all the presbyterians in scotland , did fit in the courts for church-discipline , and why may you not as well do the like ? n. the odds is very great ; for , then presbyteries stood by the legal establishment ; the act for them being still in force , which was rescinded at the restoration of bishops , anno 1662 : so that the old foundation being razed , they are no more presbyteries . c. you may remember what i said to you at our fourth meeting upon this head : but one thing i must adde , which will surprize you , it is truly very strange how matters of fact are so confidently asserted , and so tamely believed , without consideration : you give it out to every body , that the law for presbyteries , was in force till the year 1662. and this is in all your mouthes , and i confesse , i never doubted the matter of fact to be true , till of ●ate i was undeceived by a person of great honour , who shew me the act parliament 21. iacob . ch . 1. where it is expresly said , annulling and rescinding the 114 act of his majesties parliament , holden anno 1592. and that is the act which setled presbytery ; and now , what can i think ? god forbid i suspect this of disingenuous forgery ; and yet perhaps , if you catched us in such a trip , it would be told us on our deafest ear ; but it cannot be denyed to be intolerable ignorance and supinnesse , to take such a matter upon ●rust ; and since you make this the chief ground why you differ from your predecessors in this matter , how can you answer to god who have made a schisme from the church , without examining the grounds upon which you did it ? but i hope now that you see upon what sandy and slender foundations you have been building , you will consider your way better hereafter , and return into union with us : for i am still desirous and willing to hope well of you . n. truly you are in the wrong to many of them , for few of them are so bitter against you as you seem to be against them : and i assure you they pray often for you , though you i doubt seldom pray for them . c. i tell you again and again , i have no quarrel with such of them as are calm and modest , only i regrate they are too few . as for the others love to us , wo should it be to you and me , if the love of god to us ( which ought to be our measure of love to the brethren ) did appear in such effects as theirs doth . if they pray for us , it is in the most invidious strain imaginable , that god would bring us down and destroy such of us as are incorrigible , and shew the rest of us the evil of our apostacy and defection : this you know is the universal strain of their prayers concerning us . but , how would they take it , if we should pray that god would destroy their party , and shew them the evil of their cruelty , rebellion and other wicked courses ? now this is the true character of an insolent , who takes a liberty with all the world , but cannot be touched himself . and you know , we alwayes pray , that god would unite this poor church , and heal our breaches ; which shews the healing and peaceable spirit is on our side : our prayers being such , that none can refuse to say amen to them : and upon all occasions , we declare we are not only ready to unite with them , but are extreamly desirous of it . and if you will believe me , i assure you , i daily pray for them in this strain most cordially : whereas there is nothing they fear more than an accommodation ; nay , in their books they directly own , that all that can be done , ought to be done for keeping life in our differences : and who could ever have expected to have heard this doctrine in the school of christ ? and let all men judge , if there be not a bitternesse in the preface to mr. rhetorfort's letters , the apologetical narration , and naphtali , which is unsampled in any satire , not to say grave and christian writing . and what cursed doctrine is it naphthali broacheth concerning private persons their punishing of crimes in case of the supinnesse of the magistrate ? for , ransack all the provincial letters , escobar or the other profane casuists of that wicked school , you shall not find a more impious and detestable opinion among them ; and what cursed effects this produced , all the nation saw : when in the sight of the sun a vilain with a pistol invaded the persons of two of the fathers of the church , and that in the chief street of our royal city . and though the providence of god shielded the one totally from his fury , and preserved the life of the other , though with the losse of his arm , all shattered with the wound ; yet his malice was not to be blamed , for that asassinations were only wanting to compleet the parallel betwixt that spirit and the iesuits , which is indeed the same spirit moving in different characters . i do not charge the fact on that party , but acknowledge , i never spoke with one who did not express their abhorrency of it ; but , without all uncharitableness , i may charge it on the author of naphthali . n. but one thing ever sticks with me : i confesse at our last discourse , you gave me good rules in order to a christian life , but still you design to make me regardlesse of the state of the church , which is , that i be only self-concerned , and neglect the interests of christ , whereas , what ought to be dearer to me then the glory of god ? and surely when that suffers , all that love him will be tenderly affected , so was david and ieremiah , for the desolations of their times ; and it is a strange piece of religion to be unconcerned in gods glory , which is to be like gallio , to care for none of these things . c. all things have two sides ; so this doctrine of resignation , if you look to it on the wrong one , seems like unconcerned stupidity ; yet , rightly considered , it is one of the highest pieces of christianity : for , if you believe ( which you must believe , else you are no good christian ) that christ governes his church , you must also believe that he doth all things well : since he hath all power in heaven and earth committed to him ; and in him are all treasures of wisdom and of knowledge ; and he loved his church so , that he died for it . now since his power enables him to do what he pleaseth , and his goodness inclines him to please what is best , and his wisdom cannot erre in the choice , where is there rowm for any miscarriage in the government of the world ? why then are we to vex our selves with any anxiety ? doth not that tacitly accuse god , as if he did not mind his church as he ought ? or doth it not imply if we were of his council , we could adjust things better ? therefore , as in all our personal concernments , we ought to go about our duty with diligence , leaving events wholly to gods care ; so , in the publick conce●nments of his church , we are to commit the management of them to him , on whose shoulders the government was laid by the father ; and rest securely in this perswasion , that all things cooperat in promoting the grand designs of eternal wisdom and goodness : but still we are to concern our selves in the good of the church above all things , next to the salvation of our own souls : but this is to be expressed , as in our most servent solliciting of god in behalf of his church ( to which we are oblidged as well as to pray for our selves , we thereby expressing to god our zeal for his glory , and our servent charity to the brethren ) so also we are to let no opportunity slip , that god puts in our hands of doing good : but , as we are called , we are to do good as far as our station reacheth , and that upon all hazards ; yet , even in that , we are with david , not to meddle in matters too high for us , and with st. paul , not to stretch our selves beyond our own measure and line ; but withall , we are to let no inward dejecting melancholy possess our souls , which is contrary to the end of religion , wherein we are called to rejoyce evermore ; it being contrived of god to beget in us joyes , which cannot be taken from us ; and nothing marrs the souls inward joy in god more than such sorrowes . n. but all this is still contrary to the holy men of god : what sad complaints are in the psalms and prophets , and chiefly in the lamentations ? and certainly , we , in the new dispensation , enjoying a clearer manifestation of the love of god , ought to be so much the more zealous for his glory . c. it seems you consider little the difference of the two dispensations : for , that of moses was carnal , chiefly made up of temporal promises of an external prosperity ; so these outward desolations were then signes of gods displeasure against them , and therefore they did lament because of them : but now the scene is wholly altered , and these outward afflictions and persecutions , are so far from being curses , as they were of old , that our saviour hath pronounced them blessings ; yea , he hath made these trials the badges of our conformity to our head , who was made perfect through sufferings . and therefore we are to glory and rejoyce in our sufferings , as did the apostles ; and in the primitive church , though they were made havock of , in the most cruel manner , some torn by lyons , and other wilde beasts , some killed by the sword , some burnt in the fire , some roasted on gridirons , some thrown in boy●ing caldrons , some had their flesh torn off by pincers , some were starved to death by hunger and cold ; in a word , all the crueltie that diabolical malice could devise , was exercised upon them ; yet not only the martyrs themselves bore all , singing in the midst of their tortures , but the churches also rejoyced in it : and the dayes of their death , were festivals , called naetalitiae martyrum , they counting their martyrdom their most glorious birth . and by the epistles eusebius inserts in his history , we see they were far from complaining because of their sufferings . but you ( because the lawes are altered , and the magistrate hath denied you further encouragement , and punished you , not for your conscience , of which you cannot brag much , since none hath suffered because he was for presbytery , or against episcopacy , but for your unruly humours and practices ) make such complaints to god as if heaven and earth were mixed , and adapt all the lamentations of ieremiah to your sorrie matters , as if the overthrow of presbytery were to be compared to the babylonish captivity ; and see if the conclusion of the apology , and all your other writtings run not in this stile . now were your way what you imagine it to be , you should rejoyce , that you are called to suffer for it , and not to make such tragical complaints . and i am sure , your bitterness against those whom you call your enemies , looks nothing like the mildnesse of christ or the primitive sufferers , who carried with all gentlenesse towards their persecutors , in meeknesse instructing those that opposed them ; and this doth too palpably declare , you are strangers to the serene and dove-like spirit of the gospel . n. you alwayes run to the primitive christians ; but far fowles have fair feathers , and if you examine the practice of the reformers , they universally resisted the magistrate , and carried on the reformation by arms ; and how then dare you charge the doctrine of resistance with rebellion , since you thereby stain that glorious work ? c. i assure you , i have a great veneration for the reformers , and look on them as persons sent of god , to rescue his church from the grosse superstition and idolatry had overspred it ; but for all that , you must pardon me still to prefer the primitive christians to them : as for casting reproaches on them , it shall quickly appear whither of us be the more guilty in it . i will therefore from undeniable evidence of history convince you of the falshood of that vulgar errour , that the reformation was carried on by restistance ; and shall begin with the waldenses , who resisted not the king of france , as is clear in the history , notwithstanding of their unparallelled persecutions , when they were destroyed by thousands : belle forrest tells , that 60000 were killed in one town of beziers ; spond . ad an . 1209. tells of seven thousand , being murdered at once in one church . it is true there were wars betwixt the count of monfort and the count of tholouse ; but the count of tholouse was a peer of france ; and the peers , by the constitution of hugo capit , were rather vassals then subjects to the king : besides , he only sought against monfort . so petrus vallisarnensis , hist. albig . and in the counc . of monpellier , the dominions of tholouse were given to simon monfort , but not by the king , neither was the legate well pleased , that the kings son came and took the crosse , lest he might thereby pretend some right in these dominions , which the pope pretended were his : simon monfort therefore was a bloody emissary of the popes , and not authorized by philip august . then king of france , who gave no other concurrence to the war , save that he permitted his subjects to arm in it : so , here was no resistance of subjects against their soveraign . n. but did not the bohemians , under zisca , fight and resist when the challice was denied them ? c. in the general , consider that the crown of bohem , is elective : in which case , certainly the states of a kingdom share more largely of the soveraign power : besides , he from whom we have the best account of the bohemian churches , comenius ( in ordine unitatis bohemicae ) gives but a slender character of zisca and his bussinesse , extolling him chiefly as a good souldier . besides , the justifiers of the late bohemian wars , never run upon this strain of subjects resisting their soveraign , upon the account of religion , but upon the lawes and liberties of that elective kingdome . neither were the protestants too well satisfied with the last bohemian-bussinesse ; yea , king iames , notwithstanding of his interest in the elected king , was no way cordial for it : these two i have joined together , because the scene was the same , though the interval was great . n. but you know there was fighting in germany upon the account of religion . c. this showes how overly you read history , when you bring this as a president . when luther rose , the duke of saxe , being moved of god , did receive the reformation peaceably into his principalities , without any force ; and his example was followed by other princes and free cities : but , in the year 1524. and 1525. there arose a war in germany , fomented by some troublesome preachers , as saith the historian , who pretended the liberty of the gospel for their chief quarrell ; and this was called the war of the rusticks . and they appealing to luther's judgement , he wrote again and again to them , condemning what they did , as an execrable and cursed rebellion . he saith indeed , it was a great wickednesse in their princes to force their consciences , but that did not at all excuse them ; and tells how far he himself had been ever from such courses : and he calles those that somented the rebellion , vilains ; and not content with this , he stirred up the protestant princes against them , who fought them and broke them . and in this i desire you will not consider the tatles of some ignorant persons , but read the history it self , and those excellent papers of luther : for which i refer you to sleidan , lib. 5. and he will give you full satisfaction . afterwards the duke of brunsuick , and some other princes of germany , did invade their neighbour protestant princes , and combined in a league for the destruction of lutheranisme : whereupon the duke of saxe , the langrave of hessen , and other princes and free cities , met at smalcald , to unite among themselves : but luther was dissatisfied with this , till their lawyers shewed him how by the bulla aurea , and other constitutions of the german empire , it was lawfull for them to defend themselves : whereupon he consenting , they entered into that famous league . and every one who knowes any thing of that empire , knowes well that the princes are soveraigns within themselves , and that the emperour is only the head of the union . as for the war that afterwards followed betwixt charles the 5th , and the duke of saxe , besides , that the duke of saxe , was free to defend himself , as i have told , charles the 5th , declared it was not for religion he fought , whatever his design was : neither did all the princes of the religion join against him . the electors of cullen and pallatine , both protestants , lay neuters ; and the elector of brandenburg , and maurice , afterwards elector of saxe , armed for the emperour : so you may see , what pitifull historians they are , who alledge the precedent of germany . in sweden , king gustavus , anno , 1524. with the states of that kingdom , peaceably received the reformation ; neither were their any broils about it , till about seventy years after , that sigismond , king of polland ( whom notwithstanding of his being papist , they received for their king , he being the son of the former king of sweden , and peaceably obeyed him ) was by force entring the kingdom , resolving to root out the protestant religion : whereupon ( vide decret . in comitiis lincop . anno , 1660. ) they deposed him , and choosed his uncle charles king ; no strange thing in the swedenish history , that being an elective crown , before the year , 1644. that the states received gustavus then reigning for their hereditary king ; but still the states retained the supream authority , as may appear by all their writs . nor was it any wonder , if they , who had but a while before , crept out of an elective kingdom into an hereditary , could not brook sigismond his tyrannical invasion . and if this serve not to vindicat the swedes ; at least , the reformation was not introduced by wars among them , neither were ever the actions of that state , lookt upon as a precedent to others . in denmark , frederick the first , with the states of that kingdom , received the reformation peaceably , nor was there any violence used . n. but you cannot deny , there was force used in helvetia and geneve . c. this shews what a superficial reader of history you are . in switzerland , the reformation was peaceablie received by zurich ( the first and chief canton of that state ) and other towns. but other cantons maligning them for this , at the instigation of the pope and his instruments , injured them ; so that at length it broke out into a civil war : wherein they of zurich , as they were surprized by them , so continued to be purely defenders , vide sleid. lib. 8. but you know helvetia ill , if you know not that the cantons , are no way subject to one another , and are free states , only united in a league , as are the seven provinces : so that in their treaties with france and other princes , they often treat sever'dly , vide siml . de rep. helv. as for geneve , the bishop fled from it , out of a pannick fear , when the reformation was received : but no force was used to drive him out . sleid. lib. 6. and beside , geneve was a free town , neither subject to the bishop nor the duke of savoy ; vide siml . de rep. helv. lib. 10. de geneve . n. what say you to the war in the netherlands ? c. i say still , it was not for religion they sought , papists and protestants jointly concurring ; and c. egmond and c. horn who were beheaded by the duke of alve , as the chief instruments in it , died both papists ; yea , the state by a placart , declared it scandalous to say they fought for religion ; the true ground of the quarrel ( as you may read in all the histories ) was , that their prince was not an absolute soveraign , but limited in his power , and that by expresse compact , they might use force if he transgressed his limits : which he did most notoriously and tirandically : and for all this , i refer you to grotius , de antiquitate bataviae & in lib. ann. who yet is one of the strongest pleaders for subjection to magistracy . n. but nothing of this can be alledged to palliat the french civil wars ? c. the first civil wars were mannaged by the princes of the blood , who by the laws of that crown , are not ordinarie subjects . besides , the wars were begun in the minority of the king ; in which case the powers of the princes is greater : i do not for all this deny their following wars , were direct rebellion ; but consider the fierce spirit of that nation ( ready to fight for any thing ) and you must confesse , it was not religion , but their temper that was to be blamed ; but now many of the eminent men of that church are fully convinced of the evil of these courses : and do ingenuouslie condemn them . yea , in the wars of the last king , one of the glories of our nation , cameron , at mountowban directly preached against their courses , and taxed them of rebellion . n. but if that was rebellion , how did the late king of britain give assistance to the rochellers in the last wars ? c. there was a particular reason in that , as appears from the account the illustrious duke of rohan gives of it : for the king of britain had interposed in the former pacification , and had given surety to the protestants , that the french king should religiously observe the agreement : but the king of france violating this , the king of britain thereby receiving so publick an injurie and affront , was oblidged in honour to assist them : which for his part was most just , whatever the subjects of france their part in it might be . and thus i have cleared the churches abroad of that injurious stain you brand them with : and by this let all men judge whether you or i do them the best office . but to come to our own britain , you know it is the glory of the english reformation , that it was stained with no blood , save that of martyrs , which was its chief ornament : yea , though a popish and persecuting queen interveened betwixt the first reformation of king edward , and the second of queen elizabeth ; yet , none rebelled : for that of wyat , was not upon the account of religion ; but in opposition to the matching with king philip of spain . it is true scotland hath not that glory : but as we were long allyed to france ; so we have too much of their temper : so that it passeth as a common saying , of scots-men , praefervida scotorum ingenia . and all that travelled the world , can witnesse that we were not approven in our late rebellion abroad . i shall not instance what diodati , spanhem , rivet , salmasius , blondel , amerald , de moulin , and many of the greatest and most famed forreign divines , have publickly expressed against it . some in print , others in publick discourses and sermons . one thing i will not passe by , that in the consistory of charrenton , they made an act , that no man should be barred the communion for the scots excommunication , except it were for a crime ; and so told the late bishop of orkney then of galloway , that the pretended excommunication of scotland , should no way hinder their receiving him to their communion ; and this was a loud declaration of their disowning and condemning the scots practices . n. but tell me ingenuously , are there no precedents in history for subjects fighting upon the account of religion ; and have none of the writters of the church asserted it ? c. yes , there have , and i will deal ingenously with you upon this head . the first i know is pope gregory the seventh , who armed the subjects of germany against henry the fourth emperour , upon the account of religion ; because the emperour laid claime to the investitures of bishops , they being then secular princes . and this prospering so well in the hands of hildebrand , other popes made no bones , upon any displeasure they conceived , either against king or emperour , to take his kingdom from him , and free his subjects from their obedience to him ; alwayes pretending some matter of religion , as you may read particularly in the history of frederick the first , frederick the second , lewis of baviere , emperours , philip le bell and lewis the 12th of france , henry the second , and iohn of england , conradine of naples , and charles of navarre . these are the eldest precedents i meet with in history , for your bussinesse ; and the latest is the holy league of france , from which our whole matter seems transcribed . the authors who plead for this , are only courtiers , cannonists and iesuits . now how are you not ashamed in a matter of such importance to symbolize with the worst gang of the roman church , ( for the soberer of them condemn it ) yet fill heaven and earth with your clamours if in some innocenter things the church of england seem to symbolize with them ? n. no , you still retain the papacy , you only change the person from the pope to the king , whom you make head of the church , and swear to him in these termes . c. this is so impudent a calumny , that none but such as have a minde to reproach would use it : which i shall clear by giving an account of the whole matter . in england , you know the pope , beside his general tyranny , exercised a particular authority , after king iohn had basely resigned the crown to him , vide matth. paris . ad an. 1213. when therefore the reformation was introduced in england , and the papal yoke shaken off , the oath of supremacy was brought in to exclude all forreign jurisdiction , and to reinstate the king in his civil authority over all persons and in all causes , as well ecclesiastical as civil . i confesse henry the eight , did directly set up a civil papacy , but you know the reformation of england was never dated from his breach with the bishop of rome : but the oath of supremacy was never designed to take away the churches intrinsick power , or to make that the power of ordination , giving sacraments , or discipline , flowed from the king , to which he only gives his civil sanction and confirmation . however , because the words being general , might suggest some scrouples , they are clearly explained in an act of parliament of queen elizabeth ; and in one of the 39 articles , and more fully by the incomparable and blessed bishop vsher , to whom , for his pains , king iames gave thanks in a letter . now this oath being brought from england to scotland , none ought to pretend scrouples , since both the words in themselves are sufficiently plain , and the meaning affixed to them in england , is yet plainer : and we having it from them , must be understood to have it in their sense . n. but this clearly makes way for erastianism . c. this is one of your mutinous arts , to find out long and hard names , and affix them to any thing that displeaseth you . in the old testament , you find the kings of iudah frequently medling in divine matters ; and the sannedrim , which was a civil court , determined in all matters of religion ; and you are very ignorant in history if you know not , that the christian emperours still medled in matters of religion . the first general councils , were called by them , as appears by their synodical acts and epistles . and by the accounts all the historians give , they also preceeded in the councils ; so constantine at nice , theodose at constantinople , earl candidianus in name of theodose the second at ephesus , and martian at chalcedon . it s true in preceeding , they only ordered matters , but did not decide in them , as particularly appears from the commission given to earle candidianus , inserted in the acts of the ephesin council . they also judged in matters of schisme ; so constantine in the donatist bussinesse , even after it had been judged , both by miltiades and marcus , bishops of rome and millan , by the synod of arles , and by the council of nice ; yea , the code and basilicks , and the capitolers of charles the great , shew , they never thought it without their sphere , to make lawes in ecclesiastick matters . the bishops also were named by them , or , at least , their elections were to be approven by them , not excepting the roman bishop , though he was the proudest pretender of all , who after the overthrow of the western empire , was to send to constantinople or ravenna , to get his election ratified : and when the western empire was reasumed by charles the great at rome , it was expresly provided , that the emperour should choose the roman bishop . so kings medling in ecclesiastical affaires , was never contraverted till the roman church swelled to the height of tyranny , and since the reformation , it hath been still stated as one of the differences betwixt us and them . n. well then , i hope you who are so much for the kings supremacy , will not quarrel at this indulgence , which is now granted to us . c. we are better subjects then to criticize upon , much lesse condemn our soveraigns pleasure in such things , neither do we as you did , carry all these matters to the pulpit . but , i pray , how would you ( anno 1641. ) have received such a proposition from the king in favours of the doctors of aberdeen , or other worthy persons , whom you drove away by tumults , not by lawes : i doubt , all your pulpits should have rung with it . and we may guesse at this by the opposition many of you made to the receiving of suspected persons into the army , for the necessary defence of the countrey , then almost overrun by the enemy : so that you have now got a favour which you were never in a capacity to have granted to us when you governed : and yet you see with what cheerfull obedience we receive his majesties pleasure , even in an instance , which may seem most contrary to all our interests : or , if any have their jealousies , they stiffle them so within their breast , that none whisper against authority . n. this sayes it is against your will , and therefore your compliance to it is forced , not voluntary . c. so much the greater is our vertue , when we obey and submit to things against our inclinations , which you never dream of : but we are so inclined to peace , that if you abuse not this liberty you have got , we shall never complain of it ; nay , if it produce the effects which we desire , and for which we are assured it is designed , we shall rejoyce for it : which are to bring you to a more peaceable temper , to make you value and love more one of the noblest and most generous princes that ever ruled , and to dispose you to a brotherly accommodation with us , which the fathers of the church , are ready to offer to you on as fair terms as could be demanded by any rational person ; whereby , if you listen not to them , it will appear to the world , that you are truly schismatical : and to encline you more to union , i intend , at our next meeting , to give you a full prospect of the state of the antient church , both in their government , worship , and discipline ; whereby i doubt not to convince you , that their frame was far better suited for promoting all the ends of religion , then ever presbytery could be . but though i have made considerable observations in this , besides what is in various collectors ; yet , i cannot at present give you so particular a plann as i design ; but shall reserve it till another meeting . mean-while do not abuse our soveraigns royal goodness , nor the tenderness of these he sets over you . but let us all jointly pray , that god , in whose hands all our hearts are , may incline us all to peace , love and charity : i shall therefore sum up all in the words of scripture , which if they weigh not with you , there is no hope man shall prevail on you ; if there be therefore any consolation in christ , if any comfort of love , if any fellowship of the spirit , if any bowels and mercies : fulfill ye my joy , that ye be like minded , having the same love , being of one accord , of one mind . let nothing be done through strife , or vain glory , but in lowlinesse of mind , let each esteem others better then themselves . who is a wise man , and endued with knowledge among you ? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meeknesse of wisdom ▪ but if you have bitter zeal ( for that is the word in the original ) and strife in your hearts , glory not , and lie not against the truth : this wisdom descendeth not from above , but is earthly , sensual and divelish : for where zeal ( the word is still the same ) and strife is , there is confusion and every evil work . but the wisdom that is from above , is first pure , then peaceable , gentle , and easy to be intreated , full of mercy , and good fruits , without partiality , and without hypocrisy ; and the fruit of righteousness is sowen in peace , of them that make peace . put on therefore ( as the elect of god , holy and beloved ) bowels of mercies , kindnesse , humblenesse of mind , meeknesse , long-suffering , forbearing one another , and forgiving one another , if any man have a quarrel against any : even as christ forgave the church , so also do ye : but above all these things , put on charity , which is the bond of perfectness ; and let the peace of god rule in your minds , to the which also you are called in one body : and be ye thankfull . let the word of christ dwell in you richly , in all wisdom , ●eaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns , and spiritual songs , singing with grace in your hearts to the lord. n. in all this i agree with you , and heartily wish these words were more deeply infixed in our minds : for , i confess , i am weary of the janglings of divines , and long for peace as much as any can ; and indeed there is nothing makes converse grow more wearisome to me , then that i meet with very few who love peace ; but , generally , the minds of all are so fretted , that i often remind and repeat davids groan , oh! that i had wings like a dove , for then would i flee away and be at rest ; i would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest . and indeed the farther i see into the great businesse of religion , i am the more convinced of the necessity of a serene and placide temper , which so qualifies the soul for divine converse . c. oh! how have these words you dropt last united my heart to you ? my soul hath too long dwelt amongst them that hate peace ; and the thick foggs and mists of contention , have rendered the air of this valley of tears the more noisome : but my releef is in divine contemplation , whether , as to the mountain of god , i flee for sanctuary , that being above this atmosphere of contentions and passions , i may take that rest in god , which is denied me here below : whether whoso arrive , finde that placide tranquillity and joy unspeakable , that they must needs heartily compassionat all such who are strangers to this peace of god which passeth understanding : for , i assure you , there are no joyes comparable to these purer solaces . this is the secret of gods presence , where you may be hid from the pride of man , and kept , as in a pavilion , from the strife of tongues . let us therefore flee from this evil world , and flee into the blessed and refreshful shades of the almighty , avoiding foolish and unlearned questions , knowing that they do gender ●●rife ; for , the servant of the lord must not strive . i shall therefore leave you with these thoughts , hoping they shall be daily more deeply infixedin your mind . farewel . finis . act and intimation anent this current parliament 14 march, 1699. scotland. privy council. 1700 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05293 wing s1390 estc r226082 52528893 ocm 52528893 178913 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05293) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 178913) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2774:52) act and intimation anent this current parliament 14 march, 1699. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to the kings most excellent majestie, edinburgh : anno dom. 1699 [i.e. 1700] caption title. royal arms at head of text. signed: gilb. eliot, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-12 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 megan marion sampled and proofread 2009-01 megan marion text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion act and intimation anent this current parliament 14 march , 1699. the lords of his majesties privy council considering , that his majestie by his proclamation , of the date the twentieth of december last by past , hath adjourned this current parliament to this day , being the fourteenth day of march one thousand six hundred ninety nine years ; and that his majestie hath not as yet signified his pleasure , either by sending a commissioner for holding thereof at this day , nor his royal order for adjourning the same to a further day ; and seing both by the nature of the high court of parliament , and by express acts of parliament , parliaments are current , without the necessity of a special continuation , until they be dissolved by his majesties particular warrand , whose sole prorogative it is to dissolve , as well as to call , hold , and prorogue the same : therefore the saids lords of his majesties privy council , in expectation of his majesties express orders , and to prevent the unnecessary trouble of the members , and other good subjects , who may be concerned to repair to the meeting of parliament , have thought fit to ordain intimation to be made , that all members of parliament be ready to meet , and attend in this present current parliament , so soon as his majesties will and pleasure shall be signified to them for that effect : and that none may pretend ignorance , ordains these presents to be printed , and published at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , by the lyon king at arms and his brethren , heraulds , and pursevants , and at the mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the several shires within this kingdom , by macers , or messengers at arms. per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king. edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to the kings most excellent majestie , anno dom. 1699. an exact and perfect relation of every particular of the fight at vvorcester and ordering the battle on both sides of the river of severne from an emminent officer of the army ; severall letters from scotland signifying the taking of sir philip musgrave with severall other lords and lairds, and 500 of their party kild and taken neer dumfreeze in scotland ; also a letter from col. alured of the manner of the taking of generall lesley, &c. at ellitt near dundee ... ; lastly, also a letter of the taking of dundee by storme september 1, in which storme major gen. lumsden and 600 more of the scots were slaine, &c. emminent officer of the army. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a38884 of text r17159 in the english short title catalog (wing e3603). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 14 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 5 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a38884 wing e3603 estc r17159 12102453 ocm 12102453 54138 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a38884) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 54138) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 66:14) an exact and perfect relation of every particular of the fight at vvorcester and ordering the battle on both sides of the river of severne from an emminent officer of the army ; severall letters from scotland signifying the taking of sir philip musgrave with severall other lords and lairds, and 500 of their party kild and taken neer dumfreeze in scotland ; also a letter from col. alured of the manner of the taking of generall lesley, &c. at ellitt near dundee ... ; lastly, also a letter of the taking of dundee by storme september 1, in which storme major gen. lumsden and 600 more of the scots were slaine, &c. emminent officer of the army. [2], 6 p. printed by francis leach, london : 1651. "published by special command and authority" reproduction of original in yale university library. eng worcester, battle of, 1651. scotland -history -1649-1660. great britain -history -puritan revolution, 1642-1660 -correspondence. a38884 r17159 (wing e3603). civilwar no an exact and perfect relation of every particular of the fight at vvorcester, and ordering the battle on both sides of the river of severne, emminent officer of the army 1651 2333 5 0 0 0 0 0 21 c the rate of 21 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2006-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2006-10 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2006-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2006-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2007-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an exact and perfect relation of every particular of the fight at vvorcester , and ordering the battle on both sides of the river of severne , from an emminent officer of the army . severall letters from scotland signifying the taking of sir philip musgrave , with severall other lords and lairds , and 500 of their party kild and taken neer dumfreeze in scotland . also a letter from col. alured , of the manner of the taking of generall lesley , &c. at ellitt near dundee , with an exact list of the prisoners of quality there taken . lastly , also a letter of the taking of dundee by storme september 1. in which storme major gen. lumsden and 600 more of the scots were slaine , &c. published by speciall command and authority . london , printed by francis leach 1651. a more exact relation of every particular of the fight at worcester , &c. vpon wednesday morning between 5 and 6 of the clocke we began to march from vpton , and by reason of some hindr●nces in our march we reached not to tame river , till betwixt 2 and 3 in the afternoon : as soon as our boats came up , which was much about the same time , the bridge was presently made over the severn on the generalls side , and another over the river tame on our side , we were come as far as poyick , half a mile on this side the bridge with our van before the enemy took the alarm , which after they had taken , they drew downe both their horse and their foot from their leaguer at st. jones , to oppose our passing over our bridges of boats : the generall pre●●n●ly commanded over col. ingolsby , and col. fairfax their r●g●ments , with part of his own regiment , and the life guard , and col hackers of horse over the river , after these on our side were commanded over col. goffs , and major gen. deàns regiments , all of which advanced toward the enemy , who had lined their hedges thick with men , but it pleased the lord after some sharp dispute , ours beat them from hedge to hedge . col. blake , col. gibbons , with col. marshes regiment were commanded over as seconds to the former , and to attempt the enemy in other places , where they had drawn down their men : my lord gray's was likewise order'd over and it pleased the lord in half an hour or an hours dispute the enemy quitted their ground and fled away , only about poyick bridge ( which they had broke down , having the advantage of hedges and ditches ) they continued a sharp dispute with col. haines his regiment , and col. cobbet , col. matthews being as reserve to them both , and it ple●sed the lord that the enemy likewise quitted the ground and runne away , some of col. hains his men wading over the river to advance upon them ; about a mile beyond poyick the enemy had broken down another bridge upon the passe , unto which place we sent some dragoons , who with the assistance of some horse made the enemy quit that place , which gave a passage over for lieut , gen. fleetwoode regiment , col. twisletons and col. kenricks , who were commanded to pursue the enemy , who as we had supposed made towards hereford or ludlow , but they wheeled off and run into worcester , only some few who were taken . the ground where we fought was full of hedges that our horse had not much liberty to engage : but both horse and and foot where they had opportunity ( through the lords presence strengthning of them ) did very gallantly : after the enemy had run away into worcester , they drew out their whole army of horse and foot upon our army on the other side , supposing that most of our army had been advanced over the river , but the lord made our army there alike successefull as on the other side ; being assisted by major gen. desboroughs regiment . of horse , and col. cobbets of foot , on that side was part of the generals regiment , major gen. lamberts , commissary gen. whalies , major gen. harrisons brigade , and col. tomblins with some of the surrey and essex troops , those of foot were major gen. lamberts , col. prides , col. coopers , the cheshire brigade and the essex foot , all of these as the lord gave them opportunity did behave themselves very gallantly , and beat the enemy that came out , and those of them in the royall fort into the town , and afterwards in the night time possessed themselves of the towne , but as many horse as could got away , though i suppose not three thousand in all escaped us : col. barton being commanded to bewdley the day before with some horse and dragoones , did take many prisoners in their running away , it is said 1200. yesterday morning by order from the generall , we commanded 1500 horse and dragoons to pursue after the enemy ( under the command of col. blundell ) who fled in the same way they came hither , m. g. harrison is likewise gon after them , and will we doubt not ( through the lords mercy ) overtake most of them , col. lilburn will , we hope , put a stop unto them . the king ( it is said ) went away with not above 12. horse , t is thought there is not 1000 horse of them together ; in all the engagements that ever hath beene , i think we have not seen a more immediate hand of god appearing than in this ; i believe there was never more courage and resolution in an army , yet lesse done by us as men ; that which adds much to the mercy is that the presence of the lord was so immediate with us , that we may say no flesh hath cause to boast , but we must say it is the lord hath done all these things ; and o that we may have hearts to walke suitable unto what the lord hath done for us , that it may appear by our walking and actings , that we are the people that the lord hath done all this for . the number of those that are taken are said to be about 10000 , and neer 3000 slain , but in neither can i be positive , of all that were slain on our side , i am perswaded there is not 100 : of officers i hear but very few , lievt. col. mosely , and capt. iones of colonel cobbets regiment were slain , major general lamberts horse was shot : the number of the arms and colours are so many , that as yet there can be no certain accompt given of them ; the general did exceedingly hazard himself , riding up and and downe in the midst of their shots , and went himself up to their fort and offered them quarter , was then answered with nothing but shot , the major general likewise and all the other officers , did doe in their several places very gallantly . in the persuit , col. lilburns and the generals regiment of foot have taken the earl of derby , earl of louderdale , earl of cleaviland , and about 140 more persons of quality ; they are still in persuit of the rest , september 5. 1651. neer worcester . letters from scotland of the routing of sir philip musgrove , several lords , and 500 of their party neer dumfrieze sir , vpon friday last ( being our fair day at beampton ) i got certaine intelligence , that one lievtenant douglas , and craford with some horse and dragoons were designed for naward , to surprise our horse , whereupon i forthwith sent to the governour of carlisle , who forthwith sent me a partie of musqueteers , it seems one terrel , late a corporal to capt. cicil howard and some other runawaies , brought the enemie upon this business : since then i dispatcht two messengers into scotland , to observe what they were doing ; and now one of them is returned , and brings me certain word , that our horse and dragoons from edenburgh fell in amongst them at dunfrieze , where there were above 500 of the enemie , and after half an hou●s dispute our men got into the town , kild or took most of them , almost none escaping ; and by reason that most of the townsmen did stand out ( notwithstanding the former promise ) therefore our officers are making an example of them , and are scouring the countrie thereabouts : i hope to day to have the particulars , for i heare sir iohn chastors , with one cealehead , and others are taken : i am naward , september 3. 1651. sir , your humble servant r. c. sir , since i closed up my packet , i have another messenger come , who assures me of the routing of the enemie at dunfrieze , and that sir philip musgrave , the mayor of iohnston , kealehead , with all the lords and leards in that countrie are taken or killed ; the manner of it was thus , 100 horse of ours came to dunfrieze , and after some small dispute got into the towne , and plundered part , then retreated into galloway , where they took up quarters ; and that night the remainder of the bodie came to the same place , as was agreed before ; hereupon the scots countrymen , and all got together , not knowing of our grand bodie , and thought in the night time to have devoured our 100 horse , but our bodie being readie and expecting them , fell pell mell upon them , and as yet never a scot can tell what is become of his fellow , an absolute rout , scarse any escaped . naward sptember 3. 1651. yours , r. c. collonell alured's letter of the taking gen. lesley , &c. with a perfect list of the prisoners neer dunder . sir , it hath pleased the lord to give a great mercy to us in the delivery up of a great many of the leaders , and chiefe of the scottish forces into our hands . i ( being commanded forth with a party of horse and dragoons , ) marched on a dark rainy night , in rough and tedious way , to the town neer the high-lands called ellit , where we had intelligence , that most of the scots commanders lay , which wee found to bee true , and have taken there these prisoners in this inclosed list , nominated , not above two of the most considerable men of the committee of state are left , besides those who are here , the rest of the enemy were quartered at two little towns within a mile , but my party , who were about 800 were so dispersed in getting such rich prizes , that i could not possibly go any further ; but having such considerable prisoners , thought it most convenient to march away with them . the enemy were about 4000. who are all dispersed . some of our party have gotten 500. 300. 200. 100 pounds a peece , and none of them but well rewarded for their service . i desire the lord to give us hearts to be truly thankfull to him for this and all other his mercies towards us . i am sir , your friend to serve you , matth : alured . from my tent before dundee aug. 29. 1651. a list of the prisoners . general lesley , earl marshall , lord of keeth , earl crawford , lord ogleby , lord burginee , lord humby , lord lee , sir iames fowls of collington , sir alexand. fotheringham of powery , sir iames locker , col. andrew milns , mr. archibald sidserfe , mr. tho. hoburn , lord of humbies sonne , mr. iohn brickburn , of ormston , mr. robert norn of strathord , mr. iohn blare , mr. laurence blare , m. alex. nern , m. donell crocket , m. andrew gray , m. iohn ramsey , m. will. leithton , m. david duer , m. james ogleby , m. iohn belches , m. henry cheap , m. iames fleming . ministers . m. rob. douglas , m. ia. hamilton , m. mungo law , m. iohn smith , m. george petilon , m. iohn ruttera , m. iames sharp , m. hugh ramsey , m. andrew carre , cap. andr. wood , cornet tho. brown . with about 70 prisoners more , being souldiers and servants to the noblemen . a letter from leith sept. 3. of the taking of dundee by storme , &c. sir , even now i received the newes of the taking dundee , it was taken by storme on munday last about 10 and 11 a clock , within a quarter of an hour after they began to storme ; six hundred as my intelligence tels me are slaine . amongst them major gen. lumsden the governour . leith 3. sep. 1651. finis . some farther matter of fact relating to the administration of affairs in scotland, under the duke of lauderdale. humbly offered to his majesties consideration, in obedience to his royal commands. that the duke of lauderdale was concerned in the designe of bringing in of popery and arbitrary government, may appear by these following particulars, &c. hamilton, william douglas, duke of, 1635-1694. 1679 approx. 14 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 3 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2005-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a45373 wing s4502a wing h483 estc r231 13649587 ocm 13649587 100970 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a45373) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 100970) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 789:24 or 1939:13) some farther matter of fact relating to the administration of affairs in scotland, under the duke of lauderdale. humbly offered to his majesties consideration, in obedience to his royal commands. that the duke of lauderdale was concerned in the designe of bringing in of popery and arbitrary government, may appear by these following particulars, &c. hamilton, william douglas, duke of, 1635-1694. 4 p. s.n., [london : 1679] ascribed to william douglas, duke of hamilton. cf. nuc pre-1956. caption title. imprint suggested by wing. item at reel 789:24 identified as wing h483 (number cancelled). reproduction of original in henry e. huntington library and art gallery and british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng lauderdale, john maitland, -duke of, 1616-1682. scotland -history -1660-1688. 2004-12 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-12 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2005-01 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2005-01 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion some farther matter of fact relating to the administration of affairs in scotland , under the duke of lauderdale . humbly offered to his majesties consideration , in obedience to his royal commands . that the duke of lauderdale was concerned in the designe of bringing in of popery and arbitrary government , may appear by these following particulars , &c. i. first , in anno 1669 , when he knew that the duke had changed his religion , he procured an act in scotland for asserting the kings supremacy ; which he made the presbyterian-party believe was to empower the king to put down episcopacy , and set up presbytery , ( the very words of it . ) the disposal of the external government of the church , is put absolutely in the kings power ; as also all ecclesiastical meetings and meeters are to be ordered by the king. now the acknowledgment of the pope is a great part of the ecclesiastical government ; besides , the other words are so comprehensive , that all popery may be brought in at that door . soon after this , he entered into a firm friendship with the head of the popish party . ii. at his next session of parliament , which was after madam's being at dover , in 1670 , to shew his farther kindness to that religion , he put in words in the 7 o act of that session , against withdrawers from publick worship ; which secured papists from all troubles : for the act runs onely against his majesties subjects of the reformed religion ; for that papists are expressly excepted , and the words he put in with his own hand in the draught of that act. iii. whereas he first procured the act that was past anno 1667 , that offerred the king an army of 22000 men to be brought into england for any cause in which his majesties honour , power , and greatness was concerned ; which was generally passed as a complement , and continued so till the year 1669 , that other designe being projected in england by the papists . he to be ready to second that , raised this army , and procured another act , which is the second in the first session of the parliament held by him ; by which the former act was not onely confirmed , but it was ordered that this army should obey the order of the council , without naming the king at all : which , as he has managed it , is upon the matter himself . and of late , before the discovery of the plot , he designed to convert the 22000 men to a standing army , as an addition to the new forces raised last summer , to be constantly maintained by all subjects ; contrary to the true meaning of the first or second acts of parliament relating to that purpose , and directly against the fundamental constitutions of the nation , to impose burthens upon it without consent of parliament . iv. when he went down anno 1673 , to see if he could draw down this army to england ( finding he could not effect it , that nation not being able to support this tyranny longer ) he first wearied the members of parliament with often adjournments , and finding in the end that artifice and other tricks would not do , he dissolved the parliament , that he might proceed there , consonant to the councel he gave here ; and set up a bare-fac'd arbitrary power there , which he has so much advised and pressed here ; and has ever since taken all the ways he could fall on to force the nation to a rebellion , by illegal imprisonments , unjust accusations , false reports made to the king , taking away from the subjects the right of propriety , their limitable jurisdictions by the councils order , grounded upon letters procured by him from the king , and put in execution by his brother halton , by wrongful turning out bishops , ministers of state , magistrates , and others , by cruel and illegal sentences , banishments , and fines ; some whereof he disposed to pensioners relations of his own , by grants obtained from the king here , which bear date before the fines were judicially imposed in scotland . and likewise by bringing a man to die , whom he had perswaded to confess upon hopes of life ; and afterwards forswore that he had promised , though it stands yet registered upon the councils book . by sending shipfuls to be slaves in english plantations , which he justified here at council-board in whitehal . by imposing bonds against law. and above all , by sending an army of 9 or 10000 men , most of them highlanders , to lie upon free quarter , and rob and spoil a country that was in no rebellion , nor could any colour of saying they intended any , be ever found now or since . this he did last year , thinking that would certainly make them rebel , and so give a just cause for keeping up a standing army both there and here . and that being at the time when the papists thought the plot so neer perfection , was certainly in conjunction with them having prepared above 8000 horse and foot , with officers of his own stamp , to execute his designe . it is more than probable that it was for the intelligence his lady gave of this , that the cardinal of norfolk sent his thanks to her . v. whereas there are but few papists in scotland , he hath given these all the incouragements he could . the earl of aboins , who was oft complained of to the council by the bishops for keeping many priests in his house , and being a main stickler for popery , he made a privy-counsellor , and gave him a pension , though he has never since gone to church , nor received the sacrament . the earl of northdale , another furious papist , in command of the new forces he raised ( and so is lord and king ) and both those two were last year employed by him in the plundering of the west of scotland , &c. and there being in scotland but five noblemen that are papists , four of them have been supported and maintained by him , &c. vi. he was a principal instrument in procuring the toleration of popery , and courted them into sworn friendship with the lord clifford ; and preferred the declaration and other the kings edicts at the council-board , to law , &c. he pressed the king to break with his parliament , and maintain the declaration , and to take the great seal from the earl of shaftsbury , for giving him better councel ; of which he has often boasted . he became also an enemy to the earl of arlington , upon the same account , and has ever since had an intire friendship with the lord treasurer , for promoting those ends he supported the last year against the just complaints the scotch lords made for free quarter , and other barbarous usages which they met with , &c. vii . he became a pensioner to france , from whom he received rich presents , and great sums : out of one of the jewels which monsieur colbert gave him , he made his rich george . he always helped on the french levies in scotland , against the treaties the king had made , and gave the french officers the publick prisons ; yea , and the kings own castle of edenburgh , of which he is governour , to keep their leavies in , till the ships are ready for their transportation : he gave order to his brother to set the levies forward , and to press men by force into their service ; which being informed to the house of commons , he corrupted one of the witnesses by money to forswear it ; and this he did , after the house of commons had voted that any who assisted those leavies , should be lookt upon as publick enemies to the nation . so much did he contribute to serve the french kings designes ; and particularly in the year 1667. when complaints were made to the king by spanish ministers , that scotland leavies for france were a breach of treaty , his majesties commissioners ordered a proclamation to be sent down immediately for the discharging of them ; but the duke of lauderdaile dispatcht an express to his brother halton secretly , to acquaint him that the proclamation was coming , and that it should be kept up , until the leavied souldiers should be shipt and sent away , and then published ; which was accordingly performed . but for all the hast they made to sayl , the wind detained some of their vessels in the road after the proclamation , and did drive others back , which had been a good way gone , yet none durst stop or trouble them , for fear of halton , who had always promoted those leavies , and had signed particular warrants to several prison-keepers , for delivering their prisons to the french officers . he lived at that time in such intimacy with the french embassadour , that they were never asunder . he sent his nephew to make campaigne in the french army , and wrote to the english embassadour to present him to the king ; and tell him , that he had sent the dearest thing he had to his service , and if he had anything dearer he would have sent it . viii . he hath upon all occasions spoken of the house of commons with the greatest contempt and scorn possible , calling it commonly , bellua multorum capitum ; and usually said , if they would address against him , he would fart against them , and that he would put a dog in his arse and bark at them . and after boasted among his creatures , that he had risen by their addresses . for after one , he got himself made an earl of england ; after the other , he had a pension of 3000 l. per annum in england , though he had above 9000 l. per annum in scotland , of the king ; and his usual word about the commons is , let them bark , and he will bite . ix . not long ago he carried a person , known to be of a very mercenary quality , before the king , and its like suborned him to accuse some of the nobility of scotland , and say , they had inticed him to complain upon his grace to the commons in parliament ; thereby thinking not onely to put those noblemen out of the kings favour , but also to beget in his majesty an ill opinion of the house ; but the parties being convened before the king , his majesty discovered the forgery , and ordered the cheating rogue to custody , where he yet lyes under restraint . x. at his last being in seotland , he forced all the officers of state , and others , in both civil and military employments , to hold their commissions of the king durante beneplacito , which was never practised in that nation before ; the consequence thereof tends so much to arbitrary power , that they need not be particularilized ; he put in and put out members of the kings council , according as they suted his secret designs . in a word , he so packt all the judicatures , that justice and equity have been administred according to his pleasure , under colour of the good of the kingdom . xi . when the treaty for the union of both kingdoms was set on foot , which had been a great happiness to both nations , perceiving he should thereby loose that absolute power he had in scotland , and not be able to prosecute his arbitrary defigns , set himself to a breach ; for which , this was his argument , that it was rather the kings interest to keep the kingdoms distant , and to hold england under the fear of the scotch army , which then he was raising and modelling . xii . he has lived in that correspondence with the papists and priests , that the cardinal of norfolk before he left england was perpetually at his house ; he has kept constant correspondence with conyers and some jesuites ; and at rome he was called by one of the popes bed-chamber , a great friend of the catholicks ; and in all his concerns , the papists were still of his side . so that his late proclamation against papists in scotland hath been onely a mockery . now since the plot is discovered , to disguise his traiterous conspiracies , which then , though upon mr. oates his discovery he talked at the board like one that believed it ; yet he went strait to the duke , and spoke of it with all possible scorn , and called it a ridiculous contrivance . xiii . first , that colemans letters were discharged to be made publick in scotland . and next , his tryal being reprinted at edenbourgh , the books were by a peremptory order in council stopt at the press , when finished almost to the last sheet , not onely to the printers great dammage , but to a manifest suppression of the discovery of that horrid plot from the good people of that nation , who were longing for the particulars thereof . for is it not known , that charles milford of hatton treasurer , deputy of scotland , managed all the affairs and councels there , exactly as he received instructions from his brother the duke of lauderdail here ? according to which , those in that country , which these creatures talk now , of the discovered plot , to be onely a malicious forgery of two rogues , oates and bedlow . finis . information from the scottish nation, to all the true english, concerning the present expedition scotland. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a11667 of text s1706 in the english short title catalog (stc 21917). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a11667 stc 21917 estc s1706 21499703 ocm 21499703 24659 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11667) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 24659) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1714:4) information from the scottish nation, to all the true english, concerning the present expedition scotland. parliament. 1 broadside. r. bryson?, [edinburgh : 1640] imprint suggested by stc (2nd ed.). reproduction of original in the university of st. andrews. library. eng scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649. scotland -politics and government -1625-1649. a11667 s1706 (stc 21917). civilwar no information from the scottish nation, to all the true english, concerning the present expedition scotland. parliament 1640 754 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2007-08 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion ❧ information from the scottish nation , to all the true english , concerning the present expedition . our distresses in our religion and liberties being of late more pressing then we were able to beare ; our supplications and commissions , which were the remedies used by us for our reliefe , were after many delayes and repulses , answered at last with the terrors of an army comming to our borders ; a peace was concluded , but not observed : and when we did complain of the breach , and supplicat for the performance , our commissioners were hardly intreated ; new and great preparations were made for war ; and many acts of hostility done against us , both by sea and land . in this case to send new commissioners or supplications , were against experience , & hopelesse ; to maintain an army on the borders is above our strength , & cannot be a safety unto us by sea : to retire homeward , were to call on our enemies to follow us , & to make our selves & our countrey , a prey by land , as our ships & goods are made at sea . we are therefore constrained at this time to come into england , not to make warre , but for seeking our relief and preservation . duetie obligeth us to love england as our selves : your grievances are ours ; the preservation or ruine of religion & liberties , is common to both nations : we must now stand or fall together . suffer not therefore malice & calumnie to prevaile so far as to perswade , that we come to make warre , wee call heaven and earth to witnesse , that we are far from such intentions , & that we have no purpose to fight , except we be forced , & in our own defence ( as we have more fully expressed in our large declaration ) we come to get assurance of the injoying of our religion & liberties in peace against invasion : and that the authors of all our grievances & yours being tryed in parliament , & our wrongs redressed , the two kingdomes may live in greater love & unitie then ever before , which to our common rejoycing , wee may confidently expect from the goodnes of god , if the wicked counsels of papists , prelats and other fire-brands their adherents be not more harkned unto , then our true and honest declarations . and where it may be conceived , that an army cannot come into england but they will waste & spoile ; we declare , that no souldiours shall be allowed to commit any out-rage , or do the smallest wrong , but shal be punished with severity : that we shal take neither meat nor drink , nor any thing else , but for our moneyes : & when our moneyes are spent , for sufficient surety , which by publique order shal be given to all such as shall furnish us things necessary . we neither have spared , nor will we spare our pains , fortunes , & lyves in this cause of our assurance & your deliverance : & therefore cannot look from any well-affected to trueth & peace , to be either opposed by force & unjust violence in our peaceable passage , or to be discouraged by wilfull or uncharitable with-holding of meanes for our sustentation on our way . we are brethren : your worthy predecessors at the time of reformation , vouchsafed us their help & assistance . we have for many yeares lived in love : we have common desires of the purity of religion and quietnes of both kingdomes : our hopes are to see better dayes in this iland : our enemies also are common : let us not upon their suggestions or our own apprehensions , be friends to them , & enemies to our selves : we desire nothing but what in the like extreamity ( which we pray god your nation never find ) we would most gladly upon the like declaration grant unto you , comming with your supplications to the kings majestie , were he living amongst us : and what ye would we should doe unto you , we trust ye will be moved to doe even so unto us , that the blessing of god may rest upon both . a proclamation for choosing the additional representatives of barons to the parliament scotland. privy council. 1690 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05649 wing s1856 estc r183508 53981738 ocm 53981738 180370 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05649) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180370) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2826:58) a proclamation for choosing the additional representatives of barons to the parliament scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to their most excellent majesties, edinburgh : anno dom. 1690. caption title. initial letter. dated at end: given under our signet at edinburgh, the fourth day of august, 1690. and of our reign the second year. signed: gilb. eliot cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -elections -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1689-1702 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-03 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation for choosing the additional representatives of barons to the parliament . william and mary by the grace of god ; king and queen of great britain , france and ireland , defenders of the faith , to our lovits , _____ macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as by an act of the second session of our current parliament , of the date the fourteenth day of june , one thousand six hundred and ninety years , we with the advice and consent of the estates of parliament , have statute and ordained , that in all parliaments , meetings and conventions of estates , from thenceforth , and thereafter , the barons and free-holders of the shires after-mentioned , shall add to their former representation , the number of commissioners after-exprest , viz. the shire of edinburgh two , the shire of hadingtoun two , the shire of berwick two , the shire of roxburgh two , the shire of lanerk two , the shire of dumfreis two , the stewartry of kirkcudbright one , the shire of air two , the shire of stirling one , the shire of perth two , the shire of aberdene two , the shire of argile one , the shire of fife two , the shire of forfar two , and the shire of renfrew one : declaring , that the said act should take effect in the next session of our current parliament : and we considering , that by the said act , there is no day or days prefix'd by us and our estates of parliament , for conveening the barons and free-holders within the respective shires above-mentioned ; do therefore with advice and consent of the lords of our privy council hereby ordain all the barons , free-holders , and others , who by law have a vote in the election of commissioners , to meet and conveen at the head burghs of the respective shires and stewartrie above-mentioned , upon the particular days after exprest , viz. these of the shires of edinburgh , berwick , lanerk , and fife , upon the twelfth of august instant , and these of the shires of hadingtoun , roxburgh and perth , upon the fourteenth day of the said current moneth ; these of the shires of dumfreis , stirling , renfrew , and forfar , upon the fifteenth day of the said moneth ; these of the stewartry of kirkcudbright , the shires of air and argile upon the ninteenth day of the said moneth , and these of the shire of aberdene upon the twenty seventh day of the said moneth of august instant . and that the saids barons , free-holders , and others foresaids , may have the more timely notice hereof , we , with advice and consent foresaid , appoint the sheriff-clerks of the several shires above-mentioned , and the stewart-clerk of the stewartry of kirkcudbright , immediatly upon receipt hereof , to cause make publication and intimation of the premisses , not only at the mercat-crosses of the head burghs of the several sheriffdoms , and stewartrie above-exprest ; but likewise at the several paroch-church-doors within the respective jurisdictions foresaid , upon a sabbath day in the forenoon , after divine service , preceeding the time of the saids respective elections . and whereas by an act of the second session of our current parliament , all the electors of commissioners , before they proceed to choose their representatives , are appointed to swear and sign the oath of allegiance to us , under the certification and penalty contained in the said act of parliament : and that by another act of the second session of the same parliament , all persons who are in law obliged to swear and take the oath of allegiance , are appointrd to subscribe the certificat , and assurance subjoyned hereto . therefore we , with advice foresaid , command and require all the barons and free-holders of the respective shires and stewartries above-mentioned , to swear and sign the oath of allegiance to us , and also subscribe the certificat and assurance above-mentioned , before they proceed to their election , under the pains and penalties contained in the saids acts of parliament . and we ordain these presents to be printed and published at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and whole remanent crosses of the head burghs of the several sheriffdoms and stewartrie above-written , and to be intimat at the several paroch church-doors within the respective jurisdictions , in manner foresaid , that none may pretend ignorance . given under our signet at edinburgh , the fourth day of august , 1690. and of 0ur reign the second year . per actum dominorum sti. concilii . gilb . eliot cls. sti. concilii . follows the certificat and assurance . i _____ do in the sincerity of my heart , assert , acknowledge and declare , that their majesties , king william and queen mary , are the only lawful undoubted soveraigns , king and queen of scotland , al 's well de jure as de facto , and in the exercise of the government ; and therefore i do sincerely and faithfully promise and engage , that i will with heart and hand , life and goods , maintain and defend their majesties title and government , against the late king james , his ad●erents , and all other enemies , who either by open , or secret attempts , shall disturb , or disquiet their majesties in the exercise thereof . god save king vvilliam and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to their most excellent majesties , anno dom. 1690. a second edition of camden's description of scotland containing a supplement of these peers, or lords of parliament, who were mentioned in the first edition, and an account of these since raised to, and further advanced in the degrees of peerage, until the year 1694. britannia. english. selections camden, william, 1551-1623. 1695 approx. 350 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 107 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-08 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a32776 wing c376 estc r4896 12248234 ocm 12248234 57011 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a32776) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 57011) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 623:6) a second edition of camden's description of scotland containing a supplement of these peers, or lords of parliament, who were mentioned in the first edition, and an account of these since raised to, and further advanced in the degrees of peerage, until the year 1694. britannia. english. selections camden, william, 1551-1623. dalrymple, james, sir, fl. 1714. [8], 204, [19], 16 p. printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh : 1695. from camden's britannia / edited by sir james dalrymple. imperfect: last two groups of paging lacking in filmed copy. reproduction of original in bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -description and travel. scotland -description and travel -early works to 1800. scotland -peerage. 2004-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-05 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-06 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2004-06 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-07 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a second edition of camden's description of scotland , containing a supplement of these peers , or lords of parliament , who were mentioned in the first edition ; and an account of these since raised to , and further advanced in the degrees of peerage , until the year 1694. edinbvrgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to his most excellent majesty , anno dom. m.dc.xcv . the preface . reader , in the description of scotland , the author camden hath been at great pains , and taken information from the most intelligent , in the antiquities , peerage and constitutions of the kingdom ; and especially from sir alexander hay secretary of state , who in the year 1608 , did succeed in that office to the lord balmerinoch ; till which time , he hath given the most full and exact account of our nobility , or lords of parliament , in the order and description of the countries or shires , the places from which they take their designations , and where they have their interest or residence ; and therefore his work deserves very well a second edition , for the benefit of the kingdom of scotland ; which if it had been finished in due time , as it was begun to be printed , might have been a part of the second edition of the whole britannia , and will always be a treatise by it self concerning scotland , to satisfy these whose curiosity lead them no further . in this edition , little alteration is made from the words of the author , albeit now less used , except where the error or mistake can be mended by a few words , and might have proceeded , rather from the fault of the transcriber or printer , then the author ; and i have left out the latine lines made by johnston , the poet on several occasions , and also the translation of them in english rhime , as tending more to increase the volumn , then to give light to the history ; and have made alteration of these words which directly relate to the former treatise , as a part of it , and so have omitted the authors preface and apology , for his little experience in scottish affairs , which he lightly passeth over , reserving the due honour to these of that nation , with a more full pinsel to set forth these matters . albeit in several things of more remote and ancient times he is mistaken ; yet still the treatise is useful , and deserving well to be published : nor is he or his informers lyable to censure on that account , most of these being vulgar errors , passing in that time , and since , for truth : and a second edition was more proper , passing over them , then in this to have commented upon , and contradicted the author , which is but seldom and slenderly done , in matters only concerning the kingdom in general , and the great stewarts of scotland , the progenitors of our kings . it will be a task , requiring great time , skill and pains , and the help of more knowing persons , by particular treatises , going in order from the greater antiquity downward , out of the most antient and approved histories , most exact collections and authentick records and documents , to describe the considerable and eminent families , who have by their actions deserved to be noticed , without which the account of the nation in general , and of the other great families will be incompleat ; albeit some of them did never attain to the degree of peerage : seing in the sense and language of our law , as well as of the french , the nobility is composed of the barons , free-holders , and immediat tennents of the king , and not of the peers only , now called lords of parliament . in which undertaking , the errors in this treatise , to the advantage of some , and prejudice of other families , may be rectified ; and in the mean time , the publisher of this edition is not to be concluded of the opinion , that all the matters contained therein , are to be received as truth , and is not to incurr the displeasure of any , by the further publishing of these smaller errors . if in the supplement and addition , the publisher hath erred in anything , upon better information , & full conviction , he is most willing to amend , and shall study to find an opportunity to publish the same : and if in the descriptiou of some families , he hath been more large then in others , it is not to be imputed to partiality , but that his knowledge and information was not alike full in all . as to these more ancient . lords , who are described by the author , the publisher hath given no more particular account of the times of their creation ▪ then the author did , reserving that to another time and occasion ; but hath been more special in the accounts of the later lords , and in the method of the author hath mentioned them , according to the order of the situation of the several places from which they have their designations : some errors are mended in the description of places , but in that , exactness is not studied , there being particular maps and descriptions of the countries by straloch and scotstarbat , printed anno 1654 , and lately by mr. adair , some more exact tables are published , and the rest dayly expected . it is observable , that a great part of the nobility , since the reign of king james the sixth , have made and encreased their estates , by being members of the colledge of justice , or session , and obtaining the erection of church benefices , ( whereof they were commendators ) in temporal lordships , to them and their successors : the finer spirits , who formerly were imployed in the wars , or became churchmen , since the reign of king james the fifth , beginning to apply themselves to the laws , some of them did attain to the degrees of lords of session , and other publick imployments ; and for their better encouragement , were rewarded with abbacies in commendam , and were created peers , or temporal lords of parliament . it is likewise worth observing , that king james the sixth ( after his succession to the crown of england ) did make a considerable addition to the antient nobility of this nation , by new creations , as well as in his other dominions ; for in england and ireland , as well as here , the peers were much diminished by forfaultures , extinction of dignities , and by the suppression of the abbots , and priors , which queen elizabeth had not supplyed . since the reformation of religion , the constitution of our parliament did receive a considerable alteration , the clergie , the third estate , for some time , being almost abolished ; and these in the sederunts of the parliaments , and articles pro clero , not being church-men , but meer laicks , titulars and commendators of abbacies and priories ; and of them seldom a full and equal number with the other estates in the articles , and for the most part but two or three of them designed bishops , who had not the full power and episcopal jurisdiction , which was for a long time lodged in the synods and general assemblies , and the only popish-bishop , who imbraced the reformation , and continued in office in the church and state , was adam bothwel , bishop of orkney . there was also a great alteration in the representation of barons and free-holders in parliament , who albeit fred by act of parliament king james the first , from general appearances in parliament to which they were formerly lyable , and allowed to send their commissioners to represent them ; yet if this act was ever observed , it was long in desuetude , till revived in the parliament 1587 ; since which time the free-holders of the shires , under the degrees of peers , have sent their commissioners to represent themselves and their vassals in parliament . to supply these alterations , it was necessar that more should be created lords of parliament , to come in proper right , and as representing these holding their lands of them , as the bishops and abbots did for themselves and their vassals , in right of their baronies , which they held immediatly of the crown ; and bishops being again supprest , as well as abbots and priors , whose lands are possest by the peers or free-holders , or their vassals , the great number of peers is still more reasonable , whereof the half do never appear in parliament , by reason of minority , or as being females , or being otherways legally incapacitat or hindered to take place there ; and also , the addition of twenty six members , by a late act of parliament to the representation of the barons , did make a just ballance , the free-holders representing a great part of the property of the nation . it is to be remembred , that of those dignities noted as extinct , some of them do stand in the rolls of parliament , their honours being lately enjoyed , and the rolls not altered , but by special warrand . to the treatise , is subjoyned a list of the nobility with their sirnames , and the titles of such of their eldest sons who are lords , and of the other members of this current parliment , commissioners for shires and burghs royal ; and a second alphabetical table of these whom the publisher observed to have been created , or to have used at anytime , the titles or dignities of lords , viscounts , earls , marquesses and dukes ; and a table of the abbacies & priories , especially these who were conventual , once a part constituent of our parliament ; with a list of the presbytries , synods and commissariots not specified in the treatise . these are the few things with which the publisher thought fit to advertise the reader , farewel . a description of scotland . chap. i. the division of scotland . the north part of the island of britain , was of old time inhabited throughout by the picts , who were divided into two nations , the dicalidonii , and vecturiones : of whom the author did speak out of ammianus marcellinus . but when the scots became lords and rulers over all this part , it was shared into seven parts among seven princes , as we find in a little ancient pamphlet touching the division of scotland , in these words and old name . the first part contained enegus and maern . the second , atheodl and goverin . the third , stradeern and meneted . the fourth , was forthever . the fifth , mar with buchan . the sixth , muref and ros. the seventh cathanes , which mound , a mountain in the midst divideth , running on forward from the west sea to the east . then afterwards the same author reporteth , according to the relation of andrew bishop of cathanes , that the whole kingdom was divided likewise into seven territories . the first from erith , in the british tongue called by the romans worid , now scotwade , to the river tae . the second to hilef , according as the sea fetcheth a compass , to a mountain in the northeast part of sirivelin , named athran . the third from hilef to dee . the fourth from dee to the river spe. the fifth from spe to the mountain brunalban . the sixth mures and ros. the seventh , the kingdom argathel , as it were the border and skirt of the scots : who were so called of gathelgas their captain . also according to the habitation of the people , scotland is now divided into highland-men and lawland-men : these being more civil , use the english language and apparel ; the other , which are rude and unruly , speak irish , and go apparelled irish-like . out of this division the borderers are excluded , because by reason of peace shining now upon them on every side , by a blessed and happy union , they are to be ranged & reckoned in the very heart and midst of the british empire , as who begin to be weary of wars , and to acquaint themselves with the delightful benefits of peace . moreover , according to the situation and position of the places , the whole kingdom is divided into two parts : the south on this side the river tay , and the north beyond tay ; besides a number of islands lying round about . in the south part , these countries are more remarkable than the rest . tiviotdale merch lauden liddesdale eskedale annandale niddasdale galloway carrick kyle cunningham arran clidesdale lennox stirling fife strathern menteith argile cantire lorn . in the north part are reckoned these countries . loquabrea braidalbin ▪ perth atbol angus merns marr buquhan murray rosse sutherland cathanes strathnavern . these are subdivided again according to thei● civil government into counties , called sheriffdoms , seneschalsies , commonly stewartries , and bailliwicks , or bailliaries , whereof a list shall be subjoyned as they now are , and in the order they stand in the rolls of parliament . as touching the administration of the divine city and common-wealth , which we term the church , likeas the bishops in all the world besides , had no certain dioeceses , before that dionysius bishop of rome , about the year 268. did set out dioeceses for bishops : so the bishops of scotland executed their episcopal functions in what place soever they came , indifferently and without distinction , untill the time of king malcolm the third , that is about the year of our redemption 1070 , at which time the dioeceses were confined within their bounds and limits . afterwards , in process of time , this hierarchie , or ecclesiestical government , was established in scotland . two archbishops , one of saint andrews , the other of glasgow ; whereof the former is counted primat of all scotland : under whom there be ▪ eight bishopricks . dunkeld . aberdene . murray . dunblan . brechin . rosse . cathanes . orkney . under the archbishop of glasgow there be only three . * candida casa , or galloway . lismore , or argile . the isles , or sodorensis episc. edinburgh was erected an episcopal see 1633 by k. ch. 1. suffragan to the arch-bishop of st. andrews , and hath place of dunkeld . by the 3d. act of the 1st . session of this current parliament , the estate of bishops being the third estate of parliament is abolished . by the fifth act of the second session , presbyterian church government was settled , and the nobility which did consist of the great barons or lords , or the lesser barons or free-holders , is divided in two estates ; so that by the third act of the second session of the same parliament , the three estates are declared to be the lords of parliament , designed the nobility , the barons or commissioners from shires designed the gentlemen ; and the commissioners from burghs designed the burgesses . chap. ii. the states or degrees of scotland . the republick , or common-wealth of the scots , like as that of englishmen , consisteth of a king , the nobility or gentry , and commons . the king , to use the words of the record , is directus totius dominus , that is , the direct lord of the whole domain , or dominion , and hath royal authority and jurisdiction over all the states and degrees , as well ecclesiastical as lay or temporal . next unto the king is his eldest son , who is called prince of scotland , and by a peculiar right duke of rothsay , and seneschal or steward of scotland . but all the rest of the kings children are named simply princes . among the nobles , the greatest and most honourable were in old time , the thanes , that is , those who were enobled only by the office which they administred . for the word in the ancient english saxon tongue signifieth , the kings minister . of these , they of the superior place were called abthanes , the inferior vnder thanes . but these names by little and little grew out of use , ever since that king malcolm the third conferred the titles of earls and barons , after the manner received from the english , upon noblemen of good good de●●●●● . in process of time , new titles of honours were much taken up , and scotland as well as england , hath had dukes , marquesses , earls , viscounts , and barons . as for the title of duke , the first that brought it into scotland was king robert the third , about the year of salvation 1400. likeas the honourable titles of marquess and viscount were first brought in by king james the sixth . these are counted nobles of the higher degree , and have both place and voice in the parliament , and by a special name are called lords , likeas also the bishops . among the nobles of a lower degree , in the first place are ranked knights , who verily are dubbed with greater solemnity than in any other place throughout all europe , by taking of an oath , and are proclaimed by the publick voice of an herauld . in the year 1621 was instituted the hereditary order of knight baronet , for advancing the plantation of nova-scotia in america , with precedency of all ordinary knights , lesser barons or lairds ; of which order there is a great number , but the ancient great lairds , chiefs of clans or families , have not generally yielded precedency to them . of a second sort are they , who are termed lairds and barons , among whom none were reckoned in old time , but such as held immediatly from the king , lands in chief , and had jus furcarum , that is , power to hang , &c. in the third place are all such as being descended from worshipful houses , and not honoured with any special dignity , be termed gentlemen . all the rest , as citizens , merchants , artisans , &c. are reputed among the commons . chap. iii. the judicatories , or courts of justice . the supreme court , as well for dignity as authority , is accounted the assembly of the states of the kingdom , which is called by the very same name as it is in england , a parliament : and hath the same very power as absolute . it consisteth of three states , of lords spiritual , namely , bishops , abbots , and priors : and of lords temporal , to wit , dukes , marquesses , earls , viscounts , and barons : and commissioners for cities and burghs . unto whom were adjoyned not long since for every county or shire also two commissioners . and by the 11th act of the second session of this current parliament , certain shires , and the stewartrie of kirkcudbright therein enumerat , according to the largeness and extent of the lands , are allowed an additional representation of commissioners in parliament , whereby the greater shires are allowed four , some shires three , and in the stewartrie of kirkcudbright two commissioners . as will appear clearly by the list of parliament subjoyned . it is appointed and solemnly called by the king at his pleasure , at a certain set time , before it be holden . when these states abovesaid are assembled , and the causes of their assembly delivered by the king , his commissioner , or chancellor , the lords spiritual chuse out apart by themselves , eight of the lords temporal ; as also , the lords temporal make choise of as many out of the lords spiritual : then the same all joyntly together nominat eight , of the commissioners for the counties , and as many of the commissioners for the free burghs regal , which make up in all the number of thirty two . and then these * lords of the articles ( so they are termed ) together with the chancellor , treasurer , keeper of the privy seal , kings secretary , &c. do admit or reject every bill proposed unto the states , after they have been first imparted unto the king , or his commissioner . being allowed by the whole assembly of the states , they are throughly weighed & examined , & such of them as pass by the greater number of voices , are exhibited unto the king , or his commissioner , who by touching them with the scepter , pronounceth , that he either ratifieth & approveth them , or disableth and maketh the same void· but if any thing dislike the king , it is razed out before . this method of the lords of articles is altered by the 3d. act of the first session of this current parliament , whereby the committee of parliament is abrogated , and the parliament to appoint committees of what number they please , being alike of noblemen , barons , and burg●sses , to be chosen out of each estate by it self , for preparing all motions and overtures first made in the house , and that the parliament may alter the said committees at their pleasure , or conclude upon matters proponed before them in plain parliament , without committees , and that in the committes , some of the officers of state may be present by their majesties or their commissioners appointment , who is freely to propose and debate allennerly , but not to vote . by act of parliament 1617 , the officers of state are restricted to the number of eight , including the master of requests , beside the chancellor , who by his office is president of the parliament . since the restauration of king ch. 2d . there hath been no master of requests , but frequently two secretaries ; and there hath been also debate amongst the lesser officers of state : and especially between the thesaurer-depute and the others , concerning their precedency ; but at present by order , the thesaurer-deput is ranked after the advocat , and before the justice-clerk . the second court , or next unto the parliament , is the colledge of justice , or session , which king james the fifth , parl. 5. art. 36. 40. and 41. anno 1532. instituted after the form of the parliament of paris , consisting of a president , fourteen senatours , seven of the clergy , and as many of the laitie ( unto whom is adjoyned the lord chancellor , who being present , is to have vote , and be principal of the said council ; and sick●ike other lords as shall please the kings grace to injoyn to them of his great council , to have vote sicklike , to the number of three or four : by vertue whereof the king uses to adjoyn besides the chancellor four of the nobility or lords of parliament , who are called extraordinar lords , and are not counted of the quorum of the nine , which must be of the ordinar lords . the distinction of half spiritual half temporal is laid aside , and the lords are all of the temporality , and three principal scribes or clerks : but by the 38 act. 1st . sess parl. k. ja. 7. there is allowed two persons to be conjoyned in each of the three offices of ordinary clerks of session , and so now six clerks , and as many advocats as the senators shall think good . these sit and minister justice , not according to the rigour of law , but with reason and equity , every day ( save only on the lords day and monday ) from the first of november to the fifteenth of march ; and from trinity sunday unto the calends of august . but by law and custome , the session fitteth from the first , of november to the last of february , and from the first , of june to the last of july inclusive . in regard the office of the lords of session are for lifetime , they are set down as follows . james viscount of stair , lord president of the session . sir john baird of newbyth , mr. alexander swinton of mersingtoun , sir colin camphel of aberuchil , james murray of philiphaugh , robert dundass of arnistoun , mr. john hamilton of haleraig , mr. david hume of crossrig , sir john lawder of haltoun , sir john lawder of fountainhal , william enstruther of that llk , mr. archibald hope of rankeilor , mr. james falconer of phesdo , robert hamilton of presmenuan , sir william hamilton of whitelaw . extraordinary lords . william duke of queensberry , william earl of annandale , patrick lord polwarth , the fourth is vacant by the death of william duke of hamilton . the president of the session by an act of parliament 1661. is declared to have precedency of the lord register and advocat , and they to have precedency of the lord thesaurer-deput . * sir george mckenzie in his precedency , doth relate , that there was an ordinance upon the 20. feb. 1623 amongst his majesties officers and counsellors , where the lesser officers of state are ranked , and after them the lords of session , according to their admission , and before privy counsellors being barons & gentlemen . suitable to this precedency , the lords of session have since their institution enjoyed the title of lord , both in designation and compellation , albeit the designation be proper to the lords of parliament : the lords of session in the beginning being composed of bishops and abbots , and dignified beneficed persons , chief barons , and eminent lawers ; this designation is frequently given to them in the acts of parliament , and particularly to president provan , in an unprinted act , anno 1581. intituled act in favours of mr. william baillie lord provan , & frequently thereafter . all the space between sessions , being the times of sowing and harvest , is vacation and intermission of all suites and law matters . they give judgment according to the parliament , statutes , and municipal laws , and where they are defective , they have recourse to the imperial civil law. there are besides in every county or shire , in ferior civil judicatories or courts kept , wherein the sheriff of the shire , or his depute , decideth the controversies of the inhabitants , about violent ejections , instrusions , damages , debts , &c. from which courts or judges , in regard of hard and unequal dealing , or else of alliance and partiality , they appeal sometime to the session . these sheriffs are all for the most part hereditary , for the kings of scotland , like as these of england also , to oblige more surely unto them the better sort of gentlemen by their benefits and favours , made in old time , these sheriffs hereditary and and perpetual . but the english kings soon perceiving the inconveniencies thereby ensuing , of purpose changed this order , & appointed them from year to year . there be civil courts also in every regalitie , holden by their baillies , to whom the kings have graciously granted royalities : as also in free-burghs , by the magistrates thereof . there are likewise judicatories , which they call commissariats , the highest whereof is k●pt at edinburgh : in which before four judges , or commissars ; actions are pleaded concerning wills & testaments , the right of ecclesiastical benefices , tithes , divorces , and such other ecclesiastical causes . in every other several part almost throughout the kingdom , there sitteth but one judge alone in a place about these matters . in criminal causes , the kings chief justice holdeth his court for the most part at edinburgh , ( which office the earls of argile executed for some time , ) and he doth deput two or three lawers , who have the hearing and deciding of capital actions concerning life and death , or of such as infer loss of limbs , or of all goods . and by the 16 act 3d. sess 2d . parl. k. cha. 2d . concerning the justice court , it doth now consist of the lord justice-general , the lord justice-clerk , who are both at the kings nomination , and to them are added five of the lords of session , who are supplied from time to time by the king , and are called lords of the justiciary . in this court the defendant is permitted , yea in case of high-treason , to entertain a counsellor or advocat to plead his cause . moreover in criminal matters , there are sometimes by vertue of the kings commission and authority , justices appointed for the deciding of this or that particular cause . also the sheriffs in their territories , and magistrats in some burghs , may sit in judgement of man-slaughter ( in case the man-slayer be taken within 24 hours after the deed committed ) and being found guilty by a jurie , put him to death . but if that time be once over-past , the cause is referred and put over to the kings justice , or his deputs . the same priviledge also some of the nobility and gentry enjoy against theives taken within their own jurisdictions . there be likewise that have such royalities , as that in criminal causes they may exercise a jurisdiction within their own limits , and in some cases recal those that dwell within their own limits and liberties from the kings justice , howbeit with a caution and proviso interposed , that they judge according to law. thus much briefly the author hath put down , as one that had but slightly looked into these matters , yet by the information of the judicious knight , sir alexander hay , secretary to k. ja. 6. for scotland , who had given the author good light . he being one of the three principal clerks of session , was in the year 1608 appointed secretary in place of the lord balmerinoch removed , and admtted a lord of session the 3d , of feb. 1610. but as touching scotland , what a noble countrey it is , and what men it breedeth ( as sometimes the geographer wrote of britain ) there will within a while more certain and more evident matter be delivered , since that most high and mighty prince k. ja. 6. did set it open for us , which had so long time been shut from us . mean time before we proceed to the description of particular places , according to the authors project , we must give some short account of the privy council , thesaury and exchequer , being soveraign courts , and omitted by the author . the privy council is constitute by the king's commission to decide in matters that concerns the government and publick peace of the nation , wherein the chancellor by his office doth preside , and after him the president of the council , who hath the same precedency as in england : the persons are chiefly named out of the nobility , with the addition of some barons . in the thesaury and exchequer , the lord high thesaurer doth preceed , but this office is frequently in commission , as it is at present , and then the lord chancellor is , and uses to be one and chief of the commission , as also the lord thesaurer deput , and they together with the lords of exchequer nominat by their majesties do order , determine , and dispose of the kings rents , revenues , gifts , and casualities : i have omitted particular lists of them , in regard the commissions to the council , thesaury and exchequer are some times changed , as the king doth think fit ; and that the persons employed in them are eminent , of whom occasion will be to make mention in some part of this treatise , either as noblemen , sheriffs of , or commissioners from shires , or otherwise . chap. iv. gadeni , or ladeni , upon the ottadini , or northumberland , bordered as next neighbours the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , gadeni , who also by the inversion or turning of one letter upside down , are called in some copies of ptolomy ladeni , seated in that countrey which lieth between the mouth of the river tweed and edinburgh forth : and is at this day divided into many petty countries : the chief whereof are teviotdale , tweddale , merss , and lothian , in latine lodenium , under which one general name alone the writers of the middle time comprised all the rest . chap. v. teviotdale . teviotdale , that is to say , the vale by the river tiviot , or teveat , lying next unto england , among the edges of high craigie hills , is inhabited by a war-like nation , which by reason of so many encounters in foregoing ages , between scots and english , are always most ready for service and sudden invasions . the first place among these that we meet with , is jedburgh , a burgh well inhabited and frequented , standing near unto the confluence of teviot and jed , whereof it took the name : also melros , a very ancient monastry , wherein at the beginning of our church , were cloistered monks of that ancient order and institution , that gave themselves to prayer , and with their hand-labour earning their living ; which holy king david restored , and replenished with cistertian monks . and more eastward , where tweed and teviot joyn in one stream , rosburgh sheweth it self , called also roxburgh , and in old time marchidun , because it was a town in the marches , where stands a castle , that for natural situation , and towred fortificatons , was in time past exceeding strong . which being surprised and held by the english , whiles james the second king of scots encircled it with a siege , he was by a piece of a great ordnance that broke , slain untimely in the flower of his youth ; a prince much missed and lamented of his subjects . as for the castle , it was yielded ; and being then for the most part of it lay'd even with the ground , is now in a manner quite vanished and not to be seen . the territory adjoyning , called of it the sheriffdom of roxburgh , hath one hereditary sheriff out of the family of the dowglas , who is usually called the sheriff of teviotdale ; the heir of this family is sir william dowglas of cavers , who is present sheriff , and one of the commissioners of the shire to this present parliament . and now hath roxburgh also a baron , roxbert ker , through the favour of king james the sixth , out of the family of kers , a famous house , and spred into a number of branches , as any one in that tract : out of which the fernhersts , and others inured in martial feats , have been of great name . sir robert ker of cessfuird , was amongst other great men , chosen by k. james the sixth , to attend him in his journey to england , in the year 1603. to take possession of that crown , at which time he was created lord roxburgh , and is mentioned amongst the commissioners for the union , parl. 1604. first of all the lords created about that time ; and in like manner in the decreet of ranking and the several rolls of parliament , he is placed before loudown , lindores , &c. till the year 1617 , when he is designed by the rolls of that parliament earl of roxburgh ; he was lord privy seal to king ch. the first , whose grand-childs grandchild is robert earl of roxburgh : the laird of berneherst , the other principal family of that name , was by king james the sixth created lord jedburgh , which peerage doth belong to the lord newbottle , eldest son to the earl of lothian , and in the quality of lord jedburgh , william lord newbottle is a member of this present parliament , which is special to the earl of lothians family , that both the father and the son are peers . sir robert ker the youngest brother of the first lord jedburgh , a great favorite of king ja. the sixth , was by him made thesaurer of scotland and earl of somerset in england . also of the family of ferneherst , sir robert ker of ancrum was created earl of ancrum by king cho. he first , in the year 1633 , of whom is descended robert earl of lothian , by his father , william earl of lothian , who married the heiress , and the younger brother succeeded to his father in the dignity of the earl of ancrum residing in england , who sat in the parliament 1681. collonel rutherfoord of the family of hunthill , was created earl of teviot by king cha. the second , who left his fortune and the dignity of lord rutherfoord to the family of hunthill , which hath been possessed by three brothers , the youngest is robert lord rutherfoord . the dignity of viscount teviot was conferred by king ia. the seventh anno 1686 , on the lord spencer eldest son to the earl of sunderland in england . in the same shire lived sir walter scot of bran●holme , who by king ja. the sixth , 17 may 1606 was created lord scot of buckcleugh , he was the next after the lord scoon , and these mentioned in the decreet of ranking , and was immediatly created before the lord blantyre , his son walter was created earl by the same king in the year 1619 , & in the rolls of parliament 1621 , is ranked after the earls of roxburgh and kellie and before the earl of melros● ; his son earl francis was father to countess margaret , married to walter scot of heychester , who shortly deceased , her husband was by king cha. the second created earl of tarras during life , by whose decease the dignity is extinct , the younger daughter countess anna , was married to james scot duke of monmouth , son to k. ch. the second , and was by him created dutchess of buckcleugh , about the year 1661. who liveth , and her son is james earl of dalkeitb . tweed aforesaid runneth through the midst of a dale , taking name of it , replenished with sheep , that bear wool of great request . a very goodly river this is , which springing more inwardly eastward , after it hath passed , as it were in a straight channel by drumelzier castle , by peebles a burgh royal , which had for the sheriff thereof baron yester , now earl of tweddale lord high chancellor , who sold his estate in that shire , and the sheriff-ship to the duke of queensberry , of whom afterwards in east-lothian . in this shire the laird of traquair as a baron , commissioner to the parliament 1621 , was by king ch. the first created lord stuart of traquair , and in anno 1633 was made earl , his predecessor was a lord of session , in the year 1560 he himself was first thesaurer-deput , and afterwards lord high thesaurer and high commissioner for the king , whose grand-child is charles earl of traquair . in this shire also , sir patrick murray of elibank , was designed in the rescinded parliament 1644 , lord elibank , whose father sir gideon murray thesaurer-deput , was admitted a lord of the session anno 1613 , the great grand-child is alexander lord elibank . likeas selkirk a burgh royal hard by , hath another sheriff out of the family of murray of falahill , an ancient family , designed of philiphaugh , james murray now of philiphaugh is one of the lords of session and sheriff ; this place is famous by the defeat of the army of the great marquess of montrose . by king charles the first anno 1646 , lord william dowglas second son to the marquess of dowglas was created earl of selkirk , was married to anna dutchess and heiress of hamilton , and by king charles the second ( after the restauration ) created duke of hamilton , he was commissioner to two sessions of this current parliament , and enjoyed many great and honourable offices , who in his lifetime did convey and establish the title and dignity of earl of selkirk on charles his second son now earl of selkirk , his lady anna dutchess of hamilton and james earl of arran doth survive . tweed also receiveth lawder a riverat , upon which is situat a royal burgh , and seat of a bailliary , belonging to the family of lawderdale , within the sheriffdom of berwick ; near to which stands thirlestane castle , a very fair house of sir john maitlands , sometime chancellor of scotland , whom , for his singular wisdom , king ja. the sixth created baron of thirlstane . sir richard maitland of lethingtoun was his father , who is marked in the book of sederunt of the lords of session 1553 amongst the lords , being then an extraordinary lord ; in the sederunt 1561 , he is admitted an ordinar lord , and his eldest son william , then secretary is admitted extraordinar , and thereafter ordinar , in place of sir robert carnagie deceased , ( it being customary at that time , first to be entered extraordinar , and then ordinar ; ) this sir richard was privy seal to queen mary , and continued an ordinar lord till his old age , when he demitted the eleventh of july 1584 , in favours of sir lewis ballenden justice-clerk upon the kings letter , bearing lethingtoun to have served his grand-sir , good-sir , good-dame , his mother and himself faithfully in many publick offices , and now greatly disabled by age , he had demitted in favours , &c. reserving all profits to himself during his life ; which notwithstanding of his dimission , he enjoyed till his death , anno 1586. the said mr. john maitland of thirlstane , his second son was in april 1581 admitted lord of the session , and about the year 1584 secretary , and in the 1586 vice chancellor , and thereafter chancellor , and in the 1592 designed lord thirlstane chancellor , whose son john was created viscount of lauderdale by king ja. sixth , and is so marked in the rolls of parliament 1617 , and in june 1618 , under the designation of viscount of lauderdale , he is admitted an ordinar lord of session , and thereafter created earl of lauderdale by king ja. thessixth ; about the year 1624 , whose son john earl of lauderdale was secretary to king ch. the second , & by him created duke of lauderdale in the year 1672 , he was high commissioner to the hail sessions of the second parliament king ch. the second & convention of estates 1678 , and enjoyed many other honourable offices , and upon his decease without heirs-male of his body , his brother charles maitland of haltoun thesaurer-deput , and a lord of the session succeeded to him in his dignity of earl of lauderdale , the title of duke being extinct with himself ) whose son is richard earl of lauderdale . then tweed beneath roxburgh , augmented with the river of teviot resorting unto him , watereth the sheriffdom of berwick throughout ; a great part whereof is possessed by the humes ( wherein the chief man of that family exerciseth the jurisdiction of a sheriff ( & so passes under berwick , the strongest town of britain , where he is exceeding full of salmons , and so falleth into the sea. chap. vi. merchia , merch , or mers● merch , which is next , and so named because it is a march countrey , lyeth wholly upon the german sea. in this , first hume castle sheweth it self : the ancient possession of the lords of home , or hume , who being descended from the family of the earls of merch , are grown to be a noble and fair spred family : out of which alexander hume , who before was the first baron of scotland , & sheriff of berwicks , was about the 1604 , advanced by james the 6. the first king or great britain to the title of earl of hume ; to whom charles now earl of hume succeeds . sir james dowglas , brother to the first marquess of douglas , married the heiress of oliphant , and in her right had the precedency of the lords of oliphant , with the dignity of mordingtoun ; whose grand-child is presently lord mordingtoun . near unto hume castle lyeth kelso , famous sometime for the monastery , which with thirteen others , king david the first of that name built out of the ground , for the propagation of gods glory , but to the great empairing of the crown-land . then is to be seen coldingham , which bede calleth the city coldana , and the city of coludum , haply colania mentioned by ptolomy , a place consecrated many ages since unto professed virgins or nuns , whose chastity is recorded in ancient books : for that they , together with ebba their prioress , cut off their own noses and lips , choosing rather to preserve their virginity from the danes , than their beauty and favour ; and yet for all that the danes burnt their monastry , and them withal . hard by is fast-castle , a castle of the lord humes , so called for the firmness and strength thereof , at the promontory of the said saint ebbe , who being the daughter of edilfrid king of northumberland , when her father was taken prisoner , got hold of a boat in humber , and passing along the raging ocean , landed here in safety , became renowned for her sanctimony , and left her name unto the place . but this merch is mentioned in the historiographers a great deal more for the earls thereof , than for any places therein , who for martial prowesse were highly renowned , and descended from gospatrick earl of northumberland , whom after he had fled from william conquerer of england , malcom canmor , that is , with the great head , king of scotland entertained , enriched him with the castle of dunbar , and honoured with the earldom of merch ; whose posterity , besides other goodly and fair lands in scotland , held ( as appeareth plainly in an old inquisition ) the barony of bengelly in northumberland , that they should be inborow and utborow between england and scotland , what the meaning should be of these terms let others guess . in the reign of king james the first , george de dunbar earl of merch by authority of parliament , for his fathers rebellion lost the property and possession of the earldom of merch , and the seignorie of dunbar ; and when as he proved by good evidences and writings brought forth , that his father had been pardoned for that fault by the regents of the kingdom , he was answered again , that it was not in the regents power to pardon on offence against the state ; and that it was expresly provided by the laws , that children should undergo punishment for their fathers transgressions , to the end that being thus heirs to their fathers rashness , as they are to their goods and lands , they should not at any time in the haughty pride of their own power , plot any treason against prince or countrey . this title of earl of merch , among other honourable titles , was given afterward to alexander duke of albany , and by him forfeited ; and this title of honour was revived again in robert , the third brother of matthew earl of lennox , who being of a bishop of cathanes made earl of lennox , resigned up that title soon after unto his nephew , then created duke of lennox ; and he himself in lieu thereof received of the king the name and stile of the earl of merch ; which title was also brooked by charles , uncle to king james , and younger brother to henry lord darnley , afterward king. collonel john churchhil was created by king charles the second lord churchhil of eymouth , near berwick , who is now earl of marleburrow in england ; and sir patrick hume of polwarth baronet , was by their majesties created lord polwarth in the year 1691. chap. vii . lauden , or lothien . lothien , which is also called lauden , named in times past of the picts , pictland , shooteth out along from merch unto the scottish sea , or the forth , having many hills in it , and little wood ; but for fruitful corn-fields , for courtesie also and civility of manners , commended above all other countries of scotland ; which is divided in three shires , haddingtoun called east lothian , edinburgh called mid-lothian , and linlithgow called west-lothian . about the year of our salvation 873 , edgar king of england ( between whom and keneth the third , king of scotland , there was a great knot of alliance against the danes , ( common enemies to them both ) resigned up his right unto him in this lothian , as matthew the * flour-gatherer witnesseth : and to win his heart the more unto him , he gave unto him many mansions in the way , wherein both he and his successors , in their coming unto the kings of england , and in return homeward might be lodged : which unto the time of king henry the second continued in the hands of the kings of scotland . in this lothian , the first place that offereth it self to the view , to these coming from the mers , is dunbar , a passing strong castle in old time , and the seat of the earls of merch aforesaid , who thereupon were called earls of dunbar . a piece many a time won by the english , and as often recovered by the scots . but in the year 1567 , by authority of the states in parliament it was demolished , because it should not be a hold and place of refuge for rebels : but james king of great-britain conferred the title and honour of earl of dunbar upon sir george hume thesaurer , who is marked last earl , and after dumfermling in the decreet of ranking , march 5. 1606 , for his approved fidelity , whom he had created before baron hume of berwick , to him , his heirs and assigneys . afterward the same king did confer the dignity of viscount of dunbar upon an english gentleman of the name of constable , whose heirs in england doth presently enjoy that dignity ; this viscount is marked in the rolls of parliament 1621. hard by , tine a little river after it hath run a short course , falleth into the sea ; near unto the spring-head , whereof standeth yester , which hath his baron out of the family of the hays earls of erroll . john lord yester , was by king charles the first created earl of tweddale about the year 1646 : john now earl of tweddale his son , after he had enjoyed several honourable publick employments , was by their majesties constitute lord high chancellor of scotland . the lord hay of yester , is descended of the antient family of the hays of locherward , near borthwick , which raise to greatness by the marriage of three heiresses , viz. of frazer of oliver-castle , in tweddale , and the heiress of gifford of yester , & the heiress of cunninghame of belton , both in east lothian ; his chief residence is yester , which he hath extraordinarly improven & beautifyed by planting & inclosing . by the same riveret , some few miles higher , is seated hadingtoun or hadina , in a wide and broad plain : which town the english fortifyed with a deep and large ditch , with a mure or rampire also without , four-square , and with four bullworks at the corners , and with as many other at the inner-wall : and sir james wilford , an englishman valiantly defended it against dessie the frenchman , who with ten thousand french and dutch together fiercely assaulted it , until that by reason of the plague , which grew hot among the garrison soldiers , henry earl of rutland coming with a royal army , raised the siege , removed the french , & having laid the munitions level , conducted the english home . and king james the sixth about the year 1606 ranged sir john ramsey among the nobles of scotland , with title and honour of viscount haddingtoun , for his faithful valour , as whose right hand was the defender of prince and countrey , in that most wicked conspiracy of the gowries against the kings person . i shall choise this place to speak of sir thomas hamilton , whose last designation was earl of haddingtoun , and the more particularly , in respect he did pass through very many degrees in the session , and enjoyed many publick offices , and attained to great honour and riches , the first of november 1587 , in the books of sederunt of the lords of session , mr. thomas hamilton appear and heir of priestfield , was admitted an ordinar advocat , he was son to thomas hamilton of priestfield , afterward a lord of the session , descended of the hamiltons of inner , weick , one of the most antient and great cadets of the family of hamilton ; he was admitted lord of the session 1592 , under the designation of lord drumcairn , he is appointed one of the commissioners for the thesaurey and exchequer , commonly called octavians in the year 1595 ; and is admitted in february thereafter kings advocat ; the fifteen of may 1612 , under the designation of sir thomas hamilton of byers , is made clerk register : in the parliament 23 of october , the same year he is designed secretary in place of sir alexander hay formerly mentioned , who became in his place lord register . the fourteen of june 1616 , upon the death of president preston , he under the designation of lord binny , was admitted president of the session : in the rolls of parliament 1617 , he is designed lord binny , and before the lord carnagie ; in the rolls of parliament 1621 , he is designed earl of melross , which title he thereafter exchanged for earl of haddingtoun , he continued secretary and president till the year 1626 , & then was constitute lord privy seal and he & his successors in that office have had the same precedency , as the lord privy seal in england , which he enjoyed several years , his grand-childs grand-child is thomas earl of haddingtoun . within a little of haddingtoun standeth athelstanford , so called of athelstane , a chief leader of the english , slain there with his men about the year 815. but that he should be that warlike athelstane , which was king of the west-saxons , both the account of the times , and his own death do manifestly controll it . the sheriff ship of this shire , being at the kings disposal , is given to sir robert sinclar of stevinson baronet , and one of their majesties privy council , and a member of this present parliament for the shire . above the mouth of this tine , in the very bending of the shore , standeth tantallon castle ; from whence archibald douglas earl of angus , wrought james the fifth , king of scots , much teene and trouble . here by retiring back off the shores on both sides , is room made for a most noble arm of the sea , and the same well furnished with islands , which by reason of many rivers encountring it by the way , and the tides of the surging sea together , spreadeth exceeding broad : ptolomy calleth it boderia , tacitus bodotria , of the depth , as is thought ; the scots the forth , and firth , we edinburgh firth ; others the fresian sea , and the scotish sea , and the eulogium , morwiridh . patrick ruthven general to king charles the first his forces , was created by him in the year 1639 , first lord estrick , from the name of a rivolet , and in the year 1641 , earl of forth in scotland , and earl of branford in england ; there is none descended of him that claims the title . upon this river , after you be past tantallon , are seated , first * north-berwick , a famous place sometime for an house there , of religious virgins : and then dirltoun , which belonged in times past to the notable family of the halyburtons , and by them to the ruthvens , and by their forfeiture to sir thomas erskin captain of the english guard , whom james king of great-britain for his happy valour , in preserving him against the traiterous attempts of gowrie , first created baron of dirlton about the 1603 , being the next after the lord loudoun , and before kinloss , abercorn and balmerinoch : and afterward advanced him to the honourable title of viscount fenton , in the year 1606 , making him the first viscount that ever was in scotland , james maxwel of the bed-chamber , was created by king charles the first , earl of dirlton , who left no lawful issue male , but two daughters , the one married to william earl of lanerk , afterwards duke of hamilton , and at present his dignity is not claimed by any . a gentleman of the name of douglas was first created viscount of belhaven , a place near to dunbar , which honour being extinct , sir james hamilton was created lord belhaven by king charles the first , about the year 1648 , to whom succeeds john now lord belhaven . against these places there lyeth in the sea , not far from the shore , the island bass , which riseth up as it were all one craigy rock , and the same upright and steep on every side : yet hath it a block-house belonging to it , a fountain also and pastures ; but it is so hollowed with the waves working upon it , that it is almost pierced through : what a multitude of sea-fowles , and especially of those geese which they call scouts and soland-geese , flock hither at their times ( for by report , their number is such , that in a clear day they take away the suns light , ) what a sort of fishes they bring ( for as the speech goeth , a hundred garrison soldiers that here lay for defence of the place , fed upon no other meat but the fresh fish that they brought in , ) what a quantity of sticks and little twigs they get together for the building of their nests , so that by their means the inhabitants are abundantly provided of feuel for their fire ; what a mighty gain groweth by their feathen and oyl , the report thereof is so incredible that no man scartcely would believe it , but he that had seen it . the garrison of the bass having stood long out against their majesties before they surrendered about the beginning of may 1694. the fortifications were ordered to be slighted . then as the shore draweth back , seton sheweth it self , which seemeth to have taken that name of the situation by the sea-side , and to have imparted the same unto a right noble house of the setons , branched out of an english family , and from the daughter of king robert bruce : out of which the marquess of huntly , robert earl of wintoun , alexander earl of dumfermling , advanced to honours by king james the sixth , are propagated . george now earl of winton , is great grand child to the first earl , whose brother was alexander seton of vrquhart an extraordinar lord of session , and by the same designation admitted ordinary lord in february 1587-8 , in august 1591 created lord vrquhart , and in may 1593 on the death of president provan , admitted president of the session , and in the year 1595 , one of the octavians , in the year 1604 he was a commissioner for the union , by the designation of the lord fyvie , and in that parliament the earl of montrose chancellor being commissioner he did preside ; in march 1605 in the books of sederunt , alexander earl of dumfermling is made chancellor , and was afterward commissioner to the parliament , his designation was from a royal burgh in fife , formerly a famous abby , his son was charles earl of dumfermling lord privy seal to king charles the second , and his grand-child james earl of dumfermling is now forefault , also alexander seton uncle to george now earl of wintoun , was by king charles the first created viscount of kingston , whose son is now viscount . after this , the river eske in mid-lothian , which dischargeth it self into this firth , when it hath run by borthwick ( which hath barons surnamed according to that name , and those deriving their pedegree out of hungary ) by newbottle , that is , the new building , sometimes a fair monastrey , now the barony of sir mark ker ; by dalkeith now belonging to the dutchess of buckcleugh , and from whence her eldest son is designed earl , a very pleasant habitation of the late earls of morton ; and by musselburgh , hard under which in the year of our lord 1547 , when sir edward seymor duke of somerset , with an army royal had entred scotland , to claim and challenge the keeping of a covenant made , concerning a marriage between mary queen of scotland , and edward the sixth king of england , there hapned the heaviest day that ever fell , to the adventurous youth of the most noble families in all scotland , who there lost their lives , at pinky-cleugh . the dignity of the lord borthwick is not now claimed by any . mark commendator of newbottle an extraordinar lord of session anno 1569 , after his decease was succeeded by his son mark also commendator of newbottle in the same office in the year 1584 , at which time he was master of requests , which he enjoyed long after ; and obtained of king james the sixth the erection of that abbacy in a temporal lordship to him and his heirs , in october 1591 ; who was thereafter created earl of lothian , by the same king anno 1606 ; whose grandchild anna countess of lothian was married to william ker eldest son of ancrum , of the family of ferneherst ; he was by king charles the first created earl of lothian , of which marriage is descended robert now earl of lothian justice-general , with the precedency of his great grand-father , and was commissioner to the general assembly ; he is sheriff of the shire of edinburgh : the dignity of the earl of ancrum was conveyed to the younger brother , and the eldest son of this family is lord jedburhg , a peer as hath been said . near to this place was the seat of sir william cranston of that ilk , who was created lord cranston by king james the sixth , and is the last lord marked in the rolls of parliament 1612 , whose descendants enjoyes that title and dignity , and reside in teviotdale . as also the residence of sir james mcgill of cranston-riddel baronet , who being one of the lords of session , was created viscount of oxenford by king charles the second , whose son is robert now viscount of oxenford , his grand-father was mr. david mcgill of nisbet , advocat to king james the sixth , and one of the lords of session ; his grand uncle mr. james mcgill was clerk register to queen mary and king james the sixth , and one of the lords of session ; and his uncle mr. david mcgill of cranston-riddel , also a lord of session . upon the sea-side is the town of prestoun , from which sir richard graham had the title of viscount of prestoun conferred on him by king charles the second in the year 1681. in this shire of edinburgh is the castle of dalhousie , which belongeth to the antient family of the ramsays , who by king james the sixth was created lord ramsay , and is marked in the rolls of parliament 1621 after the lord carnagy , and by king charles the first anno 1633 , was made earl of dalhousie , whose granchilds grandchild is william earl of dalhousie , general major george ramsay is his uncle . near to edinburgh is the castle of marchistoun , which belonged to the napers ; sir archibald naper of marchistoun baronet , was thesaurer-deput to k. cha. the first , and an ordinar lord of session , who in the beginning of that reign was created lord naper , whose grandchild margaret lady naper doth succeed him , and hath a son to succeed her ; their residence now is near to dumblane . here is not to be passed over in silence this inscription , which . john naper , a learned man , predecessor to the lord naper , hath in his commentaries upon the apocalyps recorded to have been here digged up , and which the right learned knight sir peter young , teacher and trainer of king james the sixth in his youth , in this wise more truly copied forth . apollini granno q. lusius sabinianus * proc : aug : * v. s. s. lv. m. who this apollo granus might be , and whence he should have this name , not one to my knowledge , of our grave senate of antiquaries hitherto could ever tell : but if i might be allowed , from out of the lowest bench , to speak what i think , i would say that apollo granus amongst the romans , was the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , apollo with long hair amongst the greeks : for ifidor calleth the long hair of the gothes , grannos . lower yet , and near unto the scotish forth , is seated edinburgh , which the irish scots call dun edin , that is , the town edin , or edin hill , and which no doubt is the very same that ptolomy named 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , the winged castle : for adain in the british tongue signifieth a wing : and edinburgh ( a word compounded out of the british and saxon language ) is nothing else but the burgh with wings . from wings therefore we must fetch the reason of the name : and fetched it may be , if you think good , either from the companies of horsemen , which are called wings , or else from those wings in architecture , which the great master builders term petromata , that is , as vetruvius sheweth , two walls so rising up in height , as that they resemble a shew of wings : which , for that a certain city of cyprus wanted , it was called in old time ( as we read in the geographers ) aptera , that is , without wings . but if any man believe that the name was derived from ebrauk a britain , or from heth a pict , good leave have he for me , i will not confront them with this my conjecture . this city in regard of the high situation , of the wholsome air and plentiful soil , and many noblemens towred houses built round about it , watered also with clear springing fountains , reaching from east to west a mile out in length , and carrying half as much in bredth , is worthily counted the chief city of the whole kingdom , strongly walled , adorned with houses as well publick as privat , well peopled and frequented , by reason of the opportunity from the sea , which the neighbour haven at leith affordeth . and as it is the seat of the kings , so is it the oracle also , or closet of the laws , and the very palace of justice . for the high courts of parliament are here for the most part holden , for the enacting and repelling of laws : also the session , and the court of the kings judicators , and of the commissariat , whereof i have spoken already , are here settled and kept . on the east-side , hard unto the monastry of saint crosse , or holyruide , is the kings pallace , which king david the first built , and was burnt by oliver cromwel : king charles the second after his restauration , did raise there a fair and stately court and pallace , all of hewen stone . in anno 1633 , the city of edinburgh did to their great expense , build a stately hall for the meetings of the parliament , with other rooms adjoyning for the session , and above stairs for the privy council and exchequer , with a large closs or yard , to the south of st. giles-church , surrounded from the entry with that church , and other fair high buildings , all in hewen stone , and in the middle is raised a stately statue of king charles the second on horse-back in brass . and to the south-west , on a rising ground , is a curious and large hospital , built with the money left by george heriot gold-smith , which doth entertain above an hundred young boys , children of decayed burgesses . this city is well watered with five large fountains on the high and broad street thereof . in this city also , by king james the sixth an university was founded over which , within a large park , riseth an hill with two heads , called of arthur the britaine , arthurs chair . on the west side , a most steep rock , mounteth up aloft to a stately hight every way , save only where it looketh toward the city : on which is placed a castle , with many a tower in it , so strong that is counted impregnable , which the britains called castle myned agned , the scots , the maidens castle , and the virgins castle , of certain young maidens of the picts royal blood , who were kept there in old time , and which may seem in truth to have been that castrum alatum , or castle with a wing abovesaid . john bothwel commendator of holy-rud-house , who being one of these honourable persons who attended king james the sixth to england , in the year 1603 , was by him created a temporal lord of holy-rud-house in the year 1607 , which honour is now extinct , he was a lord of the session , as also was his father adam bishop of orkney , who excambed that bishoprick with robert stuart for the abbacie of holy-rud-house , and the heir of the one became earl of orkney , and the heir of the other lord holy-rud-house : in the institution of the colledge of justice , mr. richard and francis bothwels were nominated two of the lords of session . near to edinburgh , is brughtoun , which belonged to the family of the ballendens , and sir william ballenden being thesaurer deput to king charles the second , was by him made lord ballenden of brughtoun about the year 1661 , whose honour was conveyed to john ker now lord ballenden , uncle to the present earl of roxburgh , who carries the name and arms of ballenden : of this family , were sir john ballenden of auchinnoul , justice clerk , and one of the ordinar lords of session in the reign of queen mary and king james the sixth ; and sir lewis ballenden also of auchinnoul , justice clerk , and an ordinar lord of the session ; in the reign of king james the sixth , by cnarter under the great seal , sir john ballenden foresaid , had the heretable office of usher to the exchequer , which is transmitted to the lord ballenden , and is exerced by a deput named by him . fairfax an english gentlemen , was created lord cameron , who is in the rolls of parliament 1633 , his successor thomas lord fairfax is a member of the house of commons for the county of york in this current parliament . richardson an english gentleman , was created lord cramond . about the same time lord forrester of corstorphine was created by king charles the first anno 1633. george lord forrester of corstorphine is one of the commissioners for the holding of the parliament 1633 , and yet in the rolls of the same parliament , he is marked sir george forrester for the shire of edinburgh , so that he hath been nobilitat after he was chosen for the shire , and before the sitting of the parliment , his grand-child is william lord forrester . how edinburgh in the alternative fortune of wars was subject one while to the scots , and another while to the english , who inhabited this east part of scotland , until it became wholly under the scots dominion , about the year of our salvation 960 , what time the english empire sore shaken with the danish wars , lay as it were gasping and dying . how also , as an old book of the division of scotland , in the library of the right honourable lord burghly sometime high thesaurer of england , sheweth : whiles indulph reigned , the town of eden was voided and abandoned to the scots unto this present day , as what variable changes of reciprocal fortune it hath felt from time to time , the historiographers do relate , and out of them ye are to be informed . a mile from hence lyeth leith , a most commodious haven , hard upon the river leith , which when dessey the frenchman , for the security of edinburgh had fortified , by reason of many men repairing thither , within a short time from a mean village , it grew to be a big town . again , when francis the second king of france , had taken to wife mary the queen of scots , the frenchmen , who in hope and conceit had already devoured scotland , and began now to gape for england , in the year 1560 , sttengthned it with more fortifications . but elizabeth queen of england , solicited by the nobles of scotland that embraced the reformed religion to side with them , by her puissance and wisdom effected , that both they returned into france , and these their fortifications were laid level with the ground , and scotland ever since hath been freed from the french. as also , near this place is new-haven , from which an english gentleman of the name of cheney , ( being by k. charles the second anno 1681 , created viscount ) got the designation of viscount of new-haven . where this forth groweth more and more narrow , it had in the midst of it the city caer guidi , as bede noteth , which now may seem to be the island named inchkeith . whether this were that victoria which ptolomy mentioneth , i will not stand to prove ; although a man may believe , that the romans turned this guidh into victoria , as well as the isle guith or wight into victesies or vecta : truely seing both these islands be dissevered from the shore , the same reason of the name will hold in both languages . for ninius hath taught us , that guith in the british tongue betokeneth a separation . in west-lothian , the first remarkable place in the same forth , is the burgh of * queens-ferry , supposed to be called from saint margaret , queen to king malcom canmore , as the shortest and easiest passage over the river of forth to dumfermling , where she did much reside , and began to found that monastry . upon the same forth is situat abercorn , in bedes time a famous monastry , which by the gracious favour of king james the sixth gave unto james hamilton eldest son to claud hamilton , first commendator and then lord of pasley youngest son to the duke of chattelrault , the title of lord of pasley in renfrew , he is ranked after the lord torphichen , ●nd before the lord newbottle ; james his said son was created lord abercorn about the year 1603 , and is ranked after the lord kinloss , and before balmerinoch ; and in the year 1606 was created earl of abercorn , which title is enjoyed by hamilton lord straband an irish peer , descended of the first earls of abercorn . and fast beside it standeth blackness castle , and beneath it southward , the anctient city lindum , whereof ptolomy maketh mention , which the better learned as yet call linlithgow , commonly lithgow , beautified and set out with a very fair house of the kings , a goodly church , and a fishful lake ; of which lake it may seem to have assumed that name : for lin , in the british tongue soundeth as much as a lake . a sheriff it had in times past by inheritance out of the family of the hamiltons of peyle ; and now in our days it hath for the first earl , sir alexander livingston , whom king james the sixth raised from the dignity of a baron , wherein his ancestors had flourished a long time , to the honour of an earl. in the same shire is situat livingstoun , the peyle of livingstoun , which was burnt by oliver cromwell , and did antiently belong to the family of livingston , who from the seat and sirname were first designed lairds of livingstoun : and afterward callender of that ilk being forfaulted for adhering to the baliol. a daughter of that family was married to livingstoun , who by right of blood , and grant from king robert the bruce , obtained the lands and barony of callender , whose successor sir alexander livingston of callender was great counsellor to king james the first , and by him appointed governour to king james the second ; himself or his heir was created lord livingstoun : alexander lord livingstoun about the year 1603 , was by king james the sixth created earl of linlithgow , and was one of the commissioners for the union 1604. george earl of linlithgow , great grand child to the first earl , doth presently enjoy the dignity , and is one of the commissioners of the thesaury . near to livingstoun is the castle of calder , which antiently belonged to the family of sandilands ; in the reign of queen mary 1563 , sir james sandilands being preceptor of torphichen , and lord of st. john , was created lord torphichen , whose successor walter lord torphichen doth enjoy the title . the sheriffdom of linlithgow being annexed to the barony of abercorn , it doth belong to charles hope of hoptoun , who doth inherit the barony and sheriffship . chap. viii . selgovae . beneath the gadeni , toward the south and west , where now are the small territories of liddesdale , eusdale , eskdale , annandale , and nidesdale , so called of little rivers running through them , which all lose themselves in solway firth , dwelt in antient times the selgovae ; the reliques of whose name seemed to the author to remain in that name solway . in lidesdale there riseth aloft armitage , so called , because it was in times past dedicated to a solitary life ; of old a very strong castle , which belonged to the hepburns , who draw their original from a certain englishman a prisoner , whom the earl of merch , for delivering him out of a danger , greatly enriched . these were earls of bothwell in clydsdale , and a long time by the right of inheritance admirals of scotland : but by a sister of james earl of bothwell , the last of the hepburns , married unto john prior of coldinghame , base son to king james the fifth ( who begat many bastards ) the title & inheritance both came unto his son now extinct . hard by is branksholm , the habitation of the warlike family of buckcleugh , surnamed scot ; of whom already in teviotdale , or the shire of roxburgh , where branksholm is situat ▪ beside many little piles or forts of military men every where . in eusdale , one would deem by the affinity of the name , that old vzellum , mentioned by ptolomy , stood by the river euse. in eskdale some are of opinion that the horesti dwelt , into whose borders julius agricola , when he had subdued the britains inhabiting this tract , brought the roman army : especially if we read horesci insteed of horesti . for ar-esc in the british tongue betokeneth a place by the river eske . the author hath disjoyned this chapter too far from the description of teviotdale , but gives an entry to treat of annandale . chap. ix . annandale . unto this on the west side adjoyneth annandale , that is , the vale by the river annan ; into which the access by land is very difficult . the places of greater note herein are these ; a castle and town by lough-maban , three parts whereof are environed with water , and strongly walled , and the town annan at the very mouth almost of the river annan : which lost all the glory and beauty it had by the english war , in the reign of edward the sixth . in this territory , the johnstons are men of greatest name ; a kindred even bred to war : between whom and the maxwels there hath been professed an open enmity over long , even to deadly feud and blood-shed : which maxwels by right from their ancestors , had the rule of this seneschalsie or stewartrie , for so it is accounted . this vale edgar king of scots , after he was restored to his kingdom by auxiliary forces out of england , gave in consideration and reward of good service , unto robert bruse or brus lord of cliveland in york-shire ; who with the good favour of the king bestowed it upon robert his younger son , when himself would not serve the king of scots in his wars . from him flowered the bruses lords of annandale , of whom robert brus married isobel the daughter of william king of scots by the daughter of robert avenal : his son likewise , robert the third of that name , wedded the daughter of david earl of huntington and of garioch : whose son robert surnamed the noble , when the issue of alexander the third king of scots failed , challenged in his mothers right the kingdom of scotland , before edward the first king of england , ( as the direct and superiour lord of the kingdom of scotland , ( so the english give it out ) or , an honourable arbitrator ( for so say the scots ) as being nearer in proximity , in degree and bloud , to king alexander the third and margaret daughter to the king of norway , although he was the son by a second sister , who soon after resigning up his own right , granted and gave over to his son robert brus , earl of carrick , to his heirs ( the author alledges this out of the very original ) all the right and claim which he had or might have to the kingdom of scotland . but the action and suit went with john balliol , who sued for his right , as descended of the eldest sister , although in a degree farther off : and sentence was given in these words . for that the person more remote in the second degree , descending in the first line , is to be preferred before a nearer in a second line , in the succession of an inheritance that cannot be parted . howbeit the said robert , son to the earl of carrick , by his own vertue , at length recovered the kingdom unto himself , and established it to his posterity . a prince , who as he flourished notably , in regard of the glorious ornaments of his noble acts , so he triumphed as happily with invincible fortitude & courage , over fortune that so often crossed him . sir richard murray of cock-pool baronet was first created viscount of annan , & is so designed in the year 1623 , and thereafter in the 1624 , was by king james the sixth created earl of annandale . the laird of johnstoun was created lord johnstoun by king charles the first , anno 1633 , and by the same king made earl of hartfield , and so designed in the rescinded parliament 1644 : and by king charles the second after the restauration , the title of earl of hartfield was changed into that of the earl of annandale , ( the dignity of annandale murray being extinct ) and william the present earl is a privy counsellor , and extraordinar lord of session , and now hereditary stewart of annandale . chap. x. nidisdale . close unto annandale on the west-side lyeth nidisdale , sufficiently furnished with corn-fields and pastures ; so named of the river nid , which in ptolomy is wrongly written nobius , for nodius or nidius : of which name there be other rivers in britain , full of shallow foords and muddy shelves , like as this nid is also . it springeth out of the lake logh-cure , by which flowrished corda , a town of the selgovae . he taketh his course first by sanquher a town and castle of the creightons , who a long time kept a great port , as enjoying the dignity of the barons of sanquher , and the authority besides of hereditary sheriffs of nidisdale . afterwards by king james the sixth , anno 1622 , was created william viscount of air , and by k. cbarles the first anno 1633 , earl of dumfreis , whose great grand-child is penelope countess of dumfreis . then by morton , which gave title of earl to some of the family of dowglas , out of which others of that sirname have their mansion and abiding at drumlanrig . the laird of drumlanrig was one of the commissioners to the parliament 1617 , for the shire of dumfreis , and being a baron of a great estate , was at his first promotion created viscount of drumlanrig , after the viscount of air , and is so ranked in the rolls of parliament 1633 , and in the same year was created earl ▪ of queensberry , whose grandchild william earl of queensberry was first created marquess , thereafter duke of queensberry by king charles the second , and was lord high thesaurer of scotland , and commissioner to the parliament anno 1685 , and did enjoy other great offices and honours , ( the lordship of sanquhar and sheriff-ship of dumfreis , was purchased by the earl of queensberry from the earl of dumfreis , whose residence since hath been at leifnoris , near cumnock , a regality belonging to them in kingskyle in the shire of air : ) the duke of queensberries eldest son , is james earl of drumlanrig , who besides other offices enjoyed by him , is one of the commissioners of the thesaury ; and by a special commission did represent the lord high thesaurer in the last session of this current parliament . i cannot pass over in silence his uncle , james dowglas of scraling , second son to james the second earl of queensberry , who being an expert captain , and lieutenant general , was joyned with the duke of schomberg in the first expedition into ireland 1689 , where he continued that year and the next , until he went with the army into flanders in the year 1691 , where he died , leaving children by his wife anna hamilton , daughter to the laird of red-house , of the family of haddingtoun . also a natural son of the regent mortons , was created by king james the sixth lord tothorwald , it seems betwixt the year 1585 , at which time the natural children of the said earl were restored , and the year 1592 , tothorwald being ranked in the rolls of parliament 1612 , before the lord thirlestane , albeit omitted out of the decreet of ranking 1606 , his honours are now extinct , but many considerable persons are descended of him , his lands being purchased by the family of queensberry , is one of the titles of the present duke . by the same river , near unto the mouth whereof standeth dumfreis , between two hills , the most flourishing town of this tract ; which hath to shew also an old castle in it , famous for making of woollen clothes , and remarkable for the murder of john commin , the mightiest man for manred and retinew in all scotland ; whom robert brus , for fear he should fore-close his way to the kingdom , ran quite through with his sword in the church , & soon obtained his pardon from the pope , for committing that murder in a sacred place . near unto the mouth , is solway , a little village which retaineth still somewhat of the old name of selgovae : upon the very mouth , is situat caer-laverock , which ptolomy i suppose called carbantorigum , accounted an impregnable fort ; when king edward the first , accompanied with the floure of english nobility , besieged , and hardly won it : but now it is a weak dwelling-house of the barons of maxwel , who being men of an ancient and noble linage , were a long time wardens of these west marches , and of late advanced by marriage with the daughter of one of the heirs of the earl of morton ; whereby john lord maxwel was declared earl of morton upon the forfaulture of the regent morton , and is designed john earl of morton in the parliament 1581 , and the dowglasses being restored to the dignity of earl of morton in the parliament 1585 , the e. of angus , nephew to the regent , was first vested with that earldom ; thereafter it came to the laird of loch-leven , of which family was william e. of morton , thesaurer to k. ch. the first , and james now earl of morton , is his grandchild . the lord maxwel was created by king james the sixth earl of nithsdale , with the same precedency he would have had when created e. of morton , which dignity his successor william now e. of nithsdale doth enjoy : as also by the daughter and heir of lord hereis of taregles , whom j. a younger son of the family of maxwel took to wise , and obtained by her the title of baron hereis . the heirs of the eldest son of the earl of nithsdale failing in the reign of king charles the second , the lord hereis succeeded to be earl of nithsdale , and so the lesser dignity of hereis is swallowed up in the greater of the earl nithsdale , and is now in the person of the present earl. moreover , in this vale by the lake side lyeth glencairn , whence the cunninghams , of whom i am to write more in place convenient , bare a long time the title of earl. this nithsdale , together with annandale , nourisheth a war-like kind of men , who have been infamous for robberies and depredations ; for they dwell upon solway frith , a foordable arm of the sea at low-waters , through which they made many times out-rodes into england for to fetch in booties , and in which the inhabitants thereabout on both sides with pleasant pastime and delightful sight on horse-back with spears hunt salmons , whereof there is abundance . what manner of cattel-stealers these be , that inhabite these vales in the marches of both kingdoms , john lesly , bishop of ross , will tell you in these words . they go forth in the night by troops out of their own borders , through desart by-ways , and many winding crankies . all the day time they refresh their horses , and recreat their own strength in lurking places appointed before hand , until they be come thither at length , in the dark night where they would be . when they have laid hold of a bootie , back again they return home likewise by night , through blind ways only , and fetching many a compasse about ; the more skillful any leader or guide is , to pass through those wild desarts , crooked turnings , and steep down-falls , in the thickest mists and deepest darkness , he is held in greater reputation , as one of an excellent wit : and so crafty and wily these are , that seldom or never they forgo their booty , and suffer it to be taken out of their hands , unless it happen otherwhiles that they be caught by their adversaries following continually after , and tracting them directly by their footing , according as quick-senting slugh-hounds do lead them . but say they be taken , so fair spoken they are and eloquent , so many sugared words they have at will , sweetly to plead for them ▪ that they are able to move the judges and adversaries both , be they never so austere and severe , if not to mercy , yet to admiration , and some commiseration withal . chap. xi . novantes , galloway . from nithsdale as you go on west-ward , the novantes inhabited in the vales , all that tract which runneth out far and wide toward the west , between the sea and dunbritain frith , or clyd-forth : yet so indented and hollowed with nooks and creeks , that here and there it is drawn into a narrow room , and then again in the very utmost skirt it openeth and spreadeth it self abroad at more liberty : whereupon some have called it the chersonesus , that is , the biland of the novantes . but at this day their countrey containeth galloway , carrick , kyle , and cunninghame . galloway , in the latine writers of the middle time , gaelwallia and galovidia , so called of the irish , who in times past dwelt there , and term themselves short in their own language gael , is a countrey rising up every where with hills , that are better for feeding of cattel than bearing of corn : the inhabitants practise fishing , as well within the sea lying round about them , as in little rivers , and the loches or myres in every place standing full of water at the foot of the hills : out of which in september they take in weels and weer-nets , an incredible number of most sweet and savourie eels , whereby they make no less gain than others do by their little naggs , which for being well limmed , fast knit , and strongly made to endure travail , are most in request , and bought from hence . among these , the first place that offereth it self by the river dea , mentioned in ptolomy , which keeping the name still full and whole , they call d ee , is kirkcudbright , the most commodious port of this coast , and the second stwartrie of scotland , which belongs heretably to the earls of nithsdale . the family of mcclellan of bomby , was dignifyed by king charles the first , about the year 1633 , with the title of lord kirkcudbright , but at present no person claims that dignity ▪ then cardines , a fort set upon a craggie and high rock by the river fleet , and fenced with strong walls . near unto it the river ken , corruptly read in ptolomy jena , runneth into the sea. on this river standeth kenmore , from which alexander gordon , now viscount of kenmore is designed , whose predecessor was dignified with that title by king charles the first before the year 1633 , descended from an antient family of the gordons of stitchel near kelso , and lochinvar in this stewartrie : near to kenmore , is new-galloway a burgh royal. after it is wigton , an haven town with a narrow entrance unto it , between the two rivers , bluidnoo and crea , which also is counted a sheriffdom , over which sir andrew agnew of lochna● baronet , is heretable sheriff , and a member for that shire to this current parliament . in times past , it had for lord , archibald douglas , renowned in the french war , and by the favour of king james the sixth , john lord fleming of cummernald , who deriveth his pedegree from the antient earls of wigton , was created earl of wigton , whose posterity doth still enjoy that honour . near unto this , ptolomy placed the city leucopibia , which i know not , to say truth , where to seek . yet that place requireth that it should be that episcopal seat of ninian , which bede calleth candida casa , and the english and scots in the very same sense whithern : what say you then , if ptolomy after his manner translated that name in greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , white-houses ( in stead whereof the * transcribers have thrust upon us leucopibia ) which the brittains termed candida casa . in this place ninia or ninian the brittain , an holy man , the first that instructed the south-picts in christian faith , in the reign of the emperor theodosius the younger , had his seat , and built a church consecrated to the memory of saint martin , after a manner unusual among the brittains , as bede saith , who wrote that the english in his time held this countrey , and when the number of the faithful christians multiplied , an episcopal see was erected at this candida casa . a little higher there is a bi-land , having the sea insinuating it self on both sides with two bayes : the loch of lucé , on the south toward whit-hern , and loch-rian to the north , designed abravanus , which being set a little out of his own place , is so called of ptolomy , for aber-ruanus , that is , the mouth of ruan . for at this day that river is named rian , and the lake out of which it floweth , loch-rian , exceeding full of herrings & stone-fishes . on this lake standeth stranrawer , a burgh-royal ; the promontory or point by which it entereth into the sea , is called the point of corsehill stretching to cantyre , and on the other side is port-patrick , a known sea-port , opposite to donaghadee in ireland , & from thence running southward to the point of the mule. the land betwixt the two points of corsehill and the mule , is called the rinnes of galloway , perhaps , because the points run out narrow a great length into the sea , and are twenty four miles distant ▪ and to the south of lochrian is another bay , called the loch or bay of luce , running betwixt the points of the mule and whitehern , opposite to the isle of man , the neck of land interjected betwixt the lakes joining the rinnes to the main-land , is six mile broad , and near to the midst whereof in a little rising ground , standeth the castle of the inch among the lakes : on this bay is the vale or glen of luce , where there was an abbey founded by rolland lord of galloway , father to allan , confirmed by the king with a regality ; whereof the viscount of stair is hereditary baillie . this galloway had in times past princes and lords over it : of whom the first recorded in chronicles was fergus , in the reign of henry the first king of england , who gave for his arms , a lyon rampant arg , crowned , or , in a shield azur : who after many troubles that he had stirred , was driven to this exigent by king malcolm , that he gave his son vcthred to the king for an hostage , and himself weary of this world , took the habit of a chanon at holy-rud-house in edinburgh . as for vcthred , gilbert his younger brother took him prisoner in battel , and when he had cut out his tongue , and plucked his eyes forth of his head , he cruelly bereaved him both of life and inheritance . but within some few years , when gilbert was dead , vcthreds son recovered his fathers inheritance , who of a sister of william morvill constable of scotland , begat allan lord of galloway , and constable of scotland : this allan , by margaret the eldest daughter of david earl of huntingtoun , had dervolgilda wife to john balliol , and the mother of john balliol king of scotland , who contended with robert brus for the kingdom of scotland ; and by a former wife as it seemeth , he had helen , married to roger quincy earl of winchester , who thereby was constable of scotland , like as william ferrars of groby , the nephew of the said roger , by a daughter and one of the heirs : but these englishmen soon lost their inheritance in scotland , as also the dignity of constably , which the cummins earls of buchan , descended likewise from a daughter of roger quincy obtained , until it was translated unto the earls of errol . but the title of the lords of galloway fell afterward to the family of the dowglasses . and now the title of earl of galloway belongeth to the family of stuarts of garleis , an antient family of the name of stuart , which being first dignified by king james the sixth , about the year 1609 , with the title of lord of garleis , is marked in the rolls of parliament after the lord haly-rood-house , and before the lords cowper , maitherty , kintail , and cranstoun ; he was also created by the same king about the year 1622 , earl of galloway , and is ranked in the rolls of parliament , next after the earl of haddingtoun : and james now earl of galloway , is the fifth earl , and great grand-child of the first . chap. xii . carricta . carrick . now followeth carrick upon dumbritain frith , lying on the east-side of loch-rian opposite to the corse-hill fair to be seen with fresh pastures ; supplyed both by land and sea with commodities abundantly . in this province ptolomy placed rerigonium a creek , and rerigonium a town . for which berigonium is read in a very antient copy of ptolomy , printed at rome in the year 1480 , so that we cannot but verily think it was that which now is called bargeny . a lord it hath out of the family of the kennedies , which came forth of ireland in the reign of robert brus , and is in this tract of high birth , spread into many branches , and of great power . the chief of which linage is the earl of cassils ; for this is the name of a castle wherein he dwelleth by the river dun : upon the bank whereof he hath also another castle , named dunnure , his predecessor was first designed of dunnure , and being married to mary stuart , lawful daughter to king robert the third , whose successor was first created lord kennedy , and thereafter earl of cassils , and john now earl of cassils , is one of the commissioners of the thesaury . an ancient family of the kennedies , did possess the forementioned lands of bargeny , which were purchased from them by sir john hamilton , son to john marquess of hamilton , whose son sir john , was created lord bargeny , by king charles the first , anno 1639 , his grand-child is william lord bargeny . the earl of cassils is the hereditary bailiff of this countrey . for this carrick , together with kyle and cunninghame , are counted the three bailleries of scotland , because they that govern these with an ordinary power and jurisdiction , are called bailliffs , by a term that came up in the middle times , and among the greeks , sicilians , and french men , signifieth a conservator , or protector . but in the age aforegoing carrick had earls : for , to say nothing of gilbert of galloway's , son unto whom king of william gave all carrict to be possessed for ever , we read that adam of kilconcath , was about the year 1270. earl of carrick , and died serving in the holy-land : whose only daughter martha fell extremely in love with robert bruce , a beautiful young gentleman , as she saw him hunting , and thereupon made him her husband , advanced him with the title of earl , and with possessions : unto whom she bare robert bruce , that most renowned king of scots , from whom the royal line of the kings is descended . but the title of the earl of carrick being left for a time to the younger sons of the family of bruce , afterwards among other honours encreased the stile of the princes of scotland . the title of the lord kincleven in perth-shire was conferred by king james the sixth , anno 1607. and earl of carrick by king charles the first , upon john stuart brother to patrick stuart , last earl of orkney , descended of king james the fifth by a natural son , which is now extinct . chap. xiii . kyle . more inward , toward clyds-forth , followeth kyle , plentiful in all things , and as well inhabited : in bedes auctarium , it is called campus cyel , that is , the field cyel , and coil : where it is recorded , that eadbert king of northumberland annexed this with other territories , unto his own kingdom . in ptolomy's time , there was known a place here named vidogara , happily air , which is a sheriffdom , hath a town also of merchandise , and a well known port by a river of the same name . this country lyeth between the river of dune bordering carrick , and the river of irwine northward , bordering cunninghame ; and is divided in kings-kyle , under the jurisdiction of the sheriff , which lyeth betwixt dune on the south and west , and the rivers of air and lougar running into air on the north and east , including also the paroch of achinleck on the other side of lougar ; and kyle-stewart containing the rest of the country , northward to the river of irwine , which belonged anciently to the stuarts of scotland , since , to the prince , the kings eldest son. the wallaces lairds of craiggie , were heretable stuarts , but now both sheriffship and stewartry being at the kings disposal , are granted to one person ; which rivers hath many little villages scattered along their banks . upon lougar standeth vchiltrie , sometime the seat of the stuarts of the blood-royal , as who issued from the dukes of albanie , and were created lords of vchiltrie , which title is now failed , out of which house was that noble robert stuart , who kept continually with the prince of condie as an inseparable companion , and was slain in battle with him in france . near to this place to the westward , on the river air in kings-kyle is situat stair , the inheritance of sir james dalrymple , knight and barronet , who being learned ▪ in the laws , was admitted an ordinar lord of session , in the first nomination and settlement of the judicatory , by king charles the second , after his restauration anno 1661 , and president anno 1671. and being removed from that office in the year 1681 , was by their majesties , restored to be president of the session in the year 1689. and in anno 1690 , was created viscount of stair , whose eldest son john master of stair , also an eminent lawyer , after he had been honoured with several publick employments , was constitute one of the principal secretaries of state , anno 1691. in this country are the crawfords and campbels of cessnock , and others of these sirnames , all families of good note . the chief messuage of the stewartry of kyle , was dundonald , purchased by sir william cochran of cowdoun , who was by king charles the first , created lord cochran in the year 1648. and by king charles the second , appointed one of the commissioners to the thesaury , and by him created earl of dundonald about the year 1669. his great grand-child is william earl of dundonald . the government of this jurisdiction belonged anciently to the lairds of lowdoun , as hereditary sheriffs : who had many lands in kyle , albeit their chief residence was on the other side of the river of irwine at lowdoun in cunninghame , from which they wer designed . chap. xiv . cunninghame . cvnninghame adjoyning to kyle on the east-side and on the north , butteth upon the same firth so close , that it restraineth the breadth thereof , which hitherto lay out and spread at large . the name , if one interpret it , is as much as the kings habitation : by which a man may guess how commodious and pleasant it is . this territory is watered with irwine , that divideth it from kyle : at the spring-head , well near whereof , standeth lowdoun the ancient dwelling place of the crawfords , which by the marriage of sir duncan campbel of the family of lochaw , in argyle shire , with the heiress , the campbels did enjoy that estate , with the sheriff-ship of air , or kings kyle annexed to it , as said is . sir hugh campbel of lowdoun , sheriff of air , was by king james the sixth , about the year 1604 , created lord lowdoun , whose grand-child lady margaret campbel , being married to sir john campbel of lawers , had the title of earl of lowdoun from king charles the first , anno 1633. and was made lord chancellor anno 1641 , in which office he continued , until the year 1651 , earl james his son died in holland , and the grand-child is hugh now earl of lowdoun . king charles the first , did redeem the sheriff-ship from john earl of lowdoun , which together with the stuartry , is conferred by their majesties on sir george campbel of cessnock . the earls of lowdoun carries the arms of the crawfords ▪ quartered with their own . below lawdoun on the river irwine , lyeth kilmarnock ▪ the habitation of the lord boyds ; of whom in the reign of k. james 3d , robert , by a prosperous gale of court-favour , was advanced to the authority of regent or vice-roy , thomas his son , to the dignity of earl of arran , and marriage with the kings sister . but soon after , when the said gale came about , and blew contrary , they were judged enemies to the state : thomas also had his wife taken from him , and given unto james lord hamilton ; their goods were confiscate , fortune made a game of them , and when they had lost all , they died in exile : ( this is the received history , but the family of hamilton doth contravert many of the circumstances thereof . ) howbeit the posterity of the lord boyd , recovered the ancient honour of barons , and honourably enjoy it at this day . this family was dignified with the title of earl of kilmarnock by king charles the second , about the year 1661 , and william now earl of kilmarnock , is the third earl. at the mouth of this river standeth irwine , with an haven so barred up with shelves of sand , and so shallow withall , that it can bear none other vessels but small barks and boats. james , brother to the earl of argyle , was created lord kintyre , and then earl of irwine by king charles the first . the former dignity being extinct , arthur ingram an english man , was created viscount of irwine by king charles the second , about the year 1661. ardrossan also , a pile belonging to the montgomeries , more above standeth higher over the creek : this is a very ancient and famous family as any other , who have to shew for witness of their warlike prowesse , ioununy , a fort built with the ransome money of sir henry percie , sirnamed hot-spur , whom j. montgomerie with his own hand , took prisoner in the battle at otterburn , and led away captive . not far from ardrossan is largis , embrued with the blood of the norwegians by king alexander the third . from whence , as you follow the shore bending and giving in , you meet with eglington a fair castle , which was the possession of certain gentlemen highly descended of the same sirname : from whom it came by marriage unto the montgomeries , who thereby received the title of earls of eglington . of this ancient family of the montgomeries , is descended alexander now earl eglington , heretable baillie of cuninghame , and lord of the regality of kilwinning , formerly an abbacie . but whence the said sirname should come , a man can hardly tell : this i know , that out of normandy it came into england , and that divers families there , were of the same name : but that in essex , from which sir thomas montgomerie , knight of the order of the garter , descended , in the reign of edward the fourth , gave arms a little different from these . this noble linage is fair and far spread , and out of those of gevan , was that gabriel de lorges , called earl of montgomerie , captain of the guard of scots ( which charles the fifth king of france instituted for defence of his own person , and his successors , in testimony of their fidelity , and his love toward them ) who in running at tilt , slew henry the second , king of france , by occasion that a broken splint of his spear , where the helmet chanced to be open , entred at his eye , and pierced into his brain ; and afterwards in that civil war , wherein all france was in a broil , whiles he took part with the protestants , he was apprehended and beheaded . but the cunninghames in this tract , were counted to be the greater and more numerous family , the chief whereof , enjoying the honour of earl of glencairn in dumfreis-shire , dwelt at kilmaurs in cunninghame , and fetcheth his descent out of england , and from an english gentleman , who , together with others , killed thomas arch-bishop of canterbury , the chief of which family , was first created lord kilmaurs , and afterward earl of glencairn . john son to william earl of glencairn , late chancellor of scotland is now earl. how true this descent is , i know not ; but they ground it happily upon a probable conjecture , taken from an arch-bishops pall , which the cuninghames give in their coat of arms. chap. xv. isle glotta ; or , arran . within the sight of cunninghame , among sundry other islands , glotta , the isle mentioned by antonine the emperour , beareth up his head , in the very forth and salt-water of the river glotin , or cluyd , called at this day arran , of a castle bearing the same name . inwardly it mounteth up altogether with high rising hills , at the bottom and foot whereof , along the shore , it is well inhabited . the first earl hereof that i can read of , was thomas , eldest son to robert boyd , whose wife and earldom together , when boyd was banished the realm , james lord hamilton , as i said before , obtained , and his posterity enjoyed the same earldom , saving that sir james stuart , appointed guardian to james hamilton earl of arran , when he was so defective in understanding , that he could not manage his estate , took this title in the right of being guardian . near unto this standeth bute , so called of a little religious cell which brendanus founded ( for so is a little religious cell tearmed in the scottish tongue . ) in this island is rothsay town and castle , which giveth the title of dukedom unto the king of scots eldest son , who is born prince of scotland , duke of rothsay , and seneschal of scotland , since the time that king robert the third invested robert his eldest son duke of rothsay , the first in scotland that ever was created duke . with which title also queen mary honoured henry lord darnly before she took him to be her husband . then shew themselves hellan , sometimes called hellan leneow , that is , as iohn fordon interpreteth it , the saints islands , and helen tinoc , that is , the swines island , with a great number of other islands of less note and reckoning in the same forth . these islands are erected in a sheriffdom , and sir james stuart of bute descended of a son of king robert the second , is heretable sheriff thereof . chap. xvi . damnii , clydsdale , &c. beyond the novantes , more inward , by the river glotta or clyd , and farther still even to the very east-sea , dwelt in times past the damnii , in those countries , if i have any judgment ( for in things so far remote from our remembrance , and in so thick a mist of obscurity , who can speak of certainty ? ) which are now called clydsdale , the barony of renfrew , lennox , stirlingshire , monteith , and fife . near unto the head of clyde in crawford moor , among the wild wastes ; certain husband men of the countrey , after great store of violent rain , happened to find certain small pieces like scrapings of gold , which gave great hope of much riches , since that sir beamis bulmer undertook with great endeavour , to find out here a mine of gold ; near to which place , are the lead-mines belonging to the laird of hoptoun . the castle of crawford , together with the title of the earl of crawford , was by robert the second , king of scots , given unto sir james lindsey , who by a single combate performed with baron welles an english man , won high commendation for his valour . these lindseys have deserved passing well of their country , and are of ancient nobility , ever since that sir william lindsey married one of the heirs of william of lancaster , lord of kandale in england , whose neice in the third degree of lineal descent , was married unto the most honourable family of coucy in france . the dignity of the earl of crawford was conveyed to the lord lindsey , of whom hereafter . clyde , after he hath from his spring-head with much strugling , got out northward by baron somervels house , called carnwath , which being purchased by the family of dalziel , also residing in clyds-dale , was by king charles the first , created lord dalziel , who is ranked the last lord in the rolls of parliament 1633 , and thereafter , earl of carnwath , whose grand-child is john earl of carnwath . no person at present claims the dignity of lord somervel . the last lords marked in the rolls of parliament 1633 , are cranstoun , deskford , melvil , carnegy , ramsey , naper , cameron , newburgh , weyms , ashtoun of forfar , rae , dalziel . and thereafter out of the west , falleth in the river duglasse or douglasse , so called of a blackish or greenish water that it hath : which river communicateth his name both to the vale through which he runneth , called douglasdale , and also to douglasse castle therein : which name that castle likewise hath imparted unto the family of the dowglasses : which i assure you is very ancient , but most famous ever since that sir iames dowglas stuck very close at all times , as a most fast friend unto king robert bruce , and was ready always with singular courage , resolution , and wisdom , to assist him , claiming the kingdom in most troublesome and dangerous times : and whom the said king robert charged at his death , to carry his heart to jerusalem , that he might be discharged of his vow , made to go to the holy-land ; in memorial whereof , the dowglasses have inserted in their coat of arms , a mans heart : from which time , this family grew up to that power and greatness , and namely , after that king david the second , had created william , earl of dowglass , that they after a sort , awed the kings themselves ; for at one time well near , there were six earls of them , namely , of this dowglass , of angus , of ormund , of wigton , of murray , and of morton : among whom , the earl of wigton , through his martial prowesse and desert , obtained at the hands of charles the seventh , king of france , the title of duke of tourain , and left the same to six earls of dowglasse his heirs after him . the earl of dowglass being forefeited by king james the second , the earl of angus got the castle and countrey of dowglasse , whose heir william earl of angus , was created marquess of dowglasse by king charles the first , in the year 1633 , whose grand-child is james marquess of dowglass . concerning the lives and actions of this family , see the history written by godscroft . in this place of clyds-dale , is the seat of the lairds of carmichael . sir james carmichael baronet , was a lord of the session , and thesaurer depute to king charles the first : and by king charles the second when in scotland , created lord carmichael , whose grand-child is john lord carmichael : he hath been twice employed by their majesties , as commissioner to the general assembly , and is of the privy council . below the falling of dowglasse into clyde , is the town of lanerk , head burgh of the sheriffdom thereof , whereof the lords of hamilton are heretable sheriffs ; and eight miles below that , standeth the town and castle of hamilton , in a fruitful and pleasant soil , the lords whereof derive there original from england : they have enjoyed great lands in scotland , since the time of king robert bruce , and their estate was much augmented by the bounty of king iames the third , who bestowed upon the lord hamilton , his sister in marriage , after the death of the lord boyd her first husband , as is asserted by mr. john ballenden arch-dean of murray , translator in scots of the chronicle of hector boetius , who lived in the reign of king james the fifth , book 12. chap. 5. anent the genealogy of the stuarts , in these words , the first douchter of james the secound , was marryit to the lord boyd , of whom was gottin ane son , quhylk was slain be the lord of mongumry , and ane douchter gregane , quhylk was maryit efter on the erl of casselis : and efter the deith of the lord boyd , this douchter of james the secound , was maryit on the lord hammylton , and be that way the house of hammylton is decorit in the kyngs blude : and thereafter in parliament 1542 , james earl of arran , the grand-child of this marriage , was declared governour of the kingdom , during the nonage of queen mary : and in the year 1548 , was by henry the second king of france , created duke of castle-herald in france , and thereafter his son iohn , was by king james the sixth , created marquess of hamilton anno 1599 , and was the first that enjoyed that dignity in scotland ▪ his son james marquess of hamilton was commissioner for the king to the parliament 1621 , whose eldest son james marquess of hamilton , was created thereafter duke of hamilton ; his second son lord william hamilton was secretary to king charles the first , and created earl of lanerk in the year 1640 , from the head-burgh of the shire , who after the death of his brother duke james , was also duke of hamilton , the lives and actions of james and william dukes of hamilton , and castle-herald , are set forth in the memoirs written by dr. gilbert burnet , now bishop of salisburry ; william duke of hamilton as well as james duke of hamilton , having deceased without heirs-male of their own body , the dignity of hamilton and castle-herald did descend upon dutchess anna , eldest daughter to duke james , who married that noble and stately person william earl of selkirk , thereafter duke of hamilton formerly mentioned , who have that advantage above others , of many & excellent children , who already have appeared much in the world , viz. their eldest son james earl of arran , who after he had finished his travells abroad , resided at the court of england , and from king charles the second , and king james the seventh , enjoyed many honourable employments . the second lord william , of great hopes , dyed in france . upon his third son lord charles descended his dignity of earl of selkirk , as is said , who is one of the gentlemen of their majesties bed-chamber . the fourth son lord john , is general of their majesties mint , and married to lady anna kennedy daughter to john earl of cassils , by his most excellent and vertuous lady susanna , second daughter to james duke of hamilton . their fifth son lord george , collonel of that valiant and renowned regiment , ordinarly commanded by one of the family of dowglass , of which this lord is a grand-child . the sixth son lord basile , married to mrs. mary dumbar , heiress to sir david dumbar of baldone baronet in the shire of wigtoun her grand-father , by his son of the same name , married o lady helen montgomery daughter to hugh earl of eglington . the seventh lord archibald , is commander of the woolage , one of their majesties ships of war. their eldest daughter lady katharine , is married to john lord murray , eldest son to the marquess of atholl . the second is , susanna countess dowager , and mother of william earl of dundonald ; and lady margaret is married to james earl of panmure . the river glotta or clyde , runneth from hamiltoun by bothwel , which glorieth in the earls thereof , namely , john ramsey , whose greatness with king james the third , was excessive , but pernicious both to himself and the king : and the hepburns , of whom already . near to this place is blantyre , from which walter prior of blantyre , lord privy-seal , and afterward thesaurer , and one of the octavians to king james the sixth , and an extraordinar lord of session , was created lord blantyre , july 10. 1606 ; his descendant is alexander lord blantyre . this river runneth straight forward with a ready stream through glasgow , in ancient times past a bishops seat : but discontinued a great while , until that king william restored it up again : but now it is an arch-bishops see , and an university , which bishop turnbul , after he had in a pious and religious intent , built a colledge in the year 1454 , first founded . this glasgow is the most famous town of merchandise in this tract : for pleasant situation , apple-trees , and other like fruit-trees much commended , having also a very fair bridge supported with eight arches . near to it is rutherglen , a burgh royal , and head burgh of the nether-ward of clydsdale , as lanerk is of the whole shire , and specially of the upper-ward . lower on the bank of clyde , lyeth the barony of renfrew , anciently in the shire of lanerk , but by king robert the 3d. erected in a shire so called of the principle town , which may seem to be randvara in ptolomy , upon the river cart , which had the baron of cathcart dwelling upon it , carrying the same sirname , & of ancient nobility ▪ the present lord cathcart is called allan , his residence is now at sundrom in kings-kyle on the river of kylne , near where it falls into the river air. near unto cathcart ( for this little province can shew a goodly breed of nobility ) there bordereth cruikston , the seat in times past of the lords of darnley , from whom by right of marriage , it came to the earls of lennox , whence henry the father of king james the sixth , was called lord darnley . halkead , the habitation of the barons of ross , descended orginally from english blood , as who fetch their pedegree from that robert ross of wark , who long since left england , and came under the alledgeance of the king of scots , of whom is descended william lord ross. pasley , sometimes a famous monastery , founded by alexander the second of that name , high-steward of scotland , which for a gorgeous church , and rich furniture , was inferior to few : but by the beneficial favour of king james the sixth , it yielded both dwelling-place , and title of baron , to lord claud hamilton , a younger son of the duke of chasteu herald ; the eldest son of the earl of abercorn , is designed lord pasley , of whom already . and semple ; the lord whereof baron semple by ancient right , was sheriff of this barony . the lady heiress of semple being married to francis abercrombie of fiternier , he was by king charles the 2d , created lord glasford , and is father to the present lord semple . in this country of renfrew , is areskine , the seat of the ancient lords of areskine , now earls of marr. but the title of baron of renfrew , by a peculiar priviledge , since the reign of king robert the 3d. doth appertain unto the prince of scotland . the heretable sheriffs of this shire , are the earls of eglington . the author camden is not to be blamed , for asserting , that alexander the second , great stewart of scotland , founded the monastry of pasley , since it was generally related by the scottish historians : but because the errors in this matter are so many and gross , to the disadvantage of the great stewarts of scotland , progenitors to our kings , and that a wrong genealogy of them is printed , with our acts of parliament . i must be allowed to prevent the further course of that mistake , to digress a little beyond my ordinary in privat families , to give a true and brief account of that ancient , great and noble family of the stuarts , from undoubted records , charters and history . their barony was the shires of renfrew , and bute , and the stewartry of kyle . the first of that family , i find mentioned in charters and records , is walter , the son of allan dapifer regis , founder of the monastry of pasley , who in the register book of charters , of the abbacy of pasley , now in the custody of the earl of dundonald , proprietar of these lands , and where he hath his chief residence , is mentioned as the founder and son of allan , and particularly in a discharge granted by himself to the monks , of two chalders of meal , payable out of the miln , he is designed walter , the son of allan , and in a confirmation by pope alexander of the abbacy of pasley , to alexander stuart of scotland , he is designed heir by progress , to walter the founder . there are also charters extant , granted by this walter , designing himself the son of allan , and dapifer regis . the chronicles of melross and fordon , do design him walter the son of allan dapifer regis scotiae , qui fundavit pasletum , and that he died in the year 1177 , by the former , and 1178. by the latter , which was in the 12th or 13th year of the reign of king william . and frequently in king william's charters in the said register of pasley , allan dapifer is mentioned , and also in the foresaid confirmation by the pope , he is designed allan the son of walter the founder , he died in the year 1204. to him succeeded walter his son , designed senescallus scotiae . fordon relates , that king alexander the 2d , at the feast on his birth day , in the year 1231 , made walter the son of allan , stewart of scotland , justiciar of scotland . a manuscript of andreas wintonius , prior of the inch in lochlevin , who wrote in the time of the government of robert first duke of albany , and uncle to king james the first , dedicate to sir john weyms , predecessor to the earl of weyms , agrees with fordon , that at st. andrews , king alexander made allan's son , stewart of scotland , the kings justiciar . the manuscript contains many things useful to the history , and is in the hands of the reverend mr. james kirktoun , one of the ministers of edinburgh , a person well known in scottish antiquities . this walter is an ordinary witness in king alexander the second's charters , under the designation of senescallus & justitiarius scotia . and as the same winton mentions , walter , stewart and justiciar of scotland , was in the year 1238 , sent over to france , to bring mary daughter to ingeram de coucy , to be queen to king alexander . anno 1241. obiit walterus filius allani junioris . to walter succeeded his son alexander , stewart of scotland , frequently so designed in his own and other charters , recorded in the register of pasley . fordon mentions him to be killed in the battle of the largis in cunninghame , which he places in the year 1263 , chron. de melross 1262 , where the norwegians were defeated , and ever since banished from any possession of the isles : he is designed alexander stuart of dundonald , great grand-child to the first walter stuart , and grandfather of the noble walter , who married king bruce's daughter . beside the records of pasley , many of his charters are extant , and i have seen one by this alexander , confirming the donation which walter the father , gave to the church of st. andrews of bromholm , of 20 shilling yearly , to be taken out of the burgh of renfrew , with the seal entire , himself on horse-back on the one side , and the checker on the other for his arms , which the sirname of stuart do still bear . to him succeeded james , great stewart of scotland , his son who was one of the wardens of scotland , after the death of alexander the third , and one of these who treated with edward the first of england , in relation to the marriage betwixt the maid of norway , and king edward's son , and in the competition concerning the crown , betwixt bruce , baliol , and others . as also after baliol was defeated , & resigned the crown , he is amongst these whom prinns history , bears to have given allegiance to edward longshanks , and designed james seneschall de scoce saluz , &c. a little after 15 die maij apud rokesburgh , venit dominus ioannes quondam seneschallus , praedicti domini jacobi ` germanus , miles . and i have a charter of james stuart of scotland , designing himself son to alexander stuart of scotland , and confirming the charter formerly mentioned , granted by alexander stuart of scotland his father , and walter his grand-father , his seal appended , is also entire : he died in the year 1309. at the battle of falkirk 1298 , sir john stuart designed of bute , who contended with john cummine , for leading the van-guard of the army , was killed , it seems he was the same person who in the 1296 , in prinns history , is called frater germanus , domini jacobi , and in the absence or restraint of his elder brother the stewart of scotland , acted as stewart for him : this probably hath been the mistake , why our historians omitted iames stuart of scotland , predecessor and god-father to all the king iames's , and insert john stuart , to be father to walter stuart of scotland , who is well known to have been husband to marjory bruce the kings daughter , and by her , father to robert stuart , who in the absence of king david bruce his uncle , and in defence of his title against edward baliol , did many brave actions from the year 1335 , to the year 1338 , when he was chosen governour of the kingdom , which he freed from the english and baliol's claim , and restored it to king david bruce at his return from france : this king being afterward taken prisoner at the battle of durham , commonly placed in the year 1348 , was again governour , till the king returned from england in the 1359 , by the help of his two eldest sons , john then lord ▪ kyle , designed senescallus de kyle , afterward king , and robert , designed senescallus de monteith , afterward duke of albanie . maurice murray , lord of bothwel , and clydsdale and earl of strathern , being killed in the battle of durham , robert stuart of scotland was created earl of strathern ; at the same battle , john ranulph earl of murray being killed , the stewart of scotland , married his relict eupham ross , daughter to hugh earl of ross , as appears by a charter granted by robert , stewart of scotland , earl of strathern , and eupham his spouse , countess of murray , to john maxwel , predecessor to sir john maxwel of netherpollock , of certain lands within the earldom of strathern , which have of a long time , belonged to the lairds of glenagies : john hadden now of glenagies , hath the charter and lands , an ancient baron , nobly descended . there is a charter to the same person of the same lands , but then designed sir john maxwel , by david earl of strathern , who was eldest son of the second marriage , by the said countess eupham , and who got from his father the said robert , when he became king of scotland , the earldom of stathern , it being then usual to renew the investiture or infeftment , upon the change of the superior , as well as upon the change of the vassal : the charter is dated at edinburgh may 10. 1372. coram his testibus , nobilibus viris & potentibus , domino joanne , domini nostri , &c. regis scotiae primogenito , comite de carrick , & senescallo scotiae , roberto comite de fyfe , & monteith , fratribus nostris charissimis . king robert confirmed the 25 of april the third year of his reign the said charter , by his son david earl of strathern , whom he designed dilectus filius , and amongst the witnesses to the charter , is , joannes comes de carrick primogenitus , & robertus comes de fyfe & monteith , filius noster dilectus , this is a clear acknowledgment , both by the king the father , and by the earl of strathern himself , the eldest son of eupham ross , that the earls of carrick and monteith , were his elder brothers , but of this , sir george mackenzie hath already said very much , and more proofs do dayly occur , to rectifie this universal mistake of our historians , which , together with the description of that ancient family ▪ and the family of darnly and lennox , and other great branches descended thereof , deserve a particular treatise . i shall only repeat , that fordon in his chronicle lib. 14 pag. 73 , inserts a charter of confirmation of the popes bull , granted by king david bruce to the bishops , with the consent of robert earl of strathern his nephew , giving power to bishops , to dispose in testament upon their own moveables : in which charter , the witnesses are robertus senescallus comes de strathern , nepos noster , ioannes senescallus comes de carrict , filius suus primogenitus & haeres , &c. before all the other earls , which is an attestation of the grand-uncle king david , owning the earl of carrick to be his fathers eldest son in this matter of importance : and there are two declarations in parliament concerning the succession of the crown , whereof one of them is extant with the seals of the nobility , by robert earl of strathern after he was king , the one the first , and the other the third year of his reign , asserting the earl of carrick to be his eldest son , and to succeed him in the kingdom , for proving that this robert stuart the first king , was grandchild to james , stewart of scotland , there is a charter recorded in the publick register of charters , by the same king robert , the first year of his reign , to sir adam fullertoun , of the lands of fullertoun and others , confirming the charters granted by himself , when stewart of scotland , and by his grand-father james , stuart of scotland , to sir adam fullertoun : this sir adam fullertoun was predecessor to william fullertoun now of the ilk in kyle-stewart , of these lands . chap. xvii . lennox . along the other bank of clyde , above glasgow , runneth forth leviana , or lennox , northward , among a number of hills close couched one by another , having that name of the river levin , which ptolomy calleth lelanonius , and runneth into clyde out of loch-lomund , which spreadeth it self here under the mountains , twenty miles long and eight miles broad , passing well stored with variety of fish : but most especially with a peculiar fish that is to be found no where else , ( they call it pollac ) as also with islands , concerning which , many fables have been forged , and those rife among the common people . as touching an island here that floateth and waveth too and fro , i list not to make question thereof . for what should let , but that a lighter body , and spongeous withal in manner of a pumice-stone , may swime above the water ? and pliny writeth , how in the lake vadimon , there be islands full of grass , and covered over with rushes and reeds , that float up and down . but i leave it unto them that dwell nearer unto this place , and better know the nature of this lake , whether this old distichon of necham be true or not ditatur fluviis albania , saxea ligna dat lomund multa frigiditate potens . with rivers scotland is enrich'd , and lomund there a lake so cold of nature is , that sticks it quickly stones doth make . round about the edge of this lake there be fishers cottages , but nothing else memorable , unless it be kilmaronock , a proper fine house , sometimes of the earls of glencairn , ( which they had by the marriage with the heiress of dennistoun ) the east side of it , which hath a most pleasant prospect into the said lake . but at the confluence where levin emptieth it self out of the lake into clyde , standeth the old city called al-cluyd . bede noteth , that it signified ( in whose language i know not ) as much as the rock clyde . true it is , that ar-cluyd signifieth in the brittish tongue , upon clyde , or upon the rock ; and clyde in ancient english , sounded the same that a rock . the succeeding posterity called this place dunbritton , that is , the britans town , ( and corruptly by a certain transposition of letters , dubarton ) because the brittains held it longest against the scots , picts , and saxons ; for it is the strongest of all the castles in scotland by natural situation , towring up on a rough , craggy , and two-headed rock , at the very meeting of the rivers in a green plain . in one of the tops or heads abovesaid , there standeth up a lofty watch-tower , or keep : on the other , which is the lower , there are sundry strong bulwarks : between these two tops on the north side , it hath one only ascent , by which hardly one by one can pass up , and that with a labour by degrees or steps , cut out aslope traverse the rock : in stead of ditches on the west side , serveth the river levin ; on the south , clyde ; and on the east a boggy flat , which at every tide is wholly covered over with waters ; and on the north side , the very upright steepness of the place , is a most sufficient defence . certain remains of the brittains , presuming of the natural strength of this place , and their own man-hood , who , as gildas writeth , gat themselves a place of refuge in high mountains and hills , steep and naturally fenced , as it were with rampires and ditches , in most thick woods and forrests , in rocks also of the sea , stood out and defended themselves here , after the romans departure , for three hundred years , in the midst of their enemies . for in bedes time , as himself writeth , it was the best fortified city of the brittains . but in the year 756. eadbert king of northumberland , and oeng king of the picts , with their joint forces , enclosed it round about by siege , and brought it to such a desperate extremity , that it was rendred unto them by composition . of this place , the territory round about it , is called the sheriffdom of dunbarton , and hath had the earls of lennox this long time for their sheriffs , by birth-right and inheritance . as touching the earls of lennox themselves , to omit those of more ancient and obscure times , there was one duncan earl of lennox , in the reign of robert the third , who died , and left none but daughters behind him : of whom one was married to allan stuart , descended from robert , a younger son of walter the second of that name , high stewart of scotland , and brother likewise to alexander stuart the second , from whom the noblest and royal race of scotland hath been propagated . this sirname stuart was given unto that most noble family , in regard of the honourable office of the stewart-ship of the kingdom , as who had the charge of the kings revenues . the said allan had issue , john earl of lennox , and robert , captain of that company of scottish men at arms , which charles the sixth , king of france , first instituted , in lieu of some recompence unto the scottish nation , which by their valour had deserved passing well , of the kingdom of france ; who also by the same prince , for his vertues sake , was endowed with the seigniory of aubigny in auvergne . iohn had a son named matthew , earl of lennox , who wedded the daughter of james hamilton , by marion daughter to king james the second ; on whom he begat john earl of lennox : he taking arms to deliver king james the fifth , out of the hands of the dowglasses and the hamiltons , was slain by the earl of arran his uncle on the mothers side . this john was father to matthew earl of lennox , who having sustained sundry troubles in france and scotland , found fortune more friendly to him in england , through the favour of king henry the eight , considering that he bestowed upon him in marriage his neice , with fair lands . by the means of this happy marriage , were brought into the world henry and charles . henry , by mary queen of scots , had issue james the sixth , king of brittain , by the propitious grace of the eternal god born in a most auspicate and lucky hour , to knit and unite in one body of an empire , the whole island of brittain , divided as well in it self , as it was heretofore from the rest of the world , and to lay a most sure foundation of an everlasting security , for our heirs and the posterity . as for charles , he had issue one only daughter arbella , married to the earl of hertford in england , who above her sex , so embraced the studies of the best literature , that therein she profited and proceeded with singular commendation , and comparable with the excellent ladies of old time . when charles was dead , after that the earldom of lenox whereof he stood enfeoffed , was revoked by parliamentary authority , in the year of our lord 1579. and his uncle by the fathers side , robert bishop of caithness , had some while enjoyed this title ( in lieu whereof he received at the kings hands , the honour of the earl of march. ) king james the sixth conferred the honourable title of duke of lennox , upon esme stuart , son to iohn lord d' aubigny , younger brother to matthew aforesaid earl of lennox , which lodowick esme his son , after him did enjoy . for since the time of charles the sixth , there were of this line , lords of aubigny in france , the said robert before named , and bernard or eberdard under charles the eighth , and lewis the twelfth , who is commended with great praise unto posterity by p. jovius , for his noble acts most valourously exploited in the war of naples , a most firm and trusty companion of king henry the seventh , when he entered into england , who used for his emprese or devise , a lyon between buckles , with this motto , distantia jungit : for that by his means the kingdoms of france and of scotland , severed and dis-joined so far in distance , were by a straighter league of friendship conjoyned : likeas robert stuart , lord d' aubigny of the same race , who was marshal of france under king lewis the eleventh , for the same cause used the royal arms of france , with buckles or , in a border gules : which the earls and dukes of lennox have ever since born quarterly with the arms of stuart . the dukes of lennox were also heretably great chamberlains of scotland , and high-admirals , and had several regalities , and the baillerie of glasgow . the race of the earls and dukes of lennox aforesaid , being extinct , by the death of charles duke of lennox , and richmond , ambassador for king charles the second in denmark , about the year 1672 , his estate in scotland did fall to the king by succession , who bestowed it on his son charles , by the name of charles , lennos duke of lennox , about the year 1675 , who enjoyeth that honour . lord george dowglass , one of the younger sons of william marquess of dowglass , collonel of the scottish regiment , and mareschal of the camp in france , thereafter lieuetenant general in brittain , was by king charles the second , before the year 1677 , created earl of dunbarton , whose son doth enjoy that title . chap. xviii . stirling . upon lennox north-eastward , bordereth the territory of stirling , so named of the principle town therein : for fruitful soll , and numbers of gentlemen in it , second to no province of scotland . here is that narrow land or streight , by which dunbritton firth and edinburgh firth , piercing far into the land out of the west and east seas , are divided asunder , that they meet not one with the other . which thing julius , agricola , who marched hitherto and beyond , first observed ; and fortified this space between with garisons , so as all the part of brittain , on the east and south side was then in possession of the romans , and the enemies removed and driven as it were , into another island , in so much as tacitus judged right truly , there was no other bound or limit of brittain to be sought for . neither verily in the time ensuing , did either the valour of armies , or the glory of the roman name , which scarcely could be stayed , set out the marches of the empire in this part of the world farther , although with inrodes they other whiles molested and endamnaged them . but after this glorious expedition of agricola , when himself was called back , brittain , as saith tacitus , become for-let , neither was the possession kept still thus far : for the caledonian brittains drave the romans back as far as to the river tine : in so much as hadrian , who came into brittain in person about the fortieth year after , and reformed many things in it , went no further forward , but gave commandment that the god terminus , which was wont to give ground unto none , should retire backward out of this place , like as in the east on this side euphrates . hence it is that s. augustine wrot in this wise : god terminus , who gave not place to jupiter , yielded unto the will of hadrianus , yielded to the rashness of iulian , yielded to the necessity of jovian , in so much as hadrian had enough to do , for to make a wall of turff between the rivers tine and esk , well near an hundred miles southward on this side edinburgh firth . but antoninus pius who being adopted by hadrian , bare his name , stiled thereupon titus aelius hadrianus antoninus pius , under the conduct of lollius vrbicus , whom he had sent hither lieutenant , repelled the northern enemies back again beyond bodotria , or edinburgh firth , and that by raising another wall of turff , namely , besides that of hadrianus , as capitolinus writeth : which wall , that it was reared in this very place whereof i now speak , and not by severus ( as it is commonly thought ) i will produce no other witnesses , than two ancient inscriptions digged up here ; of which the one fastned in the wall of an house at calder , belonging to the laird of keir , chief of the sir-name of stirling : near to the place where the wall was built , sheweth how the second legion augusta , set up the wall for the space of three miles and more : the other , now in the house of the earl marshal at dunnotire , which implyeth , that a band of the twentieth legion victrix raised the wall three miles long . but see here the very inscriptions themselves , as servatius riheley a gentleman of silesia , who curiously travailled these countries , copied them out for the author camden . imp. caesari t. aelio hadriano antonino . aug . pio . p. p. vexillatio leg . xx. val. vic . f. per. mil. p. iii. imp. caes. tit. — io aelio hadriano anton . aug . pio . p. p. leg . ii. aug . per. m. p. iii. d. cix vis. at calder where this latter inscription is extant , there is another stone also erected by the second legion augusta , wherein within a lawrel garland , supported by two little images resembling victory , are these letters . leg . ii avg. fec . and in a village called miniabruch , out of a ministers house , there was removed this inscription into a gentlemans house , which is there new built out of the ground : d. m. c. juli . marcellini praef . * coh . i. hamior . but when the northern nations in the reign of commodus , having passed once over the wall , had made much waste and spoil in the country , the emperor severus repaired this wall of hadrian . howbeit afterwards the romans brought oft-times the country lying between under their subjection . for ninius hath recorded , that carausius under dioclesian , strengthened this wall another time , and fortified it with seven castles . lastly , the romans fenced this place ( when theodosius the younger was emperor ) under the conduct of gallio of ravenna . now , saith bede , they made a turff wall , rearing it not so much with stone as with turfs , ( as having no cunning artificer for so great a piece of work ) and the same to no use , between two firths or arms of the sea , for many miles in length : that where the fense of water was wanting , there by the help of a wall , they might defend there borders from the invasion of enemies : of which work , that is to say a very broad and high wall , a man may see to this day , most certain and evident remains . this wall began as is generally believed , at the river aven , that goeth into edinburgh firth , and having passed over the river of carron , reacheth unto dunbarton : but bede affirmeth , that it beginneth in a place called pen-vael , that is in the picts language , as much as the head of the wall ; in the brittains tongue pen-gual , in english penwalton , in scottish cevall : all which names no doubt are derived from vallum in latine : and he saith , that place is almost two miles from abercurvig or abercurving ; and it endeth as the common sort think , at kirk-patrick , the native soil as some write of saint patrick the irish-mens apostle ) near unto clyde , according to bede at al. cluid ; after ninius at the city pen aloloyt , which may seem all one . now this wall is commonly called grahams dyke ; either of graham a warlike scot , whose valour was especially seen when the breach was made through it , or else of the hill grampie , at the foot whereof it stood . the author of rota temporum calleth it the wall of aber. corneth , that is , of the mouth of the river corneth : where , in bedes time , there was a famous monasterie standing , as he hath recorded , upon english ground , but near unto that firth or arm of the sea , which in those days severed the lands of the english and the picts . hard by this wall of turff , what way as the river carron crosseth this sheriffdom of stirling , toward the left hand are seen two mounts cast up by mans hand , which they call duni-pacis that is , knolls of peace . near to this place is kilsyth , which belonged to an ancient cadet of the family of the livingstons , who in the year 1606 , was a lord of the session , and his successor was by king charles the second , in the year 1661 , created viscount of kilsyth , which dignity his son now enjoyeth : ( here the marquess of montross obtained a signal victory . ) and almost two miles lower , there is an ancient round building four and twenty cubits high , and thirteen broad , open in the top , framed of rough stone without lime , having the upper part of every stone so tenanted into the nether , as that the whole work still rising narrow by a mutual interlacing and clasping , upholdeth it self . some call this the temple of god terminus , others arthurs-oven , who father every stately and sumptuous thing upon arthur . others again , julius hoff , and suppose it to have been built by julius cesar. but i would think rather that julius agricola built it , who fortified this frontier part , were it not that ninius hath already informed us , that it was erected by carausius for a triumphal arch. for he , as ninius writeth , built upon the bank of carron , a round house of polished stone , erecting a triumphal arch in memorial of a victory : he re-edified also the wall , and strengthened it with seven castles . the mid space between duni-pacis and this building , on the right hand bank of carron , there is yet to be discerned a confused face of a little ancient city : where the vulgar people believeth there was sometimes a road for ships , who call it camelot , by a name that is rise in king arthurs book ; and they contend , but all in vain , to have it that camalodunum which tacitus mentioneth . but it would seem rather by the name of the river carron running underneath , to have been corta damniorum , which ptolomy mentioneth in this tract . and now take with you that which george buchanan that excellent poet , wrot of the limit of the roman empire at carron . roma securigeris praetendit maenia scotis , hic spe progressus posita , carronis ad undam terminus ausonii signat divertia regni . 'gainst warlike scots with axes armed , a mighty frontier wall the romans rais'd : and limit there , which terminus they call , near carron stream now past all hope more brittish ground to gain , marks out the roman empires end , whence they to turn were fain . in this territory of stirling on the east side , there sheweth it self castle callender , belonging to the barons of livingstoun , which with the lands of almond , were purchased by james , second son to alexander the first earl of linlithgow , who by king charles the first , was created lord almond , and then earl of callender in the year 1641 , he was lieutenant general to the parliaments army , his successor by entail is james , brother son to george now earl of linlithgow : mention hath been made of the earl of linlithgow in lithgow shire . the family of the barons f●●●ing dwelling hard by at cumbernald , which they received at the hands of king robert bruce , for their service valiantly and faithfully performed in defence of their country : whereby also they attained unto the hereditary honour to be chamberlanes of scotland : and the favour of king james the sixth , honoured this house with the title of earl of wigtoun . about the year 1606 , his predecessor had that title with the lordship of galloway , in the reign of king david bruce , which they resigned to the earl of dowglass , who , and his successors , amongst other titles , were designed earls of wigtoun , till the forefaulture in the reign of king james the second , and the dignity was vacant , till conferred by king james the sixth as said is : the heir of this family is iohn earl of wigtoun . in a place near adjoyning standeth elphingstoun , which likewise hath his barons , advanced to that dignity by king james the 4th . of whom is descended iohn now lord elphingstoun . and where forth , full of his windings & crooked cranks , runneth down with a rolling pace , and hath a bridge over him , standeth stirling , commonly called striviling , and stirling burgh ; where on the very brow of a steep rock , there is mounted on high , a passing strong castle of the kings , which king james the sixth beautified with new buildings , and where of a long time the lords of areskine earls of marr have been captains , unto whom the charge and tuition of the princes of scotland , during their minority , have been at other times committed . whereas some there be , that would have the good and lawful money of england , which is called sterling money , to take the name from hence , they are much deceived : for that denomination came from the germans , of their easterly dwelling termed by english men easterlings , whom king john of england first sent for , to reduce the silver to the due fineness and purity : and such monies in ancient writing are ever more found by the name of easterling . about two miles hence , the banock-burn runneth between exceeding high banks on both sides , and with a very swift stream in winter , toward the forth : a burn most famous for as glorious a victory as ever the scots had , what time as edward the second king of england , was put to flight , who was fain to make hard shift , and in great haste and fear , to take a boat and save his life : yea and the most puissant army which england had before sent out , was discomfited through the valiant prowess of king robert bruce , insomuch as for two years after , the english came not into the field against the scots . about stirling , ptolomy seemeth to place alauna , which is either near the little river alon , that here entreth into the forth ; or else by alloway , an house and ordinar residence of the areskins , who by inheritance are the sheriffs of all this territory without the burgh ; but have been of a long time earls of marr , from a country in aberdeen shire to be described after . the sheriffship of this shire belongs to the earls of callender . sir william alexander was the kings lieutenant in nova scotia , and had precedency of all those baronets : he succeeded sir archibald aitchison as secretary of state to king charles the first , and is so designed in the kings letter , anent the baronets november 17. 1629. amongst the commissioners for continuing the parliament august 4. 1631 , is william viscount of stirling , principal secretary , he was created earl of stirling anno 1633 , his heir doth reside in england . to conclude this chapter , take here a description of the principal seal of the burgh of stirling , which carries on the one side a bridge of seven arches , with a cross mounted on the the middle , and armed men on each side of the cross , with this inscription , hic armis bruti , scoti stant hic cruce tuti . and on the other side a large strong castle in a wood , with this motto , continet hoc in se nemus & castrum strivlingnense . which two inscriptions they give us in english thus , the brittains stand by force of arms , the scots are by this cross preserv'd from harms . the castle and the wood of stirling town , are in the compass of this seal set down . which agreeth well with what buchanan said , that the river carron was the boundary of the roman conquests , and stirling the limits of the brittains and scots . however it be , the seal and inscription must be very old , when special notice is taken of a wood at stirling , whereof there is but small remains ; and at this place , doth the river forth admit of a bridge , which is the secure passage betwixt the south and north of scotland . chap. xix . caledonia . whatsoever part of brittain lyeth northward beyond grahams dyke , or the wall of antoninus pius before named , and beareth out on both seas , is called by tacitus , caledonia , likeas the people thereof brittains inhabiting caledonia . ptolemy divideth them into many nations , as caledonii , epidii , vacomagi , &c. who were all of them afterward , for continuing their ancient manner and custom of painting their bodies , named by the romans and provincial people , picts : divided by ammianus marcellinus into two nations , the dicalidones and vecturiones : howbeit in the approved and best writers , they go all under the name of caledonians ; whom i would think to have been so called of kaled , a brittish word that signifieth hard , and in the plural number maketh kaledion , whence the word caledonii may be derived , that is to say , hard , rough , uncivil , and a wilder kind of people , such as the northern nations for the most part are ; who by reason of the rigorous cold of the air , are more rough and fierce , and for their abundance of blood , more bold and adventurous . moreover , beside the position of the climat , this is furthered by the nature and condition of the soil , which riseth up all throughout , with rough and rugged mountains ; and mountainers , verily all men know and confess to be hardy , stout , and strong . but whereas varro alledgeth out of pacuvius , that caledonia breedeth and nourisheth men of exceeding big bodies , i would understand the place rather of caledonia the region of epirus , than this of our ; although ours may also justly challenge unto it self this commendation . among this was the wood caledonia , termed by lucius florus , saltus caledonius , that is , the forrest of caledonia , spreading out a mighty way , and impassible by reason of tall trees standing so thick , divided also by gramp hill , now called granizbain , that is , the crooked bending mountain . that vlysses arrived in caledonia , ( saith solinus ) appeareth plainly by a votive altar , with an inscription in greek letters ; but i would judge it to have been rather erected to the honour of vlysses , than reared by vlysses himself . martial the poet likewise in this verse , maketh mention of caeledonian bears , nuda caledonio sic pectora praebuit urso . thus yielded he his naked breast , to bear of caledonian forrest . plutarch also hath written , that bears were brought out of brittain to rome , and had there in great admiration ; whereas notwithstanding brittain for these many ages past , hath bred none . what caledonian monster that should be , whereof claudian wrote thus , — caledonio velata britannia monstro , with monster caledonian brittain all attir'd to tell you truth , it is uncertain , that it nourished in times past , a number of white wild bulls , with thick mains in manner of lyons , ( but in these days few ) and those very cruel , fierce , and so hateful of mankind , that for a certain time they abhorred whatsoever they had either handled or breathed upon : yea , they utterly scorn the forcible strength of dogs ; albeit rome in times past , wondered at the fierceness of scottish dogs , that it was thought there , they were brought thither within iron grates and cages . but this term and name caledonii grew so rise with roman writers , that they used it for all brittain , and for all woods of brittain whatsoever . hereupon lucius florus writeth , that caesar followed the brittains unto the caledonian woods , and yet he never saw them in his life : hence also valerius flaccus writeth thus to vespasian the emperor , — caledonius postquam tua carbasa vexit oceanus : that is , the brittish ocean . hence likewise it is , that statius versified thus unto crispinus , son of vectius volanus proprietar of brittain , about the time of vitellius . quanta caledonios attollet gloria campos , cum tibi longavus referet trucis incola terrae ? hic suetus dare jura parens , hoc cespite turmas affari , ille dedit , cinxitque haec moenia fossâ : belligeris haec dona deis , haec tela dicavit , cernis adhuc titulos : hunc ipse vacantibus armis induit , hunc regi rapuit thoraca britanno . how much renowned shall the fields of caledonia be ? when as some old inhabitant of that fierce land to thee shall in these terms report and say ? behold , thy father oft was wont in judgment here to sit : upon this bank aloft to th'armed troups to speak ; also 't was he that wall'd this fort , that built thus strong , and it with ditch entrenched in this sort . by him to gods of war , these gifts and arms were consecrate , the titles ( lo ) are extant yet ; himself this brave brest-plate in time of battle did put on , this cuirace finally , in fight he pluckt by force of arms from king of brittainny . but in these , and in other things i may say , crescit in immensum facunda licentia vatum . poetical licence is boundless . for neither caesar , nor volanus so much as ever knew the caledonians . in plinies time as himself witnesseth , thirty years almost after claudius , the romans with all their warlike expeditions , had discovered no farther in brittain , than to the vicinity of the caledonian wood. for julius agricola under domitian , was the first that entered caledonia : whereof at that present , galgac was prince , ( who is named galauc ap liennauc in the book of * triplicites , among the three worthies of brittain ) a man of a mighty spirit and stout stomack : who having put to flight the ninth legion , in exceeding heat of courage , joyned battle with the romans , and most manfully defended his country so long , until fortune rather than his own valour , failed him : for then , as he saith , these northern brittains , beyond whom there was no land , and beside whom none were free , were the utmost nation verily of this island : like as catullus called the brittains the utmost of all the world , in that verse unto furius , caesaris visens monumenta magni , gallicum rhenum , horribiles & ultimosque britannos . great caesars monuments to see in his memorial , the rhene in gaul , and brittains grim , the farthest man of all . in the days of severus ▪ as we read in xiphilinus , argetecox a petty prince , reigned over this tract ; whose wife being rated and reviled as an adulteress by julia the empress , frankly and boldly made this answer : we brittain dames have to do with the bravest and best men , and you roman ladies with every lewd base companion secretly . the author camden is at great pains to perswade , that the walls were built betwixt the two firths of edinburgh and dunbartoun , and the actions in these places had by the romans , was against native brittains passing under different names by ptolomy , and other names by ammianus marcellinus , and the country by tacitus , called caledonia , and the people by the approved and best writers called caledonians , and in aftertimes by the romans and provincial brittains called picts . but he will by no means , allow the scots to be comprehended under these northern unconquered nations , who made opposition to the romans , and to pass under the name of the caledonians , and others as he owns the picts were : albeit there is the same authority to join the scots with the picts in these martial feats against the romans , from the latine authours themselves , and from gildas and bede the most ancient brittish and saxon writers , who join the scots and picts in these actions : and that the seas which the roman enemies were driven over , were the firths of edinburgh from the east , and of dunbartoun from the west , and not over the sea to ireland , which made some late writers imagine , against the express opinion of bede , that the scots during these times , were not setled inhabitants in brittain , but only as auxiliaries to the picts , made incursions from ireland which they inhabited , and were beat back over the seas to ireland . but in vindication of the ancient settlement of the scots in brittain , before the romans and saxons came to fix their residence in this island , and their early conversion to the christian religion : much hath been said in these books published by sir george mackenzie , in the year 1685 , in answer to the bishop of st. asaph and dr. stillingfleet , to which the reader is referred . there is also now in the press , the manuscript of the judicious and learned mr. thomas craig advocat , to justifie the soveraignty of the crown of scotland , and the independncy of its church from the see of york . chap. xx. fife . in this large country of the caledonians , beyond the territory of stirling before mentioned , are two countries or sheriffdoms of less note ; clackmannan , over which a knight sirnamed monteith of carsse ; and kinross , over which the earls of mortoun were sheriffs . the sheriffship of the first , viz. clackmannan , was purchased by bruce of clackmannan , and the lands and sheriff-ship of kinross , by sir william bruce . fife , a most goodly country , wedged as it were between the two arms of the sea , forth and tau , shooteth out far into the east . this land yieldeth plenty of corn and forrage , yea and of pit coals : the sea , besides other fishes , affordeth oysters and and shell-fish in great abundance , and the coasts are well bespread with pretty townlets , replenished with stout and lusty mariners . in the south side hereof by forth , first appeareth westward culross , which gave the title of a barony to sir i. colvil , created lord colvil of culross , about the year 1604 , and is the last in the decreet of ranking , except the lord scoon ; his father was a lord of the session and commendator of culross ; and king charles the second , when in scotland , created sir robert colvil of cleish , lord colvil , his successor is robert lord colvil . near to culross , to the north-west is kincardine , whereof edward bruce of carnock , was created earl by king charles the first , anno 1648 , his brother alexander succeeded him in his dignity , who was one of the commissioners of the thesaury to king charles the second , his son is alexander earl of kincardine , culross , and these places adjacent , albeit surrounded with fife and clackmannan , yet make a part of the shire of perth . then standeth dumfermling , a famous monastery in old time , both the building and burial place of king malcolm the third , which gave both name and honour of an earl unto sir alexander seton a most prudent counsellor , whom james king of great-brittain , worthily raised from baron of fivie , to be earl of dumfermling , and lord chancellor of the realm of scotland : of the succession of this earl , mention is made in the description of the family of seton in east lothian . then kinghorn standeth hard upon the forth , from which place sir patrick lyon baron glames , received at the bountiful hand of k. james the 6th , the title and honour of an earl , anno 1606. after this there is upon the shore dysert , situat on the rising of an hill , from whence there lyeth an open heath of the same name , where there is a good large place which they call the cole-plot , that hath great plenty of an earthy bitumen , and partly burneth to some damnage of the inhabitants . william murray of the bed-chamber of the family of tullibardine , was by king charles the first , created earl of dysert , whose daughter and heiress elizabeth , countess of dysert , is dutchess of lawderdale , by marriage with john late d. of lawderdale : and by a former marriage , her son sir leonald talmash l. huntingtour residing in england , is to succeed her as earl of dysert . her second son of that marriage , was thomas talmash , who attended his majesty in his expedition to brittain , in the year 1688 , who for his valour in the wars , and reduction of ireland , was advanced to be general major , and thereafter lieutenant general : which office he did worthily discharge in flanders , and in the summer 1694 , being chief commander in the attempt upon brest , was unfortunatly wounded , whereof he died after his landing in england . unto it adjoineth ravens-heugh , as one would say , the steep hill of ravens , the habitation of the barons sinclar , whose successor is henry lord sinclar . above it the river levin hideth himself in the forth : which river running out of the lake levin , wherein standeth the castle of the dowglasses , which belonged to the earls of mortoun . sir alexander lesly general of the scots forces , was by k. charles the 1st , created earl of levin anno 1641 , whose successor is david now earl of levin , second son to george earl of melvil , begotten on lady katherine leslie , grandchild and heiress to the said earl of levin : which river , hath at the very mouth of it weyms castle , the seat of a noble family , bearing the same sirname . the laird of weyms is in the rolls of parliament 1617 , one of the commissioners for the shire of fife ; he was thereafter made lord weyms , and in the parliament rolls 1633 , is ranked after the lord newburgh , and before ashtoun of forfar , and in the same year created earl of weyms , whose grandchild margaret now countess of weyms , was married to sir james weyms , who by k. charles the 2d . was made lord burntisland , from a burgh royal of the same shire , and hath a son lord elcho to succeed her in that dignity . from hence the shore draweth back with a crooked and wiuding tract unto fife-ness , that is , the promontory or nose of fife . above it saint andrews , an archiepiscopal city , hath a fair prospect into the open main sea : the more ancient name of the place as old memorials witness , was regimund , that is , saint regulus mount : in which we read thus , oeng or vng king of the picts , granted unto god and saint andrew , that it should be the chief and mother of all churches in the picts kingdom . afterward there was placed here an episcopal see , the bishops whereof like as all the rest within the kingdom of scotland , were consecrated by the arch-bishop of york , ( as is asserted by the english historians ) until at the intercession of king iames the third , by reason of so many wars between the scottish and english men . pope sixtus the fourth , ordained the bishop of saint andrews to be primat and metropolitan of all scotland ; and pope innocentius the eighth , bound him and his successors to the imitation and precedent of the metropolitan of canterbury , in these words : that in matters concerning the archiepiscopal state , they should observe and firmly hold the offices , droits , and rights of primacy , and such like legacy ; and the free exercise thereof , the honours , charges , and profits : and that they should endeavour to perform inviolably the laudable customes of the famous metropolitan church of canterbury , the arch-bishop wherewhereof is legatus natus of the kingdom of england , &c. howbeit before that , laurence lundoris and richard corvel ▪ doctors of the civil law , publickly professed here good literature , laid the foundation of an university : which now , for happy increase of learned men , for three colledges and the kings professors in them , is become highly renowned . hard by there loseth it self into the sea edan , or ethan , a little river which springeth up near falkland ( a place from which carry an english man , had the designation of viscount from king james the sixth , and is so marked in the rolls of parliament 1621 ; his successor is anthony viscount of falkland , a member of the house of commons in the current english parliament , ) it belonged anciently to the earls of fife , and was a retiring place of the kings , when residing in scotland , and is very well seated for hunting pleasures , and disports ; sometimes it was reckoned amongst the burghs royal , and is the seat of the stewartry of fife ; this river hath its course under a continued ridge of hills , which divide this country in the midst , by struthers ( a place so called of a reed plot ) a castle of the barons lindsey of whom is descended iohn lord lindsey , created by king charles the first , anno 1633 , earl of lindsey . and in anno 1641 , was lord high thesaurer , and after the forfaulture of lodowick earl of crawford , and by vertue of a former entail , the honour , dignity and precedency of the earl of crawford , was declared in parliament to belong to him and his successors , and since ratified in parliament anno 1661 ; he was by king charles the second , restored to be thesaurer , from which office he had been removed in the year 1649 : his son william now earl of crawford , was president of the parliament 1689 , and 1690 , and one of the commissioners of the thesaury : the secondary title belonging to his eldest son , is lord lindsey . eden also runneth by cowper a notable burgh , where the sheriff sitteth to minister justice . now where the shore turneth inward a front northward , hard by the salt water of tau , there flourished in old time two goodly abbeys , balmerinoch , built by queen ermengard , wife to king william , daughter of viscount beaumont in france . king james of great brittain , advanced sir james elphingston of barntoun , to the honour of baron balmerinoch , about the year 1604 , being mentioned in that parliament , one of the commissioners for the union with england : he is placed in the decreet of ranking , after the l. abercorn , and before the l. tullibardine ; he was a lord of the session , & secretary & thereafter succeeded to the l. fyvie to be president of the session , anno 1605 , whose grand-child is john l. balmerinoch . the other abbey is that of lindoris , founded among the woods by david e. of huntingtoun , & is the barony of sir patrick lesly created l. lindoris about the year 1604 , and placed in the decreet of ranking immediatly after the lord roxburgh , and before the lord lowdoun , his successor is iohn lord lindoris . between which standeth banbrich , the habitation of the earl of rothes , strongly built castle-wise . near to these places on the confines toward perth-shire , is balvaird , which belongs to the murrays , ancient cadets of the lairds of tullihardine : their successor was created l. balvaird by k. charles the 1st . after the year 1641 , his grand-child hath succeeded to the dignity of lord scoon , and viscount stormonth by entail , sir david murray the first lord and viscount , being a younger brother of the laird of balvaird . the governour of this province , like as of all the rest in this kingdom , was in times past a thane , that is in the old english tongue , the kings minister : as it is also at this day in the danish language : but malcolm canmore made macduff who before was thane of fife , the first hereditary earl of fife ; and in consideration of his good desert and singular service done unto him , granted that his posterity should have the honour to place the king , when he is to be crowned in his chair , and to lead the vant-guard in his army ; and if any of them should happen by casualty to kill either gentleman or commoner , to buy it out with a piece of money . not far from lindoris , there is to be seen a cross of stone , which standing for a limit between fife and strathern , had an inscription of barbarous verses , and a certain priviledge of sanctuary , that any manslayer allied to macduff earl of fife , within the ninth degree , if he came unto this cross , and gave nine kine with an * heifer , should be quit of manslaughter . when his posterity lost this title and priviledge , is uncertain ; but it appeareth , that king david the second , gave unto william ramsey this earldom , with all and every the immunities and law , which is called clan-mac-duff : and received it is for certain , that the linage of the weymesses and dowglasses , yea and that great kindred clan-hatan , the chief whereof is mac-intoshech , descended from them . and the most learned sir john skeen of currie-hill clerk of register , in his treatise de verborum significatione , informs , that by an indenture at perth the penult day of march 1371 , betwixt robert stuart earl of monteith , and dame isabel countess of fife , daughter and heir to duncan earl of fife . the countess is obliged to resign her earldom in the kings hands , in favours of the said earl for new heretable infestment thereof to be given to him ; which earl being afterwards designed of fife and monteith , was thereafter duke of albany , and affecting the kingdom , with cruel ambition , caused david the kings eldest son to be most pitifully famished to death , which is the highest extremity of all misery . but his son murdac suffered due punishment for the wickedness both of his father , and his own sons , being put to death by king james the first for their violent oppressions , and a decree passed , that the earldom of fife should be united unto the crown for ever . but the authority of the sheriff of fife belongeth in right of inheritance , to the earl of rothes , the heir of which family , was iohn earl of rothes : who after he was high commissioner for king charles the second to the parliament , and conventions of estates , and enjoyed several other honourable and profitable employments , was made chancellor anno 1668 , in which office he continued till his death , in anno 1681 , and was shortly before created duke of rothes : which dignity is extinct , by default of heirs male of his body , but his eldest daughter margaret countess of rothes , being married to charles earl of haddingtoun , hath iohn lord leslie , who is to succeed in the dignity of the earl of rothes , and thomas who hath succeeded his father in the dignity of the earl of hadingtoun . since printing of the former edition , several lords were created in this shire , some whereof have already been mentioned , and also others to be mentioned , viz. sir michael balfour of balgarvie by k. james the 6th , created l. burghlie july 16 , 1607 , whose successor is john lord burghlie . and by the same king , sir robert melvil , first of murdocairny , and thereafter of burntisland , who had been thesaurer deput , and thesaurer , before the year 1592 , and an extraordinar lord of session anno 1594 , was created lord melvil about the year 1617 , to whom succeeded robert his son : he is ranked in the parliament 1633 , after the lord deskford and before carnegie , and is amongst the commissioners for holding that parliament , who had been admitted an extraordinar lord of session upon the dimission of his father , and then by entail , the honour fell to the laird of raith , descended of the eldest brother , and the only male representative of the ancient family of the melvils : george lord melvil his son , is the 4th . lord , who was sole secretar of state to , and created by their majesties earl of melvil , lord high commissioner to the second and third sessions of this current parliament 1690 , and now lord privy seal : his son alexander lord raith , was constitute thesaurer deput anno 1689. mr. john lindsey of belcarras , was a lord of the session , and one of the octavians of the thesaury , & secretary before k. ja. his succession to the crown of england : his grand-child alexander about the year 1633 , was created lord belcarras by king charles the first , and afterward earl of belcarras by king charles the second when in scotland : his son is colin earl of belcarras . the viscount fentoun , of whom before , was created by king james the sixth about the year 1617 , earl of kelly , and is in the rolls of parliament 1621 , next after the earl of roxburgh , and before buckcleugh , whose successor is alexander earl of kelly . sir john living stoun of kinnaird baronet , was by k. charles the first , made lord newburgh , and earl of newburgh by king charles the second , whose male successor is deceased lately in england , without issue male. sandilands laird of st. minnans , was by king charles the first , advanced to the title of l. abercromby , in the year 1648 , whose honour is not now claimed by any . lieutenant general david lesly , son to the lord lindoris , was created by king charles the second , lord new-warkî he had been lieutenant general to the scots army , and at philiphaugh , surprised and defeat the marquess of montross : he was general of the army at dumbar and worcester : his son being deceased without heirs male , the grand . child is married to mr. alexander anstruther , a younger son of sir philip anstruther of that ilk. beside the burghs royal mentioned in this shire , there are also others , viz. innerkeithing , kirkaldy , anstruther easter , and wester , pitttenweem , crail and kilrenny , all lying on forth from the west to the east . chap. xxi . strathern . as far as to the river tau , which boundeth fife on the north-side , julius agricola , the best proprietar of brittain under domitian the worst emperour , marched with victorious armies in the third year of his warlike expeditions , having wasted and spoiled the nations hitherto . near the out-let of tau , the notable river ern intermingleth his waters with tau : which river beginning out of a lake or loch of the same name , bestoweth his own name upon the country through which he runneth , for it is called strathern , which in the ancient tongue of the brittains , signifieth the vale along ern. the bank of this ern is beautified with drymein castle , belonging to the family of the barons of drummond , advanced to highest honours , ever since that king robert stewart the third ; took to him a wife out of that linage : for the women of this race , have for their singular beauty , and well favoured sweet countenance , won the prize from all others , insomuch as they have been the kings most amiable paramours . baron drummonds successor was created by king james the sixth , earl of perth about the year 1605 , and so designed from the head burgh of the shire : of whom is descended james now earl of perth : his great grand-child , who was an extraordinar lord of the session , justice general , and chancellor to k. ch. the 2d . & k. ja. the 7th . james a son of this family , was created by k. ia. the 6th . lord maderty , and is in the rolls of parliament 1617 , after the lord garlies , and before the lord kintail , whose successors second son l. general william drummond , was by king james the seventh , about the year 1686 , created viscount of strathallan , to whom his son william now viscount of strathallan succeeded , and also is heir to his uncle the lord maderty . upon the same bank , tullibardine castle sheweth it self aloft , but with greater jollity , since that by the propitious favour of king james the sixth , sir john murray created baron of tullibardine , before the lords colvil and scoon , was raised to the honour and estate of earl of tullibardine anno 1606. by an unprinted act anno 1612 , there is a ratification to the master of tullibardine of the lands of the earldom of athol , who was the earl of tullibardines eldest son , ( earls eldest sons at that time , being designed masters and not lords ; ) this master , afterward william earl of tullibardine , having married the heiress of stuart earl of athol , his son john succeeded to the dignity of earl of athol , and his uncle sir patrick murray by resignation , became earl of tullibardine , whose son james earl of tullibardine dying without issue , his estate and dignity fell to his cousin iohn earl of athol , son to the earl of athol before named , who liveth , and was to king charles the second , lord justice general , and thereafter lord privy seal ; and extraordinar lord of the session , and before the year 1677 , created marquess of athol ; he retains the sirname of murray , and carries , the arms of stuart earl of athol quartered . upon the other bank , more beneath duplin castle , sometime the habitation of the barons oliphant , reporteth yet what an overthrow ( the like to which was never before ) the english men that came to aid king edward balliol , gave there unto the scots ; insomuch as the english writers in that time do write , that they won this victory not by mans hand , but by the power of god : and the scottish writers relate , how that out of the family of the lindseys , there were slain in the field fourscore persons , and that the name of hays had been quite extinguished , but that the chief of that house left his wife behind him great with child . the precedency of oliphant is transmitted to dowglass lord mordingtoun as heir of line , of whom before : and charles lord oliphant , residing in the shire of bamff , as heir-male , doth also claim the precedency . the lands of duplin were purchased by sir george hay of kinfauns , a lord of the session , and clerk of register , and thereafter in the year 1622 , made lord chancellor : september 25 1629 george viscount dupline is one of the commissioners for holding of the parliament : in a roll of the nobility about that time , he is ranked last viscount , after the viscount of drumlanrig , and in anno 1632 , created by king charles the first earl of kinnoul , to whom he continued chancellor till his death , and was succeeded by john spotswood arch-bishop of st. andrews , the earl of kinnoul his successor resides in england . not far from it standeth innermeth , well known by reason of the lords thereof , the stuarts out of the family of lorn : this dignity at present is claimed by none . inch chafra , that is in the old scottish tongue , the isle of masses , hereby may be remembered when as it was a most famous abbey of the order of saint augustine , founded by gilbert earl of strathern , about the year 1200. when ern hath joined this water with tau in one stream , so that tau is now become more spacious , he looketh up to abernethy seated upon his bank , the royal seat in old time of the picts , and a well peopled city : which , as we read in an ancient fragment , nectane king of the picts gave unto god and st. brigid until the day of doom , together with the bounds thereof , which ly from a stone in abertrent , unto a stone near to carfull , that is , loghfoll , and from thence as far as to ethan . but long after , it became the possession of the dowglasses earls of angus , who are called lords of abernethy , and there some of them ly entered . malisse earl of strathern , in the time of king henry the third of england , married one of the heirs of robert muschamp , a potent baron of england . long afterward robert stuart about the year 1360 , was e. then david a younger son of k. robert the 2d . whose only daughter given in marriage to patrick graham , b●gat mailise or melasse graham , from whom king james the first took away the earldom as escheated ; after that , he understood out of the records of the kingdom , that it was given unto his mothers grand-father , and the hirs male of his body . this territory , the barons drummond , earls of perth , govern hereditarly by seneschals authority , as their stewartries ; as the lords of doun ( now earls of murray ) are hereditary stewarts of the jurisdiction of monteith . monteith hath the name of teith , a river which also they call tai●h , and thereof this little province they term in latine taichia ; upon the bank of which lyeth the bishoprick of dumblain , which king david the first of that name erected . sir thomas osburn thesaurer of england , was by king charles the second , before the year 1677 , created viscount of dumblain , who is now duke of leeds in england , and president of the council : the dignity was conveyed to peregrine his 2d . son , who now by the death of his elder brother , is marquess of carmarthan . the laird of dincrub , was by king charles the second when in scotland , created lord rollo from his sir-name , whose successor is andrew lord rollo . at kilbride , that is saint brigids church , the earls of monteith had their principal house , or honour . this monteith reacheth unto the mountains , that enclose the east-side of the loch or lake lomund . the ancient earls of monteith were of the family of cumming , which in times past being the most spread and mightiest house of all scotland , was ruinated with the over-weight and sway thereof : but the later earls were of the grahams line , ever since that sir mailise graham attained to the honour of an earl. the author beginneth the description of the grahams of monteith , before the grahams of montross , it seems in regard they did first attain to the degree of earls . william earl of monteith descended of these earls , was by king charles the first made president of his council : and being served heir to david earl of strathern , who was son to king robert the first of the stuarts , was by patent from that king , ratified and approven in his title and dignity of earl of strathern . april 13. 1632 , amongst the commissioners for holding the parliament , is william earl of strathern , president of the council , ranked before the l. privy seal ; it is reported , that being vain of the title of strathern , joyned with the general error of historians , of david earl of strathern's being a son of the first marriage of king robert the second , a decreet of reduction and improbation was obtained at the instance of sir thomas hope of craighall , barroner , kings advocat , and that earl and his successors appointed to use in time coming , the title of earl of monteith , or airth : his grand-child , william earl of monteith lately deceased , did convey his estate and dignity to the marquess of montross , descended of the same stock of grahams at kincardine not far off , who had many noble and valiant progenitors ; and in late times , iohn earl of montross , chancellor to king james the sixth was the first , who as great or high commissioner , did represent the kings person in the parliament 1604 , as distinguished from several noblemen and gentlemen , appointed commissioners by the king under the quarter seal , to meet at the dyet of parliament , and to continue the same to a furder time , and to see the solemnities constituting the parliament performed , the first day of its sitting ; which form was constantly observed , till the year 1640. this earls grand-child james , was famous in the late wars in scotland , and was created marquess by king charles the first : george wishart dr. of divinity , and afterward bishop of edinburgh , did write his actions ; his great grand-child is james marquess of montross . near these places is the abbacy of cardross , which by k. ja. the 6th , was erected in a temporal lordship , to henry erskin a son of the e. of mar , he is ranked in the rolls after the lord blantyre , the great grand-child is david lord cardross . before i end the description of this country of strathern , which is so famous for the roman actions there , and several noble and antient families inhabiting it . i return to the cross of macduff before mentioned , placed in the limits of fife and strathern , of whose inscription sir john skeen took notice , that the priviledges of clan macduff were expressed in barbarons verses , whereof he gives a short hint in his de verborum significatione ; of which mr. james cunninghame has given a more full description in print , the inscription as it is set down by him , is thus , maldraradrum dragos malairta largia largos spalando spados sive nig fig knippite gnaros lorca lauriscos lanringen louria luscos et coluburt●s sic fit tibi bursca burtus exitus et blaradrum sive lim sive iam sive labrum propter macgidrim et hoc obla●um accipe smeleridem super limpide lampida labrum . but one dowglass in new-burgh , near to cross macduff , had by him a version , which seems to be much more probable , and agreeable to the matter , which reads thus , ara , urget lex quos , lare egentes atria lis , quos hoc qui laboras , haec fit tibi pactio portus , mille reum drachmas mulctam de largior agris spes tantum pacis cum nex fit a nepote natis propter macgidrum , & hoc oblatum accipe semel haeredum , super lymphato lapide labem . here seems to be wanting a line of the inscription , which is lost , or could not be read by the translater , which probably related to macduffs leading of the van of the kings army , which inscription is thus paraphrased in english rhime , all such as are within the ninth degree of kindred to that antient thane macduff , and yet for slaughter are compell'd to flie and leave their houses , and their houshold stuff ; here they shall find for their refuge , a place to save them from the cruel blood avenger : a priviledge peculiar to that race , which never was allow'd to any stranger . but they must enter heir , on this condition ( which they observe must , with a faith unfeignzied ) to pay a thousand groats for their remission , or else their lands and goods shall be distrenzied . for saint macgidders sake , and this oblation , and by their only washing at this stone , purg'd is the blood shed by that generation : this priviledge pertains to them alone . in this country about mid-way betwixt dumblain and the castle of drummond , is the house of ardoch , belonging to sir william stirling barronet , where there is large vestiges of a roman camp , enclosed on some sides with treeple trenches , wherein at several times , roman medals have been found , and from that there is a great mercat-road leadeth towards st. iohnstoun or perth , calseyed in many places , and thence through strathmore toward angus . this incampment is believed to have been made by iulius agricola , being near to the grampian hills where he defate the scots and picts . within this camp there was found a squair stone , which is yet kept at the castle of drummond , and may be seen there , whereon is engraven the inscription following , dis manibus antonius daimonius cohortis i. legionis xvii . hispanorum heredes . f. c. mr. adair in his map of strathern , hath printed this inscription with some small difference , whee rhe hath also a draught of the roman camp before mentioned . chap. xxii . argathelia : or , argile , beyond the lake lomund and the west part of lennox , there spreadeth it self near unto dumbarton firth , the large country called argathelia , and ar. gwithil , that is near unto the irish ; or as old writings have it , the edge or border of ireland : for it lyeth toward ireland , the inhabitants whereof , the brittains term gwithil and gaothel . the country runneth out in length and breadth , all mangled with fishful pools , and in some places with rising mountains , very commodious for feeding of cattel ; in which also there range up and down wild kine and red deer : but along the shore it is more unpleasant in sight , what with rocks , and what with blackish barren mountains . in this part , as bede writeth , brittain received after the brittains and picts , a third nation of scots , in that countrey where the picts inhabited : who coming out of ireland , under the leading of reuda , either through friendship , or by dint of sword , planted their seat amongst them which they still hold . of whom , their leader they are to this very day called dalreudini : for in their language , dal signifieth ( a part . ) and a little after , ireland ( saith he ) is the proper country of the scots , for , being departed out of it , they added unto the brittains and picts , a third nation in brittain . and there is a very great bay or arm of the sea , that in old time severed the nation of the brittains from the picts , which from the west breaketh a great way into the land , where standeth the strongest city of all the brittains even unto this day , called alchith . in the north part of which bay , the scots aforesaid when they came , got themselves a place to inhabite . of that name dalreudin , no remains at all are now extant ; neither find we any thing thereof in writers , unless it be that same dalrieta . for , in an old pamphlet , touching the division of albany , we read of one kinnady ( who for certain was a king of scots and denyed the picts ) these very words ; kinnady two years before he came into pictavia ( for so it calleth the country of the picts ) entred upon the kingdom of dalrieta . also in an history of latter time , there is mention made of dalrea in some place of this tract , where king robert bruce fought a field unfortunatly . that justice should be ministred unto this province by justices itinerant at perth , whensoever it pleased the king , king iames the fourth by authority of the states of the kingdom , enacted a law. but the earls themselves have in some cases their royalties , as being men of very great command and authority , followed with a mighty train of retainers and dependants , who derive their race from the ancient princes and potentates of argile , by an infinite descent of ancestours , and from their castle campbel , took their sirname : but the honour and title of earl was given unto them by king james the second , who , as it is recorded , invested colin lord campbel , earl of argile , in regard of his own vertue , and the worth of his family : whose heirs and successors standing in the gracious favour of the kings , have been lords of lorn , and a good while general justices of the kingdom of scotland , or , justices ordained in general , and great masters of the kings royal houshold . archibald earl of argile , by king charles the first , created marquess of argile , was forefaulted by king charles the second , and his son archbald lord lorn , restored to the dignity and precedency of the earl of argile : who thereafter in that same kings reign , upon very nice & slender grounds , was also forefaulted ; which forefaulture was particularly taxed as a reproach to the nation in the claim of right , or instrument of government anno 1689 , and by a special printed act of parliament 1690 , his son archbald lord lorn now earl of argile restored . since the printing of the first sheets of this book , he hath presented a letter from the king to the lords , nominating him an extraordinar lord of the session , in place of the duke of hamilton deceased , and is accordingly admitted . from melfort in this country , did john drummond of lundie , first married to the heiress of that family , and brother to james earl of perth , by grant from king james the seventh , take first the title of viscount , and thereafter of earl , and was thesaurer depute to king charles the second , and secretary to him and king james the seventh . the head burgh of this shire is inerara , a burgh royal. chap. xxiii . cantire . logh . fin , a lake breeding such store of herrings at a certain due season , as it is wonderful , severeth argile from a promontory , which for thirty miles together growing still toward a sharp point , thrusteth it self forth with so great a desire toward ireland ( betwixt which and it there is a narrow sea , scarce thirteen miles over ) as if it would conjoyn it self . ptolomy termeth this , the promontory epidiorum , between which name , and the islands aebudae lying over-against it , there is , in my conceit , some affinity . at this day it is called in the irish tongue ( which they speak in all this tract ) can-tyre , that is , the lands head ; inhabited by the mac-conells , a family that here swayeth much , howbeit at the pleasure and dispose of the earl of argile : yea and other times they make out their light pinnaces and gallies for ireland , to raise booties and pillage , who also hold in possession those little provinces of ireland , which they call glines and rowts . this promontory lyeth annexed to knapdale by so thin a neck ( as being scarce a mile broad , and the same all sandy ) that the mariners find it the nearer way to convey their small vessels over it by land. which i hope a man may sooner believe , than that the argonauts laid their great ship argos upon their shoulders , and so carried it along with them five hundred miles , from aemonia unto the shores of thessalia . this place gave first the title of lord to a brother of the earl of argiles , as hath been said , and thereafter when argile became marquess , he was designed earl of kintyre . chap. xxiv . lorn . somewhat higher toward the north lyeth lorn , bearing the best kind of barley in great plenty , and divided with leave a vast and huge lake : by which standeth berogomum a castle , in which sometime was kept the court of justice , or session : and not far from it dunstaffage , that is , stephens mount , the kings house in times past : above which logh aher , a lake insinuating it self from out of the western sea , windeth it self so far within land , that it had conflowed together with ness , another lake running into the east sea , but that certain mountains between kept them with a very little partition asunder . the chiefest place of name in this tract is tarbar in loch kinkeran , where king james the fourth ordained a justice and sheriff , to administer justice unto the inhabitants of the out islands , but now the shires of argile and tarbat are joyned in one these countries and those beyond them , in the year of our lords incarnation 655. the picts , held : whom beda calleth the northern picts , where he reporteth , that in the said year columbane a priest and abbot , famous for his monkish profession and life , came out of ireland into brittain , to instruct these in christian religion , that by means of the high rough ridges of the mountains were sequestred from the southern countries of the picts : and that they , in lieu of a reward , allowed unto him the island hii , over against them , now called i-comb-kill , a famous monastry and nursery of the christian religion over britain . the lord of lorna in the age aforegoing were the stuarts : but now , by reason of a female their heir , the earls of argile use this title in their honourable designation . chap. xxv . braid albin , or , albany . more inwardly , where the uninhabitable , lofty , and rugged ridges of the mountain grampius , begin a little to slope and settle downward , is seated braid-albin , that is , the highest part of scotland : for they that are the true and right scots indeed , call scotland in their mother tongue , albin ; like as that part where it mounteth up highest , drum albin , that is , the ridge of scotland . but in an old book it is read brun albin , where we find this written : fergus filius eric , &c. that is , fergus the son of eric was the first of the seed or line of chonare , that entred upon the kingdom of albanie , from brun-albain unto the irish sea and inch-gall . and after him the kings descended from the seed or race of fergus , reigned in brun-albain or brunhere unto alpin the son of eochall . but this albanie is better known for the dukes thereof , than for any good gifts that the soil yieldeth . the first duke of albanie was robert earl of fife , whom his brother king robert the third of that name , advanced to that honour : yet he ( ungrateful person that he was ) pricked on with the spirit of ambition , famished to death his son david , that was heir to the crown . but the punishment due for this wicked fact , which himself by the long sufferance of god self not , his son mordac , the second duke of albanie , first designed in his fathers time , sir murdac stuart of kinclevin suffered most grievously , being condemned for treason and beheaded , when he had seen his two sons the day before executed in the same manner . the third duke of albanie was alexander , second son to king james the second , who was also designed earl of march , marr , and garioth , lord of annandale and of man , was by his own brother king james the third outlawed , and after he had been turmoiled with many troubles , in the end , as he stood by to behold at justs and tourneament in paris , chanced to be wounded with a piece of shattered launce , & so died . his son john , the fourth duke of albanie , was called home & made regent and tutor to king james the fifth , taking contentment in the pleasant delights of the french court , after he had wedded there the daughter , and one of the heirs of john earl of anverne and lauragveze , died there without issue : whom in respective reverence to the blood royal of the scots , francis the first king of france gave thus much honour unto , as that he allowed him place between the archbishop of langres , and the duke of alenson , peers of france . after his death there was no duke of albanie until that queen mary conferred this title upon henry lord darnly , whom within some few days after she made her husband : likeas king james the sixth granted the same unto his own second son charles being an infant , during the lifetime of prince henry his elder brother , to whom he succeeded as prince and steward of scotland , and to his father as king of great-britain , and first of the name of charles : king james , the seventh did enjoy the title of duke of albany during the lifetime of his elder brother . there inhabit these regions a kind of people , rude , warlike , ready to fight , quarrellous and mischievous : they be commonly termed highlandmen , who being indeed the right progeny of the antient scots , speak irish , and call themselves albinich ; their bodies be firmly made and well compact , able withal and strong , nimble of foot , high minded , inbread and nuzzeled in warlike exercises , or robberies rather , and upon a deadly feud and hatred , most forward and desperat to take revenge . they go attired irish-like , in stript or streaked mantles of divers colours , wearing thick and long glibes of hair , living by hunting , fishing , fowling and stealing . in the war their armour is an head-piece , or morion of iron , and an habergeon , or coat of mail : their weapons be bows , barbed or hooked arrows , and broad back swords : and being divided by certain families or kindreds , which they term clans , they commit such cruel outrages , what with robbing , spoilling and killing , that their savage cruelty hath forced a law to be enacted , whereby it is lawful , that if any person , out of any one clan or kindred of theirs hath trespassed ought , and done harm , whosoever of that clan or linage chance to be taken , he shall either make amends for the harms , or else suffer death for it ; when as the whole clan commonly beareth feud for any hurt received by any one member thereof , by execution of laws , order of justice , or otherwise . sir john camphel of glenurchie baronet an antient and powerful cadet of argile , descended of one of the heiresses of stuart , lord lorn of whose lands he enjoyes a part , and their arms quartered , and of other great families , and from whom many noblemen and barons derive their pedegree , was by king charles the second , about the year 1677. created earl of brade albine , and is one of the present commissioners of their majesties thesaury , he is hereditary baillie of broad albine . chap. xxvi . perthia : or , perth sheriffdom . out of the very bosome of the mountains of albany , tau the greatest river of all scotland issueth : and first runreth amain through the fields , until that spreading broad into a lake full of islands , he restraineth and keepeth in his course . then gathering himself narrow within his banks into a channel , and watering perth , a large , plentiful and rich countrey , he taketh in unto him amond , a small river coming out of athol . this athol , that i may digress a little out of my way , is infamous for witches and wicked women : the countrey , otherwise fertile enough , hath valleys bespread with forrests : namely , where that wood caledonia , dreadful to see , for the sundry turnings and windings in and out therein , for the hideous horrour of dark shades , for the burrows and dens of wild bulls with thick manes ( whereof i made mention heretofore ) extended it self in old time far and wide every way in these parts . as for the places herein , they are of no great account , but the earls thereof are very memorable . thomas , a younger son of rolland of galloway , was in his wives right earl of athol , whose son patrick was by the bissets his concurrents murdered in feud , at had dingtoun in his bed-chamber , and forthwith the whole house wherein he lodged burnt , that it might be supposed he perished by casualty of fire . to the earldom there succeeded david hastings , who had married the aunt by the mothers side of patrick ; whose son that david surnamed of strathbogie may seem to be , who a little after , in the reign of henry the third king of england , being earl of athol , married one of the daughters and heirs of richard , base son to john king of england , and had with her a very goodly inheritance in england . she bare unto him two sons , john earl of athol , who being of a variable disposition and untrusty was hanged up aloft on a gallows fifty foot high ; and david earl of athol , unto whom by marriage with one of the daughters and heirs of john cummin of badzenoth , by one of the heirs of aumer de valence earl of pembroch , there fell great lands and possessions . his son david , who under king edward the second was other whiles amongst english summoned to the parliaments in england , and under king edward baliol made lord lieutenant general of scotland , was vanquished by the valerous prowess of andrew de murray , and slain in battel within the forrest of kelblen , in the year of our lord 1335 : and his son david left two young daughters only , elisabeth wedded unto sir thomas piercy , from whom the barons of burrough are descended : and philip , married to sir thomas halsham an english knight . then fell the title of athol unto that walter stuart , son to king robert the second , who cruelly murdered james the first , king of scotland , who for this execrable cruelty suffered most condign punishment accordingly : in so much as aeneas sylvius , ambassadour at that time in scotland from pope eugenius the fourth , gave out this speech : that he could not tell whether he should give them greater commendations that revenged the kings death , or brand them with sharper censure of condemnation , that distained themselves with so hainous a paricide . after some few years passed between , this honour was granted unto john stuart of the family of lorn , the son of james , surnamed the black knight , by joan the widow of king james the first , daughter to john earl of somerset , and niece to john of gaunt duke of lancaster , whose posterity at this day enjoy the same . the eldest son of tullibardine being descended of the stuarts of athol , whose successor is john marquess of athol , as hath been said . lord charles murray second son to the marquess of athol , was by king james the seventh , created earl of dunmore , and sir robert nairn of stra●hurd , one of the lords of session , was by king charles the second , about the year 1681. created lord nairn , his only daughter to be married to a younger son of the marquess of athols , by vertue whereof william lord murray is now lord nairn . the marquess of athol is heretable sheriff of perth . this river is increased by receiving the river of bra●n , which having given name to a strath through which it passeth , loseth its name by augmenting of tau at dunkeld , which was adorned by king david the first with an episcopal see. sir james galloway master of requests to king james the sixth , and king charles the first , was by the latter created lord dunkell , about the year 1646. whose grand child is forfeited for opposing their majesties in the highlands by force of arms. in these bounds lyes gillichrankie , a place remark●ble for the defeat of the kings forces , under the command of general major mckay , by the late viscount of dundee and his associats , but himself was killed in the action , which fell out the 27th of july 1689. most writers grounding upon the signification of that word , suppose dunkeld to be a town of the caledonians , and interpret it , the mount or hill of hazeles , as who would have that name given unto it of the hazel-trees in the wood caledonia , from hence the tau passeth forward to the old castle of kincleiven , where it is much augmented by the river ila , a very pleasant and large river , and thence goeth downward by the carcass of bertha , a little desolat city , remembring well enough what a great loss and calamity he brought upon it in times past , when with an extraordinary swelling floud , he surrounded all the fields , laid the goodly standing corn along on the ground , and carried headlong away with him this poor city , with the kings child and infant in his cradle , and the inhabitants therein . in steed whereof in a more commodious place , king william builded perth , which straightways became so wealthy , that necham , who lived in that age , versified of it in this manner : transis ample tai per rura per oppida , per perth , regnum sustentant istius urbis opes . by villages , by towns , by perth , thou runn'st great tay amain , the riches of this city perth doth all the realm sustain . but the posterity ensuing call it of a church founded in honour of saint john , saint johns town : and the english whiles the wars were hot between the bruces and the balliols , fortified it with great bulwarks , which the scots afterwards , for the most part overthrew , and disman led it themselves . howbeit it is a proper pretty city , pleasantly seated between two greens : and for all that some of the churches be destroyed , yet a goodly shew it maketh ; ranged and set out in such an uniform manner , that in every several street almost there dwell several artificers by themselves , and the river tau bringeth up with the tide sea commodities by lighters . king james the sixth having erected it to the title of an earldom , created james baron drummond earl of perth , of whom in strathern . unto perth these places are near neighbours , methven near to which runneth the river of almond , which passing downward falleth in tau , near to the place where the antient town of bertha stood . margaret an english lady , widow unto king james the fourth , purchased methven with ready money for her third husband henry stuart descended of the royal blood , and for his heirs ; and withal obtained of her son king james the fifth for him the dignity of a baron , since extinct , and was one of the titles of the late dukes of lennox . more beneath is ruthven , a castle of the ruthvens , whose name is of damned memory , considering that the three estates of the kingdom hath ordained , that whosoever were of that name should forego the same , and take unto them a new : after that the ruthvens , brethren in a most cursed and horrible conspiracy , had complotted to murder their soveraign king james the sixth , who had created william their father , earl of gowrie , and afterward beheaded him , being lawfully convicted , when he would insolently prescribe laws to his soveraign . but of men condemned to perpetual oblivion , i may seem to have said overmuch , although it concerneth posterity also for a caveat , that wicked generations be notified as well as noisom weeds and venemous plants . sir thomas ruthven of freeland , descended of this family , was created by king char●●s the second while in scotland , lord ruthven , whose son is david lord ruthven , and in anno 1689 , was appointed by their majesties , one of their privy council , and one of the commissioners of the thesaury . as for the country gowrie aforesaid , famous for the corn-fields , and singular fertility of the soil , it lyeth more plain and flat along the other bank of tay. in this tract over against perth , on the farther side of tay ▪ standeth scoon , a renowned monastery in old time , and of reverend respect for the coronation therein of the kings of scotland : since that time , king kenneth having hard by , put the picts for the most part to the sword , placed a stone here enclosed within a chair of wood , for inaugaration of the kings of scotland , that had been transported out of ireland into argile : which stone edward the first , king of england , caused to be conveyed unto westminster : touching which , i have put down this prophesie so rise in every mans mouth , since it hath now proven true and taken effect , as very few of that sort do . ni fallat fatum scoti qvocvnque locatvm invenient lapidem regnare tenentvr ibidem . except old sawes be vain , and wits of wizards blind , the scots in place must reign , where they this stone shall find . scoon gave the title of baron to sir david murray comptroller , whom king james for his good service , advanced to that honour , and is the last in the decreet of ranking , after the lords torphichen , pasley , newbottle , thirlestane , spenzie , roxburgh , lindores , lowdoun , dirleton , kinlos , abercorn , bal●●crinoch , murray of tullibairn . colvi●● of ●u●ross : he was afterward created by that same king viscount of stormonth , which is the upper part of the country of gowry , and is in the rolls of parliament 1633 , before the viscount air , who being descended of the lairds of balvaird , the dignity of v. stormonth did fall to their successors , of whom is descended david now viscount stormonth , as hath been said . where tay now grown bigger enlargeth himself , there appeareth over it arrol , which was the habitation of the noble earls of arrol , who ever since the bruces days , have been by inheritance the constables of scotland : and verily they deduce an ancient pedegree from one hay , a man of exceeding strength and excellent courage , who together with his sons , in a dangerous battle of scots against the danes at longcartie , caught up an ox yoke , and so valiantly and fortunatly withall , what with fighting , and what with exhorting , re-enforced the scots at the point to shrinke and recule , that they had the day of the danes : and the king , with the states of the kingdom , ascribed the victory and their own safety , unto his valour and prowess : whereupon in this place , the most battle and fruitfull grounds were assigned to him and his heirs ; who in testimony hereof , have set over their coat a yoke for their crest , over their arms , three escutcheons gules in argent . of this family is descended john now earl of arrol . near to which lived sir george kinnaird of rossie , privy counseller to king charles the second , created lord kinnaird about the year 1683 , patrick lord kinnaird in his son. touching huntley castle that joyneth unto it , i have nothing to write , but that it hath given title to a very potent , great , and honourable family , whereof i am to speak hereafter . but i think rather , the title of earl of huntly was taken from a place in the merse , called by that name , which is a part of the barony of gordon , the ancient inheritance of this family . huntly castle , is one of the dwelling houses of the earl of strathmore , and now passeth under the name of castle-lyon , well planted and pleasantly situat in the carse of gowry . in the description of this kingdom , the following method had been more agreeable to the situation of the country , and there had been less disjunction of the countries described ; to have begun with the country of the merse , and then east , mid , and west lothian , and to have subjoyned the shires of peebles , selkirk , and roxburgh ; and in the end of roxburgh , to have added the selgovae , viz. liddesdale , eusdale , eskdale , annandale , and nithisdale ; and to have gone to galloway , carrick , kyle , cunninghame , isle of arran , cliddesdale , the shire of stirling , lennox , argyle , kintyre and lorn , these three in one shire ; & to have begun the description of caledonia with that part of perth shire called brade-albion , which joineth lorn ; and then to have added athol and perthia , and in the third place strathern , which compleats the shire of perth ; and fife , kinross and clackmannan bordering with strathern , and then to proceed to the country of angus , or shire of forfar , which is divided from fife by the river tay : the ordinar division of scotland in publick acts and letters , being by south and be north tay. chap. xxvii . angusia , or angvs . by the out-let or mouth of tay , and more within , beside the river north-esk , anguis , called by the natural and true scots aeneia lyeth , extended with goodly fields bearing wheat and corn of all kinds plentifully , with large hills also and pools , forrests , pastures , and meadows , and also garnished with many forts and castles . in the very first entry into it ; from gowry , standeth glamis a castle , and the barony of a family sirnamed lyon , which arose to honour and reputation , ever since that sir j. lyon standing in the high favour of king robert the second , received this and the dignity of a baron with the kings daughter for her marriage portion , and therewith as i find written , the sirname of lyon , with a lyon in his arms , within a treassure floury , as the kings themselves do bear , but in different colours : likeas sir patrick lyon , lord glamis , was advanced by king james the sixth of that name , to the honour of the earl of kinghorn . this title was changed by patrick the present earl , from kinghorn to strathmore , as being the largest strath in scotland , running through perth shire and angus , where the said earls estate for the greatest partlyes . not far hence standeth forfar , where for the administration of justice , the barons grays are hereditary sheriffs , who being descended from the grays of chillingham in the country of northumberland , came into scotland with king james the first , at his return out of england , of whom is descended patrick now lord gray ; upon the first of whom named andrew , the king of his bounteous liberality , bestowed the segniory of foulis , together with helen mortimer in marriage for his advancement . ashtoun an english gentleman , was created lord forfar , about the year 1633 , by king charles the first : and archibald second son to the earl of angus , and brother to james marquess of dowglass , was by king charles the second , created earl of forfar , about the year 1651. hard by the mouth of tay is situat dundee , sometimes called alectum : others term it in latine taodunum , a town verily of great resort and trade , and the constable whereof by a special priviledge , was standard bearer to the king of scots . hector boetius who was here born , expounded this name dundee by way of allusion , to donum dei , that is , gods gift this hector , in the reflourishing time of learning , wrote the scottish history elegantly , and that out of such hidden and far fetched monuments of antiquity , that paulus jovius wondered in his writings , there should be records extant for above a thousand years , of these remote parts of the world , scotland , the hebrids , and the orcads : considering that italy the nurse of fine wits , for so many ages after the goths were cast out , was defective of writers and records . the ancient family of the scrymsours of dudup , constables of dundee , was first created by king charles the first , viscount of dudup , and by king charles the second earl of dundee : and by gift of last heir and recognition , being carried to charles maitland of haltoun , came afterwards to be at the kings disposal , who gifted the same to collonel john graham of claverhouse , who by king james the seventh , was created viscount of dundee , and opposing their majesties in arms , was killed at gillichrankie in athol , in july 1689 : and both he and his brother david also present at that action , were forefaulted in parliament 1690. from hence standeth within sight brochty-craig , which being a good fortress , was with the english garison souldiers , manfully defended & made good for many months together , what time as in their affectionat love to a perpetual peace , they desired and wished for a marriage , between mary heir apparent of scotland , and edw. the 6th . k. of england ; and upon promise thereof , demanded it by force of arms : and in the end , of their own accord , abandoned the said place : then there lyeth full against the open ocean aberbroth , short arbroth , a place endowed with ample revenues , and by king william dedicated in old time to religion , in honour of thomas of canterbury ; beside which , the * red-head shooteth into the deep sea , and is to be seen a far of . hard by southesk voideth it self into the ocean ; which river flowing amain out of a lake , passeth by finnevin castle , well known by reason of the lindseys earls of crawford keeping residence there ; of whom is already written . and downward on the same river standeth kinnaird , the inheritance of the carnagies , who amongst other families , by being members of the colledge of justice , have raised their fortunes , and advanced into great honours . robert carnagy of kinnaird in the year 1553 , is marked in the sederunt of the lords of session . and about the year 1561 , under the designation of sir robert carnagy of kinnaird , admitted ordinary lord of session ; mr. david carnagy of coluthy i suppose his second son , was a lord of the session , and one of the octavians ; he dyed in the year 1598 , his son sir david , carnagy of kinnaird succeeded , of whom frequent mention is made in the acts of parliament of king james the sixth ; he was by that king created lord carnagy after the lord binnie , and is so ranked in the rolls of parliament 1617. in the books of sederunt july 5th 1616 , david lord carnagy is admitted an ordinary lord of session : in the year 1633 , by king charles the first , he was created earl of southesk , his great grand-child is charles earl of southesk . sir john carnegie of ethie , younger son to the before named mr. david carnagie of colluthy , and brother to david earl of southesk , was by king charles the first , created lord lour , and thereafter by that same king earl of ethie : his eldest son david , exchanged the said titles with these , of earl of northesk and lord rosehill , as being more agreeable to the title of earl of southesk , the chief of the family . david earl of northesk , is great grand-child to the first earl. then upon the said river standeth brechin , which king david the first adorned with a bishops see. patrick maul of panmure of the bed-chamber , of an ancient family , was created by king charles the first , about the year 1646 , earl of panmure , lord maul and brechin , immediatly before the earls of selkirk , tweeddale and northesk ; whose grand-child is james earl of panmure . and at the very mouth thereof standeth montross ; as one would say the mount of roses ; a town in times past called celurca , risen by the fall of another town bearing the same name , which is seated between the two esks , and imparteth the title of marquess to the family of the grahams : not far from hence is boschain , belonging to the barons of ogilvy , of very antient nobility , lineally descended from alexander sheriff of angus , who was slain in the bloody battle at harlaw against the mac-donald of the out isles . in this shire is also airlie , which was the first designation of the lord ogilvie of airlie , andrew lord ogilvie was created by king charles the first , anno 1633 , earl of airlie , whose son is james earl of airlie . as touching the earls of angus ; gilchrist of angus , renowned for his brave exploits under king malcolm the fourth , was the first earl of angus that we read of . about the year 1241 , john cummin was earl of angus , who died in france , and his widow ( haply inheritrix to the earldom ) was married to sir gilbert vmfranvill an englishman . for , both he and his heirs successively after him , were summoned to the parliament in england ( until the third year of king richard the second ) by the title of earls of angus . howbeit the lawyers of england refused in their brieves and instruments to acknowledge him earl , for that angus was not within the kingdom of england , until he had brought forth openly in the face of the court , the kings writ and warrant , wherein he was summoned to the parliament by the name of earl of angus . in the reign of david bruce , thomas stuart was earl of angus , who by a sudden surprise won berwick , and straightways lost it ; yea , and within a while after died miserably in prison at dunbritton . but the douglasses , men of invincible hearts , from the time of king robert the second , when vvilliam first e. of douglas married stuart heiress and countess of angus , of which marriage was george douglas earl of angus , who married king robert the thirds daughter , have been earls of angus , and reputed the chief and principal earls of scotland , and to whom this office belongeth , to carry the regal crown before the kings , at the solemn assembly of the kingdom . the sixth earl of angus out of this stock , was archibald , who espoused margaret , daughter to henry the seventh king of england , and mother to james the fifth king of scots , by whom he had issue margaret wife to matthew stuart earl of lennox ; who after her brothers decease ( that died childless , ) willingly resigned up her right and interest in this earldom , unto sir david douglass of pittindreich , her uncles son by the fathers side , and that with consent of her husband and sons ; to the end that she might bind the surer unto her self , by the link also of a beneficial demerit , that family , which otherwise in blood was most near ; what time henry her son went about to wed mary the queen : by which marriage king james the sixth , the mighty monarch of great-britain was happily born to the good of all britain ; and from these earls of angus & douglass , the marquess of douglass is lineally descended . from an abbacy in this shire james elphingstoun second son to secretary elphingstoun lord balmerinoch , was created by king james the sixth lord couper , but dying without issue , the title and dignity is confounded in the person of the now lord balmerinoch . the sheriffship of this shire being at the kings disposal , patrick earl of strathmore is sheriff . chap. xxviii . mernis : or , shire of kincardin . these regions were in ptolomy's time inhabited by the vernicones , the same perhaps that the vecturiones mentioned by marcellinus . but this their name is now quite gone , unless we would imagine some little piece thereof to remain in mernis . for many times in common speech of the british tongue , v. turneth into m. this small province mernis lying on the north-side of the north-water of esk , abutting upon the german ocean , and of a rich and fertile soil , lieth very well , as a plain and level champion . but the most memorable place therein is dunnotyr , a castle advanced upon an high and unaccessible rock , whence it looketh down to the underflowing sea ; well fensed with strong walls and turrets , which hath been a long time the habitation of the keiths of an antient and very noble stock ; who by the guidance of their vertue , became hereditary earls mareschals of the kingdom of scotland , in the reign of king robert bruce and sheriffs of this province ; of whom is descended william now earl mareschal . in a porch or gallery here , is to be seen that antient inscription formerly mentioned , of a company belonging to the twentieth legion , the letters whereof the right noble and honourable earl george , commissioner to the parliament 1609 , a great lover of antiquity , caused to be guilded . somewhat further from the sea standeth fordon , graced in some sort and commendable in regard of john de fordon ; who being born here , diligently and with great pains compiled scoti chronicon , that is , the scottish chronicle : unto whose laborious studies the scottish historiographers are very much indebted : but more glorious and renowned in old time , for the reliques of st. palladius , bestowed and shrined sometime , as is verily thought , in this place ; who in the year 431 , was by pope coelestinas appointed the apostle of the scottish nation . in this shire the laird of arbuthnet of that lik , of an antient family , was created viscount arbuthnet by king charles the first , about the year 1641 , whose great grand-child is robert viscount of arbuthnet . as also , sir alexander falconer one of the lords of session , was by king charles the first , anno 1648 , created lord halcartoun , whose grand-child is now lord halcartoun . also lieutenant-general middletoun , of an antient family designed by that surname , was by k. charles the second appointed commissioner for holding the parliament 1661 , and created at that time earl of middletoun , his son is charles earl of middletoun , who was first secretary of scotland , and then of england , to king charles the second , and king james the seventh . in this shire is inverbervie a burgh-royal . in the antient times the countrey horestia did comprehend both angus and mernis : in this matter i must be allowed to differ from the learned author , who places the horesti in the countrey of eskdale , a small and inconsiderable countrey , surrounded with others , and not bordering on the sea , whereas tacitus in the life of agricola , describing his war in our part of britain , saith * the third year of the war agricola discovered new nations which he conquered even to the river tau . and after this he adds , agricola having beat galgacus near to the grampian hills , brought back the roman army to the boders of the horesti , and having received hostages from them , he ordered the commanders of the roman fleet to sail about the isle . the chief part of this quotation is on the margin , in the words of the author , which is only applicable to the mouth and firth of tay , and the countrey of angus and mernis situat thereupon , where the roman navy hath landed their men , and in the which station remained to receive them at the end of the expedition , and from this port to the grampian hills , through the large countrey of strathmore , they have marched their army and carriages , and by the same way returned them to their ships , of which great ways there are certain vestiges remaining ; but there is no direct continued way betwixt the grampian hills and eskdale , nor could any army with such great carriages march betwixt these places , nor thereafter be embarked at eskdale . see more of this in sir george mckenzies answer to st. asaph . chap. xxix . marria : or , mar. from the sea in the mediterranean , or in-landparts above mernis , mar enlargeth it self , and runneth forward threescore miles , or thereabout : where it lieth broadest vvest-wards , it swelleth up with mountains , unless it be where the rivers dee , which ptolomy calleth diva , and don make way for themselves , and infertile the fields . upon the bank of don , kildrummy standeth as a fair ornament to the countrey , being the antient seat of the earls of mar : and not far distant from it the habitation of the barons forbois , who being issued from a noble and antient stock , assumed this surname : whereas before time they were called bois , after that the heir of that family had manfully killed a savage and cruel bare , of whom is descended william now lord forbes . but at the very mouth of this river , there be two towns that give greater ornament , which of the said mouth , that in the british tongue they call aber , borrowing one name , are divided asunder by one little field lying between : the hithermost of them , which standeth nearer to dee mouth , is much ennobled by an episcopal dignity ( which king david the first translated hitherto from murthlake a little village ) by fair houses of the canons , an hospital for poor people , and a free grammer school ; which william elphingstoun , bishop of the place , in the year 1480. consecrated to the training up of youth , and is called * new aherdene : the other beyond it , named old aherdene , is most famous for the taking of salmons . it is almost incredible what abundance of * salmons as well these rivers , as others also in scotland on both sides of the realm , do breed : this fish was altogether unknown unto pliny , unless it were that esox of the rhine : but in this north part of europe , passing well known , shining and glittering ( as he saith ) with his red bowels : in autumn they engender within little rivers , and in shallow places for the most part , what time they cast their spawn , and cover it over with sand : and then are they so poor and lean , that they seem to have nothing else in a manner , but their small bones . of that spawn in the spring next following , there comes a fry of tender little fishes , which making toward the sea , in a small time grow to their full bigness : and in returning back again to seek for the rivers wherein they were bred , they strive and struggle against the stream , and look whatsoever lyeth in their way to hinder their passage , with a jerk of their tail , and a certain leap ( whence happily they had their name salmons ) to the wonder of the beholders , they nimbly whip over , and keep themselves within these rivers of theirs , until they breed : during which time it is enacted by law , they should not be caught ; namely , from the feast of the assumption of our lady , to the feast of saint andrew in winter . : and it should seem they were reputed among the greatest commodities of scotland , when likewise it was ordained that they should not be sold unto englishmen , but for english gold , and no other contentation . but these matters is left for others . to come now unto the earls of marr. in the reign of alexander the third , william earl of marr , is named among those that were sore offended and displeased with the king. whiles david bruce reigned , donald earl of marr , protector of the kingdom , was before the battle at dyplin , murdered in his bed by edward balliol , and the englishmen that came to aid him : whose sister isobel , king robert bruce took to be his first wife , on whom he begat marjory , mother to robert stuart king of scots . under the same david there is mention also made of thomas earl of marr , who was banished in the year 1361. likewise in the reign of robert the 3d , alexander stuart is named earl of marr , who in the battle at harlaw against the islanders , lost his life in the year 1411. in the days of king james the first , we read in scoto chronicon thus , alexander earl of marr , died in the year 1435 , the base son of alexander stuart earl of buchan , son to robert the second king of scots ; after whom , as being a bastard , the king succeeded in the inheritance . john the second son of king james the second , afterwards bare this title ; who being convict for attempting by art magick , to take away the king his brothers life , was let blood to death : and after him , robert cochran was promoted from a mason to this dignity , by king james the third , and soon after hanged by the nobility : since which time , this honourable title was discontinued , until that queen mary adorned therewith , james her bastard brother : and not long after , when it was found that by ancient right , the title of earl of marr appertained to john lord ereskin ; in lieu of marr , she conferred upon him the honour of earl of murray , and created john lord ereskin , a man of ancient and noble birth , earl of mar ; afterward regent to king james the sixth , of whom is descended john now earl of marr. forbes lord pitsligo , was by king charles the first , created lord pitsligo anno 1633 ; whose descendant doth still enjoy the title . and fraser of stony-wood or muchill , was at the same time , created by king charles the first , lord fraser , whose successor is lord fraser . sir john keith of keith-hall knight , mareschal , and son to the earl mareschal , was by king charles the second , about the year 1677 , created earl of kintore , from a burgh royal , and was thesaurer deput to k. char. the 2d , and k. ja. the 7th , his eldest son is designed lord inverurie , from another burgh royal , both lying in this shire . sir george gordon of haddo , baronet , a lord of the session , was admited president anno 1681 , and constitute chancellor the year following , and created earl of aberdeen shortly thereafter . james l. gordon second son to the marquess of huntly was created by k. char. the 1st , v. of aboyn , & thereafter charles his fourth son , was created earl of aboyn by king charles the second , anno 1661 ; his son is charles earl of aboyn . creighton laird of frendraught , descended of the l. creighton , chancellor to king james the second , was by king charles the first , created viscount of frendraught about the year 1641 , whose successor is lewis viscount of frendraught . in this shire is the river ythan , from which king charles the first , after the year 1641 , gave the title of lord ythan to lieutenant general king , of whom none is descended claiming the title . john earl of arrol , is by the kings nomination , sheriff of this shire . chap. xxx : buchania , or bvqvhan . the taizali mentioned by ptolomy , in ancient times inhabited which is now buquhan , in latine boghania and buchania , above the river don , beareth forth toward the german sea. some derive this latter name à bobus , that is , from oxen and kine ; whereas notwithstanding the ground serveth better to feed sheep , whose wool is highly commended . albeit the rivers in this coast every where breed great store of salmons , yet do they never enter into the river ratra , as buchannan hath recorded . neither let it be offensive if his testimony be cited , although his books by authority of parliament in the year 1584 , were forbidden : because many things in them contained , are to be dashed out . who also hath written , that on the bank of ratra , there is a cave near unto stangs castle , the nature whereof seemeth not to be passed over . the water distilling by drops out of a natural vault , presently turneth into pyramidal stones ; and were not the said cave or hole otherwhiles rid and cleansed by mans labour , the whole space as far as up to the vault , would in short time be filled therewith . now the stone thus engendered , is of a middle nature , between yce and hard stone : for it is brittle and easy to crumble , neither groweth it ever to the solidity and hardness of marble . concerning those claik-geese , which some with much admiration have believed to grow out of trees ; both upon this shore and elsewhere ; and when they be ripe , to fall down into the sea , it is scarce with the labour to mention them . that there be little birds engendred of old and rotten keels of ships , they can bear . witness , who saw that ship wherein francis drake sailed about the world , standing in a dock near the thames ; to the outside of the keel , whereof a number of such little birds without life and feathers stuck closs . yet it would be thought , that the generation of these birds , was not out of the logges of wood , but from the very ocean , which the poets termed the father of all things . a mighty mass likewise of amber , as big as the body of an horse , was not many years since cast upon this shoar . the learned call it succinum , glessum , and chryso electrum : and sotacus supposed , that it was a certain juice or liquor which distilleth out of trees in britain , and runneth down into the sea , and is therein hardened . tacitus also was of the same opinion , when he wrote thus : i can verily believe , that likeas there be trees in the secret and inward parts of the east which sweat out frankincense and balm , so in the islands and other countries in the west there be woods and groves of a more fatty and firm substance , which melting by the hot beams of the sun approaching so near , runneth into the sea hard by , and by force of tempest , floateth up to the hoars against it . but serapio , and the philosophers of later times write , that it ariseth out of a certain clammy and bituminous earth under the sea , and by the sea-side ; and that the billows and tempests cast up part thereof a land , and a fishes devour the rest . in the reign of king alexander the second , alexander cummin rose up to the honour of earl of buquhan , who married the daughter and one of the heirs of roger de quincy , earl of winchester in england , and his niece by a son , brought the same title unto henry de beaumont her husband : for he , in king edward the third his days , had his place in the parliament of england , by the name of earl of buquhan . afterwards alexander stuart , son to king robert the second , was earl of this place ; unto whom succeeded john , a younger son of robert duke of albany , who arriving in france with seven thousand scottish men , to aid charles the seventh , king of france , bare himself valiantly , and performed singular good service against the englishmen , and that with so great commendation , as having victoriously slain thomas duke of clarence , brother to henry the fifth king of england , at baugie , and discomfited the english , he was made constable of france . but in the third year following , when the fortune of war turned , he with other most valiant knights , to wit , archibald dowglass earl of wigton , and duke of tourain , &c. was vanquished at vernoil by the english , and there slain . whom , notwithstanding as that poet said , — aeternum memorabit gallia cives grata suos , titulos quae dedit & tumulos ▪ france thankfully will ay recount , as citizens of her own , on whom both titles glorious , and tombs she hath bestown . and whereas under the kings , k. charles the sixth and seventh , france was preserved , and aquitain recovered , by thrusting out the english , the frenchmen cannot chuse but acknowledge themselves much beholden to the fidelity and fortitude of the scots . but afterwards , king james the first gave the earldom of buquhan unto george of dumbar , moved thereto upon pity and commiseration , because he had deprived him before of the earldom of march by authority of parliament , for his fathers crime : and not long after , james the son of james stuart of lorn , sirnamed the black-knight , whom he had by queen joan sister to the duke of somerset , and widow to king james the 1st obtained this honour , and left it to his posterity : but for default of heirs-male , it came by a daughter marryed to robert dowglass , a younger brother of dowglass of lochlevin , to the family of the dowglasses , and so to james ereskin eldest son of the earl of marr thesaurer , by his second wife , daughter to esme duke of lennox , of whom is descended the present earl. from buquhan , as the shore bendeth backward , and turneth full into the north , lyeth boena , and * bamff a small sheriffdom , also ajuza a little territory of no especial account , and rothamay castle , the dwelling place of the barons of salton , sirnamed abernethy . beneath these lyeth sirathbolgy , that is , the vale by bolgy , the habitation in times past of the earls of athol , who of it assumed their sirname ; but now the principle seat of marquess of huntly . for this title king james the sixth conferred upon george gordon , earl of huntly , lord gordon and badzenoth , a man of great honour and reputation for his ancient nobleness of birth , and the multitude of his dependants and followers ; whose ancestors descended from the setons , by parliamentary authority , took the name of gordon , ( when as sir alexander seton had taken to wife the daughter of sir john gordon knight , by whom he had a large and rich inheritance ) and received the honour of the earl of huntly at the hands of king james the second , in the year 1445 : his successor george marquess of huntly , was by king charles the second about the year 1683 , created duke of gordon . in this shire also did reside the ogilvies of findlater , of whom walter ogilvie was by king james the sixth created lord deskford : and in the rolls of parliament 1633 , he is ranked immediatly after the lord cranstoun , and before the lords melvil , carnegy and ramsey ; his son james was created earl of findlater by king charles the first anno 1633 , who marryed his daughter , and heiress to ogilvie of inch-martine in perth shire , an ancient family of that sirname ; the son of the marriage , is james now earl of findlater , who doth compet with the earl of airly , both for the antiquity of his family , and precedency as an earl : his second son sir james ogilvie , is designed of ogilvie , from a barony which belonged to their family purchased by him , he is his majesties sollicitor , and a member of this present parliament , for the royal burgh of cullen . in this shire , ogilvie of dunlaguse , afterward designed sir george ogilvie of bamff , baronet , descended of the ogilvies of boyn also in this shire , who are cadets of findlater , was by king charles the first , anno 1639 , created lord bamff , whose successor is george lord bamff . sir alexander fraser of philorth , in right of his mother abernethy , daughter to the lord saltoun , was by grant of king charles the second , declared lord saltoun , and approven in parliament 1670 , upon the death of alexander abernethy last lord saltoun of that sirname , whose grand-child is william fraser now lord saltoun ; he carries the arms of abernethy , quartered with the arms of fraser . his majesty hath nominat the forementioned sir james ogilvie , sheriff of bamff . chap. xxxi . moravia : or , mvrray . the vacomagi remembred by ptolomy , anciently inhabited on the further side of crantzbain mountain , which as it were in a continued range , by hills hanging one by another ; driveth out his ridge with many a winding as far as to murray firth ▪ where now lyeth murray , in latine moravia , celebrated for the fertility , pleasant situation , and commodity of fruitfull trees . by this province , spey a famous river , maketh his issue into the sea , wherein he lodgeth , when he hath watered rothes castle , whence the family of the leslys took the title of earl , ever since that king james the second conferred the honour of earl of rothes upon sir george lesly , of whom in the shire of fife . concerning this spey , the poet necham hath thus written . spey loca mutantis praeceps agitator arenae , inconstans certas nescit habere vias . officium lintris corbis subit , hunc regit audax cursus labentis nauta fluenta sequens . spey raising heaps of sand amain , that shift oft-times their place , inconstant he doth change eft-soons , and keeps no certain race . a panier serves here for a boat , some ventrous swain it guides , who followeth still the rivers course , whild down the stream it glides . the river loxa mentioned by ptolomy , which now is called losse , hideth himself in the sea hard by , near unto which elgin appeareth , in which and in forres adjoyning , j. of dumbar of cumnock , descended from the stock of the earls of march and murray , hath his jurisdiction as sheriff by inheritance , whose descendent is alexander dumbar of west-field , sheriff of murray ; his predecessor sir alexander dumbar of westfield , sheriff of murray , was son to the last dumbar earl of murray , whose son james dumbar , married one of the heiresses of patrick dumbar of cumnock , descended of the earls of march , by which marriage , their successors had the barony of cumnock , and were designed lairds of cumnock , till they sold these lands about the year 1600 , which now belong to the countess of dumfreis , and then they resumed their former designation of west-field and sheriff of murray . but where losse is now ready to enter into the sea , he findeth a more plain and soft soil , and spreadeth abroad into a meer full of swans , wherein the herb olorina plentifully groweth , he hath spiny castle standing upon it , whereof the first baron was alexander , of the linage of the lindseys now extinct . likas kinloss also a neighbour by , sometime a famous monastery ( some call it kill-flos , of certain flowers miraculously there springing up on a sudden , when the carcase of king duff , murdered and hidden in the same place , was found ) had for the lord thereof edward bruce ▪ a lawyer , and a commissar of edinburgh , afterward a lord of the session , and commendator of kinloss , and ambassador to queen elizaheth , and afterwards master of the rolls in england , and of the kings majesties privy council , whom king james the sixth created baron bruce of kinloss , about the year 1604 , whose son was created earl of elgin by k. ch. the 1st . anno 1633 , and a lord baron in york shire : and his son rohert was by k. ch. the 2d , created earl of ailshury in england , whose son doth succeed him in both dignities . in this shire also , sir alexander sutherland of duffus , an ancient cadet of the earls of sutherland , was created lord duffus in the beginning of the reign of king charles the second about the year 1651 , whose son is alexander now lord duffus . thus much for the shore . more inward , where now standeth bean castle , ( thought to be banatia that ptolomy mentioneth ) there was found in the year 1460 , a vessel of marble artificially engraven , and full of roman coin. hard by is nardin or nairn , an hereditable sheriffdom of the camphels of lorn , designed of caddel , sir hugh camphel of caddel is the present sheriff : and alexander campbel his eldest son , is one of the commissioners for that shire in this current parliament : where there stood within a biland , a fortress of a mighty hight , built with wonderful bulwarks , and in times past defended by the danish forces against the scots . a little off is logh-ness , a very great lake , as reaching out 23 miles in length , the water whereof is so warm , that even in this cold and frozen climat it never freezeth : from which , by a very small isthim or partition of hills , the logh lutea or louthea , which by aher letteth it self forth into the west sea , is divided . near unto these loghs , there stood in old time two notable fortifications , the one named iuverness , the other innerlothea , according to the names of the said loghs . iuverness had for sheriff thereof by right of inheritance , the marquess of huntly , who is of great command hereabout ▪ now at the kings disposal , lodovick grant of freuchie , commonly designed laird of grant a privy counseller , and one of the commissioners for the shire , is sheriff thereof . under the reign of rohert bruce , thomas randolph his sisters son , who in his countries behalf , undertook exceeding great pains and most grievous quarrels , was highly renowned by the title of earl of murray . under king rohert the second , john of dumhar took to wise the kings daughter , to make amends for her devirgination , received this earldom of murray with her in marriage . under king james the second , william creighton chancellor of the realm , and archihald dowglass , were at great variance and eager contention about this earldom ; when as against the laws and ancient customs , dowglass who had married the younger daughter of james of dumhar earl of murray , was preferred to the earldom before creighton , who had wedded the elder , and that through the powerful authority that william earl dowglass had with the king ; which was so great , that he advanced not only him to the earldom of murray , but also another brother to the earldom of ormond ; and made two cousins of his earls , the one of angus , and the other of morton : but this greatness of his not to be trusted upon , because it was excessive , turned soon after to his own confusion ; under king james the fifth , his own brother whom he appointed his vicegerent in the government of the kingdom , enjoyed this honour : and james the base son of king james the fifth , received this honour of queen mary his sister : but he requited her ill , when joyning with others of the nobility and nation , she was deposed from her royal estate and kingdom ; a president prejudicial to kings and princes , which notwithstanding was revenged ; for shortly after he was shot through with a bullet : his only daughter brought this title unto her husband sir james stuart of down , who was also of the blood-royal from the dukes of albany : who being slain by his concurrents , left his son james to succeed him in this honour . sir james stuart of down , first created lord down by king james the sixth about the year 1581 ; the successor of the lord down and earl of murray , is alexander earl of murray , who was secretary to king charles the second , and king james the seventh , and by the latter , was sent commissioner to the parliament 1686. chap. xxxii . loqhuabre . whatsoever beyond the nesse bendeth to the west coast , and adjoineth to the lake aber , is thereupon called loqhuabre , that is in the ancient tongue of the britains , the mouth of the lakes , as what lyeth toward the north is commonly called ross. loqhuabre is full of fresh pastures and woods , neither is without iron mines , but not so free in yielding of corn , but for most fishful pools and rivers , searce inferior to any country thereabout . at logh-lothy , innerlothy senced with a fort , and well frequented with merchants , was of great name and importance in times past , but being razed by the piracies and wars of danes and norwegians , it hath lien for these many ages so deserted , that there remained scarce any shew of it . loquhabre hath had no earls , but about the year of our salvation 1050 , there was a thane over it of great fame , and much spoken of , named banquho , whom macbeth the tyrant , when with murder and bloodshed he had usurped the crown , being fearful and suspicious , caused to be made away ; for that he had learned by a prophesy of certain wise-women , that his posterity when the line of macbeth was expired and extinct should one day obtain the kingdom , and by a long successive descent reign in scotland , which verily hath fallen out accordingly : for fleanch the son of banquho , who unknown in the dark , escaped the trains laid for him , fled into wales , where for a time he kept himself close : and having taken to wife nesta the daughter of griffith ap lewellin , prince of north-wales , begat walter ; who returning into scotland with so great fame of his fortitude , repressed the rebellion of the islanders , and with as great wisdom managed the kings revenues in this tract , that the king made him seneschal , whom they commonly call stewart of the whole kingdom of scotland , whereupon this name of office imposed the sirname of stuart unto his posterity : who spreading throughout all parts of scotland into a number of noble branches , after many honours heaped upon them , have flourished a long time , and from out of them three hundred and twenty four years ago , robert stuart by marjory his mother , daughter to king robert bruce , obtained the kingdom of scotland : and james stuart of that name , the sixth king of scots , by margaret his great grand-mother , daughter to king henry the seventh ( the divine power of that most high and almighty ruler of the world so disposing ) ascended with the general applause of all nations to the hight of monarchial majesty , over all britain and the isles adjacent . in the shire of inverness , aeneas macdonald laird of glengarie , was by king charles the second created lord macdonald , about the year 1661 , the patent being granted to heirs-male of his body , doth not descend upon his successor the laird of glengarie . chap. xxxiii . rossia . the province ross , so called by an old scottish word , which some interpret to be a promontory , others a biland , was inhabited by the people named cantae ( which term in effect implieth as much ) in the time of ptolomy . this extendeth it self so wide and large , that it reacheth from the one sea to the other , what way it beareth upon the vergivian or western ocean , by reason of huge swelling mountains advancing their heads aloft , and many woods among them : it is full of stags , roe-bucks , fallow-deer , and wild fowl ; but where it butteth upon the german sea , it is more lovely bedeck'd with corn-fields ane pastures , and withall much more civil : in the very first entrance into it , ardmanoch no small territory , whereof the second sons of the kings of scotland bear the title , riseth up with high mountains that are most trusty preservers of snow : as touching their hight some have reported strange wonders ; and yet the ancient geometers have written , that neither the depth of sea , nor hight of hills , exceed by the plumb-line ten s●adia , that is one mile and a quarter ; which notwithstanding , they that have beheld tenariff amongst the canary islands , which is fifteen leagues high , and sailed withal the ocean near unto them , will in no ways admit for truth . in this part standeth lovat castle , and the barony of the worthy family of the frasers , whom for their singular good service for the scottish kingdom , king james the 2d . accepted into the rank of barons , whose descendant at present is hugh lord lovat , and whom the clan-ranalds a most bloody generation , in a quarrel and brawl between them , had wholly destroyed every mothers son ; but that by the providence of god , fourscore of the principal persons of this family , left their wives at home all great with child , who being delivered of so many sons , renewed the house , and multiplied the name again . but at nesse-mouth , there flourished sometimes chanonrie , otherwise called fortrose , a burgh-royal , so called of a rich colledge of chanons , whiles the ecclesiastical state stood in prosperity , in which there is erected a see for the bishop of ross. in this country resided the laird of kintail , or mckenzie ; in an unprinted act of parliament 1593 , colin mckenzie of kintail , is mentioned : and in the convention of estates 1598 , the laird of mckenzie is a member : amongst the commissioners under the great seal , for holding the parliament 1607 , kenneth mckenzie of kintail , is mentioned : and also amongst the commissioners for holding the parliament 1609 , colin mckenzie of kintail , is named : and also in a sederunt of the same parliament , the laird of mckenzie is ranked inter barones and commissioners of shires . it seems shortly after tha● time , and before the year 1612 , the foresaid colin was created lord kintail ; for in the rolls of parliament 1617 , kintail is ranked after garleis and madertie , and before the lord cranstoun and carnagie , and the lord cranstoun is the last lord in the rolls of parliament 1612 : in like manner in the rolls of parliament 1621 , kintail is after garleis and cowper , and before cranstoun and carnagie . colin lord kintail december 3. 1623 , by k. james the sixth , was created earl of seaforth , his grand-nephew is kenneth earl of seaforth . hard by is placed cromarty , where vrquhart a gentleman of noble birth , by hereditary right from his ancestors , ministred justice as sheriff to this sheriffdom : and this is so commodious and safe an harbour for any fleet , be it never so great , that both sailers and geographers name it portus salutis , that is , the haven of safety . sir roderick m●kenzie , a son of the laird of kintail , was married to the heiress of mcleod of the lews , of which marriage was sir john mackenzie baronet , who married dame margaret ereskin , one of the daughters and coheirs of sir george ereskin of innerteil , one of the lords of session , and grand-child to the lord ereskin : sir george mckenzie of tarbat baronet , their son , was a lord of the session , by the first nomination and settlement of the judicature by king charles the second after his restauration in anno 1661 , in the year 1678 , he was by the same king appointed justice general ; and thereafter in the year 1681 , constitute lord register , and continued in that office during the reign of king charles the second , and king james the seventh : and in the year 1685 , was created viscount of tarbat , lord mcleod and castle-haven , and is present lord register to his majesty king william : and he having purchased the lands of cromartie , and sheriffship thereof , procured the enlargement of this shire by act of parliament , as did sir william bruce the shire of kinross . above it is littus altum , whereof ptolomy maketh mention , called now as it seemeth , tarharth : for there indeed the shore riseth to a great hight , enclosed on the one side with cromer , a most secure and safe haven ; and on the other with colnius , now killian the river , and thus much of the places toward the east ocean . into the west sea the river longus mentioned in ptolomy , at this day named lough longus , runneth : then the cerones anciently dwelt , where now is assinshire , a country much mangled with many in-lets and arms of the sea , inbosoming it self with manifold commodities . as for the earls of ross , it is full of difficulty to set them down in order successively out of writers . in the reign of king alexander the second , we read that ferquhard flourished and enjoyed this title , but for default of issue male , it came by a daughter to walter lesly , who for his noble feats of arms , courageously atchieved under lewis the emperour , was worthily named the nohle knight : he begat alexander earl of ross , and a daughter married unto donald lord of the islands hebrides . this alexander had issue one only daughter , who made over by her deed , all her own title and right unto robert duke of albany ; whereat the said donald of the islands being highly incensed , and repining , stiled himself in the reign of james the third , king of the islands , and earl of ross ; having with fire and sword , laid waste his native country far and near . at length , the said king james the 3d , by authority of parliament in the year 1476 , annexed the earldom of ross to the crown , leaving only to him the title of lord of the isles , so as it might not be lawful for his successors , to alienat by any means from the crown , either the earldom it self , or any parcel thereof ; or by any device to grant the same unto any person , save only to the kings second sons lawfully born : and so charles afterward king , during the life-time of his elder brother prince henry , enjoyed the title of earl of ross. this country hath lately been erected in a sheriffdom , the sheriffship whereof is at the kings disposal : and david ross of balnagoun is present sheriff , lineally descended of hugh ross of rarichies , lawful son to hugh earl of ross , and brother to earl william the last of that sirname , and to eupham queen of scotland dingwal was the seat of the earls of ross , and is now a burgh royal. andrew keith one of the commissioners , sent anno 1589 , to treat a marriage betwixt king james the sixth , and anna then princess of denmark , afterwards queen , was created lord dingwal . in the rolls of parliament 1621 , the lord dingwal is ranked after the lord holy-rud-house , and before the lord garleis , who behoved to be of a latter creation , i suppose of the sirname of preston of the family of craigmiller , of whom perhaps the duke of ormond is descended . in this shire is also tayn a burgh royal. chap xxxiv . sutherland . beyond ross , sutherland looketh toward the east ocean , a land more meet to breed cattel , than to bear corn ; wherein there be hills of white marble , ( a wonderful thing in this so cold a climat ) but of no use almost , considering excess in building , and that vain ostentation of riches , is not yet reached to these remote regions . here is dunrobin , a castle of very great name , the principal seat of the ancient earls of sutherland , descended of the family of murray : among whom , one william under king robert bruce is most famous , who married the sister of the whole blood to king david , and had by her a son , whom the said david declared heir apparent of the crown , and compelled his nobles to swear unto him alledgeance : but he within a little after departed without issue , and the earldom in the end came by a daughter and heir hereditarily unto adam gordon , one of the line of the earls of huntly , of whom is descended george , present e. of sutherland : this dignity by the decreet of ranking anno 1606 , being placed after the earls of argile , crawford , errol and marshal ; the earls of sutherland have quarrelled that ranking , and claimed precedency of these other earls by citations in processes & protestations in parliament , & in the last session of parl. 1693 , the said e. did by petition , apply to the parliament to have his precedency declared , which was remitted to be judged by the lords of session , before whom the process at his instance against these earls is depending . this country was in the year 1633 , erected in a sheriff-ship , to belong heretably to the earls of sutherland , who also have there the jurisdiction of justiciar and admiral : and because there are but few of the heretors who hold of the king , and not of the earl , by particular priviledge they are allowed to choise their commissioners to represent them in parliament , such as are not free tennents holding of the king , but only vassals holding of the earl. dornock is now become a burgh royal , and seat of the sheriff . chap. xxxv . cathanes . higher lyeth cathanes , butting full upon the said east sea , bending inward with a number of creiks and compasses , which the waves as it were indent : in which dwelt in ptolomy's time the catini , but written falsly in some copies carini , among whom the self fame ptolomy placeth the river ila , which may seem to be the wifle at this day . the inhabitants of this province raised their greatest gain and revenues , by grazing and raising of cattel , and by fishing : the chief castle therein is called girnego , in which the earls of caithness for the most part make there abode : the bishops see is in dornock , a little mean town otherwise ; where also king james the fourth appointed the sheriff of caithness to reside , or else at wike as occasions shall require , for the administration of justice . the earls of caithness in antient times , were also earls of the orcades , but at last they became distinct , and by the eldest daughter of one malise , given in marriage to william sinclar the kings pantler , his heirs successively came to be earls of caithness , and do still enjoy the same honour , of whom is descended george now earl of caithness . the earl of braid-albion having purchased the greatest part of the estate of caithness , is sheriff of this shire . chap. xxxvi . strath-nanern . the utmost and farthest coast of all britain ; which with the front of the shore looketh full against the north point , and hath the midst of the greater bears tail , which as cardan was of opinion , causeth translations of empires , just over head , was inhabited as we may see in ptolomy , by the carnabii , among whom he placeth the river nabeus , which names are of so near affinity , that the nation may seem to have drawn there denomination from the river that they dwelt by : neither doth the modern name strath-navern , which signifieth the valley by navern , jar altogether in sound from them . the earl of sutherland is superior of this country , and his eldest son is designed from it lord strathnaver . the chief inhabitants here are the mackeys , who were designed from their lands of fare ; but about the year 1625 , sir donald mackey was designed of strathnaver , and made a baronet , & in the year 1631 , was created lord rae , from a place belonging to him in the country of caithness , holding of the king ; he was imployed by gustavus k. of sweden in his wars : george lord rae is his great grand-child ; of whose grand-uncle by the mothers side : lieutenant general hugh mackey , descended of the same stock and linage ; it is reasonable to make mention , he was one of the captains of dowglass regiment , who for his service to the venetians , did from them receive a medal of considerable value ; he continued in that regiment and the french service , till they had made their conquests of some of the united provinces in the year 1672 : and then being imployed by the states , he was at the siege of grave made lieutenant collonel , and thereafter collonel ; in the year 1685 , his regiment & others were called over to england by k. ja. the 7th , to oppose the d. of monmouth , when he was made general major ; in the year 1688 , he did attend and assist his majesty in his expedition to britain , and in anno 1689 , was sent to command the forces in scotland , where albeit he had not good success at gillicharnkie , yet by his great fidelity and diligence , he settled garisons at inverlochy and other places of the high-lands , which laid the foundation of the settlement of these countries , and then was appointed to command in ireland , where with great courage , amongst the first to encourage the souldiers under him , he waded through the river , whereby they gained the town of athlone , & did signalize his courage and conduct at the battle of aghrim , and in the other parts of that war , till the reduction of the whole kingdom ; which by the acknowledgement of his fellow great captains and commanders , was in a great measure due to him ; for which service , he was made lieutenant general : and with the duke of wirtemberg , having commanded at steenkirk , was near the beginning of that action , unfortunatly slain with james lord angus , and sir robert dowglass of glenbervie , both collonels and heirs of these two noble families of the dowglasses , and representing the valour of their many predecessors the dowglasses , the last of whom slain in flanders , was l. ja. dowglass mareschal of the camp , grand-uncle to the lord angus of the first marriage , immediat elder brother to the last duke hamilton : in which action also , were many other brave scottish officers concerned , and of them a great part killed , or wounded ; and amongst the rest , lieutenant collonel aeneas mackey uncle to the lord rae , was wounded , who succeeded as collonel to the lieutenant general his uncle , to whom both he and collonel robert the younger brother , were disciples in the war , and in recompense of the dangers undertaken , and wounds they received , are advanced to the commands they now worthily exerce . the country it self is for the soil nothing fertile , and by reason of the sharp and cold air , less inhabited , and thereupon sore haunted and annoyed with most cruel wolves ; which in such violent rage , not only set upon cattel , to the exceeding great damnage of the inhabitants , but also assail men with great danger ; and not in this tract only , but in many other parts likewise of scotland , in so much as by vertue of an act of parliament , the sheriffs and inhabitants in every country , are commanded to go forth thrice a year a hunting , for to destroy the wolves and their whelps . but ( if in this so northerly a country , this be any comfort to speak of ) it hath of all britain again , the shortest night and the longest day : for by reason of the position of heaven , here distant from the aequinoctial line 59. degrees and forty minuts , the longest day containeth 18 hours and 25 scruples : and the shortest night not above five hours and 45 scruples : so that the panegyrist is not true in this , who made report in times past , that the sun in manner setteth not at all , but passeth by , and lightly glanceth upon the horizon ; happily relying upon this authority of tacitus , for that the extream points and plain levels of the earth , with their shade so low , raised up no darkness at all . but more truly pliny ( according to true reason ) where he treateth of the longest days , according to the inclination of the suns circle in the horizon . the longest days ( saith he ) in italy are 15 hours , in britain 17 , where the light nights do prove , that undoubtedly by experience , which reason forceth credibly , that in mid-summer days , when the sun approacheth near to the pole of the world , the places of the earth under the pole have day 6 months , though the light having but a narrow compass , the night contrarywise when he is far remote in middle winter . in this utmost tract , which ptolomy extendeth out far east , whereas indeed it beareth full north ( for which roger bacon in his geography taxed him long since ) where tacitus said , that an huge and enorm space of ground , running still forward to the farthest point , groweth narrow like a wedge . there run out three promontories mentioned by the old writers , namely berubium , now called vrdehead , near to bernswal a village : virvedrum now dunsby , otherways named duncansbay , which is thought to be the most remote promontory of britain . orcas now named howburn , which ptolomy setteth over against the islands orcades , as the utmost of them all : this also in ptolomy is called tarvedrum and tarvisium , and so named as is conjectured , because it is the farthest end of britain : for tarvus in the british tongue , hath a certain signification of ending . chap. xxxvii . the stewartry of orknay , and the other northern and western isles . i do not design to treat particularly concerning the isles of scotland , where i can find little to my purpose of jurisdiction , nobility , or burghs royal : and as to these , i leave the reader to straloch and scots-tarbat , who made very particular descriptions of them , published in latine at amsterdam in the year 1654 ; and to mr. adairs geography not yet fully ended , which is expected will be exact in relation to them : only something i would add first concerning the northern isles , called the orcads and shotland , who have been longer in the possession of the kings of denmark and norway , than any other of the scottish isles . in the year 1320 , amongst the barons of the kingdom of scotland , who in the reign of king robert bruce , wrote to pope john , is , magnus comes cathaniae & orcadiae . to these earls succeeded the sinclars earls of orknay , the last of whom was william sinclar earl of orknay , and chancellor to k. james the second , whom in the year 1456 , resigned the lordship of nithsdale to the king , and in place thereof , got the earldom of caithness . king james the 3d , got a further right to these isles , by his marriage with the k. of denmarks daughter ; which right was renewed and became compleat , and absolute by k. james the sixth , his marriage with the princess of denmark ; by which king , robert stuart earl of coldinghame , descended of a natural son of king james the fifth , was created earl of orknay ; his successor patrick e. of orknay , anno 1614 , was foresaulted these countries were erected in a stewardship , and the rents thereof managed by a steward named by the king , and payed in to the exchequer : to represent this stewartry two commissioners are sent to the parliament , and kirkwal is the head town thereof , and burgh royal : there was also here a bishop , last of the province of st. andrews , and a commissar or official under him . as concerning the western isles commonly called the aebudae , and the hebrides ; they were the ancient possessions of the scots , in their first inhabiting from ireland , as doth appear from our historians , and particularly chronicon de melross , that in the year 1098 , magnus the son of olavus , king of norway , added the isles orcadae and menaniae to his kingdom , which happened by the wars and divisions after the death of malcolm canmore , betwixt donald bain his brother , and duncan his bastard son , who usurped the crown , and were expelled , and edgar his eldest son alive , settled on the throne ; since which time , there were feudatory kings or princes of the isles , generally depending on the kings of norway , and sometimes upon the kings of scotland , till the year 1263 , or 1263. that the danes in the reign of alexander the third , were defeat at the battle of largs in cunninghame , and driven out of the isles as hath been said . donald earl of ross , in the reign of king james the second , with the earls of dowglass and crawford , joyned in arms against the king ; and doing the like against king iames the third , ( designing himself king of the isles ) was in the year 1476 forefaulted , and the earldom of ross annexed to the crown , to be enjoyed by the second sons of the kings of scotland , leaving only to him the title of l. of the isles , as hath been said before : which is the only dignity of l , i have observed to have been taken from the isles . these isles had also a bishop , who was called sodorensis , from his seat and church in the isle of man ; bnt since that isle did belong to the english , his seat hath been at icolmkill , he was of the province of glasgow , and had likewise an official or commissar under him . i shall conclude this treatise with a note of the charter by king malcolm the fourth anno 1159 , at rokesburg , confirming a charter granted by king david the first , his grand-father , of the abbacy of * seleschirke , which is narrated to have been founded by him , when he was earl , in the life of his brother king alexander the first , who died in the 1124 : and that king david by the advice of john bishop of st. andrews , translated the abbacy from this place to * kelcho ; which robert the succeeding bishop of st. andrews , in whose bishoprick it was granted , the abbacy freedom from all episcopal service ; and that the abbots might be ordained by any bishops in scotland or cumberland . the witnesses to the kings charter , are herbert bishop of glasgow , william bishop of murray , gregory bishop of dunkeld , william and david the kings brothers , ada his mother , jeffery abbot of dumfermling , osbert abbot of jedworth , amfrid abbot of newbottle , ailvred abbot of stirling , walter cancellarius , robert prior of st. andrews , matthew arch-deacon of st. andrews , thor. archi-diacon . laodoniae , herber . camerarius , nic : clericus , ric : cappellanus , walterus clericus cancellarii , joannes nepos episc : roberti , godredus rex insularum , cospatricius comes , ferteth comes , dunc : comes , uthredꝰ filius fergusii , gilbertꝰ de vmfravil , will : de somervel , ric : de morevil , ranulphus de soulis , david olyphard , ric : cumin , robertus avenal , will : de morevil , will : finimund , walterus corbet , asketi de ridala , henricus de perth , vlphus filius maccꝰ . this charter is special , both because of the antiquity related to , and the great number of famous and considerable witnesses , and especially of the king of the isles , ( whom i just now mentioned ) before four earls , and albeit the earl of angus be only designed by his earldom , yet the other three were certainly cospatricius earl of dumbar , or march , ferteth earl of strathern , who was father of gilbert before mentioned , and duncan earl of fife , and vchtred was lord of galloway , and father of rolland . this note i took from the principal charter , which if i had at hand , i would have inserted the tenor , and the initial letters as they are gilded , containing the effigies and regalia of the kings david and malcolm . this charter is again confirmed by king william , formerly mentioned the kings brother , to whose charter the witnesses are joceline bishop of glasgow , earl david my brother , archibald abbot of dumfermling , hugo cancell , simon archi-diacon . glasc . william morevil constab. meus , robert de londonys , rolland filius vthredi , william de linddeseys , malc . filius comitis dunecani , phil. de vallonys , allanꝰ filius walteri gervosius de avenel , constab : de rockesburg , walter corbet , ranulphus de soules , herb. de maxhwill , tho. de colvil , rob. de phil. de setune , herb. maresc . earl david was earl of huntingtoun in england , and garviath or garrioth in scotland , of whom our kings are lineally descended : as also allan the son of walter , of whom before concerning the stuarts of scotland . amongst these witnesses are also the predecessors of the earls of crawford , nithsdale , and winton . and now having gone through the whole countries of scotland , according to the method of the author , i conclude . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a32776-e1310 highlandmen . lawlandmen . bishopricks . * whiterne , thanes , knights , gentlemen . parliament . * domini pro articulis . the session . mckenzies precedency . page . 37. courts of criminal matters . ● . royal. the shire of roxburgh . dowglas of cavers . spotswood hist. of the church of scotland . lib 7. page 476. e. roxburgh . l. jedburgh . ● . ancrum . e. teviot . l. rutherfoord v. teviot . mackenzies precedency pag. 48. d. buckcleugh the shire of peebles e. tweddale . e. traquair . 1. elibank . the shire of selkirk . philiphaugh . e. selkirk . e. lawderdale . e. hume . l. mordingtoun . e. merch. l. eymouth . l. polwarth . lothian . * florilegus . the shire or constabulary of haddingtoun . b. royal. e. dunbar . v. dunbar . e. tweeddale . e. royal. 1548. v. haddingtoun . e. haddingtoun . athelstanford . bodotria . e. forth ▪ tantallon . * b. royal. v. fenton . e. dirltoun . v. belhaven . l. belhaven . soland geese , which seem to be plinies picarniae . e. winton . e. dumfermling . v. kingstoun . the shire of edinburgh . l. borthwick . e. lothian . l. cronstoun . v. oxenford . v. prestoun . l. dalhousie . l. naper . * procurator . * votum susceptum solvit lubens merito . apollo granus . edinburgh , the metrapolitan city . l. holy-rud-house . l. ballenden . l. cameron . l. cramond . l. forrester . oppidum eden . leith . v. new-haven . the shire of linlithgow . * b. royal. e. abercorn . blackness . b. royal. e. linlithgow . l. torphichen . hoptoun . liddesdale . l. bothwel . this stewarttry lyes in dumfreis shire b. royal. b , royal ▪ l. annandale e. carrick . v. annan . e. annandale murray . e. hartfield . e. annandale johnstoun . the shire of dumfreis . b. royal. e. dumfreis . d. queensberry l. tothorwald b. royal. e. morton . e. nithsdale . l. hereis . glencairn . the behaviour of scotish borderers . galloway : the stewartrie of kirkcudbright . b. royal. l. kirkcudbright . v. kenmore . b. royal. the shire of wigton . b. royal. e. wigtoun . leucopibia . b. royal. * o 〈…〉 piers . hern a house or habitation . b. royal. lords of galloway . constable of scotland . e. galloway . the shire of air. baillairy of carrick . berigonium bargeny . e. cassils . l. bargenie . earls of carrick . book of melrosse . stuart , e. carrick . the shire of air , kings-kyle and kyle-stewart . b. royal. l. uchiltrie . v. stair . e. dundonald . the shire of air. baillarie of cunninghame . e. lowdoun . e. kilmarnock . b. royal. e. irwine . v. irwine . e. eglington . e. glencairn ▪ rothsay castle . b. royal. sheriff of bute . e crawford . l. somervel . e. carnwath . douglasse . e. dowglasse . m. dowglass . l. carmichael . b. royal. ballendens translation of boetius hist. book 12. chap. 5. d. hamilton . e. bothwel . l. blantyre . b. royal. b. royal. shire of renfrew . b. royal. l. cathcart . l. darnley . l. ross. l. pasley . l. semple . l. glasford . l. areskine . walter the son of allan dapifer regis , founder of the abbacy of pasley . allan dapifer . chronica de melross & fordon . walter stewart and justiciar of scotland . chron. de melross . alexander stewart of scotland . james stewart of scotland . prinns hist. page 649. anno 24. ed. 1. sir john stuart of bute . walter stuart of scotland . robert stuart of scotland , & e. of strathern k. r. 2. the shire of dunbarton . al-cluyd . b. royal. r. hoveden . earls of lennox . a troop of scots in france . d. lennox . lords of aubigny . paradine . e. dunbarton . the shire of stirling . god terminus god terminus . aug. de civ . dei l. 4. c. 29. the wall of antoninus pius . * cohors prima hamiorum . ninius . abereorn . grahams dyke . duni-pacis . v. kilsyth . arthurs oven . corta damniorum . buchananus scotus . e. callender . e. wigtoun . l. elphingstoun . b. royal. battle of banock-burn . alauna . e. stirling . caledon forrest . ulysses his altar . caledonian bears . caledonian bulls . galgacus the brittain . * triadum . argetocoxus . the shires of clackmannan and kinross . shire of fife . b. royal. l. colvil . e. kincardine . b. royal. e. dumferming . b. royal. e. kinghorn . b. royal. e. dysert . l. sinclar . e. levin . e. weyms . l. burntisland . b. royal , b. royal v. falkland . b. royal. l. balmerinoch . l. lindoris . l. balvaird e. fife . * colpindach● . e. rothes . d. rothes . l. burghly . e. melvil . e. belcarrras . e. kelly . e. newburgh . l. abercromby . l. new-wark . burghs royal in perth-shire e. perth . l. maderty . v. strathallan . m. athol . l. oliphant . e. kinnoul . l. innermeth . stuart earl of strathern . l. doun . v. dumblain . l. rollo . earls of monteith . graham e. of monteith . graham e. of strathern . e. monteith , or airth . m. montross . l. cardross . inscription of macduffs cross. the shire of argile . e. argile . e. melfort . b. royal. in the shire of argile . l. kintyre . in the shire of argyle . lochaber : lib : 3 : cap : 4 : bed : hist : ecclesiast : s. g : mackenzie against st : asaph , and dr : stillingfleet . in perth shire d : of albanie : earl of braid-albine . the shire of perth . earl athol . marquess athol earl dunmore . lord nairn . burgh-royal . lord dunkell . gillichrankie . burgh-royal . l. methven . e. gowry . l. ruthven . v. stormonth . e. arrol . l. kinnaird . the shire of forfar . e. kinghorn . e. strathmore . b. royal. l. gray . l. forfar . e. forfar . b. royal. hector boetius . e. dundee . v. dundee . b. royal. * red-head , a promontory . e : southesk . e : ethie . e : northesk . b : royal. e : panmure . b : royal. m : montross : e : airlie : e : angus : douglass e : angus : l : couper : the shire of kincardin : dunnotyr castle : e : mareschal : john de fordon : st : palladius : v : arbuthnet : l : halcartoun : e : middletoun b : royal : see chap : 8 : pag : 49 : * tacitus vit : agric : c : 22 : tertius expeditionis annus novas gentes aperuit : vastatis usque ad taum ( aestuarii nomen est ) nationibus agricola in fines horestorum exercitum deducit : ibi acceptis obsidibus praefecto circumvehi britanniam praecepit , &c. sir george mckenzies answer to the b : of st : asaph , pag : 77. 78 , 79 : in the shire of aherdene : e : mar : l : forbois : * b : royal : * bede , and our writers called them in latin isicii : earls of marr. l : pitsligo . l : fraser . e : kintore . b : royal. b. royal. b : royal. e : aberdeen . v : aboyn . e : aboyn . v : frendraught . l : ythan . in the shire of aberdeen . cummin e. of buchan . stuart e. of buchan . ereskin e. of buchan . in the shire of bamff . * b : royal. l. abernethy of salton . d : gordon . e : findlater . b : royal. l : bamff . l : saltoun fraser . the shire of elgin . e : rothes . b : royal. b : royal. dumbar of westfield sheriff of murray . l : spenzie . e : elgin . l : duffus . b : royal , and shire of nairn . b : royal. the shire of iuverness . e : murray . dumbar e. of murray . stuart earl of murray . in the shire of inverness . banquho thane of loquhabre . l : macdonald . the shire of ross. l : ardmannoch . l : lovat . b : royal. e : seaforth . the shire of cromarty . v : tarbat . earls of ross. b : royal. l : dingwal . b : royal. the shire of sutherland . earls of sutherland . b : royal. the shire of caithness . b. royal. e. caithness . e. caithness . in the shire of sutherland . l. rae . the stewartry of orknay . e. orknay . b. royal. the western isles . * selkirk * kelso a defence of the scots settlement at darien with an answer to the spanish memorial against it, and arguments to prove that it is the interest of england to join with the scots and protect it : to which is added a description of the countrey, and a particular account of the scots colony. philo-caledon. 1699 approx. 135 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 33 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a40373 wing f2047 estc r18505 12112069 ocm 12112069 54217 this keyboarded and encoded edition of 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(eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a40373) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 54217) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 68:11) a defence of the scots settlement at darien with an answer to the spanish memorial against it, and arguments to prove that it is the interest of england to join with the scots and protect it : to which is added a description of the countrey, and a particular account of the scots colony. philo-caledon. ridpath, george, d. 1726. fletcher, andrew, 1655-1716. foyer, archibald. [4], 60 p. s.n.], [s.l. : 1699. dedication signed: philo caledon. "according to a manuscript note in the librarian's copy for the catalogue of the new college library (edin. 1868), the author is archibald foyer" -scott, j. bibl. of ... the darien company, 1904, p. 22. also attributed to george ridpath and andrew fletcher. cf. sabin, bibl. amer.; halkett & laing, 2nd ed.; bm. reproduction of original in columbia university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng darien scots' colony, 1698-1700. panama -colonization. panama -discovery and exploration. scotland -history -1689-1745. scotland -commercial policy. 2002-12 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-02 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-06 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2003-06 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-08 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a defence of the scots settlement at darien . with an answer to the spanish memorial against it . and arguments to prove , that it is the interest of england to join with the scots , and protect it . to which is added a description of the countrey , and a particular account of the scots colony . printed in the year , m. dc . xc . ix . to the king's most excellent majesty . sir , the interest you have in the flourishing of your antient kingdom of scotland , whose crown is transmitted to you by an hundred and eleven of your ancestors , without ever having been on the head of a forraigner , emboldens the author to lay the following sheets at your majesties feet . the design of them is to vindicate the settlement of the scots in darien , and your majesties justice in protecting them , against the oblique aspersions which are cast upon it in the spanish memorial . the soveraignty of the crown of scotland hath alwise been held sacred by our ancestors , who never were sparing of their blood to defend it either from the invasion of foreigners , or the mean compliance of some few of our princes that were unworthie to wear it ; and therefore were either totally excluded from it , as the family of baliol , or oblig'd to reassert its right when rescu'd out of the hands of their enemies , as happen'd to our william i. and james i. providence having now plac'd it on the head of your majesty , whose heroic courage is known to all the world , our nation should be unjust to your character to expect any thing less than that our crown , which you receiv'd free and independent from your ancestors , should be transmitted by you with greater advantages than ever to your successors . therefore it is , great sir , that a privat subject of your antient kingdom takes the holdness to vindicate the soveraignty and dignity of your crown as kings of scots , and to put such as are enemies to it in mind , that when edward i , and ii. of england invaded it , the scotish nation did gallantly defend it , advanced robert bruce to the exclusion of baliol the nearest heir , and acquainted the princes of christendom that they did so in defence of their independency ; adding that they would expel robert bruce , if he offered to betray their liberty , and would never subject their crown to that of england , whilst there were 100 scots men alive . this being the fundamental constitution of our government , and the condition on which that prince and his successors were admitted to our crown ; they can in no wise be look'd upon as friends to your majesties dignitie as king of scots , who call in question what you enact in the parliament of that kingdom , or that offer to traverse it by contrary proclamations . we are your majesties subjects as well as our neighbours , and have an equal right to share your protection , which its hop'd they will at last be convinc'd it is their interest to agree to in relation to our american settlement . your majesty's paternal affection to the kingdom of scorland , hath discover'd it self in many instances : nor is it to be desired or expected by our nation , that it should any way interfere with the like care and affection , which is owing to our brethren of england ; but there is no reason that they should enjoy a freedom of trade throughout the world , and that we should be denied it . ●…our majesty in yo●…r gracious proposals os an union , gave sufficient evidence of a fatherly concern for both nations . thereforo as it hath pleased god to make you the glorious instrument of our common deliverance ▪ that he would also make you the happy instrument of our inseparable union , and after a long reign here , crown you with everlasting glory hereafter , is the sincere and ardent prayer of your majesty's loyal and affectionate subject , philo caledon . a defence of the settlement of the scots on the isthmus of darien in america with arguments to prove , that it is the interest of england to join with them , and to protect them in that colony . the heads propos'd to be insisted upon in the following sheers , ar●… , the legality of the scots establishment , the advantage or disadvantage that may redound from it to england : whether the scots without the assistance of the english may be able to maintain their footing in america ; and what , may probably be the consequences , if the scots should be oppos'd therein by the english , and miscarry in the undertaking . the chief objections against the legality of their establishment , ari●…e from the memorial delivered in against it to the king , by the ambassad or extraordinary of spain , may 3 , 1699. o , s , as follows : the under-subscriber , ambassador extraordinary from his catholick majestie , finds himself oblig'd by express orders , to represent to your majesty , that the king his master having receiv'd information from different places , and last of all from the governor of havana , of the in●…ult and attempt of some scots ships , equip'd with men and other things requisit , who design to settle themselves in his majestres soveraign demains in america , and particularly the province of darien . his majesty receiv'd those advices with very much difcontent , and looks upon the same as a token of small friendship , and as a rupture of the alliance betwixt the two crowns ( which his majesty hath observed hitherto , and alwayes observes very religiously , and from which so many advantages and profits hath resulted both to your majesty and you●… subjects ) as a consequence of which good correspondence , his majestie did not expect such sudden insults and attempts by your majesties subjects , and that too in a time of peace , without pretext ( or any cause ) in the very heart o●… his demains . all that the king desires , is , that this may be represented to your majesty , and that your majesty may be acquainted , that he is very sensible of such hostilities and unjust procedures , against which his majesty will take such measures as he thinks convenient . given at london , may ●… . 1699. it were easie to make proper remarks upon the weakness , insolence and ingratitude of this memorial , but it is not worth while ; all the world knows what the crown of spain ows to his majesty of great britain ; and therefore a more civil application might reasonably have been expected to a prince , who hath not only saved the netherlands , but prevented his catholick majesty from being insulted on his throne at madrid . but these things we pass over , and come to the chief point in the memorial , which is , that the scots have posted themselves in the king of spain ' s demains in america , contrary to the allyance betwixt the two crowns . if this be proved to be ●…alse , then the cause of the complaint ceases , and his majesty of great britain hath reason to demand satisfaction for the affront offered thereby to his justice and soveraignty . to prove the falshood of the allegation , that the province of darien is part of the king of spains demains : it is positively denied by the scots , who challenge the spaniards to prove their right to the said province , either by inheritance , m●…rriage , donation , purchase , reversion , surrender or conquest ; which being the only titles by which they or any other people can claim a right to those or any other dominions , if the spaniards cannot make out their right by those of any of those , their claim must of consequence be null and void . it is evident that the spaniards cannot pretend a tittle to that countrey by inheritance , marti●… , or the donation of prince and people ; and as to conquest it would be ridiculous to alleadge it ; since the dariens are in actual possession of their liberty , and were never subdued , nor receiv'd ●…ny spanish governor or garison amongst them . nay , they were so far from it , that wafer , dampier , and others that have wrote of that countrey , do all agree that they mortally hate the spaniards , were in war with them , and that the spaniards had no commerce with those indians , nor command over them in all the north side of the isthmus a little beyond porto bello . * capt. sharp in the journal of his expedition , published in cap●… hacke's collection of voyages , gives an account , that in 1680 he landed at golden island with 330 men , and being joyn'd by one of the darien princes , whom they call'd emperor , and another to whom they gave the tittle of king golden ▪ cap , with some hundreds of their men , took sancta maria , attempted panama , and made prize of several spanish ships ; which is the more remarkable , because capt. sharp was afterwards tryed in england for robbery and piracy on this very account , but acquitted because of his commission from those darien princes : which is a plain demonstration that the government of england did then look upon darein to be no way subject to spain , whateve●… some who are enemies to the scots , do now say against the legality of their settlement in that country . this same expedition against the spaniards by assistance of the darien indians is confirm'd by mr. dampier in his introduction to his new voyage round the world. and the ●…p of chiapa a prelate of their own , in his relation of the spanish voyages an●… cruelties in the west-indies . p 217. owns that the spaniards had no title to the americans , as their subjects , by right of inheritance , purchase , o●… conquest . we have likewise a large account , and a full confirmation of the war and perpetual enmity betwixt the dariens and the spaniards in the history of the buccaneers of america , vol. 2. part 4. wrote by basil ringrose , who was one of their company . there he in●…orms us that the indians of darien , and the spaniards are commonly at war with one another ; and that the buccaneers were invited into that countrey , and join'd by the darien princes , capt. andrea●… , captain antonio , and the king of darien , who assisted th●…m in the taking of sancta maria , au●… their attempt upon ●…anama ; and the king whose daughter the spaniards had stole away , promised to join the buccaneers with 50000 men. this is the more remarkable , because those very princes , or their successors are now in league with the scots , and have joyfully receiv'd them into their countrey . so that it is the strangest imposition that can be put upon any nation , and one of the most audacious affronts that ever was put upon so great a prince as k william , for the spaniards to pretend a right to darien , and accuse him of a b●…each of the peace , because a colony of his subjects have settled themselves there ; when it is so well known to the world that the crown of spain has no manner of title to that province . then as to any claim by virtue of possession , the spaniards have no●… the least gr●…und of plea : all they can alledge on this head is , that they were once admitted by the consent of capt. diego , another of the darien princes , to work on some golden mines , within 15 leagues , or thereabouts , of the scots settlement : but it is plain that this makes nothing for their purpose . that prince admitted them only as labourers , but not as proprietors ; and when they broke the con●…itions on which they were admitted , viz : to allow the dariens such and such shares of the product , they were expell'd again by forc●… ; and ever since that time the dariens refuse to have any further dealings with the spaniards , who made themselves odious to them by their treachery and insolence : so that mr. wafer tells us pag. 133. they allow a distinguishing mark of honour to him who has kill'd ●… spaniard : and pag. 179. that lacenta one of the chief of the darien princes , did in his converse with him , express his sense and resentment of the havock made by the spaniards in the west of america , at their first coming thither . it remains then that the spaniards can lay no other claim to darien but what they plead from the pope's general grant of america , its being bounded by their dominions , and the treaties with england . which shall be considered in their order . to urge the pope's grant amongst protestants is ridicolous , and amongst papists themselves but precarious : but adm●…tting it were sufficient to justifie their title , it is easie to prove that the spaniards have forf●…ited all the right that they can claim by virtue of that grant. the church o●… rome will not publickly own her power to grant a right of conquest , but in order to propagate the faith , and not that neither , except the infidel prince or people be guilty of a breach of treaty . so that the pope's grant with these restrictions is so far from establishing the title of the spaniards , that it plainly overth●…ows it . that the indians were committed to the spaniards by pope alexander the vi. on condition that they should teach them the christian religion , is proved by don bartholomew de las casas bishop of chi●…pa , iu his account of the first voyages and discoveries made by the spaniards in america , and the relation of their unparallel a cruelties , p. 165. and there he likewise owns , that their acquitting themselves so ill of that commission , they ought to make restitution of all they have taken from them under this pret●…xt . and pag. 200 , he charges them with breach of the terms prescrib'd by the apostolical brief , tho queen isabella ▪ to whom it was granted earnestly entreated them to keep exactly to it . p. 218. he says that the title of the king of spain to the indians ▪ is ●…ounded only on the obligation he h●…d taken upo●… himsel●… to instruct them in the true faith , as appears by the apostolick b●…ief : which they w●…re so far from performing , that instead of converting their sou●…s , they destroyed their bodies , having in those early dayes , viz : in the time o●… the emperor cha●…les v. mu●…dered above 40 millions of them ; and ●…ook so little care to 〈◊〉 them in the christian religion , that they perfectly obst●…ucted their conversion , and sold those very idol●… that some of the poor people had 〈◊〉 away with abhorrence , to o●…her of the indians ; ibid ▪ p ▪ 194. which , together with ●…heir 〈◊〉 horrid 〈◊〉 , c●…eated an aversion in ●…hose poor infid●…ls fo●… heaven it self ; according to the known story of hathwey an ●…ndian prince , ibid. p. 21. wh●… being fast'ned to ▪ a s●…ake ▪ by the spaniards in o●…der to be burnt , ●…or no other crime but 〈◊〉 to defend himself and his ●…ubjects against their 〈◊〉 , ask't a fria●… that was discoursing to ▪ him of heaven , promising him eternal happines●… there ▪ if he would believe , and threatning him with hell if he did not , whether heaven was opened to the spaniards ; answer'd that it was to such of t●…em as were good , replied immediatly that h●… would not go thither , fo●… fear of meeting such cruel and wicked company as they were , but would much ●…ather chuse to go to hell , where he might be deliver'd from the troublesome sight o●… such kind of people . so that their forfeiture of all right or title to darien , by the pope's g●…ant , if it were of any validity , is plainly demonstrated . their next plea is , that darien is bounded or inclosed by their dominions , viz. by portobello and carthagena , with ●…heir territories on the no●…th , and panama and sancta maria on the south . to this it is answered , that darien is bounded only by ●…he sea on both sides , without so much as a spanish fort or garrison , from nombre de dios , to the gulf of darien on the north sea , or ●…rom the river of chepo , to the river of cong●… on the south sea. the territories of the spaniards confining on bo th end of the isthmus are not unlimited , but are restricted on both sides by the dariens , who , as has been already said , were never subject to spain . nor is it any new thing in the world , for independent soveraignty s to ly inclos'd within the dominions of other princes , to instance in no more than orange and avignon in europe , ceuta , metilla . &c. possessed by the spaniards themselves in africk , which lye in the very bosome of morocco , and yet the spaniards don't think their title to them e're a whit the worse . the dutch and portugueze have both of them settlements on the coast of brasil , to which the spaniards pretend a right . the french have settlements in hispaniola and guiana , notwithstanding the neighbour-hood of the spaniards . the english and french have both of 'em plantations in newfoundland . the dutch in time of peace settled in long island , in the middle of the english plantations , yet no war ensued upon it . the english plantations themselves of bahama islands , tho the spanish fleet passed betwixt them and florida : and the english have several times settled at port-royal in campechy bay , to cut loggwood , &c. and remov'd and settled as they found convenient . k. charles ii ▪ in time of peace granted a patent to mr. cox , to settle a colonie in the bay of mexico , which was never question'd by the spaniards : and the french have now since the conclusion of the last peace , planted a colony on the river mississipi in that same bay ; against which we hear of no complaints from madrid ▪ so that the plea of the spaniards from this topick is perfectly overturn'd by common practice , the law of nations , and their own concessions in parallel cases . the next plea of the spaniards is from the treaties betwixt them and the crown of great britain , of which they alledge the settlement of the scots at darien to be a breach , but that there 's no ground for this allegation . will appear to those that peruse the said . treaties , viz. that of may 23 1667. and that of july 1670 , wherein there 's not the least mention of excluding either party from enlarging their dominions in ameriea , upon wastes , or by consent of the natives , in such places as have never yet been possest by spain or great britain . so that all that can be infe●…'d from those treaties , is , that they were a mutu●…l security for the peaceable possession of what each crown enjoy'd in that countrey . and no more ; which is sufficiently confirm'd by the patent granted to dr. cox , and the settling and removing of the english in campechy bay , &c. without controul , as before mention'd . having thus made it evident that the spaniards have no manner of title or right to darien , it is natural in the next place to shew that they themselves are guilty of the breach of treaty by proceeding in this affair as they have done . by the third article of the treaty between the crowns of great britain and spain ▪ concluded at madrid may 23. 1667. it is provided , that if any injury shall be done by either of the said kings , or by the people or subjects of either of them , to the people or subjects of the other , against the articles of that alliance , or against common right , there shall not therefore be given letters of reprisal , marque or countermarque , by any of the confederates , until such time as justice is follow'd in the ordinary course of law. yet the spaniards without any such procedure , or offering in the least to prove their title to darien , present a virulent and huffi●…g memorial , at the very first charging the king with want of friendship , and a breach of alliance , and threatning to take such measures as they shall think meet : when their sickly monarchy has not yet had time to breath , since rescu'd from the common danger , wherein europe was involv'd , by the arms of that very prince whom they treat so ungratefully . but this is not all ; for contrary to the express words of that same treaty , they attack the scots by sea and land , who had done them no injury , but acquainted them that they came peaceably , without any hostile design against them or any other people ; and were so generous as to reject the motion of capt. andreas , one of the darien princes , and their ally , when he offered to make them masters of panama , if they would but join him with 500 of their men. the spaniards have also , contrary to the 10th and 11th articles of the treaty concluded at madrid . july 18 1670 , concerning america , detain'd the scots and english prisoners who were forc'd ashoar at carthagena by shipwrack , tho all such practices be expresly provided against by the said articles ; and they have also violated the 14th article of that treaty , which forbids reprisals , except in case of denying or unreasonably delaying justice , from all which it is evident , that the king of great britain has just reason to demand satisfaction of the spaniards sor attacking his subjects contrary to treaty ; and that the scots being thus injuriously treated , may very lawfully , not only make reprisals upon the spaniards for themselves , but join with the king of darien in taking sancta maria , panama , or any other place helonging to the spaniards in that countrey , of which the dariens are natural lords , and the spaniards tyrannical usurpers , as is pleaded by the king of darien himself ; and therefore he invited the english buccaneers to assist him to retake it : and by this capt. sawkins justified his proceedings in a letter to the governor of panama , asserting that the king of darien was true lord of panama , and all the countrey thereabouts ; and that they came to assist him . history of buccaneers , vol. 2. part 4. p. 32. and we have mentioned before that capt. sharp , who was accused of piracy , for that same expedition , and succeeded sawkins in his command , was acquitted in england , because he had that prince's commission . having fully prov'd that the spaniards have no title in darien , it remains to be prov'd that the scots have as good and just a title to their settlement there , as any people in the world can have ; which may easily be demonstrated thus : they were authorized by an act of parliament , and the kings letters patent , to plant colonies in asia , africa , or america , upon places not inhabited , or any other place by consent of the natives , not possest by any european prince or state. being provided with this authority than which there cannot be a greater , or one more duly and honestly limited , they equipp'd their ships , and landed on the north side of the isthmus of darien in november 1698. where the spaniards , as has been fully prov'd , never had any possession , and no other european prince or state pretends any claim to it . being arriv'd there , they fairly obtained the consent of the princes and people of the country , and particularly of captain andreas , who is the chief man in that tract ; and after a solemn treaty and alliance deliberatly made , and wrote in spanish , because the said prince understands that language , they peaceably enter upon their new colony , without either force or fraud . so that they have religiously kept to the conditions of the act and patent , which is a plain demonstration hat they have a just and legal title to their settlement . and a right to the protection of the government , against the attempts of the spaniards , or any other people whatsoever . the next topick to be insisted upon . is the advantage or disadvantage that may redound to england from this settlement . we shall begin with the disadvantage which consists in the supposed damage it may do to the trade of england , and that it may , as is pretended , occasion a rupture between them and spain . to this we may easily reply , that being a distinct and independent nation , we are not oblig'd to consult their interest , any further than they consult ours ; and that we have as much reason to maintain this colony , because of the advantage it may bring to our selves , as they have to oppose it , because of the disadvantages that they fancy may arise from thence to england . but withal we deny that it can be any damage to their trade , which from that part of the world consists chiefly in sugar and tobacco , neither of which are yet to be found in new caledonia . but that which we look upon to be a compleat answer to the objection , is this , that they may be sharers with us in the settlement if they please , and by consequence partners in the profits and trade , and lay it under such regulations as may prevent its endamaging the commerce of england . and whereas it is further objected , that by the great immunities and freedom granted to the scots company for so many years , we shall be able to undersell the english company forestal their markets , and lessen his majesties customs ; we answer , that this objection is in a great measure obv●…ated , since we do not now pretend to set up an east-india trade ; but admitting it were true , it will be to the general advan●…age of the english nation , since the buyers are always more than the sellers . it must certainly be better for the kingdom in general , that every one who has occasion for musl●…n or indian silks , &c. should have so many shillings per yard or peice in their pockets , than that some two or three merchants should once in an age get money enough to make a daughter or two a countess or dutchess . no●… can it be denied but it's better for england , that housekeepers in general should save that money to buy provisions for their families , which consumes our own product , than that a dozen of merchants should be enabled by the extravagant prices of those commodities to keep their coaches . add to this , that the english if they please by joining with the scots , may have an equal share of all those immunities ; and if there should be for some time a lessening of the king's customs , of which there is at present no manner of prospect , it will be sufficiently made up in time to come by a large addition , if that colony prospers ; so that the king's bounty in that respect , is but like the bestowing of charge to improve barren or waste ground , which will return with treble interest to him or his heirs . there 's another objection made against the scots company , that by their constitution , such ships as belong to them must break bu●…k ●…o 〈◊〉 but in scotland , wh●…ch will diminish th●… number of english ships and se●…men , and make scotland the only free port of all these commodities . ●…o which it 's ●…eplyed , that tho ou●… own ships are obliged to break bulk no where but at home , they don't lay same obligation upon others , but allowing them a free trade to darien , they may ca●…ry their goods where they please ; or upon fair proposals , there 's no doubt but the parliament of scotland will give ●…he english all possible liberty as to that matter . then as to the haza●…d of a rupture with spain , we reply , tha●… the spaniards are in no condition to break with england , when they are not able to maintain themselves against the insu●…ts of the french by sea and land : and the only way to secure them in th●… british interest , is to have a powerful colony in darien , which lying in the very centre o●… their american dominions , and within reach of their silver and gold mines , will be an effectual cu●…b upon them , and not only prevent their own host●…lities , but their joining at any time with our enemies ; or if they do , being masters of their money , we shall speedily cut ●…e sinews of their war. in the ●…ext place we u●…ge that it will be very much for the in●…rest and advantage of england to incourage and support us in ●…his settlement . 1. because by this means the scots will increase their shipping , and come in time to have a naval force , capable of assisting the english in the common defence of the ●…sland , in maintaining the soveraignty of the seas , and convoying their merchant men in time of wa●… ; the necessity of which is obvious enough , since they and the du●…ch ▪ both have been scarce able to secure their t●…ade , maintain their dominion in the seas , and defend themselves from the invasions of the french during the last war. nor can the english always promise to themselves the amity of the dutch , who are their rivals in trade , and dif●…er far enough from them both in t●…mper and interest , there 's no●…hing to cement them but the life of our p●…esent soveraign : whereas the scots being united with the english under the same government , and inhabiting the same island , must of 〈◊〉 have the same interest as to trade , and to defend the coun●…y against all forraign invad ers , as they constantly did in fo●…mer times , against romans , danes , saxons , and normans , 〈◊〉 th●…ir living then under a separat prince , and their frequent wars with england . no●… is that brave resistance which a few of them made to the dutch at chattam to be forgotten , which did in a great measure repair the honour of england , and make amends ●…or the ignominy and disgrace which that attempt put upon the english nation ▪ 2. as scotland increases in shipping , they will increase in wealth and by consequence be able to bear a greater share of the burden of any foreign war , which will save men and money to england , and lighten their taxes . 3. the success of the sco●…s in their americ●…n colony ▪ w●…ll be an additional strength to the english 〈◊〉 in the west-indies , as well as an advancement of their trade , by consuming their product , and giving them theirs in exchange . 4. the success of the scots at darien will be o●… great advantage to england ; for the more mon●…y the scots acquire by their trade , the more they will spend in england , which being the seat of the government , must frequently be visited by their nobility and gentry , who generally furnish the●…seves in england with their best apparel , household 〈◊〉 , coaches and horses &c. besides the money that the young noblemen and gentlemen spend in their passage through that nation , when they go & come from their travels . these things occasion their laying out vast summs of money annually in the city of lon●…n , ●…hich being the seat of the government , will as certainly draw money from scotland , as the sun draws vapours after it . 5. the success of the scots in their forreign pla●…tation will not only ease england of a great number of their p●…dlars , so frequently 〈◊〉 of in 〈◊〉 , by country corporations and 〈◊〉 , but it will occasion the return home , and prevent the going o●…t of v●…st numbers of their youth , who follow the 〈◊〉 sort of 〈◊〉 , or betake themselves to the sword in denmark , 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 ▪ m●…ovy ▪ germany , holland , and 〈◊〉 ; by wh●…ch me●…ns the government of great brit●…in , may fu●…nish t●…ir f●…ts and armies at a much cheaper and easier rate than fo●…merly , and w●…th as good mariners and souldiers as any in the worl●… . 6. the e●…glish by joining with the scots , and supporting their colony at d●…rien , may have their plate brought home in their own bottoms , and from their own mines , with which we are assured that country abounds , without being obliged to touch at cadiz , or any 〈◊〉 port , being lyable to the vexatious indu●…os of forreign princes , or in such hazard of being intercepted ▪ as they many times were du●…ing the late war. 7. the english may by joining with the scots , render themselves more capable than ever of keeping the ballance of europe in their h●…nds ; a trust which nature and providence seems to have assign'd them , since their situation and naval force , not only mak●…s it propper for them , but they have had an opportunity put into their han●…s in l●…ttle above the revolution of ●…ne century , of twice breaki●…g the chaines of europe , when threatned with slavery ; first by the spaniards , and then by the french. this is so much the more evident , that by being possess'd of darien , they will be able either to prevent the uniting the spani●…h and french monarchies ; or if not so , to render that union so much the less dangerous , when it will be in their power to s●…ize their 〈◊〉 a●… dominions in the indies , without which that bulky mona●…chy , must fall by his own weight . this is likewise of so m●…ch the greater importance , that it may very probably ▪ ether 〈◊〉 a religious war , ●…owards which the papists discover so mu●…h 〈◊〉 , or at least bring it to a 〈◊〉 conclusion : for we have as good reason to look upon the spanish mines in the west-indies to be antichrist's pouch , by which he maintaines his war against the church , as the old taborites had to call the silver mines in bohemia by that name . it is ce●…tainly the surest method of destroying antichrist , to seize his purse ; for if he once be depriv'd of judas's bag , he will quickly drop st. peter's key●… . it 's by the charms of her gold , that the babylonish whore hath made the whole world to wonder after her , and the kings of the earth to be drunk with the cup of her fornication . 8. by this means the english may be better able to prevent the ruin of their trade in the mediterranean and west-indies , if the french should possess themselves of the kingdim of spain : and they will likewise be the better able to prevent their possessing themselves of the netherlands ; which if once they should do , and get ports there capable of holding a fleet , they would also ruin thier e●…stland trade , and put a period to the liberties of great britain . 9. it will effectually unite the scots to england by an inseparable tie , if the english join us in this undertaking : their ancestors would have gladly purchased this union at a much dearer rate , but were al●…ise out bid by france : and the want of which union made the english not only an easie prey to their successive conquerors , but lost them all the large provinces that they enjoy'd beyond sea , which were their natural barriers ▪ gave them a free access to the continent , and made the english name so glorious in the days of their ancestors . 10. it will be of general advant●…ge to the protesta●…t interest , and contribute to the advancement of pure christianity , without any of the romish sophistications : which certainly ought to weigh much with all true protestants ; and so much the more , that the pope and the conclave of rome have espoused the quarrel of the spaniards in this affair as a cause of religion . doubtless the poor americans will be more i●… clinable to embrace christianity , when they find the difference of the morals and doctrine betwixt protestants and papists , and see ●…t the former treat tbem with humanity , and seek their welfare both in body and soul ; whereas the spaniards have render'd 〈◊〉 , and the religion ●…hey profess ▪ odious , by the inhuman cruelties and brutish lusts , wbich they have exercised up●…n so many millions of the natives . this is so far from being a calumny , that an unexceptionable author of their own , don b●…tholomew de las casas bishop of chiapa , f●…rmerly mentioned , who was an eye witness of their cruelties , gives an account that they had in his time destroyed above 40 millions of the poor indians ; tho they receiv'd them with the greatest kindness imaginable , were ready to do 'em all the friendly offices that one man could desire of ano●…her , and testified their great inclination to have embrac'd the christian religion . but the spaniards aim'd at the destruction , and not at the conversion of the in●…ians ; and are avowedly charged with it by the said bishop , who in many places of his book decl●…res , that ●…fter they had sent for the chiefs of the countries to meet them in an amicable manner , which the poor ●…armless creatures did without suspicion of any ●…d , these merciless 〈◊〉 murdered them wholesale , on purpose to make themselves terrib●…e to them . this was a practice so inconsistent with humanity , that all the people of the world ought to have re●…ente ●… it ; as having m●…h more reason to declare the spania●…ds to be enemies to mankind , than ever the roman senate had to declare nero to be such . but this sort of treatment , compar'd with what they made others to suffer , may well be call'd mercy : for tho it was d●…ath , the indians were hereby quickly deliver'd from their misery ; whereas they put mul●…itude of others to li●…ing deaths , that they might ●…eel themselves die gradu●…lly ; and yet this is not so intol●…ble neith●… as to the condi●…ion of those poor people , tha●… had the misfortune to survive that cruelty ; for the whole time of th●… lives under that miserable servitude , i●… but death prolonged , or making his attacks upon 'em by intolerable labor , and continual hunger , the most insupportable o●… all plagues ; these poor creatures that ●…oil in the mines , and are imploy'd in pearl fishing ▪ &c. having no more sustenance allowed them , and that 〈◊〉 of the 〈◊〉 so●…t , th●…n is just enough to keep the soul and body together , in order to prolong their misery . then let any m●…n , who has bu●… the least remains of humani●…y left him , judge whether the sco●…s could be criminal , if ●…hey should have actu●…lly l●…nded upon a spanish settl●…ment , ●…nd have seiz'd the same , ●…n o●…der to deli●… their brethren the sons of adam ▪ f●…om such hellish se●…vitude ●…nd oppression ●…s the above me●…tion'd b●…shop describes ; and i●… any man tha●… has any bowels of compassio●… within him can s●…y th●…y could , what shadow of reason is there to b●…ame t●…e scots fo●…●…recting a colony where the spaniards neve●… had any footing ? the ne●…t thing to be consider'd is , whether the scots without the assistance of england , may probably maintain their footing ●…here ▪ which th●…re's no doubt may very well be d●…termin'd in the affi●…mative ▪ 1. becaus●… the whole kingdom of scotland being mor●… zealous for it , and 〈◊〉 in it , than they have been in any other 〈◊〉 for fourty or fifty ye●…rs past , it is not to be doubted , but t●…ey will use their utmost efforts to support themselves in it by their own strength ; or if that will not do , by making alliances with other nati●…ns that are able to assist ●…hem with a naval force . 2. if they me●…t with no other opposition but what the spaniards are abl●… to make t●… them , it will be ●…asie for the n●…bility , and gent●…y , and roy●…l burroughs of scotland ▪ to raise money upo●… their lands , &c. to increase their stock for the american tr●…de , and buy ships of fo●…ce to protect it ; nay , without that it 's but giving commis●…ion to the buccaneers ●…o ▪ become an over-match for the spaniards ▪ 3. supposing the frenc●… should offer to join with the spaniards , a●…d assist them to drive the scots from dar●…n , a some ●…ay they have already proffered ; we are no●… to imagine that the spaniàrds will accept their proff●…rs in this case , when they 〈◊〉 ●…ed them as to ●…he d●…ving the m●…rs from before ceuta . the re●…sons are obvious : they declin'd the accepting their proff●…rs as to ceuta ▪ because they would not thereby give the french an opportunity of possessing themselves of any of their towns in africa , as it is but too common for forreign auxiliarys to do in such cases . then ce●…tainly they have much greater reason to refuse their proffers as to darien , america being of infinitly mo●… 〈◊〉 to them than some african towns : and if once the french should get ●…ooting there , it would be in vain for the spanish g●…andees any further to dispute t●…e succession of france to t●…eir crown ; for they wo●…ld immediatly seize upon their mines an●… treasures in the westind●…es , without which the spanish monarchy is not able to support it self . o●… supposing that the king of spain should live for many years , and by consequen●…e keep the french out of possession ; ye●… having once got footing at darien , which they will certainly do , i●… the scots be expell'd by their assistance , the spaniards will quickly be convinc'd to their cost , that they ar●… more d●…ngerous 〈◊〉 th●…n th●… scots ; not only because of their g●…ater power to do them mo●…e mischief , but because o●… their 〈◊〉 temper , which all europe is sensible of ; and being of the sam●… r●…ligion with the spaniards ▪ and havi●…g of late years set up for the champions of popery , they will by the influence of the cl●…rgy , bring all the spanish settlements in america to a depen●…ence upon them , and a love for them as the great protectors of the catholick faith ; which will at once destroy the interest of spain in america . this will appear to be no vain speculation , to ●…hose ●…hat consider the tempe●… of the popish clergy , and the in●…olence of the spanish inquisitors , who so da●…ingly reflected upon the late allyance of spain with p●…otestant princes and states , tho absolutly necessa●…y to preserve that nation srom being swallowed up by france . whereas the scots being zealous protestants , and for that very reason hateful to the popish clergy and l●…ity , they are under a moral impossibility of having so much influence to withdraw the american settlements from the obedience of spain : and be●…es , being under an obligation by the principles of their religion , and their fundamental constitution , not to invade the property of an other , the spaniards have no cause to tear any thing from them ▪ provided they forbear hostilities on their part ; but on the contrary may find them true and faithful allies ; and useful to assist them in the defence of their countrey . if attack'd by the french as in the late war : it being the interest of the scots , as well as of the spaniards , to prevent the accession of the crown of spain to that of france . these things , together with the known endeavours of the french to pro●…uce an interest amongst the natives of that country , and especially with don pedro and corbet . in order to a settlement , make it evident enough that it is the interest of spain the scots should rather have it than the french , who have already been tampering with the spaniards , as well as with the indians , and doubt not to have a large share of america when ever the king of spain dies . but admitting that the spaniards should so far mistake their interest , as to accept of the proffers of the french to expell the scots , it is not impossible for the latter to find other allies than the english to assist them with a naval force to maintain their possession . the dutch are known to be a people that seldom or never mistake their interest : they are sensible how useful the alliance of scotland may be to them , both in regard of their liberty to fish in our seas without controul , and of being a curb upon england , in case the old roman maxim of delenda est carthago , should come any more to be applied by the english to that republick , as in the reign of k. charles ii. they are likewise sensible of the advantage it would be to their trade to be partners with the scots at darien ; and how effectual it may be to disable the fre●…ch to p●…sue thei●… cl●…im to sp●…in , ●…nd by 〈◊〉 to 〈◊〉 t●…e old title of th●…t ●…own upon their own seven , as well as to swallow up th●… other t●…n provinces . th●…se things , together w●…●… lon●… con●…inu'd amity and trade be●…xt scotl●…nd and holland and their union in religion and ecclesiastical disciplin●… are sufficient to evince that th●… dutch would become ou●… 〈◊〉 in america with little 〈◊〉 . th●…t they ●…re able to as●… us in that case with a 〈◊〉 force suffici●… ▪ is be●…ond contradiction ; and that they would soon be convinc'd it is th●… 〈◊〉 to do it , to prevent that mo●…strous i●…crease of the fren●… m●…chy , is obvious enough from the part they acted in the l●… w●… . but admitting th●…t none of those 〈◊〉 should pre●…il with the dutch , a●…d that they should likewis●… abandon us ; it is not impo●…ble for us to obtain a●… alliance a●…d naval force 〈◊〉 t●…e norther●… cro●…ns : it 's well en●…gh k●… t●…at 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 abound ●…ith me●… and shippi●…g , and that they 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a●… their hearts to m●…ke an exchange of 〈◊〉 for the gold 〈◊〉 silver of america , which they might ea●…ily carry from to●… to to●… , 〈◊〉 from market to market . 〈◊〉 the trouble of a w●…l-barr●… , as they are now obliged to do ●…ith their ●…per . fr●… all ●…ich it is evident 〈◊〉 that it is not imp●…ble ●…or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 maintain themselves i●… darien wi●…out the a●…ance of england . the next thing to be discours'd of is , what the 〈◊〉 may probably be , if the e●…glish should oppose us in this settlement . we could h●…ily wish the●…●…d ●…ever been any ground for this suggestion , and that the opposition we have met with from england had been les●… national ●…han that which we h●…d from both their hous●…s of parliament , af●… the p●…ssing an act ▪ for an african company , &c. in ou●…s ▪ a●… it 〈◊〉 to be wish ▪ d 〈◊〉 so many of the english had not given us such proofs of an alienated mind and 〈◊〉 to our welfare , as they h●…ve don●… sinc●… by their resident at hamborough , and thei●… late proclamations in their west ▪ india plantations ; and we could have wish'd above all that his majesty of england had not in the least concu●…'d , or given his countenance to that opposition ; for as king of scots it is ●…ain he could not do it : he ha h confirm ▪ d what we have done by the touch of his scepter , which no private order or 〈◊〉 can revoke . and we could wish that his english counsellors , who put ●…m upon those things , would remember that strafford and laud lost their ●…eads , ●…or giving k charles the first , that fatal advice in oppressing and opposing the scots . we di●… verily think that the suffering of our crown to be uni●…ed with that of england , in the person of k james their first , and our sixth ; our seasonable coming to the rescue of ●…heir expi●…ing libe●…es in the reign of k. charles i. our being so instrumental to rescue them from anarchy and confusion ▪ by the restoration o●… k. charles ii. and above all , our generous and frank concurrence with them in the late happy revolu●…ion , and advancement of k. william iii. we did verily think that all these things deserv'd a better treatment ; and to evince that they did , we shall begg leave to ●…nsist a little upon the first and last . the english have no cause to think that we were ignorant of the reason why their politick henry vii . chose rather to match his eldest daughter with the king of scots , than with the king of france , because he foresaw , that if the king of scots should by that means come to the crown of england , he would remove the seat of his government thither , which would add to the grandeur and riches of england : whereas if the king of france did by that means fall heir to the english crown , he would certa●…nly draw the c●…t of england to paris . ●…his the scots were so 〈◊〉 from being ignorant of , that many of the nobility and gen●…ry did express their disl●…ke of the union of the crowns , as well knowing that it would reduce our kingdom into a subjection and dependance upon england , and drain us of what substance we had ; and theresore some of them express'd themselves on that occasion , that scotland was never conquer'd till then : yet such was our zeal for the common wellfare of the island , the interest of the protestant religion , and of europe in general , which were then almost in as much danger by spain , as they have been since by france , that we quietly and freely parted with our king , and suffer'd him to accept the english crown , rather than the nation should be involv'd in war and confusion , and the protestant religion indanger'd by another successor , as it must necessarily have been , had the infanta of spain , whose title . was then promoted by the popish interest , succeeded . and all the reward we had for this condescension and kindness , was a contemptuous and disdainful refusal , on the part of england , of an union of the n●…tions when proposed , tho the same would visibly have tended to the benefit of the whole island , the general advantage o●… europe , and the security and increase of the protestant interest . and our king was so little thankful on his part , that tho he promis'd solemnly in the great church of edinburgh before his departure , that he would visit his antient kingdom , once in three years , he never saw it after but once , and that not till 14 years after . and by the influence of that same faction in england , who are still our enemies , he made innovations both in church and state , contrary to the laws of the land , and his own solemn oath ; which laid the foundation of all those disasters that ended in the fa●…al exit of his son , and the subversion of the government of both nations . these were the first advantages we had by the union of the crowns . his son king charles i , had scarce ascended the throne , when we had new proofs of the disadvantages we labour'd under by that union ; for he by the advice of some enemies to our nation , did in an imperious and arbitrary manner , send for our crown , tho the only monument almost left us of our independency and freedom ; but was generously answer'd by him that had it in keeping , that if he would come and be crown'd in scotland , he should have all the honour done him , that ever was to his ancestors ; but if he d●…d not think it worth his while , they might perhaps be inclin'd to make cho●…e of another soveraign , or to that effect ; as record●…d in the con●…uation of s●…r richard baker's history . another 〈◊〉 we had by that union of the crown , was this , that that unfortunate prince being inspir'd with an aversion to the constitution of our country , by his education in the court of england , he made an unnatural war upon us , to bring us to a conformity with england in church-matters . we shall not here offer to debate , which of the churches was best const●…uted , or most agreeable to the scripture-pattern : it suffices for our argument , that we were injur'd in having a forreign model offered to be obtruded upon us , which was ●…he cons●…quence of the union of the crowns , and of having our king e●…ucated in another n●…tion ; but that was not all , another mischievous effect of the union was this , that whatever k. charles had deserv'd at our hands . ●…et out of natural af●…ection , conscience and honour . we were oblig'd to do what we could to prevent his illegal trial and death , and to defend his sons title , which threw us into convulsions at home occasion'd us the loss of several armies , and expos●…d our nation afterwards to ruine and deva●…tation by our implacable enemy the usurper , which together with the ungrateful retributions made us by the government after the restoration , were enough to have wearied any nation under heav●…n , but our selves , of the union of the crowns . yet such was our z●…al for the protestant intrest , the welfare of the isl●…nd , and the liberty of europe , that tho we had a 〈◊〉 oppor●…ity of providing otherwise for our 〈◊〉 and the advancement of ou●… trade , and of forming our selves into a common wealth , or or bringing england to our own terms , yet we frankly and generously concurr'd with them to settl●… our g●…vernment on the same persons , and in the same manner as they did theirs , and all the reward we had from them is , that an union of the nations , tho twice propos'd by his majesty in parliament , hath been 〈◊〉 rejected , our king questioned by parliament of england ●…or an act of his parliament in scotland , which is a manifest impeachment of our soveraignty ; a compliance with which excluded baliol and his heirs for ever from our crown ▪ and to this they have added an opposition to our receiving foreign subscriptions at hamburgh and elsewhere , refus'd us a supply of corn for our money ▪ to relieve us in our distress ; and discourag'd our settlement a●… darien , by forbidding their subjects to trade with us there . if these continued slights and injuries be not enough to make us weary of the union of the crowns , let any man judge . to discover a little of the unreasonableness of this sort of treatment , we dare appeal to the calm thoughts of such of our neighbours in england , as prefer the interest of the publick to private animosities , and foolish ill-grounded piques , either as to church or state ; whether at the time of the revolution , and before we declar'd our selves , they would not have been willing to have assur'd themselves of our friendship , at the rare of uniting with us as one nation ? had we but demurr'd upon for●…eiting the late k. james , or made but a proffer of renewing our antient league with france , and joining with that crown to keep that prince upon rhe throne of great-britain ; they know we might have made what terms we pleas'd with the late king & louis xiv . on that condition , and might have been restor'd to all the honours and privileges that our ancestors enjoy'd in france , which were almost equal to those of the n●…tives ; and yet that gallant nation thought it no disparagement to them , however we be despis'd and u●…dervalued now by a certain party in england . had we but seem'd to have made such overtures , the english must needs have foreseen that the natural consequences of such a design , i●… it had taken effect , must have been these , viz the late king's adherents in england would certainly have join'd us and our nation would have afforded them a safe retreat , in case of any disaster , till they could have concerted matters to the best advantage ; the late king would not have yielded himself such an easy conquest , nor disbanded his army in such a manner as he did ; ireland had certainly never revolted , since every one knows that the revolution was begun , and in a great measure perfected there by the scots of the north ; so that england must have become the theatre of war , been lyable to an invasion ●…rom france on all occasions , would only have strengthned her fetters by struggling with them , and expos'd all the patriots of her religion and liberty to butchery and destruction . these must certainly have been the consequences os our adhering to the late king , and the english would have thought they had had a very good bargain if they could have bought us off in that case with uniting both the kingdoms into one , and granting us a joint trade to their own plantations ; whereas now they will not allow us to settle a forreign colony of our own , and treat us as forreigners in theirs . to shew that this is not a mere conjecture , that has no other ground but a vision of the brain , they may be pleased to consider the honourable privileges granted us by their ancestors , and some of the greatest princes that ever swayed their scepter , viz ; king edward and william the conqueror , who by the consent of the states in parliament assembled , enacted , that the scots should be accounted deniz●…ns of england , and enjoy the same privileges with themselves , because of their frequent intermarriages with the english , and that they did ever stand stoutly as one man with them , for the common utility of the crown and kingdom , against the danes and norwegians , fought it most valiantly and unanimously against the common enemy , and bore the burden of most fierce wars in the kingdom . this they will sind in a book call'd archaionomia , translated from the saxon by william lambard , and printed at london by jo●…n day in 1568. it must be granted , that the reasons of such a grateful retribution are redoubled now : intermarriages betwixt the two nations are more frequent than ever ; the union of the kingdoms under one crown for almost 100 years ; the generous concurrence of the scots in the last revolution ; their loss of so many gallant officers and brave soldiers in the common cause during the late war , and the preservation of ireland , which hath been twice owing to ou●… countreymen , might reasonably entitle us to the same priviledges now , that our ancestors were formerly allow'd by k. edward , and william the conqueror . we need not insist on another sort of obligati●…n , that we have put upon england , twice within this 60 years , viz : the delivering them from their oppressions in the time of k. charles i. the anarchy of the rump , and several models of armies and juntos . by encouraging general monk ' s undertaking ; for it cannot be denied that we had the ballance of europe in our hands , at the time of the last revolution , and that we turned the scale to the advantage of england in particular , and of europe in general , which must be allowed to be as great a service , as that which was so thankfully rewarded by edward , and william the conquero ; whence it is evident that those englishmen ; who at present oppose our settlement in america , don't inherit the gratitude of their ancestors , when they not only will not allow us to trade in conjunction with them , but withstand our doing any thing that may advance ▪ a trade ▪ by our selves . if they object that what we did in all those cases , was no more th●…n our duty , and what we ow'd to our own preservation as well as to theirs : it is easie to reply , that admitting it to be so , yet by the laws of god and men people are encouraged to perform their duties by rewards ; and their ancestors were so sensible of this , that tho they knew we were equally coneern'd to defend the island against foreign invaders as well as they , yet they thought themselves obliged in policy as well as gratitude , to reward us ; which they not only did by that honorary premium of allowing us to be denisons of england . as abovementioned , but sometimes gave to us , and at other times confirm'd to us the three northern counties of northumberland , westmorland , and cumberland , to be held in fee of the crown of england . it is likewise very well known with how much honour the parliament of england treated us , when they courted onr assistance against k. charles i. and what large promises that prince made us , if we would have but stood neuter ; which tho we had reason to think many of those that opposed him had no great kindness neither for our civil nor ecclesiastical constitution , yet the sence that we had of the common danger that our religion and liberties were in at that time , made us proof against all those tentations ; so that after all endeavours for a reconciliation betwixt the king and parliament of england proved unsuccessful , we sent an army , which cast the ballance on the side of the latter , who before that time were reduced low enough by the kings army , as is very well known to such as are acquainted with the history of those times , and is own'd by my lord hollis in his memoirs lately published . but to return to the last revolution ; tho we must own that we owe our deliverance to his present majesty , and were oblig'd in conscience and honour to concurr with him ; tet who could have blam'd us to have stood upon terms before we had fallen in with england , especially considering how ungratefully ( nay villanously ) we were treated by cromwel and his party , after we had sav'd them and the parliament of england , from the scorpions that the cavaliers had prepar'd to chastise them with ; as is own'd by the said lord hollis . not could we have been any way calpable , if we had stood upon higher and surer terms with his majesty , considering how unthankfully we were abus'd and enslav'd by our late kings , for whom we had acted and suffered so much . and tho we must own that no less present than that of ou●… crown , was sufficient to testify our gratitude for what the prince of orange had done for us , yet we were under no necessity of gratifying him in that manner , since our deliverance was effected before hand , and that he himself in his declaration , expres'd it to be no part of his design to come for the crown , so that our re ward was as frank and generous as his service . then as to england , we were under no manner of obligation to continue the union with them ; we might have insisted upon having our king obliged to reside as much amongst us , as amongst them : that we should be govern'd without any consideration or respect to their interest , any further than it fell in with our own . we might have insisted upon an act , that we should not be oblig'd to attend his majesty at any time at the court of england , about our affairs ; but that he should either attend upon our administration in person pro re nata , as he does now upon the affairs of holland , or lay down methods to have his pleasure signified to us at home in such cases as it was requir'd ; which would save a vast deal of money annually to the kingdom of scotland . then as to the succession , we were under no necessity of settling it in the same manner as they did in england ; for since they had made a breach in the line , they could not handsomely have blam'd us to have made an improvement of it , and either to have limited the reversion after his present majesty's death , or otherwise as we should have thought best , for the security of our civil and religious liberties ; or we might have settled it upon the prince of orange , and his issue by any other wife , there being cause enough then to conceive that he was never like to have any by his late excellent princess . had we taken any of these methods , it must be own'd that england would have been considerably weakned , and lessen'd in the esteem of the world by it ; that we should have thereby had an opportunity of making such forreign alliances with france , as formerly , or with any other nation , as would have made england uneasy , and perhaps unsafe on occasion ; and therefore it must be reckon'd highly impolitick , as well as ungrateful , in our neighbours to treat us continually at such a rate , as if they had a mind to bring us under subjection , since we have so many open doors to get out at . they must not think that we have so far degenerated from the courage and honour of our ancestors , as tamely to submit to become their vassals , when for 2000 years we have maintain'd our freedom ; and therefore it is not their interest to oppress us too much . if they consult their histories , they will find that we alwayes broke their yoke at long-run , if at any time we were brought under it by force or fraud . the best way to assure themselves of us , is to treat us in a friendly manner : tho we be not so great and powerful as they , it is not impossible for us to find such allies as may enable us to defend our selves now as well as formerly . none of these things are suggested with an ill design to raise annimosity betwixt the nations , or to perswade to a separation of the crowns , but meerly to shew those of our neighbours , who use us os unkindly , that they are bound in gratitude , duty and interest to do otherwise , and particularly to support us in our american settlement , and not to lay our king under a necessity by their froward humours in parliament or otherwise , to discourage us in that undertaking , as they have hitherto done , and continue still to do in their american colonies , by their proclamations against having any commerce or trade with the scots at darien ; tho they be settled there , according to the terms of his own patent , and an act of parliament in scotland . we are not insensible that the present juncture of affairs obliges the kingdom of england to carry fair with spain , and may admit that in part as an apology for some of that opposition we have met wi●…h from them ; but the questioning our act of parliament at first , and their hindering our subscriptions at hamburgh afterward , before ever they knew what our design was , make that excuse of little weight : but allowing it all the force they would have it to bear , it may be worth their while to consider whether it be more their interest to incourage the spaniards in an unjust opposition to our american settlement , or to support the scots in maintaining their right . it is certain that the spaniards are in no condition to break with england ; or if they should , it 's in the power of the english to reduce them speedily to reason : whereas if the scots should miscarry in their undertaking by the discouragements from england before-mentioned , which exposes our ships to be taken and treated a pirates by any nation that pleases , the infallible consequence of it will be , that the ruin and utter impov'rishment of scotland , which must necessarily follow such a miscarriage , will immediatly affect england both in her trade and strength : the city of london and the northern road will soon feel the effects of it , when the money spent by our gentry and merchants continually for cloaths , provisions , and goods , ceases to circulate there : england must unavoidably become an easier prey to any forreign enemy ; since it will not be only the loss of a tribe , but of an entire sister-nation . or supposing that scotland should be able to bear up under the loss , it will lay the foundation of an irreconcilable feud , and perhaps issue in a war betwixt the two nations ; which did never yet terminate at long run to the advantage of england , and is as unlikely to do so now as ever : for in such a case they would find us unanimous as one man against them ; whereas we are sure that all those who wish well to the protestant interest , and their present constitution , would never join in any such war against us ; and therefore those who are enemies to the peace of the nations , being aware of this , labour to effect their design by another method , and endeavour as much as they can to dash the government against one another . but they are mistaken in the people of scotland : we are so sensible of our obligations to k. william ; and know so well what is due to our deliverer , that it surpasses all their art to create in us the least ill thought of him ; it is not in the temper of our nation . the world knows that however frequent and successful we have been in reducing our bad kings to reason , yet there never was any people under the sun more loyal and affectionate to good princes than we have been ; and is , when we have been forc'●… to oppose our monarchs , private persons have sometimes carried ●…eir r●…tments too high , yet the publick justice of the nation was alw●…e govern'd with temper . we could multiply instances to prove this , but need go no higher than the three last kings , who tho a●… o●… them enemies to our constitution , as appear'd by their principles and practices , yet it 's very well known what we both did and suffer'd for them , and particularly for k c●…arles i. tho the malice of a faction in our neighbouring nation six'd a ●…ous reproach upon us , as if w●… had sold ●…im ; 〈◊〉 which ref●…ection we are sufficiently vindicated by the lord hollis's memoirs before-mentioned ; wherein that exc●…llent p●…rson makes it evident , that tho our war against that prince was just , yet we had all possible respect for his person , made the 〈◊〉 conditions ●…e could for his safe●…y and honour . and to avoid greater misch●…fs , and the playing of our enemies came to the 〈◊〉 of our s●…lves and his majesty , we were 〈◊〉 to 〈◊〉 him in england , memoirs p. 68. then since we carried it so to a prince that had been no 〈◊〉 kind to us , it will be impossible to create a breach 〈◊〉 ●…s an●… a prince , to whom , under god , we owe all that we 〈◊〉 as me●… and 〈◊〉 : but at the same time our neighbours w●…o 〈◊〉 ●…o dri●…e 〈◊〉 n●…il as far as it will go , would do well to 〈◊〉 ●…hat ●…e never b●…liev d that doctrine in scotland , that it is 〈◊〉 to resist a king , or 〈◊〉 that has a commission under him , upon any pretence whatsoever : we 〈◊〉 that doctrine in scythia , 〈◊〉 wh●…ce s●…me a●…ors derive our origin , and think it o●…ly fit to be ●…nt back to turkey , from whence it came . we know very well how to distinguish betwixt a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the abuse of it ; and our ancestors rightly understood how to obey the lawful commands of their princes ▪ when masters of themselves , and how to govern by their authority . and in their name , when ●…ey were not ; tho they did not think themselves obliged to o●…ey their personal commands . when the fortune o●… war , or other accidents had put them into the hands of our enemies . thus we refused obedience to k. james i. when detain'd prisonet in england , contrary to the law of nations , and carried over into france , to command his subjects there , not to bear arms against the english army , where he was in person . we told him we knew how to extinguish betwixt the commands of a king , and those of a captive : and that most of the kings of scots have been such in relation to us since the union , we could heartily wish were not too demonstrable . to return to the point of what may probably be the consequences , if the english should proceed to any surther degree of of opposition ; or if the scots should misearry in the design . it 's reasonable to believe , that the english will be so wise as to forbear hostilities , tho we are very well satisfied , there is a party in that nation , who bear ours no good-will ; but they being such as are either disaffected to the present constitution , or acted by a sordid principle of private interest , it 's to be hop'd they will never be able so far to leaven the sound part of the english nation , as to occasion a rupture betwixt them and us , yet we must needs say , that we look upon their way of treating us to be a very unaccountable thing , and that it was no small surprise to us , to find that an english parliament should look on our taking subscriptions in england , in order to admit them joint-sharers with our selves , in the benefit of the act to encourage our trade , to be no less than a high misdemeanour . we have reason likewiwe to complain of their constant practice of pressing our sea-men in time of war , as if they were their own subjects , and that they should treat us in other respects , as if we were aliens ; and sometimes confiscate ships , by reckoning scots mariners as such : so that the english have not only depriv'd us of our government , and the warm influences of our court , the want o●… which is a considerable addition to the natural coldness of our climate , but they likewise oppress us on all occasions , and do 〈◊〉 endeavour to prevent our application to trade . we know there 's a party in that nation , who think we sustain'd no great loss by the removal of our princes ; but we would wish them to consider what a murmuring they themselves make when the king goes annually to the netherlands ( tho the safety of europe requires it ) because of the damp it puts upon trade , and the money it carries out of the kingdom . let them consider then what our nation hath suffered in that respect now for almost 100 years , besides the lessening our esteem in the eyes of the world , so that our honour and substance are both swallow'd up by the kingdom of england ; and yet they will neither admit us to the privileges of ●…ellow-subjects with themselves , nor suffer us to take such measures as may enable us to stand on our own bottom . certainly this is not the way to establish the peace , no●… to increase the wealth of the island . we know that it was a maxime in some of the late reigns . that it would never be well , till all that part of scotland on this side forth , were reduc'd to a hunting field : but we were in hopes the bitterness of those days had been past : yet it seems that party have still so far the ascendant amongst our neighbours , as to procure a publick opposition to all our endeavours for raising our nation by trade . it will upon due examination be found as bad policy as it is christianity , to urge , as some of our neighbours do , that it is the interest of england to keep the scots low , because they are an independent and free nation ▪ and were our ancient enemies ; and therefore may be dangerous neighbours if they grow rich and potent . nothing but rancor and inveterate malice can suggest such sour thoughts as these . it were fit that sort of men should be purg'd of their choler . the scots to obviate all dangers from that h●…ad , have , tho they be much the ancienter nation , condescended so far as several times to propose an union , which the gentlemen of that kidney have hitherto prevented ; and therefore we would wish them to look back into their histories , ●…nd upon casting up their accounts , make a true estimate of whatever they gain'd by a war with scotland . they will find that their ancestors , as well as the romans , have been sensible , as tacitus expresses it , quos sibi viros caledonia seposuerit ; and that as it was true what ou histo●…ian says of the unjust and treacherous war made upon us by edwa●…d i. that scotor●… nomen pene delevit ; it was also true what he says on the other hand , that angliam vehementer concussit : so that those gentlemen take the direct way by opposing and oppressing us to ●…un into those dangers they would avoid : for they may assure themselves that if the english opposition to our american settlement should once break out into hostilities , the scots will find some allies , antient or new , that will be glad of the opportunity to join with them . o●… if , which is most probable , tho highly ungrateful and impolitick , the english should so far neglect the scots , as to suffer them to be ov●…power'd by the french , they may be sure that the scots , when put to their last shift , can always make an honourable capitulation with fran●…e . it 's not to be doubted , but that crown would be very willing to renew their antient alliance with us ; and besides allowing us a share at least in the trade of darien , would on co●…dition of giving them the possession of new caledonia , restore us likewise to all our ancient privileges in france . they would think it a very good purchase if they could secure themselves of that colony by doing so , granting us what security we could reasonably desire for the uninterrupted enjoyment of the protestant religion , and a freedom of trade to all places of the world , where it did not actually interfere with their own settlements and colonies . so that if this should be the case , we leave it to our n●…ighbours to judge what would become of their east and west india trade and plantations , and whether they would be able to stand out against france and us , now that they have no footing on the continent , ●…nce formerly , when they had so many provinces of that kingdom in their possession , and could not do it , and at last lost every foot of their french dominions : whereas had they been in union with us , they might certainly have retain'd them , and by consequence have prevented the great calamities that europe hath since groan'd under by the prodigious increase of the french monarchy . this we think sufficient to convince those angry g●…ntlemen in our neighbouring nation , that are so very much disgusted with our american settlement , that it is the interest of england to join with us and support it , and that it may be of dangerous consequence to them ? either to oppose or neglect us : whereas by joining cordially in this matter , they may unite us inseparably to themselves for ever , inrich their own nation , secure and advance the protestant interest , keep the ballance of europe in their hands , and prevent the returns of its danger , their own expence of blood and treasure to save its being threatned with slavery any more , either by the house of bourbon or austria . therefore we cannot believe after all , but our wise and politick neighbours will at last see it their interest to protect and incourage us in this matter ▪ that we may mutually strengthen and support one another against the french , who are loudest in their clamours against our settlement , because if incourag'd and improv'd , it will defeat all their ambitious and antichristian designs ; and thereby we shall also be in a condition to assist the english plan ations in the west indies , who as we find by the proceedings of the earl of bellomont and the assemblies of new england and new ▪ york , are su●…iciently sensible of their danger , from the incroaching temper of the french , which increases every day ; and it is evident , that their new design'd colony in mississipi river looks with a dangerous aspect upon all the english plantations in america , and may be 〈◊〉 justly esteemed an incroachment upon spain , as being in the bay of mexico , than our plantation in d rien : which argues the treacherous humor of that nation , to make such an ou●…cry against the scots who have envaded no mans property , when they themselves are so notoriously guil●…y of it ; and therefore it would seem to be the interest of england rather to strengthen themselves by our friendship , and to look after the french , than to provoke us to look out ●…or other allies by their opposition and neglect . we shall conclude this matter ▪ with one or two more arguments to prove , that it is th●… interest of england to join with us in this affair ; by which also it will appear that there is nothing advanc'd in these sh●…ets out of any ill design against the english nation , or to perswade to a disu●…iting of the crowns ▪ but on the 〈◊〉 , that a stricter union is absolutely necess●…rry , ●…hat both nations may have but one interest , which will render us less lyable to convulsions and intestine commotions at home , and put us out of danger of being atrack'd by enemies ●…rom abroad . the first argument is this ; that by encou●…ging ou●… settlement at darien , english ships that have occasion to pass by those coasts , will there be certain of a plac●… of retreat , in case of attack either by enemy or tempest , without danger of being confiscated by the spaniards , and having their men condemn'd to be perpetual slaves in their mines . 2. i●… we be encou●…aged in ou●… american colony , it will contribute much to heighten the consumption of the english product ; since what we have not of our own , or wherein we are wanting , either as to quality or quantity , we shall suppl●… ou●… selves , ●…or the use of our plantation , in england ; which may be of great benefit to the northern counties especially , whence we may conveniently furnish our selves with b ●…eves ●…or victualling our ships , ou●… own cattle being for the most part too small ▪ for ●…hat use ; besides many other things that we shall have occasion ●…o export to england , for the use of the plantation , and to maintain a commerce with the na●…ives . 3. by joining with us in this colony , and securing a post on the south-sea , which the princes of darien will no doubt very readily ag●…ee to , they may shorten their voyages to the east-indies ▪ and by that means be able to outdo all their rivals in that trade ; but if they will be so far wanting to themselves , as to suffer those advantages to fall into the hands of others , who are enemies to our religion , and common country ; they cannot blame the scots , who have made them such fair offers : and if ou●… nation should miscarry in the attempt , they themselves cannot expect to stand long , but must be buried in the common ruines , and fall unpitied . 4. if after all the english should continue obstinate in their opposition to us , as their late proclamations in america , and other passages would seem to imply they have a mind to , the world cannot blame the scots to provide for themselves , by such other alliances as they shall think meet , since the english are so unkind , and have been constantly growing upon us , especially since the restoration of king charles ii. to which we did so much contribute , that without our concurrence , it could never have been effected . this will appear to be incont●…overtibly true , i●… we consider that in the time of k. ●…ames i. we were u●…der no restrictions , as to matters of trade more than they , except as to the exportation of wool , and a few other things of english product ; and so we continu'd till the restoration , when king charles ii. and the english did very ungratefu●…ly lay su●…h prec●…usions and restrictions upon us , contrary to the laws , relating to the postnati , by the 12th of car : 2. for the incouraging and increasing shipping and navigation , and the 15 car : 2. for the encouraging of trade ; by which we are put in the same circumstances , ●…s to trasfick with france and holland , and in a worse c●…ndition than ireland , that is a conquest ; which is so much the more unreasonable ▪ since we are always invol'd and ingag'd in the wars betwixt england and other countries : and those with whom they have most frequent wars , being holland and france , the only two nations with whom the scots have almost any commerce , our trade must of necessity sink ▪ during such wa●…s , whereas england hath still a great trade to other parts of the world ; and by this means we are forc'd to be sharers in their troubles , tho they will not allow us to partake of their profits , nor suffer us to take any measures to procure such as we may call our own . it is plain from the instance of darien , and the proclamations in the english american colonies , against their subjects entertaining any commerce with our settlement there , that by the union of the crowns , upon the present footing , we are in a worse condition than ever ; for when any thing happens wherein the interest of england seems to be contrary to ours , it is certainly carried against us , and we are left without remedy : so that in this respect , we are in a worse condition than any forreigners , with relation to england ; ●…or if a foreign people discover any thing that may be of advantage to them , they are at liberty to pursue it by themselves , or to take in the assistance of others ; and if they find themselves aggriev'd by england , they have their respective governments to make application to for redress . but we are the most unhappy people in the world ; for if endl●…nd should oppose us , we have no king to appeal to , but one that is e●…ther an alien and enemy to us , as being king o●… a great●…r people who are such , or if he be inclinable to protect and do us justice as king of scots , he is a prisoner in england , and cannot do it : if they question him in the parliament of england , for any thing relating to his government of scotland , as in the case of our late act for an east india and african trade his interest as king of england , obliges him to submit himself as king of scotland ; by which means our crown , which we desended so gallantly for so many ages , and which the english could never make subject to theirs by force , is now intirely subjected by a false step of our own , in suffering our king to take their crown upon him , without making better terms for our selves : so that instead of having a king to fight our battels , we h●…ve made a surrender of our prince to the enemy ▪ who arm him again●…t us ; and which is worst of all , we have satisfied our own proverb , as to our selves , that scots men are wise behind hand : for tho we sufficiently sma●…ed for it in the four last reigns , yet we had not so much foresight or care of our selves , as to prevent the consequences of it in this reign , when it was in our power to have done it . then if we make application to our antient allies , or any other foreign power for our assistance , when we groan under opp●…ession , then we are treated as rebels : thus our whole nation was proclaim'd such for but offering to make application to the king of france , as our ancient friend and ally , when a certain party in england had arm'd our natural sovereign k. charles i. against us . and that which is still worse , tho our crown from the time of the uni●…n has been for the most part on the head of an alien or enemy ; yet it has iufluence enoug●… to divide us amongst our selves against the interest of the nation ; as in the reign of k. charles ii. those that comply'd with the court of england , were brib'd with all the chief places in our administration , whilst those who were patriots to their country ( as for honour sake to instance in the late great duke of hamilton , and our present lord high chancellor ) were exposed to all manner of dangers and vexations . this we think sufficient to convince our neighbours that we have no reason to be fond of having the union of the crowns continu'd , except the interest of the nations , be more closely united then ever they have been hitherto . and to let them see that it is their interest as well as ours it should be so , we shall only desire them to consider how fatal it may be to them , if by any emergency we should be forc'd to break off the union of the crowns , and enter again into a f ●…ench alliance . it ●… in vain for them to object that in such a case we should betray o●…r religion ; for we see the persecuted hunga●…ans were protected in that ●…y the tu●…ks , tho sworn enemies to it ; nor is it less impossible but there may be a change as to that matter in france , l. xiv . is not immortal : a●…d even julian the apostate himself found it his interest for some time to protect the orthodox christians , whom he mortally ●…ated . but supposing ( as indeed there 's no great likelyhood of it ) that no such allyance as this should ever happen : yet howev●…r , if these two nations be not more closly united ; it may be of ill consequencc to england , if any of their kings at any time should be so far disgusted with their proceedings , as to leave them , and betake themselves to us. what a field of blood and slaughter must england have become , had we carried off k. charles i. when he came to our army , or if we had join a him against the parliament of england ? what great efforts did a party of our nation make to inthrone king charles ii , when england was against him ? and how did our concurrence afterwards with general monk effect it ? how soon did our espousing the d. of york ' s interest turn the tables upon those that opposed him in england ? and if our nation had likewise espoused his cause before the revolution , the viscount of dundee gave a sufficient proof what we could have done for him . there 's a strong party in england at present against allowing the king a standing force , for fear , as they pretend , of losing their liberties ; but all their opposition in that respect would signifie little , if in case of a rupture ) ou●… nation should take part with the court , and bring in 22000 men. with 6 weeks provisions and pay , as we are obliged to do by act of parliament ; for his assistance . this makes it evident that it is not the interest of england to slight an union with us so much as they have done ▪ so●… so long as we remain divided , any king that is so minded , may make use of us to inslave one another ; and any envious neighbour , whose interest it is to keep this island low , will be sure to blow the coals . if they 'd but turn the tables , and make our case their own , they would quickly be satisfied of the truth of what we advance . supposing that the government of scotland should traverse the actings of the government of england in relation to their trade , &c. as they have done ours ; and supposing that a parliament of scotland , when the king were there , should question him for the navigation act , and that for the encouragement of trade in england by king charles the second . which lays us under such hard circumstances and restrictions , the english would certainly very much resent it , and speedily tell us we meddled with what did not belong to us : then why should they deny us the like liberty in re●…erence to their 〈◊〉 against us , seeing we are a free nation as well they ? they cannot think that scotland will look upon the english proclamations in the west indies , against having any commerce with our colony at darien , to be the act and d●…ed of a king of scotland , sinc●… it is not only contrary to his own act o●… pa●…liament there , and his patent under the great se●…l of that kingdom , but contra●…y to the interest of that nation ; but being the act of a person who is really king of scots , we can look upon it to be no other than the esfect of a ●…orce put upon him by a nation which in this matter thinks it their interest he should do so . now suppose , which god forbid , our colony should be starv'd by virtue of these proclamations , or that our ships going and coming from darien , should by reason thereo●… be attack'd , and treated as pirates by the english , french , dutch , or any other nation ▪ who may take the opportunity to do it , and say ou●… king has d●…clared against us : to whom should we make application sor redress in this matter ? the king of england he is our enemy , and e●…itted these proclamations ; the king of scots is detain'd in england , and not master of himsel●… , but is forc'd to act thus contraty to the interest of his own antient crown and kingdom ; as a former k. william , john baliol , and james i. were 〈◊〉 ' d to do , when in the power of the english. ●…n such a 〈◊〉 ▪ if our in●…ant colony should by this means bed stroy●…d , ou●… 〈◊〉 must needs think that we should look ●…or a compens●…tion 〈◊〉 . resume the government into our own hands , and strengthen our selves by new alliances ; which perhaps might be lit●…le ●…o their advantage , this is not suggested as a thing that is ever likely to be practis'd , or to which the kingdom of scotland is any way inclin'd : our whole conduct since the union is a continu'd evidence of the uprightness of our intentions towards england ; and the offers we did make , and do still continue to make , of admitting 'em as partners and sharers in our settlement , are enough to stop the mouth of calumny it self . but if in return for our kindness we meet with neglect and contempt , have our soveraignty trampled under foot , our settlement in america by an act of parliament in scotland reflected upon as unjust by proclamations from england , the world cannot blame us to complain of the violence done to our independency and honour , which is not to be salv'd by any politick considerations whatever , that our neighbours pretend for this treatment . nor can any thing less than joining with us , and protecting that settlement against all opposition in case of attacks by the french , or others , sufficiently atone for what is already done , or heal the wound those proclamations have giv'n to the common interest and honour of the island . we come in the next place to give a description of the isthmus of darien . it lies betwixt the 8th and the 10th degrees of northern latitude ▪ and in the narrowest place is betwixt 60 and 80 italian miles over . we shall not trouble our selves with the description of any more of it than is in the possession of the natives , which is in length from e. to w. on the north side from the mouth of the river darien to port scrivan , above 140 italian miles ; from caret bay to the river of cheapo on the south side ▪ it is about 160 in length . it is supposed to take its name from the great river of darien , that bounds its northern coast to the eastward . it is bounded on the north and south with the vast oceans that carry the names of the north and south seas . it s situation is very pleasant and agreeable , and very commodious for a speedy and short communication of trade betwixt the north and south seas , and preventing that vast compass that must otherwise be fetch'd round either of the extremes of north and sout●… america . by this means also it lies convenient for a speedier communication of trade betwixt europe and the east-indies than any that hath hitherto been found out . mr. dampier says , that from cheapo , or santa maria river , a man may pass from sea to sea in three days , and that the indians do it in a day and half . there are abundance of valuable islands on both sides the isthmus , which prevent the breaking in of the ocean upon it at once ; and besides the conveniencies of wood , fish , foul , and water , afford good and safe riding in all weathers , to any number of ships , especially those call'd the sambaloes , that lie along the northern coast. the continent is ag●…eably intermix'd with hills and vall●…ys of great variety , for height , depth , and extent . the valleys are watered with rivers , b●…ooks and springs , which take their rise from a great ridg of hills that run along the isthmus , but nearest to the northern shore , from which it is seldom above 15 miles distant , and from whence the sambaloes islands , and the various makings of the shore , and the continued forest all along the country grati●…y the eye with a very fine prospect . the rivers of t●…e northern coast are generally small . because their course from the abovementioned ridg of hills is but short ; yet the river of darien is very large but the depth of its entrance not answerable to its width ▪ yet further in it is deep enough , and hath a good har●…our in caret b●…y w●…ich is some leagues up the river , hath two islands of pretty high land , cloath ▪ d with a varie●…y of trees lying before it and two or three slreams of ●…resh water falling into it . from this bay to the promo●…tory near go●…den-island , the shoare is indif●…erent fruitful : and the s●…il 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 northern coast is generally good , but swamp●… here and there to the sea. to the west ward of the promontary , at the e●…trance of the river . is a fine sandy bay with three islands , one of them golden islands lying be●…ore it , which make it an extraordinary good harbour . golden island is rocky and steep all round . except at the la●…ding place on the south side . so that it is naturally forti●…y'd . t●…e land o●… the isthmus over against it to the s. e. is an excellent ●…ruitful soil . west of this island lyes the largest of the three , b●…ing swam●…y and covered with maingroves . to the north of these lyes the 〈◊〉 of pines , cover'd with tall trees , sit for any use . from the point against these islands for three l●…agues w●…stward , the shoare is guarded with rocks , so that a boat cannot la●…d ; but at the n w. end of the rocks , there 's a very good harbour , and good riding , as has been faid , in all winds , by some or other of those islands , which with the adjacent shore , make a lovely landskip off at sea. the channel betwixt them and the isthmus is two , three and four miles broad , and navigable from end to end ; and the ground opposite to them within land an excellent soil , and a continued forrest of stately ti●…ber trees . on the south side there 's the river sambo , that falls into the sea by point garachina . this is a large river . th●…n there 's the gulph of st. michael , made by the outlet of several considerable rivers , as those of santa maria and congo and the gold-river , so call'd because of the great plenty of gold dust it affor●…s to the spaniards . the river congo may be entred at high water , and affor●…s a good harbour . the gulph has several islands in it , and afforcs good riding in many places . the country on this 〈◊〉 as one the other , is one continued forrcst ; and forms a bay call'd the bay of panama , abounding with fine 〈◊〉 ▪ and a●…fording good riding for ship●… . the soil os the inland country , is for the most part a black 〈◊〉 mold . the we●…ther is much the same as in other places of the torrid 〈◊〉 in this latitude , but inclining to the wet extreme , for two thir●…s o●… the year , the rains beginning in april . the most remarkable of their trees are the cotton tree , which bears a cod as big as a nut●…meg fuil of short wool or down , and affords timber for canoes and periagoes : they abound with stately cedars and macaw trees , which bear fruit as big as a smal pear , of a tart but not unpleasant taste ; bibby tree , the wood hard and black as ink , and being tapp'd , affords a liquor call ▪ d bibby , of a pleasant tart taste which the indians drink . they have abundance of plantains set in walks , which make very delightful groves , and yield an excellent fruit , and being green and sappy , are cut down with one stroke of an ax. they have also plenty of bonanoes another sort of plantain , which eats best raw as the plantain does boil'd . they have great store of that excellent fruit call'd pine-apples , which tastes like a mixture of all delicious fruites , and ripens at all times of the year . they have also prickle-pear , which is a very good fruit ; and sugar ▪ canes . of which they make no other use but to suck out the juice . the maho tree , of which they make ropes , cables for ships , and nets for fishing . the calabash whose shells serve for cups and other occasions , is curiously painted ; the sweet sort of 'em is eatable , and the bitter sort medicinal . they have also gourds of the like nature . there is a plant call●…d silk grass , which resembles ou●… flaggs : this they beat nto strings like fine flax , much stronger than our flax or hemp ; of these they make ropes , cordage of all sorts , nets ●…or small fish ; and the spaniards and others use it for shoemakers thread , stockins , and a sort o●… lace . they have a tree called lightwood , as large as an elm , but so light , that a man may carry a great quantity of it on his back . it is in substance like cork , and made use of bv the indians for rasters to go to sea , or pass rivers . they have a tree call'd whitewood , of a finer grain , and whiter than any european wood and fit for inlaying . they have tamarind , locust-tree , bastard cinnamon , bamboes , and maingrove trees in plenty . they have shrubs that bear store of pepper , of two sorts , called bell p●…pper , and bird pepper . mr. wafer , to whom we owe this description , takes notice of a redwood , whereof there grow great quantities on the northern coast ; the indians make use of it for dying , and mix a kind of earth they have with it . it makes a bright glo●…y ●…ively red , which no washing can ●…etch out again this we suppose to be the ni●…ragua wood. their roots are potatoes . yams , and cassava ; of the last of which they make bread. they have likewise tobacco , but don't understand the planting and manuring of it ; it is not so strong as that of virginia . their beasts are the peccary , and warce a kind of wild hogs , which are very good meat . they have considerable store of deer , and rabbits , and great droves of monkeys , which are extraordinary fat and good to eat . they have an insect call'd a soldier , somewhat resembling a crab , which feeds upon what falls from the tree , is a delicious meat , and yeelds an oyl that is an excellent salve . they have no european cattle . their birds are the chicaly chicaly , which makes a noise somewhat like a cuccoo , is a large bird , has feathers of divers colours very beautiful and lively , whereof the natives sometimes make aprons . this bird keeps mostly on the trees , feeds on fruit , and is pretty good meat . the quam feeds in the same manner , his wings are dun , his tail dark . short , he is much preferable to the other for meat . there 's a ru●…et-colour'd bird , resembling a partridg , runs most on the ground , and is excellent meat . the corro●…ou is a large fowl as big as a turky , and of a black colour . the cock has a fine crown of yellow feathers on his head , and gills like a turkey , they live on trees , and eat fruit. they sing very delight●…ully , and are so well imitated by the indians , that they discover their haunts by it . they are very good meat , but their bones make the dogs run mad , and are therefore hid from them by the indians . they have abundance of parrots , for size and shape much like those of jamaica , they are very good meat ; their parakites are most of them green , and go in large flights by themselves . they have macaw birds ; which are as big again as parrots , and resemble them in shape , they have a bill like a hawk , and a bushy tail wi h two or three stragling feathers , either red or blue ; but those of the body , are of a lovely blue , green and red ; the indians tame those birds , and teach them to speak , and then letting them go into the woods amongst the wildones , they will return of their own accord to the houses : they exactly imitate the voice and singing of the indians , and call the chicaly in its own note . it is one of the pleasantest birds in the world , and it's flesh sweet and well tasted . they have also woodpeckers which are pied like our magpies , and have long claws that they climb up trees with ; they are not pleasant to eat . they have plenty of dunghil foul resembling those of europe , and their flesh and eggs as well tasted as ours . about the samhaloes they have great store of sea foul , and particularlv pelicans , which are large birds , having legs and feet like a goose , and a neck like a swan , the feathers are grey . it has a bag under its throat , which when fill'd , is as large as a man's two fists ; and when dry , will hold a pound of tobacco ; they feed upon fish. and the young ones are good meat . they have cormorants resembling ducks for size and shape , are of a black colour , have a white spot on the breast , and pitch sometimes on trees and shrubs by the water they are too rank to be eaten . they have a●…undance of sea ▪ gulls and pyes , which are pretty good meat , but eat fishy , which is cur'd by burying 'em eight or ten hours in the sand with their feathers on . they have flying insects too , and among others bees , which form their hives on trees ; and it s observed , that they never sting any body : the natives mix the honey with water , and so drink it , but know not the use of the wax . they have shining ●…ies , which in the night time resemble glow-worms . their fish are the tarpum , which ears like salmon ; some of 'm weigh 50 or 60 pound , they affo●…d good oyl . they have sharks and another fish that resembles a shark , but much better meat . the cavally is much of the size of a maccarel , and very good meat . they have a fi●…h called old wives , which is also very good 〈◊〉 eat their paracods are as large as a well grown pike , and very good meat , but in some places poisonous , which a●…e distinguish'd by the liver . their gar fish is good meat , they have a long bone on their snour , with which they will sometimes pierce the side of a canoe . they have also s●…ulpins , a prickly fish , which when strip'd , is very good meat . they have likewise string-rays , parrot-fish , snooks , conger-eels , conchs , perr●…winkles , limpi●…s , s●…a-crabs , and craw-fish , and other sorts whose names we know not , that eat very well . the inhabitants are most numerous on the north of the isthmus ; the men usually five or six foot hight , clean lim'd , big-bon'd , handsomely shap'd , nimble , active , and run well . the women are short and thick , and not so lively as the men , the young women plump , well shap'd , and have a brisk eye : both sexes have a round visage , short bottle noses , large and grey eyes , high forehead , whi●…e even teeth , thin lips , pretty large mouths , well proportion'd cheeks and chins , and in g●…nerall handsome , but the men exceed the women . both sexes have stre ght long lank black hair , which they generally wear down to the middle of their back . all other hair but that of their eye-brows and eye-lids they pull up by the roots , cut off the hair , of their heads , and paint themselves black by way of triumph , when they kill a spaniard . their natural complexion is a copper colour , and their eye-brows black as jet . there are some among them of both sexes , which bear the proportion of two or three to a hundred , who are milk white , and have all their bodies cover'd over with a milk white down ; their hair is of the same colour , and very fine , about six o●… e●…ght inches long , and inclining to curl . they are less in stature than the other indians , and their eye lids point downwards in form of a crescent : they don't see well in the sun , their eyes being weak and running with water if the sun shine upon them , therefore they are called moon ey'd . they are weak and sluggish in the day ▪ time , but in moon shiny nights all life and activity , and run as fast thro the woods by night , as the other indians do by day . they are not so much respected as the other indians , but look'd upon as monstruous . the natives go naked both men and women , only the men have a thing like an extinguisher of silver or gold plate tyed round their middle to cover their . yard , and the women tye a piece of cloath before them , which comes as low as their knee ; but they use none of these precautions till they come to the years of puberty : the members that have not those extinguishers , make use of a piece of plaintain leaf of a conick figure . they are in general a modest and cleanly people , and have a value for cloaths if they had them . the better sort have long c●…tton garments shap'd like carmens frocks , which they use on solemn occasions , as attending the king or chief , & c for an ornament to the face , besides their general painting and daubing , the men wear a piece of plate hanging over their mouths , and the chief of them have it of gold. it is of an oval form , and gently pinching the bridle of the nose with its points , hangs dangling from thence as low as the under lip ; and instead of this the woman wear a ring thro the bridle of the nose : they lay them aside at their feasts . they likewise wear chains of teeth , shells , beads , or the like ; the heavier they be , they reckon them the more ornamental . their houses ly mostly scattering , and always by a river side . but in some places they are so many as to form a town or village . their walls are made up of sticks , and daubed over with earth : the fire is in the middle of the house , and the smoke goes out at a hole in the roof , they are not divided into stories or rooms , but into hovels ; every one has a hammock for a bed in one of these hovels . they have no doors , shelves , or ●…eats , other than logs of wood. every neighbourhood has a warehouse of 130 foot long , the sides and ends full of holes , w●…nce they shoot their arrows on the approach of the spaniards . in their plantations they set so much plantain , maiz , &c , as serves their occasions : they likewise make drink of maiz. which they forment by grains of the same chewed in their mouths . they have also another sort of d●…ink , which they make of plantains . most of the drudgery is per●…ormed by the women with great cheerfulness , being very well condition'd and d●…tiful to their husbands , who are otherways very indulgent to them ▪ and their children the vvomen wash the mother and child in a river within an hour after their delivery . the boys are bred to the bow , hunting , and fishing , &c , in which they are mighty dexterous ; and the girls help the women in dressing their victuals , weaving , m●…king cotton cloth , cordage , nets , &c. and the men make baskets very neat , dying the materials first with lively colours . they allow poligamy , but punish adultery with death of both parties : they punish theft also with death ; and fornication with thrusting a briar up the man's tard , whereof they commonly die ; the facts must be proven by oath , which is a swearing by their tooth . when they marry , the father or nearest kinsman keeps the bride privatly in his own appartments the first seven nigbts , and then she is deliver'd to her husband : all the neighbours for some m les round , are invited to a great feast , and bring provisions with them , the fathers o●… the young couple bring them forth in their hands , and the bridegrooms father makes a speech ; then he dances about in antick gestures , till all on a sweat , when he kneels down , and gives his son to the bride , her father also having danc'd himself into a sweat , and presenting her to the bridegroom in the same manner ; then they take each other by the hand , and so the ceremonie concludes . after this all the men take up their axes , and run shouting to a tract of wo●…d-land to prepare a plantation for the new couple . that being done , they have their feast , and afterwards drink hard , all their 〈◊〉 being first put out of the way , to prevent danger in case of quarrelling . they divert themselves sometimes by dancing , and piping on a small hollow bamboe , but without distinction of notes : the men and women never dance nor feast together , but apart . the women accompany them likewise in their hunting expeditions , which sometimes last 20 days : they tie their hamocks betwixt two trees cover them with plantain leaves , and have fires all night by their hammocks : such of their prey as they take a hunting , and design to keep for future use , they barbecue in the woods ; and what they make use of for present sustainance , they mix with roots , plantain , bonanoes , and pepper , and stew it together till it be brought to a pulp ; which they take up with the two foremost fingers of their right hand bent hookwise , and put into their mouths . they travel by direction of the sun , or the bending of the trees , according as the wind is . none of the english authors take notice of their worship or religion , but give an account that they pawaw , or consult the devil to know futurities ; and it would seem they are as ignorant in matters of physick and chi●…gery , since when they would set a patient blood , they set him upon the bank of a river , and with a little bow , and small arrow , gag'd that it may enter no further than our lancets , they shoot as sast as they can at all parts of the patient ' s body ; and if they chance to hit on a vein , that the blood spurs out a little , they testify their joy by antick dances . we come next to give an account of the settlement of our men there ; how they were receiv'd by the natives ; wh t indian princes there are in their neighbourhood ; in what state they found the affairs of the country ; and of the situation of our colony . on the 27th of october 1698. our ships came to an anchor in a fair sandy bay , 3 leagues w. off the gulf of darien ; upon which two canoes , with several indies , came on board , were very free with our men , told them they had been long expected , and were very welcome : our men gave them some old hats , looking ▪ glasses and knives , with which they were extremly well pleas'd , and ue●…t off . when our ships stood further into the bay , they saw about 20 indians drawn up on the shoar , being arm'd with bows and lances ; upon which a boat being sent a●…hoar , and making a signal of peace , they unstrung their bows , talk'd familiarly , and told our men that two great captains would in a little time come on board our ships . acco●…dingly on november 2d in the morning capt. andreas , on of their princes accompained by 12 men. came on board , and ask'd their bussines ; he was answered , that we came to live among them and trade with them , and would afford them your european commodities , cheaper then any other people . he ask'd if we were friends or enemies to the spaniards ; and was answered that we were at peace with all men , and would make war upon no man , except they injur'd us . he took us for buccaneers , and told us he knew capt. swan and capt. davis in the south sea , and commended them as men of 〈◊〉 . we heard that part of his discourse with very much couldness , and told him we came on no such designe as those men did , but had authority for what we undertook . we treated him civilly , gave him a hat lac'd with gold , and some toys : and so he parted , promising in a little time to come again ; which he accordingly did , and brought don pedro , another of their princes or captains , with him . captain andreas was freer with us than at first , plainly own'd that he took us for buccaneers , and complain'd that some english men of that sort , had after great pretences of friendship , carried off some of their people , and therefore don pedro would not come aboard us , till he had further assurance of us . captain andreas is a person of small stature ; he affects the spanish gravity , as having been often among them at the mines of santa maria , panama , &c. and formerly had a commission under them as a captain , upon which he values himself above others . the french hate him mortally , because of something he did against some of their nation formerly . when he came on board us , he had a sort of a coat of red loose stuff , an old hat , a pair drawers , but no stockings nor shoes ; and the rest that came with him were all naked , excepting their penis , which was covered by extinguishers , as formerly mention'd . upon further communing , capt. andreas was very well pleas'd with us , offered us what part of the country we would chuse , and accepted a commission from us ; and at the same time we gave him a basket hiltted sword , and a pair of pis●…ols : upon which he promised to defend us to the last of his blood. some of the princes on this side the isthmus had been in peace with the spaniards for several years , and suffered a few of them to reside amongst them , to give notice to panama of what ships came upon these coasts ; but upon some fresh disgust , about two months before we arriv'd , capt. ambrosio , who is the most noted prince among'st 'em , had oblig'd them to enter into a common alliance against spain , and cut off ten spaniards , who liv'd upon golden-island . the place where we are setled is 4 miles east of golden-island , within a great bay. we have 〈◊〉 excellent harbour , surrounded with high mountains , capable of holding a thousand sail land-lock'd , and safe from all 〈◊〉 and tempests . the mouth of the harbour is about 〈◊〉 cannon-shot over , form'd by a peninsula on the one side , and a point of land on the other . in the middle of the entrance there is a rock three foot above water , upon which the sea breaks most terribly when the wind blows hard ; and within the points there is a small rock that lies a little under water . on both sides these rocks there 's a very good wide channel for ships to come in : that on the south-side is three cables lon , and seven fathom depth ; and that on the north two cables long . from the two outermost points the harbour runs away east a mile and an half ; and near the midle , on the right hand , a point of land shoots out into the bay : so that by raising forts on the said point , on the rock in the midle of the entrance , and the two outermost points , it will be the strongest ha●…bour , both by art and nature , that 's in the known world. the bay within is for the most part 6 fathom water , and till you come within a cable's length of the shoar , three fathom and an half : so that a key may be built , to which great ships may lay their sides , and unload . the peninsula lies on the left hand , is a mile and an half in length , very sleep , and high towards the sea : so that it would be very difficult for any body to land , till you come to the isthmus where there 's a small sandy bay that little ships may put into , but is easie to be secu●…ed by a ditch and a fort. there are several little rivers of very good water that fail into the bay ; and it abounds so with excellent fish ▪ that we can with ease take more than it 's possible for us to destroy , having sometimes caught 140 at a draught : amongst others there be tortoises , which are excellent meat , and some of them above 600 weight . the peninsula was never inhabited , and is cover'd all over with trees of various sorts , as stately ced●…rs , brasil-wood , lignum vitae , box-wood , fustick-wood , yellow sanders , manshinel , &c. and the like sorts , besides others whose names we know not . grow on the continent ; and we doubt not of finding out the nicaragua wood : we have found cabbage trees , the fruit of which eats like collyflowers . the natives have no plantation wit●…in t●…o miles of u●… . we have a watch tower upon an high hill adjoining to our plantation , about a mile south of the bay , from whence we can see the ships in the bay , the fort we have raised on the mouth of the bay , and as far as the mouth of the river darien : we can see above thirty miles southward , and have a fine prospect of golden-island , and the isle of pines , westward towards porto-bello , and northward towards jamaica . the hill is about a mile in height ; so that we can see any ships before they come within some leagues of the harbour . we compute our selves to be about 50 leagues north of ca●…thagena , and as muc●… south of portobello . the four indian kings or captains on this coast , visit us frequently in their canoes : and the n●…tives are very kind to us , and sell us plantains , fowls , & c. ●…or toys or old shift a french man who hath married one of the natives , informs us , that the spaniards have silver and gold mines on the i●…thmus which we might make our selves masters of with a 100 men ; so that if they commit hostilities upon us , as we hear th●…y threaten to do , it 's not unlikely that we may visit them . we found some french refugee●… in the country , who are willing to settle under us , and having been several years in these parts , and understanding the language of the natives , are very useful to us . we have seen some sand in the rivers , which looks as if it were mixt with gold , and in some places the earth seems to be very much mixt with it : so that it 's concluded , there 's more gold-dust here , than in any part of guinea . the indian princes or captains on this coast , do somewhat resemble our heads of clans in scotland ; and by their converse at times with the spaniards , and other european nations , affect christian names . the first of these princes we shall name , is captain diego ; he commands f●…om the bottom of the gulph of uraba on this fide caret bay , and has 3000 men under him ; he has been at war with the spaniards several years , occasion'd by an insult his people had receiv'd from them , when they came to demand their share in the mines , which they had discover'd to the spaniards in their country , on condition of being partners with them : but when they came to demand it , the spaniards treated them villanously , beat and abus'd them , upon which they attack'd the spaniards , cut of 20 of their men , and three priests that belong'd to the mines . the next is capt. pousigo . he is an indian clergy-man , and brother-in-law to capt. andreas . the peninsula that we possess , lies betwixt his territory and that of capt. andreas , who together with his brother , commands from golden island to the rive●… pinas . their command is greater than that of pousigo ▪ but not so great as that of diego . these princes are very useful to us , because of their neighbourhood and consa●…guinity to one another . capt. ambrosio commands from the river pinas to the samballo●…s : he is a man of about 60 years of age , but strong and vigorous , well limb'd and of a stern countenance : he is a mortal enemy to the spaniards , with whom he hath had a long war ▪ he is esteemed the bravest of all the indian captains . his son ▪ in ▪ law don pedro having been taken by the spaniards , and kept by them as a slave at panama , he can never forget no●… forgive it them : this young man is a great friend to the french , who they are made to believe design to come and settle among them . ambrosio and his son in law prest us much to come and settle in their dominions , and join with them to make war on the spaniards : we gave them fair words , and promis'd to come and view their coasts ; which we accordingly did , and in our way thither , four leagues westward of our settlement , we found an excellent harbour , capable of 10000 sail ; but it cannot be defended without many forts : here the privateers used to come and careen . capt. ambro●…io's house lyes about a l●…ague from the water side , on the bank of a river , having 12 lesser houses about it : when we drew near it , he advanced 50 paces to meet us , being attended by 20 men in white loose frocks with fringes round t●…e bottom , and arm'd with lances . he saluted us kindly , and gave us a calabash of liquor almost like lambs-wool , made of indian corn and potatoes . his house is 90 foot long , 35 broad , and 30 in height , curiously thatch'd with palmetto royal , and over that cotton leaves , the floor is of firm earth like tarras , very smooth and clean the sides are compos'd of large canes , as thick as a man's leg. in this house live ambrosio and his son in law don pedro , with both their families , consisting of about 40 persons . we saw ambrosio's grandmother there , who is 120 years old , and yet was very active in getting things ready for our entertainment , she has 6 generations deseended from her now in the house with her , the people live here to 150 and 160 years of age ; but those that converse much with europeans , and drink strong drink , don't live so long . from the samballoes to the river of conception , the countrey is commanded by one corbet ; who is altogether in the french interest , he having contracted a friendship with ●…heir privateers seven years ago , and done them many good offices . they promised to reward him ●…f he would go to petit guavus , and in his way thither he was taken by an english privateer , & carried to jamaica , whence the governor of petit guavus got him releas'd . he was with pointi at the taking of cartagena ▪ and has a commission from the french to be general of all the french and indian forces on that coast , and to take , sink , and destroy spaniards or any other enemies . yet the french themselves , and the sensible part of the indians , don't put any confidence in him ; and ambrosio who is the bravest of all those indian captains , keeps him in aw and within bounds . next to corbet , there 's another of their captains call'd nicola , who is said to be a wise , brave and good natur'd prince , insomuch that the indians had a mind to have s●…t him up instead of ambrosio , who is of a rugged military temper : but ambrosio's authority and power is so great , that they did not find it practicable . nicola is a mortal enemy to the spaniards , and can never entertain a good thought of them ▪ since the governor of porto bello rob'd him of a curious fusee that had been presented him by some of the buccaneers ; and being out of order , he sent it thither to be mended ; upon which the governor taking a liking to it , kept it to himself ; and sent nicola another sorry piece instead of it . since we came hither , there have been an english , a dutch , and a french ship in our bay. the english sh●…p was capt. long in the rupert prize ; he had been in the gulf of uraba , but he himself and his men own'd , that they had not then been ashore there . he hath some way or other disoblig'd the captains ambrosio and diego . tho we treated him with all possible civility , yet we are since inform'd that he hath been a days journy into the gulf , and endeavour'd to incense the indians against us , telling them that we were privateers , and that the king of england would not protect us . he left some men in the bay , who have since kill'd some spani●…rds , and came to us for arms and ammunition , but we told them we could not grant them any , and that they had done what they could not justify . we gave them however what was necessary for fitting up a boat ; and as a reward . they 〈◊〉 away the carpenter and mate of one of our ships call'd the unicorn . the dutch ship that came hither was afraid of the spanish barlavento . fleet , and put in here for protection , that fleet having made prize of another dutch ship of 32 guns , and of two english sloops for trading on those coasts . the french ship that put in here , was that which was order'd to carry back the church-plate , &c. to carthagena , did afterwards bulge on a rock , and was cast away in our harbour . we sav'd all their lives , and capt. pennicook our commodore endanger'd his own life to save that of the french captain . he inform'd us , that the french had 4 men of war of 50 guns each , who thinking we had a design on the river mississipi , were gone to the gulf of mexico in quest of us . the french have been very industrious in cultivating their interest , both with the natives and spaniards in this part of america , and doubt not of having a good share in those countries after the king of spain's death . they have got a great interest with captain ambrosio . by means of his son-in law don pedro , whom they carress extremly , and design'd to have carried him to petit guavus , and from thence into france , to aquaint the french king with the favourable sentiments the indians have en●…ertain'd of the french , and of their design to surrender themselves into his majesty . this has been projected by the french a long time , but the king of spains indispositio●… , and their pretences to that crown , made them refer it ; and it s no doubt but our settlement will quicken those resolutions . captain andreas capt pedro his brother , capt. diego , and capt. pou●…igo . our neighbours , have no manner of correspondence with the french. the letter hath acquainted us , that there are several gold mines within two miles of our settlement , which he hath promised to shew us ; and he hath actually let us see several samples o●… fine gold. this being the substance of several journals , that were sent from our colony in da●…ien , upon their first settlement there , we hope its sufficient of it self to satisfie our neighbours in england , of the justice of our cause , of the equity of our proceedings , of the true reason why the french are so much our enemies in this matter , of the greatness of the providence that has put us in possession of that post , and that it is englands interest to join with and protect us , by which the designs of the french against europe in general , and grèat britain̄ in particular , may be defeated , and the english west-indies trade secur'd . but since by the proclamations before mentioned , which treat us as rebels and pirats in america ▪ for what we have done according to act of parliament in scotland , our ships may be in danger of being attack'd by other n●…tions as pirates , and our colony discountenanc'd and oppos'd on that account by the natives ; there 's no reason that our neighbours should think strange i●… we complain of that unkind usage , and endeavour to lay before them what may probably be the consequences of such proceedings , without being construed either to threaten or to wish , that any ●…uch thing should happen . it being evident that by offering to admit the english as joint . sharers in our trade , we entertain no sentiments but what are friendly towards that nation , being satisfied that all those who wish well to the protestant religion and true liberty , are enemies to any thing that may occasion a breach of the union and good understanding betwixt us . yet it must be own'd that we have but too great reason to complain of the hardships we suffer by the union of the crowns , which it is in the power of england to remedy , by complying with the gracious proposals of uniting the nations , repeated in pa●…liament by his majesty , who-like a true father of his country . has expos'd himself to the greatest of dangers to procure the welfare and peace of his subjects , by which he has made an absolute conque●…t of the hearts of all good men who are unanimous to join in the like prayer for him , that the israelites of old put up for their kings , viz. that he may live for ever . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a40373-e460 * 〈◊〉 new voyag●… and description o●… the 〈◊〉 of america . p. 11. 6●… , 149 , 150 , 151. sad and serious politicall considerations touching the invasive war against our presbyterian protestant brethren in scotland, their late great overthrow, and the probable dangerous consequences thereof to both nations and the prorestant [sic] religion which may serve as a satisfactory apology for such ministers and people, who out of conscience did not observe the publike thanksgiving against their covenant, for the great slaughter of those their brethren in covenant. prynne, william, 1600-1669. 1650 approx. 203 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 38 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-01 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a56200 wing p4058 estc r5356 12378466 ocm 12378466 57195 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a56200) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 57195) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 223:10a) sad and serious politicall considerations touching the invasive war against our presbyterian protestant brethren in scotland, their late great overthrow, and the probable dangerous consequences thereof to both nations and the prorestant [sic] religion which may serve as a satisfactory apology for such ministers and people, who out of conscience did not observe the publike thanksgiving against their covenant, for the great slaughter of those their brethren in covenant. prynne, william, 1600-1669. [2], 21 p. s.n.], [london : 1650. protesting cromwell's invasion of scotland and the celebration of his victory at dunbar. attributed to william prynne. cf. nuc pre-1956. place of publication from nuc pre-1956 imprints. reproduction of original in yale university library. marginal notes. with: a brief description of the future history of europe, from anno 1650 to an. 1710. london : [s.n.], 1650. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database 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illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng great britain -history -puritan revolution, 1642-1660. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649. scotland -history -1649-1660. great britain -church history -17th century. 2002-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2002-05 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2002-06 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2002-06 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2002-07 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion sad and serious politicall considerations , touching the invasive war against our presbyterian protestant brethren in scotland , their late great overthrow , and the probable dangerous consequences thereof to both nations and the prorestant religion . which may serve as a satisfactory apology for such ministers and people , who out of conscience did not observe the publike thanksgiving , against their covenant , for the great slaughter of those their brethren in covenant . printed in the yeer 1650. sad and serious politicall considerations . the english independents new invasive war against their presbyterian protestant brethren of scotland , and late great rout and slaughter of their army , meeting with variety of censures and constructions , according to the dive●sity of mens inclinations and interests , some prudent christians , ingaged to no parties , whose interest is onely the preservation , propagation and safety of the reformed protestant religion against the common enemies and underminers thereof , have these sad melancholy apprehensions thereof ; that it is a dolefull prologue and tragicall scene , not onely to the approaching ruine and desolation of both kingdoms for their manifold crying sins , but likewise to the speedy subversion of the true protestant religion , and extirpation of all zealous professors thereof through our three kingdoms , and in forraigne parts , upon these ensuing considerations . 1. that the kingdoms of england and scotland make up the greatest body of the protestant religion in christendom , being best able to defend themselves , and succour other reformed churches , when indangered and designed to ruine by popish enemies , as the lords and commons declared long since in their * protestation to this kingdom and the whole world , 22. octob. 1642. and in their order of the seventh of october 1643. and therefore the ruine of the protestant party in these kingdoms , is the readiest way to indanger , conquer , ruine all other reformed churches in the world , and extirpate the protestant religion in all other countries ; as they there likewise declare . 2. that the pope of rome , jesuites , priests , papists , and their confederates , upon this ground , have for many years last past , by open force , and secret practices , endeavo●red the extirpation of the protestant religion and most zealous professors thereof throughout these kingdoms , and made it their chiefest designe to reduce them to their pristine obedience to the see of rome , which by the popish negotiations with spain , the papisticall match with france , the agency of the popes nuncio's , the practices of priests and jesuites in england ( countenanced and protected against the force of lawes ) and the confederacy of popish prelates , clergie-men and courtiers with them in these designes , they had almost totally accomplished and brought to full perfection in all our realms ; as the whole house of commons in their remonstrance of the state of the kingdom , 15. decemb. 1641. and other subsequent declarations ; and they and the scottish commissioners in their impeachments against the archbishop of canterbury , largely remonstrate . 3. that the most zealous protestants , then branded with the name of puritans and presbyterians in england and scotland , were the principall and only obstacles to the finishing of this their neare compleated work. whereupon the * jesuiticall , popish and prelaticall prevailing f●ction resolved to root them out of this kingdom by force , or drive them out with fear , and rid them all out of the way . for the better effecting whereof , they thought it necessary to reduce scotland to such popish superstitions and innovations , as might make them apt to joyn with england in that great change which was intended : whereupon new popish canons and a liturgy reformed much after the modell of the papists mis●alls , were prest upon them ; and all the arminian and popish doctrines broached , maintained , and new popish ceremonies practised in england , were in deavoured to be planted and set up in † scotland . 4. that this their dangerous ripened designe finding no publike , but onely private opposition in england by particular persons , who were ●ined , * pillori'd , stigmatized , deprived of their ears , close imprisoned , banished and ruined by the star-chamber and high-commission , to the publike terror of all others ; thereupon the scottish puritans and presbyters were the first visible instruments raised by god to give a publique check to their successefull design , beyond their or our expectations . 5. that hereupon the † jesuiticall and prelaticall popish party raised two severall armies successively to suppresse and extirpate the puritan and presbyterian party in scotland , as the only remo●a's to their design ; and were most active and forwards in their leavies and contributions against them ; indeavouring to ingage the protestant party in both nations in a bloudy civill war●e to their mutuall ruine ; to which the puritan and religious party in england were most averse . first privately murmuring , and afterwards publiquely protesting against this warre , as dishonourable and dangerous to religion and both kingdomes in the parliament , in april 1640. purposely summoned to raise moneys to carry on that war , which they refused to grant to so ill a purpose , and did all they could to blast their malicious designs and warre against scotland ; whereupon the popish party caused that parliament to be dissolved , and did all they could by violent arbitrary courses , and illegall loanes and taxes , to raise forces and moneys to maintain a warre against them ; imprisoning and prosecuting those , who resisted or refused to assist them in this warre , in the self-same manner as those in present power have done , divers of their christian brethren for manifesting their dislike and backwardnesse to assist them in this ungodly invasive warre against their protestant brethren in covenant against many publique ingag●ments , and not giving publique thanks to god for their late overthrow . 6. that the scotti●h puritans and presbyterians advance with their army into england , in the year 1640. of purpose to preserve the religion , and protect themselves and their english brethren from slavery and ruine ; was the * pri●cicipall and only means under god , of preventing their own and our thraldome to no p●ry and tyranny , of frustrating all the jesuites , papists and prela●es designs , of securing religion , laws , liberties , and conve●ing the last parliament ; which through gods blessing on their indeavours , through the assistance of the scottish commissioners , and countenance of their army , over-powered the popish and prelaticall faction , brake all their former projects in pieces , suppressed all their popish innovations , doctrinall and ceremoniall , reconciled the differences between both nations , setled a firm unity and amity between them , by an act of oblivion and pacification , abolished the high-commission , star-chamber , extravagances of the councell-table , the bishops courts , and votes in parliament , ship-money , impositions , and all other illegall taxes ; quickned the laws against jesuites , priests and popish recusants ; passed a law for triennuall parliaments , and another against the untimely adjourning , proroguing and dissolving of themselves at the kings own pleasure , and thereby put our religion , laws , liberties and properti●s in a farre better condition of security , and the popish and prelaticall party into a farre worse , and more hopelesse and desperate condition then ever heretofore . 7. that to prevent and frustrate these laws and this security , the † jesuiticall and prelaticall party whilest they were in agitation , indeavoured all they could by subtill practices , slanders , and private solicitations , to raise jealousies and divisions between the scottish commissioners and army , and the parliament , to ingage the scottish and english armies each against other , or to make the scots stand neutrall to the parliament , that so they might bring up the english army from the north to london to over-awe and suppresse them , and hinder the union between both kingdomes ; which through the fidelity of the scots , and of some officers in the english army , was timely discovered , prevented , and a firme union between both kingdomes setled by acts of parliament , passed in the parliaments of both nations . 8. that these acts of pacification and union between both kingdomes , and the religious party of both nations , the extirpation of prelacy and the popish hierarchy , and the establishing of a presbyterian government and uniformity in doctrine , worship and discipline in both kingdoms were apprehended , prosecuted and resolved upon by the most religious protestant party and * parliaments of both nations , as the readiest , probablest , and most effectuall means under god to preserve and secure their religion , lawes , liberties , against all future invasions , and to frustrate all popish and prelaticall design●s against them , and were accordingly † esteemed and looked upon by the adve●se popish and prelaticall party , who thereupon attempted with all their policy and power , to uphold prelacy , and retard and prevent the establishment of ●resbytery , as fatall to all their hopes and designes ; and thereupon improved all their int●rest both at home , and with forraigne ●rinces , to raise what forces they could , to break this d●signe and the ●arliament too , before they should accomplish it . 9. that when the jesuiticall , popish and prelaticall party in england , ireland , scotland , and forraigne parts , had taken up arms , and raised great forces to hinder the settlement of the presbyterian government● , suppresse the late parliament , subvert the protestant religion , introduce popery and tyranny , ext●rpate the puritan and religious party in england and ireland , and were grown very strong and p●evalent in both , the * scottish presbyterians ( now invaded and defeated ) out of their brotherly love , and christian aff●ction , in this extremity of danger , for the preservation of our religion , liberties , lawes , parliament , and the godly party in england & ireland , at both hous●s earnest solicitatio● , did readily and chearfully assist us with their forces in both kingdoms , and thereby , through gods b●essing , were a great means of weak●ning and subduing our enemies , and prese●ving our religion , lawes , liberties , lives , from utter destruction ; which brotherly assistance , with so powerfull an a●my of above twenty thousand ho●se and foot in our greatest dangers , was so welcome to us , that the house of commons on the second of february 1643. † ordered , publike thanks should be given in all churches for the aid and assi●tance come in by our brethren of scotland : and when the malignant party there , in their absence for our preservation , had p●ev●iled and routed only some few of their force● ( nothing considerable in comparison of those lately slain and defeated ) left behind for their defence , both houses were so sensible thereof , that they appointed a speciall d●y of humiliation for the miseries of scotland throughout all the parliaments q●arters by their * order of 2. september 1645. which was accordingly observed ; so much did they and we then condole th● least overthrow and misery of our scottish brethren in covenant ●being members of the self●same body of christ ) as if it had been our own : whereas now on the contrary , we invade , slay , d●stroy and ruine these our brotherly assistants , rejoyce & triumph at their misery , appoint publike da●es of thanksgiving throughout the whole nation for their gr●at slaughter and overthrow , and hang up the ensignes taken from them in westminster hall , as publike trophies and testimonies to succeeding ages of our gratitude and brotherly kindnesse towards them , and of our religious observation of our solemne nationall league and covenant with them , not long since made and entred into upon their coming in to our assistance . 10. that in the extremity of our dangers , by the prevailing popish party , the † parliaments , ministers , and religious people both of scotland and england did resolve it most nec●ssary , and essentiall for gods glory and their s●fety , to enter into a more sacred and stricter union then formerly , for defence of their religion , king , parliament , lawes , liberties , the extirpation of popery , of prelacy , and the bringing of all our kingdoms to uniformity in doctrine , worship and discipline , by a solemne nationall league and covenant , as the onely means under god , to prevent all future differences and breaches between all the godly people of both nations , to preserve and secure religion , lawes , liberties , and priviledges of parliament , against all present and future attempts whatsoever , and dash in pieces all the designes , practices , hopes of the jesuiticall and prelaticall faction in all our kingdoms : which league and covenant was accordingly agreed upon by the parliament , and assemblies of divines in both kingdomes , and after that most chearfully and solemnly taken and subscribed , not only by the scottish parliament , army , clergy , and generality of that nation , but by all the members of both houses of our parliament , the genera●ity of all the godly ministers and people in england and ireland ; and by all , or most officers and souldiers in the parliaments armies ; who many of them carried it in their hats , hands , and fixed to their pikes as they marched , and amongst others it was taken and subscribed by * oliver cromwell himself and ireton ; and every man by ordinances of both houses , was disabled to injoy or exercise any civill or military office , or place of trust whatsoever in the state or army , who did not solemnly take and subscribe it● whereupon it was almost universally● taken and subscribed in a most sacred and solemn manner throughout the kingdome , and followed with many glorious victories and successes , till the popish and prelaticall malignant party in england were totally subdued ; all counties , and garrisons fully reduced to the parliaments command ; and a happy peace and settlement of our reliigion , laws , liberties upon most safe and honourable terms , indeavoured , expected● and almost accomplished by a personall treaty● , with the king in the isle of wight . 11. that to prevent this peace and settlement ; the † officers of the army ( who love to make a trade of war , thereby to gain and keep all civill and ecclesiasticall power in their own hands , and to inrich themselves with our three kingdoms spoils and ruine ) confederating with some few members of the commons house against their trust , duty , oaths , protestations , the very letter of this solemn league and covenant , and all the ends thereof ; forcibly seized , condemned and beheaded the late king , secured and secluded the greatest part of the commons house addicted to the presbyterian government , suppressed the whole house of lords , disinherited the kings posterity of the crown , subverted the fundamentall government of the kingdome ; usurped all regall and parliamentall authority to themselves ; and by colour thereof , now trample all laws , liberties , and priviledges of parliament under feet ; remove all or most zealous presbyterians ( though never so eminent actors and sufferers for religion and the publique weal ) out of all offices and places of power and trust throughout th● nation ; discourage and discountenance all or most pr●sbyterian ministers , especially the most pious ; banish some , imprison others , recall the sequestrations , and substract the a●gmentations , and tithes of all or most of them , to starve and ruine them ; withdraw themselves from their ministery , suborn or tolerate their monethly prognosticators , and diurnalists to revile and rail openly against them in print , without the least controul , and to prognosticate their and their presbyterian gouernments downfall , to incense the people against them and it ; invent and prescribe new oaths , ingagements , publications , observations of thanksgivings , and humiliations , and other snares and engines , thereby to insnare either their consciences , or indanger their estat●s , liberties , ministery , persons in their plundring committees , and new arbitary judicatories ; declare against the solemn league and covenant as expired , abolished , yea , and dangerous and unlawfull to be kept , set up and inforce an anti-covenant engagement to frustrate , null , and abjure it , debar all from all publike offices , pref●rments , augmentations , degrees of learning , the practise of the law , and the very benefit of the laws of england , ( for which we have so long contested with the kings party ) who will not out of conscience or loyalty subscribe it ; oppose and traduce the presbyterian government , as papall , antichristian and tyrannicall ; exempt all s●ctaries whatsoever from all penall laws , in not repairing to any publike ordinances or churches ; authorize them freely to meet when and where they please in private conventicles , ( where running priests and jesuites may and wil easily seduce them ) without the least danger or disturbance : and because their brethren of scotland stick close to their presbyterian government and covenant , and have closed with their king at last , according to their covenant and allegiance , and will not disinherit him as they have done ; they thereupon have recalled cromwell out of ireland from prosecuting the irish papists and royalists , made him their generall instead of the lord f●irfax , and sent him in to scotland , without any real provocation on their part , to invade them with an army , where he entred without the least resistance , seized some of their towns and garrisons , provoked them oft times to fight , when they declined fighting , and at last gave them battle in their own countrey , routed their whole army , and though he lost not forty men in the fight● yet he and his forces , out of their christian charity cut down near 4000. of them in the pursuit , maimed and wounded above 5000. more , whereof many are since dead , and more like to die ; took 10000. of them prisoners , 5000. whereof are sent captives into england ; since which he hath taken edenborough and leith , prosecutes his victory with all vigour , sends up all the scots colours to westminster , where they are publiquely hung up in the hall for triumph . and for this great slaughter and overthrow of our presbyterian brethren , a solemn publike day of thanksgiving hath been prescribed to be strictly observed throughout the nation , and celebrated in many places accordingly , to involve the whole nation in a double guilt of their bloud : first by their contributions to pay the army sent against them , next by publike thanksgiving to god for their destruction , and that in those very churches and places , where we not long since lifted up our hands and subscribed our names , when we took the forementioned leaga● and covenant in the presence of god himself , angells and men , † sincerely , really . and constantly to preserve their religion in doctrine , worship , discipline , government , and with our estates and lives mutually to preserve the right and priviledges of their kingdome and parliam●nt , and to bring all to condigne punishment , as malignants , incendiaries , and evill instruments , who should indeavour the dividing of one of the kingdomes from another , and each one of us , according to our place and interest , to indeavour that both kingdomes may remain conjoyned in a firm peace and union to all posterity ; and that we shall not suffer our selves directly or indirectly by whatsoever combination , perswasion , or terrour , to be divided or withdrawn from this blessed union , which so much concerns the glory of god , and good of the kingdomes , but shall all the daies of our lives zealously and constantly continue therein against all opposition , and promote the same according to our power against all lets and impediments whatsoever , &c. which how well and really we have performed , let that almighty god , the searcher of all hearts● in whose presence and name we made and subscribed this covenant , judge , and our own consciences , as we shall answer the contrary at that great day , if we seriously repent not of it now , whilest we have time , and space of repentance given us . 13. that upon the due consideration of all these premises , we shall not conclude as some rigid presbyterians do , perchance not without good grounds ; that this invasive warre with our brethren of scotland is an apparent violation of every clause and branch of the solemn brotherly league and covenant , and a very strange act of ingratitude and injustice in invading their kingdom , because they will have a king , according to their ancient constitution , government , laws , covenant ; and in indeavouring to deprive their king of the kingdome of scotland , because they have injuriously and per●idiously dispossessed him of his two kingdoms of engl●nd and ireland , against their national league and covenant , and other oaths , for fear his possession of that his hereditary kingdom should be a means to regain the other two , ( which is as unconscionable and unreasonable , as if a great statesman or commander should wrongfully deprive his neighbour of all his lands and goods in a third parish or county , because he hath forcibly dispossessed him of all his lands and goods in two other parishes or counties , that so he might never be able to recover them by suit of law , having no means left to maintain his suit against him ) but rather infer from thence , first , that this war with scotland is not only exe●eding scandalous , dishonourable , and disadvantagious to all the professors of the reformed protestant religion in both kingdoms , and throughout the christian world , to behold protestant brethren in covenant thus invading , slaughtering and destroying each other upon such slender unchristian carnall grounds , but † ungodly too . secondly , that this invasive war , and great slaughter of the most zealous scottish presbyters , is a matter of greatest joy , triumph and advantage to the jesuiticall , popish and prelaticall party , and tending much to the present promotion and future accomplishment of all their former frustrated , successelesse , and almost hopelesse malicious designs against the puritanicall and religious party in both kingdoms , and the intended accomplishment of the presbyterian government , and r●formation of religion in them , which they so much feared , and opposed by open force of arms and secret policies , who will now indeavour to continue and heighten our open divisions ( first plotted by them ) till we have weakned and destroyed each other by our civill wars , and made our selves fit to be suddainly surprised and destroyed by their party , when we have consumed and undone each other . thirdly , that in these respects , the successes , great victories , and slaughters in this unnaturall and unchristian warre against our protestant brethren in covenant , are no matter of publike joy , thanksgiving and triumph to the conquerours , as some vainly conceive , but of greatest publike lamentation , humiliation and mourning , ( it being both unnaturall , uncharitable , and unchristian for members of the same body of christ , and sworn christian brethren , ingaged by covenant , and god himself , to protect and * love each other with a pure heart fervently , to murther and destroy each other ) an argument of gods heavy wrath against us● tending to our desolations , as the sacred tex●s and presidents compared together , will fully resolve the conscientious perusers of them . iudg. 21.1 . to 18. 2 sam. 1.12.17 , 18 , &c. 2 sam. 2.12 . to 29. to 3.30 . c. 39. c. 4.8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12. c. 19.1 , 2 , 3 , 4. 2 chron. 28.5 . to 16. ezek. 19.12.2.33.14 . ezek. 35.1 . to the end . obad. 1. to the end . amos 1.9 , 10 , 11 , 12. gen. 37.26 , 27. 1 sam. 14.7.7 . 1 kings 13.30 . psal. 35.14 . isay 9.19 , 20 , 11. c. 19.2.3 . 2 chron. 15.5 , 6. ier. 22.17 , 18. ezek. 38. 21 , 22. mich. 1.2 . &c. zech. 7.9 . to the end . mal. 2.10 . mat. 10.21 . &c. 1 iohn 3.10 , 21 , 12. exod. 2.11 , 12. iudg. 9.5 . to the end , a sad story , 1 kings 12 , 14.15 . 2 chron. 11.4 . c. 21.4.12 , 13 , 14. &c. neh. 5.1 . to 10. iob 6.14 , 15. prov. 6.16.19 . isay 66.5 . acts 7.26 . mat 12.25 . mar. 3.24 , 25 , 26. gal. 5.14 , 15. iam. 3.14 , 15 , 16 , 18 , 18. c. 4.1 . 9 , 10 , 11. fourthly , that the continuance of this unbrotherly warre with scotland , will be the utter ruine of all the presbyterian godly party in that nation● if god shall frown upon them ; and the utter subvertion of the presbyterian government there , where the prelaticall and malignant party will soon get head and sway all , to the strengthning and reviving of their numerous party in england : or in case god give them after some overthrows , a glorious victory over the english independent forces ( as he did to the defeated israelites over the benj●mites , iudg. 20. ) it will certainly ruine all the independent party in england , who have so cheated and tyrannized over all sorts of men , that they will never be able to make head again , if once defeated , and find all mens hearts and hands against them , for their manifold extravagances and tyrannicall proceedings against all ranks and degrees of men , & subverting the whole frame of our civill and ecclesiasticall government . and if the presbyterian party in scotland be much weakned and impoverished by the victory , and the presbyteriall ministers and gentry of england discountenanced , and thrust out of all power and reputation in the interim , as they are through their cowardize and folly ; how far this may indanger and expose them to the popish and prelaticall parties power and malice hereafter , is very considerable ; and how far their present contributions ( though not voluntary ) without distresse or forcible coaction against their king and brethren of scotland , and sitting still like idle neutrall spectators , without contributing the least visible assistance to either of them , may be interpreted by their king and them , to be a b●each of ●heir nationall league and covenant , and of their allegiance to their soveraign , in case they should prevail , and restore the king to the crown of england by their own forces only , without the english presbyterians assistance , to the indangering of their persons and estates , and the losse of all that favour and respect from either ( which their actuall conjunction with them might procure ) to the ruine of the presbyterian , as well as independent party in england , and setting up of the popish and prelaticall malignant party in supreme power and favour in this realme , is very considerable . fifthly , that if the scottish presbyters , and the kings party in scotland shall be both conquered by the english independent forces , and unable to defend themselves , or their king , and to settle him in his kingdoms , then greater dangers are like to insue to our religion and kingdoms , then otherwise in some wise mens judgments ; because the independents ( as their present violent proceedings manifest ) wil probably use their presbyterian brethren in england , no better then those in scotland , and extirpate them if they can ; and the king then will be necessitated to cast himself wholly upon the assistance of forraign states , and kings , and their forces , as his last refuge ; which he hath hitherto declined as dangerous both to himself and his people . if he in this extremity throw himself upon any forraigners , they must be either papis●s only , or protestants alone , or both of them joyntly . if on papists only , which some think most probable ; first , in regard of his queen mothers great interest in that party , both in france and italy , being of that religion : secondly , in respect of the open differences and wars already between us , and france , and portugall , two popish kingdoms , which are like , to continue and grow greater every d●y : thirdly , in respect of that parties constancy and fidelity to the king and his father : fourthly , because that party is most powerfull , and most likely to close with the king for the advantage of the catholike cause , and reducing of england to it's former obedience to the see of rome ; so that without gods infinite mercy , it will necessi●ate him for a full compliance with them : first , to match into some great popish family , upon the same and harder a●ticles , then were inforced on his fathes by spain or france : secondly , to alter his religion , and professe himself a roman catholike , and obedient son to the roman pontife , as king henry the fourth of france did : thirdly , to covenant and ingage with them for an utter extirpation of the protestant religion ; and of all independents and presbyterians , as not only heretikes in religion , but regicides , traytors , rebells , covenant breakers , p●rjured persons , who make no conscience of oaths , vows , protestations , declarations , and professed enemies to monarchy , who have murthered his father , banished his mother , disinherited him of three crowns ; and indeavour to imbroil and subvert all monarchies and kingdoms in christendome : fourthly , to swear and ingage to set up and tolerate none but the roman religion in his kingdoms , when he shall be restored to them by their assistance and forces : fifthly , to promise satisfaction of the greatest part of their expences in this war , out of the puritans and protestants estates , who have been in arms , or any ways acted , or contributed assistance of moneys against his father or him , and to make full reparations of all damages to such papists , who have left their estates and fortunes to assist his father or him . upon these terms he may easily gain the joynt assistance of all popish kings , kingdoms , and states in europe , through the popes powerfull mediation . and if hereupon , through their aid , he should so far prevail as to get into actuall possession of his thrones and kingdoms by the meer power of the sword , without any terms or conditions by way of treaty , of which there will be little probability ; we can then expect nought else but these dismall consequences . first a totall ●radication of our reformed religion , and of all zealous professors thereof , especially such who have acted any waies against the king or his father , a full repeal of all penal laws , against jesuites , priests , papists , and a publike profession and practise of the romish religion , and of that only throughout our kingdoms . secondly , a totall subversion of all our former laws and liberties , and a full exercise of all arbitrary and tyrannicall power over our lives and estates . thirdly , an absolute confiscation of all our lands and estates , together with our lives , to satisfie the kings debts , gratifie his assistants , and repair the losses of his faithfull catholikes , whom we have undone by adhering to his party . fourthly , an absolute inslaving of our whole nation to these forraign conquerours ; if not a totall banishment , and extirpation of them out of their native soil ; the case of the ancient † britains , when conquered and driven out of this their countrey by saxons , and the extraordinary pestilence and famine sent amongst them for their sins , and then a dieu both to our religion and nation . but in case the king should not prevail to conquer us by their power , the least we can expect is , first , a continuall long lasting warre , and open hostility by land and sea with all romish kings and states , the very charge whereof , now we are almost quite undone and beggered already , which will utterly ruine and undo us . secondly , losse of trade and commerce with all those kingdoms and states , with whom we are in hostility ; which will utterly break us in one year or two for want of venting our native commodities , our chiefest inablement to maintain the wars . thirdly , intolerable uncessant taxes of all sorts , which will every moneth grow heavier and greater then other , which accompanied with want of trade , will cause a generall insurrection at last both of poor and rich against those in power , and put all into confusion , to the enemies great advantage . fourthly , a necessity of seizing and selling all colledges , corporations , companies , hospitalls and gleab-lands throughout the realm ; and of new projects to make new delinquents , of purpose to raise moneys to defray the extraordinary expences of the armies and navies : and what garboils this will produce , all prudent persons may easily conjecture . fiftly , a generall decay of religion , piety , learning , law , and all arts , sciences , trades . sixthly , an extraordinary new effusion of christian bloud . seventhly , an inundation of all kind of sin , wickednesse , atheism , heresie , blasphemy , murders , rapes , robberies , oppressions , whoredome , drunkennesse , dissolutenesse , barbarousnesse , and disobedience to laws , magistrates , ministers , parents , and other disorders . eighthly , free-quarter , insolences of souldiers , spoiling , plundring , if not pestilence and famine , the usuall concomitants of warre , which will reduce us to a condition worse then nothing in conclusion . if he cast himself upon forraign protestant kings , princes and states alone , the far better , though unlikelier of the two ; yet this will certainly prove , 1. a great dishonour to god , and scandall to reformed religion , to see them so unnaturall and unchristian as to imbrue their hands in one anothers bloud . 2. an extraordinary ground of joy and triumph to the pope and his confederates , to behold their enemies thus murthering , invading , and destroying each other by their mutuall dissentions ; when they by all their power and policy were unable to accomplish their ruine , and do them so great mischief . 3. a great indangering of all the protestant churches and states in europe , by incouraging their popish adversaries to invade and ruine them , whilest thus ingaged in an unbrotherly and unchristian warre between themselves , and weakening , impoverishing and destroying each other . 5. an effusion of much precious protestant bloud , which will † cry for vengeance to heaven against the originall authors and occasioners of such a warre . 6. if the king shall inthrone himself , and regain his kingdomes by their assistance ; though the profession of the protestant religion may still be continued , yet we may justly fear , 1. that the purity and power of religion will be much abated . 2. that our lawes and liberties will be much indangered and eclipsed . 3. our estates confiscated to make them reparations , and satisfie the kings ingagements . 4. their removall hence will be disputable , when once possessed of our country ; as the history of the danes invasions of this island heretofore , and the saxons full possession thereof , with the britains expulsion , will manifest . 5. if the king and they be repulsed by us , yet this will prove a seminary of lasting wars and breaches between us and most protestant kingdoms and states ; it will hinder all commerce between them and us , to the destruction of merchandize and trade ; destroy the protestants strength and interest ; impoverish us through taxes , fill us with d●scontents , augment our divisions , if not conclude in our beggery and ruine . if he throw himself upon forraign papists and protestants joyntly , then , first , the wars are like to be more generall , dangerous and costly to us , and of longer continuance . secondly , the divisions and dangers from at home are like to prove the greater , since all discontented and oppressed protestants and papists will then be apt upon all occasions and advantages to joyn with that forraign party they best affect , and from whom they may expect the most favour and the best conditions . thirdly , if the king prevail , then both parties must be satisfied , and his debts defrayed out of our estates ; both gratified with a free toleration and exercise of that religion throughout his realms as both sides professe : and between them both all will be plundered , impoverished , ruined , and perchance inforced to quit the whole kingdom to one or both of them , who will challenge an interest therein by conquest and the longest sword , and hardly part with it when once possessed thereof . fourthly , if the king and they should be foiled by us , yet the wars and differences would survive , all commerce and trading lost , armies and navies must still be maintained , and garrisons in all our kingdoms to secure us ; taxes , oppressions , and all publike grievances continued and mul●iplied , and thereby new intestine commotions raised ; which of themselves alone will destroy us without any othe● enemy , and suppose the king himself should miscarry in these warres , yet the title and right of the crowns of our thre● kingdoms s●rviving to his brothers , or if they miscarry , to his sister , matched to the prince of aurenge ; or if they all should fail , descending to the queen of bohemia , and prince elector palattine ; their severall new titles and interests will find means to infest us with new warres , till they have either obtained their rights , or rui●ed both themselves and us . so that unlesse god put so much wi●dome , and spirit to the english nation , as to restore the king to his just rights upon safe and honourable terms , according to their oaths , covenant , protestations , declarations to all the world , and principles of their religion ; we can in humane proba●ility expect nought else , but the utter ruine , both of our religion , nation , kingdoms , and totall extirpation by forraign enemies . and certainly if we seriously consider , 1. the infinite divisions , discontents , & oppressions that are every where amongst us . 2. the heresies , blasphemies , sects , and schisms that are lately broached , and publikely countenanced by us . 3. the generall contempt and neglect of the publike ordinances of god , and free toleration granted to all to withdraw themselves from them , without the least censure or punishment . 4. the generall contempt , hatred , discountenancing , reviling , and persecuting of godly and faithfu●l m●nisters throughout the nation , and the snares that are daily laid to intrap and ruine them . 5. the extraordinary apostacy of many professors , from the truth , purity , and power of religion , almost to professed atheism , contempt of the word , prayer , preaching , sacraments , and all other o●dinances , to meer licentiousnesse , lukewarmnesse , and prophanenesse . 6. the generall inclination of the people to errours , e●thusiasmes , and seducing spirits . 7. the little cordiall reall love and affection between professors of religion , and the great animosities , hatreds and divisions amongst them , both in opinion● practise and affection . 8. the little conscience of oaths , protestations , covenants , promises ; and great hypocrisie , covetousnesse , oppression , self-seeking , envy , hatred , and malice that is in the nation , and amongst those especially , who professe themselves saints of the highest form . 9. the universall inundation of all kind of sin and wickednesse , and open profession thereof in all places . 10. the extraordinary injustice , tyranny , cruelty and mercilesnesse that all parts of the land complain of , and groan under . 11. the great effusion of christian bloud , and of the bloud of our christian brethren in covenant , that our whole land is polluted with ; and our rejoycing in this bloud-guiltinesse , instead of repenting and mourning for it . 12. our present decay of trade and merchandize . 13. our intolerable taxes and impositions o● all sorts . 14. the extreme poverty of our kingdom , and increase of poor people in all parts , which have little work or none , and will not sta●ve . 15. the divisions of our forces into ireland and scotland , where standing armies and garrisons must be constantly maintained for fear of revolt . 16. our great breaches with france and portugall , and no good quarter with any forraign states or kingdomes , which as yet will neither own , nor hold full and open correspondency with our new governours or government . 17. the revolt of most of our forraign plantations from us , and the late declaration against them , as traytors , and rebells , who count us such . 18. the negotiations with the pope and popish kingdomes , and most protestant princes and states to incense them all against us , as enemies to all magistracy and publike government , and to mankind it self , as salmatius hath published us in print . 19. the spreading the pestlence in many places , and the feared famine throughout the realm . 20. the manifold injuries and afronts offered to all the nobility , and most of the gentry of the na●ion , and the whole nation it self , in the change of the government , without and against their consent , in contin●ing and increasing their burthens , taxes , and out-lawing many of them , because they will not subscribe the ingagement , in erecting new high courts to take away their lives , without any legall triall by their peers , for offences punishable by no common law. 21. the ex●cution of so many protestants , and not of one papist whatsoever by these or other courts of justice , though the chief contrivers of our late unhappy wars , and discontinuance of all capitall proceedings against priests and jesuites , since the abolishing of the oaths of supremacy and allegiance , made principally against them and the popes usurpations and practises . 22. the injustice of our present cause and warre , meerly against monarchy , presbytery , and old english peers and parliaments , purposely to support the present government , set up by the meer power of the sword , yea founded on the bloud of a protestant king , and ruine of the very best of parliamen●s , to prevent a settlement of peace and religion by an unbloudy treaty . and then compare them with the premises , and cardinall richelieu his instructions and advice to the late french king , a little before his death , ( published by an italian of good note , and printed in italy . anno. 1645. ) to foment the late differences between the late king and parliament all he could ; and if possible by the solicitation of his instruments , to draw the commons to change our monarchy into a meer republike , thereby to imbroil all our kingdomes in civill warres against each other , as the only and best policy of all , to weaken and destroy both our power and religion , and advance the interest of france and catholike religion , which we see now accomplished according to his advice ; and then we have just cause to fear an inevitable approaching ruine , both of our religion and nation , notwithstanding our late victories and successes ; which do but weaken , impoverish , destroy our selves , and promote the designs of our common enemies , unlesse god give us a timely sight and reformation of this our impolitick oversight , and incline our hearts to a generall peace and unity th●oughout our kingdome , by restoring every man to his just right and inheritance , from the highest to the low●st , and abolishing all future seeds and occasions of our intestine warres : the serious consideration of all which premises , are a sufficient satisfactory apology for all ministers or others , now questioned for the non-observance of the late thanksgiving day , ●or the great rout and slaughter of our protestant presbyterian brethren of scotland , against all their persecutors . we shall therefore close up all with abners speech to ioab , in case of the civill wars between the house of david and saul ; wherein the is●aelites ( of the same religion and nation ) unnaturally fought and slew each other , ioabs souldiers pursuing and slaughtering abners , whom they had discomfited in battell , addressing to those in present power , 2 sam. 2.26 , 27 , 28. then abner called to ioab , and said , shall the sword devoure for ever ? knowest thou not that it will be bitternesse in the latter end ? how long shall it be then ere thou bid the people return from following their brethren ? and ioab said , as god liveth , unlesse thou hadst spoken , surely then in the morning the people had gone up every one from following their brethren . so ioab blew a trumpet , and all the people stood still , and pursued after israel no more , neither fought they any more : which we heartily pray may be the fruit and issue of these sad and serious meditations of those who drive on no other design , but the preservation of religion and their native countrey from totall and finall desolation . finis . a brief description of the future history of europe , from anno 1650 to an. 1710. treating principally of those grand and famous mutations yet expected in the world , as , the ruine of the popish hierarchy , the final annihilation of the turkish empire , the conversion of the eastern and western jews , and their restauration to their ancient inheritances in the holy land , and the fifth monarchie of the universall reign of the gospel of christ upon earth . with principal passages upon every of these , out of that famous manuscript of pavl grebner extant in trinity-colledge library in cambridge . composed upon the occasion of the young kings arrival into scotland , to shew what will in probability be the event of the present affairs in england and scotland . ludit in humanis 〈…〉 printed in th● 〈…〉 to the ingenuous and wel-affected readers . gentlemen , i here present you with a mishapen embryo , having neither had time for perfection , nor life to actuate acception . a meer chaos and disordered discourse is it , yet for matter treating of wonderfull and famous events , which i● this european world are quickly to be performed . it is true , that primi foetus sunt horridiores , a● commonly defective in mature conceptions and ripenesse of judgement . yet they that reade this pamphlet seriously , will finde those passages opened ( i will not say fully explained ) in scripture , which commentator never yet disclosed● nor divine unfolded . in such a● intricate la●●rinth it is easie to stray : therefore i am confident , charity will usher your iudgements , and your love cover mine infirmities . i know i have slipt in many places , but for the present can neither tell where , nor how● some ariadne might do well to lead the way , and i shall be as ready to follow : secundae cogitationes sunt meliores : if i finde those non-entities to be accepted with , but as much respect as worse ware every day is , it shall not irk me to bestow a week or two in licking it over into a better form and putting a handsomer coat upon it's back . there are several passages in it , which ( i know ) will not resent with our great ones : but amicus plato , amicus socrates , yet magis amica veritas , which shall prevail , though all the world gather in battalia against it . i must confesse it is too too abortive : for it came into the world in fewer hours , then tostatus bestowed in translating the five first chapters of genesis out of greek into latine . i wish it may obtain the end for which i made it : that is , to move us all with repentance to meet god in these great mutations and changes he is bringing upon us in this land ; that every one would strive to reform one from here●ies , sects and schisms , to suffer the scriptures to be our rule , and the holy ghost our guide both in faith , religion and discipline , that so god may put out his hand in amending the body● politick in the whole , that judgement may depart from us , destruction flee far from us ; that peace may dwell within our wals and plenteousness within our palaces . i study multum in parvo , and hope to give satisfaction to all , but such as are wedded more to their wils then reasons . for these i have no more but this , a good winde at their backs to the anticyra's , that they may drink hellebor lustily to purge their brains , that they may be more quick , and their eye-sight clearer . i quote strange authors in this work ; and good reason , for the work it self is strange . yet they in whose hands these authors are ( and they are not in every library ) shall finde i have both dealt with them truly , and cited them faithfully . and for the tractate it self , it will with the learned be either laudatus aut saltem excusatus ; either of which shall content me at this time . farewel . a brief description of the future history of europe , from anno 1650 , to an. 1710. 1. having with silence and admiration beheld these ten years , the horrid broyls and civil tumults in these western coasts of europe , i cannot but adore the justice of god upon his enemies , and his paternall chastisements upon his church for sin . it hath made me oft●n wonder , to behold how virulently and barbarously protestants could oppose and massacre one another , when the romish froggs can live in an established amity among themselves , and laugh at our follies . i will not say , it is jesuiticall projects which sets us by the ears together , so much as our own seditious and schismaticall spirits , and want of charity . if we would but ponder , how much popery hath won upon us by these warres and divisions , what fearfull occasions we have given to the professed enemies of christ to blaspheme his name , and deride our religion , it would much provoke us to end our controversies , and band against the common enemy . the empire hath got but a wofull booty , by her 30 years warres , having weakned her self with the losse of six millions of valiant souldiers , and enticed that imp of mahomet to prepare an army of 200000 , now in the field , and ready to march within the bowels of germany . we in england have gained no better by our civil warre● but in stead of one tyrant to advance a douzen over us , and from the height of liberty to runne the broad way up the next hill , to the height of slavery . our western sun is set , on whom the eies of all protestants were ●ixt , to have composed their differences , and united them into a mutuall league against the romish dragon , and the false prophet . nor was any insufficiency in him to the performance of so glorious an enterprize , had not the sins of his own subjects , hastned his untimely fate . behold then what profits our warre hath brought us ! and what a blessing our sins have deprived us of ! how fearfull are the judgements of god and his anger against sin , when the church is dilacerated , the commonwealth disjoynted and dismembred in every part thereof , the lust of tyrants , the pleasure of pesants , the barbarousnes of souldiers , dissentions of churchmen , sad and tragicall ends of nobles , confusions in families , countenancing of heresies , and applauding of blasphemies are so rife and ripe amongst men ! on the contrary , how happy are kingdomes , how blessed be commonwealths , when princes , magistrates , and other subordinate officers , each in their sever●ll place and calling , strive to promote the glory of god , with the liberty , honour and tranquillity of subjects ; where the ministry is incouraged , universities countenanced , courts of judicature upholden , subjects be unanimous and accustomed to the exercise of piety and godlinesse : lastly when both prince and people aim joyntly at the advancement of the gospel and mutuall commodity of one another , so that there be no decay , no leading into captivity , nor complaining in their streets ! ii. the disparity of these two contradictory conditions , and the fearfull effects , which they in all ages have wrought in the consciences of men , have made me at length after a long time of silence put pen to paper , and through the intricate labyrinth of those portions of scripture which never commentator yet ever medled with ( i mean , the twelve last chapters of ez●kiel , the three last of the revelation , the last of daniel , with some passages in hosea and zech●ry ) to descry when we people of england with all protestants in europe shall see an end of these our warres and tumults , what shall be the estate of our churches , states and kingdomes , from this present year 1650 , to the beginning of the fifth and last universall monarchy of the gospel of christ upon earth , which shall begin in the year of our lord 1710 ; and in what year we may expect the downfals of the beast of rome , the red dragon of constantinople , the totall conversion and restauration both of the eastern and western jews within their holy land of iury : all which must mo●t certainly be fulfilled before the end of the world. of these high points and mysteries , i finde nothing in any commentator upon the last of daniel and the revelations , save only brightman , who being acquainted in leiden with ioseph scaliger , got some ( but those very imperfect ) notes of grebner concerning those numbers in ezekiel and daniel . but that excellent manuscript , which iohannes bauden●is writ of the life and writings of grebner , declareth all these things most plainly and punctually , how that greater troubles , fe●rfulle● combustions , direfuller devastations shall come upon the western kingdomes of europe , then yet ever did , before they can expect the downfall either of turk or pope , or the universall monarchy of the gospel of christ upon earth . in which incomparable work the learned astrologer bringeth divine and heavenly reasons , why europe ( for the space of thirty seven years , after that fearfull blazing comet in 1618. ) should with amazed eyes behold the infinite and sudden mutations and downfals of flourishing states and potent kingdomes , the deformity of empires , and mournfull faces of commonwealths ( as is lately happened in england , portugall , swethland , bohemia , and denmark ) the devastations of whole kingdoms at a clap , and burning six or seven nations at once in their ashes and cinders ( as of late in germany ) not to make them ask whether there be a god , heaven and providence , or not ? or whether empires and states depend wholly upon the will and power of man , or upon secret and hidden causes beyond the thoughts and expectations of the world ? but to praise god for his paternall corrections , seeing by this they know he remembreth them , and that through this fire and water of affliction he will bring his church to a finall conquest ove● her enemies , and both the congregations of jews and gentiles to an universall monarchy over the face of the whole earth . severall passages of which manuscript i will insert here and there in this ensuing discourse , as method and matter shall require . iii. since the spirituall sword was sheathed in england ( which lopt off the serpentine heads of heresie and schisme , while they were yet growing ) it is a wonder to see how all sects and schismaticall opinions in the world have ( like devouring weed ) overgrown and choked the seed of the word . above the rest , the millenaries have exalted themselves , whose abominable pamphlets have flown abroad like atomes , wherein they dream of a personall reign of christ upon earth , how he shall descend from heaven an. 1666 , destroy all the works of darknesse in every corner of the earth , make an easie passage to men from earth to heaven , so that they may ascend into heaven , and leap down to earth again , as oft as they list : how he shall keep a quarter sessions or goal-delivery in his own person upon mount olivet , call all nations before him , rebuke them of sin face to face , and shall cut out of them their stony hearts , and shall sew in their bellies hearts of flesh in stead thereof : that an. dom. 1700 shall be the day of judgement , and that the judgement shall last other 1700 years , because otherwise the glorious attributes of christ's mercy and justice cannot be sufficiently explained to the world and the consciences of men . all which fopperies with many mo too horrid to relate , are contained in m. archers personall reign of christ upon earth , rich. stirreys kingdome of king jesus , and in a.r. his caelestis hierusalem , printed a. 1642 , 1644 , and 1645. now having unmasked the vanity of this error ( ut contraria juxtà se posita magis elucescant ) i will epitomize in this section the truth of the future estate of the world , from this time to the end , which afterward i intend ( god willing ) further to dilate and prosecute in this treatise . this year 1650 all europe are in civil warres . these civill warres shall not cease till they have mustered out a great army of the true worshippers of god to ruine rome , which shall be about anno 1666. rome thus destroyed , the western jews shall begin to learn the waies of god , and believe his gospel ( which they cannot do so long as rome standeth ) and shall anno 1683. enter upon the conversion of their eastern brethren ( the 10. tribes now invisibly hid in tartaria and india ) and they two ( none else ) shall ruine the mahumetan empire about an. 1698. and so shall be restored to the holy land to reinhabit jerusalem . then must begin a comparative felicity of the church of god upon earth , because after these times both turk and pope shall be destroyed . neverthelesse this felicity must be mingled with internall troubles and persecutions , within the bowels of the church , because the church shall never be wholly at rest , while the world standeth . lo , here the difference betwixt truth and heresie , betwixt the opinions of the millenaries and right sense of scriptures . the millenaries say , christ must descend personally from heaven : the scriptures on the contrary say , he shall not come from heaven personally till the last day , when he shall descend with his holy angels in flaming fire to judge the quick and the dead . he shall send power and strength from heaven to his true worshipppers ( as he hath done hitherto ) to destroy tu●k and pope , from heaven he shall give power to his ancient people the jews , to regain their ancient land of judea , and not by his corporeall presence upon earth : from heaven about an. 1700. he shall transferre his gospel from europe , as he hath done from asia , and raise up and inspire godly ministers after his own will , who shall implant his holy word in all and every of the kingdomes and provinces of america , and in all countries of the southern and eastern india , china , tartaria , and in all the regions of the north unto the worlds end , and make it shine in as great purity and glory as ever it hath done in england or germany . this is the felicity of the church , the fifth monarchy in nebuchadnezzars image , the ministeriall ( not personall ) reign and kingdom of christ upon ●arth , which must not endure for ever ( as archer would have it ) nor for a 1000 years ( as alsted dreams ) but for a very short time , that all nations ( none excepted ) may professe gods worship , and none plead ignorance before his tribunall , presently after which the dissolution of the world shall come , after which time shall be no more . iv. this digression made , i return to my purposed method . that fearfull and ominous night-torch , which prognosticated all that misery to germany and great brittain , which they have now suffered , was the forerunner of all our evils . this comet longomontanus and d. bambridge say appeared but 28. dayes , indeed it was neither observed in denmark nor at london before novemb. 18. or 21. but erycius puteanus observed it novemb. 11. the first time , as he testifies in the first book of his learned paradoxologie , pag. 33.38 . so it appeared for the space of 37. or 38. dayes , foreshewing that first germany , livonia , swethland , with other north-parts of europe , then scotland , england and ireland , should feel the terrible effects thereof in warre and famine , for the space of 37. or 38. years , even from an. 1618. till an. 1656. this comet was strengthned by a fearfull conjunction of saturn and jupiter , an. 1616. july 18. the effects of both which were not to be confined in those terrible concomitants of war perpetrated in germany ( which l.b. and d. vincent so pathetically delineate ) but were to end in the judgements of god upon europe for neglecting the downfall of antichrist , ruine of rome , annihilation of the sodomiticall order of the society of jesuites , and in the extirpation of all kingdoms and free states of papists , to make way for the lion of the north to erect his fifth monarchie in the ashes of germany , wherein shall be established the eternall felicity of the church , by the conversion of the jews and fulnesse of the gentiles . m. shirley fellow of trinity-colledge in cambridge , once shewed me a letter from his learned friend buxtorf , dated an. 1624. may 3. wherein was contained a prognostique prophecy of the before-mentioned comet and conjunction , sent him from that incomparable astrologer , iohannes baudensis nephew to paul grebner , which for the strangenesse and rarity of it , i will here insert . caeterùm , quòd de patriae nostrae afflictissimae statu consilesco , indignaris ; nihil profectò scribendum nunc hab●o , nisi omnia ( ut poetae verbis utor ) in pejus ruere , & retrò sublapsa referri . tam danus quàm caesar ●nixè laborant , ut miseram germaniam quamprimùm p●ssum iri spectem : nec milites utriusqùe quiequam aliud meditan●nr , nisi strages & vastitatem . accepi nudiustertiùs à johanne baudensi ( amico mihi multimodis charissimo ) sententias nostratium astrologorum de horribili illo comet● , qui anno 1618. apparuit , & nuperrimâ saturni & iovis conjunctione . en tibi vaticinium , si no● apostolicum , at longè ( ni fallor ) plusquàm astrologicum . surrexit deus & gladium eduxit . clades magnorum imperatorum , strages populorum , regum funcra , rerum-publicarum eversiones , monarchiarum mutationes , assassinationes principum & ducum illustriorum , violenta & superba consilia , proditiones & rebelliones inter subditos in hoc coelo nostro europico exorientur . exporientur religiosi à potentioribus legum & institutorum ecclesiasti●orum mutationem , à plebeijs novarum rerum inexplebilem cupiditatem . boreales europae partes ferro , morbo & peste laborabunt , depauperabuntur divites , principes dominijs exuti erunt , exulabunt patres & filij post longum turb●rum intercapedinem in integrum restituentur . hic quoque cometa terribilem romae ruinam , singulisque europae civitatibus incendia minitatur● clerici papicolae praecipuè cardinales de gradibus suis dejicientur , loiolistae ubique ad mortem rapientur , nec gallis aut hispanis animus erit carnificum l●queos evitare . quinimò cernimus etiam in terrâ sanct● à veteribus incolis● oriturum regnum , quod ●rit christianis miraculum , & orbi terriculamentum . novique imperij revolutio istis succedet , sub quo generale gaudium , laetitia & voluptas humano generi subministrabitur , improbis ubique de medio sublatis . haec omnia per regem quendam borealem peragentur , qui pacem , religionem , & securitatem per totum orbem miraculosè stabilibit . whereas you are angry that i keep silence concerning the esta●e of our most distressed countrey . truly i have nothing now to write , but that all things ( that i may use the words of the poet ) grow worse and woese . as well the king of denmark as the emperour earnestly endeavour to see miserable germany destroyed as soon as may be ; neither do the souldiers of either of them , think of any other thing then slaughter and desolation . i received the other day , from my dear friend iohn baudensis , the opinions of our astrologers concerning that terrible comet which appeared anno 1618 , and about the later conjunction of saturn and iupiter . behold thou then a prophecie ( if not apostolical ) yet ( if i mistake not ) far beyond astrological . god hath arisen and drawn his sword : there shall happen in these our european regions , the destruction of great emperours , the slaughter of people , funerals of kings , subversions of common-wealths , mutations of monarchies , massacres of princes and illustrious commanders , violent and proud counsels , treasons and rebellions amongst subjects : clergie-men shall finde a change of laws and ecclesiastical constitutions , by those of greater power , and an insatiable desire of new things amongst common people . the northern parts of europe shall be greatly oppressed with warre , sicknesse and pestilence . rich men shall be impoverished , princes cast out of their dominions ; the fathers shall be banished , and after a long space of trouble their children shall be restored to their former condition . this comet also threatneth the terrible ruine of rome and burnings in all the cities of europe . the papistical clergy , especially the cardinals , shall be cast down from their dignities , the jesuites every where shall be drawn to death , neither shall the french-men or spaniards have courage to save their necks from the halters . furthermore , we discern a kingdom to arise of the most ancient inhabitants in the holy land , which to christians shall be a miracle , and to the world a terrour ; and these shall obtain the revolution of a new empire , under which shall be administred universal gladnesse● joy and delight to mankinde ( the wicked being every where taken away . ) all these things shall be effected by a certain northern king who shall miraculously establish peace , religion and security throughout the whole world . thus far the words of this letter . and how punctually all these things are come to passe , let the world judge . we in england have felt the misery of the one , and are ready stript to suffer the calamities of the other , having for the present lost what is impossible to be regained , and seeing a new storm of devastations hanging over our heads by the young kings late arrival in scotland ( where he is received as absolute soveraign ) which fil● mens hearts with pensive thoughts and doub●ings what will be the end of these wofull beginnings . for my part , i am a zealous adorer of a parliament , nor deserve i to censure the actions of our representatives , yet will i not promise the term of an age to our novel government , but think ve●ily , a change to the old model is nigh at hand . it is casual to the best kingdoms to have interregnums , but as we stand now , we shall ne●ther be for six years together a body politique , nor a true church of god. that excellent astrologer of misnia , paul grebner , was more then an inquisitour into the effects of starres , being questionlesse indued from above with a prophetick spirit , not to be desired , much lesse expected of all . he plainly affirms , that as england ever was a monarchy within it self , since it was discovered by the romans , so shall it so continue and remain , even then when all other kingdoms and states in europe are swallowed up of the fifth monarchie of the lion of the north. his prophecie of our civil wars , of the fate of our late king , and the restauration of his son to his fathers dominions , runneth thus in ban. 72. per idem tempus rex quidam borcalis ( nomine carolus ) mariam ex papistic● religione sibi assumptam in matrimonium conjunxerit , ex quo evidet regum infelicissimus . unde populus ejus , ipso abdicato , comitem quendam perantiquae familiae regno praeponet , qui tres annos , aut circitèr durabit ; & hoc quoque remoto , equitem quendam bellicosum in ejus locum assumet , qui paulò ampliùs regnabit . post hunc eliget nullum . interea , unus è stirpe caroli in littore regni patres sui cum gallicis , suevicis , danicis , hollandicis , burgurdicis & germanicis auxiliis stabit , omnes inimicos suos cruentissimo praelio superabit , & posteà regnum suum felicissimè administrabit , eritque carolo magno major . and in ban. 74. he saith , circà anno 1663 brittaniarum rex antiquum cum belgarum ordinibus foedus & amicitiam rumpet , ob ereptas sibi ab ipsorum piratis naviculas quasdam , qui pertrepidi ad novum danorum regem ( nomine christiernum ) confugient , qui utrosque primò compositissimis orationibus , deinde muneribus in concordiam alliciet . about the same time a certain northern king ( named charles ) who shall marry mary of the popish religion to his great unhappinesse , so that his people ( rejecting him ) shall set up an earl of a very ancient family , who shall continue three years or thereabouts , he dying they shall elect in his stead a warlike knight , who shall rule a little longer : after him they elect none ; but in the mean one of charles his stock shall land on the sea-coasts of his fathers kingdom , and with french , swedish , danish , hollandian , burgonian and german forces , in a most cruel battell shall vanquish all his enemies , and afterward most happily govern his kingdom , and be greater then charls the great . and about the year 1663 , the king of the most ancient brittains for the losse of some ships at sea shall break his league and amity with the states of holland , who fearing , shall to the new king of danes ( named christiernu● ) for succour , and he by fair intreaties and large gifts shall win either side to agreement . nor ever doth he speak of england in all that famous manuscript , but as of the most warlike and potent kingdome in europe . therefore all good christians ought to wish the new warre were concluded rather by an happy agreement and composition , then by sword and musket , and the king placed on his throne rather with the hands of his loving and and rejoycefull subjects , than with the swords of forreigners . for if the beginning of his restauration be in bloud , and tumbling of garments in bloud , the accomplishment of it will be with burning and fuel of fire . that this future history of europe , may be more fully and clearly understood , i intend to set it down by way of chronology upon the principall passages in ezekiel and the revelations , as i lately collected it out of the two mss. of grebner and ioannes baudensis , and afterward subscribed certain notes and animadversions upon the same . the woman travelleth , viz. the jewish synagogue bringeth forth christ , whereupon ensueth the battel between anno christi . 1 michael and the dragon ( christ and the devil ) anno mundi . 3947 christ being persecuted of the devil by herod in his infancy , flieth into aegypt , in his appointed time of 34 years , suffereth and ascendeth into heaven ; the devil enraged anno christi . 34 that he could no more persecute christ , raiseth persecutions anno mundi . 3981 anno christi . 65 against the primitive church by nero and others , revel . 12. per tot . anno mundi . 4012 anno christi . 70 the first seal opened● the white horse and his rider , with anno mundi . 4017 the crowned bow , signifieth the purity of the gospel in the primitive church , revel . 6.2 . anno christi . 71 satan is bound for a 1000 ●ears from raging against the church , anno mundi . 4018 revel . 20.2.8 . anno christi . 65 the second seal opened , the red horse is the massacre of anno mundi . 4020 christians in the ten general persecutions about a●no 65 , to an. 330. revel . 6.3 , 4. anno christi . 104 the third seal opened , simon magus , ebion and corinthus anno mundi . 4051 trouble the church with damnable and infectious heresies , revel . 6.9 , 6. anno christi . 173 the fourth seal opened , horrid famine , devouring pestilences anno mundi . 4120 and outragious wars , waste and depopulate the roman empire for cruelty to christians , revel . 6.7 , 8. anno christi . 194 the fifth seal opened , mutual massacres of the wretched caesars , anno mundi . 4141 beginning at pertinax , and ending at licinius , slain by constantine the great , revel . 6.9 , 10 , 11. anno christi . 288 the sixth seal opened , dioclesian and maximilian give over anno mundi . 4235 their caesarships , because they could not eradicate christianity . constantine strengthened with their armies and provinces , warreth upon licinius , slayeth him , destroyeth the pretorian-camp , abolisheth heathenism , and setteth up the true worship of god , revel . 6.12 . to the end . the seventh seal opened , and silence in heaven for half an hour , viz. the church enjoyeth rest thirty years , all the time that constantine anno mundi . 4255 the great reigned , revel . 8.1 . yet clouds of persecution anno christi . 308 anno mundi . 4286 arise in the interim in the sky of the church ; and the seven angels anno christi . 339 prepare themselves to blow the seven trumpets for the space of 23 years , even all the reign of constantines three sons , revel . 8.2 , 3. anno mundi . 4310 iulian that wretched apostata bending his utmost endeavours to anno christi . 363 ruine the gospel , licenceth 17000 jews to return to ierusalem to rebuild their temple ; but god destroyeth them all by lightnings and pestilences : horrible earthquakes cast up into the air the foundations which had been buried in rubbish till then . therefore daniels compute of the temples finall ruine must but begin then ; there begin his two numbers ( chap. 12. ver . 11 , 12. ) of 1290 , and 1335 , which in all must but make 1335 years , which added to 363 , make up and point to anno christi 1698 , the joyfull jubile of the churches deliverance from all adversity . anno mundi . 4373 the first trumpet blown . fire and hail ( war and bloudshed ) anno christi . 426 cast into the troublesome sea of the roman-western-empire by valentinian , and the succeeding emperours , untill the end of the western-empire , the savage inundations of goths , huns , vandals and bulgarians into italy , revel . 8.7 . anno mundi . 4553 the second trumpet blown , boniface that mountain of fiery anno christi . 606 combustions obtaineth of phocas the popish supremacy . hence wars betwixt the emperours and popes , revel . 8.8 , 9. anno mundi . 4613 the third trumpet blown , the romish bishop ( the great anno christi . 666 star of the western christian clergy ) falleth from the heaven of truth and godlinesse , and of a vigilant pastour becomes a ravenous robber of the church , and the gifts thereof , revel . 8.10 , 11. anno mundi . 4946 the fourth trumpet blown , the pope fallen from piety , anno christi . 999 and his clergy from the pulpits , christ the sun of righteousness with his merits , the church the moon , and the ministers the stars thereof are eclipsed , and vilified by sylvester ii , revel . 8.12 , 13. anno mundi . 5018 satan loosed out of prison beginneth to rage by gregory vii anno christi . 1071 against the gospel of christ , revel . 20.4 . anno mundi . 5140 the fifth trumpet blown , the vicar of christ with his anno christi . 1195 keyes openeth hel's mouth to let out his cloister-fiends and satanical locusts to overspread the earth of christendome , described by iohn most graphically , revel . 9.9 . to 13. anno mundi . 5245 the sixth trumpet blown , the ottoman empire ariseth , invadeth anno christi . 1300 first the eastern-empire of constantinople , and winneth it : then flieth upon the germane emperour with barbarous millions of invincible armies , revel . 9.13 . to the end . the saying , revel . 9.15 . of the turks preparation for a day , a moneth , and a year , beginneth now . which number allegorically taken maketh 398 years : which added to a. 1300 , the year of the original of the turkish empire , sheweth that a. 1698. shall be the final down●al of the same . anno mundi . 5462 the last trumpet is blown , the thrones , principalities and anno christi . 1517 dominions in heaven rejoyce , that god would now at length take his churches cause in hand , and raise up luther , and other sons of thunder to vindicate the quarrel thereof against the romish antichrist to the ruine of his kingdom , revel . 11. from ver . 15. to the end . by eating of the book , chap. 10. measuring the temple and slaying the witnesses , chap. 11. is understood the reformation by luther , and downfall of the papacy under charles the fifth . anno mundi . 5504 the first vial poured out , england , scotland and ireland by anno christi . 1559 the reign of queen elizabeth , renounce the papacy ; which generates the ulcers of spight and malice in the romish church against england , revel . 16.2 . anno mundi . 5518 the second vial poured out , martin chemnitius and others , pronounce anno christi . 1572 the vengeance of god against the mortiferous sea of the councel of trent , revel . 18.3 . anno mundi . 5528 the third vial poured out , the stinking waters of the papacy anno christi . 1583 are infected with bloud in murthering of the popes and romanists in rome , the slaughters of the spaniards in the low-countreys , and the discomfiture of the spanish-armado in anno 1588. revel . 16.5 , 6 , 7. anno mundi . 5540 the fourth vial poured out , the protestant champions pareus , anno christi . 1605 polanus , whitakers , perkins , andrews , king iames and others , pour light upon the sunne of the gospel , in writing against bellarmine , stapleton , campian , and other papists , revel . 16.8 , 9. anno mundi . 5565 the fifth vial is now pouring out , the swedes in germany , anno christi 1630 an. . 1632. the english in england , 1640 , combine against the papists , jesuites proscribed in poland and swethland , anno 1648. this vial shall end in the ruine of rome , anno 1666. revel . 16.10 , 11. anno mundi . 5594 the sixth vial beginneth to be poured out , three barbarous anno christi . 1659 nations sack hydruntum in apulia , made enrodes into the eastern coasts of italy , and sack them with fire and sword . factions and massacres in rome and tuskany . the pope contemned and invaded , the western christians make an army , and fire rome in the 2419 year after romulus laid the foundation thereof , as sibylla prophesied . oracul . lib. 4. revel . 16. from ver . 12. to 17. anno mundi . 5595 the faithfull and true warriour riding upon a white horse anno christi . 1660 descendeth from heaven with his souldiers riding upon white horses , to fight against the enemies of his church . the angel in the sun calleth to all the fowles of heaven , to come to the feast of god , to eat the flesh of kings , captains , mighty men and horses . rev. 19.11 , 17 , 18. and i saw the beast and the kings of the earth , and the warriours gathered together , to warre against him that sate on the horse , and against his souldiers . but the beast was taken , and with him the false prophet , that worketh miracles before him , whereby he deceived them that have received the beasts mark , and them that worship his image : these two were cast alive into the lake burning with fire and brimstone , &c. ibid. 19 , 20. anno mundi . 5601 vrbs antiqua ruit , multos dominata per annos : anno christi . 1666 destruiturque armis gens scelerata suis. go out of her my people , that ye be not partakers of her sins , nor receive of her plagues . forasmuch ( o rome ) as thou glorifiedst thy self , and livedst in pleasure , saying , i sit a queen , am no widdow , and shall see no sorrow : therefore shall thy plagues come upon thee in one day , death , sorrow and famine , and thou shalt be burnt with fire ; for strong is the lord god that judgeth thee . the kings of the earth shall bewail thee , and thou shalt never more be inhabited , the light of a candle shall shine no more in thee , and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more in thee . rejoyce ( o heavens ! ) for righteous are gods judgements , he hath condemned the great whore. then they sung hallelujah , and her smoak arose up for evermore . rev. 18.7 , 8 , 20. & 19.3 . anno mundi . 5614 rome being destroyed , jews dwell amongst protestants , and begin anno christi . 1679 to search into the scriptures , and learn the waies of god. anno mundi . 5618 a g●eat conjunction of saturn and iupiter in leo. the jews anno christi . 1684 converted in the west , prepare to unite with their brethren in the east , and raise a combination to propagate the gospel and destroy the headless turks . anno mundi . 5622 praise our god all ye his saints and servants , and ye that fear anno christi . 1687 him both small and great . and i heard the voice of a great multitude both small and great , as it were the sound of many waters , and as the voice of strong thundrings , saying , hallelujah , for the lord our god reigneth . let us rejoice and be glad and give glory to him , for the marriage of the lamb is come , and his wife hath anno mundi . 5633 made her self ready , rev. 19.5 , 6 , 7. the dreadfull and terrible battell of the jews with the enraged anno christi . 1698 turks in the land of judea , where the turks are destroyed with an eternall destruction . ezech. 38. & 39. chap. all . gog and magog , ( viz. turks and tartarians ) gather themselves together to battell , whose number is as the sand of the sea , and they went up into the plain of the earth , and incompassed the tents of the saints abo●t , even the beloved city , but fire came down from god out of heaven , and destroyed them revelat. 20.8 , 9. anno mundi . 5635 the fifth monarchy . anno christi . 1700 anno mundi . 5645 and i saw a new heaven and a new earth , for the first heaven anno christi . 1710 and the first earth were passed away , and there was no more sea . the new jerusalem came down from god out of heaven , trimmed like a bride to meet her husband . and i heard a great voice out of heaven saying , behold the glory and tabernacle of god with men , and he shall dwell with them , and they shall be his people , and god himself shall be their god with them : and god shall wipe away all tears from their eyes , and there shall be no more death , neither sorrow , neither crying , neither shall there be any more pain , for the first things are passed away . rev. 21.1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , &c. anno mundi . 5698 no more germany , no more any western empire or any footstep anno christi . 1763 thereof ; for god hath now transplanted his gospel from europe unto a more gratefull and pregnant soyl , which will bring forth the fruits thereof in due season . anno mundi . 5699 iam nova progenies coelo demittitur alto , anno christi . 1764 exoriturque atris lucifer albus equis . anno mundi . 5702 the holy temple restored at jerusalem : the holy utensils prepared : anno christi . 1767 the glory of god fil●eth the house , god lovingly upbraideth the israelites for their infidelity and idolatry , for which they were vagabonds in all coasts of the world 2400 years , without king , law , priest and temple , and rehearseth their blessed and joyfull estate now being converted and victorious over all their enemies . ezech. 12. last chap. per tot . anno mundi . 5705 behold i make all things new . rev. 21.5 . anno christi . 1770 anno mundi . 5728 the jewish magistrates and ministers labour in the conversion anno christi . 1793 of the world to the gospel of god. ezech. 46. per. tot . anno mundi . 5765 the seventh viall powred out , and now are all things fulfilled anno christi . 1830 which are contained in the scriptures . after which all nations may expect the comming of the great judge , to render to every man according to his works . thus farre reacheth the observations of grebner and baudensis . vi. before i come to comment upon this chronologicall index , it will not be amisse to deliver that saying , revel . 20.8 . ( and the saints shall reign with christ a thousand years ) from all those false interpretations which have been fastned upon it , by papias , bucholcherus , scaliger , brightman , alsted and others , and declare the true sense of it , as remotest from innovation , and coming nearest the intention of the h. ghost . there is in this 20 chap. two severall epoches of a 1000 years , which are two severall waies to be interpreted . the first is in vers . 2. of satan being bound for a 1000 years ; which must begin either at the instant of our saviours incarnation , and end at an. 1000 , in the 2● year of the popedome of sylvester ii , that infamous sodomite , necromancer , and conjurer , under whom the filthinesse and idolatry of the romish church was brought to the height : or rather they must begin at the destruction of the 2 d temple by titus , which was an. 71 , and end in an. 1071 , in the popedome of gregory vii , aliàs hildebrand , who first broke bonds of allegiance with henry the emperour , excommunicated him , set the gospel in a totall eclipse , and europe in the mournfull flames of a civil warre : but of this in the chronology . but this in the 8 vers . of the saints reigning with christ a 1000 years , alsted , bucholcherus and others expound of a comparative felicity of the church on this earth , for a 1000 years , beginning an. 1694 , when they say all visible enemies of the church shall be overthrown , and must end an. ch. 2694. after which shall be the warre of gog and magog against the church , which shall be prevented by the coming of christ to judgement . but in this alsted is wide from the right mark : for this number must begin an. 1072 , at the expiration of the former , and must be interpreted for all that time that the world shall last after the aforesaid an. 1072. and the holy ghost doth term this indefinite and unlimited time by the number of a 1000 years , for three speciall reasons : 1 because a 1000 years are the number of perfection and of eternity , and doth most aptly serve to expresse the end of these earthly troubles , and the beginning of that time which never shall have end . 2 because those things which the holy ghost in the scriptures affirmeth are yet to come , must not be plenarily accomplished till after an. 1830 , it may please god that the glorious and flourishing estate of the church and gospel here upon earth , may continue much of 200 years longer , to increase the number of them who shall be saved , and to amplifie more the heavenly attributes of gods mercy , righteousnesse , truth , holinesse and omnipotency in the salvation of the just : and his equity , judgement and uprightnesse in the firebrands of destruction . 3 because a vicissitudinary time of affliction and ease , persecution and rest , pure doctrine and heresies , is signified to be the whole continuance or most part of a 1000 years , wherein those who are to suffer for the testimony of the word of god , and the truth of jesus christ , shall have their reward after the expiration of that time , which cannot be till after the last generall judgement . the fearfull and ●errible warre of gog and magog ( viz. the bloudy warre of turks and tartarians with the jews newly converted in the land of iury , in which the very name of turks shall be rooted from off the earth ) must be before the beginning of this glorious estate and felicity of the church of god here upon earth , and therefore the 7 , 8 , 9 , and 10 verses , are in order of time before the 5 and the 6. the devil and antichristianity must be chained up in the dungeon of hell for the space of a 1000 years after the incarnation of christ. an. 1000 must the devil and romish idolatry by the popedome of sylvester the second , be let loose to range upon earth , and tyrannize over the church for the most part of another 1000 , ever till an. 1698 ( numerus completus being put here pro incompleto ) before an happy and comfortable estate of the gospel can be brought forth to the world. herefore all christendome from this year 1650 , must expect very sad and wofull daies , much persecution , bloodshed and savadge ty●anny in every kingdom of europe ( especially in france , spain , italy , swethland , germany and england ) untill an. 1698. some of those kingdoms which have abandoned the superstition of the beast , shall by subtle allurements be perswaded to readmit and reestablish the same . wofull and unsupportable afflictions shall befall both the european jews ( which are the two tribes of benjamin and iudah , now resident in christendom and turkie ) as likewise the ten tribes , the kingdom of israel ( who shall insensibly and miraculously arise out of the bowels of tartaria and india , about an. 1669. ) who neverthelesse shall be so extraordinarily supported by god , that they shall stand in little or no need at all of the christians . because from this time of the conversion of the israelites for the spac● of 30 years , these 12 tribes shall suffer much trouble , heathens , papists and mahometans , shall strive to eradicate their name from under heaven , and yet all in vain ; for an illustrious and heroick prince ( è tribu nephtali oriundus ) shall be their valiant and fortunate commander , called michael , not proprio nomine , but because he dan. 12.1 . shall stand up and shew himself the assertor and protector of their religion and liberty . in which time shall be such troubles as never were , no , nor ever shall be to the end of the world . for like as the christians had rest 30. years from the ascension of christ , and now have endured the fiery triall almost these 1600. years , since that time from the heathen emperors , and the beast ; so the israeli●es , which shall 1600. years till anno 1668. live without prince , law , temple , sacrifice , and true religion ( as hosea prophesied ch . 3. v. 4 , 5. ) beginning now to be converted to christ , shall have savage times of affliction and butcheries for other 30. years ( to welcome their conversion withall ) till anno● 1698. when god shall grant rest from their enemies , and begin a peaceable estate of the church . vii . entring at length upon my notes on the afore-said chronology , i think it meet first to strengthen the former epoch's of the ruine of rome , downfall of the turk and tartar , and the conversion of the jews by the conduct of certain memorable numbers in holy scriptures . grave and judicious authours have with wonder and admiration observed the heavenly and inimitable method of holy scrjptures , how all the mysteries and memorable occurrences in the same are comprized in numbers , how within the compasse of such a quantity of years , god alwayes divulged his counsels , and manifested what he purposed should be wrought among the children of men . so that in considering the admirable consent and agreement of times by things past , we may probably conjecture of things to come . from the creation to the floud was 1656 years : the floud was a sign of the consummation of all those things which are to be fulfilled before the conclusion of time . anno christi 1656 , let the church of god expect with joy and comfort , the acting of the first scene of the tragedies of all those european kingdoms , which have been implacable persecutours of the gospel of christ. the whole government of moses ( who was a second noah to the church ) is a shadow of the kingdom of christ. the law continued in force 1529 years to the passion of christ : but 1598 years to the destruction of the temple by titus : the destruction of the temple by titus was according to the accompt of dionysius exiguus , a. c. 69. from thence reckon the number of 1598 years , and you come to a. 1667 ; which is the year which shall smoke with the ascending up of the flames which consume the kingdom of the beast . from the nativity of christ to his re-nativity in the preaching of his gospel by luther and other eminent ministers are 1517 years : and from the beginning of the reign of the maccabees untill the birth of christ are 169 years : put these two sums together , and you come to anno 1686 , in which god having 18 years before enlightned the eyes of those who for almost 2000 years have sit in darknesse , and in the shadow of death , and having laid the kingdom of the beast and the false prophet in the lowest dust , shall bring that people into the bosome of the true church , which within 13 years after shall deliver his children from all adversity . from the universal deluge of man-kinde by the floud to the beginning of the universal captivity of the church under nebuchadnezzar beleaguering ierusalem are numbered 1698 years : so likewise from the birth of the king of kings unto the final consummation of the miseries , and restauration of the felicity of the church by the destruction of gog and magog , shall be reckoned the very same number of 1698 years . from the confusion of the tower of babel to the return of the jews from babel , are 1666 years : and from prophane pompey's spoiling of the temple at ierusalem ( when the kingdom was taken from the house of david , and superstition and gentilism began to spring up amongst the jews ) to the birth of of antichrist and apostasie in the church of god are 666 years ; from thence ●eckon a 1000 years wherein the saints must suffer persecution and martyrdom for the testimony of jesus christ , and the truth of a good conscience , revel . 20.4 . and you come to a. 1666 , in which shall be fulfilled all those things which are mentioned , revel . 18 , and the 19 chapter . so likewise from the departure out of aegypt , untill the death of christ , are numbered 1542 years : to these adde ●hose 169 years , which are from ●he beginning of the reign of the assomonaei or macchabees to the birth of christ , and you come to anno 1711 ; which year shall be wonderfull and terrible to all the world , because that in the year next going before ( viz. anno 1710. ) the abominable names and mention of papists , turks and tartars being eradicated from the memories of men , the glorious estate of the gospel , and the terrestial felicity of the church of god shall begin over the face of the whole earth . from the birth of moses untill the destruction of ierusalem by titus ( which typifies the end of the world ) are 1646 years : so many from the incarnation of our saviour , denoted that year , whose influence hath begun , and shall prove fatal to most of the kingdoms of europ● : adde to these 20 years to come after , from that time ( which 980 years ago were prophesied of , to be those years , in which the kingdom and the dominion , and the greatness of kingdoms under the whole heaven , shall be given to the saints of the most high , whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom , and all dominions shall serve and obey him , dan. 7.17 . ) and it will amount to the year of the fatal ruine of the beast , anno 1666. from these few particulars of the consent and agreement of times in the holy scriptures , i infer thus much . about the year 1657 shall be great changes and alterations in government in every kingdom in europe , as well protestant as papist , attended and accompanied with such horrid combustions and massacres , as hath not been before since the memory of man. this shall make way ( as i said before ) for the protestants to unite in a general combination to send forces under the conduct of an invincible cyrus over the alps to harrow italy with fire and sword , and after level the wals of ●ome with the lowest dust , anno 1666. for as in the year of grace 666 , popery was brought to a full maturity in the womb by vitalian ( who ordained latin-service in the church , contrary to christs institution , and the precedent primitive times ) and as 1000 the number of perfection and eternity is seldom used in our ordinary computes , but left out for brevity sake ( as we use to say , the spanish-armado was in 588 for 1588 , and the powder-plot in 605 for 1605. ) so it is most certain and indubitable , that as the birth of antichrist was in anno 666 , so the death of it shall be anno 1666 , though the carkasse of it may lie unburied for 30 years after , yet questionlesse it shall with gog and magog b● cast into the lake of gods wrath at one and the same time . this ruine of rome shall make way within ten years after to the conversion of the jews : for seeing the kingdom of antichrist ( as now it is ) is the only let to their conversion ( for all the jews that now are , live within the papacy , and are prohibited from turning christians , partly because of the idolatry they see amongst the papists in their worshipping of images ( the jews being zealots in the second commandment ) partly because at their conversion with the papists they must renounce all their goods as ill gotten , which rigid condition a worldly people will never yield to ) therefore till the very name and power of popery be destroyed , and they admitted amongst protestant kingdoms , there can be small hope of their conversion . but now antichrist totally destroyed , they begin to see into their errours and ignorances , endeavou● to learn the wayes of god , and that the saviour of the world ( whom they so long expected ) is come so many years since and suffered . this conversion of the western jews shall be compleated in that fatall and terrible year 1683. and six years after that shall they be united with their eastern-brethren the 10 tribes captivated by salmanasser , who have for 2433 years lien invisible in the bowels of the kingdoms of turks and tartarians . the christian world neither must nor ought to enquire , how this people which have lien hid and obscured so long a space , shall in so small a time as a year and an half , so visibly , so powerfully , and so magnificently arise to the terrour and conquest of the whole earth . the holy ghost declareth , ezek. 37.8 . by the dry bones , fleshed and indued with life in an instant , so that they stood upon their feet , and became a great army ; what a strange , horrid and wonderfull thing this shall be , and how terrible it shall appear to the sight of the world in that year ; which within 15 years after ( viz. anno 1698. ) shall fight that famous and fearfull pitcht-field with the united for●s of turks and tartarians , which shal● prove the deliverance of the church of god from all adversity . thrice shall europe within this time strive to establish that power , which superstition and tyranny first pro●reated : thrice shall the children of this world raise innumerable forces to destroy the saints of the most high : thrice shall the power of godliness prevail in the hearts and arms of those , who shall make the land thrice drunk with the bloud of the enemies of christ ; and whose grand ancestours stew'd it so oft with the bloud of the prophets and apostles . preparatives to these fearfull wonders shall be those horrid and ominous eclipses preceding the year 1660 , fatall and conspicuous to europe ; signs both of god's paternal chastizements for sects and schisms in the church , and of his consuming judgements impending upon the implacable enemies thereof . in the year 1654 , august 2. shall happen a fearfull and lamentable total eclipse of the sun in the 39 degree of leo , about half an hour before high noon , where shall be seen the mighty hand of god working wonders in italy , sicily , bohemia , greece , armenia and syria , the kingdoms subject to leo. the body of the sun in this eclipse will be totally darkned for the space of two hours and 29 minutes : it will be so great , the like hath not been before , nor after shall be : greater then that eclipse of the sun which was feb. 25. 1597. commonly called the dark saturday . of this eclipse thus baudensis m.s. fol. 105. exercit. 59. papa , dum petri patrimonium dilaturus , italicum quendam ducem possessionibus spoliabit avitis , &c. the pope attempting to enlarge peter's patrimony by seizing upon the ancient estate of an italian duke deceased without issue , sets his own nest on fire , and rome in a combustion . this year shall a new sect of sodomitical monks arise , which being tollerated by the pope , sets that quarrel betwixt him and the duke of florence , which shall prove the downfall of both in a few years . this is affirmed likewise by grebner , ban. 75. yet in the interim ( saith baudensis ) god shall promote the happiness of ierusalem , peace shall be within her wals , and plenteousness within her palaces . and fol. 134. exerc. 67. he saith , the years 1657 , 1658 , 1661 , 1663 , shall be formidable to austria , silesia , hungary , holland , france and portugal , because that every one of those years shall be attended with four eclipses apiece , portending the mutations of all those several states , and that the revolution of time is come , wherein they must give place to the lion of the north , whose scepter shall bruise their power to nothing , and his gauntlet lay their forces prostrate at his feet . at which time all europe shall sing this mournfull ditty ; heu mala progenies fatis servata nefandis , gensque nefandarum domitrix altrixque ferarum , quid fueras , quid ●isque vide : tua prima propago bella gerit , ●ibolémque petet lues atra secundam . at leo terribilis borealibus editus oris fammiferam ex orco & pelagi plangentibus undis educens aciem , pecudes● urbésque virósque sternet , & antiquis solem lunámque movebit sedibus ; ille etiam pacrio jure infima summa reddet , & occasum sub leges mittet inermem . thus englished . alas ill race , to dismall fates reserv'd , by whom dire beasts are tamed and preserv'd , see what thou wert and art : thy first issue inclines to war , plague doth the next subdue . but lion fierce sprung from the northern shore shall bring from deepest hell and waves that rore a blasing army , he shall men o'rerun , cities and cattel , yea the moon and sun shall he remove ; and father-like the least make highest , and give laws to the weak west . yet he that returns back in reviewall of the conjunctions and fiery triplicities , may see how they have in part prognosticated the present troubles and and distractions of europe , with the common-wealths of england and scotland . anno 1603 in the first great conjunction of saturn and iupiter , in the fiery triplicity , k. iames came to the crown of england , and so was fulfilled that prophecie which an holy anchoret made 890 years agoe , english men for that they wonneth them to drunkeinesse , to treakson , and rechlesenesse of got's house , firsten by dancs , thenth by nortmans , and the thrid time by scots , whom they holden lest worthen of all , they shallen be overcompn . then the world shallen be unstable , and so various and diversable , that the unstablenesse of thoughts shallen b● betookeineid by many manner diversity of cloathing . this could never be fulfilled but by a scottish king swaying the english-scepter ; and therefore never came to passe till the union of the two kingdoms under the said king. as the second conjunction , anno 1623. found germany and most of the west involved in civil wars , and as the third an. 1643. found the king and subjects of england in the field one against the other ; so the fourth conjunction , an. 1663 in sagitarius shall begin those destructive combustions in italy , which shall allure the protestant armies to make a third all-conquering party in the same ; and the fifth an. 1683 in leo shall bring forth the conversion of the jews : but the sixth conjunction happening in taurus , an. 1703 , shall behold that which many glorious saints and children of god have read of , and ●ejoyced and desired to see , and yet could not see them . for now revel . 22.1 . ●hall the sea ( that is , the miserable estate of the world by wars , desolations and sicknesses ) be destroyed , and no more extant . now shall the time of tribulation , war and desolation , the time of torments , temptation , heresie and persecution be utterly abolished from the memory of men for a new heaven and a new earth , a renovated church , purified saints shall succeed in the room of those wolves , who in sheeps-cloathing devoured the flock of christ. these are the dayes , for the hope of which the stones of ●ion cry day by day , though little esteeming seven thousand deaths in regard of that precious assurance g●aven in their brests , that they shall then , and in that day behold the lord , which hath mercifully gathered them from all nations , and hath so wonderfully preserved them from the sorcery of babylon ( which hath destroyed all the earth ) that leadeth them in and out bef●re pagans , hereticks and idolaters , before the covetous and foolish-wise of this world , so prudently and so invisibly , that they seeing are not seen , and living are not known . but from these low things let us ascend up to scripture further to prove the certainty thereof . daniels image as it gave the first , so it gave the fullest knowledge of this great mystery of the church of god , dan. 2. per tot . in which image is described in brief the estate of the world , from the very day god revealed this to daniel , and he to nebuchadnezzar , to the full and final end and conclusion of time . by the golden head , silver arms , brazen belly , and iron legs , we must understand the chaldean , persian , macedonian and roman monarchies , which successively one after another , tyrannized over mankinde by cruelty , and by cruelty came to as miserable destructions in the end . the feet part of iron , and part of clay , denoted the declining estate of the roman empire ( after that indiscreet division of it under charles the great into the eastern and western ) under the present papacy , and now-vulturizing house of austria , which hitherto doth and shall continue until an. 1694. therefore the stone cut without hands ( in the 34 verse ) ( which smote the image on his feet , that were part of iron , part of clay , and so brake them to pieces , that the iron , brasse , clay , silver and gold became as chaff of the summer-flowers that the winde carried them away , and no more place was found for them ; and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain , and filled the earth ) must needs be understood of a glorious monarchy of the church of god upon earth , which by the conversion of the universal nation of the jews shall overcome all her enemies , and reign triumphantly in all nations under heaven , in universality , uniformity , integrity and inn●cency of life and conversation . this blessed and happy estate of christs church upon earth ( after the aforesaid battel of gog and magog described ezech. 38. and 39 chap. of which enough before ) is graphically deciphered in the nine last chapters of the same prophet , beginning at the 40 ; where under a specious and large type of restoring the old jewish temple with the sacrifices ( chap. 40. ) the measuring , ordering and disposing of it in every thing thereto belonging ( chap. 41. ) as the chambers of the priests in the temple , the holy utensils ( chap. 42. ) the glory of god filling the house ( chap. 43. ) his paternall upbraiding the israelites for their antient idolatry , and demonstrating his great and affectionate love to them for the present ( chap. 44. ) is contained ( as i said before ) a pithy discourse how powerfull and magnificent these new converted christians shall be ; how holy , learned and unanimous their ministers should be , how ardent and studious they shall be in communicating the gospel of christ to such as yet sit in darknesse and in the shadow of death ( chap. 45. ) how vigilant their princes and magistrates shall be in being keepers of the house of god , that is in incouraging the ministers , tam praemio quàm paenâ , to instruct the people in the knowledge of the truth , that so both ministers and people may render due obedience to their common saviour , in love to god , and charity toward men . and again , the reserved portions of land for the temple , city , priests and princes all in just measures and dimensions , the waters issuing out of the temple , ever increasing in latitude and profundity , the severall divisions of the particular lots of priests , temple , levites , the city and the princes secondarily repeated in the 45 , 46 , 47 , and the last chapters , evidently declare the undoubted certainty and verity of this wonderfull mystery , that the jews shall repossesse their antient possessions and severall inheritances in the land of iudea ; how devout , pious and chearfull they shall be in the worship and service of god , intimated by the frequent performing of spirituall sacrifices and oblations : how potent and spatious their church shall be , how great and infinite the priviledges , and never decreasing graces of god shall be to it , signified by the depth and latitude of the spiritual waters of life . thirdly , daniel in the end of his 11 chap. doth above all other , most plainly and specifiquely picture the two grand preparations to this spirituall monarchy of christs church in the end of the world : viz. 1 the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the enemies of god , and 2 the conversion of the jews . for in the 40 , 41 , 42 , and 43 verses of the said 11 chapter , declaring first , what victories , the saracens should get over the roman empire , by saying , that the king of the south should push at him ( viz. the saracens should invade the emperour ) and secondly , what lamentable havock the turk should make of the roman monarchy by conquering and subduing from them all the eastern empire of constantinople , in these words , and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwinde , with charets and horsemen and many ships , and shall enter into the countries , and shall overflow and passe thorow ; which was verified in the turks conque●ing all greece , scythia , moldavia , servia , asia , syria , mesopotamia and the isles of the aegean sea : and he shall enter into the pleasant land , and many countries shall be overthrown , but these shall escape out of his hands , edom and moab , and the chief of the children of ammon , which also came to passe when selimus i. invaded egypt , slew tomumbey the sultan thereof , eradicated the very name of the mamalucks , and so got all the wealth and treasures of memphis and grand-cairo , and added also iudea as a member of egypt to the turkish empire , an. 1517. his son solymon the magnificent , awed india and ethiopia , and his grandchilde selimus ii. conquered tunis and algiers in afrique , yet neither of them medled with the arabians , edomites or moabites , as thinking them a people not worth conquering . in the 44 verse , daniel saith , but tydings out of the east and west shall trouble him ; the conversion of the eastern and western iews , shall so inrage the turke , that he shall levy innumerable forces , and march forth in great fury to destroy and root them out : and he shall pitch the tabernacle of his palace between the seas in the glorious and holy mountain , shall fight a most terrible and bloudy pitcht field with them in their own land of iury , and yet shall he come to his end , his power , by god's providence , shall be overthrown , and totally eradicated by them from off the earth , and none shall help him . lastly , s. iohn in revel . 9.15 . setteth down in plain and evident numbers , the very beginning , increase and downfall of this hellish generation . for in saying the turkish armies shall be prepared at an hour , a day , a moneth , and a year , he analogically declareth the very time of their birth , and the year when they shall come to a finall annihilation . here a day is to be taken prophetically for a year , a moneth for 31 daies , which likewise make so many years , and a year for the daies of a bissextile iulian year ( which are 366 ) making in the same manner as many propheticall years as in the former epoch's of daniel and ezekiel● so the sum's of 366 , 31 and 1 , make a compleat product of 398 years , which added to an. 1300 ( the year in which the ottoman empire first saw light in the world ) plainly demonstrates , that as the turkish empire began an. christi 1300 , so in an. 1698 shall be the fatall end and finall downfall of the same . thus it is evident , that as the downfall and captivity of the jewish nation fell in the building and birth of that city , which was afterward the fourth monarchy ; so in the buriall and ruine of the same city and monarchy shall be their conversion to the gospel of truth , and the institution of the fifth monarchy ; in which all power , and earthly magnificence must submit to the kingdom of the saints of god , and all scepters bow to the authority of the church of christ. viii . against these former assertions it is thus objected : that these are but the dreams of idle-headedmen , considering the sad method of the world in the continuall increase of sin and wickednesse , and degeneration of all sublunary things daily more and more to worse ; and because our saviour said , at his second coming he should scarce finde faith upon earth . but to this i answer ; no time is god's time for the propogation of the gospel , and enlargement of his church , but in the deluge of sin and inundation of impiety : then is his power most manifest , when man is weakest ; his decrees most effectible , when we think him the furthest off ; and his providence nearest execution , then , when the world is most irregular , and incapable of a reformation . when the abominations and paganismes of the old world had destroyed all true worship of god , and an 120 years of repentance did no good , then was god's time to separate the wheat from the chaffe , and by saving of noahs family to preserve a seed for the implantation of a new . so in the n●w world , when idolatry had overspread all , the judgement and mercy of god most appeared in abrahams vocation , by selecting his church from the rest of mankinde , and continuing it above 2000 years in the house of heber , the true heir to grace and salvation . thus was it in the destruction of sodome and gomorrha , in the babylonish captivity , in the reformation by luther , when all the world were become apostates , god's providence shone out brightest , and was most conspicuous in propagating religion , maugre all the opposition the devil and the world could invent or de●ise : so shall it be in this prefixed time : though the world must degenerate more and more in civility and humanity ; christianity be eclipsed in a higher measure , and the true worshippers of god decrease above what ever yet hath been done : though protestantisme in many coasts and kingdom● shall be totally swallowed up of popery and mahumetanisme ; more lamentable warres and fearfull massacres rage through england , germany , france , spain , italy , and all european monarchies , then we have yet beheld ; and though some of these kingdoms wholly revolt to popery , others be luke-warm and at a stand , until an. 1686 ; yet all these shall but make way for the finall eradication of the enemies of the church , and the glorious and wonderfull birth , and erection of the fifth monarchie universall , which by these pangs and sorrows of christendome shall be brought forth about the time of the totall conversion of the jews . for the season is now come , when judgement must begin ( not at the temple of antichrist ) but at the house of god ; and what bloud soever is shed upon the soyl of the church , shall be no other then fruitfull showers and warm seasons , to make the field of christ more pregnant in production of that glorious harvest of saints , which shall cover the earth . for as it shall be in the end of the world , this old , decrepit , and corrupt world must be purged and refined with the fire of the lord , before there can be placed in stead thereof a new heaven and a new earth : so in the finall conclusion of the troubles of the church , warres , apostasies , alterations and changes in kingdoms and states , the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of gog and magog , and all the enemies of christ , the amputation of unprofitable trees , and eradication of noxious weeds out of the garden of the church , shall facilitate and prepare the way for the ingresse of the monarchy of the gospel into the eyes of the world . far wide therefore is the surmise of those christians , how this doctrine of the universall regiment of the church upon earth is a vain-glorious and fantastick dream , considering the hopes of it now are small , and like to be lesser , because charity and devotion daily decreaseth : nay rather this is the most evident sign that it speedily approacheth , because the malice of the devil with the corruption of mankinde , hourly augmenteth and strives to stifle and prevent it . if god be known to be god by bringing light out of darknesse , and manifesting his power in weaknesse ; then certainly shall these warres and schismes among christians , the barbarous invasions ●nd conquests of turks and tartars , the encreasing idolatry of the western and eastern indians , be an axe in the hand of god , to lop off all superfluous branches from his vine , to make it overspread with nourishing fruit , the globe of the whole earth . ix . and that these are no novell opinions , these following testimonies may give sufficient evidence , petrus damiani flourished anno 1060. a laborious divine , an acute philosopher , and a witty poet. gesner and other bibliothecaries say nothing of him is extant . yet i have seen in the library of trinity-colledge in cambridge certain latine epigrams of his , of the conversion of the jews , of the destruction of the world by fire in the last day , of the ruine of rome , and of the last judgement , which latine epigrams i finde translated into english stanza's in an old manuscript of l. b. intituled the dove . 1. of the burning of the world by fire . primum foedavit mundum scelcrata libido , cujus quàm ad coelum flammea massa venit , diluvium immissum est , immensumque obruit orbem , vt mala tanta pijs eluerentur aquis : o dira ebrietas mundi faex prima secundi , te opposita interiment atque elementa prement . iustitiam domini in cunctis sic cernimus actis , vnda lavat venerem , pocula flamma bibet . thus englished . as the first world did first by lust offend , whose burning rage to such a height did win , that god to quench the same a floud did send , o drunkennesse , the second world's first sin ! the course of vice that element must end , which is opposed to that which did begin . in every thing gods justice we may spie , as flouds drown lust , flames drunkennesse must dry . 2. of the ruine of rome . effuge , grex christi , peccati à gurgite diro . cui meretrix odio est , atque corona triplex , effuge , dum tempus datur , & fera praelia cessane ; ne ut tu delitias , sic sua damna feras . quum jam funestos agnus superaverit hostes . pingue gregique epulum militibusque dabit . se mentem metet haec meretrix , quam sevit , eandem : iam sathanae sedes , quae domina orbis erat . thus englished . fly , faithfull christians , from that sea of sin , who hate the whore , and the two-horned beast ; fly , fly , in time before their griefs begin , lest as their pleasures , so their plagues you taste . when once the lamb the victory doth win , he of fat things will make his flock a feast . who as she sowed , so shall she reap those evils , once the worlds mistresse , now a cage of devils . 3. of the conversion of the jews . postquam evangelium toto narretur in orbe , fulget & ignotis nostris genitoribus oris , quum gentes christum agnoscunt generalit●r 〈◊〉 . qu●s deus aeter●●im aetherea dignabitur aulā . tunc amplectetur verum solynaea propago , quod priùs invidid tam aversabatur iniquā : vltima evangelium , legem quae prima recepit . quos d●cuit primos , postremos christus habebit . thus englished . the gospel once being preacht in every place● to lands of which our fathers could not tell , and when the gentiles all are drawn to grace , which in the new jerusalem should dwell . then shall the stubborn jews the truth embrace● from which with such disdain they did rebell : who first the law , last shall the gospel have , christ whom he first did call , shall last receiv● . 4. of the last judgement . indictum tempus , quod totum territet orbem , per praedicta homines signa monere solet . praelia , evangelium mundo vulgatur , adorant iudaei christum , cognita jam meretrix : zelus hebet , stellaeque cadunt , fera crimina regnant , aegra fides languet , daemonis ira furit : vltima jam genus omne malorum buccina clangit , supremamque diem signa tremenda notant . thus englished . that threatned time which must the world appall , is that all may amend by signs foreshown . wars rumor'd are , the gospel preach'd o're all , the jews convert , the antichrist is known . devils rage , vice reigns , zeal cools , faith fails , stars fall , all sorts of plagues hath the last trumpet blown . and by prodigious signs 't may plain appear , that of the son of man the time draws near . thus by this great divine living in the mistiest times of popery , it may plain appear , that it was a received opinion that the total destruction of rome , the conversion of the jews , and the fifth monarchy should precede the end of the world . and this is also confirmed by hieronymus savanarola ( who died a martyr at florence , a. 1498. ) whose prophesies are extant in the works of franciscus mirandula . that in the last times jews , turks and moors should be converted to christ , a man like cyrus with a numerous army of true professors should come over the alpes and destroy rome , and ruinate all the kingdoms and states of italy . that grievous wars , bloud-sheddings and massacres should arise in the world by a northern king for a happy reformation , who should carry the gospel out of europe into a vast and unknown world in the end of time . that an eastern king should blow the trumpet of god from tartaria , which should reform all the islands of the indian infidels . he likewise prophesied in particular of iulio the second , of the troubles of the duke of mirandula , of luthers reformation , of the persecutions of merindol , chabriers , angrogne , the valtolin● , and other places of france , all which most evidently came to passe . thirdly , a prophecie of the estate and condition of the times unto the end of the world , was found written in hebrew under the foundation of the church of s. denis in france , a. 1616. by the sexton of the place , as he digged for the erecting of a monument for the lord teligni . he gave it unto the popes nuncio ( who rewarded him with 200 dollars for his pains ) from him it was sent to the cardinall of bruges , who presented it unto the young k. lewis xiii . it was written in parchment , and wrapped in lead in the form of an heart : hebrew numericall letters were set at the side of every line , signifying in what year of our lord every accident should come to passe , and be manifested to the world . out of hebrew it was translated into latine by iohannes parmarino secretary to the said cardinall . the prophesie runs thus . anno christi . 1661 obruit italiam saevo mars impius aestu . anno christi . 1665 vnica sint christo pascua , campus , oves . anno christi . 1666 totum operit mundum terror & ira dei. anno christi . 1667 pauci iehovam venerantur . anno christi . 1678 inclytus exurgit factis heros . anno christi . 1686 europa tremit : asā urget metus . anno christi . 1693 generalis terrae motus ruit . anno christi . 1699 agnoscunt omnes gentes deum . anno christi . 1700 flumina siccentur ubique . anno christi . 1710 pastor & ecclesia unica . 3 alephs . the heat of war doth italy surround , let christ's pasture be one , his sheep and ground . gods wrath and terrour doth the world confound . but few that god do reverence . a prince shall rise of eminence . asia doth tremble , europe shake . now is a generall earthquake . all nations gods knowledge partake . rivers are dried every where . pastor and church only one are . by this prophecy great troubles must arise in italy within this small time , cruell wars afflicting every state thereof , which must be preparations to the eternall destruction and ruine of rome the head city thereof : rome can never be destroyed except protestants lay aside their unnecessary civill contentions , which may ( god so disposing ) come to them about anno 1665. after which great commotions are like to aris● in europe , till a noble hero arise , which shall quench those evils by imploying christians in mutuall leagues against the turk . suddenly after which comes troublesome daies in asia and africk . then follows universall peace and quietnesse of nations , prophesied of by ezechiel and s. iohn in the revelations , which must bring forth the purity and perfection of the gospel over the whole earth . x. of how large an extent the turki●h empire should be , how far it should prevail against christendome , when it should be at the height , and whe● christians should begin to cry quits with them by victories and conquests , is long since ex●ant in ancient prophesies . one whereof m. fox in his first volume of acts and monuments , pag. 746. antiq . edit . relates he found in the persian language in a manuscript of bartholomary georgienitz : the substance whereof in latine is this . imperator noster veniet , ethnici principes regnum capiet , rubrum quoque pomum capiet , inque suam potestatem rediget . quod si in septimum usque annum christianorum gladius no● insurrexerit , u●que ad duodecimum annum eis dominabitur . domos aedificabit , vineas plantabit , hortos sepibus muniet , liberos procreabit , & post duodecimum a●num christianorum gladiu● apparebit , & turcam quaque versum in fugam aget . our emperour shall come , he shall take the kingdom of a heathen prince , he shall also take the red apple , and subdue it to himself . but if the christians sword shall not arise by the seventh year , he shall reign over them to the twelfth year , he shall build houses , plant vineyards , hedg● in orchards , and beget children , and after the twelfth year shall the christians sword appear , and put the turk to flight on every side . m. fox expounds these 12 years to be 12 turkish emperours prevailing against christians , beginning at the first emperour ottoman an. 1300. and so solyman the magnificent to be the twelfth emperour , and the last that should prevail against christians ; who began his reign an. 1519. and died an. 1567. but i think rather it must begin at mahomet the ii. winning of constantinople ( called here rubrum pomum ) an. 1452. and must end at the late emperour mahomet the iv. his death the last august , 1649. my reason is this : other emperours have prevailed against christians , since solyman the magnificent . for selimus the ii. his son wan cyprus from the venetians . armurath iii. took the fort guiermo from the hungarians , and his son mahomet iii. took agria in hungary , and had he pursued his victory , had won that whole kingdom in lesse then a year : so the late mahomet is the 12 emperour from mahomet the ii. and now ●fter his death shall the turks prevail no more against christians . for fourty years agoe that kingdom was at a stand , and is declining to an eternall destruction . the sword of the christians shall now arise and prevail again●t the turks ●ill an. 1696. when the converted jews shall gather head to overcome them in a bloudy pitcht field , and root out their name from off the earth . by this young emperours decease without issue , the ottoman line is extinct , and none left . one sultan hali ( a persian by birth ) is now steward of the ottoman house , and the crim-tartar by old composition and agreement layeth claim to the turkish empire , which at present is in combustion because of this . and though above 200000 turks are in the field , with an intent ( as is thought ) to invade germany , yet if christians could but leave o●● their unnecessary divisions , they might soon ruinate the turkish empire . for since armurath iv. his death , an. 1642. ( who began to reign , an. 1623. ) all the time of this late mahomet's reign , since there hath been continuall contentions and massacres amongst the turks , the jannizaries eluding and despising the young and weak emperour , which terrified the mufti and the bassa's sore , because they had a prophecy , that as a mahomet wan constantinople , so a mahomet should lose it again to the christians . however the matter goes for the present , the year 1698 shall be fatall both to them and to the pope in both their ruines , and the beginning of the comparative felicity of the church of god , as may be further manifested by an excellent prophecy , which the learned erasmus received from reuchliuus , and was found in the study of iustus lypsius by ianus douza the younger , running thus . post mille expl●tos à partu virginis annos , et post sexcentos rursus ab orbe datos , nonagefimus octavus mirabilis annus ingruet , is secum gaudia laeta faeret . corruet hoc anno turcarum i●visa propago ; roma , tuum in libris fabula nomen ●rit . omnia tunc mundi sursum ibunt atque retrorsum imperiae , ut populus sceptra novella premant : vtque suum cunct as verbum diffundat in oras . christus , & imperitet nomine ubique suo . thus englished . six thousand years from virgins birth expir'd , six hundred after that acquir'd , the famous ninety eighth year shall come on , full of great contentation . this year the turkish hatefull race shall rue , rome shall a fable be , not true . then shall be tost all kingdoms of the world , and into a new kingdom hurl'd : that into all coasts christ his word may spred , and be alone the peoples head. xi . the two books of esdras are thought ( and that by none of the least learned , as augustine , hierome , ambrose , tostatus , scaliger the elder , melan●thon , arrias montanus , bucer , and bibliander ) to be canonicall , because of the most evident fulfilling of many predictions in them contained . in the 11 chap. of the second of those books , there is under the type of an eagle , a manifest prophecie both of the roman heathenish empire , as likewise of the papacy with her chief leagurers to this present time throughout the whole chapter . this eagle is that roman heathenish empire ; her twelve feathered wings are the twelve first emperours from iulius cesar to nerva cocceius . the three heads are the three kingdoms of france , spain and germany , preordained of god to uphold and maintain the power of her pride , when all her wings ( her heathenish and tyrannicall cesars ) should fail her . neverthelesse , under her 12 first cesars are comprehended in generall all the emperours which reigned in her from iulius cesar ( who first crackt the strings of her liberty ) to augustulus momyllus ( her last roman cesar ) for the space of 474 years . her 8 contrary feathers are the 8 terrible inundations of severall nations from the north ( god's scourges ) which overwhelmed her fairest provinces , sunk her state in bloud , and by fire and sword humbled her as low as the dust she trod on ; viz. 1 alaricus and his west-gothes , 2 attilas and his hunnes , 3 gensericus and his vandals , 4 odoacer , 5 theodoricus and his east-goths , 6 totilas and his spaniards , 7 alboinus and his longobards ( who deposed her diminitive cesar augustulus momyllus ) 8 and lastly , the intestine homebred faction and conspiracy , which proved more pernitious then the rest ( as all included diseases are the worst ) which in the reigns of otho the great , otho iii , and frederique ii , so often strove to eradicate the papall superiority , and reedifie her s.p.q.r. buried so many ages ago out of the ruines of the city . the head in the midst is the germane empire , begun an. 801 on christmas day , by charles the great , which though vers . 32. it long did and yet doth put the earth in great fear , yet vers . 33. must vanish in an instant , as did the wings , and come to nought . the germane empire thus destroied , vers . 35. the head on the right side ( the kingdom of spain ) must devour the head on the left side , which is the kingdom of france . therefore it is manifest , that the kingdom of france , though now it flourisheth in what glory and magnificence earth can afford , must ere long be humbled by the power of spain , with many discomfitures , and brought to dolefull streights and great perplexities . i my self have observed one remarkable adjunct of that kingdome in particular , how that year ( in which the figures of the golden number were equall to the figures of the year of christ ) hath ever proved fatall to that monarchy for warre , bloudshed , pestilence and famine . it was so with them from an. 1570 to an. 1576. in all which seven years , the guisian faction made lamentable havock of the church of god and the kingdom ; so shall it be in that year in which the finall tragedy of that kingdom shall be acted , six years after which france shall be no more . but when that shall be , no sign of europe shall remain , nor remembrance where the wals of rome stood . the lion ( which vers . 37. and chap. 12. v. 31. came roaring out of the wood speaking to the eagle , and rebuking her for her wickednesse ) is the wind which the most high god hath kept for rome and her wickednesse till the end , even the lion of the north ( of which you shall hear anon a prophesie of the true merlin ) which shall reprove the roman empire , and cast before her her spoils ; he shall set her alive in judgement , rebuke and correct her , and deliver the residue of gods people by afflicton which are preserved upon his borders and make them joyfull untill the day of judgement . in the 13 chapter , esdras beholds a vision of a man rising out of the sea , and devouring the multitudes of fighters that came against him , neither with sword , spear nor any instrument of warre , but only with the fire and storm that came out of his mouth ; which is christ the son of man , who through a sea of bloudy persecutions and tribulations propagated his gospel over the earth , confounding and devouring the multitudinous pagans and idolaters fighting against christians , by the invincible force of the gospel . after a long time of the obstinate wilfulnesse and fulnesse of the gentiles , he shall call to himself another peaceable multitude , vers . 12 , 40. even the whole nation of the jews , out of armenia , tartaria , and the eastern india , whom god shall defend and convert to the gospel , when he shall destroy all other nations upon earth . these are called the peaceable people , because after the conversion of the jews , shall come that ministeriall monarchy of the church over the whole world ; that peaceable and still time , when all kingdoms under heaven shall forget fighting one against another , warres shall cease in all the world , and swords and spears shall be beaten into plowshares and pruning hooks . when the seventh angel blew the trumpet , luther began his reformation , then it is , when the multitude stood before the lamb , and sung the new song of moses ; and then neverthelesse is but the vail only of the tabernacle opened in heaven , and a great cloud and smoak covered that glory . but it must be 180 years after , when the kingdomes of this world become the kingdoms of our lord and of his christ , and those be destroyed that destroyed the earth . for then and not till then shall the temple of god be fully opened in heaven , and the ark of his testament ( the very same modell , which god shewed to moses in the mount ) shall be seen in ierusalem , not in a tabernacle , but in that temple , which the power of god shall make . then shall lastly , the four beasts , the elders , with all the angels of heaven , and all the creatures of heaven and earth , and of the sea and under the earth fall down before the throne , and give glory , honour , blessing and praise unto him that sitteth on the throne , and to the lamb for ever , and the four beasts shall say , amen . xii . i have heard many jews discoursing of this their glorious restauration and religion to come . they say , they never possessed ( no not in the time of david and solomon , when their kingdom was largest ) an half of that which god promised in deuteronomy and ioshua . indeed it is said in ioshua , no good thing failed of what god promised , but this is to be understood of their peaceable settlement in what ioshua then conquer'd , not of the utmost boundders of what they were to possesse towards the end of time. from euphrates to the red sea , all the coasts on the west to the great mediterranean sea , with tyrus and sydon , on the north hemath and cel●syria , even in length from l●banon to egypt , was to be the confines of this sacred commonwealth . now if we consider , what a moity of this was possessed by lot , ammon , esau , the kings of tyrus and sidon , the philistines with syria , we may plainly see , that more then an half was never their own , of what god promised . in confidence of possessing which , and all the world beside in time to come , in their great hosanna they shake palmes in their hands , in triumph towards the four coasts of heaven , to intimate that in their universall empire every tree of the wood shall clap hands , and sing for joy . it is strange , and makes me give more credit to esdras then otherwise i would , to see how pat he goes with our saviour christ , in affirming the second captivity of the jews to be long , and that their return should be about the ruine of the roman empire . he relates how the ten tribes ( soon after their captivity by salmanasser ) travelled through a great river or strait ( perhaps the streits of anian ) in a long journey of many moneths or years to a country not inhabited . yea many good authors , who write of the histories of america , relate how the maxicans have a tradition ( delivered from father to son , time out of minde ) of a great multitude coming a great journey into those parts with an ark carried before them on mens shoulders , with their god inclosed therein . these people certainly were jews , from whom they learned circumcision ( which our travellers finde in most of their coasts ) with other rites of tribes , heads of tribes and families , with some handsome ceremonies of marriages , funerals and washings , directly the same with the jews or israelites . but to prove , that the israelites were first placed in media and carmania , and from thence removed into india , let us return a little back , and survey scriptures and some approved authors . when salmanasser king of assyria carried the ten tribes into captivity ( in the fifth year of the reign of hezekiah king of iudah ) he was a prince of spacious dominions and invincible forces , as comprizing within his empire all media and persia , mesepotamia , assyria , all arabia and ethiopia inferiour to the confines of egypt , all syria and palestine ( save only the poor exhausted kingdom of iudah ) and lastly armenia with all the coasts bordering upon the caspian and euxine sea , as farre as tartaria . by this it will be hard to define in which province of his empire he placed them , out of his dominions we may well think he would not abandon them . in the 2 king. 17.6 . it is said that he placed them in hala and habor by the river of gozan , and in the cities of the medes . which hala ( or rather chala ) and habor by affinity of pronuntiation , can be no other then col●hies and iberia , two provinces of armenia , the first bordering upon the euxine , the latter upon the caspian sea and the confines of the tartars . east of armenia lies media , in the cities of which , a great part of the israelites were likewise placed to inhabit . north of armenia is the entrance into those immense and indiscoverable nations of muscovites and tartars , the utmost limits of whose kingdoms were never yet fully known . the chief river of which countries arising farre beyond the hyperborian territories , after a wearisome travel through many nations and provinces , disburthens it self at last into the caspian sea , at the very entrance into armenia , where it is called zolga ( though our mariners call it wolga ) which is nothing else but a metathesis or a bad pronunciation of the word gozan . so that that saying of ben-gorion is true ( if that manuscript be his which gallo-belgicus fathers upon him , yet visible in bibliothecâ florentinâ ) salbumadzar ( saith he ) rex assyrius , exciso samariae regno , decem illas tribus , quae à divino cultu tandiu ante desciverant ad idololatriam , abductas in captivitatem conlocavit in fasso , alvati , loride , & bascapante civitatibus colchidos & iberiae arm●nicarum provinciarum , & in ecbatan● & bocchu urbibus mediae juxta pontum euxinum , & mare caspium . thus by the testimony of this great rabbi it is manifest that the opinion of those men is fond who think the ten tribes to be utterly lost ; thus likewise is it plain that the jews conversion must first a●ise out of the east , and that fassum , alvatis , loris , and bascapan cities of colchis and iberia , and ecbatana and bocchu cities of media were the places , where salmanasser ( called here salbumadzar ) placed these israelites in name , but pagans in nature . and iohn lunclay in his pandects of the turkish history , fol. 769. writes , how there are certain hoords ( troops or families ) of people near the more northern parts of tartaria , which retain the names of dan , z●bulun and nepthali , and in the vicinity of rega there is a certain barbarous nation of letti , which for three moneths in the year perpetually wander up and down the fields , having these words iure-shel●-mashalom continually in their mouth , as a kinde of lamentable tune or mournfull ditty : by which words authours credibly suppose are meant jerusalem and damascus the two head cities of judah and israel . he that diligen●ly reades the history of these x. tribes in scripture , after their revolt from the house of david , and combination with i●roboam in erecting idolatry , may see that they were a nation quickly overgrown with heathenism , cruelty , and barbarousnesse , wholly become abominable pagans in nature , manners , life , condition and conversations ; as if they had had numa pomphilius to their father , and not abraham the faithfull : they only kept circumcision and the names of their progenitors in remembrance , but had quite forgotten the stories of their religion and piety , thence it came to passe that in this their captivity , being transported and implanted among those nations , they quickly conjoyned and counited with them in marriage and affinity ( being already long before coupled with them in idolatry ) and so ceased to be called israelites , but being now all one people , were called by the names of armenians and medes . that these israeltes likewise inhabited part of tartaria , and from thence spread into india and the east , and that they likewise possessed a part of the caucasian mountains mingled with a people , which herodotus calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( a word not unakin to turks ) is manifest by these undeniable reasons . 1. because the colchians , iberians , and a great part of tartaria used circumcision in most ancient times , long before the building of rome , which they could not have received from any people else but from these israelites , who 30. years before the foundation of rome were sent to inhabit among them . 2. the crim-tartars derive their progeny from sampson ( hence so many of them have been called camson , an obscure notion of sampson ) and in imitation of him wear long hair ; which could not have been , except they had had their originall from those people from whom they had the memory of sampson . 3. the names likewise of moses , aharon , cham , selim , or solyman ( a vitious pronunciation of shlemo or solomon ) were proper names of men amongst the turks long before ever they broke into asia . now what times the turks first broke into asia , chronologers agree not among themselves : some say they broke through the caspian streits into armenia major ( now turcomannia ) an. 844. but i rather suppose their first irr●ption into asia was 20. years after the death of alexander the great , about an. m. 3718. when the parthians shook off the macedonian yoke , and began their empire : for in those times we reade in mela , pliny and herodotus , that a ba●barous and savage people from the north had invaded and possessed carmania , which could be no other then this nation of the turks . thus it is plainly manifest , that when these israelites passed into america , they left a great part of their brethren behinde them in asia , tartaria , and india . millions of them are in persia , and their domineering at this present day in carmania , is rightly observed by benjamin the jew in eyre , by m●rcator , ortelius , and other geographers . xiii . abraham was told in genesis , his seed must thrice be like dust , and then afterward like stars ( stars not for multitude , but for piety and glory ) onc● in aegypt ; secondly in babel ; thirdly throughout the world in the roman empire , and afterward in the beginning of the fifth monarchy must enlighten the whole world with the glory of god. and the jews themselves have an ancient tradition , that they must have two messiahs ; 1 the first should come about what time the government was taken from iudah ; he should lay the foundation of their redemption , afterwards be betrayed , crucified , and die by their own hands , and leave them in a dolefull plight in the jaws of destruction by the gentiles : him they called ben-ioseph or ben-ephraim , alluding to sorrowful ioseph , who endured so much hardship , being sold by his brethren into aegypt , and estranged from his fathers house ; and to the unfortunate attempt of the tribe of ephraim ( soon after that barbarous edict of murthering male infants came forth ) to deliver themselves and the israelites by force of arms from pharaoh some 12 years before the birth of moses ; when pharaoh levying an huge army , made fearful slaughters of them , forcing them to return to their old obedience , of which you may reade in psal. 78.9 . in this doleful misery they should remain so long till their second messiah came and delivered them from the hands of all their enemies , restored them to their native land of iudea , and reigned over th●m in equal fame and prosperity with david their father . him therefore they call ben-david . 2 secondly , isaac was mo● wayes then in his immolation a figure of christ. he had two sons esa● and iacob , of whom it is said , the elder shall serve the younger● edom ( which jews interpret to be the roman christian church , the first-born to christ from isaac ) must come to serve the younger , the iewish converted church in the end of time , when it is once come up . thirdly , 3 iacob a type of christ in his descent to aegypt had two wives , leah a type of the visible church of carnal jews using and leaning upon ceremonious shadows in stead of the true sacrifice from moses to the end of the second temple : as likewise of the church of the gentiles , which from the ascension of christ was to continue in vicissitudinary fortune to it's end , full 1668 years . thus leah was blear-ey'd , but fruitfull in her posterity , yet not so acceptable and lovely in the eyes of her husband as rachel ( a type of the glorious jewish church in the end of monarchies ) who was to be many dayes barren , even from the end of the second temple , till anno 1683 , then brings forth ioseph , leaves her fathers idolatrous house , within a few years after travels again , and brings forth the staff of iacobs old age with the losse of her own life . fourthly , 4 that the jews were to have a temporal monarchy in the end of the roman empire , is evident likewise out of the new testament . in the first of acts our saviour christs disciples shewed how greatly the jews expected for this time , when their messiah should deliver them from the yoke of the romans , and restore them to their temporal kingdom in iudea ; as likewise how near they thought the season and period to be in our saviours time , when they came to him , saying , lord , wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to israel ? our saviour in his answer doth not deny but that such a time was to be , when the jews should be restored to their temporal kingdom in their own land ( which should exceed davids and solomons in magnificence , and should extend over the whole world ) but only blames and checks his apostles for enquiring of that which neither was needful for them to know , neither should be in their dayes ; as likewise for being too inquisitive in the times and seasons when it should be , and was to begin , which ( said he ) the father hath put in his own power . and whoso reads hos. 3.4 , 5. the four last chapters of zechary , mich. 7.15 , 16 , 17. esa. 2.2 , 3 , 4. and chapter 27. 12 , 13. with ier. 24.6 , 7. with divers other passages in scripture , may plainly see that neither solomons house nor the maccabees ever obtained their full propriety , nor were those prophecies of their universall soveraignty ever fulfilled in the old testament . fifthly , 5 the song of moses in the 32. of deuteronomy , is clear , that many and great afflictions shall befall them in the latter daies , even all the time of their first messiah , and the roman empire . no jew in the world ever expounded otherwise from the 36. verse to the 43. of that song . and to this place they referre their afflictions which they have , and shall suffer all the time of the roman empire till their restauration . there is but few of them now , but will confesse that their messiah ben-ioseph , is come already , but their ben-david is yet hid in the depth of the sea , and will arise from thence about the finall end of the destruction of the gentiles . sixthly , 6 the life of ioseph in genesis hath in it more then history . at 17. years of age he was sold by his brethren , and stood before pharaoh to expound him his dreams at thirty . so he lived above 12. years in misery and irons . and for those 12. years god rewarded him with 80. years of government in and over all the land of aegypt . his brethren came and bowed to him according to his dream of the sheaves ; his father also was inferiour and subjected to him as he was viceroy in the government of aegypt : and was nourished and maintained by him according to his second d●eam of the sun , moon , and the eleven stars crouching and making obeisance . though his brethren pitied him not in the anguish of his soul , yet he forgiveth and preserveth them in aegypt , and at their deliverance thence marcheth triumphantly before them to canaan in his coffin . but yet neverthelesse iacob was to stay in canaan , and ioseph was to be unknown to his brethren till aegypt be destroied by famine , and yeeld if self to ioseph . and the bon●s of ioseph too must stay in aegypt till 600000 men besides women and children be delivered them by the hands of moses and aaron . no departure from aegypt , no passage through the red-sea without the bones of ioseph . edom in the dayes of moses , and babylon in daniels time suffered the severest punishments god could inflict upon a people , and all for afflicting eber. and here is a mystery not so observed as observable in scripture . as aegypt was broken before the first tabernacle was set up by moses : as edom was harrowed by david before the first temple was erected by solomon : and thirdly , as babel was brought to nothing by cyrus before the second temple was built by zorubbabel and i●hoshuah : so shall both edom and babel , turk , pope , and all monarchies in the earth be brought to dust , before the third temple be built by the converted jews in their native land of iudea and ierusalem . ierusalem now inhabited by turks and hereticall christians shall at that time be purged from filth , and be the only receptacle of the children of god. but when that time shall be , i have abundantly shewn in the sections before . and in that season shall benjamin be sent down from his good father in the power of his right arm , and ioseph ( even ben-ioseph ) shall make himself known to his brethren , who did hate him , shoot at him , cast him into the pir , and delivered him to the gentiles . which excellent parallels of ioseph and christ are fully explained in the massorch , zoar , and in rabbi-asse , besides ezechiel and s. iohn in the revelations . notwithstanding in citing these jewish traditions , i would not be mistaken , as if i maintained a second descention of our saviour christ from heaven , as the millenaries do ; or that the jews must have him come personally dowm from heaven to destroy the whole world , and restore them to their land of iudea , i mean no such thing . god hath other means to bring his purposes to passe then , by sending his sonne christ to sojourn the second time upon earth . a second moses , yet a king , must work all this for them : yet not a moses of their own bloud , but a captain from the north ; who shall work the works of god in righteousnesse , and make peace like a mighty stream overflow the whole earth . xiv . the consideration of these future great blessings of god towards this nation of the jews , and in them to all the world in the advancement of the gospel ; as likewise the laying to heart the grievous calamities which have so long tossed the kingdomes and free-states of europe , should move all men with repentance to prepare themselves to meet those great and fearfull mutations which god is bringing upon all the european coasts of the world . historians have made their four monarchies according to the rise or fall of severall particular nations . 1. assyrians . 2. persians . 3. grecians . and 4. romans : but this is a lame division , and comes far short of that transcendent metamorphosis of humane affairs , which ( by comparing of histories , observation of new starres and comets of late , with the consideration of the manners and conditions of the sonnes of men ) we may easily perceive must within these few years be brought upon the world . the learned mathematicians and philosophers ( who have more throughly searched into the secrets of astrology ) rightlier place their four monarchies according to the four coasts of heaven . 1. the eastern monarchy of the assyrians . 2. the two southern monarchies of the persians and grecians , bounded within the circumference of 3600 miles , or 11 degrees of latitude . 3. the western monarchy of the romans . 4. and lastly , the northern monarchy ( but in right accompt the fifth ) must be of the northern lion , which to the amazement of christendome , shall arise from the northern sea , and pitch his tents in the ashes of the eastern and western monarchies . but now having made mention so oft of this v. monarchy in this pamphlet , i think it meet to produce two or three reasons of the truth and certainty of it , deduced out of the holy scriptures and humane authority . first , the jews have a tenet among them , that their messias must not come in the flesh till the destruction of the fourth monarchy in daniel , which is the roman : and so will not beleeve christians professing him to be come already : but say , this coming is deferred till the roman empire be totally abolished ; which because it is not nor must be yet , they will not beleeve he hath appeared . but the jews are deceived in this , for dan. 2.44 . and 7.9 , 22. the incarnation of our saviour christ was promised to be in the very nick of the constitution and establishment of the roman empire , and not after the ruine of it ( which was performed accordingly ) else should there have been six monarchies before the end of the world . for the dispersion and rejection of the jews , the revelation of antichrist with the fulnesse of the gentiles , was prophesied to be accomplished in the fourth monarchy , all which we see are punctually fulfilled . none of which should yet have come to passe , if our saviour christ was not to be incarnate before the end of the roman empire . therefore as the rejection of the jews with these other signs and things was to be in the fourth monarchy ; so their conversion and remission into the church , and the glorious estate of the gospel upon earth must be in another fifth monarchy , which is yet to come . secondly , so many empires as are comprized in nebuchadnezzars image ( dan. 2. ) must come to passe before the end of the world : but five monarchies are comprehended in that image , erg● . the major is manifest , the minor is thus proved : nebuchadnezzar himself was the golden head of this image , as he was in another respect the feet of the old decrepit assyrian monarchy , which by his chaldean empire and the ruine thereof ( which was approaching ) should totally be annihilated . the armes and brests of silver are the empire of the medes and persians . the belly of brasse is the empire of the grecians by alexander the great . lastly , the iron leggs and the clay toes depictured the roman empire , with the present declining house of austria , and the breathlesse papacy . therefore the stone cut without hands which brake this image in pieces , and became a mountain and filled the earth , must be understood ( as i touched before ) of a fifth monarchy yet to come , in which , by the conversion of the jews and fulnesse of the gentiles the gospel shall shine in majesty over all kingdoms upon earth . thirdly , if the rejection and dispersion of the jews were to be in the fourth monarchy , as is apparent by gen. 49.10 . and numb . 24.24 . then was their conversion not to be till the beginning of the fifth , and towards the end of the world , as is manifest by the apostle , rom. 11.25 . but the first is true and therefore the latter also . fourthly , the conversion and restauration of the jews to their antient inheritances in the holy land ( which ezekiel hath so largely described in his twelve last chapters ) and the glorious felicity of the gospel of christ proceeding from their conversion , must either be in the fourth monarchy , or not untill the fifth . but in the fourth monarchy it cannot be , for among the turks the jews are kept in extream slavery , idolatry and ignorance : and under the papacy they are not permitted to use the new testament ( by which only they must be saved ) and besides they are so inraged against christianity , by the papists image-worship , that there is a flat impossibility ( much lesse any hopes ) of their conversion , so long as either the turkish empire or the papacy stands in force . ergò their conversion and restauration cannot be , till both turk and pope eternally be destroyed , and so the fourth monarchy finally ended . thus having delivered the reasons of a fifth monarchy , i come to describe the lion of the north , as i finde it in an antient prophecie of the true merlin , and by grebner . 1 first of merlin . many scholars have often disputed what merlin should be , who he was , what time he lived in , whether those prophecies be true , and his , which go under his name , or not : how he came by them , and lastly , what reckoning is to be made of them . of every of which somewhat . it hath fared with merlin , as with tostatus in spain , and many learned in our times ; who for the eminency of their learning , and approbation of their writings , became so famous , that pedlar authors father'd bastar'd ware upon them in every corner for easier vent . merlins there were severall of old ; one a welsh-man in the daies of edgar the monarch , of an austere living and monkish conversation . he lived for the most part in the isle of anglesey , where he had familiarity and acquaintance with the bards and druides then not wholly extinct , who had incomparable skill in divination by birds , and other kinde of magique . he was an excellent astrologer and a great chymist : so that many think those prophecies , that are like his , to be deducted from no more then naturall reason . all those prophecies which i have seen of his ( some of which i have ) i cannot see how they smell any whit of a prophetique spirit ; they speak him a great scholar in astrology , but no prophet . but there was living in k. lucius daies another merlin ( called the first ) a scottish man , and he is the true merlin , and if any prophecies could be found of his , great credit was to be given to them . he was a great friend of k. lucius himself , and his daily companion . of his there is but one prophecie extant , which i found in that antient chronicle of nennius of bangor of the saxons ( who yet lives in manuscript ) k. lucius being as yet unconverted from paganisme to christianity , would needs joyn in confederacy with santoline a king of the scutti ( now scots ) to raise warre against the roman emperour ; to which purpose he asked councel of merlin what he should do in this matter ; who earnestly dehorted him from his purpose ; and in the end prevailed . merlin prophesied to him , that within lesse then a sesquidecumane period of time , the eagles head should be cloven in two ; one part whereof agar should burn with fire , and iaphet the other after the grand revolution of daies . mark ( o king ) saith he , and consider , samothea shall be quickly overflown with a vagabond army of an unknown originall , spued out of a land toward the east , which a floud from the north shall quickly possesse . i know thy thoughts and the intents of thy heart ; thou seekest friendship from a people , whose weaknesse shall be thy glory , and their greatnesse thy ruine . a squadron of fishers are risen up from the east , which shall ascend unarmed upon the world without spear and shield , to whom all nations shall in time obey . they shall destroy the temples of thy gods ( o lucius ) and convert them to the service of their eternall king , who only can rescue from the grave , and deliver from the snares of death . behold i see a great sun arise i●sensibly upon us brittanes ! but ( woe is me ! ) what black seas of darknesse , and rivers of bloud pursu● after it ? hast thou not heard of the valiant angles , of barbarous neustria , of yonder terrible picts thy perfidious enemies ? these shall overflow thy land , and possess the cities thereof , till the old age of empires , and government shall flow upon the world . illis autem temporibus revolutis , cauda virginis leonem intrabit , & sagittarii dorsum scorpius ascendet . borcalia regna à messoribus obterentur , australes principatus in statum pulvereum d●●ine●t , & insulanarum monarchiarum potestates sine fraeno aut milite ephippiabuntur ; bella atrocia ventis dissipabúntur , & pessum ibunt judiciali grandine , quae per baculum ortum habuerunt , per spuri●s juventutem . sol ipse tympanizabit miniato clamyde indutus , & luna cineritiis cothur●is ad nundinas tolutabit . rides , o rex ? at quibus haec supervenient , luctu & maerore contabescent . haec omnia vix plenè peragentur , qu●m princeps regali origine coronatus ex borealibus plagis proveniet , suis inexpectatus , alienigenis desideratus ; qui ●ò quòd l●one feroci●nte in●ignietur , leo nuncupabitur , non conquiescet , donec synodo per eum convocat● minisque dissolutâ , victricia arma in hostes transferat , & lamentabili successu vicinorum principum ditiones pessundet . alexandrum magnum virtute , cyrum felicitate superabit : freta transnavigabit ; à multis regibus imperator sal●tabitur ; & urbem quandam vetustam solo aequabit . intereà ex oriente princeps bellipotens illum praelio lacesse● , contrà quem leo cum omnibus copiis procedet , & ●is euphratem positis castris illum expectabit . si princeps flumen transibit , leo superabitur ; at ipse exercitu fluvium transducto hostem cruento conflictu superabit , & universum orientem in potestatem rediget . dum haec agentur , complures reguli ex india in suriam cum ingentibus irrumpent excercitibus , & circà vallem iehosaphat praeliabundi leonem opperibunt , ubi ab ipso ad internecionem omnes delebuntur . nec multò post , leo ipse fatis concedet , postquàm regnum transfugarum mirand● pietate in perpetuum fundavit . those times being past , the tail of the virgin shall enter the lion , and scorpio shall ascend the back of sagittary : the northern kingdoms shall be wasted by reapers , the southern principalities shall end in dust , and the powers of the iland-monarchies without either bridle or souldier shall be harnessed . cruell warres shall be scattered by the windes , and quell'd by a revengefull hail , whose beginning were by a staff , their growth and continuance by bastards . the sun it self shall play on the timbrell clad with a vermilion coat , and the moon with dunne buskins shall amble to the fair . laugh'st thou , o king ? but those on whom these things shall come , for grief and sorrow shall pine away . all these things shall scarce be accomplisht , when a prince of royall stock shall come forth crowned from the northern parts , as to his own people unexpected , but desired by forreigners , who because he shall bear a rampant lion , shall therefore be called a lion. he shall not rest , till having called a synod and after dissolved it by threats , he shall advance his conquering arms against his enemies , and by wofull successe shall harrase the territories of neighbour princes . he shall exceed alexander the great in vertue , and cyrus in successe . he shall passe the seas and be saluted emperour by many kings : a certain antient city shall he lay even with the ground . in the mean while a powerfull prince out of the east shall provoke him to battel , against whom the lion shall march with all his forces , and pitching his camp on this side euphrates , shall expect him . if the prince shall come over the river , the lion shall be overcome : but he shall passe his army over the river , and give his enemy a bloudy defeat , and be master of all the east . while these things are in action , divers petty kings from india shall break into syria with mighty armies , and provided for battel shall wait for the lion about the valley of iehoshaphat , where they shall by him be all wholly cut off . not long after shall the lion himself decease , after that with eminent piety he shall have established the kingdome of fugitives . this is all that is extant of this former merlin , whose glorious works and inestimable prophecies are utterly lost to the great detriment of learning . 2 not much unlike this , is that of greb●er , ban. 73. europae labes & imbecillitas singulorum ejusdem regnorum sedem mirabilitèr struet qvintae monarchiae , quae sub tempus exitii imperii romani ad terrorem totius mundi ex ruinis germaniae refulgebit . haec triennii spatio caetera europae regna aut vi perdomitabit , aut belli metu ad soci●tatem perpellet : quò universalem ligam & unionem omnium protestantium e●●ici●t sub specie bellum poloniae inferendi , re autem verâ imperium austriacum italiamque invadendi . nec eum spes fefellerit . nam circà hoc tempus secta quaedam manachorum adeò abominabilis , obscaena , & seditiosa in papat●s si●● orictur ; ut compellet tam protetestantes quàm italiae principes extremum romae exitium moliri . the corruption of europe , and the weaknesse of her several kingdoms shall strangely make way for the fifth monarchy , which about the time of the fall of the roman empire to the terrour of the whole world shall appear out of the ruines of germany . she within three years shall either subdue by force the rest of the kingdoms of asia , or for fear of war shall bring them to a league , whereby she shall conclude an universal confederacy , under colour of making warre against polonia , but in deed to invade the austrian empire and italy . neither shall her hope fail her : for about this time a certain sect of monks shall arise in the bosome of the papacy , so abominable , obscene and seditious ; that it shall urge both the protestants and princes of italy to endeavour the utter subversion of rome . thus having shewed the seat and certainty of this v. monarchie ; i come to declare what people or kingdom in europe shall obtain and rule it , and whose it shall soly be . of the european christians two several kingdoms long since , and of late have mainly striven for the fifth monarchy . first , the kingdom of spain hath alwayes for a matter of 170 years ago by incorporating it self with the house of austria , and the most potent families of germany and italy by strange marriages and odde medlies laboured extremely to bring all europe under her wings , that so she might become the glorious sun of the west . on the other side , the swede of late by keeping an high hand over the king of poland , and fixing his glorious trophies of conquest in all corners of germany ; hath brought the emperour to so low an ebb , and hath of late become so terrible to the pope and spaniard : and lastly can in an instant enleague himself with all protestant kingdoms and states , either for fear or favour upon any necessary occasion , that many account him the man that both goeth the directest way , and whom heaven hath ordained to sway the imperial scepter within the limits of the church . but neither of these are they who are ordained to the empire of the fifth monarchy . not the spaniard , because he is for his inhumane cruelty so generally hated of christians , all men avoiding him and flying from him , as the serpent from the ash : his indian plantations both thrive nor , and likewise for their barbarousnesse are so detested of the savages worse than vipers , and upon opportunities are accordingly massacred . yea , those places● of italy which are under his protection , as florence , genoa , millain and other cities afford him as much affection , as the spider doth the serpent . thus is he the universal odium of all the world , thrives in no place , and like oyl over-swiming all other liquids , and can hardly incorporate with any ; so seldom is he conjoyned but in natural antipathy with all nations . adde hereunto the austerity and unpleasantnesse of his government , chusing rather to domineer over subdued countries by rapine and cruelty , than to govern them by love and piety . and lastly , his governours in every province aim at their own ends , pilling and squeezing the subjects , so that his name and government is every where abominated , no province continuing loyal any longer then they can get arms and stoutly rebel . the injustice of which hath caused portugal to be rent from him , which while the world standeth shall never be his again . and moreover the oracle tels him , that naples , navar , his reconciled provinces in belgia , with his indian plantations ( the best jewels he hath ) shall be pluckt within 30 years to come from his ambitious crown , never to be recovered again . secondly , the swede cannot be paramount in this monarchy , because of the various sects and schisms he is pestered with , so inveterate and so predominant , that no reformation can purge him of them . the male line of that royal pedegree is extinct , and only a weak young princess surviving ; the whole kingdom shared and governed by factious nobles and covetous generals , and while every one sucks from the veins of the body politique to cram his own , it will be soon evacuated , both of life and nourishment . besides , it hath been since prophesied to sweden , that he shall not be so much as a tributary kingdom to this great soveraignty , but shall be the first , that shall be made a slave to that famous northern lion , who shall wear the crown of that transcendent monarchy . as for france , denmark , england , and the free cantons of germany , they make account for the present they d● valiantly if they can well husband what is got already . and for england in particular , if it chance that she make war upon any neighbour enemy , and enlarge their dominions by conquest , it is more to secure her self , and prevent the invasion of the great eagle , and her chief feathers , then any gre●dinesse of extending her bounders by the conquest and ruine of others . if she keep her ancient soil and possessions in those times , it is as much as heaven hath ordained her , and more she shall not have . who then must be lord of this monarchy ? or what people shall be parts and members thereof ? even a nation which at this day is hid invisibly within the bowels of europe , which seeing are not seen , and living are not known : which shall by a miraculous resurrection ( like the jews from india and tartaria ) be raised to destroy all idolatry and abomination out of every corner of the north , with the weapons of an holy warfare tending to the glory of god , and the honour of their king. his sword shall be religion , and his ensigns righteousnesse and piety . all the godly in every kingdom and state in europe , the converted jews conjoyned and united with them in spirit and habitation , shall ( as i said before ) root out all names of iniquity , and be this monarchy , which shall only consist of , and subsist by holinesse , and an unquenchable desire of propagating the glory and gospel of god : according to that of daniel , chap. 7. ver . 27. and the kingdom , and dominion , and the greatnesse of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the most high , whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom , and all dominions shall serve and obey him . the first preparation to the birth of which , was that ominous and fatal starre which appeared in the head of cassiopea , an. 1572 , the effects of which shall begin to operate upon europe , and the eastern coasts of america , an. 1699 , in bringing a mystery to light which all the sons of adam are not able to effect . of this fat●l and ominous starre ( or comet , chuse you whether ) i finde several tractates written . one nuntius propheticus in print : magell de quintà monarchiâ , & openheims ephemeris caelica , both manuscripts , both excellently discoursing of the effects thereof : how that , quo tempore accidet septima & ultima-maxima superiorum planetarum conjunctio , princeps erit monarchia prima , quae caput ex ruinis quarti imperii erexerit . currus lunae zodiacum perturbabit , cauda draconis coget pl●iades in fletum prorumpere , dorsum delphini ascendet , & flores virgineos obfuscabit : continuae turbae , seditiones , bella civilia , strages , panolethriae luctuosissimae omnia illa regna & illustres familias persequentur , ex quibus ista monarchia orta est , aut ei ullo modo obviabunt . burgundiae domus fi●em accipiet , sile●iae libertas gallico neroni prostituetur . belgarum ordines potentiae & aristocratiae suae finem videbunt , &c. openheim fol. 86. but magel is most plain above all three , fol. 67. col . 8. fateor majorum luminarium deliquia sine insigni hominum pernicie pecorumque strage nunquam extitisse : regnorum mutationes etiam , populorum clades , regum fun●ra , bella & incendia in ipsorum deliquiorum articulis , aut paulò post evidentèr apparuisse . fateor etiam superiorum erronum coitum malorum ut plurimùm iliade comitari : atque hanc stellam ( quae hoc an. 1572 in vertice cassiopeae illuxit ) suprà omnem elementarem regionem collocatam novi imperij revolutionem dominiumque significasse . quae tamen effecta haec aetas nostra minimè perspiciet : reservanda nihilominùs in gentem quandam etiamnum invi●ibilem , cujus magnitudinis radij in universum caeli terraeque ambitum extende●tur . at what time the 7 th , the last and greatest conjunction of the chief planets shall happen , the first monarchy shall reign , which shall lift up her head out of the ruines of the iv empire . the chariot of the moon shall disturb the zodiack . the tail of the dragon shall force the pleiades to break out into weeping , shall ascend the back of the dolphin , and shall darken the lustre of the virgin : daily troubles , seditions , civil wars , slaughters , and most lamentable universal destructions shall vex all those kingdoms and eminent families , from whence that monarchy sprang , or which shall any way crosse it . the house of burgundie shall be at an end : the liberty of silesia shall be prostituted to a french nero. the estates of belgia shall see an end of their power and aristocracy . i confesse eclipses of the great luminaries never hapned without the notable destruction of men and slaughter of cattel : the changes also of kingdoms , the deaths of people , funerals of kings , wars and fires have broke forth either in the very time of their eclipses , or within a little after . i confesse also the conjunction of the higher wandring starres is for the most part attended with an iliad of mischiefs : and that this star ( which this year 1572 appeared on the top of ca●●iopaea ) being placed above the whole elementary region , did signifie the revolution and dominion of a new empire . which effects shall not yet be seen by this our age ; yet are they reserved for a certain nation , as yet invisible , the beams of whose greatness shall be extended through the whole verge of heaven and earth . in that same year shall the kingdom● of salvation be preached by the ministry of the saints the most high , to those immense and unknown american coasts , to whom as yet the name of christ was never yet revealed . and that people● who from the creation till that time were the empire of satan , shall be called the specious and spacious church of god. the gates of which shall be open continually , neither day nor night shall they be shut , that men may bring unto them the riches of the gentiles , and the treasures of the kings of the earth . all nations and kingdoms , that will not serve her , shall perish and be destroyed for ever . within whose land shall be heard no violence nor destruction , nor desolation within her borders , but salvation shall be her wals , and praise her gates . her government shall be peace , and her exaactors righteousnesse . h●r sun shall never go down , nor her moon ever be hid , for the lord shall be her everlasting light , and the dayes of her sorrow shall be ended . the people within her shall be all righteous ; for ever shall they possesse their proper inheritances , for god shall make them an everlasting glory , and a ioy from generation to generation . therefore ought no man to be sorrowfull for the calamities of europe , or the afflictions of the times ; nor grieved with the mutations and downfals of kingdoms and empires , neither should he be afraid because wars and miseries rage in all coasts of the world . for this is the eternal law of creatures ( which the creator imposed upon them at first ) that the birth of one thing should be the death of another , and that the order of nature should be preserved by the vicissitudinary course of alternate mutability . and why should we be offended at warres amongst men , when there are daily and continual conflicts between the elements themselves ? cities , republiques , empires and families are mortal as men , have their states of birth , infamy , growth and old-age as well as they . glory , majesty , arts and soveraignty began in asia by the assyrians ; from them departed to the medes and persians ; and from them ( before they had well tasted the sweetnesse of them ) translated to the grecians , and next to the romans : the glory of the roman empire was eclipsed and humbled by the barbarous inundations of goths , huns , vandals , and other savage nations , who being themselves once civilized and mollified by the effeminacies of italy and the west , were in 560 years space overthrown by the potency of charlemain and the germans . germany hath now fully possessed the imperial dignity 790 years ; and before fifty years moe be past , shall be made a scorned servitor of the king of the north , whose power and religion shall transcend the utmost confines of east and west . in the beginning of which empire , venice shall not brag of being inaccessible by the circumfluent ocean , and london , paris , antwerp and prague , the iv ladies of europe shall be humbled to sit in the dust of eternal destruction . the consideration of this must teach men humility in prosperity , carefulnesse to know god and keep his commandments , seeing every plant which he hath not planted shall be plucked up , and nothing can be permanent but by his favour and protection . xv. thou therefore the eternall and incomprehensible father of lights , the indivisible god of peace and unity , look down at length upon the afflicted estate of thy gospel and mournfull face of thy church , clouded with sects and schisms , rent by civill combustions , dying by the wounds which her sons have given , and wallowing in that gore which was shed by the hands of her own children . though our sins have deserved that we should for ever be cast out of the sight of thy countenance , yet respect thou the bloud of thy sonne , crying better things then that of abel , and be once at one again with thy inheritance● abraham knows us not , israel is ignorant of us , but thou art our father , and in thee shall be all our a●fiance , with whom even the worst of men have found mercy . extend the light of thy loving-kindenes to the tribes of iacob , and return to the many thousands of israel , for the time to build up zion is come , and the daies of restoring jerusalem cannot be prolonged . for why ? thy servants think upon her stones , and favour the very dust thereof . but remember edom , o lord , as thou remembredst babel , which have cryed so oft , down with it , down with it to the very earth . pour thy-vengeance down upon the beast of rome , and the red dragon of constantinople , who never knew thy name , that so the sorrowfull sighings of the prisoners may come before thee● and thy servants be preserved that are appointed to die . let thy work be upon the man of thy right hand , and upon the son of man whom thou hast made so strong for thy self , that pharaoh , elam , mesheck , with the sonnes of tubal may fall in the midst of them that are slain by the sword , and may descend into the midst of hell with all that help them , even the whole multitude of the uncircumcised , whose lot is to goe into the nether parts of the earth . there shall they have their beds with the uncircumcised near those valiants , which are gone down to the grave , with their weapons of war , and have laid their swords under their heads , because they were the fear of the mighty in the land of the living . but what shall be said to the captain of the nations , or to the angell destroying edom and babylon ? even this , that the lord hath founded zion , and the poor of his people shall trust in it . he will leave an afflicted people , and they shall trust in the name of the lord : he shall give them a pure law , that they may pray to him with one consent . he shall open the doors of darknesse , the gates of obscurity shall he break down , that the world may be filled with the knowledge of the lord as the waters cover the sea. o thou sower of discord , and captain of iniquity , how long wilt thou delight to murther , spoil and pursue the distressed ? knowest thou not that it will be bitternesse in the end ? command the people to return every man from pursuing his brother : for lo , a nation is risen against you , a mighty nation and terrible from the east , whose horses ace fire and his chariots flames of fire to devour : his men are as swift as the eagle , who will have no compassion on the fruit of the womb , nor shall their eye pity : they shall encompasse ●hy tents with an intent to lay all waste before them , but neverthelesse be con●ident and bold in the lord of hosts : for fire shall come down from heaven and return their wickednesse upon their heads , and their doings upon their own pates . o thou worship of israel ! how wonderfull art thou in thy doings toward the children of men● bringing light out of darknesse , strength out of weaknesse , and making justice the mean to the manifestation of thy goodnesse and glory ! as for me , i will expect him who is as well the king of salem , peace , as melchised●ck , the king of justice , all my daies : and will heartily pray for his coming , who shall bring every work into judgement , and every thing to a legall triall , whether it be good or evill . he is the lamb upon the white throne , before whose face heaven and earth shall fly away , and the sea be no more found : death and hell shall give up the dead that are in them , and every name that is not written in the book of life , shall be cast into the lake of fire . for which time all the creation groaneth , crying out to be delivered from the bondage of corruption , and restored to the glorious liberty of the sons of god. even so , come lord jesus , come quickly , that sin may be destroyed for ever , and righteousnesse eternally established in stead thereof , amen . finis . for●itan hunc aliquis verbosum dicere librum non dubitet : forsan multò praestantior alter pauca reperta pu●et , quùm plura invenerit ipse : des●s & impatiens nimis haec obscura probabit : pro capt●● lectoris habent sua fata libelli . sed me juditij non p●enitet : haec benè vobis commis● , quibus est amor & sapientia juxtà , et labor in studijs ijsdem celebratus inhaeret : vos sequar : in vestro satis est examine cautum . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a56200-e80 * exact collection p. 663.666 . a collection of orders & ordinances , p. 354. exact collection , p. 4. to 14.97.98.508 . * exact collection , p. 10.199 492 , 493. † m. baylies canterburians self-conviction . the scots impeachment against ●ar●hbishop lawd . * exact collection , p. 10.11.12.492 . † exact . c●●l●ction , p. 10 . 11.12●●3 97.492.508.894.595 a coll●●●ion , p. 308.309.354.417.419.457.458 . * exact collection , p. 11.12.13.199.492.493.508 . † exact collection , p. 17.18.98.229.493 . * exact collection p. 594. 〈◊〉 605. a coll●ction , p. 309. to 313 327 . 358.359.3●0.399 404 . 41●.420 . to 428.458.453 . † exact collection . p. 97 , 98 218.564 . * exact col. p. 56.57.58.666 564 to 605. a collection , p. 308. ●o 312.354.355.363.371.372.428.441.467.677 . &c. 66● . 711.767.798 . to 810.933 . † a collection , p. 428. * a 〈◊〉 , p. 721. † a collectio● , p. 309.310 311 . 312.327.358.359.39●.399.404.416.42●● to● 428.458.459.694.751.768.769.798.802.806 . &c. 878.879.889 . * a collection of ordinances , p. 426. † the history of indep●nd●ncy . † a collect●on , of ordinances , p. 424.425.426 . † 2 chro. 11.4 . c. 28.6 , 7.8 , 9 , 10.11 . 2 sam. 26 , 27. acts 7.26 . gal 5.14 , 15. obad. 10. &c. 1 cor. 6.1.6 7 , 8. 1 john 3.12 . * john 13.34 , 35. c. 15.12 . rom. 12.9 , 10. c. 13.8 , 9 , 10. gal. 5.13 , 14. ephes. 1.15 . col. 2.2 . 1 thes. 3.12 . c. .4.9 . heb. 13.1 . james 2.8 . 1 pet. 1.12 . c. 2.17 . c. 3.8 . 1 john 3.11.14 16 , 17 , 18.23 . c. 4.7.11.12.16.20.21 . c. 5.2 . 2 john 5. † gildas . de excidio britanniae . fox acts & monuments . vol. 1. † gen. 4.10 , 11. jer. 51.35 . ezek. 35 , 5.6 , 7 , 8 , 9. notes for div a56200-e2960 the occasion of writing this trea●is● . th● subject ●●tt●r of ●●is ensuing discourse . the confutation of the wicked opinions of the millenaries of the personall reign of christ upon earth after an. 1700. a d●clara●ion o● the e●fects of the blaving comet , anno 16●8 . grebners prophecie of our la●e king , and his son now king. ☜ ☜ a true explication of th● number in rev. 20.8 . the estate of england with other pr●vinces of europe from anno 1650. to an. 1698. certain remarkable numbers in scripture , whereby ●he epoch'● of the ruine of tu●k , po●e , and the conversion of the iews are more ●ully strengthned . a pr●gnostick of the estates of c●●tain years of an. 1657 of the eclipse in an. 1654. baudensis prognostication of anno 165● , 1658 , 1661 , 1663. a description of the 7 ●iery triplicities . the exposition of nebuchadnezzar● image , in dan. 2. the exposition of the 12 last chapters of ezeckiel . the exposition of the end of d●ni●ls 11 chap. ● the exposition of rev. 9.15 . the cōmon objection of divines against the v. monarchy and the universall kingdom of the gospel here upon earth , drawn from the badnesse of the times , answered . certain epigrams of petrus damiani of ●he ruine of tu●k and pope , &c. never yet before printed . prophesies of hieronymus savanatola . a prophecy lately found in france , of the future ●st●te of the world till an. 1710. the true explanation of the prophecy o● the cōtinu●nce of ●he turkish empire , found in m. fox's act● and mon●ment● , pag● 746. a prophecy of the year 1●98 , found in the study of iust●● lypsi●● ● a true exposition of a esdr. 11. c●● . evidences out of scripture that the ten tribes shall be brought out of tartaria & india , and converted to the gospel , as well as our western iews . a large discourse of a probable co●jecture that the ten tribes of israel were placed by salmanasser in arme●ia and media , & that from thence they passed into tartaria , and so into india . other excellent proofs of the future conversion and monarchy of the iews , 1 from abraham ● 2 from isaac . 3 from iacob . 4 from the new testament , act. 1. 5 from moses song , deut. 32. 6 from the history and life of ioseph what uses protestants ought to make of this blessing of the conversion of the iews● description of the four monarchies . reasons of the v. monarchy . prophecies of the lion of the north. 1 of the true merlin in k. lucius daies , an. ch. 130. 2 of greb●er● who shall be king of this v mona●chy . not the spaniard . nor the swede . object . answ. of the effects of that fatal star , which appeared in the head of cassiopea , an. ●●72 . the description of the flourishing monarchy of the gospel in america and india about anno 1710 , and a. 1763. a praye● to god to u●ite his church , end the afflictions of it , and to hasten the conversion of the iews , with the monarchy of the gospel . a new declaration set forth by the lord gen. hamilton wherein is declared, the full resolution of the officers and souldiers in the scottish army, to the presbyterians of england, and their resolution to settle the kings majesty in his royal throne, and to make him as glorious a prince as ever reigned in europe. likewise, the propositions of sir marmaduke langdale, to the lord generall, concerning the uniting of the two armies, and a declaration touching the presbyterians, and the royalists. presented to duke hamilton upon his entring into england, and the proceedings of the scottish army thereupon. also, another army advancing out of scotland, under the command of gen. monroe. and a great fight neer carlisle, between the two armies, and the number killed and taken. hamilton, james hamilton, duke of, 1606-1649. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a86996 of text r204868 in the english short title catalog (thomason e452_31). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 9 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 5 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a86996 wing h481 thomason e452_31 estc r204868 99864325 99864325 116552 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a86996) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 116552) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 72:e452[31]) a new declaration set forth by the lord gen. hamilton wherein is declared, the full resolution of the officers and souldiers in the scottish army, to the presbyterians of england, and their resolution to settle the kings majesty in his royal throne, and to make him as glorious a prince as ever reigned in europe. likewise, the propositions of sir marmaduke langdale, to the lord generall, concerning the uniting of the two armies, and a declaration touching the presbyterians, and the royalists. presented to duke hamilton upon his entring into england, and the proceedings of the scottish army thereupon. also, another army advancing out of scotland, under the command of gen. monroe. and a great fight neer carlisle, between the two armies, and the number killed and taken. hamilton, james hamilton, duke of, 1606-1649. langdale, marmaduke langdale, baron, 1598?-1661. [2], 6 p. printed at edenburgh, and re-printed at london, for general satisfaction both of presbyterians, royalists, and independents, [london] : 1648. annotation on thomason copy: "july 13". reproduction of the original in the british library. eng charles -i, -king of england, 1600-1649 -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a86996 r204868 (thomason e452_31). civilwar no a new declaration set forth by the lord gen. hamilton: wherein is declared, the full resolution of the officers and souldiers in the scotti hamilton, james hamilton, duke of 1648 1477 3 0 0 0 0 0 20 c the rate of 20 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2008-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-09 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-12 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-12 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a new declaration set forth by the lord gen. hamilton wherein is declared , the full resolution of the officers and souldiers in the scottish army , to the presbyterians of england , and their resolution to settle the kings majesty in his royal throne , and to make him as glorious a prince as ever reign'd in europe . likewise , the propositions of sir marmaduke langdale , to the lord generall , concerning the uniting of the two armies , and a declaration touching the presbyterians , and the royalists . presented to duke hamilton upon his entring into england , and the proceedings of the scottish army thereupon . also , another army advancing out of scotland , under the command of gen. monroe . and a great fight neer carlisle , between the two armies , and the number killed and taken . printed at edenburgh , and re-printed at london , for general satisfaction both of presbyterians , royalists , and independents , 1648. the scots new martch and their advancing into england with 12000. horse and foot , for king , covenant , and religion . vvith the lord generals declaration , sent to the counties of northumberland and westmerland . right honoured , the scots are now upon their march towards the borders of westmerland , with a resolution to advance towards the southern climate , the lord sincler with a regiment of horse , and two of foot is joyned with major general langdale , and the whole army , together with the tram of artillery will suddenly be united ; for they are now upon the confines of england , and upon the 12. of this instant intends to joyn with major generall langdale , their army consisting of 12000. horse & foot , besides 4000. more commanded by generall monroe , who is said to be come out of ireland with most of the said forces , having ma●e a cessation with the rebels , as it is reported . these are said to be very expert in martiall affaires , the worst of them being able to make a good commander . but notwithstanding all their great force , and impregnable power , our men are resolved to fight with them , being full of courage , and willing to adventure lives and fortunes against any forreigners whatsoever that shall endeavour to obstruct the peace of their native country . and being willing to testifie their fidelity both towards king , parliament , and kingdome , against the enemies thereof , have made another gallant attempt against the longtailes , the manner thus . on sunday night last our army comming to warwicke bridge four miles from carlisle , the enemy kept a strong guard of horse and foot there , but our men marching very silent , and the foot keeping their matches undiscovered , we were upon them before they were aware : our forlorn fell in amongst them , doing great execution , and being unwilling to dispute the businesse , the enemy set fire on their guards and fled , our men pursued them to the walls of carlisle still firing upon their rear , and did great execution , so that after a sharp breathing , we took about one hundred prisoners , forty horse , and sixty armes , with the losse of six men . this action hapned in the night , which saved the enemy many hundreds , but we gave them so hot an allarm , that they left all their quarters , and ran to carlisle . we hear that col. fairfax who lyeth with his forces at fern bridge , hath given the pomfret forces a defeat ; occasioned by their salleying forth upon fryday night last , a party of them being commanded out by major thimbleby who wheeling about by the lower towne . in the evening made their approach neer the bridge , but our centinels discovering them , gave the word privately back , and our men being in a readinesse to receive them , gave them a volley , ●ut notwithstanding they cam● within pistoll shot of the bridg foot , whereupon the captain of the guard , discharged a drake laden with key shot at them , the cunner being absent , which made such a rout , that they betook themselves to flight , our men pursued , & in the pursuit took their commander in chiefe prisoner , with divers others , and killed about 20. of them , pursuing the rest into pomfret town . we are further advertized , that about tuesday or wednesday he scots intend to set footing into england , and have already sent their embassage to the northern counties to be proclaimed and read at the respective market townes within the said counties which is to this effect . the declaration of duke hamilton . whereas we find the long sufferings of his royall majesty to be great & unexpressable , and the heavie burdens and oppressions of his liege people so intollerable and unsupportable , to the great dammage of divers of his majesties loyall subjects ; therefore we do declare , that we are resolved to hazard lives and fortunes for the redeeming of his majesty from prison , and to make him as glorious a king as even reigned in europe , to settle religion according to the covenant , & to establish and preserve the peace of both kingdoms , according to our solemn league and protestation . the declarations and propositions of major gen. langdale , to duke hamilton , concerning the presbyterians of england . upon the second of this instant july , sir marmaduke langdale , and sir tho : glenham called a generall councel , where appeared most of the field-officers under their present command , and after they were assembled together , they agreed upon certaine propositions , to be sent to duke hamilton , and the rest of the scottish peers , now in activity with the new raised forces of scotland , concerning the presbyterian parry of england ; which propositions i shall here communicate to the publike view , viz. i. that sir marmaduke langdale humbly desireth , that their lordships would be pleased to contrive some expedient way how he may declare , that as the presbyterian party be incouraged to joyn with us , in this our engagewenr for the king and covenant so the royall party may not be lost , but that a fair correspondencie may be kept betwixt both . ii. to acquaint their lordships with the reasons why the presbyterian party do not joyn with us , nor come in to our assistance , is , because they had some thoughts that we should have been left to our selves , and have received no assistance or ayd from this kingdome , to adhere to us , and to stand firme in this our association and conjunction , for the honour of the king , and the peace and happinesse of both kingdomes . iii. that they would be pleased , to let some person who is of known integrity to the lord generall , and faithfull to his present engagement , may be employed into england , to advertise their lordships of our procedings . iv. to certifie their lordships , that there hath been nothing wanting on our parts for the advancement of this great work , and to keep a good correspondency with the inhabitants of these northern counties , notwithstanding the falling off of lancashire , and our endeavouring to engage them with us . these propositions were agreed upon at a generall councell held in carlisle , and sent to duke hamilton , lord generall of the scots army ; who after reading thereof , in presence of most of the chiefe commanders , it was resolved , that orders should be forthwith sent to the commanders in chief of each regiment , to march with their regiments to the generall randezvouz at dumfreize , according to the day prefixed , which accordingly they did , where severall orders were read at the head of each regiment , concerning the discipline and government of the army , intimating the penalties which should be executed upon those that did offend . and after these and the like passages , each regiment drew off , and marched from the randezvouz , towards carlisle , the lord generall rode before them with his life-guard , accompanied with many noblemen , and knights of chivalry ; and it is believed , they will crosse the tweed tomorrow . edenburgh july 7. 1648. finis . a proclamation, intercommuning the rebels in the bass scotland. privy council. 1691 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05713 wing s1950 estc r183570 53299297 ocm 53299297 180027 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05713) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180027) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2810:52) a proclamation, intercommuning the rebels in the bass scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh, : anno dom. 1691. caption title. initial letter. imperfect: faded, with slight loss of text. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng insurgency -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-10 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-12 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-12 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation , intercommuning the rebels in the bass . william and mary by the grace of god , king and queen of great-britain , france and ireland , defenders of the faith ; to _____ macers of our privy council , pursevants , messengers at arm , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch , as by clear and express acts of parliament 〈…〉 our kingdom , it is declared to be high treason , to stuff houses , or hold them against vs , or to assail any castles or forts under our command , and to maintain and hold out the same by open force and violence , especially after they are charged and required by our heraulds , with our coat displayed in our name and authority to deliver up , and surrender the same , under the pains contained in the saids acts ; nevertheless james halyburton , michael middleton , patrick roy , and david dumbar , sometimes prisoners in our fort and garrison of the bass , and certain others , who have associat and joined themselves with them , have dared , after the surprysing of the said garrison where they were prisoners , presumptuously to fortifie , and by open violence defend and maintain our said garrison of the bass , against us , and our authority , notwithstanding of their being charged in manner forasaid to deliver up the same , and thereby have owned themselves open and manifest traitors ; and we being careful that none of our good subjects be ensnared by the saids rebels , and involved in their guilt ; do therefore , with advice of the lords of our privy council , declare the persons above-named , and all who have joyned themselves with them , in surprising , maintaining or defending our said garrison of the bass , guilty of open and manifest treason and rebellion , and ought to be pursued as traitors to us ; and we with advice foresaid , discharge and command all our subjects , that no person presume to aid , abett , assist , harbour , of any ways supply the saids traitors , or any of them , under the pain of treason , and that they do not keep correspondence , or intercommune with them , without warrand from our privy council for that effect , under the pains forsaid ; certifying such who shall do in the contrary , that they shall be holden and repute , treated , and proceeded against as art and part of , and accessory to the foresaid crime of treason and rebellion against us and our authority , with the utmost severity of our law. our will is herefore , and we charge you straitly and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and remanent mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the several shires , of haddingtoun , fife , berwick and clackmannan ; and in our name and authority , there , and at other places needful , make publication of the premisses , that none may pretend ignorance , as ye will answer to us thereupon , the which to do , we commit to you , conjunctly and severally , our full power , by these our letters , delivering them by you , duly execute , and indorsed again to the bearer . given under our signet , at edinburgh , the first day of july . and of our reign the third year , 1691. per actum dominorum secreti concilii , gilb . eliot , cls sti consilii . god save king vvilliam and queen mary . edinbvrgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to their most excellent majesties , anno dom , 1691. a proclamation against the importation of irish victual and cattel scotland. privy council. 1676 approx. 9 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05473 wing s1610a estc r183344 52612293 ocm 52612293 179594 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05473) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179594) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2793:66) a proclamation against the importation of irish victual and cattel scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to the king's most sacred majesty, edinburgh : 1676. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. intentional blank spaces in text. dated at end: given under our signet at edinburgh, the fourteen day of december, and of our reign, the twenty eighth year, 1676. signed: tho. hay, cl. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng foreign trade regulation -scotland -early works to 1800. animal industry -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -commerce -ireland -early works to 1800. ireland -commerce -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-12 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 scott lepisto sampled and proofread 2009-01 scott lepisto text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal blazon or coat of arms c r 〈…〉 a proclamation , against the importation of irish victual and cattel . charles , by the grace of god , king of great britain , france , and ireland , defender of the faith ; to our lovites , _____ messengers , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch , as we and our estates of parliament , by several acts , have ( upon diverse weighty considerations , ) discharged the importation of all irish victual and cattel into this kingdom , under the pains , and certifications therein contained : and whereas the lords of our privy council have emitted several acts and proclamations in pursuance of the saids acts of parliament , notwithstanding whereof , and of all the care and endeavours taken , to hinder and prevent the importing of irish victuall and cattel , finding the same is imported into this kingdom : and considering the best and firtest way for preventing thereof , might be to commissionat some persons of power and authority in the several places of the countrey where the said victual and cattel is ordinarly brought in and landed . we therefore , with advice of the lords of our privy council have thought fit , to grant full power , authority , and commission to our right trustie and well beloved cousins and councellors , archibald , earl of argyle , and george , lord rosse , and to our well beloved , richard murray of brughtoun , by themselves , their deputs , servants , and such as they shall think fit to appoint ( for whom they will be answerable ) to search for , seize , and apprehend all irish victual and cattel , and salt-beef made thereof , that shall happen to be imported from ireland unto this kingdom in the particular places after-specified , viz. the said earl of argyle in all places , from lechlung to the mule of kintyre , and round about the same . the said lord ross in all places , from the burgh of glasgow , to the march of galloway on the south , and from glasgow , to lochlung on the north : and the isles of arran , bute and comray : and the said richard murray , from the march of galloway , to the march of nithsdale . and for the more ready and effectual prosecution of the said commission , have granted full power and authority to the saids earl of argyle , lord ross and richard murray by themselves , their deputs , servants , and such as they shall think fit to entrust in the respective bounds foresaids , to secure all barks , or travelling boats whether scots or irish , until the skippers or owners shall find caution that they shall import no irish victual or cattel hereafter . the saids commissioners or their foresaids are thereby authorized to search all barks , boats , or other vessels , wherein any irish victual or cattel are suspected to be ; and to seize and secure the same , incase they find the saids prohibited goods therein ; and for better discovery thereof , all merchants , skippers , or owners of boats , barks , or other vessels travelling to and from the places foresaids , are thereby ordered before they break bulk , or liver any goods , to advertise the saids commissioners , or these entrusted by them at one or other of the ports following , viz. at the point of garvel near greenock , the towns of largs , irving , turnberry , dumbarton , rothesay , brodick , dinnon , tarbet , campbletoun , innerarey , portpatrick , glenluce and kirkudbright ( at which ports , offices are stablished to receive these advertisements ; ) under the pain of confiscation of the saids vessels and goods , and being holden as confest importers of irish victual : provided that the skippers or owners , shall not upon such occasion be obliged to wait longer then one tydes water . if upon pregnant presumptions the saids commissioners , or these entrusted by them shall suspect any person or persons guilty of importing irish victual or cattel , they are thereby authorized to conveen any such person or persons before the nearest magistrat in burgh or landwart , and to lead all manner of probation against them for proving thereof : whereupon the saids magistrats are to give present and ready justice . all sheriffs , stewarts , bailyes of royalties , regalities , and baronies , and all heretors are thereby ordered to give their speedy and ready assistance to the saids commissioners , or these entrusted by them , when ever they shall be required , either as to the searching of vessels by night or day , making open and patent doors , searching of sellars , or other suspect places for irish victual or cattel , which they are thereby authorized to do . as also the officers of any garrison are obliged to concurr , and assist them with a party of souldiers as they shal be desired upon any extraordinary occasion . in case any seizure be made by the saids commissioners , or these entrusted by them ; the heretors next adjacent to the said place are thereby required to cause carry the victual to some convenient place nearest , untill our council shall give order thereanent : and these so employed shall be payed by the person who makes the seizure for each horse carriage ; not exceeding two shilling scots the mile . the saids commissioners , or these entrusted by them are thereby empowered with consent of the magistrat of the place to send any person or persons to prison who shall be found guilty of contraveening the saids laws , or shall be contumacious in refusing to depone ; the magistrats of the place being alwayes free of the prisoners charges : in which case , the magistrats are to secure the prisoners and their vessels , and to be comptable for them : and in case any person or persons shall make open resistance against the saids commissioners , or these entrusted by them in the execution of our said commission , and that there shall happen blood-shed , mutilation or slaughter to follow , through the said resistance ; it is declared that the saids commissioners , and these entrusted by , or giving assistance to them , shal never be called in question , or pursued therefore civily or criminally in time coming . and further , by the said commission , it is declared , that the same shall no wayes free or liberat the importers or resetters of irish victual or cattel , or heretors upon whose ground the same shall be imported , but that they shall continue still lyable to the pains and penalties appointed by the saids acts of parliament and council ; as if the said commission had never been granted : which commission is to begin and take effect , from , and after the first day of january next , and to continue until the first day of january , 1678 years . and to the effect , all our leidges and others concerned , may have due and timeous notice thereof , we have thought fit , that these our letters of publication of the same should be direct in manner under-written . our will is herefore ; and we charge you straitly , and command , that incontinent these our letters seen ye passe , to the mercat-crosses of edinburgh , glasgors dumbariours , and other places needful : and thereat , in our name and authority , by open proclamation , make publication of the premisses ; to the effect , that all our leiges , and others concerned , may have due and timous notice of our pleasure in the premisses , and may give ready obedience to our commands therein , as they will be answerable at their highest peril . given under our signet at edinburgh , the fourteen day of december , and of our reign , the twenty eighth year , 1676. per actum dominorum secriti concilii . tho. hay . cl. sti. concilii . god save the king. edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to the king 's most sacred majesty . 1676. edinburgh, the 16 day of june, one thousand six hundred seventy and four years. act assuring a reward to any who shall apprehend some rebels and others. scotland. privy council. 1674 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05306 wing s1405 estc r182981 53981721 ocm 53981721 180348 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05306) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180348) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2826:36) edinburgh, the 16 day of june, one thousand six hundred seventy and four years. act assuring a reward to any who shall apprehend some rebels and others. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by his majestie's printers, edinburgh : anno dom. 1674. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. signed at end: tho. hay, cls. sti. concilii. imperfect: creased with slight loss of text. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng covenanters -scotland -legal status, laws, etc. -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1660-1688 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-12 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 megan marion sampled and proofread 2009-01 megan marion text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion edinburgh , the 16. day of june , one thousand six hundred seventy and four years . act assuring a reward to any who shall apprehend some rebels and others . forasmuch as the keeping of field-conventicles , and the intruding upon , and invading of pulpits , are most unlawful and disorderly practices , tending to the disturbance of the peace , and to the affront of his majesties authority , and notwithstanding the laws and acts of parliament prohibiting the same , under high pains therein mentioned , the ring-leaders , promoters , and other persons guilty of the said disorders , are emboldned to commit the same , presuming that they will not be discovered and brought to trial and punishment : therefore the lords of his majesties privy council for the encouragement of all his majesties good subjects to discover and apprehend all such persons as is after-mentioned , do hereby offer , declare , and give assurance , that if any person , being of his majesties standing forces , or of the militia , or any other his majesties subjects , shall seiz upon , and apprehend any person or persons , who since his majesties late gracious proclamation of the 24. of march last , hath convocated any number of persons to field-conventicles , or at any 〈…〉 persons thereto , or shall apprehend any heretors or others being at field-conventicles , while the saids persons are present at , or coming from the same , so that the saids persons apprehended shall be brought to a trial , and shall be found guilty and convict of the said offences , that the apprehenders of such persons shall have the gift of the fines of the saids persons given to them : and incase any person or persons be cited for the saids crimes and offences , and after certification is granted against them for their contumacy and not appearing , shall be apprehended , the apprehenders of such persons shall have the gift of their escheats , and benefit arising from the said certifications . and whoever of the standing forces , militia , or others his majesties good subjects , shall apprehend any minister or other person preaching at any field-conventicle , or who hath preached since the said proclamation , or shall at any time hereafter preach at field-conventicles , or any of them . and whatsoever person or persons shall apprehend and seiz upon any outed minister who are not licenced by the council , or any other person not authorized nor tolerat by the bishop of the diocess , who since the time foresaid have invaded , or shall invade any pulpit or pulpits , the person or persons apprehending any of the ministers or other persons foresaid guilty of preaching at field-conventicles , or invading of pulpits , shall for their reward have payed to them the sum of an thousand merks : and for the persons after-named , viz. mr , john welsh , mr. gabriel sempil , and mr. samuel arnot , the apprehenders shall have the sum of 2000 merks payed to them . and his majesties subjects are not only warranted to seiz upon , and apprehend the saids disorderly persons in manner foresaid ; but it further declared by the saids lords of council , that upon consideration of the condition of the persons who shall be apprehended according as they have been more stickling and active in the said disorders , and the pains and diligence of the apprehenders and other circumstances , they will also consider what further reward shall be given to them for their service . and ordains these presents to be printed , that none pretend ignorance . tho. hay , cl s. s ti . concilii . edinburgh , printed by his majestie 's printers : anno dom. 1674. an order for the speedy raising of money for the advancing of the scotch army die sabbathi. 7. october. 1643. england and wales. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a82917 of text r211988 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.7[46]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a82917 wing e1682 thomason 669.f.7[46] estc r211988 99870649 99870649 161027 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a82917) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 161027) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 245:669f7[46]) an order for the speedy raising of money for the advancing of the scotch army die sabbathi. 7. october. 1643. england and wales. parliament. penington, isaac, sir, 1587?-1660. city of london (england). lord mayor. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [london : 1643] imprint from wing. signed at end: isaac pennington, mayor. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng scotland. -army -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. a82917 r211988 (thomason 669.f.7[46]). civilwar no an order for the speedy raising of money for the advancing of the scotch army. die sabbathi. 7. october. 1643. england and wales. parliament. 1643 605 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an order for the speedy raising of money for the advancing of the scotch army . die sabbathi . 7. october . 1643. whereas by the desperate designes and plots of papists , prelates , and other ill-affected persons , there hath beene a most cruell , and unnaturall warre raised in both the kingdomes of ireland , and england , to the almost utter destruction of the protestants , and their religion , in the kingdome of ireland , and tò the hazzard of the like ruine , both of religion and liberty to us and our posterity , in this kingdome of england ; the which miserable and deplorable condition of both these late flourishing kingdomes , and the apparent and eminent danger , which upon the ruine of these islands may ensue to other reformed protestant churches throughout the world . the lords and commons assembled in parliament , having taken into serious consideration , and finding no neerer , or speedyer assistance in this their sad condition , than by their brethren of scotland ; have thought fit by commissioners lately sent unto our said brethren , to invite them to the speedy helpe and deliverance of this bleeding kingdom , from the cruell and mercilesse proceedings of the common enemy , by their comming into this kingdome with an army to that purpose , unto which desire , our said brethren , as being exceeding sensible of our aforementioned deplorable condition , have expressed both by their owne commissioners , which they have presently thereupon sent unto us , as also by certaine intelligence from our owne commissioners that are resident in scotland , herein fully assented ; being now neere unto a readinesse to enter into this kingdome , with an army of one and twenty thousand horse and foote , with all things necessary , and fit thereunto , for which a supply of money is most necessary , and without which , they are no wayes able to move with their army . therefore , for the better advancing of this necessary service , the ministers of every parish are required publikely to stirre up their parishioners thereunto , and the churchwardens of every parish to cause an assembly of the parishioners to morrow after sermon in the afternoone , where it is expected that all such who are sensible of the dangers imminent , and desirous that this opportunity which god hath put into our hands , may be improved to the best and most speedy advantage , will subscribe such summes of money , as the necessity of so great a worke doth require , and that upon monday next ( being the ninth of this instant october ) by nine of the clocke afore noone , the churchwardens bring into goldsmiths hall , the said subscriptions , and that all such as shall have subscribed , doe on the same day , or very speedily after , bring in , or cause to be brought in , all such summes of money as they have so subscribed , where there are treasurers appointed to receive , and to give acquittances for the same ; with consideration for the time of the forbearance thereof ; for which summes so lent , there shall be the publicke faith of both kingdomes , of england and scotland given , together with such other security , as shall give content to all true lovers of their religion and country . let this be read and published , as is desired , isaac pennington , mayor . a proclamation, indemnifying such rebels as shall lay down their arms. at edinburgh, the 14 day of august 1689. scotland. privy council. 1689 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05709 wing s1944 estc r233619 52528998 ocm 52528998 179104 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05709) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179104) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:93) a proclamation, indemnifying such rebels as shall lay down their arms. at edinburgh, the 14 day of august 1689. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to their most excellent majesties, edinburgh : 1693. caption title. initial letter. text in black letter. signed at end: gilb. eliot, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng revolutionaries -legal status, laws, etc. -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -revolution of 1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-04 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-05 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-05 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation , indemnifying such rebels as shall lay dovvn their arms. at edinburgh , the 14 day of august 1689. whereas their majesties , king william and queen mary , being most desirous to restore the peace of this their antient kingdom , and to vnite all their subjects in a chearful obedience to their government , they are graciously pleased to extend their mercy , even to those who have been misled and seduced to rise in open arms and rebellion against their authority ; his majesty by his royal letter , dated at hampton court the eight instant , direct to his privy council , did authorize and impower them to issue forth a proclamation of indemnity , to all those who are now in rebellion against their majesties authority , in the kingdom of scotland , who shall lay down their arms betwixt and the days after-specified , and shall submit themselves to , and acknowledge their majesties authority , take the oath of allegiance , and give security for their future good behaviour : and to the effect that their majesties gracious intentions may be made effectual , that the minds of these persons may be quieted from the fears and apprehensions that the just punishments may be inflicted upon them , which their crimes deserve : therefore the lords of his majesties privy council , by his majesties special warrand , and in their majesties name and authority , do indemnifie , secure and pardon all such persons as are in open arms and rebellion within this kingdom , or have been accessory thereto , by converse , resett , intercommuning with , or any way assisting the rebels ; providing always the persons foresaid shall lay down their arms within eight dayes after the proclamation of this indemnity , at the mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the shires where they dwell , or stay for the time ; and that in testimony of their submission to , and acknowledgment of his majesties authority , all noblemen , gentlemen , chiftains of clanns , heretors and officers shall apply to major-general mackay , commander in chief of his majesties forces , and before him swear and sign the oath of allegiance to their majesties , betwixt and the third day of september , in this instant year of god 1689 , or before the lords of his majesties privy council at edinburgh , betwixt and the tenth day of the foresaid month of september , and find such security as they are able for their future good behaviour ; and that all other yeomans , and such as are below the degree of heretors , or officers , shall repair to the sheriffs of the respective shires where they dwell , or their deputs , or to such other persons as may be appointed by the council , and before them acknowledge their majesties authority , and swear and sign the oath of allegiance : and the lords of his majesties privy council do assure and declare , all such persons who shal lay down their arms , and fulfil the conditions foresaid , that they shal be altogether free , safe and secure from all manner of punishment , pains and penalties that can be inflicted upon them for open rebellion , acts of hostility , or any manner of accession to rebellion against their majesties : and that such as continue obstinat and incorrigible , after the offer of so great mercy and favour , shall be punished as traitors and rebels to the utmost extremity of law ; and requires and commands all iudges and ministers of the law , to interpret this present indemnity in the most favourable manner ; declaring always , likeas it is hereby expresly declared , that this present indemnity shall not be extended or beneficial to any persons in prison , who have been under his now majesties pay , and guilty of any of the crimes above-mentioned . and ordains these presents to be printed , and published at the mercat-crosse of edinburgh , and all the other mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the shires of the kingdom , by heraulds , macers , pursevants , or messengers at arms. extracted by me gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . follows the oath of allegiance . i do sincerely promise and swear , that i will be faithful , and bear true allegiance to their majesties , king william and queen mary . so help me god. god save king william and queen mary . a proclamation, for putting the kingdom of scotland in a posture of defence against the enemies of the king and government scotland. privy council. 1685 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05672 wing s1893 estc r183526 53981740 ocm 53981740 180373 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05672) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180373) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2827:2) a proclamation, for putting the kingdom of scotland in a posture of defence against the enemies of the king and government scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1685. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. dated: given under our signet at haly-rude-house, the 28. day of april 1685. and of our reign the first year. signed: will. paterson, cls. sti. concilij. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng monmouth, james scott, -duke of, 1649-1685. scotland. -army -mobilization -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1660-1688 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion jr royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , for putting the kingdom of scotland in a posture of defence against the enemies of the king and government . james , by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith ; to our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers of our privy council , pursevants , and messengers , at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as these traiterous conspirators , who designed the horrid and sacrilegious murder of our dearest brother , the late king , of renowned and eternal memory , and the destruction of our ancient monarchy , continuing still in the same hellish project and fury against us , and our royal government ; are now again setting their designs on work , to raise commotions in this our ancient kingdom , as being the last struglings of them , and their execrable party , and the outmost effects of their absolute despair : for preventing whereof , and bringing these desperat and execrable traitors to just and condign punishment ; we , with advice of our privy council , do hereby strictly require and command , all and every of the subjects of this our realm , that they be in a readiness in their best arms concur and assist us against any the aforesaid commotions , or insurrections , as they shall be advertised ; and particularly , we hereby require and command , all and every the collonels of our militia regiments of foot , and captains of horse , and the inferiour officers and souldiers under their command , in the shires respective under-written , viz. the merse teviotdale , peebles , selkirk , east , mid , and west lothians , town edinburgh , stirling shire , fife and kinross shires ; the four companies of the low-countrey , of the earl of perth our chancellors regiment ; and the three companies of the low-countrey , of the marquess of athol , lord privy seal , his regiment ; the sheriffs of forfar and kincardin ; and all the heretors , liferenters , feuars and wodsetters in the shires of air , renfrew , clidsdale , wigtoun , dumfreis , and stewartries and bailliaries within the same , to be in readiness with fourteen dayes provision , to march when , and whether our privy council shall give them orders ; and to that end , to have their arms fixed , and their several companies of our militia , presently mustered , and the heretors and others aforesaid , listed modelled in companies , and mustered for the putting them in a condition of a greater readiness . and further , we hereby require and command all persons , fenciblesmen , betwixt sixty and sixteen , within the shires of aberdene , bamff , elgin , nairn , inverness , ross , sutherland and caithness , to be in readiness in manner foresaid . as likewise , we hereby require and command all our liedges on the sea-coasts of this kingdom , or near to them , or to any of the islands thereunto belonging , so soon as they hear , or get notice of any vessels arriving at any place from abroad , or at home into any coasts , ports , creiks , or harbours , with men , arms , or ammunition , forthwith to convocat , and rise in their best arms , and to beat them off , or seize upon , and secure the ships or vessels , and the men , arms , and ammunition , and give immediate advertisement to our privy council , and for their security in obeying these our royal commands , we hereby fully pardon and indemnifie them forever , of all slaughter , blood , mutilation , fire-raising , burning of ships , or suchlike warlike inconveniencies as may follow , in case they meet with hostile-opposition : and we hereby require and command all our collectors , customers , or waiters , to make strict and diligent search and inquiry in all ships , arriving in any part of this kingdom , for traitors , rebels , fugitives , or disaffected persons , and for arms and ammunition , and to seize upon the ships , men , arms , and ammunition , until they acquaint our privy council , and receive their directions thereanent : and to the effect they may the better be able to perform this service , we do require all our subjects nearest to them , as they shall be by them advertised to rise , concur with , fortifie and assist them , who , and these so assisting , are hereby declared to be fully indemnified in manner foresaid . and that all the persons aforesaid may know their hazard , if they fail in any of the premisses . we hereby declare , that they shall not only incur our high displeasure , but also shall be punished with the outmost of severity , conform to their demerit , and the laws and practice of this kingdom , and that the heretors which shall be deficient in sending out their tennents , and other fensible men , or shall not give advertisement as said is , and of any rebels and traitors appearing on their lands , that they shall be punished accordingly . and to the end the saids . desperat traitors and rebels may have no reset , harbour , comfort or refuge from any of the subjects of this our realm . we hereby strictly prohibite and discharge all and every of our subjects therein , fo furnish house , meat , drinks or any other thing comfortable to them , or to keep intelligence , or correspondence with them , by word , writ , or message , or to transport them to , or from ferries , or any wayes to be aiding , abating or assisting to them , under the pain of being repute and esteemed art and part with them in all their wicked deeds and practices , and proceeded against , demeaned and punished accordingly . and that our plesure in the premisses may be fully known to all our leidges , our will is , and we charge you strictly and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat cross of edinburgh , and all the other mercat crosses of the head-burghs of the shires of this kingdom ( and all places else needful ) and there by open proclamation , in our name and authority , make publication of our royal will and pleasure in the premisses , that none pretend ignorance . given under our signet at haly-rude-house , the 28. day of april 1685. and of our reign the first year . per actum dominorum secreti concilij . will. paterson , cl. sti. concilij . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1685. an congratulatory poem, on the safe arrival of the scots african and indian fleet in caledonia and their kind reception by the natives, with an amicable advice to all concerned. r. a. 1699 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a75246 wing a26c estc r231744 99897603 99897603 137218 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a75246) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 137218) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2505:1) an congratulatory poem, on the safe arrival of the scots african and indian fleet in caledonia and their kind reception by the natives, with an amicable advice to all concerned. r. a. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh 1699] verse "scotland rejoyce, and praise the king of kings,". signed at end: r.a. imprint from wing cd-rom, 1996. reproduction of original in the john carter brown library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. broadsides 2008-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-09 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-11 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-11 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an congratulatory poem , on the safe arrival of the scots african and indian fleet in caledonia , and their kind reception by the natives , with an amicable advice to all concerned . scotland rejoyce , and praise the king of kings , who this your project to good success brings commands the winds and seas to favour you more than any e're attemp't that place before , from brittish ports and makes you friends of those whom all men judged , would have been your foes , brake off divisions then , in unitie , amongst your selves , and in fraternitie , together live , to all the earth 't is known the thirstle buds after the rose is blown ; let courage and conduct , you strengthen soe , as may enable you ' gainst any foe , your ancestors by courage got renown , and by their valour run their enemies down , no nation e're could conquer scotland , by the force of arms , if not that treachery , too much prevail'd with those who bear command , which to the sad experience of this land , is ah! alas too true therefore take head , the proverb is , that burn'd bairns fire do dread , let no pretentions fring affinitie , to one another , but see that ye agree , with courage to defend you from all foes . that they who dare molest you , may find blowes : the thirstle pricks the fingers with it close . i wish that heavens may still favour this trade , under the indian pole , and treasure hade worthy the pains and travel you are at , t' enrich this land was long depauperat , that scotland may yet flourish and in peace , preserved be from all seek to deface , its fame , so that its honest industrie , may persevere to all posteritie , that all the neighbouring nations yet may own , scotland deserves still honour and renown , and those who do this traffick propogat , may have their names , in ages memorat , that whilst the sun and moon endure they may be prosperous , i heartily do pray , though some may chance by casual death to fall yet let not that discourage great nor small ; for since they sail'd , double the number have even here at home , doubtless gone to the grave . more honourable , a funeral cannot be ther. brave adventurers have tho in the sea , they be intomb'd till she yeild up her dead , no man of courage will such dangers dread , to wish my country well , 's all i can do , since i am poor of purse and person too . r. a. charles by the grace of god, king of great britaine ... forsomuch as in our parliament holden at edinburgh upon the twentie eighth day of june, 1633 ... have made a free and willing offer of one yearly extraordinarie taxation of the sixteenth pennie of all annuall rents ... scotland. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) 1633 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a11702 stc 21991 estc s2322 23273161 ocm 23273161 26485 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11702) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 26485) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1803:24) charles by the grace of god, king of great britaine ... forsomuch as in our parliament holden at edinburgh upon the twentie eighth day of june, 1633 ... have made a free and willing offer of one yearly extraordinarie taxation of the sixteenth pennie of all annuall rents ... scotland. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) charles i, king of england, 1600-1649. 1 broadside. r. young, [edinburgh : 1633] second pt. of title from text. imprint suggested by stc (2nd ed.). "given under our signet at edinburgh the twentie eighth day of june, and of our reigne the ninth year, 1633." reproduction of original in the town house (aberdeen, scotland). charter room. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng taxation -scotland. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649. scotland -proclamations. 2007-08 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2007-09 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion charles by the grace of god , king of great britaine , france , and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. to 〈…〉 messengers , our sheriffs , in that part conjunctly and severally specially constitute greeting . forsomuch as in our parliament holden at edinburgh upon the twentie eighth day of june , 1633. the three estates of our kingdome of scotland being assembled , having taken to their consideration the many blessings which this nation doth enjoy under our most wise , happie , and peaceable government , whereof each estate is most sensible , our royall zeale for propagating the gospel of jesus christ , our care for providing sufficient maintenance for the clergie , our extraordinarie pains taken for uniting the dis-jointed members of this common-wealth , and extirping of all roots of discords , relieving the oppressed , and with so even and fatherly a hand curing the wounds of this common-wealth , as the wisest eye can finde no blemish in the temper of all our royall actions ; and lastly , the great comfort they have by enjoying of our presence , pains taken , and expences disburst by us in this our journey , have made a free and willing offer of one yearly extraordinarie taxation of the sixteenth pennie of all annuall rents which any person or persons within this our said kingdome have freely due and payable to them yearly or termly ( their owne annuall rents wherein they are adebted to others being first deduced ) the first termes payment whereof is to be and begin at the feast and terme of martinmasse in the year of god , 1634. and so forth yearly and termly at martinmasse and whitsunday for the space of six years , untill the said six years and twelve termes payment thereof be full and completely out-run . and whereas we and our estates have by act of the said parliament authorised all and sundrie heretable sheriffs , stewards , bayliffs , and bayliffs of regalities , and their deputes , and the provests and bayliffs of free burrows within the bounds of their jurisdictions , as likewise the clerks within the jurisdictions where these offices are not heretable ( which clerks have their offices ad vitam ) to collect the said extraordinarie taxation , and to make payment thereof to the collector generall to be appointed by us for receiving of the same . therefore , and for inbringing of the 〈…〉 termes payment of the said extraordinarie taxation , our other letters are direct , charging all and sundrie heretable sheriffs , stewards , bayliffs , and bayliffs of regalities , their deputes and clerks , and the provests and bayliffs of free burrows and their clerkes , as likewise the clerkes within the jurisdictions where these offices are not heretable , that they and everie one of them dwelling by north the river of dee within the space of fifteene daies after the said terme of 〈…〉 in the year of god 163● years , and that they and everie one of them dwelling be south the river of dee within the space of ten daies after the said terme , deliver to 〈…〉 our collector generall appointed by us for receiving the said extraordinarie taxation , a true and justaccompt and inventar of the whole sowmes of money due to be payed by any person within the bound of their jurisdictions for his part of the said extraordinarie taxation , and that they give up the same compt and inventar upon their oathes solemnely sworne that the same are just and true , and that they make payment to our said collector generall , or to his deputes in his name , having his power to receive the same of the whole moneys due to be payed to us , conforme to the said accompt and inventar for the said 〈…〉 termes payment of the said extraordinarie taxation , within twentie daies after the terme of 〈…〉 in the year of god , one thousand six hundred thirtie 〈…〉 years , under the pain of rebellion and putting of them to our horne . for whose reliefe 〈◊〉 our will is , and we charge you straitly and command , that incontinent these our letters seene , ye passe , and in our name and authoritie command and charge all and sundrie the said annuall-rentars dwelling within that our 〈…〉 to make payment to you our said 〈…〉 and your deputes of the said sixteenth pennie of all annuall rents freely due and payable to them as for the said 〈…〉 termes payment of the said extraordinarie taxation , within twentie daies next after they be charged by you thereto , under the paine of rebellion and putting of them to our horne . and if they failyie the said twentie daies being by-past , that ye incontinent thereafter denounce the disobeyers our rebels , and put them to our horne , and escheat and inbring all their moveable goods to our use for their contemption . and if need be , that ye our said 〈…〉 poynd and distrenyie therefore , as ye shall thinke most expedient . according to justice , as ye will answer to us thereupon . the which to doe we commit to you conjunctly and severally our full power , by these our letters delivering them by you duely execute and indorsed againe to the bearer . given under our signet at edinburgh the twentie eight day of june , and of our reigne the ninth year , 1633. per actum parliamenti ▪ by the lord lieutenant. ormonde. whereas the present parliament is adjourned until the five and twentieth day of this present may: ... ireland. lord lieutenant (1661-1669 : ormonde) 1663 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a46191 wing i931 estc r213870 99826129 99826129 30521 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a46191) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 30521) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1760:35) by the lord lieutenant. ormonde. whereas the present parliament is adjourned until the five and twentieth day of this present may: ... ireland. lord lieutenant (1661-1669 : ormonde) ormonde, james butler, duke of, 1610-1688. aut 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by john crook, printer to the kings most excellent majesty; and are to be sold by samuel dancer, next door to the bear and ragged-staffe in castle-street, dublin : 1663. title from heading and first lines of text. at end: given at his majesties castle of dublin the 21th day of may, 1663. god save the king. prorogues the parliament until 21 july 1663. reproduction of the original in the bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. 2007-11 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 pip willcox sampled and proofread 2008-08 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion c2 r diev et mon droit honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms by the lord lieutenant . ormonde . whereas the present parliament is adjourned until the five and twentieth day of this present may : and whereas for sundry good causes and considerations , we have thought it convenient and necessary to prorogue the said parliament until the one and twentieth day of july next , we do therefore will and require all persons to whom it doth or shall appertain , to take due notice thereof , to the end that in the mean time they may repair to their houses , or otherwise apply themselves about their private affairs at their pleasures , and then to give their attendance here again at the day and time aforesaid in the usual place appointed for that intended service , whereof they may not fail . given at his majesties castle of dublin the 21th day of may , 1663. god save the king . dvblin , printed by john crook , printer to the kings most excellent majesty , and are to be sold by samuel dancer , next door to the bear and ragged-staffe in castle-street , 1663. a true and impartiall account of the plunderings, losses, and sufferings of the county of hereford by the scottish army, during their siege before the city of hereford, anno dom. 1645. since brought in by the country in writing. published in this juncture of time for the undeceiving of the people, who may perhaps fancy to themselves some imaginable advantage by stickling for the scots and their partizans in this nation. by miles hill, gent. hill, miles. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a86351 of text r205863 in the english short title catalog (thomason e607_3). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 38 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 9 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a86351 wing h2004 thomason e607_3 estc r205863 99865107 99865107 117344 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a86351) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 117344) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 93:e607[3]) a true and impartiall account of the plunderings, losses, and sufferings of the county of hereford by the scottish army, during their siege before the city of hereford, anno dom. 1645. since brought in by the country in writing. published in this juncture of time for the undeceiving of the people, who may perhaps fancy to themselves some imaginable advantage by stickling for the scots and their partizans in this nation. by miles hill, gent. hill, miles. [2], 14 p. printed by e.g. for l.c., london : 1650. annotation on thomason copy: "july. 2d". reproduction of the original in the british library. eng scotland. -army -history -early works to 1800. great britain -history -commonwealth and protectorate, 1649-1660 -early works to 1800. hereford (england) -history -siege, 1645 -early works to 1800. a86351 r205863 (thomason e607_3). civilwar no a true and impartiall account of the plunderings, losses, and sufferings of the county of hereford by the scottish army, during their siege hill, miles. 1650 4452 3 0 0 0 0 0 7 b the rate of 7 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the b category of texts with fewer than 10 defects per 10,000 words. 2008-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-12 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 megan marion sampled and proofread 2009-01 megan marion text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a true and impartiall account of the plunderings , losses , and sufferings of the county of hereford by the scottish army , during their siege before the city of hereford , anno dom. 1645. since brought in by the country in writing . published in this juncture of time for the undeceiving of the people , who may perhaps fancy to themselves some imaginable advantage by stickling for the scots and their partizans in this nation . by miles hill , gent. london , printed by e. g. for l. g. 1650. to the christian reader . when the apostle makes a prediction of the evils and miscariages of the last daies , 2 tim. 3. he doth not instance in such wickednesses as are of a grosse and visible cognizance , but in those of a more spirituall and refined nature , men shall be lovers of themselves , without naturall affection , highminded , &c. for as in the appearances of heavenly glory the best wine is kept till last , and the compleatest enjoyments served up at the end of the feast ; so darknesse treasures up her most deceavable workes till the last shew and appearance of all her sorceries : the reason is , because the world being now ripened in understanding and judgement , by long and costly experience , is not so apt to be imposed upon by such evils , as lye open to the redargution of sence and common principles ; but is advanced into error by changable fallacies and deceits , through all gradations and methods of subtilties , according to the wisdom of him who is wiser in his generation then the children of light , amongst those dark and sable appearances which hightned the danger of the last times ; the apostle gives the last place to a form of godlinesse , without the power , ver. 5. & truly ( reader ) when thou seest self love , love of pleasure , covetousnesse , fiercenesse &c clothed with a form of religion , then judge that this prophecy is fulfilled , and that thou art fallen into the very last of the last dayes , ( i. ) into the lees of all danger , and the very dreggs of times . and indeed the world in a great measure labours under this deceit at this very time , when selfe and selfe interests are advanced , under notions , and pretences more specious and taking then their own ; who is there almost that lives in the true being and power of religion , and delights in it for its own sake ? but we embrace the outward huske and shell , mixing the pretences of divine and humane interest for worldly advantages , which is the most fordid and degenerous of all accompts ; how happy were it if the world were undeceaved in this particular , and could attaine to the true understanding and discernance of all things , untwisting all interests , unfolding all mysteries , giving unto caesar that which is caesars , and unto god that which is gods ? as i cannot acquit many of our owne from this evill , so thou hast here a pregnant instance of this deceit in the ensuing discourse . our brethren of scotland ( us we formerly called them ) in the flood of all their designes made their own interests and advantages the mid channell , the heart , and center , which acted and informed the course of their undertaking here amongst us . the pretended appearance of religion and zeale had at first wonne them great r●●ute amongst the credulous and well meaning english , especially in their first and best designes ; i myselfe was a great proselite of theirs till i had experimented their oppressions , self-seekings and cruelty at the siege before hereford ; where though they were sufficiently provided for , by the care of the honorable commissioners from the parliament of england , who were pleased to imploy me to get in provission from the country ; yet the great spoyle and havocke they made , almost to the impoverishing and ruining many poore families in that country , did wofully experiment the disagreement between their intentions and pretences in this particular : i speak not of the hamiltonians party , whose deceit was more grosse , and by consequence sooner found out , and deeply punished by him , who judgeth the fatherlesse and pleadeth the cause of the widdow ; but of the army under generall leven , cemented in a pretended kirk-interest ; these were the men that in five weekes endamaged this small county so many thousands , when they were setled in the siege before hereford , and an orderly course taken for their subsistance far above the ability of that poore county ; yet they soon found out waies to carpe at the proceedings of the parliaments commissioners , to disoblidge them , to weary them out , that so they might be their own carvers , and impose what charge they pleased upon the country , which was taxed by them five times above what the parliaments commissioners thought it able to beare ; of which thou hast here an accompt in the ensuing discourse , as to some parishes ; if i had not been impeded in my work by malignant , neutrall , and disaffected persons i had brought in a compleat catologue from the remaining parishes amounting to neare so much more ; is not neare 60000 li. a great losse for one county in five weeks , and that by pretended friends ? let not religion be abused hereafter ; let pollicy and piety go by distinct names ; let lucre appeare as it is ; let not selfe and self interest be ashamed to appeare to be what they are ; let us learne to distinguish persons , interests , and things hereafter ; let religion go for no more then it weighs ; ( i. ) let us ascribe no more truth or realty ●●men , then we can experiment in them ; let not pretences cheate us . naturallists observe that those bruites which come nearest the shape , but fall short of the true being of man , are most ugly ; t is so here , the more seemingly religious a pretence is , the nearer a kin to the outward forme , the more loathsome , despicable and deformed . yet , how are weapt to be deceived ? how are we transported ? how many proselytes have these false pretences , and interests amongst us ? what children are we when toys and fancies please us ? i write this ( if possible ) to caution and undeceive my country men from harkening to the syren layes of kirke seducers , these are the men that foment warres , strifes , divisions , in the world , for the maintenance of their own dominations and discontents ; if their stratagems were but seene , they were prevented , let us rather joyn hand in hand , and quietly sit under our own vines and figtrees in submission to the present power , then to make merchandize of our peace estates and lives by huckstering for any corrupt party or faction whatsoever ; if their little singer were so heavy , what wil their loynes be ? it is eccentricall to my purpose to enumerate all their miscarriages in their marches to and from hereford , and in the northerne countrys , i shall leave that to those who are fellow sufferers with us in the like miseries , hoping that they may be awakened to some such discovery as i doe here present thee with ; i shall say no more to thee , but wishing thee not to sacrifice thy wife and children to the bare pretences of a covenant , loyalty , religion ; i leave thee to the perusall of the ensuing discourse by which thy conviction as to the true understanding of the persons and designes herein mentioned ( through gods blessing may be more cheap and easie then ours ( to our so●●ow and smart ) was . an abstract taken of the losses dammages and plunderings of 106. small parishes within the county of hereford by the scottish army commanded by generall leven , in which the poor inhabitants thereof lost , as by a true accompt ready to be attested upon oath , under the hands of the officers and chiefe of every parish , to the value of the summes underwritten at every parish appearing , in which county are 70 parishes more which suffered in the like nature asmuch if not more , as is verily believed , which brought not in their accompts to be put to publique view , by reason of some disaffected to the businesse being scottified persons ; in the prosecution of which were divers houses riffled , doors , chests , and trunks broken open , severall families undone ; most of all their cattle , horses , and goods taken from them ; much mony plate , jewels and all kind of rich houshold-stuffe , rings , and other rich commodities , as wearing apparrel , linnen , books ; the plate & linnen of divers churches , neere all the horses , mares , & colts that ever they set their eyes upon as wel from friends as others ; which the reader may see if he please in an inventory , as it was taken and brought in writing unto miles hill gentleman , at the city of hereford , in the moneth of september 1646. being the severall accompts of each parish , at major mans house at the signe of the boote hard by the fountaine taverne in the strand ; these outrages being committed in july and august the yeare before , as they lay in siege before the city of that county ; their body of foote had then close begirt it ; who had their provisions brought in to them by the poor country-man , they confisting of 9000. and odde persons ; their horse that guarded these foote were about 1500. david lesley having marched with the rest towards scotland ; as soon as they entred the county the spoyle being divided most of it by those horse left to guard these foote , there being many hundred of women , & baggage horses ready to receive it , who packed it up , who did constantly march with this army . reader , if thou hadst been present to have seen the cryes these poor people made , if thy heart had not been hard , it would have melted into teares with them ; considering that this army comming in with the prayers of the kirke as brethren , should doe such things ; and all within the space of 36 dayes ; the siege began the 29. of july 1645. and rose up the second of september following , and left the city unattempted or taken . the severall losses and dammage sustained by the severall inhabitants in the severall parishes within the hundred of graytree .   l. s. d. taken and plundered from the brough and and forren of rose to the value of — 1189 18 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of much martle to the value of — 1104 11 04 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of eaton tregos to the value of — 0238 16 00 taken and plundered from the parishioners of ashton iguram to the valew of — 0178 04 10 taken and plundered from the parishioners of the lea to the value of — 0134 19 08 taken and plundered from the parishioners of linton to the value of — 0487 16 11 taken and plundered from the parishioners of woollhoye to the value of — 0650 00 00 taken and plundered from the parishioners of sollershop to the value of — 0094 09 00 taken and plundered from the parishioners of upton bishop to the valew of — 0674 12 08 taken and plundered from the parishioners of westton under _____ to the value of — 0742 05 08 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of waford to the value of — 0091 05 10 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of brampton to the value of — 0439 15 06 taken and plundered from the parishioners of putney to the value of — 0073 13 00 taken and plundered from the parishioners of mancels hope to the value of — 0063 00 00 taken and plundered from the parishioners of dorrington to the value of — 0328 08 02 taken and plundered from the parishioners of mordeford to the value of — 0490 00 00 summe 6979 08 08 the severall losses and dammage sustained by the severall inhabitants in the severall parishes within the hundred of woolsey .   l. s. d. taken and plundered from mr. manington of the parish of sarnfield to the valew of — 1000 00 00 taken and plundered from the parishioners of risbury and nicton to the value of — 0325 00 00 taken and plundred from the parishioners of docklow to the value of — 0123 01 08 taken and plundered from the parishioners more to the value of — 0051 13 03 taken and plundered from the parishioners of hatfield and doctlow to the valew of — 0107 08 04 taken from the parishioners of hursby , hepsleys green , and hoggaston to the value of — 0087 19 08 taken and plundered from the parishioners of sarnfield to the value of — 0022 19 00 taken from arthur vvinwood of upton gent. to the value of — 0185 00 00 taken from the parishioners of upton more by plunder to the value of — 0051 10 00 taken and plundered from the parishioners of tester to the value of — 0076 10 00 taken and plundered from mr. richard collins of upton to the value of — 0220 00 00 taken and plundered from the parishioners of yarpall to the value of — 0066 01 08 taken and plundered from the parishioners of little dwilwin and sollers to the value of — 0256 15 01 taken of mr. hyet of bidney to the valew of — 0015 16 01 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of warton and newton to the value of — 0176 11 00 taken and plundered from the parishioners of ivington — 0189 03 00 taken and plundered from the parishioners of eaton honner , and stretford to the value of — 1043 18 02 taken and plundered from the parishioners of hidehill and wintercot to the value of — 0068 18 04 taken and plundered from hope hampton , and winsbery to the value of — 0483 11 02 taken and plundered from the parishioners of humber to the valew of — 0055 05 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of lye court to the value of — 0031 18 06 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of luston to the value of — 0137 16 10 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of kimbolton to the value of — 0278 17 01 taken and plundered from the parishioners of orleton to the value of — 0027 13 04 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of ashton to the value of — 0032 16 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of moorton to the value of — 0093 00 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of little hereford to the value of — 0066 16 08 taken and plundered from the while and piddleston to the value of — 0022 03 06 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of stagbadge in chalstry to the value of — 0050 05 00 taken from the inhabitants of richford to the value of — 0220 00 00 taken from the inhabitants of eyton to the value of — 0088 08 04 taken from the inhabitants of lucton to the value of — 0063 18 04 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of middleton to the value of — 0217 05 11 summe 6130 11 11 the severall losses and dammage sustained by the severall inhabitants in the severall parishes within the hundred of broxas .   l. s. d. taken from the parishioners of marden by plunder to the value of — 0796 15 05 taken from preston town and the parishioners of willington to the value of — 0696 15 00 taken from the parishioners of felton to the valew of — 0099 13 04 taken from the inhabitants of bromyard cum membris to the valew of — 0682 17 06 taken and plundered from the parishioners of sutton to the value of — 0354 00 00 taken from the inhabitants of wacton to the value of — 0012 11 07 taken and plundered from the parishioners of grendon bishop to the value of — 0090 02 08 taken from the parishioners of amberley to the value of — 0066 00 00 taken from the parishioners of thorneby and rowden to the value of — 0043 05 04 taken and plundered from the parishioners of much cowyarne to the value of — 0278 10 00 taken and plundered from the parishioners of tedston dallamore to the value of — 0031 00 10 taken and plundered from tedston wafer to the value of — 0087 09 08 taken and plundered from the parishioners of pencomb to the value of — 0063 08 03 taken and plundered from the parishioners of ullinsweek and little coward to the value of — 0022 13 04 taken from the parishioners of stokelacye to the value of — 0120 12 10 taken from the parishioners of whiteborne to the value of — 0046 94 11 taken from the parishioners of ockle pychard to the value of — 0338 17 06 taken from the parishioners of stamford bishop to the value of — 0236 11 02 taken from the inhabitants of menbery to the value of — 0081 01 08 taken from the inhabitants of bromyard town to the valew of — 0252 02 00 taken from waffoloe , and one cooke to the valew of — 0057 00 00 taken from the parishioners of hampton charles — 0030 10 05 taken and plundered from the parishioners of boddenham to the value of — 0607 10 01 summe 4895 12 02 the severall losses and dammage sustained by the severall inhabitants in the severall parishes within the hundred of wormloe .   l. s. d. taken and plundered from the inhabitants of st. warne to the value of — 0195 00 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of bowlston to the value of — 0099 10 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of actenbury to the value of — 0105 10 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of dewsall to the value of — 0129 06 08 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of sellocke and foye to the value of — 0077 08 08 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of machbery to the value of — 0181 07 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of orcupe to the value of — 0097 11 02 in damage and losse to the inhabitants of kilpecke to the value of — 0104 14 02 taken und plundered from the inhabitants of kings chappell to the value of — 0063 11 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of little burch to the value of — 0071 03 08 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of little dew church to the value of — 0092 16 08 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of tretyre and michael church to the value of — 0165 02 08 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of londinabo to the value of — 0045 14 06 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of longaran to the value of — 0120 13 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of morstow — 0010 09 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of kentchurch to the value of — 0006 14 06 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of garway to the valew of — 0401 18 02 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of phitslowe to the value of — 0006 00 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of gotheridge to the value of — 0038 03 06 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of hentland to the value of — 0082 15 00 taken and plundered from morley of that parish to the value of — 0022 00 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of dewchurch to the value of — 0040 00 00 summe 2157 06 01 the severall losses and dammage sustained by the severall inhabitants in the severall parishes within the hundred of jemisworth .   l. s. d. taken and plundered from the inhabitants of holmer to the value of — 0531 07 04 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of hampton bishop to the value of — 0511 18 04 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of willington to the value of — 0485 13 08 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of wornsley to the value of — 0107 10 04 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of pipe to the value of — 0161 08 08 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of kenchester to the value of — 0336 12 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of credenhill to the value of — 0113 11 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of bushopson to the value of — 0218 11 02 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of norton cannon to the value of — 0112 10 10 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of byford to the value of — 0241 01 06 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of braynton to the value of — 0060 00 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of mornington to the value of — 0220 18 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of bridge sollerd to the valew of — 0211 10 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of yazor to the value of — 0172 12 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of stanton to the value of — 0352 16 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of burhill to the value of — 0268 12 04 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of mansell gamadge to the value of — 0212 02 06 summe 3818 15 08 the severall losses and dammage sustained by the severall inhabitants in the severall parishes within the hundred of huntington .   l. s. d. taken and plundered from the inhabitants of kington to the value of — 0165 02 11 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of huntington to the value of — 0140 09 03 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of brilley to the value of — 3152 03 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of eridesly to the value of — 0454 03 04 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of whitney to the valew of — 0193 06 08 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of cliffard and hardwick to the value of — 0221 10 07 taken and plundred from the inhabitants of winsorton to the value of — 0112 00 08 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of batch and _____ to the value of — 0151 08 06 taken and plundered from the severall inhabitants of clifford to the value of — 0017 16 08 summe 1608 00 09 the severall losses and dammage sustained by the severall inhabitants in the severall parishes within the hundred of bebtry .   l. s. d. taken and plundered from the inhabitants of preston upon wye to the value of — 0606 00 08 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of tremell to the value of — 0119 17 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of merkes to the value of — 0141 16 00 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of dorson to the value of — 0302 07 02 taken and plundered from the township of vowchurch to the value of — 0080 02 04 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of wormbridge to the value of — 0034 01 04 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of kentchurch to the value of — 0054 04 11 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of dinder to the value of — 0484 07 08 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of didley to the value of — 0307 15 07 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of kinson to the value of — 0392 19 10 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of black more to the value of — 0042 03 04 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of dulas to the value of — 0030 15 02 taken and plundered from backton parish to the value of — 0039 12 04 taken from the parish of peterchurch to the value of — 0237 16 08 taken and plundered from the inhabitants of abbeydore — 1212 03 01 taken from kentchurch and howton to the value of — 0177 18 10 taken from retherose and the inhabitants there to the value of — 0206 00 00 taken from the inhabitants of home larye to the value of — 0295 09 11 taken from the inhabitants of much dewchurch to the value of — 0689 12 11 taken from the inhabitants of eaton bishop to the value of — 0610 10 05 taken from other persons neer the parish to the value of — 0137 18 01 summe 6153 09 11 summe totall of all the aforesaid particulars is 31743 05 02 besides the dammage , plundering , and losses of the 70 parishes which brought not in their accounts : with divers gentlemen , and persons that neglected to bring in their accounts , that lived within the 160 parishes herein accounted for , which is expected , might have amounted neer the summe of 30000 li. more . finis . perth decemb. 14. 1650. the commission of the generall assembly considering how greivous a sin against god and scandall to religion it were for any of this kirke and kingdome to joine or comply with any of the sectarian enemy, ... church of scotland. general assembly. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a79708 of text r212065 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.15[68]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a79708 wing c4202 thomason 669.f.15[68] estc r212065 99870717 99870717 163141 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a79708) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 163141) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 246:669f15[68]) perth decemb. 14. 1650. the commission of the generall assembly considering how greivous a sin against god and scandall to religion it were for any of this kirke and kingdome to joine or comply with any of the sectarian enemy, ... church of scotland. general assembly. ker, a. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [s.l. : 1650] signed at end: a. ker. title from heading and first lines of text. annotation on thomason copy: "psalme 92. & 8. in latine as it was sent to ald: john ffowkes: [illegible]". reproduction of the original in the british library. eng church of scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1649-1660 -early works to 1800. a79708 r212065 (thomason 669.f.15[68]). civilwar no perth decemb. 14. 1650. the commission of the generall assembly considering how greivous a sin against god and scandall to religion it were church of scotland. general assembly. 1650 281 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion perth decemb. 14. 1650. the commission of the generall assembly considering how greivous a sin against god and scandall to religion it were for any of this kirke and kingdom to joine or comply with any of the sectarian enemy , who having most injustly invaded this kingdom , hath shed so much of the blood of gods people , is destroying the land , are so wicked enemies to the truth of god , & worke of reformation . and having heard , that some already have fallen into those sins : therfore the commission , for removeing so greivous scandall , ordaines , that all such , as have , or shall joine in armes or councell with the afore said enemy , upon the cleare notice & evidence therof , shall be excommunicate ; and all such as shall be found to have procured protections from the fore said enemy execute any orders from them , or given them intelligence , or have spoken favourably of them to the advantage of their cause : and all such as shall be found in any other way to comply with them , shall be censured according to the degrees of their compliance , as others have bin censured , who have complyed with other enemies of the covenant and cause of god , and the peace of this kirke and kingdom : and to the effect that all persons may be made to guard & keepe themselves from being misled or carried away with any inticement or tentation unto such courses , it is appointed that this act be read in all congregations of this kirke . a. ker . an account of the election of the convention of scotland, with the scotch reasons why the said convention should proclaim their majesties of england, william and mary, king and queen of scotland. 1689 approx. 9 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a75263 wing a284b estc r223241 45097483 ocm 45097483 171100 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a75263) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 171100) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2559:2) an account of the election of the convention of scotland, with the scotch reasons why the said convention should proclaim their majesties of england, william and mary, king and queen of scotland. flemming, john. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed for john flemming, london : 1689. caption title. reproduction of original in: the bodleian library, oxford, england. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) scotland -politics and government -1689-1745. scotland -kings and rulers. broadsides -england -17th century. 2008-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-08 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an account of the election of the convention of scotland , with the scotch reasons why the said convention should proclaim their majesties of england , william and mary , king and queen of scotland . sir , yours of the 28th past i receiv'd , and as your account of the affairs and transactions of england is by several hands ( to our general satisfaction ) here confirm'd , so i must be bold to tell you , you are very much deceiv'd and abus'd in your intelligence concerning this kingdom : for whereas in one clause of your letter you insinuate your fears of a rupture , or a disagreement at the meeting of our grand convention ( which will certainly be the 14th . of this instant . i assure you there is so little reason for your doubts , that the general belief of this kingdom is , that they will in nothing differ from the proceedings of your convention , as to the settlement of the crown , but in the time for having so good an example and president at hand , is thought there will be but little delay in their resolves ; besides , the country have in the choice of their resentatives , been so free and unprejudic'd , that i dare affirm there never was a more just or lestal assembly than this will prove ; many of them do here publickly already applaud and approve the wisdom and choice of england ; an instance of which is this paper therewith sent you ( written as is suppos'd by one of the members ) whereby you may guess at their inclinations , though i cannot say we are wholly without wicked , disaffected , restless , and turbulent spirits in some parts , who would willingly embroil us , if possible ; but we doubt not but a happy agreement of this healing convention , in a general declaring for their present majesties of england , will confound all their devices . thô it may be reasonably expected that allitrue scotsmen may by this time be fully sensible of what may be most conducing for the settling this ancient kingdom , yet considering that the time for meeting of the great convention draws near , and the affair anent which they are to meet , is of so great importance , i shall presume to give this brief advice , and in the first place , i humbly conceive that we cannot pitch upon more feasible means for the attaining a setled and lasting peace , than that which our elder sister england has already fixed upon , viz. that the late king james the second , having endeavoured to subvert the constitution of the kingdom , by breaking the original contract between king and people ; and by advice of jesuits and other wicked persons , having violated the fundamental laws ; and having withdrawn himself out of his kingdoms , has abdicated the government , and that the throne is thereby vacant ; for which misgovernment he has forfeited the trust of the regal inheritance of the executive power both in himself and in his heirs lineal and colateral ; so that the same is devolved back to the people , who have also the legislative authority ; & consequently may of right give & dispose thereof by their representatives for their future peace , benefit , security , and government , according to their good will and pleasure . and forasmuch as it is absolutely necessary that the government be speedily settled on sure and lasting foundations , and consequently that such person or persons be immediately plac'd in the throne , in whom the nation has most reason to repose an entire confidence , and therefore have proclaim'd the prince and princess of orange , king and queen of england , france , and ireland &c. and this will easily appear if we consider , 1. what great dangers the said neble prince has exposed himself to in rescuing us from popery and slavery , which otherwise would undoubtedly have overflown our land : and therefore who can we imagine will be so carefull to preserve all things in their right channel , as he that was at such pains to reduce them thereto . 2. by this means we shall secure to our selves the best of princes , such too , as the whole world that we wat of , does not afford their equals . 3. we shall in like manner deliver our selves from that race of popish successors that would otherwise certainly be obtruded upon us , should king james be called home , to the no less prejudice of the royal blood , than the destruction of our kirk and state . for should he be sent for again , we could not evite the pretended prince of wales's succeeding him ; and if he should dye , the same tricks would be used for the imposing another upon us , and what an ill comb we should bring to our own heads by swae doing , we may easily imagine ; and we are not foolishly to expect to be delivered from such a grievous bondage as that would be , by extraordinary miracles , especially if we slight such singular mercies as god has now put into our hands for the preventing our falling thereinto . 4. we may easily foresee the grievous inconveniencies that will follow upon the not taking the same measures that england has taken ; for then we can expect no less than to have our land a seat of war , & to be filled with rapine & blood-shed ; let not the old proverb that we frequently use , to wit , that scots folks are aye wise behind hand , now be verified of us . if we are not wilfully blind , we have a fresh instance before us of the mischiefs that shall befall us ( if we suffer our selves ito be imposed upon by papists and other disaffected ' persons among us ) in the neighbouring kingdom of ireland , which is already so plundred , that in seven years it will not recover its prestine state , and who knows what it may yet suffer ; felix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum . 5. by this means both the succession will be preserved , and the liberties of the people sufficiently vindicated : for the princess of orange is the next legitimate successor to the crown , and her father having deserted his dominions , tle rights of succeeding devolves upon her , and in swae far as she cannot pretend a right to succeed during her jathers life , she comes now to the crown by election , which does mightily confirm the liberties of the people that a some case they have a power to elect a governour , and this frees us from the fears of having a popish successor imposed upon us . these things consider'd , i hope our good patriots , who are to meet in the ensuing convention , will follow the pattern which the english convention hath cast them , especially seeing , besides the infinite advantages which will redound to us in this ancient kingdom : the whole protestant interest abroad , will be very much supported thereby , which has suffer'd so much in many places for several years , and the king and queen we are to make choice of , have always made it their work to defend that interest to the utmost of their power , and we shall enjoy a happiness that for several years we have been wholly strangers to . in the next place seeing the said illustrious prince , has given you a liberty to redress the manifold grievances , under which not long ago , you groan'd as under an aegyptian bondage : i hope you will take such methods for freeing your selves therefrom , that not only the present age , but even after generations will have a grareful remembrance of your names , and so doing , you shall wipe off that odium that hath been cast upon our nation , by the cruel and barbarous acts that have been made by some-self-seeking court parasites that have crept into our parliaments some years ago . i shall say no more , but , verbum sapienti sat . london : printed for john flemming . 1689. a discourse shewing the great happiness that hath and may still accrue to his majesties kingdomes of england and scotland by re-uniting them into one great britain in two parts / by john bristol. thornborough, john, 1551-1641. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a71100 of text r32805 in the english short title catalog (wing t1042a). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 175 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 165 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a71100 wing t1042a estc r32805 12761682 ocm 12761682 93510 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a71100) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 93510) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1144:21 or 1537:42) a discourse shewing the great happiness that hath and may still accrue to his majesties kingdomes of england and scotland by re-uniting them into one great britain in two parts / by john bristol. thornborough, john, 1551-1641. bristol, john digby, earl of, 1580-1654. [42], 286 p., [1] leaf of plates : ill. printed by r.h. for charles duncomb ..., london : 1641. variously attributed to john bristol and john thornbourgh--nuc pre-1956 imprints. this work appears as wing b4792 (wing number cancelled on wing (cd-rom, 1996)) on reel 1144:21, and as wing t1042a on reel 1537:42. imperfect: tightly bound, pages stained, with print show-through and loss of print. reproduction of originals in the university of illinois (urbana-champaign campus). library and the harvard university library. eng great britain -politics and government -1625-1649. scotland -politics and government -1625-1649. a71100 r32805 (wing t1042a). civilwar no a discourse, shewing the great happinesse, that hath, and may still accrue to his majesties kingdomes of england and scotland, by re-uniting thornborough, john 1641 31008 522 20 0 0 0 0 175 f the rate of 175 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the f category of texts with 100 or more defects per 10,000 words. 2005-09 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2005-12 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2006-01 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2006-01 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2006-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a discovrse , shewing the great happinesse , that hath , and may still accrue to his majesties kingdomes of england and scotland , by re-vniting them into one great britain . in two parts : by john bristol . london , printed by r. h. for charles duncomb , dwelling in little-britain . 1641. to the right honovrable the estates now assembled in both houses of the high court of parliament . the sacred mottoes upon the coins of our late soveraigne and solomon king james , faciam eos in gentem unam and , quae deus co● junxit , nemo separet● might have deterre● some turbulent spi●rits of england and scotland , from vio●lating their peace cutting off the brid● from twede , and hindering that in●tercourse of amity , which to heavens and britaines glory , we no lesse happily than long enjoyed : but tongues and pens ▪ ( i wish i could not say swords ) have beene too busily imployed to untie that gordian-knot , which a good god , and a pious king had made so firme : some in these earth-quakes of state have laboured to underprop the houses of both realmes , others to pull them downe , saying , as of jerusalem downe with it , downe with it , even to the ground : nay , i feare , the same hand that hath held a spade , pretending to build a wall , hath held a sword to kill a subiect . wee need not send to ireland for poyson to kill two kingdomes , we have too much within our selves . poetry and oratory ( such is the corruption of wit ) can make candida de nigris , & de candentibus atra ; like dogs , they can either bite the sore , or licke it ; or like knives , that can both spread a plaister for a wound , and make a wound for a plaister : the poet juvenal speaking of alexander the great comming to see diogenes ; ( sensit alexander testa cum vidit in illa magnum habitatorem , &c. ) takes away the title of magnus from the king , and gives it to the cynicke : and have not we those that strive to make great britaine little , putting alexander from his bucephalus , and setting beggars on horse-backe ? i feare we have . there are too many empiricks among us , whose delight is rather to kill than cure ; but you who are the colledge of physitians for the preservation of the body politicke , will make no anatomies but of condemned persons by law executed , and by inquiry into the bad , labour for the safety of the good : let it not be said that this day a tribe is wanting in our israel . what though , as judicious weemes saith , the scots and english be as samaritans and jewes we have no rehoboam , why should we have a jeroboam ▪ we have no rigor ▪ why should we have a revolt ? there may bee a good samaritan which may take charge of the wounded man , when a priest and levite may passe by on the other side . let not the union of britaine be cut off , if it may bee preserved : binde up the bones that are broken , and make them whole ; so shall god binde up your souls in the rowle of the living . i doubt not but much good may bee gotten by a serious perusall of this ensuing tractate : sure i am it will not be wholly uselesse to candid , pious , & unprejudiced mindes , who shall finde it as fit as necessary for these times . i say no more , but with heart and hands lift up to heaven , pray , that as you are treasurers of the weale-publique , god will be pleased to crowne your publique endeavours , to the everlasting peace and welfare of this church and common-wealth , that his sacred majesty and royall off-spring may ever bee glorious , and that all his kingdoms and provinces may flourish , to the terror of foes , and the endlesse comfort of all true loving subjects . the epistle to the reader . it was no blessing , but a curse , when the ten tribes revol●ed from rehoboam ▪ division is good i● musicke , ill in kingdomes ; and if confusion of tongues ruin● a babel , confusion 〈◊〉 hearts will ruine bethel . scotland ma● say to england , 〈◊〉 lot to abraham we are brothers ; ye● when love cannot continue , except their bodies discontinue , the ●e of necessity must ●e to sodome , a 〈◊〉 and destinated for ●ire and brimstone . ●ingle kingdomes , ●ke fooles bolts , are one shot away ; but ●njoyned , as in a ●eafe , not easily bro●en . it was the hap●inesse of our late so●eraigne king james 〈◊〉 blessed memory , to a bridge ove● the tweed , not 〈◊〉 wood or stone , b● of english and sco●●tish hearts , cemente● with strong affection it was indeed a ha●●pinesse , to make tw● spots of earth , tw● little kingdomes , o● great britain : the in building , a seco● story makes a hov● 〈◊〉 house , though there ●e neither painted , ●or carved image in ●t , no fretted roofe , no ●old nor ivory . ca●or and pollux●rung from one egge , ●nd their signe is one gemini : thus is ●e vnity of brethren ●xalted even to a ●onstellation . that ●hich some years since was a motion , bre● some few moneth since a commotion namely , a necessity 〈◊〉 separation between england and sco●●land : which diff●●rence might bette● have beene decid● with an olive bran● than a sword , as 〈◊〉 hope time ere long wi● make manifest . wh● happinesse hath the vnion of two houses brought forth in this ●ne kingdome ? and ●f there bee such hap●inesse in the vnion of houses , what will there be in the vnion of kingdomes ? a thing which might bee ●s easily continued as compassed , if some turbulent spirits did not disturbe the peac● of sion . this ensuing treatise i could not b● publish , as knowing ▪ to be so soveraigne ▪ medicine for the maladies of these times . wherein ▪ ( gentle reader ) ● thou finde as much benefit , as i delight● thanke god , and the author ; i have my reward . farewell . svndry obiections against this ensuing treatise . the objections pretended against this treatise , are divided into foure severall natures or kindes : the first objection i● matter of generality 〈◊〉 common reason . the second is , matter of estate domestique an● inward , or matter ● law . the third is , matter 〈◊〉 estate forreine , or ma●●ter of intercourse , 〈◊〉 commerce . the fourth is , matter 〈◊〉 honor or reputation . the matter of genera●lity , or common reason as concerning all in generall , is also divided into two parts : first , that there is , nor can be pretended no cause ●f the change . secondly , that there is ●o president of like change , neither ancient , nor moderne , forreigne , or domestique . the first objection therefore is : that in constituting or ordaining of any innovation or change , here ought to bee considered either a generall necessity , or evident utility but that we finde no grief in our present estate , an● foresee no advancemen● to a better condition by this change ; and desire that it may be shewed unto● us . the second objection that we finde no presiden● at home nor abroad , o● uniting or contracting of the names of two several kingdomes or states int● one name , where the vnion hath growne by marriage or blood . and that those examples which may be alleadged , as far as wee can finde , or understand , are but in the ease of conquest . matter of estate domestique , or inward , or matter of the law , is divided into these three maine heads following . the first , that the alteration of the name of the king doth inevitably and infallibly draw on an erection of a new kingdom● or estate , and a dissolution and extinguishment of the old ; and that no explanation , limitation , or reservation can cleare or avoid that inconvenience , but i● will he full of repugnancy and ambiguity , and subject to much variety and danger of construction . the second is , an enumeration or recitall of the speciall or severall confusions , incongruities and mischiefes , which will necessarily and incidently follow in the time present . as in the summoning of parliaments , and the recitals of acts of parliament . in the seals of the kingdome . jn the great officers of the kingdome . in the lawes , customs , liberties and priviledges of the kingdome . in the residence and holding of such courts as follow the kings person which by this generality o● name may be held in cou●●land . in the severall and reciproque oathes , the on● of his majestie at his coronation , which is neve● iterated ; the other in the oathes of allegiance , homage , and obedience , made and renewed from time to time by the subjects . all which acts , instruments ? and formes of policy and government , with multitude of other forms of records , writs , plead●gs and instruments of a ●eaner nature , run now ●n the name of england , ●●d upon the change would 〈◊〉 drawne into incertain● and question . the third is , a possibi●●ty of alienation of the ●rowne of england to the ●ne of scotland , in case 〈◊〉 majesties line should determine : ( which god of ●s goodnesse defend ) for if it be a new erected kingdome , it must goe in t● nature of a purchase , 〈◊〉 the next heire of his majesties fathers side . the matter of st●forreine , or matter of 〈◊〉 ●●tercourse and commer●● consisteth of these th●●● points following . the first is , the league treaties , forreine fredomes of trade and tr●fique , forreine contra●● may be drawne in ques●●on , and made subject quarrell and cavillation . the second is , that the kings precedency before other christian kings , which is guided by antiqui●● of kingdomes , and not ●y greatnesse , may be en●angered , and his place turned last , because it is ●h newest . the third is , that the ●lory and good acceptation of the english name and ●ation , will be in forreine ●arts obscured . the matter of honou● and reputation stande● chiefly upon these fou●●maine heads , or points following . the first is , that 〈◊〉 worldly thing is more de● to men then their name 〈◊〉 as we see in private fam●●lies , that men disinheri● their daughters to con●nue their names ; muc● more in states , and whe● the name hath been famous and honourable . the second is , that the contracted name of bri●aine , will bring in oblivion the names of england and scotland . the third is , that whereas now england in the stile 〈◊〉 placed before scotland ; ●n the name of britaine that degree of priority or ●recedence will be lost . the fourth is , that the change of name seem harsh at the first , in the popular opinion , and something un●leasing to the countrey . these precedent objections , and many other pretended against the happy uniting of these two famous king●omes of england and ●cotland , the reader shall finde sufficiently answered in the ensuing treatise , by the author , to his full satisfaction and content . the ●e-marriage of two famous kingdomes , england and scotland : ●●duced into one great brittaine , ●y the providence of one god , the ●iety of two kings , the unity of ●oth nations . by way of answer 〈◊〉 former objections . by iohn bristol . it was long before the objections against the ●ntended happy union of both the realmes came to my hands : b● having read them , 〈◊〉 could not hold m● hand from writing 〈◊〉 remove & cleare them esteeming them only 〈◊〉 great shew of big lo●● laid in the way , b●●tween the two emine●● markes shot at by t● soveraign vnitor , namely , honour and happinesse : the one inseparably inherent in his m● royall person : the othe● assuredly intended 〈◊〉 subjects benefit : whi●●●hings in apparant uti● , or urgent necessity ●e objectors desire to ●e shewed them : for whose satisfaction , i have briefly examined , and answered every ob●●ction . the objectors finde ●o president at home ●or abroad , of uniting 〈◊〉 contracting of the names of two severall kingdomes or states ●nto one name , where the vnion hath growne ●y marriage or blood : and say , that the examples which may bee alleged , are but in case 〈◊〉 conquest . but i remember , that charles 〈◊〉 france the eighth , 〈◊〉 comineus mentioneth taking to wife the hei● of little brittaine , annexed it to the crowne● france , ruled it 〈◊〉 lawes , customes , a● priviledges of fran●● and gave the noble thereof place in parliament in france : 〈◊〉 union is a strong keep of imperiall soveraignty , and is the very si●ewes of weale pub●●que . but as tacitus●ith , by divers lawes , ●er diverse nations ●●bject to one king , ●uicquid est authoritatis ●ebis destruitur contra●●ctionibus . charles the fifth uni●●d in the common ●ame of spaine divers ●ther his kingdomes , ●hereof two of them , ●amely , aragon and ●astile , descended to him in right of blood ▪ for he well knew , that the most eminēt in dignity is most honored 〈◊〉 vnity : and that this truly called prudence even the electing , or rejecting , the continuing or changing of forme● and uniting kingdome according to time , pla●● or persons : which gre●● vertue is not alwai● contained in certai● and the same bound but altereth it selfe 〈◊〉 occasion serveth , in respect of forenamed circumstance . but the objectors acknowledge uniting of kingdomes in case of conquest . i marvell they doe it not much more by right of blood : for in that vnion of constraint , there is ever doubt , and dread for continuance thereof , as is well said : malus cu●tos diuturnitatis metus : but in this by right of ●lood , god giveth bles●ing to natures work . first , in the great majesty of the high at supreame governou● where one mighty monarch is of more command and power , the a king of divers disti●guished kingdomes . secondly , in 〈◊〉 more facility of the government , where people under like law are more easily rule than under divers law ▪ and thirdly , in t● more security of the g●●verned , who being with like equity of ●wes , will one love and strengthen the other : but being divided , ●oe oftentimes under●ine , and practise sub●ersion one of the o●her . vires imperii in ●onsensu sunt obedienti●m : tolle unitatem , & ●mnis imperii contextus in ●ultas partes dissidet . which consideration made king henry the ●ighth rightfully assuming the title of king of ireland , by voluntary vote in parliament o● the lords and com●mons of that king●dome , ( albeit the king of england were be●fore that time , but cal●led lords of ireland● yet now changing hi● stile , to endeavour b● just lawes to cause the irish change as wel● their apparell , as lan●guage , and divers thei● old formes and forme● lawes , and to reduc● them into forme o● english fashion , eve●●gainst their former cu●tomes and conditions . ●t is then a matter not only of utility and ne●essity , but also of rea●on and justice , that a king in right of blood ●olding two king●omes or states , doe ●nite & contract them ●nto one name and na●ure , specially kingdomes of one continent , and which in ancient times were but one , till ambition and contention divided them . and this ma● stand for answer to the objectors first main head of matter , of esta●● inward . now where it is fa●ther alleaged , that the alteration of the nam● of the king , doth in●vitably and infallibl● draw on an erection o● a new kingdome , and dissolution and extinguishment of the olde herein verily i think the matter is much mistaken ; for the change o●●●me , is not so rightly 〈◊〉 be tearmed alteration 〈◊〉 new erection , as re●●●tution and reparation ●oth of name and ho●or : for divers his ●ajesties most noble ●ogenitors , have here●●fore been entituled ( as ●hronicles tell us ) ●●ings of all britaine : as ●enry the second , king 〈◊〉 all britaine , duke of ●ascoine , guien , and ●ormandy , whose son ●●hn had also in his ●oine stamped , as is to be shewed , johan● rex britonum . and before the conquest of t● saxons , it is certai● that the whole i le w● called by the name 〈◊〉 britain . but saxons e●tring at disadvantage● that mighty natio● consumed by death a● famine , conquering t● remnant of people of ●mous britain , enforc● them to distinguish a● divide themselves 〈◊〉 flying into mountain and fortified plac●●d afterward king ●bert , utterly to roote ●t the remembrance 〈◊〉 great britaine , com●nded that the land ●ould be called no ●ore by that name , ●t england , and the ●ople , englishmen . ●t egbert is dead , his ●wer weake , nay ●ne at all : let none ●erefore feare to re●re his country to 〈◊〉 olde name , and an●nt honour : for eg●rt , i say , is dead , and king charles ●veth , et vivat & vin● rex carolus . this , i say and e●force againe , is a mat● also reasonable , ju●utile , and necessary , s●ing the soveraign bri●geth in no innovatio● of a new name , but ●stitution of the old , 〈◊〉 dissolution , but forti●cation , whereto i kno● none will subscrib● which either envy t● kings greatnesse , 〈◊〉 kingdomes happiness● but let none mar●ll , why it hath not ●is long time been re●uced into his former ●ame : for the diversity ●f kingdomes , being made divers by war ●nd conquest , and ha●ing heretofore divers ●ings , could not in rea●on or justice endure it , ●or under any colour of ●tility , or necessity , un●ergoe , or conclude it . but now seeing our soveraigne lord the king , being rightfully descended of all the kings & princes , whi● heretofore raigned a● ruled in england , sc●land , or wales , as 〈◊〉 only hath power to ●●store all into one 〈◊〉 former title and dig●ty , so let none thin● this his princely a● just pleasure , a ne● erection , but restitutio● of olde , where it is mo● reasonable and just , 〈◊〉 extinguish the name lesser continuance , the the name which h●●ntinued and been fa●ous by the space of ●37 . yeares before ●hrist , and 688. after ●s incarnation , which ●hole computation ●ommeth to 1825 years . ●nd where it is most ●onourable by just de●ent in right of blood , ●ot only to change , but 〈◊〉 abolish the name ●mposed by a con●uerour to the disho●our of a nation : ●nd where , for ●ught i understand , the matter is not so d●●ficult , nor of that inco●●venience and dange● but may with mu● ease and safety be do● with salvo jure , or oth● reservation and expl●●nation , as the wise an● learned in the law● can at large devise when they list , five no● excogitent , sive antiq● restituant . but for example , 〈◊〉 bring the uniting 〈◊〉 dane-lex , and merci● lex , by edward th●●onfessor , which was ●ot prejudiciall to any , ●at ever i could reade , ●ut profitable and ●eedfull to all , in the ●olishing of divers old ●wes , and ordaining ●vers new , and ma●ng lawes to all , all ●ne : done no doubt with due respect to ●eale publike , with ●eedfull limitation and ●ue consideration of ●en , matter , time , place , ●nd other circumstance . neither doth any new erection and exti●●guishment of olde , 〈◊〉 necessarily conclude 〈◊〉 convenience full of ●●pugnancy , danger 〈◊〉 construction and co●●fusion , as is pretende● but may in this case ( 〈◊〉 beata omnium vita mo●●ratori est proposita ) as e●●sily bee cleared and ●●voided , as it was wh● the principality a● country of wales w● by parliament incorp●●rated and united un● the kingdome of en●●●nd , and all the inha●●tants thereof made ●●uall in freedomes , ●●berties , rights , privi●●dges , lawes , and in all ●●her respects to the na●●rall subjects of eng●●nd , and all inheritan●●s made of english te●●re , to descend with●ut division , or partiti●n after the manner of ●ngland : and the ●awes , statutes , and ●rdinances of the realm ●f england , comman●ed to bee executed and put in pract● within the country a● principality of wal● so as now in this ne● erection and dissolu●●●on of the old , 〈◊〉 welshmen with us , a● we with them , a●●knowledge joyfull● one only governo● and one only gover●ment , where the m●●jesty of the governo● is equally supra nos , a● the justice and equity 〈◊〉 the government equ●ly pro nobis : where● ●ertus ordo in jubendo & ●arendo . which certain ●nd the same course and ●rder of commanding ●y the king , and by his lawes , and of obedi●nce in subjects , is a ●trong tye , and as it were a vitall spirit , ●olding in one infinite ●housands : where re●ere , as the philosopher speaketh ? is reckoned ●nter necessaria , and regi inter utilia . againe , could seven kingdomes of saxons bee reduced into one and in good time , all their divers lawes 〈◊〉 whereby the divers● subjects of those seve● divers kingdomes wer● diversly governed , be● brought into one form● of civill governmen● without repugnancy 〈◊〉 ambiguity or dangers and shall we thinke it 〈◊〉 matter of such difficul●ty , to unite onely two kingdomes , which do● not much differ in manners , lawes and customes ; saving such laws & customes as were formerly ordained on each part one against ano●her , when they were enemies , or scarce friends one to the other ? which ●aws doubtlesse all will say , must bee abrogated , ●hat in further proceed●ng to union , wise men , with grave consideration may conclude it , for good of both nations , without offēce , as in former times much more hath bin done with less 〈◊〉 doe . an empire of many kingdomes thus reduced into one , is not unlike the firmament o● heaven , which god hath adorned with the two great lights , the sunne and moone , and other starres , even the whole army and ha● mony of the heavens in one firmament . wh● so throweth a ston● against heaven , saith the wise man , it will fa● upon his owne head and if any one standing alone from the rest , speaketh against and oppugneth this vnion , better it were ( saving my charity ) that vnus ille periret , quam vnitas . touching the enumeration and recitall of the speciall or severall confusions , incongruities and mischiefes , which in the objections are in the second place , of matter of estate inward , pretended , i briefly answer , that there is no feare of confusion in true and perfect vnion . which thing the mighty alexander , renowned for fortitude and policy , well knew , who is much commended by plutarke , that ( where zeno chiefe of stoickes framed an idea of best common-wealth , such as was not divided by countries and contrary customes , but was as all one , of one kinde of life , and as one flocke feeding in one pasture , under one shepheard ) alexander i say , put that in practise which zeno but imagined : for saith plutarke , not as aristotle alexanders master taught him , so did hee , living as a father to the grecians , and cruell commander over barbarians , respecting some , and neglecting others : but he reconciled all into one , mixing mens lives , lawes , names and marriages together , and perswading that none were aliens and strangers among his subjects , but such as were evill men , accounting all good men , as one man . now i conclude this point , that there is no confusion , incongruity , or mischiefe to be feared in that vnion , where our most rightfull king sitteth , not by conquest of sword , but by right of royall blood , in the seate of his most noble progenitors : and not as alexander , who by conquest sate in the seate of darius among persians : nor as xerxes who joyned asia and europa together with a woodden bridge over hellespont : but as all other most mighty governours , and the best kings have ( by a golden bridge of likenesse , of love , of equity , of laws , and of common comforts of society and joy , ( all which were both profitable and needfull ) joyned together two or more kingdomes , for their owne greater honor , and subjects more undoubted happinesse . which thing likewise that noble and valiant trojan aeneas long sithence put in use , who by vnion , even of divers nations , omnis eodem nomine , & eodem jure latinos vocavit . and thereby as livie reporteth of him , he made many and divers nations as one people , most familiar , and most friendly together . doe not divers sun-beames come from one sun , and all they of one nature ? are not divers lines drawne from one center , and all they of one fashion ? are not divers boughes from one tree , and all of the same substance ? and may not divers people under one prince , though they are divided in persons , yet be united in lawes ? and though they bee sundred in countries , yet be knit together in hearts , specially if emulation cause no incongruity , nor disorder confusion , nor strife mischiefe , only with saving each mans honor , with continuance of each good custome , and with furtherance and establishing the common good of weale publique ? the king is the countries parent , who by vnion , non servos , sed cives cogitat : and as iupiter was said to be rex omnibus idem ; so would his majesty be idem omnibus , one head to one body . wherefore if hee desire to unite the two kingdomes , and to account them one , and as one beloved sonne ( whose life is deare , and whose happinesse joy to him ) that all subjects as one sonne , in common apparant utility , might participate common patrimony of just lawes for weale publike , let none be so hardy ( with the harlot in the daies of solomon ) to say to the king our common parent ; divide the childe , and cut it into two parts ; lest such division part that into two , which god in nature first made one : and now in his greater goodnesse hath restored , in the royall person of our gracious king into one : what god hath so joyned together , let no man put asunder . for hereof may arise plaine incongruity , and fearefull inconvenience , which may farther grow into confusion and mischief . only i pray them , which object against the happy vnion , to set before their eyes , and to consider with their hearts , the grievous contention between the divers people of the kingdome of israel and the kingdome of iudah : for albeit the two kingdomes were united in the person of david their king , yet for want of more perfect vnion in lawes and love , there arose heart-burnings on both sides : for israel complained : the men of iuda have stolne the king from us : and they of iuda challenged , that the king was nearer in blood to them , than to israel : and israel againe replyed , that they had ten parts in the king , and therefore had more right to him . but what in the end grew of this contentiō & emulation ? consider i pray , and prevent such inconvenience and mischiefe : there was not any one among the tribes in the second generation that followed the house of david , but iuda only : omen avertas deus . when i was but a yong scholer , i learned to call that aequivocation , which was corpu● monstrosum , under one name of divers formes : as homo pictus , and homo vivus agree in the name of man , but not in the same reason , definition , and nature : so i can call the agreement of english and scottish only in subjection to one soveraigne , but without farther vnion of lawes and true love , not lively and indeed , but painted and in shew ; not substantiall , ●ut aequivocall ; not re●ll , but nominall : name●y , in the king , as in the head , which is but one : ●ut not in themselves , ●s in the body , which ●ikewise is , or should be ●ut one . this is true in●ongruity , wherof may ●rise such farther fearefull inconvenience , as i wish may bee to them ●hat hate the state , and the experience thereof ●nto the k. enemies . touching the particulars of confusion , &c ▪ surmised by the obje●ctors , i briefly answer first , that exception taken of summoning future parliament , is no worth answer : for the stile and title of the kin● changed , may chang● also in future writs . secondly , the chang●ing of the seale , is only charge of a new cut . thirdly , the great old officers of the kingdome , when they ( ye● most worthy of office ) ●oe hereafter weare ●ut , the kings majesty ●hall afterward by this vnion , have more ●hoice to prefer the worthiest : for his ma●esty by this vnion shall ●gaine more choice for ●ll the publike services , ●o be performed either at home or abroad . neither may it be reasonable for any man , for private or particular respects to repine thereat : like to cato his son , who feared lest by his fathers marriage h● might leese somewha● of his patrimony , and therefore murmured lest his father should beget more sons : bu● had his answer with a sound reply unanswerable : son ▪ i desire to have more sons like thy selfe , good citizens , and serviceable for the common weale . fourthly , touching lawes , customes , liberties , and priviledges , ●t is to be wished that the rigour of ours were somewhat qualified , ●nd the liberty of theirs ●omewhat restrained : ●either is it a new ●hing , in so large a ●ingdome , that some should be more enabled and honoured with priviledges than others , according to the kings good pleasure , ●n whom dwelleth , ●nd from whom is de●ived all true honour . fifthly , the feare of residence , or holding in scotland such courts as follow the kings person , is the selfe same as if we feared , that without vnion the king would hold personall courts in cornwall : or as if we doubted that such courts , when our former kings were personally in france , were not for all that kept a● westminster . the sea● of judgement is the sea● of the house of david thither the tribes goe up , and there the peoples feet stand , even in the gates of ierusalem ; which ierusalem is a city that is at unity in it selfe : at unity concerning matters of religion , at unity in matters touching publike justice and government : therefore the king began his psalme 122. i was glad when they said to me : we will goe , &c. lastly , the exception taken against vnion because of the kings oath at his coronation , which is never iterated , is grounded on the selfe same reason : as if it were also alleadged , that because his majestie sweareth to maintaine ancient and fundamentall lawes , therefore upon circumstance of time and occasion he might not alter any law : but let it be remembred , that the kings oath concerneth the lawes and not the title , and we know the lawes may be preserved , though the title be altered . and as for subjects , i doubt not , but they may without danger , at the pleasure of the king , sweare their allegeance and doe homage and obedience after restitution of title , reformation of law , and vnion of kingdomes . and ancient records doe no more leese their force by the change of england into britaine , then by change of king iames into king charles . and there is no more incertainty of pleadings , instruments , and writs , than when a plaintife deceaseth after seven yeares suite , his heire is put to begin , & commence his suite anew , & in other name . the heart of objections against vnion being halfe broken , let us enter into the third consideration of matter of state inward , where is objected a possibility of alienation of the crowne of england to the crowne of scotland , in case his majesties line should determine . but blessed bee god , our gracious soveraigne king is blessed with a plentifull issue , and hath yet much farther hope . and i hope ( for which i pray night and day ) that his majesties royall issue shall not faile , so long as the sun and moone endureth . neverthelesse , if some will not labour of the common bane of good wits , which is rather to dispute , than obey ; and rather to reason beyond reason , than yeeld to reason , ( more magis quàm judicio ) they may herein also easily answer themselves , that in uniting the two kingdomes , the second place in stile may be rather drawne to the next of blood in our land , than the kingdome of england bee transferred to one farther off frō the seem . which thing , neither henry the seventh nor henry the eighth doubted , the one seeking to marry his eldest daughter lady margaret to king iames the fourth of scotland , hoping if his heire male failed , by that meanes to unite scotland to england . and the other having his whole drift , to match his sonne prince edward to queen mary , foreseeing in his providence the inestimable benefit of uniting the two kingdomes : for which cause many of the nobles of scotland , gave faith to doe their best endeavours . but it is a strange doubt , and cast beyond the moone , to imagine , that vnion of the two kingdomes doth so confound the state , and change the tenure , to bring it so into case of purchase , as it will necessarily subject england to scotland , especially if his most excellent majesty , of his singular tenderness and love to this his realme of england , be pleased to effect and establish , that in case his royall issue ( which almighty god of his infinite mercy defend ) should faile , that then by this happy intended vnion , the realme of scotland should for ever be and continue indissolubly united , and annexed to the lawfull and rightfull inheritance , and succession of the crowne of england , in the blood royall of the same . now touching matter of state forreine , in answer to the first objection : i am well assured , that our forreine affaires were at worst in the opinion of all , at the decease of our late queen , and our entercourse utterly decaied with many princes : so as we need a kind of present renewing , which may be cōcluded as wel under title of king of all britain , as of england . to the second it is easily answered , that the king loseth no precedency of place , as is imagined , specially antiquity ( as in the objections is alleadged ) guiding it , and not greatnesse . for the successor to king arthur of britaine , will bee worthy in the opinion of the whole world , of better place , then king egbert of england . to the third , that if the name of england ( as is imagined ) be obscured , the name of famous and great britain will be illustrate , memorable in times past to all the then knowne nations of the earth . touching matter of honour , it is certaine and evident , that the name of england , though it hath beene worthily most famous and great , yet is not equall to the title of great britaine , when england and scotland are reunited , either by reason of honor , or of power . all histories remembring unto us , that the britaines long time resisted the mighty force of romaines , lords , and conquerours of the world . and albeit some fathers can be content to disinherite their own daughters , to continue their names , ( as is inferred in the objections ) and therfore inforced , shold be much more in states , specially where the name hath beene famous : yet for my part , i account such parents unkind and unnaturall , where self-love of their name , maketh them forget themselves , and forsake their owne flesh . i will not urge here the law of god , of nature , and of most nations where daughters inherite , & names grow extinguished . but this is a vaine respect only of name , wherof is spokē ; to get a name on earth , and to think their name should never be put out : whereas so many countries , so many people , so many persons , have either lost or left their former name , and most willingly have been called by another name , gaudet cognomine terra : ( virgil eneid . lib. 6. ) that countrey rejoyced to be called by a new name : how much more should our land imbrace this name of britaine ; and yet not new , but indeed his old proper name renewed , and as it were redivived and restored from the dead . or be it simply losse only of a bare transitory name ; yet as the prophet esay speaketh , chapter 56. ver. 3. let not the eunuch say , behold , i am a dry tree , my name shall perish with mee . let us rather regard that name which god promiseth to them that serve him , saying , ( esay 65. ver. 5. ) even unto them will i give in my house and within my pallaces , a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters : i will give them an everlasting name which shall not be put out . the argument of oblivion deserveth no answer , but silence and forgetfulnesse : and yet i doubt not , but famous acts of noble english men , will as well by chronicle bee remembred to posterity , as the glory of renowned britaine record remaineth to this day , neither will either be forgotten to the worlds end . the stile of england now placed before scotland , doth no way prejudice the vnion by losse of precedency : for when all is one , there is no subsequence : onely honor is due to him , who is to be honoured ; and much honour to him , that is much to be honored : which thing in the vnion may easily bee provided for , and other pretended inconveniences prevented . lastly , the prejudicating the popular opinion , to whom ( as is objected ) change of name will be harsh and unpleasing , is in mine opinion a wrong done , and imputation laid upon the people , who i know ( for the most part ) being a wise nation , and ( i am sure ) most loving subjects to the kings majesty , have learned obedience and duty , and will therefore rather joy in the content of their good and gacious king , then any way murmure at his demand : knowing , that the empire , ( as livie speaketh ) is firmissimum , when eo gaudent obedientes , who doubtlesse with one voice and heart submit themselves , and say to their soveraigne : esto nobis solus arbiter rerum jure , & nomine regio . and as for harshnesse of the strange name , use will easily make it familiar . as horace saith : multa renascentur quae jam cecidere , cademque quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula , si volet usus . this pretended unpleasing harshnesse is no more , than the nicenesse of a virgin , who is as loth , and maketh it dainty to leave her fathers name , yet afterward married to a husband , taketh greatest comfort in the name of her husband , in whom shee glorieth , and by whom shee enjoyeth all her worldly joy . and yet need not england be so nice as if she were a virgin , who like a widdow hath so oftē changed her name : but may take pride , as widows do , to bee called by her most honourable and most glorious name . thus having briefly run over the objections , and withall carried in open view in mine answer due consideration both of evident utility , and urgent necessity , i will be bold with additions of more reasons , yet a little farther to proceed in the perswasion of this desired happy vnion . god , alwaies blessed and to be honoured for evermore , who is trinity in vnity , and vnity in trinity , three persons , and but one god , doth by influence of his holy spirit , give divers gifts and graces to beleevers , of what country or condtion soever they be , & governes them by holy law , and uniteth them in the same faith , though diversly scattered among all the nations of the christian world : that hereby the gods on earth , whom he hath placed to rule over many and divers kingdomes upon earth , might learne by the same lawes in things humane , and same religion in matters divine , to preserve weale publike , and christian society among men . but the ambition , and frowardnesse of many , desirous rather to be distracted into divers names and countries , and to be ruled by divers lawes and customes , doe oft times hazard the common good and peace of the weale publike : where two kingdomes so divided under one soveraigne , are not unlike the rich treasures of pearle and gold , laid up in one ship , by contrarieties of divers windes to be driven upon rocks with extreamest danger : as is said in tully , of dividing and distinguishing desires into severall parts and members , in such diversities and differences : hoc est dissipare , & non distinguere , frangere , & non dividere . which thing is to be feared by not uniting , but keeping the two kingdomes still in parts , when upon every discontent in scotland , as at a backe doore passage may be given for a forreine enemy , soone to weaken a divided power : as cyrus the persian soone emptied that great and deep river , otherwise unpassable for his soldiers , by drawing it into divers channels . and why should not we feare such and greater evils , if as virgil laid infamy upon us , calling us , toto divisos orbe britannos : so we be content to adde greater infamy to our selves , and become toto in orbe divisi , divided within our selves in the sight and view of the whole world ? but i hope and wish for better things , that by vnion in name of britaines , we may leave to be any longer divided into english and scottish ; as rivers of divers names meeting in the sea , receive one and the same name : the rather , because the elements of fire and water , of earth and aire , being of repugnant qualities , yet joyned in one body , doe agree in one forme , as in a medium uniting and mixing them together : much more , divers kingdomes oft times heretofore at war and discord , yet now being united into one body , of one name and nature , qualified by equall mixture , of law , manners , honors , marriages , and such like , may be made perfect in one forme , and have a beeing not as english and scottish , but as britains , knit together in that third and renowned name : that the maxime may be verified in us : qua in aliquo tertio conveniunt , optime conveniunt . i confesse , that some lawes of ours may bee thought too streight for them , and some liberties of theirs unfitting us : but let all be wrested alike , pulling some up , and letting some downe , and in pleasing harmony we shall find , as tully saith : commune & aequabile inter omnes jus : where will be no strife , as was betweene esau and jacob , undermining and deceiving one the other of blessing and patrimony ; but all love , and unity , and concord , and content , as if all were not twins , but one man , even one heart in one body . and now if iphicrates , that valiant leader were againe living , and asked , whether he were under the now imperiall majesty , this or that , english or scottish , or among , or over them , an horseman , an archer , or a leader ; he might truly answer , as sometimes he did in like case : no , not any of these , but i am he , who knoweth under him whom i serve , to command and governe all these , as if they were but one man : vnius ducis imperium simul sentiunt omnes copiae . thus in warre and tumult , much more in quiet peace , may it be said : divers subjects ad nutum unius regis , & ejusdem legis omnes simul respondent . so powerfull is the force of vnion , that una via being director , for law , and cor unum performer for obedience : the law enjoyning obedience , and obedience executing law , the prince cannot command what the people will not obey : and the people will obey what the prince commands , and vnity among them will uphold all : vnum imperii corpus unius animo regendum videtur : & so likewise , ejusdem juris esse debent , qui sub eodem rege victuri sunt . but rule of two kingdomes without uniting them , is to give occasion to either part to look backe for an olde grudge , vbi antiqui odii pertinacia in publicum stimulat exitium : which i feare would be , as the going backe of two rammes , more fiercely to butt at , and beate one the other : where held both together in like yoke , one cannot easily offend or force the other . sic enim immensa multitudo authoritatis quasi spiritu regitur . and where it is of the nature of man not to endure all servitude , nor all liberty , but to strive to shake off the one , and to be weary of the other ; it is certaine , that equity and equability of like lawes to a divers people united in one , will make them ( which otherwise feare servitude ) to enjoy freedome : and those which seeme most free by former priviledges & immunities , to feare servitude , if they transgresse their bounds : for such vnion and equity is communis custodia , & principatus & reipublicae . but faction and ambition , are the father and mother of intestine calamity , civill war , and deadly feud . who so loveth this , will never like that ; neither is he of the body , but of the toes and feet of that image which nebuchadnesar dreamed of , dan. 2. whose head was of fine gold , whose breast and armes of silver , whose belly and thighes of brasse , whose legs of iron , and whose feet , part of iron and part of clay . silver , brasse , and iron are metals easily mixed , but iron and clay will not by any meanes melt and joyne together . kingdomes divided are prefigured in the iron and clay , they are partly warlike and well governed , & partly weak , factious , and seditious : they agree not to the king their golden head , and though they ( as the text saith , verse 43. ) mingle themselves with the seed of men , yet joyn not one with another , but are as iron and clay , which will not be mixed together . the poets call this latter age ferrea : let us which live in it prove them poets , and not prophets , that so being joyned to our golden head in all obedience and duty , in all love and zeale to our countrie , and in vnitie among our selves , god may still showre down his wonted favours upon church and common-wealth ; and that wee may still bee thankfull , returning him the glory . finis . a second part to the precedent treatise . the state of england , and scotland may bee resembled to the condition of israel , and iuda , not only for emulation , who have most right to the royall person of the kings majesty , for their defence , and government ; but also for that the two kingdomes were at first both but one . besides , god , as he speaketh by his prophet hosea , chapter 11. did also at first alike leade both them , and us , with cords of a man , even with bands of love . and as it pleased god , for sinne of people to breake those bands , even both the staffe of bands , and of beauty , to dissolve the brotherhood of israel , and iuda , ( as saith the prophet , zach. 11. ) so , for the iniquity of our forefathers , god brake the staffe of bands , signifying mutuall love , and also staffe of beauty , signifying order of government , and brought in upon them , and upon their posterity , even to these our later daies , as esay saith , chapter 9. a staffe of division , and yoke of burden upon theirs , and our shoulders ; which now for all that , out of the riches of his mercy , he hath also broken in pieces , making all one againe , as hee spake by his prophet ezekiel , concerning israel , and iuda , ( chapter 37. ) saying , i will make them one people in the land , upon the mountaines of israel , and one king shall be king to them all , and they shall be no more two peoples , neither be divided , any more henceforth into two kingdomes . this foundation laid , as project of our whole purpose ; the truth sheweth it self how two kingdoms , severed in place , not much differing in lawes , nor dissonant in language , but only disagreeing heretofore in neighbourhood , may be comprehended under notion of one name , specially seeing , when one ruleth both , and both become subject to one , they are no more two , but one body , linked in like duty , and knit together in one band of obedience . to doubt this is in strangers , ignorance , but in subjects , a great offence . for who so considereth that many shires , with the principality of wales , heretofore made one england , cannot but confesse that likewise england , and scotland , with all their territories , islands , shires , and countries make now one great britaine , and all the people of both the mighty nations , britaines ▪ and that the kings majesty hath done as princely an act in uniting both the kingdomes into one name , as he did in uniting the armes of both the realmes into one scutchion , having a like right in both . for all great britaine being his majesties inheritance , all his subjects within that continent are brittaines . iust , and reasonable was the demand of annius , chiefe governour of latines , in uniting romanes , and latines , saying , ex utraque gente unum oportet esse populum , unam fieri rempub : eandem imperiisedem , idemque omnibus nomen . and albeit the latines were content , for sake of weale publike , to prefer romanes before themselves , and be called by their names ( as the history there farther reporteth ) quoniam ab alter utra parte concedi necesse est ( quod utrisque benè vertat ) sit haec sanè patria potior , & romani omnes vocemur : neverthelesse the case not standing so with us , that scottish should be called by our name , nor we by theirs , methinkes , a third name of great britaine might easily , and equally please both : otherwise as king deiotarus cut off all his children , saving one , because he would leave the kingdome but to one : so should english , swallowing up name of scottish , or scottish drowning name of english , prove such a vine , which to bring but one grape to ripenesse , is content that all branches be cut off , but one . but the question here is not , which of the branches should best prosper , but how all the branches may flourish , which abide in the vine : and verily the question carrieth in it selfe his answer . abide in the vine . this vine is but one , though of many branches , and much fruit . and thankes be given to god , that his majesty k. iames of blessed memory , by publique proclamation , divulged the inserting and fast grafting of each branch , and all fruit into his owne royall person , as into a fruitfull and flourishing vine , even into the head of the whole body , of how many soever parts consisting . wherein his highnesse laid the first stone , as he was the true and only foundation of happy union : and yet , as yet , like apelles fashioning only the exquisite and most excellent beauty of venus in the head , but i hope also , and will pray for perfection in the rest : that the saying may be true . rex velit honesta , nemo non eadem volet● and that an universall union may be as happy in successu , as it is most just by proclamation in inceptu . that the head going before , the whole body may follow after in imitation , to worke out perfection of the desired happy union . that it may be verified , quod diu parturivit tandem peperit ; and what god had in his providence long purposed , is fulfilled in these our happy daies . and that by no meanes that of the poet may be imputed to us , either by disobedience to our head , or disagreeing among our selves , human● capiti varias i●ducere formas ▪ grammarians doe observe , that metallum , is so called , quasi {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , that is , post , & {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , that is , aliud , because there is scarcely found no veine of mettall , where is not more of that sort adjoyning to it : so among english and scottish , they are not to bee thought of the true metalline mine , but as drosse , and canker , corrupting , and consuming each other , which joyne not in the universall name of great britaine , so to continue , and dwell together , to grow up and agree together : seeing nature hath made them all of one kinde , forme , complexion , habit , and language growing together . and verily divine is the mistery of union ( whether the provident wisdome of nature from god hath ingendred it , or the skill of mans reason hath observed it ) where one of , and in it selfe , doth out of it selfe poure forth innumerable formes of things ; as brittaine doth even two kingdomes , and the principality of wales , with many shires , rivers , islands , and people , and yet containeth them all within it selfe : one having many , many making one ; where one of many is not divided against it selfe , and the many in one make no division to overthrow the whole ; but all are the same ; whether we respect union , or division . and this doubtlesse is a divine power , or celestiall vertue , not only for our purpose , but compassing , and passing through the whole world , making things either simple , or conjunct , but one ; subsisting , by , and under the divine essence , which is one ; and consisting in all his members , and parts united , but one ; where each , and every part of this universall world , respecteth the whole , otherwise innumerable , but brought by union to a number , without number , even beginning of numbers , which is but one . and this is most agreeing to the conceit of wisest philosophers , skilfull in natures secret : teaching , all ( whatsoever is ) to be but one : and that in the universall nature of things there is an agreeing amity , and intermixed affinity , where all the parts of the whole world accord , by one transfused continuate spirit among them , being compact together with one and the self-same agreeing force , and forceable agreement of nature , proceeding from one beginning , continued by one meane , and referred to one end ; every particular being knit together with the whole universality and diversity of things , and wrapt up in one round orbe together , that as parts of this world , they may dwell in one center , or circle together . to shut up many things in few , and to shew how certainly all things are contained in one , and one doth comprehend all , verily in schooles of philosophers , it is an infallible maxime , that all things are communicated in one ; vnum hoc praeque omnibus unum . this one is all in all . ruunt autem omnia , ubi unitas non firmamentum , diffluunt , ubi non coagulum . the demonstration in our intended purpose , is plaine . many villages make one shire , many shires one kingdome , many kingdoms one imperiall monarchy : all which is britaine , and britaine all these ; and the kings majesty possessing , and governing britaine , possesseth , and governeth all these : and the subject , knowing britaine , knoweth all , and every of these ; for all these are one , and this one is all these . that as this excellent workmanship of vnion sheweth it selfe in the mighty masse , and fabricke of the whole world , so much more particularly , and plainly doth it appeare in a modell of the same , even in the name , and honour of great britaine ; where every subject ought clearely to see in himselfe , that though hee be termed the little world , and compact of infinite variety , and multiplicity of things , yet is he not two , but one man . here let the neare neighbourhood , and conjunction of man , and man , in mutuall society , and participation of profits , which man hath with man ( where two friends are but one , and not parting meum , and tuum ) confesse ; that though they are in person two , yet indeed doe , with idem velle , and idem nolle , enjoy the fruition of heaven , with the same aspect , and the commodities of the earth , with the same minde ; where all things are common to both , and yet proper to each one . all which things are alleadged to shew that as every kingdome , and state of the world is upheld with one and the self-same power and life , wherewith the universall world consisteth ; so now it concerneth all , and every one subject , both of england , and scotland , to participate in the common obedience , transfused into all , under the government of one . where sacred unity is guide , and director , there , even from distinct nature , use of mutuall society , and good of weale publique , many are knit together inseparably ; and great , and infinite numbers of all sorts of people , are contained in one narrow compasse of neere conjunction ; for so the most populous and powerfull kingdomes , though two , or moe , under one soveraigne , seeme to bee , but as one whole body , and the whole body of weale publique in subjection , and obedience , but as one man : sic enim omnes aequo jure parent omnibus imperaturo . and as in all things , so specially in this , are we bound to render all praise , and thanksgiving to that thrice sacred vnity , from whom , as from the first author , and fountaine , is sowen abroad in the world , that fruitfull seed of constant unity ; whose force draweth many of one houshold to be of one minde , and is ever doing good , in its owne nature , keeping israel together , like a flock of sheep . neither is it an hard matter to unite , and keep them together , who live under the same climate of heaven , and are of like language , manners , countenance , lawes , customes , forme of body , fashion of behaviour , yea , and religion : à religando · rightly called the chiefest band of hearty union . for though the island salamis be controverted between the athenians , and megarenses , yet must it be adjudged to the athenians , because they lived after the same fashion and lawes ; as now the skilfull in the lawes of this land easily acknowledge what congruity and affinity is between most of the ancient lawes of both our kingdomes , more then is to be found between those of any other two nations . and albeit the towne sidas bee controverted between the athenians , and boetians , yet epaminondas will adjudge it , to the boetians and not to the athenians , because the athenians called an apple malum punicum , but the boetians called it sidas . there is between english , and scottish small , or no difference , nay now none at all , in union all being britaines , not so much as between gileadites and ephraimites in pronouncing shibboleth , for sibboleth , but all are of one language , and even of one canaan language , only a little river twede is common limit , or rather imaginary bound to both : and all from twede southward , is britaine within twede , and all from twede northward , is britaine beyond twede , yet both on this side , and that all but one britaine ( non nos mare separat ingens , exiqua prohibemur aqua ) as all france hath formerly been divided into two parts , the one beyond the alps , the other within the alps : and all india westward within the river gange , and eastward beyond gange . and all scithia within imaus , and without imaus . and though the island hath beene long time divided into two kingdomes , yet england it selfe hath oft times of divers been called britaine , as by a sirname : and if pars pro toto , might have that denomination , much more ought the whole , being now made one . therefore linacre and grocinus of the one part called themselves britaines , and iohannes major of the other , affirmed that the kings of england , and scotland wanted good councell to advise them to marry together , so to make of both one kingdome of britaine : and that only envious men , and they who neglected the weale publique , did hinder this union of peace . which thing king henry the seventh , and king henry the eigth , wisely foresaw , seeking by marriage to unite both kingdomes into one . discordantis saepe patriae non aliud est remedium , quam si ab uno regeretur . therefore the wise men have most religiously observed two beginnings of things ; one of evill , divisible , imperfect , manifold , called duallity , or binarius numerus . another of good , indivisible , perfect , and in name and nature , alwaies one , called unitas . if duallity , or binarius , as cause efficient beare sway , then in the aire breed intemperature ; if in cities , families , or kingdomes , wars , and discord ; if in the body diseases ; if in the minde of men , vice , and wickednesse . but where union possesseth chiefe place , her fruits are , to the aire wholsome temper ; to cities , families , and kingdomes , mutuall love , and joy ; to the body health and strength ; and to the mind , vertue , & godlines . for unity admitteth no duality , knoweth no contrariety , and by consequence no● infirmity . but duallity seduced adam in disobedience , seeking to know , as well evill , as good ; who before , was sole monarch of the whole earth , and was wholly good , and perfect , both in body , and soule , untill he drew with a double twisted cord of contrarieties unto his body , in stead of health , sicknesse , and infirmities ; and unto his soul , in stead of righteousnesse , sin , and misery ; needing now to strengthen his body , bread ; and to repaire his soule , grace ; even for body , and soule gods mercy . for so he turned the monarchy of perfect good , into a monomachy , or duellum of good , and evill , sinne , and righteousnesse , peace , and war , joy , and sorrow , sicknesse , and health , yea life , and death . and now when the sole monarch of the whole earth , left off to abide in the common obedience , and universall union of all things to his creator ( albeit all the creatures were before in voluntary subjection , united also to their sole monarch adam on earth ) yet now every creature lifteth up himselfe against his sole earthly soveraigne , and against his succession for ever . the earth will not yeeld adam bread , but by the sweat of his browes ; the beasts become wilde , and cruell ; yea the earth openeth her mouth against the succession of disobedient adam , and swalloweth up corah , dathan , and abiram ; the waters drowne the whole world , except eight persons ; the poore flie can , and doth sometimes choake a man , having before neither power , nor will to doe it ; lice can devoure and eate up herod ; even the vilest , and weakest creatures , can , and often do destroy the greatest tyrants of the earth . and in the opinion of some , the holy ghost seemeth in mystery to open this matter to a man of understanding , forbearing in the second daies worke , to say , all was good ; as is plainely said of all the other five daies , and he saw all things good ; not but that the worke of this day , was also good , ( for all his works , are , and were exceeding good ) but because of waters , which in many places of the scripture signifie troubles , yea intollerable afflictions , and because of division of waters in that daies worke ( god being a god , not of division , but of peace ) therefore the holy ghost seemeth to forbeare to say in that place , and it was good ▪ and yet would not these bee mistaken in their curiosity , as if they included the division of waters in that dayes worke , not to be good , ( seeing that waters in the clouds divided from the seas , are upholden by gods providence , not to poure downe and overwhelme the earth ) for they approve divisions of constructions to be good , as the dividing the light from darknesse , the day from night , and of whatsoever into parts , for ornament , and beauty of the forme divided ; but utterly condemne divisions of destructions , or of distractions , which is , frangere non dividere , comminuere non distinguere , to part the body from the head , or the members from the body , to bring order to confusion , unity to distraction , forme to a chaos , and e●s to privation , such division was that , whereof caselius answered the merchant : navem si dividis , nec tu , nec socius habebit and such division the unnaturall harlot entended ; requiring the living childe to be cut into two parts , ( 1 kings 3. ) let it be neither mine nor thine , but divide it . where two , or three are made one , there is the image of god , of truth , of peace , of fortitude , of praise , and of perfection : but where one is drawne , divided , and torne asunder , there breaketh forth falshood , warre , feare , dishonour , and confusion . they which are of god , embrace the one , and they which are of the devill , the other . for god both in the center , and circumference of truth , is in simplicity , and perfection , one ▪ but the devill , neither dwelling in this center , nor sitting in this circle , is carried in duallity , nay contrari●ety of numbers , opposing evill against good , whose center being falshood , the circumference cannot bee truth : his is a kingdome divided , and must fall , being not a monarchy it cannot stand . and yet we reject not the number of two , so they continue , and persist in union , as it is written ; they shall be two in one flesh : but reprobate is that duallity , that maketh war in peace , begetting , and ingendring division , and contrariety , controversie , and confusion : and either of ambition , senslesness , hatred , quarrell , open discord , or rebellion , hindreth that sweet harmony of union , most pleasing to god , & most profitable for men , of whom saith tacitus , in publicum exitiosi , nihil spei , nisi per discordias habent , tamen libertas , & praeciosa nomina praetexuntur . but doe we not see by this unfolding of things , how the perpetuall course of truth , and unity , throughout all in the world , doth even now conduct , and lead me , by the hand , to the matter now in hand ? and verily i will follow thee ( sacred union ) whither soever thou leadest me , and into , whatsoever region of vertue thou intendest ; i will not leave thee , being never unlike thy selfe , alwaies well accompanied , adorned , and beautified with diversity of things , and never alone , and yet still but one . it is thy doing , that prudence , the chiefe head and governour of vertues , the rule and direction of all well doings , and prescribing to every vertuous action , the manner , order , and course , of doing well , doth so knit , and joyne together all morall vertues , as that by thy secret influence they all may be found joyntly in all wise subjects , and in every one particularly with one heart to performe that duty , which both yeeldeth right to the king , and maintaineth peace , and love among men . siquidem communis vitae societas , in unione consistit . and seeing it hath pleased his majesty king iames , by publique proclamation to assume the name and stile of king of great britaine , jure haereditario , it is meet that all loving subjects not only acknowledge the clearenesse of his right , but joyfully applaud , and chearfully follow him herein , now in our gracious k. charles his reign ; lest murmuring , they , like evill , and base minded souldiers , follow their emperour with an evill will , according to that saying , malus miles imperatorem sequitur gemens . we see some noble men , yea , and the gentlemen in our state daily to purchase , and unite land to land , and lordship upon lordship , and to seek by all meanes to shake off the tenure in capite , and to hold all their lands in some other more free tenure . and it cannot be denyed , that to all their severall courts , all tenants and freeholders willingly performe their severall services ; or else are fined by the lord of the mannor , or by his steward . and may the inferiour lord expect more homage , from a tenant , then a king require , both of lords , and tenants , all subjects to him , and holding all they have , from , by , and under him ? pacis interest omnem potestatem ad unum referri . but all gain-sayers and murmurers , qui contumaciam potius cum pernicie , quam ●bsequium cum securitate malunt , are not unlike mesech , and kedar , spoken of in the psalme , in respect of whom the good king complained to god , and to himselfe , saying : woe that i dwell with mesech and kedar : i labour for peace , and they prepare them to battell , i study union , and they strive to make division . non placeo concordiae author , said that good valerius . but alas , why should ephraim beare evill will to iuda , or iuda vexe ephraim , fratres enim sumus : should not they rather both together united now into the name of britaines , as into the name of the beloved israel of god , ( esay 11. ) flee upon the shoulders of the philistines , and make spoile of their enemies , so that the idumites , moabites , and ammonites , even all their enemies might be subdued unto them : duo enim sunt , quibus omnis respub : servatur , in hostes fortitudo & domi concordia . and verily the uniting the two kingdomes into the name of britaine , is not unlike ( esay 21 ) that chariot , drawne with two horsemen , mentioned in esay ; at sight whereof , the watchman cryed , babilon is fallen , babilon is fallen , and all the images of her gods are smitten downe to the ground . for so ( except we will smother the childe of vnion in his first birth , ) both english , and scottish , will soone heare him sound aloude into the whole world , that all great britaine is like ierusalem , which is , as a city , at unity within it selfe ; and babilon , even division , disorder , discord , and confusion are confounded , and overthrowne ; and what king egbert did write in sand , king iames of blessed memory , and our gracious king charles hath blotted out , and troden under foot all the dishonour thereof , and engraven , as in a marble stone , the perpetuall honour of great britaine by royall restitution ? this verily commeth of the lord of hosts , which worketh with wonderfull wisdome , and bringeth excellent things to passe . alexander asked king porus his captive , how hee would be entertained ; and porus answered , like a king ; alexander demandeth againe ; porus answereth againe , in kingly manner . alexander asketh what else , porus answereth nothing else for in this kingly maner , every thing else , is contained . and though ( god be praised for it ) the cause be not between english , and scottish in conquest , and captivity , as between alexander , and porus , ( but two famous kingdomes in right of blood , under one mighty monarch ) yet our great alexander in his high wisdome considering how these two might best be governed , hath in his owne royall heart best resolved it , namely by uniting them into one monarchy , into one government , and into one name ; and if any demand , how else , verily he must be answered no way else , for in this union whatsoever else is contained , nam in istoc sunt omnia even , the stoickes , ( who i think neither were in jest , nor arrogantly conceited ) contained under prudence , both justice , and fortitude , and temperance , and whatsoever vertue else , accounting also him who was perfectly wise , an orator , a poet , a rich man , a very king , and an emperour . all blessings , and graces , may be thought attendants , and companions to union , who alone knoweth how to order all things in government : and is a princely commander of subjects obedience , and subduer of gain-sayers , ordering unruly affections , bridling untamed lusts , restraining swelling pride , composing rebellious appetites , determining all doubts , and rights , within the compasse of her judgement , and yet giving to every one his due , by her discretion : and therefore is like the sun in the middest of heaven , among the stars ; and as the stars take light of the sun , so also blessings of weale publique proceed from this sacred , and thrice happy union into the name of great britaine , whose glorious light shineth to all , and every one hath comfort thereby . it is also not unlike the soul in the body of man ; for in the whole common weale , it is wholly , and in every part thereof , whether it be of english , or scottish intire . tota in toto , & tota in qualibet parte . as a shining light , it sheweth a way for common good , and as a reasonable soule , giveth understanding to the blindest body , to see the full fruition of all worldly happinesse : let no man shut his eyes against the sunne , nor refuse a living soule for his carcasse . if i could express the image of this union in lively colors , i would surely make her a goddess , faire & beautifull , having a garland , and crown of all blessings upon her head , and sitting in a chaire of state , with all good fortunes , vertues and graces attending her , and as a goddesse in triumphant chariot going into the capitol , or temple of mighty iupiter : where also the poets have found her , but called by another name , even pallas , who is also named monas , that is , vnity : because having one only parent , she resideth in iupiters braine , even in the chiefe seat of his wisdome ; where all the muses are her companions , so called musae , quasi {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , that is altogether in one ; where all the graces goe hand in hand , congratulating to vnion their mutuall society ; where all vertue , and knowledge are neare of affinity , but iustice , and government of consanguinity to her , her selfe still holding primacy over all ; as england , and scotland , are chearefully looking one towards the other in the name of great britaine , and as the two cherubins did looke one towards , the other , in one propitiatory . and thy royall state o great britaine is as the anointed cherub . ezek. 28. and as in the heart of man is placed fortitude , in his liver temperance , and in his minde iustice , and yet all these , with all other vertues are annexed to prudence , the common ligament of all ; so is great britaine , by uniting all his kingdomes , principalities , countries , and honours the compleat proportioned forme of all , and all in it both universally and particularly , are fashioned and made fit on every side for happy conjunction and mutuall correspondence . for this renowned name of great britaine standeth in stead of a loadstone drawing all into one , chaining them together with links of love ; as lisippus made an image of foure mettals mixed together , gold , silver , brasse , and iron ; expressing hereby absolute perfection of vertue , putting in gold , to signifie prudence ; silver , iustice ; brasse , fortitude ; and iron , temperance : whereof they are altogether ignorant , as if they had never seene vertue , so much as painted , who , to overthrow union in the name of great britain , bring no union of vertues , even excellencies of many countries , to this so excellent worke . but skilfull zeuxes going about to depaint an absolute worke of a perfect virgin , took not only view of one womans beauty , but had variety of many the fairest , to accomplish out of all these a more excellent , and consummate forme of body . shall we not thinke the kingdome of france , containing pickardy , normandy , the isle of france , champaigne , averne , dalpheny , bry , bloys , turin , the dutchy of an●ow , xanto●n , burgundy , and uniting ●o it little britaine , to be more glorious in all these , being made one , then if but one only of all these were that kingdome ? doe we not see that the enlarging of the dominions of spaine , in uniting , and establishing divers kingdomes , and territories , as those of aragons , castile , and that of portugal with others , hath so enlarged that kingdome , as that the like hath not befallen other christian potentates ? hath not the king of denmarke , beside the cimbrian chersonese ( where holsatia , theutomartia , the dukedome of sletia , flensburgh , friesland , and iuthland doe lie ) other spacious islands , fifteen in number , all comprehended under the name denmarke , and united to that crowne ? did not iagello , taking to wife in the yeare , 1380. the princesse hedingee the last of the blood royall of polonia , after he was enstalled king there , unite all his owne principalities of lithuania , and samotgathia provinces of russia , to the kingdome and crowne of poland ? did not ahasuerus ( esther 1. ) raigne from india to ethiopia , over an hundred twenty and seven divers provinces ? and was not he so mighty ( by reason of this variety , subjected , and united to his sole government ) that he was , an hundreth and fourescore daies shewing the riches and glory of his greatnesse , to all his princes , and to the mighty men of persia , and media ? but to take example of one only rome for all . how hath it been renowned through the whole world , by joyning all nations of the world into one , even to it selfe ? herehence it was called terrarum dea gentiumque roma , communis patria , mund● compendium . as propertius . omnia romanae cedant miracula terrae , natura hic posuit quicquid in orbe fuit . but the majesty of this empire grew so great by adjoyning other nations , and bringing them all into one : haec est , in gremium quae victos sola recepit , humanumque genus communi nomine fovit matris non dominae ritu , civesque ●ocavit . quo● domini , nexuque pr● longinqua revinxit . and againe , fecisti patri em diversis gentibus unam , dumque offers victis proprii consortia juris , vrbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat . and so may we say of this renowned name of great britaine comprehending us all of divers nations in one , under our gracious king . hujus pacificis debemus moribus omnes , quod cunctigens una sumus . i could set forth , and confirme by sundry examples , this uniting of many into one , and thereby shew , that the enlarging of dominion consisteth in uniting all together into one name , and establishing divers territories under one soveraignty , and government ; and that the greater states , and imperiall powers of larger extent and far spreading domination are the more durable ; and that the monarchy of great britaine is like to bee hereafter of more durance , strength , and honor as partly ( comming under our kings government without conquest or constraint : nam errat longe mea qui dem sententia , qui credat imperium stabilius aut firmius quod vi● adjungitur quam quod facilitate & clementia ) so now especially it being united in the whole , then heretofore divided in parts ; his contexture being of a greater frame than before , holding by more then one naile , an● upholding its owne greatnesse : even as great build●ings endure and subsist by their owne weight , as the poet speaketh , pondere t● suo est . but i thinke it here as needfull to lay open the great fault , imputed to con●stantine , dividing the em●pire among his children whereby of one empire , he made three , and withall a memorable diminution of of his authority , and forces : which part brutus also played , dividing this whole empire of great britain among his three sons : of which , though two parts afterward , namely england , & wales , were againe in good time united : yet scotland stood till now , divided from the rest , and the rest from it , till god in speciall goodnesse restored to former name , and government , all into one againe : for which kings iames may challenge more glory by uniting all into one , then brutus or constantine dividing it from one ; and though constantine the great , was counted the glory of britaine as being borne and made emperour here : yet may that commendation better fit king iames than constantine : tu nobiles fecisti britanias , quod illic ort● factusque es imperator . the platan tree hath many goodly branches , and boughes , and leaves in one body : and therefore xerxes in herodotus , crowned him with a golden garland ▪ doubtlesse there is a deserved glorious garland due to the name of great britaine , bringing forth many goodly boughes , and branches , like to the faire , and well spread platan tree ; or rather for the height of his honour , like the ●all , and goodly cedar , in whom , the dreame of nebuchodonosor hath been verified : for he saw a tree in the middest of the earth , great , and strong , whose height reached unto the heaven , and the sight thereof to the end of the earth : whose leaves were faire , and the fruit thereof much : dan. 4. in which was meat for all , yea the beasts of the field had shadow under it , the fowles of the aire dwell in the boughes thereof , and all flesh fed of it . but nebuchodonosor heard also a watch crying out mightily , hew downe this tree , breake off his branches , shake off his leaves , scatter his fruit , that both beasts , and fowles may be put from him : neverthelesse leave the stump of his rootes still in the earth . so was the ancient honour , and glory of great britaine ; great , and mighty , high to heaven , faire , and fruitfull , and of power over the whole land from one end to the other : but the highest , who hath power over all , did ( for the sin of the inhabitants ) hew downe this goodly tree ; yet left the stumpe of the rootes in the earth . and out of it the tree is growne up againe to former beauty , that we might learn to magnifie the k. of heaven , as did nebuchadnesar restored to the honor of his kingdome , to his glory , and beauty againe , to his counsellors , and princes , and to the establishment of his throne with augmented glory . and here let us now consecrate to all eternity the ancient name of famous great britaine , as a pantheon of all blessings in peace , prosperity , and honour : for as pantheon was a temple at rome , round , and like to the capacitie of heaven , wherein were put all the images of their gods . so i say , in the name and stile of great britaine , as in a pantheon , are placed all worldly blessings , like stars shining from heaven , and having their influence into the whole body of common weale , even perfection of beauty in sion . superstitious antiquity framed false gods , one indued with this vertue , and another with that : this a wise , that a warlike , and another a just god : yea , for so many vertues , they framed so many goddesses , where one temple might not be consecrated to two goddesses , but distinct vertues must be worshipped with distinct worship . so as marcellus dedicating one and the same temple to honour , and vertue , was thought to offend against religion . but our happy , and better instructed age , reducing all to one , truly to worship one true , and only god ; so in civill things , and government , it offereth only one above and for all , that whatsoever is separate , and distracted from it , may bee counted , as anathema , excommunicate , divorced , or as a barren handmaid to bee sold to the vsurer , unprofitable , imperfect , or as it were , not at all . and now , as union into the name of great britaine , is like a pantheon , and bringeth manifold abundant blessings meeting together , and concurring in one , so let us account our selves most blessed in our soveraigne unitor king iames , in whose royall and princely successor , our gracious k. charles , and his noble progeny , is laid up all our obedience , and dwelleth all our happinesse ; even as that worthy scipio , is said therefore to be borne , that there might be one , in whom all vertue should shew it selfe effectually , and absolutely perfect : hic est scipio , quem dii immortales nasci voluerunt , ut esset in quo se virtus per omnes numeros efficaciter ostenderet . this is the voice of truth it selfe ; england and scotland are so naturally united in the name of great britain , that the one nearely allyed to the other , can no longer bee an alien , or stranger one to the other , except it may bee said , that , quia meus est , non est meus , ipsaque damno est mihi proximitas . so this naturall conjunction should bee no union , because it is both naturall in the soile , and reall in the subject . but albeit the romanes put into the temple called pantheon that precious gem named vnio , divided and cut in two , yet we with all our goods and geare , ought willingly be borne into the bosome of great britaine , quae fundit in omnes imperium , not distributing union into parts , but knitting up all parts into one , as cicero's oratour all sciences , and aristotles good man all vertues , as cato was counted like perfect in all vertues , or as the divine plato sealed up in man , the lesser world , whatsoever vertue was in the whole world , or rather as eden the plentifull garden of god sealing up the summe of all perfection and glory , ezek. 28. was freight and deckt with all manner of precious stones , the ruby , the tapaze , and the diamond , the chrysolice , the onix , and the iasper , the saphir , the emerande , and the carbuncle , and gold . even now may it be said of this universall name of britaine , as it was said of rome . imperii virtutumque omnium lar , and virtutum omnium latissimum templum . in ancient time it was counted ominous , if a stone fell , or a dog came among brethren . and socrates was wont to curse those , who by self-conceits , and head-strong opinion attempted to set asunder those things which nature coupled together . and now if any factious tribune of the people interpose himselfe to divide us , and to disturbe the peace of israel , thinking there is good fishing in troubled waters , and that the honours , and benefits they hunt after , are attained in perturbata republica : whereof they utterly despaire in a peaceable state , quia in concordia ordinum nullos se usquam esse vident : verily such are not unlike medea , who so dispersed her brothers limmes , that they could not be gathered againe : cujus etiam vultu laeditu pietas : as the mariners at sea well observe in the two stars castor , and pollux , that if one without the other appeare , they foresee a troubled sea : but peaceable , and quiet without storme , and without danger in the sight of both together . the principality of wales shall witnesse this truth , which never received any thing any more beneficiall for the people there , then uniting that countrey to the crown & kingdome of england . for whilest it was alone without his brother , it was subject to storme , full of contentions , war , and shedding of blood , but joyned with his brother , it florished with peace , and at this day is blessed in the uniformity of government there established . and in mine opinion , it is well observed in the chronicle of wales , how god was not pleased with the first change of the name of britaine into the name of england ; for presently followed the terrible and cruell invasion of the danes , and after that the conquest of the normans . but memorable is it , that the britaines ruled all the whole isle together , with the out isles of wight , men , in english anglisee , manaw , in english man , orkney , and ewyst , 1137. yeares before christ , and after the yeare of his incarnation 688. even to the death of cadwallader , the last king of britaines , and of the noble race of trojans . which when in succeeding age many mighty and famous kings of england , considered , they laboured by all meanes to recover and resume the name and stile of kings of great britaine , acccounting it dishonorable , to leese any jot of the honour of their most princely progenitors . and therefore k. knute , king of england , mighty in his dominions of swethen , from germany to the north poles , with norway and denmarke , having obtained prosperous success in warring against scotland , is recorded after his death , the mightiest prince in the west parts of the world , and of all the noble isle of britaine . and so william the conqueror , for the good successe he likewise had in scotland , is recorded king of all britaine ; and henry the second , surnamed curtmantle , is also for like successe , recorded king of all britaine . and if they be renowned and honoured with name and stile of britaine , which by rightfull descent or by conquest , were inheritours but to one part only , though by their fortunes in war , they also claimed the other ; what rightfull title must we then acknowledge , most justly now to belong to his most excellent majesty , in the imperiall crowne of both , who by lineall descent inheriteth both . here i wish i had as many eyes as argos , to looke into their devises , who seeke to divide england from scotland , and scotland from england , renouncing the name of great britaine , lest joyned in one , they might as the forenamed stars , appeare together , shine together , and bring joy together . i would then not spare to lay open , ( as cneius flavius did reveal to the world the tricks and misteries of lawyers of that time , and therefore was said to put out their eyes , and to cut their purses ) how also these adamants hinder the naturall power , and vertue of the load-stone : whom i call adamants , aswell for repugnant qualities , as that they be truly adamants , even sons of adam , practising rather in disobedience , dissention , and ruine of all , to lay hands upon that is forbidden , then to draw the iron , nay golden chaine of linkes of love , in obedience to the king , and for common peace , and preservation of men . but herein such imitate the devise of q. fabius labeo , seeking to have the ship of common weale divided in parts ; as when by compact of league with antiochus he ought to receive halfe part of antiochus ships , cut them all in the middest , craftily , so to defraud antiochus of his whole navy : or else imitate they cyrus , dividing great rivers into many little brookes , till they be not only passable , but even dryed up : for so these seek to stay the maine and mighty streame of great britaine by dividing it , and in dividing , to make it of sundry kindes , unlike it selfe . such dividing into parts , is disjoyning of the parts , by disjoyning , dismembring , and by dismembring , spoiling , making the stone scyros , which whole and firmely compacted , doth swim and floate above the waters , to sinke , and be drowned , because it is divided . but our two famous kingdomes with all their provinces , shires , and countries united into the name of great britaine , are like the goodly and pleasant river danubius , which passing by many countries keepeth his name , till it enter into illiricum : where receiving into it sixty other rivers of divers other names , leeseth not only his owne and all their other names of parts , but is called ister , one for all containing all . here i require both of english and scottish , is either of them now , as a people disjoynted one from the other ? or as sand without lime ? or scattered straw without binding ? or as sampsons foxes running divers and contrary waies , with fire brands of dissention among them ? nay here in the glory of great britaine is renowned , that king iames , with our gracious king charles , and his royall issue doe gather together that , which was scattered , and unite that , which was divided , and restore that which was lost , and save that which was endangered even by this meanes , uniting all in one name of britaine , as it was said of rome , uniting so many countries into it selfe , all parts which disagreed heretofore are now well agreeing . hereupon rome was said to be anchora fluctuanti mundo : and as he saith in tacitus , regna bellaque per gallias semper fuere donec in nostrum jus concederetis . so happily doth this universall conjunction of all under one head , take away all discord , and maintaine conjunction of love for everlasting continuance . only they which will be alone , and not contained under one name of great britaine , are not bound up with the sheaves , nor carried home into the barne , and therefore are like gleanings after harvest , left behinde in the field , subject to storme , they come not two and two into this arke , and whatsoever remaineth alone , extra arcam , perit . such are not unlike that captaine , whom xerxes rewarded with a garland , for escaping alive , when all other souldiers were slaine , and yet because he came alone without the rest , he hanged him : and as the the athenians in the warre with the aeginetae , when one returned , without his fellowes , ranne upon him , and killed him , asking where were the rest ? and what can such ( i pray you ) as separate themselves from the happy union of all britaines answer for themselves , if they be called to account ? can any be english , and not scottish , can any be scottish , and not english ? let that outcry against the romans be ingeminated against such , saying : quintilius varus , restore us our legions , where are our souldiers , what is become of them ? where are the english , where are the scottish , let all restore themselves , and each one the other to the name of britaines . and so i say to all , and every one of both nations , cedo alterum , ( for i feare lest this name cedo alterum , mentioned in taci●us , be in scarely found among many : ) but i call aloud where art thou , cedo alterum , give us thy selfe , bring in thy friend , yea , yet another , and another , bee not wanting to the weale publique ; una navis bonorum omnium , all good subjects are contained in one ship of common weal , numerū non habet illa suū , one is not perfit without the other : for britaines subject ought maintaine mutuall society for common good . as for others disclaiming us , and disjoyning themselves , only i wish they may all be of the same consort , and society with us , for , victrix causa dii placuit , though , victa catoni . and albeit many great , and mighty potentates on earth make a great shew of copia verborum , by copious recitall of many provinces , and kingdomes ; as if his majesty should entitle himselfe by all the severall shires under his dominions , and not by one honourable title of great britaine comprehending all : to shew how this misliked some , it is recorded when the emperours embassador comming to the french king rehearsed the emperours stile at large , which consisted of many dominions and names of countries ; the french king willed his herauld to repeate and say over the name of france as many times as the other had rehearsed the severall titles of his masters dominions : intimating that one name of france well compacted and united of many particulars into one generall name , was better then divers particular names of many countries . and when quintius flaminius heard how his army was terrified , at the recitall of many his enemies forces , of their diversity of names , of countries , of armour , and of multitudes , dahae , medi , cadusij , elemei , cataphracti , &c. spearemen , horsemen footmen , archers , &c. oh saith he , what a doe is here , with numbers , and diversity of numbers ? all these are but onely syrians , and make a great shew , like that great supper , which mine hoast at chalcis dressed for me , and for my followers , with much variety , and marvell at the diversity of the dishes , and yet all was but one flesh , though of so many divers dressings . the river peneus may better serve for instance : it divideth it selfe , and floweth into divers rivers , and every one of these rivers in his division , hath a proper name to himself , one after this name , and another after that : but all these meeting in one , and becomming againe one great , and mighty river , doe now lose the particular names , which they held being divided , and are called by one generall name , as before , namely , peneus . non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate . it is not reasonable that brethren from one parent , should be divided in one house , though they be severed in distinct place : but be as fingers to one hand , knit together by common joynts for mutuall offices : even as the brethren molionides , are poetically imagined to have but one body : or rather the three cerions , to have many bodies , but one soule , and one minde ; not unlike to that of pithagoras , vt unum ex pluribus fiat , many in name , but one in deed . and as when piso was commended to posterity for frugality , i doubt not , but he was wise withall ; and as when lelius was renowned for wisdome , i doubt not but he was just withall : and metellus for piety , i doubt not but hee was temperate withall : and aristides for justice , i doubt not but he was valiant withall : yet i know that the denomination is ever but of one , though it containe things two , and moe : as the temple consecrated to two brethren castor and pollux , was named only castors temple : and the munificency of two consuls , caesar , and bibulus , was called only caesars munificency : and even many imaginary shewes , and shadowes have seemed compleate , in deciphering one thing only : yea the very images of excellent men have been patternes , and resemblances of many consummate vertues in one : as plutarchs alexander , xenophons cyrus , homers vlysses , virgils aeneas , and lucians imagines , instead of all . and as there is a common idea , and infolded notion of all things in the minde of man , so the other viewing the whole race and tract of things in the world , doth tell us , that as many peculiar excellent properties , may be , and are in one man , and hee over them , as sole monarch over all the diversities of worthiest vertues ; so a king under his imperiall power hath to him subjected many shires , states , cities , honors , provinces , and kingdomes , himself being sole soveraign and lord over all . therefore though magnanimity onely , was attributed to cyrus , only modesty to agesilaus , onely wisdome to themistocles , skill to philip , and boldnesse to brasidas : yet alexander , as plutarch reporteth , was furnished , and full-fraight with all these . and quintus metellus is reported to attaine and possesse together , ten of the chiefest , & greatest things that ever he desir'd ( as if he had at once ten provinces under his command ) and was known a mighty warrier a sweet orator , a great commander , to prosper in his greatest affaires , to be in greatest honour , of great wisdome , a chiefe senator , plentifull in children , rich of substance , and most renowned in the city . so copiously hath one man been stored with plentifull variety of manifold graces , all these at once dwelling in him , and he well ordering them ; even as one free , and absolute monarch may , and doth rule many mighty and divers nations , knit in one by obedience , and love among themselves , and by law , and justice from the king , who by his lawes speaketh alike to all , is heard of all , and understood of all : una , eademque communi voce . i confesse the name of great britaine hath beene long time eclipsed , or rather like those voices , which antiphon said were kept close , and frozen up in the winter , untill the heate of summers shining sun resolved the frozen , and fast bound aire , that they might bee againe disclosed . comfortable is the warmth of this blessing , in the sun-shining daies of our soveraign lords king iames , & king charles ; wherein not only cloudes are scattered , but the renowned name of great britain breaks forth as a gladsome voyce from frozened aire , & comes forth , as a bridegroome out of his chamber , long time before lockt up like a prisoner . doubtlesse this is our yeare of jubile , a yeere of delivering the captive , of making the bond free , and of joy , even in sort , and true sense to us , annus platonicus , wherein things are come about againe to be as they were , ( iure postliminij ) to recover our selves , and be restored to name and fame of great and glorious britaine , long divided into two kingdomes , but now most happily , and joyfully subjected , and reunited in all the government therof unto one onely soveraigne , most wise and most religious governour of the same . deus haec benigna restituit in sedem vice . doubtlesse this is the lords doing , and it is marvellous in our eyes , this is the day that the lord hath made for us to rejoyce , and be glad therein . for as it is said , we owe to god our selves , for creating us when wee were not ; and more than our selves ; for re-creating , and restoring us , when wee were lost : so ought all good subjects thinke the dayes more happy , and joyfull , in which they are now , as it were new borne , then those , in which they were first borne , as is well said ; non minus illustres , a que jucundi sunt illi dies , quibus conservamur , quàm quibus nascimur . happy art thou , ô israel , ô people saved by the lord , who is like unto thee ? thou wert lost , and art found , bond , and art free , eclipsed , and art glorious , dead , and art alive , thy name forgotten , and behold , it resoundeth even among hard rocks , and in the hollownesse of mountaines ; thy beauty withered , and behold thy vallies stand thick , replenished , and adorned , with fairest varieties of all good ; thy yeares forgotten , thy feathers plucked , and thy strength weakned , and behold thou waxest young , and lusty like the eagle ; yea thine honour , the honour of thine ancient name ruined like an old house , but behold it is now repaired , and called after his owne , and old name ; even as deliaca navis , torne , and taken in pieces , was renewed , and built againe to his most ancient forme , and called still deliaca navis . sic rerum summa novatur . and albeit worldly kingdomes and civill states seem subject to alteration , and doe carry in their outward appearance , faces sometime shining , and glorious as the sun , and sometime defaced , darkned , and deformed , conquering , and conquered , triumphing , and enthralled ; yet the common weale it selfe like the ship before mentioned , ruinated and repaired , is still the same ; euen as the sunne , though eclipsed , is still the same ; and a river sometime shallow , sometime deepe , still the same ; and a man now sick , now in health , still the same . respublica enim semper ut civitas , est contigua , unâ , perpetuâque serie compacta , and though admit it mutation , as our state did long time , ever since the first division , till this blessed day ; yet britains common weale , was but sick for a season , till health returned into the whole body , by the glory of the head . so as now the first and ancient common weale of great britaine is againe conformed to his prime estate , sound , the same , and like it selfe ; and is likely so to continue and flourish , so long as it retaineth the common band of community , and individuall knot of unity . as socrates is said , as long as he is socrates , to bee one & the same . whether in childhood , or manhood , in in fancy , or in age , the same socrates . but heraclitus denied , because of the odaine change of men and things , that one man could goe into the same river twice : and ill debtors borrowing mony heretofore , refuse payment , because they thinke themselves not the same men , and plead the day is past , and cannot be againe ; deluding with that saying : ego non sum ego : hodie & heri . but such conclusions or rather collusions are simple rusticall follies ; as he saith , rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis , at ille labitur & labetur in omne volubilis aevum . for howsoever times alter , yet truth ever sheweth it selfe ; as the river lycus , running along under the earth for a long space , breaketh forth againe , and as is said , alioque renascitur orbe . the sleepers in sardos , when they awaked , thought they had passed no time : but we shall be more drowsie , and sottish then they , if now rowsed from our long sleep , wherein the honorable name of great britaine was forgotten , we now not open our eyes to acknowledge the happinesse of these our dayes : wherein our hearts may leap for joy , to see that two of our most gracious kings , as fathers of peace , and procreators , protectors , and perfitors of subjects joy , sit in royall seat of great britaines most ancient , and most absolute monarchy : whereby our strength , peace , wealth , and honour is the more increased , in that our soveraigne is the more universally obeyed , and we are doubtlesse hereby more blessed , then all our fore-fathers : of whom we say , as demaratus the corinthian said , that all dead grecians are , deprived of great joy , in that they lived not to see alexander in darius chaire . but comfortably spake he in the comedy : gaudeo , cum video hujus generis reliquias ; and how joyfull is it for us to acknowledge one another britaines , as it was for them brethren in the comedy which after so long time came to knowledge one of another : yea now for us to know one another to bee britaines by all signes and tokens , non naevo aliquo aut crepundiis , sed corpore omni . and though he may bee pittied , which sitteth alone mourning , and crying : nec mihi eognatus quisquam fuit isto nome : yet may both english , and scottish rejoyce , because neither sister is a widow , but all their legitimate children are now of one name , and one blood , become , and borne againe britaines , as it were by a pithagoricall palingenesia , even twice britaines , as hippolitus was called virbius , because he lived againe ; and was twice the same man . aeson miratur ; & olim ante quater denos hunc se reminiscitur annos . and surely ( as pliny saith ) sparsas & lacera● gentilitates colligere & conuectere , est , ut ita dicam , renasci jubere . thus we say , and thus we sing , redeunt saturnia regna , even the golden age of britaines monarchy is come againe : alter tiphis , & altera , quae vehat argos , delectos heroas : atque iterum ad trojam magnus mittetur achilles : another governour and chief master , of the common weales ship , and another arke , or argosie , as before , doth transport the nobles , and commons both of england , and scotland , to fetch the golden fleece , which egbert that dragon held so long time in his jawes . quondam etiam victus redit in praecordia virtus . now then , siquid patriae virtutis , if there be in us valour , of men stirred up , with remembrance of the name , and honour of the name , and honour of our country : si quid antiquorum hominum : if any drop of our ancestors blood live in us : si quid humanitatis : if any touch of brotherly kindnesse , we cannot , but readily imbrace each other , as the ancient romanes reconciled after long civill war , and shedding much blood iungebant castra , & consalutabant cives : yea , and triumph also as they did , saying , exurgere , & reviviscere romani nominis memoria incipit , & gloria : unlesse it may be said of us , as of that base minded vitellius : tanta torpedo invasit animum , ut si eum principem fuisse caeteri non meminissent , ipse oblivisceretur : or it may bee said to us britaines descended from brutus , as sometimes to another brutus , in another sense , not here intended : dormis brute , & non es brutus . our country men , and neighbours of wales , as chronicles report , derive themselves from ancient true britaines ▪ and doe retaine the british tongue , though somewhat mixed , called camberaec , which could never be extinguished by any attempts of romanes , saxons , danes , normans : and that famous city london , is still by them called trenwith , of brutus first named trenovanton . and the countrey it selfe is called cambria , of camber , brutus sonne , though we call it wales , a word imposed by saxons , naming them walshe , which is strange ; and many mountaines , rivers and cities are among them still retaining british names : extremos pudeat rediisse : let us be ashamed to be last , or backward , seeing another arthur king of all great britain raigneth ; lest we still seem over-awed , and captivated to the conquerour egbert his will , and by his beating us , to be made as base vassals , forgetting our selves , our names , and our country , and not daring to challenge , or acknowledge them : even as that base slave sos●a was enforced to yeeld to his master mercurie , and say , pugnis me fecisti tuum , & si sum ego , tamen non credo mihi , nomen simul abstulit cum forma . neither doe i esteeme the change of name , a matter of indifferency , as if it were all one , whether we were called britaines , or continued english , and scots . but in my judgement it is reason to alter all into britaines , because it was our most ancient , and is the more honourable name , except we will weare the badge of slavery on our sleeve , to brag to the world , that we are not ashamed to be conquered , so to shew our nakednesse , and shame , which adam sought to cover , when he once saw it . neither in mine opinion is it reason , that the now nobles or gentlemen of england , should delight in name imposed by that saxon ; seeing the whole race of saxons is for the most part rooted out by the danes and normans , and none of the saxons blood that was noble , or almost but gentile is left ; and seeing ( as chronicle reporteth ) it was counted in the daies of the conquerour , a reproach to be called an english man , or to joyne in mariage with any of the english ( which in my understanding is saxons nation . ) redit ad authores genus , & generosa in ortus exurgunt semina suos . and verily names , and titles , are matters of great consideration : unlesse , like varro , not caring for name , we should also say , that the god whom the iews worshipped , was but the same iupiter , and common god of other countries , though otherwise called , nihil interesse censens , quo nomine nuncupetur dum eadem res intelligatur . but in the union of the sahins and romanes , ( as eutropius reporteth ) this was especially agreed upon , that the sabins and romanes should assume one anothers name promiscuously : so that by no meanes they should be distinguished by name . and albeit among us , custome hath begotten prescription , yet we may remember , what is well said in the comedy : nunquam ita quisquam , benè subducta ratione fuit , quin res , aetas , usu● , aliquid apportet novi , ut quae prima putes , post in experiendo , repudias . as in the romane story , ( when it was objected that innovations , were dangerous to the state , and nothing was to be done , whereof formerly there was no president ) saith canuleius . quid postea ? nullane res nova institui debet ? & quod nondum est factum ( multa enim nondum sunt facta , in novo populo ) ea , ne ( si utilia quidem sint ) fieri oportet ? whilest we of england were put apart from scotland , it was reason we should have a name divided , and distinguished from them , and retaine that name , and condition , as pleased fortune to impose , as andromache saith to her son , sume , quod casus dedit : but being restored in integrum , and every part knit together , it is a like reason we returne to our old name , and say , as in the prophet , i will goe , and returne to my former husband , for at that time it was better for me , than now . ( hos. 2. ) and no man when he hath tasted the new wine , but saith the old is better . so that as the romane empire first was a monarchy , afterwards governed by two consuls , and so a long passing through divers kindes of governments , till it returned to his former state of monarchy , to be as it was at first : even so the state of great britaine , first was as a monarchy all governed by one ; since it was divided , but now it returneth to his monarchy againe , moribus antiquis res stat romana virisque . for men waxe weary , in time , of their present condition : and rome mole laboravit sua : or rather , and more truly , god setteth bounds to all things , which they cannot passe : even the mightiest powers have their periods . and all worldly kingdomes thus changing , ( after long experience ) say , the first is best ; and so likewise , vt rerum , ita verborum interit usus , quem penes est rerum & vis & norma loquendi . but in this case neither the thing nor the name , being changed : but we lawfully recovering that which was lost , renuing the title of great britain , enjoying our country ( as we did before ) calling all britaines , and holding all things in the same safety , and security under name of great britaine ( as before under names of england and scotland ) say all and each to other , pascite , ut ante , boves , pueri submittite tauros . it is a good and gracious deed to provide for reall agreement in all equall conjunction , and mutuall participation . but in my simple opinion , it had beene verbo tollere , & reipsa relinquere , only in shew to take away difference , but not in deed , without uniting both kingdomes into the name and stile of great britaine ; for , as he complained , tirannus occidit ? tirannis vivit ? so if the old enmity of english , and scottish be removed , and yet the names still remaine , i feare that the very names would ever put ill men in minde of olde grudge , and incite new variance : as is said of one , that he was romani nominis inimicus , at deadly hatred with the very name : where the name is taken for the very cause of hatred . as , eo nomine hostis , for that cause , even for name sake he is an enemy : even as in rome , when all things were accorded , and all parties pleased , only a name , which was in dislike among them , was thought hinderance to their mutuall concord , and content , saying , non placere nomen , id periculo sum esse , id officere , id obstare libertati : and therefore the sanate perswaded lucius , tarquinius , collatinus , otherwise in all respects approved , and beloved of all , even for his names sake , to forsake his office , saying , absolve beneficium , amicus abi , exonera civitatem vano ( forsan ) metu . this i speake , lest retaining former name of english , and scottish , which heretofore hath been offensive to each other , we call ( as before is spoken ) the ill disposed to former opposition , as between fire , and water , even to kindle such a fire in iacob , as will devoure in israel , and no water shall be able to quench it in bethel . where it may be thought more fit , to set aside all difference of former names : vt exoneremus rempub. vano ( forsan ) metu ; as it is said of one , quod nihil est metuit , metuit , sine corpore nomen . and if any account the feare of name nothing , ( bee it also say i nothing ) yet a man cannot be too carefull , or fearefull of that which is counted even nothing , seeing it is said . qui cavet , vix etiam cavet , dum cavet . let former destructions be present instructions . offensive distinction of names hath bred much woe . in italy faction of guelphs and gibelines arose for name sake . in england much blood for the white and red rose . in iustinians time fearefull division betweene the veneti and parsini about colours blew and greene . in which grievous contentions , arising first of small or no cause but only of difference in name and diversity of colours , deadly hatred is oft times kindled among former friends , as against sworne enemies . after phalarides death , the agrigentini made a decree that none should use glauca veste , because the tirants did use glaucis subligaculis : for they hated whatsoever might remember them of former tiranny . and the romanes publiquely ordained , that no romane should be ever called after the name of manlius ; for , because his remembrance was displeasing , they would have his name utterly perish . i wish that nomen , or mentio ipsa , the names english , and scottish , borders , former feud , wars and bloodshed between the two nations , were not once mentioned within our lips , but as nomen pelopidarum utterly put out , abolished , and never heard of , as that which is laid up in silence in the grave : even now that not the least occasion be left , no not in sport or inter ludicra certamina ( as we have a name of play amongst us called prison base , one part striving for england , and another for scotland , representing unto us the variance betwixt both nations ) lest it prove , as that betwixt them two brethren , demetrius , and perseus , king phillips sons ; who in ludicio certamine , opposite one to the other , with their companies divided on both sides , fell in earnest unto a maine deadly warre one against the other . i say , as neare as may be , these opposite tearmes of scottish and english should cease ; except they remaine , as only they ought remaine , epithites pertaining to one name of great britaine , and to one people britaines , as all the iewes of all the severall tribes , were called iacob gods people , and israel his inheritance . and herein ( seeing as vegetius saith ) princip●● est pro salute r●ipub . & nova excogitare , & antiqua restituere ) both nations ought joyfully applaud the late proclamation , & in all humbleness of duty , submit themselves to the kings majesties good pleasure , seeking thereby the common good of weale publique , and not his owne glory ( as they doe , who call their lands after their owne name , to get a name upon earth : and as valens the emperour desired ( according to his ambitious , and vaine-glorious humour , ) to call this whole continent valentia , after his owne name : for which thing also henoch the son of cain , building a city , was first noted , ) but as a king most gracious , not natus sibi sed patriae ( as hadrian the emperour professed before all : ita se rempublicam gesturum , ut sciret populi rem esse non propriam ) thinketh only on the ancient name , non tam mutans , quam aptans , so to roote out remembrance of former hatred , and to unite both into one . pastor populi non suum ipsius , sed subditorum quaerit commodum : & officio suo semper fungitur , utilitati consulens , & societati . change of names hath ever been thought meet in policy , even where men formerly strangers , and of divers kingdomes were to bee trained up together , and framed in fashion one to the other : as were given to daniel , hananiah , mishaell , and azariah , ( dan. 1. ) new , and other names . and daniel was called baltasar , and hananiah , shadrah , and mishael mesach , and azariah abednego of purpose , by changing their names , to make these forget themselves , their country , and if it were possible , the god of their fathers . and so the turkes have , from time to time , in their pollicy changed the old names of those places , they now possesse , which before professed christiany , and when upon any conquest , they take into their governement christians , they impose on them new names , to live like them , and as one people among them ; and shall we thinke it a wrong or inconvenience , that , if a grecian prince or other christian king recover against the turke , they afterward abolish a name imposed on them , and call any province , people or city after their olde and ancient name ? et si hoc in arido , quid in viridi ? if this be done ( ex facto ) by the children of this world , unto an evill end : may not his majesty in his princely wisdome ( fas estet ab hoste doceri ) ( ex jure ) for the undoubted good of the children of light call to remembrance , and put in execution the wise councell of maecenas to augustus : to take away all differences whatsoever , even of the meanest things which might bee thought on , whether of name or apparrell , or any thing else , to the intent all things might be throughly composed in one uniforme fashion , and conformity among all his subjects , to their undoubted good ? it hath been often observed , that parva scintilla neglecta magnum saepe excitavit incendium . and sores sleightly cured , break forth into greater danger . and , if i might boldly write my minde without mislike , i would undertake sufficiently to prove , that if the name had not been changed into great britaine , it might be feared we should not long ( as we ought ever ) continue one ; and that ( love being not without dissimulation ) we would among our selves , as is upbraided to the inconstancy of another nation ( now not to be here named ) ridendo fidem frangere , and so love , as that we would hate againe . for as a chiefe inhabitant , and commander in privernum , being asked in the senate at rome , what peace they should expect , answered , s● bonam dederitis , fidam , & perpetuam : si malam , haud diuturnam . so here may it be said , if union in name , bring also in deed , a good composition , and faithfull conjunction bona fide , it will doubtlesse by gods goodnesse , last ever : but otherwise i feare ( which god forbid ) may againe rent in sunder , and make the new breach worse than the former . and therefore wise was that saying ; ejusdem jurit esse debent qui sub eodem rege victuri sunt ; and that practise of romulus renowned , who by union of divers nations , eodem nomine & eodem jure latinos vocavit . and hereof grew the italicum bellum , because the latines united in other respects , were not joyned eodem jure with the romanes . to speak plaine , we all confesse our union in our obedience to the king , as to the head : but yet without continuance of that union also in the name of great britaine , and of other things thereto requisite ( to be farther by the honourable commissioners considered ) i feare wee shall prove , as imperfect , if not deformed a body , as apelles ( before noted ) painted venus , only perfect in the head , and left all the parts of the body unperfect . neither can i , for my part , imagine that part of the body well united to his head , which doth not concur with all the body in all his parts perfect with the head . vt nec pes nec caput uni reddatur formae . herein let natures workmanship in our naturall bodies leade us to the imitation of her wisdome , in the government of bodies civill : and as she hath in naturall mixtion reduced the foure contrary elements into a temperate and agreeing conformity , by taking away suspition of emulation , making them lose their proper names , and joyntly called mistionis forma : so should we by temperate discretion be willingly united with our neighbour friends into one corporation : especially seeing the reality of every thing we enjoy is to continue in all respects the same , and only a formality of appellation a little changed . naturam ducem dum sequimur non aberrabimus , said he : and the god of nature hath spoken it , so that we must beleeve , that a kingdome divided cannot stand , howsoever it may glory in the multitude of his parts : wherein a common weale may fitly be resembled to musicall instruments ; which howsoever consisting of the multitude of strings , yet the harmony is in the unity of proportion with agreeable consent of distinct sounds . now as a little jarre in musicke , a little intention or remission of any one string discordeth all the harmony ; so in this excellent musicall concord of a well ordered kingdome , never so small difference , though it be but titular betweene the severall parts of one common-weale , sometimes breedeth hatred , oftentimes envy , but alwaies emulation . whereupon philip comines well observed , finitimorum aemulationem nativam esse : that it was essentiall for neighbour regions to emulate one the other : which is only remedied by taking away the frets and by incorporation making them not now our neighbours , but all one with our selves . and herein consisteth the nature of true mixtion ( whereat all common weales should tend ) when every thing remaineth that was , yet nothing as it was ; when many contrary things yeeld up their contrariety and plurality unto one , consisting of all ; which participating of all their reconciled natures , imposeth only a new name , to their new manner of being , which is to be one instead of many ; and that not by coacervation or apposition of things without farther mixtion , remaining still distinct within themselves , but by union of consociation , which taketh nothing away from these things that were before distinct , but their distinction . out of which mistion will arise excellent temperature , which we hope long to see in our brittish common-weale , wherein no humour either of english or scottish may be predominant , but temperamentum aequabile , and that ad pondus too . which as it is seldome found anywhere , so it is alwaies found where it is found with perennity . and concerning such mistion was that said of romulus and trajanus , and now may it be said of king iames , and king charles ; diversas gentes ita commercio miscuit ut quod genitum esset usquam id apud omnes natum esse videretur . and of such mixtion may that of zeno be said , alterius chorus major , meus antem concinnior : another kings empire may be greater , consisting of diversity of nations , but ours more compact and united in one . and this mixtion of both our nations so mixed in one , bringeth forth but one title of great britaine . vnum , sed leonem , as the proverb saith . which i the rather urge here , against polititians ( if any such be ) of this age , who seeke to nourish faction and opposition in the state , and common-weale , and think nothing better , quam si in commune non consulant ; who ever have a rowland for an oliver ; where fearefull experience doth often shew the fruits of that axiom , contraria contrariis curatur . which manner of keeping subjects one opposite , and offensive to the other , is a flinty , and fiery society , even societas lapidum , fornicationi similima , quae casura , nisi invicem obstarent , hoc enim ipso continetur . and this practise , wheresoever prevaileing , is more then machivelian , even devillish , sowing seed of dissention in parts , to destroy the whole . therefore it being an infallible , but woefull ground of truth , nulla salus bello ; it is meete that all and every subject of great britaine , understand , and professe the other part of that verse , pacem te poscimus omnes . for so i thinke this axiome in a state , is better for preservation of weale publique : similima similimus nutriuntur . and if i were worthy , here would i advise all the magistrates of great britaine , which either now do , or hereafter shall beare rule under their high soveraigne , in any parts of his dominions , to remember in all their high honours , that cleo , and themistocles tooke contrary courses , and were both misliked in time of their magistracy . for cleo called all his friends , and old acquaintance together , and renounced them openly , giving them to understand , that now he was so advanced , they should expect nothing from him for former friendships sake . and themistocles answered one , wishing him to be alike to all , and not partiall , that he would not sit in seate of honour , and not doe more good to former friends than to others . but truth is , in a common-wealth , nor disdaine of former friends becommeth cleo , nor partiall favours themistocles ; for community regardeth neither any man , neither any cause for private respects , but is as the sun , yeelding alike common comfort to all : which thing i wish all , as one man , wisely to perceive , and willingly performe . and yet may cyrus have in remembrance , the very meanest of them , with whom sometimes he lived . and ahasuerus looking into the chronicles may remember those which have saved the king from any , who sought to lay violent hands upon him . and the macedonians may not either grudge , or disdaine that alexander prefer the persians before them of his owne countrey . ecquis est qui vestra necessaria suffragia pro voluntariis , & serva pro liberis faciat ? but to returne into the kings high way for the name of britaine : seeing his majesty may say , non me troja capit , scotland alone doth not containe my greatnesse : and therefore speaketh also to england : salve fatis mihi debita tellus : england is also the lot of mine inheritance : and both england , and scotland will i make one empire , and renew their names into the first title of great britaine , as it were ilium in italiam portans : ( though in removing all the gods out of the temple , to give place to iupiter , only that petty god terminus refused , and would not move ) yet let the termini , and bounds of both our nations , and all the people therein contained , willingly give place to the just pleasure of their sole monarch , and even in this also , acknowledge k. charles their supreame head , and governour : where obedience in each subject , is like the reconciled genius , utriusque regni : which though before was as angry iuno , much adverse to the romanes , yet now like iuno , out of her very image seemeth to speake aloud , romam se velle ire : anger is appeased , displeasure forgotten , and discord come to a perpetuall end . nec quenquam incuso potuit quae plurima virtus esse , fuit : toto certatum est corpore regni : and now the whole common-weale , odiis saturata , quiescit . neither may contention , either of antiquity , or any other dignity ( whereabout albanes , and romanes , so much contended , and would not yeeld one to the other ) breake this common band of love among our selves , or loyalty to our soveraigne , who imbraceth both nations with equall and indifferent love . but we ought to consider , that both english and scottish ( quis major ? aeque ambo pares ) making no question of difference for common goods sake , without difference may challenge like interest in his majesties favour ( et vitula tu dignus & hic ) to bee divided equally , and graciously among all , by geometricall proportion as his majesty shall be pleased to deeme meet . which thing may move all to mutuall kindnesse , and reciprocate love one towards the other , with an orderly conformity of both to live together in all peace , and christian charity , affectioned to love one another , with brotherly love , and in giving honour to go one before the other ; rom. 12. as it is said of scipio and lelius , actuosae vitae iter aequali gradu exequebantur : not grudgingly , nor contentiously , striving for prerogative of blessing and birth-right , in his majesties favour ; as if it might be said to his highnesse , hast thou but one blessing , my father ? gen. 27. for his majesties abundance , and overflowing measure of honour , poureth forth , as out of a fountain , streames to fill up every empty channell , nemo ex hoc numero mihi non donatus abibit ; and where every one may be contented , cuncta aderunt ; animus , si te non deficit aequus . herein let us take example from the romane common weale ( and surely for our instruction may it be said , nulla unquam respublica , nec major , nec sanctior , nec bonis exemplis ditior fuit ) where dyonisius halicarnasseus giveth us a strange shew of two consuls largius and claelius , who both strove to give precedence one to the other , preferring each other before himselfe , and reckoning one anothers worth before his owne : and this done , two or three severall times , neither presuming to goe before the other , but still refusing , and could by no meanes either be perswaded to take the preheminence one before the other . but is any mans eye evill , because the kings eye in speciall and gracious aspect is good ? doubtlesse when a king doth not all things ad voluntatem , sed ad utilitatem omnium ; they which mislike , ( and yet seeme of the same league , and society with others ) doe notwithstanding like nahaz the ammonite , ( 1 sam. 11. ) joyne in common covenant with others , but on condition onely , that they may thrust out the others right eyes . hoccine in commune honores vocare ? quaenam ista societas ? quaenam consortio est ? but whosoever intendeth truely the common good , let him remember , that solon said , the onely way to keep subjects in unity , is to maintaine an equality for all : for motus , as plato saith , is in inequalitate ; but status , and quies in aequalitate : which thing is spoken , not to breed , or maintaine parity in condition of men , for that equality were true inequality , nay iniquity , so to confound the world . but these things are alleadged to shew , that our gracious soveraign may herein ( i speake under favour ) be resembled to ianvs , who had two faces , to looke forward , to looke backward : for so his majesty is set in the middest , sole soveraigne of all great britaine , to looke on england , to looke back to scotland , and with princely and favourable aspect to countenance both , tros rutulusve fuat , nullo discrimine habebo : where both being made one common countrey , that saying may well befit our common emperour ; hostem qui feriet , mihi erit carthaginensis , quisquis erit . and there is that equality , before mentioned , distilling from his grace and majesty in honouring , and defending both alike , ( lusta pari premitur , veluti cum pondere libra , prona nec hac plus parte sedet nec surgit ab illa . ) where none ought strive contentiously , lest they seeme to offer violence to the kings grace , or to his honour , or to both : as the mid-wife charged pharez in making the breach betweene him and his brother , by forcing his birth before his brothers , through strife in his mothers womb ; whose name therefore , was called pharez , which signifieth division . but our brotherhood is not in strife , as that of cain and abel , esau and iacob , ismael and isaac : nor as that of geta and antoninus , sonnes to the emperour severus : after whose death , their mother iulia was forced to divide the empire betwixt her sonnes , severing and setting them asunder into separate governments , with a sea betwixt them , because of their hot contentions and implacable hatred . and god forbid , that we should by opposite contentions one against another , provoke the common parent of both our nations , as those two brethren did their parent iulia , to cry out against us , as she did against them : o my sons , you have found the way how to be severed and divided by sea and land , into distinct regiments , and ' as you say , the water divides you one from the other : but how will you divide me your mother ? how shall i bee divided between you both ? will you dissect mee into parts also , as them two lovers ( mentioned by plutarke ) striving for their love , dum uterque ad se certatim rapere conatur , rent her in pieces ? let our strife rather be like that of ephestion and craterus , who contended whether should love their king alexander most ; in so much that alexander was enforced to decide the controversie , adjudging that ephestion loved the king best , and craterus alexander best . so it pleased the king in his sentence equally to divide his love , and so did they both equally strive to love : and after this manner did the iones and chi● contend in love to hercules : and iuda and israel for david . and so i doubt not but our contention is of the like love , and duty towards our soveraigne : but as for hatred and malice amongst our selves , so separating us that we cannot be mixed together , dii talia graiis , erroremque hostibus illum . seeing ( as he said ) no greater hurt can be wished to our enemies then to be disunited among themselves , and if they will not bee at one with us , that they may be at odds betweene themselves : maneat quaeso duretque gentibus si non amor nostri at certe odium sui . quando nihil jam praestare fortuna majus potest , quam hostium discordiam . and now farther to enforce this union into both nations , the rather , because we are both alike under one head and governour : hath not his majesty two eyes , to respect both kingdomes ; two eares , to heare alike the cause of both ; two shoulders , to beare alike the burden , and care of both ; two hands , to distribute honours alike to both ; and two feet , to goe one before the other , yet both alike to support but one body ? the inequality only is , if we are not alike dutifull , and thankfull ; neither doe we , as the apostle exhorteth , ( rom. 12. ) carry like mindes one towards another ; nor make our selves in our owne conceits , equall to them of the lower sort . and where xenophon calleth magistrates , and mighty men , the kings eyes , the kings eares , the kings shoulders , yea also his hands , and his feete , it is not thereby meant , that they should thinke they also had two eyes to envy one the other ; two eares , to listen after advantages , or offences one against the other ; two shoulders , to shove at , and shoulder out one the other ; two feet , to out-runne , and prevent one the other ; two hands , to catch , and snatch one from the other , or to carry fire in one hand , and water in the other , or to build with the one , and to pull downe with the other , or with the one to offer a gift , and with the other a stab ; altera manu panem , altera lapidem ; but that their eyes , eares , shoulders , feete , and hands are , or should be mutuall helpers one to the other , for the common good , and publique service of the whole state . and i perswade my selfe , that all magistrates under his majestie , of the one , or other nation , united now in one common name of britaines will for publique administration of the common-weale , so see with their eyes , heare with their eares , beare up the head with their shoulders , and walke uprightly , having pure , and cleane hands , that as the fingers in the hand are distinctly divided , and yet do clap , and clasp themselves together , for more strength ; so all of command and in authority within great britain , though they have distinct offices , yet will so concur , and agree together , that though there appeare among them , and their distinct publique services , as , in digitis , divisio , it shall not be , ab unitate praecisio . and verily the two kingdomes , are like two hands warming and enfolding each other , continuing two , yet in one body : where if the right hand challenge more necessary use and service in the body then the left , or the left hand more than the right , and one not readily yeeld to joyne with the other , as is meete , the head may in his good pleasure make choice and use of either : as in the romane story , when tribunes disagreed for chiefest honour , quintus servilius , consul , of much lesse dignity , and authority than a king , tooke the matter into his owne hands , saying , patria majestas altercationem istam dirimet . here prudence among subjects hath need intermeddle with all other vertues , and shew the power of union in her selfe ; where justice demandeth right , fortitude tollerateth what ought be borne , temperance reformeth will , subdueth anger , moderateth passion , and represseth ambition ; and all in unity of obedience coupled together , bring forth plentifull fruit , for society , honour , and joy . which thing well pleased marcus furius camillus , dictator of rome , seeing all the senate , and subjects of rome , not only accord in the common execution of each office for common good of all , but willingly , and lovingly , both highest , and meanest to embrace one the other , saying , that the common-weale was flourishing , and most happy : si tales viros in magistratu habeat tam concordibus junctos animis , parere , atque imperare juxta paratos , laudemque conferentes potius in medium , quam ex communi ad se trahentes : whereof the senate , consuls , and tribunes gave testimony , and good proofe , when they all submitted all authority to camillus , perswaded in themselves , nec quicquam de majestate sua detractum , quod majastati ejus viri concessissent . in britaines union , england may not exalt it selfe above scotland , nor scotland strive against england , but both as members of one and the same body , under one and the same head , ought to have the same care one for the other , as if one member suffer , all suffer with it , and if one be honoured , all the members rejoyce with it ; and as in the church , so in the common-weale , one is my dove , one is my darling , shee is the only beloved of her mother , and deer to her , that bare her ; so i know there are diversities of gifts , and differences of administrations , and divers manners of operations in both ; and god hath set the members of the whole body , every one of them , severall in the body , as it hath pleased him , but , omnia ab uno ad unum ▪ all from one head , and to one end . hee that is wise will consider this . qui vero curiosiores sunt , quam capatiores , quaedam mag●is contentiose objectanda , quam prudenter consideranda esse arbitrantur . and now seeing i have waded so far in the union of britaines ; english may not mislike , that scottish beare office among , and with them , as if they were of a farre countrey , hunting after others treasures , serving the king of babylon , and not as the same subjects to hezechias ; for they are of , and for england , as we ; and we of , and for scotland , as they , and both for both , being made one . nay rather we ought desire their society , and rejoyce in this community , setting before our eyes for example , that saying of austin of the communion of saints , made fellow heires with christ through the mercy of our good god : deus , cum baberet unicum , noluit esse unum , sed habere fratres . and , ( if in humane matters , humane examples more move ) remembring that scipeo was as glad of his brothers preferment as of his owne ; and that castor would not be a god without his brother pollux , but would be only semideus , that his brother might partake with him ; as is well said : habent oculi in corpore magnum honorem , sed minorem haberent si soli essent . in the time of claudius , the emperour , when it was consulted that the senate should bee supplyed with more senators , the peeres and nobles of france , long before enfranchised free denizens of rome , sought also to participate in honours , magistracies , and dignities with romanes : and the matter being handled on both sides with great consideration , the romanes alleadged against the french , that italy wanted no sufficient men within it selfe , for it selfe . and that there was no reason to incorporate others with them , who had beene at so deadly hatred , and bloody warres against them . what ? no private men , not the common people , not strangers , but enemies taken into the senate ? was it not counted for a wonder that the athenians did take onely anacharsis into their city ? would the lacedemonians admit the tyrrheni to participate in their honors , though they had done them service ? and had their mothers also athenian women ? but the good emperour replying , said to the senators , that he would assume into the senate , of all his subjects , such as he found most worthy , of what countrey soever , alledging that his owne ancestors were descended from the sabins , and made of nobility and senate of rome , and that the iulij were taken from alba , coruncani from camerium , the porcij from tusculum , etruria , and lucania , and from all parts of italy chosen into the senate . and that by this meanes italy was extended , and greatly enlarged , so as not onely the people , but all their possessions , had their dependance upon the state of rome , and grew into one nation and people of rome . and that a setled state chiefly flourished , when the people inhabiting even beyond the river padus were received into the community of romane citizens . and lastly , that nothing was more hurtfull to the lacedemonians and athenians , then refusall to encrease the common-weale by accesse of new and other people . what ? shall not they be admitted , because they and romanes have had deadly feud one against another ? so the aequi , so the volsci . and yet are now all one and the same people of rome . this forcible speech pierced their hearts , and prevailed so , as that all submitted their judgement to the emperours wisedome . which thing i thought good here to remember , not forgetting also what anna said to dido . quam tu urbem soror hanc cernes ? quae surgere regna , connubio tali , troum comitantibus armis ? punica se quantis attollet gloria rebus ? which if we consider , as we should , wee cannot then but ingenuously acknowledge , that good and praise-worthy was the speech of paedaretus , who uederstanding he was not chosen into the number of the trecenti , who chiefly bare rule , said , he did glory there were so many his betters in the common-weale . and no lesse commendable was his saying , who wished , hee could raise frō the dead many moe , such excellent citizens ; as quintus fabius well advertised titus octacilius , nec tu id indignari possis aliquem in civitate romana , meliorem haberi quam te . doubtlesse the common-weale is more happy , and doth there more flourish , where is more choice of worthy honourable men , to be imployed in publique affaires , as need and occasion require . and as arrows in the hand of the strong man , so are the succession , and children of such ▪ blessed is our gracious king charles , that hath many kingdomes , like many quivers full of them : but as for the arrowes , which of them shall be taken forth , and sent , or shot abroad , that is in the power of the archer : neither may one say , why hast thou taken me ? nor the other , why am i left with the rest ? an non in coelo ipso sua luce sol lunam superat , non vituperat ? et stella à stella differt in gloria non dissidet in superbia ? and albeit there bee a kinde of jealousie , and naturall strangenesse among men , untill they better grow in knowledge one of the other , and doe eate , ( as our english proverbe saith ) a bushel of salt together : yet have we long since shaken off that infamy , which horace laid unjustly upon us , that britaines were uncurteous , and unhospitall to staangers : and have learned to grant incorporation , and immunities even to strangers in deed , and to enfranchise strange nations for trade with us , making them partakers of our rights : much more than should we be lesse nice of all immunity , and naturall community with us towards those , who now are one with us ; that though in the comedy , cause of strangnesse among men be alleaged , quia nec ille te novit , nec tu illum : yet we should be ashamed , quasi canes , latratu accipere , quem non agnoscimus . yea rather should we rejoyce to heare by this union , how that lacedemonii medizant , and medi lacedemonizant , both scot and english , so familiarly converse together , and are growne into one anothers natures and manners , that like servilii fratres , they are all one . and should we wish by reason of the neighbourhood , and neernesse of both nations , as also for likenesse of language we should bee alone : even as the historian discourseth of the phryges and trojani , and likewise other nations , how they were taken for the same , & called by one anothers names promiscuously , because they were so neere one to the other ; and the same also were counted but one nation , and of one kinde , by reason they were of the same language : a most sure argument ( saith he ) that they be but one people , who agree in one language ; as it is most absurd , the inhabitants of the same places should differ in language , if they be of the same kinde . why then ( as he saith ) iube hanc maceriam dirui , quantum potest , huc transfer , unam fac domum . and according to that resolution , — foederis aquas iungamus leges , sociosque in regna vocemus . especially seeing they may challenge with us , cives esse , & licet non easdemopes habere , eandem tamen patriam incolere : quare connubium petimus , & soci●tatem , quod finitimis , externisque dari solet : nibil novi ferimus , sed id , quod populi est , petimus : vt quibus velit populus romanus honores mandet . was not numa pompilius , though no romane , fetcht from sabins , and made king of rome ? was not also lucius tarquinius , not so much of romane blood , made king there ? and was not survius tullius , though borne basely , and of a bond-woman also , made king there ? et dum nullum fastiditur genus , in quo eniterit virtus , romanum crevit imperium ▪ but no such exception of scottish blood , his majestie being rightly , and anciently descended of royall english blood , and his nobles hence forth in their posterity , be●ing with us , and wee with them , all of brittish blood ●an esse ulla major , aut in signi●or contumelia potest , quam partem civitatis , velut contaminatam , indignam connubio habe●ri ? quid est aliud , quam exil●●um intra eadem moenia , qua● relegationem pati ? ne propi●quitatibus , ne affinitatibus im●misceamur , ne societur sanguis ▪ what can we say more but render all possible praise and thankes to our good , and gracious god , who by his servants our two gracious soveraignes , hath reduced , and restored the whole island of great britaine , answerable to his first beginning , and ancient former being ; like to one city , even one ierusalem , which is a city , at unity within it selfe . hoc verè regium , duos populos unum efficere . as the king of kings hath in mercy done to iew and gentile , to grecian , and barbarian , fecit utraque unum : he brake downe the partition wall , and hath gathered the people , & kingdomes together to serve him , dissoci●ta locis concordi pace ligavit . and why should no● many , and moe then tw● kingdomes , as well civilly a●bide in unity of subjection ▪ as many christian nation● continue in unity of faith ▪ but that the one hath the spi●rit of god , which is autho● of peace , and lover of con●cord , directing them : and the other the spirit of satan ▪ author of contention , and cause of confusion , perverting them . which thi●g king david well perceived , praying god for his sonn●solomon , that he might enjoy the full possession of the whole dominion from sea to sea , promised to israel under moses , but not fully obtained till then , because of the peoples sins . and albeit for our manifold , and great sins , this whole island was overlong divided into two , and forced by former division to many battels , and much shedding of blood ; yet we praise god , that in these our dayes , the full possession thereof is restored , and given to our peaceable solomon ; so as not only all his own subjects , even from sea , to sea , of both the kingdomes , are in him united into one ; but even the potent , and powerfull neighbour kings seeke peace , and ' make league with israel , even the kings of tharsis , and of the isles , bring presents , the kings of sheba , and seba brings guifts , as in the daies of solomon . this change ( even the happiest change that ever was ) from a people so divided from one , by gods eternall decree , and speciall mercy , to be made one , biddeth us open our eyes , and calleth us alowd , come , and see ; speque , fide que inquit , majora videbis . for our island , formerly for sin divided ( as the echinades insulae , were faired by poets , once far seperate , and distracted , for contempt of their gods ) is now become like that island delos , which though it floated , and was tossed sometimes upon the waters , à gente in gentem , as one wave forceth another ; was neverthelesse reported to be afterwards , truly firme , and stable . doubtlesse that god which hath written in the waters , and the sea , legible for ever eye to see , and read mare britannicum : and who hath continually carried in directing the pens , and pensils of all cosmographers , mapmakers , or whatsoever historiographers ( whom alphonsus sicilia calleth optimos consiliarios mortuos ) not to alter the first , and old name , but to call it in all their writings and descriptions , mare britannicum ; hath graciously , and miraculously effected for the land also , that out of the dead ashes of old great britaine , should be raised even the self same britaine , as the phenix living , and dying , est eadem , sed non eadem , quia ipsa , nec ipsa est . o admirable metamorphosis , & happy changel england , and scotland have left , though not lost , their names , both being preserved in the bosome of great britaine : non duo sunt , nec forma duplex , but , neu●runque & utrunque videtur : and of both us english and scottish being now britaines may it be said , as of them two brethren , alteruter & uterque ; alteruter est uterque , ut●rque autem neuter . which i againe call that faire phoenix , dying , and living , eadem , & non eadem , quia ipsa nec ipsa est . in which , excellent ? and vyonderfull work , the rather , and better to bring to passe the good purpose of uniting the two kingdomes and people into one , it hath seemed best to the godly wisedome of divine providence , first , and long since to knit all our hearts in one holy religion , and in the same service , and godly worship , to make us all like citizens with the saints , and of the houshold of god , renewed in christ , and reconciled into one body , acknowledging but one god , and professing but one faith , and religion , the hope of our vocation . whereby we learne , and cannot but confesse , ( if , as ciprian saith , consiliorum gubernaculum , lex sit divina ) that that common weale best pleaseth god , which commeth neerest to the church of god , that wisest polititiās , are best christians , that best governments have correspondence with gods lawes ; and that those kingdomes are best ruled , and the more blessed , which are of one heart and one obedience , even as all are one in christ , who is the head , and all under his government , are by one spirit , but one body . wherefore the good emperors theodosius , and valentinianus writing to ciprian bishop of alexandria , were bold to commend their government , according to the platforme , before described , saying : a pietate quae in deum est , reipublicae nostrae constitutio pendet , & multa utrinque est cognatio , & societas , &c. which most excellent patterne , and forme of government , is after the example of christ , uniting all into one and this the psalmist resembleth to that precious ointment , powred on the head of aaron , and running downe his heard , even to the skirts of his cloathing : for so doth sweet and precious union rest chiefly in the head , which is but one , and from thence run all along , and alike to all the parts of the people , which are but one . but shame on schisme , whither it be civill , or ecclesiasticall ; for it renteth the seamlesse coat of christ , both in the church and in the civill state , even in the doctrine , and ceremonies of the one against the truth of god ; and in christian charity , and common civility of the other against the peace of men . wherefore whosoever opposeth himselfe against the one , or other , is more unreasonable , and may be thought more cruell , than the souldiers which would not divide christs seamelesse coat , but cast lots , whose it should be ; saying , sortiamur cujus sit . for it cannot bee denied , but that they which divide great britaine , to have it divided within and against it selfe , divide that , for which they cannot say , sortiamur ; seeing cujus is known , and sit cannot be denied : but sortiamur , and cujus , and sit , should wholly , and only be left to his majestie , and to his royall succession for ever . only let our contention be , as was that of israel and iudah , who should be forwardest not only in bringing our king unto the seate of his kingdome , but also now to preserve the possession of his kingdome , sartum & rectum , inseparably united to the king , and joyntly united and undivided within it selfe . vnus rex , una lex ; unus pater , una communis patria ; unum caput unum corpus . let not private respects hinder a common good : let every man be as one man , of one heart and one soule , united to his majesties gracious intentions , which are for the everlasting good of every one . if the king had commanded thee a great thing , wouldest not thou have done it ? how much more then , when he saith , bee you all of one minde to live agreeably together , in one uniforme government , for your owne undoubted good . cedat jus proprium regi , patriaeque remittat . and to conclude in nomine , & omine concerdiae : to consummate this structure of union , and to consecrate it to all eternity , as the romanes did their temple of concord . behold , now is the time of establishing the unity of both nations together ; ( as he said ) si quando unquam consociandi imperii tempus optastis , en hoc tempus adest , & virtute vestra , & deûm benignitate vobis datum . heretofore , as c. marius said , he could not audire ju● prae strepitu armorum ; so by reason of civill discord betwixt both nations , the name of unity was but as a pleasant song , touching the eare , but not entring into the heart or serious consideration of either part . and so for many yeares this cogitation crept in every where . the name of britain seemed as a brutish name , all commixtion betwixt us seemed confusion , any mutation for union sake an utter subversion of all the state . but now the matter is come extra rubiconem : jacta est alea : the matter is proceeded in , aut nunquam tentes , aut perfice . such a matter of state is not slightly to be intended . and i know , that all the honourable commissioners on both sides thinke every one of themselves not to be imployed in this so great businesse , only as pro consule and in his owne person , but pro consulibus , & in commune omnium ; and therefore will be assembled like wise romanes , who after long dissention , and part takings , made full reconcilement and concord perpetuall for all matters in aede concordiae . and i doubt not , but all subjects will in all places , as the graecians did after long variance embrace that joyfull {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} agreed on , for good of all , not for fashion sake , as among heathen , but for conscience sake , as among such , which truly know , and feare god , who is author of vnity , and but one god : that so there bee henceforth , a perfect , and perpetuall establishment , according to the lawes of medes , and persians , which may not , nor cannot be altered ; remembering , inimicit●as mortales , amicitias immortales esse debere . only yet i would set before all mens eyes that worthy speech of the renowned tullus hostilius king of romanes , in the reconcilement of rome , and alba , and represented unto us in uniting england , and scotland by our two gracious soveraignes , quod bonum faustum , foelixque sit populo romano , ac mihi vobisque albani , populum omnem albanum , romam traducere in animo est : civitatem dare plebi : primores in patres legere : unam urbem : unam remupb . facere : & , ut ex uno quondam in duos populos diversa albana res est , sic nunc in unum redeat . and now also concerning the name , i recite only a poeticall fable , yet moralized , no fable : that when neptune and pallas did strive , whether of them should give name to athens , it was agreed , that he , or she should name the city , who could bring the best gift for common good . wherefore neptune did strike the shore , and it brought forth an horse , fore-shewing that athens should bee warlike : but pullas gave the city an olive , signifying peace , and that the city should flourish by peace : whereupon , peace being more profitable than war , neptune was enforced to yeeld his interest ; and pallas gave the name . oh how blessed are the peace-makers ? how beautifull are their feete ? how glorious , and joyfull the light of their countenance ? — pax optima rerum , quas homini novisse datum est ; pax una triumphis innumeris potio . k. iames first dove-like brought the olive branch , shewing that the waters were abated , anger appeased , dangers escaped , sorrows fled , and that salvation and joy entered the arke of great britaine . and it is and hath long been his most sacred majesties desire to encrease and establish the vnity of both nations , happily begun by his father king iames of blessed memory ; wherefore let it be the daily prayers of all true subjects , that god in mercy will still continue the s●me , to his majesty and his posterity for ever . finis . a proclamation for observing the staple-port at camphire. scotland. privy council. 1692 approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05662 wing s1880 estc r183519 52528981 ocm 52528981 179080 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05662) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179080) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:69) a proclamation for observing the staple-port at camphire. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most excellent majesty, edinburgh : anno. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. intentional blank spaces in text. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the eleventh day of august, and of our reign the fourth year, 1692. signed: gilb. eliot, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng maritime law -scotland -early works to 1800. foreign trade regulation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -commerce -netherlands -early works to 1800. netherlands -commerce -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion rr diev et mon droit honi soit qui mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation for observing the staple-port at camphire , william and mary by the grace of god , king and queen of great-britain , france and ireland , defenders of the faith ; to macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as by many antient contracts past betwixt the royal burghs of this our antient kingdom , and the town of camphire in zeland , and which have been approved by the kings our predecessors , the whole trade and commerce , as to the staple-commodities exported from this our kingdom , to the seventeen provinces of the nether-lands , has been settled and established at the said town of camphire , as being found by experience the fittest place for the scots staple , and there being in the former reigns of our royal predecessors many proclamations issued forth , requiring all our subjects traveling to the seventeen provinces of the netherlands , to export all staple-goods and commodities to the said staple-port , and to no other port nor place , and ordaining the laws and acts of parliament , and acts of the convention of the royal-burghs to be put to due and vigorous execution , for the full observance of the same : and we being informed , that of late , the staple-trade of this kingdom , hath been altogether diverted from the said staple-port at camphire , and carried to roterdam , and other places in the nether-lands , to the great prejudice and discouragement of trade , and contrair to the foresaid agreement with camphire , from presences that the said town of camphire neither could , nor would furnish sufficient convoyes , for convoying the saids ships , both out-ward and in-ward bound , from and to the said port now in the time of war. and now it being certified to us , that the magistrats of the town of camphire have engadged to the royal-burghs , that they will furnish sufficient convoyes , for securing of the trade betwixt that port and the firth and road of leith , twice in the year , viz. against the middle of september , and the middle of march yearly , commensing from the middle of september next ; and we being fully resolved , that all the standing laws and acts of parliament , and acts of convention of our royal-burghs , be put to full and vigorous execution , for the more due observance of the said staple-port for the future ; do therefore with advice of the lords of our privy council , hereby require all our subjects to give all due and exact obedience to the foresaids acts made for observing of the staple-por● discharging all merchants and skippers , or any other our subjects , to export forth of this our kingdom , any goods or commodities , that are or shall be declared to be staple commodities , to any other port or place in the nether-lands , but only to the said staple-port and town of camphire in zeland , under the pains and certifications mentioned in the saids acts of parliament , and acts of the convention of burghs , which pains and penalties , we ordain to be exacted from the transgressors with all rigour , and that they be further proceeded against , as our council shall find cause . and further , we with advice foresaid , do hereby require the general farmers , tacksmen , or collectors of our customs , and their sub-collectors , surveyers for the time being , that they make exact search and tryal of all staple goods and commodities that shall be hereafter transported forth of this kingdom , to any port of the seventeen provinces of the nether-lands , and take sufficient security from the merchants or skippers transporters thereof , that they shall transport the same to the said staple-port at camphire , and at no other place nor port within the said seventeen provinces , and that they shall not break bulk before their arrival thereat , conform to the acts of parliament , oblidging the said exporters to report certificats from the conservator , or his deputs at camphire , bearing , that the said staple-commodities were livered thereat , without breaking bulk ; and we do ordain the saids testificats , to be delivered in quarterly by the collectors at the several ports , to the agent of our royal-burghs for the time , to the end exact diligence may be done by him , against all the transgressors of the said staple , conform to the saids acts. our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and whole remanent royal-burghs of this kingdom , and other places needful , and thereat , in our name and authority , by open proclamation make publication of the premisses , to the effect , our royal-burghs , and all merchants and other persons , may have timeous notice hereof , and give due and punctual obedience thereto , as they will be answerable at their outmost perril , the which to do , we commit to you conjunctly and severally our full power by these our letters , delivering them by you duely execute , and indorsed again to the bearer , and ordains these presents to be printed . given under our signet at edinburgh , the eleventh day of august , and of our reign the fourth year , 1692 . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . in supplementum signeti . gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii god save king william and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to their most excellent majesties , anno dom , 1692 the kings majesties proclamation, for calling of his parliament in scotland. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii). this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription b02114 of text r171273 in the english short title catalog (wing c3324). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 6 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 b02114 wing c3324 estc r171273 52612085 ocm 52612085 179368 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b02114) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179368) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2786:29) the kings majesties proclamation, for calling of his parliament in scotland. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii). charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by evan tyler, printer to the kings most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1660. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. dated at end: given at whitehall the tenth day of october, and in the twelfth year of our reign, 1660. also includes: the list of persons entrusted by his majesty, for conveening the shires to make election of the commissioners to the parliament. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. b02114 r171273 (wing c3324). civilwar no the kings majesties proclamation, for calling of his parliament in scotland. england and wales. sovereign 1660 831 2 0 0 0 0 0 24 c the rate of 24 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2008-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-05 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-06 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-06 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the kings majesties proclamation for calling of his parliament in scotland . charles r. charles by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith , to all , and sundry , whom these do , or may concern , greeting . the confusions and troubles , by which our good subjects of this our ancient kingdom of scotland , have these late years been deprived of that peace and happiness , they justly might have expected , in the administration of our royal government among them ; being now by the special blessing of almighty god , happily removed : we have thought fit to let them know , that we still retain the same tenderness and good affection towards them : and as we will chearfully interpose our authority , in what may be for their good and welfare , and for securing the just priviledges and liberties of our people ; so we do expect from them , those dutifull returns of obedience and subjection to our person and authority , which are suteable to their obligations and the duty of loyal subjects . and , conceiving that a parliament , in its right constitution , will , at this time , be a ready mean for establishing a firm peace to our people , and for settling all religious and civill , all publick and private interests . we have therefore thought fit to call a meeting of our estates of parliament , to be kept at edinburgh upon the twelfth day of december , next to come . our will is herefore , and we charge and command our heraulds , pursevants and messengers of armes , to passe and make publication hereof at the mercat crosses of our royal burroughs ; and in our name and authority , to warne all our nobility by themselves , and the heritors of shires ( according as after publication hereof , they shall receive advertisement fra the persons contained in the list hereunto subjoyned ) and our royall burroughs to meet ; and according to the laws of our kingdom , to make choice of fit persons to be their commissioners to this ensuing parliament ; and that our nobility , commissioners of shires and burroughs , and all others having interest , do precisly keep this meeting of our parliament , under the paines prescribed by our laws thereanent . given at whitehall the tenth day of october , and in the twelfth year of our reign , 1660. record . a. primerose , cls. reg. by his majesties command , lavderdaile . the list of the persons entrusted by his majesty , for conveening the shires to make election of the commisioners to the parliament . sir hary home , for the sheriffdom of berwick ; sir peter wedderburn , for the sheriffdom of haddington● sir james foules , for the sheriffdom of edinburgh ; william murray of stanehop , for the sheriffdom of peible● robert ker of garden , for the sheriffdom of roxburgh ; thomas scot of whitslaid , for the sheriffdom of selkirk ; sir william dowglas of kelhead , for the sheriffdom of dumfreiz ; hay younger of park , for the sheriffdom of wigtoun ; sir james lockhart of lie , for the sheriffdom of lanerick ; naper of kilmahew , for the sheriftdom of dumbarton ; sir george kinnaird of rossie , for the sheriffdom of pearth ; campbell of achenbreck for the sheriffdom of argyl ; montgomery of hasled , for the sheriffdom of air ; sir arcbibald stewart of blackball , for the sheriffdom of renfrew ; john murray of polmais , for the sheriffdom of stirline ; david bruce of clackmanan , for the sheriffdom of clackmanan ; sir archibald stirling of carden , for the sheriffdom of linlithgow ; william scot of ardross , for the sheriffdom of fysw ; halyburtoun of pitcur , for the sheriffdom of forfar ; david ramsay of balmayn , for the sheriffdom of kincardin ; sir alexander fraser of philorth , for the sheriffdom of aberdeen , sir alexander abercrombie of brokenbou , for the sheriffdom , of bamff ; mckenzie of pluscarden , for the sheriffdom of elgin ; the laird of moynes , for the sheriffdom of nairn ; sir vrwhart of cromerty , for the sheriffdom of innerness ; sir george mckenzie of tarbet , for the sheriffdom of ross ; sir robert gordon of embo , for the sheriffdom of sutherland ; sir james sinclar of murkle , for the sheriffdom of caithness ; george smith of rapness , for the sheriffdom of orknay ; sir james stewart of bute , for the sheriffdom of bute . a. primerose , cls. reg. god save the king . edinburgh , printed by evan tyler , printer to the kings most excellent majesty . bloody nevves rom [sic] the scottish army, concerning the late bloody fight upon munday last, six miles on this side carlisle, between the 2. armies of england and scotland, the one commanded by major gen. lambert, the other by his excellency duke hamilton. with the number that were slain and taken prisoners on both sides, and the resolution of the scottish army thereupon, and the names of the chiefe commanders of scotland, which were wounded in the fight. likewise the scottish message to the english army, and their answer and resolution thereupon. with the declaration of the county of kent, concerning the landing of the duke of york, and the coming in tothe [sic] scotish army. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a76906 of text r205057 in the english short title catalog (thomason e453_34). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 12 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 5 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a76906 wing b3284 thomason e453_34 estc r205057 99864499 99864499 161998 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a76906) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 161998) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 72:e453[34]) bloody nevves rom [sic] the scottish army, concerning the late bloody fight upon munday last, six miles on this side carlisle, between the 2. armies of england and scotland, the one commanded by major gen. lambert, the other by his excellency duke hamilton. with the number that were slain and taken prisoners on both sides, and the resolution of the scottish army thereupon, and the names of the chiefe commanders of scotland, which were wounded in the fight. likewise the scottish message to the english army, and their answer and resolution thereupon. with the declaration of the county of kent, concerning the landing of the duke of york, and the coming in tothe [sic] scotish army. hamilton, james hamilton, duke of, 1606-1649. lambert, john, 1619-1683. scotland. army. [2], 6 p. printed for general satisfaction, of the english and scottish .., london : [1648] publication date from wing. consists of 4 letters: 1) dated: perith iuly 16. 1648; 2) signed and dated: avan july 18. 1648. j. hambleton; 3) signed i. lambert; 4) dated: waymer castle july the 20. 1648. annotation on thomason copy: "july 21". reproduction of the original in the british library. eng scotland. -army -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. kent (england) -history -early works to 1800. a76906 r205057 (thomason e453_34). civilwar no bloody nevves rom [sic] the scottish army,: concerning the late bloody fight upon munday last, six miles on this side carlisle, between the hamilton, james hamilton, duke of 1648 1892 11 0 0 0 0 0 58 d the rate of 58 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the d category of texts with between 35 and 100 defects per 10,000 words. 2008-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-06 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 paul schaffner sampled and proofread 2008-08 paul schaffner text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion bloody nevves from the scottish army , concerning the late bloody fight upon munday last , six miles on this side carlisle , between the 2. armies of england and sctoland , the one commanded by major gen. lambert , the other by his excellency duke hamilton . with the number that were slain and taken prisoners on both sides , and the resolution of the scottish army thereupon , and the names of the 〈◊〉 commanders of scotland , which were wounded in the fight . likewise the scottish message to the english army , and their answer and resolution thereupon . with the declaration of the county of kent , concerning the landing of the duke of york , and the coming in t of he scottish army . london , printed for geneall satisfaction , of the english and scottish 〈…〉 a great fight on sunday last between two armies of england and scotland . honoured sir , since my last to you , dated the 14. of this instant , the scots horse are advanced from carlile , towards our quarters at perith , and thought to have fallen upon our out-guards , and surprized our men in our quarters , but by the vigilancy of our scouts , they were discovered , and notice were given to our horse guards , who were kept 4 , miles from perith in the road to carlile : whereupon c●ptain bethel ( a man of known valour and integrity ) receiving the allarm , caused his troop immediatly to mount , and with 5. troopes more , and 2. troopes of dragoones advanced towards warwick bridge , to receive the scottish ●ockies , which accordingly they did ; for about 2. miles on this side the bridge , a party of the scots horse ; and 4 companies of foot , were drawn up in a close , and stayed only for orders , their horse who gave the allarm , retreated another way , so that they had not the least notice of our coming , but upon our near approach , they cryed out , horse horse , arme arme ; but notwithstanding all their preparatives , our dragoones dismounted , and got the hedge , and the english ground ; they fired again , and kept their ground , and after a sharp dispute , and furious conflict gallantly maintained on both sides , we gained ground , and beat them out of the field , where they first charged us , they be took themselves to another field , ( the sence thereof being only supported by a small stone wall ) breast high , where they fired very resolutely , but our dragoones pursued , and made way for the horse over the wall , which the scots perceiving , betook themselves to flight , our men pursued them 2. fields , but by reason of fresh supplyes coming to them , made good their retreat , with little losse . in this conflict we lost about 8. men of the enemies , we found dead in the place above 20. who might easily be discovered by their gray shootes and blew bonnets . it s said that lieutenant col. hames , and major ennis , who commanded in chiefe , were mortally wounded , for ndeed they fought resolutely , charging three times through our body of horse , a gallant break-fast at their first coming ; this action happened upon sunday morning last about 2. of the clock in the morning , the armies of duke hamiltons are marched on this side carlile ; the said duke entered england with about 9000 horse and foot , about 50. troops , and 70 companies , their horse not so big as ours in england , excepting those brought thence , there were not so many at the randevouz at dunfreese , but more came up , there are very few much affected to the cause , and therefore escape as fast as they can back , which being foreseen , necessitated a degree of raising continually , the cannon was not come up , nor was there much need , for though speed was made to get upon english ground , yet is it not like they will advance far before they have setled garisons in barwick and carlile ( according to the large treaty ) which are to be delivered up to them , & out come the english to joyn with sir marmaduke langdale , and so there will be ● . armies : the scots forces are come as farre as roase castle , a fine house belonging to the bishop of carlisle , and 5. miles on this side the city , but now burnt down because not tena●ble . major gen. lambert lies at perith about 12. miles from carlisle , and seven from the scots , from which place he intends not to budge , expecting 600 horse and dragoones daily , who came from wales by the way of chester , also what yorkshire can afford , the magistrates of barwick sent to scotland ( and it 's like carlisle will do the like ) to know what terms they should have if the scots garison come in : sir iohn morley being escaped from london , is a gallant golden man in scotland , as any covenanter of them all , and is now with the duke , the kingdome of scotland generally disaffected to this war , the ministers speake broad and say , the divill is gen. d. hambleton is but lieutenant gen , and that he nevr prospered in any undertaking and they hope he will not in this , and they have a strong faith that way , the royall english say , get they their ends , the seots shall be little the better for comming into england . two troopes only left in those parts , all the rest gone to lambert , the letters which were interchanged between duke hambleton , and major gen. lambert , being the harolds that past before enterance may not unfitly follow . perith iuly 16. 1648. noble sir . the parliament of the kingdome of scotland , upon consideration of the great danger eminent to religion , his majesties sacred person , and the peace of this kingdome , from the prevailing power of sectaries & their adherents in england , did lately send to the honourable houses of parliament such demands , as they conceive just and necessary , whereunto not receiving any satisfactory answer and finding the danger still increasing , and great forces drawne together upon their borders . the committee of the estats of parliament have thought fit to lay thei● commands upon mee , with such other noble personages as they have joyned with mee in this service for prosecuting their just desires in pursuance of the ends of the covenant , according to the joynt declaration of both kingdomes , 6. jan 1643. and 1644. for setling religion liberation his majestie from his base imprisonment , freeing the honourable houses from such constraint , as have been by forces long upon them , disbanding of all the armies whereby the subject be free from the intollerable taxes and quarter which they have so long groaned under , and for procuring the settlement of a sollid peace , and firme union betwixt the kingdomes under his majesties gogovernment . these being the true intentions and desires of the kingdome of scotland who will most faithfully observe on their part their engagement by government and treaty to their bretheren of england ; except you will not oppose their pious , loyall , and necessary undertakings , but rather joyne with them as the prosecution of their ends . i shall desire that the bearer , my trumpter , may not be long kept , but returnd with your present and possitive answer , that accordingly i may move as i am commanded . sir . i am your servant , j. hambleton . a●an july 18. 1648. to his excellency duke hamilton , and generall of all the scotish forces by sea and land . my lord , i received a letter from your lordship , by your trumpet , which mention that the parl. of scotland ( having upon consideration of the danger to religion , his majesties person and kingdoms , sectaries in england ) addrest themselves to to the parl. of england for redresse , and have not received a satisfact●ry answer therein , to which ( my lord ) i shall not take upon me to give an answer , seeing the late ordinances concerning the settlement of religion , their sundry addresses and propositions tendred to his majesty in order to the peace and wel being of his kingdoms are published , and laid open to the view of the whole world , and which i doubt not but are well known to your lordship . to what your lordship mentions concerning the encreasing of danger by the drawing of some forces upon the borders of scotland , i can more fully answer , having the charge and conduct thereof , by commission from his excellency the lord fairfax , and have his positive command to be most tender in acting anything , such might give any seeming occasions of offence to our brethren of scotland , which commands i can confidently say i have hitherto most consci●ntiously and punctually observed , and further that i do b●lieve it never entred into the parliament or his excellencies thoughts to act any thing prejudiciall or harmfull to the kingdom of scotland ; and what the true reasons are which do occasion the drawing of these forces so neare the borders , i shall not need to mention : all men knowing it to be for the suppressing of sir marmaduke la●gdale and his adherents , who are many of them papists ; and grand delinquents , and are lately risen in rebellion against the parl. and have ever and still are notorious opposers of the ends of the covenant , according to the joynt declaration of both kingdoms 6. ian. 1648. for setling religion , his majesty in his due rights and prerogative , and for the procuring a firme peace and union betwixt both kingdoms . signed i. lambert . joyfull newes from kent . endired sir , the tide is now turned , our countreymen begins to thwart the sands ; for upon the intelligence of the duke of yorks landing with an army from holland , and the scots coming into england , they resolved to adhere to their late principles , and to stand for the defence of the liberties of their unconquered nation , and have declared their joynt resolution to oppose all forces whatsoever that shall endeavour to make an inroad within the bowels of this county , to disturb the peace thereof , being resolved to display their banners , in opposition to the van of the new raised royalists . waymer castle july the 20. 1648. fjnjs . apud edinburgum undecimo maii 1643. forasmeikle as the lords of privie councell, commissioners for conserving the peace, and commissioners for the common burdens, taking to their consideration the necessitites of the scottish army ... scotland. privy council. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription b05745 of text r183607 in the english short title catalog (wing s2013). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 b05745 wing s2013 estc r183607 53981746 ocm 53981746 180379 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05745) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180379) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2827:8) apud edinburgum undecimo maii 1643. forasmeikle as the lords of privie councell, commissioners for conserving the peace, and commissioners for the common burdens, taking to their consideration the necessitites of the scottish army ... scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) by evan tyler, printer to the kings most excellent majestie, printed at edinburgh : anno 1643. caption title. initial letter. signed at end: arch. primerose cler. s. cons. imperfect: cropped with slight loss of text. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. eng scotland. -army -finance -law and legislation -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1642-1649 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. b05745 r183607 (wing s2013). civilwar no apud edinburgum undecimo maii 1643. forasmeikle as the lords of privie councell, commissioners for conserving the peace, and commissioners f scotland. privy council 1643 539 8 0 0 0 0 0 148 f the rate of 148 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the f category of texts with 100 or more defects per 10,000 words. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion apud edinburgum undecimo maii 1643. forsameikle as the lords of privie councell , commissioners for conserving the peace , and commissioners for the common burdens , taking to their consideration the necessities of the scottish army in ireland , which for want of pay , victuall , and cloathes , is not able longer to subsist , and having according to their bound dutie resolved to provide some supply for their present maintenance , did therefore by their act of the fourth of march last determine that the sum of twenty thousand pound sterling , & as much more as should be voluntarily offered by his majesties good subjects betwixt and the first day of may instant , should be presently borrowed to that effect , upon the conditions and securitie contained in the said act : and now considering that in respect of the shortnesse of time many of his majesties goods subjects who will willingly put to their helping hand to this religious and necessary work , could not have timous advertisement to provide what they are to lend , and that the whole moneyes already given is onely able to furnish some meale to the souldiers , without which they had either starved or disbanded ere now . therefore the saids lords of privie councell , and commissioners of both commissions foresaids , doe hereby declare , that what ●ummes of money shal be yet lent for the use foresaid , betwixt and the tenth of july next to come , shall be thankfully payed to the len●ers , their heires , executors , and assignes , betwixt and the first of august next ; together with the ordinary annuall rent , from the 〈…〉 me of the lending of the same , so long as the whole or any part thereof shall remaine unpaid , and that conform to the tenour of the ●●oresaid act of the fourth of march , which is holden as here repeated ; and that the lenders shall upon deliverie of their money have tickets of receipt , and acts of counsell in manner contained in the said act. and als declares , that as any summes of money , due ●r to be due to the armie , shall come from the parliament of england , or otherwayes whatsoever , that the same shall be imployed ●or payment of the advancers proportionally , according to the summes lent by them . and therefore the saids lords of privie councell , with consent foresaid , doe now , as of before , desire every one of his majesties subjects , who will contribute their assistance ●●erein , that they will be pleased speedily to advance such summes as they shall think sit upon assurance and security in manner foresaid : and ordains thir presents to be registrate in the books of councell and commissions foresaids , and to have the force of an act of the ●…ids judicatories jointly and severally , and to be printed together with the former act of the fourth of march . arch. primerose cler. s. cons. printed at edinburgh by evan tyler printer to the kings most excellent majestie , anno 1643. a short and impartial view of the manner and occasion of the scots colony's coming away from darien in a letter to a person of quality. fletcher, andrew, 1655-1716. 1699 approx. 87 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 21 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a39785 wing f1297 estc r6209 12581343 ocm 12581343 63768 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a39785) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 63768) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 960:25) a short and impartial view of the manner and occasion of the scots colony's coming away from darien in a letter to a person of quality. fletcher, andrew, 1655-1716. 40 p. s.n.], [edinburgh : 1699. attributed to andrew fletcher. cf. nuc pre-1956. place of publication from wing. reproduction of original in union theological seminary library, new york. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng darien scots' colony, 1698-1700. scotland -history -1689-1745. panama -colonization. panama -discovery and exploration. 2007-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-07 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-03 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a short and impartial view of the manner and occasion of the scots colony's coming away from darien in a letter to a person of quality . quia veritas , propter taciturnitatem , non lucet , mendacio se ingerendi , locus est . tacit. printed in the year , m. dc . xc . ix . my lord , i am so far from wondring at the extraordinary concern which you are pleased to express for the late bad news of our colony's having come away from so valuable and impregnable a settlement , as that of which they were possess'd , in the very navel of the trading world ( if i may properly so call it ) that i should much more wonder , if any man who carries scots ▪ blood in his veins , and pretends to have any regard either for the honour , interest , or reputation of his countrey , should not , upon so provoking an occasion , contribute as much as in him lies , to retrieve so great a loss at any rate , and have a just resentment against the authors of so surprising and unaccountable an emergency . you tell me ( which is true ) that several people , according to their different interests and affections , as well as different capacities to penetrate into , and judge of , the true grounds of so unexpected an emergency , do vent their opinions and reflections variously concerning it : some attributing it to the want of due care in the directors at home , to send intelligence , as well as the needful supplies of men and provisions to the colony , in due time ; some to the temerity , imprudence and incapacity , of those who were intrusted abroad , with the management and government of the colony ; some ( who you say are the far greater number ) to the effect of his majesty's proclamations issued forth in all the english plantations of america , declaring the said settlement illegal , and strictly intercomuning all persons thereunto belonging ; and you are pleased to desire my sentiments of the whole matter . it may possibly be reckon'd no small piece of presumption in one of my weak talent , to venture upon setting pen to paper , upon so critical an occasion as this is ; and how willing soever i might have been at any other time to gratify your request that way , i must confess , i am in so splenetick a mood , at this juncture , that my inclinations prompt me but very little to bestow my time upon scribbling : yet your commands being always indisputeable with me , i shall supercede my own inclinations at this time , and freely give you my thoughts of the matter , with all imaginable candour , as succinctly as i can , and commit the whole to your own discretion , being well assur'd that you 'l advise nothing thereupon , but what you are fully convinc'd will be most suteable to the honour , interest , and reputation of the nation , which ( by the by ) was , in my humble opinion , never at a lower ebb than at present . that the directors of our indian and african company at home , are no manner of way chargeable with any omission or want of due care in making early provisions for supplies to the colony , or with any mis-managements in taking wrong measures , upon some occasion or other , or with too much easiness and credulity ( as some do alledge ) in suffering themselves to be over-perswaded , or any otherways imposed upon by mercenary pretenders , who at the same time might possibly have been the tools for driving on a forreign interest , for selfish ends , is more than i shall take upon me to maintain too positively in their behalf : but sure i am , the many dis-appointments , difficulties and wicked contrivances , which they were all along oblig'd to grapple with , both abroad and at home , made their part very uneasie , and were enough to daunt the resolutions of any privat society whatsoever ; especially finding themselves so openly discountenanc'd by authority , that the adventurers were thereby discourag'd from paying in their shares ; yea in so much that the directors were not only sheckled from pursuing many reasonable and convenient measures that they had in view , but were also often oblig'd to pawn their own privat credit for carrying on , and doing those things that were indispensibly necessary for supporting the common interest , and wait for their relief till a better opportunity should offer . but whatever escapes they may be chargeable with , i dare confidently averr in their behalf , that they have directed to the best of their knowledge ; and i doubt very much , whether the most part of all those , who ever yet took the liberty of censuring their actions , would have taken half so rational measures , had they had the same game to play , and the same difficulties to encounter with : for , as the directors were chosen by the solemn election and suffrage of all the adventurers in the joint-stock of the company , ( wherein the most considerable of the nobility , gentry , and whole body of the royal burrows are concerned ) so it must be allowed , that the generality of those in the direction , are persons of as much known honour , probity and integrity , and of as much knowledge too , as can be found of any other set of men in the nation : but the continued thwartings that they met with from time to time , did not only necessarly retard many of their measures , but made also some of those measures prove altogether abortive , tho' , never so rationally projected : and it 's very observable , that none have been more busie and meddling in censuring their conduct all along , and even at this time , than some who had little or no concern in the stock , and others who were ready upon all occasions to throw stumbling blocks in their way . but 't is very easy , and no new thing , to either credulous fools , or designing knaves , ( who , alas ! are by far , the greatest part of mankind ) to censure the best of mens actions , without ever considering the reasonableness of the measures they take , or the crossness of any accidents they may meet with . and this brings into my remembrance a saying of the renowned sir walter raleigh , in his apology for his voyage to guiana : as good success admits no examination , so the contrary allows of no excuse , how reasonable or just soever . and indeed the poet is very just upon that head : — careat successibus opto quisquis ab eventu facta notanda putat . ovid. epist . 3. it is very evident by the strain of the acts of parliament and letters patent , establishing the said company , that these who projected that scheme had in view , sooner or later , no less des●gn than a trade to both the indies and to africa , and that by a more immediat and much quicker communication than was ever before practised by any society whatsoever . in order whereunto , those in the management thought it was not only necessary , to establish a free and staple-port in some convenient place or places on that isthmus or nick of land , situated on the height of the world , between the north and south seas , formerly called darien , or in some such convenient place , but also to raise a joynt-stock suteable to the greatness of such an undertaking . and not imagining that privat hands in this kingdom could of themselves be able to raise a sufficient stock for that purpose , the first offer thereof was made to our friends at london , who in nine days time concluded a subscription there , of 300000 pounds sterling , and paid in the first fourth part thereof either in money , bank-bills , or notes payable on demand , and further declared their willingness to subscribe for as much more , if allowed : but you know how that subscription was quickly render'd void by the measures taken in the parliament of england . the next attempt ( you know ) that the directors made for strengthning their stock and interest , was to endeavour the procuring of forreign subscriptions for some considerable sum ; and in order thereunto , upon repeated encouraging advices from several parts beyond sea , but more especially from hamburgh , they sent some of their own number , as commissioners or deputees thither , with whom soon after their arrival , the merchants of the said city of hamburgh , enter'd into contract to joyn at least 200000 pounds sterling with the company 's stock : but you know likewise , how the english ministers there , did , under pretence of a special warrant from his majesty , put a stop thereunto , by giving in a memorial to the senat of that city , not only , disowning the authority of the said acts of parliament and letters patent , but also threatning both senat and inhabitants with the kings outmost displeasure , if they should countenance or joyn with the company 's said deputees , in any treaty of trade or commerce . notwithstanding whereof , tho' the council-general and court of directors of the said company have , not only often address'd and petition'd the king and privy council of this kingdom , but also his majesty's high commissioner , and the right honourable estates of parliament at their last session ; and likewise , that the said estates were thereupon pleased , by their unanimous address of the 5th . of august 1698 to his majesty , to manifest not only their own , and the whole nation 's concern in that matter , earnestly entreating , and most assuredly expecting , that his majesty would , in his royal wisdom , take such measures as might effectually vindicat the undoubted rights and privileges of the said company , and support the credit and interest thereof ; but were also pleased in the same address , to recommend the concerns of the said company to some special marks of his majesty's royal favour , as being that branch of the trade of this kingdom , in which they and the nation they represent , have a more peculiar interest . yet ( it seems ) his majesty has been all along so taken up with the far greater and more general concerns of europe , that , to this hour , i have not heard of any manner of redress that has been given in that matter . there were likewise considerable steps and advances made by several merchants in holland , particularly at amsterdam and rotterdam , towards a subscription there ; but upon notice had of their meetings with the company 's deputees above-mention'd , and of the success their negotiations were like to have had , the most considerable and leading men of those merchants , who had shewed most forwardness in that matter , were sent for by some of the states , and threatned that measures would be taken , to make them repent their doings , if they persisted any further in treating with the said deputees , or if they would joyn with the scots company . this , i remember , happen'd some months before the hamburgh-memorial above-mention'd was presented , which i confess makes it seem a problem to me , as well as to many others that have heard of it , whether the english were influenc'd by the dutch , or the dutch by the english , to deal so unkindly by us : but in short i think we may truly say with the prophet , the syrians before , and the philistines behind , &c. isaiah , 9. 12. but to pass over all these previous discouragements and disappointments , and to come closely to the point in hand , the colony that was first sent away in july 1698 , for settling a plantation in america , pursuant to the instructions then given , carried along with them not only abundance of all necessaries for such an undertaking ▪ but also such a quantity of provisions , as was calculated for a whole year , and of some particulars ( namely stock-fish ) what was computed might have served for near 18 months : and for their further security , in case those provisions should happen to fall short , before advice could be had of their settlement , and the fresh supplies of provisions sent after them , there was likewise a cargo of sortable goods , to the value of about 16000 pounds sterling prime cost here , sent along with them , at the absolute disposal of the council , for the colony's use ; which goods were either to be traded with upon the coast and american islands , or barter'd for provisions and other necessaries at the council's discretion , as should best sute with their circumstances for the time . yet such was the directors care of their welfare and safety , that , immediatly after their departure from scotland , the directors did , upon the encouragement of the parliaments address above-recited , apply themselves in a dutiful manner to his majesty , by their humble petition of the 16th . of august 1698 , to bestow upon them , as a gracious mark of his royal favour , the use of the two small friggots . then ( and to this hour ) lying useless in burnti●land harbour ; with design to ●it them out , as soon as possible , with provisions and other necessaries for the colony ; and appointed a particular committee to wait upon the chief-men in the government , to desire their assistance in seconding the said petition : but in a short time thereafter , they found it necessary to call a council-general of the company , which accordingly met on the 5th . day of september following : and the directors laying before them a representation in writing ( which contained an abstract of the then state of the company 's affairs , together also with their own opinion , what they thought necessary to be done by the company at that juncture , with relation to a supply of provisions and other necessaries to be sent to the company 's colony ) they thereupon ordered a further proportion of the company 's joint-stock to be call'd in , from the respective proprietors for that purpose . and upon the 9 th day of november , the court of directors did , upon the prospect of the martinmass payments , come to a resolution , that a ship of near about 200 tuns burden , should be bought forthwith for the company 's use , and that the buying and fitting thereof , as also the buying of the needful provisions for a supply to the colony , should be referred to a committee which was appointed for that end ; but after enquiry made in several places about such a vessel , they could find none reported to be so fit for their purpose , as one that lay then in leith-harbour , exposed to sale ; which one of their number bought , with a special condition to be free , if upon survey she should not be sound fit for the company 's use : and upon the 14 th day of december ( which was near about four months before any word came from the colony ) the court of directors gave orders to conclude the bargain for the said ship , according to former agreement , and to fit her out with provisions for the colony , with all possible expedition : but the ship when bought ( tho' a known prime sailer , and after all the necessary precaution had in buying of her ) happening not to be so sound as was expected , took a much longer time to be repaired , than could well have been imagined , and could not therefore sail as soon as was intended . but in the mean time , the directors being loath ( it seems ) to trust to the said ship only , in case of accidents , made it their business to find out , and purchase a good sailing ship , english-qualified , to be dispatched from clyde with provisions , and the needful advices for the said colony : and upon finding a ship so qualified , she was dispatched from clyde upon the 24 of february last ; but to the company 's and colony's inestimable loss , the said vessel was cast away on one of the west islands of scotland : of which accident the court of directors had no advice before the 11th . day of april : and the loss was still the greater in this , that she was bought so qualified , with a view to be serviceable to the colony , not only in trading upon the coast , but also in running backward and forward , to and from any of the english plantations , with goods , provisions , and intelligence ; she being qualified to touch there in the strictest sense of the english act of navigation . you may remember likewise , that the other ship abovemention'd was just ready to sail about the latter-end of march last , being the time that the first advices arrived here of the colony's settlement and good condition : but the directors having intelligence of three spanish ships of force , that were to sail about that time from cadiz to the west-indies , with a re-inforcement of men , arms and ammunition , for carthagena , under the command of don piementel , the present governour of that city , and that he had particular instructions , with relation to our settlement ; they thought it not safe to let the company 's said ship sail alone ; and therefore stopt her , till another ship of force might be got ready with men and provisions ; which accordingly being got , both the said ships set sail from leith-road , on the 12th . of may last , with a recruit of 300 men , about 900 bolls of wheat made into bisket and flower , as also a considerable quantity of pease , pork , oyl , brandy , some beef , arms , ammunition , and other necessaries ; carrying likewise along with them advices , that a much more considerable recruit of ships , men , provisions , arms , ammunition and other necessaries , were to follow with all convenient dispatch , under convoy of the rising-sun . and the directors did accordingly dispatch the rising-sun , and three other ships of considerable force and burthen , from greenock , the 18 th . day of august last ; tho' by contrary winds they were stopt , so as that they could not sail further than the isle of bute , till the 24 th of september following : they had 1300 men on board , with as many ingineers , fire-workers , bombardeers , battering guns , mortars , bombs , and other warlike provisions , as ( if safely arrived at the colony in due time , and considering the situation and natural strength of the place ) might reasonably be presumed to have made it impregnable . nor was this all , for immediatly after the first advice that the directors had of the colony's settlement , they wrote back to the colony , by the several ways of new-england , jamaica , barbados , antegoa , and the other leeward islands , that these recruits above-mentioned were coming to them ; and in the mean time , sent them an illimited and discretionary credit , for buying of provisions from any of the english plantations , if they should happen to stand in need thereof ; which credit the directors were induced to give , from an assurance that they had given them , by several persons at london , and in the west-indies , of their good inclinations to supply the colony with provisions , if such a credit were given ; and for that end , printed copies of the said credit were sent by the way of london , to be dispersed over all the english plantations in america . and upon the faith thereof , several sloops and brigantins , freighted full of provisions , were dispatched from the english plantations to our colony ; particularly from new-england , new-york , road-island , and philadelphia ; tho' , alas ! they happen'd to be too late , those of the colony being unluckily come away from darien , some weeks , before these sloops could well be arrived there : so that this was no such imaginary credit , as some people would have us believe it to have been . yea further , even before the said credit was known in america , not only several sloops went with provisions from jamaica to the colony , and barter'd their provisions for other goods : but also , a new-england brigantin , freighted full of provisions , sold her cargo to the council of the colony , for bills drawn by them upon the company 's cashier here ; which bills amounted to about 700 pounds sterling , and were punctually paid accordingly . by which it may evidently appear , that if no extraordinary methods had been used to put a barr to their begun correspondence , there had been little or no occasion for any special credit on particular persons . and upon the directors having received the said surprizing and unexpected news of their colony's coming away from darien , they immediatly came to resolutions of dispatching a particular credit , with proper advices , per express to new-york , by a vessel then bound thither , where they understood most of their men were , and to send other expresses , by several ways , in quest of both the first and last recruits sent to the colony ; with orders to repossess themselves of their former settlement , and to fend supplies of provisions and other necessaries after them , as soon as possible ; and to have from hence forward some small vessels or advice-boats , running continually , backward and forward , with certain intelligence , between this and the colony , their former way of corresponding having ( it seems ) fail'd by reason of the proclamations above-mention'd ; as shall appear , more particularly , by and by . and because the expediting of those several expresses , and sending a credit for provisions , and other necessaries , could not admit of any delay , at so critical a juncture , they frankly engag'd their own privat credits , for those several purposes , until the company 's own money should come in to answer the same ; and in the mean time , they called a meeting of the council-general , who approved of those resolutions : and several of the councellours did likewise freely and generously joyn their own privat credits with that of the directors , for the purposes aforesaid . in pursuance of which resolutions , the directors sent a credit of 2000 pounds sterling to new-york by a gentleman , whom they sent express from hence thither , in the beginning of october last , with proper instructions suteable to the occasion . they sent likewise at the same time , by a ship then bound from the downs to the leeward islands , and jamaica , a ●ew councellour for the colony , fully instructed in relation to this emergency , with orders to go with all possible dispatch , in quest of the recruits lately sent to the colony : and the better to enable him to execute effectually what was then given him in commission , he carried a credit of 1000 pounds sterling along with him . since which , they have , in the month of november last , dispatch'd one of the company 's own ships , full of provisions and other necessaries for the colony , from clyde ; and sent another councellour on board thereof , with a credit of 500 pounds sterling more : and about the same time , they freighted another ship , which sail'd from forth sometime ago , to carry provisions to the colony : and ( as i 'm inform'd ) are now upon dispatching forthwith two other ships with more provisions after them ; the one from forth and the other from clyde ; that from forth being already agreed for , and bound by charter-party to sail ( god willing ) on the 20 th . of january next . now this , being a short abridgment of what i understand , may be offered in justification of the directors care and conduct : i shall now proceed to give you a short view of what occurs to me at present , with relation to the conduct of those , who were intrusted abroad with the management and government of the colony , under the name of councellours . that the equippage sent by the company on their first expedition , for settling a colony in america , was , in all respects , superior to any that was ever before sent on the like account , by any privat society in europe , is what i never heard in the least contraverted : and as the generality of the men who went on that expedition , gave former proofs to the world , in their respective stations , during the last war , of their fitness for such an undertaking ; so it has been agreed upon , by all that ever saw them , not only when they went away , but also after their arrival and settlement in america , that they were , seemingly , as hopeful and promising a set of men , as ever were seen ( to the memory of man ) in those parts ; had they been under the government and care of such heads as were to be wish'd : but many people do say , that the council appointed for the government of the colony , was composed of an odd kind of mixture of persons , of heterogeneous humours and principles , and that few of them were fit for that station . the truth is , whatever may be in this , i 'm certain that the directors were at no small pains to invite such as they thought most capable for that station ; but it not being publickly known , where they were design'd to settle , there were but very few candidates ; and there 's nothing i know better , than that those of them who were most strongly recommended as persons of capacity , honour and honesty , prov'd to be the least deserving of that character , of all that went under the denomination of councellours . i was told , indeed , that there was too much emulation , jealousy , private animosities , and pique among themselves ; and that the bad example thereof gave too much ground to believe , that the like animosities were diffused among the inferior officers and others , as they stood severally affected or engaged , more or less , to this or that councellour : yet , by the influence of some few of the discreetest of their number , for above eight months time together , they had so much prudence , as to stiffle those divisions ( as much as possible ) in all publick concerns , for carrying on the common interest ; as may evidently appear by the unanimity and discretion of all their advices and letters to the directors at home , as well as by their publick transactions with such as had to do with them in america ; particularly in all their transactions with the indians , the president of panama , the governours of carthagena and sancta maria , and the commander of a french vessel , which happen'd to be shipwrack'd near their settlement ; & their diligence and care in building of houses , clearing of the ground , and fortifying of their settlement , in such manner , that it was look'd upon , by all that saw it , or had account of it , to be almost impregnable ; till that about the latter-end of march last , by reason of the absence of some , and indisposition of others , so few remain'd , that for some weeks together , their votes run generally split , being only two of a side , and consequently all business almost at a stand . yet such was the excellence of the constitutions by which they were to govern , that by means thereof , and by the providential recovery of one of their number out of a desperate sickness , to cast the ballance , they quickly wrought their own cure : for by the assumption of three or four new councellours , and the humorous withdrawing of two of the old , whose places were thereupon deservedly declared vacant ; the council wrought it self so into one piece , that their actings look'd then , like that of one man : and tho the season had , all of a sudden , ( as is said ) sowred some of their provisions ( which continued very good till the rains came on in april ) and tho their men turn'd afterwards very sickly upon their hands ; yet they were firmly resolved to maintain that place and interest to the last , as appears by the letters which they dispatched home upon that occasion , pressing that supplies might be sent to them with all expedition . and in the mean time , they not only engaged one captain ephraim pilkington of port-royal ( who had been , it seems , sometime in their service , and was resolved to bring his whole family to live in caledonia ) to return with his shallop full of fresh provisions and strong liquors from jamaica ; but sent also a sloop of their own thither , with money and goods to purchase provisions ; yet neither the one , nor the other , could have any , by reason of the proclamation that was published there sometime before : and it is very observable , that the said proclamation , was , for haste 's sake , published at port-royal in jamaica , upon a sunday , being the 9 th day of april , to stop two other sloops that were ready to sail from thence next morning , with provisions and strong liquors for caledonia . and the unhappy news thereof arriving at caledonia , the 18 th , day of may , together with a copy of the said proclamation , as also a wicked contrived story , that the company at home had , upon some occasion or other , petition'd or address'd the parliament of scotland , and that their petition was unanimously rejected , and thrown with disdain over the bar ; the council and colony were , as it were , thunder-struck all at once , with those accounts , especially when they consider'd the treatment which they knew the company had met with at london , hamburgh , and other places , and the malicious rumors that were industriously spred here , before they went away , of what the parliament might possibly be induced to do ; since it was whispered as if the commissioner had had instructions to lay an embargo on the company 's ships ; and not having received one single line from scotland since their departure hence , they were easily confirmed in the belief thereof , and concluded , that certainly the company was quite defeat and crush'd at home , and had not the liberty of sending so much as any advice to them to shift for themselves . all which suggestions were so successfully improved by the person , whom i have heard , most blamed upon that occasion , that he found , at last , the said proclamations gave him a handle to say or propose any thing whatsoever , tho never so villainous ; and particularly , that as , by the said proclamations , they were positively declared to have broken the peace , by settling at darien ; so of consequence they were declared pyrates ; and that , as they could not think of staying there , abandon'd by all the world , so it would be dangerous for them to go to any of the british dominions , for fear of hanging : and therefore proposed , that they should sail directly to hamburgh , or some other foreign port , and dispose of the ships and effects ; or at least to take up money upon them , to pay the seamen their wages . which pretence , he thought , might sufficiently baite many ( at least the seamen ) to close with his proposal : but the proposal was so self-evidently wicked , unnatural , and inconsistent with the trust reposed in them by the company , that it was exploded with reproach , by all those who had any honour or honesty in them , and so fell to the ground ; tho' the 〈◊〉 away was what few or none ( it seems ) said any thing material against , after having got those accounts : nor indeed can i see what could well be retorted to captain p — k , when he urged that all the arguments made use of for staying , were grounded at best but upon suppositions ; whereas their reasons for coming away , were grounded upon real things , viz. the proclamations , want of intelligence , and scarcity of provisions . and indeed it must be allowed , that if no such proclamation had been published , he durst never have had the impudence to have made such a wicked proposal , at least so openly , as is above narrated . now to recapitulate the whole matter , you see the sum of what those in the colony do offer in justification of their coming away , is their being in such desperate circumstances , that in a crowd of confused and perplexed thoughts , they believed the longer they would stay there , the worse it would be for them : because several species's of those few provisions which they had left , were rotting ( as they say ) upon their hands ; most of their men fell sick and weakly , with but slender hopes of their recovery , for want of fresh provisions , strong liquors , and good looking after ; and were out of all manner of hopes of getting any supplies , by reason of the proclamations , and the story above-narrated , especially having had no word from scotland all the time ; which fully determin'd them in that fatal resolution of coming away , ( bag and baggage ) steering their course to new-york , in hopes to get some provisions there , in barter for goods , which might carry them to scotland : but how inhumanely they were treated by the government there ( tho' the generality of the people were inclined to be kind to them ) in their distress'd condition , is too well known ; as is also the barbarous treatment , which those on board the saint-andrew met with , from the government of jamaica , upon her being ( it seems ) forced in there by stress of weather , and to shun the barlavento-fleet , which gave her chace for some days . by all which , ( if true , as is , indeed , generally said and believed ) it seems to me naturally conclusive , that , tho' i 'm far from setting up to justify any escapes or omissions , that the directors at home may be truly chargeable with , or to lessen any imprudence , rashness or divisions , that i have heard the council of the colony blamed for ; yet the burden of the song still rests on the effects of those proclamations ; because that , if those proclamations had not been published , i am morally assured , that even the grossest mistakes in the management , either at home or in the colony , would have been soon mended of course , from the experience that must have been had of the consequences of their own omissions and mistakes . and whoever would be at the pains , but to examine the first conduct and management of the most flourishing trading-companies this day in europe , might easily find , that they have , not only in their infancy , but even after a much longer standing , been guilty of , at least , as gross mistakes and omissions , as any that i ever , as yet , heard the directors of our company justly charged with , and that there is no such thing to be precedented , or , indeed , reasonably expected , as infallibility in any humane conduct ; especially in a matter , whereof the good , as well as the bad , success must necessarly depend on a great many unforeseen accidents . and yet the truth is , after all , the most plausible and material objections , which i have heard suggested against the foresight and care of the directors at home , are , 1 st , that they imployed persons in fitting out the ships , goods , provisions , and other necessaries for their first expedition , as made no conscience of the trust reposed in them ; for that the numbers , quantities and qualities of those goods and provisions , were far short of what they were given out for , and some of them rotten , even before they went from hence . and , 2 ly , that they should trust to the uncertainty of a correspondence , by the way of england , and the english plantations , and not be at the charges of sending letters and advices frequently by some packet-boats of their own , directly from hence to the colony ; which would undoubtedly have prevented their coming away in such despair of being relieved from hence , as they say they did . this seems indeed , at first view , to be a heavy charge , tho' it may be justly answered for the court of directors , first , that those imployed by them , for the purposes aforesaid , were not only of their own number , and chosen by the general suffrage of the adventurers in the joint-stock ; but were also reputed merchants of considerable substance and dealing , and might therefore be reasonably presum'd , not only to have understood that matter of buying and providing goods , provisions and other necessaries for a sea-voyage , better than those noblemen and other gentlemen in the direction , who never had occasion formerly to be concern'd in a matter of that nature ; but also , that they themselves being considerably interested in the joint-stock , and intrusted with the particular stock , of many of their own friends , relations and acquaintances , and indeed with that which they must needs have known , was of universal concern to the whole nation ; that they would act at least as tenderly and conscientiously therein , as any other persons whatsoever , who were not so immediatly concerned . and for these few directors , who were imployed for buying those goods and provisions , i dare confidently affirm , in favour of some of them , that they not only understood , and were pretty much accustomed with dispatches of that kind , ( tho' differing perhaps in the degree ) but that they acted also with as much care , diligence , integrity , and real zeal for the company 's interest , as any in the kingdom could have done ; so that i reckon , whenever that matter is fully inquired into , and all circumstances considered , it will be found , that there was no such great abuse , in either the quantities or qualities of those goods and provisions , as some would have us believe there was : tho' at the same time , ( i must confess ) i have , from the beginning , heard one or two of those directors extremely blamed , for making some bargains for the company , with an alledged visible advantage to themselves : and tho' it must be granted , that it were much better for the company 's interest , they had never acted with any such selfish view ; yet , granting they did so , ( which i do not believe ) it is very possible , they might have contrived matters so , as to have some advantage by those bargains to themselves , and yet the company be no great losers thereby . just as i had done writing of the foregoing paragraph , i came to the knowledge of a declaration made by captain robert drummond ▪ commander of the company 's ship , the caledonia , now lying in clyde , with relation to the premisses ; and because of the extraordinary patness thereof , i procured an exact copy of it , which i send you hereunto subjoyned . my lords and gentlemen , whereas i understand , that some people take the liberty to say and give out , that our provisions , which we carried along with us from scotland , were , for the most part , rotten and damnified , before we scarce got to our voyage's end , and that some of them were quite spoiled , even before we went from hence : i think my self , in duty and honour , bound to declare , that on board your ship the caledonia , which i have the honour to command , all the flower and oat-meal kept good till the month of april , yea some part thereof until the latter-end of june , as did also the gray pease , till we had little or nothing of them left , in the latter-end of april : and as for the bread , beef and pork , they continued sound and good , till the very last pound weight of them . it is true , the irish beef ( tho' very sound ) was nothing near so good as the scots beef ; for which cause we expended it first . and as a proof of the scots beef's being extraordinary , when i came from on board on friday the 15th . instant , i left four barrels of it on board as sound as ever it was , and dined on a piece of it very comfortably that same day , as did also the whole ships crew , and i doubt much , whether it may not be all eaten up by the seamen before now , tho' they have other provisions on board . i have sailed for the space of eight years together in america , and i must needs say , i never in all that time had provisions which held out so well , which i have often signified to several persons in our passage . all this is true , as i shall answer to my maker , and ( if required ) shall be own'd by the whole crew . witness my hand at edinburgh the day of december 1699. i am ▪ my lords and gentlemen , to the right honourable , the court of directors of the company of scotland , trading to africa and the indies . your lordships most humble and most obedient servant , robert drummond . nor is this all ; for the said captain robert drummond declared further to my own hearing at one time ( several other gentlemen being then present ) and at an other time ( as i am positively informed ) before mr. mackenzie the company 's secretary , and mr. hamilton clerk of the canongate , at the ship tavern ▪ that he the said captain robert drummond caused over-haul all the goods and cargo that were on board the said ship under his command , when they lay in caledonia-harbour , and that , upon his conscience , there was not one cask , pack , bundle , or bale , in the whole , when he compared the contents with the invoyce , but what contained full as much as was charged in the said invoyce ; excepting only one bundle of twine , which he said did not contain much above half of what it was charged for ; and some hundreds of sail-needles too , which he said was wanting out of a bundle that was charged in the said invoyce . he declared likewise at the same time , that all the time he was in caledonia he never saw one piece of beef or pork , but what he himself , or any other sea-faring man , might make a hearty dinner on ; but that possibly such as were all their days accustomed to nothing else but fresh provisions , could not think so well of it . now , after so positive and solemn declarations made by the person who , of all men living , should ( and i believe does ) know best what was under his own immediat care , i must beg leave to say , that it cannot but grate upon the spirit of any good man , to find with what an intolerable liberty malice , envy and ignorance have , as it were , combined together to derogat from the just merit of those noble and worthy persons , who are concerned in the management of the company , by endeavouring to asperse their conduct , as if ( forsooth ) they had acted like so many fools or knaves , or both ; when , indeed , by what is already said , it may evidently appear to any unprejudiced and impartial judge : that ( considering the novelty of the undertaking , the many unexpected difficulties they met with , the odness of the tools they were oblig'd to make use of , the slowness of payments from the subscribers , and the faintness of any countenance they had from authority ) they have acquitted themselves of their trust , far beyond what could be reasonably expected from ( perhaps ) any sett of men in the nation : and i dare confidently averr , that some of them have often neglected their own privat affairs and interest by their close attendance and unwearied endeavours to promote that of the company ; without the least prospect of having any immediat or particular advantage thereby , other than the glory of being the chief instruments for laying the foundation of , and carrying on , so great and good a work , for the general advantage and credit of the nation , as well as for the particular benefit of the adventurers . and the matter being so ; i hope , no good man will think it presumptuous in me to say , that it may , perhaps , be thought some kind of reflection on the justice of a nation , that the unbridled licentiousness of some peoples tongues and pens against them , should pass so long unpunished ; when there 's nothing more certain , than that impunity hardens and confirms men in their wickedness : for proof whereof , we see that some of those persons who first begun to vent their malice against the company , only by whispers and slye insinuations , stick not now to break out into open exclamations ; magnifying their own prophetick spirits ( forsooth ) as if they had foreseen all the misfortunes that must necessarly have attended the affairs of a company , that was under such management ; making even the very wisest , and most considerat actions of the directors conduct , the subject of their buffoonry and ridicule ; and that they may the better , not only impose on the credulous and ignorant multitude ; but also distract and confound the judgement of even discreet and unbyass'd persons , they make it their daily divertisement , first to hatch , and then give wing , to an indefinit number of detracting and slanderous stories , that have as little of truth in them , as the authors have of either probity , honour or honesty : and knowing that these spurious brats of their own invention , cannot possibly be long lif'd , because a very short period of time must , of course , necessarly demonstrat their falsehood , they providently take care to have whole troops of them ready at command , to succeed one to another , thereby to amuse the brain-sick multitude , with continued false alarms ; and having already , by such means , declared themselves so openly enemies , not only to the directors , but to the undertaking in general , they think ( it seems ) that since they cannot reasonably expect to regain their lost credit with the company , they had best ( according to the common course of the most wicked of all sinners ) endeavour to justifie always one crime by another greater than it self : and juvenal aludes very concisely to such sort of men , in his 6 th satyr . fortem animum proestant rebus quas turpiter audent . but how agreeable soever the poisonous wit of such envious and designing slanderers , may possibly seem to many of the heedless , unwary , and giddy-headed people of this age , yet what mean opinion the generous and wise romans entertained not only of them , but also of such as gave them any countenance , may be seen in the few following lines of horace . — absentem qui rodit amicum , qui non defendit alio culpante solutos qui captat risus hominum , famamque dicacis , fingere qui non visa potest , commissa tacere qui nequit ; hic niger est , hunc tu romane caveto . but above all , the grossness of these mens folly does manifestly appear by these words of solomon : he that hideth hatred with lying lips , and he that uttereth a slander , is a fool , prov. 10. 18. andho w secure soever these fools , scoffers and slanderers may imagine themselves to be at present , we have assurance from the words of the wisest of men , that they shall not always escape unpunished : judgements are prepared for scorners , and stripes for the backs of fools . prov. 19. 29. as to the second objection , concerning advice-boats not being sent directly from hence to the colony ; it is an easy matter , after an accident is over , to propose such a remedy , as might have prevented that accident : but who could have dream'd of such proclamations , unless we had been at open and declared war with england ? and in the name of wonder ! who could ever have imagined , that such rigorous proclamations , or indeed any at all , should be issued forth against us , in the name of our own sovereign , who gave our company first a being , and of whose protection , we had all possible assurance , not only , in common , with the rest of the nation , as we are his subjects , but in a very special manner , by the concessions of his royal grant , by letters patent under the great seal of this kingdom , as well as by three several acts of parliament in favours of our company . by the first of which , namely the 32 d. act of the 4 th . session of this current parliament : it is specially provided for the encouragement of such , as should become adventurers by joint-stock in carrying on of trade to the east or west-indies , or to the coast of africa , that if , in their endeavours for the advancing and promoting of trade to any of the said parts , they should happen to be attack'd , violently seized , or otherways disturbed by persons not in open war with their majesties ; that then , and in that case , their majesties would be pleased to order , that the recovery of the ships and goods so seized , or otherways molested and hindred , be carried on and prosecuted by publick means , and at publick expense . by the 32 d. act of the 4 th . session of this current parliament , the said company is not only impowered to equip , fit , set out , freight and navigat their own , or hired ships , in warlike or other manner , as they shall think fit , to any lands , islands , countreys or places in asia , africa or america : and there to plant colonies , build cities , towns , or forts in , or upon , any place or places not inhabited , or in , or upon , any other place , by consent of the natives and inhabitants thereof , the same not being posses'd by any european sovereign , potentat , prince or state ; and by force of arms to defend their trade and navigation : as also to make reprisals , and to seek and take reparation of dammages done by sea or by land , and to make and conclude treaties of peace and commerce , with the sovereigns , princes , states , rulers , governours or proprietors of the aforesaid lands , islands , countreys or places , in asia , africa or america ; but also , his majesty , amongst several other considerable concessions , is graciously pleased to promise , that if contrary to the rights , liberties , priviledges , exemptions or agreements mentioned in the said act , or contrary to the general treaties of peace and commerce between his majesty and any potentat , prince or state , in amity with his majesty , the ships , goods , merchandise , persons or other effects whatsoever belonging to the said company , should happen to be stopt , detain'd , embezel'd or away taken , or in any sort prejudg'd or damnified , that his majesty would interpose his royal authority to have restitution , reparation , and satisfaction made , for the dammage done , and that upon the publick charge . and by the 3 d. act in favours of the company , namely the 42 d. act of the 5 th . session of this current parliament , it is specially statute and declared , that , for the encouragement of the company of scotland trading to africa and the indies , it should be lawful to the magistrats and others , the administrators of the common good of burrows ; as also , to the deacon , masters , and other administrators whatsoever of any incorporation , or body , or company incorporat or collegiat within this kingdom , to adventure , and put in , money belonging to their respective administrations , in the stock of the said company : which they could not warrantably do without some such act. and seing the whole body of the royal-burrows , and the most considerable other incorporations and bodies collegiat in this kingdom , as well as many noblemen , gentlemen , and particular burgesses did , upon the faith of those acts , become adventurers in the joint-stock of this company , it were almost an absurd thing in the directors , ( especially when perhaps all the money they were then masters of , was not sufficient to answer the company 's pressing occasions ) to have been at the trouble & expense of setting up packet-boats , as a remedy against the effects of proclamations , which , i may say , would have been undutiful in them to have dreaded . but yet , to let you see the effects of those proclamations , even in point of bare correspondence ; i do assure you , that several of the company 's packets directed to the council of their colony , under cover to particular friends in the english plantations of america , are to this hour lying in the hands of those friends ; who wrote back hither , that by reason of the strictness and severity of those proclamations , they durst not venture to foreward the said packets to the colony ; because , if they should happen to be discovered in holding any such correspondence ( as ten to one but they would ) the least that they could expect , was confinement , and to be afterwards sined at the next grand session , by the discretion of a jury , and that the discretion of that jury would be directed by the degree of love they bear our country , and the wishes they have to the prosperity of an undertaking of this nature . by which it is plain , that the proclamations have put a stop to the colony's getting intelligence from hence , and that if no such proclamations had been issued forth , there had been no such indispensible necessity for packet-boats , to have been sent directly from hence to the colony , at least before the directors had an account of their settlement , as some mighty pretenders will tell us now there was . and yet nevertheless , it 's evident by what has been already said , that the directors did positively intend to have dispatched a vessel with advice and provisions to the colony very soon after their departure from leith ; and for that end , used all other endeavours by petition , and otherwise , to have procured one or two of the small friggots , which are still lying useless in bruntisland-harbour , as being the fittest they could think of , for that purpose ; and in regard that the parliament was pleas'd to order the building of those friggots for the security and advantage of the trade of the kingdom , and that the conclusion of the general peace , took away all manner of occasion for them in the narrow seas , it was thought they could not be otherwise so well imploy'd , as in carrying on and supporting the designs and interest of this company , especially since the estates of parliament , by their address , formerly recited , were pleased to express a singular concern for it's prosperity and welfare . and if the directors said petition had been seconded , as well as was expected , and that they had got the use of all or any of the said friggots , there had been , in all probability , no such occasion of clamour against them , as now there is , for not having sent any ships directly from hence to the colony , soon enough , with provisions and intelligence . but nevertheless , 't is likewise evident , by what has been already narrated , that upon the directors losing hopes of procuring any of the said friggots , they came to a positive resolution of dispatching a small vessel , directly from hence to the colony , with advice and provisions , in the month of january at furthest ; tho' , as cross fate would have it , she happen'd to be such a ship , as could not well be fitted out for such a voyage , in some months time thereafter : upon discovery whereof , they fitted another small vessel , which sail'd from clyde in the month of february , but was unluckily shipwrack'd by a violent storm on the west-coast of scotland , as i have formerly narrated . yet still there are some , who ( right or wrong ) will have the management bear the sole blame of all the mis-fortunes that have happen'd to the company and colony , and stick not to say too , that the colony's coming away , in the manner they did , was not occasion'd so much by the effects of those proclamations , as by the treachery and villainy of some of their own number . well , let us for once suppose there was treachery in the case ; does that lessen the effects of those proclamations ? no certainly , but rather aggravates : for if there was any treachery in the case , these proclamations gave the traitors a better handle to work by , than any other pretence they could have made use of . i would gladly know further , whether we can suppose there could be treachery , without supposing at the same time , that some person or other must have brib'd the traitor ? and if so , it seems natural to believe , that none would be so ready to do that , as some of those who were concerned in issuing forth those proclamations : so that still we are cloven to pieces with a wedge of the same timber . nay further , what if ( notwithstanding of those proclamations ) the colony had never budged , but remained still in their settlement , in a flourishing condition ; and that they had been in such circumstances , that the proclamations could have done them no harm ? shall any man therefore mantain , that the issuing forth of those proclamations was a good and harmless thing ? sure no man has face enough to say so : for , their having , or not having , the design'd effect , could not at all alter the nature or intention of them . but really , for my part , i cannot conceive how it could be possible , for a colony , consisting of the king of britain's subjects , to have been in any such good circumstances , but that those proclamations must necessarly have done them a vast prejudice , if not ruin'd them : for , suppose that in the month of may last , when they got the first copy of the jamaica-proclamation , they had been all in perfect health and vigour , and had had plenty of fresh provisions , strong liquors , and all other necessaries whatsoever , lying by them in store ; what then ? must they not have seen at first view , and considered , that by the said proclamation they were declared to have actually broken the peace entred into with his majesty's allies , by settling at darien ; and that therefore they must expect to have been treated as pyrates ? must they not have considered , that tho' the said proclamation was emitted against them in the king of england's name only , that yet the same person was king of scotland also ; and that the matter being so , they could have but small hopes of being vigorously protected by the king of scotland against the king of england's proclamations ? must they not have considered , that their then declared enemies , the spaniards , would undoubtedly be thereby encouraged to pursue their ends against them with greater assurance and much more vigor , than perhaps otherways they durst have done ? must they not have considered , that upon every the least discontent or capricious humor of any of their own people , this proclamation would be made use of as a handle to be very troublesome and uneasy to the rest of the colony ? ( as indeed it has been to their sad experience ) must they not think , that since the said proclamation was published in his majesty's name , that undoubtedly it must needs have been legally founded upon some positive law , tho' they knew nothing of it ? and must not the consideration of all these together , have distracted and confounded the thoughts , resolutions , and measures of any sett of men that could have been in the colony ? unless they had unanimously resolved to have turn'd pyrates indeed ; and to have cast off all manner of loyalty and obedience to his majesty ; and in that same case , they must have resolved to have been dis-own'd by scotland , as well as by england : and if so , pray from whom then must they have expected protection ? and here i cannot suffer my self to pass by , without taking notice of some persons , who would pretend to palliat or skin over any thing that may relate to those proclamations , upon a suggestion , as if they had been ( forsooth ) necessarly emitted in compliance with , and in prosecution of , an alledged english act of parliament ; and that therefore any particular person or persons , cannot well be quarrelled for the same : which being a suggestion that cannot well be obviated , without having recourse to the english acts of parliament ; and but few people here having occasion to be acquainted with them , i reckon it may not be thought much amiss to touch such of them , as can any ways relate to the matter in hand , and shall therefore do it as succinctly as i can . every body knows , that by the english act of navigation , 12. car. 2. cap. 18. it is enacted , that no goods shall be imported into , or exported out of , any of the english plantations in america , in other vessels than such as belong only to the people of england , or ireland , or wales , or town of berwick , or any of the said plantations ; and whereof the master and three fourths of the mariners shall be english , under the pains and penalties mention'd in the said act. since which time , neither we , nor the people of any other nation , can pretend to any right , or freedom of trade and commerce , with the said plantations , except in ships qualified as above : so that the having of any such freedom , is what the company never contended for . by the very same act , it is likewise specially enacted , that no sugars , tobacco , cotton-wool , indicoes , ginger , fustick , or any other dying wood , of the growth of any english plantations in america , shall be transported to any place , other than to some english plantation , or to england , ireland , wales , or town of berwick , on pain to forfeit both ship and cargo . and this being a particular enumeration of the several commodities , which are prohibited by the said act to be transported into any place or plantation belonging to forreigners ; it follows of consequence , that all manner of provisions , and other necessaries whatsoever , which were not prohibited by the said act , might be transported from the english plantations , in ships qualified as aforesaid , whethersoever the master should think fitt . and that it has been , all along , the constant practice of such masters , as sail commonly from new-england , new-york , and the other northernmost plantations of america , to do so , is what , i suppose , none that knows any thing of that trade will deny : and tho' , upon complaints made , in the year 1695 , to the parliament of england , of some frauds and abuses committed in the plantation-trade , contrary to the act above-recited , they thought fit to superinduce some new act , with very strict clauses , to inforce , and put in practice , the true intent and meaning of the said first act ; yet i dare adventure to say , that no man can let me see an act of the parliament of england , laying any such restraint on the inhabitants of the english plantations in america , as that they cannot carry or sell provisions to any forreign place or plantation whatsoever : which makes the hardships of these proclamations still the greater in this , that we , who are his majesty's own subjects , should be denyed the common benefit of having our colony supplied with provisions , from the english plantations , by english vessels , in the ordinary way of commerce ; while , at the same time , it is most certain , that neither the dutch at curacao , the danes at st. thomas , the french at st. christophers , martinico , petitguavis , or hispaniola , nor the portuguise at the maderas , or tessera-islands , were , ever to this hour , denyed the benefit thereof , except in the case of declared war : and even then too , the selling them provisions , and perhaps some other merchandise likewise , is often wink 't at ; as is at this time , the carrying of provisions , negro's and other commodities , from the english plantations , to several parts of the spanish dominions in the west-indies : so that , to our comfort , we are the only nation under heaven , ( that i could ever yet hear of ) against whom any such proclamations have been published by the english , in their american plantations . nor was it thought enough , that , upon the first orders sent from england , dated , as i am informed , the second day of january 1698 / 9 , the said proclamations , against our colony , were published in barbados and jamaica in the month of april , and in all the other english plantations , in some short time thereafter ; but that , upon second orders , a second fleece of proclamations should be likewise published by the same persons , and in the same places , to let the world see that the first were not grounded upon mistake , but that they were resolved to make their putt good : for upon the 5th day of september last , a second proclamation , pretty near in substance with the former , was published in barbados ; and some of those lately come from new-york , in the company 's ship the caledonia , do report , that three or four days before they set sail from thence , there were fresh orders arriv'd at new-england , for emitting and publishing second proclamations in those parts , against our colony ; which gives us sufficient ground to believe that like orders were sent to all the other plantations . yet such as have a mind to be talking , will always find something to amuse the multitude withal , be it never so little to the purpose : and thus we find some people still urging , that notwithstanding of those proclamations , some inhabitants in the english plantations , who are zealous well-wishers to this undertaking , have , since the publication of those proclamations , sent some sloops and brigantines to the colony ; and that therefore the proclamations were not the occasion of the colony's coming away from darien , but that the same proceeded from other causes ; and that if the colony had staid still , and maintain'd their settlement , more sloops and brigantines would , beyond all peradventure , be sent to them from time to time , till the company 's own ships should arrive there . well! all this is very plausible ; and i think our nation , as well as the company , is very much beholden to the generous and kind inclinations of those gentlemen , who ventured any part of their own interest so frankly , to support that of the company or colony : but , as it happen'd , pray what was the colony the better for it ? did any of those sloops or brigantins arrive at darien , before the colony's departure thence ? or had the colony so much as the least advice , that any such vessels were a-coming to them ? no certainly , i suppose no man can or will say so ; and without that , they say nothing at all : for , how mean soever my opin on may perhaps be of the colony's conduct and resolution , not only upon that unlucky occasion , but in other respects too : yet i have so much charity , as to believe sincerely , that if they had expected any such vessels to have come to them with provisions , in any reasonable time , or if they had known , that they had any such real friends and well-wishers in the english plantations , as it seems they had , or that supplies and recruits were so near them coming from scotland , that they would not have come away from darien , at least , before they had had some certain and positive orders from the company , how to behave with relation to those proclamations : but so it is , to their own and the company 's sorrow , as well as the nations disgrace , whatever may be the occasion of it , away , you see , they are come , as ill luck would have it : quae volunt fata , non tollunt vota . upon the directors having received certain intelligence of this tragical and unexpected emergency , they laid the whole matter in writing before the council-general of the company ; who thereupon thought fit , in most dutiful and humble manner , to represent the same to his majesty , by their petition of the 29 th . of october last , wherein they seem to intimat , that without some special testimonies and evidence of his majesty's gracious favour , and royal protection , as well as the assistance of a parliament , they could not well expect , but that the best of their endeavours , for carrying on and supporting an undertaking of this nature , must prove altogether vain : and therefore , their petition consisted briefly of two articles , 1st . that his majesty would be graciously pleased to take off the force and effects of these proclamations ; and , 2dly , that his majesty would allow the parliament to meet in november last , it being adjourn'd till that time . they at the same time address'd his majesty's most honourable privy council , with relation to the contents of their said petition to his majesty ; but what the privy council did therein , i know not : and as for his majesty's answer to the said petition , you have already seen it , so i shall not presume to make any comments upon it . however the council-general of the company having , it seems , about the beginning of this month , resolved to address his majesty , in a most dutiful manner , upon an other head ; and considering , that none of their former addresses or petitions had such success , as they could have wish'd for , and that they were all transmitted , in the ordinary way , to the secretary of state , in waiting for the time ; they resolved to send this address by one of their own number , who should , at the same time , have particular instructions with relation to the contents of their former petitions , and should carry along with him letters to the secretaries of state , intimating his business and entreating their concurrence . whether this method may produce better effects than their former , i know not ; but some people are pleased to prognosticat , that if in this as well as in former ages , there should happen to be any such favourites or courtiers near his majesties person , as may perhaps endeavour to make a monopoly of the king's ear , that it will never be pleasing to such to see any corn pass by their own mills ; and that therefore they may readily endeavour to give it a state-turn : but until i see it , i shall never suffer my self to believe any such thing ; for as the king is a gracious prince , so his ears will be equally open to all his people . i am informed , that the west india merchants , or at least their agents at london , are now preparing a representation to be made ( if not already done ) complaining that the proclamations which were published in the plantations , strictly forbidding them to carry or sell provisions or other necessaries to the scots colony , are contrary to their rights and liberties , and prejudicial to their interests ; and that the friends of the several governours , who publish'd those proclamations happening to hear thereof , are endeavouring to stiffle these complaints as much as they can : but what truth there may be in this , a little time must shew . i am likewise just now told , that his majesty has been graciously pleased to declare that he knew nothing of those west-india proclamations , till he had seen copies of them come from thence : and if indeed it be true , that his majesty has said so ( as i hope it is ) i reckon it would be no very hard matter to name some few persons who have a great deal to answer for . i remember the judicious montaigne , in his political essays , observes it , as a misfortune commonly incident to a nation that is under the government of a prince living in another country , that any nation so stated , is seldom or never govern'd according to the real inclination of the prince , or the true interest of the people ; so much as according to the humors , affections , and designs of his ministers : for that he seeing only with their eyes , and hearing but withtheir ears , cannot possibly know the true state , condition and interest of a distant nation , nor the humors and inclinations of its inhabitants , any thing near so well as if he lived amongst them . seneca in his treatise of benefits , puts the question , quid omnia possidentibus deest ? what can a man want that has every thing ? and he answers himself , ille qui verum dicat . one that will tell him the truth . and really of all men living , i think kings and princes stand most in need of having such men near their persons . and i wish , from my heart , that all those who , at any time , have occasion to be at the helm of publick affairs in any kingdom or state whatsoever , would seriously consider what the learned and wise statesman ; sir francis bacon observes by way of precaution , in his judicious and celebrated essays . as for discontentments ( says he ) they are in the politick body like to humors in the natural , which are apt to gather preter-natural heat , and to enflame . and let no prince measure the danger of them by this , whether they be just or unjust : for that were to imagine people to be too reasonable , who do often spurn at their own good : nor yet by this , whether the griefs whereupon they rise , be in fact great or small ; for they are the most dangerous discontentments , where the fear is greater than the feeling . dolendi modus , timendi non item . besides , in great oppressions , the same things that provoke the patience , do withal mate the courage ; but in fears it is not so . neither let any prince or state be secure concerning discontentments , because they have been often , or have been long ; and yet no peril hath ensued : for as it is true , that every vapour or fume doth not turn into a storm ; so it is nevertheless true , that storms , tho' they blow over divers times , yet may fall at last : and as the spanish proverb noteth well , the cord breaketh at the last , by the weakest pull . one material passage i had almost forgot : upon the first advice that the council-general of the company had of the colony's safe arrival and settlement in darien , they gave his majesty an account thereof , by a very dutiful letter , bearing date at edinburgh , the 31 st . day of march last , wherein they particularly condescended upon its being a place uninhabited , and never before possess'd by any european prince or state whatsoever , and that upon the request , and with the consent of the neighbouring natives , they landed and settled there , ( which consequently made it a place precisely in the terms of his majesty's acts of parliament and letters patent ) and withal , that they were positively informed , that the french had a design upon all that coast , or at least to make a settlement some where thereabouts ; and therefore humbly offered to his majesty's consideration , how that the firm settlement of the scots colony there , might be a means of preventing , or at least , lessening the evil consequences that might arise to his majesty's kingdoms and dominions every where , by the settlement of any powerful forreign neighbour in , upon , or near any part of that coast ; and therefore confidently expected his majesty's royal favour and protection , in the maintainanee of such an important settlement , as having , in all the steps of their conduct , through the whole course of this affair , strictly observed the conditions required by the said acts of parliament , and letters patent . and in another letter , at the same time , to both the secretaries of state , they have , amongst several other particulars , the following paragraph : as to the french designs of settling thereabouts , ( meaning on the coast of darien ) " it is a point not to be doubted of ; for , in order thereunto , they have already been tampering with several of the natives , some of whom they have endeavoured to have carried into france ; and we have very good reason to believe , that a further progress had been made in that matter before now , were it not the dayly expectations which that court had of the king of spain's death . which , we humbly conceive , is a matter worthy of his majesty's consideration , and of no small concern to the interest of his whole dominions , tho' this nation , and our company , may seem to be more immediatly interested at present . and to certifie further , that the french designs upon that coast did not consist in imagination only ; mr. paterson , one of the councellours of the colony , and captain robert drummond , commander of one of the company 's ships the caledonia , have , by declaration under their hands , signified to the directors , the contents of a letter written in march last , by the governour of portobell to the commander of a french sloop , which was imployed by the spaniards to perswade the indians of the samballo's to join against the scots colony at caledonia . the letter was written in spanish , and found in a bottle by some of our colony on board of the said sloop , near the samballos , where she was left deserted and owned by no body ; and the contents of the said letter is in substance as followeth . sir , i have received advice from monsieur du cass , governour of petitguavis , wherein he assures me , that rather than fail , he will come himself in person ; but however , he will send four friggots to assist us in rioting the scots out of darien . you may assure ambrosio , corbet , pedro , and the rest of the indians of the samballos , that if they continue to help , and keep correspondence with the scots , that not only the spaniards , but likewise the french , will revenge it upon them : but if on the contrary , they will join with us to destroy and root out these scots , they shall be well rewarded and gratified for their pains . i shall make no reflections on this matter , nor shall i pretend to prophesy ; but any one of but an ordinary reach in speculation , may easily see , that it 's very possible there may be such a juncture of time , that the english nation may come to wish , that this company had never met with such unreasonable obstructions in the prosecution of their designs , as they have done : nor am i out of hopes of seeing , perhaps , some of the wisest men of our neighbouring nation , become so sensible of the folly , as well as the injustice of the unaccountable treatment which the company met with , that they may think it their interest , even to contribute to the mantenance of such an important settlement on that isthmus , which now affords so much matter of speculation to the most considerable courts in europe . proestat sero sapere , quam nunquam . my lord , i need not tell you the ferment that the body of the nation seems to be in , upon account of the disasters and misfortunes , that have attended the undertakings of this company ; and really , since the affections , as well as the interests of many people seem to be wrapt up in its fate ; i wish , with all my heart , that those at the helm would think of falling upon some agreeable expedient , for quieting the minds of people upon this head , by doing something or other , that may let the world see , that the company is not so destitute of protection , in the prosecution of its honest and lawful undertakings , as now ( alas ! ) it seems to be . now if it should so happen , that through the stupid ignorance of some , the supine neglect and indifference of others , the industrious suggestions and malicious detractions of a third , the dreaming delusions and imaginary fears of a fourth , the servile and mercenary backwardness of a fifth , or the humorsom factions and divisions of a sixth sort of people , the body of the nation should be discouraged from concurring unanimously , in representing the whole nations concern in this matter to his majesty , and in endeavouring to procure some gracious marks of his majesty's royal favour and protection to the company ; or if that , through the want thereof , together with the company 's other misfortunes , the designs of so noble , great and generous an undertaking should happen to be frustrated , and that so many brave men as are lately sent to maintain the company 's settlement in darien , should perish in the design ( which god forbid ) as most of those that went on the first expedition did ; then may we justly expostulat with heaven in the words of the royal psalmist upon an other occasion , thou makest us a reproach to our neighbours , a scorn and a derision to them that are round about us . thou makest us a by-word among the heathen , and a shaking of the head among the people , psalm 44. 13. 14. but i am still in hopes of better things , and that all those , in whose power it is , in their several capacities , to contribute any thing towards the aiding , assisting , carrying on , supporting or protecting this noble and just undertaking , will , sooner or later , be of sir francis bacon's opinion , in his excellent essay upon plantations , where he hath the following words ; the principal thing that hath been the destruction of most plantations , hath been the base and hasty drawing of profit in the first years : it is true , speedy profit is not to be neglected , as far as may stand with the good of the plantation , but no further . then , after having given his full advice and opinion , in many useful particulars , in the way and manner of settling and carrying on a plantation , he concludes expresly thus : it is the sinfullest thing in the world , to forsake or destitute a plantation once in forwardness ; for besides the dishonour , it is guiltiuess of blood of many commiserable persons : tu ne cede malis , sed contra audentior ito my lord , i am not ignorant of my own incapacity , for discussing judiciously such intricat points , as are interwoven throughout this letter : but according to the information that i have had , ( which i dare say is pretty good ) i have endeavoured , as no●… as i could , to place every particular matter of fact in its due plac● according to order of time , and to assert nothing as such , but what i have unquestionable ground to believe is truth . i have studied throughout the whole to shun personal reflections as much as possible , but if any particular person fancy to himself , that he is comprehended under this or that general head , let him blame his own actions for bringing him under any disagreeable predicament : if i seem to shew any more than ordinary zeal in the just vindication of the management , it is because i have seen it so very lately attacked in such a publick manner as was not expected . i am , my lord , your lordship 's most obedient servant . p. c. to his highness the prince of orange. the humble address and supplication of the parishioners and inhabitants of the famous town of linton submetrapolitan of tiviotdale. pennecuik, alexander, 1652-1722. 1689 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b04678 wing p1396a estc r181639 52614829 ocm 52614829 176020 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b04678) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 176020) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2759:2) to his highness the prince of orange. the humble address and supplication of the parishioners and inhabitants of the famous town of linton submetrapolitan of tiviotdale. pennecuik, alexander, 1652-1722. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [glasgow? : 1689] caption title. in verse. imperfect: creased, with some loss of text. attributed to alexander pennecuik by wing (2nd ed.). place and date of publication suggested by wing (2nd ed.). reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng william -iii, -king of england, 1650-1702 -poetry -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745 -poetry -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century 2008-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-06 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-07 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-07 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion to his highness the prince of orange , the humble address and supplication of the parishoners and inhabitants of the famous town of linton submetrapolitan of tiviotdale . prologue victorious sir , still faithful to thy word , who conquer more by kindness then by sword , as thy ancestors brave with matchless vigor caus'd hogen mogon make so great a figure . so thou that art great britains only moyses ; to guard our ancient thirstle with the roses : the discords of the haro , in tune to bring and crub the pride of lillies in the spring . permit , great sir , poor us amongst the press in humble terms , to make this blunt address ; in linton verse , for as your highness knows you have good store of nonesense else in prose . sir , first of all that it may please your highness to give us an ease , of our oppressions more or less , especially that knave the cess . and poverty for pity crys to modifie our dear excise : it you 'l not trust us when we say 't , faith , sir . we are not able to pay 't : which makes us sigh when we should sleep , and fast when we should go to meat : ye● scarce can get it when to borrow , yet drink we must to ●●●cken sorrow , for this our grief , sir , makes us now sleep seldom sound till we be fow . sir , let no needless forces stand , to plague this poor , but valiant land. and let no rhetorick procure pensions only but to the poor . that spendthrist courtiers get no share to make the king's exchequer bare . then valiant sir , we beg at large , you will free quarters quite discharge . we dwell upon the king 's high street , and scarce a day we miss some cheat. for horse and foot when they come by , sir , be they hungry , cold or dry ; they eat and drink , and burn our peats ▪ with feind a farthing in their breicks . destroy our hey , and press our horse , whiles break our head's and that is worse consume both men and horses meat , and make both wives and bairns to greit , by what is said your highness may judge if two stipends we can pay : and therefore if you wish us well you must with all speed reconcile ; two jangling sons of the same mother , elliot and hay with one another ; pardon us , sir , for all your witt , i fear that prove a kittle putt . which tho' the wiser sort condole , our linton wives still blow the coal ; and women here as well we ken , would have us all john thomsons men. therefore , dear sir , e're you be gone , cast kirk and meeting-house in one ; whose mutual charities are as scant as papists is to protestant . sir , it was said ere i was born , who blows best bears away the horn ; and he that lives and preaches best should win the pulpit from the rest . the next petition that we make , is that for brave old teviots sake , who had great kindness for this place , you 'l move the duke our masters grace ; to put a knock upon our steeple , to shew the hours to countrey people : for we that live into the town , our sight grows dim by sun go down . and charge , sir , our street to mend , and cassey it from end to end . pay but the workmen for their pains , and we will joyntly lead the stones in ease your highness put him to it , the mercat customs well may do it , as for himself he is not rash , because he wants the ready cash ; for if your highness for some reasons , should honour linton with your presence ; your milk white pelfrey would turn brown , e're you ryde half but throw the town . and that would put upon our name , a blot of everlasting shame who are reputed honest fellows , and stout as ever william wallace . lastly , great sir , discharge us all . to go to court without a call. discharge laird gifferd and hog yards , james dowglas and our linton lairds ; old william younger and geordy purdy , laird giffoord , scroges , and little swordie and english andrew , who has skill , to knap at every word so well . let kingside stay for the town-head , till that old peevish wife be dead ; and that they go on no pretence , to put this place to great expence . nor yet shall contribute their share , to any who are going there . to strive to be the greatest minione or plead for this , or that opinion if we have any things to spair , poor widows they should be our care : the fatherless , the blind , the lame , that sterve , and to beg think shame . so fare-well , sir , here is no treason but wealth of ryme and part of reason . and for to save some needless coast , we send this our address by post . epilogue . thrice noble orange , bless'd be the time , such fair fruit prosper'd in our northren clime : whose sweet and cordial joyce affoords us matter , and sauce to make our capons eat the better . long may thou thrive and still thy arms advance , till england send an orange into france : well guarded thorrow proud neptun's wawes , and then what 's sweet to us , may prove sour sauce to them . as england does , so caledonia boasts , she 'l fight with orange for the lord of hosts . and tho' the tyrrant hath unsheath'd his sword , fy fear him not , he never keep 't his word . act anent the out comming of horses as well conforme to their rents as voluntiers. laws, etc. scotland. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a11662 of text s114751 in the english short title catalog (stc 21910.3). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a11662 stc 21910.3 estc s114751 99849974 99849974 15155 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11662) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 15155) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1584:04) act anent the out comming of horses as well conforme to their rents as voluntiers. laws, etc. scotland. 1 sheet ([1] p.) by iames bryson, printed at edinburgh : 1640. formerly stc 21913. identified as stc 21913 on umi microfilm. reproduction of the original in the bodleian library. eng scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a11662 s114751 (stc 21910.3). civilwar no act anent the out comming of horses, as well conforme to their rents as voluntiers. scotland 1640 540 1 0 0 0 0 0 19 c the rate of 19 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-08 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2007-09 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion act anent the out comming of horses , as well conforme to their rents as voluntiers . at edinbvrgh , the last day of iune 1640. years : these of the committee appointed by the estates of parliament , taking to consideration how the instructions for putting out of horses may be best effectuate , conforme to the generall order : hath appointed and ordained , that every man , as well to burgh as landwart , shall send out a sufficient and able horse and man armed , with jack , and lance , or with pistols , carobine ; and that according to two thousand markes of rent , conforme to the valuations , which shall be the rule of the mustars . and siklike , it is appointed , that every heritour and tennent shall put out their best and most fitting horse for that use : neither shall any man whatsoever , bee suffered to keepe any good and able fit horses for the troup at home , but must either send him out as one of their proportion for their rent ; or otherwise come presently out upon them themselves , or some other friend , as voluntiers , or otherwise sell them at a reasonable rate for the use of the countrey . and because barrons , and gentle-men of good sort , are the greatest and most powerfull part of the kingdome , by whose valour the kingdome hath ever beene defended : wee doe most earnestly require and expect , that every barron and gentle-man of good sort , shall come to the armie in their owne persons , or at least send their ablest son , brother , or friend . and that all noble-men , gentle-men , and others , may bee the better encouraged to come out as voluntiers in so good a cause , for maintenance of religion , and preservation of the liberties of this ancient and never conquered kingdome , which wee are all sworne to maintaine . it is earnestly desired , that all brave caveliers will take the businesse to heart , and consider that now or never is the time to gaine honour , and eternall reputation , and to save or losse their countrie . like as , it is heereby declared , that who shall so come out as voluntiers ( havng put out their proportions in good and able horses as said is ) shal have libertie to serve upon their owne best horses themselves as voluntiers , and shall have corne to their horses out of the common magazine , and good quarters for themselves ; and shall not bee put to toilesome watching , or any other troublesome duetie : so that it is hereby declared , that no good horses shall bee suffered to stay at home upon any kinde of pretext whatsoever ; with certification that these who shall faile in any of the premisses , shall not only b●e censured , as the committee of estates shall appoint , but will also bee repute and holden as loytterers , or averse from the good cause . printed at edinburgh by iames bryson , 1640. proclamation against the importation of irish cattle, &c. edinburgh, the first day of feb. 1667. scotland. privy council. 1667 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05472 wing s1610 estc r233277 52612292 ocm 52612292 179593 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05472) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179593) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2793:65) proclamation against the importation of irish cattle, &c. edinburgh, the first day of feb. 1667. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by evan tyler, printer to the kings most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1667. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. text in black letter. signed: pet. wedderburne cl. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng foreign trade regulation -scotland -early works to 1800. animal industry -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -commerce -ireland -early works to 1800. ireland -commerce -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-12 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 scott lepisto sampled and proofread 2009-01 scott lepisto text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal blazon or coat of arms c r honi soit qvi mal y pense proclamation against the importation of irish cattle , &c. edinburgh , the first day of feb. 1667. charles , by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith. to all and sundry our liedges and subjects whom it effeirs , greeting : forsomuch as by an act of our late parliament , entituled , act asserting our prerogative in the ordering and disposal of trade with forraigners ; it is declared , that the laying on of restraints and impositions upon forraign imported commodities , doth belong to us and our surcessors , as an undoubted priviledge and prerogative of our crown ; and that by vertue thereof we may so order and dispose upon foraign trade , as we shall judge most fit for the good of that our kingdom . and whereas many humble addresses have been made to us by the convention of our estates , in august , 1665. and by the lords of our privy council , for restraining of irish cattle , corn , and some other commodities , from coming in to this kingdom , as being most prejudicial thereto , by reason that our subjects are more then sufficiently provided within themselves ; and incase of trade with forraign kingdoms and states ( which is now for the most part stopped ) are able to spare and export considerable quantities of all these commodities , and we being most willing to gratifie the subjects of that our ancient kingdom : therefore , and in testimony of our just resentment of their loyalty and affection to our service , we , with advice of the lords of our privy council , have discharged ; and by these presents discharges the importation of all irish cattle ( except horses ) as also , irish salt beef , and corns of whatsoever grain , or meal made thereof , to any town , port , or harbour , or any other place of that our ancient kingdom , in any ship or vessel whatsoever , after the first day of march next to come . as also , discharges all persons whatsoever to receive or pasture any of the saids cattle upon their lands or pasturage , or to sell and dispone thereupon , or to reset or receive any quantities of the victual so prohibited , or to conceal the same within their houses or cellers : and do hereby authorize and command all magistrates of our burghs royal , sheriffs , or iustices of peace in all shires where the goods or vessels shall arrive , to prohibit the unloading thereof : and incase of contravention , to seize , or cause seize upon the samine , to be confiscat , the one half thereof for our use , and the other half for the use of these who shall attach and seize upon the same . and further , requires the saids magistrates , or either of them , to apprehend the persons of the contraveeners , and to secure them by imprisonment till they advertise the lords of our privy council , that order may be given to proceed against them as contemners of our royal authority , that all condign punishment may be inflicted upon them without mercy . and ordains these presents to be printed and published at the mercat cross of edinburgh , pear and shore of leith , and at the mercat crosses of all burghs royal , and burghs of regality and barony lying in the western parts of this kingdom , where the saids goods and victual are ordinarily imported , and other places needful , that none pretend ignorance . pet. wedderburne cl. s ti concilii . edinbvrgh , printed by evin tyler , printer to the kings most excellent majesty , 1667. a paper put in by the commissioners of scotland, concerning the last votes of the house of commons. scotland. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a92588 of text r210741 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.11[112]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a92588 wing s1298 thomason 669.f.11[112] estc r210741 99869502 99869502 162763 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92588) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 162763) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 246:669f11[112]) a paper put in by the commissioners of scotland, concerning the last votes of the house of commons. scotland. parliament. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [london : 1648] imprint from wing. the commissioners are informed the king is in carisbrook castle, and have seen votes of the commons forbidding applications and adresses to him on pain of high treason. no person is to bring any message from him to parliament. does this extend to scotland? -cf. steele. addressed to the speaker of the house of lords; dated and signed at end: worcester-house, jan. 6. 1647 lowdoun. lauderdale. charles erskin. hugh kennedey. rob. barklay. annotation on thomason copy: "1647" '8' in dating at end of text crossed through. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng charles -i, -king of england, 1600-1649 -early works to 1800. england and wales. -parliament. -house of lords -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. a92588 r210741 (thomason 669.f.11[112]). civilwar no a paper put in by the commissioners of scotland, concerning the last votes of the house of commons. scotland. parliament 1648 351 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a paper put in by the commissioners of scotland , concerning the last votes of the house of commons . right honourable , we are informed that by order from both houses the king is secured in caresbrook castle , and we have seen some printed votes of the house of commons to this effect : that they will make no further addresses or applications to the king ; that no applications or addresses be made to the king by any person whatsoever without the leave and approbation of the houses : that all persons whatsoever which shall make breach of this order , shall incur the penalty of high treason : that they will receive no more any messages from the king , and do injoyn that no person whatsoever presume to receive or bring any message from the king to either or both houses of parliament , or to any other person . by which , as his majestie is deprived of all comforts of freedom ; so it gives us occasion to ask , whether it be intended , that it shall extend to his majesties subjects of scotland , to debar such as are warranted by the parliament of scotland ( or others having their authority ) from free accesse to , or intercourse with the king ; or that his majestie shall be hindred from ( and so made incapable of ) the exercise of any act of government in relation to the affairs of that kingdom : to the end we may be enabled from the answer of the houses to give an account upon our return to scotland , of his majesties condition , and the discharge of our trust to the committee of estates and parliament there , which is to meet the sixth of march next ; and waiting your speedy answer , we rest worcester-house , jan. 6. 1648. your humble servants , lowdoun . lauderdale . charles erskin . hugh kennedey . rob. barklay . for the right honourable the speaker of the house of peers pro tempore . his majesties gracious letter to the parliament of scotland with the speeches of the lord high commissioner and the lord high chancellor : together with the parliaments answer to his majesties letter. england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) 1685 approx. 25 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 5 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2005-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a46475 wing j195 estc r30362 11300319 ocm 11300319 47363 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a46475) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 47363) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1464:31) his majesties gracious letter to the parliament of scotland with the speeches of the lord high commissioner and the lord high chancellor : together with the parliaments answer to his majesties letter. england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) james ii, king of england, 1633-1701. scotland. parliament. 8 p. printed by thomas newcomb in the savoy, re-printed at edinburgh by the heir of andrew anderson ..., [edinburgh] : 1685. reproduction of original in the harvard university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng great britain -history -james ii, 1685-1688. scotland -history -1660-1688. 2003-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-06 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2005-02 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2005-02 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion his majesties gracious letter to the parliament of scotland : with the speeches of the lord high commissioner , and the lord high chancellor ; together with the parliaments answer to his majesties letter . published by authority . honi soit qui mal y pense ir royal blazon or coat of arms printed by thomas newcomb in the savoy ; and re-printed at edinburgh , by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty : anno dom. 1685. his majesties gracious letter to the parliament of scotland , with the speeches of the lord high commissioner , and lord high chancellor ; together with the parliaments answer to his majesties letter . james r. my lords and gentlemen , the many experiences we have had of the loyalty and ex●mplary forwardness of that our ancient kingdom , by their representatives in parliament assembled , in the reign of our dearest and most entirely beloved brother of ever blessed memory , made us desirous to call you at this time in the beginning of our reign , to give you an opportunity not only of shewing your duty to us in the same manner , but likewise of being exemplary to others in your demonstrations of affection to our person , and compliance with our desires , as you have most eminently been in times past , to a degree never to be forgotten by us , nor ( we hope ) to be contradicted by your future practices . that which we are at this time to propose unto you , is , what is as necessary for your safety as our service , and what has a tendency more to secure your own priviledges and properties , than the aggrandising our power and authority ( though in it consists the greatest security of your rights and interests , these never having been in danger except when the royal power was brought too low to protect them ) which now we are resolved to maintain in its greatest lustre , to the end we may be the more enabled to defend and protect your religion as established by law , and your rights and properties ( which was our design in calling this parliament ) against phanatical contrivances , murderers and assassins , who having no fear of god more than honour for us , have brought you into such difficulties as only the blessing of god upon the steddy resolutions and actings of our said dearest royal brother , and those employed by him , ( in prosecution of the good and wholsome laws by you heretofore offered ) could have saved you from the most horrid confusions and inevitable ruin. nothing has been left unattempted by those wild and inhumane traitors for endeavouring to overturn your peace : and therefore we have good reason to hope , that nothing will be wanting in you to secure your selves and us from their outrages and violence in time coming , and to take care that such conspirators meet with their just deservings , so as others may thereby be deterred from courses so little agreeable to religion , or their duty and allegiance to us. these things we considered to be of so great importance to our royal , as well as the universal interest of that our kingdom , that we were fully resolved in person to have proposed the needful remedies to you , but things having so fallen out as render this impossible for us ; we have now thought fit to send our right trusty and right entirely beloved cousin and counsellour william duke of queensberry to be our commissioner amongst you ; of whose abilities and qualifications we have reason to be fully satisfied ; and of whose faithfulness to us , and zeal for our interest we have had signal proofs in the times of our greatest difficulties . him we have fully intrusted in all things relating to our service , and your own prosperity and happiness , and therefore you are to give him intire trust and credit as you now see we have done ; from whose prudence and your most dutiful affection to us we have full confidence of your entire compliance and assistance in all those matters wherein he is instructed as aforesaid . vve do therefore not only recommend unto you , that such things be done as are necessary in this juncture for your own peace , and the support of our royal interest , both at home and abroad , but also that you do them so speedily as may evidence to the world that you are still in the same manner addicted to the royal interest , of which we had so much experience when amongst you , that we cannot doubt of your full and ample expressing the same on this occasion ; by which the great concern we have in you our ancient and kindly people may still increase , and you may transmit your loyal actions ( as examples of duty ) to your posterity . in full confidence whereof we do assure you of our royal favour and protection in all your concerns . and so we bid you heartily farewell . given at our court at whitehall , the 28 th day of march , 1685. and of our reign the first year . by his majesties command , drvmmond . the speech of the lord high commissioner . my lords and gentlemen , his majesty has been pleased so fully and obligingly by the letter you have now heard to intimate his royal pleasure to you , as what i am to say seems in a manner superfluous , so i need not take up much of your time , nor shall i do more than touch a few things as briefly as is possible . and in the first place , my lords , this being the day of his majesties coronation in our neighbouring kingdom , you see he is no sooner placed on the throne of his royal ancestors than he inclines to have your advice in what may import the good of his service and subjects here ; by which you ought not only to be convinced of the great confidence his majesty has in the loyalty of this his ancient kingdom , and their good example to his other dominions , but also how fully he makes good his royal word and declaration , to follow ( in his reign ) the example of his late majesty of ever glorious memory under whose protection and government we enjoyed so long peace and quiet ; i say ( my lords ) as by calling you so soon , his majesty expresses great confidence in you , and seems still mindful of the zeal and affection of the last parliament for the rights and prerogative of the crown , so ( in a due return ) it is not to be doubted , but you will upon this occasion not only exceed what has been formerly done , but also comply with all that can be proposed for establishing his majesties greatness and your own security , and by this convince the world how sensible you are of the great honour his majesty has allowed you of being the first parliament of his dominions to do so . i am in the next place to tell you , that his majesty is very mindful of the duty and loyalty of this kingdom to his late majesty and himself , when he was here amongst us : and the better to compose the minds of his faithful subjects , i am allowed to assure you of his princely resolutions to protect and maintain the religion and government of this church as they are now established by law , and that he will take the persons and concerns of the regular clergy into his special care and protection ; and in order thereunto , i am to give the royal assent to such laws and acts as can be reasonably proposed . i am likewise to let you know , that his majesty will concernedly maintain your just rights and properties according to the established laws of this kingdom , and will not allow of oppressive arbitrary proceedings in souldiers or others , and further his majesty being sensible of the great decay of our trade , has warranted me in his royal name to consent to such laws as can reasonably be proposed for recovery and improvement thereof . and , my lords , to conclude what i am to say on this subject , his majesty is so concerned in the encouragement , welfare and prosperity of this his ancient kingdom , as he will not only do what can justly be desired or expected for these ends , but even in business of the excise and militia ( his immediat concerns ) i am warranted to go the greatest lengths for your ease and conveniency that the nature of these things can bear , and his majesties service and your own security will allow . and , my lords , his majesty having in all things so evidently discovered his gracious inclinations for the good of this kingdom , and given us the fullest assurances of his favour and protection that our hearts can desire , what suitable returns and acknowledgments can we make to so excellent and imcomparable a prince , who in all things relating to our quiet and prosperity prevents our very desires ; so if during his reign ( which i pray god to make long and glorious ) we be not the happiest people in the world , we have only our selves to blame . and now the king having so fully done his part , it concerns you in the next place to mind yours ; and in order thereunto , i make no doubt but you will assert the rights and prerogatives of the crown , and establish the revenue as amply upon his majesty and his lawful successors as it was enjoyed by the late king or any of his royal predecessors , since you cannot ( in the least ) doubt but his royal care for your repose and security will rather exceed than fall short of any of his ancestors . but to use any further arguments to incite you to what is so much your duty and interest , were at the same time to question your loyalty and zeal for his majesties service , and your concern for the interest and honour of your native country whose representatives you are , so i shall not injure you , nor lessen your thanks by saying more upon this subject . my lords , his majesty certainly expects from the prudence and loyalty of this parliament , that effectual ways will be fallen upon for destroying that desperate phanatical and irreclaimable party who have brought us to the brink of ruine and disgrace , and are no more rebels against the king than enemies of mankind ; wretches of such monstrous principles and practices as past ages never heard , nor those to come will hardly believe : what indemnities and acts of grace and clemency have they not contemned ? and all the use they made of them has still been to harden and confirm them in their execrable villanies ; and how inconsiderable soever they appear , assure your selves they ought not absolutely to be contemned ; for if they had not support and correspondence not yet discovered , it is not to be supposed they could have so long escaped the care and vigilance of the government : it therefore concerns you both in honor and prudence , no longer to dally with them , but that the utmost severities be most effectually applied , and all wayes taken , both to find out their favourers and retired and secret haunts . my lords , i doubt not but all of you sufficiently know that some of our nation are deeply involved in the late horrid conspiracy , who ( and some others for other treasonable crimes and practices ) are to be proceeded against before this parliament ; the evidence of their guilt i shall leave to its proper place and time , and do not doubt but his majesties advocate will manage that weighty matter with suitable care and faithfulness : so all i shall further say upon this subject at present is , that if almighty god ( who watches over the security of princes ) had not miraculously discovered and disappointed those the most hellish and barbarous designs that were ever contrived , in place of that peace , happiness , and tranquillity which we now enjoy , these kingdoms had certainly been at this day a sea of blood and in all imaginable misery and desolation ; which ( being evident beyond denial ) will certainly provoke your and all good mens indignation and resentment against those who can be reached , not only as advisers and contrivers of such villanies , but concealers of them : and since our honour and security every way seems absolutely bound up in the life of his sacred majesty , ought we not most cheerfully to grant what the exigencies of his mild and gentle government requires ? especially seeing what we give is still bestowed upon our selves , and for maintaining us in our just rights and possessions , against the most cruel and barbarous designs of his and our enemes . and now my lords and gentlemen , in the last place touching my self i shall not say much , my unfitness for this eminent station is possibly more obvious to me than to any of you ; however since his majesty has been graciously pleased to place me in it , i am resolved to serve him boldly and firmly , and thereby labour to make up my other great defects : and as this has still been my practice in the other great trusts i have the honour to carry under his majesty , so i know his goodness will always accept the sincere endeavors of his servants in place of greater performances . the lord high chancellor's speech . my lords and gentlemen . after what my lord commissioner hath so well represented to you , it will be very little necessary for me to say much . i shall only take the liberty to put you in mind , ( of what i believe you are very sensible already ) of the many obligations this nation lies under to be grateful to our great monarch . when by the command of the late king , his majesty who now reigns came first hither , what disorders , divisions , and animosities found he amongst us ? to bring the state of things into your prospect as it was then , could not be very grateful to you , nor pleasing to me , but we all remember with joy how well he left us , and by what easie gentle ways he brought about the establishment of that unity , which we were beginning to despair of : since that time , how much we have been in his particular care , during the happy reign of that excellent prince his brother , of ever blessed and glorious memory , is known to all the world. but of all the instances of his majesties care for us , his favour towards us , and his good opinion of us , this of his calling us together in the very beginning of his reign , ( which god grant may be long and prosperous ) that we might have the opportunity of presenting him with the first fruits of the service of his parliaments , and of becoming exemples to his other dominions , is the greatest and what we should prize the most , improving it as far as it will go . when we consider what strange turns the extravagant follies of some , and the malicious devilish contrivances of others among us have taken , since the last meeting of parliament , what convulsions have attacted the body of this nation , and how vile a ferment has raged in it , to have our advice called for by our prince , how to provide proper remedies for it , is the greatest honour could be put upon us . that we may do what in duty we are bound in return , let us lay aside all private aims and ends ; for how can we hope to serve his majesty , or promote the interest of the nation , while our eye is directed only towards our own particular ? and let us with the frankness and cheerfulness of honest scots men. use all possible means for uniting of the nation , and the driving from amongst us , whoever will not joyn with us upon such terms as may conduce to the advancement of the honour and interest of our king and his crown , and the well-being of this our native countrey , which we should not suffer to be defiled and rendred contemptible to the whole world by entertaining so venemous a bastardly brood of villanous men , as have of late , to the reproach of scotland , and of humane nature it self , maintained principles , and ventured upon practices not to be named amongst any who have ever heard of a government , much less of religion . my lords and gentlemen . you all know what a conspiracy hath been entered into by ill men of both kingdoms , against the sacred lives of the late king and his present majestie ; and who but incarnate , devils could think of attempting any thing against such precious lives ? for what prince in e●rop , or the whole world , was ever like the late king , except his glorious brother who now reigns ? and to have cut off any of them , had been barbarous to a degree of making us appear more abominable then any people ever were , but for us to have lost both , had been our utter ruine . yet against both was the design laid , and had suceeded , if that watchful providence , which hath often preserved the two royal brothers in so many difficulties , had not defeated the success , by an un-fore-seen accident , and had it succeeded , what confusion , what cruelty , what blood , what un-expressible misery had overflowed these kingdoms ? but besides this , we have a new sect sprung up amongst us from the dunghil , the very dregs of the people , who kill by pretended inspiration , and in stead of the temple of the lord , the temple of the lord , have nothing in their mouths but the word of god , wresting that blessed conveyance of his holy will to us , to justifie a practice suggested to them by him who was a murtherer from the beginning , who having modelled themselves into a common-wealth , ( whose idol is that accursed paper the covenant , and whose only rule is to have none at all ) have proceeded to declare themselves no longer his majesties subjects , to forefeit all of us who have the honour to serve him in any considerable station , and will be sure ere long to do so by this great and honourable court. it is how to rid our selves of these men , and of all who incline to their princ●ples , that we are to offer to his majesty , our advice , concurrence , and utmost assi●ance . these monsters bring a publick reproach upon the nation in the eyes of all 〈◊〉 neighbours abroad , while in their gazets we are mentioned as acting the vilest assass●nations , and the horridest villanies , they render us unquiet and unsecure at hom● they bring reproach upon our religion , and are our great plague . let us for the sake of our allegiance , for his majesties honour , for our reputatio● abroad , for the vindication of our religion , and for our own peace and tranquillity make haste to get our selves cured of it . if this were once effectuated , we might yet hope for quiet , and in order to the making our quiet the more comfortable to us , when once we are come to a resolution abou● what relates to the publick peace , and to the respect we owe to his majesty , we may have occasion of considering what laws may be necessary towards the facilitating th● well-governing of our selves and native countrey , both as to the regulating our carriag● one towards another , and the securing our estates , from any thing that may be unea 〈…〉 from the distribution of justice between man and man , as to the improving of our trade and commerce abroad , and encouraging industry and frugality at home ; for in all these things his majesties care will not fail us . and my lord commissioner amongst his many other advantages , is so well known to be a lover of his countrey , that we need not fear , but that he will give his concurrence in what he is allowed so freely to consent to . my lords and gentlemen . to encourage us to do all we can towards the service and the honour of our glorious monarch , let 〈◊〉 consider him in all his personal advantages , whether in what relates to war or peace , where has the world afforded such another ? one whose natural endowments have been improved by his great experience , at home and abroad , in armies and courts , by the greatest tryals of the most differing kinds ; those of prosperity and success , and of adversity and opposition , of hazards and toyle , and of authority and command in the strictest adhering to his word ; such temperance and sobriety , so indefatigable a diligence in affairs , so undaunted a courage upon all occasions , and so unwearied a clemency towards the most obstinate malicious offenders ? did ever heroe compleat the character so fully , in overcoming bravely , and shewing gentleness to the vanquished ? and i must say , the triumphs of his patience are not his obscurest glories ; nor is the forgiving of those whose virulent tongues , would have tainted his fame , if their malice could have reached it , what is least to be admired in him ; what reputation other princes have laboured for , at the vast extent of blood and treasure , and the putting of a constant constraint upon themselves , sits so easie upon him , that what they would have , he forces from the consciences of his very enemies by his merit , and it costs him no more than to be himself but this theme is not for me , i do him wrong , and while it may be at this very moment , he is receiving the acclamations of his good subjects , in the chief city of our neighbour nation , at the great solemnity of his coronation there , i am detracting from him here , by giving him too low a character . i shall onely add , that he gave to subjects the greatest example of loyalty and obedience while he was one himself ; and now he is an example to all kings in his love , his clemency , and care towards his people . let us give him the return of our love , our fidelity , and our obedience . and seeing he takes pleasure in nothing so much , as in our felicity and prosperity , let it be an additional tye upon us to advance his honour and greatness , by all the endeavours of our lives , without reserve , and with our whole fortunes , which under his protection we may ( if we please ) so peaceably and comfortably enjoy . the parliaments answer to his majesties letter . may it please your sacred majesty . your majesties gracious and kind remembrance of the services done by this your ancient kingdom , to the late king your brother of ever-glorious memory , shall rather raise in us ardent desires to exceed whatever we have done formerly than make us consider them as deserving the esteem your majesty is pleased to express of them , in your letter to us dated the 28 th of march. the death of that our excellent monarch is lamented by us to all the degrees of grief that are consistent with our great joy for the succession of your sacred majesty , who has not onely continued , but secured the happiness which his wisdom , his justice , and clemency procured to us : and having the honour to be the first parliament which meets by your royal authority , of which we are very sensible , your majesty may be confident that we will offer such laws as may best secure your majesties sacred person , the royal family and government , and be so exemplarily loyal , as to raise your honour and greatness to the utmost of our power , which we shall ever esteem both our duty and interest . nor shall we leave any thing undone for extirpating all fanaticsm , but especially those fanatical murtherers and assassins , and for detecting and punishing the late conspirators , whose pernicious and execrable designs did so much tend to subvert your majesties government , and ruine us and all your majesties faithful subjects . we can assure your majesty that the subjects of this your majesties ancient kingdom are so desirous to exceed all their predecessors in extraordinary marks of affection , and obedience to your majesty , that ( god be praised ) the onely way to be popular with us , is to be eminently loyal . your majesties care of us when you took us to be your special charge , your wisdom in extinguishing the seeds of rebellion and faction amongst us , your justice which was so great , as to be for ever exemplary , but above all , your majesties free and cheerful securing to us our religion when you were the late king your royal brother's commissioner , now again renewed when you are our soveraign , are what your subjects here can never forget . and therefore your majesty may expect that we will think your commands sacred as your person , and that your inclination will prevent our debates . nor did ever any who represented our monarchs as their commissioners , ( except your royal self ) meet with greater respect , or more exact observance from a parliament , than the duke of queensberry ( whom your majesty has so wisely chosen to represent you in this ; and of whose eminent loyalty , and great abilities in all his former employments , this nation hath seen so many proofs ) shall find from , may it please your sacred majesty , your majesties most humble , most faithful , and most obedient subjects and servants , in name of the parliament , sic subscribitur , perth cancell . i. p. d. parl. at edinburgh the 28th of april , 1685. proclamation prohibiting the nobility and others to withdraw from this kingdom without licence scotland. privy council. 1678 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05720 wing s1969 estc r233098 53981744 ocm 53981744 180377 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05720) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180377) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2827:6) proclamation prohibiting the nobility and others to withdraw from this kingdom without licence scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1678. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the third day of january, 1678. and of our reign the 29 year. signed: thomas hay cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng international travel regulations -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1660-1688 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2008-08 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion c r honi soit qui mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms proclamation prohibiting the nobility , and others to withdraw from this kingdom without licence . charles , by the grace of god , king of great britain , france , and ireland , defender of the faith ; to our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers , pursevants , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally specially , constitute , greeting : forasmuch as the lords of our privy council , having taken to their consideration , that upon the great disorders lately committed in some western & other shires , they did write to them , requiring them in our name , to take such course therein , as might secure the peace in these places , with certification to them if they failȝied therein , they would imploy our authority for doing thereof : which offer having received no satisfactory answer , and they having declared . that they were not able to suppress those disorders , nor free the countrey thereof , we did command and warrand our privy council , to arme such of our militia , and such others as should offer to serve us for redressing the saids disorders ; and did authorize them to charge all heretors and others , and if need be , all betwixt sixtie and sixteen , to come and attend our host under the pain of treason , according to the ancient laws of this our kingdom : in obedience to our royal commands , the saids lords have thought fit to send a committy of our council , to attend our forces so to be imployed : and therefore , left any person should withdraw from the said service , by going out of this kingdom , we , with advice of the saids lords of our council , do hereby require and command all noblemen , heretors , and magistrates of burghs royal ( except actual traffickers within burghs ) to remain and continue within this kingdom , and not to depart forth thereof upon any pretext whatsomever , without special licence from our council , as they will be answerable at their highest perill . our will is herefore , and we charge you straitly , and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat cross of edinburgh , and other places needful , and thereat , in our name and authority , by open proclamation , make publication of the premisses , that none pretend ignorance : the which to do , we committ to you conjunctly and severally , our full power , by these our letters , delivering them by you duely execute and indorsed again to the bearer . given under our signet at edinburgh , the third day of january , 1678. and of our reign the 29. year . thomas hay cls. sti. concilii . god save the king. edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty . anno dom. 1678. advertisement from a noble and potent earle, iohn earle of errol, lord hay and slaines, high constable of scotland, sheriff-principall of the sheriffdom of aberdeen mr. william more of hilton, advocate, sheriff depute of the said shyre, and andrew skene younger, of pitmuckston, heritable mair of fee of the said sheriffdom : to the several mair-deputs within the samen. erroll, john hay, earl of. 1680 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2007-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a38591 wing e3247 estc r37807 17021635 ocm 17021635 105828 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a38591) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 105828) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1614:50) advertisement from a noble and potent earle, iohn earle of errol, lord hay and slaines, high constable of scotland, sheriff-principall of the sheriffdom of aberdeen mr. william more of hilton, advocate, sheriff depute of the said shyre, and andrew skene younger, of pitmuckston, heritable mair of fee of the said sheriffdom : to the several mair-deputs within the samen. erroll, john hay, earl of. more, william. skene, andrew. 1 broadside. s.n., [aberdeen : 1680] "given under our hands at aberdeen, the twentysixth day of august 1680. [signed] erroll. mr. william more. andrew skene." reproduction of original in the aberdeen city charter room, aberdeen, scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng sheriffs -scotland -aberdeen. scotland -history -1660-1688. 2006-11 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2006-11 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2006-12 pip willcox sampled and proofread 2006-12 pip willcox text and markup reviewed and edited 2007-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion advertisement from a noble and potent earle , iohn earle of errol , lord hay and slaines ; high constable of scotland , sheriff-principall of the sheriffdom of aberdeen ; mr. william more of hilton , advocat , sheriff-depute of the said shyre ; and andrew skene younger , of pitmuckston , heritable mair of fee of the said sheriffdom : to the several mair-deputs within the samen . whereas the office of mair of fee , of this sheriffdom , hath been of a long time bygone neglected and slighted , and that severall persons have presumed to assume unto themselves the name and office of a mair-deput , who were never lawfullie admitted thereto ; as also , those who have been admitted by the said andrew skene , have maleversed in the exercise of there offices , and altogether deficient in the performance of any duty incumbent upon them ; to the great abuse of the said office , and of his majesties liedges . these are therefore giving advertisement to the whole mair-deputs , and officers within this sheriffdom , that they are not to exerce nor use , and hereby they are discharged to use or exerce the said office after the feast of michelmas next to come , under all highest pain that can be inflicted upon them , requyring and commanding all such persons who presently are , or do intend to be mair-deputs within this sheriffdom , that they present themselves to the said andrew skene , betwixt and the foresaid day , and to receive from him formal admissions , and find sufficient caution to him for their faithfull administration in their offices : and for payment of such aunuities as are due and payable be them : and his maiesties liedges within the said sheriffdom are hereby discharged to imploy any persons who shall not be formally admitted by the said mair of fee. and to the effect none pretend ignorance , thir pesents are appointed to be printed , and published at each parish church door within the said sheriffdom . given under our hands at aberdeen , the twentysixth day of august 1680. erroll . mr. william more . andrew skene . for the parish of _____ a proclamation, taking off the stop of execution against heretors, called out to attend his majesties host. scotland. privy council. 1688 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05739 wing s1992 estc r183595 52615092 ocm 52615092 176118 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05739) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 176118) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2762:61) a proclamation, taking off the stop of execution against heretors, called out to attend his majesties host. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh, : anno dom. 1688. title vignette: royal seal with initials j r. caption title. initial letter; text in black letter. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -army -early works to 1800. military discharge -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-05 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-06 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-06 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion ir royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , taking off the stop of execution against heretors , called out to attend his majesties host . edinburgh , the seventh day of december , 1688. forasmuch as by a proclamation of the date , the third day of october last , calling out the heretors and others , to attend his majesties host , there was thereby personal protection granted to all , who were called to attend the said service , against all personal execution , for any civil cause , or debt ; as is alwayes usual and customary on such occasions . and now his majesties privy council considering it unnecessary to give is majesties leidges any further trouble in that service , and that they have dismissed the heretors and others , who were called out to that effect : therefore the lords of his majesties privy council do hereby discharge the said personal protection , and takes off all stopes , to all personal diligences whatsomever , granted upon the account above-mentioned , after the twentieth day of december instant , that in the mean time , the persons respectively concerned herein may return home . and ordain these presents to be forthwith published at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and other mercat-crosses of the head burghs of the shires of this kingdom , that none pretend ignorance . extracted forth of the records of privy council , by me col : m ckenzie . cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson . printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom , 1698. act asserting his majesties supremacy over all persons and in all causes ecclesiastical at edinburgh, the 16th of november, 1669. the estates of parliament having seriously considered, how necessar [sic] it is for the good and peace of the church and state; that his majesties power and authority, in relation to matters and persons ecclesiastical, be more clearly asserted by an act of parliament;... acts. 1669 scotland. parliament. committee of estates. 1669 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92479 wing s1059 estc r231896 99897086 99897086 137278 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92479) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 137278) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2467:11) act asserting his majesties supremacy over all persons and in all causes ecclesiastical at edinburgh, the 16th of november, 1669. the estates of parliament having seriously considered, how necessar [sic] it is for the good and peace of the church and state; that his majesties power and authority, in relation to matters and persons ecclesiastical, be more clearly asserted by an act of parliament;... acts. 1669 scotland. parliament. committee of estates. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by evan tyler, printer to the king's most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1669. all ecclesiastical customs, &c. inconsistent with his majesty's supremacy are void and null--steele. arms 223; steele notation: necessar his declares. reproduction of original in the bodleian library, oxford, england. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church and state -scotland -early works to 1800. royal supremacy (church of england) -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland 2007-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2007-09 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion act asserting his majesties supremacy over all persons and in all causes ecclesiastical . at edinburgh , the 16. of november , 1669. c r honi soit wui mal y pense the estates of parliament having seriously considered , how necessar it is for the good and peace of the church and state , that his majesties power and authority , in relation to matters and persons ecclesiastical , be more clearly asserted by an act of parliament ; have therefore thought fit it be enacted , asserted and declared , likeas , his majesty , with advice and consent of his estates of parliament , doth hereby enact , assert and declare , that his majesty hath the supreme authority and supremacy over all persons and in all causes ecclesiastical within this his kingdom ; and that by vertue thereof , the ordering and disposal of the external government and policy of the church doth properly belong to his majesty and his successors , as an inherent right of the crown : and that his majesty and his successors may settle , enact and emit such constitutions , acts and orders , concerning the administration of the external government of the church , and the persons imployed in the same , and concerning all ecclesiastical meetings , and matters to be proposed and determined therein , as they in their royal wisdom shall think fi● . which acts , orders and constitutions , being recorded in the books of council and duly published , are to be observed and obeyed by all his majesties subjects , any law , act or custom to the contrary notwithstanding . likeas , his majesty , with advice an● consent foresaid , doth rescind and annull all laws acts and clauses thereof , and all customs and constitutions , civil or ecclesiastick , which are contrary to , or inconsistent with , his majesties supremacy as it is hereby asserted , and declares the same void and null in all time coming . edinbvrgh , printed by evan tyler , printer to the king 's most excellent majesty , 1669. the declaration of both houses of parliament concerning his maiesties letter to the privy councell of the kingdome of scotland and the petition of the noblemen, gentlemen, ministers, &c. of scotland, to the lords of the privy councell. england and wales. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a82613 of text r210708 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.5[42]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a82613 wing e1340 thomason 669.f.5[42] estc r210708 99869477 99869477 160755 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a82613) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 160755) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 245:669f5[42]) the declaration of both houses of parliament concerning his maiesties letter to the privy councell of the kingdome of scotland and the petition of the noblemen, gentlemen, ministers, &c. of scotland, to the lords of the privy councell. england and wales. parliament. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed for joseph hunscot and iohn wright, london : 16 iune, 1642. parliament has read a letter from the king and a petition of scots nobility, &c., to the privy council at edinburgh. the suffering there expressed are not owing to parliament, which has laboured to take the blame off the king and throw it on his ministers. .. -steele. reproduction of the original in the british library. order to print dated: mercurii 15 iunii. 1642. signed: io. brown. cleric. parliament. eng charles -i, -king of england, 1600-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1625-1649 -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. a82613 r210708 (thomason 669.f.5[42]). civilwar no the declaration of both hovses of parliament concerning his maiesties letter to the privy councell of the kingdome of scotland. and the peti england and wales. parliament. 1642 581 2 0 0 0 0 0 34 c the rate of 34 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the declaration of both hovses of parliament concerning his maiesties letter to the privy councell of the kingdome of scotland . and the petition of the noblemen , gentlemen , ministers , &c. of scotland , to the lords of the privy councell . the lords and commons in parliament , have perused a printed paper under the title , a letter sent from the kings majesty to the lords of the privy counsell of the kingdome of scotland ; bearing in the front the appearance of his majesties usuall signature , and in the bottome this date . given at ou● court of yorke the 20 ▪ of may . 1642. as likewise another paper in the forme of a petition with this inscription , to the right honorable the lords of his majesties privy counsell . the humble petition of many noblemen , gentlemen , burgesses , and ministers occasionably meeting at edenbrough , and having bin credibly informed , that they are true copies of a letter and a petition sent and delivered as the severall titles import . vpon mature consideration of the matter therein contained , doe declare , and protest ; that those sufferings expressed in the papers betwixt his majesty , and parliament , cannot justly be imputed to any actions , or intentions of ours , who have endeavoured with all fidelity , to procure the happinesse of his majesty , and of this kingdome ; and that we are not guilty of laying upon the king , any such calumnies , and aspertions , as are mentioned in that paper , and seeme to reflect upon us ; but on the contrary have laboured to take the blame from his majesty , and to lay it upon his evill councell . and as touching the petition aforementioned , wee doe with much contentment , and thankfulnesse , observe the faithfulnesse , and good affection of our brethren of scotland , in seeking to prevent all iealousies , and to preserue the peace betwixt the two nations , so truly expressed to the lords of the councell ; whereby the hopes of those , who practised to have drawn from their lordships some declaration to the prejudice of this kingdome , were frustrated . and we shall never cease to answer this great care of theirs , with the like earnest and dilligent endeavours , to promote the honor , wealth , and prosperity of that nation , and preserve that union so strongly fortefyed , by publike and mutuall interest , and affection on both sides ; and wee desire that the commissioners may give notice to the scottish commissioners how heartily , and joyfully wee doe imbrace the kindnesse of that kingdome , manifested in that petition , and order this declaration to be forthwith printed ; that so it may be published to the whole kingdome of scotland , hoping that this constant , and inviolable amity betwixt us , will not onely conduce to the safety , and honour of both kingdomes , but prove very usefull for the advantage , and security of the protestant religion in other parts . mercurii 15 iunii . 1642. ordered by the lords and commons in parliament assembled . that this declaration shall be forthwith printed and published . io. brown . cleric . parliament . london printed for joseph hunscot and iohn wright , 16 iune , 1642. proclamation for apprehending sir george barclay scotland. privy council. 1696 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05638 wing s1838 estc r183499 53299285 ocm 53299285 180017 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05638) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180017) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2810:42) proclamation for apprehending sir george barclay scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1694-1702 : william ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh, : 1696. caption title. initial letter. title vignette: royal seal with initials w r. intentional blank spaces in text. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng barclay, george, -sir, fl. 1696. conspiracies -great britain -17th century -sources. great britain -history -william and mary, 1689-1702 -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-03 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion w r honi soit qui mal y pense diev et mon droit proclamation for apprehending sir george barclay . william by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france , and ireland , defender of the faith : to _____ macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially , constitute , greeting : forasmuch as , sir george barclay having entered into a horrid and detestable conspiracy , with diverse other wicked and traiterous persons , to assassinate and murder our sacred person , is not yet apprehended and brought to justice , but is supposed to have made his escape out of the kingdom of england ( wher 's that execrable villany was to have been perpetrat ) and to have fled to , and taken his refuge in this our ancient kingdom ; and we being resolved to use all endiavours , to bring such a barbarous traitor to condign punishment . do therefore , require and command all magistrats , and ministers of our law , officers of our army , and souldiers under our pay : and all other the good subjects of this our antient kingdom , whatsoever , to discover , seize upon ; take and apprehend , the person of the said sir george barclay , wherever he may be found , and to carry him to the next sure prison , where he is to be detained till farther order , and our privy council to be immediatly acquainted therewith : and for the encouragement of all persons , to be diligent and careful in discovering , and apprehending the said sir george barclay , we do hereby declare , that whosoever shall apprehend the said sir george barclay , and deliver him to any magistrat within this kingdom , to be detained prisoner as said is , shall receive , and have payed to them the sum of one thousand pounds sterling as a reward for their good service , which sum we hereby require the lords commissioner of our treasury , to make payment of accordingly ; and in case any of our good subjects shall kill , mutilator hurt the said sir george barclay , or any person who shall presume to withstand our good subjects in the apprehending of him , the saids persons who shall kill , hurt , or wound the said sir george barclay or any others who shall stand up violently to defend or withstand his being apprehended , shall be hereby as sufficiently indemnified , as if they had a remission under our great seal for the same : and farther , we hereby strictly prohibite and discharge all the subjects of this our ancient kingdom , to conceal , harbour , or supplie the said sir george barclay , under the pains of being proceeded against with all rigor , according to the several laws and acts of parliament made anent harbouring , or resetting fugitives and traitors . our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly , and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh ; and to the mercat crosses of the whole remanent head-burghs of the several shires and stewartries within this kingdom , and there in our name and authority , by open proclamation , make publication of the premises , that none may pretend ignorance , and ordains these presents to be printed . given under our signet at edinburgh , the seventh day of may , and of our reign the eight year , 1696 . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot cls. sti. concilii . god save the king. edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to the kings most excellent majesty , 1696. the transactions of several matters between lieut: gen: cromwel and the scots, for surrendring the towns of bervvick, carlisle, and all other garisons belonging to the kingdom of england. together with the reason of lieut: gen: cromwels entring the kingdom of scotland to assist the marquis of argyle. die jovis, 28 septembr. 1648. ordered by the commons assembled in parliament, that the extracts of the letters of the committee at derby-house to lieut: general cromwel, and the whole dispatch from lieut: general cromwel now reported, and the votes thereupon, be forthwith printed and published. h: elsynge, cler. parl. d. com. cromwell, oliver, 1599-1658. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a81015 of text r201085 in the english short title catalog (thomason e465_18). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 30 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 13 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a81015 wing c7176d thomason e465_18 estc r201085 99861651 99861651 113791 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a81015) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 113791) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 74:e465[18]) the transactions of several matters between lieut: gen: cromwel and the scots, for surrendring the towns of bervvick, carlisle, and all other garisons belonging to the kingdom of england. together with the reason of lieut: gen: cromwels entring the kingdom of scotland to assist the marquis of argyle. die jovis, 28 septembr. 1648. ordered by the commons assembled in parliament, that the extracts of the letters of the committee at derby-house to lieut: general cromwel, and the whole dispatch from lieut: general cromwel now reported, and the votes thereupon, be forthwith printed and published. h: elsynge, cler. parl. d. com. cromwell, oliver, 1599-1658. england and wales. parliament. house of commons. 24 p. printed for edward husband, printer to the honourable house of commons, london : octob. 2. 1648. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng cromwell, oliver, 1599-1658 -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a81015 r201085 (thomason e465_18). civilwar no the transactions of several matters between lieut: gen: cromwel and the scots, for surrendring the towns of bervvick, carlisle, and all othe cromwell, oliver 1648 5111 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-02 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-07 olivia bottum sampled and proofread 2008-07 olivia bottum text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the transactions of several matters between lieut : gen : cromwel and the scots , for surrendring the towns of berwick , carlisle , and all other garisons belonging to the kingdom of england . together with the reason of lieut : gen : cromwels entring the kingdom of scotland to assist the marquis of argyle . die jovis , 28 septembr . 1648. ordered by the commons assembled in parliament , that the extracts of the letters of the committee at derby-house to lieut : general cromwel , and the whole dispatch from lieut : general cromwel now reported , and the votes thereupon , be forthwith printed and published . h : elsynge , cler. parl. d.com. london , printed for edward husband , printer to the honorable house of commons , octob. 2. 1648. to the right honorable , the committee of lords and commons at derby-house . my lords and gentlemen , i did from alnwick write to sir william armyn an account of our condition , and recommended to him divers particular considerations about your affairs here in the north , with desire of particular things to be done by your lordships appointment , in order to the carrying on of your affairs . i send you here inclosed a copy of the summons that was sent to barwick when i was come as far alnwick ; as also of a letter written to the committee of estates of scotland , i mean those who we did presume were convened as estates , & were the men that managed the business of the war : but there being ( as i here since ) none such , the earl of roxbrough and some others having deserted , so that they are not able to make a committee , i believe the said letter is suppressed and retained in the hands of colonel bright and mr. william rowe , for whom we obtained a safe convoy to go to the estates of that kingdom with our said letter ; the governor of barwicks answer to our summons leading us thereunto : by advantage whereof , we did instruct them to give all assurance to the marquis of argyle , and the honest party in scotland ( who we heard were gathered together in a considerable body about edenburgh , to make opposition to the earl of lanerick , monro , and their armies ) of our good affection to them ; wherewith they went the sixteenth of this moneth . upon the seventeenth of this moneth sir andrew car and major straughan , with divers other scotish gentlemen , brought me this enclosed letter , signed by the lord chancellor of scotland , as your lordships will see : they likewise shewed me their instructions , and a paper containing the matter of their treaty with lanerick and monro ; as also an expostulation upon lanericks breach with them , in falling upon argyle and his men contrary to agreement , wherein the marquis of argyle hardly escaped , they having hold of him , but seven hundred of his men were killed and taken : these papers also i send here enclosed to your lordships . so soon as these gentlemen came to me , i called a councel of war , the result whereof was , the letter directed to the lord chancellor , a copy whereof your lordships have also here enclosed , which i delivered to sir andrew car and major straughan , with which they returned upon the eighteenth , being the next day . upon private discourse with the gentlemen , i do finde the condition of their affairs and their army to be thus ; the earl of lanerick , the earl of crawford-lindsey , monro , and their army hearing of our advance , and understanding the condition and endeavors of their adversaries , marched with all speed to get the possession of sterling-bridge , that so they might have three parts of four of scotland at their backs to raise men , and to enable themselves to carry on their design , and are above five thousand foot , and five and twenty hundred horse , or three thousand , the earl of leven , who is chosen general , the marquis of argyle , with the honest lords and gentlemen , david lesley being the lieut : general , having about seven thousand foot , but very weak in horse , lye about six miles on this side the enemy ; i do hear that their infantry consists of men who come to them out of conscience , and generally are of the godly people of that nation , which they express by their piety and devotion in their quarters , and indeed i hear they are a very godly and honest body of men . i think it is not unknown to your lordships what directions i have received from you for the prosecution of our late victory ; whereof i shall be bold to remember a clause of your letter , which was , that i should prosecute the remaining party in the north , and not leave any of them ( where-ever they shall go ) to be a beginning of a new army , nor cease to pursue the victory , till i finish and fully compleat it , with their rendition of those towns of barwick and carlisle , which most unjustly , and against all obligations and the treaties ( then ) in force , they surprized and garisoned against us . in order whereunto , i marched to the borders of scotland , where i found the countrey so exceedingly harrased and impoverished by monro and the forces with him , that the countrey was in no sort able to bear us on the english side , but we must have necessarily ruined both your army , and the subjects of this kingdom , who have not bread for a day , if we had continued amongst them . in prosecution of your orders , and in answer to the necessity of your friends in scotland , and their desires , and considering the necessity of marching into scotland , to prevent the governor of barwick from putting provisions into his garison on scotland side ( whereof he is for the present in some want , as we are informed ) i marched a good part of the army over tweed yesterday about noon , the residue being to come after as conveniently as we may . thus have i given to your lordships an account of our present condition and engagement ; and having done so , i must discharge my duty in remembring to your lordships the desires formerly expressed in my letters to sir william armyn and sir john evelyn for supplies ; and in particular , for that of shipping to lye upon these coasts , who may furnish us with ammunition or other necessaries wheresoever god shall lead us , there being extreme difficulty to supply us by land , without great and strong convoys , which will weary out and destroy our horse , and cannot well come to us if the tweed be up , without going very far about . having laid these things before you , i rest , my lords , norham this 20 of septem. 1648 . your most humble servant , o. cromvvel . whilest we are here , i wish there be no neglect of the business in cumberland and westmerland : i have sent orders both into lancashire and the horse before pontefract ; i should be glad your lordships would second them , and those other considerations expressed in my desires to sir william armyn thereabouts . o. c. lieut : general cromwels summons to the governor of berwick . sir , being come thus near , i thought fit to demand the town of berwick to be delivered into my hands , to the use of the parliament and kingdom of england , to whom of right it belongeth : i need not use any arguments to convince you of the justice hereof ; the witness that god hath born against your army in their invasion of this kingdom , which desired to sit in peace by you , doth at once manifest his dislike of injury done to a nation that meant you no harm , but hath been all along desirous to keep amity and brotherly affection and agreement with you : if you deny me in this , we must make a second appeal to god , putting our selves upon him , in endeavoring to obtain our rights , and let him be iudge between us ; and if your ayms be any thing beyond what we profess , he will require it ; if further trouble ensue upon your denial , we trust he will make our innocency to appear : i expect your answer to this summons this day , and rest , your servant , o. c. for the governor of berwick . for the right honorable , lieutenant general cromwel . much honored and noble sir , i have received yours , wherein ye desire the delivering up of this town , which i was put in trust with by the committee of the states of scotland , wherewith i am immediately to acquaint them , and expects their order ; and in the mean time rests , berwick , 15. sep. 1648 . noble sir , your humble servant , lo : leslie . the letetr to the committe of estates of scotland . right honorable , being upon my approach to the borders of the kingdom of scotland , i thought fit to acquaint you with the reasons thereof : it is well known how injuriously the kingdom of england was lately invaded by the army under duke hamilton , contrary to the covenant and our leagues of amity , and aginst all the engagements of love and brotherhood between the two nations : and notwithstanding the pretences of your late declaration , published to take with the people of this kingdom , the commons of england in parliament assembled , declared the said army so entring , as enemies to the kingdom , and those of england who should adhere to them as traytors ; and having received commands , with a considerable part of their army to oppose so great aviolation of faith and justice , what a witness god , being appealed to , hath born upon the engagements of the armies , against the unrighteousness of man , not onely your selves , but this kingdom , yea , and a great part of the known world , will i trust acknowledge , how dangerous a thing it is to wage an unjust war , much more to appeal to god the righteous judge therein : we trust he will perswade you better by this manifest token of his displeasure , least his hand be stretched out yet more against you , and your poor people also , if they will be deceived . that which i am to demand of you , is , the restitution of the garisons of berwick and carlisle into my hands , to the use of the parliament and kingdom of england : if you deny me herein , i must make our appeal to god , and call upon him for assistance , in what way he shall direct us ; wherein we are and shall be so far from seeking the harm of the well-affected in the kingdom of scotland , that we profess as before the lord , that what difference an army necessitated in an hostile way , to recover the ancient rights and inheritance of the kingdom under which they serve , can make , we shall rejoyce , and use our endeavors to the utmost , the trouble may fall upon the contrivers and authors of this breach , and not upon the poor innocent people , which have been led and compelled into this action , as many poor souls now prisoners to us confess : we thought our selves bound in duty thus to expostulate with you , and thus to profess , to the end we may bear our integrity out before the world , and may have comfort in god , what ever the event be . desiring your answer , i rest , your lordships humble servant , o. c. for the right honorable , the commander in chief of the forces of the parliament of england , near berwick and carlisle , or in any other part within the northern counties . right honorable , hearing that some forces of the parliament of england are come northward , near the borders of scotland , to reduce berwick and carlisle ; the desire we have to preserve a right understanding between the kingdoms , hath moved us to signifie to you , that as we did dissent from , & protest against the late unlawful engagement against england , carried on by a prevalent party and faction , against the declaration of this church and their commissioners , and against the desires and supplications of the most considerable shires of this kingdom ; so shall we be ready to cooperate , by contributing our best endeavors with you , that the garisons of berwick and carlisle be reduced , and the towns delivered to the houses of parliament , or such as are or shall be by them authorized . these who command the forces returned from that army which went into england , and their adherents , have made applications to us for a treaty ; we have desired them to disband their forces and garisons , and deliver those towns , that they may be surrendred to the houses of parliament ; assuring you , that in any transaction of peace with them , or pursuance of war against them , we shall be as careful and tender of the interest and good of the kingdom of england , as of our own nation ; and our actions in this and in every occasion shall be real evidences of our sincere resolutions to observe inviolably the covenant and treaties between the kingdoms , and to be mutually ayding to each other against the common enemy , till it please god to grant both kingdoms the great blessing of a safe and well-grounded peace . falkirk , 15. sep. 1648 . by warrant , and in the name of the noble men , gentlemen and burgesses now in arms , who dissented in parliament from the late engagement against the kingdom of england . loudoun canc' instructions to the laird gramheat , and major straughan . 1. you shall shew , that the remainder of that army that went into england in the last wicked engagement , with the forces with george monro and their adherents , being returned into this kingdom , are very active to raise new forces , and strengthen themselves to carry on the former designs . 2. you shall shew , that we are resolved to oppose them , and that we shall agree to no desire of that army , without disbanding of their forces , and denuding themselves of all power , that the power of peace and war may be intrusted to such as have dissented from the late engagement , and desire to preserve the union between the kingdoms . 3. you shall shew , that if they lay not down their arms , but persist to pursue their engagements against the kingdom of england , and disturb the peace of this kingdom , we are confident that the houses of parliament and their armies will be ready to assist us with their forces , to pursue them as common enemies to both kingdoms , as we were and are willing to assist the houses of parliament against the malignants in england . 4. that we desire and expect they will be in readiness to concur with us , when we shall give them a call ; and that we are to send to the honorable houses of parliament , to desire their assistance , and that by joynt councels and forces , the disturbers of the peace of both kingdoms may be brought to tryal and condign punishment . falkirk , 15. septemb. 1648 . articles in treaty between the two armies . the members of parliament who dissented in parliament , and the gentlemen and burgesses chosen by the several shires and burghes , now in arms for the covenant , do propound to those in arms against us , that all their forces in the field be forthwith disbanded , and the garisons of berwick and carlisle , and other garisons in their power within the kingdom of scotland and england be forthwith delivered ; that we may surrender to the kingdom of england their own garisons and forts , and for continuing the union betwixt two kingdoms , and dispose of our garisons for securing the peace of this kingdom . that all these of their number , who have been imployed in publique place or trust in the kingdom ( in respect they have by manifest abuse of their power and trust so exceedingly endangered religion , and brought the kingdom to the very brink of dispair and ruine ) shall forbear the exercise of all place , power or trust , until a free parliament or convention of estates , consisting onely of persons free from the late unlawful engagement ; and that the benefit of their places be sequestred , to be disposed of by the parliament or convention of estates , and they giving assurance that in the mean time they shall not disturb the peace of the kingdom , we shall not challenge them for their lives or estates ; being always understood , that nothing herein contained , shall prelimit the parliament of this kingdom to the kingdom of england , according to the treaties and covenant . it is to be remembred , that the persons above written , nominated and authorized for the treaty , shall not have any power to conclude , but after debate of all matters in writing , to make a report thereof to us . woodhouse , 14 septemb. 1648 . the expostulation between the two armies . vpon tuesday morning about five of the clock , the lord humby and the lord lee your commissioners , presented a letter subscribed by the earl of crawford-lindsey , the earl of lanerick , and col : geo : monro ; wherein they did agree , that a treaty should begin at eight of the clock in the morning at wenchborow ; with this limitation , that the treaty should onely continue till twelve at noon , promising that the army under your command should march no further then they were at present , our army doing the like ; and that during the treaty , there should be a cessation from all acts of hostility . though this letter came late to our hands , about three hours after the time appointed , and so it was in our choyce to have marched presently , or to have embraced a treaty ; yet we resolved to stay , and were content to send some of our number to treat at wenchborow with the like number from you ; provided , that the treaty might endure until wednesday at four of the clock in the morning , and all marching of forces , and acts of hostility on either side should cease during that time : whereupon your commissioners the lord humby and the lord lee did undertake , that either your lordships should agree to prorogate the time of the treaty until wednesday four of the clock in the morning , the forces of both sides not marching further then they were at present , and the marquis of argyle not coming with his forces to st. nynyans kirk , about a mile on this side of sterling : or otherwise if you did not agree to this , that then none of your forces should march before eleven of the clock at the soonest . two from us were sent along with your commissioners to receive your answer , which was delivered by the earl of crawford and glencarn , at the town end of lithgow , in these words : that it was impossible for you to consent to prorogate the time of the treaty until four of the clock on wednesday morning ; and that you resolved to fight that night for the pass at sterling , though it were with twenty thousand : but withal promised to make good what your commissioners had undertaken ; viz. that none of your forces should march before eleven of the clock out of your quarters ; particularly , that they should not before that time cross the river of evarn near lithgow : all which notwithstanding , we were credibly informed part of your forces marched through falkirk , which is about six miles distant from lithgow , betwixt nine and ten of the clock in the forenoon , and about two of the clock in the afternoon marched into sterling , which is distant twelve miles from lithgow , and so under trust and fair pretences to treat , your lordships did take an opportunity to surprize the forces of the marquis of argye , killing some , and taking others prisoners , when they were in security , being advertised by us of a treaty betwixt your lordships and us ; which we cannot esteem to be a fair way of proceeding : and therefore we desire , that all those of the marquis of argyle's forces , detained prisoners by your lordships , may be forthwith released and set at liberty ; and for the blood of those that have been killed under trust , we know not how it can be expiated . for the right honorable , the earl of loudoun chancellor of scotland , to be communicated to the noblemen , gentlemen , and burgesses now with the army , who dissented from the late engagament against the kingdom of england . right honorable , vve received yours from falkirk of the 15 of septem. instant ; we have had also a fight of your instructions given to the laird of gramheats and major straughan ; as also two others papers , concerning the treaty between your lordship and the enemy , wherein your care of the interest of the kingdom of england , for the delivery of their towns unjustly taken from them , and desire to preserve the unity of both nations , are dearest : by which also we understand the posture you are now in to oppose the enemies of the welfare and peace of both the kingdoms ; for which we bless god for his goodness to you , and rejoyce to see the power of the kingdom of scotland in a hopeful way to be invested in the hands of those , who we trust are taught of god to seek his honor , and the comfort of his people . and give us leave to say , as before the lord who knoweth the secret of all hearts , that as we think one especial end of providence in permitting the enemies of god and goodness in both kingdoms to rise to the height , and exercise such tyranny over his people , was , to shew the necessity of the unity amongst his of both nations ; so , we hope and pray , that the late glorious dispensation in giving so happy success against your and our enemies in our victory , may be the foundation of the union of the people of god in love and amity : and to that end we shall , god assisting , to the utmost of our power endeavor to perform what may be behinde on our part : and when we shall through any wilfulness fail herein , let this profession rise up in judgement against us , as having been made in hypocrisie ; a severe avenger of which , god hath lately appeared , in his most righteous witnessing against the army under duke hamilton , invading us under specious pretences of piety and justice : we may humbly say we rejoyce with more trembling , then to dare to do so wicked a thing . upon our advance to alnwick , we thought fit to send a good party of horse towards the borders of scotland , and therewith a summons to the garison of berwick ; to which having received a dilatory answer , i desired a safe convoy for col : bright and the scoutmaster general , to go to the committee of estates of scotland , who , i hope , will have the opportunity to be with your lordships before this come to your hands , and according as they are instructed , let your lordships in some measure ( as well as we could in so much ignorance of your condition ) know our affections to you , and understanding things more fully by yours , we now thought fit to make this return . the command we received upon the defeat of duke hamilton , was , to prosecute the business until the enemy might be put out of a condition or hope of growing into a new army , and the garisons of berwick and carlisle were reduced : four regiments of our horse , and some dragoons , having followed the enemy into the south parts being now come up , and this countrey not being able to bear us , the cattel and old corn thereof having been wasted by monro and the forces with him , the governor of berwick also daily victualling his garison from scotland side , and the enemy yet in so considerable a posture , as by these gentlemen and your papers we understand , still prosecuting their former design , having gotten the advantage of sterling-bridge , and so much of scotland at their backs to enable them thereunto ; and your lordships condition at present not being such as may compel them to submit to the honest and necessary things you have proposed to them for the good of both the kingdoms ; we have thought fit out of the sence of our duties to the commands laid upon us by those who have sent us , and to the end we might be in a posture more ready to give you an assistance , and not be wanting to what we have made so large professions of , to advance into scotland with the army ; and we trust by the blessing of god , the common enemy will thereby the sooner be brought to a submission to you , and we thereby shall do what becometh us in order to the obtaining our garisons ; engaging our selves , that so soon as we shall know from you the enemy shall yield to the things you have proposed to them , and we have our garisons delivered to us , we shall forthwith depart out of your kingdom , and in the mean time be more tender towards the kingdom of scotland in the point of charge , then if we were in our own native kingdom . if we shall receive from you any desire of a more speedy advance , we shall readily yield compliance therewith , desiring often to hear from you how affairs stand . this being the result of the councel of war , i present it to you as the expression of their affections and my own , who am , my lord , your most humble servant , o. cromvvel . an extract of letters from the committee of derby-house , of 24 augusti , and 19 , septembr . to lieutenant general cromvvel . sir , vve doubt not but god will so direct and assist you in doing what remains , as both those that are come southward will be destroyed ; and that you then will prosecute the remaining party in the north , and not leave any of them ( where ever they shall go ) to be a beginning of a new army ; nor cease to pursue your victory , till you finish and fully compleat it , with their rendition of those towns of berwick and carlisle , which most unjustly , and against obligations , and the treaties ( then ) in force , they surprised and garisoned against us . derby-house , 24 aug. 1648 . by the postscript of your letter of the 11th , we conceive you will be advanced as far as the borders before these come to you ; and that you will lose no time nor opportunity for the regaining of the towns of berwick and carlisle , and desire you to use the best means that you in your judgement shall think most conducing to that end ; the regaining of them being a thing of so grent concernment to the honor of this kingdom , and safety of those northern parts . derby-house , 19 septem. 1648 . die jovis , 28 septemb. 1648. . resolved upon the queston , that the lords and commons assembled in parliament , do approve of the actions of lieut : general cromwel , in pursuance of the orders he received from the committee sitting at derby-house , which they likewise approve of . resolved upon the question , &c. that in case those noblemen and others that dissented against the invasion of the kingdom of england by the army under the command of duke hamilton , shall desire the assistance of lieut : general cromwel , that he be ready to afford them all seasonable relief and assistance . h : elsynge , cler. parl. d.com. finis . a proclamation, for adjourning the parliament, from the eighth of october next, to the twentieth of december thereafter. at edinburgh, the first day of october, one thousand six hundred eighty nine years. scotland. privy council. 1689 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05621 wing s1810 estc r183486 52528972 ocm 52528972 179055 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05621) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179055) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:44) a proclamation, for adjourning the parliament, from the eighth of october next, to the twentieth of december thereafter. at edinburgh, the first day of october, one thousand six hundred eighty nine years. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, by order of secret council, edinburgh : anno dom. 1689. caption title. initial letter. signed: gilb. eliot, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -parliament -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2008-08 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation , for adjourning the parliament from the eighth of october next , to the twentieth of december thereafter . at edinburgh , the first day of october , one thousand six hundred eighty nine years . whereas his sacred majesty considering , that by the last act of the present current parliament , of this his ancient kingdom , holden at edinburgh , the same is declared current and adjourned until the eighth day of october next ; and that the present state of his majesties affairs doth not require the meeting of the said parliament , so soon as the said eighth of october , to which it was adjourned , hath therefore by his royal letter , dated at hamptoun-court , the twenty fifth of september one thousand six hundred eighty nine , signified his resolution , to continue the adjournment from the said eighth of october , to the twenty day of december thereafter ; and that the members thereof may not be put to the trouble and charge of meeting upon the said eight of october ; hath likewayes authorized and required the lords of his majesties privy council , to issuef forth this proclamation , in his name , to the effect after-mentioned therefore the saids lords of privy council , do , in his majesties name , and by his special command and authority , hereby adjourn the said current parliament , to the said twentieth of december next ; and require and command the lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers of privy council , pursevants , messengers at arms , sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , that incontinent , thir presents seen , they pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and the remanent mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of this kingdom , and there , in his majesties name and authority , by open proclamation make intimation of the said adjournment of the parliament of this kingdom , from the said eighth day of october , to the twentieth day of december next ensuing ; requiring hereby all the members of the parliament to attend that day , in the usual way , and upon the accustomed certifications . the which to do , the saids lords commits to them , his majesties full power , by these presents , delivering the same , by them duly execute , and indorsed again to the bearer . per actum dominerum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot , cls , sti. concilii . god save king william and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , by order of secret council , anne dom , 1689. the history of the kings majesties affairs in scotland under the conduct of the most honourable james marques of montrose, earl of kincardin, &c. and generall governour of that kingdome. in the years, 1644. 1645. & 1646. de rebus auspiciis serenissimi, & potentissimi caroli. english. wishart, george, 1599-1671. 1647 approx. 346 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 106 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-07 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a66737 wing w3120 estc r217175 99828875 99828875 33308 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a66737) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 33308) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1962:14) the history of the kings majesties affairs in scotland under the conduct of the most honourable james marques of montrose, earl of kincardin, &c. and generall governour of that kingdome. in the years, 1644. 1645. & 1646. de rebus auspiciis serenissimi, & potentissimi caroli. english. wishart, george, 1599-1671. matham, adriaan, 1599?-1660, engraver. the second edition corrected and much amended. [26], 184 p. : ill. (port.) printed by samuel browne, english bookeseller dwelling in the achter-om at the signe of the english printing house, haghe [i.e. the hague] : [1647] a translation of the author's "de rebus auspiciis serenissimi, & potentissimi caroli", first published in 1647. date of publication from wing. with engraved portrait, signed: a. matham. fe. includes errata. caption title on p. 1 reads: the affaires of the king of scotland, under the conduct of the most honourable iames marquesse of montrose, earle of kinkardin, &c. and generall governour for his majesty in that kingdome, in the years 1644, 1645, & 1646. reproduction of the original in the bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng charles -i, -king of england, 1600-1649 -early works to 1800. montrose, james graham, -marquis of, 1612-1650 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. 2003-02 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-03 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-04 rina kor sampled and proofread 2003-04 rina kor text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-06 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion iames marquesse of montrose , earle of kingcairne , lord graeme , baron of mont dieu , etc ▪ lieutenant governour and cap t. general ffor his ma tie . in the kingdome of scotland . a. matham . fe . the history of the kings majesties affairs in scotland , under the conduct of the most honourable iames marques of montrose , earle of kincardin , &c. and generall governour of that kingdome . in the years , 1644. 1645. & 1646. the second edition corrected and much amended . haghe ▪ printed by samuel browne , english bookeseller dwelling in the achter-om at the signe of the english printing house . to the high , and mightie , charles by the grace of god , prince of scots , and wales , duke of cornwal and rothesay , heire of great britaine , &c. low and humble ( most high , and mightie prince ) doeth your montrose addresse himself to your highnes presence : not he himself , in his full aequipage , no , nor a moitie of him , and in truth scarse a mean scantling of that matchles worth . who , though unpolished and rude , and , in this his roman dresse , ill deck● , rough , and uncomely ; yet shal be not feare the publike view , if you daigne him that favorable aspect , and grace , which you are wont to vouchsafe even forraigners , and strangers that court you. and he thinks , he may , upon better grounds then they , presume to entreat this , he being no alien , but a lawful native of your royal fathers haereditarie kingdome : and no otherwise , then by the fatall calamitie of those times , exposed , bred , and fed in a strange land . nor doth he want lively characters , and marks imprinted in him , to evidence from what land , and father he is descended : that , your own scotland , wherein one hundred and nine of your progenitors have raigned ; all whose royall blood runs in your veins , and divine souls breaths in your breast : him a free , born , and bred native , of that most ancient kingdome ; a loyal servant of your dearest father , his most gracious lord , and faithful follower of his , in despight of all the casualties of fortune . which arguments , if they be not sufficient to conciliat the sweet gale of your grace , to inspire health , and life , in this tender birth , otherwise readie to expire : yet let me beseech your singular clemencie , to lend it so much of your countenance , as to observe in it ( though drawne with a rude pencill ) some lineaments , and shaddows of it's first patterne ; and even for those resemblances sake , vouchsafe it so much of your countenance , as may give it some life and being , if not immortalitie . for , who would despise that only pourtra●cture that were of scipio , caesar , alexander , or of your royall grandfathers , exstant , iames the peaceful , or henry the great , because the work of some obscure , and perhaps , unskilfull craftsman ? i can wel divine , montrose will not long want an apelles , or leucippus to paint him out , and limbe him to the life ; nor an homer perhaps to sing his praises : only ( most gracious sir ) be pleased to use a while these my poore endeavours , till those more worthie show themselves to the world . and looke not on the harshnes of my stile , but bend your high and generous thoughts upon the actions , truly roman , that 's to say , noble , high , heroik , great , and farre transcending meane and vulgar spirits . and , if you wil impute ( as is fit and just ) the blemishes and errours , which herein may occurre , to the weaknes of my wit and judgement , and no wayes , to my patterns genius , i dare boldly undertake , that your montrose shall prove neither unpleasant , nor unprofitable . for , what can be more pleasant to a prince , second to none on earth , but his father , borne in that eminent dignitie , bred in that condition , and from his infancie trained up in those wayes , which resent nothing but heroicall deeds ; then to have alwayes before his eyes , that worthie , whom ( be it said without envy ) no man in his time goeth beyond , to embrace , caresse and cherish him , and coppie out his actions , and observe , how he behaves himself , how brave and goodlie , in martiall feats , manhood and chevalrie ? who taking up arms to serve the commands of the best of kings , your most gracious father , and leading the dance , as it were , to usher in your valour , which now waxeth to ripnes and strength apace ; hath performed such exploits , as strikes the present times with admiration ; and gratefull posteritie shal ever preserve in memorie . for , though envy presse hard upon true glorie , and tread upon her heels ; yet that short lived , and self destroying furie , shall never overtake , nor ecclipse her solid and immortall lustre . in the meane time ( most gracious sir ) we present you here with no smoothe fables , or romanses . antiphates , and scillaes gulf are not my theme , swallowing charybdis , devouring polypheme . no gyants , or glorious wonders ; yet enemies , as like gyants , and victories obtained over them , as like wonders , as may be . for , what did ever lying greece faine of the proud attempts of their old gyants , which these conspiratours , the sons of the earth , have not dared to doe against god , religion , faith , loyaltie , and right , in all their dealings , with your royall parents , your self , and all yours ? who heaping up mo intains , upon mountains of lyes , calumnies , and slanders ; reared up those bulworkes , from whence , with horrid violence , they have fought against the gods. and what did they imagine done by apollo , by pallas , or mars , to overthrow those monsters ; which our montrose did not with like courage undertake , and successe performe ? and now that having vanquished , he did not finally , and totally triumph over them ; we must impute it to the force of your fate , which would not permit the genius of your countrey , to owe so glorious a deliverance , to any others valour , but your own . nor indeed , seemed it convenient , that any other should thunder downe enceladus , with those other titans , to hell ; but the sonne of him , whose father those gyants kept in chains . and then ( great sir ) when you intend those courses , to which the lawes of god , and man oblidge you ; the vindication of your father , and countrey , from that most savage bondage ; what can be more profitable , then to have your eyes stil on him , as the guide , and leader of your way , who first of all discovered the counsells , plots , and treacheries of these traitors , and , as i may say , alone did show the way , how to lay their intollerable pride , and breake their power , though growen verie great , before it was perceived . for you shall find him a body , without a soul ; for being no more valiant in arms then wise in counsell and managing affairs , he advised ●mously ( and would to god his counsell had prevailed ) to strangle that monster in the cradle , aswell as when it was growen strong , he had crusht it , but that your growing vertue , was not to be defrauded , of so large a field , for purchasing renowne . so that besides his singular valour , and militarie skill , you may find in him choise instructions of civil prudence , and politik wisedome ; which though ( through the sad fatalitie of the times ) they were but ill believed , yet such as may perhaps be usefull to your self , and after ages . and this is seene clearly , in that advise , to prevent betimes , the purposes and practises of these traitors , who had built their hopes upon the sweet disposition of our most gracious king. his clemencie to wickedst rebells , his trust in unworthie persons , his bountie to ingrate men ( for such most of them proved ) and great compassion on all ; more then on anie strength , or power of their own : and to compasse , and quell them , by the force of just armes ( since they had left no other way ) before their forces , with too long delay , should bulk , and grow too puissant and great . and if but this had beene put in execution ( to say nothing of what else befell us ) our britaine had never become the bloodie stage of this unnaturall war ; the glorious temples of our lord had never beene so vilely , so wickedly prophaned ; our streets had never so swame with the innocent blood of our best nobles , and churchmen ; your royal father , and brothers had never beene detained in so unworthie bonds ; your gracious mother as a widow , and your self , as a banished exile , had never beene forced to live beyond seas ; though in an hospitable , and friendly , yet strange and forreigne land . who is 't , that can such stories tell , and his dry eies , with tears not swel ? and seing in al these exploits ( even above envy it self illustrious ) the almightie most evidently kithed his own immediat hand ; so that to god alone the whole and solid glory is duly to be rendred : yet withall , who can but acknowledge , honour , admire , love , and set forth his worth , whom that great god thought good to depute his instrument of so glorious atchievments ? for , had our montrose beene only to graple with open enemies in the fields , perhaps these might seem matters of lesser moment : that he was never pursued , with lesse then two , somtimes three armies at once , in the front , the rear , and flank ; and the least of those , for number of souldiers , choice of weapons , and abundance of all warlike provision , farre exceeding all the forces that he could gather ; yet did he still free himself of them all , with equall resolution and successe : that , he had never other magazin of arms , powder , shotte , or instruments of warre , but what by force he tooke from his conquered enemies : that , in the space of one yeare , he obtained six compleat victories , in sett battells in the fields ; and chased the conspiring lords quite out of all scotland : that he endured the winter , in a most bitter frostie cold countrie and climate , without garrison , without tent , or hutte , or boothe ; for most part under the open canopy of heaven : that dry , he quenched his thrist with cold water , and that such , as from the melting snow came dropping down these mountains : that , without bread , or salt , with beife alone , and that often scarse , stale , and leane , he sustained hunger ; and all such other inconveniencies of warre . but his master-piece , and hardest taske was , to wrestle with those , who would seeme the sharpest avengers of the wrongs done to the king ; and patrons of majestie : with some of their dull , heavie , and stupid sloth ; others intolerable pride , some of their base couwardise , others their sordid avarice , some of their horrible perfidiousnes . so that had not his constancie , and courage been undanted ; and that loyall flame of zeale , which in his heart did burne towards his dearest , and most dread soveraigne , beene unquencheable ; he had never been able to bear out , endure , resist , and rectifie all those severall unruly passions , and humors of men . for , by severe laws of militarie discipline , or other punishments ( as commanders in chiefe are wont ) montrose neither ought , nor could restraine his souldiers ; who received no pay ; but took up armes freely , of meere loyaltie to their king , and goodwill to him their generall : and who could easily have turned to the rebells side , so soone as ever they had but seemed to themselves to be provoked by the sleightest injurie , or branded with the least note of disgrace ▪ men , for the most part , head-strong , turbulent , factious , and readie to revolt , upon the meanest irritation and pette . so that to preserve , at once his own authoritie , with the good liking of his souldiers , was the most difficult taske in the world . nor was there any thing that more violently exercised his wit and judgement , then that it behooved him to square out his counsells and actions , to the measure of other mens capacities , or at least , seeme so to doe . but he , that he might advance the kings service , made no account of , and despised , as things farre under him , all the hatred of his enemies , the envy of his emulous rivalls , the back-byting of court-sycophants , the complaints of his friends , the reproaches of the people , and ( which was of all others , most terrible , and most affrighted the superstitious minds of the simple multitude ) all the execrations ; and anathemaes of their fierie and furious ministers , verilie , he , a generall worthie of a nobler command , and more happie times then these . and now ( most excellent prince ) this same your montrose , will plainly show that which i hope will most of all conduce to your affairs : that all your scots have never made defection frō their most gracious lord and king. which , while some unjust enemies of our good name , too bitterly , and malitiously strive to rubbe upon us ; they are no more undeservedly injurious to us ; then indeed unfaithful , and treacherous to your royall father , and your self . because , they goe about only to render your best and fastest friends , servants , and subjects suspected , and odious , and consequently uselesse unto you , and unprofitable : of whose loyaltie , and valour , they themselves ( the worst of evill counsellours ) have just cause to be jealous ; least by their means , it be brought to passe , that one day they may receive the just punishment of their treacheries . but , let no man unworthily upbraid us , that this reflects upon the most renowned nation of the english , as if we did neither think , nor speak aright of them : which is a crime that we abhorre from our very souls . and to the contrary we doe confesse , applaud , magnifie , and congratulate to their immortall glorie , that many worthies of that nation have showne themselves most loyall , brave and gallant , and done rare , and glorious deeds for their king. only this we entreat for , that with the same ingeniousnes , and candour they would deal with us ; and not lay the guiltines of any one faction , though never so powerfull and prevailing , to the charge of the whole nation : nor do to others what they would not have done to themselves . neither let them deny , but that there are , and have been scotsmen , eminent personages , of everie degree , and qualitie , who in these most disastruous times , have been readie and willing to shedde their dearest blood , for asserting and vindicating the royall majestie , from the combinations of most pernicious rebells in both kingdomes . and this is so evident , and cleare ; that these scots may ( without all boasting ) boldly affirme , that they , being hired with no pay , nor expecting other reward ; but meerly moved by a good conscience , and faith , and pietie towards their most gracious soveraigne ; have suffered for him greater losse , according to the condition of their fortunes , and done the rebells greater harm , and obtained more noble victories over them , then others ; who , having drained and exausted the kings exchequer , reduced him to that extream penury , & want of al things , that in the end he was necessitated , to render up his sacred person into the hands of the conspiratours . but , ô how much better had it been ( in our weak judgments ) if it had pleased god , that his majestie had retired himself to his own scots : not those , who then were armed against him , for the english rebells ; out these loyall , trusty , faithful , and valiant ones , who fought for him under the conduct of montrose . assuredly , to those , who under the command but of his lieutenant , and leader of his armies , durst so gallantly attempt , and did so happilie atcheive , what in this book we have most faithfully recorded , nothing could have appeared too arduous , and difficult to compasse , had they been encouraged , and animated with the presence of so dear a pledge . nor can any doubt , unlesse he be altogether ignorant of the scottish affairs , but that , if his majestie had come among them , he would have easily drawn to his party , the hearts and affections of his native subjects ; who wholly enclined to him , of their own accord . but this being too to well known to the leaders of the rebellion , their speciall care was , that he should find no entrance to his native countrie , when he was in their hands , not fourtie miles distant from the borders of it . and truly the scots in generall , though ( cheifly at that time ) sorely opprest with the heavie yoke of those usurping tyrants ; yet were they not afraid to curse , with bitter maledictions , the authours , and abetters of that shamefull deed , of delivering up their king to the hands of the english. and even those , who formerly went along with the conspiratours , in all things else , did openly , and not without danger of life , talke thus aloud : that , the single kingdom of scotland , had of old sufficed his majesties ancestours , to mantain their just rights , and royall dignities : that their own forefathers had been sufficiently able , to defend and fight for thē , against their fiercest enemies , cheifly the english , of whom they had purchased manie , great , and glorious triumphs , while they opposed them for their kings . that , though they had warred often and long with sundries , as well inhabitants of the same island , as of other countreys , with various successe of uncertain warre ; yet could they never be reducted to those straights , so sleightly , and as it were perforce , to deliver up their kings to the arbitriment of others . and that they should not now consent to doe it the verie ghosts of their fathers ( they said ) the most sacred name , and majestie of a king , their faith , alleagiance , loyaltie , reputation among stangers , example to be derived to posteritie , all right , all lawes of god and man did withstand . and moreover ( they added ) that it did plainly contradict , and fight against their own verie covenant ; wherein they had invoked , as both witnes and judge the immortal god , that they would maintaine and defend their king , the safetie of his person , his dignitie , crowne , and greatnes , against all men living , with their lives and fortunes to their last breath . so that , beside those seditious and sacrilegious persons , ( who first raised that armie by wicked means , and then got the command of it in their own hands , and with the dreadful terrour therof overawed their poor countreymen , unarmed , unprovided for warre , without any head , or cheistaine ) beleeve it , most of all the scots , desire no greater happines then an occasion to testifie their fidelitie , obedience , and love to their drearest king , and to seal it with their blood . nor is it to be questioned , but that they , being now so trampled on by most barbarous tyrannie , would gladly return to their wonted subjection , under the just and easie government of their most gracious lord and king : so soone as ever your royall fathers most wished for presence , or your own shall appeare or shine in their horrizon , like a blessed starre , or influence from heaven . it behoveth you then ( most gracious sir ) to employ all the power and force you can , of body and mind , to succour your countrey , and father , both in extream danger at this instant . all , to this end , pray , implore , expect your help ; and promise theirs . this undertaking , by the law of god , and nature , and prerogative of birth , belongs unto you : and the eyes and thoughts , not only of your owne , but of all the world are upon you. and all men of honour , and honestie , heartily desire , that by gods help , and with their best wishes , and assistance , you may goe about this glorious enterprise , of restoring the church of god , now sunck , and drowned in the stinking puddle of so manie vile , and odious sects , to her former luster , and puritie ; of re-establishing your fathers throne and kingdome ; of recovering your countreyes wonted felicite , and happie conclusion of all , in a solid , lasting , and much desired order and peace . and so , in a good time , may that most ancient kingdom of europe , acknowledge , fear , love , and adore you , as their only highest lord , and soveraign : and so may this happines befal from time , to time , world without end . to you and to your offspring evermore , to them , and those , who from them shall be bore . vvherfore ( most high and mightie prince ) vouchsafe to raise up your montrose in your thoughts , to cherish him with your countenance , to employ him in peace , or warre , as a counsellour , or captaine , a worthie , of whom ( i hope , and dare promise ) so great a prince shall never be ashamed . the first of october in the yeare of our lord. 1647. to the courteous reader . ther be some few things ( courteous reader ) wherewith i would have them acquainted , who shal come to reade this breife commentarie : whereof , some concerne the lord marquis of montrose himself , whose actions at home , in his native countrey , by the space of two yeares , are heirin described ; and others , the authour of this worke . and first , i would have thee understand that montrose is the cheife of the graemis , a most auntient , & renowned family in scotland ; and that in the language of the auntient scots , he is called graeme the greate . he deryues the first known source of his pedegree , from that most famous graeme , so often , and so honorably mentioned , in the monuments of that kingdome ; father in law to ferguse the second of that name . who first , under the command of his sonne in law the king , overcame the romans , and overthrew severus wall , the furthermost border of the roman empire ; built all along from forth , where it is navigable , to the mouthe of the river clyde , where the isle of greate britaine is narrowest ; and so closed up the roman province in straiter bounds . whence it comes to passe , that the ruins of that wall , yet evidently appearing , beares his name to this day ; and by the neighbouring inhabitants , is called graemsdijke . and this same founder of that noble race , after the death of his sonne in law king ferguse , being declared administrator of the kingdome , and appointed governour to the young king his grandchilde ; was no lesse famous , for his peaceable government , then exploits of warre . for having recalled , and brought home againe the doctors , and professors of the christian faith , banished by late persecution & warre , to their native countrey , & settled aswel the church as kingdome with wholesome laws ; of his own free accord , gave up the government to his grand-child , now grown to some ripenes o● yeares . he lived in the dayes of honorius and arcadius emperours , about the yeare of our lord 400. from whose loynes sprang a long & flowrishin● stemme of sons , and nephewes , who inheriting still , that the● greate grandfathers vertues , grew famous in the following generations . among these , that valiant graeme was eminent who with dunbarre , brought timous aide to his countrey , then in greate danger by the dones ; who having overpowered england , from thence with greate armies often , but in vaine , invaded scotland . and after , that most noble iohn graeme , came short , for vertue , & just renowne of none of all his auncestors ; who , after the fatall end of alexander , the third of that name king of scots , in the time of the interraigne ( bruce , and baliol then disputing , which of them two had the iuster right , and title to the succession ) with that so justly admired william vvallace governour of the kingdome , played the most valiant champion , for defence , and recoverie of his countreys libertie , from the unjust usurpation , of edward the first , king of england . in the which quarrell , after manie gallant acts atcheived by him , like a worthie patriotte , he died nobly , fighting in the field . the sepulchre of this renowned knight , is yet exstant in a church called fallkirk , for wallkirk , from the foresaid wall of severus , or graems dijke , neare to which it is built : about the which wall also , the lord marques of montrose enjoyeth divers large , & fruitfull farmes or feilds by right of inheritance , from that first graeme , through so manie hands & ages transmitted unto him . yet , least we may seeme , only to deduce this most famous worthie , the splendour of his noble pedegree , from the obscure trace of so remote antiquitie ; we shal descend to later , & better known times . and so cannot passe his grandfather earle of montrose in silence ; who , almost in our own memorie , was raised to places of greatest honour and trust in that kingdome , which he most faithfully , and worthly discharged . for being lord high chauncelour of scotland , at what time iames the sixt of that name , of ever blessed memorie went to possesse the crowne of england : he was by the same king created , and left behind him viceroy of scotland : in which highest place , and degree of dignitie , he died aequally beloved , and deare to king and people . and then , the father of this man , singularly endowed with all eminentest graces of mind and body , so as few living in his time could equall him ; and no lesse famous in forragne nations then at home : for when he hade performed many honourable embassages for king iames , was by king charles declared lord high president of the supreme counsell : and being , snatched away in his prime , by an untimly deathe , from his king , countrey , and all good men , he died much lamented , and highly estemed in every mans affections . and now , what men should think of , and hope from this present man grandchild to the viceroy , and lord high presidents sonne , let every one that pleaseth , judge , by the things he hath already atcheived , when now it is a yeare and an halfe , since he left that kingdome , and yet hath not attained to the thirty and sixth yeare of his age . one thing only more will i adde in thy favour ( courteous reader ) from the auntient monuments of that kingdome ; that three , almost , fatall periods have threatned heretofore the scots nation ; first from the romans , whose yoke our farefathers did shake of under the conduct of that first graeme , who was lineally descended out of that auntient , noble brittish family of the fulgentij : the second from the danes , who , that they never gotte the masterie , and lordship over vs ; we owe it especially to the greatest valour of that second graeme : the third from the english & normans , whom that thrid graeme , of●ner then once did beate , and drive out of scotland ; and , in many bitter conflicts , did them much mischeiffe . so that , as they were wont to say of the scipions in afrik , we may say , of our graems , that that name by a luckie destinie hath been appointed for the succour of their native covntrey in greatest dangers , & distresses : & that in these , the worst times , that ever was , this man was not raised but by speciall divine providence , to preserve the kings just rights , to restore to his fellow subjects , their wonted peace , libertie & safetie , and infinitly to encrease the auncient splendour and glory of his own family . and this is all , that i thought fitt to have briefly praemised of my lord marquis of montrose . now , of the authour himself , conceive this much ; that he is a man not very conversant in these studies , nor ambitious to be praised for excellency of wit , which he acknowledges to have but small or none ; nor covetous of reward , or gaine , which are the sharpest spurres that in this age doe push men to it , to putte hand to the pen. but that , he did put hand to this worke , only being enflamed with and ardent zeale , of propagating truthe , to after ages , & forraigners . for how many are ready to patronise , and magnifie , even greatest villanies , when they prosper ; and how few to advance , and defend truth , once afflicted , & cast downe ; he had learned by too late and sad experienc , ein a cau●e very neare of kinn to this . when the conjured rebells of both kingdomes , by their ordinary tricks of lying , and slandering , had overthrown the church , that with the revenues thereof , purchased by hellish sacriledge , they might sacrifice to their own greedie avarice ; and enrich their children , with the heavie curse of god : yet wanted they not those , who extolled them to the skies , as well deservers of their countrey , yea of the verie church it self , which they have pillaged , and even of all mankind in generall , when , on the contrarie , they proscribed , defamed , rent , and tore a peeces , with al manner of blasphemies , and curses , all those most holy men of god , confessors & martyrs ( for so they were indeed ) who constantly , and couragiously opposed , and withstood their rapines . and therefore he thought , it was no wayes to be doubted , that those same men , who by the same wicked practises , wēt about to pul under feete the majestie of so good a king to swell high , with his honours , prerogatives , and patrimony , which they had gained , by perfidious trecheries rebellions , & treasons , would find too to many such sycophants ; whereof the world is full ; who by the same libertie of calumniating , and reproaching , would backbite this most excellent worthie , and his heroicall actions . and , what men say of the waspes , that they sucke the juice from most fragrant , & wholesome flowers , which by their own stings , or tongues they empoyson : so would these harpyes strive to de●ile his most noble exploits , convert them to poyson and gall , by their venimous tongues & pens , and as such offer and present them to the ignorant , and unwarie world . against this mischiefe , the author thought good to offer this short & plaine discourse as a timely antidote to all that love sinceritie and truth ; whose so faithful & constant a maintainer , he professeth , and avoucheth himself , that though he did well foresee , that he should derive upon himself no small hatred , and envy of many , & mightie men ; yet he resolved , neither servilly to flatter them , nor to envolue the truthe in obscure , doubtfull , or ambiguous termes . for as he was borne , and bred a freeman , so hath he vowed , never to forsake his libertie but with his life . and , though he be ambitious of no other commendation of a good historian , either of wit , or art , or eloquence ; yet this he thinks he may boldly challenge as his due , that he hath sette down the simple and naked truth : which to assert , and publish to the world , he hath foresaken , & undervalued all those things , which this world holds dearest : thrice robd , and ploundered of all his goods , thrice cast in vilest , and ugliest dungeons or prisons , and now the third time banished , for the same : yet is he cheerfull and gladd in heart , that being guiltie of no crime before men , the lord hath counpted him worthie to suffer these things for truth , and righteousnes sake . love him then , at least for his truths sake ( courteous reader ) & of what rests make the best you can , by a faire and candid interpretation : & farwell . courteous reader . be pleased to correct these faults which by reason of the compositors not understanding the english language , is committed with some few more in the live nature . page 2. line 18. for firname , read surname . page 4. l : 20. for professin ghis , read professing his . page 32. l : 28. for wat , read what . page 64. l : 6. for know , read known , page 70. l : 21. for cordon , read gordon . page 79. l : 20. for march , read match . page 109. l : 20. for lodg'g , read lodg'd . page 171. l : 14. for hig , read high . the affaires of the king in scotland , under the conduct of the most honourable iames marquesse of montrose , earle of kinkardin , &c. and generall gouvernour for his majesty in that kingdome , in the years 1644 , 1645 , & 1646. iames marques of montrosse having at first sided with the covenanters in scotland , very actiuely bestowed his too too succesful endeavors in their behalfe : for at that time they pretended to nothing else , but the preservation of religion , the honour and dignity of the king , the lawes of the land , and the freedome of that ancient realme , so happily , so valiantly defended in time of yore from such powerful enemies , as the romans , saxons , danes , normans , by the sweat and bloud , with the lives and estates of their ancestours . and the tales they made they never wanted fitting instruments to tell and spread among the people . it was given out , that there was nothing more in the aime of the court of england , then that that free people being reduced to a kind of province , should be eternally enslaved un●der the power of their old enemies . yet all thi● while they engaged themselves by their publique at●testationes and even a solemne oath , that they woul● never goe to worke by force and armes , nor solli●cite the king any other way then by petition , tha● he would be pleased graciously to accept the supplications of his humblest subjects , and to take orde● that his dearest countrey should suffer nothing i● matter of religion or the liberty of the subject . but at last in the yeare 1639. montrose found ou● that these faire tales were coyn'd of purpose to steale the hearts of the silly and supperstitious multitude and to alienate them from the king , as an enemy to religion and liberty . for the covenanters did no● dissemble to him but spoke out , that scotland had been too long governed by kings ; nor could it ever b● well with them as long as one stuart ( that 's the firname of the kings family in scotland ) was alive : and in the extirpation of them , they were first to strike at the head ; so that montrose easily perceived the kings majesty and person was levelled at . therefore vehemently detesting so horrible a crime , hee resolved to desert the conspirators side , to frustrate their counsels to impoverish their store , to weaken their strength and with all his might to preserve his majesty and his authority entire and inviolate . but because betweene force and craft , the covenanters had draw● in almost all the kingdome to their side , he saw himselfe alone to weak to check their power and thereforee thought not good to open himself too suddenly or rashly . amongst them he had many friends , men very considerable as well in regard of their numerous retinues and clients , as of their wealth and authority : these he had a minde to draw off from them , and bring them with him to the kings , and by this meanes conceived he should be able to gather no small power , which would conduce much both to the kings safety and his owne . meane time the covenanters raise a strong army against the king , and in a solemne convention at duns , they determine to invade england : montrose was absent then . which resolution of theirs , the chiefe of the covenanters had taken up in their cabinet counsels more then six weeks before ; and to that purpose had been busie in divulging through al great britain their apologeticall pamphlets , whereby they laboured to set a good gloosse upon the reasons of their expedition . this resolution of theirs montrose being returned , seeing he could not hinder , would not seem to disaprove : montrosse commanded in this army two thousand foot and five hundred horse , his friends ( who were most obliged unto him , and had religiously promised their best endeavou●s in the kings service ) had the command of five thousand more . and truly if a great part of them had not beene worse then their words , they had either brought the whol army along with them to the king , or at least had broken the neck of the covenanters designes . when the army came to the river of tweed ( which 〈◊〉 the border of the two kingdomes ) dice were cast a●mongst the noblemen and commanders , and it wa● montrose's his chance to passe first over the river ; which he cheerfully performed on his feet , his own foot soul●diers following him , that he might more easily con●ceale his own resolution , and take off all occasion o● suspition . for as well his authority in the army , a● the integrity of his noble spirit began to be looked o● with a jealous eye by the guilty-conscienced rebells so that they diligently observed all his behaviour words and deeds . after this , marching over the river of tine four● miles above newcastle , by the treachery of the englis● commanders who had retreated to york with a poten● army of the kings , the scots possesse themselves o● that towne : and thereupon , commissioners being appointed on either side to treat of a peac● , a truc● was presently made . in the time of this truce , mon● trose had sent letters unto the king , professin ghis fide●lity , and most dutifull , and ready obediency to hi● majesty ; nor did the letters contain any thing else these being stoln away in the night , and coppied ou● by the kings own bed-chambermen , men most endea●red to the king of all the world , were sent back by the● to the covenanters at newcastle : and it was the fashio● with those very men to communicate unto the co●venanters from day to day the kings most secret coun●sels , of which they themselves onely were either au●thors or partakers . and some of the forwarder sort o● the rebels were not ashamed to taxe montrosse bitterly enough with those letters : and all though they durst not make an open quarrell of it , or call him publiquely to account , because he was so powerfull and welbeloved in the army , yet they loaded him with back bitings & slanders among the people . for they had obliged unto themselves most of the preachers through out the kingdome whose mercenary tongues they made use of to winde and turn the mindes of the people which way they would . nor did they promote their rebellion more effectually any other way , nor do yet , then this , to have those doughty oratours in their popular preachments to raile bitterly against the king and all his loyall subjects , as the enemies of christ ( as they love to speake , ) being themselves the while the very shame and scandall of christianity . montrose returning into scotland , and thinking of nothing but how to preserve his majesty from that storm of rebellion hanging over his head , at last resolved of this course . he joynes many of the prime men for nobility and power , in a league with himselfe , in which they vowed to defend the kings majesty , and all his royall priviledges , and ancient and lawfull prerogatives , with the hazard of their lives and estates , against all his enemies , as well home-bred , as foraign unto the last breath in their bodies . and truly it came to that passe , that there had been an open division in the army ( which was his aim ) had not some for fear , levity , or cowardise ( which are bad keepers of counsell ) betrayed the whole businesse to the covenanters . heare arose no small stirres and braules , but were pacified againe in a while ; for neyther yet durst they offer any open violence to montrose . but afterward the confederates having given a new oath , made sure the army at their devotion ; and joyning themselves to the parliament of england in a strict covenant , although they saw themselves secure enough from the subtlest designes of any private man , yet they seriously consult how they should take montrose out of the way , whose heroick spirit being fixt on high honourable ( howsoever difficult ) atchievements they could not endure . to make their way therefore unto so villanous an act , by the assistance of some courtiers whom with gifts & promises they had corrupted , they understood that the king had written letters to montrose , and that they were quilted in the saddle of the bearer , one stuart belonging to the earle of traquair . the beater was scarce entered the borders of scotland but they apprehend him , rip his saddle & finde the letters . there was nothing at all written in them , which did not become the best of kings to command , the best of subjects to obey . neverthelesse those most exact crafts-masters in the arts of lying and slandering set about horrible and tragicall reports by their apt ministers , that at last all the kings plots with montrose , for the overthrow of religion , & the ruine of the kingdome were found out and discovered . nor yet neither durst they afford him a publique tryall , but on a suddain when he suspected nothing , thrust him ( with napier lord of marchiston , and sir sterling keer knight , two both of his neer kindred and intimate familiars ) into the castle of edinburgh . at length a pacification being made between the people of both kingdomes ( between whom there had been no war , onely they laid their heads together against their most just and gracious king ) a parliament was called at edinburgh , where the king in person was present . montrose desires most earnestly to be tryed before the king and that solemne assembly ; but to no purpose , for the covenanters being conscious enough of his innocency and their own guilt , applyed their speciall endeavours to detain the gentleman in prison unheard , untill such time as the king was got out of scotland , and they had concluded all things with the king in parliament according to their hearts desire . and certainly they were much afraid , lest by his wisdome , and courage , and the esteem he was in , as well with his peers of the nobility , as with the people , he should have fetch 't off the greatest number of either sort to his own resolution for the preservation of his majesties power and authority . at last the king returning into england ; montrose and his friends are set at liberty : and because it was ordered in parliament that he should not come into conference with the king he sat still a while at his own house . this was towards the end of the year 1641. chap. ii. in the year 1642. the covenanters of both kingdomes began to unmask themselves & let us see more plainly what they meant to do . the rebells in eng-england , began to vexe the king with unjust , unreasonable , unseasonable petitions and complaints , bespatter him with malitious slanders prophane his sacred name in scur●ilous songs and ballads , villifie him in infamous libells , pasqui●ls or pamphlets , raise tumults , arme great numbers of the scumme and rascally sort of the people , and engage them upon the kings palace ; in a word , threaten all extremity to him & his : whom although he might have justly punished himself , yet he chose rather to reser them to the parliament , that he might the more oblige it unto himself . but it was to no end for so gracious a king to gratifie that & many things more to so ungracious , so ingrateful men , who were the very authors and abettors of these villanies . for he had already granted more and greater graces to his subjects , for the ease of their grievances ( which they pretended , ) and the security of their persons and estates , then all his ancestors the kings of england together , from william the conquerour downward . therefore at last , that he might withdraw himself & his family from present danger , he is forced sore against his mind to depart london : he sends the queen out of the way into holland for the safety of her life , & betakes himself to york . the states of parliament ( as they call themselves ) forthwith , & before the king , take up armes , and divert those very forces which the king had appointed for ireland , which were then in a readinesse , and whose officers had been of the parliaments chusing , hoping by thē to overth●ow the king himself . the rebells in scotland who knew wel enough the king would have strength sufficent to deale with the english rebells , resolved upon no termes to be wanting to their confederates in so apparent danger as they were in . and al though our most gracious king had given them satisfaction ( as much as ever they could desire ) in that parliament at edinburgh aforesaid , which also they have recorded among their publique acts , neverthelesse they provide themselves for a march into england . now that they might the better secure their affaires at home , they labour tooth and naile to draw montrose ( of whom almost onely they were afraid ) againe to their side . they offer him of their own accord the office of lievenant generall in the army , and what ever else he could desire and they bestow . he seeing a mighty storm hovering over the kings head , that he might give him an account of it whereby it might be timely prevented , undertakes a journey into england taking the lord ogilby into his counsell and company . at newcastle he received newes that the queen being newly returned out of holland was landed at birdlington in yorkeshire : thither he makes haste , and relates unto the queen all things in order . she , having had a rough passage , and being not wel recovered from the distempers at sea , told him she would advise further with him about that businesse after they came to york . thither being come , the queen of her own accord calls for montrose , he opens the whole story over againe , & makes it appeare , that there was no lesse danger from the scotch then from the english covenanters , if they were not timely suppressed . and being asked his opinion what was best to be done , answered , to resist force with force ; told her , the king wanted not subjects in scotland , faithfull men , and ●●out ; nor did they want hearts , or wealth , or power to oppose against the covenanters if they durst enterprise any thing against the king : all that they wanted was the kings commission , without which they durst doe nothing , with which any thing ; and all the danger that was , was in delay : that the covenanters , when they had once got their army on foot would be able to grinde any one to pieces that should offer to stirre ; therefore the beginnings of so great an evill were to be withstood , and the cockatrice bruised in the egge ; that physicke being too late that comes when the disease hath over-runne the whole body . wholesome counsell it was , and seasonable , which doubtlesse the most prudent queen had approved of . but while things were going on in so good a posture , al things were quash't by the coming of the duke hamilton out of scotland upon pretence of kissing the queens hand , and gratulating her happy returne , but in very deed that he might overthrow montrose his counsels ; for he had posted thither with the knowledge & consent of the covenanters . nor did he himself dissemble that there was some danger from the scottish covenanters , but he laboured to extenuate it ; and condemned the counsel of montrose as rash , unadvised , and unseasonable . that stout and warlike nation was not to be reduced with force and armes , but with gentlenesse and courtesies : warre , especially civill warre , should be the last remedy , and used many times to be repented of even by the conquerous . the fortune of warre was uncertaine ; if the king should get the best , it would be but a sorry triumph he could enjoy over his own subjects : but if he had the worst on 't , he must expect what hîs soule ( goodman ) abhorred to speake . all meanes were to be tryed to preserve peace with that nation , nor were things yet come to that passe , that the king should despaire of amity and reconciliation with them : he would be ready to take the whole businesse upō himself , if the king pleased to commit it to his paines and trust , & to authorise him sufficiently thereunto . montrose replyed , nothing would come of that but the delay of time , untill the traitors having raised an army should prevent the king of any meanes to deliver himself and his party from their tyranny . the sad event proved al this to be too true ; but in this debate montrose was faine to suffer himself to be overborn , being not so great a courtier as the other ; nor were those vertues which the world now admires discovered then unto the queen . hamilton returning into scotland , seemed to be as active for the king as was possible . the covenanters mean while by their owne authority ( contrary to the known lawes of the kingdome ) summon a parliament at edinburgh ; which all understanding men that wished well unto the king foresaw would be of very dangerous consequence to his affaires , & therefore abhorred it so much that they intended not to honour it with their presence . but hamilton interposing the name and authority of of the king , invited thē by his letters that they would not faile to be all there ; and that they should not doubt but they would be able to out-vote the covenanters , if at this time they were not wanting to the kings cause . and if it should happen otherwise , he would be ready with his friends , to protest against the covenanters & immediately to leave them . abundance of the nobility incited by the name of the king , & those hopes , were present at that parliament , onely montrose and a few of his adherents staid away . and with montrose to the duke had dealt by his friends , that as he loved & honoured the king he would joyn himself unto them . but he ( who had reason to suspect all motions that came that way ) answered , that he was ready to grapple with any difficulty , especially under his command who had so great an honour as to be the kings supreme commissioner ; onely on this condition , that the duke should engage his honour , that if they could not bring up that parliament to righteous things he would endeavour to enforce them by the dint of the sword . he answered , he would protest , he would not fight . which passage considered , montrose to preserve his integrity , expecting the issue , betooke himself to his own home . in that parliament , the covenanters out-voted the loyall party by seventy voyces or there abouts , trampled upon the royall authority , arrogated unto themselves the power of calling of paliaments , pressing souldiers , sending embassadours , and other things hitherto unattempted , without the kings knowledge or tonsent . and to make up the measure of their presumption and treason , ordaine that a powerfull army shall be raied against the king , and in the aid or their confederates of england . to which purpose , they taxe the people with new subsidies & levies , much heavier , then if al the impositions which upō never so much necessity for two thousand years space by one hundred & nine kings have been charged upon thē were put together . montrose therefore , who saw the king was like to be ruined by his own authority , and saw to that he was too weake to oppose himself both against the strength of the covenanters & the kings abused commission , in a melancholy mood made as if he took no notice of any thing . and the covenanters , supposing that he had received some distaste from the king , by reason of the affront he received at york and hamiltons over-povvering him , they set upon him yet againe , privately and by friends , to see if by intreaty or interest they could draw him to their side ; offering him authority and wealth , even the greatest honour civill and military . which offers he did not seem much to slight , that by that meanes he might have an easier vvay to dive into their counsells . the covenanters that this groving friendship might be the better cemented and sanctified ( god blesse us ) send unto him that great apostle of their covenant , alexander henderson , who should give him full satisfaction in all his scruples . montrose heartily desired to speake with that fellow , out of whom he doubted not to pump all the secrets of the covenanters : and lest a private meeting with such a man should give a scandall to the kings friends , he tooke the lords napier and ogleby , & sir sterling keere to be witnesses of the discourse , and on the bank of the river forth not far from sterling the● met . montrose made as though he accounted himself● very happy , and much honoured in the visit of so worthy a man , upon vvhose faith , honesty , and judgement , he so much relied . told him , that t● give the ill opinion of his enemies leave to breath it selfe after some late mistakes , he was content to stay at home ; that he knew nothing of what was done in parliament ; that he was almost at a losse how to behave himselfe in that ticklish condition the common-wealth stood ; and therefore beseeched him for old acquaintance sake to let him freely know what they intended . henderson taking it for granted by these expressions that he was wheeling about towards the covenanters , that he might the more oblige the marquesse unto him , answered him flatly and without more adoe , that it was resolved to send as strong an army as they could raise , in aid of their brethren of england against the kings forces ; that the covenanters of both kingdomes had unanimously agreed upon this ; either to dye or bring the king to their lure ; that nothing could fall out more happily , then that he should renew his friendship with his peers of the nobility , and the rest of the kingdome ; that so doing he would give great content to all men , besides the honour and profit that would redound to himselfe ; that by his example others ( if others there were ) that idolized the empty shadow of the kings name , would give most hearty thanks unto his lord god that he had vouchsafed to make use of him as the minister and ever mediatour of so great a worke ; and at last entreated him to speake out his minde , and commit all such things to his care and industry as he should desire from the parliaments , either in relation to his honour or profit ; assuring him he satisfied his hearts desire . montrose having gotten out the knowledge of those things which he eagerly sought for , now bethought himselfe how he should keep henderson and his party in suspence a while , that they should not yet get within him . for what answere could he give them ? if he should professe himselfe to be against their courses , that would doe the king no good , and might bring a great deale of danger upon himselfe : and on the other side , to put them in greater hopes of him , by promising those things he never meant to performe , as being a staine unto his honour . therefore he takes this course ; there was present at that conference with hinderson one sir iames rollock , chiefe of a very ancient and flourishing family ; his former wife had been montrose his sister after whose death he married the sister of the marques of argyle , the ring-leader of the covenanters in scotland : thus being allied unto them both , he seemed to be a very fit mediatour of friendship between them . montrose askes him whether those things which had passed between them proceeded from the direction of the parliament , or out of their owne good wills ? he answered , he conceived that master henderson had received commission from the parliament to that purpose ; but henderson said no , but he made no question but the parliament would make good any thing that he promised . montrose told them , he could resolue upon nothing except he had the publque . faith to build upon especialy the messengers dis●greing between themselves . where upon ( as th● fashion is on such occasions ) one of them layes th● blame upon the other , when both of them ought r●ther to have condemned their owne carlesnesse an● negligence . the conference being thus ended , mo●trose having obtained his ends , and they being no w●●ser then they came thither , every one went his ow● way . chap. iii. montrose being returned from this conference , related all things as they had passed unto some select friends whom hee could safely trust ; and witha● entreated them , that ( for the greater confirmation o● the businesse ) they would all goe along with him to the king ; that his majesty receiving a full account o● all things might lend his eare to sound counsell , and yet ( if it was possible ) provide a remedy against so threatning evils . most of them were of opinion , tha● the king and his authority were utterly ruined and irrecoverable ; that is was a thing passing the power of man to reduce tha● kingdome to obedience ; that for their parts they had acqui●ted themselves before god , and the world , and their owne consciences , that hitherto with the disgrace of their persons , the losse of their estates , and the hazard of their lives they had continued in their allegeance ; hereafter they would be onely lookers on , and petitioners unto almighty god for better times . montrose who could by no meanes be removed from so honest a resolution , communicating his counsell to the lord ogiléy , ( whom of all men he especially loved ) goes straight to oxford . the king was absent thence , being gone to the siege of glocester . he imparts unto the queen what designes the scottish covenanters had against his majesty ; but he had as good have said nothing , for she had determined not to beleeve a word , by reason of the farre greater confidence she reposed in hamilton & his brother . montrose , seeing no good was to be done with the queen , goes to glocester , and declares all things to the king himselfe : how there was a powerfull army to be raised in scotland , & a day appointed on which it should be brought into england ; how their counsels were manifestly knowne unto him ; & how to fetch him over to their side , they had offered him very honourable commands in the army : but that he heartily detesting so horrid an employment had fled to his majesty , that he having notice thereof , if he were not able to provide so timely & powerful a remedy as could be wished , at least might cast some blocks & rubs in their way untill such time as he had settled his affaires in england ; that the traitours of either kingdome might be easily dealt withall by themselves , but if they came once to joyne their forces they would be hardly supprest ; that there were very many in scotland who would sacrifice themselves and all that they had for their dearest king , whose good will would be of no use unto his majesty after the covenanters had raised their army , but destructive unto themselves ; that the haughty spirits of the traitors were to be sneap't in time , & their strength broken before it grew too big , lest the beginnings b●ing neglected , repentance should prove the onely opposition that could be made afterward . these things , and to this effect did montrose continually presse unto the king , but in vaine , for he had not onely the strong and deeply rooted confidence his majesty had of the hamiltons to struggle with , but the devices of a set of desperate courtiers beside , who daily buzzed in the kings eares montrose's youth , his rashnesse , his ambition , the envy and hatred he bare unto the hamiltons , and what not ; & on the other side , the hamiltons fidelity , their honesty , their discretion , their power . thus montrose nothing prevailes & the king returnes to his winter quarters at oxford . and al though his majesty saw very well ( reports coming thick and threefold of the scottish army ) that all was true that montrose had told him , yet the most religious king determined upon no termes to give any occasion of quarrell to the scots till first they entered england ; resolving that he for his part would perfectly observe the articles of pacification he had made with them , which if they should violate , he doubted no● but they should highly answer it both to god & him . while these things were discussed at oxford , the covenanters in scotland bring their businesse about according to their desires , no one opposing them . they raise as big an army as they can , which consisted of eighteen thousand foot and two thousand horse ; and at last when they had marched unto the very borders , the hamiltons were not ashamed to give the king notice by letters of the approach of that formidable army ; making this their excuse , that according to their engagement they had prevented an invasion the summer before , but now that winter was come on they were able to keep them out no longer , but they would come in immediately with a powerfull army . the king when he saw himselfe thus grosly abused sends for montrose , shewes him the hamiltons letters , and at last ( when it was even too late ) askes his advice what was best to be done . montrose tells him , that his majesty might now see that what he had before given him notice of had neither proceeded from ambition , nor malice , nor any self-ends , but from his bounden duty and allegeance ; that for above a twelve-month hee had been continually pressing both their majesties to prevent this ; that he accounted himselfe very unhappy that all that while so faithfull a servant , could not be credited by so good a master ; that the case seemed now desperate , but if the king had a minde he might trust them againe who by pretence of his authority had bound some of his friēds hands that they could not assist him & drawn in others who intended nothing lesse under colour of loyal●y to fight against him , & given up unto the rebells , now that they had got an army , all that they had without striking a stroke . the king complaining that he was most abominably betrayed by them with whom he had entrusted his crowne , his secrets , his life , earnestly demanded his advice . he repeating againe the lamentablenesse of the condition in which things novv stood , neverthelesse offered , that if his majesty so thought good , he vvould either lose his life , vvhich if he did , ( he would be sure it should seeme rather sold then lost , ) or else ( vvhich he did not despaire of ) he vvould reduce his country men and bring the rebels there into subjection . the king being no little pleased vvith the confidence , undauntednesse , and gallantry of the man , that he might more advisedly contrive his designe , desired him to take two or three dayes to consider of and so dismist him . montrose returning at the time appointed , shewes his majesty how desperate an adventure he was vndertaking ; that al scotland was under the covenanters cōmand , that they had garrisoned al places of strength that they were plentifully provided both of men and money , and armes , and ammunition , and victuall , & al● things necessar● for a warre ; that the english rebells were joyned with them in a most strict covenant to defend one another against all the world . but for his owne part he had nothing to set up with neither men , nor armes , nor pay ; yet he would not distrust gods assistance in a righteous cause , and if the king would lay his commands upon him he would undertake to doe his best . the king should be in no worse case the● he was . he himself would take what malice , envy , o● danger should fall upon himselfe , so that his majest● were graciously pleased to condescend to a few reasonable requests . and first , that the businesse might g● on more successefully , it seemed to him very necessary that the king should send some souldiers out of irelan● into the west of scotland . next , that he should give o●der to the marquesse of newcastle ( who was the general of the kings forces towards scotland ) that he shou●● assist montrose with a party of horse to enter the sou● of scotland , by which meanes he might convey himse● into the heart of the kingdome . then , that he shoul● deale with the king of denmarke for some troops o● germane horse . and lastly , that his majesty should tak● some course to procure and transport some armes out of some forraigne countrey into scotland : nothing needed more but humane industry , the successe was gods part , and to be referred to his providence . the king commending his counsell , & giving him thankes that he apprehended some life in the businesse , encourageth him to fit himselfe cheerfully for so great a worke & wished him to leave the care of those things he had requested unto him . and truly for the matter of aid out of ireland , the king sends for the earle of antrim , and acquaints him with montrose's design . this antrim is of scottish extraction , descended of the noble and ancient family of the mac-donalds , a man of great estate and power in ireland , & allyed to the prime nobility of england , by matching with the duchesse of buckingham . he being driven out of his own countrey lived at oxford , and cheerfully undertooke the negotiation with the irish upon himself , and engaged himselfe also voluntarily unto montrose , that he would be in argyle ( a part of scotland bordering upon ireland ) with ten thousand mē by the first of aprill 1644. this passed in december 1643. and as for forraigne aides and armes , the king sent sir iohn cockeram his embassadour about it with his commission and instructions . and directions unto the marquesse of newcastle were carried by some of montrose's own company . who receiving the kings letters and commission to be governour of scotland and generall of the army there , made himselfe ready for his journey . in the interim newes comes on a sudden , that duke hamilton with his brother the earle of lanericke were posting up to oxford . they , that they might make their accesse easier to the king who had hitherto given eare unto their counsells , and to continue or recover the good opinion the king had of them , gave out all the way as they came , especially unto governours of shires and townes , and commanders o● the army , that they were banished their countrey that they had been plundered of their estates by the covenanters for their loyalty to the king , and that for safety of their lives , ( with which they had hardly escaped , ) they fled to oxford . but montrose and those of his minde saw plainly that these were but tales o● their own making , of purpose to wipe off the suspicion of this new guilt ; and that by this meanes , they in confidence of that esteeme they had lately with the king , and of a strong faction they drove at court doubted not but they should stand as fair in his opinion as ever , if they were but once admitted into the kings presence ; and that the onely businesse they ha● thither , was by defeating montrose againe , clearly to extinguish that little sparke of loyalty that was no● yet quite out in scotland . and montrose delivered himselfe freely , that for his part he would never stand by to be witnese of so great an oversight : an● therefore humbly besought the king that he would give him leave to seeke his fortune in some forraigne countrey , if these men that had deceived him so of should be received againe into favour : not that he desired any severyty should be used against them , onely he wished the king might have a care that they should do him no more harme . the king was drawne with much a doe that they should be forbidden● the court , yet for all that he suffered the earl of lanericke to live in the city . but he ( by whose instigations i cannot tell ) betakes himself from oxford to londen to the parliament of england , and not long after to the scotch army which had now entered england , and never since hath failed to doe them the best service he could . the escape of his brother so much moved the king , that he saw it high time to secure the duke himself . there were severall scots in the kings court and army who were suspected ( and perhaps not without reason ) to favour the covenanters too much , and to give intelligence unto them of the kings counsels . montrose that he might put these to the touch tooke this course , he got a protestation to be drawne up by the kings authority , unto which all scots who would have the reputation of honest men were to set their● hands : wherein they professed themselves heartily to detest the courses of the covenanters , condemned especially the bringing in of an army into england against the king and the lawes of the land as an act of high treason ; promised and vowed to acquit themselves of that scandall , and to the utmost of their power , with the hazard of their lives and fortunes , to oppose those that were guilty of that crime . this protestation all men of honour and honesty readily tooke ; but there were two , in whom the king ●rusted most of all scotch men next to the hamiltons , to wit , the earle of trequaire , & mr. william murray of the bed chamber , who were difficultly brought unto it at last with much reluctancy , and fear of being discovered traitours : yet even they engaged themselves by a solemne oath at a certain day to be aiding & assisting unto montrose in scotland ; which oath of theirs afterward they most unworthily violated . this being done , and montrose on his journey from oxford towards scotland , those that were the hamiltons creatures , and other false-hearted courtiers began to blast the honour of montrose , to call him a vaine and ambitious man who had attempted an impossible thing : to extoll above measure the power of the covenanters , and that they might dete●re every one from engaging himself in so noble an exploit , gave out every where most maliciously , that no good was ever to be expected from montrose . he being little troubled with the calumnies of unworthey men , came forward to yorke & so to durham : where he sees that the kings instructions be sent to the marquesse of newcastle , and the next day they met and conferred , newcastle discours't of nothing but the distresses and necessities of his army ; how the rebell scots breaking in in the midst of winter had spoiled his recruits , and that now in farre greater numbers then he they quartered within five miles of him ; that he could not possibly spare any horse without a manifest hazard to the whole army . montrose urged on the other side , that nothing could do . newcastle more service then to let him have a party of horse ( in which he was very strong ) with him into scotland , that so he might either divert or at least divide the enemy , and by kindling a fire in their owne houses fetch them home againe to defend themselves . newcastle courteously replyed , that assoon as he had wound himself out of that present danger , he would not be wanting in any service to montrose : which promise , there is no doubt but a person of so much honour and loyalty would most surely have performed , had he continued any while in the command of those parts . in the meane time , all that he could do for the present was , to afford him about one hundred horse , but lean ones , and ill accoutred , ( which was not the generals fault but some mens private spleen ) with two brasse field-pieces . moreover he sent his orders unto the kings officers and commanders in cumberland and westmorland , that they should give montrose all the succour and assistance they could make for his journey into scotland . montrose going towards carlisle was accordingly met by the cumberland and westmorland men , consisting of eight hundred foot , and three troops of horse ; who according to the marquesse of newcastles command , were to waite upon him into scotland . montrose himselfe brought with him two hundred horse , most of them noblemen and gentlemen , and such as had been captaines either in germany , france , or england . with which small forces ( nor over trusty neither ) he entered scotland on the 13. of aprill ; for he made the more hast , lest he should have been absent at the time appointed by the earl of antrim . chap. iiii. montrose having entred scotland had come to the river of anan , when upon a mutiny among the english , occasioned by richard grahams souldiers , almost all of them flie their colours , and in all hast runne back to england . notwithstanding he with his own men came to dunfrise , and took the towne into protection upon surrender : and there he staid a while that he might be ready to entertaine antrim and his irish ; but the day appointed being already pass'd , there came not so much as a messenger from them , nor the least report of them into scotland . and the covenanters gathering themselves together on every side , there was no staying there any longer for montrose , without being surprised ; therefore he returns safe to carlisle with his men . and seeing he could neither procure any aid from the english , nor expect any forraigners suddenly , nor had scarse any hopes of good from ireland ; and found that the earle of calendar had raised a new army in scotland to second general lesly , who had by this time together with the english covenanters besiged yorke , he resolved , lest he should spend his time idlely , to engage himselfe among the kings forces in northumberland & the bishoprick ; nor was that resolution either unprofitable to them , or dishonorable to himself . for having ferretted a garrison of the covenanters out of the towne of morpet , he took in the castle , permitted all the pillage unto the english , and taking an oath of them that had held it , that they should never more fight against the king ; he sent them away without any greater punishment . he tooke a fort at the mouth of the river of tine from the covenanters , ( who had not long before turned out an english garrison from thence ) and dismist the prisoners upon the same termes with those of morpet . he plētifully victualled newcastle with corne brought from alnwicke , and other places thereabouts . when this was done , he was sent for by letters from prince rupert count palatine of rhine , who was then coming to raise the siege of yorke . and although he made all the haste he could , yet he met not the prince till he was upon his retreat the day after that unfortunate battell . and truly the prince freely offered montrose a thou●ād horse to take along with him into scotland , but some that were too powerfull with him dealt so with the good prince , that the next day after that promise was made there was not one horse to be had . all things thus failing montrose from which he expected any assistance , yet his spirit never failed him : therefore returning to carlisle with those few but faithfull and gallant men that strucke close to him , he sends away the lord ogleby and sir william rollock into the heart of scotland in meane disguise , lest they should be discovered by the enemy . within a fortnight they returned , & brought word that all things in scotland were desperate ; all passes , castles , townes , possessed with garrisons of the covenanters , nor could they finde any one so hardy as to dare to speake reverently or affectionately of the king. most of those who had adhered to montrose all this while , being cast downe with this sad newes , bethought themselves of bending their courses some other way , especially when they were tampered with by that honest man the earle traquair to desert the service : who forgetting all his vowes and imprecations he had made before the king , undertook in the name of the covenanters , not only for indemnity to all that should fall off unto them , but rewards and preferments too ; as if he had been all this while an agent for the rebells , and not for the king as he pretended . and yet this man was greater in the kings favour , and more confided in then any one except the hamiltons . montrose calling his friends to counsell , desires them to deliver their opinions what they conceived was fittest to be done in this sad face of things . some advise him to repaire to the king at oxford , and certifie him that his scotch affaires were past recovery ; that antrim came not with his irish forces , nor was there any appearance of them ; that little or no assistance had been obtained from the english ; and as for armes or aid from forraigne parts , he had not so much as heard a word of them ; so that it was none of his fault that his service had no better successe . others were of opinion that it was better for him to excuse himself by letters unto the king and to send up his commission a long with them , and that he himself should step a while aside into some other countrey till such time as it should please god to send better opportunities . but all agreed in this , that nothing more was to be attempted or thought of in scotland . but he himselfe onely entertained farre other thoughts in his high and undaunted spirit : he conceived himselfe bound never to forsake his dearest lord the king though in extreamest hazards , and that it was an unworthinesse to despaire of so good a cause ; and if he should attempt some greater matter then came within the reach or apprehension of common men , he conjectured it might prove much to his owne honour , and some thing perhaps to the kings good too . for as it was dubious , whether it might please god in his mercy to looke upon the king with a more favourable eye , and to turne his adversity into prosperity ; so it was most certaine that if he should not be able to goe thorough with it but perish in the enterprise , he should die with honour , and his fall should be much lamented . so resolved , and commending himselfe and his successe to the disposall and protection of almighty god , he performed such adventures without men , without money , without armes , as were not onely to the astonishment of us that were present , and were eye and eare witnesses of them , but also the example and envy both , of all great commanders hereafter . what those were we shall declare by and by . montrose delivers those few gentlemen that had been constant unto him to the lord ogleby , to be conducted unto the king , ( for as he had communicated all his former designes unto him , so he did this also ) and conjureth him withall to deale earnestly with his majesty for hastening of some aid , if not of men yet of armes at least , from beyond seas . so he accompanying them two dayes on their journey , and leaving with them his horses , his servants , and his carriages , conveyed himself privily away from them , and with what speed he could came back to carlisle . the company suspecting nothing of his departure , because ogleby and other his dearest friends were still with them , marched on straight towards oxford ; but theither they never reached for most of them ( of whom were the lord ogleby himself , sir iohn innes , & colonell henry graham his brother , a most hopefull young gentleman , iames , iohn , and alexander oglebyes , patricke melvin , and other gallant men , and highly esteemed by montrose ) fell into the enemies hands , & endured a long & nasty imprisonment untill they were set at liberty by montrose himself the next yeare , after which they did him most faithfull service . he returning to carlisle imparts his designe to the earle of aboine , least he should have any occasion to cavill afterwards , that a matter of that consequence was done without his knowledge or advice , who might have proved able to give a great stroke to the advancing of it . but when he found some thing too much ficklenesse in that young man , he was not over earnest to engage him to adventure with him in so perillous a journey ; and therefore easily perswaded him to reside at carlisle till he heard further newes out of scotland , by which time it might be more seasonable for him to returne into his countrey . and now being prepared for his journey , he selected onely two men for his companions and guides ; one was sir william rollock a gentleman of most knowne honesty , and an able man both of his head and hands . the other was one sibbald , whom for the report of his valour and gallantry , montrose did equally love & honour : but the latter afterwards deserted him in his greatest need . montrose passing as sibbalds man , & being disguised in the habit of a groome , rode along upon a leane jade , & led another horse in his hand . and so he came to the borders where he found all ordinary and safe passes guarded by the enemy . there was a chance happened which put them in a greater fright then all that , & it was this ; not farre from the borders they hit by chance upon a servant of sir richard grahams , who taking them for covenanters , & to be of lesley's army who used to range about those parts , told them freely & confidently that his master had made his peace with the covenanters , and had undertaken ( as if he were their centinell ) to discover unto them all such as came that way whom he suspected to favour the king. an unworthy act it was of a shamelesse villaine , of whom , not onely montrose had a very high esteem , buth is majesty also , whose mistaken bounty had raised him out of the dunghill ( to say no worse ) unto the honour of knighthood , and an estate even to the envy of his neighbours . having not passed much further , they met a souldier , a scothman , but one that had served under the marquesse of newcastle in england who taking no notice of the other two gentlemen , came to montrose and salute him by his name : montrose giving no heed unto him , as if he were no such man , the too officious souldier would not be so put off , but with a voyce and countenance full of humility and duty began to cry out , what ? doe not i know my lord marquesse of montrose well enough ? goe your way , and god be with you whither soever you goe . when he saw it was in vaine to conceale himself from the man , he gave him a few crownes and sent him away , nor did he discover him afterwards . but montrose conceiving himselfe much concerned in these speeches , thought it the best course to make all the haste he could , and to run faster then the newes of him could flie : nor did he spare any horse flesh , or scarce draw a bridle till after foure dayes travell he came to the house of his cosen patrick graham of innisbrake , not farre from the river of tay on that side of the sherifdome of perth which is next the mountains . this patrick being descended of the noble family of montrose , and not unworthy of so noble parentage , was deservedly in very great esteeme with the marquesse ; who so journed besides him for a little while in the day time in a meane cottage , and passed the nights alone in the neighbouring mountains . for he had sent away his companions unto his friends , that they might inform themselves exactly of the whole state of the kingdome , and bring him word in wat condition they found it . after a few dayes , having examined the matter with all the industry they could use , they returne with nothing but sad and tragicall newes : that all the subjects that were honest and loyall , lay under the tyranny of the rebells ; and of such as had been so hardy as to endeavour to recover their freedome with their swords , some were put to death , others fin'd , others being yet in prison , daily expected the worst their enemies could doe ; that the marquesse of huntley had laid downe the armes which too unadvisedly he had taken up at the first summons of the enemy ; that indeed he had had no contemptible number of men , but the men wanted a good commander ; that his friends and dependants were exposed to the implacable malice and revenge of their enemies , and that he himself had fled to the uttermost corner of the land , and sculked upon another mans land . montrose was very much troubled ( as he had reason ) at this newes , especially at huntley's errour and the ruine of the gordons , who were men of singular loyalty and valour , and expert souldiers , therefore much lamented by him , that for no fault of theirs , they should come to so great misfortune . and now he began to cast about how he might daw them to himself , that they might try againe the fortune of warre under another generall in the behalf of his most excellent majesty . chap. v. in the meane time there were some uncertaine reports spread abroad among the shepheards who kept their flocks in the mountaines , of certaine irish who were landed in the north of scotland , and ranged about the mountaines . montrose conceived it not unlikely that these might be part of those auxiliaries which the earle of antrim had promised should have been there four moneths before ; but he had no certainty what they were , till at last some letters came from some intimate friends of his , highlanders , and from alexander mac-donell , a scotch-man also , to whō antrim had given the command in chiefe of those few irish , directed to montrose . these they had taken care to send to a certaine friend of his , a sure man , that he might convey them if it were possible to carlis●e , where montrose was beleeved still to remaine . he , who never dreamed of montrose's returne into scotland , though he sojourned by him , by chance acquainted mr. patricke graham with the businesse , he promiseth to take charge of them , and undertaketh to see them safely delivered to montrose , though he made a journey as farre as carlisle of purpose ; and so by the good providence of god they came into his hands much sooner then could be expected . and he writes backe , as from carlisle , that they should be of good comfort , for they should not stay long either for sufficient assistance to joyne with them , or a generall to command them ; & withall requires them forthwith to come down into athole . the people of athole were engaged unto montrose by many obligations , men whom he valued most o● all the highlanders , both for their loyalty , piety , constancy , and singular valour ; and truly they made good his opinion of them to the very end of the warre . the irish , with a very few highlanders who were almost all of badeneth , receiving montrose's commands , marched straight into athole , he , who was not above twenty miles from them , comes to them immediately , and or ever they looked for him , on foot , in the habit of a mountanier , without any man along with him save the abovesaid patricke graham his guide and companion . and indeed the irish would hardly be perswaded that that was montrose ; but wen they saw him so saluted , and onely not adored like some great deity , by the men of athole and others that knew him well , they were overjoyed : for his coming to them was in exceeding good time , they being then in extreame danger to be cut off . for argyle was in their reare with a strong and well ordered army , the champaine countrey were ready in armes before them , expecting if they should make downe into the plaine , to trample them to dirt with their horses hoofes ; the vessels that brought them● over were burnt by argyle , that they might have no way to retreat ; nor would the athole men or any other that favoured the king venture any hazard with them , because they were strangers and came not by the kings open and known authority ; nor had they any commander of ancient nobility , a thing by the highlanders much set by , who would not fight under the command of alexander mac-donell , a man of no account with them : lastly their number was inconsiderable , being not above eleven hundred , though ten thousand had been promised . the next day , the athole men to the number of eight hundred put themselves in armes , & offered their service most cheerfully to montrose , who having got his handfull of men and earnestly commending his most righteous cause to the protection of almighty god , now desired nothing more then to be among the thickest of the enemy . impatient therefore of further delay , that very day he marches through the plains of athole towards ern ; as well to make way for his friends and assistants easier accesse unto him ( if any should rise upon the newes ) as that he might fall upon and amaze the rebels unlook't for , before they should be able to joyne together who lay at distance . therefore passing by weme a castle of the menises , seeing they handled a trumpeter whom he sent friēdly unto them unworthily , and fell hotly upon the reare of his army , he wastes their fields , and causes all their houses and corne to be fired ; this was at the very first onset of the warre , to strike terrour into the enemy . the same night he passed over tay , the greatest river in scotland , with part of his forces ; the rest follow him very early the next day . when they were ready to march on , he gave patrick graham ( of whom i shall haue often to speak , & never without honour ) at their earnest request the command of the athole men , & sent him with the nimblest of them he could pick out amongst them to scout before . he brings word he saw some souldiers drawne up on the top of an hill at buckinth towards them montrose makes straight . these proved to be commanded by the lord kilpont son to the earle of taith , a man of ancient nobility , and descended of the grahams ; and sir iohn drummond , sonne to the earl of perth , a kinsman also of montrose● ; who were both of them summoned by the covenanters to joyne against the irish as the common enemy , and had with them five hundred foot and no more ; nor had they heard any certainty at all of montrose's being in those parts . he resolveth with all speed to surprise them , and either to winne them to his side or to crush them to pieces . but they as soone as they heard that montrose was generall of those forces , send unto him some of their chiefest friends to understand from him what he intended to doe . he tells them he had the kings authority for what he did , and was resolved to assert that authority to the utmost of his power against a most horrid rebellion , conjuring them by all the obligations that were betweene them , that they would not thinke much to doe their best endeavours for the best of kings . which as it was much becoming their high birth , and would be very acceptable service to the king , so it would be beneficiall unto them for the present , and much to their honour with posterity and strangers , if they of all others should be the first that put to their helping hands to hold up a tottering crowne . they most readily without any delay came in unto him ; for both of them though underhand favoured the king exceedingly . from them montrose understood that the covenanters were thick in armes at a rendezvouz at perth ( the second city to edinburgh ) and there waited for their enemies falling down from athole . he knowing also that argile with his army was upon his backe , lest he should be hem'd in on both sides ▪ determines to goe forward to perth , that there he might either force the enemy to fight , or reduce the towne to the kings obedience . marching therefore three miles from buckinth , and allowing the souldiers but a short time of refreshment , at the breake of day he drawes out his men . nor was he above three miles more from the city , whem the enemy was in view in a large and open plain ( called tippermore ) providing to fight . they were commanded by the lord elchoe , one that was taken for no great souldier : there were with him the earle of tullibardin , and the lord drummond , but this latter ( as was conceived ) against his will , for he & his fathers whole family favoured the king in their hearts : knights he had with him good store , among whom sir iames scot ( who heretofore had done good service under the state of venice ) was the most noted souldier . they had six thousand foot & seven hundred horse , and in confidence of their numbres , they had even devoured their enemies before they saw them . it was on sunday the first of september , & it was given in charge to their ministers , that in set speeches they should encourage the people to fight , not forgetting to minde them of their most holy covenant forsooth . and to give them their due they plyed their lungs stoutly in the performance of that worke ; they most freely promised them in the name of almighty god an easie and unbloudy victory ; nay , there was one frederick carmiohael , one very much cryrd up for learning and holinesse by the silly people , who was not afraid to deliver this passage in his sermon , if ever god spake word of truth out of my mouth , i promise you in his name assured victory this day . gods service being thus finely performed as they thought , they put their men in battalia . elchoe himself commanded the right flank , sir iames scot the left , and the eare of tullebardin the battell . to the right and left flanks were added wings of horse , with which they made no doubt on so faire a plaine to hemme in the enemy . montrose perceiving the great body of the enemy , and especially their strength in horse , ( for he had not so much as one horse-man , nor more then three leane horses ) and being carefull ( as it concerned him ) lest being incompassed with so great a number , they should fall upon him in the front , reare and flanke , he caused his army to be drawne out to as open order as could be possible , and makes his files onely three deep . he commands the ranks all to discharge at once , those in the first ranke kneeling , in the second stooping , and in the hindmost , where he placed the tallest men , upright : he chargeth them also to have a care of mis-spending their powder , of which they had so small store , and that they should not so much as make a shot till they came to the very teeth of their enemies ; & assoone as they had discharged their muskets once a piece , immediately to breake in upon the enemy with their swords & musket ends ; which if they did , he was very confident the enemy would never endure the charge . montrose undertakes the command of the right flanke over against sir iames scot , appoints the left to the lord kilpont , & the maine battell to mac donell with his irish : vvhich vvas very providently ordered , lest the irish vvho vvere neither used to fight vvith long pikes nor vvere furnis-with swords , if they had been placed on either flank should haue beene exposed to the fury of the scotch horse . montrose had sent unto the commanders of the enemy , drummond sonne and heire to the lord maderty , a noble gentleman , and accomplished with all kinde of vertues , who declared in his name , that montrose , aswell as the kings majesty from whom he had received his commission , was most tender of shedding his countreyes bloud , and had nothing more in his devotions , then that his victories might he written without a red letter . and such a victory they might obtaine as well as he , if they should please but to have the honour to conquer themselves , and before a stroke were st●ucke to returne ●nto their allegeance ▪ that for his part he was covetous of no mans wealth thirsty after no mans bloud ; all that he desired was , that in the name of god they would at length give eare to sound counsell , and submit themselves and what belonged unto them unto them grace and protection of so good a king : who as he had hitherto condescended unto all things ( either for matter of religion or anything else ) which they thought good to aske , though to the exceeding great prejudice of his prerogative ; so still they might finde him like an indulgent father ready to embrace his penitent children in his armes , although he had been provoked with unspeakable injuries . but if they should continue still obstinate in their rebellion , he called god to witnesse , that it was their own stubbornesse that forced him to the present encounter . the commanders of the enemies answered nothing at all to all this , but against the law of nations sent the messenger ( who out of meere love to his countrey had undertaken the employment ) prisoner with a company of rude souldiers unto perth , vowing assoone as they had got the victory to cut off his head . but god was more mercifull to him , and provided otherwise then they intended , for the safety of that gallant man. they were come within musket shot when the enemies under the command of the lord drummond sent out a forlorne-hope to provoke montrose to a light skirmish : he sends a few to meet them , who at the first onset disorder and rout them , sending them backe to their maine body in no small fright . montrose thought now was his opportunity , and that nothing could conduce more either to the encouragement of his owne souldiers , or the terrour of the enemy , then immediately to fall upon them as they were disordered and astonished with that fresh blow , nor would he give them time to rally or recover courage : therefore se●ting up a great shout , he lets loose his whole army upon them . the enemy first at distance discharge their ordnance , which made more noise then they did harme , afterwards marching forward , their horse labour to breake in upon montrose's souldiers ; those when their powder was spent , and many of them had neither pikes nor scarse swords , they stoutly entertaine with such weapons as the place would afford , good stones ; of which they poured in such number amongst them with so great strength and courage , that they forced them to retreat and to trouble them no more . for the irish and highlanders striving bravely whet●er should out vie the other in valour , bore up so eagerly when they gave ground , that at last they betooke themselves to the nimblenesse of their horses heeles . there was something more to do a little while longer in the right flanke . sir iames scot disputed some time for the higher ground , but montrose's men being stronger bodied , & especially swifter footmen obtained the hill ; from thence the athole mē rushed downe with their drawne swords upon the enemy , and making little account of the musquetiers , who sent their bullets amongst them as thicke as haile , closing with them ( as they lik't best to fight ) they slash't and beat them downe . at last the enemy not able to abide their fury , fairely ran away . most of the horse made so good speed as to save themselves ; but there was a great slaughter of the foot , whom they pursued for six or seven miles . there were conceived to be two thousand of the covenanters slain , and more were taken prisoners ; of whom some taking a military oath , took up arms again with the conquerour ; but perfidiously , for almost all forsooke him afterwards . the rest taking a solemn protestation that they would never after beare armes against the king , he set at liberty . he tooke in perth the same day , without doing the least harme unto the city , although most of the citizens had fought against him in this battell ; thinking by so great clemency to turne the hearts of the people towards their king , vvhich vvas the onely end to vvhich he directed all his designes . chap. vi. he staid three dayes at perth , for there he expected many in those parts to come in with their friends and clients armed , who upon the noise of the late victory professed themselves most faithfull to the king ; but none came but the earle of kinoule with a few gentlemen of gawry , nor did they continue very constant unto him neither . and by this time argyle was at hand with a great army of foot of his owne , & supplies of horse were joyned with him out of the south parts ; therefore montrose passing over tay tooke up his quarters in the field ( for other quarters he seldom had ) near couper a little village in angus , where a famous monastery once stood , but now lies on the ground . here a brave young gentleman , sir thomas ogilby sonne to the earle of arley , with others of the gentry of angus , met him , & readily offered him their service ; whom he courteously entertained , and sent them away with thankes , they pretending they onely went to fit themselves for a march , neverthelesse few of them returned besides the ogilbies . next morning by breake of day before the revellier was beat there was a great tumult in the camp , the souldiers ranne to their armes , & fell to be wilde and raging ; montrose guessing that it was some falling out between the highlanders & the irish , thrust himselfe in amongst the thickest of them : there he findes a most horrible murther newly committed , for the noble lord kilpontin lay there basely s●aine . the murtherer was a retainer of his owne , one stuart , whom he had treated with much friendship and familiarity , in so much that that same night they lay both in a bed . it is reported that the base slave had a plot to dispatch montrose , and in regard of the great power he had with kilpontin , he conceived he might draw him in to be accessary to the villany , therefore taking him aside into a private place , he had discovered unto him his intentions ; which the nobleman highly detested , as was meet ; where upon the murtherer fearing he would discover him , assaulted him unawares , & stabbed him with many wounds , who little suspected any harme from his friend and creature . the treacherous assassine by killing a centinel escaped , none being able to pursue him , it being so darke that they could scarse see the ends of their pikes . some say the traitor was hired by the covenanters to doe this , others onely that he was promised a reward if he did it . howsoever it was , this is most certaine that he is very high in their favour unto this very day , and that argyle immediatel● advanced him ( though he was no souldier ) to great commands in his army . montrose was very much troubled with the losse of this nobleman , his deare friend , and one that had deserved very well both frō the king & himself , a mā famous for arts & armes , and honesty ; being a good philosopher , a good divine , a good lawyer , a good souldier , a good subject , & a good man : and embracing the breathlesse body againe & againe with sighes & teares , he delivers it to his sorrowfull friends and servants to be carried to his parents to receive its funerall obsequies as became the splendor of that honourable family . with the rest of his forces montrose marcheth to dundee : the towne being proud of the number of its inhabitants , and having a garrison out of fife beside , refused to submit . and he , thinking it no wisdome to hazard the honour he had gotten by his late victory upon the doubtfull successe of a siege , turnes away toward eske ; for he hoped that many of his friends and kindred , being men of greatest note in those parts , and who used to talke as highly what they would doe for the king as any others , would be ready to joyne with him . but they having newes of his approach withdrew themselves : onely the lord ogleby airley , a man of threescore yeares old , ( with his two sons , sir thomas , and sir david , and some of his friends and clients , men of experienced resolutions ) joyned himselfe unto him : and with admirable constancy he went along with him through all fortunes unto the very end of the warre ; being in that almost universall defection , the other honour and ornament of the nobility of scotland besides montrose . while montrose was hereabouts , he receives intelligence that some commissioners from the covenanters ( of whom the lord burghly was the principall ) lay at aberdene with an army , and laboured to assure unto themselves the northerne parts , upon which montrose especially relyed , either by faire meanes or foule . he determines to fight these immediately before argyle could come up to them , therefore with long marches he hies thither ; and possessing himselfe of the bridge upon the river of dee , and drawing neare the city , he found the enemy drawn up close beside it . burghley commanded two thousand foot , and five hundred horse whom he placed in wings ; & having chosen his ground , & planted his great guns before his men , he expected battell . montrose had fifteene hundred foot ( for the lord kilpontins souldiers were gone to convey their lords dead body to his parents , and most of the athole men after the victory of perth were gone home , from whence they were not farre , laden with spoile , ) and just foure and forty horse , of whom he made two divisions , and mixing amongst them the best fire-men and archers that he had ( who in nimblenesse and swif●nesse of body were almost as good as horsemen ) placed them on either wing , to prevent the falling of the enemies horse upon his rere ; which they performed most gallantly beyond the opinion or perhaps the beliefe of many . he gave the command of the right flank to iames hay and nathaniel gordon , and of the left to sir william rollock , all valiant men . the left wing of the enemy was commanded by lewis gordon , sonne to the marquesse of huntley , a bold young man and hor spirited , but haire brain'd and one that had forced out his fathers friends and clients to fight with montrose against their wills . he having gotten the plaine and most commodious ground for fighting on horsebacke charged montrose's right flank : which when he perceived , he commanded rollock with his twenty horse to their aid ; and they , being backed with the gallantry of their commanders , and the activity and stoutnesse of the foot amongst them , received the charge with so much hardinesse , that they foure and forty beat backe full three hundred of the enemy routing all and killing very many . but because they were so few they durst not follow the chase : which was forborne by the great prudence of the commanders , and proved to be of great consequence towards the obtaining of the victory : for the enemy charged montrose's left flanke vvhich had no horse vvith their right wing of horse . montrose therefore in atrice ( now that lewis gordon and his men vvere fled ) conveighs the same horse to the left flanke ; vvho seeing they vvere not able to dravv themselves into a body like the enemies , fetch 't a compasse about , & so escaped their first charge ; then neatly vvheeling about they fall upon the flanke of the enemy , & vvith their naked svvords , beat , and cut , and vanquish , and put them to flight . they tooke prisoners on forbes of kragevar , a knight of great esteem vvith the enemy , and another forbes of boindle . those that retreated got safe away , because that so few could not safely persue them . they that commanded the enemies horse vvere not so much frighted vvith their losse as vexed vvith the disgrace of a double repulse , therefore imputing their defeat to those light fierelockes that vvere mixed vvith montrose's horse , they themselves call for foot-men out of their maine body intending to returne vvith greater courage . montrose suspected that , & vvas loath to engage those fevv gallant men againe , vvhose horses vvere spent already in tvvo sharp services , vvith the enemy vvho vvas reinforced vvith fresh foot. therefore observing the enemies horse not yet railled since their nevv rout , & stāding at a sufficient distance frō their foot ; hee rode about among his owne , who had been sore galled already with the enemies ordnance ) and bespeaks them to this effect : vve doe no good ( my fellow souldiers ) while we dispute the matter at thus much distance , except we close up with them how shall we know an able man from a weake , a valiant man from a coward ? if ye would assaile these timorous and brawnelesse shrimps with handy blowes , they will never be● able to stand you . goe to therefore , fall about them with your swords and butt-end of your muskets , beat them downe , drive them backe , and make them pay what is justly due for their treason and rebellion . it was not sooner said , then they fall to worke , breake in upon the enemy , defeate them , rout them . their horse who expected foot to come and line them , seeing them all run away , ran faster then they : whom the conquerours were not able to follow much lesse to overtake , so they scap't scot-free ; but the foot paid for all , few of which escaped the victors hands . for having no other place to fly unto but into the city , montrose's mē came in thronging amongst them through the gates and posternes , and laid them on heaps all over the streets . they fought foure houres upon such equall termes , that it was an even lay whether had the oddes . at this battell montrose had some great guns , but they were unserviceable , because all advantages of ground were possessed by the enemy ; but the enemies guns made no small havock of his men . among others , there was an irishman that had his legge shot off with a cannon bullet , onely it hung by a little skin ; he seeing his fellow-souldiers something sad at his mischance , with a loud and cheerfull voyce cryes out , come on , my camerades , this is but the fortune of warre , and neither you nor i have reason to be sorry for it . doe you stand to it as becomes you , and as for me , i am sure my lord marquesse , seeing i can no longer serve on foot , will mount me on horsebacke : so dravving out his knife , being nothing altered nor troubled , he cut asunder the skin with his owne hand , and gave his legge to one of his fellow-souldiers to bury . and truly when he was well againe , and made a trooper , he often did very faithfull and gallant service . this battell was fought at aberdene on the twelfth day of september , 1644. then montrose calling his souldiers back to their colours entered the city , and allowed them two dayes rest . chap. vii . in the meane time newes is brought that argyle was hard by with much greater forces then those they dealt with last , the earle of lothion accōpanying him with fifteen hundred horse . therefore montrose removes from a●erdene to kintor a village ten miles off , that he might make an easier accesse unto him for the gordons ( the friends and dependants of the marquesse of huntley ) and others that were supposed much to favour the kings cause . from thence he sends sir william rollocke to oxford , to acquaint his majesty with the good successe he had hitherto obtained , and to desire supplies out of england or some place else . that he had fought twice indeed very prosperously , but it could not be expected that seeing he was so beset on all sides with great and numerous armies , he should be able to hold out alwayes without timely reliefe . still nothing troubled montrose more , then that none of the gordons , of whom he conceived great hopes , came in unto him . and there wanted not some of them , who testified their great affection to the service , but that huntley the chief of the family , being a backe-friend to montrose , had with held them all , either by his owne example , or private directions ; and that himselfe being forced to sculk in the utmost border of the kingdom , envied that honour to another of which he had missed himselfe , and had forbidden , even with threats , all those with vvhom he had any power to have any thing to doe vvith montrose , or to assist him either vvith their power or counsell . which when he understood , he resolved to withdraw his forces into the mountains & fastnesses , vvhere he knew the enemies horse ( wherein their great strength consisted ) could doe them little service ; and of their foot ( if they were never so many ) relying upon the iustice of his cause , and the valour of his souldiers , he made but little reckoning . therefore he hid his ordnance in a bogge , and quitted all his troublesome and heavy carriages . and coming to the side of the river of spey , not farre from an old castle called rothmurke , he incamped there : with an army , if one respected the number but very smal , but it was an expert & cheerful● one , & now also some thing acquainted with victory . on the other side of the spey , he findes the men o● cathnes , and suderland , and rosse , and murray , and others to the number of five thousand up in armes to hinder his passage over the swiftest river in all scotland , till such time as argyle who marched after him was upon his backe . being oppressed , and as it were besieged with so many enemies on every side , that at least he might save himselfe from their horse , he turned into badenoth , a rocky and mountainous countrey , and scarce passable for horse . there for certaine dayes he was very sicke , which occasioned so immoderate joy to the covenanters , that they doubted not to give out he was quite dead , and to ordaine a day of publique thankesgiving to almighty god for that great deliverance . nor were their levites you may be sure backward in that employment in their pulpits ; for as if they had been of counsell at the decree , and stood by at the execution , they assured the people that it was as true as gospell , that the lord of hostes had slaine montrose with his owne hands . but this joy did not last them long , for he recovered in a short space ; and as if he had been risen from the dead , he frighted his enemies much more then he had done before . for assoon as his disease would give him leave , he returned into athole , and sent away mac-donell with a party unto the highlanders , to invite them to take up armes with him ; and if they would not be invited to force them . he himselfe goes into angus , hoping it might happen that he should either force argyle with his tyred horse unto his winter quarters , or at least leave him farre enough behinde him . for argyle had pursued him so slowly , and at such distance , that it was appare●t he thought of nothing lesse then of giving him battell . therefore going through angus , & getting over the grainsbaine ( which going along with a perpetual ridge from east to west , divideth scotland into two equall parts ) he returned into the north of the kingdome . and now that he had left argyle so farre behinde him , that he might safely take some time to recruit , he went to strathbogy , that he might meet with the gordons , & perswade them to engage with him . but he lost his labour , for they were forestalled by huntley , and after his example plaid least in sight . for such as were generous & daring spirits , though they were loath to provoke the indignation of their chief , yet they could not but be ashamed , that at a time when there might be so much use of them they did nothing . besides the lord gordon , huntley's eldest sonne ( a man of singular worth and accomplishment ) was detained by argyle his ●ncle by the mothers side : the earle of aboine the second son was inclosed within the siege of carlisle and lewes another son was of the enemies side ; so that there was no one of huntley's family under whose authority they should take up armes . notwithstanding montrose quartered there a great while ; in which time almost every other night marching seven , or eight , or ten miles with a party of light foot ( for horse he had few or none ) he used to give alarmes to the enemy , beat up their quarters , put them to flight , and frequently to bring home horse and men prisoners . and because he alwayes brought his men safe off , it was strange to see how cheerfull & daring his souldiers were ; so that though their number was not great , there was nothing that he would lead them on unto that seemed great to them . at last when he despaired of any good to be done with the gordons , at the end of october he removed from starthbogy , and came to faivy castle and possest it . there he was like to have been utterly undone by the bad and false intelligence his scouts in whom he put great confidence brought unto him concerning the enemy : for those whom they perswaded him were scarce got over grainsbaine were on a sudden encamped within two miles of him . argyle and lothian had there two thousand five hundred foot , & twelve hundred horse montrose , now when mac-donell was absent with a party , had fifteen hundred foot and about fifty horse . if he should have descended into the plain with so small strength it had been madnesse ; and to keep a castle ( and no strong one neither ) he thought dishonourable , and derogatory to the credit of his late victories . therefore he bethought himself of another course , he drawes his men up unto a higher hill vvhich over-look't the castle . the soile of the hill vvas rough , and there vvere hedges also and ditches cast up there by the husbandmen for the sences of their fields , vvhich vvere almost as usefull as breastvvorks . but before he had appointed every one his ground to dravv up in , those fevv of huntley's dependants vvhich accompanied montrose from strathbogy , in the sight of all people fairly betooke them to their heels . and on the other side , the enemy driving fiercely up the hill , made themselves masters of no small part of it ; vvhich if they had been able to maintaine vvith the same vigour that they had obtained it , montrose had been a lost man : vvhose souldiers , discouraged both by the timorous flight of some of their owne , and the multitude of their enemies forces , were wel neare ready to turne their backs ; them montrose presently put life and courage into by his ovvn example and presence , by putting them in minde of their former atchievements , and their ovvne sence of their vvonted provvesse . moreover he thus bespake a young irish gentleman , one colonell o kyan , go thy way , o kyan with such men as thou hast at hand , and drive me those fellows out of yonder ditches that we may be no more troubled with them . the gallantry of o kyan montrose had often seen and commended , nor did that truly valiant man deceive the generalls opinion of him ; for he quickly ferretted the enemy out of the ditches , though they much out-numbred his men , and vvere seconded vvith a party of horse . and not onely so , but gained some bagges of povvder vvhich the enemy had left behinde them for haste , a very seasonable pray , of vvhich they had great need . nor doth a notable example of the forwardnesse of the souldiers seem to me unvvorthy in this place to be remembred ; for one of them looking upon the bagges of povvder , what ( saith he ) have they given us no bullets ? mary but we must fetch bullets too from those sparing distributors of ammunition . as if it had been altogether the enemies duty to provide thē necessaries for the warre . in the meane time his horse ( which were but fifty ) being disposed in a place of danger , he timely secured them by lining them with musketiers . for lothain charged them with five whole troops , who before they had crossed over half a field that lay between them , being scared with our shot wheel'd about , and returned to the place from whence they came . montrose's men being encouraged with these two successes could hardly be kept of from falling on with a shout upon the whole body of the enemy : whom montrose refraines rather with a kind of commendatiō of them ( as was meet ) then reproof , only bids every one know his own duty and vvait his commands . towards night . argyle having done nothing to any purpose , retreats two miles off , and slept not that night . but the next day , vvhen he vvas told that montrose's souldiers had great scarcity of powder and bullet , drawing his men into the same ground againe , he made as though he vvould have charged up the hill and beaten montrose out of his hold . but vvhen his heart failed him in that enterprise , besides some skirmishes between small parties while the main bodies kept their ground , there vvas nothing done that day neither . all this while montrose●ends ●ends for all dishes , and flaggons , and chamber-pots , and what other pewter vessels could be had , and caused them to be melted into bullet ; yet when that was done the souldiers had not enough . with which great inconvenience the souldiers were so little troubled , that one as often as he made a shot ( which he presumed never missed ) he would say merrily to his camerades . as sure as can be i have broken one traytors face with a chamber-pot . nor wil any one wonder if montrose's men were oft in want of powder and other necessaries for warre , when he considers they had no other vvay to supply themselves vvith them , but out of their enemies stocke . and novv the second day being almost spent , argyle vvithdrawes his men over the river , the way that they came three scotch miles ( vvhich make sone dutch mile ) off . the time was thus spent at faivy for severall dayes , argyle carrying nothing away with that great army , but disgrace among his friends , and contempt among his enemies ; for it was wholly imputed to his cowardise that there he had not made an absolute conquest . at last montrose ( least by marching away in the day time he might have some of his rear cut of by the enemies horse ) takes the advantage of the night to returne to strathbogy : were he intended to make some stay , both because the c●agginesse of the countrey was a good security to his souldiers against the incursions of the enemies horse ; and because it was near those places from vvhence he dayly expected mac-donell with vvhat highlanders he could raise . the next day the enemy pursues him vvith an intention to force him to fight vvith them in the open field : and truly assoone as they came in sight of them , drawing up their men they made ready to battell , as if they would have fallen on with all their power . but a forlorne hope of highlanders was sent before by argyle to engage montrose in a light skirmish , who were manfully entertained and repulsed . then montrose having possessed himselfe of the highest ground , argyle alters his resolution , & thinkes upon that which was more safe and lesse honourable . he desires a cessation , proposes that engagements may be given on both sides for a conference & treaty ; yet at the same time , he did not onely tempt the souldiers to forsake montrose by promising them indemnity & rewards to boot ; but ( which is a shame to say even of an enemy ) set a great price upon montrose's head , to be paid unto any assassine or murtherer that should bring it in . of which , when montrose was well assurred , ( who well knew the disposition of the man to be more bent to overreach and betray , then to fight with his enemy ) he thought nothing concerned him more , then with all speed to bring of those small forces he had as farre as he could , both from argyle's hose and knavery . therefore calling a counsell of warre , he declares his opinion , they all aprove his wisdome , and promise to continue their fidelity and their best endeavours to serve him . therefore he resolveth upon a long march the next night , as farre as badenoth ; and that the souldiers might be lighter for so great a journey , he sent the carriages before with a guard , & bid the souldiers make themselves ready against the next day , as if they were to fight . and now the carriages were on the way , when on a sudden newes came that forbes of cregaver , a prisoner ( to whom upon the engagement of his honour for his true imprisonment montrose had given the liberty of the camp ) and that sibbalds , who besides rollock was onely of his counsell and company when he came out of england , and some others , had made an escape an run away to the enemy . he was troubled at the perfidiousnesse of the men , and justly suspected that they , to ingratiate themselves with the enemy , would betray his counsells . therefore he straight called bake the convoy with the carriages , & seemed as if he had wholly altered his resolutions . but indeed he altered them not , but thought it fit to delay them for a time , that the intelligence which the enemy received from his fugitives might appear unto them idle and uncertain . but after four dayes he sent the carriages away again before him , & making fires through all the camp , he placed all the horse he had vvithin view of the enemy , as if they kept their guard there , till such time as the foot vvere marched farre enough from danger and then brought the horse also safe off , and all by break of day came to balveny . and novv being safe from having their quarters beaten up by the enemies horse , and they no further pursuing , it being also the very deep of vvinter he allovved a fevv dayes unto the refreshment of his souldiers . and at this time especially argyle began to appear in his owne colours and his subtilties vvere manifested . for most of the noblemen , gentlemen , & prime souldiers that were vvith montrose ( vvho setting aside irishmen and highlanders , had more commanders then private souldiers in his army ) deserted him , and fell off to argyle . some of them pretended sicknesse , others disability to make such long marches in winter time overmountains uninhabited , unpassable , full of nothing but stones & bryars , for the most part deep in snow , and never travelled over by any man alive . and therefore sore against their wills , as they said , and being compelled to depart by an extream necessity , they disired his passe : which he denyed to none that ask't ; but yet look't upon them rather with a kinde of indignation & scorn , then approbation or compassion . nor can one easily say how much the example of such mē weakened his forces , & howmuch it disheartned many that intended to have listed themselves under his command . but the old lord ogleby the earl of airly , a man of threescore years old , and no● very healthy neither , together with two of his sons most worthy of such a father , sir thomas & sir david , could never be perswaded even in the extreamest hazard of their lives to depart from him . chap. viii . montrose returning from balveny to badenoth met a very faithful intelligencer , who gave him notice that argyle with his foot ( for his horse were gone to their winter quarters ) lay at dunkeldon , and that from thence he used all his industry to perswade the athole men to revolte . he , although he was assured of their loyalty , neverthelesse vvith incredible hast goes down into athole . for in one night he marched with his forces four and twenty miles , through vvayes untrodden , untilled , full of snow , vvaste , and never inhabited by mortall man , to the intent he might fall upon argyle whiles he had not his horse about him . but he being frighted with the report of his coming , when montrose was yet sixteen miles off , bid his men shift for themselves , and he himself fled as fast as he could into perth , wherein the covenanters had a strong garrison . mac-donell vvas by this time returned , and brought along with him the chief of the mac-renald● vvith his men to the number of five hundred : and montrose himself added to that number patrick graham vvith some choice men of athole . being recruited with these , he marcheth to the lake of which the river of tay breaks forth , to passe from thence through bradalbaine into the country of argyle ; for he thought an enemy could never be so happily overthrown as in his own countrey . and truly he had many strong reasons for that resolution . in the first place , argyle's power and authority among the highlanders rendered him formidable to his peers and neighbours ▪ and so conduced much both to raise and foment the whole rebellion : for assoon as any one adventured to oppose the covenanters , or dispute their commands , presently argyle gathering a tumultuous army of five or six thousand highlanders ( who for all that served him against their wils ) crush't him to pieces ; and therefore he had all the reason in the world to bring down the power of so seditious , and covetous , and cruell a man. moreover , those highlanders who did not only favour the kings cause , but hated argyle heartily , as having had sufficiēt experience of his tyranny , durst not appeare as they would till he was first subdued . and lastly , the low-lands of the kingdome were maintained by the covenanters with strong garrisons , and great bodies of horse ▪ so that except he had a minde utterly to undoe his friends , he had no other place to winter his souldiers in but that . and being pressed with these reasons , with long and foule journeys , and incredible speed he cometh into argyle . the earl at that time was listing souldiers in his country , and had appointed the day and place for a rendezvouz . he lived securely in the castle of innerare , supposing no enemy to be within a hundred miles of him . for he could never before be brought to beleeve that an army could get into argyle on foot in the midst of summer , & many times heretofore he has be● heard to bragge , that he had rather lose a hundred thou sand crownes , then any mortall man should know the way by which an army could enter into his countrey . when he therefore suspected nothing lesse , the trembling cow-herds came downe from the hills , & told him the enemy was within two miles , he not knowing what to do , and almost besides himself for fear , at last commits himself to a fisher-boat , and flies away ; leaving his friends , and servants , and the whole countrey to their fortunes , and the mercy of an enemy . ●t is a rough and mountainous countrey barren of corn , for little or none is sown there , but very commodious for pasture , the chief riches of the inhabitants consisting in cattell . montrose divides his army into three brigades , and sends thē about the countrey ; one brigade was commanded by the chief of the mac-renalds , another by mac-donel , and the third by himself . they range about all the country , and lay it waste ; as many as they finde in armes going to the rendezvous appointed by their lord they slay , and spare no man that was fit for warre : nor do they give over till they had driven al serviceable men out of that territory , or at least into holes knowne to none but themselves . then they fire the villages and cottes , & lay them levell with the ground : in that retaliating argyle with the same measure he had meted unto others , who was the first in all the kingdome that prosecuted his country-men with fire and sword . lastly , they drive their cattell . nor did they deal more gently with others who lived in lorn , and the neighbour parts , that acknowledged argyle's power . these things lasted from the 13. of december 1644. to the 28. or 29. of ianuary following . and indeed , he used never more to acknowledge th● singular providence & fatherly mercy of almighty go● then in bringing him & his men safe out of those places ; for if but two hundred souldiers had handsome● kept those passes , they might easily either have cut off or at least driven back all his forces . besides , if th● cow-herds had but driven away their cattell which they might easily have done ) in those barren places he must have starved for hunger . or thirdly , if it had bee● a sharp and stormy winter , ( and it seldome chances t● be otherwise there ) they had either been drowned i● snowdrifts , or starv'd and benumb'd with cold . bu● merciful god took away both courage from the enemy , and its ordinary temper from the air ; & supplyed their want of bread with great abundance of flesh . a● length departing out of argyle and passing through lorn-glencow , & aber , he came to logh-nesse . and now he expected that al the highlanders being either frighted with the example of argyle , or freed frō the fear o● him , should be ready to assist the kings most righteou● cause , & vindicate it with their armes against the rebel● ▪ but now least montrose's heroicall spirit should eve● want matter to work upon , he is advertised that the earl of seafort , a very powerfull man in those part● ( and one of whom he had entertained a better opiniō with the garrison of innernesse which were old souldiers , & the whole strength of murray , rosse , sutherland , cathnes , and the sept of the frasers , were ready to meet him with a desperate army of five thousand horse and foot. montrose had only fifteen hundred , for those of clanrenald , and most of the atholemen suspecting no such need of them , & being laden with the spoils of argyle , had got leave to go home on condition they should return when they were sent for . but for al that montrose was not afraid to give battell to that disorderly army : for although he knew those of the garrison to be old souldiers , yet he accounted of the rest of the multitude ( which were newly raised out of husbandmen , cow-herds , pedees , tavern-boyes , & kitchin-boyes ) to be altogether raw and unserviceable . and now while he thought of nothing but fighting these , a trusty messenger overtakes him , and informs him , that argyle having gathered forces out of the lower parts of the kingdom , and joyned unto them such highlanders as yet adhered unto him , had come down into aber with three thousand foot , and staid at an old castle called innerlogh upon the bank of logh-aber . montrose who wel understood the crafty & cowardly dispositiō of argyle , by that had a good guesse at his designe ; which was to follow after him at a good distance , that he might be first engaged with those northern men , & then to make his ovvn advantage of the event of that battel , but by no means to fight himself if he could help it . therefore montrose considered that it vvould be a matter of greater concernment and of lesse danger , to let men see that argyle was not invincible even in the highlands , vvere he was adored by the simple people like some great little god : and as for the northern army , he conceived that upon the report of a victory obtained against argyle , it would moulder a way and easily be brought into order . montrose was thirty miles absent from innerlogh , neither would he goe the high way thither ( though he placed guards in it lest the enemy should have any intelligence of his moving ) but streight over logh-aber hills , in untroden pathes , and onely know to cow-herds and hunts-men , ( for in those mountains there are great herds of deer ) by a way that never man led an army before ; and killing their scouts , was upo● the back of the enemy ere he was aware ▪ they being but little affrighted with so unexpected an accident run to their arms , and immediately prepare themselves for battel . when montrose perceived them to be in a posture so quickly , he stood still a little while till his rear being tired with so hard a march could come up unto his front. it was night , but the moon shone so clearly that it was almost as light as day : all night they stood to their arms , and making frequent ●allies & skirmishes one with another , neither gave the other leave to rest or retreat . all others earnestly expected day ; only argyle being more advised then the rest conveied himself away at dead of the night ; and this second time taking boat saved himself from the peril of battel , as if he intended to be vmpire between the two armies being himself out of gunshot stand spectatour of other mens valour , & wel too ▪ at the break of day , montrose ordered his men as he intended to fight , and the enemy were as forward to do the like . for they did not yet think that montrose was there ( as some prisoners afterwards confessed ) but some colonell or captain of his with a party only of his forces . when the sun was up , on the second of february ( which is candlemas day ) a trumpet sounding struck no small terrour into the enemy . for besides that a trumpet shewed they had horse with them , and therefore was a sound with which those parts were little acquainted , it discovered also that montrose himself was there . neverthelesse the prime of the campbells ( that 's the syrname of argyle's family ) being gallant men and stout , and deserving to fight under a better chieftain in a better cause , cheerfully begin the battell , but their souldiers that were in the front having only once discharged their muskets , and montrose's men pressing on fiercely to come to the dint of sword began to run . whom they , raising a great shout , so eagerley pursued , that as it were at one assault they routed them all ; and had the killing of them with a most horrible slaughter for nine miles together . of the enemy were slain fifteen hundred , among whom were very many gentlemen of the campbells , who where chief men of the family , and of good account in their country , who fighting but too valiantly for their chieftain , had deaths answerable to their names , and fell in campo belli , in the field of war , [ i cannot say the bed of honour . ] their fortune montr●se extreamly lamented , and saved as many of them as hee was able , taking them into his protection : whiles argyle himself being gotten into a boat and rowed a little way off the shore , securely look't on whiles his kindred and souldiers were knockt on the head . some colonels and captains that argyle had brougt thither out of the low-lands fled into the castle ; whom when the castle was surrendred , and quarter was given unto them , montrose used courteously ; and after he had done them severall good offices of humanity & charity , freely let them depart . in this fight montrose had many wounded , but none slain saving three private souldiers : but the joy of this great victory was much abated by the wounds of that truly honourable sir thomas ogleby , sonne to the earl of airley , of which after a few dayes he dyed . he was one of montrose's dearest friends ; one who had done very good service for the king in england under the command of his father-inlaw the lord ruthien , earl of forth and braineford , ( a man known all the world over for his noble achievements . ) nor was he lesse a scholler then a souldier , being a new ornament to the family of the oglebyes , whose honourable deaths-wounds for his king and country had no small influence upon that dayes victory . montrose being very much afflicted with the losse of him , causeth his body to be carried into athole , where he was interred with as sumptuous a funerall as tha● place and those times could afford . but the power of the campbel●● in the highlands , which for these many ages past hath been formidable to their neighbours , was by this overthrow clearly broken to pieces ; and by it also a way opened unto montrose to do his businesse the more easily thenceforward . for the highlanders being warlike men , and let loose from the hated tyranny of argyle , now began to offer themselves willingly unto the kings service . chap. ix . the souldier who was almost spent with this sore travell , having refreshed himself for a few dayes , montrose measuring over againe logh-aber hills returneth to logh-nesse . and from thence viewing by the way the coasts of harrick , arne , and narne , came to the river of spey . here he is told that there was no small party of the enemy at elgin , ( which is the chief town of murray , a country beyond the spey . ) montrose hies towards these , either to draw them to his side or to suppresse them : but the very report of his advancing blevv avvay that cloud , for they in great amazement shifted for themselves every one vvhither he could . montrose neverthelesse goes on his march , and takes in elgin by surrender on the 14. day of february . at which time the lord gordon , eldest son to the marquesse of huntley , ( a man who can never bee sufficiently commended for his excellent endowments ) came off openly to the kings side ( from his uncle by whom he had been detained against his will ) and with not many but very choise friends and clients , voluntarily did his duty , and offered his service to montrose as the kings deputy and vicegerent . montrose first welcomed him with all civility , and gave him many thanks ; afterwards when hee came to understand him more inwardly ; joyned him unto himself in the entirest bonds of friendship and affection . now , because the inhabitants of murray were extreamly addicted to the convenanters , they hid themselves in their lurking places , nor were any supplies to be expected from men so maliciously disposed ; therefore he drew his forces to this side the spey , to raise the countries of bamph and aberdene by the presence , example , & authority of the lord gordon . so having got together what forces he could in those places , with two thousand foot and two hundred horse , passing the river of dee he came into marne , and encamped not farre from fettercarne . at brechin some seven miles from thence , sir iohn hurray , a stout man and an active , and famous also in forraigne parts for military exploits , being generall of the horse for the covenanters , had the command over the whole forces there . hee came out with six hundred horse to discover the strength of montrose : he conceived montrose had but very few foot and no horse , and if he should but descend into the plain , hee made account to make short work with him ; and howsoever it should happen , he made no question but to secure himself . montrose to draw him on , hid the rest of his men in a bottome , and made shew only of his two hundred horse , but lined them ( as he used ) with his nimblest musquetiers . which horse when hurrey saw , and observed they were so few , he drew up his men and charged . but when he perceived ( too late ) the foot that ran close after montrose's horse , he sounded a retreat , and hurrey himself turning his men before him behaved himself stoutly in the rear . when they turned their backs , montrose's souldiers drive on , let fly , and lay about them , untill being got over te river of eske , the enemy scarce safe under the protection of night , betook themselves to shelter : nor did they think themselves secure till after a race of four and twenty miles long they came to dundee . then they that had pursued them so far returned to fethercarne , and thence the next day to brechin . here montrose understod , that batly a commander of great account had been fetched out of england , to be generall of the enemies forces ; that hurrey with his horse was joyned unto him , and that they had in their army many olde souldiers brought back out of england and ireland ; so that now the covenanters going about their businesse in so great sadnesse , montrose must expect not only other kind of souldiers , but also most expert commanders to deal with . therefore , lest he should chance to be hemb'd in with their horse ( in which their chief strength lay ) he chuseth his most convenient way by the foot of grainsbaine towards the river of tay ; intending also if it were possible to get over the forth , where hee believed the king could not want assistance . which designe of his was not unknown to the enemy : therefore they send these commanders against him with a powerfull army ; who no sooner came in sight then montrose offered them battell . but they intended nothing lesse then to try it out with him that way , nor would adventure so much as but to fall upon the rear of montrose as he marched off . so he went to the castle of innercarity , and the next day to a village called eliot . and here again leaving the mountains behinde him hee descends into the plain , and by a trumpet sends a challenge unto baily to fight . between their two armies ran the river i le , which neither could safely passe over without the others consent . montrose therefore desires baily to give him leave safely to come over to that side ; which motion if baily should not like of , he offered him a safe and free passage , on condition , that he would engage his honour to fight without further delay . baily answered , he would look to his own businesse himself , and would not have other men teach him when to fight . thus the two armies fac't one another many dayes , neither the enemy endeavouring to passe their forces over the river against montrose , nor he hoping to make good his passe unto them by reason of his scarcity of horse . marching therefore to dunkeldon , he thought to passe the tay , at which time by a sudden and unexpected mischief he was almost utterly ruined . it was thus , lewis cordon , sonne to marquesse huntly , who had born arms against montrose in the battell of aberdene , by the mediation of his noble brother the lord gordon had bin received into favour . he either by true or counterfeit letters from the old fox in the hole , his father , tempred and carried away with him almost all the gordens without the knowledge of his brother ; and basely deserted montrose and him when they were ready to be engaged with the enemy . and truly it is hard to say to whether of both he bore lesse good will. montrose being sore afflicted with this unexpected revolt , although he was of necessity to return into the north to gather new forces , yet made as if neverthelesse hee went straight towards the forth ▪ and his scouts came all with full cry , that all the enemy were got over the tay , that by taking the fords of the forth they might hinder this passage . hee , lest he should seem all this while to have done nothing , thought it wel worth his labour , if by the way he could take in dundee , a most seditious town ; for that being the securest haunt and receptacle of the rebels in those parts , and a place that had contributed as much as any other towards the rebellion , was kept by no other garrison but of the townsmen . he therefore commanded the weakest and worst armed men to go along by the bottom of the hills and to meet him at brechin : and he taking with him what horse he had ( which were but one hundred and fifty in all ) and six hundred nimble musquetiers , departing from dunkelden about twelve of the clock in the night , made so great haste that hee came to dundee by ten of the clock in the morning on the 4. day of aprill . he summons the townsmen to deliver the town to the king , which was the only vvay to preserve their ovvn lives and its safety ; if they would not they must expect fire and svvord . they began to make delayes , and first to give no ans●er at all , aftervvard to commit the trumpet to prison . which affront provoked montrose so highly , that hee stormed the town in three places at once : the townsmen stood out a vvhile and maintained their works , but they had as good have done nothing , for the irish and highlanders would take no repulse , but with a resolute assault some beat them out of their sconces , and possessing themselves of their ordinance turned it against the town ; others beat open the gates , and possesse themselves of the church and market-place ; and others set the town on fire in severall places . and indeed had not the common souldiers by an unseasonable avarice and intemperance addicted themselves to pillage that rich town had been immediately all on fire . but as it happened it was better both for the conquerours and the conquered that it was not , for all the intelligence that the scouts had brought in concerning the enemies coming over te tay was absolutely false : it may be they saw a few troops ( and many they dit not see ) passe over it , which they beleeved to have been the wole body of the enemy , and by that means were like to have undone both themselves and the whole party . montrose stood upon the top of a hil close unto dundee loocking upon this onslaught , when his almost breathlesse scouts brought him newes that baily and hurrey with three thousand foot and eight hundred horse were scarce a mile off . he immediately calls his men out of the town , vvhich he had much to do to perswade them ; for the souldiers counting themselves secure of the victory , and thinking they had done a good dayes work already , and besides being a little heated in drink , and much taken with so rich a booty , could hardly be brought to leave the town they had so newly taken . and truly before they could be beaten off from the spoile , the enemy was come within musket-shot of them . and now ( as it uses to happen in great dangers ) montrose's counsell of war were of different opinions ; some perswaded that montrose should shift for himself with te horse he had , because they conceived it not possible that he should be able to bring off the foot , who had been wearied with a march of above twenty miles in the morning , after that where spent in a hot fight at noon , and now were over-loaden either with drink or prey ; especially seing he was to march twenty or perhaps thirty miles from dundee before they could rest in safety . that this was the fortune of war , and to be patiently undergone , especially since he had given oft times far greater overthrowes to the enemy then this could be to him . that there was no doubt , but that as long as he was safe , his forces might be easily recruited ; and on the other side if he miscaried , the case was desperate and they were utterly undone . others cryed out , that all was lost already , and there was nothing left them but to die with honour ; and therefore if charging courageously they should break in amongst the thickest of the enemy , no one could say but that they fell gallantly . montrose concurred with neither of these ; for he could never be brought to forsake so good men as he had in the extramest danger , and preferred an honourable death among his souldiers before dishonourable safety . but for all that , for men that were so much out-numbred by them to run desperately upon the enemy , and as it vvere to dash out their ovvn brains against the stones , vvas the very last refuge , and not hastily to be made use of ; therefore as vve ought not to tempt almighty god by our ovvn vvretchlesnesse and negligence , so neither ought any valiant man or good christian despair of his assistance in a just cause . lastly , he exhorts every one to do his ovvn part and referre the successe to god , and other things to his ovvn care and industry . immediately he sends out four hundred foot before him , and commands them , that as much as they possibly could vvithout breaking their ranks they should make all speed . then he appoints two hundred of the activest men he had to follovv them ; & he vvith his horse brings up the rear . the horse trooped on in so open order , that if occasion vvere they might have room enough to receive light musquetiers . he believed the enemies foot vvere not able to overtake them ; and if their horse only should charge them ; ( vvhich they vvould hardly adventure to do ) he conceived it vvas no matter of extream difficulty to make their part good against them : besides the sun vvas ready to set , & the darknesse of the night vvould be commodious for their retreat . the enemy understanding the number of them that vvent avvay first by some prisoners they had taken , and after that by their ovvn vievv , assoon as they savv they vvere disposed rather for a journey then a battell , divide their forces into tvvo parts and so pursue them . wherein their intention vvas not only to fall upon their rear and flank at once , but also to secure against them all passages up to the highlands : and their commanders the more to encourage their souldiers to a hot pursuit , proposed twenty thousand crownes to any one that could bring in montrose's head . and now the van of the enemies horse began to close up unto the retreaters , whereupon those good musquetiers that lined montrose's horse welcomed one , and another , and another of the forwardest of them with bullets in their sides ; with whose mischance the rest becoming more wary , abated of the eagernesse of their pursuit . and montrose's souldiers when they saw they had been too hard for the enemies foot at a march , and had got before them , taking heart and courage they skirmished stoutly with their horse , untill the night parted the quarrell . and to rid themselves some way of the enemy , took their way east-ward many miles by the seacoast , however that was not their way , but to go north-ward toward grainsbaine , and so to deliver themselves from their mischievous horse . but baily had laid the greatest part of his army between them and grainsbaine that there might be no place for thē to retreat unto . therefore at the dead of the night when they were not far from aberbroth , montrose commands his men to make a stand a while . and long they stood not , before he considering with himself that all wayes & passages straight into the mountains might be laid by the enemies horse ( & he was not mistaken ) cōmands them to face about , and march south-west . and by this art ( though with intolerable pains ) he beguiled the pursuers , whom that same night he passed by ; and then turning north-ward , by the next morning at sunrising passed over south-eske at a place not far from careston castle : and from thence sent to brechin to fetch those men which he had there with the carriages . but that had not needed , for they upon the report of this expedition had provided for themselves better and more timely , and had taken the mountains . whiles he staid at careston , the scouts brought him word on a sudden that the enemies horse were in fight , and their foot being refresh't with victualls and sleep , march't after them apace . montrose himself being now within three miles of the mountains was not much afraid of them , but his souldiers who had not slept for three dayes and two nights , but had all that while been either on their march , or in fight , were overcome with so dead sleep that they could hardly be raised without pricks and wounds . the enemy being at last entertained with a light skirmish suffered montrose to possesse himselfe of the bottom of the mountains , and having done nothing to the purpose retreated from their vain pursuit . so he and his men came to gleneske . and this was that so much talk'd of expedition of dundee , infamous indeed for the mistake of the scouts , but as renowned as any for the valour , constancy , and undaunted resolution of the generall : and even admirable for the hardinesse of the souldier , in encountering all extremities with patience , for for threescore miles together they had been often in fight , alwayes upon their march , without either meat , or the least refreshment . which whether forraigne nations or after times will beleeve i cannot tell , but i am sure i deliver nothing but what is most certain of mine own knowledge . and truly amongst expert souldiers , and those of eminent note both in england , germany , and france , i have not seldom heard this expedition of his preferred before montrose's greatest victories . chap. x. and now being safe beyond expectation , montrose bids the souldiers take their rest , whiles he determines thus of the whole affaire of the war. he sends the lord cordon , together with those that had continued loyall and dutifull after the revolt of his brother lewis into their own country , both that they might recall those whom his brother had seduced away , and recruit themselves by levying new forces . whic● he cheerfully and courageously performed , and though he spared none , yet he was most severe with those that had been authours or accessaries to his brothers defection : ad he was the more active in that businesse , that he might acquit himself of any suspition . nor indeed did montrose himself or any other more detest that villany of lewis gordon then that noble lord his brother . as for montrose , he with a small party ( for he kept but five hundred foot and fifty horse with him ) marches through angus into perthshire , that he might distract the enemy till such time as hee made up his army with recruits from every side . neither was hee out in his aime , for the covenanters had sent hurrey the lieutenant generall of the horse with a command into the north , of a party of six hundred old foot , and two hundred horse ; that he might strengthen their own side , and suppresse the lord gordon . and baily himself staid with an army at perth , as in the very heart of the kingdome , ready to wait upon all motions . montrose was twelve miles off at a village called kreif , where baily understood he quartered securely with a very small party : who being diligent upon all occasions , set out from perth at the beginning of the night with all his army , that by a speedy march he might at break of day fall unexpected into m●ntrose's quarters . but hee found montrose carefull enough of his businesse , and his foot ready in armes either to march or fight ; buth he with his horse came up towards the enemy to discover their number and strength . and when he found them to be two thousand foot and five hundred horse , hee commanded his men to march speedily away , and following the course of the river erne to make good the fords thereof : hee with the few horse that hee had was their rear guard , lest they should have been troden in pieces by the enemies cavalry . and truly he so valiantly repulsed the fierce assault of the enemy , that by killing some and routing others he forced them to a retreat , till at last his foot after six miles march had made themselves masters of the passes of erne . so the enemy retreated with the losse of their labour , and montrose that same night being the 18. of aprill , quartered at logh-erne , and came the next day to balwidir , where the earl of aboine met him , who with some few more had escaped out of carlisle , and hearing tydings of montrose's good successe , had at last returned into his country . leaving balwidir they advanced to logh-catrinet , where they receive intelligence that hurrey had raised great forces in the north , and was ready to engage with the lord gordon ; and therefore there was danger that he being an active souldier and a good commander should be able to over-master that gallant young gentleman . therefore montrose thought it necessary to oppose hurrey assoon as was possible , as well to secure so dear a friend from imminent danger , as to be nibbling at the enemies forces as he found them asunder , and to cut off that power by peace-meal which he vvell knew if it vvere all in a body vvould be above his march . therefore by long and continued journeys passing by balwidir , and a lake of four and tvventy miles long , out of vvhich the river of tay breaks forth , through athole and angus , and over granshaine , through a vale called glenmuck , hee came to the midst of marre . there he joyned vvith the lord gordon , vvho had novv a thousand foot and tvvo hundred horse , and marching straight to the spey , laboured to finde out and engage with the enemy . nor vvas he above six miles off vvhen hurrey thought hee had not yet got over gransbaine , for vvith unvvearied labour and incredible speed he had over-run the very report of himself . hurrey , lest a battell should be forced upon him whether he would or no , before he had received an addition of numerous auxiliaries , in all hast passeth over the spey . and because he had appointed the rendezvouz of all his friends at innernesse , hyeth to elgin ; nor did montrose pursue him lazily to elgine . thence with all speed he passeth to forresse , nor did montrose make lesse haste to follow and overtake him too at forresse , and sat so close on his skirts for fourteen miles together , that notwithstanding he had the advantage of te night , hee had much adoe to reach innernesse . the next day montrose incamped at a village called alderne : and hurrey according to his hopes found the earls of seafort and suderland , the whole sept of the frasers , and most of murray and cathnesse , and the neighbouring parts to have assembled themselves to innernesse well appointed . to these hurrey ads some old souldiers of the garrison of that town , and so drawes up against montrose . he now commanded three thousand and five hundred foot , and four hundred horse ; but montrose ( who had no more but fifteen hundred foot and two hundred horse ) had a great minde to retire . but not only hurrey pressed so vehemently upon him , that it was scarce possible for him to retreat , but baily also vvith a southern army much stronger then hurrey's ( especially in horse ) was novv got already a great vvay on that side gransbaine , and marched in great hast tovvards the spey . what should montrose do in this condition ? hee must of necessity either give hurrey battell , or undergo a far greater hazard of being hemb'd in between two armies . therefore he resolves to try the fortune of war without delay , to commit the successe unto god , and chusing the best advantage of ground hee could finde , there to expect the assault of the enemy . there was a little town that stood upon the height which shadowed the neighbouring valley ; & some little hills that were higher then the town behinde it , that hindered the discovery of any one till they were just upon him . in this valley he drawes up his forces out of the view of the enemy . before the town he places a few but expert and choice foot with his ordnance , who were sheltered with such ditches as they found there . the right wing hee commits to alexander mac-donel with four hundred foot , and lodged them in places fortified to their hand with banks and ditches , with shrubs also and great stones : and commands him to preserve himself entire , that he might be a reserve upon all occasions , and not to depart from his station which had so good a naturall fence , that they might lie there safe enough not only from the enemies horse but foot also . and with the same good advice , he committed to his charge that notable standard of the kings , which only he was wont to carry before him ; expecting that the enemy upon the sight of that would order the best of their forces against that wing , which by reason of the disadvantage of the place would be rendred wholly unusefull unto them , till such time as hee on the left flank should take his best advantage against them . and to that end drawing the rest of his forces to the other side , hee commends the horse to the lord gordon , and takes charge of the foot himself . those few that stood before the town under the shelter and covert of the banks and ditches seemed as if they were his main battell , whereas indeed hee had none . and for reserves , in that scarcity of men they were not to be thought of . the enemy ( as montrose most wisely fore saw ) assoon as they savv the kings standard ordered , the most part of their horse and old souldiers ( vvherein their chief strength consisted ) against that . and by this time the van of the enemy began to dispute it with those before the town , and on the right flank , and still as their souldiers were spent , drew up fresh men ; which montrose because his number was but few could not so easily do : therefore hee resolved with all his men that he had on the left flank to make a violent assault upon the enemy at once . and whiles he was thinking so to do , there comes unto him one whom hee knew to be trusty and discreet , and whispers him in the ear that mac-donell with his men on the right flank were put to flight . he being a man of a quick spirit , thought it was best to forestall the souldiers lest their hearts should faile them upon bad newes , and cryes aloud to the lord gordon , my lord , what doe we doe ? mac-donell upon the right hand having routed and discomfited the enemy is upon the execution ; shall wee stand by as idle spectatours whiles hee carries away the honour of the day ? and with that hee commands them to charge . hurrey's horse had no minde long to endure the shock of the gordons , but wheeling about and beginning to run , left their flanks which they were to maintain open to their enemies . their foot , although thus deserted by their horse , being both more in number and better armed then montrose's men , stood out very stoutly as longs as his men kept aloof ; but assoon as hee came to fall upon them hand to hand , hee drove them to throw away their arms , and to seek ( though to little purpose ) to save themselves by their heels . but montrose himself , not forgetting what was signified unto him by so faithfull a messenger , drew off with a few of his readiest men unto the right flank , where hee found things in a far other condition then they were left . for mac-donell , being a valiant man , but better at his hands then head , ( being over-hasty in battell , and bold even to rashnesse ) disdaining to shelter himself behinde hedges and shrubs whiles the enemy vapoured and provoked him with ill language , contrary to orders , upon his own head advanceth towards the enemy out of that most defencible fastness & station where in he was placed . and he did it to his cost , for the enemy over-powering him both in horse and foot , and having many old souldiers amongst thē , routed & repulsed his men . and certainly if he had not timely drawn thē off into a close hard by , they had every one of thē together with the kings standard been lost . but hee made amends for that rash mistake in his admirable courage in bringing off his men , for he was the last man that came off ; and covering his body with a great target which he carried in his left hand , defended himself against the thickest of his enemies . those that came closest up unto him were pike-men , who with many a blow had struck their spear-heads into his target , which he cut off by three or four at once with his sword which he managed with his right hand . and those that made him any opposition in the close , seeing montrose come in to his aid , and their own men on the other side put to flight , such as were horse spur'd away , and the foot ( most of which were old souldiers out of ireland ) fighting desperately , were almost all of them slain upon the ground . the conquerours pursued them that fled for some miles ; so that there were slain about three thousand foot of the enemy , amongst whom their old souldiers fought most stoutly ; but almost all their horse escaped by a more timely then honourable flight . nor had hurrey himself with some of their best men which went last off the field escaped the hands of the pursuers , had not the earl of aboine by i know not what want of heed , displayed some ensignes and standards that had been taken from the enemy ; and himself not following the chase but turning towards his own party , seemed to have been the enemy , and to threaten a new battell . with which mistake they were so long deluded , untill the enemies horse , though much disordred , had shifted themselves away into such by-paths as they knew or could light upon : only a few of them came with hurrey before next morning to innernesse . of such of the enemy as were slain , the most notable were cambell laver a colonell of old souldiers , sir iohn and sir gideon murray knights , and other stout men , and perhaps not unworthy to bee lamented , had they not stained their otherwise commendable valour with the horrid crime of rebellion ; nor in that did they so much follow their own jugdements as the humour of the times , or the ambition , or avarice of their chiefs . montrose of those that served with him on the left flank missed only one man , and him a private souldier ; and on that side where mac-donell commanded , there were missing fourteen private souldiers also . but hee had many more wounded , the curing and securing of whom was especially provided for by montrose . afterwards entertaining the prisoners with sweetnesse & courtesie , hee promised all such as repented of their errour , liberty or employment , and was as good as his word ; and such as were obstinate in their rebellion he disposed of into severall prisons . in this battell at alderne the valour of young napier did very much discover it self ; who being the son of the lord napier of marchiston , and montrose's nephew by his sister , had but a little before without the knowledge of his father , or wife , stoln away from edinburgh to his uncle , and did at this time give an excellent assay of his valour , and laid down most firm principles of a most noble disposition . whereupon the chief of the covenanters took his father , a man almost threescore and ten years old ( and as good a man as ever scotland bred in this age , ) and his wife , the daughter of the earl of marre , sir sterling keer his brother-inlaw ( an excellent man also , chief of his family , and one that had suffered very much for his loyalty ) together with his two sisters , the one sir sterlings most virtuous lady , the other a virgin , and cast them all into the dungeon ; from whence afterward they were to be delivered by napier himself with the assistance of his uncle . this battell was fought at alderne on the 4. of may , 1645. chap. xi . montrose allowing a few dayes of refreshment to his souldiers , marched to elgin which is the chief town of the province ; where for the sake of those that were wounded , hee made some longer stay , because they had there the accommodation of good chyrurgeons and medicines , which are sometimes scarce to be had in the field . afterward passing over the spey hee came to keith , from thence to frendrackt , and so to strathbogy . here baily meets him ( unto whom hurrey with those that remained of his broken troops at alderne was joyned ) and provokes him to battell . montrose kept back his men , who were spent with great travaile , and were far fewer both in horse and foot , though very eager to fight , till such time as he had raised new forces , & recruited them . therefore thinking it enough to maintain that ground which he had chosen as commodiously as he could for himself untill night , passeth then to balvenie , whither also the enemy followeth him : but he passing by strath done & . strath-spey , went up to badenoth . the enemy getting to the other side of the water provokes him again to fight ; but in vain , for he was very wary of giving them a set battell , but neverthelesse by frequent skirmishes , and especially beating up quarters in the night , did so much weaken their power and courage , that they that were so haughtily daring but a while ago , as well commanders as souldiers , hastily and disorderly betook themselves by night to innernesse when none pursued them . montrose was not much displeased that hee was so rid of this enemy , especially for this reason ; the earl of linesey , the prime ringleader of the covenanters next unto argyle , and his rival too ( as being brother-in-law to duke hamilton ) used to give out , that argyle wanted either care or courage ; and howsoever it came to passe , was still unfortunate . and therefore he took upon himself the command of that army which was newly raised , as if he would assay to manage the businesse with better conduct . and now he had passed over with his forces into angus , intending to be a reserve unto baily ; and if any thing should happen otherwise then wel , at the worst hee was ready to hinder montrose's passage over forth . for they were alwayes very jealous lest montrose should remove the seat of warre to this side the forth , and nearer edinburgh . therefore hee resolved with all speed to quell lindsey ( who lay yet in angus at a castle called newtill ) both because the generall was no souldier , and the souldiers raw , and unacquainted with the hardship of war. in pursuit of which designe , departing from badenoth he marcheth through the plains of marre over granshaine , and came by long and painfull journies unto the coast of the river of airley , intending to surprise the enemy on a sudden : which was easie to be done , for hee had made such hast , that the newes of his approach was not so swift as himself . and now lindsey was not above seven miles from him , and all things were ready for an assault , when ( upon what occasion it is uncertain ) almost all the northern men privately ran away from their colours ; and going back the way that they came , return into their country . the lord gordon was in the camp , and there was none there that detested that villany with greater indignation then he , in so much that montrose had much adoe to with-hold him from putting such of the fugitives to death as had any dependance upon him . some stick not to say , that these men were inveigled away by the private directions of his father the marquesse of huntley to the earl of aboine , who by reason of his sicknesse was absent . for it vext huntley , a haughty and envious man , to hear of the successe of montrose ; nor could he endure that inward frindship which was between his eldest son and him . however it was , montrose being cast down with this unexpected misfortune , was forced to put off that expedition against lindsey , and to suffer patiently so great and easie a victory to be taken out of his hands . therefore taking up new resolutions , hee followeth after colonell nathaniel gordon , a valiant man and a trusty , and welbeloved in his country , whom he had sent before . and by this time baily and hurrey had returned from innernesse , and quartered in lower marre by the side of dee . and montrose came by the coast of eske , and the plains of marre into the heart of that country , commonly called crommare . and whiles hee passed through those plains aforesaid , hee dispatched mac-donell with a party into the furthest part of the highlands , to conduct such forces as were there raised with all speed unto the army . afterward hee sent away the lord gordon himself , to hasten and promote that levy of men which nathaniel gordon was listing , by all the power and interests hee had in those parts . which he most diligently performed , and amongst others , brought his brother the earl of aboine back with him . whilest these things passed in cromarre , lindsey joynes his forces with baily in lower marre . with whom montrose finding himselfe unable to deal , ( the most part of his forces being gone along with the lord gordon and mac-donell ) hee stept aside to the ruinated castle of kargarf , lest the enemy should overlay him on the champaine grounds with their multitudes both of horse and foot ; but when hee was close unto the mountains he feared them not . from hence aboine falling sick again , betook himself to strathbogy ; and upon pretence of a guard , carried along with him a considerable number of horse , whom his brother the lord gordon had much adoe afterward to draw back to their colours . in the mean time lindsey took a thousand old souldiers from baily , and gave him as many raw & new rais'dmen for them ; and as if hee intended to do some famous exploit , returning through merne into angus , with all the pains he took hee did only this , he ranged with his army up and down athole , and after hee had robbed and spoiled all the countrey , he set it on fire . in this imitating argyle , who was the first that in this age introduced that cruell and dreadfull president of destroying houses and corn : being better at fire then sword , when they came into empty fields and towns unmann'd . baily at that time went to bogy , to besiege the fairest castle that belonged to the marquesse of huntley , and indeed of all the north ; and in case he failed to take it in , to waste and fire all the country of the gordons thereabouts . montrose ( although mac-donell was absent with a greatparty ) thought it necessary to relieve huntley and his friends , whom he laboured to assure unto himself by all good offices , and hied thither . where having notice that baily's souldiers , though not all yet a great part , were new rais'dmen ( for he had parted with so many old souldiers to lindsey ) desired nothing more then without delay to fight him , and marcheth straight towards him . hee had not gone above three miles before he discovered the enemies scouts : he therefore sent before some of his readiest men that knew the wayes to view the strength , the rendezvouz and the order of the enemy . they immediately bring word , that the foot stood on the top of a hill some two miles off ; and the horse had possessed themselves of a narrow and troublesome passe which lay almost in the middle between the two armies , and were come on this side it . against them montrose sent such horse as he had in a readinesse , with some nimble firelocks , whom they first entertained with light skirmishes afar-off , and after retreated behinde the passe , which they had strongly man'd with musquetiers . montrose sends for the foot , that if it were possible they might dislodge the enemy from thence ; but it could not bee done , for they were parted by the fall of the night , which both sides passed over waking , and in their arms , the next day montrose sends a trumpet to offer a set battell , but baily answers , hee would not receive orders to fight from an enemy . hee therefore seeing he could not drive the enemy from those passes without manifest losse and danger , that hee might draw him out thence in some time , marcheth off to pithlurge , and from thence to a castle of the lord forbesis called druminore , where he staid two dayes . and at last hee understands the enemy had quitted the passes , and was marching toward strathbogy ; so he at break of day sets forth towards a village called alford . but baily when he had gotten certain notice that mac-donel with a considerable part of those forces was absent in the highlands , hee voluntarily pursues montrose , conceiving him to be stealing away , and about noon began to face him . montrose determines to wait for the enemy ( who as seemed to him came towards him ) upon the higher ground : but baily turning aside some three miles to the left hand , montrose holds on his intended march to alford , where hee staid that night , the enemy lying about four miles off . the next day after , montrose commands his men very early in the morning to stand to their armes , and make ready to battell , and placed them on a hill that stands over alford . and as he with a troop of horse was observing the motion and order of the enemy , and viewing the fords of the done , a river which runs by alford , it was told him that the enemy , horse and foot , were making unto a ford which lay a mile from alford , to the intent that they might cut off the reare of their flying enemy ; for so those excellent diviners prophesied to their owne destruction . montrose leaving that troop of horse not farre from the ford , together with some select and understanding men who should give him perfect intelligence of all things , hee returneth alone to order the battell . and above all things he possesses himselfe of alford hill , where hee might receive the charge of the enemy if they fell on desperately . behinde him was a moorish place full of ditches and pits , which would prevent horse falling upon his reare : before him was a steep hill which kept his men from the enemies view , so that they could hardly perceive the formost rankes . hee had scarce given order for the right managing of all things , when those horse whom hee had left at the ford returned with a full cariere , and bring word that the enemy had passed the river . and now it was no more safe for either of them to retreat without the apparent ruine of their party . it is reported that baily , like a skilfull and wary commaunder , was sore against his will drawne unto this battell ; nor had engaged , had he not beene necessitated unto it by the rashnesse of the lord ba●carise , a colonell of horse ; who precipitated himselfe and the horse under his command into that danger , whether baily would or no , as that hee could not be brought off without the hazard of the whole army . montrose gave the command of his right wing ( on which side the enemies horse were most strong ) unto the lord gordon ; and appointed nathaniel gordon , an old commander to his assistance . the command of the left wing was given to the earle of aboine , to whom also was joyned sir william rollock : and of the maine battell to two valiant men , glengar , and drumond of ball the younger , unto whom hee added george graham master of the camp , an expert souldier also . the reserve , which was altogether hid behinde the hill , was commanded by his nephew napier . and for a while , montrose kept himself upon the height , and the enemy in the valley being fortified with pits and ditches ; for it was neither safe for the later to charge up the hill , nor for the former to fall upon them that were surrounded with marshes and pooles . the numbers of the foot were in a manner even , either side had about two thousand : but baily was much stronger in horse , for he had six hundred , and montrose but two hundred and fifty . only montrose had this advantage , that the enemy were for the most part hirelings raised from dunghills , but those that served the king , gentlemen , who fought for a good cause and honour , gratis , and not for gaine ; and such as esteem'd it more becoming to die then to be overcome . besides montrose knew that the greatest part of the old souldiers were gone with lindsey , and the new ones would be so frighted with the shouts of the armies , and the noise of trumpets , that they would scarce stand the first charge . therefore in confidence of so just a cause , and so valiant assertors of it , he first drew downe his men , and immediately the lord gordon giving a smart charge upon them , was courageously receiv'd by the enemy , who trusted to the multitude of their horse : and now being clos'd , and come to handy blowes no one could advance a foot but over his vanquished enemy ; nor retreat by reason of the pressing on of those in the rear . the first that made way for themselves and their men by a great slaughter of their enemies were the two gordons , the lord , and the colonell ; and colonell nathaniel called out unto those expert firelocks who now lin'd the horse as they were wont , come on , my fellouw sonldiers , throw downe your now uselesse guns , draw your swords , and sheat them in the rebells horse ; or hamstring them . they instantly tooke the word of command , and at the same time montrose drawes up napier with his reserve , which lay out of sight on the other side of the hill ; at whose sudden and unexpected coming , the enemy afrighted , betook himself to his heels . aboine with the left wing kept off , nor did hee attempt the enemy but by light skirmishes in small parties : who when they saw their own men on their left wing routed and put to flight , made their retreat with little losse . their foot being deserted by their horse , after they had desperately stood out a while , and refused quarter , were almost all cut off . the fall of the lord gordon was no little advantage to the escape of their horse , who after the battell was won , rushing fiercely into the thickest of them , received a shot through his body by the conquered and flying enemy , and fell down dead . whom also aboine did not hotly pursue , being much troubled with the losse of his brother . in this battell , montrose did not lose so much as one common souldier , and of gentlemen , one culchol , and one milton ; whose names and families i should most willingly have inserted , had i been so happy as to have knowledge of them , because they died gallantly in the bed of honour ; fighting for their king , their liberty , and the laws . nor are some pedees as well scotch as irish to be forgotten , boyes scarce fourteen years of age a piece , who throwing down their masters luggage , & mounting upon their nags & sumpter-horse , did not onely make a faire appearance of a body of horse , but ( as if they had bin corrivalls in valour with their masters ) beyond what might be expected from their years & strength , fell in among the thickest of their enemies . of whom some , but very few were slain , nor did they sell their lives for nothing ; and by that they gave an ample testimony of their towardnesse , and of so manly a spirit in children as might prescribe to riper years . but the losse of the lord gordon had so deep an impression upon all mens affections , that they had the face rather of a defeated then victorious army . the first scene of their sorrovv vvas acted in a dull silence ; in the next , the floud-gates vvere broke open , and the army vvas full of sighes , and sobs , and vvailing , and lamentation : and then vvith bedevved cheeks , assoon as their grief could get a tongue , they blam'd heaven , and earth , and fortune , and every thing for depriving the king , the kingdome , the age , themselves , and their posterity of such a man. thus forgetting their victory and the spoile , they fixt their eyes upon the lifelesse body , kissed his face and hands , commended the singular beauty of the corps , compared the nobility of his descent , and the plentifulnesse of his fortune , vvith the hopefulnesse of his parts ; and counted that an unfortunate victory that had stood them in so much . and truly it vvas like to have happened , that their excessive sorrow for the losse of this noble gentleman had conquer'd the conquerors , had they not comforted themselves vvith the presence and safety of montrose . nor could he himself refrain himself from bewailing vvith salt tears the sad and bitter fate of his most dear and only friend , but lamented much that the honour of his nation , the ornament of the scottish nobility , the ablest assertor of the royall authority in the north , and so intimate a friend unto himself should be thus cut off in the flowre of his age . in the mean time , hoping that reason and time between them would asswage that grief , hee commands physicians to embalme his noble corps , which afterwards being removed to aberdene , he saw brought forth with a sumptuous and souldier-like funerall , and interr'd in the monument of his ancestors in the cathedrall church . this battell was fought at alford on the 2. of iuly , 1645. chap. xii . montrose that same afternoon that hee had got this victory at alford , marching to clunie castle , allowed onely two or three houres to his souldiers for their refreshment . and going from thence to the banke of the river dee , sent away the earl of aboine , who succeeded his deceased brother . into buchanshire , and the places adjacent for recruits ; for many of them who were at the fight being highlanders , & not farre from their own habitations , had dropt home with their pillage . and because macdonell was not yet returned , hee kept his quarters at cragston , expecting both him and aboine . but when hee perceived those auxiliaries were dispatched unto him with lesse speed then he hoped , and finding his expectation deluded , impatient of so long and disadvantageous delay , after he had got over the dee and gransbaine , fell down into merne , and lay at ferdon chapell , once famous for the see and sepulchre of st. palladius . thence hee sends to the earl of aboine ( who was now come to aberdene ) to hasten unto him into merne with such forces as he heard he had raised . aboine came indeed but brought no great store of forces along with him ; therefore hee sends him backe into the north to raise as many men as he could possibly , and bring them with all speed unto the camp. hee himself going through angus met his cosen patricke graham with his athole men ready to live and die under his command , and mac-donell with a great power of highlanders : with him was macklen , the chief of his sept , a valiant man , and singularly loyall , who brought some seven hundred choise foot of his friends and clients . also the chief of the mac-ranolds , a great man in the highlands , & one that entirely lov'd the king , who had above five hundred men at his heels . the mac-gregories also , and the mac-nabies men inferiour to none in valour and hardinesse : after the fashion of the country , followed their commanders and chiefs of their families , whose certain number i cannot easily assigne . and glengar , a man never sufficiently to be commended for his valour , and loyalty to the king , and serviceablenesse & affection to montrose , ( seeing he in person almost from the expedition into argyle had never departed from him ) by his uncles and others whom he imployed , brought in about five hundred more . besides out of the plaines of marre came a great number of the fercbarsons , gallant men and of approved valour . and some too out of badenoth , not many indeed but stout and able men of their hands . montrose being reinforced with such an army , resolves to make his way into the heart of the kingdome ; as wel to spoile the enemies levying of men in fifeshire , and the country on this side the forth , as also to break up the parliament which the covenanters had not without solemnity and ostentation summoned at saint iohns-tovvne . nor did any thing hinder him but want of horse , of which alwayes he had such scarcity , that it was never or very seldome safe for him to fall down into the plain country . but because hee daily expected aboine and airley to come unto him with a considerable party of horse , he passed over the tay at dunkeldon , and lying near amunde , struck no small terrour into the enemy who held saint iohns tovvn ; and from thence approaching nearer unto them , he encamped in methfyn forrest . the enemies foot ( all but the garrison souldiers in the towne ) lay on the south of the river erne . the horse which were designed for the guard of the town and parliament assoon as they discovered montrose's scouts , bring in a hot alarm that hee was there , and come already close to the gates , and no question but he meant presently to scale the walls , and make an assault upon the town : therefore they were earnest with the nobility and the whole parliament , to secure themselves by a speedy flight : when all this while montrose had scarce a hundred horse , & they wer four hundred . but he the next day the more to encrease their terrour , drew nearer unto the town with those horse hee had , and about the same number of ready fire-lockes whom he mounted upon pack-horses ; and set out his men in their view so much to his advantage , that they appeared a considerable body of horse . and because the enemy kept themselves within the gates , forthwith turning towards duplin , hee diligently view'd this side of the river erne and all that coast , as if he had horse enough to keep all that country in subjection . and truly thus much he got by it , that the enemy tooke him to be exceeding strong as well in horse as foot. therefore they draw together as many forces from all sides ; as they could make , whom they intended to fight with montrose if hee should offer to passe over the forth . but hee finding it not safe for himself neither to descend into the champian country , they both kept their stations for many dayes , the enemy expecting auxiliaries out of fife , and the country on this side the forth , and out of the west ; and montrose looking for the like out of the north. and waiting impatiently for aboine who was too slow with his men , he sent some to hasten him , least they should lose the opportunity of doing their businesse . hee also complained , but in a soft and gentle manner , as before a faithfull friend , that aboine's lingring and delay was in the fault , that a brave victory , by which he conceived the rebells might have been utterly subdued , had slipt out of his hands ; which misfortune no man doubted but his speed and diligence might have prevented . the enemy when they understood that he onely cheated them with a false muster of horse , having gotten aid from all parts , and by this time over-numbring him even in foot , labour'd not only to provoke , but even compell him to fight . wherupon hee concluded to step aside a little into the neighbouring mountains , whither he knew either the enemy would not advance , or if they dit it would be to their losse . therefore the enemy drawing near with all their army to methfyn , he gives a private command for the carriages to drive fast up the hills , whiles he , as if he intended to fight , orders the battell , makes good the passes with strong guards , and drawes up the horse into the front. nor did the enemy expect any other then to try it out by battell , which hee made as if hee would give , till such time as the carriages were got so farre before , that he conceiv'd them out of danger : and then he commands the army in one body at their close order to march away apace : he gave charge unto such horse as he had , and his ablest fire-locks to bring up the reare , & to secure them from the enemies horse . the enemy providing for a present charge , as they expected , when they saw montrose retreating , first pursued eagerly though to no purpose ; for he making good all passes as he went , easily repulsed them , and without losse of so much as one private souldier came chearfully off into the heights and steep places that were unaccessible unto the enemies horse , and for their foot they fear'd no assault from them . it is remarkable , that when montrose's horse were come up unto the passes , and the enemy knew very well they were not able to pursue any further ; lest with all that paines they should seem to have done nothing at all , they sent out three hundred of their ablest and readiest horse to follow after them with a great shout & base language ; whom , when montrose saw , he call'd for only twenty active bodied men of the highlanders that were used to hunting , & very good marks-men , and commanded them to check their insolence ; and they first of all creeping hither , and thither , and hiding their guns , took their aimes so well that they knockt downe some of the forwardest of those men ; who being men of the better sort , by their example made the rest more wary , so that they were all contended to retreat . but those good huntsmen being encouraged with their good successe , assoon as they saw their enemies disorder●d , came into the open plain and resolutely charged their horse : who , in as much feare as bucks or does chased by hunters , set spurs to their horses and fled back to their maine body as if the divell were in them . the enemy upon their retreat chose that place for their rendezvouz , from whence montrose departed , methfyn forrest : after they had done nothing worthy to be remembred in all that expedition but that when thy found themselves unable to cope with men , they exercised their cruelty upon women : for all the wives of the irish and highlanders that they light of , ( who followed the camp for the love of their husbands ) most basely and shamelesly they hew'd in pieces . montrose kept his quarters at little dunkeldon , both because the place was cumbersome and unpassable for horse , and lay very conveniently for receiving such aids as he daily expected with aboine out of the north. all which time the two spleenative armies lying close together rather stood upon their guards then offered any affront one to the other . and now at length aboine and colonell nathaniell gordon brought up their men out of the north to dunkeldon ; men for their number indeed fewer then was expect , but for their stoutnesse and true valour farre above their number . the horse they brought were only two hundred , and some six score firelocks whom they had mounted and made dragoons : other foot they brought none . along with them came the earl of airley and sir david his son with fourscore horse , most of them of the noble family of the oglebyes ; amongst whom alexander sonne and heir of sir iohn ogleby of innercarit was most eminent , not onely for the rare accomplishments of his person and the splendor of his ancestors , but for the honour of his valiant and happy atchievements , much above what his age could promise . montrose being thus well recruited , thought it not good to lose any time but marched straight towards the enemy . but assoon as he came to amonde ▪ he thought it best to see in what condition the enemy was , & to find out whether that was true which he had receiv'd a flying report of ; that was , that very many of their auxiliaries had deserted their colours and run home . therefore leaving his foot to take their rest , a little before night he fac'd the enemy with his horse ; with which sight being somting affrighted , they kept within their trenches . and next morning early montrose riding about to discover , was informed that they had stollen away at the dead of the night to methfyn , and in disorder had got over a bridge upon the erne . hee instantly causes his men to march , and passing the river at a stone-bridge about six miles off , lay that night in strath-erne . chap. xiii . fife is the most populous , the most rich , the thickest country of towns and villages in all scotland . its inhabitants are little martiall , consisting most of merchants , shopkeepers , mariners and husbandmen . but so new fangled in their religion , and so bewitched both by the example and authority of the nobility , and by the sermons of their seditious ministers , that all of them upon the matter were extremely addicted to the covenanters . the country it self is almost an iland , being inviron'd towards the south with the scottish firth , on the north with the tay , which carrieth ships of great burden all along ; on the east with the maine sea . no entrance thither by land but on the west , in the straights of which both armies lay . the whole country was in a distraction , some ( especially their much admired preachers that thundred nothing but excommunications ) inciting and compelling all of every estate and age to take up armes ; others flocking in great numbers unto them , others running hither and thither to hide themselves , as every one was led by his own superstition , confidence , or fear . montrose was very desirous to assault the enemy , and try the fortune of a battell with them before they encreas'd their forces with addition of the fife-men ; but it would not be . for they had so for●ified themselves by the advantage of the ground , and the narownesse of the passages , that hee could by no means either make his way unto them or draw them out into plainer ground . having therefore made them severall fruitlesse offers of battell , he resolved to march into the heart of the country , and came to kinrosse , as well to hinder the rising of that country , as to traine the enemy at last out of their fastnesse to come in unto the aid of their distressed friends . they , not so much as daring to fall upon his rear , turn'd another way , and keeping close to the banke first of the erne , afterwards of the tay , made speed towards the east-side of the conntry . as montrose passed along , he sent colonell nathaniell gordon , and sir william rollock before him with a small party . these sending the rest of their party up and down to scout , kept only ten men in their company : on a sudden they happened upon two hundred of the enemy who were raising mē in those parts ; and being not able to retreat , they twelve encountred the two hundred , put them to flight , kill'd some and took other some prisoners . montrose that night came to kinrosse , not doubting but they of fife who were exceedingly out of love with the king , most firm to the covenanters , and wholly given to the new superstition , were generally up in armes . therefore thinking it not safe rashly to engage with so great a multitude of horse and foot , hee determin'd to passe over the forth ▪ and that upon this ground , that he having wearied out the fife-men ( whom he beleev'd would not bee easily perswaded to follow the army further then their own borders ) with long marches might vanquish them without a blow . for he accounted that most of them being born or brought up in shops , or ships , or taverns , & not acquainted with the hardship of souldiers would presently give out and be weary . besides such of the nobility as were in rebellion ( after they saw with sorrow that the seat of the warre was drawn so near them as the forth ) were raising men with more eagernesse then ever before upon the borders & in the west ; of whom the chief were the earls of lanerick , cassils , and eglington . whose levies montrose laboured either to hinder , or draw themselves to his side before they came up to baily and the fife-men ; therefore hee marched from kinrosse towards sterling , and lay that night some three miles from the city . the next day sending the foot before , he followed softly after with the horse , because hee suspected that the enemy pursued him in the rear . nor was he deceived in that suspition , for some espyals whom he left behinde him brought word that baily was hard by with the greatest army that ever he had . and immediately the enemies scouts came within view , one of whom having been too forward was brought prisoner to montrose by some of his horse . he being examined told them freely and confidently , that he beleeved baily and his party were resolved to march all that night to engage him to fight assoon as was possible before they dismist the fife-men , who being already tir'd he hardly beleev'd would be drawne over the forth ; accounting their work at an end assoon as the enemy was gone out of their own country . therefore montrose that he might get speedily over the forth , bid his men march apace , and going on the other side of sterling ( a good town , and one of the kings strongest castles , in which the enemy had now a great garrison ) that same night passed over the river at a ford about four miles above the town . and at break of day next morning made a halt a while about six miles from sterling : where he had intelligence , that the enemy the night before had not come over the forth , but quartered three miles from sterling on the other side of the river . therefore montrose holding on his intended journey , encamped himself in that fatall place , the field of kilsythe . he bids the souldiers to refresh themselves , but however to be in a readinesse either to fight or march , as occasion should serve . the enemy the mean while by an easier and shorter cut got over the forth at sterling bridge , and encamped at night some three miles from kilsythe . in the interim , the earl of lanerick duke hamilton's brother had rais'd a thousand foot and five hundred horse of the friends and clients of the hamiltons , in cluidsdale and the places adjacent , an● was not at present above twelve miles from kilsythe and the earls of cassils , eglington , and glencarne with others of the covenanting nobility , were engaging the west unto the same impious milit●a : who were so much the readier to take up armes , by how much they had lesse felt the miseries of warre . which things being well considered , montrose thought it best to fight with those forces which baily had at present . for although they were more numerous then his own , yet the danger was like to be greater of his side , if he should be put to engage with them when lanericks & other parties were com up . but moreover hee was either obliged to take this course or do nothing , and return back into the highlands with the blemish of that honour which by so many victories he had atchiev'd . the enemy on the other side being arrogant , and confiding in the multitude of their men , beleev●d that montrose had but made a running march the dayes before , and had passed the forth more out of fear then designe , so that they counted it nothing to assault him in that ground and entrenchment which hee had chosen to his best advantage . and above all , their proud hopes were most carefull of this , to block up all wayes of his escape , and to prevent his return into the mountains . but there are some that say , baily himself thought it not best to give him battell , but was over-sway'd by the authority and votes of the earl of lindsey especially , and some other of the nobility that were present in the army , which forc't him much against stomack to draw up his men , and order the battell as he could . however it was , early in the morning they led their men straight upon montrose : which when he saw , he told the standers by that that was happen'd which he most desired , for now hee could supply his want of men by the advantage of the ground ; and therefore he made haste to possesse himself of the fastnesses before them . moreover hee commands all his men as wel horse as foot to throw off their doublets , and to affront the enemy all in white , being naked unto the waste all but their shirts : which when they had chearfully performed , they stood there provided and ready to fight , resolved certainly either to conquer or die . in the field where they intended to fight there were some cottages and country-gardens , where montrose had conveniently lodg'g some few men ; and the first design of the enemy was to dislodge them . but it took not , for making a fierce assault and being as stoutly receiv'd , assoon as they were observ'd to cool something of their first heat , those that mann'd the places beat them off , drave them away , and slew them without resistance . the highlanders being animated with this happy successe , those that were next those places not expecting the word of command , ran rashly up the hill wich lay open to the whole strength of the enemy . montrose although hee was something troubled at the unseasonable boldnesse of his men , yet thought it not good to leave them engaged ; nor was it easie to say whethe● the quicknesse of his relief or the cowardlinesse o● the enemy conduc'd more to their fafety . montrose had in all four thousand four hundred foot , and five hundred horse ; a thousand of his foot or more had now by their own fault so engaged themselves with the enemy that they could not come off , for the enemy encounter'd them with six thousand foot and eight hundred horse . but the enemies rear came up but slowly , and while the van made a stand expecting their advance , montrose had opportunity to bring timely aid to his engaged men . but at last they send out three troops of horse , and after them two thousand foot against those rash and almost lost men of montrose's . which when montrose saw ( after others had too dishonourably shifted off that service ) he thus bespeaks the earl of airley : you see ( my noble lord ) how yonder men of ours by their unadvisednesse have brought themselves into a most desperate hazzard , and vvill presently be trampled to dirt by the enemies horse , except vvee relieve them vvith all speed . novv all mens eyes and hearts are fixt upon your lordship , they thinke you onely vvorthy so great an honour as to repell the enemy and bring off our fellow souldiers . besides it seemes most proper for you , that the errour vvhich hath been committed by the foolhardinesse of youth , may be corrected by your lordships grave and discreet valour . and he undertook the service ( as dangerous as it was ) with al his heart , and being guarded with a troop of horse , ( in which rode iohn ogleby of baldeby , who had formerly been a colonell in svvethland , a stout man , and a skilfull souldier ) led them on straight upon the enemy . and they giving the charge upon the ogleby's , disputed it sharply with them for a while , but at last being no longer able to withstand their courage sac't about : whom the ogleby's pursued so hotly , that they made them fall foule upon their owne foot ; and ( charging them furiously thorough and thorough ) routed them and trode them under foot . by this gallant example of airley and the ogleby's , montrose's souldiers being enrag'd more and more could no longer be kept back from raising a great shout ( as if they had already got the day ) and falling on upon the enemy . nor would the rebells horse long abide their charge , but deserting their foot , fell a running as fast as ever they could : nor did their foot after they were so deserted stand it out long , but throwing down their armes sought to save their lives by flight . which proved unserviceable , for the victorious pursuers had the killing of them for fourteene miles : so that of all the enemies foot that were present at that battell , it is thought there did not an hundred come off . nor did their horse escape very well , of whom some were killed , some taken , the rest disperst . their ordnance , their armes , their spoiles came clearly to the conquerours , who lost only six of their side ; whereof three were oglebyes , valiant gentlemen , who fighting like themselves , sealed the victory with their own bloud . the rebellious sort of the nobility ( of whom many were in the fight ) some of them by their timous running and swiftnesse of their horses got to the town and strong castle of sterling ; others escaping to the scottish fyrth shipt themselves in some vessels that lay at anchor near the shoare : amongs● whom argyle ( having now this third time been fortunate to a boat ) escaped into a ship ; and thought himself scarce safe enough so , till weighing anchor he got into the main . of prisoners , the chief were sir william murray of blebe , iames arnot brother to the lord burghley , one col. dice , and col. wallis , besides many more , whom montrose after quarter given used courteously , and upon the engagement of their honours set at liberty . and this is that famous victory of kilsythe , obtained on the 15. day of september 1645. in which it is beleev'd no fewer then six thousand rebells were slain . chap. xiv . there was a great alteration all the kingdome over after this battell at kilsythe ; those of the rebell-nobility were all of them sore affrighted , some of them fled to barwicke , some to carlisle , some to newcastle , others into ireland . and such as before only privately wisht wel unto the king , now did no longer fear to shew themselves to expresse their loyalty , to pray openly for his prosperity , and to offer their service . but those that before had sided with the covenanters began to ask forgivenesse , to plead they were constrain'd to take up armes by the violence and tyranny of the rebells , to submit their persons and estates to the conquerour , humbly to beseech his protection , and implore his wonted clemency . and cities and countries that were furthest off began to dispatch their commissioners to professe in their names their allegiance to their king , their duty and service to his vicegerent , and freely to offer him men , arms , provisions , and other necessaries of war. the nobility of the realm and the chiefs of septs came in thick unto the lord governour , welcomed him , tendred their service unto him , extoll'd his high and honourable atchievements , & thank't him for them . all whom he pardoned for what was past , received them with liberty and indempnity into his protection , and encouraged them to be of good chear . nor did he lay any greater burden upon them , then to change that covetous and cruell slavery which they were manacled with by the rebells , for the sweet and gentle government and protection of a most gracious prince ; and by laying aside all former grudges ands fewds , hereafter more religiously to observe their duty and loyalty to the good king ; & thenceforward never more to have to do with the counsells of seditious men , who by endeavouring to satisfie their own lusts , had engaged king and subject one against the other , & upon the matter ruin'd both . for his part hee never had any other intention , then to restore their religion , their king , their liberty , his peers and countrimen , by armes ( when no other means was left ) out of the tyranny of rebells unto their ancient peace , happinesse , and glory . which if he should effect , he would give almighty god , the author of all good things , everlasting praise ; but if hee failed however hee should by these his honest endeavours acquit himself before god , and gods vicegerent his majesty ; before all good men , and his posterity , his honour , and his conscience . at this time the whole kingdom sounded nothing but montrose's praise . men of all sorts every where extolling the ingenuity of his disposition in which he out-went all his equalls ; the gallantry of his person in war , his patience in travels , his evennesse of spirit in dangers , his wisdome in counsels , his faithfulnes to such as submitted , his quicknesse in dispatches , his courtesie to such as he took prisoners ; in a word , his truly heroick vertue in all things , and towards all men . and this honour most men gave him in good earnest , & out of a sincere affection , but som in craft & dissimulation ; and as every one had wit or skill they set forth his encomiums or panegyricks in verse or prose . yea such is the volubility of humane things , and the inconstancy of the whirling multitude , that they were not affraid openly to curse & raile at the ringleaders and prime men of the covenanters faction , such as argyle , lindsey , loudon , & others ( whom a while agoe they honoured & adored for saints ) as authors of al the mischiefs that had befalne them . all things going on thus happily , the northern parts of the kingdome being secured on his back , the way being opened unto him into the south , the power of the rebells every where quash't their chief leaders ( who in conscience of their guilt despaired of mercy ) driven out of the kingdome , & no considerable party remaining in armes ; yet in the west there were some stirres . for the earls of cassils and eglingtou , and some other promoters of the covenanters cause laboured to engage the countries in a new war , and were said to have rais'd in a tumultuary way the number of four thousand men . therefore montrose the next day after the battell of kilsythe drevv his men into cluidsdale , from vvhence the earl of lanerick , being struck vvith the newes of their late overthrovv , disbanding those men that he had rais'd , vvas fled . montrose chose that quarter as lying most commodiously for his affaires in the south & west ; and marched to glascow , vvhich is the principall city of that countrey . hee receiv'd the tovvn into his protection , and entring into it vvith the joyfull acclamations of the people , first of all he restained his souldiers from plunder , and then being severe against the delinquents , for the terrour of others , he put some of the chiefest incendiaries of them to death . after that in favour of the citizens , the next day after he came , hee departed the tovvn and quartered at bothwell . where because it was but six miles from the city , lest the citizens should bee prejudiced by the insolence of the souldiers , he gave them leave to stand upon their guard , and defend the city vvith a garrison of the inhabitants . hoping vvith such acts of clemency to engage not only the men of glascow unto himself , but the inhabitants of other cities also , by good offices more then by force and armes . at bothwell he staid many dayes , where he received the personall addresses of some of the nobility , and of others by their trustees , friends , and messengers ; & settled the peace of towns & countries thereabouts , who all willingly submitted themselves . the chief of the inhabitants of those parts who came to welcome him , and offer their service were the marquesse of douglasse , a man of a most noble family , and chief of the douglasses ; the earls of limmuck , annandale , and hertfield ; the lord barons of seton , drummond , fleming , maderty , carnegy , and ionston ; hamilton of orbeston ; charter of hempsfield , toures of innerleigh , ( a most deserving man , who afterwards lost his life gallantly in battell ) stuart of resyth ; dalyell , a brother of the earl of c●rnvvarth , knights : and many more , whose names i can either not rightly call to mind , or else think fit to forbear at present , lest by giving them an unseasonable and thanklesse commendation now whiles they lie under intolerable tyranny , i should do them more harm then honour . after the victory of kilsythe , no thought had higher place in montrose's noble breast , then the enlargement of such prisoners as for no other fault but the sin of loyalty had been most basely used , and still expected death , in the grievous and filthy gaole of edinburgh . therefore hee sends his nephew napier with col. nathaniell gordon and a commanded party of horse to edinburgh , to summon the city and receive it upon surrender , to set the prisoners at liberty , and to settle the town in peace and loyalty ; but in case they stood out and refused to submit , to threaten them with fire and sword . they assoon as they came within four miles of the town made a stand , ( and intended to come no nearer , unlesse they chanced to bee forced unto it by the obstinacy of the citizens , ) as well that at that distance they might the more easily restrain the unrulinesse of the souldier , lest they should wrong the poor inhabitants , & in their fury reduce that cursed city which had been the cause & fomenter off all the rebellion into ashes , which montrose gave them especially in charge by all means to prevent ; as also to preserve the army safe from the plague , which was hot in the city and places adjacent , and where of very many died every day . assoon as ever the newes of their approach was brought unto the town , they all began to tremble & despaire of their lives ; and to raise a cry as if the swords were already at their throats , or their houses in a flame . not a few of them being pricked in their guilty consciences , freely & openly accus'd themselves for the most ungratefull , traiterous , sacrilegious , and perjured persons in the world , and unworthy of any mercy . then applying themselves unto the prisoners they had , both calling unto them aftar off , and sending private messengers , they implored their assistance ; and besought them in compassion of the poore silly people vvere almost vvasted too vvith a great mortality , to pa●ifie the anger of the conquerours whom they had most justly incensed : told them , all their hopes lay in them , and they vvere utterly undone vvithout their help . protested moreover , that if they found mercy but that one time , they vvould redeem their former revolt vvith more religious fidelity and constant allegeance ever after . the prisoners ( whom but the other day the basest of the people bitterly abused and reviled , cursing and bequeathing them to the gallowes and worse ) forgetting all injuries received , & more troubled with the sence then revenge of their sufferings ; first rendred hearty thanks to almighty god who of his mercy shewed unto them that liberty and safety which they little expected ▪ & then turning unto their deadly enemies , bade them be of good cheare , for the most gracious king ( and his lieutenant montrose ) desired the safety and happinesse of his repenting subjects , and not their extirpation and ruine . therefore they advised them immediately to send some delegates to montrose , humbly to beg his pardon ; for nothing could better appease the rage of a conquerour then a speedy submission . for their parts they would not bee backward to mediate with him for their safety , and doubted not but his high and noble spirit which could not be vanquished with their armes , would yet suffer it self to bee overcome with the prayers and lamentations of men in misery . the edinburgians being conforted with these hopes , and assisted with this good advice , immediately call a hall to consult of sending delegates . there were among the prisoners of those that were most high in birth , and favour with montrose , lodowick , earl of crawford , chief of the most ancient and noble family of the lindseys , a man famous for military service in forraign nations , amongst the swedes , imperialists and spaniards . this man by the power and cunning of his cosen the earl of lindsey ( who because hee was greedy of the honour and title of the earl of crawford , was greedy also of his life ) was designed by the covenanters to be put to death . nor was it for any other crime but for being a souldier , and an expert man , & one that had done faithfull service for his master the king , and it was feared hee would doe so againe if hee should be suffered to live . there was also iames lord ogleby , son to the earl of airley , one singularly beloved by montrose , who was formidable both for his fathers and his own vertue and authority . hee also being an enemy to argyle , both upon old fewds and some freshe● wrongs , was just as deep in sin and danger as cravvford . these therefore the common counsell of edinburgh chose out of the rest of the prisoners , and immediately setting them at liberty , they earnestly pray and beseech them to assist their delegates to the uttermost of the power they had with the lord governour , and to labour to hold his hands off that miserable city , upon which the hand of god himself lay so heavy already . and they curse themselves & theyr posterity to the pit of hell , if they should ever prove unmindful of so great a favour or unthankfull to them that did it . they were not backward to undertake a busines which was so universally désired , but taking the delegates along with thē went forth to napier . he having by the way delivered his dear father , his wife , his brother-in-law sir sterling keer , and his sisters out of the prison at limnuch , whither the covenanters had removed them from edinburgh castle , marched backe unto his uncle with his forces , and those prisoners now at liberty , & the delegates of the city , as having done his businesse . montrose embracing crawford and ogleby , his dearest friends whom he had long longed for , and rejoycing to see them safe and sound , useth them with all honour and accommodation after their long restraint ; and they on the other side magnified their deliverer and avenger with high praises and thanks , ( as became them to do , ) on both sides affording a spectacle of great joy to the beholders . afterwards the delegates of edinburgh were admitted to audience , and delivered their message from the provost and city . the summe was , they would freely surrender the town unto the governor , humbly desired his pardon , promised to be more dutifull and loyall for the time to come ; committed themselves and all that they had to his patronage and protection , for which they earnestly besought him . moreover they undertooke forthwith to set the rest of the prisoners at liberty according to his appointment , and to doe any thing else that he should enjoyne them . and although the city was so wasted with a grievous contagion that no men could be raised out of it , yet they were ready as far as their share came , to pay contribution to such as should be raised in other places . and above all things they humbly begged at his hands , that hee would labour to mitigate the anger of their most gracious lord the king , that hee might not be too severe with that city , which by the cunning , authority , and example of a seditious and prevailing party had been engaged in rebellion . montrose bade them be confidens of the rest , and required no more at their hands then to bee hereafter more observant of their loyalty to the king , and faithfully to renounce all correspondence with the rebells in armes against him , either vvithout or vvithin the kingdome ; to restore the castle of edinburgh ( vvhich it vvas evident vvas in their custody at that time ) unto the king , and his officers . lastly , assoon as the delegates came home , to set the prisoners at liberty and send them to him . and truly as for the prisoners they sent them away upon their return : but as to other articles they were perfidious , and perjured ; and if they doe not repent must one day give an account unto god the assertor of truth and justice for their high ingratitude , and reiterated disloyalty . whiles these things passed concerning edinburgh , montrose sent away alexander mac-donell ( to whom hee joyned iohn drummond of bail , a stout gentleman ) into the western coasts to allay the tumults there , and to spoile the designes of cassils and eglington . but they receiving the alarme of mac-donells approach were immediately disperst in a great fright . some of the earls and other nobles made straight into ireland , others plaid least in sight in i know not what lurking places . all the western countries , the town of aire , irvvin and others strove which should first submit , freely offering their fidelity and service . neither ( which was more then hee expected ) did montrose ever finde men better affected to the king then in those western parts : for most of the gentry , knights , and chiefs of families , and some also of the prime nobility came off chearfully to his side . whose names , which otherwise ought to have been registred with honour , at the present i shal passe by ( if not in an acceptable perhaps , yet certainly in an advantageous silence , ) for i should be loath so honest and loyall soules should be questioned by their cruell enemies , for their good affections , upon my information . chap. xv. montrose had now taken into his thoughts the setling of the south-borders , and send unto the earls of hume , rosburough , and trequaire , to invite them to associate with him for matter of peace and war , and all things that were to be done in the name and by the authority of the king. these were not only the powerfullest men in those parts by reason of the multitude of their friends and their great retinue , but also made as though they were most cordiall assertors of the kings authority . for besides the bond of allegeance , which was common to them with others , they were engaged unto him by extraordinary benefits . nor were they only advanced unto great honours by him , as being raised from the order of knighthood to a high pitch of nobility ; but were made governours of the most gainfull countries , and by that means being enriched above their equalls and their own condition , heaped up wealth indeed unto themselves , but envy and hatred upon the king. they againe dispatch some of their friends of the best quality to assure him , that they were ready to undergoe any hazard under his conduct and command in the behalf of their most bountifull king , they promise moreover to raise a world of men , and nothing hindred their coming up unto the camp , if he would but be pleased to draw that way with never so small a party of his forces . and so it would come to passe , that not onely their friends and clients , but the whole country being animated with his presence and authority , would cheerfully take up armes as one man ; and if they stood out they might be compelled , or a course taken with them . therefore they earnestly besought him to afford them his assistance in this , and in all the rest he should finde them his most faithfull and ready servants . these were fair words , and a first hearing seem'd to carry an honest meaning along with them ; but were promised with that kind of faith that the creatures and favourites of the too indulgent king are used to keep . and perhaps upon that score he earl of lanerick ( duke hamiltons brother ) is more to be commended , whom montrose having earnestly sollicited by friends to come off to the kings side , although that way he might very likely expect his pardon for what was past , and the releasement of his brother , yet without any dissimulation he gave this peremptory answer , that he would have nothing te doe with that side , and that he would never pretend that friendship which he intended not to preserve . and i would to god all they on whom the good king has too much relied , had delivered themselves with the same candor and plain dealing ever since the beginning of those troubles . about the same time montrose sent the marquess of douglasse , and the lord ogilby over into anandale and niddisdale , that there with the assistance of the earls of anandale and hartfield , they might list a many souldiers , horse especially , as they could . and gives them orders withall to march with such as they should so raised towards trequaire , roxborough , and hume ; that they might engage them without any further put offs in an association with them . for montrose understood a little what court-holy-water meant , and therefore was something suspitious of the delayes which they fram'd , the rather having had some experience of their cunning and slipperinesse , especially of trequaires . and truly douglasse by the chearfull endeavours of the earls of anandale and hartfield , had quickly raised a considerable party , if one count them by the head ; but they were new men , taken from their plowes and flocks , and but raw soldiers : forward enough at the first charge , but by and by their hearts faile them , and they can by no means be kept to their colours . when douglasse and the rest of the commanders considered this , they write againe and againe to montrose , that he would make haste after them with his old souldiers towards tweed ▪ for by his presence and authority , and the company and example of the old souldiers , they might be brought either willingly , or whether they would or no to know their duties . in the meane time according to his command they go on to strathgale , freely offering an opportunity and their service ( if it needed ) to roxborough and trequaire , to draw out their men the more easily and timely . but they ( good men ) who well enough understood the secretest counsels of the covenanters , and knew that all their horse would be there immediately out of england under the command of david lesley , intended nothing more then to over-reach the king with their old tricks , and to deliver montrose ( whose glory they envied ) into the hands of his enemies , though not by armes ( for that they could not ) yet by treachery . to that end they insinuate againe and againe not only unto douglasse and his party , but to montrose himself by their friends and frequent messengers , that for their parts they were ready to expose their persons to the utmost hazard , but they could never be able to draw together their friends , clients , and trained bands , except they were animated and couraged with montrose his presence . and that they might be the better beleeved , they curse themselves to the pit of hell if they did not stand stifly and unalterably to their promise . montrose notwithstanding was not taken with all this , but staid still at bothvvell , conceiving that if there were any truth or honesty in their words , douglasse and his party who still lay in the country adjacent , would be sufficient for the raising and encouraging of their friends and dependents . at length when montrose had quartered a great while at bothvvell , most of the highlanders being loaden with spoile ran privily away from their colours and returned home . presently after their very commanders desired furloghs for a little while , pretending that the enemy had not an army in the field within the borders of that kingdom , and therefore their service for the present might well be spared ; besides they complained that their houses and corn , in and with which their parents , wives children were to be sustained that winter , were fired by the enemy , and no provision made for them , so that they humbly desired to be excused for a few weeks , in which they might take care to secure their families from hunger and cold . also they solemnly and voluntarily engaged their words , that they would return many more then they went , and much refreshed , within forty dayes . these montrose , seeing he could not hold them , as being voluntiers & fighting without pay , that he might the more engage them , thought fit to dismisse them not only with licences but commissions . and giving publick commendations to the souldiers , and thanks in his majesties name to the commanders , exhorting them to follow their businesse closely & vigorously , he appoints alexander mac-donell their countriman and kinsman ( who was but too ambitious of that employment ) to be their companion and guide , who should bring them back to the camp by the day appointed . who in a set speech gave thanks in all their names to the lord governour for his so noble favour ; and as if he had been their baile or surety , with a solemne oath ondertook for their sudden return : yet hee never saw montrose after . nor was he contended to carry away with him the whole forces of the highlanders , ( who were more then three thousand stout mē ) but he privily drew away sixscore of the best irish , as if ( forsooth ) he had pick't thē out for his live guard . about this very time many messengers came severall wayes to bothwell from the king at oxford . amongst whom one was andrevv sandiland , a scotch-man , but bred in england , & entred into holy orders there , a very upright man , faithfull to the king , and much respected by montrose , who continued constantly with him unto the end of the war. another was sir robert spotswood , once the most deserving president of the highest court in scotland , and now his majesties secretary for that kingdome ; who passed from oxford through wales into anglesey , and thence getting a passage into loghaber came into athole , and was conducted by the men of athole unto montrose . almost all the agents that came brought this instruction amongst the rest , that it was his majesties pleasure , that hee should joyne unto himself the earls of roxbourogh and trequaire , and consider in their advice and endeavours ; of whose fidelity and industry no question vvas to be made . moreover , that he should make haste towards the tweed , vvhere hee should meet a party of horse vvhich the king vvould instantly dispatch out of england to bee commanded by him , with vvhom hee might safely give battell to david lesly , if ( as vvas suspected ) he marched that way with the covenanters horse . all this the respective bearers unanimously delivered , and his most excellent majesty being over-credulous signified by his expresses . and montrose being now over born with the kings absolute commands , takes up his resolution to march to the side of tweed . but the day before he went , the souldiers being drawn up to a rendezvouz , ( before that mac-donell and the highlanders were gone ) sir robert spotswood making an humble obeysance , under the kings standard , delivered his majesties commission under the grea● seal unto montrose , which he again gave unto archi●bald primrose clerk of the supreme counsell to be read aloud . that being ended in a short but stately oration , he commended the valour and loyalty of the souldiers , and the great affection he bore them . and for mac-donell , he not only extoll'd his gallantry in the head of the army , but by virtue of that authority that he had received from the king gave him the honour of knighthood . for not only montrose but all the kings friends were confident of the integrity of the man ; whose good opinion he deceiv'd , not only to the undoing of the kings cause , but the utter ruine of himself and his friends . montrose following his intended journey , came the second night to ca●der castle ; at which time the earl of aboine ( whether the lord governour would or no ) carried away with him not only his own men but all the rest of the northern forces , whom he had i●veighled to desert the service . nor would he be perswaded either by reason or the intreaty of his friends ( who heartly detested that shamefull act ) to stay but so much as one week , and then he might depart not only with the generals license , but with honour , and the good esteem of honest men . seeing it would be no better ; montrose passing by edinburgh , led his small army through lothainshire , & in strathgale joyned with douglasse and the other commanders , whose forces being much diminished , were daily mouldring more & more . in that coast trequair himself came unto him , more chearfull and merry then he used to be ; who pretended himself to be a most faithfull servant not only to his majesty but also to montrose , and the next day sent him his son the lord linton with a gallant party of horse , as if they were to be under his command , that by so likely a pledge he might make montrose more secure , and so more easily ruine him . for this was not the first time that trequaire plaid the covenanters scout-master : that ungratefullest piece of mankind intending to betray unto thē montrose , & in him the king himself . now when he was not above twelve miles from the lord hume and roxborough , and they sent not so much as a messenger to him , nor offered him the smallest courtesie , montrose being much troubled at it , resolved to march into their territories , and to bring them in either by faire means or foule . but they prevented him by a singular device ; they sent unto david lesley whom they well knew by that time was come to berwicke with all the scotch horse , and many english voluntiers ( for they were privy to all their counsells ) and entreated him to send a party and carry them away in the condition of prisoners ; which he did the day before montrose came thither . for by this means that crafty old fox roxborough ( who had hume under his girdle ) conceiv'd that they might both ingratiate thēselves with the covenanters , as freely committing themselves into their protection , & yet keep in the kings favour whiles they made as if they fell into lesley's hands , sore against their wills . and this being lesley's first noble exploit , he passed over tweed & marched into the east-side of lothian . montrose assoon as he perceived the king and himself betrai'd by these men , and saw no hopes of that party of horse which was come from the king , and that the too powerfull enemy would block up his passage into the north and highlands , resolved to march with those few men he had into niddisdale and annandale , and the countrey of ayre , that he might there raise what horse he could , for although hee had no certain intelligence concerning the strength of the enemy , yet hee conjectured that it consisted especially in horse . chap. xvi . montrose arising from kelsow marched to iedburgh , and so to selkirk ; where he quartered his horse in a village , and his foot in a wood close by . for he was resolved to make sure of all advantages of ground , lest hee should be forced to fight with an enemy of vvhose strength he knevv nothing upon uneven termes . then he commands the captains of horse to set out good store of faithfull and active scouts , and to place horse-guards in convenient places on every side , and look vvell to their vvatch . all vvhich he in person ( as he used to do ) could not see done at present , because that night he was dispatching letters to the king , & to send away a trusty messenger that he had light upon , before break of day : therefore he was earnest with them to have the more care , lest the enemy who were very strong in horse should surprise them unawares . and the commanders promising all care and diligence , he was so taken up with writing of letters that hee slept not all that night . and sending ever and anon to the captains of guards ( men that were skilfull souldiers , and so known to be in forraign countries ) such uncertain noises as were brought unto him of the enemies approach , they being deceiv'd either by the negligence of their scouts or their own misfortune , very confidently sent him back word there was no enemy in those parts nor in the country thereabouts . at the break of day some of the best horse , and most acquainted with the country were sent out again to scout ; they also brought word they had been ten miles about , and diligently examined all by-wayes , and rashly wisht damnation to themselves if they could finde an enemy in armes within ten miles . but afterward it appeared when it was too late , that the enemy with all their forces were then scarce four miles from selkirk , and had lien there all that night in their arms . lesley that day that montrose departed from iedburgh , mustered his men upon gladesmore a plain in lothianshire ; were holding a counsell of war with the chief of the covenanters , the refult was that he should march to edinburgh , & so to the forth , that hee might hinder montrose's retreat into the north , and force him to fight whether he would or no before he joyned with his highlanders . but lesley contrary to that resolution , gives order on a sudden to his whole forces to wheel to the left hand , and to march away apace ; every one wondering that knew not the mistery of the businesse ; what should be the meaning of that change of his resolution , and his intention in that sudden expedition , for they marched streight to strathgale . but the matter was , ( as they afterward gathered from the enemies themselves ) hee had received letters by which he had perfect notice that montrose being attended only with five hundred foot , and those irish , and a very weak party of new-rais'd horse , might very easily be surprised on the borders of tweed , if lesly would make use of that opportunity was offered him to doe his businesse . therefore lesley upon this intelligence made haste thither , and ( as i said ) lodg'd within four miles of selkirk . that trequaire sent those letters unto lesley , although it was the generall report , i cannot certainly affirm ; but it cannot be denied that that same night he sent his commands to his son the lord linton that he should immediately withdraw himself from the royall party , which with much jollity he did . this was like themselves , being the ungratefullest of all men , deserting their king of whom none had better deserved , and staining their posterity . and truly that morning being very misty gave no small advantage to the treachery of the enemy ; whom at last montroses frighted scouts discover'd to march towards him in a full body at such time as they were not above half a mile off . montrose mounting the first horse he could light on , gallops into the field appointed for the rendezvouz that morning ; where he finds a great deal of noise , but no order . the cavalry being little acquainted with their duty , & lying already disperst in their quarters , where they dream't more of baiting their horses then maintaining their lives and honours , upon the first alarme which they received from the enemies trumpet , ran disorderly up and down they knew not whither , but never came in the fight . yet there were a few , and those were for the most part noblemen or knights , who made all speed thither and gallantly undertook to make good the right wing : and they were not above sixscore in all . nor did the foot who ( were about five hundred ) make agood appearance , for many of them looking about their private businesses among the carriages , by that unseasonable care of saving , lost themselves and all they had . and , which spoiled the matter which was bad enough before , most of the commanders were absent & never came in the field . besides , the enemy coming on so speedily left them no time for deliberation . the enemy therefore who were six thousand ( whereof most were horse out of england ) furiously charging montrose's right wing were twice gallantly received and repulsed with no small losse . nor could they make that noble troop give any ground , or break through it , untill at last laying along those few foot that withstood them , they broke in upon the left flank vvhere there vvas no horse . by this , tvvo thousand horse whom the enemy had sent over to the other side of the river vvere gotten on the rear of those noble gentlemen , who , lest being hemb'd in on every side , & gall'd with the enemies shot at distance , they should fal for nothing and unreveng'd , withdrew themselves every one the best way he could . but the foot who could have little security by flight , fighting a good while stoutly & resolutely , at last upon quarter ask't and given for their lives , threw down their armes and yeelded themselves prisoners . every one of whom being naked and unarm'd , without any regard to quarter given , lesley caused to be most unhumanely butcher'd . the staine of which perfidious cruelty ( by which he hath so filthily blurr'd his hononr , if any he got in forraign service ) he shal never be able to wipe away . as for those that escaped out of the battell the enemy pursued them no further , being busie in plundering the carriages , where they made a lamentable slaughter of women , pedees , and cook-boyes : no pity vvas shovvn to sex nor age , they vvent to the pot altogether . the number of the slain is not easie to be given , almost no horse , and very fevv foot ( besides those that yeelded themselves and had quarter ) fell in that battell : vvhich may appear by this , that they vvere no more then five hundred in all , & before the next day tvvo hundred and fifty of them came safe to montrose , of all them vvith their svvords by their sides , so that there could not be as many more missing : and very fevv vvere taken prisoners , and not untill their horses being tired , and themselves ignorant of the vvay , they became a prey to the country people . whom they , forgetting all the benefits & protection they had but nevvly received from montrose , to do the covenanters a favour , delivered up unto their cruell enemies , to be made by them acceptable sacrifices to baal-berith , the god of the covenant . for all that , the rebell conquerours missed of the kings standards . the one of them ( vvhich vvas carried before the foot ) vvas preserved by an irish soldier , a stout man , & of a present spirit vvhen others vvere almost beside themselves ; vvho vvhen he savv that the enemy had got the day , stript it off the staffe and vvrapped it about his body : and being othervvise naked , made his vvay vvith his dravvn svvord through the thickest of the enemy , and brought it to montrose at night . whom he received into his life-guard , and gave it him to carry in token of his valour and loyalty . and the other of them william hie brother to the earl of kinoule , a hopefull young gentleman ( vvho succeeded his uncle by the mothers side , douglasse son to the earl of morton , vvho having receiv'd many and grievous vvounds at the battell of alford , vvas rendred unable for that burden ) stript from off the staffe too , and carried it avvay vvith him . and conveighing himself into the borders of england , skulked there a vvhile till the coast was a little clearer about tweed , and then through by-wayes and night journies for the most part , ( being accompanied & couducted by his faithfull friend robert toures , a stout man and a good souldier , who had been a captain in france a good while ago ) returned into the north , and presented that same royall standard unto the generall . and now at last montrose when he saw his men totally routed and put to flight ( which he never savv before ) thought of nothing more for a good space then to die honourably , and not unrevenged ; therefore rallying about thirty horse vvhom he had gathered up in that confusion , he resolved by fair and honourable death to prevent his falling alive into the enemies hands . and seeing he vvas not able to break through the enemies troops ( vvho stood thick round about him ) he gall'd them on the front , and rear , and flanks , and of such as vvere so hardy as to adventure out of their ranks , many he slevv , others he beat back . but vvhen all that he could do vvould not do his businesse , as god vvould have it this consideration possessed his resolute and noble spirit ; that the losse of that day was but small and easily regained , because but an inconsiderable part of his forces were there . that the highlanders were the very nerves and sinewes of the kingdome , and all the north was sound and untouch't . that many of the prime nobility and men of power , many knights too and chiefs of their sep●s had entered into an association with him ; who if he should miscarry would be suddenly ruined or corrupted , and by that means the kings party in scotland utterly subdued . therefore he thought himself bound never to despaire of a good cause , and the rather lest the king his master should apprehend the losse of him to be greater then the losse of the battell . and vvhile these thoughts vvere in his head , by good hap came in the marquesse douglasse and sir iohn dalyell , vvith some other friēds ( not many but fatihfull & gallant men ) vvho vvith tears in their eyes ( out of the abundance of their affection ) beseech , intreat , implore him for his former atchievements , for his friends sakes , for his ancestors , for his sweet wife & childrens sakes , nay for his kings , his countries , and the churches peace and safeties sake , that hee would look to the preservation of his person ; considering that all their hopes depended on him alone under god , and that their lives were so bound up with his , that they must all live or die together . at last montrose overcom with their intreaties , charging through the enemy ( who vvere by this time more taken up vvith ransacking the carriages then follovving the chase ) made his escape : of those that vvere so hardy as to pursue him , some hee slevv , others ( among vvhom vvas one bruce a captaine of horse , and tvvo cornets vvith their standards ) he carried avvay prisoners . whom he entertained courteously , and after a fevv dayes dismist them upon their parole , that they should exchange as many officers of his of the like quality , vvhich parole they did not over-punctually perform . montrose vvas gotten scarce three miles from selkirk vvhen hee having overtaken a great number of his ovvn men that vvent that vvay , he made a pretty considerable party ; so that being novv secure from being fallen upon by the country people , he march't avvay by leisure . and as he vvent by the earl of trequaires castle ( by vvhose dishonesty he did not yet knovv that he had been betrai'd ) he sent one before him to call forth him and his son that he might speak vvith them ; but his servants bring vvord that they vvere both from home . notwithstanding there are gentlemen of credit that testifie , that they were both within ; nor did that gallant courtier only bid the rebells joy of their victory , but was not ashamed to tell abroad ( not without profuse and ill becoming laughter ) that montrose & the kings forces in scotland vvere at last totally routed ; his ovvn daughter the countesse of queensborough , as far as modestly she might , blaming him for it . montrose after he had made a halt a vvhile near a tovvn called peblis , untill the souldiers had refresh't themselves & vvere fit to march , many flocking to them from every side , at sun-set they all stoutly entered the town ; and by break of day next morning ( by the conduct of sir iohn dalyell especially ) passed over cluid at a ford . where the earls of crawford and airley having escaped another vvay met vvith him , making nothing of the losse of the battell assoon as they savv him out of danger . nor vvas he lesse joyfull at the safety of his friends , then that he had sav'd & pick't up by the vvay almost two hundred horse . but although hee vvas already secure enough from the pursuit of the enemy , neverthelesse he resolved to make vvhat haste hee could into athole ; that taking his rise there , he might dravv vvhat forces he could raise of the highlanders , & other friends into the north. therefore passing first over the forth , and then the ern , having marched through the sherifdome of perth by the foot of the mountains , he came thither . as he was on his vvay , he had sent before him douglasse and airley vvith a party of horse into angus , and the lord areskin into marre , that they might speedily raise their friends and dependents in those parts ; and had also sent sir iohn dalyell unto the lord carnegy ( with whom he had lately contracted affinity ) with commissions to that purpose . moreover he sent letters to mac-donell , to require him according to his promise to return with the highlanders by the day appointed . but above all he sollicited aboine both by letters and speciall messengers , that he would bring back his friends and clients , who were willing enough of themselves , and wanted no other encouragement then his authority and example . chap. xvii . it was towards the latter end of harvest , nor was the corn reap't in that cold country , nor their houses and cottages which the enemy had burnt repaired against the approaching winter ( which is for the most part very sharp thereabouts , ) which made the athole-men to abate some thing of their wonted forwardnesse . yet montrose prevailed so far with them , that they furnished him with four hundred good foot , to wait upon him into the north where there was lesse danger , and faithfully promised him upon his return , when he was to march southward , hee should command the whole power of the country . mean time frequent expresses came from aboine that hee would wait upon him immediately with his forces ; and mac-donell promised no lesse for himself and some other highlanders . areskin signified also unto him that his men vvere in a readinesse , and vvaited for nothing but either aboines company ( vvho vvas not far off ) or montrose's commands . about this time there vvere very hot but uncertain report of a strong party of horse that vvere sent him from the king whom many conceived not to be far from the south-borders . but other nevves they had which was too certain , to wit , that there was a most cruell butchery of what prisoners the rebells had , without any distinction of sex or age : some falling into the hands of the country people , were basely murthered by them ; others who escap't them ( and found some pity in them that had so little ) being gathered together , were by order from the rebell lords throwne head-long from off a high bridge , and the men together with their wives and sucking children down'd in the river beneath ; and if any chanced to swim towards the side , they were beaten of with pikes and staves , and thrust down again into the water . the noble men and knights were kept up in nasty prisons to be exposed to the scorne of the vulgar , and certainly doom'd at last to lose their heads . montrose was never so much troubled as at this sad newes . therefore to the end he might some way relieve his distressed friends , being impatient of all delay , with wonderfull speed he climbes over gransbaine , and passing through the plains of marre and strath-done , maketh unto the lord of aboine , that he might encourage him by his presence to make more hast into the south . for his design was , assoon as hee had joyned his forces with areskins and airleys , and sent for mac-donell and other highlanders , & taken up the athole , men by the way , to march in a great body straight over the forth , and so both to meet the kings horse , and to fright the enemy , upon their apprehension of an imminent danger to themselves , from putting the prisoners to death . for he conceived they durst not be so bold as to execute their malice upon men of nobility and eminency , as long as they had an enemy in the field , and the victory was uncertaine . and truly , they being doubtfull and solicitous what might be the successe of so great warlike preparations they knew were in providing , did deferre the execution of the prisoners . montrose upon his journey found the lord areskin very sick , but his clients ( whose fidelity and valour hee had had sundry experiences of , even in the absence of their lord ) all in a readinesse if aboine did but doe his part ; for they depended much upon his example and authority . and now the marquesse of huntley , after he had plaid least in sight for a year and some moneths , ( it is hard to say , whether awaken'd with the newes of so many victories obtain'd by montrose , and the reducing of the kingdome , or by the deceitfull influence of some bad starre ) was returned home . an unfortunate man & unadvised , who howsoever hee would seem most affectionate unto the kings cause ( & perhaps was so , ) yet he endeavoured by a close and dishonourable envy , rather to extenuate montroses glory then to out-vie it . which seeing it was not for his credit openly to professe even before his own men ( who were sufficient witnesses of montrose's admirable virtues ) lest by that he should discover some symptomes of a heart alienated from the king ; yet he gave out , that for the time to come he would take upon himself the conduct of that war against the rebells ; therefore he commanded his tenants , and advised his friends and neighbours , scarce without threats , to fight under no command but his own . and when they replyed , what shall wee then answer to the commands of the marquesse of montrose whom the king hath declared generall governour of the kingdome , and generall of the army ? he made ansvver , that he himself would not be wanting to the kings service ; but however it concerned much both his and their honour , that the king and all men should knovv vvhat assistance they had given him , which could not otherwise be done then by serving in a body by thē selves . moreover he fell to magnifie his own povver , and to undervalue montrose's , to extoll unto the skies the noble acts of his ancestors , ( men indeed vvorthy of all honour , ) to tell them , that the gordons power had been formidable to their neighbours for many ages by gone , and was so yet ; that it was most unjust that the atchievements gotten with their bloud and prowesse , should be accounted upon another mans ( meaning montrose's ) score : but for the future he would take a course , that neither the king should be defrauded of the service of the gordons , nor the gordons of their deserved honour , favour , and reward . all these things the simpler sort tooke to bee spoken upon all the grounds of equity & honour in the world ; but as many as were understanding men , and knew better the disposition of the person , saw through those expressions a minde too rancorous & altogether indispos'd towards montrose , and that his aime was to fetch off as many as he could from him , not only to the utter ruine of the king and kingdome , but even to his own destruction : which ( god knowes ) the sad event made too manifest . nor were there wanting amongst them desperate men and of good fore-sight , who condemned this counsell of his as unwise , unseasonable , and pernicious even to himself . for they considered with themselves that he never had any designe that did not miscarry either by bad play or bad luck . that businesses were better carried by montrose , and it was ill to make a faction● upon the poore pretence of his carrying away the honour of it . for if huntley joyned his forces , and communicated his counsels unto montrose , he should not be onely able to defend himself , but subdue his enemies , and gaine unto himself the everlasting honour of being one of the kings champions ; but if he should make a breach in that manner , it would prove not onely dishonourable but destructive to him . that montrose ( it could not be denyed ) had got many and eminent victories with the assistance of the huntleys , but they had done nothing of note without him . therefore they earnestly desired him , constantly to adhere unto the kings lieutenant , which as it would be both acceptable and advantageous to the king , so it would be well taken with good men , and honourable to himself . nor did some of them fear to professe openly , that they would yeeld their duty and service to montrose , if huntley should stand out in his humour ; and they were as good as their words . but he refusing the advice of his friends resolved what ever came on 't to run counter too montrose ; nor did montrose ever propose any thing though never so just , or honourable , or advantageous , which he would not crosse or reject . and if at any time montrose condescended to his opinion ▪ ( which he did often & of purpose ) he would presently change his minde ; seeming to comply with him sometimes before his face , but alwayes averse unto him behinde his backe , and indeed scarce wel agreeing with his own self . for all this , aboine being at that time solicited by many expresses from montrose , and the importunity of his own friends ( that he might be some way as good as his word ) met him with a considerable party at druminore , a castle of the lord forbeses . he brought with him fifteen hundred foot and three hundred horse , all chearfull and ready to undergoe any hazard under the command of montrose . and truly assoon as ever they met , aboine freely protested hee would carry those men that hee had whithersoever the lord governour should lead him ; but there were many more behinde ( which for his scantnesse of time he had not got together ( which his brother lewis would bring after him . montrose extolling highly his fidelity and pains , turned back again almost the same way he came ; that taking up the lord areskins , and the marre forces by the way , and climbing over gransbaine , hee might fall dovvn into athole and angus , not doubting vvithin a fortnight to be able to passe over the forth with a great army . the first dayes journey aboine and his men marched with a good will , but the next night his brother lewis ( whom montrose had placed under the command of the earl of crawford ) conveighed himself homewards with a strong party of horse , making as if he meant to encounter some troops of the enemy , and carried along with him as many souldiers as he could get upon pretence of a guard . crawford returning brought word that lewis was gone home , but would be back again next day , for so he had made him beleeve though he intended nothing lesse then to come back ; ( a youth liable to sensure for more feats then that . ) but when upon the third day they came to alford , it was observed that aboines men were slow to stand to their colours , that they loytered in their march , that their ranks were thin and disorder'd and that they ran away by whole companies almost every night : and at last their commander aboine himself was not ashamed to disire to be excused , and to have leave to depart . when all men wondred , and desired to know what might be the reason of that sudden alteration of his resolution , he pleaded his fathers commands , which he was obliged in no case to disobey ; and that his father had not sent him such directions without just occasion : for the enemies forces lay in lower marre , and would be presently upon their backs , if they were deprived of the protection of their own men : and that it was unexcusable folly for him to carry his men another way when his own country was in so much danger . montrose reply'd , that it was most certaine that onely a few troops of horse kept within aberdene , that they had no footat at all , & those few horse now durst nor could doe the country any harme ; and there was no doubt but upon the first alarme of his aproach , their commanders would sen● for those also to secure the low-lands . besides , that it would be much more to the marquesse of huntleys advantage , if the seat of warre were removed into the enemie● country then be kept up in his own : and vpon that score the●● was more need to make haste into the south , that they might save the north for the burden of the armies ? he added moreover , that he daily expected aids out of england , which could by no means joyne with them except they me● them on the south-side of the forth . and at last with much resentment he represented unto him , the condition of the prisoners ( who were many of them huntley's own kindred , allyes , or friends ) who would all be únhumanely murthered except they timely prevented it . to all this when aboine had nothing to answer , he desired his father might be acquainted with the whole matter , and 't was granted . such were made choise of to treat with huntley as were conceived to be highest in his favou● , to wit , donald lord rese , in whose country he had ●ojourned , and alexander irwin the younger of drumme , who had but the other day married huntleys daughter : and both of them were also much obliged to montrose for their newly recovered liberties . rese being ashamed of receiving the repulse had not the confidence to return ; and irwin ( a noble young gentleman , and a stout , who stuck to montrose to th● last ) brought no answer but his father-in-lawes ambiguous letters of which no hold could be taken ▪ being desired to deliver what he conceived his fathe● in lavves resolution vvas ; he professed ingenuously he knevv not vvhat to make of him , he could get no certain ansvver , but doubted he vvas obstinate in his fond conceit . aboine , first declaring hovv sore against his vvill it vvas to part vvith montrose , urged hovv necessary it vvas for him to please his dear father , vvho vvas sickly too : and therefore more earnestly desired the lord governour to dispence vvith him for a fevv dayes till he could pacifie his father ; & made an absolute promise , that within a fornight he vvould follow him with much stronger forces . and whē he had oftē and freely engaged his honour to do as he said , he extorted with much adoe a furlogh from montrose sore against his stomach , to be absent for the time aforesaid . aboine being returned home , montrose marched over the planes of marre & scharschioch & came down into athole : and thence ( having a little increased his army ) into the sherifdome of perth , where receiving an expresse out of the north he is put into new hopes , aboine having sent him word he would be with him with his men before the day appointed . at the same time came unto him by severall wayes captain thomas ogleby of pourie the younger , and captain robert nesbit , both of them sent unto him from his majesty with commands , that if he could possibly , he should make all speed towards the borders to meet the lord george digby son to the earl of bristoll , who was sent unto him with a party of horse . the same bearers montrose dispatcheth to huntley and aboine , to communicate unto them those instructions from the king , hoping by that means , that being quickened with his majesties authority , and the approach of aid , they would make more haste with their forces , in the vain expectation of whom he had trifled away too much time in strath-erne . about this time the lord napier of marchiston departed this life in athole ; a man of a most innocent life and happy parts ; a truly noble gentleman , and chief of an ancient family ; one who equalled his father & grandfather napiers ( philosophers and mathematicians famous through all the world ) in other things , but far exceeded them in his dexterity in civill businesse ; a man as fatihfull and as highly esteemed by king iames and king charles : sometime he was lord treasurer , and was deservedly advanced into the rank of the higher nobility ; and since these times had expressed so much loyalty and love to the king , that he was a large partaker of the rewards which rebells bestow upon vertue often imprisonment , sequestration , and plunder . this man montrose when he was a boy look'd upon as a most tender father , when he vvas a youth as a most ●age admoniter , when he was a man as a most faithfull friend , and now that he died was no otherwise affected withhis death then as if it had been his fathers . whose most elaborate discourses of the right of kings , and of the originall of the turmoiles in great britaine , i heartily wish may sometime come to light . chap. xviii . montrose when he had waited for aboine with his forces out of the north now three weeks , either on his march or in strath-erne ; and perceived that the r●bels began to grow more outrageous towards the prisoners being impatient of further delay crosseth over the forth , and came into leven : & he encamped upon the land of sir iohn buchanan the ringleader of the covenanters in those parts , expecting that by that meanes , lying so near glascow , he might fright the rebells ( who then kept a convention of estates there ) from the murther of the prisoners . to which end facing the city every day with his horse , he wasted the enemies country without any resistances although at that time for the guard of the estates and city they had three thousand horse in their quarters , and he not full three hundred , & twelve hundred foot. notwithstanding before his coming down into leven , the covenanters assoon as they understood that huntley & montrose agreed not , and that aboine and his men had deserted him in upper marre , as a prologue to the ensuing tragedy , had beheaded three stout and gallant gentlemen . the first was sir william rollock , one of whom we have had often occasion to make hononrable mention ; a valiant & expert man , dear unto montrose from a childe , and faithfull unto him to his last breath . the chief of his crimes was that he would not pollute his hands with a most abominable murder . for being sent from montrose with an expresse to the king afte● the battell of aberdene , he was taken prisoner by the enemy , & was condemned unto death , which he had not escaped except for fear of death he had harkened nto arg●yle , ( who most unworthily set a price upo● montroses head , and promised great rewards , honours , and preferments to whomsoever should bring it in ) and had taken upon himself to commit that treason which he abhorred with all his soule . by which shift having his life & liberty givē him , he returned straight to montrose , and discovered all unto him , beseeching him to be more carefull of himself , for not he onely ( vvho heartily detested so high a villany ) but many more , had been offered great matters , most of whom would use their best endeavours to dispatch him . the next was alexander ogleby , of whom we also spake before , eldest son to sir iohn ogleby of innercarit , descended of an ancient family , and much renowned in the scottish chronicles . he was but yet a youth ( scarce twenty , ) but valiant above his age , and of a present and daring spirit . nor can i hear or so much as conjecture what they had to lay to his charge , but that new and unheard of treason , to wit , his bounded duty and loyalty to his king. but there vvas no help for 't but arg●yle must needs sacrifice that hopeful youth if it had been for nothing but his names sake , for he bare an implacable fewd to the oglebyes . the third vvas sir philip nesbit , of an ancient family also , and chief of it next his father ; who had done honourable service in the kings army in england , and had the command of a regiment there . nor can i discover any reason they had to put him to death neither , ( besides that which is used when they have nothing else to say , that mad charge of the new high treason , except it was that their guilty consciences suggested unto them that that courageous and viglant man might take occasion sometime hereafter to be even with thē for the horrid injuries they had done his father & his family . however these men suffer'd a noble death with patience and constancy , as became honest men and good christians . and unto these there are two brave irish gentlemen that deserve to be joyned , colonell o-cahen & colonel laghlin , odious unto the rebels only for this impardonable crime , that they had had many experiments of their courage and gallantry . these irish gentlemen were murthered indeed at edinburgh , but many more were doom'd to the like executiō at glascow had not mōtroses unexpected approach within a few miles of the city had so much influence that it repriev'd them till another time . the lord governour was very much perplexed with the newes of these mens death , & it was a question whether he was more vex't at the cruel●y of the rebells , or the negligēce if not treachety of his friends . for besides huntley , whose forces he had so long in vaine expected to come with his son aboine , mac-donell also himself ( of whō he entertained an exceeding good opinion ) being oftē sent unto , & invited also by the nearnesse of the place , although the time appointed by himself was already past & gone , made no appearance of his approach . six weeks had now passed since aboine had engaged himself for the northern forces & the winter ( then which our age never saw sharper ) was already deeply entred . besides the aids that the king had sent under the commād of the lord dig●y were defeated : al which might easily have been salv'd , and the kingdome reduced againe , if those great professors of loyalty had not plaid loose in that good cause . therefore at last on the 20. of november , montrose departing from levin , and passing over the mountains of taich , now covered with deep snow , through woods and bogges whose names i do not at this time well remember , crossing also through strath-erne & over the tay , returned into athole . there he met captain ogleby and captain nesbit , whom he had formerly sent with the kings instructions unto huntley . and they bring word the man was obstinate and inflexible , who would beleeve nothing that they said ; & when they unfolded unto him the kings commands answered scornfully . that he understood all the kings businesse better then they or the gouvernour himself ; and neither he nor any of his children should have any thing to doe with him . moreover he sharply & threatningly reproved his friends & clients , who had willingly assisted montrose , and dealt worse with them then with rebells . neverthelesse the lord governour thought best to take no notice of any of these things , but bear with them ; & whiles he treats with the athole men for the setling of the militia of that countrey , he sends again unto huntley by sir iohn dalyell , as a more fit mediator of friendship . who was to informe him of the danger the king and kingdome was in , and so of the present misery that hung over his & all faithfull subjects heads ; and to make it appear unto him that it was no ones but his and his sons fault , both that they had not brought in the supplies into scotland which the king had sent , and that the prisoners , who were gallant and faithfull men , had been so cruelly butchered ; and that yet there were many more remaining that had near relations to huntley himself & some also of the prime nobility , whom the rebels would cut of after the same fashion unlesse they were now at last relieved . and lastly , to pray and beseech him that at least he would grant the kings governor the favour of a friendly conference , promising he would give him abundant satisfaction . huntley although he answered dalyel in all things according to his wonted peevishnesse , yet he was most of all averse to a conference ; as fearing ( seeing he should have nothing to answer to his arguments and reasons ) the presence , the confidence , and the wisdome of so excellent a man. but montrose , assoon as things were setled in athole , that he might leave nothing unattempted that might possibly bring him to better thoughts ; resolved , dissembling all injuries , and obliging him by all good offices , to surprise him , and be friends with him whether he would or no ; and to treat with him concerning all things that concern'd his majesties service . therefore in the moneth of december he forced his way very hardly through rivers and brooks , that were frozen indeed , but not so hard as to bear mens waight , over the tops of hills and craggy rocks , in a deep snow ; and passing through angus and over gransbaine , drew his forces into the north : and almost before he was discover'd marched with a few men into strathbogy , where huntley then liv'd . but he being struck with his unexpected approach , upon the first newes he heard of him , lest he should be forced to a conference against his will , immediately fled to bogie , a castle of his situated upon the mouth of the spey ; as if he intended to ferry over the river and to wage war against the rebelles in murray . and now it comes into my minde briefly to enquire what night be the reason why huntley bore such a spleen against mōtrose , who had never givē him any distaste , but had obliged him with courtesies many times undeserved . nor could i ever hear nor so much as guesse at any other cause but a weak and impotent ( emulatiō i cannot call it , but ) envy of his surpassing worth & honour . for i should be loath to say that his minde was ever alienated from the king , but onely averse unto montrose ; with the unjust hatred of whom he was so possest , that he precipitated himself into many unexcusable mistakes ; insomuch as he desired rather al things were lost then that montrose should have the honour of saving them . and now being already● puffed up with an unbeseeming conceit of himself , he was the more exceedingly enraged against him upon the remembrance of those injuries and disgraces he had heretofore throwne upon him ; & that was the chief reason ( as i take it ) that he so often avoided the sight of him . for , besides what we have occasionally delivered , both the father and the sons had put neither few nor small affronts upon the kings vicegerent ; some few of which it will not be out of our way to relate . the great guns which we told you montrose had hid in the ground the last year , they digging them up without his knowledge , carried away in a kinde of triumph , and disposed of them in their owne castles as if they had been spoiles taken from the enemy , and would not restore them upon demand . but those montrose had got in the fights at saint iohan towne and at aberdene ; in the former of which there was never a man present of that family , and in the other lewis gordon and his men fought on the enemies side . besides they so converted unto their own use the gunpowder , and arms , and other necessaries of war , which were gained from the enemy , and only deposited in their castles as in safe and convenient store-houses , that they would never make any restitution of the least part of them when they were desired . moreover aboine upon his returne home after the victory of kilfythe set at liberty the earle of keith lord marshall of scotland , a●d the lord viscount arbuthnot , & other men of quality of the enemies side who were within his custody , without acquainting the governour of the kingdome , and his brother-in-law young drumme ( who by chance was present ) earnestly declaring his dislike of it . vpon what termes he did it , it is uncertain , but this is evident , that ( besides the affront done to the lord gouvernour , and the losse of dunotter castle , which was of great strength and concernment in that warre , & other military advantages they got by it ) the rebells would never have had the boldnesse to fall so cruelly upon the prisoners , if he had but kept them in safe custody . yet more , by his own private authority , he exacted tributes , and customes , and taxes , ( which the governour himself had never done ) upon pretence indeed of maintaining the war , but in truth to far other uses , and to the grievous prejudice of the kings cause . last of all ( which is most to be lamented ) either at the intreaty of the enemy , or for smal sums of money , they had enlarged the prisonners that had been taken in the former battells in the north , and committed to custody in their castles . nor would they permit them to montroses disposall , though being prisoners of warre he had reserved thē for that only purpose , by exchanging them to save the lives of gallant and deserving men . huntley being pricked in his conscience about all these things , was alwayes as afraid of montroses presence as of a pest-house . but montrose for all that , passing by injuries , and laying aside all other matters , bestowed his whole endeavours in the promoting of the kings service . and to that end he was resolved to intrude himself into his company though never so unwelcome , to insinuate into his friendship upon any conditions , to yeeld unto him in all things , and to deny nothing so that he might qualifie huntleys imbitr'd spirit . therefore leaving his forces in their quarters , he posted early in the morning with a few horse unto bogie , and by his un● dream't of approach prevented huntley of any oppo●●tunity of flying or hiding himself . assoon as the● met montrose forgetting all that was past , invited him in smooth and gentle language to associate with him in the war for the safety of the king & kingdome ; & gave him so full satisfaction in all things , that as being at last overcome he seem'd to give him his hand . an● promised that not only all his men but he himse●● would come in person in the head of them , and be● with him with all possible speed . afterward they lai● their heads together concerning the manner of managing the war , and agreed that huntley wa●ting over the spey should make his way on the right hand by the se●● coast of murray , and montrose was to go round abou● on the left hand through strath-spey , which was at tha● time of the year a very tedious and difficult march ; an● so the design was to besiege innernes , a garrison of th● enemies , on both sides : and in the mean time to dra● the earl of seaford either by fairemeans or foule t● their side . that garrison however it might appear●● to be othervvise strong and and vvel fortified , yet 〈◊〉 very ill provided for victuall and other requisites , which in that sharp winter & tempestuous sea coul● hardly be had . and so novv they seem'd to be agree● in all things so that aboine and his brother lewis vvish●● damnatiō to themselves if they did not continue constant in their fidelity & service to montrose to their 〈◊〉 most breath . and the rest of the gordons , the marque●● ses friends , were surprised with incredible joy , & mad as much of their lord and chief , as if he had been returned from the dead . chap xix . montrose supposing huntleys spirit at last pacified , and seriously inclined to joyne with him in the prosecution of the warre , marched with his forces through strath-spey towards innernesse . and the more to a muse the enemy on every side , he lent his cosen patrick graham ( of whose worth i have had often occasion to speak ) and iohan drummond of ball the younger ( a gentleman of approved trust and valour , who had often done excellent service ) with authority and commission unto the athole-men , that if any should offer to strirre in those parts they should neglect no opportunity to suppresse them . the athole-men being encouraged by their authority & example , shewed themselves very ready and chearfull : and they wanted not long an occasion to shew it , for the remainder of the arg ylian party ( either by reason of a generall scarcity of all things in their own country , or being driven out of their country for fear of mac-donell , who was very strong , and threatned their runie ) fell upon the mac-gregories and mac-nabis who sided with montrose . and afterward joyning unto themselves the stuart which inhabite balwidir , and the menises , and other highlanders who still followed arg yles fortune , were reported to make up some fifteen hundred men ; and were ready to invade athole ●nlesse timely opposed . and truly they had already 〈◊〉 red an iland in logh-torchet after they had taken it b● force & pillaged it , & had besieged ample castle whic● lyeth on the side of the river of that name . which a● soon as they had intelligence of , the athole-men , being only seven hundred in all , under the command 〈◊〉 the aforesaid graham & drummond , thought best to oppose them before they brake in into their countrey . ▪ they upon the alarme of the advance of the athole 〈◊〉 raised the siege of ample & retreated toward taich . th● athole-men pursued them hotly , & finde them in battell-aray not farre from kalendar a castle of taich . fo● they had possessed a ford , and manned the bank on the other side ( which was fortified with a steep hill ) with a number of musquetiers . which when the athole-men saw , & perceived that their forces were not so strong as was reported ( for they had not above twelve hundred men ) although they themselves were scarce seven hundred strong , yet being heartned by the gallantry and encouragement of their commanders , they were resolved not to stay to receive the enemies charge , but to charge them . therefore they place a hundred good souldiers over against the enemy , as it were to make good the ford on the other side , & the rest marched away unto another ford near the castle , that they might get over the river there . the arg ylians when they perceived the athole-men so resolute , retreat straight towards sterling . then first of all those athole-men that were left below at the ford , possesse themselves of the bank which the enemy had quit , after that they fall upon the rear of the retreaters , cut off som , scatter others , drive others forward ; & the rest of the athole-men following hard after , put them all to flight . fourscore of them were slain , the rest escaped by flight : who fared the better because that same morning the athole mē had had a foule & ●edious march of ten miles long , & had no horse at all to help thēselves . so they having come of with credit returned home . at that time the rebells held their convention of estates at saint andrews , which they polluted with the innocent and i feare crying bloud of men never sufficiently to be commended . they had amongst their pri●oners some very eminent men , as appeared by the hatred the rebells bare them , ( for they scarce sought the bloud of any but the best of men , but for others of whom they were not so much affraid , they satisfied themselves only with their sequestration & plunder , ) amongst whō were the lord ogleby , sir william spotswood , william murray a noble young gentleman , and andrew gutherey a stout gentleman & an active , whom they determied to put to death in that city , to appease the ghosts of the mē of that province with their bloud of whom it is reported above five thousand had been slaine in severall battells . now , because they intended not to proceed against them by law , but according to their own lusts , they have recourse to their old shifts , & make religion draw the curtaine over their cruelty to which purpose they set up their prophets kant and blaire , & others that were possessed with the same spirit , who ●oar'd out of their pulpits , bloudy oracles before the people ; that god required the bloud of those men , nor could the sins of the nation be otherwise expiated , or the revenge of heaven diverted . and by this art especially they provoked the hearts of the people ( otherwise inclined to pity ) to thinke upon them as accursed things , and own'd and devoted to destruction ; perswading them that they ough● to have no protection of humane lawes , nor any advocate to plead for them whom god himself indited and accus'd . nor did those excellent interpreters and deciders of gods secret will make any scruple to sentence the soules , and bodies , and all of so great delinquents unto hell and damnation . and having by this means blinded the people , it was easie for them who were their accusers & judges both , to condemne the innocent men who were destitute of al patronage and protection . but ogleby , who was not onely the most eminent of them for nobility and powr , but also was a hamilton by his mothers side , and cousen-german to lindsey , pretending himself sick , with much adoe got so much favour as to have his mother , wife , and sisters suffered to visite him in prison . which when he had obtain'd , whilst his keepers in reverence to the honourable ladies , vvithdrevv out of his chamber , he immediately puts on his sisters govvne vvhich she had put off , and vvas dressed in all her attire . she also put on his cap in vvhich he used to lie sick in bed , and lay dovvn instead of her brother . at last many salutations and some tears passing on both sides , at eight of the clock in the night , in the habite and likenesse of his sister he deceived his keepers vvho lighted him out vvith cādles and torches . and immediately departing the city , he took a horse ( vvhich he had laid for him ) vvith tvvo of his followers , and before morning was got out of danger . but when the next day his observant keepers had found out their mistake , arg yle was so unable to containe his wrath and revenge , that he would needs have the noble ladies ( and the more noble for this their compassion and adventure ) brought in question for it . but he could not effect it , for by reason of the equity of their cause , they found much stronger friēds then he could , of the hamiltons and lindsey ; by whose connivence it is conceived by many that all this comedy was acted ; but in a thing that is uncertaine i shall determine nothing . this cleanly conveiance of ogleby out of their hands vext the rebells exceedingly , and made them almost wilde ; whence it happened that they made a quick dispatch of the rest . and the first that suffered was colonell nat●aniel gordon , a man of excellent endowments , both of body and minde . who being near unto his death , bitterly lamented with many tears that the carriage of his youth had been much otherwise then it ought to have been . and when being ready to die , they offered him an instrument to signe , wherein he vvas to testifie his repentance , he subscribed it without any more adoe ; and withall call'd god , and his angels , and the men there present to witnesse , that if any thing was contained in that paper which vvas contrary to the king , his crown , or authority , he utterly disavovved it . then being absolved from the sentence of excommunication under vvhich he lay for adultery long since committed , to the great grief of the beholders he laid down his neck upō the block . a man subject indeed to that fault , but famous for his valour & souldiership both in forraign countries and at home . the next that was brought upon the scaffold yet reeking with the bloud of colonell gordon , was a man worthy of everlasting memory . sir robert spotswood , one rais'd by the favour of king iames & king charles unto great honours , as his singular vertues did merit . king iames made him a knight , & a privy counsellor : king charles advanced him to be lord president of the session , and now but of late principall secretary of scotland . this excellent man ( although his very enemies had nothing to lay to his charge through all his life ) they found guilty of high treason ; which is yet the more to be lamented , because he never bore armes against them ; for his eminency lay in the way of peace not knowing what belong'd to drawing of a sword. this was therefore the onely charge that they laid against him ; that by the kings command he brought his letters patēts unto montrose , whereby he was made vice-roy of the kingdome , and general of the army . neverthelesse he proved at large that he had done nothing in that , but according to the custom of their ancestors , & the lawes of the land . and truly he seemed in his most elegant defence to have given satisfaction to all men except his judges , ( whom the rebells had pick't out from amongst his most malicious enemies that sought his death , ) so that questiōlesse they would never have pronounc'd that dolefull sentence , if they had but the least tincture of iustice or honesty . but to speak the truth , a more powerfull envy then his innocency was able to struggle with undid the good man ; for the earl of lanerick having been heretofore principal secretary of the kingdome of scotland , by his revolt unto the rebells forced the most gracious and bountifull king to the whole family of the hamiltons , to take that office frō so unthankfull a man & bestow it on another : nor was there any one found more worthy thē spotswood to be advanced to so high an honour . and hence happened that great weight of envy & revenge to be thrown upon him , which seeing he was not able to bear out , he was forced to fall under . and now spotswood being about to die , abating nothing of his wonted constancy and gravity , according to the custome of the country made a speech unto the people . but that sacrilegious thief blair , who stood by him upon the scaffold against his wil , fearing the eloquence and undauntednesse of so gallant a man lest the mysteries of rebellion should be discovered ) by one of his gravity and authority ) unto the people , ( who use most attentively to hear , and tenaciously to remember the words of dying men ) procured the provost of the city ( who had been once a servant to spotswoods father ) to stop his mouth . which insolent , and more then ordinary discourtesie , he took no notice of ; but letting his speech unto the people alone , he wholly bestowed himself in devotions and prayers to almighty god. being interrupted againe , & that very importunately , by that busie and troublesom fellow blair , and asked , whether he would not have him and the people to pray for the salvation of his soule ? he made answer , that he desired the prayers of the people , but for his impious prayers which were abominable unto god , he desir'd not to trouble him . and added moreover , that of all the plagues with which the offended majesty of god had scourged that nation , this was much the greatest ( greater then the sword , or fire , or pestilence ) that for the sins of the people , god had sent a lying spirit into the mouth of the prophets . with which free & undeniable saying , blaire finding himself galled grew so extremely in passion , that he could not hold from scurrilous & contumelious language against his father who had beē long dead , & against himself who was now a dying ; aproving himself a fine preacher of christian patience & longanimity the while . but all these things spotswood having his minde fixed upon higher matters , passed by with silence and unmoved . at last being undaunted , & shewing no alteration neither in his voyce nor countenance , when he laid down his neck to the fatal stroke , these were his last words , mercifull iesu , gather my soule unto thy saints and martyrs who have run before me in this race . and certainly seeing martyrdome may be undergone not only for the cōfession of our faith , but for any vertue by which holy men make their faith manifest ; there is no doubt but he hath received that crown . and this was the end ( a dolefull end indeed in regard of us , but a joyfull and honourable one in him , ) of a man admirable for his knowledge of things divine and humane ; for his skill in the tongues , hebrew , chaldee , syriack , arabick , besides the western languages ; for his knowledge in history , law , & politiques ; the honour and ornament of his country and our age for the integrity of his life , for his fdelity , for his iustice , for his constancy ; a man of an even temper and ever agreeing with himself ; whose youth had no need to be ashamed of his child-hood , nor his riper years of his youth ; a severe observer of the old● fashion'd pie●y with all his soule , & yet one that was no vain & i●perstitious profes●our of it before others ; a man easie to be made a friend , & very hard to be mad an enemy , and who being now dead was exceedingly lamented evē by many covenanters . his breath●esse , body hugh scrimiger once his fathers se●vant took care to bring fo●th , as the times would permit , with a private funerall . nor was he long able to bear so great a sorrow & losse ; for after a few dayes spying that bloudy scaffold not yet removed out of the place , immediately he fell into a svvoon , and being carried home by his servants and neighbours , died at his very door . lastly , they give unto spotswood another companion in death , andrew gutherey son unto the most deserving bishop of murray , and hated the more by the rebe●s for that . a youth as well valiant in battell , as constant in suffering and contemning death . he also vvas threatned & rail'd at by the same blaire , but answered , that no greater honour could have be done him , then to be put to an honest death in the behalfe of so good a king , and so just a cause ; which those that were present should see he embraced without fear , and perhaps another generation would not report without praise . for his sins he humbly begged mercy a●d forgivenesse at the hands of his most gracious lordgod ; but for that for which he stood there condemned , he was not much troubled . after this manner died with constancy and courage a man who if almighty god had so thought fit had beē worthy of a longer life . and that now they might put the last scene to a tragedy of which most part was acted , after two dayes breathing they brought forth william murray , brother to the earl of tullibardin , a young gentlemen , to the same place . and truly every man much admired , that his brother being in great favour & esteem amongst the covenanters , had not interceded for the life and safety of his own onely brother . some imputed it to his floth , others to his covetounesse , as gaping after his brothers estate , others to his stupid & superstitious zeale to the cause ; but even all , the very covenanters themselves , condemned his silence in such a case as dishonourable , and mis-becoming a noble spirit . but the youth himself , being not above nineteen years old , purchased unto himself everlasting renovvn with posterity for so honest and honourable an end . amongst those few-things which he spake to the people , those that heard him told me these words , which he spake with a higher voyce then the rest ; account ( o my countrimen ) that a new and high addition of honour is this day atcheived to the house of tullibardin and the whole nation of the murrays , that a young man descended of that ancient stock , willingly and chearfully delivered up his innocent soule ( as unto men ) in the very flower of his youth , for his king , the father of his country , and the most munificent patron of our family . nor let my most honoured mother , my dear sisters , my kindred , or any of my friends be sorry for the shortnesse of my life , which is abundantly recompenced with the honourablenesse of my death . pray for my soule , and god be with you . chap. xx. the death of his friends troubled montrose exceedingly ; as it had reason ; but yet it was not able to break or shake his firm and setled resolution . nor did his noble and more then ordinarily elevated spirit ever give greater evidences of it self then now . for there were many who being enraged with the unworthy murder of their friends egg'd him on being already sufficiently discontended , to a present revenge . and whiles they too much favoured their grief ( although it wast just ) and seem'd to desire nothing but was fit , to wit , to render them like for like , they wearied out the generall with their many , and troublesome , and unseasonable complaints . for they must needs be angry , that their companions , their friends , their kindred , noble and gallant gentlemen , vvel deserving of their king , their country , and the generall himself , should be murther'd contrary to their faith promised them , the custome of vvar , the law of the land , of nations , and of nature , and all unreveng'd : and on the other side such rebells as had been taken by him to be kept rather as in their friends houses then in prisons , to rejoyce , to triumph , tolaugh at their sorrow : and therefore they humbly desired such prisoners might be tryed as malefactors ; nor would the enemy be otherwise frighted from their unheard of cruelty , nor the minds of his own men otherwise satisfied and raised up . whom he entertained with a courteous speech , commended them for the love they bare their friēds , & told thē , that the bloud of those honourable and innocent subjects ought to be reveng'd endeed , but such a way as became honest and valiant men ; not by basenesse and mischief as the rebells doe , but by true valour , in a soldier-like way . it concerned them so to tame , as not to imitate the wickednesse of their enemies . nor , if they considered matters well , was it conscience , that those that were prisoners with them , and so could not be accessary unto the murther of their frinds , should suffer for those sins of which they were innocent . the faith that they had passed uuto them was a most sacred things , and to be kept inviolate even by enemies . vvhy should they make themselves guilty of that which they so much abhorred in their enemies ? the time would come when they must give a severe account of it 〈◊〉 the ●ost righte●us god , and to his vice-gerent the king. in the meane time ( saith he ) let them set a price upon our heads , let them hire assassines , let them send in their instruments amongst us to murther us , let them make promises and breake them , yet they shall never effect that we shall contend with them in an emulation which shall be worse , or any otherwise then upon honourable and virtuous termes . now huntley , who intended nothing lesse thē what he promised montrose before his face , having passed over the spey , and entred into murray , trifled away his time , and wasted his strength without either honour or profit , a good way off innernesse . for giving his minde too much to prey and spoile , after he had wasted the country ; he heard a flying report that the inhabitants had hid their gold and silver , and the best of their stuffe in certaine 〈◊〉 and obscure castles . which willes he assaults in vaine , and could neither by commands , nor intreaties be taken off from his resolution , the enemy sending in provision on that side which he had undertaken to block up , relived innernesse vvith all things that they wanted . which if he had hindered , as he undertook unto montrose , the garrison vvould have been shortly forced to yeeld . and montrose having now received intelligence that major generall middelton was come with six hundred horse and eight hundred foot as far as aberdene , and was like to lay waste huntleys and the gordons country , sent colonell william stuart unto huntley to entreat him to return again unto the siege of innernesse according to his engagement : or if he did not aprove so well of that , because the enemy was advanced so near his territories , he should perswade him to joyne his forces with his , and to march immediately towards the enemy , whom he doubted not with an easie hazard to overthrow . to which he answered scornfully , that he vvould look to his ovvn businesse himself , nor did he need the help and assistance of montrose to drive the enemy out of his borders . at last after ten weeks spent in the siege of a small inconsiderable castle , and the losse of all the forvvardest of his men , he was forced vvith dishonour to raise the siege , when he vvas never the nearer . and in contempt not so much of montrose , as of the kings majesty , he retreated to the spey without the consent or knowledge of the vice-roy : giving thereby a very bad example to all men , vvho began to come in thick and three-fold with great eargernesse unto the kings party . amongst whom the chiefest for vvealth & povver , and multitudes of followers & dependants were the earl of seaford , the lord rose , and from the furthest ilands sir iames mac-donell , chief of a most povverful and ancient family in the highlands ; macklen also & glenger the captain of the mac-renalds , ( & many more ) who were some of them already in montroses army with their forces , others had sent for theirs . and by this means before the end of march , montrose might have fallē down into the low-lands with a farre greater army then ever the scots produc'd in the memory of man. but the unexpected revolt of so great a personage did not lesse encourage the rebells to persevere in their course , then scandalize and discourage honest and loyall hearts . whence it happened that those whose men were already come up to the army began to draw off , & steal away privately , and others to make excuses for their delay . all which put together made montrose to cast about another way . for he resolved ( seeing he could doe no good with vain , light , wavering and inconstant men by gentlenesse & good offices ) to reduce thē to his obediēce by his authority backed vvith the strength of armes and severe penalties ; and to that end to force all the highlanders and north countrimen , to take up armes , by marching in amongst thē with a confiding party of good souldiers . for he vvel knew that many governours & leading men in their respective countries , and chiefs of septs were of his side unto whom this course would be very acceptable . nor did he question but the chief and most powerfull of the gordons being weary of their lords miscarriage , would doe him the best service they could if need was , though it ran counter unto huntleys designe . however he was resolved to use al fair means , if that would doe , before he would put them to the cost of that last and sharpest remedy . but because inn●rnesse was the most considerable garrison of all the north , and the haven there most commodious for intertaining forraigne forces , he desired nothing more then to reduce that : therefore he surrounded it with the forces he had . for the enemies army under the command of middelton was above fourscore miles off , & huntley and the gordons half way between them in a body . therefore montrose dealt again with huntley to perswade him not to lose his time , but ( as they had agreed , to joyne with him in the siege of innernesse ; or at least to hover about the spey , over which the enemy was to passe , & to hinder their passage if they advanced to raise the siege ; and if they chanced to get over to joyn their forces together and fight thē . to all which he answered so disdainfully , that the vice-roy thought it hig time to despair of any good frō him , and conceived himself engaged to look better to himself lest at last he should betray him . so that putting no confidēce in huntley , he sent back three troops of horse to lie at the fords of the spey , to observe the motiō of the enemy ; & if they came , to send him often & certain intelligence . and they quartering thēselves in the most advantageous places for scouting were carefull enough to observe his commands ; untill lewes gordon , huntleys son , who then commanded the castle of lothes , plaid a more shamefull prank then any he ever did before . he assured those captains of horse whom montrose had set to guard the fords of the spey , that the enemy lay very far off and intended nothing lesse then to passe that river & raise the siege ; & therefore he perswaded thē ( who took him for a most faithful friend ) to let alone their needlesse guards ( to which they had been appointed ) and to come to his castle to refresh themselves ; and with many complements invited them to a feast which he had provided for thē● and they had no more wit then to trust him and go . he entertained them with a huge deal of courtesie , & besides very dainty chear plyed them with good sto●● of wine and strong waters . and with a great deal of jollity and ceremonious courtesie , detain'd them so long till middelton with a great army of horse and foot had got over the spey , and had gotten footing in murray . which assoō as he had notice of , he at length dismist them , and that with these jeering termes ; go● now to your generall montrose , who will have a sharper bo●● now then he had at selkirk meane time the enemy march straight and eagerly towards montrose , & those horse getting past them with much ado , came not much before them to innernesse , insomuch as they seem'd to be but the van of the enemy , and middeltons whole ▪ army followed within cannon shot . but , as the providence of god would have it , montrose had notice of their approach another way and having drawn off his forces a little way from the town had got them al into a body . and when he perceiv'd the enemy to be much too strong for him in horse , avoiding the plain , he retreated with his men beyond the nesse . the enemy falling upon his rear , and being handsomly repul●sed , kept thēselves also close . the losse on both sid's was very little , and a most equall . montrose , passed by bewly into rosse , whither the enemy pursued him , that taking him in the champain ground which was disadvantageous to him , they might compel him to fight whether he would or no. but besides tha● the enemy was much stronger then he , the country people being faithlesse & rotten , and seafords new raised men running a way by companies from their colours , moved him with all the speed he could to save himself from the enemies horse . therefore passing by logh-nesse , and through strath-glasse , & harrage , he advanced unto the bank of the spey . montrose was resolved to proceed against huntley as a publick enemy , unlesse he repented ; but would try all fair means first , to see whether it was possible to bring him into a better minde . to which end taking with him only one troop of horse for his life-guard , in al speed he rid twenty miles unto him to his castle at bogy . and as he was on his way , he sent one before to give him notice of his approach ; & to tell him that he came thither alone & without his forces , to no other end then then to kisse his hand , and to be advised by him concerning such things as concerned the kings service ; & he was the more earnest to speak with him , because he had newly received letters from the king from oxford , which he would let him see . but huntley being affrighted with the first news of montroses approach , was so averse frō the presence of so gallant a mā that in a trice he leapt on horse-back , & with one man along with him , ran a way any way he car'd not whither ; nor vouchsafed the kings viceroy the favour of a conference or entertainment . which assoon as montrose understood , he returned back those twenty miles the same day being the 27 of may ; and was as carefull as he could possibly to conceale this frovvasrdnesse & unrulinesse of huntleys , lest it should be a bad president . themselves and others of huntleys friends , being most of them very honest men and complete gentlemen , told all with a great deal of indignation , and detestatiō of huntley ; that by that means they might acquit thēselves from the aspersion of so unworthy an act . nor can one easily say how great influence that mans example had upon other northern men : the earl of seaford , who had beē but lately , & with much adoe reconciled to the kings side , was conceived to begin to falter ; and some say that being still unsetled , he had then underhand dealings for the making of his peace with the covenanters , which truly i can hardly believe . and alexander mac-donell himself , pretending i know not what , although he had had often and serious invitation , made nothing but sleevelesse excuses and put-offs from day to day . which carriage of his gave occasion of strange reports of him , as if he , although he was a bitter enemy 〈◊〉 arg yle , yet had great correspondence with , and relations unto the hameltons ; and therefore staid at home , and looked only upon the preservation of the mac-donells , not medling with publique affaires . which whē montrose considered , he resolved without further delay to make his progresse over all the north country and highlands with a considerable party , to list souldiers , to encourage the well disposed , to reduce those that were refractory by the severity of the lawes & condigne punishment ; & to deal with them as men use to do with , sick children make them take physick whether they wil or no. and he wanted not fitting instrumnets to promore this designe , who had earnestly labored with him to take that course . while these things passed at innernesse , huntley , lest he should be thought never to have done any thing by his own conduct without the assistance of montrose , besieged and took in aberdene , ( which middleton kept with five hundred men ) but with more losse to huntley himself then to the enemy . for , besides the losse of many valiant souldiers , he gave his highlanders leave to pillage the city . but what fault those poore innocent aberdene-mē had made either against the king or huntley let them judge , who know that almost all of them were eminent and observed for their loyalty . but for the enemy whō he took in armes , who were both many , and of very good account amongst their own party , he dismist them freely without any conditions , and look't fawningly upon them , rather like a petitioner then a conquerour . nor vvhen he had many colonels , knights , and others of quality ( who by chance were found in aberdene ) in his hands , did he so much as think of exchanging any one of his own friends for them , many of whom were prisoners either in scotland or england . but this was his humour , being alwayes more ready to doe good for his enemies then his friends . chap. xxi . montrose being busie about his designe , on the last of may there came unto him a herald with cōmands from the king , who by i know not what misfortune had cast himself upon the scotch covenanters army at newcastle ) whereby he was required forth with to lay dovvn his armes and disband , and to depart into france , and there to waite his majesties further pleasure . he being astonished with this unexpected message , bitterly bewailed the sad condition of the king , that had forced him to cast himself upon the mercy of his most deadly enemies . and doubted not but that that command which was given him for disbanding was extorted from him by the craft , or force , or threats of the rebells into whose hands he had fallen . but what should he do in that case ? if he obeyed he must give over the estates of his friends to plunder & their lives to death ; & if he stood in arms against the kings commad , he should be guilty of that crime he undertook to scourge in others , rebellion . and especially he was afraid lest the rebels should put his actions upon the kings account , & use him the worse for them , seeing they had him in their power : of which the king had given him a fair hint in his letter . therefore montrose resolved to call together all the noblemen , and chiefs of septs , & knights , & others of quality that were of his side ; that a matter of that consequence which concern'd them all might be discust by generall consent . to which end , after he had received so many injuries from him , he dispatcheth sir iohn hurrey and sir iohn innes , being men of greatest account in his army , & ( as he conceived ) most in huntleys favour , unto him to desire him to be present at that so serious consultation , & referr'd unto him the appointment of the time and place . and to tell him moreover , that montrose was willing to come to his castle if he thought fit . huntley answer'd ; that the king had sent him letters also to the same effect , which he was resolved to obey ; that the kings commands were of that nature as not to admit of second thoughts and after them nothing was left for consultation . when they replyed , that that likely was montroses opinion too , and that he was as ready as any other to give obedience to the kings commands , if they were not forced ; however it concern'd them all to provide in time for the safety of them and theirs . and that the credit aud authority of what they resolved upon would be greater , even in the opinion of the enemies themselves , if they made a joynt and unanimous resolution . he made no other answer then that he had resolved for himself , and would have nothing to doe with any body else . montrose there fore sends his answer to the king by letters , wherein he was very inquisitive of the condition he was in amongst the covenanters , and whether he conceiv'd himself safe in their hands ? and also whether his service could be beneficiall unto him any further ? and , if he was fully determin'd to have that army disbanded which fought for him ( whiles the enemy in both kingdomes were in a military posture , and crow'd over them more & more ) what course should be taken for the security of the lives and fortunes of his most gallant and faithfull subjects , who had spent their bloud and all that was deare unto them for his sake ? for it was a lamentable case if so excellent m●n should be left to the mercy of them that had none , not only to be undone but to be murthered . to this he received no open answer , besides some articles which the messenger brought which were signed by the rebells , with wich montrose was to be content but he in great anger rejected those conditions which the enemy had made , being so unconsionable as they were ; and not vouchsafing so much as to treat with the enemy , sent back the bearer to the king , professing that as he had not taken up armes but by the kings commission , so he would have no condition prescribed him to lay them down by any mortall man but the king himself . therefore he humbly besought the king ( if he thought it fit that he should disband his army ) that he would not think much to make and signe the conditions himself ; to which , though they prov'd perhaps very harsh , he promised absolutely to submit , but he scorn'd the commands of any one else whosoever they were . the messenger returning , at last brought with him articles signed by the kings hand , with injunctions now the third time , wherein he was required to disband without further delay ; and the same messenger charged him in the kings name , under pain of high treason , to give obedience forth with unto the kings command . and besides his majesties pleasure , there was another thing which hastened him which was , that those that had engaged with him had most of thē p●ivately and by their friends laboured to make their peace with the rebells ; which was evidently known by good tokens of the earl of seaford and others . as for huntley & aboine they did not only professe themselves open enemies to montrose , but also threatned to fall upon him by force of armes , if he did not immedaitely submit to the kings authority . and antrim being newly arrived out of ireland in the highlāds without either men or arms busied himself to draw away all the highlanders as his kindred and allies to himself from montroses army , whom in scorn he call'd the governour of the low-lands making by this means an unseasonable fraction , and apernicious one to his friends in those parts . all which montrose having well considered , he was forced according to the kings command to disband his army . and truly that was amost sad day , in which having solemnly prais'd and encourag'd his souldies ( as well as the occasion permitted ) he took his leave of them . for although he bid thē to be of good comfort however , and told them he saw some day-light of a blessed peace , and that he did as much service to the king by his present submission , as he had done before by his martiall atchievements . yet notwithstanding they all conceiv'd that that was the last day of the kings authority in scotland , and all of thē beleeved for certaine , that those commands from the king were wrested from him upon the apprehension of greater dangers to his person if he had not given them . and although some provision had been made by articles in writing for their indempnity , yet they had rather have undergone the worst that could fall , then survive idle & unserviceable spectators of the miserable condition of their dearest king. and it was no little vexation to those generous spirits , to think what an unworthy opinion forraign nations and their own posterity must needs have of them , as if all the scottish nation had been unanimously guilty of rebellion & desertion of so good a king. besides , their sorrow was much augmented with the consideration that their generall , who was most valiant , most successefull , and therefore most beloved , should be taken off so unhappily from the king , from his country , from themselves , and all good men . so that his souldiers falling down at his feet , entreated him with tears in their eyes , that seeing the safety of the kings person depended so much upon it , and he must of necessity depart the kingdom , he would be pleased to take them along with him into what part of the world soever he went. professing their readinesse to live and fight any where under his command , and ( if god would have it so ) to die too . and truly many of them were resolved , though to the certain hazard of their lives and estates , to follow him even against his will and knowledge , and to offer him that service in an unknown land that they were able to afford him no longer in their miserable country . by the articles to which the king had consented according to the desires of the covenanters it was especially provided , that montrose should depart scotland before the first of september , and that they should finde him shipping , vvith provision and all things necessary vvhen he went. these things were transacted the first of august , and a port in angus designed for montrose whither they were to send shipping from whence he vvas to imbark . and montrose to prevent and remove all occasions of exception or suspition , being accompanied only with his own servants & a very few friēds , betook himself thither , and waited for the shipping . about this time his most implacable enemies set abroad crafty & feigned reports by their fit instruments wherein they confidently averred , that the states of the kingdome ( as they call'd themselves ) would by no means suffer that so gallant a subject should be banished the country : for they knew not how great need they might have of a man of his worth , especially if the king who had cast himself freely upon the affections of the scots could not get any right of the english , but should be put to seek it by force and armes ; and if it came to that , no age had afforded a better generall then montrose . and truly that was the earnest desire and expectation of most men , who were not able to dive into the bottom of the rebels plots , but they had farre other designes in hand , and another game to play . for what their thoughts were tovvards the king , the sad event made too manifest , and for montrose , they laid very unconscionable & unworthy traps to catch him . for they did this , that if they could flatter him up with such vain hopes , & entice him to stay in the kingdome beyond his time appointed , they might take hold of him upon the articles , & cut him of with more credit . august vvas almost spent and no news at all vvas to be had about the shipping or safe conduct : therefore montrose , ( although he was resolved to be gone by the day the king had limited ) that he might the more fully grope the intentions of the covenanters , gave leave to some of his friends to deale with them for further time . but when they brought him nought but uncertain & doubtfull answers , he had reason to think they intended nothing but to delude & intrap him . besides ( vvhich made his suspition so much the greater ) there came a ship upon the very last day allowed for his stay ( to wit , on the last of august ) into the haven of montrose . the master of it was not only a stranger to him , but a most rude and violent abettor of the rebels ; the sea-men and souldiers men of the same temper , malicious dogged , & ill-condition'd , the ship it self neither victualled , nor fit to goe to sea. so that vvhen montrose shew'd himself ready to depart , and bad them hoise their sailes assoon as they could , the master of the ship told him that he must have some dayes allowed him to pitch and rigge his ship , before he durst aduenture himself to the winde and vvaves . and then making great brags of himself and his ship , he drew forth a commission vvhich the covenanters had given him , vvherein he vvas required to transport the passengers to certain places assigned by themselves , and to carry no body else . moreover there lay great english ships and men of war every day in sight about the month of the river of e●k ( vvhich makes the haven of montrose ) attending there in favour of the rebels for their much desired booty , that by no means he might escape their hands . but montrose had sufficient notice of these treacheries , and wanted not some friends of the covenanters themselves , who informed him by frequent messages that the sea was sore pester'd with the english navy , and he could not escape safely either into france or the low-countries ; that the haven was upon the matter block't up in which he was to take shipping , and therefore it was very perillous for him to go to sea ; that his enemies look't for nothing else , then that either by making too long stay in his own country he should fall into the hands of the scottish covenanters , or by going he should be surprised unarm'd & unawares by the english rebells . montroses friends that were with him were of opinion that it was best for him in so apparant a danger to return into the highlands , & draw his men together again conceiving that he had better trust the fortune of war then so perfidious a peace . but be forbore to take that course , especially because of his most ardent affection to the king : for he was assured if the war brake forth again , it would be laid upon the king though undeservedly , and so he should bring his person into present danger perhaps as much as his life was worth . therefore being straightned on every side , one vvay vvith treachery plotted against his ovvne , another against the kings anointed head , he determined with an unalterable resolution to bearall the burden upon his own shoulders . and therefore he vvithdrevv himself not out of rashnesse as if he despair'd of safety at the worst , but out of sage & discreet deliberation . for when he had smelt out the plots of the rebels before-hand , he had sent some a good while agoe to search diligently the havens in the north , and if they chanced to finde any outlandish-vessell to agree with the master for the fraught , and to appoint him to be ready to put to sea at such a day , and to transport the passengers ( which should be ready with him ) by the help of god into norway . by good fortune there was found in the haven of stanhyve a small bark of bergen in norway , and the master was soon agreed with , for he was very glad of the opportunity , having hopes for getting . thither montrose sent away sir iohn hurrey iohn drummond of ball henry graham his brother , iohn spotswoad nephew to that great sir robert , iohn lily , a captain of approved skill and courage , patrick melvin such another , george wischeart docter of divinity , david guttherey a stout young gentleman , pardus lasound a french-man , once a servant to the noble lord gordon , after wards entertained for his masters sake by montrose himself , one rodolph a german an honest & trusty young man ; & a few servants more . and these he had pick't out to carty a long with him whithersoever he vvent , for this reason especially , because he knevv the rebels to be so maliciously bent against most of them then they could not be safe for never so little a vvhile in that country . and they on the third of september having a good vvinde put forth to sea for norway ; and the same evening montrose himself accompanied only with one iames wood a worthy preacher by a small cock-boat got into a bark which lay at anchot without the haven of montrose ; and being clad in a course suit the lord and patron passed for his chaplains servant . this was in the year of our lord 1646. & the 34. year of his age . finis . a proclamation, for restoring the goods of such persons as were robbed, and taken away from them in the late tumults. scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) 1688 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05680 wing s1905 estc r183533 52615088 ocm 52615088 176115 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05680) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 176115) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2762:58) a proclamation, for restoring the goods of such persons as were robbed, and taken away from them in the late tumults. scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh, : anno dom. 1688. title vignette: royal seal with initials j r. caption title. initial letter. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng reparation -scotland -early works to 1800. victims of crimes -legal status, laws, etc. -scotland -early works to 1800. robbery -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -revolution of 1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2008-08 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion j r diev et mon droit honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , for restoring the goods of such persons as were robbed , and taken away from them in the late tumults . iames , by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith ; to macers of our privy council , and messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as the robbing and taking away of goods , belonging to any ot his majesties subjects , whatever be their perswasion , contrary to , and inconsistent with the laws of this , and all other well governed nations ; and being truly informed , that several privat persons goods have been lately robbed , and taken away , they do therefore command and require the magistrats of edinburgh , and sheriffs of mid-lothian , and all other magistrats , sheriffs , baillies of regalities , baillies or bailliaries , and all other his majesties officers of law , within their respective jurisdictions , to seize and secure all goods , already taken , or to be taken after that manner , until by a process , or tryal , the owners be known , to the effect their goods may be restored to them : certifying all such who shall keep , or detain any of the saids goods , they shall be looked upon , and pursued as thieves , and resetters of thift , and shall be punished conform to the laws made thereanent accordingly ; and ordain these presents to be forthwith published , at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and other places needful , that none pretend ignorance . given under our signet at edinburgh , the 14th day of december , 1688. and of our reign the fourth year . per actum dominorum sti. concilii . col : m ckenzie . cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom , 1688. terrible nevves from scotland: or, a true declaration of the late councell of the kingdome of scotland, and how far they have proceeded in the raysing of their forces with an exact representation of their genealogies, lives, and manners, / written, by a gentleman imployed in the service for the publique, and dedicated to the commissioners of scotland. perfect description of the people and country of scotland weldon, anthony, sir, d. 1649? this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a96177 of text r201816 in the english short title catalog (thomason e402_7). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 14 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 5 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a96177 wing w1277ac thomason e402_7 estc r201816 99862309 99862309 114463 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a96177) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 114463) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 64:e402[7]) terrible nevves from scotland: or, a true declaration of the late councell of the kingdome of scotland, and how far they have proceeded in the raysing of their forces with an exact representation of their genealogies, lives, and manners, / written, by a gentleman imployed in the service for the publique, and dedicated to the commissioners of scotland. perfect description of the people and country of scotland weldon, anthony, sir, d. 1649? [2], 6 p. printed for t.w., london : 1647. reproduction of the original in the british library. an enlarged edition of: a perfect description of the people and country of scotland. annotation on thomason copy: "aug: 16". eng great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a96177 r201816 (thomason e402_7). civilwar no terrible nevves from scotland: or, a true declaration of the late councell of the kingdome of scotland,: and how far they have proceeded in weldon, anthony, sir 1647 2543 49 0 0 0 0 0 193 f the rate of 193 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the f category of texts with 100 or more defects per 10,000 words. 2007-02 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-02 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-07 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-07 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion terrible nevves from scotland : or , a true declaration of the late councell of the kingdome of scotland , and how far they have proceeded in the raysing of their forces with an exact representation of their genealogies , lives , and manners , written , by a gentleman imployed in the service for the publique , and dedicated to the commissioners of scotland . london , printed for t. w. 1647. a true declaration of the late councell of the kingdome of scotland . having had the fortune ( honour i will not say ) to be imployed in weighty affaires of the publick , between this my native kingdome of england , and the neighbour kingdome of scotland , and collecting from time to time with the greatest industry i could , the severall most materiall passages observable , during the time of my sad employment , at last seeing no end of the case i undertooke , i composed my selfe to a retired life and began to reflect upon the diary of my last five yeares action , which now seemes to me as one in a continued trance , and often brings to my mind that of the psalmist , man walketh in a vaine shaddow , and disquieteth himselfe in vain . and now as the stopping of me in that careere , was a signe of gods speciall favour unto me , so i now publish this relation in testimony of my thankfulnesse and repentance . first , for the country i must confesse it is to good for those that possesse it , and too bad for those that will be at charge to conquer it ; the ayre might be wholsome but for the stinking people that inhabit it , , the ground might be made fruitfull , had they wit to measure it ; their beasts are generally small , their weomen onely accepted , of which sort the world i thinke hath not greater ; there is store of fowle , fowle houses , fowle linnen , fowle d●shes , and pots , fowle napkins and trenchers , fowle sheets and shirts , with which sort of fowle they have ben forced to fare as the children of israel did with their fowle in the wildernesse . they have good store of fish , and good for them that can eate it raw ; for if it but once come in their hands , it is presently worse then if it were three daies old ; for their butter and cheese i l'e not medle with them at this time , nor no man else at any time that loves his life . they ha ve great store of deare also , but so farre from the places i have seene , that i had rather beleeve it then go to disprove it : all the deare i meet withall , was deare lodging , deare horse meate , deare tobacco , and english beere , as for fruit , for their grandmother eves sake they never planted any , and for other trees had christ beene betrayed in this land as doubtlesse he should have beene , had he come a stranger amongst them , iudas had sooner found the grace of repentance then a tree to hang himself on . they have many h●lls wherein they say is much treasure , but they have none of it ; nature hath onely discovered to them some mines of coales to shew to what end she created them , i se little grasse but in pottage , & no flowers but such as ( modesty forbids me to name ) the thistle was not given them for naught ; for it is the fairest flower in the garden : the word hay is heathen greek to them , neither man nor beast knowes what it means , corn is reasonable plentifull at this time for since they heard of the kings coming , it ha●h beene as unlawfull for the common people to eat wheat , as it was in old time for any bu● priests to eat shewbread : they prayed much for his coming , and fasted longer for his welfare , all his followers was welcome but the guard , those they said were like ph●roes leane kine , and threaten a dearth where they come : they would perswade footmen that oaten cakes would make them long winded , and the children of the chappell they have brought to eate them for the maintenance of their voyces : they said our cookes were too sawcy , and for groomes and coachmen they gave their horses no worse then they might be content to eat themselves : they commend the brave minds of pentinors , and the gentlemen of the chamber , that chuse rather to go to tavernes , then to be alwayes eating of the kings provisions ; as likewise the pages and yeomen of the buttery , for their retirednesse and silence , in that they will have 20 knackes , before they will answer one : they perswade the trumpeters , that fasting is good for men of their quality ; for emptinesse causeth wind , and wind maketh the trumpet sound the bringing in of harralds they thinke was a needlesse charge , they all know their pedegres well enough , and the harbingers might have been spared since they brought so many beds with them , and of two evils since the least is to be chosen , they wisht that the beds might be left with them , and the poore harbingers do their office as they returne . his hangings they desire may remai●e here as relinques to put them in mind of his majestie , and they promised to despence with the wodden images ; but for his graven ones in his new beautified chappel ▪ they threaten to pull them down soone after his departure , and make of them a burnt off●ring , to appease the indignation ; they conceive the almighty bears them for suffering such idolatry to enter into the country : the organs may sound because they say they have some affinity with bagg-pipes , the skiper that brought the singing men with ●heir papisticall vestiments , complaines that he hath been much troubled ever since with a singing in his head ; for remedy whereof the parson of the parish hath perswaded him to sell that prophane vessell , and to destribute the mony among the frighted brethren ; for his majesties entertainment , he was received into the parish of edenburgh , for a city i cannot call it , with a great shout and cry , but no showes of charge ; for pagans they hold idolatrous things , and not fit to be received in so reformed a place . from the castle they gave him some peeces of ordnance which surely he gave them since he was king of england , and at the entrance of the towne the presented him with a goulden bason , which was carryed before him on mens shoulders to his palace , from whence i thinke it came . they protested if christ came from heaven , he could not have beene much welcomer , which i beleeve . since his majesty came but to summon them to parliament , and christ would have summoned them to judgment which they love not to heare of , he was conveyed by the yorkers of the town , who w●re about 200 halbert bearers , who will rue it in respect of the charge to the cross● , and so the high church , where the onely bell they had , stood on tiptoe to behold his faire fac● , where i must entreate you to stay for an houre , i confesse i left him . to report the speeches made for his meaner entertainment would be to tedious for you ▪ as the sermon was for those that were constrained to indure it out . after the preachment he was conducted to his palace , which i forbeare to speak of , but it is a place sanctfied to his devine majesty , onely i wish it had been well walled for my friends sakes that waited on him , to bring the major back who all the while attended on his maiesty , were to much to amplyfie my story , the gentlemen lodged 2 staires high , i will onely faithfully and briefly spake of the people , according to their degrees ; for the lords spituall they may be well so called , being neither fish nor flesh , but what it sh●ll please their earthly god the king to make them . obedience they hold to be better then sacrifice , making a mocke of martyrdome , by saying christ dyed for them , and not they for him : they will rather subscribe then surrender , or rather dispence with small things then trouble themselves with great imputations , they will rather acknowledge the king to be their head , then want where-with to pomper their bodies : they have taken great pain●s and trouble 〈◊〉 compasse their bishopticks , and they will leave them for a trifle ; for the deacons whose desert will not advance them ▪ all they study is to discharge them as have got the least degree before them . and because they cannot write bishop they proclaime they never heard of any in the scriptures ; they spake of deacons and elders , but not a word of deacons and bishops , their words are full of detraction , their sermons nothing but rayling , and their conclusion● herresies and treasons , that religion they have i confesse is above my reach , and god willing i will never stretch for it ; they christen without the crosse , and marry without a ring , receive thk sacrament without reverence , die without repentance , and bury without divine service . they keep no holy-daies nor acknowledge no saint but st. andrew , who say they got that honour by presenting christ with an eaten cake after his 40 daies fast . they say likewise that he that translated the english bible was the son of some malter , because he spake of a miracle done by barley loaves , where●s they le sware tw●s done by many thousands . they use no prayer at all , for they say it is needles , god knows their wants , without their pratling , what he doth h● doth freely , sabbath daies exercise is a preaching in the forenoonc to heare the law , and to the cragg & clifts in the afternoone to louze themselves ; they hold their nose if you speak of a beare-baiting and stop their eares if you take of a play , fornic●tion they hold but a pastime wherin mens abilities are approved , and the fertility of a woman discovered ; adultry they shake the head at , theft they raile at , murther wink at , and bl●sp●emy they laugh at , they thinke it impossible to loose the way to heaven if they can but leave rome behind , to be opposite to the pope is to be present with god , to conclude , i am verily perswaded if god and his angels should come downe in white garments , they would 〈…〉 e aw●y and cry out the children of the chappel are come again , to meete us , let us fly from the abom●nation of th●se boyes , and hide us in the wilderness● ▪ for the lords temporall , and temporizing lords and gentlemen if i were apt to spea● of any i would not say much of them , onely i must tell them they are scottishmen , for as soone as they fall from the breasts of the beasts their mother , their carefull siers posts then away for france , where as they passe the sea , sucks from them that which they suckt from their rude dames : there they gather new flesh , new bloud , new maners , there they learne to speak , to stand , to congie with weomen , and to complement with men , to put on their cloaths , and to returne them into the country to ware them : they have spared no cost to honour the king , no complementall courtisie to welcome country men ▪ there followers are there fellow● ▪ their vvives their slaves , their horses their masters , and their svvords their iudges ▪ therefore there are but few lawyers , and those n●t rich : their parliament holds but three dai●s , their statutes 3 lives , and are determined in 3 words , the vvonders of the buttery are these , the lord chancellour is beloved , the mr. of the roules well spoken of , the vvhole councell who are iudges in all causes free from suspition of corruption the land though it be mountanous affords no monsters but vveomen ▪ of vvhich the countesses and ladies are ●ept in cages like our bore franks , through vvhich peeping sometimes to catch the ayre , vve are almost frghted at the sight of them . the greatest madnes among the men is ●●●o●●ie , making such solicitous care to ●eep th●t vvhich none have but 2 of their sences vvould seeke to take ●rom them . the ladies are of opinion that susanna could not be chast because she bathed often : pride is a thing breed in their bones and their flesh naturally abhorreth cleanlinesse , their breath commonly stinketh of pottage , their linn●n of pisse their hands of pigs turds , their vvhole body of svveat and their splay feet ever offend , notvvithstanding their stocks to be chained in marriage vvith one of them , vveare to be tied to a dead carcasse and cast into a stin●ing ditch . fucus or a darby frieze , are things that they d●eame not of , the oyntments among them most frequent are brimstone and butter for the scald , and oyle of baies and stavesa●er for the lice , vvhich lately out of curiositie is but nevvly crept into the kingdom , and i thinke vvill not long continue . i prefesse i had rather be the meanest minnion then the f●i●est countesse i have yet seene or discovered . to dravv you dovvn from the citisens vvife to the countrie common dames vve●e to bring you from nevvgate to bridevvell . the despised dames 〈◊〉 seacoale lane are things of immortall race , every on in hounsditch that converse in raggs and maribones are hellens to them , the greasie bauds in turnball-street are gree 〈…〉 dames in comparison of them . to conclude the vvoman of ●ury in old time did out more vvonder that the great messias should be born . finis a proclamation concerning the payment of the watch-money by the citizens of edinburgh proclamations. 1682-09-01 edinburgh (scotland). town council. 1682 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a82889 wing e164i estc r231985 99900082 99900082 133318 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a82889) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 133318) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2514:3) a proclamation concerning the payment of the watch-money by the citizens of edinburgh proclamations. 1682-09-01 edinburgh (scotland). town council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1682. dated at end" given at edinburgh, september 1st. 1682. reproduction of original in the british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -militia -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal blazon or coat of arms cr a proclamation concerning the payment of the watch-money by the citizens of edinbrugh . forasmuch , as the magistrates and council of edinburgh , for the ease and conveniency of the neighbours and inhabitants of this city , has raised an company of foot souldiers ' by vertue of a commission from the kings most sacred majesty for guarding thereof , and which company is now actually upon duty ; and seeing in order to their payment , there has been great pains and care taken by them to make a list of the whole inhabitants lyable to watching : and a certain small sum weekly to be payed by the persons contained in the said list , which are now put in the hands of the constables , to be collected by them within their respective bounds ; and whereupon , there is an act of the town council made , the twelfth day of july last by past , which is likewise approven by the kings majesty . and the sa●d magistrates and council considering , that the saids souldiers has been som time upon service , and that it will take likewayes sometime for the constables to ingather and collect the said watch-mony , and to the effect that the inhabitants lyable in paym●nt thereof , may have timeous warning to pay in to the saids constables their respective proportions . therefore , the saids magistrates , did ordain , one of the officers of the said town of edinburgh to command and charge , in our soveraign lords name , and in name and behalf of the lord provost , baliffs , and council of this burgh , that each of the inhabitants and neighbours within the same , contained in the respective lists , whereof , the constables has an authentick double subscribed by the magistrates , that they pay in to the respective constables within their bounds , a months watch-silver , which begins from the 24th of august last , ( upon which day the said company entered upon duty ) and that at , or before the seventh day of september instant , and monthly thereafter in time coming upon the first lawful day of each month : certifying all such persons whose names are contained in the saids lists , and who doe not make punctual payment of their respective proportions , and that monthly , as said is , that they shall be poinded to the double value of their saids months proportion ; declaring , that the poinds taken for payment of the saids watch-mony , shall not be restored unless redeemed upon payment the very next day after the poinding : as likewise , with certification , that those persons who shall be refractory in payment of their said watch-mony , that they shall be lookt upon and holden as contemners of authority , and accordingly shall be punished in their persons . and to the effect the constables may attend carefully upon their duty in receiving of the said watch-mony , they are hereby discharged from going forth of this bu●gh unless they lay down some solid way for payment in their absen●e , of the proportions of watch-mony payable by the inhabitan●s within their respective bounds : certifying the saids constables who doe in the contrair , that their houses shall be poinded to the double value of the watch-mony contained in their lists . and ordains this present proclamation to be intimat at the mercat cross of this city by sound of trumpet , and the samine to be printed , that none may pretend ignorance given at edinburgh , september 1st . 1632. i. r. god save the king. edinburgh printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1682. the muses threnodie, or, mirthfull mournings, on the death of master gall containing varietie of pleasant poëticall descriptions, morall instructions, historiall narrations, and divine observations, with the most remarkable antiquities of scotland, especially at perth by mr. h. adamson. adamson, henry. 1638 approx. 169 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 54 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-07 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a03379 stc 135 estc s100435 99836275 99836275 535 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a03379) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 535) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 818:6) the muses threnodie, or, mirthfull mournings, on the death of master gall containing varietie of pleasant poëticall descriptions, morall instructions, historiall narrations, and divine observations, with the most remarkable antiquities of scotland, especially at perth by mr. h. adamson. adamson, henry. [20], 87, [1] p. in king iames college, by george anderson, printed at edinburgh : 1638. verse satire. reproduction of the original in the henry e. huntington library and art gallery. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -humor. 2003-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-04 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-05 olivia bottum sampled and proofread 2003-05 olivia bottum text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-06 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the muses threnodie , or , mirthfull mournings , on the death of master gall. containing varietie of pleasant poëticall descriptions , morall instructions , historicall narrations , and divine observations , with the most remarkable antiquities of scotland , especially at perth . by mr. h. adamson . horat. in arte. omne tulit punctum , qui miscuit utile dulci. printed at edinburgh in king iames college , by george anderson . 1638. to his native town of perth : the lord provest , baillies , and counsel thereof , his worthie patrons , wishing them all happinesse heere , and hence , dedicateth these his recreations their devoted servant mr. hen. adamson ; student in divine , and humane learning . to the reader . courteous reader , it is not amisse thou bee a little informed concerning the poet , and the persons of the defunct and mourner . the poet wrote this for his owne exercise , and the recreation of his friends ; and this peece , although accomplished to the great contentment of many that read and heard it , yet could not the author be induced to let it thole the presse , till the importunitie of many learned men urged him unto it : and the last brash was made by a letter of the prime poet of our kingdome , whereof this is the just copie . to my worthie friend , mr. hen. adamson . sir , these papers of your mournings on master gall appeare unto me as alcibiadis sileni , which ridiculously look , with the faces of sphinges , chimeraes , centaures on their outsides , but inwardlie containe rare artifice , and rich jewels of al● sorts , for the delight and well of man. they may deservedlie beare the word , non intus ut extra . your two champions , noble zannies , discover to us many of the antiquities of this countrey more of your auncient towne of perth , setting downe her situation , founders , her hudge colosse , or bridge , walls , fousies , aqueducts , fortifications , temples , monasteries , and many other singularities . happie hath perth beene in such a citizen : not so other townes of this kingdome , by want of so diligent a searcher and preserver of their fame from oblivion . some muses neither to themselves , nor to others do good ; nor delighting , nor instructing ; yours performe both : and longer to conceale them , will be to wrong your perth of her due honours , who deserveth no lesse of you than that she should be thus blazoned , and registrate to posteritie , to defraud your selfe of a monument ; which after you have left this transitorie world shall keepe your name and memorie to after times . this shall bee preserved by the towne of perth for her owne sake first , and after for yours . for to her it hath beene no little glory that she hath brought forth , such a citizen , so emi●ent in love to her , and so dear to the muses . edinburgh , julij 12. 1637. w. d. anent the defunct , his name was m. iames gall , a citizen of perth , and a gentle-man of a goodly stature , and pregnant wit , much given to pastime , as golf , archerie , curling ; and joviall companie . a man verie kinde to his friends , and a prettie poet in liberall merriments , and tart satyres ; no lesse acquaint with philoenus , and the acidalian dame , than with the muses . for the mourner , he yet lives and mournes : and seeing he is of purpose to set forth the webbe of his life , which is verie long , now almost an hundred elnes , counting an elne for a year , it is needlesse to speak of him here , all know him ( that know him ) to be a good man , and hath beene occasion of mirth to many , to none of mourning , as m. gall by his immature death hath been● to him . it seemeth sufficient , untill the time he him self set out the historie of himself , to set down here t● inventar of the ornaments of his cabin , which , by a ca tachrestick name , he usually calleth gabions . this inventarie we have in a torn , and worn copie , and in respect there are some lines in it we can not read , pray thee , gentle reader , be content of that , that is to the fore , till we can obtaine from m. george the whole piece , which was alleaged to be written by m. gall , although , in veritie , the author of this book did write it , and as i think , not without m. george his owne advice , and for his friends recreation . the inventarie of the gabions , in m. george his cabinet . of uncouth formes , and wondrous shapes , like peacoks , and like indian apes , like leopards , and beasts spoted , of clubs curiously knoted , of wondrous workmanships , and rare , like eagles flying in the air , like centaurs , maremaids in the seas , like dolphins , and like honie bees , some carv'd in timber , some in stone , of the wonder of albion ; which this close cabine doth include ; some portends ill , some presage good : what sprite daedalian hath forth brought them , yee gods assist , i thinke yee wrought them , your influences did conspire this comelie cabine to attire neptune gave first his awfull trident , and pan the hornes gave of a bident , triton his trumpet of a buckie , propin'd to him , was large and luckie : mars gave the glistring sword and dagger , wherewith some time he wont to swagger , cyclopean armour of achilles , fair venus purtrayed by apelles , the valiant hectors weightie spear , wherewith he fought the trojan war , the fatall sword and seven fold shield of ajax , who could never yeeld : yea more the great herculean club brusde hydra in the lernè dub . hote vulcan with his crooked heele bestow'd on him a tempred steele , cyclophes were the brethren allans , who swore they swet more then ten gallons in framing it upon their forge , and tempring it for master george : but aesculapius taught the lesson how he should us'd in goodly fashion , and bad extinguis't in his ale , when that he thought it pure and stale , with a pugill of polypodium : and ceres brought a manufodium : and will'd him tost it at his fire and of such bread never to tyre ; then podalirius did conclude that for his melt was soverainge good . gold hair'd apollo did bestow his mightie-sounding silver bow , with musick instruments great store , his harp , his cithar , and mandore , his peircing arrowes and his quiver : but cupid shot him through the liver and set him all up in à flame , to follow à peneïan dame : but being once repudiat did lurk within this cabinet , and there with many a sigh and groane , fierce cupids wrong he did bemoane , but this deep passion to rebet venus bestow'd her amulet , the firie flame for to beare downe , cold lactuce and pupuleum ; and thenceforth will'd the poplar tree to him should consecrated be . with twentie thousand pretious things , mercurius gave his staffe and wings : and more this cabine to decore , of curious staffs he gave fourescore , of clubs and cudgels contortized : some plaine worke , others crispe and frized , like satyrs , dragons , flying fowles , like fishes , serpents , cats , and owles , like winged-horses , strange chimaeraes , like unicorns and fierce pantheraes , so livelike that a man would doubt , if art or nature brought them out . the monstrous branched great hart-horne , which on acteon's front was borne : on which doth hing his velvet knapsca . a scimitare cut like an haksaw , great bukies , partans , toes of lapstares , oster shells , ensignes for tapsters , gadie beeds and crystall glasses , stones , and ornaments for lasses , garlands made of summer flowres , propin'd him by his paramoürs , with many other pretious thing , which all upon its branches hing : so that it doth excell but scorne the wealthie amalthean horne . this cabine containes what you wish , no place his ornaments doth misse , for there is such varietie , looking breeds no sacietie . in one nooke stands loquhabrian axes , and in another nooke the glaxe is . heere lyes a book they call the dennet , there lyes the head of old brown kennet , here lyes a turkasse , and a hammer , there lyes a greek and latine grammer , heere hings an auncient mantua bannet , there hings a robin and a iannet , upon a cord that 's strangular a buffet stoole sexangular : a foole muting in his owne hand ; soft , soft my muse , sound not this sand , what ever matter come athorter , touch not i pray the iron morter . his cougs , his dishes , and his caps , a totum , and some bairnes taps ; a gadareilie , and a whisle , a trumpe , an abercome mussell , his hats , his hoods , his bels , his bones , his allay bowles , and curling stones , the sacred games to celebrat , which to the gods are consecrat . and more , this cabine to adorne , diana gave her hunting horne , and that there should be no defect , god momus gift did not inlake : only *** was to blame , who would bestow nothing for shame ; this cabine was so cram'd with store she could not enter at the doore . this prettie want for to supplie a privie parlour stands neere by , in which there is in order plac't phoebus with the nine muses grac't , in compasse , siting like a crown . this is the place of great renown : heere all good learning is inschrynd , and all grave wisedome is confin'd , clio with stories ancient times , melpomené with tragick lines , wanton thalia's comedies , euterpe's sweetest harmonies , terpsichore's heart-moving cithar , lovely erato's numbring meeter , caliope's heroick songs , vranias heavenly motions ; polymnia in various musick paints all with flowres of rhetorick , amidst sits phoebus laureat , crown'd with the whole pierian state. here 's galene and hippocrates , divine plato and socrates , th' arabian skill and exccellence , the greek and romane eloquence , with manie worthie worke and storie within this place inaccessorie . these models , in this cabine plac'd , are with the world 's whole wonders grac'd : what curious art or nature framd , what monster hath beene taught or tamd , what polycletus in his time , what archimedes rich ingine , who taught the art of menadrie the syracusan synedrie . what gods or mortals did forth bring it in this cabinet doth hing , whose famous relicts are all flowr'd , and all with precious pouldar stowr'd : and richly deckt with curious hingers , wrought by arachne's nimble fingers . this is his store-house and his treasure , this is his paradise of pleasure , this is the arcenall of gods , of all the world this is the oddes : this is the place apollo chuses , this is the residence of muses : and to conclude all this in one , this is the romaine pantheon . an apologie of the author , done as by the mourner , to the lovers of learning . let none offend , though in mine age i sing swan-like , some lawfull joyes youthead did bring : my songs are mournings , which may clearly shew th' inconstant course of all things here below : yet guided by that steadfast hand alwayes which , midst confusions great , the ballance stayes : thus heraclitus-like sometimes i mourne at giddie fortunes reelings : thence i turne like to democritus in laughter wholly to see th' inconstant changes of her folly . thus do i mourne , and laugh oftimes , by course , as giddie fortune reeles from good to worse : for neither is the battell to the strong , nor doth unto the swift the race belong , nor bread to these whose wit should have commanding , nor riches to the men of understanding : nor favour doth to men of knowledge fall , but chance ( as would appear ) doth order all . so , if the second causes we do view , we shall finde out a paradoxe most true . but o thou prime and supreme cause of all , nothing to thee by fortune doth befall , for thou , in midst of all these great confusions fores●s , and workes most permanent conclusions , keeping most comely order in varieties , and making concord in all contrarieties . hence doth it come to passe of thy benignitie , that wicked men possesse both wealth and dignitie . but , as it s written , riches are preserv'd , and for the evill of th'owners are reserv'd : and as a mightie load the bearers smothers , so some to their owne burt rule over others , not looking to th' account they must needs make , nor bow their smiling fortune may turn back , whose honour like the sea doth ebbe and flow , whose beautie hath the time to fade and grew , whose riches , like the eagle , hath their wings , now lighting down on earth , to heaven then springs . the body's summer rose is quickly gone , by winters stormie age all overblowne , to shew earths constant changes : and that all which here on earth do spring must likewise fall . thrise happie he that state who quickly findes , which is not shaken with earths contrare windes ! hence solitarie and poore content i live , sith bitter hap blind fortune doth not give : and , like diogenes , contemplate all , within my cabine , that here doth befall : which gives me subject both to sing and mourne , the times ov'rpast , which never shall returne . i praise the worthie deedes of martiall men , and i do wish the whole world might them ken : i praise their vertues : no , their vertuous deeds do praise themselves , and as most lively seeds beget like children : so commemoration begets them native sons by imitation . native ! more native than by blood descended , who with their fame their fortunes have mispened . for what availes to point a noble race by long descent of branches , if in face like vertue doth not shine , and equall worth ignoble deeds belie a noble birth ; maugre all contrare thoughts , this true shall trie vertue alone is true nobilitie . if one most vitious in my line should be five hundred years ago , what is 't to me , who vertuous am ; ? what ? can it derogate to my good name ? or violate my state ? or if antcestors brave shall me preceed , and i do prove the knave , what shall proceed by their heroick vertues unto me , wh●se vitious life denies my progenie ? for linage and forebears , naso said , are not cal'● ours , nor what our selves not made . to prove this paradoxe i durst be bold with judgement of the learned but i hold my pen : for all do know of old what 's said , i rather that thersites were my daid , and i achilles-like , most noble , rather then i thersites , he to be my father : true generositie doth so esteeme , though ignorance the contrare would maintaine . but momus must needs carp , and misanthrópos be ariopagita-like scythropos . scarce were these lines as yet come to the birth when some false flattering sycoph●nt gave forth most foule aspersions , making rumors spread , that citing of some auncient stories bred no small disgrace unto the present times , places , and persons of most auncient stemmes . and that i write of purpose to attaint them ; i wish of this their wrong it might repent them : ●or as the contrare's true , so i protest i never bad a purpose to infest the meanest , far lesse these of better sort , where birth and grace do make a sweet consort . yea , more i do protest , against my will these lines were reft from under my rude quill : i never did intend so great a height that they should touch the presse , or come to light : but now , sith more there is then my designe , i forced am my just defence to bring gainst my traducers , who maliciouslie , with banefull invie's tooth , have snatch'd at me but i appeale to all judicious learning , whose wits are exercised in decerning , if i your approbation do finde , i care nought these ardelio's catching winde ; nor other patrons do i seek but you , to take of this small piece a litle view , and give just censure joyn'd with your protection , more worth then zoilus hate gnatho's affection ; your favours shall me shelter and defend against all invies rage to live to end● trusting in god to keepe my conscience pure , whose favour most of all shall me secure . farewell . de authoris praematuro obitu , elegidion . a damsone jaces , raptus florentibus annis ? totque animi dotes hausit acerba dies ? tam carum phoebo letali tabe lev are artes phoebaeae non potuere ca put ? quod tibi si canam fas aspexisse senectam , pectoris & diti promere clausa sinu : inferius tiberi non taus nomen haberet : et romae aequaret pertha superba decus . haec vide , quae primâ lusit vernante juventâ ( talis erat ciris virgiliique culex ) aspice , conatu quam nil molitur inepto , grancia seu memoret , sive jocosa canat . martia grandiloquo memorat dum bella cot●urno , maeoniam credas incinuisse tubam . si laudes canat heroum , aut facta inclyta iovae , daunigenam jures increpuisse fides . ad jeca si laetae demittat plectra thaliae , bilbilidae dicas plectra movere sales . si canit historias , diae si dogmata legis ; dixeris his omnes invigilasse dies . denique sic unus cunctâ proludit in arte , ceu brevis ars , illi vitaque longa foret . quòd si tantus honos florum ; quae gloria messis ( hanc nisi praeriperent fata inimica ) foret ? at tu quae primae dederas spiramina vitae , cui vitae aeternum reddidit ille diem , aeternos titulos spiranti in marmore scribas , vsque memor civis , inclyta pertha , tui . th. crafordius . to perth , anent two of her sons , her two suns , mr. henrie anderson , and mr. henrie adamson , his nephew . two henries , like two suns , upon thee rose , the uncle , and the nephew , and did close the one à summer , th' other a winter day , nor longer could on our horizon stay . with home-bred beames the one on thee did shine , th' other with rayes brought from the coast lavine . but herein these excell fair phoebes brother , he and his beames do rise , and set together ; their rayes shine most , themselves when under earth , and shall perpetuall splendor give to perth . so be it ay , upon thee , noble town , may many such suns rise , & so go down . i. a. ad authorem proximi epigrammatis , de tertio perthi sole , patricio adamsono , poeta & oratore elegantissimo , qui perthi natus & educatus , ob eximias animi dotes , insignem eruditionem , & incomparabilem eloquentiam , pari pietate conjunctam , in archiepiscopatum andreanum evectus est , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pertha duos tantùm vidit , sua pignora , soles laetifica claram spargere ●uce diem ? hinc adamsoni discussit nubila lampas , hinc andersoni fulserat ante jubar . tertius hinc ortus ( gentilis & ipse nepotis ) clarus in arctoo phoebus & orbe fuit . nec tantùm arctoo ; sed & hunc quoque gallia soles aequantem stupuit quos sua terra dabat . aequantemque suos mirata est anglia soles , lumine multiplicis enituisse facis . non alius quisquam docti pollentior oris fulmine : non calamo qui superaret , erat . prompta illi graiae & latiae facundia linguae : nota illi veterum dogmata cuncta soph● . illius , orbatae buchanani in funere , musae pectora ceu sacros incoluere lares . nota mag● nulli d●●cula : nullus , haec melius posset qui reserare , fuit . nec , quanquam occiduas curru● demisit in undas , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 occu● potest . t. c. in authorem libri . nvper adamsonus vicit splendore triones , at nunc occid●m spissior umbra tegit . non tamen in caecas omnino evanuit auras , liquerat en patrio lumina clara solo . perthigenasque suos secus hand intermicat ille , ( accendens radio nobiliore diom ) ac phoebe , reliquis praefulgens lu●ida stellis , noctigenam pleno dum movet orbe facem . ad pertham . qvid fles ? quid tristi rumpis praecordia luctu ? pone modum lachrymis , inclyta pertha , tuis . occiderat tuus ( heu ) fato adamsonus iniquo : non tamen interiit : sed redivivus adest . to the memorie of the author . dear soul , thou hast obtain'd more lasting fame , in follies collours wisedome setting forth , than if ten fabriks like mausolios frame were for thee rear'd in witnesse of thy worth . thy perth may boast of such a gratefull son , who thus hath honoured his deare aged another , thy muse such glorie and such fame hath won to her , as no oblivioun can it smother . art , wit , and learning ; learning , wit , and art do joyntlie justle here , each of them striving which carrie shall the prise , and beare chiefe part in these thy layes , thy native town describing . thy georges gabions shew to underlings that all things trifles be , that heaven not reaches , by what thy gall and he , in rapture , sings , much wisedome divine and humane thou teaches . thy death the muses darlings all shall mourne , and shall a tombe erect unto thy name of teares turn'd cristall ; and upon thine urne these words shall write , as blazon of thy fame : heere lyes his dust , by whose most learned quill he and his perth doe live , and shall live still . io. moore . faults escaped . courteous reader , who intends to read this book , may it please thee amend with thy pen these faults before thou read . pag. 29. lineâ ultimâ , for where , read with . pag. 48. lin . 25. for thus entring through well straitly , read , thus entring , though well straitly , pag. 52. lin . 17. say , read see . pag. 56. lin . 10 sault , read salt . pag. 71. lin . 4. and wraks of that citie , read , and of that cities wrake . p. 76. l. 10. cooles , read coole . of master george ruthven the teares and mournings , amids the giddie course of fortunes turnings , vpon his dear friends death , master james gall , where his rare ornaments bear a part , and wretched gabions all . the first muse. now must i mourne for gall , since he is gone , and yee my gabions help me him to mone ; and in your courses sorrow for his sake , whose matchlesse muse immortall did you make . who now shall pen your praise , and make you known ? by whom now shall your vertues be forth-shown ? who shall declare your worth ? is any able ? who dar to meddle with apelles table ? ai me there 's none : and is there none indeed ? then must yee mourne of force , there 's no remeed : and i , for my part , with you in my turne shall keep a dolefull consort whilst ye mourne : and thus , with echoing voice , shall houle and cry , gall , sweetest gall , what ailed thee to die ? now first my bowes begin this dolefull song , no more with clangors let your shafts be flung in fields abroad , but in my cabine stay , and help me for to mourn till dying day . with dust and cobwebs cover all your heads , and take you to your matins and your beads , a requiem sing unto that sweetest soul , which shines now , sancted , above either pole . and yee my clubs , you must no more prepare . to make you bals flee whistling in the aire , but hing your heads , and bow your crooked crags , and dresse you all in sackcloth and in rags , no more to see the sun , nor fertile fields , but closely keep you mourning in your bields , and for your part the trible to you take , and when you cry make all your crags to crake , and shiver when you sing alace for gall ! ah if our mourning might thee now recall ! and yee my loadstones of lidnochian lakes , collected from the loughs , where watrie snakes do much abound , take unto you a part , and mourn for gall , who lov'd you with his heart : in this sad dump and melancholick mood the burdown yee must bear , not on the flood , or frosen watrie plaines , but let your tuning come help me for to weep by mournfull cruning . and yee the rest , my gabions lesse and more of noble kinde , come help me for to roare , and of my wofull weeping take a part , help to declare the dolour of mine heart . how can i choose but mourne ? when i think on our games olympike-like in times agone ; chieflie wherein our cunning vve did try , and matchlesse skill in noble archerie ; in these our dayes vvhen archers did abound in perth ( then famous for such pastime found . ) amongst the first for archers vve vvere knovvn , and in that art our skil vvas lovvdly blovvn ; what time perths credit did stand vvith the best and bravest archers , this land hath possest . we spar'd nor gaines , nor paines for to report to perth the vvorship , by such noble sport : witnesse the links of leith , vvhere cowper , grahame , and stewart vvin the price and brought it home ; and in these games did offer ten to three there to contend : quorum pars magna fui . i mourn good gall , when i think on that stead , where yee did haile your shaft unto the head , and with a strong and stedfast eye and hand so valiantly your bow yee did command ; a slidrie shaft forth of its forks did fling , clank gave the bow , the whistling aire did ring , the bowlt did cleave the clouds and threat the skyes , and thence , down falling , to the mark it flies , incontinent the aimer gave a token , the mark was kill'd , the shaft in flinders broken : then softlie smyling , good gall , thus quod i , now finde i time my archerie to try , and heere by solemne vow i undertake , in token of my love , even for thy sake , either to hit the mark , else shall i never , more with these armes of mine use bow and quiver . therewith my ligaments i did extend , and then a noble shaft i did commend unto my bow , then firmelie fixt mine eye , and closelie leveld at orions knee , a star of greatest magnitude , who kend it so well as i , prayes you be not offended ; ( for i did use no magick incantation for to couduct my shaft i will finde cation . ) then cleverly my flen soone can i feather , upon my left arme was a brace of leather ; and with three fingers hailing up the string , the bow in semicircle did i bring ; with soft and tender lowse out went the shaft , amids the clouds the arrow flew aloft , and , as directed by a skilfull hand , with speedie flight the steadfast mark it sand , the aimer gave his signe , furth-with was known , the shot was mine , the boult in flinders flown , above his shaft , in such difficile stead , closely i hit the mark upon the head ; then on the plain we capreld wonder fast , whereat the people gazing were agast ; vvith kinde embracements , did we thurst and thrimble , ( for in these dayes i was exceeding nimble ) vve leapt , we danct , we loudly laught and cry'd : for in the earth such skill was never try'd in archerie , as we prov'd in these daies , whereby we did obtaine immortall praise . then gossop gall ( quod i ) i dar approve thou hast a trustie token of my love . vvhat shall be said of other martiall games ? none was inlaking from whence bravest stemmes , victorious trophees , palmes , and noble pynes olives and lawrels , such as auncient times decor'd the grecian-victors in their playes , and worthie romanes in their brave assayes , for tryall of their strength , each match'd with other , whose beautie was , sweat mix'd with dust together . such exercises did content us more then if wee had possest king croesus store . but o! ye fields my native perth neerby , prayes you to speak , and truely testifie , what matchlesse skill we prov'd in all these places , within the compasse of three thousand paces , on either side ; while as we went a shooting , and strongly strove who should bring home the booting , alongst the flowrie banks of tay to amound , ay when i hit the mark i cast a gamound ; and there we view the place where some time stood the ancient bertha , now ov'rflow'd with flood of mightie waters , and that princely hold vvhere dwelt king william , by the streame down rold , was utterly defac'd , and overthrown , that now the place thereof scarce can be known . then through these haughs of faire and fertile ground , which with fruit trees , with cornes , and flocks abound , meandring rivers , sweet flowres , heavenly honey , more for our pastime then to conquesh money we went a shooting , both through plaine and park , and never stay'd till wee came to lowswork : built by our mightie kings for to preserve us , that thenceforth waters should not drown , but serve us ; yet condescending it admits one rill which all these plaines with cristall brooks doth fill , and by a conduit large three miles in length serves to make perth impregnable for strength at all occasions ; when her clowses fall , making the water mount up to her wall . when we had viewd this mightie work at randon , we thought it best these fields for to abandon , and turning home-wards , spar'd nor dyke nor fowsie untill we come unto the boot of bowsie , alongst this aqueduct , and there our station , we made , and viewd balhowsies situation , o'reluking all that spacious pleasant valley , vvith flowres damasked , levell as an alley betwixt and perth , thither did we repair ( for why the season was exceeding fair ) then all alongst this valley did we hye , and there the place we clearlie did espye . the precinct , situation and the stead , vvhere ended was that cruell bloodie fead between these cursed clans , chattan , and kay before king robert , iohn ; upon the day appointed , then and there , where did conveene thirtie 'gainst thirtie matcht upon that greene , of martiall fellows , all in rageing mood like furious ajax , or orestes wood , alonely arm'd with long two-handed swords , their sparkling eyes cast fire in steed of words , their horride beards , thrown brovves , brusled mustages of deadly blovves t'enshevv vvere vive presages . thus standing fortuns event for to try , and thousands them beholding , one did cry vvith loud and mightie voice , stay ! hold your hands ! a little space vve pray ; the case thus stands ; one of our number is not heere to day ; this suddaine speach did make some little stay of this most bloodie bargaine , th' one partie fight vvould not unlesse the number vvere made right unto the adverse faction , nor vvas any that vvould it take in hand amongst so many beholders of all ranks into that place : on th' other side none vvould sustaine disgrace to be debarred from his other fellovves , he rather hung seven yeeres upon the gallovves . thus as the question stood , vvas found at length one henry wind , for triall of his strength the charge vvould take , a sadler of his craft , i vvot not vvell vvhether the man vvas daft , but for an half french crovvn he took in hand , stoutly to fight so long as he might stand , and if to be victorious should be tide him , they should some yeerly pension provide him . the bargaine holds : and then withall their maine their braikens bukled to the fight againe ; incontinent the trumpets loudlie sounded , and mightilie the great bag-pipes were winded : then fell they to 't as fierce as any thunder , from shoulders armes , and heads from necks they sunder ; all raging there in bloud , they hew'd and hasht , their skin coats with the new cut were out●lasht ; and scorning death , so bravely did they fight it , that the beholders greatlie were affrighted : but chiefly this by all men was observed , none fought so fiercely ; nor so well deserved as this their hired souldier , henrie winde , for by his valour victorie inclinde vnto that side ; and ever since those dayes this proverb current goes , when any sayes , how come you heere ? this answere doth he finde , i 'm for mine owne hand , as fought henrie winde . so finely fought he , ten with him escapt , and of th' other but one , in flood who leapt , and sav'd himself by swimming over tay : but to speak more of this we might not stay . thence did we take us to the other hand , from this divided by a crystall strand : from whence the king beheld with open sight the long-time doubtfull event of this fight , from of his pleasant gardins , flowrie wall , which we the guilted arbor yet do call ; and here some monuments we did descrie , and ruin'd heaps of great antiquitie : there stood a temple , and religious place , and here a palace ; but ah wofull cace ! where murthered was one of the bravest kings for wisedome , learning , valour , and such things as should a prince adorn ; who trads and arts by men of matchlesse skill brought to thir parts , from italie , low germanie , and france , religion , learning , policie to advance , king iames the first , of everlasting name , kill'd by that mischant traitour , robert grahame , intending of his crown for to have rob'd him , with twentie eight wounds in the breast he stob'd him . unnaturall parricide , most bloudie traitour ! accursed be thou above any creature , and curst be all , for so it is appointed , that dar presume to touch the lords anointed . this phoenix prince our nation much decord , good letters and civilitie restord , by long and bloudie wars which were defaced , his royall care made them be reembraced : and he this citie mightilie intended to have inhanc'd , if fates had condescended : for which if power answer'd good-will , we would with gorgias leontinus raise of gold a statue to him of most curious frame , in honour of his dear and worthie name . he likewise built most sumptuouslie fair that much renownd religious place , and rare , the charterhouse of perth , a mightie frame , vallis virtutis by a mystick name , looking alongst that painted spatious field , which doth with pleasure profite sweetly yeeld , the fair south inch of perth , and banks of tay. this abbayes , stiples , and it's turrets stay while as they stood ( but ah where sins abound the loftiest pride lyes leveld with the ground ! ) were cunningly contriv'd with curious art , and quintessence of skill in everie part ; my grandsire many times to me hath told it he knew their names this mightie frame who moldit : italians some , and some were french men borne , whose matchlesse skill this great work did adorne . and living were in perth some of their race when that , alace , demolish'd was this place , for greatnesse , beautie , statlinesse so fair in britans isle , was said , none might compare even as apelles for to prove his skill in limming venus with a perfect quill , did not on some one beautie take inspection , but of all beauties borrowed the perfection : even so this prince to policie inclinde , did not on some one fabrick set his minde to make the prototype of his designe , but from all works did all perfections bring , and rarest paterns brought from everie part , where any brave vitruvius kyth'd his art , so that this great and princelie enterprise perfections of all models did comprise . and in this place where he doth buriedly vvas kept the relict wherein he did dye ; his doublet , as a monument reserv'd , and when this place was raz'd , it was preserv'd : vvhich afterwards i did see for my part , vvith hols through which he stab'd was to the heart . then , good gall , thus quod i , what shew of reason mov'd this unnaturall traitour work such treason ? reason ! good monsier , gall did thus reply , reason ! so much in shew i do deny , reason ! no reason did he have at all , but wormwood , bitter malice stygian gall vvithin this traitours heart did closely lurk , vvhich moved him this tragedie to work : and i would truelie tell this wofull storie , but that my tongue doth faile , mine heart 's so sorie : yet whiles that we unto the town do go , monsier , the true occasion , will i show . this worthie prince , according to the taillie made by king robert , when heirs male should faillie , of his son david then earle of statherne , so soone , i say , the king as he did learne , that heirs male of this david were surceast , into these lands he did himself invest : for david leaving after him no son , his lands by right come back unto the crown , yet after him one daughter did survive , in mariage which to patrick grahame they give , to vvhom she bare a son , one melisse grahame , vvhose parents dying young , robert did clame , as uncle , and as tutor , of these lands to have the charge devolved in his hands : which when the king most justlie did deny to give , and gravelie shew the reason why , this bloodie traitour from his gorge did spew words treacherous , nor to be spoke , nor true . for which he justlie traitour was declar'd , but he the kings authoritie nought car'd , but more and more pursuing his intent , to walter earle of athole straight he went , whom well he knew to have the like designe , above all things for to cut off the king , and all the race sprung of eliza mure , with witches did consult and sprits conjure , this to effect , and all th' infernall furies with draughts and spels , and such unlawfull curies : at length he finding that incarnat fiend , believ'd his response should have stedfast end , which was , that he should once before he die be crowned king with great solemnitie : which came to passe indeed , but not with gold , for his familiar sprit keept that untold : thus these two traitours cruelly did hatch the treason , which this good king did dispatch . both of these traitours at the crowne did aime , th' one thought his nephew might it some time claime , and he without all question would succeed : for well he knew to cut the fatall threed : likewise that other hell-taught traitour walter believ'd by no meanes his response could alter , thus both of them fed with ambitious hopes , keep'd secret by themselves their partiall scops , but mutually this one thing they intend , the king must die ; and heere their thoughts they spend . but this earle walter subtile more than th' other his quaint designe gan cunningly to smother , observing well the grahames proud haughtie braine , greatly aggreag'd the wrongs he did susteine , affirming that there was none had a heart but would avenged be , and for his part he would assist , and when that turne were ended against all deadly grahame should be defended . thus by ambition witcht , and rage demented this traitour execut what was intented . who from the famous trojan had his name and from the woods , when he did hear the fame of this infamous fact at edinburgh then residing to make peace between these men who of the greeks and trojans are descended , o how he was inrag'd ! o how offended ! to see so brave a prince so traiterouslie cut off , he roard and rail'd outragiouslie 'gainst all the nation ; but when he justice done had seene upon the traitours , then his tune he quicklie chang'd , now have i seene ( said he ) a cruell crime revenged cruellie . this tragick task , monsier , in hand to take mine eyes do melt in teares , mine heart strings crake , what! shall i speak of priam king of troy by pyrrhus kild ? that cannot much annoy : or shall i of brave iulius caesar tell , vvhom these two traitours did in senat kill ? these may affect us with some small compassion , but for to speak of this is a tentation . caesar for valour , learning and meek mind , and ah too much like caesar in his end . excusa moi , monsier , mine heart 's so sorie , that i can tell you no more of this storie . vvhen i think with what gravitie and grace this tragedie was told , teares weet my face : and i do wish good gall , thou were on live , that vvith meonian stile thou mighst descrive such memorable acts ; or else thy spirit in some nevv bodie plac'd , it to inherit : ai me , this can not be , vvhich makes me cry , gall , svveetest gall , vvhat ailed thee to die ? the second muse. but this sad melancholick disquisition did not befit our joviall disposition in these our dayes : therefore vvhen we had mourned for this good king , vve to the tovvn returned , and there to cheere our hearts , and make us merrie , vve kindely tasted of the noble berrie ; melancholie and grief are great men-killers : therefore from tamarisk , with some capillars infusde we drank ; for to preserve our splens from grief , our lungs from cough , and purge our reins . but this recept gall did not keep alway , vvhich made him die , alace , before his day . then home we vvent unto our beds to rest us , to morrovv againe vve to the fields addrest us ; and in my bed as i did dreaming ly , me thought i heard vvith mightie voice , one cry arise , monsier , the day is vvondrous fair , monsier arise , then ansvvered i , who 's there ? arise , monsier , the third time did it call . vvho 's there ? quoth i , it is i master gall. then i avvoke , and found it so indeed ; good morrovv master gall. monsier , god speed . good master gall , dreames did me much molest this night , and almost rave me of my rest . monsier , quoth gall , what motion might that be ? said i , i dream'd i vvas in archerie outmatcht so far , that i was striken dumbe , for verie grief to be so overcome . monsier , said he , that 's beene a mightie passion , that hath you striken dumb in such a fashion . a passion , so great , that i did sweat , my sinewes tremble , and my heart did beat . at length , respiring , these few words did speak , o noble heart , of force now must thou break ! for to these dayes was never in this land that did o'rcome this matchlesse maiden hand ; and dreaming , as i grudg'd with master gall , incontinent a voice on me did call ; arise monsior , arise : then i awoke , and found it was gals voice unto me spoke , which made me doubt , if so could come to passe : then answer'd gall , although your bow were brasse , that might be done ; and i 'm the man will do it vvhat say you gall ? quod i , then let us to it . foorthwith we drest us in our archer grath , and to the fields we came , like men in wrath : when we our nerves and tendons had extended , incontinent our bowes were bravely bended ; the skie was wondrous cleer , apollo fair greatlie delighted to behold us there : and did disperse the clouds , that he might see what matchlesse skill we prov'd in archerie . the cristall river phabus beames reflected ; as glad of us , them in our face directed : the flowrie plains , and mountains , all the while that we were shutting , meriely did smile . meane while , for honours praise as we were swelting the sweat from of our brows and temples melting , phaebus , as seeming to envie our skill , his quiver with some firie shafts did fill , and from his silver bow at us he darted these shafts , to make us faint and feeble hearted : whose mightie force we could not well oppose , vnder a shade we therefore did repose a pretie while , hard by a silver streame , which did appear some melodie to frame . running alongst the snow white pibble stones mourning did murmure ioyes , commixt with moanes : a cup i had of woodbind of the wall and drinking , said , this to you master gall. quoth he , monsier , sith that we have no better , with all mine heart i will you pledge in water : this brook alongst the flowrie plain meanders , and in a thousand compasses it wanders ; and as it softly slides so many wayes , it sweetlie sings as many rowndelayes , and , harmonie to keep , the honie bees their trumpets sound amongst the flowres ; and trees their shadowes from their shaggie tops down sending did bow , in token of their homage rendring but in short while phaebus his face withdrew ; then freshly fell we to 't again of new , and kyth most skilfull , and most pleasant game , while to the lands of loncartie we came . then thus , quod i , good gall , i pray thee show , for cleerly all antiquities yee know , what meane these skonses , and these hollow trenches throughout these fellow-fields , and yonder inches ? and these great heaps of stones , like pyramids ? doubtlesse all these yee know , that so much reads . these trenches be ( gall answering , did reply ) where these two armies scots and danes did ly incamped , and these heaps the trophae's be , rear'd in memoriall of that victorie , admir'd unlook't for , conquest in that day , be th' only vertue of a hynds-man , hay , and his two sons , from whence immortall praise he gain'd , and glory of his name did raise to all succeeding ages ; as is said of briareus an hundreth hands who had , wherewith he fought , or rather as we see a valiant sampson , whose activitie with his asse-bone kills thousands , or a shangar with his oxe-goad kills hundreths in his anger : even so , this war-like wight with oxens yoak beats squadrons down by his undaunted stroke , and did regain the victorie , neere lost , vnto the scots , by his new gathered host of fearfull fleers , in a wofull plight , by his incouragements infusing might into their nerves , new spirits in their arters , to make them fight in bloud unto the garters , against their hatefull foes , who for to be did fight , more than for price or victorie . such cruelties their bloudie hearts possest to have old quarrells on us scots redrest , for utterly quail'd pights , and for their own armies by us so often overthrown . this worthie chieftains happie enterprise which sav'd this countrie from the tyrannies of cruell danes , and his two mars-like sons do for all ages wear the quernall crowns , like thrasibulus ; ever bluming bayes do adde much splendour to these worthie hayes . and alwayes since they for their weapons weild three rubrick targets in a silver shield . which shield the soaring falcon doth sustaine , to signifie these three men did obteine the publick safetie , and the falcons flight by mounting , shews their worth ; by lighting , right unto their lands ; for honours high regard : which in all ages should have due reward . like shall all finde , who loyall to the state and countries well do prove , though small or great : men shall them praise , god shall preserve their stemmes , immortall fame shall canonize their names . thence forward went we unto campsie-lin , from whence the river falling makes such din as nilus catadups : there so we sported it is impossible for to report it : whither we walk't , or did we sit , or stand , quiver was ty'd to side and bow in hand ; so that none thought us to be mortall wights but either phoebus , or fair phoebe's knights . there we admir'd to see the salmond leap , and overreach the waters mightie heap , which from a mountain falls , so high , and steep , and tumbling down devals into the deep , making the boyling waters to rebound , like these great surges neere by greenland found : yet these small fish ov'rcome these watrie mountains , and kindely take them to their mother fountains , with what affection everie creature tenders the native soile ! hence comes great iove remembers his cradell creet , and worthie more than he , let th' idle cretians at their pleasure ly , even these most worthie kings , of mightie race come of great fergus , long to see the face of their deare caledonia , whose soyle doth make their kindelie hearts within them boyle , to view these fields where martiall men of armes great monuments have rear'd , with loud alarmes of thundring trumpets , by a hundreth kings and seven , one queen ; what auncient poet sings the like descent of princes , who their crowns and scepters have bestow'd upon their sons or neerest kinsmen ? neither is it so that this continued line had never fo to interrupt the same , witnesse these standers that bear the romane eagle , great commanders of most part of the glob , and cruell danes victorious elsewhere , but not in our plaines , pights and old britans ; more than these to tell , who in the compasse of this iland dwell but , praisde be god , britaine is now combinde in faith and truth , one god , one king , one minde . let scoffers say that neither wyne nor oyle ( whose want stay'd conquest ) growes within this soyle : yet if gold , pearle , or silver better be , as most men them account , it doth supplee : yea things more needfull for mans use it yeelds , heards , flocks , and cornes abound heere in our fields , wilde beasts in forrests , of all kindes in plentie , rare fowls , fruits , fishes , and what else is daintie ; perpetuall fire ; to speak it in a word , the like no where is found , it doth afford . thus providence divine hath it ordained , that humane commerce may be intertained , all soyls should have , yet none brings all things forth , yea grounds most barren oft have greatest worth contained in their bowels : this to tell us , non omnia producit omnis tellus . hence comes that men their gold for yron change , and so far from there native countries rainge , their softest silk for coursest canvasse give , because by commerce men do better live , then by such things their native grounds forth measure , by traffike they do finde more gaine and pleasure : yea things more simple much more usefull are , and for mans well more profitable far . thus yron serves for all brave arts , much more then gold , let midas heap it up in store : and canvasse serves for ventrous navigation , where silks are only for cloths green seek fashion , and though wyne glad the heart , yet stirres it strife , but graine the staffe is which sustaines our life : so humane fellowship to intertaine , our fishes and our corners bring oile and wyne . but above all our soile throughout all parts beares bravest chiftans , with couragious hearts : these be the bar of conquest , and the wall , which our most hatefull foes could never scall . would you behold one hanniball o'returne fourscore of thousands ? looke to bannokburne : or would you see xerxes his overthrow and flight by boat ? edward the second know : or carthaginian towres with all their mights destroy'd ? view camelon with faithlesse pights : or would yee know great castriot , whose bones could martiall vertue give , dig'd from the stones , where he did buried ly ? take for that part the brusse and douglas , carrying his heart through many lands , intending it to have solemnly buried in the holy-grave . this heart though dead , within their hearts begetting brave hearts , 'gainst dangers their bold breasts outsetting . vvould you a king for zeale unto gods house like israels david ? our saint david chuse . or know king iames the first , like iulius caesar , or gregorie like alexander ; these are vvith many more the vvorthies , vvhose renovvn by martiall deeds have keeped close this crown . yea more to speak of such heroick themes , vvho knoweth not the worthie great king iames of britains union first ; whose vertues great vvere more than equall to his royall seat ; vvhose matchlesse wisedome , and most learned quill did nectar and ambrosia distill , and ravisht with amazements all who heard him , but most for active prudence all admir'd him . happie in all his life , whose worthie name a peaceable augustus did proclaime . vvho conquered more by wit , than by the sword , and made all europe muuh regard his word . and good king charles the son of such a father , thrise happie by thy virgine crovvn ; yea rather more happie , if more happinesse can be , in earthly things , by thy high pedegrie ; but most of all by heaven , vvhich hath appointed this maiden crovvn for thee , the lords anointed , the man of his right hand , and for thy seed , vvhich god mot blesse and all vvho shall proceed forth of thy loines , and stablish in thy place so long as sun and moone shall run their race . then reigne , great charles , our nostrels svveetest breath , long may thou reigne defender of the faith , inthron'd among these vvorthie peerlesse pearles , and let all say , god save our good king charles ; and deeply in his heart imprint that zeale , to make the lavv supreame the peoples vvell . vvhat shall vve speak of martiall chiftans more ? of gideons , and of sampsons vve have store , vvhom god did raise , for to defend our state miraculously , in times most desperate . vvhat braver hector , or more brave achilles in greece , or phrygia , than sir william wallace ? and iohn the grahame , his mate , and brother svvorn , vvhose living fame his name doth much adorn ? and if vve list this subject more to handle , what governour like good earle thomas randall ? or doughtie douglas vvith couragious heart , whose name vvrought dreadfull terrour in each part ? but this heroick theme , so passing great , impossible it is all to relate , our worthie rulers even unto thir dayes they do not want their own deserved praise , nor shall they for my part want due renown , vertue t' advance , and vice to trample down . these be the wall of gods own work and framing against our foes , and of his own maintaining , wherefore we blesse his holy name that made us , and pray that never forraine scepter lead us , t' impose hard lawes , and tributaries make us , to chastise us with scorpions , and to rake us ; and likewise pray , that ajax-like , we would not undo our selves , which all our enemies could not . but o dear caledonia ! what desire have all men who have heard thy fame t' admire thy monuments ? how much more these who be thy sons , desire thy maiden soile to see ? thy maiden castle , and fair maiden burgh , the stately winged citie , which is through all ages much renow'nd with streets so fair , and palaces so mounted in the air that if the deepnesse of imagination could limme a landskape by deep meditation , scarce could it match , where bravest youths abound , and gravest counsellours are alwayes found : where justice joineth hand with true religion , and golden vertue keep the middle region , as register , where these acts are enrold , better than in corinthian brasse or gold . let poetaster-parasits , who fain , and fawn , and crouch , and coutch , and creep for gain , and , where no hope of gain is , huffe , and hur , and bark against the moone as doth a cur ; let such base curs , who nought but gobbets smell , wish the disgrac'd , and deeply sunk in hell whether themselves do go ; yet shalt thou stand , and see them ruin'd all that thee withstand : god shall be-friend thy friends , and shall all those aray with shame that causelesse be thy foes : thou art this ancient kingdomes bravest part , for wit and worth thou art its hand and heart , and who the kingdomes compend brave would see needs do no more but survey take of thee . hence these desires fair caledonias soile to view , where bravest stratagems with toile have acted beene , hence comes these kindly wishes , to see these fields , even like these kindly fishes , which we behold ov'rcome this mightie lin , and seeke the fountaines where they did begin . the third muse. thus as wee did behold the salmond sporting , wee spyed some countrie clowns to us resorting , who striken were with suddain admiration to see us graithed in such antique fashion , their stairing eyes grew blinde , their tongues were dumb , a chilling cold their senses did benumme . said we , what moves you ghosts to look so griesly ? they scarcely muttering , answered , and not wisely , oft have we heard of such strange wights as yee , but to this time we did them never see , if yee be men or not , scarce can we tell , yee looke like men , yet none such heere do dwell . then said good gall , monsier , these fellowes stupid , doubtlesse take me for mars , and you for cupid ; therefore let us be gone , we will not tarie , yon clownes will swear that they have seene the farie when they come home at night , and by the fire will tell such uncouth tales , all will admire , both man and wife , the laddes and all the lasses , for be yee sure such clownes are verie asses . thence downe the river bank as we did walk , and mirrielie began to chant and talk , a prettie boat with two oares we espy'd fleeting upon the waters , then we cry'd , how boatman come ; two fisher men neerby thus answered us againe , and who doth cry ? said we , good friends , to favour us delay not , the day is verie hot , and walk we may not , therefore your kindly courtesie implores , to let us have these little pair of oares for down the river we would make our way , and land at perth , with all our heart , said they , for we likewise at perth would gladly be , only we want such companie as yee . all men were glad of us , none did refuse what ever thing it pleasde us ask or chuse , then we inbarked with two boyes in train , who recollect our shafts , and these two men : as down the river did we softlie slide , the banks most sweetly smyld on other side : to see the flowres our hearts did much rejoice the banwort , dazie , and the fragrant rose ; favonius in our faces sweetlie blew his breath , which did our fainting sprits renew . then with sicilian muse can we dissemble our secret flammes , making our voices tremble ; while as we sweetlie sung kinde amaryllis , and did complaine of sowre-sweet lovely phyllis , so sadly , that the nymphs of woods and mountains , and these which haunt the plains and crystall fountains bare-legged to the brawns , armes bare and brest , like whitest evorie bare unto the waste , the lillies and the roses of their faces running more pleasant made , their waveing tresses , vvell curled with the winde : all these drew nye the waters brink , in song to keep reply , treading the flowres , vvhen gall them so espy'd o! how he cast his eyes on either side . and wish't t' have smeld one flovvr , vvhere they had traced , judge vvhat he vvould have given to have embraced . but chiefly echo fettred vvas in love , at everie vvord vve spoke her tongue did move , then did vve call , svveet nymph , pray thee dravv nye ? she ansvveering us most vvillingly , said , i dravv neere said gall , for gladlie vvould i please thee , do not deny to heare me . she said ease thee , then comesvveet nymph , thy face faine vvould i knovv , she quickly ansvvering him againe , said , no. why so , said he ? heere is there no narcissus . to this her old loves name did answer , kisse us . kisse us , said he , with all my heart , againe . this is the thing i would : she answered , gaine : gaine ! such a gaine , said he , i crave alway ; no countenance she shews , yet answers ay ; and bashfuly obscures her blushing face , lest from cephisus son she finde disgrace . but if that she had known gals tender minde , she had not prov'd so bashfull and unkinde . when ended were our songs with perfite close , we thought it best to merrie be in prose ; then seriously and truely to discourse , of diverse maters grave , we fell by course , but chiefly of this blinde worlds practice bad , preferring unto learning any trade . for these evill times hold not in such account men learned , as the former ages wont : but if the worth of learning well they knew , good gall ( quoth i ) they would make much of you , in poetrie so skild , and so well red in all antiquitie , what can be said whereof you fluently can not discourse , even like the current of this rivers course ? things absent you can present make appear , and things far distant ; as if they were near , things senselesse unto them give sense can yee , and make them touch , taste , smell , and heare , and see : what can not poets do ? they life can give and after fatall stroke can make men live ; and if they please to change their tune or note , they 'le mak mens names on earth to stink and rote . who did fixe hercules amongst the stars ? and diomedes for his wit in wars made equall to the gods ? but odious for vice thersites vile , and sisyphus ? these were th' immortall muses , who do sing , as vice and vertue do their subjects bring , therefore this counsell wisedome doth impart you , flee filthie vice and intertaine fair vertue . yet 't is not so that everie spirit fell whose wicked tongue is set on fire of hell , nor everie momus , nor archilochus , whose mouths do vomite venome poysonous , hath inspiration of the sacred muses , such wickednesse th' aonian band refuses : but he who vice most gravely censure can , and vertues praise advance in any man with perfect numbers , such one is a poet , but in thir dayes , alace , few men do know it , like my dear gall : who gravely did reply a good mecaenas lets not poets die , poets make men on gold wing'd fame to flie when lands with losse ; life chang'd with death shall be . as we thus talk'd our berge did sweetly passe by scones fair pallace , sometimes abbay was : strange change indeed , yet is it no new guyse , both spirituall lands and more to temporise . but pallace fair , which doth so richly stand , where gardens , orchards , parks on either hand , vvhere flovvres , and fruits , the hart , and fallovv deere , for smell , for taste , for venison and cheere , the nose , the mouth , and palate vvhich may please , for gardine chambers for delight and ease , damask't with porphyrie and alabaster , thou art not subject for each poetaster , but for a poet , master in his art , vvhich thee could vvhole descrive , and everie part , so to the life , as t'vvere in perspective , as readers that they see thee might beleeve . meane vvhile our boat doth vvith the river slide the countrie nymphs vvho in these parts abide , vvith many a shout moving both head and hand did us invite , that vve vvould come a land . not novv , said vve ; and think it not disdaine for vve do promise for to come againe , and view where some time stood your cathedrall , and mount , which omnis terra you do call . just by this time we see the bridge of tay o happie sight indeed , was it that day ; a bridge so stately , with elleven great arches , joining the south and north , and commoun march is unto them both , a bridge of squared stone , so great and fair ; which when i think upon , how in these dayes it did so proudly stand , ov'rlooking both the river and the land ; so fair , so high , a bridge for many ages most famous ; but alace , now through the rages of furious swelling waters , thrown in deep , mine heart for sorrow sobs , mine eyes do weep . and if my tongue should cease to cry and speak , undoubtedlie my grief-swoln heart would break . but courage , monsier , my good genius sayes , remember yee not how gall in those dayes did you comfort , lest melancholious fits had you opprest , your spleen so neerelie sits , and told you in the yeer threescore thirteene the first down-fall this bridge did ere sustaine , by ruine of three arches nixt the town , yet were rebuilt . thereafter were thrown down five arches in the yeer fourescore and two , reedified likewise , and who doth know monsier , but ah , mine heart can scarcelie sober ! even that great fall the fourteenth of october , six hundred twentie one , repaird may bee , and i do wish the same that i might see : for britaines monarch vvill it sure repair , courage therefore , monsier , do not despare ; is 't credible to bee believ'd or told , that these our kings , who did possesse of old scotland alone , should such a work erect and britaines mightie monarch it neglect ? absurd it is to think , much more to speak it ; therefore good monsier yee do far mistake it ; for never had yee king vvas more inclinde to do great vvorks ; nor of a braver minde , providing he can have due information , his vvord vvill prove of powerfull operation : for kings are gods on earth , and all their actions do represent th' almighties great perfections . thus gals sweet words often do me comfort , and my good genius truely doth report them unto me , else sure my splene should wholly be overcome with fits of melancholie ; therefore i courage take , and hope to see a bridge yet built , although i aged be , more stately , firme , more sumptuous , and more fair , then any former age could yet compare : thus gall assured me it would be so , and my good genius truely doth it know : for what we do presage is not in grosse , for we be brethren of the rosie crosse ; vve have the mason word , and second sight , things for to come we can foretell aright ; and shall we show what mysterie we meane , in fair acrosticks carolus rex , is seene describ'd upon that bridge , in perfect gold : by skilfull art ; this cleerelie we behold , with all the scutcheon of great britaines king , which unto perth most joyfull news shall bring , loath would we be this mysterie to unfold but for king charles his honour we are bold . and as our boat most pleasantly did passe upon the cristall river , clear as glasse , my dearest gall , quoth i , long time i spend revolving from beginning to the end all our records , yet searching can not finde first when this bridge was built ; therefore thy minde faine would i know : for i am verie sorie such things should be omitted in our storie . monsier , said gall , things many of that kinde to be omitted often do vve finde : yea time hath also greatest vvorks destroyed , wherein the learn'dest pennes have beene imployed . but if that i should tell what i do knovv , an ancient storie i could to you shovv , which i have found in an old manuscript , but in our late records is overslipt , which storie no lesse probable is , than true , and , my good monsier , i vvill show it you . i leave to speak vvhat hollinshed hath told of cunidag , vvas britaine king of old , the time vzziah was of iuda king , and ieroboam did ov'r israel reigne , ere rome a citie was yeers fourtie five , ere sons of rhea did for masterie strive , hovv that this heathen built three cels of stone , to mercurie at bongor built he one , his vvay for to direct : then to apollo at cornuel another did he hallovv , for favourable response : the third to mars , where perth novv stands , for to assist his wars . but good monsier this storie is too old , therefore i leave the rest of it untold , the time vvill not permit me to out-read it , i 'm sure in hollinshed yee often read it . i will a storie of no lesse credite tell , in after ages truely what befell . when mightie romaines came into this soile , with endlesse labour and undaunted toile , after great conflicts and uncertaine chance of fortunes dye , they did in armes advance , at length unto these parts where perth doth stand under the conduct and victorious hand of that most valiant chieftain of great fame brave iulius agricola by name . and there hard by a river side they found the fairest and most pleasant plot of ground , that since by bank of tiber they had beene , the like for beautie seldome had they seene , of eighteene hundreth paces good , in length , from muretowne brays to foot of carnaks strength , king of the pights , which stood on moredune hill , the foot thereof from friers dwelt thereintill now named is , in breadth eight hundreth paces , painted with white , red , yellow flowrie faces , so equall fair ; which when they did espy , incontinent they campus martius cry , and as an happie presage they had seene , they fixt their tents amidst that spatious greene , right where now perth doth stand , and cast their trenches even where perths fowsies are , between these inches , the south and north , and bastalies they make , the power and strength of scots , and pights to brake , who presently would fight , by wise cunctation they frustrat all their hope and expectation : for well this most victorius romaine knew t' abate his enemies rage and courage too . finding the place even to their hearts desire , with grasse for pasture stor'd , and wood for fire , the river likewise verie opportune for lighter vessels to passe up and downe , and correspondence with their navie make , as souldiers wise , they all occasions take , and do conclude to winter in that place , to foile their foes , by voluntarie chace . meane while couragiously they do advise a bridge to build , for further enterprise , then forthwith fall they with redoubling stroaks to fell the tall firre trees , and aged oaks ; some square the timber with a stretched line , some do the tenons , and the morties joine , some frame an ovall , others make a cub , some cut a section , other some do grub , some with great compasse semicircles forme , some drive the wadges , painfullie some worme , some do hoyse up the standers , others fixe them ; and some lay goodly rafters ov'r betwixt them ; what strength or skill can work , from point to point they cunningly contrive with angular joint , and do most strongly binde these contignations , to make them stand against all inundations . all men are set on frame , all hands are working , and all ingines are bussied without irking . thus in short space , a bridge they strongly make , with passage fair ; and for their safeties sake a mightie strength to be , they frame withall , on either end , a bridge to lift and fall , that souldiers might within it keep at ease , admitting , or repelling , as they please thus fortified , lest that they should neglect due honour to their gods , they did erect to mars a temple , rather did restore the temple built by cunidag before : for time on all things worketh demolition , and heathen men maintaine like superstition . then did this valiant chiftaine name the river in italies remembrance neo-tiber . which afterwards it kept for many a day , how long i know not , now it s called tay. likewise an house of mightie stone he framed , from whence our castell-gavell , as yet is named . and , if domitian had not cald him home , i think he should have built another rome . but all these monuments were worne away ere did king william perths foundation lay , only mars temple stood upon that greene , and th' house built by agricola was seene , and some characters cunningly incisde with iulius agricola imprisde in solid marmor , and some print was found , where camped had an armie , and the ground where there had beene a bridge : all which did yeeld occasion to king william for to beild , after old bertha's overthrow , that citie , these ancient walls , and famous bridge ; ah pitie if they were as ! but what doth not the rage of men demolish and consuming age ? for good king william seeing where had beene of old a passage , forthwith did ordaine a mightie bridge of squaired stone to be . these famous wals and fusies which we see , perth his chief strength to make , and seat of power did with most ample priviledge indue her . these be the first memorials of a bridge , good monsier , that we truely can alledge . thus spake good gall and i did much rejoice to heare him these antiquities disclose ; which i remembring now , of force must cry , gall , sweetest gall , what ailed thee to die ? the fourth muse. this time our boat passing too nigh the land , the vvhirling streame did make her run on sand , aluif , vve cry'd , but all in vain , t' abide , we were constrain'd , till flowing of the tide . then master gall , quod i , even for my blessing now let us go , the pretious pearles a fishing , th' occasion serveth well , while heere we stay to catch these mussels , you call toyts of tay : it 's possible , if no ill eye bewitch us we jewels finde , for all our dayes t' enrich us : the waters here are shald , and clear , and warme , to bath our armes and lims will do no harme , for these sweet streames have power to bring back our spirits which in outward parts make slake our naturall strength , but when these sprits retire they multiplie our heat and inbred fire , helping our vitall , and our naturall parts , our lungs , our levers , stomachs , and our hearts , and mightily refrigerat our reanes , but above all they do refresh our spleans . for such a bathing bravely doth expell melancholie , which makes the splean toswell . more than it should , causing an atrophie , that we like skelets rather seeme to be then men , and atropos appears to laugh , thinking we look liker an epitaph , then marriage song ; likewise it doth us make both supper and collation freshly take . content said gall : then off our shoes we drew , and hose , and from us we our doublets threw , our shirt sleeves wreathing up , without more speeches , and high above our knees pulling our breeches , in waters go , then streight mine armes i reach unto the ground , whence cleaverly i fetch some of these living pearled shels , which do excell in touching and in tasting too , as all who search do by experience try , and we oftimes ; therewith i lowdlie cry , good master gall , behold i found a pearle , a jewell , i assure you , for an earle . be silent , said good gall , or speak at leasure , for men will cut your throat to get your treasure , if they its worth did know so well as i. harpocrates my patience will try , said i againe , for i am not like such who hurd their treasure and their speach asmuch . but gall , to stay long , no wayes could be mov'd this element , said he , i never lov'd . to land : on goeth our cloaths , alongst the way then did we go , and taking cleare survey how proper perth did stand , one might have drawn its landship fair , on paper , or on lawn . good gall , said i , ofttimes i heard of old to be of truth these things ere while you told : but of these wals i doubt that which you said that good king william their foundations layd . their founding is more late , i you assure ; that we from strangers rage may be secure , they builded were , even then when iames did reigne the second , and in minor age was king , vpon a bloodie slaughter , i hear tell , which twixt our town and highland men befell ; for taking , as the custome was , a staig at midsummer ; said gall , monsier , you vaig . which word indeed my spleane almost did move : then gall , said i , if that i did not love you most intirely , i would be offended . said he , good monsier , would you have it mended ? then i that storie will you truely tell , and if i faile so much as in a spell , speak all your pleasure , i my peace shall hold , an● grant my tongue in speaking was too bold : therefore monsier , be not so much annoy'd , these walls have oft been built , and oft destroy'd and stratagems of war have acted been , as worthie as the world hath heard or seene . by sojours as good as the earth hath born , this boldly to avow i dar be sworn : englands first edwards three can shew the same , and scotlands wallace , bruce , and stewarts fame , whose prowes vvithin this isle vvere not confin'd the netherlands and france scarce them contain'd , nor other parts of europ , and it 's cleare what great exploits they bravelie acted heere , these stories are vvell known , i must not slack , for by and by the tide vvill call us back , when edward langshanks scotland did surprise , the strengths first did he take , as chiftaine vvise , but his cheif strength to keep both south and north lovv-lands and high-lands on this side of forth , perth did he chuse , and stronglie fortifie with garisons of foot and chavalrie . and vvhat the former times could not outred in vvalls and fovvsies ; these accomplished . thereafter vvorthie wallace first expell'd them , and for to leave these vvals by force compell'd them . whom after foughten vvas that fatall field vvofull falkirk , envie did force to yeeld up his governement ; to perth then came , and in the nobles presence quatte the same . leanfac'd envie doth often bring a nation to civill discord , shame , and desolation . such bitter fruit we found , all to confusion at once did run , was nothing but effusion of guiltlesse bloud : our enemies did take our strengths again , and all things went to wrake , such was our wofull state , unto the time the brave king , robert bruce , came to this clime , most happily , yet small beginnings had : for many yeers before this land he fred from enemies rage , till wisely he at length by soft recoiling recollected strength ; then came to perth , and did the same besiege and take ; who through persuit and cruell rage kil'd scots , and english all were in it found , brake down the walls , them equal'd to the ground . but after this victorious king did die , and brave earle thomas randolf , by and by all things perplexed were , the baliol proud with english forces both by land and floud in scotland came , arrived at kinghorne , and through the countrie mightily did sorne . our governours , the earles of merche and marre sufficient armies levying for warre this pride for to represse , did fixe their tents at dupline camped marre : mine heart it rents to tell the wofull event , in the night this earle and all his hoste surprisde by sleight , yee know the storie , all to death neer brought , the englishmen on scots such butcheries wrought . thus baliol proud to perth did make his way , the city all secure ere break of day for to surprise , naked of walls and men , as pray most easie did obtaine , and then to fortifie the same , in haste , did call , go cast the fousie , and repair the wall . the earle of merch , hearing the wofull chance , incontinent his armie did advance to perth , hoping the same he might regaine , did straitly it besiege , but all in vaine , he forc'd was to reteir ; baliol to scone then went , was crown'd , rather usurp'd the crown . by these fair fortuns having gain'd a faction , not for the countreyes peace , but for distraction did overswey the ballance , none with reason durst call the baliols enterprise a treason , because it had good successe ; so doth reele th' inconstant course of giddie fortunes wheele . constant in changes of blindfolded chance . meane while king david bruce did flee to france as yet a child , his tender life to save from tyrannizing baliols bloodie glave . baliol install'd , in guarding leaves the town to some true traitours , not true to the crown . hereafter nobles and commons all combinde whose kin wer kild at dupline , in one minde aveng'd to be , did come in awfull maner unto the citie , with displayed banner ; and strongly it beseige three months and more , till strong assault , and famine , urgeing sore , forc'd them to yeeld , the traitours openly kild the wals were raz'd againe , and fousies fild . yet baliol once more did obtaine the same , and with new fortunes much advance his name but who doth not finde fortunes fickle chance ? whom erewhile she so highly did advance to hold a scepter , and to weare a crown , now tyrannizing proudly pesters down : king edward came with fiftie thousand brave to perth , the baliol , lead as captiv'd slave . trust not in kings , nor kingdomes , nor applause of men , the world 's a sea that ebbes and flowes , a wheele that turnes , a reele that alwayes rokes a bait that overswallowed men choaks . seditions rise againe , this edward windsore with greater forces came , and made a winde sore to blow through scotland , minding a new conquest , did all things overwhelme , even as a tempest castles ov'rcome , strongly beligger perth it take , rebuild her wals , all thrown to earth , upon the charges of sex abacies , with bulwarks , rampiers , rounds , and bastilies of squared stone , with towres and battlements , houses for prospect , and such muniments , for strong defence , clouses and water fals , with passage fair to walk upon the wals , and spacious bounds within sojours to dreele , to merch , to string , to turne about , and wheele . these were the abacies , couper , landores , balmerinoch , dumfermling , saint androes , and aberbrotok ; who these works did frame , for merite , and for honour of their name : such zeale had they , though blinde ; ah now a-dayes much knowledge is profest , but zeale decayes . thus was the citie strongly fortified , till robert the first stuart first assayed with foure great armies , yet by force repell'd and after three months sage with grief compell'd to sound retreat , douglas meane while in tay most happ'ly did arrive : then they assay to reinforce the charge , and with munition for batterie new prepard , and demolition , most furiously assault , a month and more , yet nothing could availe their endevoure , untill the earle of rosse with new supplie did fortifie the leaguer , and drew by the water , which the wall did compasse round , by secret conduits , and made dry the ground . then after sharp assault , and much bloud spended , bravely pursued , and no lesse well defended , finding themselves too weak who were within more to resist , to parlie they begin , and treat of peace ; both parties jump in one , with bag and baggage that they should be gone , and so it was : the citie they surrender no english since hath been thereof commander . read george buchanane boëce , master mair these histories they word for word declare . after this seige the wals some part thrown down but were not wholly razde , to keep the town in some good sort , readie for peace or war , if not a bulwark , yet some kinde of bar . thus did they stand , untill these heighland men amidst their furie kil'd a citizen ; a citizen to kill , an odious thing it then was thought ; no sacrifice condigne could expiat the same , though now each knave dar to account a citizen a slave ; no such conceat in all the world againe , as proudlie-poor such fondlings do maintaine . this suddaine slaughter made a great commotion , the burgesses without further devotion as men with war inur'd , to armes do flie , upon these heigh-land men aveng'd to be , which they performe , chaffed in minde as beares , and do persue them unto hoghmansstaires ; in memorie of this fight it hath the name , for many men lay there , some dead , some lame , on which occasion they gan fortifie , and build these walls againe , as now we see ; though not so brav'ly as they were before , for that did far surpasse their endevour , yet some resemblance they do keep and fashion for they be builded neere the old foundation . these are the wals , monsier , as i have shown , which often have beene built , ofttimes down thrown with stratagems of war , fame hath renownd them , and if not mars , yet martiall men did found them . but now , good monsier , needs none more at all them to destroy : they of themselves will fall . so said good gall , and humbly begged leave for that offence so rashly he did give . oh! if he were on life to say much more , for so he was disposde some times to roare . the fifth muse. yet bold attempt and dangerous , said i , upon these kinde of men such chance to try by nature inhumaine , much given to blood , wilde , fierce , and cruell , in a disperat mood . but no such danger , answer'd master gall , as fearfullie you deeme , was there at all : for perth was then a citie made for war , her men were souldiers all , and bold to dar such motion attempt , a souldier keene the smallest outrage hardly can susteene . many such stratagems declare i might , which perth hath acted in defence of right : how ruthvens place , and duplins , in one day were burn'd , or battell of the bridge of tay , with manly courage fought , where , kil'd were many , vpon the day sacred to magdalené , five hundreth fourtie foure , for which she mournes , and many times her cristall teares she turnes in flouds of woes , remembring how these men were justly by their own ambition slaine , thinking to sack a town , some through despaire did overleap the bridge , and perish there : some borne on spears , by chance did swim a land . and some lay swelting in the slykie sand , agruif lay some , others with eyes to skyes , these yeelding dying sobs , these mournfull cryes . some by their fall were fixed on their spears , some swatring in the floud the streame down bears , by chance some got a boat , what needs more words ? they make them oars of their two handed swords : some doubting what to do , to leap or stay , were trampled under foot as mirie clay ; confusedly to fight and flee they thrimble , the shifring spears thurst through their bodies tremble , and strongly brangled in splents do quicklie flee , the glistring sword is changed in crimson dye ; to wrak they go ; even as the raging thunder , rumbling and rolling roundly , breaks asunder a thick and dampish cloud , making a showre of crystall gems , on earths dry bosome powre , so broken was that cloud , the purpure bloud in drops distilling , rather as a floud , the dry and dustie ground doth warmely draine ; and dying bodies in their own blood staine , or as the comets , or such meteors driven or stars which do appear to fall from heaven : so tumbling headlong spears in hand they traile ; as firie dragons , seeme to have a taile ; or phaëton , or some sulphureous ball , so from the bridge in river do they fall . i pray the gall , quoth i , that storie shovv some things i heard of it , and more vvould knovv , tell it i pray . no , no , gall did reply , lest i offend our neighbour tovvn neerby , when they shall hear hovv malice did provoke them , ambition them guide and avarice choak them ; thinking upon our spoyles triumph to make , and on th' occasion given our tovvn to vvrak , with full commission purchast for the same , t'intrude a provest , else vvith svvord and flame all to destroy , given by the cardinall , at vvhose devotion then vvas govern'd all : so in that morning soon by break of day the tovvn all silent did beset , then they to clim the bridge begin and port to skall , the chaines they break , and let the dravvbridge fall ; the little gate of purpose vvas left patent and all our citizens in lanes vvere latent , none durst be seene , the enemies to allure their ovvn destruction justlie to procure ; thus entring th●ough , vvell straitly , one did call , all is our ovvne , come fellovv-souldiers all , advance your lordlie pace ; take and destroy , build up your fortunes ; o vvith vvhat great joy these vvords vvere heard ! then did they proudly step as men advanc'd on stilts , and cock their cap. with roulling eyes they looke , and hand in side throwing their noses , snuffe , and with great pride selflooking set their brawnes , themselves admire and doubting at their own hearts closely speare if it be they ; thus wondering do they pause a prettie while , anone they quickly loose with swifter pace ; and turning round , they move if there be any gazer to approve their great conceat ; thus , inly fil'd with glie , they wish their wife or mistres might them see : scorning alcides , they his strength would try , and in their braine the world they do defie . with such brave thoughts they throng in through the port thinking the play of fortune bairnely sport , and as proud peacocks with their plumes do prank alongst the bridge they merche in battell rank , till they came to the gate with yron hands , hard by where yet our ladies chappell stands , thinking to break these bars it made some hover , too strong they were , therefore some did leap over , some crept below , thus many passe in by them , and in their high conceat they do defie them . forwards within the town a space they go , the passage then was strait , as well ye know , made by a wall , having gain'd so much ground they can exult : incontinent did sound a trumpet from a watchtowre ; then they start , and all their bloud doth strike into their heart ; a wondrous change ! even now the bravest fellows in their own fansies glasse , who came to quaile us the vitall sprits their artires do containe , their panting hearts now scarcely can sustaine . our souldiurrs then , who lying were a darning , by sound of trumpet having got a warning do kyth , and give the charge ; to tell the rest yee know it well , it needs not be exprest , many to ground were born , great bloud was shed , he was the prettiest man that fastest fled . yea happie had they been , if place had served to flee , then doubtlesse more had been preserved . within these bars were kill'd above threescore upon the bridge and waters many more . but most of all did perish in the chace , for they pursued were unto the place , where all their baggage and their canon lay , which to the town was brought as lawfull prey . what shall i more say ? if more you would have , i 'le speake of these three hundreth souldiours brave , like these renown'd lacedemonians , couragious thebans , valiant thespians resolv'd to die , led by leonidas , stop't xerxes armie at thermopylas . such were these men who for religions sake , a cord of hemp about their necks did take , solemnly sworn , to yeeld their lives thereby , or they the gospels veritie deny : quiting their houses , goods , and pleasures all , resolv'd for any hazard might befall , did passe forth of the town in armes to fight , and die , or they their libertie and light should lose , and whosoever should presume to turn away that cord should be his doome . hence of saint iohnstoun riband came the word in such a frequent use , when with a cord they threaten rogues ; though now all in contempt it speak , yet brave and resolute attempt , and full of courage , worthie imitation , deserving of all ages commendation made these men put it on , symbole to be , they readie were for christ to do or die . for they were martyrs all in their affection and like to davids worthies in their action ; therefore this cord should have beene made a badge and signe of honour to the after age . even as we see things in themselves despised , by such rare accidents are highlie prised , and in brave skutsheons honourablie born , with mottoes rare these symbols to adorn . thus some have vermine , and such loathsome swarmes , yet honourably borne are in their armes , and some have myce , some frogs , some filthie rats , and some have wolfs , and foxes ; some have cats ; yet honourable respect in all his had , though in themselves they loathsome be and bad , thus millaine glories in the bainfull viper , as none more honour misterie none deeper ; the auncient gaules in toads , in lillies now metamorphosde : the phrygians in their sow . athens their owle with th' eagle will not barter , and honi soit who thinks ill of the garter . what shall be said then of this rope or cord ? although of all men it be now abhord , and spoke of in disdaine , their ignorance hath made them so to speak , yet may it chance when they shall know the truth , they will speak better , and think of it as of a greater matter , and truely it esteeme an hundreth fold of much more honour than a chaine of gold . thus may you see monsier , men of renown of old time have possest this ancient town . and yet this may we boast , even to this day men of good wit and worth do not decay ; for to this houre some footsteps still remaines of such couragious hearts and cunning braines . good master gall , quoth i , i know that well whereof you speak , and clearly can it tell , for i did say these men , being then of age some twelue or threttene years , a prettie page , as easely you may guesse , and can you show some partiall poynts whereof you nothing know . nor are they written . then answered master gall , a witnesse such as you is above all exception , therefore show what you did see , or heare , good monsier , your antiquitie is of great credit : master gall , quoth i , much did i see , and much more did i try : my father was a man active , and wight in those dayes , and who helped for to fight the battell of the bridge : within few yeeres thereafter was i borne , then all our quires and convents richly stood , which i did see with all their pomp ; but these things told to me first will i shew ; a storie of much ruth how that our martyrs suffered for the truth of christs blest gospell , on pauls holy day before the fight was of the bridge of tay in that same yeere ; the sillie governour led by the craftie cardinall , with power held judgement on these men , and under trust condemned them ; nothing their bloudie lust could satiat : the citizens made sure their neighbours should nor losse nor skaith indure , go to their homes , forthwith the cardinall causde lead them unto execution all . and from the spey towre window did behold doome execut , even as his cleargie would : which treacherous fact did so enrage the town , no credit more to black , white , nor gray gown after these dayes was given : thus in the place where malefactors end their wicked race , these innocents do make a blessed end , and unto god their sprits they recommend , in witnesse of the faith , for which they die , and by the sprit of truth did prophesie these vvords , looking and pointing vvith the hand tovvards our monasteries , vvhich then did stand most sumptuously adorn'd vvith steples , bels , church ornaments , and vvhat belongeth else , " these foxes which do lurke within these holes , " delighting in the earth like blinded moles , " drown'd in their lusts , and swimming in their pleasures " whose god their belly , whose chief joy their treasures ; " who caused have our death , shall hunded be " forth of these dens , some present heere shall see " the same ere it be long , then shall yee say , " its for gods truth that we have dyed this day . " and all these sumptuous buildings shall be cast " down to the earth , made desolat , and wast : " this to performe gods zeale shall eat men up , " to fill the double potion in their cup : " the apples then of pleasure , which they loved " and lusted after , shall be all removed . " yea scarcely shall they finde a hole to hide " their heads ( thus by the sprite they testified . ) " and in that day true pastours shall the lord " raise up to feed his flock , with his pure word , " and make christs people by peculiar choice " dignosce the sheepheards from the hyrelings voice . which as they did foretell did come to passe some sixteene yeeres or thereby , more or lesse , thus with cleare signes , by gods own sprit exprest , in full assurance of heavens blesse they rest . meane while saint catharins chaplan standing by , wringing his eyes and hands , did often cry , alace , alace , for this unhappie turn , i feare for it one day we shall all mourn , and that by all it shall be plainlie said , that we blind guides the blinded long have led ; some churchmen there , bad pack him heretick , else certainelie they should cause burne him quicke , this done , friends take their bodies and with mourning do carie them towards the town , returning with heavie hearts , them to this chappell bring , but no soule masse nor dirigé durst sing . yet this good priest did lay them on the altar , and all night read the pistle , and the psalter , with heart devote , and sad ; from th' evening vapers , placing upon the altar burning tapers unto the dawning : exequies thus ended . their bodies to the earth are recommended . this chapell some time stood by our theater , where i my self sprinkled with holie water , after these dayes did often heare the messe albeit i knew not what it did expresse , but this i saw , a man with a shaven crown , raz'd beard , and lips , who look't like a baboun , perfum'd with odours , and in priestlie vestures , did act this mimik toy with thousand gestures ; a misterie indeed , nor which no fable acted on stage to make you laugh more able . after these innocents were martyred thus as you have heard , churchmen were odious , and , when occasion serv'd , so did they finde , for , so soone as did blow a contrare winde , the houre was come , and then our knox did sound , pull down their idols , throw them to the ground . the multitude , even as a spear , did rush then in poulder beat ; and cald them all nehushtan . our blak friers church and place , white friers , and gray prophan'd , and cast to ground were in one day . the charterhouse like a citadale did hold some tvvo dayes more , untill these nevves vvere told we should be raz'd and sackt , and brought to ground , not so much as a footstep should be found where vvas such citie ; neither sexe , nor age should saved be , untill the cruell rage of fire and svvord should satiat that moud , quenching the fire vvith citizens ovvne bloud and vvith destructions besome svveep from station , and savv vvith sault ; perpetuall desolation to signifie : these nevves made great commotion , the fearfull people ran to their devotion : doctrine and prayers done , chief men advise , to take in hand first vvhat great enterprise . said one , this place hard by our tovvn doth stand a mightie strength , vvhich easely may command , and vvrake our citie , therefore let us go in time , and to the ground it overthrovv , for sure our enemies vvill possesse the same , and us from thence destroy vvith svvord and flame , even at their pleasure . then they all conclude in armes to rise ; and rushing as a floud vvhich overflovves the banks , and headlongs hurles the strongest bulvvarks vvith devouring vvhirles , svvallovving the mightie ships them overvvhelme , nothing availes his skill that guides the helme ; even so the multitude in armes arise vvith noise confusde of mirth and mourning cryes for that fair palace , then sexscore nine yeeres vvhich had continued ; turning of the spheres the fatall period brought , to ground it must , and all its pomp and riches turne to dust . even as these martyrs truelie did foretell in everie point the judgement so befell . towres fall to ground , monks flee to hide their heads , nothing availe their rosaries and beads ; then all men cry'd , raze raze , the time is come , avenge the guiltlesse bloud , and give the doome . courage to give was mightilie then blown saint iohnstons huntsup , since most famous known by all musitians , when they sweetlie sing with heavenly voice , and well concording string . o how they bend their backs and fingers tirle ! moving their quivering heads their brains do whirle with diverse moods ; and as with uncouth rapture transported , so doth shake their bodies structure : their eyes do reele , heads , armes , and shoulders move : feet , legs , and hands and all their parts approve that heavenlie harmonie : while as they threw their browes , o mightie straine ! that 's brave ! they shew great phantasie ; quivering a brief some while , with full consent they close , then give a smile , with bowing bodie , and with bending knee , me think i heare god save the companie . but harmonie which heavens and earth doth please could not our enemies furious rage appease ; cruell erinnis reignes destruction shoring , ten thousand souldiours like vvilde lyons roaring against our tovvn do merch , fame desolation proclaimes ; the church then nam'd the congregation makes for defence : but ah the burghs distractions ! papists and protestants make diverse factions ; the town to hold impossible they finde , the fields to take they purpose in their minde , factions within , munition , victuall scarce , hardly to hold eight dayes they finde by search . amids these doubts these valiant fellowes come in armes aray'd , and beatting of the drum , with coards about their necks , come , come , they cry , we be the men who are resolv'd to die . first in this quarrell ; we to death will fight , so long as courage will afford us might , and who so yeeldes alive , this tow portends streight must he hing where did our dearest friends who suffered for the truth , nothing we skunner , this certainlie we count our chiefest honour . thus as manasses half tribe , ruben , gad do leave their cattell , and mount gilead , before their brethren over iordan go , in armes to fight against their cursed fo ; so these three hundred do abandon quite their citie , houses , goods , and chief delite , resolv'd to die all for the gospels light , armed before their brethren merch to fight ; and having gain'd a place meet to abide , their enemies to resist , courage they cride , be merrie fellowes all , leave sad complaints , dine cheerefullie , for sup we shall with saints . fame spreads the brave attempt , all martiall hearts inflam'd with divine zeale flock to these parts from places most remote , in armes they rise t' assist the matchlesse happie enterprise . god giveth hearts to men , and mightiest things by weakest meanes he to confusion brings : our enemies ears are fild that all our feare was into courage turned from despare ; their fierie rage is quencht , their hearts do faile , where god forsakes nought doth mans strength availe . then what their open force could not work out , by sleight they endevour to bring about , they treat of peace : peace flees with joyfull wings , but under it was hatcht most lewd designes when time should serve : but he whose thought doth rule this worlds great frame their madnesse did controule ; and gratiouslie through his aboundant pitie preserv'd our innocents , and sav'd our citie . ( ded when by small means they found themselves confoun even to their verie heart roots were they wounded : then they began to raile , and shew their passion , saying , such riband's meet for such profession . and in contempt , when any rogue thy see , they say , saint iohnstouns ribands meet for thee . or any fellow resolute in minde for some great act , this riband fit they finde for such a one , thus time made all men use this word , and ignorance through time t' abuse , for everie bad conceat , which for religion vvas stoutlie undertaken in thsi region : vvhich i did see , and heare , and well do know , and for your life the paralel me show in all the world ; except leonidas the rest , without a third i overpasse . thus our saint iohnstons riband took the name whereof we have no reason to think shame . our shipper heerwith cald , how , turn aback , the waters flow , and tide doth quickly make , therefore of this to speak more was no leasure , for winde and tide ( you know ) stay no mans pleasure . with post haste to our bearge we make our way , the day far spent , longer we might not stay ; our ship now fairlie fleeting comes a land , two skilfull rowers take the oares in hand we reembarked , down the river slide , which was most pleasant with the flowing tide , the bridge drawes nigh where contrare streams do run , take heed shipper , said we , these dangers shun , the whirling streame will make our boat to cowp , therefore let 's passe the bridge by wallace loup . which when we did behold , 'mongst other things we much admir'd who lent his feet such wings : empedocles may leap in aetna burning , in tiber leap may cocles home returning , the one burnes in flame , th' other falls in flood but wallace overleaping makes all good . when we these heaven-like arches had survey'd vve admird in th' air these hinging stones what stay'd . then thus said gall ; these on their centers stay , as on their bases fixt , and all their sway they presse toward the same , a wondrous thing , albeit the center in the air doth hing , yea diverse circles sections diverse wayes tend to their proper centers , as their stayes ; so these two sections do conjoine in one , to make the arch , and finisht in a cone , as everie peace these bowing arches bends , it rightlie pointing to the center tends . so heavens respect the earth , and all their powers together in her bosome strongly powres , vvhich is their center , roote , and sure pedestall the stedfast base whereon this vvorld doth rest all . thus mans ingine gods works doth imitate and skilfull art doth nature emulat . as archimedes in a sphere of glasse the worlds great fabrick lively did expresse , vvith all the stars fixt in the azure heaven , and all the motions of the wandring seven , moving about a fixed point or center , observing houres , dayes , months , summer , and winter . even so the arches of this bridge proclaime , and shew the building of the starrie frame : but now all lost , needs archimedes skill , oh if it were supplied by master mylne ! thus having past the bridge , our oares we bend to shore , so this day voyage made an end . the sixth muse. as we arrived at our ladies steps , incontinent all men reverst their capes , bidding us welcome home , and joining hand , they ask from whence we came , and from what land ? said we , some curious catching everie winde do run through sea and land to either inde , and compassing the glob , in circuit role , some new found lands to search beneath each pole , or memphis , wonders , or the pharian tower , or walls which shew the babylonian power ; or hung in th' air the mausolean frame , or statelie ' temple of the trivian dame , the rhodian colossus , and the grove , where stood the statue of olympian iove , with endlesse toile and labour passe to see , or if in all this world more wonders be , they search the same , and so they stoutlie boast , yet both themselves and paines are oft times lost : for going men , if they return perhaps , strange change , in swine transformed are their shaps : albeit some , though rare , who go from hence , returne , like him of ithaca was prince : but we , more safely passing all alongs , are not bewitched with such syren songs . in little much , well traveld in short ground do search what wonders in the world are found ; treading these mountains , and these pleasant valleyes , elisian fields had never braver allies then we imagine , and for wonders rare more than the carian tombe which hings in air do we conceave . of travels let them talk , we in the works of learned men do walk and painfully their learned paths do tread , for sure he 's traveld far who is well read yea who so views my cabinets rich store , is traveld through the world , and some part more . let this suffice we travell to content us , and of our travels think nev'r to repent us , yea in our muses , we do travell more than they that coast and sound the indian shore . yet think not so brave travels we condemne , if with safe conscience we may use the same ; nor do we speak voide of experience , for both of us have traveld been in france , and france for all , and if that will not ease you we think then all this world will never please you . then went we home to get some recreation , but by and by befell a new tentation : our neighbour archers our good sport envying , a challenge to us sent , our patience trying , and did provoke us , if we shut for gold , or honours praise , betimes , to morrow would : or for our mistres if we had a minde , doubtlesse , said gall , thereto vve are inclinde : but for the present vve have taken in hand to vievv our fields by river and by land ; boast not therefore , for nothing vvill disheart us , nor from our present progresse vvill divert us . but of our journey having made an end , our lives in such brave quarrell vvill vve spend . this ansvvere vvhen they heard , they did compeer vvith ardent hearts some further nevves to speer , and vvhat brave sport vve found , vvhat pastime rare ? forthvvith in loftie verse gall to declare began , his breast vvhen phoebus once did vvarme , their ears and hearts , his heavenly voice did charme , and i to keep a consort vvith full voice , as fell by turn , did make them all rejoice vvith svveetest rimes ; for both of us inclinde , even as democritus did truely minde of poets all , vvhen once that sacred fire vvith divine furie did our breasts inspire . and thus vvith heavenlie rapture , as transported that vvhole dayes journey gall to them reported , till hesperus appeard , and in despight of heavens vvhich hearkned , forc'd to bid good night . vvhich vvhen i call to minde , it makes me cry gall , svveetest gall , vvhat ailed the to die ? the night vvas short , phoebus did touch the line vvhere cruked cancer makes him to decline , no sleep could close mine eyes , but wake must i , till fair aurora did inlight the sky . then up i got , and where good gall did ly , with mightie voice and chanting did i cry , good master gall , arise , you sleep too long with hey the day now dawnes , so was my song , the day now dawnes , arise good master gall , who answering said , monsier , i heare you call : and up he got . then to our bearge we go , to answer us our boatman wondrous slow , when we did call , thrise lifting up his head , thrise to the ground did fall againe as dead . but him to raise , i sung hay the day dawnes ; the drowsie fellow wakning , gaunts , and yawnes ; but getting up at last , and with a blow raising his fellow , bad him quickly row . then merrielie we leanche into the deep , phoebus meane while awakned rose from sleep , at his appointed houre , the pleasant morning . with guilded beames the cristall streames adorning : the pearled dew on tender grasse did hing , and heavenly quires of birds did sweetlie sing : down by the sweet south inche we sliding go , ten thousand dangling diamonds did show the radiant repercussion of sols rayes and spreading flowres did looke like argoes eyes . then did we talk of citie toiles and cares , thrice happie counting him shuns these affaires , and with us have delight these fields to haunt some pastorall or sonnet sweet to chant . and view from far th'ambitions of this age , turning the helmes of states , and in their rage make shipwrake of the same on shelfs and sands , running be lawles lawes and hard commands , and often drown themselves in flouds of woes , as many shipwraks of this kinde well showes . we passe our time upon the forked mountain , and drink the cristall waters of the fountain . dig'd by the winged horse ; we sing the trees the cornes , and flocks , and labours of the bees ; of sheepheard lads , and lasses homelie love , and some time straine our oaten pipe above that mean : we sing of hero and leander yea mars , all cled in steel ; and alexander . but cynthius us pulling by the ear did warning give , to keep a lower air , but keep what air we will , who can well say that he himself preserve from shipwrake may ? in stormie seas , while as the ship doth reele of publick state , the meanest boy may feele shipwrack , as well as he the helme who guides , when seas do rage with winds and contrare tides . which : ah too true i found , upon an ore not long ago , while as i swim'd to shore , witnesse my drenshed cloaths , as you did see , which i to neptune gave in votarie and signe of safetie . answered master gall , monsier , your table hung on neptunes wall did all your losse so livelie point to me , that i did mourne , poore soul , when i did see . but you may know in stormes , thus goeth the mater , no fish doth sip in troubled seas clean water . courage therefore , that cloud is overgone , therefore as we were wont , let us sing on . for in this morning sounded in mine ear the sweetest musick ever i did hear in all my life , good master gall , quod i you to awake , i sung so merrielie . monsier , quoth he , i pray thee ease my spleane , and let me heare that musick once againe . with hay the day now dawnes , then up i got , and did advance my voice to elaes note , i did so sweetlie flat and sharply sing , while i made all the rocks with echoes ring . meane while our boat , by freertown hole doth slide , our course not stopped with the flowing tide , we ned nor card , nor crostaffe for our pole , but from thence landing clam the dragon hole , with crampets on our feet , and clubs in hand , where it s recorded iamie keddie fand a stone inchanted , like to gyges ring , which made him disappear , a wondrous thing , if it had been his hap to have retaind it , but loosing it , againe could never finde it : vvithin this cove ofttimes did we repose as being sundred from the citie woes . from thence we , passing by the windie gowle , did make the hollow rocks with echoes yow le ; and all alongst the mountains of kinnoule , vvhere did we shut at many foxe and fowle . kinnoule , so famous in the dayes of old ! where stood a castle and a stately hold of great antiquity , by brink of tay woods were above , beneath fair medowes lay in prospect proper perth , with all her graces , fair plantings , spatious greens , religious places , though now defac'd through age , and rage of men , within this place a ladie did remaine of great experience , who likewise knew by sprite of prophecie , what should ensue , who saw wight wallace , and brave bruce on live , and both their manhoods lively did descrive unto that noble prince , first of that name , worthie king iames , who hearing of her fame , went to her house , these histories to learne , when as for age her eyes could scarce discerne . this ladie did foretell of many things of britaines unioun under scotish kings , and after ending of our civill feeds , our speares in syths ; our swords should turn in speads , in signe whereof there should arise a knight sprung of the bloodie yoak , who should of right possesse these lands , which she then held in fea , vvho for his worth and matchlesse loyaltie unto his prince , should greatly be renownd and of these lands instyl'd , and earle be crownd ; vvhose son in spight of tay , should joine these lands firmely by stone on either side vvhich stands , thence to the top of law tay did vve hye , from vvhence the countrie round about vve spy , and from the airie mountaine looking down , beheld the stance and figure of our town , quadrat with longer sides , from east to wast , whose streets , wals , fowsies in our eyes did cast a prettie shew : then gan i to declare vvhere our old monastries , with churches fair sometime did stand , placed at everie corner vvas one , which with great beautie did adorne her , the charterhouse toward the southvvest stood , and at south-east the friers , who weare gray hood . toward the north the blackfriers church did stand ; and carmelits upon the vvesterne hand ; vvith many chappels standing heere and there and steeples fairly mounted in the air , our ladies church , saint catharins , and saint paules , vvhere many a messe was sung for defunct souls . the chappell of the rood , and sweet saint anne , and lorets chappell , from romes vaticane transported hither , for a time took sasing , ( you know the cloister monkes write nev'r a leasing . ) for what offence i know not , or disdaine , but that same chappell borne hence is againe , for it appeares no more , look who so list , or else i 'm sure it s covered with a mist saint leonards cloister , mourning magdolené , vvhose cristall fountaine flowes like hippocrené . saint iohnes fair church , as yet in mids did stand : a braver sight vvas not in all this land than vvas that tovvn , vvhen thus it stood decord as not a fevv , yet living , can record . and to be short , for this we may not tarie on , of that old town this nought is but the carion . monsier , said gall , that for a truth i know these kirks and cloisters made a goodly show ; but this as truely i dar well alleadge , these kirkmen usde the greatest cousenage that ev'r was seene or heard . good gall , quoth i , how can that be ? monsier , if you will try , too much true shall you finde . pray thee , good gall , your speach to me seemes paradoxicall ; therefore i would it know : monsier , quoth he , and shall i show what such idolatrie hath brought upon that town ? the many closters vvhere fed there was so many idle fosters , monks , priests , and friers , and multitude of patrons , erected in their queires ; th' old wifes and matrons gave great head to these things , which they did say , and made their horned husbands to obey ; and mortifie so much unto this saint , and unto that , though they themselves should want ▪ yea twentie saincts about one tenement , each one of them to have an yeerlie rent , and all to pray for one poore wretched soul , vvhich purgatorie fire so fierce should thole . so these annuities , yeerelie taxations , are causes of these wofull desolations vvhich we behold . the ground of all these evils , vvhat to these saincts they gave , was given to divels . god made them saincts , men set them in gods stead , gave them gods honour ; so them idols made : thus satan served is ; what men allow on idols in his name ; to him they do : and now these friers destroyers may be seene , and wracks of that cities the cause have been : for none dare buy the smallest peace of ground , so many annuel rents thereon are found , and if he build thereon , doubtlesse he shall spend in long suits of law his moyen all . if some good salve cure not this sore , i fear it shall be said , some time a town was there . good gall , said i , some melancholious fit molests your joviall sprite , and pregnat vvit , i vvould some venus-heir might cure your sadnesse ; repell your sorrovves , and repleage your gladnesse : therefore i 'le quickelie go a herbarising to cure that melancholik mood by snising . herevvith vve turne our pace , and dovvn againe passe by the windie gowle , unto the plaine ; and herbarising there a prettie vvhile , galls lustie face blithly began to smile : guesse then hovv blith vvas i , if i had found ( i vvould not been so blith ) a thousand pound . thus recreat , to boat againe vve go , and dovvn the river smothly do vve rovv , neerby kinfaunes , vvhich famous longoveil sometime did hold ; vvhose auncient svvord of steele remaines unto this day , and of that land is chiefest evident ; on th' other hand elcho and elcho park , vvhere wallace haunted , a sure refuge , vvhen englishmen he daunted ; and elcho . nunrie , vvhere the holy sisters suppli'd vvere by the fratres in their misters . by sleeplesse isle vve rovv , vvhich our good kings gave to our tovvn vvith many better things . before there vvas in that neere neighbouring station , or frier or nun to set there their foundation . on th' other side vve lookt unto balthyok vvhere many peacock cals upon his mayok . megeance fair place , and errols pleasant seat , vvith many more , vvhich long vvere to relate . right over against is that vvood earnside , and fort vvhere wallace ofttimes did reside : while vve beheld all these , the tide did flovv , a lie the rudder goes ; about vve rovv , up to the tovvn again vve make our course , svveetly convoy'd vvith tayes reflovving source . there vve beheld vvhere wallace ship vvas drovvnd , vvhich he brought out of france , vvhose bottome found vvas not long since , by master dickesons art , that rare ingeniour , skild in everie part of mathemathick ; quoth i , master gall , i marvell our records nothing at all do mention wallace going into france , hovv that can be forgote i greatlie scance , for vvell i knovv all gasconie and guien do hold that wallace vvas a mightie gian , even to this day ; in rochel likevvise found a tovvre from wallace name greatly renovvnd . yea longoveils antiquities , vvhich there we do behold , this truely do declare that wallace was in france ; for after that the publick place of government he quat , were full four yeeres and more , before he shed his dearest bloud , ah dearest truelie said : and think you then that such a martiall heart yeelding his place , would sojourne in this part , and lazely ly loytring in some hole ? that any so should think i hardlie thole ; therefore i grieve our men should have forgotten themselves , and left so brave a point unwritten ; or should it contradict , there being so many good reasons for this truth , as is for any . monsier , said he , that 's not a thing to grieve at , for they did write his publick life , not privat : for sure it is , after his publick charge grief made him go to france , his spirit t' enlarge , his noble sprite , that thraldome suffered never , for he to libertie aspired ever ; and turning home , his ship causde sunken be , to stop the rivers passage , that from sea no english ship should come perth to releave , for any chance of war fortune could give . but now this ship , which so long time before in waters lay , is fairlie haild a shoare ; what cannot skill by mathematick move ? as would appeare things natures reach above . up by the willow gate we make our way ; with flowing waters pleasant then was tay. the town appeares ; the great and strong spey towre , and monks towre , builded round ; a wall of power extending twixt the two , thence goeth a snout of great squair stones , which turnes the streames about ; two ports with double wals ; on either hand are fowsies deep , where gorged waters stand , and flow even as you list : but over all the palace kythes , may nam'd be perths whithall . with orchards , like these of hesperides but who shall shew the ephemerides of these things , which sometimes adornd that citie ? that they should all be lost , it were great pitie . whose antique monuments are a great deale more than any inward riches , pomp or store ; and priviledges would you truely know ? far more indeed , than i can truelie show ; such were our kings good wills , for to declare what pleasure and contentment they had there : but of all priviledges this is the bravest , king iames the sixth was burges made and provest ; and gave his burges oath , and did inrole with his own hand within the burges scrole and gildrie book his deare and worthie name , which doth remaine to perths perpetuall fame , and that kings glorie , thus was his gratious pleasure of his most loving heart to shew the treasure ; writing beneath his name these words most nervous , parcere subjectis , & debellare superbos . that is , it is the lyons great renown to spare the humble , and proudlings pester down . which extant with his own hand you may see : and , as inspir'd , thus did he prophesie , vvhat will you say , if this shall come to hand , perths provest londons major shall command . vvhich words , when we did hear , we much admir'd , and everie one of us often inquir'd what these could meane ? some said , he meand such one , that london , yea all england like had none , some said , he mindes his dignitie and place ; others his gifts of nature , and of grace . all which were true indeed , yet none could say , he mean'd that englands scepter he should swey , till that it came to passe some few yeeres after , then hearts with joy , and mouths were fild with laughter : happie king iames the sixth , so may i say , for i a man most joviall was that day , and had good reason , when i kist that hand , vvhich afterwards all britaine did command . monsier , said gall , i sweare you had good reason most glad to be that day : for you of treason assoylied was , of your unhappie chief : pray thee good gall , quod i , move not my grief . said gall , monsier , that point i will not touch , they 'l tine their coales that burnes you for a witch . a witch , good gall , quod i , i will be sworne , vvitchcraft's the thing that i could never learne ; yea master gall , i swear that i had rather ten thousand chiefs been kill'd , or had my father , the king is pater patriae , a chief oft times is borne for all his kinnes mischief . and more , i know was never heart , nor hand did prosper , which that king did ev'r vvithstand . therefore good gall , i pray thee let that passe , that happie king knew well what man i was . while we thus talk , our boat drawes nie the shoare , our fellowes all for joy begin to roare when they us see . and lowdly thus gan call , welcome , good monsier , welcome master gall ; come , come a land , and let us merrie be , for as your boat most happilie we did see , incontinent we bargaind to and fro , some said , it was your berge , and some said , no : but we have gaind the prise , and pleadges all , therefore come monsier , come good master gall ; and let us merrie be , while these may last ; till all be spent we think to take no rest . and so it was , no sleep came in our head , till fair aurora left tithonus bed . above all things so was good gals desire , vvho of good companie could never tire , vvhich when i call to minde , it makes me cry , gall , sweetest gall , what ailed thee to die ? the seventh muse. up springs the sun , the day is cleer , and fair , etesiae , sweetlie breathing , cools the air ; then coming to my cabin in a band , each man of us a gabion hints in hand . where me their sergeant major they elected , at my command that day to be directed . what prettie captaine's yone ( so said some wenches ) ladies , quoth i , men are not met by inches . the macedonian monarch was call'd great , not from his bodies quantitie , but state and martiall prowesse , good ladies then to heart you , you shall well know that talenesse is no vertue . thus merche we all alongs unto moncreiff where dwells that worthie knight , the famous chief of all that auncient name : and passing by three trees sprung of one root we did espy : which when we did behold , said master gall. monsier , behold these trees , so great and tall sprung of one root , which all men brethren name , the symbole which true concord doth proclame . o happie presage , where such trees do grow , these brethren three the threefold gerion show , invincible , remaining in one minde , three hearts as in one body fast combinde , scilurus bundell knit , doth whole abide , but easily is broke , when once unty'd . so these three trees do symbolize most cleerly ; the amitie of hearts and mindes , inteirly kythes in that happie race , and doth presage to it more happinesse in after age ; loves sweetest knot , which three in one doth bring that budding gemme shall make more flourishing fair brethren trees , and sith so is your name , be still the badge of concord , and proclaime all health and wealth , unto that happie race , where grace and vertue mutually embrace . to moncrief easterne , then to wallace-town to fingask of dundas , thence passing down unto the rynd , as martiall men , we faire . what life mans heart could wish more void of care ? passing the river earne , on th' other side , dreilling our sojours , vulgars were affraide . thence to the pights great metropolitan , where stands a steeple , the like in all britaine not to be found againe , a work of wonder , so tall and round in frame , a just cylinder built by the pights in honour of their king , that of the scots none should attempt such thing , as over his bellie big to walk or ride , but this strong hold should make him to abide . unlesse on pegasus that he would flee , or on ioves bird should soare into the skye , as rode bellerophon and ganymede : but mounted so must ride no giddie head . from thence we merch't directlie unto dron , and from that stead past to the rocking stone ; accompanied with infantrie a band , each of us had a hunting staffe in hand , with whistles shrile , the fleeing fowles to charme , and fowlers nets upon our other arme : but as for me about my neck vvas borne , to sound the chace a mightie hunting horne ; and as i blevv vvith all my might and maine , the hollovv rocks did ansvvere make againe , then everie man in this cleare companie who best should vvinde the horne began to try ; among the rest a fellovv in the rout boldly began to boast , and brave it out , that he vvould vvind the horne in such a vvise , that easelie he vvould obtaine the prise , but to record vvhat chance there follovved after gladly i vvould , but grief forbiddeth laughter , for so it vvas the merrie man vvas mard , both tongue and teeth , i vvot , vvere tightly tard ; then no more stay ; fellovv , good night , quod vve , th' old proverb sayes , that dirt partes companie . by this vve vvere just at the rocking stone , amongst the vvorlds great vvonders , it is one most rare : it is a phaenix in its kinde , the like in all the vvorld yee shall not finde : a stone so neicely set upon its kernels , not artificiall , but naturall chernels , so huge , so grave , that if you please to prove it , a hundred yoak of oxen vvill not move it , yet touch it vvith your fingers smallest knocking , incontinent it vvill fall to a rocking , and shake , and shiver ; as if obedient , more by request , than by commandement . then up i clame this rock , as i vvas vvonted , and like aegeon on whales back i mounted , and vvith etites ra●ling stone i knocked , and as it ratled , even so vvas i rocked . so fair a cradle , and rare was never seene oh if my cabinet could it conteine ! next at the bridge of earne we made our station , and there we took some little recreation ; vvhere in heroicks gall fell to declaring all circumstances of that dayes wayfairing , and there so merrielie we sung , and chanted , happie were they our companie who haunted , vvhich when i call to minde it makes me cry , gall , svveetest gall , what ailed thee to die . the eight muse. what blooming banks sweet earne , or fairest tay , or amond doth embrace ; these many a day we haunted ; where our pleasant pastorals vve sweetly sung , and merrie madrigals : sometimes bold mars , and sometimes venus fair , and sometimes phoebus love we did declare ; sometimes on pleasant plaines , sometimes on mountains , and sometimes sweetlie sung beside the fountains . but in these banks where flowes saint conils vvell , the which thessalian tempe doth excell . whose name and matchlesse fame for to declare , in this most dolefull dittey , must i spare : yet thus dar say , that in the world again no place more meet for muses to remain ; for shadowing walks , where silver brooks do spring , and smelling arbors , where birds sweetly sing , in heavenly musick warbling like arion , like thracian orpheus , linus , or amphion , that helicon , parnassus , pindus fair to these most pleasant banks scarce can compare . these be the banks where all the muses dwell , and haunt about that cristall brook and well , into these banks chiefly did we repair erom shunshine shadowed , and from blasting air . there with the muses we did sing our songs , sometimes for pleasure , sometimes for our wrongs ; for in those dayes , none durst approach their table , but we , to taste their dainties , this no fable . from thence to methven wood we took our way , soone be aurora fair did kyth the day ; and having rested there some little space , againe we did betake us to our chace , raising the does and roes forth of their dennes , and watrie fowles out of the marrish fennes , that if diana had been in that place , would thought , in hunting we had stain'd her grace . to methven castle , where gall did declare how margaret teuther , queen , sometimes dwelt there ; first daughter to king henrie seventh , who closes york-lancaster in one , englands two roses . a happie union after long debate , but union much more happie , and more great even by that same queen springs , and by her race whereby all britaine joyes long wished peace . hence came king iames his title to the crowne of england , by both parents of renowne . hence comes our happie peace , so be it ay , that peace with truth in britaine flourish may . right over to forteviot , did we hy , and there the ruin'd castle did we spy of malcolme ken-more , whom mackduff then than● of fife , ( so cald ) from england brought againe , and fiercelie did persue tyrant makbeth , usurper of the crowne , even to the death . these castles ruines when we did consider , we saw that wasting time makes all things wither . to dupline then , and shades of aberdagie , from thence to mailer , and came home by craigie . soone by that time , before three dayes were done , we went to se the monuments of scone , as was our promise , scones nymphs see we must , for in such vowes we were exceeding just . and there with ovid thus did we declare , heere is a greene , where stood a temple fair : where was the fatall chaire , and marble stone , having this motto rare incisde thereon , this is the stone , if fates do not deceave , where e're it s found the scots shall kingdome have . which longshanks did transport to troyuovant , as troy took in the horse by grecia sent so we , who sprung were of the grecian crue , like stratageme on trojans did renew . oh if this fatall chaire transported were to spaine , that we like conquest might make there , from thence to italie , to rome , to grece , to colchos , thence to bring the golden fleece : and in a word , we wish this happie chaire unto the furthest indes transported were , that mightiest kingdomes might their presents bring , and bow to charles as to their soveraigne king. neerby we view that famous earthen mount , whereon our kings to crowned be were wont : and while we do consider , there we found demonstrat was the quadrat of the round , which euclide could not finde , nor pater erra , by guesse we did it finde on omnis terra . and if you geometers hereof do doubt , come view the place , and yee shall finde it out . a demonstration so wondrous rare , in all the world , i think , none may compare . thence need we must go see the mure of scone , and view where pights were utterlie undone by valiant scots , and brought to desolation , that since they never had the name of nation . seven times that fight renew'd was in one day pights seven times quaild , scots were victorious ay ; hence is it said , when men shall be undone , we shall upon them bring the mure of scone . king donskine with his remnant pights neere tay all kild , did crown the victorie of that day . then valiant kenneth went to camelon , and threw to earth king donskins ancient throne . so greatest kingdomes to their periods tend , and everything that growes , must have an end . where is that golden head that reing'd so long , the silver armes and bellie of brasse most strong ? the yron legs divided now in toes are mixt with clay : and so the world it goes . thus nations like stars in multitude , like sand on shore , or fishes in the floud ; yea rooted in the earth so deep , so long , as on the mountains grow the cedars strong , yet time hath overturn'd them , and their names are past , as letters written on the streames : to tell us , here we have no constant biding , the world unto decay is alwayes sliding , one kingdome ever doth remaine , and all gainst it who rise to powder turne they shall . neere this we did perceave where proud makbeth , who to the furies did his soul bequeath , his castle mounted on dunsinnen hill , causing the mightiest peeres obey his will , and bow their necks to build his babylon ; thus nimrod-like he did triumph upon that mountain , which doth overtop that plaine : and as the starrie heaven he should attaine , a loftie tower , and atlas caused build , then tyrannizing , rag'd as nimrod wild : who had this strange response that none should catch him that borne was of a woman , or should match him : nor any horse should overtake him there , but yet his sprite deceav'd him by a mare , and by a man was not of woman borne for brave makduff was from his mother shorne . makduff cald thane of fife , who home did bring king malcolme kenmore was our native king. ken-more , great-head , a great-head should be wise , to bring to nought a nimrods enterprise ! vp to dunsinnen's top then did we clim , with panting heart , weak loynes , and wearied limme , and from the mountains height , which was well windie , we spy where wallace cave was at kilspindie . but there we might not stay , thence to the plaine with swifter pace we do come down againe . descent is easie , any man can tell ; for men do easelie descend to hell. when we had view'd these fields both heere and there , as wearied pilgrims gan we home to fair ; home , happie is that word , at home in heaven , where gall now rests above the planets seven , and i am left this wretched earth upon , thy losse , vvith all my gabions , to bemoane : then mourne vvith me my gabions , and cry , gall , svveetest gall , vvhat ailed thee to die ? the ninth muse. what ! could there more be done , let any say , nor i did to prevent this dolefull day ? for when i saw galls fatall constellation would not permit him in this earthly station long to abide ; then did i give a tryall , to make impartiall fate susteene denyall , by herbarising while i prov'd my skill , on top of law-tay , and stay mooredowne hill , collecting vegetables in these parts , by all the skill of apollinian arts , if possible't had been , fate to neglect him , by heavenlie skill immortall for to make him . but sith that phaebus could not stemme the bloud of hyacinthus in his sowning moud , how then should i ? a mortall ! ah too shallow ! in wit and art presse to outreach apollo ? far be the thought , i therefore must absent me , and never more unto the world present me , but solitarie with my gabions stay , and help them for to mourne till dying day . then farewell cabine , farewell gabions all , then must i meet in heaven with master gall : and till that time i will set foorth his praise in elegies of wo , and mourning layes , and weeping for his sake still will i cry , gall , sweetest gall , what ailed thee to die ? finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a03379-e3030 eccles. 9. 11. eccles. 5. 1● eccles. 8. 9. prover . 23. 5. 〈◊〉 . sat. 〈◊〉 . meta● . 13. arist. ethic. lib. 1. cap. 11 〈◊〉 . sat. 〈◊〉 . notes for div a03379-e6280 the auth● of this boo● did write t● pantheon , which wa● fathered o● master ga● bowes . clubs . curling stones . archerie the pre●nded poet ●hen he shot ●rivers , used ●say have ●the knee of ●ion . bertha ●wsie , or●lhousie ●lhousie . ●he battell ●he north inch betw● thirtie an● thirtie . henrie wi● black frie● where kille● was king iames the first . the charter ●ouse , or car●usian mo●astery , wher ●uried was ●ing james ●e first , was ●uilt by him . aeneas sylvius . campsie-li ●he old ●emies of ●cotland . commodi●s of scot●d . couragio worthies scotland . din●urgh . countrie clowns hal● asses . gall was a ●le & good● man , m. george a ●onnie little ●an . nymphes . echo . ●ontempt of ●rning . ●hat a poet ●n do . ●dge of ●y . ●st building 〈◊〉 the bridge 〈◊〉 tay. wright work . fishing of pearles . the wals perth . ●allace ex●leth the 〈◊〉 our perth . ●allace sur●ders the ●vernment . bruce . buchan . li● 8. pag. 272. baliol. duplin field ●erth besei●d three ●onths . is taken , a● her wals r● zed . king edwa● the third t● keth capti● the baliol● takes in pe● and rebuil● her wals . ●ng robert ●e second ●liggereth ●rth , assisted 〈◊〉 the dou●as , & earle rosse . ●rth surren●red by the 〈◊〉 . the he● land men a burges perth . are pers● by the ci● zens to ho● manstair● the 〈◊〉 building 〈◊〉 the wals . perths old ●rgesses all ●osen men greatest ●nhood , for ●ence of ●t strength , ch . lib. 16. 〈◊〉 . 593. the battell the bridge tay its ●ent . ●he occasi● of the bat , 〈◊〉 . ●he enemie ●tereth the ●wne too ●ldly . the enemi● fleeth . johnston ●and . persecut● at perth 〈◊〉 the truth . catharins ●plan . knox preac● eth , idols a● throwndow and religio● places . ●e charter●sethrown ●n . s. iohnsto● huntsup . ●allace ●p . ●ometricall ●cription ●wo sorts ●rches . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mira● of the ●ld . ●cludit sa● helicone ●tas demo●tus , ho● . in arte . 〈◊〉 speaketh 〈◊〉 gowries ●spiracie . dragon ho● windie● gowle . kinnoule● castle . ●nnouls la● did see ●allace and ●e bruce . ●e prophe● . situation 〈◊〉 perth . lorets cha● pell transpo● ted to pert● from rom● vaticane . saints how ●ade idols , ●d devils . kinfanes . elcho . ●leeplesse isle . balthyok . megeance . errol . earnside . wallace ship . ●allace go●g to france ●t recorded ●d why . ●erths whit ●all . king james ●he sixth pro●est of perth . talenes n● vertue . moncreif the b● thren trees bernethie . the rocki stone of b● vaird . bridge of rne . ●unting ●er of old , ●d luth● queen margaret teuther . ●orteviot . 〈◊〉 . malcolme ●enmore . the marble ●haire . omnis terr . mure of scone . makbeths ●stle on dū●oun hill . makduf . wallace cave . the miraculous and happie vnion of england and scotland by how admirable meanes it is effected; how profitable to both nations, and how free of inconuenience either past, present, or to be discerned. cornwallis, william, sir, d. 1631? 1604 approx. 48 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 19 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-08 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a19359 stc 5782 estc s108707 99844363 99844363 9169 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a19359) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 9169) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1375:02) the miraculous and happie vnion of england and scotland by how admirable meanes it is effected; how profitable to both nations, and how free of inconuenience either past, present, or to be discerned. cornwallis, william, sir, d. 1631? [40] p. imprinted [by george eld] for edward blount, london : 1604. by sir william cornwallis. printer's name from stc. signatures: a-e⁴. the first leaf is blank except for signature-mark "a". running title reads: the happy vnion of england and scotland. in this edition the last line of text reads: ceiued it. reproduction of the original in the henry e. huntington library and art gallery. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database 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illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng england -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign relations -england -early works to 1800. 2004-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-04 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-05 olivia bottum sampled and proofread 2004-05 olivia bottum text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-07 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the miracvlovs and happie union of england and scotland ; by how admirable meanes it is effected ; how profitable to both nations , and how free of any inconuenience either past , present , or to be discerned . london imprinted for edward blount . 1604. to his louing countrimen . if euents be the certainest and least suspected councellors as they that cannot looke but like themselues : for their sakes i hope to be accepted , and for their sakes to haue so much of the priuiledge of an historian as to be allowed to speake truth ; which if it carrieth no other then it owne beauty , cal it not a fault , since thereby i giue you proofe i desire not to steale your opinions with inticements . i haue deliuered you the last time , and this ; that out of the experience of both , you may frame the succeeding . i haue spoken them truly , because it is fit you should see them in their nakednes , for to iudge by them is to know them without colours . lastly i haue touched , ( though not neere to the life ) the admirable happines of this iland in our prince ; a prince whose vertues giue luster to his authority , and that authority to his actions ; so as he needs not the pruiledge of his fortune , since all his performances are able to stande vpon their owne force , needing neither countenaunce nor power to giue them reputation . amongest his vertues i haue showed his vprightnes , that lighted by that great example , you may bee free from all partialities . thus haue i performed the duty i owe to you , and my country , i knowe honestly : if you thinke so my rewarde is the fuller . free i am from hiding a corrupted will vnder another pretence ; and as i haue finished this epistle without mingling it with salutations or excuses , so haue i passed through the boundes of my purpose , wooing no one but all , and all without any other aduocate but truth , the colours vnder which all honest spiritts and good common-wealthes-men ought to venture themselues . and so not doubting but the same minde that is truly inclined to the good of his country will allowe my intent and pardon my errors , i rest . the humble seruant of all true patriottes . the miraculous and happy vnion of england and scotland ; by how admirable meanes it is effected ; how profitable to both nations , and how free of any inconuenience , either past , present , or to be discerned . the end of knowledge , is acknowledgement , for since we can looke vpon nothing that is not deriued from god , and that beareth not a testimonie of his power and goodnesse , gratitude must follow vnderstanding , if not to recompence , yet to witnesse the feelings of his benefits . from this consideration ( louing countrymen ) i haue presumed to offer you this treatise . we haue all fealt , i doubt not the mercy of god in this late happy and admirable alteration , and i hope not alone fealt it with our bodyes , but our mindes ; for to haue so great a benefit , from so great a power , rewardes the minde with such a satisfaction as earth cannot giue . what you haue thought , pardon mee though i presume to speake , since my end is not to challenge any superiority , but to preuent ( if my end may bee as happy as my purpose ) the incident diseases of humaine prosperity . my proiect is then the greatnes of this blessing , and not alone the blessing , but to oblige vs the more ; the consideration by what vnexpected meanes , and how much beyond either the common course of things , or the strength of man it is effected . next how free it is from all the inconueniences incident to the common alterations or augmentations of empires : and lastly since it is aboue the course of nature , or the ordinary disposition of things , being full of profit without either daunger or former hazardes , that like adiuine and supernaturall blessing wee entertaine and vse it . thus farre goeth the scope of my intent , destinating my labours to bee the seruants of your memory , for which i desire no other recompence , but your owne happy and iust proceedings , taking the aduenture of your acceptance , and leauing vnto you the glory of so great an action , as the due of those progressions that are performed with iust and vnspotted mindes . this realme hauing a long time laboured in the preuention of dangers , and enioying an outwarde rather then inward peace , like a body that fetcheth all the health from phisicke , and was of late yeares come to that weaknesse , as in a short space had she continued in her course her preuentions had prooued vaine . for the aduantage of others disagreement was by agreement taken from vs , our treasure spent , our souldiers of experience consumed , the subiects purse emptied , and in fine , like a shippe that had throwne out her goods to saue her carkasse , we floated with our liues rather repriued then saued . in the meane time , and in all this time , this realme resisted none of her griefes by a naturall course , which is by her owne strength , but beeing rather feathers then winges , neither the glory nor profit was hers , but our blood and treasure , was the medicine of our suspected constitution . it is necessary i bring you thus farre backe ( good countrimen ) aswell because man knowing nothing in his originall , cannot iudge singlie ; but by coupling contrarieties , seeth the difference by the effects : as also feeling your prosperitie and from whence it commeth , you may loose the sight of no part of this blessing . nowe may you perceiue the nature of it , and the greatnesse , that from a weakned & almost breathlesse state , is come to be the most opulent , strong and entire empire of the world . what shall we call it ? no naturall name can expresse it , it is a miracle ; take vp thy bedde and walke . it is a miracle in the cure , it is no lesse in the meanes ; for if the marriages of princes , the issue of princes , the prayers of men , the plottes of our enimies , or the iealosies of greatnes , could haue hindered it , england had not beene happy . we had yet laboured vnder the burthen of a torne and dismembered kingdome . how much the resisting these impediments , passeth the common course of nature euery iudgement may easily discerne : but we haue yet but halfe the sight . a midst all these courses swaied by ambition , and vniust iealosies , behold our prince , prouoked by al means ; and by some where his patience might be called in question , suffering all , induring the plots of his enimies against his right , his person against their malice , he withstood all their hates with his loue , his loue to this his coūtry made him suffer his wrongs , and where the hot ambition of some princes , would easily haue couered the inuading of this kingdom , vnder the reuenging of his wrongs , and the feare of filling it with the horrible effects of ciuill wars was a curbe to his iust mislikes , choosing himselfe to feele wronge , rather then they should . surely if we consider this truly , wee shall finde the obligation we are bound in to the diuine power , no lesse stronge heere , then in the rest . for if the resisting wronge bee a warrant of nature to the simplest creatures , and that there is nothing more opposite to euery disposition ; how much more in kinges , vnto whome god hath giuen both power and authority to iudge and punish iniuries and wronges ? so that for the good of this lande , he hath not alone resisted the prouocations of flesh & blood , but a liberty , for a more pleasing colour and stronger excuse , no prince euer had to make warre vpon another . thus you see the straunge and miraculous passages of former times , from how admirable proceedings your safety is deriued , but behold another part of your blessing . you buie not your peace , your plenty , your strength , your happines , no it is giuē you , for wheras your safties abroad might haue bin purchased , with a prince that might haue line heauie vpon you at home , & by exactions haue but exchāged your burthens from your shoulders to your hartes , you are blessed with one , that in his whole life , hath approued the happines of the subiect and the flourishing of his kingdome to be his chiefe contentments . for otherwise , who would haue indured the slaunder of a iust title , the death of his friendes , the plots against his person , but hee onely that valueth iustice and a common preseruation aboue any humaine prouocation , or ambitious enticements . wee haue now heard how much we are blessed and by how strange and extraordinarie meane , and more , that we enioy all this without any inconuenince , either passed or to be discerned . let vs then examine what the alteration and augmentation of this kingdome hath done . insomuch as all changes are earthquakes to a state , shaking the very foundation of gouerment ; and augmentations and increases , are neuer vnaccompanied of present daungers , and future burthens . to examine this by history , behold the auntients , where for the passing of simple lawes , the whole body of the common-wealth , laboured betweene life and confusion . and in those changes where reformation and amendment bare the name , yet did they neuer alter without hazard , the medicine being as dangerous as the disease . how different is this from ours , where the axeltree or vphold of our common-wealth being changed , we rather heard of it , then fealt it ; or if we fealt it , it was the comfort of it . what vproare was there ? what confusion ? what surfet of the former gouernment brake out ( the inseparable accident of an interraigne ) what factions ? what misorders of discontented and desperate persons ? but on the contrarie as men expecting a wonder , a generall quietnes possessed the whole land , & as it were inspired with the age to come , gaue ouer the care of their own mislikes to the generall redresser , & all the different humours nourished either by former griefes , or this long expected day , grewe in an instant to be turned to the generall good , and to prepare an entertainement for the elected both by god and man , both by his title and vertues . in a worde , neuer was prince receiued with so generall an applause , nor was there euer prince that deserued better of vs : for laying by the iustnesse of his owne title , the remembrance of his sufferings ( which to another nature would haue beene accounted an earning of this kingdome ) the need we had of him , the testimonies giuen to the whole world of his abilities for gouernment , laying by these considerations , he hath beene yet content to acknowledge the loue of his subiects ; & not alone to acknowledge it in wordes , but to assure them of it , he hath not respected his priuate gaine , beyond their profits : to this end hath he abolished monopolies & other prerogatiues of the crowne , rather then to let his subiects feele any greeuance , though he might haue kept them without any colour of mislike , being to him inheritances no exactions . but his loue to vs will not permit excuses , but on all sides sheweth he will performe the office of a king , without mingling it with the iusts of man. but this is but one ; on all sides appeare actions of the same quality ; how hath he of late , to giue vs yet more testimonies of his loue , taken offendors of the highest nature out of the hands of iustice and giuen them mercy ? whereno excuse , no priuate petitions , no not where mercy it selfe ( being gouerned by her owne nature ) could haue intreated it ; for our sakes they liue , and for our sakes , against the rules either of lawe , iustice , or pollicie . let vs behold these parts with a true consideration , and we shall finde neuer people had so infinite blessings laid before thē . for wheras it hath bin too common amongst some princes , to esteeme handsome colours good paiment for subiects : our prince , hath not onely not held them good enough for vs , but euen iust reasons , if they haue any way seemed to concerne him more then his subiects , ( though that which concerneth him , must them ) haue bin laid by & not respected . to be short , neuer was there prince , that avowed al his actions to be grounded vpon a more vpright iudgement , which doth not onely represent vs this great blessing of ours more fully , but with all disburtheneth vs of all iealosies of partiality . for he that in all questions between himselfe & the subiect , hath not spared himselfe , cannot betweene man and man be partiall , since all partialities are begottē by self-loue . by this we may cleere the doubt of english and scottish , since he is king of both , he is father of both , and ( being equally charged by the king of kings with both ) owing vnto both one duty , he will giue vnto both one affection . but least i be called into question for a proofe , behold his former gouernment , where his vprightnes had that hād with him , as neither the generality , nor the custome , could make him yeeld to the common defence & nourishing factions by names , euer protesting him highest in his opinion , that was owner of a good life , aswell as a great name . so that to be knowne for an honest man , was more then to beare the sir-name of steward . he that knoweth in how contrary a course the example of that kingdom might haue nourished him , & how the customes of their clannes had brought this integrety to the suspition of a vice , will ask no more instances for cleering all suspitions , that foreknowledge shall neuer bar merit . for since he defended his yongest years , frō the most receiued vice of his countrey , we must expect in this riper time the habituall possession of this regall vertue . now to the increase of empire , which though it carieth the face of the happiest alreration , yet being an alteratiō , can hardly escape defects . for not only the nature of all humaine accidents approues it , all things being deliuered to vs cōmixt , we being not to be trusted , either with good or ill alone , separated , such are our frailties & weaknes , presumption or despaire , growing mightie if fed with either fortune single . but more particularly to illustrate the inconueniences of the increase of kingdomes , the cōmon examples are either by power or ambition in one body , or by necessity compelled to offend defensiuely in another : both are by conquest , whose violent effects leaue for euer an equall mistrust both in prince and subiect , an humor of that fatall operation , as nothing but bloud and oppression followeth . what shall i say now of our encreased dominions , that haue made vs terrible to the world without any terror to our selues : but so happy and excellent meanes are the long disioyned partes of this kingdome , brought to an inseparable imbracement . and if the long receiued axiome of pollicie shall bee beleeued ( that kingdomes must bee maintained by such meanes as they were gotten ) vnto what an excellent necessity are we tyed ? marriage was the meanes , a friendshippe of that high nature , that god himselfe daineth to bee a witnesse of this indissoluble knot ; we must maintaine it with the neerest resemblance , that is by a constant friendship and loue . verely i beleeue it impossible for man to thinke , how so infinite a blessing to both sides could haue beene accomplished , by any other so easie and euen conditions . for neither side sought others friendship , by comming past the boundes of the reputation of a nation , there were no threates , no violence , no swordes drawne of neither side . so that as if god would prouide to satisfie euen our most distempered and sicke affections , least such sparkes might inflame this great action , neither nation can charge other with needing , or yeilding , or giuing way to other . so are they met , so are they prepared as they shall scarcely need eyther time or custome the vniters of flesh to assist their incorporating , since they are by the diuine wisdome , so knit together , as it resembleth a new creation . when wee shall haue beheld on all sides the cleerenes of this benefit , how all things answere one another , and all without the least signe of any inconuenience or daunger , what place is left for suspition ? or if not for suspition , was there euer any benefit possessed so entirely ? who is there now that shall bring in questions of seperation and be beleeued ? since we may easily determine all such differences , arise out of the malignity of such dispositions , not the cause . it is most true if you will ( happy countrimen ) that the streames of the common wealth and people runne contrary ( for flourishing states haue commonly dissolute inhabitants , poore countreies honest people ) this is because we borrowe our behauiours from our fortunes not discourses , being good or bad , according to the floud or ebbe of our estates . but if you will be owners of this happines , you will proceed with more aduised considerations , and iudge of your councellors as well as councels . if they tell you of the pouerty of scotland , examine whether our wealth shall not come from the addition of their kingdome , for at once we receiue from them the stopping of our vnnecesary warres , and the vse of trafficke . how infinitely haue we beene consumed in the vpholding the low countryes , which we were enforced to vse for a stillt to vphold the body of our state . shall not a naturall limme , nay another body , that doth not onely rescue vs , but becometh vs , be thought worthy of entertaining ? there is none of vs that worne with the trauailes of the world and time , but would buy a new strength and youth at any rate : be now ashamed to be taken with this selfe-loue , or els value the new youth and strength of our commonwealth . since gratitude and the knowledge of benefits , cometh from the looking back vpon former times , let vs not be ashamed to remember times past : how was the wealth of our lande decayed ? how full of doubt stood wee ? with what prince or state durst we enter league , that was able to be our enimies ? nay to such a state wee were come , as wee were as much afraid of peace as warres , and durst trust neither . at once to bee deliuered of these , without feeling any alteration but the ease , what doth it not deserue ? without feeling any alteration , for what hath hapened in this change that we can complaine of ? warres are ceased , peace is entreated on all sides , oppressions are abolished , in the meane time , the prince exercising al those vertues that may make the subiect happy , his iustice , his mercy , his liberality , his benignity . and whereas euen the best princes , haue thought it sufficient to exercise certaine generall vertues , who is there that could demaund particular fauours of any kind , and hath beene sent away empty ? truth cannot be flattery , and that which so many can wittnes ought not to be suspected . not alone the deseruers of him haue tasted of his bounty , but the assisters of the gouerment past , haue founde it as sure a plea to be able to proue , they serued his predecessor loyally , as those nearest vnto himselfe . what shall wee gather of this ? but that this kingdome is beheld of him , with the same care that his others are , and that the seruants of it are as deare to him . a rare example of equity , since in the succession of princes wee see nothing more ordinary , then that the fauour of the seruants dieth with the master . after this assurance to doubt his partiality , and that the number of his auncient attendance will rob the english of places and employments , cannot come but from a minde , that speaketh his owne vices in anothers name . for since wee cannot iudge the thoughts but by the actions , and that all his actions haue bene found of another nature , from whence issue these suspitions but out of their owne bosomes ? shall it bee thought an answere that the old seruants of his scottish gouerment haue beene rewarded ? the same minde would haue pronounced ingratitude if they had beene vnrewarded . for who is hee that censureth honestly , and houldeth not this an argument for our incouragement , who being in the beginings of our times , cannot knowe him but by his vsage of others , who hauing spent for him in a time of lesse expectation , & so lesse to be suspected , their youthes & strengths , how could any indifferent iudgment hould them vnworthy of rewardes ? it hath then rewarded vs in them , for the example hath giuen vs encouragement , which is the very food of the soule , and the greatest prouocation of vertue . shall wee yet doubt and desire more assurances ? behould euery man that hath not had a more capitall fault , then the being a stranger to him , holdeth the same place hee possessed before ? from the highest to the lowest , yea euen the seruantes of the person and house of the last prince are his . an vnusuall satisfaction and so to be esteemed , and an action of a prince , that cannot suspect that in another , that hee findeth not in himselfe . can there now be such another testimonie of his vprightnesse , when by the changing the administers of this state , by another disposition , would haue bin thought so important a part , as he should by the alteration not onely haue rewarded others , but assured his owne person . but from the generall consent of his entrance , hath he framed the rest of his proceedings ; he found vs then , ioyfull , loyall , louing subiects , and according to that demeanure hath he vsed vs : which if we do not acknowledge , and acknowledge in making the same vse of his actions to vs , we are vnworthy of so happy a gouernment . but yet saith some body , how can it be that the number of that nation shall not shorten the benefits of the english ? if they brought men without a kingdome it were an obiection , or if men vnder this prince must not bring somewhat besides a petition . they haue a countrey of their owne that yeeldeth so much plenty , as their plentie breedeth their want ; for concerning the necessaries for mans life no countrey is better furnished : and for wealth , the happinesse of their latter gouernment hath giuen such testimonies of encrease , as already they possesse enough both to defend themselues and to free their countrey from the imputation of sterility . but this is not all , the number of able men is not a discommoditie , for how commeth it ( thinke you ) that all the princes of christendome thinke well of our friendship , but because wee haue many able men : so that either it must be confessed , enuy is better food then safety , or else that two offices in one hand is not so important , as two kingdomes vnder one scepter , vnder one lawe , becomming one body . neither doth the commodity of so many able men end thus , but as it bringeth reputation and safety from abroade , so ease and wealth at home . for when this multitude of able men shall disburthen the officers of their too much businesse , they shall not excuse vnder-briberies by their ouer many emploiments , and so shall the poore subiect escape paying fees vpon fees , and sometimes double and trebble briberies . by this time it is apparant , that neither the pouertie nor multitude of our connexion can be preiudiciall , since it is prooued they will be the onely instruments of our enriching ; and that this multitude bringeth a happy necessitie for the redressing the griefes of the greatest part of our people . let vs then come to the beholding this happinesse together , which since wee finde so infinitely full of blessings as the sharpest sight cannot discerne any inconuenience or future perill , what shall i call it ? but a diuine and miraculous blessing of god. now should we bring vnto this great benefit our sicke and corrupt affections , though neuer so well couered vnder the names of foresight or preuention , shall we not worthily deserue punishments answerable to our fauours ? let this learne vs ( good countrimen ) our duties to the common-wealth , whether we ought not to bring our bodyes , but to cary our mindes , for to bring priuate driftes to the publique busines , is an impietie of the highest nature . what shall we say now to their imaginations that hold our vnity most profitable if it were inseparable , but if the kings issue should faile , say they , and seuerall titles disvnite vs , then would their neighbourhood be more dangerous : for by our incorporating being growne more riche , they would be more able to affront vs. how doe these striue to bury benefits with suspitions ? they haue forgot who ended our warres without miserable conditions , who hath enforced ireland to lay downe armes , who hath made vs capable of forreigne leagues without buying them , but beholding all these and many more both defences and benefits as things past , and now in their owne possessions they are as weary of their assisters , as they were of their feares . or els being people of such a condition as finde most contentment in troubled and doubtfull states , because setled and flourishing are the lights that discouer ill affected and ill disposed persons , they desire to shroud themselues still in the darkenesse of confused and perplexed gouernments . but to answere their obiection without them , how vnlike is this to the english stile , that lately durst not thinke beyond one life , and now out-runneth foure , and by gods grace many more . and are there foure betweene this feare and vs , and is it yet a feare ? it is no preuention but an impious forecast ; for to prouide beyond probability , armeth our imaginations against the will of god. a strange office for man to vndertake , since if it were a part of his appointment , heauen and earth , and all their generations , reuolutions and changes , and euen god himselfe were idle and vnnecessary powers . but still we insist vpon our wealth and their inriching , which either we mistake or vnderstand not . for if we haue the aduantage of wealth we shall hold it , for since they neither can nor will demaund any thing but by way of commerce or traffique , the long and great concourse of trading to the cheife city of our iland , will sucke vp still the greatest part of our weath . but might it be that their wealth would be encreased , the publique good purchaseth not losse but profit , for by the dispersion the state findeth the people more able and more industrious , from whence ariseth the increase of traffique to the subiect , and of custome to the prince , the most honest and easy way of enriching the kings coffers . not vnlike vnto this obiection is the mislike that they would lay vpon the disposition of the people that because they haue in times past giuen way to their priuate mislikes and drawne priuate quarrells to multitudes ; that wealth vnto such natures being like oyle to fire , might drawe their fewds from a sparke to a flame , and so inwrappe vs in an vnnecessary warre . but they are much deceiued in the generall operation of wealth that suspect that , since if there be any quality in riches more then our opinion hath forced , it this that it ordinarily maketh ill men good citizens . for it is not the goodnesse of lawes , their integritie , nor good effects in generall , that maketh all men obserue them , but that their wealth hath no other defence , so doe they loue iustice and her obseruations , out of their owne particular , there being no way to make them conceiue that foundation of equitie ( suum cuique tribuere ) to yeeld euery man his owne , except they haue of their owne to make the instance . but were these probable , are wee not to prouide first against those that threaten vs neerer ? is not the first and most waighty consideration of a states man to preuent the inuasion of forraine enimies ? and can there be any other course for them , then by our leauing matter of discontentment amongst our selues . against outward inuasions nature hath cared ; we are enuironed by the sea , and so knit together both by religion , language , disposition , and whatsoeuer els can take away difference ; as vnlesse we breed disagreeing affections , we are indissoluble . neither can we nourish these vnlesse we will contradict heauen it selfe . behold how we are ioyned , god , nature , & time , haue brought vs together , and so miraculously if we obserue the reuolutions of time , as me thinketh the very words after the consummation of a marriage , shall not be vnproperly vsed , those whome god hath ioyned together , let no man seperate . vnto whose iudgement now , will not these obiections seeme light , if wayed with this consideration . lawes and pollicie can fight and ouercome inwarde inconueniences , the wisdome of the statist , is aboue any of these discommodities , especially in monarchies , where ciuill matters are easily redressed by reason of the absolute power of the prince , and that the people are not strong enough to fauour their owne imperfections if they come in question . but against outward inuasions invited by inward diuisions , there is no cure but preuention , for being once on foote , wisdome may see the fault , but armes must determine it . to assure you this is no idle warning , let vs both examine the states of our neighbours , their dispositions , their former actions , and then what is likely to leaue matter of discontentment and diuision amongst vs. first for france were it one man , former fauours might warrant vs , but kingdomes can dispence with ingratitude , therefore wee must forget their distresse , and looke for the common disposition of their prosperitie , which hath euer leueld at the keeping vs downe . to this end haue they alwaies held correspondence with scotland , which they haue vsed for their onely refuge , to escape the english preparations . so that if we shal close this past their entrance ; we haue taken away their first and safest defence . for now all questions must bee decided within their owne entrailes , where how so euer they speed , they must be loosers ; for though the euents of armes bee doubtfull , yet the deciding place is certaine of losse . now for spaine vnto whose ambitions wee haue euer beene an impediment , both in our aides to france , and the lowe countries , though we feele not the gratitude of these , yet must wee prouide against the mislike of the other . for by most natures reuenge is preferred before recompence , as the more profitable qualitie : therefore must wee prouide not onely against their ambitions , but mislikes , which double excitation nothing can pacifie but our owne strengths . but it may be the iealosies betweene spaine and france will cleere these dangers ; let vs not borrow a defence out of their humors , when we may haue one of our owne , nor can wee trust to it , since hopes and feares doe equally quench contentions , so that if they haue no other impediment but themselues they will ( questionlesse ) respit their owne mislikes , vntill they haue taken order with vs. in the meane time we search not enough the spanish pollicy , who beginneth his attempts thorough diuisions and factions , which if he espie , hee prosecuteth dangerously , for by his strength in rome and the west-indies , he searcheth all kindes of dispositions , which if not sound , he maketh at his deuotion . to make perticulars sound , wee must begin with the generall ; when we haue laide our foundation strong , and past the shaking of our enimies , we take away the prouocations both of the temptor & tempted against their religion , let our religion be opposed , in respect of whose strength and reputation we ought to be more then moued , since our vnitie in bodies to our already vnited mindes , will make the reputation of our religion so strong , as they that put on the aduerse , for feare and in pollicie , shall neither shame nor feare to vse their owne consciences . shall wee see now out of what matter our enemies can worke dissention , there is neither ambition nor discontentment amongst our great men , nor burthens vpon the people , lawes haue their due course , and purge the vaines of the common-wealth , from vnnaturall stoppings and corruptions . it can then be no other , then in the disposing of our new body , from which we may take the beginning of the happiest empire that euer was . plato to illustrate the strength of friendship borroweth so much of poetrie as to tell a tale that the body of man was first rounde , and whilest hee enioyed that forme was doubly furnished of all the organes and abilityes of man , after , abusing his strength the gods diuided him and left him but the halfe of that hee was ; but yet with a power ( as findding the other halfe which is a perfect freind , not differing in resemblance ) he might againe enioy his first strength and happines . england hath found her other halfe , shee is now doubly furnished with the strength of a kingdome , she hath foure armes , foure leggs , two harts ( made one ) two powers , and double forces . what can make vs now so vnnaturall , as to doubt of our restored strength ? or by what rule will suspition be tryed ? if lawes and ordinances bee called and rightly called the soule of the common-wealth , they must not be begotten by ourappetite : for then they can neither be diuine in their operation nor eternall in their continuance ; if we confesse it , and appeale to iudgment , iudgment trieth all things of this nature by the consent of these three vnuariable rules , namely conscience , reason and example , as those that giue lawes their true essences . for conscience reconcileth our humane lawes to our diuine , in so much as all lawes that take not them for a patterne , cannot be honest , and so not durable . reason shapeth them against all assaultes which cannot be without making them profitable to all . lastly example assisteth the weaknes of reason with the sight of former successes , in so much as the strength of humaine reason , is but to deuise and cannot without triall ariue any nearer the end then probability . then to examine it by conscience : is there not a necessity of mutuall helpe imposed vpon man ? and haue we freed our selues of infinite troubles and is there not a duty belonging to the meanes ? doth a nation not differing in any part from our selues , full of strength , able men , of so important a scituation , offer her selfe with open armes to embrace vs , and can we thinke of another entertainment besides a louing and euen embracement ? if the offences or violences of kingdomes , alloweth vs , first to ouercome , then to subiect and tye them with thraldome , doth loue , freenesse , amity , brotherlike regard require the like vsage ? either we were wronge before , are now , or confound merit and iniuries . in a word , were there no other motiue but our prince , who would not be ashamed to refuse such a medium . since his bloud is of both nations his minde so iust to all nations , and that his vertues haue already confuted all obiections : what conscience is there that hasteneth not to this combination , not onely for a quiet as compelled , but for ioy as the due of so noble and glorious a performance . now let vs see the triall of reason , this ilande is happily come within the circle of one diadem , not by conquest , nor by weaknes , nor for protection , but are drowne together by the vertue of an vnited blood , and made one mans kingdome by the happy coniunction of the royall blood of both nations . and is that blood growne one , and shall not the kingdomes growe one ? it is reasons office , not onely to bringe the will and the desire together , but by the way to examine the will , from what right he desires , how iustly , and to what end . by this meanes all parts haue satisfaction or ells the reason disclaymeth the employment . we shall neuer get reason then to goe of this errand , for wee haue no right to the holding it by a diuided title , nor is there iustice in couering an vnequality in a title , nor hath the end , any other soundnes then the deuise of some sicke affection . for if there were some great difference in our powers , power might sway it , and reason would make the weaker yeild to necessity : if the prince were either by bloud or affection of one side , the other were to light , but hauing neither strength nor right to a superiority , how can it belong vnto vs ? now if this be apparant , were it in our power to bynde them to vs , by some vndername , how standeth it with the pollicy of a state to leaue so many idle men , for since our industry hath euer an eye vpon our owne good wee must either interest them in the gaines , or wee must expect cold endeauours . for nature hath giuen vs abilityes for our vse and preseruation , which though our reason perswadeth vs to vse for the cōmon good , yet neuer for the common good without including our owne perticular . but it may be it will be answered , let their industries be spent vpon their owne soyle , and so shall ours and wee will craue nothing from them . who seeth not in this answere either a willfull or ignorant folly ? that forgetting their neernes , the daunger of their mislikes , the gappe for seditions and plotts to get entrance , we reckon them as a people that concerne vs not . no , no , they must haue a hande in our busines , our peace is theirs , our florishing theirs , our successe of all kindes theirs , in so much as if they be not thus farre interessed in these , and their loues so fastned to vs , as to ouercome all temptations , wee must expect none of these , so shall they or we , if we preuent not all enticements be wooed ; since forraine forces are too weake to craze our strong constitution without euill iarres . lastly if wee looke for presidents and examples to strengthen our resolutions , neuer were two kingdomes inuited by so stronge and forcible meanes to become one , and reiected it . contrariwise , spaine and france were neuer absolute monarchies vntill the first of seauen kingdomes became one , and normandy and brittaine were annexed to the crowne of france ; which before were vnder other lordes . the deuiding a kingdome into petty principalities prepareth it to bee swallowed by a more vnited power . so standeth italy at this day , that liueth not by her owne strength , but by the iealosies of her neighbours : yet was shee once mistresse of the world , and so would be againe ( saith one of their authors ) were she re-united and vnder one scepter . but why seeke i forrain examples when wee haue one of our owne so neare vs ? wales is englished , a country whose riches did not woe vs , nor her power , nor the fertility of the soyle ; but the discommodities that we might receiue by them whilest they were held as aliens , beeing matter to feed discontented or ambitious plottes , this was the furthest and onely aduantage we expected , which since it lay within the power of our incorporating to cure , and that nature had performed halfe the worke , with the alliance of countreys so neerly knit together vpon one continent , wee performed . successe hath followed , a warrant for the like occasion , but this is more like vs then that , a greater prouocation , wee differ not in language ( a signe that god euer meant to haue vs one kingdome ; ) and for the other conueninences of our match , as power , wealth , largnes of territories , reputation of a kingdome , ability in men , there is no comparison . that the world is possessed by many lords , and that the great empires that grew in her minority , crushed themselues with their owne weight , cannot in one reason be better comprehended ( mee thinketh ) then that the difference of scituation , clymate and disposition , could not giue power , to the imperiall country , to naturalize her conquests , they could not make them themselues . for it is lawes and customes and euennesse in capicity of offices and dignities , that can make countries loue one another truely , for so they doe as it were beget one another , and become flesh of flesh , and bone of bone . for want of this it hath beene in the power of priuate men , to shake an empire , that could not haue moued a kingdome , and for want of this , haue empires beene enforced to hould subiected countries by garrisons , and by cruelties waies , so disagreeing from nature , as their authority hath depended meerly vpon fortune , and an externall reputation , which neuer indureth a distemper without a downefall , nor is euer sicke without destruction . for recouerable diseases are onely in naturall bodyes , which these being opposite to , must depend onely vpon force . in the meane time , how much the expence of treasures , and the continuall doubts wee haue of such countries exceedeth the aduantage , we may easily discerne , if we behold but spaine , whose many dispersed kingdomes haue beene such a burthen to them , and haue drawne them , into so many inconueniences , as his west indies , and great encrease of possessions lately annexed to that crowne , haue not bin able to defend him from the extreamest wants , insomuch as his designes haue oftner stood still for want of mony and men , then many smaller kingdomes . had it beene now thinke you in his power to haue made them all spanish and within the limits of one continent , vpon the condition to haue called all spaine , and but one nation , would hee not haue thought it an excellent exchange ? doubt it not since hee had at once beene deliuered of those charges and suspitions , that make his possessions a paine , and weaknes rather then a strength , being like a monster of nature that hauing a body without bloud inough , hath his limmes withered and feeble being a great bulke , drowned in his owne proportion . all forced gouerments must bee momentary in so much as they leaue out the will and desire of man , which onely can beget continuance . for an instance behold nature her-selfe , who driueth at none of her endes tirannically , but emorapping her driftes in the naturall desires of her creatures , hath her purposes effected not as hers , but as their owne . so must the aduised polititian proceed , if he intendeth to giue either a goodly or substantiall forme to his workemanship ; for though man can inforce other creatures beyond their willes , yet the will of man , hauing reason to direct it which hath a freedome and eminencie in her nature , must therfore be wrought by perswasions , not enforcements , the onely means to bring her to obedience , and to yeelde to the directions of others . i haue gone thus farre beyond my purpose ( louing countrimen ) to free you of all suspitions , insomuch as the soule of man , is no sooner cured of any great infirmitie , but there remaine certaine dregges behinde of doubts and suspitions , which i hope these fewe considerations will cleere , not as they are mine , but as they are truthes , though at this time , ( vnto an aduersary ) i cannot complaine of my weakenesse , for being the champion of right i doubt not of the successe of dauid . you haue now then the sight of this great blessing , which approacheth you so full of infinite happinesses , so pure and vncommixt with the common fortunes of the worlde , as you may laye by all thoughts , but such as are apt to prepare you fit to receiue so gratious an assurance of gods fauour , and of gratitude though not answerable , yet answerable to your powers . in the meane time beholde the goodly time before you , so cleere and calme as there is not so much as matter for cloudes or stormes left to breed on , ( the originall of the happinesse of a common-wealth ) for then onely are the inward motions of gouernment made perfect , when there ariseth neither feares nor dangers from abroad , since those times are often so miserable , as they are not onely forced to make vse of the diseases of the time and people , but also to praise them , the forerunner of the downefall of a state . which you shall easily prooue if you search the ruines of the ancient empires , where ( towards their end ) vices went for vertues , and the greatest corruptions were the greatest merits . but our state is of another nature , it cannot growe old and doate , because it had no infancie or youth ; wee builded not our foundation out of a little , and increased it after by the sworde , we are no purchasers , but inheritours , and inheritours of a state , that commeth to vs strong and flourishing , so doe wee want those shiftes and by-courses , which come in with necessity , which make such states in time suffer shipwracke both by iust and naturall reasons . for hauing gotten by oppression , it standeth with iustice that they loose so : and it is infallible , that people gotten vp by indirect meanes , though the present gaine maketh them insensible of it , yet it leaueth in them the example of the corruption ; and being like creatures bred out of putrifaction , they liue no longer then there remaineth such matter to feed on , but are after ouerthrowne by some aduerse power , or els turning head vpon themselues , are the authors of their own destruction . but you freed of all these , shall haue a happy leasure to view ouer your owne inwarde parts of the common-wealth , and being hindered by no new doubts , may search , medicine and heale , all olde griefes , which not alone the time permits , but the prince warrants , aleach chosen by god to make a new time setled in an instant , such as the power of iustice and an vpright distribution , another testimonie of gods gratious fauour vnto vs. for beeing strangers though not by birthe , yet by personall knowledge , and the commerce of stran gers , warranting almost a partiality to our countreimen , it is onely the worke of such a king , to alter nature by the force of wisdome . so hath his iust proceedings wrought vpon vs , that neither side , being able to charge him with leaning more to one side then another , neither side hath cause to mistrust him , another doore at which partialitie often entereth . will you know now what we haue escaped ? the being begotten by a diseased father , for this time being the father of the succeeding , had it constitution beene corrupted by partiality , the after-ages would for euer haue felt it , which would haue beene so much the more dangerous , because as in naturall bodies , hereditarie diseases are aboue the skill of the phisitian , so would these of the statesmen . but ours that is to be directed by a prince so infinitely indued by the graces both of god , nature and fortune , we may assuredly expect actions answerable to such a concurrance of vertues . to that height of felicitie are you then arriued , as not onely you shall enioy your country without feares , your estates without hourely impositions , and your liues without warres and hazards , but as if you exchanged these for their contraries , your countrey shall yeeld you peace , and by peace infinite contentments , your estates shall encrease daily , and you shall not buy your owne industries of strange impositions and taxes : and warres that had wonte to diuorce you from your parents and wiues , and by presses violently pull you from your owne quiet courses , to sacrifice you to the distempered and troubled age , to quench the fire of forraine ambitions that threatned vs , shall no more haue any such power ouer you . but your time and determinations shall bee your owne , and your hopes shall not bee frighted with feares . prepare then mindes fit to enioy so many happinesses , and mindes fit to bee gouerned by so sincere and iust a prince , whose very entrance amongst vs hath had that vertue , as to driue away all threatning calamities that hung ouer our heades . let it not bee forgotten since the remembrance of passed perills is sweet , and not onely sweet but profitable , for it inuiteth vs to the acknowledgement . and since wee cannot better testify our thankefullnes to god , then in the offering our obedient hartes to the meanes he chose for the expressing this his wonderfull and gratious fauour vnto vs ; let vs begin our contentments from him , who like the sunne hath dispersed and consumed our doubts , and like the sunne draweth nothing from beneath , but to yeeld it downe againe with more vertue then he receiued it . finis . a proclamation, declaring war against the french king. edinburgh, the 6th of august, 1689. scotland. privy council. 1689 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05557 wing s1738 estc r183432 52528948 ocm 52528948 179015 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05557) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179015) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2776:4) a proclamation, declaring war against the french king. edinburgh, the 6th of august, 1689. scotland. privy council. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, by order of privy council, edinburgh : anno dom. 1689. caption title. initial letter. signed: gilb. eliot, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng war, declaration of -scotland -early works to 1800. grand alliance, war of the, 1689-1697 -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign relations -france -early works to 1800. france -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-08 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation , declaring war against the french king. edinburgh , the 6th of august , 1689. whereas the french king being the great disturber of christendom , these several years , hath not only invaded , and seized the territories and rights of his neighbouring princes , his majesties allies ; but hath used unparalelled cruelties , and devastations , and by a most unchristian persecution , having designed to suppress and extirpat the protestant religion , he hath been the great supporter , and abetter of the arbitrary courses in these kingdoms , for the destruction of their religion , liberties , and laws ; and hath of late , without any declaration of war , invaded ●he kingdom of ireland , fomenting and maintaining a rebellion there : and likewise , he has lately declared war against his majesty , and his kingdoms of scotland and england , and hath sent ships to transport irish forces to invade the said kingdom of scotland ; for which cause his majesty having required the lords of his privy council , to emit a declaration of war in his majesties name . therefore the lords of his majesties privy council , in their majesties names and authority , do declare war against the french king , and his subjects , and discharge all the leidges of this his majesties antient kindom of scotland , to trade , correspond , or have any intercourse , or meddling with the said french king , or any of his subjects : declaring nevertheless , that such of the french subjects , as for the causes foresaids have been expelled , or have abandoned their native countrey , and have taken refuge in this kingdom of scotland , that they living dutifully , and not corresponding with his majesties enemies , they shall be secure in their lives , liberties and fortunes , under his majesties protection , and the shelter of his laws . requiring likewise , all officers of war , captains , and masters of ships , and generally the whole leidges , to prosecute the war against the said french king , and his subjects , with all acts of hostility , by sea and land , to their uttermost . and ordains these presents to be printed , and published by the lyon king at arms , or his depute , heraulds , macers , and pursevants , at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , at the castle-gate , and peer and shore of leith , and other places needful . extracted by me gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save king vvilliam and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , by order of privy council , anno dom. 1689. a proclamation for the security of ministers. at edinburgh, the thirteenth day of june, one thousand six hundred and sixty seven. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1667 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05703 wing s1937a estc r183561 52612443 ocm 52612443 179638 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05703) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179638) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2794:32) a proclamation for the security of ministers. at edinburgh, the thirteenth day of june, one thousand six hundred and sixty seven. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by evan tyler, printer to the king's most excellent majesty, edinburgh : anno. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. printed in black letter. intentional blank spaces in text. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church of scotland -clergy -early works to 1800. church and state -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -church history -17th century -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-10 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-12 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-12 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation , for the security of ministers . at edinburgh , the thirteenth day of june , one thousand six hundred and sixty seven . charles , by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith : to our lovits , _____ messengers , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally specially constitute , greeting . forasmuch as we , by divers acts of parliaments and proclamations , have expressed and declared our royal care and resolution , to protect the orthodox and well-affected clergy and ministers : and to that effect and purpose , a proclamation was issued by us upon the fifth of march last , commanding all heretors and parochioners within the western shires therein mentioned , to protect and defend the persons , families and goods of their respective ministers within their several paroches , from all affronts and injuries to be committed by insolent and dis-affected persons to the present government , in manner , with , and under the certifications and pains therein contained . and nevertheless , the malice and rage of such persons is so implacable against loyal ministers , upon no other account , but that they are faithful and obedient to our laws and authority , that of late , since the said proclamation , divers outrages have been committed within the saids western and other shires , by invading and wounding the persons of several ministers , assaulting them in their houses , and plundering and robbing their goods , to the great scandal of religion , contempt of our authority , and discouragement of the preachers of the gospel , and is a great incouragement to such sacraligious and wicked persons , that within the paroches where such insolencies are committed and done to ministers , there is no wanting persons of the same temper and principles , who do secretly favour and comply with them ; and they do presume , that the actors with-drawing , the parochioners will not be questioned , and that they will not think themselves concerned to prevent or repair the wrongs done to the ministers . therefore we , with advice of the lords of our privy council , command and charge all heretors , life-renters and others , having any real interest and rent within the several paroches of the kingdom , whither they reside within the same or not , their bailies , chamberlains and others having trust under them , and all other parochioners , to protect , defend , and secure the persons , families and goods of their ministers , not only in the exercise of their ministerial function , but in their dwelling-houses , or being elsewhere within the paroch , from all injuries , affronts and prejudices which they may incur in their persons and goods , from the violence and invasion of any phanatick or dis-affected person : and that upon the notice of any attempt of such , they immediately repair to any place where they shall beat such injuries are offered , and seize upon the persons of the committers ; and in case that they flye out of the saids bounds , that they give notice to the sheriff or any garrison or forces that shall be nearest to these places , that they may pursue them till they be apprehended and brought to tryal : with certification , that if any such outrages shall be committed , the actors , and all persons who shall have any accession to the same , and shall aid , assist , or any way comply with , or shall willingly resset and conceal the delinquents , shall be proceeded against and punished with all severity , as equally guilty with the invadors . and farther , if they be not apprehended and brought to tryal by the means and diligence of the parochioners , letters shall be directed at the instance of our advocat , to cite the parochioners to appear before the lords of our privy council , at the least to send three or four of their number specially authorized for that effect , to hear and see the parochioners decerned to pay to the minister for reparation , damage and interest , such a sum and fine as our council shall think fit to determine , ( special consideration being alwayes had of well-affected heretors and parochioners , who constantly attend the publick ordinances , and as they are required by the ministers , concur with them in the exercise of church-discipline , who are to be relieved of the half of the fine to be imposed , which is to be payed by the dis-affected , who are to be tryed to be such by the justices of peace , or other judge-ordinar ) and a citation of parochioners in general , at the mercat-cross of the shire , being intimate at the paroch-church upon a sunday before-noon after divine service , we declare to be sufficient ; and the said sum so to be modified , shall be divided amongst the heretors and life-renters and others , according to their respective valuations , and is to be advanced and payed by them to the sheriffs , stewarts , or bailies of regalities and baileries , who are hereby ordained by themselves or their deputes , to uplift the same for the use of the minister , and to use all lawful execution for that effect : and for relief of the saids heretors , life-renters and others foresaids , their several tennents are hereby ordained to pay the third part of the several proportions payable by their masters ; and where any person has more tennents then one , the third part payable for relief of their master is to be divided and proportioned betwixt their tennents proportionally , and according to the duty they pay respective : and if any question arise thereanent , either amongst the tennents themselves , or the tennents and their masters , the same is to be determined by the iustices of peace or sheriff of the shires , or other iudges ordinar in whose jurisdiction they reside , in the option of the complainers . and ordains these presents to be printed , and published at the mercat-cross of the head burghs of this kingdom , and read at all paroch-churches upon a sunday before-noon , after divine service , that none pretend ignorance . edinburgh , printed by evan tyler , printer to the king 's most excellent majesty , 1667. a proclamation against all persons who have intrometted with the goods of forefaulted rebels and traitors, &c. england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) 1685 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a46532 wing j309b estc r35431 15305055 ocm 15305055 103383 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a46532) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 103383) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1189:21) a proclamation against all persons who have intrometted with the goods of forefaulted rebels and traitors, &c. england and wales. sovereign (1685-1688 : james ii) james ii, king of england, 1633-1701. 1 broadside. edinburgh printed by the heir of andrew anderson ; this may be reprinted at london august the 21th for j.c., [london] : 1685. reproduction of original in the huntington library. "given under our signet at edinburgh, the eleventh day of august, 1685. and of our reign the first year." created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1660-1688. 2007-11 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-08 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2009-01 megan marion sampled and proofread 2009-01 megan marion text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal coat of arms a proclamation against all persons who have intrometted with the goods of forefaulted rebels and traitors , &c. james by the grace of god , king of great brittain , france and ireland , defender of the faith , to _____ macers of our privy council , or messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch , as we understanding , that several persons do at their own hand intromet with the goods and gear of those rebels and traitors lately forfaulted by our parliament and justice-court , and others fugitives and rebels from our laws ; and more especially , cut and destroy the woods , trees , plantings , and orchards of the lands lately belonging to them , in high contempt of our authority , and to our enorm prejudice , these lands being annexed to the imperial crown of this our ancient kingdom . and we being resolved , that the former transgressors , as well as these who may hereafter be guilty of the saids crimes , may be brought to condign punishment : do with advice of our privy council , hereby strictly require and command all our sheriffs , and other magistrates within whose jurisdiction the foresaid abuse and crimes have been committed , to make strict inquiry and tryal anent the delinquents , and sentence and punish them as well for their by gone guilt aforesaid , as for what may be done by them or any others in time coming , according to our laws and proclamations , as committers of thieft , and for reset of thieft . certifying hereby , our saids sheriffs and other magistrates , that if they fail in their duty herein , they themselves shall be lyable , for concealing , to the same pains and penalties , which might have been , or may be incurred by the saids transgressors , besides being otherways punished , as our council shall think fit . and for encouragement of such as shall any ways discover either the negligence , tolerence , or connivance of our saids magistrates , or the transgressors , so as they may be found guilty by sentence . we hereby declare , that those informers and discoverers shall have for their reward , the one half of their fynes , the other half thereof being to be paid in to our cash-keeper for our use . and that our pleasure in the premises may be known ; our will is , and we charge you strictly and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and all the other mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the shires of this kingdom ; and thereby open proclamation , in our royal name and authority make publication of our pleasure in the premises that all persons concerned , may have notice thereof , and give obedience accordingly , as they will be answerable ; and ordains the sheriffs of the several shires to cause publish this proclamation . given under our signet at edinburgh , the eleventh day of august , 1685. and of our reign the first year . per actum dominorum secreti concilij . col mackenzie , cls. sti. concilij . god save the king. edinburg , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , this may be reprinted at london august the 21th . for j. c. 1685. the commonwealth of england having used all means of tendernesse and affection towards the people of this nation, by receiving them (after a chargeable and bloody war) into union with england ... albemarle, george monck, duke of, 1608-1670. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a26602 of text r33064 in the english short title catalog (wing a841). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a26602 wing a841 estc r33064 12881666 ocm 12881666 94948 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a26602) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 94948) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1517:8) the commonwealth of england having used all means of tendernesse and affection towards the people of this nation, by receiving them (after a chargeable and bloody war) into union with england ... albemarle, george monck, duke of, 1608-1670. 1 broadside. s.n., [leith : 1654] title from first two lines of the text. at head of title: by the commander in chief of all the forces in scotland. "given under my hand at dalkeith, this 4. day of may, 1654. george monck." place and date of publication suggested by wing. reproduction of original in the bodleian library. eng scotland -history -1649-1660. great britain -history -commonwealth and protectorate, 1649-1660. a26602 r33064 (wing a841). civilwar no the commonwealth of england having used all means of tendernesse and affection towards the people of this nation, by receiving them (after a albemarle, george monck, duke of 1654 1182 1 0 0 0 0 0 8 b the rate of 8 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the b category of texts with fewer than 10 defects per 10,000 words. 2006-02 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2006-02 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2006-03 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2006-03 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2006-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion by the commander in chief of all the forces in scotland . the commonwealth of england having used all means of tendernesse and affection towards the people of this nation , by receiving them ( after a chargeable and bloody war ) into union with england , and investing them with all the liberties and priviledges thereof ( purchased at the expence of so much blood and treasure ) and by daily protecting them with their army and navy , at a great charge ( of which this nation under-goeth no more than their equall proportion with england ) against their enemies both abroad and at home , whereby all of them might enjoy the fruits and benefits of peace ; yet diverse lewd persons , broken in their fortunes , and dissolute in their lives , are run into rebellion , who being assisted and connived at by their parents , brethren , tuitors , masters , and people among whom they live , who secretly conceal them in their houses in the day time , and in the night suffer them to rob and plunder the countrey , whereby the peaceable people of this nation are many of them ruined , and the rest disturbed , so that they cannot live in peace . and to the end that no peaceable means might be left unattempted , for the prevention thereof , i , by vertue of the authority to me given by his highnesse and his council , do declare , that all such persons that are now in rebellion , ( except such as are excepted in the acts of grace ) who shall within twenty dayes after the publication hereof , come in , and submit him or themselves , to the governor of the next english garrison , and give good security for his or their future peaceable living , shall be , and is hereby in his and their persons , freely pardoned , for any offence , spoil or plunders committed by him or them in this present rebell on , ( the killing of any person in cold blood onely excepted . ) and i do declare , that if any parents , brethren , or tuitors , who have assisted or connived at any their sons , brothers , or pupils , now in rebellion , as aforesaid , shall within twenty dayes after publication hereof , cause their said sons , brothers , or pupils , to render themselves , and give security , as aforesaid , that then the said parents , brethren and tuitors , who have so offended , are hereby freely pardoned ; but if otherwise , then the said parents , brethren , and tuitors , who have so offended , shall be imprisoned during the time the said persons do remain in rebellion . and in regard diverse persons who are now in ●ebellion , and who have lived remote from their friends , but could not probably break out into rebellion , without the knowledge or consent of some of the inhabitants of that parish or presbytery where he or they last lived , before their breaking forth ; i do therefore hereby declare ; that if the said parish or presbytery where he or they last lived , procure the said person or persons so broken forth , to render him or themselves , within twenty dayes after publication hereof , and give security , as aforesaid , that then the said parish or presbytery so offending , is hereby pardoned ; but if otherwise , i do hereby impose upon the said parish and presbytery , two shillings six pence a-day for each horse-man , and ten pence a-day for each foot-man , so broken into rebellion , over and above their ordinary sess , out of the said parish or presbytery , which the governor of the next english garrison is hereby authorized to levie and receive monthly , during the time the said persons shall so continue in rebellion . and i do likewise hereby impower all the good people of this nation , to apprehend all such person and persons as are , or hereafter shall break out into rebellion , or attempt so to do , and safely to deliver him or them to the governor of the next english garrison ; and in case of resistance , to take such weapons as they can get , and to fight the said person or persons ; and if they shall kill any of the said persons so resisting , they shall not be questioned for the same , but ( on the contrary ) shall receive as a reward of their good service , all such moneys , goods , horses , and cloaths , as the said rebellious persons are then possessed of , besides full satisfaction for their pains and travell therein . and in regard this present rebellion hath been principally contrived , fomented , and is now obstinatly maintained by major generall middleton , the earl of athol , the earl of seaforth , viscount kenmure , and major generall dayell ; i do hereby therefore declare , that what person or persons soever of this nation , ( except such as are before excepted ) shall kill any of the said principall contrivers , or shall deliver any of them prisoner , to any governor of any english garrison , the said person or persons so killing , or bringing prisoner , as aforesaid , shall not only be pardoned for any thing he or they have acted in this late rebellion , but also shall receive as a reward of his good service , the sum of two hundred pounds sterling for every person so kill'd or brought prisoner , as aforesaid . and lastly , for the encouragement of all peaceable and well-affected people , both english and scots , i do also hereby declare , that what damage shall be done to their persons , goods or geer , for their good affection to the publick , the same shall be again repaired out of the estates of such as have done the damage , or out of the estates of the friends and harbourers of such wrong-doers , or out of the parish , presbytery , or shire where the wrong is done , in case they do not apprehend the said offendors , or give the english forces such timely notice thereof , that the said offendors may be apprehended by them . and i do hereby require all provosts , bailiffs , and chief officers of head-burghs , in their severall burghs , to cause these presents to be duly published and posted up , according to the usuall form , and to certifie their doings therein to me , in writing , under his or their hands . given under my hand at dalkeith , this 4. day of may , 1654. george monck . at a quarter-session, held at air, the 5th day of february, 1657. by his highness oliver lord protector his justices, assigned to keep the publick-peace in the shire of air. ayrshire (scotland). justices of the peace. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription b01456 of text r172624 in the english short title catalog (wing a4095a). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 9 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 b01456 wing a4095a estc r172624 53298947 ocm 53298947 179734 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b01456) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179734) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2798:16) at a quarter-session, held at air, the 5th day of february, 1657. by his highness oliver lord protector his justices, assigned to keep the publick-peace in the shire of air. ayrshire (scotland). justices of the peace. england and wales. lord protector (1653-1658 : o. cromwell). 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by christopher higgins ..., edinburgh, : 1657. caption title. initial letter. signed at end: mr. william caldwell, cl. of the peace. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. eng conduct of court proceedings -scotland -ayr -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1649-1660 -sources. ayrshire (scotland) -politics and government -17th century -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. b01456 r172624 (wing a4095a). civilwar no at a quarter-session, held at air, the 5th day of february, 1657. : by his highness oliver lord protector his justices, assigned to keep the ayrshire 1657 1512 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2008-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-09 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion air ss. at a quarter-session , held at air , the 5th day of february , 1657. by his highness oliver lord protector his justices , assigned to keep the publick-peace in the shire of air . his highnesse justices of peace for the said shire , in the pursuance of the trust reposed in them , and for remedy of several abuses , not formerly rectified , have ordered as followeth : i. that the constables in their respective towns and parishes within the said shire , shall call for two or three best knowing and skilful men , in the discerning of the sufficiency and insufficiency of meal , malt , fleshes , and shoes , and to survey and sight the same each mercat-day in time of mercat , or any other day and place of the selling of the foresaid commodities ; and if any insufficient goods be found , to bring the seller thereof before the nearest justice of peace , to be punished as the said justice shall think fit . ii. that no veals be killed or sold under fifteen dayes old ; and if any be found to contravene this order , the constables are authorized to bring the killers and sellers thereof before the nearest justice of peace , to be punished in manner foresaid . iii. that the constables in their respective towns and paris ; hes , with the surveyors or visiters aforesaid , are to take notice and make diligent search of all insufficient ale and beer that is vended and sold , and to bring the venders and sellers thereof before the nearest justice of peace , to be punished and fined at his discretion . iv. that no white-bread be sold by the bakers and sellers thereof , above twelve penies scots , at twelve ounces weight , it being good and sufficient bread , of good and sufficient flower , which is to be surveyed and sighted in manner aforesaid ; and if it be found above the said price , or under the said weight , or made of insufficient flower , that they shall be convened and punished in manner foresaid . v. that no insufficient shoes , made of insufficient leather , be sold , which is to be surveyed in manner foresaid ; and if it be found otherwayes , that the makers and sellers thereof are to be convened and punished as said is . vi . that all sorts of measures and weights made use of by merchants , sellers and buyers , to be conform to the act of parliament , which is to be surveyed and sighted in manner foresaid ; and if found otherwayes , to bring the owners and havers of the same , before the nearest justice of peace , to be punished as he thinks fit : and in the mean time to take the wrong measures and weights from them , and to dispose thereof at the said justice his order : alwayes this being without prejudice of measures betwixt masters and tennants for uplifting of their yearly farms and rents , as hath been formerly in use and wount . vii . that no smith take any more for working of each pound weight of plow-irons , or of any other rough work whereupon the file cometh not , but ten penies scots , and no more : and the givers and takers of more to be punished in manner foresaid . viii . that the weavers are to have for weaving each ell of harden or round linen , under ten heer 's in the pound ( being sufficiently woven ) but twelve penies scots and no more , without bountieth . and for each heer of yarn above ten heer 's in the pound , one peny scots and no more : and the givers and takers of more to be punished in manner foresaid . as also , it is ordered , that the weavers not only make good and sufficient cloath upon the respective prices aforesaid ; but likewise that they work it timously , and keep their agreements with all persons . as also , that no weaver refuse to take in webbs upon the prices here set down , in contempt of the foresaid order : and who ever shall be found to contravene the same , shall be punished in manner foresaid . and as for the price for weaving of woollen-cloath , serges , camlets , floured-stuffs , coverings , and such like ; together with the breadth of the foresaid linen-cloath , is to be taken to consideration at the next quarter-session . ix . that the candle-makers , or sellers thereof , take no more for each pound of good and sufficient candle , nor four shillings scots : and the givers and takers of more to be punished in manner foresaid . x. vvhereas there is no particular price of herds fees set down in the late printed acts made anent fees , &c. therefore it is ordered , that the justices in their several divisions shall have power to determine therein as they think just . xi . ordered , that no vvomen be permitted to travel with men through the shire , under pretext of marriage , without having a certificate of their marriage , and a passe from two or more of his highnesse justices of peace . xii . that no men nor women that are fit for service , or have used to serve for fees or wages , be permitted to live alone in houses by themselves , or in the family of others not in actual service with them , in any place of this shire ; but that they be caused to serve for the fees that are appointed ; and if they refuse , to be punished as aforesaid . xiii . that the persons foresaids , called for by the constables to be assisting to them in surveying the whole particulars above-mentioned , are to make faith for their faithful discharge of their trust , as surveyors or visiters , before the nearest justice of peace in that division ; and if any of them refuse to accept of the office in manner foresaid , the constables are to bring them before the nearest justice of peace , to be fined and punished at his discretion . xiv . whereas there are many strange , strong , sturdy and idle beggars , whereof some are lame souldiers , others vagabonds and idle persons ; as counterfeit aegyptians , and such like , still haunting and begging within this shire ; through which several thefts and robberies are committed , notwithstanding of several acts of parliament made to the contrary : it is therefore ordered , that all such persons shall forthwith be apprehended , and brought before the nearest justice of peace , to be punished conform to the act of parliament made there-anent . xv . whereas there are several poor orphans that have no livelihood , as also many indigent weak and aged persons begging through the shire , not confining themselves to their respective parishes where they were born , or have cohabited , contrary to the act of parliament made there-anent ; it is therefore ordered , that all such persons shall forthwith return to their said respective parishes , and there give up their names to the constables , and others authorized for that effect within the said parish ; and the names so given up , are to be brought in to the clerk of the peace betwixt and the next quarter-session held after the publication hereof , to the effect some regular course may be taken for their maintenance in all time coming ; and in the mean time ordains the respective parishes to maintain their respective poor until that be done ; and if any faile or neglect to give up their names , as said is , they shall be holden as strangers and vagabonds , and extruded the shire . xvi . that if any parish wherein any theft or robbery is committed , do not answer the hue and cry raised upon the committing thereof , and follow the constable in the pursuit till he return , such parish shall be liable for payment of the goods and geir robbed and stolen , or so much thereof as the saids justices shall find cause for . ordered , that the several articles concerning the particulars above-mentioned , be forthwith printed , and published at the mercat-crosses , and respective parishes within the said shire . the several constables of each town and parish are hereby ordered to see the same done accordingly . mr. william caldwell , cl. of the peace . edinbvrgh , printed by christopher higgins , in harts-close , over against the trone-church , 1657. a declaration of the lords and commons assembled in parliament. die lunæ 8. septemb. 1645. whereas the lords and commons in parliament assembled, are informed that by the subtile and malicious practises of a popish and malignant party, ... england and wales. parliament. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a82620 of text r212256 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.9[45]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a82620 wing e1350 thomason 669.f.9[45] estc r212256 99870896 99870896 161143 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a82620) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 161143) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 245:669f9[45]) a declaration of the lords and commons assembled in parliament. die lunæ 8. septemb. 1645. whereas the lords and commons in parliament assembled, are informed that by the subtile and malicious practises of a popish and malignant party, ... england and wales. parliament. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed for john wright at the kings head in the old bayley, london : 9. septemb. 1645. title from heading and first lines of text. signed: ioh brown cler. parliamentorum. disclaiming any intention of confiscating welsh estates for the benefit of the scotch. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng england and wales. -parliament -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. wales -history -1536-1700 -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign relations -wales -early works to 1800. a82620 r212256 (thomason 669.f.9[45]). civilwar no a declaration of the lords and commons assembled in parliament. die lunæ 8. septemb. 1645. whereas the lords and commons in parliament assem england and wales. parliament. 1645 394 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2007-11 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a declaration of the lords and commons assembled in parliament . die lunae 8. septemb. 1645. whereas the lords and commons in parliament assembled , are informed that by the subtile and malicious practises of a popish and malignant party , opposite to gods cause and the prosperity of this kingdome , it hath been insinuated and infused into sundry of the inhabitants of his maiesties dominions of wales , to dis-affect and poyson them against the proceedings of the parliament , that it was their intention to gratifie our brethren of scotland for their assistance in these our extremities drawne upon us by the said popish and malignant party with the estates and lands of the said inhabitants , which is so absolutely false that it never entred into their thoughts , and consequently needed no refutation : yet that the subiects of this kingdome , inhabiting within the said dominion of wales , may receive full and befiting satisfaction , and we and our brethren of scotland vindication against so foule and so barbarous an aspersion , the said lords and commons doe testifie and declare to all persons whatsoever to whom these shall come , that they doe much abhor and detest an act of such iniustice and inhumanity , and that they are so farre from doing any such thing , that if any of the said inhabitants upon due sense and sorrow for any of their crimes and misdemeanours committed against the present parliament , shall submit and apply themselves by humble petition to the parliament , and desire the favour of ; and reconciliation to the same , the said lords and commons will be thereupon ready to receive any and all such upon such reasonable termes as the wisdome of the parliament shall thinke in some measure proportionable to the qualities and degrees of their severall offences , and thereupon yeeld them all such aid and assistance as they shall reasonably desire , and the parliament be able to afford . provided alwayes that this shall not extend to any that are excepted from pardon within the propositions lately presented to his maiestie for a safe and well grounded peace . ioh brown cler. parliamentorum . london printed for john wright at the kings head in the old bayley . 9. septemb. 1645. new propositions from the king of scotland to the parliament of that kingdom with his last promise and condescensions and the proclaiming of a new proclamation for his highness ; also another bloudy fight in ireland .. the routing of generall oneal's army by the lord of ards, the raising of the siege at london-derry and the rallying of the marq. of ormond's forces and advancing within 12 miles of dublin. england and wales. sovereign (1660-1685 : charles ii) this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a32340 of text r35502 in the english short title catalog (wing c3191a). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 10 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 5 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a32340 wing c3191a estc r35502 15345655 ocm 15345655 103456 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a32340) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 103456) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1147:27) new propositions from the king of scotland to the parliament of that kingdom with his last promise and condescensions and the proclaiming of a new proclamation for his highness ; also another bloudy fight in ireland .. the routing of generall oneal's army by the lord of ards, the raising of the siege at london-derry and the rallying of the marq. of ormond's forces and advancing within 12 miles of dublin. england and wales. sovereign (1660-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. [2], 6 p. printed for e. cotton, london : aug. 17, 1660. "extracted out of the orignall for generall satisfaction and published by authority." reproduction of original in the huntington library. eng great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649. scotland -history -17th century. ireland -history -1625-1649. a32340 r35502 (wing c3191a). civilwar no new propositions from the king of scotland to the parliament of that kingdom; with his last promise and condescensions, and the proclaiming [no entry] 1649 1724 5 0 0 0 0 0 29 c the rate of 29 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2003-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-05 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-08 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2003-08 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-10 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion new propositions from the king of scotland to the parliament of that kingdom ; with his last promise and condescensions , and the proclaiming of a new proclamation for his highnesse . also , another bloudy fight in ireland , the particulars thereof , and the routing of generall oneal's army by the lord of ards , the raising of the siege at london-derry , and the rallying of the marq. of ormond's forces , and advancing within 12 miles of dublin . extracted out of the originall , for generall satisfaction , and published by authority . london , printed for e. cotton , aug. 17. 1649. the king of scotland his propositions to his subjects of that nation ; and his promise and condescensions to the desires of the parliament . sir , since the receipt of the intelligence from ireland , of the fatall blow there given to the prince his forces , the court hath continually rung with sorrow , and his highnesse is very sad and melancholy : since which time , there hath been a great disputation held by his privy councell , whose result was , that new propositions should be sent to the parl. of scotland , viz. 1 that his declared majesty would wive his assent , for the setling of religion , according to the solemn league and covenans . 2 that he would wholly apply his ear to the councell and advice of the estates conveened , provided , that respect might be had to the tender consciences of those who have adhered to or assisted him . but this will hardly be ; for he must either become a perfect covenanter , or else a despised prince . many of the royall party have caused proclamation to be made for charles the ii , for the raising of voluntiers , but few appears in that engagement , hague 9. augusti , 1649. the newes is confirmed from dublin , ormond hath paid dear for his bowzing , taff , preston , and he being met together , thought they could destroy the parl-power , by drinking healths to their destruction , when it s in so many words a bull , whereas lieu. gen. jones came soberly upon them , and made them run several ways : it 's said , that in their hast they fell upon ballyshanon , have taken it , and are rallyed , being about twelve thousand within twelve miles of dublin and fallen to their old way of disputing passes : which when lost , they run to the next : they increase by the coming of forces to them , and say , if they recover not their reputation before michaelmas , they shal not keep ireland from a totall reducement within a year . the scots-resolution touching their king . first , that prevailing party of sectaries of england , who have broken the covenant , and despised the oath of god , corrupted the truth , subverted the fundamentall government , by king and parliament , and taken away the life , look upon us with an evill eye , as upon those who stand in the way of their monstrous and new-fingled devices , in religion and government , and though there were no cause to fear any thing for that party , but the gangrene and infection of those many damnable and abominable errors , which have taken hold on them , yet our vicinity unto and dayly to commerce with that nation , may justly make us afraid that the lord may give up many in this land unto a spirit of delusion , to beleeve lyes , because they have not received the love of truth . secondly , neither is the malignant party so far broken and brought low , as that they have abandoned all hopes of carrying on their former designes against the covenant , and work of reformation , besides many of them in this kingdom who are as foxes tyde in chaines , keeping in evill nature , and waiting opportunity to break their cords , and again to prey upon the lords people . that the standing armies in ireland , under the command of the marq. of ormond , the lord inchiqueen , the lord of airds , and george munroe , who forgetting the horrible cruelty that was exercised by the irish and english nations in that land , have entred into a peace and association with them , that they may the more easily carry on the old design of the popish , prelatical and malignant party , and the lord of airds , and george munroe , have by treachery and oppression , brought the province of ulster , and garrisons therein , under their power and command , and have redacted our country-men , and such as adhere unto the covenant and cause of god in that province unto many miseries and straits , and are like to banish the ministers of the gospell , and to overturn these fair beginnings of the worke of god , which were unto many a branch of hope , that the lord meant to make ireland a pleasant land . thirdly , but which is more grievous unto us then all these , our king notwithstanding of the lords hand , against his fathers opposition to the work of god , and bearing down all those in the three kingdomes , by which it is come to passe , that his majesty hath hitherto refused to grant the just and necessary desires of this kirk and kingdom , which were tendred unto him from the commissioners of both for securing of religion , the liberties of the subject , his mai government , and the peace of the kingdom ; and it is much to be feared that those wicked councellours may so far prevail upon him in his tender years , as to engage him in a war for ouerturning ( if it be possible ) of the work of god , and bearing down all those in the three kingdoms that adhere thereto , which if he shall do , cannot but bring great wrath from the lord upon himself and his throne , and must be the cause of many new and great miseries and calamities to these lands . and albeit the lands be involved in many difficulties and compassed about with great and imminent dangers ; yet ●here is hope and ground of consolation concerning this thing ; the lord is in the midst of us , and we are called by his name , our ears hear the joyfull sound of the gospell , add our eyes see our teachers . we behold the arm of the lord stretched out daily in working salvation for his people , and answering their desires upon their enemies , by terrible things in righteousnesse ; although we be few in number , yet the lord of hosts is with us , and in the power of his strength we shall be able to prevaile ; although our land be filled with sin , yet we have not been forsaken of the lord our god , but he hath always had compassion upon us , and delivered us in all our distresse ; although some of understanding fal , it is bot to try , and to purge , and to make white even to the end , because it is yet for a time appointed although many cleave to us by flatteries , yet there be a remnant w●● keep their integrity , and the lord shall do good to those that be good ; but such as turn aside to crooked ways , shall be led forth with the workers of iniquity . the lords people in england and ireland , who adhere to the cause and covenant , may be perplexed , but shall not despair , they may be persecuted but shall not be forsaken ; they may be cast down but shall not be destroyed ; and although uniformity and the work of reformation in these hands seem not only to be retarded , but almost pluckt up by the roots , and the foundation thereof razed ; yet the seed which the lord hath sowen there , shall again take root downward , and bear fruit upward , the zeal of the lord of hosts shall perform this . a. ker . right honoured , since the late blow given to the marq. of ormond by lieut. gen. jones , we hear that they are re-bodying about kilkenny and munster , and that in the said engagement thirteen thousand of the princes forces escaped , who are gathering together , and randezvouzing in severall places ; but the raising of the siege , and defeating that pote● power is joyfully rescented by many . we have received another express from thence , which intimates , that the d. of lorraign hath landed 3000 horse in ireland , and that a conjunction is designed by them with 7000 scots under the lord of ards , 3000 irish commanded by the earle of clanrickard , 7000 of the spanish faction commanded by gen. oneal , 1400 horse commanded by l. incihiquin , and the 13000 of ormonds that escaped at the last fight ; all which ( it is said ) intend a randezvouz neer kilkenny , who being bodyed , will make an army of 30000 and upwards , and may probably much indanger our friends in dublin , if a considerable supply be not speedily sent over to them . bristol 12. august , 1649. yesterday came news , as if dredagh were re-taken or delivered up by the lord m●or , that sir charles coot since his relief by his brethren hath been abroad , disputed several passes with the enemy , and set the besiegers at a further distance . the lord of ards ( its said ) hath likewise fallen upon ge●erall oneal , and after a sharp conflict , killed many , took divers prisoners , and scattered the rest . finis . certaine instrvctions given by the l. montrose, l. nappier laerd of keer and blackhall with a trve report of the committee for this new treason that they had a three-fold design. montrose, james graham, marquis of, 1612-1650. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a51201 of text r22235 in the english short title catalog (wing m2508). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 4 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a51201 wing m2508 estc r22235 12741293 ocm 12741293 93141 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a51201) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 93141) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 253:e160, no 26) certaine instrvctions given by the l. montrose, l. nappier laerd of keer and blackhall with a trve report of the committee for this new treason that they had a three-fold design. montrose, james graham, marquis of, 1612-1650. 7 p. [s.n.] london : 1641. reproduction of original in thomason collection, british library. eng scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -sources. a51201 r22235 (wing m2508). civilwar no certaine instructions given by the l. montrose, l. nappier, laerd of keer and blackhall. with a true report of the committee for this new tr montrose, james graham, marquis of 1641 1084 6 0 0 0 0 0 55 d the rate of 55 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the d category of texts with between 35 and 100 defects per 10,000 words. 2003-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-07 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-08 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2003-08 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-10 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion certaine instrvctions given by the l. montrose , l. nappier , laerd of keer and blackhall . with a trve report of the committee for this new treason , that they had a three-fold designe . london , printed in the yeare 1641. certaine instrvctions given by the l. montrose , l. nappier , laerd of keer and blackhall . how necessary it is that r. come to the parliament . to desire that h. be kept up till it be seene who deserves them best . that h. be not bestowed by advice of the elephant , for feare he crush the l. to assure l. that r. and l. being granted , he will be powerfull to crush the elephant . not to let l. drink water , except he promise not to cast it up againe . that is , not to reveale it to the marquesse . to assure d. and t. that except they take genero by the hand , they will be trod upon at home and made naked . to assure l. d. that g. will take him by the hand and lead him throughout all difficulties , r. and l. being granted . instructions from l. traq to l. colonel steward . to counsell l. his hom● comming till they heare from d. or d. heare from thence to advertise c. withall diligence how ... are pleased with the tablet . and if there be any particulars that they would have the l. more speciall in . that they be not moved with reports of any alteration , or any thing derogate from the tablet , except they heare from d. tablet propositions for the king and his majesties answer . that the word moderation be explained to genero annent traq in a letter from the duke . that ... strive to let the towne wigton know how carefull t. hath been to get him satisfaction , as my lord of roxborough can beare witnesse , and that they may be confident of satisfaction . it is thought most necessary that some ... who will be least suspected come , or if that cannot conveniently be , that the bearer returne with all possible diligence , and howsoever , he come up before . that all meanes be used for trying the information against the dromadary , and what further can be found of his carriage , with athol magduffe or any other in these parts , wherein sir puritan and some of the redshankes friends can best informe and instruct . to assure sir puritan that he will get satisfaction annent the ward and marriage he desired , but that now it is a fit time to doe it for him or any other so disposed as he is . to tell genero , that so soone as dick comes to the schoole , who is daily expected , he will by him heare from l. to let ... know how well l. takes their care and in the discreetest way to informe your selfe of their desires , and particularly if rick ayme upward , that its businesse goes right . to try the summons against t. and to send up a double , that he may compare them with that which he hath gotten , and to assure ... and all others , that he shall cleare himselfe of all these as cleare as day-light . that by all meanes they labour with the plantations , to let them know , the tablet being filled up , and made good , how much it concernes them to shew themselves affectionate . that the parliament be constitute of noblemen , gentlemen , and burrows . that religion be secured by confirming the acts of the last generall assembly holden at edenburgh , and every thing done necessary there , annent which may assure his majesties . subjects that there shall be no innovation in religion in any time hereafter . that the subjects be governed in all time comming conformed to the lawes of this kingdome formerly established , and not otherwayes . this done , his majesties loyall and faithfull subjects will maintaine his majesties honour and person and royall authoritie against all men , and will suffer no innovation or lawes nor otherwise to be introduced against his majestie . it is requisite his majestie keepe up his office of state , and other his majesties royall favours , to be bestowed upon such as shall best de●erve at parliament , and elsewhere . and that his majestie be graciously pleased to be present there in person , for countenancing his own service , and his loyall and faithfull subjects . his majestie agrees to the first propositions , and upon assurance of performance of the fourth , will so dispose of his affaires , as that he shall god willing be at the parliament in scotland . and in the meane time will keepe up all places and offices of state , and other markes of his favour , of any great moment undisposed , untill such time as he may bestow them upon parties according to their merit and deserving at the parliament . a true report of the committee for this new treason , that they had a threefold designe . first , to seize on the tower , the lieutenant to have twenty thousand pound , his sonne to marry with straffords daughter , with means to live on ; strafford to be sent into ireland to send an army hither , and to goe into france to prepare an army from thence . secondly , to possesse the northerne armies with an ill opinion of the house , and to make them advance to london . thirdly , to deliver portsmouth into iermines hands , to be a randevowes for the french papists . the bishops to raise two thousand horse . the committee gave most of the great names in blanckes , and will report them hereafter . the lord of newcastle to be generall of the northerne army , and to have met them with the army at nottingham . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a51201e-160 r. king . h. office . duke traq montrose . g. mont. r. religion and l. libertie . duke meat . pap. keer . argeil . e ▪ sefor● macha● . sr. richard greemes com● to court . smoake . proclamation discharging merchants and other traffickers, to sell or exchange any prohibite commodities, with themselves or amongst others england and wales. sovereign (1660-1685 : charles ii) 1683 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a58727 wing s1751 estc r6555 13704269 ocm 13704269 101471 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a58727) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 101471) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 848:50) proclamation discharging merchants and other traffickers, to sell or exchange any prohibite commodities, with themselves or amongst others england and wales. sovereign (1660-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1630-1685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty ; for langley curtis ..., edinburgh : and reprinted at london : 1683. reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng foreign trade regulation -scotland -early works to 1800. proclamations -great britain. scotland -commerce -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -edinburgh (lothian) -17th century 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-09 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-09 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation discharging merchants , and other traffickers , to sell or exchange any prohibite commodities , with themselves , or amongst others . charles by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland defender of the faith , to _____ macers of our privy council , or messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting , forasmuch as we , from the great care we always had of the advancement of the trade and manufactories of this our ancient kingdom , have made several good laws and acts thereanent , and particularly , by the 18th . act of our current parliament , in the month of september , 1681. relative to our former proclamation in april , preceeding ; the importing , selling , venting , bartering , or exchanging of diverse commodities therein named , is prohibited and discharged , under the certifications and penalties exprest therein : and albeit we then understood that the importing , and venting of these prohibited commodities could hardly be restrained without a total prohibition had been given to the wearing thereof ; yet out of a tenderness to the merchants , who might have had great parts of their stocks in these commodities upon their hands , we thought it not then fit to make a total and immediate prohibition to the wearing , but ordained them to be put under bond , not to import any of these prohibited goods thereafter , nor to vent , sell , barter , or exchange any thereof , upon hazard of incurring the certifications contained therein : and notwithstanding there hath been more then sufficient time allowed to the merchants to have sold off these prohibited goods , yet upon pretext thereof , and of the abiguity of the words in the bond , that they are only obliged not to vent , sell , barter , or exchange any of these goods , that at the buying or receiving thereof were known to have been imported , contrary to the laws ; diverse persons have presumed to import , at the least to reset commodities unwarrantable imported , and to vent , sell , barter , and exchange the same , so that thereby the execution of the law hath been hitherto evacuated and eluded , and honest men , who out of conscience and duty have given obedience , in hazard to be ruined , and the trade and manufactory of the kingdom overturned and destroyed ; and although we had more then reason to have inforced the execution of the saids good laws , by the examplary punishment of persons most guilty : nevertheless we , according to our accustomed clemency , have thought fit to continue any sentence upon the process in dependence a gainst them , at the instance of our advocat , till we shall have occasion to know their future behaviour . and in the mean time , for explicating and making the said act of parliament effectual for the good ends therein designed , we with advice of our privy council hereby prohibit and discharge all merchants within this kingdom , or other trafficquers , men , or women , to buy , sell , or barter , or exchange with themselves , or among others , any cloaths , stuffs , sarges , holland , cambridge , silk stockings , or any goods made of wool , or lint , after tho date hereof , except they know and can be able to declare upon oath they were either made in the kingdom , or lawfully imported , preceding the prohibition contained in the act of parliament and proclamation aforesaid , under the penalties and certifications therein contained , to be inflicted on them , without favour or defalcation . and in respect diverse persons have , or may pretend to have such goods in their custody , as to which they cannot positively declare upon oath that they were imported before the prohibition , as having come through several hands : we do allow the merchants burgesses of edenburgh , and others , havers of such goods in their possession , before the date hereof ( who did take the bond , and give up inventar , and none others ) liberty to retail the same to the liedges , or export them out of the kingdom at any time betwixt this and the first of november next ; certifying such as shall upon pretext hereof import any prohibited commodities , or vent , sell , barter , or exchange any thereof after the said day , the same shall be confiscat , burnt , and destroyed , and the persons guilty otherwise punished , conform to the said act of parliament . given under our signet at edenburgh , the 16th of august , one thousand six hundred eighty and three . and of our reign , the thirtieth and fifth year . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . will. paterson , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edenburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty and reprinted at london , for longly curtis near fleet-bridge . 1683. a briefe discourse, touching the happie vnion of the kingdomes of england, and scotland dedicated in priuate to his maiestie. bacon, francis, 1561-1626. 1603 approx. 24 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 20 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-01 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a01064 stc 1117 estc s104437 99840175 99840175 4650 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a01064) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 4650) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 871:04) a briefe discourse, touching the happie vnion of the kingdomes of england, and scotland dedicated in priuate to his maiestie. bacon, francis, 1561-1626. [48] p. printed [by r. read] for fœlix norton, and are to be sold by william aspley, at london : 1603. by francis bacon. printer's name from stc. signatures: a-c. the first leaf and the last three leaves are blank. running title reads: the happy vnion of england and scotland. reproduction of the original in the henry e. huntington library and art gallery. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng england -foreign relations -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -foreign relations -england -early works to 1800. 2002-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2002-03 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2002-04 tcp staff (michigan) sampled and proofread 2002-04 olivia bottum text and markup reviewed and edited 2002-05 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a briefe discovrse , tovching the happie vnion of the kingdomes of england , and scotland dedicated in private to his maiestie . at london printed for foelix norton , and are to be sold by william aspley . 1603. a briefe discourse , touching the happy vnion of the kingdomes of england , and scotland . dedicated in priuate to his maiestie . i doe not finde it straunge ( excellent king , ) that when heraclitus , hee that was surnamed the obscure , had set foorth a certaine booke , which is not now extant : many men tooke it for a discourse of nature , and many others tooke it for a treatise of policie , and matter of estate . for , there is a great affinitie and consent , betweene the rules of nature , and the true rules of policie : the one being nothing els but an order in the gouernement of the world , and the other an order , in the gouernment of an estate . and therefore , the education and erudition of the kings of persia , was in a science , which was termed by a name , then of great reuerence , but now degenerate and taken in ill part . for , the persian magicke , which was the secret literature of their kings , was an obseruation of the contemplation of nature , and an application thereof to a sense politicke 〈◊〉 taking the fundamentall lawes of nature , with the branches and passages of them , as an originall , and first modell , whence to take and describe a copie and imitation for gouernement . after this manner , the foresaid instructors fet before their kings , the examples of the celestiall bodies , the sunne , the moone , and the rest , which haue great glorie and veneration , but no rest or intermission , beeing in a perpetuall office of motion , for the cherishing , in turne , and in course , of inferiour bodyes . expressing likewise , the true manner of the motions of gouernement , which though they ought to bee swifte and rapide in respect of occasion and dispatche , yet are they to be constant and regular , without wauering or confusion . so did they represent vnto them , how that the heauens do not inritch themselues by the earth , and the seas , nor keepe no dead stocke or vntouched treasure , of that they drawe to them from belowe , but whatsoeuer moysture they doe leuie and take from both the elements in vapours , they doe spend and turne backe againe in showers , onely houlding and storing them vp for a time , to the end to issue and distribute them in season . but chiefely they did expresse and expound vnto them , that fundamentall lawe of nature , whereby all things doe subsist and are preserued : which is , that euery thing in nature , although it hath his priuate and particular affection and appetite , and doth follow and pursue the same in small moments , and when it is deliuered and freed from more generall and common respects : yet neuerthelesse , when there is question or cause , for the sustaining of the more generall , they forsake their owne particularities and proprieties , and attend and conspire to vphold the publike . so , we see the yron in small quantitie will ascend and approach to the load-stone , vpon a particular sympathie . but , if it bee any quantitie of moment , it leaues his appetite of amity with the load-stone , and like a good patriott , falleth to the earth , which is the place and region , of massy bodies . so againe , the water , and other like bodies , doe fall towardes the center of the earth : which is , as was saide , their region or country . and yet , we see nothing more vsuall , in all water-workes and ingens , then that the water ( rather then to suffer any distraction , or disunion in nature , ) will ascend : forsaking the loue to his owne region or country , and applying it selfe to the body next adioyning . but , it were too large a digression , to proceede to more examples of this kinde . your maiesty your selfe , did fall vppon a passage of this nature , in your gratious speech of thankes vnto your councell . when acknowledging princely , their vigilancye and well deseruinges , it pleased you to note , that it was a successe and euent aboue the course of nature , to haue so great a change , with so great a quiet : forasmuch as suddayne and great mutations , as well in state as in nature , are rarely without violence and perturbation . so as still i conclude , there is , as was saide , a congruity betweene the principles of nature , and and of pollicie . and , least that instance may seeme to appone to this assertion , i may , euen in that perticular , with your maiesties fauour , offer vnto you a type or patern in nature much resembling this present euēt in your state : namely earthquakes , which many of them , bring euer much terror and wonder , but no actuall hurt ; the earth trembling for a moment , and sodainely stablishing in perfect quiet , as it was before . this knowledge then , of making the gouernment of the world , a mirror for the gouernement of a state , beeing a wisedome almost lost ( whereof the reason i take to be , because of the difficulty , for one man to imbrace both philosophies ; ) i haue thought good to make some proofe , ( as farre as my weakenesse , and the straights of time will suffer , ) to reuiue in the handling of one particular wherewith now i most humbly present your maiesty . for , surely , as hath beene said , it is a forme of discourse , anciently vsed towardes kings . and , to what king , should it be more proper then to a king , that is studious to conioyne contemplatiue virtue and actiue virtue together . your maiesty is the first king , which hath had the honour , to be lapis angularis , to vnite these two mighty and warlike nations of england and scotland , vnder one soueraignety and monarchy . it dooth not appeare by the recordes and memories , of any true history , nor scarcly by the fiction and pleasure of any fabulous narration , or tradition : that euer , of any antiquity , this iland of great brittaine was vnited vnder one king , before this day . and yet , there be no mountaines or races of hils , there be no seas , or great riuers , there is no diuersity of toung or language , that hath inuited or prouoked this ancient separation , or diuorce . the lot of spaine was , to haue the seuerall kingdomes of that continent ( portugal onely except , ) to be vnited in an age , not long past : and , now in our age , that of portugal also , which was the last that held out , to bee incorporate with the rest . the lot of france hath beene , much about the same time likewise , to haue reannexed vnto that crowne , the seuerall duchies and portions , that were in former times dismembred . the lotte of this iland , is the last reserued for your maiesties happye times , by the speciall prouidence and fauour of god : who hath brought your maiesty to this happy coniunction , with great consent of harts , and in the strength of your yeares , and in the maturity of your experience . it resteth therefore , but that , ( as i promised ) i set before your maiesties princelye consideration , the grounds of nature , touching the vnion and commixture of bodies ; & the correspondence which they haue with the groundes of pollicie , in the coniunction of states and kingdomes . first therefore that position , vis vnita fortior , beeing one of the common notions of the minde , needeth not much to be induced or illustrate . we see the sunne ( when he enters , & while he continues vnder the signe of leo ) causeth more vehement heates , then when he is in cancer : what time his beames are neuerthelesse , more perpendicular . the reason whereof , in great part , hath beene truely ascribed , to the coniunction and corradiation in that place of heauen , of the sunne , with the foure starres of the first magnitude , syrius , canicula , cor leonis , & cauda leonis . so , the moone likewise , by ancient tradition , while she is in the same signe of leo , is saide to be at the heart , or , to respect the hart . which is not for any affinity , which that place in heauen can haue , with that part of mans body : but onely , because the moone is then ( by reason of the coniunction and neerenesse with the starres aforenamed ) in greatest strength of influence : and so worketh vppon that part , in inferiour bodyes , which is most vitall and principall . so , wee see waters and liquors , in small quantity , do easily purrifie and corrupt : but , in large quantity , subsist long , by reason of the strength , they receiue , by vnion . so , in earthquakes , the more generall doe little hurt , by reason of the vnited weight , that they offer to subuert : but , narrow and particular earthquakes , haue many times ouerturned whole townes and citties . so then , this point touching the force of vnion is euident . and therefore it is more fitte to speake of the manner of vnion . wherein againe , it will not be pertinent , to handle one kinde of vnion , which is vnion , by victory : when one body , doth meerely subdue another , and conuerteth the same into his owne nature , extinguishing and expulsing , what part so euer of it , it cannot ouercome . as , when the fire conuerteth the wood into fire , purging awaye the smoake and the ashes , as vnapt matter to inflame . or , when the bodye of a liuing creature dooth conuert and assimilate foode and nourishment : purging and expelling whatsoeuer it cannot conuerte . for , these representations doe aunswere in matter of pollicie , to vnion of countreyes by conquest : where the conquering state dooth extinguish , extirpate and expulse any parte of the estate conquered , which it findeth so contrarye , as it cannot alter and conuerte it . and therefore leauing violent vnions : wee will consider onelye of naturall vnions . the difference is excellent , which the best obseruers in nature doe take , betweene compositio and miltio ; putting together and mingling . the one beeing but a coniunction of bodyes in place , the other in quality , and consent : the one , the mother of sedition and alteration , the other of peace and continuance : the one rather a confusion , then an vnion , the other properly a vnion . therefore we see those bodies which they call imperfectè miltio , last not , but are speedily dissolued . for , take for example , snow or froth , which are compositions of ayre and water : in them you may behold , how easily they seuer and dissolue , the water closing togeather , and excluding the ayre . so , those three bodies , which the alchymists doe so much celebrate , as the three principles of things , that is to say , earth , water and oyle , ( which it pleaseth them to terme salt , mercury and sulphur : ) wee see , if they bee vnited onely by composition , or putting togeather , how weakely and rudely they doe incorporate . for , water and earth , make but an vnperfect slime , and , if they be forced togeather by agitation , yet , vpon a little setling , the earth resides in the bottome . so , water and oyle , though by agitation it be beaten into an oyntment . yet , after a little setling , the oyle will floate vppon the toppe . so as , such vnperfect minglinges , continue no longer , then they are forced : and still in the ende , the worthiest getteth aboue . but , otherwise it is , of perfect mixture . for , wee see those three bodies , of earth , water and oyle ; when they are ioyned in a regetable or minerall , they are so vnited , as without great subtiltie of arte , and force of extraction , they cannot bee seperated and reduced into the same simple bodyes againe . so as , the difference betweene compositio and mistio , cleerelye set downe is this : that compositio , is the ioyning or putting togeather of bodyes , without a new forme : and mistio , is the ioyning or putting togeather of bodies , vnder a new forme . for , the new forme , is commune vinculum : and without that , the oulde formes , will be at striefe and discorde . now , to reflect this light of nature , vpon matter of estate : there hath beene put in practise in gouernment , these two seuerall kindes of pollicie , in vniting & conioyning of states & kingdomes . the one to retaine the auncient formes still seuered , and onely conioyned in soueraingtie ; the other , to superinduce a new forme agreeable and conuenient to the entire estate . the former of these hath beene more vsuall , and is more easie : but the latter , is more happy . for , if a man doe attentiuely reuolue histories of all nations , and iudge truly therevpon : hee will make this conclusion , that there were neuer any state that were good commixtures , but the romaines : which because it was the best state in the worlde , and is the best example of this pointe , wee will chiefely insist therevpon . in the antiquities of rome , virgill brings in iupiter , by way of oracle or perdiction , speaking of the mixture of the troyans and the italians : sermonem ausonij patrium , moresque tenebunt . vtque est , nomen erit : comisti corpore tantum subsident teucri , morem , ritusque sacrorum adijciam , faciamque omnes vno ore latinos . hine genus ausomo mistum quod sanguine surget , suprà homines , suprà ire deos pietate videbis wherein iupiter maketh a kinde of partition or distribution , that italy should giue the language and the lawes ; troye should giue a mixture of men , and some religious rites , and both people should meete in one name of latines . soone after the foundation of the citie of rome , the people of the romaines and the sabines mingled vppon equall termes . wherin the interchange went so euen , that ( as liui noteth ) the one nation gaue the name to the place , and the other to the people . for , rome continued the name : but , the people were called quirites , which was the sabine worde deriued of cures , the countrie of tacitus . but , that which is chiefly to be noted , in the whole continuance of the romaine gouernment , they were so liberall of their naturallizations , as in effect , they made perpetuall mixtures . for their manner was , to graunt the same , not onely to particular persons , but to families and linages : and not onely so , but to whole citties and countries . so as , in the end it came to passe , that rome was communis patria , as some of the ciuilians call it . so , we read , that saint paul , after he had beene beaten with roddes , and therevpon charged the officer with violation of the priuiledge of a citizen of rome : the captaine then sayde to him ; art thou then a romaine ? that priuiledge hath cost mee deere ! to whome saint paul replyed : but i was so borne . and yet , in another place saint paul professeth of himselfe that hee was a iewe by tribe . so as it is manifest that some of his ancestors were naturallized , to him and to his descendents . so , wee read , that it was one of the first despights that was done to iulius caesar , that whereas hee had obtayned naturalization for a cittye in gaul , one of the cittizens of that cittye , was beaten with roddes , by the commaundement of the consul marcellus . so wee read in cornelius tacitus , that , in the emperour claudius time , the nation of gaul , that part which was called comata , the wilder part , were suters to bee made capable of the honours of beeing senators and officers of rome . his wordes are : cùm de supplendo , senatu agitaretur , primoresque galliae quae commata appellatur , foedera et ciuitatem romanam pridem assecuti , ius adipiscendorum in vrbe honorum expeterent : multus ea super re , variusque rumor , et studijs diuersis apud principem certabatur : and , in the ende , after long debate , it was ruled , they should be admitted . so likewise , the authoritie of nicholas machiauell , seemeth not to bee contemned : who , inquiring of the causes of the growth of the romaine empire , dooth giue iudgement , there was not one greater then this , that the state did so easily compound , and incorporate with straungers . it is most true , that most estates and kingdomes , haue taken the other course : of which this effect hath followed , that the addition of further empire and territorie , hath beene rather matter of burden , then matter of strength vnto them ; yea , and further ; it hath kepte aliue the seede and rootes of reuoltes and rebellions , for many ages : as , wee may see in a freshe and notable example of the kingdome of aragon , which though it were vnited to castile by mariadge , and not by conquest , and so descended inhereditarie vnion by the space of more then a hundreth years : yet , because it was continued in a diuided gouernement , and not well incorporated and cemented with the other crownes ; entred into a rebellion , vpon point of their fueros , or liberties , now , of very late yeares . now , to speake briefely , of the seuerall partes of that forme , whereby states and kingdomes are perfectly vnited : they are , besides the soueraignety it selfe , foure in number . vnion in name , vnion in language , vnion in lawes , and vnion in employmentes . for name , though it seeme but a superficiall and outward matter ; yet it carrieth much impression and inchantment . the generall and common name of grecia , made the greekes alwayes apt to vnite ( though otherwise full of diuisions amongst themselues : ) against other nations , who they called barbarous . the he●●●tian name , is no small band to knit together , their leagues and confederacies , the faster . the common name of spaine , no doubt hath beene a speciall meane of the better vnion and conglutination , of the seuerall kindomes of castile , aragon , granada , nauarra , valencia , catalonia , and the rest : comprehending also now lately portugall . for language , it is not needfull to insist vpon it : because both your maiesties kingdoms , are of one language , though of seuerall dialects : and the difference so small betweene them , as promiseth rather an inriching of one language , then a continuance of two . for lawes , which are the principall synewes of gouernment , they be of three natures . iura , which i will terme freedomes , or abilities , leges , and mores . for abilities and freedoms , they were amongst the romans ; of foure kindes , or rather degrees ius connubij , ius ciuitatis , ius suffragij , and ius petitionis , or ius honorum . ius connubij , is a thing , in these times , out of vse . for , marriage is open betweene all diuersity of nations . ius ciuitatis answereth to that we call denization , or naturalization . ius suffragij answereth to voyce in parliament , or voice in election of such , as haue voyce in parliament . ius petitionis , aunswereth to place in councell and office . and , the romanes did many times seuer these freedoms , granting ius connubij , sine ciuitate , and ciuitatem sine suffragio , & suffragium sine iure petitionis , which was commonly with them the last . for lawes , it is a matter of curiosity and inconuenience , to seeke eyther to extripate all particular customes , or , to draw all subiectes to one place or resort of iudicature and session . it sufficeth , there be an vniformity in the principall and fundamentall lawes , both ecclesiasticall and ciuill . for , in this point the rule houldes , which was pronounced by an ancient father , touching the diuersity of rites in the church . for , finding the vesture of the queene , ( in the psalme ) which did prefigure the church , was of diuerse colours : and , finding againe , that christes coate was without a seame : hee concludes well , in veste varietas sit , scissura non fit . for manners , a consent in them is to be sought industriously ; but , not to bee inforced . for , nothing amongst people , breedes so much pertinacie , in houlding their customes , as suddaine and violent offer to remooue them . and , as for employments ; it is no more , but an indifferent hand , and execution of that verse : tros , tyriusué mihi , nulle discrimine agetur . there remaineth onely , to remember out of the grounds of nature , the two conditions of perfect mixture : whereof the former is time. for , the naturall philosophers say well , that compositio , is opus homines : and mistio , is opus naturae . for it is the dutie of man , to make a fitte application of bodies together . but , the perfect fermentation and incorporation of them , must bee left to nature and time : and vnnaturall hasting thereof , dooth disturbe the worke , and not dispatche it . so , wee see , after the grift is put into the stock , and bound ; it must bee left to nature and time , to make that continuum , which was at first but contiguum . and , it is not any continuall pressing , or thrusting together : that will preuent natures season , but rather hinder it . and so , in liquors , those mixtures which are at the first troubled : growe after cleere and setled , by the benefit of rest and time . the second condition is : that the greater drawe the lesse . so wee see , when two lights doe meete , the greater dooth darken and drowne the lesse . and , when a smaller riuer , runs into a greater , it leeseth both his name and streame . and hereof to conclude , we see an excellent example in the kingdomes of iuda and israel . the kingdome of iuda contained two tribes ; the kingdome of israel , contained ten . king dauid raigned first ouer iuda , for certaine yeeres : & , after the death of isbosheth , the sonne of saul , obtayned likewise the kingdome of israel . this vnion continued in him , and likewise in his sonne salomon , by the space of seuentie yeares at least , betweene them both . but yet , because the seate of the kingdome was kept still in iuda , and so the lesse sought to drawe the greater ; vppon the first occasion offered , the kingdomes brake againe , and so continued , diuided for euer after . thus hauing in all humblenesse made oblation vnto your maiestie of these simple fruites , of my deuotion and studies : i do wish ( and i do wish it , not in the nature of an impossibilitie , to my thinking , ) that this happye vnion of your maiesties two kingdomes of england and scotland ; may bee in as good an houre ; and vnder the like diuine prouidence , as that was , betweene the romaines and the sabines . finis . a proclamation, for bringing in arms out of some western shires. scotland. privy council. 1667 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05642 wing s1842 estc r233125 53981737 ocm 53981737 180369 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05642) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180369) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2826:57) a proclamation, for bringing in arms out of some western shires. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by evan tyler, printer to the kings most excellent majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1667. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. text in black letter. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng weapons -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-03 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion honi soit qui mal y pense a proclamation , for bringing in arms out of some vvest shires . edinburgh , the 25. of march , 1667. charles , by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith. to our lovits , _____ messengers , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as the late rebellion , and rising in arms in the western shires , is too great an evidence that there are man disaffected persons in these places , who are ready to involve the kingdom again in a bloody and unnatural war : and that we have just reason to suspect that these rebels will be ready to lay hold in this opportunity , to rise in arms , when we are necessitate to continue the war with our forraign enemies . and not only to make use of such arms , powder and ammunition , as they have concealed , or may be transported to them from our enemies ; but will seize upon the arms of our well affected subjects , who reside amongst them , and are not able to make resistance : which may endanger the peace of the kingdom , and weaken our forces , necessitating them at one time to oppose forraign invasions , and intestine commotions . as likewise , that according to their former wicked practices , they may invade the ministers of the gospel , who are lawfully admitted preachers amongst them , and do violence or injury to their persons , to the great contemnt of our authority , and scandal of the reformed religion , as it is now protest . therefore , we , with advice of the lords of our privy council , command and charge all persons residing within the shires of lanerk , air , renfrew , wigton , and the stewartry of kirkcudbright , betwixt and the first day of may next , to bring in all their arms and ammunition which they have in their possession , of whatsoever sort ( allowing gentlemen only to carry swords , and none other ) to the head burgh of the respective shires and stewartry ; and deliver the same to the sheriff , his depute , or any having his order . with certification to them , if they faylie , they shall be fyn'd by our secret council in the sums of money underwritten ; viz. jik gentleman , in the sum of two thousand merks ; and every other person , in the sum of five hundreth merks ; to be divided , the one half to be paid to our exchequer , and the other half to any person who shall first discover the concealers : and further , shall be proceeded against as seditious persons , and disaffected to our government , likeas , we ordain the said sheriff , his depute , or any other appointed by him , immediatly upon the delivery of their said arms or ammunition , to carry the same of striviling , or dumbarton castles , which shall be next adjacent ; there to be kept by the governor thereof . as likewise , we command and charge , that all heretors and parishtioners , residing in any of the paroches within the saids bounds , protect and defend the persons , famalies and goods of their respective ministers , within their several paroches , from all affronts and injuries to be committed by insolent and disaffected persons to the present government ; as well when they are in the exercise of the ministerial function , as residing at their own houses and dwellings : with certification , that if any injury or affront shall be done to them , in their persons or goods , that the parishtioners who shall suffer the same to be done , and not oppose the doing thereof , shall be repute and holden as art and part of the saids crimes and violence , and be proceeded against by law , as guilty thereof , and punished according to the quality of their offence , with all rigour . and incase the saids injuries shall be done by surprisal , that they follow and pursue the committers thereof , untill they apprehend their persons , and present them to our secret council , to be judged by them , as they shall order : otherwise we declare , that they themselves shall be lyable for such reparation , dammage and interest , as the saids lords of council shall think sit to determine . and ordains the saids sheriffs to cause intimat these presents , by publick proclamation , at the mercat-crosses of the head burghs of the saids respective shires and stewartries : and cause read the same at all the paroch churches within the saids shires and stewartry , upon a sunday before noon , after divine service , with all diligence : and that these presents be printed , that none pretend ignorance . edinburgh , printed by evan tyler , printer to the kingsmost excellent majesty , anno dom. , 1667. the scots apostacy. cleveland, john, 1613-1658. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a79968 of text r210703 in the english short title catalog (thomason 669.f.10[117]). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a79968 wing c4699a thomason 669.f.10[117] estc r210703 99869473 99869473 162648 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a79968) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 162648) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 246:669f10[117]) the scots apostacy. cleveland, john, 1613-1658. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [london : 1647] attribution from thomason. in verse: "is't come to this? what? shall the cheekes of fame" ... annotation on thomason copy: "march 10th 1646 cleaveland". identified as wing (2nd ed.) s2020 on umi microfilm set "early english books, 1641-1700", reel 2124.1. l (luttrell) copy lacks period at end of third line, second column. reproduction of the originals in the british library. eng great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a79968 r210703 (thomason 669.f.10[117]). civilwar no the scots apostacy. cleveland, john 1647 596 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the scots apostacy . is 't come to this ? what ? shall the cheekes of fame stretch't with the breath of learned lowdens name be flagg'd againe , and that great peice of sence as rich in loyaltie , as eloquence , brought to the test , be found a tricke of state ? like chimists tinctures prov'd adulterate ? the divell sure such language did atcheive , to cheate our un-fore-warned grandame eve ; as this impostor found out to besot th' experienc't english to beleeve a scot . who reconcil'd the covenants doubtfull sence ? the commons argument , or the cities pence ? or did you doubt persistance in one good would spoyle the fabrick of your brotherhood , projected first in such a forge of sinne , was fit for the grand divels hammering . or was 't ambition that this damned fact , should tell the world you know the sines you act . the infamie this super-treason brings , blast's more then murders of your sixtie kings . a crime so blacke as being aduis'dly done , those hold with this no competition . kings only suffer'd then , in this doth lie , th' assacination of monarchye . beyond this sinne no one step can be trod if not t' attempt deposing of your god . oh were you so engag'd that we might see , heavens angry lightning 'bout your eares to flee ; till you were shriveld into dust , and your cold land , parcht to a drought beyond the libian sand ; but ti's reserv'd , and till heaven plague you worse be objects of an epidemick curse . first may your brethren to whose viler ends , your power hath banded cease to count you friends ; and prompted by the dictate of their reason reproach the traytors ; though they hug the treason . and may their iealousies encrease and breed , till they confine your ships beyond the tweed . in forreigne nations may your loath'd name be , a stigmatizing brand of infamie . till forc't by generall hate you cease to rome the world , and for a plague goe live at home ; till you resume your povertie , and bee reduc'd to begge where none can be so free , to grant ; and may your scabbie land be all , translated to a generall hospitall . let not the sun afford one gentle ray , to give you comfort of a summers day . but as a guerdon for your trayterous warre , live cherisht only by the northerne starre . no stranger deigne to visite your rude coast , and be to all but banisht men , as lost . and such in hightening of the infliction due , let provok't princes send them all to you . your state a chaos be , where not the law ; but power , your lives and liberties may awe . no subject mongst you keepe a quiet brest , but each man strive through blood to be the best ; till for those miseries on us yo 'ue brought , by your own sword , our just revenge be wrought . to summe up all — let your religion be , as your allegiance , mask't hypocrisie . untill when charles shall be compos'd in dust , perfum'd with epithites of good and just ; he sav'd ; incensed heaven may have forgot , to afford one act of mercy to a scot . finis . a just and modest vindication of the scots design, for the having established a colony at darien with a brief display, how much it is their interest, to apply themselves to trade, and particularly to that which is foreign. ferguson, robert, d. 1714. 1699 approx. 441 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 124 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-11 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a41175 wing f742 estc r21931 12408814 ocm 12408814 61453 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a41175) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 61453) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 276:13) a just and modest vindication of the scots design, for the having established a colony at darien with a brief display, how much it is their interest, to apply themselves to trade, and particularly to that which is foreign. ferguson, robert, d. 1714. hodges, james. [31], 214 p. s.n.], [edinburgh? : 1699. written by robert ferguson. cf. dnb.; ferguson, j. robert ferguson the plotter, 1887, p. 333; and, a short vindication of phil. scot's defence of the scots abdicating darien, 1700, p. 48. attributed by some authorities to james hodges. cf. halkett & laing; hazlit, w.c. bibl. coll., 3rd ser., sup. place of publication from nuc pre-1956 imprints. marginal notes. reproduction of original in harvard university libraries. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest 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eng darien scots' colony, 1698-1700. scotland -commercial policy. scotland -history -1689-1745. panama -colonization. panama -discovery and exploration. 2004-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-06 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-07 rachel losh sampled and proofread 2004-07 rachel losh text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-10 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a just and modest vindication of the scots design , for the having established a colony at darien . with a brief display , how much it is their interest , to apply themselves to trade , and particularly to that which is foreign . sanctiora sunt patriae jura , quam hospitii . ▪ corn. nep. in vit . timoth. nemo patriam amat quia magna est , sed quia sua. senec. epist. 66. printed in the year , 1699. to the reader . there being no dedication of this discourse ; a preface is therefore not only the more allowable , but necessary . for how vain , as well as impertinent soever , they are deservedly accounted , who think either to recommend , or to cover , an unseasonable , useless and trifling book , from censure , contempt and ridicule , by their emitting it under the usurped patronage of a great name ; yet it is to treat those , into whose hands authors are ambitious to have their papers to fall , and of whose good opinion they are covetous , with rudeness , as well as with want of respect , not to afford them those previous advertisements , and vouchsafe them the lights which may let them decently in to what they are invited to peruse , and serve both to obviate misapprehensions of the writer , and to prevent groundless and satyrical reflections upon his performance . and the endeavouring of the one and the other of these , is the more indispensably needful in the present case ; in that ( if credit may be given to vulgar reports ) there are some advanc'd to eminent posts , and cloath'd with lofty characters , who from politicks peculiar to themselves , have declar'd their opinions , and oracularly given forth their decisions , concerning the question hereafter debated , as if they were partizans of the king of spain , rather than state-councellors and civil ministers of his britannick majesty . for besides their having in their private conversations not only question'd , but aspersed the legality and justice of the late vndertaking of the scots at darien ; they are by their friends , as well as by their enemies , represented to have given both encouragement unto , aud to have bestowed liberal rewards upon , the unmannerly , little and despicable writer of the defence of the scots abdicating darien . in which scurrilous pamphlet , there are not only those intollerable invectives against the whole kingdom of scotland , as well as against the directors of their indian and african company , that are more calulated to exasperate that nation , and to run them into disloyalty , than any ways adapted to allay their resentments , and to quench their intemperate heats under that misfortune ; but there are likewise such insolent assertions , and those bottom'd upon brutal ignorance , in relation to the legitimacy of the design to have setled upon the isthmus of america , that no spaniard wou'd have had either the effrontery , or the ill breeding to have utter'd them . for , as if it were not enough for the mercinary scribler , to assume the impudence of affirming , that the motives upon which the proclamations were emitted in the english west-india colonies , forbidding the supplying , relieving , and assisting the scots at darien , or in any parts of america , where they should settle , was because the government of england would not be accessary to an act , which the world might judge to be felonious , p. 4. of his epist. dedicat. he takes the boldness to add afterwards in terms that are most slanderous , as well as defamatory , p. 7. of the same epistle , that their attempt of planting on the isthmus , was the setling a colony in another man's dominions , unless by vertue of their presbyterian tenet of dominions being founded in grace , the scots , who are the presumptive elect , pretend a divine right to the goods of the wicked , and so take upon them to cloath the councellors of their colony , with such another commission , as god gave the hebrews when they departed out of egypt . which language tho' agreeable to the education , manners , politicks , and inferior stations of harris and d — 1 to have been the one the belcher , and the other the voucher of ; yet it cannot miss being esteemed extremely odd and incongruous , that a person , who is not only a schollar , a gentleman , but a minister of state , should be reputed to have both authorized the reproachful falshood , and to have paid liberaly for the inventing and divulging of it . but the forwardness express'd by one in an honourable office ( and as is commonly said with raptures of joy ) in the speedy communication to the spanish ambassador , that the scots had abandonn'd darien , would seem not only to insinuate his being possess'd with a greater picque against the kingdom of scotland ( omitting at present all those further instances that give evidence of it , which occur numerously enough both in the foremention'd pamphlet , and in that other , stil'd , the defence of the scots settlement at darien answer'd , which are publish'd under the safeguard of his countenance , as well as vented and sold with his connivance ) than is reconcileable with the duty of one in his post under a prince , who is no less king and soveraign of that nation , than he is of england ; but it doth also intimate a warmer concern for the interest of the catholick king , and for the having his desires , and the wishes of his subjects complied with and gratified , than was either prudential for an english secretary of state , or correspondent to the zeal which a person in his station ought to have had for the success and prosperity of all and of every one of his masters people in their vndertakings , to have rendred himself obnoxious to the being charged with . not to add how little and mean it was in it self , and what aversion from , and disaffection it proclaimed against the scots , to have affected the pleasure and coveted the glory of being the first author and conveyer of that news to the forementioned ambassador . especially when transmitted to himself upon no surer intelligence , than that such a report being arrived at jamaica , the tydings thereof were dispatch'd hither by one who might be suspected the more credulous in believing it ; because it was that which out of enmity to the caledonian colony he earnestly longed for and desired . nor is it without a pointed ( tho' but tacit ) reflection upon a certain gentleman's conduct in this matter , that the writer of the paris gazette of nov. 14. hath inserted in the paragraph from madrid of october 22. that il arriva ici le 14 ●n courier extraordinaire des pesche de londres par le marquis de canales ambassadeur d'espagne en angleterre avec s'avis de l'abandonement de le colonie de darien , qui avoit este receu par un des secretaires d'estat & communique a cet ambassadeur , there had on the 14th an extraordinary courier come thither from the marquis of canales the spanish ambassador in england , wish news of the abandoning the colony at darien , which one of the secretaries of state having received , had communicated to the said ambassador . but there having been a message delivered since by the same english minister to the said foreign ambassador , which how ravishing soever it might be unto the former to convey , could not be very joyous and delightful to the latter to receive ; i shall only observe in relation to the diversity of the matter , and the different relish between the said message and the foregoing intelligence , that there is sometimes a vast dissimilitude , betwixt what one may find himself obliged to perform in obedience to the order and injunction of a master , who is no less wise in what he commands , than authoratative and vncontrolable in the having it executed ; and what the same person may run himself into the indiscretion of doing when not directed by a greater prudence than his own , nor over-ruled by a superior authority . which i do take the liberty the rather to suggest , in that it is too often the misfortune of princes , to have even those actions of their ministers , of which they were not previously in the least conscious , and much less had enjoyned , to be interpreted as if done either in obedience to their positive command and special direction , or in order to humour their inclinations and to comply with their sentiments . there being but few men in the world who render the justice and pay that deference to kings , as to distinguish with that impartiality and exactness which they ought , between what persons raised to emenent posts in the administration , are to have imputed unto them as acting in abstraction from their offices , and as they come to be considered only personally ; and what they are to be held accountable for as behaving themselves correspondently to the characters which they bear , and to the trusts which are repos'd in them ; and as they govern and regulate themselves in the several and respective parts of their administrations , both in conformity to the laws , and to the measures of biensance and decency , which their masters out of respect to their own honour and glory , as well as from principles of wisdom and justice , are to be always suppos'd to require , as well as to wish , that they may neither trespass against , nor in the least deviate from . for as monarchs and soveraign princes , notwithstanding the innocence of their own purposes , and the righteousness of their designs towards their subjects and people , do seldom escape obloquy and blame , when they upon whom the execution and the exercise of their authority is devolved , are found to offend against the laws , which stand enacted and established to be the standards and boundaries of governing and ruling power ; so it is hardly to be avoided , let kings and potentates be never so justly celebrated , by reason of their own wisdom , and the mannerliness of their whole royal conduct , but that there will be found pevish and ill-natur'd people enough , ready to sully the fame , and to detract from the glory of their prudence , in case they who are employ'd in the chiefest offices of the state , are observed to over-look and forget the rules of decency , and to trespass against the forms of civility and the maxims of discretion . and that what i have represented , may appear to have been said from a dutiful regard to his majesty's honour and safety , let me be allow'd to set both the cases in a clearer light , by the proposal of two suppositions , whereof there are proofs within view , to shew that they are not visionary and chimerical . for example , let his majesty be never so merciful , as well as just , nevertheless it will be impossible , during a season wherein there is no suspension upon any acts of parliament , that his government should escape the censure of being not only rigorous and severe , but arbitrary and despotical , if a person trusted with authority and power of causing seize and apprehend such as are informed and sworn against to be plotters and conspirators against the safety of his majesty's person , the tranquility of his government , or the peace of his dominions , should under that cover and pretence , so far contemn and trample upon the many and several laws of england , which have been made for the preservation of the liberty of english subjects , as to cause take up , and by his warrants to confine under aspersion of high treason whom he pleaseth , without the vouchsafing to mention in those warrants his having received depositions upon oath specifying and importing the crimes for which he commits them . which as it doth often prove to be the ruining them in their estates and fortunes , as well as the scandalizing and blackning them in their names , credits and reputations , thro' the charging them with the guilt of disgraceful and capital offences ; so it is no less than the reducing and bringing the people of england into a state and condition of absolute and down right slavery , by the making the liberty of every english subject , as well as of some , to depend precuriously , and at the same time entirely , upon the humour of him who assumeth unto himself the exercise of such a jurisdiction . which makes me astonished , that they who covet to act after this illimited and unconfined rate , are not more friendly and kind to scotland , than they have hitherto chosen to shew themselves in that no more is required there , for the empowering those in the administration to throw men into prison , without their admission to baile , or the being brought to tryal , but that they do suspect them to be seditious disloyal or traiterous . likewise , let the king behave himself towards the subjects of all , or of any of his kingdoms , with never so much condescension , goodness , and compassion , sincerely and joyfully congratulating their prosperity , and condoleing and simpathizing with them under their calamities ; ( as the king with great tenderness hath lately done towards the scots company , thro' telling them in his answer to their address , that he is sorry for the dammage which they and their country have sustained in and by the loss of their colony ) yet none of all these things will be found sufficient to preserve him in the hearty affections awful esteem , and firm confidence of those subjects of such of his dominions , who find their nation made the object of the scorn , ridicule and contempt ; its welfare the motive of the envy and hatred ; and their misfortune the matter and ground of the pleasure and delight of those , whom he hath honored with the first places in the exercise of his authority , and in the administration of the affairs of state in whatsoever dominion it be under his subjection . however it may not be amiss to observe , that how discontented and clamorous soever the spaniards have been , because of the scots endeavouring to have setled at darien ; and how unkind , as well as unassistent unto them , ( whether upon imaginary motives of justice , or real inducements of state , i shall not determine ) such have shewed themselves , whose favour and protection they expected in the supporting them in that undertaking , and how great and damageable thereupon their disappointments and losses have proved , which while they cause sorrow to them , do administer occasion of joy to others , whose characters it doth very ill accord with and become ; yet that it is some consolation both to their company , and their whole kingdom that the representation a messrs les primieres ministres d' angleterre , the memorial or manifest given into the lords justices by the spanish ambassador in september last , was not in the least occasion'd by , nor bottom'd upon any thing relative to their colony upon the american isthmus . so that whatsoever the consequences of that memorial , and of his britannick majesty just resentment of it may be , yet none of them , can either now , or hereafter , be said to have sprung and flowed from any fact or enterprize of the scots . and tho' i do not pretend to any knowledge of those consultations , treaties and stipulations , ( save as they are there expressed to have been . sur la succession de la couronne d' espagne , & sa division and repartition , about the succession to the crown of spain , and the division and repartition of that monarcy ) wherein his majesty having been concerned , gave occasion and administred ground for that memorial , which was so displeasing unto him , that he thereupon commanded the spanish ambassador , who deliver'd it , to depart within eighteen days out of his kingdom , and in that time not to go out of his gate ; yet i hope it will neither be accounted presumption , nor an intrusion upon secrets and mysteries of state to say , that nothing could have contributed so much to the obviating all such misunderstandings between the two crowns , as should swell into and terminate in a rupture , as the having protected the scots in their settlement at darien would have done . for as the having a c●lony establish'd in the very heart and bosome of the spanish american dominions , and accomodated with a defenceable harbour , that is capable of receiving the whole naval strength of england , would ( unless the cabinet resolutions at madrid , be the results of passion and haughtiness , rather than of sedate thoughts , political wisdom , and of debates where arguments derived from safety and interest cast the scale ) effectually check the spaniards against falling into rash and hasty councils , and an infallible motive for restraining the catholick king from emarquing in a war with his britannick majesty , because of the unavoidable mischiefs , that upon our being so circumstanced and stated thro' the possession of that place , would attend it in relation to the many great and opulent territories of the spanish monarchy in the west-indies , which are both the sources of all that wealth and treasure which inable them to defend their kingdoms and provinces in europe , and do afford them the means and advantages of supporting themselves in that veneration and esteem , which are paid them , and rendred unto that crown in this part of the world ; so it is not to be doubted , should a war commence upon any inducements and reasons whatsoever , whether fancied or real , slight or weighty , between the king of spain and the monarch of great britain , but that thro' our being so posted in the midst of their american plantations , they would soon be made sensible of their betaking themselves thereby to a course and method that will unavoidable issue in their ruine . for tho' no man that pretendeth to good sense can have the weakness to imagine ; nor any who are under the ties of allegiance and fealty , can have the disloyalty to suspect ; that the coldness and indifference of the court of england , in reference to the scots being encouraged and supported at darien , ( to say nothing of the measures that have been taken and pursued , not only to the disheartening and obstructing them in their design , but to the defeating it , thro' rendring as far as could be effected , without open and direct hostility , their continuance in that place impracticable ) was either in subserviency to the better concealing and covering those transactions , which were then carrying on , and are since discovered and divulged , concerning the adjusting and determining the succession to the crown of spain , or in order , at the expence of the kingdom of scotland and the dishonour as well as the loss sustained by their african and india company , to have the more easily reconciled , what was at that time under consultation and treaty towards the being concerted and stipulated , to the catholick king and his ministers ; yet it may both with modesty and safety be affirmed , that among other means which would have both advanced his majesty above the threats and menaces of the spaniards , who endeavour to allarm him , that unless all that he hath projected in the foremention'd affair , be promptement arreste , viendra un guerre funeste & universelle dans toute te europe , speedily renounced , there will arise a destructive and general war thro' all europe , but inabled him to justify and to make good by his power and force , what he hath by his great prudence and wisdom been adjusting and contracting with others in reference to the foresaid matter . it would have also been in some degree useful and subservient thereunto , if instead of lending his name and authority to those who emitted the proclamations in the english west-india plantations , prohibiting the holding any correspondence with , or the giving any assistance unto , any person or persons , that had been fitted out in scotland with ships of force to settle in some part of america , he had vouchsaved unto his subjects of scotland , those testimonies of his royal care and zeal for their success in the expedition they went upon , and for their pr●spering in the design in which they were embarqu'd , as might have made them out of gratitude , ambitious of sacrificing their lives in his service . for as it is a great satisfaction to a prince , and that which gives him a reputation , and at such a juncture and in those circumstances , renders him formidable to those who seem inclined , and do only covet a favourable opportunity of declaring themselves his enemies , to be universally known to have a firm tenure in the affections and confidences of all his people , and to be understood to have their wealth and power ready to be surrendred with readiness and chearfulness unto his disposal , and their lives chiefly valued by them on the foot of having them to venture at his command , and for the exalting , as well as for the maintaining his honour and glory ; so it cannot but both extreamly disquiet him , and also lessen his credit and veneration with those potentates , that envy the greatness of his vndertakings , and who dread the wisdom that displayeth it self in his projections , to find the largest part and proportion of the whole body of his subjects in one of his dominions , highly discontented with , and clamorously complaining , and as they think not without just reason , of the conduct and behaviour of those towards them , who being in the highest places of the exercise and administration of the government , do vouch his orders and his authority for those actions that are so ill resented . and that these proceedings of the king's english ministers of state , and of his subordinate governors , towards and against the scots in their west-india vndertaking , might have been forborn and avoided , without his majesty's becoming obnoxious to detraction and censure , of having connived at and countenanced any fact in them , than can justly be called invasive upon the dominions of spain , and an infraction of alliances with that crown , or that can reasonably be held prejudicial to the interest of england , either in their manufactures and commerce at home , or with respect to the flourishing and traffick of their plantations abroad , being the subject of the ensuing discourse , i do without craving the lenity and favour , or deprecating the prejudice and severity of any , submit it to the judgment and verdict of all such , who understand the laws of nature and nations , have examin'd the alliances that have been contracted between the crowns of great britain and spain , and who are able to judge of what is advantagious to the british kingdoms , whether collectively or disjunctively consider'd . and i am sure , that whatsoever hath been alledged by the spaniards in the memorial presented by the spanish ambassador to his majesty in may last , for the blackning and aspersing the design and attempt of the scots , with respect to their setling a colony upon the isthmus of darien , ( all which will in the following sheets be brought under disquisition , and demonstrated to be groundless , frivolous , and impertinent ) yet that it hath no analogy , nor beareth any proportion with the undecency , severity and defamatoriness of the language , which occurreth in the memorial exhibited by the same minister to the lords justices in the month of september . wherein he upbraids and reproaches a great and wise , as well as an immediate personal transaction of his majesty , as if therein he had not only been emporter a l'ambition d'usurper & bouleverser les pais d'autruii , hurried into the ambition of usurping a power over , and of endeavouring to subvert the dominions of another prince ; and that if such an act stand allowed , il ny auroit ni statutes ni loys municipales , a observer chez les unes ni chez les autres qui ni fuisse libres de attentates d'autruii , there will neither remain statute nor municipal laws observable between princes , which will not be liable to be invaded , and freely broken in upon ; but he farther calls it such an action towards the catholick king , that by reason of the influence , which it may have upon his subjects , pour tenter la foy , & exciter leur esprits a des soulevements , in tempting them from their allegiance , and by exciting them to mutinies and insurrections , is not consistent , a la bon foy qui se doit observer entre les chretiens , & a la plus fort raison entre des allies & amis , with that sincerity which should be observed among christians , and much more among those that are allies and friends ; being withal such a practise , that if suffered , il ny aucoune nation , ni domination en europe en surete contre les machinations & tromperies de la plus fort , ou de la plus malicieux , there will be no nation or kingdom in europe in safety against the contrivances and deceits of such , as are either powerful or malicious . all which i have therefore called over and mention'd ( and would not otherwise have done it ) that they who have appear'd unfriendly unto , and offended at the scots vndertaking , thro' the suffering themselves to receive sinistruous impressions of it , upon its being represented in the foremention'd memorial of may 3. as an invasion upon the dominions of his catholick majesty , and an infraction of the alliances between the two crowns , may from their being made acquainted with the foulness and undecency of the terms that are bestowed upon the stipulation which the king of great britain hath been concerting , to the happiness of the very spansards themselves , as well as for the future tranquility of all the soveraignties and principalities of europe , be from thence henceforward convinced , that the credit and authority of a spanish memorial is too lubricous and sandy a foundation to build an opinion upon , of the illegality and injustice of a transaction , enterprize and fact. and as i hope the having unanswerably prov'd , that the spaniards were wonderfully mistaken in the appellations which they gave to the scots landing and their beginning to erect a plantation upon the isthmus of america ; so i doubt not , but that the projection , for which his majesty is so undecently treated , and dishonourably aspersed , will be both vindicated from all the obloquies cast upon and affixed unto him ; and also justified to have been the result and effect of a wisdom , that future ages , as well as the present , will admire and magnify him for . only care in that case must be taken , that they who shall be honoured with the trust of being employ'd in such a noble work , may not be of those persons chusing , who selected and pitched upon the writers of the pamphlets , call'd , the defence of the scots abdicating darien ; and the defence of their settlement at it answer'd , these being with respect to sense , truth , reason , and good manners , the most silly , ridiculous , and ignominious creatures , that ever the name of authors was conferr'd upon . and that their performances in their several and respective ways , which are such as proclaim the intellectuals of both of them mean , and the morals of one of them very bad , are not arraigned and exposed in the ensuing discourse , is , because of its having been fully written and finished , before the scurrilities of the one , and the impertinencies of the other , towards the blackning of the conduct of the scots , or the disproving the legitimacy of their undertaking , were obtruded upon the world ; as likewise previously to the publication of the book that is stil'd , a defence of the scots settlement at darien , with an answer to the spanish memorial against it . and as i have not upon the perusal of the last either added unto , or substracted from what i had antecedently written , which may serve to vindicate me from being accounted a plagiary , in case that in our reasonings upon a subject that is the same there do here and there appear , not only an affinity of stile and language , but a concidence of thoughts , whether in the mentioning of facts , or in the citing of authorities ; so i do not think it necessary to reply any thing to what by some may be held argumentative in either of the other two formention'd pamphlets , as reckoning that whatsoever occurreth in them of that nature and tendency , to be sufficiently obviated , and in way of answer fully anticipated , in what is represented and argued in the following sheets ; and much less can i prevail upon my self , to wast my own time , and give entertainment to the judicious part of mankind ( whom i do only covet to be the readers of what i write ) in the detecting the calumnies and falshoods , and in rebuking the petulancy of a mercenary scribler , that hath been brib'd with money to defame a nation , and to throw that dirt upon persons of integrity and honour , which a little scandalous fellow , who had been expell'd some time ago out of his majesty's navy for his crimes and misdemeanours ( and who thereupon spoke as scandalously and revilingly then of the english , as he hath lately done of the scots ) had rak'd and gather'd together . the only thing which i shall therefore say , for overthrowing the faith , reputation and credit , of that detractive miscreant in his many other fictitious and romantick stories , shall be to refer those , who are not willing to be misled in their belief of men and things by lies and fables impos'd with impudence and audacity upon them , to mr. wafer , who can and will assure them , that the aspersions thrown upon the scots , in relation to their treating of him , are as false , as they are defamatory . so that thro' the fellow's appearing a liar in one case , he is to be accounted incapable of having his testimony receiv'd in all other whatsoever . nor can any , without the renouncing of common sense , believe that the gentlemen employ'd by the company to confer and transact with mr. wafer , cou'd be guilty of such weakness and folly , as to reveal and detect unto him their design upon darien , in that the whole success of that vndertaking , depended entirely upon its being kept and preserved a secret . however it may not be amiss to take notice of a certain passage in that fabulous book , which is to be met with page 16. namely , that just as the scots companies books were open'd at amsterdam , for the receiving subscriptions to their stock and capital , the dutch east and west-india companies run open mouth'd to the lords of that city , shewing what was hatching by the scots commissioners in their town , to ruine the trade of the united provinces . which i have therefore the rather cited , because it is one of the few that have any truth in them , and not to administer occasion unto any men ( tho' i fear many will be ready to take it from thence without my leave or allowance ) for suspecting , and much less for concluding , that our councils in england , are too much under the influence of the hollanders , and accommodated to such measures , as are subservient to a dutch interest . for tho' the unthinking creature who communicated the story to the writer , and the unwary statesman and indifferent politician , under whose countenance as well as connivance it stands publish'd , might no ways design the begetting and fomenting such an opinion , yet it is so adapted to justify an apprehension of that nature , that not only such who are disaffected to the government , but many that place their happiness , and do find their profit in being under it , will be ready to fall into the notion , and to imbibe the sentiment . especially seeing as well the proceedings here in discouraging the scots in their american design , as what hath been done and practised in the english west-india plantations by positive orders and injunctions from hence , which have proved very prejudicial , if not ruinous unto them in their colony , thro' appearing very little subservient to an english interest , either here , or in america , will thereupon be construed by those bold and critical men , who do both usurp a liberty of penetrating into , and a right of judging and censuring resolutions and actions of state ( which ought to be look'd upon with reverence , and acquiesc'd in with silence ) to have flow'd either from a wisdom in reference to our concerns , welfare and prosperity , that is indiscoverable and past finding out ; or to have sprung from reasons relative to the satisfaction and advantage of that outlandish and foreign republick , which hath been named . and as 〈◊〉 the other pamphlet , call'd , the defence of the scots abdicating of darien , answer'd paragraph by paragraph , whereof the author hath written with more modesty , than he did on whom i have been reflecting , tho' at the same time so weakly and triflingly , that i cannot bring my self to think , that it needs ( for i am sure it doth not deserve ) so much as one stricture or animadversion bestowed upon it , beyond what in the following discourse will be found applicable thereunto . and indeed that gentleman's design seems ( as if playing booty ) he had intended the getting a book to pass un●rrested and current under the vizor and mask of being answer'd , which thro' its want of that skreen , cover and pasport , there were endeavours used to have stifled and suppressed . which appears the more evidently to have been the scope of the answerer , in that he doth not only give us the other book entirely , so far as he taketh upon him to reply unto , it which he doth in his manner with reference to the whole that is argumentative and discoursive in it ; but he annexeth , without the omission of a word , whatsoever occureth in the book , against which he would be thought to set up as an antagonist , a sheet and a half giving the description of darien , without the being at the expence of a syllable to contradict or disapprove it . yea , the main argument upon which he endeavoureth to justify the opposition unto , as well as the discountenance given by the government of england to the scots , in their american vndertaking , being taken from a visionary and romantick topick , and superstructed upon a known and downright falshood , it doth thereby become manifest to all who are endowed with any measure of discerning , that his main purport in writing , was to give a licence for the safe and publick sale of a book , which crept about , and was here and there vended abroad , only surreptiously and by stealth before . for whereas he seeks to have it believed , that all the late english proceedings in disfavour and prejudice of the scots , were in pursuance of and address presented by the parliament to his majesty , anno 1695. this is all mere dream and imagination , and no better than a bantering of mankind . it being most certain , that the parliament never entertain'd a thought , of having obstruction given to the kingdom of scotland , as to their setling a colony either in the east or west-indies , provided it were not where they were the previous occupiers , and on condition that it prov'd not in ways , and by means inconsistent with the amity that is between the two kingdoms , as they stand link'd together under one soveraign . neither could they so far forget the boundaries unto which they do at all times circumscribe and confine themselves in their parliamentary actings , as to attempt it in reference to a nation , over which they claim no jurisdiction , but which they do own to be absolute within it self , and altogether independent upon them . but the whole which the parliament applyed unto the king about at that time , was that he would interpose and exert his authority for the hindring of his english subjects from becoming subscribers to the stock and capital , which the scots were about to make , frame and establish , for the erection of a west or east-india plantation , and for the beginning and promoting of a foreign trade . which as they had a righ and an inherent and legal power to do , so they shew'd themselves extreamly wise and prudential , in opposing and defeating that part of the scots projection . seeing shou'd such a liberty have been either allowed or connived at in the subjects of england , much of that treasure which is employ'd in their own traffick and commerce , and especially to the indies , might have been put into the scots bank , upon the prospect and motive of the profit that would thereby accrue unto them , thro' the many privileges and great immunities , which were granted unto the scots company for and during the term of 22 years . nor doth he shew himself very prudent , in reflecting so severely , as he doth , upon the behaviour of the scots towards king charles i. in that the english themselves were not only as disloyal as they , but both tempted them unto , and rewarded them for it . seeing besides their troops being paid with english money , not a few of their leading men better'd their fortunes , at the expence of this kingdom , by their being the fomenters of the first war , as well as for being the instruments of scotland's joyning to support the parliament against the king afterwards . and whensoever it is seasonable , it can be demonstrated from authentic memoirs , and such as deserve to be credited , that the scots had neither marched into england , anno 1638 , nor in 1643 , had they not been universally courted , and divers persons of the first rank bribed thereunto . it being undeniable that the ship-money and the long intermission of parliaments in england , influenced such as in that kingdom were stil'd patriots ( which whether they were or not i do not enquire ) to tempt and draw in the scots to that bloody and infamous war , whereas without encouragements , that i am not willing to name from them , the scots would have upon no resentments of their own have run into it , how bigotted soever some of their clergy might at that time have been . and as the rebellious part fell equally to the share of both the nations , so the treacherous share both towards god and man doth distinguingly affect england , in that instead of making that king a glorious prince , as they both swore and stipulated , provided those things were redressed which had been complained of as amiss in the administration , they not only rejected the concessions which he made ▪ that were more than a wise people would have demanded , but they murder'd him . neither was the number of those in england , who persever'd in their allegiance to that king , and suffer'd with him and for him , greater and more numerous , in proportion to the people of the one kingdom and the other ; then they were , who asserted his interest in scotland to their ruine . nor can i imagine for what end , that author recalls those things ( which ought to be for ever forgotten ) in such approbrious and aspersive terms , unless it be to fasten an ignominy and a reproach upon what hath been since transacted against another prince , tho' not carry'd to the height of the original . yea , were not that author prodigiously silly , and altogether unfit for the province which he undertook , he would not upbraid him whom he pretends to answer , for having shew'd both vanity and want of judgment , because of his having only said , that scotland turned the ballance in the late revolution . whereas it is as demonstrable as any problem in euclid , that if the kingdom of scotland had vnanimously declar'd against the abdication ( considering the many thousands in england , who in the justifying thereof would have been ready to have seconded them ) but that both the war in ireland and that upon the continent , would have been carry'd on with more difficulty than they were , and probably have terminated more unfortunately , and with less honour , than they did . nor is it to be thought impossible , but that upon such a declaration , the scots might have obtained , those terms with reference to their laws , liberties , privileges and religion from king james , and those so secured from repeal and alteration , as that they might have been as happy as either at present they are , or have reason to hope to be hereafter . for however impossible it was , as our author rightly accounts it , for the scots to have remain'd neutral at the time of the revolution , considering the party within their bowels , that was headed by dundee ; yet all men who have not lost their vnderstandings , must needs acknowledge , that they might at that juncture have taken other measures than they did . nor can this writer be any ways thought a politician , who seeks to represent it as a thing too ridiculous to be imagin'd , that england could be render'd obnoxious to dangers , thro' the scots running into a conjunction with france . for tho' i do esteem him a very ill man that wisheth it ; yet i cannot avoid reckoning him strangely unacquainted with the state and ballance of europe , that doth not foresee , how mischievous the vnion of these two nations together might prove to this kingdom , notwithstanding both its own great opulency and power , and its having the dutch for its allies . of whose wonderful friendship our east-india company hath had a late experiment , thro' the holanders both supplanting them in effect in their whole east-india trade , and in the getting them to be disgracefull insulted by the ministers and officers of the mogul . for whereas that monarch being provoked by the hostilities of european pirates , would admit no europeans to traffick in his dominions , without their becoming obliged to cover all his ships and those of subjects from those robbers : the dutch in the vertue of bribes seasonably bestowed , have procur'd the protection of the vast ocean southward of surat to be devolv'd upon the english , ( the performance whereof is altogether impracticable , especially if the suborners thereunto , should not only countenance the piracy of others , but think it convenient in order and subserviency to their interest to practice it on these seas themselves ) while the whole which the dutch have thought fit to charge themselves with , is to protect the commerce to mocca , in the vndertaking whereof , they have also a prospect of acquiring other advantages over the english. but to return to the author of whose performances i have been suggesting my thoughts . would either my temper , or my principles , allow me to judge of another's desires by consequences deducible from hasty and unwary expressions , i should be apt to suspect , that the gentleman would be glad to see the experiment of the one and the other that have been mentioned . whereas i do heartily pray , that neither the scots may be so traiterous as to be guilty of the first ; not the english brought into the circumstances of being expos'd to the trial of the second . all that i shall further subjoyn for preparing the reader to the perusal of the following discourse , is briefly to let him know , that i do reckon what will be there met with , to be no less either needful or seasonable , in case the scots have forsaken darien , than if they had continued still in the possession thereof ; or after their having once abandon'd it , had again re-possess'd it . in that my business is to justify and vindicate the legality of their design and attempt to settle there , abstracting from the consideration whether their vndertaking might be attended with success or disappointment . and if what i have represented and offer'd on that head , be pertinent and effectual for the proving and establishing of what it is alledg'd and adduc'd for , it will not only render their condition the more compassionable , on the supposal of their having been unfortunate ; but it will both make their present clamours and resentments for their loss , calamity and disgrace , the less surprizing and the more pardonable , provided they carry them no farther , than what is consistent with their fealty and allegiance ; and will shew the unkindness and neglect of those to have been the greater , whether in the giving them opposition , or in the refusing them assistance , whose favour and aid they might , on many accounts , have reasonably relied upon with respect to the being countenanced and supported . not to add , that some will find themselves extreamly mistaken in their politicks , and perceive their having been misled into wrong measures ; if the intelligence should prove true , which divers have receiv'd , of the spaniards having accepted the naval assistance of the french , for driving the scots out of darien , in case they be still there , and on the supposal of their having left it , for the covering all those parts of america , over which the catholick king pretends a soveraignty , tho' unoccupied by any of his subjects , from attempts of that nature upon them for the future by any of the british nations , or the dominions thereunto belonging . seeing that as spains complying to receive the aid of the marine power of france , must argue such an entireness of friendship , and firmness of confidence between them , as can neither be comfortable nor safe to several principalities and states in europe ; so besides the inconveniencies and damages which may thereupon befall other of his majesty's kingdoms , as well as scotland ; it is not impossible , but that congruously as well as consequentially to this , the crown of spain may be willing to admit of the conjunction , aid , and assistance , of the french in the loan of their land forces , for the compassing ends on the continent of europe , which neither we nor the dutch will find our interest and benefit in . however , if what i have said and argued in the ensuing sheets , be pertinently adapted unto the question that is debated , and demonstrative of the legality and justice of the fact , which i have espoused the defending of ; the scots will thereby be not only vindicated from the clamours that have been rais'd against them for what they have done ; but they will be also cover'd from aspersions for the future of acting invasively upon the rights , and from being injurious to any , shou'd they on the supposition of having abandon'd that place , and the renouncing of all thoughts of re-establishing themselves again in it , apply their utmost efforts and endeavours to the obtaining a settlement in some other american territory , where nothing else can be objected against their liberty and right of planting , than what having been alledged against their sitting down on the isthmus of darien , will be found to be impartially examin'd , and abundantly refuted , and that with an exact observance of all the rules of modesty , decency , and good manners , wherein the author of the defence of the scots settlement at darien is said to have been deficient . adieu . the errata being but few , and such as any reader may both discern and correct ; the author hath not thought it needful to make a collection of them . the application of the scots to foreign trade , commended and incouraged : and their late attempt to have setled at darien , fully vindicated from all that hath been excepted against it . the humane race being the alone and the only rank and species of the whole sublunary creation , that is furnished and endowed with intellectual faculties and corporeal organs , by which they stand adapted and qualified for a mutual communication of their several and respective conceptions and thoughts ; and thereupon thro' their very frame and constitution rendred sociable with , and under all deficiencies , exigencies and infirmities assistant and relieful unto one an other . the great and wise creator , who hath produc'd them , enrich'd and adorned them with those advantages , and who governeth them in proportion to their natural aptitudes and capacities , hath consequentially thereunto , not only made several acts , offices and performances , to be , by his engraven , and by his revealed laws , the indispensible duties of men towards each other ; and that both as they stand considered individually and apart , and as they become assembled , and united into , and do constitute societies : but he hath also in his admirable wisdom , so formed this terraqueous globe , and the whole elementary world , that by means of the variety and difference of natural , and artificial productions , in suitableness to the distinction and diversity of climates and territories , there should be as well a kind of necessity imposed upon , as an incouragement given unto all nations , for the cultivating and promoting a correspondence together . and tho' the chief and great ends which the universal and sovereign ruler designeth , thro' and by the means of an intercourse between and amongst people of all nations , and which accordingly he makes the pursuing of , to be the principal part of our duty , be exceedingly different from , and are incomparably more noble , and sublime as well as more subservient , both to his own glory , and to the mutual benefits , which should be prosecuted , and are attainable , by a free and unlimited correspondence , than those , which the generality of men , do mainly propose , and ultimately acquiesce in ; yet we are not in our desires and endeavours after communication and commerce with others , so precluded from acting under the prospect and influence of secular advantages , in subordination to higher aims and attainments ; but that it is both lawful in it self , and may be expedient , with respect to the safety and prosperity of those regions , and dominions , and political communities , where we are brought forth , do inhabit , and into which we are incorporated , to seek , and pursue such an acquisition of opulency and wealth thereby , as may as well advance the respective nations and societies unto which we belong , above the contempt , and prove serviceable to the covering them from the insults of neighbouring kingdoms and states , as recompence and reward the labours , hazards and expences of those , who do either personally , or otherwise engage , associate and venture in the beginning , promoting and defending a correspondence and commerce of this nature . for tho' there have been , and still are here and there , a few that being formed ex meliore luto , and who thro' having something distinguishing and singular in their mechanical frame , or thro' the being imbued with more exalted and generous principles either of nature or of grace , then it is the lot and portion of many any where to be , have upon philosophical or upon religious motives , become travellers , and voyagers into far distant and remote countries ; yet as the ends under the view , and for the compassing whereof , they have heretofore undergone , and do hitherto subject themselves to the toil , cost and dangers , which unavoidably attend and accompany such undertakings , are either too speculative , and too much abstracted from things and matters , that affect our senses , and are beneficent , and gratifying to the animal life ; or are of too elevated , spiritual and celestial a nature and consideration , to make an impression upon , and to byass and govern any large number of those of great political bodies , and national societies ; so the embarking thereinto , upon the forementioned single inducements and prospects , by some individuals , whose either natural genius , or their improvements in divine knowledge , and the being furnished with more christian zeal , and supernatural grace , than most have arrived unto , or are under the power of , does neither amount nor bear proportion to the notion and idea , which an vniversal correspondence between and amongst those of all regions signifieth and imports . nor will it answer the exigencies and necessities , which the people of every nation are less or more under , of having their superfluities exported and of gaining those things to be imported , which they do either wholly , or to very prejudicial measures and degrees , want and stand in need of . so that it is not more obvious , than it may be easily accounted for , how a correspondence of this or that state or kingdom , with other nations and dominions , especially when far distant , and widely disjoyned from each other , comes to be so little minded and practised , save in order unto , conjunction with , and in subserviency to traffick and mercantile commerce . nor do remarkable numbers of any people much love to travel , or commonly do , out of their own native regions and territories , tho' but into neighbouring and adjoyning provinces , which may be effected with great safety , and at little expence , unless upon views either of subsisting better there , than they did at home , or of qualifying themselves thro' an acquisition of arts and sciences , or by the procuring treasure , and wealth , by means whereof , they may afterwards make a better figure , and live more comfortably and opulently in their own countries , than they were otherwise likely to have done . and whosoever alloweth himself liberty , and vouchsafeth to take the pains , of observing the present state and balance of europe , with the various and different conditions of the several territories , jurisdictions and dominions thereof , will soon discern and understand , why every people whose country lies situated , and whose either soil or industry may furnish them with materials for trade , should account it their interest and make it the scope and design of their skill and labour , to cultivate and pursue navigation and foreign traffick ; seeing the great advantage , whether with respect to power or to wealth , which this or that european country and nation have above and beyond others , is mostly , if not altogether , owing and ascribable unto the extent and measure of their navigation and traffick . for as it is principally this that attracteth and draweth large swarms of industrious people to countries and territories , where the natives and such as did inhabit there before , were but few ; so in proportion to the encrease of people , and their application to commerce , there do necessarily ensue enlargement of agriculture , augmentation of manufacture , the venting of natural as well as of artificial productions , and thereby a growth in wealth and treasure , and consequently thereunto , an advancement in the value and price of lands . but because the main design , as well as the necessary brevity of this discourse , will not allow place nor room , for the arguing of this according to the worth , and importance of the subject , i shall therefore choose at once , both to prove and to illustrate it from and by uncontroulable matter of fact. nor have we occasion to go far for a convincing instance and evidence of it : forasmuch as we need no other demonstration of the many benefits that naturally result from trade , than to consider how our neighbours , the dutch , are hereby become populous , wealthy and powerful . it being apparent , beyond possibility of being rationally denied , or contradicted , that notwithstanding the unhealthfulness of their air , the brackishness of their waters , the badness of their ports , the scarcity of their natural productions , the narrowness of their territories , and the vast expence , which they are indispensibly obliged unto , for the covering and defending themselves , and their country from the inundations of the sea ; yet that upon the motive and encouragement of the profits and advantages arising by trade , they have drawn many of the most laborious and ingenious people of all neighbouring countries into their provinces ; so that from a scanty number of original natives , and primitive inhabitants , they are increased into such a multitude , that no nation without traffick , and that is confined to there narrow dimensions of lands and territories , maketh an approach unto , and much less equalleth . and all these by accruements from navigation and commerce , are not only by reason of their riches and wealth , become the objects of the envy of such as live about them ; but the heads , governours and supreame rulers of that republick , are risen from poor weak supplicant and despised states , to the making of such a figure in the world , that fully and amply answereth the lofty title , which they have assumed unto themselves , of high and mighty . nor is it unworthy of remark , that the english , whose genius disposeth and inclineth them , and whose situation , ports , natural productions , and manufactures , give them incomparable advantages for foreign traffick and commerce , beyond what the hollanders , with respect to all and every one of these recited particulars are possessed of , and furnished with , and that the said english have for above a century of years applyed themselves unto trade , with industry , zeal , and success , beyond what most of their european neighbours can pretend to have done ; yet even they are greatly exceeded by the dutch ( allowing for the dimensions of their territories ) both in number of people , and in the opulency of private dealers , as well as of their states . and this meerly by a more intense , and vniversal cultivation of commerce , and by the wise conduct of their government in the making the export and import of their goods , and commodities moderate and easy , under all the exigencies and necessities of the state , and a proportionable imposition upon , and exaction from the subject . for whereas the dutch ( as is well observed by that excellent and sagacious author of an essay upon ways and means ) having in all their provinces only about eight millions of acres , do entertain , employ , and comfortably subsist near three millions of people , yet england notwithstanding all the forementioned advantages , for traffick beyond and above them , and its having in land more than thirty nine millions of acres , is not reckoned to have above six millions of people , which upon a balance , and an adjustment of our extent of ground and theirs , makes them to exceed us more than in a moyety of inhabitants . and as they have in the vertue of , results from , and natural consequences upon there application unto , and cultivation of trade , attained unto a naval strength , which makes them superiour in marine power to most nations , and rival competitors with all for the sovereignty of the seas ; so they are grown able thro' the treasure , which they have acquired by traffick and commerce , to procure , raise , and muster , such numerous forces , out of distant , as well as out of adjoyning countries ( where the want and poverty not only of subjects , but of princes tempteth the latter upon the baite and bribe of pensions , to grant and afford them what proportion of troops they do require , and compelleth the former upon the hopes of a pay , that will hardly yield them food , to be willing , and ready to serve under their banner ) as thereby to be in a condition to undertake , carry on , and manage both offensive and defensive wars against the greatest potentates , and the powerfullest nations in europe . for as it is with great judgment , and an accurate regard to truth , observed by the most ingenious author of an essay , upon waies and means , that no sums dug out of mines , bear any proportion with what may be made to rise , by the labour and traffick of a trading and industrious people : so it is no less morally and politically certain , than any problem in euclid is mathematically , that in proportion to the riches and treasures which a people is possessed of , they may be powerful ( if they please ) by land as well as by sea. whereas such nations , who do either because of their distance from navigable waters stand incapacitated and disabled for all maritime traffick , or who by reason of their carelesness , and sloth , do not apply themselves unto it , with that industry which they should , are notwithstanding their larger , as well as their equal extent of territories , with them whom we have mention'd , not only unable to support and sustain a full complement of people , in proportion to the dimensions of their land , but tho' possibly through the largeness of their ground , they be overstockt with inhabitants , beyond what some trading countries are , nevertheless they are uncapable of maintaining even a land war ( especially if it be offensive ) for so long a time , and with so much reputation and honour , as a kingdom or state addicted unto traffick and commerce , are experimentally found to be in a condition to do . whereof i need not assign instances , there being several large dominions , and considerable republicks in europe , which are undeniable and convincing proofs of it , and particularly even germany , as well as switzerland : who notwithstanding their great numbers both of men and of disciplined troops , and their inclination unto , and bravour in war , yet thro' their being straitned and scanted in money , which is a natural and unavoidable consequence of their want of traffick , they are neither in a condition to bring such numerous armies into the field , nor for any long time to maintain them there , as such nations who are stored with treasure , as the result effect and produce of trade , easily may and often do . but that which in a most especial manner , should awaken and oblige every nation , that lies situated , and is provided with necessaries and conveniencies for trade , to undertake , cultivate and promote it , is seriously to weigh and consider , what our neighbours who have commodious ports for navigation , and natural and artificial productions , to be both the source original and foundation , and the nerves and supports of it , have been of late and are still industriously doing . namely that the acquisition and enlargement of trade , is the great study and endeavours of most princes and states , the adjacency of whose territories to the sea , the growth of their soil , and the manufactures of their subjects do in any measure make it practicable , and give hopes of succeeding and prospering in it . particularly that powerful and wise monarch of france , no less to his own glory than the benefit of his dominions , makes it the chief business of his royal care and authority , to encourage advance and protect it . tho' of all potentates and people whatsoever , the french king and his subjects are in the best condition to subsist comfortably without it . and that by reason of their enjoying not only within themselves and at home , all things that are absolutely necessary and requisite for the pleasure , as well as for the sustentation of life , but because of their having so many and such valuable superfluities , which others do export from them , for which they do both furnish them in way of exchange , with those few conveniencies , they do want , and do enrich them with treasure , by paying them in gold and silver , for most part of the goods and commodities that they purchase of , and import into their own countries from them . and indeed what that prince , hath effected and done within the compass of a few years , and the narrow circle of his own reign , in the encouraging and promoting manufactures at home , the extending and enlarging traffick into all countries , tho' at never so great a distance abroad , notwithstanding the natural aversion , as well as the long contracted indisposition of his people thereunto , thro' humour , genius and custom , and his having raised and furnished himself with a naval power , which for number and strength of ships , is not only in a condition to protect his commerce , and defend his kingdom against invasions by sea ; but to dispute the very dominion of the ocean with those , who have long laid claim unto , and honorably maintained it ; i say that the great encouragement which he hath given , and the stupendious advancement that he hath made in all these , do cloath and adorn him with greater honour while he liveth , and will transmit his name hereafter to posterity , with a more dazling lustre and splendour , than either all his victories and conquests heretofore , or his late sustaining so long a war , without any considerable mortification and disgrace to himself , or momentons prejudice or damage to his people . and whosoever will give themselves leave to think , and are withal qualified to penetrate into the springs , reasons , and proper causes of matters and affairs of this nature , will easily find and perceive , that there is nothing has so much laid the foundation of his vast power and strength of military forces at land , and of his ability to maintain and support them , without either their deserting or their mutinying thro' want of food , rayment and pay ; and of all the successes which he hath attain'd unto by means of their bravour and discipline , as his manufactures at home , and his commerce abroad have done , from and by which most of that great wealth and treasure hath flowed in to him , in the vertue whereof these things became practicable and have been accomplished . for i do reckon there is nothing more demonstrable , than that the french king is chiefly indebted to the profits and emoluments , which have arisen by manufacture and trade , for all that during the late war he hath been enabled to do both offensively and defensively . and while others do amuse and triflingly employ themselves , and impertinently and uselessly squander away their time , in loading their memories with naked and insignificant accounts and memoirs of the military facts of that monarch , and of those confederated against him , which were transacted here and there , during the late bloody expensive and tedious war : i am not ashamed to declare my self one , who am rather willing to enquire into , represent and to recommend , the springs , originals and foundations , upon which that potentate was in a condition to support and manage so long a war , with so much reputation to himself , and safety to his territories and people . and i do presume to affirm , that the main sources and fundamental means hereof , were his former acquisition of wealth , and a continued accession and accruement of new treasure by manufacture and trade . it being thereby alone , that so large a quota and portion of the gold and silver dug out of the spanish mines of america , and of what of the former is gathered in africa , hath either by shorter and more expeditious steps , or after longer and wider strides flowed into , france , and thereupon in the course of circulation there , hath come at last to be so plentifully lodged in that princes exchequer . so that it is into trade and the product thereof , that we are principally to resolve the french king 's having been not only able during the last war , to cover and protect himself from dishonour , and his kingdom from ravage and impoverishment , by the irruption of the troops of the allies into his provinces , their destruction of his cities and towns , or the pillaging of his subjects to a measure and degree , that countervailed the attempting , and executing any thing of that kind , but his having been victorious in several battles , successful in the conquest of divers strong holds and fortifyed places , that were thought by some to be impregnable ; and the rendring himself master of large and rich provinces , whose situation and remoteness , were thought sufficient to have covered them , from being insulted , and much more to have made it impossible to have subdued them , and all this against such a plurality of confederate allies , and the greatest , strongest , most numerous and best disciplined united forces that were ever known in this part of the world , to have cemented and joyned against one prince and single kingdom . now i have the more particularly mentioned this , not that any should thereby be provoked to complain of , or to blame that monarch because of his employing his princely solicitude for , and exercising his royal authority over his people , in commanding as well as encouraging their application unto manufacture and trade ; but that his example may be both a pattern and a motive unto every nation to enter upon , and , to pursue the same ways and methods , that is any wise qualified for , and capable of doing it . and especially that they would engage therein with zeal and industry , unto whom upon the advantages , which will redound and accrue to him , thro' his subjects improving in manufactures , and in the enlargement and encrease of their traffick , he may be reason of his neighbourhood become hereafter a more dreadful enemy than ever he yet was . for tho' neither our uneasiness , upon the aforementioned account for the present , nor our too just fears of what may overtake and befall us in time to come , can justify either our being offended with , or our speaking undecently of the french king , but will only betray and discover our folly , ill nature and want of breeding ; yet it will both become the wisdom , and prove the interest of the people of england whom he is about rivalling in commerce , as well as in naval strength , to make it more their care and endeavours to exceed him in each of those . and it is and will be every day more and more the great concern of the scots , to emulate and imitate him in these particulars , as far and as much as they can . and were he at present in actual hostility with us , as who knows how soon he may be , yet fas est ab hoste doceri , it is both lawful and commendable to submit to learn of an enemy , and to suffer our selves to be taught by him . nor can it justly administer offence to any honest and prudent englishman , if i take the liberty hereupon to subjoyn in a few words , that the more the french do cultivate and promote manufacture and traffick , for which neither his majesty nor the parliament of england can righteously quarrel with them , nor can attempt to disturb , or to obstruct them in their commerce without some previous infraction on their part of the treaty of reswick : the more it should be the princely care of the king of great britain , and the sedulous and prudential study and endeavour of an english parliament and people , that the scots , who being under the same prince , that they are , and thereupon so confederated and linked together , as to have the same friends and enemies , may both have the advice , councel , and countenance of england , to encourage them unto , and the aid and assistance of their treasure , and strength and power to uphold and protect them in trade . for seeing traffick is the spring and fountain of wealth , and that nations encrease in riches in proportion to the kind and degrees of their manufacture , and the quality and extent of their commerce ; it naturally followeth that it is both the interest and duty of these kingdoms mutually to further , and support one another , who being subjects under one and the same soveraign , are knit and united together by a stronger cement , and by more firm and indissoluble tyes , than countries under distinct and different princes , are capable of being made by alliances and leagues , how publickly soever contracted and stipulated , and solemnly ratified and confirmed . nor will it i suppose be denyed , but that according to the share which england and scotland shall acquire and obtain of the trade of the world , the less will fall to the portion of the french , and the less vent they will have , as well every where for their own natural and artificial productions , as for what they do import from foreign and remote places . nor can it be reasonably contradicted , but that scotland hath been expos'd and stood liable to many inconveniences and prejudices by it's having so long and greatly neglected manufacture and trade , as it hath imprudently and supinely done . and had not they of that nation , given undeniable proofs in divers other ways and instances of their being a sagacious and wise , and a laborious and industrious people ; such of some other kingdoms who assume a great licentiousness in rallying upon the defects and imperfections of those of other countries , than their own , might as justly reflect upon the laziness of the scots , and their deficiency in prudence , and good sence , as they do with insolence and unmannerliness enough , upbraid them with their poverty . but as this is a very tender subject , i shall handle it with such gentleness , that none of the kingdom of scotland , shall have cause to be offended : for as much as my only design herein is , to represent the benefits which will arise to them , by their present undertaking , and to commend their engaging , as well as to encourage their persevering in it , but not to reflect with any severity upon their omissions heretofore in this matter . and i suppose it will be readily acknowleged , by all men that are capable of thinking accurately , and to useful purposes , that it is not the largeness of territory , that makes a country strong and powerful , but the great and plentiful number of people , and consequently that the neglecting of such means and methods , as would be effectual motives to prevail upon such as are born and bred in a nation to continue in it , or to go no where but in prospect of , and in subserviency unto the prosperity of their native land , must unavoidably cause a nation to be weak , notwithstanding the vast multitudes , that may have been born , and for some years brought up in it ; which i presume will be confessed to have been hitherto the case of the kingdom of scotland , in that so large numbers of people of great ingenuity of mind , and of bodily strength and agility , equal to those of any country about them , have through the difficulties they were under of living comfortably at home , which proceeded from neglect and want of manufacture and trade , been necessitated , as well as tempted , to seek their fortunes , and to endeavour to gain a livelyhood elsewhere . whereunto may be added , that as it is not meerly because of the having a great number of people , that a nation is rendred prosperous and happy , but thro' the having them usefully employed , which it is impossible they should be , without manufacture and traffick , and therefore that where there is none or very little trade , a nation is even made obnoxious , and doth become liable to calamities and desolations , by the greater complement and number it hath of inhabitants . seeing in such years as are not seasonable for grain , wherein that of the poet obtains of spem mentita seges , the corn doth not answer the hope and expectation of the husbandman ; the greater that the number of the people is , they must be subject the more to famine , and multitudes of them exposed to starve . whereof there needs no other proof , than what that country hath for these two or three last years afforded us . for tho' it is by reason of trade , being become more diffused and universal in the world , than it anciently was , by means whereof the indigency of one country , is supplyed out of the abundance and plenty of another , that famines of late ages are neither so frequent nor so fatal as of old they used to be ; yet in proportion to the scarcity and want that there is of money in any nation , which must necessarily be answerable to the littleness of their manufactures , and the meanness of their commerce , famines will both fall out the oftner there , and prove the more destructive . seeing by the same reason , that the poor in any country , are in a time of scarcity more obnoxious to starving , than such as are rich : a nation that is necessitous must be more exposed and subject to famines and to devastations by them , than kingdomes and provinces which are wealthy and opulent stand liable unto . yea where trade is not encouraged and promoted , even agriculture it self will be much neglected , tho' it be the chief , if not the only means , whereby the inhabitants do subsist . because that as thro' the scarcity of money , and the poverty thereunto annexed , which as i have often intimated , will always both accompany , and be proportionable to the want of manufacture and commerce , there will never be a sufficient complement of people to cultivate all the ground , that is capable of being manured , but that much of it must be left barren : so the price of grain and of fatted cattle , being generally in proportion to the wealth , and treasure that a nation is possessed of , the rates of those will run too low , for husbandmen to be encouraged and enabled , to make such improvements even of their agriculted lands , as they might by expence upon them be brought unto . which brief hint and suggestion , i do leave and referr unto the consideration of those who do live in scotland , who must know better than i pretend to do , how little their best lands are improved to what they are capable of being , and how much ground doth lie wholly barren , by reason of the want of a sufficient number of people , and of the deficiency in riches of those the nation is stockt with , to take it in and cultivate it . whereas it is obvious what great enlargements are made in the agriculture , and pasturage of england beyond what formerly was , and to what high prizes in comparison of that which they bore before , corn and cattle are advanced , since the application of the english to trade . nor is it to be doubted , but that as they extend their traffick , and become thereby farther enriched , there will be a proportionable progress made in the taking in and rendring those lands fertile which remain hitherto barren , and in the encrease of the price of those which are already cultivated . nor may it be amiss under this head further to represent , that it is because of the scots having neglected manufactture and trade , that the general rental of that kingdom , and the value of lands when farmed , are even for the dmiension of territory and ground , so much disproportionable unto , and below what they are in england and holland . nor can any mathematical proposition be more evident and certain , upon the indubitable principles of that science , than it is sure and unquestionable both from moral arguments and experience , that the current worth of land to be let will be always according to the measure of manufacture and trade , and in proportion to the riches which a nation by that means becomes possessed of . in confirmation whereof , it may not be unseasonable to take notice , how that answerably to england's enlarging its manufacture , and extending its trade , the value of lands hath in equality thereunto gradually risen and swelled . so that from twelve years purchase , which was the highest that land went at about the middle of queen elizabeth's reign , when this nation began first to apply it self considerably to commerce , it was risen and advanced some time ago to twenty years purchase , and in several places of the kingdom to more . for as the admirable author of an essay on ways and means doth most pertinently observe , and confidently affirm , that there are undeniable reasons to be given , that the general rental of england did not in the year 1600 exceed six millions per annum , but that thro' the help of that wealth , which had flowed into the kingdom by foreign trade , it had risen before the commencement of the late war , to fourteen millions yearly ; so none will have the effrontery to gainsay , but that the rental of england , was the year 1600 greatly encreased beyond , what it had been about half a century before . which the more it is seriously weighed , and duly pondred by the nobility and gentry of scotland , it will not only both justifie their wisdom in procuring an act of parliament , for trading to africa and the indies , and in their having joyned so freely , and contributed so liberally , for the forming a stock , and raising a treasure , that may be sufficient as well to uphold , and promote as to begin it , but it may also animate their zeal , and raise their courage for the maintaining and protecting of it . but to shut up this particular , it is to be ascribed to the neglect of trade , and their falling below their neighbours in riches and treasure , which is the natural effect of that omission , that scotland is not only so weak as it is in a naval strength , notwithstanding the variety , goodness and conveniency of its ports , for the ocean and mediterranean , as well as for the narrow seas , and the baltick , but that the nation doth make so mean and inconsiderable a figure in europe , and that the scots nobility and gentry , who for their natural and acquired accomplishments do equal most of any country that are of their rank and quality , and who for bravour are universally acknowledged to come behind few or none , are nevertheless so little valued and caressed by princes , and in courts , by whom and where persons are chiefly esteemed , according to their weight in the balance of an exchequer , and in proportion to their rental and capital . but the kingdom of scotland being at last willing and desirous to redeem it self from the opprobry and reproach , unto which it hath so long stood exposed among its neighbours , for the having either thro' supineness or pride , neglected the promoting and pursuing manufacture and trade , and being now embarked in an undertaking , that will relieve that nation against , and rescue it from the inconveniencies and damages , which have ensued upon , and accompanied their omission of commerce , it may not be here improper to represent in a few words the several advantages that scotland is possessed of , and doth enjoy in equality with most countries , and above divers , for its being qualified and enabled to succeed and prosper in this design . for the main and great things that are antecedently needfull , and pre-required , in order to a peoples engaging in manufacture at home , and commerce abroad , being large numbers of men and women , and a soil producing variety and plenty of usefull commodities , and convenient ports for the exportation of their own commodities , and the importation of such goods from foreign parts , as they shall have either occasion to consume amongst themselves , or which by carrying them forth again , they can dispose of and vend else where ; there are few nations in europe , that are better furnished and accommodated with all those advantages , helps and succours than scotland is . seeing besides its having divers harbours , and those both safe and conveniently situated , for sailing to and from the eastern , southern and western parts of the world ; it hath likewise diverse natural productions , and may have a sufficient plenty of artifici●l , to give an original unto , and be both a foundation and nourishment for trade : nor will any deny but that it actually doth , or may at least speedily so abound with people , as to yield and afford hands enough for manufacture and traffick . for tho' i do acknowledge , that gold and silver with which the scots , may probably be but indifferently and scantily furnished ( whereof nevertheless they may in time by this means acquire more ) be the measure of trade ; yet nothing is more certain , than that the natural and artificial products of a country are the spring and source of it ; and that the nerves and sinews thereof are a multiplicity of hands properly and industriously employed . and with these scotland doth so abound , that many have not only been , and still are thro' want of business and labour whereunto to apply themselves , an useless and a grievous burthen to their native country : but great numbers have by their necessities been constrained either to transport themselves into the colonies and plantations of other nations , or to serve foreign princes and states in the wars , which they have been carrying on against one another , in neither of which ways , hath any benefit accrued to the kingdom of scotland , nor is it possible that it should , unless now and then casually and by accident . but those colonies , where they have planted , do carry away and engross the gains of their industry : and the potentates under whose banners they bear arms , do reap the glory of their bravour , and do become possessed of those acquisitions of towns and provinces , which they purchase at the expence of their blood and lives , and may i be permitted , without giving offence , to add , that thro' the latter of these methods , scotland hath had the misfortune , to have more thousands of lusty and valiant men kill'd and destroy'd in wars , wherein that kingdom had no national concern , that if they had been employ'd in the gentle and peaceable arts of manufacture and trade , would have been sufficient to have render'd it a powerful and opulent nation . yea , such has been the guilt , as well as the unhappiness , of those , who thro' want of business , to give them a subsistence and livelihood at home , have betaken themselves to the carrying arms under foreign rulers and potentates ; that they have not only been frequently engag'd in the killing of others , and expos'd to be kill'd themselves , when and where the alone cause of the war , hath too often been m●erly , either the covetousness , pride and ambition of the aggressors , or the fraudulencies , and injustices of the aggressed : but , that to the disgrace of the christian religion , and the infamy of their country , they have , many times , in opposite and hostile brigades and battalions , been found encountring and slaughtring one another . so that for the obviating , preventing , and avoiding , that criminal and reproachful course for the future , if upon no other prospects and motives , that kingdom ought to apply it self more to manufacture and trade than it hath hitherto done . for which that nation stands not only exceedingly adapted , by reason both of the sagacity of their nobility and higher gentry , for the discerning and advising unto means , ways , and methods , for the encouraging , encreasing , and maintaining thereof ; and of the mercantile knowledge , skill , and artifice , of those of the middle rank , for adjusting , conducting , and managing , as well what is to be fabricked at home , as what is to be chiefly regarded and cultivated abroad : but especially , because of its having , with respect to the number of its people , a vaster proportion of those that are of the poorer and inferiour sort , than some other countries are furnish'd with . nor is any thing more demonstrable , than that a multiplicity of nobility and gentry , without a very large number of commonalty , and of such as are necessitous and indigent to very considerable measures and degrees , is rather an obstruction unto , than a furtherance of manufacture and commerce . seeing tho' the former may assist towards the finding and supplying the materials , and can alone afford and advance the treasure that is necessary to the managing , upholding , and the enlarging of both ; yet it is they of the latter kind that do mainly afford the hands , by whose toyl , labour , and industry , the production of the waters is gain'd , the growth of the land is fabrick'd and manufactur'd ; and whatsoever commodities colonies and plantations are capable of yielding , come to be acquir'd and improv'd . for as it is confess'd by all , who do exercise their thoughts in and about speculations of this kind . that multitudes of people are the most valuable treasure , as well as the greatest strength of a country : so it is infallibly certain , that the peasants and ordinary sort , and such as are reckon'd for the mobb and commonalty , provided they be universally and fully employ'd , and their labour and industry pertinently and usefully apply'd , are as serviceable to the interest of a community and republic , and as contributary to the making a country opulent and wealthy , as those are of any rank and quality whatsoever , if not considerably more . and the more any nation is over-stock'd with poor , it becomes the more signally the interest of that state or kingdom to cultivate manufacture and trade , these being the only means of rendring such steadable to the common-wealth , who must otherwise be unavoidably burthensome . and as scotland hath a large complement and share of very mean and poor people , that may be made serviceble to the fabricking good and commodities at home , the navigating ships of traffick . raising a breed of seamen for fleets of men of war , and for the planting of colonies abroad , and the winning , extracting , and improving the productions of those lands and countries , whither they are carry'd , and where they are set'led : so the scots peasantry are accustom'd to a frugal and parsimonious way of living ; to which those of some neighbouring nations , are not , without great difficulty , to be brought , nor hardly able to bear ; which is a farther and a considerable reason , why scotland should proceed and persevere in the settling and maintaining a foreign plantation . nor are they only dispos'd , as well as capable of living both healthfully and contentedly upon viands and allowances , that would reduce those of some other countries , who are as mean as they are , and born as much upon the flat , to a weak and languishing , if not to a starving condition ; but they are by the size and fabrick of their bodies , the nimbleness and agility of their limbs , and the natural acuteness of their understandings , as capable of being laborious , industrious and ingenious , in whatsoever they are put upon , and made apply and addict themselves unto , as such of any other country are . finally their great inclination to marry , because of their narrow and frugal way of living , and their prolificalness , and aptitude for generation , and thereupon , their accustomedness to encrease and multiply , thro' the parsimonious manner , of their subsisting beyond what is usual in most countries , gives another encouragement , as well as administers a further inducement ; why the scots should remain steady and unchangable , in their design and undertaking , of establishing foreign colonies : seeing they will upon that account , and by reason thereof , become the sooner peopled , without drawing too many swarms from the hive at home . of this their needs no other proof , than barely to observe , how the scots in ireland , from a very inconsiderable number , that settled there not long ago , are multiplied to a very great and large body of people , whereof that kingdom receiveth and enjoyeth all the benefits both in power and otherwise ; and the whole that falleth to the share of scotland , is meerly the satisfaction and credit , of having so vast a colony of their countrymen there . and by this blessing and advantage of being more prolifical and fertile , in the procreating of children , than those of their strait and narrow circumstances , are any where else ; the plantation of calidonia in the isthmus of darien may in a few years , become equal in number of people , to some other colonies in that part of the world , and scotland may securely promise to it self , the escaping of that mischief , which hath befallen the kingdom of spain , in the being almost depopulated , by the colonies which it hath planted in the west indies . yea , were there not so much in what i have intimated , as i do believe there is , for the rendring them suddenly populous , in any plantation , which they shall establish in an entire dependance upon themselves , and especially subservient and conducive to their own benefit ; yet they will find enough to transport and transplant yearly , into their plantations without draining their country of its inhabitants , by meerly inviting and prevailing upon such to go thither , whose necessities do either compel them to travel abroad , in order to be soldiers and servants , in foreign countries and plantations , or who stand reduced to pinching wants , if not to be beggars at home ; which being seconded and accompanied with a thrifty , temperate and regular conduct in their colony , and with the giving due encouragement , thro' granting liberty of conscience , as well as secular privileges both in scotland and there , to such strangers as shall come and settle among them , thro' the want whereof , spain is become dispeopled at home , and their plantations in america but slenderly stockt with inhabitants , they will not only render the calidonian colony , suddenly populous and flourishing , but they will draw more people into scotland it self , than it now hath , or can at any time hereafter , under all the advantages of commerce an traffick , be well able to bear . whereof england as well as holland , are evident examples and demonstrative proofs , being since their respective and several plantations , in the east and west indies , mightily encreased in the number of their inhabitants , notwithstanding the vast shoals of people , that have from year to year been transplanted into those colonies : for as the incomparable author of an essay upon ways and means , doth assure us that england since the year 1600 , is increased in number of inhabitants about 900000 ; whereof i may venture to say the like of holland in proportion to the dimension of their territories : so it is undeniable , that within that circle and compass of time , diverse of the english plantations , came to be erected and established , and that all of them , as well as those of the dutch , have since that term of years , been enlarged , improved and become vastly more peopled than they were before . so that it appeareth , from the whole which hath been hitherto said , how much the scots have of late , discovered their wisdom and prudence , and how highly their care and zeal are to be commended , in their having made an essay , and a beginning for the encouragement and enlargement of manufacture at home , and towards the erection and establishment of a colony abroad , and by that foundation which they have laid , for the settlement and advancement of trade . and this unquestionably they have a plenary right to do , as they are a free and independant nation , without asking the leave , or demanding the concurrence of any rulers and countries whatsoever , provided they be countenanced and authorised thereunto , by their own king ; and that they do nothing therein , which is inconsistent with the laws of nations , nor attempt the settling in any districts or provinces , from which they stand prohibited and excluded by publick and solemn stipulations , between him that now is their sovereign , or those that have been so formerly , and other states , princes , and potentates . for that scotland dependeth upon , or is a province subordinate to any other nation , and subjected to the ordinances , constitutions , and municipal statutes thereof , i suppose none will betray the ignorance or have the effrontery to affirm . it being a kingdom that holdeth of none save of god , for their title unto and possession of their country , and of their own swords , under his providential blessing and aid , for the maintaining and defending of them . for tho' there be a very near and close conjunction and union , between the kingdoms of england and scotland , thro' their being under one and the same king , rather than in the virtue , and force of mutual contracts and alliances ▪ which i do heartily wish may always continue , and that all the secret caballings and clandestine endeavours of those , may prove abortive , unprosperous and miscarry , who either from ancient piques , personal moroseness , envy , and ill nature , or upon any other motives , prospects and designs whatsoever , shall seek to weaken , interrupt , and especially to dissolve it . yet england doth not challenge and lay claim to the having any authority over scotland , nor pretend to an imposing of their own laws upon that nation , or to a supervising of such parliamentary bills as are prepared and formed there in order to the being enacted into statutes . but the scots are absolute within themselves , and vested with a power underived from any nation , and in the exercise whereof they are accountable unto none , for the making of laws , and falling upon , and pursuing all such ways , methods , and means , which are reconcilable with the fealty and loyalty , which they owe unto their prince , that may be subservient and usefull to their own safety and interest . and in testimony and evidence of their being a free state , and a kingdom as entirely independent upon england , as upon any other dominion whatsoever ; they both can , and do often lay what customs and impositions they please , upon english productions and commodities , when carried and imported thither , to be vended and disposed of there . and by a power inherent in themselves , which england cannot reasonably dispute , nor lawfully controul : they sometimes do , and at all times may , inhibit and forbid their own people , the buying , using , and consuming such goods as were either manufactured in england , or brought thither by the english , from their plantations and colonies elsewhere . and as in the vertue of this independent freedom , liberty , previlege and right under the authority and power of their kings , they have at all times made legal provision for the government of their people at home , and pursued that little trade , which they had attained unto with such nations abroad , as were in peace and amity with their princes , without their being questioned for , or disturbed in it by any , save by those that were in hostility with their sovereigns , and that only in seasons of actual war ; so they have by a fresh exertion of this innate freedom , and inherent and independant right , lately contrived and framed a bill , which they have obtained to be passed into an act , and a law , wherein the people and subjects of that kingdom , are empowered to erect societies and companies , for the establishment and carrying on trade , with whatsoever nations and countries , or places in as●● ▪ , africa , or america , which are either not inhabited , or where they have the consent of the natives , and inhabitants thereof , under the limitation and restriction , that such places are not previously and antecedently possessed by european sovereigns , potentates , princes and states . and moreover , that they may provide and furnish the said places , cities towns and forts , with magazines , ordinance , arms , weapons , ammunitions and stores of war , and by force of arms , defend their trade , navigation , colonies , cities , towns , forts , and plantations , and their other effects . as likewise , that it shall be lawful for them to make reprisals , and to seek and take reparation of damages done unto them by sea or land , and to make and conclude treaties of peace and commerce with the sovereign princes , estates , rulers , governours , and proprietors of the said lands , islands , countries or places in africa or america . in relation to which act , for authorising the scots to establish a foreign trade , and their being empowered to settle plantations in the forementioned parts of the world , in order to the better gaining , enlarging , and protecting of it , the few things which i have to offer under this head , shall be briefly these . namely , that as the design of erecting such a trade , and of planting colonies in the subserviency , to the maintaining , improving and extending thereof , was not rashly and unthoughtfully undertaken by those of that kingdom ; so the act by which in pursuance of that projection , they stand warranted to do whatsoever is before reported , was not surreptitiously obtained of his majesty , nor was he by any undue artifices misled into the granting of it . for how much foever that nation , might be desirous to have a foreign settlement , towards the better enabling them for such a traffick , and notwithstanding they sufficiently understood it to be their great and indispensible interest , to embark vigorously both in manufacture and commerce , yet their unsuccessfulness heretofore in some attempts of that nature , as particularly in the plantation of carolina , which they held of the crown of england , antecedently to the english planting there , from which they became expelled by the spaniards , thro' want of that protection , and of those encouragements which were necessary to the having rendred them safe and prosperous ; made them proceed slowly and with great calmness and discretion , in the forming , digesting and maturating what they have at last , after an adjusting of all that was prerequired thereunto , put in execution . nor could the king be surprized into the giving his royal assent to the bill for the premised establishment ; seeing ▪ as they who served his majesty at that time , under the characters of commissioner and secretary of state , were persons as entirely in his interest , and zealous for his honour and glory , as ever any have been known to be that filled those posts ; so there was an interposition of two years , whereby the king had all the time , an opportunity desirable , for the consideration of the most important and arduous affair , in which he might have informed and satisfy'd himself of the justice and conveniency of what was laid before him , and humbly desired of him , between the passing of the 32 act of the parliament , anno 1693. which invited and encouraged , persons in general to enter into societies and companies , for carrying on a trade , in any or in all such parts of the world , as were not in hostility with his majesty , and the enacting of that statute , which was the 8 act of the parliament anno 1695 , whereby that design was perfected and compleated , thro' a companies becoming settled by law , vested with the rights and powers forementioned , and favoured with such immunities , as were necessary to encourage so hazardous and expensive an undertaking , as that was likely to be , and will infallibly prove . and tho' the grace and goodness of his majesty , appear'd very eminently manifested to the scots therein , in vouchsafing to have granted them the privileges , that none of their stock and effects , shall be liable unto any manner of confiscations , seisures , forfeitures , attachments , arrests , or restraints ; that they may freight outlandish and hired ships , for the space of ten years , notwithstanding the act for encouraging shipping and navigation . anno 1661. and that their merchandice , goods and effects , shall be free from all manner of restraints and prohibitions , and of all customs , taxes , sesses , supplies or other duties imposed , or to be imposed by act of parliament , or otherwise , for and during the space of 21 years . as likewise , that no officer , civil or military , or other person whatsoever within that kingdom , shall impress , entertain , stop or detain , any of the members , officers or servants , or others whatsoever , of or belonging to the said company ; and that all these shall be free , both in their persons , estates and goods , employed in the said stock and trade , from all manner of taxes , sesses , supplies , excises , quartering of souldiers , transient or local , or levying of souldiers , or other impositions whatsoever for and during the space of 21 years . yet it must withal be acknowledged , that his majesty's wisdom and justice to all the world , as well as to his allies , and those that are his own subjects in his other territories and dominions , are no less singularly , conspicuously and abundantly displayed , thro' the providing expressly and particularly in the said act , that no prince , country , people , or colony , shall be invaded or molested in what they are rightfully possessed of , nor disseised of their properties , or of what they can lay claim unto , by the laws either of nature or nations . which shews that what his majesty did , in passing the act , that hath been so often mentioned , was the result of great judgment , and mature deliberation . and whosoever will but allow himself time to read and consider it , will find himself oblig'd to confess , that in no projection whatsoever , towards a settlement of that nature , nor in any statutes or edicts enacted and emitted , for the authorizing and countenancing of them , was there ever such a regard had , and expressed to the rights of foreigners , or of planters elsewhere , and of the natives where that colony should come to settle , as is done in the scots act of parliament . whereunto i will only further subjoyn , that the scots have not only obtained an act of parliament , empowring them to plant and settle foreign colonies wheresoever they can , without doing injustice to the natives , invading the territories , and districts of other princes , or their being injurious to previous and antecedent planters ; but they have likewise procured a patent under the great seal of that kingdom , whereby all and every thing or things , granted to them in the said act , stand ratified and confirmed by a fact and deed , that is personally his majesty's own , in the most distinguishing manner , and that by which he speaketh most vnretractably as well as sovereignly to his people . so that his majesty being a prince eminent for his veracity , and his constancy to his royal word , as well as for his courage justice and honour , he hath made it impracticable , without sullying and disparaging his own glorious perfections , which 't is impossible he should have the weakness , infirmity and imprudence to do , either to depart from , dispense with , or by a subsequent relaxing interpretation , to retract or supersede what he hath granted unto his subjects of scotland , or to avoid the maintaining and protecting them in it . for tho' divers projects , proposals and matters , that are in themselves very just and lawful , and which in their effects and consequences would prove exceeding advantageous and usefull , may antecedently to their establishment by laws , and by royal facts and grants be declined and waved , as well as procrastinated and adjourned , upon the meer foot and the single motive of their being inconvenient , either thro' the offence or jealousie that may thereby be administred to allies and princes in amity ; yet no publick and solemn laws are to be violated or royal charters and patents , to be over-ruled , transgressed against and vacated upon the inducement , and because some potentates with whom his majesty is in leagues , and under stipulations and compacts , may shew themselves peevish , and become groundlessly ▪ and causelessly offended . for as all the affairs that fall under the executive part of the administration , are regulated either by law or by conveniency : and come to be considered under the notion and views , either of what may be done with profit to our selves , and without injustice to any , tho' possibly not without giving provocation unto divers , and the rendring them discontented ; or what according to the tenour and obligation of laws , and the sacredness of a princes word declared and pledged in his charters must and ought to be done ; so whatsoever latitude is left and allowed in reference to matters and things of the first kind , for acting according to the measures of civil prudence , and the rules of politicks : yet in relation to such matters as are of the latter sort , there is no room or place left to consult and deliberate what is fit to be done according to topicks of convenience , maxims of state , and politick theorems ; but there ought to be a conscientious observance and a vigorous pursuance of , as well as a firm and unchangeable adherence unto what is made legal , and which by consequence , when and where the case is important , and the matter is of that concern and value that the chiefest interest of a nation lies in it , can neither be omitted nor dispensed with , without obnoxiousness to guilt , as well as to clamour and blame . nor may it in the next place be unworthy of being represented , with what readiness vnanimity and zeal , the people of scotland came into this design , of erecting trade , and establishing a foreign plantation upon the passing the forementioned act. for the subscriptions in order to the raising and constituting a fund , for the setling a colony , and thereby for the promoting of traffick , for which they were allowed by the act of parliament , from the 16 of june 1695 , untill the first of august 1696 , were not only filled , compleated and perfected , long before the elapse of the time that was prefixed by the statute ; but whereas it was provided , that it should be held a sufficient compliance , with the design and tenour of that law , if only half the money that should be subscribed towards the forming a stock , did belong unto , and were the proper cash of such as were scots , and did live within that kingdom ; it deserveth to be observed , that the whole , hath been subscribed , advanced , and paid in by such as are scots , which is not only beyond what could have been expected , but may justly beget admiration ; considering what in that intrim , they have been obliged to pay in taxes for the maintenance of troops : and what they have been necessitated to carry abroad in specie , of their cash for the purchasing grain , to live upon in these late years of extraordinary scarcity and dearth ; which , at the modestest computation , may be reckon'd to have exceeded two hundred thousand pounds sterling . nor are they meerly persons of the middle rank , or of the mercantile order , that have contributed and put in their money for the framing of a bank in order to the foremention'd ends ; but they of all qualities and degrees have , with great liberality and cheerfulness , answerable to their several titles and figures , contributed their shares to that capital ; and none with greater alacrity and in larger proportions than they of the grand , as well as of the petite nobless . for none of the greatest persons of that kingdom have had the folly and pride to excuse and cover themselves from becoming assistants to the founding and promoting of trade , by pretending it a disparagement to their garters and coronets , and below the lofty stiles that they have by parchments , which give them an ascendency above gentlemen . these days of vanity and phantasticalness are over ; and they of the sublimest rank do begin to govern themselves by principles of reason and good sense , and by maxims of civil , social , and oeconomical wisdom ; and not by the airy , whimsical and pernicious notions of haughtiness and luxury . yea , even they of the military order , have such of them , as were in a condition thro' having acquir'd beyond a naked subsistence during the war , readily subscribed and paid in what they could , and would have done it more plentifully , had they receiv'd all their arrears ; and such of that tribe as were only subordinate-officers , or private centinels , who are now reduc'd or disbanded , that could not bring in gold and silver to the encreasing of the fund and the augmenting of the capital ; yet they have with great forwardness offer'd their bodies and their cold iron to the corporation and company , for the protecting of their traffick , and the defending of their plantation against all such as shall become their enemies and assailants . and how dangerous soever men of that praedicament may be to their country , when kept in too great numbers regimented at home ; and how altogether useless they are unto it , while they hear arms under foreign princes and states abroad ; yet they are as capable as any other whatsoever of being serviceable and profitable thereunto , when employ'd in the ways and methods to which many of them have begun to betake themselves . of whom it will be no presumption nor visionary dream to add , that as they do account their wages , salaries , and pay , to be their estates ; so they reckon their swords and musquets to be their title unto it . in brief , there are few persons , families , or orders of men , that are of any consideration or esteem , but who are become associated , united , and confederated , in this project , enterprise , and design . how much distant or different soever persons are , either in their religions or their political principles , yet herein they do all of them amicably agree and combine : neither the bigotry of the presbyterians , nor the resentments of those of the diocesan perswasion , for the unkind and ill treatment they have met with , do in this make any variance or discord between them ; but herein the wolf and the lamb do tamely meet together , and the leopard and kid do peaceably assemble as in one field . nor do those great animosities , or late hostilities , which have been between one another , about rights and claims to the soveraign authority , and the royal jurisdiction , occasion any misunderstanding or opposite sentiments in this , but both the jacobites and the williamites do shew themselves equally and alike concern'd in the promoting of a national trade , and the setling of a foreign colony . and , which is of very material consideration , it deserves to be observ'd , that besides what several persons have in their private capacities subscribed towards that capital , not only most of all the corporations , but the royal burroughs of the kingdom , have become sharers therein , and contributed liberally thereunto , out of their public revenues . from all which i may , with great safety , as well as with decency and modesty , venture to lay open and infer , how mortifying , afflictive and grievous it will be to that whole nation , to be discourag'd and frustrated of protection from the king , of whom pursuant to the act and patent which he hath granted them , they expected to be countenanc'd , animated and defended . nor dare they entertain such disrespectful and undutiful thoughts of his majesty , as the proclamations emitted by his governors over the english west-india plantations might seem to give occasion and umbrage for . seeing as they have not , by their setling at darien , invaded the territories of any european prince or state whatsoever , nor have been injurious to the natives , in planting there without their allowance and consent , nor in any one particular or circumstance , have exceeded the limits and regulations prescrib'd unto them by the act of parliament , and the king's charter , as shall be fully and uncontroulably demonstrated in what is to follow : so they have a more engraven and firm belief of his majesty's mercy and justice , than to give liberty unto themselves to think , that his majesty's subjects in the west-india plantations , depending upon , and subordinate to england , should by an order , command , and authority from the king , be charged and required to hold no correspondence with the scots , in their colony at darien ; nor to give them any assistance with arms , ammunitions , provisions or any thing else whatsoever . for as much as this is not only inconsistent with , and irreconcilable to his majesty's goodness , wisdom and righteousness ; but directly repugnant to the express words , terms and clauses of the forementioned statute ; by and wherein his majesty royally and solemnly promiseth , if any of the ships , goods , merchandize , persons , or other effects whatsoever , belonging to the scots company , trading to africa and the indies , shall be stopt , detained , embezled , or taken away , or in any sort prejudiced or damnified ; that he will interpose his authority to have restitution , reparation , and satisfaction made for the damage done , and that upon the publick charge , which his majesty shall cause , disburse and lay out for that effect . so that thro' what arts , and what means soever , these proclamations are come to be emitted and published : yet the scots neither do , will , nor can entertain any other thoughts of his majesty , than that he will carefully and powerfully cover and protect them , instead of abandoning them to the rage and power of such as may become their enemies , without the giving them aid , succour and assistance . and in place of giving room to any such sinistrous opinion , as if either his majesty could be indifferent , or meanly concerned , in countenancing of that nation in an affair of so great an importance , and that is so eminently subservient to the prosperity and happiness of that kingdom , or become alienated and disinclined from upholding and defending them in the possession of their plantation of darien , they are tempted to give credit to a passage in the paris gazette the first of august , 1699. namely . on avoit avis , qu'on envoye des ordres aux comandants de toutes les colonies angloises de l' amerique , d' assister l' escossois d' arien de tout leur pouvoir , comme estant sujects du mesme maistre . that the king hath sent orders , to the governours of the english plantations in america to assist the scots at darien , with all their power , they being no less his subjects than they are . nor can it be unmannerly or unlawful to add , that it is of the last danger to a prince , to administer cause and occasion to a whole kingdom , to grow estranged in their affections unto him , and to depart from their zeal for his service . and it may with confidence be affirmed that his majesty's treating the scots in this manner , either unkindly , or unsuitably to the hopes wherewith they have fed themselves , is like to have those effects and operations upon the hearts and minds of most of that people . t is abundantly discovered in histories how it hath often proved unlucky and of ill consequence to sovereigns , to have disobliged and displeased the generality of a nation , tho' but in a trifle , and that it hath been very fatal unto them , to discountenance and thwart their subjects in that wherein they placed their secular glory , and their temporal happiness . nor have the ties and obligations upon the conscience of subjects , been at all times found sufficiently powerful , to preserve them in discharge of duties of exact fealty and loyalty ; but these bonds have been easily broken , and dissolved , when ground hath been given , for the thinking and believing , that their worldly interest hath not only been neglected , but opposed and sacrificed . and it is in vain for a prince to rely upon his personal merits , or to trust to his own conscientiousness , of what he hath done in delivering a people from former distresses : seeing these will be found to afford him a very weak and slender security , against the ungrateful and ill natured resentments of a people , that shall account themselves abandoned , or crossed in what their present genius , humour and biass , do universally , sway , carry and determine them unto . nor is it credible that his majesty who is a prince of great wisdom and justice , would have order'd those who govern under him , and by his authority , in the west-indies , to emitt and publish such proclamations , without his vouchsafing to have it told and represented to the person constituted by himself , for his scots secretary , and who is resident at his court under that character ; seeing as that would have imported such a contempt , as well as a neglect , of his kingdom of scotland , that none without rendring themselves criminal , can conceive his majesty capable of being misled into it , so it is sufficiently obvious to all thinking men , what the scots secretary hath made himself obnoxious unto , if in case of his being made acquainted with it , he did not discharge the duty incumbent upon him by his post , both towards his majesty in endeavouring to divert him from running into such measures and in his informing those of scotland ( to whom he will deservedly find himself accountable , ) with it , whose concern it was to have it prevented . yea it is so inconsistent with all the rules of prudence and justice , as well as of honour , that nothing in don quixot , or amadis de gaule can be more romantick , than that his majesty should some months after the orders must have been transmitted to the west-indies , for enjoyning and and authorizing the forementioned proclamations , have commanded the lord president of the sessions , and my lord advocate to come from scotland and attend him at his palace here , in order to satisfy him of the legality of the scots proceedure , had he been conscious in himself , of having empowred the english secretary mr. vernon , to convey such instructions to the governing magistrates in the english plantations , as the papers emitted there under the title of proclamations , would perswade us they are warranted by and bottomed upon . nor in the case which i have now under consideration , will the scots reckon that their loyalty to his majesty , and their zeal for his interest and service , were either esteemed or rewarded , as they flatter'd themselves they should have been : for their having not only furnished him , with so many and such brave troops , during the war , and for their preserving ( now meerly to please and gratify him ) such a number on foot and in pay , and that notwithstanding both the poverty of the country , and the great scarcity that for divers years it hath groaned under , when their neighbours have not in proportion to their extent of territories , and of their opulency , thought fit to continue near the quota of forces , which they have done ; but especially because of their having , so readily at first declared him their king , when the bare delaying , and the demurring only unto it for a little time , would have gained them such concessions from the people of england , that would have made their looking after a plantation of their own needless , or at the least have brought them into that conjunction , with the english nation , as would have engaged the whole strength of that powerful , and wealthy kingdom , for their defence and support in the colony , which they have begun to settle . nor can it be undecent or immodest to add , that the protecting them in this undertaking , is the rather expected from his majesty , least otherwise they should have occasion to complain of the prejudice , they have received by the revolution , with respect to their trade , instead of reaping the advantages which they had thereby promised themselves , in that as well as in other things . it being known to diverse , that a proposal and plan having by some scots men been laid before king james , for the obtaining his authority , as well as his countenance , for their setling a commerce in africa and the indies , how kindly he not only received it , but with what both goodness and readiness , he referred the consideration of it to my lord middleton , my lord melford , mr. penn and mr. berkley , that upon their opinion of the justice and equity of it , ( who were all known to be entire favourers thereof ) he might by his royal charter and patent , have empowered the scots , to have proceeded in the establishing of it ; and which nothing could have obstructed , had not the accession of his majesty , who was then prince of orange , in 〈◊〉 england at that time intervened . but to proceed unto that which doth in the course of method , next offer it self to be laid open and discoursed of , namely the situation , nature and conveniency of the place , where the scots have pitched their tents , and are about establishing there plantations , which is called the isthmus of darien , and is a country very fit and proper for that purpose , as well because of the richness of the soil , as by reason of its situation for trade . it is the narrowest part of america , and lieth between the northern and southern , or the atlantick and pacifick oceans , and is justly called an isthmus , as comprehending where it is broadest not above two degrees , ( viz. ) between eight and ten n. l. and where it is narrowest about but one degree . and it is in all probability stiled the ishhmus of darien , from the great river of that name , where with the northern coast is bounded to the east . for beyond that river on the north side , the land doth so spread to the east and the north-east , and on the south side , to the south and south-east , that it can no farther be called an isthmus : but as to the narrowest part of this american isthmus , which as i have said , doth not extend above one degree , upon which the scots have setled their colony , and have appointed that the country shall hereafter be called calidonia , and that themselves , successors and associates , shall be stiled by the title of calidonians : wafer doth assign for its western limits , from the mouth of the river chagre , where it falls into the north sea , to the nearest part of the south sea westward of panama ; and for its eastern boundaries , from point garachma , or the south part of the gulph of st. michael , directly eastward , to the forementioned river darien : and all do know , that it is circumscribed , limited and bounded , on the north and south , by the two vast oceans that are so denominated . and as to the particular place , where the scots have pitched their tents and raised fortifications , it is upon a harbour , called by the spaniards acla , and by the natives schocana , and is one of the most defensible ports of the world , and is situated about two leagues from the golden island , called by the spaniards guarda , which as it is not further distanced from the south sea , than what any man may travel in two or three days , and which the natives can do in one : so it lieth in a nearness of eight or nine leagues , both to the river darien and conception , upon which boats may go to the southern ocean . and as the weather in the place , and on all hands where the scots are setled is exceeding temperate , being much the same that is in other places of the torrid zone of that latitude , but inclining rather , as wafer says , to the wet extreme , the rains beginning usually in april or may , and continuing more or less to the latter end of august , but with intermixtures even then of fair and dry days for a week together ; so that the country , is healthful beyond what was commonly believed , or could have been imagined unless experienced . and tho' the artificial productions of the district and territory be few by reason of the sloth and unskilfulness of the natives to cultivate the land , and to improve and fabrick what it yields , yet the ground is unconceivably fertile and rich , and might by being well manured and agriculted , afford both as great variety and as great plenty , for the comfort and pleasure , as well as for the necessities of life , as any land in whatsoever part of the world doth . however the natural productions , and what it spontaneously yields , as materials of , and commodities for trade , and to enrich such as are , or shall become engaged and interessed in the traffick , are divers and great , both in the variety of kinds , and in the plenty and quality of them . for besides its being stored with all sorts of wood , proper for building and wainscotting , and particularly with cedar , it hath also abundance of white wood , fit for cabinets , and interlaying , and which is more than all the other , it is likewise plentifully furnished with logwood , which the english do now cut upon the bay of hunderos , not without being exposed to great hazard and danger ; and ( if credit may be given to reports , ) it is provided of nicaragua wood , which is a commodity for dying of that value , as to be reckoned to approach to the worth of cochenele ; and which is beyond all other productions whatsoever , it affordeth both silver and gold mines , as well as large quantities of gold dust , that is gathered out of the rivers , after that it hath been washed from the mountains by violent rains. and then for the people , they are open , frank and good natured , and for many leagues round in an entire friendship with the scots , having not only received them in a most obliging manner , at their first arrival into those american parts , and their captains , supreame leaders , or caiques , who have neither dependance upon any other prince or state , nor upon one another , save by leagues for mutual defence , readily and with great chearfulness , consented and agreed to permit the scots to settle among them , and to become inhabitants in their country ; but have by stipulations and contracts since , joyned in a confederacy with them , for the defence of them and their colony , against all such as shall in time to come be their enemies . so that for situation , as the councel constituted by the indian and african company of scotland , for the government and direction of their colonies and settlements in the indies , have published in their declaration bearing date , at new edinburg in calidonia december 28. 1698 ; it is a more convenient place than any other in all america , to be the store-house of the unsearchable treasures of the spacious south seas , the door of commerce to china and japan , and the emporium and staple for the trade of both the indies . and as it is there that the scots have settled a colony and plantation , by and with the consent of the natives ; no european prince or state being thereof possessed , or having right of claim thereunto ; so they did not offer to enter upon that district and territory , without the having a particular and strict regard unto , and conforming exactly with all the regulations , proviso's , and limitations laid down and prescribed in the act of parliament , and in his majesty's patent , and the having seriously considered and duly weighed , whatsoever could be pretended or alledged against them , upon their proceeding to establish a colony there . for the examination whereof , they allowed themselves sufficient time , in that tho' their subscriptions were perfected and compleated , about the beginning of the year 1696 ; yet they did not send their ships from scotland , untill the month of july 1698 , which arrived not in that place until november following . and as it is not only hoped , but morally certain , that great advantages of attaining unto wealth , power and honour , will thereby accrue and be administred to scotland ; so it might easily be demonstrated , that very considerable benefits , will infallibly redound from thence unto england , and that both in times of peace and of war. seeing as it will be a means , whereby in a short time , a compendious way and passage for trade to china , japan , as well as to the east-indies , may be obtained and rendred secure , whereby the english , will become qualified and enabled , not only to outdo the french , who begin to rival them in traffick to the latter , but to equal the dutch , who do at present far exceed them in it : so by the conveniency of the scots caledonian plantation , both a great quantity more of the manufactures of that kingdom , will come to be vented in all the east parts of the world , as well as in the spanish west-indian provinces , and the expence made less , and the returns much speedier and surer , to and from the latter , than they are , or ever can be , by the way of cadiz and malaga . and as for the english plantations in america , they will not only have larger and more advantageous occasions , of trading into the spanish american colonies ; but the very scots of the calidonian plantation , will will take off and consume abundance of their commodities and productions , especially theirs of new york and new england , for which they will pay in gold and in silver , and such valuable goods , as the mines , rivers , and land of darien do yield and furnish . and should a war at any time come to be between the kings of great britain and of spain , as who knoweth what may hereafter fall out , calidonia is and will in that case be found , the best situate place of any in the world , from whence and by means whereof , to do hurt and prejudice to the spaniards , and to yield service to his britannick majesty , and give his subjects opportunities of enriching themselves . seeing the scots colony there , will prove to be not only posted , in the middle and bosom of the spanish american ports for traffick , having carthagena on the east , porto bèllo on the west , and panama on the south ; but will be found to stand situated in the direct way and passage , that their flotas , galleons , armados and armadilals must go and return to and from mexico and peru. nor on the supposition of such a hostility arising between these two crowns , as i have mentioned , will the english meerly have a larger , better and more fortified harbour for ships , either of war or commerce , than any of their own west india plantations do afford ; but they will have one to receive , cover and protect them , that is nearer and more adjacent by a hundred leagues to porto bello and panama , than jamaica ; and by above three hundred than barbadoes , which of all the english american colonies , are the least distanced from them . but seeing i shall have occasion to discourse more fully hereafter , of the benefits and advantages , which will accrue to the crown and kingdom of england , by the scots having settled in darien , and how much upon that account , it is both the interest of the king , and of the english nation , that they should be maintained and defended in the possession of their plantation at calidonia ; i shall therefore insist no more upon it under this head , but adjourn what is to be further represented , and argued to the foregoing purpose , until it will lie more naturally before me in some other paragraph . that which i am then in the next place to advance unto , is to justifie and prove beyond all possibility of any reasonable reply , that the scots , by their establishing a colony on the isthmus of darien , have made no invasion , upon the rights or dominions , and territories of the king of spain , nor have therein acted contrary either to the laws of nations , or to any articles of publick treaties , that have intervened , or have been conserted , accorded and stipulated , between the kings of great britain , and those of spain ? 't is true his spanish majesty , hath by several memorials delivered by his ministers to his britannick majesty , or to his secretaries of state , represented , remonstrated and complained , as if the scots , had thereby made an infraction of the peace , between the crowns , were become guilty of an insult ▪ and attempt against his catholick majesty , and that by settling a plantation in that place , they have posted themselves , dansles souverains , & le plus interieur de ces demaines de sa majeste , in the soveraign and most inward territories of and belonging to his spanish majesty . and as in case that the matter stood as it is represented , and as the complaint doth import , the blame thereof , ought to be wholly and entirely imputed unto the charged upon the governours and directors of the company erected for trading to africa and the indies , and no ways either in the injury that is done , or in the clamours and accusations which arise by and from it , to affect his britannick majesty in his justice , veracity and honour ; so it would be both requisite and necessary , on the foot of righteousness , as well as of truth , that full reparation should be made to his catholick majesty , if the fact of the scots , in planting on the isthmus of darien , were disagreable to royal and national treaties , and a forceable seisure , in times of amity and peace of the lands and demains of that king. yet i hope , it will not be accounted rudeness or insolence , in me to say , that it is both expected and demanded , that none will discover and betray themselves , to be persons of so little prudence or equity , as upon the single credit , and alone evidence of memorials to submit unto , and to suffer , their being either surprised , or wheedled , or menaced and hecto●ed into a belief , that the settling the aforesaid colony , in the place abov●●mentioned , is therefore injurious and criminal in the scots , and to be reckoned an invasion upon the sovereign rights , and the lawful dominions of the king of spain , meerly because it is alledged and affirmed by his ministers and in his name to be so . and i do reckon my self fully warranted , in the requiring and exacting this of every man , who desires to escape the censure and reproach of being imprudent , partial , and iniquous ; in that it hath very often , and upon frequent occasions , been the custom and practice of states , princes and potentates , to remonstrate and complain of the proceedings of other rulers , governours and soveraigns , and of their several and respective subjects ; when all that hath been offered , attempted and done by those who have been thus applyed and addressed unto , and complained of , hath been lawful , friendly , honourable and just , and only accounted inconvenient at the season , or held to administer ground of jealousie and fear , that it might in the future , be prejudicial unto such who were the complainants and remonstrants . and as no potentate or court in the world , hath oftener and more clamorously , betook themselves unto this method , than they of spain have done , in reference unto , and behalf of what they unreasonably challenge , and would have others be so weak , as to allow them a right unto the west-indies ; so they have commonly , in the issue and event been made to understand , that they had no pleadable , valuable and justifiable reasons , grounds or causes , for their remonstrances and complaints . whereof as the histories of all nations , are full of examples , and instances , so our own are not barren and unprovided of them . unto which as i shall confine my self , on the motive of the brevity , that this discourse is designed to be of ; so i shall only assign a few out of the many that might be enumerated . whereof , the first shall be , the behaviour and answer of queen elizabeth , during the time of amity with spain , and before there was any rupture , between her and philip the second , upon a complaint against one captain parker , made unto her by the spanish minister , who resided at her court , under a publick character ; which i do the rather mention , because it relates to something that fell out at darien , where the scots having taken the freedom to settle , and to establish a plantation , is made the ground of the memorials presented lately to his majesty by the spanish ambassador , in the name of the catholick king : for captain parker having in the year 1565 , sailed from england to darien , and begun to manage a profitable trade with the natives , the spaniards , who have been always jealous of , and offended at any other europeans coming into , and trafficking in those parts of america , came with armed ships against him , and after having threatned , to make prize of him , and those that were with him , unless he would immediately depart , upon his refusal to do so , they attempted it . but parker being a gallant man , and being likewise assisted by the natives , he not only beat the spaniards that assaulted him , and took one of their ships , but also plundred a place called castel dolora , for all which he was both commended and justified by the queen , notwithstanding the complaints and remonstrances of the king of spain , by his ambassador . whereunto may be added , that famous and remarkable transaction , much about the same season , between queen elizabeth and philip the second , in relation to captain drake , who having in a time of peace , betwixt the two crowns , been seised by the spaniards , for trading in the bay of mexico , and who thereupon , having been allowed by her majesty , to make himself reparation and satisfaction , for the wrong and dishonour done to her , as well as for the loss and injury , which he had sustained , sailed to boco fero , where being shewed the south sea , and also assisted by the native indians , who had war with the spaniards , he took and plundred some rich spanish vessels , at st. lazarus de chagra . of which bernardine de mendoza , who was then spanish ambassador at the court of england , having by a memorial which he presented to the queen , complained as a great act of depredation , committed by drake upon the spaniards in the west indies , and thereupon demanded reparation of the loss and damage , which his masters subjects had thereby undergone , he was answered by the queen almost in the very terms , and directly to the purpose following . namely , that as the spaniards had drawn these inconveniencies and mischiefs upon themselves , by their severe and unjust dealing with the english in their american commerce , and their trade there with the natives , so she did not understand , why either her subjects , or those of any other european princes , should be debarred from traffick in the indies . vnto which as she did not acknowledge the spaniards to have any title by the donation of the bishop of rome ; so she knew no right they had to any places there , besides those that they were in actual possession of ; seeing their having touched only here and there upon those coasts , given names to rivers , or capes , and possibly built a few cottages , were such insignificant things , as could no ways entitle them to a propriety , further than they were actually settled , and continued to inhabit . and therefore , that as all their claim unto other parts , places and countries in the west indies , was only imaginary and chimerical ; so it was thereupon free , for other princes and states , and their respective subjects , without the least breach , or violation of the laws of nations , both to trade and transplant colonies , into all such american districts and territories , where the spaniards did not inhabit . and that as all pretence to a right to any country there , otherwise than as they were possessed of it , is nothing but a vain and unjust vsurpation , which makes no foundation , nor gives any right by and according to the laws of nations , for a limited and restrained claim , in and over those countries ; so it is as lawful for any other nation , as it is for spain , to navigate that vast ocean , without being inhibited , obstructed , or therein disturbed ; in that the use of the sea and air is common unto all and every people whatsoever , neither nature nor custom having given or allowed , possession or propriety thereof , to any one particular country of the world , preclusive of others . but tho' this that i have here reported may very reasonably be counted enough to have been said under this head , as being so full , as well as pertinent , for shewing how little reason and cause there may often be , of judging hastily , conclusively and prejudically of the proceedings and facts of the subjects of any state , or soveraign , meerly because of complaints exhibited in memorials by the ambassadours of other princes , stiling and representing what hath been done by them , under the characters of being violatious of the laws of nations , invasions upon the territories and jurisdictions of potentates , and infractions of publick treaties and alliances ; yet i shall not reckon it either superfluous or impertinent , nor will the reader i hope think it tedious , to have one instance more subjoyned , that was of a parallel nature , and to the same purpose and upon the same occasion : which as it referreth to a memorial of the same importance and kind , with those that have been presented lately to his majesty ; so it was one delivered into a king of great britain by an ambassadour of spain in the name and in obedience to the command of his master . whereof the story in brief is this : namely that in the year 1629. being after a rupture , and during the time of a war , between the crown of great britain , and of spain , divers of the english nation , finding the islands of cateline and tortuga unpossessed and empty of inhabitants , did thereupon seize and begin to plant colonies , on them , giving to the former the name of the island of providence , and to the latter the name of the island of association . and which they continuing to inhabit , and occupy after the establishment , of the peace betwixt his britannick majesty , and the catholick king , anno 1630. the spaniards became thereat offended , not only because of its being an extending , and an enlargement of english settlements in america , but by reason of the nearness of those islands to the spanish west-india colonies , particularly to those of cuba and hispaniola , and accordingly complained thereof to king charles the first , by their ambassador ; who tho' he was a prince both of those morals and politicks , that he would not countenance , the least thing that was unjust , and illegal towards and against any , and much less in relation to soveraigns and potentates , with whom he was in leagues , and alliances , nevertheless he gave in answer to the said complaint , that his subjects having found those islands , both unpossessed by the spaniards , and uninhabited by any other people whatsoever , had thereupon by the laws of nature as well as of nations , a liberty and right to sit down and to plant there . and that they ought not to be therein obstructed or hindred , either because of jealousies , which the spaniards might entertain , on the foot of those islands being so adjacent to their territories , or by reason of any apprehensions they might have , that english colonies there , would prove afterwards inconvenient , and prejudicial unto them . in which answer the spaniards were so far forced to acquiesce at that time , as not to reckon that fact of his britannick majesty's subjects to be any infraction of alliances , or a rupture of the peace . tho' i must withall add , that upon the arising of misunderstandings between king charles the first and his people of england , and upon his subjects of scotland running into rebellion , the spaniards made those advantages , of our quarrelling here at home among our selves , as to assault the english in both the forementioned islands , and were therein so successful , as first to drive them out of tortuga , anno 1634. and afterwards out of cateline anno 1640. in the attempt whereof as they acted against all the measures of law and justice , and to the highest degrees of cruelty and barbarity in the execution of it , so it is too well known upon whom both the blame and infamy are to be charged , that those invasions of the spaniards upon the rights , properties and possessions of the english , were not revenged as they deserved , and as they undoubtedly would have been , had not king charles been diverted and hinder'd from it , by the unhappy differences , which sprung up between him and his people . having then done , what i hope will be judged sufficient to obviate and prevent all misconstructions and sinistrous thoughts , which might otherwise have risen in the minds of any , by reason of the late memorial presented to his majesty , i do reckon , that i have thereby paved my way , towards an examination of the fact of the scots company , in their setling at darien , whether it ought to be accounted illegal , and unjust , contrary to the laws of nature and of nations , and to interfer with solemn regal stipulations ? or whether it may be esteemed lawful , righteous and agreeable to all the rules and measures of wisdom , amity and justice ? as that i may now apply and address my self directly and closely to it , without finding the forementioned remonstrances , to remain an impediment and obstruction in my way . and as an introduction thereunto , i cannot but both acknowledge and commend , the fair , honourable and friendly proceedure of the catholick king , in that he hath by memorials , given in to his britannick majesty , chosen to assert his pretensions and rights in an amicable way , and so affords an opportunity , that the whole world may be satisfied , on the foot and topicks of reason , custom and law , that neither the act and patent , which the king of great britain , hath granted to his subjects in scotland , are any ways either disagreeable to treaties with spain , or dissonant from the received maxims of equity and justice , by which states and princes do govern themselves , in their publick and political actions towards one and other ; nor that the scots company , have either exceeded the limits prescribed unto them , in the statute and charter , by which they are authorized to trade to africa and the indies , and to establish colonies and plantations there , or that they have done any thing prejudicial unto and invasive upon the rights of spain . for hereby instead of putting the decision of this great and important affair , upon the strength power and success of arms , and the verdict that should result from hostility and war ; it is placed on the amicable foundation of reason , alliances and laws , and made adjudgeable in the cabinets , and at the councel boards of princes , and not immediately referred to a determination , by fleets and armies on the ocean and continent . and therefore that this matter , may be set and represented in the best and clearest light , for an amicable adjustment , and composure of it , between his brittanick majesty and the king of spain , i shall in order thereunto , propose and lay down , some things in the way of so many premises , which which shall carry that intrinsick certainty and evidence in them , as to resemble and be of the nature of postulata in mathematicks , and which shall be found as undeniable principles , in a discourse that is relative unto , and concerning right of property in a country , as the other are acknowledged by all men to be in geometry . whereof the first is this , namely , that the original , most ancient , and that which is by all civilians , confessed to be the ground and foundation , of the uncontrovertible title and right of any people , to this or that country , is their having been the primitive occupiers and possessors of it . quod enim est nullius , per occupationem acquiritur ejus dominium , say all civilians . for while the greatest , or any part of the world , lay wholly void and vninhabited , and for the occupation whereof , no formal division had intervened , and been agreed upon , by those who emitted colonies for the possessing and planting such and such parts of the earth , assigning to every one of those colonies , there several and respective partitions and districts ; in that case the right of title unto , and of property in such a country , and place became , primi possidentis , his or theirs who were the first occupiers thereof . 't is taken for a dictate of nature , and is that which the universal reason of mankind conducted them unto , in the first and separated division , which was made of this habitable world , so far as it was void and uninhabited , vt quod quisque occupasset , id proprium haberet , that whatsoever any came actually to possess and occupy , thereof they should be acknowledged to have the propriety . and as cicero long before our late civilians expressed it , quod cuique obtigit , id quisque teneat , wheresoever any mans lot falls to be the first possessor , that he hath a legal claim thereunto . which possession or occupation ▪ as they are not accounted to stand acquired by any meer act of the mind , whether in way of wish or purpose of settlement in such a place , but they are only obtained in and by a bodily act , that is quasi positio pedis a placing and fixing there foot upon it ; so no bare transient and vagrant passage , thro' an empty and uninhabited country without setling their abode , and continuing to reside in it , was ever held sufficient by any civilian for the giving unto those itinerant passengers a claim of property and inheritance there . for as grotius says desultoria possessio nihil efficit , an occasional touching at a place without settling and continuing to inhabit giveth no right thereunto in law. and as puffendorf speaks to the same purpose , occupasse tum demum rem aliquam dicimur quando possessionem ejus adprehendimus : ita ut occupatio rerum mobilium fiat manibus , soli pedibus ; vidisse autem tantum , aut scire ubi quid sit , nondum ad possessionem sufficere judicatur . whereunto may be added in the second place , that the spaniards did not find those countries , kingdoms , isles and provinces , whereof they are either possessed , and confessed by all to be so , or those unto which they pretend a right , tho' it be not acknowledg'd by others , void and empty of people , and uninhabited ; but that when they came thither and arriv'd there , they found them actually possess'd by a large and numerous people that had no knowledge of , nor dependance upon spain , nor had deriv'd either their own original , or their title to occupy and inherit those spacious and vast american territories from the spaniard ; so that whatsoever title or property the spaniards are come to have unto , and over those dominions , it must be deriv'd either from the donation of the pope , or acquir'd by a conquest of those , who were the previous and ancient proprietors ; or it must be obtain'd by a grant from the natives , in the vertue whereof the spaniards have a right transferr'd unto them , and are with and by the consent of the indians , made the rightful and universal proprietors of all those countries . and as to their claim by the pope's donation , the very mentioning , and much more the pleading of it , is a ridiculing , as well as bantring of mankind ; seeing even on the supposal , that the roman pontiffs should be acknowledg'd the successors of st. peter , which as no protestants are forward to believe or confess , so they have never hitherto found , nor do they think they ever shall find the pontificians able to prove it : yet this would invest them with no right of disposing the kingdoms of the world as they please , and unto whom they will. for peter being cloathed with no such power himself , nor having ever pretended to exert such a jurisdictive authority , as some popes have had the vanity and pride to do , how could he convey it unto , and entail it upon others , under the quality and character of being his successors ? yea our lord jesvs christ was so far from exercising a power and authority of divesting princes of their soveraignties , principalities and dominions , tho' all of them were then gross idolaters , that he would not be prevail'd upon to divide an inheritance between two brethren , when desir'd by one of them to do it . but as he made it the duty of all those who should believe in him , and embrace the christian faith , to be conscientious and exact in yielding obedience to all the laws and commands of civil rulers and magistrates , whether they should be heathen or christians , provided that those laws and injunctions were not inconsistent with , and repugnant to the laws of god : so he was himself contented to pay tribute to tiberius caesar , who was both an idolater and a tyrant . nay , so far are the bishops of rome from having any jurisdiction in the quality of st. peter's successors , over the dominions of any prince and potentates whatsoever , that all the right which they have to their own temporal and secular possessions , even to that which is vulgarly call'd the patrimony of st. peter , is by and from the concession and grants of potentates , kings , and civil rulers ( among whom i wou'd not be thought to place constantine , whose pretended donation is a meer fiction and chimera , but some that were later than he ) who were more liberal and beneficent , than they were prudent and wise. moreover , tho' the spaniards have had sometimes , the weakness as well as the vanity to claim a right to the whole west-indies , thro' and by vertue of the donation of pope alexander vi. in his bulls dated 2d and 3d of may , anno 1493 , yet the very spanish historians do assure us , that ferdinand and isabella who were king and queen of castile , when columbus made the first discovery of the west-indies in the year 1492 , having consulted with those who were esteemed the most learned in the civil and canon laws , thought it needless to use any such formality as to desire a grant and donation of those countries from the pope ; and that the bulls of alexander vi. were obtain'd , or rather accepted upon some particular considerations . nor have divers nations , and those roman catholicks , as well as reformed , made the least scruple of sailing unto , and settling in the regions and countries of america , notwithstanding the pope's bulls , by which they are said to have been granted to the kings of spain . seeing besides what hath been done by divers princes and states during this whole present century , and a good part of the former , whereof i shall here make little or no mention ( it being notoriously and fully known , not only to every statesman , scholar , merchant , shopkeeper and artificer , but to those who are the meanest boors , peasants , and the ignorantest part of mankind ) there were divers attempts and endeavours made by others trading to america immediately and soon after the emission of those bulls , upon which some would found the spaniard's having a right and claim , and legitimate title to those dominions . for no longer than three years after the pretended donation of all the american territories to ferdinand and isabella , king and queen of castile by alexander vi. did henry vii . of england ( tho' a zealous roman catholick , and one who by reason of his domestick troubles stood in great need of the favour of the see of rome , and who no less courted it ) equip and set forth in the year 1496 , four ships under the command of sir john , and sir sebastian cabet of bristol , to discover , enter upon , and take possession of any place or places of the west-indies , that were not in the actual possession of the spaniards , which by his authority and in his name they did from 25 to 26 degrees of the northern latitude ; and in two voyages which they made to the west-indies , they both establish'd a friendship and trade with the natives of florida , long-island , and of divers places of those american countries . and tho' henry viii . who succeeded him ( thro' his being employ'd in wars with france and scotland , and taken up about important affairs at home ) could not extend his empire in the west-indies ; nevertheless there were , even in his reign , divers private persons that voluntarily engag'd in the making discoveries and settling trade in america : and among others whom we do find equip'd and sent forth upon this design , were edward spurstow , in the 5th and 9th years of henry viii . and robert warner in the 12th of the same reign , who made rich voyages thither , and were kindly entertain'd by the natives . and which is of affinity hereunto , and extremely pertinent , for shewing the insignificancy of the foremention'd bulls to the establishing any right in the spaniards to any other parts of america than they are actually in possession of ; it deserveth to be observ'd , how that vespusius a florentine by order of emanuel king of portugal , did in the year 1500 , discover all brasile , which makes a large part of the american continent , and that the portuguese asserted their right unto it , and preserv'd a liberty of trading thither , notwithstanding all that was objected to the contrary by ferdinand and isabella of castile . whereunto should i add what hath been done since , and that not only by the english under queen elizabeth , and king james , charles ▪ i. and ii. but by the french and dutch , and by divers other nations and states , which have all traded to and settled several colonies both upon the terra firma and the islands of america , notwithstanding either the popes bulls of donation of those countries , and islands to the spaniards , or their pretensions unto them , by any other right or title whatsoever ; it would evidently and unanswerably appear , that their claim to the west-indies was never further allowed and admitted by any european potentates and rulers , than in reference to those places and territories of which they were become actually possess'd . yea the pope's grant of the west-indies to the castilians , having been in order to the propagation of the christian faith among those infidels , the see of rome challenging no power or authority to dispose of earthly dominions , save in relation thereunto , and neither for destroying the natives or usurping their territories , it naturally follows that the spaniards having acted so directly contrary to all this , both in massacring above forty millions of the indians , and in the encouraging them in their heathenish idolatry , thro' selling their idols unto them for money , after the indians had thrown them away , rather than in seeking and promoting their conversion to the christian religion , can pretend no claim of right and title to those countries and dominions by the pope's bulls , but as de las casas expresseth it , all their conquests are to be accounted vnjust , tyrannical and null . 't is true that the spaniards have at all times been displeas'd with , and opposite unto the settlement of any nations in america besides themselves ; but the many rich colonies , such as virginia , barbadoes , bermudos , new england , new york , carolina , pensilvania , jamaica , &c. which the english have there , besides what places are possess'd by others , especially by the french and dutch in that part of the world , do abundantly shew , that all nations do account the claim of the spaniards to the whole west-indies to be no better than a weak , vain and chimerical imagination , and that the popes bulls by which it is alledged that they are entituled thereunto , are no otherwise esteemed by european princes and states , than as a jest and banter . nor , finally , have the spaniards themselves paid that respect to the bulls of alexander vi. which they should , and certainly would have done , had they taken their right to the american islands and dominions to be deriv'd from them : seeing whereas the same pope had in and by these very bulls , not only confirmed unto the portuguese their title to such places , as they were not only possess'd of in the east-indies , but to all other whatsoever in that eastern quarter of the world , for the occupying and inheriting whereof they had formerly obtain'd bulls of other pope● , and particularly of eugenius iv. excluding all others from trading thither , yet notwithstanding of this , they of castile laid claim to the moluccao islands , to which ferdinand magelanus had found a passage by the south-west of america , and continu'd to assert and defend their pretensions to them , until john king of portugal , by lending the emperor charles v. 350000 ducats , upon condition , that he and his heirs should forbear trading to the molucca's till the money were repaid ; they declin'd the maintaining their title to those islands , and laid aside their trading to them . nor is it unworthy of remark , as well for the chicane as the pleasantry , and divertisement of it , that the pope having divided the new world into two hemispheres , allotting the western to the spaniards , and the eastern to the portuguese , how that they coming to disagree about their respective shares , each of them laying claim ( as i have said before ) to the molucca islands , as falling by that division within their portion , and the decision of the case , seeming to depend upon mathematical calculations , about which the men of skill in geography , being consulted on both sides , the spaniards and portuguese did in reference thereunto , differ from one another almost forty degrees , in their fixing of the longitude , and so dogmatical and obstinate were both in their accounts , that orders were given by publick edicts , for fixing the degrees and meridians , in their several charts and maps , as they had been differently determined by the two nations . finally that which still shews a further slight put upon those bulls , by the very spaniards themselves is this , namely , that no sooner had americus vespusius discover'd the south sea , and found store of excellent timber , for building of ships , near to an excellent port , that was but one league distant from that sea , and which vespusius called ralio , then that having immediately built two ships there , he sailed from thence to the northern parts of the east indies , and begun in the reign of charles the 5th . to settle a colony there upon one of those islands , which afterwards upon the perfecting of that plantation in the time of philip the 2d . came to be called the philippine islands , where to this day they have a colony , and keep possession of them in scorn and contempt of the pope's bulls , by which all the east-indies were granted to the portuguese . the third and last thing that i would premise upon this occasion , and in order to the clearer determination of the point in dispute , is , that whatsoever right of propriety , and dominion the spaniards may have , by the title and upon the foot of conquest acquired in and over the empires of mexico and peru , and such countries and provinces , that were dependent upon , subject and tributary unto those two empires , yet they cannot thereby have obtained and jurisdiction title or claim of possession over , in , and to those regions , districts and places of america which as they have never subdued , so they of those places were not nor at any time had been in vassallage or subjection to the monarchs and soveraign rulers of either of those empires . i could very justly have laid down the postulatum , and proposition more at large , and at the same time been able to justify it both by reason and authority , and to have proved and made it good , as well by artificial as inartificial arguments : namely that whatsoever legal right , the spaniards may have acquired to those lands and territories in america of which they are possessed , by the claim and upon the foot of prescription thro' their having inhabited , occupied and inherited them for above 200 years , without interruption , disseisure , or dispossession ; yet they never obtained a lawful and righteous title unto , or a legal jurisdiction over them , upon the basis and foundation of having conquered the mexican and peruvian emperors and empires in and by a just war , but that they rather subdued , and destroyed those monarchs , and possessed themselves of their dominions , by fraud , violence and usurpation . now puffendorf tells us , and that agreeably to the opinion of all civilians , that per solam vim injustam , non posse alicui solidum jus quaeri , & cui exadversum , obligatio conscientiam stringens respondeat , nisi vitium acquisitionis purgatum fuerit per accidentem post novam causam quae per se jus parere idonea est . no right is acquired , or doth arise or accrue to any , by the alone and single means of unjust violence and force ; nor do a people become obliged and bound in conscience to pay fealty , and allegiance , and to yield obedience to such , as have unrighteously and without cause , or provocation , overpowered and master'd them , unless and until something else doth interpose and intervene , that may create and give a title , and right of domination , rule and authority unto the former and beget ties of legal subjection and obedience in the latter . for as grotius affirms to the same purpose , that actus imperij invasoris quos exercet , nullam vim habere possunt ex ipsius jure , quod nullum est . that no invader meerly as such , and under that reduplication hath a right of exacting fealty and obedience of the subjects of those princes , whom they have without justice violently and forcibly assaulted . that quicquid jure possidetur , injuria aufertur ; what any rightfully possesseth , he cannot save injuriously be disseised of , is engraven upon the minds of all men , as a part of the legislation of the divine creator , conveyed unto us with our natures . nor can it be denied by any , who do believe that there are such things , as right and wrong among men , and that they are under laws which enjoyn , what is just , and prohibit what is unjust ; but that the wars which the spaniards made upon the emperors of mexico and peru , and upon such supreme rulers and governours of those other american territories and countries whereof they are become possessed , were the most groundless , unrighteous and unjust , as well as the most bloody inhumane and barbarous , that ever were either begun , or carried on in any part of the world : seeing that tho' those potentates , rulers , and their people and subjects were not christians ( and for any thing that we do know , were never provided of means nor furnished with advantages of being such ) yet they were as lawful kings , princes , and governours of their several and respective dominions , territories , and districts in america , and as legal proprietors of their demesns and possessions there , as any european prince or people whatsoever are in reference either unto the authority and jurisdiction , which they have and do exercise in this part of the terrestrial globe , or to the lands and goods where they do here inhabit , and which they do enjoy and possess . for infidels being rational creatures , as well as other men are , they are thereupon sociable , as well as they , and consequently capable of entring into societies , and agreeing upon laws for the government of them ; and indeed to have governours and to be governed , are equally comon to all sorts of men , whether they worship god or idols , being things that have their foundation in the light of nature , and not in revelation . and therefore , civil dominion and property , being no ways founded in grace , or in the orthodoxy of faith , but in principles of nature which guide men to provide for their own safety , it is as much a violation of the laws of god , and of nations , to invade the countries of those soveraigns and to deprive those potentates of their dominions , without a previous and antecedent just reason and cause , and it is as heinous an offence , against the laws both of nature and revelation to rob and plunder their people of what they had and enjoyed , as it is for any one king and people in this christian part of the world to do the like against and upon any other in this hemisphere , and who are of the same belief of the gospel that they who invade them are . nor have there hitherto been , nor hereafter can , any reasons be produc'd , for legitimating and justifying the war of the spaniards , upon and against the natural princes and the natives of the west-indies , but which do with greater evidence proclaim , and more singularly aggravate and enhance the guilt of it . for to alledge that they were idolaters , and that therefore it was lawful , to make war upon , and to destroy and extirpate them , is directly repugnant to all the principles of humanity , the maxims of evangelical meekness , and the methods establish'd by our lord jesus christ for the propagation of the christian faith ; as well as to all the laws of nature , revelation and nations . and as the time once was , when all the nations even of europe , asia and africk , save the single and l●ttle people of the jews , were gross and open idolaters ; so i do not believe that any are so far void of good sense , and of humane sentiments , as to think that the jews , had they been powerful enough to have attempted it , stood warranted and authorized to have depopulated the earth , thro' destroying the inhabitants of it . and considering how the same character of being idolaters is by most of those of all countries that are stiled reformed fasten'd upon the spaniards themselves , because of divers religious actions in their pontifician worship , it is not therefore to consult well for their own safety , to invest those who do both believe and call them so , with a right of slaughtering and murdering them upon that account . and whereas it may possibly be pretended , that the spaniards had just cause administer'd unto them , of making war upon the indians , even almost to the extripating of them , in that the potentates and people of america , would not admit them to trade and reside peaceably among them : it is as irrational and barbarous an allegation as the former , and is withal uncontroulably false with respect to matter of fact , which the other was not . for abstracting from the question , whether one people may not lawfully exclude and debar another from trafficking with them , and settling in their country , which why it may not be done in other cases , besides that of open hostility , i will not at this time take upon me to decide ; but that which i do affirm , is , that the spaniards had no provocation of that kind given them for their making war upon the natives . it being declared and recorded by their own historians and writers , that the indians receiv'd them chearfully , and treated them amicably , and entertain'd them according to all the rules of hospitality and friendship ; yea , both wellcom'd and esteem'd them rather as gods than as men , until the spaniards , by their barbarities perpetrated upon the natives , provoked them to seek and endeavour , how to preserve and defend themselves from their brutal and hellish rage . so that , tho' there be not the least shadow of truth in that pretence for the spaniards having made war for forty years successively , used all the arts of fraud , treachery and violence , for destroying and exterminating them , which they so far effected , as to murder above forty millions of men , women , and children , to the laying waste some of the largest and finest countries in the world , and the rendring them in a manner destitute of inhabitants ; yet the folly and impertinence of those who produce this as a reason , and in justification of the war that was made upon the indians , are too obvious and remarkable to be overlook'd , and silently omitted : seeing by the same reason , and upon the same motive , that they seek and endeavour , to have the spaniards either excused or justified in what they did against the natives of america ; an european nation that hath strength and power enough to fall upon the spaniards in their west-india provinces , and is able to drive them thence , becomes warranted and authorized to do it , in that it is their avowed principle and practice , to permit none to plant and trade there besides themselves . so that it being apparent from the whole , that hath been said under this head , that the war which the spaniards made against the rulers and inhabitants of the west-indies , who were the ancient natives , was , upon all accounts , most unrighteous and unjust , it doth from thence unanswerably follow , that no title in those dominions can arise and accrue unto them , from their having been victors and conquerors in that war. it being impossible that what is lawful and just , should be the natural , proper and immediate effect of what is in it self , wicked , abominable and villainous . and therefore such of the spanish nation as have been wise and honest , they do renounce all claim of right in the crown of spain to a soveraignity and jurisdiction over those countries , and the having a legal property in them , on the foot and foundation of conquest , and are willing to place and settle it on the bottom of their own occupation and possession , and quiet acquiescence of the natives . and indeed when columbus had first discover'd the west-indies , and was about to establish colonies in those provinces , and being at his second voyage to hispaniola , advised by some of his own people , and particularly by one father boyle , to sieze upon guacanagari , that was an indian king , and stood accused for having murder'd some castilians , whom columbus had left there upon his first voyage thither , he not only refus'd to do it , but declar'd that he came not into those countries upon a design of using force , nor in order to make a conquest , but in a peaceable and gentle way , and to settle with the consent of the natives . in brief , tho' neither any crimes against god , wherewith the indians were chargeable , nor any undue and inhumane carriages towards the spaniards , at their first landing in america , whereof some have had both the impudence and indiscretion to accuse them , were either just motives according to the morals of heathens or christians , or allowable by the laws of nations , as lawful causes for the spaniards making war upon that people , yet both the occasions of it on the part of the natives , and the real inducements unto it on the side of the spaniards , are too obvious and apparent , to escape the observation and notice of any person , that is conversant in history . namely , that the simplicity , meekness , patience and unacquaintedness with arms , and martial discipline , and their being ill provided of weapons , either offensive or defensive , together with their abounding with wealth , and their countries being stored with gold and silver mines , were the true occasions of that war , on the side of the indians , and an insatiable avarice , a brutal insolence , and unquenchable thirst after blood , were the real causes of it , on the part of the spaniards ; who under all their pretences , of converting those infidels to the christian faith and worship , intended principally if not only , the destroying and extirpating of them , and converting their countries and their treasures to their own use . whereunto may be further added under this head , that the murther of the emperours of mexico and peru , and the destroying all such as were of the royal lines , of those two great monarchical families , which was perpetrated against all the measures and obligations of gratitude , truth , honour , equity and justice , and with all the treachery and inhumanity imaginable , gave no legal jurisdiction to the spaniards , over such as had been subjects or vassals to those soveraigns , in that the spaniards did not set themselves up , and lay claim to an authority , in order to govern the mexicans and peruvians , to their advantage and benefit , but that they might extirpate and exterminate them . and governments being at first instituted , for the safety of a people and not for their ruine : kings being as aristotle saith , ordained for the good of kingdoms , and not kingdoms for the lust and pleasure of kings , to be tyrannized over as they will , such can never acquire any right to rule and govern a country , whose design work and endeavour were to depopulate it . and if on the supposition , that it were possible for one , that is a legitimate soveraign and monarch , to entertain a purpose of making an universal destruction of his people , instead of protecting them ( which i do really think and believe no prince whatsoever is capable of , who is not fitter for bedlam than a throne , and who needeth not rather to be bound in chains , than to be accounted fit to sway a scepter , as being more mad and distracted , than any that are kept at hogsden ) it were lawful for his very subjects , without the violation of their allegiance , to restrain and resist him ; surely then it ought much more to be esteemed , not only lawful but an indispensible duty , to withstand and oppose those , to whom they had never been subjects , paid fealty , or yielded obedience , that should challenge an authority and jurisdiction over them , meerly that they might in the exercise thereof , massacre and exterminate them , which was directly the case of the people of the west-indies , in relation to the spaniards , both at their first landing among them , and for a long series of years after . so that this serveth to vindicate from blame , not only all those few and small retaliations , which any of the native indians were capable of making upon the spaniards , in killing them wheresoever they could conveniently find , and were strong enough to master them ; but it doth abundantly justify the withdrawment of all those that could , from a dependence upon the empires of mexico and peru , as they are now become vested in the kings of spain , tho' they had been anciently either subjects , or vassals , or feudatories unto them , and their erecting themselves into free , absolute and independent governments , that thereby instead of falling under , and being forced to submit to the spanish jurisdiction , they might be the better able to withstand their power , and to defend themselves against all the pretensions of the spaniards , in their claim of authority over them . and if the length of time , wherein the spaniards have not only been in the quiet possession , but in the exercise of rule and government , over such and such west-india provinces , countries and districts , that have , either actively , or passively , submitted to them , gives them a title thereunto by prescription , then certainly by parity of reason , and on the same foot of account , are they who ( upon the spaniards getting into possession of mexico and peru , and there treating of the natives in the manner above related ) withdrew themselves from any further dependence on those empires , and became erected into distinct , free and independent governments , made likewise entitled to there possessions , and jurisdictions , by the same tenor and claim of prescription . nor is it to be denied , but that there are several societies and bodies of indians within the ancient precincts and limits of the foresaid empires , who to this day , instead of submitting to the jurisdiction of the spaniards , are in continual and constant war with them . whereof though a multitude of instances might be assigned , yet for the sake of brevity , i shall only mention two . of which one shall be the collection or herd of indians , within the bounds of the kingdom of guatimala , whom the spaniards have not hitherto conquered , but would fain subdue , in order both to the setling a commerce with some parts of jucatan , from the doing whereof they are hindred by those natives , and for the opening a way , for the conveying their goods over land to the havana , which they reckon would be often more for their safety , than the venturing them thither by sea , from the gulph . the other which i would mention is , that sept and tribe of indians , who remain imbodied on the northern part of the province of new mexico , who are both valiant , and in implacable hostility with the spaniards , and whom they are more desirous to bring into subjection , than any other that are unsubdued , because of the rich gold and silver mines , which they know to lie in the mountains , and within the districts which those natives possess , where they have hitherto covered and defended themselves , against the power of the spaniards . finally , if the crown of spain , cannot rightfully pretend unto any soveraignty over those , whom i have mention'd , it is then apodictically evident , that thro' their having master'd mexico and peru , and got into possession of those empires , ( and by reason of a long and quiet occupation , are come to be universally acknowledg'd to have a right in them , so far as they are possess'd , and submitted unto by the natives ) they can lay no claim of title , authority or jurisdiction whatsoever , unto and over such places and people , who , as they never were in any way or manner dependant upon , or feudatory to the foremention'd empires ; so they were never subdued by , nor yielded any fealty or obedience to the spaniards ; but instead thereof have all along been either in terms of hostility , or in actual war with the spaniards , and have defended themselves , and preserved their territories from being over-run , subdued , occupyed , and inhabited by them . which is the plain and direct case of those of that part of the isthmus of darien , where the scots , with consent of the natives , and of their rulers , have landed , and are about setling a colony . and this doth both conduct me more nearly , and let me in more closely to the matter and affair , which my design in the writing of this discourse , is to vindicate and justify ; namely , that the scots in their endeavouring to establish their colony at caledonia , at the port , and upon the harbour acla in the isthmus of darien ; have made no invasion upon the dominions , territories , or demesns of his catholick majesty , nor have thereby done any thing which may be call'd an infraction of , treati●● and alliances between the crowns of great britain and of spain . now that i may manage this undertaking , both with all the perspicuity , and with all the candor imaginable , i shall freely grant unto the spaniards whatsoever in justice and reason should not be deny'd them : that i may the more methodically , the better , and with the less offence to any afterwards deny unto them such pretensions and claims , as they have no grounds , either in laws , or in compacts and stipulations for the demanding of . i do therefore willingly and with great readiness allow them to have a title unto , and a propriety in mexico and peru , and such other provinces and islands in america , where they have plantations and colonies , to such dimensions , so far , and to that extent of limits and bounds , as they do actually occupy and are in the possession of . for notwithstanding that their entrance into , and first settlement in those countries , was mostly in the way of force , violence and usurpation , and accompany'd with the greatest barbarities , horridest cruelties , and most execrable massacres which it was possible for men to practise , commit and perpetrate ; from , and by which no just and legal title could result and accrue unto them in and over those territories , as i have already said , yet thro' their having for so long , and for such an uninterrupted series of years , peaceaby possessed and inhabited such and such places in the west-indies , there is from thence , according to the laws of nations , a title risen unto and become vested in them by prescription over these provinces , isles , and districts , that unless in the case of actual war , none may or can disturb , disseize or expel them , without the doing that which is unlawful , unjust , injurious , and highly criminal . for if prescription should not be acknowledg'd to create and give unto a prince or people a title to a country , province , or territory , so far as he or they may have been possessed of them ; and if a peaceable and undisturb'd occupation for an hundred or two hundred years be not confessed sufficient time to found prescription upon , the right of many princes , as well as of common men , would be very questionable to what they call their inheritances , and matter and cause would thereby be administred , of bloody wars as well as of litigious and expensive sutes in courts of law , both between rulers , and between private subjects , in most places in the world. but whereas upon this concession which i have made , it may possibly be said and alledged by some , that thro' the spaniards having a right of soveraignity and dominion in and over mexico and peru , they must consequently be own'd to have a legal title to all the provinces , districts , and places , that had been formerly , and particularly at the castilians landing in america , were parts of , feudatory unto , or any ways dependant upon those empires : it being a maxim in the english , as well as in all other laws , that the possession of a part in a person or persons that have the right , gives unto them a just claim of possession to the whole . whereunto the answers that may be given are obvious from what hath been offer'd and laid down in the foregoing postulata and premises ; namely , first , that the whole imported in that maxim , doth only refer unto , and obtain in reference to such , who had been , and were the legal and rightful , proprietors of such and such dominions and territories , or who had thro' a conquest in a just war , cut out and made a title to themselves by their swords ; whereas it signifieth nothing , nor is of any validity to the giving a legal claim and title unto , and over any parts of a country , further than as they are actually occupyed and possessed , to those who neither had ancient propriety in and over those dominions , nor had come to acquire any in way of conquest by a just war. which being the plain and direct case of the spaniards , even in relation to the empires of mexico and peru ; it may therefore be affirm'd , and that consonantly both to all the rules of laws , and the measures of equity and justice , and that from the castilians having inhumanely , savagely , and treacherously murder'd the emperors of mexico and peru , and the having destroy'd all those of each of those imperial lines as they could byfraud or violence get within the circle of their power , and their having set themselves to slaughter , massacre and exterminate the natives , as far as their might and strength , excited and influenced by malice , rage , avarice , and insatiable thirst after blood could extend and reach ; i say it may be affirm'd , that from thence and thereupon no right or title of propriety or dominion did arise unto the spaniards in and over those empires , further than they came quietly to inhabit , and were submitted unto ; but that rather thereupon the natives of those two empires were at liberty to account these two great monarchies to be entirely dissolv'd , and might reckon that they themselves were in effect reduc'd back again to the state of nature , and that whatsoever power and authority had either by primitive compacts and agreements , or by tacit submissions been vested in those monarchs , and their hereditary successors , was become wholly vacated and annulled , not only as to them and their legal heirs , but to all such who should pretend to arise and set up in their room , in the vertue of any claim resulting from their having destroy'd and murder'd those monarchs ; and that the power and jurisdiction of the ancient emperors of mexico and peru being altogether extinguish'd , there was thereby a right as well as a freedom restor'd unto and divolv'd upon the natives , of disposing themselves , how , to whom , and after what manner they pleas'd , so that they might choose what governors , and erect what government they would , in order to their being kept in peace and safety among themselves , and be protected and defended from and against all such as should hostilely invade them . so that whosoever of those indians , who had formerly been dependant upon and subject unto the empires of mexico and peru , did , for the reasons i have mention'd , withdraw themselves from being for the future any ways under those empires , or any parts or branches of them , and became united and confederated into distinct , separate and independant communities , erecting governments , and choosing governors of their own ; as the spaniards can lawfully pretend to no legal claim of right and authority over them ; so it is not only free for those indians to admit any european or other nation to come , and to settle , and to plant among them , but they may upon the motive and guidance of their own interest , as well invite as receive any sort of people to plant and reside among them , that shall shew themselves willing , and who may be able to assist those natives against the spaniards who make war upon and seek to oppress them . for as civilians do generally agree , si populus vel propriis viribus vel siociorum jugum hostile excusserit , sine dubio libertatem & statum antiquum recuperat . whensoever a people , that hath been drove out of their possessions , do either by their own power , or by the aid and assistance of their allies , rescue themselves from the yoke and dominion of their enemies , they immediately thereupon do legally recover both their liberty and right to whatsoever they were disseized of ; and this is call'd jus postliminium quod nascitur ex reditu in limen . to which purpose grotius says from pomponius , expulsis hostibus ex agris quos ceperant , dominia eorum ad priores dominos redeunt , vpon the expulsion of enemies out of such territories whereof they were by invasion and vsurpation become possessed , the propriety and dominion of those lands do return unto such who had been the first lords and owners of them . nor is any length of time allow'd by some of the best civilians sufficient to give a title , so much as by prescription unto such who by force and violence were gotten into the occupation of countries and territories , in case they whom they had subdued gave no signs of their submission to them , nor any ways testify'd their receiving of them for their rulers and lords . nullum tempus , says one , sufficit ad acquirendum sum●um imperium , aut partem ejus necessariam , nolente primo possessore , quod significatur etiam silentio quando loqui non audeat . no length of time wherein an vsurper possesseth , can vest him in a rightful jurisdiction and dominion , while he wants the consent in some manner intimated of those that were the first legal inheritors , and that their very silence is enough to shew their refusal of becoming subjects , when their circumstances are such , that they dare not express their disclaiming his soveragnity over them . for in some cases it is enough that they murmur , tho' they dare not express their hatred ; seeing that they do not resist , is not because they would not , but by reason that they cannot ; and their being tame and silent under a force , which they can neither withstand nor throw off , do no more declare and express their submission , than a man approves of his being robb'd , when without contradiction or quarrelling , he delivers his purse to a thief whom he knows to be too strong for him . yea , secondly , it may be farther added in way of answer , that the whole which can be suppos'd to follow upon , and to result from the foremention'd maxim in law , is only that the spaniards may thereupon and from thence pretend to a title of right in , and of dominion over all such places in america , as had anciently been either directly and immediately subject to , or by one way or another dependant upon the foremention'd empires ; but it doth in no manner concern or affect the settlement of the scots on the isthmus of darien , nor can it be pleaded as a reason for giving disturbance to their caledonian colony . forasmuch as the country of darien , had never been any part of , nor any ways feudatory or tributary unto , nor in any manner whatsoever dependant upon either of the foresaid empires , but was always a distinct , free , and independent country , and the natives and inhabitants thereof , a distinct , free and independent people . nor hath the place of that isthmus , where the scots are particularly landed , and have begun to erect forts , and do purpose to establish a colony for trade and commerce , been ever subdued or inhabited by the spaniards . to which may be further added , that as the district on that isthmus where the scots have begun their settlement was never dependant upon any part or place , where the spaniards have their colonies within the isthmus , so the ruling natives of that little circuit where the scots are , and of whom they have obtain'd liberty to settle and plant , were never subject to any other indian sovereign or government within the precincts of the isthmus . which leads me to a second concession , that i am oblig'd to make unto the spaniards , but whereof that they can have no advantages , for the weakening or rendring controvertible a right and legal power and liberty in the scots to settle on the isthmus of darien , i shall give uncontradictable reasons , and those such as shall be founded both upon laws and facts . that which i do then further grant unto them , is this , namely , that besides the many large and numerous colonies which the crown of spain hath in divers other places of america , they have also several of very great importance and profit , within and upon the isthmus of darien . ●eeing the spaniards are not only the undoubted masters of several places on the bay of panama , and of the coast of the isthmus upon and towards the south-sea ; but they do likewise possess carthagena , which stands on a small island , and porto bello which is upon the continent upon the north-sea . yea , i do moreover acknowledge , that besides their having heretofore possessed nombre de dios , and their having planted upon some part of the river darien it self , which are places nearer and more adjacent to that little district and spot of land , where the scots have begun to settle , than those already mention'd , but which they have since relinquish'd , and are wholly withdrawn from : they have likewise at this very time some small territories in their occupation which are not remov'd and distanc'd much above ten or twelve lěagnes from the caledonian colony and new edenburgh , where they are in the possession of mines , out of which they dig gold : in reference to all which places , as their title and right of propriety is readily confess'd by the scots , as well as legally asserted by themselves ; so neither the scots nor any other nation whatsoever , unless in case of open hostility in a just war , can invade them there , or seek to dispossess them from thence , without incurring the guilt of great injustice , and becoming violators of the laws of nations . nevertheless nothing of all this , that i have granted , can or ought to be reasonably alledged as a legal plea against , a legitimate obstruction unto , or a lawful hindrance of the scots establishing a colony at the port acla , or the rendring it injurious and criminal in them , and an infraction of alliances , to possess , with the consent of the natives , the country bordering upon , and neigbouring unto it . seeing the equity and justice of what they have therein done , are easie to be demonstrated from and by all the topicks of law , reason , and fact , upon which the settlement of colonies by aliens , foreigners , or strangers , in any parts of the world , have been accounted lawful , and do in the esteem of nations stand justify'd . in order to the better and fuller clearing whereof , it may not be amiss to observe , that neither antecedently in the discovery of that part of america by the spaniards , and their becoming at first possessors of any places there , nor at any time since , was the soveraignty and dominion of the whole isthmus of darien vested in any one person whatsoever , as the sole and alone ruler , governor and prince of it . but it anciently was , and has always hitherto been divided and distributed into several little principalities and jurisdictions , over which they who bear the supreme sway , and give laws unto the rest of the natives in their different and respective precincts , and both had , and still have , obedience paid and yielded unto them , by those that were or are the indigenae or natural inhabitants , deserv'd rather the name and stile of captains than the title of princes and kings . and who , tho' they be accordingly call'd by the natives caciques , which is a much lower appellation than those of ingas , and the being the off-spring of the sun , by which emperors of peru and mexico were stil'd ; yet they have been at all times both absolute within their several respective districts , and altogether independent upon , and unaccountable to one another , or to any potentate else whatsoever ; and how contiguous soever their principalities may be , and tho' never so small , narrow and contracted in their dimensions and extents ; yet further than as they became confederated and united together by leagues between one another against their enemies , and particularly for mutual defence against the spaniards , whom they ever did , and still do account their common enemy , they have at all times had an independent and absolute power and authority within each of their own particular bounds , which they have unaccountably to any other prince , sovereign or monarch whatsoever , exercised over such as did inhabit in their several distinct circuits . nor is this a thing singular and peculiar to the people on the isthmus of darien , but what hath been and still is common upon the continents and in the isles of asia and africk as well as in many other countries , provinces and islands of america , besides that which i have been speaking of . nor can any person that pretends to have been conversant in geography or histories be ignorant of this matter , whereof all the accounts and narratives which we have of those three parts of the world do so fully and particularly instruct us . neither ought we to think it strange , that this should be the form , model , and manner of government on the foresaid isthmus , and that the boundaries of supreme authority and jurisdiction there , should be so narrowly limited , confin'd and circumscrib'd , if we do but allow our selves to observe , how that there is the same species of rule and domination both as to quality and extent , to be every where found and met with , in brasile , chili , paragua , florida , carolina , virginia , malabar , and the country which is call'd the land of the amazons , of which it is particularly remarkable , that there are above fifty different indian nations , or distinct and independant septs , on the banks of the river that is so call'd . nor was the like heretofore altogether unusual and unexemplify'd in the european parts of the world , whereof the several and distinct supreme principalities of the ancient britains in england , where in julius caesar's time , there were no fewer than four distinct kings in kent alone , namely , cingetorix , carvilius , taximagulus , and segonax ; or , as cambden calls them reguli vel melioris notae nobiles ; captains or persons distinguish'd from the vulgar by their power and figure , and whose territories could not be much larger , if of that extent , as the districts of the several caciques on the isthmus of darien are . and the like may be said , only allowing them greater dimensions of territory , of the saxons during the heptarchy afterwards in the same country , as well as of the scots and picts in the ancient caledonia . yea , and the distinct and different soveraignties which were in spain it self , not only both before and after it was a roman province , but even until less than within these two last centuries , as leon , arragon , navarre , castile and portugal , under which the christians in spain were divided and those of cordova , sivil , malaga , granada , and others under the power of the moors , not to speak of the several independent and absolute jurisdictions , which are at this day both in italy and some other places , do abundantly confirm the same . and were not the bible a book , that some men are little conversant in , they would not think it a banter , to have those stiled independent , absolute and soveraign rulers , whose territories are circumscribed and confined within strait and narrow limits . seeing besides many instances of that kind , which are to be met with in divers places of the sacred history , they would find that joshua subdued no fewer than 31 kings in canaan when he conquered the land in order to settle the people of israel in it , tho' that country was not much larger in the whole extent and circumference of it , than some single counties of england are ; not to add that as there were several kings more , whom he did neither drive out , nor destroy , so most of the primitive governments of the world were of that sort , constitution and complexion . but to what hath been already said and represented under this head , there is further to be added , that whatsoever possessions , the spaniards have obtained in that american strait whether thro' their having conquered any of the caciques , that had their jurisdictions there , or by their having contracted alliances , with those indian governours , and by agreements with them and the natives acquired a liberty to sit down , plant , and to erect colonies within the limits and bounds of their little territories and principalities ; or how much soever they may have encroached upon any of these captains whom they have not wholly subdued , and wrested part of their lands and jurisdictions from them ; yet there are still divers of these caciques over the native indians , who as neither they , their people , nor their territories , were ever conquer'd by the spaniards ; so they never enter'd into agreements and contracts with them , nor have at any time granted liberty unto them , to settle within the precincts of their lands , inheritances , and demesnes , but have at all times been in terms of variance and hostility with them , and for the most part in a state and condition of actual war. so that at least within the boundaries and jurisdictions of such indian governors , the spaniards have no just or legal pretence of property and dominion . for how weak and mean soever those natives and their rulers may be esteemed and represented , yet that doth no ways alter the case , or any ways enfeeble their right unto , and their authority over their own principalities ; but they do retain an equal claim and title unto , and property in what was anciently and originally theirs , and what they have defended from the invasion and usurpation of the spaniards , as if their dominions were as large , and their might and power as great as those of his britannick majesty's are . the little republic of geneva hath as good right in law to a propriety in what they have immemorially possess'd , as the great monarch of france hath unto the vast and powerful dominions over which he is hereditarily king and soveraign . yea , they of san marino in italy are no less absolute and independent proprietors and governors in and over that poor and despicable hamlet and dorp , than those who go by the stile of high and mighty are over the dutch provinces in reference to those things , matters and ends for which they became united and confederated . nor is the duke of mirandola , whose territories do not extend themselves to three italian miles , less absolute and independent over his own small principality , than the emperor of germany is with respect of his austrian and hereditary countries . for according to the laws of nature and of nations the point of right and property is the same in the poor that it is in the rich , and in the weak that it is in the strong . and how impotent and contemptible soever those unsubdu'd caciques on the isthmus of darien are , in comparison of his catholick majesty ; yet it is enough to justifie their propriety and authority in and over what they possess , that the spaniards have not by all their power and might been hitherto able to disseize , subdue , or drive them out ; but that all along since the castilians first descended upon the isthmus , and occupy'd several places within that streight of darien , they have been in a condition , either singly by the forces of some one or other of them alone , or conjunctively by uniting and joyning their several and respective powers together , to cover , protect and defend themselves , their territories and jurisdictions from being so invaded as to be over-run and subdued . nor is the extent and dimensions of the land and territory so scanty and small , or the number of those captains or their people so few , in which , and over whom the span●●ards have not hitherto been able to obtain possession and authority , as some who do not give themselves leave to think so closely of thi● affair , and to examine it with that accuracy which they ought to do , may be inclined and ready to imagine ; seeing , that upon the whole north-side of the isthmus from the river darien to the bastimentos , the spaniards are not in possession of one foot of ground , nor ever were , save for a little while at first of nombre de dios , which they soon relinquish'd . and it is against both all the topicks of argumentation , and all the measures of law and justice , that from the spaniards having made some settlements on the south-sea , and their having , so far as they have obtain'd possession there , restricted and confin'd the natives to narrow bounds , to infer and conclude from thence , their having a propriety in , and a jurisdiction over all the northern coast. and such a pretence is the more unreasonable and absurd , in that the isthmus of darien is naturally divided by a ridge of hills that runneth from east to west . nor can any allegation whatsoever more avowedly offer violence to common sence , and more notoriously attempt the putting an affront upon the understandings of men , than from the spaniards being possessed of , and having dominion over one part of isthmus , to deduce and conclude from thence , that therefore they must have a propriety in , and a soveraign jurisdiction over the whole : and from their title and right of prescription upon long occupation , unto some of the southern boundaries of that streight , to infer and plead their having in the vertue of that , a title to the northern parts thereof , of which as they were never in possession : so the people of the latter are wholly independent upon them of the former , and the rulers of the one altogether absolute within themselves , without deriving the least authority from , or paying any kind or degree of subjection and obedience unto the other . and for the spaniards to pretend , that thro' their possessing porto bello on the south of darien , and carthagena in a small island on the north-side of it , that therefore , and by consequence , they ought to be acknowledg'd to have a right of propriety in , and of jurisdiction over all the adjacent country , which is between two and three hundred english miles in dimension and extent , is not to argue , but to banter , and to ridicule and lampoon mankind , instead of endeavouring to instruct , satisfie and convince them . especially seeing that as all the settlements and plantations which the spaniards have upon , or near unto that isthmus , whether upon the southern , or the northern oceans , were all obtain'd without the consent of the natives , so the indians who live and inhabit in the interjacent and intervening countries , between the spaniards plantations , on the south and north-seas , have still preserved the possession of those territories , without the having ever become subject unto , or the having any ways acknowledg'd the soveraignty and dominion of the spaniards over them . and should we submit to that way and method of reasoning , what a claim would the kings of france have had long ago , to all the countries , provinces , and dominions , which the catholick king doth possess and bear soveraignty over in europe ; in that all the spanish provinces are situated and do lie between the countries which the french king possesseth upon the ocean , and those which he hath right unto , and soveraignity over on the mediterranean . nor can any thing carry more intrinsic and self-evidence along with it , than that when a people were not the first occupiers , and the original inhabitants , their title unto , and their tenure and property in that case in a country can extend and reach no farther , than as they are got into possession of it , either by the consent of the natives , or by conquest in a lawful war , or by prescription , thro' long occupation , upon an unjust one . none of all which do in any manner obtain or hold , or can any ways be pleaded by the spaniards in reference to the peninsula on the isthmus of darien , where the scots are settling and establishing a colony . moreover , to all that is already said under this head , let me further subjoin , that no nations being meerly in actual possession of part of a country that had not been originally their own , hath been accounted sufficient in equity , law or justice , to preclude and debar others from seeking to settle themselves in such places as those strangers who had come first to plant there were not in actual possession of ; whereof it were easie to assign many instances , but it being a matter whereof none that are acquainted with books of voyages , and navigations , can be ignorant , i shall content my self with the mentioning of a few ; but in the mean time shall be careful , that they may be adapted to the case that is under present debate . let it then be observ'd in the first place , that notwithstanding the english had planted upon the continent , as well as in several islands of america , and did particularly possess upon the terra firma from new-england to carolina , without the interposition of colonies belonging to any european princes or states whatsoever , nevertheless the dutch finding long-island , that is since come to be call'd new-york , and which lyeth within the foremention'd limits unoccupy'd , yet environ'd and surrounded on all hands by english plantations , they did in a time of full and entire peace betwixt the crown of great britain and the belgick-states , sit down and establish a plantation upon it ; which without any disturbance from the english , or their quarrelling with them upon that account , they continu'd to possess until the year 1667 , when after a treaty of peace between king charles ii. and the states general , for the putting an end to that war , which had commenc'd between those two ruling powers , anno 1665 , long-island was exchang'd by the dutch for surinam . moreover whereas the spanish plate fleet must of necessity pass between florida , and the bahama islands , unto both which the spaniards do likewise lay claim by challenging a property in and a dominion over them ; yet notwithstaning of this , the english possessed themselves of the said islands , and tho' the spaniards both complained and did highly resent it , and so far as they had strength and power , did as well barbarously as injuriously treat those english , whom they found settled there ; nevertheless the spaniards being no ways able to justifie their right and title to those islands , the english continued to assert and maintain the possession , which they had acquired , as long as they themselves found there intrest in it , and thought it convenient so to do . yea notwithstanding that the spaniards plead a right unto , and a propriety in jucatan , and if the having over-run a great part of a country , which is above 300 leagues in compass , and the having massacred a prodigious number of the native indians , give them a legal title unto , and a dominion over all the territories and districts of it , it must be acknowledged that they had them . nevertheless , the english have not only sailed frequently thither , and landed without asking leave of the spaniards , but they did appropriate unto themselves the logwood in cape cato , which belongeth thereunto , until it was so exhausted , that it could no longer answer the charge of sending ships thither . yea king charles the second in time of peace granted a patent to dr. cox to settle in the bay of mexico , which the spaniards never questioned , nor complained of . and that the doctors project did not succeed , proceeded from the inability or the backwardness of the undertakers to carry it on , and not from the illegality or invalidity of that princes patent to have authorized and justified it . further tho' the bay of campechay , which lies in the gulph of mexico , must be confessed to be situate in a country , over which the spaniards pretend to have the sole soveraignty and jurisdiction , yet the english have accounted this to be no obstruction in way of law and justice , to their settling at port royal in the said bay , and their carrying on there the same trade , of cutting and providing themselves of logwood , which they formerly did at cape cato . whereof as i never heard of any complaint made by the spaniards ; so we may believe that it would not have been regarded if there had , but that the english would have pursued and persevered in the same course and method , of settling , removing , and resettling there again , all which they did as they thought convenient , and for their advantage . moreover tho' all men know , that the spaniards have not only many great plantations and colonies in hispaniola , but challenge a peculiar right to that country , as having conquered it , or rather got treacherously , violently and barbarously , into the possession of it , and whereof their massacring some millions of the natives , may be admitted as a crying and execrable , as well as a sufficient and undeniable proof ; yet the french upon their finding pettit guaves , which lieth and is situated in hispaniola , unoccupied and unpossessed , they have without paying any respect to the pretensions of the spaniards , taken the liberty to settle there , and to establish a colony , and to cultivate a trade . and likewise notwithstanding the claim of an universal right and jurisdiction , which the spaniards ( as i have often said ) do challenge unto , and over the whole empire of mexico , yet the french have not only once and again endeavoured to settle upon the river de spiritu sancto , which is in the bay of mexico , and are at this time studying how to settle at the disemboging of the river messisipi which is in the gulph of mexico , but they have actually settled in guiana , that is situated upon the terra firma of the mexican continent . yea moreover still , namely that tho' the spaniards have great possessions and many plantations , on the isthmus of darien towards the south-sea , and do pretend a right of dominion and soveraignty over that whole country , yet the french have been endeavouring to settle on the sambolas islands , which lie much nearer to porto bello , and other spanish plantations on that isthmus , towards the northern sea than port a●la doth , where the scots have begun to fix and establish a colony ; in order whereunto , they do greatly caress and court a certain indian cacique , called captain corbelo , whose territories lie from the sambola's to that river of conception , as hoping by his favour and assistance to succeed and prosper in their design ; nor are they wanting in their addresses to captain ambrosio , whose jurisdiction extends from the river pinas to the sambol●s , and we may be sure upon the same prospect , if not also on the design of setling within the isthmus it self , whose friendship they have in a great measure acquired , partly by means of his mortal enmity to the spaniards , and partly by the intercession of a brother in law of his called don pedro , who having been taken by the spaniards , and kept for some time by them at panama as a slave , doth therefore irreconcilably hate them . whereunto indeed much more might be added , and largely insisted upon in reference to such countries islands and districts , which the french are become possessed of in those parts of america where the spaniards pretend to have a soveraignity and jurisdiction exclusive of all other european nations , but that it is wholly needless , and would be accounted to be done in design to weary the reader , rather than to inform and convince him , and which would also be an encreasing this discourse into a length and bulk beyond what the question in debate doth any wise require , tho' it be both very important in it self , and the desires and expectation of men at this time more than ordinarily excited and raised , for the having it fully cleared and decided . and therefore all that i will add further , concerning the rest of the plantations which the french have in those american territories and places , where the spaniards do alledge their obtaining a peculiar property , and right of dominion ▪ shall be barely to mention them . namely that they have not only colonies in martinigo , st. christopher's , guardulupa , and divers of the charibbes as well as other islands , to the number at least of twelve or thirteen , and all these within the limits and boundaries unto , and over which the spaniards do claim a right preclusive of all others ; but that they also have and do possess several forts on the coast of caribana , that lyeth in the very heart and bosom of mexico , and which is not many leagues distant from the isthmus of darien , or may be rather said to joyn upon it . and upon the some motive of my designing to be short , and not to load and cloy the reader with more examples and instances of the foregoing nature , than are either indispensibly necessary , or which at least may be such , as they who are impartial inquirers into the legality of the fact of the scots indian and african company , will not be displeased to be made acquainted with . i say that i shall therefore upon that inducement , only briefly intimate what colonies the dutch have settled and establish'd within those american territories , unto which ( besides the title that the spaniards pretend to the whole continent and all the islands of america on the foot of the pop's bull which hath been already disprov'd and manifested to be vain and ridiculous ) they plead a particular right , either thro' their having been parts of the empires , kingdoms , and countries , of which they became possessed , or else that they had been some way or another , dependent upon , or tributary unto them . for the dutch knowing all these pretensions and claims of the spaniards to be groundless , vain , and ridiculous , and accordingly slighting and despising them , are not only settled in surinam , and have several forces on the coasts of guayane , and are masters of the city coro , which are all upon the terra firma , but they have likewise possess'd themselves both of the island curasoa , that lies not above seven leagues from the main , near unto cape roman , and of the islands araba and bonary which are not far distant from that , and had also planted in the island tabago until driven thence by the french , anno 1677 ; during the time of that war which commenc'd 1672 , between france and holland . by all which many and various instances of divers european nations settling within those provinces , islands , and places of america , which they found unoccupy'd by any other european princes or states , and whereof several more examples might be assign'd ( but that it is needless and would be superfluous ) of other potentates and republics in europe that have done the like , notwithstanding any claim of property , right and title which the spaniards pretend to have in , and unto them , and which they have with great confidence heretofore asserted , tho' without any foundation either in reason or law. i say , that i hope it will indisputably appear by these instances and examples , that what the scots have lately done in the establishing a colony with the consent of the natives at acla on the isthmus of darien , which was a place never possess'd nor occupy'd by the spaniards , is , according to the same measures of equity and justice , undeniably lawful , and demonstratively justifiable ; and that all who are impartial and unprejudic'd will acknowledge it to be so . and whatsoever hath been said in defence and justification of any european nation 's having a right to settle in such parts of america as were never occupy'd and possess'd by the spaniards , it is of equal validity and force to authorize and warrant the sitting down and planting in any place , or places there , that may heretofore have been possessed by the spaniards , but which they have since voluntarily relinquish'd ; as they are known to have done in the abandoning several places both on the continent and in the islands of america , where they had formerly settled and establish'd colonies , as well as in their forsaking nombre de dios , and a plantation which they once had on the river darien , which they left and withdrew from ; after that they became possessed of porto bello and carthagena . for tho' it hath been always acknowledg'd , as being grounded upon the laws of nature and nations , that they who are the original , lawful and uncontroverted possessors of a country or land , and have been once in the occupation of it by acts of the body , may and do retain a right and title unto it by acts of the mind , after their having corporally forsaken and left it ; yet it is far otherwise with respect to a people who are come into a country , not only as aliens and strangers , but as invaders and vsurpers , which is the case of the spaniards in relation to those places on the isthmus of darien , as well as elsewhere in america where they had at any time heretofore set down and planted , but have since departed and withdrawn . for being neither the primitive inhabitants , nor having settled there with the leave and consent of the natives , they can stand no otherwise entit'led to any right in , and over those places , than as they have the actual possession , and are occupiers in fact. seeing as their forceable and violent entrance into , and their sitting down in them , by , and in the meer vertue of power and strength , neither did , nor could defeat and extinguish the right of those that had been the indigenae and original inhabitants ; so immediately upon their withdrawing from , and their relinquishing of those places , the title of the natives unto them doth revive and take place , and becomes again as effectual , both for the justifying their own re-assumption , and re-occupation of them , and for their granting a liberty , freedom and right , to any other foreigners to settle in those places , as shall come among them , and desire it , as if they had never been at any time , either disseized or driven from , or disquieted , interrupted and rendred unsafe in their occupation of them . and how easy were it to multiply examples and instances even in europe , where they of one nation having by violence , obtained possession of some of the cities , towns , lands and territories of another , so as either directly to expel and drive away those , who had been the rightful inhabitants and proprietors , or to beget that fear in them , as to cause them to chuse of themselves , either to depart and fly from their possessions , in order to escape the rage of those that had invaded them , than by continuing in their legal inheritances , to become exposed to the lustful pleasure , and cruelty of their enemies ; yet no man ever thought , that the title of such , who upon the foregoing motive , had abandoned , or who in the forementioned manner , had been thrust out and forced away , became thereby annulled and extinguished . but all do confess , and the practice hath been every where , and at all times accordingly , that upon the withdrawment , and departure of them who had been the invaders and usurpers , the other might in the virtue of their antecedent and ancient title , reasume the possession of what they had been either driven from , or had abandoned . but not to trouble my readers with memoirs of that nature , relating to europe , i shall at once evidence and confirm what i have said by two instances , whereof the first shall be in reference to a country , upon the continent of america , that was once in the possession of another european power , than that of spain , and the second shall be concerning a noted island in the west-indies , that was heretofore possessed by the spaniards , but both which are now in the rightful occupation of the english. the former in brief is this ; namely , that the french in the reign of charles the ninth and by his authority , as well as by his encouragement , having in the year 1569 ; transported 1200 families together with 300 soldiers , to the northern part of florida , and having there established a colony , between 32 and 33 degrees n. lat. which after that kings name they stiled carolina , but who upon their treating the natives injuriously , and thro' their having settled at places so remote and distant from one another , that the dispersed and scattred planters , could neither give nor receive mutual relief nor support , were in the year 1573 , assaulted and all cut off by the indians , save one monsieur chaplain , and about 35 more , who got timely into a small ship that lay close by a fort , and therein escaped to the island anticosty , in the mouth of the river canada , yet that notwithstanding of the settlement there of the french , and their having been once possessed of that place , the english are now gotten into possession of it , and have erected there a noble and flourishing colony , the propriety whereof , was in the year 1661 granted by charles the second , king of england , to several men of quality and their associates , and whereof the french have never complained as of a wrong and injustice done unto them . and indeed they are a wiser people , than to be guilty of so great an absurdity , and they do very well know , that such a complaint would by the english have been counted ridiculous , in that thro' their having been the first europeans that settled there , but expelled thence by the natives , on whom they had intruded , there neither doth arise nor remain unto them any right of claim unto that country , nor any exception against the title of the english thereunto , who are become possest thereof with the liking and consent of the natives . the second is that of barbados , which the spaniards having for some time settled upon , left and forsook , in order to their planting in other places in that hemisphere , which they hoped would turn to better account , and prove more to their advantage ; as they did upon the like motive abandon many other places , where they had at first sit down , which island the english having found unoccupied , either by them , or any other europeans , and nothing left upon it , that could denominate the spaniards to be residential , or entitle them to the possession and propriety of it , save a few hogs , that were never by any laws whatsoever , reckoned proper and valuable representatives , substitutes and deputies , for the keeping possession in the name and behalf of a people ; the english thereupon entred into the island , and made settlements there , which how displeasing and offensive soever it was to the spaniards at first , and how ready soever they were to have quarrelled with their successors upon that head , had their power been answerable to their resentment ; yet they have by a solemn treaty since , renounced all pretensions of claim and title unto it , and have acknowleged the english to be the lawful rightful proprietors of barbados . but i will insist no longer , nor add any more on this head , all that hath been already said upon it , having been done ex abundanti , in order meerly to render this discourse , as particular and clear as i can ; not that it was absolutely and indispensably needful towards the justification , of the scots calidonian colony , seeing that place was never in the possession of the spaniards ; but hath always continued in the possession of the natives . the point then that is next to be more narrowly enquired into , and to be discoursed with greater application , than it hath hitherto been , is to search out , assign and shew the strength of the reasons , upon which the scots sitting down erecting forts , and planting a colony , in the place above-mentioned is founded and done . and i shall endeavour to give that detale , and to make such an enumeration and deduction of them , as shall convince the unbiassed part of mankind , that it is both lawfully and legally done by them , and without wrong , injury or injustice to the spaniards . it is true that i might supersede the giving my self this trouble , in that thro' the spaniards charging the scots , to have therein invaded their territories and demesus ; and the scots positively denying it , the proof of the charge and accusation should be wholly devolved upon the spaniards , for that being the affirmative part of the controversy and question , which is that alone in any matter of debate , which is accounted capable of admitting probation , it belongs therefore unto them to make it good : whereas the scots by insisting and standing altogether upon that which is the negative part , are both by all the logical rules of argumentation , and by all the methods , measures and standards , allowed as well as required in judicial proceedings , excused from proving of their right any otherwise , than by answering the allegations and exceptions which the spaniards do advance against it : for the company denying that ever the spaniards had any possession of the place where they have planted , or the least legal right unto , or property in it ; and the spaniards alledging that they had , it doth in law and reason , belong unto the spaniards to instruct and prove what they pretend unto , and challenge . nevertheless , for the obviating of all clamours , and extinguishing of all suspicions against , and in reference to the legality , equity , and justice of what the scots have done , i shall put this matter into such a shape and mould , as that the probation of it may be devolv'd and made incumbent upon the scots , and the proofs thereof expected from them . that which i do therefore say and affirm , is , that the scots are become rightful proprietors of that part of the isthmus of darien where they are settled , and that they have a good legitimate and legal title to that portion of that american streight , whereof they have taken possession , and are become occupiers ; and that therein they have done no wrong to the spaniards , but that they are upon a better , and a more just , righteous , and legal bottom , in reference to their caledonian colony and plantations , than the spaniards themselves are , either in relation to those settlements , which they have upon that isthmus , or with respect to such colonies which they have in any other parts of america . and that which i have here asserted , and with the highest confidence adhere unto my affirmation of , bears upon these three following things , which are all of them uncontestably true , demonstratively evident , and as infallibly certain , according to the receiv'd maxims of law , by which titles , rights and properties are defined , decided and determined , as those principles of science are confessed to be , of the whole's being greater than a part ; and that where two propositions are directly contradictory , the one of them unto the other , they cannot both of them be true . the first is , that the natives were not only originally the rightful possessors of that place , but that they were actually in the possession and occupation of it , when the scots landed and sat down there . and hereof there are five undeniable proofs . ( 1. ) their inhabiting in that part of the isthmus , not only independent upon the spaniards , and without their leave , but against their will , and in defiance of their power : nor did they only continue to dwell there , without the demanding liberty of the spaniards so to do ; but they had always debarr'd and shut out , nor had ever receiv'd or suffer'd the spaniards to dwell amongst them . and if any thing be sufficient to declare a people to be the rightful and actual possessors of a country ; surely the possessing it both hereditarily from the primitive occupiers and proprietors of it , and preclusively of all others whatsoever , must be held and esteemed enough to do it . ( 2. ) that the native indians were at the time of the scots landing , and of their beginning to settle , the lawful , actual , and sole possessors of that part of the isthmus , where the scots have erected forts , and built themselves dwellings , doth uncontrolably appear , from their having receiv'd and welcom'd them , without the having had any communication with the spaniards about it , and in order thereunto , or the having ask'd liberty of them for the doing of it : for it is not only dissonant from the custom and practice of all people and nations whatsoever , who are either subjects or tributary to others , whom they acknowledge for their rulers and sovereigns , to admit and receive aliens and foreigners calmly and tamely among them , without first sending to their superiors , and their rightful governors , to understand their pleasure , and to obtain their instructions and commands concerning , and how to behave themselves in it : but it is likewise treason by the laws of all constitutions and governments , and a fact that is capitally punishable to do otherwise . and consequently the indians on that part of the isthmus , having done nothing of all this in reference to the spaniards , but on the contrary , having by a right , power and authority inherently lodg'd in themselves , receiv'd and welcom'd the scots into their country , convers'd with them in a friendly and peaceable manner , given them all the hospitable entertainment , and kind liberal supplies , relief and succour , which their condition and circumstances enabled them to render , is a proof beyond the being reasonably control'd , of their being the proprietors as well as the possessors of those territories and districts in darien , where the scots are settled . ( 3. ) there may be subjoyned hereunto , in further confirmation that the native indians , by the confession and acknowledgment even of the spaniards themselves , were the unquestioned and undoubted possessors and occupiers of that part of the isthmus , where the scots have establish'd their plantation and colony , and of the country neighbouring upon and adjacent unto it , in that the spaniards have at several times treated with them , as with a free and independent people , and by agreements , contracts and stipulations , have , upon certain conditions and terms , obtain'd and procur'd liberty of them , to settle colonies within their circuits and precincts , and to employ people to work in such gold and silver mines , as do lie within the compass of their jurisdictions . whereof to omit other examples , i shall assign one known and public instance , and i shall the rather do it , because it respecteth the nearest possession of mines which have been wrought in by the spaniards to the place where the scots are planted , of any which they can pretend to have upon the isthmus . the instance and case then , in brief , is this ; namely , that there being within 12 or 13 leagues of the caledonian colony , certain gold and silver mines , which are esteem'd as rich as are either in that or any other parts of america , the spaniards therefore , to get into the possession , and to reap the benefit of them , instead of attempting by power and force , and in the way of conquest to do it , they amicably address'd the cacique , in whose territories and within whose jurisdiction they lay , who was call'd captain diego , and by a treaty and stipulation with him , that he should have a share of what gold should be obtain'd , procur'd leave upon that condition to enter upon the occupation of those mines ; which as it is an undeniable evidence , in the opinion and judgment of the very spaniards themselves , that diego and his people were both the rightful and legal possessors and proprietors of that territory and district ; so the liberty that was granted unto the spaniards by that cacique , and the people that were under him , did no ways desseize him of , or eject him out of his right , nor change , and much less extinguish his property in that territory where the mines were . they being rather admitted as tenants and labourers who were to pay him a rent in allowing him such a proportion of their gains , than as proprietors that had a legal right and title in them . and accordingly when the same captain diego found that the spaniards had not only violated the conditions upon which he had given them permission to work in those mines , by refusing to grant him his tribute or share when it was sent for and demanded , but that they were contriving , plotting and conspiring how to destroy and exterminate , or at least to enslave him and his people , he thereupon forcibly fell upon them , and drove them from thence . which as it was done some little time before the scots came to settle on the isthmus , so at their arrival there , they found that place , as well as all other that lay near to the spot where they have establish'd their colony 〈…〉 europeans and particularly altogether unpossessed and unoccupied by the spaniards . ( 4. ) there may yet be annexed , as a further proof of the native indians , being the rightful owners , proprietors and possessors of that part of the isthmus , that they have successively since the castilians first discovery of that country , and their landing in it , been in terms of hostility as well as of distance with them , who as they were never subdued , nor brought into that subjection , as either formally or tacitely , explicitely , or implicitely to acknowledge the spaniards , having a dominion or soveraignty over them , or to confess their being become subjects , or vassals to the spaniards ; so the hostile oppositions , which they have in all times continued to make against them , cannot be said to have been a rebellious , but just and lawful wars . it being the highest of nonsence to stile them rebels , who were never subjects . yea it is to ridicule as well as to endeavour to mislead , and impose upon mankind , to bestow that title and epithete , upon the martial actions against the spaniards , of those darien indians , of whom i have been speaking ; it being a perversion of words , from their proper and allowed signification , and the fastning a sence and meaning upon them , which they were never invented , instituted , nor agreed to bear , which is worse than the speaking unto them in a language that is wholly unknown . in that by the latter we are only left under ignorance , of what an other intends to say unto us ; but in the way of the former , there is a plain design to cozen and cheat us . nor is it unworthy of remark , that of all the natives of america , whom the spaniards have for their enemies , they have none that are more inveterately and mortally so , than the unsubdued indians on the isthmus of darien , as doth not only appear by what they themselves have done , and continue to do against them ; but by the encouragement and assistance , which they have at all times been ready to give , unto the privateers , piccaroons and buccaneers of all nations , that have within their circle ever come to assault and prey upon them . witness what they did in the case of captain sharp , who having landed at golden island with 330 men , and being joyned by two darien caciques , with a good body of indians , took sancta maria , and made prize of several spanish ships ; it being also upon the invitation , and with the aid of those indian rulers , that captain sawking assaulted panama , the legality and justice whereof as founded upon the authority of those caciques , whose commission he had obtained , he avowed and asserted in a letter to the governor of that place . ( 5. ) there remains one thing yet further to be added , in demonstration that the indian natives are not only the true , rightful and undoubted proprietors and possessors of those territories upon the isthmus of darien , of which the spaniards are not become masters , nor have planted colonies in them ; but that they have been openly , solemnly and avowedly owned and acknowledged to be such , both by the courts and civil judicatures of england . now the case which i have my eye upon , and do refer unto for the support of this assertion , being signally remarkable in it self , as well as wonderfully pertinent , suited and adapted to the matter in hand , i shall therefore both give a brief detale of it , and endeavour to set in the true and best light that i can . the case in short then was this ; namely that the same bartholomew sharp , whom i have just now mentioned , being an english man , and consequently a natural subject of his majesty of great britain , was by a memorial given in by the spanish ambassador to king charles the second , complained of , for having in the time of peace between the two crowns , committed acts of hostility and piracy upon the spaniards in the west-indies , and thereby taken great treasure and booty from them , of which restitution and reparation was demanded . nor was it deniable but that the said sharp , having joyned with the dariens , who were then in war with the spaniards , as indeed they always in effect are , did both invade the spanish territories , and attack their ships and vessels on the coasts of america , and commit several acts of force and hostility upon them , to their very great damage and loss . for which being here in custody , and thereupon indicted , arraigned and judicially tried , the whole he had to plead for his justification , as well as in his defence , was that he had therein acted upon , and in the vertue and by the authority of a commission granted unto him , by some of the caciques of darien , who were absolute rulers , and altogether independant upon the spaniards . upon which plea , after a fair and full hearing and tryal , and a due consideration of their intrinsick power , and independant jurisdiction and authority , in whose name and by whose commission , he had made war , and committed ravage upon the spaniards , he was acquitted from the criminal charge of that , whereof he had been indicted and arraigned , and was declared not guilty of the pyracy , whereof the spaniards had accused him , and complained to the king. and for any to say , that the alledging of sharp's having been acquitted , upon the ground of his having acted by a commission from the dariens , is a meer jest , as some have been reported to have expressed themselves ; i shall only in reference to that term and phrase modestly observe , that as the matter of fact in his being acquitted , is certain , and that no other reason was then given , or hath since been assigned of it , save his having acted by a commission of a people that were absolute within such and such territories , and districts , and altogether independant upon the spaniards ; it is too great a reflection upon the honour and justice of the nation , the integrity and uprightness of our judicial courts , and upon our sincerity in the observation of alliances , to stile a juridical verdict and sentence , a jest , in that which was the sole and the alone legal foundation of and motive unto it . and what an idea would the belief of this give both heathen and christian nations of the world of us , and what an opinion must they of all countries , where a regard to truth and justice is maintained , conceive and entertain of the english , if in legal trials wherein right is to be done to princes in alliance with them , reparation to be made unto those , who have been unjustly and injuriously , as well as egregiously , wronged ; and wherein crimes of the highest nature and of most pernicious consequence to mankind ought to meet with their demerit ; i say that if in tryals of that kind and importance , a sham , whim or jest , must over-rule proceedings , and be the ground of the juridical decision ; all which must be acknowledg'd to have obtain'd in sharp's acquittal , if he came otherwise to be brought in not guilty , and to be discharged , than by reason of his having acted upon a commission receiv'd from the dariens , as legal , supreme , and independant rulers over that part of the isthmus , where they have their territories , and are in possession . so that having dispatch'd the first and the chief proposition , and the main particular , upon which the legitimacy of the settlement of the scots company on the isthmus of darien is legally founded ; i do in the next place proceed to the second proposition , which i promised to lay down , as a further ground of their having righteously become planters , and begun the establishment of a colony in the place abovemention'd . and of this i shall give an account with more speed and ease , than i did of the former ; namely , that the true proprietors and lawful possessors of a country are vested with a power inherent in themselves , by which they may rightfully and authoritatively , without being accountable to any other , admit and receive strangers , foreigners , aliens , and others , into their territories , and within their own proper and peculiar jurisdictions , and allow them the freedom privilege and right of settling , inhabiting , and trading among them . for it is one of the first principles both of the laws of nature and nations , that they who are the original and primitive proprietors , inheritors , possessors , and occupyers of a country and soil , may admit , welcom , and take in others , into the inhabiting , planting , cultivating , and improving such places and parts of it , as doth neither thrust out and dispossess themselves of what is either necessary or convenient to their living safely after their wonted manner , of plenty and pleasure , nor which will incommodate , hurt , or endanger them in the enjoyment of what they do retain . for tho' no man can give , dispose and alienate to another , that which he neither has in possession , nor can pretend any legal claim of title and right unto , which the pope both betray'd his pride and folly in doing , when he took upon him the granting of all the west-indies to the king of spain , being therein ridiculously liberal of that which did no ways appertain to him : yet every one hath a right of bestowing upon another , what is indisputably his own , provided it be sine damno tertii , without the wronging or the prejudicing a third person , or a party , upon whom he either depends as his superiour , or of whose convenience he is previously obliged , either by the laws of nature or of nations , or by antecedent agreements , contracts , and stipulations , to take care . nor is this any personal or private notion of mine , but the uniform and universal judgment of all civilians , out of whose writings it were easie to cite many testimonies , were it not in a manner wholly superfluous , thro' the intrinsic evidence which shine in the matter and case it self . so that i shall content my self with one or two from puffendorf , who is one of the most judicious and learned , as well as of the latest authors that have written of the right and laws of nature and nations , ea est , says he , vis dominii , ut de rebus quae tanquam propriae & in solidum ad nos pertinent , pro arbitrio nostro disponere possimus : it is a necessary appendent unto dominion , that he or they unto whom it doth properly and entirely belong , may dispose of all and every thing or things , which do fall within the compass and circle of it , to whom , after what manner , and upon what terms they please : and as he further saith , vt quis rem suam possit alienare , seu in alterum transferre , id ipsum ex dominii pleni natura resultat . cum enim hoc domino det facultatem de re pro arbitrio disponendi , utique vel praecipua ejus facultatis pars videtur , si ita placeat , eam in alterum posse transferre : it belongeth as an essential property unto dominion , and followeth from the nature of it , that he or they unto whomsoever it doth appertain , do thereby , from thence , and thereupon stand possess'd of and vested with a right and power of disposing , transferring , and of alienating those things they have a right unto , and propriety in , to what person or persons they shall think meet and convenient so to do . to which might be added that of grotius , who very well saith , that non venit ex jure civili , sed ex jure naturali , quo quisque suum potest abdicare : it is from the laws of nature , rather than that of nations , that every man may dispose of his own as he pleaseth . nor do the diversity of forms and modes of government in and over countries and societies of people , any ways change and alter the case in this particular . for be the supreme authority placed in one person , or in a plurality ; and be the exercise and administration of it , either circumscrib'd or confin'd by laws , or left to the arbitrary will and pleasure of him that governeth , it is the same thing with respect to that which i am discoursing of : seeing what the latter is enabled to do , by an individual and despotical right , in the execution whereof he acts always unaccountably , tho' possibly not at all times so wisely ; the other may do the same , under the direction of the laws , and with the consent of the people . and how much soever they who are cloath'd with the supreme ruling power may be limited and restrain'd , either by the maxims of wisdom and honesty , and by the natural and unwritten laws of humanity , gratitude and justice , or by political compacts , and municipal ordinances and constitutions , from acting against the good welfare and interest of their countries and people ; yet all do acknowledge , that both they of the one form and rank , and of the other , have not only a wonderful latitude and liberty vouchsafed them in whatsoever is for the advantage of themselves , and of those over whom they are set , but that they stand indispensably oblig'd ( tho' the omission of it is with impunity ) to pursue and fall in with every thing that is for the security and universal interest of themselves , their subjects , their territories and districts . all which do obtain and hold in relation to the caciques and native indians on the isthmus of darien , who as they have an absolute , independant and plenary power , to receive , give freedom unto , and authorize such strangers and foreigners , to settle , inhabit , and traffick among them , as they shall think meet and judge it convenient to entertain and endue with those privileges ; so in no one thing whatsoever could they have more consulted their advantage , and have acted more subserviently to their own interest , than in the receiving the scots to settle among them , and to erect forts and establish colonies . for besides the benefits which may thereby accrue to them , whereof they probably may be neither thoughtful nor solicitous , of being render'd a more civiliz'd people , and of enjoying means and helps for the arrival at the knowledge of the true god , and of our lord jesus christ , and of all annexed thereunto , depending thereupon , and resulting from thence , there are many great secular advantages , which they will thereby become furnished with , and attain unto . for it is evident , how that by this means , the gold and silver which lies hid and bury'd in their mines , and the several sorts of dying woods which grow in their fields , as well as many more natural productions , which their lands do afford , besides such goods and commodities , as their grounds may , by art and industry , be brought to yield and bear , will thro' labour and cultivation , be gain'd and improv'd both to their own benefit , and that of european nations , and particularly of great britain , and the rest of his majesty's dominions , which are all at present of little or no use , service of advantage , either to the natives or to the rest of mankind ; and that partly by reason of the laziness , ignorance and unskilfulness of those indians , and partly because of the want of a sufficient number of fit and proper hands , to turn all these and more both of like and of other kind of productions , which that country either actually doth , or by manuring may be improv'd to afford , to a beneficialness either unto themselves or unto others . moreover , by the indians having admitted the scots to sit down and to establish colonies within their territories , they will become strengthened to defend themselves and their possessions , against those who have always been their enemies ; and who have pursued all the ways and means , and have improved all the advantages , which they could arrive at , either by fraud and force , for the encroaching upon their demesnes , and the wresting them from them , and for the subduing and enslaving their persons . for tho' the scots are desirous to live neighbourly , peaceably , and amicably with the spaniards , and will be far from either committing any acts of hostility upon them , unless they be first attack'd and assaulted by them ( in which case they will be justifiable by the laws of god and nations to withstand and oppose force with force ) or from the countenancing , encouraging , and aiding of those natives who have receiv'd them , and with whom they are enter'd into alliances , in any offensive wars against the spaniards within the spanish colonies and settlements , yet the scots will account themselves oblig'd in gratitude and justice , as well as by vertue of the covenants and stipulations , which they have made and contracted with the indians , within whose jurisdictions , and near unto whose territories , there calidonian colony lies , to cover and protect those natives against all the violences , which the spaniards shall causelessly and injuriously offer them . which as it will be of wonderful defence and security to the natives , amongst whom they are received to dwell and to trade , against their ancient , constant and irreconcilable enemies , so it was an act of great discretion and prudence , in those indians , that they have upon the said prospect and motive , welcomed the scots into their country , and admitted them to plant , and to erect forts within their precincts . hereunto may be added , that it is upon the foundation and basis of the native americans , having an intrinsick and legal power of receiving foreigners and aliens among them , and an indubitable and unquestionable right of allowing them a freedom , to settle in their countries and within their territories , either upon the continent , or in islands , that all the plantations of the europeans , and particularly of the english in the west-indies , are rendred lawful and just in the sight of god and of men . for whereas the english were not the primitive inhabitants , nor the original possessors of those american provinces , nor of several of the islands , where they have now many and large colonies and plantations ; they must either be accounted violent invaders , and unrighteous usurpers of those territories where they have settled and planted , or they must derive their right and title to their being there , from some act of the natives importing their consent to receive them ; which the indians cannot be allowed to have been capable of giving , without a previous supposed right in them so to do . yea , the very spaniards upon their first discovery of america , pretended no otherwise to settle there , than with the allowance and consent of the natives , as i have intimated before in and from the acknowledgement of columbus , who was the discoverer of the west-indies , as it is recorded by ●●errera , the spanish historian : tho' it must withal be confessed , that they did not proceed upon that principle ; but that into whatsoever places they were suffered to come , and were received by the indians , they did there establish themselves by violence , and thro' unjust wars , and upon the enslaving , massacring and exterminating of the natives . there remains yet one proposition more , which is the third that i promised to lay down , in order both to the representing within a narrow view and compass , the whole legal ground and foundation , upon which the scots settlement is superstructed and built , and for the demonstrating that their planting in that place of the isthmus of darien , is according and agreeable to the laws of nations , and consequently lawful , just and blameless , unless vitiated and rendred illegitimate , and culpable thro' the violation of some articles of alliances , between the crowns of great britain and of spain , which i shall afterwards invincibly shew that it is not . the proposition then , ( and without which , the two former would be of no significancy nor service , to the decision of the question under debate ) is , that the scots have had the leave and consent of the natives for their setting down and planting in the place above-mention'd , and that they have neither forcibly invaded those indians , nor by fraud or power wrested that part of their territory from them ; but that whatsoever they are become possess'd of , was by a grant and concession of it from those natives within whose jurisdiction it lyeth . for whereas the scots did not find the place void , but that it was pre-occupy'd by the natives , who were the true proprietors of it , as well as of the country adjacent thereunto , it is impossible that the scots should have any right and title , for sitting down and erecting forts there , unless in the way of conquest , surrender , or consent of those who were the antecedent inhabitants and owners , these being the all and the only ways met with and known in laws , whereby the subsequent comers into a country already possess'd and occupy'd , can acquire a right and title for sitting down and becoming residents . and as the scots do wholly renounce all pretence and claim of conquest , as the ground and foundation of their settlement there ; so they do not challenge a possession , either of that particular place , where they have erected their works and made themselves dwellings , or of any part of the country that neighboureth unto it , by and upon a plenary and full surrender of it to the calidonian company , and exclusive of the natives retaining any right in the place , save as the scots shall amicably indulge and gratuitously allow them ; but the whole which they plead , is a grant from , and consent of those indians , who were the primitive and rightful proprietors , for their sitting down in that part of the country , and for the cultivating and improving it to their own use and benefit , and for the taking in such other places within their territories as they shall judge meet , and find themselves in a condition to dilate , stretch and extend their colony unto . and the present natives of that place , and ●f the districts about it , being as free from any subjection unto , or dependance upon the spaniards who do at this time possess and occupy and colonies upon the isthmus , as the ancestors and predecessors of the former were at any season heretofore from and upon those of the latter , it doth by a necessary consequence follow , and become naturally deducible from thence , that the scots coming to settle with the consent of the caciques , and of the indian people under them , must thereupon be in the like condition with the natives , and no ways liable to any claim of the spaniards , more than the indians were and are , and therefore not to be held concerned in , or made censurable upon any complaints from the court of madrid . and that the scots have the consent of the natives , for whatsoever they have done in that part of america , i suppose no man will betray such reproachful ignorance of the present transactions of the world , or shew so much impudent effrontery , as to deny it : nevertheless i shall so far supererrogate , as to give some demonstrative and undeniable proofs of it . for so prudent and discreet , as well as calm and temperate were they , who commanded the ships that sail'd thither , and arriv'd on that coast about the beginning of november , 1698 ; and particularly they who were sent along in them to have authority over such as were to land , and to be directors of the colony that was to be establish'd , in case they were receiv'd and welcom'd , that notwithstanding of distempers , that were among them , as well as of several other inconveniences , under which they labour'd , as also notwithstanding their having both a good naval and a land force , they would not so much as enter into the port or haven , or attempt to set any body of men on shore , until they were encourag'd thereunto by the natives , and having had some of them on board their ships , were invited by them to do it , and withal told that they were very welcome , and that they had long expected them . yea , such was their care , circumspection and tenderness of escaping the very suspicion of invading that part of the isthmus , to which they had directed their course , and upon the particular coast whereof they fell in , that they would not disembark any of their military forces , and companies of soldiers , until by some of the principal among them , who went on shore with the indians , that had visited them on board their ships , they had obtain'd a meeting and congress with the cacique in whose territory the port lay , and had both receiv'd his consent for their landing within his district , and had concerted the terms for their settlement within the bounds of his precincts ; which cacique , being one call'd captain andreas , did upon the second meeting and congress between the scots and him , not only agree to receive them into any part of his country they would choose to settle in ; but took a commission from them , promising that both himself , and those under his authority would assist and defend them with the hazard and at the expence of their lives . to which may be added , how that besides their daily and friendly coversation and intercourse together , both at first and all along since testify'd on the part of the scots , by their presenting the natives with such things , as might be most acceptable and pleasing unto them , and witnessed on the part of the indians , by their supplying the scots with such provisions and eatables as they either bred or could catch in hunting , which they could spare out of their bare and daily livelihood and subsistence ; i say that over and above all this , tho' a sufficient indication and proof of the natives receiving them into their country , and of their giving their consent to the scots landing and setling among them ; there was a formal compact and stipulation transacted in the most solemn manner , between captain andreas and them , and which was ratify'd on the part of the scots , by their giving unto captain andreas a sword and a pair of pistols , and confirmed on his part and that of the indians , by their delivering a piece of turf and twigg unto the scots , in token of the grant which the natives had made unto the scots of a liberty to settle and establish a colony in their country . moreover in further evidence , that the scots have erected forts , and planted their calidonian colony with the consent of the natives , i shall finally observe , how that upon the approach of the spaniards with some military forces , to have either surprized the scots , or in a fair encounter to have beaten and drove them from thence , the indians in that district were unanimously ready to have joyned them against the spaniards , and actually did so with such a number of their best men , as the scots out of a great multitude that offer'd themselves , judged convenient to entertain and receive . among whom as there was the cacique's own son ; so both he and all the rest of the indians , that marched in conjunction with the scots against the spaniards , behaved themselves with great fidelity , and with as much bravour , as the sudden flight of the spaniards , would allow them occasion and opportunity of manifesting . so that upon the whole , i may now venture to conclude , that the settlement of the scots on the isthmus of darien , is not only according to the laws of nations just and lawful , and no ways injurious to the rights of any , and that they have in all the steps which they have therein taken , proceeded according to the rules and measures , by which all the european nations , who have established plantations in any parts of the world , do both vindicate themselves from obnoxiousness to blame in what they did , and do justifie their claim of right and title unto them , and for the defending and upholding of them : but i may presume with modesty , as well as with truth , further to affirm , that there never was a plantation or colony settled by any nation whatsoever , or in any part of the world whatsoever upon juster principles , or whose establishment hath been transacted , with more fairness and candor , and with all due respect to the reasonable pretences of every one that had but a shadow or seemingness of claim , as well as with a tender and full regard to the property and right of the natives , whose both consent and entreaty they have for authorizing them in what they have done . having then fully both declared and demonstrated the legality of the scots , having planted a colony on the isthmus of darien , and given a deduction of the grounds of law and justice , upon which that establishment is founded and built , and by which it is evidently vindicated , from all the exceptions and complaints that are or can be made against it by the spaniards , or by any others charging it as unlawful , invasive and criminal : it may possibly be said in favour of the spaniards , that tho' there be no usurpation made thereby upon their rights , yet thro' the adjacency and nearness of that plantation , to the colonies which the spaniards are allowed to be rightfully possessed of , upon the isthmus , the scots have not acted so kindly and amicably , as might have been expected from the subjects of a prince and potentate , who is in a firm alliance , and under all the bonds and measures of friendship , with his catholick majesty . and therefore that tho' that settlement , be neither against the laws , nor the rules of justice , yet it is a violation of those terms of decency , and of bienseance , which ought to be observed among monarchs , that are so cordially united in royal and brotherly correspondence and amity , as his britannick majesty and the king of spain are known to be . but in reference to that allegation , there are several things which lie obvious to be offer'd . namely , that by this exception , the scots are only censurable for having trespass'd against the ceremonies and punctilio's of what is call'd genteel and good breeding : but not for having offended against the rules of justice , or for having violated the laws of property . so that tho' they may not have acted so mannerly as some people would have had them , yet they have done nothing that is unlawful and unrighteous . nor was it hitherto ever expected , and much less requir'd , that a nation , rather than to be deficient in a complement , should both neglect and abandon their interest . moreover , whatsoever respect the subjects of any soveraign ought to have unto the rules of complacence , and the ceremonies of royal courtships , by and according to which crown'd heads do conduct and govern themselves towards one another , while matters regarding the benefit and prosperity of a kingdom do fall within the compass of the personal transactions of a few , or do lie under private debates , and antecedently to their being digested and concerted into parliamentary bills , and before those bills be ratify'd into laws , and pass'd into acts ; yet there is no deference of that nature payable , nor any observance to be had of meer ceremonies of courtship , after they are dispenc'd with , and superceded by a statute , and the affair wherein they were to have been practised , is become authorized by a municipal law. further it must necessarily also be granted , that the place where the caldionian colony is establish'd , is no nearer to the spanish plantations , by its being in the hands of the scots , than it was while in the alone and sole possession of the natives . nor is there so much reason or cause , why the spaniards should fear the meeting with any thing that may be uncivil or hurtful from the scots , as they had reason to apprehend and dread from the indians , in that the latter are not only a rude and barbarous people , but their ancient , inveterate , implacable and mortal enemies ; whereas the former , are both a civil , generous , and christian people , trained up in all the measures of humanity , good breeding , morality , and religion , and governing themselves by the laws of revelation , as well as of nations , and who withal have never been in war , nor are desirous to have any hostility with them . yea , the alliances between the crowns of great britain and of spain ought to obviate all jealousie in the spaniards , of their having any thing that is either undecent or injurious offer'd unto them by the scots , who are subjects under a monarch that is in affinity with his catholick majesty . whereas thro' want of leagues and stipulations between the spaniards and those indians , into whose territories the scots are receiv'd , they had ground of being always and justly suspicious , that such mischiefs would be done them , as the power of those natives could enable them to attempt and execute . further , if the adjacency and nearness of the scots plantation unto the spanish colonies prove matter of offence unto the latter , and of complaint against the former , the fault thereof is wholly to be lodg'd upon the spaniards , and therefore the blame ought entirely to fall upon them . seeing whatsoever the scots are come into the possession and occupation of , they have a just and legal right thereunto , from the grant and consent of the natives , who were the undoubted and true proprietors thereof ; whereas the whole which the spaniards do there possess , and all the colonies which they have settled , hath not only been done without the leave , but against the will of the ancient and rightful owners . so that by reason of the badness of their title , which flows from usurpation , and is built upon their having unjustly invaded what belonged unto others ; the whole of a reasonable accusation , and of a just complaint , doth lie against them , and their plantations ; whereas the title of the scots proving legal and good , thro' their having come to inhabit and settle with the allowance , and upon the invitation of the indians , the nearness of their colony to those of the spaniards , doth not make them or it obnoxious to any just and rational expostulations or remonstrances . nor is the case of the spaniards made better because of their colonies being establish'd long ago , or the condition of the scots render'd worse , by reason of their having but lately begun to sit down , and to plant ; in that the title of the one is good from the first moment ; whereas no length of time can ever make the claim of the other justifiable : for as all lawyers do say , and particularly grotius , that tempus in se nullam habet vim effectricem , that a possession which is acquir'd unjustly at first , can never be render'd just by a continuance in the long occupation of it : so a title unto a place , and a right in a settlement , by the grant and with the consent of the true proprietors , is equally good , just and valid in law the first day , as it will be after the having been inherited a thousand years . moreover , there is not that nearness of the calidonian colony to the plantations which the spaniards have upon the isthmus of darien , as some thro' ignorance of maps and unacquaintedness with journals , may , upon a general noise and clamour , be inclin'd to imagine ; seeing none of the settlements , which the spaniards have , and whereof they are in the actual possession and occupation , are within less distance than fifteen or sixteen leagues of the scots plantation , which is enough not only to silence the report , and to put an end to the pretence of the adjacency between the colonies of the one and the other , but for the giving large bounds for determining between their properties and jurisdiction , and for chalking out limits of division and separation betwixt what can any time resonably arise , and come to be their several and respective claims . and as they who would extend their pretence of right and jurisdiction fifteen or sixteen leagues beyond what they are actually possess'd of , may as well enlarge it to a thousand ; so neither do the titles of princes unto their various and different dominions and territories depend upon the nearness unto , or the remoteness of their lands from each others , but upon the legal property which they have , and their being either in the actual possession of them , or of countries , cities , towns , or places , upon which they do depend , or upon the retaining a claim by vertue of an hereditary right which they have not renounced . but they must not only be strangely unacquainted with histories as well as with maps , but stand ignorant of what every traveller can inform them , who do not know that even in europe there are soveraign jurisdictions and principalities , surrounded by and inclosed within the dominions of other princes , whereof among many others , orange and avignion are undeniable instances . nor is it possible to be avoided , but the lands and territories of all neighbouring princes whatsoever , who do live upon continents , must be contiguous in some one place or another . and tho' the limits of some princes countries , may in some places be divided from those of other potentates by ridges of mountains , or by considerable rivers ; yet for the most part they are no otherwise distinguished and separated , than by a road , a hedge , a brook , or by erected pillars of wood , or by stones which are set up here and there . finally that wherewith the scots stand charged , and whereof they are in this particular accused ▪ is no more than what is practised by all european princes , and states in most parts or the world , where they have settled colonies and plantations , and that without the infraction of the bonds of amity and alliances between them , or the being thought to trespass against the rules of decency and respect , which the rulers of kingdoms and republicks , are accustomed to render to each other , of which it were easy to assign many undeniable instances , but i shall confine my self to a few . 't is sufficiently known , that all along on the coast of africk , and particularly on the river gambe , the english , french , and other europeans , have their settlements intermixed and contiguous , without clamouring against or impeaching of one an other , on the score of adjacency . nor is it to be denied , but that as ceuta , tangier and mamora , do lie in the bosom of the empire of morocco ; so that they have been possessed by , and have belonged to different european potentates , without their complaining of one another upon that motive . neither is it to be in the least contradicted , but that the english and french have their several and respective plantations , on the island of newfoundland , where , save in the time of actual war , between these two crowns , they live in all friendliness together , each of them following , carrying on , and promoting their several fisheries , in and by which as many seamen are bred as well as employed , and navigation greatly encreased , and multitudes of ships advantageously used ; so with a little cost that is disbursed on nets , and on diet for saylers , ( which also turns to a national benefit and gain ) there is more wealth floweth annually into the kingdom , or at least might , if that trade were encouraged , and cultivated as it deserveth and ought to be , than by any one branch of our manufacture whatsoever , to the fabricking whereof to make it mercantile , there is so much previous expence required . the same might be instanced with respect of the island of st. christopher's , which belongeth half no the english , and half to the french , tho' neither of their shares be well peopled or cultivated . whereunto may be also added , that the dutch and portuguese have their different and respective plantations , on the coast of brasile , without any misunderstanding or quarrel between them on that account , and to which the spaniards do pretend as much right , as they do to the isthmus of darien . yea the island of st. thomas , which is possessed by the danes , is not far distant from porto rico , which is in the occupation of the spaniards ; as also very near unto st. thomas , lyeth the crab island , which is pretended unto not only by the spaniards , and the french , and particularly by the danes , but likewise by the english , who were once possessed of it , and which i do wonder they endeavour not to repossess themselves of , seeing as it is now void , so it is of very great importance in it self , and would be of wonderful usefulness to their plantations , were it in the english hands , and secured by a good military force , without which they well be sure to be murderd in , or soon drove out of it by the spaniards , that inhabit porto-rico . and to conclude this paragraph with one instance more , it is observable that whereas the english ( as i intimated before upon another occasion ) were in actual possession of all the places adjacent to , and snrrounding the mouhados , which lies betwixt long island and the main , and is sometimes reckoned a part of long island , the dutch finding it unoccupied either by the english , or by any other europeans , sat down and settled a colony upon it , in a time of peace between his britannick majesty and the states of holland , and called their chief seat and fortification there , by the name of new amsterdam , tho' it was wholly encompassed by , and in some places immediately bordered upon the english colonies , without so much as the interposure of a river . whereof the english were so far from complaining , and much more from making it a matter , and cause of hostility between the english crown , and the belgick republick , that even upon breaking out of the war 1672 , when all things were alledged , that could administer the least shadow for justifying the commencement of it , on the part of the english who were the aggressors , that of the dutch having settled on the mouhados , was not so much as once mentioned , nor in the treaty of peace in the year 1677 , was it ever brought under debate , in the congress between the plenipotentiaries of england and holland . but after the re-entrance of those two powers again into terms of amity , it was by a private capitulation at london in the end of that year , exchanged ( as i have already said ) for surinam . now the foregoing exception made by the spaniards , in relation to the scots , having acted , if not unjustly , at least very disingenuously , and unkindly in the settling of a colony so near unto there plantations , having been fully considered in the last paragraph , and the weakness and vanity of it so abundantly laid open and manifested , that no man will offer to revive and insist upon it for the future , without incurring the forfeiture of his reputation , i shall now proceed to examine the pretension and allegation , of its being an infraction of the treaties and alliances between the crowns of great britain and of spain ; for the scots to have landed and begun to establish a colony , upon any part of the isthmus of darien . and i shall the rather bring this to an exact scrutiny , and under a particular and accurate disquisition , in that it hath been distinguishingly mentioned , and positively asserted in the memorial that was presented to his majesty , by the command and in the name of the king of spain . in which that fact of the scots is stiled la rupture de l'alliance qui a este toûjours entre ces deux couronnes , laquelle sa majeste d'espagne a observée jusques icy , & observe tousjours fort religieusement , an infraction of the alliance which is between the two crowns , which his spanish majesty hath hitherto observ'd , and will religiously do so . which resolution of his catholick majesty to keep and withal sacredness to observe the alliances which he or his predecessors have made with the kings of great britain , as it is noble , princely and christian ( and which i wish the crown of spain had better attended , and acted more consonantly unto in their proc●edings since in relation to this affair , but which hereafter we shall shew that they have not ) so it deserveth to be corresponded with , and answer'd in the same manner , and with the like measures of friendship , honour , veracity and religion . nor is there any thing more disgraceful and ignominious in the esteem of men , as well as sinful and criminal in the sight and account of god , than for monarchs to violate their royal compacts and agreements , whether with one another , or with their own subjects , without provocations administred to them , whereby the confederacies and covenants do become causally and morally dissolv'd . and if it be universally acknowledg'd , that potentates having made compacts with their own subjects are bound in justice , as well as in truth and honour , to perform them ; much more must it be confess'd , that they are oblig'd to keep and observe the agreements which they have made with princes and states that have no dependance upon them , but are upon an equal foot with themselves . yea , if a king cannot without iniquity violate an agreement which he hath made , with subjects that had been rebels , so as afterwards to punish them for that rebellion , in reference to which the stipulation was , as being pardon'd by the tenor , and in the vertue of the treaty ; much less can he break the articles of an alliance with soveraign . rulers , who tho' they may have been enemies unto him , could never have been rebels . nor are any persons whatsoever , so much concern'd to be exact and punctual in keeping their faith and in performing of their promises as princes are , and that upon the motive of credit and reputation , as well as by reason of the obligation of conscience : for as padre paolo says ( alluding to a passage of livy ) that a prince who violates his word , must invent a new religion to make himself believ'd another time , seeing the oaths he made in the religion he profess'd , have not been able to bind him ; so there is more in that of tacitus , than many are aware of , namely , caeteris mortalibus in eo stare concilia , quid conducere sibi putent principum diversam esse sortem , quibus praecipua rerum ad famam dirigenda : that while all others may adapt their projections and conduct to their interest , it behoveth princes to calculate their designs , and to manage all their transactions and administrations in subserviency to their honour and glory . and as both a german emperor , and a king of france are reported to have said , that if faith and truth were lost in the world , they ought to be found in the words of kings ; so whatsoever stipulations have been made with the crown of spain , by his majesty's predecessors , as they were the governors of these kingdoms , and the rectors of the people ; they do no less oblige him who sits upon the throne , than if they had been first stipulated , and immediately contracted by himself . and as all the leagues which are by civilians stil'd real , do not only oblige the contractors , but those who succeed unto them in the governing power , unless it be otherwise provided in the articles of the alliance , so all such treaties ought to be even observ'd by them that are their subjects , and that upon the motives and obligations of conscience , as well as upon the foundation and reason of their civil and political obedience , which they are to render unto his commands in the vertue of his authority . for such treaties and alliances being transacted in the force of that political power wherewith rulers are vested over their subjects , and being concerted and made , with respect to the benefit and advantage of their people , they are , in the construction of the laws , and in the opinion of nations , the acts of the people themselves , no less than they are the deeds of those who are their soveraigns . and indeed that is rightfully suppos'd to be the fact of the community , which is done by the supreme ruler in the vertue of the authority that is stated in him by the laws , and consequentially to that trust which the subjects have repos'd in him . so that should the scots , thro' their settling at darien , appear to be guilty of having violated any articles of solemn treaties , and of having acted contrary to any clauses in public leagues , they would therein not only have done what was injurious to the crown of spain , but that which was both disloyal and dishonourable to their own king. and as the fact in the criminalness of it , doth originally and immediately only affect the scots , and is no ways imputable unto his majesty , save as he should , in case it be a trespass against treaties , support and protect them in it ; so they are bound both out of the duty which they owe to his majesty as their soveraign , and in equity as well as in deference to the king of spain , either to return home from darien , and abandon their design , or else to vindicate themselves from having done any thing in that matter , whereby treaties and alliances are violated . and if they cannot do the latter nor will do the former , his majesty will not only be highly justifiable in the disclaiming to countenance and defend them , but he will be oblig'd in truth , honour and justice , to exert that authority and power which are plac'd in him over his people , for to see right done unto the king of spain , and reparation made unto the spaniards . but that his majesty , instead of falling under the necessity of doing a thing of that nature , which will both so much injure , disoblige and disgust the scots nation , i shall endeavour to make it evidently appear , that he may not only uphold and protect them , without either prejudice to his own reputation and glory , or any wrong done to the king of spain , who is his allie , but that he is indispensably oblig'd as he is their king , as well as in pursuance of an act of parliament , and of his own royal grant , to cover them from all the violences which shall be offer'd unto them . and this i shall do by demonstrating that the fact of the scots , in their landing and settling at darien , is no ways inconsistent with , nor done in violation of any leagues , treaties and alliances betwixt the crowns of great britain and of spain . and here i must challenge the taking it for granted , that there are no treaties between the kings of england and of spain , but what are publick , and which all men are or may be acquainted with . for if laws themselves , in the judgment of all mankind , do not bind and oblige , antecedently to their being promulgated and publish'd ; much less are subjects concern'd in the observation and keeping of treaties , unless they have had due information and notice given of them . and should it be granted , that such federal contracts which civilians stile personal , and which do only respect the particular benefit of those princes who do contract them , and do terminate in their single and personal interests , without either affecting their people , or their heirs or successors , i say should be it allow'd , that there is no necessity why these stipulations should be promulgated and made publickly known ; yet it is absolutely requisite , that such agreements and compacts should be so divulged as that they may be generally understood , wherein the several respective interests of many and various kingdoms and dominions , and of different and distinct soveraigns are both involved and adjusted , and whereby the carriage and behaviour of their people and subjects stand regulated towards one another in such and such parts of the world ; and such are the leagues and alliances pretended and referr'd unto in the case before us . now the only treaties between the kings of great britain and those of spain , by which both their own , and their peoples respective concerns in america are adjusted and regulated , and the carriage of their britannick majesty's subjects towards the subjects of their catholick majestie , and reciprocally of the subjects of the spanish manarchy towards them of great britain , and of the dominions thereunto belonging , stand directed and are made governable , are the treaties of may 13. 1667 , and of july 8. 1670. which as they are the only regulating treaties between the two formention'd monarchs in relation to their several dominions , provinces and possessions in america , so it is by applying unto and consulting those two treaties , that we are to examine and decide , whether the scots in their having landed and begun to establish a colony upon the isthmus of darien , have made themselves guilty of the infraction of alliances , which i do psitively affirm , and shall demonstratively prove , that by those facts they have not done , nor ought to be so represented or esteemed . seeing it will uncontrolably appear unto every one that will afford himself time and leisure to view the treaties , and to peruse the articles concerted and agreed in them , that they were meerly declarative of what was confess'd to be in the legitimate and rightful possession of those two kings , and regulative of what should be the behaviour of their several and respective subjects towards each other in america , as also restrictive with reference to their claims of any title or right to the provinces , islands and territories , which either of them were in the possession and occupation of ; but that they were in no ways or manner exceptive of , or preclusive from their settling plantations in such other conutries , districts and places , as were neither possess'd and occupy'd by them , nor by any other european princes or states . and whereas the treaty of 1670 , is that whereby the mutual interests and possessions of the kings of great britain and of spain are provided for and adjusted , it may not be amiss to intimate , the occasion and reason of those regulations , which were concerted and made by that alliance . namely that the crown of spain having antecedently thereunto laid claim to all america , as of right belonging unto his catholick majesty , and having accounted all the settlements of every one else , and particularly of the english within that vast continent , as likewise in the american islands , to have been so many invasions upon their right , it was concerted and agreed by that treaty , that this universal claim and pretence of title of the spaniards should be renounc'd and disclaim'd . and that the possession of the crown of england in such territories and places where the english had planted , should be confess'd and acknowledg'd to be legal , rightful and good . which was the sole and alone business that was design'd and compass'd in the foremention'd treaty . for whereas by the treaty of 1667 , there was only a general and perpetual peace concluded and established between the dominions and territories of great britain and those of spain , without the particularizing of any thing that respected their several plantations in america . and whereas the kings of spain had always question'd the right of the kings of england to their american plantations ; upon the ground of an universal title , which they claim'd to all the west-indies , and had particularly controverted the right of their britannick majesties to several plantations which had been made by the english in the american part of the world , upon pretences and allegations , that the english had forceably drove out the spaniards , and thereupon gotten into possession of several places that had formerly been enjoy'd and occupy'd by them ; therefore it was that upon these considerations , that whole matter came under particular regulation and adjustment in the treaty of 1670 ; in and by which the right and dominion of the king of spain in those countries , islands , provinces and territories , whereof he was possessed , and so far as they wert in the actual occupation of the spaniards , being confess'd , and provision made for their quiet and peaceable enjoyment of them : there was likewise a formal and explicite renunciation of all claim made by the spaniards to whatsoever was in the english possession ; but not one word or syllable , so much as once mention'd in that whole treaty , concerning and relative to such parts and places , as were not at that season in the occupation of the one or of the other . nor can it , in consistency with good sence and reason , be imagin'd , but that if the right of the king of spain to all those territories and districts in america , which were neither in the actual occupation of the spaniards , nor of any other european princes and states , should by that treaty have been acknowledg'd to appertain and belong to the crown of spain , their title thereunto would have been specially inserted and declared , with an express exclusion of all others , that should afterwards desing to be planters in those void places of the continent and islands of america . nor is it to be doubted , that if the right of the spaniards had been to be confess'd and own'd in that treaty to all the parts of the continent and islands that were not possess'd by europeans , but that the landing and settling there , in order to plant , without freedom and liberty previously granted by the crown of spain , would have been specify'd as an act of hostility and infraction of the alliances . so that there having been no such care taken , nor provision made in the foremention'd treaty , it is an indispensible evidence , that the whole which was thereby design'd , was only to adjust and settle matters , in relation to what each of those two crowns were actually in possession of . and that they were left still under an equal freedom of settling in any new places that were void and unoccupy'd , and no more in the hands of the one than of the other . nor can it fall into the thoughts of any , who have not lost their understandings , that the english who are a trading people , and who finding their interest and profit in their west-india plantations , design'd to extend and enlarge them in whatsoever other parts of america they could , where settlements might be made , without invasion upon the rights of europeans , should by that treaty be concluded and stak'd down to plant in no other places of the west-indies , save in those , where they had colonies at that time . so that the whole which was decided , adjusted and stipulated in and by that treaty , amounted only to these two things : first , that by the 7th article , the king of great britain and his heirs and successors , shall have , hold , and possess , with full right of empire , property , and possession , all lands , regions , isles , colonies , and lordships , situated in the west-indies , or in any part of america , which his majesty king charles ii. did then hold , or which his subjects did then possess ; so that no controversy whatsoever was afterwards to be rais'd or mov'd in reference to that matter . and , 2dly , that by the 8th article , the subjects of the said king should abstain from all commerce and navigation in the ports , havens , and places , having forts , castles , or staples for commerce , that is , that the subjects of great britain shall not trade nor sail into the ports and places which the king of spain hath in the west-indies , nor the subjects of the king of spain trade or sail to the places which the king of great britain doth there possess , without licences mutually and reciprocally given in the words and terms , which were specify'd and set down in a schedule annex'd to the articles of the treaty . from both which it doth demonstratively appear , that all stipulated about and agreed unto in that treaty , was , and is , that the said kings and their subjects , shall not only severally and respectively forbear the invading of such others territories , and the injuring of one another , but that they shall not navigate , nor trade in the ports and staples that do belong unto either , save under such provisions , limitations and terms as are agreed upon and expressed . by neither of which are the kings of great britain , or their subjects shut out , debarred or excluded , from sayling into such ports , havens and places of america , and setthing plantations any where there , as either are not inhabited , or where the king of spain is not in possession and occupation . but to set this matter yet further in such a clear and distinct light , as that they who are the most prepossessed and prejudiced , may see , and be oblig'd to confess , that the scots have proceeded in the whole affair of their calidonian settlement and plantation , both according to the measures of law , justice and equity , and with a full deference and respect unto , and an entire compliance with the articles of the publick treaties , and particularly of that of 1670 : i shall call over the heads of some of the articles of that treaty , and make those reflection upon them , which they do naturally suggest and offer . whereas then it is stipulated , agreed and provided by the second article , that there shall be a firm and vniversal peace in america , as well as in other parts of the world , between the kings of great britain and spain , and between the kingdoms , states , plantations , colonies , forts , cities and dominions which do belong to either of them , and between the people and inhabitants under their respective obedience , it doth from thence undeniably appear , that as both the kings were set upon an equal foot , and did treat for themselves , and for the people , and inhabitants that were under their respective obedience , and no further nor for any other , so it is from thence no less evident , that all matters and things were left untouched , and undetermined , that did concern and relate unto such places and parts of america , as were either wholly void and not at all inhabited , or that were inhabited only by the native indians , which as that part of the isthmus of darien was , where the scots have landed , and are now begun to settle ; so it doth in the way of necessary consequence from thence undeniably follow , that by the said article , it remained free and lawful , either for them , or for any other of his britannick majesty's subjects , so to do , and therefore that there neither is , nor can thereby any violation , or infraction be made of the alliances , between the crowns of great britain and of spain . for in that the right , titles and claims , of the kings of great britain and spain , are defined by and circumscribed unto such regions , territories , plantations , colonies , &c. as do severally and respectively , belong to either of them , it is thereby made uncontrolably manifest , that neither of them , by that treaty had any rights and claims granted , and allowed unto them in reference to any places in america , further than as they were possessed of them , and save as those places were in and under their actual occupation . and consequently that by the chief purport and design , and by the whole tenor of the treaty , it was left free for each , or either of them , to make new acquisitions , and to establish new plantations in such parts and places of the west-indies , whether upon the continent , or in islands , as were inhabited by the subjects of neither of the two kings , but were either ( as i have said ) wholly void , or possessed by the native indians . moreover whereas it is covenanted , adjusted and provided by the eighth article , that the subjects of their britannick majesties , shall not sail into , nor trade in such ports , havens , &c. as do belong unto the catholick king , unless with leave , and upon the terms which are there specified ; it doth from thence evidently and unquestionably follow , that they are left at liberty to sail into , and trade in such other ports and places , as are not the king of spain's . and therefore that the port into which the scots sailed , and where they are establishing a colony , being neither then , nor having been at any time since , in the possession of the spaniards , they are in their having so done , altogether unaccusable of the being guilty of any crime or misdemeanor , or of having in the least transgressed against publick and solemn treaties . further whereas it is concerted , and agreed by the same article , that the subjects of the king of england should not sail into any ports or havens , that had fortifications , magazins , or warehouses possessed by the king of spain , it may from thence be apodictically inferred and concluded , that it continued free and lawful for them , to sail into ports , and to trade , where there were no fortifications , magazins nor warehouses at all , and much less any appertaining unto , or in the possession of the king of spain . both which being unquestionable with reference to acla , and the creeks , ports , harbours and places adjacent thereunto , it may thereupon be justly affirmed , and solidly concluded , that neither the scots , nor any other of his britannick majesty's subjects , were by that treaty precluded and debarred from landing , trading and settling there , and that the scots thro' their having sit down , and become planters in that place , are altogether innocent of the infraction of any such alliances . moreover , whereas it is agreed and provided by the tenth article , that in case the ships that do belong to either of those kings , or to the subjects of either of them , shall by stress of weather , or otherwise be forced into the rivers , creeks , bays , or ports belonging to the other in america , that thereupon they shall be received kindly , harbour safely , and be treated with all humanity and friendship ; it may from thence be inferred and deduced , that as both the kings are thereby stated upon an equal bottom and foot , and the rights of both , and of each of them respectively are restricted and determined to particular rivers , creeks , bays , &c. so it is also thereby mutually confessed and acknowledged , that there are other and of all those several kinds , in which neither of them have any property , interest or concernment , and that it might be free for the ships of either of them to sail into such , and there to anchor , and to furnish themselves with what they wanted , and the places afforded , and to continue there during their own pleasure , and to do in such places , whatsoever they should judge to be for their advantage and interest , without incurring the imputation of being accounted injurious to one another , or of becoming liable to a charge and complaint against them , of having violated alliances . and by consequence , that the port acla being such , the scots might sail thither , land and settle there , without either asking leave of the spaniards , or of becoming thereupon censurable by them , of having therein done any thing , that is either against the laws of nations , or an infraction of alliances and treaties between the crowns of great britain and spain . again whereas it is concerted and stipulated in the fifteenth article , that nothing in the said treaty shall derogate from any preheminence right and dominion of any of the confederates in the american seas , channels or waters , but that they shall have and retain the same in as full and ample manner , as may of right belong to them , with and under the provision , that navigation shall not be disturb'd ; i desire in reference to that article that it may be observ'd , how tho' the crown of spain having made a claim of privilege , pre-eminence and jurisdiction in and over the american-seas , which was no ways granted and yielded unto them by the crown of england , but the right in and over those seas left in the same state that it was before ; yet neither in that article , nor in any other of the said treaty , is there any claim of jurisdiction , soveraignty or dominion , made by the spaniards , either over such parts of the continent or of islands , whereof neither they themselves were possess'd , nor a right of property and dominion in and over them , had been claimed by and granted to the english , of which omission of the spaniards , there can be no other reason assign'd , but that they knew no claim of that nature would have been allow'd them ; and that the very mentioning of it , would have occasion'd a formal , explicite , and stipulated reduction and restriction of the pretensions of title and right in america to the bounds and limits of what is actually occupy'd by them , which they were not willing to have decided and determin'd by an express contract and stipulation to the making and rectifying whereof there was their own concurrence and consent . tho' in fact no nation will grant them a right of property and jurisdiction in and over more , nor have any european princes whatsoever hitherto done it . i do the rather make this observation , in that a claim of jurisdiction and soveraignty over seas and oceans , is more liable to exceptions , than a claim of dominion over lands , either upon continents or islands , in that it is universally granted , that princes are capable of having their several just , supreme and divided properties in and over lands , and withal as generally deny'd , that any potentate whatsoever can rightfully claim a sole property in and jurisdiction over seas , preclusive of the rights of other princes to sail and navigate upon them . finally , there may be this one thing yet added , as an indisputable evidence , and a full confirmation , that there was no right of property and jurisdiction in and over any lands , territories or districts , in america , granted in the treaties either of 1667 , or of 1670 , by the king of great britain unto the crown of spain , save so far as the spaniards were in actual possession , in that the english have since those treaties sit down upon that part of america which is come to be call'd pensilvania , and have there establish'd large and flourishing colonies , and that without the spaniards having once offer'd to complain of it as a violation of treaties and alliances ▪ between the two crowns . having fully vindicated the scots settlement at darien , from the being either against the laws of nations , or in opposition to publick treaties and alliances , and having withal justify'd them both as to the fact , and with respect to the steps and methods , in which they begun and have promoted it , i know but of one thing , besides what hath been already consider'd , that can be reasonably alledg'd , against either the justice or the equity of it . namely that the spaniards have not only been esteem'd the proprietors of that isthmus by divers european nations , but that they have been declar'd , as well as accounted , so by the english in two remarkable instances . whereof the first is , that several english merchants , having agreed upon , and provided a fund of settling a plantation at port-royal in the bay of mexico , in order to the cutting of logwood , were refus'd the support and protection of the government for carrying it on , and only permitted to manage a trade there at their own hazard and peril . and as for the second , which comes closer to the question which we have been debating , it is said that certain english-men having undertaken to settle in darien , and brought the proposal of it before the council of trade of england , by whom it was laid before the lords justices in his majesty's absence , and by them transmitted to the king himself , how that after a mature consideration , it was judg'd and pronounc'd to be a design and project , that would be an encroachment upon spain , and therefore let fall and abandon'd . and that the case of the scots being parallel to that it ought to meet with the like censure , and be judg'd invasive upon the rights of the spaniards . all which tho' it hath been sufficiently both obviated and answer'd in what hath been already said , yet in compassion as well as in condescension to the infirmities and weaknesses of the greatest part of mankind , who suffer themselves to be impos'd upon and misled in their opinions and judgments , of actions and matters of all kinds , by trifling reasons and considerations of very little moment , especially when their understandings have receiv'd a wrong byass , and are previously too much over-rul'd by prepossessions and prejudices arising from national pique , or particular envy ; i shall offer several things in way of reply to what is alledg'd , and bestow several reflections upon it . whereof some of them shall be more general respecting both the cases , and the rest particular relative unto each of them singly and apart . and tho' i shall behave my self in the whole with that modesty and deference towards his majesty and them that have either had the universal administration , or any part of it , as not to give the least occasion for censure or blame ; yet i hope i may expect to be so far both indulg'd and justify'd in the vindication of the legal and righteous fact of a whole kindom , as not from too much pusilanimity on the one hand , or sycophancy on the other , to suffer that nation to lie under causeless suspicion of injustice . in the way therefore of a general reply , i desire it may be observ'd , that as the sentiments and opinions of no body of men whatsoever , and much less of a few individuals , are the measures and standards of moral right and wrong , but that the laws of nature and nations are ; so the acts and proceedings of the people of great britain are not to be finally decided and determin'd , with respect to their legality , or their illegality , and their being judg'd lawful or unlawful , before civil tribunals , and at humane benches , save by the acknowledg'd laws of nations and the respective municipal laws of the kingdoms . for tho' the projecting or the acting disagreably to the opinion of this or that board , may in some cases prejudice the undertakers and doers ; yet that singly , precisely , and abstractedly , doth neither render the design nor the execution of it , at all times , unwise , and much less at any time unlawful and unjust . nor is it moreover unworthy the being taken notice of , that there is a great difference to be made between the discouraging a projection , while it is only in proposal and in embryo , and the condemning and rescinding it , after it hath been put in execution . seeing by the first the undertakers are only advis'd and caution'd , whereas by the last , they are not only disoblig'd and disgusted , but really prejudic'd and injur'd . further , there is likewise a great discrimination to be made between what is adviseable at one season , and what is justifiable as well as prudential at another . for the exigencies which at one time we may be under , of having the favour and assistance of a neighbouring nation , may render it impolitick to countenance that , which at another time , when we stand rescu'd from attendance to any other measures , save those of law , justice and truth , it ▪ were both to abandon and sacrifice our interest to neglect it . further , the inhibiting of the subjects of england , from proceeding in the foremention'd designs , may have been founded upon such motives and reasons , as do no ways affect that , which the scots have undertaken . nor can the cases therefore be render'd parallel , unless the circumstances could be made appear to be equal : so that the kingdom of scotland , being altogether ignorant of the inducements upon which the resolutions were taken in the cases of those english-men , it is not to be expected , that their cases should have been look'd upon by the scots as presidents for their conduct , or that they should have govern'd themselves by any rules , save those of their own interest and profit , in subordination to the laws of nations , public alliances , and the municipal statutes of that kingdom . moreover , there is a great difference to be made between checking the inclinations of a few private men , who possibly might be rather designing their own personal advantage , than a national good ; and the crossing the unanimous desires of a whole kingdom , who as they knew the thing to be lawful in which they were engag'd , so they did believe , that the pursuing it was indispensably needful , in order to their welfare and prosperity . finally , whatsoever authority his majesty stands vested with , or whatsoever liberty his ministers are allow'd to have in reference to affairs previously to acts of parliament concerning them , or in relation to matters that do not directly fall under the regulation of laws and statutes ; yet they do become not only uncontrolable by them , but even are not to be superceded by his majesty , after that they are once establish'd by laws , and confirm'd by charters . for such things as are once made lawful by acts of parliament , are put out of the reach both of the king and of his council , as to their considering afterwards whether they be convenient . but having upon anotoer occasion mention'd this before , i will not here insist upon it again . and as for the particular reflections , which i intend to make upon each of the cases apart , i shall dispatch them with what expedition i can , and in the order that the cases are laid down . in reference therefore to the first , which was the council of england's discouraging such english merchants , as had design'd to have settled at port-royal in the bottom of the bay of campeachy ; i do say that there is no likeness , alliance or affinity , between what was intended to have been done by some english there , and what is done by the scots in the isthmus of darien . in that the bay of campeachy , lying in the province of nicaragua , within the diocess of stiapa ; which dominion and bishoprick , being part of the ancient empire of mexico , which the spaniards conquer'd after their usual way of killing the inhabitants , and converting the land to their own use , and unto which they have been confess'd to have a right by prescription , can be no parallel unto , nor bear any similitude with that of the isthmus of darien , where the scots have establish'd their colony of calidonia ; seeing as the isthmus was never any part either of the mexican or the peruvian empires ; so that particular district of the isthmus , where the scots have begun to settle a plantation , was never subdu'd by the spaniards , nor did the natives at any time acknowldege their having jurisdiction over them . so that tho' for the english to have settled in the bay of mexico , might be accounted an encroachment upon the right of the spaniards , yet it can no ways from thence follow , that for the scots to settle at acla , which had never been subdu'd or possess'd by the spaniards , is to be held an invasion upon any of the territories , or an encroachment upon the rights of the spanish crown . moreover , for the council of england to have given permission to the english subjects to sail unto , and to stay and cut logwood in the bay of campeachy , without the leave and consent of the spaniards , was a greater encroachment upon the rights of his catholick majesty , than it would be to have the scots authorized and justified in their erecting a colony on that part of the isthmus where they landed and are sit down . seeing it is contrary to all the measures both of justice and amity , for a government to connive at an invasion upon the dominions of a prince , in whom a title , jurisdiction and property are allow'd to stand vested in and over those territories ; whereas it interferes with no rules of law , equity or friendship , for a government to authorize and empower its subjects to plant in a place where that prince was never acknowledg'd ( nor justly could be ) to have a soveraignty or right . further , whatsoever the opinion of the court and council of england may have been as to the spaniards having such a right to the bay of campeachy , as doth debar and preclude all others from coming thither , without obtaining of leave from the spaniards ; yet there are other courts in the world , who have thought that it was free for them to settle in that bay , without a grant and concession from the crown of spain , whereof there needed no other instances to be assigned , but that of the french , who have several times been endeavouring to have settled on the river de spiritu sancto in that bay , and who are at this time designing to establish a colony on the river mischasipe upon the mexican gulph . finally whatsoever the council of england , might have said to those english merchants , for discouraging their settling at port royal in the bay of mexico ; yet it is unquestionably certain , that the project of the english for settling and cutting logwood there , obtained and took effect , in that they have had for several years , logwood in that place appropriated unto them , which they have cut and brought home for the accommodating of english dyers . and as to the second case , concerning the prohibition of those english merchants and traders , to settle in darien , whose proposals for the establishing a plantation in that part of america , had been laid before the king , as well as the lords justices , i shall in the first place declare , that the circumstances of that being wholly unknown to me , i shall not assume the confidence , to pronounce any thing positively in reference to the particular grounds and reasons , of the opinion and judgment of his majesty , the lords justices , and the council about it , only it may not only be conjectured , but affirmed with confidence , that the forbidding all proceedings in that enterprize , was upon motives of state , rather than of justice , and that it was done because of the inconveniencies , which at that juncture might have ensued ; and not by reason of the illegality of it . for as the proposal was made at a time , when we were in confederacy with the crown of spain , for the carrying on a war against a great and powerful monarch , and as the spanish dominions were the chief seats of the war , and the ports and havens of spain absolutely needful , as well as extreamly useful , for the management of our commerce in the mediteranean and levant , so the preserving of spain firmly in the alliance , was upon many other accounts , ( which i shall not enumerate ) indispensably necessary , both for the upholding of the war , and in order to the success of it , in favour of the allies in general , and particularly of great britain . so that upon whatsoever political inducements , that proposal was discountenanced , and rejected , yet i may venture to affirm , that it was not upon the foot and motive of the spaniards having a right and property in , and a soveraignty and jurisdiction over , the whole isthmus of darien . for as that would have been an acting in direct opposition , to the general foundation and principle , which both the english and all european nations proceed upon , in their establishing of colonies in the west-indies , and in justification of the rightful and legal dominion , that they have over the lands , territories , provinces , islands , which they have acquired there : namely that no ones right in that part of the world , doth extend beyond possession and occupation ; so it were to have debarred and shut out , the english as well as all other europeans , not only from erecting new colonies in those places of america , where the spaniards are in the possession , and have the dominion ; but from settling any new plantations in such parts of the west-indies , where the natives are the sole soveraigns and occupiers . which is a thing both so absurd in it self , and so directly opposite to the interest , prosperity and honour of england , that it were to entertain an opinion inconsistent with good manners , so much as once to imagine , that either the king , the lords justices , or any english ministers of state , should be so weak and imprudent , and so neglectful of the welfare and glory of great britain , as either to fall into such a pernicious measure of themselves , or to be dup'd into it by others . moreover to have been influenced to reject the foresaid proposal , upon the reasons and motives of the spaniards , having an universal and a sole right in the isthmus , would have been to have acted in the highest way of injustice to the natives , thro' the ejecting them out of their property and jurisdiction in and over those lands and territories , whereof they are both the legal and rightful owners , and the alone occupiers and possessors , to a great extent of ground upon that straight , and thro' the vesting the property and dominion in the spaniards , who have no title or claim to a great part of those territories , either by conquest or the consent of the indians . nor can any thing more disgraceful and unrighteous , as well as undecent and unmannerly be conceived of his majesty , and of those that are in the administration , than that they should act upon an inducement , that would import a robbing of the rightful proprietosr of their inheritances , and a deposing of hereditary and legal governours , from their lordships and jurisdictions , to place ; and settle them in others to whom they do no ways appertain . finally , should we suppose his majesty , and the lords justices to have prohibited the foresaid english merchants and traders to settle upon the isthmus of darien , because it would have been an encroachment upon the rights of the king of spain ; we must be obliged to add , that they therein acted incongruously to the measures of other princes and civil ministers , who have been both encouraging and endeavouring the planting of colonies upon or near to that isthmus , with the consent of the natives , without the least respect had to the claim and title of his catholick majesty , whereof having given an instance before , i shall not here repeat it . so that having represented and finished , whatsoever i account needful to be said for justifying the scots settling a colony at darien to be according to the laws of nations , and agreeable to all the measures of justice and friendship , and not to be an usurpation upon the right of the king of spain nor to interfer with any alliances between his britannick majesties , and the catholick king ; and having vinvicated that fact of theirs , from all the exceptions which are made either against the lawfulness , or the friendliness of it ; it will now be a piece of prudence , as well as of decency to bespeak the favour and assistance of the parliament and people of england , for their being supported and protected in that undertaking . nor shall i so much endeavour to perswade and influence them thereunto upon the motives of generosity and kindness , as upon the inducements that they will find the doing it , to be greatly for the advantage of the crown and subjects of england . for as much might be expected to be done in behalf of the scots by that powerful and opulent nation , upon the reason of their being not only neighbours to one another upon the same island , and under the soveraignty and government of one and the same monarch ; but because of the many offices of councel and aid , which they have since the union of the two crowns , mutually render'd to one another ; and that the kingdom of scotland in particular , hath espoused the concerns of england in a way of singular amity and with extraordinary fidelity and zeal , whensoever they have seen them involved under difficulties and dangers ; so that which is now desired from the english towards the scots is not near what the ancestors of the former have render'd unto those of the latter heretofore , in that besides their having had the counties of northumberland , cumberland , and westmorland several times granted and confirmed unto them , to be held in fee of the crown of england , in recompence for the services and assistances which they had yielded unto the english , in their distresses : we are assured by an english writer , that it was provided for in a course of law under the reign of edward the confessor , that the scots should be held denizons of england and enjoy the same privileges with themselves , because of the aid which they had render'd to that kingdom against the danes and norwegians . but i shall chuse to wave the laying the recollection and consideration of all or of any of these before them , which touch upon the head of gratitude , and shall think it more advisable to address them by other topicks , namely by those that shall refer to the benefits of strength , riches , and honour , which will thereby accrue , and redound unto the kingdom of england . for how mighty and wealthy soever , the nation must in truth stand acknowledged to be , yet it must also be confess'd , that under the great variety and plenty of natural and artificial productions , which their own country and the dominions thereunto belonging do afford , they have not the advantage of being furnish'd with gold and silver mines , which yield the metal and bullion that make the funds of trade , raise the bulworks of safety , administer the supplies of plenty and pleasure in peace , and enableth to muster armies , and equip fleets in times of war. and tho' it is not to be denyed , but that by means of their manufactures , and by reason of their industry and their application unto , and skill in the management of a large and universal commerce , they have a great share of the treasures of the spanish west-indies flowing annually unto them ; yet it is with great hazard , at much expence , and after having been long out of their principal , that they become possest of it in those methods . and it is also demonstrable , that a much greater proportion of gold and silver will both come into private banks , and into the public exchequer of england , by the scots having such mines within the bounds of their colony of darien , than hitherto hath , or ever can , in the ways of meer commerce with the spaniards . nor ought it here to be omitted , that the mines in the occupation of the spaniards in that part of darien , which lie nearest , to the plantation of caledonia , and in which they work at present , do so abound in the very oare of gold , that every negro whom they employ , is bound to gain daily to his master , as much as doth amount after it is refined to thirty lewis d'ors : whereas such as are employed in the english american sugar plantations , which are reckoned to be the most profitable of any they have , do not after all the expence upon them in their food , cloaths , and other accommodations , earn above one hundred pound sterling gain a head per annum to their master , which is not near so much in a whole year , as the other bringeth in per week . and as the goods and commodities sent out of england to spain , which bring them returns in gold and silver , will be transmitted immediately to darien with more speed , and at less expence , as well as hazard , than they go now to the spanish colonies in america , by making the tower of cadiz , malaga and sevil ; and the profit thereupon be much the greater to the english merchants ; so a good part of the treasure which cometh directly into scotland , upon the alone and single account of the caledonian company , will in divers ways so circulate , as to come at last to center in england . seeing besides what must necessarily flow in thither in payments , both for what of their own productions , and what of foreign goods that have been first imported to england , will be called for and purchased by the scots , it is not to be imagined how much will come to be brought in , and spent there in ways of diversion and pleasures by all sorts of people of scotland , and especially by the nobility and gentry . for as it is too well known , that the generality of the scots , whose circumstances do quality them for and allow it , have much in them of the humour and even vanity of travelling , and are inclinable enough to spend in proportion to the quantity of their cash ; so thro' london's being the metropolitical seat of the government , and the place where the king has his residence , the court is kept , and all grand affairs of state , as well as many of the most important concerns of particular men are transacted , they will be certain to come thither in far greater numbers than they now do ; some out of courtship , and others in complyance with the exigency of their affairs , and all of them maintain a port , and live at a charge answerable to the weight and depth of their pockets . which will not only be of great profit and advantage to the northern roads , thro' which they must go and return , and of divers other parts of the kingdom to which their pleasure , health or curiosity may tempt them , but especially it will be of great advantage to london , seeing besides what they will spend during their residence , and in the making a figure , while they are there , they will also furnish themselves in that metropolis with such accoutrements of state , and provisions of houshold furniture , as they shall esteem to be needful either for their grandeur , or their conveniency when they go home . moreover it is not to be questioned , but that the english , upon very easy and honourable terms and conditions , may be admitted into a partnership in the plantation , and into a share of trade with the scots . which as it will draw a considerable part of all that is either dug out of mines , or that is otherwise produced within the district of that colony , as well as of whatsoever shall accrue to the company , by a traffick drove at darien , directly and immediately into england ; so it will both greatly enlarge the trade and commerce of england , and mightily encrease their wealth . for as the scots were so neighbourly and kind upon the enacting of the law , for the establishment of a company , for trading to africa and the indies , as to make the first offer to the english of joining in the subscriptions to a stock and fund , so as to become partners with them in any plantation they should settle , and in whatsoever they should acquire ; so it may not only be hoped , but confidently affirmed , that they will not now be opposite , nor averse , to the receiving them upon such terms , as may be safe and creditable to both kingdoms . nor can the parliament of england , in their approaching session , fall upon any matter , that will be of more national concernment , or from which more benefit will arise to the government and people of england , than to consider and advise , how the kingdoms may become so incorporated with respect to that colony , as that upon a congress between commissioners , authorized respectively by both nations to treat and agree about it , the terms upon which the english shall be admitted sharers in it , as well as the degree measure and proportion of interest in it , which they shall be received into , may be adjusted , defined and stipulated . further it is not unworthy to be observed that the french , as well as the dutch , being grown mighty in naval power , and both of them , but especially the latter , the rivals of england , not only in traffick and commerce , but with respect to the prescribing unto others , what shall be the terms of navigating the seas , and what ceremonies of respect , ships of war , as well as of trade , shall pay to one another wheresoever they come to encounter in sailing ; how that thereupon it is become the true interest of england , to have scotland advanced into such a state and condition , as that it may be able to provide , equip and maintain , good squadrons of men of war. which as it cannot be done without their attainment unto a considerable foreign trade ; so they may be enabled speedily to effect it , by means of their colony at darien , provided they be supported in it . and as scotland , upon their being in a condition to send out a warlike fleet of their own , will in case of a war against great britain , save england the trouble and charge of maintaining men of war on the coast of scotland , for covering that nation from invasion , as it hath several times both lately , and more anciently been forced to do ; so it may with confidence be affirmed , that neither france nor holland will be very forward to quarrel with england , when beside their own great naval power , they will have a considerable marine strength from scotland , ready at all times to joyn and assist them . and should it so fall out , that a war is not with honour and safety to be avoided between great britain and either of those nations , which is so far from being impossible , that it lies within a probable view , scotland thro' having a potent naval power of its own , will upon a conjunction in that case of its strength with england , give the king of great britain such a superiority over his enemies in number and force of ships , as may in the ordinary course of providence , render him unquestionably victorious , which will redound chiefly to the profit and glory of england . nor will they only in such case be in a condition both to protect their own trade , and to assist the english with a squadron of stout men of war towards the encreasing of the royal navy ; but they will by reason of the situation of their country , and the conveniency of their ports , be able to cover and defend the trading ships of england towards the east , and to secure their navigation to hamburgh , swedeland , denmark , poland , muscow , greenland , &c. which is very needful to be kept safe , because of the pitch , tarr , canvass , timber , as well as of divers other commodities , which are brought from those parts , whereof several , if not most of them , are indispensibly necessary for the building , repairing , and equipping of ships of all sorts , and cannot be so well had in other places . further , the more rich and opulent that the scots do grow , which they will speedily do , by the gold and silver which will be dug out of the mines of darien , and by the profits that will accrue from such other productions , as that territory where they are so planted doth afford , they will thereby be in the better state and condition for granting larger supplies to the crown , than they hitherto could ; and thereupon administer ground , as well as occasion , for greatly lessening and moderating the charge , which england , even in times of peace , but especially of war , hath heretofore been necessitated unto . and whereas the scots have been at all times able , and thereof given abundant proof during the late war , to raise and muster great numbers of as brave and well-disciplin'd forces , as any nation of the world can afford ; yet by reason of their penury , which is a consequence and effect of their want of foreign trade , and of colonies in those parts of the earth , from which the great wealth doth arise and flow into european countries , which their plantation at darien will soon cure , remedy and relieve them against , they could not grant taxes , nor advance money that would have been sufficient for the maintaining and paying of their troops , but there was a necessity of putting them upon the english establishment , which was in part an occasion , both of those excessive impositions of all kinds , which england became indispensibly oblig'd to fall into the projection and enacting of ; and of those incredible debts which it hath contracted , doth lye under , and cannot speedily redeem it self from . for seeing the kingdom of england , how plentifully soever it be furnish'd with men , and able to bring into the field very numerous , as well as admirable forces , could not have rais'd within it self that vast proportion of military troops , which were thought needful to be kept on foot during the late war , which made it to receive and maintain so many thousand of scots forces ; will it not therefore be of great advantage upon any stress or exigency of the like nature hereafter , to have the same or a greater proportion of scots forces to join them , and to come in to their assistance , without england's becoming oblig'd either to subsist or to pay them ? and instead of having them upon loan , and at a great expence of english treasure , to obtain them as a quota , which their neighbours and friends will not only at all times be ready to grant and advance , but to maintain at their own charges . and as it may be affirm'd under all the moral certainty imaginable , that the scots thro' their being upheld and defended in their calidonian colony , will , in a few years , be render'd able , and will be found ready and forward to come into those measures of conjunction and union of forces with england , in all such foreign wars wherein they shall at any time embark ; so it may from thence be inferr'd , that it is the true interest of the parliament and people of england , to have the scots not only preserved and protected in the enjoyment of their plantation in darien , but to give them all the countenance and aid which they can , against such , whosoever they be , that shall attempt either the troubling of them there , or the driving them from thence . moreover , it might be represented and shew'd at large , how much it will be to the advantage of england , both with respect to their plantations in the west-indies , and their own general growth and encrease in trade , and the rendring their whole traffick and commerce more secure and profitable than it has been , to have the scots upheld in the possession which they have obtain'd upon the foremention'd american isthmus , and that they be successful and prosperous in the improvement and further extension of their colony . but having said enough in a former paragraph , for the demonstrating of that beyond the being either deny'd or contradicted , and the matter being obvious to all men , who are capable of thinking rationally and to any useful purposes , and it being withal a topick , which every little and common writer upon this subject , will not fail ( thro' inability to enlarge and employ their conceptions about other things relative hereunto ) to make their best and utmost of ; i shall therefore decline the re-assuming the consideration of that head again here , and shall address to the representation of one medium of argumentation , whereby it will apodictically appear to be the interest of england , to have the scots preserved and defended in their settlement at darien . namely , that the conveniency of that place for an european plantation , being now better understood than it was before , and the wonderful profits and advantages that will flow from and accrue by it , being more fully apprehended and more clearly discerned , than ever they were ; it will thereupon follow and ensue , that should the scots be drove from thence , the subjects of some other prince or state , besides the spaniards will possess themselves of it . which whosoever it be , will be of fatal consequence to england , as well as ruinous to scotland . nor dare i entertain so unworthy and dishonourable an opinion of the english nation , nor shew my self so ungrateful to a kingdom , unto which i owe more thankfulness , service and duty , than ever i can be capable of paying , as once to imagine , that they themselves will be so unjust , as well as unkind , either clandestinely and by connivance , to be accessary to the wresting of that plantation out of the possession of the scots ; or so ungentile as well as unfriendly , as singly and alone , or in conjunction and confederacy with others , to drive and compel them from thence by force . seeing as endeavours and attempts of those kinds , would not only appear so shamefully scandalous to all the sober , wise and righteous part of mankind , that the greatest part of the world would reproach them for the treachery and wickedness , as well as for the imprudence and folly of it , but it would beget that bitter and implacable hatred in the scots nation against england , as would excite and kindle those desires and flames of revenge , as no length of time will ever allay , nor the authority of any prince entit'led to both the crowns , be able to extinguish or to prevent the fatal consequences of . and tho' the power and strength of scotland may be look'd upon with derision and contempt , when compar'd with the force and might of england ; yet should first wrath , and then war arise between these two nations , it may be easily foretold , without pretending to a spirit of prophecy , that it will be mischievous beyond expression to both , tho' in the issue it may prove more ruinous to the one than to the other . nor is it possible to be avoided , but that a quarrel rais'd between the kingdoms upon that motive and account , will produce the like , if not more dismal effects , than the war in the reign of edward i. did , whereof a judicious historian hath left this wise and memorable observation , that angliam vehementer concussit , & scotorum nomen fere delevit ; it wonderfully shook and weaken'd england , and almost exterminated the very name of the scots . and this is so obvious to be foreseen and discern'd by any man , that gives himself the freedom of thinking , especially considering the present circumstances of england , with respect to its no less potent than envious enemies about it , as well as upon other accounts , which i decline the mentioning of , that it will neither be undecent , nor savour of undue boldness , to say that whosoever shall advise the application of the power of england for driving the scots out of darien , can design no less , than either the ruine of the nations by one another , or the making them when divided and weaken'd a prey unto those who long to subdue and destroy both . but as england is a nation of more honour and justice , than from their own inclination and choice , to come into to such a design against the scots ; so they are a more sagacious and wise people , than either to consent unto , or to connive at their being wheedled and drawn into it by others . so that the scots having no ground or reason for apprehensions and fears , that the english will directly or indirectly concur and assist to their being expell'd from thence , nor i hope supinely and tamely look on until it be effected : all the jealousie and dread is , that either the french or the dutch may co-operate and contribute towards it ; or at least that in case the spaniards alone should be in a condition to accomplish it , thro' the scots wanting , and being refus'd sufficient and seasonable support , one of these nations , who are both so potent in land forces and fleets of war ; should by way of after game , make it their business to get into possession of it . and under the power of which of these two nations soever it shall chance to fall , it will be of equal , but of very fatal consequence , even to england . for suppose that the dutch , who are a people that do extraordinarily well understand their interest , and who never miss the going into all the measures and methods whereby they may promote it ; ( witness their conduct and management not many years ago at bantam , and if we will believe a sort of ill-natur'd men among our selves , their coming thereupon into the late revolution here in england , not so much out of kindness either to our religion or laws , as to prevent king james's revenging that action upon them , ) i say suppose that they upon the scots being expell'd from darien , should find themselves able , as undoubtedly they are willing , to settle a colony there , the consequences thereof towards england are at present as obvious , as they will hereafter be infallibly fatal and ruinous . for besides the advantage that such a plantation will give them , of engrossing and monopolizing in a little time unto themselves the whole trade of the east-indies , china , and japan , as well as most of the american traffick , especially that which is mainly profitable of it : they will moreover by that addition of wealth to the treasure , which they have already , which the gold and silver mines of darien will inconceivably and speedily yeild them , be not only in a condition to give laws to all europe , and become the sole arbiters of affairs in these parts of the world , but they will be able , if they have a mind to it , and it is neither wise , nor will it be safe to lie at their discretion , to rob england both of the the soveraignty of the narrow-seas , and of the freedom of navigation into any places of the baltick , the mediterranean , or elsewhere , save as they shall be pleas'd to permit and licence them . but tho' this be a subject worthy to be enlarg'd upon , and that deserveth to have an ample detale given of it , and which withal it were not difficult to do in a manner that might awaken england out of its drousie and lethargical temper , yet for reasons which need not to be told , but may readily be guess'd at , i shall not at this time , nor in this place , prosecute it any further . however should the dutch , upon motives which may lie before them , and whereof we can have no information , decline interposing in that affair , either as to the encouraging of the spaniards to drive the scots out of darien , or the endeavouring to establish a colony there themselves , in case they should be expell'd ; yet who knoweth but that the french may co-operate towards the first in order to their obtaining and compassing of the latter ; which will be as mischievous , if not much more , in the effects and consequences of it to england , than if it should fall under the power , and come into the possession of the hollanders . and we have the more reason to be apprehensive , that the french have some such design , if we do but observe how jealous and importunate they have been and still are in their offers of assistance to the spaniards , for the dislodging of the scots ; which every wise and thinking man must believe to be done in prospect of advantage to accrue unto themselves , rather than of any benefit which they intend shall result thereby to the spaniards . nor do i think it needful to give along deduction of the mischiefs that may , and which in all probability will ensue , upon the settlement of a colony on the isthmus of darien by the french , to the affecting of all europe , and particularly the kingdom of england , they being so obvious that they cannot escape the views of any who have eyes to see , and will but vouchsafe to open them . nevertheless in order to the awakening thoughts in such , who do not exercise themselves in speculations of this kind , i shall very briefly intimate a few things , which carry their own evidence along with them . namely , that should the french become possest of any part of darien , and especially of that where the scots have erected their calidonian colony , they would thereby be wonderfully enabled , both to disturb the trade of england in all their west-india plantations , and for making encroachments upon them , in their best and most profitable colonies . and if what the author of an essay upon ways and means , doth say of the danger and damage that by the french settling at meschasipi , will arise to england , with respect to their american traffick and plantations , deserveth serious consideration , as undoubtedly it doth ; much more is their establishing themselves upon the isthmus , to be for the same motives and reasons seasonably thought of and prevented . moreover it may be very rationally affirmed , that were the french once possessed of such a considerable port in darien as port acla is , they would not long continue contented with that , but would be endeavouring to enlarge their acquisition and jurisdiction over the whole ishhmus , which as it would lay the foundation of their becoming powerful over the northern ocean , and afford them wonderful means and opportunities of extending their trade , to the east-indies , china and japan , and of getting in a great measure to be masters of the rich and beneficial commerce , that is carried on and managed by europeans in those parts of the world ; so it would infallibly put them into a capacity and condition , of gaining in a very little time the soveraignty both of mexico and peru. it being both certain and evident beyond all denial , that with fewer than ten thousand well disciplined troops , they may wrest both those empires from the crown of spain , as also whatsoever they do possess besides upon the american continent . seeing as the apparent weakness of the spaniards there is such , that they will not be able to withstand the impression , and attacks of a few battallions of good military and regular forces ; so it is morally certain , that they will have the aid and assistance of the criolians ( who are such as are born in america of spanish parents ) as well as of those , who are of the race of the old native indians , to rescue those countries and provinces from under the power and dominion of the crown of spain . which how fatal it would be to the european princes and states , as well as ruinous to the spanish monarchy , i need not be at the pains to represent and prove . further should the french become once possessed of any part of darien , and obtain the occupation of the gold and silver mines which are there , it would after that be in vain to contest or withstand their pretension of succeeding to the crown of spain , and of the dominions thereunto belonging . for as the house of bourbon , hath a great deal to alledge in justification of its right and title , of succession to that monarchy , should his present catholick majesty die , without issue , as he is like to do , and as they have already powerful forces for the seconding and making good their claim , so it is beyond contradiction that were they once masters of those mines , which lie within the district where the scots have their calidonian colony , it would after that be impossible to defeat and prevent them in their pretensions , seeing they would not only thereby be in a condition to possess themselves with ease of the many and rich provinces which the spanish crown hath in america ; but they would be furnished with a fund of treasure for the payment of all those numerous troops without burden to their subjects , which they shall think needful to keep on foot in europe , for the asserting of their right of succession to that monarchy . and i may justly as well as boldly say , that the single supporting of the scots in their settlement at darien , will be more subservient and effectual for the obstructing of the french in that design , than all the alliances that can be made in europe against it , will in the issue and event signifie , without the preservation of that colony . and indeed god in his wise providence , seems to have adjusted the scots settling there at this juncture , in order to be a means and expedient of obstructing the french from succeeding in their pretension , if others will have but eyes to see it , and prudence to make use of it . finally it is not unworthy the being considered , what jealousies all nations in this european part of the world have of late entertained , and what a general belief they have imbibed , as if the french were aspiring after an vniversal monarchy . and was not the fear of this on the one hand , and the obviating it on the t'other , the pretended reasons of the late confederacy , and of the war that proved so bloody and expensive , which tho' they may be thought to have given some check and interruption unto it , yet they are far from having either made the french deposite the thoughts of it , or from having so weakned and disabled them , as to render the prosecution and compassing thereof impracticable . yea i may venture upon all the topicks of reason , and politicks , to pronounce that it is impossible to hinder and disappoint it , may they be but connived at , in the obtaining the possession of the gold and silver mines , which lie in the neighbourhood , and within the district of the calidonian colony . whereas if the scots be protected and upheld in it , there will those treasures flow from thence into britain , as will so enrich his majesties exchequer , that he may not only make his own dominion the happiest and most opulent in the world , and put the balance of the trade of the whole universe into their hands ; but render himself and his successors , the unquestionable arbiters of all affairs and transactions , within the limits of the european dominions , and give him the glory of saving all europe , from the deluge and inundation of a french conquest . whereunto let me in the next place be allow'd to subjoin , that in case scotland should be able of it self to defend and maintain their colony against the machinations and assaults of the spaniards , without the assistance and support of england , as it is hoped they may , that the english will not only lose the honour and thanks of it , with all the privileges and advantages which thro' countenancing and aiding of them they might have been partakers of , as well as have been secur'd of the perpetual friendship of that nation , and upon all occasions experienc'd the happy effects of it ; so it can give no just offence to such of the kingdom of england as are endow'd with wisdom and understanding to have it plainly laid before them , that if scotland find it self too weak to withstand the forces of the crown of spain , and of such as may joyn their power with that of the catholick king for dislodging of them , and in the mean time find themselves abandon'd by england , how that in such a case , it is greatly to be fear'd that they may call in some neighbouring monarch or state to their succour and support , tho' the doing it will infallibly be reckon'd , and deservedly too , a trespass against their allegiance , fealty and loyalty . and the scots being naturally a warm people , too much verifying the proverb , that scotorum ingenia sunt fervida , which vulgarly goes of them , they may the sooner be hurry'd into such an irregular and unlawful course , by reflecting , that since both the nations came under one soveraign , they are both much less esteemed by the english , and enjoy fewer privileges in england , than in times of peace between the crowns they did before . whereof the reason is obvious ; namely , that england being the powerful and opulent nation , and having the king resident among them , they do thereby the more easily influence him to be kinder to them than to the scots . for tho' i hope that they will never be tempted to run into such a method , and do also heartily wish , that no provocations may force them upon it , yet whosoever will either consider , the nature and temper of mankind , and make reflections upon late , as well as upon more ancient precedents , may find matter of apprehension and jealousie administred unto them , that it is so far from being impossible they should do so , that it rather looks like a moral certainty , that it will come to pass . there being nothing more natural , as well as usual , than for communities and nations , as well as for individual and particular men , when either unkindly treated by their friends , or distressed by their enemies , to seek for succour and relief wheresoever they can obtain it . and to cite the testimonies and examples that do aver and confirm this , would be both to transcribe a considerable part of the histories of all ages , and to give the detale and memoirs of the behaviour of vast numbers of private persons . nor doth it in such a case come much under peoples consideration how far such a procedure will be accounted criminal , and the authors of it held impeachable ; interest in such circumstances out balancing duty , and present inconveniencies stifling fears , with respect to what may be future . nor is it unworthy of remark what mr. littleton , brother to this present speaker , broadly insinuates concerning barbados , when he , as well as that whole plantation , thought themselves severely dealt with by the government and kingdom of england ; namely , that it was to be dreaded , least under such discouragements , they should be tempted to run into merthods , that would be as irreconcilable to their loyalty , as they would be contrary to their inclinations , unless they were forc'd upon them . and as it is firmly to be believ'd , that the dutch , or any of the northern crowns , if apply'd unto by the scots , and their aid crav'd , would be ready to own and espouse their concern ; so it is to be apprehended and fear'd in more special manner , least under such melancholy menacing and distressful circumstances , they should not make their address unto , and put themselves under the protection of france . seeing besides the agreeableness in temper and humour , between the scots and the french , more than between any two nations in europe , the old affinity that was betwixt them , and the benefits which redounded mutually to each of them by it , are not wholly forgotten . for as the ancient alliance of scotland with france , and the many brave troops wherewith upon all occasions they supplyed the french , were the unhappy means of the english losing all those noble provinces , and vast territories , whereof they were once rightfully possessed in france , so the scots are upon every unkind carriage of england towards them , but too apt to remember the honours and opulent fortunes , which divers of them attained unto during their long and faithful league with the french. nor have they reason much to question , but should they renew their old confederacy with france , and call for assistance from thence , the whole kingdom of scotland , would be soon reinstated there in all the ancient privileges and immunities , which were enjoyed by them heretofore , and not only such who are chiefly concerned in the business of darien , become liberally rewarded and recompenced for throwing themselves into the arms of the french ; but such as are of the chief and first rank of their nobility , would be courted to accept general-commands , mareschal-staffs , ducal-coronets , and annual pensions , answerable to those of princes of the blood , which their ancestors formerly had . nor ought it to be over-look'd , how the scots even since their vnion with england under one and the same king , have without the knowledge of his britannick majesty , sought the protection of france , when they conceiv'd themselves in danger of being invaded by england . it being too well known to admit of contradiction , that when king charles i. was advised and influenc'd to make war upon them , for their withstanding what they call'd invasion upon church and state , how they apply'd themselves unto france for assistance ; inscribing their petition and memorial to lewis xiii . au roy. for which , tho' they were charg'd both with treachery and rebellion by the court party , yet that act of the scots was not so heinously resented by the english , as to deserve to be taken notice of and upbraided at the treaty at rippon . nor will the zeal , or rather biggotry of the present french king be of much signification for diverting them from begging his protection , in case they see themselves likely to be ruin'd in their present design , thro' their being assaulted by spain and abandon'd by england . as knowing that the state wisdom of lewis xiv . will as much over-rule his warmth for the faith and worship of the romish church , as it did that of henry ii. of france , when the protestants in scotland resisted such as they said would persecute them in the reign of queen mary his daughter-in-law . that king being recorded to have said upon that occasion , we must commit the souls of scots-men to god , for we have difficulty enough to rule the consciences of such as are french. neither ought it to be pass'd over without observation , that the application which the scots under the reign of charles i. made to lewis xiii . was not very long after his having subdu'd his subjects at rochel , and wrested the cautionary towns out of the hands of his reformed subjects . which open'd the way to all the mischief and ruin that have overtaken them since . nevertheless this must be said in favour of the scots , that it was upon the motive of religion , and from indignation against france , because of the late and present persecution of the protestants there , that they did not carry their resentments higher for the affront put upon his majesty , and the parliament of scotland , with respect to their act for a company to trade in india and africa , and that they did not warmly express their displeasure in relation to the interposure of his majesty's envoy at the courts of lunenburgh , and his resident at hamburgh , who by menaces , as well as by gentler methods , both deter'd and discourag'd the hamburghers from contributing to their stock and capital , and from joyning in the establishment and promotion of the plantation and trade , which the scots were about to settle and embark in . for as it would not but wonderfully surprize the scots to find their undertaking , and particularly their transaction with the hamburghers for subscriptions and aid , not only stil'd the action of some private men , who neither had credentials , nor were any other ways authorized by his majesty , when they stood warranted in the one and t'other by the king's charter , as well as by an act of parliament , but to have it represented to the magistrates and governors of that free city , that his majesty would regard all proceedings with the scots in that affair , as an affront to his royal authority , and that he would not fail to revenge himself of it ; so it was matter of the greatest astonishment to the people of scotland , that the said envoy and resident , persevered to oppose them in all their transactions at hamburgh , until they had frustrated and defeated them in what they were about , notwithstanding that tullibarding and ogilvis , his majesty's two scotch secretaries , had declar'd in a letter to the council general of the company , that they stood empower'd by the king to signifie unto them , that his majesty would give order to the said envoy and resident , not to make use of his majesty's name and authority for obstructing the scots company in the prosecution of their trade with the inhabitants of hamburgh . nor ought it to give offence unto any , tho' it may possibly alarm a great number of judicious and thinking people , to have it represented and publish'd , that all the opposition made and given by his majesty's said envoy and resident to the scots , transacting with the hamburghers , was previous and antecedent unto any knowledge they had receiv'd , or could possibly attain unto , of the place , territory , or country , where the scots had design'd to land , and to endeavour the establishment of a colony . for as none of the very directors of the company had , until a long time after , come to any fix'd resolution where they should attempt the beginning and carrying on a plantation ; so posteriorly to its having been agreed upon and concerted by those few of them , to whom the determination thereof was referr'd by the rest , it was so secretly conceal'd and kept faithfully undiscover'd , that neither his majesty , nor any of his ministers , were in the least made acquainted with it . and consequently that the foresaid envoy and resident , being altogether ignorant in what part of the world , the company intended to seek and pursue a foreign settlement for trade and commerce ; and whether it might not be in some region or province , that would be both agreeable to the humour of the spaniards , and subservient to the interest of england , their interposing so zealously and industriously with the hamburghers against the scots , could neither be upon motives of love and kindness to the english , or of respect and deference to the king of spain , but out of meer disaffection to the kingdom of scotland , and from an aversion to the welfare and prosperity of that people . so that it may be worth those gentlemens recollecting , what heretofore befell archbishop laud and the earl of strafford , for having medled in scots affairs beyond their posts , tho' with the countenance and by the authority of king charles i. who notwithstanding their being persons of incomparable talents , as well as of the most elevated stations and illustrious characters of any of the kingdom of england , yet upon the arising of a misunderstanding between that prince and his english parliament , and thro' the necessity that the latter stood in of having the favour of the kingdom of scotland in the difference that sprung up between them and their soveraign , were sacrific'd in order to appease and gratifie the scots , rather than for any treasonable crimes that they were guilty of . i do foresee that it will be here objected , that for the english to countenance and uphold the scots in what they have done , will be to enter into a conspiracy against themselves , and a concurring in what will be highly prejudicial , not only to the traffick of the english american plantations , but to the trade and commerce of england it self . and that not only by reason of the general share in trade which the scots by reason of that calidonian company may speedily grow up unto ; but because of the great immunities in freedom from taxes , customs , and all manner of impositions whatsoever , which are granted unto their company for 21 years , while the english traffick is by so many laws and statutes clogg'd and over-loaded with them . to which exception i shall endeavour to give such a full and sufficient reply in the few following reflections , that i hope both the frivolousness and indiscretion of it will be made obvious , and render'd apparent to every man , that hath but judgment and temper enough to weigh things in equal and just scales . the first thing therefore which i would offer to be consider'd is this , namely , that the hazard of succeeding in the founding and establishing of a new colony is so great , and the treasure that must inevitably be expended in order thereunto so large , before any considerable reimbursements can be hoped for , that it is extremely difficult by any propos'd immunities and privileges whatsoever , to gain those that have money , and who know how to make other improvements of it , to be forward , liberal , and zealous of entring into and promoting such a design . and if we will but cast our eye beyond sea , and look at present into germany , and observe the encouragements propos'd to the vaudois , and the french refugees , in case they will settle in such and such places , where they are sure to be protected , and at a season , when they neither know how to be harbour'd , nor to subsist , any where else ; we shall not wonder that his majesty , and the parliament of scotland , thought the granting of all those privileges and immunities needful for the prevailing upon the subjects of that kingdom , to engage in a design , the scene whereof lay so remote , and the difficulties and charges would be so great and large towards the bringing it to perfection . yea , doth not every inheritor and landlord in england allow large favours and advantages , both to such as will come and cultivate their waste lands , and to those who will lay out their money in the building houses upon their grounds where there were no dwellings before ? and ought it then to be complain'd of , that a nation in order to the extending the empire and dominion of their soveraign , and the contributing thereby to the enriching , in a little time , of all his kingdoms and subjects , as well as his own exchequer , should have immunities and privileges granted unto them for a few years , and whereof several were expir'd , before they actually enter'd upon the execution of their design . whereunto may be added , that the advantage which will both accrue unto the government at all times hereafter by an increase of customs , and an ability acquir'd unto scotland , of being more liberal in the taxes , which they shall grant unto his britannick majesty , than heretofore their poverty , notwithstanding their zeal for his majesty's service , would allow them to be ; and likewise the many benefits which will arise to england , in the several particulars whereof i have already given the detale , and which i shall not here repeat , will abundantly compensate for the immunities and privileges which are vouchsafed the scots company for 21 years , whereof four are already elapsed , wherein they have been at great expences , without any return in way of principal or interest . and it being the daily practice of the english themselves , and indeed of all mankind , to venture upon designs and to run into disbursements , where the gains are too often only chimerical , and at most times but merely conjectural , and very seldom are morally certain ; should the people of england then , make it a matter of quarrel with the scots that they are embark'd in a design without the english coming into any part of the charge of it , from which if it do succeed , it is mathematically demonstrable , that the english nation will obtain great glory , power and wealth . moreover it is demonstrable , that the benefits which will redound to the english in the interim , and within that circle of time , will greatly overbalance any damages , or inconveniencies that can be supposed to arise unto them in their traffick and commerce , by that short indulgence granted unto the scots , of being free from customs and impositions in relation to their exports unto , and imports from their colony . seeing besides the emoluments that will accrue to england , and to their american plantations , by the opening unto them a vast trade unto places where they had none , or very little before , and by that necessity , as well as occasion , which the scots cannot avoid , of taking more off from them both of their natural and artificial productions , than they could formerly use , or know how to dispose of them ; i say besides this , it is provided for , and ordained in the very act , by which their company is established , that their colony shall be a free port and market , so that the english may carry thither , whatsoever they judge vendible either to the scots , or the natives , for which they are like to be paid in gold and silver , and they may also traffick there , and bring from thence whatsoever is produced within the district , where the calidonian colony lies , and in the territories occupied by the indians , which are adjoining unto it , all which will greatly countervail and and outbalance , the few supposed inconveniencies , that are discoursed by unthinking men , as likely to arise unto england , and their west-india settlements , by the immunities granted to the scots , for the short forementioned term of years . further that as all the commodities importable by the company which are not of the growth of that country , are all excepted from being custom-free , and are made liable to all legal impositions ; so nothing of the very productions of that place , can be imported by the scots into england , but what they stand bound to pay customs for , and are ready in compliance with the laws of england so to do . yea the navigation acts made in england being still in force , and never like to be repealed , and whereof the conniving at the violation and breach , would be of fatal consequence to the english in their shiping , no goods can be imported from darien directly into england save in english vessels , and thither it is that most of the dying wood , as well as of divers other commodities , which the directors of the plantation can procure on the isthmus , must be immediately carryed and disposed of . so that from the whole which i have laid down in way of reply to the foregoing objection , it appears to be made without any solid ground , and to proceed from people , that neither have , nor can take a full survey of this affair , nor look round it , rather than from persons of any great penetration , or who are conversant either in the philosophy , or in the praxis and mechanism of trade in the full compass and extent of it . the only thing further that i imagine to be alledgable against the english giving countenance and encouragement to the scots in their present undertaking , and to hinder their joyning in the protection and defence of them , is that it may prove prejudicial to the church of england , thro' the giving way unto , and concurring to promote the settlement of the presbyterian form and model in that part of the world ; the church of england having found trouble and inconveniencies enough from that scheme of ecclesiastical government in the scots frame and edition of it , while it hath been confined within their own kingdom . this looks so much like bantering instead of reasoning , that it may be construed for a reproach put upon the understandings and good sence of the greater part of mankind to vouchsafe an answer unto it , especially in a kingdom , as well as an age , wherein the jus divinum of this or that form of church government , obtains a very slender room in most mens belief . and it were well , if all those who are reckoned to have the best natural and acquired parts , could be brought to agree in the essentials of christianity , tho' they continued to differ in disciplinary points . yea it is to be feared , that the dogmaticalness and the intemperate zeal of some , for things vastly removed from being fundamentals in our religion , have rendred too many persons sceptical in the material articles of it . and if we could better bear with one another , and agree to differ in religious matters of less importance , we might thereupon possibly better accord , and more second each others endeavours in the defence of the apostolical and athanasian creeds . but how strangely are the scots circumstanced and stated , with respect to their darien undertaking , when those of the romish communion , are alarmed at , and incensed against it , upon the foot , that it will be an introducing of the reformed religion into those parts of america where it never was ; and at the same time , some protestants are the less favourable unto it , because it may be attended with the erection of a form of ecclesiastical government and discipline there , different from those of the church of england . whereas we should be thankful to god , that the reformed religion is like to obtain some footing where it never had any . and we ought certainly to acknowledge and reckon , that this will abundantly compensate for the inconvenience of presbyteries going along with it . and how much sorry soever i am , that there should be so much of what is properly popery spread among , and received by the american indians , within the spanish dominions and provinces in the west-indies ; yet i cannot but declare my joy , that the christian religion , how much soever sophisticated and embased as well as emasculated , with and by romish errors and superstitions , is nevertheless come to be conveyed unto , and planted among them in any measure and degree . seeing tho' popery can save no man , yet the christianity that is in the papal religion , ( in that the church of rome believeth whatsoever we do believe ) may be a means of saving every man that is upright and sincere , and whose mistakes , errors and superstitions , are not the effects either of wilfulness or of negligence , but of insuperable ignorance . which as it doth at the least wonderfully extenuate their crimes and guilt before god , and renders them prepared and qualified subjects for the divine compassion , so it should awaken zeal in such as have love for souls , and are concerned to have the kingdom of our lord jesvs christ enlarged , both for the rectifying the judgments of those poor indians , which have been wofully misled in matters of the christian faith and worship by the spaniards , and for having the gospel preached in the purity and simplicity of it , among those native americans who knew nothing of it . and it is no small disgrace unto protestant kingdoms , states and churches , that while they of the romish church have shewed themselves so forward and industrious , and have been at such vast expences , to send and maintain missioners in those parts , and in mahometan countries , for the publishing of the christian religion , tho' wofully corrupted by superadded doctrines and superstitions of their own ; that none of those stiled reformed , have concerned themselves therein to any purpose , save where they have plantations , that will without their aid , subsist and maintain preachers , and these also very poorly supplyed and provided with pious and able ministers . and indeed one would wonder , that after the laws in england , for giving liberty to such there , as are dissenters from the diocesan jurisdiction , and from the rites , ceremonies and modes of worship of the episcopal church , it should raise jealousie , envy and pique of and against the caledonian colony , upon the motive that the great body of the planters , and the governors and directors of that settlement , will be of the presbyterian perswasion in those extraessentials of christianity . whereas for my part , were i a zealot for the english episcopacy and liturgy , neither of which in my opinion , ought to give that offence to wise , learned and good men , which some pretending to all those characters , have conceived against them ; yet i should not be sorry , to see some of the bigotted scots presbyterians to transport themselves thither , where i am sure they will do less harm to the church of england , and may be to religion it self , than they have done , and still are like to do nearer at hand . tho' even what they are in the very neighbourhood able to do , against the diocesan government , and the liturgical worship , will not without a stock of men of more learning and discreeter conduct , than those men the church of scotland is at present furnished with , signifie much to the disparaging or supplanting of either , further than as law and force do interpose . and against that vltima ratio ecclesiae , as well as aulae i know no methods that can be lawfully run into , save those of patience and humility , under violence and severity from them , accompanied with integrity and moderation , in the firmly keeping and modestly asserting of episcopal principles . nor are the scots at caledonia like to be so bigotted , narrow and peevish with referrence to the extraessentials and circumstantials of religion , as they have been found in scotland ; in that the directors and overseers of that plantation , have emitted a declaration , wherein they grant liberty of conscience to all that will come and settle among them . which as it plainly shews , that the denying of it at home , is not upon the foot of conscience , seeing on that foundation they should allow it no where ; but that the refusing it in scotland , is upon the motive of domination , and worldly policie ; so who knows , but that this precedent of theirs in america , may prove a leading case to their being more indulgent that way in europe , than hitherto they could be prevailed upon to be . and that being no longer restrained by principles , which guide and over-rule conscience from granting liberty to such as dissent from them in lesser matters of religion ; the interest of the kingdom may in time oversway the peevishness of their clergy . for tho' i do readily acknowledge , that no liberty upon whatsoever pretence of conscience , is to be granted unto any , whose principles do not only authorize them to the disturbing and overturning of civil governments ; but do make the blaspheming god , and the ridiculing of all revealed religion venial , and the living brutishly and sensually lawful ; yet in matters that are purely religious , wherein too much rigour and severity have been commonly exerted , i do take it to be our duty to bear with , and forbear one another in love and peace . for i do really believe it to be one of the first truths dictated to us by nature , that whereupon a person is to venture his eternal state , that therein he should be allowed the liberty and freedom of choosing for himself finally this exception will prove the more vain , as well as surprizing , if it be but observed that the form of church government , and the modes of christian worship , even in some of the english american plantations , are no less dissonant from , and may be of worse consequence to the church of england , than what the scots are supposed resolved to set up , and to be in the practice of in their colony at darien , of which if i mistake not , new england and pensilvania , are undeniable instances . in that independancy , which sufficiently strikes at episcopacy , and all the ceremonies of prelatical worship , obtains as the legal form of government , discipline and worship in the first , and quakerism , which is a collection and system of very dangerous errors , both in doctrin , worship and discipline , is the christianity that prevails , and is countenanced in the latter . having now fully represented the whole , that i judge either needful , or convenient to be said , not only for the justification of the scots , with respect to their present undertaking , and the vindicating them therein , from whatsoever with any shadow of reason can be excepted against it ; but towards the clearing and demonstrating how subservient their being countenanced , protected and assisted in it , will be to the interest of england , and the dominions thereunto belonging , as well as to scotland ; all that doth further remain to be added , ere i put an end to this discourse , is to acquit my self of a promise made in one of the foregoing sheets . namely that were i inclinable to recriminate , it were easy to fasten some of the worst of those imputations upon the spaniards , whereof themselves have been so hasty to accuse the scots . and that as the ways of force , which they have run into , do not correspond with the alliances between the crowns of great britain and of spain ; so that thro' having betaken themselves to those methods , they have altogether acquited and absolv'd his majesty , from having that amicable and friendly regard to the memorial presented unto him , in the name and by the authority of the king of spain , that had they persevered in the ways of mildness , might have been expected from him . it being unquestionable , that upon their persevering in those measures , his majesty would have comply'd as far with their desires , as either in justice he should have found himself obliged , or as his royal care for the interest of his kingdom of scotland , or the trust reposed in him by that nation ( for the discharge whereof he is sacredly and solemnly bound by oath ) would have allowed . nor can it be a trespass against that profound respect , which is payable to every crowned head , even by such as are the subjects of other princes , to intimate in terms of deference and modesty , that the spaniards , thro' having betaken themselves to ways of force and violence against the scots , and that not only posteriorly , but antecedently , to the presenting the memorial , they have transformed that into a jest , if not an affront , which might otherwise have been interpreted an act of esteem and kindness for his britannick majesty . for whereas the memorial was not delivered unto the king , until the 3d. of may , 1699 they had above seven weeks before that , not only detained such of the scots prisoners , who by storm and stress of weather had been cast upon the coast where they have their colonies and fortifications ; but they had likewise invaded and assaulted the scots , within their own territory and district , with an armed and military power . by which , the actings of the spanish governours in america , are not only wholly incongruous and inconsistent ; and altogether irreconcilable with the proceeding of his catholick majesty ' s ambassadour at london ; but the crown of spain is become apparently guilty of the infraction of the alliances between his majesty of great britain , and that king : for whereas it is provided by the third article of the treaty 1667 , and by the fourteenth article of the treaty 1670 , that if any injury shall be done by either of the said kings , or by the subjects of either of them , against the articles of those alliances , or against common right , there shall not therefore be given letters of reprisal , marque , or countermarque , by any of the confederates , untill such time as justice is followed in the ordinary course of law , and unless upon a denial or an unreasonable delaying of justice . yet not only while the case is depending , and notwithstanding the assurance given by his britannick majesty to the catholick king. that he will cause examine the justice or injustice of this fact of the scots , and thereupon act towards the crown of spain , according to the measures of law and equity , and the tenour of his alliances ; but even previously to their representation of that matter unto his majesty , the spaniards have actually fallen upon the scots , in the ways above mention'd . and whereas it is concerted and stipulated by the tenth article of the treaty 1670 , that if the ships which do belong to either of these kings , or the subjects of either of them , shall by stress of weather , or otherwise , be forced into the rivers , bays , ports , &c. belonging to the other in america , that they shall be received kindly , and treated with all humanity and friendship , yet nevertheless the spaniards have in direct violation of that article , apprehended and kept such of the scots prisoners , as were forced a shoar at carthagena by the violence of a storm . by which as they have plainly made themselves guilty of an infraction of alliances between the two crowns ; so they are become the aggressors in a war , which neither his majesty nor his scots subjects have given any just cause for , or provocation unto . and as they have thereby rendred it lawful for the king to oppose force against force , it being received as a theoreme of what is just and right by all nations , that iniquitas partis adversae , justa bella ingerit , that the doing of wrong by one party , gives foundation of a righteous war on their side against whom it is committed ; and that of all wars they are the justest , quae ulciscantur injurias , which are undertaken for the avenging of injuries , so the spaniards have made his majesty's entring into war against them ( in case they persevere in that method ) indispensably necessary , unless he should at once both sacrifice his own glory and honour , and abandon his people for a prey to such as are causelessly their enemies . the great duty of every supreme ruler being to protect his subjects , from receiving of injuries , or to revenge them when done . and for this end it is , that people becoming united into societies , chose and elected such and such to be their soveraigns , that they might as well defend as govern them ; and protect them against wrongs from others , as well as take care for the administring of justice among themselves . yea this every king oweth to his people , as they are a part of himself pars rectoris , as grotius expresseth it ; he and they making one political body , whereof as he is the head , so they are the limbs and members . and that the aggressed may at all times endeavour , not only to defend themselves against , but that they may also lawfully attack the aggressor , while he continueth to pursue his hostility , seems one of the first dictates of the law of nature , being a sentiment wherein all mankind are agred : yea it is the only remedy and relief left by god , and agreed upon by nations , for the obviating , withstanding and punishing of those , who upon the motives of ambition , covetousness , or of any lust else whatsoever , do seek to disturb and injure others . ( for as puffendorf says , vanum fuisset praecepisse ne alter ladatur , si ub de facto is laesus fuerit , damnum ipsi gratis sit devorandum , & qui laesit , fructu suae injuriae secure , & citra refusionem gaudere queat , it were a vain thing to have prohibited the doing wrong by one to another , if he who suffers the injury , shall be obliged tamely and remidilesly to bear it , and he who commits it , shall without reprisal made upon , and reparation exacted of him , be allowed in quietness and safety to enjoy the fruits of his violence and rapine . nor have the most civilized nations , accounted any provocations whatsoever to be a juster cause , for their making war , than their having injuries done to their people . majores nostri , says cicero , saepe mercatoribus & naviculariis injuriosius tractatis bella gesserunt , our ancestors denounced and commenced wars , in case their merchants , or their mariners , were wrongfully and abusively dealt with , which he repeats again elsewhere , saying , quot bella majores nostri susceperunt , quod cives romani injuria affecti , navicularii retenti , mercatores spoliati dicerentur ; how many wars have our forefathers undertaken and pursued , because of roman citizens being injured , their subjects made prisoners , and their merchants pillaged . but i hope as well as desire , that the spaniards will so far bethink and recollect themselves , as not to prosecute a war against those , that have neither wronged them , nor are willing to be their enemies , and that they will not only forbear all further hostility , but make satisfaction for any injury they have done . towards the effecting whereof , little more will be demanded , than the releasing of those , whom they illegally and unrighteously detained as prisoners , when thrown upon their shoar by the violence of a storm ; and for the restoring of whom , they may have also such of their own in exchange , who became lawful prisoners to the scots ; thro' being taken in actual hostility , and in the field of battle . and that the spaniards may be brought to calm thoughts , and to a cool temper , it may not be amiss to offer to their consideration , that the stakes for which the scots and they are about to quarrel , are so far from being equal , that what the spaniards are ready to hazard , and going to put upon the dice of war , is vastly beyond what the scots can be exposed to the risk of . it being plain that the whole which they are capable of losing is a little spot of ground upon the isthmus , and a few men ; whereas the spaniards , are about to venture no less than all their colonies there , and some of the richest provinces which they have in america , together with greater proportions of men , whom they are not so over stocked with , as to chuse to be prodigal in hazarding them . and as the spaniards ought seriously to ponder , how uncertain the issue of the war may prove , so they cannot be ignorant , if success should attend the scots , what they will rightfully thereupon become entitled unto . it being settled as a rule among all nations , that in such a case , omnia bona quae victus habuit victoris fieri , whatsoever was his , or theirs , who are conquered , doth in right become theirs who conquer them . et quae ex hostibus capiuntur , statim capientium fiunt , and that all that is taken from enemies , doth by the laws of nations , fall under the legal property , as well as the possession of those that subdued them and took it . but this being a subject that i have no call to meddle with , as being neither framed for the cabinet , nor the tent , i shall both decline it , and put an end to this discourse . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a41175-e130 see that set forth by the earl of bellamont . june 3. 1699. notes for div a41175-e4380 essay upon the probable methods of making a people ●ainers in the balance of trade . p. 37. essay upon probable methods of making a people gainers in the balance of trade . p. 77. see the act for a company trading to africa and the indies , june 26. 1695. printed at edenburgh by andrew anderson , and reprinted at london , by john whitlock . see the act. see the list of the adventurers , &c. printed at edinb . 1696. see wafer's new voyage and description of the isthmus of america . p. 46. see camden ' s elizabeth lib. 2. p. 255. an. dom. 1565. vid. scriptum cromweli , in qu● r●ipubl . angliae causa contra hispanos justa esse demonstratur : edit . lond. 1655. puffend . de jur. nat. & . gent. lib. 4. cap. 7. grot de . jur. bel. & pac. lib. 2. cap. 2. §. 2. de offic. 3. de jure nat. & gent. lib. 4. cap. 6. §. 8. see herrera's hist. of the west-indies . dec. lib. 1. 2. cap 4. see de las casas account of the first voyages , engl. edit . 1699 p. 184. idem ib. p. 147. prop. 26. see mariana's hist. of spain lib 26. cap. 2. and herrera's hist. of the west indies dec . 2d . lib. 6. a capite 3. ad cap. 9. dissertat academ . select . p. 293. de jure bell , & pac . lib. 1. cap. 4. see de las casas of the voyages , &c. of the spaniards to the west-indies . p. 147. english translation , & alibi passim . &c. see also what mar. ginami hath in his italian translatiof de las casas book , particularly in that part called conquista dell ' indie . see de las casas account of the voyages and discoveries of the spaniards in the west-indies , from p. 136 to 161 of the english translation . see herrera dec . 1. li● . 2. c. 9. see de las casas ubi supra , thro' the whole book . see gage's survey edi . 1699. p. 160 , 161. and 305. vid. puffen . de jur . nat. ad gent. lib. 8. c. 6. §. 25 , 26. vid. grot. de jure bell. & pac. lib. 3. c. 9. §. 13. vid. grot. ubi supra , l. 2. c. 4. see caesar de bell. gall. lib. 5. and cambden ' s brit , in cant. jos. 12. see hack's collect . of voyages , and the hist. of the buccaners vol. 2. de jure nat. & gent. l. 4. c. 4. §. 2. & c. 6. §. 14. de jure b. & p. l. 2. c. 4. §. 4. his opinion to the venetian inquisitors of state , p. 24 eng. edit . annal. lib. 4. n. 40. see dalby thomas ' s historical account of the west-indie colonies p. 17. and 18. vid. buch. hist. lib. 8. see discourses on the publick revenues p. 116 , 117. see gage's new survey of the west-indies of the edition 1699. p. 20. see the groans of the plantations . see their letter of august 2. 1697. vid. grot de jur. bell. & pac. lib. 1. cap. 1. & pufend . de jur . nat & gent. lib. 8. ap . 6. vbi sup . lib. 2 cap. 25. vbi sup . lib. 3. cap. 1. §. 2. orat. ad quirites . orat. 2. cont . ver. 2. vid. grot. ubi sup . lib. 3. cap. 6. medulla historiæ scoticæ being a comprehensive history of the lives and reigns of the kings of scotland, from fergus the first, to our gracious sovereign charles the second : containing the most remarkable transactions, and observable passages, ecclesiastical, civil, and military, with other observations proper for a chronicle, faithfully collected out of authors ancient and modern : to which is added, a brief account of the present state of scotland, the names of the nobility, and principal ministers of church and state, the laws criminal : a description of that engine with which malefactors are tortured, called the boot. alexander, william, fl. 1685-1704. 1685 approx. 330 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 127 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2007-01 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a26656 wing a917 estc r21197 12226435 ocm 12226435 56522 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a26656) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 56522) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 621:11) medulla historiæ scoticæ being a comprehensive history of the lives and reigns of the kings of scotland, from fergus the first, to our gracious sovereign charles the second : containing the most remarkable transactions, and observable passages, ecclesiastical, civil, and military, with other observations proper for a chronicle, faithfully collected out of authors ancient and modern : to which is added, a brief account of the present state of scotland, the names of the nobility, and principal ministers of church and state, the laws criminal : a description of that engine with which malefactors are tortured, called the boot. alexander, william, fl. 1685-1704. [15], 233, [5] p. : port. printed for randal taylor ..., london : 1685. advertisement: prelim. p. [13] and p. [2]-[5] at end. includes bibliographical references. first edition. dedication signed: w.a. ascribed to william alexander. cf. halkett & laing (2nd ed.). reproduction of original in bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. 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quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng nobility -scotland -registers. scotland -kings and rulers. scotland -history. 2005-08 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2005-10 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2006-06 ali jakobson sampled and proofread 2006-06 ali jakobson text and markup reviewed and edited 2006-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion his royal highness iames duke of alban● , and yorke , only brother to his sacred mayesty , lord high com̄issioner of scotlan● medulla historiae scoticae : being a comprehensive history of the lives and reigns of the kings of scotland , from fergvs the first , to our gracious sovereign charles the second . containing the most remarkable transactions , and observable passages , ecclesiastical , civil , and military , with other observations proper for a chronicle ; faithfully collected out of authors ancient and modern . to which is added , a brief account of the present state of scotland , the names of the nobility , and principal ministers of church and state , the laws criminal : a description of that engine with which malefactors are tortured , called the boot . london , printed for randal taylor , near stationers hall , 1685. to the most noble james earl of perth , lord drummond , and stobhall , &c. lord justice general of the kingdom of scotland , one of the extraordinary lords of the session , and one of the lords of his majesties most honourable privy council in that kingdom . this compendious history of the kings of scotland , is most humbly dedicated by your lordships most humble , most faithful , and most obedient servant , w. a. to the reader . i shall not detain the generous reader with flourishes upon the grandeur , and glory of the scotish crown , nor tell you that it may vie antiquity with the ancientist monarchy of the vniverse , that i leave to your vmpirage , when you have compared the following sheets with the histories of other nations . only thus far i will assure you that scotland will be found to be a country pregnant of wonderfull changes , and revolutions , a theatre whereon divine providence has i exhibited divers remarkable instances , of it's peculiar care over crowned heads , and where all treason and disloyalty has been persued with utter ruine and destruction . it can show a race of kings vnparallel'd for their bravery , and gallantry in the defence of their country , and protection of their allies , and for their heroicism in assisting and redresing the miserable and opprest . but i leave their own acts , as represented in the following mirrour to make good my assertion , and shall proceed to offer something in my own vindication , for i am liable to some reprehension for cramming so large , so bulky a history into so small a volum , but if it be considered that all the curious have neither the leisure to peruse nor the means to provide a larger , i hope i shall need no farther apology upon that point , nor need i advocate much for differing much from many authors , as to the origin of our nation , since i have followed the most authentick , and have only vary'd from those whose writings are vanished with monckery , and savour more of the legend than true history . besides the plain bomespun manner wherein all these matters are deliver'd , will disgust several who only delight in what is flaunting and trick'd up with all the ornaments and gawdiness of rhetorick and elocution ; but be it known i fitted my stile for the capacities of vulgar readers , such as becomes a history , not a panegyrick , and what squars best with the tongue of both kingdoms , wherein there was never yet any chronicle publish'd of the realm of scotland ; so as that those who were unacquainted with the latin , were excluded from the knowledge of the primitive state of so illustrious a kingdom . after having fitted this account for the common use by divesting it of a pompous dress and a too stately dignity of stile , my chief care was to avoid partiality , by a stedy and cauterous stearing between buchanan and bishop lesley , seylla and charybdis , where vast funds of wit and learning might easily have wrought the shipwrack of an unwary pilot ; so that tho' a great part hereof is a translation of eminent authors , yet i left my originalls when i found 'em bias'd , and avoiding their extreams boul'd directly to the block . the introduction , history has been reckon'd , one of the most generous amusements of the greatest personages , and the loftier the subject , the more agreeable the entertainment . now for the advantages , and dignity of a scotish chronicle ; i will not so much insist upon it's novelty , and the wonderful vicissitudes it contains , as the preheminency of that crown , over all common-wealths , empires and monarchies , which , by stating their several claims and pretences , will sufficiently be made appear . the emperor challenges the first rank , as succeeding to the roman emperors , who are supposed to have been universal monarchs ; the french king pretends also to it , upon the account of his being stiled the most christian king , with other such pretences . the king of spain also pleads it , as his right ; being the most catholick king , and king of manyest kingdoms . in this debate of theirs , we are not a little concerned ; our business therefore shall be to prove : first , that the king of great britain hath an unquestionable right of precedency to all the above named princes : secondly , that he hath it it as king of scotland . first , he founds his precedency to them all , 1. upon his being a absolute monarch of the isle of great britain , which was first christian , 2. upon his being one of the quatuor nucti , which were before all other kings , 3. that having conquered france , he hath right to all it's titles , by which he carries it clear from the spaniard , or any other competitor , and lastly , that it was granted him , even as king of england by the popes themselves , in the general councils ; so that had they not relinquished his papacy , it is like his holiness , had not as yet questioned their title to it . ii. his majesty as king of scotland , may justly claim the precedency from all those princes ; it being by lawyers declared the uncontroverted use of precedency , that amongst those of equal dignity , he who first attained to that dignity , is to be preferred , this being a rule among others dignities , we see no reason , but that it should hold here . this being granted , i subsume that the king of scotland , being equal in dignity with the kings of england , france and spain , attained to that dignity , before either of them , for the first king of scotland reigned about three hundred and thirty years before the birth of christ : whereas the english historians confess , that they cannot reckon higher than eight hundred years after christ : nor can either the french , or spaniard come up to the english , for the french take the origine from hugh capi , who usurped that crown , anno. 987. and the spaniards from rudolphus king of the romans , elected 1273. but here it is objected by some , that the kings of scotland , were vassals to the kings of england , and did them homage for the crown of scotland , and so can claim no precedency amongst any free princes , far less amongst such as are of the first magnitude . this some english historians do with great confidence aver ; but that their ignorance , or malice , or both may appear , we are content to refer the matter , not only to the respect the general councils gave to the representatives of the kings of scotland , which was only due to free princes , together with the judgment of forreign princes , lawyers , and historians about it ; but also to the acknowledgment of the kings of england themselves , ( 1. ) king henry of england , having intreated the assistance of alexander king of scotland , against simeon earl of leicester , did by letters under his hand , publickly declare , that he did not crave this assistance , as superior , to which superiority , he had no pretence , but to which is very considerable , the king and parliament of england , have treated with the ambassadors of scotland ; whereas no superior can treat with his own vassal , as a forreigner . we freely grant that the kings of scotland did hold the lands of northumberland , cumberland , and westmerland , in capite of the crown of england , which yet was no disparagment to them ; that being most ordinary amongst sovereign princes , for thus henry king of england , and several others of their kings , did homage to the kings of france , for the provinces possest by them in france ; as the king of spain also doth , this day to the pope , for naples and sicily . and yet the homage done for those countries have been the occasion of an ignorant mistake in some , and a malicious pretence for others , to mis-represent it , as done for the kingdom of scotland . advertisement . by reason of the authors absence from the press ; several faults have escaped , which the reader is desired to amend . a list of the kings of scotland . 1 fergus . 2 ferithar . 3 main . 4 dornadill . 5 hothat . 6 r●ther . 7 rutha . 8 thereus . 9 josine . 10 finnane . 11 durst . 12 euen . 1 13 gill 14 euen . 2. 15 eder . 16 euen . 3. 17 metelan . 18 caratack . 19 corbred . 1. 20 dardan . 21 corbred . 2. 22 luctack . 23 mogald . 24 conar . 25 ethod . 1. 26 satrael . 27 donald . 1. 28 ethod . 2. 29 athirck . 30 nathalock . 31 findoch . 32 donald . 2. 33 donald . 3. 34. crathilinth . 35 fincormach . 36 romach . 37 angusian . 38 fethelmach . 39 ewen . 1. 40 fergus . 2. 41 ewen . 2. 42 dongard . 43 constantine . 1. 44 congall . 1. 45 goran . 46 ewen . 3. 47 congall . 2. 48 kinnatell . 49 aidan . 50 kenneth . 51 ewen . 4. 52 ferchard . 1. 53 donald . 3. 54 ferchard . 2. 55 maldwine . 56 ewen . 5. 57 ewen . 6. 58 amberkelleth . 59 ewen . 8. 60 mordach . 61 etfin . 62 ewen . 7. 63 fergus . 3. 64 solvat . 65 achaius . 66 congall . 3. 67 dongall . 68 alpine . 69 kenneth . 2. 70 donald . 5. 71 constantine . 2. 72 eth. 73 gregory . 74 donald . 6. 75 constantine . 3. 76 malcolm . 1. 77 indulf . 78 duff . 72 culen . 80 kenneth . 3. 81 constantine . 4. 82 grim. 83 malcolm . 2. 84 donald . 7. 85 macbeth . 86 malcolm . 3. 87 donald bane . 88 duncan . 89 edgar . 90 alexander . 1. 91 david . 1. 92 malcolm . 4. 93 william . 94 alexander . 2. 95 alexander . 3. 96 john balliol . 97 robert bruce . 98 david . 2. 99 edward balliol . 100 robert. 2. 101 robert. 3. 102 james . 1. 103 james . 2. 104 james . 3. 105 james . 4. 106 james . 5. 107 henry stewart , and mary stewart . 108 james . 6. 109 charles . 1. 110 charles . 2. an epitome of the history of scotland . the scots by the most judicious writers , and by those who have most carefully studied , not only their own antiquities , but those of other nations are acknowleged ( although they be not of the greatest ) to be undoubtedly among the most antient people in europe . but to speak more particularly of their antient nation , we must know that the whole island 〈◊〉 , it is a part , was at first called albion , or albium : as theophrastus , ptolomy , tacitus and seneca tells us , which name the true race of the ancient scots retain to this day , calling the ancient country albin , and themselves albinich , always keeping their primitive name notwithstanding of the many different people , that have since inhabited it . the etymology of this name is disputed by many , but it seems to be really derived from alb , or alp , signifying a hill or high place . the antient inhabitants of the northern parts of this island were called scots , who were divided into two sorts , the one who were the first possessors , and this posterity doth inhabit it to this day , were called the scoto-brigantes . some have taken upon them to be very accurat , in giving an account of their descent , and the manner of their coming hither , even from the far ends of the earth ; but with so little appearance of truth , that i will not put my reader nor my self to the trouble to refute it . the most probable conjecture , and that which carrieth most evidence with it is , that these first inhabitants came in colonies from spain to ireland ( nor is it improbable , that these colonies were originally from france ) who either for want of accommodation to live at home , or being thrust out by stronger hands came over to ireland , where they continued long , for either themselves or their children desirous of new habitations , transported themselves to the north islands , where they continued in an unsetled course of life for a long time ; the time of their entring albion , is said to have been from the creation , about 3530 years . the first place they took possession of was argyle , they being divided into sundry tribes , elected every tribe their own captain , to govern them in peace and war , this very name they had in great veneration . then after , about 150 ( as some write ) a german , or as beda saith , a scythian navy arrived upon the coast of ireland ; being as is probable , beat thither by a tempest , having neither wives or children with them ; the men were in want of every thing , having by tedious sailing consumed all their provision . they sent to the inhabitants , desiring they might have a residence among which they told them , they could not afford in regard of the barrenness of the place , and the multitude of inhabitants that possess it already ; but that there was a habitable land called albion , not far from them , whether they might go ; it being for the most part , as yet un-inhabited , and such as did inhabit it , like to ruin one another by civil discords those men ( afterward called picts following their advice , set sail and came to that part of albion that lyes toward germany ; and having landed , soon beat out the inhabitants , and made them draw themselves within less bounds . possessing themselves of caithness , ross , murray , merus , angus , fiffe and lothian , together with orkney , which some say was their first habitation . they were a civil people , ingenious and crafty , both in peace and war. having fixed their residence , they sent messingers to the scots , desiring their daughters in marriage , alledging that if they condescended , it would highly conduce to the welfare of both of them ; being thereby made strong , for either an offensive or defensive war , with any of their neigbours . this message the scots at first rejected , but upon mature deliberation they condescended : so having agreed upon the terms , which were that they should concur with all their forces , when they were invaded , and as often as the crown of picts came to want an heir , the next of the womans blood should succeed ; the scots gave their daughters in marriage to them : but the brittons who inhabited the south parts of the island , suspecting that this affinity between the scots and the picts , might tend to their prejudice , sent ambassadors to the picts , perswading them to break with the scots ; by this means the scots suffered extreamly , many of their people who dwelt among the picts , being surprized and cut off , in compensation of which they cut off , as many of the picts as they could catch ; thus they for a long time wasted one anothers country with continual incursions , at last they resolved to put it to the hazard of a general battle . the scots assembling in argyle , consulted what was fit to be done , and considering that they had not only to do with the picts , but with the brittons also ; therefore it was agreed to send ambassadors to ireland , to have the advice and assistance of their old friends , and progenitors in this affair , and finding that by having many supreme captains , sedition and division increased amongst them , they resolve to elect one to have the supreem government over the rest . their ambassadors arriving in ireland , and representing their condition to ferchard king of scots , he was much concerned at the wrongs done them , therefore he sent his son fergus a wise and valiant prince , accompanied with many gallant soldiers ; sending with him also the fatal marble chair for his incouragement : upon his arrival he called a councel in argyle , where having made an elegant oration , he was by unanimous consent elected king of the scots . 1. thus fergus the first king of scots , was crowned in the fatal marble chair , which he brought with him from ireland , in the year from the creation 3641. before the coming of christ 330. about the beginning of the fourth monarchy , when alexander the great vanquished darius the last persian monarch . soon after the picts assisted by the brittons , invaded the country against them , the king most valiantly took the field with his fierce scots ; when the two armies approached one another , the brittons stood off in battle array , resolving that when the scots and picts had sufficiently weakened one another in battle , to break in upon them , and destroy them both ; this by a fugitive britton was discovered to fergus , whereupon he desired an interview with the king of picts ; wherein , representing the eminent hazard that both of them were in , by the treachery of the brittons , after mature deliberation ; it was determined that they both should convert their arms against the brittons , this resolution was most pleasing no doubt to the picts wives , to see their husbands and their fathers agreed . the brittons seeing this disappointment of their hopes break upon the picts , pillaging and spoiling at their pleasure , which when fergus heard of , he went against them , and with the assistance of the picts , he totally routed them killing their king , his name was coil with many of his nobles : upon this victory the nobles and subjects agreed , that fergus and his posterity , should inherit the crown of scotland for ever , whereupon charters and evidences were granted to them , ratifying the same . the kingdom of scotland being thus confirmed to fergus and his successors , he with advice and consent of his councel divided the whole land , then inhabited by the scots among his nobles and captains , making many laws to repress vice and disorders : not long after he was chosen arbitrator , to determine some high controversies amongst his friends in ireland ; whereupon he went thither , accompanied with many of his nobles , and setled all their debates . but returning home , he was by a tempestuous storm driven upon a rock in the sea , where he and all the nobles in his company perished , this rock is called after his name carrib-fergus : thus dyed this brave and valiant prince , in the five and twentieth year of his raign , to the unspeakable grief and loss of his subjects . 2. fergus being dead , left two sons behind , him ferlegus and atainus , neither of which were capable presently to manage the government , because of their tender years : whereupon a convention was holden by the nobles , for electing of a king , wherein some were for choosing one of the late kings children ; alledging , that they were bound by oath to continue the crown in fergus his succession ; others aggravated the danger both at home and abroad , under the government of a child . at length , after a long debate it was enacted , that when it happened their king should dye , ( the heirs begotten of his body , being children ) the nearest of the royal blood , being the best qualified for doing of justice should succeed , and possess the crown for his time ; and after his death , the former kings son to succeed without any impediment , if he is found fit for government . this law was in force till the reign of king malcom the third . thus by this law feritharis brother to fergus the late king was chosen , who begun his reign in the year of the world 3666. before the coming of christ 305 years , from the beginning of the reign of scotland 26. feritharis reigned fifteen years with such equity and modesty , that his subjects found him an excellent king , and his nephews an excellent tutor ; but at length ferlegus having an itching after the government , and having got some loose young men upon his side , went to his uncle and boldly demanded the kingdom from him , alledging that he enjoyed it , only by way of trust , during his minority . feritharis upon this called a convention of the nobles , where he willingly offered to resign the kingdom , in favours of his nephew ; but they being sensible how happy they had hitherto lived , under his government , and knowing that the other was of a rude untractable disposition , by no means would hear of it ; soon after there was a conspiracy discovered against the kings person , managed by ferlegus and some others : whereupon he was presently arraigned and found guilty , but his fathers memory , his uncles desire to the parliament , prevailed to have him pardoned , and committed only to the keeping of some , who were commanded to take special notice of all his actions , but he found a way to deceive his keepers , and make his escape ; he first fled to the picts , then to the brittons , where he spent the rest of his days in great misery , within a month after , feritharis dyed , not without suspicion of being poysoned by some of his nephews accomplices , which so inraged the nation against him , that his very memory was hateful . 3. mainus fergus his second son , succeeded , in the year of the world 3680. before christ 291. after the beginning of the reign forty one . he was a noble prince , and a severe justitiary , he renewed the old league , with crinus king of picts , he dyed peaceably the 29th . year of his reign . 4. his son dornadill succeeded him in the government in the year of the world 3079. before christ 262. after the beginning of the reign seventy , he followed his fathers foot-steps in equity and justice , but was more given to pastimes ; especially hunting ; he is said to have made several laws about hunting , which the ancient scots observe to this day , he dyed peaceably the 28. year of his reign . 5. dornadilles eldest son , being yet a child and not fit to govern , the people set hothat his brother upon the throne in the year of the world 3738. before christ 233 after the beginning of the reign 98. he proved a monstrous tyrant , taking pleasure in nothing more than in murthering his nobility , and destroying his people by all the means that he could devise , till at last one dowall a gallaway man , having gathered together a company of disaffected persons came boldly to the king , telling him how grievous his government was to the people , because of his oppression , and therefore desired him to resign the crown ( which he was unfit to wear ) to such as had a better title to it ; the king tho' surprized by his enemy , yet no ways daunted , told him , that whatever was done by him during his government , was done by royal authority , and if it was grievous to the subjects , they had their own obstinacy to blame for it , hereupon dowall presently fell upon , and killed him after he had reigned twenty years . 6. rewther the son of dornadilles , was by dowals faction made king without the peoples consent , in the year of the world 3758. before christ 213. after the reign 118. the nobles took this very ill . and as for hothat , tho' they knew that he deserved the worst kind of death , yet they did not approve of this fact , as being of bad example ; they knew also , that what dowal did , was for his own ends , as afterward appeared . hothat's relations taking the advantage of the peoples dissatisfaction stirred them up by all means , to make war upon dowall ; at length , they draw to arms under the command of ferguhort , hothat's son-in-law , and captain of kintire and lorn . dowall came against them with great power , accompanied with the young king , the king of picts , and many others of his friends . there followed a most cruel battel , where after two several engagements in one day , dowall was utterly defeated , himself , the king of picts , together with all the chief of the claws were killed upon the place . reuther the young king was pursued , and taken at the castle of callender , but very civilly used . the consequences of this unhappy day , were most fatal both to scots and picts ; not having men enough left alive to inhabit the realm , or to withstand their enemies , upon which the brittons took occasion to invade them , but they no wise being in case to resist them , after several bloody skirmishes , were forced to betake them to the mountains ; the king of scots went into ireland , and the king of picts to orkney , whereafter twelve years misery , they resolved once more to try their fortune , and returning home , the one from ireland , the other from orkney ; they joyned battle with their old enemies , the conflict was so terrible , that none of the parties could boast much of the victory . however , the up-shot of the matter was , a peace was concluded , and the scots , and picts re-installed in their old possessions . this king dyed in the twenty six year of his reign , having left one son begotten by gethus the king of picts his daughter . 7. but he being young and not fit to reign , being scarcely ten years of age , reutha his fathers brother succeeded in the year of the world 3784. before christ 187. after the beginning of the reign 144. he instituted divers laws , which are in force among the old inhabitants to this day ; and having reigned seventeen years with great applause , either for his want of health , or love of solitariness , or for fear of thereus , reuthers son , whom he knew to have an itching after the crown he resigned . 8. thereus succeeded in the year of the world 3799. before christ 171. after the reign 158. the first six months he governed pretty moderately , but he suddenly brake loose , giving reins to all kinds of of wickedness , causing slanders and calumnies to be raised against his nobles , and under this pretence cruelly murthering them ; but at last the people not able to endure his tyranny , degraded him of all his honours . covan captain of the brigants , was made governor , who governed very wisely , about the space of eleven years , at which time being informed , that thereus had dyed at york , he resigned the government . 9. josina the kings brother succeeded to the crown , the year of the world 3818. before christ 161. after the reign 170. he was a peacable and good king , it is observed of him , that he highly esteemed physitians , being himself very expert in that science , whence it came to pass that for many ages after , the heads of families and men of worth , were for the most part excellent physitians : he dyed in a good age , after he had reigned twenty four years . 10. to him succeeded his son finnan , in the year of the world 3834. before christ 137. after the reign 194. this prince followed his fathers foot-steps , he studied nothing more than to gain the hearts of his subjects , and to maintain his royal dignity , more with clemency than force : that he might prove an effectual enemy to tyranny , he made a law that kings should command nothing of great weight , in the state without advice of their parliament , he dyed the thirtieth year of his reign . 11. durstius his son succeeded finnan , a. m. 3864. before christ 107. after the reign 224. a flagitious and wicked tyrant , he banished his fathers friends from the presence , because they advised him to leave off his lewd courses . having prostituted his wife , who was daughter to the king of the brittons to his companions , he repudeated her . but soon after , it was discovered , that he was carrying on a conspiracy against his nobles , and knowing that he could have no shelter , either at home or abroad ; having been so cruel , he feigned a sincere repentance of his former wickedness , calling home his queen , promising by oath to his nobles , that he would no longer follow his irregular courses ; which they readily believing , forgot all former injuries , but not long after having invited them , to make them merry with him , when he got them all together , he caused a company of ruffians to fall upon them and murther them . the noise of this heinous act going all abroad , stirred all the people to revenge , who killed him in battle , after that he had reigned nine years . 12. it was hotly debated among the nobles , whether the next in blood to durstius should succeed , some were against it , fearing lest the successor , if he were in kin to him , might be tempted to revenge the death : others were for keeping up his ancient custom according to the oath sworn to fergus , at length they condesended upon ewen , brother to durstius , him they crowned , a. m. 3873. before christ 98. he is thought to have been the first , who caused his subjects to give him their oath of fidelity . he went with the picts against the brittons , where there was so cruel a battle fought , that night drawing on both parties retired , but the scots and picts understanding that the brittons had left the field , they returned to their camp , where they found great spoil , which they divided by law of arms , and returned home victors , where ewenus spent the rest of his days in peace , he dyed the nineteenth of his reign , and was buried in dunstaffage . 13. durstius his two sons , who were the nearest of the royal line , after evenus his death began to contend for the crown , in the mean time gillus , base son to evenus , having got together some villains for his purpose , suppresseth them both , and murthers them , then sets himself upon the throne , a. m. 3802. before christ 79. after the reign 252. but not thinking himself secure , so long as any of durstius his posterity , were extant resolved , to take off his three nephews , who were in the isle of man ; the eldest two he caught in his snare , and killed , but the third was conveyed away by his nurse , in the night time and carryed to argyle , where she kept him for some years in a cave for fear of the tyrant , who was at last killed in battel in ireland , whether he had fled , by caldebus the captain of the brigrands the second year of his reign . 14. evenus the second king finnans nephew succeeded in the government , a. m. 3894. before christ 77. years ; a good institutor , he confirmed the peace with the picts , having married gethus the third king of picts his daughter , he afterward overcame belus king of orkney in battle , who finding no way to escape killed himself : he also built innerlosher , and innerness , he dyed in the seventeenth year of his reign . 15. ederus durstius his brothers son succeeded in the year of the world 3911. before christ 60. after the reign 271. bredus of the isles , cousin to gillus the tyrant , brake in upon the country ; the king went presently against him , and overthrew him and his followers , and burnt their ships ; he afterward assisted the brittons against julius caesar in england , where by his means a glorious victory was obtained , he dyed in peace the forty eight year of his reign , and was buried in dunstaffage . 16. to him succeeded evenus the third his son , a. m. 3959. before christ 12. this man came to such a height of luxury , that not being content , that he took an hundred noble women to be his concubines ; he made an act , that every man should keep as many wives as he pleased , so that he had an estate to maintain them , and another , that the king should have the first nights enjoyment of a noble mans lady , allowing the noble men the same priviledge from their inferiors : he was afterward taken in battle and imprisoned , where he was killed by a young child the seventh year of his reign . 17. mettallan's nephew to ederus succeedeed , a. m. 3966. before christ 4. after the reign 326. a king universally beloved , because that in his time there was universal peace abroad , and tranquility at home ; but yet he could not reduce his nobles from the riotous habit , that they acquired in his predecessors time , he dyed peaceably the thirty ninth year of his reign . 18. to him succeeded , garratacus his sisters son , a. m. 4005. a. d. 35. he first composed some tumults , that were in the isles upon the late kings death , then assisted his neighbours against the romans . some report that in his time , orkney was conquered by claudius the emperor , and the king and queen of it sent in triumph to rome . after many bloody battles fought with the romans , he at last was desired by vespasian to submit to them , and he should be reputed a friend to the senate , and enjoy great honours , to which he answered , that the kingdom of scotland was as free to him , as the kingdom of the romans was to caesar , he dyed peaceably the twentieth year of his reign . 19. to him succeeded his brother corbred , a. m. 4025. after christ 55. after the reign 385. the islanders , who almost in every interregnum stirred up sedition , hoping for a change therein , divers expeditions quite subdued by him : he suppressed thieves , going frequently from place to place , doing justice , he dyed in the tenth year of his reign , and was buried in dunstaffage . 20. corbred's son being a child , the parliament chused dardan nephew metellan , a. m. 4042. after christ 72. there were great hopes had of him at first , but within three years he degenerated , and became an odious tyrant , murthering and destroying all the wisest , and best of his councellors , and to compleat his villainies , hired a ruffian to murther corbred's two sons , who were in the isle of man ; but the traitor being taken just ready to perpetrate the villany , was forced to discover the whole plot : whereupon the nobles unanimously resolved , to revenge the treason , but the king absconding himself , and his forces being defeated by the nobles , was at last taken , and his head struck off the fourth year of his reign . 21. corbred the second , surnamed galdus cometh next to the throne , after christ 76. a couragious and warlike prince , in his days the romans had greatly inlarged their borders , for having quite routed the brittons , they went as far north , as the river tay , and had probably gone further , had not that valiant warrier agricola been called home by domitian , who envied his success , he was no sooner gone , but corbred came with an army , and made a great slaughter among the romans , pursuing them from one place to another ; till at length they were glad to beg their peace , which was granted upon very honourable terms . corbred having spent the rest of his days in peace , dyed the thirty fifth year of his reign , and was buried in dunstaffage . 22. luctacus succeeded his father corbred , anno dom. 110. a most flagitious man , given to all kinds of lewdness and cruelty ; which his nobles perceiving , at a convention of the states , began to reprove him for his wickness and tyranny : he being inraged at this , commanded some of them to be put to death ; but instead of being obeyed , they fell upon him and his complices , and killed them the third year of his reign , he was buried in dunstaffage . 23. to him succeeded mogald , corbred the second sisters son , a. d. 113. the beginning of his reign was fortunate , for he governed most prudently and successfully . he discharged the romans from approaching the confines of his kingdom , and defended the picts from them , he defeated lucus with his romans in westmorland , and obtained a great victory : in his time adrian the emperor came into brittain , where he built adrians wall , from the mouth of tyne , to the flood of esk fourscore miles in length , he was killed in the thirty third year of his reign . 24. conar succeeded his father mogald , a. d. 149. who became a cruei tyrant , and was suspected to have had a hand in conspiring his fathers death , he did greatly dilapidate the rents of the crown by his extravagancies , being forced to call a parliament ; he pressed mightily for money , alledging that his revenues was not answerable to his charges , but his nobles answered his demands in another manner , then he expected , for they presently degraded and imprisoned him . ardgad captain of argyle made governor : he dyed in prison the fourteenth year of his reign , and was buried in dunstaffage . 25. after , him ethod the first sisters son to mogad began to reign , a. d. 163. he highly applauded ardgad his government , keeping him still in great trust with himself . he sent him to the isles , to allay some tumults that were beginning to stir , which he did ( as he thought ) effectually , but he was not long gone , then they became worse than before ; wherefore the king sent him thither again , where he was unfortunately killed , this so inraged the king that he went thither himself in person , and made them soundly smoke for their insolency . having composed his affairs at home and abroad , he began to give himself to ease , but soon after he was killed in his chamber by an irish harper , whom he kept to make musick to him , the thirty third year of his reign . 26. ethod having no sons ripe for the government , his brother satrael succeeded him , a. d. 199. he was so cruel , that he made it his work to cut off all the antient nobility , but was at length stabbed by one of his courtiers the fourth year of his reign , and was buried in dunstaffage . 27. his brother donald the first succeeded him , a. d. 199. a prince famous for princely endowments , but especially , in that he was the first king , that imbraced christianity in scotland , and gave it his royal sanction , tho' for several years before his time , the gospel had it's professors , tho' not publickly owned ; he with the concurrence of his nobles made what reformation , he could , yet could he not during his life , get the people weaned from their old heathenish superstitions : in his time sevesus the emperor came into brittain with a prodigious army , intending no less than to conquer the whole island . the scots and picts at his coming , betake them to the hills , and draws him after them , but his army suffered grievously , having as one writes , * lost 50000. men in that expedition , at length they came to a peace with him , after which he built a great wall , reaching from forth to clyde : peace being concluded abroad , donald returned home , and passed the rest of his days in peace , he dyed the eighteenth year of his reign and was buried in dunstaffage . 28. ethodius the second son to ethodius the first , succeeded donald , a. d. 216. a man of a foolish and cross temper , unfit to govern that fierce people ; but his nobles managed the government prudently , he at last was killed in a tumult , made by his domesticks the sixteenth year of his reign and was buried in dunstaffage . 29. his son athircus is made king , a. d. 231. at first he gave great grounds of hope , that he should prove an accomplished prince , but it proved quite contrary , he turned extreamly profligate , prostituting noble mens daughters to his companions : upon which account one hotholocus a noble man conspired against him , which he perceiving , that there was no way to escape , killed himself the twelfth year of his reign . 30. athircus being dead , hatholocus procured himself to be chosen king , a. d. 242. a cruel and lascivious tyrant , being acquainted that ethircus his children were with the picts , he called the chief of the nobility , whom he knew to have been athircus his friends , pretending he wanted their advice , in some matters of state ; whent he had got them convened in one place , he caused them to be thrown in prison , and soon after executed : whereupon their friends rebelled , and the king going about to gather an army to subdue them , was killed by one of his courtiers the eleventh year of his reign . 31. hathalocus being thus dead , athircus his children are called home and findochus , the eldest of them set upon the throne , a. d. 253. a wise and valiant prince ; his first expedition was against donald , of the isles who under pretence of revenging the late kings death , had raised an army , him he subdued forcing him to flee to his ships , where being hotly pursued , he got into a small boat which being over loaden immediately sunk , and he perished , yet his son whose name was donald , keept up the quarrel against him . hindoch , went with an army entering the islands wasted them so that they were left almost quite desolate . donald finding his weakness betakes him to treacherous courses , and striking in with carance the kings brother , they instigated two ruffians to murther him , both which were tormented to death . the 11 th . year of his reign he was buried in dunstaffage . 32. to him succeeded his youngest brother donald the 2 d a. d. 264. an excellent prince , while he was preparing to reveng his brothers death he heard that donald of the isles had made an inroad upon murray , not in the quality of a robber , but of a king. where upon commanding the strength of the kingdom to follow him , he went against him with those forces he had in readiness , which donald hearing of , took such tedious marches that he was close upon the kings camp before any was a ware , which obliged the king to fight , but the inequality of their number was such , that the king was defeated , most of his men killed , himself being wounded , with several of his nobles were taken . he dyed the third day after , partly of his wounds and partly of melancholy , the first year of his reign , he was buried in dunstaffage . 33 donald , lord of the isles usurped the crown a. d. 265. excercising much cruelty , none dared to oppose him having so many of the nobility his prisoners whom he threatned upon every provocation to kill . at length crathelinth son to king findochus , who having lurked long with his nurse , and was believed to be dead , having gathered a few subtil men together went directly to donalds court , who dissembling both his name and quality became in a short time very intimate with him , but when he found his opportunity he put an end to the tyrants days , the 12 th year of his reign , conveying himself and his followers away undiscovered . there was all this time a sore persecution of the christians , under the emperor decius . 34. crathelinth was set upon his fathers throne a. d. 277. a valiant and religious king. he first caused all the late tyrants race to be razed to the foundation for preventing the mischief might follow , he also purged the land of superstitions , planting the true christian religion . this king having peace on all sides , he addicted himself much to hunting , one day as he was at his sport , one of the picts stole away a dog in which he greatly delighted ; but the keeper of the kings dogs being informed where he was kept , went to take him and striving to take him by force was killed in the place , which was the beginning of a sad war , that lasted a long time ; but at last by means of one caransius a roman , ( who was afterward king of britain . ) they made peace . king crathelinth passed the rest of his days in peace , and dyed the 24 year of his reign , he was buried in dunstaffage . 35. to him succeeded his cousin german fincormach , a. d. 301. a prince both pious and valiant , he joyned with the britains against the romans , and after a most bloody battel routed them , pursuing them as far as yorke . having procured peace abroad he wholly applyed himself to the utter extirpating of idolatry . in his days fell out the ninth persecution under aurelius , and the tenth under dioclesian , which gave occasion to many christians from divers parts of the empire , now a second time to flee to scotland , for refuge as they had done once before under domitian . among those fugitives who fled thither for shelter , from the general massacre were many excellent men in piety and learning , whom the king not only did kindly receive but also imployed to assist him and his council in the further setling of christianity in his dominion , and in the total extirpation of idolatry out of it , which was so much the harder work because of the druides , the principal false prophets and idolatrous priests of those days who not only by their subtil hypocrisy and sence pleasing divine service but also by a cunning forcast having drawn into their hands the hearing and determining of civel affairs , had so gained upon the spirits of the poor and simple people , that they could not imagine how to be without them and live . the resolute care and labour of this gracious king and his council , together with the help of these pious and learned men , prevailed at last utterly to overthrow , and abolish the groves with the alters under the oaks , and all idol service ; and to establish the pure worship of god in all places of his dominions , filling the rooms of these false prophets with godly and learned teachers among the people , which was done in all places throughout the kingdom , but especially in the islands which those pious men took for their particular abode , as being most fit for a retired life and namely in the isle of man , the king caused a church to be built to the honour of our saviour , these holy men were for their labouring so much in gods worship called colidei or culdees . this good king dyed in peace the 47 year of his reign and was buried in dunstaffage . 36. romach brothers son to crathelinth , after a hot debate , by the assistance of the picts , possessed himself of the throne , a. d. 348. but proving a cruel tyrant he was killed by his nobles the 3 d year of his reign ; in his time christianity began in ireland . 37. augustian another of crathelinth's brothers sons succeeded , a.d. 351. a valiant and peaceable king. the late kings associates , not thinking themselves secure fled to the picts , whom they instigated to make war upon the scots , in revenge of romacks death : augustian hearing of their purpose sent to hertanus the king of the picts , acquainting him how dangerous , a war betwixt them at that time might prove ; the romans and britains being so apt to take advantage of them , when they are low ; but all would not do , whereupon he went against them with his forces and quite defeated them , killing many of their nobles . afterward they renewed their strength , and came to the wood of camelon where the king of scots with his army lay , where they fought a most bloody battel on both sides , both the kings were killed with many of their nobles in the third year of his reign . he was buried in dunstaffage without succession . 38. fethelmack the youngest of crathelinths brothers sons succeeded , a. d. 354. a valiant prince ; he scarcely reigned two years when having raised an army he went against the picts , and gave them a most fatal overthrow , killing their king in battel , he was afterward trayterously murthered in his bed , by two perfidious picts , who insinuated themselves into his favour with the assistance of an harper , the groans of the dying king being over heard by his servants , they came rushing into the room where they took the villains in the very act of their cruelty , who were afterward tormented to death . at this time st andrews church was built by the king of the picts , at the request of st rewell , he dyed the third year of his reign , and was buried in dunstaffage . 39. to him succeeded ewin the first son to fincormach . a. d. 357. a valiant , just , and good king. in his time the romans resolving to be masters of the whole island , and to destroy both scots and picts , first communicate to the picts , their purpose to eradicat the scots , and that if they would be assistant therein they should enjoy all their lands , holding it of the romans . they as a base ungratefull people accepted the proffer . so that the scots had now to do with romans , britains and picts . in the first battel the romans and the others were worsted , but soon after the romans renewing their strength , with all their adherents eugen , ( or ewen ) upon the other hand convened all that could bear arms in his dominions knowing they were to fight for no less then their country , and liberty . they engaged at the river dun , the battel was most bloody , with doubtful success for a while , but at last the scots being over powered with fresh supplies from the romans , were forced to fly , leaving the king and his brother with fifty thousand of their men dead in the field . they fled some to the isles , some to ireland and scandia , they attempted several times to recover their countrey but in vain , till at length the king of picts dying , the roman legat charged them that they should choose no other king but live under the roman government and by roman laws , when they saw this they became some what sensible of their folly , and treachery to their best neighbours ; resolving at length to call them home and joyne forces them , that the one might recover their country , the other their liberty . 40. echadius the kings brother ( upon the late fatal defeat , ) finding there was no shelter for him in his country departed with his son hutha , and his grandson fergus to scandia , there they were kindly entertained . in process of time echadius and hutha dying , fergus became a most valiant man , gained great fame in france , and pannonia . to him the picts sent embassadors inviting him home , promised there assistance toward the recovering of his country , which he readily accepted of , and having arrived with a few danes and goths in his company ( the scots , likewise gathering to him , ) he soon regained his kingdom , being victorious against the romans in many battels , at last he was killed in battel by the romans , the sixteenth year of his raigne , and was buried in icolmkill , which was the burial place for the kings till king malhiscom kanmors days ; having left the kingdom almost in as bad case as he found it . 41. to him succeeded his son eugenius the second , a. d. 420. a valiant and victorious prince ; he managed the government by the help of the valiant grame , ( whose father was banished out of scotland , with ethod brother to king eugenius the first ) who married a virgin of the blood royal of denmark , she brought forth a daughter to him which was married to fergus the second , eugenius his father . this grame being the kings grandfather was mighty helpful to him against the romans : for he pulled down the wall of abercorn built by the romans called afterward grames dick , as also adrians wall , over against the irish seas ▪ by his help the kings of scots and picts past with fire and sword through all the bounds between tyne and humber , here they fought a most bloody battel in which there were 15000. britains killed , together with most of their princes and nobles , but few of the scots : by which means they totally expelled the romans out of britain , and brought the britains under contribution , reserving also to themselves the whole land lying between tyne and humber . this prince dyed the one and thirtyth year of his reign , having the seventh year delivered his country from the romish yoke , 496 years after that julius caesar brought them first under tribute . 42. to him his brother dongard succeeded . a. d. 451 a prince fitted both for war and peace , in his time the pelagian heresie infested the church , for curing of which celestine bishop of rome sent one paladius into scotland ; he is said to have been the first who instituted bishops there , for untill that time the church was governed by monks ▪ this king dyed the fifth year of his reign . 43. constantine the first succeeded to dongard . a. d. 457. a man full of bad qualities , cruel to his subjects , but fearful of his enemies , given up also to all kind of lasciviousness : the picts seeing his unworthiness broke with him , his subjects also were at the very nick of rebellion . he was slain in the two and twentyth year of his reign by a noble man of the isles , whose daughter he had defloured . 44. to him succeeded congall the first , a. d. 479. his first work was to reduce his subjects from the sottish and base customs to which his father had inured them . the britains seeing him inclin'd to peace , perswaded aurelius ambrosius , to demand restitution of westmorland from him , which he denying to do , they draw to arms on both sides , but being better advised , they again agreed that things should stand as constantine left them . during the reign of congall he had wars with the saxons , but no great action , in his time lived those two famous prophets , merlin and gildas . he dyed the two and twentyth year of his reign . 45. his brother govan succeeded him , a. d. 501. who governed the kingdom with great discretion . in his time arrived in britain occa and passentius the sons of hengist , with an army of german souldiers against whom came king ambrose and fought and routed them , but with small reason to boast of his victory , for he lost the prime of his nobility in that ingagement , he thereupon sent for the king of scots and picts to come to his assistance finding himself so much weakened occa being advertised thereof , sent his brother passentius to germany for assistance , who by contrary winds being driven upon the coast of ireland , gathered a considerable number of souldiers of fortune and returned home . in the mean time ambrosius was poysoned by occaes means to him succeeded the valiant king arthur , who by assistance of the scots and picts , obtained several great victories against the saxons . govan having made peace with all his neighbours returned home , he dyed the thirty fourth year of his reign , not without suspicion of treacherie in which donald captain of athlo had no small hand . 46. eugenius , ( or ewen ) the third , congallus the firsts son succeeded , a. d. 535. a wise and prudent prince , he consulted with some of his nobles about revenging the late kings death , but found by their coldness and unconcernedness in the matter ground of suspicion , that they themselves were not inocent of it , which made him dread their designes against himself . yet he managed the government so wisely , that he dyed in peace the twenty third year of his reign . 47. to him succeeded congal the second his brother , a.d. 558. a prince of a very strict life , contending even with the monks themselves for piety , he made many excellent laws relating to churches , and churchmen . in his time lived these two famous men s. colm and s. mungo . he dyed in peace the eleventh year of his reign . 48. kinnatill succeeded his brother congall , a. d. 569. at which time aidan govans son come to scotland , who being ntroduced to the king by s. colm , was graciously received with assurance that he should be the man who should succeed to the crown . he dyed in peace the first year of his reign . 49. aidan accordingly succeeds , a. d. 570. soon after a conspiracy being discovered , which some of his servants intended against his person , the conspirators fled to the picts , who refusing to deliver them up to justice when demanded , he quite broke with them , and confederated with the britains against them , and the saxons , routing them in several battels . about this time his good friend s. colm dyed to his great grief . soon after augustine the monk came into britain , being sent by pope gregory , who created much trouble by his innovations , in matters of religion . this prince dyed in peace the thirty fifth year of his reign . 50. kenneth the first , congalls second son succeeded , a. d. 605. we have nothing recorded of him worth noting , he dyed in peace the first year of his reign . 51. ewen the fourth , aidans second son succeeded , a. d 606. he was educated by s. colm , but slighted his injunctions in one thing , for that he preferred war to peace , his hand was heavy upon the rebellious and stubborn , but yet a modest conqueror , he dyed in peace the fifteenth year of his reign . 52. to him succeeded his son ferchard the first , a. d. 621. a vitious tyrant , which his nobility not being able to endure , called him to an account , but he refusing to submit was compelled ; having laid before him how injurious he had been to his country , and what an enemy to religion , abetting the pelagian heresie , with many such things , they degraded him , and put him in prison , where soon after he killed himself . 53. to him succeeded his son donald the fourth , a. d. 632. he studied nothing more then to preserve and advance the christian faith , at home , and among his neighbours , he sent some learned divines to northumberland , to restore the christian faith , which was much decayed . he perished ( as some write ) in lochtay , being there at fishing the fourteenth year of his reign , but others affirm he dyed in his bed. 54. his brother ferchard the second succeeded , a. d. 646. a wicked tyrant impious toward god , and cruel towards man , having strangled his wife , and deflowred his daughters , his nobles resolved to call him to account , but were disswaded by one colmar a religious monk who told them that gods hand would soon be upon him which accordingly fell out , for being at hunting he was bitten by a wolfe , which caused a dangerous feavour of which he dyed , declaring his sorrow for his former life , the eighteenth year of his reign . 55. to him succeeded malduin . donald the fourths son , a. d. 664. a wise and religious prince . the argyle and lenox men much infested the country by their animosities between themselves ; the leaders of the sedition he put to death ; at this time the plague had over spread all europe , whereof infinite multitudes dyed every where , but the scots and picts were preserved from it . this good king was strangled by his queen , upon suspicion of adultery the twentyth year of his reign . she and her servants were the next day burnt alive . 56. ewin the first malduins brothers son succeeded , a. d. 684. edfried , king of northumberland invaded scotland , having the assistance of the picts , but they deserting him he was routed and ten thousand of his men killed . the next year edfried invaded the picts , they pretending to fly drew him upon an ambush where he and all his army were cut off . the scots and britains also entering northumberland , so afflicted that king that he was never able to recover his losses . ewin dyed the fourth year of his reign . 57. ewin the sixth , ferchard the seconds son succeeded , a. d. 688. a religious and learned king , he had neither certain peace nor certain war with his neighbours . he dyed the ninth year of his reign , it is said that in his time it rained blood for seven days over all britan , that also the milk butter , and cheese was turned into blood. 58. amberkelleth succeeded , a. d. 697. at first he appeared a sober prince , but he soon put of the mask , turning to all kinds of wickedness , he was killed by the shot of an arrow in the night time , the second year of his reign . 59 to him succeeded ewin the seventh , his brother , a. d. 699. he made peace with the king of picts , and marryed his daughter , who within a year after ( being with child ) was murthered in her bed instead of the king , by two brothers of athols , who had conspired the kings death . he was a good and religious king , he dyed the sixteenth year of his reign . 60. ewin a little before his death recommended to the nobles , mordach amberkeleths son , who was chosen a. d. 715. an excellent prince , he procured peace over all britain , he repaired many decayed churches , and built the monastery of whitehorne . he dyed the sixteenth year of his reign . 61. to him succeeded etfin , ewin the sevenths son , a. d. 730. a religious king and severe justitiar , being aged , after that he had reigned 30 years , he elected four regents , viz. the thanes of argyle athole gallaway and murray to govern his subjects , but their government was greivous . he dyed the thirty first year of his reign . 62. ewin the eighth mordachs son succeeded a. d. 761. his first work was to put to death donald , lord of the isles , and the earle of galloway , for their cruelty in the late kings latter days . but he himself afterward degenerating into all vices , was killed by his nobles the third year of his reign . 63. fergus the third etfins son succeeded , a. d. 764. he married ethiolia , daughter to the king of picts , who having several times admonished him of his adulteries at last with the help of some of his familiar servants strangled him , and being accused thereupon confessed the fact , and presently stabbed her self to the heart with a dagger . the king was buried in icolmkill the third year of his reign . 64. solwath ewin , the eighths son succeeded a. d. 767 , a valiant prince , he was much troubled with the gout , of which donald a bane , captain of the isles . taking advantage proclaimed himself king of the isles , breaking also in upon the continent made great havock , but at length was by duchal captain of argyle and duchal captain of athol beset in a wood , where their was no way to escape , their he and all his followers were cut to pieces . this good king dyed of the gout , the twentith year of his reign . 65. acaius etfins son succeeded a.d. 787. he made a new peace with the english and picts , finding that the irish intended to make war against him , because of a slaughter that was committed in kintire , upon some irish robbers , yet he sent ambassadors to ireland , shewing how little ground they had to denounce war , and how little it would tend to their honour to revenge the quarrel of a pack of thieves , but they not giving ear to his peaceable message , presently rigged out a fleet , which was not two nights at sea , when it was utterly ruined by a storme , which made the irish now supplicate for a peace upon any terms , which the king readily granted . he soon after made a league with charles the great king of france , and emperor of germany , which continues inviolated to this day . for the corroboration of which , achaius sent his brother william with forty thousand valiant warriours to assist the aforesaid charles in his wars , against the infidels where he purchased great fame , being commonly called by the princes of france : the knight without reproach . before this time also some learned men , passed from scotland unto france , among which johannes scotus who was charles's tutor was singular for his learning who together with clemens another of his country men , founded the university of paris . achaius marryed fergusian sister to hungus , king of the picts , who bore to him one son called alpine who afterward succeeded ; to be king of scotland , and heir to the king of picts ; king achaius dyed the thirty second year of his reign . 66. to him succeeded congal , his cousin german , a. d. 819. he governed peaceably for five years . 67. dongal salvatius's son succeeded , a. d. 824. who having settled the peace at home , sent his embassadors to the picts , demanding the right of succession in the name of alpin , son to king achaius , being there own king dyed without succession , which they refusing to do ; dongal denounced war against them but he unfortunatly perished in a boat as he was passing over the river of spey , in the seventh year of his reign . 68. alpin acaius's son succeeded , a-d. 831. a valiant prince , he led the army , which was raised by dongall , against the picts , to assert his title to their crown , wherein a most bloody battel , he with his own hand slew feredech their king ; then they elected brudus his son , who was killed the first year of his reign , in a tumult raised by his subjects : his brother kenneth succeeded to him , who coming with an army against the scots , rent off his coat of armour and fled to the mountains , where he was shamefully killed by a country man ( not knowing who he was ) whereupon the picts elected brudus , a fierce and valiant prince to be their king , who sent his ambassadors to alpine desiring peace ; alpine answered that he would make no peace , untill the crown of the picts were set upon his head , as the right inheritour of it . brudus upon this raised a great army , and came over the bridge of dunkell , marching to augus , where alpin with his army did lye . the night before the battel , he devised a cunning stratagem ; for having a great many women in his army , he caused them to stand in battel array , with linnen shirts above their cloaths , ordaining some horse-men to command them ; he drew them into a wood , commanding none of them to appear , till the armies had joyned battel . king alpin upon the picts approach , presently led out his men , and joyned battel with them , then the aforesaid reserve began to move from their ambush : the scots seeing them , apprehended them to be a fresh army of picts , whereupon they immediately fled . in this battel king alpine himself was taken , and beheaded the third year of his reign . 69. to him his son keneth the second succeeded , a. d. 834. now the picts fully resolve , to banish the scots quite out of their country , for which purpose they procure help from england . but when they were at their full strength , they divided amongst themselves to such a height , that brudus was forced to disband his army ; he soon after dyed for grief , donsken his brother succeeded , who made it his work to keep peace on all hands . but keneth after three years uncertain peace , being desirous at any rate to revenge his fathers death , and to recover the crown , which by right did belong to him ; convened his nobles , and consulted with them concerning the matter , but finding them not inclined to it , he invites them all to a great feast , which he had prepared of purpose , where they were royally entertained within his pallace untill dark night ; after they had liberally feasted , they were conveyed to several apartments within the palace , and when deep sleep had seized upon them ; the king caused some men that he had ready for that end , to pass to their several beds clad with fish-skins , which did cast a dazling light in the dark ; each man having a hunting horn in his hand , through which he spake . the nobles being amazed at this sight , were desired by them , not to be terrified for that they were angels sent from god , to the princes and nobles of scotland , to cause them to obey the kings order ; it being very just and right , and that they needed not to fear the success , for they should be victorious . their speeches being ended , they in an instant vanished : this mightily astonished the nobles , not knowing what to make on 't . it was no sooner day light , than they got up and enquired one for another ; and having convened all together , every man began to declare what appeared to him , which made them all presently conclude , that it was no fancy , but a real vision : the king also assured them , that the same vision appeared to him at the same hour . hereupon they unanimously consented , that all who were able for fighting , should meet the king upon a day appointed , which they did as the picts did also upon the other hand ; they fought most valiantly on both sides , but the picts were routed in one , and quite ruined in another battel ; their king and all his nobles being killed . and their city camelon after a long siege utterly destroyed , and razed ; and the picts men , women , and children put to the sword ; after they had reigned in albion 1181 years . king keneth brought the fatal chair from argyle to scone , adding the picts dominions to his own , he dyed the twentieth year of his reign . 70. donald the fifth , keneth the seconds brother succeeded , having his territories enlarged from the orcades to adrians wall : he was a vicious and luxurious prince , which gave the fugitive picts some ground to hope , that they might recover their lands , whereupon they requested osbred and ella two great princes in england , to restore them , promising to pay homage to them , they accepted the offer invading scotland , with great forces where they were miserably routed in a pitch'd battle . king donald proud of this victory , pursued them to the water of tweed with his army ; there he found two ships laden with wine , which he parted among his souldiers , they not being much used to such liquor drank of it , till they were not able to stir : of which , when king osbred was advertised , he came suddenly upon them , and killed 2000 of them , took the king himself , and carried him about in derision . osbred pursuing this victory conquered great lands in scotland : so that sterling-bridge was made the march between the scots and the english . this osbred coyned money in sterling castle , which was ( as some think ) the first beginning of sterling money . king donald being ransomed , was soon after taken by his nobles , and put in prison , where he desperately killed himself , the fifth year of his reign . 71. to him succeeded constantine the second , who was crowned in scone . a. d. 859. soon after hunger and hubba with a great fleet of danes landed in fife , to shun whose cruelty , many religious persons , with adrian their bishop fled into the isle of may , where they were all cruelly put to death by the unmerciful danes . constantine with his army met them at the river of levin , where he overthrew them , pursuing them toward caryl , where their ships lay ; but the scots being proud of this victory , became too secure : whereupon the danes rallied upon them , where followed a terrible battel , at last the scots were defeated ; the king being taken , and dragged to a cave was basely murdered , the fifteenth year of his reign . 72. to him succeeded ethus his son , surnamed the swift , a.d. 874. his wickedness and cruelty , came to so great a heigth , that his nobles were forced to imprison him , where within three days he dyed of melancholly , the second year of his reign . 73. gregory the great dungalls son succeeded , a. d. 876. a prince of a kingly spirit ; he made a law , that all ●ings hereafter , should at their coronation , swear to defend the christian faith. his first expedition was into fife , against the picts and danes which were left there , when hungar went into en●land ; them he expelled , not only out of fife , but also out of lothian , and the mers . coming to berwick ; the danes durst not venture to fight him ; but leaving a garrison in the town , retired to northumberland , to gather more forces . but gregory in the night time , being guided by some english-men entred the city , and put all the danes to the sword ; thence he went to northumberland , there he utterly routed the rest of them , which gave him occasion to inlarge his dominions with northumberland , cumberland , and westmorland ; after which he entered in a league with the king of england , wherein his right to the foresaid lands was ratified . his next expedition was against the irish , who had landed in galloway , and committed great insolencies , but at his coming they retired back to their own country . he with a great army followed them , where at his landing , he overthrew brennius and cornellius , who were guardians to the young king of ireland , with their nobles taking several forts and castles , at last he laid seige to dublin , where their young king was ; which after some resistance yeilded . the king returning conqueror from ireland , dyed the eighteenth year of his reign ; by him the city of aberdeen was built . 74. donald the sixth , constantine the seconds son succeeded , a. d. 894. he was a religious and good king , fit for either war or peace ; he had some ingagments with the danes , and sent assistance to the king of england against them , toward the latter part of his days , he was troubled with intestine broils , for the murrays , and rosses invading one another , committed great insolencies ; to quench this fire the king came upon them with a great army , and taking the leaders of the faction , put them to death for an example to others . he dyed the eleventh year of his reign . 75. to him succeeded constantine the third , ethus's son , a. d. 905. a valiant , but unfortunate prince ; the perfidious danes , having broken their league with him joyned with the english , but within four years they met with such measures , as made them glad to return to the scots : whereupon followed a hot and cruel war , wherein constantine found himself so unsuccessful , that he resigned his crown , and betook himself to a monastery , where he dyed the fortieth year of his reign . 76. malcolm the first , donald the sixths son succeeded , a. d. 943. a valiant prince , and severe justitiar . a peace being made with england , wherein cumberland and westmorland were annexed to the crown of scotland , to be holden in fee of the kings of england ; this prince passed the rest of his days , in executing of justice , which he did with such strictness , that some villains in murray-land conspired against him , where he was traiterously killed , the ninth year of his reign . 77. indulf constantine the thirds son succeeded , a. d. 952. a brave warrior , the danes landing in the north with a huge army , he went against them , there in a pitch'd battel , he routed them , but dyed himself in the battel , the ninth year of his reign . 78. to him succeeded duff . malcolm the first 's son , a. d. 961. a prince who much studied the peace of his country ; he went about his northern circuits , where he kept his courts , severely punishing malefactors ; coming at last to the castle of forress , suspecting no harm was traiterously murdered by the captain , and his wife , who were afterwards apprehended and put to a cruel death . 79. to him succeeded culen , indulfs son , a. d. 966. who having revenged the late kings death , soon after became a most flagitious and wicked prince , deflowring his own daughters and sisters : he was killed by rodard a noble man at meffen , this daughter he had deflowred the fourth year of his reign . 80. keneth the third , duffs brother succeeded , a. d. 970. the beginning of his reign , was good , executing of justice severely , finding his nobles averse , to deliver up ther friends and vassals , who troubled the peace , to justice ; he called a convention of the states at scone , where having clandestinely conveyed , some men in arms , where the nobles were convened , made them all prisoners , telling them , that so it would be untill they did give up those rebels to justice ; they finding themselves thus hooked , sent to their friends , to perform the terms of their liberation ; thus in a short time he had five hundred notable thieves , delivered up , them he caused to be every one hanged upon gibbets , close by the castle of berth . the danes with a great fleet of ships landing in angus , destroyed all before them , till they came to berth , where the king and his army ran-countered with them ; there followed a most bloody battel , the scots beginning to give ground , were made to rally by the means of one hay and his two sons , who hearing as they were at plowing , not far from the field , that the scots fled , came each of them with a club in his hand , and renewed the battel , putting the danes to flight , there they were all cut off , the king amply rewarded him , giving him so much of the best land in scotland as a faulcon off a mans hand , flew over , which was six miles in length , and four in breadth , this was the original of the noble and ancient surname of hay . but that which darkned all this noble kings acts , was his causing malcolm prince of scotland to be poisoned ; making a law , that the eldest son , or nephew of the deceased prince of what age soever he be , shall succeed to the crown , with divers others laws of the like nature : at last coming to the castle of felercarne , the lady grof had the kings image in brass , in the midst of the house with a golden apple in his hand ; the king upon the ladies desire , pulling the apple out of the images hand , was shot through the body with an engine , that was made in it for the purpose : he dyed the twenty fourth year of his reign . 81. to him succeeded constantine the fourth , surnamed the balde , a. d. 994. he came to the crown by usurpation , he was killed in battel at cramond in lonthian , the second year of his reign . 82. grimus , duffs son usurped the crown , a.d. 996. malcolm whose right it was , sent to the nobles , acquainting them how far he was wronged ; which grimus hearing of , caused the messengers to be cast into prison , which was like to have been , the beginning of a war ; yet they were seemingly agreed for that time by one horthadus a bishop , but not long after his vices being intolerable , malcolm was brought home from england , who killed him in battel , the eighteenth year of his reign . 83. malcolm succeeded to the crown , a. d. 1004. a noble and valiant prince , in his time sweno king of the danes being banished his country , and coming to scotland , was converted to christianity , and supplyed with men for reducing his kingdom ; yet to his great loss he soon after made war against malcolm , who utterly routed his army several times : this prince was killed by a conspiracy , of some of his nobles in the castle of glames , the thirtieth year of his reign , the conspirators flying in the night , chanced to pass over the pool of forfar upon the ice , where the ice breaking , they all miserably perished . 84. duncan the first , malcolm the seconds grand-son , by his daughter beatrix succeeded , a. d. 1034. he was thought to be of too indulgent a spirit , for governing that fierce and untractable people : bancho of whom are descended the ancient and royal name of stewarts , was in his time thane , or earl of lochaber : he was traiterously murdered by his cousin makbeth , the sixth year of his reign . 85. to him succeeded mackbeth , malcolm the seconds daughters son , a. d. 1040. altho' he came to the crown by treachery and blood-shed , yet he governed for a time pretty moderately , but at last brake out into all kind of tyranny , and cruelty , forcing his nobles to the servilest of his work ; which they being not able to endure , macduff earl of fife , posts to england , where he found malcolm the late kings son , at king edwards court , whom he invited home to revenge his fathers death , and possess the crown which was his own by right : malcolm suspecting treachery , pretended several excuses to try macduffs sincerity , but when he found him cordial , he declared his willingness : whereupon getting assistance of men from king edward , he entred scotland ; macbeth hearing of his arrival , went about to oppose him , but macduff surprizing him in his castle of dunfinnan , killed him with his own hand , the seventeenth year of his reign . 86. malcolm surnamed kanmor , son to duncan the first succeeded , a. d. 1057. he was a worthy prince , and in compensation of their service and loyalty , in his restauration created many earls , lords , barons and baronets , commanding that their lands should be called after their names : he made also his thanes earls ; many new surnames began at this time , as calder lochbart , gordoun , seytown , lander kennethe , meldrome , schau , liberton , livermond , cargill , strachan , ratray , dundass , meazeis , mertine , cockbourn , lesly , abercromby : at this time also william duke of normandy conquered england , which was the occasion that these surnames ( being expelled their country ) came to scotland . viz. ramsay , vans , lindsay , lownal , towres , preston , bissat , foules , wandlaw , maxwell , from france came the names of frazer , sintcare , boswel , montray , montgomry , boyes , campbel , beaton . at this time walter son to fleance came to scotland , who shortly after was created high steward of the kingdom . king malcolm was killed at the siege of anwick , by one robert moubray , who came from the castle upon a light horse holding in his hand a lance , with the keys of the castle upon the point of it . king malcolm looking stedfastly to the lance , the other run him through the eye with it , escaping to the next wood : whereupon king william changed this moubrey's name to percy : king malcolm dyed the thirty sixth year of his reign , and was buried in dunfermling . 87. donald the seventh , sirnamed bane , being malcolm kanmores brother usurped the crown , a. d. 1093. but within a year he was expelled by duncan , base son to the foresaid malcolm . 88. duncan the second usurped the crown , but did not enjoy it long , being killed by macpendar earl of mearnes at taich , by procurement of donald the seventh , who after was crowned king. he gave the north and west isles , to the king of norway for his assistance , to recover the crown . he was taken captive by edgar his successor , and put in prison , where after some years he dyed miserably . 89. edgar , malcolm , kanmores son succeeded , a. d. 1098. he was the first anointed king , governing with great wisdom and sobriety : he dyed the nineteenth year of his reign , and was buried in dumfermling . 90. to him succeeded alexander the first , sirnamed fierce , a. d. 1107. soon after his coming to the throne , certain traitors were by his chamberlains means let in to his chamber , intending to have killed him in bed , but he being surprised at their noise , got out of bed and caught a sword in his hand , wherewith he killed the chamberlain , and six of the other traitors ; the rest hasted away , but being pursued , and some of them overtaken confessed , that divers of the nobles were in the conspiracy , them the king pursued , killing some and taking others : he dyed in peace the seventeenth year of his reign , and was buried in dumfermling . 91. to him succeeded his brother david the first , a. d. 1124. he possessed northumberland , and cumberland , huntington , and westmorland . he married maud daughter to the earl of northumberland , who dyed in the flower of her age , for which the king took such grief , that he resolved never to marry again ; but gave himself wholly to works of charity . he purged his court from all vices , so that his whole family were given to vertuous exercises , no rioting nor drunkeness , nor lascivious , or wanton songs were suffered : this victorious and religious king dyed in carlyle , the twenty ninth year of his reign , and was buried at dumfermling ; where king james the first visiting his tomb , called him , a sore saint to the crown . 92. malcolm the fourth ( sirnamed the maiden ) next heir after king david began his reign , a. d. 1153. a just and mild prince ; in the beginning of his reign , there was a great famine in scotland , whereof many dyed . sumerled , thane of argyle , taking advantage of the present calamity raised a rebellion , purposing to make himself king ; but he was soon crush't , his friends killed , and himself forced to fly to ireland ; soon after , being invited to london , by king henry of england , under pretence of confirming him in his title , to northumberland , cumberland , and westmorland ; he carried him with him into france , where he had wars for that time ; he no sooner was returned home , then he made war with england , to the great loss of both kingdoms : he dyed at jedburgh , the twelfth year of his reign . 93. to him succeeded william his brother , sirnamed the lyon , a. d. 1165. he demanded northumberland , which by right belonged to his crown , to be re-delivered to him , which the king of england ( being taken up with wars in france ) durst not altogether refuse ; but condescended to let him have such parts of it , as his grand-father possest ; but soon after he was by a stratagem taken prisoner at alunick , and sent to france where the king of england was , whence not long after he was ransomed with a sum of money ; being returned home , he expelled all the murrays out of murray-land , for that they were seditious and tumultuous in his absence : about this time the pope sent to king william a sword , with the sheath and hilts all of gold , set about with precious stones with a hat , or diadem , giving him the title of the defender of the church . after this , he retired to bertha , where he stayed not long , when by a sudden inundation of two rivers , tay and almond ; the towns walls were beat down , the castle demolished , the young prince and his nurse with several others drowned ( the king himself narrowly escaping : he founded and built the city of perth , granting to it several great and ample priviledges . he dyed the forty ninth year of his reign , and was buried in aberbrothick . 94. his son alexander the second succeeded to him , a. d. 1214. having pacified all rebellions at home , he led his army into england , where having made peace with king john , he married his sister : afterward he went into france and renewed the old league with this addition , that neither of them should receive , or protect the enemies of the others kingdom , nor marry with any stranger , without making one another privy thereto . in the mean time his queen dyed without any succession ; within a year after he married mary daughter to ingelram earl of coucy in france , who bare to him alexander the third ; in his time came cardinal egadius into britain , to beg money for the holy war , of which he got a great deal , but going through france he spent it all , and told his holiness , when he came to rome , that he had been robb'd by the way : whereupon presently another legat was sent to britain . but the people hearing , how they were cheated of their money by the last procured an order , discharging this not to enter the kingdom . king alexander dyed in peace , the thirty fifth year of his reign , and was buried at melross . 95. alexander the third succeeded his father , a. d. 249. being nine years of age at his coronation . ambassadors were sent to england , demanding margaret king henry the third's daughter in marriage for king alexander , which was granted ; the next year , the two kings had a meeting at york , where the marriage was solemnized . during his minority the realm was well governed by his nobles ; taking the government upon himself , his first work was to summon the earls of monterth , athole and buchan , and the lord strabogy , who were all of the name of cumings ; they not daring to appear , were denounced rebels : they being now afraid , thought nothing so much for their safety , as the having the king in their power , which they got , and confined him in the castle of sterling ; but the earl of athel , who was the head of the party , dying , their hearts failed them , and ( every one of them getting his remission ) they set the king at liberty ; soon after the danes with a great army invaded the country , the king with his forces went against them , and routed them , killing twenty four thousand of them ; the king returned to norway with only four ships , which was all that was left of his whole fleet. at this time alexander earl of carrick , passed to the holy-land , having a daughter who succeeded to his estate ; she married robert rance , lord of annaudale , and bare to him , that noble and invincible champion robert bruce king of scotland : king alexander had two sons by his queen , viz. prince alexander and david , and one daughter margaret , who was married to the king of norway ; she bare to him margaret called the maiden of norway . the king and queen going to london , to the coronation of king edward the first : david the second son dyed in their absence ; within a few years after the prince dyed at lundores , to the great grief of the nation , and not long after the king dyed by a fall from over a rock at kinghorn , the thirty seventh year of his reign : leaving none of his own direct line to succeed him . the nobility having met upon this so important occasion , they put the kingdom into the hands of six regents ; for the south side robert arch-bishop of glasgow : john cumine , and john the great steward of scotland . for the north , the arch-bishop of s. andrews , macdiff earl of fife , and cumine earl of buchan . edward of england , sends to demand the daughter grand-child in marriage , as next heir to the crown , which was agreed too , but the death of the lady frustrated all that negotiation , by which means great contention arose between bourn , and john baliol. baliol managing the english , and bruce the french interest , baliol being in the second degree of relation and bruce in the third ; the one being david earle of huntingtons grand child , the other his great grand child : matters standing thus , the whole was referred to king edward , who coming to berwick and calling lawyers to his assistance , pretends all equity , but raised up eight other competitors , the better to weaken the claim of the other two , and so handled the business that ( bruce having refused the crown in homage to england , ) upon his aceptance of these conditions . 96. john balliol was declared king , a. d. 1293. in the fourth year of his reign , an appeal being made against him to king edward , by mac-duff and he refusing to rise from his seat to answer it . king edward enters scotland masters the country , takes baliol and sends him prisoner to london , and afterward to france , where he dyed long after in exile . about this time sir william walace arose , who to his honour did so heroically defend his country , in its low condition , as made it easily appear that if he had had as happy a fortune to advance , as he had to relieve , he might have been commemorated for as great a man as ever was in any age ; for having upon a quarrel slain a young english gentleman , and enforced to lurk in the hills for safety of his life , he became inured to such hardness , that awaking his natural courage , he be came the head of all the malecontents , and filled both the kingdomes with his terror so that having gleaned up to a tumultuary army , he became baliols viceroy ; thus after some little skirmishes he reduced all beyond the forts : after which he went to england , and ranged up and down for some time , and returned without opposition ; after which the english enters scotland with a great army , and finding the scots disposed under three leaders , ( who disputed among themselves for priority ) quite routed them , but soon after they made a general insurrection , to oppose which , king edward sent ralph conniers with a great army , who a by tripple victory were defeated at kolkin . all this while robert bruce continued with king edward , who weary of the kings delays and offputs , at last strikes in with john cumin , baliols cousin german , they agreed that bruce should have the kingdom , and cumine all bruces lands . cumine notwithstanding communicates this agreement to king edward , bruce hath notice , and by shooing his horse backward escapes to lockambban , there he finds cumines letters advising to cut him off , upon which he hastens to dumforess , where he heard that cumin was , and after his exprobrating his infidelity , stabs him dead in the franciscan monastery . about the same time walace was traiterously betrayed by sir john monteits at glasgow , and delivered to the english : and being brought to london was cruelly executed in smithfield , and his limbs hung up in the most eminent places . 97. robert bruce was ( after he had stayed for the popes absolution for defiling the monastery , with the murder of cumine ) crowned at scone 1306. a valiant and heroick prince , he had many enemies both at home and abroad , which edward taking advantage off , with the assistance of the cumines , quite routed him , forcing him to the hills where he endured great misery , to the great ruine and slaughter both of his family and friends , but making to gether some little force , he took carrick and innerness , by surprisal , and by this means augmented his train , so that he was in case to withstand edward , having obtained a considerable victory ( though sick and forced to be held on horse back ) this gave him time to take in the remaining strength , but they were within a year retaken from him , which incouraged edward the second to enter with a great army to scotland , but had a great defeat at bannokburn , which occasioned the loss of berwick , and bruces confirmation in parliament ; some few years after were spent in light skirmishes , and incursions . robert having some rest convened his nobles intending to determine the right of inheritances , which some had unlawfully kept in these unsettled times ; this begat a conspiracy , which being detected , a meeting was held at perth , there by their own papers many were convicted , and executed but some pardoned . in the mean time a legat came from rome , armed with all the thunderbolts of that see , to threaten the scots into a peace with england ; but missing of his errand , the scots followed him with an army , and marched as far as stainmore ; edward in revenge raiseth a most powerfull army , robert therefore considering that his force would not be in case to resist so great a power , caused all the cattel to be carryed unto the avious retreats of the hills , that they might not be serviceable to the enemy , whereupon the english for want of victuals were forced to retire , bruce pursues them as far as yorke , there he obtained a great victory . about this time the family of the hamiltons took their rise , one of them killing an english gentleman , fled to robert for protection , who gave him lands which retain the name to this day . bruce now having subdued his enemies , begins to compose himself to the cares of peace , and by act of parliament settles the crown upon his son , ( though a child ) and in case of his decease , to robert stewart his grand-child by his daughter , soon after thomas randolph , and james dowglas were sent with a flying party of horse into england , from whence they returned without any considerable action , saving only that dowglas with two hundred horse beat up the english quarters , cutting two ropes of the kings tent with his sword , and made a good retreat , bruce finding himself wasted with age , retyred to the abby of kilross , leaving these three counsels behind him . first not to let one man solely command the ebudae . secondly never to put all their strength at one hazard with the english . thirdly never to make long truces with them . thus he dyed leaving charge with the valiant dowglas , to go to jerusalem ( whither himself designed an expedition ) which the dowglas performing , he afterward joyned with the christian princes against the turks and saracens , where he obtained several great victories . he purposing to return home was driven by a tempest upon the coast of spain , where he joyned with the king of aragon against the saracens , and obtained great victories , at last he was killed by an ambushment that was laid for him of purpose , thus ended the noble and valiant dowglas , one of the most renowned warriours that lived in his days ; it is said that he was thirteen times victorious against the turkes and sarazens , and fiftie seven times against the english . in the preceeding age there was a gate in dansick called the dowglas port , in memory of this dowglas . king robert dyed at cardross the twenty fourth year of his reign , and was buried in dumfermling . 98 to him succeeded his son david bruce a. d. 1330. being seven years of age , thomas randal who was continued governour , kept the country in entire peace and prosperity , which king edward hearing of , hired a monk to kill randal by poyson , the monk giving out that he had great skill in curing the stone ( where with the government was sore troubled ) came to be in favour with him , which gave him opportunity to perpetrate his villany , how ever the poyson did not take effect at first , but the monk returned home and told king edward that he had done his business , who immediately raising a great army came to the border , of which the governour being advertised presently marched against him , ( himself not being able to ride nor go , was carryed in a litter ; when king edward heard that the governour was there , in person , he sent an herald under pretence of seeking peace , whom the governour received with a very austere countenance , when edward was by the herald certified of the truth of his being alive , he returned home and burnt the monk alive . the governour returning home dyed at musselbrough , after his death the earle of march and the earle of marr were chosen governours , in which they were scarce warm when news was brought that edward balliol was seen in the fryth with a formidable fleet , his army consisted of both english and scotch , the earle of stafford with divers other english men of note were with him , the governours raised two great armies to oppose the balliol , he came near the water of hone , where he pitched his tents , the earle of marr also encamped within view of him , but he slighting the smallness of their number took little care of himself , the balliol in the night time passed the water of erne , having intelligence of the ford by a stake set up for that purpose , and entering the earle of marrs camp , killed him in his bed , with many other noble men and gentlemen ; namely the earle of carrick , sir william hay constable of scotland , alexander frazier , also robert keith , lord marshal , balliol past immediately and beseiged perth and soon overcame it . the earle of march being encamped at ochterarder , and hearing of the earle of marrs death , and the taking the town of perth marched thither and beseiged it , but after he had filled the ditches , and put himself in a case to make an assault , he most shamefully left it thereupon . 99. balliol usurped the crown at scone , a. d. 1332. coming from thence to perth , they that adhered to david , bruce beseiged him and his party , upon the other hand his adherents wasted and destroyed the beseigers country , perth being well fortified , was by the king committed to the earle of fiffe as governour of it , but the sons of them who were killed with the earle of marr at duplin , beseiged and took it committing the governour to the castle of killdrummie . andrew murry of tullibardin , was executed for fastning the stake in the ford of the river erne , whereby balliol and the englishmen were directed the night wherein they surprised the earle of marre . therefore john kandal earle of murry , and the earle of galloway gathered a great army and came against balliol and quite routed him , killing many of his nobles and taking many prisoners , the kingdom being thus divided the one part for balliol , the other for bruce , the king of england thinking it a fit time for him to make a full conquest of scotland , raised a great army and beseiged berwick , mean while archibald dowglass raised an army and entring the borders , burnt all before him to divert the king of england from the seige , king edward advertised of this , sent a messenger to sir alexander setonn , who was governour , telling him that if he did not presently render he would hang his two sons , whom he had in his hands , which he refusing to do the two young gentlemen were presently hanged then the governour came with an army to northumberland where a most bloody battel was fought on halidown-hill , and the governour himself with many nobles killed , thereupon berwick was rendered , and edward balliol established king , who sought by all means to have gotten robert stewart in his hands , for he knew that ( next to king david ) his title was best to the crown . soon after king edward prepared an army both by sea and land , to enter into scotland , but the most part of his ships perished in forth . the king returning with balliol into england , left cumin earle of athol governour who seized upon all the lands pertaining to robert stewart and his friends , but robert stewart took the castle of dunne , and killed all the englishmen therein ▪ at this time the earle of murray came from france , who together with robert reduced much of the country to the obedience of king david chasing the governour and his followers to the mountains , but the english entred with a great army and ( though a great part of their army was routed ) took perth , but their fleet being harrast at sea , were forced to retreat , and the rather in design of a french war , but some of the nobles still standing out , the english landed in murray , and reduced all , and leaving balliol returned home , the next year the english beseiged dunbar , and sent in two parties under talbot and monford who were both routed , yet the seige continued , at last they were forced to raise the seige , also having received great loss by the valour of robert stewart . murray in the mean time dying , stewart was created viceroy till davids returne , who having the first year gained some victories , did the next year take perth , sterling and the castle of edenburgh , the scots gaining all their ground except berwick . in the year 1336. david resolves upon an expedition into england , though much disswaded by his council , making john randolph general , himself going disguised , soon after a peace for two years was treated of , which david would not accept without the consent of france , whereupon marching as far as the county of durham , had his army quite routed and himself taken prisoner , his kingdom also in a manner depopulated with the plague : by this time john of france was also made prisoner in england ; the scots after eleven years captivity , ransomed their king , who at his returne punished some of those who had deserted him at durham , and endeavoured to remove the succession of the crown from robert stewart , to whom he was some years after reconciled ; he spent the last five years of his reign in composing domestick feuds , queen jane daughter to edward the second of england dying , he marryed margaret logy , daughter to sir john logy , then he purposed to have past to jerusalem , having provided all necessarys for his voyage , but he fell sick of a feavour in the castle of edinburgh , whereof he dyed in the fortyth year of his reign , without succession , and was buried in holyrood-house . 100. robert stewart the first king of that name , succeeded his mothers brother , a. d. 1378. a valiant and worthy prince , he married eupham daughter to the earl of ross , who bare to him david , earl of strathern , walter earl of athol , alexander earl of marr , with several daughters . after her death , he marries elizabeth moor his own concubine , the better to legitimate children he had by her , he honoured them with titles , and declared them his successors , two years after an attempt is made upon berwick ▪ and sir john lilbourn , and 〈…〉 grave captains of it taken 〈…〉 after this , the earl of douglass came with twenty thousand men , to the fair of pennire within england , spoiling all the goods there ; but carried away the pestilence with him , whereof many dyed . to revenge this , the english came with a great army over solway , destroying all before them , mean while the scots gathered together about five hundred men. and lay in ambush , till the english returned back ; then with a sudden noise and clamour , as they passed by they set upon them , forcing them back , till many were drowned in solway . not long after , edward king of england dyed ; whereupon the duke of lancaster came into scotland , intreating to have a peace for three years , which peace being expired : my lord of galloway , laid siege to the castle of lochmaban , and made himself master of it ; defeating a strong party of english , who were coming from carlyle to it's relief : king richard fearing of it , sent the baron of gray-stock with a body of men , to fortifie roxburgh , who being within a mile of it , he was taken by the earl of march , and carried to dunbar ; the same year , the strengths of teviotdale were by the earl of douglas recovered out of the english hands , soon after which he dyed . his son james succeeding to him , went by the kings order with an army into england , whence he was presently after counter-manded home , where he found the admiral of france with two hundred and forty ships well man'd , come to their assistance , with them they passed into england and took the castles of warkford , and corwal . and laying siege to roxburgh , and carlyle ; the scots and french could not agree , in whose names the strengths should be kept if they were won , which brought the business to nothing : whereupon king richard in revenge enters scotland with a great army , and marching through the mers and louthian , did much hurt . but the earls of fife , douglas and galloway followed him into england , and secretly passing the water of solway , came to cokermouth ; where in three days time they spoiled the whole country about , and returned safely with great booty . in the year 1388. the king past again into england with an army , at which time the irish taking their advantage , entered galloway , destroying all before them : whereupon william the lord of galloways son pursued them to ireland , and burnt the town of carlingfoord , and finding sixty ships in several harbors , loaded fifteen of them with the spoil of the town , and burnt the rest : returning home , he spoiled the isles of man. the next year , the king of england sent an army into scotland , which did much hurt in the mers , revenging this affront : king robert sent two armies into england , the one under the command of the earl of fife , entred cumberland ; the other led by the earls of douglass , and march entred northumberland ; the two armies met within two miles of newcastle . the earl of douglass chose out ten thousand men to besiege newcastle , wherein was the earl of northumberland with his two sons , henry hotspur , and ralph . henry challenged the earl of douglass to fight with him , which douglass accepted off , so being mounted upon two starely horses , they assaulted one another desperately , at last douglass beat peircy out of his saddle , but he was presently rescued and brought into the town . immediately douglass assaulted the town , but it was so well defended by the english , that he was forced to retire and encamp at otterburn , whither henry peircy immediately followed , there they fought a bloody battel , until the darkness of the night parted them , but when the moon began to appear , they joyned again with more fierceness than before , victory inclining sometime to one side , and sometimes to another ; till at last patrick hepburn came with fresh men to the scots : whereupon the english retreated , leaving eighteen hundred of their men dead in the place , and a hundred and forty taken prisoners ; among which were the two peircies above mentioned . but the valiant earl of douglass dyed in this battel , being thrice run through the body , and mortally wounded in his head , which was a greater loss and grief to his nation , then the gain of this victory could ballance . the next year a parliament was called at perth , wherein robert earl of fife , the kings second son was elected governor , the king himself by reason of his great age , not being able to govern. he was a valiant , victorious and fortunate prince in all his wars , for his governours and captains returned always with victory . he was very constant , and a great iustitiar , hearing patiently the complaints of the poor ; causing all wrongs to be redressed . he dyed peaceably in the castle of dun-donald , the seventy fifth year of his age , and the nineteenth year of his reign . the same year john his eldest son was called to succeed , who thinking that name ominous to kings ( and there wanted not examples ) as of him of england , and him of france , and thinking something of the felicity , of the two former roberts , was crowned by the name of , 101. robert the third , a. d. 1390. he was more remarkable , for his peaceableness and modesty , then for any other vertue ; the first seven years of his reign were past in peace , by reason of his truce with england , but not without some fierce fiends among his subjects ; especially , the clankays , and clanchattes , the king seeing the difficulty of reducing them , made this proposition to them , that three hundred of each side should try it by dint of sword before the king ; the conquered to be pardoned , and the conqueror advanced , this being agreed to , a place was appointed upon the north-side of perth ; but when the clans presented themselves , there was one of one side missing , whom then his party could not supply : a trades-man steps out , and for half a french crown , and promise of maintenance during his life , filled up the company . the first was furious , but none behaved himself more furiously , then the other mercenary champion , who was the greatest cause of the victory , for of his side their remained ten grievously wounded , the other party had but one left ; who not being wounded , yet being unable to sustain the stroak of the other , threw himself in the tay , and escaped with his life : by this means the fiercest of the two clans , being cut off , the remainder being headless were quiet : two years after , the king in parliament made his two sons dukes , which was the first time that title , was known in scotland . next year richard the second of england , being forced to resign , henry the fourth succeeded , in the beginning of his reign , tho' the truce was not expired ; yet the seeds of war began to bud , upon this occasion , george earl of march betrothed his eldest daughter to david the kings eldest son , archibald earl of douglass incensed at this , got a vote of parliament to revoke this marriage , and giving a greater sum of money , got a marriage confirmed in parliament , betwixt david and mary his daughter . the earl of march nettled at this , demands redress , but not being heard , he leaves the court ; and with his family and friends goes into england , to the lord percy , who with his assistance did much hurt to the lands of the douglasses ; the scots declare the earl of march an enemy , and sends to demand him of the english , which they refusing , several incursions happened upon both sides , till at length piercy was defeated by the douglass's at lynton-bridge . at this time , david earl of cravford , and the lord welles in england , ingaged to run certain courses on horse-back , with sharp spears for life and death upon london-bridge , which they performed most gallantly . the people perceiving the earl of cravford to sit so stifly , cryed , the scotch man was lock'd in his saddle ; he hearing this , leapt out of the saddle upon the ground , and presently mounted again , to the great wonder of the beholders : the second time they run without any hurt , but the third time the lord welles was beat out of his saddle , and sorely hurt with the fall . by this time the queen dying , her son david , who for his extravagancies was by her means kept under restraint , broke out into his former disorders , and committed all kind of rapine , and wickedness ; complaint being brought to his father , he committed him to his brother robert ( this design was to root out all that off-spring ) the business was so ordered , as that the young man was shut up in faulkland castle to be starved ; which yet was for a while delayed , one woman thrusting in some oaten cakes at a chink , and another giving him milk out of her breasts , through a trunk ; but both these being discovered , the youth being forced to tear his own flesh dyed of a multiplyed death , which murder being whispered to the king , he was so abused by the false representations of his brother ; that grief and imprecations was all the relief that he had left him , and being now retired sickly , to boot castle , and unable to punish him . the king therefore solicitous to preserve james his youngest son , is resolved to send him to charles the sixth of france : and having taking shipping at the bassas , he passed by the promontory of flambrough ; and whether he was forced by a tempest , or that he was sea-sick , he was forced to land there , he was taken by the english , and detained prisoner , notwithstanding the eight years truce ; and tho' it came to be debated at the councel table , yet his detention was carried in the affirmative : but the news so struck his aged father , that he had almost presently dyed ; but being carried to his chamber with voluntary abstinence and sorrow : he dyed within three days , the sixteenth year of his reign , and was buried in pasley . upon this , the parliament confirm robert for governour ; about four years after , donald of the isles enters ross as his pretended inheritance , with ten thousand men , which he easily subdued ; thence he went to murray and mastered it also , and so went on to aberdeen ; to stop this torrent , alexander earl of marr , followed by most of the nobility , met him at harlaw , where they joyned in so bloody a battel , and lost so many noble and considerable persons , that tho' night parted them , neither could pretend to the victory , to this year , the university of s. andrews owes it's rise : the english being taken up with a war with france , nothing considerable was acted between them and the scots , for ten years after , at which time robert the governour dyes , and murdoch his son ( a very unfit person , ) was put in his place ; who suffered his sons to come to that petulancy , that they were not only offensive to the people , but with all disobedient to their father ; who having a brave faulcon , which his son walter had often begged , but in vain , he snatched it out of his fathers hand , and wrung off her neck , for which his father being angry well says he , since i cannot govern thee : i will bring one shall govern us both : and from that day , he ceased not to further the redemption of the king , he governed four years . 102. but the nobles weary under this form of government , the governour being also irritated by the misdemeanor of his children , all unanimously determine without longer delays , to work the deliverance of their native prince james , fourth of england , which at length was effected , anno. dom. 1424. having ransomed him for the sum of forty hundred thousand marks . he married jane daughter to the duke of somerset , son to john of gaunt , who bare to him two sons , alexander who dyed shortly after , and james the second who succeeded to him . the king having passed the solemnities of hasterat edenburgh : he with his queen came to perth , and from thence to scone ; where he was crowned in the twenty seventh year of his age , after he held a parliament at perth , where the tax was laid on to pay the sum promised to england for his ransome , from thence he went back to edenburgh , where he called such as were concerned with the crown rents together ; he understood by their accounts , that the most and best part of the crown lands were alienated , and wasted by the late governour , and his sons , whereat he was exceedingly incensed ; yet that time he smothered , and put a fair countenance upon his passion . but soon after , pregnant accusations were brought in against some of the nobility ; especially , the governours friends , upon which some of them were made prisoners , which occasioned much discontent and jealousie on both sides , yet the king securing the body of this estate on his side , resolved to go on ; and having arrested the governour , with two of his sons , and several others his friends , they were all committed to several prisons : whereupon james the governours youngest son , in a desperate rage accompanied with a number of out-laws , came to dumbarton , and set on fire , and killed john stewart the kings uncle , with thirty others . this insolency of the son , quite diverted the kings clemency from his father and brethren : whereupon he calleth a parliament at sterling , where the governour with his two sons , and his father-in-law the duke of lenox , were arraigned and condemned , and soon after executed ; this highly perplexed some other lords and gentlemen , who were prisoners at the same time , fearing that they should also meet with the same measures ; yet the king like a wise physitian , being not willing to take away more blood , than he thought would take away the disease of the body , in a short time set them all at liberty . the wars continuing between france and england , the french sent an ambassador to renew the ancient league with scotland : but his main business was , to carry on a match between lewis the daulphine , tho' then very young ; and margaret daughter to king james , this match the english neglected , but afterward most earnestly sued for it . the south parts of the kingdom , being brought under obedience , the king resolved to have the north follow their example , for which end he went thither himself in person , to keep his courts : when he came there , he found things in a strange condition , all going by strength of hand ; the stronger overthrowing the weaker . the king not knowing well how to go about the taming of these rude villains , seemed to give small faith to what he heard of them , allowing such of them , as seemed to come and see him a great deal of seeming favour , till at length he got forty of their chiefs all at once , within the castle of innerness , whom he presently surprized , making them close prisoners : within a few days after , the king was convinced of this wickedness ; alexander macrory , and john macherter were hanged ; john campbel for murthering john of the isles , was beheaded : the earl of ross being taken in this trap , was brought by the king to perth , where he was accused of oppression and other things ; yet the king pardoned him , and freely dismist him , taking his oath of fidelity . but as soon as he went home , he gathered together a rabble of out-laws , who came towards innerness , burnt both town and castle to the ground : whereupon the king himself went with his forces against him , at whose approach all the rebels fled : alexander thus abandoned of his forces , fled to the isles ; but finding that he was way-laid on all hands , and had no way left him to escape , he came disguised to edenburgh : whereupon yesterday the king being at church , he came wrapped in a mourning garment and fell down at his feet , beging his life , which at the queens request was granted ; but to keep him from any more mischief , the earl of august was appointed to take him into custody , within tanutallon castle . donald balloth cousin-german to the earle of ross raised a great number of outlaws and invaded lochaber , and in a bloody battel overthrew the earles of marr and caithness at innerlochy , the news coming to the king he came with a great army to dunstaffage , which when the clans heard of , they tendred their submission to the king , promising to break balloth and his party , which the king accepted of , balloth fled to ireland where he was taken and his head chopt off and sent to king james . notwithstanding of the many acts of justice that were done upon these disorderly outlaws , yet nothing frighted one macdonald , who was famous for all sorts of villanies ; among other cruelties he is said to have nailed horseshoes to the soles of a widdow , because that she swore to delate him to the king being taken with twelve of his associates , and brought to perth , the king caused them to be shooed in the same manner as he had served the woman , draging him about for a spectacle to the people for three days , then all of them were put to death . in this year a. d. 1430. the first of june was a terrible eclipse of the sun , at three of the clock in the afternoon , the day turning black for the space of half an hour , as though it had been night , which was afterward called by the common people the black hour . the king having setled the country , begins to look to his own affairs , and having advisedly perused all evidences and charters belonging to the crown , he recalls all such lands as had been either alienated from it , or wrongfully usurped , about this time there came ambassadors from the king of denmark requiring of king james a yearly tribute , due to him as king of norway for the western isles , the ambassador was honourably entertained , and the old league renewed with denmark ; soon after the french kings ambassadors came to have margaret already betrothed to lewis the dauphin , delivered to them and conveyed to france , where they found the lord scroop earnestly dealing with the king , that he must bestow his daughter upon king henry the sixth of england , promising that if he would agree thereto , that the town and castle of berwick should be delivered into the hands of the scots , with all the lands lying between tweed and the redcross in in richmondshire , the french ambassadors also proffered great and tempting things , withal puting the king in mind how true they have been to him for so many years , since the first making of the league . the king and his council after mature deliberation , declare they will not break the ancient league with france , whereupon the english ambassadors turned from prayers to threatnings , and being denied friendship denounced war. but the king no wise moved hereat presently prepared his ships , and with a company of able and skilful mariners set his daughter to sea , and having escaped the english fleet that waited for her , safely arrived at the rochel , a. d. 1430. the english to revenge this supposed afront invades scotland both by sea and land ; against their forces commanded by henry piercy of northumberland , went james dowglass earle of angus , with several gentlemen , their numbers were much about one , the lists of their meeting was popperden , adam hepburn of hales , and alexander elphinston led the vanguard of the scots , sir richard piercy and sir john ogle of the english , sir alexander ramsey of dalehouse , and henry clidsdale kept the rears , no sooner came they within distance of joyning but the sounds of drums and trumpets , was out noised by the shouts of the assailants ; guns being about this time invented were here first practised between the scots and english in an open field , then the fight with equal order had been long maintained on both sides , now the scots then the english yielding ground , many of the commanders at length began to fall , most of the english , then was the piercy at once constrained to be both commander and souldier , but all would not do , at last victory declared her self altogether for the scots , two hundred gentlemen and common souldiers of the scots were slain here . of the english dyed sir henry cliddsdale , sir john ogle , sir richard piercy with fifteen hundred gentlemen and common souldiers , and four hundred taken prisoners , of which forty were knights ; king james resolving to prosecute this war raised an army , and cometh to roxburgh , beseigeth the castle defended by sir ralph gray ; but when he came so near his designe that they within were driven to terms to surrender : the queen in great hast cometh to the camp representing to her husband a conspiracy , which if not suddenly prevented would indanger his person and crown , this put the king in great astonishment , not knowing what to do , at last after many doubtful resolutions and conflicts in his thoughts , raiseth the seige , disbandeth the army , and accompanied with some chosen bands of his most assured friends , perplexed pensive and sad returned to perth , staied in the convent of the dominicans , indeavouring so secretly as was possible to find out the conspiracy , but his close practising was not unknown to the conspirators , which made them hasten the mischief before tryal , or remedy could be thought upon . the conspirators were robert graham , robert stewart nephew to waller earle of athole , and one of the kings sworn domesticks , but he who gave motion to all was the earle of athole , he himself the kings fatthers brother ; this quarrel was no less then a pretended title to the crown , and being animated by the oracle of a southsayer , who assured him that he would be crowned in a solemn assembly before his death , never doubted of success . these having associated unto them the most audacious , whom hope of preferment might intice . thus graham and stewart which were accomplices guided with resolution , and guarded with the darkness of the night , came to the black-fryers of perth , and having the way made open to them , entred the gallery before the kings chamber door , where they attended some of their confederates , who should have stole away the bar by which means they might enter the chamber , but before their coming the occasion was put in their hands , for walter streater one of the kings cup bearers came forth of the chamber and finding armed men , rushing rudely to force their entry , with a loud voice gave the alarum of treason , while they were working his death a maid of honour got to the door , and essayed to shut it , but the bar which should have made it fast was gone , she thrust in her arm in the place of it but that easily broken , the conspirators rush into the chamber , and slaying all such of the waiters as made defence , they at last stroke down the king , ( whom while the queen by interposing her body sought to save , she received two wounds ) and he with twenty eight most toward the heart was left dead . the report of this murther being spread abroad , wrought incredible sorrow and grief in the hearts of his subjects of all sorts , the nobles of their own accord and motion assembled to edenburgh , and directed troops of armed men through all the quarters of the kingdom , to aprehend the murtherers ; such diligence was used that within forty days all were taken and put to ignominious deaths : the common sort of the conspirators were hanged upon gibbits , the punishment of athol was continued for three days , the first day he was stript naked to his shirt , and by a crane fixed in a cart often hoisted aloft and thus dragged along the great street of the town , on the second day he was mounted upon a pillar in the market-place , and crowned with a diadem of burning iron with this inscription , the king of all traytors , thus was his oracle accomplished , the third day he was laid naked upon a scaffold , his belly ript , his heart and bowels taken out and thrown in a fire before his eyes , lastly his head was cut of and fixed in the most eminent place of the town , his body sent in quarters , to the most populous cities of the kingdom , to remain a trophy of justice . his nephew was not altogether so vigorously handled , being only hanged and quartered . but it being notorious , that graham had imbrewed his hands in the kings blood , a gallows being raised in a cave , he had his right hand nailed to it , and as he was dragged along the streets , executioners with burning pincers , tearing the most fleshy part of his carcass ; being thus torn and flayed , his heart and intrals were thrown into a fire , his head set up , and his quarters sent among the towns , to satisfie the wrath and sorrow of the injured people : being asked during his torture , how he durst embrew his hand in his princes blood , he made answer , that having heaven and hell before him , he dared leap from heaven into hell ; an answer worthy for such a villain . dueas sylvius then legat in scoltand , from the pope ; having seen this sudden and terrible revenge , being a witness of the execution : said he could not tell , whether he should give them greater commendations , that revenged the kings death , or brand them with a sharper condemnation , that distained themselves with so hainous a parricide . thus dyed this noble and wise prince , in the thirteenth year of his reign : he was buried in the charter-house of perth , which he himself had founded . 103. the three estates of the kingdom , set the crown upon the head of james the second at holy-rood-house ; while yet a child in the sixth year of his age , a. d. 1437. the government is intrusted to alexander levingston of calander , and the custody of the kings person , to sir william crichtoun : whereupon archibald earl of douglass , grudging that these honours had been conferred upon men far below himself , retired home and gave orders , that none of his vassals should acknowledge the present government ; also he used all means to weaken the hands of the chancellor , and governour , sowing ( by his instruments ) the seeds of division between them , which accordingly answered expectation , they begin to cross and counter-act one another , which made them at length that neither of them was obeyed , the country , having usurped a licencious liberty , doing what he thought best . the queen seeing things thus mis-managed betwixt them , and finding that the chancellor was mostly to blame , she at last resolves to change the game of state. to effect her design , she came to edenburgh ; and with fair speeches prevailed with the chancellor , to let her enter the castle ▪ and delight her self some days in the company of her son ; after some days staying , where having fixed every thing for her purpose , she puts the king into a trunck , as if he had been some fardel of her apparel , and conveys him by water to sterling , presently after proclamations are made against the chancellor , and he commanded to render the castle , which he refusing to do , he is presently besieged . but the two rulers being better advised , considering that douglass waited to see them undo one another , come to an agreement . much about this time , the queen dowager married james stewart's son , to the lord of lorn , the governour fearing what might follow upon the novation , committed them both to the castle of sterling , then the queen began to repent her , of her former courtesies to the governour , resolving once more to face about ; which the chancellor observing , lays hold upon the opportunity , and strikes in with her presently , they contrived how to take the prince out of the governours hands , which they after effected thus , the king being one morning hunting in the park ( the governour being at perth ) the chancellor coming to him by the queens assistance , prevails with him to go to edenburgh , and take the government upon himself ; which when the governour hears of , he very calmly came to edenburgh , where the chancellor and he becometh friends . the great confusions that were in the country , did necessitate the the calling of a parliament , where many grievous complaints were brought against several oppressors ; and among the rest william earl of douglass , son to archibald ; was represented as the source , whence the miseries of the country sprang : the parliament resolve to proceed against him , by way of rigour , but the governor and the chancellor advise them rather to write a fair letter to him , and invite him by fair means to come in and submit , which was accordingly done , and wrought so effectually upon him , that he resolves presently to obey ; hoping thereby to get himself set up : he upon his arrival , was together with his brother david , and sir malcolm flyming of cummerald , with great ceremony conducted by the governour to the castle of edenburgh , where the king was ; at this table he was set to dine , this so elevated his heart , that he blessed himself with the expectation of other favours . but amidst these entertainments ( behold the instability of fortune ) near the end of the banquet , the head of a bull ( which was the sign of present death in those days ) is set down before him : at which sudden spectacle , he leapt from the table all agast , but he is presently seized upon by armed men , who led him to the outer court of the castle , and notwithstanding the tears and crys of the young king , that they might spare his life , he together with his brother and flyming , had their heads cut off : this act left grief and terror in the hearts of the people , who ever after hated the actors of the tragedy . the kings nonage being now near expired , he takes the government upon himself , and finding the two rulers being so long settled in the government ; not to be ambitious and head-strong , he resolves to entertain another faction more powerful than they : so setting his thoughts upon william earl of douglass son to the baron of abercon , him he received into favour . this sudden change of court , moved the two rulers to withdraw , after which they were both removed from their offices ; and at last summoned before the king , to answer such things as they should be legally accused of . they finding that there was a design upon them , did not appear : whereupon they were both forfeited . this produced great confusion in the state , all being divided into factions , and parties : whereupon followed much effusion of blood ; especially , between the layndsays , and the ogletives . douglass to keep himself high , did much abett these broils , making his own use of them ; yet not long after , the chancellor notwithstanding douglass's power , and policy , is restored to his fortune and dignity . the king being setled upon the throne , married mary daughter to the duke of gnilders , soon after , the peace with england expired , and the borders of both kingdoms , break and mutually invade each other , which issued in a truce for seven yeers . but this truce stood not long , both nations being equally inclined to break it : whereupon after several incursions on both sides , at last they came to a battel . the scots were commanded by the earl of ormond , the english , by the earl of northumberland , magnus red-beard ; a man trained from his youth in the wars of france , who is said to have required no more for his service to the crown of england , then that by his own valour , he must conquer of scotland . here it is valiantly fought for a long time , with doubtful victory , till at length magnus being killed , it inclined to the scots , the loss of the english was great , many brave men being killed and taken prisoners , upon their side , but the scots lost few of any note , except cragy wallace : this battel brought on a truce for three years . this victory no sooner was obtained , and thereby peace abroad , but presently they fall out at home ; this douglass being always the first mover of strife : but now finding himself over-powered by adversaries , both at court and in the country ; he leaveth the kingdom and goeth to rome , he was not long gone , but by the means of his enemies , he is cited to appear before the council upon several days together , with his brother and vassals , to answer such things as should be objected against them ; and upon not appearing , are all denounced rebels : the earl of douglass hearing of this unexpected news at rome , takes a journey , and comes to the borders of scotland ; whence he sent his brother to court to know the kings mind towards him . the king promised upon his submission , to accept of him , which he performed , making him for his further encouragement lieutenant general of his forces : but he stood not long privately in his prosperity , for going to the court of england upon some design , the king was highly dissatisfied with him , yet upon his humble submission he is pardoned , but divested of all publick imployment within the kingdom . thus being degraded from his honnour 's , he gives himself wholly to study revenge , and that he might the more successfully effect his design ; he gets the earls of cranford , ross-murray , the lord balveny , with many other barons and gentlemen , to enter in a confederacy , both offensive and defensive with him , after they broke out in unsufferable insolences ; spoiling and plundering the lands of such as were not of their faction , and killing , and destroying such as offered to oppose them . the king begins to be apprehensive of their design ; therefore thinks it high time to look to himself and his country : whereupon he sent for douglass , to come and speak with him at sterling , which he at first feared to do , but upon second thoughts , he accompanied with many of the confederates went to court , where the king very graciously received him ; the day being far spent , the gates of the castle shut , all removed except some of the council , and the guards , the king takes the earls apart very friendly , and remembred him of favours received , and wrongs forgotten : taxing him with the exorbitant abuses of his followers , then he told him of a covenant , which he heard was made betwixt him and some of the other nobility , and desired to know what he had to say . douglass answered in plain terms , it was so , but that the covenant was made for his own safety , the king further expostulated with him to break it , which he refusing to do , the king with his dagger ended the quarrel , killing him in the place . about the end of this tragedy , a pair of spurs between two platters , is directed to sir james hamilton , as a part of the kings banquet : whereupon he and the rest takes the allarum , and setting fire to divers places of the town , they make their escape ; the king to vindicate himself , emits declarations , shewing all his good subjects the reasons that moved him to take douglass's life , that it was not a fit of passion , nor an act of private revenge , but meerly to save the state from utter ruin : yet the mobile were diversly affected some justifying the fact , as noble and just , but others ( as the greater number ) as boldly condemned it , as inhumane and cruel ; these of the league missing no opportunity that was for their interest , made it their work to sow sedition and discord , and to encourage all breaches and contempt of the laws , which encreased their number , so that the king was reduced to a very low condition , till at last cranford one of the confederates being routed , by the earl of huntly , he recovered some strength , and having called a parliament at edenburgh , summoned the confederate lords to appear before , which they scornfully refused to do : whereupon the king levying an army , forced them to retire ; yet the country suffered sadly , by their unbridled fury . at length after much loss on both sides ( the king daily prevailing , the earl of cranford submitted himself to his mercy , as several others did afterward . whereupon the earl of douglass fled to england , there having gathered together several desperate men , he made several inroads upon the border . the king having with much difficulty recovered the royal authority of his ancestors , ( england in the mean time being at the point of utter ruine by the contest of henry the sixth , and the duke of york , ) was much solicited by both of them , but he told the ambassadors that he had more reason to look to his own concerns , then to assist either of them which he intended to do , thereupon raising a powerful army he passed the tweed , and besieged roxburgh , where having applyed his battery to the castle , he began to storm it , but by the space of an over-charged piece the king's thigh bone being broken was struck immediately dead , the twenty fourth year of his reign , having left three sons james who succeeded alexander duke of albany , and john earl of marre , and was buried at holy-rood house . after his death the queen with her son came to the siege and encouraged the nobles , who took and demolished the castle , and also the castle of warke . 104. to him succeeded his son james the third , a. d. 1460. a good prince corrupted by wicked courtiers , who with advantage of his years being but seven years of age when he began to reign , his education is intrusted to his mother , the government of the kingdom to the earls of anaudale castle , orkney and the lords , boyd and graham , the bishops of st. andrews , glasgow and dnubek . in this princes nonage great confusions increased both at home and abroad , at home by the islanders who extreamly infested the country , and came as far as the blairth of athole and burnt s. brides church , where the earl and his lady took sanctuary , carrying them to the island ila , from whence as these savages were going further , they were all miserably destroyed by a tempest . nor was it better abroad , england being in a flame by the civil wars , henry being taken and released again by his queen , flees to scotland desiring their assistance against his enemies , and that he might be the better heard caused the town of berwick to be delivered to the scots ; thereupon the queen who managed the war geting some supply , marched ( taking the king with her ) into england , but was soon overthrown at durham . a. d. 1466. the queen of scots dyed having left many sound and profitable instructions to the king her son , who now coming to fifteen years of age , is by his regents committed to the lord boyds brother to be educated in the excercise of chivalry , by which means the boyds became to darken all others in the state , nothing being done without them , the kenedies who had been the kings best friends , seeing things go thus left the court , after which the glory of the court and country suffered a great eclipse . the lord boyde to be yet higher gets the sole government setled upon himself , which laid the foundation of his ruine , and not satisfied with this , he obtains his son to be married to the kings eldest sister , this highly displeased the rest of the nobility that his ambition should be so boundless , which gave matter to his former enemies to work upon , all oppression and violence is winked at on purpose at last they procure complaints from all parts of the kingdom against the boyds , which made the kings affection begin to turn away from them . a. d. 1468. a match being proposed and agreed upon between the king and margaret daughter to the king , of denmark , the boyds enemies procures the earl of arran who had married the kings sister to be sent to bring home the queen ; he was no sooner gone then his interest at court began to fall , for a parliament being called ; the lord boyd and his brother sir alexander are summoned to appear thereupon he distrusting this case fled to england , but his brother was taken and arraigned , the earl of arran also though absent is declared a rebel . the queen arriving with her fleet arriving in the ferth , my lady arran went aboard in disguise and informed her husband of the calamity of his house , perswaded him to do for himself , whereupon he hoisted sails and returned with his lady to denmark . the king sendeth letters full of promises and threatnings to move his sister to return to scotland , which when she did she was constrained to be divorced from her husband , and to marry james lord hamilton ; not long after the earl of arran dyed in great misery at antwerp . queen margaret the third year after her marriage brought forth a son who was named james , the king of denmark to congratulate the happy delivery of his daughter , released all his claims to the isles of orkney and sherland , but in the midst of this calm a cloud begins to overcast the kings splendor , for his brothers being princes of unquiet and restless spirits they set themselves altogether to study novelties , and to bring him into contempt with his subjects , to this end they had drawn away many of the young nobility and gentry to follow them . the king was naturally superstitious , giving much head to divinations which gave also his brothers occasion to vilifie him , and incense his people against him , yea the earl of marre became so insolent that in the kings own presence , he began to raile against the government of the state and court , which the king highly resenting , caused to imprison him where he fell in a high fever whereof he dyed . the duke of albany imputed the death of his brother to the court party , but while he was keeping his cabals in order to an insurrection , he was surprised and imprisoned in the castle of edenburgh out of which he soon after made his escape to france , thence he came to england , and began to tamper with king edward , revealing to him the weakness of the kingdom of scotland , and how easily it might be subdued , the nobility not respecting the king but much affecting a change in the government , which by his assistance might easily be effected , he promised also to settle a corespondence with the nobles of scotland which he did , then that they might get their design wrought , gives way for the breaking loose of the borders , fierce incursions are made by the english upon scotland and by the scots upon the english , and the discontented nobility blame the king for all , thereupon pretending the necessity of the times and the danger the kingdom was in , they entered into a bond of association after which they enter the kings bed chamber , where they seized some of his servants in his presence and put them to death , as incendiaries in the state . about this time the duke of gloucester set forward toward scotland with two and twenty thousand men , finding berwick two strong for him he marches directly to edenburgh , there by publick writings at the market places he gave out high demands , all which king james being shut up in edenburgh castle answered with silence , the disatisfied lords having obtained what they chiefly aimed at , wished the english at home again therefore they desire a peace with them , which the duke of gloucester granted upon condition that all his demands were satisfied ( one of which was to reinstall the duke of albany ) which after much debate was granted and he with his army returned home . the duke of albany having recovered his estate and honours , his first work was to restore the king to his prerogatives , reconciling him to his discontented lords ; but he himself stood not long in his favour , for by the advice of some of his enemies about the king a plot is resolved upon to bring the duke within compass of law , which he being aware of fled to england to present to king edward and the duke of gloucester his grievancies , in his absence he is convinced of many points of treason whereupon he and the lord crightton his associate are both forfeited , which when he heard he presently caused to give up the castle of dunbar , whereof he was lieutenant , to king edward , who immediately put a garison in it . not long after the said king edward dyed , and his brother richard duke of gloucester succeeded . the duke of albany obtains five hundred horse from king richard with which he came with the old earl of douglass to lochmabban to surprise a fair which was held there , whereupon the laird of johnston who was warden dispatched posts about for supply of men with which he encountred the duke , here it is most couragously fought on both sides but at last the english are quite routed , the duke hardly by swiftness of his horse escaped , but the earl of dowglass is taken and brought in triumph to edenburgh where the king adjudged him to perpetual confinement , soon after followed a truce with england for three years , but before the time was expired henry earl of richmond came with some companies out of france , ( of which that famous warriour , bernard stewart , lord albany brother to the lord darnly had the leading , ) which by the resort of his country men turned into an army and rencountred richard at bosworth where he was killed , and henry proclaimed king of england . king james taking advantage of this change besieged dunbar , which was soon surrendred upon articles . after this king henry sent embassadors to king james , to agree if possible upon a lasting , and firm peace between the two crowns , at length after some difficulty they agree upon a truce for seven years . the king having settled a peace with england , betakes himself to the exercise of religion , having founded a colledge for divine service in the castle of sterling ▪ he endeavoured to annex the priory of goldingham to it . the priors of this convent , having for many years been of the name of humealedged , that they were wronged of their right : first they began to petition , but finding this uneffectual , they began to associate with their neighbours , giving it out that the king was a meer tyrant , not to be trusted , by which means many of the hearts of the subjects were alienated from the king. the king understanding how things stood he made choice of a guard to defend his person , resolving to live beyond the river ferth ; of which , when the lords of the insurrection were certified , they surprize the castle dunbar , and tumultuously over-run the countries , besouth the ferth : thus coming to lithgow , they resolved to make the duke of rothesay the kings own son their head , whom having corrupted his keepers with bribes , they constrained to go with them . but the king loosing neither courage , nor councel passeth the ferth , near blackness with his forces , before his arrival at this place , the earls of montross , gleancan , lords , maxwel , ruthwen with others , being advertised by letters came to him , they of the association , having the prince with them , to add authority to their quarrel . gathered from all quarters , the two armies being in readiness to decide their quarrel by battel ; the earl of athole the kings uncle , so travelled between the lords of either party , that the king had a suspension of arms agreed on . the earl rendring himself a pledge for the accomplishment of the kings part , of the reconcilement to lord hails . thus the king lost a good opportunity , the like of which was never again in his offer , for the lords notwithstanding that was agreed upon , continued very troublesome to the country , the town of edenburgh , is pestered with troops of armed men. the king warned of his danger , fortifies the castle of edenburgh for his defence ; then he sent to the lords , to understand their intentions , and what they meant , they finding their offences flew higher than hope of pardon could reach , answered that nothing could secure them , nor the kingdom until he had divested himself of all the government of the kingdom , and resigned the crown in favour of his son. but he resolving to hazard all rather , then condescend to this , was advised by some of his friends , to retire to the castle of sterling , where his forces might have more easie access to him , but this proved a a fatal advice for coming thither , the treacherous constable denyed him entrance , in the mean time news came to him , that the confederates were within six miles of him at falkirk . the king to make a vertue of necessity , resoves to put all upon the hazard of a battel ; the confederates were incamped near the torwood . the king set forward with his army upon the other side of the torwood . both drew up in a plain field near bannock-burn , and engaged most desperately : the first charge is valiantly given , and lance meeting with lance , the vant-guard of the lords began to yield ground . but the next charge being given by anandale men , the middle of the kings army is beat back to the main battel , notwithstanding of which it is fought a while with great obstinacy on both sides , until the standard royal was beaten down ; then began the kings army to bow the horsemen , obeying no orders , begun to turn their backs . in this rout and confusion of horse and foot , the king seeking to retire towards the river ferth , by the fall of his horse in leaping a ditch , being sore bruised , was carried by such , who knew him not , to a well at bannock-burn ; where he was killed in cold blood , by borthwick a priest with some others , the twenty ninth year of his reign , and was buried at kambush-kenneth . 105. to him succeeded his son james the fourth , who was crowned at edenburgh , a. d. 1489. being about sixteen years of age , a noble and couragious prince , and godly ; the beginning of his government was most uneasie , the death of the late king , being yet recent , his followers resolve to have it revenged . in the north , alexander lord forbs displayed the bloody shirt of the murthered king upon a lance in aberdeen , and other places of the north , inviting the country as by an herald to the revenge of his murther . in the west , the earl of lennox hath the same resolution ; also the earl of marshad , lords , goodore and lyle , with the confederates in other parts of the kingdom . but the lord drumond routed the earl of lennox at telliemoss , and also sir andrew wood , obtained a considerable victory over the english ( who pretended to revenge the late kings death ) at the mouth of ferth . the rumor of these victories , so amazed forbs and his confederates , that they laid down their arms , and put themselves into the kings mercy , and were all received into favour . the lords rejoyced greatly , that they had brought things to this pass , but the king gave no sign of joy ; yea upon the contrary , to give a testimony to the world , of the agony of his mind , for the death of his father ; and that remorse and anguish he suffered for the faults of those , who brought him to the field against him , he girded himself with an iron chain , to which every third year thereafter , he added some rings and weight , so long as he lived , and though this might threaten no good to some , yet they pass it by , not daring to attempt ought against the common peace . amidst this grief and sorrow of the kings , andrew forman secretary to alexander the sixth bishop of rome , arrived in scotland , with instructions to the clergy , in a letter , from his master , to the king and nobles , exhorting them to the mutual duties of their stations , after this some head-strong nobility dying , the country enjoyed a great calm of peace , the seeds of dissention , seeming to be quite taken away . but the borders keeping up their old fewds by new accessions , make daily incursions one upon another , which came at last to open hostility : whereupon king james enters england , and spoils all the north parts , and returns home without any considerable action , not long after ambassadors came from england , desiring a peace ; which is granted , and the commissioners for both sides met at edenburgh , where many articles and conditions of the peace were hotly disputed , one of the englishe's demands was an interview between the two kings at newcastle , which being referred to king james his own arbitrement , he answered , that he meant to treat of a peace , but not to go a begging for it . much being said at last they conclude upon a peace for some months following ; after which followed a match between king james of scotland with lady margaret the king of englands eldest daughter , which was consummated at edenburgh . king henry bringeth his daughter as far as cokebiston in the way , and then resigning her to the earl of northumberland , who with a great train of lords and ladys brought her to edenburgh to the king her husband , where they for some days , were taken up with nothing but banqueting , masks , and tilting , with such other exercises ; by this means the king wasted his treasures greatly ; then some of them set their wits awork , to squeeze the subjects for money , which occasioned great murmurings among the poor . a. d. 1507. james prince of scotland and the isles , was born at holy-rood-house the one and twentyth of january but he soon after dyed at sterling , the year following , the queen brought forth another son named arthur , but he dyed also in the castle of edenburgh . then she brought forth her third son at linlithgow , who succeeded to the crown and was named james . about the same time bernard stewart came to scotland , intreating that king james would make war with king henry of england , to keep him from molesting france , which at last he obtained : then began they to go to their old work of making incursions one upon another , till at last it breaks out to an open war. whilst king james staied at linlithgow attending the gathering of an army , now ready to set forward , as he was at his devotion an ancient man came in , in a very strange and majestick manner , and of a comly and reverent aspect , who having enquired for the king , he intruded himself prease , passing through till he eame to him with a clounish simplicity , leaning over the canons seat where the king sat : sir ( said he ) i am sent hither to intreat you for this time to delay your expedition , and to proceed no farther in your intended journey . for if you do , you shall not prosper in your enterprize , nor any of your followers . i am further charged to warn you , if you be so refractory as to go forward , not to use the acquaintance , company , or councel of women , as you tender your honour , life and estate . having delivered his commission , he withdrew himself among the croud , but could never be seen again ; the queen also did greatly shake his resolutions with her tears and prayers , acquainting him with the visions and affrightments of her sleep , but he laughed at all these fancies , thinking them to be only the contrivance of such as hated the french and loved the english faction , so he gave present orders to his army to march over the tweed , not staying till his whole forces came to him , though they were upon their march , yet for all his hast when once he had passed the river , he trifled away his time so idly , that many of his souldiers wanting necessarie provision returned home , which the nobility seeing , advised the king to returne also : having spoiled that country sufficiently already , but he would hear no such advice , though at last his army was brought so low that he had none almost left but the nobility and their attendants . the english army commanded by the earl of surrey consisting of twenty eight thousand men , were come by this time within three miles of the place , where the scotish army was incamped , which made them draw to their arms . the earl of surreys vanguard , passed the water of till at twysel bridge , king james seeing them pass the water imagineth that they intended to gain a hill between his camp and them . to prevent which , he removed to another hill ; whilst the scotish army was removing , the english advance to the foot of flondon hill. the fatal hour of the two armies approaching one another , the english draw up in good order in two battels , one of which was equal in number to the whole scotish army , the scots by their fewness of number , not being able to order many battalions , marshal themselves in four , three of which to enter the fight , and the fourth to attend for supply : the king commanded the middle , or main battel ; the earl of huntly , the right wing , and the earls of cranford , and montross the left ; the third battalion was commanded by the earl of lennox , and the earl of argyle , and the reserved , by the earl of bothwel . the earl of huntly making down the hill , where they incamped , encountred a wing of the english van , led by sir edmund howard ; which after a furious and long fight , he put to flight , the battalion led by the earls of lennox & argyle ( being high-land men ) incouraged with this glance of victory loosing their ranks , brake furiously upon the enemy , invading them in the face of them ; they were not only valiantly received , but hedged in on all hands , and miserably destroyed . the main battel which the king led , being joyned by the earl of bothwel , fought it out couragiously body against body , and sword to sword ; great numbers falling upon both sides , till the darkness of the night , as it were by mutual consent , forced a retreat ; neither of them knowing unto whom victory pertained . many brave scots did here fall , esteemed to be above five thousand of the noblest and worthiest families of the kingdom ; neither was the loss of the english less in number , but most part of them being common soldiers , was thought little of : about the dawning of the next morning , the lord dacres with his troops , taking a view of the field , and seeing the brazen ordnance of the scots , not carried off , sendeth speedy advertisement to the pensive army , inviting all to the setting up of trophies . what the kings fate was , is uncertain , the english hold , that he was killed in this battel ; the scots , that many in like arms , with the like guards , were killed , every one of which was taken for the king : among others , alexander lord elphingston , one of his favourites , being not unlike the king in face and stature , and representing him in his armour in the field , with the valiantest , and most couragious of the army fought it out , and acting heroically his part as a king , was killed , heaps of dead bodies invironing his . in the search , where the fight was , the number , tallness , and the furniture of the dead bodies being observed , their faces , and wounds viewed , his body as if it yet breathed majesty , was amidst the others selected , thought to be his master , brought to berwick and imbalmed . that it was not the kings body , his iron chain which he always wore , and was not there found about him , gave testimony . others have recorded , that the fortune of the day inclining to the english ; four tall men mounted upon lusty horses , wearing upon the tops of their lances for cognizance , streamers of straw , mounting the king upon a sorrel hackney , conveyed him far from the place of fight , and after that he was seen beyond the tweed , between kelso and dunce , after which , what became of him was uncertain . many think , that he was killed in the castle of hume , either by intelligence , between the english and the humes , or in hopes of great fortunes , which would follow innovations , and confusions in the state. to this is added , that one carbreth in the time of john duke of albanies government , vaunted , that however the governour wronged the humes , yet he was one of those who had abated the insolency of king james , and made him know that he was a mortal , all which , increased the suspicion of many . the governour not long after , cut off the heads of the earl of hume and his brother , without any known cause . this noble prince was lost the twenty fifth year of his reign . 106. the fatal overthrow of the king and nobility , filled the remnant of the state with great sorrow and perplexity ; the heads and fairest parts , which majesty , authority and wisdom had made eminent , were cut off , and nothing but some turbulent church-men , orphan-noblemen , and timerous citizens , left to fill their room . in this maze of perplexity , james the prince is set upon the throne , a. d. 1514. and is committed to the tutelage of his mother , together with the government of the realm . but the government of a woman and a child , over a head-strong people , could not stand long firm : a hot contest arose among the clergy for the archbishop-prick of s. andrews ; three being put in at one time , one by the pope , another by the queen , and a third by the chapter ; the state was in as bad case ; alexander ▪ lord gordon usurping almost a royal authority , over the countries benorth the ferth , as the lord hume also did , upon the south-side . the queen seeing her authority contemned , privately , marries the earl of angus ; looking upon him , as one who could protect her , and hers in extremity ; but this match instead of heightning , weakened her interest ; the nobility dividing in two factions , the one pleading for the earl of douglass , and the other opposing him ( thinking him too high already ) made choice of the earl of arran , but a third party steps in , of whom the lord chamberlain was chief , who carried the choice from both ; pitching upon john duke of albany : when king henry heard , that this gentleman was like to carry the day , he writes to scotland , remonstrating to them , how dangerous this choice might prove to their state : yet notwithstanding of all that could be said , they adhered to their choice , and sent to france to call home the duke of albany , who furnished with all necessaries by the french king , with eight well rigg'd ships , takes the seas , and in the month of may , arrived upon the west-coasts of scotland , from whence with a great retinue of the nobles and barons of the country , by easie journies , the queen meeting him , he came to the town of edenburgh , where he is restored in parliament , to his fathers inheritance . at the presence of this new governour , the face of the state turned more beautiful ; oppression is restrained , justice sincerely executed ; the governour not willing to listen to every mans advice , gave himself to follow the councel of john hepburn prior of s. andrews ; this man being of a subtle mind , malicious and crafty , represented to him things as he pleased , representing the factiousness of the nobility , naming several , whom he said the kingdom could not bear . among others , he gave out , the lord chamberlain to be a man unpolish'd , stubbornly stout , mighty in riches , and power , of a working mind , and vehement spirit ▪ that he spoke against the chamberlain , &c. the governour did presently lay hold on this , and changed in his affection toward him , which the chamberlain perceiving , could not but reflect upon the governours ingratitude ; wherefore he resolved to face about , and striking in with the queen and her husband , became very intimate with them , he represented to them what hazard the prince was in , the governour being a man of such an unsatiable spirit , that nothing but the crown could set bounds to his ambition : advising the queen to think of a way to prevent it ; they concluded at last , that their only safety would be , that the queen would transport her son to england . but as privately as the business was managed , it came to the governours ears , who presently sent a troop of horse , who surprized the castle of sterling , and in it the queen with her two sons . the prince and his brother are sequestred from their mother , and committed to the keeping of four noblemen : whereupon the queen , her husband , and the chamberlain , with many others mis-trust-ing the governour , fly to england ; their sudden departure perplexed the court exceedingly , which moved the governour to write to king henry , representing to him , how little reason they had from him to depart the kingdom ; earnestly declaring his respects to the queen ; and that if she , and all that were with her should please to return , she should be very welcom ; they hoping that they were sincere , at last were moved to yield to his desires , but when once he had got them within the country , he resolved to be revenged upon them ; this bred new confusions , for some of the lords being imprisoned , their friends break very loose , the country is daily pestered and impoverished , by incursions and inroads , till at last after great loss on both sides , they come to an agreement , which was followed with the renewing of the truce with england for some months . all things being thus seemingly calmed , both at home and abroad , the forementioned prior of s. andrews , begins to perswade the governour , that all his indeavours to settle the realm , would prove vain , so long as the earl of hume was alive , whom neither rewards could soften , nor honours and preferments make constant , upon this the governour begins to contrive how to get the earl secured ; wherefore he came to edenburgh , and called a convention of the states , having intreated the earl of humes friends , that he would not fail to be there , the matters to be determined , concerned him dearly . the earl of hume with his brother david came to edenburgh , the night , before the day appointed , who were received by the governour with great ceremonies , and with more than ordinary favours entertained , and shortly after , both imprisoned , and a day appointed for their tryal : the first thing laid to their charge , was the death of the late king , whom several witnesses proved to have been seen coming to the castle of hume , from flondon ; this not being proved by pregnant evidences , he was accused of several other points of treason , of which he not being able to clear himself to their satisfaction ; the judges prepared and directed by the governour ; pronounce him and his brother guilty , and condemn them to have their heads chopt off ; which sentence was the next day put in execution , and their heads fixt upon the most conspicuous places of the city . this calamity of the family of the humes , bred terrour and astonishment in many of the noblemen of the kingdom , and greatly estranged their hearts from the governour . ambassadors being sent from france , to renew the ancient league between the two countries : the governour was chosen by the nobility of scotland , to pass into france for accomplishing this solemn action . he was no sooner gone , but the queen after she had stayed a year in england , honourably dismissed by her brother came to scotland : sir anthony darcy , being by the governour made warden of the mers , and lothian , was slain by sir david hume of wedderburn , coming to dunce , to hold a justice court : whereupon the earl of arran was declared supream warden , of the marches , who soundly revenged darcies death upon the humes . the kingdom now began to be sensible of the offence of the governour ; factions increasing daily , the nobility and gentry deciding their rights by their swords ; insomuch , that the earl of arran , who was provost of edenburgh , having been with the prince at dalkeith upon his return had the gates shut upon him ; the citizens pretending that , he intended to invade their priviledges : whereupon followed a tumult in the city , which continued all night , where a deacon of the crafts was killed by one of the hamiltons , which did quite alienate the citizens affection , from the earl of arran ; and made them incline to the earl of angus ; this made the earls of arran , and angus begin to cross each other : whereupon followed much confusion in the country , and much blood-shed between the douglasses and the hamiltons ; at last having encountred one another with their followers , at edenburgh they fight most desperately in the street , till at length the hamiltons were forced to retire , having left above fourscore of their number dead upon the street . these broils coming to the governours ears in france , he made all the haste he could home ; coming to edenburgh , he set himself to amend the enormities , committed in his absence : a parliament is called , to which many noblemen and gentlemen are cited to appear and answer , but some fearing the event appeared not : whereupon their estates are forfeited ; several fled into england , among which were the humes , and the cockburns , who were the authors of darcies death , others submitted and were pardoned . the king of england being informed of the condition of scotland , sent thither an embassador requiring the duke to avoid the country , according to the articles agreed upon , between him , and the king of france in their last truce . to which he answered , that what the kings of france and england agreed upon in their treaties of peace , was to him uncertain , but of this he was most certain that neither the king of england nor france , had power to banish him ( a foraigner over them where authority did not reach , ) his native country , like over like having no jurisdiction . whereupon king henry gathered a great army to invade scotland . now they draw to arms on both sides , the governour marches with his army to carlile , where he pitched his camp upon the river esk , this struck great terror to the citizens of carlile , who offered him divers presents for their safety of the town , which were rejected , but the nobility refusing to go upon english ground ( suspecting that the governour only played the game of the french ) he was forced to come to a truce . however the governour resolving to be revenged upon england , went to france where he obtained from the king , three thousand pikes , and one thousand lances , with which he returned home , and having raised an army with them he marches to england , and besieges wark , but is repulsed ; whereupon much against his will , a truce for some months is concluded on . soon after , the administration of the government was put upon the prince himself , the thirteenth year of his age ; the governour returning to france , after which he never returned to scotland . a parliament is called , wherein a peace is concluded with england , and eight lords appointed to have the custody of the kings person quarterly . embassadors were sent to england , to treat for a marriage between the king , and the king of englands daughter , which came to nothing . the state began of new to be tossed with the troublesom factions of the queen , and the earl of angus ; the queens faction accused angus of high treason , for detaining the king against his will : to which the earl moved the king to give an answer , shewing that he was not kept against his will. but with all sent another letter secretly , desiring by any means he might be removed from the earl ; upon this advertisment , the queen , and they of her faction assemble what forces they could raise , and with great expedition marched from sterling to edenburgh . the earl of angus , with the citizens of edenburgh , and the king ( though against his will ) marched out against them , when the leaders of the queens forces understood , that the king himself was in person in the advers army they would advance no farther , but retired back again to sterling , where they disbanded , and returned every man to his own dwelling place ; presently after the queen sues for a divorce from the earl of angus , which the archbishop of s. andrews granted with the earls own consent . the king wearied of his confinement in the earl of angus his custody , consults with the lord of buccleugh , and some borderers , how he might be set at liberty ; they essayed it by arms at melross , but were put to the worst , then the earl of lenox undertook it , and raised some forces for that end , but the earl of angus having gotten the assistance of the earl of arran , with several others , quite routed him near costerphin where he was killed in cold blood. now , the earl of angus thinks himself secure enough , having put all things in ( as he thought ) to rights , he takes a progress to lothian , leaving the king at faulkland . now the king amidst his solitary walks in his park , bethinks himself what a fair oportunity he had , resolved to essay by stratagem what the factions of his nobles could not perform by force , thereupon he directeth the forester of the park to advertise such gentlemen about as kept hounds , to attend him next morning , for he would have his sport early ; he suppeth sooner then he used , commanding all to their rest ; the waiters all shifted , and the court hush'd , shutting his camber door , in the apparel of one of his grooms , unperceived , he passed the guards to the stable , where with two who attended him with ready horses , he posted to sterline , where many of the nobility and gentry flocking to him , he discharged the earl of angus from all publick offices , whereat he was so exasperated , that he and his friends , followed very extravagant courses , but the king pursued them so , that after much misery at home , they were constrained to fly into england , where they were charitably received , and honourably entertained by king henry . the next year the king visited the borders , holding justice courts , and executing justice upon all oppressors , thieves , and out-laws there in ewsdale ; he caused eight and twenty famous robbers to be hanged , others he brought with him to edenburgh , for more publick execution and example ; yet the borders were nothing the more peaceable , for by the means of the earl of angus , the english make daily incursions , and spoiles the country ; the scots likewise serving the english with the same sauce , till at last , by the mediation of the french king , a peace is concluded on , during the princes lives , and one year after the decease of him who should dye first . about this time the pope's power began to totter in england , king henry having renounced all subjection to him , because he would not grant him a divorce from his queen katharine , who had been before married to his brother , prince arthur , and then ( by a dispensation from the pope ) to him . the pope finding king henry peremptory in his purpose , did , together with the emperor , deal with king james to make war with england , and to this end sent an ambassador privately to scotland : king henry went on with his affairs in england , and executed john fisher , bishop of rochester , for asserting the pope's supremacy in england : upon this , the whole conclave stirr'd up the pope against king henry , wherefore he sent another ambassador to scotland , most invectively exclaiming against the king of england's cruelty , and humbly desiring king james's assistance against him . king james ( to try his uncle's mind ) send an ambassador to england , to acquaint him with the emperors and popes embassage . king henry presently dispatched william lord howard to scotland , who made such hasty journeys , that he prevented the news of his coming ; he found the king at sterline , a part of his ambassage was , that the two kings must have an interview at york ; this so startled the church-men , fearing , that his uncle might infect the king with the opinions of the new reformers , that they opposed it with all their might : yet the king and his council proposed , that the meeting might be at new-castle , which the lord howard would , in no wise , hear of , but departed in a chafe . king james having so many great matches in his offer , now resolves to accept of some one or other ; wherefore sailing from kirkaldie in ten days , he arrived at diep in normandy , and from thence to vandosme , where the lady mary of burbon was ; but upon some considerations he setled not his affections upon her , though a great beauty , but went to paris , where he fell in love with magdalen , daughter to king francis , with her he was married in the church of nostradam , with great solemnity ; and soon after returned with her to scotland , but to his great grief ; she dyed within a few months after , and was buried at holyrood-house . not long after , the king ( desirous of succession ) sendeth david beaton , and the lord maxwel to france , to propose marriage in his name , to mary of lorrain . in the mean time , two plots against his life are discovered at court , one by john , eldest son to the lord forbes , who thereupon was put to death ; yet the king was much grieved afterward , finding great probability , that he was accused through malice : the other was jane doughlass , with her husband archbald campbel of keepneeth , who , in the thoughts of many , were as groundlesly accused as the first , yet both were found guilty , and dyed for it . the king's marriage with the foresaid lady , being concluded , they are married by proxie , and she arrived in scotland , a. d. 1538. soon after the queen dowager dyed at methwen , and was buried in the charter-house of perth . now began the kingdom to be divided in matters of religion , the reformation breaking in upon them , which perplexed the king exceedingly , not knowing what course to take : his council was against violent courses to be followed , but the prelates , who had most his ear , gave him a quite contrary advice ; after which , most vigorous inquisitions are established , and punishments denounced against all such as departed from popery ; whereupon some are burnt alive , others banished , and many imprisoned ; amongst which , was that famous poet and historian , master george buchanan , who whilst his keepers slept , escaped by a window of the prison , the muses holding the rope . the king of england , having by this time , so irritated the pope , that he was excommunicated , sendeth again to his nephew king james , desiring an interview at york ; the nobility were clearly for it , but the church-men fearing their bacon , was as much against it , pretending , the hazard that his person and kingdom would be lyable to . after long reasoning upon both sides , it was agreed , that the king should not altogether refuse to meet his uncle , but adhere to the first offer proposed to his ambassador , concerning this interview ; which the king of england , rather than his sute should take no effect , accepts : but an incursion , which hapened upon the borders , made him that he lost all heart to the interview ; hereupon he sendeth many letters , excusing his stay , also representing his many grievances and wrongs ; thus were the seeds of discord again sown amongst them . the reformed religion , by this time , begins to be professed by many ; for the curbing of which , the prelates presents sir james hamilton , natural son to the earl of arran , to be supream judge of the inquisition , which turned to his own ruine ; for while he is vigorously persecuting all such as were suspected of the reformed religion , having many in jayles , and multitudes in scrolls , to bring within the labyrinth of a process , the supream providence arresteth himself : for having a process against james hamilton , sheriff of lithgow , his own couzen ; the said james accuses him of high treason , for which ( notwithstanding all that the prelates could do in his favour ) he was tryed , condemned , and put to death . not long after , divers of the nobility became to favor the protestant religion , which so perplexed the king , that he knew not what to do ; he became very sullen and retired , that he would scarce suffer his own domesticks to come near , to add to his perplexity , ( as he lay in the palace of lithgow ) in the midst of the night he leaped out of his bed , and called for lights , commandeth his servants to search for thomas scot , his justice clerk , who ( he said ) stood by his bed-side loaden with great weights , cursing the time that ever he served him ; for by too much obedience to him , he was by the justice of god condemned to everlasting torments . soon after , news came , that the said thomas scot dyed at edenburgh , much about the same hour of the night . another instance of the same nature was , sir james hamilton , a little after his death , seemed to the king , to have appeared to him in a gastly manner , with a sword in his hand , with which he thought he cut off both his arms , advertising him , he would come again shortly , and be more fully revenged . the next day after the vision , word came , that both his sons were departed this life almost in one hour . king henry finding himself disappointed , by his nephew , of their meeting , and understanding the church-men to have been the occasion of it , maketh prizes of all the scottish ships that his fleet could meet with by sea , and incursions with his garrisoned souldiers by land. king james directeth james lermonth of darsie to his uncle , to give sufficient reasons for his not meeting him at new-castle , and to demand restitution of his ships . king henry not only refuseth to restore the ships , but also delaying the answer of the scottish ambassador to gain time , sendeth sir robert b●wes , seconded with the earl of angus , and sir george douglass , in hasty manner , to invade scotland : these to the number of three thousand , burn and destroy all before them , till at last the earl of huntly , with some borderers , meeting them at a place called valldanrigg , quite routed them , killed many , and took some prisoners . the next summer king henry sent the earl of norfolk towards scotland with an army of forty thousand men , accompanied with a great many of the english nobility . king james advertised of their coming , mustered an army of thirty thousand men on falla-moor , to oppose them . when the duke of norfolk understood that he was resolved to give him battel , choosing rather to make an honourable retreat , than give a doubtful charge , he retireth off the scottish ground : whereupon king james encouraged his nobility and army to follow them , and revenge old quarrels : the nobles answered , that to defend their prince and country , they would hazzard their lives , or whatever was dear to them . if the enemy had stayed upon scottish ground , they would either make them retire , or dung the field with their carcasses . but to invade england , they did not think their quarrel just enough , neither had they ammunition enough to engage with so strong an enemy in his own country ; that they thought it enough , that upon their approaching , they made the english retire , if not fly ; for whether they did fly or retire , they had suffered as much wrong as they had done . the king finding them thus obstinate , returneth with his army to edenburgh , where he immediately disbanded them ; he begins most bitterly to reflect upon the noble mens refusing to invade england , which was aggravated and abetted by cardinal beat●n , oliver sinclave , and others . the lord maxnel seeing the king so highly offended , desired his majesty to give him ten thousand men , and he would ingage his honour , to effect something to the king's satisfaction ; the king thanketh him for his offer , appointeth a rendezvous upon the west marches : no proclamations are divulged for the levies of men , but close letters sent . the cardinal , and the earl of arran , march towards haddingtoun , and the east borders ; and several earls , lords , and barons , accompanied with the king 's domestick servants , ride to the west borders : the night before they rode , the king himself came to lochmabban to attend the event . sir thomas wharton , warden of the marches , much troubled at such a frequent assembly of the scottish riders ; raising the power of the country , placeth them by a hill , where he might take a view of the forces . the scottish lords beholding the english putting themselves in a fighting posture , desire to know the king's lieutenant-general ; whereupon oliver sinclave is mounted upon crossed pikes , and the commission read , wherein he is designed to be lieutenant , and all commanded , in the king's name , to follow him . no sooner began the commission to be read , but such a tumult , and confused clamour arose in the army , that there was no order kept ; every thing running in confusion . the english taking advantage of the disorder , brake in among them ; while they stand in amaze , doubting whether to fly or stand. here is a general surprize , most part willingly rendering themselves to the english , without any shew of defence ; many of the nobility and gentry were taken and carried prisoners to london , where they remained till after the king's death . the certainty of this voluntary defeat coming to the king at lockmabban , so stupified and astonished him , that he had neither council nor resolution what to follow ; apprehending by this and their former actions , that the nobility had conspired his overthrow . after which he came to faulkland , where he gave himself over to sorrow : now are his thoughts busied with revenge , as also with rage against his nobility . long watchings , continual cares and passions , abstinence from food and recreation , had so extenuated his body , that pierced with grief , anguish , impatience , despair , he remained affixed to his bed. to comfort him , letters came from lithgow to him , that his queen was delivered of a daughter ; when he heard it was a daughter , he turned his face from them that read the letter , and sighing a farewel to the world : it will end as it began ( sayes he ) the crown came by a woman , and it will go with one . the cardinal put some blank papers in his hand , of which they composed a letter-will , which , whether he subscribed or not , is uncertain : after which he spoke not many words that could be understood ; he dyed the thirteenth of december , anno dom. 1542. in the thirty-third year of his age , and thirty-second of his reign ; not without suspition of having got an italian posset by the cardinal's means . the king was no sooner dead ( leaving his young daughter , who was afterward called mary , to succeed ) then the cardinal proclaimed his last will , wherein were expressed four protectors or regents , of whom himself was the first and principal , and with him were joyned the earls of huntly , argyle , and murry . but within a week after , the chase was turned : for the earl of arran being advised by the lord of grange , who was treasurer , and master henry balneaves , with some others , caused to assemble the peers of the realm , representing to them his undoubted title to the government of the kingdom , during the minority of her , to whom , by line , he should succeed , if she want succession of her own body . the cardinal opposed himself , and all his interest against arran , but it was carried by many voices ; whereupon arran was declared governor , and with publick proclamation invested in his office. a parliament soon followed , wherein the clergy most violently pressed , that severe edicts might be published against those they called hereticks : but others propounding in parliament , whether such , of the people , as could not speak latine , might not have the word of their salvation in the language they understood , as lawfully as they that understood latine , must have it in that language ; it was voted affirmative , and at last , after much debating , it passed into an act , that it was free for all men and women to read the scripture in their own vulgar tongue ; and all acts made to the contrary were rescinded . king henry ( before the parliament was ended ) sent an ambassador to scotland , whose embassage was to contract a perpetual league and amity between the two kingdoms ; and that all occasions of wars might be taken away , a match was proposed , by the ambassador , between young prince edward , and the queen of scotland ; which was by the governour and parliament accepted ; whereupon they sent their ambassadors to england , where things came so far , that both partyes declared their agreement in all particulars , except the time when the young queen should be delivered to the english . the papists foreseeing what would probably follow , if the queen should be put in their enemy , the king of england's hand ; begin , with all their might , to oppose it : about this time the governors base brother , john hamilton , came from france , who was very helpful to his brethren the papists , in carrying on all their affairs . at last , partly by few promises of great things , and partly by threatning to declare him an enemy to holy-church , if he complied not , they make him condescend to break with england ; whereupon ensued great and bloody wars between the two kingdoms ; for king henry immediately sent a strong army to scotland , who came as far as edenburgh , committing great hostilities . in compensation of which , the scots enter england : burning and destroying all before them , returning again with great spoil . mr. george wishart , being by cardinal beaton , burnt alive for the protestant religion ; the said cardinal was surprized by norman loslie master of rothes , william kirkaldie of grange , and john loslie of park-hill , in his castle of st. andrews , and put to death ; possessing themselves of the castle for their security , knowing that now they were to have many and powerful enemies , which accordingly fell out ; for the papists procure an army from france , under the conduct of monsieur deosel , who besieged the castle , and soon after took it . king henry being now dead , his son king edward sent an army of ten thousand men to scotland : the popish party there procures the like number from france ; these two armies grievously infested the country . the next year the queen was at six years of age transported by the west seas into france ( escaping the english fleet , that watched for her about calice ) and soon after married to the daulphine . however , the reformation goes on , notwithstanding the queen-mother , who is now stiled queen-regent her opposition . she was assisted in her designs by the french ( as the reformers were also by the english ) but her death put a stop to the persecution ; which gave the protestants opportunity of putting things in order , relating to the worship of god. great preparations were making in france , for invading of scotland , and root out the reformed religion : this terrified the reformers mightily ; but while they were in a consternation , not knowing what to do , the king of france dyed , and their queen remained a widdow ; this was a great deliverance to them , for by his death the intended invasion came to nothing . soon after , the queen comes home , and sets up mass in her chappel , which the reformers opposed . this bred much confusion in the state ; but the queen finding that the body of the people , with most part of the nobility were against her way , she became a little more calm , condescending that some maintenance might be settled upon the ministers . about this time , the earl of huntly breaks out in a rebellion in the north ; to oppose which , the queen went her self in person , and routed him , near aberdeen , his sons , and many of his friends being slain , himself also dying in the place without any wound . the easter following , mass began to be very publick at edinburgh , which so incensed the lords and others , that they imprisoned several priests : the queen began to storm at this , but they told her , that what they did was according to law , and they would justify it in parliament . in july 1564. the earl of lenox , with his son henry stewart , lord darly , return from england , and were very graciously received by the queen , who took such affection to darly , that she posts away lethington to queen elizabeth , shewing her , that she meant to marry him : queen elizabeth ( pretending her disliking of such contracts of princes with subjects ) labours to diswade her from it ; but under-hand promotes it for her own ends . the queen ( with some difficulty ) gets her intended marriage ratified in parliament , which was afterward proclaimed by name , henry and mary , king and queen of scotland , and solemnized the twenty-seventh of july , 1565. this procures great alterations in the state ; for several lords and gentlemen of the reformation , being summoned to appear before the king and queen ; and upon non-appearance , were declared rebels : whereupon , the king and queen presently take armes ; the lords , with their intention , fled into england , where they stayed a while under queen elizabeth's protection , who afterward dismissed them , writing to the king and queen in their favours ; at length they came to an agreement , which yet continued not long . for the king beginning to be jealous of the daily resort of french-men to court , and of their great favor with the queen , caused one of them , called rizio , who from a musitian , was advanced to be the queen's secretary for french , to be seized in her chamber , and presently put to death ; and finding that this action brought him under the odium of the papists , he made a shew of turning protestant , calling home several of the banished lords and others : but however , from that day he began to be despised by the queen , and bothwel is advanced . the nineteenth of june , 1566. the queen , at edinburg , was delivered of a son , to the great joy of all the kingdom ; he was baptized at sterlin , december the seventeenth , and called james ; the witnesses were the earl of bedford for queen elizabeth , who in her name presented a font of pure gold , valued at three thousand crowns ; the count de briance for the french king , and an ambassador for the duke of savoy . the king finding himself daily slighted by the queen , repaired to his father at glasgow , where , by the way , he was taken very ill with a pain in his stomack ; when he came to glasgow his body breaks out in blewish blisters , which when the physitians saw , they knew him to have been poisoned ; but with their antidotes , and his own vigorous youth , he recovered . not long after , the queen visited him at glasgow , and prevailed with him to come to edinburg ; he lodged in the kirk-field for his health ( as was pretended ) : but many suspected that the earl of bothwel had a design upon him , but few durst adventure to tell him of it : yet the earl of orkney told him , that if he retired not hastily out of that place , it would cost him his life ; this advertisement moved the earl of bothwel to hasten forward his enterprize , laying a train of powder under the house where the king lay , which in the night time did blow it up ; but it was said , that the king was taken forth , and brought ▪ alive to a stable , where a napkin was stopped in his mouth , and he therewith suffocated . presently after , bothwel obtains a divorce from the pope , to free him of his wife , and was married to the queen , may the fifteenth , 1567. whereupon the lords take armes ( the queen and bothwel being at dumbar ) resolving to call him to an account for what was past : the queen also , and he , sent to their friends to come to their defence ; the two armies faces each other at seaton : then bothwel steps out upon horse-back , between the armies , offering to fight with any that durst charge him with that foul aspersion of murdering the king : james murray offers the combat , but he is refused , as not equal in honour ; then his brother , the laird of tully-bardine , accepts the challenge ; him he refuseth , because he was not a noble-man ; then the lord lyndsay presents himself , telling him , that he was his equal every way : but the queen recalled bothwel , and would not suffer them to fight . in fine , the queen finding the confederates resolute , and their number exceeding her own , she desires bothwel to shift for himself , for that she would put her self in their hands ; which accordingly she did , and was by them conveyed to edinburgh , and after to the castle of lochlevine . the queen of england sends her ambassador to the lords , desiring , that the queen might have her full liberty ; and that the prince might be sent to england to be educated : at length matters were wrought to that point , that she must of necessity resign the crown to her son 108. this young prince was crowned at sterline , the twenty-fourth of july , anno dom. 1567. at thirteen months and eight days old . the earls of morteun and hume , taking the coronation oath for him : master knox also preached the coronation sermon . the earl of murray is , within a month after , created regent ; he presently summons a parliament , wherein divers are executed , as having accession to the late kings murder ; which occasioned many factions in the state , and much hatred to the regent . in the mean time the queen was conveyed out of lochlavin , by george douglass the governours brother , my lord seaton , and divers of the house of hamiltone , with their dependers waited to receive her , and conveyed her to hamiltoun : the regent being at glasgow , draws together what men he could so suddenly command , and with them marches to langsidemoor , where it was fought most briskly ; but the queen , though being more in number , was worsted ; after which she lost all courage , never resting till she was in england : the regent returned victor , and destributed the spoyl among his friends and dependants . the queen of england sends ambassadors to the regent , desiring him to send commissioners to her , to give her a reason of their thus proceeding against their queen , upon which he himself went to berwick for that purpose : after long reasoning , they parted without concluding any thing . the regent returning home , did not sit long idle ; for the earl of hamilton pretending a right to the regency , conveins his friends at glasgow , the regent presently went against him . he finding himself disappointed of many that he expected to come to his assistance , submitted himself , and is made prisoner , queen mary , being by the queen of englands order conveyed to carlisle . the duke of norfolk in hopes to get her in marriage , became mighty forward to procure her liberation ; which made queen elizabeth begin to grow jealous of him ; whereupon he is committed to the tower , a conspiracy being discovered , which he managed for relievving the queen of scots . the regent having brought things to some order at home , the hamiltons seeing it impossible for them now to contend with him , killed him most treacherously and basely , as he was passing through lithgow , having shot him with a hakbut , out at a window , january the 22 d. 1569. about three months after lennox , the kings grandfather is chosen regent . hamilton being by all refused , he marches with 5000 to lithgow , to suppress the queens faction , they intended to call a parliament ; there great confusion follows over all the kingdom . a parliament being summoned by the regent at sterling , they began to reform abuses , which are very many ; but they thinking themselves secure , took no care to keep guards : whereupon one george bell marches from edenburgh , in the night time as guid to the earl of huntly ; he commanded five hundred men , they surprised them all in their beds , some escaped , and others were taken prisoners ; but the regent himself was killed in the tumult . those who were for the king , chose the earl of mar regent ; about this time the duke of norfolk was arraigned , and found guilty of complotting with queen mary against queen elizabeth , and within four months after had his head chopt off upon tower-hill , where he confessed all the indictment : mar about a year after being chosen regent , dyes at sterline ; to succeed whom , mortoon was without controversie elected . the king was committed to the keeping of alexander arskine , and mr. george buchanan made his tutor , none of the queens party being permitted to come near him . the factious had by this time become very unnatural ; the mother against the son , and the son against the mother . edenburg castle , which kirkaldie of grange kept for the queen , is besieged and taken by the regent , and the governour , with his brother hanged . the regent proud of his success , began to be somewhat extravagant , which was a forerunner of his downfall , which his enemies improved to his disadvantage : whereupon he is deposed . the king seeing that things were turning from bad to worse , took the scepter in his own hand , having the assistance of twelve noblemen , whereof m●rtoun was one : a parliament soon after is called at edingburgh , where the king appeared to his people , being yet but twelve years old. in this parliament was ratified that confession of faith inserted in the late test in scotland . anno dom. 1582. fell out the road of ruthwen , where the king was seized by some of his nobles , and carried to edinburg , upon pretence , that he was misled by bad councils : they kept him under a sort of restraint for above a year ; but at last , being at st. andrews , he was relieved by collonel stewart captain of the castle ; for as the king had entred the gate , the collonel presently shuts it , and by this means shuts out the company that attended the king : soon after , many of them are imprisoned , but all obtain a pardon , except the earl of goury , who was arraigned , condemned , and executed , anno dom. 1584. about which time there is a plot discovered in england , to set the queen of scots at liberty ; in which the lord pag●t throgmorton and others were concerned , who accordingly suffered for it . but the suspition of all reflected upon queen mary , which hastened her ruine : whereupon she was removed from her fifteen years imprisonment under the earl of shrewsberry , to sir amias pawlet , and sir drew drury in fothrengam castle , on purpose to put her upon extremities of redress against their extream imprisoning : whereupon she deals with the pope and spain to hasten the means of her relief , but it proved the hastening of her destruction . the council of england after long deliberation what to do with queen mary , at last resolved to proceed against her upon act 27. eliz. against plotters or contrivers of the queens death . to which purpose a commission under the great seal issued out , impowering twenty-four noble-men and others therein , who came to the castle the 11th . of octob. 1536. to try her . the manner of her tryal was thus . a chair of state was set , as for the queen of england , at the upper end of the presence chamber . beneath against it was placed a chair for the queen of scots ; close to the walls on both sides of the cloath of estate , seats were made for the lords ; next to these were the knights , privy councellors . forward before the earls , sate the two chief justices , and on the other side , other two justices . at a table in the midst sate the attorney general , the solicitor , a sergeant at law , the clerk of the crown , and two notaries . the inditement being read , she declined their jurisdiction , being a free princess , and not a subject to the crown of england ; to which it was answered , that her declinator was in vain , for whosoever offends the laws of england in england must be subject to the same , and accordingly examined and judged . so they proceeded to examine the evidence , and after a long tryal , and much spoken on both sides , she is found guilty . not many dayes after a parliament was called , wherein queen elizabeth was besought , that the sentence against the queen of scots , might be put in execution . the queen desired that some other methods might be consulted for safely , and that poor distressed queen spared ; but they answer , what no other satisfaction ▪ whereupon the sentence was proclaimed throughout london and all the kingdom ▪ king james hearing of his mothers condition , writ several letters to queen elizabeth , passionately desiring , that the sentence might be reversed ; but all to no purpose : for soon after she signed a warrant for a mandate fitted for the great seal for her execution , which was performed upon wednesday , the 8th . of february , 1586. queen elizabeth immediately after writes a letter full of apologies , and fair promises to king james ; yet notwithstanding in great discontent , he calls home his ambassadours from the court of england . the states of scotland urge him to a revenge : the king of spain also , and the pope promise him great assistance , if he would undertake it ; but he thought fit to delay for a time , which made england the more suspitious of his designs . wherefore an ambassadour was sent to him , earnestly desiring him to take off his adherence from forreign friendship , assuring him that his mothers fate would be no prejudice to his right of succession , which was a powerful argument with him . the next year , the kings marriage with the king of denmarks daughter was agreed upon . in the mean time , the popish lords , such as huntly , cranford and a●rol , make a rebellion in the north ; to suppress which , the king himself went in person ; at his coming , the rebels disperse ; the headers of them submitted to the kings mercy , and are commited close prisoners , and not long after tryed and found guilty ; but the sentence was delayed to an indefinite time , which at last turned to a pardon . the king hearing that his marriage was consumated at denmark by proxie , and the queen at sea , was soon after surprised with the news , that her navy was beat into norway by a storm : he presently resolves to go thither , and meet her , which he does very privately ; leaving the government of the kingdom to his council . within five dayes he arrives at norway , where he was solemnly marryed the next sunday . from thence he went with his queen to visit the queen mother of denmark ; where they staid till april following : then having sent for shipping to return , they landed at leith the 20 th . day of may , anno dom. 1590. and a little after the queen was solemnly crowned at holy-rood-house . though the king made severe laws against feuds , yet were they not quite suppressed , for by reason of a quarrel between the earles of huntly , and murray the north broke very loose , as did the kers also in the south ; but they were soon suppressed , till bothwel afterward ( being imprisoned , for consulting with witches to take away the kings life , and having escaped , made an attempt upon the kings lodgings , and was repulsed ; ) being suspected to have been with murray , the earl of huntly procures a warrant to take him ; and coming to dunnibirsle , where murray was , firing the house , murray attempting to make his escape was barbarously murdered . bothwel having so often been disappointed of his designes , at last having got some of the lords on his side , he came in by the postern-gate , under disguise of attending my lady athole , with another of his companions armed , to the very bed-chamber ; where he forced the king to grant him a pardon , which was the next day repealed in council , and bothwel and his associates forced to fly . anno dom. 1593. the queen was delivered of her first born in sterli●g , where he was christned in the chappel roval , by the name of henry frederick . two years after , princess elizabeth was born at edenburgh . the king resolving to bring the church of scotland to a conformity in government , and ceremonies , did occasion much confusion ; for the ministers strong opposed ; having also a great part of the nobility on their side . the popish lords and others unable to stand out any longer , submitted to the censure of the church . the next year a parliament is called , wherein the king will have some of the ministers sit as representing the church ; being church affairs , as well as affairs of state are handled there . anno dom. 1599. john earl of goury , and his brother alexander , attempt to kill the king at perth ; but both of them dyed in the attempt , and had all their lands seized for the kings use . in commemoration of which , the 5th . of august is annually celebrated . the 26 th of february , 1600. prince charles was born at domfermling , which afterward was king of great britain , &c. the jesuits having no hope of toleration in scotland , all their politicks having failed them , they went the old way to work . one moubray at the court of spai● , undertook to kill king james , but as he was upon his way to london , he was discovered by an italian , who accused him of his intended murther ; whereupon they were both taken , and sent to scotland . moubray was committed to the castle ; where having found a way to break the iron grates of the prison window , thought to have let himself down by a rope ; which proving too short , he fell from the precipice , and dashed out his braines upon a rock . queen elizabeths health beginning to decay , by reason of her age , and the great troubles she had undergone , removes from london to richmond , where she daily became weaker and weaker . the lord admiral , lord keeper , and secretary cecil came from the council to know her pleasure concerning her successor . she answered , my throne is for a king , none oth●● shall succeed me . cecil asked her , what king ? she said , what other king , than my kinsman the king of scots : then after some time not stirring , she leasurely turned her head about and dyed , the seventyeth year of her age , the 24th . of march. 1602. her eyes being shut , the same day the lords spiritual and temporal being assembled , proclaimed her death , and declared king james her successor : presently posting letters to him , acquainting him with the queens death , and ( being a body without a head ) humbly desiring his majesty to hasten to them , how soon , and in what manner he pleaseth . the king having communicated these letters to his privy-council ; returns them his acknowledgment of their dutifull affection . the king sets out for england , ordering the queen to follow twenty days after , the princes henry , charles , and princess elizabeth at further pleasure . he was most magnificently entertained all the way , having a gallant train of scottish noblemen and other gentlemen , to convey him to berwick , where he was most magnificently received by the english , and accompanied with shouts and acclamations of joy by all ranks , in his journey through england , till he came to london . his first reception was in the charter-house , where he stayed four days , having confered the honour of knighthood upon 80 gentlemen . on st. jameses's day the king and queen were crowned at westminster in the fatal marble chair . secretary elphingston was within a few years after accused by the king , for writing letters to the pope in his name ; which he confessed , and was thereupon committed , but soon after pardoned . the king was not allowed to enjoy the pleasure of his new title with peace , for soon after followed the treason of the lord cobham and gray , with sir walter rawley , and others ; for which , some of the number being condemned to dye , and brought to the very block , obtained a pardon . his majesty took upon him the title of great britain , to take away every thing that might be occasion of discord amongst the subjects of the two kingdoms , and to that effect were sundry of his majesties chief officers of estate , sent for to england by commission ; viz. the earl of mo●●rose great chancellour of scotland . francis earl of errol , lord great constable , alexander lord urquhart and fyve president . sir thomas hamilton advocate , the lords , lithgow and roxburgh ; with sundry others of the nobility , with sir john sharp , and sir thomas craig , learned lawyers . these meeting with the chancellour , treasurer , secretary , had many learned orations , conferences , and speeches , wherein the king assisted himself sometime in person . this great meeting was dissolved without any great business done . at this time came to england don john de velasco great constable of castile , and extraordinary ambassador from the king of spain , to take oath of the king for observation of the articles of peace concluded between these two kings . like as baron howard of essingham , and earl of nottingham , and high admiral of england , was sent into spain , to take the king of spain's oath for observation of peace . like as edward baron of beauchamp and earl of hartford , were sent into the low countries for the same purpose . the earl of rutland was sent into denmark , and sundry noblemen and gentlemen , to sundry kings and princes , and common-wealths , his confederates and allyances . thomas percie , robert catesbee , thomas winter , by the instigation of some jesuits , having intended to overthrow the king , his queen , and posterity , at one blow , intended that most inhumane and barbarous treason , called , the powder-plot ; and to that effect , associating themselves with sir edward dick●ee , ambrose rockwood , john grant , the two wrights , with sundry others fell to digging of the vault , where after long travail , hearing that the cellers were to let , hyring the cellers which were under the parliament house , to the use of mr. thomas piercie one of the kings gentlemen pensioners , and one of the chief plotters ; where conveying in the said cellers under the parliament-house , a great quantity of gun-powder , with billets and faggots , with sundry other combustible stuff , the principle plotters removed themselves to warwickshire , under pretence of a match hunting , and at that time to surprise lady elizabeth , then in the custody of the lord hadington , whom they meant to proclaim queen , and in her name to enter into arms. but there is an eye in heaven , that seeth mens actions , and lays them open to the view of the world , by weak means , and weak instruments : all things succeeding thus happily , as they thought ; and leaving faukes , alias johnstoun to give fire to the train in the night time by torch : the lord monteagle going along in his coach , an unknown fellow presents him with a letter : the tenor whereof was to withdraw his lordship from that session of parliament , wherein there was something to be done against the catholicks , but there was a terrible blow to be given , and no man should know who should be the giver of it , and when the letter was burnt , the peril was ended . my lord monteagle , in religion popish , notwithstanding delivereth the letter to salisbury , who acquainting my lord chamberlain , and after my lord admiral , and the earls of worster , and northampton , who not finding out the meaning of the letter , and knowing that the king was well seen in such hid misteries , present it to his majesty in the privy gallery : the king reading it over , and over again , salisbury told him that he thought some mad fellow had written it : his majesty asking the reason of salisbury : he replyed , because he writ there was a terrible blow to be given , and no man should know who should be the giver : his majestie answered , that the last sentence made the other more clear : that the letter being burnt , the peril was ended , which the burning of the letter could make to no purpose to hinder the peril . the king assured him that is was some blowing up of powder , and therefore desired that his houses might be surveyed . after examination , wh●ngard , keeper of the parliament house , told that he had let the house to mr. thomas perci● ; & after some pains taken that same night , by the lord chamberlain , the lord knevet , mr. doublede , found the foresaid faukes with a dark lanthorn , ready to enter the house , but he being apprehended , the blow was prevented ; where swift fame carrying it down to the country , the principal plotters knew not where to flee to hide their heads . they surprize warwick castle , where being affrighted with drying of gun-powder , and other strange dreams , seeing castles and towers blown up in the air , they were at last besieged in the castle of warwick where percie and catesbee were both shot with one musquet , shot back to back , the rest were apprehended and brought to london , where after the confession of all for the most part , and penitence and contrition in some , craving pardon of his majestie and countrie , for such an horrible and inhumane fact , catesbee , grant , winter , and bates were executed at the west of pauls ; as also , winter , the two wrights , and faukes , and ambrose rockwood at westminster . so here we see the god of light brought the deed of darkness to light , and as they said by their confession , to cast the aspersion and guilt of the action upon the puritanes , so the god of heaven would have it to fall upon the plotters themselves . after this followed the nuptial of that noble lady , lady elizabeth , matched with the prince palatine of the rhyne . at which time that noble prince , prince henry ▪ a prince so compleat of all vertues , that europe could not shew his second , a prince so mars-like , and so beloved of all military men , and so beloved of them ; that true moecenas of vertue , and learning ; as appeared by his valiant , his active , and his princely prise , wherein he intituled himself by the name , moeliades , lord of the isles ; challenging the gentrie of great britain ; which was performed in the hall of whitehall by torch light ; the challengers were with him , the duke of lennox , the earls of arundal , southampton , pembr●ke , sir thomas somerset , and sir richard preston ; where before the king , the queen , the peers of the whole island , with the concurrence of all forraign ambassadors , where he gave testimony of his activeness , agility and quickness , which cannot be expressed to the life , how every thing was done in the action , and performed , and the prises given to the defendants , where the challengers and defendants were most royally feasted the next day , as the prise and reward of their vertue and valour , given by the noblest lady of britain , according to the tennor of the challenge ; and was given by lady elizabeth his sister , viz. 1. philip earl of montgomerie . 2. thomas dearsie , son to the lord dearsie . 3. sir robert gordon of lochinvar . this triumph being ended to his no small honour . much more might be said of this great prince , who was taken away in the prime of his years , ( to the great grief of all his majesties most loving subjects ) to eternal happiness : for our sun-set , ensued no night , by arising of the day star of our britain , charles our hope , who long may raign over us . his majesty being possest with a longing desire to see his ancient native kingdom ; made progress in anno 1617. and did so much by easie journey , till he came to berwick upon tweed ; where he reposed himself two or three dayes . from thence he came to the bound-rod : the earle hume hereditary sheriff of the mers , welcomed his majesty with a gallant train of gentlemen , being three thousand well mounted . his majesty alighted at the rod , and received the dukes of lennox and buckingham , the earls of arundale , rutland , pembroke , southampton , montgomery , and carlile , with many others of his court , very royally , making them welcome ; and mounted his horse again : he rode to dunglasse the earl of hume his residence , where he was bountifully entertained . the next day he removed to seaton , the residence of the earl winton , where he was most royally entertained . the next day he rode forward towards edinburgh , where compassing the town , riding the way of the long-gate , he entred the west port , where the provost , bayliffs and counsel attended him in their bounds ; where mr. john hay , in name of the town , made an eloquent oration , welcoming his majesty , and was delivered to him a fair bason with a thousand pieces of gold. riding along to the high church , being conducted by the trained bands of the town , being clad in velvet and satin with partizados in their hands ; and entring there he heard a learned sermon , by the right reverend father in god the arch-bishop of st. andrews ; where after sermon , he mounted his horse and going toward the abby , where at st. johns cross , the provost taking leave of him , his majesty knighted him . and within few dayes his majesty rode to his parliament , with his peers , prelats , barons , and burgesses , and thereafter was most sumptuously feasted by the town of edinburgh . it is needless to set down in particulars what was done , because i intend brevity . his majesty removed to linlithgow , and so to striviling ; where he was feasted by the earl of marre : thereafter he went to dunfermling , faulkland , scone , &c. where by the way he was feasted at dearcie the arch-bishops residence . it were tedious to rehearse the learned orations , poetical poems , which were presented to his majesty and are extant in a book , called , the muses welcome . his majesty crossing tay to angus , had every where most royal entertainment ; and returning the same way to sterling , and so to glasgow , where he was received by the town : thereafter he went to lochlowmount , where he hunted , and slew many deer ; and crossing the river of clyde to pasiey , where he was entertained three dayes together by the earl of abercorne : from thence to hamilton pallace , where he was honourably entertained by the marquess : from thence to sanquihair , and so to dumfries : thereafter crossing the river of eske , he went to carlile , where he kept his fifth day of august . and so taking along the west sea bank , through the countries of cumber , westmerland , lancashire , and cheshire , and so crossing through the middle of england , he returned to london in health , with great joy and content of his majesties loving subjects ; where he lived a long time after in great tranquillity and peace with the christian princes his neighbours , ballancing the affaires of europe , and labouring the peace and quiet of all christendom . his piety , religion , learning , bounty and mercy , would of it self take a volume , but every one of these lives after him , and speaks for him , as may appear by many excellent poems he writ , as some part of davids psalmes , some part of du bartus divine weeks , lepanto , his basilicon doron , his book of demonology , his premonition to christian princes , his book against conradus vorstius , &c. are all sufficient of themselves to testify of him , and need no other blazing . he went to england the 36. of his age , and brought with him his queen , with a goodly and royal progeny , bringing with him kingdoms , unity , peace and plenty , and ending his pilgrimage ( being full of dayes ) at his house in theobalds the 59th . year of his raigne , upon the sabbath , to the everlasting sabbath , where he rests . he was buried at westminster . this illustrious monarch having dyed in a good old age , left the diadem of three kingdoms , in succession , to his son charles , the first of that name , who was immediately proclaimed , being on a sunday morning , when doctor laud then bishop of st. davids , was in the pulpit at white-hall , and broke off his sermon upon the first notion of the fathers death . he was set upon the throne , a. m. 5682. anno dom. 1624. he married henrietta-maria , daughter to the french king , henry the fourth ; and sister to lewes the thirteenth , of the family of the b●urbones , whom he had formerly seen , as he passed through france into spain : having gone to meet her at dover , his first complement to her , was , that he desired to be no longer master of himself , than he was servant to her , which he made good to the full . he called his first parliament at westminster , which assembled the fifteenth of june following , anno dom. 1624 , wherein the king declared his want of money , and the great charge he was like to be put to , upon several accounts , both at home and abroad ; especially to maintain the army which was listed for recovering the palatinate . the parliament having several petitions , which were presented to king james a little before his death , un-answered ; petitioned his majesty to redress those grievances which concerned religion and priviledge , without which they could come to no conclusions for raising of money ; whereupon the king gave them full assurance of all their demands ; so they immediately granted two subsidies from protestants , four from papists , and three from the clergy . after this the parliament did not sit long ; for the last subsidies not being enough to defray the king's necessary charges , he urges the parliament for more ; but they , instead of answering his just demands , fall foul upon his servants , who managed his revenues , especially the great duke of buckingham : this came to such a height in the houses , that they came to the canvasing his commings in , his great revenues of crown demeans , which they would revoke , and resume to supply the king's wants ; which made the king , in great regret , resolve to give an end to their sitting ; and accordingly the next day dissolved them . the city of london was at this time much wasted with a long plague , which was the occasion of removing michaelmas term to redding . there was another parliament called soon after , but they began where the former left ; present grievances , and impeach : buckingham . upon may the nineteenth , 1630. the queen was delivered of a son at saint james's , who was christened charles , and preserved by providence , to succeed his father , to the royal scepters of three kingdoms ; the king of france , and the prince elector palatine , represented by the duke of lennox , and the marquess of hamilton were his god-fathers ; and the queen-mother of france , represented by the dutchess of richmond his god-mother . the king in the year 1633. made a journey to scotland , attended with a splend●d train of the nobility of both kingdoms ; and upon june the eighteenth , was solemnly crowned king at edinburgh ; which solemnity being over , his majesty called a parliament , and in which he passed an act , for ratification of the old acts ; some suspecting , that the confirmation of episcopacy was by it intended , with all their strength opposed it , but in vain . not long before his majesty went to scotland , being desirous ( if possible ) to have it prevented , he writ to a lord , who had the trust of the crown , to bring it to england , that he might be crowned there : but the lord answered , that he durst not for his life do it ; but if his majesty would be pleased to accept of it in its proper place , he should find his people there ready to yield him the highest honour ; but if he should put it off much longer , it might tend to his majesties and their great loss ; neither could they be long without some to govern them . in the year 1633. october the thirteenth , the queen brought forth her second son , who was baptized james , and entituled , duke of york : much about this time the discontents in scotland began to increase ; some of the nobility siding with the male-contents ; of which the lord balmirreno , the chief secretary of state was one , who was thereupon arraigned by his peers , and found guilty ; but obtained the king's pardon . december the twenty-eighth , 1635. the lady elizabeth was born ; and now great differences arose about church-matters , chiefly occasioned by arch-bishop laud's zealous injoyning of ceremonies , as placing the communion-table at the east end of the church upon an ascent , with rails altar-wayes , with many other things not formerly insisted on by the church , but now obstinately opposed by many , which brought things into great confusion . his majesty earnestly desiring an uniformity in religion in scotland ( a thing attempted before by king james ) enjoyned the scots the use of the liturgy and surplice , with all the english ceremonies , and began first in his own chappel ; proclamation being made , that the same order should be kept in all churches : the bishops were satisfied with it , but the ministers and people was so discontented , that when the dean of edinburgh began to read the common-prayer , the women began to grumble ; upon which , the bishop of edinburgh steps up into the pulpit to command silence ; but this did but augment their fury to such a height , that they assaulted him ; some with cudgels , others with stones , and others ( for want of better weapons ) were forced to pelt him with the stools upon which they sat , to the great hazard of his life : the arch-bishop of of st. andrews ( being then lord chancellor ) interposing , was like to have been served with the same sawce : the like disturbance happened in several other places ; whereupon the council emitted proclamations to prevent tumults ; which was so little regarded by the multitude , that the bishop of galloway , going the next day to the council , was by them pursued to the council chamber . they seized also the city magistrates , that they might not joyn with the council to curb them . the lords of the council having at length , with fair words , in some measure , pacified them , they presently emit proclamations to keep the peace , but produced no such effect ; for they stifly petitioned against the service-book ; which incensed the king extreamly : thus matters went in the year 1637. the next year the scots hearing , that the king was making preparations in england , to reduce them by force , they entred into a covenant , to defend the religion they profest ; whereupon , they sent for general lesly , and other officers from beyond sea , putting themselves in a posture of defence : but the duke of hamilton obtained a declaration from the king , discharging the use of the service-book , & the five articles of perth for a time ; consenting also , that church-matters may be ordered by general assemblies . this declaration ▪ being published , and a general assembly convened at glasgow ; the bishops are summoned to appear there as guilty persons ; but in answer to the summons , the bishops sent in a protestation against their assembly ; which the covenanters , for a while , would not vouchsafe to read , until they had dispatched what business they pleased : the king , having notice of their proceedings against the bishops , ordered their assembly to be dissolved , which accordingly was done ; but the covenanters presently emit a protestation against it . in this assembly they quite abolished episcopacy : whereupon , the king raises an army in england , with which he marched in person against the scots ; but while his majesty stayed at york , by the mediation of some persons , a treaty of peace was agreed upon ; wherein it was agreed , that the king should publish a declaration , ratifying , what his commissioners had promised in his name : that a general assembly , and a parliament be held at edinburgh within a short time : and lastly , that upon disbanding their forces , and restoring the king to his forts and castles ; the king was to recall his fleet and forces , and make restitution of their goods since the breach . the king not finding the scots punctual to their articles , returned to england , and nullified the agreement resolving now to try other courses : whereupon , the scots apprehending their danger , prepared for their own defence . the king resolves upon a war ; and with some difficulty compleateth his army , whereof himself was generalissimo . he began his march to the north , july the twentieth , 1640. by which time the scottish army was upon the border : wherefore the king sent the lord conway with twelve hundred horse , and three thousand foot , to secure the passes upon the river tyne . general lesly being advanced thither , desired leave to pass to the king with their grievances , which was denied ; whereupon he commands his horse to take the water ( the foot to their no small hazard following ) and force their passage ; which they did , and put the lord conway to a disorderly retreat . soon after , they took new-castle , and then durham . at last , his majesty condescends to treat with them , and to that end , receives a petition from them , containing their grievances ; for redressing of which , it was agreed , that sixteen english lords should meet with as many scots . rippon was a place appointed for the treaty ; here they appointed another treaty to be held at london for composing all differences . much about this time montross fell off from the covenanters , having by several private letters tendered his service to the king , which came all to be discovered by the means of some that were about his majesty . however , the treaty went on at london , and at last was concluded : whereupon the scots , after five months abode in england , returned home . by this time a parliament was called at westminster ; wherein the breach was so far from being healed , that it was made wider . divers of the kings favourites were impeached ; amongst which , arch-bishop laud was one , and soon after him the earl of strafford . this year 1641. his majesty went towards scotland , where he was entertained with great demonstrations of affection ; and confirmed the treaty between the two nations , by an act of parliament , which he summoned himself during his abode there . in the mean time , the horrid rebellion in ireland broke out ; wherein those cruel butchers , did most barbarously murther about 200000. protestants , men , women and children . the king being then in scotland , moved the parliament to send thither sir george monroe with 2500. men to reduce the rebels . the king being returned from scotland , ( the parliament then sitting at westminster ) the breach daily grew wider ; wherefore the scotish commissioners interposed between the king and parliament , for composing their differences , which were now grown to such a height , that the king not long after left london , and returned to york . now began the calamity of a sad war ; for which they began vigorously to make preparations on both sides . the scots finding ( as they pretended ) that the king was refractory to an agreement with his parliament ; and giving ear to those vile libels that were spread abroad , which accused his majesty of conniving at the papists both in england and ireland ( being called by the parliament to their assistance ) entred england , jan. 16. 1643. their army being in number 18000. foot , and 2000. horse . in the mean time matters are fitting in scotland , by james earl ( afterward marquess ) of montross ; who having received the kings commission by sir robert spotswood , to be general governour of scotland , passed into the heart of the kingdom ; where he raised what men he could for the kings service , resolving with them to divert the covenanters . they upon the other side raised an army to oppose him . their first rencounter was near perth ; where the covenanters under the command of the lords elcho , tullibardine , and drumond were quite routed ; here the atholmen and irishmen , of which he had 1500. did him good service . from thence he marcht northward , to aberdeen ; where at the bridge of dee , he defeated another body of the covenanters , under the lord burleighs command . after this victory , he went about most of the northern countries , and brought a great many of them under subjection , though himself and his army were reduced to great straits by reason of the coldness of the weather , and scarceness of victuals , yet he would not give over his enterprise . from thence he marched into argileshire , where he burnt & destroyed all before him , and returned back again to lochabor . he stayed not long there ; when hearing that argile was coming against him , and was already the length of innerlochy , he resolves ( finding his men bent for 't ) to fight him , which accordingly he did , and quite worsted him . not long after , he had an absolute victory over general major hurry at a place in the highlands , called aldearn , which did very much weaken the covenanters . and baily resolving revenge , at alford was served with the same sauce himself . the next victory that this valiant champion obtained , was at kilsyth ; a fatal day it was to the covenanters : for here they lost a great many gentlemen of quality , besides a vast number of common souldiers : yea , such of their leaders as escaped this bout , finding ( as they thought ) their strength quite gone , fled some to england , others to ireland , and some also came in , and submitted to montross upon mercy . thus things being , in humane probability , brought to great order , montross receives orders from the king at oxford , to march southward with his army : where his majesty promised to send him some recruit of horse to fight sir david lesly , who was coming from england against montross : but l●sly preventing the kings recruits , surprises montross at philiphaugh , where he quite routed him . thus the wheele of fortune turnes now upon this gallant nobleman , who was conqueror hitherto , and forces him with a very few followers to shift for himself , leaving many of his friends dead in this fatal place . montross by this loss , being brought very low , he marched toward the north with the few men he had ; and after many endeavours to make up his army again , he is surprised by a message from his majesty , commanding him to lay down his armes , and go into france , where he should stay till further orders ; which accordingly he did , though with great reluctancy , in the year 1646. but to return to the scots army in england : they after they had served the parliament upon several occasions , and particularly at marston-moor , where they helpt them to obtain a victory against prince rupert , retired to new-castle . the king being brought so low , that he was hardly able to keep any thing of an army in the field , came thither in disguise , acquainting the scotish-general , that he would now commit himself to him ; looking upon him as a man of honour , that would do nothing but what is just and loyal , in a matter of such weight ; the general answered his majesty , he would with all his heart serve him , and that the most effectual service that he thought he could do him , was to mediate a peace between his majesty and his parliament . the parliament being advertised , that the king was in the scotish army ; sent their messengers thither , to know upon what account they detained the king of england in their camp ; who were only called in to assist the parliament , but not to act by themselves : telling them further ; that if the king were in scotland , as he was then in england ; they would not presume to keep him up from his subjects there , as the scots did in england ; the committee of the army answered , that they knew very well the people of englands right to the king to be as good as theirs ; neither did they detain his majesty from them , but that he was with them as their king ; in no wise under restraint , but at full liberty as became his majesty to be . and further , that it was their earnest desires to see a well-setled peace between his majesty and his two houses . presently after , they had another message , desiring them to return home ; for that the parliament had no further service for them ; thanking them withal for the service they had done . the committee replyed , that they came not to england without the parliaments call , and that the terms upon which they were invited thither , were not fulfilled by the parliament , their army wanting almost 500000 l. of their arrears : that upon payment of it , they would go home . at last it was agreed , that the scots should have 200000 pound of their arrears in hand , and the rest should afterward be sent after them . so that within — weeks after , they would draw the army out of england . as for the kings person , it was agreed , that he should be kept by the english in honour and splendor suitable to his royal dignity , and that nothing should be transacted in england concerning his majesty , without the advice and consent of the scots . thus were they befooled by perfidious men , which brought a great reproach upon them and their posterity . though it be false that they sold him , yet it is a sad truth , that his majesty told them , that the english would no longer stand to their agreement , than they thought it for their interest . his majesty being now in the english's hands , they at first carried themselves somewhat respectfully to him ; but they began soon after to appear like themselves ; having purged the house of commons of all such as they thought would oppose them , they began to keep his majesty almost a close prisoner in the isle of wight . the scots hearing how the king was thus ( contrary to the promise and engagement ) abused by the english , sent their commissioners to london , to put the parliament in mind of the agreement at new-castle ; but before they came , the game was altered ( the parliament being purged by the army ) the barbarous juncto prove unexorable ; wherefore the commissioners return home , and acquainted the nobility how matters stood : whereupon an army is presently listed under the duke of hamilton , with which he marches to england , but is unfortunately overthrown at preston ; most of the souldiers being killed , and himself taken prisoner , and brought up to london ; where , not long after , he , together with the earl of holland , and lord capel , were executed on tower-hill . within a few days , his majesty is brought from the isle of wight to windsor ; during his abode there , the officers of the army , and the members they left in the house , proceeded to that height of insolence , as to bring the king to a tryal . which , when it was voted , and passed in the pretended house of commons , they proceeded to make an act for the tryal of his sacred majesty ; which they intituled , an act of the commons of england , assembled in parliament , for erecting of an high court of justice , for trying and judging charles stewart king of england . this terrible form of proceeding against his majesty , struck great terrour to the hearts of all sober and good men ; yea , the presbyterian ministers , who before were against him , now declare themselves both in their pulpits , and by earnest petitions to the parliament , to be zealous abhorrers of the kings death , and every where make publick protestations against the tryal ; yet nevertheless the juncto goes on : and upon fryday january the 19 th . 1648. his majesty was brought by a strong guard of horse from windsor to st. james's , and from thence to westminster , where he was tryed , and found guilty , contrary to the laws of god and man : and upon january the 30 th . about two a clock in the afternoon , he submitted his royal neck to the fatal stroak , upon a scaffold erected between white-hall gate , and the gate leading to the gallery to st. jameses : the 24 th year of his reign he was interr'd , in st. georges chappel at windsor . his sacred majesty that now reigns , being at this time in france , with the queen mother , is by unanimous consent of all his subjects in scotland , proclaimed at edenburg , charles the second , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france , and ireland , &c. and presently after , they sent their commissioners to treat with his majesty , who was then in the isle of jerzey : after much debating on both sides , at last , breda in holland is agreed upon , as a fit place for a solemn treaty . here the commissioners from the church and state , met the king , and delivered the propositions . during the treaty , the above-mentioned marquess of montross was seized in scotland , and executed , which troubled his majesty so much , that it went nigh to break the treaty ; but at length , through the urgency of affairs , it was concluded . and being brought to edenburgh , it was agreed , that another message should be sent to invite the king over , to take possession of the crown , which was his own by an unquestionable title ; but the english parliament replyed , if they could hinder it , it should not be so . wherefore they prepare an army to invade scotland , under the command of their general oliver cromwell . however , the scots no wise daunted at the storms threatned from england , resolved to adhere to his majesty , ( though upon their own terms ) . the king arriving at the mouth of spey , in the north , several lords were sent to accompany him to edenburgh ; but in the mean time , cromwell was advanced as far as haddington against him . sir david l●sly , sent sir john brown with a party of horse , which continued skirmishing for some while , but produced no great effect : the next rencounter was at dumbar , where the scots had a bloody overthrow from cromwel ; which did exceedingly strengthen his interest in scotland . the first work that the scots went about after this disaster , was the coronation of the king , which was done at scone ; with as great solemnity , as the state of affairs could allow : the ceremony being over , his majesty removed to sterling , resolving to debate his right to cromwell , where people of all ranks flocked to him ; insomuch , as in a short time , he had an army of 22000 men ; but they dividing amongst themselves , gave cromwel opportunity to pass over ; & forthwith defeating a part of the kings army at innerkething , possest himself of the whole country : his majesty seeing ( after the defeat ) that cromwel was like to conquer all scotland , makes choyce of his most faithful friends , to venture with him into england ; where he might with more safety and advantage hazard three kingdoms , than in a field ; wherefore with 16000 men he privately marched to england , by the way of carlyle ; and without any considerable opposition , came to lancashire ; where at warrington bridge , some considerable forces of the parliament were ready to cut down the bridg , but the scots were with them so suddenly , that they prevented the breaking down of the bridg , & forced their way over the planks . hence his majesty marched to worcester in very good order . cromwel hearing of his motions , sends lamb●rt with a select party of horse ; after him the parliament also raised numerous forces in most countryes in england ; all which marched to worcester against the king. in the mean time lambert gained a most advantagious pass at hop●on , by a desperate attempt , having caused some of his troopers to swim the river on horseback , carrying their houlsters and pistols in their hands , to save them from wet ; whereby they put major general massey , and his men , to the retreat : so that the parliamentarians had a fair opportunity to make a bridge over the river , over which cromwel passed , and joyned the rest of the army ; which put the king upon a necessity of fighting , ( the city being attacked on all sides ) : whereupon his majesty marched out of the city with horse and foot against them . where followed a most desperate engagement ; insomuch that his majesties horse was twice shot under him ; every man resolving to dye in the bed of honour , rather than to have their prince and country thus trod upon by the base usurpers : but the enemy still advancing with fresh supplies where there was need of them , so over powered the kings forces , that they were forced at last to give ground , after twice rallying , to retreat to the city . his majesty seeing that all was lost , was forced to retreat to the city by the same gate he came out at , having left the duke of hamilton , sir john douglass , sir alexander forbes , with many other valiant gentlemen behind him . his majesty was exceedingly troubled for the loss of duke hamilton ; for that he did see him behave himself so valiantly , and fighting so desperately , even when he was incompassed with the enemies horse and foot. it being impossible for his majesty to keep the city long , the whole nation almost being in armes against him , he resolves to retire : accordingly , with some few attendants , he marched out at twelve a clock at night ; and thinking their number might discover them , ordered every man to shift for himself : only with three or four in his company , he came to a place called boscobel , where he disrobed himself ; and for want of scissers , had his hair cut off with a knife ; and so with the company of one careless ( who brought him provision ) he betook himself to a wood , where he lodged in that famous royal-oak : the soldiers hunting about for him , and a thousand pounds promised to any that would take him , either dead or alive . soon after , his majesty rode from bently to bristol before mistress lane ( she having a pass for her self and her servants ) whence he returned , and absconded a while in sommersetshire , wiltshire , and hampshire ; and at last came to briggemstone in sussex , where he took shipping , about the end of october , 1651. and was safely wafted over to a creek in normandie , whence he went to diep , and there provided himself of such necessaries as served him until he came to his mother , who was at the french court. cromwel hearing of iretons success in ireland , and of lieutenant general monks success in scotland , makes a motion , that for the security of the common-wealth ( as it was then called ) the parliament should be turned out , as a parcel of drunkards , whore-masters , and oppressors ; which was accordingly done , and then a new convention is called , july , 1653. where the government is put upon oliver's shoulders , by an instrument delivered to him , by their speaker mr. rouse . in this year and the next , were five bloody engagements at sea , between the english and the dutch ; the english for the most part having the victory . in the year 1656. cromwel calls another parliament , which he had so far secured for his interest , that they invite him to take the imperial crown of this realm ; which he , as a cunning fox ( knowing that this step of his advancement would hasten his ruine ) with pretented modesty declined , contenting himself with being lord-protector , which he was made three years before . then they petitioned him to accept of three-hundred thousand pounds a year for his support ; to have a new house of lords ; to name his own successor : all which ( with much ado ) he accepted of . but when fortune had set him so high , that all the world that heard of it were astonished : behold , in the midst of his triumph he is snatched away by death , upon september the third , 1658. he lay in state , at white-hall , about six weeks , and then was , in great splendor , interred in westminster abby , among the princes of the royal blood : his son richard was presently installed in his place , wherein he had hardly time to look about , when fleetwood and lambert , with the rest of the army thrust him out , calling the long-parliament again ; this revolution was followed by another ; for soon after , several gentlemen in cheshire , under the conduct of sir george booth , rose for the defence of their priviledges , but were defeated by lambert ; he immediately after turned out the long-parliament , and erected a committee of safety . his majesties friends looked on with some hope all this while , seeing all these metamorphosing of government , might tend to the opening a door for his majesties entring general monk hearing in scotland , how matters went in england , drew his army towards the borders : against him lambert marched as far as new-castle , resolving to fight him ; but his men had no heart to the work , which forced him to give way . in the mean time the remainder of the long-parliament , had again convened with some difficulty , and dissolved the committee of safety ; inviting general monk to march with his army to london , which he accordingly did ; and to requite their kindness , gets them dissolved . in the year 1660. another parliament was called at westminster , where , by unanimous consent , his majesty was invited home ; and accordingly , the twenty-ninth of may following , his majesty accompanied with the dukes of york and glocester , and attended with a gallant train of lords and gentlemen , arrived at dover , whence he was conducted through london , in great state to white-hall ; where , by a lineal legal succession , he possesses the imperial crown of scotland , for almost two thousand years : so that , for royal extraction , and long line of just descent , his majesty may reckon with any monarch in the christian world. an appendix to the present state of scotland , sect . i. of its climate , dimension , division , air , soil , commodities . scotland is one of the two kingdomes that divides the great island of brittain , being bounded on the east by the german ocean , on the north , by the dewcalledon sea ; on the west , by the irish sea : and divides it self from england , by the rivers tweed and solway , and the cheviot hills . clim . edinburgh is scituated between the degrees of latitude 56 d. 2 minutes , of longitude 3 d. 0 min. from london west . longest day , 17 hours 27 min. aberdeen 57 d. 10. min. of latitude ; 2. d. 20. min. longitude ; the most northernly parts of scotland , is dunsby-head , whose latitude is 58 d. 5 min. dimensions . it s length is about 480. miles ; its breadth is very disproportionable , there being no place in it that is above 70. miles distant from the sea. division . the country is divided according to its inhabitants ; into highland and low-land . the highlanders live in the north and west parts , or in some out islands ; being a bold and hardy people , much given to warlike exercises ; being alwayes in readiness , when ever commanded by their cheif : their weapons were commonly bows and arrows , but not so much used now as formerly ; they are a people that can endure as much hardships of war , as any people in the world. the lowlanders bordering upon the east and south , are as civil , as any other people ; their language much like the english , differing only in the accent . air. the air is very wholsome ; the cold in winter towards the north is very sharp ; but there being great plenty of firing , the inhabitants do not suffer by it . the heat is less scorching in summer , than in some other parts of the continent . the soil is pleasant and healthful , abounding with springs and rivers ; towards the north it is mountainous , yet not wanting fruitful valleys apt to bear any grain . commodities . the country every where affordeth plenty of sheep , oxen , coneys and fallow deer ; as also abundance of geese , ducks , hens , turkies , pigeons , partridges , sea-plover , herons , quailes and larks , &c. with great plenty of fish , such as salmonds , pikes , carps and trouts ; also herrings , oysters , cockles , mussels , turpots and lobsters . fruits . as apples , pears , plums , cherries , peaches and apricocks . corn , barly , rie , beans , pease and oats . also it produceth a great quantity of tin , lead , copper , allom , salt , hops ; with several silver-mines . it is accounted richer under ground , than above , by reason of their mines , which when tryed , yeild much in their quantities of ore. sect . ii. of the laws of scotland . they are made of the municipal and civil laws ; the municipal consists either of acts of parliament , or of the customes and practices of the colledge of justice ; and when neither of these contradict , the civil law is of force . all the rights and evidences of the subject , are committed to registers ; by which means men are sure not to be cheated in buying , or conveying estates . for first , no man can have a right to an estate but by his being seised of it , which is done by delivering earth and stone ; upon which an instrument is made , called a seising , and this within sixty dayes after must be registred , else it is of no force ; by which means all secret conveyances are cut off . next , all bonds have a clause in them for inserting them in the publick registers ; and they being registred without any further action upon a charge of six dayes , the debtor must make payment . a third instance is , that any creditor may serve a writ on his debtor , called letters of inhibitione , by which he can make no disposition of his goods or estate , till the party be satisfied ; if these letters be returned registred , within twenty-one days after they are served , otherwise they have no force . many such instances may be produced , by which it appears how securely the subject may enjoy that he hath , or may purchase . sect . iii. of the cheif officers of state , of the parliament , of the privy council , of the colledge of justice , of the justice court , and of the exchequer . the king administers the government of the kingdom by his officers of state , who are eight in number : the first is the lord chancellour , who is keeper of the great seal , and president of all courts , except the exchequer . this office is in the person of john earl of perth . the second is the lord treasurer , who manages the revenue , and presides in the exchequer , who is at present the marquess of queensbury . the third is the lord privy seal ; which office the marquess of athole enjoyes . the fourth is the lord secretary , who is at present alexander earl of murray . the fifth officer is the lord clerk of the registers , who has the charge of all the publick records ; this office is executed by sir george mikenzie , of tarbet . the sixth is the kings advocate ; he is commonly a judge , except in cases where the king is concerned ; and then he pleads for the king : the present lord advocate is , sir george mikenzie of rosehaugh : the seventh office is , the lord treasurer deputy ; which office was executed by sir charles maitland , of hattoun , now earl of lauderdale . the eighth is the lord justice clerk , who assists the lord justice general in criminal causes . the present justice clerk is , richard maitland , esquire . par. the parliament is made up of three estates : the first is ecclesiastical , consisting of arch-bishops , and bishops : the second estate is , the nobility and barons : the third is , the burroughs . upon the first day of each parliament , there are such solemnities , and magnificent shews , as is not observed in any kingdom upon such occasions . for all the members of parliament according to their degree , riding ( as it were ) in procession from the kings palace to the parliament house . the commissioner riding last : the crown , the sword , and the scepter , with the rest of the honours being carryed before him ; they return in the same order back again to the palace . sometimes the king makes use of a convention of estates , which can make no laws ; only by this meeting impositions are laid upon the subjects . the parliament being the supream court , it is not impertinent to give a list of the nobility with their precedency and surnames , which is as follows . dukes . his royal highness the duke of albany .     surnames . the dukes of hamilton hamilton . buccleauch scot. lenox lenox .   marquesses surnames . the marquess of huntley gordone . douglas douglas . montross graham . athol murray . queensbury douglass .   earls surnames the earls of crawford lindsey . errol hay . marishall keith . southerland southerland marr ereskine airth grahame . morton douglass . buchan ereskine . glencairn cunninghame . eglinton montgomery . casstles kennedy . murray stewart . caithness sinclare . nithifdale maxwell . wintoune seatoune . linlithgow livingstone . hume hume . pearth drummond . dumfermling seatoune . wigtoun fleming . strathmore lyon. abercorn hamilton . roxborough ker. kelly ereiskine . haddingtoun hamilton . galloway stewart . seaforth mac. kenzy . lowthian ker. kinnoule hay . loudon campbell . dumfriess creighton . sterling alexander . elgine bruce . southesk carnaigy . traquair stewart . ancram ker. weimes weimes . dalhousy ramsey . airly ogilvy . callender levingstone . carnwath dalziel . finlator ogilvy . levin lesley . annandale johnstone . dysert murray . panmuire mauld . tweddale hay . northesk carnaigy . kinkardin bruce . forfar douglass . balcarres lindsay . middleton middleton . aboyne gordone . tarras scot. newburgh levingstone . kilmarnock boyd . dundonald cochraine . dumbarton douglass . kintore keith . broad albyne campbell . aberdeen gordone .   viscounts surnames . the viscounts of faulkland carey . dumbarr constable . stormont murray . kenmure gordone . arbuthnet arbuthnet . frendaret creightone . kingstone seatoune . oxenford macgill . kilsyth levingstone . irwing campbell . dumbiane osborne . preston grahame . newhaven sheene .   lords surnames the lords of forbes forbes saltone frazier gray gray . ochiltry stewart cathcart cathcart . sinclare sinclare . mordington douglass . semple semple . elphingstone elphingstone . oliphant oliphant . lovat frazier . borthwick borthwick . rosse rosse . torphighen sandilands . spyne lindsey . lindoris lesley . balmerinoch elphingstone . blantyre stewart . cardrosse ereskine . burghly balfour . maderty drummond . cranstone cranstone . melvil melvil . neaper neaper . cameron fairfax . cramond richardson . rae macky . forrester bailzy . petsl●go — kirkudbright mac-cleland . frazier frazier . bargany hamilton . bamf ogilvy . elibank murray . dunkeld galloway . halcarton falconer . belhaven hamilton . abercromby sandilands . carmichael carmichael rollo rollo . colvil colvil . duffus southerland . ruthven ruthven . mack-donald mack-donald . rutherford rutherford . balanden balanden . newark lesly . burntisland weimes . strathard nairne . his majesties privy council is chiefly imployed about publick affairs ; the power of it hath been mostly raised since king james came to the crown of england ; by reason of which , being necessitated to be absent from scotland himself , he lodged much of his power in the lords of his privy council ; we cannot ( by reason of the late alterations ) give an exact list of the present lords of the council : wherefore we shall forbear . the supream court of judicature , about the property of the subject , is called the colledge of justice . it consists of fourteen judges , who are called senators of the colledge of justice , and a president . this court sits from the first of november , till the last of march. the justice court being the next supream court , where criminals are tryed , consists of a lord justice general , and a lord justice clerk who is his assistant . all tryals for life , are in this court ; where every subject , as well peers as commoners are tryed ; peers by a jury or assize of peers ; and commoners , by a jury of commoners . the next supream court is the exchequer , which consists of , the lord treasurer , the lord treasurers deputy , and some assistants called the lords of the exchequer : here all the kings grants , pensions , gifts of wards , and such like are passed . sect . iv. of sheriff-courts ; also an account of the shires of scotland , with their sheriffs who are ( most of them so ) by inheritance . there are beside the supream courts of the nation , other inferior courts ; the most considerable of which , is the sheriffs courts , where thefts , and all lesser crimes are judged ; as also murthers , if the murtherer be taken in hot blood . the sheriffs in this nation are ( most of them ) so by inheritance ; wherefore it may not be impertinent here to give a list of the shires of scotland , with their sheriffs . shires of scotland , with their bounds and sheriffs . shires sheriffs the shire of edinburgh containeth middle lothian . the earl of lau●erdale . the shire of berwick containeth mers . earl of home . the shire of peeblis containeth tweddail . earl of tweddail . the shire of shelkirk containeth the forrest of etterick . — murray . the shire of roxburgh containeth tiviotdale , lidisdale , eshdail , eusdail . duke of buckleugh . the shire of dumfreis containeth nithisdail , and anandail . marquess of queensbury . the shire of wigton containeth the west parts of galloway . sir patrick agnew of lochnaw . the shire of aire containeth kyle , carrict , and cunninghame . earl of dumfreis . the shire of renfrew containeth the barony of renfrew . earl of eglington . the shire of lanerick containeth clidsdail . duke hamilton . the shire of dumbritton containeth lenox . duke of lenox . the shire of bute containeth the isles of bute and arran . sir james stewart of bute . the shire of innerara containeth argile , lorn , kintyre , with the most part of the west isles . — the shire of pearth containeth athol , goury , glenshee , strath-ardell , broad-albine , ramach , balhider , glenurqhuay , stormont , menteith , and strath-yern . marquess of atholl . the shire of striveling lyeth on both sides the river forth . earl of marr. the shire of linlighgow , west lothian . — hope of hoptoun . the shire of clackmanan containeth a part of fife , lying upon the river forth , towards striveling . bruce of clackmanan . the shire of kinross containeth so much of fife , as lyeth between lochleiven , and the ochell hills . earl of morton . the shire of couper containeth the rest of fife . earl of rothes . the shire of forfar containeth angus , with its pertinents . earl of southesk . the shire of kinkardin containeth mernis . earl of kincardin . the shire of aberdeen containeth mar , with its pertinents , also the most part of buchan , forumarten , and strathbogie . sir — campbel of caddel . the shire of bamf containeth a small part of buchan , strath-dovern , boyn , enzy , strath-awin and balveny . sir james baird of auchmedden . the shire of elgine containeth the eastern part of murray . robert dumbar of — the shire of nairn containeth the west part of murray . — the shire of innerness containeth badenoch , lochabyr , and the south part of ross . earl of murray the shire of cromarty containeth a small part of ross , lying on the south side of cromarty firth . — the shire of tayne containeth the rest of ross , with the isles of sky , lemes , and harrigh . earl of seaforth the shire of dornoch containeth southerland . & strath-naver . earl of southerland . the shire of weik containeth cathness . earl of cathness . the shire of orkney containeth all the isles of orkney and schetland . — the constabulary of haddington containeth east lothian and lauderdale . earl of lauderdale . stewartries . stewards . the stewartry of strathern . earl of pearth . the stewartry of monteith . earl of monteith . the stewartry of annandate . earl of annandale . the stewartry of kirkudbright containeth the east parts of galloway . earl of nithisdale . baileries bailiffs . kyle . — carrict . e. of cassiles . cunninghame . e. eglington . we should in the next place have spoken somewhat of the ecclesiastical government of the kingdom ; but it being done already by so many learned pens , especially arch-bishop spotswood , to which we refer the reader : we shall now pass to sect . v. of the vniversities of scotland . in scotland there are four universities . st. andrews . glasgow aberdeen . edenburgh . of the vniversity of st. andrews . this university was founded by bishop heawardlaw a. d. 1412 the arch-bishops of st. andrews are perpetually chancellors thereof ; the rector is chosen yearly , and hath the same power with the vice-chancellor of oxford and cambridge . there are in this university three colledges , viz. st. salvator , st. leonards , and st. maryes , st. salvators colledg was founded by bishop kennedy who endued it with very sumptuous and costly ornaments ; and provided sufficient maintenance for the masters and professors . st. leonards colledg was founded by prior , john hepburn , a. d. 1525. persons endowed are principal , four professors of philosophy , eight poor schollars . st. maries colledge was founded by arch-bishop beaton , no science is here taught but theologie , which is done gratis , the schools being open to receive any to be instructed . of the vniversity of glasgow . this university was founded by king james the second , and augmented with ample priviledges by king james the sixth . king charles the first did ratify all the old priviledges , and bestowed mony for repairing the fabrick , also king charles the second by consent of parliament bestowed a considerable sum of mony uppon it . of the vniversity of aberdeen . there were in this place an associated company of students of divinity , and the canon and city laws in the times of king alexander the second , but it was by king james the fourth made an university in a. d. 1494 , it was founded with as ample priviledges as any university in christendom . in it both philosophy , divinity , physick , and law , are very accurately taught . the vniversity of edenburgh . king james the sixth , anno. dom. 1580. founded this university upon the supplication of the magistrates of the city ; granting them under the great seal an university with all the priviledges and immunities that any university within the kingdom could pretend to . persons endowed , were , a principal , a professor of divinity ; a professor of philosophy , a professor of humanity ; to which is since added a professor of hebrew . a postscript . of the laws of scotland for torturing criminals ; and of that torture in particular called the boot . the laws of scotland , according to a late learned writer , sir g. mace●zy in his criminals , allow not tortures but in case of obstinacy in the criminal , where there is great presumption of guilt , and therefore it is not allowed to any , but to the councel or justices to use torture in any case . it is a ruled case in law , that torture being adduced , purges all former presumptions , which preceded the torture , if the person tortured be constant in his denyal ; and therefore torture is called , probatio vltima . neither can a person sentenced to dye , be tortured , when sentence is passed against him , for post condemnationem judices functi sunt officio . minors also have this as one of their priviledges , by the scottish laws , that they cannot be tortured lest the tenderness both of their age and judgment make them fail . the most ordinary way of torture in scotland is , by an iron engine called the boot , the manner thus . the criminal is called to be examined before the councel , and upon obstinacy is threatned with the boot , and then dismissed for that time ; with certification , that if within so many dayes he do not confess , he shall be tortured : when this day comes , if he continue obstinate , he is called before the council , or a quorum of them , where the executioner attends with the boot ; there he is again examined by the judges ; if he do not confess , then they order the executioner to put his leg in the boot with some iron wedges ; then they examine him again ; if he continue refractory , then the executioner is commanded to drive one of the wedges , and then another , till the criminal either confess , or the judges are satisfied he hath nothing to confess . finis . books lately printed and sold by william benbridge . the second part of the weeks preparation for the sacrament . consisting of soliloquies , prayers , hymns , ejaculations , thanksgiving and examination , for sunday evening , ( after the celebration of the holy communion . ) as also for morning and evening on every day of the week following . together with directions to lead an holy life . the stile of exchanges , containing both their law and custom , as practised now in the most considerable place of exchange in europe . unfoulding divers misteries , and directing every person , howsoever concerned in a bill of exchange , to what he ought to do and observe , in any case , in order to his own security . translated out of low and high-duch , french and italian-latine authors . the whole methodically digested into chapters and sections , that by the help of an index any particular case many readily be found . by john scarlett , merchant of the eastland company , the second edition . lucian's works , translated from the greek . by ferrand spence . 1. volume . 2. volume . 3. volume . the history of the bucan●ers : being an impartial relation of all the battels , sieges , and other most eminent assaults committed for several years upon the coasts of the westindies by the pirates of jamaica and tortuga , both english , and other nations . more especially the unparallel'd atchievments of sir h. m. made english from the dutch copy : written by j. esquemeling , one of the bucaniers , very much corrected from the errours of the original , by the relations of some english gentlemen , that then resides in those parts . scanderbeg redivivus . an historical account of the life and actions of the most victorious prince john the iii. king of poland : containing an exact and succinct series of affairs from his cradle , to this present day ; with a particular account of the many great and signal victories obtained by him against the turks , from the time he was first made crown-general , and afterwards elected king of poland . the exact englishman : or , the compleat london scholler , a new spelling book . beginning with a choice and methodical collection of all monosyllable , or words of one syllable , ( turned into english metre ; ) and proceeding to those of two , three or more syllables , digested into an order and method never before extant . with graces and prayers . useful not only for english-schoolmasters in teaching children to spell and read , but may be servicable to the elder learners , and to strangers , as a repertory or treasury of english words to be used on occasion . by s. n. schoolmaster in london . the parliament of women : or , a compleat history of the proceedings and debates , of a particular junto , of ladies and gentlewomen , with a design to alter the government of the world. by way of satyr . pandaemonium : or , the devil's cloyster . being a further blow to modern sadduceism , proving the existence of witches and spirits . in a discourse deduced from the fall of the angels , the propogation of satans kingdom before the flood : the idolatry of the ages after , greatly advancing diabolical confederacies , with an account of the lives and transactions of several notorious witches , some whereof have been popes : also a collection of several authentick relations of strange apparitions of daemons and specters , and fascinations of witches , never before printed . by richard bovet gent. finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a26656-e3980 pect . boet. ralph l. 306. * dion . at a court of directors of the company of scotland, trading to africa and the indies holden at edinburgh the 18th of april 1699. company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1699 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a80257 wing c5585 estc r223376 99897565 99897565 135593 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a80257) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 135593) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2510:6) at a court of directors of the company of scotland, trading to africa and the indies holden at edinburgh the 18th of april 1699. company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh : 1699] imprint from wing. reproduction of original in the john carter brown library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -17th century -early works to 1800. scotland -commerce -early works to 1800. broadsides 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion at a court of directors of the company of scotland , trading to africa and the indies . holden at edinburgh the 18th of april 1699. the said covrt of directors taking into their consideration , how that by the constitutions of the company 's colony in america ; all persons of what nation soever in amity with his majesty are allowed to trade thither under certain easy conditions , particularly mention'd in the said constitutions : and that notwithstanding the council of their said colony have a considerable stock of merchantable goods , and other valuable effects by them , to give in barter for whatsoever provisions or other necessaries they may have occasion for ; yet for the further encouragment of all such merchants and others as shall trade to the said colony , and particularly of such as shall carry good and wholesome provisions thither . the said covrt of directos , do hereby declare and make known , that any person or persons , procuring a bill or bills , from the council of the said colony , or any four of them , at any time or times , before the first of january next to come , for any sum or sums , not exceeding 2000 lib. sterl . in the whole , on the said company 's cashier , payable in a months time after sight , shall be duely honoured and complyed with accordingly . ditto the 2d . day of may 1699. the said covrt of directors re-assuming the consideration of their act of the 18th of april last ; by which they gave the council of caledonia in america , a credit of 2000 lib. sterl . upon the company's-cashier here payable to such persons as should procure bills for the same , under the hands of any four of the said council before the first of january next . and lest , that contrary to the intention of the said court , the limitations in the said act should be a discouragement to any person or persons that have a mind to carry provisions to the said colony , upon the presumption that possibly the said credit may , before their arrival there , be exhausted by bills given , or to be given to others ; and in regard that possibly the inhabitants of the said colony may ( god willing ) from time to time , encrease still more and more , so as to require more povisions , than can conveniently at all times be bought by the bartering of such merchantable goods as the said council have lying in store by them : therefore , the said covrt of directors do , upon further consideration , hereby declare and make known , that any person or persons procuring a bill or bills , from the council of the said colony , four of them at least subscribing the said bills , on the company 's cashier here , for provifions brought to the said colony , and sold to the said council , at any time or times , before the first day of march , which shall be in the year of god 1700 , payable in a months time after-sight , shall be duely honoured with acceptance and good payment accordingly . ordered , that this act be forthwith printed and published , extractted out of the records of the said covrt , by me rod. mackenzie sc ry . a progenie, of prodiges: or, treasons arraigned, convicted: and condemned, discovered. in the many successive practises: and succesles [sic] attempts of the hamiltons to gaine the crowne of scotland. gardiner, robert, fl. 1649. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a42385 of text r223636 in the english short title catalog (wing g243). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 112 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 34 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a42385 wing g243 estc r223636 99833925 99833925 38403 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a42385) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 38403) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1830:14) a progenie, of prodiges: or, treasons arraigned, convicted: and condemned, discovered. in the many successive practises: and succesles [sic] attempts of the hamiltons to gaine the crowne of scotland. gardiner, robert, fl. 1649. [16], 50, [2] p. s.n.], [s.l. : printed in the first yeare of king charles, the second, 1649. with a final errata leaf. reproduction of the original at the trinity college library, dublin eng hamilton, james hamilton, -duke of, 1606-1649 -early works to 1800. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a42385 r223636 (wing g243). civilwar no a progenie, of prodiges: or, treasons; arraigned, convicted: and condemned, discovered. in the many successive practises: and succesles [sic gardiner, robert 1649 20234 824 0 0 0 0 0 407 f the rate of 407 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the f category of texts with 100 or more defects per 10,000 words. 2007-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-01 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-06 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2007-06 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a progenie , of prodiges : or , treasons ; arraigned , convicted : and condemned , discovered . in the many successive practises : and succesles attempts of the hamiltons to gaine the crowne of scotland . hic niger est hunc , tu britanne caveto : nemo potest diu personam ferre fictam : cito in naturam suam recidunt , quibus veritas non subest . magna est veritas & prevalebit . printed in the first yeare of king charles , the second , 1649. to the sacred maiestie : of king charles the second , undoubted successor to the crownes : of england , scotland , and ireland , defender of the fayth sir . did not my naturall duty and allegiance to your sacred majestie oblidge mee to this performance , the gratitude , and reverence , i owe to the pretious memorie of your ever glorious father , would provoke mee to this duty , beesides both these , the trust and imployments : i had the honnor to receive from him , engage mee to an account , and the discharge of my loyaltie & faithfulnes to you . sr. i most humblie begge your majesties pardonne , that i make that discouerie of such treasonable practises , which will perplexe , sooner then satisfie and quiett your expectation : the subiect can give your highnes no delight , when it onely discourseth , the aspirings of an ambitions subject to a crowne , of rightes appertaining to your highne . sr. i should inexpressiblie mourne my sad misfortune , should my zeale to your majesties service and happines , mistaken encounter other effect , then what is cleerlie intended : the preservation of your life , and royall dignities . sir , should the disclosing of these treacheries and falshoodes [ wherin i present most eminent truths ] unhappilie encrease , or continue the disturbance in your majesties present and most important affaires . [ i abiure from my very soule the single thought of so bad a consequence . ] yet were i lest guiltie , then if i should conceale the traitor , and by a calme , inconsiderate silence , render myselfe accessorie to the treason , if this contribute the least to your greate designes , i am highlie rewarded in my service . i have satisfied my conscience , and payde one debte , i owe to truth to the god of truth , and to your highnes , gods amointed , and vicegerent my constant actions shall witnes to the whole world , that it holdes not a person more . sir , your majesties loyall and faythfull subject . rob. gardiner : the authors apologie . to the royall reader . camarade . thou hast no sooner reade the title in the frontispiece , but i know thy iudgement , meethinkes i ●eare thee all ready pronouncing thy cen●ure . alas poore , honest gentleman , it 〈◊〉 greate pitty , he is mad . a fooles bolt . who but a mad man durst write so bold , ●ruths ? pray give mee leaue to creepe gra●elie into the witts , i am like , a young nim●le , prodigall cashkeeper , unawarrs runne ●ut of , & to recover my creditt , before you ●ake out too hastilie this commission of bankrupte against mee . et insanire cum ratione . i had rather bee that mad-man twice told you speake of , then a dull , sober foole . i would choose sooner , to have my throate cut , for voicing any man traitor then by his good leave , conceale his name , and beecome interressed in the treason , and for a conclusion bee hanged . there are others , that have throates too , and as fit to bee cut . wee must see the hopes of our beeing , our well beeing the onelie support of our lives , our well , living hereafter , the royall king , at whose devotion wee prostrate our lives ; wee must see him , upon the precise minute of falling into those hands , those cursed hands , that subscribed the murther of his glorious father of sacred memorie , and sold ( him ) to those murtheres , and themselves to the devill to worke sim and wickednesse , wee must see him upon the criticall now , of beeing beetrayde likewise , and we like fooles , must digito compescere labellum , ●um , follow at that distance , the fright ●●e apostles did our savior when hee was ●eetrayde , and like pretious disciples , ●ite the lippe for anger , and tacitely looke ●n i will not say with those lewd transla●ors of the psalmes wee will prevaile , our toungs shall vs extoll . but to farre i 'le goe along with them , our toungs are ovrs ●ee ought to speake , what lord shall ●s controle ? i would sooner eate my ●ayles , byte my fingers ends off , then ●ake no better vse of them ! lay my hand on ●y mouth . peace , and catche a mouse while others are setting a trappe to ensnare our most hopefull king . and serve him as they did his too credulous , but never enough commended and bemoned , father . there is a proverbe frequent , in every mans mouth in scotland . he that deceives mee the first time the devill take him , and not me , if hee deceive me the second time , the devill take mee , and not him , but if the third time , the divell take us both . the devill take mee , if ever i trust any of them more . any of there factions , there divisions and there subdiuisions ? i know all there hocus pocus trickes ; i know the independent mountebanke lords that with there presbiterian zanies fil up one presbiterian independent classis . and wish they were all pendant together . the english arguile , and the scotche cromwell . i must acknowledge there is a royall loyall party in scotland , but who must command them ? the king in person , or that person , i am confident , they will trust there soules with . the strafford of that kingdome , and the alexander of the world , but neither of them did such miracles as incomparable montros . who can onely bee , by himselfe outdone ; i am strongly of there opinion , that perswade the king to remove him . i would presume to advise the same . onely i would assigne the place , whither : send him considerablie into scotland , to see what it is they can alleadge against him . his allegiance . t is that indeede which must chastise there saucie , unnnamerlie and peremptorie demands . there is a way of reclaiming these haggard rebells . keepe them sharpe , and then feed them morning , and at night with good sharpe two handed swords . if they can disgest cold yron they shall have there gorge● full . they will neede no other castings ▪ since hee left scotland , they are returned with the dogge to the vomitt , and when hee goes backe wee shall see them with the hogge , wallowing in the myre . they teach preposterous and false doctrine , that say rebells will , bee tamde by yeelding . with which caesaer was unacquainted . i doe not thinke it treason to say . i would see king charles aut caesar ant nihil . i wishe him a larger empire . i would see him act over the blacke prince , and farre on t doe him . some thing that might cancell the acts , and deface the monument , of preceding ages at which posteritie , showlde gaze with wonder . he is ●ot inferior to any in dignities and ex●ellencies . and i covet to see him supe●ior to the whole world in glories . greater then charles the greate , hap●ier then charles the good . i would ●ot for a world ( it should bee the last ●hing in the world i would see ) his highe ●nd just designes disappointed pretences , ●nd coulorable treacheries of those that ●ayde his glorious father low , and would ●is honnor in the dust had they him in ●quall power to dispose . this is too sad 〈◊〉 truth , and the truth is i am mad . ●s i live and breathe mad : t is not op●ression , that makes the wise man mad which puts my thoughts into this distraction . i am a fool ; yet to be preferd to a knave . too much knowledge of there damnable design and traiterous practises in scotland , makes mee thus wildly deliver my mynde in holland , and discover the naked truth to the whole world , in sheets . my fears , least that sonne of goodnesse the inheritor of all his glorious fathers excellencies the now king , should give to much credit to those perswasions and counsells , that would call on and hasten his ruine and undoing . such feares disturbe mee . my zeale to his service , and my knowledge of there horridand dangerous subtilles transport mee : knowledge of crimes laesae maiestatis cause in mee loesum cerebrum . and my braines are crackte insteade of there neckes . i showld grow calme on a suddaine , did i see this cloud that hangs over the kings heade dispelde , and those evill counsellors removed , that portend a storme , and prognosticate fowle weather , how faire so ever they seeme , to pretend . reader farewell ! farewell for good and all . i cannot expecte to live above a mouhe having spoken so much truth , unless i lye in ; and gallants hott in the distempers of there blouds , have a ●ust excuse the spring after the fall . i shall not keepe my chamber , not that i would not bee found , but toms , runne out of there wits , have ever the perpetuall motion , and there extravigant humor . at it of ram●ling a broad i goe in danger but not feare of my life , who will bee so much bedlam as 〈◊〉 question his cousen . yet i had rather fall by the noble hand of a loyall pretender , then suffer an unluckie death by the common and rude hand of a rebel trooper in a croud , that i shal not know to whome to owe the favor of my death . the kings glorious martyrdom hath made mee ambitious of suffering . the murthering of him makes mee in love with deathe . when i see ye deadly hart , i shall imagine it cupids , fall in love with death and court it as my mistris . i cannot live , and lye fallow . if i lye fallow , i am deade when i produce no fruits of my obedience . till my sword shall bee rendred usefull , i must imploy my penknife , my blade at the best , can strike but a single rebell , at one blowe destroy but a melancholly trooper . one stroke of my pen , can put a ragged begiment of rogues to a route . a second . cut of a whole brigade . one dashe more of the quill , discomfit , and put to winge an hoaste of disloyall traitors when they see there treasons bee trayde ; if i fall in this happy service , i bequeathe all his maiesties subiects . loyalty for a legacie . r. g. in this exigencie of tyme and pressure of affaires when a general sadnes , and kynde of despaire óreclouds & shaddows the face of things , as well as men . i know nothing so necessarilie conducing to his maiesties concernments as information ; which must not come lamely creeping forth , as if it were affrayde ●o view the light or bee seene by any and unawares bee disco●ered , but appeare in bold , naked , and iustifiable truthes ! the king is in no cōdition to bee flattered , when hee is in so greate 〈◊〉 hazard , and visible danger of beeing beetrayde , and by com●ination of those factions who gave that fatall and cursed ●…owe to his glorious father , of euer belssed memorie . and ●resentlie threaten appairent ruine to his royall posteritie . without counsell no highe undertaking can bee succefull , or attaine to its wished period . without information ●ounsell is at a stand , and fixeth the pillars of hercules , bee ●…re wee have performed the least of his labors . the end of ●ounsell is action , execution . the end of this designed action 〈◊〉 restore the king : beefore the king can settle and establish 〈◊〉 throne hee must settle and confirme his counsell . which ●hile it continues in this unhappy distraction , his wauering ●●…d unfixt resolutions will bee so divided , that hee shall but 〈◊〉 certainlie know , to which , with best aduantages he should ●●…line when faction , professing the same ends , with the royall party labors in there pursuite to arriue at them by other , and most indirect means , and by the way endeauor to exclude them . i shall communicate freelie , what either the undoubted information of others , or my owne apprehension , and certaine knowledge hath suggested to my sense and iudgement . and since most men are ledd , and seduced by opinion , lett every one , [ it is an uncontrolable libertie that all men wil take ] frame what arguments and censure hee pleaseth , from what hee finds most faythfully asserted . i hold myselfe obliged to the whole world to render a du● and stricte account of my observation and knowledge and wi● entirelie endeavor to vindicate truth so excellinglie pretious and absolutelie to rectifie , misinformed and erring iudgements i shall doe it with such impartialitie and so sincerelie , tha● nota person liuing , of what faction soever , whithersoever hi● particular interests and relations leade him , wil bee able t● disprove . there are diverse papers exhibited to the world in prin● which , beecause they are obuious to every common eye , purposely omitt . they discover the manifold practises and a●tempts of the hamiltons , for the obtaining of the crown● and governement of the kingdome of scotland , at which the have aymed , more then one hundred and twenty yeares , in constant proseqution of there disloyal designes . if wee examine seriouslie the whole tracte of the dukes life and reflect on the series of all his actions , wee shall discov● no less designe of usurpation , and fierie ambition of rule , in hi● then in his predecessors . encouraged by several prediction and astrologies , to which that familie is much addicted . shall beeginne with , but not insist on his desyres to the king 〈◊〉 sweden , for his assistance to his uniust pretence : to who● david ramsey was sent a commissioner , who imagining h● master already king , and himselfe his embassador , stood n● upon bare ceremonies , but readilie putt on his hatt , in the presence of the king . the most material things worthy our observation and strict survey , are the dukes actions and deportments , after the pu●lishing of mr meldrumes scandalous & traiterous booke ; which declaring him to have the onely iust righte to the crowne of scotland , cherished in him such an insatiate and implacable ●mbition of reigne , that deathe onelie was able to extinguish the one , with the other . the booke was burned by the hang●an , but the author was entertained by the duke , and relea●ed , after three yeares imprisonment in the fleete , notwith●anding the base aspersions of so inglorious a libeller . touching the dukes next designe , i referre the reader to the depositions of the lord rhe , lord ocholtrie , maior ●arstwike with diuerse others , extant upon record , and sin●● published in printe . his pretexte of leavies for germany . a 1630. was onely a ●lott to gett power into his hands , that having men in a rea●ines on foote , and well appointed , hee might , supresse the ●ing and kingdomes by that power , ioyned with his factions 〈◊〉 either kingdomes . the king , the people , all men in such ●rofound securitie , not suspecting the hidden and concealed , ●anger , were not able to make the leaste considerable resi●ance . the duke had resolued to launch out into the deepe , and ●●ter two dayes sayling to returne to hull , plante a garrison ●●d leaue a governor , while hee showld march to london , ●yne with his faction , imprison the king in the tower . and ●ere dispatche him by poyson , send the queene to france ●rowne himselfe king of scotland , declared to bee prote●or of the young king . the islande of orcades were offered to the lord rhe , ha●ng a regiment of fiveteene hundred men , to ioyne in the ●esigne . to this end the duke procured twelve or ●●●●teene thousand armes , to bee disposed pri●●●elie in sev●ral places of his interests , and caused diverse peeces of cannon to bee cast , by his cousen alex : hamilton in that kingdome , hee pressed the king to al monopolies , of which himselfe had the greatest share . and yett had his emissaries to poison the people agaynst them , and to murmurre and cry out agayust the king in both kingdomes . hee importuned the king to call parliaments and then urged reasons to dissolve them , thus bee brought the king into hatred , and incited the people to commotions . while he alwayes studdied to send al persons , from court malcontente hee ordinarilie reuiled the king , and where hee had freedome tovent his expressions , had him in hate and derision . when hee was deputed commissioner for scotland , hee had particular warrant to limitt and regulate episcopacie , or pass from it altogether , as might best conduce for peace ; the king iustlie fearing , that the troubles and stirrs in scotland if not quieted and appeasde on any termes would breed unrest in england ; and put his discontented subjects into a combustion at home , yett hee deserted the assembly , suffering them to sit , abandōed the governement , tooke with him all officers of● state and purposlie let the reines of government loose that ye people might have ye easier libertie to rebell . hee told the king , that if hee did not cut of those rebells hee did not deserve to reigne , the king had done well to have beegunne with him yet double toungde hee whispers to the people , the● king was a coward ; the innocent death and uniust suffering of the king the guilt and deserved punnishment of the ●●ke speakes who appeared the cowart on the scaffold , he advised them to hold the king strictlie to it , and not to depart from there unreasonable demands . telling them if they gave him his will , hee would prove a greater tyrant then ne●ro ; when hee was first imployed with a fleete into the scotsh sease , hee might have either hindred them from comming to ●nntzlawe or , if he had landed in the north of that kingdome , as hee was often sollicited , by the kings freinds hee might ●here have brought twenty thousand men on there backes , as is most notoriouslie known : but having five or sixe thousand men 〈◊〉 boarde , hee never made the least attempt . while hee was in the fleete , hee had private meetings every ●ther day , and conference with the cheefe of the rebells com●ittee , discovered to them all the kings designes and provided , ●emedies against them , and either approved there counsels , ●r put them upō new proiects all his freinds of greatest intima●ie , and neerest relation to him , who were never accustomed 〈◊〉 desert him in the most uniust designes imaginable , were the ●nely mortal and most malitious enemies against the , king and ●emed in that onely , to appeare against him , his people , his ●angers on did ordinarily drinke healthes to king iames the ●venthe and hee did tacitely allowe , and countenance it at ●●ch times as hee lay in the kings bedchamber , hee frequently ●●ed to searche his majesties pocketts for letters , sent the dup●ates to the rebells , by which intelligence , the kings freinds ●●re disappointed of there intentions to doe him service he so ●●btily insinuated with the king [ hee could picke thankes as ●ell as pocketts ] as he prevailed for a commission to goe ●●o scotland , with a coulorable pretence , to settle and com●●se there differences : hee referred all to the determination 〈◊〉 a national synod at glascow , which hee soone dissolved , ●●d returning to the king incensed him against his subjects of ●●otland . the warre followed hee to himself purchased the ●●mmand of the navy , hee came to the forth of scotland but ●●eatned by the covenantars , who sent some to the ships to 〈◊〉 him knowe that if hee did preiudice them , they would discover all , and prove against him the accusations of my lord rhe and ocholtrie , hee desisted from enterprising any thing , conducing to the kings service , unless the munity hee enforced on his souldiers , aduantaged it , a pacification was made beetweene the king and his subjects of scotland who the insueing yeare inuaded england . the duke held correspondence with the cheifest covenanters . hee perswaded the king to passe an acte for the triennial parliament ; and more to eternize that , while it was not to bee dissolved without there owne consent . anno , 1641. at the kings goeing into scotland , the duke to ingratiate himselfe with the people joyned with ye marquisse of arguille in that faction , with whome , hee deserting the parliament at edinburg , retired into the country , pretending a plott agaynst him by some courtiers and souldiers . at which tyme the king publikly declared in parliament , that the duke was the onelie man , had incensed him against the kingdome , how ever hee seemed now to comply with them . when hee was his maiesties commissioner hee often sayde in private , to the cheife covenanters , that nothing would prevaile with the king but force , and necessitie . when the earle of traquaire beeing commissioner in scotland , did returne to london , hee concealed him ten dayes in his bedchamber , gave no occount of his trust to the king , till they had resolued on a bitter relation agaynst the scots , which compelled the king to declare a warre , which done , hee sent them informations , advertissements , helpes and assistances to state them in a condition , of defence . hee did subtlie weave himselfe into the command of the navy the second tyme , hee provides it with a vast expence ▪ pretends ( as hee knew wel to dissemble , though unfit for reigne ) some easy discontents , causeth all the ships to bee unvictual'd , the stalladges and other necessarie accomodations for horse & foote to bee demolished , within ten dayes following , hee urged to have his charge renewed , 〈…〉 to bee reuictuald hee brings a saucy bill of fare ; the 〈…〉 chargeth the account , upon his one score , the ships up●n the dukes , to which , beeing cheife of his cabbinet counsell , hee had perswaded him in a very short tyme . thus are the kings treasures unnecessarilie exhausted , and tyme allotted to the rebells in scotland to advance in there undertakings . when the king had made a prosperous progres in his affaires ●nd had very neere subdued all his opposers in england , when ●ee had reduced the whole kingdome to his obedience except london , and three or fowre other garrisons , and those few members who styled themselves a parliament had no visible meanes left to preserve themselves , or oppose the king , but the ●uiting in of the scots , when it was if not possible , at least ●ery difficult , for the covenanters to afford , or contribute ●ny considerable assistance to there confederates in england , if ●hose who protested themselues the kings freinds in scotland ●ad faythfully acted there parts ; then hamilton thought it ●ighe tyme for him to passeover from the covenanters , and ●retend for the king that having free accesse to his counsels , ●e might at pleasure betray , and disappointe his designes ●●hen the incomparably noble marquis of montros had at ●orke informed the queene , of the scots conspiracie , and ●ad fully represented to her maiesty , the treacheries and ●mminent danger of the covenanters , had unripped there ●olicies and unmasked all there devices , when hee advised 〈◊〉 mature prevention , and by anticipating there designes , to ●pell force with force . to which more then a bare lawfulnes , 〈◊〉 in evitable necessitie did vrge . the duke posted with more ●ast then good speed to yorke , with a coulor to kisse her ma●sties hands and congratulate her safe arivall into england . ●om whence he had formerly designed to send her on an embassy : but his plot was entirely to overthrow and confound the seasonable and faithfull counsells and perswasions of that truly perfectlie loyall soule , that man of honnor the marquis of montros , he possessed the queene how rawe , indisgested , rashe and dangerous the counsels of the marquis were and altogether condemned his iudgment and in that his owne vvhich in all mens ought to bee highlie preferd to the dukes opinion , he did more then put a remora , to retard , he gave check to the marquisses high undertakings and by subtile art and cunning , gott the disposing of the men and the whole game iuto his owne hands by which meanes after , hee gave checkmate to the king he offers by faire means to hinder the raising of an army in scotland , if the too often deceived king would trust him with the managinge of that buissnes , to rende 〈◊〉 it more plausible , he promiseth to performe it , without trouble or expence to his majestie whose bagges hee had milkt before ; such easie proffers have ever a powrfull influence on princes reduced to want and irresistible necessitie , but his vile an● cheape counsels , which hee alwayes gave for nought cost the king deare by dissembling a danger , hee had contracted o● himselfe from the legislative covenanters , and counterfeitin● the hazards he seemed to run , although hee came not withou● there privitie and allowance and abundantly furnished with there treacherous instructions , hee gayned from the king a●● absolute trust . returnde to scotland , hee made greate professions at hom● as hee had done abroade and would have gladly seemed the most joyous , and most zealous person living for the kings in●terest , yet in all his proceedings , hee crossed the advices an● resolutions of the kings freinds hee betrayed the kings tru●● and filled up the blanks committed to him , with the king● approbations to that convention of scotland , where a leavy o●● twenty thousand , men for england , and sixe thousand fo●●●reland were ordained . the king advertisde that the co●enanters had indicted a convention of state without his con●●nt or knowledge did write a letter to the duke and those of ●●e counsel to discharge the convention , the duke concea●ng the letter desired the earle of kallender to conferre with ●●e earle of roxbroug , and some others , best affected to his ●ajestie to aske ther aduise they all unammously concluded , ●●e king should disclayme the convention , and declare it ●●egall but the duke , [ who without the kings knowledge ●●d consent , and contrary to ye lawes of the kingdome inter●●sing the kings name and authoritie , had invited , and com●lled the covenanting lords to frequent assemblies ] ac●●aints them by the earle of callander , that it was the kings ●●tention and purpose , to approve the convention , with some ●●w restrictions , and limitations ; this false suggestion of the ●uke , made them to alter there aduice the king never having ●rboured such a thought untill it was insinuated , to him by ●●milton as the advice of a freind from scotland , that there ●●ere probable conjectures and posible hopes , to overpowre 〈◊〉 covenanters , and carry the matters in the convention , 〈◊〉 the kings advantage , or at least to impede and obstruct any ●●stance to bee sent into england against him . thus the ●●ngs expectation , was deluded and the hopes of his faithfull ●bjects in scotland frustrated , while both , were induced by ●●e dukes policie to approve and countenance the convention ●●d the kings affaires suffered an infinite prejudice when at that ●●me it was very feosible to have supprest there confederacie 〈◊〉 its infancy or growing estate , ere it had aspirde to that ●●ighte and perfection , since scotland wanted not , rather a●unded with men loyall , trusty , and valiant , those men wan●●d neither power , or those necessarie accomodations for ●●rre , the sinewes , the ligaments that causa sine qua non , ●oney , onely the kings commission , by which they should have power to act , was deficient with which once inspired , they would have attempted any thing , might present danger , and administer any occasion to express there honorable reguard to the kings most inestimable life , and royall dignities . delay ( in affaires of greate importance ever dangerous , and to bee avoyded ) could onely destroy there hopefull designes then , a● our just feares are , it will doe at present ▪ there are too many sa●… witnesses of the dukes and his brother the earle of lannerick● deportments in that convention , and afterwards ; there actions were in no wise answerable to there promises in there conference with the noble men that were well affected to the king , they refused to joyne with them in a course of oppositi on , or to give there approbation , that they should actuate without his personal appearance in the buisines , these that would have aduentured there fortunes , there lives , whatsoever wa●… deare unto them , for his majesties preservation were ignominiouslie betrayde . when the duke for his heinous crymes and treasonabl● practises , was justlie committed prisoner to pendennis cast●… his brother the earle of lannericke , deserted his majestie● service at oxford , and secretlie conveyed himselfe away having no excusable pretence , unless the dukes deserved imprisonment can justifie his defection from so deare and bounteou● a master , that to the duke had ever given more then hee could deserve , and no more in this then what hee deserved . lanne ricke preferrs the safetie of a brother to the preservation of hi● countryes father , to save one , on whose beeing some particular freinds , and followers had dependance hee leaves as much as in him lay , the king to the mercy of his ennemies to bee destroyed , in whose life and well beeing the preservation and securitie of three kingdomes did alone consist . hee repaires to london , joynes himselfe to the scotch commissioners , for which hee will never bee able to repaire his weatherbeaten reputation and blasted honnor . the commissioners welcome ●s revolte and congratulate his dishonorable retreate from ●s masters cause and service . they dispatche him away to ●ere army , by sea , with letters of commendations . from ●e army hee beetakes himselfe to scotland , where in a sol●●ne meeting in there parliament , he not onely protested that ●e was penitent for his former carriage in adhering to the ●●ing , but that hee would not have deserted his master untill ●s master had deserted god [ well sayd thou good and ●thful servant ] he declared publiklie that it he did see visiblie . 〈◊〉 religion destroyed , and the mass openly mantained and ●●ofessed both in the army , and at oxford [ a zealous convert ●at speakes more then the truth , ] hee hath no sooner given ●idence of his penitent and contrite heart , but they are mer●full to the sinner , they receive him into there honorable ●●cietie , and adorne him with the reverent title of a cove●nter [ a holy and blessed order ] thus qualified , they admitt ●●e sanctifide brother , to there religious counsells and on ●m immediately conferre the command of forces against the ●●ngs majestie , which hee like a gratefull and loyall subject ●ost thankfully receivesly how vigorous and stirring he proved 〈◊〉 all his undertakings with the rebells , all men , that know ●●y thing of that kingdome perfectie know , hee did showe ●●ch rare feats of his activitie , in there combination , that ●●th quicke and nimble motion hee skipps into the place of a ●eading member , hee appeared like a ruling elder , nothing ●s done , or indeed could bee done , without him , at that ●eate battaile of kilsythe where sixe thousand rebells were ●yne under the well managed conduct of the noble munt●s , hee had drawne together one thousand foote , and five ●ndred horse , of his freinds and followers , which were on ●ere marche within seven miles , to have joyned with the ●●bells not with standing all the intreaties , and sollicitations , perswasions , and promises loyall montros did use , to make him joyne with him , in the kings service , against which hee stubbornly persisted , and continued in armes and opposition till montros by the kings express commands , had disbanded his forces [ the royall party . ] when the king was at newcastle , hee was crediblie informed , that upon a serious consultation amongst the covenanters , what instructions they should send to the scotch commissioners residing at london , concerning the king who as they sayde was the author of so much bloushed , the generous earle of lannericke gave out these words : vvee can never have peace so long as this king or any of his race remaines . [ a worthy position ] but wee deny his major and his mino●… and pray against his conclusion , touching the race of the king ▪ an argument hee may chance to runne himselfe out of breath● in ! upon another occasion hee delivered his mynde in these words . vvee can have no difference of monarchical governement all the difference will bee , who shall bee king . his scrupilous conscience needed not have raisde so dangerous a doubt , it may bee , hee expects the accomplishment of his horoscope , wherein ( as himselfe since related , hee had so grea● confidence ) that when hee was thought to bee in danger , before his escape from oxford hee was heard to say . hee was sure hee was not neere his deathe for it was promised him that beefore hee dyed hee should bee greater man , then was safe for him to mention . [ would hee be more then a duke ? ] if his ambition cannot ●●e satisfied with his brothers title , god send him his place ●●o ; hee may bee an angell in heaven , but must not a king up●● earthe , unless hee designes to rule some new plantation , the ●●d brittaines preferre the stewarts to the hamiltons . some old wives in scotland affirme that the midwife at his ●●tivitie , out of the strengthe of all inspird , did prophesie most ●wrefully , and lett some odde and strange things droppe from ●er , they say with all that hee was an eminent witche . when the duke was set at libertie from imprisonment and ●●e to london , he was heard say . vvherfore shonld he go to the king [ then at ●ewcastele ] how could hee ever trust that man who ●●en hee was in power împrisond him . [ i wonder hee did not doe it sooner and that hee had trusted 〈◊〉 so long ] this unhansome expression discovered the re●●ment hee had of his imprisonment . when hee came to neu●astele , he and his brother lannericke , did undertake to the ●●ng , to carry him into scotland , which if they had performed ●●cording to promise it had beene very easy for ye king to have , ●●gaged that kingdome , and there army , for restoring his maje●●e to his just rights in england . but his comming into scot●●d and there designes were incompatible . his presence there ●ould have to much ecclipsed there greatnes , and have clipte to ●ort the wings of there too highe-soaring ambition . they divert 〈◊〉 from his resolutions , with faire pretences leading him along , 〈◊〉 a strict guarde was sett upon his person . withi● some few ●yes after he was delivered [ being sold ] to the parliament brokers the parliament of scotland they made a faire semblance of reasoning for the king , had a pretty flourish , a skirmishing in words but when it came to the pushe of a vote conceruing his deliveri● the two brethren in iniquitie were in the negative themselves but al there freinds and dependants , whose voices they vsed t●● command with the same freedome , they did there own , were a●●together in the arffirmative for selling the king contrary to the aforsayde brethrens promise & asseurance to his majesty . tho● greedy merchants that so fierclie voted for selling the king , we●● as violent in there debates for making the duke general in ther● late engagement , for when not onelie the lawfulnes , but the unavoidable necessitie of ingageing in a warre against the bre●●kers of that covenant , of ever cursed memorie , with englan● was made manifestie to appeare and had received the stampe , an● authoritie of the convened states . duke hamilton by the contrivance of his complices and the connivence of is competitors is elected generall . a person 〈◊〉 of the most eminent titles , so of the greatest activitie and vigo● amoungst them ; hee , having had the command of an army h● retofore in germany , and for some few other intricate reason it thought fittest to command the present designed to go● against the common ennemie , of the confederate kingdome● they procede to levie men , which are lifted with that unwilli●gnes , and so slowlie , that they seeme to be too heauy a burthe● for the country , and the cause too light ; whatsover is so spe●●ouslie pretended by thes new undertakers , it is suspected 〈◊〉 most men and beeleeved by many , the good and happie beei●● of the king and his royal posteritie is the least in there intention● this was the reason , why this new model of a cause mett o●●struecion in the house ad oppofition abroade the dissentors 〈◊〉 parliament , having abettor is in the assemblie by whose divi●● assistance , they were more then encouraged . for the persoaha● brought the caule into suspicion and controversie . in the most stricst examination , and disquirie of particular●●●ey found argument and ground enough whereon to raise a ●●rre but the generall they had pitched upon , would not hold 〈◊〉 watter ; hee had sprung a leake beefore , & was not sound at ●●ttome . had the affaires be managed under another conduct , the un●fulnes of the ingagement had not beene imputed for sin . so ●●e was it iudged from beeing uniust , that by al sydes it was con●● to bee inevitablie necessaire . so much acknowledged to bee ●re d●ty , that necglect would prove periurie . they conclu●● in a kind of dilcmma , either take up armes , or shake hands ●●h the covenant & part . lay it altogether asyde , or vse the ●ost endeavonrs to make it good ; stand to it now , or lett it 〈◊〉 for ever . cowld the duke in there opinion have beene as ea●● cleared as there other doubts , the church in all mens opi●●n had undoubtedlie gone along for company . and those ●●pits wich were fraught with most bitter invectives , had beene ●ull of exhortations and motives . large promises of blessings 〈◊〉 beene the snbject of sermons , that now abounded with revi●●s & bitter curses yett i wonder not to heare him cald mad ●●gge to his theethe , out of the pulpitte at edinburg , when no●● was so sold as his owne chaplayne at hamilton in his presence ●●urse the engagement & damne al such as showld prosecute it , 〈◊〉 doe i wonder at his impudence , when i know others the ●●ke had sent to , to exclaime and inueigh against ye unlawful en●●ement . who out of conscientiousnes refusing were suddenly ●●cke dumme . silenced by ye assembly . all the vse they made , of preaching , was first exprobation to 〈◊〉 duke , and commination to the people . which hee him●● heares with that wonderfull patience , that hee seemes ra●● pleased with the doctrine then offended with the applica●● : that not one of them was ever in q●estion ; calls the hearers q●estion , & might putt it out of doubt , they were conscious ●hat they had heard an ordinance is provided to stoppe there mouthes , which they open theu vider to there very faces the duke takes notes , but no notice of there sermons , beeing very confident , as hee often affirmed , all they cowld vent in those places , would not suffice , to prevent his designes , which i● the unhappy event proved too trve . yet by this a●t by this cunning of preaching the levies are almost every where retarded in the west they rise to oppose them . the insurrection is brough● soneere the dukes owne gates , that wise men imagined , it wa● contrived within , for his own vassals were as buisie as the best● and the cheife actors and leaders of the r●bellion , were left a● libertie to sitt downe , till the dispersing of the first , and the gathering together of the second levie might administer a fresh occasion to manifest whose children they were . if the dukes designe was to ruine the wel affected to the king and the royall partie as it was rationalie conj●ctured , then i● very much did conduce to his purpose , to preserve so necessarie instruments for perfecting the worke where hee had layde 〈◊〉 most strong foundation . hee had soone discovered of what excellent use thay would prove in due tyme , that had alreadye supdlyde him with a hansome excuse that his motion to the assistance of the royall party i● england might not bee censured slow , and the delay , to which se●emed inforete , receive some coulour to iustifie the reason , though the insurrection it lelfe had none . before that time , there deportment to the english had received a scurvy construction . little were they beholding to them for the advancing of there affaires , when all arts and industrie was vsed to holde them backe . there diligence and utmost powers would have beene imployed to the advantage of there undertakings , had the duke simply espoused a quarrell for the king , and not a quarrell against him , for one of his kingdomes to which that an easyer way , and not so open , may bee found t is thought expedient to destroy first his maiesties knowne faithfull , freinds in england those fir●●e pillars once removed , the royall pallace must fall , being ●o longer supported . whose ruine that it might be certaine , ●●nd unsuspected , prerogative must receive its fatall wound ●hrough the sydes of a pretended loyaltie . sir marmaduke langdale is treated with . a person whose ●ndoubted integritie , and perfect courage had so powrfull in●uence on his majesties party , that from all parts hee was able ●o drawe forces to his assistance . hee is permitted to take ●erwicke and carlisle and pntt in garrisons , but upon this ●ondition , that they bee surrendred into the dukes possession , 〈◊〉 soone as hee showld enter into england , with his army . as ●laces to retreate to , showld his army bee beaten . if he had ●estined them to that end before , it was a subtile plot to dis●ossess the kings freinds , and secure those townes in the ●ands of his professed ennemies . it cowld not bee expected , ●●e army once vanquisht those garrisons would hold out long , ●onsisting all of officers and souldiers at the dukes devotion . sir marmaduke landale had purchased so greate a reputa●on , by the surprise of berwike and carlisle that his forces are ●ery much encreased , by a confluxe of people from those ●diacent parts . men are not wanting to him so much as armes , ●f which hee stood much in need yett every one had his brest ●rmed with resolution and loyaltie , not intending to turne ●ere backes on the rebellions ennemy . messingers are dispatcht to the duke to desire a supply ●f armes , tustie expecting a readines in them to further and ●romote there enterprise , from whome they had received en●ouragement to attempt it . although there necessitie , and the greate consequence is ●ade to appeare , there is little showe of compliance while ●ere demands are unsatisfied , by much sollicitation and im●ortunitie , five hundred armes to berwicke , and three hundred to carlisle are privatelie conveyed . for the duke will not bee s●en to allowe or countenance there procedings albeeit the beeginnings were warranted with promises of his graces assistance . which being at any tyme implorde , was at no tyme so ready as an excuse . and that backte with reasons to coulour the ne●glect . a further supply of armes is required , and promise made to restore them so soone as there souldiers showld march to the borders . protestation is made they have them not . some armes there are of the old generals but they will not make bold , to handle them withou● his leave , which , i knowe not if they ever askte . so little i● hee there freind , whom they feared to make there ennemie ▪ that those armes are reserved for ther destruction which prob●●bly mighte have proved there preservation . they choose rather to prejudice there certaine freinds , then hazard the offending of one , at that tyme doubtful , but after there declare● ennemie . this not granted , they are desired to furnish them● with so much money , for the present occasion , and they woul● take care to provide armes , there beeing then good store i● leithe and for caution , they would make choise of wha● notherne gentlemen , they pleasde to secure themselves . they had mett so many occasions to disburse large summes ▪ that mony was the hardest commodite to come by . thi● slender excuse serving for a denial , no more is insisted on , bu● that they would procure them credit with the merchants , & they would drive the bargaine , make the best marquett they cowld . but this demand also is supposed to be so unreasonable that it is not assented to , and it was thought as strang● that proposals to aduantagious showld meete so cold an entertainement . but t is no wonder if duly considered ; for ad●mitt the restoring of the king to bee the sole object of ther● purposes , then would the english forces share too much in th●●lory of the action , and robbe the duke of the honnor due ●●ohis name . suppose sinister and worse ends , then would ●hose forces with there daily accruits , if tymouslie supplyde , ●ave growne to that greatnes and strengthe , it would not have ●eene in the power of the duke or the adverse army , to who ●●e they seemed to bee destineda prey , to have gainde so easy a ●onquest . notwithstanding the no helpe hee receives . sir marmaduke advanceth into the country swells into a ●ody of fowre or five thousand horse and foote ; hee mar●eth forward , meets an open ennemy and a secret order ●ot to sigh . in obedience to this order hee rerreats . the ●nnemie pursves ; hee forbidden to fight , secures his forces in carlisle ; lambert sitts downe beefore it . sir marmaduke , blocked up on one syde of the towne is re●uced to an unnecessarie necessitie , a needles extremitie . he ends away to aquainte the duke in what a posture his affaires ●ood , his grace little sensible of the inconveniences would ●nsuer , etournes but an unsatisfactorie answer . sr marmadukes wants admitt of no delay , nor will they ●uffer him to bee in jest . doubtfull of the dukes intendments 〈◊〉 come , and desirous ot knowe certainely , what hee was to ●xpectt and trust to , dispatches a gentleman to reneuw his for●er sollicitations and informe him preciselie of there reall ●●d insupportable condition . and importune his suddaine ad●ance . colonell lockher is sent beefore with twelve hundred ●orse to visitt the borders , but the plague was , hee hath no ●rder to releevi the distressed . otherwise they might have , in ●l probalitie , performed that , in an instant , a longe tyme ●ould not serve to undo eespeciallie if they had at the same ty●e spared collonell gray five hundred or a thousand horse , ●hich were in a readines . and for which hee offered pro●ortionable pay to goe into northumberland , of vvhich hee had beene undoubtedly absolutie master . and had endangered the ennemyes garrison in nevvcastle vvhich they had resolved to surrender and of vvhich ye duke vvas informed . a parte of the army is not vvorth the hazarding , one blovve shall suffice to cutt of the vvhole . the duke is now at length on foote , hee takes carlisle into the armes of his protection ; marcheth forward , goes , as if hee had beene beewitcht into lanchashire , and without performing any , the least considerable thing , his mightie , and all threatning army is totaly routed , wee defeated of our expectation , and the trauaile , the hard labour of so many monthes destroyed in a moment . a strange catastrophe , this suddaine execution made very many beeleeue they had received there doome longe beefore , that the ennemy might giue the easier , and an irrecouerable ouerthrow order was taken to disperse them to there hand , the reare of the army beeing distant from the van , more then forty miles ; good miles but bad wayes and there i leaue his grace , where hee left his army to bee disbanded after a strange new , mode , of which there is nothing left , but the sad remembrance . no sooner had the wellcome newes of the armyes defeate● arriued in the west , but they rise in armes beeing in a readines beefore and expecting this blessed opportunitie . the● brethren in fife had more prophetike spirits who wrote diverse epistles wherin they made mention of the very tyme● and so preciselie related particular accidents , is if they had consulted beefore with the duke or the devill . the rebels in the west have slaine some of the intended second leuie in there owne country , and beeing fleshte the bloud hoauds hunt for prey abroad . they aduance and threaten edinbourough . the standing committee , is running out of there witts , thy advise what way is best to take . they agree , they will not longer prosequute the late engagement , ●ut resolve the endeavoring to preserve and secure there ●wne persons , by joyning those small forces they have to ●ose newly returnde from england . there old secretarie is ●osen there new generall : the same hand directs the pen , ●d the sword sing the second part to the same tune the good ●ukes brother is aboute to perfect what himselfe had leftun●one . scarse vvarme in his but yesterday title , hee hastens to ●s command ! the designe must not coole . beefore hee secu●s the tovvne , hee takes possession of the fei●de . the castle 〈◊〉 left in the hands of an ennemie to keepe out freinds that ●ight as easilie have beene committed to the safe custody of freind , that vvould have kept the ennemie at a greater ●stance . hee takes along vvith him the earle of glenkerne . the lord lynsey by usurpation craford stayes beehinde to pro●de armes formy lord mourtons regiment . but beeing ●easurer and carryng the bagge not keeper of the castle , hee ●ew better hovv to lay up , theu to distribute . hee stayes not ●ng , for the destroying ennemie approaching , hee flyes like ●icodemus to seeke a saviour by night , and at heddington ●eets the other desciples , who vvere thither fled , not for ●e testimonie of a good conscience , and here they lay the ●undation for there intended vvare . but the generall vvants ●en , those men hee hath vvant armes . wee have a certaine ●nde of treasurer , and hee vvants money , vvhich vvould have ●ene much more acceptable to the souldier then his per●n . they send letters to recall general majior munro out of ●ngland , who beeing left beehinde to guarde the cannon , his ●rees were preserved entire , when the army disjointed fell ●to peeces . the triumuirate , l. lannerike , lynsey and glenkerne , march towards the borders , to unite with some scattered tropes , that had escaped the ennemy and were come into scotland . they meete at a rendevous , joyne , and march to dunce . the lord honby , and the lord lee , come with overtures for a treaty with the chancellor then in armes about edenbourg . they imbrace the offer ; send backe there proposals , vvhich if the ennemy condiscend to , they vvill prosequute the treaty wherin they hope to retoncile ther private differences , & vvith an unanimous consent oppose cromvvel that bore intestine hatred to ther nation . and so happilie recover ther lost honnor . this is made the ground , and pretence for a treaty . yett wee were not ignorant that letters were intercepted in there passage to lambert ; wherin hee had order to hazard fighting with sir marmaduke langdale on any termes , that if possibly , hee might joyne with them in the west of scotland with whome they helde correspondence , and where himselfe was dayly with his forces , expected . t is a wonder to simple honestie , that rationall men ( for such showld men of those eminent places bee ) cowld imagine , that the westland people would combine with there ennemies , to repell there freinds , whome they had long beefore invited , and were now ready to entertaine . of there inclinations to the one faction , and of there hate and aversion to the other this there second insurrection , had giuen a sufficient testimony . what expectation , what asseurance cowld bee had of those people now , that in the pride and glory of a puissant army durst with a few oppose , and dispute the unlawfulnes of the engagement ; would they allowe that for lawfull now , when there are as few to withstand them strong , at least in there owne opinion , both in number and power . nor were wee ignorant of the great disadvantage the delay of treating would bring upon our selves . and of what excellent ●se it would bee to our adversaries , which they wiselie taking ●nto there consideration , demand there may bee a cessation for ●●veteene dayes , in which tyme they would endeavour to compose the discords then beetweene them , which they desired ra●her , and intended showld bee continued david lesley thought ●●veteen dayes enough to putt his undisciplinde mutineers into 〈◊〉 warlike posture , and aboute that tyme , as after hee did crom●ell would come to there assistance . there demands are thought ●oo hard , and unreasonable , to yeele to , lynsey is appointed to ●o and meet with m. g. munro . to invite him , to his owne losse ●ojoyne with us . to which hee is readilie perswaded , beeing ●imselfe a person of much gallantry , hee was confident they ●ent upon the same principles of honnor that hee did , nor did ●eesuspect any thing , but the kings interest , to bee the object of ●ere bee gunne quarrell , and this continued controversie . our ●ords like the devill having compassed the earth returne to ●eddington , wher g. m. munro . in a noble compliance with ther ●esires , gives them a faythfull asseurance of his utmost powers . at that instante sir iaruis lucas , & colonell chater two en●lish gentlemen of knowne loyaltie and trust , are sent from the ●●maining forces in england under the command of sr thomas ●●insley with offer of there ayde and assistance , to the proseqution 〈◊〉 the warre wherin they were first engaged mutualie ; and although two or three thousand men were not at such a tyme in●nsiderable , they are rejected , and returne with a bare , a thred●re compliment , they camot come , they may not enter into ●e holy land , [ scotland is canaan ] without the covenant ●ere mouthes are stopt , but beefore they face about . they are ●ld to aske a certaine question or two . first , if , that in case , cromwell showld press so upon ●em , they were no● able to keep footing in there owne coun●y , they would give them leave to come upon scotch ground ●eerly for there own preservation . by no meanes my lord lannericke cannot allow that in consistencie with his designes . that will call in cromwell , wh● under a coulour of pursuing them , will with a greater an● more considerable number , joyn with the ennemy to there in●finite preiudice , which to avoyde , they are advised to dis●band , when they are no longer in a possibilitie of making good there owne countrey . which nevertheles did not divert cromwell from his designe and long purpose of coming into scotland , but onely which was enough , weaken and destroy the kings party in england thus private policie undermines , and easilie ruines a strength , that being once joyned to them , the publike ennemy would have encountred a difficultie before there overthrowe : counsaile seconded with seeming reason . pust a fatal and final end , to that force , would have begunne a new worke , that might have met a revolution , sooner th●n a period . the officers and other gentlemen obtaine a liberty to secure themselves in berwicke , under protection of there garrison , but had not most of them provided better for there owne safetie , they had been secured with those that adventured a stay , in a prison . yet was it desperatelie sworne , they would hazard all there fortunes the last drop of there blouds , in the defence and iust preservation of those gallant men that had so freely layde there fortunes , there lives at stake in ioyning with them . yet barwicke is not onelie surrendred , but those gentlemen , of whome there is no mention in the capitalation , are given up a sacrifice to there cruell ennemy . and with the towne , as if that were too little , they resigne up the preceding governour , out of whose custody they had taken it formerlie , it seemes , and may bee presumed , on purpose to put it into those hands . now is the l. lamericke ioyned to g. m. munro there united forces discover a hansome body , onely the l. glenkerne is in doubt , vvhat face to put on it . here is an army ●●le to iustifie the cause , but the cause in it selfe doth not ap●eare to be iust and so not iustifie them . ( they told not this to ●unro before ) when in there letters to him they had coniured ●●m by his loyaltie to combine with them , and svvorn to him , 〈◊〉 prosecute the late engagement vvhile there veines contei●ed the least drop of bloud . notvvithstanding . there private ●greement at a committe to desert it ) a tender conscience ; ●tisfaction must be given . it vvas thought iust , even by these ●ersons , and requisite to suppress them vvhen they did rise ●efore in the west and is not it equalie iust to destroy them , ●ovv , that made so ill vse of there former mercy . the persons are the same onely more in number , the cause ●f there rebellion is the same , onelie t is not the same re●ellion . t is another , but to the same tune , the second re●ellion for the first cause . vvas the engagement at first lavv●ll , and is it unlawfull to pursue it . the engagement is not less lavvfull , but vve are less able , so ●ore unvvilling to continue in it , to make it good . the duke ●vanquisht , gone to the dogs , and vvho knovvs vvhat vvill ●ecome of poor lannericke and us ? the duke is dovvn the ●inde , and lannericke will but swime against the streame . 〈◊〉 yet if the refractorie ennemy condiscend not to there de●ands , which onely tended to there owne preservation , t is ●estionles most lawfull to engage the poore , deceived soul●er to fight it out to the last man . the proposals are rejected ●e word and signe are given , wee advance , and approache the ●nemy with such boldnes , as if wee resolved , either certaine● to beate and conquer the foe , or at least to make sure of the ●ippe , then in leithe roade , that was sent with armes from ●e princes highnes to the l. lynsy and l. lannericke , which ●d been no ill service , considering my l. mourtons regi●ent consisting of about a thousand men were quartered within ten miles of us , and stayde beehinde us for wante of armes . a commanded party is sent out , which about musslebourough rancunters a porty of ye ennemyes horse , who beeing so uery lately borrowed from the plow , were as unacquainted with this new trade as there rawe ryders , they drawe backe , and both make use of there heeles , and in there flight leave about ten , beehinde them , which being dead , weight , were too heavy to carry and there they gave the first proofe how they meante ( not ) to fight . the whole body of our horse advanceth to musslebourough the sands by r●ason of the sea were not then passible . we march● to the bredge , wher vve maks a halt , and in a cecem●ny give the● foote the way to march before us . while wee are sent to seeke out new adventures , to finde a pass , and where the river was fordable , albeit wee might have marched over the bridge● before our foote had come up . wee have discouered a passe ▪ where some of our men having crost the river they are cal● backe with a witnes , rouges , for obeying commands . that they might more asseuredly prevent enc●unters , the foote are commanded backe , to quar●er in the towne and the horse behinde them , least happily we might gaine too grea● an advantage over the enn●my . the next morning care is take● to give them asseurance not to come , to quarter within thre● miles of edinbourough . and now are they at rest , for they are sure to hinder our meeting . the ennemy intends not t● forsake his ●renches , yet about five h●ndred of there horse● had made a long retreate upon a supposed allarum the nigh● before ; if fighting must have decided the controversie it wa● seared the rest would not have stayde long behinde , but to encourage , and secure there stay , we march avvay , about the promised distance . and leave behinde us a pavvn , as an asse●●rance of fidelitie to them a shippe vvith armes to dispose a● they thinke good . and novv they rest vvith there predecessor● 〈◊〉 the castle . the l. mourton may secure his foot in the ●hippe , it is not likely the old generall that good subiect ●il furnish them vvith armes novv , that had denyde them ●efore . if he vvithhelde those vvhich vvere intrusted in the castle for securitie , vve my iustly expect , for his ovvne sa●●tie , he vvill , not part vvith a lavvfull price . all the accounte the t king vvill r●ceive . is , that his armes ●e in hucksters hands . they vvere malignant armes , though ●ot in the unlavvfull engagement , and are committed to the ●astle for safe custody . but novv they are conuerted , and if ●e castle secure them they secure the castle ; and such armes ●ithin the vvalls , are good collaterall securitie . if they cost the king dear , to purchase them at first , it ●ill stand him in much more , to redeem them now . though ●ings at second hand usuallie go lesse . they are bought and ●ld the second time , or betrayde for nought . his highnesse ●ust expect as much ; if ( which heaven forbidde ) he fall into ●e same hands . yet they deale more faurtably with the earle 〈◊〉 castles . who having taken up his quarters in lithco . is ad ●rtisde before of our approache . that the world may know to whom he owes this courtesie ●d his preservation , the provident lord threasurer , unwil●●g so good a friend as castles , showld be the first should suf●r . dispatches before hand . a messinger to informe him cer●●inly of the danger of his stay , and our armies advance . which ●d he not with speede avoyded , he might have been sent to ●ilde castles in the aire . that he might have time enough to escape vvith his vvhole ●egiment , our horse are dravvn up to quarter in te feilde . g. m. munro having intelligence of the ennemyes quartering 〈◊〉 lithco . encourageth his foote as unacquainted with his de●gne , as hee unknowing of lynseys , to march that night to ●thco . there needed not much rhetoricke to perswade to a good towne , the souldier wearied with tedious matches , and worse quarters . yett ye hopes of surprising any thing was called ennemy , would have wingde there feete whose onely sorrow was , they had left one beehinde , and had not there hands at libertie to fight . wee enter the towne , but castles a wiseman , to whome , one word is is enough , upon his tymely intelligence had remoude his men to fresh quarters , our souldiers mouthes are soone stopped , though they cowld not but bite the lippe for anger , that the ennemy had escaped out of there hands to which they had a greater appetite , then to the meate , they left beehinde them , although they had bourne away castles on there camell backes , they marched away with empty bellyes . the alarum was so hott and there courage so cooled : they had no leisure to take there super from the fire , which they had provided for themselves , and left ready drest for us . we thanke ye good catarers , and they may thanke the good l. threasurer , or they might have been well sauc'te , though our men are ill cookes , had wee come in season . but , since the birdes are flowne our men are forc'te to make merry with what they finde , and soone are reconcilde there hungry stomackes to the foode , though they will never forgive lynsey for taking away there best dish . hee had beene his owne foe , that having fasted all the day , would haue nicely refused to eate because it was prepared for the ennemy . hee had had no stomacke , or a stomacke to greate that would have usde , or stood upon other ceremony then the word , and fall on . being so well refresht at lithco , wee out of ye strength may thereof , marche the next day , to sterling , that wee may prevent , the joyning of arguiles forces with lesly . arguile had newly possessed himselfe of the town but before our lords had time to give him notice of our approache arguile had made a suddaine sally out of the towne , bnt at the wronge porte , leaving his men to our mercy , & the towne to our protection , g. m. munro , receving intelligence that arguile was in ser●ng , stayes not to advertise our good lords , of it , or his designe , ●ast his present hopes might bee unhappily frustrated by those ●at had deceived his former intention . hee resolves to carry the newes himselfe , that when they sawe ●im , thay might beeleeve hee was come in good earnest . not ●nowing hovv vvelcome they vvould make him in the tovvne , ●ee takes his vvay to the bridge , resolving to make good his quarters there or loose , his life , if hee covvld not gayne that ●●sse vvithout vvhich all vvas lost , this desperate undertaking he ●ovvned with so much gallantry and wonderfull success , that ●ad his fortunate enterpise beene seconded vvith a serious and ●gorous proseqution of the vvar , he had soon reverst vvhat vvas ●tely forfetted , and regaynde here vvhat vvas lost in england . if it appeared so great a vvonder that ten thousand in a vvel ●rdered body should destroy an army of thirty thousand that ●ere so disperst they covvld never be brought to fighte , this 〈◊〉 a miracle ! munro vvith five men breaks in upon about se●en hundred disperseth them , takes above five hundred priso●ers ; the rest are either slayne on the ground , or drownde in ●e watter . arguile well horst with two men hardly escaping . they that ●eadge the fing●r of god was seen in the first , must con●ss his hand is visible in this . nor was the reputation of this ●●tion less then if he over came d. lesley with his adherents . it would prove a more difficult worke , of another nature , 〈◊〉 reduce them to obedience , and make them good subiects . 〈◊〉 if they pretend devotion , and religion to coulor there re●llion , we conceale rebellion under coulor , and pretence 〈◊〉 obedience . our treachery will ballance there treason , if ●e appeare not the greater traitors , by how much , a pro●●t ennemy is less dangerous and more excusable then a see●●g freind . the lords are at last com to be witnesses of the execution , but whereas they are expected to congratulate the victorie ▪ they manifest the greatest indignation , and aversion to the act . the daring souldier is well rewarded for the hazard of his life while they , for whose preservation wee ignorantly fought , discountenance both the attempt and success . and seem to curse the event of that day which we al thought heave● had bestowed on us for a blessing , and were thankfull . the ennemy was not in greater disorder and confusion the● were these lords ; it beganne to grow doubtfull which syd● had gott the victorie . yet wee lost but one man , who was stobbed by one to whome hee had given quarter . they seeme so much concerned , that had we exchanged the fortune of that day with our ennemies , there cowld not have appeared more recentment , or a face drest in more sadnes , the● what our lords put on . the pittifull l. threasurer greiving to see the bloud of hi● freinds , so prodigally spilt , opened his purse mouth and sayd he would have given a hundred pounds , [ out of the abundanc● of his tender compassion , and his maiesties revenewes , ) tha● we had not come to sterling that day . munro is not used t● bribes , but if he would have given all his estate , he knew no● whither else we cowld go . lesly pursueing in the reare . ar●guile possest of sterling . the left handed l. glenkerne publicklie protested he● would have given his right hand we had not come . he cowl● have curst those fingers that made such worke that day . it wa● generally thought hee might have spared it and would have fought with one hand as soone as with two . they all resolve to renew the treatie . policie must undo● what we had atchieved by force . that they may express there penitence for bloud drawn against there vvill , and without there knowledge they wil● condiscend to dishonorable conditions vvhich for that very ●eason they had reiected before . a trumpett is sent to give ●ee ennemie an account of our actions , and breake a gappe ●or the treatie to enter . they intimate , that notwithstanding god [ he indeed is much in there thoughts ) had been pleased ●ut of his goodnes , not there desert . ] to giue them a victorie ●uer arguiles forces [ vvee might have hoped for a second o●er lesley had vvee not falne to treating ] to manifest to the ●vorld they did not desire there countries ruine , and that ●ey did , not thirst after bloud [ nor hunger after righteous●es ) they would treate upon the old score . t is accepted . a ●lace appointed l. treasurer . and glenkerne are commissio●ers for us . vvell may they treate , and talke of the buisines ●s not thought , there vvill be any debate amongst freinds . differences vvill soone be composed , vvhen persons of so ●ame spirits , and easy natures haue the managinge . we ●ay expect good quarter , when lynsey and castles draw in ●ouples and all our hopes hang upon them . wee are like to ●ay long in sterling , when our treators , would haue giuen 〈◊〉 liberaly wee had neuer come there . who can imagine i ynsy will not beetray us , when hee fin●es so faire an opportunitie , that used beefore such diligence ● bee treacherous . will hee bee faythfull in a cessation , that was false in tyme ●f hostilitie . when so easy a way as a treaty may bee found to ●stifie his meeting with his good freind castles . with whome ●is hearte went sti●l along though wee had the honnor , but no ●appines , of his company ; hee misdemeaned himselfe so in all ●s actions , as it is no contradiction to say , hee was with and ●gaynst us . that under a coulor of beeing on our syde , hee ●ight secretly and unsuspected doe us greater mischeife . i ●ish wee had not the unhappy occasion to say there were grea●er traytours with vs then agaynst us . t is yett undiscovered , who gave advise to colonell laweere to march speedilie to burntellin in fife with his regiment and joyne with lessey , least hee were prevented as was arguile , who mistooke his vvay & went by weeping cross . but this is certainlie knowne , though we had earlie intelligence , that there was no party sent to stoppe thier passage , till the next day after they had croste● the sea and us . the steede is stolne , and l. lannericks ovvne regiment of horse is sent , to shutt the stable dore , to repayre this ill lost● opportunitie , vvee growe vviser for the future . since vvee came to late to meete vvith our ennemyes , vvee make the more hast to discover our freindes . well knovving of the good affections of the inhabitants of st. iohn stons to his maiestie , and the cause vvhich vve pretended to be his . vve go to secure the tovvn being a very considerable passe , and undoe the ▪ to-bee-pittied , people , vvho hauing giuen euidence of there loyaltie to the king , forfet there charter , and become slaue● to tyrants . it vvas cruelly done to betray our freinds , and leaue them t● the mercy of a seuere ennemy , to bee destroyed . vvhen vv● take care to preserue our knovvn and profest ennemies . d. lesley is untoucht , undisturbde in his house at st iohn●stons , vvhen his souldiers had left nothing standing in s● william nisbets house , but the walls . a captaine of hors● must not come in competition vvith a generall , and haue hi● vvrongs repairde upon the others sufferings . the vvorld shall see , the reuenge wee intend shall be exe●cuted on those to vvhome vve pretend a freindship we writ● letters to our acquaintance in the north of povver , and o● either knowne or suspected fidelitie to the king , to inuit● them to our assistance , and here owne undoeing . for at tha● same time , although wee had procurde them a safe passe at s● iohnstons . wee weare in treaty with the ennemy , and ha● before it beganne , resolved vvhat should bee the conclusion the letters had not come long to there hands , but others are ●ispatcht to desire them to disband the forces , they had not ●llowde them time to raise ! there own letters shall serve to un●aske there policies and render those subtilties perspicuous ●hich they might suppose invisible . sterline . 19. sept. 1648. right honorable . svch are present distempers of this kingdome . and our danger from abroade , [ the prevailing army of sectaries being now upon our borders , and as we are informed are invited to this kingdome ] as all men vvho are zealous for the good 〈◊〉 religion , love the honnor of the king , and have any re●ards to the freedome and liberty of this antient and yet un●nquered nation , must either novv bestirre themselves , or ●solve to be slaves for ever . vvee knovv the principals of pie● loyaltie , and honnor you go upon , and are confident you ●ll novv shovve your selfe , for the preservation of all that is ●arest untous . and therfore shall desire , that you vvill instant● dravve together all your friends and ●ollovvers , and vvith 〈◊〉 imaginable diligence march to the braes of angus and from ●ence come hither to this place , in the best condition you can ●herby you vvill express your selfe a good christian , a loy● subiect , and an honest countriman , for so seasonable assistance you shal give your country in there extremitie , vvhich shall ever bee highly valevved by us vvho are . your affectionate freinds . craford ▪ glekerne . lannericke lyone . sterline sep. 27. 1648. right honorable . seeing that all differences beetwixt us , and those lately iu armes in and about edinbourough , are removed and a joyn● resolution taken of disbanding all forces not onely for easing the country of the insupportable burthen of mantaining armies but likewise for removing of all occasions of mistakes beetwix● this kingdome and our neighbour nation of england ; wee hav● thought fitt to give you notice thereof , and to returne you hearty thankes for your readines , and cheerfulnes to assist us in preserving the authoritie of parliement , and those intrusted by them and withall desire you to disband your forces . your affectionate freinds craford : glenkerne . lannericke . lyone . t is not ill spent tyme , nor labor to observe how much rhetorike , is used , what strong reasons are asserted to perswade them to ingage in this holy warre and upon what easy conditions they are required to disband . in the first they ●mply there extreamest cunning and arts to invite , and civilie ●ourt them then what little paynes they take , how slovenly they ●idde them farewell in the last . which seemes to unriddle the ●eacherie of the first such are the present distempers of this kindome , [ heightened ●ytreason on the one side and treachery on the other . ] and our ●ur dangers from abroade . [ or no where for wee are very secure ●t sterline . ] the prevailing army of sectaries being now upon ●ur borders [ wee may thanke the duke for that ] and as wee are ●nformed are invited in . [ y●u were informed of that beefore the duke went into england . ] as all men who are zalous for the good of religion . [ what religion is a politian of ? poore un●ortunate religion that must ever serve for a maske to impietie , ●nd acloake for villanies , ] love the honnor of the king . damna●le hipocrisy ▪ there are greate reguardes had indeede to the honnor of the king , it is much insisted on in the articles , of the treaty . ] a●d have any reguardes to the freedome of this on ciert . and yet unconquered nation [ lett not cromwel heare that , hee hath conquered it as farre as sterline & made you throwe downe your a●mes , and but that hee sawe it was an antient kindome , hee would have bidde fayre for all . must now beestir●e themselves [ to great purpose , to bee disbanded with our next letter ] or resolue to bee slaves for ever , [ to the duke and his faction ] wee know the principals of pietie , loytltie , hand honnor you goe upon . no body knowes yours . ] and are confident [ to trippe vp your heeles , lay your honnor in the dust , and ruine your fortunes for your cons●ience . and loyaltie . you will show your selfe . a foole , to bee betrayed with a guilded pill . ] for he preservation of all that is dearest to us , [ our selves , for whose preservation wee are in armes ] and therfore desire you to [ bee undone ] drawe all your freindes and followers [ that they likewise , may bee undone like fooles , ] and with all imaginable diligence [ wee conceive you , no hast to hand true folkes ] nor more hast then good speede ] marche to the braes of angus to joyne with such forces as shall bee on foote forthe service , they shall bee on foote , but you le disband them as soone as youdare [ and thence come to sterline [ of blessed memorie ] in the best condition you can [ and wee le putt you in a worse then you cowld suspect , and the worst wee can ] wherby you will express your selfe a good christlan [ good but an ill polititian ] a loyal subject . very good , to the king whose good wee are pursueing in the articles of the treary ] and an honest contriman [ excellent , an honest , simple countryman , meerly drawne in ] for so seasonable extremitie [ which wee have brought on it by an unsesaonable treaty . ] which shall bee highlie valewed [ and you soldoat the best rate wee can ] by vs wht are [ no good christians , loyal subjects , or honest countrimen . your affectionate [ seeming ) freinds , [ you doe but say so dissemblers ] seing that all differences [ but not the present distempers of this kingdome , and our dangers from aborade betwixt us [ all vs treators ] and those lately [ and still ) in armes in and about edinbourough are remoued [ and the army of sectaries brought in by arguile ] and a ioynt resolution taken to disband al [ our ] forces . [ thereforces are not disbanded yet ] not onely for easing the country [ honest countrimen ] of the insupportable burthen of mantaining armies [ to doe nothing but plunder the country in time of treating ] but likewise for remouing all occasions of mistakes [ good christians that take al matter of scandal away ] betwixt this kingdome and our neighbore nation of england [ betwixt two factions , presbiterians and independents ] we have thought good [ but have not a good thought ] to give you notice [ and they are extreame weake that ●o not take notice of this and the rest of your iuglings . ] and ●turne you hearty thankes [ from the lips outwards ] take your ●ankes againe ] for your readines , and cheerfulnes to assist us 〈◊〉 preserving the authority of parliament , and those intrusted 〈◊〉 them . [ now all the whole matter is out . neither the good 〈◊〉 religion , nor honnor of the king , was the subiect of there ●arrell , but the authority of parliament , and there owne ●eservation . ] and withal to desire you to disband [ first let them 〈◊〉 rais'de ] your forces [ which wee shall not neede hopeing to ●eepe our places , or have better , when the duke shall return triumphe from our neighbour nation of england to make ●otland a kingdome . your [ same ] affectionate freinds . how like linsey-woolsey lookes this last letter , wherein the whole design is betrayde . the former discovers quicke inuention intricacies and subtile plots , and this unawarres ●●covers the subtilties of there plotts . in the first where wee 〈◊〉 invited to ingage . we are made sensible of the distempers , 〈◊〉 home , dangers from a broade , threaten us ; the good of ●●ligion must inflame our zeale , loyaltie and love to the 〈◊〉 , must quicken our duty , and provoke our powers . free●e and liberty must serve to express our reguards to the na●n . whose extremity commands our assistance , which if ●●sonable will speake us , good christians , loyall subiects , 〈◊〉 honest countrimen . but now lynsey comes , and out of a ●●der conscience as before out of a rotten hearte , discloses whole truth . we insist not so strictly on those severe principles of piety , loyalty , and honnor that th●y shall ▪ holde us at a longer distance , all differences betwixt us are removed and not one of those trifles ever came into controuersie . shall an imprisoned king , be the subiect of our quarrell ? must we for his honnor appeare in open feilde , in hostile manner ? or shall the defence of i know not what , religion , ingage our swords ? shall wee keepe up armies , to save us , from being trodden downe , or mantaine our vassals to preserve u● from being perpetual slaves ? they must be disbanded to ease the country whose preservation is dearer to us , then piety , loyalty or honnor . teach● children piety , preach loyalty to courtiers , and let the● souldier swell , in robes of honnor . the resolution wee have taken to disbande , will declare u● honest countrimen , and remove all mistakes between us an● our neighbour nation , the taking away all occasion of offence will showe we are good christians . the laying downe of ar●mes when the army of secturies is not upon our borders b●●farre advanced into our country will undoubtedly speake 〈◊〉 men of honnor , what bette character can we give of loy● subiects , then to submitt and yeelde obedience to arguile , wh● all the world knowes , how much he is the kings freind , an● vvell wisher . noble resolutions , and worthy such men , from whom n● better cowld be expected , when they had written letters to the ennemy , that they continued in armes not in prosequutio● of the late engagement , but for the preservation of there ow● persons and places . all that love the honnor of the king co● to sterline . in the best condition you can , & express yourselv● loyall subiects . the crown and scepter , by wondrous magic● is converted into a staffe and a penne . our honest countrime● have changed there religion . the army of sectaries hath co● led there presbiterian and not long liude zeale . and will 〈◊〉 doubt have reguards to the libertie and freedome of this au●ent , and yet unconquered nation . thus ends the quarrell declared to be personall . all differenes betwixt them are reconciled . and the mistakes of the ●eighbour nation , removed . to showe they are good patriots , those forces are disbanded or the ease of the country ; that were never raised , for its pre●rvation . good christians that lay down armes for the testi●ony of a good conscience , that were never taken up for the ●efence of religion . loyall subiects , that since they had no ●tention to fighte in so noble a cause as that of the kings , they ●ould not hazard the life of a subiect in so degenerous a cause there owne . what more they are , there needs nothing more 〈◊〉 make them known to the world , then the articles of the ●reaty at sterline . to give a perfect iudgement of the whole matter , it is ne●ssarie to understand aright . which wee shall easilie , if wee ●flectt on the dukes , behaviour in england , and survey the ●portment of his confederates in scotland ; compare s●erl●e with preston , and you will find the translation agrees with ●e originall , if wee paralell there severall actions , wee may ●cyde a question disputable beefore , and bee confirmed in a ●th , that might have beene suspected . sterline and preston ●oke like the comment , and the texte , where the knottines , ●d the intricacies of the one , are made plaine , and unfolded the other . an easy exposition of a hard chapter . preston a ridd●e , sterline the solution murther will out ; the treason preston is discouered at sterline . there was an army des●oyed with a blowe , and without a word . here was an army ●stroyed with a word , and without a blow . and the kings ●einds ruined at bothe . the duke wanted good intelligence , preston , and his brother at sterline , common understanding the duke lost the honnor , which he never had , at preston ; at sterline they forfeited the honestie , they made a showe off . i know the earle of lannericke disclaimes the articles of the treaty at sterline , hee constantly avowes , his assent was never to those dishonorable conditions . yet he signed the commission by which the traitors had power to treate , and determine . and after he did write letters to the governors of berwicke and carlis●e to surrender there garrisons , ( vvich vvas the most material article of the traety without any respect had to the english , although hee had deepely protested the contrary to s. laiuis lucas , it is more then probable , that afterwards hee did accept of the articles . at that time he stood impeached of more then tvventy articles of highe treason . for amoung other questions the committe of the parliament at edinburg proposed to him ; the first was , whither hee did acknowledge them a lawfull committe the next , whither hee did accept of the articles of the treaty at sterline to which he had formerly openl● protested , hee would never yeelde his approbation and consent . affirming them to be most dishonorable . he well knew that it was no time in that place to dispute the authority of the committee , hee advisedly acknowledged the lawfullnes of there calling , though certainelie now , the parliament trade is no lawfull calling . touching the articles , they next put him to tryall . which had he renounced , they had certainely put him into a worse condition , a prison . for all this while although he was accused of highe treason● he had the libertie to walke at pleasure , and was unconsined many monthes after the disbanding of the army at sterline and in the height and extremitie of there prosequtions , was no more then confined to his house , twelve miles distant from edinburge , from which hee had leave to take a two mile● walke . had he beene of the kings party , he had be●ne made more sensible of there power , and authority , though never so uniust , and unlawfull . wee are all knowing of there riguor and ●everity extended to them one day had apprehended him , th●●ext adiudged him , on the third he had received his dis●harge . ●ith the resignation of his heade . which that he might save , he betakes him to his heeles ; and ●ommitts burglarie , breakes by night the houses order of ●onfinement , and is come to tell a plausible storie of his adven●ures , and escapes . that having tymely advertisement , and ●dvice from his freinds in the house of parliament , that a party ●f horse was to bee sent the next , day to guarde him to edin●urg , hee prevented there designe , and ( arguile like ) com●i●s hims●lfe to a boate goes aborde a shipp , which it seemes the earle of lauderdale had brought for this cleanly con●eyance , hee is no sooner there , but a messinger is sent from the parliament to the shippe , ryding in leithe roade , to com●ere lauderdale , and lannerike and summon them to give ●curitie to the parliament not to acte any thing prejudiciall to ●em . if they suspected there fidelitie , it had beene a very easy ●atter to have secured both themselves , & them while the one ●ood under the notion of treason , and the other walked free● in the streets at edinburg . but that would have spoyled ●ere designes at the hague , the plott was better cast , they ●eighe anchor , and no sooner are they putt to sea , but to ●ulour there devices . they are both comperde to give in ●ution to the parliament , within three dayes , or to bee pro●aimed traitors , a hansome cloake . i doe not heare that the arliament of scotland , insists on there bannishment from ●ourt , they may acte as residents for them . yett are they ●iltie of more disservices , and later , to the sate then the he●icke montros , who onelie in that , had disobliged them , ●at to his masters commands hee was a faythfull servant ! ●e late unlawfull engagement is , cancelled . the killing of rguiles men at sterline is burried in oblivion , which gives ●ee great cause to beelelve , there peace was concluded in those nights the earle of lannericke , had his private meetings and consultations w●i●h his adversarie arguile . i wonder what securitie arguile had from lannerike then . without it i am sure hee is so monstrous a dwarfe in courage , hee would never have mett , those night walking spirits that had frighted him so lately from sterline . this iugling is a riddle to others . and will aske more yeares for the solution then sphinx allowed dayes for the displaying of his aenigma . i am so well acquainted with all the devices , that to me they are no wonders because i know them , there late proclaiming of the king , is a pretty peece of mockery . it vvill serve to blind● the common people : vvho must be alvvayes kepte in there desperate ignorance . to satisfie them , they openly proclayme him king , they all confess it to be his indisputable righte , but he must not exercise his regall power , till he give those rebell● satisfaction in there unreasonable demands . they allovv him his title , but viciously declare against the vertue thereof here is the stampe , the image of a king , and the king stands for no other then an image , vvhile his coyne is thus rounde● and clypte , his motto . circumscrib ' de , and his image defac'te . he must give satisfaction to the kirke , [ it may be they will inioyne it in sackclothe ] then is mais iacke presbiter , a greater man of worship then the king his master , and shal● take an accounte and survey of his actions as often as he pleaseth , which , under payne of there petty damnation , excommunication he must not refuse to give . thus they will handle him worse then a texte , which many of them as little understand , as there auditory , them ! then [ beloved brethren i● the lord arguile ] and not till then , they will admitt him to that presbiterian sacrament , the holy ordinance of the covenant . bold , forward rebells . i wishe , those that impose the covenant on his maiesty , would doe like cavaleeres , like braue men , unlike themselves . and answer the reasons of the vniuersity of oxford obiected against there covenant . i won●er those molten calves , doe not more strongly defend there ●doll . it alludes so much to impudence and subtiletie , that i ●ight ca●l it there brasen serpent , and would , did i not see it ●o be a tipe of antichrist . those reasons have been in printe ●bout three yeares and neither the synod in fngland nor the ●ssembly in scotland , did ever dispute there soliditie , or saisfie tender conscience esin the contradiction . t is all the mo●esty they ever exprest . they confess the truth of them unde●iable , by there diliberate silence , which implies there assent ●e doe not thinke there reply , t is so , because it is so and we ●ave voted it so , to be of weighte enough to perswade , because 〈◊〉 proceeds from the plumbeous cerebrosity of a sleepy chair ●an , or an immoderate moderator . wee do not beleeve that ●ere accidentall holines , doth oblidge us to implicite faith . ●ee do not beleeve infallibilitie to be annexed to that scorne●ll chaire , which we know stands in errors denne the par●ment house we know , they erre as men , and damnably too 〈◊〉 devills , and wee demand reason for a guyde to our faith . ●ationall men , that hold nothing of that refractorie spirit of contradiction . are well content , with the well grounded po●ions , of the vniuersity , and beleeve oxford equall in autho●tie , to either glascowe or st. andrewes in scotland . they ●e fortified with so strong arguments , that they are highe ●ovenant proofe at hand , and not to be beaten from those te●ents , they mantaine , or can be forc●te to re●ire from so firme ●rinciples . grante [ which i never will ] that the king take the cove●nt . hee may bee a king of scotland . they will never further ●m in his progress to the crowne of england . when they pu●ikly declare , they will preserve the unitie and agrement [ i ●eleve they are agreed ] beetweene the two kingdomes . yet the pretended parliament , and usurping power of england , have thrust forth there declaration , that they wil never admitt of kingly governement . and with the late king of blessed memorie , have destroyed monarchy . i wonder that the parliament men of scotland were such bold knaves to send , or there commissioners such sylly fooles to come , on so sleeveles an errant to mocke and affronte the king 〈◊〉 they give lawes to him , and will instruct him in his duty , beefore they knowe , or practise there owne ! brave montros must bee bannished , and to attend him for a life guarde all such as are declared ennem●es by the parliament of england when those bloud thirsty persequutors had taken off the heade of greate strafford , cardinal richelieu was pleasde to say . england had but one wise man , so excellingly wise , and the fooles had cvtt of his heade . [ yett those cursed feinds cowld never make a divell of him . ] there is but one loyall , faythfull , and powrefull scotche lord , so superlatiuelie able to do service● neere the king , and he must uncivily be put to a civill deathe● bannishment , and exile i know there are , who to lessen ( if 〈◊〉 were possible ) his reputation , object his unabilitie to doe the king service in scotland and consider him as one man , a syngl● person , hee is a singular person , indeede and one amongst● ten thousand men , and taller in merritt then they all by the heade , and showlders . reflect on his gallant actions ; an● compare them with the petty doeings of the rest of that king● dome , you will finde the difference , and confesse his interest t● bee more then all theires ! concerning the duke , and the hamiltons power in that nation , give mee leave to say thus much that who so knows the present condition of that kingdome , wi● acknowledge it nothing . they exclayme of the dukes treacherie , or cowardise , call it what you please , in england , an● dislike , and cry out agaynst his brothers proceedings at sterline so much , that at there disbanding it was one common voice of the officer , and souldier with full mouth , in open streete , god ●damne him , that ever followed a hamilton more . when the duke , at the heighte of his power went into england amongst ●orty collonels of horse , and thirty nine collonels of foote ●here were very few , that went not upon there owne scor , to ser●e the kings interest . and amoungst them very many , who were ●ver averse to the hamilton faction ; the duke sufferd but few of his f●iends to take charge in the army some few that desyred ●t , cowld never have his countenance after . turne your eye , and beeholde arguile the boatman , the ferriman of scotland , see how all his purblinde actions looke a ●quinte on the kings service i shhowld bee sorry to see him ingaged in his majesties service , hee is so unblest in all his underta●ings ; hee never broughte men to fighte [ as hee hath done very ●ften , but never stayde to fighte himselfe , ] which came not ●lwayes by the worst . they are weary to followe so unpros●erous a commander , withso unlucky and ill a visage . they ●ay that when hee , having lost all is men at sterline , went to in●vite cromwell into scotland , which hee did the same night , cromwel stood upon his guarde , add durst not suffer him to ●ome within the poynte of his nose , though hee knew him to ●e an admirable coward . cromwel might have kept him at that dista●ce , and be in no danger of his poysonous lookes . his eyes ●re not more prodigious then the others nose , which serves for 〈◊〉 kinds of an head peece to his face . would both there headpeices were off once . these are the two heading factions of scotland . the hamiltons , and the camels . touching the cheife of the hamiltons , i see nothing but that hee goes into scotland , unless he hath under wrought his peace , on the ●ame termes , that the marquis doth , i mean in relatiō to scotland , 〈◊〉 know other wise there is a greate difference , the one having ser●ed the king , the other the state . and both proclaymed trai●ors , & unlesse there bee craft in the dawbing , lannerick can●ot return in to scotland , but upon the kings account . the king must doe his buisines now , and not hee the kings , when hee is in disgrace with the state , and how wil hee doe the kings buisines in tyme to come , that heretofore at sterline ne●glected , and wilfully lost so faire an opportunitie . i will not quarrell fate , and dispute the necessitie of contingencies , but i cowld almost mathematically , demonstrate , that had the earle of lannerike , a● sterline improude his time , or usde but his meanest faculties to the advantage of his majesties service , the kings heade , had beene upon his showlders at this very day , if the crowne had not beene upon his heade . although he was pleasde to say , he might keepe sterline , and have the full command of all scotland on that syde the forthe which is the most considerable parte of the kingdome but it would contribute nothing to the kings service . [ i thinke so to , if the sequell vvas the service hee intended ] onely it would undoe and destroy a poore kingdome , [ of which it may be he dream● te to be a king ; ] hee had good reason then , to preserve it to his power . when he was demanded , why he would not rather fight then condiscend to so dishonorable conditions , he answered ; he would not bee a traytor to his country for no man alive . [ the king was then in being albeit in a bad one ] it being replyde that no such aspertion cowld be throwne on him , so long as hee owned his maiesties interest , he answered , that , hee never iutended to acte the second part to montroses scaeue . if by it hee meant the loyall subiect . all men will readily beleeve his words at volley he chooseth rather as secretary to write after the dukes fowle coppy then as generall , to set before him , the noble example and wondrous actions of so inimitable a marquisse . we may trust him to raise fresh supplies , that disbanded a force might have helde of the confederacie beetweene a●guile and cromwell , if not utterly have broke it , have beaten lesley before cromwells advance into scotland . i shall not condemne so much , arguiles league vvith cromwell , when the duke before his going into england helde a correspondency with the earle . of denbighe , a gratefull ser●ant of the late king of sacred memorie , and an archeinde●endent traitors . one letter was intercepted from denbighe 〈◊〉 the duke . wherin he entreated him to make all hast , and dis●atche his comming into england , for every thing was in a ●ght way , and to his wishes ! how much the duke intended the kings service and happines is easilie collected out of his ●wne speeche on the scaffolde . t is no time to dissemble . how willing i was to have ●rved this nation in any thing , that was in my power , 〈◊〉 known to very many pious , honest , and religious men . ●nd how ready i would have beene to have done what i ●wld to have served them , if it had , pleased them to ●ave preserved my life in whose hands there was a po●er . they have not thought it fitt , and so i am become ●nusefull in that which willingly i would have done . i never acted to the preiudice of the parliament i ●ore no armes , i medled not with it . these are the words of a dying man , and they alwayes carry ●ith them weight , and often times credit . i wish that all men ●f his opinion , were in the same condition yet his death sig●ifies nothing . it is a hard fate , when his suffering cannot acquitt him from the facte for which hee dyed . yett hee dyed not so much . for the fact , for which hee stood condemned as to satisfie particular splene and faction ; vvherin truly arguile did out vvit him . who was neither safe , nor confident of his owne life , while the other was in beeing . cromwell having shaken hands with arguile and they beeing mutuallie resolved , thought it not so proper to suffer hamilton to live , of whome hee cowld make little or nouse , in subseiviencie to his purposes ; first that hee was politique as himselfe , next as treacherous . of which hee had the experiencie , and therfore judged it as indiscreete as unnecessarie to tr●st him . thus machiavill like , hee hugges the treason , but hee hates the traitor , and having battelde awhile in the treason , he strikes off the traitors head having done his worke ! i would not have his tragedie made the argumēt , to trust the hamilton faction of whome the king must the more diligently beeware , and walke with greater circumspection , for upon this grounde , there are those that will not ●aile to insinuate , with his mje●y , whisper in his eare the dukes loyalty , and integrity , ho●● treacherous so ever the whole tracte of his life hath appeared to the vvorld . ●harity bids me bury the rest with him in his grave hee hath satisfied the world . but many in the world are very much unsatisfied , while persons of so neer relations to him , are so conversant with his majestie . being no whit inferior to the duke , in court arts of matchivilian practises , if they doe not farre excell . now lett all the world iudge , vvhat the king can expect● from these men ; or vvhat trust hee may repose in factions ? vvill not those malitious villaines that have digged up the kingly roote , bee as ready to catche opprtunitie vvhe : they can to loppe off the royall branches ? althoughe the independants acted the iewes to putt the king to death , the presbiterians playde pilate and delivered him over bound , vvhat confidence can the king give to scotland that now mantaines so much of independencie , and countenance the murther of his glorious father of blessed memorie , by there compliance vvith the english pretended parliament , and audiaciously controling army . the kirke of scotland hath already procured the patronage of all the churches in the kingdome not vvithstanding any vvritt of the king , barrons or others , and for carrying on there beegunne independencie . mr , roe scoutmaster generall to cromvvell , hath beene often vvith arguile in private , hath given him full instructions . from the arch-traitor his master . englands belzebub , and is not long since with abundant satisfaction and reioycings of spirit , returnde to him that sent him . there appeare no other hopes now , but that his maiesty must wholy rely upon the royall party , hee must lay the foundation of his hopes , & build them up upon the terrafirma of there constant loyaltie , not loose his ovve party , vvith deceiptful hopes to gayne traitors and conspirators , vvhen all there designe is to inueigle the king , and gett him into there hands , by vvhich they vvill easily casheere and destroy his majesties party , vvho cry dovvn montroses povver [ none ever durst his vvill to serve his master ] lett them reade the volume of his ac●s , uvho living , is his ovvn , and glorious monument . vievvhil ●yding on a tyred ●ade that would have discomposed iob , & vexte his patience at●ended with a clookbagge , stuft with loyaltie , beeholde him stealing [ yett no theife ] into scotland when they had on foote ●en thousand men , at home , and in england tvventy . see him ●n sixe battailes more then a conqueror , and beetrayde in the seventh , wee gaze with vvonder on all his actions , and but that they are uncontradicted , showld have payne to beleeue posteritie will bee infidels and reading his life , will conclude it a romance , oh that the king would renevv that commission which [ as hee had taken it up ] hee layde dovvne at the commands of his dearest master . his reputation is so farre from flooping , that it towres aloft flyes highe , but not to lessening , and hath the rebell in his eagle eye , which hee vvill make his prey so soone , as hee can fasten his tallons , ●eesydes him there is none that can or will s●tt the crowne on the kings most sacred heade . if any vvonder that the duke performed nothing at all vvith so many men , and the marquise of montrose , so much , vvith so 〈◊〉 knovve there principles vvere different . the marquisse perfectlie noble pursued simply , the kings inte●st . the duke vvas treacherous , and prosecuted his ovvne . both vvould have sett up the crovvne , the marquise on the kings heade the duke on his ovvne . the marquise vvould have made a king , the duke vvould have beene one , vvonder at the duke , admire the marquise , and obey the king . fac deus , infestos penitus rex dissipet hostes , tempora , perpetuò viridi cingente coronâ accinctum femori gladium perstringe , superbos deijce ! qui solus potis es confunde rebelles . errata . in the last line of the first pag. in the epistle dedicatorie , for rights . rea , righte . for highne . rea highnes in the 11 , l. of 2. p. for lest . r. less . in the apolo . to the reader . for royal read loyal . 3. p. for fright●de . r. srighted . l. 10. p. 14. ●oi hart . r. dart . l. 9. disappointed pretences . disappointed by . in 6. p. l. 24 , for 〈◊〉 t , r. account . 11. p. 2. l. r. for receivesly . receives p. 13. l. 8. or all r. ale . l. 10. for sher . r. her . for he 〈◊〉 shee 28. l. for withim . r. within . p. 14. for concerving r. concerning . l. 20. for it . r. is 〈◊〉 30. for abettoris r. abettors . p. 15. l. 1 for fouud . r. found . l. 5 , for . bee . r. been . l. 20. for theethe . r. teethe . p. 16. l. 1. for theu videt r. the wider . 20. l. for which seemed . 〈◊〉 . which hee 23. for inforete . r. inforc'te . for . reason , r. reason . p. 17. l , 10. for pntt . r. putt . l. 25. for rebellions . r. rebellious . l. 27. for tustlie . r. iustly . pag. 19. l. 11. for . sigh . r. ●ght . for rereats . r. retreats . 12. for . nee . r. hee , 18. l. for entuer . r. entue . for . etournes . 〈◊〉 returnes . 28. l. for . releene . releeve . r. p. 20. l , 30. for houuds r. hounds . p. 22. l. 2. for . troper . r. troopes . p. 23. l. 9. for yeelde . r. yeelde . p. 24. l. 14. for . pust . r. puts . 26. p. l. 3. ●or porty . r. parly . pag. 12 , for . breegs . bridge for . mako , r. make . for . cetemny . r. ceremony . p. 27. l. 5. for . my . r. may . l. 18. for faurtably . r. fauorably . l. 30. for ●e , 〈◊〉 the . 29. p. l. 1. for serling . r. sterline . p. 31. l. 15. for . came , r. calme . a proclamation discharging forraign copper-coyn to be imported or made use of in this kingdom scotland. privy council. 1686 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05566 wing s1747 estc r183439 53981579 ocm 53981579 180366 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05566) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180366) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2826:54) a proclamation discharging forraign copper-coyn to be imported or made use of in this kingdom scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1686. caption title. initial letter. "...discharging forraign copper-coyn to be imported or made use of in this kingdom" in ms.; additional ms. notes. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the twentieth day of may one thousand six hundred eighty six years. and of our reign the second year. signed: will. paterson, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng coinage -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. finance, public -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-09 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-09 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation iames by the grace of god , king of great-britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith , to our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers of our privy council , pursevants , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as we understanding that there are copper-coyn , imported from abroad , and passing in this our kingdom , which is a great abuse to the nation , and prejudice to our mint : we therefore , with advice of our privy council , for preventing thereof , do hereby strictly prohibit and discharge , all merchants , skippers , mariners and others , to import into this kingdom , after publication hereof , any doyts , or other copper-coyn , from france , holland , or any place from abroad , under the pain of confiscation thereof , the one half to our use , and the other half to the discoverer , or informer , besides what other punishment we , 〈◊〉 our council shall think fit to inflict upon the contraveeners . and further , we do hereby prohibit and discharge the foresaid doyts , or other copper-coyn , from france , or holland , or any copper-coyn , but what is under our royal stamp , to pass within this kingdom hereafter , or any of our subjects to receive the same ●s coyn , as they will be answerable : and authorize , and hereby require all customers , waiters , collectors and others , to seize upon , and appropriat to their own use , any of the said forraign copper-coyn , wherever they can find , or discover the same ; requiring all magistrats , officers and souldiers of our forces to be concurring and assisting hereto , when required , as they will answer at their perril ; and to the end our pleasure in the premisses may be made notour and known ; our will is , and we charge you strictly , and command , that incontinent , these our letter seen , ye pa●s to the mercat cross of edinburgh , and other places needful , and thereat , in our royal name and authority , make open proclamation , and publication of the premisses , that none pretend ignorance . given under our signet at edinburgh , the twentieth day of may one thousand six hundred eighty six years . and of our reign the second year . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . will. paterson , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1686. at a meeting of the council-general of the company of scotland, trading to africa and the indies. holden at edinburgh, the 5th day of september, 1698. company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1698 approx. 3 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b02303 wing c5589a estc r174190 52614576 ocm 52614576 175806 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b02303) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 175806) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2751:25) at a meeting of the council-general of the company of scotland, trading to africa and the indies. holden at edinburgh, the 5th day of september, 1698. company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh : 1698] caption title. place and date of publication suggested by wing (2nd ed.). reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng trading companies -scotland -17th century -sources. scotland -commerce -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 john pas sampled and proofread 2008-08 john pas text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion at a meeting of the council-general of the company of scotland , trading to africa and the indies . holden at edinburgh , the 5th day of september , 1698. upon a representation , made from the court of directors in writing , containing an abstract of the present state of the company 's affairs ; and giving also their opinion , what they thought necessary to be done by the company at this juncture : the said representation was read over , article by article . upon due consideration whereof . resolved ( nemine contradicente ) that the needful preparations be made for a supply of provisions , and other necessaries to be sent to the company 's intended colony , upon the first account that shall be had of their landing and setlement . resolved ( nemine contradicente ) that the further proportion of seven pounds ten shillings sterl . of every hundred pounds subscribed for , in the company 's books , shall be called in from the respective subscribers , or present proprietors of the company 's stock ; the one half thereof to be payed on the first day of november next , and giving bonds at the same time , to pay the other half at candlemass thereafter : certifying all such persons , as shall happen to fail in performing as aforesaid , before the first day of december next ; that their respective shares shall either be rouped , pursuant to the constitutions , or that they shall be otherwayes proceeded against upon their subscriptions , as the council-general shall think fit to direct . resolved ( nemine contradicente ) that for the encouragement of ready payment , and to the end , that all the proprietors may as near as possible , be put upon an equal footing , with respect to their payments , the same being at different times , that all such persons as have payed in the first fourth part of their subscriptions before or upon the first day of june 1696. shall have interest for the same , from the first of june asoresaid , to the first of august last past : and all those that have payed in the first fourth part of their subscriptions after the said first of june , shall have interest for the same from the respective days of their several payments to the said first of august , and all to be deducted out of the first moiety of the seven pounds ten shillings sterl . per cent . abovementioned : and that all such persons , as have not as yet payed in the first fourth part of their respective subscriptions , shall be lyable to pay interest for the same , from the said first day of august last . ordered , that the said several resolutions be forthwith printed and published in the usual manner , for information of all persons concern'd , to the end that none may pretend ignorance . annandale j. p. c. g. de jure regni apud scotos, or, a dialogue, concerning the due priviledge of government in the kingdom of scotland, betwixt george buchanan and thomas maitland by the said george buchanan ; and translated out of the original latine into english by philalethes. de jure regni apud scotos. english buchanan, george, 1506-1582. 1680 approx. 229 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 74 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-08 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a29958 wing b5275 estc r19572 12399655 ocm 12399655 61242 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a29958) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 61242) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 271:12) de jure regni apud scotos, or, a dialogue, concerning the due priviledge of government in the kingdom of scotland, betwixt george buchanan and thomas maitland by the said george buchanan ; and translated out of the original latine into english by philalethes. de jure regni apud scotos. english buchanan, george, 1506-1582. maitland, thomas. philalethes. [10], 133, [1] p. s.n.], [s.l. : 1680. reproduction of original in british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and 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first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng kings and rulers -duties -early works to 1800. monarchy -early works to 1800. scotland -constitutional law. 2004-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-04 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-05 melanie sanders sampled and proofread 2004-05 melanie sanders text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-07 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion de jure regni apud scotos . or a dialogue , concerning the due priviledge of government in the kingdom of scotland , betwixt george buchanan and thomas maitland , by the said george buchanan . and translated out of the original latine into english. by philalethes . printed in the year 1680. the translator to the reader . candide reader , i have presumed to trouble your attention with the ceremony of a preface , the end and designe of which is not to usher in my translation to the world with curious embellishments of oratory ( that serving only to gratify , or enchaunt a luxuriant fancy ) but allennatly to apologize for it , in case a zoilus , or a momus , shall happen to peruse the same . briefly , then i reduce all that either of these will ( as i humbly perceive ) object against this my work ▪ to these two generals , prevarication and ignorance . first , they will call me a prevaricator or prevaricating interpreter , and that upon two accounts . 1. because i have ( say they ) sophisticated the genuine sense and meaning of the learned author , by interpreting and foisting in spurious words of mine own . secondly , that i have quite alienated the literal sense in other places by a too paraphrastical exposition . to the first i answer , that none are ignorant , that the original of this piece is a lofty laconick stile of latine : now i once having undertaken provinciam interpretis , behoved to render my interpretation somewhat plain , and obvious , which i could never do in some places , without adding some words ( claritatis gratiâ ) but alwayes i sought out the scope ( as far as my shallow capacity could reach ) and suited them thereunto . wherein i am hopfull , that no ingenuous impartial reader not prepossessed wiih prejudice against the matter contained in the original , and consequently against the translation thereof , will find much matter of quarrell upon that account , if he will but take an overly view of the original , and so compare the translation therewith . for i have been very sparing in adding ought of my own . to the second branch of the first challenge i answer briefly ; there are none who have the least smattering of common sense , but know wel enough , that it is morally impossible for an interpreter to make good language of any latine piece , if he shall alwayes verbum verbo redere ; i mean , if he adhere so close to the very rigour of the original , as to think it illicite to use any paraphrase , although the succinctness and summary comprehensiveness of the original stile even cry aloud for it , as it were ; but to silence in a word these critical snarlers , where ever i have used any paraphrase , i likewise have set down the exposition ad verbum ( to the best of my knowledge ) as near as i could . the second challenge is of ignorance , & that because i have passed by some latine verses of seneca , which are at the end of this dialogue , containing the stoicks description of a king , without translating them into english. now , true it is i have done so , not because i knew not how to interpret them ( for i hope , candide readers at least will not so judge of me ) but because i thought it not requisite to meddle with them , unless i could have put as specious a lustre upon them , as my pen would have pulled off them ( for otherwise i would have greatly injured them ) which could never be done without a sublime veine of poesy , wherein i ingenuously profess ignorance : so that if the last challenge be thus understood , transeat , because nec fonte labra prolui cabalino , nec in bicipiti somniasse parnasso , memini ut repente sic poeta prodirem . and hence it is , that all the latine verses , which occurre in this dialogue , are by me translated into prose , as the rest : but i fear i have wearied your patience too long already , and therefore i will go no further , i wish you satisfaction in the book , and so vive & vale. a dialogue treating of the jus , or right , which the kings of scotland have for exercising their royal power . george buchanan , author . george buchanan to king james , the sixth of that name king of scots , wisheth all health and happiness . i wrote several years ago , when amongst us affaires were very turbulent , a dialogue of the right of the scots kings , wherein i endeavoured to explain from the very beginning ( if i may so say ) what right , or what authority both kings and people have one with another . which book , when for that time it seemed somewhat profitable , as shutting the mouths of some , who more by importunat clamours at that time , than what was right , inveighed against the course of affaires , requiring they might be levelled according to the rule of right reason ; but matters being somewhat more peaceable , i also having laid down my armes , very willingly devoted my self to publick concord . now having lately fallen upon that disputation , which i found amongst my papers , and perceiving therein many things which might be necessary for your age ( especially you being placed in that part of humane affaires ) i though good to publish it , that it might be a standing witness of mine affection towards you , and admonish you of your duty towards your subjects . now many things perswaded me that this my endeavour should not be in vain : especially your age not yet corrupted by prave opinions , and inclination far above your years for undertaking all heroicall and noble attempts , spontaneously making haste thereunto , and not only your promptitude in obeying your instructors and governours , but all such as give you sound admonition , and your judgment and diligence in examining affaires , so that no mans authority can have much weight with you , unless it be confirmed by probable reason . i do perceive also , that you by a certain natural instinct do so much abhorre flattery , which is the nurse of tyranny , and a most grievous plague of a kingdome , so as you do hate the court solaecismes & barbarismes no less , than those that seeme to censure all elegancy , do love and affect such things , & every where in discouse spread abroad , as the sawce thereof , these titles of majesty , highness , and many other unsavoury compellations . now albeit your good natural disposition , & sound instructions , wherein you have been principled , may at present draw you away from falling into this errour , yet i am forced to be some what jealous of you , lest bad company , the fawning foster-mother of all vices , draw aside your soft and tender mind into the worst part ; especially seeing i am not ignorant , how easily our other senses yeeld to seduction . this book therefore i have sent unto you to be not only your monitor , but also an importunat and bold exactor , which in this your tender and flexible years may conduct you in safety from the rocks of flattery , and not only may admonish you , but also keep you in the way you are once entred into : and if at any time you deviat , it may reprehend and draw you back , the which if you obey , you shall for your self and for all your subjects acquire tranquillity and peace in this life , and eternal glory in the life to come . farewell , from stirveling , the tenth day of january in the year of mans salvation one thousand five hundred seventy nine . a dialogue concerning that jus , or right of government amongst the scots . persons , george bvchanan , and thomas maitland . thomas maitland beeing of late returned home from france , and i seriously enquiring of him the state of affaires there , began ( for the love i bear to him ) to exhort him to continue in that course he had taken to honour , and to entertain that excellent hope in the progress of his studies . for if i , being but of an ordinary spirit , and almost of no fortune , in an illiterat age , have so wrestled with the iniquity of the times , as that i seeme to have done somewhat : then certainly they who are born in a more happy age , & who have maturity of years , wealth and pregnancy of spirit , ought not to be deterred by paines from noble designes , nor can such despair beeing assisted by so many helps . they should therefore go on with vigour to illustrat learning , and to commend themselves and those of their nation to the memory of after ages , & posterity , yea if they would but bestirre themselves herein somewhat actively , it might come to pass , that they would eradicat out of mens minds that opinion , that men in the cold regions of the world , are at as great distance from learning , humanity , & all endowments of the mind , as they are distant from the sun. for as nature hath granted to the affricans , egyptians , and many other nations more subtile motions of the mind , and a greater sharpness of wit , yet she hath not altogether so far cast off any nation , as to shut up from it an entry to vertue and honour . hereupon , whilst he did speak meanly of himself ( which is his modesty ) but of me more affectionatly than truely : at last the tract of discourse drew us on so far , that when he had asked me concerning the troubled state of our countrey , and i had answered him as far as i judged convenient for that time ; i began by course to ask him , what was the opinion of the frenches or other nations with whom he had conversed in france , concerning our affaires ? for i did not question , but that the novelty of affaires ( as is usual ) would give occasion and matter of discourse thereof to all ▪ why ( saith he ) do you desire that of me ? for seeing you are wel acquaint with the course of affaires , and is not ignorant what the most part of men do speak , and what they think , you may easily guess in your own conscience , what is , or at least should be the opinion of all . b : but , the further that forrain nations are at a distance , they have the less causes of wrath , hatred , love and other perturbations , which may divert the mind from truth , and for the most part they so much the more judge of things sincerely , and freely speak out what they think : that very freedome of speaking and conferring the thoughts of the heart doth draw forth many obscure things , discovers intricacies , confirme doubts and may stop the mouth of wicked men , and teach such as are weak . m : shall i be ingenuous with you ? b : why not ? m : although i had a great desire after so long a time , to visite my native country , parents , relations , and friends , yet nothing did so much inflame my desire , as the clamour of a rude multitude : for albeit i thought my selfe well enough fortified either by my own constant practice , or the morall precepts of the most learned , yet when i came to fall upon the present case , i know not how i could conceale my pusillanimity . for when that horrid villany not long since here perpetrat , all with one voice did abominat it , the author hereof not being known ; the multitude , which is more acted by precipitancy , than ruled by deliberation , did charge the fault of some few upon all ; and the common hatred of a particular crime did redound to the whole nation , so that even such as were most remote from any suspicion were inflamed with the infamy of other mens crime . when therefore this storme of calumny was calmed , i betook my self very willingly into this port , wherein notwithstanding i am afraid , i may dash upon a rock . b. why , i pray you ? m. because the atrociousness of that late crime doth seeme so much to inflame the minds of all already exasperat , that now no place of apology is left . for , how shall i be able to sustain the impetuous assaults , not only of the weaker sort , but also of those who seeme to be more sagacious , who will exclaime against us , that we were content with the slaughter of an harmeless youth , an unheard of cruelty , unless we should shew another new example of atrocious cruelty against women , which sexe very enemies do spare when cities are taken in by force . now from what villany will any dignity or majesty deterre those , who thus rage against kings ? or what place for mercy will they leave , whom neither the weakness of sexe , nor innocency of age will restrain ? equity , custome , lawes , the respect to soveraignty , reverence of lawful magistracy , which hence forth they will either retain for shame , or coërce for fear , when the power of supreame authority is exposed to the ludibry of the basest of the people , the difference of equity and iniquity , of honesty and dishonesty being once taken away , almost by a publick consent , there is a degeneracy into cruel barbarity . i know i shall hear these , and more atrocious than these spoken how soon i shall returne into france again ; all mens ears in the mean time being shut from admitting any apology or satisfaction . b. but i shall easily liberat you of this fear , and our nation from that false crime . for , if they do so much detest the atrociousness of the first crime , how can they rationally reprehend severity in revenging it ? or if they take it ill , that the queen is taken order with , they must needs approve the first deed ; choose you then , which of the two would you have to seeme cruel . for neither they nor you can praise or reproach both , provided you understand your selves . m. i do indeed abhorre and detest the kings murther , and am glad that the nation is free of that guilt , and that it is charged upon the wickedness of some few . but this last fact i can neither allow nor disallow , for it seemes to me a famous and memorable deed , that by counsel and diligence they have searched out that villany , which since the memory of man is the most hainous , and do pursue the perpetrators in a hostile manner . but in that they have taken order with the chief magistrat , and put contempt upon soveraignty , which amongst all nations hath been alwayes accounted great and sacred . i know not how all the nations of europe will relish it , especially such as live under kingly government ; surely the greatness and novelty of the fact doth put me to a demurre , albeit i am not ignorant what may be pretended on the contrary , and so much the rather , because some of the actors are of my intimate acquaintance . b. now i almost perceive , that it doth perhaps not trouble you so much , as those of forrain nations , who would be judges of the vertues of others to whom you think satisfaction must be given . of these i shall set down three sorts especially , who will vehemently enveigh against that deed . the first kind is most pernicious , wherein those are , who have mancipated themselves to the lusts of tyrants , and think every thing just and lawfull for them to do , wherein they may gratify kings , and measure every thing not as it is in it self , but by the lust of their masters . such have so devoted themselves to the lusts of others , that they have left to themselves no liberty either to speak o● do . out of this crew have proceeded those , who have most cruelly murthered that innocent youth , without any cause of enmity , but through hope of gain , honour , and power at court to satisfy the lust of others . now whilst such feign to be sorry for the queens case , they are not grieved for her misfortunes , but look for their own security , and take very ill to have the reward of their most hainous crime , ( which by hope they swallowed down ) to be pulled out of their throat . i judge therefore that this kind of men should not be satisfied so much by reasoning , as chastised by the severity of lawes , and force of armes . others again are all for themselves ; these men , though otherwise not malicious , are not grieved for the publick calamity ( as they would seeme to be ) but for their own domestick damages , and therefore they seeme to stand in need rather of some comfort , than of the remedies of perswasive reasoning and lawes . the rest is the rude multitude , which doth admire at all novelties , reprehend many things , and think nothing is right , but what they themselvs do or see done : for how much any thing done doth decline from an ancient custome , so farr they think it is fallen from justice and equity . and because these be not led by malice and envy , nor yet by self-interest , the most part will admitt information , and to be weaned from their errour , so that being convinced by the strength of reason , they yeeld : which in the matter of religion , we find by experience very often in these dayes , and have also found it in preceeding ages . there is almost no man so wilde , that can not be tamed , if he will but patiently hearken to instruction . m. surely we have found oftentimes that very true . b. when you therefore deale with this kind of people so clamorous and very importunat , ask some of them , what they think concerning the punishment of caligula , nero or domitian , i think there will be none of them so addicted to the name king , that will not confess , they were justly punished . m. perhaps you say right , but these very same men will forthwith cry-out , that they complain not of the punishment of tyrants , but are grieved at the sad calamities of lawfull kings . b. do you not then perceive how easily the people may be pacified ? m. not indeed , unless you say some other thing . b. but i shall cause you understand it in few words , the people ( you say ) approve the murther of tyrants , but compassionat the misfortune of kings , would they not then change their opinion , if they clearly understood what the difference is betwixt a tyrant and a king ? do you not think that this might come to pass , as in many other cases ? m. if all would confess that tyrants are justly killed , we might have a large entry made open to us for the rest , but i find some men , and these not of small authority , who while they make kings liable to the penalties of the lawes , yet they will maintain tyrants to be sacred persons ; but certainly by a preposterous judgment , if i be not mistaken , yet they are ready to maintain their government , albeit immoderat and intolerable , as if they were to fight for things both sacred & civil . b. i have also met with several persons oftentimes , who maintain the same very pertinaciously ; but whether that opinion be right or not , we shall further discuss it hereafter at better conveniency . in the mean time , if you please , let us conclude upon this , upon condition , that unless hereafter it be not sufficiently confirmed unto you , you may have liberty to retract the same . m. on these termes indeed i will not refuse it . b. let us then conclude these two to be contraries a king and a tyrant . m. be it so . b. he therefore that shall explain the original and cause of creating kings , and what the duties of kings are towards their people , and of people towards their kings , will he not seeme to have almost explained on the other hand , what doth pertain to the nature of a tyrant . m. i think so . b. the representation then of both being laid out , do you not think that the people will understand also , what their duty is towards both ? m. it is very like they will. b. now contrary wise , in things that are very unlike to one another , which yet are contained under the same genus , there may be some similitudes , which may easily induce imprudent persons into an errour . m. doubtless , there may be such , and especially in the same kind , where that which is the worst of the two doth easily personat the best of both , and studies nothing more , than to impose the same upon such as are ignorant . buc. have you not some representation of a king and of a tyrant impressed in your mind ? for if you have it , you will save me much pains . m. indeed i could easily express what idea i have of both in my mind , but i fear , it may be rude and without forme , therefore , i rather desire to hear what your opinion is , lest whilst you are a refuting me , our discourse become more prolixe , you being both in age and experience above me ; and are well acquaint not only with the opinions of others , but also have seen the customes of many , and their cities . b. i shall then do it , and that very willingly , yet will i not unfold my own opinion so much , as that of the ancients , that thereby a greater authority may be given to my discourse , as not being such as is made up with respect to this time , but taken out of the opinions of those , who not being concerned in the present controversy , have no less eloquently than briefly given their judgment , without hatred , favour , or envy , whose case was far from these things ; and their opinions i shall especially make use of , who have not frivolously trifled away their time , but by vertue and counsel have flourished both at home and abroad in well governed common wealths . but before i produce these witnesses , i would ask you some few things , that seeing we are at accord in some things of no smal importance , there may be no necessity to digress from the purpose in hand , nor to stay in explaining or confirming things that are perspicuous and well known . m. i think we should do so , & if you please , ask me . b. do you not think that the time hath been , when men did dwell in cottages , yea and in caves , and as strangers did wander to and fro without lawes , or certain dwelling places , and did assemble together as their fond humours did lead them , or as some comodity , and comon utility did allure them ? m. for sooth i beleeve that : seeing it is consonant to the course and order of nature , and is testified by all the histories of all nations almost , for homer doth describe the representation of such a wilde and barbarous kind of life in sicily , even in the time of the trojans . their courts ( saith he ) do neither abound with counciles nor judges , they dwell only in darksome caves , and every one of them in high mountains ruleth his own house , wife and children , nor is any of them at leisure to communicat his domestick affaires to any other . about the same time also italy is said to be no better civilized , as we may easily conjecture from the most fertile regions almost of the whole world , how great the solitude and wastness there was in places on this side of italy . b. but whether do you think the vagrant and solitary life , or the associations of men civilly incorporat , most agreable to nature ? m. the last without all peradventure , which utility the mother almost of justice and equity did first convocat , and commanded to give signes or warnings by sound of trumpet and to defend themselves within walls , and to shut the gates with one key . b. but , do you think that utility was the first and main cause of the association of men ? m. why not , seeing i have heard from the learned , that men are born for men . b. uitility indeed to some seems to be very efficacious , both in begetting and conserving the publick society of mankind ; but if i mistake not , there is a far more venerable , or ancient cause of mens associating , and a more antecedaneous & sacred bond of their civil community , otherwise , if every one would have a regard to this own private advantage , then surely that very utility would rather dissolve than unite humane society together . m. perhaps that may be true , therefore i desire to know what other cause you will assigne . b. a certain instinct of nature , not only in man , but also in the more tamed sort of beasts , that although these allurements of utility be not in them , yet do they of their own accord flock together with other beasts of their own kind , but of these others we have no ground of debate : surely we see this instinct by nature so deeply rooted in man , that if any one had the affluence of all things , which contribute either for maintaining health , or pleasure and delight of the mind , yet he will think his life unpleasant without humane converse . yea , they who out of a desire of knowledge , and an endeavour of investigating the truth , have with drawn themselves from the multitude , and retired to secret corners , could not long endure a perpetual vexation of mind , nor , if at any time they should remit the same , could they live in solitude , but very willingly did bring forth to light their very secret studies , and as they had laboured for the publick good , they did communicat to all the fruit of their ●abour . but if there be any man who doth wholly take delight in solitude , and flee from converse with men , and shun it . i judge it doth rather proceed from a distemper of the mind , than from any instinct of nature , such as we have heard of tim●n the athenian , and bellerophon the corinthian , who ( as the poet saith ) was a wandering wretch on the elean coast , eating his own heart , and fleeing the very footsteps of men . m. i do not in this much dissent from you , but there is one word nature here set down by you , which i do often use rather out of custom , than that i understand it , and is by others so variously taken , and accommodat to so many things , that for the most part i am at a stand to what i may mainly apply it . b. forsooth at present i would have no other thing to be understood thereby , than that light infused by god into our minds , for when god formed that creature more sacred , and capable of a celestial mind , and which might have dominion over the other creatures , he gave not only eyes to his body , whereby he might evite things contrary to his condition , and follow after such as might be usefull , but also he produced in his mind a certain light , whereby he might discerne things filthy from honest ; this light some call nature , others the law of nature , for my own part , truly i think it is of a heavenly stamp , and i am fully perswaded ▪ that nature doth never say one thing , and wisdom another . moreover , god h●th given us a● abridgment of that law , which might contain the whole in few words , viz. that we should love him with all our soul , and our neighbours as our selves , all the books of holy scriptur which treat of ordering our conversation , do contain nothing else but an explication of this law. m. you think then that no orator or lawyer , who might congregat dispersed men ▪ hath been the author of humane society , but god only ? b. it is so indeed , and with cicero , i think there is nothing done on earth more acceptable to the great god , who rules the world , than the associations of men legally united , which are called civil incorporations , whose several parts must be as compactly joyned together , as the several members of our body , & every one must have their proper function , to the end there may be a mutual cooperating for the good of the whole , & a mutual propelling of injuries , and a foreseeing of advantages , and these to be communicat for engaging the benevolence of all amongst themselves ▪ m. you do not then make utility , but that divine law rooted in us from the beginning , to be the cause ( indeed the far more worthy and divine of the two ) of mens incorporating in political societies . b. i mean not indeed that to be the mother of equity and justice , as some would have it , but rather the handmaid , and to be one of the guards in cities wel constitute . m. herein i also agree with you . b. now as in our bodies consisting of contrary elements , there are diseases , that is , perturbations , and some intestine tumults , even so there must be of necessity in these greater bodies , that is in cities , which also consist of various , ( yea and for the most part ) contrary humours , or sorts of men , and these of different ranks , conditions and natures , and which is more , of such as can not remain one hour together approving the same things : and surely such must needs soon dissolve and come to nought ; if one be not adhibited , who as a physician may quiet such disturbances , and by a moderat and wholesome temperament confirme the infirme parts and compesce redundant humours , and so take care of all the members , that the weaker may not languish for want of nutrition , nor the stronger become luxuriant too much . m. truely , it must needs be so . b. how then shall we call him who performeth these things in a civil body ? m. i am not very anxious about his name , for by what name soever he be called , i think he must be a very excellent and divine person , wherein the wisdom of our ancestors seemeth to have much foreseen , who have adorned the thing in it self most illustrious with an illustrious name . i suppose you mean king , of which word there is such an emphasis , that it holds forth before us clearly a function in it self very great and excellent . b. you are very right , for we designe god by that name . for we have no other more glorious name , whereby we may declare the excellency of his glorious nature , nor more suteable , whereby to signify his paternal care and providence towards us . what other names shall i collect , which we translate to denote the function of a king ? such as father aeneas , agamemnon , pastor of the people , also a leader , prince , governour . by all which names such a signification is implyed , as may shew that kings are not ordained for themselves , but for the people . now as for the name we agree wel enough : if you please , let us conferre concerning the function , insisting in the same footsteps we began upon . m. which , i pray ? b. do you remember what hath been lately spoken , that an incorporation seemeth to be very like our body , civil commotions like to diseases , and a king to a physician ? if therefore we shall understand what the duty of a physician is , i am of the opinion , we shall not much mistake the duty of a king. m. it may be so , for the rest you have reckoned are very like , and seem to me very near in kin . b. do not expect that i will here describe every petty thing , for the time will not permit it , neither doth the matter in hand call for it : but if briefly these agree together , you shall easily comprehend the rest . m. go on then , as you are doing . b. the scope seemeth to be the same to us both . m. which ? b. the health of the body , for curing of which they are adhibited . m. i understand you , for the one ought to keep safe the humane body in its state , and the other the civil body in its state , as far as the nature of each can bear , and to reduce into perfect health the body diseased . b. you understand very wel , for there is a twofold duty incumbent to both , the one is to preserve health , the other is to restore it , if it become weak by sickness . m. i assent to you . b. for the diseases of both are alike . m. it seemeth so . b. for the redundance of things hurtfull , and want or scarcity of things necessary are alike noxious to both , and both the one and other body is cured almost in the same manner , namely either by nourishing that which is extenuat and tenderly cherishing it , or by asswaging that which is full and redundant by casting out superfluities , and exercising the body with moderat labours . m. it is so , but here seems to be the difference , that the humours in the one , and manners in the other are to be reduced into a right temperament . b. you understand it wel , for the body politik as wel as the natural hath its own proper temperament , which i think very rightly we may call justice . for it is that which doth regard every member , and cureth it so as to be kept in its function . this sometimes is done by letting of blood , sometimes by the expelling of hurtfull things , as by egestion ; and sometimes exciting cast-down and timorous minds , and comforting the weak , and so reduceth the whole body into that temperament i spoke of : and being reduced , exerciseth it with convenient exercises , and by a certain prescribed temperature of labour and rest , doth preserve the restored health as much as can be . m. all the rest i easily assent to , except that you place the temperament of the body politik in justice : seing temperance even by its very name and profession doth justly seem to claime these parts . b. i think it is no great matter on which of them you conferre this honour . for seing all vertues , whereof the strength is best perceived in action , are placed in a certain mediocrity and equability , so are they in some measure connected amongst themselves , and cohere , so as it seems to be but one office in all , that is , the moderation of lusts . now in whatsoever kind this moderation is , it is no great matter how it be denominat : albeit that moderation , which is placed in publick matters , and mens mutual commerces , doth seem most fitly to be understood by the name of justice . m. herein i very willingly assent to you . b. in the creation of a king , i think the ancients have followed this way , that if any among the citizens were of any singular excellency , and seemed to exceed all others in equity and prudence , as is reported to be done in bee-hives , they willingly conferred the government or kingdom on him . m. it is credible to have been so . b. but what if none such as we have spoken of , should be found in the city ? m. by that law of nature , whereof we formerly made mention , equals neither can ; nor ought to usurpe dominion : for by nature i think it just , that amongst these that are equal in all other things , their course of ruling and obeying should be alike . b. what if a people , wearied with yearly ambition be willing to elect some certain person not altogether endowed with all royal vertues , but either famous by his noble descent , or warlike valour ? will you not think that he is a lawfull king ? m. most lawfull , for the people have power to conferre the government on whom they please . b. what if we shall admitt some acute man , yet not endowed with notable skill , for curing diseases ? shall we presently account him a physician , as soon as he is chosen by all ? m. not at all ▪ for by learning and the experience of many arts , and not by suffrages is a man made a physician . b. what maketh artists in other arts ? m. i think there is one reason of all . b. do you think there is any art of reigning or not ? m. why not . b. can you give me a reason why you think so ? m. i think i can , namely that same which is usually given in other arts. b. what is that ? m. because the beginnings of all arts proceed from experience . for whilst many did rashly and without any reason undertake to treat of many things , and others again through exercitation and consuetude did the same more sagaciously , noticing the events on both hands , and perpending the causes thereof , some acute men have digested a certain order of precepts , and called that description an art. b. then by the like animadversion may not some art of reigning be described , as wel as the art of physick ? m. i think there may . b. of what precepts shall it consist ? m. i do not know at present . b. what if we shall find it out by comparing it with other arts ? m. what way ? b. this way : there be some precepts of grammar , of physick , and husbandry . m. i understand . b. shall we not call these precepts of grammarians and physicians arts and lawes also , and so of others ? m. it seems indeed so . b. do not the civil lawes seem to be certain precepts of royal art ? m. they seem so . b. he must therefore be acquaint therewith , who would be accounted a king. m. it seemes so . b. what if he have no skill therein ? albeit the people shall command him to reigne , think you that he should be called a king ? m. you cause me here hesitate : for if i would consent with the former discourse , the suffrages of the people can no more make him a king , than any other artist . b. what think you shall then be done ? for unless we have a king chosen by suffrages , i am afraid we shall have no lawfull king at all . m. and i fear also the same . b. will you then be content that we more accuratly examine what we have last set down in comparing arts one with another ? m. be it so , if it so please you . b. have we not called the precepts of artists in their several arts , lawes ? m. we have done so . b. but i fear we have not done it circumspectly enough . m. why ? b. because he would seem absurd who had skill in any art , and yet not to be an artist . m. it were so : b. but he that doth performe what belongs to an art , we will account him an artist , whether he do it naturally , or by some perpetual and constant tenour and faculty . m. i think so . b. we shall then call him an artist , who knowes wel this rational and prudent way of doing any thing wel , providing he hath acquired that faculty by constant practice . m. much better than him who hath the bare precepts without use and exercitation . b. shall we not then account these precepts to be art ? m. not at all , but a certain similitude thereof , or rather a shaddow of art. b. what is then that governing faculty of cities , which we shall call civil art or science ? m. it seemes you would call it prudence : out of which , as from a fountain or spring , all lawes , provided they be usefull for the preservation of humane society , must proceed and be derived . b. you have hit the nail on the head , if this then were compleat and perfect in any person , we might say he were a king by nature , and not by suffrages , and might resigne over to him a free power over all things : but if we find not such a man , we shall also call him a king , who doth come nearest to that eminent excellency of nature , embracing in him a certain similitude of a true king. m. let us call him so , if you please . b. and because we fear he be not firme enough against inordinat affections , which may , and for the most part use to decline men from truth , we shall adjoyn to him the law , as it were a colleague , or rather a bridler of his lusts . m. you do not then think that a king should have an arbitrary power over all things . b. not at all : for i remember , that he is not only a king , but also a man , erring in many things by ignorance , often failing willingly , doing many things by constraint : yea a creature easily changeable at the blast of every favour or frown , which natural vice a magistrat useth also to increase : so that here i chiefly find that of the comedy made true , all by licence become worse . wherefore the most prudent have thought it expedient to adjoyne to him a law , which may either shew him the way , if he be ignorant , or bring him back again into the way , if he wander out of it : by these , i suppose , you understand , as in a representation , what i judge to be the duty of a true king. m. of the cause of creating kings , of their name and duty you have fully satisfied me . yet i shall not repine , if you please to add ought thereto : albeit my mind doth hasten to hear what yet seemes to remain , yet there is one thing which in all your discourse did not a little offend me , which i think should not be past over in silence , viz. that you seem somewhat injurious to kings , and this very thing i did suspect in you frequently before , whilst i often heard you so profusely commend the ancient common-wealths , and the city of venice . b. you did not rightly herein judge of me . for i do not so much look to the different forme of civil government ( such as was amongst the romans , massilians , venetians and others , amongst whom the authority of lawes were more powerfull , than that of men ) as to the equity of the forme of government ; nor do i think it matters much , whether king , duke , emperour , or consul be the name of him who is the chiefest in authority , provided this be granted , that he is placed in the magistracy for the maintenance of equity , for if the government be lawfull , we must not contend for the name thereof . for he whom we call the duke of venice is nothing else but a lawfull king : and the first consuls did not only retain the honours of kings , but also their empire and authority , this only was the difference , that not one , but two of them did reigne ( which also you know was usual in all the lacedemonian kings , ) who were created or chosen not constantly to continue in the government , but for one year . we must therefore alwayes stand to what we spoke at first , that kings at first were institute for maintaining equity . if they could have holden that soveraignty in the case they had received it , they might have holden and kept it perpetually ; but this is free and loosed by lawes . but ( as it is with humane things ) the state of affaires tending to worse , the soveraigne authority which was ordained for publick utility degenerated into a proud domination . for when the lust of kings stood in stead of lawes , and men being vested with an infinite and immoderate power , did not contain themselves within bounds , but connived at many things out of favour , hatred , or self-interest , the insolency of kings made lawes to be desired . for this cause therefore lawes were made by the people , and kings constrained to make use not of their own licentious wills in judgment , but of that right or priviledge which the people had conferred upon them . for they were taught by many experiences , that it was better , that their liberty should be concredited to lawes than to kings , whereas the one might decline many wayes from the truth , but the other being deafe both to intreaties and threats might still keep one and the same tenor . this one way of government is to kings prescribed , otherwise free , that they should conforme their actions and speech to the prescripts of lawes , and by the sanctions thereof divide rewards and punishments , the greatest bonds of holding fast together humane society . and lastly , even as saith that famous legislator , a king should be a speaking law , and the law a dumb king. m. at first you so highly praised kings , that you made their majesty almost glorious and sacred , but now , as if you had repented in so doing , i do not know within what strait bonds you shut them up , and being thrust into the prison ( i may say ) of lawes , you do scarce give them leave to speak . and as for my part , you have disappoynted me of my exspectation very farre . for i exspected , that ( according to the most famous historians ) you should have restored the thing which is the most glorious both with god and man , into its own splendor , either of your own accord , or at my desire , in the series of your discourse , which being spoiled of all ornaments , you have brought it into subjection , and that authority , which through all the world is the chiefest , you having hedged-in round about and made it almost so contemptible , as not to be desired by any man in his right witts . for what man in his right witts would not rather live as a private man with a mean fortune , than being still in action about other mens affaires , to be in perpetual trouble , and neglecting his own affaires , to order the whole course of his life according to other mens rules ? but if that be the tearmes of government every where proposed , i fear there will be a greater scarcity of kings found than was of bishops in the first infancy of our religion . nor do i much wonder , if kings be regarded according to this plate-forme , being but men taken from feeding cattel , and from the plough , who took upon them that glorious dignity . b. consider i pray you , in how great an errour you are , who does think that kings were created by people and nations not for justice , but for pleasure , and does think there can be no honour , where wealth and pleasures abound not ; wherein consider how much you diminish their grandour . now that you may the more easily understand it ; compare any one king of those you have seen apparelled like a childs puppet brought forth with a great deale of pride and a great many attendants , meerly for vain ostentation , the representation whereof you miss in that king whom we describe . compare , i say , some one of those , who were famous of old , whose memory doth even yet live , flourisheth & is renowned to all posterity . indeed they were such as i have now been describing . have you never heard what an old woman , petitioning philip king of macedon to hear her cause , answered him , he having said to her , he had no leisure , to which she replyed , then cease ( said she ) to be king ? have you never heard , ( i say ) that a king victorious in so many batells , and conqueror of so many nations , admonished to do his duty by a poor old wife , obeyed , & acknowledged that it was the duty of kings so to do ? compare then this philip not only with the greatest kings that are now in europe , but also with all that can be remembred of old , you shall surely find none of them comparable to those either for prudence , fortitude , or activity : few equal to them for largeness of dominions . if i should enumerat agesilaus , leonidas and the rest of the lacedemonian kings ( o how great men were they ) i shal seem to utter but obsolete examples . yet one saying of a lacedemonian maid i cannot pass over with silence , her name was gorgo the daughter of cleomedes , she seeing a servant pulling off the stockings of an asian ghuest , and running to her father cryed out , father , the ghuest hath no hands ; from which speech of that maid you may easily judge of the lacedemonian discipline , and domestick custome of their kings . now those who proceded out of this rustick , but couragous way of life , did very great things : but those who were bred in the asiatick way , lost by their luxury and sloth the great dominions given them by their ancestors . and , that i may lay aside the ancients , such a one was pelagius not long ago among the people of galicia , who was the first that weakned the saracen forces in spain , yet him and all his the grave did inclose , yet of him the spanish kings are not ashamed , accounting it their greatest glory to be descended of him . but seeing this place doth call for a more large discourse , let us returne from whence we have digressed . for i desire to shew you with the first what i promised , namely that this forme of government hath not been contrived by me , but seemes to have been the same to the most famous men in all ages , and i shall briefly shew you the spring from whence i have drawn these things . the books of m : tullius cicero which are intituled of offices , are by common consent of all accounted most praise worthy , in the second book thereof these words are set down verbatim . it seemes as horodotus saith that of old well bred kings were created , not amongst the medes only , but also amongst our ancestors for executing of justice , for whilst at first the people were oppressed by those that had greatest wealth , they betook themselves to some one who was eminent for vertue ▪ who whilst he kept off the weakest from injuries , establishing equity , he hemmed in the highest with the lowest by equall lawes to both . and the reason of making lawes was the same as of the creation of kings , for it is requisite that justice be alwayes equall , for otherwise it were not justice . if this they did obtain from one good and just man , they were therewith well pleased : when that did not occurre , lawes were made , which by one and the same voice might speak to all alike . this then indeed is evident , that those were usually chosen to governe , of whose justice the people had a great opinion . now this was added , that these rulers or kings might be accounted prudent , there was nothing that men thought they could not obtain from such rulers . i think , you see from these words , what cicero judgeth to be the reason of requiring both kings and lawes , i might here commend zenophon a witness requiring the same , no less famous in war-like affairs , than in the study of philosophy , but that i know you are so well acquaint with his writings , as that you have all his sentences marked . i pass at present plato and aristotle , albeit i am not ignorant how much you have them in estimation . for i had rather adduce for confirmation men famous in a midle degree of affaires , than out of schools . far less do i think fit to produce a stoick king , such as by seneca in thyestes is described : not so much because that idea of a king is not perfect , as because that examples of a good prince may be rather impressed in the mind , than at any time hoped for . but lest in those i have produced there might be any ground of calumny , i have not set before you kings out of the schythian solitude , who did either ungird their own horses , or did other servile work , which might be very far from our manner of living ; but even out of greece , and such , who in these very times , wherein the grecians did most flourish in all liberall sciences , did rule the greatest nations , or wel governed cities : and did so rule , that whilst they were alive were in very great esteeme amongst their people , and being dead left to posterity a famous memory of them selves . m. if now you ask me what my judgment is , i scarce dare confess to you either mine inconstancy or timidity , or by what other name it shall please you to call that vice . for as often as i read these things you have now recited in the most famous historians , or hear the same commended by very wise men , whose authority i dare not decline : and that they are approved by all good and honest men to be not only true , equitable & sincere , but also seeme strong and splendid again as oft as i cast mine eyes on the neatness and elegancy of our times , that antiquity seemeth to have been venerable and sober , but yet rude , and not sufficiently polished , but of these things we may perhaps speak of hereafter at more leisure . now if it please you , go on to prosecute what you have begun . b. may it please you then that we recollect briefly what hath been said ? so shall we understand best what is past , and if ought be rashly granted , we shall very soon retract it . m. yes indeed b : first of all then we agree , that men by nature are made to live in society together , and for a communion of life . m. that is agreed upon . b : that a king also chosen to maintain that society is a man eminent in vertue : m : it is so . b : and as the discords of men amongst themselves brought in the necessity of creating a king , so the injuries of kings done against their subjects were the cause of desiring lawes . m : i acknowledge that . b : we held lawes to be a proofe of the art of government , even as the preceps of physick are of the medicinal art. m : it is so , b. but it seems to be more safe ( because in neither of the two have we set down any singular and exact skill of their severall arts ) that both do , as speedily as may be , heal by these prescripts of art. m : it is indeed safest . b : now the precepts of the medicinal art are not of one kind . m : how ? b : for some of them are for preservation of health , others for restauration thereof . m. very right . b. what say you of the governing art ? m : i think , there be as many kinds . b : next then it seems , that we consider it . do yo think , that physicians can so exactly have skill of all diseases , and of their remedies , as nothing more can be required for their cure ? m : not at all , for many new kinds of diseases arise almost in every age , and new remedies for each of them , almost every yeer are by mens industry found out , or brought from far countries . b : what think you of the lawes of commonwealths m : surely their case seemes to be the same . b : therefore neither physicians , nor kings can evite or cure all diseases of commonwealths , by the precepts of their arts , which are delivered to them in writ . m : i think indeed they cannot . b : what if we shall further try of what things lawes may be established in commonwealths , and what cannot be comprehended within lawes . m : that will be worth our pains . b : there seems to be very many and weighty things , which cannot be contained within lawes . first , all such things as fall into the deliberation of the time to come . m : all indeed . b : next , many things already past , such are these wherein truth is sought by conjecturs , confirmed by witnesses , or extorted by torments . m : yes indeed . b : in unfolding then these questions what shal the king do ? m : i see here there is no need of a long discourse , seeing kings do not so arrogat the supream power in those things which are institute with respect to the time to come , that of their own accord they call to councill some of the most prudent . b : what say you of those things which by conjectures are found out , and made out by witnesses , such as are the crimes of murther , adultery and witchcraft ; m : these are examined by the skill of lawyers , discovered by diligence , and these i find to be for the most part left to the judgment of judges . b : and perhaps very right ; for if a king would needs be at the private causes of each subject , when shal he have time to think upon peace & war , and those affaires which maintain and preserve the safety of the commonwealth ? and lastly when shall he get leave to rest ? m : neither would i have the cognition of every thing to be brought unto a king , neither can one man be sufficient for all the causes of all men , if they be brought unto him : that counsel no less wise than necessary doth please me exceeding well , which the father in law of moses gave him in dividing amongst many the burden of hearing causes , whereof i shall not speak much , seeing the history is known to all . b : but i think , these judges must judge according to law . m : they must indeed do so . but as i conceive , there be but few things , which by lawes may be provided against , in respect of those which cannot be provided against . b : there is another thing of no less difficulty , because all these things which call for lawes , cannot be comprehended by certain prescriptions . m : how so ? b : lawyers , who attribute very much to their own art , and who would be accounted the priests of justice , do confess that there is so great a multitude of affaires , that it may seeme almost infinit , and say that daily arise new crimes in cities , as it were severall kinds of ulcers , what shall a lawgiver do herein , who doth accommodat lawes both to things present and preterit ? m : not much , unless he be some divine-like person . b : an other difficulty doth also occurre , and that not a small one , that in so great an inconstancy of humane frailty , no art can alnost prescribe any things altogether stable and firme . m : there is nothing more true than that . b : it seemeth then most safe to trust a skilfull physician in the health of the patient , and also the kings in the state of the common wealth . for a physician without the rule of art will often times cure a weak patient either consenting thereto , or against his will : and a king doth either perswade a new law yet usefull to his subjects , or else may impose it against their will. m : i do not see what may hinder him therein . b : now seeing both the one and the other do these things , do you think that besides the law , either of them makes his own law ? m : it seemes that both doth it by art. for we have before concluded not that to be art which consists of preceps , but vertue contained in the mind , which the artist usually makes use of in handling the matter which is subject to arts. now i am glad ( seeing you speak ingenuously ) that you being constrained , as it were , by an interdiction of the very truth , do so far restore the king from whence he was by force dejected . b : stay , you have not yet heard all . there is an other inconvenient in the authority of lawes . for the law being as it were a pertinacious , and a certain rude exactor of duty , ●hinks nothing right , but what it self doth ●ommand . but with a king , there is an ●xcuse of infirmity and temerity , and place ●f pardon left for one found in an errour . the law is deaf , cruel and inexorable . ● young man pleads the frailty of his years , ● woman the infirmity of her sexe , another ●is poverty , drunkenness , affection . what ●aith the law to these excuses ? go officer or ●erjeant , conveene a band of men , hoodwink him , scourge him , hang him on a tree . now you know how dangerous a think it is , 〈◊〉 so great a humane frailty , to have the hope ●f safety placed in innocency alone . m : in ●ery truth you tell me a thing full of hazard . ●● surely as oft as these things come into ●ind , i perceive some not a little troubled . m : you speak true . b : when therefore i ●onder with my self what is before past as ●anted , i am afraid lest the comparison of ● physician and of a king in this case seeme ●ot pertinently enough introduced . m : in what case ? b : when we have liberat both ●f the servitude of preceps , and given them ● most a free liberty of curing . m : what ●oth herein especially offend you ? b : when ●ou hear it , you will then judge , two ●uses are by us set down , why it is not expe●ient for a people that kings be loosed from 〈◊〉 bonds of lawes , namely love and hatred , ●hich drive the minds of men to and fro in judging . but in a physician it is not to be feared , lest he faile through love , seeing he expecteth a reward from his patient being restored to health . but if a patient understand that his physician is solicited by intreaties , promises and money against his life , he may call another physician , or if he can find none other , i think it is more safe to seek some remedy from books how deaf soever , than from a corrupt physician . now because we have complained of the cruelty of lawes , look if we understand one another sufficiently . m : how so ? b : we judged an excellent king , such as we may more see in mind than with bodily eyes , not to be bound by any lawes . m : by none . b : wherefore ? m : i think , because , according to paul , he should be a law to himself and to others , that he may express in life what is by law enjoyned . b : you judge rightly ; and that you may perhapst the more admire , severall ages before paul , aristotle did see the same , following nature as a leader , which therefore i say , that you may see the more clearly what hath been proved before , to wit , that the voice of god and nature is the same . but that we may prosecute our purpose . what shall we say they had a respect unto , who first made lawes ? m : equity i think , as hath been said before . b. i do not now demand that , what end they had before them , but rather what patterne they proposed to temselves ▪ m : albeit perhaps i understand that , yet i would have you to explain it , that you may ●onfirme my judgment , if i rightly take it 〈◊〉 , if not , you may amend my error . b : you know , i think , what the dominion is ●f the mind over the body . m : i seem to ●now it . b : you know this also , what ●ver we do not rashly , that there is a certain ●dea thereof first in our minds , and that it is ● great deale more perfect than the works to ●e done , which according to that patterne the ●hiefest artists do frame and as it were ●xpress . m : that indeed i find by experi●nce both in speaking and writing , and per●eive no less words in my mind , than my ●inds in things wanting . for neither can ●ur mind shut up in this dark and troubled ●rison of the body perceive the subtilty of all ●hings ▪ nor can we so endure in our mind the ●epresentations of things , however foreseen in ●iscourse with others , so as they are not ●uch inferiour to these which our intellect ●ath formed to it self . b : what shall we say ●hen which they set before them , who made ●●wes ? m : i seem almost to understand what you would be at . namly , that they in ●ouncill had an idea of that perfect king , and ●hat they did express a certain image , not of ●he body but of the mind , according to that ●●resaid idea as near as they could . and would have that to be in stead of lawes which 〈◊〉 is to think might be good and equitable m : you rightly understand it , for that is the very thing i would say . but now i would have you to consider what manner of king that is which we have constitute at first , was he not one firme and stedfast against hatred , love , wrath , envy , and other perturbations of the mind ? m : we did indeed imagine him to be such a one : or beleeved him to have been such to those ancients . b : but do lawes seeme to have been made according to the idea of him ? m : nothing more likely . b : a good king then is no less severe and inexorable , than a good law . m : he is even as severe : but since i can change neither , or ought to desire it , yet i would slaken both somewhat , if i can . b : but god desires not that mercy be shewed even to the poor in judgment , but commandeth us to respect that one thing which is just and equal , and to pronounce sentence accordingly . m : i do acknowledge that , and by truth am overcome . seing therefore it is not lawfull to loose kings from the bonds of lawes , who shal then be the lawgiver ? whom shall we give him as a pedagogue ? b : whom do you think fittest to performe this duty ? m : if you ask at me , i think the king himself . for in all other arts almost we see their precepts are given by the artists ; whereof they make use , as it were of comments , for confirming their memory , and putting others in mind of their duty . b : on the contrary i see no difference : let us grant that a king is at liberty and solved from the lawes , shall wee grant him the power to comand lawes ? for no man will willingly lay bonds and fetters upon himself . and i know not whether it be better to leave a man without bonds , or to fetter him with slight bonds , because he may rid himself thereof when he pleases . m : but when you concredit the helme of government rather to lawes than to kings , beware i pray you , lest you make him a tyrant , whom by name you make a king , who with authority doth oppress and with fetters and imprisonment doth bind , and so let him be sent back to the plough again , or to his former condition yet free of fetters . b : brave words : i impose no lord over him , but i would have it in the peoples power , who gave him the authority over themselves , to prescribe to him a modell of his government , and that the king may make use of that justice , which the people gave him over themselves . this i crave . i would not have these lawes to be by force imposed , as you interpret it , but i think that by a common council with the king , that should be generally established , which may generally tend to the good of all . m : you will then grant this liberty to the people ? b : even to the people indeed , unless perhaps you be of another mind . m : nothing seemes less equitable . b : why so ; m : you know that saying , a beast with many heads . you know , i suppose , how great the temerity and inconstancy of a people is . b : i did never imagine that that matter ought to be granted to the judgment of the whole people in general , but that near to our custome a select number out of all estates may conveen with the king in council . and then how soon an overturne by them is made , that it be deferred to the peoples judgment . m : i understand well enough your advice . but by this so carefull a caution you seem to help your self nothing . you will not have a king loosed from lawes , why ? because , i think , within man two most cruell monsters lust and wrath are in a continuall conflict with reason . lawes have been greatly desired , which might repress their boldness , and reduce them too much insulting , to regard a just government . what will these counsellours given by the people do ? are they not troubled by that same intestine conflict ? do they not conflict with the same evils as well as the king ? the more then you adjoyn to the king as assessors there will be the greater number of fools , from which you see what is to be expected . b : but i expect a far other thing than you suppose . now i shall tell you why i do expect it . first , it is not altogether true what you suppose , viz. that the assembling together of a multitude is to no purpose , of which number there will perhaps be none of a profound wit : for not only do many see more and understand more than one of them apart , but also more than one , albeit he exceed their wit and prudence . for a multitude for the most part doth better judge of all things , than single persons apart . for every one apart have some particular vertues , which being united together make up one excellent vertue , which may be evidently seen in physicians pharmacies , and especially in that antidot , which they call mithredat . for therein are many things of themselves hurtfull apart , which being compounded and mingled together make a wholesome remedy against poyson . in like manner in some men slowness and lingering doth hurt , in others a precipitant temerity , both which being mingled together in a multitude make a certain temperament and mediocrity , which we require to be in every kind of vertue . m : be it so , seeing you will have it so , let the people make lawes and execute them ; and let kings be as it were keepers of registers . but when lawes seeme to clash , or are not exact and perspicuous enough in sanctions , will you allow the king no interest ormedling here , especially since you will have him to judge all things by written lawes , there must needs ensue many absurdities . and , that i may make use of a very common example of that law commended in the schooles , if a stranger scale a wall , let him die , what can be more absurd than this , that the author of a publick safety ( who have thrust down the enemies pressing hard to be up ) should be drawn to punishment , as if he had in hostility attempted to scall the walls . b : that is nothing . m : you approve then that old saying , the highest justice is the highest injury . b. i do indeed . if any thing of this kind come into debate , there is need of a meek interpreter , who may not suffer the lawes which are made for the good of all to be calamitous to good men , and deprehended in no crime . b. you are very right , neither is there any thing else by me fought in all this dispute , ( if you have sufficiently noticed it ) than that ciceronian law might be venerable and inviolable salus populi suprema lex esto . if then any such thing shall come into debate , so that it be clear what is good & just , the kings duty will be to advert that the law may reach that rule i spoke of , but you in behalf of kings seems to require more , than the most imperious of them assume . for you know that this kind of questions is usually deferred to judges , when law seemeth to require one thing , and the lawgiver another : even as these lawes which arise from an ambiguous right or from the discord of lawes amongst themselves . therefore in such cases most grievous contentions of advocats arise in judicatories , and orators preceps are diligently produced . m. i know that to be done which you say . but in this case no less wrong seemes to be done to lawes than to kings . for i think it better to end that debate presently from the saying of one good man , than to grant the power of darkning rather than interpreting lawes to subtile men , and sometimes to crafty knaves ; for whilst not only contention ariseth betwixt advocat for the causes of parties contending , but also for glory , contests are nourished in the mean time , right or wrong , equity or iniquity is called in question : & what we deny to a king , we grant to men of inferiour rank , who study more to debate than to find out the truth . b. you seeme to me forgetfull of what we lately agreed upon . m. what is that ? b. that all things are to be so freely granted to an excellent king , as we have described him , that there might be no need of any lawes . but whilst this honour is conferred to one of the people , who is not much more excellent than others , or even inferiour to some , that free and loose licence from lawes is dangerous . m. but what ill doth that to the interpretation of law . b. very much . perhaps you do not consider , that in other words we restore to him that infinit and immoderat power , which formerly we denyed to a king , namely that according to his own hearts lust he may turn all things upside down . m. if i do that , then certainly i do it imprudently . b. i shall tell you more plainly , that you may understand it· when you grant the interpretation of lawes to a king , you grant him such a licence , as the law doth not tell what the lawgiver meaneth , or what is good and equall for all in generall , but what may make for the interpreters benefit , so that he may bend it to all actions for his own benefit or advantage , as the lesbian rule . ap. claudius in his decemviratus , made a very just law , that in a liberall cause or plea , sureties should be granted for liberty . what more clearly could have been spoken . but by interpreting the same author made his own law useless . you see ; i suppose how much liberty you give a prince by one cast , namely that what he pleaseth the law doth say , what pleaseth him not , it doth not say . if we shall once admit this , it will be to no purpose to make good lawes for teaching a good prince his duty ; and hemme in an ill king. yea , let me tell you more plainly , it would be better to have no lawes at all , than that freedom to steal should be tolerat , and also honoured under pretext of law. m. do you think that any king will be so impudent , that he will not at all have any regard of the fame and opinion that all men have of him ? or that he will be so forgetfull of his subjects , that he will degenerat into their pravity , whom he hath restrained by ignominy , imprisonment , confiscation of goods , & in a word with very grievous punishments ? b. let us not believe that these things will be , if they had not been done not long ago & that to the exceeding great hurt of the whole world . m. where do you tell these things were done ? b ▪ do you ask , where ? as if all the nations in europe did not only see , but feele also how much mischief hath the immoderat power , and unbridled tyranny of the pope of rome brought upon humane affaires . even that power which from small beginning & seemingly honest he had got , every man doth know that no less can be feared by unwary persons . at first , lawes were proposed to us , not only drawn out of the innermost secrets of nature , but given by god himself , explaind by the prophets from the holy spirit , at last by the son of god , & by the same god confirmed , committed to the writings of those praise worthy men , expressed in their life , & sealed with their blood . neither is there in the whole law any other place more carefully , commendably , or more clearly delivered , than that of the office of bishops . now seeing it is lawfull to no man to add any thing to these lawes , to abrogat or derogat ought therefrom , or to change any thing therein , there did remain but one interpretation , & whilst the pope did arrogat it , he not only did oppress the rest of the churches , but claimed a tyrranny the most cruell of all that ever were , daring to command not only men but angels also , plainly reducing christ into order , if this be not to reduce him into order , that what thou wilt have done in heaven , in earth & amongst the damned in hell , be ratified : what christ hath commanded , let it be ratified , if thou wilt ; for if the law seeme to make but little for your behoofe , interpreting it thus you may back-bend it , so that not only by your mouth , but also according to the judgment of your mind christ is constrained to speak . christ therefore speaking by the mouth of the pope , pipin is set in childericks place of government , ferdinandus of arragon substitute to john king of navarre : the son arose in armes against his father , and subjects against their king. christ is full of poison , then he is forced by witches , so that he killeth henry of luxemburg by poison . m. i have heard these things often before , but i desire to hear more plainly somewhat of that interpretation of lawes , b. i shall offer you one example , from which you may easily understand , how much this whole kind is able to do . the law is , a bishop must be the husband of one wife , than which law what is more clear , & what may be said more plain ? one wife , ( saith the law ) one church , ( saith the pope ) such is his interpretation . as if that law were made not to repress the lust of bishops but their avarice . now this explanation , albeit it saith nothing to the purpose , yet doth contain a judgment honest and pious , if he had not vitiated that law again by another interpretation . what doth therefore the pope devise for excuse ? it varieth ( saith he ) in regard of persons , cases , places & times . some are of that eminent disposition , that no number of churches can satisfy their pride . some churches again are so poor , that they cannot maintain him who was lately a begging monk , if he now have a mitre , if he would maintain the name of a bishop . there is a reason invented from that crafty interpretation of the law , that they may be called bishops of one church , or other churches given them in commendam , and all may be robbed . time would faile me , if i should reckon up the cheats , which are daily excogitat against one law. but albeit these things be most unbeseeming as well the name of a pope , as of a christian , yet their tyranny rests not here . for such is the nature of all things , that when they once begin to fall they never stay untill they fall headlongs into destruction . will you have me to shew you this by a famous example ? do you not remember upon any of the roman emperours blood who was more cruell and wicked than c. caligula ? m. there was none that i know of . b. now what was his most nefarious villany think you ? i do not speak of those deeds which popes do reckon up in some reserved cases , but in the rest of his life . m. i do not at present remember . b. what do you think of that , that having called upon his horse , he invited him to sup with him ? set a golden grain of barley before him , and made him consul ? m. indeed it was most impiously done b. what think you of that , how he made the same horse his colleague in the priesthood ? m. do you tell me that in good earnest ? b. indeed in good earnest , nor do i admire that these things seeme to you feigned . but that roman jupiter of ours hath done such things , that those things done by caligula may seem true to posterity . i say pope julius the third , who seemes contended with c. caligula a most wicked wretch for preheminence of impiety . m. what did he of that kind ? b. he made his ape-keeper , a man almost more vile than the vilest beast , his colleague in the papary . m. perhaps there was another cause of choosing him . b. some are reported indeed , but i have picked out the most honest . seeing then so great a contempt not only of the priesthood , but also a forgetfulness of humanity arise from this freedome of interpreting lawes , beware you think that to be a small power . m. but the ancients seeme not to have thought it so great a business of interpreting , as you would have it seeme to be . which by this one argument may be understood , because the roman emperours granted it to lawyers : which one reason doth overturne your whole tedious dispute , nor doth it only refute what you spoke of the greatness of that power , but that also which you most shun , it perspicuously declareth what power they granted to others of answering rightly , was not denyed to themselves , if they had been pleased to exerce that office , or could have done it by reason of greater affaires . b : as for those roman emperours , whom the souldiers did choose indeliberatly , & without any regard to the common good of all , these fall not under this notion of kings which we have described so that by those that were most wicked were they chosen who for the most part were most wicked , or else laid hold upon the government by violence . now i do not reprehend them for granting power to lawyers to interpret the law. and albeit that power be very great , as i have said before , it is notwithstanding more safely concredited to them to whom it cannot be an instrument of tyranny . moreover it was concredited to many whom mutuall reverence did hold within the bounds of duty , that if one decline from equity , he might be refuted by another . and if they should have all agreed together into fraud ; the help of the judge was above them , who was not obliged to hold for law what ever was given by lawyers for an answer . and over all was the emperour , who might punish the breach of lawes . they beeing astricted by so many bonds were hemmed in , and did fear a more grievous punishment , than any reward of fraud they could expect : you see , i suppose then that the danger to be feared from such kind of men was not so great . m. have you no more to say of a king ? b. first , if you please , let us collect together , what is already spoken , so that the more easily we may understand , if any thing be omitted . m. i think we should do so . b. we seemed to be at accord sufficiently concerning the origine & cause of creating kings , & making lawes , but of the lawgiver not so : but at last , though somewhat unwillingly i seeme to have consented , being enforced by the strength of truth . m. certainly you have not only taken from a king the power of commanding lawes , but also of interpreting them , even whilst i as an advocat strongly protested against it . wherein i am afraid , if the matter come to publick hearing , lest i be accused of prevarication , for having so easily suffered a good cause , as it seemed at first , to be wrung out of my hands . b. be of good courage : for if any accuse you of prevarication in this case , i promise to be your defence . m. perhaps we will find that shortly . b. there seems to be many kinds of affaires which can be comprehended within no lawes , whereof we laid over a part on ordinary judges , & a part on the kings councill by the kings consent . m. i do remember we did so indeed . and when you was doing that , wot you what came into my mind ? b. how can i , unless you tell me ? m. me thought you made kings in a manner like stone seals , which for the most part so seeme to lean on the tops of pillars as if they did sustain the whole fabrick : whereas in effect they bear no more burden , than any other stone . b. what ? good advocat of kings , do you complain that i lay on them a little burden , seeing both day and night they do nothing else , than seek out others to bear burden with them , or upon whom they may altogether lay the burden , & so disburden themselves . and in the mean time you seeme to take it in ill part that i afford them help labouring under their burden . m. i also very willingly admit these auxiliaries , but such would i have as may serve , but not command , such as may shew the way , but not lead in the way , or more truly draw , or rush them forward as some warlike engine , and leave a king no other power but to assent to them . therefore i presently expect that having ended our discourse concerning a king , you would step aside to speak of tyrants , or some where else . for you have inclosed a king within so narrow bounds , that i am afraid , lest , if we tarry longer therein , you drive him out of his greatest wealth , & highest dignity , & banish him as it were into some desert island , where , being spoiled of all his honour he wax old in poverty & misery . b. you feared , as you pretend , the crime of prevarication ; but i am afraid , lest in calumniating you wrong the king , whom you endeavour to defend . first , i would not have him to be idle , unless you would appoint idle master builders , secondly , you deprive him of good ministers & friends , whom i have adjoyned unto him not as keepers , but would have them called by him to bear a part of his labour , & these being driven away you surround him with a band of knaves , who make him to be feared by his subjects , neither do you think he will be formidable , unless we allow him a great power of doing wrong . i would have him to be by his subjects beloved , not to be guarded by the terrour , but goodwill of his subjects , which armes alone do make kings invincible , unless you gainsay this , i trust i shall shortly prove it . for i shall lead him out of these you call straits into light : & by one law shall give him so much authority and enlargment , that if he desire more , he may seeme impudent . m. indeed i long to heare that . b. i shall then fall upon that matter , that i may satisfy your desire as soon as i can . a little before we have confessed , that no law can be so accurately cautioned concerning any affair , but that malicious subtilty may invent some fraud . this perhaps will be the better understood by the example already proposed . by the law it is ordained , that no parents transmit their benefices to their bastards . here in effect the law seemes clear , yet a cheat is found out : that the father substitute some other man , & that he may deliver that same benefice to the bastard of the former possessor . thereafter , when as it was carefully ordained by law , that the son should by no means enjoy that benefice which his father had possessed before : yet by this caution it was never a white the better . for against that law a paction was found out amongst priests , that each of them should substitute the son of the other in his office . and when that was also forbidden , the law was also eluded by another kind of cheat : a pretender was set up against the father , who might pretend he had a right to that benefice . whilst the father seemingly is a contending with this supposed sycophant , the son doth petition the pope for the benefice , if so be that the right unto that benefice belong not to either of the parties contending for it , and so the son by his fathers prevarication doth enjoy his fathers benefice , and over cometh both the parties , who willingly & freely yeeld up their plea. thus you soe how many kinds of cheats are invented against one law. m. i see it . b. do not lawgivers seeme to do altogether the same herein which physicians do , who whilst they endeavour by applying a plaister to compesce the eruptions of flegme , or of some other hurtfull humour , the humour restrained in one place seeks issue in many places at once : & as a certain hydra having one head cut off , many heads start up in place of one . m. nothing more like . b. what was incumbent for a physician to do at first for freeing the whole body at once of peccant humours . ought not the politik physician to do the same in this case , for freeing the whole common wealth of evill manners ? m : i think that to be the right way of cure , albeit it be difficult . b· and if this can be obtained , i think there would be need of few lawes . m. it is indeed so . b. doth not he alone seeme to conferre more for the publick good who can apply this remedy , than all the conventions of all estates met for making of lawes ? m. doubtless far more . but that i may make use of the comick poets words , who is able to undertake so weighty a charge . b. what if we shall lay it over on the king ? m. merrily spoken indeed . what was soon done and easy you have committed to the whole people : but if any thing be difficult and intricat , you will lay it over upon the king alone , as if you thought him not sufficiently bound tying him round about with so many fetters , unless you lay upon him a most grievous burden under which he may also succumbe . b. it is not so , but we contend for a business easy for him to be done , we beseech , he would suffer himself to be exorable . m. what is that , i pray ? b. that as fathers ought to carry towards their children , so in all his life he would behave himself towards his subjects whom he ought to account as children . m. what is that to the purpose in hand ? b. surely this one is certainly the chiefest remedy against corrupt manners , and lest you suppose that it is an invention of mine , hear what claudianus saith . thou king must as a father rule thy subjects , and no less have a care of all than of they self ; let not thy own desire only move thee , but also the publick desires of thy people . if thou commandest ought to be done by all , and to be obeyed , obey the same first thy self . then will the people become the more observant of equity , nor will refuse to bear any burden , when they see their king himself obedient to what he commands . the whole world doth act conforme to the example of a king. the lawes of kings prevaile not so much to incline mens minds unto obedience , as the conversation of the rulers . for the fluctuating multitude doth alwayes change as their prince doth . do not imagine that the poet pregnant for understanding & learning did in vain believe so great force to be herein , for people are so addicted to the imitation of kings , in whom any image of honesty doth shine or appeare , and so endeavour to express their manners , that whose vertue they admire , they endeavour also to imitat some of their vices in speech , apparell in deport . but in conforming themselves to the king in gesture , manners of speech they not only desire to imitat him , but also by flattery they insinuat themselves into the minds of great ones , & by these arts they hunt after riches , honour , and preferment , because they know we have it by nature , that we love not only our selves , and our own concernes , but embrace our own likeness though vicious in others . now that which we demand not wickedly and arrogantly , but by intreaty endeavour to obtain , hath a far greater force , than the threatnings of lawes , the ostentation of punishments , or armies of souldiers . this reduceth a people without force into modesty , conciliateth to a king his subjects good-liking , increaseth and maintaineth the publick tranquillity , and the wealth of every one severally . let therefore a king carefully consider , that he is set on the theatre of the world , and for a spectacle proposed to all , so as no word or deed of his can be concealed , the vices of kings can never be kept secret . for the supream light of fate suffers nothing to ly hid in obscurity , and fame enters into all secret places , and finds out obscure corners . o how much doth it concerne kings to be circumspect on all hands ; seeing neither their vices nor their vertues can be concealed , nor yet without a great universall change of affaires . but if any do yet doubt , what great importance there is in the conversation of a prince , for the emendation of the publick discipline , let him take but a view of the small beginning of the state of rome . that rude people consisting of shepherds and countrey in habitants , i shall not say worse , naturally fierce , having got a very cour●gious king , and having pitched once their tents , for soliciting the peace of the neighbouring nations , and provoking them to fight , how much do you think of hatred and fear was bred in their neighbours ? when again that very same people had set over them a pious and just king , they were so suddenly changed , that being wholly devoted to the worship of their gods and to acts of justice , that to wrong them their neighbours judged it a crime , even those very neighbours , i say , whose lands before they had laid waste , whose cities they had burnt , and their children and kinsmen they had carried away into bondage . now if in that barbarity of manners , & rudeness of times numa pompilius , ( who a little before was brought out of another nation at enmity with them , and made king ) could do so much : what shall wee xpect , or rather , what shall we not expect of those princes , who being supported by affinity , vassalls , and much wealth left them by their ancestors , obtain the government ? and are born and brought up in expectation thereof . now how much should it stirre up their minds unto vertue , that they hope to have the praise not of one day , as stage-players do , the scene being once past , but the goodwill , admiration , and perpetuall remembrance of their life to all posterity , and know that honours in heaven are prepared for them ? i wish i could express in words the representation of that honour which in mind i have conceived . now that i may somewhat propose unto your view the same by some of the first draughts and lineaments thereof , consider with your self , how the brasen serpent erected by moses in the desert of arabia , did heal the wounds made by other serpents by a very look of the people thereon . imagine that out of the whole people there were some stung by serpents , and running together for present cure , others astonished at the newness of the miracle , and all celebrating with all kind of praise the immense and incredible goodness of god : when they perceive that the pain of that deadly wound was not taken away , either by medicaments , with the torment of the patient , by the physicians labour and assiduous carefulness of friends , nor by any long space of time , but reduced unto health in a moment . compare now a king with that serpent , and so compare him , that you may reckon a good king amongst the greatest benefits of god who alone without any expence of thine , and without thy paines and labour , doth relieve a kingdome of all its troubles , setleth perturbations , and in a short space bringeth the inveterat ulcers of minds unto a cicatrice or scar : neither is he only a procurer of health to those who behold him near at hand , but also to such as are a far off , and have no hope to see him , in whose image so great a force is presented to the minds of his subjects , that it doth easily performe what the prudence of lawyers , the science of philosophers , and the experience of so many ages in collecting their severall arts could never performe . now what greater honour , dignity , eminency or majesty can be told or excogitat to be in any man , that by speech , converse , sight , fame , and a tacite species presented to the mind , he may reduce the most luxurious to modesty , the violent to equity , and those that are furious unto a right mind . can you ask of god a greater benefit than this so much for the good of mans concernes ? if i mistake not , this is the true representation of a king , not that of a king guarded with weapons of war , ever fearing others , or making others afraid , by his hatred towards his people measuring his peoples hatred against him . this representation which we have given , seneca in his thyestes hath expressed in very pleasant colours , which verse i doubt not but you know , seeing it is most elegant . do i now seeme to speak basely and contemptuously of a king ? and bind him fast loaded with the fetters of lawes within a goale , as you did lately say ? and not rather do bring him forth into light , and assemblies of men , and set him upon the publick theatre of mankind , accompanied not with the arrogant company of archers and armed men , and rogues cloathed in silk , but guarded in safety by his own innocency , not with the terrour of armes , but by the love of his people : and not only at freedome and set aloft , but honoured , venerable , sacred , and eminent , and coming forth with the good wishes and fortunat acclamations of the people , and whithersoever he goeth , turning the faces , eyes and hearts of all towards him . what acclamation , or what triumph can be compared with this daily pomp ? or if god in humane likeness should come down into earth , what greater honour could be given him by men , than that which would be given to a true king , that is to the lively image of god ? for neither can love bestow , nor flattery invent a greater honour than this . what do you think of this representation of a king ? m. so splendide & magnificent indeed it is , that it seemes nothing can be said or imagined more magnificent . but in these corrupt times of ours , it is hard to find this magnanimity , unless carefull education make an honest and good nature and disposition . for the mind being principled with good instructions and acts from infancy , and by age and daily practice confirmed , endeavours by vertue to attain to true glory ; in vain it is tempted by the allurements of lusts , or weakned by the impressions of adversity . for thus learning doth perfect naturall parts , and good breeding doth strengthen the mind : so that it findeth occasion of exercising vertue amongst the very recreations of pleasures , and these things which usually terrify weak ones , by reason of difficulty , vertue doth account them as a matter of praise . seeing then there is so great importance in learning for all conditions of life , with what great care and solicitude should men foresee , that the tender minds of kings be righly principled , even from their very infancy . for seeing many are the benefits of good kings towards their subjects , and contrary wise , many calamities proceed from wicked princes , than nothing doth seeme to have a greater influence upon every rank of men , than the cariage and conversation of kings and others , who joyntly rule publick affaires . for what is done well or ill by private persons , is for the most part hid from the multitude : or by reason of such mens obscure condition their example belongeth to few . but all the words and deeds of those , wh● hold the helme of publick affaires ; canno● be concealed , beeing written as it were 〈◊〉 a publick monument , as horace saith , but ar● set before all men for imitation . for the● do not turne mens affections to themselves 〈◊〉 studying to please them , but by very kindl● allurements of utility . and whither soeve● the inclinations of kings do drive , they mak● the publick discipline wheele about wit● them . but i am afraid , that our kings wi●● not be intreated to performe what you hav● now mentioned . for they are so marred by th● allurements of pleasures , & deceived with th● false shew of honour , that i think they 〈◊〉 almost that which some poets report to hav● befallen the trojans who were in compan● at sea with paris . for the true helena bein● left in egypt with protheus a holy and truel● religious man , they did contend so pertina●ciously the space of ten years for her likeness that it was the end of a most pernicious war and of the most flourishing kingdome in thos● times . for impotent tyrants embracin● that false representation of a kingdome when they have once obtained it by right 〈◊〉 wrong , cannot lose it without destruction now if any do admonish them , that the tru● helena for whom they imagine to fight , is els● where concealed , they would call him ma● ▪ b. i am indeed glad that you somewhat unde●●stand the beauty of that true daughter 〈◊〉 jupiter from this her likeness , such as it is , albeit you do not see her self . but if these lovers of that helena , to their great dammage , did see the perfect image of the true helena , pourtrayed with her lively colours by some protegenes or appelles , i do not question but they would admire her and fall in love with her . and if they did not command their affections to enjoy that other , they might fall into those grievous punishments , which perseus in his satyres doth imprecat on tyrants . o supream father of the gods , be pleased thus to punish cruell tyrants , when any execrable lust dipt in raging poyson doth stirre up their spirits , let them see what vertue is , and let them pine away for sorrow , because they despised her . and therefore seeing we are fallen in to make mention of tyrrants , may it please you , that straight way we proceed to speak of them ? m. yea , unless you think some other thing should be first spoken . b. i suppose we shall not deviat , if we proceed in the same footsteps for finding out a tyrant , wherein we did insist in seeking out a king. m. i think so . for by that means we shall very easily understand what difference there is betwixt them , if set one against another they be duely considered . b. and first of all that we may begin at a tyrants name , of what language , it is uncertain . i therefore think it now necessary for us to seek therein the greek , or latine etymology . now what the ancients did call tyranny , i think is not unknown to any who are well versed in humane literature . for tyrants were called both by the greeks and latines , who had the full power of all things in their hands , which power was not astricted by any bonds of lawes , nor obnoxious to the cognition of judges . therefore in both languages , as you know , not only the noble heroes , and most famous men , but the chiefest of the gods , and so jupiter also is called tyrannus : and that even by those who both think and speak honourably of the gods. m. i know indeed that well enough : and the rather i much admire , whence it is come to pass , that that name now for so many ages is accounted odious , and also amongst the most grievous reproaches . b. it seemes certainly to have fallen out in this word , which happeneth to be in many others : for if you consider the nature of words , it hath no evill i● it . and albeit some words have a more pleasant sound in the ears of hearers , and others a more unpleasant , yet of themselves they have no such thing , so as to stirre up the mind to wrath , hatred , or hilarity , or otherwise to creat pleasure or pain and trouble if any such thing befall us , that happens to fall out usually , not from the word , but from the consuetude of men , and image thereof conceived by the hearers . therefore a word which amongst some men 〈◊〉 honest , amongst others cannot be heard ●ith some preface of , with reverence . m : ● remember that the like is befallen the ●ames of nero and judas , whereof the one ●mongst the romans , and the other amongst ●he jewes was accounted by great men very ●amous and honourable . but thereafter by ●o fault of these names , but of these two ●en , it hath come to pass , that even the ●ost flagitious men will not have these names ●o be given their children : they being buried ●nder such infamy . b : the same also is ●erspicuous to have befallen the word tyrant , ●or it is credible , that the first magistrats , ●ho were thus called , were good men ; or ●rom hence , that this name was sometime so ●onourable , that it was attribut to the gods. ●ut those that came afterward made it so famous by their wicked deeds , that all ●en abhorred it as contagious and pestilen●ous , and thought it a more light reproach 〈◊〉 be called an hang-man than a tyrant . m : ●erhaps it was the same as befell the kings 〈◊〉 rome after the tarquinii were deposed in ●●e name dictator after m. antonius and 〈◊〉 : dolabella were consuls . b : just so . and ●● the contrary , base and vulgar names have ●een made famous by the vertue of men ●●lled thereby . as amongst the romans , ●●millus , metellus , scropha : and amongst ●●e germans , henry , genserick , charles . ●his you shall the better understand , if taking away the name of tyrant , you consider the thing , notwitstanding that this kind of government hath continued in its former honour and respect amongst many famous nations , as the aesymnetae amongst the greecians , and the dictators amongst the romans : for both were lawfull tyrants . now tyrants they were , being more powerfull than the lawes but lawfull they were , as being chosen by consent of the people . m : what am i hearing ? tyrants and yet lawfull ? indeed i did expect a far other thing from you : bu● now you seeme to confound the difference of all kings and tyrants . b : indeed bo●● kings and tyrants amongst the ancien● seeme to have been altogether one and th● same ; but i suppose in diverse ages : for 〈◊〉 think the name of tyrants was more ancient thereafter when they became weary of t●● name , in their place succeeded kings 〈◊〉 more plausible name , and more gentle g●●vernment , and when they also began to degenerat , the moderation of lawes 〈◊〉 adhibited , which might set limites to th● boundless lusts of their government . 〈◊〉 men according to the exigence of times , 〈◊〉 their usuall way , seeking out new remedi● became weary of the old way of government and sought out new wayes . now our prese●● purpose is to handle both kinds of govern●ment , namely that wherein as well the ●●●vernment of kings as of lawes is the 〈◊〉 ●owerfull : and the worst kind of tyranny , ●herein all things are contrary to a king●ome , and have undertaken to compare ●hem one with another . m : it is so . and earnestly expect you would fall upon that . b : at first then we had agreed , that a king was created for maintaining humane society , ●nd we determined his office and duty , that by the prescript of lawes he should allow every man his own . m : i do remember ●hat . b : first then , he that doth not receive ● government by the will of the people , but ●y force invadeth it , or intercepteth it by fraude , how shall we call him ? m : i suppose , a tyrant . b. there be also many other differences , which i shall briefly run through , because any man may easily collect them from aristotle : for the government of kings is according to nature , but that of tyrants is not . a king doth rule his subjects , and reigne over them by their own consent . tyrants reigne over them nill they , will they . a kingdome is a principality of a free man among free men : tyranny is a principality of a master over his slaves . for defence of a kings safety the subjects watch and ward , for a tyrant forrainers do watch to oppress the subjects . the one beareth rule for the subjects welfare , the other for himself . m. what do you say of those who have gotten into their hand the supreame authority by force and without the peoples consent , and yet for many years did so rule that the people were not weary of their government ? for what could be wanting in hiero the syracusan king , or in cosmo 〈◊〉 mediees the florentine duke to make them just kings , except the peoples suffrages ? b. indeed we cannot exeeme them out of the number of tyrants . for it was nobly spoken by a notable historian , albeit you may indeed rule your countrey and friends by violence and force , and correct their faults , yet it is unseasonable . then again , such do seeme to do just like robbers , who cunningly dividing their ill gotten goods , do seek the praise o● justice by injury , and of liberality by robbery ▪ yet do not obtain what they hunt for ; by the odiousness of one ill deed they lose all the thanks of their ostentative bounty , and so much the less assurance of their civill disposition do they give their subjects , and that because they do not that for their subjects good , but for their own government , namely , that they the more securely may enjoy their own lusts and pleasures , and establish a soveraignty over the posterity to come , having somewhat mitigated the peoples hatred . which when they have once done , they turne back again to their old manners . for the fruit which is to follow may easily be known by the sower thereof . for he hath the same strength and power to revoke all things at his pleasure , and to transferre unto himself the strength of all lawes , even as if he would abrogat all lawes . but this kind of tyrants had been perhaps tolerable , if without the common destruction of all it could have been taken away , even as we do endure some bodily diseases rather than throw our life into the hazard of a doubtsome cure . but they who bear rule , not for their countrey 's good , but for their own self interests , have no regard to the publick utility , but to their own pleasure and lust , they place the stability of their authority in the peoples weakness , and think that a kingdom is not a procuration concredited to them by god , but rather a prey put into their hands . such are not joyned to us by any civil bond , or bond of humanity , but should be accounted the greatest enemies of god and of all men . for all the actions of kings should aime at the publick safety of their subjects , and not at their own wealth . by how much kings are raised above other men , so much should they imitat the celestiall bodies , which having no good offices of ours given to them , yet do infuse on humane affaires a vital and bountifull vertue of heat and light . yea the very titles wherewith we have honoured kings ( if you remember ) might put them in mind of their munificence . m : me thinks i remember , namely , that they should use a paternal indulgence towards their subjects committed to them as towards children ; the care of a shepherd in procuring their profit : as generals in maintaining their safety , as governours in excellency of vertues , and as emperours commanding those things which might be usefull . b. can he then be called a father , who accounts his subjects slaves ? or a shepherd , who doth not feed his flock , but devoureth them ? or a pilot , who doth alwayes study to make shipwrack of the goods in his ship , and who ( as they say ) makes a leck in the very ship wherein he sailes ? m. by no means . b. what is he then , who doth not rule for the peoples good , but still doth all for himself , who doth not strive with good men in vertue , but contendeth to exceed the most flagitious wretch in vices ? who leadeth his subjects into manifest snares ? m. indeed such shall not be by me accounted either a generall , or emperour , or governour . b. if you then shal see any usurping the name of a king , and in no kind of vertue excelling any of the people , but inferiour to many therein , not fatherly affectionat towards his subjects , but rather oppressing them by arrogant domineering , and that thinketh the people is concredited to him for his own gain and not for their safeguard ; will you imagine that such a man is truely a king , albeit he goes vapouring with a great many in guard about him , and openly be seen with gorgeous aparrell , and make a shew of punishments ; can he conciliat the people , and catch their applause by rewards , games , pompous shewes , and even mad underminings , and what ever is thought to be magnificent ; will you , i say , account such a man a king ? m. not indeed , if i would understand my self aright , but void of all humane society . b. within what limites do you circumscribe humane society ; m. within the very same limites wherein by your preceeding discourse you seemed to include it , namely within the hedge of lawes . which whosoever transgress , be they robbers , thieves , or adulteres , i see them publickly punished , and that to be accounted a just cause of their punishment , because they transgressed the limites of humane society . b. what say you of those , who would never once enter within these hedges ? m. i think they should be accounted enemies to god and men , and reckoned amongst wolves , or some other kind of noisome beasts , rather than amongst men : which whosoever doth nourish , he nourisheth them for his own destruction and others : & whosoever killeth them , doth not only good to himself , but to all others . but if i had power to make a law , i would command ( which the romans were wont to do with monsters ) such kind of men to be carried away into solitary places , or to be drowned in the depths of the sea afar from the sight of any land , lest by the contagion of their carcases they might infect other men . and rewards to the killers of them to be discerned not only by the whole people , but by every particula● person : as useth to be done to those who have killed wolves or namely that these spirits beares , or apprehended their whelpes . for if such a monster should be borne , & speak with a mans voice , & have the face of a man , & likeness of other parts , i would have no fellowship with him ; or if any man divested of humanity should degenerat into such cruelty , as he would not meet with other men but for their destruction , i think he should be called a man no more than satyres , apes , or bears , albeit they should resemble man in countenance , gesture and speech . b. now , if i mistake not , you understand what a king , and what a tyrant the wisest ancients meant in their writings . will it please you then that we propose some idea of a tyrant also , such as we gave in speaking of a king ? m. yes , that i do earnestly desire , if it be not a trouble to you . b. you have not forgot , i suppose , what by the poets is spoken of the furies , and by our divines of the nature of evill spirits , are enemies of mankind , who whilst they are in perpetuall torments , yet do rejoice in the torments of men . this is indeed the true idea of tyranny . but because this idea can only be discerned in the imagination , but not by any of the senses , i shall set before you another idea , which not only the mind may discerne , but the senses also perceive , and as it were represented to the very eye . imagine you see a ship tossed by waves in the sea , and all the shoares round about not only without haven or harbour but also full of most cruell enemies , and the master of the ship in contest with the company , and yet to have no other hope of safety than in their fidelity , and the same not certain , as knowing well that he puts his life into the hands of a most barbarous kind of men , and void of all humanity , whom by money he may hold trusty , and who for greater gain may be conduced to fight against him . such indeed is that life which tyrants embrace as happy . they are afraid of enemies abroad , and of their subjects at home , and not only of their subjects , but of their domesticks , kinsfolk , brethren , wives , children , and near relations . and therefore they have alwayes war , either a forrain war with their neighbours , civil war with their subjects , or a domestick war within doores , or else they are still in fear thereof . neither do they expect aid any where but by a mercenary way , they dare not hire good men , nor can they trust bad men ; what then in all their life can be to them pleasant ? dionysius would not let his daughters once become women to trim him , fearing to let the razor come to his throat . temoleon was killed by his own brother , alexander pheraeus by his own wife , and sp : cassias by his own father . he that still hath such examples set before his eyes , what a torture do you imagine he carryeth about in his breast ? seeing he thinks that he is the mark set for all mankind to shoot at . neither is he only while awake tormented with these tortures of conscience , but also is awakned out of his sleep by terrifying sights both of the living and dead , and agitat by the fire brands of hellish furies . for the season which nature doth grant for rest to all creatures , and also to men for relaxation of their cares , to him is turned into horrours and punishment . m. forsooth you have handled these things very acutely , but i know not if truely also , but yet , if i mistake not , they make not so much for our purpose . for they who have the power to choose what kings they please , in them is the power to bind by lawes such as they have chosen . but you know that our kings are not chosen , but born kings . to whom i have alwayes thought it to be no less hereditary , that their will and pleasure should stand for law , than the kingdome it self . nor am i rashly induced to be of this opinion , but convinced by severall great authors , with whom i am not ashamed to be mistaken , ( if at all i be in any mistake or errour . ) for not to make mention of others , lawyers do affirme , that by the royall law which is made for the government of kings , all the peoples power is so transmitted into them , that their will and pleasure should be accounted for lawes . and indeed from this law did those threatnings of a certain emperour arise , that he would quite take away from lawyers all their science , wherein they so much boast , by one edict . b. you do very well , that whilst you cite a most wicked author of one of the greatest deeds , thought good to suppress his name . for that was c , caligula , who wished but one neck for all the people of rome . now in that emperour there was nothing of a man , far less of a king , beside his shape , you are not then ignorant how much authority may be due to him . but as for the royal law ▪ what it is , when , by whom , and in what words it was made the very lawyers make no mention . for that power was never in any of the roman emperours , seeing from them appeals were made to the people . but that ordinance , whereby l : flaccus having oppressed the liberty of the people of rome , established by the silence of other lawes ; the tyranny of l : sylla , no man did ever hold for a law . for of that ordinance such was the strength , that whatever l : sylla had done , should be ratified , which law never any free people was so infatuat , as willingly to permit to be imposed on them . or if any such were , he were indeed worthy to serve perpetually tyrants , and be punished for his folly . but if any such law have been , let us think it was an example proposed to us for caution , but not for imitation . m. indeed you admonish well . but that admonition belongeth to them in whose power it is to creat such kings as most please them , but to us it doth not at all belong , who do not by suffrages elect the best kings , but accept of those that by chance are given us . that also of a certain lawyer seemes properly to quadrat with us , who have given to our kings ancestors that right and authority over us and our posterity , that they and their posterity should perpetually hold their empire and authority over us . i wish then you had admonished them ( i mean our ancestors ) who once had it in their own power entirely to admit such kings as they pleased . but now that counsell of yours too late serves only for this , not to amend the faults that are not in our power , but deplore our ancestors folly , and acknowledge the misery of our condition . for what can be left to those that are made slaves , but to be punished for other mens folly ? and that our punishment may be made more light , let us asswage them by patience : let us not provoke their wrath , by tumultuating importunely , whose dominion over us we cannot cast off , nor diminish their power , nor flee from their force or weakness . now that royal law , to which you are so much an adversary , was not made in favours of tyrants , as you would have it seeme to be , because it was approved by justinian a very just prince . with whom so plain flattery would not have had place . for with a foolish prince that of the poet would prevaile whom doth false honour help , or lying infamy terrify , but a lewd man and a lyar ? b. indeed justinian , as history reports , was a great mighty man albeit some do report him to have been cruelly ingrate to bellisarius . but let him be such as you judge he was , yet you may remember , that it is recorded by some almost of that same age with him , that tribonius , a chief man amongst the compilers of these lawes , was a very wicked man , and so might easily be induced to gratify also a very bad prince . but even good princes do not hate this kind of flattery . for even those who will not kill any man , do yet desire to have it in their power , and there is nothing which he dare not believe of himself , seeing his power equall to that of the gods is commended . but let us returne to our own princes : to whom you say the kingdome doth come by inheritance and not by suffrages . now of our own only i speak , for if i shall digress to speak of forrain princes , i fear lest our discourse become more prolixe than we intended . m. i think you should do so . for forrain affaires do not much belong to our dispute in hand . b. that i may therefore begin at the first principles . this is sufficiently agreed upon , that our princes were chosen for their vertue , who should governe others . m. so do the writers of our affaires record . b. nor is this less known , that many who have reigned cruelly and wickedly have been called to account by their subjects : some adjudged to perpetuall imprisonment , others punished partly by exile , and partly by death , against whose killers no inquisition was ever made , even when their sons or kinsmen were assumed into their stead . but who ever had killed good kings , were most severely punished , so as no where else was murther more severely revenged . and because it would be tedious to rehearse every one , i shall produce some few of these last kings , whose memory is most recent . the nobility did so grievously punish the murther of james the first , ( having left as heir his son● of six years of age ) that by a new and exquisit kind of punishment they put to death severall persons of very eminent families , and peers of the land , both for wealth and vassalage eminent : on the contrary , who did condole the death of james the third , a man flagitious and cruell ? far less revenge it ? but in the death of james the fourth his son , the suspition of the crime was punished with death , neither were our ancestors piously inclined towards good kings , but also gentle & mercifull towards wicked kings . for when one of king culen's enemies had killed him in his journey , whilst he is coming to give an ●ccount of his administration , he was severe●y punished by a sentence of the estates of ●arliament . and likewise was punished as 〈◊〉 enemy he who had killed evenus in prison , who had been adjudged to perpetuall bonds . and the violent death or parricide of him ●hey punished , whose wicked and vicious ●ife oll men had hated , m. i do not so much ●nquire at present what some time hath been done , as by what right kings reigne amongst us . b. that we may therefore returne there●nto , as in our first kings until kenneth the ●hird , who first setled the kingdome in his own family , it is very clear what was the peoples power in creating their kings , and ●aking order with them , even so it is necessary we know , that he either did that against the peoples will , or by perswasion obtained it m. that cannot be denied . b. moreover , if by force he compelled the people to obey him , then how soone the people began to have confidence in their own strength , they might have cast off that violent yoke of government imposed upon them : seeing all lawes received by kings and people do pronounce , and nature it self doth call for it , that whatever is done by force and violence , may be undone by the like violence . m. what if the people being by fraud eircumvented , or by fear forced did surrender themselves into that slavery : what for excuse can be pretended , but that they perpetually continue in that case , into which it was once agreed they were to be in ? b. i● you debate with me from that agreement what excuse there is for undoing the same i shall on the other hand lay down some reasons why pactions and agreements may be dissolved . and first of all , such as are made through force or fear , in all common-wealths concerning these there is a sure law , draw● from natures spring . lawes allow restitution to be fully made to such as are by frau● circumvented , and think that it should be kept for pupills , and such other persons ▪ who by just law they would have to be defended . what assembly therefore of me● can require more justly to have restitution than a whole people , to whom the wrong is done , which indeed is not done against one part of the commonwealth , but floweth fa● abroad into all the members of that politick body ? m. i know this law to be made use of in the cases of private persons , nor is it unjust . but there is no necessity we should debate herein , seeing it is far more credible ( which is recorded by historians ) that tha● right was by the peoples will granted to kings . b. it is also credible that so great a matter was not obtained without some great cause . m. i do easily assent thereto . b. what do you think was the chief cause thereof ? m. what other , except that which is recorded ? wearisomness of ambition , tumults , murthers , intestine wars , often with with the utter destruction of the one party , and alwayes with very great dammage of ●oth . for such as did obtain the government , endeavoured to cut-off their brethren , and almost all their near kinsmen , that they might leave the government the more peace●ble to their children , even as we hear is done amongst the turks , and as we see amongst the chief of clanns in our islands , and in ireland . b. to which of the two do ●ou think was that contention most pernici●●s , to the people or to the princes ? m. certainly to the kings , seeing the greatest 〈◊〉 of the people securing themselves doth usually stand spectators of princes contests , and yeeld alwayes as a prey to the victors . ● . it seemes then that princes rather for themselves , than for the good of the people desired to establish the kingdom in their own family . m. that is very probable . b. now that ●hey might obtain that which did so much concerne the perpetual dignity , wealth and safety of their family , it is probable , that they did dispense or remit to one another somewhat of their right : and that they might the more easily obtain the peoples goodwill , ●iking and consent , they on their part gave ●hem some ease . m. i believe that . b. you will certainly confess it incredible , that ●or so great a benefit bestowed on their kings , ●hey should endure to be in a worse case than formerly they were in . m. it is altogether incredible . b. neither would kings have desired it with so great ambition , if they had known it would prove hurtfull to their children , and unprofitable to the people . m. not at all . b. imagine then that some one in parliament of the free people did freely ask the king , what if to any king should succeed a son that is a fool , or mad ? will you set such over us to rule us , who cannot rule or governe themselves ? m. i think there was no need to make use of that exception , seeing by the lawes it is provided against such a case . b. well said indeed . let us then see , if kings had obtained from the people a free power over the lawes , whether that had been unprofitable , especially to those who desired to foresee the good of their own family in time coming . m. why shall we think that that power would be unprofitable ? b. because nothing doth so much contribute for the continuance of a government , as that temperament of government , seeing it is both honourable for kings , and moderat , and safe for the people . the mind of man hath somewhat sublime and generous imbred therein by nature , that it will obey none , unless he governe profitably : nor is there any thing more prevalent for maintaining humane society , than the mutuall exchange of benefits , and therefore theopompus seemes to have wisely answered his wife ●pbraiding him that by adding the epbory he ●ad diminished the power of his authority , ●nd had left the kingdome to his sons less ●han he had gotten it . it is , saith he , so much the more firme and sure . m. what you relate of continuance , i perceive is most true . for i think the kingdomes of the scots and danes are the most ancient of all that are in europe , nor do they seeme by any other means to have attained that antiquity , than by the moderation of the supreame authority , whilst in the mean time the kingdomes of the frenches , englishes and spaniards have past so often out of one family into another . but i do not know if our kings have been so wise as theopompus . b. as they have not been so prudent , do you imagine that the people were so foolish , as to neglect an occasion so opportune put into their hand ? or that they were so struck with fear , or seduced by flatteries , as to give themselves over into slavery willingly ? m. perhaps it was not . but if the people ( which indeed might be ) were so blind , that they did not see what might concerne their own good , or being careless would not see what might be for their benefit , so as to contemne it , should they not then be justly punished for their folly ? b. it is not probable , that any such thing was done , seeing we may see the contrary to be observed even to our dayes . for besides that wicked kings , as often as they intended tyranny over their subjects were alwayes restrained , some vestiges 〈◊〉 the ancient customes do yet continue in som● ancient familes . for the old scots even 〈◊〉 our very dayes do choose their heads of clans and having chosen them , do give them council of elders , to which councill who soever gives not obedience , is deprived 〈◊〉 all honour , and dignity . what therefore 〈◊〉 with very great care observed in the parts would they be negligent of for the security and safety of all ? and would they willingl● redact themselves into bondage to him , wh●● was to possess a lawfull kingdome in stea● of some benefit ? and would they freely giv● over their liberty acquired by vertue , defend●ed by armes , not interrupted for so many ages , to one not expecting it , without force● without war ? for the calamity of john bal●o● doth shew that that power was never granted to our kings , besides the punishments so often taken for their maladministration . who about two hundred and sixty years ago was by the nobility rejected , because he had subjected himself and his kingdome to the authority of edward king of england , and robert the first was substitute in his stead . the same doth also shew that perpetual custome continued from the beginning of our government . m. what custome do you speak of ? b. when our kings are publickly inaugurat , they solemnely promise to all the people , that they will observe the lawes , rites and old statutes of their predecessors , & use the ●ame power which they have received from them , that whole order of ceremonies doth shew , & the first entry of our kings into every city , from all which it may be easily understood , what kind of power they did receive from our predecessors , to wit , none other than that they swear to maintain the lawes being chosen by suffrages . this condition of reigning did god propose to david , and his posterity , and promiseth they should reigne so long , as they should obey the lawes he had given them , those things indeed they do , as is probable that our kings received from our ancestors a power not immense , but within certain limites bounded and limited . and further there was the confirmation of a long time , and the usurpation of a perpetual right by the people , never reprehended by a publick decree . m. but i fear it cannot be easily obtained of kings as being perswaded by that probability to condescend to these lawes however sworn unto , or usurped by the people : b. i also believe , it is no less hard to perswade the people to pass from the right received from their ancestors , approved by the use of so many ages , and practised by one continuall tenour . i do not think it needfull to proceed by conjectures what the people is to do , since i see what they have done already . but if by the obstinat pertinacy of both the business come to armes , he that prevaileth will give what law and right he pleaseth to the vanquished : but this will not longer continue than he who is vanquished , having again gathered together his forces , shall take up armes again . in all which contentions men usually still fight with very great damage of the people , but with the utter overthrow of kings . for from this spring do flow all the destructions of all kingdoms . m. it must needs be so . b. i have perhaps gone back further than was needfull ; to the end you might clearly understand what kind of government there was amongst us of old . for if i had reasoned with you according to the rigour of the law , i might have gained my poynt in a far more compendious way . m. albeit you have almost satisfied me already , yet i shall willingly hear what that is . b. i would then have you first of all to answer me this question . do you not approve the definition of law set down by lawyers , who say that law is , that which the people knew when demanded by him to whom the prerogative of demanding belongeth . m. indeed i do approve it . b. we have agreed , that the faults of lawes being found out , they may be amended or abrogat by the law givers . m. we did so . b. i suppose you perceive now , that such as are borne kings are by the lawes and suffrages of the people created , no less than those whom we said were elected ●n the beginning . and that in receiving of lawes there will not be remedies wanting in ●he people , who are the lawgivers , not on●y against force and fraud , but also against ne●ligence . m. i perceive that clearly . ● . only here is the difference , that the law ●oncerning our kings was made severall ages ●efore , and when any doth enter into the ●ingdome , there useth to be no new law ●ade , but the old law is approven , and ●●tified . but amongst those who have their ●eeting of estates at the election of every ●ing , the law useth to be made , the king ●reated and approved , and so to enter into ●s government . m. it is so . b. now if ●ou please , let us briefly recapitulat what we ●re at accord in from the very beginning . ●o that if ought be rashly approven , it may ●e retracted . m. i am content . b. first ●f all then , it seemes that a king is created 〈◊〉 the peoples sake , and that nothing more ●xcellent is given us of god than a good king , ●nd more pestilentious than a wicked king. ● : very right . b : we have also said that wicked king is called a tyrant . m· we ●●ve said so . b. and because there is not ●●ch plenty of good men , so as to choose those ●ho may prove good kings , nor so great a ●●ppiness of birth , as that good luck may ●●fer us those that are good : if we have not ●●ch as we would wish , yet we have such as ●ther consent hath approved , or chance hath ●●fered . now the hazard that occureth either in choosing new kings , or in appro●ving such as are given us by birth , was th● cause that we desired lawes , which migh● modify the government of kings . no● these lawes should be nothing else but th● express image ( as far as may be ) of a goo● prince . m. we are at accord in that als● b : it now remaineth , as i suppose , for 〈◊〉 to speak of the punishment of tyrants . m ▪ that only seemes to remain unspoken of . ● if then a king break all the bonds of lawes and plainly behave himself as a public enemy , what think you should be done this case ? m : indeed i am at a stand her for albeit the reasons you have given see● to convince me , that we ought to have 〈◊〉 society with that king , yet so great is t●● strength of a constant custome that in my opin●●on it hath the strength of a law : whi●● custome doth so closely cleave to men in the minds , that if at any time it hath brought an errour , better it is to tolerat it , than 〈◊〉 marre the constitution of the whole body whilst we endeavour to cure a disease that but small by custome . for such is the natur● of some diseases , that better it is to endu●● the pain they bring , than to call for doub● some remedies , in the applying whereo● albeit the cure may be wrought , yet th● bring such sharp paines in their cure , as th●● the cure of the disease is more pernicious th●● the disease it self . next , that whi●● troubles me more is , i see that governme●● which you call tyranny confirmed by the word of god , and what you abhorre as the ●●tter overthrow of lawes , god doth call ●he law of the kingdome ; the authority of ●hat passage of scripture doth move me more ●han all the arguments of philosophers . if you do not explain this to me , the comments of men will not be of so great account with ●e , but that i may instantly fall away to the adversaries side . b : you are , as i perceive , ●n the common errour , and that very grie●ous , who do endeavour to confirme tyranny by tyranny . for how great the tyranny of custome is in the minds of men , wherein ●t hath taken deepest root , and too often we have found it in this our age , herodotus an an●ient writer doth give us warning by an old example , but i need not old examples . be well advised . consider with your self how many things there be of great moment , wherein you following the dictates of reason have fallen from a custome inveterat so many ages past , so that now you might have learned by domestick experiments , that there is no custome more full of dangers than that which in a publick way they command us to follow . i bid you look well to it round about , how many ruines , and how great slaughters will you see therein ? but if it be more clear ( as we say ) than the very light , i need not tarry longer in proving or illustrating a thing so perspicuous . now as for that passage of scripture , which from the history of the kings you rather signify than explain , beware , i pray you , you think that the things which god doth abhorre in the life of tyrants , are by him allowed to kings . now lest this be , i bid you first consider what that people sought of the lord : then what causes of a new petition they had . lastly , what the lord did answer them . first , they ask a king , but what a king ? a lawfull king ? such a one they had . for samuel was given them by the lord , whose prerogative it was to set a king over them . he had for many years judged them lawfully according to prescript of gods law : but whilst in his old age his sons did judge , they did many things wickedly , and judged contrary to the lawes . i see no reason why they should ask the change , or rather amendement of the government , or expect the same from the lord , who not long before had quite rooted out the whole family of heli● almost for the like cause . what do they then ask ? a king , such as their neighbouring nations had , who at home might be a judge to them , and abroad a leader of their armies . now in effect such were tyrants . for as the people of asia are of a more servile disposition than those of europe , so did they the more easily obey the commands of tyrants . there is no mention made for ought i know , by any historian of any lawfull king in asia . moreover , it doth easily appear that a tyrant , and not a king is there described , in regard the lord in deuteronomy had prescribed to them a forme not only different from this in that place cited by you , but also plainly contrary thereto , according to which forme samuel and the other judges had judged so many years , which whilst they did reject , the lord complaines , that he was by them rejected . m : but the lord doth not call him tyrant , but ever king. b : he calles him indeed king : for it is peculiar to the lord , to use the common speech of the people , as often as he speaketh to a people . and therefore he maketh use of that word with the vulgar people : but lest an ambiguous use thereof might deceive , he doth eloquently expound what the use of that word was amongst neighbouring nations . m : as that may be true , yet that of the apostle paul doth urge us more narrowly , who commandeth us to pray for the safety of princes : he is so far from permitting us to revile government , much less to dethrone such as are invested therewith , or to kill them being thrown down . but what princes doth he recommend to our prayers ? the most cruell that ever were , tiberius , caligula , claudius , nero. for pauls epistles were almost contemporary with them . b. that you make so much account of the authority in paul , so as one sentence of his hath more weight with you than the writings of all philosophers and lawyers , i think you do well : but see that you consider well his judgment , or meaning : for you must not examine the words only , but in what time , to whom , and why he wrote . first then let us see what paul did write . for he writeth to titus chap. 3. put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers , and to be ready to every good work . i suppose , you see , what end of obedience and subjection he appoints . he likewise to timothy chap. 2. doth write , that we should pray for all men , even for kings , and other magistrats , that , saith he , we may live a peaceable life in all godliness and honesty . and here you see what end of praying he appoints : namely not for the kings safety , but the churches tranquillity , from which it will be no difficult thing to conceive also the forme of prayer . now in his epistle to the romans , he doth define a king near to a logick subtilty , for saith he , he is a minister to whom the sword is given by god , for punishing the wicked , and for cherishing and relieving the good . for saith chrisostome , these things are not by paul written of a tyrant , but of a true and lawfull magistrat , who is the vice-gerent of the true god on earth , whom whosoever resisteth , doth certainly resist the ordinance of god. now albeit we ought to pray for wicked princes , we should not thence conclude , that their vices should not be punished : nor will it more follow that we should not punish the rapines of robbers , for whom we are also commanded to pray . and if we should obey a good prince , it will not therefore follow that we should not resist a wicked prince . but if you consider the reason which did move paul to write these things look that the place or argument make not much against you . for he wrote this to chastise the rashness of some , who did deny the authority of magistrats to be necessary for christians· for since the power of magistrats is ordained against wicked men , that we may all live righteously , and an example of divine justice might remain amongst men , they affirmed that there was no use thereof amongst men , who abhorre so much the contagion of vices , as that they are a law to themselves . paul doth not therefore speak of those who bear rule as magistrats , but of magistracy it self , that is , of the function and office of those who rule : nor yet of one or other kind of magistracy , but of every forme of a lawfull magistracy . nor doth he debate with those who think that wicked magistrats should be restrained , but with those men who deny all authority of magistrats , who absurdly interpreting christian liberty , did affirme it to be an indignity for those that were made free by the son of god , and ruled by the spirit of god , to be under the power of any man. that paul might refute their errour , he sheweth , that magistracy is a thing not only good , but also sacred , namely an ordinance of god , and for that end institute , that the assemblies and incorporations of men might be so continued , that they might acknowledge gods benefites towards them , and might forbear to wrong one another . god commanded them to be keepers of his lawes who were constitute in dignity . now if we confess lawes to be good ( as indeed they are ) and the keepers thereof worthy of honour , we will be forced to confess that the office of the keepers is a good and profitable thing . but magistracy is terrible , but to whom ? to the good , or bad ? to the good it is not a terrour : it being to them a defence from injury : but to wicked men it is a terrour : it is not so to you , who are ruled by the spirit of god. but you will say to me , what need have i then to be subject to magistracy , if i be the lords freeman ? yea , that you may approve your self to be the lords freeman , obey his lawes : for the spirit of the lord , by whom you boast to be led and governed , is both the law-giver , and approver of magistrats , and also the author of obedience to magistrats . we therefore in this will easily agree together , that there is need of magistracy even in the best common-wealths , and that we should every way honour the same . but if any man think otherwise , we account him mad , infamous and worthy of all punishment . for he doth plainly contraveen the will of god revealed to us in the scriptures . but as for caligula , nero , domitian , and such like tyrants , why they should not be punished as breakers of divine and humane law , you have nothing here from paul , who treats of the power of magistrats , but not of the wicked ministers of that power , nor will they be at all magistrats , if you examine that kind of tyrants according to pauls rule . but if any will debate that wicked princes are also ordained by god , look that this his discourse be not captious . for ( as they say in proverb ) god may put a hard wedge to cleave a hard knot , so doth he set up a wicked man for punishing of wicked men : but no man in his right wits dare affirme , that god is therefore the author of evill , or wickedness , even as no man is ignorant that he is the author of punishing wicked men . a good magistrat also for the most part chooseth a wicked man to be an hangman for punishing guilty persons . and albeit indeed that a magistrat doth assume such an hangman for that office , yet no impunity is granted him or all his misdeeds . nor will the magistrat have him to be so above the lawes , as that he cannot be questioned thereby . i will not stay longer upon this similitude , lest court flatterers cry out that i speak basely of the supreame magistrat . but however they exclaime , certainly this they cannot deny , that the hangmans function is a part of the publick office , and perhaps of the royall office , or at least by the testimony of very kings : who complain that their majesty and person is wronged , as oft as any of their publick ministers is wronged , or violence done to them . now the punishment of wicked malefactors , and what ever else of that kind , doth belong to the kings office . what say you of majors or provosts in towns ? what of generals of armies ? what of baillies . what of sherifs ? doth not paul command us to be subject to them ? doth he hold them for private persons ? now an account useth to be taken for mal-administration of all , not only of inferiour magistrats ; but also of such as are equal to kings . i would therefore have them , who from pauls words do dreame that so great a power is given to kings , to shew me from him , that kings only are here to be understood by the name of power , and therefore they only are to be exeemed from the punishment of lawes : or if , when we say powers , other magistrats be also understood by the same author , who are ordained by god for the same use : i would have them also to shew me where all magistrats are loosed from the lawes , and pronounced free from the fear of punishment : or if this immunity be granted to kings only , but denyed to others who are set in authority . m. but paul will have all to be subject to the higher powers . b : he commandeth so indeed , but by this name of power he must needs comprehend other magistrats , unless perhaps we imagine that paul doth think no power at all to be in those commonwealths , which have not kingly government , but plainly an anarchy therein . m : i do not believe that , nor is it probable : and the rather i am of this opinion , because the current of all the most learned interpreters on the place make for you : who think that pauls dispute there was against those that affirmed that no lawes and magistrats did at all belong to them . b : what say you to that which i lately spoke . do you think , that those tyrants before mentioned of all men the most cruell , are meant by the apostle ? m : yes , but what produce you against me to hinder me from the belief thereof ? especially seeing jeremy doth earnestly advise the jewes , and that by command of god , to obey the king of assyria , and by no means to reject his authority , and thence they inferre by the like reason , that obedience should be given to other tyrants also how cruell soever . b : that i may answer first to what you last spoke , you must take notice , that the prophet doth not command the jewes to obey all tyrants , but the king of assyria alone : now if you would conclude the forme of a law from that which is commanded to be done to one single person , first you are not ignorant ( for logick hath taught you that ) what a great absurdity you will make , next you will be in danger to be assaulted by the opposers of tyranny with the like weapons : for you must either shew what singular thing there is in that matter , or propose it to be imitat by all every where , or if you cannot do this , you must acknowledge , that whatever is enjoyned concerning any one person by any speciall command of god , it doth alike belong to all . if you shall once admit this ( which you must needs do ) it will be instantly objected , that ahab was killed by gods command , and a reward was also promised and performed to him that should kill him . when ever therefore you betake your self to that refuge , you must obey all tyrants : because god by his prophet did command his people to obey one tyrant . it will be instantly replyed , that all tyrants ought also to be killed , because ahab at the command of god was killed by the captain of his host . therefore i advise you to provide a more firme defence from scripture for tyrants , or then laying the same aside at present you may have your recourse to the philosophers schoole . m : i shall indeed think upon it . but in the mean time let us returne from whence we have disgressed . what do you bring from scripture , why tyrants may be lawfully killed . b : first of all i profer this , that seeing it is expresly commanded to cut off wickedness and wicked men , without any exception of rank or degree , and yet in no place of sacred scripture are tyrants more spared than private persons . next , that the definition of powers delivered by paul doth not wholly belong to tyrants , because they accommodat not the strength of their authority for the benefit of the people , but for fulfilling their own lusts . further we should diligently consider how much power paul doth grant to bishops , whose function he doth highly and truely praise , as being some way like unto kings , as far as the nature of both their functions can admit . for bishops are physicians of internall diseases , as kings are physicians of externall distempers , and yet he would neither of them to be free from , or not liable to the jurisdiction of the other . and even as bishops are subject to kings in the exercise of their civil government , so ought kings tobey the spirituall admonitions of bishops . now albeit the amplitude and dignity of bishops be so great , yet no law divine or humane doth exeeme them from the punishment of crimes . and to pass by others . the very pope , who is accounted the bishop of bishops , who so exalts himself above all kings , that he would be accounted a certain god amongst men , yet is he not exempted from the punishment of lawes , no not by his own canonists , a kind of men very devoted to him . for seeing they would think it absurd that god ( for they do not hesitat to call him thus ) should be obnoxious to mens censure , and think it unjust that the greatest crimes and most filthy abominations should pass unpunished in any , and yet they have found out a way whereby crimes may be punished , and the pope accounted sacred & inviolable . for the priviledge of the pope is one thing , and of that man who is pope is another , say they , and whilst they exeeme the pope ( whom they deny can erre ) from the cognition of the lawes , yet do they confess him to be a man obnoxious to vices and punishment of vices : nor have they more subtilly than severely declared their judgment herein . it would be tedious to rehearse , what popes ( to speak after their usuall way ) what men personating popes , who not only alive were forced to renounce their popedome , but being dead were pulled out of their graves , and thrown into tiber. but to omit old histories . the recent memory of pope paul the fourth is fresh in our mind , for his own rome did witness a publick hatred against him by a new kind of decree . for they vented their fury ( he being by death taken away ) against his nearest kinsfolk , his statues and painted images or pictures . nor should this interpretation seeme more subtil , whereby we separat the power from the person in power , than philosophy doth acknowledge , and the ancient interpreters do opprove , nor is the rude multitude and strangers to subtile disputing ignorant thereof ; for the meanest tradsmen take it for no blot upon their trade , if a smith or baker be hanged for robbery , but are rather glad that their society is purged of such villains . but if there be any of another mind , i think it is to be feared , that he seemes to be rather grived at those mens punishment with whom he is associat in their villany ▪ than for the infamy of their society . i am of the opinion , if kings would abandon the counsells of wicked men and flatterers and measure their own greatness rather by duties of vertue , than by the impunity of evill deeds , they would not be grieved for the punishment of tyrants , nor think that royall majesty is lessened by whatsomever destruction of tyrants , but rather be glad that it is purged from a most filthy blot of wickedness : especially seeing they use to be highly offended with robbers , and that very justly , if any of them in their malefices pretend the kings name . m : forsooth , they have just cause , but laying these things aside a i would have you go on to the other head you proposed . b : what heads do you mean ? m : namely in what time , and to whom paul wrote those things , for i desire to know what the knowledge thereof doth make for the argument in hand . b : i shall herein obey you also . and first i shall speak of the time , paul wrote these things in the very infancy of the church , in which time it was not only necessary to be blameless , but none was to give occasion to such as sought occasion of reproaching , and unjust causes of staining the professors of christianity : next he wrote to men of severall nations , and so gathered together into one society out of the whole body of the roman empire , amongst whom there were but few very rich , yea almost none , who either had ruled , or could rule , or were in any great account amongst their fellow citizens , they were not so many in number , and these almost but strangers , and for the most part but lately freed of bondage , and others but tradsmen and servants . amongst them there were many who did further pretend christian liberty , than the simplicity of the gospell could suffer . now this company of people out of the promiscuous multitude , which did won their living , though meanly , by hard labour , was not to be so carefull of the state of the common wealth , of the majesty of the empire , and of the conversation and duty of kings , as of the publick tranquility , and their domestick affairs , nor could they justly claime any more , than to ly lurking under the shadow of what ever government they were under . if that people had attempted to lay hold upon any part of government they should have been accounted not only foolish , but , mad . nor should they come out of their lurking holes to breed trouble to those that did hold the helme of publick affaires in hand . immature licentiousnes was also to be repressed , an unfit interpreter of christian liberty . what then doth paul write ? doubtless , new precept no but only these usuall precepts , namely , that subjects should obey their rulers , servants their masters , and wives their hus bands , nor should we think the lords yoke , how light soever doth liberat us of the bonds of our duty , but vvith a more attentive mind than before to be bound thereunto , so that we should omit nothing through all the degrees of duties in our relations , that might any wayes make for acquiring the favour and goodwill of men . and so it should come to pass , that the name of god should be well spoken of amongst the gentiles because of us , and the glory of the gospell more largely propagate . for performing of these things , there was need of publick peace , the keepers whereof were princes and magistrats , albeit wicked . may it please you , that i set before you a manifest representation hereof ? imagigine that one of our doctors doth write to the christians , that live under the turks , to men , i say , of mean fortune , fore dejected in mind , weak and few in number , and exposed to the injuries of all and every one . what else , i ask you , would he advise them , than what paul did advise the church that then was at rome , or what jeremy advised the exiles in assyria ? now this is a most sure argument that paul had a regard to those mens condition to whom he did write , and not to all others , because he diligently sets home the mutuall duties of husbands towards thier wives , of wives towards thier hus bands , of parents towards thier children , and of children towards their parents , of servants towards thier masters , and of masters towards thier servants . and albeit he writes what the duty of a magistrat is , yet he doth not give them any particular compellation , ( as he had done in the preceeding relations . ) for which cause we shall judge that he gave no other precepts for kings and others in authority : especially seeing thier lust was to be much more restrained , that of private persons ? what other cause may we imagine , than that at that time there were no kings or magistrats in the church to whom he might write ? imagine that paul doth now live in our dayes , wherein not only the people , but princes also profess christianity . at the same time , let there be some prince , who doth conceive that not only should humane lawes , but also divine lawes be subject to his lust and pleasure , and who will have not only his decrees , but also his very nods to be accounted for lawes , like that man in the gospel , who neither did feare god , nor reverence man , who distributes the church revenues amongst villains and rascals , if i may so say ; and doth mock the sincere worshipers of god , and accounts them but fools and mad men , or fanaticks : what would paul write of such to the church ? if he were like himself , he would certainly deny that he should be accounted a magistrat . he would interdict all christians to have any communion with him , either in dyet , speech , or converse , and leave him to the people to be punished by the lawes , and would think they did nothing but their duty , if they should account him not to be their king , with whom they were to have no fellowship by the law of god. but there will not be wanting some court slaves , or sycophants , who finding no honest refuge , become so impudent , as to say , that god being angry against a people doth set tyrants over them : whom as hangmen he appoints for punishing them . which to be true i do confess ; yet it is true , that god many times doth stirre up from amongst the lowest of the people some very mean , and obscure men to revenge tyrannicall pride and weakness : for god , ( as before is said ) doth command wicked men to be cut-off : and doth except neither degree , sexe , or condition , nor yet any man. for kings are not more acceptable to him than beggars . therefore , we may truely averre , that god being alike the ●●her of all , to whose providence nothing lyes 〈◊〉 , and whose power nothing can resist , will 〈◊〉 leave any wickedness unpunished . more●●er , another will stand up and ask some ●●ample out of scripture of a king punished 〈◊〉 his subjects : which albeit i could not pro●●ce , yet it will not presently follow , that ●ecause we do not read such a thing therein to ●●ve been done , that it should be accounted 〈◊〉 an high crime and malefice . i may rehearse ●mongst many nations very many and sound ●awes , whereof in holy write there is no ●xample . for as the consent of all nations ●oth approve , that what the law doth com●and , is accounted just , and what it forbid●eth , is unjust , so since the memory of man 〈◊〉 was never forbidden , that what should not ●e contained in lawes , should not at all be ●one . for that servitude was never received , ●or will the nature of things so fruitfull of new examples suffer the same to be received , that whatever is not by some law commanded , or recorded by some famous example , should be accounted for a great crime and malefice . if therefore any man shall ask of me an example out of the sacred scriptures , wherein the punishment of wicked kings is approven , i shall again ask him , where is the same reprehended ? but if nothing done without some example doth please : how many civil statutes shall we have continued with us ? how many lawes ? for the greatest part thereof is not taken out of any old example , but established against new deceits and that witho●● example . but we have already answered th●●se that require examples more than was nee●●full : now if the jewish kings were not p●●nished by their subjects , they make not muc● for our purpose in hand . for they were not first created by the people , but were by go● given them . and therefore very justly , 〈◊〉 who was the author of that honour , was 〈◊〉 punish their misdeeds . but we debate , th●● the people , from whom our kings enjoy wh●●●ever priviledge they claime , is more pow●●●full than their kings : and that the who●● people have that same priviledge over them which they have over every one in particula● of the whole people . all the rights and priv●●ledges of forrain nations , who live unde● lawfull kings do make for us : all the nation● which are subject to kings chosen by themselves , do commonly agree herein , that whatever priviledge the people hath given to any the same they may require again very justly ▪ all commonwealths have still retained th●● priviledge . therefore lentulus , having con●spired with catiline for overturning the commonwealth of rome , was compelled to renounce his praetorship , and the decemviri , the makers of the roman lawes , were taken order with , even whilst they enjoyed th● supream authority : some dukes of venice , and chilpericus king of france , laying aside their royall honours , as private men spen● their dayes in monasteries . and not long ago ▪ christiernus king of the danes , twenty years almost after he was deprived of his kingdome did end his life in prison . now the dictatorship ( which was a kind of tyranny ) was in the peoples power . and this priviledge hath been constantly observed , that publick benefices granted amiss , and the liberty granted to ingrate persons set at liberty ( whom lawes do very much favour ) might be taken back again . these things we have spoken of forrain nations , lest we alone seeme to have usurped any new priviledge against our kings . but as to what doth properly belong to us , the matter might have been handled in few words . m : what way ? for this i am very desirous to heare . b : i might enumerat twelve or more kings , who for great crimes and flagitious deeds have been either adjudged to perpetuall imprisonment , or escaped the just punishment of their wickedness either by exile or voluntary death . but lest any blame me for relating old and obsolete stories , if i should make mention of culen , even , and ferchard , i shall produce some few within the memory of our forefathers . all the estates in a publick convention judged james the third to have been justly killed , for his great cruelty and flagitious wickedness towards his subjects , and did caution that none of them who had aided , consented , or contributed money , or had been active therein to be called thereafter into question therefore . that they therefore did judge the deed to be duely and orderly done , it being once down , doubtless they desired it might be set down for an example in tim● coming , surely no less , than l : quintiu● sitting in judgment did commend serviliu● ahalus for having killed before the bench sp● mellus turning his back and refusing to com●pear into judgment , and that he was not guilty of blood shed , but thought him to be nobi●litat by the slaughter of a tyrant , and al● posterity did affirme the same . what subjec● hath ever approved the slaughter of one affec●ting tyranny ? what do you suppose would he have done with a tyrant robbing the good of his subjects and shedding their blood what hath our men done ? do not they seem● to have made a law , who by a publick decre● without any punishment have past by a flagiti●ous crime committed , if such like shall happe● in time coming ? for at most there is no diffe●rence whether you judge concerning tha● which is done , or make a law concerning what is to be done . for both wayes a judg●ment is past concerning the kind of the crime and concerning the punishment or reward o● the actor . m. these things will perhaps hav● some weight amongst us . but i know not how other nations abroad will take them . you se● i must satisfy them . not as in a judiciall way i were to be called in question for the crime ▪ but openly amongst all concerning the fame not mine ( for i am far from any suspition thereof ) but of my countrey men . for i am afraid , lest forrain nations will rather blam● the decrees , wherewith you suppose you are sufficiently protected , than the crime it self full of cruelty and hatred , but you know , if i mistake not , what is usually spoken according to the disposition and opinion of every one on both hands , concerning the examples you have proposed . i would therefore ( because you seeme to have expeded what is past , not so much from the decrees of men , as from the springs of nature ) you would briefly expound if you have ought to ●ay for the equity of that law. b. albeit that may seeme unjust to stand at the bar to plead amongst forrainers for a law approved from the very first times of our scots government by kings , by the constant practice of so many ages ago , necessary for the people , not unjust for kings , but lawfull , but now at last accused of illegality ; yet for your sake i shall try it . and as if i were debating with those very men who would trouble you , i first ask this . what do you think here worthy of reprehension ? is it the cause ? why is it sought for ? or is it the law it self which you reprehended ? for the law was sought for repressing the unjust lusts of kings . whoever doth condemne this , must likewise condemne all the lawes of all nations , for all lawes were desired for the very same cause . do you reprehend the law it self ? do you think it lawfull that kings be exempted of , or not lyable to the lawes ? let us then see if that be also expedient . and for proving that it is not expedient for the people , there needs not many words . for it in the former discourse we have rightly compared a king to a physician , as it is not expedient for people that impunity be permitted to a physician for killing whom he pleaseth , so it is not for the good of all , that a promiscuous licence be granted to kings for making havock of all . we have no cause then to be offended with a people , whose chief power it is in making lawes , if as they desire a good king to be set over them , even so a law to be set over a king none of the best . but if this law be not for the kings use , or profit , let us see if the people should be dealt with to remit somewhat of their priviledge , and of abrogating it not for the space of three dayes , but according to our usuall way we indict a parliament to meet within fourty dayes . in the mean time , that we may reason together concerning the law , tell me , doth he seeme to respect the good of a mad man , who looseth his bonds ? m. not at all . b. what do you think of him who giveth to a man sick of a feaver , so as he is not far from madness , a drink of cold water though earnestly craving it , do you think he deserveth well of that sick man ? m. but i speak of kings of a sound mind . i deny that there is any need of medicine for such as are in health , nor of lawes for kings of a sound mind . but you would have all kings to seeme wicked , for you impose lawes upon all . b. i do not think that all kings are wicked . nor do i think all the people to be wicked , and yet the law in one voice doth speak to the whole people . now wicked men are afraid at that voice , good people do not think it belongs to them . thus good kings have no cause to be offended at this law , and wicked kings , if they were wise , would render thanks to the law giver , who hath ordained what he understood would not be pro●●table for them , nor to be lawfull for them to do . which indeed they will not do , if so be they shall once returne again to their right mind . even as they who are restored to health do render thanks to their physician , whom before they had hated , because he would not grant their desires whilst they were sick . but if kings continue in their madness , who ever doth most obey them , is to be judged their greatest enemy . of this sort are flatterers , who by flattering their vices do cherish and increase their disease , and at last together almost with kings are utterly ruined . m. i cannot indeed deny , but that such princes have been & may be restrained by law-bonds . for there is no monster more violent and more pestiferous than man , when ( as it is in the poets fables ) he is once degenerat into a beast . b. you would much more say so , if you consider how many wayes a man becomes a beast , and of how many severall monsters he is made . which thing the old poets did acuely observe and notably express , when they say that prometheus in the framing of man did give him some particle out of every living creature . it would be an infinite work for me to relate the natures of all one by one . but certainly two most vile monsters do evidently appear in man , wrath and lust . but what else do lawes act or desire , but that these monsters be obedient to right reason ? and whilst they do not obey reason , may not lawes by the bonds of their sanctions restrain them ? who ever the● doth loose a king or any other from these bonds doth not loose one man , but throwes in against reason two monsters exceeding cruell and armeth them for breaking asunder the barrs of lawes : so that aristotle seemeth to have rightly and truely said , that he who obeyeth the law , doth obey both god and the law : but he that obeyeth the king , doth obey both a man and a beast . m. albeit the●se things seeme to be said appositely enough yet i think we are in a mistake two wayes ▪ first , because the last things we have spoken seem not to agree well enough with the first ▪ next , because , as we may well know w● seem not to have yet come to the main poin● of our debate . for a litle before we were a● agreement that the voice of the king and law ought to be the same , here again we make him subject to the lawes . now though we grant this to be very true , what have we gaine● by this conclusion ? for who shall call to a● account a king become a tyrant ? for i fear priviledge without strength will not be po●werfull enough to restrain a king forgetfu●● of his duty , and unwilling to be drawn unt● judgment , to answer for maladministration . b. i fear ye have not well pondered what we have before debated concerning the royall power . for if ye had well considered it , you had easily understood what you now have said , that betwixt them there is no contradiction . but that you may the more easily take it up , first answer we , when a magistrat or clerk doth utter the words of a proclamation before an herauld . is not the voice of both one and the same ? i say of an herauld and of a clerk ? m. it is the same indeed . b. which of the two seeme greatest ? m. he who first doth utter the words . b. what is the king who is the author of the edict . m. greater than both . b. then according to this similitude let us set down the king , the law , and the people . the voice is the same both of king and law. which of the two hath the authority from the other ? the king from the law , or the law from the king ? m. the king from the law. b. from whence collect you that ? m. because the king was not sought for to restrain the law , but the law to restrain the king. and from the law he hath that , whereby he is a king , for without the law he would be a tyrant . b. the law then is more powerfull than the king : and is as a governess , and moderatrix both of his lust and actions . m. that is already granted . b. what ? is not the voice of the people and the law the same ? m. the very same . b. which of the two is most powerfull , the people or the law ? m. i think , the whole people . b. why do you think so ? m. because the people is as it were the parent of the law , certainly the author thereof , they being able to make or abrogat it , as they please . b. seeing then the law is more powerfull than the king , and the people more powerfull than the law , we must see before which we may call the king to answer in judgment . let us also discuss this . are not the things which for some others sake are institute , of less account than those for whose sake they are required or sought ? m. i would have that more clearly explained . b. follow me thus ; is not a bridle made for the horse sake ? m. it is so . b. are not sadless , girdings and spurrs made for horses ? m. they are . b. now if there were no horse , there should be no use of such things . m. none at all . b. a horse is then better than all these . m. why not ? b. why ? a horse , for what use is he desired ? m. for very many uses , and first of all for obtaining victory in war. b. we therefore do esteeme the victory to be of more worth than horses , armes and other things , which are prepared for the use of war. m. of more worth indeed it is . b. what did men especially regard in creating a king ? m. the peoples good , as i suppose . b. but would there be no need of kings , if there were no socities of men ? m. none at all . b. the people then is better than the king. m. it must needs be so . b. if the people to better , they are also greater . when a king then is called to judgment before a people , the lesser is called in to judgment before the greater . m. but when shall we hope for that happiness , that the whole people agree unto that which is right . b. that indeed is scarce to be hoped for . and to expect it , is certainly needless : otherwise a law could neither be made , nor a magistrat created . for neither is almost any law alike to all , nor is there almost any man in that popular favour , so as to have no man either an enemy to him , or envious or slanderer of him ; this now is desired , that the law be usefull for the greatest part , and that the greatest part have a good opinion of him that is to be chosen . what if the greatest part of the people may enjoyne a law to be made , and creat a magistrat , what doth hinder , but that they also may judge him , and appoint judges over him ? or if the tribunes of the people of rome , and the lacedemonian ephori were sought to modify the power of magistracy , should it seeme unjust to any man , if a free people , either upon the like or different account , did foresee their own good in suppressing the bitterness of tyranny ? m. now i seeme almost to preceive what a people can do : but it is a matter of difficulty to judge what they will do , or appoint to be done . for the greatest part almost doth require old and usuall customes , and hateth novelty , which the rather is to be admired , seeing there is so great an inconstancy in meat , apparell , buildings , and in all houshold furniture . b. do not think that these things are spoken by me , that i would have any new thing in this kind to be done , but that i might shew you it hath been of old , that a king should answer in judgment before judges , which you did believe to be almost incredible , or at least a novelty . for to pass over , how often it hath been done by our ancestors , as partly before we have said , and you may also easily collect from history ; did you never hear of those who contended for the kingdome to have appealed to arbiters ? m. i have indeed heard it to have been sometimes done amongst the persians . b. and our writers affirme that the same was done by grimas and milcolumbus . but lest you alleadge that that kind of arbiters were wount to be assumed by the contenders own consent , let us come to the ordinary judges . m. here i am afraid you may as far prevail , as if a man should spread nets in the sea to catch whales . b. why so , i pray you ? m. because all apprehending , restraint , and punishment is carryed on by the more powerfull against the weaker . but before what judges will you command a king to compear ? before them over whom he hath the supream power to judge ? whom he can compesce by this one word , i forbid ; b. what if some greater power be found which hath that right priviledge or jurisdiction over kings , which kings have over others ? m. i desire to hear that . b. we told you , if you remember , that this power is in the people . m. in the whole people indeed , or in the greatest part thereof . i also yeeld thus further , that it is in those to whom the people , or the greatest part of them shall transmit that power . b. you do well , in holding in my pains . m. but you know that the greatest part of the people is corrupted either through fear , or reward , or through some hope of a bribe and impunity , so as they preferre their own benefit and pleasures or lusts to the publick utility , and also safety . now there are very few who are not hereby moved : according to that of the poet. good people are indeed rare , scarce so many in number , as there be gates in thebes , or issues of the river nilus . now all the rest being a naughty rable fatned with blood and rapine enjoy their venal liberty , and envy the liberty of others . now that i may pass from those with whom the name of wicked kings also is sacred . i also omit those , who , albeit they are not ignorant what is lawfull and just or right , yet preferre a quiet slougfulness to honest hazards , and hesitating in their minds do frame their consultations on the expectation of the event : or follow the good fortune of either party ▪ but not the cause . how great this multitude will be , you see . b. great indeed : but yet not very great . for the wrong of tyrants may reach many , but their good deeds very few . for the advarice of the vulgar is insatiable , as a fire is the more vehemently kindled by adding few all thereto ! but what is by force taken away from many , doth rather increase the hunger of some few , than satiat their lust . and further the fidelity of such men for the most part is unstable . as saith the poet. fidelity doth stand and fall with fortune . but if they would also continue firme in their judgment , they should not be accounted in the number of good subjects , for they are the violators , or rather betrayers of humane society : which vice if not sufferable in a king , is far less tolerable in a private person . who then are to be accounted the right subjects ? they who give obedience to the lawes , maintain and defend humane society , who rather undergo all paines and labours , and all hazards for common safety , than spend their time sluggishly in idleness void of all honesty ? who set before their eyes not their present enjoyments , but the remembrance of eternity . but if there be any whom fear and self interest recall from hazards , yet the splendor of some notable atchievment , and the beauty of vertue will raise up dejected minds : and those who dare not be authors or leaders , will not decline to become associats . if therefore subjects be reckoned , not by number , but by dignity and worth , not only the better part , but also the greater part will stand for their liberty , honesty and safety . but if the whole common people dissent , this sayes nothing to our present debate : for we demand not what is to be done , but what may lawfully be done . but now let us come to the ordinary judiciall sentences : m : that i just now look for . b : if any private man contend that his inheritance , or some part of his land is unjustly detained by the king , what do you think should this privat man do ? shall he pass from his land , because he cannot set a judge over the king ? m : not at all , but he may command not the king , but his proxy to compear in judgment . b : now see what strength that refuge hath whereof you make use . for it is all one to me , whether the king compear , or his proxy , or advocat , for both wayes , the litis-contestation will redound to the kings loss : the dammage or gain will redound to him not to his advocat by the event of the sentence . in end he is found guilty , that is , he whose cause is agitat . now i would have you consider not only how absurd it is , but also unjust to pass sentence against a king for a perty inheritance for lights in a house , or for ease droppings thereof , and no sentence to be past for parricide , witchcraft , or treason . to make use of the severity of the law in lesser matters , and the greatest licence and impunity to be permitted in the greatest crimes . so that that old proverb seemes plainly true , lawes are very like spiders webs , which hold flies fast , but let bigger beasts pass through , nor is that complaint and indignation of some just , who say that it is neither honest nor equitable , that judgment should pass against a king by a man of an inferrour rank , seeing they see it received and admitted in debate about money or land ; and the greatest peers next to the king for the most part compear before the judges , who are inferiour to them in riches , nobility , and valour . and not much above the vulgar rank : and far more below the guilty , than the greatest peers are below kings . nor yet for all this do these noble men , or peers think it any derogation to their dignity . now if we shall once admit this , that no man can be sisted before a judge , unless the judge be every way superior to the person arraigned , the inferiour rank must attend and wait on untill the king either please , or be at leisure , to cognosce concerning the guilty noble man , but what if their complaint be not only unjust , but also false ? for no man coming before a judge doth come before an inferiour person , especially seeing so great an honour is by god himself conferred upon the order of judges , that he calleth them not only kings but also gods , and as much as can be , doth communicat to them his own dignity . therefore those roman popes , who did graciously indulge kings to kiss their feet , who did send for honours sake to such as came to meet them , their mules , who did tread upon the neeks of emperours , being called to answer in judgment , did obey , and being compelled by judges renounced their popedome . john the twenty second being from flight brought back , was thrust into prison , and scarce at last relieved by money , and submitted to him that was put into his place , and therefore he did approve the sentence of the judges . what did the synode of basile ▪ did it not appoint and ordain by the common consent of all the members thereof , that the pope is subject to the councill of priests . now these fathers were perswaded upon what account they did so , which you may find out of the acts of these councills . kings then who confess the majesty of popes to be so far above them , as that it doth overshadow them all with the top of its celsitude , i know not how they think therein their dignity to be diminished , wherein the pope did not think he was disparaged to descend from so high athrone , namely to stand to the judgment and sentence of the cardinals : hereby you may see how falce their complaint is , who disdain to be arraigned at the bar of an inferiour judge , for it is not titius , sempronius , or stichus that doth in a judiciary way condemne and assoile , but the law , to which kings should yeeld obedience . the most famous emperours theodosius and valentinianus accounted honourable . i shall here set down their own words , because they deserve the memory of all ages . it is ( say they ) a word well beseeming the majesty of a king to confess he is a prince tyed to the lawes . and we declare that it is more to submit a principality to the lawes than to enjoy an empire . and what we now declare by this our edict , we will not suffer to be infringed . these things the very best princes judged right and by law established , and some of the worst see the same . for nero being apparelled in the dress of harpers , is said to have not only observed their carriage and motions , but also when it came to be judged who had done best , that he stood solicitous betwixt hope and fear for the victory . for albeit he knew he would be declared victor , yet he thought the victory would be the more honest , if he should obtain it , not by the flattery of the judges , but by due debate : and he thought the observation of the law did contribute not for the diminution of his authority , but for the splendor of the victory . m : your discourse , i perceive , is not so insolent , as at first i took it , when you said , you would have kings obedient to the lawes : for it is not so much founded upon the authority of philosophers , as of kings , emperours and councils of the church . m : but i do not well understand that you say , it is not man but the law that judgeth . b : call to mind what was said a little before : did we not say , that the voice of the king and of the law is the same ? m : we did so . b : what the voice of the clerk , and herauld is , when the law is published ? m : the very same . b : but which of the two hath the authority from the other , whether the judge from the law , or the law from the judge ? m : the judge from the law. b : the strength of the sentence is then from the law , and the pronunciation of the words of the law is alone the judges . m : it seemes so . b : yea , there is nothing more certain , for the the sentences of judges pronounced according to the law are ratified , else they are reseinded . m : there is nothing more true than that . b : you see then that the judges authority is from the law , and not the lawes authority from the judge . m : i see it is so . b : the low and mean condition of him that proclaimeth the law doth not diminish the dignity thereof , but the dignity of the lawes is still the same , whether the king , a judge , or an herauld proclame it . m : it is so indeed . b. the law then being once established , is first the voice of the king and then of others . m : it is so . b : whilst then the king is condemned by a judge , he seemes to be condemned by the law. m : that is very clear . b : if by the law , then he is condemned by his own voice , as seemes , no less than if it were written with his own hand . b : why then do we so much weary our selves concerning a judge , seeing we have the kings own confession , that is to say , the law ? let us also consider this , which is but presently come into my minde . when a king in what cause soever doth sit in judgment as a judge , should he not lay aside the person of all others , and to have no respect to brother , kinsman , friend or foe , but retain only the person of a judge ? m : he ought so to do . b : ought he not to remember that person only , whose proper act it is he is about . m : i would have you tell me that more clearly . b : take heed then : when any man doth secretly take away another mans goods , what do we say he hath done ? m : i think , he hath stollen them . b : how do you call him for this deed ? m : a thief . b : how do you say he hath done , who makes use of his neighbours wise , as him own ? m : we say he hath committed adultery . b : how shall we call him ? m : an adulterer . b. how do we call him that judgeth ? m : a judge . b. to others also after this manner from the actions they are about , names may berightly give . m. they may . b : when a king then is to pass a sentence , he is to lay aside all other persons . m : indeed he should , especially those that may prejudge either of the parties in judging . b : how do you call him against whom the sentence is past , from that act of judgment ? m : we may call him , guilty . b : and is it not equitable that a judge lay aside such persons as may prejudge the sentence ? m : certainly he should , if so be , such persons be more regarded than the cause : yet such persons pertain not to a judge . seeing god will have no respect to be had to the poor in judgment . b : if then any man , who is a painter or a grammarian debate before a judge concerning the art of painting against a painter , he is not a grammarian , for the science of grammer should not herein availe him . m : nothing at all . b : nor the art of painting availe the other , if the debate be concerning grammer . m : not a white more . b : a judge then in judgment must acknowledge but one name , to wit , of the crime , or guilt , whereof the adversary or plaintife doth accuse his party or defendant to be guilty . m : no more . b : what if a king be guilty of parricide , hath he the name of a king , and what ever doth belong to a judge ? m : nothing at all , but only of a parricide , for he commeth not into controversy concerning his kingdome , but concerning his parricide . b : what if two parricides be called to answer in judgment , the one a king , and the other a poor fellow , shall not there be a like way of procedure by the judge of both ? m : the very same with both , so that i think that of lucan is no less true than elegantly spoken . viz cesar was both my leader and fellow in passing over the rhine . whom a malefice doth make guilty , it maketh alike . b : true indeed . the process then is not here carried on against a king and a poor man , but against their parricides : for then the process should be led on concerning the king , if it should be asked which of the two ought to be king : or if it come into question , whether hiero be king or a tyrant , or if any other thing come into question which doth properly belong to the kings function . even as if the sentence be concerning a painter , when it is demanded , hath he skill in the art of painting . m : what if a king will not willingly compear , nor by force can be compelled to compear . b : then the case is common with him as with all other flagitious persons . for no thief or warlock will willingly compear before a judge to be judged . but i suppose , you know , what the law doth permit , namely to kill any way a thief stealing by neight , and also to kill him if he defend himself when stealing by day . but if he cannot be drawn to compear to answer but by force , you remember what is usually done for we pursue by force and armes such robbers as are more powerfull than that by law they can be reached . nor is there almost any other cause of all the warres betwixt nations people and kings than those injuries which , whilst they cannot be determined by justice , are by armes decided . m : against enemes indeed for these causes warres use to be carried on , but the case is far otherwise with kings , to whom by a most sacred oath interposed we are bound to give obedience . b : we are indeed bound : but they do first promise that they shall rule in equity and justice . m : it is so . b : there is then a mutuall paction betwixt the king and his subjects . m : it seemes so . b : doth not he who first recedes from what is covenanted , and doth contrary to what he hath covenanted to do , break the contract and covenant ? m : he doth . b : the bond then being loosed , which did hold fast the king with the people , what ever priviledge or right did belong to him , by that agreement and covenant who looseth the same , i suppose is lost . m : it is lost . b : he then with whom the covenant was made becometh as free as ever he was before the stipulation . m : he doth clearly enjoy the same priviledge , & the same liberty . b : now if a king do those things which are directly for the dissolution of society , for the continuance where of he was created , how do we call him ? m : a tyrant , i suppose . b : now a tyrant hath not only no just authority over a people , but is also thier enemy . m : he is indeed an enemy . b : is there not a just and lawfull war wich an enemy for grievous and intolerable injuries ? m : it is for sooth a just war. b : what war is that which is carried on with him who is the enemy of all mankind , that is , a tyrant ? m : a most just war. b : now a lawfull war being once undertaken wich an enemy , and for a just cause , it is lawfull not only for the whole people to kill that enemy , but for every one of them . m : i confess that . b : may not every one out of the whole maltitude of mankind assault with all the calamities of war , a tyrant who is a publick enemy , with whom all good men have a perpetuall warfare . m : i perceive all nations almost to have been of that opinion for thebe is usually commended for killing her husband , timoleon for killing his brother , and cassius for killing his son : and ful vius for killing his own son going to catiline , and brutus for killing his own sons and kinsmen , having understood they had conspired to introduce tyranny again : and publick rewards were appointed to be given , and honours appointed by severall cities of greece to those that should kill tyrants . so that ( as is before said ) they thought there was no bond of humanity to be kept with tyrants . but why do i collect the assent of some single persons , since i can produce the testimony almost of the whole world ? for who ▪ doth not sharply rebuke domitius corbulo , for neglecting the safety of mankind , who did not thrust nero out of his empire , when he might very easily have done it ? and not only was he by the romans reprehended , but by tyridates the persian king , being not at all afraid , lest it should afterward befall an example unto himself . but the minds of most wicked men enraged wich cruelty are not so void of this publick hatred against tyrants , but that sometimes it breaketh out in them against their will , and forceth them to stand amazed with terrour at the sight of such a just and lawfull deed . when the ministers of casus caligula a most cruel tyrant were with the like cruelty tumultuating , for the slaughter of thier lord and master , and required those that had killed him to be punished , now and then crying aloud , who had killed the emper , our : valerius asiaticus one of the senators standing in an eminent high place from whence he might be heard , cryed out aloud : i wish i had killed him . at which word these tumultuary persons void of all humanity stood as it were astonished , and so fore bore any more to cry out tumultuously . for there is so great force in an honest deed , that the very lightest shew there of , being presented to the minds of men , the most violent assaults are allayed , and fierce fury doth languish , and madness nill it will it doth acknowledge the soveraignty of reason . neither are they of another judgment , who with their loud cryes mixe heaven and earth together . now this we do easily understand either from hence , that they do reprehend what now is done , but do commend and approve the same seemingly more atrocious , when they are recorded in an old history : and thereby do evidently demonstrat ( that they are more obsequious to their own particular affections , than moved by any publick dammage . but why do we seek a more certain witness what tyrants do deserve , than their own conscience ? thence is that perpetuall fear from all , and chiefly from good men : and they do constantly see hanging above their own necks the sword which they hold still drawn against others , and by their own hatred against others they measure other mens minds against them . but contrariwise good men , by fearing no man do often procure their own hazard , whilst they weigh the good will of others towards them , not from the vicious nature of men , but from their own desert towards others . b : you do then judge that to be true , that tyrants are to be reckoned in the number of the most cruell brute beasts ; and that tyrannicall violence is more unnatuall than poverty , sickness , death , and other miseries which may befall men naturally . m : indeed when i do ponder the weight of your reasons , i cannot deny , but these things are true . but whilst hazards and in conveniences do occurre , which follow on the back of this opinion , my mind as it were tyed up with a bridle , doth instantly i know not how , faile me , and bendeth from that too stoicall and severe right way towards utility , & almost falleth away . for if it shall be lawfull for any man to kill a tyrant , see how great a gape you do open for wicked men to commit any mischief , and how great hazard you creat to good men : to wicked men you permit licentiousness , and le ts out upon all the perturbation of all things . for he that shall kill a good king , or at least none of the worst , may he not pretend by his wicked deed some shew of honest and lawfull duty ? or if any good subject shall in vain attempt to kill a prince worthy of all punishment , or accomplish what he intended to do , how great a confusion of all things do you suppose most needs follow there upon ? whilst the wicked do tumultuat , raging that their head and leader is taken away from them , neither will all good men approve the deed , nor will all those who do approve , the deed , defend the doer and author of their liberty against a wicked crew . and many under an honest pretext of peace will vaile their own laziness , or rather calumniat the vertue of others , than confess their own slothfulness . surely this remembrance of self interest , and excuse of leaving the publick cause , and the fear of dangers , if it doth not break the courage , yet it weakneth the same , and compelleth it to preferre tranquillity , albeit not very sure , to an uncertain expectation of liberty . b : if you well remember what is before spoken , this your fear will be easily discussed . for we told you that there be some tyrannies allowed by the free suffrages of a people , which we do honour with royall titles , because of the moderat administration . no man , with my will , shall put violent hand on any such , nor yet on any of those , who even by force or fraud have acquired soveraignty , providing they use a moderat way in their government . such amongst the romans were vespasianus , titus , pertinax ; alexander amongst the grecians , and hiero in syracusa . who albeit they obtained the government by force and armes , yet by their justice and equity deserved to be reckoned amongst just kings , besides , i do only shew what may be lawfully done , or ought to be done in this case , but do not exhort to attempt any such thing . for in the first a due consideration of the case , and a clear explanation thereof is sufficient : but in the last there is need of good counsell in undertaking , of prudence in assaulting , and courage in acting . now seeing these things are either promoved or overturned by the circumstances of time , person , place , and other instruments in carrying on the business : if any shall rashly attempt this , the blame of his fault can be no more imputed to me , than his fault to a physician , who hath duely described the remedies of diseases , but were given by another to the patient unseasonably . m : one thing seemes yet to be wanting to put an end to this dispute which if you shall add , i shall think i have received a very singular kindness of you : the matter is this , let me understand , if there be any church censures against tyrants ? b : you may take it when you please out of the first epistle of paul to the corinthians , where the apostle doth forbid to have any fellowship either at meat or discourse with openly lewd and flagitious men . if this were observed amongst christians , such lewd men , unless they did repent , might perish by hunger , cold , and nakedness . m : a grievous sentence indeed that is . but i do not know if a people , that allow so much liberty every way to their rulers , will believe that kings should be punished after this manner . b : surely the ancient ecclesiastick writers without exception did thus understand that sentence of paul. for ambrose did hold out of the assembly of the christians theodosius the emperour , and theodosius obeyed the said bishop : and for what i know , antiquity doth more highly extoll the deed of no other so much , nor is the modesty of any other emperour more commended . but to our purpose , what difference is there betwixt the exclusion out of christian fellowship , and the interdiction from fire and water ? this last is a most grievous sentence imposed by rulers against such as refuse to obey their commands : and the former is a sentence of church men . now the punishment of the contempt of both authorities is death : but the secular judge denounceth the death of the body , the ecclesiastick judge denounceth the destruction of the whole man. therefore the church will not account him worthy of death , whom it doth expell out of the fellowship of christians , while he is alive , and banisheth him into the fellowship of divils , when dead . thus according to the equity of the cause i think i have spoken abundantly , if therewith any forrainers be displeased , i desire they would consider how unjustly they deal with us . for whilst there be many nations both great and wealthy in europe , having all their own peculiar lawes , they deale arrogantly who would prescribe to all that modell and forme of government which they them selve● enjoy . the helvetians government is a common wealth , germany useth the name or title of empire , as a lawfull government . some cities in germany , ( as i am informed ) are under the rule of princes . the venetians have a seignory tempered of these . muscovia hath a very tyranny in stead of government . we have indeed but a little kingdome , but we enjoy it these two thousand years free of the empire of forrain nations . we did creat at first lawfull kings , we did impose upon our selves and them equall and just lawes , the long continuance of time doth shew they were usefull . for more by the observation thereof than by force of armes hath this kingdom stood intire hitherto : now what iniquity is this , that we should desire either to abrogat , or neglect the lawes , the good whereof we have found by experience for so many ages ? or what impudence is that in others , that where as they cannot scarce defend their own government , endeavour to weaken the state and good order of another kingdome ? what ? are not our lawes and statutes usefull not only to our selves , but also to our neighbours ? for what can be more usefull for keeping peace with our nearest neighbours , than the moderation of kings ? for from immoderat lust unjust wars are for the most part rashly undertaken , wickedly prosecuted and carried on , and shamfully with much disgrace left off . and further , what more hurtfull can there be to any common wealth , than bad lawes amongst their nearest neighbours , whereof the contagion doth usually spread far and wide ? and why do they thus trouble us only , seeing so many nations round about have their severall lawes and statutes of their own , and no nation hath altogether the same lawes and statutes as others about them have ? and why are they now offended at us , seeing we make no new law , but continue to observe what we had by an ancient priviledge ? and seeing we are not the only persons , nor the first persons , nor yet is it at this time that we make use of our lawes . but our lawes are displeasing to some . perhaps their own lawes displease them also . we do not curiously enquire what the lawes of other nations are . let them leave us our own well known by the experience of so many years . do we trouble their councills ? or in what business do we molest them ? but you are seditious , say they . i could freely give them an answer : what is that to them ? we are timultuous at our own perrill , and at our own dammage . i might enumerat a great many seditions that are not hurtfull either to common wealths or kingdoms . but i shall not make use of that defence . i deny any nation to be less seditious than we . i deny that any nation hath ever been more moderat in seditions than we . many contentions have fallen out for lawes , and right of government , and administration of the kingdome , yet the main business hath been still kept safe . our contentions never were , as amongst many others , with the destruction of the people , nor with the hatred of our princes , but only out of love to our own countrey , and desire to maintain our lawes . hovv often in our time have great armies stood in opposition to one another ? hovv oft have they retired and vvithdravvn from one another , not only vvithout vvound , but vvithout any harme , yea vvithout so much as a reproach ? hovv often hath the publick utility setled the private grudges ? hovv often hath the rumor of the enemies approach extinguished our intestine hatred and animosity ? in all our seditions vve have not been more modest than fortunat ; seeing for the most part the party most just hath been alvvayes most fortunat : and even as vve have moderatly vented our hatred , so have vve to our prof●t and advantage condescended to an agreement . these things at present do occurre , vvhich might seeme to compesce the speeches of malevolents , refute such as are more pertinacious , and may satisfy such as are of a more temperat disposition . but by vvhat right other nations are governed , i thought it not much to our purpose . i have briefly rehearsed our ovvn vvay and custome , but yet more amply than i intended , or than the matter did require : because i undertook this pains or you only . and if it be approved by you , i have enough . m : as for me , you have abundantly satisfied me : but if i can satisfy others also , i shall think i have received much good by your discourse , and my self eased of very much trouble . finis . a journey to scotland giving a character of that country, the people and their manners. by an english gentleman. with a letter from an officer there, and a poem on the same subject. ward, edward, 1667-1731. 1699 approx. 44 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 10 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-07 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a67509 wing w743 estc r220840 99832225 99832225 36697 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a67509) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 36697) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2102:10) a journey to scotland giving a character of that country, the people and their manners. by an english gentleman. with a letter from an officer there, and a poem on the same subject. ward, edward, 1667-1731. cleveland, john, 1613-1658. rebel scot. aut 16 p. [s.n.], london : printed in the year m dc xc ix. [1699] "english gentleman" = edward ward; attribution from wing and nuc pre-1956 imprints. caption title on p. 3: a character of scotland. poem on pp. 14-16 has caption title: "the rebel scot"; copy cataloged has ms. attribution on p. 14: "by cleaveland" [i.e. john cleveland, 17th century poet]. copy has stained title page and considerable print show-through. reproduction of the original in the british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -description and travel -early works to 1800. scotland -history -17th century -poetry -early works to 1800. 2003-02 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-04 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-05 john latta sampled and proofread 2003-05 john latta text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-06 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a journey to scotland , giving a character of that country , the people and their manners . by an english gentleman . with a letter from an officer there , and a poem on the same subject . london : printed in the year m dc xcix . a character of scotland . if all our european travellers direct their course to italy , upon the account of its antiquity , why should scotland be neglected , whose wrinkled surface derives its original from the chaos ? the first inhabitants were some straglers of the faln angels , who rested themselves on the confines , till their captain lucifer provided places for them in his own countrey . this is the conjecture of learned criticks , who trace things to their originals ; and this opinion was grounded on the devil's brats , yet resident amongst them , ( whose fore-sight in the events of good and evil , exceeds the oracles at delphos ) the supposed issue of those pristine inhabitants . names of countries were not then in fashion , those came not in till adam's days , and history ( being then in her infancy ) makes no mention of the changes of that renowned countrey , in that interval betwixt him and moses , when their chronicle commences , she was then baptised ( and most think with the sign of the cross ) by the venerable name of scotland , from scota , the daughter of pharaoh king of egypt . hence came the rise and name of these present inhabitants , as their chronicle insorms us , and is not to be doubted of , from divers considerable circumstances ; the plagues of egypt being entailed upon them , that of lice ( being a judgment unrepealed ) is an ample testimony , these loving animals accompanied them from egypt , and remain with them to this day , never forsaking them ( but as rats leave a house ) till they tumble into their graves . the plague of biles and blains is hereditary to them , as a distinguishing mark from the rest of the world , which ( like the devil 's cloven hoof ) warns all men to beware of them . the judgment of hail and snow is naturalized and made free denison here , and continues with them from the sun 's first ingress into aries , till he has passed the 30th . degree of aquary . the plagues of darkness was said to be thick darkness , to be felt , which most undoubtedly these people have a share in , as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( darkness ) implies ; the darkness being appliable to their gross and blockish understandings ( as i had it from a scholar of their own nation . ) upon these grounds this original is undeniably allowed them , and the countrey it self ( in pyramids ) resembles egypt , but far exceeds them both in bulk and number ; theirs are but the products of mens labours , but these are nature's own handy-work ; and if atlas would ease a shoulder , here he may be fitted with a supporter . italy is compared to a leg , scotland to a louse , whose legs and engrailed edges represent the promontories and buttings out into the sea , with more nooks and angles than the most conceited of my lord mayor's custards ; nor does the comparison determine here : a louse preys upon its own fosterer and preserver , and is productive of those minute-animals called nitts ; so scotland , whose proboscis joyns too close to england , has suckt away the nutriment from northumberland , as the countrey it self is too true a testimony , and from its opposite a — , has calved those nitty islands , call'd the orcades , and the shetland , ( quasi shite-land ) islands . the arms of the kingdom was anciently a red-lyon rampant , in a field of gold , but ann. dom. 787. they had the augmentation of the double tressure , for assisting the french king ; but his majesty's arms in scotland is a more hysteron proteron , the pride of the people being such , as to place the scots arms in the dexter quarter of the escutcheon , and make the unicorn the dexter supporter , with the thistle at his heel , with a suitable motto , nemo me impune lacessit , true enough ; whoever deals with them shall be sure to smart for 't : the thistle was wisely placed there , partly to shew the fertility of the countrey , nature alone producing plenty of these gay flowers , and partly as an emblem of the people , the top whereof having some colour of a flower , but the bulk and substance of it , is only sharp and poysonous pricks . woods they have none , that suits not with the frugality of the people , who are so far from propagating any , that they destroy those they had upon this politick state maxim , that corn will not grow on the land pestered with its roots , and their branches harbour birds , animals above their humble conversation , that exceeds not that of hornless quadrupedes ; marry , perhaps , some of their houses lurk under the shelter of a plump of trees ( the birds not daring so high a presumption ) like hugh peter's puss in her majesty , or an owl in an ivy-bush . some firr-woods there are in the high-lands , but so inaccessible , that they serve for no other use than dens for those ravenous wolves with two hands , that prey upon their neighbourhood , and shelter themselves under this covert ; to whom the sight of a stranger is as surprizing as that of a cockatrice . the vallies for the most part are covered with beer , or bigg , and the hills with snow ; and as in the northern countries the bears and foxes change their coats into the livery of the soil , so here the moor-fowl ( called termagants ) turn white , to suit the sample , though the inhabitants still stand to their egyptian hue. they are freed from the charge and incumbrance of enclosures , the whole being but one large waste , surrounded with the sea : indeed in many places , you may see half a root of land divided with an earthen bank , into many differing apartments , according to the quality of beasts that are to posses● them . the whole countrey will make up a park , forest , or chace , as you 'll please to call it ; but if you desire an account of particular parks , they are innumerable , every small house having a few sodds thrown into a little bank about it , and this for the state of the business ( forsooth ) must be called a park , though not a pole of land in 't . if the air was not pure and well refined by its agitation , it would be so infected with the stinks of their towns , and the streams of their nasty inhabitants , that it would be pestilential and destructive ; indeed , it is too thin for their gross senses , that must be fed with suitable viands , their meat not affecting their distempered pallats , without it have a damnable hogoe , nor musick their ears without loud and harsh discord , and their nostrils ( like a jew's ) chiefly delight in the perceptible effluviums of an old sir r — . fowl are as scarce here as birds of paradise , the charity of the inhabitants denying harbour to such celestial animals , though gulls and cormorants abound , there being a greater sympathy betwixt them . there is one sort of ravenous fowl amongst them that has one web foot , one foot suited for land , and another for water ; but whether or no this fowl ( being particular to this countrey ) be not the lively picture of the inhabitants , i shall leave to wiser conjectures . their rivers , or rather arms of the sea are short , few places in scotland being above a day's journey from the sea , but they are broad , deep and dangerous pestered , with multitudes of porposses or sharks ( some of them perhaps amphibious too , that live more on land than water ) which destroy their salmon , the great commodity of this countrey , which being too good for the inhabitants , are barreled up , and converted into merchandize , &c. the banks and borders , of these rivers ( especially near their towns ) are adorned with hardy amazons , though inverted , their valour being ( chiefly ) from the waste downwards , which parts they readily expose to all the dangers of a naked rencounter . the exercise of their arms , i should say feet , is much about linnen ; sheets are sufferers , a fit receiver is provided ( not unlike a shallow pulpit to mind them of their idol sermons ) wherein foul linnen is laid to suffer persecution , so they turn up all , and tuck them about their wasts , and bounce into a buck-tub , then go their stock , and belabour poor lint till there be not a dry thread on 't . hence came the invention of fulling-mills , the women taught the men , and they put in practice . the countrey is full of lakes and loughs , and they well stockt with islands , so that a map thereof , looks like a pillory-coat , bespattered all over with dirt and rotten eggs , some pieces of the shells floating here and there , representing the islands . their cattle are only representatives of what are in other countries , these being so epitomized , that it is hard to know what class they relate to . their horses are hardy , and not without gall ( as some say other horses are ) using both tooth and nail to mischief you ; that they may not use more state than their masters , they go bare-foot , which preserves them from the gout ; and if hudibras's horse had been of this race , he had not needed a corn-cutter : their furniture or harness is all of the same matter , all wood from head to tail , bridle , saddle , girths , stirrups and crupper , all wood ; nothing but a withy will bind a witch , and if these be called witches , i shall not oppose it , since by their untoward tricks , one would guess the devil to be in them ; their bridles have not bits , but a kind of musrol of two pieces of wood ; their crupper is a stick of a yard's length , put cross their docks , both ends thereof being tied with woven wood to the saddle . their bed and board too , is all of the same dry straw , and when they have it up , whip on harness , and away . their neat are hornless , the owners claiming sole propriety in those ornaments , nor should i deny them their necklace too , for methinks that hoisted wood would mightily become them . their sheep too have the same preferment , they are coupled together near their master's palace . some animals they have by the name of hogs , but more like porcupines , bristled all over , and these are likewise fastned to the free-hold by the former artifice ; all their quadrupedes ( dogs only excepted , in which sort they much abound ) are honoured with wooden bracelets about their necks , legs , or arms , &c. their cities are poor and populous , especially edenborough , their metropolis , which so well suits with the inhabitants , that one character will serve them both , viz. high and dirty . the houses mount seven or eight stories high , with many families on one floor , one room being sufficient for all occasions , eating , drinking , sleeping , and shit — the most mannerly step , but to the door , and nest upon the stairs . i have been in an island where it was difficult to tread without breaking an egg ; but to move here , and not murder a t — is next to an impossibility ; the whole pavement is pilgrim-salve , most excellent to liquor shooes withal , and soft and easie for the bare-foot perambulators . the town is like a double comb ( an engine not commonly known amongst them ) one great street , and each side stockt with narrow allies , which i mistook for common shores ; but the more one stirs in a t — the more it will stink . the other cities and towns are copies from this original , and therefore need no commentators to explain them ; they have seven colleges ( or rather schools ) in four universities ; the regents wear what colour'd cloaths or gowns they please , and commonly no gowns at all , so that 't is hard to distinguish a scholar from an ordinary man , since their learning shines not out of their noses ; the younger students wear scarlet gowns only in term time ; their residence is commonly in the town , only at school hours they convene in the college to consult their oracle buchanan ; their chief studies are for pulpit preferment , to prate out four or five glasses with as much ease as drink them ; and this they attain to in their stripling years , commencing masters of arts ( that is meant only masters of this art ) before one would judge them fit for the college ; for as soon as they can walk as far as the school ( which they will do very young , for like lapwings they run with shells on their heads ) they are sent thither , where they find no benches to sit on ( only one for the master ) but have a little heath and fadder strewed for them to lie upon , where they litter together , and chew the cud on their fathers horn books , and in good time are preferred to the bible ; from this petty school , away with them to the grammar-school , viz. the college , where in three or four years time they attain to ( their ne plus ultra ) the degree of a. m. that is , they can extempore , coin graces and prayers for all occasions ; if you crack a nut , there is a grace for that , drink a dish of coffee , ale or wine , or what else , he presently furnishes you with a grace for the nonce ; so if you pare your nails , go to stool , or any other action of like importance , he can as easily suit you with a prayer , as draw on a glove ; and the wonder of all is , that , this prayer shall be so admirably framed , that it may indifferently quadrate with any occasion , an excellency no where so common as in this countrey . thus you see the young man has commenced and got strength enough to walk to the kirk and enter the chair , where we shall find him anon , after we have viewed the out-sides of their kirks , some of which have been of antient foundations , and well and regularly built , but order and uniformity is in perfect antipathy to the humour of this nation , these goodly structures being either wholly destroyed ( as at st. andrews and elgin , whore by the remaining ruins you may see what it was in perfection ) or very much defaced ; they make use of no quires , those are either quite pulled down , or converted into another kirk , for it is common here to have three , four , or five kirks under one roof , which being preserved entire , would have made one good church , but they could not then have had preaching enough in it : out of one pulpit now they have thirty sermons per week , all under one roof , plenty of spiritual provision , which gusts much better with a mixture of the flesh ; as you may guess by their stools of repentance in every kirk , well furnished with whoremongers and adulterers of both sexes . in venice , the shadows only of curtezans are exposed to publick view only in effigic , but here the whore in person has a high place provided her in the view of the whole congregation for the benefit of strangers , who ( some think ) need not this direction , but may truck for all commodities , with the first they meet with . they use no service-book , not whore of babylon's smock ( as they term a surplice ) nor decency , nor order in their divine , or rather contumelious service . would a king think himself honoured by subjects , that petitioned him with bonnet valed , but cockt his cap the while his request was granting , while precious mr. presbyter , grimaces , prays or houls , the monster rabble vails ; but as soon as text is taken , blew-bonnet takes place again , and this pulpit-prater is esteemed more than god's ambassador , having the holy spirit at his beck to prompt him every word he speaks , yet not three sentences of sence together , such blasphemy as i blush to mention . their christnings ( as all other things ) are without form , only water poured on the infant , and such words used as sir john's mephistophilus supplies him with , and so the child commences christian , as good ( or better ) than the best of them . some think marriage an unnecessary thing amongst them , it being more generous and usual amongst them to take one another's words ; however , 't is thus performed , the young couple being attended with tag-rag and bob-tail , gang to kirk , where mr. scruple ( like a good casuist ) controverts the point in hand to them , and schools mr. bridegroom in his lesson , then directs his discourse to mrs. bride , who being the weaker vessel , ought to have the more pains taken with her ; he chalks out the way she is to walk in , in all its particulars , and joyns their hands , and then let them fall to on god's name : home they go with loud ravishing bag-pipes , and dance about the green , till they part by couples to repetition , and so put the rules in practice , and perhaps sir roger follows mrs. bride to her apartment , to satisfie her doubts , where he uses such pungent and pressing arguments , as she never forgets as long as she lives . when any one dies , the bell-man goes about ringing their passing-bell , and acquaints the people therewith , in form following , beloved brouthrin , and susters , i let yau to wot that thir is an fauthful broothir lawtli departed awt of this prisant varld , and thi plesuir of aulmoughti good ( and then he vails his bonnet ) his naum is volli voodcock , thrid son to jimmoy voodcock , a cordinger ; he ligs aut thi sext door vethin thi nord gawt , close on thi nawthwr rawnd , and i wod yaw gang to hus burying on thrusdau before twa a clock , &c. the time appointed for his burying being come , the bell-man calls the company together , and he is carried to the burying-place , and thrown into the grave ( as dog-lyon was ) and there 's an end of wolli . few people are here buried in their kirks ( except of their nobility ) but in the kirk garths , or in a burying place on purpose , called the hoof , at the further end of the town ( like our quakers ) enclosed within a wall , so that it serves not only as a burying place , but an exchange to meet in ; perhaps in one part of it their courts of judicature are kept ; in another are butts to shoot at for recreation . all agree that a woman's tongue is the last member she moves , but the latin proverb , mulieri ne credas , &c. seems to prove it after death : i am sure the pride of this people never leaves them , but follows them to their long homes ( i was about to have said , to the devil ) for the meanest man must have a grave stone full fraught with his own praises ( though he was the vilest miscreant upon earth ) and miserable memento mori's , both in english and latin , nay , greek too , if they can find a greek word for cordinger , the calling he was of , and all this in such miserable scotch orthography , that 't is hard to distinguish one language from another . the castles of defence in this countrey are almost impregnable , only to be taken by treachery or long siege , their water failing them soonest ; they are built upon high , and almost inaccessible rocks , only one forc'd passage up to them , so that a few men may easily defend them . indeed , all the gentlemens houses are strong castles , they being so treacherous one to another , that they are forced to defend themselves in strong holds ; they are commonly built upon some single rock in the sea , or some high precipice near the mid-land , with many towers and strong iron grates before their windows ( the lower part whereof , is only a wooden shutter , and the upper part glass ) so that they look more like prisons than houses of reception ; some few houses there are of late erection , that are built in a better form , with good walks and gardens about them , but their fruit rarely comes to any perfection . the houses of the commonalty are very mean , mud-wall and thatch the best ; but the poorer sort live in such miserable hutts as never eye beheld , it is no difficulty to piss over them ; men , women and children pigg altogether in a poor mouse hole of mud , heath , and such like matter ; in some parts where turf is pentiful , they build up little cabbins thereof , with arched roots of turf , without a stick of timber in it ; when the house is dry enough to burn , it serves them for fuel , and they remove to another . the habit of the people is very different , according to the qualities , or the places they live in , as low-land or high-land men. the low-land gentry go well enough habited , but the poorer sort go ( almost ) naked , only an old cloak , or a part of their bed-cloaths thrown over them . the highlanders wear slashed doublets , commonly without breeches , only a plad tied about their wasts , &c. thrown over one shoulder , with short stockings to the gartering place , their knees , and part of their thighs being naked ; others have breeches and stockings all of a piece , of plad-ware , close to their thighs ; in one side of their girdle sticks a durk or skean , about a foot or half a yard long , very sharp , and the back of it filed into divers notches , whereie they put poyson ; on the other side a brace ( at least ) of brass pistols ; nor is this honour sufficient , if they can purchase more , they must have a long swinging sword. the women are commonly two handed tools , strong-posted timber , they dislike english-men , because they have no legs , or ( like themselves ) posts to walk on ; the meaner go bare-foot and bare-head , with two black elflocks on either side their faces ; some of them have scarce any cloaths at all , save part of their bed cloaths pinn'd about their shoulders , and their children have nothing else on them but a little blanket ; those women that can purchase plads , need not bestow much upon other cloaths , these coversluts being sufficient . those of the best sort that are very well habited in their modish silks , yet must wear a plad over all for the credit of their countrey . the people are proud , arrogant , vain-glorious boasters , bloody , barbarous , and inhumane butchers . couzenage and theft is in perfection amongst them , and they are perfect english haters , they shew their pride in exalting themselves and depressing their neighbours . when the palace at edenburgh is finished , they expect his majesty will leave his rotten house at white hall , and live splendidly amongst his nown countrey-men the scots ; for they say that englishmen are very much beholden to them that we have their king amongst us . the nobility and gentry lord it over their poor tenants , and use them worse than gally slaves ; they are all bound to serve them , men , women , and children ; the first fruits is always the landlord's due , he is the man that must first board all the young married women within his lairdship , and their sons are all his slaves , so that any mean laird will have six , or ten , or more followers , besides those of his own name , that are inferiour to him , must all attend him ( as he himself must do his superiour , of the same name , and all of them attend the chief ) if he receives a stranger , all this train must be at his beck , armed as aforesaid ; if you drink with them in a tavern , you must have all this rubbish with you ; and if you offend the laird , his durk shall soon be sheathed in your belly , and after his , every one of his followers , or they shall suffer themselves that refuse it , that so they may be all alike guilty of the murder : every laird ( of note ) hath a gibbet near his house , and has power to condemn and hang any of his vassals ; so they dare not oppose him in any thing , but must submit to his commands , let them be never so unjust and tyrannical . there are too many testimonies of their cruelty amongst themselves in their own chronicles , forty of their kings have been barbaroufly murdered by them , and half as many more have either made away themselves for fear of their torturing of them , or have died miserably in streight imprisonment . what strange butcheries have been committed in their feuds , some of which are in agitation at this day , viz. argile with the macclans , and mac donnels about mula islands , which has cost already much blood , and is likely will cost much more before it be decided ; their spirits are so mean , that they rarely rob , but take away life first , lying in ambuscade , they send a brace of bullets on embassy through the traveller's body ; and to make sure work , they sheath their durks in his liveless trunk ; perhaps , to take off their fire edges , as new knives are stuck in a bag pudding . if an highlander be injured , those of his own name must defend him , and will certainly have satisfaction from the offenders : a late instance whereof was at inverness , ( a considerable town ) where one of the macdonnels was slain , but shortly , the chief of the name came down against the town with 1500 men of his own name , and threatned to fire the town , but the inhabitants compounded with them for 2000 l. their cruelty descends to their beasts , it being a custom in some places to feast upon a living cow they tie in the middle of them , near a great fire , and then cut collops of this poor living beast , and broil them on the fire , till they have mangled her all to pieces ; nay , sometimes they will only cut off as much as will satisfie their present appetites , and let her go till their greedy stomachs calls for a new supply ; such horrid cruelty as can scarce be parallel'd in the whole world ! their theft is so well known , that it needs no proving , they are forc'd to keep watch over all they have , to secure it ; their cattel are watch'd day and night , or otherwise they would be over-grown by morning . in the high-lands they do it publickly before the face of the sun , if one man has two cows , and another wants , he shall soon supply himself from his neighbour , who can find no remedy for it . the gentry keep an armory in their own houses , furnish'd with several sorts of fire arms , pikes and halberts , with which they arm their followers , to secure themselves from the rapine of their neighbourhood . the lowland language may be well enough understood by an englishman , but the highlanders have a peculiar lingua to themselves , which they call erst , unknown to most of the lowland men , except only in those places that border on them , where they can speak both : yet these people are so currish , that if a stranger enquire the way in english , they will certainly answer in erst , and find no other language than what is forc'd from them with a cudgel . if cornelius agrippa had travelled scotland , sure cookery had not been found in his vanity of sciences , such is their singular skill in this art , that they may defie the world to rival them ; king james's treat for the devil , that is , a poll of ling , a joll of sturgeon , and a pigg , with a pipe of tobacco for digestion , had been very compleat , if the ordering thereof had been assigned to a cuke of this countrey , who can sute every dish with its proper hogo , and bring corruption to your table , only to mind men of mortality : their meat is carrion when 't is kill'd , but after it hath been a fortnight perfuming with the aromatick air , strained through the calmy trunks of flesh-flies , then it passes the trial of fire under the care of one of those exquisite artists , and is dish'd up in a sea of sweet scotch butter , and so covered and served hot up to the table : o how happy is he that is placed next to it , with a privilege to uncover it , and receive the hot steams of this dainty dish , almost sufficient to cure all distempers . it will be needless to instance in particulars so plain and evident to all that have travell'd through the countrey , that they may certainly bear away the bell from all their neighbouring nations , or indeed from the whole world. their nobility and gentry have tables plentifully enough furnish'd , but few or none of them have their meat better order'd : to put one's head into their kitchen doors , is little less than destructive ; to enter hell alive , where the black fairies are busied in mangling dead carcases , and the fire and brimstone , or rather stew and stink , is ready to suffocate you , and yet ( which is strange ) these things are agreeable to the humours of the people . the poorer sort live on haddock , whiting , and sour milk , which is cryed up and down the streets ( whea buyes sawer milk ) and upon the stinking fragments that are left at their lairds table . prodigious stomachs , that like the gulon , can feed on their own excrements , and strain their meat through their stomachs , to have the pleasure of devouring it again ! their drink is ale made of beer-malt , and tunned up in a small vessel , called a cogue ; after it has stood a few hours , they drink it out of the cogue , yest and all ; the better sort , brew it in larger quantities , and drink it in wooden queighs , but it is sorry stuff , yet excellent for preparing birdlime ; but wine is the great drink with the gentry , which they pour in like fishes , as if it were their natural element ; the glasses they drink out of , are considerably large , and they always fill them to the brim , and away with it ; some of them have arrived at the perfection to tope brandy at the same rate : sure these are a bowl above bacchus , and of right , ought to have a nobler throne than a hogshead . musick they have , but not the harmony of the spheres , but loud terrene noises , like the bellowing of beasts ; the loud bag pipe is their chief delight , stringed instruments are too soft to penetrate the organs of their ears that are only pleased with sounds of substance . the high-ways in scotland are tolerably good , which is the greatest comfort a traveller meets with amongst them ; they have not inns , but change houses ( as they call them ) poor small cottages , where you must be content to take what you find , perhaps eggs with chucks in them , and some lang cale ; at the better sort of them , a dish of chopp'd chickens , which they esteem a dainty dish , and will take it unkindly if yon do not eat very heartily of it , though for the most part you may make a meal with the sight of the fare , and be satisfied with the steam only , like the inhabitants of the world in the moon ; your horses must be sent to a stablers ( for the change houses have no lodging for them ) where they may feed voluptuously on straw only , for grass is not to be had , and hay is so much a stranger to them , that they are scarce familiar with the name of it . the scotch gentry commonly travel from one friend's house to another , so seldom make use of a change house ; their way is to hire a horse and a man for two pcnce a mile ; they ride on the horse thirty or forty miles a day , and the man who is his guide , foots it beside him , and carries his luggage to boot . the best sort keep only a horse or two for themselves and their best friend , all the rest of the train foot it beside them . the commonalty are so used to worship and adore their lairds , that when they see a stranger in any tolerable equipage , they honour him with the title of laird at least , an 't please you my laird such a one , or an 't please you my laird dr. at every ba●e word forsooth . the nobility shew themselves very great before strangers , they are conducted into the house by a many of his servants , where the lord with his troop of shadows receives them with the grand paw , then enter into some discourse of their countrey , till you are presented with a great queigh of syrup of beer , after that a glass of white-wine , then a rummer of claret , and sometimes after that a glass of sherry sack , and then begin the round with ale again , and ply you briskly , for it 's their way of shewing you'r welcome by making you drunk ; if you have longer time to stay , you stick close to claret , till bacchus wins the field , and leaves the conquer'd victims groveling on the place where they received their overthrow ; at your departure you must drink a dongha doras , in english a stirrup cup , and have the satisfaction to have my lord's bag-pipe ( with his loud pipes , with his lordship's coat armor on a flag ) strut about you , and enchant you with a loth to depart . their money is commonly dollars , or mark pieces , coined at edenbrough , but their way of reckoning is surprising to a stranger ; to receive a bill of a hundred pound in one of their change-houses , when one would not suppose they had any of the value of a hundred pence ; they call a peny a shilling , and every twenty shillings , viz. twenty pence , a pound ; so the proportion of their pound to ours , is twelve to one. strangers are sure to be grosly imposed upon in all their change houses , and there is no redress for it : if an englishman should complain to their magistrates , they would all take a part against him , and make sure to squeeze him . the conclusion of the abridgment of the scotch chronicle , is the rare and wonderful things of that countrey ; as in orkney , their ews bring forth two lambs apiece ; that in the northermost of shetland islands , about the summer solstice , there is no night ; that in the park of cumbernaule , are white kine and oxen ; that at slanes there is a putrifying water in a cove ; that at aberdeen is a vitriolin well , that they say is excellent to dissolve the stone , and expel sand from the reins and bladder , and good for the colick , being drunk in july , &c. these prodigious wonders in one countrey are admirable , but these are not half of them . loughness never freezes ; in lough lommond are fishes without fins : and 2dly . the waters thereof rage in great waves without wind in calm weather : and 3dly . and lastly , therein is a floating island : in kyle is a deaf rock twelve foot every way , yet a gun discharged on one side of it , shall not be heard to the other . in another place is a rocking-stone of a reasonable bigness , that if a man push it with his finger , it will move very lightly , but if he address his whole force , it availeth nothing ; with many more marvels of like nature , which i would rather believe than go thither to disprove . to conclude the whole bulk and selvege of this countrey , is all wonder too great for me to unriddle , there i shall leave it as i found it , with its agreeable inhabitants in a land where one may pray with curst intent : oh! may they never suffer banishment . finis . a description of scotland , in a letter from an officer in the army , to his friend in london . sir , you may be sure it goes hard with a soldier , when he is brought to his prayers , and that is my case and all with me , and would defire my friends to join with me in them , that god would put it into his majesty's heart to call us out of this kingdom , and to send us to any other part of the world ; for we can't lose by the change , for here is neither meat for man nor horse ; here is great store of fowl , indeed , as foul houses , foul sheets , foul linnen , foul dishes , pots , trenchers , napkins , &c. they have good store of fish too , and good for those that can eat it raw ; but if it comes once into their hands , it is worse than if it was three days old . for their butter and cheese , i will not meddle withal at this time , nor no man else at any time that loves his life . the country , i confess , is good for those that possess it , and too bad for others to be at the charge to conquer it . the air might be wholsome but for the stinking people that inhabit it ; the ground might be fruitful , had they wit to manure it . they have good store of deer , but they are so far from the place where i have been , that i had rather believe than go to disprove it ; all the deer i met withal , was dear lodgings , dear horse-meat , dear tobacco and english beer . fruit , for their grandsire adam's sake they never planted any , and for other trees , had christ been betrayed in this countrey ( as doubtless he should , had he come as a stranger ) judas had sooner found the grace of repentance , than a tree to hang himself on . they have many hills , wherein they say is much treasure , but they shew you none of it , nature hath only discovered to them some mines of coal , to shew to what end he created them . there is little grass to be seen but in their pottage ; and hay is heathen greek to them , neither man nor beast knows what it means . as to their religion , it is such a hodge-podge , there is no describing it . their sabbath exercise is a preaching in the forenoon , and a persecuting in the afternoon ; they go to church in the forenoon to hear the law , and to the craggs and mountains in the afternoon to louze themselves . they hold their noses , if you talk of bear-baiting , and stop their ears , if you speak of a play. fornication they hold but a pastime , wherein man's ability is approved , and a woman's fertility discovered ; at adultery they shake their heads . theft they rail at , and think it impossible to lose the way to heaven , if they can but leave rome behind them . the ointment they use , is brimstone and butter for the scabs . to conclude ; the men of old did not more wonder that the great messias should be born in so poor a town as bethlehem , than the world may wonder at , that england should have a race of kings from such a cursed countrey as scotland . yours . the rebel scot . how ! providence ! and yet a scottish crew ! then madam nature wears black patches too , what shall our nation be in bondage thus unto a land that truckles under us ? ring the bells backward ; i am all on fire , not all the buckets in a country-quire shall quench my rage . a poet should be fear'd when angry , like a comet 's flaming beard . and where 's the stoick can his wrath appease to see his country sick of pym's disease ; by scotch invasion to be made a prey to such pig-widgin myrmidons as they ? but that there 's charm in verse , i would not quote the name of scot without an antidote ; unless my head were red , that i might brew invention there that might be poyson too . were i a drowzy judge , whose dismal note disgorgeth halters , as a jugler's throat doth ribbands ; could i in sir empericks tone speak pills in phrase and quack destruction , or roar like marshal that geneva bull , hell and damnation a pulpit full : yet to express a scot , to play that prize , not all those mouth granados can suffice . before a scot can properly be curst , i must like hocus , swallow daggers first . come , keen iambicks , with your badgers feet , and badger-like bite till your teeth do meet : help ye tart satyrists to imp my rage with all the scorpions that should whip this age. scots are like witches ; do but whet your pen ; scratch till the blood come , they 'll not hurt you then . now as the martyrs were enforc'd to take the shapes of beasts , like hypocrites at stake i 'll bait my scot so , yet not cheat your eyes ; a scot , within a beast , is no disguise . no more let ireland brag , her harmless nation fosters no venom since that scot's plantation : nor can our feign'd antiquity obtain ; since they came in , england hath wolves again . the scot that kept the tower might have shown within the grate of his own breast alone , the leopard and the panther , and ingross'd what all those wild collegiats had cost . the honest high-shoes in their termly fees , first to the salvage lawyer , next to these . nature her self doth scotchmen beasts confess , making their country such a wilderness ; a land that brings in question and suspence god's omnipresence , but that charles came thence ; but that montross and crawford's royal band atton'd their sin , and christned half their land. nor is it all the nation hath these spots , there is a church as well as kirk of scots . as in a picture where the squinting paint shews fiend on this side , and on that side saint . he that saw hell in 's melancholy dream , and in the twy-light of his fancy's theme scar'd from his sins , repented in a fright , had he view'd scotland had turn'd proselite . a land where one may pray with curst intent , oh may they never suffer banishment ! had cain been scot , god would have chang'd his doom , not forc'd him wander but confin'd him home ; like jews they spread , and as infection fly , as if the devil had ubiquity . hence 't is they live at rovers and defie this , or that place , rags of geography . they 'r citizens o' th' world , they 'r all in all , scotland's a nation epidemical . and yet they ramble not to learn the mode , how to be drest , or how to lisp abroad ; to return knowing in the spanish shrug , or which of the dutch states a double jug resembles most in belly , or in beard , ( the card by which the mariners are steer'd ) no , the scots errant fight , and fight to eat , their ostrich stomachs make their swords their meat . nature with scots as tooth drawers hath dealt , who use to string their teeth upon their belt. yet wonder not at this their happy choice , the serpent's fatal still to paradise . sure england hath the hemorrhoids , and these on the north postern of the patient seize , like leeches ; thus they physically thirst after our blood , but in the cure shall burst . let them not think to make us run o' th' score to purchase villenage , as once before when an act past to stroak them on the head : call them good subjects , buy them ginger-bread . not gold , nor acts of grace , 't is steel must tame the stubborn scot , a prince that would reclaim rebels by yielding , doth like him , or worse , who saddled his own back to shame his horse . was it for this you left your leaner soil , thus to lard israel with egypt's spoil . they are the gospel's life-guard ; but for them ( the garrison of new jerusalem ) what would the brethren do ? the cause ! the cause ! sack-possets , and the fundamental laws ? lord ! what a godly thing is want of shirts ! how a scotch-stomach , and no meat converts ! they wanted food and rayment ; so they took religion for their seamstress , and their cook. unmask them well , their honours and estate , as well as conscience , are sophisticate . shrive but their title and their moneys poize , a laird and twenty pence pronounc'd with noise , when constru'd but for a plain yeoman go , and a good sober two pence , and well so . hence then you proud impostors , get you gone , you picts in gentry and devotion . you scandal to the stock of verse , a race able to bring the gibbet in disgrace . hyperbolus by suffering did traduce the ostracism , and sham'd it out of use . the indian that ' heaven did forswear , because he heard some spaniards were there ; had he but known what scots in hell had been , he would erasmus-like have hung between . my muse hath done . a voyder for the nonce , i wrong the devil should i pick their bones ; that dish is his ; for when the scots decease hell like their nation , feeds on bernacles . a scot when from the gallow tree got loose drops into styx , and turns a soland goose. finis . a true and plain account of the discoveries made in scotland, of the late conspiracies against his majesty and the government extracted from the proofs lying in the records of his majesties privy council, and the high justice court of the nation : together with an authentick extract of the criminal process and sentence against mr. robert baillie of jerviswood / extracted by command of his majesties most honourable privy council of scotland ... mackenzie, george, sir, 1636-1691. 1685 approx. 247 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 36 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-08 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a50890 wing m210 estc r19774 12172850 ocm 12172850 55475 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a50890) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 55475) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 817:22) a true and plain account of the discoveries made in scotland, of the late conspiracies against his majesty and the government extracted from the proofs lying in the records of his majesties privy council, and the high justice court of the nation : together with an authentick extract of the criminal process and sentence against mr. robert baillie of jerviswood / extracted by command of his majesties most honourable privy council of scotland ... mackenzie, george, sir, 1636-1691. baillie, robert, d. 1684. england and wales. privy council. [2], 61 p. by thomas newcomb, for susanna forrester ..., reprinted at london : 1685. reproduction of original in huntington library. ascribed to sir george mackenzie. cf. nuc pre-1956. "the tryal and process of high-treason and doom of forfaulture against mr. robert baillie of jerviswood traitor" has special t.p. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual 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characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng trials (treason) -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1660-1688. 2004-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-04 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-06 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2004-06 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-07 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a true and plain account of the discoveries made in scotland , of the late conspiracies against his majesty and the government . extracted from the proofs lying in the records of his majesties privy council , and the high justice court of the nation . together with an authentick extract of the criminal process and sentence against mr. robert baillie of ierviswood . extracted by command of his majesties most honourable privy council of scotland ; and published by his majesties command . reprinted at london , by thomas newcomb , for susanna forrester in kings-street westminster . 1685. a true and plain account of the discoveries made in scotland , of the late conspiracies against his majesty , and the government . the king's majestie having , on certain great considerations , indicted a parliament , to hold at edinburgh , 28 of iuly 1681. did render that meeting the more illustrious , by nominating his royal brother commissioner , to represent his majesty in it . the fanatical party , who let no occasion slip , to promove their designs , and to disturb the settled government , did at this time , use all their endeavours , to have as many of those infected with their principles , elected commissioners for the parliament , as the little power and interest they had in the nation could procure , and even where they could not hope to succeed , they had the insolence to attempt , thereby pursuing closly what they constantly design , that is , pertinaciously to disturb , where they cannot alter , and to found a reputation to their party , by much noise , though to little purpose . at the time of meeting of the parliament , their first consult was to strick at the head , and by invading the right of the monarchy , to pull it down so far , as to have the king , in the person of his commissioner , subjected to the same rules and inquisitions , with other subordinat members . the king by his laws , having prescribed rules to those who serve him in that great court , and council : they , according to the laws of their leagues and covenants , propose that the parliament should prescribe the same to the king , consonant enough to their beloved design of co ordination in power . had this succeeded , they with this one blow , had overthrown the parliament , by laying the commissioner aside : but as men oft-times design bold treasons with abundance of resolution , yet are frighted from the execution , by the danger , as well as ugliness of the crime , so this insolent resolution dar'd not shew its face , being strangl'd by their own fears . and seeing they could not dissolve the parliament , they , in the next place , resolv'd to disappoint the design of it ; and indeed , if the maintaining of an unjust interest could warrand the action , they had reason so to do : for the fanatical-party having , by their own great industry , and the supine negligent● ( to say no worse ) of these trusted by the king , to suppress them , not only kept up , but encreased their pernicious brood ; so that they began to appear formidable , both to the king and the countrey : and one of their great hopes , whereby their party increased , being founded on the short continuance of the supply granted by the nation , for maintaining the forces , they could little doubt , but that all loyal subjects would not only continue , but also further augment them , rather then leave the seditious , in a capacity to disturb the government . therefore , as a necessary expedient to preserve fanaticism , they resolved by all possible means , to hinder any continuation of the supplie . but they soon found , that the votes of their party had neither number nor weight . these well-natur'd subjects , finding that they could not disappoint , thought it convenient to perplex ; and since they could not do what they would , they resolv'd to do all they could . and albeit the late earl of argile , and some others , who were under too great obligations to the king's majesty , and his royal-highness , to appear on the side of their friends in the good old cause ; whilst the opposition was so bare-fac'd , and the hope of success so little . yet lest their little flock should be discouraged , they began then to animat them the more close , and ( as they thought ) undiscern'd methods . and now the cause being in an apparent decay , they labour'd to refresh it , with its first milk , the pretence of religion . wherefore a new security for religion was proposed ; and albeit our laws had formerly provided , what was necessary for this ; yet it could not be expected that those , who aimed at debate for religion , should rest-satisfied with what settled it . so the doctrine of the church , the canons of councils , and the laws of the kingdom being all lookt upon as nothing : argyle , sir iohn cochran , salton , the earl of tarras , philiphaugh , stairs , gallowsheils , and others of that crew , would needs provide a greater security than these afforded ; and indeed it was congruous for those who were tainted with new doctrines , to desire new sanctions : for this end they pressed a committee , for drawing an act to secure the protestant religion , which was no sooner proposed then granted ; accordingly a committee was appointed , consisting for the most part of west-countrey men , who upon short deliberation prepared a long act , which at its first appearance in the articles , was soon discerned to be an invasion upon the prerogative , under the name of a defence for religion , and not to have many more lines than incroatchments upon the royal right : whereupon it was rejected ; and in place of it a general and plain ratification of all the former good laws , which had past for security of the protestant religion , was drawn , approven , and acquiesced in , by the parliament . but fanaticks are not of a temper to give over , for notwithstanding of this good law , murmurings were heard , clamors were raised , and open protestations were made for f●rther security in religion . wherefore a new committee was appointed , for preparing an act to be drawn from the proposals for that end . the party which clamored for the protestant religion ( but in effect intending good offices to the fanatical party ) did seek after what conduc'd to their by-ends , which as they were easily discovered , were as soon rejected : argyle , sir iohn cochran , the earl of tarras , stairs , philiphaugh , gallowshiels , and their adherents fall at last on an expedient , as they thought insuperable by the kings servants , and which would force them on the dilemma of opposing religion , or the soveraignity . in the first year and parliament of king iames the sixth , when the differences betwixt queen mary and many of the nobility were in their greatest hight , and she forc'd to resign her government , being a prisoner ; there were several acts past in that , and some subsequent parliaments , which incroached on the prerogatives of the crown , the king being then an infant ; and amongst others , that wherein the confession of faith was insert , had in it several clauses altogether extrinsick to a confession of faith , for which that act by its title was chiefly design'd : and tho these acts and clauses which derogated from the rights of the crown , were often rescinded , or corrected , and the prerogative fully vindicated in many succeeding parliaments : yet these who intended more disturbance to the state , nor security for religion , took occasion after their other proposals were rejected , to offer the renewing of the said act of the first parliament of king iames the sixth , as an expedient for securing the protestant religion , as it is there profess'd ; concluding , that if that act were renewed , it would derogate from the pesterior laws , which corrected what related to the prerogative ; or if the renewing of it were refus'd , they might take occasion from that refusal , to impose on the people , that the kings commissioner and the parliament design'd not the security of the protestant religion : but the parliament defeated both these projects , by taking into the test not that act , but the protestant religion contained in it ; for the parliament was far from reviving , much less for inserting in the test any part of that act , which did incroach on the royal prerogative , the episcopal government , and policy , or whatever was extrinsick , or contradictory to the protestant religion contained in it . this , as all other disappointments , incited rage in those who resolved not to be satisfied ; and those pretended patrons of the protestant religion , will overturn it , and tear the securest test that could be made for it , rather then permit , that monarchy and it should stand together ; and finding that this test , as it did absolutely secure the protestant religion , so in just consequence thereof , it knocked fanaticism on the head : therefore to work they fall against it , with all the force of their imaginations ; and none appeared more violent then those who formally with undiscreet violence had press'd it , whilst they hop'd to invenom it , with a mixture of the poison of the covenant . but 'mongst them all , none acted with more industry , or more malice , then the late earl of argile , who being by education and choice sufficiently fanatical , yet having dissembled it for a while , thereby to keep himself in the government , and to draw it to a concurrence in his particular designs , and oppressions , whereby he kept a great estate , defrauding all creditors , and bringing many families to beggary ; he found this parliament pry a little into these mysteries , for they having made some motion in doing right to the earls of errol , marischal and strathmore , whose estates were exposed for argiles debt , whilst he enjoy'd his own estate , without owning a relief to them : therefore , albeit in the beginning of the parliament , he professed a fervour for carrying on of the king's service , yet ( his zeal to the old cause , being prick'd on by this invasion of his new right ) in the course of it , none was so active , or used more indirect ways to disappoint it . but being over-power'd by the loyal members , who were ten to one of the dis-affected ; albeit he , and other sticklers , were allowed to word the test at their pleasure , and did accordingly add to it all those clauses which since hath given pretences of scruple to many who have refused it ; yet no sooner was the session of parliament adjourned ; but the said late argile industriously , first at edinburgh , and afterward in traversing several shires , did insinuate all the prejudices he could devise against the tenor of the test : thereby endeavouring ( and not without some success ) to increase the dissatisfied party , and fit the nation the more for cumbustion : so passing home to the shires of argile , and tarhet , he fix'd the clergy and laity thereof in these seditious sentiments . thereafter he returns to edinburgh , giving it out openly , that he would not take the test ; but to make his refusal the more malicious , proposes to his royal highness , and those of the government , that he might be allowed to take it with his own explanation , which exposition he put in writ , and dispersed it ; being of that tenor and contryvance , as to cast all the obligations therein loose , making his fancy the rule of his religion , and his own loyalty the standard of his allegeance , according to which he was only to ty himself . his majesties commissioner , and the council , being well informed of his seditious carriage , both in city , and countrey , and fully confirmed in their judgments , of his malicious design in this his paraphrase on the test ; and finding that thereby he had not only perverted the sense of his majesties laws , contrary to their true meaning and intention ; but that he had endeavoured to shake the people loose from their allegeance , and make all obligations thereto illusory : and that by these methods , he did with boldness and impudence , found a schism in the church , and faction in the state , publickly owning them in the face of council : on which grounds he was most justly pursued by the kings advocat , before the soveraign justice court , and there by learn'd judges , and a jury , not only of his peers , but many of them his nearest relations ; his accusation was found relevant and proven , and judged a sufficient ground to infer the pains appointed by law for treason . albeit his father had been one of the most obstinate , and most pernicious rebels against the royal family , and that he himself had been educated in these principles , and had entered early into those practices : and albeit it be notourly known , that his private discontents and debates against his father , and the penury to which those had reduced him , were the motives which made him joyn with middleton in the hills , bringing no power with him to that army , and acting as little in it ; but by assuming the honour of what was acted by m●naughton : and that at last he was instrumental to break that party by faction ; which though this was clearly discerned by middleton at the time , yet he judged fit to dissemble it , both for encouraging the high-landers , and giving reputation to his majesties affairs , upon which account also at argiles , then lord lorn's earnest suit he did give testificates to him of his own wording , which those of undoubted loyalty did not require , and indeed were only useful to such whose actions and principles needed vindication ; yet under pretence of these , together with the great assistance of the duke of lauderdail , having attained to so immense donatives from his majesty both in estate and dignity , it was not easie to believe , he should retain that hereditary malignity , at least to such a degree as to become an open rebel ; but the ethiopian cannot change his skin ; for albeit the kings majesty , and his royal highness were so far from any resolution of taking his life , that he was allowed all freedom in prison , even after he was found guilty ; and that no further prejudice was design'd to him , than to take from him those jurisdictions and superiorities , which he and his predecessors had surreptitiously acquired ; and were used by him and them to destroy many honest and considerable familes , sometimes by stretches of law , and at other times by violence and force , but always under shelter and pretence of these jurisdictions : and that some reparation might have been made to his just creditors , and some donatives to those , whom he and his father had formerly rob'd and destroy'd , for their fidelity and loyalty to their king : and the super-plus ( if any were ) was intended for his lady and children ; which was the hight of clemency , there being indeed more debt upon the estate then the whole of its value : yet being more conscious of his own guilt then his prince did apprehend , he dar'd not rely upon that clemency , whereof he had tasted so plentifully ; but abusing the favour of his open imprisonment , for verifying of his other crimes , he added this one , of breaking the prison , and flying from the laws . no king but ours could after all this think of favouring his family , but his majesty will not only favour but restore , and before it was known that the late argile had more debt then estate , in a royal largese , he gifts more to his children by thrice then their father could lawfully give them , had he never been forsault . could it have been thought that any christian , or gentleman , could have been guilty of ungratitude to so benign and bountiful a prince ; and yet that the late earl of argile , did after the receiving so many favours , and the profession and boasting of so much loyalty ; not only enter in a horrid conspiracy for rising in arms , but gave at least courage by his bold undertakings to those who conspir'd the murther of his sacred majesty , and his royal highness ; and this conspiracy does demonstrate what was his meaning in that paraphrase upon the test , which fools and knaves have justified as very loyal and orthodox . but with what forwardness argile and others did enter into a conspiracy for overturning the monarchical government , destroying the sacred person of the king , and of his only brother , and for pulling ruine upon the three kingdoms by a civil war , the evident proofs of unsuspect witnesses , and the concurrence of many authentick papers and documents with these depositions , will not only sufficiently prove , but amount to the quality of a demonstration , all the pieces being considered together ; and with what earnestness he acted , doth evidently appear from these following evidences . for shortly after argiles escape , information was given from the west that he had caused secure the militia arms of argile and tarbet shires , as also a considerable quantity of the kings arms were given to him in trust , besides a little magazine which he had of his own , and some pieces of cannon , and that he had employed some merchants to bring arms from abroad to be landed securely in some of his remote high-land castles . and upon inquiry , one william campbel master of a ship at newport-glasgow was found to be conduc'd for this end , as his deposition taken before some of the officers of state doth clearly evince . edinburgh , the last day of august , 1682. in presence of the lords chancellor , and advocat , william campbel skipper at newport-glasgow , being examined upon oath , depons , that in march last he was fraughted by iohn campbel merchant in glasgow for norway , france , or elsewhere , for three months certain , conform to a charter-party produc'd by him ; and about that same day he having desired to know what could be his prospect of his voyage to norway with so small a ship and loading , he refused to tell him till he were at sea , and being at the back of the lews a day or two after they set off , the said iohn campbel then said , now skipper i will tell you the design of our voyage , which is to go to norway and loaden dails , and out of that to amsterdam and buy arms , and to take in the same to cairnbulg ; and the deponent having asked him what he would do with these arms there , he answered , may not my lord come to his own again , and have use for them ; and the deponent understanding these arms were to be made use of against the king , the deponent answered , that when he was made burgess of dunbartoun there was an oath taken of him to be true to the king , and the present government , as it is established ; and upon the deponents refusal to comply with him in the said voyage , he got the ships company upon his side , who beat and abused the deponent ; and having gone from that to norway , he behoved to suffer all the voyage ; there being no justice in these remote places where he came to , from which , being upon their voyage to holland , the ship was by providence cast away , for which they blam'd the deponent , as having done the same wilfully . and this is the truth , as he shall answer to god. sic subscribitur will. campbell . g. gordon cancell . edinburgh , the 14 of ianuary , 1685. in presence of the secret committee , the said william campbel being re-examined , adheres to his former deposition ; and further declares , that he offered to the then lord chancellor , to apprehend the said iohn campbel ; but the chancellor made no answer to him , but whispered the general in the ear ; and he heard afterwards that the said campbel had escaped . and this is the truth , as he shall answer to god. sic subscribitur will. campbel . at the same time surmises were heard , from amongst the fanaticks from all parts , of argiles intention to land in the west with arms , and to raise that countrey , and to joyn with the western shires ; and in summer 1683 , gordon of earlston being apprehended at newcastle , the papers taken with him , and his own depositions made upon oath in scotland did give good grounds for suspition of some imminent design , which apprehensions were raised by a little accident which happened at the time ; for upon the first noise of the discovery of the conspiracy in england earlston being in prison in edinburgh tolbooth , the keeper came in to visit , him ; who found him asleep ; but he awakening at the time , the keeper told him that now the conspiracy was broke out : how ( says earlston ) is argile then landed ? of which expression the keeper having given notice to some councellers , earlston was examined upon the meaning of the expression , who plainly confess'd , that both in england and holland he had information of argiles buying of arms with intention to land in scotland , and that at the same time he was informed that the english were to rise in several places of england . alexander gordon of earlston his deposition , before a committee of his majesties privy council , and two of the iustices . edinburg , the 25 of september , 1683. sederunt . privy counsellors . the earl of linlithgow . lord livingston . lord president of the session . lord collington . lord castlehill . justices . lord pitmedden . lord harcarss . the earl of linlithgow elected praeses . alexander gordon being further interrogate upon the interrogators given in anent the conspiracy in england , declares , that the first time he heard of any design of rising in arms , was at the time when the competition was anent the sheriffs at midsummer was a year , and then he heard the duke of monmonth was to head the rebels , and this he had from iohn nisbet and one mr. murray a scots man then at london , and declares that in ianuary last the declarant being in holland , he heard by general report that the late earl of argile was to raise some thousands of high-landers to assist the rebels in england by making a diversion , and was to get a sum of money for that effect , and that in march last he having received a letter in holland from iohn nisbet then in london , he came over to london , where he met with the said nisbet and murray , who told the declarant , they design'd to rise presently in england , and to rendezvous in six or seven places at one time , particularly at coventry and london , and that they computed several thousands in york-shire who were to joyn with them ; that murray desired the declarant to go along with him to meet with the late lords russel and gray , and the lord wharton , ( but of wharton they said they were not very sure , being a fearful man ) and with mr. ferguson , and spoke of several old officers of cromwels that were to be there , but the declarant not being for the present rising , shunned to meet with these persons , or any of them ; and both nisbet and murray told the declarant , that sir iohn cochran was with them , and heard from these two persons , that both the cessnocks were concerned in that business : as to the letter written by io. n. of the 20 of march , and directed for the declarant at rotterdam , declares that iohn nisbet wrote the said letter , and that under the metaphor of trade throughout the whole letter , is meaned the design of rising in arms and a rebellion , and that by the word dispatching the old rotten stuff , is meaned either the excluding the sectaries from joyning with them , or destroying the government , both civil and ecclesiastial , which last the declarant supposes rather to be the meaning of the words ; and that by the factors are meaned their emissaries for carrying on the rebellion ; and for that strange thing that was to fall out that week or the next , the declarant thinks is meaned the suddain muster of the rebels ; in the close of the letter which says , things are full as high as i tell you , is meaned that the rebellion was instantly to break out ; and having met with iohn nisbet after his coming from holland , the said nisbet explained to him , that the sense of the said letter was , as is above-said . as to the little letter direct to the declarant under the name of pringle , of the second of may 168● , declares that the name of the subscriver , which is blotted out , was so blotted before it came to his hand ; but by the contents of it , he knows it is from one robert iohnstoun , a tennent or vassal to the lord gray on the border , and that the traders and trading there spoke of , is the design'd rebellion ; and that the said robert iohnstoun offered to come into scotland with the declarant to have seen some of our dis-affected people here , and to have met with them ; and that a. y. mentioned in the said letter , which the letter says laboured to undervalue the dis-affected party in scotland , which he calls your goods , is the name of andrew young , who stays about newcastle , whom he supposes to be a suspected person , because he was afraid collonel struthers would apprehend him ; and that he supposes the way that that letter came to his hand , was from some person that was at a meeting at tweeds-moor about that time , where were present several of these people that had commission from the several districts , but he himself was not at that meeting . sic subscribitur al. gordon . linlithgow i. p. c. follows the letter direct b● jo. n. which was found upon earlston . london 20 march , 1683. sir , on saturday last i had the occasion of seeing a letter from you , directed for mrs. gaunt , in whose absence mrs. ward had received it , at the reading of which i was not a little troubled , considering my full resolutions signified to you in my last ; for effectuating of which i had spoke for passage , and taken my farewel of mother gaunt , she going into the countrey : and that very week i was set upon by that gentleman with whom i stay , and io. iohnston with some others to stay but a moneth , and if that did not accomplish somewhat in hand to help trading , then i should be no longer detain'd ▪ after i was prevailed to retract so far , i ordered io. who had time at command , to give you an ample account of matters ; and withal io. was desired by our friends from scotland to stand here in my place the like engagements of secrecy , &c. being taken , and thereupon i ordered him to shew you the grounds of my staying , and to desire if you inclined to cross the water to come this way , but since many are the confused , yea troubled thoughts that have possessed me for yielding , concerning which , 〈…〉 my yielding to it , take the subsequent account . in my last , or it precedent to it , i shewed you that trading was very low here , and many breaking , which has made the merchants ( such as they are ) to think that desperate diseases must have desperate cures ; and while they have some stock , it will be better to venture out , than to keep shop and sit still till all be gone , and then they shall not be able to act , but let all go : which resolution i thought a thing not to confide in , seing the most of them are fire-side merchants , and loves not to venture where storms are any thing apparent . but about my departing they shewed the model of affairs in such order , that i see venture they must , and venture they will ; whereupon 〈◊〉 first demanded how our trade would be carried on . answer , they knew well what goods had proven most prejudicial to the trade , and therefore they thought to insist upon negatives , in which whatever i proposed is assented to , as i find ▪ and thus they thought best to still some criticks in the trade : and by this means first to endeavour the dispatching the old rotten stuff before they order what to bring home next . this lookt somewhat strange to me , but when i consider all circumstances , i think they for themselves do best in it : for our merchants i made account only to have had some stock for to set the broken ones up again , and so bid them here fare-wel , and they to try their way , and we ours ▪ since they think fit that some of these whom we have found ( as you will say , when you hear them named ) treacherous dealers in our trade , consulted , and accordingly have done : whereupon i fear , or rather hope that our merchants , tho broke , will rather desire to live a while longer as they are , than joyn with such , &c. to advance the trade ; unless surer grounds of their fidelity be gotten , the● is , or can be expected , and this is the bottom of all my sorrow . but to proceed , i find ( if all hold that is intended ) that they think it is almost at a point to set forward , if they had their factors home , who are gone to try how the countrey will like such goods , as they are for , or against the making sale of . friends , i mean merchants , wrote to me , that after i had spoken to you , possibly you might come this way , the better , thereby to advise them what to do in this case , for i have signified somewhat of it to them , but not so far as this , because i thought to have seen you long ere this time : but i hope you will not misconstruct of my staying , seing in it i designed nothing but advancement of our trade ; but once this week these factors sent for will be here , and then matters will in instanti , either off or on , break , or go thorow . wherefore in reference to friends , i desire you will advise me what to do , if you cannot , or think it not convenient to come here ; if you do , let a letter preceed , and if any strange thing fall out this * week or the next , i will again post it towards you ; i think when this and the next week is gone ( and no news come from you ) that i shall set forward , being still so ready , as that in 12 hours i can bid adieu : the whiggs are very low as well in city as in the suburbs , all meetings being every sunday beset with constables to keep them out , and what they get is stollen , either at evening or morning . this winter many of the great bankers and goldsmiths in lombardstreet are broken and gone ; the ba●tam factory in the indies is taken by the dutch ; confusion , confusion in town and countrey , such as you never saw . mrs. ward and several others desire to be remembred to you . my endeared respects to your self and b. with the young men arrived . this i have writ in short , and in hast , expecting a line with as great hast as you see is needful , for matters are full as high as i tell you . farewel . from your friend and servant , while io. n. postscript . be sure that you direct not for bednal-green ; but for me at mr. mead's in stepney , near london . by this time the conspiracy had broke out in england , and by the papers sent down from the council-board there to the king's officers in scotland ; it was plain , that argile and some other scotsmen had joyned in the conspiracy , as appears by what follows . the abstract of the english depositions . thomas shephard on the 29. of iune 1683. deposed , that mr. ferguson told him of an general insurrection intended in england and scotland , and that in order to it , sir iohn cochran , mr. baille of ierviswood , mr. monro , sir hugh campbel , and sir george campbel of cesnocks ▪ were come up to treat with the englishmen about it , and that argile had made a proposition , offering for 30000. pound to begin the rebellion in scotland , and to raise a great force ; and ere it were undone , he would begin with 10000. that mr. baillie of ierviswood told him frequently , what steps were made in this , and that the lord russel , &c. had agreed to raise 5000. pound , and that they expected the other 5000. pound to be raised in the city , which failing , the scots-men were to go beyond sea , and that baillie told him , he had advised the earl of argile to accept of this 10000. pound , and that he would remit it into shepards hand , and that mr. charleton had undertaken to raise the 10000 pound . the said shepard declares , that he spoke with commissar monro sometimes of this money , and that sir iohn cochran knows of it also , and that monro complained to him that it was too little , and that the delay of paying it would ruin them all : on the 24. of august , the said shepard declares , that baillie did send carsteres to him , to speak further of these things , and that sir iohn cochran did also regrate the delay in payment of the money , all this the said shepard deposes upon oath ; as is contain'd in his deposition repeated in the following process , page 23. major holms declares , that he knew from mr. carstares , that some person proposed the raising of 30000. pound to be given to argile for buying of arms , towards his going into scotland , and that 10000. pound was agreed upon , that the duke of monmouth and lord russel , did send him word by carstares , that the money was to be remitted to argile for the said end , and that he the said holmes had writ so much to argile at carstares desire , that argile did send to him many letters in cyphers , and that mr. spence knew how to direct them , that he shew'd some of argiles letters to carstares , and that carstares had often spoke to him , both in the coffee-house and exchange , about argiles going into scotland , to carry on the conspiracy : that he cannot decypher the long letter marked number 3. nor can he positively say to whom it was directed , but was to have been carried by carstares to ferguson , and by him to the other chief men concerned in the design : that the letters marked number , 2 , is from the countess of argile to her husband , and that the letter marked number 5 , was from argile to his lady , which he knew by a mark on the back ; that spence went by the name of butler , and that the late earl of argiles letters were direct to him by spence , that castares told him , the persons concerned had condescended to give 10000. pounds to argile , that he did so write to argile , and that argile had writ to him , that 30000. pounds was the least he could accept of ; this was given in by holms on the 3. and 7. of december , 1683. zechariah bourn on the 10. of december 1683. before secretary ▪ ienkins deposeth , that mr. baillie did sit up a night or two with mr. ferguson in the deponents house , and that they went several times to the managers of the conspiracy , that ferguson told him their main business with the conspirators was , for getting 10000. pound promis'd to promove the insurrection in scotland , and that baillie was the chief man in it next to argile , that ferguson told him he was to go over with the bills of exchange , and that argile was to command the scots . robert west declares , that ferguson told him that argile would raise a sturdy commotion in scotland , if he had but 6000. pounds ; that cessnock , sir iohn cochran , and other scots , were come up to london , under pretence of treating for carolina ; but in truth to consert matters for a design in scotland . on the 29th of iuly , 1683. hepburn , a scots vagrant minister declared , that he knew by several hands and persons , that there was a plot , and a rising intended both in scotland and england . all these depositions were taken in england , except earlstons and campbels . after this , one mr. spence , who past under the name of butler , being apprehended there , was sent to scotland . major holms declared , that spence did pass under the name of butler , that he came over from holland with a cargo of argiles books , to disperse them , that he landed at harwich , that he could open argiles letters , and was the person who directed many of argiles letters to him . these proofs , with what occurr'd in england , were sufficient to convince all men of the truth of this conspiracy ; but the perversness of fanatick humors will neither admit of confession nor amendment : for albeit the evidence did fully convince juries and judges : albeit parties confess associations and resolutions to amend the government in their own methods : albeit some acknowledge designs to surprize the kings guards , others to have a parliament called ( whether the king will or will not ) to judge of the government ; and severals with great remorse reveal their own resolutions to murder the sacred person of the king , and his royal brother , and they adhering to this confession ; yet fanaticks will neither believe it , nor allow others to do so , but with unheard of impudence treat so weighty a matter in ridicule , as if they who before had acted all , which now could be feared should be now esteem'd incapable to fall in the like actions , albeit they openly avow the same principles : and bold pamphleters adventure to impose these clear proofs as apert falshoods upon the credulous world , and too many were so ill minded as to believe them . but it 's hoped , that what follows will convince all good men of the truth of what was discovered , and silence all libellers , if darkness must give place to light. at the time of the discovery of the conspiracy in england , several letters , with two keys for opening some mystical words contain'd in them , were found with major holms and others , which letters were known to be argiles hand-writ , by those who were acquainted with it , and afterwards being confess'd by the said holms to be so ; they were considered in england , and some imperfect decyphers made of some of them there : many of which letters , with the keys , and these decyphers were sent down to scotland ; but they appeared so perplex'd , what with cyphers , what with other secret contrivances in writing , as that some who then had the chief management of affairs there , by their supine negligence made but little procedure in discovering them : until a secret committee was appointed by his majesty , who considering that those letters might contain matters of importance ; did apply themselves with earnestness to search into them ; but finding them very intricate , and that the decyphers which were sent from england did open nothing to purpose : they employed one mr. gray of crichie , and gave him for the first experiment , that letter written by the lady of argile to her husband , thereupon to make an essay , which indeed proved more uneasie to unfold , then any of the rest ; yet with much travel , he did very ingeniously discover , first , that every cypher was made up of two figures , next , that every letter of the alphabet was denoted by three different cyphers , which were promiscuously used in one and the same word ; as likewise that there was mute-figures mix'd in with many words , the more to confound the discoverer : so that upon application of the triple alphabet , hereafter set down , to this and several others of the letters ; it was found to open them exactly . of which first discovery mr. gray having given an account to the lords of the secret committee , they found it evident , and appointed the rest of the letters , the english keys , and all other papers relating to that business to be given him for his help in further discoveries ; all which being considered , it was observed , that the middle alphabet of that triple one found out in scotland , was the same with that found out in england , which was made use of by argile himself in his letters ; yet his way of using it in his writings was so perplex'd by the interposition of a great many mute-figures , that tho the key was found out there , yet some of the letters could not be opened : and in full evidence of this first discovery , the said letter is afterward set down , both as it was written in the cypher , and also as it was decyphered , to which is added the triple alphabet , the warrand thereof . the letter from the countess of argile to her husband . marked number 2. 87887886804482 , the 9 2315. 788982. i came here on tuesday , where i found 70 4686442881788878 82●6 , 44 8444868817 81 81818382 44817026464482 4386 and the 70438983437088 , 4 , 8023261886 of the 874487182382 all the 8023261327 came 174426 to see 29 , 75 and 25 and ●6 came with 29 43 came by an 2326131426 with all 151815 442618282326 and 43 82268984 , i never saw 75 so 8944311413 for 43 12298228561032. we hear of a great circuit court hath been at stirlin , there were three shires met there or 4. and m. of m. and the kings troop , and e. b. came with the herotors of fife , and his troop . m. of m. went to glasgow , but some of his troop is at stirlin , and there were some of them sent to to edinburgh for an prisoner they say they call smith ; and friday last the 8. of iune , 50 of the kings troop came with that smith the length of an place they call inch-belly-bridge as they go to glasgow ; there is they say a moss , and near it a house and a barn ; and as they came near the barn 8 armed men fired at the gentlemen of the guard , and shot dead one mr. murray , he had one shot in his forehead , 3 in his body , and one in his shoulder ; and an other of the gentlemen called iohn bannatine was shot thorow the arm and side , his arm broken to splinders , that he is dead before this time ; the prisoner when he saw them , lighted off his horse , and run to them , and got an long gun from his fellows and ran into the moss , the gentlemen pursued , but got none of them taken , but many is in pursuit of them . it 's a horrid way for any that bears the name of christians to associat persons to murder on the high-ways : there is an story going here that there was a ship put in to newcastle which had some box from rebellious people in holland , and when they came to land , a waiter came to search the ship , and the box was cast into the sea , at which the waiter called the ship-master to catch the box as he would be answerable ; so it 's said , it was got and sent to the king , and that io. br. and some of l. st. andrews murderers was come to scotland to make trouble , but i would hope such a crew shall never get fitting here nor harbour . i must here bid you adieu , i use not to write so much news as this is . i got not writ last week , because poor 70261217181412 is sick , and i will not 88868927888132201488142627 to every 2322 , i have got nothing done in my affairs , our trade goes ill on ; but 16231318172384 will 171420548144 to 111410261020 i am sorry i 121022132322232817182216 for 29 i am this far on my way to 18222914261022 and to see 81321318142617 i shall give 20 account when i come back , and i fear till then i will not get writ , for my boy is sick . i sent the letter to 20 211028 who i saw on wednesday , 43 told me he had received yours ; but did not yet 261410131828 which i confess i thought a little strange , being at least 8 days with him 781822291828141343171826 to stay with 29 but 43 would not , but said 7819221429 it was not meet 151828 nor 874415 for 43 to 8032 at this 17232927182710181318 thought none would be so 1802 as to take that 182043121021 not , i said 75 never stood to shew his constant 19322243527427 to 29 and all that belonged to 43 20 21108820 is very 1129271814 17181426 doing that 43 18 hope hath no 242014272926 1822 and i hear , for 10 20 43 13232887 there is a 291026102213 to 20 121027281020171820 to get 43 24201012 but 2021 knows not yet ; there was 22 1429142627291217 29102619 as has 1114 2 2171426 it makes 10 20 in 15141026 some 272921 14211317 1426 for 27244419182216 with 1822281426122321 1422 1413 2418241420 the 27281820 of their 17232682 832181426 10 1623 75 hath so 27281819201413 for them all that hath procured 43 a great deal of love from the 12232228261032 and somewhat 142027 from others it 's the 2728261022161427●8 thing tho it could not 1114 24262329●422 they could not 161428 an 281127232029102814281820 they 2810ck the 88448788 and 241032 a 16261828 13181020 to 887081 468386434482 the 4280708619 who 16142827 too great 131420 of 2123221814 there was one here a 1514291426 of 29 that lives in 2710201422. that was most 292218292728203227293120221317181426 ii32 on 241028102228 for speaking 282614272322 i spoke to 2021 for 43 but none befriended 43 or appear'd for him but 75 who did 1126182216432315 , the 282614272322 was only good of 29 the other tho the favorit of the 1220102619 was 15292213 10 20321426 and ja. 23201815102228 23 1i27232029141323 ii2928 1812292013 29261428 10 long letter to 29 who i think 1710241814 1114 2328171426. postscript . let these news be known to your scots friends . this letter opened . stirling the 9 of june i came here on tuesday , where i found a great meeting , e. perth , m. mon. e. marr. gen. dr. and the advocat , four lords of the session ; all the lords came here to see w. f. and q. and r. came with w. d. came by an order with all fife heretors and d's troop . i never saw f. so vexed for d. countrey ( here is in plain writing some scots news till it came to this ) i got not write the last week , because poor archie c. is sick ; and i will not trust my letters to every one , i have got nothing done in my affairs , our trade goes ill on ; but god i hope will help me to bear all . i am sory i can do nothing for w. i am this far on my way to inveran and to see my dear h. i shall give l. account when i come back : and i fear till then i will not get write , for my boy is sick . i sent the letter to l. mat. who i saw on wednesday , d. told me he had received yours , but did not yet read it , which i confess i thought a little strange , being at least eight dayes with him , i invited d. here to stay with w ▪ but d. would not , but said i knew it was not meet , fit , nor safe for d. to ly at this house ; i said i thought none would be so ill , as to take that ill ; d. came not , i said f. never stood to shew his constant kindness to w. and all that belonged to d. l. matl . is very busie here doing what d. i hope hath no pleasure in ▪ and i hear for all d. does there is a warrant to l. castlehill to get d. place ; but l. m. knows not yet . there was never such work as has been here , it makes all in fear , some summoned for speaking with intercommuned people the stile of their horn. eight years ago : f. hath so stickled for them all , that it hath procured him a great deal of love from the countrey , and somewhat else from others , it s the strangest thing , tho it could not be proven they could not get an absolvitor , they take the test , and pay a great deal to tam gordon the clerk , who gets too great a deal of money , there was one here a feuar of w. that lives in salen that was most unjustly summoned here by one paton for speaking treason , i spoke to l. m. for d. but none befriended d. or appeared for d. but. f. who did bring d. off . the treason was only good of w. the other tho the favorit of the clerk was found a liar , and iames oliphant absolved , o but i could write a long letter to w. who i think happy be others . postscript . let these news be known to your scots friends . nota , that after this letter was deciphered , the letter d. which was denoted by the figure 43 , could not be found out , until the secret committe appointed the kings advocat and sir william paterson , one of the clerks of the privy council , to examine the countess of argile upon the meaning thereof , who declared that it was no proper name , but wherever it was placed in the letter , it stood for a relative . the clavis of this letter d. stands for the relatives he , his , their , him , &c. w. stands for argile , and his lady , or me , yours , &c. l. stands for lorn , conform to the countess her deposition . l. m. stands for lord maitland . f. q. r. the key of words , whereof two copies were found with major holms , one of them being mr. carstares hand writ , and confest by him to be the key of their correspondence , in which also there is an alphabet different from the other three , for which as yet we have found no use ; the middle column is thought only to be mute figures , to confound the design of the key . so that one word is only set down for another , as ker stands for king , birch for england , brand for scotland , &c. king 40 ker d. york 71 corse d. mon. 39 white e. roch. 37 whit e. halifax 43 whyte the court 45 west the council 50 westli one of the council 57 east the torries 30 westly the whiggs 22 brown the city 18 wilson the mayor 27 watson sheriffs 31 brun court of aldermen 36 baxter common council 35 barker l. russel 29 weste e. essex 32 wilson dissenting lords 47 browne bishops of england 61 wood the clergy 65 child non-conformists 64 chyld england 73 birch france 72 birche the states 44 heart the prince 38 harwood forces 17 hal horse 28 hilyard foot 90 hickman 1000 of the one or — other , a tick after . his so many partners . and so forth a 100 — a stroak after , thus . his so many neighbours . arms 75 chylde money 80 hall 100 or 1000 lib sterl . for the number 100 or 1000 , with a stroak , or tick , as above , but the 5 ves beneath , and the 10ths before , or a little figure underneath to mark the number . so many associats or sharers with him . officers 81 ramsey a general 88 bareley col. sidley 96 ramsoy mr. holms 53 barclay commissar monro 59 reid sir iohn cochran 49 rac mr. carstairs 74 red mr. stewart 83 harlay mr. athol 84 harlaie mr. huntly 77 ross scotland 10 brand council there 92 boid chancellor 11 calender queensberry 15 davidson d. ham. 93 boyd e. argile 67 forrest scots forces 66 forret scots fanaticks 42 goven scots n. c. ministers 13 lands scots clergy 5 menzies the west 6 mason the high-lands 7 wright the south . 9 ma●son the north 95 nairn edenburgh 26 ross the castle 25 masone dumbareon 24 thoms●n the east 20 tomson the scots gent. 21 grein the gent. at lond. 94 gray the borders 76 menzies ships for their number a figure added 99 mr. berrie a garrison 98 bierre religion 48 bass popery 58 sibbet papists 51 long scots nobility one of them a friend of h. 52 sibit the alphabet . a 12 b 14 c 16 d 19 e 23 f 28 g 29 h 33 i 34 k 41 l 42 m 46 n 54 o 55 p 56 q 60 r 63 s 68 t 69 u 70 v 78 w 79 x 82 y 85 z 86 & 89 an addition in the key , written by mr. carstares . old friend is tome . mr. kiffin is bishop . mr. cox is crafts . lock is huxter . cessnock is cozens . ierviswood is ball. to surprize is to speak with . to land is to go to . to march is to deal . to make prisoner is to agree . to fight is to talk . to disarm is to help . to kill is to see . to give quarters is to ●ear . to overcome is to find . here follows the alphabetical key , found out by the said mr. gray , which opened the countess of argiles letter . a b c d e f g h i k l m n o p q r s t u w x y z ● 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 3 34 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 the next letter decyphered by the foresaid mr. gray , answering exactly to the middle alphabet of the said key ; was a little one written in a paper , and inclosed in a letter to mr. west , at mr. staples in south-wark coffeehouse , in bartholomew-lane , london , dated the 24 of iune ( the letters direct to major holms being declared by spence and mr. carstares to pass under this kind of direction , ) which little paper inclosed within the said letter , here follows both in cypher , and decypher . a little letter written by argile , all in cypher , and confounded with mutes . 32674845254324512641443651404344692837●6545648575352394 456274744294857395053575822535340504852585764545956545357 445768584756484244516921564443575140434428545653545358485 8485352205345445944566●6758474852463251484647585744425956 443941564052436048584753595840415361645847445258534344405 0446048584741●8564247415958485848575253585840504948524660 485043534448586460474058485774405444524443524444435752535 8474852434456415958574753595043455956584744564451. the said letter decyphered . 32 67 if 25 d. 24 m. 26 be 36 made 69 28 37 26 prison 39 er 27 he 29 is 39 lost 22 to all intents and purposes , 68 thrice m. 6921 reds made 28 proposition 20 of every 67 thing 32 might secure , 39 brand without a box , and then to deal with birch , but it is not talking will do it , and what is hapened needs not hinder but should further ' em . this letter was opened by the middle alphabet before set down : so the significant figures read thus in plain writing . if d. * m. be made prisoner , he is lost to all intents and purposes , thrice mr. reds made proposition of every thing might secure brand without a box , and then to deal with birch : but it is not talking will do it , and what is happened , needs not hinder , but should further ' em . by m. red , mr. carstares is signified , brand is scotland , and birch england , according to the key of words , which was found with major holms : mr. carstares deposition insert in ierviswoods process will further inform as to the tenor and intent of this letter . this letter was writ in all probability after that he heard , that the conspiracy was discovered ; for the plain letter in which this cypher was inclosed , seem'd to be a part of his lamentations . the letter follows . 24 iune . sir , i have received yours 19 instant , with the inclosed , which is indeed sad ; yet god guides the world , and all will work to the end he intends , and what he purposes will at length prevail . i had newly read the first treatise of the big book you sent me , pray read the last lines of the 3 d chapter , pag. 152 of that treatise , and if you please some leaves before , and the 20 that follows , he mistakes the calculations of the numbers of years , but the matter looks as like our present circumstances as any such thing can do , if the party were alive he could say little more : what you writ will make me long to hear again : our scribe it seems is an unhappy man : desire m. b. to buy me b. vshers prophecy , which i have seen in print by it self ; and if it be possible to get me a copy of that little book you once lent me , wherein is a speech i copied ; he may look for it . this letter was also direct to mr. west . by these two letters , it appears ; that albeit by the providence god the conspiracy was discovered , and the designs thereof defeated , yet nothing would either divert or deterr argile from prosecuting so glorious a work : for so he had promised before it was discovered , by several of his letters ; as appears particularly by one direct to mr. west , dated 19 iune . another adressed to holms , marked n. 4. 19 iune . sir , this morning i received yours , 15 instant , but can say little till i meet with mr. red ; only you may be sure , it will not be a small matter will make me desert your service , and especially no concerns of my own : and none shall be more sparing of your credite that understands the trade . i doubt not after i have spoke with him , to convince you of what i shall then give you as my opinion , and leave the issue to god almighty . i am very sensible of all your kindness to me , and of good honest m. l. pray return him my thanks : as for my other friend that is the life of all , pray tell him i must once see him before i need that you offer to send me , it will be then time enough to dispose of it ; and if it be made use of , i hope he shall hear of it to his satisfaction : i perceive by it , he hopes well of me : it made me smile when i read your letter : when i know that mr. b. is with you i can write at greater length of all your affairs . i will now long to hear how the last parcel of goods i sent you pleases the merchants , they were long of coming , but i hope are not yet out of time , and what ever the fault is may be helped in the next parcel . adieu . haste back . m. b. direct the inclosed by his advice . directed . mr. west , at mr. shepneys south-wark coffee-house in bartholomew-lane . london . here follows another letter , marked number 5. direct by argile to his lady , of the same date , which was known by major holms , t● be f●r the count●s● , by a particular mark upon the back of it , which he shew to his 〈◊〉 . sir , this is only to tell you that all your friends here are in health ( god be thanked ) our news from england are very various and uncertain , and mr. b. is gone to london , and to return in a month , or less ; i doubt not he will write to you : i have heard nothing from 80 , nor 80 , 81. these six months . adieu . the decypher of the said letter· this is only to tell you that all your friends here are in health ( god be thanked ) our news from england are very various and uncertain , and mr. b. is gone to london , and to return in a month , or less ; i doubt not he will write to you : i have heard nothing from l , nor l , m. these six months . this letter is decyphered by the aforesaid alphabetical key , and by the countess of argiles deposition , the letter l , stands for lorn , and the letters l , m , for lord maitland . mr. gray of crichie having considered these following letters of argiles , which after discovery , were found to comprehend the designs more plainly , and finding such a perplex'd contexture and in-cohesion of the words , as he had not observed , at any time before , in this way of writing : he concluded it to be a work of very great difficulty to open them ; yet his success in former discoveries , gave him encouragement to make an attempt . but in the mean time , having informed the lords of the secret committee , that it appeared from the postscript of the long letter ( where argile says , in plain writing , that mr. butler ( which is spence ) knows how to write to me , and understands my address , and to instruct you ; and if not , he had lost six hours work ) that the said mr. spence could do the business : and they finding , that what was already decyphered , did give such evidence of a conspiracy and treasonable designs against the king , and his government , which being joyn'd with earlstons deposition , and the letter taken upon him from io. n. they judged themselves bound in duty , to offer what was discovered to the consideration of his majesties most honourable privy council in scotland , and thereupon , according to the law and practice of the nation , did call before them the said spence , and after all arguments of perswasion and command were used , and these passages in argiles letter , whereby it appeared he was instructed to open them , were represented unto him ; yet ( notwithstanding of his duty and alledgeance to his prince , and that it was judicially declared , that what he deposed , should not militate against him ) he still refusing to open the letters , or to depon that he could not ; yea , not so much as to answer other interrogators , which did arise from matter of fact clearly proved against him . they afterwards proceeded to torture , according to the custom of nations , in the like cases , which had its desired effect . for upon the day of august 1684 , he not only acknowledged that he was the mr. butler , or m. b. mentioned in argiles letters ; but also undertook to shew the way of reading the following letters , to the then thesaurer deput , now lord secretary , and to the lord register , upon their promise not to divulge the same ( which accordingly they performed ) and so he gave in a copy of the letters opened . but mr. gray ( after some pains taken ) understanding from the lord register that all the words of the letters were significant words , whereof he had formerly been doubtful ; there being of 1024 words in the long letter , 800 monosyllab● , he did fall upon the way of opening these letters , which not only did confirm the sense mr. spence , had given of them ; but made it a demonstration : so that by the way of opening afterwards set down , the matter was more clearly proved , then it could have been done by the attestation of many witnesses : by which was discovered both the blackness of the treason , and the great care taken for keeping it secret . for , 1. things were express'd under new words : so that indeed upon the matter it is a new language . 2. these words were written in cyphers . 3. this cypher consisted of a triple alphabet . 4. many words were intermix'd with mute-cyphers . 5. in some of these letters all the relatives were express'd by figures , as in the lady argiles letter , the figure 43 , or the letter d , stands for the relatives he , his , him , &c. 6. that tho mr. spence was instructed to shew the way of reading the following letters , yet he knew nothing of the purpose contain'd in them , all the material words being in cypher . 7. the words in the long letter were so ordered , that 254 words in course were interposed betwixt the 1 and 2 word in sense , and as many betwixt the 3 and 4 , and so forth to the last word of the letter : then beginning with the 2 word there was 252 words betwixt that and the next in sense , and so forth till they came to the penult word : again beginning with the 3 word of the letter , betwixt which and the next in sense : there interveen'd only 250 words , and so forward to the end . 8. in the short letter 62 words were interposed betwixt the first and second , and so to proceed as in the other . by which unequal destribution and gradual decresce of the interjected words , the method of reading became the more mysterious and intricate ; but the way fallen upon by mr. gray giving so clear and convincing evidence of the method , it leaves no ground of doubt concerning the matter : for in the long letter there being 8 colums , and each column containing ●28 words , argiles way of using them is , he begins at the head of the first column , and proceeds to the foot of it , then beginning at the bottom of the second column , he rises to the head thereof , thereafter begins at the top of the 3 column , and goes on after that manner till he come to the upmost word of the 8 column , which tho it be last word in order , yet it is but the 8 word in sense : whereby all the words were plac'd in their right sense and plain view , as the letter both in its mask and decypher doth clearly evince ; yet one word being added or abstracted in the said order of the words , the letter should return to its first chaos of nonsense . the letters follow , together with their decyphers , and ways of opening . this is a letter wherein argile gives an account to his confederates in england , of the proceedings of the kings ministers in scotland , thereby endeavouring to disparage them , all written with his own hand . west much way daily at i i● with 69415358475944503322 then or 4253514857485352 or a if to 5644693941445057 at in 5744525844524244 of he cause other to keep and also did 58445240525357 persons any thing they of any if gave any mr. m. did thereof knew these and relation 39505360435352 and go he 585644405862 any with any in or 3648525●445642●3 5159524445 he send air to be 40504056514443 sheils is as done extremities to them knew 3951485248575844 657 if 4056 51445●66 others any other and knew to if or to if persons of and imploy 384250445649 person him any thing others say they plea●e will to to of money out of him if their now he the 3157 457 52●349 he 233246504057465360 who who of person did or they or any to a here where any arrived the and you are 58●452445●58 you that others conversed since write to the was imployed and knew or present kept with going 446950 to the of for the perswade go be for fear found to or above that the 384●485642594858 go 6942 44●7525349 away drawn correspondence 4653●9445651445258 any of 4●●051485058●3 2 mr. the 49485246●7 my or and with at had for of 48●2584456534640●85●5657 are as pre●dent is desirous things given 44 the privat or the if send 50 party person m. to any other and with and or or to 42535956●85453565844 5957 effect named disswade the to or money swear 5●444144 50●85352 any persons and roll to 332246504057465360 any the if any black 6053435738 place meeting the c. and for m. any they rebels before meeting stile l. in go what as , lib. ss . there rests just 32 — 8. the decypher of the foresaid letter , as it was done in england , with some amendments here , which answered exactly with the middle alphabet , found out in scotland . west much may daily at i if with 69 bothwel 33 22 then or commission or a if to re 69 39 bels at in sentence of he cause other to keep and also did tennents persons any thing they of any if gave any mr. m. did thereof knew these and relation 39 london and go he treaty any with any in or 36 intercommuned he send air to be alarmed sheilds is as done extremities to them knew 3● ministers if arms 60 others any other and knew to if or to if persons of and imploy 38 clerk person him any thing others say they please will to to of money out of him if their now he the 31 cessnock he 23 32 glasgow who who of person did or they or any to a here where any arrived the and you are tennent you that others conversed since write to the was imployed and knew or present kept with going e. 69 l. to the of for the perswade go be for fear found to or above that the 38 circuit go 69 cesnock away drawn correspondence government any of hamilton mr. the kings my or and with at had for of interrogators are as president is desirous things given e. the privat or the if send l. party person m. to any other and with and or or to court porteous effect named diswade the to or money swear rebellion any persons and roll to 33 22 glasgow any the if any blackwoods 38 place meeting the c. and for m. any they rebels before meetings stile l. in go what as . lib. ss . there rests just 32 — 8 the copy of the said letter , as it was given in upon oath by mr. spence . west-shields is arrived , the president is as much alarmed as any , and as desirous what may be done where you are ; things go daily to extremities ; here are interrogators given in at air to a tennent of e. l. i send them to you for the stile : if he knew any that had private meetings with intercommun'd ministers , or others , at , or before bothwel , or if they conversed with the rebels then in arms , or since ; and if they , or any others did write , or send any commission with any person , to my l. m. or any other of the king's party for a treaty , and who was the person , and if he knew who imployed mr. m. c. to go to glasgow and hamilton to the rebels , and if he knew of any meeting at lowdon , or cesnock , or any other place in relation to the present government , and blackwoods sentence , and if he kept correspondence with any of these persons now with-drawn , and if he knew of their going away , or the cause thereof , and if e. l. cesnock , or any other did imploy him to go to glasgow to mr. m. clerk of the circuit court , to keep any person out of the porteous roll , and gave him money for that effect ; and also , if any of the above-named persons did any thing to perswade , or disswade any tennents of others to go to the rebellion , persons they say will be found to swear any thing they please , for fear , or money . follows the method or way of opening the foresaid letter discovered by mr. gray , for further confirmation . the foresaid letter set down according to the method of opening before narrated . west sheilds is arrived the president is as much alarmed as any and as desirous what may be done where you are things go dayly to extremities here are interrogators given in at air to a tennent of e. l. i send them to you for the stile if he knew any that had privat meetings with intercomun'd ministers or others at or before bothwell or if they conversed with the rebels then in arms or since and if they or any others did write or send any commission with any person to my l. m. or any other of the kings party for a treaty and who was the person and if he knew who imployed mr. m. c. to go to glasgow and hamilton to the rebels and if he knew of any meeting at loudon or cessnock or any other place in relation to the present government and blackwoods sentence and if he kept correspondence with any of these persons now with drawen and if he knew of their going away or the cause thereof and if e. l. cessnock or any other did imploy him to go to glasgow to mr. m. clerk of the circuit court to keep any person out of the porteous roll and gave him money for that effect and also if any of the above named persons did any thing to perswade or diswade any tennents of others to go to the rebellion persons they say will be found to swear any thing they please for fear or money . the long letter written with argiles own hand , which was address'd to major holms , and marked number 3. 21 iune . tho i cannot by this post send you a full account of your affairs , yet i send you as much as may make you take measures what bills to draw upon me , which i hope you will fully understand by mr bs. help ; the whole account amounted to several pages ; but i only give you one to total , as sufficient . i gone so i and refuse object first you time much is way the our would of altogether concerned do upon absolutely do to do effectually as that it be to is at all be 335759424244575769 money 36 47575657 of and to 69224736535657 and they have is at be that no some their 2345535958 , &c. 50000 4548464758 part as against the but concurrence from be less nor like place and interest is small and power against need do bring which birch that cannot time are out upon an 324753235657 to 56444256594858444367 projected meat very may little done the been purse i to shall my lists ● to great venture they prospect provided have can willing god given conference week brown i of things said some the now their my head guard mention 324344675748465257 things which to your hope some ago as over some if do spoke for of know and encouragement confer have and self be order resolve and to reckoning all and undertake honest or was far be shooes undertaking many of to for purchase was as is the a possibly us of by force it tho so how the credite for time birch and some greatest them concerned will for and to and 404843 station good may only the if more will if should expect tollerably standing and by and necessar the the more the hazarded to it 8 and think urge so necessar i the that so affairs have business very i possible of i send here against my till what little upon know not which money 25405748575840524244 i service any what shall resolve thee at did least effectually thought and far if business reckoned for still the there i or stuck you upon money by first sum if then bills 26 435640465359525769455356424457 well that 3841444058 515950584858594357 need trouble something very a frighten the probably not 2000 the tho the once for and 575942 4244575735 will 4057 5748575840524244 and to money could foolish browne many the not to gods brand besides stay iob seat yet to proposed 322240565157 a deal the things as all once less any drink well on know i as pay whether never the received to any calculate about to that that the such with you i other i i for considerable be particular add i are of lest i but all have it enemies to cannot to friends made part i write wish may be service mr. an whole there consider persons it when knowing any and payments to i it low shall little little meaning intelligence thing out had which tents usual whole with 673151485048584840 and by the more of if but the that blessing raise a 54565358445758405258 4753565744 can virgins supply to call 485650405243 not keep imaginable tho them 4853485244 standing many number 25 4753565733 only at standing a 5159505848585943 first considerable with more can them countrey 425351514052434443 in and there 40565157 it was weeks half i so to at 600 think needs precise i the the it a within what requisite not sum truly this grounds to say mr. thing nor know they as hath the grounds occasioned i they both do is red only let i distance in i half in i the little would 4057485758405242 first shall number very 1000 and the consider small confess them work proposed please cannot are 2000 brand it 544453545044 the be 40565157 then be 40544440564852464640584744564443 little 455356424457 5758445650485244 have the but it will 455356574457 and as we yet together only it for buy it consider imploy better interest small so to some 47535657 a future the to total the absolute of and designed and wagons are but of proposed or and because what add as out meddle touch of i knowing merchant there it that what is 40454 04856444058●4515458 red i not but i of expect of up i enforce at be that should a is in considerable put i done this all have by the not to had before able will i if and a they have will is for 5753504348535956 shall necessars the or of if is is they very incident for the dayly not cloaths necessar to there the necessar best of the 60405639 events little to hope 564454564457 many sum were for so in we them more will in and it had any many yet be may all 51485048584840 and will it without and not but more got triple on is very 45535959 now be god and but is what a if odds it as near named not brush of not less power proposed an of thought my and go you in or resolved so i intend hear them our 45564844524357 to neither to will much till any the know on in proposition could what other i of could be the and be but that easie were i all differ was absolutely soon more to sent above at well right foot their together provisions the suddenly that 404258485352 will take will of the be unwilling the will can at is get brand not 40565157 no should the much their not and men the are be while do to advantage the husbanding for number is be for 5747534457 only to whole provisions charges good can to i i my meddle money as freely for the and be es●ates do project all after see be i it such you all 47535657 the yet i distance to dare them direction gods hands in on not prevent and have some help may from a a be pray very i i necessars and that to a occasion prices the submit they but not own had made be do men some of sum be necessar 47535657 such bestowed nothing they one it money of brand not to sent engaged whole with a concerned own money next prove money far then but some impossible first be be most to of 4744564858535657 20000 to up do tho there done case and yet number without hard appointed left 1200 like give will after necessar proposed as should leave hard had number i peremptor i 673347535657 stood possibly those thought juncture i do mention this as as mean other i as neither give know offer have adieu . gil. st. the total sum is 128 8. which will be payed to you by mr. b. follows in plain writing on the back of the letter . i have found two of the books i wrote to mr. b. were lost , i believe he hath the blew one , we have received his letter , i have nothing more to say to him at present , i hope he knows how to write to me , and understands my address , and to instruct you ; if he do not , i have lost six hours work . adieu . the decypher of the said letter as it was done in england , with some amendments since , which answers exactly with the middle alphabet found out in scotland . sir , iune 21. tho i cannot by this post send you a full account of your affairs , yet i send you as much as may make you take measures what bills to draw upon me , which i hope you will fully understand by mr. b's help ; the whole account amounted to several pages ; but i only give you one to total as sufficient . i gone so i and refuse object first you time much is way the our would of altogether concerned do upon absolutely do to do effectua●ly as that it be to is at all be 33 success 69 money 36 horse of and to 69 2 h 36 orse and they have is at be that no some there 23 foot &c 50000 sight part as against the but concurrence from be less nor like place and interest is small and power against need do bring which birch that cannot time are out upon an 32 ho 23 rse to recruited projected meat very may little done the been pur●e i to shal my lists i to great venture they prospect provided have can willing god given conference week brown i of things said some the now there my head guard mention 32 de 67 signs things which to your hope some ago as over some if do spoke for of know and encouragement con●e● have and felt be order resolve and to reckoning all and undertake honest or was far be shoes und●rtaking many of to for purchase was as is the a possibly us of by force it tho so how the credit for time birch and some greatest them concerned will for and to and aid station good may only the if more will if should expect tollerably standing and by and necessar the the more the hazarded to it 8 and think urge so necessar i the that so affairs have business very i possible of i send hear against my till what little upon know not which money 25 assistance i service any what shall resolve the at did least effectually thought and far if business reckoned for still the there i or stuck you upon money by first sum if then bills 20 dragoon● 69 forces well that 38. beat multitudes need trouble something very a frighten the probably not 2000 the tho the once for and success 35 will assistance and to money could foolish browne many the not to gods brand besides stay job seat yet to proposed 32 22 arms a deal the things as all once less any drink well on know i as pay whether never the received to any calculate about to that that the such with you i other i● for considerable be particular add i are o● lest i but all have it enemies to cannot to an account to friends made part i write wish may be service mr. an whole there consider persons it when knowing any and payment to i it lo● shall little little meaning intelligence thing out had which tents usual whole with 67 31 militia and by the more of it but the that blessing raise a protestant horse can virgins supply to call ireland not keep imaginable tho them joyn standing many number horse only at standing a multitude first considerable with more can them countrey commanded in and there arms it was weeks half i so to at 600 think needs precise i the the it a within what requisite not sum truly this g●ounds to say mr. thing nor know they as hath the grounds occasioned i they noth do is red only let i distance in i half in i the little would assistance first shall number very 1000 and the consider small con●ess then work proposed please cannot are 2000 brand it pe●ple the ●e arms them ●e appearing gathered little forces stirling have the but it will forces and as we yet togethe● only it for buy it consider imploy better interest small so to some horse a future the to total the absolute of and design'd and wagons ar● but of proposed or and because what add as out meddle touch of i knowing merchant there it that what is affair attempt red i not but i of expect of up i enforce at be that should a is in con●●●erable put i done this all have by the not to had before able will i if and a they have will is for souldier shall necessars the or of if is is they very incident for the daily not cloaths necessar to their the necessar best of the war 39 events little to hope repress many sum were for so in we them more will in and it had any many yet be may all militia and will it without and not but more got triple on is very foot now be god and but is what a if odds it as near named not brush of not less power proposed an of thought my and go you in or resolved so i intend hear them our friends to neither to will much till any the know on in proposition could what other i of could be the and be but that easie were i all differ was absolutely soon more to sent above at well right foot their together provisions the suddenly that action will take will of the be unwilling the will can at is get brand not arms no should the much there not and men the are be while do to advantage the husbanding for number is be for shoes only to whole provisions charges good can to ii my meddle money as freely for the an be estates do project all after see be i it such you all horse the yet i distance to dar them direction gods hands in on not prevent and have some help may from a a be pray very ii necessars and that to a occasion prices the submit they but not own had made be do men some of sum be necessar horse such bestowed nothing they one it money of brand not to sent engaged whole with a concerned own money next prove money far then but some impossible first be be most to of heretors 20000 to up do tho there done case and yet number without hard appointed least 1200 like give will after necessar proposed as should leave hard had number i peremptor j 67 33 horse stood possibly those thought juncture i do mention this as as mean other i as neither give know offer have . adieu . gil. st. the total sum is 128 — 8. which will be payed to you by mr. b. written in plain sense on the back of the letter . i have found two of the books i wrote to mr. b. were lost , i believe he hath the blue on : we have received his letter . i have nothing more to say to him at present : i hope he knows how to write to me , and understands my address , and to instruct you , if he do not , i have lost six hours work . adieu . the copy of the said letter , as it was given in by mr. spence , according to the plain sense thereof , without the preface or postscript , being set down already with the cypher and decypher . i know not the grounds our friends have gone upon , which hath occasioned them to offer so little mony as i hear , neither know i what assistance they they intend to give ; and till i know both , i will neither refuse my service , nor do so much as object against any thing is resolved , till i first hear what mr. * red , or any other you send shall say ; only in the mean time i resolve to let you know as much of the grounds i go on , as is possible at this distance , and in this way . i did truly in my proposition mention the very least sum , i thought could do our business effectually , not half of what i would have thought requisite in an other juncture of affairs ; and what i proposed i thought altogether so far within the power of those concerned , that if a little less could possibly do the business , it would not be stood upon : i reckoned the assistance of the horse absolutly necessar for the first brush , and i do so still : i shall not be peremptor to urge the precise number named , but i do think there needs very near that number effectually ; and i think 1000 as easie had as 8 or 600 and it were hard that it stuck at the odds . i leave it to you to consider if all should be hazarded , upon so small a differ . as to the money , i confess what was proposed , is more by half then is absolutely necessar at the first weeks work , but soon after all the sum was proposed , and more will be necessar , if it please god to give success ; and then arms cannot be sent like money by bills : there are now above 1200 horse and dragoons , and 2000 foot at least of standing forces in † brand , very well appointed and tollerably well commanded , it is right hard to expect that countrey people on foot , without horse ; should beat them the triple their number ; and if multitudes can be got together , yet here follows the foresaid letter , plac'd in eight columns , and 128 words in every column , wanting both preface and postscript which was written in plain sense . i know not the grounds our friends have gone upon which hath occasioned them to offer so little money as i ●ear neither know i what assistance they they intend to give and till i know both i will neither refuse my service nor do so much as object against any thing is resolved till i first hear what mr. red or any other you send shall say only in the mean time i resolve to let you know as much of the grounds i go on as is possible at this distance and in this way i did truly in my proposition mention the very least sum i thought could do our business effectually not half of what i would have thought requisite in an other juncture of affairs and what i proposed i thought altogether so far within the power of those concerned that if a little less could possibly do the business it would not be stood upon i reckoned the assistance of the horse absolutly necessar for the first brush and i do so still i shall not be peremptor to urge the precise number named but i do think there needs very near that number effectually and i think 1000. as easie had as 8 or 600. and it were hard that it st●ck at the odds i leave it to you to consider if all should be hazarded upon so small a differ as to the money i confess what was proposed is more by half then is absolutely necessar at the first weeks work but soon after all the sum was proposed and more will be necessar if it please god to give success and then arms cannot be sent like money by bills there are now above 1200. horse and dragoons and 2000. foot at least of standing forces in brand very well appointed and tollerably well commanded it is right hard to expect that countrey people on foot without horse should beat them the triple their number and if multitudes can be got together yet they will need more arms more provisions and have more trouble with them but the case is if something considerable be not suddenly done at the very first appearing and that there be only a multitude gathered without action tho that may frighten a little it will do no good the standing forces will take up some station probably at stirling and will to their aid not only have the militia of 20000. foot and 2000. horse but all the heretors &c. to the number it may be of 50000. and tho many will be unwilling to ●ight for the standing forces yet the most part will once joyn and many will be as concern'd for them as any can be against them and tho we had at first the greatest success imaginable yet it is impossible but some will keep together and get some concurrence and 〈◊〉 not only in brand but from birch and ireland it will not then be time to call for more arms far less for money to buy them no money nor credit could supply it we should prove like the foolish virgins consider in the next place how brown can imploy so much money and so many horse better for their own interest tho the protestant interest were not concerned is it not a small sum and a small force to raise so many men with and by gods blessing to repress the whole power of brand that some hope are engaged against us besides the horse to be sent need possibly stay but a little while to do a job if future events do not bring the seat of the war to brand which is yet more to the advantage of birch as to the total of the money that was proposed by the best husbanding it cannot purchase arms and absolute necessar for one time for a militia of the number they are to deal with and there is nothing out of the whole design'd to be bestowed upon many things usual and necessars for such an undertaking as tents waggons cloathes shooes horse horse shooes all which are not only necessar to be once had but dayly to be recruited far less out of the whole sum projected was any thing proposed for provisions of meat or drink intelligence or incident charges some very honest well meaning and very good men may undertake on little because they can do little and know little what is to be done all i shall add is i made the reckoning as low as if i had been to pay it out of my own purse and whether i meddle or meddle not i resolve never to touch the money but to order the payments of necessars as they shall be received and i shall freely submit my self to any knowing souldier for the lists and any knowing merchant for the prices i have calculate when there is an occasion to confer about it it will be a great encouragement to persons that have estates to venture and that consider what they do that they know that there is a project and prospect of the whole affair and all necessars provided for such an attempt if after i have spoke with mr. red i see i can do you service i will be very willing if i be not able i pray god some other may but before it be given over i wish i had such a conference as i write of to you a week ago for i expect not all from brown some considerable part of the horse may i hope be made up by the help of your particular friends i have yet some things to add to enforce all i have said which i cannot at this distance and some things are to be done to prevent the designs of enemies that i dare not now mention lest it should put them on their guard i have a considerable direction in my head but all is in gods hands . they will need more arms , more provision , and have more trouble with them ; but the case is , if something considerable be not suddenly done , at at the very first appearing , and that there be only a multitude gathered without action , tho that may frighten a little , it will do no good , the standing forces will take up some station , probably at stirling , and will to their aid , not only have the militia of 20000. foot , and 2000. horse , but all the heretors , &c. to the number , it may be of 50000. and tho many will be unwilling to sight for the standing forces , yet the most part will once joyn , and many will be as concerned for them , as any can be against them ; and tho we had at first the greatest success imaginable , yet it is impossible but some will keep together , and get some concurrence and assistance , not only in * brand , but from † birch , and ireland ; it will not then be time to call for more arms , far less for money to buy them , no money nor credit could supply it , we should prove like the foolish virgins : consider in the next place how * browne can imploy so much money , and so many horse , better for their own interest , tho the protestant interst were not concerned ; is it not a small sum , and a small force , to raise so many men with , and by gods blessing to repress the whole power of brand , that some hope are engaged against us , besides the horse to be sent , need possibly stay but a little while to do a job , if future events do not bring the seat of the war to brand , which is yet more to the advantage of birch , as to the total of the money that was propos'd by the best husbanding it , cannot purchase arms , and absolute necessars for one time , for a militia of the number they are to deal with , and there is nothing out of the whole design'd to be bestowed upon many things usual , and necessar for such an undertaking , as tents , waggons , cloathes , shoes , horse , horse-shoes ; all which are not only necessar to be once had , but dayly to be recruited , far less out of the whole sum projected , was any thing proposed for provisions of meat or drink , intelligence , or incident charges , some very honest , well-meaning , and very good men , may undertake on little , because they can do little , and know little what is to be done . all i shall add is , i made the reckoning as low as if i had been to pay it out of my own purse ; and whether i meddle or meddle not , i resolve never to touch the money , but to order the payment of necessars , as they shall be received ; and i shall freely submit my self to any knowing souldier for the lists , and any knowing merchant ; for the prices i have calculate , when there is an occasion to confer about it , it will be a great encouragment to persons that have estates to venture , and that consider what they do , that they know that there is a project , and prospect of the whole affair , and all necessars provided for such an attempt , if after i have spoke with mr. † red , i see i can do you service , i will be very willing ; if i be not able , i pray god some other may ; but before it be given over , i wish i had such a conference as i write of to you a week ago , for i expect not all from * browne , some considerable part of the horse may i hope be made up by the help of your particular friends . i have yet some things to add , to enforce all i have said , which i cannot at this distance , and some things are to be done to prevent the designs of enemies , that i dare not now mention , lest it should put them on their guard . i have a considerable direction in my head , but all is in god hands . nota , that the foregoing marginal notes are so explain'd by the key of words , pag. 19. here follows mr. spence his deposition in so far as it relates to the two foregoing letters , whereof he had given in the copies above set down in plain sense : the queries put to him , and many of his answers being little to this purpose , they are not all here subjoyned , but only these that immediatly relate to the letters . part of spence his deposition . at the castle of edinburgh , the 19 of august , 1684. mr. william spence , of the age 33 years , or thereby , not married , solemnly sworn , depons , that in the paper subscribed by him , the letter dated 21 iune , and the other without date , marked a , are written plain , and in the true sense , so far as his knowledge reaches , and that he had no key to open the letters with , but the alphabetical cypher : that by the 128 gilders , 8 stivers , mentioned in the end of the long letter , he understands that it is the key thereof ; and by the payment of the same , he understands the way of using it . that he does truly believe there was an insurrection intended , within these two years ; and as for what is to come , he cannot tell what the people abroad may be doing : that he had often heard of designs and associations ; but that they were directly intended to hinder the duke his succession to the crown , he cannot say : for all that he understood was pretended for the ground of any designs of arms , was the defence of the protestant religion , the liberties of the kingdom ; and if against the duke , his succession only , in so far as that might be prejudicial to these : and that he thinks upon the kings death troubles may probably arise : that mr. west to whom the letters were directed , was not one of that name , but major holms to the best of his knowledge : and this is the truth as he shall answer to god. sic subscribitur w. spence . these foregoing letters are exactly set down , both such as were in cypher , and these in plain letter , all written with argiles own hand ( except that from his lady ) conform to the principals , compared therewith , before the lords of the secret committee : together with the decyphers , and other ways of opening , perfectly agreeing both in the sense and design , with the triple alphabet , the key of words , and the method before narrated . there was also ( besides these ) several other letters , both in cypher and plain writ found with major holms ; all of them , as in a chain , knitting together the undenyable evidences of this hellish machination ; but these above set down , being the most material , and sufficient to convince all , except those of invincible obstinacy , it was not thought fit to burden the reader , or incumber this short narrative with more of them . all the principal letters and cyphers , with the keys of words , and a great many depositions taken both here and in england , are lying in the records of his majesties privy council in scotland . it 's further to be considered , that all these letters being taken at one time with major holms , who was argiles trustee for conveying them , it is not to be supposed , but that much more of this stuff has been interchanged betwixt him and those of that confederacy : as appears from the alphabet written with the key of words , for which alphabet as yet there is no use found : and also from the key it self , wherein tho there be upwards of 80 new coyn'd words , yet in all this parcel of letters there is not six of them made use of ; which likewise appears evidently from the tenor of all his letters , and particularly from the beginning of the long letter , pag. 31. where he says , i did truly in my proposition mention the very least sum , &c. and a little after he says , and what i proposed i thought altogether so far within the power of those concerned , &c. and towards the end of that same letter , he says , but before it be given over , i wish i had such a conference as i wrote of to you a week ago , &c. by which , and many other passages and circumstances , what is above-said , becomes undenyable . the method or way of opening the long letter , discovered by mr. gray , for further confirmation . but for further discovery of this treason , the secret committee finding that mr. william carstares , one of the prisoners sent down from england , was not only frequently mention'd in several of argiles letters , but related to in them as one of the principal agents in these affairs ; they endeavour to bring him to a confession , but all endeavours were fruitless , untill he was put to the question , according to law and custom of this , and other nations in such cases , where persons under great and pregnant presumptions of the knowledge of crimes , refuse to confess , they are by law to be put to torture , especially where they refuse to depone upon oath to the interrogators proposed , their depositions being always declared to be of no force nor danger to themselves ; all which concurred both in mr. carstares and mr. spence : this man albeit he was not easily brought to confess , yet once brought to it , seem'd very ingenuous . and what he deposed at several times , is insert to a word in his deposition ; which is not here insert , to evite prolixity , being at full set down in ierviswoods process hereto subjoyned , pag. 23. every step discovering a new scene of treason , the secret committee did order the apprehending of polwart , torwoodlie , philiphaugh , gallowsheils , and the earl of tarras , as those who had corresponded with other scotsmen and englishmen in england on these treasonable designs : polwort and torwoodlie being indeed most active , and conscious to themselves of the highest guilt , were more watchful over themselves then others , and so escaped before they were taken ; the other three were brought in to edinburgh , where philiphaugh and gallowsheils , did at their first appearance freely and voluntarly confess , as is subjoyned in the said process against ierviswood , pag. 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23. both these had assurance that their confessions should not militate against themselves , without which they could not legally be examined upon oath in so capital a crime . alexander monro another of the prisoners being likewise examined , did depone , as is subjoyned in the said process ; and shortly thereafter the earl of tarras , without either craving or receiving any security , but on a sincere remorse for his guilt , did give in an ingenuous confession of what he knew of the design , as it is there also subjoyned pag. 12 , 13 , 14. these depositions and testimonies both in england and scotland concurring to bring a manifest guilt on baillie of ierviswood , as one of the most active and violent in these conspiracies , whereby he did design with all possible rigour , and imaginable violence , to destroy the sacred person of his majesty , and his royal brother , to overturn the monarchical government of britain , to destroy our established religion , the property and liberty of all subjects , to settle all the power in the hands of bloody and fanatical assassinats , to break off the happy peace and tranquility wherewith god hath blessed us , under the reign of a most gracious king ; and in place thereof to throw these nations into ruine and war , and to bring over our isle a deluge of blood ; he was pitched upon as the first person who should be brought to tryal for these execrable crimes ; and accordingly on the 23 of december 1684 , he was brought before the justice court , the privy council having commanded such advocats as he named , to plead in his defence , so far as law could allow ; the libel adduced against him being found relevant beyond all controversie , he was by a jury of noblemen , barons , and others his peers , found guilty of these execrable crimes , and by the proofs adduced against him in presence of the judges , jury , panual , and a croud of all kind of people who were auditors , they were all convinced of his guilt ; wherefore he was on the 24 of december condemn'd to the death of a traitor , being hang'd , quartered , and his quarters affix'd . the plain and evident probation adduced against baillie of ierviswood in this process , the probation and confessions of captain thomas walcot and iohn rouse in england , not only at the time of their trial , but at the time of their death , when all dissimulation was to little purpose ; the faint defences of the lord russel and collonel sidney , with the open prevarications in their confessions , and the certain demonstration by the discoveries which are laid open in argiles letter , and the concurring circumstances of the keys which discovers his language , the identity of the decypher found out in england and in scotland , without any correspondence betwixt the decyphers , with that discover'd by mr. spence , argiles own servant and trustee ; the unalterableness of the position of the words in these letters discovered by mr. gray , which in any other position can make no sence , do not only amount to a sufficient probation , but to an evident and irrefragable demonstration of the truth of the conspiracy in its blackest view : and chiefly of the late argiles unalterable malice to his king and country , which he would have past as a standard in his exposition and paraphrase of the test , under the names of his religion and his loyalty ; in which sense only he was to swear it then , and to vindicat it since in his book : and any who will but consider the foregoing evidences , must have the famine opinion of the truth of his book , and of the justice of his plea. and no body can doubt the truth of such evidences , but such as would rather wish these villanies execute then discovered . finis . the tryal and process of high-treason and doom of forfaulture against mr. robert baillie of jerviswood traitor . by his majesties special command , as a further proof of the late fanatical conspiracy . edinburg , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , and reprinted at london , by tho. newcomb , 1685. the tryal and process of high-treason , and doom of forefaulture against mr. robert baillie of jerviswood traitor . cvria iusticiariae s. d. n. regis tanta in praetorio burgi de edinburgh vigesimo tertio die mensis decembris 1684. per nobilem & potentem comitem georgium comitem de linlithgow , dominum livingstoun , &c. iusticiarium generalem totius regni scotiae , & honorabiles viros , dominos jacobum foulis de colintoun iusticiariae clericum , ioannem lockhart de castlehill , davidem balfour de forret , rogerum hoge de harcarss , alexandrum seaton de pitmedden , & patricium lyon de carss , commissionarios iusticiariae dicti . s. d. n. regis . curia legitime affirmata . intran mr. robert baillie of jerviswood prisoner indited and accused , that where notwithstanding by the common law of this , and all other well governed nations , the conspiring to overturn the government of the monarchy , or of the established government of this kingdom , or the concealing , and not revealing of any treasonable design , project , or discourse tending thereto ; or the assisting , aiding , or abaiting such as have any such designs , does infer the pains and punishment of treason . and by the third act of the first parliament of king iames the first , the rebelling openly against the kings person : and by the thretty seventh act of his second parliament , the resetting , maintaining , or doing favours to open , or notour rebellers against the kings majesty , is declared treason , and punishable by forefaulture . and by the hundred fourty and fourth act of the twelfth parliament of king iames the sixth , it is declared treason to reset , supply , or intercommune with traitors . and by the first act of the first session of his majesties first parliament , it is declared , that it shall be high treason for the subjects of this realm , or any number of them , less or more , upon any ground , or pretext whatsomever , to rise , or continue in arms , to make peace or war , without his majesties special approbation . and by the second act of the second session of his majesties said first parliament , to plot , contrive , or intend death , or destruction , or to put any restraint upon his majesties royal person , or to deprive , depose , or suspend him from the exercise of his royal government , or to levy war , or take up arms against his majesty , or any commissionated by him , or to intice any strangers , or others , to invade any of his majesties dominions , or to write , print , or speak any thing that may express or declare such their treasonable intentions , it declared treason , and punishable as such . likeas , by the second act of his majesties third parliament , it is declared high treason in any of the ●ubjects of this realm , by writing , speaking , or any other ma●ner of way to endeavour the alteration , suspension , or diversion of the ●ight of succession , or debarring the next lawful successour . nevertheless , it is o● ve●ity that the said mr. robert baillie of ierviswood , shaking off all fear of god , respect and regard to his majesties authority and laws ; and having conceived most unjustly , a great and extraordinary malice and hatred against his majesties person and government , and having designed most tra●●erously to debar his royal highness , his majesties only brother , from his due right of succession , did amongst many other traiterous acts , tending to promove that wicked design , endeavour to get himself elected one of the commissioners for negotiating the settlement of a colony of this nation in carolina , in one or other of the days of the moneths of ianuary , february , march , april , or may , one thousand six hundred and eighty three years ; and that he might thereby have the freer and better access to treat with the earls of shaftsbury and essex , the lord russeb and others , who had entered into a conspiracy in england against his majesties person and government , and with colonel rumsay , walcot , west , and ferguson , and others who had likewise conspired the murder of his majesties sacred person , and of the person of his royal highness ; and finding that he could not get himself elected one of the said commissioners , he resolved to go to london upon his own expenses , and declared to severals ( whom he took great pains to draw in to be his accomplices ) that his design was to push foreward the people of england , who did nothing but talk , that they might go on effectually ; and after he had settled a correspondency here , he did go up to london in one or other of the saids moneths , with sir iohn cochran and commissar monro , and did then , and there , transact with the saids conspirators , or one or other of them , to get a sum of money to the late earl of argile , a declaired traitor , for bringing home of men and arms , for raising a rebellion against his majesty , and invading this his native countrey ; and so earnest was he in the said design , that he did chide those english conspirators , for not sending the same timeously , and lamented the delayes used in it ; and perswaded the late earl of argile and others in his name to accept of any sum , rather than not to engage : and amongst the many meetings that he h●d at london , for carrying on the said traiterous design , there was one at his own chamber , where he did meet with the lord melvil , sir iohn cochran , and the c●ssnocks elder and younger , and amongst others , with mr. william veatch a declared traitor , and there he did treat of the carying on of the said rebellion , and of the money to be furnished by the english for argyle , for buying of armes . and that if the scots would attempt any thing for their own relief , they would get assistance of horse from england ; and from that meeting , he or ane , or other of them did send down mr. robert martin to prevent any rysing , till it should be seasonable for carying on of their designs , which mr. robert , after he came to scotland , did treat with palwart and others , for carying on of the said rebellion , by securing his majesties officers of state , his castles and forces , and by putting his correspondents here , and there associates , in readiness , to assist the late earl of argyle ; and after the said mr. baillie had engadged many of his countrey-men in england , and had assured his correspondants here , that the english were resolved to seclud his royal-highness from his due right of succession , thereby to encourage them to concur in the said rebellion , and exclusion , he slew to that hight , that he did particularly and closly correspond with mr. robert ferguson , sir thomas armstrong , collonel rumsay , and walcot , who were accessory to that horrid part of the conspiracy , which was designed against the sacred life of his majesty , and the life of his royal-highness , and did sit up several nights with them , concerting that bloody massacer : at least the said mr. robert baillie of ierviswood was , and is guilty of having correspondence with the late earl of argyle , and mr. william veatch declared traitors , and of being art and part of an conspiracy , for assisting of these who were to rise in arms against his sacred majesty , and for exclusion of his royal brother , and of concealing and not revealing the accession and proposals of others for that effect . wherethrow he has committed , and is guilty of the crymes of high treason , rebellion , and others above specified , and is art and part of the famine , which being found by ane assize , he ought to be punished with forfaulture of life , land and goods , to the terror of others to commit the like hereafter . his majesties advocat produced an act , and warrand from the lords of his majesties most honourable privy council , for pursuing , and insisting against the said mr. robert baillie of ierviswood , whereof the tenor follows : edinburgh , the twenty two day of december , one thousand six hundred and eighty four years . the lords of his majesties privy council , do hereby give order and warrand to his majesties advocat , to pursue a process of treason and forfaulture , before the lords of his majesties justiciary , against mr. robert baillie of ierviswood , to morrow at two a clock in the afternoon preceisly , and the said lords do hereby require and command , sr. george lockhart of carnwath , and sr. iohn lauder advocats , to concur , and assist in the said process with his majesties advocat , from the intenting until the end thereof , as they will be answerable upon their alledgance . extract by me , sic subscribitur . colin mckenzie , cls. sti. concilij . pursuers . sir george mckenzie of roshaugh our soveraign lords advocat sir george lockhart advocat . sir iohn lauder . advocat . procurators in defence . sir patrick hume . mr. walter pringle . mr. iames graham . mr. william fletcher . mr. william baillie . advocats . the pannals procurators produced ane act of his majesties privy council , in their favours , whereof the tenor follows : edinburgh , the twenty third of december , one thousand six hundred eighty four years , the lords of his majesties privy council having considered ane address made to them , by mr. robert baillie of ierviswood , now indited at the instance of his majesties advocat ; before the lords commissioners of justiciary , of treason , do hereby require and command sir patrick hume , mr. walter pringle , mr. iames graham , mr. william fletcher , mr. iames falconer , mr. william baillie advocats , to consult , compear , and debate for the petitioner , in the process of treason , mentioned in his address , without any hazard , as they will be answerable at their peril ; extract by me , sic subscribitur . william paterson , cls. sti. concilij . after reading of the inditement , the lord justice general required the pannal to make answer thereto . the said mr. robert baillie pannal pleaded not guilty . mr. walter pringle advocat , as procurator for the said mr. robert baillie of ierviswood pannal , alleadges that he ought not to pass to the knowledge of an assize ; because he had not got a citation upon fyfteen days , or at least on a competent time , which is usual , and absolutely necessar in all actions , and much more in criminal pursuits , especially , seing , if a competent time be not allowed to the pannal , he is precludit of the benefit of ane exculpation , without which he cannot prove his objections against witnesses , or assyzers , or any other legal , or competent defences ; and by the late act of parliament concerning the justice court , all pannalls are allowed to raise precepts of exculpation , and thereupon to cite witnesses , for proving the objections against witnesses , and assyzers , which necessarily presupposeth , that a competent time must be allowed to the pannal to execut his diligence , or otherwise , how is it possible he can prove an defence of alibi , or any other just defence : and as this is most consonant to that clear act of parliament , and to material justice , and to the rules of humanity , so this point has been already fully and often decided , and lately in the case of one robertson in iuly 1673. the instance whereof , is given by his majesties advocat in his book of criminals , and title of libels , where the lords found , that albeit robertson got his inditement in prison , yet he behoved to get it upon fifteen dayes . his majesties advocat oppons the constant tract of decisions , whereby it is found , that a person incarcerated may be tryed upon twenty four houres ; and the late act of parliament is only in the case where a summons or libel is to be raised ; but here there is no libel or summons , but only an inditement ; nor was any exculpation sought in this case , before the tryal , which is the case provided for by the act of parliament . the lords , justice-general , justice-clerk , and commissioners of justiciary , repell the defence , in respect the pannal is a prisoner , and that it has been the constant custom of the court , and that the pannal made no former application for an exculpation . sir patrick hume for the pannal , alleadges ( alwas denying the libel , and whole members , and qualifications thereof ) that in so far as the libel is founded upon harbouring , maintaining , and intercommuning with the persons mentioned in the dittay , the pannal ought to be assoylzied , because it is res hactenus judicata , he having been formerly pursued before the lords of his majesties privy council for the same crimes , and fined in an considerable sum ; and therefore that crime cannot now ●e made use of as a ground of treason against the pannal . his majesties advocat answers , that he restricts his libel , to the pannals entering in a conspiracy , for raising rebellion , and for procuring money to be sent to the late earl of argile , for carrying on the said rebellion ; and for concealing , and not revealing ; neither of which is referred to his oath ; and consequently was not res judicata , there being nothing referred to his oath ; but his converse and correspondence with some ministers , and others within the kingdom , and his own gardiner , and his writing letters to my lord argile ; and oppons the decreet of council it self , and restricts the libel to all the crimes not insisted on in the decreet . sir patrick hume replyes , that as to the corresponding with the late earl of argile , at any time since his forefaulture , was expresly proponed as an interrogator to the pannal in that pursuit , at his majesties advocat's instance against him , before the lords of his majesties privy council , and that not only his own correspondence by himself ; but also by major holms , mr. carstares , robert west , thomas shepherd , richard rumbold , and collonel rumsay , as the interrogator bears , as appears by a double of the act of council , written by the clerk of councils servant , and is offered to be proven by my lord advocats oath : and as to any correspondency with mr. veitch ; it is not relevant , since he was not declared rebel . sir iohn lauder for his majesties interest , answers , that he oppons th● decreet of privy council , where no such interrogator was put to the pannal , and the decreet must make more faith than any pretended scroll , and cannot be taken away by his majesties advocats oath , to his majesties prejudice ; and for mr. william veitch , he stands expresly forefault in anno 1667. and the doom of forefaulture , is ratified in the parliament 1669. sir patrick hume oppons the reply , that as to the corresponding with mr. veitch , it does not appear , that he is the person mentioned in the act of parliament ; and albeit he were , as he is not , he having thereafter come home to scotland , all the punishment inflicted upon him was banishment , not to return under the pain of death , which did take off any former punishment ; and it was no crime in any person to intercommune with him , especially in another kingdom ; and by the late act of council in anno 1683. even the conversing , and intercommuning with declared traitors , is restricted to an arbitrary punishment . his majesties advocat oppons the standing doom of forefaulture against veitch , and the proclamation , or act of council it self . the lords , justice-general , justice-clerk , and commissioners of justiciary , having considered the libel , pursued by his majesties advocat , against mr. robert baille of ierviswood , with my lord advocats declaration , whereby he restricts the same to the crimes not insisted on in the decreet of council formerly pronunced against the pannal : they find the same relevant as it is restricted , to infer the pain of treason , and remits the same to the knowledge of the assize , and repells the remnant defences proponed for the pannal , in respect of the decreet of council produced , bearing no such thing as is alleadged , and of the answers made by his majesties advocat thereto . assisa . the earl of strathmore . the earl of belcarras . sir george skeen , provost of aberdene . sir iames fleming , late provest of edinburgh . sir iohn ramsay of whitehill . adam hepburn of humby . andrew bruce of earleshall . iohn stuart , tutor of alpin . alexander miln of gar●in . mr. iams elies of stenhopsmilus . sir william drummond of halthornden . major andrew white , lieutennent of edinburgh-castle . mr. david grahame , sheriff of wigtoun . colin mckenzie , collector of ross. david burnet ▪ merchant . the assise lawfully sworn , no objection of the law in the contrary . his majesties advocat for probation adduced the witnesses and writs aftermentioned ; and first , walter earl of tarras . sir patrick hume procurator for the pannal , objects against the earl of tarras , that he cannot be a witness , because he is socius & particeps criminis ; and it is clear by the 34. chap. stat. 2. rob. 1. concerning these that are excluded from bearing of testimony that socij & participes ejusdem criminis , vel incarcerati & vinculati , cannot bear testimony : as also , the earl of tarras being presently under an inditement of high treason , and under the impressions of fear , and death , no person in his circumstances can be admitted a witness , as is not only clear from the foresaid statute , but from the common law. his majesties advocat answers , that it is an exception from that rule , both by the common law , and ours , that in the crime of lese majestie , and especially , that branch thereof , which we call a conspiracy , socius criminis may be a witnes , and which is introduced very reasonably by lawyers , to secure the common interest of mankind , which is the chief of all interests ; and because conspiracies cannot be otherwayes proved , and not to allow this manner of probation , were to allow treason , since no man can prove a plot , but he that is upon it , and how can a man object against him as a witness , whom himself trusted with his life , his fortune , and their common plot , nor is the intenting of the lybel any stronger qualification , since every man that is socius criminis , is under the same impression , and it would rather seem the greater and nearer apprehensions a man has of death , he will be the more sincere and faithful ; nor has the earl of tarras , nor did he ever seek any security , in order to his deponing . and this has been constantly , and latlie , conform to the common law , as may be seen in the hundreds of citations set down by mascard , de probationibus , vol. 4. conclus . 1318. num 21. and the contrary citations prove only , that regularly socius criminis cannot be a witnes . sir patrick hume replyes , that the statutes of robert the first is opponed , and non est distinguendum ubi lex non distinguit , and not only was he socius criminis , which is acknowledged , but he is incarceratus , and lying under an indytment of high treason , and has thrown himself on the kings mercy , and it is not proper he should be a witness , seeing he is in the kings mercy , who may give him his life or not , and there was never a person in these circumstances , that ever was admitted a witness . mr. walter pringle adds , that the earl of tarras , is not only in the case of a person who stands indyted for high-treason ; but must be look'd upon , as a person condemned for the said cryme , seeing he fully , and amply confest the cryme : & confessus habetur pro convicto , and never any lawyer asserted , that damnatus criminis loesae majestatis could be admitted as a witnes , and there is nothing more clear , then that by the common law , and the law of all nations , this objection ought to be sustained , for the civil law is clear , leg . 11. cod . de testibus and matheus in his title de probationibus , cap. de testibus , doth assert positivlie , that the cryme of lese majestie , heresie , and generally all these crymes quae sine sociis non possunt facile admitti , are not excepted . and he asserts , that the lawyers , viz. gomesius , & decianus , who are of another opinion , do acknowledge , nominatum a reo damnandum non esse , and that they contravert only , an nominatio rei ●it indicium sufficiens ad torquendum nominatum . sir george lockhart repeats , and oppons the answer , and the cryme lybelled , being a conspiration of treason , which of it's own nature is manadged , and caryed on by secrecie and contrivance ; and which is only known to the complices of the treason , and which cannot be commited sine sociis , the law of this kingdom , and of all nations , do allow socios criminis to be testes habiles , and not only are they admitted in the case of such conjurations , but generally in omnibus criminibus exceptis , amongst which the crime of perduellion , and lese majestie is the chief , and it is absolutly impossible , that plots , and conspirations of treason can be otherways proven , then per socios , and such as are participes criminis , and which is the common opinion of all lawyers , as may appear by farin . quest : 45. and the authorities cited by him , and which is the inviolable practique of this kingdom : and as to that pretence , that the earl of tarras is under a process of treason , and has submitted to his majesties mercy , and that confessus habetur pro convicto , it imports nothing , and infers no more then that he is socius criminis , and is still a habil witnes , as to conjuration of treason socius criminis hoc ipso , that it is acknowledged , or proven , being still under the hazard of process , or condemnation , which law regards not in regard of the secrecie involved in the nature of the crime , that either witnesses neque actu neque habitu , can be present , so that the objection amounts to no less then that conjurations of treason cannot at all be proven : and as to the law cited from the majestie , it imports no more then that the objection regulariter procedit , in crimes , which of their own nature are not perdifficilis probationis , and are not inter crimina excepta such as the cryme of conspiracy and treason is . mr. williom fletcher oppons the objection , and reply , and further adds , that albeit crimen loesae majestatis be reckoned inter crimina excepta , and so have some priviledge ▪ as to the qualification of witnesses , yet it cannot be denyed , but there are some objections competent against witness adduced for proving conspiracies , and treason , verbi causa , that a witnes is a capital enemy , or that he is sub potestate accusatoris , and the objection now pleaded , being taken complexlie , viz. that the earl of tarras is not only sucius criminis , but also , that he is publico judicio reus , upon the same crime , and that as means to procure his majesties savour , he has submitted himself , and come in his majesties mercy , by an acknowledgment of the cryme , before the dyet of citation , he is obnoxious to a most just objection , viz. that he is sub potestate , and by the submission , and confession , his life and estate is now in his majesties hands , so that he is not only in the case of a reus confessus , but in the case of a witnes , who does absolutely depend upon his majesties advocate the pursuer ; and as a private accuser , could not adduce his own servants to be witnesses , because they are ●estes domestici , and depend upon him , so far less ought a witnes to be adduced , who not only depends , as to his estate , but as to his life , and the law gives a very good reason , and which is mentioned by paulus , lib. 1. receptarum sententiarum , cap. 12. parag . ult . in these words . de se conf●ssu● , non est audiendus ut testis , ne alienam salutem in dubium deducat qui de sua desperavit ; and as to the pretence that a conjuration is a cryme so occult , that it must either be proven by such witnesses , or otherways the guilty person will escape . it is answered , that in this case , his majesties advocate had an easie remedie , ●or he might have pursued the pannal , before he pursued the witness , and the terror and apprehension of the event of a process for treason cannot be constructed otherways , then to have influence upon the deposition of the witnes ; and as to the citation out of farina●ius , it is only in the case o● ●ocius ●riminis , but when he comes to treat de ●este accusatio vel carcerato . quest. 56. articulo 4 to . he sayes , regula sit in accusato quod is pendent● accusatione à testimonio repellitur ▪ and be the 2 d. rule of the same ar●icle , he sayes , it is a principle quod carceratus testimonium ferre prohibetur , and he gives this reason , quia praesumitur , quod falsum testimonium diceret pro aliquo qui ei promiserit se liberare a vinculo , and limits this rule , that he must be carceratus propter crimen . sir patrick hume adds , that it is a certain principle , that any person that is guilty infamia juris , cannot be a witness , no more than a person that is convict , and condemned of treason ; and if he were convict , and condemned of treason , he could not be a witness , even in the case of treason : so neither can the earl of tarras in this case be received a witness , for he being adduced a witness after he received his indi●ment , and confessed the crime , is equivalent , as if he had been actuall convict ; and whatever may be pretended , that testes infames may be admit●ed ; yet it was never asserted by any lawyer , that a person convict of treason can be admitted a witness . the lords repelled the objection against the earl of tarras , and ordains him to be received a witness . walter earl of tarras , aged fourty years , married , purged , and sworn ; being interrogat , if about the time that sir iohn cochran , and commissar monro got their commission from the carolina company for london , the pannal mr. robert baillie of ierviswood did not desire the deponent to speak to commissar monro , to try if he could get him the ●aid pannal added to that commission , depones affirmative . being interro●at , if the said ierviswood , the pannal , did not tell the deponent that he was resolved to go to london however upon his own expenses , and that his and their going about the carolina bussiness , was but a pretence , and a blind ; but that the true design was , to push foreward the people of england who could do nothing but talk , to go more effectually about their bussiness , depones affirmative . depones that the pannal did settle a correspondence with the deponent whereby he was to give an account to the deponent of what should pass betwixt the countrey party in england , and the scots men there : and on the other hand , the deponent was to write to him what occurred here ; depones that the pannal did say to the deponent , if the king would suffer the parliament of england to sit , and pass the bill of seclusion , that that was the only way to secure the protestant religion . depones that the pannal said to him , that the king might be induced to do so , if the parliament would take sharp or brisk measures with him , or the like . depones these words were spoke to him by the pannal ▪ since the holding of the last session of this current parliament ; and before the pannal and commissar monro went for london . depons that after the pannal went to london , he did give the deponent an account by letters , that things were in great disorder there , and that he hoped there would be effectual courses taken to remeid them . depones that mr. robert martin did come to mr. pringle of torwoodlies house in may 1683. or thereby , and brought a letter to the deponents lady unsubscribed , but the deponent knows it was ierviswoods hand-writing , who was then at london , and that mr. martin told the deponent , that things in england were in great disorder , and like to come to a hight , and that the countrey party were considering on methods for securing the protestant religion . and that archibald , sometime earl of argile , was to get ten thousand pounds sterling , whereas thirty thousand pounds sterling was sought by the scotsmen at london , which was to be sent over to holland to provide arms ; and that the late earl of argile was to land with these armes in the west-highlands of scotland , and that the deponents friend ierviswood the pannal , was to be sent over with the money . depones that philiphaugh and he went to gallowshiels house , where they met with polwort and gallowshiels , and that it was talked amongst them there , that in case those in england should rise in arms , that it was necessary in that case , that so many as could be got on the borders should be in readiness to deal with straglers and seize upon horses , and that thereafter they should joyn with those t●at were in arms on the borders of england . depons that in the case foresaid , it was said , it was convenient the castle of stirling , berwick , and some other strengths should be seiz'd upon ; and it was likewise spoke amongst them , that some persons should be employed to inquire what arms was in that countrey . depons , that it was spoke then , that the best time for argyle was to land in the west when there was a stur in england , or scotland , or words to that purpose . depons , that every one desired another to speak to such particular persons as they could trust , by letting a word fall indirectly upon supposition , in case of the rising in england concerning the affair for preparing of them : and that he was told by philiphaugh thereafter , that there was a word and sign to be used amongst them , viz. the sign was by loosing a button on the breast , and that the word was harmony . depons , the pannal spoke to the deponent to advertise torwoodlie , that he might acquaint mr. william veitch a forfault traitor , who was in northumberland , that he might keep himself close , and be on his guard , lest he should be catch'd ; which was since the pannal was prisoner in the tolbooth of edinburgh . and this is the truth , as he shall answer to god. sic subscribitur , tarras , linlithgow . i. p. d. alexander monro of bear-crofts , aged fourty five years , or thereby ; solutus , solemnly sworn and purg'd . depons , that the earl of tarras proposed to the deponent , that ierviswood might be made one of the commissioners for the affair of carolina , for that he could not safely stay at home ; and that the deponents answer was that he had no interest in the affair , and so could not be a commissioner . depons , that the pannal did wait for the deponent at wooller , and did go alongst with him to london , and that by the way he heard him regrate his own hazard and others , because of blackwoods sentence ; and that he heard him regrate the hazard our laws , and liberties , and the protestant religion were in . depons , that the pannal spoke to the deponent and others , more then once at london for getting of money from the english to be sent to the late earl of argile , for bringing home arms for the said earls use , as he understood , for carrying on an insurrection , and rebellion in scotland . depons , that at the time libelled , in ierviswoods chamber in london , mr. william veitch a forfault traitor was present ; and that sir iohn cochran did at that meeting expressly speak of money to be sent to argile for bringing home arms for invading the kingdom of scotland ; and that at another occasion he heard some of them say , that there would be twenty thousand men in scotland who would assist the rebellion , and that he heard sir iohn cochran and ierviswood speaking of it , but cannot be positive which of the two said it . depons , that at the meeting he heard ierviswood speak , but did not hear him oppose that treasonable proposal , or contradict the overture proposed by sir iohn cochran . depons , that mr. robert martin was sent down from that meeting which was at ierviswoods chamber , to scotland , to try what the people of scotland would do for their own safety : and that it was understood that the people of scotland should not rise till there should be a rising in england , and that the commission was granted to mr. robert martin by all the persons present , whereof ierviswood was one , and that there were present the lord melvill , sir iohn cochran , cessnocks elder and younger , mr. william carstares , mr. william veitch , ierviswood , and the deponent ; and depons they did contribute money for mr. martins journey . depons , that at his return he meeting with the deponent , told him , that matters were in that condition in scotland , and that the countrey was in such a condition as little would kindle the fire in order to the rebellion . and this is the truth , as he shall answer to god. sic subscribitur , alexander monro , linlithgow , i. p. d. james murray of philiphaugh , aged 30. years , married , purged and sworn , produces ●our leaves of depositions , emitted by him before the lords of the secret committie , and all written and subscribed with his own hand , which being publickly read , in presence of the justices , and assize , he adheres thereto , in all points , whereof the tenot follows . upon the day of may , 1683. upon a letter from mr. pringle of torwoodlie , i came to his house in the morning , and he presently led me to a chamber , where i found mr robert martin , who was lately come from london , with whom we stayed a little , and discoursed of the news , and about the present condition , and temper of england , and in particular of london , which mr. martin said , was much irritated through some attemps upon their priviledges , either as to the concern of the sheriffs , or their charter , but that all honest men were of good heart and very brisk , and after some general discourses to this purpose , torwoodlie , and i left him ▪ and walked out a little , and he told me , he was expecting the e. of tarras presently , for he had sent to him ; and mr. martin had a letter to him from ierviswood , then he told me that there were great matters in agitation at london , and that mr. martin had come down with a commission from our friends there , ( i do not remember he named any ) but that i behoved not to expect , he would impart his instructions to me , for he was to communicat them only to polwart and himself , ( at least for these shyres ) and they were to pitch on such as they thought fit to intrust with the affair , whereupon he assured me , that he had great confidence in me , and his kindness to me oblidged him to send for me , to acquaint me that matters were now come to a crisis , and that he had reason to think england would shortly draw to arms , and stand by them , till they were satisfied anent the bill of exclusion , and what other security they could propose for the protestant religion , and their liberties , and that it was no project of any inconsiderable party but a design through the kingdom , and that many of the finest men , and of the greatest interest and credit there , had adjusted almost every thing necessar for the purpose , and had concerted matters with our friends there , in order to concurrence from this , and had agreed to advance money for furnishing arms here , ( i do not remember he told me more particulars at this time ) but said , polwart would be at gallow-shiels that night , and it would be necessar that the e. of tarras and i should confer with him fully , on the business , about this time the e. of tarras lighted , and torwoodlie having left us for a little time , being gone to bring mr. martin ; the e. of tarras asked me , what news , i told him of mr. martins being there , but that he had given me no account of the design of his down-coming , which perhaps he would acquaint him with , but by what i had heard from torwoodlie , i understood it to be , to engadge us to rise in arms shortly , whereat the e. of tarras hummed , and said , he would look ere he leapt , such a leap , or some such expressions , presently mr. martin came , and the e. of tarras and he retired a little , after the reading an letter , he gave him , the contents whereof was ( as the e. of tarras informed me ) only an order from ierviswood , to deliver some money to the bearer , which he had left with him , and the e. of tarras called for his servant , and bad him bring up the money ; in the mean time , torwoodlie asked me , if i had acquainted the e. of tarras with what he spoke to me , and i told him , i had let something of it fall to him , but it was not to be thought , that persons of sense and quality would engadge in such designs at random ; so torwoodlie said , that ( though mr. martin would not commune with us upon his commission directly ) yet he thought it would be fit , we conferred , and without taking notice of his commission , discoursed of things upon suppositions , and as our own privat notions ▪ abstract from any prospect of a present design , so after dinner , we four went to a chamber , and after some general discourses , of the discontents of both kingdoms , these suppositions following were discoursed ( and as i remember ) mr. martin started them all , or the most part ) viz. what if the countrey party in england should have thoughts of going to arms ( whereof he knew nothing but only supposed such a thing , for discoursing a little freely , and to know our sentiments , what we thought could be expected here in such a case ) would it not be expedient to have a settled correspondence betwixt that party there and here , and might not matters be so adjusted , that both kingdoms should draw out in one day , and might not as many be expected to undertake in these shires , and about edinburgh , as would serve to surprize , and seize our rulers ( i do not remember any named , but the then chancellour and treasurer ) and some to joyn with these on the english borders , to assist them to surprize berwick ; and if for that effect , any horse , or dragoons , that should be in the bounds might not be surprized , that their horse and arms might be gotten to furnish the country people , and stirling castle ; and if argile should at the same time land in the west , and raise that countrey , would not these measures contribute much to the advancement and security of the interest of that party here , since thereby the government would be disordered , and such steps would encourage all that had an inclination to the countrey party , to draw to them frankly , and scar many of the other side to act against them , and so they might have leasure to joyn from all places ; and might it not be expected , there would be as many in this kingdom , as would be able to deal with the forces here , at least divert them from troubling england . this is the sum , as i remember , of what was proposed , and discourst of , though i cannot distinctly say , it was in this method , and expression , nor was all moved at once , but droped now and then , as the discourse seem'd to give rise to it ; and though i cannot fully re●count all that was spoke on these heads , and tell distinctly , what this and that man said ; yet i remember these following answers were giving , and ( as i judged ) acquiesced to by the whole company ; and they were certainly the e. of tarras , his sentiments and mine , and every one that spoke , used this or some such precaution , that if they were concerned , or to give counsel in any such case , ( as they were not , &c. ) 1. as to the settling a correspondence , it was confest to be very convenient for those of a common interest ; but the present circumstances of affairs were such ( as we thought , ) that none could be found here who was fit to mannage it , and would undertake it . 2. as to the trysting at the same time , it could not be done without the devulging the design to all ranks of people , which none would undertake , except these already in desperat circumstances , and they could not have generally much influence . 3. the thing was not at all adviseable for this kingdom , since if any of englands own measures miscarried , they would not stur for any such trust ; and the spring of their motions being always at london , there might happen an interruption near the appointment , whereof these here could have no timous notice , and so might keep tryst , whereby they would be exposed a prey ; and if they should subsist any time , or prevail ( which was hardly possible ) the multitude that must be imployed , are tainted with such wild and unruly principles , that if once they got the sword in their hands , they would never be brought to order without a greater force to over-awe them ; neither would any expectation of argiles landing , be a just ground for such a tryst , considering the uncertainty of sea-voyages ; and if argile were to be the head , undoubtedly many people would conclude that he were to be suspected of private designs , and that restoring him , might lay him aside : as also , that dispair might blind his usual prudence , and prompt him to unsolid , and undigested methods ; and so it was to be expected , that few of the gentry ( except such as he had special influence on , or such as were under hard circumstances ) could embarque with him . 4. as to the surprising rulers , &c. it was inveigh'd against , as an action not to be thought of amongst protestants ( especially when the very design of it was pretended , to secure that religion , which taught its professors to abhor and detest such principles as popish , yea un-christian ) since it could not be effectuat without blood-shed of people , secure in peace , which being by all approven , divines and casuists condemned as unlawful , and meer assassination ; it was not to be doubted , that as such a practice would cast a blot upon the whole affair , and quite take off any pretence of defensive arms , so it would scar many from joyning . these things were reasoned again and again : but i do not remember there was any formal conclusion made , but the discourse was let fall ; and mr. martin told us , if any of us had a mind for a suit of armour , he could provide as many as we pleased , from one who had made a great many lately , to honest men at london , of a new fashion , very light , and at an easie rate ; so torwoodlie and i gave him our measures , e. of tarras told he had a suit already ; then torwoodlie said to the e. of tarras and me , we would meet polwort at gallowsheils , and desired we might commun with him , anent what we had been discoursing , so we hasted away , that if possible , we might both get home that night , it being saturnday , and we unfurnished , for staying abroad , and torwoodlie whispered me just as i was mounting ( as i think ) that he was not clear we should commun before gallowshiels , for he was sometimes too much good-fellow , or the like ; so the e. of tarras and i rod away together , and upon the way we were both of opinion , that the suppositions we had discoursed of , were in effect propositions , and resolv'd , if they were insisted on by polwort , as we suspected , we would adhere to the former answer , and would undertake nothing in these methods ; when we came to gallowsheils , the laird was abroad , and polwort was not come , so we had thoughts to go away , being both damped with what had passed , and inclining to be free of farder medling ; but the lady would by no means hear of our going till her husband came , who , she assured us , was about the doors , and she having sent to call him , he would be in presently ; yet it was so late ere he came , that the e. of tarras could hardly have day enough to go home with ; so gallowsheils would not let him go , and he would not stay , unless i stay'd , so we both stayed , and not being resolv'd to discourse with gallowsheils on what passed , we we it to the tavern , on pretence i might call the baillie , and seek horses or lime , and stay'd there till polwort came ( which seemed unknown to gallowsheils ) then we returned to gallowsheils house , and after supper polwort whispered the e. of tarras and me , and enquired if we had seen mr. martin ; and we having told him we had , he enquired , if we were free to commun on the affair before gallowsheils , we told , as he thought fit , for we could trust him ; then he whispered gallowsheils , and ( as i understood afterwards ) asked if he was free to commune on matters of great secrecy and importance with that company , to which he assented , then we sat down closs together , and as i remember ▪ polwort began the discourse ; but since i am not able to follow exactly the method of our conference , or keep the very expressions used , or repeat all that was spoke , or to tell distinctly what was every mans part of the discourse ; i shall set down the heads , and most remarkable passages thereof , that i remember in some articles following ; 1. polwort signified that he was credibly informed ( but i do not remember he named his informer ) that the countrey party in england would draw to the fields shortly , as he heard before lambass , wherewith gallowsheils seem'd visibly surprized ; and being asked , if his heart fail'd him already , he said he did love it better truly to be walking in his own parks in peace , and quiet , than to be medling in such matters ; however he assured the company , that if there came any troublesome world , he would joyn with them firmly ; and the e. of tarras said , he wondred to hear of any such resolution in england , for he took it for a principle amongst that party there , that they should make no stir in the kings life ( which the whole company owned to be their opinion and desire ) because that might strengthen the dukes interest ; and he suspected it was the project of the common-wealths men , with whom he believed , few scots gentlemen would joyn ; and he was almost perswaded the d. of monmouth would not concur in any rising during the kings life , to which it was answered by polwort , that he had indeed heard that principle had been generally agreed to , but it seem'd they found , they behoved either to do their business now , or lay aside hopes of doing it hereafter , which might be , that if the charter of london were let fall , they would not only lose all safe opportunity of digesting matters ; but a great part of their strength , and he heard all things were concerted mutually , betwixt monmouths friends and the heads of the commonwealth party ; and tho he heard monmouth was shy on that account , yet it was hop'd he would engage , for otherways he would be deserted by that party . 2. polwort told us the suppositions above-written as overtures concerted betwixt our friends at london , and the principal men of that party there ; so the e of tarras and i renewed our former answers also above-written , and maintained them with all our vigour , wherein gallowsheils joyned forwardly with us ; and polwort asserted , we went on very good grounds , and he was fully of our opinion , if things were entire but referr'd it to be considered , whether it were better to comply with some of these methods , tho not so proper and justifiable as were to be wish'd , then to disappoint the business totally , which might be of the best consequence to all the party , yet we did not condescend as i remember to undertake any of these methods . and there was a further argument adduced against the trysting above-written , viz. that it was talked there was a day appointed in england latly in shaftsberry's time , which did not hold , so they were not to be relyed upon . 3. it was proposed to be considered what methods were most proper in the companies opinion for scotland to follow in case of englands rising , whereanent it was said , that all that could be expected or desired from scotland , was , that upon the certain news of englands being in the fields , those in the southern shires who would own that party , should presently rise , and ( how soon they could get as many conven'd as would be able to deal with stragling parties , or any sudden rising in the countrey ) march to joyn them , and that it would be fit these in the northern shires of england waited near the borders for such , and that they had officers trysted there to command , and that then it would be seasonable for argile to land in the west , and these parties on the borders might divert the forces till he had time to put himself in a posture . these things seem'd to be the sentiments of the whole company , but were not finally determined till the opinion of others who were to be communed with by polwort were known : and it was represented , there behoved not to be any wilful and obstinate adhering to our own thoughts of things , ( but an mutual condescendance to others concerned , ) otherwise it were not possible to bring a publick design to any good issue . 4. all the company seem'd to agree , that they should undertake nothing or move in that affair , till they had a full and certain account what england proposed , what methods they resolved to follow there , who were to be their heads , and that if they design'd any attempt on the kings person , or overturning monarchy , they would not be forward or clear to joyn : and it being here insinuated , that the most they could do ( at least for which there could be any plausible pretence to justifie ) was to draw together , and without any act of hostility , send addresses to his majesty for redress of the present abuses of the government , and for obtaining sufficient security against the hazard they apprehended to their religion and liberties . it was said by polwort that he was apt to think , that was their very design , for he had heard it was generally believed by that party in england , that if once they were in a body , the king would be prevailed with to quite the duke , to be tryed for popery , correspondence with france , and accession to the popish plot , and then if the king were once free from the influence of the dukes counsels , they were confident he might be moved to reform their abuses , and secure their religion and liberties for the future to their contentment . 5. it was resolved , that till we got the foresaid account from england , and were satisfied thereanent , and knew others here ( who were to be communed with ) their sentiements of what methods were most proper for us , in case we should undertake , we should not meddle further ; only it was left to the earl of tarras and me , if we thought fit to acquaint sir william scot younger with some of the matter of this conference overly , without taking notice of our informers , or such an conference ; and it was recommended to all to be enquiring ( at such as they had some trust in ) indirectly about the affection of our neighbours , and what arms there was amongst them ; that if we should get an satisfying account , and resolve to joyn , we might know where to seek men and arms suddenly : here it was said by polwort , as i think , that if the e. of tarras , torwoodlie , gallowsheils , and i once took horse , he thought the most part of the west end of tiviotdale and selkirk shire would soon come to us , especially , when they heard england was risen , then we trysted to meet there against midsummer fair , betwixt and which the forsaid account was expected , but in case it came to any of our hands sooner , we promised to advertise the rest , that we might meet , presently , if the case required ; this is the substance and sum of what passed at the forsaid conference , that i can now remember ; but i remember , i was likewise told these following particulars in privat , by polwart , or torwoodlie , ( which of them , i cannot distinctly tell ) the day of the forsaid conference , or within a short time after . 1. that polwart keeped the correspondence with our friends at london , i remember not positively of any of them that was named , to be on the entrigue there , except my lord melvil , sir iohn cochran , ierviswood , and commissar monro ( for i hardly knew any of the rest ) and as i think , commissar monro was call'd his correspondent there . 2. that the money to be advanced by the english partie to scotland was ready , when mr. martin came from london , and it was expected , that within few days after , it would be dispatched with some confident to holland , ( whither by bills , or in cash , i cannot say ) it was call'd ten thousand pound sterlin , and was to be imployed ( as i was told ) by that confident , at argyles sight , for buying arms , providing ships to transport them with argyle , to the west here , and such other charges . 3. that how soon our friends at london got notice of the safe arrival , of the confident forsaid , and all other things were finally concluded there ( which was expected would be about the middle of iune , as i remember ) they would come home , and as they passed , would give them , or one of them , an particular account of all resolutions taken to be communicat to the rest , that it was not to be expected by letters , that behoved to be under figures , and dark expressions , and as i remember , they were written as it were about the carolina business , or some houshold furniture , as i was told , for i never remember i saw any letter , either direct to london , or sent from it on that head . 4. i was told there was a sign , and a word agreed on by that party , so that men might know with whom they might use freedom , the word , as i remember was harmony , and the sign , the opening two buttons in the breast coat and shutting them presently ; this i communicat to the earl of tarras , but does not mind i ever saw it used , except when i visited park-hay here in town , about the end of iune ; we discoursing a little freely , he asked if i had the word and sign of the carolina men , and i having given them , he said something to this purpose , that he was afraid that the carolina business did not go well , for there had been some of the managers expected here ( as i think he named ierviswood or commissar monro ) these eight days past , but there was none come , nor could he learn that any of their friends had heard from them for several posts . polwart , torwoodlie , and i met at gallowsheils , on midsummer fair , but i mind nothing passed but private whisperings . dated september 15. 1684. and subscrived thus , iames murray . edinburgh , december 23 ▪ 1684. the deposition above-written being read to the said iames murray of philiphaugh , in presence of the justices and assizers , he adheres thereto in all points upon oath . sic subscribitur , james murray . linlithgow , i. p. d. the said iames murray further depons , that at their meeting at gallowsheils , it was resolved , that they should keep up their cess unpayed till their next meeting at midsummer , which was to be at gallowsheils , and should deal with all these they had influence upon to do the like , and that upon the supposition mentioned in his oath given in . it was spoke amongst them that the troupers horses should be seized upon , when they were grasing . and this is the truth , as he shall answer to god. sic subscribitur , james murray . linlithgow , i. p. d. hvgh scot of gallowsheils , aged 36. years , married , purged , &c. and sworn . depons , that the earl of tarras and philiphaugh did come to the deponents house , in may , 1683. and polwart came likewise there , where there were discourses and proposals , that if the english would rise in arms , their friends in the south shires should rise with them ; and that they should seize the horses belonging to the kings troops where they grased ; and the town of berwick , and the castle of stirling : and likewise it was there discoursed anent the late earl of argiles coming to invade scotland , but because of the uncertainty of sea voyages , there was not much stress laid upon it . depons , it was also proposed , that some of the south countrey whom they trusted in should be acquainted with it , and that endeavours should be used to learn what arms was in the countrey . depons , there was some such discourse there , as that the earl of tarras , philiphaugh , torwoodlie , polwart , and some others should draw to horse with the first when the rising should be in readiness , that it might be expected that the south parts of teviotdale and selkirk shire would joyn with them . and this is the truth , as he shall answer to god. sic subscribitur , hugh scot. linlithgow , i. p. d. his majesties advocat produc'd other depositions , emitted by gallowsheils before the lords of the secret committee , whereof the tenor follows . edinburgh , the 14 of september 1684. gallowsheils depons , that the e. of tarras and philiphaugh , being in his house in may 1683. discoursed of an intended rising in england , and of proposals made to scots men , to rise with them , and of london in particular , and that polwort was present at that meeting , and told he was sure the englishmen intended so , and that it was discoursed at that meeting amongst them , that it were fit to seize berwick and stirling ; and that it was talked amongst them of bringing the duke of york to tryal , and tha● the king would abandon him . sic subscribitur , hugh scot. perth , cancel . queensberry george mckenzie . io. drummond . george mckenzie . edinburgh , october 29. 1684. sederunt . lord chancellour . lord secretary . lord president . lord advocat . the laird of gallowsheils , prisoner in the tolbuith of edinburgh , being call'd and examin'd upon oath , depons , that in the moneth of may 1683. the e. of tarras , hume of polwort elder , and laird of philiphaugh , came to the deponents house , himself being absent , at his coming home , they were speaking of the security of the protestant religion ; and of a party in england , who would secure , or seize the king or duke ; and that if any should rise in arms to defend them , or to rescue the king and duke : there was another party who would rise in arms against them , it was proposed , that some countrey-men should be spoken to , to try their resolutions , and that the resolutions , of england should be told them , to see if they would concur . but the deponent does not remember that this proposition was approven , or undertaken to be done by any present ; nor does he remember who manag'd the discourse . it was likewise propos'd , to seize the officers of state , especially the chancellour and thesaurer , and the said , sir iohn cochran was to come to the west from england , for advancement of the design ; and that the earl of argile was to land in the west highlands , and to raise that countrey . of these matters , all these who were present discoursed , as of an affair that they were agitating , and wherein themselves were particularly concerned , though at that time they did not conclude what their carriage should be ; the reason why the deponent cannot be more particulars is , because he was sometimes going out , and sometimes walking up and down the room ; and though the deponent cannot be positive of the very words ; yet he is positive they were either these words , or words to that purpose . sic subscribitur , hugh scot. perth cancellarius . edinburgh , december 23. 1684. hvgh scot of gallowsheils being solemnly sworn in presence of the justices and assize , adheres to the depositions within , and above-written in all points , sic subscribitur . hugh scot. linlithgow , i. p. d. his majesties advocat in fortification of the former probation , adduces the printed copy of mr. william carstares depositions , emitted before the officers of state , and other lords of privy council , and leaves the same to the assise , and uses it as an adminicle of probation ; for though it was capitulat , that he should not be made use of as a witness ; yet it was agreed , that the deposition should be published : and likewise produces the principal deposition signed by himself , and the said lords . the lords , justice-general , justice-clerk , and commissioners of justiciary , admit the paper produced as an adminicle , and refers the import thereof to the inquest , and ordains the printed paper as it is collationed , to be taken in , and considered by the inquest . sir william paterson , and mr. colin mckenzie , clerks of his majesties privy council being interrogat , if they heard mr. william carstares own the depositions read , depons they saw and heard him swear , and own the same upon oath , and they collationed the printed copie with the original formerly , and now they heard it collationed , sic subscribitur , will. paterson . colin mckenzie . the deposition of mr. william carstares , when he was examined before the lords of secret committee , given in by him , and renewed upon oath ; upon the 22. of december 1684. in presence of the lords of his majesties privy council . edinburgh castle , september 8. 1684. mr. william carstares being examined upon oath , conform to the condescention given in by him , and on the terms therein-mentioned ; depons , that about november , or december 1682. iames stuart , brother to the laird of cultness , wrot a letter to him from holland , importing , that if any considerable sum of money could be procur'd from england , that something of importance might be done in scotland : the which letter , the deponent had an inclination to inform shepherd in abb-church-lane , merchant in london of ; but before he could do it , he wrot to mr. stuart above-nam'd to know from him , if he might do it ; and mr. stuart having consented , he communicat the said letter to mr. shepherd , who told the deponent that he would communicat the contents of it to some persons in england ; but did at that time name no body , as the deponent thinks : sometime thereafter , mr. shepherd told the deponent , that he had communicat the contents of the letter above-named , to colonel sidney , and that colonel danvers was present , and told the deponent , that colonel sidney was averse from imploying the late earl of argile , or medling with him , judging him a man too much affected to the royal family , and inclin'd to the present church-government ; yet mr. shepherd being put upon it by the deponent , still urg'd , that one might be sent to the earl of argile ; but as mr. shepherd told him , he was suspected upon the account of his urging so much ; yet afterwards he press'd , without the deponents knowledge , that the deponent being to go to holland however , might have some commission to the earl of argile , which he having inform'd the deponent of , the deponent told him , that he himself would not be concern'd , but if they would send another , he would introduce him ; but nothing of this was done : upon which the deponent went over , without any commission from any body , to holland , never meeting with iames stuart above-named : he was introduc'd to the earl of argile , with whom he had never before conversed , and did there discourse what had past betwixt mr. shepherd and him ; and particularly , about remitting of money to the said earl from england ; of which the said mr. stuart had written to the deponent , namely of 30000 pounds sterling ; and of the raising of 1000 horse and dragoons ; and the securing the castle of edinburgh , as a matter of the greatest importance : the method of doing this was proposed by the deponent , to be one hour , or thereby , after the relieving of the guards : but the earl did not relish this proposition , as dangerous ; and that the castles would fall of consequence , after the work abroad was done . iames stuart was of the deponents opinion for seizing the castle , because it would secure edinburgh , the magazines and arms ; as to the 1000 horse and dragoons , my lord argile was of opinion , that without them nothing was to be done ; and that if that number were rais'd in england to the said earl , he would come into scotland with them ; and that there being so few horse and dragoons to meet them , he judg'd he might get the country without trouble , having such a standing body for their friends to rendezvous to ; and the said earl said he could show the deponent the conventient places for landing , if he understood ; and as the deponent remembers , where the ships could attend . the deponent remembers not the names of the places . the deponent spoke to the lord stairs ; but cannot be positive that he nam'd the affair to him , but found him shy : but the earl of argile told him , he thought stairs might be gain'd to them : and that the earl of lowdo●n being a man of good reason , and disobliged , would have great influence upon the countrey , and recommended the deponent to major h●lms with whom the deponent had some acquaintance before , and had brought over a letter from him to the earl of argyle ; but the deponent had not then communicate any thing to the said holms , iames steuart laid down a way of correspondence by cyphers and false names , and sent them over to holms , and the deponent , for their use ( which cyphers and names , are now in the hands of his majesties officers , as the deponent supposes , ) and did desire the deponent earnestly to propose the 30000. pound sterling abovenamed to the party in england , and did not propose any less ; for as the earl told the deponent , he had particularly calculate the expence for arms , ammunition , &c. but iames steuart said , that if some less could be had , the earl would content himself , if better might not be ; but the earl always said , that there was nothing to be done without the body of horse and dragoons above-mentioned . during the time of the deponent his abode in holland , tho he had several letters from shepard , yet there was no satisfactory account , till some time after the deponent parted from the earl of argyle , and was making for a ship at rotterdam to transport himself to england . iames steuart wrot to him that there was hopes of the money . the next day after the deponent came to england , he met with sir iohn cochran , who , with commissar monro , and ierviswood , was at london before he came over ; and depons , that he knows not the account of their coming , more then for the perfecting the transaction about carolina : and having acquainted sir iohn cochran with the earls demands of the 30000 pound sterling and the 1000. horse and dragoons , sir iohn carried him to the lord russel , to whom the deponent proposed the affair , but being an absolute stranger to the deponent , had no return from him at that time ; but afterwards having met him accidently at mr. shepards ho●se , where he the lord russel had come to speak to shepard about the money above-named , as mr. shepard told the deponent . the deponent ( when they were done speaking ) desired to speak to the lord russel , which the lord russel did , and having reiterate the former proposition for 30000. pound sterling , and the 1000. horse and dragoons , he the lord russel told the deponent , they could not get so much raised at the time , but if they had 10000. pound to begin , that would draw people in , and when they were once in , they would soon be brought to more ; but as for the 1000. horse and dragoons , he could say nothing at the present , for that behoved to be concerted upon the borders . the deponent made the same proposal to mr. ferguson , who was much concerned in the affair , and zealous for the promoving of it . this mr. ferguson had in october or november before , as the deponent remembers in a conversation with the deponent in cheapside , or the street somewhere thereabout , said , that for the saving of innocent blood , it would be necessary to cut off a few , insinuating the king and duke , but cannot be positive whether he named them or not , to which the deponent said , that 's work for our wild people in scotland , my conscience does not serve me for such things ; after which the deponent had never any particular discourse with ferguson , as to that matter ; but as to the other affair , ferguson told the deponent that he was doing what he could to get it effectuate , as particularly that he spoke to one major wildman who is not of the deponent his acquaintance . ferguson blamed always sidney , as driving designs of his own . the deponent met twice or thrice with the lord melvil , sir iohn cochran , ierviswood , commissar monro , the two cessnocks , mongomery of landshaw , and one mr. veitch , where they discoursed of money to be sent to argyle , in order to the carrying on the affair , and tho he cannot be positive the affair was named , yet it was understood by himself , and as he conceives by all present , to be for rising in arms , for rectifying the government . commissary monro , lord melvil , and the two cessnocks were against medling with the english , because they judged them men that would talk , and would not do , but were more inclined to do something by themselves , if it could be done . the lord melvil thought every thing hazardous , and therefore the deponent cannot say he was positive in any thing , but was most inclined to have the duke of monmouth to head them in scotland , of which no particular method was laid down . ierviswood , the deponent , and mr. veitch , were for taking money at one of these meetings . it was resolved , that mr. martin , late clerk to the justice court should be sent to scotland , to desire their friends to hinder the countrey from rising , or taking rash resolutions upon the account of the council , till they should see how matters went in england . the said martin did go at the charges of the gentlemen of the meeting , and was directed to the laird of polwart and torwoodlie , who sent back word that it would not be found so easie a matter to get the gentrie of scotland to concur : but afterwards in a letter to commissar monro , polwart wrote that the countrey was readier to concur then they had imagined , or something to that purpose . the deponent , as above-said , having brought over a key from holland , to serve himself and major holms : he remembers not that ever he had an axact copy of it , but that sometimes the one , sometimes the other keeped it , and so it chanced to be in his custody when a letter from the earl of argyle came to major holms , intimating , that he would joyn with the duke of monmouth , and follow his measures , or obey his directions . this mr. veitch thought fit to communicate to the duke of monmouth , and for the understanding of it was brought to the deponent , and he gave the key to mr. veitch , who as the deponent , was informed , was to give it and the letter to mr. ferguson , and he to shew it to the duke of monmouth ; but what was done in it , the deponent knows not . the deponent heard the design of killing the king and duke , from mr. shepard , who told the deponent some were full upon it . the deponent heard that aron smith was sent by those in england to call sir iohn cochran , on the account of carolina , but that he does not know aron smith , nor any more of that matter , not being concerned it it . shepard named young hamden frequently as concerned in these matters . signed at edinburgh castle , the 8. of september , 1684. and renewed the 18 of the same month. william carstares . perth cancell . i. p. d. edinburgh castle 18 september 1684. mr. william carstares being again examined , adheres to his former deposition , in all the parts of it , and depones he knows of no correspondence betwixt scotland and england , except by martin before named ; for those gentlemen to whom he was sent , were left to follow their own methods . veitch sometimes , as the deponent remembers , stayed sometimes an nicolson , stabler's house , at london-wall ; sometimes with one widow hardcastle in more-fields . the deponent did communicate the design on foot to doctor owen , mr. griffil , and mr. meed , at stepney , who all concurred in the promoting of it , and were desirous it should take effect ; and to one mr. freth in the temple , councellor at law , who said that he would see what he could do in reference to the money , but there having gone a report , that there was no money , to be raised , he did nothing in it ; nor does the deponent think him any more concerned in the affair . nelthrop frequently spoke to the deponent of the money to be sent to argyle , whether it was got or not , but the deponent used no freedom with him in the affair . goodenough did insinuate once , that the lords were not inclined to the thing , and that before , they would see what they could do in the city . the deponent saw mr. ferguson , and mr. rumsay , lurking after the plot broke out , before the proclamation , having gone to ferguson , in the back of bishopsgate-street , at some new building , whether he was directed by ierviswood , who was desirous to know how things went. rumsay was not o● the deponent his acquaintance before , but they knew as little of the matter as the deponent . this is what the deponent remembers , and if any thing come to his memory , he is to deliver it in betwixt the first of october . and this is the truth , as he shall answer to god. william carstares perth , cancell . i. p. d. at edinburgh , the 22. of december , 1684. these foregoing depositions , subscribed by mr. william carstares deponent , and by the lord chancellor , were acknowledged on oath by the said mr. william carstares , to be his true depositions ; and that the subscriptions were his , in presence of us under subscribers . william carstares . perth cancell . david falconer . queensberry . george mckenzie , athol . his majesties advocat for further probation , adduces the examinations of mr , shepard , taken before sir leolin ienkins secretary of state for england , with the information or deposition of mr. zachary bourn , relating to the plot , sign'd by him and secretary ienkins , of which depositions the tenors follow . the examination of thomas shepard of london merchant , taken upon oath before the right honourable sir leolin jenkins knight , his majesties paincipal secretary of state , the 23. day of december . 1683. the deponent saith , that ferguson told him on , or about the moneth of april last , that an insurrection was intended both in england and in scotland , and that for the settling that affair betwixt the two nations , mr. baillie , mr. monro , sir iohn cochran , sir hugh and sir george campbels , with some others ( whose names this deponent heard not ) were come to london . that the deponent had some acquaintance with mr. baillie , mr. monro . and sir iohn cochran , and none at all with sir hugh and sir george campbels ; that mr. baillie told the deponent , that the earl of argile demanded thirty thousand pounds of the english to capacitat him to begin the business effectually in scotland , and that he the said baillie likewise told the deponent , that having concerted things with the lord russel and others , he the said baillie found an impossibility of raising that sum ; after which the said baillie had acquainted the deponent , that they were certainly promised ten thousand pounds , which sum was agreed to be payed into the deponents hands , in order to be remitted into holland , for the providing of arms ; and that the said baillie told the deponent at divers times , that the said sum , or at least one half of it would be payed such a day , and such a day ; and sometimes asked the deponent , if he had received any part of the said money , to which the deponent replyed that he had not , and that he the deponent scarce thought any would be payed . and the deponent also saith , that having had some little conversation with sir iohn cochran , he remembers well , that both of them did sometimes lament the delays in not paying in the money , and said , that although the said ten thousand pounds were pay'd in , they , the said sir iohn cochran and mr. monro , fear●d it would be too little ; and this deponent further sayeth not , as to any new matter . but the deponent being asked , to explain what he thought was meant by the words above-written , viz. to capacitat him ( the earl of argile ) to begin the business , he , this deponent sayeth , that he did understand by the word business , an insurrection in scotland . sic subscribitur , iurat coram . thomas shepard . l. ienkins . the information of zachary bourn of london , brewer , taken upon oath , the tenth day of december 1683. before the right honourable mr. secretary ienkins . the informant deposeth , and sayeth , that mr. baillie set up one night , if not two , with mr. ferguson , and went several times in the evening with him to the duke of monmouth , and the chief mannagers of the conspiracy ; that ferguson told the deponent , that he the said baillie was the chief man for the scots , next to the lord argile ; that the said baillie did sit up the greatest part of one night , with the said ferguson ; at which time this deponent believeth they were busie in preparing the intended declaration , which the deponent has the more reason to believe , in as much as the said ferguson did go about to show him the deponent , such a paper , wherein the said ferguson was hindered by the coming up stairs of some person , to speak with the said ferguson , that the said ferguson told the deponent , that the main business of the said baillie , in meeting the saids conspirators , was in order to get from them the ten thousand pounds , promised for the buying of arms , for the insurrection intended in scotland . that the deponent saw mr. william carstares come often to the lodgings of the said ferguson ; but that the said ferguson never told the deponent of any discourse held by him with the said carstares : and further this deponent saith not ▪ sic subscribitur , zac. bourn . iurat coram . l. ienkins . his majesties advocate likewise produced several warrands , and papers to prove , that those depositions are sign'd by sir leolin ienkins . his majesties advocate also produced the books of adjournal , bearing mr. william veitch to be a forefault traitor , and the act of parliament whereby the forefaulture is ratified , his majesties advocat's speech to the inquest . my lords and gentlemen , you have now a conspiracy against his majesties sacred person , and royal government , so fully discover'd , that they must want reason as well as loyalty , who do not believe the discovery ; and they must be enemies to sincerity , as well as to the king , who do not acknowledge it . beside , that the councils of all the three nations , thought the proof sufficient , for indicting a general thanksgiving through all these nations ; and that the judges of england thought the same strong enough to infer forefaulture of life and estate , against some of all ranks there ; you have a discovery made here from the late e. of argiles own letters , and the confession of his own emissaries , the two surest proofs that law ever invented , or the nature of humane affairs can allow ; and i am this day to add to all this , a new s●rt of proofs in the process that i now lead against this pannal , from the confessions of noblemen and gentlemen , who have been engaged in this wicked conspiracy ; and who from a sense of their guilt , are content freely to depose against their nearest relation , and their most intimate friend , in which having thus cleared to you , that there was really such a conspiracy , i shall , in the next place , proceed to prove this pannals accession to it . it cannot be imagined , that we would willingly involve our countrey men in it , without a conviction stronger then our kindness to scotland ; nor did his majesties servants accuse this pannal , without the opinion of the ablest lawyers of the kingdom , who did , with them concur , to think that there was not the least occasion of doubting left , to the most indifferent inqueist of his guilt , after they had seriously , and with reflection , read over , and pondered the probation now laid before you . the person accused of accession to this cryme is the ring-leader of all those , who in this kingdom concurr'd with the english conspirators , as you may see by the testimonies of all who have deposed ; and it was indeed fit and just to begin with the most guilty , so that if he be not convicted , there should no man be punished for this conspiracie ; all the noise we have heard of it , is but a cheat , the kings judges have been murderers , all the witnesses have been knaves , and such as dyed for it have been martyrs . the accession charged on the pannal , is not an accidental escape , nor is it proved by witnesses , who can be suspected of unkindnes to his person , or his cause , for it is a long tract of a continued design , gone about with the greatest deliberation and concern imaginable , and proved by his nearest relations , and persons so deeply engadged in that cause , ( for which he suffers , ) that they were content with him to venture their lives and fortunes in that quarrel . he is not accused of a crime that can amount only to a single murder , though that be a dreadful cryme , but a rebellion , which was to draw upon us a civil war , that murder of murders , in which hundreths of thousands were to fall ; and to crown all , he was to 〈◊〉 ▪ and to be the 〈…〉 a rebellion , in which one of the first steps was to kill his sacred majestie , and his royal brother ; and one of the chief witnesses which i have led against him , is bourn , which bourn confessed that he was to kill the king , and who confesses the pannal sat up several nights with ferguson , the other contriver of the kings murder , and so familiar was he with him , that bourn depons , that the said pannal had been with ferguson , at the drawing of the manifesto , whereby he was not only to be an actor , but to be the justifier of that horrid villanie : and therefore bourns depons , that ferguson , ( the best judge in that case ) looked upon him as the chief man , next to argyle ; but because no man is presumed to go to such a hight , without previous inclination and motives , i shall to convince you , that this gentleman was very capable of all that was lybelled against him , remember you , that he is nephew , and son in law to the late waristoun , bred up in his family and under his tutory ; about the time of this plot it was undenyably known , and is now sufficiently proved , by two present witnesses , the earl of tarras and commissar monro , that he thought himself desperat , knowing himself to be guilty of treason by blackwoods case ; and as it 's presumable , that a man that 's guilty of one point of treason , will commit another ; so when a man is desperat as to his life and fortune , he is capable of any thing ; he was likewise animated to commit this cryme , by the intelligence he had that there was a plot in england , carryed on by men of so great parts , fortune and influence , and by the too probable hopes , that they would get all the western shires to joyn with them here , because of the common guilt , in which they had engadged themselves , by their late extravagances , they made an account of an assistance of twenty thousand men ; and by philiphaughs deposition , that these gentlemen expected the concurse of the southern-shires ; and thus , i am to prove to you a cryme , which is in it self , so probable and liklie , that it should need little probation , tho i have adduced for your conviction sufficient evidences , albeit the cryme were in it self very unliklie . the crymes which i hope i have proved , are , that ierviswood the pannal transacted for money to the late earl of argyl , a declared traitor . 2. that he designed to raise a rebellion . 3. that he intercommuned with the earl of argyl and mr. veitch declared traitors . 4. that he was present , whe●● it ●as treated ▪ either that argyle should have money from the english ▪ and assistance from scotland , or that a rebellion should be raised , and that he did not reveal the famine ; and all these being sound relevant separati●n ▪ it is sufficient for me to have proved any one of them . and if a gentleman was lately found guilty of high-treason , by the opinion of all the lords o● session , for not revealing , that sir iohn cochra● sought fifty pound sterling from him , though he refused the same , and tho he believed , it was sought for a charitable subsistance to preserve him from starving ; what deserves this pannal , who sought thirty thousand pound sterling , to buy him arms , to invade his native countrey ? that ierviswood was designing to carry on a rebellion , or at least was accessory , or ( as our law terms it ) was art and part thereof , is clearly prov'd ; but that in this occult and hidden crime , which uses not to be prov'd by clear witnesses ; i may lead you thorow all the steps of the probation , which like the links of a chain , hang upon one another . you will be pleased to consider , that 1. it is proved that he desired a blind commission to go to england , not to manage the affairs of the carolina company , as he confess'd , but to push the people of england to do something for themselves , because they did only talk and not do ; and what he would have them to do , appears too clearly , because he tells the earl of tarras it was probable , that if the king were briskly put to it by the parliament of england , he would consent to exclude the duke from the succession : here is not only a treasonable design , ( though a design be sufficient in treason ) but here are express acts of treason proved , viz. the treating with the earl of tarras upon this design , the settling a correspondence with him for the prosecution of it , and the writing letters from london to him concerning it , and the sending down mr. martin to compleat it by a general ●●sing ; as he design'd to push on the english , so he prosecutes closely 〈◊〉 design upon all occasions . on the road he complains cunningly and bitterly , that our lives , laws and liberties , and the protestant religon were in danger , the stile and method of all such as design to rebel ; after he arrives at london , he engages the conspirators there to assist the late earl of argile , a declar'd traitor , with money to buy arms ; this was indeed to push the english to do the most dangerous things by the most dangerous man , and in the most dangerous methods . he enters also in a strict correspondence with ferguson the contriver , with shepard the thesaurer , and carstares the chaplain of the conspiracy . alexander monro another present witness , proves that he argued with him , that it was necessary to give argile money expressly for carrying on the rebellion , and that they did meet at ierviswoods chamber where this was spoke of , and from which mr. robert martin was sent to their friends in scotland to know what they would do ; and though the silly caution was , that they sent him to prevent their rising , yet a man must renounce common sense , not to see that the design was to incite them to rebellion , and to prevent only their doing any thing in this rebellious design , by which they might lose themselves in a too early and abortive insurrection here , till things were ready in england . for , 1. this commission was given him in a place , and by a company who had been themselves treating immediatly before of sending money to the late e. of argile to buy arms , and certainly those arms were to be bought for men , and not for a magazine . 2. they were treating how many men could be raised in scotland . 3. carstares deposition bears , that martin was sent to hinder rash resolutions , till they saw how matters went in england , and the return to their embassy bore , that it would not be an easie matter to get the gentry of scotland to concur ; but afterwards better hopes of their rising was given , which could not have been , if the true commission had not been to raise scotland . 4. that sir iohn cochran made a speech to that purpose , is expressly prov'd , and that ierviswood spoke to the same purpose , is prov'd by a necessary consequence ; for since it 's prov'd that he spoke , and that he did not speak against it , it must necessarily follow that he spoke for it , though the witness is so cautious , that he cannot condescend upon the words now after so long a time ; and it is against sense to think , that ierviswood who in privat press'd the same so much upon commissar monro , and who was the deacon-conveener here , and who , as mr. martin their envoy declared , was the person who was to be sent for the arms , should not himself have been the most forward man in that design , but above all exitus acta probat , this commissioner , ( who being a meer servant , durst not have proposed any thing from himself , being a mean person , and being one , who , as the earl of tarras deposes , would say nothing , but what was in his paper : ) does expresly declare , that he came from ierviswood and others ; and in the meeting with him , a rebellion is actually formed , and it is resolved , they should seize the king's officers of state , garisons , and forces , and that they should joyn with the late e. of argyle , and put their own forces in a condition to joyn with these forces that were to come from england , and they gave a sign , and a word , which uses only to be done in actual war ; so here is treason clearly prov'd , by two present witnesses , from the first design to it's last perfection . nor can it be objected , that they are not concurring witnesses , but testes singulares upon separat acts , for in reiterable crimes , witnesses deposing upon different acts ; do prove if the deeds tend to the same end ; as for instance , if one witnes should depose , that they saw a traitor sit in a council of war , in one place , and in another place , they saw him in arms , or that one saw him assist at a proclamation in one place , and saw him in arms in another ; or that one saw him writ a treasonable paper , and another saw him use it ; these witnesses are still considered as contestes , or concurring witnesses , and ten or twelve inqueists have so found , and upon their verdict , rebells have been lately hang'd . the learn'd judges of england being all met together did expresly find , that one witnes proving , that a. b. said , that he was going to buy a knife to kill the king , and another deposing , that he saw him buy a knife , without telling for what , that these two witnesses were contestes , and prov'd sufficiently the cryme of treason , yet there the one witnes , prov'd only a remote design , and the other an act , which was indifferent of it's own nature , and became only treasonable by the connexion ; but no witnesses ever deposed upon things so coherent , and so connected together , as these do , for they depose still upon the same person , carrying on the same design of a rebellion ; as to which , in one place , he is exciting his own nephew , and telling him his resolutions , and settling a correspondence with him , at another time , he presses commissar monro to the same rebellion . at a third , he holds a meeting at his own chamber , and speaks concerning it , and from that meeting , he sends a trusty , who formes the rebellion . besides all this , tho two witnesses be sufficient , i have adduced mr. william carstares chief conspirator , and who choos'd rather to suffer violent torture , than to disclose it , he likewise deposes upon all these steps , and connects them together , and this his deposition is twice reiterated , upon oath , after much premeditation . and i likewise adduce two depositions taken upon oath , by sir leolin ienkins , who was impower'd by the law of england , and at the command of the king , and the council of england , upon a letter from his majesties officers of state here , in which deposition , shepard , one of the witnesses , deposes , that baillie came frequently to him , and desired him to advance the money , and lamented the delays , and that there was so little to be advanced ; and who should be better believed then one who was his own trustie , and a person who was able to advance so great a sum ; bourn , another of the witnesses , deposes , that ferguson told him , that the pannal spoke frequently to him concerning the same money , and that he sat up several nights with ferguson upon the said conspiracy ; and who should be better believed then fergusons confident , and one who was so far trusted in the whole affair , that he was to take away that sacred life , which heaven has preserv'd by so many miracles . against these three depositions , you have heard it objected , that non testimonia sed testes probant , especially by our law , in which , by an express act of parliament , no probation is to be led , but in presence of the assise and pannal . to which it is answered , that these depositions are not meer testimonies ; for i call a testimony , a voluntar declaration , emitted without an oath , and a judge ; but these depositions are taken under the awe of an oath , and by the direction of a judge . 2. shepard was confronted with the pannal himself , and he had nothing to say against him ; whereas the great thing that can be objected against testimonies ( and by our statute especially ) is that if the party who emits the testimony had been confronted with the pannal ; the impression of seeing a person that was to die , by his deposition , would have made him afraid to depose laxly ; and the pannal likewise might , by proposing interrogators and questions , have cleared himself , and satisfi'd the judges in many things depos'd against him : but so it is that mr. shepard having been confronted with the pannal , before the king himself , who is as ●ar above other judges , in his reason and justice , as he is in his power and authority ; he deposes that the pannal was the chief mannager of this conspiracy , next to argile , and that he was so passionate to have this money to buy arms , that he lamented the delays ; and can it be imagined that mr. shepard whom he trusted with his life and his fortune , and whom all their party trusted with their cash , would have depos'd any thing against him that was not true , especially when he knew that what he was to depose , was to take away his life and his fortune ; or that if the pannal had been innocent , he would not when he was confronted with mr. shepard , before the king himself , have roar'd against mr. shepard , if he had not been conscious to his own guilt . there is a surprise in innocence , which makes the innocent exclaim , and it inspires men with a courage , which enables them to confound those who depose falsly against them ; and in what occasion could either of these have appear'd , more than in this , wherein this gentleman was charg'd to have conspir'd with the greatest of rascals , against the best of princes ; and that too in presence of the prince himself , against whom he had conspir'd ; but guilt stupifies indeed , and it did never more than in this gentlemans case , whose silence was a more convincing witness than mr. shepard could be . mr. carstares likewise knew when he was to depone , that his deposition was to be used against ierviswood , and he stood more in awe of his love to his friend , than of the fear of the torture , and hazarded rather to die for ierviswood , than that ierviswood should die by him : how can it then be imagin'd , that if this man had seen ierviswood in his tryal , it would have altered his deposition ; or that this kindness , which we all admir'd in him would have suffer'd him to forget any thing in his deposition , which might have been advantageous in the least to his friend : and they understand ill this hight of friendship , who think that it would not have been more nice and careful , than any advocate could have been : and if carstares had forgot at one time , would he not have supplyed it at another ; but especially at this last time , when he knew his friend was already brought upon his tryal : and that this renew'd testimony was yet a further confirmation of what was said against him ; and albeit the kings servants were forced to engage , that carstares himself should not be made use of as a witness against ierviswood ; yet i think this kind scrupulosity in carstares for ierviswood , should convince you more than twenty suspect , nay than even indifferent witnesses ; nor can it be imagined , that the one of these witnesses ; would not have been as much afraid of god , and his oath at london , as at edinburgh ; and the other in the council chamber in the forenoon , as in the justice-court in the afternoon . 3. the statute founded on , does not discharge the producing of testimonies otherways than after the jury is inclos'd ; for then indeed they might be dangerous , because the party could not object against them : but since the statute only discharges to produce writ , or witnesses , after the jury is inclos'd ; it seems clearly to insinuat , that they ought to prove when they are produc'd in presence of the party himself , as now they are . and though the civil law did not allow their judges to believe testimonies , because they were confin'd to observe strict law ; yet it does not from that follow , that our juries , whom the law allows to be a law to themselves , and to be confin'd by no rule , but their conscience , may not trust intirely to the depositions of witnesses , though not taken before themselves , when they know that the witnesses , by whom , and the judges , before whom these depositions were emited , are persons beyond all suspition , as in our case . but yet for all this , i produce these testimonies , as adminicles here only to connect the depositions of the present witnesses , and not to be equivalent to witnesses in this legal process ; albeit , as to the conviction of mankind , they are stronger than any ordinary witnesses . when you , my lords and gentlemen , remember that it is not the revenge of a privat party , that accuses in this case ; and that even in privat crimes , such as forgery , or the murder of children , &c. many juries here have proceeded upon meer presumptions , and that even solomon himself , founded his illustrious decision , approv'd by god almighty , upon the presum'd assertion of a mother ; i hope ye will think two friends deposing , as present witnesses , adminiculated and connected by the depositions of others , though absent ; should beget in you an intire belief , especially against a pannal , who has been always known to incline this way , and who , though he was desired in the tolbooth to vindicate himself from those crimes , would not say any thing in his own defence , and though he offers to clear himself of his accession to the kings murder , yet sayes nothing to clear himself from the conspiracy entered into with the late earl of argile , for invading his native countrey , which is all that i here charge upon him , and which he inclines to justifie , as a necessary mean for redressing grievances ; i must therefore remember you , that an inquest of very worthy gentlemen did find rathillet guilty , tho there was but one witness led against him , because when he was put to it , he did not deny his accession : and two rogues were found guilty in the late circuit at glascow , for having murdered a gentleman of the guard , though no man saw them kill him ; but the murderers having been pursued , they run to the place out of which the pannals then accused were taken , none having seen the face of the runaweys ; and the pannals being accus'd : and press'd to deny the accession , shun'd to disown the guilt , but desired it might be proved against them . this may convince you that there are proofs which are stronger then witnesses ; and i am sure that there were never more proving witnesses then in this case , nor were the depositions of witnesses ever more strongly adminiculated . remember the danger likewise of emboldening conspiracies against the kings sacred life , and of encouraging a civil war , wherein your selves and your posterity may bleed , by making the least difficulty to find a man guilty by the strongest proofs that ever were adduced in so latent a crime as a conspiracy is . and i do justly conclude , that whoever denys that a conspiracy can be thus prov'd , does let all the world see that he inclines that conspiracies should be encouraged and allow'd . our age is so far from needing such encouragements , that on the other hand in this , as in all other crimes , because the guilt grows frequent and dangerous , the probation should therefore be made the more easie , tho in this case the king needs as little desire your favour , as fear your justice . and i have insisted so much upon this probation , rather to convince the world of the conspiracy , than you that this conspirator is guilty . thereafter the lords ordained the assize to inclose , and return their verdict to morrow by nine a clock in the morning . edinburgh , december 24. 1684. the said day , the persons who past upon the assie of mr. robert baillie of ierviswood , return'd their verdict in presence of the saids lords ; whereof the tenor follows . the assize , all in one voice , finds the crimes of art and part in the conspiracy , and plot libelled ; and of concealing , and not revealing the same , clearly proven against mr. robert baillie the pannal , in respect of the depositions of witnesses and adminicles adduced . sic subscribitur , strathmore chancellor . after opening and reading of the which verdict of assyze , the lords , justice general , justice clerk , and commissioners of justiciary ▪ therefore , by the mouth of iames iohnstoun dempster of court , decerned and adjudged the said mr. robert baillie of ierviswood to be taken to the mercat cross of edinburgh , this twentie fourth day of december instant , betwixt two and four a clock in the afternoon , and there to be hanged on a gibbet till he be dead , and his head to be cut off , and his body to be quartered in four , and his head to be affixt on the nether-bow of edinburgh , and one of his quarters to be affixt on the tolbooth of iedburgh , another on the tolbooth of lanerk , a third on the tolbooth of air , and a fourth on the tolbooth of glasgow ; and ordains his name , fame , memory , and honours to be extinct , his blood to be tainted , and his arms to be riven forth , and delate out of the books of arms , so that his posterity may never have place , nor be able hereafter to bruik , or joyse any honours , offices , titles or dignities , within this realm in time coming ; and to have forfaulted , ammitted and tint all and sundry his lands , heritages , tacks , steadings , rooms , possessions , goods and gear whatsoever , pertaining to him , to our soveraign lords use , to remain perpetually with his highness , in property , which was pronunced for doom . sic subscribitur . linlithgow . james foulis , i. lockhart , david balfour , roger hog , al. seton , p. lyon. extracted forth of the books of adjournal , by me mr. thomas gordon , clerk to the iustice court , sic subscribitur . tho. gordon . in pursuance of which sentence , his majesties heraulds , and pursevants , with their coats display'd ( after sound of trumpets , ) did publickly , in face of the court ( conform to the custom , in the sentences of treason ) in his majesties name and authority , cancel , tear and destroy the said mr. robert baillie his arms , threw them in his face , trampl'd them under foot ; and ordain'd his arms to be expunged out of the books of herauldry , his posterity to be ignoble , and never to injoy honour and dignity in time coming : and thereafter went to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and solemnly tore and cancelled the said mr. robert baillie his arms , and affixed the famine on the said mercat-cross reversed , with this inscription ; the arms of mr. robert baillie late of jerviswood traitor . finis notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a50890-e160 * nota , that this week his majesty was expected from new-mercat , but came 8. dayes sooner , by reason of the fire . * monmouth . * carstares . † scotland . * scotland . † england . * dissenting lords . † carstares . * dissenting lords . notes for div a50890-e28570 nota , that the earl of tarras depon'd nothing against jerviswood but what the other two witnesses depon'd against himself before the tryal , and upon which thereafter they being renew'd , the earl was forfaulted ; so that there could be no ground of suspicion from his circumstances . proclamation for bringing in and paying the arrears due by the forces in this country scotland. privy council. 1694 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05641 wing s1841 estc r226042 53981736 ocm 53981736 180368 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05641) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180368) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2826:56) proclamation for bringing in and paying the arrears due by the forces in this country scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1689-1694 : william and mary) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson, printer to their most excellent majesty, edinburgh : 1694. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. dated: given under our signet at edinburgh, the sixteenth day of november. and of our reign the sixth year, 1694. signed: gilb. eliot, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland. -army -pay, allowances, etc. -law and legislation -early works to 1800. poll tax -law and legislation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1689-1702 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2008-08 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion monogram of 'w' (william) superimposed on' m' (mary) diev et mon droit honi soit qui mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms proclamation for bringing in and paying the arrears due by the forces to the countrey . william and mary by the grace of god , king and queen of great-britain , france and ireland , defenders of the faith ; to macers of our privy council , messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally specially constitute , greeting ; forasmuch as ; by the ninth act of the fourth session of this our currant parliament , for pole-money , the same is most strictly appointed and destined , for payment of the arrears due to the countrey and army , preceeding the first of february , one-thousand six hundred and ninety one years , in the first place : prohibiting and discharging the applying thereof to any other use whatsoever , and certifying such as shall either give orders for mis-applying thereof , or intromet with the same , the mis-applyers and receivers thereof , shall be lyable conjunctly and severally in the double thereof , at the instance of any party concerned , and their privat estates subject and lyable for the double of that which shall be so mis-applyed . and further , it is by the said act declared , that where the arrears due to the countrey , by the forces , shall be first duely stated for any burgh or shire , conform to the orders and rules set down thereanent , the burgh or shire to whom the said arrears shall be found due , shall have retention , and get a discharge of their pole-money , in satisfaction of their said arrears ; and where the arrears due to any shire or burgh , exceeds the pole-money due by the said burgh and shire , then and in that case the said superplus shall be ordered to be payed by the lords of the thesaury , out of the pole-money due and brought in from other places , with regard always to the total of these arrears , and to the total of the said pole-money , that the foresaid superplus may be payable , and payed proportionally , as the foresaid act of parliament , impowering the lords of our privy council to determine all difficulties thereby undetermined , that may arise anent the premisses , more fully bears . likeas the saids lords of our privy council having thought fit , for the better ingathering of the foresaid pole-money , and for the more sure answering of the ends and uses to which it is appropriat , as said is , that the said pole-money should be set in tack upon a roup , for payment of the highest tack-duty that should be offered ; we in prosecution of the said act of parliament , and acts of our council , for setting the foresaid tack , did by our proclamation of the date the last of july last by past , require and command all burghs and shires , to whom any arrears were due , as said is , and who might pretend to the benefit of the foresaid retention , to cause state and bring in their accompts thereof to the clerks of our privy council , to the effect that they might be there revised and approven , and payment ordered accordingly , as the said proclamation , bearing an express distinction of the arrears due by the english forces , from these due by the scots forces at more length proports and we being firmly resolved , that notwithstanding that few or none of the saids shires and burghs have obtained their the payment of the said pole-money , to the effect they might have had the benefit of the retention above provided : yet nevertheless the destination contained in the foresaid act , for the payment of the said arrears to the first place , shall be strictly and punctually kept , without any violation , or taking the least advantage of the foresaids shires and burghs , their neglect and omission ; have therefore , and to make the foresaid destination more effectual , and the payment of the said shire and burghs more sure and punctual , with the advice of the lords of our privy council ordered , likeas , we with advice foresaid , do hereby order and appoint the foresaids shires and burghs ; as also , all others to whom any arrears are due by our forces out of the pole-money , to send in to the clerks of our privy council , the accompts of their said arrears , duly stated conform to former orders , to be revised and approven by the lords of our privy council , and that peremptorly betwixt and the fifteenth day of january next to come , certifying all such as shall failȝie herein , that their accompts shall not be hereafter received , in respect of their said neglect and contumacy , and that their falling shart , or being delayed of the payment hereby for them intended , shall only be imputable to their own fault . and it is further hereby declared , that when ever the foresaids accompts , hereby ordered to be brought in , shall be revised and approven by the lords of our privy council , to whom we earnestly recommend to dispatch the same with all diligence possible , then the lords of our thesaury are with all due conveniency to give precepts to the saids shires and burghs , and others concerned , upon our genetal receivers for payment to them of the respective sums that shall be found due by the saids lords of our privy council in manner foresaid , to the effect that our said general receiver , to whom the tack-duty of the said pole-money , is by the tack set to the farmours thereof , appointed to be paid at the terms of candlemass and whitsunday next therein specified , may make punctual payment of the saids precepts , after the foresaids terms , and as he shall be ordered by the saids lords of our thesaury . and lastly , it is hereby declared , that these presents so exactly calculat , for the furthering of the countreys payment of the said arrears , conform to the said act of parliament , shall be without prejudice to the farmours of the pole-money , of their uplifting of the same , as also of the payment , to be made by them of their tack-duty , therefore , conform to the tenor of their tack in all points . our will is herefore , and we charge you strictly and commands , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and , to the mercat crosses of the head-burghs of the several shires of this kingdom , and there , in our name and authority make publication hereof , that none pretend ignorance . and ordains these presents to be printed . given under our signet at edinburgh , the sixteenth day of november . and of our reign the sixth year , 1694. per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save king william and queen mary . edinburgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew andersson , printer to their most excellent majesty , 1694. of the medals and coins of scotland nicolson, william, 1655-1727. 1709 approx. 68 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 17 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; 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(eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a52339) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 35010) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1920:27) of the medals and coins of scotland nicolson, william, 1655-1727. 32 p. s.n., [london? : 1700] by william nicolson. caption title. imprint from wing. reproduction of the original in the goldsmiths collection, university of london. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng coins -early works to 1800. scotland -history -early works to 1800. 2005-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2006-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-01 ali jakobson sampled and proofread 2007-01 ali jakobson text and markup reviewed and edited 2007-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion chap. i. of the med●●● and coins of scotland . there are not many scotch coins found on the borders of the two kingdoms , notwithstanding the frequent conflicts that have happen'd there : and one great reason , why they are more rarely met with than the english , is because ( as our edward the second observ'd in his (a) speech ) the kings of scotland used not , in old time , to pay their armies , but every man follow'd at his own expence , and carry'd his own provisions . he that wrote the short catalogue of the king 's prefix'd to h. boethius's history ( i speak thus doubtingly of it , because it could not be written by that historian himself , since it concludes with queen mary's two husbands ) affirms roundly that there was no coin'd mony in the days of k. reutha ; but that all manner of payments , of wages or prices , were made in corn or beef . in the (b) history it self this king is said to have order'd the salaries of men of different professions in a certain and critical manner ; so as that a counsellor at law was to have the ox's tongue , the physician two ribs out of each of his sides , &c. bishop (c) lesley indeed reports this matter much otherwise ; and assures us that king reutha coin'd mony of leather , numum ex corio bubulo cudi jussit : but , long after this , the brigantes are (d) said to have been strangers to the use of any sort of coin , their whole treasure ( in aractacus's reign being in re pecuaria , in their stocks of cattle . we are told that (e) brudus king of the picts , sent a considerable sum [ missa ad eum ingenti pecuniae vi ] to the saxon king edwine , as his stipendiary against the scots : but , whether this was of his own or some foreign coin , we are not inform'd . 't is probable enough that some sort of coin'd money they had , even long before that time , if their neighbours the scots were made acquainted with the thing as early as k. donald the first 's days . and so says (f) h. boethius , whose very expressions are mostly transcrib'd by the following historians , and are these : donaldus , primus omnium scotorum regum , ut in nostris annalibus proditum est memoriae , nummum argenteum aureumque signavit , una parte salutiferae crucis , altera sui ipsius effigie expressa , quo suscepta a se primum inter scotos reges christianae pietatis memoriam ad posteros propagaret . enimvero nostrates antea aut nulla pecunia signata , sed ejus loco mercibus commmutationis causa , aut romana aut britannica , in commerciis utebantur . he proves the latter part of this story from great quantities of roman money found in fife and other parts of the kingdom ; but his authorities for the rest , which is of chief concern to us are omitted . i do not much doubt but that these parts of great britain have all along maintain'd their commerce ( and may they ever continue to do so ! ) in the same methods and fashion with those that are more southern : so that the value of money , and the prices of goods , have generally been at a par amongst the several nations which antiently inhabited this island . an early instance we have of this in the (g) laws of king malcolm the second , wherein a colpindach ( or young heifer ) is valu'd at thirty pence ; the very same price which is set on an ox in some of our (h) saxon laws , which are supposd to have been enacted about the same time. chap. ii. of the scottish gold coins . how long the scots have coin'd gold is very uncrtain ; tho' , i think , we may ( in the gross ) venture to affirm that they hardly did it before the english : and we have elsewhere ascrib'd the beginning of the matter there to k. edward the third . what the (i) nummus aureus was which macolm camnoir appointed to be paid in lieu of that obscenc privilege given to the grandees of scotland by euenus the third , upon the marriage of their tenants and vassals , i cannot certainly tell ; tho' my author says 't was of the same kind with what ( in his own time ) was well enough kown by the name of marcheta . dimidiata argenti marca is the expression he (k) elsewhere uses ; and i suppose this may suit the thing better than nummus aureus . the five last chapters in the regiam majestatem are observ'd to be of a suspected authority ; or , otherwise , we might seem to have a pretty good evidence of k. david the firsts coining of gold : for thus runs one of the laws , (l) pro vulnere in facie vulnerans dabit unam peciam auri , videlicet , unam imaginem auri. these are all uncertainties . before we enter upon the times wherein we have better light , it will be convenient to to observe two things to the reader : 1. that the proportion betwixt gold and silver , in the kingdom of scotland , has usually been as one to twelve ; so that when the ounce of gold was at three pounds , the ounce of silver went at five shillings , &c. this is more particularly clear'd in a manuscript note of (m) sir james balfour's , which he had call'd prysses of the cunzie in the hail tyme of ja. 1. ja. 2. ja. 3. ja 4. ja. 5. and queine marey . a. d. 1437. ( says that note ) k. james the first at his death , had a standard equal to that of england : silver was at 5 s. ( scots ) the ounce , and gold at 3 l. a. d. 1440. k. james the second rais'd silver to 8 s. the ounce ; and gold to 4 l. 19 s. a. d. 1466. james the third rais'd the silver ( first ) to 10 s. 8 d. and the gold to 5 l. 12 s. afterwards he again mounted the ounce of silver to 12 s. in november , 1475. but ( in february 1483. ) he reduced it to 11 s. 8 d. the gold he advanc'd to 6 l. a. d. 1489. james the fourth kept both at the last mention'd value . there are no remaining acts of council , concerning coinage , in k. james the fifth's time ; tho' great alterations were made in that reign . the douglas-groats ( of 10 d. fine ) and babies ( of 3 d. fine ) were then brought in use ; as were likewise the bonnet-pieces of gold. he left the ounce of silver at 19 s. 9 d. and gold at 12 l. a. d. 1542. in q. mary's time the ounce of silver rose to 30 s. and she coin'd placks ( of only 2 d. fine ) at 4 l. 16 s. the ounce 2. another thing whereof i am to admonish the reader is , that he will find the weight of the gold and silver ( in the following account of the coins of both metals ) computed by different standards . in the former is observ'd that of the goldsmiths of edinburgh ; who divide their ounce into sixteen drops , and their drop into 36 grains , 27 of their grains making our penny-weight . in weighing of the silver coins , i have kept to our common english weights ; by ounces , penny-weights and grains . the reason of this difference , is , because all the golden coins are now in the possession of ( my worthy and communicative friend ) mr. james southerland ; who was pleas'd nicely to examine their several weights by the standard of his own country . most of the silver-pieces are in the hands of the most reverend father in god , the present lord archbishop of york ; and his grace , among the many generous acts of favour which i have had from him , has kindly obliged me with his own most learned and curious remarks upon ' em . these two things premis'd , i begin the scottish coins in gold. these , as i take it , cannot be carry'd higher than the sovereignty of the royal family of the stewarts ; the eldest golden coin of scotland seeming to be no older than the reign of k. robert the second . to this prince , i suppose , belong the three following : 1. the scotch lyon within a shield crowned , a small circle about the shield , and robertus dei gracia rex scot. rev. st. andrew on the cross , betwixt two flower-de-lys's , with dns. protector ms. & libera . weight 1 dr. 9 gr. 2. another differs only in the words liberato and scoto , and the weight is but 1 dr. 3. the scotch lyon in a shield not crown'd . robertus dei g. rex sco. r. st. andrew's cross , with two flower-de-lys and two trefoils . dns. protector ms. w. 20 gr. the five next i guess to belong to robert the third ; since they carry a motto , on the reverse , which was not ( i think ) more early in this isle . k. henry the fifth was the first that bore it in england . 't is true (n) le blanc gives this motto on a coin which he ascribes to k. lewis the vii . which would carry the antiquity of an inscription somewhat higher : but he that curiously examines that coin will find the shield of the royal arms enclos'd in a rose not used in england before edward the third's time : and , if the fashions of money were brought from france hither ( as perhaps every body will allow ) yet i think all agree that we followed their example pretty early , as the scots did ours . so that it may be worth the considering anew , whether this coin be truly so old as le blanc puts it . 1. the scotch lyon within a shield crown'd , robertus dei gra. rex scotorum . r. st. andrew stretched upon his cross , xpc. regnat . xpc. vincit . xpc. imp . w. 2 dr. 2. different only from the former in robertus dei gratia rex sco. w. 1 dr. 4 gr. 3. the shield not crown'd , robertus dei g. rex scoto . r. as above . w. 1 dr. 4. the shield as before , robertus rex scotorum . the reverse the same with the two last mentioned . w. 34 gr. 5. about the shield ( not crown'd ) a garniture somewhat representing a rose , robertus dei gratia rex co . r. as before . w. 34 gr. a 6th without co . king james the first may probably challenge the two next , being of a near resemblance to some of those of his immediate predecessor . 1. the scotch lyon in a shield crown'd , betwixt two flower-de-lys's , jacobus dei gra. rex scotorum . r. st. andrew stretch'd on the cross , xpc. regnat . &c. w. 1 dr. 24 gr. 2. a small crown on each side of the shield , jacobus d. gratia rex scotor . r. the flower-de-lys's not crown'd as in the former , salvum fac populum tuum . w. 1 dr. 24 gr. in the fourteenth year of king (o) james the second , it was enacted in parliament , that there should be striken a new penny in gold , called a lyon , with the print of the lyon on th' ane side , and the image of st. andrew on the other side , with a side coat even to his fute , halding the samin weight of the half english noble . this was to go at 6 s. 8 d. and its half at 3 s. 4 d. exactly at the same rates with the demy and half demy . afterwards , in his (p) eighteenth year , the demy and new lyon were order'd to go at 10 s. of one sort or other of these are the six following . 1. the scotch shield crown'd , with a crown'd flower-de-lys on each side , and jacobus dei gracia rex sco. r. st. andrew as above , salvum fac pplum . w. 27 gr. 2. the flower-de-lys's on the sides of the shield not crown'd , jacobus dei gra. rex scotorum . r. st. andrew on the cross , with flowers uncrown'd , salvum fac pplum domine . w. 27 gr. 3. st. andrew carrying his cross , jacobus dei gratia rex sco. r. the lyon in a shield crown'd , salvum fac populum tuum domine . w. 1 dr. 20 gr. 4. the lyon within a shield in form of a lozenge , with a small crown over it , jacobus dei gratia rex sc. r. a small st. andrew's cross betwixt two small flower-de-lys's , within a pretty hexagonal star , each point ending in a flower-de-lys , with a small rose betwixt every two points , salvum fac populum tuum do. w. 1 dr. 27 gr. 5. a piece of the same size and stamp with the last mentioned . w. 1 dr. 18 gr. 6. another of the same stamp , but somewhat smaller size . w. 30 gr. james the third , in his (q) third parliament , order'd the demy and lyon to be rais'd to 12 s. but , in the (r) next he held , which happend to be within a very few months , they both return'd to their old value of 10 s. in his (s) eighth , the demy is set at 13 s. 4 d. and the scottis crown ( which , i imagine , is only another name for the lyon ) at 13. in his (t) thirteenth , a fine penny of gold is order'd to be stricken of the weight and fineness of the rose-noble , which is to pass at the value of 30 new groats , of ten in the ounce of fine silver . another penny of gold , of the same inscription , to go for 20 groats ; and a third for 10. of the two latter kinds , i suppose , are these two : 1. an unicorn holding a shield with the scotch lyon , a small st. andrew's cross under the unicorn's feet , and jacobus dei gra. rex scotorum . r. a cross flory , charg'd with a great blazing star , exurgat de. & dissipent . nimici ej . w. 2 dr. 2. a piece of the same stamp , but smaller size . w. 33 gr. james the fourth , in his very (u) first year , coin'd money ( both of gold and silver ) of the same weight and fineness with that of his father ; and some of 'em seem to have carry'd the very same impression . the following four may probably belong to this king : 1. one exactly stamp'd as those two are which we have allotted to the foregoing reign , varying only the first legend thus : jacobus 4. dei gra. rex scotorum . w. 2 dr. 2. the king on horse-back in armour holding a sword , circumscrib'd jacobus dei gra. rex scotor . r. the scotch lyon in a shield crown'd , with a great cross reaching the outer ring of the piece , salvum fac populum tuum domine . w. 2 dr. 18 gr. 3. the same with the former , saving that the legends are transpos'd . jacobus , &c. being about the shield . w. 1 dr. 18 gr. 4. a lesser piece of the same stamp with the last . w. 22 gr. in the old (x) ordinance of the king of spain , there 's a piece ( call'd the croone van schotlandt ) which seems to be of this king 's coining . it bears the shield of scotland crown'd , and jacobus dei gra. rex scotorum iiii. r. st. andrew on the cross , and salvum fac populum tuum domine . it s weight is set at 2 dr. 16 gr. betwixt this king and his son ( and successor ) king james the fifth , we ought to place a noble medal in gold , struck by john duke of albany the great governour of scotland in the young king's minority . it bears the duke and dutchess's arms in a shield crown'd with a ducal crown , a large cross throughout the field , and joannis albaniae duc. gubern . r. a dove spreading her wings on the top of another shield with the duke 's own coat of arms , 1524. and circumscrib'd sub umbra tuarum . weight 7 dr. there are also some pieces of james the fifth himself , which seem to be of the medal-kind , rather than intended for an ordinary current coin. such i take the three following to be : 1. a massy one ( as broad as a new english half-crown , and very thick ) bearing the scotch shield crown'd betwixt two small crosses , with jacobus 5. dei gra. rex scotorum . r. a cross floree , with , with four thistle-heads , inscrib'd crucis arma sequamur . w. 1 ounce . 2 dr. 30 gr. 2. a smaller of the same stamp with the former . w. 1 dr. 24 gr. 3. the king in bust , crown'd , jacobus 5. dei gra. rex scotor . r. the scotch lyion in a shield not crown'd , with a large cross through it , inscrib'd villa edinbrugh . w. 7 dr. 27 gr. indeed the common golden coins of this reign ( well known by the name of bonnet-pieces , and said to have been coin'd out of gold found in the kingdom of scotland ) are extreamly beautiful , and little inferiour to the finest medals . of these they have the four following : 1. the king in bust , with a scotch bonnet on his head , jacobus 5. dei g. r. scotorum , 1539. r. the scotch shield crown'd , honor regis judicium diligit . w. 3 dr. 2. the same exactly , 1540. 3. another , a third less , 1540. w. 2 dr. 4. half of the last mention'd , 1540. w. 1 dr. the same year with the first of these , there was another piece coin'd , of the same weight and size with the bonnet , carrying the scotch shield crown'd and incircled with a chain of thistle-heads ; the inscription , jacobus 5. dei g. r. scotorv . 1539. r. a large st. andrew's cross , charg'd with a crown betwixt j and r , in the upper quarter a thistle-head , and in the lower a flower-de-lys , inscrib'd , honor regis ivdicivm diligit . 't is a curious rarity ; and very lately communicated to me by mr. sutherland . queen mary's life ( in all the several stages of it ) was so full of wonderful circumstances , that no reign afforded more copious matter for medals than hers ; and yet i have seen none in gold that respects her history . mr. sutherland indeed informs me , that he has seen one with the same stamp of the first of her coins , exactly of the weight with the first mention'd medals of her father : which i take to have been struck ( as his also probably was ) at the first opening of her mint . her ordinary coins , in that metal , are these : 1. the scotch shield crown'd , betwixt two stars , with maria dei gra. regina scotorum . r. a cross flory , with a thistle-head in each quarter , and crucis arma sequamur . w. 1 dr. 24 gr. 2. the shield as above , maria d. g. r. scotorum , 1543. r. mr. with a crown above , and a star below , ecce ancilla domini . w. 1 dr. 16 gr. 3. the shield crown'd betwixt the letters j. and g. maria d. g. scotorum regina . r. a cypher including all the letters of maria regina , with a crown above and a star on each side , diligite justitiam , 1553. w. 2 dr. 18 gr. the letters j and g. shew james earl of murray to have been governour when the piece was coin'd . 4. half of the same . w. 1 dr. 9 gr. 5. the queen's effigies , with her head in dress , maria d. g. scotorum regina . r. the scotch shield crown'd , justus fide vivit , 1555. w. 4 dr. 6 , 7. two more , of the same stamp and weight , coin'd in the years 1557 and 1558. 8. half of the foremention'd , of the same stamp , coin'd in 1555. w. 1 dr. 32 gr. 9 , 10. two more , of the weight , &c. last mention'd , coin'd in 1557 and 1558. 11. francis and mary , face to face , with a large crown above their heads , fran. & ma. d. g. r. r. scotor . delphin . vien . r. four pair of dolphins link'd together and crown'd , a cross of lorrain betwixt every two pair , and a st. andrew's cross in the middle , horum tuta fides , 1558. w. 4 dr. the largest and most valuable of king james the sixth's golden coins , is the rose-noble of scotland , of the same weight with that of england . on the one side are the arms of scotland crown'd , in a ship with two flags , betwixt the letter j and the figure 6 , with a rose on one side of the ship , jacobus 6. dei gra. rex scotorum . r. two scepters or batoons , put in the form of a st. andrew's cross , each end of 'em crown'd ; in the quarters of which are four lions rampant crown'd . all this is in a large rose , between every leaf whereof there 's a thistle ; as there is also in the center of the cross . the legend , florent sceptra piis . regna his jova dat numerari . w. 4 dr. i call this the largest of that king 's golden coins ; beause i reckon the four following ( all of that metal ) to be properly medals . 1. the king in bust , crown'd , holding a sword in one hand , and an olive-branch in the other , beneath which in utrumque paratus , 1575. circumscribed , jacobus 6. dei gra. rex scotor . r. the scotch shield crown'd , parcere subjectis & debellare superbos . w. 1 ounce . 2. another of the same stamp , size and weight , struck in 1576. 3. the king's effigies laureat , jacobus 6. d. g. r. scotorum . r. a branch'd thistle with six heads ( the uppermost crown'd ) betwixt the two letters of j and r both crown'd , under the thistle the figure 6. nemo me impune lacesset , 1590. w. 1 ounce . 4. the king and queen with a crown above their heads , jacobus 6. & anna d. g. scotorum rex & regina . r. the whole arms and atchievement of the kingdom of scotland . in defence . w. 2 oun. 12 dr. the other ( more ordinary and current ) golden coins of this reign , are : 1. the king bare-headed , jacobus 6. dei gra. ren scotorum . r. the scotch shield crown'd betwixt 15 and 80. exurgat deus , & dissip . inimici ejus . w. 3 dr. 2. j r with a crown above , placed four times in the field , cross-wise , with the letter s in the center , deus judicium tuum regi da. 1 88 r. the scottish crest , being a lion crown'd holding a sword and scepter , post 5. & 100 ▪ proa . invicta manent has . w. 2 dr. 18 gr. 3. half of this , coin'd in 1584. w. 1 dr. 27 gr. 4. another of the like , coin'd in 1587. w. 1 dr. 21 gr. 5. a quarter of the same , 1584 , w. 27 gr. 6. the king in a strange cap , behind a thistle-head , jacobus 6. d. g. r. scotorum . r. a. lion crown'd , holding up a scepter to the clouds , in which are the hebrew letters of jehovah , te solum vereor , 1591. w. 2 dr. 9 gr. 7. another of the same size , weight and stamp , coin'd in 1593. 8. the king on horse-back , in armour , under his horse 1593. jacobus 6. d. g. r. scotorum , r. the scotch shield crown'd , spero meliora . w. 2 dr. 18 gr. this is what ( in the dutch books of ordinances for money , and elsewhere ) is call'd the scotch rider ; and was long the most common gold coin of this country , pieces of the same weight , impression , &c. with this ( as likewise half of the same ) having been coin'd in 1594 , 95 , 96 , 97 , 98 , 99 , 1600 and 1601. to these the statute of his fifteenth (a) parliament refers , which ordains , that fine gold ( of 22 carats fine ) pass at 30 l. the ounce ; and that , out of every such ounce , there be coin'd six five-pound-pieces , or twelve fifty-shilling-pieces . 9. the scotch shield crown'd , jacobus 6. d. g. r. scotorum . r. a sword and scepter plac'd cross-wise . in the upper quarter , a crown , a thistle-head in each of the next , and 1601 in the lowest salus populi suprema lex . w. 2 dr. 18 gr. tho' this piece ( commonly call'd the scotch angel ) be of the same weight and intrinsic value with the former , yet it was coin'd to go at 6 l. the value of silver being now risen from 50 s. to 60 s. by the ounce ; which of necessity , enhanc'd the rate of gold in the like proportion . 10. the half of these ( w. 1 dr. 9 gr. ) carrying the same impression . this was the last gold coin'd before the happy union of the crowns in king james vi. and we are not ( for the present ) to bring our enquiries any lower . i have seen an (b) extract of the register of the mint , from december 1601 , to december 1602 , whereby it appears , that there was that year coin'd at edinburgh 119 stone of gold and 986 stone of silver . i have also read , that in the (c) beginning of this king's reign , a golden basin ( of the contents of four english quarts ) was presented by the regent morton to the french king , fill'd with coin'd pieces of gold call'd unicorns ; both the money and the vessel being made of the native gold of scotland . such pieces i never saw . to one that considers how few english coins we have of about half a score of our kings next after the conquest , it . will not look strange that the silver-money of our neighbouring kingdom ( of the like age ) is not now very plentiful the oldest that even mr. sutherland himself has been hitherto able to discover , is a penny of alexander the first 's ; which yet ( he is not very sure , but it ) may belong to one of the other two princes of that name . for the better and more skilful distinguishing the ancient silver coins of scotland , these preliminary cautions ( which i have from a very (d) great hand ) will be found to be of mighty use . 1. the merchants weights in scotland are different from ours , sixteen pounds troy ( as several acts of parliament have provided ) going to the stone , and every such pound being divided into sixteen ounces : but their silver-weights are the same , their ounce-pieces exactly agreeing with ours . how their standard ( or the fineness of the metal ) has vary'd from ours , or agreed with it , will be observed in the several reigns below . 2. the sums by which the scots always computed , and do still compute , are the same with ours , they reckoning by farthings , half-pence , pence , shillings , merks and pounds , as we do ; and all those sums bearing the same proportion to one another , as ours do ; that is , a shilling contains twelve pennies , a merk thirteen shillings and four pence , a pound twenty shilling , &c. but there has been a great difference in the two nations ( at several seasons as to the value of those sums . at first , perhaps , the scotch pieces being of the same weight and denomination with the english ) might also be current at the same rate with ours : but from the beginning of king james the first 's reign ( which is as high as their printed statutes will carry us ) it was otherwise ; and the difference increas'd in the following reigns , as will appear presently . 3. there 's no doubt but that , for a long time , the coin'd pieces of silver in scotland ( as well as england ) were only pence and half-pence : after which came in groats and half-groats ; and , by degrees , larger pieces of even an ounce , two thirds of an ounce , &c. i have a small pieee which i take to be a half-penny of david the first 's : it weighs 14 grains ; which seems to come very near the standard of that time : for thus ( if the authority be good ) the matter stands adjusted , (e) sterlingus debet ponderare , 32 gr. uncia , 21 d. libra , 26 s. 4 d. it bears a clumsy half-face , crown and scepter , and david dei gratia· and the reverse has rex scoturum about four hexagonal stars . the regiam majestatem , if any thing , will acquaint us with the value of such a piece ; when (f) twenty five shillings were the price of six cows , and (g) four pence the worth of a pair of shoes . in william the first 's reign , money seems to have been pretty plentiful ; since the nobility of scotland agreed to pay a (h) hundred thousand pound sterling ( whereof half was to be in ready cash ) to our henry the second , for the redemption of that prince . nor had this so far exhausted the publick treasure , but that he was able ( not long after ) to lend two (i) thousand merks to richard the third , on his return ( in poverty and thraldom ) from the holy land. notwithstanding his great glut of money , which he appears to have been master of , there are not many of his pence to be met with at this day . in some of the best (k) collections of our english coins , there 's one ( which has been suppos'd to belong to either the conqueror or his son rufus ) that bears a side-face and a scepter ; and whereon the king looks finer , and younger , than on any of the rest . this , with humble submission , i should rather place amongst the coins of scotland ; and guess to belong to king william the first of that kingdom . two more i have (k) seen , which may possibly belong to this king : the one has le rey willem , the other willelmus rex , and both have walter for the coiner's name on the reverse , after which ( on one ) comes on ber. which whether it be for berwick or perth ( sometimes call'd bertha ) will need an enquiry . that there was money coin'd in his reign , is pretty plainly asserted by the chronicle of mailros : * willielmus rex scotorum innovavit monetam suam . in alexander the (m) third's time , a good horse for the war was valu'd at twenty shillings ; a whole carcase of mutton , the highest rate sixteen pence , and the lowest eight pence ; a flagon of beer ( better and worse ) two-pence and a penny. a couple of these pennies , of the very same impression , size and weight , i have in my small collection ; bearing the king's head , half-faced , with a scepter , and alexander dei gra. on the reverse , rex scotorum about four hexagonal mullets , or stars . w. 21 gr. half of the same . king john's is likewise half-faced , with a crown and scepter , and johannis dei gra. r. rex scotorum , &c. as before : and the weight the same . his half-penny weighs 9 gr. half of the same . money , of some sort or other , could not be very scarce in the reign of robert the bruce ; who (n) agreed to pay our edward the third 30000 merks in ready money : and (o) lesly assures us the merks were sterling . his penny , (p) half-penny and farthing , are to be seen : much of the some shape with those of his predecessors . robertus dei gra. r. rex scotorum . in the year 1366. ( the latter end of david the second's reign ) it was (q) enacted in parliament that the money should be equal in goodness to that of england ; and the next year the coinage was further regulated , a pound of fine silver making 29 s. 4 d. et fiat , says the statute , in ipsa signum notabile , per quod possit ab omni alia prius fabricata evidenter cognosci . i think he was the first king of scotlond that coin'd groats . they give him crown'd and side-fac'd , with a scepter erect , and david dei gratia rex scotorum . r. dns protector ms. & liberator ms. on an outer circle ; and villa edinburgh , about four mullets , in an inner . his half groat has the same inscription . w. 1½ dr. his penny weighs 14 gr. and has only villa edinburgh on the reverse . there 's (r) another which has villa aberden on the reverse : and those of edinburgh have been minted at several times . there are half and a third of these ; and pennies of both kinds . robert the second's groat is much of the same shape , weight and size , with that of his predecessor . it shews the king half-faced , with a crown and scepter erect , and robertus dei gra· rex scotorum . r. dnus . protector ms. & liberator ms. on the outer circle ; and villa de perth , about four small stars , on the inner . another of 'em has villa edinburgh ; and a third dundee . and i have seen (s) halfs of all these . the first open faced groat is that of robert the third . it gives the king's picture ( crown'd , but without a scepter ) in such a kind of rose as we have on most of our old english groats . the inscription is robertus dei gra. rex scotorum . on the reverse are three globules in each quarter of the cross : in the inner circle villa edinburgh , and on the outer , dnus protector ms. & liberator ms. w. 1½ dr. 7 gr. mr. sutherland has three other varieties with villa de perth , villa de aberd . .. and villa dumbertan ; and the half of the first of these , and those of villa edinburgh , as likewise pennies of both kinds , and villa de aberde — in the first year of king james the first 's reign 't was enacted that (t) our lord the king gar mend his money , and gar stryke it in like wecht and fineness to the money of england . a little before this , the states of the kingdom had agreed to (u) pay ( to our k. henry the sixth ) the sum of 100000 merks , for this king's ransom ; whereof 50000 were to be paid in ready money . these ( tho' of such a standard as then pass'd for (x) sterling ) might probably be found to carry too great an allay , when they came to be tender'd in england ; and this might , as probably , give occasion for the foremention'd statute . his groat is full-faced , with crown and scepter , and jacobus dei gracia rex scot. r. in the quarters of the cross are two flower-de-lis's and twice three little balls ( or globuli ) countercharg'd within an anner circle bearing villa edinburgh , and an outer with dnus protector ms , &c. there 's (y) another ( which i take to belong likewise to this king , and to be of somewhat more age than the former ) whereon the inscription is jacobus dei gra. rex-scotorum ; and its reverse , in all points , agrees with that of robert the third . the weight of the former is 1 dr. 9 gr. and , of this , 1 dr. 4½ gr. there are (z) others coin'd at perth , aberdeen , linlithgow and stirling ; with the half of that of edinburgh . the parliament , in the 4th year of k. james the second , thought it expedient , (a) for diverse causes , that there be stricken new money , conforme even in weicht to the money of england , with the quilk this realm hes parte of commoning : and that there be stricken of the ounce of burnt silver , or bulzeon of that fines , aucht groates ; and of the samin mater and weicht , as effeiris , half-groate , pennie , half-pennie and farding . in his (b) eighteenth year this new groat is order'd to go for twelve pennies ; and the six-penny groat ( which appears to have been of a scandalously base allay , because the mint-masters are forbidden , on pain of death , to coin any more of 'em ) is ordain'd till have course as it hes . what value that was , its very name sufficiently shews ; and i take this to be the same piece which ( in the (c) next reign ) is call'd the sex-penny-groat of the floure de luce. this raising of their new groat ( which was of the very same weight and fineness with the english groat ) brought the computation of the sums in scotland to tripple what they bore in england : so that their pound was no more than our noble , their shilling than our groat or four pence , &c. the said groat gives this king full-faced , with an imperial crown , and jacobus dei gra. rex scot. r. dnus . protector , &c. on an outer circle , and villa edinburgh ( about two crowns intercharg'd with twice three little balls and a small annulet ) on the inner . w. 2 dr. half of this . another ( of the groats ) has villa (d) aberdie , on its reverse . the first parliament of k. james the third ordains that (e) , for the ease and sustentation of the kingis lieges and almous deede to be done to puir folk , there be cuinzied (f) copper money , four to the penny , havand on th' ane part the croce of s. andrew , and the crown on th' other part ; with subscription of edinburgh on the ane part , and an r. with james on th' other part. [ these are the same pieces which were continu'd by his successors , and ( in the reign of ja. vi. ) got the name of atcheson's from one atcheson a coiner and author of the book of metals mention'd in the first chapter of this historical library : some of which were of common currency ( for four bothwels , or eight pennies scotch ) even in the late reign of k. charles the second , but are now wholly disus'd . ] in his (g) third parliament the groat of the crown is order'd to have course for fourteen pennies ; and the strikeing of the black pennies to be ceas'd . these black pennies were a different sort of money from the copper-farthings above-mention'd ; and were for some time forced in payments , till ( at last ) the people unanimously refus'd to take them : upon which the last earl of douglas reflecting , made this answer to the king , when requested ( in his extreme old age to be his lieutenant-general against the rebels : (h) sir , you have kept me and your black coffer in sterlin too long . neither of us can do you any good . we find it also amongst the articles objected to his favourites , by the earl of angus and others , that they had perswaded him to (i) coin a brass coin of no value , which the people call'd the black coin , which fact of all other was most odious to the vulgar : for ( as it follows in the history ) a great dearth ensu'd upon the project , since every body chose to let their corn rather rot than to give it away so much below the intrinsick value . in the very next parliament of this reign , call'd within a (k) few months of the former , the groat of the crown is reduced to 12 d. and the lesser pieces to proportionable values . in this king 's (l) sixth parliament the new allay'd groat is order'd to go for six pennies , and the half-groat for three : and , in his (m) eighth , twelve groats are appointed to be stricken out of an ounce of burnt silver , as also pennies , ( to go at 3 d. ) and half-pennies of the same fineness . in his (n) thirteenth a new penny of silver , as fine as the old english groat , is order'd to be coin'd ; ten whereof are to make an ounce , and to go at 14 d. each . at the same time counterfeit placks , at 2 d. a piece , were call'd in . his groat represents him full-faced and crown'd ( without a scepter ) with this inscription , jacobus dei gra. rex scotorum . r. villa edinburg . on the inner circle , about the crowns and globuli , as on his fathers , but without the annulets ; and dnus . protector , &c. on the outer . w. 2 dr. 8 g. the like are (o) coin'd at aberdeen , sterling and roxburgh ; and a half-groats at edinburgh . some of his groats and half-groats ( on the reverse ) has a mullet in each quarter of the cross ; and , in the inner circle , villa berwici . in other points it agrees with the whole groat . this piece , being stamp'd at berwick , must assuredly belong to this king ; who was master of that town twenty-one years , and is the only prince ( of his name and nation , before the union ) that ever was so . it appears that , in king james the fourth's time , there were groats of somewhat different stamps ; as being minted by several coiners : and the (p) act of parliament particularly mentions those ( whereof the last mention'd is half ) struck by gilbert pish , commonly call'd barwick-groats , others by alexander levingstoun , and a third sort by john currour . these , being all of equal fineness , were made equally current . one groat i have , which i believe to be of this king 's own coining . it gives his face open , and a crown on his head , with jacobus dei gra. rex scotorum . r. villa edinburgh ( about two hexagonal mullets , and twice three balls , countercharg'd ) on the inner circle , and dn̄s protector ms. &c. on the outer . w. 1 ½ dw. in the abovemention'd ordnance of the king of spain i find two more , which are there call'd schotsche stooter ; and which one would imagine to be both of this king 's coining . the one of these differs very little from that already describ'd ; faving that , in the outer circle on the reverse , the legend is salvum fac populum tuum dōe . the like to which i have seen in mr. sutherland's collection , having ( on the other side ) four iiii , and a small crown after the word scotorum : another ( instead of the four iiii ) has q. t. and a third qra ; all signifying the word quartus . half of the first of these , is likewise there . the only medal ( as far as i yet have learn'd ) which was struck by this king , is that which is fairly describ'd and accounted for by the learned (q) mr. evelyn ; who observes that it was coin'd in the last and fatal year of his reign . the other begins its first inscription with jacobus 4. but the figure is undoubtedly misprinted for that of of 5 , the piece being the very same which we shall presently present the reader with , as the proper groat of the next reign . king james the fifth , as far as appears by the statutes of his time , made no manner of alteration in the standard of the coin : and yet towards the end of his reign , or the beginning of his daughters , a mighty change did happen , both in the naming of the scottish pieces of money , and in the computation of their sums ; as we shall see anon . the eldest of his coins ( groat and half-groat ) give him side-faced with jacobus dei gra. rex scotorum . r. cross floree , two thistle-heads and two spur-rowels ( for they are hexagonal and pierc'd in the center ) with villa edinburgh . his later groat gives him in bust , side-faced , with short lank hair crown'd , jacobus 5. dei gra. rex scotorum . r. the scotch shield on a cross , circumscrib'd oppidum edinburgi . others ( which seem the elder ) have villa , &c. w. 1 dr. 18 gr. after his death , we hear no more of any groats , half-groats , pennies or half-pennies , coin'd in scotland ; nor any of their names so much as once mention'd in any of the subsequent acts of parliament . 't is (r) suppos'd that , by this time , the price of silver was so risen ( or rather the scots , like the french , had so rais'd the accounts of their sums ) that the old smaller silver coins , which took their denomination from pennies , grew into disuse ; and the pieces , that were from henceforward coin'd , took theirs from shillings and merks . thus , in france , the deniers perish'd and were forgotten ; and the sols and livres succeeded in their room . we do not indeed meet with the name of testoons ( in the publick statutes of the realm ) before the beginning of james the sixth's reign : but 't is more than probable that the name was common enough in his mother's time ; that the pieces so call'd , were coin'd in imitation of our english shillings ; and that their current value was five shillings scotch . many of these , and other coins of this reign , are still to be seen in the cabinets of the curious : and i shall give the reader an account of such of 'em as have com'd to my knowledge in the same order wherein they were minted . 1. the eldest of these bears the (s) queen side-faced and crown'd with maria dei gra. r. scotorum . r. the shield of scotland crown'd betwixt two mullets , and da pacem domine , 1553. the second bears the letter m. crown'd and supported with two crown'd thistles , inscrib'd maria dei g. scotorum regina , 1555. r. the scotch shield on a cross , circumscrib'd deliciae domini cor bumile . w. 5 dr. 3 gr. half of the same . 2. another of the same year carries her head with maria dei g. scotor . regina . r. a crown'd shield , and justus fide vivit , 1555. w. 3 dr. 13 gr. 3. the scotch shield , supported by the letters m and r , maria dei g. scotor . regina , 1556. r. a large cross , with four less in its quarters , virtute tua libera me . w. 4 dr. 4 gr. 4. the half of this , of the same year , &c. 5. differs nothing from the third , excepting in its weight and date ; for 't is said to be coin'd in 1558 , and weighs only 3 dr. 20 gr. 6. f and m in a cypher crown'd , supported with double crosslets , fecit utraque unum , 1558. r. the arms of the dauphine and scotland , with franciscus & mar. d. g. r. r. scotor . d. d. vien . w. 4 dr. 2 gr. immediately upon the death of queen mary of england ( this year ) king henry the second of france (t) caused his daughter-in-law to be declar'd queen of england , scotland and ireland , in the parliament of paris ; and order'd the arms of england to be put on all her plate , tapestry , &c. it should seem that this was her common style ever after , till the treaty of leith cut her short ; for thus runs the first (u) article there : ut nec franciae rex , nec ipsius conjunx scotiae regina , angliae hiberniaeve titulos sibi deinceps usurparent ; insignia anglicana ex tota sua suppellectile delerent ; diplomata , in quibus titulus angliae & hiberniae ipsis tribuebatur , supprimi . curarent . 't is much that , in all this time , none of their money bore the arms and title of england , and yet i never saw nor read of any that did . 't is true , mr. evelyn (x) mentions her assuming the arms of england and scotland in a medal ; but that which he has given us , and which he seems to think concerns the story of our renown'd queen elizabeth , has not a stroke in it which looks this way . the queen indeed pleaded for (y) herself , afterwards , that she was constrain'd to this usurpation by her husband and father-in-law ; and that , after their death , she never practis'd any such matter : and so , i suppose , her suffering a medal to be struck ( in the year 1560 ) is to be accounted for . on this we have the arms of france , scotland and england , quarterly , circumscrib'd maria d. g. francorum scotorum reg. &c. on the reverse , two crowns on a level , with a third in the clouds , inscrib'd altamque moratur 1566. 7. another of the same weight , stamp , &c. with the last ; but coin'd in 1559. one of the articles wherewith the lords of the congregation ( this very year ) charg'd the queen-regent , was , (z) that she had embas'd the coin to maintain her [ french ] soldiers . the last mention'd is not referr'd to in this charge , but some (a) baser pieces , and smaller ; which carry the cypher crown'd , &c. but the reverse has this inscription on a square , jam non sunt duo sed una caro , 1558 and 1559. 8. arms of france and scotland crown'd , on a cross crosslet , fra. & ma. d. g. r. r. franc. scotor . q. r. f and m in a cypher crown'd , supported by a flower-de-lys and thistle crown'd , vicit leo de tribu juda , 1560. w. 4 dr. 2 gr. and 1561. 9. half of the same . 10. the queen dress'd in her hair , maria dei gra. scotorum regina , 1561 and 1562. r. arms of france half effaced by those of scotland , the shield crown'd and supported by two m m crown'd . salvum fac populum tuum domine . half (b) of both these . 11. after her return out of france , she coin'd the large pieces of an ounce weight . on the first of these is the shield of scotland crown'd , and supported by two thistles , maria & henric s. dei gra. r. & . r. scotorum . r. a palm-tree crown'd , with this motto ( on a schedule hung in it ) dat gloria vires , and subscrib'd 1565 , and circumscrib'd exurgat deus , dissipent r. inimici ejus . the same in 1566. some call the tree on the reverse an yew-tree ; and report that there grew a famous one of that kind in the park ( or garden ) of the earl of lennox , which gave occasion to the impress : wherein the tree , being crown'd , denotes the advancement of the lennox-family by henry lord darnley's marriage with the queen ; and the lemma of dat gloria vires is observ'd to comport very well with the device . this piece went for thirty shillings ; there were at the same time coin'd pieces of two thirds of an ounce , which went at 20 s. with some smaller of 10 s. and 5 s. all of 'em had the same impression . 12. after her second husband's death , she coin'd other new pieces of an ounce weight , &c. which agreed with the other in the impression and every other matter , save that henricus was now left out of the style , and the date 1567 , which we shall find to be same with the first coin'd pieces of her son. there are several medals in silver struck in remembrance of some great passages of this queen's life : one carries the arms of france and scotland crown'd with maria d. g. scotor . regina fran. dot. r. a hand out of the clouds , pruneing off a dry'd branch , and virescit vulnere virtus . another differs not from this , on the reverse ; but has the scotch shield single . a third bears as the first : but the reverse shews a jugg of water poured from the clouds upon half a tree flourishing , the other half being dry'd and perish'd , with mea sic mihi prosunt , subscrib'd 1579 , a fourth ( of the same year ) carries a ship in a storm on a rough sea , with sails rent and masts broken , but keeping steady ; with nunquam nisi rectam . in other parts not differing from the former . a (c) fifth ( of about two ounce-weight ) with the queen's picture to the waste ; with a breviary in her hand , inscrib'd , o god grant patience , in that i suffer vrang . the reverse has this inscription , quho can compare with me in grief . i die and dar nocht seile relief . circumscrib'd ( after one hand , with a heart in it , ready to joyn with another ) hourt not the heart . quhois joy thou art . in the very beginning of king james the sixth's reign , a complaint is made in parliament , (d) of the great scarcity of good money in scotland , the good silver , as testons and other old silver , being utterly melted and destroy'd , so that the ounce of silver is at double the price it wont to be at ; whereupon it is declar'd , that the king , with the advice of his regent , may coin gold and silver of such fineness as other countries do , &c. accordingly , among his coins , we have , 1. the thirty-shilling-piece of an ounce weight , whereon is the shield of scotland crown'd , and supported by the letters j and r crown'd , with jacobus 6. dei gratia rex scotorum . r. a drawn sword with a crown on its point , a hand pointing to three xxx for the number of shillings , and the date of 1567 set below , and circumscrib'd with ( that generous saying of the brave trajan , upon the delivery of the praetor's sword ) pro me . si mereor , in me . this is , on all hands , agreed to be the conceit of his tutor , g. buchanan . the like pieces ( with those of 20 s. 10 s. and 5 s. differing only in a proportionable weight and size , and their proper figures of xx , x and v ) were coin'd in the years 1568 , 69 , 70 and 71. 2. a scotch shield crown'd , with the figures 3 and 4 on the sides , jacobus 6. dei gratia rex scotorum . r. four capital iiii crown'd , with two crowns and two thistles countercharg'd in the quarters , salvum fac populum tuum dne . 1572. w. 2 dr. 2 gr. this is only half of one with the same inscription in mr. sutherland's collection ; only , his has the figures 6 and 8 , which shews it to have been coin'd for a noble , whereas the other is only a ten-groat-piece , or 3 s. 4 d. continu'd yearly to 1577. 3. shield crown'd , and jacobus 6. d. g. r. scotorum , 1591 , 1592. r. a naked sword and balance , his differt rege tyrannus . w. 2 dw. 14 gr. half of the same . 4. the royal shield of scotland crown'd , with the usual inscription of jacobus 6. dei gra. 1578 to 1581. on the reverse the thistle , (e) with nemo me impune lacesset . w. 6 dw. 19 gr. the mark-pieces of this coin , ( which were coin'd twenty years after this , and were long current in england at the rate of thirteen-pence-half-penny ) want a third of this weight ; which 't was necessary they should do , when the ounce of silver went at 60 s. scotch , whereas now it was only valu'd at 40 s. for , this very year , thomas acheson and others are impower'd to coin ten-shilling-pieces , four in the ounce of eleven-penny fine silver . [ from this mint-master the copper-pieces , of eight-pennies or four both-wel's value , pretty common in this and the former reign , had the name of achesons given them . these , in the year 1587 , were (f) cry'd down by proclamation , because counterfeit in england and other foreign parts : but their currency was afterwards reviv'd , and continu'd ( on the english borders , as well as in scotland ) even within my own memory . the scots ( says (g) fynes moryson ) have of long time had small brass coins , which they say of late [ his book was printed in 1617 ] are taken away : namely babees , esteem'd by them of old for six-pence , whereof two make an english penny ; also placks , which they esteem'd for four-pence , but three of them make an english penny ; also hard-heads , esteem'd by them at one penny half-penny , whereof eight made an english penny. ] 5. and the same act directs , that these new pieces be such as are (h) havand on th' ane side the portrature of his majesty's body , armed , with ane crown upon his head , and ane sword in his hand , with this cirucmscription , jacobvs . vi. dei. gratia . rex . scotorvm . and on the uther side , his hieness arms in ane scheild , with an crown above the same scheild , with the dait of the zeir , upon ane of the sides , with this circumscription , honor . regis . ivdicivm . diligit . there are 30 s. 20 s. and 5 s. pieces ( as well as those here mention'd of 10 s. ) which were made in pursuance of this act , and answer its directions as to their proportionable weight and circumscription : but furthermore , on their reverse , they have the letters j and r on the sides of the shield , and a little under xl s. xxx s. xx s. &c. according to the respective value of the piece . 6. in the thirty first year of this reign , there was another (i) act pass'd about coinage , wherein ( after a complaint of the vile practices of all sorts of people , in exorbitantly-raising the value of gold and silver ) it is order'd that the ounce of silver coin'd in ten-shilling-pieces , &c. according to the last recited , shall stand at 50 s. and the old 30 s. pieces ( that is , the ounce-pieces of queen mary and king james ) at the same price ; and the new thirty-shillings-pieces ( being three quarters of an ounce ) at 37 s. 6 d. this teaches us to discover the true value of a piece of this king's coin , of the exact weight of one of our english shillings , bearing the king's head without a crown , and jacobus 6. d. gra. &c. r. a thistle crown'd , with nemo me impune lacesset , 1594. there is no (k) doubt but this piece was coin'd to go for ten shillings ; the weight of it exactly answering that value at the rate of 50 s. in the ounce . nor is it any objection that this piece was coin'd three years before the passing of the said act : for silver was rais'd to this value before the act , as appears by its preface ; and 't was its design to hinder the farther raising of it , by fixing it at the price it then stood at . i have the half , a quarter , and an eighth , of this coin. 7. notwithstanding the provision of this act , the price of the ounce of silver was ( within four years ) advanc'd to sixty shillings : for the merk-pieces , which were coin'd in 1601 ( to 1604 ) are proportion'd to that rate . they have , on one side , the shield of scotland crown'd with jacobus 6. d. gra. scotorum : and , on the reverse , the thistle crown'd with regem jova protegit . w. 4 dw. 9 gr. there was also half-merks and quarter-merks of the same coin ; the former passing at 6 s. 8 d. and the other at 3 s. 4 d. nay , there was also the eighth of a merk-piece , which is the least piece of coin'd silver which ( i think ) was ever minted in the kingdom of scotland : it weighs about three-half pence of our english money , and goes for 20 d. scotch , which is one sixth short of our two-pence . and these merks , with their subdivisions , were the last silver-money coin'd by king james the sixth , before he left edinburgh , and remov'd to london . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a52339-e10 (a) j. major , hist . lib. 5. cap. 5. (b) h. boeth . lib. 2. fol. 10. a. (c) hist . scot. lib. ● . p. 8● . (d) h. boeth . lib. 3. fol. 46. a. picts . (e) h. boeth . lib. 10. fol. 194. a. k. donald . (f) id. lib. 5. fol. 86. b. lesl . lib. 2. p. 109. and buchanan ( lib. 6. p. m. 175. ) says sterling-money was first coin'd by donald the fifth about the middle of the ninth century . malcolm ii (g) ll. malc . 2. capp . 3.7 , 8. (h) vid. l l. ass. edit . wheloc . p. 95. notes for div a52339-e680 (i) h. boeth . lib. 3. fol. 35. a. (k) id. lib. 12. fol. 260. a. vid. & reg. majest . lib. 4. cap. 31. (l) reg. majest . lib. 4. cap. 40. v. 7. (m) penes d. rob. sibbald . k. rob. ii. rob. iii (n) traite historique des monnoyes de france . 4to . amsterd 1692. 54. james i. (o) parl. 8. ja. 2. cap. 33. oct. 25. 1451. james ii. (p) parl. 13. cap. 29. oct. 19 : 1455. james iii. (q) oct. 12. 1467. cap. 18. (r) parl. 4 : cap. 23. (s) nov. 20. 1475. cap. 67. (t) feb. 24. 1483. cap. 93. james iv. (u) a. d. 1488. parl. 1. jac. 4. cap. a. vide & ejusd . parl. 4. cap : 40. (x) 8vo antverp . 1575. j. duke of albany . james v. q. mary james vi. (a) dec. 19 , 1597. cap. 249. (b) ms. in bibl. icc. edinb . (c) in atchison's ms. tr. of metals . silver . (d) rr. d , d. archiep. ebor. david i. (e) assis . r. dav. 1. cap. 1. (f) reg. majest , lib. 4. cap. 40. v. 17 , (g) ll. burg. cap. 121. william i. (h) h. boeth . lib. 13. fol. 272. b. (i) ibid. fol. 277. a. (k) penes rr. d. d. archiep. ebor. & d. r. ihoresbi . (k) p. d. ja. sutherland . * chron. melross . ad an. 1195. (m) stat. gild. capp . 18.24 , 26. alex. iii ▪ k. john. rob. i. (n) h. boeth . lib. 14. fol. 308. b. (o) hist . scot. lib. 7. p. 237. (p) p. d. j. sutherland . david ii (q) vid. stat. dav. 2. capp . 38. & 46. (r) p. d. sutherland . rob. ii. (s) p. eundem . rob. iii. (t) parl. 1 jac. 1. cap. 23. mar. 26. 1424. james i. (u) h. boeth . lib. 17. fol. 346. (x) vid. lesl . hist . scot. lib. 7. cap. 261. (y) p : rr : d : d : archiep : ebor. (z) p : m : j : sutherland . james ii. (a) parl : 8 : ja : 2 : cap : 33 : oct : 25 : 1451. (b) parl : 13 : ja : 2 : cap : 29 : oct : 19 : 1455. (c) parl : 1 : ja : 3 : cap : 23. (d) p. d. j. sutherland . (e) oct. 9. 1466. cap. 9. james iii. (f) mr. sutherland has samples of these and some ( of the like kinds ) in the following reigns . (g) parl. 3. ja. 3. oct. 12. 1467. cap. 18. (h) d. hume hist . of dugl . p. 206. (i) ibid. par. 2. 226. vid. etiam lesl . hist . scot. lib. 8. p. 309. & j. ferrer . append. ad h. boeth . fol. 395. a & g. buchan . lib. 12. p. m. 444. (k) parl. 4. ja. 3. in jan. 1467. cap. 23. (l) may , 6. 1471. cap. 46. (m) nov. 20. 1475. cap. 64. (n) feb. 24. 1483. cap. 93. (o) p. m. j. sutherland . james iv. (p) parl. 1. ja. 4. a. d. 1488. cap. 2. (q) numism . p. 88. james v. q. mary . (r) ita. rr. d. d. archiep. ebor. (s) p. d. sutherland . (t) lesl . hist . sot. lib. 10. p. 503. (u) lesl . hist . scot. p. 528. (x) numism . 93. (y) archb. spotsey . hist . of ch. of scotl. lib. 4. p. 177. (z) b. burnet , hist . of reform . vol. 2. p. 412. (a) p. ● . sutherland . (b) ibid. (c) cum 4. praemissir , p. d. sutherland . james vi ▪ (d) parl. 1. ja. 6. cap. 13. (e) some of these have the letter j and r on the sides of the thistle ; but the most want ' em . (f) so the ms. calderwood in the library at glasgow , vol. 4. ad an. 87. (g) itio . par. 1. p. 283. (h) parl. 7. ja. 6. oct. 24. 1581. cap. 106. (i) parl. 15. ja. 6. dec. 19 , 1597. cap. 249. (k) ita rr. d. d. archiep. ebor. the company of scotland, trading to africa and the indies, do hereby give notice. that their bookes of subscription, will be opened at edinburgh on wednesday the 26 of this instant february ... company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1696 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a80268 wing c5597aa estc r232035 99897802 99897802 137334 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a80268) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 137334) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2528:4) the company of scotland, trading to africa and the indies, do hereby give notice. that their bookes of subscription, will be opened at edinburgh on wednesday the 26 of this instant february ... company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh : 1696] title from caption and opening words of text. imprint from wing (cd-rom edition). reproduction of original in the john carter brown library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng company of scotland trading to africa and the indies -early works to 1800. scotland -history -17th century -early works to 1800. scotland -commerce -early works to 1800. 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the company of scotland , trading to africa and the indies , do hereby give notice . that their bookes of subscription , will be opened at edinburgh on wednesday the 26 of this instant february at the house of mrs. purdie in the north side of the high-street over against the cross , and will so continue every day of the week , lord's days only excepted , from ten in the clock in the morning till twelve , and from two in the afternoon till four , untill the _____ day of march next , or untill the compleat sum of three hundred thousand pounds sterling shall be subscribed ; one quarter part whereof shall be payed to two , or more of the persons named in the act of parliament , upon or before the first day of june now next ensuing : but in regard of the occasion the company may have for present money , such as pay in the same sooner , will be allowed a discompt , at the rate of twelve per cent ▪ per annum , or eight pence per diem upon each hundred pound sterling , from the time of their payment to the said first of june . and for the greater ease and conveniency of such as are willing to be concerned : the company do further declare , that for such as live at a distance , or cannot come in person to subscribe ; a deputation in writing to any other to subscribe for him her , or them , together with one fourth par of the money to be subscribed , or bond for the same payable the first of june next will be accepted by the company , and be as sufficient , as if the parties were personally present themselves to subscribe . and as to the remaining three fourth parts of every man's subscription to be payed to the company whensoever the same shall be called in ; it shall be in three equal parts or payments . the first whereof will not be called for in less than a year to come . and for the two last payments , the company resolve to let them remain as a fund of security to the company , and not to call for the same or any part thereof , unless upon some pressing occasion ; and further that no advantage or forfalture will be taken by the company for the non ▪ payment of the remaining parts of any ones subscription ; but the company will only sell or dispose of such a share of stock in the company to pay the money to be advanced , and the remainder thereof shall be returned to the owners thereof . here followeth a copy of the preamble for subscription . edinburgh , 1696 pursuant to an act of parliament , entituled , act for a company trading to africa and the indies , we under-subscribers , do each of us for himself , become obliged for the payment of the respective sums severally subscribed by us subject to the rules , conditions , and constitutions of the said company . form of a deputation to be subscribed by such as cannot be present to subscribe in the book . i do hereby depute to subscribe for me in the books of the company of scotland , trading to africa and the indies the sum of pound sterling . form of a receipt to be given upon the first payment . edinburgh _____ 1696 received then of the sum of being the first fourth part of his subscription in the capital fund of the company of scotland , trading to africa and the indies , we say received for the use of the said company . by us. the form of the bond , to be subscribed by such as do not pay in their fourth parts . i oblige me my heirs and execu●ors to pay to the company of scotland , trading to africa and the inlies , or to whom they shall appoint the sum of as the fourth part of t●e sum s●bscribed for by me , in the capital stock or fund of the said comp●ny , and that betwixt and the first day of june next , with the sum of money foresaid of liquidate expe ces in case of failȝie by and attour the said principal sum with the due , and ordinary annualrent of the said principal sum after the said day of payment , yearly , monthly , and proportionally , during the not payment and for the more security i am content and consent , that thi●… presets be registrate in the books of council and session , or in any other judges books competent , to have the strength of a decreet of any of th● judges thereof interponed hereto , that letters and executorials of h●ning and poinding on a charge of six days , and all others needful may ass hereupon in form as affairs ; and for that effect constitute my procurators in w●tness whereof i have subscribed these presents at the day of one thousand six hundred and years foure speeches delivered in guild-hall on friday the sixth of october, 1643. at a common-hall, vpon occasion of desiring the assistance of our brethren of scotland in this warre. / viz. the [brace] 1. by mr. solicitor. 2. by mr. edmund calamy. 3. by mr. jeremiah burroughes. 4. by mr. obadiah sedgewick. published according to order. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a84751 of text r200837 in the english short title catalog (thomason e338_1). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 110 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 24 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a84751 wing f1671 thomason e338_1 estc r200837 99861470 99861470 113607 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a84751) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 113607) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 55:e338[1]) foure speeches delivered in guild-hall on friday the sixth of october, 1643. at a common-hall, vpon occasion of desiring the assistance of our brethren of scotland in this warre. / viz. the [brace] 1. by mr. solicitor. 2. by mr. edmund calamy. 3. by mr. jeremiah burroughes. 4. by mr. obadiah sedgewick. published according to order. gardiner, thomas, sir, 1591-1652. calamy, edmund, 1600-1666. burroughs, jeremiah, 1599-1646. sedgwick, obadiah, 1600?-1658. [2], 44 p. printed by r. cotes, for jo. bellamie, and are to bee sold at his shop at the sign of the three golden lions in cornhill, neer the royall exchange., london, : 1646. mr. solicitor = sir thomas gardiner. the words "1. by mr. solicitor. .. sedgewick." are bracketed together on the title page. annotation on thomason copy: may 23th. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -participation, scottish -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a84751 r200837 (thomason e338_1). civilwar no foure speeches delivered in guild-hall on friday the sixth of october, 1643.: at a common-hall, vpon occasion of desiring the assistance of gardiner, thomas, sir 1646 22042 187 0 0 0 0 0 85 d the rate of 85 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the d category of texts with between 35 and 100 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-05 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-06 jonathan blaney sampled and proofread 2007-06 jonathan blaney text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion fovre speeches delivered in gvild-hall on friday the sixth of october , 1643. at a common-hall , vpon occasion of desiring the assistance of our brethren of scotland in this warre . viz. the 1. by mr. solicitor . 2. by mr. edmund calamy . 3. by mr. jeremiah burroughes . 4. by mr. obadiah sedgewick . published according to order . london , printed by r. cotes , for jo. bellamie , and are to bee sold at his shop at the sign of the three golden lions in cornhill , neer the royall exchange . 1646. foure speeches delivered in guild-hall , on friday the sixth of october , 1643. at a common-hall . mr. solicitor his speech at guild-hall , on friday , october 6. 1643. worthy aldermen , and gentlemen , and citizens of this famous city of london , the cause of the calling of this assembly of this common-hall , it was the businesse of scotland , i thinke it is not unknowne to many of you , that about two months since both the houses of parliament did send a committee into scotland to desire the assistance of our brethren of scotland in this warre : the committee hath from thence sent propositions to both the houses , whereby wee see their willingnesse to come to our assistance : but one part of it is , that without some supplyes of money , they are not able at all to come into this assistance , the houses considering the necessity of their comming in , and of speedy supplyes of money to that purpose , they did send a committee , and did desire that a common-councell might be called , which was done upon munday last , and they did thither send a committee , with desire that the common-councell would take that into consideration , that is , the necessity of their comming , and speedy supplies to bee raised . and for the effecting of this , not having any other means so neare at hand as that , they did desire that the common-councell would appoint a committee out of themselves to consider of this businesse with the committee of the house of commons : these they met , and have been together these two dayes considering of it , that is , wednesday and thursday , and they did intend , and doe still , to send to divers of those that are able and rich of this city , to the intent that they might see , what they would lend to this businesse ; and to tender to them such security , as they conceive to be very convenient and fitting for those that are willing to lend money : but when they had entred upon the businesse , and ▪ considering the speed , and the necessity that the supply should be expedited , they thought that would be too long a way , yet resolved to prosecute it still , but withall they did desire , that my lord major would be pleased to call a court of aldermen this morning , ( which hee did ) and likewise a common-hall , to the intent that the necessity of the raising of this money speedily might be declared to you , because the other would be a longer way ; which though it be intended still to be prosecuted ; yet when you are all here together , we may the better know your affections to this businesse , and that the money may be speedily raised , though not the whole , yet it will be somewhat to the businesse , if some considerable summe might speedily be sent away . i conceive there is no need to acquaint you with the benefits that will redound to this kingdome , and the advantages wee shall have by a nearer association with them , and by their comming in , to this purpose for our assistance ; the benefits certainly when wee consider of them , are many . as first , this great cause which is now in agitation , that by this means will be much secur'd ; it will bee assur'd to us , that the event , and the successe of it ( by gods blessing ) will bee made a great deale the certainer : if they do not come in , then we are to consider how we stand . certainly , the parties they are very equall in this businesse , and where the parties are equall , the successe must needs bee dangerous , and very uncertain . now we all of us see , that all ranks and degrees of men , even from the highest lords , to the meanest commoners , they are engaged on both sides ; and if the advantage be of either side , it is in the other , because that the greater part of the nobility and gentry we know they are the other way . likewise if we consider the citi●● and townes of this kingdom , that there is newcastle , that there is york-shire , that there is shrewsbury , that there is bristoll , that there is chester , and that there is exeter , and divers others cities and great townes in their custody . if we goe through all the counties of the kingdome , wee see there the greatest parts of the northerne parts possess'd wholly by the earle of newcastle , northumberland , cumberland , westmerland , york-shire , and some other parts . so in the west , goe to other counties , there is a mixture in all of them , that we cannot say there is any part of the kingdome free ; so that the mixture seemes to be of the people likewise , if not the greater party the other way . if we consider likewise the events and successes ; as we on the one side have taken portsmouth , chichester , and some other places , so they on the other side have taken exeter , and bristoll , and other places . if we consider the events of the skirmishes , fights , and battailes that have been ; we cannot say , that on any side hath been any compleat victory ; that at edgehill , it pleased god to give us a deliverance , we finde it was no compleat victory , by those things that followed ; so this at newbury lately no compleat victory , for had it been so , the warre had been at an end , so that which way soever we looke , unlesse wee call them in to our assistance , certainly the parties on both sides , are very equally engaged ; and certainly when two men of equall strength doe wrestle , it is an even lay which of them will give the fall ; as long as the ballances stand so even , it is very uncertain which way they will weigh down . we are to consider , ( that in respect that the danger is such , and the event of the warre so uncertaine , without their comming in ) what the cause is that is lost , in case the day should be theirs ; certainly considering that the papists in ireland are wholly engaged , that the papists in england are wholly engaged , that the prelates and their party are wholly engaged , that there are divers that are neuters , and ill-disposed men , that they likewise encline that way : considering that that party is acted by jesuiticall counsells , for certainly they are behinde the curtaine , though they are not so visible to us : i say , when this is considered , who are the parties that shall get this day , it is very easie to prognosticate what the losse will be , no lesse then of religion , and of our lawes , and of our liberties : in a word , if that that party doe prevaile , i am affraid we have lost all ; and therefore those other things , they will not be so considerable which i shall tell you of . wee know the great loanes and contributions that have been made by the worthy citizens of this city , and by divers other well-affected persons throughout the kingdome ; the money , the plate , the horses , and other things for this warre too , they will bee lost : but not onely so , but certainly , that these have been lent to the parliament for the maintaining of the warre , against that party , this will b●e good reason why they should take all away . the publike faith likewise of both houses of parliament , and so the whole kingdome , certainly that must be violated , and if that should bee so , if that we should be ove●born in this cause , it will easily be foreseene , whether any future parliament will be enabled to stand up for the defence of religion , and the liberties of the people . wee may adde to this the charters and the franchises of this great city , it will be easily foreseen , what will be the event of that , whether they wil be continued to you , yea or no , considering what affection you have born to this cause . certainly in former time● , the charters and the priviledges of this city , they have been confirmed by parliaments , as doth appear in king johns time , in henry the third , richard second , & always after the ending of those great wars , whe●in no doubt , the city ( as hath been seen in that ) did engage themselves , as now , in the parliaments cause ; therefore for their security , their charters were alwayes confirmed ; which wee need not doubt will be done in this cause ; but in case the event should bee otherwise , what the losse will be in that way , you may easily see ; so that all is at stake , and if we bring not them in to our assistance , for ought i know , we are at fairs to lose the game , as win●● it , and if any mana estate here , stood upon the like c●su●lty , i believe hee would give some considerable summe to ensure it , in the office of policies ▪ thus we stand in case they are no● called in the losse so great , that is the losse of all , the event so uncertaine . in case they be called in , we are to consider then what alteration this is like to make ▪ we are therefore to consider how it comes about that the party comes to be so equall , that so many should engage themselves on the other party , as we see they doe ; certainly a great many of them doe it , being uncertaine in their judgements to which side to cleave . another party they doe it , because that they out of feare desire to keep their estates , and stand neuters . for the first of those , certainly both at home and abroad , those that are averse , they looke upon us as a protestant kingdom , but divided among our selves ; they heare protestations on both sides , that both parties doe protest to maintaine the protestant religion , the laws of the kingdome , and the liberty of the subject ; and they see and read the declarations that goe out on both sides , and the matter of fact being that that makes the cause , they know not what to believe of that ; for when they read the severall declarations , they see that affirmed by one party , that is denyed of the other , so that indeed they know not which way to bend themselves to beleeve , ( of the matter of fact , i meane : ) but now a great many after the case hath been stated , as it hath been on both sides b● these declarations , when they shall see that this kingdome of scotland , to which declarations have been sent by both parties , ( for so they have , the king hath sent on his side , and the parliament hath sent on their side also ) when they shall see the kingdome of ●cotland hath sent a committee into this kingdom , to informe themselves of the businesse how it stood , to the intent they might know how to carry themselves between both parties ; i say , when after all this , they shall see a whole protestant kingdom , as one man , a protestant kingdome that hath had differences heretofore , and those differences have beene setled , when they have beene in the same distractions as wee have , and so setled , as that it hath beene with a cleare declaration of their innocencies , that they had just cause to doe , what they had dont , and went away as they did , with that full satisfaction they have given to the world : i say , when they shall see such men , as have for so long a time stood by as a third party , and spectators onely , and lookens on ; when they shall see a kingdome , that is altogether unbyass'd , that hath the same king ▪ lives in the same island , that hath the same religion : i say , when they shall behold a whole kingdome to declare for the one party , that is , for our party ; when they shall see them not onely doe so , but enter into a league and covenant , and that by oath with us , for the maintaining of this religion : when they shall see them engaging their whole kingdome as one man , in a war for the maintaining of this cause : i say , certainly that must bee a convincing , silencing argument to all these men , that this is the party that doth maintain really , and in truth , the true protestant religion , the laws of the realme , and the liberties of the subject : that is for the first . the second is , there is another party , that are well enough satisfied in their judgements , but out of feare of their estates , and other sinister , by and base ends , ( for so they may be called , for as this covenant calls it a detestable neutrality ▪ so may wee ) i say , when these parties shall see such an addition of strength to the one side , their owne principles of feare will reach them to goe to that that is the stronger side . but admitting that men stood in their judgments , and in neutrality , as they now doe , and that their comming in did not alter one man ; yet we are to consider what the strength is that they doe bring in wi●h them , and what that is like to doe , admitting the parties to bee as equally engaged , as now they be ; and that is by their owne propositions , that when they come in , they intend to come in with 18000 foot , with 1000 ▪ dragoneers , and 2000 horse , with 21000 horse and foot , with a traine of artillery proportionable and suitable to such an army : certainly , by the blessing of god , such a force to bee added to the one party , that is now even , it cannot but in all likelihood cary down the scales , and alter the whole ●ame , and the state of the businesse . why ? certainly two against one in all ●usinesses , that makes oddes . if we have the addition of that whole kingdome to this party that is even with the other , or neare so , now wee may easily judge of the event . this is the first benefit i shall propound to you , wee are like to reap by their comming in , that is , the assuring of this great cause , that so much conc●●nes us . the second is this , which i shall propound to you , that is ▪ that it will bee for our profit , that it will ease the warre , that it will make the charge ▪ and the burthen of it to 〈◊〉 this doth arise partly out of what hath been said , that their comming in , it will shorten the warre , for as long as the parties ar● equall , it must needes lengthen and protract the warre ; when two scales are almost equally ballanced , wee know for a great while it falls on the right hand , and on the left hand , and it is a great while before they stand still ; so that if the war bee protracted and lengthened , that will bee spent in time , and a great deal more , then a good round summe will be in making a sudden conclusion of it ; i think every lessee , hee had rather pay a good round fine , than for many ●●ers together , to sit upon a great rent ▪ this may bee our condition , if wee doe not bring them in , besides the losse of all at last ; but the benefit will appear , by the shortning of the warre , in this further : by those miseries , and that poverty ▪ and that calamity , which a long warre must of necessity bring with it ; the wealth of this kingdome ( i suppose ▪ ) it arises out of the soyle , and the ground of the kingdom , and it arises out of the m●nufactures , and out of the trade of the kingdom ; these again do consist principally in rents and in debts ; certainly debtors by having their estates plundered , and wholly taken away from them , and the lives from many ▪ debts will cease ▪ there will bee no debts to bee paid ; the same will bee likewise of rents , when the cattle shall bee killed up , and the tenants plundered of all they have , there will bee no rents paid : how will it bee like , if the warres continue , that the trade will bee continued ? for the materialls of trade by a long warre , will bee wholly destroyed , and taken from us ; the sheep of the kingdom that bring our woall , and the horses , and the cattle , that bring our leather and our tallow ; these three , the wooll , leather , and tallow , and divers other things , wee know how many hundred trades , even from the greatest merchant , to the lowest handicrafts-man , how many they imploy ▪ these , they will bee destroyed , not onely by the consumption , which the souldier makes , that is wastefull , but even the policy of warre will require of the enemy , ( as wee see of late about gloucester , in the vale of esum , the policy of war will cause , i say , one party ) ●o kill and destroy all cattle , when the necessity of warre r●qui●●●●t , to s●arve out the enemy ; besides the daily losse of towns and cities , what a losse will that bee to trading , and in particular to this city ? i beleeve it is a sensible thing to many of you ▪ the ●aking o●●●●ter , the taking of bris●o● , and the trade of newcastle stopped , and some other cities , what a great losse , even in point of debt , it hath been to many worthy citizens , of this city ; besides , a long warre it will consume , the very materialls of life , of food and rayment , wee shall neither have meat , drink , nor cloathing , if the war con●inue , considering the burnings and devastations that goe along with it ▪ so that for my own part , i think it is a very clear case , that wee had better buy out with a round summe , a short war , then to have a long war continued , though it bee without any charge at all ; if all our horse and foot , and trayn of artillery , and garrisons , were all paid to our hand , wee had better buy a short peace , by bringing them in , than to have a long war without charge , because of that inevitable poverty , that a long war must needs bring to a kingdom ; this first thing that i have offered , is in point of time , the shortening of warre , the benefit and profit that it will bee to the kingdome . secondly , wee all know this warre hath contracted a great debt upon the kingdom , and it will contract farre more ; in case this shall bee hereafter to bee paid in sheere money and coyn , i am afraid the kingdom is not able to pay it at once , ( i beleeve that all men know ) suppose this then shall bee appointed to bee paid at certain yeers and times , what will bee the event of that ? i am afraid the destruction of the kingdom , for then the case will bee thus , the greatest part of the lords and gentry are ingaged in the other way , and here lies a great debt annually to bee paid by the kingdom , and certainly this will disaffect people to all other parliaments , when they shall yeerly bee under the payments of such mo●eys , that the parliament hath contracted upon them ; and then considering who it is will operate upon the other party ▪ for there is another party that will not bee easily reconciled to the party that hath been on the other side , and so this other party striking in the other way , what this is like to produce , is very dangerous to mee ; whereas on the other side , as long as the parties are equally engaged , as wee are , without their comming , i am afraid there will not bee that force on the one side , as to make the other side , ( that is , the papists , and the prelates , and the other malignants ) out of their estates to pay these debts , which their comming in , in all likelihood will make us doe ▪ which if these debts bee paid out of their estates and lands ▪ i know no inconvenience will come to the kingdom by it ; for here is the case , they that have it now in their hands , to imploy i● for the destruction of the kingdom , it will bee onely putting it in their hands , that shew their good affections to the kingdom ; so that way i conceive the debt of the kingdom , will bee no losse at all to the kingdom . the third benefit is , that even the present war it will bee made lesse chargeable to us ▪ and that in this ▪ they not being come in , wee have not newcastle , there is nottingh●mshire , york●●●ir● , that great country , a great part of l●●●olnshire , the bishopri●● of d●rham , northumberland , co●●m●erland , w●●●merland , the great●●● part of the west , the richest part , i know , in this kingdom , except this city ▪ i say , in case they come not in , they are all under contribution ▪ to the other side ; their comming in gaines new●●●●le , it gaines ▪ as much , as the money to bring them in will cost 〈◊〉 the very gaining of that town ; and likewise when they come in , it brings all those countries under contribution ; so that the very contribution ▪ that those northern countries will yeeld , it will not only pay the scotch army , but is likely ( as it is beleeved ) it will make an addition for our other for●●s , that wee shall have to spare for other forces , by that which their comming in will gain of the con●ributions of those 〈◊〉 so that i have now done with those 〈◊〉 that will come ●o you in point of profit , and likewise the assuring of this great cause . the third is this , that 〈◊〉 w●● doe come to a peace , when gods time is come that wee shall have one ▪ yet their co●ming in ▪ in all 〈◊〉 i● will cause●●s to have a better a surer ▪ and b●tter g●dunded 〈◊〉 then if they doe not ●om● in ▪ and likewise , what peace 〈…〉 that it will bee p●r●et and bee the sco●●● for us , 〈◊〉 our posterity to reap the benefit of it : first , that their comming in will make our peace , in all probability the better ; i beseech you , without their comming in , what is it like to bee ? the p●●ties are equall , the partie that is against us , they consist of p●pi●●s , and p●elates , &c. if wee come to compound this businesse , what is it like to bee ? but that our composition will bee indeed the destruction of the protestant religion , and of our liberties ; i am afraid it is very like to bee the ending of that controversie between the two women for the childe , who should bee the mother of it , that is , that the childe should bee divided ; wee know that our division must have caused death , i am afraid wee shall then come to bee half protestants , and half papists , and this neutrality of both , i am afraid it will bee the destruction of the one ; if it prove not destructive , yet certainly it will prove very dangerous to us ; in diseases , if nature bee not able wholly to expell the malignity of the disease , it afterwards breakes out in botches , and one malady o● another : a sore not cured at bottome , it afterwards festers , and breaks out , and afterwards endangers the person , as much as before ; if they come not in , considering the engagements on both sides , and considering the parties , who wee must compound with , i say , the cure is like to bee very imperfect , their comming in i hope will make it perfect ; besides , what ever the peace is , if it bee good without their comming in , it is likely wee and our posterity shall reap the fruit of it , certainly , wee have had great experiences in the times of our ancestors , that when divisions of this nature have been , as when the statute of magna cha●●a , was first obtained , which was with all the care the w●t of man could devise , there was the oath of the king , and all the nobility of the kingdom , yet it was broken within twelve moneths after ; in his sons time twelve of the nobility were appointed to see it kept , that would not doe the work , afterwards they appointed gentlemen in every countrey , that they should see to it ▪ this did not the work , it broke out from time to time ; but what should wee goe further ? those lawes that have been made against papists in our memories , are not the laws full , that no papist is to 〈…〉 how see wee that put in execution , and that two pa●t● of their ●●●ates to bee seized ▪ when wee see nothing at all hath been done ●hat way . for the petition of right , in our memory , how was that kept ? again , our neighbours the netherlanders , when they made that peace with the king of spain , they called in this kingdom and france , to bee witnesses to it ; wee see how that calling us in , to bee witnesses , how that hath engaged both parties to that state at this time , and how wee have been assistant to them , and expresse● our desires to have them thrive ; but how is it like to bee , when there shall not onely bee our own kingdom , but a brother kingdom , an entire kingdom , one of the same religion , with us , one that loves their liberties , as well as wee , when they shall bee engaged in point of interest with us , when the same law , the same acts of parliament that shall compose the differences , when if it hee broken on our parts , in any thing that concerns us , they cannot conceive but it may be their case the next day , because it all depends upon one law , one and the same title , and their interest is the same ; so that it there were nothing else in it , but that wee were like to have the better peace , and on the better termes , and what ever it bee ; it is likely to bee kept the better , to us and our posterity , if nothing else were in it , that were much to our advantage surely , if by some considerable summe of money , wee might have them brought in , and have them at the end of this peace , and interested in it as well as our selves ; so that i have now done with those benefits , i have offered to you , that wee shall have by their assistance and comming in ; i make no doubt but that most of these things were known to you all before , and that this part hath been to very little purpose , that i have spoken ▪ for when that both the houses of parliament , have seen the necessity and benefit of it , when it was propounded to the common councell , that they likewise saw the necessity of it , i know it will ●ee bootlesse to use any further arguments to you , that you may see the benefits that will redownd by their comming to us ▪ but it will bee asked , notwithstanding wee may receive benefit by it , how may wee bee assured that they are willing ? truely , for that , by what hath been done ▪ it will bee sufficiently clear ; both houses sent a committee to them , that in a little time did produce the covenant there , approved of by their assembly of divines , and by the convention of estates , it is co●● hither , it hath been agreed here , it hath been taken here by the house of commons already , and by a great many of this city ; a worthy lord , my lord wharton ( i may name him here ) at a common-councell , he did declare to my lord major and aldermen , that their house would in few dayes likewise take it ; this covenant shews their willingnesse ( in the first place ) for wee by that are bound to the mutuall defence of our religion , and preservation of our civill liberties , for by that we are bound to the preservation of the liberties of parliaments ; and that delinquents and malignants may be brought to their just triall ; so this is already done . it was likewise declared by the commissioners of scotland , that they did not doubt , but by this time they were taking it in that kingdome ; and their commissioners here they have taken it already ; so that they have joyned themselves to us by oath , for the mutuall preservation of religion and lawes . in the second place , they have shewed their consent by the propositions they have sent to us , which are the termes upon which they are to come in ; they have not stayed here but they have proceeded to action ; they have named the generall of their army , which is my lord generall lesley , which was their generall when they came into this kingdome . and likewise they have granted commissions into all the shires of scotland for the raising of horse and foot , and named their colonells , captaines , and other officers , and listed them . there is a further progresse likewise , that is , that we have taken berwicke already , for the facilitating of their comming in , which may bee a place of retreat for them , and a magazine for their ammunition and victualls . and since this hath been taken by the parliament , they have sent some troops of horse , and certain foot for the securing of that town : and if they had before knowne the consent of the parliament for their having the use of berwicke , they had put in their ammunition and victuall before this time into berwicke , which before this time surely they d●● know ; and therefore we doubt not , but they have done the other . likewise further , when they come in , they intend to goe on in their march , though it be farre in the yeare , and not to sit downe in their quarters . wee know my lord of newca●●le did it ●ast yeare , we know they are as farre northern borne , they are both in a colder cly●●te ▪ and therefore wee doubt not of it , and so 〈◊〉 long , we hope to heare of the taking of newcastle , which what reliefe it will be to this city in the point of coales , and other trade , you may easily see : most of this to the common-councell was declared by two worthy commissioners that were sent out of scotland , my lord mackland , and mr. henderson . but it may be said , if they be so willing , and so ready to come , and have all things ready , what is the reason wee heare not of their comming into the kingdome ? they have answered us by their propositions , that it is impossible for them to doe it , without some sum of money : and that this is no pretence , but that it is really so , we have it from our owne committee there , wee have it from all hands there : and if we consider how they have been exhausted heretofore , i thinke we may easily believe it our selves : and that their army that is in ireland have been 14 moneths without any pay at all , they are saine to supply them with necessities , which hath been foure score thousand pound , else that army must have starved . we know they had two years warre , we promised them a brotherly assistance , and there is an act for it , but it is knowne by reason of the troubles we have here at home , we have not paid them that ; so that considering the poverty of that kingdome ( without offence i thinke we may say so ) i say , considering the poverty of that kingdome , it is certaine , it is not a pretence of theirs , but it is really so . neither indeed can we presume it , when as the covenant and oath they take , binde them as well as us , that they should come to our assistance ; it binds them as much to our assistance , as that oath binde our selves to our owne assistance , and therefore wee cannot presume , that they would ( being dis-ingaged of an oath , afterward ) be willing to take that oath , unlesse they did likewise know their owne necessity , that they could not come in without some summe of money ; and truly i suppose that they cannot come in without money , ( as hath been declared to you ) and that we must ground upon and build upon , for wee are assured it on all hands . it will be then said , what is that summe ? why truly the summe that they have sent in their propositions , is 100000 l. i confesse a great summ● , and that that i know not how to mention in this assembly , considering how this city hath been exhausted formerly by those great contribution● , and by those aides that they have given in this case . but on the other side , though i cannot indeed tell how , when i consider the sumto presse it : yet when i doe consider the inevitable danger that follows , and the great advantages that we lose by every dayes delay in it . i say , when i consider them , i cannot on the other side but presse it . let us therefore consider , in case this bee not within some convenient time raised , what an infinite disadvantage comes by it to us . first of all , all those preparations they will bee in a manner lost , if that it be not presently raised , there will be no comming in this winter , if there be no comming in this winter , no gaining of newcastle , if no gaining of newcastle , no coales , nor materials for fewell . nay , that is not all , but if they doe not come in now , and if wee doe not provide this money , i shall despaire of their comming in at all , and that upon this ground , that if wee bee not able now to raise the summe of money , the continuance of this warre , it will more and more every day , and that sensible ▪ dis-enable us to doe it at another time . if we cannot doe it now , wee shall be lesse able to doe it , a weeke , a moneth , a quarter of a yeare hence ; for the warre you see destroyes all trade , ( that hath been opened to you before ) wee shall grow poorer , our enemies stronger ; if we be not able to bring them in now , we shall never bee able to bring them in at all . it will be desired , if it bee possible to raise this great summe of money , what is the security shall be given ? for truly it was never desired of this city , that so much mony should be given to them , but it is desired it should be onely lent , for if they come not in in time , the businesse is as good as lost : they have therefore ( considering this ) already engaged the publike faith of that kingdome , with the publike faith of this kingdome , for the raising of 200000 l. either by borrowing of it here , or in forain parts . therefore this is the first security that is ●endered to you now , that money is a borrowing in parts beyond the sea ; that mony that is so borrowed , shall goe on towards the repayment of this , what ever it is that shall be lent . but besides this publike faith , there are divers wayes visible how this publike faith will bee dis-engaged , that is , by the sequestrations , for there is an ordinance of both houses for 30000 l. to be raised for them out of the sequestrations . now this shall not need to discourage any that so little hath bin raised out of the sequestrations hitherto , for the houses have been preparing the businesses a great while , and now michaelmas is come , all the rents are ready , within few weeks to bring it in ; that is for so much . their comming in , it gaines newcastle , the gaining of newcastle gaines a great masse of coales that are there ready already , when they come in ; and out of that there will bee likewise an annuall or a monethly payment of the coales , for the dis-engaging of those that shall lend this summe . besides , when they come in , if they cleare those countrys , wee know how full of papists , & how full of prelates , those northern countreys are , as york-shire , but especially the whole bishoprick of durham , a whole county , northumberland , cumberland , &c. full of papists , full of those of the prelaticall party , full of malignants , when they come in , those parts are cleared , they will be free for three whole moneths , and ten dayes , for the dis-engaging of this , ( which i forgot to tell you before what the scots are to doe for this 100000 l. ) for they are to bring in their traine of artillery , their 21000 horse and foot , they are to continue three moneths and ten dayes in your service , after they come into your kingdome , after the payment of this 100000 l. so that there is full three moneths and ten dayes for these counties to lie open to the repayment of this mony ; for those three moneths they are to be without pay . these are the principall things , that wee have yet thought upon for the dis-ingaging of us , that wee tender to you ; there are divers others , which the committee hath taken into consideration , which they see as much or more certainty in , than in any of these that hath been propounded ; if it were no more than the publique faith of both kingdoms , as long as the kingdoms subsist , or the cause thrives in the hands of one or other , this must bee dis-ingaged , so that at best it is but a loan , and must bee paid if the cause survive , truely , if it doe not survive , it being our religion , i know not what reason wee have 〈◊〉 desire to survive it , and if wee lose it , i am sure wee lose all . truly gentlemen , thus , i have but one word more to say ; the cause it is gods , if it bee not so , let us repent that ever wee medled with it ; it is the cause of our countrey , if it bee not so , let us now say , wee repent , and leave it ; it is the cause of these three kingdomes , england , ireland , and scotland , it is the cause of christendom , for if this cause be carryed against us , certainly the protestant cause throughout all europe , will fare the worse for it : this is the cause , & this we all know to be the cause . it hath pleased almighty god out of his providence to call even us poor creatures , to be the managers of this great cause of his , we have undertaken it , we have formerly by our protestations engaged our selves to the maintaining of it , wee have all of us , both parliament , city , and all well-affected subjects , of this kingdom , wee have put our shoulders to it , wee have of late manifested to god and all the world , that wee doe not repent of what wee have done , wee have entred into a solemn league and covenant ; i think the solemnest that ever was seen in this kingdom , gentlemen thus , let our cheerfulnesse in this service shew , that wee have taken that covenant , and doe affect this businesse , with our whole hearts ; i have done , pray god give his blessing . mr. edmond calamy his speech in guild-hall on friday the sixt of october , 1643. gentlemen , you have heard a worthy gentleman of the house of commons , it is desired by this grave and reverend assembly of ministers , that three of the ministers of this assembly , should likewise speak unto you concerning this great businesse , and notwithstanding my indisposition of body , being required by them , though that gentleman of the house of commons hath spoken so abundantly to the purpose , yet notwithstanding i am here come to speak something , the rather to declare my willingnesse to appear in this cause , that is every way so just , and every way so honest , and so good , that i may truly say , as the martyr did , that if i had as many lives , as i have haires on my head , i would bee willing to sacrifice all these lives in this cause ; you know the story of craesus , that though hee never spake in his life , yet when hee saw his father ready to bee killed , it untyed the strings of his tongue , and then hee cryed out , that they would not kill his father ; you are not ignorant that england and ireland lye a dying , and though i never appeared in this place , yet i blesse god that hath given mee that health , this day , to speak something in this cause , for the reviving of the dying condition of england , and ireland ; it is such a cause as is able to make a very infant eloquent , and a dumb man to speak that never spake in all his life ; the matter i am desired to speak to , is , concerning the contribution , to perswade you to bee liberall towards the bringing in of the scots , to help us in this our great necessity ; the truth is , it is a great shame that england should stand in need of another nation , to help it to preserve its religion and liberties : that england , that hath been enriched with the gospel of peace , and the peace of the gospel for so many yeers , that england , that hath been blessed with so many rare ministers of god , so many precious , and powerfull servants , that have preached the word of god in season and out of season ; that england , that hath professed the gospel with so much power and purity ; that england should stand in need , of the help of their brethren of scotland , for to preserve that gospel that they have professed so many yeers ; i confesse to mee it seems a very strange prodigie , and a strange wonder ; but it hath pleased almighty god for the sins of england , for our great unthankfulnesse , and for our unthankfulnesse under these means , and for the great blood-guiltinesse , and idolatry , and superstition of this nation , it hath pleased god to suffer a great part of the kingdom , to bee blinded , especially those parts , where the word of god hath not been preached in a powerfull manner ; and there are many in the kingdom , that will not bee perswaded , that there is an intention to bring in popery , and to bring in slavery ; many of them ( i say ) think that though the popish army should prevaile , and the plundering army should prevaile , yet they think all would goe well with religion , and with their liberties ; i say , it hath pleased god to suffer abundance in the kingdom , to bee blinded with this opinion , out of a just judgement to punish us for our unthankfulnesse , and for our ingratitude ; and this is the reason that so many men stand neuters , and that so many are malignants , and disaffected to this great cause , in so much that i am concluded under this , that there is little probability to finish this cause , without the comming in of the scots ( as you heard so worthily by that member of the house of commons ; ) the sons of zerviah are grown so strong , what through our fearfulnesse , what through our covetousnesse , what through our malignity , that there is little hope ( i say ) to finish this great cause , or to bring it to a desired peace , without the help of another nation , and by the assistance of god , by the help of another nation it may be done ; these are two mighty , two omnipotent arguments , to prevaile with you to contribute your utmost aide and assistance to that cause ; since it cannot speedily bee done without their help , & by gods blessing , it may speedily be don by their help . what would the kings party doe , if they could engage another nation to their help ? 21000. if they could engage them to our ruine ; what would they not doe ? how much more should wee be willing to contribute our greatest help to engage a nation , that indeed is part of our own nation , within the same island , and our brethren , so faithfull , and so well affected to this cause , what should wee not bee willing to doe to ingage so great a party ? i would intreat you to remember , that it is not many yeers agoe , since our brethren of scotland came hither into england , in a warlike manner , and yet with peaceable affections , and that you would reminde your selves , what good they did to you , when they were then in england , they were the chiefe causes of this parliament , that now wee doe enjoy , and of all the good that hath been reaped by this parliament ; ( as you may well remember ) by their comming in you know this parliament was procured , and their second comming in ( through gods mercy ) may bee a means to confirm this parliament , and to establish it , and to uphold it in its dignity , and in the priviledges of it , and to keep it from being ruined ; and if the parliament bee ruined , you all well know that our religion , and our liberties are ruined , for the parliament is the great conservatour of religion and liberties ; and i may truly say , as you know caligula did once wish , that all rome were one neck that hee might cut it off at one blow ; they that intend to ruine the parliament , they ruine your religion and liberties , & all england at one blow ; now ( i say ) as their first comming was a meanes to produce this parliament , so their second comming in ( through gods blessing ) may bee a means to establish it , and to confirme it ▪ and when they were here , you know how faithfully they carryed themselves , and when they had done their work , how willingly they went away without doing any hurt , and i doubt not of the same faithfullnesse , nay , you ought all to beleeve , that they will likewise , when they have done the worke they are called too in england , they will likewise with the same faithfullnesse depart , for it is religion that brings them here , and the same religion will make them willingly leave us , and goe home to their owne countrey , when they have done that worke for which they came . i am assured that the great hope at oxford is , that they will never prevaile for the petting of money for to bring them in ; and if they once see the matter of money effected , and if they once heare of the scots comming in , it will worke such a terrour there , as i am assured , that it will ( through gods mercy ) produce a notable complyance of that party with the parliament for an effectuall peace , such as all the godly of the land shall blesse god for . i foresee there are many objections that may be brought to hinder this worke , many mountaines of opposition that will lye in the way : and likewise that the malignants will bu● many things in your eares , if it be possible to put some great rub in the way , to hinder the effecting of this work , but i hope , the love you have to god , and to your religion , and to the gospel , and to yours wives and children , will swallow down all these objections , and conquer them all ; i le name some few objections , and give you some short answer . some it may bee , will put you in minde , to call in question the lawfulnesse of contributing towards the bringing in of the scots to this nation ; but for this , i le give you an easie answer , certainly gentlemen , it is as lawfull for the parliament to call in our brethren of scotland to their help , as it is lawfull for mee , when my house is on fire , and not able to quench it my self , to call in my neighbour to quench my house , that is ready to burn down ; the kingdom is all on fire , wee are not able with that speed to quench it , as wee wish , wee call in our brethren in scotland to help us to quench the flames that are kindled among us ; it is as lawfull as it is for the master and marriners of a ship , when it is ready to sink through a mighty tempest , to call in other marriners to help to keep the ship from sinking ; it is the condition of our kingdom now , it is ready to sink , and it is our desire that our brethren of scotland would come in to our aide , to keep it from sinking . others it may be will object and say to you , it is rebellion , especially to call in another nation to your helpe . but i beseech you give me leave to put you in minde , that when the scots came last into england , there was a proclamation out against them , wherein they were called rebels , and there were prayers to bee said in our churches ( as you well remember ) in which we were to pray against them as rebells , and there was money likewise contributed then , for to hinder their comming in , and to raise an army to drive them out of the kingdome , and i doubt not but you may remember , all the ill-affected did contribute mony to keep them out of this kingdom , and from tarrying in ; but it pleased almighty god through his great mercy , so to change and alter the state of things , that within a little while , the nation of scotland , even by act of parliament , they were proclaimed and made the true and loyall subjects of the king , and in those churches in which they were prayed against as rebells , even in those very churches , they were pronounced the good subjects of the king ; this i doubt not but you remember , & i doubt not , but through the mercy of god , the lord raising up our hearts , i doubt not but the same effect , will come of their second comming into this kingdom ; and they that now tell you they are rebels , and you do an act of rebellion , in the contribution to the bringing of them in . i doubt not but you shall see an act of parliament to call them his loyall subjects , ( wherein i hope our king will concurre with his parliament ) and likewise prayers made ; nay , a day of thanksgiving , as was after their first comming , a day of thanksgiving for the mercy of god , in stirring up their hearts to be willing to come unto our help . but it may be some others will object and say , why should we that are ministers , engage our selves so much in this businesse ? to see a reverend assembly of grave ministers to appeare here in so great an assembly . this it may be , will bee a mighty objection to some , but i beseech you give me leave to give you a short answer did i not think that that that shal be said this day , would mightily conduce to peace , for my part , i would not have been the month of the assembly ; did i thinke any other way to produce a solid and a setled peace , a religious peace . i that am a minister of peace , an ambassador of peace ; i would not have been a trumpeter to this businesse this day : the truth is , if you would have peace with popery , a peace with slavery ; if you would have a judas peace , or a joab his peace , you know the story , he kiss'd amasa , and then killed him ; if you would have a peace that may bring a massacre with it , a french peace , if you would have such a peace , it may be had easily ; but if you would have a peace that may continue the gospel among you , and may bring in a reformation , such as all the godly in the kingdome doe desire , i am concluded under this , and am confident that such a peace cannot bee had without contribution towards the bringing in of the scots , and that is the reason for the promoting of this peace , this blessed peace , that we have appeared here this day : and me thinks ( gentlemen ) the very sight of these worthy divines , me thinkes so many divines , so many orators , so many silent orators to plead with you , to bee willing to engage your selves to the utmost to help forward the nation of scotland to come to our help . and likewise i would put you in mind of the 10 ▪ of numbers , there you shal read that there were two silver trumpets ; and as there were priests appointed for the convocation of their assemblies , so there were priests to sound the silver trumpets to proclaime the warre . and likewise in the 20. of deuteronomy , you shall finde there , that when the children of israel would goe out to warre , the sonnes of levi , one of the priests , was to make a speech to encourage them . and certainly , if this were the way of god in the old testament , certainly much more in such a cause as this , in which cause religion is so intwin'd , and indeed so interlac'd , that religion and this cause , they are like hippocrates his twins , they must live and die together . and ( gentlemen ) if religion were not concerned in this cause , and mightily concerned ; and if religion did not live and die with it , we had not appeared this day ; and i hope this will be a sufficient answer unto this objection . but there is another objection which i will answer , and then briefly give leave to my other reverend brethren , that likewise are prepared to speake here . the great objection of all is this , that the city is already exhausted , and so much money hath been lent already , that there is no hope of lending any more ; this is the grand objection , but truly ( gentlemen ) for my part , this is one of the chiefe arguments i have to perswade you to lend a little more , because you have lent so much : give me leave to put you in minde of that story , in the 2 kings 13. the story of king joash , that came to visit the prophet elisha , when he was ready to breath out his last , the prophet elisha gives him a bow and arrows , and bids him shoot , hee shootes , and bids him smite , hee smites the ground thrice , and then he ceased , the prophet was exceeding angry with him , and tells him , you should have smote the ground 5 or 6 times , and then you should have utterly consumed the assyrians , whereas now you shall smite them but three times . give me leave to apply this , gentlemen , you have smote the ground thrice , you have lent once , twice , and thrice , indeed you have been the fame of england , and the repairers of england , and the ornaments of england , you have lent much , but let mee tell you , you must smite the ground 5 or 6 times , if ever you look to consume the assyrians , if ever you look to bring this warre to a happy peace , that your posterities may rejoyce in this peace , you must shoot one arrow more , and then through gods blessing , you may utterly consume these enemies , that you and your posterity may rejoyce in a happy peace ; it is a famous story of johannes eleemozinarius , that when hee had given even almost all hee had to the poore , his friends were exceeding angry with him , and told him hee had undone himself , what was his answer ? o ( saith hee ) i have not yet shed my blood for jesus christ ; jesus christ hee emptied himself of his divinity , to make us rich , hee became poore , and shed his blood for you ; you have not yet made your selves so poore as jesus christ was , that had no house to lodge in , and he did all this for your sakes ; you have not yet shed your blood for the cause of christ ; wee read that moses was willing to bee blotted out of the book of life , for the cause of god ; and wee read of paul , that hee was willing to bee accursed , for the people of israels sake ; and will you not bee willing to venture your earthly provisions for so good a cause as this is , which ( i say ) england was never engaged in the like . religion hath produced all the wealth you have , all your wealth is but the childe of religion , wee have a saying , religio peperit divitias , & divitiae devoravunt matrem ; religion hath begot wealth , and the daughter hath devoured the mother ; & ●●lia devoravit matrem ; but give mee leave , and i hope ( through gods blessing ) you will invert this saying , religion hath got you all the wealth you have , you gentlemen , and i hope the daughter now will preserve the mother ; i hope riches will preserve religion , and not destroy religion . a famous example of polan●● noli●●● , that when hee had given all that hee had away , and being asked , why hee would give so much to the poor , hee gave this answer , v● levi●● ascenderem s●alam ja●c●i , that i might the easier get up jacobs ladder ; and let mee assure you , in the word of a minister , the contributing to this cause for gods sake , and for the glory of god , and for the peace of the gospel , ( i say ) will bee a means to make you the sooner ascend up jacobs ladder ; not for the giving of the money , but for the evidence of your faith , through the merits of the lord jesus christ , by your giving of the money ; and certainly that man will never get up jacobs ladder , that hath the ●ust of his money to ●●ar witnesse against him , at the day of judgement , especially at such a time as this . give mee leave to put you in minde of one other story , and that is of one bernardinu● 〈◊〉 that was so liberall to the poore , that every penny that hee gave to the poore , hee would call it a holy penny , and a happy penny ▪ and hee would blesse god ▪ that hee had that penny to 〈◊〉 indeed hee was a papist , and his ordinary speech was , o happy penny , that hath purchased immortality to mee ; indeed this speech was not good , for it is not our money that doth purchase heaven , that is an evidence of the truth of our faith , that layes hold upon christ for salvation ; but let mee tell you , if ever ( gentlemen ) you might use this speech , o happy penny ; you may use it now , happy money that will purchase my gospel , happy money that will purchase religion , and purchase a reformation , to my posterity , o happy money , and blessed bee god that i have it to lend . and i count it the greatest opportunity that ever god did offer to the godly of this kingdom , to give them some money to lend to this cause ; and i remember in this ordinance of parliament , you call it advance money ; it is called an ordinance to advance money towards the maintaining of the parliaments forces ▪ and truly it is the highest advance of money , to make money an instrument to advance my religion ; the lord give you hearts to beleeve this . you shall have the faiths of both kingdoms ingaged in this cause , the kingdom of scotland , and the kingdom of england , and surely the publique faith of scotland will secure the publique faith of england ; i speak now of secondary causes ▪ through gods blessing . i am informed by the commissioners of scotland , that the nation of scotland are now taking the covenant , ( that wee took the last lord● day in this city ▪ ) and you know that a scotch covenanter is a terrible thing ; you know what mighty things they did , by their last covenant ; you know that the name of a covenanter , the very name of it , did doe wonders ; and i am assured by them , that there is not one person in the kingdom of scotland , that is not a covenanter , and there shall not one abide among them , that will not take this covenant , and there shall not one of those 21000 that are to come over in this cause , not one of them shall come , that will not take this covenant , but they must take this covenant before they come ; o that the consideration of these things , might work up your hearts to a high degree of charity , to a superlative degree , and that the lord would make you more active and more liberall in this great cause ; for my part , i speak it in the name of my self , and in the name of these 〈◊〉 ministers , wee will not only speak to perswade you to contribute , but every one of us , that god hath given any estate to , wee will all to our utmost power , wee will not only say it● , but v●●ite , wee will not only speak to you to lend , but every one of us , as wee have already lent , so wee will lend to our utmost power , and blesse god that wee have it to lend ; for indeed it is now a time of action , and not of speaking only , because it is an extraordinary businesse , therefore here is an extraordinary appearance of so many ministers , to encourage you in this cause , that you may see how reall the godly ministery in england , is unto this cause . the gospel it is called a pearl of price , by our saviour christ , and i hope all you merchants , will part with your goodly pearls to buy this pearl of price ; you tradesmen , the gospel is called a treasure hid in the field , so our saviour christ calls it , i hope you will bee willing to part with your earthly treasures , to preserve this blessed treasure , that is hid in the field ; you have parted with some goodly pearls already , i hope you will part with your other goodly pearls : there is an excellent story of one nonlu● a roman senator , that had a pearl that hee did prize above his life , and when anthony the triumvir , one that was then in great power , when hee sent to n●nius to have the pearl , hee would not send it him , and hee told him , that if hee would banish him , hee would bee willingly banished , so hee might save his pearl , if hee would take away his life , hee would dye with his pearl ; hee did not regard his countrey , so hee might have his pearl ▪ hee regarded nothing , so hee might have his pearl ; but hee would not part with his pearl , what ever hee parted withall ; this pearl it is the gospel of jesus christ , that you have professed in this city , and i hope you have professed it with power ; and certainly , you have the name of those that have professed the gospel in the greatest purity of any under heaven ; this pearl is this gospel , i hope you will part with all willingly and cheerfully , rather than part with the gospel , though you goe to prison , carry the gospel with you , nay , though you lose your lives , ●t shall bee with the gospel , and for the gospel ; i hope so . there is one argument more , and then i have done , and that is from the inveterate hatred they have at oxford , against the city of london , and against you for your good , because you have been so well-affected to this cause . gentlemen , i beseech you give mee leave ( that am no statesman , not acquainted with the affaires of policy , yet give mee leave ) to put you in minde of this , that surely the plundering army at oxford conceive that they shall finde a great treasure here in the city , though many pretend they have no money ; though certainly you have done well , and lent much , yet the plundering army give out , that if they get possession of the city , they shall finde a treasury to bee able to pay all they have been at : and if ever you should bee driven ( which god forbid ) to make your peace , it would cost you twenty times as much then to procure your peace , and such a peace it may bee , that would bee rather a warre than a peace , and a death better than that peace , which now you may have for a very little , a most happy peace . there is a famous story of zelimus emperour of constantinople , that after hee had taken aegypt , hee found a great deal of treasure there , and the souldiers came to him , and asked him , what shall wee doe with the citizens of aegypt , for wee have found a great treasure among them , and wee have taken their riches ? o ▪ ( saith hee ) hang them all up , for they are too rich to bee made slaves ; and this was all the thanks they had for the riches they were spoyled of ; and it may be● , though some of you that stand neute●● , or some of you that are dis-affected to the cause of the parliament , may think that if the lord for our sins , should give up this city unto the army that is with the king , you may think that you shall escape , yet bee assured that youngoods will bee roundheads , though you bee not , your goods will bee gybalins , though you bee gwel●s , as 〈…〉 is ; certainly , there will bee no distinction , in the plundering of your goods , between you and others ; and therefore let mee beseech you , that as the lord hath made you instruments to doe a great deal of good already , for indeed you are the preservers of our religion , and you are the preservers of our parliament , by your liberality , and by your former contributions , and by your assistance , and the lord hath made you mighty instruments of our good , let mee beseech you , that you would persevere , and now wee are come to the sheat anchor , wee are now come to the last cast , i beseech you , you would persevere , and hold out ; and o that my words might adde somewhat to help forward this contribution ! it hath pleased god to make mee a setled ministery in this city , and i have now been here almost five yeers in this city , and though i had never done any good in my place , i should now think it a great fr●ite of my comming to this city , if after five yeers unprofitablenesse , i might speak somewhat this afternoon , that might enlarge your hearts to a greater measure of liberality ; all i will say is this : wee divines say , that perseverance is the only grace that crowns a christian ; methushelah lived 999 yeers , if hee had fallen away from grace , at the 999 yeers end , all the good that hee had done before , had been quite forgotten ; i know that god will so uphold his children , that they shall never fall away , but i bring it as a supposition , that suppose that methushelah had forsaken his righteousnesse , all hee had done before , had been quite forgotten ; but god hath made a promise , never to forsake his children , and that grace hee hath begun in them , hee will finish , and i doubt not but that god , that hath put it into your hearts to be● so liberall already , and to doe so much in this cause , and to bee so cordiall , and so reall , and to exceed all other parts of the kingdom , i hope that same god now will finish that good work hee hath begun , and will crown all his graces in you , with the grace of perseverance ; and that god that hath been the author of all the good you have done , i doubt not ; but that god will bee the finisher ; and i beseech god to give a blessing to that hath been spoken . mr. jeremiah burroughes his speech in guild-hall on friday the sixt of october , 1643. gentlemen , providence hath cast this assembly , met for such a weighty occasion ( as indeed it is the weightiest , that hath concerned england in our age ) to bee late , and so perhaps wearisome to many of you , but you may well bee content to stay a while , although you should bee deprived of a great part of your sleep this night , if this evenings businesse may have the hoped successe of it , it may make you sleep quietly and securely many nights after . things of present and absolute necessity , call for action , not deliberation ; this work that you have been called unto , is such , as you must leave objecting against it , and rather fall a blessing god , that you may bee used in it ; in the 1 of chronicles 22. 14. when david and the people had come and offered of their estates freely , and bountifully ; david hee humbles himself then , who am i ? and who are wee ? it were happy if you come all with such an humble frame of spirit , to admire that god preserves your lives , and calls you at this time to such a work , so concerning his glory , and the good of three kingdoms , yea of the christian world ; if ever you that have estates had cause to rejoyce in them , then now when god presents such a large opportunity for his service as hee loth ; and wherein consills mans happinesse , but in being serviceable in his generation ? in these dayes to bee acted by that poore , ●ow principle , qui bene lotuit , bene vixit ; that is , let us keep our selves safe , and quiet , keep our estates , take heed of appearing too farre , wee know not which side may prevaile ; this is an argument of a vile and a sordid spirit ; let such a mans name bee writen in the earth ; unworthy is such a man to live in such a generation as this , in which god is doing such great things , as might enliven the deadest heart , quicken the dullest spirit , raise the heaviest , and inlarge the straitest spirit living upon the earth ; in former times indeed there was lesse charge called for , there was lesse trouble , but there was lesse service too , and what doe you think to bee the measure of a mans happinesse , either little trouble , or much service ? a gratious heart thinks it as great a mercy to lay out for god , as to receive from god ; god in these our dayes is risen on high in his administrations , and our hearts should rise together with him ; psalm 105. 4 , 5. thy mercy o lord is above the heavens , and thy truth reacheth unto the clouds ▪ what followes ? bee thou then exalted , o lord , above the heavens , and let thy glory bee above all the earth ; this day gods name , gods great works they are above the heavens , they are very high , wee behold them , let our hearts rise in a suitable way , as god rises in his workings , and all say , and doe as wee say , that god may bee exalted now above the heavens indeed . god can doe his work without you , and doe it certainly hee will , howsoever , but seeing hee is now laying a foundation of the most glorious building , that it is like ever hath been in this world , if hee shall bee pleased to call you to bee helpfull in it , it will bee gods mercy , and your glory ; were it that this one principle were raised in the hearts of people , that to doe publique service , it is not onely a duty , but a dignity , how ready , how abundant then would men bee in the work of the lord ? there hath lately been the most blessed union of two nations , as ever was in the world , lifting up their hands to the high god , swearing that they will amend their wayes , and seek to reform themselves according unto the word , let us now reach forth our hands and hearts , unto our brethren in scotland , let us come up fully unto this our engagement , and rejoyce in it , for certainly that nation is a nation that god doth love , a nation that god doth honour , and by those many expressions of his love , shewed that hee doth intend to make them speciall instruments of the great things he hath to doe in this latter age of the world ; it is a nation that is united the most firmely of any people under heaven , wee may truly call it a philadelphia , and brightman ( that famous light in former times , 30 or 40 yeers since ) did parallell the church of philadelphia with the church of scotland ; philadelphia signifies brotherly love ; when was there ever a nation , such a church , that joyned together in such firm covenants as they have done ? had wee had the like union amongst us , o what great things had wee done long before this time ? a nation it is that hath engaged it self to god in a higher way , in a more extraordinary way , than any nation this day upon the face of the earth hath done ; in the most solemn way covenanting with the eternall god , powring forth their prayers , and their tears for joy , together with their covenanting ; a nation that hath reformed their lives for so small a time more than ever any people that wee know of in the world have done , and a people that have risen up against antichrist more in another way , than ever people have done , and that is the great work of god in these times , and therefore god certainly hath a love unto them , because they breake the ice , and begin the work , and arise in such a way as they doe for the pulling down of that man of sin . a nation that god hath honoured by giving as glorious successe unto , as ever he did unto any ; whose low and meane beginnings hee hath raised to as great a height , as ever low beginnings in any countrey were : how hath god dissipated and biasted the counsells of their adversaries ? how hath he discovered all their treacheries ? although they be in themselves ( comparatively at least ) a poor people , and of little strength , ( as the church of philadelphia was ) yet they have kept the word of gods patience , and god hath kept them in the houre of temptation ; god therefore is with them : ( how happy should we bee , if we may have them in a neare union with us ? ) and a people that have carryed themselves with as great honour and faithfulnesse , with as great wisdome and order in the most difficult worke that ever a people did undertake , in those by and intricate paths that were before uncrodden . certainly that they undertooke at the beginning of their wor●e , but a few years since , it could not but be looked upon with the eye of reason , as the most unlikely worke ever to have proceeded , as any work● hath ever done , and yet how hath the lord been with them , and with what wisdome and graciousnesse have they carryed it ? was there ever such an example since the world began , of a people comming out of a poorer countrey , into a fat and richer countrey , and having those opportunities that they had to enrich themselves to goe away so as they did ? ( their greatest enemies they now admire at them . ) a people they are that began to rise for their liberties , when the generality of this people here , were ready basely to bow down their backs , and put their necks under the yoke : and had it not been that they had been willing to have endured the brunt , we had all been slaves ( it is like ) at this day . a people that are exceeding sensible of our condition , witnesse that when our letters from the reverend assembly came unto them , they received them with teares , and much meltings of spirit , in their generall kirke assembly ; witnesse their readinesse and willingnesse to come now , though in winter season , in times that wee dare not venture our selves abroad ; witnesse the temptations that they have had unto the contrary , and yet carryed through all . they now desire 100000 l. what is this to 300000 l. in pay ? what is this to five counties ? what is this to the plunder of a whole city ? what reasonable termes doe they proffer to come among you ? doe but give them 100000 l. advance , and they engage themselves for three moneths and ten dayes , and in the winter time to be in the kingdome , not to have a foot of land granted unto them , or assured them , but willing to depart againe without any more , when they have done their worke ; this certainly cannot but satisfie any spirit that is never so malignant , at least it may stop his mouth . a nation it is that wee are engaged unto likewise , that that now is desired of you , is no more indeed then is their due , it is due already to them , but they desire it not in that way . wherefore shall such an opportunity as this is be lost for want of money ? god forbid ; shall a people to whom god hath given such testimony of his acceptance , be rejected by us , when they would come in and help us ? their liberties are setled , why they , though on the other side of jordan , they are not therein satisfied , to sit still , but are willing to come themselves , and come into the brunt , and hazard themselves , for the setling of their brethren in the inheritance of the lord likewise . and it is not only the number of those that shal come in ●1000 that is our advantage , but the great busines is , the ingagement of a kingdom , the incouragement of such a kingdom , that god hath given such testimony to , that that kingdom shall be by this everlastingly engaged in what is deare unto us , in our peace and our security , that is the advantage of all . and as the lord hath a delight in this place , in this nation , he hath no lesse surely in this renowned city ; this city whom indeed our adversaries have found out nick-names for , and call it the rebellious city , ( as formerly rehum the chancelor , and shimsbai the scribe , ezra 4. called the city of jerusalem ) but god hath other names for you , it is the city of the lord of hosts , it is the faithfull city , and god hath much mercy certainly for this place . there is no city in the world , that hath such a cloud of incense of prayers goe daily up to heaven ( i verily believe ) as doth from this city . yea , put all the cities of the earth together , i scarce thinke that god is so much honoured in family duties in them all together , as he is in this place . a city that hath had the powerfull preaching of the gospel , beyond all cities upon the face of the earth ; and the ministers of it receiving more encouragement here , then they have done in any other parts of the world . a city that hath more of the power and life of godlinesse , then any place yet upon the face of the earth ; surely god intendeth good to this city , and doth likewise delight in it , and he hath great things for this city to do , and great mercy to bestow upon them . you have been the bulwark of that honourable assembly in both houses of parliament , you have been their safety , you have been their assistance , their lives have been preserved by you , and god will remember it another day , and hee hath mercy in store for that labour of your love , and that hazard that you endured in that thing : you have been the refuge of the banished ministers , and saints of , god in most parts of this kingdome , and in ireland , and the blessing of those that are ready to perish , it is much upon this city night & day . never did the lord stir up so many young ones , as he hath done in this city at this time , that promises great mercy , that speaks aloud to us , that god intendeth to do great things by them . never was there so many godly ones , or more , ( to speak with modesty ) together in place of power in this city , then there is at this day . you have the blessing of all the prayers of all the servants of god throughout this kingdome , parents shall teach their children to blesse god for london , as long as they live , yea for many generations , when they have any fruit by the gospel , they shall teach their children to acknowledge it to the glory of god ; children thanke god for london , thanke god that ever you heard of christ , had it not been for the forwardnesse , the zeale , the activenesse of the spirits of those in london , you had never come to enjoy these liberties of the gospel , as now you doe . and now shall this city withdraw themselves from such a noble and great work of god , as they are called unto at this time , and let it fall because of them ? for it is in your power , either to raise it , or to let it fall , ( that is the english of it ) it is in your power now , either to save us , or to undoe us , and shall this be let fall now out of love of mony ? shall i say , let the mony of those men perish with them ? no , i came not hither to threaten , but to perswade ; consider that the mercies that you have from christ , cost christ more then money ▪ they cost christ his deare heart bloud : who is it that raised your estates more then others ? have not many of you come hither low , as jacob , with your staffe to this city , and now behold these bands , this estate ? who knows but that you are raised for such a time as this ? have not you engaged your selves many times in prayer to god , when first you entred into covenant to god , did not you give up all your estate then to god , to bee employed in his service , god cals for his due at this time from you ? oftentimes upon your sick beds , and death beds ( in your apprehension of death , that they would have been death beds ) you have then given up all again to god , and vowed that if god did raise you up , you would live to his service , you would employ your strength in his service . god calls for all those vows , you have now an opportunity to fulfill all those vowes : and seeing providence hath cast it so , that a reverend assembly of divines , hath appointed us to speake thus unto you , give us leave to speak in the name of god unto you , and to call upon you in the name of god ; for the fulfilling of all the vows that you have made upon your sick beds , to give up your selves and your estates for the service of the lord : and know that if you shall keep your estates otherwise then god would have you , it will be to you as the manna was to the israelites , they kept it longer than they should , and there was wormes in it ; 〈◊〉 that was preserved no longer than gods time , was sweet , but that that was kept afterwards , it had wormes breeding in it ; your estates you have now , you must not think will alwayes bee so sweet as they have been unto you , if you preserve them longer than god would have you , there will wormes breed in them , yea the curse of god will bee in them . have not you s●nt up many prayers to god , for this great cause , that god would blesse it ? ( i appeal to you ) then you have engaged your selves to heaven by all your prayers ; therfore i beseech and intreat you now , by all the prayers you have made , ( as before by your vowes , by all the prayers you have made ) upon your fasting dayes , that god would preserve his cause , that you would now doe as much as in you lies , to maintain his cause , otherwise how doe you trifle with the great god , and mock him in your prayers , that you seek to him to maintain it , and when there is an opportunity in your hands , you will not doe wh●t lies in you . it may bee you will say , w●e have done much already ; wee acknowledge it , and blessed bee god for it , but know the cause is a great cause , and it is a great god that you doe for ; philo judaeus tells us , it was enough among some heathenish people , but to say to them , libertas agitur , the businesse is your liberty , that is afoot , enough to venture their estates and lives ; it is not liberty alone , but religion ( as you have heard : ) but because some may perhaps cast such a scruple into your mindes , a● we have heard of it ; that what warrant have wee to take up armes to maintain religion ? that is not at present to bee discussed , but only this , to satisfie and stop all their mouths with one word : thus farre none can deny it , but it is lawfull to take up armes , to maintain that civill right wee have to our religion , and this wee doe ; for wee have not onely a right to our religion , by the law of god , but wee have a civill right to this our religion , that other christians have not had , and therefore there can bee no scruple in this , to retard you in such a work as this , you have done much , but a gratious heart will ever think what hee hath done for god , it is but poore and low ; that example is famous of david , that had done so much for preparing the temple of god , in the 1 of chronicles 22. 14. it was 1000000 talents of silver , and 1000 talents of gold ; which some compute a matter of 33 cart loads of silver , allowing 20000 livre. to every cart load , and 70 millions of french crowns of gold , this david had done preparing but for the house of the lord , and yet hee saith that out of his poverty hee had done all this ; all this was but a poor and low thing for him to doe in comparison of the great god ; why , have you done more then this ? therefore seeing it is for the high god , you have done it , look upon what you have done , but as low , and still goe on in the work of the lord ; you have done much , and so have the adversaries too ; wee would have you to weigh this , that the adversary hath been at as much charge , as you have been , as bountifull and free as you have been ; in the 46 of isaiah 6. wee read that the idolaters did lavish out their gold upon their idols , yea , they lavished their gold out of their bagges : certainly , our adversary hath felt the burthen of this , and hath been at the charge of it , as much as you ; you have done much , but yet you have not gone in a good work so farre as a herod hath done ; josephus in his 15 book of antiquities , and about the 12 chapter , tells us of herod the king , that in the time of scarcity , hee sold away all his moveables , all the plate that was served to his table , and fetched corn from aegypt , and bought it for the poor , and cloathed them , yea , and gave seed corn to the assyrians his neighbours ; why now , in this our kingdom , wee may see much plate still at many noble mens tables ; yea , at many gentlemens tables , a great deal of plate reserved , they have not sold all their moveables , and plate to give away ; it is but a proportion of their estates , and but to lend upon so good security . and take this one consideration further , your having done much , is a mighty preparation , to make your doing now to bee formidable to your adversaries ; for what is the hope of your adversary ? but that you are drawn dry ; they triumph in this , and they tell the world , that there must bee such petty wayes , to seek to the city , to get petty summes of money , and all is even gone , and therefore wee shall have them to bee a prey ere long ; but when they shall see , that after so much hath been expended here , that you have such free spirits , and to come out still abundantly with further treasure , this will more daunt their hearts ; this 100000 livre. will daunt their hearts more than 2000000 li. before hath done ; if you say , why doe wee doe all ? what if god will give the city , the speciall honour , yet the countrey will bee required for a great part besides ; but the lords work now to bee done , it must bee done especially by his servants ; and wee know in ezra , when as the adversaries of judah would have come and helped in the work , they would not suffer them to come and help in the work ; i say not , wee should doe so ; but onely to satisfie ●s in this , that wee should not think it much , that god should especially honour us in such a work as this is ; but yet besides know , that your interest in this businesse , it is more than the interest of other men ; for other men care not what becomes of religion , what care they for reformation ? they are willing to bee slaves to some , that they might have others slaves under them ; but you desire reformation , you therefore shall have the greatest share in the blessing of the issue of this work ; and therefore if others doe not so much , yet you should bee willing to bee forward in the work you are now called to ; and if you bee willing , it is like in a little while , you may get such power , that you may bring others to doe whatsoever may appear to bee just ; if it shall bee said , i , but a great deal is done , but to little purpose all this while ; o ( my brethren ) say not so , it is an unthankfull voyce , this , for much hath been done , there hath been a check given to the adversary , the stream of tyranny and slavery , it hath been stopped , your lives have all this while been preserved by what hath been done ; if you think , but it is too late , and all will bee lost that wee doe ; say not so neither , this is below a roman spirit , the romans when hannibal was at their gates , yet would sell their fields at as great a rate , and as great a consideration , as at any other time ▪ even the field where the enemy was , found buyers , when it was put to sale , there were enow to buy that field ; your spirits would scarce rise so high to give a valuable consideration , for the field of your enemy , to bee fee simple to your selves ; hee not discouraged , you have not only the faith of both kingdomes , ( that hath been offered ) but wee as divines may offer you this day the faith of heaven , the faith of the promises of heaven , they are offered to you , and there is nothing will blast that work more than a discouraged heart ; you know that the very thing that caused god to deprive the children of israel of canaan , when they were at the borders , it was , because they were discouraged , and said , there are children of anak here , and let us not go ; the lord is bringing of us to a blessed 〈◊〉 it is true , wee are in a wildernesse , but wee know god hath brought us into the wildernesse , and hee will speak comfortably to us in it ; and let us not bee afraid of difficulties , lest wee bee deprived of that good land that god is bringing us into ; and little cause have wee to bee discouraged , for those wee have to deal with , their spirits are base and vile ; why should wee fear those uncircumcised philistines ? and wee see god hath been with us , in every thing that wee have undertaken ; wee have never shown our selves like men , but god hath shown himself to be like a god for us . if you say , well , but were it not better wee bent all our forces to some accommodation ? to that wee answer you thus : you have to deal not only with his majesty , but with a popish party that are about him , and what security you can ever have of your peace , ( as was worthily said before ) except the scottish nation comes in for to fasten it , it is easie for any one to judge . i will tell you but one story about that , and because it is suitable unto you , i will therefore relate it here : it is a story that i finde in the chronicles , that in the dayes of king edward the fixt , king edward sends to this city for assistance against the lords , and the lords send to the city for their assistance likewise , against the protectour , the earl of somerset ; and the common councell was called , ( i suppose in this place , ) and there stands up , as the story saith , a wise discreet citizen , in the common councell ▪ and makes this speech unto them ; first , hee acknowledges that the cause was right for the lords , for the kingdom , though it were against the will of the king , because the king would not then put in execution those laws that should bee , but hindered them , but yet ( saith hee ) let mee reminde you of that that i have read in fabians chronicle , ( it was one george stadley that stood up , let mee reminde you of that ) when there was a fight between the lords and the king , the lords send for assistance to the city , the city granted their assistance , the lords prevailed , the king was taken , and his son a prisoner ; afterwards they were both released upon composition , and amongst other things , this was one , that howsoever the city should bee preserved , that the city should suffer nothing for what they had done ; and this composition was confirmed by act of parliament , but ( saith this citizen ) what came of it ? did the king forgive ? no ▪ nor forget , for afterwards all our liberties were taken away , strangers were set over us , for our heads and governours ; the bodies and the estates of the citizens were given away , and one misery followed after another ; and so wee were most miserably persecuted ; and here was their accommodation . wherefore then ( to close all ) you have heard before , that wee come not onely to perswade you , but to ingage our selves as well as to perswade you , and to doe that , that wee would have you doe : for our parts , as wee have in some proportionable manner done it already , so wee are ready to doe it further , and it beseemes us well to doe it ; wee read in the 3 of nebemiah , that the first that did help to repair the city , it was the priests of the city , and about the middle of the city , the priests of the plain ; i suppose it is meant , the city ministers , and the countrey ministers , and you shall finde in that chapter , severall sorts of people were there , there were the rulers these specially mentioned ; i suppose their chief rulers , as their aldermen , &c. they were very forward in that work of the lord ; yea , there were the tradesmen , there you read much of the goldsmiths , two severall times in that chapter , you read of the goldsmiths , more then others , and you read of the apothecaries , that they were ready in their work ; yea , and you read of the daughters of men , how they forwarded their parents ; i would i had to speak to many young ones this day , i hope i should prevail much with them , to bee great forwarders of you that are more ancient , that you may doe this freely , which you are here exhorted to . have not many of you spent your blood in this cause , yea , how many young ones in this city have lost their blood ? mee thinks a spirit of indignation should rise in you , to vindicate the losse of the blood of your servants and children ▪ many precious ones , that might have lived many yeers , to have done good service for the lord ; even the children of the city , they rise and cry , hosanna , hosanna , o blessed is ●ee that commeth in the name of the lord ! o then l●t old citizens bee forward , mee thinks elders should ●ee forward in this cause ▪ for ●●e thinks they should not think themselves men of this world , in the 17 of john , christ speaks of himself , when hee was going out of the world , i am not in the world ; and so should you going out of the world , even say , you are not in the world ; and therefore let your close in going out of the world , be a happy close in such a blessed work as this is . and know there shall come a day , wherein you shall bee calling and crying to god for mercy ; the successe of this evenings work will bee recorded against that day , when you shall cry for mercy . i conclude all with applying the words of jotham to the men of sechem , in the 9 of judges 7. hearken to me , that god may hearken to you : so ( i say ) hearken to that worthy member of the house of commons , unto that reverend divine before , and to him that shall come after : hearken unto ●s this day , that god may hearken unto you . mr. obadiah sedgewick his speech in guild-hall on friday the sixt of october , 1643. gentlemen , i am commanded by the assembly of divines , and they by a command from the house of commons , to bee present at this solemne and publike meeting , and from them to move for that , which i confidently presume is granted already , a helping heart , and a helping hand , to preserve ( o that we must be forced to say so , and yet blessed be god that we are alive to say so , to preserve ! ) our religion , our lives , and the lives of ours . it is i confesse my happinesse , that i am not to speak unto such who have made our troubles , and that laugh at them , but unto them that see our distresses , & know how to compassionate them : the perswasion is the more hopeful , when the compassion is beforehand afoot : if that honorable gentleman that spake first , had bin sent with fire to destroy your city , or others with swords from that grave senate , to have destroyed your lives , or with armed power to have compelled and plundered your estates ; there i confesse a refusall , nay a contempt had been the most proper answer . but sirs , their addresse unto you is paternall , it is humble and full of efficacy , it is but to request you to preserve your own lives , it is but to request you that you would not suffer your selves , your wives , your children , your city , your religion to be destroyed . i confesse that i had prepared divers things to have worked on you ; but they that have spoken before me , have scarce left me any new matter to say , but all ( which i wish with all my heart were wrought in you , as well as in my selfe , nothing lest but ) to doe . the religion that we have all our lives professed , if it bee not worth thy money , trample it under thy feet : religion ( brethren ) is an invaluable thing , it is farre above our estates , farre above our lives , nay it is far above our soules . for our estates , the heathen say so much , that our estates were not to be insisted on , when religion was in danger , and therefore some of them have according to their imaginary religion , ( the strength of it ) they have neglected their goods to preserve their gods ; nay they hare ( as alvinus did ) neglect his owne wife and children , to take care of that vaine deity that they sacrificed unto . it is ( i confesse to mee ) a most remarkable thing that pliny reports , ( and good gentlemen , let not heathens exceed christians , in love either to their country or religion : ) you know that hanniball was a sore enemy to the romans , and the romans , when they to maintaine themselves against them had exhausted all their publique treasury ▪ a consull in the senate bespake the people that they would all ●ring out their personall estates , ( something like what is this day moved unto you ) it was so instantly , it was so universally relished , that all ●orts of people brought in abundantly , and ( might i give but a suggest unto the grave senators , that ) the citizens , and 〈…〉 senator in rome , left not himselfe , ( so prodigall was 〈◊〉 for th●●●fety of the publike , he left not unto himselfe ) for to keep himselfe and houshold , above the value of 16 crowns . o shal heathens be so prodigall to preserve themselves against a hanniball ▪ & shal not christians be as carefull to preserve their religion against antichrist . well sirs , as that which you are desired to expend something of your estates for is religion , that is farre beyond all your estates , so it is that , that is farre beyond all your lives : for i beseech you what are all your lives for value unto religion , what will your lives bee to you for comfort , when the sunne is taken out of the firmament , and the gospel is removed out of this english horizon ? if ▪ you should outlive the gospel , why ( the lord bee mercifull to you ) what would your lives availe you ? were it not better to make religion and the gospel your executors , then to make idolaters your executors ? were it not better to make religion your executors , then to make your selves , or your posterities heires of idolatry ? when troy was taken , anchises disdained to take his sonnes counsell , to save his life : away ! live when troy is taken ? and truly ( friends ) if there bee in any of you , ( a● i perswade my selfe there is in all of you that heare me this da● ) a sense of god , a sense of your soules , a sense of the gospel of christ , why you must acknowledge now , that all your comforts are lost , that all your hopes on earth are lost , and all your hopes in heaven are gone , if the gospel , if that religion bee gone . nay , ( as i said at the beginning ) it is that , that no not your soules can stand in competition with ; i confesse the soule of man is a precious thing , it is as the ring of gold , yet if i doe not mistake my selfe ) religion is the most precious diamond in that ring . the busines of religion , why , it is the salvation of your souls , no lesse then your souls , and higher i cannot speak . and if this will not move you , at this time to lend out your strength , to preserve your lives , your estates , your religion , that which preserves your soules to eternity , i can say nothing more . but then sirs observe one thing , there is not onely this dignity in religion that may challenge all that you are and have ; but there is likewise an efficacy in religion : it is one of the best masters , and one of the best fathers , true religion is . what you lay out to preserve it , that one day will returne to preserve you . i have ever thought our religion to be our shield ; and as he said of his shield , so religion will say to you , defend me , and i will defend you . it is our shield , why , preserve your shield , you preserve your selfe : o that this large auditory would but remember two or three things , that i will speake unto you . it is better ( friends ) to keep your religion with the expence of all you have , then to keep all you have with the losse of one dram of religion ; and if you should quit the preservation of religion , you shall lose in the event , both religion and your selves too . there will be a double losse ; you may perhaps for the present be at a double cost to keep up religion , but you shall be at a treble losse if you lose religion ; you shall lose your lives , you shall lose the estates that you keep , and you shall lose your soules too ; and if any thing keeps you , it is religion . for if any thing keeps god , that keeps all , it is the keeping of religion . now sirs , a● this argument ( besides al that 〈…〉 for in truth , they have left me almost naked , that i have nothing to say ; as this argument ) ▪ may revive those affections that have been stirred up already , so methinkes , if you looke but upon the very condition of the church this day , i professe unto you , it will break your hearts ; and therefore may certainly open your purses this day : why , ( friends ) if i am able , i may not deny , no , not one day , nor the second day , nor the third day , nor any time , i must not deny to help a poor lazarus ; i must not see lazarus to starve and die at my doores , if that i am able to helpe a poore christian : why , if my bowells must extend themselves , i● 〈◊〉 helpe must extend it selfe to one christian , how shall i , how can i see , the churches of jesus christ , for to ▪ gaspe and give up the ghost at the feet of bloud ? there are two sorts of bloud which will lye heavie upon my soule , if that i should suffer the guilt of them to be upon my soul ▪ there is the bloud of christ , and the bloud of the churches of christ : if abel● bloud , the bloud of a single person , was so heavie upon ●ain , what will the bloud of 〈◊〉 church , of all the churches of christ , let downe upon our fonts ▪ if we should now falle to help the churches of christ ▪ but if there were no other 〈…〉 with you ▪ but onely something that might concerns your selves , i professe , as i am satisfied in my owns spirit , so i am p●rswaded it were enough to perswade you . why , ( friends ) you have done already , ( i speak not to flatter you , you 〈…〉 already ) more then all the land hath done , even to the preservation of all the land , nay more then all the christian world hath done to preserve the cause of christ . and let me tell you , that god hath not been behinde hand with you , god hath looked upon you , as much ( i meane this city ▪ god hath looked upon this city , 〈…〉 if not more , then upon all the land besides . and ●ruly , if you will cast east up all accounts betwixt god and your selves , though you have done very much , yet you are in arre●s ages still unto god ; god is still before-hand with mercies ▪ though in mercy he hath stirred up your hearts to doe thus . these are three things methinks , wherein the lord hath shewed himselfe to you , that may for ever engage your hearts , with all alacrity to spend , and to be spent for his cause : why , the one is , he never would to this day suffer the destroyer , notwithstanding all their intentions , ( he would never suffer the destroyer ) to enter into this city ; he hath still diverted them , as you have observed by some admirable acts of providence , when their resolutions have been to come to this place , ( the lord knowes in what condition you had been by this day , if providence had not ( at one time especially ) diverted them from it ; but notwithstanding all this , god hath not suffered them to this day , to shoot one arrow into your city . but then there is another thing ; as the lord hath not to this day suffered them to come in a publike hostile way , so he hath from time to time discovered all the treacheries , plots , and designes against you . when the enemy could not destroy you above board , but thought to undermine your lives and states , and all ( i need not say much to revive your memories , ) of late dayes , did god unknowne to you , deliver you from destruction , and should you now be backward to doe for this god , that hath preserved all that you have , and all that you are ? nay , consider one thing more ; he hath in all the publike services ; wherein indeed , if any people in the land deserve our acknowledgements and honour , this city hath got it from the whole land . but this is that i was saying , god hath in all the publike services and battails which have of late been fought in the land , god hath hanged the shield of salvation upon your shoulders , he hath been pleased to cast all the glory , not onely of preservation , but of the great successe , and honour , and victory , god hath cast it upon the people of london . and will you , that god hath defended all this while ; will you that god hath preserved from secret treachery ; will you , that god hath given hearts all this while to stand for god above all the people of the earth : will you that god hath done so much for in the times of battaile , more then for all the rest , wil you fail now to do for god ? god forbid , i beseech you rather that your hearts may be doubled and trebled for that god that is so good to you . and not to trouble you long , because the truth is , i am confident there needs no more to be said , you long rather who should most shew his affection at this time to preserve all : why , there is one thing more that might bee spoken too , that is , touching our brethren of scotland : why , so many things have been said already , that i can say nothing . our condition ( worthy sirs , our condition ) of england , mee thinks it is so like the condition of that poore man , that went between jericho and jerusalem , there the priest hee passes by on the one side , never so much as lookes upon him ; our priests and popish party ; and another sordid party that cleaves to them , they doe not so much as consider the lamentable losse of this poore kingdom of england ; the levite he came , and looked on indeed , but hee passes by : i pray god it ●ee not laid to the charge of some churches abroad , to whom wee have been helpfull , that they can have eares , to heare of our distresses , and wounds , but have not hands at all to help us , whether they have tongues to pity us , wee know not ; onely there is the samaritan ( sirs , the samaritan ) that saw this wounded man , and that had compassion , and that went to him , and that bound up his wounds , and that powred in oyle and wine ; truly ( sirs ) the samaritans that wee finde on earth , ( for our great physitian in heaven , wee blesse him still for looking upon us ; but the samaritans , the onely samaritans that wee have on earth ) they are our brethren in scotland ; o the tears that they have shed for poore england ! o the prayers that they have in solemn manner , from time to time , sent up to heaven for poor england ! o the petitions that they unknown for a long time to us , did direct unto his majesty , if it had been possible to take up all differences ! and now yet again , as if their inward compassions , as if their prayings to heaven , as if their petitionings to man were nothing , so sensible , so affectionate are they , to live with us , to dye with us , that they are ready to come in , to adventure their dearest lives , to save our lives ; why ( friends , why ) what will move your hearts , if this doth not move your hearts ? i doe professe it is the greatest equity under heaven , to lend our estates , some of our moneys to them , that are not unwilling to venture their lives for us . i know many objections might bee made ; you have done much already , and the summe is great ; i say no more , there is nothing great , to a minde that is great , and the cause is great , and though the summe of money bee great , yet their love is greater , then all you can lay out to answer their love ; and say not ( grumbling ) wee have done often and often ; i say to you , as christ said to him that asked him , how often must i forgive my brother ▪ why , 70 times 7 times ; so will i say for this publique cause , you must doe , and you must doe , and yet you must doe , and yet you must doe , as long as there is a penny in thy purse , as long as there is strength in thy hand , as long as there is breath in thy body , you must bee all servants to christ , and servants to the churches of jesus christ . and so i beseech the god of heaven , that what hath been delivered unto you this day , ( and much hath been spoken , i think as much as possibly can unto men ) that it may bee effectuall , to move your hearts , that what is done , may bee speedily done , and fully done , lest wee bee for ever undone ; nay , that wee may bee preserved , and not only wee , but all the churches of god preserved . and the lord of heaven make impression upon your hearts . finis . a speech by the marquesse of argile to the honourable lords and commons in parliament. 25. june 1646. with a paper concerning their full consent to the propositions to be presently sent to his majesty for a safe and well grounded peace. die veneris 26. junii 1646. ordered by the lords in parliament assembled, that the marquesse of argiles speech, with the paper concerning the propositions, be forthwith printed and published. jo. brown cler. parliamentorum. argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a75564 of text r200912 in the english short title catalog (thomason e341_23). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 18 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 7 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a75564 wing a3666 thomason e341_23 estc r200912 99861532 99861532 113669 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a75564) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 113669) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 55:e341[23]) a speech by the marquesse of argile to the honourable lords and commons in parliament. 25. june 1646. with a paper concerning their full consent to the propositions to be presently sent to his majesty for a safe and well grounded peace. die veneris 26. junii 1646. ordered by the lords in parliament assembled, that the marquesse of argiles speech, with the paper concerning the propositions, be forthwith printed and published. jo. brown cler. parliamentorum. argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. england and wales. parliament. house of lords. scotland. parliament. [2], 10 p. printed for iohn wright at the kings head in the old bayley., london: : 27 june 1646. includes "a paper delivered in from the commissioners of scotland, concerning the propositions", dated at end: iune 25. 1646. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -peace -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a75564 r200912 (thomason e341_23). civilwar no a speech by the marquesse of argile to the honourable lords and commons in parliament. 25. june 1646.: with a paper concerning their full c argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of 1646 3085 2 0 0 0 0 0 6 b the rate of 6 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the b category of texts with fewer than 10 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-03 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-04 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2007-04 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a speech by the marquesse of argile to the honourable lords and commons in parliament . 25. june 1646. with a paper concerning their full consent to the propositions to be presently sent to his majesty for a safe and well grounded peace . die veneris 26. junii 1646. ordered by the lords in parliament assembled , that the marquesse of argiles speech , with the paper concerning the propositions , be forthwith printed and published . jo. brown cler. parliamentorum . london : printed for iohn wright at the kings head in the old bayley . 27 june 1646. the marquesse of argyles speech to the grand committee , concerning propositions of peace to be sent to his majesty . my lords and gentlemen : though i have had the honour to be named by the kingdom of scotland , in all the commissions which had relation to this kingdom , since the beginning of this war ; yet i had never the happinesse to be with your lordships till now , wherein i reverence gods providence , that he hath brought me hither at such an opportunity , when i may boldly say , it is in the power of the two kingdoms , yea , i may say , in your lordships power to make us both happy , if you make good use of this occasion , by setling religion , the peace and vnion of these kingdoms . the work of reformation in these kingdoms , is so great a work , as no age nor history can parallel since christs daies , for no one nation had ever such a reformation set forth unto them , much lesse three kingdoms , so that this generation may truly think themselves happy , if they can be instrumentall in it . and as the work is very great , so it cannot be expected , but it must have great and powerfull enemies ; not only flesh and blood which hate to be reformed , but likewise principalities and powers , the rulers of the darknesse of this world , and spirituall wickednesses in high places . as the dangers are great , we must look the better to our duties , and the best way to performe these , is to keep us by the rules which are to be found in our nationall covenant , principally the word of god , and in its owne place , the example of the best reformed churches ; and in our way we must beware of some rocks , which are temptations both upon the right , and upon the left hand , so that we must hold the middle path . vpon the one part , we would take heed , not to settle lawlesse liberty in religion , whereby , in stead of vniformity , we should set up a thousand heresies and schismes , which is directly contrary and destructive to our covenant . vpon the other part , we are to looke that we persecute not piety and peaceable men , who cannot through scruple of conscience , come up in all things to the common rule ; but that they may have such a forbearance as may be according to the word of god , may consist with the covenant , and not be destructive to the rule it selfe , nor to the peace of the church and kingdom , wherein i will insist no further , either to wrong your lordships patience or judgements , who i doubt not will be very carefull to do every thing according to our covenant . as to the other point , concerning the peace and vnion of the kingdoms , i know it is that which all professe they desire , i hope it is that all do ayme at ; sure i am , it is that which all men ought to study and endeavour . and i thinke it not amisse to remember your lordships of some former experiences , as an argument to move us to be wise for the future . if the kingdome of england in the 1640 yeare of god , then sitting in parliament , had concurred , as they were desired , against the kingdome of scotland , no question we had been brought to many difficulties , which , blessed be god , was by the wisdome of the honourable houses prevented . so likewise when this kingdome was in difficulties , if the kingdome of scotland had not willingly , yea cheerfully , sacrificed their peace to concurre with this kingdome , your lordships all know what might have been the danger . therefore let us hold fast that vnion which is so happily established betwixt us , and let nothing make us again two , who are so many waies one , all of one language , in one island , all under one king , one in religion , yea one in covenant ; so that in effect we differ in nothing but in the name ( as brethren do ) which i wish were also removed , that we might be altogether one , if the two kingdoms shall think fit ; for i dare say , not the greatest kingdom in the earth can prejudice both so much as one of them may do the other . i will forbeare at this time to speak of the many jealousies i heare are suggested , for as i do not love them , so i delight not to mention them , onely one i cannot forbeare to speak of , as if the kingdome of scotland were too much affected with the kings interest . i will not deny but the kingdome of scotland , by reason of the raigne of many kings his progenitors over them , hath a naturall affection to his majesty , whereby they wish he may be rather reformed then ruined ; yet experience may tell , their personall regard to him has never made them forget that common rule , the safety of the people is the supreme law . so likewise their love to monarchy makes them very desirous that it may be rather regulated then destroyed , which i hope i need not to mention further to your lordships , who i trust are of the same minde . i know likewise there are many jealousies and unjust aspersions cast upon our armies in england and ireland , i can , if it were needfull , presently produce heads of a declaration intended by the army in england , for vindicating themselves from such injuries , and shewing the clearnesse of their resolutions and integrity , both in the cause , and towards this kingdome , wherein their undertakings and coming in at such a season of the yeare , their hard sufferings , and constant endeavours since , may be sufficient testimonies . therefore i am the more bold to desire your lordships , that so long as they stay in england ( which i wish may be for a short time ) they may be supplyed with some moneys , and their quarters enlarged , least their lying in too narrow quarters , make the burthen insupportable to that exhausted corner of the country where they now remain and so beget outcries against them , when they are not able to discharge their quarters , as other armies within the kingdome . as for the army in ireland , i have beene an eye-witnesse to their sufferings , and so may speake of it likewise upon certaine knowledge , that never men have suffered greater hardships , who might have been provided , for they have lived many times upon a few beanes measured out to them by number , and never had any other drinke but water . and when they were in some better condition , they had but an irish peck of rough oats for a whole week . and now at their best condition , when they are quartered upon the country ( which is able to entertaine them only for a very short time ) they have only an irish peck of oatmeal● , or a shilling in the ten dayes , both for meat and drinke . therefore according to the many desires given in to the honourable houses for that end , i humbly entreat that your lordships will take care to provide for them , so long as it is thought fit they remaine in that kingdome . for a renewed testimony of our earnest desires to comply with the honourable houses for setling the peace of these kingdoms so much longed for , we doe returne unto your lorships the propositions of peace ( which we received on tuesday last ) with our consent thereunto , wishing they may be hasted to his majestie , who hath so often called for them . and i likewise offer to your lordships the copy of his majesties letter to my lord of ormond , discharging him from any further medling in any treaty with the rebels in ireland , i hope in order to his majesties further condescending to the setling of that proposition concerning ireland , and the rest of the propositions now to be sent unto him . another paper there is which concernes the supplying of the scottish armies in england and ireland , and the perfecting of the accompts betweene the kingdoms , together with a letter from generall monro to the committee of estates of the kingdome of scotland , concerning the state of affaires in ireland . all which when your lordships have considered , i trust you will take such course therein as ma● satisfie our just desires , may put an end to our present troubles , and settle these kingdomes in a happy peace . a paper delivered in from the commissioners of scotland , concerning the propositions . it is a twelve moneth since we did earnestly presse the sending of propositions to the king for a safe and well-grounded peace ; in answer whereunto the honourable houses were pleased to acquaint us , that they had resolved propositions should be sent to his majesty , but did intend to make some alterations in the former propositions , and after eight or nine months deliberation , we received from the honourable houses some of those propositions ; and though we did finde therein very materiall additions , alterations , and omissions , which for their great importance , and the interest of the kingdome of scotland therein , might very well have required the delay of an answer untill the estates of that kingdome had been consulted ; yet so unwilling were we to retard the meanes of peace , that in a fortnights time we returned an answer upon the whole propositions ; and the houses of parliament not resting satisfied therewith , in lesse then ten daies we prepared a further answer ; wherein we did very much comply with the desires of the honourable houses , especially in the matter of setling the militia of england , and ireland , and in other things did shew our readinesse to heare , or propose such expedients as might determine any differences , so that in a whole yeares time the propositions have not remained in our hands the space of foure weekes , which we onely mention to cleare our proceedings from mistakes and aspersions ; and the houses having now after two moneths farther deliberation , delivered unto us upon the 23. of this instant june , all the propositions they intend to send to the king at this time ; we doe , without any delay , returne such an answer and resolution thereupon , as will be unto the present and future generations , one undeniable testimony ( besides many others ) of the integrity and faithfulnesse of the kingdome of scotland in their solemne league and covenant , of their love to peace , and earnest desire to satisfie their brethren of england in those things which concerne the good and government of this kingdome ; being further resolved touching the kingdome of scotland , that as nothing of single or sole concernment to that nation did engage them in this warre , so nothing of that nature shall continue the same . although these propositions now to be sent doe much differ from the propositions formerly agreed upon by the parliaments of both kingdomes , and the most materiall additions , omissions , and alterations are in such particulars as concerne the joynt interest , and mutuall confidence and conjunction of both kingdoms , which were , as we conceive , much better provided for , and strengthned by the former propositions then by these . although the particular propositions presented by us , concerning the kingdome of scotland are not yet agreed unto by the houses of parliament , as was offered in their papers of the tenth of aprill . although divers propositions of joynt concernment be now superseded , and the sending of them delayed to a more convenient time , as is expressed in the votes of both houses of the twenty sixth of march ; and although ( which is to us more then all the rest ) those ordinances of parliament unto which the fifth and sixth propositions doe relate , ( and were therefore communicated unto us upon our desire to see what the houses had already agreed upon concerning religion ) doe not containe the establishment of such a reformation of religion , and uniformity as was expected , and was the chiefe end of our engagement in this warre ; and as all these ordinances put together come short of what we wished , so there are some particulars which we conceive to be inconsistent with the word of god , and the example of the best reformed churches , and therefore cannot in our consciences consent unto them ; which particulars were expressed to both houses in the remonstrance of the commissioners of the church of scotland of the date , march 26. 1646. yet neverthelesse we do so earnestly desire and so highly value the easing of the heavy pressures under which both kingdomes groane , and the bringing of this bloudy lasting warre to a speedy and happy end , considering with-all that not onely the booke of common prayer and the prelaticall government are abolished , & a common directory of worship established in both kingdoms , but that likewise the ordinances afore mentioned do containe divers parts of a positive reformation and uniformity in church-government , unto which we formerly gave our consent in our answer upon the whole propositions of peace , of the 20. of april , and for so happy begining , and so good a foundation laid for the future , we heartily thank god , and do acknowledge the zeale , piety and wisedome of the honourable houses therin , remembring also that those ordinances doe not containe the whole moddell of church government and that the houses have beene pleased to expresse [ that it cannot be expected that a perfect rule in every particular should be setled all at once , but that there will be neede of suppliments , & aditions , and happily of alterations , in some things , as experience shall bring to light the necessity thereof ] upon these considerations as we doe cheerefully consent to many materiall parts of these propositions so we resolve to make no let , but to give way to the sending of such other particulars therein contained , with which we are unsatisfied in the matters for the reasons formerly represented to both houses , of which some still stand in force , though others of them be taken away by the new expedients it being alwayes understood that our not dissenting from , nor our opposing of the sending of the propositions as they now stand , shall be no prejudice nor impediment to all or any one of the articles of the solemne league and covenant , especially to the first article , concerning the preservation of the reformed religion in the church of scotland in doctrine , worship , discipline , and government , against our common enemies , the reformation of religion in the kingdomes of england and ireland in doctrine , worship , discipline , and government , according to the word of god , and example of the best reformed churches , and the bringing of the churches of god in the three kingdomes , to the neerest conjunction and uniformity in religion , confession of faith , forme of church-government , directary , for worship , and catechising ; which thing both kingdomes are by covenant oblieged sincerely and really to endeavour , and that not for a time , but constantly , so that neither of the kingdomes can be loosed or acquitted from the most strait and solemne obligation of their continued and constant endeavouring these good ends so farre as any of them is not yet attained , it being also understood that our concurrence to the sending of the propositions shall be without prejudice to any agreement or treaty betweene the kingdomes , and shall not infringe any engagement made to the kingdome of scotland , nor be any hindrance to our insisting upon the other propositions already made knowne to the houses ; and it being understood that it is not our judgment that every particular and circumstance of these propositions is of so great importance to those kingdomes as peace and warre should depend thereupon . upon these grounds which we make known only for clearing our consciences , and for discharging our selves in the trust put upon us , without the least thought of retarding the so much longed for peace , we condisend and agree that the propositions as they are now resolved upon be in the name of both kingdomes presented to the king , whose heart we beseech the lord wholly to incline to the councels of truth and peace . iune 25. 1646. finis . act anent the inbringing of money scotland. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a11663 of text s969 in the english short title catalog (stc 21910.5). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a11663 stc 21910.5 estc s969 23107196 ocm 23107196 26245 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a11663) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 26245) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1781:4) act anent the inbringing of money scotland. 1 broadside. by iames bryson, printed at edinburgh : 1640. imperfect: creased and torn with slight loss of print. reproduction of original in the henry e. huntington library and art gallery. eng money -law and legislation -scotland. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649. a11663 s969 (stc 21910.5). civilwar no act anent the inbringing of money. scotland 1640 1142 28 0 0 0 0 0 245 f the rate of 245 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the f category of texts with 100 or more defects per 10,000 words. 2007-08 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-08 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-09 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-09 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion act anent the in bringing of money . at edinbvrgh 〈◊〉 fifteenth day of iuly16●● yeares : these of the committee 〈…〉 , poynding , and caption be execute against collectours ▪ valuers , and others who doeth not their duetie or make payment of their tenth part in manner after specified , viz. 2. against the collectours for not making compt , ●eakoning , and payment of what they have received , and giveth not in the names and roll of these who have not payed . 3. against the valuers for not valuing , conforme to the said act of parliament which is either upon the valuers oathes , or upon the heri●ours oathes , or upon the heritours declaration , under their hands , with certification : what they conceale shall be confiscat ; and for not delivery of the saids valuations . 4. against the not payers of the said tenth part , by apprehending their persons , poynding their owne proper goods , or poynding their ground . 5. and because after all ordinarie meanes are used , to make men pay what is due , yet such is the unwillingnesse and delaying of some , to the evil example of others , that money cometh not in to serve the present time . therefore it is thought fit for maintenance of the armie presently on foote , for preservation of the religion , and liberties of this kingdome : that all those who have any moneys , and shall len the same for the publick use in maner after specified , viz. these within the shyrefdome of edinburgh , hadingtoun , and linlithgow , within foure dayes after intimation : these of the shyrefdome of aire , stirling , lanerke , renfrew , fyffe , angus , perth , bervicke , roxburgh , peibles , and selkirke , within six dayes after intimation made thereof . and siclike , these of the shyrefdome of aberdene , bamfe , murray , and innernesse , within ten dayes after intimation : such money as shall be so lent , shall be free of any common burthen , by detention of any part of their annuelrent , but shall have their full annuelrent free of any burthen or detention . 6. secondly , they shall have full annuelrent from the lenning thereof , as the same shal● bee received within the said spaces respective forsaid to the terme of vvhitsonday nexto-come as for a whole yeare , notwithst●●ding a good part of the terme is past . 7. thirdly , they shall have such securitie , as they shall please , designe , or crave themse●ves ; so that what persons they shall crave to bind for what summe they len , shall give their personall bands for the same : and these persons who shall bind to them , shall have the whole presbyterie or shyre bound for their reliefe : and the presbyterie or shyre shall have the estate bound to relieve or repay them . 8. and siclike , if it be tryed that any have moneys , and will not len the same ; it is ordained that the act of parliament bee put to execution against them , especially in that point : that all these who can bee tryed to have money , and will not len the same as said is : the delatours and finders out , to have the one halfe , and the other halfe to be confiscat for the publicke . 9. and sicklike , it is appointed , that all the silver-worke , and gold-worke in scotland , as well to burgh as land wart , as well pertaining to noble-men , barrons , and burgesses , as others of whatsoever degree and quali●●e they be of , be given in to the committee at edinburgh , or these they shall appoint to receive the same upon such securitie for rep●yment as the said committee and they shall agree at the prices following . and for this effect , the committee of war within each s●yrefdome , and the magistrats within burgh , with concurrence of the ministerie ( who must exhort and give warning out of the pu●pits to the paroshioners ) are appointed to call before them any such persons as hath any silver or gold work , that inventar may ●e made of the weight & spaces thereof , and securitie given for the same , with declaration alwayes . like as it is hereby declare● , that these who have any silver or gold worke , which they crave rather to keepe for their owne use , than deliver the same ●o be coyned , shall have power to redeeme the same at the prices following , viz. fiftie six shillings for the unce of scots silve● worke , fiftie eight shillings for everie unce of english silver worke ; and thirtie foure pounds six shillings eight pennies for ●very unce of gold : the same beeing either produced before the committee at edinburgh , or before the committee of war in each s●yrefdome , or before the magistrates of every burgh , and inventar made thereof , or else declared by the parties under their hands , and money presently payed at the rates and prices foresaid ; for the which money securitie shall bee given for repayment thereof , a●d free of any burthen , as said is . and incase any hath double gilt worke , or curious wrought worke , and can not get m●ney to redeeme them , it is hereby declared , that the said gilt and curious worke beeing delivered to the said committee , shall ●ot be melted , or disponed upon before the terme of vvhitsonday next : betwixt and which time the owner thereof shall have po●er to redeeme the same at the prices foresaid , hee paying alwayes the annuelrent thereof , so long as the same shall lye unredeem●● . and the said silver or gold worke to be all given in , either to the committee of estate , or to the committee of warre within each ●hyrefdome , or presbyterie , or to the magistrates of each burgh , within eight dayes after intimation shall bee made thereof , ●●●her at the severall market crosses , or by towke of drum , or by advertisement from the ministers out of the pulpits : with certi●●cation , that these who shall not give in or redeemed the said silver 〈◊〉 gilt worke , within the said space , the same shall bee con 〈…〉 i 〈…〉 nt for the publicke use . printed at edinburgh by iames bryson , 1640. a short memorial of the sufferings and grievances past and present of the presbyterians in scotland particularly of them called by nick-name cameronians. shields, alexander, 1660?-1700. 1690 approx. 161 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 32 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a59965 wing s3434 estc r25753 09102270 ocm 09102270 42451 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a59965) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 42451) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1295:3) a short memorial of the sufferings and grievances past and present of the presbyterians in scotland particularly of them called by nick-name cameronians. shields, alexander, 1660?-1700. [4], 56 p. s.n.], [edinburgh? : 1690. reproduction of original in the british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church of scotland -history. covenanters. scotland -history -1660-1688. 2003-08 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-09 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-10 rina kor sampled and proofread 2003-10 rina kor text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-12 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a short memorial of the sufferings and grievances , past and present of the presbyterians in scotland : particularly of those of them called by nick-name cameronians . printed in the year , 1690. to the reader . it is not needful in the entry to give a deduction , either of the excellent establishments of religion and civil liberties , and provisions made for security of both , that our fathers obtained and enjoyed , by the mercy of god , under the patrociny of righteous rulers ; or of the deplorable demolishments of these invaluable intersts , since the unhappy re-introduction of prelacy and tyranny , which brought poperie to the very birth in this land , had it not pleased the most high god , by the interposition of the present king , as an instrument , to make it abortive . but it is very useful and pleasant , to remember that the reformation of the church of scotland , was sometimes as far celebrated among all the churches , as now it is depreciated incontempt and obscurity : among other peculiar eminencies of it above many other churches , she had this very early for the subject of her gloriation , through grace ; that at once and from the beginning , both , doctrine , worship , discipline and government were reformed , according to the pattern of the institutions of christ , to that degree of purity , that our very first reformers could assert , to the praise of grace , that no corruption was left in this church , that ever flowed from the man of sin. which , through the blessing of god upon the faithful and earnest labours and wrestling of his servants in the ministry , made such progress in a short time ; that not only the doctrine was perfectly purged of the leaven of popery , arminianisme , socinianisme &c. and all other heresies ; the worship , of all idolatry and superstition : but the discipline was impartially exercised , and the government reformed from diocesan prelacy , sectarian confusions , and erastian supremacy of the civil powers , and framed in the nearest conformity to the primitive apostolick pattern , according to the word of god , and example of the best reformed churches , in the presbyterial order , of congregational , classical , synodical , and national assemblies . in the preservation and observation of which beautiful order , making our church beautiful as tirzah , comely as jerufalem , terrible as an army with banners . this was also her priviledge and praise , which is the fruit of this government wheresoever it hath place , that she was once and for a long time , as much admired for union , as of late for divisions since these corruptions made a breach upon vs : her name was once called philadelphia among all the reformed churches ; and t was long since attested at that unhappy convention at perth , which attempted the introduction of some popish novations , in the year 1618. that from that backward , to the year 1558. there had been neither schisme nor heresie in this church ; as also from thence forward , the same might have been said , excepting the contentions which the prelates and malignants occasioned , until the fatal catastrophe . no church on earth had more purity , order , or vnity , and was freer of corruption , defection and division , that this church . this our renowned reformation in doctrine , worship , discipline and government , as it was founded on the law and the testimony of the god of heaven ; so it was confirmed by all the sanctions , ratifications and securities , that any right can be capable of among men : not only by many laws , penal , and statutory , established as bulworks , for preserving and defending it against all the forementioned adversaries ; by many constitutions and acts of general assemblies , ratified by parliaments : but by many , again and again renewed national and solemn covenants , sworn to the most high god by all ranks , from the king to the beggar , in all capacities and conditions . this testimony , for this covenanted reformation , so confirmed and established ; as it hath been transmitted to vs , through a long continued tract of many wrestling and sufferings , from our worthy ancestors , and sealed by much precious blood and the bonds and bondage of many faithful martyrs and confessors of christ , adhering to the same in our day ; so , as it was then and now stated and sealed , hath been and is thought by all the asserters of our reformation , to have such a near and clear connexion with the great concern of the crown-prerogatives , and imperial dignities of the prince of the kings of the earth , as head of his visible kingdom , whose incommunicable glory it is , without competitoor co-partner , either coordinate or subordinate , to institute his own government , prescribe his own laws , appoint his own ordinances ( which he will have observed without addition , dimunition or alteration , until his second coming ) and to constitute his own officers , cloathed only with his authority , and to be regulated only by his instructions in their ministerial function without any dependence on , subordination to , or indulgence from any man or angel , in the exercise thereof , under their master christ alone ; to whom it belongs as properly to rule the church his own free kingdom , according to the good pleasure of his own will , as it belongs to him to save his church by the merit of his own sufferings ; that our famous fathers , and such of their children as have been faithful in following their footsteps , have judged it a testimony worthy to sacrifice all their interests upon , in opposing and contending against all the invasions and vsurpations made upon these prerogatives of christ , and priviledges of his church , by poperie prelacy , and erastian supremacy , all condemned in the law of god , diseharged by the laws of the land , and abjured in our covenants national and solemn league ; as being highly derogatorie to the glory of christ , contradictory to his revealed will , offensive to his people , obstructive to the power , and destructive to the peace , purity and liberty of his precious gospel . now for adbering to this complex testimony , what have been the sufferings and grievances of presbyterians in general , and ours in particular since anno 1660 : from the popish ; prelatical and malignant party , is more fully demonstrated , ( with the principles and testimonie contended for by us , vindicated ) in naphtali , jus populi , the hind let loose , our informatory vindication , & the testimony against the toleration , given in by that faithful & zealous minister of christ , mr. james renwick ; and here summarly remonstrated . we had once a resolution , at the first appearance of the prince of orange ; who , under god , was the honoured instrument of our begun enlargement from them , to have addressed his highness with this same memorial : but that failing , after this long suspence in expectation of some redress of grievances , whereof we and many others have been in a great measure disappointed ; we have been induced to publish it in this iuncture , with an appendix of our present complaints of somethings that we understand to be wrong in the church , state , army and country , at the time of the writing thereof ; which was in the time , and upon occasion of the many adjournments of parliament : wherein perhaps something will occur , which may seem obliquely to reflect upon the government , when we complain of the ill administrations of many malignants in power : but as they are sad truths which cannot be denyed , and tho we may be charged with imprudence in speaking so freely what many thousands , and those of the surest friends the government hath , do think : so , however we be neither politicians nor flatterers , we think conscience and loyalty both , doth oblige us to speak what concerns the king and country both to hear . we do not blame the king for delaying the satisfaction that his people have long waited for , further than for permitting some into trust , who have abused him with misinformations of what they waited for , and with counsels to delay their satisfaction . nor are we jealous of his majesties sincere intentions to perform what he hath promised , and the estates demanded , as necessary for settling the church , securing laws , restoring liberties , and redressing grievances ; albeit many here complained of , have laboured to suggest grounds of such iealousie . we have got already so much advantage by the success of his heroick expedition ; and so many repeated assurances of his royal resolutions to fulfill his declaration and promises to our satisfaction ; none of which we can charge him with the breach of tho many of them are not yet accomplished ; that we should be very unworthy to iealouse his integrity . we consider his majestie , stated in very difficult and dangerous circumstances , since he interposed himself in our gap , between an angry god and a sinful provocking people ; wherein he hath to do with a potent enemy without , and many undermyning enemies about his hand , seeking to ensnare him in sin and expose him to ruine ; and hath in his two kingdoms of britain people of different interests and inclination , whom to govern will require great deliberation , and consequently occasion delayes : but we lay the blame where it should lye , on the malignants at court , council and parliament , who are seeking to betray him and us both . if some of these be exposed , and their old pranks discovered , and the grievous effects of their being so much in power hinted at ; we hope the candid reader will think it no ill service either to king or country . errata reader before thou peruse these sheets be pleased to help these escapes of the press ( omitting these of less note ) page 15. line 34. read encouraged . p. 17. 19. r. superadded by l. 25. r. equaling p. 34. col. 1. 9. r. 21 men and 5 women . p. 35 col. 2. l. 11. for douglas r. dundass . p. 36. col. 1. l 5 for mouat r. mewae . col. 2. l. 20 r. dundass , and l. 26. r. dundass . p. 39. l. 36. for orders r. order p. 48. l. 18. r. flowing . a short memorial of the grievances and sufferings of the presbyterians in scotland , since the year 1660. particularly of those of them called cameronians . after king charles returned from his exile , the first device , which the malignants then advanced to the highest places of trust fell upon , for overturning our religion , laws , and liberties , was to prevent and obstruct all access either to justice or mercy for such as they had a mind to destroy , and preclude all applications for a redress of grievances . hence , when some faithful ministers were drawing up a monitory supplication to the king , congratulating his return , and minding him of his covenant engagements and promises to promote and preserve the work of reformation ; the committee of states then siting , caused apprehend , and without hearing incarcerate them , for no other cause but that supplication : against which at that time there was no law ; and which all law and reason of the world will justifie , as the most innocent expedient of getting their just complaints heard and redressed , and the common priviledge of all men , which slavery it self cannot take away . yet as all men , and they themselves , could not but , see this a manifest subverting of the subjects liberty : so , in procureing a law to approve it afterwards , they made it worse and more illegal , in declaring petitions to be unlawful and seditious , carol. 2. parl. 2. sess. 2. act 2. hence no petition or remostrance of publick grievances , oppressing , and enslaving church or nation , either durst be offered , or could find access or acceptance , being interdicted and also punished very severely ; as in the instance of the grievances given in against lauderdale . nor durst prisoners tender the most innocent supplication , even for release or a more easie confinement , in any terms that seemed either to reflect on their severity , or represent the illegality of their prosecutions , or in the least to vindicate the cause they were suffering for ; which caused many afterwards to decline all petitioning , and choose rather to ly under the most unsupportable bondage , for fear of having it made more miserable . the next succeeding devices , to undermine and overturn our religion and liberty , were the mischiefs framed into law by the first session of the first parl : charles 2. held by the earl of middletoun 1661. wherein by the very first act thereof , all the members were involved in a conscience ensnaring and enslaving oath of absolute and implieite allegiance and supremacy , ( without the former usual limitations then standing unrepealed ) not only wronging parliaments in their priviledges , and the church in her liberties , but the lord jesus christ in his prerogative of supremacy , and headship over the church ; making the king a pope , and not only a church member ( as a magistrate ) or church officer , but the supreme architectonick head of the church . for refusing this afterwards , many ministers and others were banished ; several of them made to subscribe a bond to remove out of all his majesties dominions within a moneth , not to return under the pain of death ; and many kept in prison by the arbittary power of the council , beside the tenor and extent of their own wicked act thereupon . in the following acts of that same session of parliament , they advanced the kings prerogative to the highest pitch of absoluteness : and the acknowledgement of this vast and unlimited prerogative , in all particulars , was formed and imposed , charl : 2 : parl : 1. sess. 1. act 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 11. this was the foundation of all the succeeding tyranny , and source of the nations slavery ; and in it self a head of sufferings to several gentlemen and others , who could not in conscience subscribe or make that acknowledgement of such a prerogative ; which would manifestly have imported an approving of the first audacious and presumptuous effect and attempt of its power , exerted in rescinding and annulling at one blow all the righteous and legal establishments of the covenanted reformation , and all the acts made in favours thereof in all the parliaments and conventions of estates from the year 1640. to 1650. even those that the then king charles 1. approved , owned , and called . they rested not here , in a general or gradual unhinging of legal constitutions , made for security of our religion and liberty ; but then took advantage of the universal silent submission of the nation , to break down at once the carved work of the whole fabrick of the reformation as with axes and hammers , in that insolent effrontry and indignity against heaven , in making void the national and solemn league and covenants : which the church and state both in their representatives and members , did most solemnly swear and subscrive , for themselves and posterity : which , for the matter of them perpetually obliging , for the manner so religiously engaged into , and for their ends so glorious , no power on earth can dispense with , disannull , or disable : which not only the lord from heaven did ratify , by the conversion of many thousands , and vouchsafing his presence gracious in ordinances and propitious in providences at the subscriving of them ; but in this land , at the inauguration of the king charles 2. ( being the condition upon which he was admitted to the government ) the latter of these covenants was ratified and established , as the great fundamental law of the kingdom , whereon all the rights and priviledges either of king or people are principally bottomed and secured , and as the very magna charta of our reformation . yet this not only they did break in heaven-daring boldness ; but to flatter the king in making way for prelacy , tyranny , and popery , and to indulge the licentiousness of some debauched nobles , who could not endure the yoke of christs government according to his institutions there covenanted to be preserved ; they enacted and declared , it should have no obligation or binding force any farther ; and that none should henceforth require the renewing of it carol. 2. parl. 1. sess. 1. act. 7. and afterwards , that the national covenant and solemn league and covenant were in themselves unlawful oaths : and therefore annulled all acts and constitutions ecclesiastical or civil approving them , parl. 1. sess. 2. act. 2. and not only so but in contempt of heaven , they caused burn them by the hand of the hangman . for adhering unto these sacred , inviolable , and indispensible engagements , the sufferings of presbyterians have in a great measure been stated since that time . the next wicked project was , to remove out of the way all who were eminent instruments , in promoting that work of reformation now about to be razed , and whom they feared would obstruct their antichristian and tyrannical designs , both in the state and in the church . accordingly the noble marquess of argyle was beheaded for no other alledged cause but for his complyance with the english , when they had made a conquest of our land , wherein also the judges that condemned him were socii criminis . and afterwards , the lord wariston upon the same pretence : and for the same pretended cause , many other gentlemen , above 800 were arbitrarly and exorbitantly fined ; some under divers stiles twice over . such of the ministry also as had been most faithful & servent for the interests of their master and of his church were cruelly and most illegally removed ; some by death , as famous mr. guthrie , for asserting the kingly prerogative of christ in opposition to the erastian supremacy encroaching thereupon ; others by banishment , for giving faithful warning , and protesting against the defection of that time , thereby only contraveening a wicked proclamation discharging them to speak against the proceedings of the state ; others indicta causa , without access to give in their defences , or to get so much as an extract of their sentence . after they had thus prepared their way , by the very first act of the second sess of the first parl. anno 1662. they reestablished and redintegrated their dagon of episcopal prelacy , with all its inseparably concomitant retinue of pride , perjury , simony , sacriledge , and intollerable usurpations and corruptions ; and wreathed again about our neck that yoke which neither our fathers , who wrestled much against it , nor we were nor ever shall be able to bear : which as it is insupportable to , and hated of all the godly ( and desirable to none , but dissolute & debauched persons , who cannot endure christs discipline impartially exercised , and do find incouragement under the wings of prelacy ) being in its original both the mother and daughter , root and off-spring , cause and effect of popery ; a device which advanced the man of sin to his hight in the world , and the only remaining support of his hopes of recovering these kingdoms , by christs conquest rescued from his tyranny ; in its nature , evidently eversive of the very nature of gospel church government ; in its ends only adapted to bring the church into a slavish dependence on & subordination to an usurped supremacy of the magistrate , which is a change only of the pope not of the popedom ; and in its effects , alwayes found to be most deplorably destructive to the purity and power of religion , and peace of its sincere profession , and that which hath introduced and encouraged impiety , error , schism , and persecution in these lands : so by all the sober and judicious that have known the case of this church and kingdom it hath been acknowledged to be the source and spring of all our sorrows and grievances , under which we have groaned these 28 years . this abjured prelacy , as it was introduced by manifest perjury and persidy , so it was at first erected and hitherto advanced and supported on such a foundation , as might bear out and justify the contrivers and promoters of it , as well in all attemprs to set up popery it self : the act establishing it declaring , the disposal of the government of the church doth properly belong to his majesty as an inherent right of the crown , by vertue of his royal prerogative and supremacy in causes ecclesiastick ; an usurpation upon the kingdom of christ equivalent to any that ever the papacy it self durst aspire unto over the government of the church . the first effect whereof was by another act 1 sess. 2 parl. carol. 2. the restoring the old exploded bondage of parronages ; another old relict of popish slavery , depriving the church of the freedom of calling and choosing their own pastors : and dispossessing all the ministers , who entered since the year 1640. of their churches and benefices , possessed without the presentations of patrons after which , by the instigation of the prelates , the council passed an act october 1662 , whereby above 300 ministers were violently put out of their charges , and their congregations laid desolate , without all legal procedure , without either accusation or citation , conviction or sentence , or a hearing allowed to them . and therefore for simple nonconformity , and refusing subjection to and taking collations from the prelates , the rest of the ministers , in great numbers , were , with cruelty more beseeming turks , thrust from their labours and banished , with a nice and strange confinement ; 20. miles from their own parish church , six miles from a cathedral , and three miles from a burgh . in whose room succeded , a swarm of ignorant and scandalous apostates , the prelates and their mercenary substitutes the curats : against whom such charges might alwayes have been adduced , and to this day such accusations are in readiness to be produced , to any competent ludicatories , that shall be called to cognosce upon them , of the pernicious errors of popery , socinianisme , and arminianisme maintained by many of them , abominable adulteries committed by others of them , the profanity , sensuality , and debauchery , oppression and persecution of godliness and good men chargeable on the generallity of them , and perjury in breach of covenant , and schismatical intrusion without consent of the church owned of all of them , and ungodliness by them transfused over all the land ; as could not but make them detested of all , as the greatest stain to be suffered in a reformed church . upon the back of this , by the instigation of the prelates , who scorned to be and one , no not by iulian the apostate , in surpressing religion , they proceeded to poyson all the seminaries of learning : ordaining , in act. 9. sess. 2. parl. 1. carol. 2. that none be masters in any university , except they both take the oath of supremacy , and submit to and own prelacy ; or be so much as a pedagogue to children , without the prelates licence . by which course honest and learned men were brought to considerable straits and sufferings ; and ungodly and unsound masters had access and encouragement , to corrupt the youth with perverse and malignant principles , to the great and observable detriment and decrement of religion , learning , sobriety , and morality in the nation . the next contrivance was , to corrupt all the fountains of judicature . and for this end it was enacted , act 5. sess. 2. parl. 1. carol. 2. that all persons , in any publick trust or office whatsoever , should subscribe the declaration , renouncing and abjuring the covenants ; and that not only under the certified penalty of forefaulting the priviledges of magistrates ; but also of all the priviledges of merchandizing , trading , and others , belonging to a burgess , act 3. sess. 3. parl 1. carol. 2. whereby perjury was made the chief and indispensable qualification , and conditio sine qua non of all that were capable of exercising any power in church or state ; contrate to known laws yet unrepealed , which make them that are guilty of perjury , incapable of being intrusted with any publick administration in the kingdom . the parliaments thus corrupted , and instigated by the bishops and curates , establish wicked laws pressing conformity . and in the very first of them , made such a streach , beyond all bounds of charity , justice , reason , or humanity , that they made all addresses to god or man , remonstrating such grievances and reflecting on such proceedings to be criminal ; declaring petitions to be seditious , and discharging all writing , printing , remonstrating , praying , or preaching , shewing any dislike of the kings absolute prerogative and supremacy in causes ecclesiastick , or of the government of the church by bishops , act 2. sess. 2. par. 1. carol. 2. and act 4 ibid. they not only prohibited any to preach in publick , or so much as in families without the prelates licences but discharged all private meetings in houses for religious exercise , of such as could not in conscience give their countenance to the curats service in churches . then in the 3 sess. act. 2. they declare , that all non conformed ministers , that shall presume to exercise their ministry , shall be punished as seditious persons : and require of all , in acknowledgement of and complyance with his majesties government ecclesiastical , that they give their concurrence and countenance to the curates , and attend their meetings for worship : ordaining , that whosoever shall withdraw , shall incur , each nobleman , gentleman , or heretor , the loss of a fourth part of their years rent , every yeoman the loss of a fourth or under of his moveables , each burgess the loss of his burge-ship , with the fourth of his moveables , with a reference to the council , for farther punishment , and more effectual execution : which the council very vigorously prosecuted , in emitting most rigorous proclamations after that : some requiring all to keep their parioch churches under the pain of 20. shil . toties quoties ; some discharging all preaching , praying , or hearing in families , where three or some more then the domesticks were found , as unlawful conventicles ; others certifying , that all such meetings , not authorised , shall be punished by pecunial and corporal pains , at the arbittement of the council ; other commanding all masters of families , heretors , landlords , and magistrates of burghs , ro cause their servants , dependents , tennents , taxmen , cottars , and all under their charge , to submit and conform to the curates their ministry . for putting these laws in execution , the king erected a high commission court ; consisting of some prelates , noblemen , magistrates of burghs , and some souldiers , impowered , by vertue of his prerogative royal and supremacy , to suspend , deprive , and excommunicat , as also to punish by fining , confining , and incarcerating , all keepers of conventicles , and all non conformists : a hotch-potch mongrel monster of a judicatory , authorized by the prerogative against the laws of god and man , meddling with causes and censures ecclesiastick and civil , most illegal and arbitrary , both for its constitution and procedure : whereby persons brought before them were made to answer super inquirendis , contrare to express standing law ioc. 6. parl. 10. act. 13. anno. 1585. without either libel or accuser , or admitting legal defences except they take the oaths ; and sentenced with stigmatizing , scourging , banishment , deportation and slaverie to barbados , &c. by orders from this court , especially from the prelates , whose country sides were in a great measure depopulate for non-conformity , by souldiers ; sometimes besetting the churches , where honest ministers were not yet ejected , and forcing all within to pay fines ; sometimes going to the curates churches , and amerciating all the absents in such fines as they pleased ; sometimes by force driving all to church , beating , wounding , and binding the reousants ; sometimes exacting exorbitant fines by plunder , to the harassing and making havock of whole country sides ; sparing sometimes complyers no more then recusants ; and punishing husbands for their wives , parents for their children ; yea doubling and tripling the same exactions after payment ; yet compelling them sometimes , to subscribe an acknowledgement that the captain had used them civilly and discreetly ; then after all , apprehending , imprisoning , scourging some , stigmatizing others , and sending them to forreign parts , that would not for all this conform . hereupon , being outwearied with intollerable oppressions , a small party of dissenters were partly compelled , and party by a surprise of providence engaged , to run together for their own defence , at pentland anno 1666. where , after the defeat , the prisoners that were taken upon quarter and solemn parol to have their life spared , were treacherously given up to be condemned , the very manner of their execution being first determined and described before arraigment , and cruelly hanged ; their heads being set up at edinburgh , glasgow , air , dumsreis , and at hamiltoun ; turks would have blushed to have seen the like . among the rest one eminent minister , mr. hugh mckail , for having but a sword tho not present at the fight , was first cruelly tortured with the iron boots , and afterwards execute to the death . at their executions drums were beat that they might not be heard ; a barbarity never known in scotland before ; and rarely heard of except in the duke d' alvas murdering the protestants in the netherlands ; but frequently used almost at all the executions since of our martyred brethren in this land. immediatly hereafter souldiers were sent out on free quarter , to examine men by tortures , threatning to kill or rost alive all that would not delate all they knew accessary to that rising : who accordingly , by fire matches and other tortures , forced women to discover their husbands and other relations , although they knew not it they were there ; stripped them who reset the fugitives , and thrusted them in crouds to prisons in cold and nakedness ; and some they murdered without process , that would not , because they could not , discover those persecuted people ; yea and drove away the goods of the country , without respect to guilt or innocency . in the mean time , such as were in armes , and some that were not , were intercommuned , and interdicted of all reset , harbour , hiding , corresponding , or comfort , under pain of rebellion and of being counted guilty of the same crimes , wherewith the intercommuned were charged . and many gentlemen , ministers , and others , were forfeited of their whole estates very illegally : yea some that were not present at that appearance in armes , nor legally convict , nor cited to answer according to law , were yet forfaulted before the act of parl. 2. act 11. carol. 2. contrate to express standing statutes . and further all dissenters , and such as did not joyn in suppressing that expedition , were by order from the council robbed of their armes and horses fit for service ; their guilty consciences puting them in fears , and dictating their desert of greater opposition . after all these cruelties , murdering the persons and oppressing the estates of poor dissenters ; what they could not do by law , nor force , nor futy , they contrived to effectuate by craft , under the notion of clemency ; but such a clemency , as was a greater cruelty then any former persecution . the poor people that had nothing left them but a good conscience , must have that robbed from them likewise : therefore these wicked councellers and prelates , still stirred up by the curates , having none or a seared conscience of their own , contrived to take away from people all remainders of conscience , or to make them pliable to comply with every corruption they should introduce , by imposing conscience-debauching and ensnaring oaths and bands most deceitfully and ambiguously framed , most illegally imposed , and insolently pressed ▪ and more numerous since that time than ever was heard of in any nation in one age : there being scarce one year since that time , wherein several of these oaths and bonds have not been vented and imposed , contradictory to one another , contrary to our sworn covenants and work of reformation , impossible to keep , and unlawful to take . yet finding they could not yet suppress the persecuted meetings for gospel ordinances , but that the more violence was used the greater and more frequent they grew ; they fell upon a more crafty device , to divide and destroy the remnant , to overturn what remained of the churches priviledges undestroyed , and to settle ministers and people into a silent and stupid submission to all the kings usurpations upon the same , by giving an indulgence , anno 1669. to some outed ministers , with restrictions and instructions , clearly homologatory of the supremacy whence it flowed , establishing the height of erastianism , prejudicial to the freedom of the ministry , injurious to the priviledges of the church , contrary to presbyterian principles , and contradictory to the covenants : the grant and acceptance whereof hath been the bane of the church of scotland , and a bone of contention rending and ruining the remnant of ministers and people unite before . the end of it was to advance the supremacy ; as upon this occasion they enlarged and explained it : and because it was against law , therefore , that the kings letter might be made the supreme law afterwards , at least law enough for the council to proceed , enact , and execute what the king pleased in matters ecclesiastick , the parl. 2. act 1. carol. 2. held by lauderdale , asserts and declares , that , by vertue of the supremacy , the ordering of the government of the church doth properly belong to his majesty and successors , as an inherent right to the crown ; and that he may enact and emitt such constitutions , acts , and orders , concerning church administrations , persons , meetings , matters , as he in his royal wisdom shall think fit , which acts , orders , &c. are to be observed and obeyed by all subjects , any law , act or custom , to the contrary notwithstanding . but now as before , faithful ministers that were not thus indulged , sensible of the indispensable necessity of preaching the gospel , and of the peoples great necessity calling them to it from several quarters , after they had undergone and endured many hazards and hardships of villany and violence , imprisonment and banishment , for meeting in the houses , where they were easily intraped , interrupted , and insulted over , were forced to go to the fields , and preach in places most convenient , secret and safe ; whither the people , being tyred of their cold and dead curates , and wanting long the ministry of their old pastors , resorted in great numbers , on the greatest of hazards : the council then , at the instigation of the bishops and curates , raised troops of horse and dragoons to pursue them as traitors and rebells , for their following that necessary and signally blessed duty ; impowred and encouraged to apprehend , and bring dead or alive , some ministers , with prices put upon their heads , and to incarcerate all they could find , either at the meetings , or suspected to be coming to or from them . hence prisons were filled ; some were sent to the bass ; some banished ; and many hundreds driven from their dwellings , outlawed , and intercommuned . for legalizing such mischiess , the second sess. of the second parliament , anno 1670. held by lauderdale , made many wicked laws , causes of many grievances following . as act 2. ordaining all of every quality or sex , called to depone upon oath their knowledge of such meetings and persons therein , to declare the same in all particulars interrogate , under the pains of fining , imprisonment , or banishment , and deportaion to the indies , as the council shall think fit : oblidging people thereby to betray their own neighbours . act 5. declaring all outed ministers , found preaching or praying , in any house except in and to their own family , shall be imprisoned , till they find caution under the pain of 5000 marks , not to do the like again ; and every hearer shall be toties quoties fined , each tennant in 25 pounds scots , each cottar in 12 pounds , &c. and that all that preach in the fields , or in any house where any of the people are without doors , shall be punished with death ; and any that shall seise and secure any of them , dead or alive , shall have 500 marks reward . act 6. imposing most i yrannically exorbitant and grievous . fines , upon any that shall offer their children to be baptized by any but curats and indulged ministers ; which were afterwards , by act 11. sess. 3. parl. 2. laid upon all who shall keep their children unbaptized , for thirty dayes together . act 9. imposing intolerable fines on all that shall three sabbath dayes together withdraw themselves from their own paroch churches . act 9. sess ▪ 3. declaring all ordinations of ministers , since the year 1661. which have not been by bishops , to be null and invalid ; and that they are no ministers that are otherwise ordained : encroaching hereby on the most intrinsick and formally ecclesiastick powers of the officers of christs kingdom . these wicked acts were followed with cruel executions , whereby many were made to endure such havock , as harder could not be found in the reign of caligula or nero , both in their own houses , in prisons , and at sea in deportations . hereafter , thinking the ordinary forces not cruel enough in executing these enacted mischiefs , they brought from the wild highlands a host of 10 or 11000 barbarous savages , and poured them in upon the westeren shires ( all peaceable at the time , none so much as moving a finger against them ) on design , as would seem , utterly to lay them desolate : with orders to press a bond of conformity , wherein every subscriber was bound , for himself and all under him , to frequent the paroch church , and never go to house or field meetings , nor reset any that went to them , but to informe against , pursue , and deliver up all outed preachers to judgement . many houses and families were then left desolate . the inhabitants being made to flee in the winter season : many left their cattel , and in seeking to recover them lost their lives . yet the innocent country was made to pay for all this service , and hire them to do more , by paying the imposed cess , enacted and exacted professedly , by the act of the convention of estates holden by lauderdale , anno 1678. to raise and maintain more forces , and to maintain the supremacy as now asserted and established , and to suppress field meetings called rendezvouses of rebelion and , for the same causes , and to suppress the propagation of the principles then suffered for , continued by act 3. parl. 3. held by the duke of york commissioner . and by act 12. parl. 1. iac. 7. holden by queensberry , continued and prorogued , during all the terms of his lifetime : which , because of the illegality of its imposition , the nature of its exaction , being an obedience to a wicked law , a help to the ungodly to make havock of the church , a hire to the souldiers to destroy what remained of religion and liberty , and because of its ends so expresly declared in the narratives of the acts , to suppress the persecuted gospel and destroy its followers , many presbyterians durst not justify by obedience , in paying the required moyetie ; but chose rather to suffer joyfully the spoyling of their goods , and all the force and fury they could exert against them . whereby many tho' poor yet honest and honestly provided families , were laid waste , and exposed to the miseries of uncertain wanderings . at length , upon occasion of graham of claverhouse , his assaulting a meeting near loudoun-hill , carrying about with him a minister and several countrey men bound as beasts , and getting a repulse in the rancounter with the meeting ; another insurrection , for our lives , liberties , and religion , was undertaken , and discomfited at bothwel-bridge , anno 1679 : and at the defeat several hundreds were killed on the field , and 10. or 1100. were taken prisoners , stript , and carried to edinburgh , where , after two of our ministers were martyred for that appearance , mr. iohn king and mr. iohn kid : and after the rest of the prisoners were kept several weeks in a church yard without a covert either from cold or heat in the open air ; a bond was tendered , seeming to offer life and liberty , on terms that clearly condemned the cause , never to rise in arms against the king , on any pretence whatsoever , &c. which many took , and the rest of us that refused , and even many that did take it , were sent away in a ship bound for america , between 2 and 300 in all : who were all murdered in the ship , being shut up under the hatches , when it split upon a rock in the north of scotland , excepting 50 : some of which are yet alive to give this account . after this , the grand design of subverting and utter everting our reformation , tho' from the beginning of this fatal catastrophe projected , and by all the forementioned methods prosecuted hitherto , was more and more discovered , and beyond all denial demonstrated , that nothing less was intended then the gradual introduction of popery and slavery , and that by all the ordinat iesuitical rules , observed in the seduction of churches into the roman tyrannie : the chiefest of which have alwayes been to foment all quarrels among protestants , and to strengthen the party readiest to comply , to make and execme rigorous laws against the most tenacious , and to load the protestant opinions that are more obnoxious with all odious constructions . accordingly in the first place , to propagate defection and promote division , a proclamation was emitted anno 1679 inveighing against and resolutely interdicting all field-meetings ; and granting liberty to preach in houses upon terms of a cautionary bond , binding and oblieging the people for their ministers living peaceably , and in order thereto to present him before his majesties privy council , when they should be called so to do ; and in caise of falizie in not presenting him , to be lyable to the sum of 6000 merks . yet excluding all these ministers , who were suspect to have been at that insurrection of bothwel ; and all those who should afterwards be admitted by non conformed ministers : whereby those that durst not comply were exceedingly divided , and more easily destroyed . for their courts of cruel inquisition went by circuit through the country , pressing the bond of peace , denying the principle and renouncing the priviledge of defensive arms ; and taking up portuous rolls of all that were suspect to have been at bothwel insurrection ; whereof they reputed all to be convict , who being summoned did not appear , or were delated by oath super inquirendis to have been seen or heard to be in armes , or did not go to the kings camp , about that time . whereby , not only upon the account of that appearance were many executed to the death , by packing bloody juries and assises , as might conduce and be for their murdering ends , besides more than can be reckoned that were kept to perish in prisons , or deportations to banishment ; but many gentlemen and others were indyted , imprisoned , and some condemned to death , others forefaulted or fyned above the value of their estates , for having seen or spoken with some of those called rebels ; or because they did not discover or apprehend them , even when they did not and could not know whether they were called or counted rebels or not . and some poor people , when they could not be reached any way for this insurrection at bothwell , nor any other overt act or transgression against even their wicked laws , were condemned for their simple declared opinion of it : which the council , and court of justiciarie , particularly sir george mackenzie advocate , did extort from them by terrible menacings of death and torture . for , being interrogate , whether the rysing at bothwel-bridge was rebellion , and a sin against god : many , for saying it was not , yea , for not saying it was , and waving the question , as reckoning themselves not oblieged to answer , were cruelly condemned and executed , tho they declared and were known to be as free as the child unborn of these actions they were examined upon . in fine , after our patience had been long outwearied with insupportable slavery , and under such intollerable oppressions in our consciences , persons and estates ; so universaly extended , that in the present circumstances we had more reason to hope , that past miseries , present pressures , and future dangers of greater encroachments , then foreseen by all men that did not willingly shut their eyes , should have incited and invited all , that had any regard to the great interests of religion and liberty , to concur in an essay to emancipate themselves and posterity from that yoke of grassant & growing tyrannie , than to fear the condemnation of any under these oppressions , or the clamour and out cry of those that were at ease against the informality , illegalily , unseasonableness , or unfealableness of such revolt : we were enduced and enforced at length , when we could do no more to preserve what remained of these interests , or save our consciences innocent from all participation of the sin of the destroyer of them ; to declare for our parts a revolt from , and disown alleagiance to king charles the second , as being no longer to be accounted our supreme magistrate , but ipso jure devested of that office and trust , reposed and devolved on him by express compact and covenant : when he broke all these conditions , whereupon his authority and our alleagiance were founded ; in his utter violating and making void the covenant and coronation oath , whereby our subjection to him , limited to those provisions , was explicitely disingaged and remitted ; when he did unhinge and insringe all the legal establishments of our religion ; and subverted all our religious liberties , by usurping a blasphemous sacrilegious supremacy over ecclesiastical ordinances instituted by christ ; and when now he had overturned all fundamental constitutions of the state as well as the church , subverting the peoples rights , liberties , laws , and all securities of our life and enjoyments whatsoever , by claiming and taking an absolute tyrannical civil prerogative , paramount to all law , inconsistent either with the freedom or safety of the people : whereby no shadow of government was left , but arbitrary absoluteness , making the kings letter the supreme law of scotland ; while innocent and honest people for conscience were grievously oppressed , and perjuries , adulteries , idolatries , and all impieries , were not only indemnified and past without punishment , but encouraged as badges of loyalty . for which causes , we openly proclaimed our revolt from the government as it was then administrate . and in the same declaration , we reckoned our selves oblieged to protest against the reception of the duke of york in scotland ; and against his succeeding to the crown , who was then declared incapable of succession of the government , by a vote of the two honourable houses of the parliament of england . for for owning , and not daring to disown , which revolt , it is impossible to enumerate our kinds and degrees of sufferings : for this we had our ministers and brethren murdered , both in the fields , and scaffolds , and prisons , and seas ; besides those that were slain at airds-moss , where bruce of earleshall attacked us , and slew mr. richard cameron a faithful and zealous minister with many of our brethren . after this it was generally imposed on prisoners , even such as could not be charged with any accession to the forementioned declaration , to give an account of their thoughts and consciences about the lawfulness of the kings authority : which if they could not own , or declined to declare their thoughts , as judging it the common interest of mankind to plead for the freedom of thoughts from all humane jurisdiction , or if any answered with such innocent qualifications , as that they owned all lawful authority in the lord , or , according to the word of god ; then they were punished as traitors , executed to the death , and some at their first apprehending tormented with fire-matches , then laid in irons , afterwards tortured with the boots or thumbkins , and after all executed in a most barbarous manner without suffering them to speak their dying words for beating of drums . thus a great number of innocent people have been destroyed , without respect to age or sexe ; some meer boyes have been for this hanged ; some stouping for age ; some women also hanged , and some drowned , because they could not satisfy the council , justitiary court , and the souldiers , with their thoughts about the goverment . in the year 1681. the duke of york , as commissioner from his brother , held a parliament , ( auspicated with the blood of mr. donald cargil a godly and faithful minister , which was shed at the cross of edinburgh , the day before the sitting down of the parliament ) wherein he not only presided against all our righteous laws , that make a papist incapable of such a trust , and against their own laws , without taking the oaths of administration , but procured an act to be made recognizing his succession to the crown notwithstanding all standing unrepealed laws against papists : wherein also many acts were contrived that have been great causes of the desolation and depopulation of the country that ensued : as act 4. dowbling the fines imposed by former laws for fieid conventicles ; and ordering heretors and masters to put away their tennants , cottars , or servants , at any time of the year without any warning or process of removing , notwithstanding of any tacks or terms to run ; and to retain their goods , &c. act 18. declaring , that all jurisdiction doth so reside in his majestie , that his majesty may , by himself or any commissionated by him , take cognizance and decision of any cases or causes he pleases . hereby a foundation was laid for overturning all civil and criminal justice , and for erecting the tyranny of the popish inquisition , whensoever matters were ripe for it , and for commissionating souldiers to take away the lives of innocents , without all process of law , as was frequently exemplified afterward and act 6. and 25. framing and imposing on all in trust a detestable and self contradictory test , which turned out of all places of trust any that retained any measure of common honesty . for explaining which , the late earl of argyle was arfaigned and condemned ; and escaping prison , forced to flee to forraign lands : as many others , both gentlemen and commons were constrained to leave the land ; where for multiplied , illegal , and ensnaring impositions , they could neither live like men nor like christians , but as asses couching under all burdens . these and the like acts , with many others arbitrarly superadded proclamations ( which have been multiplied every year beyond all reckoning , and stretching the designs of the court beyond all measures , no only of legality , but of humanity , expecting at the next parliament to have them either justified or indemnified and pardoned ) were with tyrannous rigor executed by circuit courts of inquisition ( some way equally if not exceeding the spanish , for illegality and inhumanity ) pressing conformity , submission to prelacy , impossing , enslaving and ensnaring oaths and bonds , contradictory to reason , and contrary to religion ; and oppressing of all ranks , qualities , and vocations , with such arbitrary acts of intercommunings , finings , and other intollerable impossitions , that they seemed to drive at no less than the overturning what remained undestroyed of religion , liberty , law ; or conscience in the nation . for not only the poorer sort were many wayes oppressed , plundered , pillaged , impoverished , and destroyed ; but gentlemen also were extremely vexed , for alledged converse with intercommuned sufferers , being fore faulted , fined , and incarcerate , till they should pay summs , which neither they were obliged nor able to pay . and not only were the formerly persecuted ministers , lurking in the land , forced to leave it ; or cited and compeared at their courts were imprisoned : but even the indulged ministers , who by the kings supremacy were authorized to preach in churches alloted to them , were as arbitrarly discharged , summoned to their circuits , and imprisoned . especially we , who durst not comply in less or more with any of their impositions , nor own their usurpations and tyranny , whom therefore they represented in all their edicts , as enemies to all government and humane society , were exposed to , and made to endure the utmost of their rage . our families were harassed , pillaged and laid waste , our persons were intercommuned , driven out of our own and all other habitarions into the wilderness , being interdicted of all harbour , supply , comfort or converse , by barbarous edicts ; and incestantly pursued by numerous forces , horse , foot , and dragons powered into all parts of the country , impowered and commissioned to plunder and pillage all houses where they heard we were seen ; and not only to search , hunt , & chase us through all towns , villages , cottages , woods , moors , mosses , and mountains , forcing us us to flee to the remotest recesses in the wildest deserts ; but to shoot , hang , drown , murder , and make havock of us , where ever they could apprehend us , without tryal or sentence . proclamations one after another were emitted , commanding all to raise the hue and cry after us , and not only to advertise the souldiers , but to concur with them in pursuing us , and to seek us out of all our dens and caves in the most retired places of the mountains , which we digged under ground , when we could not find a hiding place above the face of the earth : whence we were redacted to many incredible hardships and hazards , being exposed to the cold blasts of winter , and the pinching straits of hunger , when we could neither have sustenance with us , nor durst we go abroad to seek it but in the peril of our lives , and being forced to hide from country people as well as souldiers : whence many of us could not escape falling into their bloody hands , who , in obedience to their murdering mandates killed many instantly in the fields ; and such as obtained the favour of being spared for execution upon scaffolds , tho without any colourable shadow of a formal procedure , or were imprisoned , tortured , or banished to be slaves , were thought to have been very mercifully dealt with . whereupon , being driven to such a paraxisme of danger and despair , that neither , were we able to endure the extremities of inexpressible miseries then lying and growing upon us , nor had hope to escape in humane probability the utter destruction intended , enacted , declared , and indefatigably pursued against us by our enemies , the popish , prelatieal and malignant faction ; when so many of us were daily taken and murdered , and the rest of us could neither escape by flight out of the land , ( orders being given to stop all passages by sea and land , and catch us wheresoever we could be deprehended making any such essay ) nor by lurking and hiding in the land , through the vigilance and diligence of intelligencers , who were suborned and encouraged to use all endeavours to intrap and inform of us , wheresoever we could be heard of ; no other expedient was left under our deliberation to try for preventing our utter extermination , than to publish , by affixing on the church-doors in the night season , an apologetick declaration , avowing our adherence to former principles and testimonies , and warning our enemies to surcease from their wickedness and severity against us , under certifications that it should be revenged : designing hereby mainly to restrain and deter these insolent intelligencers . hereupon followed a most violent proclamation , ordaining all that owned or refused to disown the declaration , and the principles therein specified , should be execute to the death ; commanding all the subjects to concur in the pursute of us ; and for their encouragement , offering 500 merks for each of us ; requiring also , that none presume to offer to travel in the country without testificates of their loyalty , by taking the oath of abjuration , otherwise they should be holden as concurrers with us , and therefore that none shall be lodged without these certificates . hence the trade and commerce of the countrey was much interrupted and prejudged , by prohibiting all to travel without a pass in time of peace . and to the reproach of all order and government : hostlers and common inn-keepers were made judges impowered to impose oaths upon all passengers & travellers , that their passes were not forged and seigned . this oath of abjuration was pressed universally , on pain of death , ( in some places from house to house ) upon men and women , young and old ; who were pressed upon the penalty of death , without time to advise upon it , to give their judgement of the said declaration , and of the kings authority ; which contributed very much to make it more and more questioned by many , and rediculous to all . hence many of us that stood out and aloof from this complyance , were shot in the fields ; some brought in prisoners , sentenced , and executed all in one day ; and some early in the morning , that people might not be affected with the pitiful sight of such bloody severities ; yea , sometimes the spectators were commanded by captain graham in edinburgh , to give their judgement , and declare their opinion , whether they were justly put to death or not . in process of time , the late king dying , and the duke of york ascending the throne ; it would have been thought , that such revolutions then occurring would have required and produced some cessation , relaxation , or relentment of our persecution : being in our selves , and in our persecutors esteem , persons of so mean a figure in the world , scarce worthy to be the object of the indignation of a new installed prince ; and his late proclamations would make the world believe , that the beginning of his government had put an end to all these troubles upon the account of conscience . but on the contrare , the acts and executions against us in a manner did then but begin to be cruel ; and all the power of the forces was imployed to destroy us , so much already destroyed . for then , more cruelly than ever , not only the standing forces , but another host of savage highlanders , inured to rapine and murder , brought from the north , were ordered and impowered to act against us the greatest barbarities , in butchering and slaughtering us in the fields where ever we could be found , without all colour of justice , only for not satisfying them in their impertinent as well as wicked impositions on the conscience , or form of law , even the worst of their own laws . accordingly some of us at labour , same traveling in the road , were cut off without pity ; some surprised in caves , and murdered there ; without time given to pray to god for mercy ; some were taken first to prison , then surprised with execution , without a triall or definite sentence , not knowing when or if at all they should be execute ; some had their ears cutt , & then sentenced to be transported to iamaica , and yet some of these were kept , and again sentenced with death , and executed : others were sent to an old ruinous castle denotter , and kept in vaults , in such crouds and numbers , that they had no room either to sit or lie , and so cruelly treated , as would make savages blush to hear of it , and then banished to america , and in the voyage about 60 died . but as those cruelties were monstrnous for illegality and inhumanity ; so the ensuing laws made in the first parliament , iames 7th . 1685. held by queensberry commissioner , approving and ratifying the same , do far exceed all former for unparalelled attrociousness : as act 3. allowing pannals already in prison , and indicted for treason , to be cited on 24 houres . act 4. statuting , that such as being cited to be witnesses as in cases of treason , field or house conventicles , do refuse to depone , they shall be lyable to be punished as guilty of these crimes respectively , in which they refuse to be witnesses . act 5. declaring , that the giving or taking the national covenant or the solemn league and covenant , or writing in defence thereof , or owning of them as lawful , or obligatory on themselves or others , shall infer the crime and pains of treason . act 6. declaring the usual procedure of fyning husbands for their wives withdrawing from the church , to have been legal . act 7. statuting , that the concealing and not revealing of any supply given to such , as are forefaulted for treason ( to wit , the most innocent contending for the covenants and work of reformation , against popery , prelacy , or tyranny , and tho the supply should be given to their nearest relations so foresaulted ) is treason , and to be judged accordingly . act 8 statuting , that all that shall hereafter preach at house or field conventicles , and all hearers also at field conventicles shall be punished by death and confiscation . act 13. reinjoyning , and further extending the imposition of the self-contradictory test. act 17. ratifying , confirming , and approving what hath been done by the privy council , justiciary , or those commissionated by them , in banishing , imprisoning , and fyning such as refused to take the oath of allegiance , ( which includes the blasphemous supremacy ) with asserting the prerogatives ; and under the same pains , ordaining all subjects so to take the said oath when required . act 23. ratifying and approving the opinion of the lords of council and session , adjudging it treason to refuse the oath of abjuration , confirming all the illegality of procedure thereupon . act 24. statuting , that all masters , heretors , liferenters , &c. shall insert in all tacks to be set by them to their tennants , in burgh or landwart , an express clause , oblieging the tennant for his wife and family to conformity , under exorbitant penalties . act 25. ratifying a proclamation against us , as bearing the effect of an act of parliament ; requiring all the subjects , upon knowledge or information of any one or two or moe of us in any place , to give information thereof to the chancellour , and to the nearest commanders of the forces , within the space of an hour at most for every three miles distance , and all sheriffs , &c. to call the subjects to search and apprehend us ; and on our flight , to acquaint the magistrates of the next shire , and so from shire of shire , till we be apprehended , or expelled from the realm ; with certification , that whosoever fails in pursuing us whether magistrats or subjects , or in not giving timeous information within the space forsaid , shall be held as art and part , and undergo the same punishment with us . in which act and proclamation , we are called only 80 runnagats , traitors and fugitives , tho` in pursuance of this cruel edict , they have multiplied that number many times over and over , in imprisoning , banishing , and butchering our dear brethren ; and yet all the prisons they could fill , and shipt they could fraught with us , and gibbets they could hang us on , could never either exhaust or lesson our number : for the more we were afflicted the more we grew ; and the design to destroy us , by the mercy of our god counteracting it , proved alwayes a burdensome stone to the destroyers , and an help to the destroyed . yet tho they pretended to have us expelled out of the realm , they shut up all possible access to attempting to depart out of it : for , as forces were lying on each side the borders to catch us if we should escape by land , so they prevented all probability of going by sea , by act 27. of this same parliament , forbidding and prohibiting all masters of ships to export any passenger till he be brought before the next magistrates : which none of us durst venture upon for fear of our lives . this was an unhappy specimen of the kings commenced government , and a very unprecedented policy of his counselors , to reconcile male contented subjects to a loving and consienciously loyal subjection to him , being in effect the same with the advice of the young men to rehoboam , and productive of the same effect with that : when practically in their acts and actings it was declared to us , that whereas the former king had made our yoke heavy ; this would add thereto : the former had chastised us with whips , but he would chastise us with scorpions : whereof having felt the smart so sharply , we could not be easily induced to a kindly acknowledgment of allegiance out of conscience unto him , who came not in as a father to rule us , but as a lyon to devour us . wherefore , tho much pressed by all the tyrannical force , that could be exercised to enslave us under that yoke , or destroy us for refusing , we could not in conscience own or acknowledge his lawful authority . and in pressing it they gained little , after all the blood they shed on scaffolds and fields upon this account , but to ridicule the government , and make it more contemptible , when they required every poor lad & lass in the country to give their opinion of the government , a question very unusual to be proposed to private subjects . men really invested with authority do think , their laws and power to execute them on offenders may well enough secure the peoples subjection , and will disdain such a suspicion of the questionablenss of their authority , as to make it a question to the subjects : the more it was made a question to us , the more it became questioned and suspected : and the more we were made to enquire into it , the further we were from deprehending or recognoscing in him either the characters or constitution of a magistrate to be owned . we considered the many righteous laws , established by our worthy ancestors , for the preservation of the true religion and liberties of the kingdom , insert in the national covenant ( which every soul in the kingdom under the bond of that covenant , is bound , to maintain according to their capacities ; ) as act 8 parl. 1. king ia : 6 : repeated and ratified in many acts afterwards , expresly providing and ordaining , that all kings and princes , at their coronation and reception of their princely authority , shall make their faithful promise by oath , and that they shall profess and maintain the protestant religion , and shall abolish and gainstand all false religion contrary the same , and shall rule according to law , &c. which oath of coronation he did not take , would not take , could not take , while a papist ; and therefore we could not look on him as our king by law. we considered likewise , that in our covenants the allegiance that we must own to the king is expresly limited and qualified thus , in the preservation and defence of the true rellgion , liberties , and laws of the kingdom : of which qualification , allegiance to him , a destroyer of religion and liberty , is nor capable . we remembred the principles and sentiments of our fathers upon the admission of king charles 2. to the exercise of his royal power , declared in their seasonable and necessary warning , gen : assem . iuly 27 : sess : 27 : 1649. wherein they tell us , that a boundless and illimited power is to be acknowledged in no king nor magistrate ; that there is a mutual stipulation and obligation between the king and the people , as both of them are tyed to god , so each of them are tyed to one another : accordingly kings are to take the oath of coronation , to abolish popery and maintain the protestant religion : as long therefore as the king refuses to engage and obliege himself for security of religion , and safety ; of his people it is consonant to scripture and reason and laws of the kingdom , that he should be refused : and that in the covenant , the duty of owning the king is subordinate to the duty of preserving religion and liberty . and therefore , without security of these , it were a manifest breach of govenant , and a preferring the kings interest to the interest of christ , to bring him to the exercise of his power . and consequently , for us to give such a consent to it , as such an owning of him as required would amount to . accordingly also the commission of the general assembly in their act of the west-kirk , declared , they would not own the king nor his interest , otherwise than with a subordination to god , and so far as he should own and prosecute the cause of god , and disclaim his and his fathers opposition to the work of god and the covenant . we called to mind likewise , what our renowned reformers gave out , as the case of their revolt from the government of mary qu : dowager , anno 1559. her persecuting the professors of the true religion , and oppressing the liberties of the true lieges , her intruding of magistrates against all order of election , her adultering and subverting the old laws of the realm , &c. which all men know were as applicable to king iames 7th : as to her : and therefore we had their reason to obliege us , and their example to encourage us to say with them ; we own and promise to our lawful soveraign all due obedience , provided we may have our religion and liberty secured , without which we firmely purpose never to be subject to mortal man. for which and many other reasons , we reckoned our selves under obligations to decline the imposed owning of his authority ; and took the opportunity in the time of the expedition of the earl of argyle against him , to publish in a declaration our reasons why we could not acknowledge it . in the mean time , the late earl of argyle , with some other noblemen and gentlemen , associating with the duke of munmouth , to essay some diversion and opposition to the kings designs , of advancing and establing tyrannie and popery : all the forces , militia troups and companies , and the whole army of heretors were powred in upon those places of the kingdom , where most of us were sojourning . who , besides all the blood shed upon the account of that expedition , the blood of the earle himself , and others of both nations engaged with him , and many of his wassalls in the highlands cruely put to death by the marq. of athol , had in commission , and put in execution the bloodiest orders we think readily men could ever receive or obey . the greatest employment , that that great army had in hand and in heart , was to wreck and exert all their fury and force upon the poor mountain-men as they called us : which they did by ranging and spreading themselves many miles in breadth , every one within sight of another , and searching for us through all the rocks , woods , mountains , and mosses of the country , where we were hiding , with such vigore , violence , and dilligence , as if they had been hunting for hares or foxes . and the greatest ambition and emulation of their leaders and champions , graham of claver-house , & liev. gen. douglas brother to the duke of queensberry , col. buchan , with others of their inferiour officers , maj. balfour , liev. creightoun , and liev. livingstoun , &c. was , who should be most skilful and succesfull in destroying us . and all this , for no other cause , then because we could not answer to their satisfaction the questions they proposed , without any warrant of law , and against the common interest of mankind , which frees all men from being obliged to discover their secret thoughts ; namely because we could not obtain of our consciences to declare that we would own and acknowledge that authority which enacted , and by which they acted , all these mischiefs . yet , to the commendation of gods clemency , and condemnation of mens cruelty , we may say , when they had shot all their bolts , after they had hanged , shot , tortured , or banished for slaves , all they could catch of us , they were further from their purpose than when they began ; our numbers and mettings for gospel ordinances , administrated in purity and power , encreased more and more . but at length , tho' our persecution continued , the king was pleased to change his methods with other dissenters . he multiplied many favours to such of them as he called moderate : and , by these means intending to advance the mysterie of iniquity , by stoping the mouths , and binding up the hands of all from whom he might expect control or contradiction , and laying them by from all open opposition to the introduction of poperie and advancement of slaverie , he purposed and proposed the repealing of the penal statutes against papists , at the parliament held by the earl of murray : against which , when afterwards some of the common sort of people , and of the souldiers , spoke some what freely , and for shewing their dislike of setting up the idolatrous mass , and for speaking against poperie , and the designs of the king , they were put to death in a most despotical and arbitrary manner . the persecution the mean while still continuing against us , and growing more dangerous , and worse to bear that we had all the brunt of it to sustain ; while the forces had few other to persecute but us : which they did in great fury , murdering in fields and scaffolds , such as they could catch of us . at length , what could not be obtained by law , at the formentioned parliament for taking off the penal statutes , was effectuate by prerogative , in a proclamation , feb : 12 : 1687. granting , by the kings soveraign authority , prerogative royal , and absolute power , which subjects are to obey without reserve ; a toleration , under certain conditions , restrictions , and limitations , to all sorts of perswasions , excepting us who are left to the full vigor and utmost rigor of the laws made against us : suspending , stoping and disabling all laws , or acts of parliament , customs or constitutions against any roman catholick subjects ; giving them freedom in all respects , as much as any prtoestant subjects , whatsoever , not only to exercise their religion , but to enjoy all offices , benefices , &c. which he shall think fit to bestow upon them in all time coming . hence papists were put into places of highest trust , both civil and military : and popish magistrates without any election established in burghs , &c. contrare to the known laws of the kingdom , admitting none to be magistrates , or so much as a procutator , notar , or member of court , who professes not the protestant religion , act 9. parl : 1. iames 6. declaring all papists infamous , and unable to sit or stand in judgment , pursue , bear office , or to be admitted as proves , witness , or assisors against protestants . act 45 : parl : 3 : iames 6 : which is extended to all and whatsomever office , without any exception or restriction in all time coming . act 5 : parl : 20 : iames 6 : hence also the idolatrous mass was set up in the most publick places of the kingdom ; and popish seminary priests suffered and encouraged to preach , and set up schools , to seduce the people , especially the youth : contrate to many express standing laws , act 3 : parl : 1 : iames 6 : and act 5 : ibid : ordaining all layers or hearers of mass to be punished , with imprisonment for the first fault , banishment for the second , and justifying to the death for the third fault . act 122 : iarl : 12 : k : iames 6 : decerning , that , in all time coming , the saying of mass , resetting of jesuites , seminary priests , traffiquing papists , shall be just cause to infer the pain and crime of treason . act 196 : parl : 14 : iames 6 : ordaining in all time coming , all wilfull hearers of mass , and concealers of the same , be execute to the death : ratified in the 1 act. parl. 19. iac. 6. and in 5. act. parl : 20 : iac : 6. hence papists have erected schools , and made , sold , and dispersed their heretical books , tending to seduce the people from the true religion : contrary to express laws , act. 106. parl : 7 : iac : 6 : act 24 , and 25 : parl : 11 : i : 6. this popish toleration , was neither extended to us ; all the three proclamations thereof expresly providing , that field conventicles , & all preachers and hearers thereat , be prosecuted according to the utmost severity and rigor of the lawes made against them , left in their full force and vigor , with a command to all judges , magistrates and officers of ●orces , to pursue us with all violence ; nor could we in conscience and duty , directly or indirectly , suffer our selves to be involved , by any participation therewith or acceptance thereof , in the sin of it against the laws of god and man : since it appeared evidently to flow from a blasphemous fountain of absolute power ; through a treasonable channel of stoping , suspending , and disabling the penal statutes made against the enemies of god , and of the kingdom ; and to be designed for the wicked ends of subverting the protestant religion , and the peaceable introduction of popish idolatrie and heresie ; and to offer , not the establishment of our religion , but the tolerating of it , under the scandalous notion of a thing to be suffered for a while ; and with such shameful securities , as robbed the church of all her legal charters of laws and covenants establishing her reformation , leaving her nothing in lieu thereof but a blind precarious promise of one , whose principles oblieged him to keen no faith with those to whom he promised it . but against all these indignities done to christ , and injuries to the church , intended and effected by this toleration , our ministers thought themselves oblieged to bear witness and testimony : and with respect both to necessity and duty , to continue to keep their meetings in the open fields , whether the tyranny of the times had driven them : since they durst neither seem to homologate the toleration , by coming under the sconce of such a protection ; nor durst they give such advantage to such as were insatiably thirsting after their blood , and were impowered to shed it , as they were seeking and would have found , if they had shut up themselves within houses , that could neither hold their friends , nor be hid from their enemies . this we looked upon as a testimony , for the interest of the protestant religion , for our covenanted reformation , for the laws & liberties of our country , all undermined and sought to be subverted by that toleration . in the prosecution of this device , when others were killed with popish kindnesses , we were left to feell the sweet effects of popish crueltie . some of our bretheren were murdered in fields and scaffolds , since that pretended toleration ; many both men and women have been banished and sold for slaves in barbados : other severe proclamations were issued against our ministers , intercommuning , & seting a pryce upon their heads , to encourage all to apprehend them dead or alive : one of them , mr. iames renwick a painful minister being feb. 1688. was executed to the death in edinburgh , the drums beating all the time of his praying and speaking upon the scaffold . and after this , not only was the country oppressed with souldiers , free quarterings , and frighted with their searches , and insolences in their ryding up and down the country , challenging peaceable travellers upon the road , about their opinions of the kings authority , and if this and that was rebellion ; and threatning present death to such as did not satisfie them : but the city of edinburgh vexed with universal searches , and the impositions of these impertinences , whereby many were taken and examined by claver-house , who required them to renounce the covenant , imprisoned the recusants ; whereby the prisons were crouded : and yet , notwithstanding of an indemnity , october 2 : 1688 alledged as ample as absolute power could make it , tho not expresly excluded , they were detained prisoners until the report of his highness the prince of orange , now king of brittain his prevailing , and fear of his victorious arms did move them not to keep any longer any that might be evidences and witnesses of their arbitrary cruelty . as the same reason also it seems did constrain them , to take down and bury the heads of those they murdered , for fear lest these monuments of their cruelty standing , might occasion the question to be moved , by whom and for what they were set up ? than which nothing shall be more confounding to them , when inquisition shall be made for blood . thus these enemies of the country , the encroaching privy council , and the prelates in special , now universally contemned since the toleration , were going on in their designs to enslave the nation , and to prevent and suppress all essayes to retrive or revive any hopes of recovering any liberty ; multiplying their searches , not only for us , but for any that were suspected to favour their present majesties cause , and undertaking , so soon as it began to be surmised here ; and laying up in irons and closs prison some gentlemen , upon suspicion of their being privy to it . and , as soon as they had certain intelligence of king william his great and generous resolutions , in order to the restauration and preservation of religion , laws , and liberties , in these three kingdoms , they made such vigorous preparations for opposition , and issued out such virulent proclamations inveighing against his highness , under such severities of certifications , requiring all from 60 : to 16 : to concur under their displayed banner for arbitrary government , as if they had feared an invasion from turks or tartars . yet in the mean time , tho there were suspicions then , and discoveries since , of an intended popish massacre , they disarmed the western shires , and sent orders to the officers of forces , especially imploying such as were professedly popish , to go through the country , and take all their armes , leaving them nothing to defend themselves withal , and causing the people to swear that they had no other armes than such as they got . and in their march , meeting with some of our number , they threatned to shoot them presently if they would not own king iames , pray for him , and for confusion to all his enemies : which they refusing at first were appointed to be shot , and had their faces covered with napkins , and with great difficulty escaped by complying . by the former summary and abridged abstract and compendious deduction of our many and manifold grievances ( the truth whereof can be evidenced by many demonstrative evidences ) it may appear what have been our sufferiugs since that fatal revolution , anno 1660 : from the popish , prelatical , and malignant party ; and what have been their attempts , machins , and methods to overturn our religion , laws , and liberties , and subject us to meer arbitrary and absolute tyrannie ; at least what have been their capital devices , whereby they have ruined and sought to raze us ; and what have been the principal causes and kinds of our sufferings , in their prosecuting the same : the particular relation of which , so far as can be collected , is intended ( god willing ) afterwards in due season to be published . only here it may not be inconvenient to subjoyn , by way of specimen , a short recapitulation in bulk of some instances of our several kinds of sufferings , with a touch at some of the most principal instruments thereof in the five western shires first , for fines , and other exorbitant and illegal exactions of money , the particular summs cannot be here enumerated ; but their vastness , when together calculate , may be easily collected by the scraps already gathered , of some poor families of farmers , cottars , servants , &c. and many of these omitted , or not known , which would very considerably augment the summ ) in some few shires ; viz. clidsdale , renfrew , air , galloway , nithsdale , and annandale , only for but a few years , to wit , since bothwel bridge insurrection , amounting to above 288000. pounds scots money . besides the many honest families , which have been casten out of their houses , harassed and spoiled of their all : some of their houses being thrown down , some burnt , some shut up , their goods and moveables seized upon , their crop and cattel also disposed of , at the will of their persecuters , in the forementioned shires amounting to above 200 : of all which we have a particular account in readiness to instruct . the immediate authors , actors , and instruments of these oppressions , were principally the curates instigating the privy council , which impowered the forces , and noblemen and gentlemen of the country , to prey upon the poor people . all cannot be here expressed , but some of the most noted in the western shires shall be named , who were the greatest persecuters and oppressors by finings and other exactions . of officers of the forces . col. dowglas , now liev : gen. dowglas , brother to the duke of queensberry , exacted above 2000 pounds scots money , in galloway , nithsdale , shire of aire , and other places . liev. gen. drumond , besides the forefaultries of gentlemen , did also exact moneys of the poor in the shire of air. the earl of lithgow , and his souldiers , spoiled much in galloway . the earl of airly , and his troup , in the same shire the lord balearras , a great oppressor in galloway , besides all the robberies he committed in fife . — graham of claverhouse , afterwards viscount of dundee , with his brother , and subaltern officers in galloway , nithsdale , and anandale , exacted by fines and otherwise , above 13500 : pounds scots money . col : buchan , a most violent persecuter , in galloway and shire of air , by robberies took from the people upwards of 4000 : pounds scots . major cockburn , a great oppressor in galloway . major white , in clidsdale and shire of air , exacted by fines and otherwise , above 2500. p : scots . major balfour , now called liev : col ; balfour , a great persecuter and oppressor in clidsdale . captain strauchan , with his troup , oppressed and spoiled much in galloway , & other places . captain inglis with his troup , did dispossess many families , and got much spoil in galloway , shire of air , and clidsdale . captain dowglas , in galloway , committed much outrage and spoil . captain dalzel , harassed much in anandale . captain bruce in nithsdale . — meldrum in clidsdale , in several inroads uplifted from poor families upwards of 2300 pounds ; besides the vast summes he exacted in mers and tiviotdale ; with the earle of hume , ker of gradown , laird of hayning , and blindlee ; and in tweddale , with the laird of possa , all great persecuters . liv. winram , in galloway , a very vigilant persecuter and spoyler . liev. barns also , in the same shire took much spoyl . liev. iohn living stoun , a most violent persecuter and exacter . liev. lauder , in the shire of air , a most outragious persecuter and oppressor . — bonshaw , a borderer , a high-way man , afterwards an officer of dragoons , robbed much from the poor people in clidsdale . duncan grant , a creple with a tree leg , a very outragious persecuter , exacted in clidsdale from poor people , above 1500 pounds . of noblemen , gentlemen , and others , in the above-mentioned shires , the greatest oppressors and persecuters of the people , were ; in clidsdale . — sommervail , of spittel sheriff de . pute . who , besides his other wayes of persecution wherein he was most active , drew from the poorest people above 1200 pounds . the laird of halyards , who uplifted more then 8500 pounds . the laird of lachop , a great persecuter and oppressor . the laird of bonnytown , and laird symme , both violent persecuters and exactors . in the city of glasgow , provest iohnston , prov. barns , bail. iohn anderson , bail : yuil , bail. graham , william sterling baron baylif , great persecuters , exacted above 20000 pounds . in renfrew . the earl of glencairn , by fines and dispossessing of families , exacted , partly there , and partly in clidsdale and nidsdale , above 2400 pounds . lord semple a papist , a persecuter . alexander hume in eglshome , a most violent and vigilant persecuter and exactor , with many others . mr. ezechiel montgomery a great fine-monger . in the shire of air the earle of drumfries , exacted above 1000 : pounds . the lord craigy , a great persecuter and oppressor . william creighton sheriff depute very violent and active . crawford of ardmillan , a wicked persecuter and spoiler . mr. william crawford , montgomery of bozland , laird of broyche , clark ogilbie , all great persecuters , who sought to make themselves up with the spoils of the poor people . in galloway . the laird of lag grierson , a most wicked persecuter there , and in nithisdale , exacted above 1200 : pounds . the laird of elie , lidderdale , and canon of merdrogat , all diligent persecuters and intelligencers , together with the then collectors . in nithsdale . the duke of queensberry and his sons oppressed much . iohn alison chamberlain to the duke of queensberry , who when dying , said , he had damned his soul for the duke his master . and george charters , another of the dukes factors , who vaunted , he had made 26 : journeys in one year in pursuite of the whiggs . iohn dowglas of sten-house , a papist , exacted above 5000 : p : the laird of closburn , above 700 : pounds . sir robert dalzel , upward of 400 : p : of a few poor families . sir robert lawrie of maxweltoun , an oppressor and persecuter . in anandale . the lord anandale , dispossessed and harassed many families , and persecuted much in galloway . the laird of westerhall , a great per : exacted upwards of 1000 : p : sir patrick maxwel of sprinkell a very active and violent persecuter and oppressor . the lairds of powdeen , castlemilk , robert caruthers of ramaskells , thomas kennedy of heybeiths , most violent persecuters of poor people . the summes here charged upon these gentlemen , are collected from the minutes the writer had by him , which he is certain are computed within the extent of the several summes . the rest here named did also extort considerable summes , to their own gain and the poor peoples loss ; but because the forsaid minuts do not give a particular account of the quotas therefore they are not supplied . next for the forefaulted gentlemen and heretors , we shall not meddle with them : hoping they shall give a good account of themselves . and as for the number of such as have been forced to a voluntary exile to forreign countries , we think it impossible to come to any reckoning of them : nor of these that have been imprisoned these 30. years for nonconformity , of whom it cannot be told how many have died in prison , or contracted their death in prison , which spedily did follow upon their liberation . nor of the many extorted vast sums , and robberies of prisoners by iaylors . of the banished , deported into other countries , for the cause of adhering to the covenant and work of reformation , it may suffice to give this account besides the 6. or 7. ministers that were banished , and went to holland : and 7. or 8. country people to france ; several others to barbados , before pentland . since the year 1678. there have been banished and sent away slaves , of men and women , for the same cause , 700. viz. anno . 1678. to virginia , 60. whereof 3. or 4. were ministers , who were all by the mercy of god delivered at london . anno. 1679. of the prisoners taken at bothwel , were banished to america , 250 : who were taken away by paterson merchant in leith , that transacted for them with provost milns , laird of barntown ; the man that first did burn the covenant ; whereof 200 : were drowned by shipwrack , being shut up within the hatches , 50 escaped . afterwards were banished to flanders , 7. men . thereafter were taken away in banishment , by one robert maloch , 14. men . then by walter gibson , late provest in glasgow , to corolina 30. anno. 1685. in the time of queensberries parliament of men and women were sent to iamaica 200. that same year , of the prisoners in dinotter with others were taken away by pitlochie , to newgersie 100. whereof 24. were women . that same year , 13. more were sent to barbados . anno. 1687. after the toleration 21. men and women were sent to barbados . as for the number of the slain at the several skirmages at pentland bothuel , airdsmoss , &c. they amount too about 400. and some odds . the number of such as have been executed to death on scaffolds , under collour of law , from mr. iames gutherie the first , to mr. iames renwick , is about 140 , whereof some were women . the list of those that were killed in cold blood , without tryal , conviction , or any colour of law , by the persons under written , followeth . omitting the account of finlay , murdered by general dalzels orders at air , because he could not discover who was at the appearance at pentland , in the year 1666 ; and of iames davie in bathgate paroch , and several others , at several times , in several places , whose blood was mingled with their sacrifice at sermons in the fields , before bothwel-bridge ; and of thomas ker of heyhope , brother to the laird of cherrie trees , who was forced to flee for shelter into the english borders , and there killed by col : struthers , anno 1678 ; and of henry hall of haughead , apprehended at queensferrie by midletoun governour of blackness , and after several wounds , at length knocked on the head by tho : george waiter at queensferrie . a short hint of those that have been murdered since the year 1682. may suffce . iohn graham of claver house , viscount of dundee , in the year 1682. with a party of his troup , pursued william graham in the parish of in galloway , making his escape from his mothers house , and overtaking him , instantly shot him dead . item , the said claver house , together with the earl of dumbarton , and liev : gen : dowglas , caused peter gillis , iohn bryce , thomas young , ( who was taken by the laird of lee , ) william fiddison , and iohn buiening , to be put to death upon a gibbet , without legal tryal or sentence , suffering them neither to have a bible , nor to pray before they died , at mauchlin , anno 1685. item , the said claverhouse coming to galloway , in answer to the viscount of kenmures letter , with a small party surprised robert stuart , iohn grier , robert ferguson , and another , and instantly shot them dead , at the water of dee , in gallaway , december 1684. their corps being buried , were at his command raised again . item , the said claverhouse in may , 1685 : apprehended iohn broun in priest-hill , in the parish of moorkirk , in the shire of air , being at his work , about his own house , and shot him dead before his own door , in presence of his wife . item . the said claverhouse authorised his troop to kill matthew mckel wrath , without any examination , in the paroch of camonel in carrick , anno 1685. col. iames douglass , now liev. general , brother to the duke of queensberry , together with liev : iohn livingston , and a party with them , surprised 5 : men in a cave at inglestoun , in the parish of glencarn , being betrayed by andrew watson now prisoner in drumfreis ; their names were iohn gibson , robert grierson , robert mitchel , iames bennoch , and iohn edgar , all which were at the command of the said col : dowglas brought forth & immediately shot dead , without giving them so much time as to recommend their souls unto god. one iohn ferguson , sometimes a profest friend , thrust one of them through ; supposing he was not dead : this was done in the year , 1685. item , the said col : iames douglas and his party , shot to death iohn hunter for no alledged cause , but running out from the house at corchead , the same year , 1685. item , the said col : or liev : gen : iames dowglas , with liev : livingston , and coronet iames dowglas , surprised six men at prayer at the calduns , in the parish of minigaf ; viz : iames dun , robert dun , andrew mickale , thomas stevenson , iohn macklude and iohn stevenson , in ianuary 1685. item , the said col : or liev : gen : iames dowglas caused take adam macquhan out of his bed , sick of a fever , and carry him to newtoun of galloway , and the next day shot him dead , the foresaid year , 1685. item , the said col : or liev : gen : dowglas commanded thomas richard , an old man of 70 : years , to be shot in the time of prayer ; ( he was betrayed and taken by peter ingles ) anno 1685. at cumnock in kyle . item , the said col : or liev : gen : iames dowglas , together with the laird of lag , and capt : winram , most illegally condemned , and most inhumanely drowned at stakes within the sea-mark , two women at wigtoun ; viz : margaret lauchlan , upward of 60 : years and margaret wilson , about 20 : years of age , the foresaid fatal year , 1685. captain dowglas finding one mowat , a taylor , meerly because he had some pieces of lead belonging to his trade , took him , and without any further trial shot him dead , between fleet and dee in galloway . item , the said captain dowglas and his men finding one auchenleck , a deaf man , for not making answer , through defect of his hearing , instantly shot him dead off horseback , near carlinwark , anno 1685. sir robert dalzel and liev : stratoun , having apprehended daniel mackmichel , and detained him 24 hours prisoner , took him out and shot him at dalveen , in the parish of durisdeer in nithsdale , ian : 1685 : item , the said captain dalzel , and liev : stratoun , with their men , found william adam hiding in a bush , and instantly killed him , at the walwood in kyle , feb : 1685. captain bruce , capt : of dragoons apprehended iames kirko , at the intelligence of one iames wright , carried him to drumfreis , detained him prisoner one night , next day brought him forth to the watersands , and without any process , shot him dead . the dying man desired a little time to make his peace with god ; the captain answered , oftner than once or twice , devil a peace ye get more made up . some gentlewomen coming to beg his life , were hindred by one iohn craik of stewartoun ; the foresaid dalzells 2d . son was one of them that shot him , tho without command , iune 1685. item , the said captain bruce surprised in the fields , and instantly shot three men in the parish of kirk-patrick in galloway , viz. iohn wallace , edgar , and another , feb. 1685. item . the said captain bruce and his men , took out of his bed thomas mckhaffie , sick of a feaver and shot him instantly , in the paroch of strat●un in carrick , ian. 1686. iames dowglass coronet of dragoons , commanded to shot iohn semple , eslaying to escape out of his window , in the paroch of dellie , anno 1685. kilkerron shot him . item . the said coronet douglass apprehended edward mckcen , and by search finding a flint stone upon him , presently shot him , without any further tryal , feb : 1685. liev. gen. drummond commanded without any process or tryal iohn murchie , and daniel mckilwrick , to be immediatly shot , after they were taken , in the paroch of camonel in carrick , anno , 1685. at the same time , his souldiers did shoot dead alex. lin. captain inglis , and his dragoons pursued and killed iames smith , at the burn of ann in kyle , 1684. peter inglis his son , killed one iohn smith in cunningham , 1685. item . the said peter or patrick inglis killed one iames white , struck off his head with an ax , brought it to newmills , and plaid at the foot ball with it , he killed him at little-black wood , the foresaid year , 1685. item . the said peter inglis shot iohn barrie , with his pass in his hand , in evandale , april , 1685. major balfour , together with captain maitland and their party , apprehended at their work , robert tam , iohn vrie , and tho : cook , and instantly shot them . at pomadee , near glasgow , may , 1685. col. buchan , with the laird of lee , and their men shot iohn smith , in the paroch of lesmahago , feb : 1685. liev : lauder shot to death william shillilaw , at the wood head in the water of air , anno , 1685. liev : nisbet and his party shot to death iohn ferguson , george whiteburn , and patrick gemmil in the parish of finnick , in the said year , 1685. liev. murray , now prisoner in edin . with his party , shot one iohn broun , after quarters given at blackwood in clidsdale , mar. 1685 , liev. crichton , now prisoner in edinburgh , did most barbarously after quarters , shoot david steel , in the parish of lesmahego , decem : 1686. the laird of stenhouse , sir kobert laurie of maxueltoun and iohn craik of stewartoun , did instigate and urge coronet bailie his party of dragoons to shot william smith in hill , after he had been prisoner one night ( it was the day of maxueltouns daughters marriage , ) who also refused to let him be buried in the church-yeard . sir iames iohnstoun of westerhall , caused apprehend andrew hislop in the parish of hutton in anandale delivered him up to claverhouse , and never rested untill he got him shot by claverhouse his troupers ; claverhouse would have delayed it , but westerhall was so urgent , that claverhouse was heard say , this mans blood shall be upon westerhall , may 1685. sir robert grierson of lag , having the command of a part of claverhouses troop & strauchans dragoons , surprised io. bell of whiteside , david haliday portioner of mayfield , andrew macrabeit , iames clement , and robert lennox of irlintoun , and barbarously killed them after quarters , without time allowed to pray ; when iohn bell of whiteside begged a little time to pray , lag answered , what devil have you been doing ? have you not prayed enough these many years in the hills ? and so shot him presently in the parish of tongland in galloway , febr. 1685. item , the said laird of lag having alexander mellubie and iohn gordon prisoners , at the miltoun of orr , without any assiise or tryal , caused them to be hanged on a tree at the kirk of irongray , and there left them hanging . item the said laird of lagg , with the earle of anandale , having command of some troups of heretors , pursued another david halyday and george short , and apprehended and shot them , under the cloud of night , in the paroch of wynhame in galloway , anno , 1685. the laird of culyean , for that time captain of a troup of militiae and heretors , killed william mckergur at blairquhan milne , anno , 1685. item the laird of culyean , with the laird of ballochmilne , shott gilbert mcadam , in the paroch of kirkmichel , iuly , 1685. a party of highlanders killed ioseph wilson , david dun , simeon paterson , and other two , near the water of kill , in a moss in kile , anno 1685. the laird of ironkeple commanding a party of highlandmen , killed robert lochart and gabriel thomson , about that time also . likewise , william paterson was shot ot strevin , uncertain by whom , 1685. also iohn mclorgan was killed at drummellians house in the night time not known by whom . iohn reid belonging sometimes to craigies troup , who was this last summer in rebellion in the highlands , did under cloud of night , kill by a shot , one george wood , about 16 years old , without asking one question at him , at tinkhorn hill in kyle , iune 1688. in summ their number amounts to 78. the chief contrivers and authors of all these slaughters and mischiefs were , they that enacted and subscribed the edicts for them in council , principally the e. of perth chancellour . duke of queensberry , marq. of athol , and particularly the viscount of tarbat , who invented this murdering device , wherein yet he carried so cunningly , that he procured the dispatch of the act to the king , with such suddenness , that he found a way to shift his own subscribing of it . having thus , in a compendious and cursory glance , given this short memorial of our grievances and sufferings under the former governments , with a particular specimen of some instances , discovering some , and but a few of the actors and instruments of these evils ; whom we have specially mentioned , selected out of the copious store of many others of that character that might be specified , not out of a principle of revenge , or humor of reproach , but from a principle of zeal for justice , the honour of the king , and happiness of the kingdom ; we desire ( in the sense of the necessity , and in the hope that the king and parliament will see the expediency of removing the former tools of tyranny from power and trust under this government , and from a capacity of driving their old trade ) that among others a remark may be put upon the abovementioned persons . we shall in the next place condesend upon some of our present grievances , which , instead of the redress of the former , we are of new made to groan under ; whereby our expectation have been in a great measure disappointed , and the comforts of our present quiet and reviving in our bondage ( which yet we desire to be thankful to god for , and to the king as his honoured instrument ) are much imbittered . we are but a poor people , and therefore our grievances are the less regarded : nor were they indeed to be so much respected , if they were peculiar to us , but being of common extent , and grievous to the greatest body of the nation ( tho' a great part are so accustomed , issachar-like to couch under all burdens , in silent and stupid submission , that their grievances are heavier than their groaning ; and others through frequent disappointments are become so heartless in their hopes of redress , that they have given over complaining , except in their private murmurings , or secret mournings before the lord of heaven and earth ) we have the more confidence to speak out what others think , and choose rather ( if it shall come to that ) to suffer once for speaking than to continue languishing under growing grievances for not speaking . for our former grievances we do not plead merit to obtain a redress : yet we take the confidence to say , that as our former sufferings , under the former governments , should have conciliated compassion ; so what we have endeavoured to do in evidencing our zeal for this ; might have had some consideration . we are represented by the viperous curates , and other malignants , who alwayes sought our ruine , as antipods to all mankind , enemies to government , and incapable of orders : but as their order and cause is toto diametro opposite unto the institutions and cause of christ , and it were the interest of all in this hemisphere to have such a generation of viperous reproachers ; and their lying lybells banished to the antipods ; so they must have little witt , and less honesty , who will entertain their reproaches , who are as great rebells to this government , as we avowed our selves to be to the former . our sufferings for declining the yoke of malignant tyranny and popish usurpation are before hinted and generally known ; and all that will be pleased to know , and consider our carriage since the king did first appear in his heroick undertaking , to redeem these nations from , popery add slavery , will be forced to acknowledge we have given as good evidence of our being willing to be subjects to king william , as we gave proof before of our being unwilling to be slaves to king iames. for upon the first report of the prince of orange's expedition we owned his h. quarrel , when as the prelatick faction were in armes to oppose his coming to help us. we prayed openly for the success of his armes , when in all the churches the prayers were for his ruine . we associated our selves to contribute what we could to the promoting of his interest ; and were with the first that declared a desire to engage for him , and under him at our renewing the covenants , when they were associating with and for his enemies . accordingly for that effect , after we had gone to armes , upon the noise of kircudbrights burning , we modelled our selves in companies ; whereby we were in readiness to offer , and had the honour to be admitted to guard and defend the honourable meeting of estates , against all attempts of the d. of gordoun , vicount of dundee , or other enemies . and thereafter understanding the government required the raising of forces , for the defence thereof against the intestine insurrections , and forreign invasions of the late king iames , his complices within or without the land : upon the first occasion , we were the first that offered to furnish a regiment for his majesties service , and accordingly made up the e. of angus's regiment , all in one day , without beat of drum , or expence of levy money ; having first concerted with the liev : colonel clevland such conditions and provisions , as we thought necessary for securing and clearing our conscience , liberty and safety ; that all the officers of the regiment should be such , as in conscience and prudence , might with cordial confidence be submitted unto & followed ; such as had not served the enemy in destroying , nor engaged by oaths and tests , to destroy the cause , now to be sought for and defended ; but that they should be well affected , of approven fidelity , and of a sober conversation . having also declared , that the cause they were called to appear for , was the service of the kings majesty , in the defence of the nation , recoverie and preservation of the protestant religion , and in particular , the work of reformation in scotland , in opposition to popery , prelacy and arbitrary power , in all its branches and steps , until the government of church and state , be brought to their lustre and integrity established in the best and purest times . upon these terms , we offered to compleat two or three more regiments , if it had been accepted . but , before we offered to be souldiers , we had first made an offer to be subjects ; and because we did not look upon our selves as subjects to the late king , who treated us as enemies , we made therefore a voluntary tender of our subjection , in a peculiar petition by our selves ▪ which we purposed to have given in to the meeting of estates at their first sitting down . we shewed it to several honourable members , but by their advice it was delayed , until the meeting prevented the purpose of it , by proclaiming the king and queen . the tenor whereof here follows . to the meeting of estates of the kingdom of scotland . the noblemen , barons and bvrgesses , lawfully called and chosen , now assembled at edinburgh , for establishing the government , restoring and securing the true religion , laws and liberties of the said kingdom . the humble petition of the poor people who have suffered grievous persecution , for their revolt from , and disowning the authority of james the vii , pleading for the devolving the government upon the prince of orange , now king of england . sheweth , that the sad effects of the late arbitrary and tyrannical course of government , which these nations , and we in a special manner have been groaning under these years past ; from which to relieve them , the most serene and illustrious prince of orange was induced by the propitious conduct of a very glorious providence , to undertake this noble and heroick enterprise , and for redressing which , this honourable convention is called and conveened : together with the revived hopes , since his highness auspicious arrival , that all honnest men have begun to conceive and entertain , of getting their grievances freely represented and redressed ; the denyal whereof , these several years , hath been to us , and many others , a grievance very grievous : have necessitate , incited , invited and encouraged us among others ( tho of the meanest figure , and lowest interest in this great affair ; yet , as persons pressed to declare , and oppressed for declaring their consciences , sentiments and resentments of the late abused government ) to take the boldness , now to open our hearts to this great and honourable meeting ; and with all humility , as becomes , to represent to your honours , that , as we conceive , we wanted not right and reason upon consciencious grounds , to decline the illegally extorted , and arbitrarly imposed acknowledgement of our allegiance unto iames the vii . whose authority we could never own , because of his illegal investiture , without taking , or being in capacity to take the oath of coronation ( while addicted to poperie ) contrare to the laws of god and man , because of his advancing the prerogative , unto an illimited and most despotical absolutness , which all were required to obey without reserve ; and because of his arbitrary abusing it , to the undermining and overturning our religion , laws and liberties , and intended introduction of poperie and slaverie , at the opened gap of the prelatical hierarchy , erastian supremacy , and the late vastly extended toleration . and because we could not own it , our sufferings have been very great , known to this and other nations , and we are confident will not now be condemned by any that have espoused the cause , and have been honoured to concur in the enterprise of rescuing these nations from the unsupportable yoke of the late popish domination , upon the same , or equivalent grounds on which we durst not own it : so we prostrate ourselves , yet sorrowing under the smart of our still bleeding wounds , at your honours feet , who have a call , a capacity , and we hope a good mind to cure them ; and offer this our petition , enforced by all the formerly felt , presently seen , and for the future feared effects and efforts of this throne of iniquity , and the mischief thereby framed into law , and practised or projected against all law , by the cry of the blood of our murdered brethren , by the slavery of the banished free born subjects of this realm , by all the miseries that many forefeited , disinhereted , harassed and wasted honest families have been redacted to ( their estates and lives being at the mercy of incensed souldiers ) for adhering unto the ancient covenanted establishments of religion and liberty ; and by all the arguments of justice , necessity and mercy , that ever could conciliate commiseration among men of wisdom , piety and vertue ; humbly beseeching , requesting and craving of your h : now when god hath given you this opportunity to act for his glory , the good of the church and nation , your own honour , and the happiness of posterity , now when this kingdom , the neighbouring , and all other nations of europe , have their eyes upon you , expecting you will acquit your selves like the representatives of a free nation , in redeeming it from slaverie , otherwise ineluctable , following the noble footsteps of your renowned ancestors , and the present precedent and pattern of this honourable convention and parliament now sitting in england ; that you will proceed , without any farther procrastinations ( alwayes , especially now dangerous , when papists , and other malignant enemies are openly attempting to raise a rebellion against the state ) to declare the late iniquous government dissolved , the crown vacant , and iames vii , whom we never have , and resolve with many thousands , never again to owne , to have really forfeited , and rightly to be deprived of all right and title , he could ever pretend thereunto : and to provide , that it may never be in the power of any succeeding governour , for the time to come , to aspire unto or arrive at such a capacity of tyrannizing . moreover since anarchy and tyranny are equally to be detested , and the nation cannot subsist without a righteous governour , and none can have a nearer right , nor fitter qualifications , than his illustrious highness , whom the most high hath signally owned and honoured to be our deliveror from popery end slavery ; we cry and crave that king william , now of england , may be chosen and proclaimed king of scotland , and that the regal authority be devolved upon him , with such necessary provisions , limitations and conditions of compact ; as may give iust and legal securities of the peace and purity of our religion , stability of our laws , priviledges of parliaments , and subjects liberties civil and ecclesiastick , and make our subjection both a clear duty , and a comfortable happiness . and because kings are but men mortal , mutable , and fallible ; particularly , we crave , that he be bound in his royal oath ; not only to govern according to the will and command of god , and ancient , laudible and righteous laws , in the ministration of justice , punishment of iniquities , redressing of just grievances , and preservation of true liberties : but above all , that he and his sucessors , profess persevere in , protect and maintain the true protestant religion , abolish poperie and all false religion , heresie ; idolatrie and superstition , revive the penal lawes against the same , re-establish and redintegrate the ancient covenanted work of reformation of this church , in doctrine , worship , discipline and government , according to the word of god , confession of faith ; covenants national and solemn league ; upon its old foundations , as established from the year 1638. and downward to 1650 ; and that he restore and confirme , by his princely sanction , the due priviledges of the church , granted to her by ▪ jesus christ , her only head and supreme , and never assume to himself an erastian supremacy over the church in causes ecclessiastick , or unbounded prerogative , in civils , above law ; but , as the keeper of both tables of the law of god , in a way competent to civil authority , interpose his power , for the ejecting out of the church , the prelats , the main instruments of the church and nations miseries . and from all administration of the power and trust in the state , such malignant enemies as have promoted the ruine thereof : upon these or the like termes , we tender our allegiance to king william , and hope to give more pregnant proof of our loyalty to his majesty , in adverse , as well as prosperous providences , than they have done or can do , who profess implicite subjection to absolute authority , so long only as providence preserves its grandure . may it therefore please your hon. to take the premises into your serious consideration , and put a favourable construction on this our humble and earnest request , which sense of duty , in desire to exoner our conseiences , and in complyance with , and at the solicitation of the cries of many thousands in the nation , moved and craved , we take the confidence to present to your hon. in the hope , that zeal for god and his church , regard to iustice and mercy , care of your own , as well as the countries interest , dutiful love , loyalty and gratitude to king william , and even pity to us , will prevail with your wisdom to grant in with all convenient expedition . and your supplicants shall ever pray &c. from what is above hinted , it may appear , that we are not enemies to government ; but , that as we have had occasion , we have given more evidences of true loyalty , than any of our traducers , and of true zeal to have this government fixed , on such a foundation , as may make it secure and stable , and subjection thereunto to be not only a duty , but a comfort . and with the same inviolable zeal , affection and fidelity , since others will not , we cannot forbear to remonstrare those grievances , that are as well hateful to god , and hurtful to the government , as grievous to us. first , as to the church , tho' all honest subjects have been impatiently expecting the settlement thereof , from the kings declaration , his promises at the acceptance of the crown , and his instructions to d. hamiltoun ; yet , to this day , it is neither settled , nor purged , nor planted , but kept in uncertain suspense what to fear , or what to hope . popery indeed is much suppressed , in a way , wherein much of god , and little of man is to be acknowledged and admired ; yet the ancient laudable laws against papists , seminary priests , sayers and hearers of mass are not revived , reinforced , nor put in execution , while many of these idolaters , and intycers to idolatry , are connived at , past without punishment , and favourably intreated , when some of us have apprehend them , and delivered them into custody . whence they are much encouraged where they cohabite in great numbers ; especially in the sea coast of galloway , where they may open a door and free ingress to the irish , whenever they have a mind to invade ; whereby the country about , is contiunally tormented with fears of their massacres and murdering attempts . we can never be freed from the hazard of the return of popery , so long as papists are so much tolerated , and are bragging of their hopes of getting a toleraration established , suspending and dispensing with the penal statutes against them ; which will defile the land with idolatry , and expose us to the judgement of god. we desire also to be thankful , that poperies eldest daughter , the episcopal hierarehy , or prelacy , hath got such a knock on the head , that it is abolished by law , & its return so far legally precluded , that the removal thereof , being one of the stipulations & artieles of compact with his majesty , at the disposal and acceptance of the crown , it cannot be restored without asignal violation of the regal covenant ; the native consequences whereof , may beforeseen to be so dangerous , that we hope , the kings wisdom and justice , will be proof , against all the insinuations and perswasions of the church of england , to hazard it ; yet it is a very burdensome grievance , that the settlement of the church government , is so long suspended , and the nation kept in suspense , not knowing what shall be settled in stead of prelacy abolished ; whereby the land is left to settle in nothing , but to rest and rott in old crying sins , and new provocations are daylie multiplied without control ; scandals and disorders , to the dishonour of god , reproach of religion , stumbling the weak , hardening the perverse , and offending all are not restrained , but much encouraged , and different factions much fomented ; while church government and discipline ( the only preservative and restaurative medicine for such distempers ) is neither established , nor any rule determined , by which it shall be established , except the inclinations of the people ; which are in themselves very variable , and must be ruled by , and not a rule unto the institutions of iesvs christ : and as they are variable , so they are as various and diverse , as there are numbers of persons or parties , that prefer their own humours and interests to the supreme law , the revealed will of christ : some are for erastianisme ; some for a constant moderatorship ; some for a superintendency ; some perhaps for independency ; some for a toleration of all ; some are for a continuance of the curates ; either without any accommodation with them , and secluding them from a share of the government , but suffering them still to exercise their ministry ; or by an accommodation and coalition with them in the government also ; some again are for the continuance of patronages , how ever it be . we and many thousands are against all these things , as being contrary to the word of god , abjured frequently in our covenants national and solemn leagve ; condemned in the confession of this , and all other best reformed churches ; and in the doleful experience of former times , known to be inlets to many wicked inventions , innovations and corruptions in the church ; and in process of time productive of prelacy again : which , in the lords strength , we , and many thousands , do intend never to submit to , tho for our recusancy , we should suffer the greatest persecution from men. we are for the restauration and re-establishment of this churches ancient covenanted reformation , in its doctrine , worship , discipline and government ( according to the word of god , confession of faith , catechisms larger and shorter , national and solemn covenants and acts of general assemblies ) in all its legall immunities , securities and sanctions , as before the year 1650. these different inclinations , cannot be a rule of government and order , but of ataxie and confusion ; nor can they be determined by a lesbian rule , unconstant and uncertain ; but somewhat , to which all must vail and and submit , and which must claim the last appeal . tho we might , with as great confidence as others , venture the success of our plea for presbyterie , upon the decision of a poll and plurality of votes , providing ( which could not be denied ) none be admitted to vote , but such as are well affected to the government of king william and queen marry . yet we cannot subject the determination of that plea , to any other rule , than he institution of christ ; considering , that either the lord iesvs , who is anointed only king and head of his church , and is faithful in all his house , must not have appointed any government or order thereof at all ( which would exceedingly reflect upon his wisdom and faithfullness and the perfection of his law ) or this government which he hath appointed , must not be arbitrary and ambulatory , indifferently determinable ▪ by the will and inclinations of men , no more than others of his institutions can be . we plead for no government , and for nothing in this of presbyterie , but what we have the lawes of christ in his word , the ancient lawes of the nation , the constitutions of the church , never yet repealed , by any subsequent authority ecclesiastick , and the covenant eengagements of all ranks in the land , of indespensible obligation , for : nor do we plead for any exercise , or extent of this order , further then is necessary for the purging of the church , of every antichristian , or erastian corruption and invention , defection or schism , error or scandal in officers or members impartially ; and for the planting of the church with godly , able and faithful ministers , for the instruction , conviction conversion , edification and consolation of the members thereof . but now , not only is this government not established , but even that of prelacy is not effectually , nor can be abolished , while the many iniquous laws against presbytery , and pressing submission to prelacy are not rescinded ; and while our national and solemn league cevenants for preserving and promoting reformation , are so far forgotten and trampled upon , that the acts antiquating and discharging them to be owned , are not only not abrogated , but so far yet observed , that it is hardly allowed they should be publickly mentioned : while also , the ecclesiastical supremacy , a feather likewise of antichrists wing , and a blasphemous and sacrilegious encroachment upon christs prerogatives , and his kingdoms priviledges , is not revocked , nor declared void , whereby it stands declared by wicked laws , to be the inherent right of the magistrate , to order , dispose , alter or innovate the external government of the church , and to plant , or transplant ministers , and give them instructions , to regulate them in the exercise of their function ; which , if not abolished , will not only optn a door to the introdnction of prelacy or popery again : but if the protestant religion be never so well established , this will in process of time , unhinge all possible settlements thereof . there is nothing more the interest of the church , than to seek that this mountain in the way of its reformation , be removed ; and all acts confirming the same repealed ; and indulgences following therefrom , be declared to be usurpations . another pillar of prelacy , the constant support of it , and stop to reformation , does yet continue , while the burdensome bondage of patronages is not removed ; whereby the church is robbed of the liberty of choosing her own guides intrusted with her greatest concerns , & the great-men have open access implicity to impose , and prey upon , and pester the church with corrupt teachers : but if all these things were rectified , it is impossible the church can ever be settled , or purged , or planted , as long as the episcopal curats , intruded by the prelats collation and patrons presentation , contrare to the institutions of christ , and the constitutions of this reformed church , without the call , and contrare to the inclinations of the people in many places , but every where the bane of the nation , the scandal of the church and the cause of all our confusions , are continued in the churches . how can the church be settled , when those that unsettled it continue in the same capacity to oppose all righteous settlements of reformation ? how can the church be purged , when the greatest corrupters , and the most corrupted members , remain in power ? either they must be looked upon , and subject themselves as members of the presbyterian church , and then discipline cannot but strike against them , in such a measure of severity , as may be some way proportioned to the greatness of their scandal , their obstinacy , impenitency , and continuance in it as long as they could , and the hazard of their leavening the whole lump ; or they must be looked upon as pure and perfect schismaticks , seting up a distinct church , and seperate communion , within a well constitute national church , and as such they ought to be censured and restrained . how can the church be planted , when those plants that the lord never planted , fill so much of his vineyard , and continue in so many paroches , either to sterve them with the hungry husks of ethick homilies and harangues of moral vertues , instead of gospel holiness ( not knowing to preach the mystery of the covenant of grace , or declare the counsel of god , to the conversion of sinners unto christ or so poyson them with points of popery , arminianisme , socinianisme : yet many of them do yet peaceably possess the places they were intruded into ; and others dispossessed , are reponed by force , contrare to the inclinations of the paroch , and notwithstanding their opposition in some places , as for instance in colintown and in peebles , where great insolences were committed , affronting the magistrates , and disturbing the presbyterian meeting , which have been overlooked ; but the least accession to any opposition that was made , hath been severely punished , one francis beatie upon this account being for these many weeks kept in prison , and his petitions for liberty ejected . this hath discouraged many , and opened their mouths to reflect ; that tho this government be as much admited for acts of mercy to rebells , as the former was for cruelty , yet wherever any presbyterian can be apprehended in any fault , he must expect the rigour of severity . we do not justifie illegal tumults , nor do we approve that people should transgress their line and station in endeavours of reformation , when there is a magistrate to be applied unto : but as magistrates ought to interpose their power for extruding , and easing the people of intruders ; so when they abuse it , to the re inforcing of these intrusions , honnest and zealous people can as hardly be restrained from resisting such invasions and impositions against the laws of god and man , as they can be kept from withstanding a violent invader of their property , or intruder on their heritage . for our part , as we thought it a seasonable duty , to take the opportunity of the interregnum , before the settlement of a government that we could subject our selves to , for cleansing the western shiers of these creatures ( which was done with all the discretion that the confusions of that time , and the feared shortness of that opportunity could admitt . and whatever clamour they make of their persecutions , in their late printed account and information to the church of england , stuft with lies , we defy them to give an instance of any hurt done by us to any of their persons or families , or to charge us with one six-pence worth of their goods : if any have , let it be proven and punished ) which , if others in other places had imitated , in that season , with the like discretion , the nation might have been much eased , and the government prevented of a great deal of trouble : so , tho we are not for persecuting them who were our greatest persecuters , nor rendering them any evil for their evil , farther than to restrain them from coming back again to persecute us , and from intruding , where they have no right ; yet we are resolved , through gods assistance , to endeavour by all approven means , to hold them out now when they are out ; and sooner to die , and venture the loss of all things temporal , than to suffer any of them to repossess themselves of the churches , whence they are thrown out ; or any other within our reach , untill after sufficient evidences of their remorse they shall come in at the door of christs appointment . if in this we offend the malignants in the parliament or council , we cannot help it , it is not the first time , nor perhaps the last : but for the noble & honoured patriots among them , who are well affected to the cause of reformation the nations good , and his majesties honour and happiness , we are confident they will construct of our ingenuity in good part ; as flowing from conscience and candor . and we are hopeful his majestie will compassionat us in this matter ; and consider the case , that it is more for his honour and interest ; to have respect to the consciences of so many people , than to the humor and haughtiness of a few debauched lords and gentlemen , who delight in these vexations , and who by custom , as it were , have it for their element to impose upon poor peoples consciences . and we hope his majesty will think upon the redressing of this grievance , of the continuance of these episcopal curates , who took notice of this , as one of the grievances , in his declaration , that he came to relieve the nation from . in the netxt place , as to the state , tho we desire to be more abstract from these administrations that are above our reach ; yet it is obvious and grievous to all that desire the establishment thereof in righteousness and peace , that the settlement of church and state both is retarded and obstructed , by the frequent adjournments of parliaments , in so critical a season when the government is not well settled , the enemies thereof are prevailing , the friends thereof are sore discouraged and devided , and the forces have no maintenance . if ever there 〈◊〉 of parliaments , now it must be when the greatest interests , 〈◊〉 king and people , are in so eminent hazard : and yet it is more grievous , that when they conveen , and have opportunity to act for the good of the nation , the settlement of the church government , and the redress of grievances , the disputes of divided factions , about things of lesser moment , do hinder their establishing of those things , that all agree are absolutely necessary . time might be afterwards spared for many of these debates , with which the present precious opportunity is wasted , and they might with more advantage and facility be adjusted and composed afterwards , if once the establishment of the church , and the security of the nation were provided for , and these things , for which they have his majesties instructions , were settled and enacted : but we fear these differences are much fomented by self-seeking malignant incendiaries , who love to fish in troubled waters , and to pursue their selfish and sinistrous ends of undermining the church , supplanting the king's interest , and betraying the countries liberties , from whom these disorders and grievances have proceeded , which are now desired to be rectified and redressed , and from whose influence all these retardments and disapointments do flow , which the nation so much complains of . for as the open and avowed enemies of the king and country , owning the late king iames his interest ( all consisting either of the popish or prelatical and malignant faction , not so much as one presbyterian being among them ) are very many , insolent and prevalent ; not only in the highlands , but in all the hires of the kingdom ; and no doubt have their active agents , correspondents and abetters in the parliament , council and all the supreme judicatories of the kingdom ; so there are far moe secret undermining enemies , who for the time are not appearing in opposition to the government , that are as great enemies to the king and country , and all righteous interests , as any that do most appear , who are now desiring places , and ingyring themselves into publick trust , not to serve king william , whose advancement to the throne they opposed , with all the power and policy they had ; nor simply to satisfy their insatiable ambition , but to put themselves in better capacity to serve king iames , in retarding all righteous establishments , rending the parliaments , and ruining us all : yea , however some may account it policy , it is not only a grievance , but a sin dishonouring god , and destructive to the nation , and a dangerous politick , threatning hazard to religion and liberty and the government , that many wicked malignants , enemies to reformation , are admitted & imployed in the publick administrations , as officers of state , members of council & parliament , and other judicatories and places of trust ; who not only were our cruel persecuters , and murderers of our bretheren , whose blood cries for vengence against them ; but were the professed and sworn tools of the late tyranny , and instruments of the nations slavery , ministring to king iames , and cooperating with him in all his encroachments upon our religion , laws and liberties , as absolute vassals of his despotical will , under oaths and pensionary obligations to obey without reserve , and to this day , are either evil counsellours to perswade the king to some degrees of arbitrariness , or very disaffected to the government , counsellers to , encouragers of , or connivers at rebellion against it . it had been worthy service to the nation , to have at first exposed these men in their own colours , and represented the danger of trusting them , to the king ; who being much a stranger to men , at his first coming over , might be easily deceived in the choose of such as were to be imployed ; and then it had been easier to keep out , then now to put out of places : but it is never too late to seek to be rid of these that were , and are like to be instruments of our ruine ; whose exclusion from trust and power to play their old tricks , is necessary for the king's interest as well as the kingdoms , which are inseperable . and since the king declared against these evil counsellours ; and on their crimes and mal-administrations , founded the righteousness and necessity of his expedition , neither king nor parliament can justly offend at ; or refuse the nations demands , to be eased of them , nor find it convenient , that the betrayers of our laws , and robbers of our priviledges under the last government , be excluded from all share of administration in this . we have experience of their conduct and administration already , wherein we found nothing but tyranny , rapine and violence , and such justice and law as is discovered above ; and therefore can never beleive while only interest hath made them change their way , that ever they shall administer righteous judgement . and whatever confidence others may have , we cannot be without fears , while we are under the power of our old persecuters . but above all ; it is most offensive to god and all good men , that murderers of innocent people , without and against all law , particularly several of these above named , should not only be connived at , and past without punishment , but encouraged and intertained in favour and trust ; some of them discovered and apprehended as traitors to the present government , are notwithstanding over looked and suffered to escape justice , and liberate upon bale , as major or lieu. col. balfour , and lieu. nisbet ; others of them are members of parliament , as the commissioners for the shire of nithsdale and stewartry of anandale , sir ia. iohnstoun of westerhal , and iohnstoun of corehead , who is notourly known to have of late several times in caballs with iacobines drunk the late king's health . blood is a crying sin , defiling the land , which cannot be cleansed but by the blood of them that shed it . we thirst for the blood of none , nor crave the sheding of any , but of these who are so guilty of blood , that they are condemned to the punishment of murderers , by the law of god and all nations , having shed the blood of war in peace , without all shaddow of law. but as for those that murdered our bretheren , without all process , accusation , trial , conviction , assise or sentence , as is observed in his majesties declaration for scotland , we should not be free of the guilt of their impunity , if we did not seek justice against them . yet we wonder the less at this , that such criminalls as were authorized under the former government , by arbitrary orders , tho without law , to perpetrate their crimes , are not punished , when open avowed traitors , speakers of treason , and rebells against the present government , taken in ovett acts of lese-majestie , discovered in plots and projects , and apprehended in armes against his majestie , are indemnified , connived at , let out of prisons and tolerated , and thereby encouraged and tempted to go on in their conspiracies , and return to the same crimes , when ever they find opportunity ; for they will not ascribe this to his majesties clemency , but to the weakness of the government , that dare not draw its sword of justice . in the former government , there was nothing but severity against those that in the least discented from it : in this there is nothing but mercy to rebels ; both these are extremes . in the third place we cannot but have sad reflections upon the bad success of the war : which we think is not so much to be imputed to the bad conduct of those to whom it is intrusted , as to the wickedness and malignancy of the army , laying them and the land open to the danger of the wrath of god ; while the abominations of swearing , cursing , profaning the sabbath , whoredom , drunkenness , and all debaucheries ( which are severely interdicted by military lawes , if they were put in execution ) and are so abounding among officers and souldiers , that the honest hearted among them , whom only conscience did prompt to engage in the service , are exceedingly discouraged , & all the fearers of god affrighted , to whom the abounding of , and continuance in these sins is a greater terror , than all the numbers of enemies . this is the more to be adverted , that all that acknowledge god , are astonished with his signall and stupendous stroks , so observably wasting many thousands of the english army in ireland , within these few moneths past for these same abominations . but not only are our armies filled with the profane end profligate skum of mankind ; but to the great reproach of the cause , wherein religion is so nearly concerned , to the dishonour of god and offence of all the godly , many malignant enemies to reformation , avowed adversaries and persecuters of truth and godliness , are encouraged , imployed and intrusted for the defence of the interest , which , within this short time , they professedly opposed , and by many dreadful oaths were engaged to suppress . for the old dragoons , the late kings lieveguard and others , after by executing their old masters cruell and arbitrary orders , they had enriched themselves with the spoylls of the oppressed country , and imbrewed their hands in the blood of innocent and righteous people , when they saw the prince of orange like to prevail , forsook their king and crouded into his highness armies : not for love to his cause , which with the greatest keenness they contended against , as long as they could ; but to prevent the just vengance of his victorious armes , then threatened . hence they are yet intertained among the forces , and there tho they have not occasion to exert their fury , as formerly ; yet they cease not to express their malice against us , in boasting that they hope yet to persecute us as much as ever ; and bragging they are , and shall be for prelacy as long as they live , not fearing to impugn the act of parliament against it . it is certainly a land-sin to be witnessed against , as well as a grievance , that such enemies of truth and godliness , should be admitted unto , or continued in power and trust in the army , or imployed and intertained therein . it is dangerous that the royal standart should be a sanctuary to them , whom divine justice will pursue ; and absurd , that the army should be polluted , and in danger to be infected with the contagion of such an unhappy conjunction and unholy association . it were more profitable and promising like , that the tears and cries of the many widows and orphans , whom their bloody sword have beraved of their husbands and parents , might prevail with the justice of the government , to find them out and give them their reward . it were no loss , but a great advantage to the king and countrey both , that the army were throughly purged of those who betray the interest in stead of serving it , and whose carriage declares they are in the interest of the enemy , and were filled up with such as have another principle prompting them to serve , than the prospect of pay , which will make them venture their dearest blood in the cause , with resolution and confidence , when those that are pursued with a guilty conscience are afraid to look death and hell in the face . hereby , as his majesty would be far from all fears of the like treasons and treacheries , in some discovered already ; so all honest men having no other interest or end , but the glory of god , the peace and prosperity of their country , and the honour and happiness of the king , would be exceedingly encouraged and engaged to be zealous and resolute in the service , when they should know they have none to associate with , but such as are of aproven fidelity and good affection to the cause . it is yet the more grievous , that not only so many wicked and treacherous men are intertained in the army ; but men of principle and conscience , who are willing and zealous to serve in the warrs with the utmost fidelity , can find little encouragement ; and some are put out of trust and employment in the army , who had given good proof of their zeal , fidelity and courage , by the malignants procurement , to the end they might be rid of the fears and iealousies they had of their opposing their sinistrous designs : some there are we acknowledge in several regiments and troups , that are men of principle , conscience , courage and honour ; but these labour under very many discouragements , being very much maligned by the rest . particularly , we cannot but complain of the treatment of the e. of angues's regiment , which was sent to dunkeld ( as would seem ) on design by some to be betrayed and destroyed ; for , being there posted alone in the mouth of the highlands , the whole body of canons army marched towards them , the very day they came thither , and within three days gave them a general assault : where that regiment was left in the chock , denuded of the success that my lord cardross brought them , who were recalled ; and denyed the assistance they sought from col. ramsey lying at perth ▪ after which , getting the honor of that victory , by the goodness of god , they were more then ever envyed , by the remaining malice of their old enemies ; who , when they durst do no more to destroy them openly ; & their arts failed them to get them destroyed by the common enemy , sought by all means to break them , or to blast their reputation . finally , the country is much languishing in their jealousies , thinking their sufferings cannot be over , as long as not only the instruments , of their oppression , their persecuters are in so much power : but the laws and acts of parliament , &c. impowering them , & condemning the grounds of former sufferings , are yet standing unrepealed . yea , they complain their sufferings still continue , while forefaultries & fines are not redressed ; while many are impoverished by loss of law suits , and decreets past against them , through their non-appearance in their own defence , in times of hazard ▪ to their persons ; while many widows and orphans of those that lost their lives in fields and scaffolds , and of those that died in banishments , are in great distress , having none to provide for them ; and while many are yet in servitude in forraign plantations , whither they were banished & sold as slaves , who are not yet partakers of this reviving , we have got in our bondage . moreover , as the unrestrained debaucherie and dissoluteness of country people is very grievous , occasioned by the want of church government and discipline ; so the insolence of many gentlemen , professedly jacobins , owning the authority of k ▪ james , drinking his health , and forcing others to it where they are numerous , impugning the present authority , and openly speaking treason , is an intollerable affront to the government : for the honour of which , zeal for our god , loyalty to the king , and love to our country ; observing the deficiency of others that could do it better , we could not forbear to suggest these complaints ; in the hope that such as are not sensible of them , may open their eyes and see their distempers and dangers ; and those that are sensible of them , may be moved to represent them to those that are in authority , to redress and remove them . but whether men will hear , or not hear ; we are confident there is a god that ruleth in jacob , to the ends of the earth , who will hear the cry of the humble , in his own time . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a59965-e1000 grievance 1. grievance 2. grievance 3. grievance 4. grievance 5. grievance 6. grievance 7. grievance 8. grievance 9. grieance 10. grievance 11. grievance 12. grievance 13. grievance 14. grievance 15. grievance 16. grievance 17. grievance 18. grievance 19. grievance 20. grievance 21. grievance 22. grievance 22. grievance 23. grievance 24. grievance . 25. grievance 26. grievance 27. grievance 28. grievance 29. grievance 30. grievance 31. grievance 32. grievance 33. the case of the present afflicted clergy in scotland truly represented to which is added for probation the attestation of many unexceptionable witnesses to every particular, and all the publick acts and proclamations of the convention and parliament relating to the clergy / by a lover of the church and his country. sage, john, 1652-1711. 1690 approx. 246 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 66 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-05 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a59425 wing s285 estc r25113 08762217 ocm 08762217 41758 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a59425) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 41758) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1268:17) the case of the present afflicted clergy in scotland truly represented to which is added for probation the attestation of many unexceptionable witnesses to every particular, and all the publick acts and proclamations of the convention and parliament relating to the clergy / by a lover of the church and his country. sage, john, 1652-1711. [6], 20, 4, 33-108 p. printed for j. hindmarsh, london : 1690. attributed to john sage--lc catalog of printed cards. reproduction of original in the union theological seminary library, new york. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng episcopal church in scotland -clergy. clergy -scotland. scotland -church history -sources. 2002-12 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-01 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-02 olivia bottum sampled and proofread 2003-02 olivia bottum text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the case of the present afflicted clergy in scotland truly represented . to which is added for probation , the attestation of many unexceptionable witnesses to every particular ; and all the publick acts and proclamations of the convention and parliament relating to the clergy . by a lover of the church and his country . father , forgive them ; for they know not what they do . luke 23. 34 ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of , luke 9. 55. rejoyce not against me , o mine enemy : when i fall , i shall arise ; when i sit in darkness , the lord shall be a light unto me , micah 7. 8. london , printed for i. hindmarsh at the golden ball over against the royal exchange in cornhill , 1690. the preface . christian reader , the following narrative was writ in a letter several months ago from scotland , by a person of great moderation and integrity , well acquainted with the humour and constitution of scotland ; it has been read and approved by persons of the best quality both in the church and state i● england , and is now at their desire published , because it represents shortly and impartially , the various methods under which the church of scotland suffered since the late revolution ; that thereby all good christians , especially the most charitable church of england , may see the sad effects of rampant presbytery , pity their brethren that have so severely smarted under it , consider the fatal consequences of papal supremacy in a protestant ●irk , and speedily bethink themselves how to quench those flames in their neighbours house , which so visibly threaten destruction to their own . foelix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum . some say , and i hope it 's true , that there are many moderate presbyterians to be found abroad in the world , altho with us they have been all ever bent to persecute when they had power , and think they do god good service when they murther bishops , and quite raze out their adherents in church and state , as is too visible by the late and present proceedings of that party amongst us . dr. burnet now bishop of salisbury , in a sermon at the election of my lord mayor of london on the 29th of september , observes very well . some plead now ( says he ) for moderation , tho they have forgot it shamefully where they have power , as the congregations now in new-england , impose under the pains of banishment and death in case of return , not only the religion of the state , but many speculative points in opinion , and other things that are certainly indifferent . the presbytery in scotland imposed the covenant under the pains of excommunication ; upon which followed a forfeiture of the personal estate , and a sequestration of the real ; he might have added , and sometimes death or banishment to the person , but he goes on , and this covenant all persons , men and women , ( he might have said , children too ) were forced to swear , tho few could understand it ; and one particular was not far from an inquisition , that every one should discover all malignants and enemies to their cause , in order to bring them to condign punishment , by which every man was sworn to be a spy and an informer . the following book shews in part what gospel like methods that party now use to have the same principles and practices again revived in the world , and from it i wish these moderate presbyterians which they say are abroad , to beware of that poison that has made the brains of their scots brethren so giddy , that their zeal against episcopacy may not run them quite out of their christianity , as it 's too palpable with us it hath done to many . any moderate man will certainly think the difference between our scots episcopacy and presbytery not worth the heat or danger of a dispute , for first as to the doctrine , both parties are agreed , the confession of faith made by mr. knox and ratified in parliament by king james vi. and revived again in the test act by king charles ii. this , together with the westminster confession , ( both agreed on by the general assembly of presbyters ) are owned next to the word of god by both parties , as the standard of the doctrine of our church . secondly , as to the worship , it 's exactly the same both in the church and conventicle ; in the church there are no ceremonies at all injoyned or practised , only some persons more reverent , think fit to be uncovered , which our presbyterians do but by halves even in the time of prayer ; we have no liturgy nor form of prayer , no not in the cathedrals , the only difference in this point is , our clergy are not so over-bold nor fulsome in their extemporary expressions as the others are , nor use so many vain repetitions , and we generally conclude one of our prayers with that which our saviour taught and commanded , which the other party decry as superstitious and formal ; amen too gives great offence , tho neither the clerk nor people use it , only the minister sometimes shuts up his prayer with it . the sacraments are administered after the same way and manner by both ; neither so much as kneeling at the prayers , or when they receive the elements of the lords supper , but all sitting together at a long table in the body of the church or chancel . in baptism neither party use the cross , nor are any godfathers or godmothers required , the father only promising for his child : the only difference in this sacrament is , the presbyterians make the father swear to breed up his child in the faith and belief of the covenant or solemn league , whereas the orthodox cause the father repeat the apostles creed , and promise to breed up the child in that faith which himself then professes . thirdly , as to the discipline it 's exactly in our episcopal church ( if it may be so called ) according to the model of the presbyterian mother kirk at geneva , for conformable to the consistory direction , ( not rubrick , for that 's a superstitious word ) we have in every parish a little court which we call the kirk-session , composed of the minister or ministers , if there be two belonging to that church ; and some lay men which we call elders and deacons too forsooth ; the business of this court , is to enquire into and punish scandals , and to collect and distribute the money which good people are pleased daily to offer at the church-doors for the poor : this court or session is lyable to the inspection and iurisdiction of the presbytery , who may visit the sessions , inspect their records , and receive appeals from them upon occasion . by presbytery we mean again a court of presbyters inferior to the synod , for every synod or meeting of the whole diocies belonging to a bishop , is divided into several classes or presbyteries , in each presbytery there is about eighteen or twenty in some twenty four ministers , who with the consent of the bishop , chose their own moderator or president , they meet ordinarily once every month , or oftener if they think their affairs require , for they have power to adjourn and meet at their own discretion : as the sessions are subject to the presbyteries , so are the presbyteries to the synod ; which meets always at set times twice every year , there the bishop himself pre●ides , or in case of his necessary absence , one commissionated by him , and all things are carried by the pl●rality of votes , and the acts made that way , are the only canons or rules we use for discipline : as the presbyteries are subject to the synod , so the whole synods of the nation are to the general assembly , where by law the archbishop of st. andrews is always to pre●ide ; and if i be not mistaken , has a negative voice , tho he was never known to use it . now i leave the impartial world to judge , whether presbyterians that had any moderation , would not be well contented , and live quietly under such a moderate episcopacy , where indeed except the power of ordination ( which is always to be performed with the consent and assistance if the brethren of the presbytery ) and the title of lord , which the king is pleased to confer upon them , the bishops are truly but constant moderators , which the presbyterians themselves , because of the great divisions , which often happened among them at the electing of moderators , were at length necessitated to sit down with . now then let any moderate presbyterian abroad say , whether indeed it be matter of conscience or humour , that makes presbyterians with us , separate from a church so constitute , or whether the difference between our church and their kirk be such as can justisie men in raising so many publick rebellions , and drawing so much misery and confusion upon the nation and themselves , as our zealots have often done ; and whether their own consciences can plead not guilty at the last great tribunal , where they must answer for all those murthers and butcheries , all the cries and tears of widows and orphans and ruined families which will then testifie against them ? or what can they answer now to the world , for the many late barbarities they have committed against their protestant brethren , themselves knowing not for what ; and therefore being ashamed of their practices , they are fain to conceal and deny them abroad : but to prevent their endeavours that way , and that they may appear to the world in their true colours , i have here , for the proof of this modest and impartial narrative , inserted some few particulars of the sufferings of our present episc●pal clergy , attested by their own hands , and by the hands of gentlemen of great integrity , who were eye-witnesses to the proceedings , many other of this parties more cruel practices against the clergy , might and may hereafter be published , and attested by the hands of the most significant gentry in the several parishes where the ministers were persecuted , only here these are singled out now , because all these papers , as they are attested and here published , were shewed in the original authentick copies to most of our governours , both in scotland and england ; and the greatest part of them sent by a particular commissioner to king william then prince of orange in the beginning of our troubles . the publick acts and proclamations are also added , that men may not be deceived by thinking , as some would represent it , that the persecution proceeded only from the rabble , and that in a iumble of the times , when the government was not in a condition to protect the leiges ; and by the fourth collection of papers i think it 's plain , that the most fatal blows were all given by the scots presbyterians who were and are at the helm , and that without countenance from these , the rabble durst never have attempted what they did against all the laws of the kingdom , religion and humanity ; which plainly shews that presbyterians , howsoever dignified or distinguished are all of a piece . considering all this , one would be apt to think that the present episcopal clergy in scotland needed as much the assistance of the prayers and charitable collections of the church of england , as either these protestants in piedmont , france or ireland , especially since there seems to be something harder in our case than in any of theirs ; for in those foreign parts , if a man complies with the commands of his superiors , ( which i confess would be sometimes most irreligious in him to do ) then he would have the same protection and benefit that other subjects of his quality are allowed to enjoy : but with us it 's far otherwise , for as it plainly appears by the third collection of well attested papers , let men comply never so much with the commands of their governors , yet they are in the same sad case with those that do not in the least comply ; for nothing less than the utter and universal ruine of episcopacy being according to the covenant designed ; the superstructure as well as foundations must be destroyed , and the presbyters as well as the prelates quit rooted out , like philistines from the holy land ; and is this nothing to you , o all you that pass by ? give peace in our time , o lord , because we have none other that fighteth for us but only thou , o god. advertisement to the reader . because the publick papers in the fourth collection have not been printed in their due order , therefore the reader is desired to take notice , that upon the margin of the second page of the case of the present aff●icted cl●rgy , &c. instead of vide first paper being a declaration from the prince , read vide declaration by his highness the prince , &c. in the fourth collection of papers , and on the margin of that second page , for vide second paper being a proclamation , read vide a proclamation from the convention in the fourth collection : and at the foot of page six on the margin , for vide first proclamation , read vid● declaration by his highness the prince , &c. in the fourth collection . some other errors have escaped the pres● , because of the authors great dis●ance from it , he living in scotland ; but those being not very ma●●rial , it 's hoped the reader will be pleased to excuse and correct them himself . the case of the present afflicted episcopal clergy in scotland . sir , as nothing but a charity agreeable to its divine original , could move you , to be so solicitous to know the present afflicted state of the episcopal clergy in scotland ; so nothing but your . command could have obliged me to this short , and plain account of it . upon what ground the present parliament of scotland have thought ●it to abolish episcopacy out of that national church , i will not at present strictly enquire into : only i may be allowed to say , without offence , that since this parliament has not judged convenient to abolish it , as a government either antichristian , or contrary to reason , or scripture , or antiquity , or the universal opinion of protestant churches abroad , or learned men in all ages ; but only as contrary to the inclination of the people , and ( as such ) a grievance . it may be considently hop'd , that when presbytery , or the usurped authority of presbyters without bishops , shall become a grievance to the people , ( for what has been so heretofore , may be hereafter ) and so contrary to their inclination , that then , and in that case , episcopacy may for the same reason by authority of another parliament be restored again . this is no new thing , for before this revolution , episcopacy in scotland has been abolished twice by act of parliament , but so was also presbytery ; it 's now abolished the third time , and so presbytery may be . but with this difference , that presbytery was never setled by law in scotland , but when either our kings were involv'd in intestine broils , or when the civil government was under some great convulsion occasion'd most ordinarily by the practises of that party , which put them under a kind of necessity , ( not choice ) to allow it . but no sooner did either our kings , or the government reassume their just freedom , and vigour , but as soon was episcopacy both restored and established by law. so that episcopacy having been always setled in our church in time of peace , or at the restoration of it , may it please god to restore peace to the state , that order in the church may be it's happy effect . and may we make better use of these two blessings , then we have done hitherto . but as for the inferiour clergy of presbyters , who were received into the protection of this government , first by a declaration from the prince of orange in ianuary 1688 / 9. and in april thereafter by a proclamation of the convention of estates . by which proclamation and declaration all persons whatsoever were strictly forbid upon the highest pains to molest , disturb , or by any manner of way interrupt or hinder the clergy in the exercise of their ministry , and peaceable possession of their livings , they demeaning themselves as it became peaceable and good men . as for them , i say , to be turned out of their churches in so great numbers , may justly make strangers think these men guilty of hainous villanies and crimes , which have provoked the government against them , and obliged it to turn them out of their livings , and forbid them all exercise of their ministry , to declare their churches vacant , and to order themselves and families to remove from their dwelling-houses in the middle of winter . to set then this matter in its true light , it will be necessary to look a little back upon some things which happened before the proceedings of the privy council against the episcopal clergy . be pleased therefore to know , that there have been ministers turned out and deprived since the beginning of this revolution , by , and under a threefold authority . the first turning out was by the authority , or rather violence of the rabble in the western and southshires only . the second was by a committee of the convention of estates during the interval betwixt the convention and turning it into a parliament . the third was by the privy-council since the first adjournment of parliament . as for the first t●rning out by the rabble , it being executed in a time when the government of the nation was in a manner quite dissolved , there is less wonder , that disorders of that kind fell out , then it is accountable why they should not be redress'd now , upon this governments assuming its authority , and having power to make it self obeyed . but before i give you the true matter of fact of this highly presumptuous , and unparalell'd attempt of the rabble upon ministers , it will be first convenient to set before you the then state of those western shires in matters of religion ; what was their behaviour towards the clergy established by law , as also how they stood affected to the presbyterian ministers then tolerated by king iames to hold meeting-houses . and first , tho' it must be confessed that the western shires of scotland have been , and are , the most disaffected party of the kingdo ● to episcopal government , and have suffered much for the rebellions which their prejudices against it occasion'd ; yet it 's as true , that before the last indulgence granted by k. iames an. 1687. they were universally in a good understanding with their ministers , tho' not in that degree as the relation betwixt minister , and people doth require it , being more in shew then affection . for tho' they came generally to church , and owned that they had overcome their scruple of conscience of not having freedom to hear them preach , yet they still separated themselves from partaking of the holy communion when offered : making it a greater matter of conscience to receive that sacram●nt from their hands , then the other of baptism for their children . it is also to be presum'd , tho' not much to their credit , that there was more of constraint , for fear of penal laws , then a willing mind in this little conformity they yielded in coming to church , all which soon appeared . for in the next place , upon k. iames his declaration of ●●dulgence , or tolleration to dissenters , the people in those western shires run immediately into it , accepted of it , and 〈◊〉 agreat zeal to build meeting-houses , to call presbyte●ian preachers to these meeting-houses , and to contribute for their maintenance . with this state of affairs they seem'd so well satisfy'd , that they made addresses of thanks to king iames , in terms , which were no less acceptable to the then court , than scandalons to all judicious protestants in both kingdoms . * but these addresses having been printed and published in gazetts , i shall take no more notice of them . they were often told by wise men , that they were running a course in accepting of that tolleration , most destructive to the interest of the protestant religion , and that it would be much safer for them to continue in their parochiall churches as by law established , since every thing that weakened that fence , tended to the letting in of the popish party , which in time might destroy us both ; that tolleration being granted in both kingdoms in order to bring in popery , and by the means and favour of papists at court obtain'd and managed . tho' many , yea most of the inferiour people of these western shires at the first went into this snare , yet the persons of greatest quality and interest among them , did not so soon comply : and for the other shires in scotland , in some there were not above two meeting-houses in the whole shire , in others none at all , which , by the by , is a kind of demonstration , how little fond the generality of the nation was then of that way , and how the inclination of the people was then set , now so much talked of . but next , to show you how the presbyterians stood affected to one another , and among themselves , be pleased to know : that there was a presbyterian party then in the west , of the meaner sort of the people indeed , truly acting more consequentially to the presbyterian principle and practice in former times , who ( for all that was done ) would not accept of this tolleration given by king iames ; but did openly by their sermons and pens declare their dislike of it , and said much more bitter things against their indulged presbyterian brethren , who had accepted this toll●ration , than against the clergy established by law. where-ever these preachers came , they carryed gre●● numbers of the people after them , and would preach neither in church nor meeting-house , but in the open fields , for which they were called field-preachers . this boldness the then government found it self obliged to take notice of , and they fell upon a method to suppress it , which in all appearance had done it effectually , if the scene of publick affairs had not been changed by this revolution . it was , by giving commissions to such gentlemen in each shire , as were reputed leading men of that persuasion , or at least much favouring that way , to hold circuit-courts within their own districts , and upon seizing any of these hill-men , or field-conventi●lers , to punish them as the law ordained . this was a stratagem of the then statesmen , to cleave that party with a wedge ( as we say ) of their own wood. but that nothing was effectually done is to be attributed to this great change of our affairs . now to return to the account of the ministers being turn'd out by the rabble . upon the certain news of the prince of orange's landing in england , king iames called all his standing forces in scotland to his standard in england . this did directly break our government , it le●t the nation without defence , and gave all discontented people a favourable opportunity to execute their resentment , as their passions and interests moved them , and none having greater and more violent then these hill-men , or field-presbyterians , they prosecuted them with equall fury and disorder . the first commotion that appeared was amongst these hill-men , or cameronians , ( so called from one of their leaders , and a preacher , cameron ) they assembled themselves in the night time , and sometimes in the day , in small bodies armed . and in a hostile way went through the countries , forced their entry into private mens houses , against whom they had any private quarrell , but most ordinarily into ministers houses , where they with tongue and hands , committed all outrages imaginable against the ministers , their wives , and children ; where having eat and drunk plentifully , at parting they used to carry the minister out of his house to the church-yard , or some publick place of the town , or village , and there expose him to the people as a condemned malefactor , gave him strict charge never to preach any more in that place , but to remove himself and his family out of it immediately ; and for the conclusion of all this tragedy , they caus'd his gown to be torn over his head in a hundred pieces , of some they spared not their very cloaths to their shirt . when they had done with the minister , they call'd for the keys of the church , lock'd the doors and carryed the keys with them ; and last of all they threw the ministers furniture out of his house in many places , as the last act of this barbarous scene . this was the most general method when the minister was found at home , but in case he was absent , they entred his house , made intimation of their will and pleasure to his wife and servants , bidding them tell him , to remove from that place : if they found not a ready obedience , they would return and make him an example to others . this course went on in the months of december , ianuary , and february , 1688 / 9 , by which were turn'd outword of their livings all the ministers of the shires of aire , ren●rew , clidsdale , nidsdale , and most of annandale and galloway , to the number of about two hundred . the news of these great disorders coming to the ears of the prince of orange , who by this time had accepted the exercise of the government of scotland , untill the sitting down of the estates of that kingdom , which met on the 14th of march , 1688 / 9. as also his highness was humbly apply'd to by the oppress'd and miserable clergy of these shires ; by one of their number commissioned and sent up with a full information of their case , and therewith a petition to his highness for his help and protection in this their sad distress . in the mean time the regular gentry not willing to be alltogether run down by this furious rabble , began to bestir themselves for their own and the clergies defence , particularly the members of the colledge of justice at edenburgh ( to their eternall glory ) took up arms and form'd themselves in such a body as soon daunted the phanatick rabble ●t edenburgh . this occasioned the publication of a proclamation commanding all persons to lay down their arms in that kingdom , and therewith their animosities , and cruell resentments , ordaining also that all ministers thus violently ejected should return to their respective charges , and so continue without molestation , untill the setling of the government by the convention of estates , and in a word , that all things of that nature should be restored , as they were in the month of october preceeding . upon this proclamation the gentlemen of the colledge of justice ( not knowing what it is to oppose the least shaddow of authority ) laid down their arms , and all the good people in the kingdom ( especially the ministers ) look'd for nothing but a dutyfull complyance with so just and seasonable a command : but to the astonishment of all men , this did not allay our troubles , but by accident did encrease them , which fell out after this manner following . when the magistrates of gl●sgow had ordered one of their ministers to preach before them upon the sunday immediately following the publication of the prince of orange's proclamation , the rabble of that city got first into tumultuary assemblies on the streets , and then to arms , surrounded the church , when the minister was in the pulpit , fired in upon the best and most respected inhabitants of the place , and at length violently broke open the church-doors , which they within had shut upon themselves upon their approach , and when they had forc'd their entry into the cathedrall church , they beat many , wounded some , and dispersed the whole congregation without making distinction of age , sex , or quality . an account of this so high contempt of authority , and against laws , both divine , and humane , was sent up to the prince of orange , by the magistrates of glasgow , with their information of the affairs , attested by their subscriptions : but no remedy could be possibly apply'd at that time , for the dyet of the meeting of estates , drawing so near , upon which meeting the prince's exercise of the government ended , & nothing being able to repress these disorders committed by an armed force in contempt of that authority , except a greater for●e , and the shortness of the time , as was pretended , not allowing that to be sent down , all was referred to the meeting of the estates , who being met , instead of calling these hill-men to an account for the disorders committed by them upon ministers , these very men coming arm'd to edenburgh , were admitted as guards to that meeting , and had the thanks of the house given them for their good service , and are still a part of the standing forces of that kingdom . upon all this , the afflicted ministers saw clearly there was nothing left for them , but to suffer patiently the good will of god , which they have done , without the least publick complaint , waiting with all christian submission for a reparation of their wrongs from the justice of god , and till those in power shall be graciously pleased to commiserate their condition , since they and their poor families are in very hard and pinching circumstances , having been turn'd out of their livings , and properties in the midest of a hard winter , and suffer'd not only the spoiling of their goods , but some the loss of their children , and many marks and bruises in their own bodies ; and now are in a state of desolation , not knowing where to lay their heads , or to have bread for themselves or their families . this their case ought the rather to be commiserated ; there being no authority upon earth , that can be so much as pretended , by which they suffer , except that of the rabble . they were never since that time either cited , accus'd , or condemn'd before any judicature for any fault or crime , so that in common justice they have still a right in their persons to those livings of which they had quiet and legal possession , before these troubles , and if the wisdom of the nation in t●e next session of parliament shall judge it either ●it or convenient to remove them from these their livings , that law determining this affair , if any such shall be made , can only take place from the date of it , it cannot look back , and make men guilty before it was enacted , so that still it must remain without controversy , that whatever may be determin'd to be done with the ministers for the time to come , they have still a just and unquestionable title to their livings , until a sentence pass against them which is not yet done . this being their case , it 's not to be imagin'd that there will be found any man of reason , or ordinary quality , who will so much as open his mouth , in favour of these violent , and illegal extrusions in the next session of parliament , for it 's well known to all , how at the time , when this tragedy was acted , none of these presbyterians , who are now in power , did either avowedly own , or openly countenance these proceedings , but did publickly condemn them , so that what was morally evill in its originall , time cannot make good , nor will good men either desend or countenance . whatever may be said for some inconveniences which might have happened in that country , so fermented with passion and prejudice , if these ministers had been ordered to return to their charges there by the present government , yet it 's certain when men are innocent , they ought not to suffer , and therefore as was just now intimated untill the wisdom of the nation shall determine this matter , they ought to be look'd upon as legall possessors , tho' violently extruded . but that which no doubt will seem very extraordinary to any unbyassed thinking man , is , that these presbyterian preachers , who so heartily thanked kind iames for the liberty of their meeting-houses , with extraordinary and fulsom strains of flattery , thereby approving the dispensing power without reserve , ( which was the stile of our scots tolleration ) and did disown these cruell proceedings against the episcopall clergy , yet they would never consent to preach against such disorders , tho' often desir'd so to do , by wise and discreet men ; yea , which is more , these same ( as they called themselves moderate ) pres●yterian preachers , in a little time after , very confidently took possession of the churches of the orthodox ministers thus thrust out of their dwelling houses , and glebes , without the least title , or right to them , except what flow'd from the consent of some phanatick people who own'd them , and their meeting-houses , which was a notorious encroathment , not only upon the property of the legal incumbents , but also upon the right of patrons , not as yet taken away by law. for when the rest of the episcopal cleargy who were in quiet possession of their churches , and in good understanding with their people , were allarm'd , with the hard usage of so many of their brethren thrust out in the midst of a severe winter by this yet greater and more violent storm in the west , with their wives and children , to seek shelter from these their brethren . this gave such a damp , and rais'd such a just apprehension in their spirits , what might be the sad and tragical event of unparallell'd proceedings ; that it 's no wonder many of them were provok'd to think that the great design of some within the kingdom , who appeared so zealous for this revolution , was more to destroy the clergy and the whole epis●opal order , then to settle the kingdom upon its just and antient basis , or to preserve our religion , liberties , and properties as by law then established . this apprehension grew yet more strong when they saw that the convention of estates , did not take the ejected ministers of the west into their protection , by their proclamation , which was extended only to those who were in the actual exercise of their ministry ; by which it was plain enough , that all those ministers , who had been violently turn'd out by the rabble in the western-shires were still to be kept out , and the advantage the privy-council has taken from that proclamation , of late , to stop the course of justice , from giving them access to their tithes and stipends due to them , is a sufficient indication , how some incline to treat them , if the ensuing session of parliament be not more savourable . this was the prospect of affairs , and the temper mens minds were in towards the clergy , when the convention of estates , having for faulted k. iames , declared k. william and q. mary , king and queen of scotland . this great bus'ness being over they next emitted a proclamation bearing . that whereas k. iames had for 〈◊〉 his right to govern that kingdom , they therefore forbid any publick prayers to be made for him , and ordai●●● that in all time coming , the ministors should pray for k. william , and q. mary , as king and queen of scotland , ordaining also that this proclamation be read , upon the next sunday after publication by all the ministers of edinburgh , and in all other parts of the kingdom on such certain sundays , as are therein appointed , with certification , that who-ever should not read the said proclamation and pray for the king and queen as therein design'd , should be deprived of their churches and benefices . upon the not obeying of this proclamation it is , that all the ministers of late , have suffered , and do suffer at this day , and therefore that falls next under consideration . and first of all , it 's here more especially to be remarked , that this proclamation being published in common form at eleven a clock in the forenoon on a saturday , did not appear in print till about seaven that night . so that the ministers of edinburgh who were required to read it to their people after sermon next morning , had no notice , nor copies of it given them , untill about ten at night upon saturday , or eight in the morning on sunday ; which in a matter of so vast moment , as to translate allegiance formerly sworn to one king , and in so short a time , to resolve to preach it due to another , without so much as knowing the reasons and grounds upon which the convention had proceeded to for fault king iames , was to require a peice of blind obedience , which with so much reason , we abhor in papists , neither had ki●g william and queen mary then accepted of the crown . so that what the convention required could not be supposed , so soon and easily done , by men who either make conscience in taking such an oath , or resolve to keep it . here to this purpose , i cannot but give you an excellent passage , which i sind in a paper bearing for title , a vindication of the procedings of the convention of the estates in scotland . they are the very first words in that paper . the dethroning of a king ( saith that author ) and the setling the crown upon the head of a new soveraign , is certainly a matter of so great weight , of such vast importance and concern , that it requires the most serious and deliberate , the most calm and imprejudic'd minds to determine it ; a hasty and undigested resolution , if in any case dangerous , would unquestionably in this prove fatall and remediless : thus he very judiciously : now if this be reasonable , as surely it is , then the requiring so hasty and precipitate obedience from ministers in this point , cannot but appear very hard , and therefore if this author had been consequentiall to his own rule , he had certainly said something in favour of the scots clergy , upon whose skirts he has lately sit so hard . there is another consideration in this case which ought very much to alleviate , if not excuse the supposed guilt of ministers in the country , who did not read the proclamation ; and that is , it was not delivered to most of them in due time . not the first , for the sheriff-clerks who ( i remember well ) were order'd to send them to the respective ministers in their severall districks , did not for the most part deliver these proclamations till the day appointed for reading them , was past . how universall this neglect of those officers was , i will not positively assert ; but sure i am , most of the ministers turn'd out by the privy-council had this legal defence for themselves , that they receiv'd it not in due time to read it ; and that it was not in the second place deliver'd in due form is also clear , for whereas in all times preceeding , such publick papers which were to be read after divine service , were allways transmitted to the inferior clergy by their respective ordinaries , and the order of bishops not being then abollished , but still a third estate of parliament , they were not obliged in law to take notice of a publick paper which came not to their hands in the accustomed legal manner . moreover it is well known how in england the strongest heads and pens have been employed of late to clear this point of allegiance as now required . and how many severall topiques have been made use of to prove the subjects discharged from their first allegiance , and yet how many in england eminent both for character and conscience are still doubtfull of the point , which sufficiently shows , that the matter deserv'd and requir'd a considerable space of time for deliberation . which not being given in scotland , to the clergy there , any one may easily judge what anxieties , doubtings , and uncertainties such a weighty affair would create in the spirits of honest and well-meaning men . surely tho' this has not , it se●ms excus'd , in rigour of justice , it will surely much alleviat● thei● supposed crime , in the judgement of all ingenious and good men , who make the measures of their dealings with others , such as they would that other men in like cases should take with them . but to make the matter yet more favourable of their side , there are some , who tho' they did not read the proclamation , yet have prayed for k. will and q. mary conform thereunto , whereby they answer'd the ends of it to all intents : yet these have been condemn'd to the same ●ate , with those who out of conscience refused to do either . which proceedure is not a mark of any tenderness or charity to reclaim men , who are supposed to be wrong , but looks rather like a design to ruine them in spite of their complyance . but now we come to give account , how the proclamation , and the certification therein was executed by the government against the delinquents . no sooner were the commissions sent up by the convention of estates to make offer of the crown of scotland to k. william and q. mary , but they adjourned themselves . having first appointed a committee of their number to sit at edenburgh till their return , and they having received information from the presbyterian party , in and about edenburgh , that some ministers had not read the proclamation upon the day assign'd , and had not pray'd for k. will. and q. mary , which was no great wonder , considering what 's said before , what scruples so great a point , as translating a●●egiance was apt to create , and that they had so little time to be clear●d of them , yet an order was issued forth , to cite them to appear before the said committee , who being cited , did appear , and tho' they pleaded scruple of conscience and want of time , yet were by formall sentence of the said committee depriv'd of their livlngs , and their churches declar'd vacant immediately without any regard had to their just defence . as this fell out upon these who liv'd in edenburgh or places next adjacent , so some of them were depriv'd before king william and queen mary had accepted of the crown , or taken the coronation-oath , which the claim of right required as indispensibly necessary in order to their being own'd as sovereigns : this one of the recusant ministers * urg'd at the bar in defence of himself and brethren , but to no purpose . this course continued untill the convention was turn'd into a parliament , which makes up the second period of depriving ministers propos'd in this discourse , viz. those that were turn'd o●t by the authority of the convention of estates . the third , and last period , is , of those who have been turn'd out by the aut●●rity of the privy-council since the first adjournment of parliament . a stop having been put to any further prosecution of the ministers by the committee of estates , and as they with joy were willing to believe , by king william's order and command , this whole matter of depriving was laid aside , and men began to think themselves happy , or lucky , who had escap'd the first tryall , hoping there was to be no further enquiry made after such a disobedience which had so many circumstances to alleviate the guilt , if not quite extinguish the memory of it , they hop'd at least that the favourable things in their case , would have been proper grounds for a new king to forgive what had pass'd before his entrance upon the government ; and the lenity and tenderness shew'd to persons obnoxious enough in other trusts under him about the same time , inclin'd the episcopall clergy to expect the like , when their case should come to be dnely and impartially represented ; for seeing his mercy extended to out-laws and criminalls of the grossest sieze , they who are gods ambassadors doubted not to pertake of it , their escapes , if such they may be called , being only in points very dubious and material . and for a good time they seem'd not to be mistaken of their hope , for during th● whole session of parliament , no mention was made of any further proceedings against them . yea , one thing gave no small encouragement : that when the act of parliament pass'd for obliging all persons in civill and military capacities to take the oath of allegiance , the clergy were not comprehended in that act , and tho' it were once mov'd in the house , that the oath should be put to them as well as to others , yet did not obtain ; this made many believe that peace and settlement were really in their prospect , and that all designs of ripping up the old quarrell for not reading the proclamation , were quite laid aside , and more tender measures to be us'd , which are certainly the most effectuall in such cases . but there are some who thought , the true reason why at that time the clergy was not ordain'd to take the oath of allegiance , was more out of respect to the presbyterian preachers , than the episcopall ministers : for those of their own party in the parliament , who best knew their inclination that way , had reason to fear , they might scruple at the same oath , not upon the grounds which others went upon , but because their modell of church-government was not setled by law , they would not come under allegiance to this king till first he had done their business . and it 's presumable enough , by what many of them have since dropt in their s●rmons and other discourses ; if this oath had been put to them as to others in secular trusts , they had discover'd more of partiality to their interests , then of loyalty to k. william : for it may by the covenant will be by some requir'd to be renu'd , before they think their allegiance either due , or right placed . but no sooner was the parliament adjourn'd and severall of the chief nobility gone to the country , then a proclamation was emitted , ( surprizing enough because not expected ) by the privy-council , which did in express terms , to use the words of it , invite and allow parisbioners and other hearers , to inform against ministers who had not read the proclamation of the estates , and prayed for king william and queen mary , for the one could not serve without the other . this general invitation coming from such an authority to a hot sort of people , had a very ready obedience pay'd to it ; for one or two of the meanest of a parish , and sometimes the agents of the faction in several places , borrowed mens names without their knowledge , to fill up their citations , and either of these were thought sufficient to accuse their minister , upon which , summons were issued out to cite them to appear at edenborough within 6 or 10 days , before the privy-council . whereupon has followed the depriving of such as came before them , and had not read the proclamation . and this has outed almost all the parochial clergy in the shires of marsh , tiviotdale , the three lothians , fife , striveling-shire , perth-shire , and some in aberdeen-shire , murray , and rose , amounting ( as i am credibly informed ) to the number of above two hundred , which was all they could possibly dispatch in so short a time . their whole process went upon two points . the first was , whether they had read to their people on the day appointed the proclamation emitted by the convention of estates ? the second whether they had pray'd or did pray for king william and queen mary ? as to the first , their defences were , that they never received it , or that it came not to their hands till the day appointed to read it was pass'd : or lastly , that it was not legally delivered to them as the order for publick prayers used to be , viz. by orders from their ordinaries . but none of these defences were sustained in their case . as for the second point of inditement , viz. whether they prayed for k. william and q. mary , all cited were not guilty , for there are several instances of ministers who had pray'd and promised to pray for k. will●am and q. mary , who yet were turn'd out of their livings , and continue depriv'd to this day . 't is not deny'd that there are very many who cannot come this length , being still under the power of their former scruples in the matter of allegiance . as for these , tho' they are persons of peaceable principles , and practices , and are ready to submit to the will of god , and the command of superiors , yet all that 's pleaded for them is only favour and indulgence : and if a delay for some longer time to consider maturely upon these matters could be allow'd , it would be very acceptable , & very becoming these to grant , who have so loudly exclaim'd against persecution for conscience sake , and cry●d up so much moderation , and thanked king iames for tolleration . but what may they expect , when others who were willing to obey and did acknowledge the present government in all that is requir'd , were yet turn'd out of their places and properties by the rabble , to whom no redress is made , tho' humbly supplicated by those sufferers . in france it self , if a man renounce his religion , he saves his life and fortune , ( tho' that be indeed a base bargain ) yet the mercy of this severity is all that 's desired here . oh! when will these things be seriously considered and effectually redressed by the government ? and when shall such a temper be happily fal'n upon , as may quiet the minds and secure the persons of all good , pious , and peaceable protestants ? i thought to have ended here , and given you no further trouble upon this melancholy subject , but that i hear of a plausible pretext given out to you in england , for this sharp handling of the scots clergy , which is , that there is no advantage taken of any minister who is willing for the time to come to pray for king william and queen mary , if he be otherwise of approved integrity in life and doctrine : but that the strictness us'd is only against scandalous persons , and so by this means they are more easily turn'd out of the church than they should be by a legal tryal upon such an accusation and since this preten●e is made use of in england to their disadvantage , where the truth of this matter is not yet so well known , i must needs say something to it . and first , it 's not ordinary for men of vicious lives , or loose principles in the church , ( as they pretend the depriv'd clergy to be ) to make great scruple in disputable matters , especially when the penalty is the loss of their estates , they being generally too forward to comply with what 's uppermost , and prosperous . but secondly , i dare confidently averr that after enquiry made , it will appear , that there are many of as great integrity , piety , and learning as are in the church involv'd , without distinction , in that common fate . and i dare appeal to the whole nation to make good against them such scandalls , as their enemies have thought fit to blacken them with , in places where they are not known . the original of all this clamour about the immorralities of the clergy , at first arose from the too hasty planting of churches in the west , upon the restoration of the government in anno 1662. by which many young , men were preferr'd , for whom the prejudiced people could not be brought to have that veneration and respect , that they had had for their old preachers which were deprived for nonconformity . this prejudice , together with the imprudent conduct of some of these young men begot a contempt of them , which was carryed by far much too high , for universally these ministers were complain'd of , as the occasion of the western peoples withdrawing from their churches . but upon bishops leightons coming to the see of glasgow , and bringing with him to those parts some very good men and choice preachers , against whom the people could have no objection , an experiment was made to remove , if possible , that exception , yet he found this also ineffectuall : the aversion being more rooted in the interest of a party , then in the supposed immoralities of the clergy . and therefore by his singular example of piety and devotion , of humility and acts of charity , by his frequent visiting and preaching in country churches , thereby taking occasion to converse more intimately and conveniently with the ministers , he sow'd a blessed seed in their hearts , gave them juster notions of the duties of the pastoral charge , and thereby through the blessing of god became a burning and shineing light in those parts , the impression whereof remains upon the consciences of many to this day . but passing this , it had been a far more fair and equitable way , and as much to the honour of the government , as the disgrace of the guilty to have invited people to accuse their ministers upon the head of scandall , and after evidence thereof , ( if they had found any ) to have proceeded and deprived , rather than promiscuously to have condemn'd the righteous with the wicked . it is true their libells were generally stuft'd with a great many scandalous and vitious practices alledged against them , ( a malicious design to expose them to the present age , and to blacken them upon record to the future ) but it is as true that when the ministers came to the bar , the scandalous and immoral part of the libell was wholly omitted by their judges , altho' the ministers themselves craved for their vindication in those points to be particularly tryed upon them , but the sentence passed against them upon the two heads before mentioned , and yet in the accounts they sent to court , the immoralities of the ministers lives , which were only pretended in the summons , but never spoke of in the tryal , were represented as the great grounds of their deprivation ; but it were far more easy to give the true reasons , for truth tells best , and its this . the presbyterian preachers in scotland of the old standing who only can pretend to be own'd in any church-meeting , ( if the government should think fit to call one ) are but very few in comparison of the episcopal clergy now in place . it was highly debated amongst them , what should be their behaviour if the parliament restored them to their churches , from which they were put out in the year 1662. they could not think it adviseable to meet in presbyteries by themselves , since in some presbyteries , they would make but two in number , and in some but one , in others none at all . so that if they should joyn with the regular clergy in such presbyteries , they might reckon to be out-voted in all businesses , & so signify just nothing , nay , if a national synod should be call'd , they would be at the same loss , for the members thereof chosen by presbyteries behoov'd to be episcopal men , the plurality by far of voters being of that way . so to take off all difficulties attending this matter . it seem'd to be the most plausible & effectuall way , to make as many vacancies as was possible , and that also before the meeting of the next session of parliament , least other measures should then be taken , and for this design the premunire of not reading the proclamation seem'd next to rabbling , the fittest and shortest expedient . i call it shortest , because it was not possible to make greater dispatch for vacancies , then it occasion'd , for a dozen of ministers were ordinarly turn'd out in a forenoon , and as many more , sometimes , in an afternoon . so that this method made clear way for the presbyterian brethren to be the greater part in all ecclesiastical assemblies , and by consequence to carry any thing they please there . hereby also they have a fair opportunity of setting out young vagrants to take possession of the vacant churches , by which the number of their preachers dayly encrcase . thus you have the present state of the very much afflicted clergy in scotland represented faithfully , and with as much brevity as the matter will allow , for tho' much more might be added upon this subject , yet since you desired no more , but a plain and generall narrative , i here give it according to my ability . however it shall please divine providence to order affairs in our national church , this you in england may be assured of , that her enemies , are yours also , and it is some comfort to us that those of that way are not like to prevail so far over you , as they have done already over us . and therefore that god may prosper and preserve the church of england , restore ours to some order and decency , and settle the three kingdoms upon such righteous foundations as may establish our temporal and eternal peace , is the dayly prayer of , sir , your most humble servant . first collection of papers . relating to the practice of the rabble , before the convention met. a iust and true account how sadly the regular ministers within the presbytery of air have been treated since christmas last . upon christmas day about ninty armed men forced the minister of cumnock out of his chamber into the church-yard , where they discharged him to preach any more there under the highest peril they took upon them to command him to remove from his manse , or dwelling house , & his gleib , and not to uplift his stipend thenceforth ; after which they rent his gown in pieces over his head : they made a preface to their discourse to this purpose ; that this they did not as states-men , nor as church-men , but by violence and in a military way of reformation . in this manner , in the same place , and at the same time used they the minister of authinleck , who dwelleth in cumnock . from cumnock the foresaid day they marched to machlin , & missing the minister , were rude beyond expression to his wife , & finding the english liturgy burnt it as a superstitious and popish book : thereafter they went to the church-yard where they publickly discharged the minister from his office and interest there . upon the twenty seventh of december the more considerable part of the foresaid number went to galston : where they apprehended the minister , and taking him out of his house into the church yard they rent his cloak missing his gown , and thereafter forced him to wade upon and down through the water of irwine for a considerable time in a severe frost . upon the said day they went to rickarton : whence they brought the minister of the place to torbolton : where they kept for a whole night the ministers of these two parishes under a guard : and next morning brought them to the church-yard of torbolton where they rent the minister of torboltons canonical coat , and put the one half of it about each of the ministers necks , commanding the church-officer of the place to lead them thereby per vices as malefactors , discharging them from all exercise of the ministry , & from their houses , gleibs , and stipends under the highest peril . upon the eleventh of ianuary 1689. the first minister of air received a written paper , commanding him and all his brethren to leave their mini●tery against the fifteenth under the pain of death : and because he did not regard this , there came to his house upon the fifteenth about eight of the clock at night eleven armed men of them , who commanded him under pain of death to preach no more in the church of air till the princes further order . and at the same rate did they treat his collegue that same night . much about the same time these armed men with their associats went throughout all the ministers houses within that presbytery , and di●charged them any more to exercise their ministry , and appointed them to remove from their manses , or parsonage houses and gleibs , and discharged them to meddle with their stipends under the penalty aforesaid . so that now th● most of the clergy through force and violence have left the countrey ; none in it undertaking their protection ; but all the rabble of it in arms against them . and to compleat their miserie 's those who are indebted to them resuse to pay even so much as may carry them to places of shelter : which exposeth them to the greatest hardships imaginable . to obviate the impudent denial of these things the under subscribers are able and shall ( if called ) in due time produce sufficient proof of the whole , and that both by writing and witnesses . given under our hands at edenburgh upon the twenty and sixth dayof ianuary one thousand six hundred eighty nine years . — gregory , parson of aire . will. irwine minister at kirk michael . fran. fordyce , parson of cumnock . an account of the grievances of the presbytery of dunbarton . imprimis , upon the twenty fifth of december last , anno 1689 a party of dissenters about 9 a clock at night , entered vio●entl● into the house of mr. walter stirling minister of badernock , threatned most barbarously his wife and servants , ( himself being from home ) saying that they would cut off her papish nose and rip up her prelaticall belly but by a good providence they were hindered by the coming in of some friends . 2. they having assaulted mr. will. duncan minister of kilpatrickeaster several times before , did on the sixteenth of ianuary instant , come to his house about the number of thirty armed men , some whereof were his parishioners , and violently took from him the keys of the church , struck and abused himself , broke down and overthrew all his furniture and did cast all out of doors , so that he and his family were forced to go elsewhere and live upon the charity of friends . 3. on sunday last being the 20 instant , a little before the time the sermon should have begun , about thirty armed men came to the church of boiall threatned the minister who was to preach ( mr. will. m'kenzie minister of that church being of a long time dangerously sick ) most barbaro●sly saying that he should lose his life if he should offer to preach there , or any other sent from the presbytery to supply his place . and on the morrow thereafter , about fourscore armed men , some whereof were his parishinoers , came to his house , abused his wife by reviling and beating her , ( the minister himself the night before for fear of his life having gone out of the way ) spoil'd some of his furniture , and threatned to throw all out of doors if he and his family wou'd not go away from church and house within eigh● days . 4. each day adds new ground of complaint , most part of the brethren fearing that before the next lords day they shall be thrust from their churches and houses by armed force , for they have been often threatned to that effect . this account was sent to the prince of orange ( for then he was no more ) attested by the hands of the presbytery of dunbarton . feb. 1688 / 9. a true account of those abuses and affronts , that were committed upon the person of mr. robert bell parson of kilmarnock , by a party of the presbyterians now in arms in the west of scotland . master robert bell minister of kilmarnock , being desir'd by his neighbour minister at richardtown , to celebrate the marriage of two persons at that church , in the ministers necessary absence , as he was walking thither , was seized by two armed men , who came from a great party which he saw at some distance ; one of them as he came near to him , presented a musket to his head ; whereupon he told him , he was his prisoner , and would go where he had a mind to carry him : he having recovered his musket , and placed him betwixt himself and his fellow companion in arms ; in this posture he was brought to the minister of ritchardtown's house , where he was commanded to pluck off his hat , they calling him rogue and rascal , and treating him very rudely . but assoon as he perceived they had filled their bellies with the meat , that the good gentlewoman had set before them ; and their passion and rancour was thereby a little asswaged ; he began to ask the commander of the party , by what rule and law they proceeded , in their appearing thus in arms : he told him , by the rule and law of the solemn league and covenant , by which they were obliged to extirpate prelacy , and bring all malignants to condign punishment . mr. bell replied , they would do well to take care that those their proceedings were justifiable by the word of god , and conformable to the practice of christ , his apostles , and the primitive church in the propagation of the christian religion . he answer'd him , that the doom of all malignants is clearly set down in the word of god , and their appearing thus in arms , was conformable to the practice of the ancient church of scotland . from this house the minister was carried prisoner to kilmarnock , and in his journey thither , there was a gentleman the laird of bridgehouse , who having come to meet him , took the courage to tell the party , that their appearing in arms , and abusing the clergy in this hostile manner , were but insolent outrages against all the law of the nation ; and that they would do well to remit their illegal forwardness , together with their pretended grievances unto the parliament , that was now very quickly to be assembled , by the care and affection that his highness the prince had of all the subjects of this kingdom . they answered him , to stand off and forbear giving rules to them , for they would take none from him nor any man , and that they would not adhere to the prince of orange , nor the law of the kingdom , any further than the solemn league and covenant , was fulfilled and prosecuted by both . by this time they were come near the town , and they commanded the minister to pluck off his hat , which he obeyed , yet at the same breath they threatned to throw him in the river : and coming to the bridge , they met the whole body of the aforesaid party , returning from the mercat place ; where they had caused the church officer to deliver up the keys of the church : and they discharged by way of proclamation the minister , whom in an opprobrious manner , they called curate of kilmarnock , from all intromission with the benefice and casuality of the church , or the least exercise of the ministerial function . assoon as they saw mr. bell , and understood that he was the parson of the parish , he could see nothing in their faces , but the most insulting joy ; nor find in th●ir discourses , but the most reproaching language , that ever the greatest criminal in the world was treated with . after a long consultation amongst themselves , one of their chief commanders came , and asked him , if he had a book of common prayer : the minister desired to know of him , why he asked the question . he answered , that sure be could not want that book since he was educated at oxford , and trained up to all the superstition and idolatry of the church of england . the minister told him , perhaps he had half a dozen of common prayer books ; he commanded him , to produce one of them , for that would do their business . from this place they carried him back to his house ; and there compelled him to deliver unto their hands the book of common prayer of the church of england , after this they led him as a prisoner bare headed , betwixt four foiles of musketeers , through a great part of the town unto the market-place , where the whole party was drawn up in battallia : which appeared to be about the number of two hundred well armed , with fire lock muskets of a very large size , most of them had also a pair of pistols but all of them one . in kilmarnock , after the fashion of most mercat places in scotland , there is a cross erected , unto which one goes up by steps on all sides , after the form of a broad stare-case , with which it is invironed . it was on the uppermost step , that these rude guards placed the minister , two of them on the same step , one on both hands ; and so on every step as you go down from the cross , they ranged themselves before him : after this they called for fire , which was brought , then one of their commanders made a speech to the people , that were gathered together in great numbers from the town and country . he told them , that they were come there to make the curate of the place , a spectacle of ignominy , and that they were obliged so to do , by virtue of the solemn league and covenant ; in obedience unto which they were to declare here their abhorrency of prelacy , and to make declaration of their firm intentions and designs , to fulfill all the ends of that oath : the propagation of the discipline of the government of the church of scotland , as it is express'd and contained in the foresaid solemn league and covenant . and all this they attempted to do , not by virtue of any civil power nor ecclesiastical power , but by the military power , and the power of the posture they were now in . these are the very words of this speech . after this another of their commanders taking the book of common prayer , reading the title page of it , and extending his voice very high , he told the people , that in pursuance of the forementioned league and covenant , they were now to burn publickly this book of common prayer , which is so full of superstition and idolatry ; and then throwing it into the fire , blowing the coals with a pair of bellows , after that catching it from amidst the flames , they fixed it on the spear of a pike , and thence lifting it up on high , far above the top of the cross. which elevation was attended with shouts and acclamations , down with prelacy idolatry and superstition of the churches of england and scotland . after all these indignities and impudent reproaches , offered to the most reformed and best constituted churches in the world , they turned themselves to the minister again , and rudely in a very menacing manner , asking him , if he was an episcopal prelate's man , and of the communion of the churches of england and scotland ; he answered , he was , and did there confess it to the whole world. then they tore his gown , one of the guard first cutting up the skirt of it with his sword , and throwing it amongst their feet , telling him , it was the garment of the whore of babylon . one of them bid him promise never to preach , nor exercise the office of a minister any more ; but he refused , telling them , that such a promise lay not within the compass of his own will , and could not be extorted by force , and that tho they should tear his body , as they had done his gown , they would never be able to reach his conscience . well , well , ( says he ) do it at your peril ; the minister answer'd , that he would do it at his peril . and so they gave over troubling him any more , only asking , what he had to say to them , he told them , he was extremely sorry to see protestants , so ingratefully exasperated against the best protestant church in the world , that had done such eminent service to our common religion and interest against popery : and withal praying god to forgive them , and not to lay these things to their charge . so the minister was dismissed , they telling him , he was an ignorant and obdured curate and malignant . this is a true copy of that account , of those indignities and affronts , that were done unto me robert bell , by the presbyterians now in arms in scotland . glasgow , ian. 8. 1689. robert bell : disorders and outrages done upon the persons and families of ministers , within the presbytery of hamiltown , upon 27 and 28 days of dec. 1688. imprimis , mr. iohn dalgleishe , minister of ebandale , was taken out of his house by a company of armed men , was carried to the kirkyard style bare-headed , and after being surrounded by these armed men , and a great many of the people ; and one of them in a speech , having railed against him with many opprobrious imputations , commanded his beadle to tear his gown over his head , which when he refused to do , threatned to kill him , and did beat him in a most i●humane manner with their swords , till the minister commanded him also to do it : they likewise expresly prohibited the minister to preach any more , or to reside in that place , otherways it should be to his peril . mr. iames crightoune minister at oilbrige was treated the same way , only with this difference , that the gown they tore was a night-gown , and with this addition , that they caused him to deliver up the keys , and all the utensils of the church , and engaged him to fly and remove all his goods and plenishing within eight days , which he did , his wife was beaten so that she immediately miscarried . mr. angus m c. intosh minister at stenhouse , being from home when these men called at his house , they took his gown , and after they had discharged their pieces in it , next they trod it under their feet , and then tore it and burnt it . these presents are testified by doctor robert scott dean of glasgow , mr. george lesly minister at blautire , and mr. iohn dennistowne minister at glasford , all within the same presbytery . ian. 23. 1689. r. scott g. leslie i. dennistowne . some account of the outrages and cruelties committed upon the ministers and their families in the presbytery of irwin , who own the protestant religion as it is established by law. the ministers in irwin presbytery since the beginning of december , have been so sadly and miserably persecuted by the violencies of a rabble of armed men and furious women , who have joyned together in a most barbarous confederacy against them , that they have been forced to fly and lurk so secretly , as that they are uncapable to meet together in such full number as that they can particularly represent all their grievances which are still daily increasing , only three or four who have with much difficulty got together at the concerting of this , do from their own proper knowledge of what they have felt , and from certain accounts from the rest of their brethren declare , that all of their houses have been invaded by these armed men , not only in the day time , but for the most part under silence of night , and so many of the ministers as did not secretly escape , were most disgracefully taken to the mercat crosses and other publick places , and their gowns torn in pieces over their heads , and discharged , with greatest threatnings of cruelty ever to enter the churches and preach again : they have also turned many of their wives and children out of doors , and are still proceeding to do so to others , exposing them to the extremity of the winter cold , and to perish for want of bread , when the ministers themselves durst not come near them for their relief . the particular instances are so lamentable , and the circumstances of them so many , as that it would be a long work to enumerate them particularly , only this in the general is so well known over all the country , that there needs neither particular evidences to prove it , nor more to be said to move the pity of any that are capable to remedy it , and we under subscribers are content to prove what is here said : witness your petitioners at edinburgh , ian. 25. 1689. charles littlejohn minister of large . alexander laing minister of stewartonne . a brief representation of the sufferings of the regular clergy within the presbytery of glasgow . to omit the violences have been threatned them , the contempts have been cast upon them , and the innumerable discouragements they have generally been * trysted with , from papists on the one hand ( some of them having been in great hazard of being turned out of their places for preaching against the corruptions of rome , as were easie to instance ) and from presbyterians on the other , these several years by-past , tho they had law on their side , and have still in their stations endeavoured to maintain truth , peace and order . upon the great revolution that has happened lately ( notwithstanding his highness the prince of orange has declared his great undertaking to be for the securing religion , and establishing our laws and liberties ) the dissenting brethren have wreckt their malice upon the regular clergy , and in the manner following . on christmas day anno 1688. under cloud of night , about five and ●orty men in arms ( all his neighbours , to the most part of whom he had done special acts of kindness ) came to mr. gabriel russel's house the minister of govean ; they beat himself , his wife and daughter , carried away all the utensils of the church , and the keys of the doors , discharging him to preach there any more under the highest perils . the same night another party came to mr. robert tinnic's house minister at calcheart ; not finding himself at home , they turned his wife , family and furniture out of the * manse , and tho it was about eleven at night , with great difficulty they suffered the said mrs. tinnie to stay in the stable all night with her small children ; of which children three have since been at the point of death , through the fear and cold to which they then were exposed . the next lords day the indulged preacher in that part , possessed himself of the pulpit ; they were his own parishoners who treated mr. tinnie so . the same night , and much after the same manner mr. robert bayle minister at carmunnock was treated . on december 27. anno 1688. mr. hugh blair minister at rutherglen , had all his furniture turned out of his house , the keys and utensils of the church taken from him , &c. about the same time mr gilbert mushat minister at cumernald was treated much after the same manner . much about the same time a party came to mr. david milne minister at calider , and had ri●led his house but that they were interrupted . but all this time the ministers in the city of glasgow suff●red nothing , only letters were sent to them to forbear the exercise of their ministry , and their houses were search'd for arms , &c. till ian. 17. 1689. being thursday , on which 't is usual for them to have publick worship and sermon , a great multitude of people , for the most part women , came to church , with a design to have drag'd the minister out of the pulpit ; but he ( by the advice of some of his brethren who were there ) forbearing to go into the church , and endeavouring to retire without noise , was fallen upon most barbarously , beaten , and had his gown and other cloaths torn in many pieces , altho he had been one of the ministers of the said city twenty four years , and lived most christianly and inoffensively . the same day the same rabble went to the house of mr. alexander george minister of the barony church of glasgow , broke his doors with great hammers ; and notwithstanding he was at that time tyed to his bed by a very dangerous sickness , they thrust into his chamber , and had undoubtedly drag'd him from his bed , and perhaps murthered him , had not the provost of the city , with eight or ten men , come to his relief . on the lords day thereafter , being the 20th of ianuary . there was no sermon in any of the churches of the city . on the 22th . a copy of a letter was sent to each minister in the city , the tenour whereof followeth . we are credibly informed that our pretended provost walter gibsone , and his malignant associates , are upon a design of having you restored to your churches , sometime this or the next week , but if you will take advice and prevent your own trouble and perhaps ruine , do not listen to their motion , for they are but laying a snare for you , without reflecting upon their own being taken in it themselves : therefore consider what you are doing , and if you desire safety , forbear to attempt any thing suggested upon that head , for assure your selves , that it will not be now the female rabble you have to engage with , but must resolve in all time coming for such a guard as will be so sufficient and diligent , as to protect you , not only in the church ( which even we doubt of ) but also in your houses , and that both by night and by day ; if you take this warning , you will both save your selves , and prevent the effusion of much blood , but if not , stand to your peril , which in all probability will be more formidable than that of mr. milne . let this be a sufficient warning to you from those who by this desire to exoner themselves . we doubt not but there are other instances of the foresaid violence within our bounds before this time ; but because of our present dispersion we cannot give any more particular accounts , only as to the instances above-named , we can make them fully appear when called to it : in testimony whereof we subscribe thir presents at edinburg , ian. 26. 1689. al. george minister of the gospel at the barony church of glasgow . iohn sage one of the ministers in the city of glasgow . an account of the insolencies and outrages committed upon the ministers in the presbytery of pasley , glasgow jan. 22. 1689. imprimis . upon saturday being the twelfth instant , about three of the clock in the afternoon , there went several of the inhabitants of the town of pasley ( accompanied with a numerous rabble to the beadle , who is a man above seventy years of age , and in his own house , treated him barbarously , wounding him and taking the keys of the church from him , which they still keep , whereby they hinder the ministers there to exercise their office. item . upon the thursday thereafter the 17th . a company of armed men came to the ministers house , requiring him within two days to get him thence , and to transport his family , certifying him , if he should offer to preach any more there , or should not * void the manse , it should be on his utmost peril . item . on sunday the 13th of the said month , mr. honstown one of the mountain preachers ( as they are called ) usurped the pulpit of the parish church of eastwood , several times formerly the minister had been required by armed men to remove . item . upon monday being the 14th instant , about 200 men and women came at eight of the clock at night in a tumultuary manner , to the minister at kulbarchan house , with battoons in their hands , made that same day for the purpose , whereof three only entred , the rest standing without doors , and the minister himself being providentially from home , they treated his wise most opprobrlously , and commanded her instantly to remove her self and her family from that place , certifying her , otherwise it should be at her utmost peril . and to omit more particulars , all the several ministers in the above-mentioned bounds , are now forced for the safety of their lives , to fly from their several habitations , and to leave their wiv●s and children exposed to their cruelty ; and to add to their calamity , their parochoners ( a very few discreet persons only excepted ) refuse to pay them any part of the stipend , * or any other debts they owe them , by which cru●l usage many of our number are reduced to extream necessity . io. fullerton moderator . i. taylor minister in pasley commiss r. a letter concerning the persecution of several other ministers . reverend sir , since our last we received yours ; and for a return , you are to understand , that our circumstances are still worse , and the opposite party more insolent , cruel and barbarous . the particulars are as follows , 1. that party invaded the minister of balantra's house in open day , before many of his own people , beat to the ground his wife big with child with the butt end of a musket , dragged himself to the church-yard and back again to his house , tare his cloaths to his shirt , wounded him with a small sword , and for warding off the thrust , beat him severely with cudgels , and then commanded him under the pain of death , never to preach any more in that place . 2. six of the meeting-house men came to the minister's house of kirk michael ( himself being at edinburg ) beat , batter'd and bruised his man-servant , commanded him ( after they had lain two days and three nights upon him ) to go immediately from the house with all that belonged to his master therein . 3. they have possessed the churches of straton , ochiltri● , cumnock , torboltown , galston and sorn . 4. they have ejected the minister of rickarton's wife , family and whole furniture . this is the account of the presbytery of air. in irwin presbytery both the indulged and mountain-men have possessed several of the churches , have gone to the ministers houses , given them their last summons of removal , with all the effects thereof under pain of death . in pasley presbytery they have outed the whole ministers ( as they have in all the west of scotland ) they have particularly ejected the first minister of pasley's wife and family , burnt his gowns and hat at the publick cross , and thrown all his goods to the open street . from that they went to renfrew ( where the ministers wife was but nine days lain in of a child ) pull'd her out of the bed , threatned the families present ejection , had not one cranford of corsburn , who being occasionally there , prevailed with them for ten days respite : the ministers wife upon this cruel usage , fell into an high and dangerous fever , under which , according to our last information , she yet labours . the whole presbytery of dunbarton are banished from their charges . in glasgow the ministers are not secure of their lives , for some nights age they beat mr. miln in the street the second time : they went to the minister of calders , rent his gown in the church-yard , himself being from home , and commanded his wife and family to be gone immediately under the penalty aforesaid . sir , we who are here , are patiently waiting for the effects of the princes declaration , which was solemnly proclaimed over this cross on wednesday last . if it quiet the country , we are resolved to return to our charges , a little time will inform us . we had almost forgot to tell you , that on sunday last the meeting-house preacher at diglass caused them to break open the church-doors there , and went in and preached . we have wrapt up things in as narrow a compass as was possible : we have written nothing but truth in matter of fact , and which upon legal trial shall be made good by reverend sir , your affectional brethren to serve you george gregorie fran. fordyce william irwine minister of kirk-michael ia. hoge minister of ochiltrie . edin . feb. 14 1689. sir , besides all this , they have robbed the minister of straton's house and left him nothing . and they have carried away the minister of kirk-michael's presentation , decreet of locality , and all his other papers , with the communion cups . information of the abuses done by the presbyterians , who frequent the meeting-houses to the ministers of leving-widtalder , bathgate , and westcalder ; in the presbytery of levingstonne . upon the 22th . of dec. last , about six a clock at night , about thirty men in arms came to the kirk town of levingstonne , and having set a guard to the ministers outer gate , a party of them came to his hall-door , which was shut , and pretending that they were come to search for arms , rudely craved to have entrance into the house , offering , that if the door were not opened , they would set fire to it , and shoot in musket-ball through it , to kill those that were within , and forced the door with such violence , that the double bar which held it securest , being quite broken , the minister was necessitated to make the door patent , thereupon about eight of them entered the house , with great noise and swords drawn ( the ministers wife having been brought to bed , only six days before that time ; which was not unknown to the assassins ) and after a great deal of rough and opprobrious language , and unchristian carriage towards the minister ( which so affrighted his wife , that she apprehending her husbands life to be in danger , rose from her bed in great consternation , and having put on only a night-gown , did on her naked feet interpose for his rescue ) they compelled him to go through the rooms before them ; with a lighted candle to guide them in their search for arms ; one of them being so uncivil , that he offered to turn his wife out of the bed ; whereinto she had again betaken her self , and with much difficulty was by the minister disswaded from that cruelty . this done , they carried away such things as they thought fit , together with the said ministers horse , but the horse being quite spoiled returned the next day : they also went to the church beadle's house , and robb'd him of his horse , and other things belonging to him , but the horse returned also the next day . the names of these assassins for the most part , and of the gentleman that hounded them out , are well known . 2. upon the 27th . of ian. last , there came nine armed men to the church of levingstonne ( it being the lord's day in the forenoon ) and the church doors being made patent to them , by one of the ministers servants ▪ because they had threatned to break them up , they searched all the seats of the church for the minister , and not finding him there ▪ they went to his mansion house , and disbelieving his wife , who told them that her husband was from home , they went through the house searching for him most narrowly ; and compelled his wife to go before them with a lighted candle , belching out terrible speeches against him ; and they not yet finding him , departed , and told some of the ministers neighbors , who live in the kirk town , that if they had got their curat , they would have ducked him in the water of almond , and that albeit they were disappointed at that time , they were resolved to be full of his flesh. 3. upon the first of feb. instant , about sixty armed men came to his house , and delivered to his wife a summons of removal , the true copy thereof is hereafter inserted , and having called for the ministers gowns ( with a purpose ( as they declared ) to tear them ) and for the keys of the church door , the church bible , the communion cups , records of session , and all other utensils belonging to the church of levingstonne ; they got the said keys and bible ( all the rest having been put out of the way ) and these they delivered to iohn wilson in long levingstonne , to be by him kept , and so departed . follows the tenour and true copy of the summons . we belonging to the parish of levingstonne , having now groaned under the insupportable yoke of prelacy , and having suffered a continual tract of manifold cruelties and oppressions many years , upon the account of not owning and submitting unto the intrusion of episcopal curats , with all being touched with such zeal for the house of our god , that we cannot endure any longer , to see it made and continued to be a den of thieves ; who have not ventered in at christ's door , but the way of man's vsurpation , remembring the indispensable obligations of our solemn covenant , to endeavour the extirpation of prelacy , being resolved to prosecute it by all approved means to the outmost as the lord shall enable us ; to prevent other tumults we warn you to surcease and desist from preaching , and all other ministerial actions , in the kirk of levingstonne , and to depart from the care and benefice thereof , under certification , that if you refuse you shall be forced to do it . this summons is not subscribed by any of the parishioners of levingstonne , who never had cause to complain of the ministers oppression and cruelty , and did all except a few , cheerfully submit to mr. honeymans ministery , until the meeting-houses were set up . the verity of all which premises , i the said mr. george honeyman am able to prove by many famous witnesses , as witness these presents written by mr. iohn park clerk to the synod of edenburgh , and subscribed at my hand at edenburgh the 23 of feb. 1689. george honeyman , minister of levingstonne . jo. park , clerk syn. mr. william man minister at bath-gate , informs , that upon the first day of feb. instant , there came about the number of fifty men in arms to his dwelling house , about twelve a clock at noon , and having entered his house , they made search for him with drawn swords in their hands , and violently broke up three doors ; and not finding him , who supposing him to be at the time in the lady kirktown's house , which is situated very near to his mansion house ; they went to the said lady's house , whose gate being shut , they endeavoured to force it up with great stones , and the help of an ax , which they had purchased from some of the neighbours ; and when all failed , they set fire to the gate , and the gate being thereupon made patent by the gentlewoman , they in manner aforesaid , searched all the rooms of the house for the said mr. william , and not finding him , they went thereafter to the town of bathgate , and found him in the house of mr. iohn cala , in the company of two gentlemen , who are justices of peace , viz. thomas sharp laird of honstown , and thomas hammiston laird of boghead ; and the captain of the company , having called him forth in presence of the said two gentlemen , they required him with their swords drawn , and guns presented to deliver up to them the communion cups , the records of his kirk session , the church bible , and the keys of the church of bathgate , to which he having answered , that there were none of these things in his custody , they went to the beadle , and caused him to deliver the said keys to them , the which they committed to the custody of iohn harvy , inn-dweller in the said town , charging him not to deliver them to the said mr. william , as he would be answerable , unless he were forced by a greater power so to do ; and they being informed of the place where his gown lay , they went and took it out , and having carried it in procession to the cross of bathgate , they caused his beadle to tear it there before his eyes ; and this done , they being intreated by the said justices , not to lay violent hands upon the person of the said minister ; they delivered a summons to him to flit and remove , and this they did before several persons in the town of bathgate , whom they addu●ed to witness the deed . the summons is in omnibus the same with that , which the minister of levingstonne , received the said day , and is not signed by any of the parishioners of bathgate , who never had cause to complain of mr. man's cruelty , and did all except a few , cheerfully submit to his ministery , till the meeting-houses were lately set up . the verity of all which premises , i the said mr. william man , am able to prove sufficiently , as witness these presents written by mr. iohn park clerk to the synod of edenburgh , and subscribed with my hand at edenburgh , feb. 23. 1689. william man minister of bathgate . jo. park , clerk syn. mr. normand , mr. kinney minister at midcalder , informs , that upon the 27th . of ian. last by past , being the lord's day after sermon , eight men with drawn swords and fire-locks , came to his house , but got not entrance , in regard that the laird of calderhall , the laird of pompherstonne , with divers other good neighbors , disarmed some of them , and put the rest to flight ; in which encounter one of the assassins was wounded in the face , and two were wounded that appeared in the said mr. normans defence , viz. william elphingstonne , natural son to the said laird of calderhall , and iames nemo butcher in midcalder , and the said assassins having got back the arms taken from them upon their promise to be gone , they accordingly departed , threating that before they slept , they should cause several persons in the town of calder to sleep in their shooes , for what they had done in defence of the curat , farther averring , that nothing was designed by them to be done to that curat ; but what and much more was done this day at edenburgh , to the outing and disgrace of all curats there . 2. that upon the 1st . of feb. instant , a considerable company of men in arms , came to the said ministers house early in the morning , pretending , that they were come only to search , whether he were at home or not ( altho after the search , they confessed , that they knew he was not there , because sufficiently informed , that he had taken journey on the munday preceding , and did not carry his gown with him , which they resolved to have if possible ) and in a most barbarous manner , forced up a window at the foot of the bed , where the said minister wife was lying with her sucking child , and thrust in their swords and fire-locks at the window , which so affrighted her with the apprehension of present death ; that she begged them for god's sake , that if they intended to murther her and her family , they would but allow her the favour to put on some cloaths , and to recommend her self and family in prayer to god. this they nothing regarded , but continued forcing up the hall-door , until the lock and bolts being broken it was made patent ; whereupon sixteen of them having enter'd the house , with swords drawn ; they conveyed the said ministers wife , with her suckling in her arms to the kitching , and placed a man with a naked sword beside her , whom they commanded not to suffer her to stir from that place , and in the mean while the rest of them with their swords in their hands , searched all the house , and brought down goods that were hid in the cieling , declaring , that they behoved to see all the said ministers obligations , that he had of his debtors , and all his other papers ; and in particular , one of them viz. thomas levingstonne there said , he behoved to have a gripe of his fathers bond , granted to the said minister for a certain summ of money , which he owes to him ; and after exact search , they not finding any papers or bonds ( the minister having conveyed them away before that time ) they went away , carrying with them the communion cups , which they committed to the custody of walter iohnstonne in calder , and leaving behind them a summons of removal , in omnibus the same with these before mentioned , and withal , they declared to the said ministers wife , that if she and her family should neglect to remove within ten days next , thereafter , they would return and eject her and her children , and all the goods in the house ; or make a bonefire of all the plenishing . the foresaid summons is subscribed by none of the parishioners of middle calder , who never had cause to complain of their ministers oppressing them , and did all of them except a few submit to his ministery , till the meeting houses were lately set up . the verity of all which premisses ; i the said mac normand , mac kinney can prove by many famous witnesses , as witness these presents written at edenburgh , by the said mr. iohn park , and their subscribed with my hand feb. 23. 1689. norman mackinney minister of calder . jo. park clerk syn. mr. george robertsone minister at westealder , informs , that upon dec. 23. last by past , being the lords day , several persons in westcalder , invaded his house betwixt eleven and twelve at night , and searched for arms , but found none but an old two-handed sword , which they carried with them and departed , averring , that they were to go to their company . 2. that upon the 1st . of feb. instant , a summons of removal was left at his house by some in the parish ; the which summons is in omnibus the same with these before-mentioned , and is not subscribed by any of the parishioners of westaalder , who never received any wrong from the minister , who having been but lately settled there , most of the parishioners submitted to his ministery , till the meeting-houses were lately set up , all this i the said george robertsone am able to prove sufficiently , as witness these presents . written by the said mr. iohn park , and subscribed with my hand at edenburgh feb. 13. 1689. george robertson minister at westcalder . jo. park clerk syn. the second collection of papers , relating to the practice of the rabble , after the prince's declaration against some ministers who were afterwards deprived by the council . a true account of that interruption that was made of the service of god on sunday last being the seventeenth of february 1689 at the cathedral of glasgow , by the presbyterians , both from the hills and the meeting-houses , to the contempt of the princes declaration . as soon as his highness the prince of orange's declaration was proclaimed at the mercat cross of glasgow , for the preservation of the peace of the kingdom , and the maintenance of the free exercise of religion , as it was established in october last : the magistrates and ministers of the city assembled themselves , in order to the laying down such fit and united methods as would give punctual obedience to his highness's declaration , and procure the publick and undisturbed exercise of their religion , which has now been interrupted these four or five weeks by-past , by the illegal unchristian outrages of the rabble in this place . and after a prudent deliberation about the present state of affairs , it was the result of their counsels , that the service of god should be restored on the sunday immediately subsequent to the publication of the prince's declaration , being the seventeenth of february , according to the usual and legal methods by ringing of bells , and the publick use of all other accustomed solemnities . but for the greater security of the exercise of religion , and the preservation of the peace of the town , the magistrates thought themselves obliged in conscience and honour , to go to thomas crawfurd younger , merchant , being then captain of the guard at that time , and one of the chief commanders of that party in this place ( that keep up themselves in contempt of the law of the kingdom , and the prince's declaration , to the 〈…〉 the magistrates and all good and peaceable people in 〈…〉 to require the said thomas crawfurd to lay down his arms and dismiss his company ; which accordingly was performed by baillie iames gibson , he ( being the chief magistrate in absence of the * provost ) telling him at the same time , that he would provide for the peace and security of the town in obedience to the prince's declaration . upon the absolute refusal of obedience unto this command by the said thomas crawfurd , baillie gibson took instruments in a publick nottars hands , how far he had his duty to the law of the kingdom and the prince's declaration , and how far the said thomas crawfurd , the pretended captain of the guard , did despise and contemn them both . after this intercourse between the foresaid baillie and thomas crawfurd , both those parties of the presbyterians , that go to the hills and the meeting-houses , began to whisper about their illegal and bloody designs against the ministers of the town , and that great body of the people that keep still very stedfast in frequenting the assemblies of the church , threatning publickly all kinds of persecution unto them in the legal exercise of their religion . on the sunday morning the promiscuous rabble gathered themselves together upon the streets , and hindered the ringing of some of the usual bells for calling the people to church . yet the magistrates thought fit to connive at the first insolence , being willing upon any terms to have the exercise of their religion , and give obedience to the prince's declaration . but the more moderation the magistrates shewed on this occasion , the more the rabble were inraged , publickly threatning the people as they went to church , to pull them out by the ears . and particularly , they seeing a certain minister going to church , they pursued him with sticks and clubs , but he taking a house escap'd their fury . when the magistrates were come near the church , they found it surrounded with a promiscuous rout : upon this they desired the rude people to go home in peace , but they returned scolding and bloody language , and flinging from them their cloaks and plaides , that is mantles , they gave the assault with staves and battoons in their hands unto the magistrates ; and particularly one of them giving a severe blow to iohn bell , one of the late bailies , and at this time in company with the magistrates . upon which unsufferable and scandalous attack , the magistrates gave order to the towns servants and officers , to clear their way to the church , and beat off the rabble ; which being effected , the magistrates , together with all the people , entered peaceably into the church , seating themselves according to their ranks and qualities in the usual postures of devotion ▪ in which the service of god is performed in our church . after prayers were ended , towards the middle 〈◊〉 of the sermon , the forementioned thomas crawsurd , the pretended captain of the guard , came into the church , and cry'd aloud to the people , that the town was in arms. he was answered , that five or six hundred people of the best quality in town were assembled in church , to the service of god , according to law and the prince's last declaration , that they were naked men without arms or the least intention to make any resistance : and if the town was in arms , he was more concerned to look to it than they , he being the pretended captain of the guard. and likewise he was told , that if the people in church had designed any opposition to such as might disturb them in the exercise of their religion , they would have appeared in an armed posture ( which out of a due respect to the house of god and the prince's declaration they did forbear to do ; ) and then he should have found them too strong for any ▪ party that durst have assaulted them : but they came not thither to fight , but to serve god. the parson continued preaching until he finished his sermon . towards the latter and of the prayers after s●rmon , the meeting-houses being dismiss'd , and joyning the hill party that appeared by this time in arms upon the streets , and together with the company that was upon the guard , they formed themselves in a great body , and then marched off under the conduct of the laird of carsland , taking their way straight to the cathedral church ; when they came to it , they fired both upon the people that had fled to the pinacles and buttr●sses of the church , and through the door , where there was a little boy dangerously wounded on the face ; but at last they broke open the doors of the church , and searching diligently for the parson they found him : they were disired by the magistrates to dismiss the armed men and go in peace , but they refused it , telling , they would have out those people that beat off the women and the men from the church-door upon the first vpr●ar . they were answered , that the disorders were begun by the rabble against the prince's declaration ; and that the magistrates could not , without doing infinite injury to the service of god , the honour of the prince , and the authority of government , forbear commanding the officers and towns servants to beat off the rabble that opposed their entry into the church . and to this it was subjoyned , that if they would lay down their arms , or go home in peace , and forbear the encouraging and protecting of the rabble in those vproars , they could return in the same peaceable way from the church that they came into it . but this they absolutely refused to do , telling us , they could not desert their sisters the women , that by this time were assembled in great numbers upon the streets and in the church-yard . after this they took up the names of the people of the best quality in church , and then they hurried us out by fives and sixes at several doors of the cathedral , and so exposed us to the fury of the rabble , which we had escap'd if th●y had p●rmitted us to go out in a body . others of us they pretended to conduct by guards , but carried us no further than into the very mid●le of the rabble . the whole congregation being thus maliciously dissipated , very few of them did escape without wounds or blows ; and particularly the lord boyd was rudely treated , and had his sword taken from him . sir iohn bell had above a hundred snow-balls thrown at him : the laird of borrowfield and his lady , together with his two brothers , iames and william walkinshawes , were five or six several times beaten to the ground : iames corbeit was very dangerously wounded in the head with the stroke of a syth . george graham , one of the late bailies of the town , was d●eply cut on the head in two places . doctor wright and his lady , and together with them her mother and sisters , and several other women , were very roughly handled and beaten . mrs. anna paterson daughter to the archbishop of the place , mrs. margaret fleiming , and several other gentlewomen were cruelly pinch'd after their cloaths were torn off them . there was scores of others severely beaten and bruised , which would be tedious to make m●ntion of here , but only this we must observe , there was a certain carpenter , who was so dangerously wounded ( so that he lyeth now beyond hopes of recovery ) by four armed men that promised to conduct him through the rabble , and to whose protection he innocently committed himself . this is a true account of what pass'd upon sunday last , being the 17th of february 1689. which i , as m●gistrate of glasgow in absence of my lord provost , give under my hand as truth . iames gibsone . for the further testification of the premises , we under subscribers attest the same io. gillhagie . patrick bell. the sufferings of gideon brown. sir , to obviate all misrepresentations of my treatment at smelholm , i give you this true and impartial account according to your desire . upon the first saturday of february 1689. george dickson cottar to the lair of smelholm a profest cameronian , brought to me an unsubscribed paper in the presence of my family , in the which he , in name of the parochine , ordains me to cease from the exercise of my ministry there , pretending in it , that i had no call from the people , and that i was an intruder , and had brought troopers among them ; with this certification , that they would force and compel me to do it . this much troubled me , to be upbraided for that of which i was never guilty , and that by persons whom often i kept from the lash of the law , and who had constantly heard me till the late toleration , and frequently taken the sacrament from me , but from the consideration of our saviours treatment from those to whom he was ever doing good , i comforted my self , and resolved patiently to bear and undergo this present disaster , and whatever might follow thereupon . this being represented to the laird smelholm , he advised me for a day to cease from preaching , and withdraw , which accordingly i did : the next lords day i returned ( laying aside all fears , not willing so easily and suddenly to be put from the exercise of my ministry ) and it pleased the lord to grant to me , and to continue with me , a safe exercise of my ministry without disturbance , until the fourteenth of april hereafter , which was the lords day , on which day the scum of that people , most of them not above the quality of a servant , yet all dwelling under the laird of smelholm , except two , and newly ins●igated by one george dickson preacher in a meeting-house near by ( as i am credibly informed ) did assemble with staves and battoons ( having , on saturday before , warned me by a second summons , and taking away the bell-rope ) to oppose me that day ; the laird of smelholm being acquainted by me , of the said intended uproar , at the ordinary time of convening , came to the church-yard , i following with my family , and after some communing with the said rabble , his tenants , who had been there from six a clock in the morning , prevailed to make patent doors , and having enter●d the pulpi● and begun to pray , immediately the said george dickson ( having received the hire of eighteen pence from the rest , as he himself confess'd afterwards in my beadles hearing ) approached furiously to draw me out of the pulpit , which a son of mine ( of sixteen years of age ) observing , stop'd him before he came near me ; upon which there came t●n about the boy , pulling the hair off his head , tearing his hat , cloak and neckcloth , which extorted from his mother these words in the midst of the church , murder ! murder ! and forced me from the pulpit , at length the laird quieted them . upon all this i took witnesses , and withdrew with my family , to the neighbour church , ever after that they put cattle of all sorts into the church , frequently threatned my self , watched every lords day for my coming , to church , not to hear me but harm me : o the sin of stoning of the prophets , which brought sad judgments on the guilty of old , is now frequently among us practised , the lord grant amendment . this forced me to preach in my own house , while after whitsunday , and then it being reported to me by some , that if i preached any more in the house , the said rabble would eject me and my family , i ceased there , and preached in some neighbour churches : at length they caused cite me before the council , sept. 28. where for not praying for k. w. nominatim , in my house , and not reading the proclamation there , i was deprived by the council , and appointed to remove from my * manse at mertimas , to which i gave obedience at the time ( the laird assuring me that he could not keep his people off me , and that some had sworn to him , that they would eject me , be the event never so hazardous ) and came to the city of edinburg with my whole family , intending there the education of my seven children at colledge and schools : this is a true narration of what befel me at smelholm , among that people , who kindly received and joyned with me in all the parts of my ministry , until the said dickson and others of that perswasion had conversed with them and frequently preached among them ; yea , i am credibly informed that this george dickson on a saturday night as he came from edinburg , lighted in a change house , and then the people desiring him to preach to morrow , he answered , he would preach no more until they put away the curate from among them . sir , i doubt not but what i have here written , will find credit with you on my single testimony , yet to this the laird of smelholm , with many others , can bear witness , i rest ( wishing the lords grace and mercy ever to attend you ) your humble servant g. b. the persecution of mr. william bullo , whom the rabble hindred from giving obedience , and yet was deprived . mr. william bullo minister at stobo in tweddale , was all the winter over most barbarously used by the rabble , they having many times , not only in the day time , but even under cloud of night , with drawn swords and guns in their hands , entered his house , broke open the doors thereof , and s●arched the same for himself , and thereby did so affright his wife and children , that they took sickness through fear , and he himself for fear was forced to lye out in the fields in the coldest winter nights : and after he had endured a great many of their onsets , about the beginning of april last , as the said mr. bullo was coming home from the accompanying the corps of a gentleman , they lay in ambush for him by the way , and riding through a little village in his own parochine , where there was a meeting house erected , and where was the dwelling-house of the preacher of the meeting-house , out of which house there broke out upon him a number of the rabble ( among whom was the preachers servant-man ) and with drawn swords in their hands , offered to stobb him , and charged him to stand , and he putting the spurs to his horse rode for it , they firing their guns after him ; and at last two of them mounted themselves on horses and pursued him , and chased him farther than his own house , until at length the said mr. bullo's horse gave over riding , and so they apprehended him , and told him , they would instantly shoot him , and commanded him to his knees ; and he desiring for a little time to pray ; they told him , he had lived too long ; he answered , that was to quarrel with god , and he wished them to consider what they were saying and doing , for , said he , you are in passion : you damn'd rogue , said they , do you take on you to admonish us , we 'll shoot you presently through the head : then said he , since you will do it , god have mercy on my soul , and god forgive you , and now , said he , i have done : then they laid many stroaks on him , with the broad side of their d●awn swords , and told him , they would forbear his execution that night ( it being then late of the night ) and would take him prisoner to his own house , and guard him there until the next day , and pronounce sentence on him in sight of the whole parish , and would do further as they thought fit : and accordingly all this was done , for to morrow morning they sent through the whole parish , and convened all that would joyn with them against the said mr. bullo , and entered his house in a most hostile manner with their arms , and commanded his own man-servant to tear his gown ; and after many altercations betwixt him and them , they discharged him to preach any more upon the peril of his life : he told them , that he would receive no orders from them , he came in by authority and would not go out but by it . and about a fortnight or twenty days after this , they came upon his family ( he being from home ) and most cruelly threw out at doors his whole plenishing and furniture of his house , and locked up the doors ; and upon the lords day , whereupon he should have read the conventions proclamation for making prayers for king william and queen mary , and upon the day of thanksgiving , they set guards in the church-yard , lest he should have given obedience . and thus was he violently forced away from his church , and is since deprived by act of council , for his not reading and praying . the names of these honest gentlemen who offered to attest the truth of this matter by their oaths , when mr. bullo was deprived , are so well known to the council , that it would be needless here to insert them . the persecution of mr. iames little. mr. iames little minister of the gospel at ti●dace , was warned by six men , whereof two were cotters and four young men , all parishoners , to desist from the exercise of his ministry at the church of tindace and trailflatt annexed to tindace : he enquired of them by what authority they did that ; they answered , what they had done they would stand to it : he enquired at several parishoners , if they had any co●mission from them for the same ; they answered , not ; so he continued for two lords days thereafter doing his ministerial duties without interruption : upon the third lords day he goes to the kirk of trailflat , where he is obliged to preach once a month , and there when he was going to perform his duty , there meets him to the number of fifty women and upwards , with cudgels in their hands , and enters the house where he used to go in , and came there and most violently abused his person , without giving any reason why , and teared his cloak from his shoulders , and hauled him out of doors ; which being done , they compassed him about and beat him most severely with their cudgels , so that some persons who was come to hear a sermon , cryed out , will you murder a man ? and after they had torn all his cloaths ( his shirt not excepted ) and inquired how he durst come to preach there this day , being warned before to desist , he answered , that they could not be ignorant of a proclamation issued out in name of the prince of orange , which was publickly intimate from the cross of drumfries the wednesday preceding , that all their violencies and injuries should surcease until the meeting of the estates : they answered , that they could not obey mans laws , but their king of heavens laws . he said likewise unto them , why do you put your selves out of that frame and temper that is suitable to the lords day ? they answered , that in doing to me what they pleased , they could not offend their king of heaven . after this he desired them to allow him some covering for to defend his head from the cold , after they had cut his hat in pieces , and trod the same , with the rest of his cloaths , in the mire ; all which they denied . after all this they required the key of the kirk-door ; he cried for the beadle , who lived half a mile distant from the kirk , who was not as yet come ; upon which they sent two of their own number for it , and the man being out of the way they returned without it ; so that the minister was necessitated to send again for the key , which then came ; during which time , which was more than an hour and a half , he stood naked : then they compassed him about four at each arm , others of them beating his head and shoulders with their fists , others of them scratching and nipping his bare back , and leads him along first to the kirk-door , and after entering into the kirk , they required of him that he would there confess all the wickednesses he had done , as the preaching under a popish tyrannical king , and delating those who did not keep the kirk : to which the said mr. iames answered , god almighty forgive you and me all our wickednesses , and if you will have the patience , i shall preach a sermon to you , wherein i shall shew you , upon what ground you and i may build the forgiveness of all our wickednesses , because every one that asks forgiveness does not obtain it . after which they came upon him with their cudgels over again , and lent him upon the head and shoulders , and said , will you preach to us : after all this they dragg'd him out of the church , and caused him to deliver the key to one of them , and others of them cried , come all here , that we may all be alike in this business : immediately after they fastened four to each arm , as before , and leads him out of the church-yard until they bring him to a myre , where they go about the myre , and takes up handfuls of dirt ; which made those who had him by the arms , to part from him , and threw the same handfuls of dirt upon him , and after they dismiss'd themselves . this i am ready to prove by many unexceptionable witnesses . i. l. the persecution of mr. archibald ferguson minister at kirkpatrick . sir , since you are so earnest to hear from me a true account of the barbarities committed by the pretended godly presbyterians here , upon the person and family of mr. archibald ferguson minister at kirkpatrick , in the stueartry of annandale , where i live ; as i am able so i am willing to satisfie you in this matter to the full , for i was an eye-witness to some part of the tragedy , and had the rest from some very honest persons who were spectators of the whole : the matter of fact in short was this ; upon the festival of easter last ( a day observed with much religious reverence by all the christi●n world , except our presbyterians , who seem to have separated from that catholick society ) eight men in arms with about an equal number of women , much in the same posture , came to the ministers dwelling-house early in the morning ; and having forced open his ga●e , the good minister , who was then busie in preparing himself to serve god and his people in the church , surprized with the extraordinary noise , and hearing them ask so furiously for him , came calmly to them , and modestly ask'd what business they had with him ; whereupon one of them took him by the gorget , commanding him to surrender himself up to them as their prisoner : he ask'd them what he had done for which he should be made prisoner , and by what authority they made him theirs : he was answered by a severe blow upon the head with a pistol , the stroke knock'd him flat to the ground , and the wound it made , would in all probability proved mortal , if his head had not been gaurded by a thick velvet cap , which by kind providence he had then upon it : the miscreant who wounded him , ordered him immediately to be drag'd out from his gate , which two of his blood-thirsty accomplices as readily performed , beating him afterwards down into a nasty puddle ; his poor wife ( then so big with child that she expected every day to be brought to bed ) running out to save , if she could , her husbands life , was , at her first appearance , knock'd down with the butt end of a musket ; she received many merciless blows , and had her head and body severely bruised among the stones where she was beat down . then iames harcannass their noble captain at this honourable expedition , gave the word of command to his female janizaries , which was , strip the curate ( for they think this a most disgraceful app●llation , and therefore they apply it to all episcopal ministers ) the order was no sooner given , than these amazons prepared to put it in execution , for throwing away their plaids , ( i. e. loose upper garments ) each of them drew from her girdle a great sharp pointed dagger , prepared , it seems , for a thorough reformation . the good minister lying panting and prostrate on the ground , had first his night-gown torn and cut off him , his close coat , wastcoat and britches ript open with their knives ; nay , their modesty could not so far prevail against their zeal , as to spare his shi●t and drawers , but all were cut in pieces and sacrificed to a broken covenant : the forementioned captain gave the finishing stroke himself , with a great reforming club , the blow was design'd for the ministers head or breast , but he naturally throwing out his hands to save those vital parts , occasioned it to fall upon his shin-bones , which he had drawn up to cover his nakedness ; the blow was such , as greatly bruised both his legs , and made them swell extraordinarily after ; however the captain thinking that they were broke , and finding it uneasie for himself and his companions to stand longer in a great storm of wind and snow which happened to fall out that morning , he drew off his company , and left the semi-martyr , who afterwards by the assistance of his servants , crawled home to his bed , and but a little after , the whole herd of his persecutors broke in again upon him , and told him , they had treated him so , because he prayed for the tyrant york , ( so these people ordinarily called king iames , tho he was too kind to them ) and because he had presumed to preach , and visit the parishioners as if he had been their minister , which they had formerly forbid him to do ; they required him also to be gone from their covenanted lands , under pain of death , before that day sevennight , and never again to meddle with the ministry . and tho● application was afterwards made by some who might have been supposed to have had interest with that crew , yet nothing could prevail to obtain so much as but a delay till his poor wife should be brought to bed , and himself a little recovered of his wounds : so that he was forced to fly for his life , from his parish , wife and children , without any hopes of returning , till it shall please god to bring some order out of our present confusions , to open the eyes of blind and fiery zealots , and to stop the fury of our ungoverned rabble : i may say , that our judgments begin at the house of the righteous , for this man is a person of extraordinary parts and piety : i think it not strange , that some men with you are so unready to believe the fanatick practices here , since few men can suppose any people so barbarous as our bigots indeed are , but i admire that these ill instruments about court , who give encouragement , life and motion to the faction here , should so impudently deny the matters of fact , which themselves know to be but too true . if this particular passage should be contradicted , i am ready and willing my self to attest it , and to prove it by several other unexceptionable witnesses ; and tho it be dangerous to have particular mens names published , the faction we have to deal with being merciless and bloody ; yet if nothing else can serve , i allow you to use my name , but do it no further than the cause requires , and with all that discretion and caution that is expected from you by sir , your sincere friend and humble servant g. m. the third collection of papers , containing the sufferings of those ministers who complied . the persecution of mr. william hamilton minister at irwine and kirknewton . mr. william hamilton , a man for the integrity of his life , purity of his doctrine , knowledge and gift of preaching beyond exception , was first minister at pemicooke in midhotham , where he served in the ministry for several years with great reputation : in the year 1681. the clergy being required to take the test , he was one of these ministers who scrupled to take it , and so was laid aside , he lived privately and peaceably , following his studies , till he had again access to the free exercise of his ministry , which was first at the town of irwin in cunningham in the wes● ; the people there are for the most part presbyterians . the exemplariness of the mans life . the first character i have given of the man already , one would have thought must have conciliate all respect and kindness to him amongst his neighbours , he treated them with all discretion and civility , upon all occasions , yea , at such occasions as he was not to preach at himself , he went to hear him who preached in the next meeting-house , and went frequently to visit him , but all this prevailed not ; for about the end of ian. 1688 / 9. these people attacqued him , some of them came in the morning , and kept him prisoner all the forenoon , till their accomplices met , to the number of about fifty or sixty , when they were all convened , five or six of them seized him , and carried him through the town to the cross , making a show of him , and here were none of all these people of his own parish , but only two , but almost the whole inhabitants were looking on , and saw their minister , who deserved so very well of them , thus rudely treated , without rescuing him . when he was brought to the cross , they tore his gown over his head , and told him , that that was their testimony against episcopacy ; they took upon them to discharge him to preach there again , and to command him to depart from the * manse and glebe , which he the more readily promised to do , because he was weary of living amongst them , and had an invitation to a charge where he expected more comfort and success in his ministry , tho less stipend . from irwin he came to kirknewt●n seven miles from edinburg in the presbytery of edinburg : about the end of february he exercised his ministry there peaceably until the 18th of april , at which time a company of armed men came to his house , about nine of the clock at night ( none of them were his own parishoners ) and commanded him in king william's name to preach there no more . he had complied with the first , to the present government in all things required of him , he made his application to the committee of estates then sitting , who granted him an order to preach at kirknewton , forbidding any person to disturb him , or wrong him in his person or goods . but notwithstanding this , in iune another armed company came about six of the clock one night to his house when he was absent , and ejected his wife and six small children , one of them very sick ; at this time the act of the meeting of estates in the ministers favour was produced to these people , they read it , and dropt and trampled on it , and said , they valued it not , tho it had been under king william's own hand , this being again represented to the committee of estates , they sent out sir iohn maitland , one of the said committee , to enquire about such unsufferable insolencies , who came to the place , bespoke some he heard were most accessory , and took a list of their names : notwithstanding of this , not long after five women assaulted the minister , who had been reponed and preached again . his servant and horse coming from the coal-pit , and the servant-man's daughter coming out to her father's defence , was ill hurt by them , she fell in a swound at this and at the ●ight of a fellow who came with a drawn sword to assist these assassins . iuly 19. yet again came a company of armed men at nine at night , the minister being occasionally absent , and were yet more outragious , and again cast out of the house his wife , children and servants ; at this time also they cast out his furniture , broke much of it , took away several books and other things he could ill spare . mr. hamilton , at his return , finding his wife in a coal-house , and being informed how badly his family had been used , concluded it ne●dless to struggle any longer with the humour , and did not attempt to preach . his sick child died before the last assault . he afterward finding it needful for him to take physick , and having no conveniency for that in the coal-house , on the first of october he entered the empty * manse , and set up a single bed , caused carry into it one chair and candlestick ; on the fifth of october that rabble returned and broke the bed all in pi●ces , so that afterward he burnt it for fewel , it being rendered otherwise useless ; they cast out the cloaths into the puddle ; spared not the chamber-pot , but beat out the bottom of it with halbards , left not his walking cain unbroken . they not finding himself in the manse , they went to search for him in the coal-house ; so narrow was the search they made , that ▪ they left not feather-beds and bolsters and chests unpierced with their swords , crying , come out dog , ( so they called the minister ) two and twenty of them , all known persons , after they had left the cottage in which the minister then lived , met his servant with two horses coming loaded with coals to his house , they carried them back two miles after they had come six , and compelled the ministers own servant to bring forth kindling to make a bonefire of the coals , which was done just before my lord torphican's windows who lived in that place . the minister happened at the time to be in a house in the town in which one of the heretors of the parish lived , with a friend , about his business . these people who had so abused his house and his servant , got notice of his being there , and came to the house and would needs see him . the master of the house and his wife , being his good friends , and stout-hearted people , hindered these people from breaking open the door , which they attempted to do . they threatned to shoot a pair of balls through the door upon the minister ; at length they promised to do him no harm if he would come forth to them . upon this he came out , and when they saw him they had little to say to him , but that he had no right to go to the manse , it belonging to the kirk , and he had no right to that : he said he had returned thither not to dwell , but only for a day or two to take physick , he having no conveniency for that in the coal-house he then lived in , he behaved himself with that caution and moderation , that they could not find the least colour to do him further injury , they only vented some foolish and impertinent words against him . all this i can prove by the attestation and oaths of famous witnesses . w. h. instruments in favour of the heritors and ministers in colingtown , who gave all obedience to the conventions commands . at colingtown the eighth day of september . the which day in presence of me notar publick , and witness under subscribing , compeired personally patrick porterfeild of comistown , and pass'd with me and several others to the kirk of hailes , where we were resolved to hear a sermon ( the minister being at home intending to preach , but waiting till the bells should ring ) where we were no sooner come , but there appeared several armed men within the kirk-yard , at whom the said patrick porterfeild for himself and in name and behalf of the rest of the heritors of that parochine , and of mr. samuel nimmo present minister there , asked from whence they were come , and to whom they belonged , and if they were come to that place of design to interrupt the minister to preach : who answered , that they belonged to the earl of angus his regiment , and were come there designedly to hinder him to preach , and that he should not preach there take his part who would . to which it was answered by the said patrick porterfeild , that king william and queen mary and their council had taken his part , and authorized him to preach ; and that accordingly he was ready to preach and to read the proclamation for the fast if they would not hinder him . to which they replied , that they disowned all such authority , and that the minister should not preach there . whereupon the said patrick porterfeild took instruments in the hands of me notar publick undersubscribing . this was done within the said kirk-yard betwixt the hours of nine and ten in the forenoon , day month and y●ar of god abovementioned , in presence of mr. hugh durie writer in edinburg , and william bole taylor there , with saveral other witnesses to the premises d●sired and required . ita esse ut praemittitur ego joannes gourlay notarius publicus in praemissis requisitus assero testantibus his meis manu & signo . william bole. hugh durie . mr. william selkrig's treatment . mr. william selkrig minister at glenhome in twiddale , read the proclamation and prayed for king william and queen mary nominatim , with the very first , and continued in the exercise of his ministry till the middle of iune , at which time twenty of the rabble , shepherds and cowherds and such like , came from crawford moor and tweedmore to his house , and threatned to cast his wife and children and plenishing out of doors , if he would not engage to surcease from the exercise of his ministry and remove from the manse : this he refusing to do , they cast out all , the minister assuring them he would complain to authority : they answered him , they cared not for authority , and they would be doing : upon which he desired they would allow him a fortnight to remove ; and with great difficulty he obtained that : his parishoners did not appear against him but owned him . upon a proclamation of the sixth of august went back , made offer to return to his ministry and conform to the proclamation . two fellows , one whereof had kept the church till he had given satisfaction for a scandal , the other never kept the church : these two had put on another lock on the church●door by their own authority . upon which mr. selkrig went to the sheriff depute with another brother to crave his assistance conform to the pr●cl●mati●n to ●ake the church●open , ●e pr●mised to cause the church door he made patent against a day they agreed ●n . the minister came on that saturday and fou●d it not done , but received from the d●puty a letter of excuse , that he would understand what had been done in other shires . mr. selkrig th●n went to the two fellows with a notar , and required the key of the church-door according to the proclamation , that he might return to his ministry . they acknowledged that they were accessory to the putting on the lock but that they had not the key : he repli●d , that either they had it , or knew where it was ; and ●p●n their refusal to make the church-door patent , took instruments of his willingness and their refusal to deliver the key , protesting for reparation of cost , skaith and damage , as the ins●●ument at length b●a●s ; and upon this ●eturned to edinburg where he and his family live still . the instr●ment and acco●nt of this , was produced by the minister under the hands of the publick not●ary and several witnesses , to persons in authority , but no redress was made . the persecution of mr. burges a complier . sir , it 's like you are d●sir●us to be informed how affairs go with me ; i am one of these who have given obedi●nce to the meeting of estates , but i met with no p●otecti●n fr●m th●m : upon the lords day , immediately after the rising of this current parliament , tumultuously , tho without a●●s , th● rabble came and possessed then selves of the church , being sent from one mr. walker who preaches in the meeting-house by the connivance of mr. m●●at ( whom i suppose you know ) who sometime was minister there , but is now old and therefore unable ( as they say ) for which they have cast him ●ff ; all this time they came not near me , nor ●●quired aft●r me ; and i no wise doubted ( in the mean while ) but that act of parliament , anent their establishment , had passed unto a law , so ●oved not abroad from my house that day ; the next i preached as formerly , without any inter●uption , the reason was ( as i knew afterward ) that the heritors and the old presbyterian ministers were offended that the young man should have invaded upon mr. mouat's right ; whereupon my officious helper has ever since retired himself and discontented with his former conven●icle : however they are resolved , i mean the rabble , that i shall no longer enjoy peaceable possession , notwithstanding my compliance : in order to this , there comes in a considerable number of fellows with arms and beating of drums to my house , and asked for me upon the tu●sday following , i was not at home , but they challenged my wife how i dar'd to preach after they had possessed the church : she told them , what i did was by the authority of king william : to which they replied , king william , we care not for that authority : at which she smiled , and thanked them for their dis●●etion . some of them threatned very rudely , that if i preached any more there , it should cost me my life ; others spoke more discreetly , and only advised i should not do it , lest i brought my self to more trouble . however , when i came home , i prepar●d for preaching , but upon sunday morning there assembled in my church-yard , and about my gates , two hundred fellows with guns staves and swords ; when i judged it near the ordinary time of going for church , i sent forth my reader to know from them , why they were assembled at so unseasonable a time , since they came not to hear sermon from me ; and withal , that they would by some few of their number , let me understand the same . accordingly they commissionated four to speak with me , who told me ●iatly , our will is , y●u preach no more here , and you shall preach no more . i was indeed a little startled to hear cowards speak in such a sovereign stile , and opposed the authority of king william to counterballance theirs , but to no purpose , for they told me they cared not a rush for that , they would do as they pleased . i have not preached there since , save in my own house . they guarded the church for four or five sabbaths , and this is all i have to trouble you with , only i intreat your prayers in behalf of sir , your brother and servant i. b. the persecution of mr. david spence . about the beginning of ianuary 1689. between fifty and sixty men , all strangers to me , came in an hostile manner to my house , and searched every part of it for me , with drawn swords in their hands , and not finding me , appointed my wife to tell me , that they discharged me to preach any more there , or require any more stipend , under the highest pains ; and thus notwithstanding more than a whole years stipend was unpaid to me ; but i continued in the exercise of my ministry until the twentieth day of april , at that time a great number , some strangers , some my own parishoners , came to my house armed with muskets and swords , that was the day on which i was appointed to have read the proclamation of the 23d of april , and the cause of their coming then was , they feared i might comply ; they resolved to pr●vent that , and took away the keys of the kirk-door , and also the mort-cloth ( tho part of its price was unpaid to me ) thus i was incapacitated to obey the order of the meeting of the estates : upon this i applied my self to the committee of ●states then sitting , shewing , that whereas i was willing to give obedience to the law , yet i could not have liberty for the rabble which excluded me from the church ; the committee gave me a protection and warrand , and required the heretors to put and keep me in the peaceable ●xercise of my ministry , and secure such persons as should disturb me in my ministry . i sh●wed the protection to all the heretors , but kirkurd , one of them , and who was most concern●d , said it was not in their power to protect me , tho they were chiefly his tenants that opposed me . afterwards in september they cited me before the privy-council , which deprived me and declared my church vacant , only because i did not read the proclamation in my own house , which the law did not require : they consid●red not the protection i had from the committee , nor my willingness to obey if allowed , but tre●ted me as if my non obedience had been the most free choice in the world ; which i can prove by witnesses . this , sir , is a true account of my case . i am sir , your most obliged humble servant d. spence . the persecution of the presbytery of stranrare who complied . sir , you are desirous to have an account how the ministers of the presbytery of stranrare were tr●ated by the rabble . in the first place you must know , that all of them had read the p●oclamation , and prayed for king william and queen mary , except one who was in edinburg at the time ; notwithstanding of this they were not secure from the rabble , but on the contrary their greatest troubles then began , most of them continued preaching till whitsunday , at which time small parties of these people who came over from ireland for shelter , were imployed and conduced to go to several ministers houses to discharge them to preach any longer , adding threatnings if they continued in the exercise of their ministry there ; they put on new locks which they brought with them on the church-doors , and kept guards there and in the church-yards , to hinder the ministers from ent●ring . all the ministers of this presbytery w●re ●jected out of their manses . mr. ramsay one of them , dwelt in an hired house which did not belong to the church , but he was not spared more than the rest , these people came and drowned out his fire , cast out his goods ▪ and otherwise badly intreated his family , frighted his poor wife and children , he was forced to flee to ireland for shelter , from whence these people had come . these people , when demanded by the ministers why they who pretended to flee from pers●cu●ion themselves , and were protestants , should at such rate persecute protestant ministers , who obeyed the law , and expected rather protection , but on the contrary had shewed hospitality towards them , according to their ability . some of them being confounded at this , said , that they were pressed , yea , hir●d to what they had done ; yea , some of them vowed they should never go such an errand again . i believe necessity had moved th●se poor people for a little money to do that which otherwise they abhorred , but when some would not go they found others . the ministers , a●ter they were cast out of their manses , they lived in the barns of the manses for some time , but they were not suffered to con●inue long there but were ejected ; then they took shelter in the barns and stables of country-men who ●avoured them always , till they themselves were menaced and threatned for receiving them . one of them , mr. iames cameron , a very worthy man , was forced , with the man who reset him , to betake themselves to the fields , to save themselves in the night-time from the rabble who were come to assault th●m . this came upon the hon●st country man , meerly because he shelter●d his minister whom he loved . these furious people meeting with the ministers servant , did beat him so till he fell to the ground deprived of all signs of life . the●rabble came to a ministers wife of glenluce when her husband was absent , and enquired for him , and when they found him not , they began to cast out his goods into the closs , and the ministers wife had caused put on a pan on the fire for to make some breakfast for a sucking child , but their fury could not allow them to forbear drowning out the fire till the childs meat should first been made . this is all the abrupt information that now in haste can be given , but you may have a further account afterwards . mr. iohn maubray minister at vphall did comply with all that was required of him by the council , yet the rabble came ●pon him , did cast out his plenishing , tore his gown , aff●ighted his wife so that she died shortly after . being thus violently thrust from his wife , he came to his patron lord cardrose , one of the present privy-council , and desired that his lordship would allow him but to shelter himself in some chamber of his lordships house of kirkhill , till he provided himself of some other place ; but my lord denied his request : he then adventured again to lodge in the manse to preach to his people , but the lord cardrose commanded him to forbear , and when he would not promise to abstain , his lordship did take from the said mr. iohn the keys of the church-doors , so that he has excluded him the kirk . this can be proved by many famous witnesses , as is now attested by w. s. i. m. the persecution of mr. francis scot. mr. francis scot minister of the gospel at tweedmore , was ejected by the rabble , and his whole family turned out of doors , ( his wife having been delivered of a child four days before ) tho he complied in all points . mr. william alison minister of the gospel at kilbocho was ejected about the same time by the rabble , to wit , the middle of summer , they holding pistols to his breast , having given all obedience to the laws , yet was cited by his parochioners before the council , and was absolved and warranded to return to his charge ; after a number of women in his own parochie , rose up and went to his manse , wherein he had some plenishing standing , and threw it out and broke it all in pieces , and drove away his cows that was pasturing in his own glebe , and destroyed all his corn ; and now a meeting-house preacher possesseth his-church , preaching in it daily , albeit he be authorized himself by authority , and after all this no care is taken to repossess him . witness our hands f. s. w. a. a letter to the lord e — ne . airth octob. 14. 1689. may it please your lordship , we your whole neighhour heretors concern'd in the parish of airth , considering the vacancy of our church through the removal of mr. paul gellie our minister , by the rash depositions of two or three insignificant persons , and the great insolencies of the rabble thereupon , without law or order , in abusing and violently possessing the church ; conceived our selves obliged to intreat your lordship to see what may be done for the redress and satisfaction of orderly people . and seeing we have nothing to object against the life or doctrine of our minister , who is well beloved by the whole body of the parish , whose loyalty and painfulness in the ministry , your lordship knows : it is our ●arnest desire , that you interpose your endeavour to get him repossess'd again in this church , if possible , in doing of which , you may be instrumental for promoting the good of this place , and not only oblige the whole body of the parish , but particularly us who are your lordships humble servants , alex. bruce ia. bruce of powfouls . ionas bruce of letham . al. elphinstone as tutor of stone-house . rob. rolles of panhouse . i. wright of kersie . i. forssithe of polmais taillertowne . a letter to the right honourable the lord e — ne at london . barnton octob. 17. 1689. my dear lord , your lordship knows how mr. paul gellie , your minister , has deported himself in his ministry at airth , and has gained the affections of all the parish , except three or four of the very worst of them , and how he was removed from his charge upon the depositions of two flagitious fellows , who had resolved to damn themselves to get him out of his ministry . if your lordship can get his cas● fairly represented , and him reponed to his charge ; i hear that the hail heretors , and the most substantious tenents , will take it as a singular favour : and albeit i have no interest , but as a tutor to airth , i will esteem it for a singular kindness . my most humble service to my lady , and i am , my lord , your lordships most humble and faithful servant , ro. mylne . a letter to the lord e — ne in london . edin . nov. 19. 1689. my lord , i have sent the testimony of the heretors of your lordships parish , with barnton's in my favours , hoping your lordship on their testificat , with your own knowledge , may procure an order of reinstallment from his majesty to me , especially considering , that to your certain knowledge i have given full obedience to the government , and have in my custody the testimonies of an hundred and fifty heads of families subscribed by them , ready to depone the truth of my obedience , and innocency of what these two infamous persons witnessed against me : yea , i have a subscribed testimony of honest men , offering to prove these two witnesses ( by whom i was deposed ) really perjured , and before credible famous witnesses one of them has confessed his perjury . and if his majesty be informed of the manifest injury done me by two perjured persons , contrary to the testimony of the whole parish , i doubt not of an order of reinstallment ; and truly the falsehood , malice and cruelty of that party in your lordships parish , is so known to the presbyterian ministers themselves , that scarcely any one will come and preach to them ; for tho they violently possess the church , which they have greatly abused , they had not a sermon these divers sabbaths : so that our people not only want the preaching of the gospel , but likewise the ordinances of the lords supper and baptism . if i were present i am assured to prevail , and if you judge it expedient , send me word by a line , and with the help of god i shall come on my own horse by land , for i am afraid to venture by sea. i would have sent the testificat of the whole parish contrary to these two false depositions against me , but i am afraid they may be miscarried , and it would be hard for me to recover them again at this juncture of time , but i think your lordships own testimony will be sufficient with what i have done . my lord , i need not use motives to perswade your lordship to move herein , all are confident you both may and will prevail for an order from his majesty for my reinstallment , which will be for your lordships honour , who is patron , and for his majesties interest , as well as my advantage . i shall add no more , but pray for the blessing of god on your lordship , lady , and the whole children , which shall ever be continued by , my lord , your lordships most faithful and obedient servant , paul gellie . the fourth collection of papers containing proclamations , acts of convention and council . a proclamation against owning of the late king iames , and commanding publick prayers to be made for king william and queen mary . the estates of this kingdom of scotland having proclaimed and declared william and mary , king and queen of england , france and ireland , to be king and queen of scotland ; they have thought fit by publick proclamation , to certifie the leidges , that none presume to own or acknowledge the late king iames the seventh , for their king , nor obey , accept , or assist any commissions or orders , that may be emitted by him , or any way to correspond with him ; and that none presume upon their highest peril , by word , writing , in sermons , or any other manner of way , to impugn , or disown the royal authority of william and mary , king and queen of scotland ; but that all the leidges render their dutiful obedience to their majesties ; and that none presume to misconstrue the proceeding of the estates , or to create jealousies or misapprehensions of the actings of the government ; but that all the ministers of the gospel , within the kingdom , publickly pray for king william and queen mary , as king and queen of this realm : and the estates do require the ministers within the city of edinburgh , under the pain of being deprived and losing their benefices , to read this proclamation publickly from their pulpits , upon sunday next , being the 14th instant , at the end of their forenoons sermon : and the ministers on this side of the river of tay , to read the same upon sunday thereafter , the 21st instant ; and those be-north tay , upon the 28th instant , under the pain foresaid : discharging hereby the proclamation of the council , dated the 16th of september 1686. to be read hereafter in churches . and the estates do prohibit and discharge , any injury to be offered by any person whatsoever , to any ministers of the gospel , either in churches or meeting-houses , who are presently in the possession and exercise of their ministry therein , they behaving themselves as becomes , under the present government : and ordains this proclamation to be published at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , with all ordinary sol●mnities , that none may pretend ignorance . extracted forth of the records of the meeting of the estates , by me ro. m ckenzie . god save king william and queen mary . the reader is desired to take notice , because omitted in the narrative , that tho the presbyterian preachers , whom it is certain the convention thought gospel-ministers , were obliged as much at least as any others , to read this proclamation , and had it for that purpose sent them ; yet they were never called in question for their neglect of it , tho that was sufficient to turn out the orthodox clergy , which to play the pedant for once , amounts to this in latin : dat veniam corvis , vexat censura columbas . in scotch . show me the man and i 'll show you the law. the truth is , the governours knew that many of the meeting-house preachers could not be induced to do any thing in favour of any king , until he had first declared for presbytery and renewed the holy covenant , and this is the true reason , why no oath of allegiance is yet put to any of the clergy in scotland , either of the one perswasion or the other ; this proclamation was not published till saturday april 1● . 1689. and sent to the ministers at edinburgh late that night , and to some of them not till sunday morning , and yet upon that short advertisement , all were to satisfie their scruples of conscience against next morning , about translating their allegiance which they had sworn to one king , to another who had not then declared that he would accept the crown upon such conditions as it was offered with ; otherways they were to be deprived ; this is pressing of conscience with a witness ; and 't is plain from the latter part of this proclamation , that men might offer what injury they pleased to ministers of the gospel , who were not then in exercise and possession of their ministry ; that is indeed , to all the orthodox ministers in the west , who had been some months before drawn from their possessions by the rabble . to the king 's most excellent majesty , the humble address of the presbyterian ministers in his majesties kingdom of scotland . may it please your majesty , we your majesties most loyal subjects , the ministers of the presbyterian perswasion in your ancient kingdom of scotland , from the deep sense we have of your majesties gracious and surprizing favour , in not only putting a stop to our long sad sufferings for non-conformity , but granting us the liberty of the publick and peaceable exercise of our ministerial function , without any h●zard ; as we bless the great god who hath put this in your royal heart , do withal find our selves bound in duty to offer our most humble and hearty thanks to your sacred maj●sty ; the favour bestowed being to us , and all the people of our perswasion , valuable above all our earthly comforts : especially since we have ground from your majesty to believe , that our loyalty is not to be questioned upon the account of our being presbyterians ; who , as we have amidst all former temptations endeavoured , so are firmly resolved still to preserve an entire loyalty in our doctrine and practice , ( consonant to our known principles , which according to the holy scriptures are contained in the confession of faith generally owned by presbyterians in all your majesties dominions : ) and , by the help of god , so to demean our selves , as your majesty may find cause rather to enlarge , than to diminish your favours towards us : throughly perswading our selves , from your majesties justice and goodness , that if we shall at any time be otherwise represented , your majesty will not give credit to such information , until you take due cognition thereof ; and humbly b●seeching that those who promote any disloyal principles and practices , ( as we do disown them ) may be look'd upon as none of ours , whatsoever name th●y may assume to themselves . may it please your most excellent majesty graciously to accept this our humble address , as proceeding from the plainness and sincerity of loyal and thankful hearts , much engaged by this your royal favour to continue our fervent prayers to the king of kings , for divine illumination and conduct , with all other blessings spiritual and temporal , ever to attend your royal person and government ; which is the greatest duty can be re●dred to your majesty , by your majesties most humble , most faithful , and most obedient subjects . subscribed in our own names , and in the name of the rest of the brethren of our perswasion at their desire . at edinburgh the twenty first day of iuly , in the year one thousand six hundred eighty seven . to the king 's most excellent majesty , the humble address of those of the presbyterian perswasion in the city of edinburgh and canongate . may it please your most sacred majesty , we cannot find suitable expressions to evidence our most humble and grateful acknowledgments for your majesties late gracious declaration , by which we are happily delivered of many sad and grievous burdens we have long groaned under : and ( all restrainsts , to our great joy , being taken off ) are allowed the free and peaceable publick exercise of our religion , a mercy which is dearer to us than our lives and fortunes . could we open our hearts , your majesty would undoubtedly see what deep sense and true zeal for your service , so surprizing and signal a favor hath imprinted on our spirits ; for which we reckon our selves highly obliged ( throwing our selves at your majesties feet ) to return your most excellent majesty our most humble , dutiful , and hearty thanks : and we desire humbly to assure your majesty , that as the principles of the protestant religion , which according to our confession of faith we prof●ss , obligeth us all the days of our lives to that intire loyalty and duty to your majesties person and government , that no difference of religion can dissolve ; so we hope , and through god's assistance shall still endeavour , to demean our selves in our practice in such manner as shall evidence to the world the truth and sincerity of our loyalty and gratitude , and make it appear that there is no inconsistency betwixt true loyalty and presbyterian ●rinciples . great sir ! we humbly offer our dutiful and faithful assu●ances , that as we have not been hitherto wanting in that great duty which our consciences bind upon us to pray for your majesty ; so this late refreshing and unexpected favour will much more engage us in great sincerity to continue still to offer up our desires to the god of heaven , by whom kings reign , and princes decree justice , to bless your majesties royal person and government ; and after a happy and comfortable reign on earth , to crown you with an incorruptible crown of glory in heaven , which is most ardently prayed for , by , most dread sovereign , your majesties most humble , most loyal , most dutiful , and most obedient subjects . subscribed in our own names , and by order of those of the presbyterian perswasion within your city of edinburgh and conongate . there is another address that i have seen from the pastors and people of god * in the west of scotland in and about glasgow , which for high strains of flattery and vast promises of duty and compliance , far out-does the two that are here inserted , yea , and that high-flown one of your godly honest alsop in england , it is to that address of glasgow which could not now be bad , that the author of the narrative more particularly relates : by these two that we have found , men may see how ready that party was to comply with a popish prince , and how faithful they are to their greatest promises of duty and allegian●e , appears by their practices since . the viscount of dundee's letter to the convention . dudhop , march 27. 1689. may it please your grace , the coming of an herauld and trumpeter to summon a man to lay down arms , that is living in peace at home , seems to me a very extraordinary thing ; and i suppose will do so to all that hears of it . while i attended the convention at edinburgh , i complained often of many peoples being in arms without authority , which was notoriously known to be true , even the wild hill-men ; and no summons to lay down arms under the pain of treason being given them , i thought it unsafe for me to stay longer among them : and because some sew of my friends did me the favour to convey me out of reach of these murderers , and that my lord levingston , and several other officers took occasion to come away at the same time , this must be called being in arms : we did not exceed the number allowed by the meeting of estates : my lord levingston and i might have had each of us ten ; and four or five officers that were in company might have had a certain number allowed them ; which being , it will be found we exceeded not . i am sure it is far short of the number my lord lorne was seen to march with . and tho i had gone away with some more than ordinary , who can blame me , when designs of murdering me was made appear ? besides , it is known to every body , that before we came within sixteen miles of this , my lord levingston went off to his brother my lord strathmoir's house ; and most of the officers , and several of the company , went to their respective homes or relations ; and if any of them did me the favour to come along with me , must that be called being in arms ? sure when your grace represents this to the meeting of the states , they will discharge such a groundless pursuit , and think my appearance before them unn●c●ssary . besides , tho it were necessary for me to go and attend the meeting , i cannot come with freedom and sa●ety , because i am informed there are men of war and foreign troops in the passage ; and till i know what they are , and what are their orders , the meeting cannot blame me for not coming . then , my lord , seeing the summons has proceeded on a groundless story , i hope the meeting of states will think it unreasonable i should leave my wife in the condition she is in . if there be any body that , notwithstanding of all that is said , think i ought to appear , i beg the favour of a delay till my wife is brought to bed , and in the mean time i will either give security , or paroll , not to disturb the peace . seeing the pursuit is so groundless , and so reasonable things offered , and the meeting composed of prudent men , and men of honour , and your grace presiding in it , i have no reason to fear further trouble . i am , may it please your grace , your most humble servant , sic subscribitur , dundee postscript . i beg your grace will cause read this to the meeting , because it is all the defence i have made . i sent another to your grace from dumblein , with the reasons of my leaving edinburgh : i know not if it be come to your hands . this letter sent from dundee the great , to the convention , will somewhat serve to discover the humour of the times , and the impartial iustice of that convention , the rabble and wild-hill men went together in arms in formidable multitudes both in the country and city , and the thanks of the convention was made to them for their good services ; they affronted the viscount of dundee daily upon the streets , and sometimes on the night attempted to murder him in his house ; all which was made evident to the convention , and no notice taken of it ; but because my lord dundee and some other gentlemen , not willing to lye longer under those dangers , retired to their country-houses only with such a guard as was sufficient to secure them from the violence of the rabble , which the convention it self allowed to noble-men and gentlemen when they travelled on the road ; upon this account he was attainted of high treason , and a herauld and trumpeter sent to summon him upon that account to appear and answer for his life and fortune ; by their own messengers he sent back to them the preceding letter , and by the tennor of it , i leave the world to judge who they were that first begun the war in scotland , which is not ended there yet , nor like to do in haste , and hath cost the nation so much blood and treasure since . an act of council . at edin . dec. 24. 1689. the lords of his majesties privy council , considering that by the act of the meeting of estates of the date the thirteenth day of april last , there is a difference made betwixt the ministers then in possession and exercise of their ministry at their respective churches , and those who were not so . and that the case of the ministers who were not in the actual exercise of their ministerial function the thirteenth day of april last , lyes yet under the consideration of the parliament ; and lest in the mean time they may call and pursue for the stipend ( alledged ) due to them , or put in execution the decreets and sentences already obtained at their instance for the same before the estates of parliament can meet and give these determinations in the points . therefore the said lords of privy council finding that the case foresaid depending before the parliament , is not obvious to be cognosced and decided upon by the inferiour judges , but that the same should be left intire to the decision of the parliament ; have thought fit to signifie to all inferior courts and ministers of the law , that the matter abovementioned is depending before the parliament , to the effect they may regulate and govern themselves in the judging of all process to be intented before them upon the said matter , or in executing sentences already pronounced thereupon , as they will be answerable . sic subscribitur , crafoord . j. p. d. s. con. was ever iustice ( to speak modestly ) stretched so as in this act ; because the government in the proclamation of the date april 13. had left the ministers of the west , who were forced by the rabble from their possessions , out of their protection , which was all the difference mode by that act , was it therefore not just to allow them any tithes or other debts due to them for several years before , and for which they had obtained fairly decrees and sentences in courts of iudicature , surely these preachers , who by the violence of the rabble had possessed their places , had no legal or just pretence to any part of the tithes or stipends for which the others had served . with what face then , or pretence to common iustice could this be called a case depending before the parliament . a proclamation anent the ministers . at edinb . august 6. 1689. whereas the meeting of the estates of this kingdom , by their proclamation dated at edinburgh , the thirteenth day of april , 1689. did command and require all the ministers of the gospel within the kingdom of scotland , publickly to pray for king william and queen mary , as king and queen of this realm , and to read that proclamation from their pulpits upon the several lords days therein exprest ; as also , the estates of the kingdom did prohibit and discharge any injury to be offered by any person whatsoever , to any minister of the gospel , either in churches or meeting-houses , who were then , viz. on the thirteenth of april last , in possession and exercise of their ministry , either in churches or meeting-houses , they behaving themselves dutifully under the present government . and it being most just and reasonable , that the foresaid proclamation be fully performed and obeyed , as most necessary for the security of the peace of the kingdom , and that such ministers who gave obedience should be secure under the protection of the law , and that the pain of deprivation be inflicted upon all those ministers who have disobeyed the proclamation . therefore the lords of his majesties privy council , in their majesties name and authority , do strictly command and charge , that none of the leidges take on hand to do any violence or injury to any of the ministers of the gospel , whether they be preaching in churches or meeting-houses , and that all such as were in possession and exercise of their ministry upon the thirteenth day of april last , be allowed to continue undisturbed , and that such ministers as have been removed , dispossessed or restrained without a legal sentence in the exercise of their ministry , since the thirteenth day of april last , shall be allowed to return , and exercise their ministry without disturbance . and ordains the sheriffs and their deputs , stewards , baillies , and other magistrates , within their respective bounds , to give their assistance for making the premisses effectual ; as also , that such ministers who have not read the proclamation , and prayed for king william and queen mary , according to the tenor thereof , may be deprived of their benefice , and restrained to officiate in their churches . the lords of his majesties privy council do invite and allow the parochioners and hearers of such ministers as have neglected and slighted the reading of the proclamation , and praying for king william and queen mary , to cite such ministers before the privy council ; and grants warrand for citing and adducing witnesses to prove the same , that such ministers as have disobeyed , may by a legal sentence be deprived of their benefices , and that none of the leidges at their own hand , without a legal sentence and warrand , presume to meddle in this matter . and ordains these presents to be printed , and published by macers of privy council , and messengers , at the mercat cross of edinburgh , and other places needful , that none may pretend ignorance . extracted by me gilb. eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save king william and queen mary . in this proclamation it 's visible that the ministers who were outed by the rabble before april 13. as almost all the ministers in the west and south were , are again fairly excluded from the protection of the government , as if the cruelty and barbarities of the rabble were to be applauded by the governours , and all these who suffered under them to be condemned as criminals and traytors to the state : and to make short work on it with these ministers who were yet in the possession of their livings , the rabble and all their enemies without distinction are here invited to be evidences against them for their immediate deprivation ; and the effect was quod non fecere barbari , secerunt barbarini . this proclamation was issued out to shorten the form of process which that of the sixth of august obliged the accusers and pursuers of ministers to observe . a proclamation for citing ministers who have not prayed for their majesties . edinb . august 22. 1689. whereas by an act of council , of the sixth of this instant , in pursuance of an act of the meeting of the estates of this kingdom , of the thirteenth of april last , the parochioners and hearers of such ministers as have neglected and slighted the reading of the proclamation therein mentioned , and the praying for king william and queen mary , are invited and allowed to cite such ministers before the privy council , which act of council grants warrand for citing and adducing witnesses ; and forasmuch as the design of the said act , is , that such ministers who have disobeyed the said act of the meeting of the estates , may conform thereto by a legal sentence be deprived ; therefore that the said act of the meeting of the estates , and the act of council pursuant thereof , may attain their intended design , and effect , with the greater expedition , and least expenses to the leidges , the lords of his majesties privy council , in their majesties name and authority , do invite and allow , not only the parochioners and hearers of such ministers as have disobeyed , but also the heretors of these parochines , and the sh●riffs or their deputs , and magistrates of burghs respective , and the members of this currant parliament , within their respective bounds , to cause cite such ministers before the privy council , and hereby grants warrand to messengers at arms , for citing them , and such witnesses as are necessary , they delivering a copy of these presents , either in print or in writ , signed by their hand , to each minister that shall be cited by them to any tuesday or thursday six days after the citation , for all on this side the river tay , and fifteen days for all beyond the said river , that such ministers who have not given obedience to the said act of the meeting of the estates , may by a legal sentence be deprived according thereto ; and appoints the returns of these executions to be inrolled by the clerk of privy council , and called before the lords at their respective days of compearance ; declaring that these presents are but prejudice of any citations already given , or to be given , either upon the former act of council , or upon warrands from the council-board . and ordains these presents to be printed , and published by the macers of privy council at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , that none may pretend ignorance . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save king william and queen mary . i john dickson macer , by virtue of the above-written proclamation and warrand , summond , warne and charge you mr. james gray minister at kelso , to compear before the lords of his majesties privy council at edinburgh , or where it shall happen them to be for the time upon the third day of september next to come , in the hour of cause to answer at the instance of sir john dalrymple younger of stairs , his majesties advocate for his highness's interest , and john laidlaw tayler in maxwel-heugh , and john laidlaw wright in kelso for themselves , and in name and behalf of the parochine of kelso , to the effect and for the cause above written , with certification conform to the above-written proclamation and warrand direct to me their anent . per actum dominorum secreti consilii . dickson messenger . this is the form of the summons appointed by the council to be given to the ministers , or left at their houses if they happened to be from home . a declaration by his highness the prince of orange , for the keeping of the peace , &c. in the kingdom of scotland . william henry , by the grace of god , prince of orange , &c. whereas the lords and gentlemen of the kingdom of scotland met at whitehall at our desire , to advise us what was to be done for securing the protestant religion , and restoring the laws and liberties of that kingdom , have desired us to call a meeting of the estates in march next , and in the mean while to take upon us the administration of publick affairs both civil and military , the disposal of the publick revenue and for●r●sses , and the doing every thing necessary for the preservation of peace . we being desirous to omit nothing that may tend to the publick good and happiness of that kingdom , have ( in pursuance of the said advice ) issued forth our orders for calling of the said meeting of the estates ; and to the end that in the mean time the publick peace , and the fortresses may be secured , and the revenue collected , we do hereby will and require all persons , being protestants , that are at present in the possession of the offices of sheriffs , justices of peace , marshals of burghs , bailies of regalities , stewards of stewartries , governours or lieutenants of fortresses , keepers of prisons or prisoners , or in the possession of any inferior offices and ●aces of the like nature , and likewise all persons , being protestants , that are in the possession of any office or imployment , in collecting , receiving , managing or ordering of the publick revenue , to take upon them , and to continue in the exercise of the saids offices and places respectively , doing and ordering every thing , which the trust reposed in them , according to the nature of the saids offices , requires to be done , and ordered in the usual manner , form and method : and we do in a particular manner authorize , impower and require , such of them to whom the care of preserving the peace and quiet of the nation belongs ; to use all diligence for suppr●ssing all routs , tumults , disorders , violencies and such other unwarrantable practices as are contrary to it : and we do hereby expresly prohibit and discharge all disturbance and violence upon the account of religion , or the exercise thereof , or any such like pretence , and that no interruption be made ; or if any hath been made , that it cease , in the free and peaceable exercise of religion , whether it be in the churches or in publick and private meetings , of those of a different perswasion . requiring , like as we do hereby require all protestants , as they love the good of their country and religion , and are willing in their several stations and capacities to concur with us , in our endeavours to bring matters to a happy and desirable settlement , that they will live peaceably together , and without disquieting or molesting one another ; enjoy their several opinions and forms of worship , whether according to law or otherways , with the same freedom , and in the same manner , in which they did enjoy them in the month of october last , till such time , as by regular and legal methods , a due temper may be fallen on , for composing and settling those differences : and to the end , that the peace may be the more effectually secured ; we require all men , or numbers of men in arms , by vertue of any order or authority , and under any title and designation whatsoever , whether they be standing forces , or militia forces modelled into regular troops , and kept on foot , as standing forces , to separate , dismiss and disband themselves ; likewise we do hereby disband them , and appoint them to retire to their respective dwellings , with full assurance to them , that care shall be taken in due time for their having their pay , if any shall be found due to them . and we do farther prohibit and discharge , all persons in time coming to take arms , or to continue in arms upon any pretence whatsoever , with a commission or express order from us. excepting from what is above written , likeas , we do hereby except the garisons of the fortresses , and the company of foot entertained by the town of edinburgh , for the guard of the said town , whom we do appoint to continue in the exercise of their duty ( they being protestants ) in the said garisons and towns. and whereas several roman catholicks have been , and are still in the possession of the places and offices abovementioned ; we do hereby require them to leave the said offices and places , and to retire to their several dwelling-houses , where we forbid and discharge all persons to disquiet , disturb , or molest them any manner of way ; and we appoint the next immediate protestant officers in the fortresses , where the governours , deputy-governours , or other officers are roman catholicks , to take upon them the custody of the saids fortresses , and in the same manner , that the protestants concerned in the collecting and managing of the revenue and the keeping of the peace , do supply by their diligence , the vacancies that are or may happen to be in places of the like nature , this our declaration to be of force , and to take effect till the said meeting of estates in march next ; and to be without prejudice to any other orders we may think fit to give to any person or persons , for the ends abovementioned ; and we do farther order this our declaration to be printed and published at edinburgh , and printed copies of the same to be given , or sent to the sheriffs and stewartry , clerks of the several shires and stewartries whom we do hereby require to publish the same upon the first mercat day after the receipt thereof , at the crosses of the head burghs of their respective shires and stewartries , in the due and usual manner . given at st. james's the sixth day of february , in the year of our lord 1688 / 9. w. h. prince of orange . the effects of this declaration were , that these gentlemen who had taken arms to defend themselves , and the regular clergy from the fury of the rabble , disbanded and laid down their arms as the declaration required , whereupon the phanatick mob became much more insolent and outragious , despising the declaration , and destroying all the clergy they could reach , for which they had the following act of thanks . an act approving of the good services done by the town of glasgow , shire of argyle , and other western shires in this conjuncture , with a return of the thanks of the estates to them . at edinburgh , march 28. 1689. the meeting of the estates of this kingdom , taking into their consideration , that by the sending of the standing forces into england , the estates were destitute of that guard and defence , which was proper and necessary in this conjuncture , and that several persons , well affected to the protestant religion , at the dyet of the meeting of the said estates , having repaired to this city of edinburgh , from glasgow , the shire of argyle , and other western shires , did at the desire , and by warrand of the estates , put themselves to arms , and since have so continued watching and warding , under the command of the earl of levin , and demeaned themselves soberly and honestly , and been active and instrumental to prevent tumults , and to secure the peace and quiet of this meeting , and place ; and there being now some scots regiments arrived here , under the command of major general m●cay , the estates do therefore hereby declare , that what is past , was good , acceptable and seasonable service , and do approve the same ; and hereby gives order to the said earl of levin to disband them , and allows them to return with their arms to their respective homes , and do return their thanks to the persons who have been imployed . extracted out of the records of the meeting of estates , by me ja. dalrymple , cls. this is the act , that in the narrative is called , an act for thanks to the rabble ; the persons to whom it relates , being these zealots ( who contrary to all the laws of religion and humanity , contrary to the laws of all nations , and particularly to the standing laws of this kingdom , and contrary to the prince's own declaration , feb. 6. 1688 / 9. ) convened and continued in arms , till they drove out all the regular clergy in the west , and many in the south , and being in number about 8000 or above , overawed and threatned those concerned , to elect members for the convention ; and at the meeting of estates , rushed in a tumultuary and h●stile manner into edinburgh , planted themselves , without any publick order or commission , about and in the parliament house , where , at every turn , they rail'd at , threatned , baffled and affronted the bishops ; nor were the ancient nobility and g●ntry ; who generally adhered to the ●pisc●pal cause , better treated by them ; the terror whereof made many of the most eminent members never come near the house , and made many who came at first , soon after desert it ; all this was considerably , before the earl of levin was , by the convention , appointed to command them : this being matter of fact well known to the estates . i leave the world to judge how well these men deserved this act of approbation . a proclamation for a general fast. at edinb . august 24. 1689. present in council , e. crafurd p. m. douglas . e. southerland . e. leven . e. annandale . l. rosse . l. carmichell . sir hugh campbel of calder . sir iames montgomerie of skelmorly . sir arch. murray of blackbarrony . iames brody of that ilk. sir iohn hall l. provost of edinb . forasmuch as the great and long abounding of sins of all sorts amongst all ranks of persons , with the continued impenitency under them , and not reforming therefrom ; the falling from their first love ; and great faintings and failings of ministers , and others of all ranks , in the hour of temptation , in their zeal for god and his work ; and that although there be much cause to bless god for the comfortable unity and harmony amongst the ministers , and body of christian professors in this church : yet that there are such sad and continuing divisions amongst some , is also matter of lamentation before god ; the great ingratitude for his begun deliverance of this nation from popery and slavery , and unsuitable walking thereunto , the contempt of the gospel , not mourning for former and present iniquities , nor turning to the lord by such reformation and holiness , as so great a work calls for ; the many sad and long continued tokens of gods wrath , in the hiding of his face , and more especially in his restraining the power and presence of his spirit , with the preached gospel , in the conversion of souls , and edifying the converted ; and the lord 's threatning the sword of a cruel and barbarous eenemy , in the present great distress of ireland , by the prevailing of an anti christian party there , and threatning the sword of the same enemy at home , and the great and imminent danger of the reformed protestant religion , not only from an open declared party of papists , enemies to the same , but from many other professed protestants , who joyn issue with them in the same design , besides the sad sufferings and scatterings of reformed churches abroad ; having seriously and religiously moved the presbyterian ministers , elders and professors of the church of scotland , humbly to address themselves to the lords of his majesties privy council , for a general fast and day of humiliation , to be kept throughout the whole kingdom . the saids lords do out of a pious and religious disposition , approve of the said motion , as dutiful and necessary at the time ; and therefore in his majesties name and authority , do command a solemn and publick fast , and day of humiliation , to be religiously and sincerely observed throughout this kingdom , both in churches and meeting-houses , as they would avert wrath , and procure and continue blessings to this kingdom , and that all persons whatsoever may send up their fervent prayers and supplications to almigh●y god , that he would pour out upon all ranks , a spirit of grace and supplication , that they may mourn for all their iniquities , and more especially , that god would pour forth upon king william and queen mary , and upon all inferior magistrates and counsellors , a spirit of wisdom for government , and zeal for god , his church , and work in this land , as the present case of both do call for , and that god may preserve them for carrying on that great work , which he hath so gloriously and seasonably begun by them ; and that god would countenance , and bless with success the armies by sea and land , raised for the defence of the protestant religion ; and more especially , that god would pour forth a spirit of holiness upon them , lest their sins and ours , may provoke god again● them in the day of battel ; and that he would bless all means for the settlement of church and state : that god would bless the season of the year , and give seasonable weather for cutting down , and gathering in the fruits of the earth , that the stroke of famine , which god hath frequently threatned the nation with , may be averted . and the saids lords of his majesties privy council , do , in name and authority foresaid , command and charge , that the said solemn and publick fast , be religiously and devoutly performed , both in churches and meeting-houses , by all ranks and degrees of persons within this kingdom , on this side of the water of tay , upon sunday the fifteenth day of september next to come ; and by all others be-north the same , upon sunday thereafter , the twenty second day of the said month of september : and to the end that this part of divine worship , so pious and necessary , may be punctually kept upon the respective days above-mentioned , they ordain sir william lockhart sol●icitor , in the most convenient and proper way , to dispatch and send copies hereof to the sheriffs , their deputs , and clerks of the several shires of this kingdom , to be by them published at the m●r●at crosses of the head burghs , upon receipt thereof , and immediately sent to the several ministers , both of churches and meeting-houses , that upon the lords-day immediately preceding the fast , and upon the respective days of the publick fast , and humiliation , the ministers may read , and intimate this proclamation from the pulpit , in every parish church and meeting-house ; and that they exhort all persons to a serious and devout performance of the said prayers , fasting and humiliation , as they regard the favour of almighty god , and the safety and preservation of the protestant religion , and expect a blessed success to the carrying on of that great and glorious work of this nations being delivered from popery and slavery , so seasonably begun ; and as they would avoid the wrath and indignation of god against this kingdom , and procure , and continue mani●old blessings to the same : certifying all these who shall contemn or neglect such a religious and necessary duty , they shall be proceeded against , and published as contemners of his majesties authority , neglecters of religious services , and as persons disaffected to the protestant religion , as well as to their majesties royal persons and government . and ordains these presents to be printed and published by macers or messengers at arms , at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and other places above-mentioned , that none may pretend ignorance . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . gilb . eliot , cls. sti. concilii . god save king william and queen mary . some of the sad effects of this canting proclamation were particularly felt by mr. ramsay who preach'd in the forenoon in the old church at edinb . a man of an unblameable life , a judicious and accurate preacher , gave obedience in all things , to the act of the meeting of estates of the thirteenth of april , read the proclamation , prayed in express terms for king william and queen mary the very first day these things were enjoyned to be done on , but that availed nothing , for the design was to remove all the episcopal ministers from the pulpits in edinburgh at any rate , and upon any pretence how little soever . mr. ramsay gets a citation to appear before the privy council . by their procedure against his brethren he knew what would be the event of this ; and therefore it being his turn to preach on that day he was cited to comp●ar on , and many of his elders and parishoners being present , he delivered some advices and exhortations which made the sermon look somewhat like a valedictory one ; after sermon his elders attended him to the foot of the stairs of the council chamber . mr. ramsay is called and interrogated if he did read the proclamation of the 13th . of april , he answered , i did read it : again he is questioned if he prayed for king william and queen mary , naming them , ( for it was not enough to use such expressions as were only to be appropriated to william and mary ) he said , he had prayed for them by name . but ( says the president ) you only prayed for them as declared king and queen , not as those that were really such . mr. ramsay replied , that he had prayed for william and mary , whom the estates of the kingdom had declared king and queen , and since they had no liturgy , and they had given to them no form of prayer , he thought , being he had pray'd for william and mary , no more was to be required ; and as for the words declared king and queen , he had taken them from one of their own proclamations ; which when denied , he desired the proclamation might be produced , which was done , and then it appeared he was in the right . when he could not be reached in this point , then the president , the earl of crawfurd , said , but , mr. ramsay , you pray for the late king james . my lord , said he , i p●ay in these words , lord bless william and mary wh●m the estates of this land have declared king and queen , and bless all the royal family root and branch , especially him who is now under affliction , sancti●ie it u●to him while he is under it , and when it seems good to thee , deliver him from it . this , says he , is the form i made to my self , for you prescribe none ; and is it not a sore matter , that when nothing is left to king james in reversi●n of three kingdoms , but the prayers of poor men , that you should deny him those . they then ordered him to remove , and consulted by what other way they might reach him , for yet they could not find a pretence against him sufficient to deprive him . at last they called him in , and the president said , but mr. ramsay , you did not read from the pulpit the proclamation for the fast. now , my lord ( replied mr. ramsay ) you have nick'd me , indeed i did not intimate that fast. but why did you not ? for many reasons , my lord , said he . but pray , said my lord , let us hear some of those reasons . excuse me , my lord , replied he , it 's sufficient that i confess that i did not read it . ( but according to the method of their inquisition of screwing out mens minds , and provoking them to speak , that they might get occasion against them ) they press'd him to name some of his reasons , he said , being they urged he would give them one , that it was against the practice of the universal church , and primitive canons , to fast on sunday : and he said , tho there were no other reasons but that one● he could not intimate that fast. he gave this reason , as that which he thought would give them least offence . they ordered him to remove till they had deliberated what to do with him , and then cause call him in , and deprived him for not reading the proclamation for the fast. dr. gardner a man of great parts and piety , and one of the ministers of the tal●●ooth church in edinburgh , was deprived upon the same account of not intimating that fast , tho he had complied in every thing else which they demanded . a proclamation discharging the payment of the rents of the bishopricks to any , but the persons named by the council . at edinburgh , september 19. 1689. whereas the meeting of the estates of this kingdom , in their claim of right , of the eleventh of april last , declared , that prelacy , and the superiority of any office in the church , above presbyters , is , and hath been a great and insupportable grievance to this nation , and cont●air to the inclinations of the generality of the people , ever since the reformation ; and that their majesties with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , have by their act of the date the fifth day of iuly last bypast , abolished prelacy , and all superiority of any office in the church above presbyters : and his majesty considering the prejudice it may be to his interest , if fit persons be not appointed to look after , and receive the rents and emoluments , particularly those consisting of ti●hes , which formerly did belong to the bishops , hath therefore signified his royal pleasure , that the lords of his majesties privy council should give warrand to alexander hamilton of kinkell , for drawing and upli●●ing the tithes and other rents of the archbishoptick of st. andrews , he giving sufficient security for his faithful performance of his duty in the said office ; and hath also left it to the council to appoint fit persons for drawing and uplifting the tithes of other bishopricks for this present cropt and year of god 1689. that none concerned suffer prejudice : excepting the bishoprick of orknay , which his majesty is resolved to have uplifted with the rents of the lordship . and the saids lords of privy council having in obedience to his majesties commands , nominat and appointed fit and qualified persons for drawing of the tithes , and uplifting of the rents formerly belonging to the bishops , deans , or any other person of superior order and dignity in the church above presbyters ; and least before the time that some of them can be able to come to this place , and find caution for their faithful discharging of that trust , and make intimation of their respective commissions to uplift the saids rents for the said cropt and year of god foresaid , to the persons lyable in payment thereof , the teinds and other rents of the archbishopricks and bishopricks , and others foresaids may be imbazled and introm●tted with by persons who have no right thereto ; therefore the saids lords of privy council , in their majesties name and authority foresaid , prohibit and discharge all and sundry heretors , feuers , li●erenters , tax●-men of teinds , tennents and others whose teinds were formerly in use to be drawn , and who were lyable-in payment of any rent or duty to the saids late archbishops or bishops , or others foresaids , to draw or suffer their teinds to be drawn , and from payment of any rental-bolls , feu , blench or tack-duties , and other rents , casualties and emoluments , formerly payable to the saids late archbishops , bishops , and others foresaid , except to such persons as shall be authorized by the saids lords of privy council for uplifting thereof ; with certification to them , if they do any thing in the contrary hereof , they shall be lyable therefore , notwithstanding if any pretended discharge that may be impetrat or obtained from any other person or persons for the said cropt and year of god foresaid . and ordains these presents to be printed and publish●d by macers of privy council at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and by messengers at arms at the mercat-crosses of the he●d●burghs of the other shires within this kingdom , that none may pretend ignorance . per actum dominorum secreti consilii . gilb . eliot . cls. secreti concilii . god save king william and queen mary . this alexander hamilton who is here appointed to uplift the rents of st. andrews archbishoprick , was taken in actual rebellion at the time of bothwell bridge rebellion , and by the clemency of the government then , had his life spared , altho he was always a great ring-leader of that rebellious rout , which so much plagued the nation before and since that time . a draught of an act for establishing the church-government . presented by his majesty's high-commissioner , july 22. 1689. forasmuch as the king and queens majesties , and the estates of parliament , by their act the fifth of iuly instant , abolishing prelacy , and the superiority of any church-officers above presbyters in this kingdom ; did declare , that they would settle that church-government in this kingdom which is most agreeable to the inclinations of the people . and considering , that the church-government by general , provincial , and presbyterial assemblies , with the sessions of the kirk , as it was established by the first act of the twelfth parliament of king iames vi. holden in iune 1592. is most agreeable to the inclinations of the people : therefore the king and queens majesties , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , revives and renews the said act of parliament in the whole heads , points , and articles thereof , ( with this express declaration , that the necessity of occasional assemblies be first represented to his majesty by humble supplication : ) and statutes and declares , that it is , and shall be lawful to the presbyters of this church to admit ministers upon presentations from the lawful patrons , or iure de voluto , which shall happen hereafter ; or into churches which fall not under patronages , but were mensal and patrimonial churches belonging to the bishops ; sicklike and as freely as they did or might have done of before by the foresaid act of parliament in the year 1592. and to do all and every thing which before pertained to presbyteries , and were exercised by the bishops . and ordains all the ministers in this kingdom to submit and conform themselves to the church-government established by the foresaid act , and to take the oath of allegiance , under the pain of being deprived of their churches , and losing their benefices . and it is declared , that all ministers that shall submit and conform to the foresaid church-government , and to take the oath of allegiance , without being obliged to take any other oath , shall enjoy their churches and benefices , and shall not be deprived of the same , except for scandal or insufficiency . but in respect there are several ministers that were put out of their churches and benefices since the year 1662. for not complying wi●h , and conforming to prelacy ; and others since the year 1681. for not taking the test : and now seeing prelacy is abolished , and all acts relating thereto , it is just and reasonable that these ministers that went out , and were laid aside , for not conforming to , and complying with prelacy , and for not taking the test , should be restored to their churches and benefices ; therefore the king and queens majesties , with advice and consent of the saids estates of parliament , do ordain the saids ministers that went out , or were laid aside , upon the account foresaid , to be restored and reponed ; and do hereby repone and restore them to their respective churches and benefices . and the king and queens majesties , and estates of parliament , declares , that they will take care to provide these ministers that are now serving the cure at the saids churches , with other churches and benefices , as occasion shall offer ; they submitting themselves to the government of the church established by this present act , and taking the oath of allegiance , and being sufficient and qualified for the office of the ministry , and without scandal . as also it is declared , that intrants to the ministry shall not be holden or obliged to take any other oaths at their admission , but the oath of allegiance , and the oath de fideli . and in regard that much trouble hath ensued unto the estate , and many sad confusions and scandalous schisms have fallen out in the church , by church-men meddling in matters of state : therefore their majesties , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , do hereby discharge all ministers of the gospel within this kingdom , to meddle with any state-affairs , either in their sermons or judicatories , publickly or privately , under the pain of being holden as disaffected to the government , and proceeded against accordingly . and declares , that the jurisdiction of the church consists and stands only in the preaching of the true word of jesus christ , correction of manners by ecclesiastical censures , and the administration of the holy sacraments , conform to the 69th act iames 6. parl. 6. and to the effect there be nothing treated or concluded in the church-judicatories , that concerns the affairs of s●ate , or civil matters ; it is declared , that their majesties , if they shall think fit , may have always one present in all the provincial and presbyterial ass●mblies ( as well as they have their commissioner present in general assemblies ) that in case any affair that concerns the state , or civil matters , that d●es not belong to the jurisdiction of the church , shall come in before the saids assemblies , the said person appointed by their majesties shall inhibit and discharge the provincial or presbyterial assembly to proceed in any affair that concerns the state or civil matter , before their majesties and their privy council shall be acquainted with the same , that they may declare their pleasure therean●nt . and because there are many things to be settled in relation to the policy and discipline of the church , therefore their majesties declare , that they , by the advice of the estates of parliament , and judicatories of the church , will enact such rules concerning the policy , discipline , and other matters to be observed by the church , as shall tend most to the curbing of vice , the advancement of true religion and piety , and the preservation of unity and peace amongst the subjects . and their majesties , with advice and consent of the saids estates of parliament , r●●●inds and annuls the first act of the 15 parl. k. ia. vi. anent ministers provided to prelacies should have vote in parliament ; and the second act of the 18 parl. ia. vi. anent the restitution of the estate of bishops ; and the eighth act of the 19 parl. ia. vi. anent the commissario●s and jurisdictions given to the archbishops and bishops ; and the first act of the 21 parl. ia. vi. anent the ratification of the acts of the assembly of glasgow , in the year 1610. and the first and second acts of the 22 parl. of k. ia. vi● in the year 1617. anent the archbishops and restitution of chapters ( without prejudice always to the ministers serving the cure , of any emoluments allowed to them in part of their stipends ) and the first act of the 23 par● of k. ia. vi. in the year 1621. anent the ratification of the articles of the assembly holden at perth . and rescinds and annuls all and whatsomever acts , laws , and constitutions , in so far as they derogate and are prejudicial to the church-government , by general , provincial , and presbyteral assemblies , and kirk-sessions ; and in so far as they are conceived in favour of archbishops , bishops , abbot , priors , and other prelates or church-men whatsomever , their dignity , title , power , jurisdiction , and state in this church and kingdom , or in favours of the civil places or power of church-men , or of whatsomever sort allowed or disallowed , for their ruling , sitting and voting in parliament , either as church-men , or the clergy , or in name of the church ; or as representing the church , either in regard of their ecclesiastical titles , offices , places and dignities , or in regard of the temporality or spirituality of ecclesiastical b●nefices , or other pretexts whatsomever , with all acts and constitutions of convention , council or s●ssion , or other judicator whatsomever , and all practices or customs whatsomever , introduced in favours of the saids offices , titles , benefices or persons provided thereto ; and all other acts , statutes or practices which are contrary and prejudicial to , or inconsistent with this present act ; and declares the same to be void and null in all time coming : and seeing by the abolishing of prelacy , the is at present no meeting of the presbyteries , or provincial assemblies , and it being necessary that there be a time and place appointed for the first diet of meeting , therefore ordains the ministers of the several presbyteries on the south-side of the river of tay , to meet and convene upon the second tuesday of august next , at the ordinary places where the presbyters are in use to meet , and these ministers of the presbyteries on the north-side of the river of tay , to me●t and convene upon the first tuesday of september thereafter , at the ordinary places where the presbyters are in use to meet ; and appoints these ministers that shall meet in the respective presbyteries , to chuse their own moderator ; and ordains the moderator first to take and subscribe the oath of allegiance himself , and then administrate the said oath to the rest of the brethren , that they may take and subscribe the same ; and ordains the moderator of the respective presbyteries to return the said oath so taken and subscribed , to the clerks of privy council betwixt and the first of october next ; and orduins the first diet of meeting of the several provincial assemblies of this kingdom to be upon the second tuesday of october next , at the ordinary places , where the syn●ds and provincial assemblies were in use to meet : and ordains the church-sessions to be el●cted and chosen , both in burgh and landward , at the ordinary times , and after the ordinary manner . tho king william desired the presbyterians to pass this act for the settlement of their government in the church , yet because it seemed to restrain them from controling the state when they pleased ( as they had been always wont to do when in power ) for sometimes the parliament and general assembly flatly contradicted one another , as in the year 1674. when king charles ● . was kept prisoner at the isle of wight , the convention of estates voted that an army should be sent ( as it was ) under the command of duke hamilton , to relieve his majesty , but the general assembly pass'd an act at the same time , flatly contradicting that , and accordingly after the king's forces were defeated by the rebels in england , the kirk , to show their absolute supremacy in the state , forced the nobily and gentry , who were officers under the duke , to make their repentance before the congregations publickly in sackcloth . i say , because this act seemed to restrain them from meddling in state affairs , as they had been wont to do , leaving them no power in the state , and the king some power in the church , as that they could not call a general assembly without acquainting him with the necessity of it , therefore this act was rejected with great contempt and indignation ; and the presbyterian minister who was then in quality of a chaplain in the parliament , said , that they would , rather than admit of such a mangled mungril presbytery , beg back the bishops again ; and that it was nonsence not to allow the clergy to impose other oaths as well as that of allegiance . the conclusion . some may perhaps think it an unkindness done to the nation of scotland , thus to expose the publick acts of the kingdom which were never ridiculous or afraid of the light , but only when some men gov●rned , who are indeed the far least and most inconsiderable part of the people , otherways why should they so violently now oppose the dissolving of this parliament and the calling of a new one ; since it is certain that the humour of the nation cannot be so well known by a thin conv●ntion , which was called in an extraordinary hurry , in a great confusion and fermentation of the people , and which proceeded with equal heat and precipitancy ? others may think , that by publishing the names ( as is here done ) of some few of these good men who have suffered , they shall be thereby dangerously exposed to the fury and violence of these zealots , whose greatest mercy is cruel●y : indeed there is too much ground for this conjecture . but our enemies have put us upon this necessity , for the late account that was given , in some letters , of the present persecution of the church in scotland , tho it was exactly true in all the matters of fact relating to that persecution ; yet in england where these things are not so well known , some men being ashamed of these barbarities , to which they gave all the life they could at such a dist●nce , have industriously represented by their tongues and pens , that account as altogether false and fabulous , altho even themselves are but too well satisfied that it contains sad truths . their mercurius reformatus , as he stiles himself , wanting advertisements , and good news from ireland to fill up his weekly papers , stuffs two or three of them with reflections on that former account of our persecution : first , he doubts the matters of fact are not true ; and it 's something strange , that one who has conversed so intimately with , and been most of his life bred up amongst scotch fanaticks , should so much question their natural and customary practices . secondly , he imputes all the mischief ( if , says he , there has been any ) wholly to the rabble , and wonders that any part of it should be charged upon the godly patriots to whom the government of that kingdom is now intrusted : but now if the matters of fact so fully att●sted in this book , and the publick acts so faithfully transcribed , do not satisfie him , and those few whom he may have led into these his willful mistakes ; they must be allowed to doubt on till one come from the dead to inform them , if even that can perswade them to believe . but thirdly , which shows that he is indeed but a new observator , he seems to grant what he would deny , for acknowledging the persecution , he says , that it was occasioned by the severities wherewith the ●piscopal party had treated the presbyterians in the by-gone reigns ; as if their new gospel could adopt revenge into a vertue , and as if all the punishments inflicted upon rebels by the state for its own security , were to be charged only upon the church , and revenged now upon the clergy , the poor helpless prelates and their curates . fourthly , he 's confident that the whole book is but a malicious design to bespatter the present government ; if the government be bespattered when the true account of their open proceedings is fairly published to the world , then the faultlyes originally in that government , not in the historian : it 's a strange severity in any government , not to suffer men to groan under burthens because it imposed them , and to knock men in the head for but clattering those chains wherewith the government fetters them . fifthly , he quarrels at the stile of the letters , for the authors , he says , do no where express any thing of duty or allegiance to the present governours , but according to mercurius's own principles of policy , there 's time enough for that when they find themselves according to the articles of the pretended original contract , and many fair promises , secured in their religion , liberties and properties , for now it 's a received axiom it seems , that protection and allegiance are reciprocal : again , he 's offended at the sharpness and severity which he discovers in the expressions , then he runs out in many rhetorical commendations ( by way of new reformed observation ) upon moderation , and recommends it from the great example of a famous roman catholick prince , whereas at another turn he will not allow either popish prince or people to be capable of the least moderation , meerly because they are papists . it 's hard to think why this gentleman should be so much offended with the stile of those letter's ; it 's not , i hope , for the scoticisms in them , for that 's a fault that neither he nor we can so easily help in our writing ; perhaps he 's angry that he , as a scotch doctor , was not entrusted to purge out their sharp humour , before they were allowed to take the open air in england . when the new observator upon march 26. last , published my lord crasurd's letter dated edinburgh march 16. 1690. he might have observed , that in that letter my lord fairly owns , that the council did at the same time that they proceeded against ministers for not praying for king william , take probation of crimes of another nature also against them ; tho the cognisance of them did no way belong to the council ; these are the very words of the letter , for if this be true , the proceedings of the council against the ministers must be acknowledged not to have been fair and legal ; for the observator himself who once pretended to an inferior kind of practice in the scots law ; knows i hope so much , as that no court ought to hear probation of crimes whereof they have not the cognizance , nay the best of men may be abused by such proceedings , for if the court be not competent , the defendants cannot be admitted to object against the insufficiency of the probation , and so the worst things may be proved against the most innocent people . but of all them that have written or spoken against the account given in those lettert , we owe the most thanks to one downright true thorough-paced presbyterian , who writes a pamphlet against it , called , a brief and true account of the sufferings of the church of scotland , occasioned by the episcopalians since the year 1660. the book is indeed worth the reading because in it the author has fairly pulled off that mask which others more cunning but less honest , love to act under . i shall not here hazard the turning of the readers stomach , by repeating any of these his most fuls●me expressions which he liberally strows in every page of his book ; only this i must say , that it 's not possible for a devil to bring more railing and false a●cusations against the brethren , than this pure presbyterian does against our clergy and states-men ; he has learned it seems of his friend matchiavel to calumniate boldly , hoping that if he throw a great deal of dirt , some of it may stick ; but his mallce is too large to be confin'd to scotland , and therefore he opens foully against the church of england too , for he says , * that dr. oates ( a modest man like himself ) did the nation more service than the seven idolized stars , so many of whom are now turned dark-lanthorns . neither must the complying bishops escape his fury , for of them he says , * that as they have the dishonour of being the mother of that hel●ish monster possive obedience , they have also the ignominy of being the murtherirs of it , having new basely cut its threat , as harlots use sometimes to do with their spurious breed . † then as for the english clergy in general , he says , * that let their hyperbolical pretentions to zeal for religion and loyalty be what it will , yet if the king put forth his hand and touch them , they will curse him to his face , and rather than part with on inch of superstition , or a swinish lust , will as the party have always done , lay a confideracy with hell and rome , as times past and present do evidence beyond contradiction , from the reformation to this day : in another place he says , * that their dayly prayers are , that god would pull down the antichristian hierarchy also in england ; and why ( says he ) may we not do it , as well as the english prelates and clergy plot , drink and plead against the scotch presbytery . then he soretells the downfall of the church of england , notwithstanding their sessions ( as he * speaks ) at the devil to prevent it , and for the fulfilling of this his fatal prephecy , he declares war against them , and bids them blame themselves for it , if another invasion from scotland prove as fatal to them now as it did in bishop laud's time ; and that the godly women will with their folding-stools once mere arm against them as they did in king charles i. time . this is a true specimen of the love and charity that the scotch presbyterians have to the church of england , and it 's but a little part of that fire and slaughter which our author breaths out against them : further yet he condemns all the orderly churches in 〈◊〉 , for says he . all those who use set forms of prayer are strangers to the power of godliness . so that neither the presbyterians themselves in holland , nor in france , no nor in geneva , must escape the lash of our scotch reformers , until they be purified according to the pattern in the mount , the covenant standard . but that i may not rake any longer in this dunghill , our author is as far from truth in the points of history he relates , as his manner of expression is from the spirit of meekness and charity ; and his whole discourse is as inconsistent with that , as his beloved doctrine of resistance , is with the thirteenth chapter to the romans ; and that they who shall please next to draw their pens against us who are already suffici●ntly persecuted by their hands , may find some matter as well as words to fill their weekly papers . i shall take leave of them in some few plain queries . first , considering the great charity which the scotch presbyterians have for the church of england , as you have heard ; and their intention of visiting them again ( which the author has threatned ) as they did in the year 39. when plate , jewels , money , houshold-goods , cattle and all moveables were declared malignants ; and they grew witty in their zeal , and told , they came for all their goods . and considering that they are more numerous now than they were then ; and if they be establish'd by law , will be much more formidable , because all will be forc'd to joyn with them or suffer their utmost persecution ; for they have declared toleration to be a●tichristian . and considering that their solemn league and covenant obliges them to root out episcopacy in england and ireland , and never to desist till they have effected it . i say considering these things , and what they have formerly done upon the same principles , query whether the settling presbytery in scotland be reconcilable to the securing episcopacy in england ? 2ly , whether even king william can secure himself in the monarchy against those who formerly refused to dissolve at the king's command in the assembly of glasgow in the year 38. who preach'd the subjects into a furious rebellion , and to the delivering up the king his grandfather to be murdered , who by act of their general assembly in 48. declared his negative voice inconsistent with the liberty of the subject , and who since himself was made king , have risen twice in arms , once to the number of some thousands , who threw out the episcopal ministers by their own authority ( which our author says , was * deservedly enough ) beating , wounding and tormenting them . another time a more formidable number in a hostile manner , made an address to the council , telling them , that they would not lay down their arms till the council had discharged all judicatures to pronounce any sentence in favour of the episcopal ministers , which the council was forc'd to do . neither of which matters of fact this author has remembered to answer , tho it was the subject of the whole book against which he wrote . to speak modestly , it seems to have no very good aspect to the present government , and it 's but a small a●gument of their inclinations to live peaceable long under it , that they have voted king william out of the supremacy of the church , and that they have now so soon after usurp'd it to themselves , having already without his leave either ask'd or granted convened all at edinburgh , and voted themselves into a free legal general assembly , where they draw up daily instructions for regulating the parliament , and meet and adjourn at their own pleasure ; and in their sermons before the present high commissi●ner , my lord melvil , who is of their own professi●n , they roundly tell his grace , ( if that be not a superstitious arch-prelatical title ) how he must build the temple of the lord , the temple of the lord , only by such true b'ue israelites as can well edisie , with the truel in one hand and the sword in another , and that none of these samaritans who are addicted to the superstitions and idol●tries of england , must be concerned in this thorough reformation . by those practices one may easily conjecture why they so scornfully reject the act for establishing presbytery offered by the late commissioner . king william would likewise consider how many thousands of them have and do own , that the covenant ( which is again voted the standard of all pure religion ) is the fundamental contract 'twixt god , the king , and the people . and because k. c. 2. broke it , therefore they declared that he had fallen from his right to the crown ; and because k. i. 2. never took it , that therefore he had no right to the crown , and by publick proclamations declared it lawful to kill them , and all who adhered to them ; and accordingly killed several of their souldiers and servants in this quarrel . from all which the query naturally arises , what measure king william must expect if he will not take the covenant ; and consequently swear to root out episcopacy in england . 3ly . query , what loyalty he can expect from those who think him to be an idolater , as they think all to be who communicate according to the church of england , whose liturgy they call the mass in english ? 4ly . considering their number in the north of ireland , how easily they may carry their covenant thither , and all its consequences ? 5ly . what danger there may be of it , even in england , whose dissenters have already learned to pray for the scotch presbyterians as their mother church ? 6ly . query , whether it be fit for king william and the parliament of scotland , to set up those who think it a sin to grant any toleration , not only to episcopacy , but to anabaptists , independents , or any but presbytery ? which the general assembly declared to be a sin , anno 48. and address'd to the parliament of england to concur with them in doing the like . lastly , whether any presbyterians , considering their late practices and demands , be more moderate now than when they formerly invaded england without any pretence , but their obligations to the covenant , and to reform the kingdom of england according to that model . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a59425-e190 fourth article of covenant . notes for div a59425-e960 vide. first paper being a declaration from the prince . vide. the second paper being a proclamation from the con●ention . vide. the ●resbyterians address to king iames. in the fourth collection . vide. the first collection of some papers , relating to the practice of the rable before the convention met . vide. summons left in every parish by the rabble in the first collection of paper . so the lawyers there are called . vide. first proclamation vide. the second collection of papers relating to the practise of the rabble and the council after the princes declaration , &c. v. v● supra . vide : the paper containing the thanks of the convention to the rabble . in the fourth collection . vide. presbyterians address to king iames , in the fourth collection . vide. a proclamation from the convention in the fourth collection . vide. an act of council in the fourth collection . vide. a proclamation from the convention in the fourth collection . vide. third collection of papers , containing the suffering● of those min●sters who comply'd vide. a proclamation from the convention in the fourth collection . * dr. strachan the learned and pious ●ro●essor of divinity , and one of the ministers at edenburgh . vide. a proclamation from the convention , and the observation upon it , in the fourth collection . vide. proclamations anent the miisters in the fourth collection . vide. summons to the ministers of kelso in the 4th collection . vide. proclamation from the convention . in the fourth collection . vide. third collection of parpers containing the suffering of those ministers who comply'd . vide. presbvterians address to k j. in the fourth collection . vide. third collection of papers containing the sufferings of those ministers who comply'd . notes for div a59425-e3460 anno 1688. * i. e. happened to them . * i. e. parsonage house . * that is , leave his dwelling house . * or the by-past years . this is the form of summons left by the rabble , in most of the ministers houses ejected by them . i. e. all the furniture . notes for div a59425-e7420 * i. e. major . * i. e. parsonage house . notes for div a59425-e8860 * i. e. parsonage house . * i e. parsonage house . notes for div a59425-e10820 * as they call themselves . notes for div a59425-e14900 * page 30. * page 8. † what ground there is for this asp●rsion , d●th not concern 〈◊〉 in scotland , who still adhere to that our former doctrine , for which we now chearfully suffer . * page 7. * page 28. * page 27. * page 22. his majesties proclamation in scotland: with an explanation of the meaning of the oath and covenant. by the lord marquesse, his majesties high commissioner. set forth by the kings speciall licence proclamations. 1638-12-08 scotland. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) 1639 approx. 31 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 11 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a68712 stc 22001.5 estc s100073 99835925 99835925 158 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a68712) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 158) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1025:10, 1291:10) his majesties proclamation in scotland: with an explanation of the meaning of the oath and covenant. by the lord marquesse, his majesties high commissioner. set forth by the kings speciall licence proclamations. 1638-12-08 scotland. sovereign (1625-1649 : charles i) hamilton, james hamilton, duke of, 1606-1649. explanation of the meaning of the oath and the covenant. aut [2], 14; [2], 17, [1] p. printed by robert young, his majesties printer for scotland. 1639. are sold at the starre on bread-street hill [by r. young], london : [1639] against acknowledging the glasgow assembly. dated on b4v: given .. the eighth day of december .. 1638. "an explanation of the meaning of the oath and covenant. .. london, printed by his majesties printer for scotland, anno dom. 1639" by james hamilton, duke of hamilton, has separate title page and pagination; register is continuous. the title page verso has the duke's arms. variant: lacking the arms. a variant of the edition with "sold at the gun in ivie-lane" in imprint; bookseller's name from stc. identified as stc 22001 on umi microfilm reel 1291; the "explanation" separately identified as stc 12727 on reel 1025. reproductions of the originals in the henry e. huntington library and art gallery ("early english books, 1475-1640"), and the british library ("early english newspapers"). appears at reel 1025 (part 2 only) and at reel 1291 (same copy filmed twice). created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church of scotland -history -early works to 1800. episcopacy -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. 2008-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-06 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-08 paul schaffner sampled and proofread 2008-08 paul schaffner text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an explanation of the meaning of the oath and covenant . published by the l. marques , his majesties high commissioner in scotland , by the kings speciall command . printer's device of robert young r y יהוה ivstvs vivet fide devs providerit london , printed by his majesties printer for scotland , anno dom. 1639. coat of arms of the duke of hamilton honi soit qvi mal y pense throvghe whereas some have given out , that by the act of councell , which explaineth the confession of faith lately commanded to be sworne by his majesty , to be understood of the confession of faith , as it was then professed and received , when it was made , and that in that confession , defence both of the doctrine & discipline then established is sworn , at which time episcopall government being ( as they say ) abolished , it must needs follow , that the same government is by this late oath abjured . and understanding that even amongst those who continue together still at glasgow , under the name of a generall assembly , though but a pretended and unlawfull one , this objection is held to be of some moment , and used by them to the great disturbance of the peace of this church and kingdome , and to the great disquieting of the mindes of such his majesties good subjects as have taken the said oath , and yet never meaned nor do mean to abjure episcopall government ; and to perswade others , that if they shall take the same oath thus explained by the said act of councell , by so doing they must likewaies abjure the said government : we james marquesse of hamiltoun , his majesties high commissioner , wondring that any such scrupulous misconstruction should be made of his majesties gracious and pious intentions , and being desirous to remove all doubts from the minds of his majesties good subjects , and to keep them from being poysoned by such as by forced and forged inferences would make them beleeve , that they had actually by taking that oath sworn that which neither virtually nor verely they have sworn , or ever intended to swear , or was required by authority to be sworn by them , either directly or indirectly : considering that all oathes must be taken according to the minde , intention , and commandement of that authority , which exacteth the oath ; and that we , by speciall commandement from his sacred maiestie , commanded the said oath to be administred , we do hereby freely and ingenuously professe and declare our mind and meaning herein , as we have constantly heretofore done since our coming into this kingdome about this imployment ; viz. that by any such words or act of councell we never meaned or intended that episcopall government should be abiured , nor any thing else which was established by acts of parliament , or acts of the church of this kingdome , which are now in force , and were so at the time of the taking of the said oath . nor indeed could we have any other intention or meaning , being clearly warranted and expresly commanded by his maiesties instructions , to exact the said oath , and take order that it should be sworn throughout the kingdome in that faire and lawfull sense , and none other . neither in this point did we deliver our own words , or his maiesties minde ambiguously or doubtfully , so as any other sense , to our thinking , could be picked or wrung out of either the one or the other ; for we do attest the lords of the councell , whether we did not to many , or all of them upon severall occasions in conference with them ever since our coming into this kingdom , constantly declare unto them , that his maiesties resolution was not to suffer episcopall government to be abolished : we attest all the lords of session , whether before our tendering of that oath to them , or their lordships taking of it , we did not fully and freely declare to them , that his maiesties minde in commanding us to see this oath taken , and our own minde in requiring them to take it , was onely to settle and secure the religion and faith professed in this kingdome , but was not to be extended to the abiuring of episcopall government , or any other thing now in force by the laws of this church and state at the time of administring this oath , which their lordships , being the reverend and learned judges of the lawes , knew well could not be abiured ; after which perspicuous predeclaration of our minde , their lordships undoubtedly in that same sense and none other took the said oath . and now , good reader , having heard his maiesties minde and intention , and in pursuance of them , the mind of his maiesties high commissioner concerning this oath , though reasons to repell the former obiection seem to be needlesse ( the known minde of the supreme magistrate who urgeth an oath , being to be taken for the undoubted sense of it ) yet forasmuch as that obiection hath of late bin mainly urged for alienating the mindes of many of his maiesties good subiects , and well affected to that government , from adhering unto it , be pleased to know , that the former obiection hath neither show nor force of reason in it , and that by the said oath and that explanation set down in the act of councell , episcopall government neither was nor possibly could be abiured , and that for many reasons , but especially these five , which we having seen and approved , have caused to be here inserted , and leave them to thine impartiall consideration . first , god forbid it should be imagined that his majesty should command his subjects to take an oath which in it self is absolutely unlawfull : but for a man to swear against a thing which is established by the laws of the church and kingdome in which he liveth ( unlesse that thing be repugnant to the law of god ) is absolutely unlawfull , untill such time as that kingdome and church do first repeal these laws : and therefore episcopall government not being repugnant to the law of god , nay being consonant unto it , as being of apostolicall institution ( which shall be demonstrated if any man please to argue it ) and standing fully established , both by acts of parliament , and acts of generall assembly at the time when this oath was administred ; to abjure it before these acts be repealed , is absolutely unlawfull , and against the word of god : and it is to be hoped no man will conceive that his majestie meaned to command a thing absolutely unlawfull . and if it should be said , as it is said by some , ( who not being able to avoid the force of reason , do betake themselves to pitifull shifts and evasions ) that these acts of parliament and assembly establishing episcopall government , were unlawfully and unduely obtained : certainly if they have any reasons for this their bold assertion , which is of a more dangerous consequence then that it ought to be endured in any well setled church or common-wealth ; these reasons may be presented lawfully to these judicatories to entreat them to reduce the saids acts , if there shall be strength and validity found in them . but to hold , that untill such time as these judicatories shall repeal the saids laws , they either ought to be , or can possibly be abjured , is a wicked position , and destructive of the very foundation of justice both in church and common-wealth . secondly , it cannot be imagined that this oathshould oblige the now takers of it farther then it did oblige the takers of it at first : for doctrine and points of faith it did oblige them then , and so doth it us now , perpetually , because these points in themselves are perpetuall , immutable and eternall : but for points of discipline and government , and policie of the church , that oath could binde the first takers of it no longer then that discipline and government should stand in force by the laws of this church and kingdome , which our church in her positive confession of faith printed amongst the acts of parliament , artic . 20.21 . declareth to be alterable at the will of the church it self , and so repealable by succeeding acts , if the church shall see cause . when a king at his coronation taketh an oath to rule according to the laws of his kingdome , or a judge at his admission sweareth to give judgement according to these laws , the meaning of their oaths cannot be that they shall rule or judge according to them longer then they continue to be laws : but if any of them shall come afterwards to be lawfully repealed , both king and judge are free from ruling and judging according to such of them as are thus lawfully repealed , notwithstanding their originall oath . since therfore if the first takers of that oath were now alive , they could not be said to have abjured episcopall government , which hath been since established by the lawes of this church and kingdome , especially considering that this church in her confession holdeth church government to be alterable at the will of the church : certainly we repeating but their oath , cannot be said to abiure that government now , more then they could be said to do it if they were now alive and repeating the same oath . thirdly , how can it be thought that the very act of his maiesties commanding this oath should make episcopall government to be abiured by it , more then the covenanters requiring it of their associats , in both covenants the words and syllables of the confession of faith being the same ? now it is wel known that many were brought in to subscribe their covenant , by the solemn protestations of the contrivers & urgers of it , that they might subscribe it without abiuring of episcopacie , and other such things as were established by law , since the time that this oath was first invented and made ; and the three ministers in their first answers to the aberdene quaeres have fully and clearly expressed themselves to that sense , holding these things for the present not to be abiured , but only referred to the triall of a free generall assembly : and likewaies the adherers to the last protestation against his majesties proclamation , bearing date the 9. of september , in their ninth reason against the subscription urged by his maiesty , do plainly averre , that this oath urged by his maiesty doth oblige the takers of it , to maintain perth articles , and to maintain episcopacy . why therefore some men swearing the same words & syllables should have their words taken to another sense , & be thought to abiure episcopall government , more then others who have taken the same oath in the same words , must needs passe the capacity of an ordinary understanding . fourthly , it is a received maxime , and it cannot bedenied , but that oaths ministred unto us must either be refused , or else taken according to the known mind , professed intention , and expresse command of authority urging the same : a proposition , not onely received in all schools , but positively set down by the adherers to the said protestation totidem verbis in the place above cited . but it is notoriously known even unto those who subscribed the confession of faith by his majesties commandment , that his majestie not only in his kingdomes of england and ireland , is a maintainer and upholder of episcopall government according to the laws of the said churches and kingdomes , but that likewaies he is a defender , and intends to continue a defender of the same government in his kingdome of scotland , both before the time , and at the time when he urged this oath , as is evident by that which is in my lord commissioner his preface , both concerning his majesties instructions to his grace , and his graces expressing his majesties mind , both to the lords of councell , and to the lords of session ; and the same likewaies is plainly expressed and acknowledged by the adherers to the said protestation in the place above cited : their words being these ; and it is most manifest that his majesties mind , intention , and commandment , is no other but that the confession be sworn , for the maintenance of religion as it is already or presently professed ( these two being co-incident altogether one and the same , not only in our common form of speaking , but in all his majesties proclamations ) and thus as it includeth , and continueth within the compasse thereof , the foresaids novations and episcopacie , which under that name were also ratified , in the first parliament holden by his majesty . from whence it is plaine , that episcopacie not being taken away or suspended by any of his majesties declarations , as these other things were which they call novations , it must needs both in deed , and in the judgment of the said protesters no waies be intended by his majestie to be abjured by the said oath . now both the major and that part of the minor which concerneth episcopall government in the church of scotland , being cleerly acknowledged by the protesters , and the other part of the minor concerning that government in his other two kingdomes being notoriously known , not only to them , but to all others who know his majesty , how it can be imagined that his majesty by that oath should command episcopacy to be abjured , or how any one to whom his majesties mind concerning episcopall government was known , could honestly or safely abjure it , let it be left to the whole world to judge , especially considering that the protesters themselves in that place above cited , by a dilemma , which we leave to themselves to answer , have averred , that when that act of councell should come out , yet that it could not be inferred from thence that any such thing was abjured . fifthly and lastly , if the explanation in that act of councell be taken in that not only rigid but unreasonable and senselesse sense which they urge , yet they can never make it appear , that episcopall government at the first time of the administring of that oath was abolished : the very words of that confession of faith , immediately after the beginning of it , being these , received , beleeved , defended by many and sundry notable kirks and realms , but chiefly by the kirk of scotland , the kings majestie and three estates of this realme , as gods eternall truth & only ground of our salvation , &c. by which it is evident , that the subscription to this confession of faith is to be urged in no other sense then as it was then beleeved and received by the kings majestie , and the three estates of this realme at that time in being ; and it is well known , that at that time bishops , abbots and priors made up a third estate of this realm , which gave approbation to this confession of faith : and therefore it is not to be conceived , that this third estate did then abjure episcopacie , or that episcopacie was at the first swearing of that confession abolished . but say that at that time it was abolished by acts of generall assembly , yet was it not so by any act of parliament , nay by many acts of parliament it was in force , because none of them was repealed ; some whereof are annexed in the sheet immediatly after these reasons , which we pray the reader carefully to peruse and ponder : and at the very time of the taking of this oath and after , bishops , whose names are well known , were in being . now it is to be hoped that in a monarchy or any other well constituted republick , that damnable jesuiticall position shall never take place , that what is once enacted by a monarch & his three estates in parliament , shall ever be held repealed or repealable by any ecclesiasticall nationall synod . by all which it is evident , that the explanation of that act of councell so groundlesly urged , can induce no man to imagine that by the confession of faith lately sworn by his majesties commandment , episcopall government , which then did , and yet doth stand established by acts of this church and kingdome , either was , or possibly could be abjured . and having now ( good reader ) heard his majesties minde in his instructions to us , our minde in requiring in his majesties name this oath to be taken , and these few reasons of many which do evidently evince the inconsequence of that sense which without any show of inference is put upon it by those , who would go on in making men still beleeve , that all which they do or say is grounded upon authority , though they themselvs do well know the contrary ; we suppose that all they who have taken this oath will rest satisfied that they have not abjured episcopal government , and that they who shall take it , will take it in no other sense . which timely warning of ours , we are the more willing to give , because we are given to understand , that even they who were wont to call the takers of this oath ( notwithstanding of that explanation by act of councell ) perjured and damned persons , and in their pulpits called the urging of it the depth of sathan , do now mean to take it themselves , and urge others to take it in that sense which they make men beleeve ( though wrongfully ) that act of councell makes advantageous to their ends . but we do in his majesties name require that none presume to take the said oath , unlesse they be required so to do by such as shall have lawfull authority from his majestie to administer it unto them : being confident , that none either will or can take the said oath or any other oath in any sense , which may not consist with episcopall government , having his majesties sense , and so the sense of all lawfull authority fully explained to them . that episcopall jurisdiction was in force by acts of parliament , and no wayes abolished nor suppressed in the year 1580. nor at the time of reformation of religion within the realm of scotland , doth evidently appeare by the acts of parliament after mentioned . first by the parliament 1567. cap. 2. whereby at the time of reformation the popes authority was abolished , it is enacted by the said act , that no bishop , nor other prelate in this realm , use any jurisdiction in time coming by the bishop of romes authority . and by the third act of the same parliament , whereby it is declared , that all acts not agreeing with gods word , and contrary to the confession of faith approved by the estates in that parliament , to have no effect nor strength in time to come . whereby it is evident , that it was not the reformers intention to suppresse episcopacie , but that bishops should not use any jurisdiction by the bishop of rome his authority ; and seeing they did allow episcopacie to continue in the church , that they did not esteeme the same contrary to gods word and confession foresaid : as appeares more clearly by the sixth act of the said parliament , which is ratified in the parliament 1579. cap. 68. whereby it is declared , that the ministers of the blessed evangel of jesus christ , whom god of his mercie hath now raised up amongst us , or hereafter shall raise , agreeing with them that now live in doctrine or administration of the sacraments , and the people of this realme that professe christ as he is now offered in his evangel , and do communicate with the holy sacraments , as in the reformed kirks of this realme they are publickly administrate , according to the confession of the faith , to be the only true and holy kirk of jesus christ within this realme ; without any exception by reason of policy and discipline , declaring only such as either gain-say the word of the evangel according to the heads of the said confession , or refuse the participation of the holy sacraments as they are now ministrate , to be no members of the said kirk so long as they keep themselves so divided from the society of christs body . whereby it is manifest , that it was not the said reformers minde to exclude any from that society by reason of discipline , and that they did not at that time innovate or change any thing in that policy they found in the said kirk before the reformation . this is likewaies evident by the oath to be ministred to the king at his coronation , by the eighth act of the said parliament , wherby he is to swear to maintain the true religion of jesus christ , the preaching of his holy word , and due and right ministration of the sacraments now received and preached within this realm , and shall abolish and gain-stand all false religion contrary to the same ; without swearing to any innovation of policie and discipline of the kirk . secondly , it doth evidently appear by these subsequent acts of parliament , that by the municipall law of this realm archbishops and bishops was not only allowed in the kirk , but also had jurisdiction and authority to govern the same . first , by the 24 act of the said parliament , whereby all civill priviledges granted by our soveraigne lords predecessors to the spirituall estate of this realm , are ratified in all points after the form and tenor thereof . and by the 35. act of the parliament 1571. whereby all and whatsoever acts and statutes made of before by our soveraigne lord and his predecessors anent the freedome and liberty of the true kirk of god , are ratified and approved . by the 46. act of the parliament 1572. whereby it is declared , that archbishops and bishops have the authority , and are ordained to conveen and deprive all inferiour persons being ministers , who shal not subscribe the articles of religion , and give their oath for acknowledging and recognoscing of our soveraigne lord and his authority , & bring a testimoniall in writing thereupon within a moneth after their admission . by the 48. act of the same parliament , whereby it is declared , that archbishops and bishops have authority at their visitations to designe ministers gleibes . by the 54. act of the said parliament , whereby archbishops and bishops are authorized to nominate and appoint at their visitations , persons in every parochin for making and setting of the taxation , for upholding and repairing of kirks and kirk-yards , and to conveene , try , and censure all persons that shall be found to have applied to their own use the stones , timber , or any thing else pertaining to kirks demolished . by the 55. act of the parliament 1573. whereby archbishops and bishops are authorized to admonish persons married , in case of desertion , to adhere , and in case of disobedience , to direct charges to the minister of the parochin to proceed to the sentence of excommunication . by the 63. act of the parliament 1578. whereby bishops , & where no bishops are provided , the commissioner of diocesses , have authority to try the rents of hospitals , and call for the foundations thereof . by the 69 act of the parliament 1579. whereby the jurisdiction of the kirk is declared to stand in preaching the word of jesus christ , correction of manners , and administration of the holy sacraments ; and yet no other authority nor office-bearer allowed and appointed by act of parliament , nor is allowed by the former acts ; but archbishops and bishops intended to continue in their authority , as is clear by these acts following . first , by the 71. act of the same parliament , whereby persons returning from their travels are ordained , within the space of twenty dayes after their return , to passe to the bishop , superintendent , commissioner of the kirks where they arrive and reside , and there offer to make and give a confession of their faith , or then within fourtie daies to remove themselves forth of the realme . by the 99. act of the parliament 1581. whereby the foresaids acts are ratified and approved . by the 130. act of the parliament 1584. whereby it is ordained , that none of his maiesties lieges and subiects presume or take upon hand to impugne the dignity and authoritie of the three estates of this kingdome , whereby the honour and authority of the kings maiesties supreme court of parliament , past all memorie of man , hath been continued , or to seek or procure the innovation or diminution of the power and authoritie of the same three estates , or any of them in time coming under the pain of treason . by the 131. act of the same parliament , whereby all iudgments and iurisdictions as well in spirituall as temporall causes , in practice and custome during these twenty four years by-past not approved by his highnesse and three estates in parliament , are discharged : and whereby it is defended , that none of his highnesse subiects of whatsoever qualitie , estate , or function they be of , spirituall or temporall presume , or take upon hand to convocate , conveen , or assemble themselves together for holding of councels , conventions , or assemblies , to treat , consult , or determinate in any matter of estate , civill or ecclesiasticall ( except in the ordinary iudgements ) without his maiesties speciall commandement ; or expresse licence had and obtained to that effect . by the 132. act of the said parliament , authorizing bishops to try and iudge ministers guilty of crimes meriting deprivation . by the 133. act of the same parliament , ordaining ministers exercing any office beside their calling to be tried and adiudged culpable by their ordinaries . by the 23. act of the parliament 1587. whereby all acts made by his highnesse , or his most noble progenitors anent the kirk of god , and religion presently professed , are ratified . by the 231. act of the parliament 1597. bearing , that our soveraigne lord and his highnesse estates in parliament , having speciall consideration of the great priviledges and immunities granted by his highnesse predecessors to the holy kirk within this realme , and to the speciall persons exercing the offices , titles , and dignities of the prelates within the same : which persons have ever represented one of the estates of this realm in all conventions of the saids estates ; and that the saids priviledges and freedomes have been from time to time renewed and conserved in the same integritie wherein they were at any time before . so that his maiestie acknowledging the same to be fallen now under his maiesties most favourable protection , therefore his maiesty with consent of the estates declares , that the kirk within this realme , wherein the true religion is professed , is the true and holy kirk : and that such ministers as his maiestie at any time shall please to provide to the office , place , title , and dignitie of a bishop , &c. shall have vote in parliament , sicklike and al 's freely as any other ecclesiasticall prelate had at any time by-gone . and also declares , that all bishopricks vaicking , or that shall vaick , shall be only disponed to actuall preachers and ministers in the kirk , or such as shall take upon them to exerce the said function . by the second act of the parliament 1606. whereby the ancient and fundamentall policie , consisting in the maintenance of the three estates of parliament , being of late greatly impaired and almost subverted , especially by the indirect abolishing of the estate of bishops by the act of annexation : albeit it was never meaned by his maiestie , nor by his estates , that the said estate of bishops , being a necessary estate of the parliament , should any wayes be suppressed ; yet by dismembring and abstracting from them of their livings being brought in contempt and poverty , the said estate of bishops is restored , and redintegrate to their ancient and accustomed honour , dignities , prerogatives , priviledges , lands , teindes , rents , as the same was in the reformed kirk , most amply and free at any time before the act of annexation ; rescinding and annulling all acts of parliament made in preiudice of the saids bishops in the premisses , or any of them , with all that hath followed , or may follow thereupon , to the effect they may peaceably enioy the honours , dignities , priviledges , and prerogatives competent to them or their estate since the reformation of religion . by the 6. act of the 20. parliament , declaring that archbishops and bishops are redintegrate to their former authority , dignity , prerogative , priviledges and iurisdictions lawfully pertaining and shall be known to pertain to them , &c. by the 1. act of the parliament 1617. ordaining archbishops and bishops to be elected by their chapters , and no other wayes , and consecrate by the rites and order accustomed . finis . the last national address presented to his majesty at hampton-court, the 16th. day of november 1700 by the right honourable the lord yester, sir john pringle of stitchell and sir peter wedderburn of gosford baronets, commissioners appointed for that end. company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1700 approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a80267 wing c5597d estc r231029 99896641 99896641 134689 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a80267) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 134689) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2430:18) the last national address presented to his majesty at hampton-court, the 16th. day of november 1700 by the right honourable the lord yester, sir john pringle of stitchell and sir peter wedderburn of gosford baronets, commissioners appointed for that end. company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [s.l. : 1700?] identifed on umi film reel 2430 as wing l490a (entry cancelled in wing 2nd ed.). reproduction of original in the folger shakespeare library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -1689-1745 -early works to 1800. scotland -commerce -africa -early works to 1800. scotland -commerce -east indies -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland 2007-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-10 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-11 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2007-11 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the last national address presented to his majesty at hampton-court , the 16th . day of november 1700 , by the right honourable the lord yester , sir john pringle of stichell and sir peter wedderburn of gosford baronets , commissioners appointed for that end . may it please your majesty , vve noblemen , barons , gentlemen , burgesses , and other subscribers , your majesty's most dutiful subjects of this your antient kingdom of scotland , having formerly from an unfeigned zeal to your majesty's service , and to the good and welfare of our countrey petition'd your majesty for a meeting of the estates in parliament , in order to support , and assist our company trading to africa and the indies , which the parliament had , by their unanimous address to your majesty of the 5th . of august 1698 , declared to be their own and the whole nation 's peculiar concern , and your majesty having been graciously pleased to allow the parliament to meet on the 21th . of may last , whereby all your good subjects could not but conceive suitable hopes of its happy issue , for the honour and interest of your majesty and people , do now beg leave to express our deep concern & sorrow for the unexpected adjournment thereof , without being permitted to do any thing towards the wish'd for end of its meeting , and do in all humble manner concurr with the dutifull address lately presented to your majesty , from rhe plurality of the members of parliament , representing the inconveniencies and prejudices arising to the pressing concerns of the nation , from that adjournment , and to the rights and liberties of parliament , from the manner of it : and it is our unexpressible regret , that your majesty does seem to have been prevail'd upon by the mis-representations of evil councellours to issue out proclamations ▪ further adjourning the parliament , from time to time , whilst not only did our said company stand extremely in need of the countenance support and protection promis'd to it by your majesty in parliament , and more especially upon the misfortunes that have of late befallen it by the success of enemies against its colony of caledonia , but whilst also even the nation it self did , and still does , remain under the pressure of such grievances as can only be redress'd in parliament . and to the end that your majesty may have a just view thereof , we humbly beg leave to represent to your majesty how indispensibly necessary it is , that the protestant religion be secured against the growth of popery , immorality and profaneness ; that the freedom and independency of this antient kingdom , and the nation 's right and title to caledonia , as holding of your majesty's crown of scotland , be asserted and supported ; that the good inclinations of your majesty and successors kings of scotland be preserved from foreign influence , as well as from the mis-representations and pernicious counsels of unnatural countrey-men ; that the frequency , and sitting of parliaments be secured and ascertain'd , pursuant to the claim of right ; that dangerous influences upon the freedom of parliaments , either by gratuities , pensions , or farms of any branch of the revenue , and the disposing of any part of the revenue or annexed property of the crown , otherways than acccording to law , for the necessary support of the government , be prevented ; that the publick credit be restored , and an enquiry made into the application of the funds laid on , and appropriated by parliament , for support of the government and payment of the army ; that the security of the nation , and government , be settled in a duly regulated national force , in stead of a standing army , so burdensome to the countrey , and dangerous to its liberties ; that the manner of applying the security , which we have by our claim of right , for the personal freedom of the subject , against long and arbitrary imprisonment , as well as against pursutes upon old and obsolete laws , be specially declared ; that the trade of this nation be encouraged & advanced , by duly regulating its export and import , by discharging prejudicial branches thereof , by fixing the value of our current money , by encouraging manufactories , by imploying the poor , and more especially by countenancing and assisting our said company , in the prosecution of its lawful undertakings ; and that all such articles of grievances presented to your majesty by the estates of this kingdom in the year 1689 as have not yet been redress'd , together with such other grievances as the parliament shall , at the meeting thereof , find the nation aggrieved with , be redress'd in parliament . and your majesty having by your royal letter , of the 24 of may 1689 , been graciously pleased to declare , and give full assurance to our representatives in that meeting of the estates , which settled the crown and royal dignity of this realm on your majesty , that we should always find your majesty ready to protect us , and to assist the estates in making such laws , as might secure our religion , liberties and properties , and prevent or redress whatsoever might be justly grievous to us ; that your majesty would never believe that the true interest of your people and the crown could be opposite ; and that your majesty would always account it your greatest prerogative to assent to such laws as might promote truth , peace , and wealth in your kingdom . we do therefore reckon it our duty , humbly to desire and assuredly expect ▪ that your majesty will be graciously pleased to satisfy the longing desires , and earnest expectations of your people , by allowing your parliament to meet , as soon as possible ; and when mett , to sit till they fully deliberate upon , and come to solid resolutions in the great and weighty concerns of the nation , and grant such instructions to your commissioner , as may impower him to pass such ac●s , as the great council of the nation shall think most conducive to the true honour of your majesty and gove●●ment , the welfare of this realm , both as to its religious and civil interest , and to the full quieting ●●e minds of all your majesty's good people ▪ his majesty , after having heard this address read , was graciously pleased to give the following answer . gentlemen , i can not take further notice of this address , seing the parliament is now mett , and i have made a declaration of my mind for the good of my people , wherewith i hope all my faithfull subjects will be satisfied . jus regium, or, the just, and solid foundations of monarchy in general, and more especially of the monarchy of scotland : maintain'd against buchannan, naphthali, dolman, milton, &c. / by sir george mackenzie ... mackenzie, george, sir, 1636-1691. 1684 approx. 253 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 104 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-08 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a50542 wing m162 estc r39087 18211783 ocm 18211783 107155 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a50542) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 107155) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1127:23) jus regium, or, the just, and solid foundations of monarchy in general, and more especially of the monarchy of scotland : maintain'd against buchannan, naphthali, dolman, milton, &c. / by sir george mackenzie ... mackenzie, george, sir, 1636-1691. mackenzie, george, sir, 1636-1691. that the lawful successor cannot be debarr'd from succeeding to the crown. [4], 102 [i.e. 154], [4], 60, 16 p. printed by the heir of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh : 1684. includes, with special t.p.: that the lawful successor cannot be debarr'd from succeeding to the crown, maintain'd against dolman, buchannan, and others. dolman is the pseud. of robert parsons. addendum: 16 p. at end. errata : t.p. verso. reproduction of original in the university of illinois (urbana-champaign campus). library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -constitutional law. scotland -kings and rulers -succession. 2004-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-04 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-06 jonathan blaney sampled and proofread 2004-06 jonathan blaney text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-07 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion ivs regivm : or , the just , and solid foundations of monarchy in general , and more especially of the monarchy of scotland : maintain'd against buchannan , naphthali , dolman , milton , &c. by sir george mackenzie , his majesties advocat . 1 sam. 10.26 , 27. 26. and there went with saul a band of men , whose hearts god had touched . 27. but the children of belial said , how shall this man save us ? and they despis'd him , and brought him no presents , but he held his peace . edinbvrgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1684. the design . bvchannans book de iure regni being lately translated , and many copies dispers'd . his majesties advocat , in duty to the king , and compassion to the people , who are thus like to be poison'd , has written this answer , which was necessary , notwithstanding of the learn'd answers made by barclay and blackwood , since beside that theirs are in latin , and so not useful to the people , it is conceiv'd they understood not fully our law , nor was our law so clear then as now . many arguments have been invented since their time by dolman , milton , nephthaly , &c. and experience has open'd our eyes much since their time . blackwoods arguments are calculated for the romish church , and barclay has mistaken essential points . theirs run upon history and philology . this upon our law , the laws of nations , reason and conveniency . and i am afraid , it will be said that there are too many new thoughts in mine . errata . page 90. for pliny read tacitus . to the universitie of oxford . the king my master , and his royal brother , being by their natural goodness inclin'd to pardon all crimes , except flattery ; and by their modesty to think all that flattery , which can be justly said of them . i could not in prudence dedicat this book to them , since the first part of it , concerns the right of the monarchy : and the second the right of the successor . and therefore ( since to support a crown , is the next honour to the bearing it ) this dedication was due to you , who have both in the last rebellion , and this factious age , maintain'd the royal interest , so learn'dly , and generously . your late decisions against the fanaticks , have almost made my reasonings useless ; for your authority will weigh as much as any privat mans arguments . and what should have more credit amongst men , than an illustrious company of learn'd and pious divines , deciding for their duty , and conscience against their interest and vanity . men who wish for no crown save in heaven ; and desire no power save over their own lusts and passions . to the episcopal church , god hath fulfilled that promise , of making kings their nursing fathers , the true heirs and best scholars of the primitive church , happier than it , in this ▪ that they can practise its vertues , without its necessities , and need not poverty to make them humble , nor armies to make them loyal . and who in it are so happy as you , who can be submissive , without being slaves , firm , without being opiniatre . zealous , without being cruel , and pious , without being bigot . to whom i cannot wish greater blessings , than that your fame may grow as great as your loyalty ; that your vniversitie may continue prosperous , till an other grow more learn'd ; and that all honest men , may be as ready to serve you , as your sincere welwisher , and humble servant , geo. mackenzie . the just right of monarchy in general , but more especially of the kings of scotland , asserted against buchannan and others . lvcifer might in reason have contented himself with that share of knowledge , glory , and power , which was bestowed upon him , by his almighty , and bountiful soveraign . and adam should have rested satisfied , with the glory of having been made after the image of god , and with the being his lieutenant in this lower world. but there are such strong charms in ambition , and vanitie , that the one resolved to hazard all that he possessed , as being second , rather than not try if he could be the first , and the other , desiring to improve his present share , forefeited those excellencies which he enjoyed . how jealous then should frail and fallen man be , in debates with those , whom the almighty has appointed to be his vicegerents amongst them ; and to whom he has said , ye are gods. and how hard is it for us to conquer that vice , which the one could not resist , though he was all light , and the other though he was all innocence ? what nations under heaven were so happie as we , under the reign of king charles the first ? secure against all invasion from abroad , by the situation of our countrey ; and from all oppression at home , by its laws , and the gracious concessions of our excellent monarchs : but more especially in that age , by the innat vertues of that king , who was severe to none , but to himself ; and whose prerogatives , no laws could bound so much as his own goodness did . and yet wearie with the burden of our own prosperity , we lusted after new improvements of liberty and property : and after we had emptied our own veins , and purses , in fighting for these ; all we gained , was to be slaves , and beggars . and having kill'd for religion a king , who had more of it , than all who fought against him ; we split our own church into a thousand pieces , and from its murthered body , did arise those sectarians , like so many worms , and insects . but yet god almighty desiring to try us once more , and make us for ever inexcusable , did not only deliver us from that slavery that we had drawn upon our selves ; but because we were all crimes , he gave us a king who was all clemencie , and who deserves to have been elected , if he had not been born our king : and yet after that he had also condescended to all our new extravagancies , and that by his conduct , all sciences flourish , and trade is so increased , that riches are become a plague . we are now troubled with jealousies , because we can be troubled with nothing else : and murmuring against the gentlest and best of kings , we are tormented daily with apparitions , visions , plots , pamphlets and libels . but under whom can we expect to be free from arbitrary government , when we were , and are afraid of it under king charles the first , and king charles the second ? and what king , or government , can be secure from those , who conspire the death of this most merciful prince , and of this so ancient , and so well moulded government ? amongst the other wicked instruments in these rebellions , i must confess that our countrey-men buchannan ( one of the chief ornaments , and reproaches of his native countrey ) the authors of lex rex , naphtali , and ius populi vindicatum , have been ring-leaders , who have endeavoured extreamly to poison this nation by perswading the people : 1. that our monarchs derive their rights from them . 2. that therefore since they derive their right from the people , they are accountable to them for for their administration , and consequently they may be suspended or deposed by them . 3. that the people may reform without them , and may rise in arms against them , if the monarch hinder them to reform . 4. that the people or their representatives may seclude the lineal successor , and raise to the throne any of the royal family who doth best deserve the royal dignity . these being all matters of right , the plain and easie way which i resolve to take for refuting them , so as the learned and unlearned may be equally convinced , shall be first , by giving a true account of what is our present positive law. 2. by demonstrating that as our present positive law is inconsistent with these principles , so these our positive laws are excellently well founded upon the very nature of monarchy , and that those principles are inconsistent with all monarchy : and the third class of my arguments shall be from the principles of common reason , equity and government , abstracting both from the positiveness of our law , and the nature of our monarchy : and in the last place i shall answer the arguments of those authors . as to the first , i conceive that a treatise de iure regni apud scotos , should have clear'd to us what was the power of monarchs by law , and particularly what was the positive law of scotland as to this point ; for if these points be clear by our positive law , there is no further place for debate , since it is absolutely necessary for mankind , especially in matters of government , that they at last acquiesce in something that is fix'd and certain , and therefore it is very well observed by lawyers and states-men , that before laws be made , men ought to reason ; but after they are made , they ought to obey : which makes me admire how buchannan and the other authors that i have named , should have adventur'd upon a debate in law , not being themselves lawyers ; and should have written books upon that subject , without citing one law , civil , or municipal , pro or con : nor is their veracity more to be esteemed than their learning ; for it 's undenyable that buchannan wrot this book de iure regni , to perswade scotland to raise his patron , though a bastard to the crown : and the authors of lex rex , ius populi vindicatum , and others , were known to have written those libels from picque against the government , because they justly suffered under it . i know that to this it may be answered , that these statutes are but late , and were not extant in buchanans time , and consequently buchanan cannot be redargu'd by them . 2. that these statutes have been obtain'd from parliaments , by the too great influence of their monarchs , and the too great pusillanimity of parliaments , who could not resign the rights and priviledges of the people , since they have no warrand from them for that effect . to the first of which , i answer , that my task is not to form an accusation against buchanan , but against his principles , and to demonstrat , that these principles are not our law , but are inconsistent with it , and it is ridiculous to think , that any such laws should have been made , before these treasonable principles were once hatched and maintained , for errors must appear before they be condemned : and by the same argument it may be as well urged , that arius , nestorius , &c. were not hereticks ; because those acts of general councils , which condemned their heresies , were not extant , when they first defended those opinions ; and that our king had not the power of making peace and war , till the year 1661 : but , 2 dly , for clearing this point , it is fit to know that our parliaments never give prerogatives to our kings , but only declare what have been their prerogatives , and particularly in these statutes that i shall cite , the parliament doth not confer any new right upon the king , but only acknowledge what was originally his right and prerogative from the beginning , and therefore the parliament being the only judges who could decide whether buchannans principles were solid , and what was ius regni apud scctor . these statutes having decided those points contraverted by him , there can be hereafter no place for debate , and particularly as to buchannan , his book de jure regni apud scotos , it is expresly condemn'd as slanderous , and containing several offensive matters by the 134 act , parl. 8. ia. 6. in anno 1584. which was the first parliament that ever sat after his book was printed . to the 2 d , i answer , that it being controverted what is the kings power , there can be no stronger decision of that controversie in favours of the king than the acknowledgment of all parties interested , and it is strange and unsufferable to hear such as appeal to parliaments , cry out against their power , their justice , and decisions ; and why should we oppress our kings , and raise civil wars , whereby we endanger so much our selves to procure powers to parliaments , if parliaments be such ridiculous things as we cannot trust when they are empowered by us ? and if there be any force in this answer of buchannans , there can be none in any of our laws , for that strikes at the root of all our laws , and as i have produced a tract of reiterated laws for many years , so where were there ever such free unlimited parliaments in any nation as these whose laws i have cited ? 2 dly , whatever might be said , if a positive contract betwixt the king and people were produced , clearing what were the just limits of the monarchy , and bounding it by clear articles mutually agreed upon , yet it is very absurd and extravagant to think that when the debate is , what is the king of scotlands just power and right , and from whom he derives it , that the laws and repeated acknowledgements of the whole representatives of the people assembled in the supream court of the nation , having no open force upon it , but enacted at several times , in many several parliaments , under the gentlest , peaceablest , and wisest kings that ever they had , should not be better believed than the testimonies of three or four byass'd and disoblig'd pedants , who understood neither our laws nor statutes , and who can bring no clear fundamental law ; nor produce no contract nor paction restricting the king , or bounding his government . 3 dly , that which adds a great deal of authority to this debate , and these statutes is , that as this is clear by our positive law , so it is necessarly inferred from the nature of our monarchy , and is very advantagious for the subjects of this kingdom , which i shall clear in the second and third arguments that i shall bring against these treasonable principles , nor can they be seconded by any solid reason , as i shall make appear in answering the arguments of those authors . i know that nephthaly , the author of ius populi , and our late fanatical pamphlets alleadge that our parliaments since 1661 are null and unlawful , because many who have right to sit as members , or to elect members were secluded by the declaration or test : but my answer is , first , that these were excluded by acts of parliament , which were past in parliaments prior to their exclusion , and so they were excluded by law , and no man can be said to be illegally excluded from his seat in parliament , who is excluded by a clear statute . 2 dly , if this were not a good answer , then the papists might pretend that they are unjustly excluded , because they will not take the oath of supremacy , and because they are papists ; and how can the fanaticks pretend to make this objection , since they by the same way excluded the kings loyal subjects in the year 1647. and 1649. &c. or how would these authors have rail'd at any malignant for using this argument against them , which they use now most impudently against us with far less justice , for their parliaments were unjust upon other heads , as being inconsistent with the fundamental laws of the kingdom , and so their acts of exclusion were null in themselves . 3 dly . all the statutes made since 1661. are necessary consequences of former laws , and so are rather renewed than new laws . 4 ly . if this were allow'd there could be no end of controversie , for all who are excluded would still alleadge that they were unjustly excluded , and consequently there could be no submission to authority , and so no society nor peace . the last answer that our dissenters make when they are driven from all their other grounds is , that they , though the lesser , are yet the sounder part of the nation ; but this shift does not only overturn monarchy , but establishes anarchy , and though they were once settl'd in their beloved commonwealth , this would be sufficient to overturn it also , for every little number of dissenters , nay , and even the meanest dissenter himself might pretend to be this sounder part of the common-wealth ; but god almighty foreseeing that pride or ignorance would suggest to frail mankind this principle , so inconsistent with all that order and government , whereby he was to preserve the world , he did therefore in his great wisdom convince men by the light of their own reason , that in matters of common concern , which were to be determined by debate , the greater number should determine the lesser ; and such as drive beyond this principle , shall never find any certain point at which they may rest : and by the same reason , the law has pronunc'd it safer to rest in what is decided , though it be unjust , than to cast loose the authority of decisions , upon which the peace and quiet of the common-wealth does depend , who would be so humble and just , as to confess that his adversary has the juster side ? or who would obey if this were allow'd ? and what idea of government or society could a man form to himself , allowing once this principle . it is also very observable , that those who pretend to be the sounder part , and deny obedience upon that account , are still the most insolent and irregular of all the society , the greatest admirers of themselves , and the greatest enemies to peace , and so the unfitest to be judges of what is the sounder part , though they were not themselves parties : but what pretence is there for that plea in this case , where the foundations of our monarchy , have been unanimously acknowledg'd by many different parliaments , in many different ages , chosen at first from the dictats of reason , and confirm'd after we had in many rebellions , found how dangerous all those popular pretences are , and in which we agree with the statsmen , lawers and divines of all the well govern'd nations under heaven , who are born under an hereditary monarchy , as it is confess'd we are . to return then to the first of those points , i lay down as my first position , that our monarchs derive not their right from the people , but are absolute monarchs , deriving their royal authority immediatly from god almighty ; and this i shall endeavour to prove , first from our positive law. by the 2. act par. 1. ch. 2 d. in which it is declar'd , that his majesty , his heirs and successors , have for ever , by vertue of that royol power which they hold from god almighty over this kingdom , the sole choice and appointment of officers of state , counsellors and judges . but because this act did only assert that our kings did hold their royal power from god , but did not exclude the people from being sharers in bestowing this donative , therefore by the 5 th act of that same parliament , they acknowledge the obligation lying on them in conscience , honour and gratitude , to own and assert the royal prerogatives of the imperial crown of this kingdom , which the kings majesty holds from god almighty alone ; and therefore they acknowledge that the kings majesty only , by vertue of his royal prerogative , can make peace and war , and treaties with forraign princes . because this last statute did only assert that the king did hold his imperial crown from god alone , but did not decide from whom our kings did only derive their power ; therefore by the 2 d· act par. 3 d ch. 2 d. it is declar'd that the estates of parliament considering that the kings of this realm , deriving their power from god almighty alone , they do succeed lineally thereto , &c. which statutes do in this agree with our old law ; for in the first chapter of reg. magist. vers . 3. these words are , that both in peace and war , our glorious king may so govern this kingdom committed to him by god almighty , in which he has no superiour but god almighty alone , which books are acknowledg'd to be our law , and are called the kings laws by the 54 th act par. 3 d iam. 1. and the 115. act par. 14. iam. 3. these our laws both ancient and modern , can neither be thought to be extorted by force , nor enacted by flattery , since in this we follow the scripture , the primitive church and their councils , the civil law and its commentators , and the wisest heathens , both philosophers and poets . as to the scripture , god tells us , that by him kings reign , and that he hath anointed them kings , and that the king is the minister of god. david tells us , that god will give strength to his king , and deliverance to his king , and to his anointed . daniel sayes to nebuchadnezar , the god of heaven hath given thee a kingdom . and to cyrus , god gave to nebuchadnezar thy father a kingdom , and for the majesty that he gave him , all nations trembled . as to the fathers , augustin de civit. dei , l. 5. c. 21. let us not attribute unto any other , the power of giving kingdoms and empyrs , but to the true god. basil in psal. 32. the lord setteth up kings and removeth them . tertul : apol : contra gentes , let kings know , that from god only they have their empyre , and in whose power only they are . and ireneus having prov'd this point fully , ends thus , l. 5. c. 24. by whose command they are born men , by his likewise they are ordain'd kings . this is also acknowledg'd by the councils of toledo 6. c. 14 of paris 6. c. 5. vid council aquis gran . 3. c. 1. amongst our late divines , marca the famous arch-bishop of paris , concord : sacerd : & imperij , l. 2. c. 2. n : 2. asserts , that the royal power is not only bestowed by god , but that it is immediatly bestow'd by god upon kings : and refutes bellarm. ●de laico c. 6. maintaining , that the iesuits doctrine in this , lessens authority , and raises factions , and contradicts both the design and word of god. duvalius de suprem . potest . rom. pontif. p. 1. q. 2. asserts that kings derive their rights by the laws of god and nature , non ab ipsa republica & hominibus ; and in all this the fanaticks and republicans agree with the jesuits against monarchy . in the civil law this is expresly asserted , cod. de vet . cod. enucleand . deo auctore nostrum gubernante imperium quod nobis a coelesti majestate traditum est , nov. 6. in init . nov. 133. in proem . in nov. 80.85 , 86. iustinian acknowledges his obligation to care for his people , because he received the charge of them from god ; and certainly subjects are happier , if their kings acknowledge this , as a duty to god , than if they only think it a charge confer'd on them by their people , and that they are therefore answerable to them . that the doctors and commentators are of this opinion , is too clear to need citations , vid. arnis . cap. de essentia majest : granswinkel . de jur . maj. cap. 1. & 2. as to the heathens , hesiod . in theog . verse 96. sayes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 kings are from god. homer sayes their honour is from god 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 — iliad . 1. verse 197. themistcus asserts , that the regal power came from god , orat. 5. with whom agrees dion . chrisostom orat. 1. diotog . apud stob. serm . &c. plat. in polit . &c. but above all , aristotle in polit . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and plutarch . ages & cleom. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . if to these statutes and citations it be answered , that god almighty may indeed be the principal and chief author of monarchy , and that monarchs may derive their power from him , as from the supream beeing , that directs all more immediat causes , and yet the people may be the immediat electors of monarchs , and so kings may derive immediatly from them their power ; and thus these statutes are not inconsistent with the principle laid down by buchanan and others , whereby they assert , that kings in general , and particularly the kings of scotland , derive their power immediatly from the people . to this my answers are , that first , if we consider the proprietie of the words , there can be nothing more inconsistent , than that kings should derive their power from god almightie alone , and yet that they should derive it from the people , for the word alone , is of all other words the most exclusive . 2 dly , the design of the parliament in that acknowledgement was to condemn , after a long rebellion , the unhappie principles which had kindled it ; and amongst which , one of the chief was , that our kings derived their power from the people , and therefore they might qualifie , or resume what they at first gave , or might oppose all streaches in the power they had given , and might even punish , or depose the king when he transgressed , none of which principles could have been sufficiently condemned , by acknowledging that , though god was the chief author , yet the people were the immediat electors . 3 dly , there needed no act of parliament be made for acknowledging god to be the chief author , and first fountain of every power , for that was never contraverted amongst christians . 4 thly , that foolish glosse cannot at all consist with the inferences deduced from that principle in the former statutes : for in the 2. act , par. 1. char. 2. it is inferr'd from his majesties holding his royal power from god alone , that therefore he hath the sole choice of his own officers of state , privy counsellers , and judges ; and in the 5. act , it is inferr'd from the same principle , that because he derives his power from god alone , that therefore it is treason to rise in arms without his consent , upon any pretext whatsoever : and in the 2. act , par. 3. char. 2. it is concluded , that because our kings derive their power from god almighty alone , therefore it is treason in the people to interrupt , or divert their succession , upon any difference in religion , or other pretext whatsoever ; whereas all this had been false , and inept reasoning , if the design of the parliament had not been to acknowledge that our kings derived not their power from the people , for though they derived their power from god , as the supream beeing only , and not as the immediat bestower , and if the people were the immediat bestowers of that power , then the people might still have pretended , that they who gave the power , might have risen in their own defence , when they saw the same abused , and might have diverted the succession , when it descended upon a person who was an enemy to their interest : but how false this glosse is , will appear more fully from the following arguments , and it is absolutely inconsistent with st. augustins opinion , formerly cited , wherein he forbids to attribute the giving of kingdoms to any other but to god. my second argument for proving that kings derive their power from god alone , and not from the people , shall be from the principles of reason . for first , the almighties design being to manifest his glory , in creating a world , so vast and regular as this is , and his goodnesse in governing it , and that men might live peaceably in it , having both reason and time to serve him , it was consequential that he should have reserved to himself the immediat dependence of the supream power , to preclude the extravagant and restlesse multitude , from those frequent revolutions which they would make , and desolations which they would occasion , if they thought that the supream power depended on them , and that they were not bound to obey them for conscience sake ; so that those expressions in scripture were very useful in this to curb our insolencies , and to fix our restlesnesse ; and it seems that kings are in scripture , said to be gods , to the end it might be clear that they were not made by men· 2 dly , god almighty being king of kings , it was just , that as inferiour magistrats derived their power from the king , so kings should derive their power from god , who is their king ; and this seems to be clear from that analogy , which runs in a dependence , and chain through the whole creation . 3 dly , as this is most suitable to the principles of reason , so it is most consonant the analogy of law , by which it is declar'd , that no man is master of his own life , or limbs , nemo est dominus membrorum suorum ; and therefore , as no man can lawfully take away his own life , so neither can he transfer the power of disposing upon it to any other man , and consequently this power is not derived to kings and princes by privat men , but is bestowed upon them by god almighty , who is the sole arbiter of life and death , and who can only take it away , because he gave it : and if it be objected , that this last branch of the argument , seems either to prove nothing , or else to prove that there can be no elective monarchies . to this it is answered , that even in elective monarchies , the nomination proceeds only from the people , but the royal power from god , as we see in inferiour magistracies , such as burrows royal , &c. the people elect , and so the nomination is from them , but the power of governing proceeds from the king , and not from the electors , and therefore as the people who elected the magistrats in these towns , cannot depose them by their own authority , so neither can the people depose their king , but the punishment of him belongs to god almighty . i confesse , that if the people choose a king with expresse condition , that they may punish him as the lacedemonian kings were punishable by those magistrats , call'd the ephori , the kings are in that case accountable to the people , but then they are not monarchs , having supream power as our kings have , and who are therefore declar'd to hold their power immediatly from god , and not to be at all punishable by the people . the 4 th argument that i shall use , for proving that our kings derive not their power from the people , shall be from the natural origin of monarchie , and of ours in particular , which i conceive to be that right of paternal power which is stated in them ; for understanding whereof , it is fit to know , that god at first created only one man , that so his children might be subject to him , as all children yet are to their parents : and therefore the jesuitical and fanatical principles , that every man is born free , and at liberty to choose what form of government he pleaseth , was ever , and is most false , for every man is born a subject to his own parents , who , if they were not likewise subject to a superiour power , might judge and punish them capitally , lead them out to war , and do all other things that a king could do , as we see the patriarches did in their own families . and as long as it is known who is the root of the family , or who represents it , there is no place for election , and people elect only when the memory of this is lost , and such as overcome the heads of families in batle , succeed to them in their paternal right . if it be answered , that the father may by nature pretend to a power over his children , or it may be an elder brother over his cadets , yet there is no tye in nature subjecting collaterals , as uncles , and their descendents to those descended from the eldest familie . to this i reply , that 1. this power over all the family was justly given by nature , to shun divisions , for else every little family should have erected it self in a distinct government , and the weakest had still been a prey . 2. we see that abraham did lead out to war , and in every thing act as king , not only over his own children , but all the family , and whole nations , are call'd the children of israel , the children of edom , &c. 3. that must be concluded to be establish'd by natural instinct , which all men in all ages and places allow and follow ; but so it is , that all nations in all places , and times have ever allow'd the eldest son of the eldest family to govern all descended from the stock , without new elections ; and the author of the late famous moral essayes have admir'd this as one of the wisest maxims that we have from natural instinct ; for if the wisest , or strongest were to be choos'd , there had still been many rivals and so much faction and discord , but it is still certain who is the eldest son , and this precludes all debate , and prevents all dissention : for applying this to our case , it is fit to know , that if we believe not our historians , then none else can prove that the people of scotland did at first elect a king , that being contrarie to the acknowledgements of our own statutes ; and all buchannans arguments , for restricting kings , being founded upon the authority of our historians , who , ( as he sayes , ) assert that k. fergus was first elected king by the people , if he be not able to prove that our kings owe their crowns to the election of the people , without any inherent or previous right , all his arguments evanish to nothing , but on the other hand , if we consider exactly our historians , we will find that our kings reign over us by this paternal power ; and though i am not very fond of fabulous antiquities , yet if tradition , or histories can be believ'd in any thing , they should at least be believ'd against buchannan , and those who make use of them , to restrict the power of our kings , and by our histories it is clear , that gathelus having led some forces into egypt , he after several victories , setl'd in portugal , call'd from him portus gatheli , from which an collonie of that race transported it self into ireland , and another into scotland ; nor should this be accounted a fable , since cornelius tacitus , in the life of agricola , makes the scots to be of spanish , and the picts to be of german extraction . the scottish collonies finding themselves opprest by the brittains , and picts , they sent over into ireland to ferquhard , and he sent them a considerable supplie , under the command of fergus his son , who having secur'd them against their enemies , all the heads of the tribes acknowledged him for their king , and swore that they should never admit of any other form of government then monarchie ; and that they should never obey any except him and his posterity , which if they brake , they wish'd that all the plagues and miseries that had formerly fallen on their predecessors , might again fall upon their posterity , as the punishment of that perjury . all which religious vows and promises , seal'd by those dreadful oaths voluntarly given , were graven on marble tables , and consign'd for preservation into the custody of their priests : and these are boetius own words , fol. 10. from which i observe , 1. that as our laws assert , that our kings derive their power from god , and not from the people , so we ought not to believe the contrary upon the faith of our historians , except they were very clear , and unanimous in contradicting our laws , whereas it appears to me , that our laws agree with our historie , for gathelus was not at all elected by the people , but was himself the son of a king , and did conquer by his own subjects , and servants , and all those who are descended from his collonies , were by law oblidg'd to obey the eldest son , and representative of that royal family . and ferquhard is acknowledg'd to have been his only successor , nor did ever any of the scottish tribes pretend to the supremacie , and our histories bear , that none of our tribes would yield to another ; and the fatal marble chair that came from spain , remaining with these who went to ireland , does evince that the birth-right remain'd with them ; and therefore when fergus the son of ferquhard came over , he brought over with him the marble chair , which was the mark of empire . and boetius immediatly upon his arrival calls him king , and fordon the most ancient of our historians , lib. 1. cap. 36. calls him , fergusius filius ferardi aut ferquhardi ex antiquarum regium prosapia genitus , qui ambitione regnandi stimulatus magnam sibi iuvenum copiam assimulavit & albionem continuo progressus est & ibidem super eos regem primum se constituit , that is to say , he made himself the first king ▪ therefore k. iames. basil. doron , pag. 201. asserts , that k. fergus made himself king and lord as well of the whole lands , as of the whole inhabitants . 2. we read nothing at all of the consent of the people , but of the heads of the tribes , who had no commission from the people , each of them having by his birth-right a power to command his own tribe , and consequently , the royal power was not derived to fergus from the people , but had it's original from this birth-right that was both in them , and fergus , and he succeded in the right of those chiefs to command their respective families ; and boetius brings in king fergus , lib. 1. num . 5. speaking of himself , as a pious parent , as one who owes to them what a parent owes to his children : sunt pij parentes in liberos propensi , & debemus vobis quod proli genitores . and the consent given by the chief of the clanns , and the people did not give , but declare the former right , as our consent now does in acts concerning the prerogative , and as the vote of the inquest does in the service of heirs ; and thus at the coronation of our kings , it is still said by our historians , that such a man was declared king , communi suffragio & acclamatione . 3. this consent being only given in the armie cannot be said to have been universally by the people , nor do we read that the people did commissionat the armie , or that the armie consulted the people ; and in general it cannot be instanc'd , that the people did in any nation universally consent to election , nor is it possible all the people can meet . and in pole , which is the only elective monarchie we know , the free-holders only consent , and yet every privat man and woman have as great interest , according to these pretended laws of nature , as they have : & potior est conditio negantis . nor do we find that the commons , and mean people have any interest in the elections , of our magistrats , or parliament men ; so that popular freedom by birth , and the interest of the people , in popular elections are but meer cheats invented to engage the rabble , in an aversion to the establish'd government , when factious and insolent spirits , who cannot submit themselves to government , design to cheat the multitude by fair pretences , and to bribe them by flatterie . if it be pretended , that it is not certain , whether king fergus was eldest so● to ferquhard , nor is it probable , that if he had been such , he would have preferr'd an uncertain conquest in scotland , to his secure succession in ireland . to this it is answered , that all our histories bear , that king ferquhard sent his son fergus , and when a son is spoken of indefinitly , in such cases , he is actually understood to be the eldest . 2. he brought with him the marble chair , the mark of empire , which would not have been allow'd to a cadet . 3. it is said , that having settled the affairs of scotland , he returned into ireland to settle the differences there about the choosing of a new king , which does import that he should have been king , , if he had not prefer'd scotland to ireland , and the reason of this preference was , because ireland was then divided amongst many kings , and his predecessors had but a very small share of it at that time , and scotland being a part of a greater isle , he probably found in this greater isle , a higher flight for his hopes , and more latitude for his ambition . but albeit the kings of scotland had been originally and at first elected by the people , yet it does not at all follow necessarly as buchannan , dolman , and our other republicans pretend , that therefore they may reject them at their pleasure , or which is all one , when they imagine that the kings elected by them serve not the ends for which they were designed , and that for these reasons . 1. it cannot be deny'd , but that the people may consent to an election of a monarch without limitatons ; for from the principles of nature , we may learn , that whatever is in ones power may be by them transfer'd upon another ; and therefore , if the people be indew'd with a power of governing themselves , they may certainly transfer this power upon another ; and we see that all christians , and even our republicans allow , that men may sell themselves to be slaves , a custome not only mention'd but approv'd by god himself , so far does consent reach beyond what is necessary for maintaining this point . 2. if this could not be , then there could be no such thing as absolute monarchies , which is against the receiv'd opinion of all nations , and against the doctrine of all authors , who , though they debate that this , or that monarchie , in a particular countrey is not absolute , yet it was never contraverted by any man alive , but that the people might consent , and in many places have consented to absolute monarchies ; and by the famous lex regia , amongst the romans , populus ei & in eum omne imperium suum , & potestatem transtulit , instit . de jur . nat . gent. & civ . § 6. mention'd likewise by that famous lawyer vlpian , l. 1. ff . de constitut . princ. 3. we see this consequence to be very false in many other cases , and therefore it cannot be necessary here , for we find that a man chooses a wife , yet it is not in his power to put her away ; cardinals choose the pope , and chapters the bishop , and yet they cannot depose them ; the common council choose magistrats , and yet they cannot lay them aside . 4. this reasoning is condemn'd as most fallacious , by most learn'd , and dis-interested lawyers , and therefore it cannot be infallible , as is pretended : vide arnisaeum cap. 3. num . 2. haenon . dis . pol. 9. num . 44. panorm . ad cap. 4. de cler. non residend . zasius ad l. non ambigitur num . 3 ff . de legibus , nor have any lawyers differ'd from this common opinion of mankind , except some very few , who have differ'd from a principle of pique , rather than of judgement . the next thing that i am to prove in this my first proposition , is , that our king is an absolute monarch , and has the supream power within this his kingdome , and this i shall endeavour to prove , first , from our positive law , 2. by several reasons deduc'd from our fundamental laws and customs . 3. from the very nature of monarchy it self , and the opinion of lawyers who write upon that subject , and who define absolute monarchie to be a power that is not limited or restricted by coactive law , arnisaeus , de essentia majest . cap. 3. num . 4. by the 25. act parl. 15. ia. 6. the parliament does acknowledge , that it cannot be deny'd , but his majesty is a free prince , of a soveraign power , having as great liberties , and prerogatives , by the laws of this realm , and priziledge of his crown , and diadem , as any other king , prince , or potentat whatseever . and by the 2. act parl. 18. ia. 6. the parliament consenting to his majesties restoring of bishops , declare and acknowledge the absolutenesse of our monarchy , in these words . the remeed whereof properly belongs to his majesty , whom the whole estates , of their bound n duty , with most hearty and faithful affection , humbly and truly acknowledge to be a soveraign monarch , absolute prince , iudge and governour , over all persons , estates and causes , both spiritual and temporal , within his said realm . and by the first act of that same parliament . the estates and whole body of this present parliament , acknowledge all with one voluntar , humble , faithful , united heart , mind , and consent his majesties soveraign authority , princely power , royal prerogative , and priviledge of his crown , over all persons , estates , and causes whatsoever , within his said kingdom . and because no acts were ever made , giving prerogatives , nor even declaring prerogatives to have been due , until some special controversie did require the same , so that possession , and not positive law , was the true measure of the prerogative ; therefore the parliament doth in that same act approve , and perpetually confirm all the royal prerogatives , as absolutely , amply , and freely in all respects , and considerations , as ever his majesty , or any of his royal predecessors possessed , used , and exercised the same ; and they promise that his majesties imperial power , which god has so enlarg'd , shall never be in any sort impar'd , prejudg'd , or diminished , but rather reverenc'd , and augmented as far as possibly they can . in the preface to our books of law , call'd regiam majestatem , it is acknowledg'd that the king has no superiour , except the creator of heaven and earth , who governs all . forreign lawyers also , such as lansius de lege regiae , num . 49. and others do number the king of scotland amongst the absolute monarchs . my second argument for proving our king to be an absolute monarch , shall be from my former position , wherein i hope i have prov'd sufficiently , that our kings derive not their right from the people ; for if the king derive not his power from the people , the monarchy can never be limited by them , and consequently it must be an absolute monarchy ; for there could be nothing more unjust , more unnatural , and more insolent , then that the people should pretend a right to limit and restrict that power which they never gave ; and the only reason why buchannan , and his complices , do assert our monarchy to be a qualified and limited monarchy , being that the people , when they first elected our kings , did qualifie and restrict their government . this position being false as appears by the absolute oath , and original constitution above set down , which is lessened , or qualified by no condition whatsoever , therefore the conclusion drawn from it must be false likewise . the third argument shall be deduced from the nature of monarchy , and in order thereto , i lay down as an uncontroverted principle , that every thing must be constructed to be perfect in its own nature , and no mixture is presum'd to be in any thing ; but he who alledges , that the thing controverted is added against nature , must prove the same ; and therefore since monarchy is that government whereby a king is supream , the monarch must be presum'd , neither to be oblig'd to govern by the advice of the nobility , ( for that were to confound monarchy with aristocracie ) nor by the advice of the people ( for that were to confound it with democracie ; ) and consequently if buchannan , and others design to prove , that our kings are obliged to govern , by the advice either of the nobility , or people , or are subject to be chastised by them , they must prove , that our kings , at their first creation , were elected upon these conditions , the very essence and beeing of monarchy , consisting in its having a supream , and absolute power . arnisaeus c. 30. vasquez l. 1. contrav . c. 47. budaeus in l. princeps . zas . ibid. ff . de legibus , pone enim , says arnisaeus , populum in regem habere aequalem potestatem neutrum pro summo venditari posse . when we hear of a monarch , the first notion we have is , that he is subject to none ; for to be a subject and a monarch , are inconsistent ; but if we hear that his nobility , or people , or both may depose , or punish him , we necessarly conclude by the light of nature , that they , and not he , are the supream governours . thus we see , that in allowing our king to be an absolute monarch , we have only allow'd him to be a monarch , and to have what naturally belongs to him , and that by as necessary a consequence ; for as every man is presumed to be reasonable , because reason is the essence of man , so is a king presum'd to be absolute , except these limitations whereby the monarchy is restricted , could be prov'd by an expresse contract . 4 thly , how is it imaginable , but that if our predecessors had elected our kings upon any such conditions , but they would have been very careful to have limited the monarchy , and this contract had with these conditions been recorded , whereas on the contrary we find , that albeit great care was taken to record the oath of allegiance made to the king , and to grave the same upon marble tables , consign'd unto the custody of their priests , as sacred oracles ; yet none of all our historians make the least mention of any limitations in these oaths , or by any other contract ; and to this day our oaths of supremacy , and allegiance , are clogged and lessened by no limitations . if it be answered , that these limitations do arise from the nature of the thing it self , there being nothing more unreasonable , and contrary to the nature of government , then that a monarch , who was design'd to be a protector to his people , should be allow'd to destroy them . to this it is answered , that monarchy by its nature is absolute , as has been prov'd , and consequently these pretended limitations are against the nature of monarchy , and so arise not ▪ ex natura rei , nor can there any thing be more extravagant , than to assert that , that which is contrare to the nature of monarchy , should arise from its nature , and it might be with greater reason pretended , that because the great design of men in marriage , is to get a helper , that therefore they may repudiat their wives , when they find them unsupportable , and that the putting them away in such cases , is consistent enough with the nature of their oath , though simple , and absolute ; this cause of divorce arising from the nature of marriage it self : this is after vowes to make inquiry , and what vow , or oath could be useful , if the giver were to be iudge how far he were ty'd , and if his conveniency were the measure of his obligation . but since i shall hereafter fully prove , that these limitations are as dangerous to the subjects , as to the prince , and that ten thousand times moe murders , and other insolencies have been committed in civil wars , upon the false pretence of liberty , than ever was committed by the worst of kings ; it must necessarily follow , that those limitations ought not to be admitted after an absolute oath , for eviting inconveniencies , which at the ballance appear to be of no weight . 5. it cannot be denyed , but our kings have ever had the power of peace and war , the calling and disolving of parliments , and a negative voice in them , the remitting of crimes , and nomination of judges ; and therefore it must be presumed , that since the law has not limited them in those things , it has limited them in nothing ; for by involving us in war , they may expose our fortunes , our wives and children to the greatest of dangers ; and it had been great folly to limit them in any thing , after those great prerogatives were allowed : and though our histories do bear , that peace and war were ordinarly determined by the advice , and consent of the nobility , yet that does no more infer a necessity not to do otherwayes , than the ordinary stile of all our proclamations , bearing to be with advice of our privy council , infers a necessity upon the king to do nothing without their advice ; and how could the consent of the nobility have been necessary in the former ages , since all their right flowed from the king himself , and that neither they then , nor the parliament now , had , or have a power equal with the king , much less above him , as shall be fully proved in the first conclusion , that i am to draw from this doctrine ; only to what i have said , i must here add , that it being proposed to our predecessors , at the swearing the oath of allegiance to king fergus , whether they would be govern'd by a king , who should have absolute power , or by the nobility , or by a multitude ? it was answered , that lest they should have many kings in place of one , they abhorr'd to bestow the the absolute power either upon the nobility , or upon the multitude . 6. i cannot but exceedingly commend our predecessors , for making this reasonable choice of an absolute monarchy , for a monarch that is subject to the impetuous caprices of the multitude when giddie , or to the incorrigible factiousness of nobility when interested , is in effect no government at all ; and though a mixt monarchy may seem a plausible thing to metaphisical spirits and school-men , yet to such as understand government , and the world , it cannot but appear impracticable ; for if the people understand that it is in their power to check their monarch , the desire of command is so bewitching a thing , that probably they will be at it upon all occasions ; and so when the king commands one thing , the nobility will command another , and it may be the people a third . and as it implyes a contradiction , that the same persons should both command and obey : so where find we those sober and mortified men , who will obey , when they may command . let us consider what dreadful extravagancies , and cruelties appear'd at rome , betwixt the tribunes of the people , and the senat , one of six kings had a son , who ravish'd a woman , and thereupon the kings were expell'd , but every year almost produced a civil war , wherein vast numbers of free romans were murther'd , and in the contest betwixt sylla and marius , 90. senators , 15. consuls , 2600. gentlemen , and 100000. others were murther'd , and after the whole common-wealth was exhausted in the wars betwixt cesar and pompey ; and in the immediat succeeding war betwixt augustus , anthonie , and lepidus , wherein every man lost either a brother , a father , or a son , rome return'd again to its monarchy , and was never so happy , as under augustus . the people of naples complaining lately of their taxes , put themselves under the command of reforming massaniello , by whose extravagancies they suffer'd more in one moneth , than they had done under the spainsh cruelty in an hundred years . but our late reformation in brittain seems to have been permitted by god , to let us see that mix'd governments having power to reform kings , are more insufferable than tirrany ; for by it we saw that the multitude consists of knaves and fools , and both these are the worst of governors , that the best of kings will be thought wicked , when subjects are his judges , who resolve not to obey , and that it is impossible to know what is right , when every man is judge of what is wrong . the impracticableness likewise of this popular supremacy , will yet more convincingly appear , if we consider that the people are to be judges , because of their natural freedom , for then all men should have equal right to be reformers , and these can never meet nor consult together : and if it be answered , that the people may send their representatives , my reply is , that the greatest half of the nation are neither freeholders nor burgesses ; and yet those only are call'd the representatives of the people ; and what absurd tricks and cheats are us'd in choosing even those representatives , and it may be the resolution prevails by the vote of the greatest fool or knave in the meeting ; and if any one man remove by sickness or accident , at the passing of a vote ; or if any of the multitude be bryb'd or have prejudice , though on a most unjust account , that which would have been the interest of the nation , turns to be against it , so infallible a judge is the multitude . and i have seen in popular elections , hundreds cry for a thing , and thereafter ask what was the matter . 7 ly , if the the proceres regni , or nobility are to be the check upon our kings , and to be trusted with this coercive power of calling them to an account , as buchannan pretends ; then i desire to know who invested them with this power , for it was never pretended that it is naturally inherent in them : and if the people invested them , i desire to know by what act the people transferr'd this power upon them , for they have no law , nor original constitution for this , as our kings have for their right ; and passing over the dangers may arise from their having this power , because of the factiousness , poverty , picques , humors , or ignorance that may be incident to them , it seems to me strange , why we the people should trust such to be our checks over the king , who are his own creatures , owing their honours to him , and expecting dayly from him imployments and estates ? and if they and the people differ , who is to be judges of those controversies ? nor can the nobility and commons assembled in parliament have this coercive power , for the reasons which i shall hereafter offer ; and therefore none has it , but the king is supream in himself , and accountable to none , save god almighty alone . but more of this will be found in the sequel of this discourse , upon other occasions . 8 ly , whatever proves monarchy to be an excellent government , does by the same reason prove absolute monarchy to be the best government ; for if monarchy be to be commended , because it prevents divisions , then a limited monarchy , which allows the people a share , is not to be commended , because it occasions them ; if monarchy be commended , because there is more expedition , secresie , and other excellent qualities to be found in it , then absolute monarchy is to be commended above a limited one ; because a limited monarch must impart his secrets to the people , and must delay the noblest designs until malitious and factious spirits be either gain'd or overcome : and the same anallogy of reason will hold in reflecting upon all other advantages of monarchy , the examination whereof i dare trust to every mans own breast . 9 ly , it was fit for the people that their kings should be above law , because the severity of law will not comply with that useful , tho illegal justice which is requisit in special cases , for since summum jus is summa injuria , and since impossibile est sola innocentia vivere , we may well conclude , that absolute monarchy is necessary to protect the guilty innocent by remissions , to break laws justly , in a court of chancery , and to crook them uprightly in our courts by an officium nobile . for strict and rigid law is a greater tyrant , than absolute monarchy . i know that some pretend that the 25. act 15. par. ia. 6. declaring the king to be an absolute prince , is only to be interpreted in opposition to the popes authority , he being so far absolute , only as not to be subject to the pope , who pretended then a jurisdiction over all kings . but the answers to this are clear ; first , this statute is made to declare the kings of scotland to have right by their inherent prerogative , to their exacting customs for all merchandice , because they are absolute monarchs , which argument had been ridiculous , if this absoluteness had only been in opposition to the pope , nor is there any mention of the pope in all this statute ; and what interest hath the pope in our customs . 2 dly , when the kings power is by our statutes rais'd above the pope , it is done by declaring him supream , and not by declaring him absolute . 3 dly , all lawyers , and states-men divide monarchies in absolute and limited monarchies , and the word absolute , is still taken in opposition to limited , as is clear by arnisaeus , bodin , &c. and whereas it is pretended that these words in this statute , acknowledging the king to be absolute , are only exprest transiently and enunciatively , but are not decisive and statutory . it is answered , that our parliaments never give our kings prerogatives , but only acknowledge what our kings have by an inherent and independent right ; and these words in this statute , are of all others in our laws , exprest with most of energy , for they are usher'd with , it cannot be deny'd , but his majesty has as great liberties and prerogatives , as any monarch whatsoever : and this acknowledgment is made the foundation of his right to exact customs . and in true reasoning , nothing is made the proposition of an argument , but that which is most uncontrovertable . i foresee that our fanaticks and republicans , will be ready to mis-represent absolute monarchy , as tyrany : but a tyrant is he , who has no right to govern ; and so he may be oppos'd , as the common enemy of all the society . and it is ridiculous to pretend with hobs , that we are oblig'd to obey whoever is once in possession ; for that were to invite men to torment us , and to justifie crimes by success . nor can it be from this deduc'd , that since it is lawful to oppose any who are in possession , that it is therefore lawful to oppose our monarchy : because they have ( as algernon sidney pretends· ) vsurpt over us , a power inconsistent with our natural liberty . and owe their right to that prescription , which the greatest tyrants may maintain by force , and to that consent which they may procure by violence , or flattery . for to this i answer , that our monarchs have their power establisht by birth-right , by consent , by prescription , and by law ; which are all the wayes whereby any right can be legally establisht . but it is a gross mistake in buchannan , and others , to conclude a lawful king punishable as a tyrant , because he becomes vitious : for though god may punish him as such , yet his people cannot ; that were to raise the servant above the master , and to occasion a thousand disorders to redress one . and when king iames acknowledges , that a good king thinks himself made for his people , and not his people for him. that is only said with reference to the kings , duty to god , but not with relation to the peoples duty to their king. and when trajan delivering the sword to the proconsul , said pro me , si mereor , in me . grotius observes justly , that this was spoke as a philosopher , and not to subject himself to the others jurisdiction . and so buchannan did most traiterously advise the printing this on our coin. nor do's this title of absolute monarch , empower him to dispose upon our estates . for it is fit to know , that government is the kings , and property is the subjects birth-right . monarchy is a government , and so can include no more , than what is necessary for government . and though the turk or mogul , arrogat to themselves , the total property of their subjects , in this they are tyrants , and not kings . and when our statute above-mentioned , says , that our kings have as much power as they , this is only to be understood of what right they have by the nature of monarchy , rex nomen est jurisdictionis non dominij , say the lawyers : for the law having said , that all things were the emperours , l : bene a zenone . § . sed scimus c. de quadr : praescript . the emperor asked the famous lawyer bulgarus in what sense all was his , who is mightily prais'd for having answer'd , omnia rex possidet imperio singuli dominio , accurs : in praem . ff . in verb : sanctioni , for what is once ours cannot be taken away without our consent : and therefore by the 5. act , 1. par. ch. 2. it is declared lawful for the king to make garisons , his majesty entertaining them on his own expence . and by the act 3. par. 3. ch : 2. it is declared that the people shall not be subject to free quarter , &c. and yet right reason teacheth us , that all the land of scotland having been once the kings ( for the law saith , that the king is safitus ratione coronae , in all the lands of scotland ) his majesty is therefore presumed proprietar of all , and every thing belongs to him , if some other cannot instruct a right which is the sense of that law , nemo terram nisi authoritate regiâ possideto : and of king malcolm canmor's law , that rex distribuit totam terram scotiae hominibus suis. and it therefore clearly follows , that the king has dominium directum , a right of superiority , as all superiors have , and that the people on whom he has bestowed these lands , are oblig'd to concur in the expence with him , for the defence of it . for as if he had retain'd the property , he would have been able with the fruits and rents to have defended it . so it is not agreeable to sense or reason that they to whom he has granted it , should not be oblig'd to defend it , especially seing all the rights made by the king , are in law presum'd meer donations ; for it cannot be deny'd but that all lands were originally granted by the king , and so must have originally belong'd to himself : for no person can give what is not his own ; and our law acknowledgeth , that all lands belong to the king , except where the present heretor can instruct a right flowing from our king , and that he is the fountain of property , as well as of justice . 2. in law , all who are ingag'd in a society , as to any thing that is the subject of the society , should contribute to its preservation ; and therefore the king having the dominium directum , and the vassal dominium ut ile ▪ it follows , that the vassals of the kingdom should contribute towards its preservation , and the king may expect justly an equal contribution towards the defraying the necessary expence , and thence it was , that by our old law , all heretors were obliged to furnish some unum militem , unum sagittarium , or equitem : some a bow-man , some a souldier , some a horse-man : but thereafter the king having changed these holdings , because all betwixt 60. and 16. were obliged to come to the field with 40. days provision , which was all that was then necessary ; it follows , that now that way of making war being altered , the subjects should contribute towards the way that is necessary for defending the kingdom . 3. the king by his forces protects our persons , and by his navies protects our commerce , by his ambassadors manages all our publick affairs , and by his officers , and judges , administrates justice to us : and so it is just that all this should be done on our expences , and that we should defray the publick expences of the government , and so much the rather , because by a special statute with us , it is declared that the king may impose what he pleases on all that is imported , or may discharge us to export any thing without which we could not live ; and what ever he gets from us , he distributes amongst us , without applying one shilling of it to his own private use . the king , or whoever has the management of the government , have in the opinion of lawyers , dominium eminens , a paramount and transcendent right over even private estates , in case of necessity , when the common interest cannot be otherwise maintained ; and this grotius , though no violent friend of monarchy , doth assert ve . ry positively and clearly ; and it cannot be denied that a king may take any mans lands , and build a garrison upon it , paying for it ; and that in case of a siege , the king may order whole suburbs to be burnt down for the security of the town : and whence is this power , save from that paramount and supereminent right that the king has over all private estates , for the good of the whole so. ciety and kingdom ? nor can it be denyed ▪ that the king may in time of war quarter freely ; and it is in his power to declare war , when , or where he pleases : nor do the former statutes oppose this , for they exclude not necessity that has no law , and is it self that law which gave david right to eat the shew-bread , and the christian emperours right to sell the goods of the church for maintaining their armies , with consent of the primitive fathers ; and this is so necessarily inherent in all administration , that the very master of a ship has power to throw over the goods of passengers and merchants in a storm , for the preservation of the ship : and they are not enemies to the king , but to themselves , who would deny the king this power . the third class of arguments that i am to use against these principles , shall be from reason , and experience in fortification and corroboration of our positive law , and the nature of our monarchy ; for since humane reason it self is lyable to so many errors ; and since men when they differ , are so wedded to their own sentiments , that few are so wise as to see their own mistakes , or so ingenuous as to confess them , when they see them : therefore prudence and necessity has obliged men to end all debates by making laws : and it is very great vanity and insolence in any private men , to ballance their own private sense against the publick laws ; that is to say , the authoritative sentiments , and the legal sense of the nation . if we were then to establish a new monarchy , were it not prudent and reasonable , for us to consider what were the first motives which induced our predecessors to a monarchy , and boethius and lesly both tell us , that least they might be distracted by obeying too many , it was therefore fit to submit to one , if then this reason was of force at first to make us submit to a monarchy , it should still prevail with us to obey that monarchy , and not gape idlely after every new model , ne multos reges sibi viderentur creare summam rerum aut optimatibus , aut ipsi multitudini permittere aspernabantur , sayes boethius , fol : 6. here the advantages of being governed by aristocracie , or democracie , were expresly considered and rejected ; so that we have our predecessors choice , founded on their way of reasoning , added to the authority of our law ; and after , we their successors , had seen the mischiefs arising from the pretences of liberty and property , with all the advantages that seeming devotion could add to these . our representatives , after two thousand years experience , and after a fresh idaea of a long civil war , wherein these arguments and reasons adduced by buchannan , were fortified and seconded by thousands of debates : they did by many passionate confessions , and positive laws acknowledge , that the present constitution of our monarchy . is most excellent , act 1. par : 1. ch : 2 d. that inevitable prejudices and miseries do accompany the invading the royal prerogative . act 4. that all the troubles and miseries they had suffered , had sprung from these invasions . act 11. that all the bondage they had groaned under , was occasioned by these distractions . act 2. par. sess : 2. ch. 2. so that we have here also a series of parliaments , attesting the reasonableness of the constitution of our monarchy , and his majesties prerogatives . 2. we must not conclude any thing unreasonable , or unfit , because there are some inconveniencies in it ; for all humane constitutions have their own defects . but i dare say , the principles of my adversaries have moe than mine ; for common-wealths are not only subject to erre , because they have their passions as well as king ; but they are subject to moe passions : for 1. these who govern in common-wealthes and aristocrasies , have rivals whom they fear , and against whom , upon that account , they bear revenge , which kings want . 2 , they are not so much concerned in these , they govern as kings ; the one considering the common interest , as a tennent does lands , of which he takes his present advantage , though he should destroy it ; the other caring for it as a proprietar does for his own ground ; the one jading it , as a man does a hired horse ; the other using it as a man does his own . 3. the people are ordinarly governed by these who are the worst of men ; for these ordinarly can flatter and cheat most , and can best use the hypocrites vizorn : whereas the best men ordinarly are abstemious , modest , and love a private life , and were there ever such villains as governed us in the last age ? and in this too , can we deny but our pretenders to liberty and property , are the cheats of the nation ? who , to be in employment , hate such as are in it , or are such as are discontented for being put out of it , or are bankrupts , who resolve to make up their broken fortunes by it . 4. even good men when they are raised to govern , grow insolent , of which princes are not capable , for they are still the same . 5. kings and princes know they will be charged with what they do ; but the multitude knows , that the publick in general , and not any one man will be blamed : and so every private man thinks himself secure , whilst he shifts it over on another ; or else lessens it , by dividing it amongst many . 6. they are very subject to factions , most men scorning to obey their fellow subjects ; and when they are in factions , who knows whom to obey ; and those factions will again subdivide in new ones , and so in infinitum ; and when either prevails , they spare none , because their opposits are enemies : but kings pity even rebels , remembring that they are their own . and i dare say , that moe were murthered and ruined in one year , of the last reforming age , than suffered by the great turk , the mogul , and the king of france in twenty years . and more severity was exercised in one year by these reformers , than by all this race of our kings ; these 600. years . 7. if it be said , that kings have ill ministers , so have common-wealths and we observ'd in scotland , that after we had taken from our king the prerogative of chusing judges and counsellours , our parliament did the next year , choose the greatest block-heads , and idiots in all the nation , whom the ring-leaders advanced , to the end they might govern all themselves ; to which cheat , kings cannot be lyable , it being their interest to have able ministers ▪ and whereas kings have no interest to prefer one to another : yet in popular governments , every one endeavours to prefer his own relations . 8. in difficult cases , haste and expedition requires , that one should be trusted : and even the romans behoved in great dangers , to imploy a dictator , who was accountable to no man for any thing he did . 9. there can be no secrecy in popular governments , as in monarchy , and what many must know , all may . 10. enemies may alwayes get some in popular governments to side with them , and upon specious pretexts , to retard all good designs ; and when popular men are debating for shadows , the occasion slips away irrecoverably . 11. either common-wealths imploy no extraordinary persons , being ever jealous : or if any man become such by great actions , or long experience , he is presently ruined . and it is observable in this age , that the great zobieskie durst never undertake any great thing since he became king of pole. and if we consider the severity of venice against their nobles , and their executing men , without citing or hearing them , and that upon meer jealousies . we must confess , that there is less liberty there , than under the worst of monarchies ; nor was ever any people so miserable as rome , during their republick , having been ruined in every age with civil wars , and having had no great man , who died not miserably , after many false and popular accusations , and did not de witt find little of that justice which he magnified in republicks . but whatever may be said against the inconveniencies arising from the passions , humours , and insolencies of the populace in common-wealths , yet much more may be said against the allowing that prerogative to them under a monarchy , for that were to distract for ever the government betwixt two contradictory supream powers , and make the people miserable in not knowing whom to obey when they differ , and to make government , which should defend against a civil war , become the cause of it ; for how can it be in reason expected , but that if the people know they can controle the king , ambitious , and discontented ring-lerders , or ignorant and bigote multitudes will be alwayes endeavouring to use this their prerogative , since it seems alwayes glorious , and oft times advantagious to oppose kings , whereas on the other hand kings cannot but be alwayes jealous of , and fear popular invasions , and both these powers shall like neighbouring princes , be alwayes endeavouring to gain advantages upon one another , and in these contests shall be spent all the time and pains that should be bestowed in resisting the common enemy , which cannot but very much lessen the love which princes ought to have for their people , and the respect which people ought to have for their prince , and how can it be imagined , but that in this case the people shall alwayes groan under greater misfortunes then these which they felt betwixt the bruce and the baliol , the king and queen ? pretended factions in the minority of k. iames 6. and the houses of lancaster and york , because the one can never end , being inherent in the nature of the government , whereas the other are but accidental and temporary , all which cannot but appear very probable , as well as dreadful to those who consider the late rebellion , wherein the people pretending that the king had violated their liberties , they murder'd and pillag'd all such as were not of their opinion , and after they had ruin'd their prince , the people divided and fought one against another , the greater part pretending they ought to be obeyed , because of their numbers , and the lesser pretending that they were the sounder part , and had the better cause , and it is impossible in such a case to find a judge of controversies . which is another unanswerable argument against the peoples supremacy , by which all they can gain is an endless liberty of ruining one another without hope of redress . nor can parliaments remedy this , for we have seen opposite parliaments sitting at the same time forfeiting one another , whilst the astonished multitude stood at a gaze , not knowing whom to obey , and praying that god would re-establish our lawful monarchy , with which , when it was miraculously restored , they were so overjoyed as men are when they are free'd from the gallies , in which they had been treated as slaves . and whereas these republicans pretend that the king is but a phisician , this shews that they design to have no king , for any man may lawfully change his phisician , and buchannans laying so much weight on this argument makes me suspect much his honesty , for no man can have so mean an opinion of his sense . and his comparing the monarch to a tutor is very extravagant , for no man is sworn to have such a mans heirs for tutors , but though he were a tutor , no man can remove his tutor at pleasure , as they say the people may remove their king. nor is a tutor to be laid aside but by an action before a superior judge , wherein he is to be proved to have malversed , and therefore since there is no superior judge except god , and that the people are not his superiors , it clearly follows that the people cannot lay aside their king. a tutor has not an inherent right of property as a king hath to the government of the nation , and to the imperial crown thereof , only i joyne so far with buchannan in these rhetorical expressions , that i really think the multitude is alwayes so mad that they need a king to be their physitian , and of so weak a judgement like mi. nors , that they need him for a tutor , and without his assistance and protection every hypocritical bigot , and ambitious usurper would cheat them at his pleasure , and make them not only a prey , but a tool in their own slavery . nor is there any force in that argument , the king was made for the people , and not the people for the king ; and therefore the people are nobler than the king , and ought to be preferred to him. for to this it is answered , that 1. the question here is not , who is more preferable , but who is the superiour ? and though one good christian be preferable to a thousand , who are not so , yet their interest in the common-wealth is not preferable ; the wiser part is still preferable to the greater part : and yet the greater will over-rule the wiser . a shepherd is ordained for the flock ; and yet it cannot be concluded , that a flock of brutes is to be preferred to any reasonable creature . 2. the kings interest and the peoples are inseparable in the construction of law , which presumes , that what the king does , he does for the people , and there is none above the king , that can judge him , if he does otherwise . 3. whether the kings power be derived from god , or from the people ? yet if it be derived from god , it is preferable , because of gods ordinance : or if from the people , it is preferable , because they , by electing him king , have consented that it should be so , and they having trusted him with the publick interest , the publick interest is still preferable . i know that buchannan and others , value themselves much upon the instance of the bruce and baliol , in which the people did declare , that they preferred the bruce , because the baliol had enslaved the kingdom to the english . and it is generally urged , that all lawyers are clear , that if a king alienat his kingdom , his people may disclaim him. but my answers are , that if a king will alienat his kingdom , the subjects are free in that case , not by their power to reassume their first liberty ; but because the king will not continue king , and they are free by his deed , but not by their own right . 2. even in that case , lawyers do irritat and annul the deed ; but dissolve not the contraveeners right . and as to that particular instance , it is well known that king robert the first , or the bruce , as we call him , was desirous that the parliament should threaten to choose another , if he submitted his interest to the popes decision , who pretended then to be the supream judge , over all kings . and iohn major , as many other popish writers were still enemies to the supremacy of kings upon that account . but though the bruce , to please the people , should have shunned to quarrel what they did in such a juncture ; yet that could not wrong the monarchy , nor his successors , as shall be proved . having thus cleared , that the kings power is not derived from the people , even though they had elected him , and that he is an absolute king , both by our laws , and the nature of our monarchy ; and that all this is most consistent with right reason . i come now to draw some conclusions from these principles . the first conclusion shall be , that our parliaments are not co-ordinat with our kings , in the legislative power ; but that the legislative and architectonick power of making laws ( as lawyers term it ) does solly reside in the king , the estates of parliament only consenting , which will furder appear by these reasons , 1. it cannot be denyed but we had kings long ere we had parliaments ( we never having had any parliaments till king kenneth the 3 ds . time , according to the computation of the severest re-publicans themselves ; for till then we read only of the proceres regni , or the nobility , or chiefs of clanes , and heads of families , who assembled upon all occasions , to give the king advice ) and therefore our parliaments cannot pretend that they were designed as a co-ordinate power with the king , whilst he did what was right ; much less to be his judge , when he did what was wrong . 2. that our kings made laws of old without any consent , and that these were acquiesced in by the people , is clear , not only from our histories , which do tell us , that such kings made such laws , without speaking any thing of either nobility , people or parliament , but even from our old books of statutes , wherein there is no mention made of the consent , of either the nobility or parliament : the laws at that time beginning simply , the kings statutes , as in all the statutes of king william , king alexander 2 d. and in the statutes of king malcolm canmore : king david the first , and king david the 2 d. where there is not so much as mention made of the nobility , or the parliament , in the very beginning of the statutes , and that at other times the nobility were only called , and that only the nobility did sit , is very clear from the inscriptions of these parliaments , such as in the parl. k. alexander 2 d. which bears , to have been made with the common consent of the nobility , cum communi consensu comitum suorum , without speaking of any other state. nor do i find a word of burgesses , till the parliament of k. robert the 3 d. in 1400. and even according to this late constitution , it is undenyable that the parliament have not even an equal power with the king , much less a power above him . 3. how can that judicature have a co-ordinat power with the king , when no man can sit in it but by a priviledge from the king : but so it is , that all that are members of parliament , sit there by a special priviledge from the king , and there is nothing considered to capacitate them to sit , but the force and energie of that priviledge , without respect , either to what land they possess , or what number of people they represent . and thus the nobility and bishops , sit there , by vertue of the kings creation ; and the king may creat a hundreth noblemen that morning that the parliament is to sit , though none of all the hundreth , have not one foot of land in scotland ; and though the barons must have some land , else they cannot represent any shire ; yet though a gentleman had 5000. pounds sterling a year , he could not sit there , except he be the kings immediate vassal , and holds his lands of his majesty in capite : so that he sits not by vertue of his land , but as capacitated by the king. and though these who represent the burrows royal are commissionated by the people of their burghs ; yet the people who sent them , are not considered in that commission , but the power only which the king gives them to send : for though a town had a hundreth thousand inhabitants , and another only twenty inhabitants : yet these 100000 could not be re-presented in parliament , except the king had erected their town in a burgh royal , from which i evince two things , 1. that the parliament is the kings council , in which he may call any he pleases , and not as the peoples representatives only , since there are great multitudes in the nation , represented by none there : for tho they represent their constituents in parliament , yet the power of sending representatives , is derived from the king originally , and flowes not from any proper right inherent in those whose representatives they are . 2. that judicature cannot have a co-ordinat power with the king , which he needs not call except he pleases , and which he can dissolve when he pleases : and in which , when they are met , he has a negative voice , which can stop all their proposals , and designs ; for , if they were co-ordinat with the king , then par in parem non habet imperium , and it is against common sense to think that these two can be equal , when the power of the one flows from the other ; by which is likewise clear that the great principle laid down by buchannan , viz. that the king is singulis major , universis minor , greater than any one , but less than the collective body of the parliament taken together , is absolutely false ; because he has a negative voice over that collective body , and as they cannot meet without him , so he can dissolve them when he pleases , and i confesse it seems to me unintelligible how they can be greater than the king , by vertue of a power which they derive from the king. 4. the parliament is called by the kings council , as is clear from the inscriptions of all our old parliaments . thus the statutes of alexander the 2. begin , alexander by the grace of god king of scots did by the common council of his earls decree , &c. the statutes of k. robert bear to be by the common council of his prelats , &c. the first statute of king robert 2. bears that none who is elected to be of the kings council shall bring another to it who is not elected . the 8 , and 13. parliaments of k. ia. 1. and the 2 , 3 , 4 , and 7. of k. ia. 2. bear for inscriptions , the parliament or general council of such kings . and the 1. act of that 8. parliament k. ia. 1. bears quo die dominus rex deliberatione & consensu totius concilij , &c. and it is against sense to think that any mans counsel can have authority over him , for as we say counsel is no command . 5. the parliament was but the kings baron court , as is very clear to any man who will read the old registers of parliament , in which he will see that the parliament was fenc'd , and the suits were called , and absents unlawed as in other baron courts , whereof many publick records are extant , and i shall only set down that of the 8. parliament ia. 1. the words of which inscription are , in parliamento octavo , vel concilio generali illustrissimi principis , iacobi dei gratia regis scotiaetento apud perth & inchoato tificato & approbato , tanquam sufficienter & debite praemunito , per tres regni status , duodecimo die mensis julij anno domini millesimo , quadringentesimo vicesimo , octavo , cum continuatione dierum & temporum , summoni●is & vocatis debito modo & more solito , episcopis , abbatibus , prioribus , comitibus , baronibus & omnibus libere tenentibus , qui tenent in capite , de dicto domino nostro rege & de quolibet burgo regni , certis burgensibus , comparentibus omnibus illis , qui debuerunt , voluerunt & potuerunt interesse , quibusdam vero absentibus , quorum quidam fuerunt legitime excusati , aliis per contumaciam se absentantibus , quorum nomina patent in rotulis sectarum , quorum quilibet adjudicatus fuit in amerciamento decem librarum ob ejus contumaciam . and that the king was judge what barons should come to the parliament , is most clear by the 75. act par. 14. ia. 2. whereby it is declared , no free-holder under the sum of 20. pounds , shall come except he be specially called by the king , either by his officer , or by writ , and tho afterwards the king allowed two barons of every shire to be sent to represent all the barons for saving expences , yet even after that concession it is declared by the 78. act par. 6. ia. 4. that no free-holder be compelled to come , but gif our soveraign lord writ specially for them . it being thus clear that the parliament is the kings baron court , it seems a wonder to me how it could have entered into the heart of any sober man to think that any mans baron court , but much lesse the kings baron court , should have power and jurisdiction over him , and that it should be lawful to them , as buchannan and these other authors assert , to punish him or lay him aside , all which assertions are equally impious and illegal . 6. when the king resolves to lessen any way his own power , this is not done by the authority of the three estates , as certainly it would be , if they had the power to lessen his authority , but the king does the same from his own proper motive , as when the king binds up his own hands from granting remissions in cases of fore-thought fellony , ia. 4. par. 6. act 63. and when an act was to be made , discharging the lords of the session to admit of privat writings from the king to stop the procedure of justice , this is not enacted by the three estates but only by the king , and is founded upon the kings own promise , act 92. par. 6. ia. 6. and in all acts of parliament the king only statutes as legislator , and the parliament only advise and consent , which shews that they are not co-ordinat with the king , as is asserted by buchannan and others , much lesse above him . and the acts of parliament in the late rebellion having run thus , our soveraign lord , and the three estates contrare to the tenor of all the laws that ever were made in scotland . the parliament returning to their duty , ordained that style to be altered , and to bear as formerly , our soveraign lord , with advice and consent , &c. but lastly , what advantage can the people have by placing their security in the parliament , since they are so lyable to passions , errors , and extravagancies , as well as kings are , and have , if buchannan be believed , betrayed the interest of the kingdom , since k. kenneth the seconds time , now above 700. years ; and they are ordinarily led by some pragmatical ring-leaders , who have not that interest to preserve the kingdom that kings have : and since the king may make so many noble-men and burghs royal at pleasure , by whose votes he may still prevail . what security can we have by giving them a power above the king , or how can they have it ? from all which it may clearly appear that we have had kings long ere we had parliaments , and that the parliaments derive their power from the king ; and that at first our king only called the heads of families , and his own officers , as his council , with whom he consulted , without any necessity to call any others than he pleased , there being no law , article , nor capitulation obliging him from the beginning thereto : and our kings were so far from having parliaments associated with them in their empire , that there is no mention at all of them , or of any condition relating to them in the first institution of our kings above-related ; nor were there any parliaments in beeing at that time . but after the feudal law came to be in vigor , then our kings looking upon the whole kingdom as their own in property ; king malcolme canmore did distribute all the land of scotland amongst his subjects , as his liedge-men , which is clear by the first chapter of his laws ; and according to the feudal law , all the vassals of our kings compeared in their head-court , and therein consulted what was fit for the kingdom ; but thereafter the way of making war , requiring money and property belonging to the subject , as government did to the king , it was necessary to have their consent for raising money : and from this did arise the inserting the advice and consent of the three estates in our acts of parliament . from this also it is very clear that their opinion is very unsolid and ill founded , who think that kings can do nothing without a special act of parliament , even in matters of government . as for instance , that , he cannot restrain the licence of the press , or require his subjects to take a bond for securing the peace ; for these and the like being things which relate immediatly to government , the king has as much right to regulate these , as we have to regulate and dispose upon our property , government being the king's property . 2. though the monarchy had been derived from the people , yet how soon our kings got the monarchy , they got every thing that was necessary for the explication and administration of it , which as it is common sense and reason , so it is founded upon that most wise and just maxime in law , quando aliquid conceditur , omnia concessa videntur , sine quibus concessum explicari nequit . 3. i desire to know where there is yet a law giving the king a negative voice , a power of erecting incorporations , or a power to grant remissions , for crimes , or protections for civil debts , and yet the people is far more concerned in these ; and the king 's having power to do these , and a thousand other things , doth rather oblige and warrand me to lay down a general rule , that the kings of scotland can do every thing that relates to government , and is necessary for the administration thereof , though there be no special law or act of parliament for it , if the same be not contrary to the law of god , nature , or nations . the second conclusion that we draw from these former principles , is , that princes cannot be punished by their own subjects , as buchannan and our republicans do assert , which is most clear by the former laws , wherein it is declared , that the king is a soveraign and absolute prince , and deriving his power from god almighty . that it is treason to endeavour to depose , or suspend the king. wherein our law is founded on the nature of monarchy ; for if he be supream , he cannot be judg'd , for no man is judg'd but by his superior , and that which is supream can have no superior : and on the principles of the law of nature and nations , because saith the law , no man can be both the person who judgeth , and the person judg'd ; and it is still the king who judgeth , since all other judges do represent him , and derive their power from him , ipse se prator cogere non potest , quia triplici officio fungi nequit suspectum dicentis , & coac●● , & cogentis l. ille a●quo ff . ad trebell . it is a principle in all law , that jurisdiction and all other mandats cease with the power that granted it , and therefore as they acknowledge that a king cannot be cited till he have forfeited his just right , so how soon he has forfeited it , all the power of the ordinary judges in the nation falls , and becomes extinct , and no other judge can judge him , because no other judge can sit by vertue of any other authority , till it be known that he has forfeited his , and that cannot be till the event of the process ; and if the people be judges , yet they cannot assume the government till the king has forfeited it : and why also should they be judges , who have neither knowledge nor moderation , who are acted by humor , and delight in insolence ? and how shall they meet ? or who shall call them ? nor can the parliament judge them , because they derive their right from the king , as shall be prov'd : and though they were equal , yet no equal can judge another , par in parem non habet imperium , nemo sibi imperare potest . no man can command himself , l. si de re sua , ff . derecept . ●rbitr . nemo sibi legem imponere potest , l. quid autem ff . de donat . inter virum & uxorem , and therefore the civil law , which is ours by adoption , does positively assert , that princeps legibus solutus est , the king is liable to no law , l. princeps , ff . de legibus : for though he be lyable to the directive force of the law , that is to say , he ought to be governed by it as his director : yet he is not lyable to the co-ercive force of the law , as all lawyers that are indifferent do assert , h●rmenopol ▪ l. 1. tit . 1. sect. 48. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the king is not subject to the law , because offending against them , he is not punisht , vid : granswinkell . cap. 6. arnis . cap. 4. francisc. a victoria relect. 3. num 4. ziegler . de jur . majes . cap. 1. num . 12. with whom the fathers also agree , ambros. in apol. david cap. 4. liberi sunt reges a vin●ulis delictorum neque enim ullis ad poenam vocantur legibus , tuti imperij potestate isiodorus 3. sent . cap. 31. populi peccantes iudicem me●●u●t , reges autem solo . dei timore , metuque g●hennae coercentur : and in this sense , they take these words , psal. 51. — against thee , thee only have i sinned ; and i was glad to find in bishop vshers power of prin●es , amongst many other citations , that the rabbies , and particularly rabbi ieremiah own●d that no creature may judge the king , but the holy and bless●d god alone , in which also heathens agree with jews and christians , ecphantas the pithagorean makes it the priviledge of god , and then of the king , to be judg'd by none , stobeus sermon . 46. and dion in marco aurelio tells us , that it is certain , that free monarchs cannot be judg'd , save by god alone , and if it were otherwise , we should see them very unsecure , for the ambition and avarice of insolent subjects should never or seldom miss to form their process , and why should parties be judges ? but to demonstrate the justice kings and princes are to expect from the populace and mobile , let us remember their material justice , in the usage of our saviour , when they cryed , crucifie him , crucifie him ; their sentence against king charles the martyre , when they were at the hight of their pretensions to pietie , and publick spiritedness ; their usage of de witt , the idolizer of them , and their common-wealth : and if we want a true idea of their form of process , we will find it in their usage of the arch-bishop of st. andrews and others , no l●bel , no citation , no defenses , no sentences , no time to prepare to die : and yet all this are the dictates of pure and devout publick spiritedness . buchannans bloody arguments for this position are , that tyrants have been murthered with applause , and princes would become licentious , if they were not restrained , by the just fear of being called to an account : that the roman and venetian magistrates have been punish'd by the people , and that the ordinary judges of the place have judg'd them : and that some of our kings , as well as these of other nations , have been punish'd as tyrants . to which i answer shortly , that inconveniencies must not prevail with us to break our oathes , and overturn our laws , for nothing has so great inconveniencie in it , as this has , these being but partial , and this is a total inconveniency . and the english lawyers agree , that a mischief is better than an inconvenience , and this should have been considered , before we swore to monarchy : and if the people were electors , as they never were ; yet they should have reserv'd this power , or else they cannot now challenge it . but though our law were not clear , as it is most uncontroverted upon this point : yet right reason should perswade us to have reserv'd no such power : for as kings may erre , so may the judges who are to try them : and it is more probable their tryers will , because they may be acted by revenge , ambition , or popularity ; and there is nothing so lyable to erre as the populace . the romans and venetians might have punish'd their magistrates , because these magistrates were not vested with a supream power ; nor were they soveraigns as our monarchs are . and those judges who try'd them , deriv'd not their power from those magistrates who try'd them , as our judges do ; for the same consent , and compact by which they were made the chief , the others were made also magistrates , which cannot be said of absolute monarchs , who derive not their power from the people as these do , and the instances of kings who have been murder'd , are crimes in them , who did commit them , and so should not be rules to us . and generally the best of kings have been worst us'd . but who can escape by innocence , when king charles the martyre fell by malice : such also as cry up the murtherers of tyrants ▪ who had no just right , never meant to allow the arraignment of lawful monarchs , who , when they erre , have god only for their judge ; and if they fear not him , and eternal punishment , they will not probably fear mortal men , and their own subjects whom they can many wayes escape . 2. there is no creature so unreasonable , but he will use his own with discretion , though there be no law obliging him to it , nor punishment to be inflict'd , if he do otherwayes : who burns his own house , or drowns his lands , though he may do it ? for the law considers , that a king is either mad , and if so , he will respect no law , and should not be punisht , at least he will not stand in awe for fear of it , or else he is of a sound judgment , and then he needs no law ; and therefore , why should we apprehend that a king will destroy his own kingdom . 3. a king is also obliged by his fame , to do things worthy of his high trust , and things able to abide that conspicuous hight to which he is expos'd . 4. though his people ought not to rebel , yet no thinking man can be sure that they will not . and therefore even the greatest tyrants fear such accidents , though they know they are not bound by these laws , that tye subjects . and if all these fail , yet we must reverence gods dispensations , and expect a redress of these unusual emergents from his divine goodness , for whose sake we suffer them ; rather then expose all to ruine , by endeavouring a revenge , that may be so unjust , in the preparative , and dangerous in the event . the 3. conclusion which i shall draw from the former principles , shall be , that as it is not lawful for subjects to punish their kings , so neither is it to rise in arms against them upon what pretext soever , no not to defend their liberty nor religion . which conclusion also i shall endeavour to establish on sure foundations of positive law. reason , experience , and scripture . as to our positive law , it is clear , for by the 3. act par. 1. ia. 1. it is declar'd rebellion to rise in arms against the kings person : and by the 14. act 6. par. k. ia. 2. it is treason to rebel against the kings person or authority : by the 25. act par. 6. ia. 2. it is treason to rise in fear of war against the kings person or his majesty , or to lay hands upon his person violently , whatever age they be of , or to help or supply these who commit treason . by the 131 act 8 , par. ia. 6. all the subjects are discharged to convocat for holding of councils or other assemblies without his majesties expresse warrand ; and by the 12. act 10. par. k. ia. 6. the entering into leagues or bonds without his majesties special command is declared to be sedition . all which acts are prior to buchannans time , and consequently he was very inexcuseable in advancing this rebellious principle . and these laws having excepted no case , exclude all cases and pretexts of rising in arms against the lawful monarch ; but our unhappy countrey-men having by a long and open rebellion oppos'd the most devout , and most just of all kings upon the false pretexts of liberty , and religion , the parliament of this kingdom , from a full conviction of the villanies of these times , and to prevent such dangerous cheats for the future , they did by the 5. act , par. 1. char. 2. declare it to be treason for any number of his majesties subjects to rise in arms upon any pretext whatsoever , and to shew that all such glosses as were us'd by buchannan were absurd , and did not evacuat the first laws , though general , the parliament did by the 4. act of that 1. parliament declare that any explanation or glosse , that during the late troubles hath been put upon these acts , as that they are not to be extended against any leagues , councils , conventions , assemblies , or meetings , made , holden , or kep't by the subjects , for preservation of the kings majesty , the religion , laws , and liberties of the kingdom , or for the publick good either of kirk or kingdom , are false and disloyal , and contrare to the true and genuine meaning of these acts. which statute is a clear decision against buchannan , finding that the statutes that were prior to his time , and all other such general statutes made in favours of the king , did formerly strike against his principles and distinctions . as also to preclude all avenues to rebellion by teaching , defending , or encouraging others to rebel upon these pretexts , as the former act declared , that actual rising in arms was rebellion . so by the 2. act sess. 2. par. 2. charles 2. it is declared treason for any subject to maintain these positions , viz. that it is lawful for subjects upon pretence of reformation , or any other pretence whatsoever , to enter into leagues , or covenants , or to take up arms against the king , or any commissionated by him . 2. all the arguments formerly adduc'd against the power of the subject to punish his person , do fully prove likewise that they have no power to rise in arms against him . for either the collective body of the subjects are superior to him , and if so , they may not only rise up in arms against him , but they may punish him ; but if the king be superior to them , as has been formerly prov'd , then it cannot be lawful for subjects to rise up in arms against him , no more than it is to punish his person . nor can i see how all such as declare for a defensive war , are not to be concluded guilty of designing to murther the king , for if the king come in person to defend his own right , as certainly he will , and must ; can it be thought they will shoot at none , least they kill him ? and if they shoot , how can they secure his sacred person ? and if they kill him in the field , are they less guilty of his murther , than these russians who lately design'd it ? or doth it lessen the guilt that these design'd to kill him alone privately ? whereas our moderate men will in face of the sun , and with display'd banners against god and him , kill with him all such , as being perswaded that they are obliged before god to assist him , expose their lives for their duty . 3. that dangerous , though specious principle of defensive arms , is inconsistent with that order of nature which god has established , and which is absolutely necessar amongst all other humane relations ; and by the same analogy , by which we allow subjects to rise against their prince , we may much more allow children to rise against their parents , servants , against their masters , souldiers against their officers , and the rabble against their magistrates : for the king does eminently comprehend all these relations in his soveraignty , as inferiour branches of that paramount , and monarchical power . and what a glorious state should mankind be left in , if anarchy were thus established , and every man should be invested with power to be his own judge ? or dares any reasonable man assert , that this is fit to be allowed in the present condition of mankind , for since the generality of men can scarce be contained in their duty by the severest laws that can be made , what can be expected from them , when they are loosed from all law , and are encouraged to transgress against it ? if the multitude could prove that they were infallible , and that no oppression could be expected from them , some thing might be said , why we might ballance them with authority . but since both reason and dolefull experience , teach us , that generally the multitude consists of knaves and fools , who alter not to the better by conspiring together , nor become juster , for being led by such ambitious , and discontented spirits , as ordinarly lead on rebellions . it is safer to obey those of the two fallible governours , whom god hath set over us , and whom the law tyes us to obey , and to whom also we are bound by the oath of allegiance ; especially , seing thus we may probably expect , that they will be more careful of us , as being their own , than meer strangers , who use us only for their own ends. and at the worst in the king , we can have but an ill master , whereas in allowing subjects to usurp , we may fight to get our selves hundreds of tyrants , and these two fighting against one another , so that we shall not even know which of these devils to obey . the arguments that can be adduc'd to justifie this principle of defensive arms , are almost answered in the former article , viz. that there is a mutual obligation betwixt king and people , so that when he breaks the one , they are free from the other , and that all government is establisht for the advantage of the people , and thus these few arguments peculiar to this point , remain now only to be here solv'd . 1. that self-defence is by the law of nature allow'd to all , and even to brutes ▪ why then should men who may lose more , who deserve better , and can use self-defense more innocently be debar'd from it ? 2. we see in scripture , that the people deserted and oppos'd their kings for religion . 3. this has been allow'd with us in the instance of king iames the third , against whom his subjects rose in rebellion , for mis-governing and oppressing his people , and this opposition , was first justified by god , in the success he gave to their arms , and thereafter by a special and express act in the ensuing parliament , which stands yet unrepeal'd . to which i shortly answer , that as to the first of self-defense in brutes , we must still remember , that god having design'd government to bridle the extravagancies of restless mankind , he has appointed magistrates to be his vicegerents and representatives , and has entrusted them with his power , and so opposition to them is unlawful , because it is not lawful against him ; and because if it were allow'd , all would pretend to it , and so there should be no order , nor government . and that this may be the better observ'd , god has endowed man with principles fitted for these ends of order and society , amongst which , one is , that the publick safety of the whole is to be preferr'd to the safety of any one man , or of any number of private men , who are not to be considered as the publick , because that is the publick interest , which is the representative of the nation , and that this principle may be the better obey'd , he has commanded men to suffer injuries , rather than occasion disorders , and has promised to reward patience and submission for his sake , with eternal life , a nobler prize , than we here can contend for . this being then premis'd , it is answered , that though brutes may defend themselves , because order and the common good of societies are not there concern'd ; yet there is no reason to extend this to men , whose self-defense against authority occasions more mischief , than it can bring advantage : and if this argument hold , it would prove , that every man who is unjustly condemn'd , or at least thinks so , may kill the king , or his judge ; servants might bind their masters , and the people of any private town might pull down their judge from the bench , when they thought he opprest them . and as these must submit , because they expect reparation from a higher tribunal . so god has promised reparation to those who suffer for his sake ; and the greatness and sureness of this reward , makes this no uncomfortable doctrine , and this submission is as necessary , and rather more , for mens preservation , than resistance ; and is a kind of self-defence , since opposition to authority would bring a certain ruine , and confusion , in which moe would perish , than opposition by private self defence would preserve . upon which christian principles also , ames . a protestant and calvinist divine has resolv'd that , in bonis temporalibus tenetur quisque personam publicam si●i ipsi praeferre , bonum enim totius pluris faciendum est quam bonum alicujus partis cas : conscient : l. 5. cap. 7. thes· 14. and lex rex confesses , p. 335. that a private man should rather suffer the king to kill him , than that he should kill the king , because he is not to prefer the life of a private man , to the life of a publick man. and whereas it may be pretended , that though this opposition should not be trusted to any private man , yet parliaments and the collective body should , and may be trusted with it . but to this i have answered formerly , that all convocations without authority from the king , and all rising against him are indefinitely declared unlawful , and justly , for whoever wants authority , is but in a private capacity , none having a publick capacity , save the magistrates . and if they be allow'd to rise , because their quarrel is just , it must be as just to allow a lesser number , if they have the same justice in their pretexts , and we have frequently seen , that the same persons who magnified the multitude for their numbers , did shortly thereafter divide from them , pretending that they were the sanior pars , or juster party . 4. this position is against the very nature , not only of monarchy , but of all governmments ; for who will obey when they may resist ? and who can be judges whether the pretences upon which arms are taken , be lawful , or not ? and therefore since it is unlawful for subjects to take up even defensive arms , until it be found that the king against whom these defensive arms are taken up be a tyrant , and an oppressor : it clearly follows , that these subjects must first have a power to judge and find that the king has erred , which is to declare the people to be judges of their king ; and we may be soon convinced that this principle is against the nature of all government , if we consider that if it were lawful for subjects with us to rise against the king , it should be lawful for these in a common-wealth , or aristocracy , to rise against their governors , since these may erre as well as kings do ; and if this were allowed , all nations should alwayes have one rebellion rising out of the ashes of another , for only they who prevail'd should be satisfi'd , and all the rest would certainly conclude that they might more justly oppose these usurpers , one or moe , then the first did oppose their lawful prince ; and thus government which is design'd for the security of the state , should run in a circle fixt upon no certain basis , and determined by no sure measures . 5. this principle is dangerous for the subjects , as well as for the king and other governors ; for if kings be perswaded that subjects think this opposition lawful , then they will be still jealous of them , and will be necessitated on all occasions to secure against such oppositions , and so this doctrine tends more to make our king a tyrant , than to make us free . and if the difference betwixt king and people , should draw both to arms , where can we find a judge , to whom both parties will submit ? so that to allow this power in the people to debate , is to allow a difference that can never end ; and so what innocent man shall be able to know whom he may securely follow ? and the best issue that could be expected from these debates , would be , that the one half of the nation should ruine the other : so comfortable and just is this rebellious doctrine . 6. if we consult either our own experience , or history , we will find that these pretexts of liberty , and religion , have alwayes been used by those who loved neither , and that they have been ordinarily used against the best of kings , and so prove to be meer cheats upon their parts who use them , and absolute villanies , if we consider against whom they are used ; and it cannot be otherwayes , for the worst of men are alwayes readiest to take arms , and the best of kings are most inclined to suffer insolence to grow up by degrees to rebellion : and as few or none ever took up arms against their king , in whom even the dullest did not see other motives than a love to liberty and religion , so when they who did take up arms upon these pretexts , did succeed in their attempts , they became themselves greater grievances to the people , than these lawful powers against whom they pretended to protect them : and when others rose against them upon the same pretexts , they did in the severest manner declare that to be rebellion in others , which they contended to be lawful in themselves . 7. so dangerous is this principle , that it has been alway●s us'd as a tool to promote contrary designs , and to serve the worst of men in all the opposite sides . and thus we see that the bigot papists have by it overturn'd thrones , and disinherited and murdered kings . in which the most impious of their doctors have been admir'd and follow'd by the rigid phanaticks , who did notwithstanding teach , that all papists were to be extirpated , and unquiet spirits in the establish'd republicks of rome , venice , and florence , have by this principle endeavour'd to overturn and disquiet as much their own common-wealths , as our republicans have impiously endeavour'd to destroy just monarchy , thereby to settle an usurping common-wealth . 8. the only pretext that can justifie the rising up in arms , being , that it is lawful to all creatures to defend themselves ; the pretext must be dangerous , since its limits are uncertain : for how can defensive arms be distinguished from offensive arms ? or , whoever begun at the one , who did not proceed to the other ? or , what subject did ever think himself secure after he had drawn his sword against his king , without endeavouring to cut off by it that king against whom he had drawn it ? the hope of absolute power is too sweet , and the fear of punishment too great , to be bounded , and march'd by the best of men : and how can we expect this moderation from these who at first wanted patience to bear the lawful yoke of government , but because examples convince as much as reason , let us remember how when this nation was very happy in the year , 1638. under the government of a most pious and just prince , born in our own kingdom , we rais'd an army , and with it invaded his kingdom of england , upon the pretext that he was govern'd by wicked counsellors , and design'd to introduce popery ; and this was justified as a defensive war , by a long tract of general assemblies , and parliaments : and if this be a defensive war that is justifiable , what king can be secure ? or , wherein shall we seek security against civil wars ? or what can be more ridiculous than to pretend the invading kingdoms , murthering such as are commissionated by the king , after that invasion , entering into leagues and covenants against him , both at home and abroad , the robbing him of his navies and militia , and denying him the power to choose his own counsellors and judges , are meerly defensive ; but god almighty , to teach us how dangerous these defensive arms are , and how impossible it is to regulat lawless violence , how gentle and easie soever the first beginnings are , suffered our war , which was so much justified for being meerly defensive , to end in the absolute overthrow of the monarchy , and the taking away the life of the best of kings ; and it is very remarkable , that such as have begun with the doctrine of giving only passive obedience in all things , as in refusing to pay just taxes , to concur in securing rebels , &c. have from that stept up to defensive arms , and from that to the power of reforming by the sword , and from that to the power of dethroning and murthering kings by parliaments , and judicatures , and from that to the murthering and assassinating all who differ'd from them , without any other pretext or formality whatsoever , so hard a thing it is to stop when we begin once to fall from our duty : and so easie a thing it is to perswade such as have allowed themselves in the first degrees of guilt , to proceed to the highest extravagancies of villanie . oh! what a blindness there is in error ? and how palpably doth god desert them , who desert their duty ; suffering them after they have done what they should have abhorred , to proceed to do what they first abhorred really ? to these i must recommend the history of hazael , who , when the prophet foretold him , 2 king. 8.12 , 13. that he should slay their young men with the sword , dash their children , and rip up their women with child , answered him , am i a dog , that i should do such things ; and yet he really did what he had so execrated . the moderation likewayes of these modest pretenders to self-defence , and defensive arms , will appear , by the bloody doctrine of their great rabbies , buchannan not only allows but invites subjects to murder their king. and lex rex , pag. 313. tells us , that it is a sin against gods command to be passively subject to an unjust sentence , and that it is an act of grace and virtue to resist the magistrate violently , when he does him wrong : and after that horrid civil war was ended , the author of naphtali doth justifie it , pag. 16 , and 17. in these words , combinations for assistance in violent opposition of the magistrates , when the ends of government are perverted ( which must be referr'd to the discretion of them who minds insurrection ) are necessary by the law of nature , of charity , and in order to gods glory , and for violation of this duty of delivering the oppressed from magistrates , judgement comes upon people . from which he proceeds , pag. 18 , and 19. to assert that , not only the power of self-defence , but vindicative , and reforming power is in any part of the people , against the whole , and against all magistrates , and if they use it not , judgment comes on ( supposing their capacity probable to bear them forth ) and they shall be punish'd for their connivance , and not acting in way of vindication of crimes , and reforming abuses . before i enter upon these arguments , which the scripture furnishes us with against these rebellious principles ; i must crave leave to say , that defensive arms seem to me very clearly inconsistent with that mortification , submission , and patience , which is recommended by our blessed saviour , in all the strain of the new testament ; and how will these people give their coat to a stranger , or hold up their other cheek to him , when they will rise even in rebellion against their native prince . 2. as the taking up of arms is inconsistent with the temper requir'd in a christian ; so it seems a very unsuitable mean for effectuating the end , for which it is design'd , since religion being a conviction of what we owe to god , how can that be commanded , which should be perswaded ? and how can arms become arguments ? or how can external force influence immaterial substances , such as are the souls of men. and we may as well think to awake a mans conscience by drums , or to perswade his judgment by musquets ; and therefore the apostle speaks only of spiritual arms , in this our spiritual warfare , the sword of the spirit , and the helmet of salvation , &c. but good god , how could the extravagancy of forcing the magistrate by arms , in defense of religion , enter into mens heads ? when it is unlawful even for the magistrate himself , to force religion by arms. and as subjects should not be by the king forced to religion ; so if they use force against the king , the pretext of religion , tho specious , should not defend them . and therefore when the sons of zebedee desired fire from heaven , upon these who oppos'd even our saviour , he told them , that they knew not what spirit they were of . 3. it seems very derogatory to the power of almighty god , that he should need humane assistance , and it is a lessening of the great esteem that we ought to have for the energy , force and reasonablenesse of the christian religion , that it needs to be forc'd upon men by arms , as if it were not able to force its own way . this mahomet needed for his cheats , but our blessed saviour needs not for his divine precepts , and therefore when peter offered to fight for him , our saviour check't him , commanding him to put up his sword , and to perswade him the more effectually , he assures him , that all these who take the sword , shall perish by it , and that his kingdom was not of this world , and so he needed no such worldly help , but if he pleas'd to call for legions of angels , his omnipotent father would send them , and sure angels are fitter and abler instruments to carry on such a work of reformation , than rebellious regiments of horse and dragoons . which divine argument serves also to refute the atheistical doctrine of buchannan , and owen , who would perswade us , that our saviour did only recommend to his disciples to flee from one city to another , when they were persecuted , because they then wanted power to resist . for tho they did want , yet our saviour could have , by legions of angels , defeated all the powers upon earth : and tertullian in his apology for the christians , insists on their patient suffering under persecution , tho their number were sufficient to have resisted . 4. our blessed saviour foreseeing that mans corruption would in spight of christianity , prompt him to resist ; he therefore did command by the apostle paul , rom. 13. v. 1 , and 2. let every soul be subject to the higher power for there is no power but of god ; the powers that be are ordained of god , whosoever therefore resisteth the power , resisteth the ordinance of god : and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation . in which text , it is very remarkable that the apostle urges this christian duty of submission , as being a mark of mans immediat dependance upon god , and as that , which when contemned brings eternal damnation . and whereas it is pretended that this text commands only submission to magistrats , whilst they act piously , and vertuously , because only in so far they are gods vicegerents , but discharges not resistence to their impious commands . it is answered that the text has no such limitation , and we must have so much respect to the scripture , as to think that if god almighty had design'd to allow such an opposition , he would have warranted it , in as clear terms , as he commanded the submission , and the reason why this submission is commanded , is not because the power is rightly us'd , but because the power is ordained of god. and we see that st. paul himself did think that the power should be reverenc'd , even when abus'd : for when the high priest was injuring him , he acknowledged that he was obliged not to speak evil of the rulers of his people , acts 23.2 . and if this place of scripture , and the submission therein commanded , were so to be limited , we behoved likewise so to limit the 5. commandment , and not to honour our parents , except when they are pious , nor to obey them , if they vex or trouble us ; and st. paul having written this epistle to those , who were then living under that monstruous emperour caius , did clearly design , that the christian religion was to be admired for commanding subjects , not only to obey good princes , but even submitting peaceably to tyrants . and suitable to this doctrine are these texts , heb. ch . 12. v , 9. we had fathers of our flesh , who corrected , and chastened us , after their own pleasure , and we gave them reverence ; and lest we might think that text rather a narration than a command , it is told us peter 2. v. 18. servants be subject to your masters with all fear , not only to the good and gentle , but also to the froward , for this is thanks-worthy , if a man for conscience toward god do endure grief and v. 20. if when ye do well , and suffer for it , ye take it patiently , this is acceptable to god , for even hereunto were ye called . our blessed saviours practice , did likewise agree most admirably with his precepts and doctrine formerly insisted on , for though no man ever was , or can be so much injur'd as his blessed self , nor could ever any defensive arms have been so just , as in his quarrel , yet he would not suffer a sword to be drawn in it , and to discourage all christians from using arms , he told these who were offering to defend even himself with arms , that whosoever should draw the sword , should perish by it , and it seems that god almighty permitted peter to draw his sword at that time meerly , that we might upon that occasion be for ever deterr'd from defensive arms , by this our saviours divine example and reasoning . the last argument i shall adduce , shall be from that most christian topick us'd by st. paul , rom. 3.8 . we should not do ill that good may come of it . and therefore since disobedience to magistrats , but much more to rebel against them , is discharg'd both by the laws of god and men : this disobedience and opposition , cannot be justifi'd by pretending that it is design'd for reforming the nation . and if it be answer'd , that this opposition is not in it self ill , because the design justifies it . it is to this reply'd , that if this answer be sufficient , then the former excellent rule is of no use : for when a servant steals his masters money to give to the poor ; or a son cuts his fathers throat , ecause he is vitious ; or when iacques clement stabed henry the 3. and ravilleck henry the 4. they might have alleadg'd the same in their own defence . nor know we a surer proof that any thing is impious , or unlawful , then when the laws of our nation have discharg'd it as a great crime , they being against and contrare to no positive law of god ; but rather suitable to the same ; and own'd as such by christian synods and divines : and there being no necessity to inforce this going out of the road. all which holds in this case , nor can it be imagin'd , how reforming by arms , can be thought necessary , since god both can without a miracle , turn the hearts of kings , in whose hands they are , as rivers of waters . and can send devout men to influence kingdoms . and should not we rather suffer patiently as the primitive christians did , that his divine majesty may be by our patience prevail'd upon , to reform us now , as he did of old our predecessors from paganism ; by our own kings , in a regular way than upon every notion of bigot and factious ring-leaders overturn all government , and order , rent all unity , and involve our native countrey in blood and confusion . and whilst we are fighting for the throne of religion , lose the true efficacy of piety , and devotion , for what use can there be of patience , humility , faith , and hope . if we will presently repair our selves , submit to no magistracy that differs from us , and believe that religion cannot subsist except by us . the fathers also of the primitive church have inculcated so much this doctrine every where , both by their doctrine and practice , and both these are so fully known , that i shall remit this point to these learn'd men who have fully handled it . only i must remember that excellent passage of st. ambrose , who being commanded to deliver up his church to the arians , sayes , volens nunquam deferâm , coactus repugnare non novi ; dolere potero , flere potero , gem●re potero ; adversus arma milites gothos , lachrymae me● , mea arma sunt , talia enim sunt munimenta sacerdotis ; aliter nec debeo nec possum resistere . which prayers and tears are likewise call'd the only arms of the church by the great nazianz : in his first oration against iulian , and by st. bernard in his 221. epistle . but more of this is to be found , tom. 2. concil . galliae pag. 533. where it is fully prov'd that all subjects ought humbly and faithfully to obey the regal power , as being ordained by none but god , with whom the wise heathens agree , for marcellus ( tacit. lib. 4. hist. ) pray'd for good princes , but obey'd bad ones ; and plinij in his panegirick to trojan , confesses that the gods had bestow'd on the emperor the sole disposal of all things leaving nothing to subjects , save the honour of obedience ▪ but because these of that perswasion will believe better calvin than the fathers , i have taken pains to consider in him these few passages , cap. 20. lib 4. institut . § . 27. assumptum in regiam maj●statem violare nefas est nunquam nobis seditiosae istae cogitationes in mentem veniant tractandum , esse pro meritis regem , § . 29. personam sustinent voluntale domini , cui inviolabile in majestatem ipso impressit , & insculpsit , § . 31. privatis hominibus nullum aliud quam parendi , & patiendi datum est mandatum . and all this chapter doth so learnedly and judicially impugn this doctrine , that it is a wonder why calvinists should differ from calvin . the examples adduced by our republicans , of the revolt of libra , 2 chron. 1.21 . and from ieroboam , because he had forsaken the lord god of his fathers , and of the ten tribes from rehoboam , because of rehoboam his oppression , 1 king. 12. prove not all the lawfulness of the subjects defection from their kings , because these defections are only narrated , but not allow●d in scripture , and are recorded rather as instances of gods vengeance upon the wickedness of these princes , than as examples justified in these revolters , and to be follow'd by such as read the sacred history : in which , when examples are propos'd by the spirit of god for our imitation , they are still honour'd with the divine approbation . and i hope my readers will still remember , that i design not by this treatise to encourage princes to wickedness by impunity , but only to discourage subjects from daring to be the punishers . the great esteem which the great bishop vsher has justly , even among republicans , and phanaticks , for learning and devotion , has prevail'd with me , to set down two objections used by him , with his pious answers thereto . the first is , suppose ( say they ) the king , or civil magistrate should command us to worship the devil , would you wish us here to lay down our heads upon the block , and not to repel the violence of such a miscreant , to the outmost of our power : and if not , what would become of gods church , and his religion . to which the holy man answers , that even when the worship of the devil was commanded by the cruel edicts of persecuting emperours , the christians never took up arms against them , but used fervent prayers , as their only refuge : and st. peter animats them to this patient suffering , 1 pet. 4.12 , 13. beloved , think it not strange concerning the fiery trial , but rejoice in as much as ye are partakers of christs sufferings . but let none of you suffer as a murtherer , or a thief , or as an evil-doer , or as a busie body in other mens matters . by which last words , if i durst add to so great an author as b. vsher , the apostle seems expresly to me to have obviated the dreadful doctrine of rising in arms upon the pretext of religion , and the killing such as differ from them ; which if the christians did allow , they behov'd to pass for murtherers , and to discharge them to meddle in matters of government upon this pretext ; because then they behov'd to suffer justly , as busie bodies . and here b. vsher does most appositly cite st. augustine , in psal. 149. the world rag'd , the lion lifted himself up against the lamb , but the lamb was full stronger than the lion : the lion was overcome by shewing cruelty , the lamb did overcome by suffering . and st. ierome , epist. 62. by shedding of blood , and by suffering , rather then doing injuries , was the church of christ at first founded , it grew by persecutions , and was crowned by martyrdoms . the second objection is , if mens hands be thus ty'd , no mans estate can be secure ; nay , the whole frame of the common-wealth would be in danger to be subverted , and utterly ruin'd . to which he answers , that the ground of this objection is exceeding faulty , and inconsistent with the rules of humanity , and divinity ; of humanity , because this would impower privat persons to judge , and so should confound all order , and invite all men to oppose authority , and make subjects accusers , judges , and executioners too ; and that in their own cause , against their own soveraign , and against divinity , because it is contrary to the scriptures , and fathers , who command submission , humility , and patience . rex est si nocentem punit , cede justitiae , si innocentem , cede fortunae , seneca de iura . lib. 2. cap. 30. if the king punish thee , when thou art guilty , submit to justice : if when thou art innocent , submit to fortune . and if a heathen could be induced by his vertue to submit to blind fortune , how much more ought a christian to be prevail'd upon by devotion to submit to the all-seeing providence of the most wise god , who maketh all things to work joyntly for good to them that love him . and as st. augustine piously adviseth , princes are to be suffered by their people , that in the exercise of their patience , temporal things may be born , and external hop'd for . the instance of king iames the third being punished by his subjects , is so far from being an argument able to justifie subjects rising in arms against their king , that this part of our history should for ever convince all honest men of the dangers that attend defensive arms : for this excellent prince was so far from being one of these tyrants , against whom defensive arms are only confest to be just , that few princes were more meek and careful of his subjects . but because he imploy'd such as himself had rais'd , finding that the nobility had too often been insolent servants to their prince , and severe task-masters to the people ; the nobility thinking more upon this imaginary neglect , than their own duty , did from combinations proceed to arms , and rejecting all conditions of peace , they were at last curs'd with a victory , in which this gentle prince was murthered , whilst he sought to save his sacred life in a deserted miln . by which we may see that these defensive arms so much hallowed in our late debates , are but the militia of pride , vanity , and ambition , and that if they be allow'd , the best of princes will ever fall by them . and as to the act 14. par. 4. ia. 4. whereby it is pretended that the opposing , and even the killing k. ia. the 3. in battle is justified , and which act was never repelled . it is answered , first , that this statute was made by the same rebels who had opposed their lawful prince , and so was rather a continuing of their rebellion , than a justification of it . 2. that abominable statute proceeds on the precept of k. ia. the 3. calling in the english , and designing to enslave the kingdom to forraigners , which was not prov'd as it ought to have been , though the pretext had been legal , as it was neither legal nor true in the least circumstance , and the noblemen and barons are condemn'd , without being cited or heard ; though the act be not a statute but a verdict , so unjust are all rebels , who are forc'd to maintain one crime by another . 3. in the new collection of our statutes made by k ken. and authoriz'd in many subsequent parliaments . the dreadful and treasonable act is not insert , which was the best way to rescind it , because it was , though a reproach to the nation to have any formal law made to rescind the statute , which behov'd to preserve its memory in annulling its authority . 4. many statutes since that time are made , declaring the rising in arms against the king and his authority , upon any pretext whatsoever to be treason ; and expresly rescinding all acts and statutes to the contrary , as rebellious and treasonable , and there needed no more positive statutes to rescind that rebellious and treasonable combination rather than law. as to the 44. act 6. par. ia. 2. from which its urged , that because that act declares it treason to assault castles , and places where the kings person shall happen to be , without the consent of the three estates : and that it is therefore lawful to assault the same with the consent of the three estates , and consequently to rise in arms with the consent of the three estates is no treason . it is answered , that it being but too ordinary in the minority of our kings to have great factions amongst the nobility ( which shews also the danger of placeing the supream power in the proceres regni ) one of the factions ordinarly either having made the young king prisoner , or using to assault the castle where he was really preserved . it was therefore most wisely declared by this statute , that to lay hands upon the kings person violently , what age the ring be of , young or auld ▪ or to assailzy castles , or places where the kings person shall happen to be , without the consent of the three estates , shall be punished as treason . that is to say , that so great respect was to be had to his sacred person , that no violence was to be offered to the place where he was , untill the same was allowed by the three estates . but in all the former laws , as well as those made in our age , it is still declared treason to rebel against the kings person , or to refuse to assist him without adding , except the same be done by the three estates , which shews that there 's nothing design'd in this act in favours of their authority ; and that this king was minor the time of this act ; and that he had great troubles in his youth , is very clear from the short characters given of our kings , by skeen , in the end of our acts of parliament . it will ( i hope ) easily appear by the ballance of these arguments , that at least the municipal laws of our nation , which punish defensive arms as treason , should be obey'd by our countrey-men , since , as i have oft inculcated the laws of any nation should still be obey'd , except where they are inconsistent with the word of god , and the most that the most violent republicans alive can say upon this subject , is , that the case may be debated by probable arguments , and that neither of the positions want their inconveniencies , so that in this , as in all other debates , the law of each nation is the best judge to decide such controversies , and therefore such as maintain these principles , after so many positive and reiterated laws , are obliged for preserving the peace of humane society , and the order which god has establisht , to remove from places where they cannot obey , for they will alwayes find some place where the government will please them , and better they be disquieted , than the government of the whole world should be disturb'd , but if they will stay , and oppose the government , it must be excus'd , to execute those who would destroy it . having thus glanc'd only at answers to these objections , because i think the objections rather shining than strong , i shall sum up this debate with these reflections , first , buchannan , and our republican authors , debate all these grounds , as if we were yet to form the government , under which we were to live , whereas we live under , and are sworn to a monarchy , fixt by law and consent , time out of mind , and the levellers may as well urge that no nobleman should be dignifi'd , nor no gentleman enrich'd above , a man of good sense ; and tennents may argue that it is not reasonable , that they bearing gods image as well as the master , should toile to feed their lusts ▪ thus reason may be distorted , and we call that reason and providence , which pleases us best . 2. most of their citations and authorities , are the sentiments of these greeks , and romans , who liv'd under common-wealths , and so magnifi'd their countrey in opposition to usurpers , whereas our king is the father of our countrey , and whatever they said of their countrey , we should say of him , and therefore these citations concerns us no more than the law of england binds scotsmen , they praise their own children and servants , for their faithfulness and obedience to them , and yet they rail at us for being faithful to our great master , and chief parent under god. 3. most of the authors cited and admir'd by them , are heathens , particularly stoicks , who equal'd themselves not only to kings , but to their own gods , and against whose selfishness and pride , all christians have justly exclaim'd , and so they are not competent judges , nor sure guides to christians , in the exercise of those purely christian vertues of humility , submission , self-denyal , patience , faith , and relyance upon god. 4. they ballance not all the conveniencies and inconveniencies of either government , but magnifie the one and conceal the other ; and thus it is true that kings may be tyrants , but so may , and usually are the leaders of the rabble : cromwel was such , and shaftsbury had been such , he was such in his nature , and had been such in his government ; and the distractions of a civil war , which ordinarly attend competitions amongst republicans , destroy moe than the lusts of any one tyrrant can do , which made lucan conclude , after a sad review of the continued civil wars , betwixt scilla and marcus , caesar and pompeij , without considering what followed under the trium viri . faelices arabes , medique eoaque tellus , qui sub perpetuis tenuerunt regna tyrannii . 5. these who debate against magistracy , gratifie their own vanity and insolence ; but such devout men as ambrose , augustine , vsher and others , debate against the dictats of interest , as well as passion ; which two , nothing save grace can overcome , and there can be no surer mark of conviction than to recide against these . lastly , even buchannan repented this horrid doctrine , cambden , 10. year of queen elizabeths reign , in 1567. but forasmuch as buchannan being transported with partial affection , and with murrays bounty , wrot in such sort that his said books have been condemned of falsehood , by the estates of the realm of scotland , to whose credite more is to be atributed , and he himself sighing and sorrowing , sundry times blam'd himself ( as i have heard ) before the king , to whom he was school-master , for that he had employ'd so virulent a pen against that well deserving queen , and upon his death-bed wished that he might live so long , till by recalling the truth , he might even with his blood , wipe away these aspertions , which he had by his bad tongue falsly laid upon her , but that ( as he said ) it would now be in vain ; when he might seem to dote for age , &c. idem , anno 1582. and not content with all this ( speaking of their surprizing the king ) they compell'd the king against his will , to approve of this intercepting of him by his letters to the queen of england , and to decree an assembly of the estates , summoned by them to be just , yet could they not enduce buchannan to approve of this their fact , either by writting , or perswasion by message , who now sorrowfully lamented , that he had already undertaken the cause of factious people against their princes , and soon after died , &c. that the lawful successor cannot be debarr'd from succeeding to the crown : maintain'd against dolman , buchannan , and others . by sir george mackenzie his majesties advocat . edinbvrgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1684. king james in his advice to prince henry . page 173. if god give you not succession , defraud never the nearest by right , whatsoever conceit ye have of the person ; for kingdoms are ever at gods disposition , and in that case we are but liferenters , it lying no more in the kings , than in the peoples hands to dispossess the righteous heir . page 209. ibid. for at the very moment of the expyring of the king reigning , the nearest and lawful heir entereth in his place ; and so to refuse him , or intrude another , is not to hold out the successor from coming in , but to expel and put out their righteous king : and i trust at this time whole france acknowledgeth the rebellion of the leaguers , who upon pretence of heresie by force of arms , held so long out , to the great desolation of their whole countrey , their native and righteous king from possessing his own crown and natural kingdom . errata . page 5. delet at his majority . page 33. for richard 3d. read 2d . the right of the succession defended . the fourth conclusion to be cleared was , that neither the people , nor parliaments of this kingdom , could seclude the lineall successor , or could raise to the throne any other of the same royal line . for clearing whereof , i shall according to my former method , first clear what is our positive law in this case ; secondly i shall shew that this our law is founded upon excellent reason , and lastly , i shall answer the objections . as to the first . it is by the second act of our last parliament acknowledged , that the kings of this realme deriving their royal power from god almighty alone , do lineally succeed therto , according to the known degrees of proximitie in blood , which cannot be interrupted , suspended or diverted by any act or statut whatsoever , and that none can attempt to alter or divert the said succession , without involving the subjects of this kingdom in perjury and rebellion , and without exposing them to all the fatal and dreadful consequences of a civil warr , do therefore from a hearty and sincere sense of their duty recognize , acknowledge and declare that the right to the imperial crown of this realme , is by the inherent right and the nature of monarchy , as well as by the fundamental and unalterable laws of this realme , transmitted and devolved by a lineal succession , according to the proximity of blood . and that upon the death of the king or queen , who actually reignes , the subjects of this kingdom are bound by law , duty and alledgance to obey the nixt immediat and lawful heir either male or female , upon whom the right and administration of the government is immediatly devolved . and that no difference in religion , nor no law nor act of parliament made , or to be made , can alter or divert the right of succession and lineal descent of the crown to the nearest and lawful heirs , according to the degrees foresaids : nor can stop or hinder them in the full , free and actuall administration of the government according to the laws of the kingdom . like as our soveraigne lord , with advice and consent of the saids estates of parliament , do declare it is high treason in any of the subjects of this kingdom , by writing , speaking , or any other manner of way to endeavour the alteration , suspension or diversion of the said right of succession , or the debarring the next lawfull successor from the immediat , actual , full and free administration of the government , conform to the laws of the kingdom . and that all such attempts or designes shall inferre against them the paine of treason . this being not only ane act of parliament , declaring all such as shall endeavour to alter the succession , to be punishable , as traitors ; but containing in it a decision of this point by the parliament , as the supream judges of the nation , and ane acknowledgement by them , as the representatives of the people , and nation . there can be no place for questioning a point , which they have plac'd beyond all contraversie : especially seing it past so unanimously that there was not only no vote given but even no argument propon'd against it . and the only doubt mov'd about it was , whither any act of parliament , or acknowledgement , was necessary , in a point which was in it self so uncontraverted . and which all who were not desperat fanaticks , did conclude to be so in this nation , even after they had hear'd all the arguments that were us'd , and the pamphlets that were written against it , in our neighbour-kingdom . but because so much noise has been made about this question , and that blind bigotry leads some , and humorous faction drawes others out of the common road . i conceive it will be fit to remember my reader of these following reasons , which will i hope clear that as this is our present positive law , so it is established upon the fundamental constitution of our government , upon our old laws , upon the laws of god , of nature , of nations , and particularly of the civil law. as to the fundamental constitution of our government , i did formerly remark , that our historians tell us , that the scots did swear alledgeance to fergus , who was the first of our kings , and to his heirs . and that they should never obey any other , but his royal race . which oath does in law , and reason , bind them to obey the lineal successor , according to the proximity of blood. for ane indefinite obligation to obey the blood royal , must be interpreted according to the proximity in blood , except the swearers had reserv'd to themselves a power to choose any of the royal familie , whom they pleas'd , which is so true , that in law , ane obligation granted to any man , does in the construction of law accresce to his heirs , though they be not exprest . qui sibi providet , & haeredibus providet . and boethius tells us that after king fergus's death , the scots finding their new kingdom infested with warrs , under the powerful influence of picts , romans , and britans , they refus'd notwithstanding to preferre the next of the royal race , who was of perfect age , and a man of great merit , to the son of king fergus , though ane infant ; which certainly in reason they would have done , if they had not been ty'd to the lineal successor . but lest the kingdom should be prejudg'd during the minority , they enacted , that for the future , the next of the blood royal should alwayes in the minority of our kings administrat as kings , till the true heir were of perfect age . but this does not prove , as buchannan pretends , that the people had power to advance to the throne , any of the royal race : whom they judg'd most fit , for common sense may tell us , that was not to choose a king , but a vice-roy , or a regent . for , though to give him the more authority , and so to enable him the more to curb factions , and oppose enimies , he was called king , yet he was but rex fidei commissarius , being oblidg'd to restore it to the true heir at his majority : and so governed only in his vice , and consequently was only his vice-roy . but because the uncles , and next heirs being once admitted to this fidei commissarie tittle , were unwilling to restore the crown to their nephews , and sometimes murder'd them : and oftetimes rais'd factions against them . therefore the people abhorring these impieties , and weary of the distractions , and divisions , which they occasion'd , beg'd from king kenneth the second , that these following laws might be made . 1. that upon the kings death the next heir of whatsoever age should succeed . 2. the grand-childe either by son or daughter should be preferr'd . 3. that till the king arriv'd at 14 years of age , some wise-man should be choos'd to govern , after which , the king should enter to the free administration , and according to this constitution , some fit person has still been choos'd regent in the kings minority , without respect to the proximity of blood , and our kings have been oftentimes crown'd in the cradle . in conformity also to these principles , all the acknowledgements made to our kings , run still in favours of the king , and his heirs . as in the first act parl. 18. james vi. and the ii , iii , iv. acts parl. 1. charles ii. and by our oath of alledgeance , we are bound to bear faithful and true alledgeance to his majesty , his heirs and lawful successors ; which word lawful , is insert , to cutt off the pretexts of such as should not succeed by law , and the insolent arbitrarieness of such , as being but subjects themselves , think they may choose their king. viz. act 1. parl. 21. james 6. that this right of succession according to the proximity of blood , is founded on the law of god , is clear by num. chap. 27. v. 9. and 10. if a man hath no son or daughter , his inheritance shall descend upon his brother , by num. 36. where , god himself decides in favours of the daughters of zelophehad , telling us , it was a just thing , they should have the inheritance of their father . and ordaines , that if there were no daughters , the estate should go to the brothers . saint paul likewayes concluds rom. 8. if sons , then heirs , looking upon that , as a necessary consequence ; which if it do not necessarly hold , or can be any way disappointed , all his divine reasoning in that chapter falls to nothing . and thus ahaziah 2 chron. 22. v. 1. was made king ( though the youngest ) in his fathers stead ; because sayes the text , , ,the arabians had slain all the eldest : which clearly shews that by the law of god , he could not have succeeded , if the eldest had been alive . we hear likewayes in scripture , , ,god oft telling , by me kings reigne . and when he gives a kingdom to any as to abraham , david , &c. he gives it to them and their posterity . that this right of succession flowes from the law of nature , is clear ; because , that is accounted to flow from the law of nature , which every man finds grafted in his own heart , and which is obey'd without any other law , and for which men neither seek nor can give another distinct reason ; all which hold in this case : for who doubts when he heares of ane hereditary monarchy , but that , the next in blood must succeed ; and for which we need no positive law , nor does any man enquire for a further reason , being satisfied therein by the principles of his own heart . and from this ground it is , that though a remoter kinsman did possess as heir , he could by no length of time prescribe a valide right ; since no man , as lawyers conclude , can prescribe a right against the law of nature : and that this principle is founded thereupon is confest l : cùm ratio naturalis ff . de bonis damnat : cùm ratio naturalis , quasi lex quaedam tacita , liberis parentum haereditatem adjecerit , veluti ad debitam successionem eos vocando : propter quod suorum haeredum nomen eis indultum est ; adeo ut ne a parentibus quidem , ab eâ successione amoveri possint . et § . emancipati institut : de haered : quae ab intest . praetor naturalem aequitatem sequutus , iis etiám bonorum possessionem contra 12 tabularum leges , & contra jus civile permittit . which text shewes likewayes , that this right of nature was stronger than the laws of the 12 tables , though these were the most ancient and chief statutes of rome . which principle is very clear likewayes from the parable , math. 21. where the husband-men who can be presum'd to understand nothing but the law of nature , are brought in saying , this is the heir , let us kill him and seaze on his inheritance . nor does this hold only in the succession of children or the direct line , but in the collateral succession of brothers and others l. hac parte ff . unde cognati . hac parte proconsul naturali aequitate motus , omnibus cognatis permittit bonorum possessionem quos sanguinis ratio vocat ad haereditatem . vid. l. 1. ff . de grad . & l. 1. § . hoc autem ff . de bonor . possess . and these who are now brothers to the present king , have been sones to the former : and therefore whatever has been said for sones , is also verified in brothers . as for instance , though his royal highness be only brother to king charles the ii. , yet he is son to king charles i. and therefore , as saint paul sayes , if a son , then ane heir , except he be secluded by the existence and succession of ane elder brother . that this gradual succession is founded on the law of nations , is as clear by the laws of the 12 tables , and the praetorian law of rome . and if we consider the monarchy either old or new , we will find , that wherever the monarchy was not elective , the degrees of succession were there exactly observed . and bodinus de republ. lib. 6 cap. 5. asserts , that , ordo non tantum naturae & divinae sed etiam omnium ubique gentium hoc postulat . from all which , pope innocent in c. grand . de supplend . neglig . praelati concludes , in regnis haereditariis caveri non potest ne filius aut frater succedat . and since it is expresly determined , that the right of blood can be taken away by no positive law or statute l. iura sanguinis ff . de reg. jur . & l. 4. ff . de suis legitim . and that the power of making a testament , can be taken away by no law l. ita legatum ff . de conditionibus . i cannot see how the right of succession can be taken away by a statute : for that is the same with the right of blood , and is more strongly founded upon the law of nature , than the power of making testaments . since then this right is founded upon the law of god , of nature and of nations , it does clearly follow , that no parliament can alter the same by their municipal statutes , as our act of parliament has justly observed . for clearing whereof , it is fit to consider , that in all powers and jurisdictions which are subordinat to one another , the inferiour should obey , but not alter the power to which it is subordinat ; and what it does contrary thereto , is null and void . and thus , if the judges of england should publish edicts contrare to acts of parliament , or if a justice of peace should ranverse a decree of the judges of west-minster , these their endeavours would be void and ineffectual . but so it is , that by the same principle , but in ane infinitly more transcendent way , all kings and parliaments are subordinat to the laws of god , the laws of nature , and the laws of nations : and therefore no act of parliament can be binding , to overturn what these have established . this , as to the law of god , is clear , not only from the general dictats of religion , but 28 hen. 8. cap. 7. the parliament uses these words , for no man can dispence with gods laws ; which we also affirme and think . and as to the laws of nature , they must be acknowledged to be immutable , from the principles of reason . and the law it self confesses that naturalia quaedam jura quae apud omnes gentes peraequè observantur , divina quadam providentia constituta semper firma , atque immutabilia permanent § sed naturalia institut . de iur. natural . & § . singulorum de rer . divis : and when the law declares , that a supream prince is free from the obligation of laws , solutus legibus , which is the highest power that a parliament can pretend to , or arrive at ; yet lawyers still acknowledge that this does not exeem these supream powers from being lyable to the laws of god , nature and nations , accurs : in l. princeps ff . de leg. clementina pasturalis de rejudicatâ bart. in l. ut vim de justitiâ & jure voet. de statutis sect. 5. cap. 1. nor can the law of nations be overturned by private statutes , or any supream power . and thus all statuts to the prejudice of ambassadours , who are secured by the law of nations , are confess'd by all to be null , and the highest power whatsoever cannot take off the necessity of denuncing watr before a warr can be lawful . and lawyers observe verie well , that these who would oppose the common dictats of mankind , should be look't upon as enemies to all mankind . my second argument shall be , that the king & parliament can have no more power in parliament than any absolute monarch has in his own kingdom : for , they are when joyn'd , but in place of the supream power , sitting in judgement ; and therefore they cannot in law do what any other supream and absolute monarch cannot do . for all the power of parliaments consists only in their consent , but we must not think , that our parliaments have ane unlimited power de jure , so , as that they may forfeit or kill without a cause or decerne against the subjects without citing or hearing them ; or , that they can alienat any part of de kingdom ; or subject the wholl kingdom to france or any other forraigne prince : all which deeds would be null in themselves , and would not hinder the partie injur'd from a due redress . for if our parliaments had such power , we would be the greatest slaves , and live under the most arbitrary government imaginable . but so it is , that no monarch whosoever can take from any man what is due to him , by the law of god , nature , and nations . for being himself inferiour to these he cannot overturne their statuts . thus a prince cannot even ex plenitudine potestatis legitimat a bastard in prejudice of former children though they have only but a hope of succession l. 4. & sequen de natal . restituend . and for the same reason , it is declared in the same law , that he cannot restore a free'd man ( restituere libertum natalibus ) in prejudice of his patron , who was to succeed , though that succession was but by a municipal law. for clearing which question , it is fit to know that the solid lawyers who treat jus publicum , as arnisaeus and others , do distinguish betwixt such kingdoms , as were at first conferr'd by the people , and wherein the kings succeed by contract , and in these , the laws made by king and people can exclude , or bind the successor . and yet even here , they confess , that this proceeds not , because the predecessor can bind the successor , but because the people renew the paction with the succeeding king. but where the successor is to succeed ex jure regni , in hereditary monarchies , there they assert positively that the predecessor cannot prejudge the successors right of succession . which they prove by two arguments . first , that the predecessor has no more power , nor right , than the successor : for the same right , that the present king has to the possession , the next in blood has to the succession . and all our laws run in favours of the king , and his heirs , and no man can tye his equal , or give him the law , par in parem non habet dominium . the second is , that it were unjust and unequitable that the predecessor should robbe his successor nulla ergo ( sayes arnisaeus cap. 7. num. 5. ) clausula successori jus auferri potest , modò succedat ille ex jure regni . and hottoman : lib. 2. de regno galliae asserts , that in france which is a very absolute monarchy , ea quae jure regio primogenito competunt , ne testamento quidem patris adimi possunt . and thus when the king of france design'd to break the salique law of succession , as in the reigne of charles the v. it was found impracticable by the three estates , and when pyrrhus was to preferre his youngest son to the crown , the epirots following the law of nations , and their own , refus'd him , paus. lib. 1. in the year 1649. also amurat the grand seignior , having left the turkish empire to han the tartarian , passing by his brother ibrahim , the wholl officers of that state , did unanimously cancel that testament , and restore ibrahim , the true heir tho a silly foole . which shewes the opinion not only of lawyers but of whole nations and parliaments ; tho vander graaff , an hollander confesses , that it is not lawfull to choose any of his sons to succeed him , in which , the general quiet of the kingdom is much concerned . and therefore , tho the next heir were wiser , braver , and more generally beloved ; yet the more immediat must be received , as choos'd by god , whither good or bad , and as honored with his character . and if kings could have inverted their succession , and choos'd their own successor saint lewis had preferr'd his own third son to lewis his eldest , and alfonsus king of leon in spaine , had preferr'd his daughters to ferdinand his eldest son. and edward the vi. of england had preferr'd , and did actually preferre the lady iean gray to his sisters mary , and elizabeth . and if successions especially of such great importance , had not been fixed by immutable laws of god , and nature , the various and unconstant inclinations of the present governours , especially when shaken by the importunity of step-mothers and mothers , or clouded by the jealousie of flatterers , or favourits , had made the nations whom they governed , very unhappy : and therefore , god did very justly , and wisely setle this succession , that both king and people might know , that it is by him that kings reigne , and kingdoms are secur'd in peace against faction ▪ and it were strange , that this should not hold in kings , since even amongst subjects the honour and nobility that is bestow'd upon a man and his heirs , does so necessarly descend upon those heirs , that the father , or predicessor cannot seclude the next successor , or derogat from his right , either by renuncing , resigning , following base or meane trades , or any other : for say those lawyers , since he derives this right from his old progenitors , and owes it not to his father , his fathers deed should not prejudge him therein . fab. cod. 9. tit. 28. def. 1. warnee ; consil. 20. num. 7. and as yet the estates of parliament in both nations have no legislative power , otherwayes than by assenting to what the king does ; so that if the king cannot himself make a successor , neither can they by consenting : and all that their consent could imply wold only be that , they and their successors should not oppose his nomination , because of their consent . but that can never amount to a power of transferring the monarchy from one branch to another , which would require , that the transferrers , or bestowers had the supream power originally in themselves , nemo enim plus juris in alium transferre potest quàm ipse in se habet . and if the states of parliament had this power ▪ originally in themselves to bestow , why might they not reserve it to themselves ? and so perpetuate the government in their own hands : and this mov'd judge ienkins in his treatise concerning the liberty and freedom of the subject , pag. 25. to say , that no king can be named , or in any time made in this kingdom , by the people . a parliament never made a king , for there were kings before there were parliaments , and parliaments are summoned by the kings writtes . fourthly , a king cannot in law alienat his crown , as is undenyable in the opinion of all lawyers , and if he do , that deed is voyd and null , nor could he in law consent to an act of parliament declaring that he should be the last king. and if such consents and acts had been sufficient to bind successors , many silly kings in several parts of europe had long since been prevail'd upon , to alter their monarchy from haereditarie to elective ; or to turn it in a common-wealth ; and therefore by the same reason , they cannot consent to exclude the true successor : for if they may exclude one they may exclude all . 5. in all societies and governments , but especially where there is any association of powers , as in our parliaments , there are certain fundamentals , which like the noble parts in the body are absolutly necessar for its preservation ; for without these , there would be no ballance , or certainty . and thus with us , if the king and each of the estates of parliament had not distinct and known limits ( sett by the gracious concessions of our monarchs ) each of them would be ready to invade one anothers priviledges . and thus i conceive that if the parliament should consent to alienate the half of the kingdom , or to subject the whole to a stranger , as in king iohns case in england , and the baliols in scotland , it has been found by the respective parliaments of both kingdoms , that , that statute would not oblidge the successor . or if the house of commons in england , or the burrowes of scotland should consent to any act excluding their estate and respresentatives from the parliament , doubtlesse that statute excluding them would not prejudge their successors ; because that act was contrare to one of the fundamental laws of the nation . and the late acts of parliaments excluding bishops , were reprobated by the ensuing parliaments , as such ; and therefore by the same rule , any statute made excluding the legal successor , would be null and voyd , as contrare to one of the great fundamental rights of the nation . and what can be call'd more a fundamental right than the succession of our monarchy ? since our monarchy in this isle , has ever been acknowledg'd to be hereditary . and that this acknowledgment is the great basis whereupon most of all the positions of our law run , and are established : such as , that the king never dyes , since the very moment in which the last king dyes , the next successor in blood is legally king , and that without any expresse recognizance from the people , and all that oppose him are rebells , his commissions are valide , he may call parliaments , dispose the lands pertaining to the crown , all men are lyable to do him homage ; and hold their rights of him and his heirs . and generally this principle runs through all the veins of our law. it is that , which gives life and authority to our statutes , but receives none from them ; which are the undenyable marks and characters of a fundamental right in all nations . but that this right of lineal succession is one of the fundamental , and unalterable laws of the kingdom of scotland , is clear , by the commission granted by the parliament for the union in anno 1604. in which these words are , his majesty vouchsafeing , to assure them of his sincere disposition and clear meaning , no way by the foresaid union to prejudge or hurt the fundamental laws , ancient priviledges , offices and liberties of this kingdom ; whereby not only the princely authority of his most royal descent hath been these many ages maintain'd , but also his peoples securities of their lands and livings , rights , liberties , offices and dignities preserv'd : whilks if they should be innovated , such confusion should ensue ; as it could no more be a free monarchy . 6. there would many great inconveniencies arise , both to king and people , by the parliaments having this power : for weak kings might by their own simplicity , and gentle kings by the rebellion of their subjects be induced to consent to such acts , in which their subjects would be tempted to cheat in the one case , and rebell in the other . many kings likewise might be wrought upon , by the importunity of their wives , or concubins , or by the misrepresentations of favourits , to disinherit the true successor ; and he likewise to prevent this arbitrarienesse , would be oblidg'd to enter in a faction for his own support , from his very infancy . this would likewise animate all of the blood royal , to compete for the throne , and in order thereto , they would be easily induc'd to make factions in the parliament , and to hate one another ; whereas the true successor would be ingadg'd to hate them all , and to endeavour the ruine of such as he thought more popular than himself . nor would the people be in better case , since they behov'd to expect upon all these accompts , constant civil warres and animosities , and by being unsure whom to follow , might be in great hazard by following him who had no right . and their rights bearing to hold of the king and his heirs , it would be dubious to the vassals , who should be their superiour , as well , as who should be their king. it is also in reason to be expected , that scotland will ever owne the legal descent : and thus we should under different kings of the same race , be involv'd in new and constant civil warrs ; france shall have a constant door open'd , by allyances with scotland , to disquiet the peace of the whole isle ; and england shab loose all the endeavours it used to unite this isle within it self . another great absurdity and inconveniency which would follow upon the exclusion of the lineal successor would be , that if he had a son , that son behoov'd certainly to succeed ; and therefore after the next lawful heir were brought from abroad to reigne , he behov'd to return upon the birth of this son ; and if he dyed he would be again call'd home , and would be sent back by the birth of another son : which would occasion such affronts , uncertainties , divisions , factions , temptations , that i am sure , no good nor wise man could admit of such a project . i find also , that as the debarring the righteous heir , is in reason , the fruitful seed of all civil warr and misery , ( for who can imagine that the righteous heir will depart from his right , or that wise men will endanger their lives and fortunes in opposition to it ? ) so experience has demonstrated , how dangerous , and bloody this injustice has prov'd . let us remember amongst many domestick examples , the miseries that ensu'd upon the exclusion of mordredus the son of lothus ; the destruction of the picts for having secluded alpinus the righteous heir ; the warrs during the reigne of william the conquerour ; these betwixt king stevin and henry the ii , betwixt the houses of lancaster and york ; betwixt the bruce and the baliol ; the murther of arthur duke of britanny , true heir of the crown of england , with many other forreigne histories , which tell us of the dreadfull michiefs arising from pelops preferring his youngest son to the kingdom of micene ; from aedipus commanding that polinices his youngest son should reigne alternatly with the eldest ; from parisatis the queen of persia's preferring her youngest son cyrus , to her eldest artaxerxes , from aristodemus admitting his two sons proclus , and euristhenes to an equall share in the lacedemonian throne . the like observations are to be made in the succession of ptolemaeus lagus and ptolemaeus phisco , in the sons of severus , in the succession of sinesandus who kill'd his brother suintilla righteours heir of spaine , and that of francis and fortia duke of millan with thousands of others : in all which , either the usurpers or the kingdom that obey'd them , perish'd utterly . to prevent which differences and mischiefs , the hungarians would not admitte almus the younger brother , in exclusion of the elder colomanus , though a silly deform'd creature , albeit almus was preferr'd by ladislaus ( the kings elder brother ) to both . nor would france acquiesce in st. lewis his preferring charles his 3 son , to lewis the eldest . and the english refus'd to obey lady iean gray , in prejudice of queen marie , though a papist and persecuter . tali & constanti veneratione nos angli legitimos reges prosequimur &c. sayes an english historian . 7. if parliaments had such powers as this , then our monarchy would not be hereditary , but elective ; the very essence of ane hereditary monarchy consisting in the right of succession , according to the contingency of blood . whereas if the parliament can preferre the next , save one , they may preferre the last of all the line : for the next save one , is no more next than the last is next . and the same reason by which they can choose a successor ( which can only be that they have a power above him ) should likewayes in my opinion justifie their deposing of kings . and since the successor has as good right to succeed , as the present king has to govern ( for that right of blood which makes him first , makes the other next , and all these statuts which acknowledge the present kings prerogatives , acknowlege that they belong to him and his heirs . ) it followes clearly , that if the parliament can preclude the one , they may exclude the other . and we saw even in the last age , that such reasons as are now urged to incapacitat the children of our last monarch , from the hope of succession . viz. popery , and arbitrary government , did embolden men to dethrone , and murder the father himself who was actual king. 8. that such acts of parliament , altering the succession are ineffectual , and null , is clear from this , that though such an act of parliament were made , it could not debarre the true successor : because by the laws of all nations , and particularly of these kingdoms , the right of succession purges all defects , and removes all impediments , which can prejudge him who is to succeed . and as craig one of our learn'd lawyers has very well express'd it , tanta est regii sanguinis praerogativa , & dignitas , ut vitium non admittat , nec se contaminari patiatur . and thus though he who were to succeed , had committed murther , or were declar'd a traitour formerly to the crown for open rebellion against the king , and kingdom ; yet he needed not be restor'd by act of parliament upon his comming to the crown : but his very right of blood would purge all these imperfections . of which there are two reasons given by lawyers , one is , that no man can be a rebel against himself , nor can the king have a superior . and consequently , there can be none whom he can offend . and it were absurd that he who can restore all other men , should need to be restored himself . the second reason is , because the punishment of crimes , such as confiscations , &c. are to be inflicted by the kings authority , or to fall to the kings thesaury ; and it were most absurd , that a man should exact from himself a punishment . likeas , upon this account it is , that though in the canon law , bastards cannot be promov'd to sacred orders without dispensation , nor can alibi nati , that is to say , people born out of england be admitted to succeed in england , by express act of parliament there ; yet agapaetus , theodorus , gelasius and many others , have been admitted to be popes without any formal dispensation , their election clearing that imperfection . and the statute of alibi nati , has been oft found not to extend to the royal line . that the succession to the crown purges all defects , is clear , by many instances , both at home and abroad . the instances at home are , in england henry the vi. being disabled and attainted of high treason by act of parliament , it was found by the judges , notwithstanding that from the moment he assum'd the crown , he had right to succeed without being restored . and the like was resolved by the judges in the case of henry the vii , as bacon observes in his history of henry the vii . fol. 13. and in the case of queen elizabeth , who was declar'd bastard by act of parliament , as is clear by cambden anno 2. elizabeth . and though in scotland there be no express instances of this , because though some rebellious ring-leaders in scotland , have often in a privat capacity been very injurious to their king ; yet their parliaments have been ever very tender of attainting the blood royal , or presumptive heirs . but alexander duke of albanie , and his succession being declared traitours , by his brother king iames the iv. his son iohn was notwithstanding called home from france upon his uncles death , and declar'd tutor and governour , without any remission , or being restor'd : that employment being found to be due to him by the right of blood : therefore he had been much more declared the true successor of the crown if his cousin king iames the v. had died . these being sufficient to establish our design , i shall mention only some forraigne stories . charles the vii . of france who though banish'd by sentence of the parliament of paris , did thereafter succeed to the crown . and though lewis the xii . was forfeited for taking up armes against charles the viii . yet he succeeded to him without restitution . and lewis the ii. his son being declared a rebel , whom his father desiring to disinherit , and to substitut in his place charles duke of normandie , that son had succeeded if he had not been hindered by the nobility , who plainly told him it was impossible to exclude his sone from the succession . my next task shall be to satisfy the arguments brought for mantaining this opinion , whereof the first is . that god himself has authorised the inverting the right of succession , by the examples of esau , salomon , and others . to which i answer , that these instances which are warranted by express commands from god , are no more to be drawn into example , than the robbing of the aegyptians ear-rings . and it 's needing an express command , and the expressing of that command , does evince , that otherwayes iacob , nor salomon could not have succeeded against the priviledge of birth-right and possession . the next objection , is that it is naturally imply'd in all monarchies , that the people shall obey whilst the prince governs justly , as in the paction betwixt david , and the people 2 sam. 5. which is most suitable to the principles of justice , and government : since relations cannot stand by one side ; so that when the king leaves off to be king , and becomes a tyrant , the people may consult their own security in laying him aside , as tutors may be remov'd when they are suspect . and that this is most just when kings are idolaters since god is rather to be obey'd then men . to all which it is answered , that god who loves order , and knows the extravagant levity , and insolence of men , especially when baited by hope of prey , or promotion , did wisely think fit to ordain under the paine of eternal damnation , that all men should be subject to superiour powers for conscience sake . 1 pet. 2.13 . and that whoever resists the power , resists god , rom. 13.2 . reserving the punishment of kings to himself , as being only their superiour . and thus david , asa , and others , committed crimes , but were not depos'd , nor debarr'd by the people . nor were even the idolatrous kings such as achab , manasse , &c. judged by their subjects , nor did the prophets exhort the people to rise against them , though they were opposing gods express , and immediat will , and overturning the uncontraverted fundamentals of religion . nor did the fathers of the primitive church , excite the christians to oppose the heathen , and idolatrous princes , under which they lived : and paul commands them to pray for these heathen emperours . nor was the emperour basilicus depos'd for abrogating the council of chalcedon , as is pretended by some republicans , but was turn'd out by the just successor zeno , whom he had formerly dethron'd . nor were zeno or anastasius degraded for their errors in religion , or their vices by the ancient christians : but were opprest by private faction . and sure they must think god unable to redress himself , who without warrand , and against his expresse warrand , will usurpe so high a power . and we in this rebellious principle , owne the greatest extravagancy with which we can charge the pope and jesuits , and disowne not only our own confession of faith which article 1. chap. 22. acknowledges , that infidelity , or difference in religion doth not make void the magistrats just ▪ or legal authority , nor free the people from their due obedience to him , but contradict the best protestant divines , as musculus , melancthon and others vid. libell . de vitand . superstit . anno 1150. & consil. biden . dec. 1. consil. 10. & decad. 10. consil. 5. nor can the subterfuge us'd by buchanan , and others satisfie , whereby they contend that the former texts of scripture prove only that the office , but not the persones of kings are sacred : so that parliaments or people may lay aside the persons , though not the office , seing the sacred text secures oftner the person , than the office as i have formerly more fully prov'de . and if this principle prevail'd as to the differences in the theory of religion , it would in the next step be urg'd as to the practice of religion ; and we would change our kings , because we thought them not pious , as well as protestant . and did not our sectarians refine so far , as to think dominion founded on grace ? and this opinion seems to my self more solide than the other , for certainly an impious protestant , is a worse governour , and less gods vicegerent , and image , than a devout papist . and amongst protestants , every secte will reject a king , because he is not of their opinion . and thus our covenanters , by the act of the west-kirk anno 1650. declar'd , they would disown our present monarch , if he did not own the covenant . and though a king were protestant , yet still this pretext that he design'd to introduce popery , would raise his people against him , if differences in religion could lawfully arme subjects against their king , or did empower them to debar his successor . and when this cheat prevail'd against devout king charles the i , the martyr of that orthodox faith to which he was said to be enemie , what a madness is it to allow this fatall error , which was able to ruine us in the last age , and went so near to destroy us in this ? this is indeed , to allow that arbitrariness against our kings , which we would not allow in them to us . the second objection is , that in england the parliament has frequently devolv'd the crown and government upon such as were not otherwayes to have succeeded , as in the instances of edward the ii. and richard the iii , the first of whom was most unjustly depos'd , for making use of gavestoun , and the spencers ; which shewes how extravagant the people ar in their humours , rather than how just their power is : for besides , that we do not read , that these counsellors were unsufferable , there is no good christian that can say , that a king can be depos'd for using ill counsellors . and as to richard the iii. his case is so fully examined , and all the articles brought both against him , and edward the ii. so fully answered by the learn'd arnisaeus a protestant lawyer , ( and who had no other interest in that debate than a love to truth and law ) in that treatise , quod nullâ ex causâ subditis fas sit contra legitimum principem arma sumere , that we protestants should be asham'd to bring again to the field such instances , upon which arnisaeus , in answer to the 14. article against richard the ii , viz. that he refus'd to allow the lawes made in parliament , does very well remark , that this was in effect to consent to their being king , and to transferre upon them the royal power , and this will be the event of all such undertakings . the instances of henry the iv. and henry the vii . , are of no more weight than the other two , since these were likewayes only kings de facto , till king henry the vii . by his marriage with the lady elizabeth , eldest daughter to king edward the iv. , did by her transmit a just title to his successor : & therefore it was not strange , that either of these should allow the parliament to interpose , when they behov'd to owe to them the possession of the throne . but yet henry the vii . himself ( as the lord bacon relates in his historie ) shunn'd to have the parliament declare his title to be just , being content with these ambiguous words , viz. that the inheritance of the crown should rest , remain and abide in the king , &c. and upon this accompt it was , that the same king caus'd make a law , that such as should serve the king for the time , being in his warrs , could not be attainted or impeach'd in their persons or estates . as to henry the viii . his procuring an act , whereby the parliament declares that in case he had no issue by the lady iean seymour , he might dispose of the crown to whatsoever person he should in his own discretion think fit . it is answered , that by a former statute in the 25 year of his reigne , he by act of parliament setles the crown upon the heirs male of his own body , and for lack of such issue , to lady elizabeth , and for lack of such issue also , to the next heirs of the king , who should for ever succeed according to the right of succession of the crown of england ; which shewes that the succession to the crown of england is establish't by the law of nature , and the fundamental laws of england , upon the heirs of blood , according to the proximity of degrees ; so that though that king did afterwards prevaile with the parliament to declare this elizabeth a bastard , as he did also his daughter mary , by another act , and resolve to setle the crown , upon henry fitz roy , duke of richmond , yet these acts teach us how dangerous it is to leave parliaments to the impression of kings in the case of naming a successor , as it is to expose kings to the arbitrariness of parliaments . but such care had god of his own laws , that mary succeeded notwithstanding she was papist , and elizabeth succeeded her , though she was declar'd bastard ; the rights of blood prevailing over the formalities of divorce , and the dispensations of popes : as the strength of nature does often prevaile over poisons . and god remov'd the duke of richmond by death , to prevent the unjust competition , and so little notice was taken of this ; and the subsequent act anno 1535 , that the heirs of blood succeeded without repealing of that act , as ane act in it self invalide from the beginning : for only such acts are past by , without being repeal'd . and blackwood pag. 45. observes very well , that so conscious were the makers of these acts , of the illegality thereof , and of their being contrarie to the immutable laws of god , nature and nations , that none durst produce that kings testament wherein he did nominat a successor , conform to the power granted by these acts , that how soon they were freed by his death from the violent oppressions that had forced them to alter a successor three several times , and at last to swear implicitly to whomever he should nominat , ( a preparative which this age would not well bear though they cite it ) they proclamed first queen mary their queen though a papist , and thereafter queen elizabeth , whom themselves had formerly declared a bastard . and as in all these acts there is nothing declaring the parliaments to have power to name a successor , but only giving a power to the king , for preventing mischiefs , that might arise upon the dubiousness of the succession , to nominat a successor ; two of the legal successors having been declar'd bastards upon some niceties , not of nature , but of the popes bulls for divorcing their mothers : so , this instance can only prove , that the king may nominat a successor , and that the parliament may consent , not to quarrell it , ( which is all that they do ) but does not at all prove , that where the right of nature is clear , the parliament may invert the same . and strangers who considered more the dictats of law than of passion , did in that age conclude , that no statute could be valide when made contrare to the fundamental law of the kingdom , arnisaeus cap. 7. num. 11. henricus viii . angliae rex eduardum filium primò , deinde mariam , denique elizabetham suos haeredes fecerat , verùm non aliter ea omnia valent quàm si cum jure regni conveniant , vid. curt. tract . feud . par. 4. num. 129. there seems greater difficulty to arise from the 13 elizabeth c. 2. by which it is enacted , that if any persone shall affirme , that the parliament of england has not full power to bind and governe the crown in point of succession and descent , that such a persone , during the queens life , shall be guilty of high treason . but to this act it is answered , that this act does not debarre the next legal and natural successor . and these words , that the parliament has power to bind and govern the succession , must be , as all other general expressions in statutes , interpreted and restricted by other uncontraverted laws ; and so the sense must be , that the parliament are judge where there are differences betwixt competitors in nice and contravertable points which cannot be otherwise decided : and both this and the former acts made in henry the vi. time , are not general laws but temporarie acts and personal priviledges ; and so cannot overturn the known current of law. quod verò contrà rationem juris receptum est , non est producendum ad consequentias . and in all these instances it is remarkable , that the restriction was made upon the desire of the soveraigne , and not of the subject . and if we look upon this act as made to secure against mary queen of scotland , and to let her know , that it was to no purpose for her to designe any thing against the right , or person of queen elizabeth , as being declar'd a bastard , by act of parliament in england ; since her other right as next undoubted heir by blood to the crown , might be altered , or govern'd : we must acknowledge it to be only one of these statutes , which the law sayes , are made ad terrorem & ex terrore only . nor was there ever use made of it by queen elizabeth , nor her parliaments ; so fully were they convinc'd , that this pretended power was so unjust , as that it could not be justified by an act of parliament , being contrair to the laws of god , of nature , of nations , and of the fundamental laws of both kingdoms . but this law being made to exclude queen mary , and the scotish line , as is clear by that clause , wherein it is declared that every person or persones of what degree or nation soever they be , shall during the queens life declare or publish , that they have right to the crown of england during the queens life , shall be disinabled to enjoy the crown in succession , inheritance , or otherwayes , after the queens death ; it therefore followes , that it was never valide : for if it had , king iames might have thereby been excluded by that person who should have succeded next to the scotish race . for it 's undeniable , that queen marie did , during queen elizabeths life , pretend ▪ right to the crown , upon the account that queen elizabeth was declared bastard . and therefore the calling in of king iames after this act , and the acknowledging his title , does clearly evince , that the parliament of england knew , that they had no power to make any such act. the words of which acknowledgement of king iames's right , i have thought fit to set down , as it is in the statute it self , 1. ia. cap. 1. that the crown of england did descend upon king iames by inherent birthright , as being lineally , justly , and lawfully next , and sole heir of the blood royal. and to this recognition they do submit themselves , and posterities for ever , untill the last drop of their blood be spilt . and further doth beseech his majesty to accept of the same recognition , as the first fruits of their loyalty , and faith to his majesty , and to his royal progeny , and posterity for ever . it may be also objected , that by the 8 , act. parl. 1. ia. 6. it is provided in scotland , that all kings and princes that shall happen to reigne and bear rule over that kingdom , shall at the time of their coronation , make their faithfull promise by oath in presence of eternal god , that they shall mantaine the true religion of iesus christ , the preaching of the holy word , and due and right administration of the sacraments now received and preach'd within this kingdom ; from which two conclusions may be inferr'd , 1. that by that act the successor to the crown may be restricted . 2. that the successor to the crown must be a protestant , that being the religion which was professed and established the time of this act. to which it is answered , that this act relates only to the crowning of the king , and not to the succession . nor is a coronation absolutly necessar , coronatio enim magis est ad ostentationem , quàm ad necessitatem . nec ideo rex est quia coronatur , sed coronatur quia rex est . oldard : consil . 90. num . 7. balbus lib. de coronat . pag 40. nor do we read that any kings were crown'd in scripture except ioas. and clovis king of france was the first , who was crown'd in europe . nor are any kings of spaine crown'd till this day . neither is ane coronation oath requisit ; sisenandus being the first who in the 4. tolletan councel gave such an oath amongst the christians , as trajan was the first amongst the heathen emperours . and we having had no coronation oath till the reigne of king gregorie , which was in anno 879 , he having found the kingdom free from all restrictions , could not have limited his successor , or at least could not have debarr'd him by an oath . nullam enim poterat legem dictare posteris , cum par in parem non habeat imperium , as our blackwood observes . pag. 13. ( 2. ) there is no clause irritant in this act debarring the successor , or declaring the succession null in case his successor gave not this oath . 3. the lawfull successor though he were of a different religion from his people ( as god forbid he should be ) may easily swear , that he shall mantaine the laws presently standing . and any parliament may legally secure the successor from overturning their religion or laws , though they cannot debarre him . and though the successor did not swear to mantaine the laws , yet are they in litle danger by his succession ; since all acts of parliament stand in force , till they be repeal'd by subsequent parliaments ▪ and the king cannot repeale an act without the consent of parliament . but to put this beyond all debate , the 2. act of this current parliament is opponed , whereby it is declared , that the right and administration of the government is immediatly devolv'd upon the nixt lawfull heir after the death of the king or queen , and that no difference in religion , nor no law nor act of parliament can stop or hinder them in the free and actual administration ; which is an abrogation of the foresaid act concerning the coronation as to this point ▪ for how can the administration be devolv'd immediatly upon the successor , if he cannot administrat till he be crown'd , and have sworn this oath . the next objection is , that since the king and parl. may by act of parl. alter the successions of privat families though transmitted by the right of blood , why may they not alter the succession in the royal family ? to which it is answered , that the reason of the difference lyes in this , that the heirs of the crown owe not their succession to parliaments : for they succeed by the laws of god , nature , and the fundamental laws of the nation ; whereas privat families are subject to parliaments , and inferiour to them , and owe their privat rights to a municipal law , and so may and ought in point of right to be regulated by them . and yet i am very clear , that a parliament cannot arbitrarly debarr the eldest son of a privat family , and devolve the succession upon the younger : and if they did so , their acts would be null . but if this argument were good , we might as well conclude by it , that no persone born out of england , or attainted of treason could succeed to the crown ; because he could not succeed to a privat estate . all which and many moe instances do clearly demonstrat that the successor to the crown cannot be debarr'd , not the succession to the crown diverted by act of parliament . the last objection is , that robert the iii. king of scotland , was by ane act of parliament preferr'd to david and walter , who were ( as he pretends ) were truly the eldest lawful sons of robert the 2 d. because euphan daughter to the earl of ross was first lawful wife to king robert the 2 d , and she bore him david earl of strathern , and walter earl of athol , alexander earl of buchan , and euphan who was married to james earl of dowglass , after whose deceass he married elizabeth muir , daughter to sir adam muir ; not so much ( as buchanan observes ) from any design to marry a second wife , as from the great love he carried to elizabeth muir , whom because of her extraordinary beauty he had lov'd very passionatly in his youth , and before he married the earl of rosses daughter , and from the love which he bore to the sons whom elizabeth had born before that first marriage , who were john earl of carrick ( who thereafter succeeded to the crown by the title of robert the 3 d , ) and robert earl of fife and monteith , he prevail'd with the parliament to prefer john eldest son by elizabeth muir , to the two sons which he had by the earl of rosses daughter , who was ( as they pretend ) his first lawful wife . in which though i might debate many nice points of law relating to this subject , yet i choose only to insist on these few convincing answers . 1. that in a case of so great moment historians should be little credited , except they could have produc'd very infallible documents ; and as in general one historian may make all who succeed him err , so in this case boetius ( who was the first ) liv'd and wrot 200 years after the marriage of king robert the 2 d , and wrot his history at aberdeen , very remote from the registers and records by which he should have instructed himself ; nor did he know the importance of this point , having touch'd it only transiently , though it has been design'dly press'd by buchanan , to evince that the parliaments of scotland might prefer any of the royal line they pleas'd ; and it is indeed probable that king robert the 2 d. did for some time make no great noise of his first marriage with elizabeth muir , least the meaness of the match should have weaken'd his interest upon his first coming to the crown , he being himself the first of the race of the stewarts , and having so strong competitors as the earl of dowglass , who claim'd right to the crown in the right of the baliol and the cummings , as boetius himself observes . 2. king robert the 3 d. having succeeded as the eldest lawful son , and having been receiv'd as such by that parliament , and his posterity by all succeeding parliaments , the possession of the king and the acquiescence of the people is the most infallible proof that can be adduc'd for proving that robert was the eldest lawful son , nor have most kings in europe , or the heads of most private families any other proof of their being the eldest and lawful sons , save that they succeeded and were acknowledg'd as such . 3. to ballance the authority of these historians , i shall produce the testimonie of the learned sir lewis stewart , one of the most famous lawyers we ever had , and who ought much more to be believ'd than buchanan , not only because he was more disinterested , but because he founds upon acts of parliament and old charters which he himself had seen in the registers , in which elizabeth muir is acknowledg'd to have been the first wife . buchananus lib. 9. in vitam roberti 2. affirmat euphaniam comitis rossenssis filiam primam regis roberti 2. uxorem fuisse & eâ mortuâ , regem superinduxisse elizabetham moram ex qua prius liberos ternos mares suscepisset , & eam uxorem duxisse , ejusque liberos regno destinasse , ut postea eorum natu maximus suc●essit quod quam falsum sit , apparet ex archivis in carcere edinburgensi reconditis , ubi exstant separata acta duorum parliamentorum , subscripta manibus ecclesiasticorum praesulum , nobilium , baronum , & aliorum statuum parliamenti , & eorum sigillis roborata , quibus elizabetha mora agnoscitur prima uxor , & euphania rosse secunda , & liberis ex elizabetha mora tanquam justis haeredibus regni , successive regnum d●cernitur , & post eos liberis euphaniae rosse nec non ibidem cartae extant plurimae , factae per davidem secundum , eorum patruum magnum ex diversis terris , ioanni filio primogenito , nepotis ejus roberti , dum euphania rosse viverit nec non davidi filio natu maximo euphaniae rosse quem solum filium indigitat roberti nepotis , quod non fecisset si elizabetha mora non prius fuisset nupta roberto ejus nepoti , nam primogenitus nunquam attribuitur notho imo ego plures quam viginti cartas in archivis inveni , ubi etiam eas reliqui , ex quibus sole clarius elucessit , elizabetham moram primam fuisse uxorem , & euphaniam rosse secundam , nam extra contraversiam , liberi elizabethae morae etate grandiores erant liberis euphaniae rosse : which paper i did get from the lord pitmeden , who has himself written some learn'd observations upon this point . 4. i have my self seen an act of parliament ( found out by the industry of sir george mackenzie of tarbet , now lord register ) having the intire seals of the members of parliament appended thereto , by which the parliament do swear allegiance to robert the 2 d. the first king of the race of the stewarts ; and after him roberto comiti de carrict , filio suo natu maximo ( his eldest son ) in anno 1371 , which was the first year of his reign ; and if the pretended defect be true , it was a very palpable , and a very undenyable one , and could not but have been unanswerably known to the whole nation . and how can we imagine , that the whole parliament would have unanimously drawn upon themselves so dreadful a perjury , by excluding the lawful heir , against their national oath in the reign of k ▪ kenneth the 3 d , whereby they swore to own always the immediate heir , or that they would have entail'd upon themselves a civil war , by preferring even a questionable heir , after the miseries which they had lately then felt , in the competition betwixt the bruce and the baliol. amongst which seals , the seal of iames earl of dowglass is one , and how ridiculous is it to think , that he would sit and declare a bastard preferable to the brother of his own lady , and to his own lady who would have succeeded if her brothers had died without succession : which act of parliament does also clearly prove , that buchanan did not at all understand matters of fact in this part of the history , for he asserts , that after the death of euphan ross , the king married elizabeth muir , and did by act of parliament obtain the crown to be settled upon robert the 3 d , son to the said elizabeth muir , upon whom he also bestow'd the title of carrick ; all which is most false , for this act of parliament is dated in anno 1371 , and king robert the 2 d. succeeded to the crown that year , nor did euphan ross die till the 3 d. year after he succeeded to the crown , and so not till the year 1374 , and yet in anno 1371 this act is past , designing him heir to the crown , and earl of carrick , and consequently he was so design'd before the death of euphan ross. 5. i have seen a charter granted by king robert the 2 d , when he was only steward of scotland , granted in anno 1165 , and so long before he was king. in which charter likewise , iohn , thereafter king , by the name of robert the 3 d , is a conjunct disponer with him , under the express designation of the eldest son and heir . robertus senescallus scotiae , comes de strathern , & ioannes senescallus primogenitus & haeres ipsius dominus baroniae de kyle , &c. which charter confirms to the abbacy of pasley several lands disponed to them , by reginaldus more , father to sir william more of abercorn . and i find that david duke of rothsay , was always in the charters granted by his father king robert the first , called primogenitus , and he was no bastard , nor can this designation be given to a bastard , as is clear by covaruvias de matrim . part . 2. cap. 8. § . 2. num 4. but how can it be imagined that the monks of pasley would have taken a right from a person as heir to the crown , who was not : for this would have infer'd treason against them , beside the annulling their right , or who could understand better the lawfulness of a marriage , than a body of church-men , living in the time , and very near to the residence of the married persons , and in whose conventual-church the said king robert and elizabeth muir ly buried together . item , i have seen in the registers another charter granted by king robert the 2. in the first year of his reign , with the consent of iohn earl of carrick , primogenitus & haeres , allano de lavidia terrarum de whitslet ; and an other granted by the said king , 1. iune , anno primo regni , confirming to paulo mctire a charter granted by the earl of ross , father to euphan , wherein the said iohn primogenitus & haeres , is a witness : and to shew that the said euphan ross was then living when he was so design'd heir , there is a charter to her by the king upon the very same day of the lands of lochleaven . as also , there is a charter granted by king robert the 2 d , the first year of his reign , to alexander his son , and another to iohn kennedy of the barrony of dalrymple , in both which the said iohn earl of carrick is call'd primogenitus , and is witness with the earl of dowglass ; so that he has been design'd eldest son and heir , openly , uncontravertedly , and in all papers , and with the consent of the second wife and her relations . 6. in the parliament 1372 , the said iohn earl of carrick is design'd to be lieutenant of the kingdom , and all the estates of parliament swear to own him in his government , and which statute is printed amongst the satutes of king robert the 2 d , father to the said iohn , and which must be during the marriage with euphan ross , for she liv'd three years after her husband was king , and he succeeded to the crown anno 1371 : and this also confutes buchanan , who asserts , that he was created earl of carrick after the death of euphan ross , and it is against all sense and reason to think that he could have been acknowledg'd during her life , if he had not been the true apparent heir of the crown and a lawful son. 7. walter ( who they pretend should have succeeded to the crown , ) having kill'd his nephew king iames the first , son to king robert the 3 d ; he was not only not own'd after the death of the said king iames , as certainly he had been if his title had been good , and his right so recent and demonstrable , having so many great and powerful relations , that his father was induc'd upon their account to marry his mother ; but yet the said walter was by all the parliament unanimously condemn'd as a traitor , for having conspir'd the death of his lawful prince . nor does boetius justifie walter 's title in the least , but on the contrary , magnifies the parliament for their just sentence . as did likewise aeneas silvius the popes learned legat , who exhorted the parliament to condemn him . 8. how is it imaginable , that king robert who had so lately , and after a strong competition come to the crown , would have adventur'd to make his title yet more disputable , by preferring a bastard to the true heir , who had so many friends by his mother , and who being an infant had never disoblig'd him . 9. if we will consider the opinion of the civilians , whom we and almost all nations follow in the cases of succession , we will find , that the said king robert the 3 d was the eldest and lawful son of king robert the 2 d. filius legitimus , & non legitimatus . for , 1. they conclude , that a son is prov'd to be a lawful son by the assertion of the father , alciat tract praesumpt . reg. 2 ▪ praesumpt . 2. num . 6. and certainly the father is the best judge in such cases ; but so it is we have the father owning the said robert the 3 d. to be his eldest son and heir , both in charters and acts of parliamnets , which are the most solemn of all deeds . 2. quando pater instituit aliquem tanquam filium suum , which holds in this case , where the father institutes and leaves him heir , and the parliament swears allegiance to him as the heir , mascard . de prob . vol , 2. conclus . 799. and in dubious cases , the father's naming such a man as a son , presumes him to be a lawful son , nominatio parentis inducit filiationem in dubio , l. ex facto § . si quis rogatus ff . ad trebell . 3. even fame , and the common opinion of the people , do in favours of these that are in possession , and in ancient cases , prove & filiationem , & legitimationem , mascard . conclus . 792. but much more , where the fame and common opinion is adminiculated by other arguments , fulgos consil . 128. panorm . in cap. transmiss . qui filii sunt ligittimi . 4. when writs are produc'd , calling a man a son , the law concludes him to be a lawful son. mascard . vol. 2. conclus . 800. num 15. all which can be easily subsum'd in our case . in which robert the 3 d. is nam'd not only son , but heir , and allegiance sworn to him , even in the lifetime of the second wife and her relations sitting in parliament , and all this acquiesc'd in for many hundreds of years , and the competitors punish'd as traitors by the unanimous consent of all the parliament . i know that buchanan does most bitterly inveigh against those laws made by king kenneth the 3 d , as laws whereby the ancient right of succession was innovated , and whereby the government was settled upon children who were neither able to consult with the people , nor to defend them , and whereby those had the government of the nation conferr'd upon them who were not capable to govern themselves . to which my answer is , that in this buchanan's malice contradicts his history , for his own history tells us , that the scots swore allegiance to fergus and his posterity ; and consequently fergus's son ought by law to have succeeded , and not his brother , for his brother was none of his posterity , and therefore those laws made by k. kenneth did but renew the old law , and the innovation introduc'd in favours of the uncles , was a subversion of the fundamental law to which they had sworn . 2. that the old law was not abrogated , but was in being by vertue of the first oath , appears very clear by buchanan himself , who confesses , that upon the death of durstus , a wicked prince , it was debated whether his son should not succeed juxta sacramentum fergusio prestitum veteremque esse morem servandum , which acknowledgeth that the succession was even in these days established by law , by oath , and by custom ; and after the death of fergus the 2 d , his son eugenius ( though a minor ) was crown'd , and his uncle graemus allow'd to be his tutor . and buchanan also brings in bishop kennedy , lib. 12. praising this law as made by kenneth , a most wise and glorious prince , with advice of all his estates of parliament ; and which rather confirms ( as he says ) the old law than introduces a new one , so far did buchanan's rage against queen mary prevail with him , to praise and rail at the same individual law ; and it is observable , that it is very dangerous to recede once from fundamental laws , for buchanan makes not only the succession elective , but he makes no difference betwixt lawful children and bastards , and excludes not only minors during the uncles life , but women for ever . 3. in all nations where the monarchy is hereditary , minors succeed , and so this innovation of causing the next male succeed for all his life , was contrary to the nature of the monarchy and to the customs of all nations , and god in scripture gives us many instances of it : ioas succeeded when he was seven years of age , iosiah when he was eight , manasseh in twelve , and azariah in sixteen ; and yet in those days , god is said to have chosen the king , for it is said in deut. thou shalt set over thee , the king whom i have chosen , and consequently the choice of minors cannot be ill , since god almighty us'd to make such a choice . i know that eccles. 10.16 . says , woe unto the land when thy king is a child , but the criticks interpret this of a king that is childish , puer intellectu & moribus , or because factions arise by the opposition to his regents , and this inconveniency did more necessarily attend the allowing a regent king during life , for both the subjects and the true heir rais'd factions in that case , whereas the subjects only are factious in the other , and yet even they are no more factious for that short time , than they are always in common-wealths . 4. the reason why the minor king was to have one to supply his nonage ceasing with his majority , it was unreasonable that the remedy should have lasted beyond the disease , and the worst effect that could have been occasion'd by the infant king's minority was , that the kingdom should have been during that time govern'd by joynt advice of parliament , councils , and officers of state , which in buchanan's opinion in other places of his history and book de jure regni , is so excellent a model , that he decrys monarchy as much inferior to it . 5. it was most inconvenient to accustom any private family to live in the quality of a king. 6. it could not but occasion many murders , and much faction , for the true heir could not live peaceably under this eclipse and exclusion , nor could the uncle live without making a party to secure his pleasant usurpation . 7. as these divisions and factions were the natural and necessary effects that were to be expected from this irregular succession , so it is very observable , that from king fergus to king kenneth the 3 d , we had 79. kings , amongst whom , almost the half were the most impious , tyranical , or lazie kings that ever we had , according to buchanan's character of them ; so happy and wise a thing is this ( so much magnified ) election of a successor by the people and their representatives , to supply the defects of the lawful heir , whereas from king kenneth the 3 d , to king charles the 2 d. inclusivè , we have had 31. kings , 26. of whom have succeeded by a due lineal right , and have prov'd vertuous princes , greater by their merit than their birth , as if god had design'd to let us see , that though most of them succeeded whilst they were very young , yet that he can choose a fitter successor than parliaments can do ; whereas the other 5. kings who came to the crown against that law of kenneth the 3 d ▪ viz. constantine the bald , grimus , mackbeath , donal bain , and duncan the 2 d , were all persons who deserved very ill to be preferred to the true heir , and who , as they came to the crown against law , so govern'd without it : and it is very strange , that the fanaticks , who think that every throw of the dice is influenc'd by a special providence , will not allow , that god does by a special providence take care who shall be his representative , who shall be the pastor of his flock , and nursing father of his church ; let us therefore trust his care more than our own , and hope to obtain more from him by christian submission , humility and obedience than we can by caballing , rebelling , and sacrilegious-murdering , or excluding the true successor . finis . what follows is immediatly to be subjony'd to the testimony of calvin , page 90. i know that to this it may be answered , that the same calvin does qualifie his own words , which i have cited with this following caution . si qui sunt ( saith he ) populares magistratus , ad moderandam regum libidinem constituti ( quales olim erant qui lacedemoniis regibus oppositi erant ephori ; & quâ etiam fortè potestate ( ut nunc res habent ) fuguntur in singulis regnis , tres ordines ; quum primarios conventus peragunt ) adeo illos ferocienti regum licentiae , pro officio intercedere non veto ; ut si regibus impotenter grassantibus , & humili plebeculae insultantibus conniveant , eorum dissimulationem nefariâ perfidiâ non carere affirmam ; quia populi libertatem , cujus se tutores dei ordinatione positos nôrunt , fraudulenter produnt . to which my reply is , that these words must be so constructed , as that they may not be incosistent with his former clear and orthodox doctrine , of not resisting supream powers , the former being his positive doctrine , and this but a supervenient caution , and they do very well consist ; for though calvin be very clear , that kings cannot be resisted , yet he thinks that this is only to be mean'd of those kings who have no superiors to check them by law , as the kings of the lacedemonians had , who by the fundamental constitution of their monarchy , might have been call'd to an accompt by the ephori , and so in effect were only titular kings : or of such monarchs as had only a co-ordinate power with the states of their own kingdom ; and even in these cases , he does not positively assert , that these monarchs may be resisted , but does only doubt whether if there be any such superior or co-ordinate magistrate representing the people , they may not restrain the rage and licentiousness of their kings : but that caution does not at all concern the ius regni apud scotos , because this cannot be said of the kings of great britain , since the states of parliament are only call'd by the king , and derive their authority from him , and the legislative power is solely in the king , the states of parliament being only consenters , he and not they can only make peace and war , and grant remissions , and against him and not them treason only is committed , and the law books of both nations do affirm , that the king is supream , and consequently even according to calvin's doctrine , neither his people , nor any of their representatives , can justly oppose , and much less punish him . i know that grotius is by the republicans , and the fanaticks , oft-times cited to defend this their doctrine , of opposing princes ; but though his testimony might be justly rejected , as being himself born under a commonwealth , yet he is most impudently cited , for he lib. 1. cap. 4. does positively lay down as a general and undoubted rule , that summum imperium tenentibus , resisti non potest , those who have the supream power cannot lawfully be resisted ; whilch rule he founds upon the principles of reason , the authority of scripture , and the practice of the primitive church ; and though he limits the same thereafter by some exceptions , yet it will easily appear , that these exceptions extend not at all to our case . for the first relates only to such kings , as have receiv'd their power with express condition , that they may be try'd by other magistrats . the second to such as have voluntarily resign'd their empire , as charles the 5 th . did ; and so the one may be oppos'd , because they were only titular kings : and the other , because they left off to be kings , and consequently we are concerned in neither of these cases . the third limitation is only in the case where he who was truly a king , has alienated his kingdom to strangers ; in which case , grotius does contend , that subjects may refuse to obey , because he ceaseth to be their king. but as this is not our case , so even in that case grotius is very clear , that if this alienation be made by an hereditary monarch , the alienation is null , as being done in prejudice of the lawful successor , but he does not at all assert that the monarch may be thereupon depos'd by his people . the fourth relates only to such kings , as from a hatred to their countrey , design its destruction and utter ruine ; but as he confesseth himself , id vix accidere potest in rege mentis compote ; and consequently can take only place in a mad man , in which case all laws allow the kingdom to be rul'd by governours , and administrators in the king's name , if the madness be natural , and a total depravation of sense . but if by madness be mean'd a moral madness , and design to ruine the kingdom and the subjects , as was , and is most impiously pretended against king charles the first , and king charles the 2 d , the best and most reasonable of kings ; then opposition in such cases is not at all warranted by grotius , who speaks only of a physical and natural madness ; for else , every thing that displeaseth the people should be call'd madness ; and so the exception should not limit but overturn the general rule , and should arm all subjects to rebel against their princes , and make them the soveraign judges in all cases . which is inconsistent with grotius's own doctrine , and is excellently refuted by his own reasons . the fifth relates only to kings , who by the fundamental laws of the kingdom are ty'd to such and such conditions , so as that if they fall in them , they may be oppos'd . the sixth relates only to kingdoms where the power is equally devided betwixt the king and the senate . the seventh is incase the king was at first invested by the people , with express reservation to them to resist in such and such cases , and so is almost the same with the fifth , and all these three differ little from the first . and with grotius good leave , they err also in this , that they are not properly exceptions from his own rule , for the rule being only , that supream powers cannot be resisted , these powers are not supream , and they needed not be caution'd by an exception , since they did not fall under the rule . but neither of these cases extend to us , since our king is by the acts of parliament fomerly cited , declared to be supream over all persons and in all causes , nor made our predecessors any such express reservations at the first erection of the monarchy , and consequently by grotius own positive doctrine cannot be resisted . and so far is grotius an enemy to such fanatical resistance , upon the pretence of liberty and religion , that num . 6. he calls the authors of these opinions , time servers only . and gronovius a violent republican and fanatick , taxes him extreamly for it , in his observations upon that fourth chapter , whose arguments adduc'd against grotius i shall answer amongst the other objections . gronovius's first argument why it should be lawful to resist the supream magistrate in defence of religion , is , because if it be not lawful for subjects to arm themselves for religion against their prince , it should not be lawful for their prince by the same rule to defend himself against turks and infidels , who would endeavour to force him to comply with their impieties . but to this it is answered , that resistance to superiors is expressly discharg'd by the laws of god and nature , as said is , but this cannot be extended to cases where there is no subjection nor allegiance ; and it may be as well argu'd , that because one private man may beat another who offers to strike him , that therefore a child may beat his parent , or a servant his master , or that because i may violently resist a private man who offers to take away my goods unjustly , that therefore i may oppose the sentence of the magistrat , because i forsooth do not think the same just . his second shift is , that our saviour commanded only absolute submission without resistance in the infancy of the church when he himself was miraculosly to assist his own servants , but this submission was to end with the miracles , to which it related . as to which , my answer is , 1. that all the commands in scripture may be so eluded , nor is there any duty more frequently and fully inculcated than this is , and that too in the same chapters amongst other duties , which are to last for ever , such as submission to parents , and masters , and this is founded upon plain reason and conveniency , and not upon miracles . 2. this was receiv'd and acknowledg'd by the pagans , as has been fully prov'd , though it cannot be pretended that they rely'd upon any such miraculous assistance . 3. it cannot be deny'd but the fathers of the primitive church did recommend and justifie themselves in their apologies to the heathen emperors for bearing patiently , when they were able not only to have resisted , but to have overthrown their persecuters , as is clear by the citations out of tertullian , cyprian , lactantius , augustine , and others , to be seen in grotius , de iure belli , lib. 1. cap. 4. num . 7. and it had been great impudence as well as sin in them , to have boasted of a recent matter of fact , which was not true ; nor could there be a greater injury done to the primitive christians , as grotius observes , than to ascribe that to their weakness , which they consider'd as an effect of duty ; and why should the heathen emperors have suffered those to multiply , who obey'd only because disobedience was not safe , for they might have certainly concluded , that by the same principle that they obeyed only because they were weak , they would disobey how soon they were able . 4. if the first christians in general had obeyed only because they were not able to resist , then any private christian had resisted when he was able , or would have fled or conceal'd himself , whereas it it acknowledg'd in the other answer press'd by gronovius himself , that they sought for martyrdom , and so these two answers are inconsistent ; and the thebean lègion , and others , did submit themselves voluntarly to martyrdom with their arms in their hands , and when they were able to have overthrown the emperor . and lastly , if this doctrine were allow'd , no society could subsist , for when dissenters grew strong , the lawful magistrat behov'd to perish ; whereas jesus christ did contrive the christian religion ; so as that all governours should reasonably wish their subjects to be christians ; and so as no christian should attempt to overthrow the order and establishment of civil government , and that they should not be drawn away from the practice of christian devotion by the carnal desires of being great and strong in the world , nor have any hopes in the arm of flesh to the lessening of their immediate dependence upon him . his third shift is , that his doctrine of submission and of dying for the christian religion without making resistance , was only the practice , but not the command of the primitive church , and proceeded from their immoderat affectation of the crown of martyrdom , as milntoun also pretends . but since the express command of scripture is founded upon such clear reason , and since ( as grotius well observes ) the practice of the primitive christians , who liv'd so near the age wherein these scriptures were pen'd , is the best interpreter of the scripture , it is horrid impiety to make those blessed martyrs pass for vain hypocrites , and distracted self-murderers ; and it becomes us with holy reverence to imitate those whom the christian church has ever admir'd . the fourth shift is , that the protestant churches have been reform'd by such insurrections as these , contrary to the royal authority . but this is fully answered by the learned henry more in his divine dialogues , and by du moulin in his philanax anglicus ; where likewise are to be found the many testimonies of protestant churches , and protestant divines , condemning positively the taking up of arms against the soveraign power , even for the defence of religion ; and the very presbyterian confession of faith at westminster , is so positive as to this point , that the presbyterians themselves can never answer it . the sum of which answer is , that the king of spain coming by marriage in place of the duke of burgundy , the said king of spain could pretend to no more power than they had , nor could the house of burgundy pretend to any more power by marrying the heirs of the counts of the several provinces , than these counts had over their provinces ; and therefore since none of these were soveraigns over their provinces , the provinces might have resisted the king of spain when he oppress'd them ; and consequently that resistance cannot defend such as resist supream powers upon pretence of religion , grotius de antiq. reipub. ba●av . cap. 7. the opposition made by the protestants in france , was not occasion'd by religion , but upon a quarrel betwixt the princes of the blood and the house of guise in the minority of francis the 2 d , and is defended most excellently by king iames himself , not to have been rebellion , in his defence of the right of kings , pag. 14. the opposition made by the princes of germany to the emperor , was founded upon the inherent right in the princes , by the golden charter of the empire . and luther himself declar'd , that magistratui non erat resistendum , and has written a book to that purpose ; nor would he engage in the confederacy for defensive arms at smalcald , until the lawyers declared that that resistance was lawful by the laws of the empire , vide slydan hist. lib. 8. anno 1531. the war that arose in switzerland , was not occasion'd by religion ; for the reformation was once establish'd with the con-consent of the magistrat . and the eruption that was made by other cantons upon the reform'd cantons eleven years after that establishment , vide slydan , anno 1522. nor was it calvin who banish'd the prince and bishop of geneva , for he fled eight months before upon the detecting of a conspiracy , by which that bishop was to deliver over the liberties of that city to the duke of savoy , and for which his secretary was hang'd , vide turretin ▪ annal. reformationis , anno 1529. and albeit those who reform'd in scotland , in the reign of queen mary , pretended authority from the king , yet they were certainly rebels , and are condem'd by rivet , a famous protestant divine , who also inveighs bitterly against this principle , castiga not. in epist. ad balsac . cap. 13. num . 14. sub finem . from all which , i observe , first , that all the protestant divines by making apollogies for such of their profession as have risen in arms against supream powers , must be thereby concluded to be asham'd of the principle . 2. immediatly upon the quieting those rebellions , all the protetestant churches have in their confessions of faith , declared their abhorrence of that principle ; which being the product of conviction and experience , joyn'd with duty , must be the most judicious and sincere testimony of all others . 3. all these rebellions have been occasion'd by a mistake in point of law , and not in point of religion ; for the divines , as i have related , have been abused by the lawyers : and therefore , since in the isle of britain , the laws of both kingdoms have declared the rising in arms against the king , to be treason , albeit for the defence of religion ; it necessarily follows , that this must be unlawful in point of conscience in this kingdom . 4. though good things may be occasion'd by a rebellion , yet that does not justifie a rebellion ; for though ieroboam was allow'd by god to rise against rehoboam , yet god almighty himself calls his revolt rebellion , 1 kings 12.19 . and 2 chron. 10.19 . and it is observable , that after this revolt , there was but one good king amongst all the rebellious kings of israel ; whereas amongst the kings of iudah , who were lawful kings , there was but one or two who were any ways impious ; so far does god bless a lawful succession . some also use as a shift against this orthodox doctrine , that the reason why the primitive christians did not oppose their emperors in the defence of the christian religion , was , because they had not been secured at that time in the exercise of their religion by the laws of the empire ; and therefore the practice of those christians can be no argument why we may not now rise to defend the orthodox religion ▪ since it is now established by law. but this objection is fully answered by that great great antiquary samuel petit. diatriba de iur. principum edictis ecclesiae quaesito , where he clearly proves , that they were actually secured by the edicts of the emperors in the days of the emperor tiberius , and downward , and yet they would not rise in arms though they were persecuted under these same emperors , because the word of god and the christian religion did command obedience under persecution , and discharged resistance and taking up of arms. add to page 73. i have also seen in fordon's history , lib. 14. pag. 73. a charter granted by king david to the bishops , with the consent of robert his nephew , and his sons giving power to the bishops to dispone in testament upon their own moveables , which before that time did by a corrupt custom fall to the king , in which charter , the witnesses are , robertus senescallus comes de strathern , nepos noster ioannes senescallus comes de carrict , filius suus primogenitus & haeres , thomas comes de mar , georgius de dunbar , comes de march , & gulielmus comes de dowglass ; so that here is not only the attestation of the father before he was king , naming iohn earl of carrick , thereafter king robert the 2 d. his eldest son and heir , but the attestation of the grand-uncle king david , who could be no ways byassed in the affair ; and here he is ranked before the three eldest earls in the nation , who were then the three first subjects therein ; and it is against all sense , to think that the whole bishops would have sought the consent of the said iohn as apparent heir of the crown , if he had not been apparent heir . i find also , that fordon calls him when he is crown'd king , primogenitus roberti secundi ; nor was there the least opposition made to his coronation , nor to the coronation of annabella drummond his queen ( a daughter of the house of stob hall , now pearth , ) though both the sons of the second marriage were then alive . i find also , that boetius himself acknowledges , that the earl of marches son george , being pursu'd for having married clandestinly one of the daughters of elizabeth muir , his defence was , that he married her when she was the daughter of a private subject , and before king robert was king , whereas if she had been only a bastard-daughter , it could have been no crime to have married her . an accompt of scotlands grievances by reason of the d. of lauderdales ministrie humbly tendred to his sacred majesty. stewart, james, sir, 1635-1713. 1672 approx. 127 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 35 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2005-12 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a61504 wing s5532a estc r17495 12728013 ocm 12728013 66384 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a61504) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 66384) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 369:10, 2154:7) an accompt of scotlands grievances by reason of the d. of lauderdales ministrie humbly tendred to his sacred majesty. stewart, james, sir, 1635-1713. [10], 9-52 p. s.n., [edinburgh : 1672] attributed to sir james stewart. cf. bm; halkett & laing (2nd ed.). place and date of publication from wing. item at 369:10 has print missing in filmed copy. pages 40-end of book photographed from harvard university libraries copy and inserted at the end. errata note on p. 52. item at 369:10 incorrectly identified as s5532, but matches description for s5532a. reproduction of originasl in: huntington library and bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng lauderdale, john maitland, -duke of, 1616-1682. scotland -history -1660-1688. 2005-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2005-07 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2005-08 jonathan blaney sampled and proofread 2005-08 jonathan blaney text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-10 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an accompt of scotlands grievances by reason of the d. of lauderdales ministrie , humbly tendred to his sacred majesty . to the king sir the following sheets , containing for the most part , the complaints of your people , against your commissioner , doe so naturallie addresse themselves to your ma tie . , that i could not deny them this inscription ; some may possiblie endeavour , to render the presumption more criminall , by censuring what is thus offered , by a concealed hand in a publick manner , for a libelling pamphlet : and truelie i am sorrie , that the mere iniquitie of the objectors , should force upon it so much of a disloyall resemblance ; but sieng that it advanceth nothing , which i might not avowedlie present to your ma tie . , on your throne , and environed with both your par lts . , nd athere own and iustifie , in every point ; i am hopefull , that the truth and importance of what is here honestlie held forth , for your own and your kingdoms good , and not the partialitie of any whose interest it is to have abuses covered , shall incline you to a more favourable reflexion . i must also tell your ma tie . that after the endeavours , that have been used , to inform in the more dutifull methods , what appears lesse civill in this ( that may be thought too communicative ) is neverthelesse excused by a very loyall expediencie ; for allbeit your ma ties . goodnesse , be indeed the great comfort and hope of your people , and their loyaltie an impregnable defence , against all sinistruous suspicions ; yet this discoverie of some mens peculiar guilt in these strange doeings , wherein for their own safetie , they have dared to involve your ma ties . authoritie , may both fortifie , by a generall concurrence , my weake enterprise , for your ma ties . better information , and also signallie contribute to , the assistance and reliefe of dutie against too many obvious tentations . however as i am sure , that a successe in this essay , suitable to the sinceritie of the affection whence it flowes , is the most dutifull wish that any heart is capable of ; so , that your ma tie . may be constantlie directed to those counsels and courses , that may render you the most glorious and blissed of all princes , is and shall be ever the fervent prayer of sir your ma ties . most humble , most obedient and most affection at subject ▪ when , in the year 1660. , it pleased god to restore his ma tie . to these his kingdoms ; with how cordiall and universall a joy this blessing was welcomed by scotland , is almost still recent in every ones rememberance : neither was this joy a meer raptour of passion , or its demonstrations confined to transient expressions ; if his ma tie . had done all for himselfe and us , which god did for both , the reall and solid retributions of our acknowledgement could hardlie have been more large . i shall not at present descend to a full enumeration of instances , the whole tenour of the greatest part of the acts , past in par lt in the years 61. and 62. , doe make but one entire evidence ; yet there are a few things which doe well deserve a more particular observation . as first , that upon occasion of our former troubles , and as if their cause and rise had only been from the peoples mutinie , takeing advantage of the defects or neglects of the regall power , that might have prevented it ; we did establish , both by acts , oaths , and subscriptions , his ma ties . prerogative , to be absolute and incontrollable , in the choice of all officers of state , councellors and judges , and in and over all matters of peace , warr , leagues , bonds , meetings , conventions and parliaments , with a distinct exclusion of all exceptions . it is true , that many did even then thinke this a streatch beyond what the frailties of men , and casualities of human affairs , can reasonablie allow , and that it is no lesse wisdom , to vaile the sacred heights of sovereigntie under the shreine of an uncontroverted supposall ; then to expose them , by perremptorie determinations , to the cavillings of irresistible exigencies ; and therefor did preferr the moderation of our ancestors , who notwithsstanding the frequent occurrence of many more violent provocations , yet did ever leave these points , in that fair indefinitnesse , which dutie doth allwayes construe to an universalitie , without interfeiring with the pretences of necessitie : but heavens extraordinarie favour , did at that time so second the constancie of our love to a prince so long wished for , that our great persuasions of his singular enduements , without any regard to the peevish cautions of scrupulous prudence , were the only measures of our concessions , and therefor 2dly , our loyaltie did not here subsist , but notwithstanding that the foundest policie hath allwayes judged , the power in the prince and purse with the people to be the justest ballance of government , yet we , forgetting all preceeding distresses , to testifie the aboundance of our affection by the rarest indication whereof our nation is capable , doe francklie add to his ma ties . revennue , above the double of what he formerlie possessed ; and doe netly grant him , by a voluntarie establishment , more , i am perswaded , then ever his benigne disposition would have exacted , upon an absolute surrender : and indeed this , our liberall offer , was , at that time , so rightlie esteemed the utmost of our abilitie , that , amongst other motives mentioned in the act of par lt . it is expresselie sett down , that his majestie had signified his resolution not to raise any more sess ; and yet how often , since that time , our benevolence hath by commissioners been drawn forth , beyond our power , upon pretext of his ma ties . occasions ; the taxations and assessements that have been imposed on us , within these few years , doe planlie witnesse , but 3dly , so exuberant were the propensions of our hearts toward his ma tie . , that , as if all this subjection professed and liberalitie offered , had been farr short of dutie , we further , by an act entituled , an humble tender to his sacred ma tie . of the dutie and loyaltie of his antient kingdom of scotland , mancipat our very liberties and persons to his ma ties . devotion and service ; and doe thereby in acknowledgment of our dutie , make humble and heartie offer to him of 20000. footmen and 2000. horsemen , sufficientlie armed , and furnished with fourtie dayes provision , to be in readinesse upon his ma ties . call , for the ends there mentioned : and by the same act the par lt . doth declare , that if his ma tie . should have further use of their service , the kingdom would be readie ; every man betwixt sixtie and sixteen , to join and hazard their lives and fortunes , as they shall be called for by his ma tie . , for the safetie and preservation of his sacred person , authoritie , and government . 4thly , that there might be nothing wanting to these ample expressions of our loyaltie , the par lt . by another act , in dutifull and humble recognizance of his ma ties . prerogative royall , doth declare , that the ordering and disposeall of trade with forraigne nations , and the laying of restraints and impositions upon forraigne imported commodities , doe belong to his ma tie . and his successors , as an undoubted priviledge and prerogative of the crown , and that therefor they may doe therein as they shall judge fit for the good of the kingdom . 5thlie , that it might appear to the world , that we placed the securitie of all our interests , more in our confidence of his ma ties . goodnes , then upon the firmest provision of the best laws ; although the par lt . 1641. was held by his ma ties . father of glorious memorie present in person , and many acts were there passed and superscribed by him , for the setling of our religion , and liberties , with all the maturitie of judgement , that long and well weighed experience , many and well mannaged treaties , and englands mediation , could furnish ; yet , because their lustre seemed to be a litle stained , by the ingratefull remembrance of some previous contentions , wherein it was our misfortune to have his late ma tie . differing from us , we , at one blow , annull that par lt . , and without other reason or distinction rescind all its proceedings . 6thly and lastly , that , for to evidence our unparalelled submission , and resignation unto his ma ties . pleasure , and how that , according to the usuall phrase of that time , all that was dearest to us was to him surrendered ; notwithstanding , that the nation since its first reformation from poprie , had almost continuallie opposed prelacie , and after haveing ejected it , with the severest exclusions , had for many years enjoyed a church-constitution and ministrie , which at least was highlie commendable , for its advanceing of true knowledge and pietie , and in the worst of times did prove the surest bullworke of monarchie : yet , out of meer complyance with his ma ties . will , our par lt . doth consent and the people silentlie acquiesce , to presbyteries unexspected overthrow , and prelacies reestablishment ; not that the ruines of what the most part did esteem to be the labour of their fathers , and worke of god , were at that time unconcernedlie regarded , or the consequences of this alteration , which have since ensued , in the least unforseen ; but in a word , to a king so acceptable to us , and to whom we had alreadie given all things , we could refuse nothing . these and other arguments , that then occurred , of the sinceritie and satisfaction of our joy , for his ma ties . return , being considered , i thinke that passage ps . 126. , was not of old more truelie said by those concerned , then vve may now directlie and without paraphrase transferr it to our selves , viz that when the lord turned again our captivitie we were like them that dream then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with singing &c. but haveing said eneough of these things , by way of introduction , both for cleering of some particulars , that will hereafter fall in my way , and also for obviating any mistake , that can possiblie arise , in prejudice of the countrey , upon the matters that have been lately agitat among us ; i need not use any long deduction of the intervenient changes , to lead us unto the present posture of our affairs . the earle of midleton was first honoured , with his ma ties . commission , ad did therein bestirr himselfe very vigorouslie , but overhastning , and overpryseing his worke , he soon rendered himselfe obnoxious ; so that upon the mutuall jealousies betwixt him and the duke , then earle , of lauderdaill , the earle of midleton , in his passion mistakeing the method of billetting , for that of open voteing , and in a more justifiable presentment , then righteous judgement , causing my l o. lauderdaill to be sentenced incapable of publick trust ; lauderdaill getteth the advantage ; and manageing it at court , by a base insinuation of earle midletons generous disdain of his unworthie practices , in a short time he prevails to midletons overthrow , and , as the course lesse invidious , obtains his commission to be transferred to the earle of rothesse , whom he accompanies , from court to this kingdom , for concludeing thatar p lt . and in this last session thereof it vvas , that the act and humble tender above mentioned , vvas passed vvith that exorbitant clause , offering the forces therein condescended on , to be in readinesse , as they shall be called for by his ma tie . , to march to any part of his dominions of scotland , england , or ireland , for suppressing of any forraign invasion , intestin trouble , or insurrection , or for any other service , wherein his ma ties . honour , authoritie , or greatnesse may be concerned . which , though at that time it was lookt upon , by some , as superfluouslie expresse , and suspiciouslie distinct ( a generall offer , being a more aggrieable signification of dutie , and a limitation to scotland , more proper to a parliaments prudence ) yet the stile and humour of those times , did easilie exempt it from particular notice : but what my l o. lauderdaill , it s principall contryver , did thereby intend , time , the best revealer of secret designes , hath since sufficientlie discovered . this par lt . being dissolved , our new triumphant church ( a qualitie , which no church on earth , did ever evenlie bear ) came next upon the stage , and being fullie authorised by the laws latelie made , and then also armed with their high commission , they go on , in the years 1664. 65. and 66. with their dear and important conformitie , at so christian a rate , that i verily believe , that all men , except a few of our laborious and indefatigable ghostlie fathers , were perfectlie thereby tyred out : what prancks were plaid , tumults excited , and tragedies acted , in these years , by our reverend clergie , as if aemulous of that presbyterian zeal , which they use so hotlie to decry , needs not here be repeated : my l o. lauderdaill himselfe , though at that time our sole minister , was , in appearance , so overcome , and born down by them , to a desperate indifferencie , that , in probabilitie , if the earle of tweddell and s r. robert murray , had not come in for his admonition , and our reliefe , the land might have been reduced to the greatest extremities . but they , having then the honour of his favour , and thereby , accesse to represent things in their true state , became the happie instruments of a very seasonable deliverance , and afterwards of a more expedient indulgence ; whereby the countrey was very sensiblie refreshed , and a great part of its disquiets composed : and this was the condition of our affairs , when unluckilie , in the year 1669. my l o. lauderdaill , falling into an itch of grace , and thirsting for a little of that glory , whereof he had long swayed the power , procures a new par lt . to be called , and himselfe thereto named commissioner : now , it being from the date of this commission , that we may trulie calculate the rise of most of our late mischiefs , it will not be amisse , that , in the first place , i summarylie runn over the occasion , and continuing of this par lt . and thereby make way to their more cohaerent representation ; & , it is notoriously known , that , the pretence made for its assembling , was the notion of an union betwixt the two kingdoms ; but the matter being of great moment , our procedure must also be very flow paced , and therefore , during all the first session , which continued from the 19. of oct r. unto the 23. of dec r. , all done about it was onely the parliaments answer to his ma ties . letter : but the truth is , the honour , power , and profit of the place of kings commissioner , being once tasted , did prove by farr the more tempting ; and therefore the par lt . must be continued , for prosecution of the thing , in a second session , which was accordinglie held , from the 28. of july unto the 22. of agust 1670 , and therein the commission for the treatie , is , in litle more than an hour , expedited to such persons , as it should please his ma tie to nominate , or rather my l o. lauderdaill to suggest ; but , allbeit that , within a very short space thereafter , this whole project was marred , and its design dissipated like a vapour ; yet our par lt . and his graces commission were still kept current , untill that very happilie the warr , which he had helped to bring on , gives him a new colour , for a third session in the year 1672. and thereby , occasion to honour us , with a third visit . at the opening of this session , his ma ties letters are read , intimating the warr to be the cause of their meeting ; but withall stuffed , with such hyperbolicall commendations of my l o. commissioners grace , that i am charitable to think , that neither his presumption vvould have served him to move his ma tie to such things , nor , even his modestie have consented , that the like should be said of him , if it had not been a designed gallantrie for his new amiable dutchesse , who , by a novell practice , had her place prepared , and was there present : and certainlie it is to the same reason , that we must ascribe his breaking up of this session in the midle , for leading of her grace , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 about the countrey , for severall weeks ; the members of par lt . , being left to attend their return : & so after the close of this session , which did dure from the 12. of june unto the 19. of septr . , he goes back again to court , without any mention of a dissolution ; which neverthelesse in his particular , happened well : for finding that matters in england begun to frown , and that in the summer 1673 , the clouds thickned exceedinglie , even to the threatning of an inevitable eruption , at the ensueing meeting or their par lt . ; if scotland , formerlie the theatre of his glory , had not novv presented , as a convenient retreat , he might have been in great perplexitie : and therefore , for a fourth time , dovvn he must come , onely the pretence vvas not so obvious , yet the vvarr not ended , and the disorders of the phanaticks , that have served many a turn , are judged sufficient matter for a letter , wherein his ma tie recommending first the securitie of the kingdom , and next , the severe chastisement of non-conforming disorders , concludes with many good words in behalf of his grace in the usuall manner : but the 12. of no vr . the day of the meeting of par lt . being come , after the reading of his ma ties . letter , and a short speech made by the commissioner , he is greatly surprized , to hear a discourse of grievances begun by duke hamiltoun , and seconded vehemently from every quarter , so that he had no way to extricate himself ; but by a short adjournment : and thus , from that day to the 9 th . of dec r , keeping only five meetings or par lt . , he , on the one hand , endeavours by redressing the grievances of the salt , brandy and tobacco , caballing with his few adhaerers , and insinuating with some of his opposits , to appease matters ; and , on the other , he fights and wrestles , with pretences of his ma ties prerogative , and abrupt adjournments , to stave off more touching complaints ; untill , perceiving all his ground to be lost , he is at length necessitated to deliver himselfe by one long adjournment for all , and to wait for a more favourable opportunitie , from the issue of things then in dependence in england : but notwithstanding , that all things , both at court , and concerning the english par lt . , have succeeded to his very wish , and that in this interim , he hath omitted nothing at home or abroad , which might dispose affairs to a more propitious aspect ; yet when the meeting of our par lt . recurrs , on the 3 d. of march , he again , by his ma ties . expresse command , chuses to adjourn it unto the 14. of oct r. next , to the unexpressible surprise , and dissatisfaction of both par lt . and people . having thus dispatched the narrative of our par lt . and its sessions ; for the better understanding of the causes , that have occasioned our discontents , and increased them unto the present distemper , it may be remembred , that , after that the earle of midleton was laid aside , the whole mannagement of our affairs , at court , was devolved upon my lo. laud. , as sole secretarie , for this kingdom , neither can it be accounted an imposing , by any knowing person , to affirm , that he did no lesse absolutelie exercise it . his ma ties long absence from our countrey , and his necessarie unacquaintednesse , by reason thereof , both with persons and the condition of matters amongst us , do certainlie extend , and raise this employment to the greatest and highest trust : but my lo. lauderdaill , according to his noble selfe confidence , apprehending more the controul of other mens officious medlings , than the least possibilitie of his own mistaking , did further improve the thing , by the particular care and caution that he took , to have himselfe his ma ties sole informer as well as his sole secretarie ; and therefore , not onely upon the pretence of his ma ties prerogative , were our matters , for the most part , disposed of above , without any previous advice of his ma ties councell in scotland ; but strict notice was also taken of all scotchmen coming to court ; and to attempt an addresse , or accesse to his ma tie . , otherwise then by my lo. lauderdaill , was , no lesse , than the hazard of his implacable resentment . i need not here mention his supine , or rather designed , neglect of introduceing scotchmen to offices about court ; it is obvious to every one , that even those vacancies , happening by the death of scotchmen , were there , through his fault , discontinued from the nation : it was also his studie and work , as he hath often publicklie boasted , to have the court councell for scotch businesse , upon pretext that it consisted of englishmen , disused and suppressed : but as it is evident , that he did draw to himselfe the whole significancie of our nation in england , meerlie for the augmenting of his own value , so it is no lesse clear that he ordered all things amongst us at his own pleasure . thus , from himselfe alone , privie councellors are named , lords of session and exchecquer placed and removed , gifts and pensions granted , armies levied , and disbanded , generall officers appointed , this par lt . called , and all other matters of importance transacted , as he thought good to advise and direct : and the truth is , that for severall years , the thing was quietlie comported with , forasmuch as , we did not onely consider that the present state and circumstances of our government , did someway oblige us to this condition ; but did also find , that so long as chancellor hyde did force my lo. lauderdaill to consult , more his prudence , then his humour , his administration , though too absolute , was yet not altogether unreasonable : but , this restraint being once removed , and his ambition left at libertie to swell with his prosperitie , what strange and grievous effects it hath since produced , especiallie after his riseing to be his ma ties commissioner , the plain history of things , without the perswasions of any other argument , will best evince ; and because that the order observed , or intended in par lt . , will probablie give most satisfaction , it shall also be the rule of our method . the first , and great grievance then , mentioned in parlt . , was the monopolie of the salt , which being by my lo. lauderdaill procured , to the earle of kincaerden his friend , by his ma ties gift , allowing the praeemption of inland and prohibition forraign salt , was worth to the interessed more then 4000 lb. st . yearlie ; but not onely with twice as great a diminution of his ma ties . revennue , but to the generall and heavie distresse of the whole countrey ; it being most certain , that the nation was thereby reduced to those straits , that in many places , the poor people were necessitated , to send severall miles to the sea , for salt water , to supplie their indigence ; and in other places were constrained , to give 18. or 20. shillings st . for the same quantitie of salt , which , before the granting of this gift , they used to buy for 3 sh . and 6. d. or 4. sh . ; so that in effect the clamours of the people were ready to break out into uproars and tumults . which grievance is so much the more chargeable upon my lo. lauderdaill , because that when his ma ties chief officers , perceiving that the first design of this salt-project could not take , and that the consequences of this gift would be very hurtfull , did by their letter give full information to the court of the prejudices and dangers , likelie to ensue upon it , in stead of prevailing , they vvere rather chid and menaced for being so officious . the second grievance vvas , that of the brandy-wine , vvhich vvas thus occasioned ; in the par lt . 1663. there was an act made , prohibiting the importation of strong vvaters , and so of brandy-vvine ; vvhereupon , in the year 1672. , my lo. lauderdaill obtains for the l. elphinston , vvho had married his niece , a gift of this prohibition , and of the seizures , that should be made upon it ; but the contrivance vvas not to render the lavv effectuall , but indeed to circumvene it ; for the patentees advantage ; who , in place of hindering the import , did give to the merchants licenses upon composition , at the rate of 15. or 16. lb. st . per tunn , vvhich vvould have amounted to at least 30,00 . lb. st . yearlie ; and hereby vast quanties vvere imported , vvithout the payment of either custom or excise , and yet vented again in the countrey at excessive prices . the third grievance was a gift of 2 ½ d. per pound upon all tobacco imported ; this gift was granted in the year 1673. to sr. john nicolson for himselfe and some other of my lo. lauderdails friends , who were his partakers , whereby they should have made a considerable benefit , but with the dammage of , at least , two or three thousand pounds st . yearlie to his ma ties treasurie , and the great extortion of the people . these were my lo. lauderdails wise and faithfull improvements of his ma ties . prerogative in the matter of trade , which he was so instrumentall to have declared , and indeed are perversions , so palpablie grosse , that comparing events with their causes , a man may find great reason to doubt whether my lo. lauderdaill did not intend these very abuses , as much in the framing , as in the violating of , these laws : and yet when they came to be complained of in par lt . , what opposition , and indignation he shewed , even to the straining of his ma ties sacred authoritie , in its most tender and delicate part , many hundreds can testifie ; neither can it be alleadged that the things were first moved in par lt . , not for a redresse from my lo : commissioner , but in order to a representation desired to have been made to his ma tie . because that , first they being so enormous , and yet instances onely , and not the whole of our grievances , a representation to the king , was not more necessarie for an adequate remedie , then for future prevention . next , the matter of the salt had been alreadie fullie remonstrated to his ma tie by his officers of state , and by my lo. laud. procurement , a sharp rebuke , in stead of a gracious reliefe , was all the return , as i have allreadie marked . but lastly , it is most probable by all circumstances , that if it had not been from the fear , and for the diverting of this representation , my lo. lauderdaill , in place of hearkning to a redresse , had , according to the inflexible constancie of his great soul , in the royall spirit of pharaoh , and with the brave politick of rehoboams young huffes , answered these turbulent murmurers , you are idle , you are idle , your yoke is heavie , but i will add thereto . however necessitie , at this time , prevailing , these three burdens are removed , to the peoples great comfort , and his majesties considerable advantage . but here it is that we are to remark , that the thing wherein his grace did find himselfe mostly concerned , was the proposall made , as i have touched , that his ma tie should be by his parlt . immediatlie informed of the true state and condition of the kingdom ; and indeed his grace was thereby so hotlie allaram'd , that litle more libertie of speech was allowed , or order observed ; but immediatlie his ma ties prerogative is pretended , that nothing ought to be moved in par lt . except by the lords of the articles , that to them complaints and overtures should be first made , and , if by their vote thrown out , they should proceed no further , and therefore , not onely were all motions offered in plene par lt . checkt and interrupted with this common answer , to the articles , but the par lt . was certified by his grace , that if they should all agree to have grievances otherwise treated , and considered , he would interpose and hinder it by his great negative . now , because , that this pretence of the priviledge of the lords of the articles , was justlie lookt upon by all considering men , as a virtuall subversion of the power and libertie of par lts . , alike prejudiciall , both to his ma tie and the kingdom , it may be observed , first , that this meeting of the articles , by its last establishment , consists of eight bishops , chosen by the lords , eight lords , chosen by the bishops , and eight commissioners of shires , and eight burgesses , chosen by the eight prelats , and eight lords , first elected , jointlie to which were added by the commissioner the officers of state. secondly , that in the contending for the power of this meeting , it was asserted , that not onely all businesse must be by the lords of the articles , and by them onely , tabled in parl t. , but that , if in the debates upon their reports any new thing should be started , the par lt . ought not to take notice of it , further , then to return the whole matter to the meeting of the articles , to be there entertained or supressed at their pleasure . thirdly , that it is manifest from all our records , that the rise and constitution of this meeting , vvas at first by the free appointment of our par lts . , vvho thought fitt to name certain of their number , for framing such overtures as vvere offered for the publik good , into articles to be enacted for lavvs according to the ancient form ; and therefore , it being at first devised by the par lt . , as a simple expedient for order and dispatch , it vvas also , both inconstant in its being ▪ and variant in its number and method , according as the par lt . did see cause . fourthly , that as this meeting was in effect the committee of the par lt . , for preparing laws ; so it is very well known , that there was another , more ancient , meeting ordained by the par lt . and called , domini ad querelas or ( if you will ) the committee of grievances , which having continued in all times , was onely disused in the 2 d. session of the par lt . 1661. , to the effect that private affairs , which in the first session of that par lt . , when our ordinarie courts were not set down , had taken too great a current that way , might , after their restitution , return more easilie to their proper channels . fifthly , that the act of par lt . k. i. 6th appointing four of every estate , to meet 20. days before the par lt . to receive all articles and supplications , and deliver them to the clerk of register , to be by him presented , to the persons of the estates , to be considered by them , to the effect , that things reasonable , may be formallie made and presented to the lords of the articles , in the par lt . time , & frivolous matters rejected ; doth no vvays countenance this exorbitant power of the lords of the articles , it being manifest , by the order therein sett down of preparing matters by a previous meeting , and their subsequent forming , and presenting , by the three estates , to the articles , that the par lts . povver of first receiving , and then committing , matters to that meeting , vvas not , at that time , so much as the subject of the question . but , the onely thing intended , vvas the orderlie tableing of things in par lt . as is yet further apparent , by vvhat is there subjoined viz. that no article or supplication wanting a speciall title or unsubscribed by the presenter shall be read or answered in that convention ( to vvit of the four of every estate ) or the par lt . following the same . which is a provision , so cleerlie preparatorie , to the meeting and vvork of the lords of the articles , that it is indeed strange , hovv men could have the confidence , to obtrude this act , even to his ma tie , for proveing their pretended prerogative of the meeting of the articles over the parlt . , which , i darre affirm , did never before this time , enter in the imagination either of king or par lt . since they were knovvn in this nation . sixthly , that in the par lt . 1663. , vvhere my lo. laud , s. influence vvas very eminent and signall , there vvas a particular act made , for setling the constitution and choising of lords of the articles in all time thereafter whereby it is expresslie provided , that the lords of the articles are to proceed , in the discharge of their trust , in preparing of laws , acts , and overtures , and ordering of all things remitted to them by the par lt . , & in doing every thing else , &c. which words remitted to them do , in their obvious construction , and most received signification among us , very evidentlie suppose , and hold forth , the povver , and use , of proposing to be in the body of the par lt . , and that the lords of the articles are to act upon their references , as their committee . which arguments , being well perpended , and the unanimous suffrage of reason , law and sense , that doe plainlie say , that no court can or ought to be cypherized by its own delegates , being thereto added ; i think i may , without difficultie , affirm , that his grace by attributing to the articles this praeeminence , and superintendence over the par lt . , and thereby depriving it of its just libertie , did directlie impugn , and highlie derogate from its authoritie and dignitie ; and so became guiltie of a greater grievance , then any of those , which he laboured to avoid . it s true he wanted not cogent enough motives , for what he did ; he saw , in the first place , that the meeting of the articles , ( whereof he supposed , that his former care , with the obsequiousnesse of the bishops , would gain him the pluralitie ) was his onely refuge , from the terrour that he became to himselfe in the apprehension , that otherwise his actings might come to be trulie discovered by a faithfull par lt . to a gracious prince : and next , the par lt . had , out of their exceeding tendernesse of dutie to his ma tie , testified , in their preceeding sessions , so much complyance with all his humours , as well as deference to his character , that he had fullie assured his ambition of their eternall submission ; neither was this assurance a groundlesse flatterie , for he knew , that he had put the matter to the proof , upon severall occasions , as first , when upon a vacancie falling out in the meeting of the articles , the par lt . did allow him to supplie it by his nomination . 2dly , when contrarie to the received custom ( & yet without contradiction ) he caused exclude from being present at the meetings of the articles , all such members , as were not thereto named , to the effect , as it is probable , that the body of the par lt . , being lesse prepared , might the more implicitlie go along withall their conclusions ▪ and 3dly . vvhen in the 3d. session of this par lt . , upon an overture made by a member , in the debate about the sumptuarie act , that the summer session might be taken avvay , he passionatelie blustered out , that , for that very presumption the thing ●hould not be done so long as he was commissioner , vvith many other foolish words to this effect : yet in all these he was tamelie born with . but , albeit these things may possiblie excuse his being so untractable to free reasoning , with which he had been so litle acquainted ; yet it remains still a matter of just wonder , that , at least , the interest of his ma ties authoritie , visiblie exposed by such an intollerable stretch , did not oblige him to a better behaviour , in so concerning a contest : for as much as , it is evident , that if the prudence and loyaltie of the par lt . had not restrained , nothing else could have retrived the prerogative , from the inconvenience of this hard dilemma , either of being subjected to a necessarie regulation , or of being the occasion of a seeming breach betwixt the king and his people . but the par lt . , being resolved to decline that point , with their utmost circumspection , chused rather to maintain their possession , by an uneasie exercise , then to assert their right with the smallest umbrage of offence , not doubting , but that his ma tie would , in due time , determin the controversie to their satisfaction . and therefore , leaving it , as it stands , i shall again return to my main work , and prosecute our grievances , in such order as the members of parl t. found accesse to move them in : onely , seeing that their endeavours had no better successe , than to provoke his grace to break up this fourth session , with a two moneths adjournment , i shall here handle them more fullie then they were there spoke to . the fourth grievance then is , the corruption of our mint and coinage , whereof my l. hatton the d. of laud s. brother is generall ; this complaint was grounded in the universall clamour of the people ; vvho have found , for these severall years , that the intrinsick value of our silver coin is sensiblie diminished , both in its vveight and finenesse , to the nations great damage , and dishonour ; beside it doth add to the resentment , that the same l. hatton having , some years ago , filled the countrey , with a light copper coin , without observing , either the quantitie , or the weight and value prescribed , was neverthelesse by my l. laud s. means , secured and indemnified : it is also remembered , that the better to enable him to this depravation of our silver coin , the dutch dollars , called the legg dollars , usuallie imported by our merchants , and current amongst us at 58.d . per piece , were cryed down by the d. of laud s. procurement , to 56.d . for no better reason known , than that they might be brought in for bullion , to the mint-house , for his brothers benefit : but though , that all demanded in par lt . about this matter was , that there might be an examination of the coin appointed , and an account given of the bullion , which hath been long neglected ; yet the memoriall given in for that effect , was not regarded : it is true that my l. laud. , after the dec r. adjournment of the par lt . , did move his ma tie to vvrite a letter , and thereupon bring the businesse to a tryall , before the councell ; but in a manner so partiall , that i professe it is my admiration , hovv any man should have a confidence strong enough for such practices . the subject of our complaint is the stock of our current money , and all appointed by his ma ties letter , is , that there should be a tryall made upon the essay boxe , and the pieces therein contained . i shall not say , that the oversight thereof hath been altogether in my l. hattons ovvn povver and trust these years by past , yet so certain it is , that this box or pixis hath been of late so greatly neglected , that one of my lo. commissioners friends , appointed for the examen , could not forbear to say , that they were mett to see whether the officers of the mint were as much fools as they were suspected to be knaves , but notvv●h●tanding this the tryall goes on , and moreover the pieces are not brough● to the essay severallie , but the whole ( with what mixture of fyner pieces coined and conveyed in on purpose , to compense the baser , who can tell ) is melted down together in one masse , and thereupon the essay made , and the report thereof , with some small lignots , sent up to the king ; which proving ( to be sure ) according to the designe of the contryvance , his ma tie within these few days , sends down a second letter to the councell , signifying his satisfaction , and willing hatton and the rest of the officers to be exonerated : but when this letter is read , it is opposed that the grievance of the mint had been tabled in par lt . , where the tryall should also be issued , that his ma ties first letter did onely order a tryall to be made of the essay boxe , which if either falsified , or otherwise eluded , could not be a ground of release to the mint-officers , so long as it was manifest , that almost the whole of the current coin is defective and debased ; and lastly , there was offered , a bagg of money latelie received out of the mint office , sealed with the officers seals , which they could not but still acknowledge , and it was desired that there might be a tryall made on the species therein contained . notwithstanding all which , my l. commissioner , and the pluralitie of the councell , proceed and vote an exoneration , conform to his ma ties last letter . now is not this a noble way of redressing grievances , to purge the author , and leave the thing untouched ? nay to make the greatest aggravation that can be of his failing , viz. the corrupting or frustrating of the checque , the best ground of his cleering , and all this contrarie to the reclaiming evidence , of almost , as many witnesses , as there are pieces of his ma ties coin minted in scotland ; it being certain that amongst hundreds that have been tryed , very few have been reported to be , standard . the fifth , is the filling of our courts of judicatorie especiallie our session ( which is the supream for administration of justice ) with ignorant and insufficient men : this is a grievance so notorious that i am sorrie , that it leaves me not so much as ; the shadow of a complement , in forbearing to name the persons ; s r. andrew ramsey , one of the four latelie brought in by my l. laud. , being questioned in par lt . ( as we shall hear ) did voluntarilie demitt in his graces hands ; and yet i am assured that i neither favour him , nor wrong the other three , when i give him the preference both as to parts and knowledge . but the evill doth not here subsist ; it s more afflicting progresse is , that in effect my l. lauderdails all-swaying power , his brothers headines , and other mens basenesse , have introduced that partialitie , both in the session and other courts , that , the very foundations of law and right , are like to be shaken ; as was readie to have been instanced in par lt . , in severall late decisions , prepared for seconding the memoriall given in for a tryall of this matter : and this was also the cause of another overture then thought upon , and since moved to his ma tie , viz. that there should be a methodical digestion of our laws , and that the rules of judgement should be rendred more fixed and certain ▪ but in place of a remedie , these things were all adjourned with the par lt . , & since their breaking up , new practices have been used , to make the case more desperate : for there being , in februarie last a sentence interlocuture pronounced by the lords of session , in an action betwixt the e. of dumfermling and l. amond , the l. amond , finding himselfe thereby grieved , thought good to protest , and appeal to the king and par lt : but my l. commissioner looking on this as a noveltie ( albeit it wanted not presidents , and that even his graces father , who was himselfe a lord of the session did more , in appealing from the session to the king onely ) lays hold on the occasion , and ( as its like ) as well to ingratiate with the lords , as to reach some lawyers who had displeased him , the lords are by him moved to write to the king , complaining of the thing , as contrarie to severall acts of par lt . , and of dangerous consequence ; to which an answer is as quicklie returned , signifying his ma ties displeasure against it , and ordering the lords to enquire , by my l. amond and his advocates their oaths , who were its contryvers : but when the businesse comes to be examined , my l. amond owns the appeal , and adheres to it in the sense wherein his advocates , by a resolution under their hands , had affirmed it to be justifiable , viz. that , although by acts of par lt . , there did ly no such appeall from the lords , as could stopp their proceedings , or the execution of their sentences ; yet seing the par lt . was the absolute soveraign court of the kingdom , and hath somtimes upon complaint rescinded the lords their decreets , an appeal by way of protestation , to relieve the appellant of the prejudice of a constructive acquiescence , might be lawfullie made from the lords to the king and par lt . and that this they conceived themselvs bound to assert , lest they should contraveen the law , that forbiddeth all men , under the pain of treason , to impugn the supream authoritie of the par lt . but albeit both his ma ties advocate and others of the bench gave their opinion , that an appeal in this sense , is not against law , and none of the rest did or can assert the contrarie ; yet my l. commissioner still pousseth on , and will have my l. amonds advocats to depose upon oath , about its contryvance , whereupon the advocates do , on the other hand , answer as positivlie , that the appeal being owned by my l. amond , and offered by them to be justified , there was no more subject of inquisition ; that his ma ties letter did suppose the thing to be unlawfull , and no man was bound , in a matter of that consequence , to give oath against himselfe ; that , by an expresse law , men should not be required to give oath super inquirendis ; and lastly , that by their oath , as advocates , they were bound not to reveal the secrets of their clients , whereunto the oath demanded seemed to tend . and to this last point the whole body of the advocates do join , and declare their concurrence . but notwithstanding these answers , the lords , refusing to transmit the advocates reasons , write up a second letter , acquainting the king with their denyall . in which heats and disputes , unnecessarilie drawn on , by my l. commissioners straining humours , about the authoritie both of king , par lt . and lords of session , and after a second appeal made in the same manner , the lords , according to their usuall dyet , breake up untill the first of june , whether to the increasing , or abating the grievance here mentioned , i leave it to others to judge , and to time to determin . the sixth grievance is generall gifts of his ma ties casualities such as the generall gift of wards and marriages to the earle of kincaerden , contrarie to expresse acts of par lt . , and to his ma ties great prejudice , and the vexation or his subjects : for these casualties , being of an undetermined extent , as uncertain as the death of vassals , and ordinarilie attended vvith many circumstances , vvhereof his ma ties equitie and goodnesse can onely best arbitrate ; the reason both of the lavv , and also of his ma ties . and his subjects their interest , against all such gifts , is abundantlie obvious . neither is the aggravation , arising from the persons , the procurer , and the purchaser , lesse considerable ; the d. of laud , and earle of kincaerden are , both of them , commissioners of his ma ties treasurie , and also extraornarie lords of the session , so that being doublie obliged , by these two great and honourable trusts , equallie to intend his ma ties advantage , and the observation or his laws , their delinquencie in this point , cannot but be accounted a high misdemeanor ; vvhich to excuse , by saying , that , notvvithstanding the gift , no action hath been thereon founded , but all proceedings carried on in his ma ties name , and by his officers , after the usuall form ; vvhen in the mean time , my l. kincaerden doth treat , and compound , and takes up the profits of all sentences , vvhat is it else save to acknovvlegde a transgression of the sense , in the manifest circumvention of the vvords , of the lavv : is is true that this gift is not the first of this nature that hath been granted : immediatlie after his ma ties return my l. lauderdaill and others got a gift of all preceeding casualities , and the earle of kincaerden , had also a prior gift for three years , whereof this is onely a prorogation , by vertue of all which many thousands of pounds have been very rigorouslie exacted : but seing , there can be hardlie any thing more unreasonable , then to pretend a priviledge in evill from mens forbearance , it is evident that these things , do onely render the grievance exceedinglie more grievous . these three last grievances , having been moved in par lt . , immediatlie before its dec r. adjournment , before i passe to other things that were not moved , i shall brieflie narrate two other passages , that were thought also to influence it . the first shall be of one m r. paterson dean or edenburgh ; this man , after the first conflict in parlt . about a representation , to be made to his ma tie . , preaching before the commissioner , was pleased to tell his auditors , that somtimes god for the sins of a people would raise up a fawning absalom to flatter , and kisse them , and to steal away their hearts , by bemoaning their grievances , and saying that their matters were good and right , but there was no man deputed of the king to hear them , untill at length a sheba the son of bichri , should arise to sound the trumpet of rebellion and say , we have no part in david , &c. with many moe words to this purpose ; which discourse , by all its circumstances , carrying an intollerable reflexion upon some members of par lt . , and that so obviouslie , that notwithstanding that mr. paterson did swear , that he thereby intended no particular person , yet , unlesse they had been inspired , it was impossible not to think them designed ; there is thereupon a complaint exhibited , craving that mr. paterson might be called to account for such seditious speeches ; this the commissioner would at first have waved , and then , finding that it was like to be warmlie pressed , he agrees , that the examination be committed to the lords of the clergie , but although a competent time was given them , and their report often demanded , yet it was still declined and delayed without any issue . the second shall be about sr. andrew ramsey , this man having been proveist of edenburgh under oliver , and complyed with him to the height of being knighted , and thereafter getting himselfe reknighted and reentred proveist by the e. of midletons favour , upon his disgrace , very quicklie strikes in with my l. laud. , with whom and the tradesmen of edenburgh , he by his long-practised arts , of flatterie , and briberie , did so mightilie prevail , that after having been ten years proveist , and in that time domineered over the citie , and enriched himselfe by their rents and moneys at his pleasure , he dreamed of nothing lesse , then a perpetuall dictatorship : what kind deallings , during these years , were betwixt my lo. laud. and him is sufficientle known , the office of proveist which never had before either fee or salarie , yet now by my l. laud , s. procurement in behalfe of his favourit , hath a pension of 200. lb. st . yearlie , annexed to it . 2dly . the militia , being established , the proveist is made collonell , and his son major , of edenburgh regiment , and with a 100. lb. st . to the major of yearlie salarie . 3dly . s r. andrevv having , neither for a just price , nor by the fairest means , got a title to a bare insignificant rock in the sea , called , the bass , and to a publick debt , both belonging to the l. of wachton ; my l. lauder . , to gratifie sr. andrew , moves the king , upon the pretence of this publick debt , and that the bass was a place of strength ( like to a castle in the moon ) and of great importance , ( the onely nest of solengeese in these parts ) to buy the rock from sr. andrew , at the rate of 4000. lb. st . , and then obtains the command and profits of it , amounting to more then a 100. lb. st . yearlie , to be bestowed upon himselfe . but , besides this , there was also here an open reciprocation on s r. andrews part ; for it having pleased his ma tie , about the same time , to perpetuate to the town of edenburgh a gift , which they had enjoyed for some years by temporarie grants , s r. andrew takes this occasion to expresse his gratitude to his patron , and representing to the town , how much my l. laud. had befriended them in that matter , he perswades them to acknowledge it , with a benevolence of 5000. lb. st . 4thly . my lo. laud. procures s r. andrew , to be made first a privie councellour , then a commissioner of the exchequer , and last of all a lord. of the session , allthough the best breeding that ever he had , for these employments , was that of his being once a merchant . but here , ill-natured envie maliciouslie disdaining these ridiculous preferments , and taking the advantage of s r. andrews manifold maleversation , incites first the murmurings of the citizens , and then at michaelmess 1672 , the opposition of some of their councell , against his continuance in office : neverthelesse s r. andrew , albeit with extream wrestling , gets through for that time , and to prevent the recurring of the like difficultie , thinks fitt to inform my l. laud. , that some factious persons had stirred up tumults , to disturb his election , and thereupon his ma ties letters are directed to the privie councell , ordering them to examin the matter , and report : when the privie councell received these letters , the most part were not a litle surprized , to see a command from court , to enquire about a tumult , alleadged to have been made , in the place of their residence , whereof they had not before heard ; yet in obedience , albeit there was as good as nothing found , the report was made , which all men judged would be the close of that affair : but s r. andrew being resolved , notwithstanding that the body of the citie was generallie sett against him , to carrie also the next election , the better to prepare for it , obtains by my. l. laud. a letter from the king , in sept r. last to the town-councell of edenburgh , resuming the storie of the tumult , and thereupon ordaining mr. roughheed their clerk to be removed from his office , as being thereto accessorie , concluding that his ma tie would supersede to determin as to others , untill he should be informed of their behaviour in the ensuing election : i shall not mention all the litle insolencies , wherewith s r andrew did execute these orders against that gentleman ; the thing considerable is , that all that heard of this letter , and how that thereby , contrarie to law , the right of the clerks office , was arbitrarilie taken from him , without being heard , and the town-councell also indirectlie overawed in the freedom of their electing , did look upon the impetrating thereof , as a most dangerous precedent , threatning every mans propertie and libertie , and therefore , not onely was the clerk encouraged to raise an action declaratorie of his right and for repossession , but my l. laud. preceiving , that the generall resentment was justlie levelled against himselfe , as the principall author of this high attempt , he again by a second act , imposing no lesse upon his ma ties goodnesse , then by the former he had abused his justice , moves his ma tie to write a second letter , ordering m r roughheed to be restored , without the least acknowledgement , to a place , from which , not 10. weeks before , he had been , by the same method , removed as a seditious incendiarie : these then and severall other of s r andrews high misdemeanors , having deservedlie occasioned a complaint to be exhibited against him in par lt . , the commissioner , observing well what might be its consequence , and yet unwilling openlie to undertake his defence & patrocinie , consents that the matter be referred to the lords of the articles , and there again obtains that the tryall of the things charged , should be remitted to the ordinarie courts : but the par lt . knowing as well as his grace that those exorbitancies , that flow from the abuse of favour , are commonlie coloured with such conveyances , as plain and positive laws , ( to which these courts are tyed , ) doe rarelie suspect and so very seldom provide against ; doe therefore still insist that the lords of the articles would bring in their report ; whereupon my lo. commissioner , understanding better then any man s r andrews guilt and his own accession , as a fitt expedient , both to appease the people , and to decline so concerning an accusation ; upon the sabbath , wheedles sr andrew unto a voluntarie dimission of all his places and employments , and upon the tuesday thereafter adjourns the par lt . and how he hath since endeavoured to represent him , both here & at court , as if he alone were chargeable with all his offences is aboundantlie known . i have been the more ample in this narration , because that , with all reverence to his ma tie , ( whom i know to be infinitlie removed from all communication in my lo. laud s. naughtie practices ) and proportions also being observed , and the parallels duelie commenced from the year 1662. , i doe indeed take s r andrew ramsey with reference to my l. laud. and the citie of edenburgh , to be a very exact modell of lauderdaill himselfe , in order to his ma tie and all scotland , and therefore the more ingratfull is his confidence that under such a pressing conviction , should not relieve his ma tie and the kingdom , in compleeting the similitude by a spontaneous dimission . having thus gone thorough these motions made in par lt . about the mint , lords of session , generall gifts , dean paterson and sr andrew ramsey i now proceed to these other grievances , which , allbeit not allowed to be brought in , were notwithstanding intended by severall members , and , in probabilitie , would have been the principall points in the representation which was overtured , to be made to his ma tie . the seventh grievance then is the accumulation of eminent offices upon single persons : i shall not here reflect upon the sufficiencie or insufficiencie of any , i heartilie wish that all men were as carefull to cover , as i am willing to conceal their weaknesse ; but the plain ground of complaint is , that my l. laud. hath procured to himselfe , and the l. hatton his brother , and to the earles of athol and kincaerden , his particular freinds , not onely the most considerable , but also the farr greater part , of the more important charges of the kingdom , to the visible weakening of the government , and to the detriment of his ma ties service ; thus the d. of laud. himselfe , is first , president of his ma ties councell . 2dly sole secretarie . 3dly one of the commissioners of the treasurie : 4thly captain of the castle of edenburgh . 5thly captain of the bass . 6thly agent at court for the borroughs . 7thly one of the four extraordinarie lords of the session : and 8thly ( for who knows how long it may continue ) his ma ties high commissioner and all that it imports . the l. hatton is 1 st . treasurer depute . 2dly generall of the mint . 3dly one of the lords of session . the e. of athole is 1 st . lord privie seal . 2dly lord justice generall . 3dly captain of the kings guard. 4thly one of the four extraordinarie lords of the session . the e. of kincaerden is one of the commissioners of the treasurie . 2dly vice-admirall of scotland . and 3dly one of the four extraordinarie lords of session . principall offices are the stayes , as it were , of a state , and their distinction is , not so much determined by their objects , as by the proportionable capacities that most of them do require ; beside , as in the multitude of counsellors there is safetie , so in the multitude of officers there is strength , and their right distribution , doth not more encourage virtue and reward merit , then it settles the administration of the kingdom by a just ballance , and thereby becometh equallie advantagious , for the peoples good , and the princes securitie : but humour and ambition doe puffe at such creeping politicks . my lo. laud. hath also introduced the abuse of gifts of the reversions or survivances of places to children & boys , and such are the gifts to my l. hatton and his son of the mint-office , to s r. charles erskin and his son of the lyons office , & severall others of that nature ; by which continuance of offices , that , at most , used to be conferred ad vitam , his ma tie , is deprived of that excellent part of his treasure , which , with no expence , rewards virtue best , and is indeed the onely fond of the most obliging gratifications . the eighth grievance is the mal-administration and profusion of his ma ties revennue : the cleering of this head , in its full extent , would require a more prolix & accurate computation , than is proper for my present work ; but that i may give it its necessarie evidence & also discover , more fullie , the fruits & effects at my l. laud s. ministrie , i shall onely here sett down , in generall , first what summes of money he and his three friends have got in donatives : and 2dly . what summes they receive yearlie by their places and pensions , as hath been made appear on severall occasions by a particular condescendence . my l. laud. then , hath got in donatives within these few years no lesse then 26900. lb. st . and may be reckoned to have yearlie since the year 1669. that he was appointed commissioner , 16350. lb. st . my l. hatton hath got in donatives to the value of 15300. lb. st . and hath moreover yearlie 1196. lb. st . , beside he hath the profits of the mint and bullion , which last did render in kings james his time 1000. marks scots weeklie amounting yearlie to 2500. lb. st . the e. of athole got latelie by fines 1500. lb. st . and possesseth yearlie 1450. lb. st . the e. of kincaerdens gettings by reason of the nature of his gifts and places , cannot be so easilie computed , but that they must be very considerable , by his generall gift of wards and marriages , which he hath had above these three years , may be evidentlie gathered , from the benefit that he hath made , by some of those particular obventions , which have been compounded for by him , at , or above , the rate of a 1000. lb. how much then may be reckoned , by all that fall over the whole kingdom ? he got also the gift of a ship wrackt in schetland . as for his yearlie incomes , beside his pension as one of the commissioners of the treasurie , he hath also all the perquisits of the admiralitie , and yet over and above should have had by the gift of the salt , at least , 2000. lb. yearlie . now whether these be not excessive largesses , to such persons , for such services , and in the more honest then opulent kingdom of scotland is easie to be judged : i grant i have included in the totall of my l. laud s. yearlie summs , the pension of 500. lb. st . , which he procured , out of our exchecquer , to his dutchesse , when she was onely countesse of dysert , and not his married wife ; but i suppose that their then circumstances being considered , the error will be excused , with lesse pain , then it would have been for me , to make the distinction . i need not here subjoin how that , beside these above-mentioned summs , almost all pensions and gifts have been bestowed , these years bypast , according to his graces pleasure ; his power in our affairs being in effect an omnipotencie , this part of it is not to be doubted , onely it is to be regrated , that in all these excessive givings , so litle respect hath been had to those , who have merited most of his ma tie , both by their actings and sufferings . but the thing , that i esteem more worthie to be noticed , is that although since his ma ties restitution , his revenue in scotland hath been much above the double of what it was before , and though his casualties have been exacted with abundance of diligence , and great and vast summs otherwise levied by fynes , taxations , and assessements , without the least burden , either of monies exported for his ma ties use , or of forraign warr ; yet , through a strange misgovernment , hath all been wasted , and consumed , at home , without any visible improvement , for the publick good , or so much as the provision of one freggat , for the defence of our coast , or convoy of our merchants , in these times of warr . the 9th . grievance and fountain of all the rest is my l. laud s. excessive greatnesse , farr above what , either the kingdom , or himselfe can bear ; i have alreadie observed , how that before he was commissioner , he had , by reason of his being our sole secretarie and court-minister , the absolute rule and dispose of all our concerns ; an interposition ungratefull enough , to a people , so affectionatlie , dutifull to his ma tie . i have also marked , with what a severe jealousie , he debarred all scotchmen , from any accesse or opportunitie , so much as to speak to his ma tie , otherwise then he pleased ; a practice no lesse disserviceable to his ma tie , then disobliging to free fellow-subjects ; i might in the 3d. place add , that , as his ma ties necessarie absence hath occasioned to us the unhappinesse of my l. lauds . domination , so his graces absence also , for the most part , at court , doth further subject us to a more base , & disingenuous dependence , upon his ceatures & favourits , nay oftentimes , even upon his servants , with whom it is well known , that men did ordinarilie transact , for the obtaining and expeding of gifts and signatures , & that it was , especiallie by his graces servants , that personall protections to debtors , were most abusivlie impetrat : but seing the greatest part of what i have said , hath been , to sett forth the miserable issues of lauderdails obscuring and eclipsing grandour , i shall in this place , onely note , how by his exaltation to be his ma ties commissioner , this noxious exhalation came as it were to be consolidat into that malign meteor which hath reduced us unto the afflicted and disconsolat estate in which we doe at present languish . i need not repeet , that it was for the attaining to this high , and unaccountable power , that he devised the calling of this par lt . , upon the pretext of an union , no lesse groundlesse in its project , then vain in its successe ; nor shall i resume , by what means , and for what emptie reasons , the par lt . hath hitherto been kept current : that the office of commissioner is a thing , altogether extraordinarie , & onely warranted by the particular occasion , & speciall effect for which he is ordained , is a point so certain , that to affirm the contrarie , would be no lesse , then a treasonable attempt , to subvert the very foundations of this free monarchie ; when in former times commissions of this sort , were granted ( which yet we doe not find to have been in use untill after king james his goeing to england ) both the commissions and the par lt . used to be terminated in one session ; the first that adventured , upon the innovation of adjourning par lts . for a long time and , continuing his commission in the intervall , was the e. of midleton ; and yet , notwithstanding of all the high strainings , that were then in fashion , and that the earles worke , could hardlie be sooner compleeted , this same lauderdaill did , so farr resent it , as to make midletons drawing out of his commission ( though for litle more then two years ) an article of his accusation . but now that my l. laud. hath himselfe got into the power , he hath presumed to protract it , now more then four yeares and a halfe , with so litle appearance of any necessitie , that on the contrair , we plainlie see , how that he hath , both hindered the par lts . proceedings , and endeavoured to frustrate all its late meetings : which , as it is a manifest violenting of the ancient , and naturall constitution of our government ; so the unnecessarie continuance , and arbitrarie and frequent long adjournments of this par lt . ; hath contributed exceedinglie to the increase of our burdens , and distresses . but the truth is , that such hath been his deportment in this eminent trust , that it is now become his best securitie ; and what at first his ambition did proudlie contrive , his conscience of guilt doth now oblige him , no lesse tenaciouslie , to maintain : so that our remedie and relief in this our desolate and abandoned condition , remains onely with god , and his ma tie , in the return of their favour . from which consideration , as much as for the obviating of misinformation , it pleased the d. of hamiltoun , and earle of tweddel , with some other gentlemen , after the adjournment of the parlt . in dec r last , to go for court , with the inexpressible good-liking of the whole countrey , who from their faithfull representation to his ma tie , did confidentlie expect , an entire deliverance . but my l. laud. , that he might shew himselfe , no lesse crosse to , then he was averse from , such a loyall enterprise , omitts no obstruction , that he could lay in the way ; and first , by a pittifull fellow in berwick , whom he had before corrupted to spy and intercept all free correspondence , he causeth seise , detain prisoner , and search s r william carnegie a member of par lt . , in his passage through that town to london . 2dly . having , by the same hand , got some packets intercepted , he very ungentilly transmitts them to court , and without respect to the violation done to the common intercourse and good understanding of the two nations , or regard to that tendernesse , which most men doe retain for their countreys honour , he obtains for his intelligencer his ma ties . approbation , and a reward of 50. lb. st . out of our exchequer . 3dly . by the same means , and in the same place , he endeavours to affront d. hamiltoun and his companie , in their passage , by a suspicious questioning of their attendents , and refusing them the conveniencie of a nights lodging , which , how farr it was contrarie to the generositie of the governour , then absent , and the civilitie of the citizens , they since fullie evidenced by that noble reception , which they gave the duke in his return . and lastlie , my l. laud. imposes so farr , upon his mati es good nature , as to move him to discountenance a gentleman , sent before by d. hammiltoun , under a groundlesse pretext suggested by lauderdaill , that he had been one of olivers sequestrators , contrarie to that prudent and benign part of the act of indemnitie , prohibiting the remembrance of all odious names , whereof his ma tie hath been always most tender . but notwithstanding all these rubbs , and many other discouragements , d. hammiltoun and e. tweddell being arrived at court , doe there very freelie and faithfullie acquitt themselves , in a full and particular account of all things , relating to his ma tie or the countreys interest ; i need not here stand , to give the storie by retail ; it is like that the impressions were various , but in a word the result was the same , with the period which vve have heard , vvas putt to all the good votes and resolves of the english par lt ; hovvever having had the good fortune to hear accidentallie of a letter , and aftervvards to see its double , vvhich , i am crediblie informed , vvas delivered unto his ma tie , much about the time that our lords vvere there , i have thought good , here , to sett dovvn , for publick satisfaction , its just transcript . the addresse of the letter vvas , to the king , and its date and tenor as follovveth . edenburgh . jan. 27. 1674. sir , let the obscuritie of the person , with the zeal of his affection , excuse the manner , & maker of this addresse ; i protest , as in the presence of god , that it is without the privitie , or knowledge of either partie , and nothing lesse , then the important concern of your service , and the countries peace , could have constrained to it . i need not lay before your ma tie , the many abuses that scotland hath of late suffered , the universall and most pinching grievance of the s●lt , with these of the brandie and tobacco are confessed , and redressed : neither are these that remain , lesse manifest , to wit , ignorant and insufficient judges , a light and base coine , generall gifts of wards & marriages , generall gifts of the pains of penall statutes , the accumulation of eminent offices upon single persons , & these also such as are of small merit , gifts of the reversions or survivances of offices , invas●ons upon propertie and libertie by the impetration of private letters , unnecessarie , long and frequent adjournments of par lts , the continuing of a commissioner in the intervalls of sessions of par lt . , the mismannagement and profusion of your ma ties revenue , & lastly , the excessive greatnesse of a state minister to the exclusion of all others from free accesse & application to your ma tie , with the many evils that do thence proceed . sir , these pressures are , so heavie in themselves , & have been & are so afflicting & disquieting to your poor people , that i am confident , were it possible for you to reflect upon them , without observing by whom they have been procured , your ma ties iustice would not sooner prompt you to the remedie , than to a strict enquiry and animadversion against their authors , yea move you , even in the first place , to call out , with ahasuerus upon like occasion , who is he and where is he that durst presume in his heart to doe so ? but seeing that your ma tie , in your unparalleled goodnesse , doth seem rather to incline to a gracious reliefe with a healing composure of all differences , than to notice past misdemeanours , i shall onely in all humilitie presume to say , that whatever may be your royall clemencie , yet certainlie the causers of these wrongs cannot be the fitt instruments of an effectuall and satisfying redresse . your ma tie is not unacquainted with the untoward & crosse proceedings of the last session of par lt : if your commissioner was so uneasie , and disobliging , in his interruptings , and adjournings , when nothing was craved , but the remedie of such things , which both your ma ties service , and your peoples cryes , did instantly demand , can it be exspected , that in the things that remain ( so much the more grievous , and unjustifiable , that he and a few of his friends are mostlie therein interested ) he will be more complacent ? nay s ir , it is evident as the light , that all the repugnancie , that he hath hitherto shewed , with his high pretendings , and stretchings of your ma ties prerogative in the institution of the lords of the articles , beyond what the nature and dignitie of par lts will bear , hath plainlie been to prevent the progresse of your par lt . to this tryall . the just and necessarie motions for examining his brothers coine , and the lords of session , whereof the weakest are his friends , did provoke him to an abrupt adjournment ; since that time what arts have been used , and what methods practised , for gaining particular persons , and strengthning of the party , is too well known to all , to be unknown to your ma tie : he hath indeed thought good to anticipate the par lt . in the matter of the mint , but in a way so partiall , and elusorie , that whether your ma tie , your par lt , or your people be thereby most injured , is hard to be determined . so that , upon the whole matter , considering , that things in controversie doe purelie respect your peoples good ; and , on the one hand , are prosecuted , with the most legall intentions of such , who have allways been faithfull to your interest ; and yet , on the other part , are still opposed , with obstinate partialitie , and untractable humours ; it is beyond all question , that the ensueing sessions , if holden by the same commissioner , will necessarilie be attended with the former , if not greater heats and disorders . i can not also forbear to tell your ma tie . , that hitherto your people are perswaded , that in all their sufferings , your ma tie hath been more abused , and imposed upon than they , themselves ; how expedient then it is , that this perswasion should still continue , and that these incident errors of government should be at least gentlie expiated , by fixing them upon the true authors , your ma tie . , who hath allways valued yourselfe so much upon your peoples affections , can onely best judge ; seeing therefore that your people have been oppressed , by a malversation not more irritating in its effects , than in the obstinacie wherewith it is defended , and that they exspect relief from your royall goodnesse , with an assurance not to be disappointed , without a very surprizing confusion , and lastlie , seeing nothing is desired , or intended in order to the d. of lauderdaill , to which he himselfe ought not , both in dutie , and prudence most readilie to agree ; let these in all humilitie sollicit your ma ties transcendent bountie , to consider the following proposalls , which are not more easie in themselves , then they will prove most effectuall , at once , to dissipate all evill appearances , and restore to this your ancient kingdom , that serene peace , which will make our affection and dutie again to flourish , in most significant acknowledgements . 1 first that a new commissioner be named , and appointed to hold the next session , and conclude the par lt . 2 that the d. of laud. be confirmed in his places of president of the councell , and one of the commissioners of the treasurie , and have your ma ties indemnitie ratified in par lt . for all things past . 3 that there be two secretaries named , and appointed to reside at court , per vices , for your ma ties impartiall information in all affairs . 4 that the other eminent offices , be duelie distribute and conferred upon deserving persons . 5 that the commissioners of your ma ties treasurie , with such as you shall be pleased to add to them , be appointed to consider the revennue , and its charge , with the best means for its regulation , and improvement and to report . 6 that men , knowing in the law , and otherwise well qualified , be named to the vacancies that are , or may be , in the session through the removall of such , as the par lt . , on tryall , shall find to be insufficient . 7 that necessarie instructions be given to your ma ties commissioner , for the due redresse of all other grievances , and also for quieting and removing dissatisfactions , in matters ecclesiastick . 8 that there be past in par lt . an act of oblivion and indemnitie for the establishing of the mindes of all your good subjects . sir , these things , which may be almost , as soon done , as said , will infalliblie prove the high advancement of your service , and firm setlement of this kingdom ; to which i hope that an excesse of favour , to any one single person , shall never preponderat . sure i am , were it possible , that your ma tie could be but for one day an unseen observer , amongst us , of the present posture of things , and disposition of persons , you could not , without wonder , think , how that any pretending to loyaltie , should have obstructed these , or such like remedies as are here proposed : i might also here offer to your ma ties more serious thoughts , a passage recorded 2 sam. 19.5.6.7 . and recommended by the suitablenesse of some of its circumstances , to the present case ; but since i am farr from thinking , that the d. of laud. is to your matie as absolom to david , or that the discontents with us are so dangerous or threatning , as is there intimated ; and seing i doe as litle know , how to seperat ioabs militarie and rude passion , from his dutifull and zealous affection , i trust that god shall by more gentle and sweet influences , incline your ma tie to arise and speake comfortablie to your servants . the words of the passage , hinted at in the close of this letter , are these and joab came into the house to the king and said thou hast shamed this day the faces of all thy servants , which , this day , have saved thy life , and the lives of thy sones , and of thy daughters , and the lives of thy wives , and the lives of thy concubines , in that tbou lovest thine enemies , and hatest thy friends : for thou hast declared , this day , that thou reguardest , neither princes , nor servants ; for , this day , i perceive , that if absolom had lived , and all we had died , this day , then it had pleased the well ; now therefore arise , goe forth and speake comfortablie unto thy servants : for , i swear by the lord , if thou goe not forth , there will not tarrie one with thee this night ; & that will be worse unto thee , then all the evill that befell thee from thy youth untill now . but albeit , that all mareriall in this letter , was pressed by these noblemen , and many other things represented that might have tended to the good of the kingdom , such as a digestion of our laws and rules of judgement , formerlie mentioned , a release of all arriers of taxation and sesse preceeding the year 1665 , a discharge of the annuitie of tithes , and a setling of the order of par lt . according to known rules and presidents ; and lastlie that nothing was omitted that might give a satisfieng evidence in every point , yet my l. laud s. suggestions and influences doe more prevaill , & d. hammiltoun is dismissed with fair words : however it being promised that the par lt . should sitt at its day and grievances be redressed and also a period putt to my lo. laud s. commission , my l. hammiltoun haistens homeward , with extraordinarie difficultie , in respect both of the rigour of the season and the infirmitie of his health , to attend its dyet on the 3d. of march , which was the very next day to that of his arriveall : but in stead of a session so much exspected , by the people and all the members of par lt . ( who had now waited about four moneths and were better conveened then at any time before ) all , doe meet with the disappointiment of a blunt adjournment , unto the 14. of oct r. next , and accordinglie the par lt . is adjourned . after these our more formed and generall grievances , i might here subjoin , some smaller notices , relateing to my l. lauds . way and behaviour , not impertinent to the things that we have allreadie heard , such as , first , his arrogant undervalue of par lts . , discovered by that expression to his ma tie . against the e. of midletons services , s ir , if you had sent down a dog with your commission about his neck to your scotch par lt , he would have done all that e. midleton hath done . 2dly . his insolent treating of some members , in this present par lt . , as when he commanded one m r william moor summarilie to prison , because , i think , he desired that after the order of the english par lt . acts might be , at least , thrice read , before they were voted , or somwhat to this purpose ; and in his course style asked another , for having in his modestie said , we for i , what sir are there any myce in your arse ? 3dly . his contemptuous slighting of d. hammiltoun , and most of the antient nobilitie of greatest interest and consideration in the kingdom , whom he did not so much as allow to be named to be of the number , of the commissioners chosen for the treatie of the union betwixt the two kingdoms . 4thly . his strange inconstancie , in his friendships acted meerlie by his humour or advantage , as witnesse his dealings with the earles of rothes , tweddell and argyle , s r robert murray , d. of ormond , e. shaftsberry and others , whom according to occasion he hath , both caressed with open flatterie , and rejected with proud prejudice . 5thly . his regardlesse neglect of the countreys interest , to gratifie indigent or covetous persons of his dependence , by procuring for them gifts of the pains of penall statutes , as to sr john moncriefe a gift of the pains of non-conforming within the shires of perth and fyfe . to .... scot of ardrosse and major borthwick , a gift upon the maltmen and brewers ; and to the same major borthwick another vexatious gift , called ordinarilie of peck and bole . 6thly . his prophane complement to the archbishop of s t andrews , coming one day to visit him , come in , my lord , sit down here at my right hand untill i make all your enemies your footstool . 7thly . his dull and malicious iestings , against his old practices , and acquaintances , as when one day at his table , he said , he could pray as well as any nonconformist , and so begunn a long complaint to god of covenant-breaking and other sins to their derision ; and when at other times he hath insulted over them in their appearances , before the councell , by a reproachfull remembrance of by-past courses , so that some of them have applyed to him the old remarque omnis apostata suae sectae osor : but it is not to these onely that he confines this humour , he makes it serve also in other occurrences , as when it was said about grievances , that they ought not onely to be redressed , but prevented for the future , he answered with much noise , that this was like an overture of the commission of the kirk , &c. as if in effect his fancie were lesed with the remains of his old hypocrisie . but passing these things , that may savour of a design of personall reflexion , which is trulie farr from me , it may be to better purpose to suspend a litle the closure of this relation , in two more important remarques . the first is , that in the first session of this par lt , and for its first act , his ma ties supremacie was enacted , whereby it is declared not onely that his ma tie hath the supream authoritie over all persons and in all causes within this kingdom , and that by virtue thereof , the ordering of the externall government , and policie of the church , doth properlie belong to him ; but that his ma tie , and his successors may setle , enact and emitt such constitutions , acts , and orders , concerning all ecclesiasticall persons , meetings and matters ( a word infinitlie extensive , comprehending the all of religion ) as they in their royall wisdom shall think fit . it is true that this was unanimouslie consented to by the par lt . , and it is as well known , that all that the par lt . had in view , was the establishing of his ma ties power and authoritie , for the better confirmation of a litle indulgence , then latelie granted to some non-conforming ministers , and the more effectuall checqueing of the loyall clergies murmurings , who pretended to a negative in these affairs . but that the d. of laud. had quite another design , in the passing of this act , even the raising of his own credit and consideration at court , and the aggrandizing of himselfe , by an accession to that power , whereof he then had , and still hath the sway , did quicklie discover it selfe , in its first application , directed against the arch-bishop of glasgow ; for my l. laud. having conceived an irreconcileable grudge against this gentleman , mostlie , because he had on some occasions addressed himselfe to the king , otherwise then by him , the poor bishop is menaced , to have articles exhibited against him , before the privie councell , and thereupon is constrained , to dimitt ; but this is not the sole act , wherein my l. laud. hath proposed to himselfe the same aim : i have alreadie shewed , how that the act. 1663 ; entituled an humble tender , &c. and offering 22. thousand men to his ma ties service , was especiallie of laud s. framing , & it is very well known , hovv at court he hath often since that time valued himselfe very highlie , upon it : but novv being commissioner , his industrious advancement of what at first , was , onely more generallie agreed to , doth exhibit a more satisfying discoverie , and therefore we see , vvith vvhat care , in the very next act to that of supremacie , he goes about to setle the militia , not as a simple countrey-conceit , for the better training of men to the use of armes ; but upon the more martiall basis , & for those more noble ends of the former act , & humble tender . i vvill not , for all this , say , that at that time he had in prospect , the great things vvhereof he hath since been suspected , yet i make no doubt , but , that even then , he looked upon the supremacie & the militia , so setled , & , in a manner , both in his own hand , as being the kings commissioner , as tvvo brave leading cards , vvherewith such a court-gamester as he , in the many chances , and changes , that do there happen , might somtime or other come to do mightie feats . i love not to heighten , let be to creat , jealousies , nor have i any facultie in the search of hidden and dark counsels ; & therefore do very unwillinglie take up , or assent to , vulgar reports of my l. laud s. after-engagements , in arbitrarie & popish projects : neverthelesse , such indications , as runn into a mans eyes , can hardlie be dissembled . it may then , be remembered ; that , vvhen in the summer 1672 , the cabal at court vvas in its ascendent , & laud. got to be on the top of it , and that matters in england vvere come to a very manifest crisis ; my l. laud. about the same time goes for scotland , and there procures a new act of militia to be made , statuting that all persons , who should be therein enrolled , should be entirelie reserved for that employment , and that both officers , and souldiers should take the oath of allegiance ( vvhich vvith us includes also the supremacie , ) and is , i suppose , a sacramentum militare vvithout a president ) and by another act he obtains , to be imposed a twelve moneths assessement , to ly for a stock of money for for their provision , and that upon this expresse narrative viz. that as the kingdom of scotland will cheerfullie hazard their lives , and fortunes , in the warr against the dutch , or any other cause wherein his ma ties safetie , honour , or interest may be concerned : so in order thereunto , they have so setled the militia , as the forces of the kingdom , may be in readinesse , when ever his ma tie shall be pleased for these ends to make use of them . which things in scotland and england being laid together , & the strange twistings of the supremacie that makes so large a surrender of matters of religion , with these acts of militia & maintenance , declaring a readinesse for any expedition , &c. being well weighed ; i think , it may warrantablie be affirmed , that if there was any extraordinary design at that time in agitation , my l. laud s. hand , in probabilitie , was deepest in it . neither can the par lts . concurrence , in consenting to these acts , be pleaded for his excuse : for as much as it is certain , that their pure and single intent was , a dutiful expression of their loyaltie , for which they have always judged , that no words capable of a fair signification , could ever be too significant . i need not adduce their unacquaintednesse with secret transactions for their purgation ; he that can imagin , that scotland would have consented , to that heavie assessement , out of any other motive , then their absolute & implicite affection to his ma tie , let be in any thoughts of favouring poperie , is widelie mistaken , both of our riches and religion : and therefor it may well be concluded , that as the ill favoured aspect , of the act and humble tender &c. and acts of militia ensueing on it , toward england , with their ill contrived alternative , or for any other service wherein his ma ties honour , authoritie , or greatnesse may be concerned , were at first the dictates of lauderdails vanitie , and have often since been the boastings of his ambition ; so they do plainlie enough evince , his black accession to those other mysteries , whereof he hath elsewhere been accused . the 2d . remarque shall be , concerning my l. laud s. administration in church affairs . it is not necessarie to remember how that e. midleton in his par lt . thought fit , to correct the rigour of presbyterie , by the heights of prelacie , & what a severe vengeance of conformitie , the bishops did thereafter execute , upon the whole countrey , for their former complyance with , and retained affection to their brethren of that ministrie : o when shall princes know , wherein the true power , and peaceablenesse of the gospell doth lye ; & deliver themselvs & their people , from the pedantrie , & hypocrisie of all church-pretenders ! however the extreme distresse , whereinto these episcopall persecutions had brought the countrey , did in the year 1669 ( as i have before related , ) move the compassion of some more moderate persons , to obtain for it the case of that small indulgence , that was then granted , for the better establishment whereof , it was supposed ( as i have said ) that the supremacie was thereafter in par lt . enacted . but that the countrey might the better relish this favour , and know how to discern his ma ties , from his commissioners grace , it pleased my l. laud. that in the year 1670. , conformitie should be again commanded , and pressed by new acts of par lt , and those , in my opinion , of a greater severitie , then the highest points in christianitie could have allowed : for by the fifth act of that session ( as also by the 17. act of the 3. session ) it is statuted , that no non-conform-minister , not licensed by the councel , or other person , not authorised by the bishop , shall ( so much as ) pray to god in any meeting , except in their own houses , and to those of their own families , and such as shall be present not exceeding the number of four , and that all accessorie to the contrarie , shall be guiltie of keeping conventicles , and punished with the pains there specified , the article of the apostolick creed i beleve the communion of saints notwithstanding . 2dly . by the same act , it is declared , that whosoever without license or authoritie a foresaid , shall preach or pray at any field-meeting , or in any house , where there be more persons , then the house contains , so as some of them be without doors ( who may be onely two or three , and posted there by malice ) or who shall convocate these meetings , shall be punished with death , and confiscation of their goods , and the seizers of such persons , are not onely indemnifed for any slaughter that shall be committed , in the apprehending , but also assured of 500. merks scots of reward , for each person by them seised and secured ; so mortall a thing is this field-conventicling , the messe and all its idolatrie hath nothing in it so deadlie . 3dly . by the 6th . act of that session , there are considerable pecuniall pains ordained against disorderlie baptismes , such as those are reckoned to be that are performed by outed ministers not licensed , or by any other then the parish minister , without his certificate , or , in case he be absent , the certificate of one of the neighbouring ministers . 4thly . by the 7th . act , it is appointed , that all his ma ties subjects of the reformed religion ( for papists , that are without , god judgeth ) shall attend divine worship , in their own churches , under the pecuniall pains there mentioned toties quoties &c. and in case any landed man , shall withdraw for the space of a year , notwithstanding their being therefore fullie fyned , they are to be presented to his ma ties councell , who are authorised to require of them a bond not to rise in arms against his ma tie , or his commissioner ( as if a man could not be so far dissatisfied with a pittifull countrey curat , but he must also be suspected for disaffection to his ma tie ) which if they refuse , or delay , they are to be imprisoned , or banished , and both their single and life-rent escheat doth immediatlie fall to his ma tie . and lastlie by the 2d . act of that same session , it is statuted and ordained that all persons , thereto called by the councell , or others having his ma ties authoritie , are obliged in conscience ( very fair ) and dutie , to declare and depose upon oath , their knowledge of any crime , and particularlie of any conventicles , and of the circumstances , of the persons present , and things done therein ; may not then any one be brought from the streets , and urged to become , upon oath , informer , accuser or witnesse upon all , that he ever saw or heard in his life , against himselfe , his friend , father and all men else ; or if he shall be so perverselie wicked , or disloyall , as to refuse or delay , he is to be punished by fyneing , close imprisonment , or banishment by sending him to the indies , or elsewhere at the councels pleasure ; sure i am the spanish inquisition hath no broader warrant . and yet notwithstanding all these , my l. laud : by a new act of the 3. session of this par lt ▪ procures the execution of the above-mentioned acts against conventiclers and withdrawers from publick worship to be enjoined to all sheriffes and magistrats , with an expresse provision that they should render an account yearlie of their diligence under the pain of 500. merks scots . but all these great efforts , of my l. laud s. zeal against phanaticks , proveing by farr lesse successefull , then that litle specimen of his ma ties . clemencie , whereunto lauderdaill , had been by others inclined , and it haveing pleased his ma tie . , in the year 1672. to gratifie his protestant subjects in england , with his royall goodnesse , he thinks meet at the same time to extend it , of new , to scotland ; and therefore gives to his commissioner , then amongst us , all necessarie instructions , for compleeting this worke : but his grace being now quite freed , from all those good influences wherewith sometime he had been acted , by a very uncourteous , & rude application , sadlie marres his ma ties . kindenesse , and frustrats its best end ; for as much , as in place of that gracious reliefe , which , no doubt , was intended by his ma tie . , for all his non-conforming good subjectts , whether ministers , or people , he plainlie turns this new indulgence , into an universall confinement , of the whole non-conform ministers , unto some parishes in a corner of the countrey , leaving the rest as dry or wett , as the ground , about gideons fleece , and that , with such a scornfull inconvenience ( besides some other scrupling conditions that were also imposed ) that to seuerall small parishes , having not above à thousand communicants , and 900. or a 1000. merks scots , of stipend , he causeth to be appointed , three or four ministers , contrair to all just proportions , and onely with the ridiculous equalitie , of as litle cure as litle sallarie . neither is he content to have thus cantonized those that were licensed , but even they that had none of his ma ties . favour , must yet be made partakers of his graces mercie , and therefore , it is further ordered , that all other non-conform ministers not licensed , should either conform , in the places of their dvvelling , or else , before a certain day , repair to and reside in the parishes whereunto ministers licensed are appointed : i shall not say , that his grace did thus restrain and clogg this indulgence , because that the councell , upon a letter which he had before sent them down , from his ma tie . , to know if papists might also have some tollerance , returned their advice that , they thought it neither necessarie , nor expedient ; but it is obvious enough , that if papists had been made partakers of this intended favour , it must of necessitie have been shaped out , and moulded , by some more easie regulation . and yet , as if by this concession , there had been accumulated upon the phanaticks , a bountie to which nothing could be added , it is declared in the conclusion of the councels act , that they were not to looke for any further enlargement , but that the laws for conformitie were to be strictlie executed , against all contraveeners ; but the truth is , there was another motive , for this certification ; his grace knew very well , that not only the generalitie of that scrupling partie over scotland , were litle obliged , by their being , in a manner , excepted from this his ma ties . grace , which often makes men , that before were unconcerned , to become more curious ; but that some of them , who were now deprived of the libertie which at first was allowed to them , were thereby much irritat : and therefore he , in time , provides this colour for the executions that might again ensue . and truelie , if i were to form conjectures of mens designes , on the measures , that visiblie appear to have been taken , in this sorrie contryvance , i verily think , that all the specious commendations , wherewith it was magnified , would scarselie , make me forbear to say , that its restrictednesse and uneasinesse , seem rather to have been intended for the marring , then any thing else , for the promoveing of its successe . it is sufficientlie manifest to all ingenuous men , that , the non-conformists , for all their scruples , are not onely sincerelie , and securelie loyall , but in effect , fullie as gentle and tractable , as can rationallie be exspected , from those principles , wherewith the indulgence it selfe imports a dispense ▪ besides if dispersion & the removing of the grounds of complaints be ( as no doubt they are ) the most effectuall means , to quiet such opinionative distempers , what could have been more promiseing , then to have disposed upon the small handfull of outed ministers , that remain , either by returning them all freelie , to their own churches , or leaving them to setle , as fair invitations should have determined . but alas , who sies not the strange consequences , that would have ensued ; if all wild beasts were once tamed , hunters and their sport would be utterlie spoiled , and a quiet and satisfied kingdom , secured from almost the possibilitie , of forraign invasion , would need no more any standing forces , farr lesse a standing commissioner ; and how should this poor countrey , after so many vexations , have endured so great a losse . but that his graces well disposednesse , in affairs of this kinde , may be the better understood , there is one instance of it , that i can not here omitt and it is thus ; a litle before this indulgence was granted , there were two countrey gentlemen , hay of ballhoussie and drummond of meggins , brought in question , for this flagitious impertinencie of conventicling ; the qualitie of their guilt was , that the first , had , indeed , had privat meetings in his own house , but the second was onely charged , with his wife and daughters transgression : however , his grace haveing thought good , immediatlie upon the delation , to make over their fynes , unto his favourit the e. of athole , and the gentlemen forseing , that to make the gratification suitable , there was no lesse , then the utmost rigour to be exspected ; they judged it best , to abandon their own defence , for a friendlie transaction , & therefore , casting themselves on the earles discretion , they aggrie with him in writeing , the one to pay him 600. lb. st . , and the other 400. lb. st . ; but when they appear before the councell , my l. laud. , not content with what athole had done , very arbitrarlie and exorbitantlie , procures the sentence to be augmented , against the first , to a 1000. lb. st . and against the other to 500. lb. st . whether more generouslie , towards his friend , who had got before , all that he had demanded , or more justlie towards the gentlemen , who relying upon the aggriement , had prepared no other defence , let the world judge . i might also add another example of his graces moderation , in causing the countesse of wigtoun , a widow lady , and otherwise cloathed with all the favourable circumstances , that could be desired , to appeare in person , before the councell , to answer for privat meetings in her own house , and to be fyned in the summe of 5000. merks scots , thereby shewing an impartialitie not to be byassed with any courtesie . but to return to our purpose , i need not mention particulars , for confirming of what i have said , of the errours committed , in shapeing out this indulgence : its misadventure , as to the composeing of matters , whereunto it pretended , hath afforded , both to his ma ties councell , and to the ministers licensed , too much unpleasent exercise , in citations , examinations , and reiterat orders , to leave it in the least doubtfull . the thing , more worth our noticeing , is to consider , how fortunatlie the event did fall out , to justifie my suspicion ; i touched , in the beginning , what an opportune pretext , when all others failed , these non-conforming disorders did furnish to his grace , for his last comeing amongst us : but because the letter , that he thereupon purchased from his ma tie to his par lt . , doth not more hold forth , its true author , in its unsuitablenesse to his ma ties excellent goodnesse , then exhibit to the world the truest character of my l. laud s. goodnesse and sinceritie in all these affairs , in lines of his own drawing ; i shall here sett down at length , some passages of it : but one of the principall reasons of the keeping this session of par lt , is to the end effectuall courses , may be laid down , for curbing and punishing , the insolent field-conventicles , and other seditious practises , which have since your last session too much abounded : you are our witnesses , what indulgences we have given , and with what lenitie , we have used , such dissenters , as would be peaceable , and how much our favours , have been abused . you have made many good laws , but still they have failed in the execution against the contemners of the law ; we must now once for all lay down such solid and effectuall courses , as the whole kingdom may see , that we and you are both in earnest , and that if fairnesse will not , force must compell the refractorie to be peaceable , and obey the law . we have had frequent experience of your affection to our service upon severall occasions , and therefore we are confident , you will eminentlie doe your dutie in this which doth so much concern , our authoritie and your own peace and quietnesse : we leave the wayes and means to your own wisdom , and we exspect , you will lay down such solid grounds & take such effectuall wayes , as may put an end , to these disorders & evidence to the world that our antient kingdom of scotland , is at quiet and united to us . we have instructed our commissioner fullie in this &c. & he can well informe you of our constant affection to , & care of , all the concerns , of that our kingdom , which consideration at this time , hath made us dispence with him here when his service was so usefull to us &c. and therefore you shall give him entire trust , as we have hitherto done in all things . the text is plain and needs no comment ; i shall not say , vvith some phanaticks , that if the lord had not unexspectedlie beat down to the earth , this persecutour vvith his letters , breathing out such threatnings , and slaughter , our land might have again been turned , into a field of blood and confusion : nor vvill i positivelie affirm , that these minatorie strains , vvere purposelie intended , for to overavv the nation , to a more complyant submission , to the introduction of a service-booke , vvhich , it is vvell known , vvas both designed and prepared , and should have been the great businesse , of his grace his last comeing dovvn : but certainlie , vvhoever compares , the expressions of this letter , vvith all their circumstances , viz. his ma ties benign clemencie to all innocent dissenters , the kingdomes unquestionable quiet , from all their disturbances , its great and almost sole distemper from my l. lauds . ovvn oppressions , the visible necessitie that forced him , at that time , to take sanctuarie amongst us , and lastly the forebearance and insinuation , that he hath since used , tovvard the non-conformists , to ease himselfe of a part , at least , of that universall odium , vvhich he findes to be against him ; must inevitablie breake forth in admiration , at this unmeasured boldnesse , of abuseing his ma ties name and authoritie , to so many extravagancies . these have been his vvayes in the church , so like , in every step , to his actings in the state , that they neither could have any better successe , nor can receive a milder censure . but novv his grace , haveing rode out this storm of grievances , delivered himselfe from par lts , and defeat all his enemies , in order to his return to court , resolves ( as it is probable ) to give the kingdom a proofe , both of his ovvn free and unconstrained benevolence , and also of his great povver and interest vvith his ma tie , and therefore , there is a letter produced , from the king to his councell , bearing , that his ma ties affection for us , makes him readie to embrace all occasions , whereby he may witnesse his zeal , to doe all things , which may be for our advantage , and ease ; and that being informed , by his commissioner , of some things which have been , & still are , troublesom , & burdensom to us , he hath thought fit , in his royall bountie , and by his royall authoritie , to declare , his royall pleasure for the discharging of all impositions , due before his restoration , all rests of the taxation granted by the par lt 1633. , all arrears of the annuitie of tithes , preceeding the year 1660. , and all fynes imposed by his ma ties first par lt , excepting allwayes from all these , all summes of money allreadie paid , or for which bond is given preceeding the date of the letter : and lastlie his ma tie doth grant , a generall pardon and discharge , of all arbitrarie and pecuniall pains , incurred before the date of the letter , extending even to those against conventicles , withdrawing from ordinances , disorderlie baptismes and marriages , excepting neverthelesse , all capitall crimes , and sentences of banishment , imprisonment , or confynement . upon this letter , there being a proclamation voted and formed by the councell , it was the next day made , with the solemnities of the magistrats in their robes , the citizens in arms , ringing of bells , shooting of guns , publick feasting , bonefires , & all other ceremonies , that were used , in the most extraordinarie occasions of joy : i shall not insist on the peoples wonder , at the vain pomp , of these circumstances , who could findenothing suitable in the subject ; nor on the criticizings of the more maligne sort , who regreting , that his ma ties affection & zeal for our good , should rather have been directed , by my l. laud s. , scant and partiall suggestions then by the full and faithfull advice of his par lt . , observed first , that the exception in the discharge , of the rests of impositions , taxations and fynes , was infinitlie broader , then the release it selfe , the countrey haveing , now for 13. years , been so vexed and harassed , for these things , that there is nothing left to be discharged , safe a few desperat , and irrecoverable remains . 2dly . that a generall pardon and discharge of arbitrarie and pecuniall pains , is an ordinarie grace , customarie to be granted in most par lts . , with such a latitude as they think fit to give it . 3dly . that the extension of this pardon , even to conventicles &c. can have no emphasis , unlesse we suppose , conventicling & non-conconforming , to be worse then sabbath-breaking , profane swearing , drinking , whoring , userie , extortion , and the like . 4thly . that the exception of banishments , imprisonments and confynments , wherein a few phanatick ministers are mostlie concerned , appears to be an unseasonable reserve of a peevish rigour : and 5thly . that the style of the proclamation viz. we with advice foresaid , doe hereby statute and enact , and accordinglie discharge , to our subjects , all rests and assessements &c. is not onely forced but more parliamentarie then proper for such edicts . but the thing , we rather remarque is , that just and important exception , moved against this letter and proclamation , by d. hammiltoun and others in councell , viz. that d. hammiltoun , having an undoubted right to the taxation 1633. , by a contract betwixt his late ma tie . and james then duke of hammiltoun , and also by a commission from his now ma tie , for securitie and repayment to him of a considerable summe of money , the same could not be taken away in this summarie way , without lawfull hearing ; upon which exception d. hammiltoun ( as he declared ) did not insist , for the value of the thing , but for obviating so dangerous a preparative , to every mans right and propertie ; this discharge was overtur'd both by himselfe , and others , during the sitting of the par lt . , and if it had been prosecuted , that way , all mens interests , might have been considered , and also the countrey more effectuallie secured : but after rejecting of that method , to have made choise of this , was an introduceing of presidents , of an evill aspect : and yet albeit it was resolved by the best lawyers , in a writeing under their hands , that duke hammiltouns right was unquestionable , that the king in such cases utitur jure privati , and that by the fundamentall law of the land , no mans right could be taken away summarlie by letter and proclamation ( which plea was also confirmed by the suffrage of the judges there present ) neverthelesse it was with extream heat , and pain , that my l. laud ▪ could be induced to consent to the reserving of d. hammiltouns right , as we finde it to be done , in the proclamation . i have before mentioned , the letter impetrat , from his ma tie against m r rougheed town-clerk of edenburgh , and the offence which generallie it gave , because of the invasion of propertie and libertie , thereby threatned ; but now , that my l. laud , should have again , and thus openlie , and avowedlie , relapsed into so pernicious an errour , it doth manifestlie evince , a design of arbitrarinesse , beyond the excuses of either follie or fatalitie . and yet after this , & all his other high & strange misdemeanors , which i have hitherto related , my l. laud ▪ had the confidence , to present to the councell , a letter of answer , to be subscribed by them , and sent up to the king , wherein thanks , are not onely returned for his ma ties gracious letter of release , but also for his readines shewed by his commissioner , to have rectified all our grievances , that were orderlie represented : i will not here take notice of the dissents , entered by a considerable part of the councell , against such a groundlesse and imposeing practice ; as his grace vvould delude the common people , by bells and bonefires , and other emptie and ridiculous shows , doth he also think , that men of understanding , vvill suffer their eyes to be put out ; is it not enough , that he hath tyrrannised over us , vvith so much pride and oppression , but that he must morever offer violence to our senses , and not onely obstruct our prayers and cryes , to his ma tie for his compassion and help , but even endeavour to elicit flattering approbations , and applauses for palliating and supporting these grosse malversations ; for vvhich neverthelesse , it is beyond peradventure , that so soon as he shall be arrived at court , he vvill think fit to secure himselfe , as he hath alreadie done , for his farr inferior transgressions in england , by his ma ties remission and pardon ? certainlie the free consideration of these things , might stirre up , and raise every ingenuous spirit , to the highest measure of indignation , did not his ma ties concern , and engagement therein , farr more povverfullie encline , to a dutifull regrete ; who can observe , vvithout an astonishing griefe , this kingdom , lately so overjoyed , for his ma ties restoration , and overflovving in all the possible expressions of the most loyall acknovvledgements , novv sunke into the saddest depths , of mourning , and darkned , by reason of the vvitholding of the rayes of his ma ties gracious countenance , vvith clouds of jealousies , vvhich no man is vvilling to entertain , or yet able to dissipat : and vvho can think , vvithout a most sensible affliction , that his ma ties most excellent understanding & most benign disposition , in all other occasions , should in these matters of the highest consequence , be so oddelie possest , vvith such a strange aversion , to hearken to , a most loyall par lt . and to be advised by his most affectionat subjects : and lastly vvho can see , ( vvithout a confusion , and riseing of passions , not to be expressed , ) the d. of laud. , a person , so insignificant for the advance of his ma ties service , and , of late , become so extravagant and unacceptable , even in his privat deportment and ordinarie conversation vvith ●ll men ; yet , in these publick and great affairs vvherein he hath so vvyldlie miscarried to preponderat , in his ma ties esteem , to the universall outcry of tvvo nations , the unprejudicat complaint of tvvo par lts . , and the visible disturbing , if not breaking , of the peace and quiet of tvvo kingdoms ; i shall not offer at the arts , charms or inchantments ▪ vvhereby these vvonderfull things , may be brought to passe it is but too too manifest , that vvhere my l. laud. , did sometime stand in the most undutifull difference , & seeminglie irreconcilable distance , he hath of late , since the beginning , of the last dutch vvarr ; and the ariseing of the jealousies , vvhich did commence vvith it , procured to himselfe , so firm a friendship , & so sure a support , that the more that these jealousies , and their dissatisfactions , have encreased , the more hath this favour been confirmed , and intended . but vvhy should i grope in these suspicious conjectures , vvherein all good men , doe rather desire , to find themselves deceived , then further cleered : let us rather vvish , that his ma ties eyes may be opened , and his heart turned tovvards this , his antient kingdom , and in the mean time be established , in this most fixed assurance , that notvvithstanding of all the colours , pretensions , and insinuations , that my l. laud. can employ , for the advancing of his particular interest , and ambitious humours , ●gainst the publick good of the nation , and for the bearing dovvn of its best subjects , yet the longed for issue , is as certain as that reason is reason and 〈◊〉 men . finis . reader i must desire thou would passe over an omission of the printer in the 3d. sheet , which is the letter c. wherein the pages are misplaced ; and in thy reading follow the last word of each page and the number ; what other escapes of misplaceing of letters , as in the dedication l. 11. nd ▪ athere , for and there and such like , as i know they can not marr the sense , so i hope they shall not incurr thy censure . a letter sent from the marquess of argyle to the king of scots; concerning the raising of a new army against the english; and his desires and proposals touching the same. also, his declaration to the people, and his summons to the gentry in the north; with the rising of the highlanders and redshanks; their falling upon the parliaments forces, and the event and success thereof. likewise, the manner how they fortifie the hills and mountains; and the strange engines of war which they have planted. argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a75558 of text r206757 in the english short title catalog (thomason e660_7). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 5 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a75558 wing a3660 thomason e660_7 estc r206757 99865862 99865862 118113 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a75558) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 118113) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 101:e660[7]) a letter sent from the marquess of argyle to the king of scots; concerning the raising of a new army against the english; and his desires and proposals touching the same. also, his declaration to the people, and his summons to the gentry in the north; with the rising of the highlanders and redshanks; their falling upon the parliaments forces, and the event and success thereof. likewise, the manner how they fortifie the hills and mountains; and the strange engines of war which they have planted. argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. 8 p. for george horton, imprinted at london : 1652. annotation on thomason copy: "aprill 23". reproduction of the original in the british library. eng england and wales. -army -early works to 1800. scotland. -army -history -early works to 1800. great britain -history -commonwealth and protectorate, 1649-1660 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1649-1660 -early works to 1800. a75558 r206757 (thomason e660_7). civilwar no a letter sent from the marquess of argyle to the king of scots;: concerning the raising of a new army against the english; and his desires argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of 1652 1190 8 0 0 0 0 0 67 d the rate of 67 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the d category of texts with between 35 and 100 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-03 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-04 celeste ng sampled and proofread 2007-04 celeste ng text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a letter sent from the marquess of argyle to the king of scots ; concerning the raising of a new army against the english ; and his desires and proposals touching the same . also , his declaration to the people , and his summons to the gentry in the north ; with the rising of the highlanders and redshanks ; their falling upon the parliaments forces , and the event and success thereof . likewise , the manner how they fortifie the hills and mountains ; and the strange engines of war which they have planted . imprinted at london , for george horton , 1652. a declaration of the marq. of argyle concerning the parliament of england ; and his resolution and summons to the gentry : with the rising of the highlanders . sir , the marquess of argyle is returned to the highlands , being possessed with sundry jealousies and feares touching the present government of the commonwealth of england ; for , indeed , he hath declared , that he cannot give his assent for the incorporating the kingdom of scotland , with the commonwealth of england ; but holds himself bound in duty , whilest he hath any power ) to preserve the interest of the kirk , and to include a toleration for the discipline of that nation , as it was concluded , enacted , and agreed upon by the general assembly of divines ; and upon that account he was resolved to stand or fall : in pursuance whereof , he hath sent a summons to the lords and gentry in those parts ( a copy whereof , i have sent you here inclosed ) for them immediatly to make their personal appearance at candress , to consult and determine upon the weighty and emergent affaires of that nation ; for the defence and preservation of their religion , laws , and liberties . and accondingly on the fourth of this instant april , divers of the gentry met at the aforesaid place , where the marquess presented ▪ 19 propositions , touching their fundamental laws and government , the presbyterian pro●ession , and the ●●iviledges of the people ; and after mature deliberatio● thereupon their consultation produced these results ▪ that they found them to be consonant to the word of god ( yet the voters aliens to religion ) and according to the solemn league and covenant , and therefore thought themselves bound in conscience , and duty to adhere therunto , and to give their condescensions for promoting thereof . whereupon the marquess desired their subscriptions , and unanimously they assented thereunto ; so that there is a new league and confederacy against the english ; by which means , an highland war is expected this summer ; in order whereunto , about 1000 redshanks are levyed , bei●g armed with bows and arrows , long skeines , cross-bows , darts , and other strange engines of war , ( yet nothing so sure , but that they are instruments for their own destruction ) and have made a spacious line along the river neer andress , with several half-moons , flankers , and sconces ; but want great canon exceedingly to plant : however , they are very active and busie in making of lether-guns of several sorts both great and small ; and are raising divers bulworks and fortifications at sundry passes , rivers , and foords , and are as busie , as so many rats in a barley-mow . they talk high , and say they will level us with the valleys , by stoning us from the rocks ; & think themselves as safe as so many thieves in a mill , because of their mountainous fortifications , having upon each rock , where there is any possibility to attempt a pa●●age , placed great heapes of stones and flints , to tumble down upon their heads , in case they should attempt to storm . these highlanders have lately made an attempt upon the low-lands , where they fell upon some of our out-quarters ; but the allarm being given , our men very opportunely came in , and soon expelled them ; killing twenty two , and took thirty four prisoners . we could not embrace the pursuit , by reason of the advantagiousness of the grounds for the enemy , yet notwithstanding upon the securing of the prisoners , we demanded what their principles were they fought for ; they answer'd . for god ▪ their dear lord marquess , and their gude king ; but seemed to be very passionate ; and truly i must ingenuously confess , they are a stout ( but heathenish ) generation . for their ministers are as crosse-grain'd as ever , and throw so many fire-balls at the government , that ( if possible , and permitted ) they will set all again in flames ; and great is their spleen against those of their own nation , that are satisfied in acting by commission , under the authority of england , or appear any wayes inclinable to an incorporation with it . so much , for their own ends , are they enemies to the good of their domineering hierarchy . if the yoke of the lords , lairds , and priests be once taken off , then they will be deprived of that wicked compliance , which was wont to be maintained betwixt themselves , as cruel taskmasters , both in spirituals and civils , for inslaving of the poor people . but now ( praised be god ) things work pretty well ; for , the scales begin to fall off from mens eyes , to a lothing of former vanities , insomuch that several kirks about aberdeen are faln off , and have deserted that presbytery , which gives a strong allarm to the rest of the clergy . it s reported , that the aforesaid marquesse of argyle hath fent a letter to the pretended king charles stuart , for a supply of arms and ammunition , wherein he assures him that he will be both loyal and faithful to the last minute , and that he hath now a new game to play , &c. indeed , we may probably conjecture , that he hath some notable design in hand , by reason of his confederacy and combination with the adverse party ; a cleer demonstration whereof , is apparently made evident by the ensuing summons . these are strictly to charge and require all lords and gentlemen whatsoever , that they forthwith make their appearance at candress , there to consult and determine upon such things as may tend to the honour of religion , the peace and welfare of this nation , the preservation of our liberties and freedoms , and the due observing of our ancient laws and customes , in kirk and state , against all those who shall endeavor the extirpation thereof . dalkeith april 9. 1652. finis . a defence of the antiquity of the royal line of scotland with a true account when the scots were govern'd by kings in the isle of britain / by sir george mackenzie ... mackenzie, george, sir, 1636-1691. 1685 approx. 288 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 116 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-08 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a50493 wing m156 estc r228307 12350734 ocm 12350734 59981 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a50493) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 59981) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 893:8) a defence of the antiquity of the royal line of scotland with a true account when the scots were govern'd by kings in the isle of britain / by sir george mackenzie ... mackenzie, george, sir, 1636-1691. [8], 13, [1], 204, [4] p. printed by ri. chiswell ..., london : 1685. reproduction of original in union theological seminary library, new york. in reply to bishop stillingfleet's origines britannicae. advertisement: p. 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never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng stillingfleet, edward, 1635-1699. -origines britannicæ. scotland -history -to 1603. scotland -kings and rulers. 2004-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-03 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-05 olivia bottum sampled and proofread 2004-05 olivia bottum text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-07 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a defence of the antiquity of the royal line of scotland . with a true account when the scots were govern'd by kings in the isle of britain . by sir george mackenzie his majesty's advocate in scotland . london , printed for ri. chiswell , at the rose and crown in st. paul's church-yard . 1685. to the king . sir , divine providence having suffered these kingdoms to destroy one another for many ages , in divided monarchies ; reserv'd their happy union for the merciful royal family , of which your majesty is now the head : and mingl'd lawfully in their veins , all those many and different bloods-royal , which pretended to any soveraignty in these your dominions : designing thereby at once to reward the vertue of your majesty's predecessors , and to endear that union to us , in preventing future debates . in king iames , your royal grand-father , these nations got a monarch , who was acknowledg'd to be the solomon of his age : who excell'd all his contemporary princes in * king-craft ; all his ministers in prudence ; and all his doctors in learning . none of his subjects understood the law better , or observ'd it more : and who knew as well all that was done at council-tables abroad , as they who sat at them . to him succeeded your majesty's royal father , whose life was the best law a king could make : who knew no use of power , save to do good by it : who was less careful of his own blood , than of that of his subjects : and i may justly say , that heaven only was govern'd by a better king. after we had shown our selves unworthy of such monarchs , the divine goodness , to try us once more , gave us your gracious brother , whose clemency ( after so many and so great injuries ) was as great a miracle as his restoration : who knew every thing save to be severe ; and could bear every thing , save to see his people in trouble : who after the abuse of his goodness , had made his enemies so insolent , that his servants concluded all was lost ; did , by his extraordinary parts , with a gentle easiness , peculiar to himself , dissipate those execrable combinations , to our great satisfaction and amazement . but , sir , the conscience of his enemies , will far exceed in his praises , the eloquence of his servants ; and so my trembling hand leaves this melancholy subject . his throne is now fill'd with your sacred majesty , whose abilities your royal brother esteemed so much , that he shar'd with you the exercise of the government , before his death gave you the possession of the crown . in you , sir , your people have a general to their armies , an admiral to their fleet , a treasurer to their mony : whose courage can lead them as far as theirs can follow ; and raise the glory of these kingdoms as high as they can wish : so that if they be not happy , they will have this addition to their misfortunes , that the world will see , that they themselves are only to be blam'd for it . our country , sir , does not boast of a rich soil , or a hot sun : but it may , that it has given these happy islands those gracious and glorious kings . in return whereof , we might have expected kinder rewards , than that any of their natives should debate its antiquity , and the veracity of those histories wherein the great actions of your royal predecessors were recorded . and since the honour of the ancient and royal race of our soveraigns is the chief thing wherein we glory ; it is hard to deny us a favour , so just on our part , and so easy on theirs . however , sir , since i presume , that those of your other subjects , who controvert this , do so , rather from want of information , than from unkindness ; i , who am resolv'd to make the defence of your meanest priviledges my greatest honour , have thought it incumbent to me , as your advocate , to undertake the defence of that antiquity , which makes your majesty the most ancient monarch upon earth . which argument , i hope , i have manag'd with that candour , which becomes an honest man , and that zeal which is the duty of , sir , your majesty's most dutiful , loyal , and obedient subject and servant , geo. mackenzie . a letter to the earl of perth , lord high chancellor of scotland , upon his having sent to the author the bishop of st. asaph's book . with some reflections upon the design of that book . my lord , i have read the book you sent me , with that delight i did of old a play ; which one may think it resembles more , than our histories do a romance : for what is truly related , is so disguised and transposed , as may best suit with the author's design ; and with a rhetorick so polite and comical , that if the reasons do not convince , yet the humour and stile may charm , and please , even some of those against whom it is design'd . this made me unwilling at first to undertake to answer a book , which i suppose might have more admirers than proselytes : but finding , upon a second perusal , that the author had not fully examined the grounds upon which our historians proceeded , or had suffered himself to be byass'd by zeal for his order , or partiality to his country ; and that this whole kingdom take it as an injury done , not only to the antiquity of the royal family , but to this our nation in general ; i was at last prevailed with to enter the lists , with a kind design , by a sober and candid information , rather to convince and satisfy the author , and those he may have misled , than to acquire the vain glory of such a victory , especially over one who bears the character of a bishop , for which i have so great a veneration : altho , for the reasons following , i cannot but dislike his unnecessary undertaking , and unseasonable and partial management of a national debate , which * we are prohibited to enter upon under pain of a sedition . 1. i am sorry , that while these kingdoms are unhappily divided , not in nations , but opinions ; the old animosities amongst scots , english , and irish , being forgot and buried , and the modern differences between the episcopal and fanatick , and cavalier and republican , or , as some term it , whig and tory , are so violent and turbulent ; the author should have diverted our just and dutiful zeal , by imploying it in defence of an important right of state , unkindly , as well as unnecessarily invaded : so as the other , of near concern to the church , may in some measure come to be neglected . 2. the pretext for writing this book , wherein the antiquity of our kings and nation is so much disparag'd , being , that the presbyterians , and particularly blondel , urg'd from our historians , that we had a church for some years without bishops : it seem'd neither just nor fit , that any episcopal author should have magnify'd so highly the meanest argument that ever was us'd by a presbyterian ; as for it , to cut off 44 kings ( all preceding coranus , who began his reign anno 501 ) and to expose on a pillory as forgers , our many and grave historians . and that it is a weak argument , appears from this , that i have met with very few laicks in all our country , who had heard of it ; nor with one , even of these few , who had valu'd it : and so this author may be said , rather to have suggested a new argument , than to have answered an old one : for they urge now nothing to us , save places of scripture ; resolving to have their presbytery , iuris divini : knowing that nothing less can secure them , in opposing the laws of the kingdom . and what can the presbyterians think of their other arguments , which they value much . since this , which they valu'd so little , is thought of such force , by a learned bishop , as to deserve a whole book , the cutting off of 44 kings , and the offending a nation of friends . it is also very remarkable , that the learn'd doctor hammond , a great champion of episcopacy , owns the antiquity of our nation ; and answers fully that argument , without overturning the truth of our history , or wronging the antiquity of our royal-line : whereas baxter the presbyterian urges this citation , and yet agrees with this author in opposing the antiquity of our history ; approving what is said by cambden and vsher ; and in a letter to the duke of lauderdale asserting the lateness of our settlement here . which shews , that there is no necessity lying upon such as own episcopacy , to wrong the antiquity of our kings and nation . but how the necessity of a private corner of a remote country in ecclesiâ constituendâ , could wrong the general practice of the church ; is as little to be understood , as it is undenyable , that many thousands in iapan , and china , were converted by presbyters , before bishops were sent thither . and since it cannot be deny'd , but that those who ordain'd our presbyters were bishops ; it necessarily follows , that episcopacy was settl'd in the christian church before we had presbyters or culdees : or else , if these who ordain'd our presbyters were not bishops , the practice of that church , whereby our presbyters were ordain'd , should have been impugn'd , and not the authority of our histories , and the antiquity of our royal-line overturn'd . and though this reverend and learn'd author could prove , that we were not setled here , before the year 503 , yet that could not answer the argument : for the culdees might have been settled before that time in this country , where we now live , though amongst the picts ; for it cannot be deny'd but the picts were setled in this country before that time . and when our historians say that the abbots of icolm-kill had jurisdiction over all the bishops of the province ; that is to be understood , as beda observes , more inusitato ; and my lord st. asaph himself well remarks these words , and gives a full and clear vindication of the passages of beda in the 173 , and following pages ; and might have rested therein , and needed not to have been driven to seek a new answer in overturning the antiquity of our nation . many examples can be given of jurisdiction of presbyters , and even of deacons over bishops in the canon law and history . so that this instance from our historians makes nothing against episcopacy . and latter historians meeting with these ambiguous words in our annals , de signatus , electus , ordinatus , were by a mistake induc'd to appropriate these words to the formal ceremony of ordination and imposition of hands . and i find , by the bishop's concession , * that the abbess hilda did elect and send forth such of her monks , as she thought fit to be ordain'd : which is all that our guldees , and ancient monks did . thus a king may be said to make one a bishop , or a mother to have made one of her sons a church-man ; which answer , the learned nicol , a zealous friend to episcopacy , thought sufficient to elide blondel's arguments from our historians , without denying the antiquity of our nation , or troubling himself with our * culdees . and if beda had heard that the presbyters did ordain bishops , he had remark'd it as a most unusal thing , having marked that the abbots had jurisdiction over bishops , they being but presbyters ; such an ordination being much more extraordinary , than such a jurisdiction . and might not my lord st. asaph as well have inveigh'd against gildas and the british historians , because he says * that church-men were ordain'd by the consent of the bishops and the rest of the presbyters , from which presbyterians , and particularly the same , blondel † infers a parity betwixt bishops and presbyters . and from which it appears , that dangerous consequences should not be drawn from the dubious and heedless expressions of old authors , living in rude times and places : and from all which we might have been secure , that my lord st. asaph would have concur'd with the wise answer , which spotswood , arch-bishop of st. andrews ( with whom the learn'd hammond agrees ) gave to that silly argument , without affronting him as a betrayer of the episcopal cause ; and caressing our fanaticks by that unwarrantable and dangerous assertion ; that in consequence thereof they might reasonably conclude , that when they covenanted against episcopacy , they had only us'd their own right ; and thrown out that , which was a confess'd innovation ; in order to the restoring of that , which was their primitive government . for it does not follow , that because our church in its infancy and necessity was without bishops for some years ; that therefore it was reasonable for subjects , to enter into a solemn league and covenant , without , and against the consent of their monarch ; and to extirpate episcopacy settled then by law , and by an old prescription of 1200 years at least . 3. precedency being one of the jewels of the crown and one of the chief glories of princes ; and all who treat on that subject confessing , that the king of great-britain , as king of scotland , is the most ancient monarch in europe , the line of other kingdoms having been often interrupted , whereas ours never was ; it seems a great injury to our kings , to have their line shortened , so as thereby to postpone them , to many others ; and if this author's arguments prove any thing , they must prove that our kings cannot instruct their antiquity , till malcolm the 3d's time : and so our kings will be amongst the last of all crowned-heads . nor is it one of the least arguments , which prevail with us , to hazard all for our royal-line , that we have been so long subjects to it , and happy under it : and therefore whoever shortens it , lessens ( though without design ) the influence of our kings , and endangers the succession . and since * luddus owns , that he durst not deny the british descent from brutus , lest he might thereby wrong the majesty of the english nation ; i admire , that any of the subjects of great britain did not think it a degree of lese-majesty , to injure and shorten the royal-line of their kings . 4. if this injury had been done to kings , or to a nation , when they were enemies to episcopacy , as the obligation was , so the fault had been less . but to inveigh against our royal-line , after king iames had made the settlement of episcopacy his business ; king charles had died for it ; and our late soveraign of glorious memory , had been more disquieted by the schismatical opposition made to it , than by all his other concerns , seems very unkind . and tho this learned and worthy author , upon design to make us sit down quietly under these injuries , seems to gratifie us , by the complement , that we , since the writing of our histories , needed not such helps , as old and fabulous romances : telling us , that we have excell'd most other nations , in arts , and arms ; and especially in the purity of religion , abating only the blemish , which we have contracted by too easie a belief of these fictions , which he designs to refute . yet , since no peer in england , though a subject , would have allow'd this author to tell him , that albeit , he be now a brave and generous person ; his predecessors were lately pilfering barbarous robbers and vagabonds , and the history of his family a fabulous romance . how should he have imagin'd , that our kings and nation ( how gentle soever ) would have thought , that the justice done them in this age ( and for which we thank the bishop of st. asaph ) should have compens'd the injuries done to their predecessors ? but it is probable , that my lord st. asaph has not , on the one hand , known the grounds which we here urge for our antiquity , and that our nice jealousie for our honour , on the other hand , magnifies too much to us such injuries , of which we are naturally very sensible : and therefore , i hope , by his lordship's aquiescence , the result of the debate will be , that he will see that our royal-line and nation are more ancient than he imagined them to have been : and that we will remain convinc'd , that his book was not dictated by malice , and national humour . my design is not to convince my readers , that i am learn'd , but that my cause is just : and therefore i use no more citations , even from the books i know , than may prove or illustrate my positions . and , not being the first aggressor , i expect the favour which is due to self-defence : for of all things , i hate unnecessary debates ; and i admire st. pâul , for saying , * and they neither found me in the temple disputing with any man. debates generally starve charity , feed self-love , and incline even very good men to more partiality , than i hope can be charg'd in this debate , upon your lordship's most faithful and humble servant , geo. mackenzie . king charles the 1st his speech to the scottish parliament at edinburgh , aug. 19. 1641. i cannot doubt of such real testimonies of your affections , for the maintenance of that royal power which i enjoy , after 108 descents , and which you profess to maintain , and to which your national oath doth oblige your , &c. a defence of the antiquity of the royal-line of scotland , with a true account , when the scots were govern'd by kings in the isle of britain . in answer to the bishop of st. asaph . all the historians of scotland unanimously agreeing , that the royal-line of the kings of scotland did begin in king fergus the first : and that the scots now inhabiting it , were settled here , under one soveraign , about 330 years before christ. and their histories being receiv'd with great applause for many hundreds of years , by historians , antiquaries , and criticks of other nations , who had any occasion to take notice of our affairs ; luddus affecting singularity , did , anno 1572 , controvert both these points : for which , he having been refuted with just severity by buchannan ; the bishop of st. asaph , upon pretext of answering a very silly an inconsequential argument against episcopacy , has undertaken the defence of luddus his kinsman , contending , that the scots did not settle in britain till the year of our lord 503 , and that they had no king , who govern'd in this island till that time . albeit there be other unwarrantable assertions and positions in that book , yet being unwilling to enter upon any argument , which may , by the remotest consequence , be urg'd against that episcopacy , which i so much reverence ; i , as his majesties advocate , design only to prove , that in both these points the bishop has ( though i hope without design ) injur'd our kings and nation . for proving whereof , the first thing i shall clear , shall be , that history requires , nor admits no mathematieal , nor legal proof , but is satisfied with such moral certainty , as is infer'd from probable tradition , old manuscripts , credible historians , the testimony of foreign authors , and probable reasons . secondly ; that our histories being already acquiesced in , and received by the generality of mankind , and especially by criticks , antiquaries , and historians , the best iudges in such cases , need no confirmation , nor further proof . thirdly ; that albeit we are not obliged to prove , or confirm our history , yet we are able to do it by all the former grounds , which is all that needs be done for the credit of any history . fourthly ; i shall answer the arguments brought by the bishop against our histories . and i must intreat my readers to lay all these together , and not to judg by parcels , which is not to be done , especially in cases of this nature . for clearing the first of these points , it is fit to consider , that right reason requires only in all cases , such proofs , as the nature of the subject can allow : and therefore , though mathematicians rest only upon infallible demonstrations ; and the law requires strict and solemn proofs ; yet the law it self remits its ordinary exactness , to comply with the necessity of human affairs , allowing domestick witnesses , where others cannot be had , and strong presumptive grounds as equal to witnesses , where the subject matter can admit of no other proofs : morality convinces by probable reasons , and history allows moral certainty for a sufficient probation in matters of fact , because the matters treated of in it , can generally admit no exacter proofs : which proposition as to history , will very easily appear , if we consider , that even the historians of this present age , cannot themselves see every thing they relate ; nor can all be prov'd by the testimony of witnesses . reason likewise has oblig'd men to presume , that a nation ought as much to be believ'd in these cases , as two witnesses are in any single one : for even in the case of witnesses , our belief is founded upon the presumption , that they will not lie , and damn themselves ; and that both the one , and the other , do at last resolve in presumptive and probable grounds : so that men satisfie themselves in most things , with the general belief and tradition of those among whom they live , founded upon probable reasons . manuscripts also written by others , infer no mathematical nor legal certainty : for the author of the manuscript might have been mistaken , or byass'd ; and at best , one witness proves not . nor are strangers oblig'd to believe the exactest history of those who write in favour of the antiquity of their own nation , upon any other account , than because history is satisfy'd with probable grounds . domestick testimonies infer only a probable belief ; and tho an oath were interpos'd , that could creat no more than a moral certainty . as the former proposition is founded upon just reason , so all historians have been believ'd , and the histories of all nations have been receiv'd upon probable grounds and warrants , though they were not written by those who saw and heard what they wrote . amongst many instances of which , i shall only name that of the romans , written by * livius ; in which common-wealth , he tells us that the use of letters was not then ordinary , and that the best records were the faithful remembrance of things past ; and if some few memorials were left by the priests in succeeding ages , they perish'd at the burning of the town . and no history was collected till the year 485 , after the building of rome , fabius pictor , their first historian , writing in that year , as † vossius informs us . the iewish history also had no historical warrant for the first 2000 years , but tradition , and after that time , their transactions were mention'd in very few foreign histories : and the annals of their own priests were thought good historical foundations , in the opinion of * iosephus , even for the sacred history . i need not mention the histories of the greeks , who could have no records for many hundreds of years before they wrote ; and much less those of the french , and spaniards , whose histories might much more justly be questioned upon the grounds that ours are . the surest foundation then of all histories , is the common belief and consent of the natives : for strangers cannot know but from them , and this consent and belief may be founded upon credible tradition , manuscripts , domestick witnesses , but especially when these are fortify'd by the concurring testimonies of foreign authors , probable reasons , and the acquiescence of mankind . and tho less accepted for fortifying an ancient , than modern history , and that even a part of these would be sufficient to confirm a modern one ; yet i hope to make them all concur for supporting ours , tho very ancient . it would appear then by this , that as the bishop of st. asaph has undertaken to defame our history without any necessity , so he does it without any shadow of reason : and we will at least have the satisfaction to see our histories subsist as long as any histories can do . i conceive also , that in reason , historians already receiv'd in the world with applause , need not show their warrants whereupon they proceed ; no more than a man that is in possession needs prove or confirm his right , except the same be prov'd to be false , or a clearer , or stronger right be produced by him who challenges the former . nor are men curious to preserve old manuscripts and records , after they have form'd their histories by them : for else no historian could ever be secure , if the not being able to show their warrants , after many ages , might discredit their history . and i desire to know , where are these few historians , whom herodotus , livius , and others do cite in their histories ? or , these whom iosephus did cite to confirm that of the jews , when it was challeng'd by appion the grammarian , upon the same grounds that ours is now quarrell'd by the bishop of st. asaph ? and albeit the authority of a single historian , might be suspected after his history is written , and that then his warrants might be call'd for ; especially if other manuscripts could be found , written in the time controverted , by which that history might be contradicted : or if the history controverted did report things inconsistent with the whole tract of other historians , or the principles of common sense and reason , as ieffrey of monmouth , and some british historians do , in the opinion of the bishop of st. asaph , and their own best critiques . yet , this cannot at all be extended to our case , who have many histories written by men of great reputation , all agreeing very well with one another , and relating things probable in themselves , and very agreeable to foreign histories , and which they declare , they did draw from warrants cited by them , and which have for many years , been read with great pleasure , and cited with great honour by critiques , antiquaries , and historians , and contradicted by the authority of no positive history or manuscript , written by any in the ages controverted , asserting , that the scotish nation now inhabiting this isle , did first plant themselves here , about such a year of god , under such a king , or adducing some such solid ground against us ; all that is objected against our positive and applauded histories , being the vain scruples of an obscure author , luddus , who being confuted by buchannan , made no more noise in the world , till * cambden rais'd some conjectures with submission to us , after which learned † bishop vsher ( picqu'd by dempster's severity , to his uncle stanihurst ) gathered together , an undigested , and formless lump of all writers , good and bad , from which , he says , that discretion being us'd , a history might be form'd . and from these , the bishop of st. asaph , impatient of buchannan's severity to luddus , under the pretext of respect to episcopacy , has drawn a new model , without bringing new materials , putting that confus'd rabble in rank and file , with some pleasant reflections . i might then forbear to trouble my self any further , than in answering those few , and ill-founded objections , muster'd up by the bishop against us , which being remov'd , leave our history in its former lustre and splendor . but for serving my king and country , and satisfying my reader more entirely , i am resolv'd to clear , that our historians have proceeded upon sufficient warrants , according to the former uncontrovertible propositions , which i at first laid down in relation to history in general . and this i will endeavour to do , 1. by shewing that our tradition is very well founded . 2. by shewing , that we had ancient annals , and that our historians were men of great reputation , and that they founded their histories on those ancient annals . 3. that the best historians among the britains , do concur to assert our antiquity ; and that such as oppose it , are men of so little authority , as that their testimony should not be put in the ballance with those who stand for us . 4. that our histories are confirm'd by the authority of ancient foreign authors . 5. that our histories have been believ'd and applauded by the best of late historians , critiques , and antiquaries , the best judges in such cases . 6. that the antiquity of our history is founded upon solid reason , and great probability as well as upon the testimony of authors , both within and without the isle : which is all that can be done , or is requisite for asserting and proving the truth of any history . for clearing whereof i must inform my reader , that whilst this isle was pagan , it had for its priests , the druids , who taught them sciences , and letters , and who were so famous , that * caesar tells us , that the gauls deriv'd their first learning from them . and all histories acknowledg , that these us'd to transmit the histories of their own times in verses , which were taught by them to their scholars : and it is probable , that some of these druids having been converted from the pagan religion , whereof they were the priests , became our first monks ; being thereto much inclin'd by the severity of their former discipline : as the therapeutae did for the same reason become the first anchorits in egypt ; and so it was easie for them to inform the monasteries of what they knew so well . and this hint is confirm'd by a very clear passage in leslies preface to his history , who being a bishop himself , should be believ'd by another of the same character in a probable matter of fact. nor can there be a clearer confirmation of our having had the druids amongst us , than that in several places of the irish version of the new testament , the wise men , or priests , are translated druids : and so , where the english translation saith , that the wise men from the east came to worship our saviour : our irish translation has the druids , &c. our predecessors also being descended from the spanish gallicks , or galicians , as is acknowledg'd by historians ; and they having had the use of letters , and of grammar , long before this time , as * strabo confesses , it cannot be imagined , but that we as a colony of them , would have likewise a part of their art and learning . our predecessors also had their sanachies and bards ; the first whereof were the historians , and the latter the poets of their traditions , as luddus himself acknowledges , and by either of these means , the memory of our kings and their actions , might have been preserv'd until the 5th century ; at which time we got monasteries ; in which ( as i shall hereafter prove ) were written and preserv'd the annals of our nation . and since nothing but great improbabilities , and fundamental inconsistencies , should be allow'd to refute a history already receiv'd . i shall offer these considerations for clearing , that this way of preserving the memory of our kings , is as probable a mean as any can be in history . 1. it is probable that our nation , as all the rest of mankind , who are warlike , and in constant action , would be desirous to preserve the memory of those actions , for which they had hazarded their lives , and by which they design'd to preserve that fame , which they preferr'd to life it self : and that the kings likewise , whose authority and right was much reverenc'd for its antiquity , would be as careful to preserve those marks of their ancient dominion . 2. we do not in this serious debate , pretend to such ancient originations , and descents , as might through vanity tempt men to lie , as those do , who endeavour to derive themselves from the trojans . all that we pretend to in this debate , being only , that we are a colony , who probably came first from greece to spain , but settled certainly in ireland for some time : and that we came from them , after the time , in which cambden , and vsher acknowledge that the nation of the scots ( whose name we only now bear ) were long settled there . would not our accusers have us trust the british antiquities for 2500 years ? and the irish for a longer time than our own , without any written history , or manuscript now extant before gilda's time ? and tho lycurgus would not suffer his laws to be written , yet they were preserv'd in the memories of men , for more than 600 years , as plutarch observes ; and we and other nations have preserv'd some laws for much longer time , without the help of writing . and the only points here controverted , being the first settlement of our nation , and that we continue subjects to the same race of kings ; these are matters so remarkable , that most nations know when such changes happened to one another . as for instance , tho there were no history yet extant , we should easily have known that the saxons , danes , and normans conquer'd the britons , and alter'd the race of their kings . that ireland had many little monarchs , till they were swallow'd up by henry the 2d of england . and that edward bruce , brother to our glorious king robert the first , was chosen king of ireland , with universal consent there , and might have continued in that government , if from too great a love to fame , and to gain a victory without his brother , he had not lost it , and himself . and though all these controverted points , fell out in a time after the use of letters was known to most nations , and particularly to the druids and romans , the one whereof were our priests , and the other our neighbours very long , yet there remains not the least vestige of a doubt , that our scepter was ever sway'd by any other race . 3. though we had wanted the use of letters , as most probably we did not ; yet the tradition controverted , is at most of about 800 years . for , after that time , it shall be proved , that we had records and annals : and the things said of our kings , during that time , are so few , and so remarkable , that men might have taught the same to their children in a weeks time : and men lived so long at that time , that ten or twelve men might have transmitted the tradition to one another . as also , since private families do preserve to this day their tradition for as long time as this ; it was much more easy for a nation , and their kings , to preserve theirs . nor can i tell why my lord st. asaph , in his preface , can controvert our tradition , though we could not produce writers who lived in those times , wherein these actions are said to be done : since * he thinks it reasonable to judge that there was the same government here in britain , though for want of ancient writings , there could be produced no plain instances of it . and if this be allowed to episcopacy in these times , why should he not have allow'd the same favour to his monarch's predecessors , in the same and more ancient ages . 4. it was much easier for us to preserve our traditions , than for the english , we being all descended from the same race , and being still the same people , living under the uninterrupted succession of the same royal-line ; whereas they were oblig'd to suppress the traditions and memorials of the people whom they had conquer'd . 5. as no man is presum'd to lie , or cheat , without some great temptation ; so the most glorious things that are said of us , are true beyond debate . as our having defended the ground in which we setled , against all opposition to this very day : our having put the first stop to the roman greatness ; our having beat the far more numerous britans , though defended by strong walls , and stronger romans : all which cannot be deny'd to have been done by us , and are equally noble , whether we were setled here or not , when we did them . after those controverted times , it cannot be deny'd , that we carried our conquests further into britain than formerly : that we fought long with success against the saxons and picts , and did at last extirpate the latter : and when we were alone , we continued , and extended our former conquests against the danes and normans ; which proves also , that in the wars which we had against the romans in conjunction with the picts , the victories we then got , are chiefly to be ascrib'd to us . and to crown all , we have generously contributed all that was in our power , to support that ancient and royal family ( so unparallell'd for its antiquity ) by which we were animated , and instructed to do all those great actions , till they are now become the monarchs of the whole isle ; having by a happier way extinguished those wars and animosities , and may he be unhappy who revives them . for clearing how this tradition might have been , and was preserv'd ; our history tells us of a probable way among many others , which was , that at the coronation of our kings , one appeared and recited his whole genealogy . i shall trouble my reader only with a proof of this custom , which is such as confirms also the genealogy of king alexander the 3d , in the year 1249 , prior to fordon's time , or to the view of any such debate , and is related by fordon and major in the life of that king ; and being so memorable a fact , and so near fordon's own time , his relation cannot but be credited . his words are , that the king being plac'd in the marble-chair , the crown upon his head , and the scepter in his hand , and the nobility being set below him , a venerable old high-landed gentleman stept out , and bowing the knee , express'd himself to the king in the high-land language thus ; god bless you king alexander , son of alexander , son of william , &c. and so carried up the genealogy to fergus the first : which custom was most solemnly us'd at the coronation of king charles the martyr , at which time their pictures were expos'd , and noblest actions recited . as also the reciting of their genealogy was usual at the burial of ours kings , a written proof of which tradition , is to be seen in a manuscript of baldredus abbas rynalis ; ( for that which is the abbacy of melros , was so called before king david's time , who designs them so in the foundations of the lands of melros , which he gives to them ) and is related verbatim by fordon , consisting of eighteen chapters , mentioning the memorable actions of king david , upon whom the lamentation is made , who died 1151 ; and running up the genealogy of the said st. david to fergus the first , dedicated to henry prince of england , grand nephew to st. david , who came to the crown of england , anno 1154 , under the name of henry the second : in both which at least fordon is to be believ'd , having sufficient vouchers . this also being ordinary in our high-land families to this very day , not only at burials , but baptisms and marriages : and in which families , men continue still to be design'd from their fathers , grandfathers , and very many generations upwards ; as is a sufficient historical proof of tradition , tho we had no other warrant for those few ages . before i come to clear that we had manuscripts and records , it is fit to consider that is very probable , that as the history of most nations was preserv'd by their priests and church-men : so ours would be very ready to oblige the kings , under whom , and the people among whom they liv'd , by writing their annals . and therefore we may reasonably conclude , that since we were very early christians , we had therefore ancient histories written by our church-men , besides those which we may pretend to have been transmitted to them by the druids . and the bishop himself acknowledges that the monastery of hy , call'd by us icolm-kill , ( that is hy , the cell of columba ) was founded about the year 560 ; and it is undeniable , that 48 of our old kings were buried , and our records were kept there since its foundation , until the reign of malcolm canmore : and it is also certain , that our annals were written in our monasteries , such as scoon , pasley , pluscardin , and lindesfern * govern'd by three scotish-bishops , aidan , finan , and colman ; and abercorn , mention'd by † beda ; and melross , the chronicle whereof begins where beda ends , as their history now printed shews : though certainly that english manuscript is very unfaithful , for most of the things relating to our nation are omitted , as particularly about the beginning , in the year 844. our manuscript observes ( which the english has not ) that alpin king of the scots died , to whom succeeded his son kenneth , who beat the picts , and was declared first king of all scotland , to the water of tine ; and after it expresses in his epitaph , primus in albania fertur regnasse kenedhus filius alpini , praelia multa gerens . and it observes that he was called the first king of albany , not because he was the first who made the scotish laws , but because he was the first king of all scotland . and each of our monasteries had two books , the one call'd their register , or chartulary , containing the records relating to their private securities ; and another call'd their black-book , containing an account of the memorable things which occur'd in every year . and as it is strongly presumable , that our historians would have compil'd our histories from those : so this being a matter of fact , is probable by witnesses : and i thus prove it in such a way and manner as is sufficient to maintain any history . verimundns a spaniard , arch-deacon of st. andrews , in anno 1076 , ( as is remarked by * chambers of ormond ) declares in the epistle to his book of the historians of scotland , dedicated to king malcolm , call'd can-more ; that , albeit there are many things in the said histories , which may seem to the readers to be a little difficult to be believed , because they are not totally confirmed by foreign historians : yet after have they heard how the scots were setled in the north part of the isle of albion , separated by the sea from the firm land , and so seldom troubled by strangers , to whom they give no occasions to write their actions ; and also that they have not been less happy in having almost always among them the druids , religious people , and diligent chroniclers , before the reception of the christian faith , and continually since monks , faithful historians in the isles of man , and icomkill ; where they kept securely their monuments and antiquities , without giving a sight , or copy of them to strangers ; they will cease to wonder . this chambers was a learned man , and a lord of session , who wrote anno 1572 , and in his * preface , says , that he had those principal authors , verimund a spaniard , turgot bishop of st. andrews , john swenton , john campbel , and bishop elphinstoun , &c. and many great histories of the abbacies of scoon , called the black-book , and of other like chronicles of abbacies , as that of inch-colm , and icolmkill , the most part whereof he took pains to consider as much as was possible for him . he * cites verimund for an account of the scots and picts , and after he also † cites him for the miracle of st. andrews in hungus's time ; and he * gives an account of the tenor of the league betwixt charles the great , and achaius , and asserts that the same was extracted out of the registers and books he mention'd , and particularly , out of the second book of verimund . sir richard baker cites this verimund , among the authors out of whom he compiled his history ; and with him he cites ioannes campbellus , who ( he says ) wrote the history of the scots from the origine of the nation till the year 1260 , in which he liv'd : and also turgot , who ( he says ) wrote our annals from the beginning till the year 1098 , in which he liv'd , ( and him likewise hollinshed cites ) ; as also aluredus rivallensis , who wrote the history of king david , and died anno 1166 ; and bartholomeus anglicus , who wrote a chronicle of the scots , and liv'd in the year 1360. two of which three last , we have reason to think were scots-men , and have been called english-men , only because they liv'd in the counties which now belong to england , but then certainly belong'd to us ; and if they be englishmen , they are yet the more credible witnesses for us . and as the worthy baker says , he compil'd his history out of these books , which he neither would nor could have said , if he had not seen them : so it is very probable that he did see them ; our records and manuscripts having been industriously carry'd to england by edward the first , as shall be hereafter observ'd : nor can it be answer'd , that he cited them at second-hand from boeth , or buchannan , for else he had cited the other authors whom they cite , such as richardus de sancto victore , fordon , major , &c. all this doth evidently demonstrate that we had such historians as verimund , and the others above-cited , who asserted before fordon what he has related : so that it was most unwarrantable to say , that these things were dream'd by fordon and boethius , but that verimund was seen and consider'd by others , and cited in a particular part of his book , which could not be copied from boethius , because he doth not cite verimund for all those transactions ; and upon this * balaeus , a learn'd english-man , hath rested . and † holinshed says , that verimund wrote a book , de regibus scotorum . nor can it be deny'd that gesner in verbo verimund , and other famous strangers , cite him as one who has written our history ab exordio scoticae gentis , usque ad malcolmi tempora . and it is incredible to think so good and grave a man as boetius could have been so impudent to assert in * his dedication to king iames the 5th , that these books were sent to him by the earl of argile , and his brother the thesaurer from icolmkill , and that , he had follow'd them in writing his history : especially since he is by erasmus that great critick , admir'd as a most learned man , they having studied together at paris , where he remembers that he was in great esteem . and in a letter concerning him , anno 1530 , inserted in the life of erasmuus , he remarks , that boethius was a person who could not lie . how can it then be imagined , that he would have adventur'd to have printed a whole romance , and have told his king and the world , that he had the manuscripts by him ? nor is this asserted only by boethius , and our own historians , but by paulus iovius , a very famous foreign historian , who in his description of scotland , says , * that in iona ( which we call icolmkill ) are kept the ancient annals and manuscripts in hidden presses of the church , and large parchments asigned by the king 's own hands , and seal'd either with seals of gold , or wax . by which also it appears how nice we have been in securing the faith of our history , the seals of our kings being put to what was written by our devout church-men . and whereas the bishop of st. asaph , to lessen the credit of boethius * , relates , that bishop gavin dowglas advised polidor virgil not to follow his history . polidor virgil himself is appeal'd to , where there is no mention of boethius at all , nor could it be ; for polidor regrates that gavin dowglas died anno 1520 , whereas boethius was not publish'd till 1526 , and † boethius himself informs us , that the records from which he form'd his history , were sent him from icolmkill anno 1525 , and no sooner ; neither did he see those warrants from which he wrote his history , till that year . and it appears by that passage , that gavin dowglas believ'd our account , and produc'd a manuscript for it , which i now cite , and use as an accessory argument , and prove it by the bishop of st. asaph , and polidor : and whereas the bishop of st. asaph pretends that the relation given by gavin dowglas agreed with nennius , but contradicted boethius ; the contrary is probable by polidor's own relation of what gavin dowglas writ to him , which agrees with boethius in every thing relating to our antiquity . the bishop of st. asaph is also most unjust to boethius , in alledging that vossius considers him as a fabulous author : for vossius commends him from what erasmus and buchannan say of him , and in the end taxes him only a little for having believ'd too many miracles , a fault incident to most popish writers in those times , but to none more than to the bishop's own obscure authors , for which , among many other testimonies , i refer my reader to them who writ the preface to the histories of matthew of westminster , and to the life of king alfred , and walsingham's history . it can also be proved by many famous gentlemen , that the black book of scoon , containing our histories from the beginning , was among president spotwood's books , and was given by lewis cant to major general lambert , and by him to collonel fairfax ; which book king charles the first had ransom'd from rome by a considerable sum of money . and it is certain that spotswood had it , and the black book of pasley , signed by the hands of three abbots , when he compil'd his history : which book of pasley , together with the famous book of pluscardin , buchannan says he had , and frequently cites : and that there were such books is known to the whole nation . and i my self have seen in the learned sir robert sibbald's library ( to whom this nation owes very much ) a very old abridgment of the book of pasley ( which book bp vsher himself also cites ) agreeing in every thing with our histories , and which was extracted per venerabilem virum ioannem gibson canonicum glasguensem , & rectorem de renfrew , anno 1501. and two other old manuscripts , the one called , excerpta de chronicis scotiae , & scoti-chronico , which comes to the reign of king iames the 2d . and belong'd to doctor arbuthnot physician to king iames the 5th ; and this proves that there were chronica different from fordon's . and the other , extracta de registro prioratus sancti-andreae , giving the irish names of our kings . as also i have seen a manuscript written by a brother of the minores observants of iedburgh , in anno 1533 , containing an abridgment of our history , and whereof doctor sibbald has another copy . and there is another old manuscript written by ventonius yet extant , which buchannan also cites , and follows . since the writing of these sheets , i have seen a very old manuscript brought from icolmkill , written by carbre lifachair , who liv'd six centuries before st. patrick , and so about our saviours time ; wherein is given a full account of the irish kings : by which i conclude , that since the irish had manuscripts then , certainly we must also be allowed to have had them , having greater occasion of learning sciences , and writing histories ; because of our commerce with the romans , and polite britans . in this book also there are many additions by the druids of those times : from which i likewise may confirm that the priests in our old monasteries learn'd our ancient history from the druids who preceded them . i have seen also an old genealogy of the kings of the albanian scots , agreeing with that mentioned in our history at the coronation of king alexander the 2d , and which has still been preserv'd as sacred there . i have also seen another old manuscript , wherein the dalreudini albanach are considered as setled here six generations before eric , whom vsher calls the father of our kings . i find also in it , that angus tuerteampher reign'd in ireland five generations before our fergus the first ; and that in his time the irish and albanians divided , and separated from one another . which agrees with our histories , which say , that the scots were in this country long before king fergus and his race setled here . and these our irish manuscripts agree in every thing with the above-cited history of corbre ' , and are in effect additions to his book by our old sanachies . having thus cleared , that there were sufficient warrants upon which our authors might have founded their histories ; i shall in the next place say something of our historians , and make appear that they deserv'd the credit and applause they met with , and that they founded their history on those good warrants , from which verimund , boetius , and chambers are formerly prov'd to have drawn theirs , viz. our ancient annals and registers . fordon was no monk , as the * bishop is pleas'd to call him , and we had no such monastery as fordon : but he was venerabilis vir dominus iohannes fordon presbyter , and is called a monk by the bishop ( who studies still his own conveniency ) to make the world believe he was inclin'd to lie , as the monks are said to have been in that age ; and to shew him interested for the independency of monks and culdees from bishops . this author began at least to write before the year 1341 ; for , in his book he speaks of that as a present year . this book was so esteem'd , that there were copies of it in most of our monasteries , and one of them we have in very old , but in fair characters , continued by arelat ; another continued by a reverend man , walter bowmaker , abbot of icolmkill , and found in the custody of one , who had preserv'd several of the manuscripts of that monastery : and both these continuations have drawn out our histories to the reign of king iames the 2d . and it is not to be imagin'd that the monasteries would have esteem'd it so much ; or that the abbot of that monastery , where our chief annals were kept , would have continued it , if they and he had not known it to agree with their annals . and fordon cites frequently through his book chronica , & alia chronica , and beda , and follows him exactly : he cites also adamnanus , who liv'd before the year 700 ; and turgot archbishop of st. andrews , who lived anno 1098 , and alvared , ( who dedicated his book to king malcom the 3d , about the year 1057. ) he cites also other foreign authors , such as sigisbert , and isidor , and so has done all that the bishop requires , and all that the best historians can do : neither does he follow ieffrey , but contradicts him , even in the instance of bassianus , as shall be cleared to conviction , in answering the bishop's objections . he has in him also baldredus or ethelredus , and the process before the pope , containing the copies of the authentick letters , objections , apologies , and answers made and sign'd by edward 1. and his parliament , and the scotish nobility , produc'd before the pope , about the year 1300 , whereof the copies are not only extant from fordon , but the bishop also insinuates that the originals themselves are extant in england , and certainly they were at rome . and fordon cites many other considerable old records : he writes in a good stile , and with good judgment : and the reason why this work was not printed , was not because it deserv'd not the press , but because boethius , buchannan , and lesly having printed their histories in their own time , and there being no printing in his , it was thought we had histories enow ; which also occasion'd the perishing of many of our excellent manuscripts . but why should the bishop object to us fordon his not being printed , since he cites against us manuscripts never cited by any , and which have been left unprinted in a country where every thing is printed : and i dare say , after exact perusal of the bishops book , and of the authors cited by him , that fordon is preferable to all those old legends , and most of those authors which he cites against us , venerable beda only excepted , who is still on our side . ioannes major was rector of the famous divinity-school of paris , and was a man of such reputation in that university , as that he is yet remembred with esteem , and a man of too innocent a life , to have written a romance for a history ; and he likewise relates to beda , and our annals . of iohn major a full account and elogium is given by the learn'd launoy academiae parisionsis illustrata , tom. 2. pag. 652 , 653. & sequent . one of the most accurate writers in this age * says , that the talent of writing history hath not been found on this side of the alps in any , save in buchannan , who hath written the history of scotland , better than livius did that of rome . the bishop of condom also , and the famous rapin , in their exact essays concerning history , have preferr'd none to him , save mariana the jesuit , whom all men know to be far inferior ; but they prefer mariana , because buchannan was a protestant . ioseph scaliger says of buchannan and us , imperii fuerat romani scotia limes , romani eloquii , scotia finis erit . and * mr. dryden also my friend , whom i esteem a great critick , as well as poet , prefers buchannan to all the historians that ever wrote in britain . and tho i approve as little of buchannan's politicks as the bishop of st. asaph doth , yet i will not be so unjust to him as he is , * in saying , that buchannan in the life of fergus the first , refers to our old annals , but he cites them not ; for there is no such thing in the life of that king : and he was not so much a favourer of monarchy , to have allow'd it the advantage of so singular an antiquity , if he had not found the same due to it , from our manuscripts and records , beyond all contradiction . bishop lesly , and arch-bishop spotswood are men who have written our history with great judgment and truth , and it cannot be imagin'd that they who were indeed banish'd for loyalty , and suffer'd the loss of all for their perswasion , would have asserted a whole bundle of lies , or a continued romance , as the author calls our history , especially since they had both seen luddus , and knew that their history would be enquired into . and * lesly has the confidence to tell in his preface to the nobility , that his history had been drawn with all the exactness that the truth of history requires from the ancient records of the kingdom , and the monasteries , and he was then at rome , whither they were carried . it is also very pleasant to hear the bishop of st. asaph inveigh against dempster the jesuit , one of our antiquaries , whose book certainly he had never seen , else he would never have call'd him a jesuit as he * does . for the very title of his book bears that he was baro de muiresk , and a lawyer , and he was indeed professor honorarius of the civil law at bolognia in italy , and died married , as the history of his life , writ by peteraces , bears : and we may know by the elogies of the greatest wits in italy , how much they esteem'd him for his extraordinary learning , and parts . i may add to these , david camerarius de fortitudine , &c. scotorum , besides richardus de sancto victore , and cornelius hibernicus , both which wrote our ancient histories , the last of them liv'd in the year 1140. and they are both follow'd by boethius , and cited by vossius , baleus , sixtus senensis , and others ; and also adamnanus that wrote st. columba's life . from all which it appears , that our historians have been men of great credit and esteem , and have founded their history upon more authentick documents , than almost any other historians in the world , viz. the records of many monasteries in the time when monasteries were very devout , and upon the universal tradition of the times , both ancient and modern ; and that before there was any competition or controversie concerning our antiquity ; and that what they have said , has been universally believ'd by all the learned world. to which i shall add that our clerk of registers , skeen , the great antiquary , had added from those ancient records a chronology of our kings , and which he has inserted amongst our acts of parliament . is not then the bishop of st. asaph much to blame , when he would have all this pass for a romance , and all those authors to be reputed only as one ? because , as he says , they followed one another from fordon , and he follow'd ieffrey ; neither of which is so . tho i confess the contrivance of this untruth was prety , but happily disappointed , by their asserting that they founded their histories upon the old records of our monasteries , and on turgot , verimund , and others ; all which they had seen , and who are elder than fordon . and it might be as well objected against witnesses , that they came in and depos'd one after another , giving for the reason of their knowledg , that they had seen what they depos'd . if all these manuscripts , which i have cited were extant , i doubt not but the author himself would acknowledg our histories to be instructed beyond debate ; and therefore if i can instruct them to have once been , they must be reputed as good as extant still . for both law , and common reason having consider'd that papers are very subject to be lost , and to perish ; have therefore allow'd , that if it can be prov'd , that there were such papers , and that they were lost by accident , that this probation shall supply the loss . and i desire to know if the warrants of dr. burnet's history of the reformation had been burnt , would not the bishop of st. asaph have been angry , if his testimony and dr. stillingfleet's had not been sufficient to prove the tenor of them ? and what have we for many authors , whom livy , iosephus , and herodot cite besides their own testimony ? and what probation did ever mankind see stronger , than that which we adduce in this case ? for first , that all our monasteries did write our annals , is beside common fame , and universal and late tradition , which passes over all our country , prov'd by the other authorities above cited : if then two ordinary witnesses be sufficient to prove a matter of fact , we must much more allow , that this matter may be prov'd by very many persons , considerable for their devotion and quality . 2. there are other manuscripts yet extant , some whereof i my self have seen , and have formerly nam'd , all agreeing with the tenour of our history , and long prior to luddus's starting of this debate , in anno 1572. and so must prove sufficient to support our histories , and those witnesses ; especially seeing they have nothing in them contrary to reason , or other credible histories ; but on the contrary , are supported by both , and written by authors of great integrity and knowledg , and have been receiv'd with great applause in the world , and are also confirm'd by the english historians themselves . and therefore i must conclude with the learned vossius , * that albeit the old monuments of rome perisht , that therefore the faith of their history should not perish with them . lest it might be thought that we our selves caus'd to destroy those records we now cite , to prevent further inquiry , and to shew how much harder it is for us than other nations , to be call'd to such an account : i shall desire strangers to be inform'd as a casus omissionis , that our ancient records were destroyed in three remarkable occasions ; 1. when edward the first took away all our records that he could find , having , as all historians declare , resolv'd to abolish all memory of our nation : and of which we accus'd him before the pope , and he did not deny it . 2. when our monks flying to rome at the reformation , carry'd with them their records . 3. by cromwel , who carry'd our records into england , and many of which were lost at sea in their return . but if our historians are to be rejected , i hope it must be by the authority of far more , and far more credible authors , agreeable to a principle of dr. stillingfleet's , the patron of our bishop's book , who * says , certainly they who undertake to contradict that which is received by common consent , must bring stronger and clearer evidence , than that on which that consent is grounded , or else their exceptions ought to be rejected with the highest indignation . which principle , as it seems to be recommended by reason , so it is founded upon the express law of all nations ; by which it is acknowledg'd , that the testimonies of witnesses are not to be reprobated but by others in a double number , and who are of far greater authority . and from this principle it is , that if a jury of fifteen hath absolv'd a man unjustly , though that jury consisted of the meanest men of the nation , yet their verdict cannot be question'd for error , otherways than by twenty five , whereof most part must be persons of quality , who must proceed upon most infallible grounds and evidences . by this rule then , our historians cannot be redargu'd , otherways than by the testimonies of far more unsuspected historians , who agree in what they assert against us , and who are receiv'd with greater applause in the world than ours , and proceed upon far stronger evidences . let us then examine if these qualifications can be found in those historians , by whom the faith of ours is to be overturned . and first , as to the old british historians , it might be objected by us , that they are too much interested , both because the subject matter is an emulation for antiquity between the two nations , and because they were over-run by our country-men at that time to a degree to make them passionate enough for disabling a witness : and as it is very remarkable that florentius wigorniensis , malmesburiensis , huntingdonensis , and hoveden wrote about the reign of henry the second ; and tho. walsingham , and matthew of westminster , in the reigns of edward the third , and henry the sixth ; at all which times there were wars and animosities betwixt the nations . so if any man will read the sad lamentations that are in gilda's , and the rage with which he cries out against us , no man can allow him to be an unsuspected judg or witness in what concerns our honour . polidor virgil suspects , * that there are some things supposititious in the history of gildas ; and if any thing , certainly we may suspect most what is added concerning us ; since the design of detracting from our history , possest too much those who were masters of that manuscript , and printed the same . and yet gildas says very little that can be wrested against us in the points controverted ; being , as beda interprets him , clearly for us , as shall hereafter appear . 2. as our writers are not inferiour in number , so most of theirs deserve no credit , and they agree not so well against us in the points controverted , as our authors do in what they assert , viz. when we setled here , and who were our first kings : for * nennius britannus does positively say , that the scots came here in the time of brutus . matthew of westminster says , that we setled here the eleventh year after christ. and baker * acknowledgeth that severus built his wall against the scots and picts , without mentioning this to be the first incursion ; and this at least confutes the bishop of st. asaph , who asserts that we were not come to this isle even by way of incursion , till after the year 300. as they thus differ remarkably as to our origination , and most of them follow ieffreys ridiculous inventions , as our author himself acknowledges : so * holinshed , speaking of those ancient times , says , that scotland had in those days two kingdoms , the one whereof consisted of the picts , called pictland ; and the other of the irish race , call'd scotland : which i hope ( says he ) no wise man will readily deny . and caixton in his old chronicle of england , tells , that the king of the scots assisted cassibelan king of the britains against julius caesar : which shews that our antiquity was believed . and balaeus , a most famous english chronologist , says , that * the scots wrote , &c. ex incorrupta annalium fide. 3. that our settlement was so ancient , as not only to have been contemporary with their historians , but even to be higher than their chronology could reach to , appears from this , that gildas declares † he knew nothing of us , but what he was forc'd to borrow from beyond sea. * beda places us amongst the old inhabitants of this isle , without condescending upon the particular time , which he had given us , if he had known it himself , as he did in all other occasions . nennius their next author to beda owns , that the most skillful amongst the scots , affirm'd in his time , that we were descended from scota , as our authors now do . * and the eldest after him affirm , that we are descended from albanactus , second sond to brutus . and this is so far acknowledg'd by succeeding ages , that edward the first did upon that account claim the superiority to england over us , as younger brother to locrinus the eldest son of brutus . and we may see in hollinshed , * where he brings in many scotish kings doing homage to the kings of britain , long before this year 502 , and in which several of their authors agree with him . and the bishop fore-seeing the unanswerable strength of this argument , acknowledges this superiority to be a most unjust pretension , as indeed it is ; especially seeing it is undeniable , that there was any such thing known in the world then , as that feudol homage which the english historians contend for ; there being no vestige thereof in any part of europe , till the 800 year of god , and we having had no such kings as some of those whom they name in that ancient homage . but yet even all these forgeries prove clearly , that we were consider'd by those writers , as inhabitants here past all memory , and as ancient as themselves . * giraldus cambrensis also considers us as descended from gathelus and scota , which proves not only that this old tradition was believ'd , but that fordon was not the inventer of it . for girald liv'd about 200 years before fordon . but how any historian in this also can controvert this antiquity after selden has asserted it , lib. 2. cap. 8. i understand not . there is likewise a very full and well written manuscript in the hands of the lord maitland , which makes us to come from spain , about the year of the world 3242 , and to have been first govern'd by captains , and thereafter govern'd by the kings mention'd in our history . 4. there are no positive authorities produc'd against us , condescending expresly when our royal line did begin , save three legendary stories written with design , in whom no protestant bishop can find any considerable passages worthy to be cited ; the easiest thing in them being , * that a child made a fire of ice ; † and that when st. columba was sick , his mare wept . the first is a nameless author of st. patrick's life , cited by * vsher , who affirms , that when neil neilialagh was king of ireland , and constantius was emperor , muredus king of ulster had six sons , who possest themselves of the northern parts of britain , and the nation sprung from them ( as giraldus repeating this passage , says ) was by a special name called scotland . and it may be , saith the bishop , reuda mention'd by beda , was one of these six sons . joceline , another author of st. patrick's life , * tells , that the twelve sons of the king of dalrieda in ireland , having despised their youngest brother fergus , he complain'd of them to st. patrick , and he prophesied to him , that from him should descend kings , who should reign in many foreign kingdoms ; and accordingly fergus became king of all dalrieda , and after his successors had for many generations reigned there , aidanus the son of gabranus conquer'd albania , now call'd scotland , and the other isles , in which his posterity by due succession reign to this day . but an elder author cited by cambden ( and whom * usher calls the writer of the tigernack annals ) brings the scotish kings from another origine , to which usher himself is inclin'd . fergus ( says that author ) the son of eric , was the first of the offspring of chonar , who obtain'd the kingdom of albania from brown-albain , to the irish sea and inchgall , whom he places anno 503 , and from him the kings of fergus ' s race reign'd in brun-albain , or brun-heir to alphin the son of eochal , and with this ( as the bishop says ) the irish genealogies agree . and thus our approv'd history must be overturn'd by legends , and genealogies . upon which passages i beg leave to make these few reflections . first , that ( besides , that these authors liv'd not within 600 years of the times of which they wrote ( which the bishop of st. asaph objects to ours ) they do also contradict not only our story , but the roman , who place us here much sooner ) . all these three authors contradict one another in the most remarkable part of our history , and in so late a matter of fact , as that of fergus the second , which shews them neither faithful nor learn'd chronologists . the first nameless author , writer of the life of s. patrick , makes our king to have been one of the sons of mured , whom vsher conjectures to have been reuther , and he must have liv'd in 360 ; for constantius reign'd then , and mured's son liv'd in his reign . iocelin makes aidan to be the first , and to have sprung from fergus after many generations : and this agrees well with ours , but not with the other writers of st. patrick's life . for we place the beginning of aidan's reign in 570 , and it could be no sooner , according to iocelin . the third is the author of the tigernack annals , or an ancienter writer cited by cambden , who places our first king in 503 , and there he is call'd fergus ; and so they neither agree in the name of our first king , nor in the time of their entry to this kingdom . which dreaming glances have risen from an imperfect notion of our history , the first having borrowed his from beda , who brings us here sub duce reuda : the second has been invented to fulfil the prophecy of st. patrick , who promis'd the kingdom not to fergus himself , but to one of his succession , and therefore finding none of our kings nam'd in beda , save reuther and aidan ; he fixes on aidan as the latest . and the third of these , finding that fergus was uncontrovertedly the name of our first king , will rather contradict the rest , and go back from aidan to fergus . and thus they clensh here , making the the first fergus the second , as they do elsewhere , in making scotia to be ireland , or scotia major . 2. since the bishop's authors are so irreconcileable , what warrants can he or they have to contradict our positive history ? * and bishop vsher cites another author of st. patrick's life , meyerus , who tells us that after st. patrick ' s voyage about this isle , he turn'd his boat to an isle which bears to this day the name of st. patrick ; out of which isle i believe the accusers of our historians got their best intelligence . 3. that this reuda could not be one of mureda's six sons , is most clear , both because beda speaks of the scots coming to this isle , as very ancient , even in his time , which could not be if this had happen'd in anno 360 ; for beda liv'd in anno 730 , and how can it be imagin'd that beda could not have known the whole series of a royal descent that was so recent . nor do our historians , whose faith is not controverted , after fergus the second , mention any reuda after his reign : and so he behov'd to be an elder king , and consequently we had king 's before fergus the second , which the authors denies . nor could any of these sons of mured have been fergus the second , whom these late inventors call our first king ; for no author makes fergus the second to have reign'd within more than 40 years after constantius . luddus and cambden assert us to have setl'd here , under fergus the second , in the reign of honorius , at which time fergus the second did reign . vsher relates only the three authorities of those ridiculous legends ; and the bishop of st. asaph fixes on the year 503 , and so contradicts not only our historians , but * luddus and † cambden in making fergus the second near 100 years later , than truly he was . as these few prime and late authors who controvert our antiquity , differ thus in the names of our first kings , and the time of their settlement in scotland ; so they differ in these following cardinal points of their new invented hypothesis . the bishop of * st. asaph thinks it necessary for maintaining that the scots setl'd not till the year 503 , to assert that the picts fill'd all the northern parts of britain , and that those picts were a ruder sort of britains , divided in south and north picts ; in which he follows * cambden , yet with this difference , implying a contradiction , that cambden makes these deucaledones and vecturiones , to signify by a british derivation , picts , to the east and west : whereas the bishop of st. asaph , from a british derivation of the same words , calls them southern and northern picts . but cambden does acknowledge plainly that in this derivation , he differs from the venerable beda , whose authority he truly foretels will weigh down the reasons he brings for his conjecture . and as he , contrary to the universally receiv'd opinion , denies the picts to be schythians , tho they were really so , he makes the scots to be schythians , though really they were not so . * vsher not having considered all the scheme and consequences of this new hypothesis ( as the bishop of st. asaph has done with more cunning ) follows beda in bringing the picts from schythia , but he differs from beda in that he brings them hither after our saviour's birth , and produces such authors as he uses in our occasions , who assign three different periods of time for their settlement ; the last whereof , and to which he inclines , is said to be under the emperours gratian and valentinian ; and so makes the scots and picts to have come in together about the year 400 , and yet he finds no inconveniency in bringing us to scotland under gathelus and scota , and in asserting that we setled first in galloway , whereas none of our historians do say that gathelus and scota came to scotland , and the bishop of st. asaph and cambden assert our descent from scota to be a fiction ; and the bishop of st. asaph * confesses us to have first fixt in argile . another material difference amongst them is , that the bishop of st. asaph † confines us and the picts , for 1000 years be-north grahams dike , call'd severus wall , beyond clyde and forth . whereas cambden ‖ asserts that edinburgh was the chief seat of the kings of the picts , and derives the names of louthian , edingburgh , and pictland , from pictish words . from all which it clearly appears , that no weight is to be laid on such irreconcileable authors ; and yet by these only , is the antiquity of of our kings and nation controverted . but to confirm fully our history from iulius caesar's time , and to shew that the british historians do not only contradict one another , but do contradict the two only ancient historians , who could understand any thing of our origine , as being the eldest and most deserving of all their own authors , viz. gildas and beda ; i do appeal to them . and i begin with beda , because he is most full , and interprets the other . the venerable beda , tho a saxon himself , and so an enemy to us , having written an exact chronology , according to the periods of time ; does in his first cap. de * priscis incolis , tell us , that god was praised in five languages in this isle , that of the english , britains , scots , picts , and latines : and then proceeds to tell , that the britains were the first possessors , and possest the south parts , after which came the picts to the northern parts , and the scots under reuda , thereafter made a third nation , in that part belonging to the picts , getting the western part of scotland , north from the picts , called dumbriton , or alcluith . and he inculcates their fixing here , by three several , but concuring expressions . 1. progressi ex hibernia , they left ireland . 2. sedes vindicarunt in britannia , they setled in britain . 3. in britannia britonibus & pict is gentem tertiam addiderunt , they added a third nation to the britains and picts . and that this was very ancient is clear ; for he fixes them in britain in that chapter wherein he treats de priscis incolis ; and having thus setled the scots and picts in his first chapter with the britains ; he proceeds in the second chapter to settle the fourth nation , viz. the latines or romans , beginning with these words , * but this britain was unknown , and not entred upon by the romans , till julius caesar ' s time . and having describ'd the wars betwixt these three nations and the roman emperours , in a due gradation , marking every period of time through the reign of their consecutive emperors ; and how at last the romans had abandon'd the island , and aetius the roman consul , had refus'd the petition of the miserable britains , so often defeated by the scots and picts : he in the 14 cap. relates how the britains upon deep consultation , brought in the saxons , and from thence continues the saxon history . this being the tract of beda's history ; is there any place to doubt but that the scots were setled before the saxons ? for the wars betwixt the romans and scots are related exactly before any mention is made of the saxons ; and at last they are only brought in to assist the britains against the scots and picts , because the britains were deserted by the romans , and consequently the saxons having been brought in anno 449 , it unanswerably follows , that the scots were setl'd here , and made a third nation , long before the 503 , as the bishop of st. asaph alledges , at which time he makes us to have setl'd here very cunningly , but not sincerely , upon design to make us later than the english. as also it appears very clearly that the scots setl'd here even before iulius caesar's time , for after beda ( who proceeds exactly according to the periods of time ) had setl'd us in britain , he tells , * that this britain was unknown to the romans , and describ'd what these romans did in the isle , and how they fought with the picts and vs under their subsequent emperors , without ever speaking again of the entry of the scots , as having setl'd them in the first chapter , before caesar's time . nor is the time alter'd in any other period ; and he is so careful of the period of time , that he subjoyns to his work a chronological recapitulation , which is very exact . and he being a saxon , had certainly told ( as the bishop now does ) that the saxons were elder than we , if this had been true ; which is a demonstration according to the rules of chronology , against the bishop of st. asaph . it may be some may wonder why beda mentions not our coming under fergus the first ; and some may object , that in this we go higher than beda . to which it is answered , that our history confesses , that the scots came over from ireland at several times : once under fergus the first , but not being numerous enough , reutherus brought over another recruit , and thereafter fergus the second brought over others after his predecessor eugenius was expell'd by the romans and britains . and in so old antiquity , it 's much for beda , even to know the descent under reuda . and whereas the bishop quarrels beda , that he gives no authority for this : the reply is , that if it were requisite , then one author behov'd to give another , and he a third , & sic in infinitum . nor did ever any man before him require an authority in so ancient an author : and this answer is a full proof of the bishop's conviction , who being absolutely gravel'd here , he grows as angry at beda , as at our historians , and tells , disdainfully , that this might be true for ought beda knew , and adds , that the scots were indeed here in beda's time , and he speaks according to his own time , which were to make beda speak great non-sense . for beda speaks here of the preterit , and not the present time , viz. the first vastations spoke of by gildas , and we shall see that others , who lived in the time agree with him . the second citation i shall bring from beda , shall be from the 5th cap. l. 1. eccl. hist. where he says , that * severus built a wall to defend against the other unconquer'd nations , and in the 12 cap. he tells that † britain was vex'd by the scots and picts , two over-sea , or transmarine nations ; and thereafter , as if he had been afraid that this word transmarine , might have been mistaken , he adds , ‖ that they were not call'd transmarine , because they liv'd , and were setled out of britain ; but because they were separated from that part of britain by the two seas , which did almost meet . and in this he agrees exactly with tacitus , who in the life of agricola , says , that there being a wall built betwixt these two seas , the roman enemies were closed up as in an isle . by this place of beda it is also very clear , that the scots were setled in britain whilst the romans fought against the picts and scots , and consequently before they were call'd by the picts to defend them against the saxons , as is alledged by the bishop . if the scots had not been living in this isle at that time , the explication of transmarine had been both ridiculous and untrue . and as it is not presumable that the venerable beda would have asserted this , if he had not certainly known it ; so it was very easy for him to know it , that being so publick a thing , which concern'd his own , as well as his neighbour nation . but if the scots had setled in anno 503 , beda could not have call'd them * prisci incolae , and reckon'd them amongst the ancient inhabitants . for a man living in his time , might have told him , that his father saw the scots call'd over by the picts , and that they settled here in his time . beda being thus clear to a demonstration , as far as chronology and history can allow : i desire to know how what gildas says , can contradict our history , since he copies gildas , and liv'd within 200 years of him ? and since both wrote the same actions in almost the same words ? or how can it be imagin'd , that if gildas had known our origin to be so late , he would not have told it to our disadvantage ? whereas on the contrary , he speaks of scots and picts as living in this isle , after the same manner as transmarine , in the same sense , in which beda interprets it ; which is , because they liv'd not without the isle , but on the other side of the wall , which made an isle . from which it follows necessarily that in gildas's time , the scots dwelt not without the isle of britain ; and gildas having been born in anno 493 , as is said in the calculation prefix'd to that * edition , which himself relates , it is clear that he was born 10 years before that year , in which the bishop of st. asaph pretends we first settled here ; and so certainly he could not but have taken notice of the settlement of a nation , in which he was so much concern'd . and albeit he says once , speaking of us , that hiberni revertuntur domum . yet that was spoke of us as settl'd here , and as being irish by extraction , as shall be hereafter clear'd . nor must our histories which are so positive and unanimous , be overturn'd by clenshes and equivocations , and remote weak consequences , without authors living at the time , and mentioning expressly so remarkable an accident . before i enter upon foreign citations without the isle , i must observe , that we having kept the romans ( the only writing nation that had any knowledg of these our isles ) from entering our kingdom ; they could not know our antiquities , as they did those of england or france , whom they had conquer'd . but our being engag'd in a constant war with them , is so universally related by all their historians ; that to deny our being a nation , and in britain , when they so frequently and unanimously writ of us , as gens , & gens etiam britannica , fighting here , cannot but seem railery to any serious man : and the being able to controvert it , is rather a mark of nimbleness of wit , than skill in antiquity . but however i shall produce some few foreign authors , whose testimonies seem to me unanswerable , being joyn'd with , and illustrated by what i formerly said from the venerable beda , and the historians within this isle . my first author is eumenius in his panegyrick to constantine in praise of his father constantius : who preferring the victory constantius had over the britains , to that which iulius caesar had over them ; says , * that the britains at the time caesar conquer'd them , were a rude nation , being only us'd to fight against the picts , and irish of the british country , enemies half naked , and so easily yeilded to the roman arms and ensigns . by which citation , we contend that it is prov'd , that in the time of iulius caesar , there was another nation beside the picts , who then inhabited britain , and were a colony of the irish ; and these must certainly have been the scots . for it cannot be pretended , that ever there was another colony of the irish in britain , besides us . and it is uncontroverted on all hands , that we are that colony of the irish , who only us'd to fight with the picts , against the britains , and therefore that answer made by the bishop , that this place relates only to the irish , and not to the scots , is of no moment . but he has another answer , which his lordship insists more upon ; and for clearing whereof , i must cite the latin ; ad hoc natio etiam tunc rudis , & soli britanni pictis modo , & hibernis assueta hostibus , adhuc seminudis , facile romanis armis signisque cesserunt . his answer is , that the words , soli britanni , are the nominative , and not the genitive , and his lordship confesses , * that if the words be in the genitive , they are clear of buchannan's side . and that they are of the genitive , all disinterested men , who understand the latin , will confess . and cambden himself , tho a learned schoolmaster , and in other citations about our antiquity , somewhat more humourous , than so worthy a man needed to be , trusts to no other answer , but that the panegyrist spoke here , according to the conception of the age wherein he liv'd . but , as any citation may be thus answered ; so if he had not spoken with relation to the time of iulius caesar , the comparison and complement had no great force . the learned vsher likewise objects not this to buchannan , which shews also his acquiescence . 2. if this , natio rudis , had been the same thing with soli britanni ; and if the sence must be , as his lordship says , a rude nation , the britains ; then not only it had been superfluous , but inconsistent with true sence . for how can the same thing be copulated with it-self ? and tho it may be said , natio rudis soli britanni , assueta hostibus ; yet certainly assueti had been more elegant for an orator , if soli britanni had been the nominative . and the great * ioseph scaliger , one of the best judges both for that kind of learning and disinteressedness , exclaims against luddus , for misconstructing so the words ; and therefore the bishop might have spared the saying , * that cambden ought to have given buchannan correction ; for the great ioseph scaliger , and buchannan , that incomparable humanist , are fitter to give , than receive correction from any in the isle , or age. i must also observe , that the bishop has pointed these words otherways than they are in the author : for in the author ( of paulus stephanus , and plantins editions , who were the most learned and exact of all printers ) there is no comma immediately after tthe words , soli britanni , and it is pointed as i have set it down here , and even * luddus is just here . but the bishop has very wittily added the comma after these words . now without the comma , it is clear , that the panegyrist meant pictis & hibernis soli britanni ; and if the panegyrist had design'd his words should have been construed , as the bishop has constru'd them ; so great an orator would certainly have said , soli britanni natio ad hoc etiam tunc rudis , &c. and in this case the words had been clear , and the ingenious bishop needed not , in translating them , to have been forc'd to use the word * nation twice , because the sense was hard and unnatural , according to his construction . and whereas the bishop pretends , * that the words construed according to buchannan , would not have run so strong in the comparison : for the strength of the comparison lies , saith he , in that julius caesar ' s victory was not so great , as that of constantius , because caesar overcame a nation , yet rude and unskilful of war , and only britains , a nation us'd to no other enemies but picts and irish : whereas constantius overcame carausius , who had got a roman legion on his side , &c. but by his lordship's favour , the comparison runs strong enough thus , according to buchannan's construction . caesar overcame the britains when they were yet a rude nation , us'd only to fight against the picts and irish who liv'd upon the land , or isle of britain : but constantius overcame them after they had been long train'd up in war. and certainly a nation is a far more formidable enemy after their being long train'd up in war , than when yet rude , and unexperienc'd ; tho they had had the accession of a roman legion ; which could signify nothing against a whole roman army . nor does it follow , that the words must be ill construed ; if so , the comparison would be stronger : for it is sufficient to sustain the construction , that in the comparison constantius was to be preferr'd in the way i have mention'd . 4. if there were any doubtfulness in these words , as there is none ; yet they ought to be interpreted so , as to consist with other authors and histories , and especially with beda : for in our sence , they confirm his chronological account , of our being in this isle before iulius caesar's time : and the bishop must still remember , that he cannot overturn our receiv'd histories , except he produce arguments which infallibly conclude against them : it being a rule in law , that , verba semper sunt interpretanda potius , ut scriptura , vel actus subsistat ; quam ut destruatur . this shews also that in constantius's time , which was about the year 300 , the britains were assueti , us'd to fight with the scots and picts : and this use must imply a long time . and so it 's very probable , that we had frequent wars with the britains long before this time , and consequently the bishop errs , * asserting , we were not in britain even by way of incursion , till the year 300. if it be objected , that in the phrase soli britanni , britanni is a substantive ; britannici being still the adjective ; and therefore these words must be construed to be the nominative case , as the bp of st. asaph alledgeth . i prove the contrary by lucretius . nam quid britannum coelum differre putamus , &c. claudianus de quarto consulatu honorii terribilis mauro , debellatorque britanni littoris . a further confirmation of this arises from the same eumenius , in this same panegyrick ; where speaking of constantius's victory over this island , he saith , neque enim ille , tot tantisque rebus gestis , non dico caledonum aliorumque pictorum silvas & paludes , sed nec hiberniam proximam , nec thulen ultimam , nec ipsae si quae sunt , fortunatarum insulas , dignabitur acquirere . and tho vsher foreseeing the force of this argument , endeavours to elude it by contending , that by the caledonii , are here meant the picts , because the words aliorumque pictorum , had else been impertinent . yet to make the scots not to be caledonians in ancient authors , were too great a task even for vsher ; that being contrary to the universally receiv'd opinion of all the learned , * some of which i have cited in the margin : but for a further proof , i shall here cite a roman that liv'd very near eumenius's time , and who almost speaks in the same words with him , latinus pacatius drepanius , who in his panegyrick to theodosius the elder , who liv'd anno 367 , complements him upon * having reduc'd the scots to their marishes , shewing that the sylvae , and paludes caledonum , were the scotorum sylvae : though strangers in those ancient times , could little distinguish picts from scots . and from which i further evince , that the scots before the year 400 , dwelt in in scotland , as their own country ; else it had been impertinent and untrue to say , that the scots were reduced to their own marishes . having thus shown that the scots were caledonians : it clearly follows , that all the ancient authors who write of the caledonii , prove the antiquity of the scots ; and therefore valerius flaccus proves our antiquity , who writing to domitian , in praise of his father vespasian , who was known to have made war with us about the year 70 after christ , says , — caledonius , postquam tua carbasa vexit . oceanus phrygios prius indignatus iulos . and * martial , who liv'd also in domitian's time , says , quinte caledonios , ovide visure britannos , et viridem tethyn oceanumque patrem . next to these i cite tacitus , who in the life of agricola , brings in that famous galgacus , who fought with the romans , near to the grampian hills . and that he was a scotish king , or leader , is confirm'd from * lipsius , who calls him galgacus scotus . this is also confirm'd by the exact and noble french manuscript foresaid ; which says , that dardan was chosen , because galdus was not of age : alluding to our old law , appointing that the immediate heir of the crown , being by his infancy unable to govern , the government should in that case be devolved upon the next , who was able to govern : which law was so ancient , that it is said to be enacted immediately upon the death of fergus the first . and by bergier , afterwards the king's advocate of france , who in his learn'd history of the high-ways of rome , * calls him prince of the caledonians , or the scots . and to what better judges can we appeal , in a matter concerning roman antiquities , and the sense of a roman author , than to those two , who are the most famous of all the roman antiquaries : the one having written a book concerning the roman greatness , * and the other concerning the magnificence of the romans in their high-ways . nor could he be an irish king ; for what had an irish king to do with an army in the midst of scotland , and against the romans , with whom no irish king ever fought . and that he was no britain , is clear from the speech he made to his souldiers , telling them that they had never been conquer'd , servitutis expertes , & nullae ultra terrae . nor can any thing agree better with our being still call'd one of the two unconquer'd nations , by gildas , beda , and others . this is yet further clear'd by another passage in this same life of agricola ; wherein * tacitus says , the third year of the war discovered new nations , which agricola conquer'd , even to the river tay. and after this he adds , agricola having beat galgacus near to the grampian hills , brought back the roman army to the borders of the horesti ; and having received hostages from them , he ordered the commander of the roman fleet to sail about the isle . from which i deduce , first , that galgacus was no britan : for tacitus says , that the third year opened new nations : whereas agricola knew the britans before ; and these must have been the scots and picts : for they could not be any other , being beyond the river tay. and galgacus could be no pictish king ; for we have a manuscript , bearing all the names of the pictish kings . 2. from this passage it is clear , that cambden does err grosly , in making the horesti to be a people in eskdale , which is a scotish country on the borders of england . for ( beside that all authors agree , that they are known to be the inhabitants of angus , and merns ) it is here demonstrated by tacitus , that after the romans past forth , they came to tay , ( which is known to be the marches or boundary of angus ) and from thence they marched to the grampian hills , where they fought with galgacus : and from which he return'd to the borders of the horesti , where finding the fleet in the frith of tay , where he had left it , he embarqu'd the hostages , and sent the fleet back to that part of britain whence they came . and how could all this be in eskdale ? that being very remote from the place of battel ; and eskdale an inland country , very remote from all sea. 3. tacitus writing of us , under the name of caledonians , mentions the marishes of those who fought , which were appropriated to us by eumenius and pacatius , as i formerly observ'd . by all which we may observe , how little english writers are to be credited , when they write upon design to lessen our country , or magnify their own . and all this is confirm'd by the learned * ferrarius a stranger . and to this i may add , that we have to this day , a barony , call'd galdgirth , or the girth of galdus ; and ten great stones in galloway , called king galdus's monument : marks of antiquity far preferable to any manuscript ; as the testimony or consent of a whole nation , is to that of one privat person . two of which arguments are us'd by chambers , in the life of galdus : and he had seen verimund , and our old manuscripts : and should he not then be our king galdus , who reigned at that time , and who ( as all our histories relate ) fought against the romans , in this place , which was within the scotish territories ? the third citation , shall be from seneca ; and is a clear testimony for us in the judgment of the great * scaliger . ille britannos ultra noti littora ponti , et caeruleos scoto-brigantes dare romuleis , colla catenis jussit , & ipsum nova romanae , iura securis tremere oceanum . * to which cambden answers , that for scoto-brigantes , we should read scuta-brigantes . but this is very ridiculous ; for we read , that the picts were call'd picti , for painting their bodies ; but never for painting their shields . i know likewise , that hadrianus iunius reads cute-brigantes ; but this would be ill verse : for the first syllable in cute , is by it's own nature , short ; but according to this reading it would be long . i might to this add that answer made by florus , the poet , to adrian in spartianus . ego nolo caesar esse , ambulare per britannos , scoticas pati pruinas . for why should we read , scythicas ? since adrian was never in scythia ; but did fight against the scots : and caus'd make the vallum adriani . 2. why should not rather scotia , than scythia be joyn'd to britannia ? as * vsher argues most justly upon the like occasion . 3. the pruinae scoticae were famous about that time : for claudian hath , * ille caledoniis posuit qui castra pruinis . and claudian does so expresly and so frequently speak of the scots as setled here , and describes them to be those people , who constantly fought against the romans , with the picts ; that the citing him against us , may convince the reader , that our adversaries are not serious . which will appear when i have cited and illustrated him . in his panegyrick , upon the third consulat . of honorius , he complements him upon the victory of his gandfather theodosius , who behov'd to come into britain long before the year 382 , wherein theodosius his father was chosen emperour . facta tui numerabat avi , quem littus adusti horrescit lybii , ratibusque impervia thule . ille leves mauros , nec falso nomine pictos , edomuit , scotumque vago mucrone secutus . fregit hyperboreas remis audacibus undas . and in the fourth consulat of the same honorius . ille caledoniis posuit qui castra pruinis . — maduerunt saxone fuso orcades , incaluit pictorum sanguine thule . scotorū cumulos flevit glacialis ierne . and de bello getico , he speaks of the roman legion that return'd from fighting with the picts , and us ; ( of which * beda makes express mention . ) venit & extremis legio praetenta britannis , quae scoto dat fraena truci , ferroque notatas perlegit exanimes picto moriente figuras . that all this is applicable to us , is clear : because , 1. we had war with the romans , and the irish had not . and all these verses in claudian , are spoke to magnify the roman man conquest . 2. since we have prov'd , by other authors , that the scots were setled here , it is proper and suitable to common sense , to apply the same to us only , as being the only persons concern'd in those battels ; and to the isle , in which it is known that the same were fought . and these passages are attributed to us by selden , l. 2. c. 8. mar. claus. 3. have the irish made any mention of this war , in any of their histories ? and consequently , though scotia had been a common name to scotland and ireland in those days ; yet the circumstances of the action , related by the poet , determine which of the two is here meant . this is yet further clear from the panegyrick of sidonius appollinaris . — victricia caesar signa caledonios transvexit adusque britannos . fuderit & quamquam scotum , & cum saxone pictum . as to which , all that cambden ( much better acquainted with citing , than reasoning ) can answer ; is , 1. that the poet here wrote a complement according to the vulgar opinion of his own times , which cannot be true , ( as he says ) because the saxons were not then come to britain . but he should have considered , that , 1. if this was the opinion in sidonius's age , who liv'd anno 480 , * as gesner affirms , which was very near to claudian's time , who liv'd in 497 , as the bishop of * st. asaph calculates : we must conclude , that it is the rather to be believ'd , that then the scots liv'd here , for that is not inconsistent with history as the other is , and so should be believ'd , though the other be not . 2. there were saxons living then in zetland or orknes , tho they were not setled in britain ; as is clear by claudian himself , who says — maduerunt saxone fuso orcades . and whereas it is said , that — flevit glacialis ierne , does make the same applicable to ireland , since ierna is call'd ireland . to this it is answered , that , 1. it is clear , that there is a country in scotland , call'd ierna , near to which the romans had a noble camp , and whereof the vestiges are very remarkable to this day ; and in which , there are stones found with roman inscriptions , designing the stations of the legions . and certainly it is more proper to say , the loss was lamented in that country where the battel was fought , than in that kingdom where the romans never fought any . and why did the poet join ierna in the same lamentation with caledonia ? if he had not design'd by it , to express ierna , as a part of our scotland . and this is more proper , than to make the poet join part of one , to another different , and remote kingdom . as also starthern in scotland , is indeed a place , where the frost is strong , and continues long , as being very near the hills . but ireland was known to be , and is yet a country much freer from storms and ice ; and was believ'd by the ancients to be so , as is most clear by * beda . 2. though the poet had understood ireland , by ierne ; yet it does not follow , that because ireland lamented the loss of the scots who were kill'd here ; that therefore the scots that were kill'd , were not the scots that were planted in scotland : since certainly , ireland could not but have lamented even the death of scots , who were setled here ; as scotland , and as the scots here did lament very much the death of the scots who were kill'd in ireland in the late massacre . and as the bishop himself argues in the case of the panegyrick above-cited , i may far more justly argue here , that this sense agrees better with the poet 's noble flight , who makes the loss that the scots sustained to be so great , that it was lamented even in ireland . selden also , l. 2. c. 8. mar. claus. applys this to us , and not to the irish. and these verses in the same author , design'd likewise to the praise of the same theodosius , — pictos edomuit , scotumque vaga mucrone secutus , fregit hyperboreas remis audacibus andas . are only applicable to the scotish colony setled in ireland . for he magnifies theodosius , grand-father to honorius , for having pursued so far his victory , that he beat the northern seas with his bold oars . now , beside all the other arguments formerly us'd , can it be said , that theodosius's souldiers ever went to ireland ? that ireland lies north-west from clyde , or severus wall ? whereas it is certain they were in scotland ; and it is very probable that they would follow the scotish colony into the north-west isles , or over clyde , where it 's formerly prov'd the scotish plantation first setled . the third testimony , shall be that of * hegisippus , where he brings in ben-gorion disswading the iews to fight against the romans , the conquerors of all the earth , whom the unsearchable places of the ocean , and the furthest places of india , obey . what shall i say of the isles of britain , divided from the rest of the world by sea , and reduc'd by the romans to be a part of the world ; who makes scotland to tremble , which owes nothing to any part of the earth ? to which cambden answers , that this must be interpreted of ireland , because the words , quae terris nihil debet , must be interpreted , as if the scotia here spoke of , were joyn'd to no other place ; and that is only applicable to ireland , and not to scotland . but what a hard shift is he here driven to : for none can interpret , quae terris nihil debet , in that sense , there being nothing more different , than these two expressions , which is not joyn'd to the other parts of the earth , as cambden would interpet it ; and , which owes nothing to any part of the earth , as the author expresses it . there is nothing more ordinary , than for one who thinks he depends not upon another , to say , i owe you nothing . and certainly it agrees much more with the author's intention , to interpret these words so , scotland , which ow'd homage to no place , does tremble at the roman arms. 2. it cannot be said that ever the romans did attack ireland . and to clear this , beyond answer , in the same harangue , cited out of ben-gorion himself by vsher , * ben gorion says to the iews , that when the general of the nations only came , these nations resisted them ; but when the roman emperours themselves came , they submitted to them . and i desire to know , if ever ireland was invaded by the romans ? so that what is said in the harangue , is not applicable to the scotia hibernica , as they pretend ; but to that country wherein we now live . as also , by the same ben-gorion , it is clear , that nero being discourag'd upon the rebellion of the iews , and vespasian comming to him , comforted him , by remembering him that some of his captains had conquer'd all the western world , france , scotland , and the land of tubal . and whereas , vsher , to lessen this authority , is forc'd to alledge , that hegesippus's works were spurious . this contradicts * eusebius , who makes him to have liv'd , anno christi 160. and tho vsher contends , that both these authors must be late , because hegesippus , who only cites ben-gorion , names constantinople , which chang'd not the name of bizantium till about the beginning of the 4th century . yet the answer is easie , viz. that this being a translation from the greek , the translator has us'd the name that was best known in his own time. and the english , and other nations have acknowledg'd this to be the work of hegesippus , and translate it as such . vsher himself indeed is inclin'd to think , that this was the work of st. ambrose : but even that is sufficient for us , for not only is st. ambrose himself older than the 503 year , and so proves that our country was before that time called scotland ; but st. ambrose relating this speech made in vespasian's time , must prove , that this country was call'd scotland in vespasian's time , who was elected emperour 72 years after christ. * tertullian , who died in the year 202 , and so must have written some time before that , and could not have written of us as christians , and a nation , if we had not been so , for a considerable time : for informations did spread slowly in that age , when there was so little commerce , and at so great a distance , this great doctor of the primitive church , writing against the jews , who he knew would examine the truth of the matter of fact alledg'd against them , says , * for the honour of the christian religion , which he was defending , that those inhabitants of britain , which could not be subdu'd by the romans , yet willingly yielded to the yoke of christ. from which it is urg'd , that in tertullian's time , there were nations in britain which had never submitted to the roman yoke , but yet submitted to the yoke of christ. but so it is that could not be meant of the britains , for all the world knows , and the bishop confesses , that long before that time , they had submitted to the romans . and therefore it is plain , that there were other nations in the isle ; and that could not be true , except the scots , as well as the picts , had been setled in the isle at that time. for a vagrant company of robbers , could not be call'd a nation , or esteem'd a church : and this author writes of british nations ; we must therefore have been a nation and church , as the rest were ; and therefore , since they were setled , so must we have been . nor can this be meant of the north and south picts , though it were prov'd , that the picts were distinguish'd into northern and southern . for these could no more be consider'd as different people , than the northern and southern english can now be said to be different nations . 2. that sense was not so much for the honour and extent of the christian religion : and the jews might have lookt upon tertullian as a jugler , for making one nation appear two . 3. our sense agrees better with beda , who asserts positively , that from reudas's time , the scots made a third nation in the isle of britain , with the britans and picts . 4. selden , l. 2. c. 8. confesses , that the scoti pictique , were the gentes non subjacentes romano imperio . * ammianus marcellinus , who wrote about the year 360 , tells us , that the scots and picts harrased the country . but the bishop unjustly adds , that then they first harrassed it . but this cannot be , for ammianus speaks of their fear , as occasion'd by a tract of bygon defeats ; and this he elegantly expresses by the words , congerie praeteritarum cladium ; which shews , that these he speaks of in the 360 , were not the first of many overthrows that the brittains had got from the scots and picts . and so our being here , must be much ancienter than the 360 ; which agrees well with the word assueti in eumenius . and our having fix'd and known limits , demonstrates to all who understand the roman antiquities , that we were then a fix'd and setled nation , in the same island with the roman provinces of the britans ; the sea , or any part of it , being never signified by their word limes . * st. ierome , in his epistle to iovian , cites porphire , who liv'd in the third century , under dioclesian , and so above 200 years before the 503. his words are , neither britain a province fertil of tyrants , and the scotish nation , and all the barbarous nations , dwelling around the ocean , knew moses , and the prophets . by the scotish nations * vsher understands not the scythians , but the scots , because they are in this place joyn'd to britain : but tho both he , and the bishop of st. asaph would apply this citation to ireland , yet this gloss is most absurd ; for by the former argument , the word scots should be apply'd to us , for we are join'd to britain ; but ireland is no more join'd to britain , than scythia . and the same ierome , in the next citation , calls the scots a nation of britain ; where he says , * that when he was young , he saw the scots , a nation of britain , feed upon mans flesh. from which it is clear , that the scots at that time dwelt in britain , which agrees very well with beda , who calls the scots the third britannick nation . † and selden calls the scots and picts , gentes britannicas , l. 2. c. 8. and this is further clear'd , by his asserting , that pelagius was of a scotish race , in the neighbour-head of britain ; which proves clearly , as the learn'd * baronius observes , that there were scots then in britain , who were christians , else how could they have been pelagians ? nor can this eating man's flesh , be thought any just reflection on the nation ; for certainly these had been some rogues , who had fled out of the nation , because they knew they would have been punish'd for this crime . nor can their eating man's flesh in france be charg'd on us , but on the french , where this is said to be so publickly done , that st. ierome could have seen it ; and there is no historian that ever charg'd this on our nation , nor any part of the isle , even in our most barbarous times . and if it had been any ways common , there would have been a law made against it . and boethius relates , that there was one mean man guilty of it , who was thereupon executed examplarly . and in what nation are there not some monsters ? another of the reverend * fathers of the primitive church , enumerating the nations , which were descended from iaphet , mentions the britons and scots , whose isle is britain . this shews , that there were scots living in britain in epiphanius's time , and so he proves not only our antiquity , by his own authority , but confirms and explains what was formerly urg'd from ierome , in whose time he liv'd , and to whom he wrote letters . * orosius , who in anno 417 , says , that severus thought fit to secure that part of the isle which he had , by a wall , from the other unconquered nations . and that we , and the picts were these unconquered nations , appears from * beda , wherein he describes those very actions , in those very words . and all these authors agreeing with beda , and writing of the times wherein themselves liv'd , are sufficient testimonies , according to the bishop's own strictest rules . and they prove how unkind the bishop is in lessening beda's testimony , when it makes for us ; by saying , he spoke then according to the times wherein these actions happn'd : for we see , that they who wrote , and liv'd in the time of those actions , agree fully with him , as they speak clearly for us . having thus made plain the antiquity of our kings and nation from the historians both within and without the isle . i now proceed to clear these from the principles of sound reason : as to which , let us consider , that it being acknowledg'd by vsher , and the authors he cites , that ireland was peopl'd by the scots , before iulius caesar's time ; and by their own authors , whom that bishop cites , they are said to have been so anciently there , that we do not know how many ages they possess'd that isle before iulius caesar. and they being a very broody people , as all northen nations , and particularly they , and we are , could not but have multiply'd so exceedingly , as to need relief , and evacuation by colonies . and it can never be pretended , that the irish did settle any other colony save in britain : though it be undenyable , that all those northen nations were very desirous and concern'd to extend , by colonies , the empire of their whole nation , and thereby the possession and property of every particular man in it . nor do we ever read , that the irish had any wars with strangers , whereby they might have either wanted men to send into foreign colonies , or have been forc'd to keep them at home , for their own defence . whether then are our histories more probable , which make this colony to have come over before iulius caesar ? or the bishop of st. asaph's account , who makes us not to have settl'd here , till 503 years after christ. and tho i esteem the irish , yet i must remark , that our humour differs so much from theirs , that it may from thence appear , that we stay'd not long amongst them , but that we came from thence very early . 2. by all the tract of the roman histories , as well as by beda's , gildas's and ours , it is clear , that the scots and picts fought joyntly against the romans in this country which we now possess : that the walls built by adrian , and severus , were built here , to defend them against them : that complaints were made to the romans by the britons of them , and that succours were crav'd against them : that the saxons were call'd in , to defend the britons , from the scotish and pictish incursions : that they were call'd jointly , unconquer'd nations . all which points prove , that they were equal in every thing ; and why not then in their being equally settl'd here ? and therefore , except it were clearly prov'd that the scots were not settl'd and fix'd here , as the picts were ; and that there were authors produc'd , who living in these times , declar'd , that in the year 503 , the scots were first call'd to defend the picts , as the saxons are clearly prov'd to have been call'd in , against the scots , and picts , in the year 449 , very near to the year 503 ; which is said by the bishop to be our entry : it must be necessarily concluded , that the scots were here at the time , wherein all these things are told of them joyntly , with the picts . the third argument shall be , that it 's undeniable , that the scots and picts were such constant and formidable enemies , that the romans , and britans , who then possest the southern part of this isle , were forc'd to build two fences against them : the first betwixt tyne and solloway , which was call'd adrian's wall : and the second , by severus , who having enlarg'd the roman conquest , built a second , betwixt forth and clyde , and called it by his own name . how then can it be imagin'd , that the scots did not live on the other side of that wall ? for if they had liv'd in ireland , the wall had not been necessary , or useful , against them . this common sense would declare to a stranger , upon first reading the story ; and much more ought it to be believ'd , if we consider , that if the scots came from ireland , in corroughs , as the bishop of st. asaph alledges , from gildas ; then they might have landed upon the britons side of the wall ; nay , and which is more , they could not conveniently have landed on the other side , except they had gone too far about , and cross'd a very broad and dangerous sea. 4. tho people come once , or twice , from a foreign nation , by sea , to rob and pillage , yet it is against sense to think , that for many hundreds of years , the irish would have come over , to make war against such powerful enemies , and return once a year . and it appers clearly , that this was a constant war , from before iulius caesar's time , for above 600 years : and in those ages , it is known , that there were not very convenient means fall'n upon , for transporting men , much lesse armies ; they having only corroughs , as the bishop of st. asaph himself acknowledges : and these are a miserable little kind of shapeless boats , made of leather , streatch upon timber , as we find them , and the irish sea , describ'd by * solinus , who liv'd near those times , and writes , that mare quod iuvernam & britanniam interfluit , undosum & inquietum toto in anno , nisi aestivis pauculis diebus , est navigabile : navigant autem viminiis alviis , quos circumdant ambitu tergorum bubulorum . and how these could transport an army every year to fight against such powerful enemies as the romans and britons ? and how they could carry back in them the great booty worthy to be fought for ? especially over such broken seas , that are yet terrible in the best season , to the best of our boats , and the stoutest of seamen , is left to be considered by men judicious , or disinterested in any measure : especially , seeing they behov'd to return in the winter-time , for it 's presum'd , they fought all summer ; and even then , they had not the chusing of their own fair weather , but had just reason to be afraid that they would be chas'd away , as robbers usually are ; and as the bishop of st. asaph asserts they often-times were . but as all this is absurd , and incredible , according to the bishop of st. asaph's hypothesis ; so it is most consistent with ours ; in which we assert , that the scots setled on the other side of clyde , from which they might come every year ; which agrees also well with beda's saying , that the scots setled ad partem septentrionalem sinus acluith , or dumbriton ; a narrow sea , and call'd one part of the mare scoticum by the english authors , and particularly by * holinshed , and † polidore , as by our ‖ major ; and was so design'd in the forms of holding circuits , as is clear by the 4 chap. of the laws of king malcom 2. and by 5th . act p. 3. i. 2d . and since in the said laws of malcom 2. who reign'd anno 1004. the frith of forth is call'd mare scotiae , the sea of scotland , and that is mention'd as a law in old observance ; it must be concluded , that this country where we live , was call'd scotland , long before the year 1000 , as bishop vsher asserts . for since tacitus and beda say , that we were inclos'd by that sea , and the wall , as in an isle ; it seems that this was call'd the sea of scotland then , it being our march at that time . nor are these friths improperly call'd seas , being 40 miles broad in some places . and this also agrees with our being transmarini , or on the other side of the sea , ( which are the words us'd in the said statute ) but not out of the isle ; and it is strange , that the visigoths should have setled in france and spain ; the ostrogoths in italy , shortly after they had made their inroads ; and yet we should have return'd yearly for above 600 years , notwithstanding of the former difficulty . 4ly , the scots coming over to this isle , could not but know , that the southern parts of it were very rich , and the people there very cowardly , even to admiration ; as the bishop of st. asaph himself relates , from all their historians : and there was place enough for a colony of them in this isle , or else how could they have planted themselves after , when the picts became more numerous ; and both the scots and the picts had good reason to expect every year new additions of land : and it is probable , that our ancestors , being a colony of a more southern nation , strangers in ireland , and but lately setled there , left their confinement in the irish isle as soon as they could , to inlarge their victories and possessions in this larger one , which afforded greater glory . how then can it be imagin'd , that they would not have setled a colony here , which was far less dangerous , and more noble and advantageous , than to be constantly robbing for small booty , to the danger of their lives ? but that they fought for land , and not for booty , is very clear ; not only from the practice of others , but from sabellicus , * gliscere indies id malum augebatur duarum gentium audaciâ : apparebatque brevi totam insulam alienatam iri , nisi ejusmodi conatibus maturé iretur obviam . 5. how it is imaginable , that the picts ( finding themselves in so great danger from the romans and britons , the one very considerable for their valour , and the other for their great numbers ) would not have intreated the scots to stay constantly with them ? for tho they had been equal to their enemies , when the scots and they were together , yet they could not be but much more inferiour to them , when the scots left them once every year . 6. if the irish had constantly sent in auxiliaries to assist against the romans , it is not to be believ'd but the romans would have resentted this injury against the kingdom of ireland ; which they never did , except once , * when the irish gave the scots supplies , endeavouring to re-establish themselves after the expulsion of eugenius . and if this war had been carried on by the kingdom of ireland , and not by the scots in scotland ; we had certainly heard , that the kings of ireland had been mention'd , both in the roman , english , and our histories : for it is not to be imagin'd , that so long , and so great wars could have been carried on by the subjects , without the consent of the king and kingdom . 7. if they never had been call'd in by the picts , to stay as a colony , till the saxons had beat the britons , who had lately call'd them in to their assistance : how is it imaginable to think , that the picts would have call'd them in as auxiliaries at that time ? having so lately seen , how dangerous auxiliaries might prove , especially considering , that the scots had been us'd many hundred years to robbing , as the bishop of st. asaph would have us believe ; and that they were part of a numerous near nation , from whom they might expect suddenly great supply : or that they would have not only run this risque , but have divided with them their little country ; and yet not have employ'd their assistance for the ends for which they call'd them in . for the bishop * tells us , that the scots did nothing for 100 years after they were call'd in . 8. it cannot be deny'd , but that about the year 792 , * there was a league entred into betwixt charles the great , call'd charle-maigne king of france , and emperor of the west , and achaius king of scotland , call'd by all the french historians , the famous alliance . in which the king of scotland did send over 4000 men to the assistance of charles the great . and this is testified by * aeginardus who wrote the history of those times , and was secretary to charles the great ; and who is cited by vsher , at which time the king of scotland sent over very many famous learn'd men , who founded the incomparable university of paris . all which is clear by † favin , in his theatre of honour ; and ‖ paulus aemilius in that king's life . from which i raise two arguments ; 1. how can it be imagin'd , that if the scots had not setled in a colony till the 503 , that their king could have been so famous , that in about 280 years time , this small colony , which the bishop of st. asaph represents to have been but pilfering barbarous robbers , would have become so famous , that charles the great , then emperor of all the western world , would have entred into a league with them , especially since they had not for 100 years after their settlement , done any memorable action , * as the bishop of st. asaph alledges ? 2. if our kings , and nation , had only then dalrieda , or the kingdom of argile , as the bishop contends , how could this prince of argile ( which is , after all improvement but an earldom ) have been worthy , not only of the alliance of the great emperor of the west , but to be able to send 4000 men , especially having such dangerous enemies at home , and being himself but a stranger , newly entred into a foreign island , and living in a small part of the isle , with the picts , the more powerful and ancient possessors . and that there were 4000 men sent by virtue of that league , is clear , not only from verimundus , out of whose 2d book chambers cites the whole league ; but by sansovin an italian , who writes the history of the douglassii , or scoti , whom he derives from william douglas , who was lieutenant at that time to prince william , brother to achaius . for which sansovin cites another , viz. vmberto locato , more ancient than himself . * and this is so far acknowledg'd by the french kings , that upon it we got very great privileges in france , and all the heraulds in europe acknowledg , that the double tressure , was the badg of that alliance . 9. how can it be conceiv'd , that the scots could in so short a time , after their settlement , have been able , without any help , to extirpate the picts , who must be presum'd to have been very strong , having been so long setled in this isle ; and having possest in effect all that we have now , benorth forth , except the shire of argyle , if we believe the bishop of st. asaph . our tradition is fortified , and the former authorities cited by us , are clear'd , from the receiv'd laws of our nation ; for first , all our histories bear , * that after king fergus ' s death , the nobility finding his son too young , and the wars in which they were engaged very dangerous ; they declared , that the vncle should govern . which custom continu'd , till it occasion'd many bloody civil wars betwixt the uncles and nephews : and therefore * was justly abrogated by a parliament holden by kenneth the third , which kenneth the third reign'd , anno 970. and it were very ridiculous to think , that since these matters of fact are true , viz. that there were bloody civil wars betwixt the uncles and the nephews ; and that all this hath been much debated in posterior parliaments , betwixt such as were for the crown , and such as were for popular elections ; without ever controverting the truth of the matter of fact ; and long before we could have any apprehension of such a debate as this , and so that all this was a meer fiction , calculated for maintaining an antiquity , which was never controverted . it can as little be deny'd , that there were laws relating to the merchetae mulierum ; since many of our old charters relate to them , and discharges of them are incorporated in our charters ; and which styles are a part of our old and traditional law : these merchetae mulierum were thereafter abrogated by king malcom canmor's laws , many hundred years before the starting of this debate : and that there were such laws , is also acknowledged , not only by baker , and others within the isle , but even by solinus and ierome , &c. * and that these laws were made by evenus the third , who liv'd twelve years before christ , is a part of the same tradition ; and so cannot but be believ'd , since laws are one of the probablest means imaginable , * for preserving tradition . by the laws likewise of malcom the 2d , who reign'd in the year 1004. the frith of forth is call'd mare scotiae , or the sea of scotland ; which demonstrates , that before the year 1000 , our country was call'd scotia , or scotland : and confirms and clears all that is said out of beda ; and as this designation of the scotish sea is look'd upon there , as a thing very old and acknowledg'd ; so it is continu'd in our laws for many ages , as is evident by k. i. 2d , his laws above-cited . i had resolved not to mention the bishop's objections , against our early conversion : but i find it so clear , that we were converted to the christian faith before the year 503 , that there results this concluding argument from it , to prove that we were setled before that time . for if we were a christian nation converted here , before that time ; it follows necessarily , that we were a nation setled here before that time : since a nation is said no where to be converted , but where it is setled , albeit some persons of that nation may be said to be converted abroad . and that this part of the isle which we now inhabit , and that people from which we are descended , were christians before that time ; seems to me very evident , from the former testimony of tertullian , who wrote in the end of the second century , to which i refer my reader : and tho tertullian liv'd a little before king donald , yet the answer is apparent , viz. that the nations were ordinarily converted before the kings or magistrates . and it 's indeed very probable that the christians who were persecuted in the southern nations , would flee from their persecutors , the roman emperours : and where could they seek refuge so reasonably , as in that country , and amongst that people which had never submitted to the roman empire ? and it being acknowledg'd by the learn'd vsher , and my lord st. asaph , that britain was converted in the first century ; it is very reasonable to think , that the christians , who had fled to this isle , from the persecution of the romans , would have very probably shelter'd themselves here , where the romans had no power : for though it be not prov'd , that the roman persecution reach'd to britain so early ; yet certainly they who fled so far from the persecution , would not think themselves very secure within the dominions of the persecutors , and would have secured themselves by a few more miles from so dreaded a danger . as also , it seems very improbable , that since the christian religion spread from ierusalem to britain in less than 100 years , that it would have taken above 300 years more , to reach so few miles , as are betwixt the british part of the isle , and scotland . it is also presumable that the druids having been so prepared to receive christianity , by their excellent principles of philosophy , and their severity of life formerly mentioned , which did not contradict , but illuminate the christian doctrine , they would have both been easie to be converted themselves , and ready to have converted their former disciples , and the people who admir'd them . i might here cite many authors ; but i fix upon * beda , who asserts positively , that palladius was sent in the 8th year of theodosius junior ; that is to say , in the 431 ad scotos in christum credentes , by pope caelestine , as their first bishop : and that beda wrote of us , as the scots , is formerly prov'd ; and this mission of palladius falling in the tract and series of the actions ascrib'd by beda to us only , it is inconsistent with common reason , that the things before and after , and the things related in the very chapter , should be only applicable to us , and yet only this should not : albeit our own and foreign histories apply the same to us . as to foreign histories , i shall only cite baronius , who , because he made ecclesiastick history more his business than my lord st. asaph , and was more disinterested , is therefore more to be believ'd as to this point . this great antiquary * tells , that the scots who had first receiv'd the christian faith from pope victor , and their first bishop from pope caelestine , were become the chief of all christians , from being amongst the most barbarous of all nations , having formerly said , † that all consent that palladius was their first bishop ; and for which he cites prosper , as he does tertullian , ierome , sedulius , and others , for our being christians under pope victor , saying , that ‖ they are not to be refuted who assert our conversion under pope victor : but is most positive as to palladius . and whereas it is * pretended that prosper's words are not applicable to us , since he says , that palladius made the barbarous island christian ; and our scotland is not an island . to this it is answer'd , that our part of britain was by tacitus , and beda , said to be reduc'd into an island , by the roman wall from sea to sea : and * beda in other places of his history calls us therefore islanders . baronius also applies this to us , and so this gloss is to be preferr'd , to that unwarrantable gloss or reading cited by the bishop of st. asaph , from the copy of a manuscript of nenius , missus est palladius episcopus , primitus à caelestino ad scotos in christum convertendos : for that not only differs from beda , the far more learn'd , ancient , and credible author : but it is improbable to say , that a bishop was sent to those , which were to be converted , seeing conversion useth to be by presbyters , and missionars ; and when the church is gather'd , the bishop is sent : and this gloss contradicts not only common sense , but * ado viennen , and * marian , who both use beda's own words , ad scotos in christum credentes : and what is said of the conversion of the scots and picts by st. ninian , palladius , and columba , to make our conversion to be later than tertullian made it , viz. in the 2d century , must be interpreted of our fuller and sounder conversion from paganism , and pelagianism ; and of our being conform'd to the romish church , and rites , which the authors of those times considered as the only true conversion . but to make this our first conversion , were to contradict tertullian , ierome , the learn'd baronius , as well as all our histores . and the * magdeburgian centuriators do positively agree with baronius , and our history , in this our antiquity : and so having for us the greatest ecclesiastick antiquaries , both protestant and papist , we need not condescend upon particular authors : these being the standards of ecclesiastick history to the professors of both religions : and it is strange after all this , that a church-man should so positively contradict , what the antiquaries of both churches have so positively asserted ; tho if there had been any thing , wherein they could have contradicted one another , they would certainly have differ'd . that donald then was our first christian king , in anno 203 , and palladius our first bishop , in anno 431 , seems most fully prov'd : for these being matters of fact , may be prov'd by witnesses ; and who are better witnesses , than the many historians of the country where the things were transacted ; especially since these were matters of great importance , and notoriety ; which the monasteries , whose faith is followed by our historians , could not but know best of all others , and in which they durst not cheat or forge , because the annals of other churches would have contradicted them , whereas they are confirm'd by them ; and these things fell out , when we had the help of letters , and are agreeable to the sound reasons above-related : tho the conversion of a kingdom be a matter that could not be unknown , and no other king but donald was ever recorded to have been the first christian king here . that palladius was sent to the scots in britain , and not to the scots in ireland , appears further from these undeniable matters of fact ; viz. that pope caelestine did ordain , and send palladius , in anno 431 : that the same pope caelestine sent st. patrick to ireland : that st. patrick's mission must have been before the 6th of april 432 , is also clear , because prosper tells , that caelestine died that year . and the roman pontifical tells , it was on the 6th of april that year . from all which , the bishop did see that palladius's mission must have been to the scots in scotland ; else palladius had been first bishop of ireland , and st. patrick needed not have been sent into ireland , since palladius was sent there but the year before . to reconcile which real contradictions , the bp of st. asaph makes up a laborious hypothesis , and say's , that palladius was indeed in ireland , but finding he could not succeed , he was upon his return to rome , but died in , or near the bounds of the picts , the 15th of december , 431. so that st. patrick , who liv'd in britain , could not but have known his death , and had time enough to go to rome , and be ordain'd bishop for ireland , and go to that kingdom , and there finish their conversion , which palladius had only begun : and so st. patrick was call'd the first bishop . all this hypothesis is almost impossible , though good palladius had sooner , and deeplier despair'd , than a saint should have done , especially in the conversion of a whole nation : and though both had posted faster for a benefice , than holy-church-men did in those primitive times . yet all this is founded upon palladius's having died decemb. 15. 431. and the only proofs produc'd for this by my lord st. asaph , is baleus de 14. scrip . 6. near the end ; and yet in that same citation it is positively said , that palladius was sent to scotland , and the particular scotish king is nam'd ; and baleus adds , that palladius claruit anno virginei partus , 434 ; he flourish'd in the year 434 , and so he died not in the 431. and not content with this , baleus goes on , telling , that post multos pios tandem sudores & religiosa exercitia in fordono vico merniae foelicem hujus vitae sortius est exitum . which is in our scotland , and in the north part thereof , very far out of the road from ireland to rome ; and where we have st. padies church and fair ; and with us he is nam'd our first bishop to this day : but was never nam'd an irish bishop , until the bishop of st. asaph made him by a strange word first , in omination of success , as he says , tho not he , but st. patrick had this success . if then he died not so soon , and if the time of his death is not prov'd , why might he not have baptiz'd tarvanus ? and why should our boethius be hector'd for saying , that palladius baptiz'd tarvan ? yet i impute not this to my lord st. asaph's mistake or ignorance ; but it is an elaborate contrivance , to divert all the unanswerable authorities , proving that palladius was sent to us in scotland , in the year 431 , and so before the year 503 ; in which my lord st. asaph says we setled first in britain . i shall conclude this concerning palladius , with the suffrage of dr. hammond , a learn'd and episcopal english divine , * who in his vindication of the dissertations concerning episcopacy , reconciling the seeming differences between beda , who asserts , that palladius was sent to the scots believing in christ : and prosper , who speaking of the same mission , says , that palladius made also the barbarous island christian ; lays down these three conclusions ; 1. that christianity was planted in scotland , before caelestine's time , deriv'd to them most probably from their neighbour britons here , with whom they are known to have agreed in the keeping of easter , contrary to the custom of the roman church , as * beda says . 2. that this plantation was very imperfect , differing little from barbarism , and so reputed by prosper , till the coming of bishop palladius among them . 3. that even after that , they retain'd the use of easter , contrary to the roman custome , which still refers to some rude conversion of theirs before palladius ; and so it is evident , that in the learn'd doctor 's opinion , the scotland to which palladius was sent , was ours ; and that we were christians before his coming , tho rude and barbarous . the bishop of st. asaph having thus spirited from us , into ireland , palladius our first bishop , he proceeds to translate amphibalus our first churchman upon record , unto a shag-cloak ; designing likewise thereby to prove , that boethius our historian is not to be credited , because he follow'd their fabulous ieffrey : who finding that st. alban had , to save his pious guest , taken the holy man's habit , to the end he might be martyr'd for him ; and as beda expresses it , caracalla ejus indutus ; ieffrey concludes , as my lord st. asaph alledges , that the vestiment was amphibalus ; and ieffrey having made the cloak a man , boetius made him a bishop of the isle of man : and so this cloak was fitly ordain'd to be a proper bishop for the chapter of the culdees : but this is ludere in sacris , and to expose episcopacy it self upon the stage . in answer to which , i shall only offer these few thoughts , first , what interest had ieffrey ( who was a briton ) to oblige the scots , or the isle of man , in making so horrid a lye ? 2. it is against sense , to think that any man , much less a scholar , could have been so gross , as to take a shag cloak for a bishop . 3. if the shag cloak had been mistaken for the name of a man , he should have been call'd caracalla , and not amphibalus ; for the legend being written in latin , ieffrey had certainly chosen the word caracalla , because that was the latin word , and was the word used by beda , and because there was a roman emperor truly of that name , before beda and ieffrey's time. 4. beda relating to that passage , tells us , that in the dioclesian persecution , st. alban , aron , iulius , and many others suffer'd : and why might not amphibalus be one of these many that suffer'd ? and why ought boethius to have been tax'd , for mentioning amphibalus , since this was done long before him , by a multitude of english writers , cited by bishop vsher , who deriv'd his birth from greece , and describes the particular actions of his life , and his martyrdom ; with which also the modern english writers agree , as * baleus , holinshed , speed , all which english , and thousands of other testimonies do far weigh down bishop vsher's conjectures , that amphibalus was not a man , but a vestiment , from the silence of gildas , beda , the martyrologies and breviaries of salisbury , and ieffrey , who do not mention him : for gildas could not mention him , writing concerning the conquest , and destruction of britain ; beda tells the passage relative to st. alban ; and albeit he names him not in the dioclesian persecution , yet he tells , that many more suffer'd than the three he names . we have not seen the martyrologies , and breviaries , nor does it import whether they mention him or not ; and it is not so much to be wondered at , that some english writers do not mention him , as that he is mention'd by so many , seeing he was a greek , and a bishop in the remote isles of britain , and in all likelihood would have been buried under silence , had it not been for that passage with st. alban . my last argument for confirming our history , shall be , that the best critiques , historians , and antiquaries of other nations , who had occasion to mention our histories , and particularly the great baronius , scaliger , salmasius , lipsius , carolus sigonius , favinus , selden , and others of the first rank , ( too many to be nam'd ) have passionately defended our antiquity , and not only sustain'd , but prais'd our histories : and so the arguments and grounds whereupon i have proceeded , are already asserted by the best judges , and that too after luddus publish'd his objections against the same , and almost the very same objections which are now urg'd , and which are treated with great contempt by * scaliger . since then there is nothing now urg'd , that could have escaped the observation of these learn'd and curious authors , who could not but have discover'd , as soon as the bishop of st. asaph , that our historians did not mention any warrants which were written in the time , or did contradict the roman history or one another . i admire why now these our histories should be controverted . and tho something might be pretended , if my lord st. asaph did in this book , produce manuscripts unknown to those learn'd criticks ; yet could they have been so blind and ignorant ( especially in that subtile and laborious age , wherein all men were by a noble emulation contending , who should discover most ) as not to have seen defects ? which if they had been real , they had been obvious . it is also very remarkable , that since all nations are emulous of one another in matters of antiquity ; yet they , by yielding to ours , have thereby acknowledg'd , that ours was beyond all debate ; and to this day , none controvert it , ( notwithstanding of all the pains taken by luddus , cambden , and vsher ) further than to gratify their own country . and therefore , as cicero argues , that the romans were the bravest , because every nation commended them next to their own : i may contend , that we are the most ancient , because every nation confesses us to be next to themselves in antiquity . i shall cite , for confirming this , some few instances . saxo gram. swaningius , albertus krantzius , own our name and nation to have been before christ , though after the danes . mezeray shortly after pharamond : and my lord st. asaph himself , who brings us in but 50 years after the english. since it is probable that the bishop of st. asaph and i will not agree well in the decision of this debate ; were it not just that we should both rest in the decision of learn'd strangers , who understood antiquities exactly , these being the subject matter of our controversy ? and where can we find more qualified judges than those great antiquaries whom i have named ? but yet to shew how much i trust to the strength of that truth which i assert , i dare appeal to selden , that english-man , who was so affectionate to his country , and that antiquary who understood best of all mankind the antiquities of his own nation , and even to him also in his mare clausum , written for the defence and glory of his country ; who , lib. 2. cap. 8. maris clausi , has these words , speaking of those famous lines in claudian , to the praise of stilicho , inde caledonio velata britannia monstro — totam cum scotus jernam movit & infesto spumavit remige tethys . as the palmes , and the river tagus were peculiar to spain , as the ears of corn and ivory to africa ; so he would have it understood , that the province of britain had the sea of the same name peculiar thereto . but yet it is to be conceiv'd , that the dominion of the romans was so limited in this sea , according to their possession of the shore , that they had little power in that part of the british sea , which bordered upon the shores of those british nations who were not under their obedience . this is to be taken chiefly of the irish sea , and the rest that lies north-west ; for when the roman empire began to decline , not only in ireland , but in the isle of man also , and the other isles of the western sea , and a great portion of the more northerly parts of britain was possess'd by the scots and picts , so that we have sufficient ground to conceive , that they also had an ancient dominion of their own in the neighbouring sea. from which passage i argue thus , 1. that selden consider'd the scots and picts , as nations not subject to the romans ; gentes iis ( viz. romanis ) minime subjacentes , no manner of way subject to the romans ; and looks on us as the most considerable of these two nations : for the words run , a scotis , tenebatur pictisque ; and very justly , for we were able to defend them while they were just to us , and to extirpate them when they became enemies . 2. this great antiquary asserts , that the scots and picts possest not only in stilicho's time , who was guardian to honorius , and so liv'd about anno 400 , a great portion of the northern part of britain , as well as the isle of man , and the rest of the western isles ; and consequently if we possest them then , it cannot be said that we were only here by way of incursion , till the year 500 ; or were confin'd to argile , till after the year 500 , as my lord st. asaph contends . 3. that we were not only possest then , but that we had avitum dominium , ancient dominion , and had right prisco jure ; and nothing is so inconsistent with the being proprietors , as to be robbers , coming only by way of incursion ; and if we had the dominion of our seas , jure prisco , and per dominium avitum ; we were certainly ancient possessors before the year 400 , and so must have been not only far older than the year 500 , but even to have been prisci incolae , as beda ( l. 1. c. 1. ) says , before the romans entred this isle , and so before christ. selden also , in the transition from that 2d to the 3d chapter , tells , after that he had spoke of the scots dominion of their own sea , that he will treat of the succeeding ages , and so proceeds to the saxons , which demonstrates , that we were setled here before the saxons , though my lord st. asaph makes their settlement here more ancient than ours . and in this beda agrees with selden , but both contradict the bishop . and lastly , this passage clears , that the testimonies , not only of claudian concerning ierna , but even of tertullian , when speaking of the inhabitants of britain not conquer'd by the romans , and of ierom speaking of the britannick nations , are only applicable to us : and therefore i hope my lord st. asaph will not take it ill , if we , in a matter of antiquity , prefer an impartial antiquary , to an interested divine , as i would not be offended , if the bishop of st. asaph were preferr'd to me in a theological controversy . the first general objection against our histories , is , that they were not written by those who lived in the time , but more than 1400 years after the things happened , of which they wrote . and it were strange , that if gild●s , who liv'd 500 years before the eldest of them , could find no sufficient instructions , save from foreigners , that our historians should have found sufficient warrants for a history after so long a time . to which my answer is , that our histories giving only an account of one nation , it was easier to find the true and sincere tradition as to us , than it was in other nations , where the conquerors were not concern'd to preserve the traditions and records : and though i have made it very probable , that this isle had the use of letters before , or at least soon after we settl'd in it , and so might have preserv'd the story . yet albeit our history were only founded on tradition , until about 600 years after christ , before which the monastery of iona or icolm-kill was founded , that tradition might have been sufficiently preserv'd , for so few generations , by the means and methods that i have formerly condescended upon . nor can i see , how the origin of a nation could not have been preserv'd by those who were of it , or how , being established it could have vanished when people became more polite and curious . and after the year 600 , i have prov'd , that our historians might have been , and were sufficiently warranted in what they have said , by old manuscripts , and records : nor is there any thing urg'd in this objection against us , but what might as unanswerably be urg'd against the greek and latin historians . a receiv'd history cannot be overturn'd , from what i have formerly represented , without arguments , which necessarily conclude that the history impugn'd must be false ; which cannot be alledg'd here , where the warrants of the history controverted , not only might have been , but probably were true ; and are so far from contradicting other histories , that they are confirm'd by them . i desire also to know , what old manuscripts and records luddus , the antiquary so far preferr'd to ours , had for proving , that much elder succession of history from brutus to his own time : and whereas st. asaph says , that buchannan should not have tax'd luddus for deriving the britons from brutus , since he own'd a succession of our kings from fergus , there being as few documents to support the one , as the other . to this my answer is , that there have been very solid grounds brought for sustaining the one , which cannot be alledg'd for the other : and ours are adminiculated by the roman history , whereas theirs is inconsistent with it : for it is palpably inconsistent with the roman history , to say , that brutus was the son of ascanius whom he kill'd , for which being banish'd from italy , he came over to britain : and that britain was govern'd by consuls : which should rather be laugh'd at , than confuted . the bishop is most unjust to us , in asserting , that we have no author of our own before fordon ; and that no author mentions our antiquity , but such as have follow'd fordon , who wrote about 300 years ago . for fordon cites his vouchers , many of which are extant , and those who are lost , are prov'd to have been extant . within the isle we could have no authors till there were writers , and gildas and beda , the eldest in the isle , prove our antiquity . without the isle none could know us , being so remote , but either by the wars they had with us , or the christianity that was common to them and us . as to our wars , all the roman authors above-related speak of us ; orosius about the year 417. claudian 397. ammianus before the year 360. beda and eumenius speak of us , as before iulius caesar , as hath been prov'd . all which we have collaterally supported , by a gradation of ecclesiastick historians abroad , and all our own historians at home . beda brings us to reutherus , who was the 6th king from fergus the first : and he living within 150 years of fergus , this short step may be trusted to tradition , though we had wanted the help of the druids , and phaenician letters : for a father might have inform'd his son of so near a time ; nor was this worthy of a fiction . and i may modestly say of the foregoing citations from forraign authors , that if they be not strong enough to overturn the bishop's hypothesis , yet they are at least as strong as those produc'd by iosephus in defence of the jewish history ; and yet all the learn'd world has acquiesc'd in them . nor is there any thing to be concluded from the silence of adamnanus , and marianus , the eldest of our historians : though , as the bishop alleadges , they had certainly mention'd our antiquitiy , if they had known it . for adamnanus wrote no history save of columba ; and marianus going to germany , when he was very young , could know little of us , and mentions only the three kings of scotland , in whose time he liv'd : and so if this argument prov'd any thing , it would prove too much . for certainly we had kings before those three , whom he mentions ; and these negative arguments are of no moment in matters of history , and are justly reprobated by the learned scaliger , in his notes on eusebius , and by * vossius . the second objection is , that our historians contradict one another concerning the origin of the picts ; which ought to lessen their credit . but to this it is answered , that our historians were not concern'd to consider the origin of the picts as they were to consider their own . and this objection subsumes not what is true in matter of fact. for our historians generally agree in the origin of the picts , whom all of them make to be scythians : and though fordon relates three different accounts of them , yet he does not settle upon any thing that is different from our other historians * as is fully to be seen . the third objection is , that our historians are contradicted by our own antecessors ; for our historians assert that king donald the first was our first christian king ; whereas in our apology against edward the first of england , about the year 1300 , we assert the tradition of a wonderful victory obtain'd by our king hungus , against the saxons , by the relicts of st. andrew the apostle , by virtue whereof the scots first receiv'd the faith of christ. to which it is shortly answer'd , that every contradiction does not overturn the truth of a whole history ; otherwise we need not be troubled to give any other answer to the bishop's own book : nor is this pretended to be a contradiction amongst our historians , for they all agree , that king donald was our first christian king ; but in that apology , which is alledg'd to contradict our histories , our predecessors design'd , as most pleaders do ( and this eloquent author does in his book ) to gain their point at any rate . for understanding whereof , it is fit to know , that king edward the first , having upon the competition betwixt bruce and baliol , interpos'd with design to make himself lord paramount of scotland ; he caus'd his parliament write to the pope , to whom afterwards he wrote himself ; in which letter of his , it is pretended , that we were vassals to england , as descended from albanactus the second son to brutus . 2. because several of our kings had become vassals to his predecessors , in the times of the british , saxon , and norman kings . to which we answer in our apology , that without debating , whether the first inhabitants of the isle were descended from albanactus , or his albanians , it is asserted , that we came from spain by ireland , and conquer'd the first inhabitans ( for which we cite * beda ) and so , tho they had been vassals , we were free ; not being lyable to the conditions of the people we conquer'd ; and as such , fought constantly against the britons , who were forc'd to build severus's wall against us . and as to any homage made by our kings , it was either for the three northen countries of cumberland , westmoreland , and northumberland , confirm'd to us by the britons , to defend them against the saxons ; and thereafter again * confirm'd by both saxons and britons to assist them against the danes . or was extorted by force , from one or two young captive kings ; upon which heads the popes had declar'd us free : which bulls , edward himself had robb'd unjustly out of our treasure , with other records , which he could not deny : but to cajole the pope their judg , they insinuate , that though they were not tributaries to his holiness , as england was ; yet they ought to be protected by the pope , because they had been converted by st. andrew his predecessors brother-german : st. andrew having in hungus's reign obtain'd for them a victory over the saxons ; and so became subject , and subservient to the pope , in having converted the saxons by aidan , finan , and colman . from this matter of fact , i observe , 1. that we own'd the same origination there , that our historians do to this day : and so our ancestors differ'd not from our historians , much less are they irreconcilable , as st. asaph alleadges . 2. that the english acknowledg'd us to be as ancient as the britons , they and we being descended from two brothers . 3. that what we said of st. andrew , must needs be upon design , to have oblidg'd the pope , meaning certainly , either that we were then first effectually converted to the church of rome , from the oriental observations , in which we were very long very obstinate , and that rome consider'd that , as the true conversion ; or that after that time we first became subject , tho not feudatary to the pope , as these forecited words subjoyn'd do insinuate . but that our conversion from paganism , was more than 400 years before the saxons , is positively asserted in that same apology . nor can this have another meaning , for it is undeniable , that we were christians long before the reign of hungus , who reign'd 800 years after christ : and colman , &c. liv'd long before that king. nor was hungus our king , we being only auxiliaries to him then , as king of the picts : after which apology , king robert the 1st being crown'd , and having defeated king edward at banock-burn , where he gain'd a most signal victory over the english , they then being low , made application to the pope ; and he having discharg'd us , by a formal interdiction , to pursue the victory into england ; the nobility , to pacify that pope , and to remove the interdiction , at the desire of the king , wrote letter , wherein they own the antiquity of our nation , and religion , and royal-line , mentioning when we came from spain , as our historians do , with whom they agree exactly , vt ex antiquorum gestis , & libris , collegimus , says the letter : which being prior to fordon , proves that all this was not fordon's dream , and that our history is well founded on old records , prior to fordon . and lastly , it appears , that our kings were not vassals to england for their crown , but only for these provinces , as * my lord st. asaph confesses , and as i have prov'd in my treatise of precedency ; albeit our independency was as much controverted of old , as our antiquity is now : and i hope that the one will shortly appear as unjust a pretence , as the other is already confest to be . from this it appears , that there is rather a harmony than real contradiction here , and that any seeming contradiction is far less , than the real ones , betwixt beda , and the bishop of st. asaph , and the following contradictions , wherein he differs from himself . for clearing whereof , observe , that the bishop says * he questions not the truth of any thing that is said to have been within 800 , nay within 1400 years ; but so it is , that this would bring us to be setled here , before the year 300 after christ : for substract 1400 out of 1684 , ( which is the year in which the bishop prints his book ) his lordship can controvert nothing except what was done within 284 years after christ : and yet he decryes our historians , for saying , that we were settl'd here before the year 503 ; and denies our being christians for many years after the year 300 ; and to improve this learn'd bishop's just concession , i must remark , that all our historians agree , that gregory the great king of scotland , who died anno , 892 , added northumberland to the merse ; and having defeated the britons at lochmaben , he forc'd them to renew their ancient league , and to confirm to him the former right , his predecessors got from them to cumberland , and westmorland , for assisting them against the picts and saxons ; which shews also , what great things we could do , not only alone without , but even against the picts . all which being said by our historians , not only within the 1400 years , but the 800 , are not controvertible by the bishop's concession : and therefore i understand not why he asserts * that we had nothing but the kingdom of argyle before the beating and extirpating of the picts , who gave us their possession beyond drumalbain . nor can i reconcile , how the bishop asserts all alongst , and particularly , * that the picts had nothing besouth grahams-dyke , or the frith of forth and clyde : and yet he confesses * that amongst the south-picts , there was a monastery of st. martin at whit-horn founded by st. ninian , in honour of that saint ; and whit-horn is in galloway , in the furthest south point of our scotland , near eighty miles besouth forth ; and himself also confesses * whit-horn to be in galloway . the fourth objection being , that our historians have followed ieffrey of monmoth , in many rediculous inventions , which were purely his own ; and particularly in the history of bassianus , who being emperour , is by him pretended to have been kill'd in britain , by fulgentius ; which , tho buchannan does not exactly follow , yet he still makes bassianus to have been a roman lieutenant , and to have been kill'd in britain ; whereas it appears not from any roman authors , that there was any roman lieutenant here . to this it is answered , that no man comparing our histories with ieffrey of monmouth , can think so : for we bring not our nation from brutus , as he does against common sense ; and tho ieffrey tells a story of bassianus the emperour being kill'd in britain , which contradicts the roman story ; yet fordon does expresly say * it was not that bassianus who was emperour , but a captain sent here : and so does not follow , but contradict ieffrey . and buchannan , to shew that he does not follow him ( and he understood too well the roman story to do so ) only relates that there was a bassianus kill'd , which no roman history contradicts ; and which is not to be presum'd buchannan would have made , since there is nothing in it for the advantage of his nation : and as it is probable , the emperour would not have suffer'd carausius to make such great preparations , without sending a considerable captain ; especially since eutropius tells , that after many wars attempted with carausius , he at last concluded to send a captain against him , without naming who that captain was . it were a hard thing therefore to conclude so great authors were forgers , because they condescend not upon an author for every indifferent circumstance ; and the * notitia imperii is so far from having taken notice of every lieutenant in a legion , that i can prove by many texts of the civil law , that even consuls themselves have been forgot , when they were only chosen to succeed to those , who died during their consulship . but the great objection used by the bishop , against our antiquity , lyes in the 4th § of the bishop's first chapter , wherein he asserts , that ireland was peopled by the scots , and was the only scotland before these times , viz. before the year 503 : and in the 5th § , that there were no scots in britain before the said year 300. and in the 6th and 8th § ; that the scots , betwixt the 300 and 500 years , were indeed here , but not setled , and only by way of incursion . and in the 9th § , he asserts , that about the year 500 they first setled here , and erected the kingdom of argile . and in the 12th and 13th § , he asserts , that after the year 900 , we got the rest of the country , and then only it came to be called scotland . for clearing all these mistakes , without partiality or humour , i shall sum up my answers in these distinct propositions . first , it is undeniable in it self , and acknowledged by our adversaries , that the first special names , under which ireland was known , were ierna among the * greeks , and hibernia among the latins : both of which are , as i said , acknowledg'd by † bishop vsher himself . my second position is , that before the year 300 , there is no foreign author produced by either nation , that mentions scotia , scoti , or scoticae gentes , except seneca , who mentions the scoto-brigantes : and florus the scoticae pruinae : and hegisippus , who mentions scotia : and porphyrie , who mentions scoticae gentes . and tho i have prov'd formerly all these authors and passages to be genuine , and applicable to us alone : yet , tho they were only spurious authors , or the conjectural readings of new criticks , as bishop * vsher ( whom my lord st. asaph follows ) alledges , † porphyrie only excepted , whose testimony is admitted by him to be in the third century . it clearly follows , that my lord st. asaph has , without sufficient warrant , asserted in the forementioned place , that ireland was called scotland before the year 300 : he admitting no author for this , save porphyrie , whose book he acknowledges not to be extant , but to be only cited by ierom , who liv'd long after the year 300. 3. my chief design in this book , is not to debate the antiquity of the names of scotia , or scoti , but only when we first setled under kings in this isle . and consequently though arch-bishop vsher , and the bishop of st. asaph could prove , that the words scotia , and scoti , were not known the first 300 years , except in porphyrie ; yet that cannot prove that we were not setled here before that time. for it is undeniable , that many nations have had peculiar names , before those names can be found in history , as scaliger very well proves : and they could not be known in histories , till other nations had commerce with them , and wrote of them , which was a thing very accidental . and foreigners do oft-times design nations by appellatives , which they themselves invent . and it is asserted by bp vsher , that the scots inhabited ireland long before the year 300 , tho till then he cannot give an author for that word . and who can deny that the picts liv'd long here before eumenius , who first mention'd them , and liv'd long after porphyrie who mentions the scots ? and it is very observable that to this day , neither the irish nor we are call'd scots in the true irish language ; for they call their own country-men erenach , from the word ierna , or ibernia , and us albanach , from albion , and albania : which also clears , that we got that name long before iulius caesar's time ; since before that time , the word albian was run into desuetude , and was succeeded to by the more known name of britannia : and these originations are the more confirm'd , that to this day the same irish , and our highlanders , know no other names to the english , save sassanach , because of saxony from which they came ; as they call'd us albanach ( to distinguish us from themselves ) from the country to which we came . which may give us likewise a hint , how by names , without histories , most ancient monuments of antiquity may be preserv'd : and it is fully prov'd before that time , we were known in this country , under the name of * dalreudini , and † caledonii . 4. all those uncontroverted testimonies , that make first mention of the scots , and of scotland , are only applicable to us : such as claudian , pacatius , ammianus , &c. as has formerly been fully prov'd . and since hegesippus is the first author produc'd by the bp of st. asaph , who mentions scotia ; and that it has been formerly prov'd , that these passages relate to us , and not to ireland ; it follows clearly , that the name scotia was given to us , before it was given to ireland , or that the irish were call'd scoti : albeit it were admitted that the works ascribed to hegesippus , were really st. ambroses , who flourished before the year 400. and cambden acknowledges that the name of scotland came over with the scots to britain , cap. 1. hibernia . and therefore since i have prov'd , that the scots came over before iulius caesar's time ; it follows from cambden , that the name of scotland was ascribed to us before them . 5. tho it be true , and acknowledg'd on all hands , that ireland was inhabited by the nation of the scots , as is written by orosius in the year 417 ; and that it be true that our colony came from ireland , as beda and our historians commonly assert , and that thence it may be said , that hibernia est proprie scotorum patria . it will not follow that either we , or the irish were called scots before that time ; or that because we have deriv'd our colony from the irish , that therefore we have deriv'd the name of scoti from them . but on the contrary , supposing with vsher , that the nomen scoticum had been first given in the third century , then the name behov'd to have been ours originally , who were more known and consider'd in the world than they , because of the honour we had in the roman wars ( whose authors do first mention scoti , and scotia ) and our early conversion to the christian faith : and by our frequent intercourse of colonies with the irish ( as about the time of fergus the second ) . it is probable we did communicate the name of scoti to these inhabitants in ireland , from whose ancestors we were descended , and among whom our colonies , that were returned , setled ; as at this day , the scots in the north of ireland do retain the name , and as we had the name of hibernia communicated to us from them ; which is abundantly clear'd from what is said out of eumenius and gildas . so that these names of hiberni and scoti have become common to both people ; but with this difference , that as the irish were originally called hiberni ; so our scots were originally scoti . for of all the passages produced by archbishop vsher , or bishop of st. asaph , to prove the irish to be called scoti , that of orosius is the first that is applicable to them : for those from claudian , ammianus , pacatius , and hegisippus do not at all agree with them ; nor yet that passage from prosper , as has been proved ; nor these from gildas : for tho he calls those people , who are said to return home , hiberni , or irish ; yet * he calls the same people who return'd home , scots , and not irish. and the actions to which these passages cited against us relate , are uncontrovertedly by beda , gildas , and all the roman authors , applicable to us , and not to the irish : being the three vastations made by the picts , and vs in the british territories . and marianus ( whom the bishop likewise cites against us ) * does expressly apply this to the scots ; for he uses the word scoti , in speaking of all the three vastations . and whereas gildas useth the word scoti , speaking of the first two vastations , and says , hiberni revertuntur domum , speaking of the last : marianus , repeating the same passage , says , scoti revertuntur domum . by which also i infer by a far better consequence , that the scots must be said to return to the place where they were formerly settled ; but so it is , that the place where the scots were formerly setled was the west of scotland , and therefore when they return'd home , they return'd not to ireland , as the bp of st. asaph alledges , but to our north-west country , as we contend : for the word in gildas , is à gircio , which signifies north-west ; and ireland lies south-west from grahams-dyke , near which these actions were done : but argile , and those isles which we possessed , lies indeed north-west from it . and if they had return'd to ireland , they had been trans-marine , as living in another isle , contrary to gildas's own express assertion , as it is interpreted by beda , cap. 12. lib. 2. 2. why should the picts and scots ( being spoke of as to their going home together , the one to the north , and the other to the west ) not be thought to have gone home to the same isle , since different isles are not mentioned ? and if i said , i were going to the west , that in common sense could only be understood , of the west of that kingdom or island where i then were ; and not of any other kingdom lying to the west thereof . and both the picts and scots being equally called trans-marine nations , if the scots went out of the isle , it must follow that the picts left it also , which never any was so ridiculous as to alledge . by all which it clearly follows , that the words scoti & hiberni were , before these times , promiscuously ascribed to us . and tho beda may speak of the scots coming from ireland , and setling a third colony in britain long before iulius caesar's time , yet that doth only prove the antiquity of the settlement of the people that are call'd scoti , but not the antiquity of their name , concerning which beda was not treating : for he rather seems to insinuate the contrary , when * he says , aquo ( viz. duce reuda ) usque hodie dalreudini vocantur . 6. the passages produced by the bp of st. asaph & vsher , for proving that ireland was called scotia , after the age that hegisippus or ambrose liv'd in , and within the 1000 years , are very few : and many of them from legendary writers . but i shall glance at the most material . the first is isidor hispalensis , who liv'd in the 7th century , and who says * scotia eadem & hibernia , proxima britanniae insula , spatio terrarum angustior , sed situ faecundior . the same words are used by orosius , whom he follows , except that orosius calls the inhabitans scoti , but does not call the country scotia , but hibernia : so that orosius having first call'd the inhabitants of ireland , scoti , in the year 417 ; isidor by an ordinary derivation calls their country scotia , and is the first that arch-bishop vsher , or the bishop of saint asaph , does produce to prove hibernia to be call'd scotia ? and is in the year 620 , and so is too late to prove their design , since it is clearly prov'd that our country was called scotia in st. ambrose's time , even by their own concession . and whereas the same isidor , speaking of ireland says , haec est proprie scotorum patria ; beside what has been formerly urged , it is observable that the word proprie does imply as if it might have been justly doubted , and that it was not true in all senses : especially since * beda uses the very same expression , after that he has fully cleared that we were settled here long before that time : and therefore it doth necessarly follow that these words are consistent with our being settled here ; and consequently that they must not be so interpreted , as to infer that ireland was the place where we then liv'd but only the place from which we came : and such as understand the civil law , ( the best standard of the latine language ) must acknowled , that there is , * patria originis , as well as incolatûs & domicilii : and it may be justly said of those of virgina and other english plantations , that , anglia est proprie illorum patria : and generally it is observable , that the authors relating both to us and them , do first call the people scoti , and then the country scotia : but still the more ancient authors call us scoti before them , and our country scotia before theirs . as to the citations out of adamnanus in vita columbae , and beda : it is certain that adamnanus is lately publish'd by an irish hand , as appears by the marginal notes , the publisher still adding hibernia in the magin , where scotia is in the text. but however it is certain that adamnanus was abbot of hy , which is ikolmkil among the scotish west islands : so that in dubio he is presum'd to be a scots-man , and not an irish ; and balaeus and others positively assert him to be a scots-man . nor is there any reason for their calling him an irish-man ; but because all authors who speak of him , call him scotus ; and to assert a man to be an irish-man , because he is called scots-man , is rather a bull than a reason . but because he is mention'd by beda , who liv'd shortly after him , and is an author of far greater authority . what i shall observe from beda , will serve to clear the citations out of both . and first , beda * relates , that ecgfrid king of northumberland , having sent an army into ireland under bertus , he wasted the country , and the innocent people . and the next year , having sent an army to waste the province of the picts , contrary to the advice of his friends , and of st. cuthbert , god suffered that army to be destroy'd , because the former year he had rejected their advice ; * that he should not invade scotland , which did not wrong him . and to clear that the scotia here express'd was not ireland , he adds , † the english and scots who abide in britain . this passage ( as well as the others which i have cited , and shall cite ) proves , 1. that scotland then was promiscuously express'd by the names of hibernia and scotia : for the same thing is said first to have been done in hibernia , and thereafter it is said to have been done in scotia : and this answers the objection , hiberni revertuntur domum ; and where could their home be but in ireland ? 2. it proves that this our country was call'd scotia in beda's time ; and so long before the year 1000 , which the bishop denies . nor can it be prov'd that the king of northumberland went to make war in ireland ; nor speaks beda of any war with ireland . the next passage from beda is , where he says , * that columbanus an abbot and presbyter , came in the year 565 , from ireland to britain , to preach the word of god to the provinces of the north-picts : and converted them ; and got from them possession of the former island for founding a monastery , where he was buried . out of which monastery ( meaning hy ) many other monasteries were propagated in ireland and britain ; in all which the same island-monastery was the chief . and he takes notice , that the successors of this abbot differed in the observation of easter from the church of rome , till the year 716. and thereafter he says , that * aidan was sent from this island for instructing the province of the english. now he had said before , † aidan who was sent from the isle which is called hy , which is the chief of the scotish and pictish monasteries , and belongs to britain . and thereafter he * says , that colman seeing his doctrine slighted , and his adherents despised , returned to scotland . so that we see , that that which at the first is called * ireland ; afterward is called † the said island , and the monastery in it , the * island-monastery ; and thereafter it is † called the isle of hy ; and thereafter it is * called scotland . i shall cite a third passage from beda , where speaking of a great plague in britain , he adds , * this plague also wasted ireland with the same destruction ; at which time there were there many of the nobility and commons of england , who in the time of the bishops , finan and colman having left their own native island for the greater convenience , either of divine studies , or a more strict life , had retired thither . — all whom the scots kindly entertain'd , and furnished with all things necessary , and gave them freely meat , and books to read , and learning , and thereafter speaking of egbert , who was among them , he adds , † that he was a good example to his own nation , and to the nations of the picts and scots among whom he liv'd retiredly ; by which passages it is evident , that that which is here called ireland , is really our scotland ; first , because it is said , they came from england upon the occasion of finan and colman , who were our countrymen , and whose chief residence was the isle of hy , or icolm-kill , ( from which they came ) which did then , and does still belong to us only , and which the bishop of st. asaph also * confesses : and then because in their monastick life , it is said , they resided among the scots and picts , and † it is said before that the island where the monastery was , belonged to britain . but for further clearing the former citations , from beda i shall offer these following considerations . 1. that beda treats only the actions of these five nations that did inhabite britain : and if he do speak of france or ireland , it is but upon occasion of them ; as of the situation of ireland from whence the scots came , or of some monasteries depending upon icolm-kill , which perhaps were situated near us , in the north of ireland : and therefore unless all these passages were clearly applicable to ireland , they must be understood of scotland . 2. it being certain , that beda , in the beginning of his book , treats concerning the scots in britain , the roman wars with them , and palladius's being sent to them , it necessarily follows , that the rest of the book mentioning the scots , or that part of the isle possess'd by them , is to be understood of us , whether the country be called hibernia or scotia , or we hiberni or scoti : especially since beda mentions a king call'd aidan ; and * we had a king of that name in that time , which the irish cannot pretend . beda treats also concerning the abbots of hy , which is icolm-kill , as is clear by that passage , * where he says , columba , founder of the monastery in the isle of hy , venerable to the scots and picts , which by a compounded name from columba and cell is called icolm-kill . and that the monks sent from this monastery , or island , were the converters of the north-saxons , and the first bishops of lindasfern or holy-island ? predecessors of the bishop of durham . 3. he makes frequent mention of little islands , which never did belong to ireland , but to sotland , and are still called hebrides ; and so as the chief of these isles where the abbot resided the records were kept , and the kings were buried , might probably be called insula hiberniae , or hibernia , and that scotia might be the ordinary name to all that part of the isle of britain benorth the river of clyde : so that the going from hiberniâ , or scotiâ , in britanniam , is nothing but the going to the other side of clyde , * by which , and graham's-dyke , that part of the isle was distinguished from the rest , as if it had been a distinct island . 4. the great controversy at that time being about the keeping of easter , laurentius mellitus , and iustus , bishops , did write a letter to us of the following tenor. * laurentius mellitus , and justus , bishops , servants of all the servants of god , to our dearest brethren , the bishops and abbots through all scotland . whileas the apostolick sea , according to the custom it hath observ'd in the rest of the world , did send us to preach the gospel unto the heathens in these western parts ; and that it happened to us to come into this isle which is called britain ; we held in religious reverence both the scots and britons , believing that they did walk after the custom of the universal church . but after we had known the britons , we judg'd the scots to be the better minded : yet now we perceive by dagamus , the bishop who is come hither , and by columbanus the abbot in france , that the scots differ nothing in their observations from the britons ; for dagamus being here , refused not only to eat with us , but even to stay in the same inn or lodging . now that this is only applicable to us , and not to the scots in ireland , the subject doth prove , being exhortatory letters , to conform in the observation of easter , wherein the british scots , who follow'd columba , differ'd from the roman church . 2. the letter is written to the scots , and relates to other letters written to the britons in the same isle ; and who needed the same exhortation . and it is to be remembred , that vsher generally concludes , that where the scots and britons are mention'd in conjunction , by scots there , are to be understood the british scots . 3. * camerarius cites georgius newton , who about the year 1500 , being then arch-deacon of dumblain , did write the acts of that church ; and relates that he had seen the antographum of that letter among the records of that church ; and so it must necessarily have been written to the scots in britain , else it had not been in the custody of our church-men , and at dumblain . i could produce many other citations to prove scotland to have been call'd hibernia in those ages : but it is sufficient to add to these unanswerable proofs already produced , the authority of the roman martyrology ; wherein sanetus beanus is design'd episcopus aberdoniae in hibernia , at the 16 of december . to which vardaeus an irish-man in vita rumoldi answers , that there might have been a place in ireland call'd aberdeen , because aber is an irish word , signifying a marish , and there is a town call'd doun in ireland , situated near a marish . a pretty witticism indeed ! especially as he proposes the objection , and answers the same , as you may see upon the margin . * but to take off all debate , beanus is nam'd in our chartularies , as well as histories , as the first bishop of aberdeen : and the mortifications granted to him by our king malcom 2d , in the year 1010 , of the lands of murthlack , cloveth , and dounmeth , are yet extant : and his tomb is yet to be seen in the cathedral of aberdeen , at the postern door of the church . to the former passages i must also add , that albeit our country was promiscuously call'd scotia , and hibernia , as has been prov'd , yet scotia , even in that time , was the more frequent name of our country : and which , to keep close to beda , appears ; for when he speaks of the isle hy , ( to which the former citations chiefly relate , and which was the place of our country , in which his history being ecclesiastick , is chiefly concern'd , as being then one of ( if not ) the most famous monastery in the western world ) he expresses it to be in scotia : as where he tells , that * ceollach , of the nation of the scots , leaving his bishoprick in england , returned to hy , where the scots had their chief monastery : and thereafter he tells , that † the same ceollach having left his ▪ bishoprick , return'd to scotland . and the same * beda , writing of adamnanus , calls him abbot and presbyter of the monks that are in the monastery of hy. and mentioning the same adamnanus , † he tells , that he returned to scotland , after his embassy in england . and how can it be denied that hy is in scotland ? since beda calls it scotland , and says , that it belong'd to britain : and is by all geographers nam'd one of our hebrides , and lies locally within our country ; and was one of the first places which we planted , and far remoter from ireland , than kintire and others of our islands ; and in which our kings were buried , and our records kept . to conclude this proposition , i shall add these reflections . 1. that it is not so easy for the bishop of st. asaph to explicate himself as to these passages concerning scotia and scoti , and to make them signifie ireland and irish , since the 500 year , as before : for admitting that the terms were anciently applicable to ireland , and that the scots when mention'd here , were but by invasion from ireland ; yet it being acknowledg'd , that after the year 500 we were settled here ; it follows , that when scotia and scoti are mention'd in relation to british affairs , and in conjuction with the inhabitans of britain , they must be understood of us , and our country . 2. beda mentioning our country to be call'd scotia , as well as hibernia , from columba's time to his own , it is not only an evidence , that it was so call'd in that time , but that the name had not been then first given , otherwise he could not have been ignorant of the change , nor would he have failed to remark it : so that we may reasonably conclude in his sense , the name of scotia is as ancient in britain , as the time he mentions the settlement , wars , and religion of the scots there . 3. it is evident , that the bp of st. asaph's * proposition is faulty , viz. that , when we settled here after the year 500 , our kingdom was call'd argyle , or dalrieda : for if this had been true , this name being so recent , could not but have been noticed and used by gildas and beda , and yet it is never so much as once mention'd by either of them ; tho beda , upon the occasion of the monastery of hy , or icolm-kill , and of the bishops sent thence to england , doth frequently mention the names hibernia and scotia , and that st. asaph * doth not controvert , but that these bishops were sent from our isle of icolm-kill to england . 4. we may observe how warrantable * arch-bishop vsher's position ( repeated by the bishop of st. asaph ) is , that no author mentions our country by the name of scotia for the first 1000 years ; whereas most of all the former authors , both within and without the isle , prove scotia to have been the name of our country : and the whole tract of beda's history proves , that since the year 560 , this country was generally so called : whereas neither gildas , nor beda , who lived near that time , and wrote whole books of us , do once call it dalrieda , or argyle : and consequently ( as i observ'd before ) the bishop of st. asaph's whole sect. 9. of the first chapter , wherein he asserts , that about the year 500 , the scots erected the kingdom of argile , or dalrieda , is most unwarrantable ; for though beda calls us once dalreudini , yet this is spoken of us by him , in the time of our king reuda , and so near 70 years before the 503 after christ. and from this also arises a clear confutation of what the bishop of st. asaph asserts , that no author writing within the 1000 years , and naming scotia , means us ; which is so far from being so , that no author of credit ( isidore only excepted ) did then by scotia mean ireland . and the best authority that arch-bishop vsher gives us for dalrieda , is iocelin ; which my lord st. asaph hath improved by a new authority out of a manuscript of the lord burghlie's , where the author thinks that dalrieda , and the kingdom of argile , are the same . authors not to be once mentioned with those whom we cite . 7. the distinction of scotia major , and minor , is lately invented ; for either ireland was called scotia major before the year 1000 , or only since : if the first , then it necessarily implyeth , that at that time our country was also call'd scotia minor , there being no other place assignable . but this is contrary to arch-bishop vsher , and my lord st. asaph's position , who deny our country was called scotia at all for the first 1000 years . if it be asserted that this distinction was after the 1000 years , then there was little or no use for it : for * vsher tells us , that nubiensis geographus , about the year 1150 , describes ireland by the name of hibernia , and describes our country by the name of scotia : and so it seems at that time ireland had lost the name in our favour ; and it is not to be imagin'd that nubiensis remarked the first periods of the change of the name ; and geographers do describe countries by their ordinary names . nor does vsher * produce any other testimony , save a letter of dovenaldus oneil prince of vlster to pope iohn 22d , wherein there is this passage , * beside the kings of lesser scotland , who all came originally from our greater scotland . and a patent of sigismund the emperor , † to the convent of the scots and irish of greater scotland of a monastery in ratisbone . now vsher acknowledgeth the eldest of these two citations , were in the 14th or 15th century ; when i hope no body will assert , that ireland was called scotia major , or that ever the kings of england , who were lords of ireland , were ever called lords majoris scotiae ; and it is probable they would have very much affected that title ( if the country had had that name ) altho they could never make themselves masters scotiae minoris . but it is no wonder , that the irish should be glad to tell foreigners , that they were our chief , and so their country ought to be called scotia major ; notwithstanding that our nation was then become great and glorious : and that vsher can find no better authority for his distinction of scotia major and minor , than these borrowed and magnifying names , used long after he himself acknowledgeth that ireland had lost the name of scotia , and that we were only in possession of it . 8. the mistaking of the names of scotia and hibernia , and of that assertion , scotia eadem & hibernia , and applying these names still to ireland , and not to our country , hath been the ground whereupon we have been injured , as to the antiquity of our kings and country , saints and learned men , monasteries , and greatness abroad . for admitting it to be true , that we were not setled here till the year 500 , yet we have been so happy , as to have such excellent men , and to have done so considerable actions , as have been sufficient to tempt our neighbours , and particularly the irish , to take great pains to have both pass for their own . in order to which the irish have lately invented the distinction of scotia major and minor , to the end , that when any considerable person is called a scots-man in history , they might claim him as descended from the greater scotland . but besides , that this distinction is too new to be extended to ancient writers , how can it be imagined that our country , only having passed under the name of scotland before the 300 , and after the 1100 , as has been proved , ireland should have assumed the name of scotland in that interval ? is it not more reasonable to think that our country , which alone was design'd by that name , before the 300 , and after 1100 , bore it likewise only , or at least chiefly , during that interval . but to assert that , during that space , another country had our old and present designation in a more peculiar manner than we ; and that in dubious cases it must be appropriated to them , is a piece of confidence which even eminent wit and learning cannot support . and yet we find , in malcom the second's time , ( as was formerly observ'd ) who began to reign in the year 1004 , that the frith of forth ( in his laws , in the book of regiam majestatem ) is call'd mare scotiae : and it is said there , that the same king did distribute , omnem terram scotiae hominibus suis : and it is not to be concluded , that this was the first time that our country was so call'd . and about that time ireland was expressed only by the name of hibernia ; for king henry the 2d of england , who began to reign in the year 1154 , is stiled lord of ireland . and to clear further that scotia about those times was the ordinary name for scotland , and hebernia for ireland , i shall only add some few passages out of marianus scotus , who was born in the year 1028 , and died in the year 1086 , * who sayes , that about the year 1016 , brianus , king of ireland , was killed ; and a little thereafter , † at the year 1034. malcolm king of scotland died , and duncan the son of his daughter succeeded him . and after that he sayes , at the year 1040 , * duncan king of scotland , was killed , and the son of finlay succeeded in his kingdom , whom afterward † he calls * machetad king of scotland . all which passages agree exactly with our history , and the summary of our kings lives , as they are recorded in our acts of parliament , and prove that marianus treats of scotland , and ireland , as different kingdoms in his time. in the last place , i shall make some remarks upon the most palpable of these mistakes , and of the chief authors thereof : wherein i shall vindicate the right and dignity of our country , and assert these worthy persons controverted to be ours . i shall not insist much against stanihurst , he being solidly confuted by * camerarius , and with that severity by dempster , that his nephew bishop vsher ( as the duke of lauderdail remarked in some judicious reflections of his upon this occasion ) did highly resent it , and in this matter hath exceeded his usual temperament and moderation . and yet stanihurst never speaks injuriously of our nation ; for though he mistakes many things , and applys them to his own country ; yet it appears to be , rather of design to magnifie it , than injure ours : for he acknowledeth ingenuously , * that he doth not clearly see from what time the name of scotland commenced . and though thereafter he taxeth boethius upon the subject of gathelus and scota , and that he mixeth fables and vain glory with his history ; yet he neither disapproves of buchannan , nor follows he luddus , both of whom he cites , and who were immediatly before him ; his book being printed at antwerp , in the year 1584. in his appendix also , commenting upon giraldus cambrensis ( a welsh-man , and scretary to king henry 2d of england , and flourished before the end of the 12th century ) he translates cambrensis , who describes ireland by the name of hibernia , and makes frequent mention of our country under the name of scotia ; as when he speaks of the extent of ireland , he says ( as stanihurst interprets it ) that * it is equal in largeness to wales and scotland . and elsewhere he says , that † scotland is called the north part of the isle of britain . and afterwards he tells the story of moreds six sons , and that from them the inhabitants of the north part of britain , * by a specifick word , were called the scotish nation . and stanihurst in his annotations on these two chapters contends , that before st. patrick's time our country was called scotia ; and brings for proofs st. ierome , who asserts that the scots were gens britannica ; but with great concern he vindicates us from the calumny of eating mens flesh : and for our antiquity he cites beda , who says , that sub duce rendâ we made a third nation in britain . so that we see that neither the welsh in giraldus's time , nor the irish in stanihurst's time , had the opinion of our late settlement , and that our country was not call'd scotia for 1000 years after christ ; which their successors luddus , cambden , vsher and st. asaph have had . and the irish in those days took a far better way for advancing their own interest in doing us justice ; since from all the considerable actions we did , there did arise a measure of that honour to them , from whose country we came as a colony : whereas since they were influenc'd by strangers , they have suffer'd themselves to be impos'd upon , so as to lessen our true merit , in appropriating immediatly to themselves those devout persons , who were really our country-men : not considering that the material unjustice was much greater than the imaginary honour : and this plagiarism and man-stealing became easie to them since our reformation from popery , because after that time we became too careless of those eminent persons both at home and abroad , who had liv'd in the roman communion , or before that time . but i will not insist on this , for i hope their native kindness will incline them to return to their first just methods . if i had leisure , i would make larger reflections , to prove how unconsequential arch bp vsher is , in making sedulus and marianus irish : since by all writers they are both call'd scots , and balaeus an englishman tells us , that † sedulius flourish'd under fergus 2d . and * marianus under macbeth , both our kings ; and baronius asserts also this positively . and sedulius having liv'd before st. patrick's time ( who was the first apostle of ireland ) and being disciple to hildebert an acknowledg'd scot , and who liv'd in the 390 , must be prior to the irish christianity ; which giraldus and stanihurst acknowledge to have been first planted by st. patrick in the year 432. nor can * vsher in all his vast reading , find any christians in ireland betwixt the year 400 , and 432 , which was st. patrick's time , but kiaranus , ailbeus , declanus , ibarus : tho if sedulius had been an irish , he had been certainly mention'd and employ'd , before those obscure persons ; and certainly he would have employed himself before st. patrick's time in the conversion of his own native country , if he had been truly irish. and as to marianus scotus , it is a wonder how it can be controverted that he was a scots-man ; since our country was then called scotland by the bp of st. asaph's own confession ; and ireland was just then losing that name ; and marianus in his whole book distinguishes betwixt scoti and hiberni , and mentions the forementioned three kings of scotland about whose time he liv'd ; and also makes mention of one king of ireland about that time : as has been observed already ; and particularly , speaking of the conversions * by palladius and st. patrick , he expresly distinguishes betwixt scoti , and hibernenses . but passing these , i confess it is pretty ridiculous to see a whole book written by the above-mentioned vardaeus , and glossed by sirin , and published at louvain 1662 , to prove that rumoldus arch-bishop of mechlin was an irish-man : since the arms of scotland ( which are , or , a lion rampant gules , within a doubles tressure flowred and counterflowred with flower de lis of the same ) are plac'd upon every window of the catherdral church built by him , and are to this day a part of the arms of that archi-episcopal see , rumoldus himself being a younger brother of the royal-family of scotland : and in which witty book , the author , to confute this , * is forced to maintain that the scotish lion is born by several irish familes ; and the double tressure , tho anciently born by scotland , and which is blazon'd in that archi-episcopal coat of arms , might have been born by the irish , because that famous league betwixt the scots and charlemaigne , was made with the kings of ireland , and not with the kings of scotland ; and that our kings had never any leagues with the french , till the reign of charles 7th who was contemporary with our king iames 1st : whereas the whole french histories , as well as ours ; and all foreign historians , as well as either , the leagues yet extant ; the priviledges granted thereupon to us , recorded in the french registers , and ours ; many decisions in parliaments , and other courts ; and the universal consent of all the french who ever liv'd since that time , do in all humility seem to be sufficient warrants for laughing at this monstruous assertion ; as i do at him and others , who pretend that the scotish monasteries in germany , are irish : since they were founded in charle-maigne's time , by william brother to our king achaius , and others that went there with him ; and they are to this day govern'd by abbots and priors of our country : nor can it be understood , how the french and germans could mistake their own records and foundations for so many hundreds of years togeder , and by this i leave my reader to measure the other unjust pretensions of such authors . i hope it now at last appears , that i have detected those ingenious artifices , which this learn'd bishop was forc'd to use , to supply his want of solid and just grounds in this his undertaking . as , 1. that , to conciliate respect to this undertaking , as well as to excuse it , he pretends that it was necessary for the defence of episcopacy . 2. he makes a great muster of old authors in the beginning of his book , as if all these were men of great credit , and did concur with him to refute our history ; and adorns his margins with formidable numbers of citations . 3. knowing that it could be prov'd , both by british and foreign historians , that we were here very anciently , he confesses this ; but by a new and strange invention , he asserts that we were not here as settled inhabitants , but only by way of incursion . 4. he defers our setling here , till the year 503 , and so longer than the first inventors of this new story did ; upon design to make our settlement here , later then that of the anglo-saxons , who settl'd here in anno 449. 5. he lessens the reputation of all our historians , and endeavours also to make them pass but for one ; as if the succeeding historian had seen no other warrants , but the preceeding histories . 6. he treats in ridicule ieffrey , and some other historians of his own country , whom he knew could not be sustain'd however ; and this he does upon design , to shew his impartiality , and that he spares not his own more than ours . 7. for the same reason he decrys the british descent from brutus : in which he loses nothing , because no sober man could have defended it ; and he denies the conversion of their own king lucius , to strike thereby with the greater authority at the antiquity of our royal-line and nation , treating king donald's conversion also as a fable : and thus according to our proverb , he is content to let a friend go with a foe . 8. he complements our nation in latter times , to excuse the injury he does our kings and antiquity . 9. he uses the foreign authors that should be urg'd for us , to prevent our using of them as proving arguments against him . 10. finding that ireland has been call'd scotia , he transplants our old saints thither , and applies to it , all that is said of our country : nor did ever any author improve better a pitiful clinch . 11. he concurs in another design like to this : for , because it could not be deny'd that fergus was our first king ; all the citations for proving this , are therefore apply'd to fergus the second , and not to fergus the first . lastly ; whereas cambden and arch-bishop vsher speak doubtingly of their own arguments ; the bishop of st. asaph fearing that his reader could not be convinc'd , of what himself was not , he therefore proposesall these arguments , with a confidence , which would seem to argue that full conviction in himself , which he wishes in others . if any person then would know how that scotland , which was but a small colony , grew up to a kingdom that deserv'd so well : my thoughts of this are , that , 1. the constant defence that we were oblig'd to make against the romans and britons at first , and english thereafter , nations wise , brave , and polish'd , living in the same isle with us , and the picts within us , did force us to think and fight ; and the observing the actions & conduct of such enemies could not leave the observers rude or ignorant : and it 's like that the glory of such noble adversaries , rais'd our wit and courage above the pitch of a northen and confin'd nation . 2. our country having had the happiness to stop the roman conquest , this gave strangers a value for us ; and therefore when any of the gallant britons scorn'd to submit to the slavery and drudgery of a conquest , they fled unto us from the romans , saxons , danes , and normans ; and being passionate lovers of liberty , they animated us by their assistance and example . this likewise brought in brave strangers amongst us , as all gallant spirits did lately run to holland in its first rise : and ( as our historians probably relate ) very many of those return'd with fergus the second from the wars in italy , whither that generous young prince went to assist alarick against the romans , in a just resentment of the injury done by them to his predecessors , and with whom he was present at the sacking of rome . 3. we have been very happy in so heroick and wife a race of kings , whose blood being refin'd by a long royal descent , hath been thereby purifiy'd from all meanness , and elevated to that love for glory , which is ordinary in those , who never knew what it was to obey . 4. our country having entered early into a remarkable league with france , in the reign of charle-maigne ; our country-men got excellent breeding , under so wise and valiant a prince ; and have ever since , by being constantly employed in the french , and other wars , attain'd to a degree of merit , beyond what was to be expected in this climate . 5. our country having neither bogs nor fogs , our ground being rocky and gravelly , and our air fann'd by winds ; this preserves us from the dulness and phlegm of the northern climats ; and the want of that superfluous plenty , and bewitching pleasure , which softned even hannibal when he came to capua , preserves us against the delicacy and effeminateness of southern nations . and whereas ( heroick virtue being still attended by envy ) some in railery pretend , that we were unconquer'd , because we deserv'd not the pains and trouble of a war. i need not seriously answer , what no historian can urge : for it is ridiculous to think , that the romans would not have rather conquer'd us , than built two strong and expensive walls against us , which bounded their fame , as well as their conquest . and england hath taken too much pains to gain us , either by conquest or alliance , to have undervalued us . and though when we were divided by the differences betwixt the bruce and barliol of old , and betwixt the royalists and covenanters of late ; the half of our country having only defended its liberties , whilst the other half joyn'd with its enemies ; we were rather betray'd than overcome : and yet we soon recovered our former liberty . albeit , to be overcome by england had been no great affront to us : england being a greater and richer nation than we are . and therefore i hope , all honest men will , with judicious samuel daniel in his history , at the year 1296 , confess , that it had been a pity , we had not had a better country , to be the theatre of so many worthy and heroick actions . having thus clear'd how our nation arriv'd at its present consistence , i am to finish this discourse , with a representation of the many rights which our kings have to the imperial throne of these kingdoms ; and to show how they succeed to all who ever pretended to monarchy in any of them . as to the british part of the isle , aurelius ambrosius was , by common consent , chosen sole prince of all the britons : and he had no other succession , save two daughters , anna married to the king of the picts , and ada married to the king of the scots . mordredus king of the picts , grand-child to the foresaid aurelius , finding himself debarr'd from the succession of the british crown , employ'd the scots , who fought for him against the britons . but the britons having called in the saxons , after a bloody battel , both parties were forced to withdraw ; and the king of the picts was induc'd to desist from his pretentions at that time . but thereafter hungus , king of the picts , and the direct heir of the same mordredus , and consequently of ambrosius king of the britons , gave his sister fergusiana to achaius king of the scots ; and in her right , alpin king of scotland succeeded both to the british and pictish crowns ; hungus having died without any children , kenneth the 2d , son to alpin , was forc'd to conquer the picts , who refus'd unjustly to receive him as their lawful king. our kings are likewise lineal heirs of the danish-race , who were kings of england for 27 , or as others say , 29 years ; they being the only lineal successors of canutus king of the danes in britain : for margaret , wife to king malcolm the 3d , was sister to edgar , which edgar was grand-child to st. edward , who was brother to hardiknut , son to canutus . after this the kingdom of england return'd to the old stock in king edward's time ; to whom succeeded edgar , whose sister the pious queen margaret married king malcolm the 3d of scotland , by whom he came to have right to the crown of england ; there being none extant of the old royal-saxon-line besides her self : and with her came very many of the nobility , who fled from william the conquerour , after he conquer'd england , and with whom king malcolm would not make peace , till such of them as resolved to return were restored to their estates . the next royal-race which flourished in england , was the norman : and to that race our kings succeeded thus . the line of william the conqueror was branch'd out in the houses of lancaster and york . to the house of lancaster , they succeed as heirs by the marriage betwixt ioan daughter to the duke of somerset , and undoubted successor of the family of lancaster . and to both lancaster and york they succeed , by being heirs to henry the 7th ; in whom these successions were again happily reconcil'd ; he having married elizabeth eldest daughter to edward the 4th , who had transferred the succession of the crown from the house of lancaster , to that of york , or at least had united the two in one . for clearing whereof , it is fit to know , that henry the 7th had only four children , arthur , henry , margaret , and mary . arthur , and henry dying without succession , the right of the crown was certainly devolv'd upon the children of margaret the daughter ; who did bear king iames the 5th , in a first marriage with king iames the 4th ; and margaret dowglas , by a second marriage with the earl of angus : which margaret being married to matthew earl of lenox , had two sons ; the eldest whereof was henry , who thereafter married queen mary daughter to king iames the 5th ; and begot upon her king iames the 6th : and thus king iames the 6th was upon all sides heir to william the conquerour , and to henry the 7th . the histories also of both nations confess , that our king is the undoubted successor of the blood-royal of wales : for walter stuart , from whom our kings are descended , was grand-child to the king of wales , by his daughter , * who married fleanchus son to † banqhuo : and henry the 7th ( to whom king iames the 6th was the true successor ) was also the righteous heir of cadwallader the last prince of wales . the histories both of scotland and ireland do acknowledg , that our kings are undoubtedly descended from the royal race of the kings of ireland ; and all the debate that can be , is only whether they be desended from king ferquhard , father to king fergus the first , or from eeric father to king fergus the second ; or from some other irish kings , as vsher pretends . from all which i may draw two conclusions ; first , that god has , from an extraordinary kindness to those kingdoms , lodged in the person of our present soveraign , king iames the 7th ( whom god almighty long preseve ) all those opposite , and different rights , by which our peace might have been formerly disturb'd . 2. that his majesty who now reigns , has deriv'd from his royal ancestors , a just and legal right by law , to all those crowns , without needing to found upon the right of conquest : so that the very endeavour , to exclude him from all those legal rights , by arbitrary insolence , under a mask of law , was the height of injustice , as well as imprudence . finis . books printed for , and sold by richard chiswell . folio . speed's maps and geography of great britain and ireland , and of foreign parts . dr. cave's lives of the primitive fathers , in 2 vol. dr. cary's chronological account of ancient time. bp wilkins real character , or philosophical language . hooker's ecclesiastical polity . guillim's display of heraldry , with large additions . dr. burnet's history of the reformation of the church of england , in 2 vol. — account of the confessions and prayers of the murderers of esquire thynn . burlace's history of the irish rebellion . herodoti historia , gr. lat. cum variis lect. the laws of this realm concerning jesuits , seminary priests , recusants , the oaths of supremacy and allegiance explained by divers judgments and resolutions of the iudges ; with other observations thereupon . by william cawley esq . sanford's genealogical hist. of the kings of england . modern reports of select cases , in the reign of king charles the 2d . sir tho. murray's collection of the laws of scotland . dr. towerson's explication on the creed , the commandments , and lord's prayer , in 3 vol. the history of the island of ceylon in the east-indies : illustrated with copper figures ; and an exact map of the island . by capt. robert knox , a captive there near 20 years . qvarto . dr . littleton's dictionary , latin and english. bp nicholson on the church-catechism . history of the late wars of new-england . atwell's faithful surveyer . mr. iohn cave's seven occasional sermons . dr. crawford's serious expostulation with the whigs in scotland . dr. parker's demonstration of the divine authothority of the law of nature , and the christian religion . mr. hook's new philosophical collections . bibliotheca norfolciana . octavo . bishop wilkin's natural religion . — his fifteen sermons . mr. tanner's primordia : or , the rise and growth of the first church of god described . lord hollis's vindication of the judicature of the house of peers , in the case of skinner . — jurisdiction of the house of peers in case of appeals . — jurisdiction of the house of peers in case of impositions . — letters about the bishops votes in capital cases . spaniards conspiracy against the state of venice . dr. sympson's chymical anatomy of the york-shire spaws : with a discourse of the original of hot springs and other fountains . dr. cave's primitive christianity , in three parts . ignatius fuller's sermons of peace and holiness . the trials of the regicides , in 1660. certain genuine remains of the lord bacon , in arguments civil , moral , natural , &c. with a large account of all his works . by dr. tho. tennison . dr. puller of the moderation of the church of england . sir iohn mounson of supream power and common right . dr. henry bagshaw discourse on select texts . mr. seller's state of the church in the three first centuries . the country-mans physician . dr. burnet's account of the life and death of the earl of rochester . — vindication of the ordination of the church of england . — history of the rights of princes in the disposing of ecclesiastical benefices and church-lands . — relation of the present state of the difference between the french king and the court of rome ; to which is added , the pope's brief to the assembly of the clergy , and their protestation , published by dr. burnet . — abridgment of the history of the reformation . ogleby's aesops fables paraphrased in verse , and adorned with sculptures and annotations , in 2 vol. dr. cumber's companion to the altar . galliard's two discourse of private settlement at home after travel , and of him who is in publick employments . markham's perfect horseman . dr. sherlock's practical discourse of religious assemblies . — defence of dr. stillingfleet's unreasonableness of separation . — a vindication of the defence of dr. stillingfleet , in answer to mr. baxter and mr. lob about catholick communion . the history of the house of estee , the family of the dutchess of york , now queen of england . sir rob. filmer's patriarcha , or natural power of kings . mr. iohn cave's gospel to the romans . lawrence's interest of ireland , in its trade and wealth , stated . dvodecimo . hodder's arthmetick . an apology for a treatise of humane reason . written by m. cliford esq . queen-like-closet , both parts . bishop wettenhalls method and order for private devotion . vicessimo qvarto . valentine's private devotions . crums of comfort . books lately printed for ri. chiswell . folio . dr . spencer de legibus hebraeorum ritualibus & earum rationibus . sir iames turner's pallas armata , or military essays of the ancient grecian , roman , and modern art of war. dr. iohn lightfoot's works in english , in 2 vol. mr. selden's ianus anglorum englished , with notes : to which is added his epinomis , concerning the ancient government and laws of this kingdom , never before extant . also two other treatises written by the same author : one of the original of ecclesiastical jurisdictions of testaments ; the other of the disposition or administration of intestates goods ; now the first time published . qvarto . patris simonii disquisitiones criticae de variis per diversa loca & tempora bibliorum editionibus . accedunt castigat . opusc. is. vossii de sibyllinis oraculis . dr. falkner's two treatises of reproaching and censure : with his answer to serjeant's surefooting : also several occasional sermons . the case of lay-communion with the church of england considered . a discourse concerning the celebration of divine service in an unknown tongue . a discourse of the necessity of reformation , with respect to the errors and corruptions of the church of rome . octavo . dr . william cave's dissertation concerning the government of the ancient church by bishops , metropolitans and patriarchs . two letters betwixt mr. r. smith , and dr. hen. hammond , about christ's descent into hell. dean stratford's disswasive from revenge . the life of bishop bedel . dr. harris his rational discourse of remedies . sir george mackenzy's just right of monarchy . dr. hez . burton's first volume of discourses , of purity and charity ; of repentaace , and of seeking the kingdom of god. published by dean tillotson . — his second vol. of discourses upon divers other practical subjects . sir thomas more 's vtopia , newly made english. bishop iewel 's apology for the church of england ; with his life . by a person of quality . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a50493-e140 v. the last four pages of the book . * his own word . notes for div a50493-e480 * ja. 6. par. 20. c. 9. * pag. 169 , 170. 171. * see his late book , entituled , les pretendus reformees convanious du schism , p. 547. 548 , 549 , 550. * pag. 89. † pag. 72 , 73. * pag. 2. * acts 24. 12. notes for div a50493-e2040 sect . 1. what proofs are necessary in history . * rarae per eadem tempora literae f●ere una custodia fidelis memoriae rerum g●starum : & quod etiamsi quae in commentariis pontificum , aliisque publicis privatisque erant monumentis , incensa urbe pleraque periere . liv. i●it . lib. 6. † vossius de hist. lat. lib. 1. cap. 44. & lib. 2. * lib. 1. against appion . * brittann . cap. scoti passim , but especially pag. 242. these are the points , i say , which i would wish the scotish men diligently to think upon ; but let them remember , that in the mean time , i have affirm'd nothing , but only given an inkling of certain things , which may seem in some sort material , whence if the original of the scots have received no light , let them seek it elsewhere ; and i have in vain searched , but with that circumspect care , that i hope i have not given the least offence to any whatsoever . † praefat. de primord . eccl. brit. in nostra autem ex omni scriptorum genere promiscue congesta farragine , siquis obscuriorum authorum citata mirabitur testimonia ; cogitare illum velim , aliud esse historiam scribere aliud materiam hinc inde conve●ere , unde delectu adhibito , &c. sect . 2. what proofs we can adduce for our history , and first of our tradition . * disciplina in britannia reperta , atque inde in galliam translata esse existimatur : caes. bell. gall. lib. 6. multa de ex eorum motu , de mundi ac terrarum magnitudine de rerum natura , de deorum immortalium vi & potestate disputant & juventute tradunt . ibid. cum in publicis rationibus & privivatis , graecis literis utantur . ibid. by publicae rationes , are probably meant their histories , at least it is most reasonable to think , that since they had the use of letters , they would have written histories , or some short memorials . * pag. 96. edit . casaubon . * pag. 71. sect . 3. proofs from manuscripts and records . * beda passim . † lib. 4. cap. 26. * pag. 229. * pag. 13. * pag. 24. † pag. 94. * pag. 95 , & 96. * part post. † pag. 100 , & pag. 460. * et lib. 7. * asservantur in arcanis templi armariis vetustissimorum annalium codices atque item latae membranae , ipsorum regum subscriptae manibus aureisque vel cereis sigillorum imaginibus obsignatae ; quibus antiquae leges edictaque & finium ac civitatum iura publica continentur . * pag. 38. pref. † lib. 7. * pag. 26. pref. * vicfort memoirs des ambassadeurs . * pref. new translat . of plutarch's lives . * pag. 30. pref. * ia quibus scribendis ne historia lex violaretur , illae quae prius scripta sunt , non solum exegimus ad veritatem annalium , qui in publico regni nostri archivo , aliisque antiquissimis codicibus quos majores nostri pasleti , sconae , ac in aliis monasteriis religiose servarunt , continebantur . lesl. paraen . ad nobil . populumque scot. pag. 29. * pag. 153. * de hist. lat. pag. 4. sect . 4. the other historians of this isle cited against us , examined . * orig. sac. p. 114. sect. 5. * pag. 16. * cap. 3. as cited by s. asaph , pag. 14. pref. * pag. 2. * pag. 16. * bal. pref. part post . † de excid . brit. * cap. 1. beda . * st. asaph , p. 10. * lib. 2. descript . britan. cap. 8. & 9. * girald . camb. distinct. 3. cap. 7. * vita st. pat. cap. 5. † vita columb . adamn . lib. 3. c. 16. * de eccl. brit. primord . p. 587. * cap. 137. * pag. 160. * de primord . pag. 611. * pag. 62. † cap. scoti . * cap. 1. * camb. cap. pict . * de primord . cap. 11. init . * cap. 1. † cap. 1. sect. 12 , & 13. ‖ cap. pict . * quinque gentium linguis unam eandemque summoe veritatis , & verae sublimitatis scientiam scrutatur , confitetur anglorum , viz. britonum , scotorum , &c. bed. l. 1. cap. 1. eccl. hist. * verum eadem britannia romanis usque ad caium jul. caes. inaccessa atque in cognita fuit beda hist. eccles. l. 1. cap. 2. * verum eadem britannia romanis usque ad caium julius caes. inaccessa atque incognita fuit . beda eccles . hist. l. 1. cap. 2. * bed. lib. 1. cap. 5. eccl. hist. itaque severus magnam fossam firmissimumque vallum crebris in super turribus communitum a mari ad mare duxit . † bed. lib. 1. cap. 12. eccl. hist. denique subito duabus gentibus transmarinis vehementer saevis , scotorum a circio , pictorum ab aquilone multos stupet gemitque per annos . ‖ transmarinas autem diicimus ●as gentes , non quod exraa britanniam essent positae , sed quia a parte britonum erant remotae , duobus finibus marl interjacentibus , quorum unus ab orientali mari , alter ab occidentali , britanniae terras longe lateque irrumpit quamvis ad se invicem pertinere possunt . * cap. 1. * pag. 120. ●um . edit . heidelberg . sect . 5. proofs from foreign authors . eumenius . * pag. 258. * pag. 11. * in not . in lib. 4. tibull . * pag. 11. * pag. 37. * pag. 12. * pag. ibia . * sect. 5 , 6. cap. 1. * guidus pancirollus coment . ad notitiam imperii occident . p. 159. where he cites for this dion . eusebius & spartianus , and says that caledonia apud eos nunc scotia dicitur dion . in vita severi imp. anno 207 , berg●●r l. 1. c. 10. * pag. 248. edit . plantin . redactum ad paludes suas scotum . * lib. 10. epig. 44. * comment . ad vitam agricolae . * lib. 1. cap. 10. numb . 9. prince des caledoniens . ou escossois . * petruccio vbaldini , also in descritt . dela scotia , p. 4. & 5. asserts the scots to be caledonians . * tit. vit . agric . c. 22. tertius expeditionis annus novas gentes aperuit : vastatis usque ad tuam ( aestuarit nomen est ) nationibus agricola in fines horestorum exercitum deducit : ibi acceptis obsidibus praefecto classis 〈◊〉 britanniam praecepit , &c. * lex . geograph . verb. horresti . senec a. * scalig. ad lib. 4. tibul. ad . messal . and in his notes on eusebius ad annum mmlx , where there is a most learned and full proof of our antiquity , too long to be inserted here , and too learn'd to be answered by any adversary . * ovid. salmas● in solin . * cap. p. 723. de primord . * c. 16. p. 728. * bed. eccles. hist. l. 1. c. 12. * gesner in verb. sidonius . * pag. 8. * lib. 1. cap. 1. * lib. 1. cap. 1. hegesippus de excidio hierosol . 5. cap. 15. quid vobis cum victoribus universae terrae ? quibus secreta oceani , & extrema indiae parent . quid attexam britannias interfuso mari toto orbe divisas , & à romanis in orbem terrarum redactas . tremit hos scotia qua terris nihil debet . * p. 726 , & 727. ad quos cum venisses dua exercitus romani , opposuerant se il●i , nec voluerunt ei subditi esse : cum autem reges romanorum venerunt , subegerunt eos ut servirent ipsis . * vid. cap. 27. l. 4. euseb. eccl. hist. * tertullian . * tertul. l. advers . iudeos , c. 7. et britannorum romanis in accessa loca , christo vero subdita : which baronius applys to us , tom. 5. p. 537. st. asaph . pres. pag. 2. * ammianus l. 20 consulatu vero constantii decies terque juliani in britanniis cum scotorum pictorumque gentium ferarum excursu rupta quiete condicta loca limitibus vicina vastarentur , & implicaret formido provincias praeteritarum cladium congerie fessas . * lib. 2. ad jovian . * c. 16. p. 728. de primord . * quid loquar de caeteris nationibus , cum ipse adolescentulis in gallia , scotos gentem britannicam humanis vesci carnibus . vidi l. 2. ad jov. † pref. l. in iren. * tom. 5. p. 537. * epiphanius in auchorato . p. 117. ad par . britanni , scoti , quorum insula est britannia . * receptam partem insulae à caeteris indomitis gentibus vallo distinguendam putavit . * cap. 5 , & 12. sect . 6. proofs from reason . * pag. 352. * pag. 16. desc . brit. † in initio . ‖ pag. 6. * aeneid . l. 9. c. 1. * buchan . p. 128. * pag. 37. * chambers particularly , p. 9 , & 96 ; also from p. 229 to the end of the treatise . * scotorum quoque reges sic habuit ad suam voluntatem , per suam munificentiam inclinatos , ut eum nunquam aliter quam dominum pronunciarent : extant epistolae ab iis ad eum missae , quibus hujusmodi affectus eorum erga illum judicatur . aeginard . vita caroli magni ad annum 791. † lib. 5. pag. 80. aeginard . secretary to charle-maigne , maketh an enumeration of strange princes , who imbrac'd the amity of that puissant monarch . the emperors of constantinople , persia ; the kings of india and gallicia , with the kings of scotland . favin . l. 5. p. 8. the scots joyful of this alliance , as the most famous in christendom , delegated for their ambassours , william brother to their king achatus , assisted with the counsel of four persons , renown'd for learning , clemens , ioannes , rabanus , and alcuinus , with 4000 men of war sent to the succour of charle-maigne . the two worthy doctors who staid with charle-maign at paris and padua , were iohn sirnam'd scotus , a scottish-man , both by nation and sirname , and claudius clemens . ‖ paulus aemilius in vita caroli magni . caeterum ut paulatim extingueret saxonum nomen ; honores magistratusque gentibus aliegiuis & in primis scotis mandabat , quorum egregia fide virtuteque utebatur . * pag. 34 , & 38. vid. sansovino delle origine delle case illustri d' italici . p. 111. edit . in 40. an. 1609. * nella cr●nica di piacenza . * lesl. pag. 80 , buchan . p. 97. * i●sl . p. 188. buchan . p. 190. * lib. 2. ad iovianum , who seems to point at this , when he says , that scoti nullas proprias habens uxoret . * solin . cap. 25. de britannia . * lib. 1. c. 13. * tom. 5. edit . col . p. 586 , & 589. num . 5. qui igitur evangelium primo à victore pontifice maxim● accepere , & à celestino papa primum episcopum , à quo sunt omnes pe●itus redditi christiani , eate●us christi gratia pro●ecere , qui oli● gentilitio ritu viventes , ob feriaos mores , ut portentum ostentui erant humano generi praestantissi●i eveneri●t christiani , &c. † num. 4. ‖ quia victore romano pontifice , scotos evangelium accepisse , majorum traditione scripsere , haud sunt refellendi . * usher . p. 79● de prim . * lib. 1. c. 12. ac tusculani , &c. l. 4. c. 26. eccl. * stat. 6. * pag. 340. * edit . basil. 1624. 2d . cent. p. 1. * pag. 162. * lib. 3. * pag. 28 , & 58. * pag. in euseb . sect . 7. answers to the bishop's objections . * de hist. la● . p. 4. * cap. 30 , & 37. ● 1. * bed. ec. hist. lib. 1. cap. 1. * st. asaph , p. 45. * pag. 46. * pag. 8. * pag. 42. * cap. 1. paragraph 2 , 3 , and 12. * pag. 156. * pag. 83. * 〈…〉 bassianus caracalla , qui 〈◊〉 non pa●cis 〈◊〉 severo 〈…〉 l. 2. c. 45. * vid. instit. ad senatus . co● . trebell . * ptolom . geog. lib. 2. cap. 2. † p. 722 , 723 , and particularly 724. hanc insulam britannidem olim à julio caesare vocatam fabius ethelwardus haud recte retulit : non alio enim quam hiberniae nomine , à caesare , uti post eum à plinio , solino , & tacito illam invenimus . * p. 725 , 726 , 727 , 728. † cap. 1. §. 4. * beda l. 1. c. 1. † tacit. in vita agricol . * pag. 117 , 118. inter orthodoxogr . * pag. 347. edit . basu . * lib. 1. cap. 1. * lib. 14. cap. d● insulis . * cap. 1. lib. 1. * cujac . lib. 14. obs. 12. & ad legem 6. parag . gramatici ff . de excus . mum . * ecgfridus rex nordanhumbrorum misso in hiberniam cum exercitu duce berto , vastavit misere gentem innoxiam & anglorum genti semper amicissimam . bed. hist. eccl. lib. 4. cap. 26. * ne scotiam nihil se laedentem impugnaret . i id . † angli & scoti qui extant in britannia . ibid. * columbanus qui anno incarnationis 565. abbas & presbyter venit de hibernia in britanniam praedicaturus verbum dei provinciis septentrionalium pictorum . et gentem illam convertit , vnde & praefatam insulam ab eis in possessionem monasterii faciendi accepit ; ubi sepultus est . ex quo monasterio , & monasterio de daermach perplurima monasteria propagata sunt in hibernia & britannia , in quibus omnibus idem monasterium insulanum , principatum tenet . bed. lib. 3. cap. 4. * ab hac ergo insula , ad provinciam anglorum instituendam in christo , missus est aidanus . lib. 3. c. 5. † aidanus de insula quae vocatur hy destinatus , quae arcem tenet monasteriorum scotorum & pictorum , & ad jus britanniae pertinet . l. 3. c. 3. * colman videns spretam suam doctrinam , sectamque esse despectam ; scotiam regressus est . l. 3. c. 26. * cap. 4. † ibid. * ibid. † cap. 3. * cap. 26. * haec autem plaga hiberniam insulam , pariclade premebat : erant ibidem eodem tempore multi nobilium simul & mediocrium de gente anglorum , qui tempore finani & colmanni episcoporum , relictâ insulâ patriâ , vel divinae lectionis , vel continentioris vitae gratiâ , illò secesserunt . — quos omnes scoti libentissime suspicientes victum eis quotidianum sine praetio , libros quoque ad legendum , & magisterium gratuitum praebere c●rabant . l. 3. c. 27. † vnde & genti suae , & illis in quibus exulabat nationibus scororum sive pictorum exemplo fuit . ibid. * cap. 5. generally , and specially , p. 109. † lib. 3. cap. 3. & ad jus britanniae pertinet . * buch. p. 152. * columba fundator monasterii quod in hy ins●la , venerabile scotis & pictis , & composito nomine à cellà & columbâ collum-celli vocatur . lib. 5. c. 10. * bed. l. 1. c. 12. * dominis charissimis fratribus episcopis vel abbatibus per universam scotiam laurentius mellitus , & justus , episcopi servi servorum dei. dum nos sedes apostolica more suo , sicut in universo orbe terrarum , in his occiduis partibus ad predicandum gentibus paganis dirigeret , atque in hanc insulā , qua britannia nuncupatur , contigit introisse , antequam cognosceremus credentes , quod juxta morem universalis ecclesiae ingrederentur , in magna reverentia sanctitatis tam britones quam scotos venerati sumus . sed cognoscentes britones , scotos meliores putavimus . scotos vero per dagamum episcopum in hanc quam superius memoravimus insulam , & columbanum abbatum in galliis venientem , nihil discrepare à britonibus in eorum conversatione didicimus . nam dagamus episcopus ad nos veniens , non solum cibum nobiscum , sed nec in eodem hospitio quo vescebamur sumere voluit . bed. lib. 2. cap. 14. * in append. ad l. 3. p. 231. and it is observable that marianus , p. 175 makes mention of other two letters , in the year 632. the one from honorius , and the other from pope iohn , upon the same head : both which marianus says , were sent to us , and not to the irish . * dices in martyrologio romano vulgari legi ad diem 16. decembris , aberdone in hibernia s. beani episcopi : abredonensis autem sedes episcopalis est in scotia britannica : ergo vel in hac est , vel hac aliquando fuit hibernia . pag. 379. ad nugatorium ergo sophisma distinguo minorem : abredonensis , locus dequo martyrologium agit , est in britannia , nego minorem : alius ejusdem nominis , transeat . vel absolute , nego consequentiam , ob fallaciam figurae dictionis ; ut h●nc , omnis canis est latrabilis ; sed sidus est canis ; ergo sidus est latrabile , &c. pag. 380. * ceollach de natione scotorum , qui non multo post episcopatu● relicto reversus est ad insulam hy , ubi plurimorum caput & arcem scoti habuere caenobiorum . bed. l. 3. c. 21. † ceollach qui relicto episcopatus officio vivens ad scotiam rediit . bed. l. 3. c. 24. * adamnanus presbyter & abbas monachiorum qui erant in insula hy. bed. l. 5. c. 16. † adamnanus reversus ad scotiam . bed. l. 5. c. 22. * cap. 1. §. 9 ▪ * cap. 5. §. 4 ▪ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8. * pag. 734. * pag. 734. * pag. 724 , & 737. * quod praeter reges minoris scotiae , qui omnes de nostra majore scotia originem sumpsero . † conventus scotorum & hibernorum de majore scotia monasterii ia ratisbona . * brianus rex hiberniae necatur . pag. 423. † moelcolium rex scotiae obiit , donchad filius filiae ejus sibi successit . pag. 424. * donchad rex scotiae occiditur & mefinlaech successit in regnum ejus . p. 425. † pag. 427. * mackbeth . * appen . ad l. 3. * lib. 1. p. 17. verum à quo primum initio scotiae nomen sit tractum , nondum plane perspectum video . * quantae circumscriptis wallia & scotia potior insula britannicae pars regibusque antiquis appropriata . pag. 223. † scotia quoque pars insulae britannic● dicitur aquilonaris . p. 245. * specificato vocabulo gens scotica appellatur . cap. 19. pag. 789. † pag. 187. cent. 14. * pag. 210. cent. 14. * pag. 789. * ad scotos in christum credentes ordinatus à papa caelestino palladius primus episcopus missus est . post ipsum sanctus patricius consecratus & ad archiepiscopum hibernensem mittitur , & totam insulam hiberniam convertit ad fidem . pag. 340. * artic. 4. & pag. 281. * lesl. in vita dav. 2. † baker , p. 159. edit . 1643. the laws and acts made in the fifth session of the first parliament of our most high and dread soveraign william, by the grace of god, king of scotland, england, france and ireland, defender of the faith holden and begun at edinburgh, may 9. 1695 by john marquess of tweeddale ... with the special advice and consent of the estates of parliament / collected and extracted from the registers and records of parliament, by george, viscount of tarbat ... laws, etc. scotland. 1695 approx. 207 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 39 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-11 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a58639 wing s1269 estc r40608 19409740 ocm 19409740 108831 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be 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(eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a58639) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 108831) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1678:1) the laws and acts made in the fifth session of the first parliament of our most high and dread soveraign william, by the grace of god, king of scotland, england, france and ireland, defender of the faith holden and begun at edinburgh, may 9. 1695 by john marquess of tweeddale ... with the special advice and consent of the estates of parliament / collected and extracted from the registers and records of parliament, by george, viscount of tarbat ... laws, etc. scotland. cromarty, george mackenzie, earl of, 1630-1714. tweeddale, john hay, marquess of, 1626?-1697. [2], 67, [8] p. printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh : 1695. 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that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng law -scotland. scotland -history -1689-1745. 2003-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-09 john latta sampled and proofread 2003-09 john latta text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-10 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the laws and acts made in the fifth session of the first parliament of our most high and dread soveraign william , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith. holden and begun at edinbvrgh , may 9. 1695. by john marquess of tweeddale , earl of gifford , viscount of walden , lord hay of yester , and lord high chancellor of this kingdom . his majesties high commissioner for holding the same , by vertue of a commission under his majesties great seal of this kingdom . with the special advice and consent of the estates of parliament . collected and extracted from the registers and records of parliament , by george viscount of tarbat , lord m cleod , and castlehaven , &c. clerk to his majesties councils , exchequer , registers and rolls , &c. edinbvrgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to his most excellent majesty , anno domini 1695. cvm privilegio . laws and acts made in the fifth session of the first parliament of our most high and dread soveraign william , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france , and ireland , defender of the faith. holden at edinbvrgh the 9 day of may , 1695. i. act for a solemn fast. may 16. 1695. the estates of parliament , taking to their consideration , the great important war , wherein his majesty continueth to be necessarly engaged , for defence of the true reformed religion , the safety of this , and his other kingdoms , and the recovery and establishment of the rights , liberties and peace of the rest of christendom , so much at this time invaded and disturbed , with the continual hazards , to which his majesties sacred person is thereby exposed ; as likewise the dangers which do thence threaten this kingdom , and all that can be dear to his majesties good subjects therein , either as christians , or men , both by invasion from abroad , and the froward disaffection , and restless machinations of evil and unnatural countrey-men at home ; and how much it is the duty and interest of all good men , for these causes , and on this occasion , to implore the mercy , favour and blessing of almighty god , for preservation of his majesties royal person , and directing , assisting and prospering him in all his counsels and undertakings : and more especially , that god would countenance and assist him in the present war , give him success to his arms by sea and land , and defeat all the designs , counsels and practices of his secret and open enemies , both at home and abroad , for the preservation of the true protestant religion , securing the safety of these kingdoms , and the happy restoring the peace of europe . and the synod of lothian and tweeddale , now met at edinburgh , having made application to my lord commissioner for this end : therefore his majesty , with advice and consent of the said estates of parliament , doth hereby command and appoint , that the second thursday of iune next , being the thirteenth day of the said moneth , be set apart as a day of solemn fasting and humiliation , for making prayers and supplications to god , for the ends above-mentioned ; and that the said day be religiously and strictly observed by all persons within this kingdom : and ordains all ministers to read these presents publickly in their congregations a sunday at least before the said second thursday of iune next , appointed for keeping the said fast ; certifying such of the leidges who shal not give due obedience , or shal contemn or neglect the keeping and observing the said day and duties , that they shal be proceeded against by fyning , not exceeding one hundred pounds scots money , and warrands and commands the sheriffs , stewarts of stewartries , lords and baillies of regalities , and their deputs , justices of peace , magistrats of burghs within their several jurisdictions , to proceed against the persons guilty , and exact the fines accordingly , to be applyed , the one half to the judge , and the other half to the poor of the paroch ; and certifying such ministers as shal fail in their duty , in not reading this proclamation , and observing the duties therein prescribed , they shal be processed before the lords of his majesties privy council . and hereby requires all sheriffs , stewarts , lords and baillies of regalities , and their deputs justices of peace , magistrats of burghs , and their clerks , to make report to the lords of his majesties privy council , of these ministers who shal fail of their duty herein . and ordains these presents to be printed , and published at the mercat cross of edinburgh , and hail remanent mercat orosses of the head burghs of the several shires , and stewartries within this kingdom , that none may pretend ignorance : and that copies be dispatched in the usual manner , to the sheriffs and stewarts , baillies of regalities , or their deputs , and magistrats of burghs ; as likewise to all ministers , that they may seriously exhort all persons to a sincere and devout observance of the premisses . ii. act regulating citations before the parliament . may 28 , 1695. his majesty , with the advice and consent of the estates of parliament , finding it necessary that the order of summonding privat parties to appear before them be cleared and regulat , do therefore statute and ordain , that the manner of summonding privat parties , in actions raised either before , or during the sitting of the parliament , shal be for hereafter , and from the day and date hereof in this manner , viz. that in prosecution of protests for remeid of law , the party at whose instance summonds is to be granted , may give in his bill , containing the matter of his cause or complaint , signed by himself , or an advocat for him , which being subscribed by one of the six clerks of parliament , and presented before the sitting of the parliament , to any of the officers of state , or the time of the sitting of the parliament , to the lord chancellor , or president of the parliament for the time , or any of the said officers of state , the same may be by them past in course , and that as to all other causes that may be brought before the parliament , summonds and warrands for citation shal for hereafter only be granted by deliverance either of parliament in time of parliament , or of the lords of session upon a summar citation , to abide neither continuation or roll , in praesentia , in the recesses and intervalls of parliament , upon a bill containing subscribed and presented as above , and no otherwise : which warrands for citation being granted , summonds in his majesties name shal be thereon directed , to macers , if the party cited be within the town of edinburgh , for summonding the said party , if within the said town of edinburgh , on fourty eight hours , and if elsewhere within the kingdom , ( excepting orkney and zetland ) upon fifteen days warning , or if in orkney or zetland , upon fourty days personally , or at his dwelling house ; or if without the kingdom , upon sixty days warning , at the mercat cross of edinburgh and peer and shoar of leith , to compear before his majesty , and the said estates of parliament , where and when the parliament shal be appointed to meet , or shal be met for the time , with continuation of days , and with certification . and also , for summonding of witnesses , as is usual before the lords of council and session , which summonds to be expede by deliverance , as said is , shal pass under the signet of the session ; and the party at whose instance the same is raised , shal pay to the clerk of parliament or session aforesaid , for writing and subscribing of the bill and letters , the sum of twelve pound scots and no more , on any pretence whatsoever , and for affixing the signet the sum of three pounds scots and no more : declaring that if any adjournment of parliament one or more shal happen to interveen , betwixt the giving of citations , in manner foresaid , and the day of compearance , the foresaid summonds shal nevertheless still stand in force , for obliging the parties and witnesses summoned to compear at the day to which the parliament shal be adjourned , and when ever the same shal first meet . and furder , it is hereby declared , that at the said day of compearance before the parliament , being so met , or any other lawful day thereafter , it shal be leasome to the clerks of parliament , at the desire of the party pursuer , to call the foresaid summonds , after the opening of the house , and before the sitting down of the parliament , at the patent gate of the parliament-house , and if the party summoned compear , to mark the same , that the summonds with the executions , and the other peices produced by the pursuer may be given out to see and answer , to the effect the same may be seen and returned , within six days in the common form , and so the cause or complaint may be ready prepared for the parliament , to proceed therein , when the same shal be again called in their presence : providing always , that no decreets be given out in absence , but upon special application to , and sentence pronounced by the parliament , and no otherwise . and excepting always from this act , all summonds of treason , and for other publick crimes , and executions , and processes thereupon , which are to proceed as formerly . and lastly , providing that the foresaid citations to be made by deliverance of the lords of session , shal found no exception of prejudiciality against any party , in any action , may be raised , until the foresaid citation be called before , and sustained by the parliament . iii. act adjourning the summer-session till the first of july 1695. may 30. 1695. our soveraign lord considering that the sitting of the parliament , begun the ninth of may instant , may continue for the month of iune next , whereby the leidges cannot attend the summer session in its ordinar time ; do therefore ; with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , adjourn the session , ( which should be in course the first of june next ) to the first of iuly next , continowing all actions and causes depending before the lords of session to the said first of july : and his majesty dispenses in the mean time , with the sitting of all inferior courts , as if the session had not been adjourned , and notwithstanding of the sitting of the parliament : and further declares , that the time and space to run , betwixt the said first of iune and the first of iuly , shall not be reckoned in any short prescription . and ordains these presents to be published at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and to be forthwith printed , that the leidges may be thereby certified thereof . iv. act anent the iustice court. iune 7 , 1695. our soveraign lord , for the better regulating of the justice court , and facilitating and more sure ordering of the form and method of process therein used : do therefore , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , statute and ordain , that in all time coming , the use and custom hitherto observed in that court of advocats or procurators their dictating , and the clerks writing of the defences , duplies , triplies , quadruplies and so forth for the defender and pursuer be discharged and laid aside , and that in place thereof , his majesties advocat or other advocats or procurators for the pursuer , with the advocats or procurators for the defender or pannel debate the relevancy viva voce , and that after the said dispute viva voce is ended , then time be allowed by the lords and judges of the said court , to the effect after-mentioned , and that the kings advocat , or advocats , or procurators for the pursuer , do within the space of fourty eight hours , give in to the clerk his information in writing subscribed with his hand , that the advocats or procurators for the pannel may take it up , and give in their answers in writing also under their hands , within other fourty eight hours , which information and answers , shall be by the clerk recorded in the books of adjournal , in place of the foresaid written dispute formerly in use , and then at the advising the said information and answers , shall be first read in open court , and if any thing be found new on either side , and not noticed by the other party , the parties or judges shall point the same to the other party concerned , and hear both parties thereon viva voce , the clerk minuting in presence of , and at sight of the said judges what is so further debated , and then the said judges shal proceed to the advising . and his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , ratifies , approves , and confirms the whole rights , powers and priviledges of the said court of justice , and of the lord justice general , lord justice clerk and other judges , and all other members thereof . and it is further hereby statute and ordained , that in all capital crimes wherein inferior criminal courts were hitherto restricted , to try and execute within three suns , this time shall be hereafter restricted to the tryal and sentence only , but not to the time of execution , which is hereby left to the discretion of the judge , not exceeding nine days after sentence . v. act anent principals and cautioners . iune 7. 1695. his majesty and the estates of parliament , considering the great hurt and prejudice , that hath befallen many persons and families , and oft times to their utter ruine and undoing , by mens facility to engage as cautioners for others , who afterwards failing , have left a growing burden on their cautioners without relief : therefore , and for remeid thereof , his majesty with advice foresaid , statutes and ordains , that no man binding and engaging for hereafter , for and with another conjunctly and severally , in any bond or contracts for sums of money , shall be bound for the said sums for longer than seven years after the date of the bond , but that from and after the said seven years , the said cautioner shall be eo ipso free of his caution ; and that whoever is bound for another , either as express cautioner , or as principal , or co-principal , shall be understood to be a cautioner , to have the benefit of this act ; providing , that he have either clause of relief in the bond , or a bond of relief apart , intimat personally to the creditor at his receiving of the bond , without prejudice always to the true principals , being bound in the whole contents of the bond or contract ; as also , of the said cautioners being still bound , conform to the terms of the bond within the said seven years , as before the making of this act ; as also providing that what legal diligence by inhibition , horning , arrestment , adjudication , or any other way , shall be done within the seven years by creditors against their cautioners , for what fell due in that time , shall stand good , and have its course and effect after the expyring of the seven years , as if this act had not been made . vi. act regulating the sale and payment of bankrupts estates . iune 18 , 1695. his majesty with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , for the further clearing and explaining of former laws , anent the sale of bankrupts estates , statutes , enacts , and declares , that it shall be lawful to all purchasers of bankrupts estates , after the space of one year , counting from the decreet of sale , and to such as have obtained decreets of sale , after the term of whitsunday one thousand six hundred and ninety six years , to consign the whole price offered , with the annualrent due at the time of the consignation , or so much thereof , as remains in the hands of the purchaser , over and above what is warrantably payed to creditors preferred by the lords of session , in the hands of the magistrats and town council of edinburgh , and their thesaurer for the time , who are hereby obliged and ordained to receive the same , upon their receipt in the terms after-mentioned : and for the greater benefit of the creditors , are further allowed to keep in their hands the consigned money , for the space of a year from the next term of candlesmass , whitsunday , lambmass , or martinmass after the consignation , upon payment of three per cent of annualrent , ay and while it be called for : and the said magistrats , town council , and thesaurer of edinburgh for the time , shall be , and are hereby obliged to make forthcoming , the consigned money in whole , or in part , with the annualrent thereof , at three per cent as said is , according as they shal be ordered by the saids lords of session , with certification if they failzie , that they shall be charged with horning for that effect , and shall be thereafter lyable , not only in the tenth part of the principal sum , called for in name of penalty ; but also in the ordinary annualrent of the said principal , ay and while the compleat payment thereof . and because purchasers of lands affected with liferents , have retention of a share of the price : it is hereby declared , that the purchaser shall be allowed to consign what remains in his hands , after the decease of the liferenter in manner foresaid ; he always , making due intimation of the consignation to the creditors who got the rest of the price . and his majesty with consent foresaid , statutes , enacts , and declares , that the purchaser paying the price offered to the creditors , according as they are or shall be ranked and preferred by the lords of session , or consigning the same in manner foresaid , shall be for ever exonered , and the security given for the price , shall be delivered up to be cancelled , and the lands and others purchased and acquired , disburdened of all debts or deeds of the bankrupt or his predecessors , from whom he had right , and that the bankrupt , his heirs , or appearand heirs , or creditors without exception of minority , not compeating or conceiving themselves to be prejudged , shall only have access to pursue the receivers of the price and their heirs , and reserving to the minor leased his relief as accords : and further , his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , doeth hereby authorise the lords of session , to grant warrant for charging the magistrats and thesaurer of edinburgh for the time , to make payment of the sums consigned to the several creditors according to their preferences , upon the saids creditors their several applications to the lords , and consigning in the clerks hands , dispositions and conveyances in favours of the purchasers , in so far as their several rights may affect the purchase ; as also , in case any debate remain undetermined amongst the creditors anent their preferences , it shall be lawful to the saids lords , upon application of the saids creditors , to grant warrand for uplifting and employing the sums consigned , upon sufficient security bearing annualrent . vii . act for six months supply upon the land-rent . iune 20. 1695. the estates of parliament taking into their consideration , the dangers that still threaten this kingdom , by reason of the continuance of the present war , which visibly require the keeping up of the standing forces , and the supplies necessary for their maintainance ; do therefore humbly and cheerfully for themselves , and in name of this kingdom whom they represent , make offer to his majesty of a supply of four hundred thirty two thousand pound , extending to six months cess ; which new supply , is to be raised and uplifted out of the land-rent of this kingdom in the same manner , and conform to the proportions of the shires and burghs contained in the sixth act of the second session of this current parliament , dated the seventh day of iune 1690 , providing always that the proportions of burghs , be rated and payed as their tax-roll now is , or that be settled by themselves ; and this supply to be payed in two parts , either answering to three months cess , viz. two hundred and sixteen thousand pounds as being the first half thereof , to be payed betwixt and the first day of august , in this present year one thousand six hundred and ninety five : and the other two hundred and sixteen thousand pound , as the other half thereof , betwixt and the first of february , one thousand six hundred ninety six years . and his majesty considering , that this supply is granted for such a necessary use , doth with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , declare , that no person or persons shall be exempted from payment of their proportions of this supply for their lands , upon any pretext whatsoever ( excepting mortified lands , and the lands of new-milns , belonging to the woolenmanufactory there , for which mortified lands , and lands of new-milns , deduction is to be allowed in the quota of the respective shires ) notwithstanding of any former law , priviledge , or act of parliament in the contrary . and his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , doth nominat and appoint the same persons , who are named in the foresaid act of parliament , who are alive , and have qualified themselves according to law , or shall qualifie themselves betwixt and the last tuesday of iuly next to come , and such others as have been since nominat by the privy council , to be commissioners for ordering and uplifting this supply ; with the same power to them , to choice their own clerk , and to do every thing that may concern the said supply , as is prescribed and appointed by the said act , holding the same as repeated herein , and ordains the same execution to pass for in-bringing thereof , as is provided by that act in all points . and ordains the first meeting of the said commissioners for the shires , to be at the head burghs thereof upon the third tuesday of iuly next , at ten of the clock , for the shires on this side of the river of tay : and the last tuesday of iuly next , for the shires benorth tay. and requires the sheriffs and stewarts , or their deputs , to intimat the same to the commissioners of the respective shires and stewartries , with power to them to appoint their subsequent dyets of meeting and their conveener from time to time : and also to appoint collectors with sufficient caution , as they shall think fit . and commits to his majesties privy council , upon the death or not acceptance of any of the commissioners of supply , appointed by this act , to nominat and appoint others in their places . and his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , does declare , that all clauses contained in the former acts of parliament , and convention of estates , in relation to the inbringing of the cess , and quartering , and anent ryding mony , shall stand in full force as to this supply now imposed , in the same manner as if they were insert herein ; except in so far , as these acts of parliament or convention , are innovat or altered by the foresaid sixth act of the second session of this current parliament . and it is hereby declared , that no persons lyable in payment of this supply , shall be holden to produce their discharges or receipts of the same , after three years from the respective terms of payment , unless diligence be done by denunciation before elapsing of the said three years . and because by the supply hereby granted , the land-rent and burghs of this kingdom are only burdened ; and it being just that the personal estates in money , should bear some proportion of the burden : therefore , his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , statutes and ordains , that every debitor owing money within the kingdom at six per cent of interest , shall in the payment of his annualrents for one year , have retention in his own hands of one of six of the said annualrents , and this retention to be for the whole year , viz. from whitsunday one thousand six hundred and ninety five , to whitsunday one thousand six hundred and ninety six years . and it is hereby declared , that it shall be usury for any creditor , not to grant the said retention . follows the quota of supply , payable monthly by the several shires of the kingdom . the sheriffdom of edinburgh , the sum of three thousand one hundred and eighty three pounds , eight shillings scots money monthly . the sheriffdom of haddington , the sum of two thousand seven hundred and eighty two pounds , six shillings . the sheriffdom of berwick , the sum of two thousand eight hundred and thirteen pounds , one shilling . the sheriffdom of roxburgh , the sum of three thousand six hundred and eighty six pounds , seventeen shillings , six pennies . the sheriffdom of selkirk , the sum of nine hundred and four pounds , nine shillings . the sheriffdom of peebles , the sum of one thousand and fourty two pounds , eight shillings . the sheriffdom of lanerk , the sum of three thousand and ninety one pounds , twelve shillings . the sheriffdom of dumfreis , the sum of two thousand seven hundred and twelve pounds , seventeen shillings . the sheriffdom of wigton , the sum of one thousand and four pounds , fifteen shillings . the stewartry of kirkcudbright , the sum of one thousand six hundred and seventy four pounds , eleven shillings . the sheriffdom of air , the sum of three thousand eight hundred and seventy pounds , five shillings . the sheriffdom of dumbarton , the sum of seven hundred and sixty four pounds , ten shillings . the sheriffdom of bute , the sum of three hundred and eight pounds , eight shillings , and eight pennies . the sheriffdom of renfrew , the sum of one thousand three hundred and fifty three pounds , seven shillings . the sheriffdom of striviling , the sum of one thousand seven hundred and fifty four pounds , four shillings , and six pennies . the sheriffdom of linlithgow , the sum of one thousand one hundred and sixty nine pounds , eighteen shillings . the sheriffdom of perth , the sum of five thousand and thirty eight pounds , fourteen shillings . the sheriffdom of kincardine , the sum of nine hundred and eighty four pounds , one shilling . the sheriffdom of aberdeen , the sum of four thousand and seventy seven pounds , nineteen shillings . the sheriffdom of inverness , the sum of one thousand two hundred and thirteen pounds , one shilling , and six pennies . the sheriffdom of ross , the sum of one thousand one hundred and thirty one pounds , six shillings . the sheriffdom of nairn , the sum of two hundred and seventy seven pounds , sixteen shillings . the sheriffdom of cromarty , the sum of two hundred and fourteen pounds . the sheriffdom of argyle , the sum of one thousand nine hundred and fourty seven pounds , ten shillings , and nine pennies . the sheriffdom of fife and kinross , the sum of five thousand one hundred and seventy two pounds . the sheriffdom of forfar , the sum of three thousand two hundred and seventy three pounds , fifteen shillings . the sheriffdom of bamff , the sum of one thousand one hundred and fifty pounds , four shillings . the sheriffdom of sutherland , the sum of three hundred and thirty six pounds . the sheriffdom of caithness the sum of five hundred & ninety nine pounds , five shillings . the sheriffdom of elgin , the sum of one thousand and fifty nine pounds , five shillings . the sheriffdom of orkney and zetland , the sum of one thousand and eighty eight pounds , ten shillings . and the shiriffdom of clackmannan , the sum of three hundred and fifty two pounds , seven shillings and three pennies scots money . follows the quota of supply , payable monthly by the several burghs of the kingdom . the city of edinburgh , the sum of three thousand eight hundred and eighty pounds scots monthly . the burgh of perth , the sum of three hundred and sixty pounds . the burgh of dundee , the sum of five hundred and sixty pounds . the city of aberdeen , the sum of seven hundred and twenty six pounds . the burgh of stirling , the sum of one hundred and seventy two pounds . the burgh of linlithgow , the sum of one hundred and fifty six pounds . the city of st. andrews , the sum of seventy two pounds . the city of glasgow , the sum of one thousand and eight hundred pounds . the burgh of air , the sum of one hundred and twenty eight pounds . the burgh of haddington , the sum of one hundred and ninety two pounds . the burgh of dysart , the sum of thirty pounds . the burgh of kirkaldy , the sum of two hundred and eighty eight pounds . the burgh of montrose , two hundred and fourty pounds . the burgh of couper , one hundred and eight pounds . the burgh of anstruther-easter , eighteen pounds . the burgh of dumfreis , the sum of two hundred and thirty pounds . the burgh of inverness , the sum of one hundred and eighty pounds . the burgh of burnt-island , the sum of seventy two pounds . the burgh of innerkeithing , the sum of thirty pounds . the burgh of kinghorn , the sum of fourty two pounds . the burgh of breichin , the sum of fifty four pounds . the burgh of irwine , the sum of sixty pounds . the burgh of jedburgh , the sum of one hundred and two pounds . the burgh of kirkcudbright , the sum of thirty six pounds . the burgh of wigton , the sum of thirty six pounds . the burgh of dumfermling , the sum of ninety pounds . the burgh of pittenweem , the sum of thirty pounds . the burgh of selkirk , the sum of seventy two pounds . the burgh of dumbarton , the sum of thirty pounds . the burgh of renfrew , the sum of thirty six pounds . the burgh of dumbar , the sum of sixty pounds . the burgh of lanerk , the sum of sixty pounds . the burgh of aberbrothock , the sum of fifty four pounds . the burgh of elgin , the sum of one hundred and thirty eight pounds . the burgh of peebles , the sum of sixty six pounds . the burgh of crayl , the sum of thirty six pounds . the burgh of tain , the sum of thirty pounds . the burgh of culross , the sum of twenty four pounds . the burgh of bamff , the sum of fourty two pounds . the burgh of whythorn , the sum of eight pounds . the burgh of forfar , the sum of twenty four pounds . the burgh of rothsay , the sum of thirty pounds the burgh of nairn , the sum of nine pounds . the burgh of forres , the sum of twenty four pounds . the burgh of rutherglen , the sum of twelve pounds . the burgh of north-berwick , the sum of six pounds . the burgh of anstruther-wester , the sum of six pounds . the burgh of cullen , the sum of eight pounds . the burgh of lauder , the sum of thirty pounds . the burgh of kintore , the sum of nine pounds . the burgh of annand , the sum of twelve pounds . the burgh of lochmabban , the sum of eighteen pounds . the burgh of sanquhar , the sum of six pounds . the burgh of new galloway , the sum of six pounds . the burgh of kilrenny , the sum of eight pounds . the burgh of fortrose , the sum of eighteen pounds . the burgh of dingwal , the sum of eight pounds . the burgh of dornoch , the sum of eighteen pounds . the burgh of queens-ferry , the sum of fifty four pounds . the burgh of inveraray , the sum of twenty four pounds . the burgh of inverury , the sum of twelve pounds . the burgh of week , the sum of twenty pounds . the burgh of kirkwal , the sum of seventy two pounds . the burgh of inverbervy , the sum of six pounds . the burgh of stranraer , the sum of twelve pounds . mr. john buchan agent for the burrows to make up the quota for the burrows one thousand two hundred pounds scots . follows the commissioners of supply , ordered by the parliament to be given in by the noblemen and commissioners from the several shires ; in place of those dead , or not qualified , since the year 1690. for the shire of edinburgh . the lord ross , sir john gibson , dalmenie , sir robert dickson of sornebeg , sir george hamilton of barnton , carlops , rickarton-craig , james murray of poltoun , mr. james dalrymple of killoch , baillie alexander calderwood in dalkeith , sir james stewart his majesties advocat , sir william baird of newbyth , baillie john nairn in dalkeith . for the shire of haddingtoun . the earl of roxburgh , lord alexander hay , mr. alexander hume of crichne● , william purvis younger of ewfoord , james moor of bourhouses , john hay of athirstoun , john hay of east-hope , james rew of chesters , mr. hugh dalrymple of north-berwick , sir john clerk of pennycook , james hume of gamilshiels , david maitland of soutrac , william skirvine of plewlandhill , thomas hamilton of olive-slob , hoptouns chamberlain , patrick cockburn of clerkingtoun younger , wauchope of stotincleugh , james m cmorlan of the earl of haddingtouns chamberlain . for the shire of roxburgh . the earl of roxburgh , the laird of riddel younger , the laird of mangertoun , the laird of boon-jedburgh , the laird of timpenden , john scot of weems , william turnbull of langraw , walter cairncross of hilslop , james lithgow of drygrains younger , robert davidson of hownam , andrew young of oxnam-side , robert davidson of marchcleugh , mr. archibald douglas brother to cavers , gideon eliot of northsymptoun , william scot of burnhead . for the shire of selkirk . the earl of roxburgh , francis scot of balzielie , william eliot of borthwick-brae , george curror of hartwood-burn , william ogilvy of hartwood-myres , the laird of gala younger , the eldest baillie of selkirk for the time , mr. john murray sheriff deput of selkirk . for the shire of peebles . adam murray of cardon , alexander monteith of chappel-hill , alexander veitch younger of glen , william burnet of barns , john law of netherurd . for the shire of lanerk . the earl of wigtoun , the earl of selkirk , james master of carmichael the laird of lee , sir william hamilton of whitelaw , one of the senators of the colledge of justice , sir william stewart of castle-milk , john baillie of welstoun , john somervel of gladstones , allan lockart younger of cleghorn , gawin hamilton of raploch , the laird of blackwood younger , the laird of ferm younger , the laird of shiel-hill , william somervel of corehouse , mr. archibald hamilton of dalserff , the laird of munkland , the laird of boigs , john hamilton of udstoun , james anderson of stobcorss , the laird of cultness younger , john wardrop of drummarnock , the laird of mauldsly , the laird of braidisholm . for the shire of wigtoun . james earl of galloway , william stewart younger of castle-●ewart , patrick m cdowal of culgrot , john dalrymple son to the master of stairs . for the shire of air. the earl of lowdoun , the lord kennedy , the lord bargeny , mr. william cochran of kilmaronock , the laird of langshaw younger , the laird of dunlap , the laird of ralstoun , sir archibald muir of thorntown , james crawfurd of newark , thomas boyd of pitcoun , the laird of crawfurdland younger , mr. alexander crawfurd of fergusnil , john crawfurd younger thereof , james cochran of mayns-hill , neivin of munkriding , william cunninghame of ashinyards , john dalrymple son to the master of stairs , sir iohn cochran of ochiltrie , iohn cochran of waterside , faucher of gilmils-croft , william baillie of munktoun , iames campbel of iurebank , the lairds of logan elder and younger , hugh crawfurd of drumdow , hugh dowglass of garallan , adam aird of catharin , iames m cadam of waterhead , the laird of dunduff , kennedy younger of drumellan , iames riddoch of midtown baillie of cumnock , mr. william crawfurd of dalragills , david boswal of brae-head , david kennedy of kirkmichael , mr. iohn schaw of drumgrains , hugh kennedy of bennan . for the shire of renfrew . porterfield of duchil , iames hamilton of aikenhead , gawin ralstoun of that ilk , ludovick houstoun of iohnstoun younger , hall of fulbarr maxwells of southbarr elder and younger . for the shire of stirling . the lord forrester , the lord cardross , the laird of bedlormie , iohn ross of nuick , archibald buntin of balglass , george buchannan of ballachrum , thomas buchannan of roquhan , iohn buchanan of cralgyvairn , walter buchannan of balfunning , iohn m clauchlan of auchintroig , duncan buchannan of harperstoun , iohn forrest of pardiven , david forrester of denovane , iohn cuthil of stonniewood , iames rankin of balhumilzear , thomas crawfurd of manuel-miln , iohn campbel younger of douan , robert forrest of bankhead , mr. iohn areskin present governour of the castle of stirling , robert hay of candy , archbald naper of bankell . for the shire of linlithgow . the earl of annandale , the lord cardross , lord iohn hamilton , lieutenant collonel iohn areskin , iohn dalrymple son to the master of stairs , iames dowglass of pompherstoun , david dundass of philipstoun , patrick dickson of westbinnie , iames hamilton of badderston , iames carmichael of pottieshaw , the laird of duntarvie , the laird of barbachlay , the laird of wrae , the laird of duddingstoun younger , patrick dundass of breastmiln . for the shire of kincardine . john arbuthnet of fordown , george allardice of that ilk , mr. james keith of auchorsk sheriff-deput of kincardine , william forbes younger of moniemusk , alexander ross of tullisnaucht , david melvil of pitgarvie , william strauchan of strath . for the shire of aberdeen . mr. patrick ogilvie of cairnbulg , william frazer of broadland , the laird of innercald , mr. james scougal , mr. robert forbes of birsmore , the eldest baillie of frazersburgh for the time being , the laird of mouny , john forbes of tulliegrig , alexander leslie of little-wartle , mr. alexander frazer of powis , john forbes of innerdraen , alexander keith of kidshill , william hay of earnhill . for the shire of inverness . james grant of gallowie , patrick grant of rothiemurchus , robert grant of garthinmore , patrick grant of raick , james grant of tulloch , william grant of dalliechappel . for the shire of cromartie . hugh rose of kilravock , john urquhart of craighouse , alexander mackenzie of bellon , aeneas mackleod of catboll , mr. roderick mackenzie in tarrel , kenneth mackenzie of culbo , adam gordon of dalfollic , roderick mackenzie of navitie . for the shire of argile . james campbel younger of ardkinglass , patrick campbel of duntroon , colin campbel chamberlain to the earl of argile , dougal campbel younger of kilberrick , neil macneil fiar of teynish , robert campbel fiar of carrick , archibald campbel of clunes baillie of yla , ronald campbel of laggan-lochan , george campbel of dall , archibald campbel of shindarlin , donald campbel of glencaradel , john campbel baillie of jura , archibald campbel of craigage , angus campbel younger of skipnedge . for the shire of fife . the lord yester , the master of yester , the laird of lundie , sir alexander bruce of broomhall , mr. alexander anstruther of newark , the laird of durie , mr. john prestoun of drumraw , thomas beaton of tarvit , the laird of murdocairnie , macgill younger of rankeillor , the laird of kirkness , the laird of dowhill , mr. robert beaton of craigfoodie younger , the laird of bannochy younger , the laird of dinboig , mr. david scrimzeour of kirkmore , john dempster younger of pitliver , weems of bogie younger , the laird of bandone , john melvil of carskirdo , the laird of balcanquel younger , mr. john mitchel of balbairdie , lundie of baldastard , george moncreiff of sauchope , john hay of naughtoun younger , walter boswell of balbertoun , alexander swinton of strathore , james maxwel of achibank , james clelland of piddennis . for the shire of forfar . the laird of loggie younger , the laird of strickathro , the laird of smiddiehill younger , the laird of rossie younger , mr. james lyel of balhall . for the stewartry of kirkcudbright . james earl of galloway , lord bazile hamilton , patrick horron of kirrachtrie , john mackie of palgown , alexander mackie younger of palgown , mackulloch of bareholm , william muir tutor of cassincarrie , william gordon of schirmoirs , robert gordon of garerie , james gordon of largmoir , robert gordon of airds , william maxwel younger of newlands , robert macklellan of barmagaleim , charles macklellan of collin , andrew corsan of balmagan , grier of dalscerth . for the shire of sutherland . george monro of culrain , aeneas mackleod of catboll , david ross of innerchasly , and david sutherland younger of kinnald . for the shire of caithness . alexander sinclair of braibster , mr. john campbel commissar of caithness , james murray of clairdon , mr. william caldell of galshfield , daniel budge of tostingall , william sutherland of geese , john sinclair of forss , donald williamson of banaskirk , patrick murray of pennyland , george sinclair of barroch , david sinclair of freswick . for the shire of elgin . ludovick dumbar of grainge , joseph brody of milntown , the laird of innes younger , alexander brody of duncairn , robert cumming of relugus . for the shire of ross. the laird of gairloch , john mackenzie of cowle younger , colin mackenzie uncle to the laird of gairloch , mr. simon mackenzie of allans , george monro of lamelair younger , colin robertson of kindeis , lauchlan mackenzie of assin younger , david monro tutor of fyress , robert monro of auchnagart , hector monro of daan younger , aeneas macleod of catboll , william ross of easterfearn , mr. charles mackenzie of loggy , mr. alexander mackenzie of dachmaluick younger , mr. alexander ross of pitkearie , abraham lesly of findrossie , mr. george mackenzie of bellamuckie , roderick macleod of cambuscutrie , ronnald bayn of knockbayn , john bayn younger of tulloch , mr. colin mackenzie of muir , alexander forrester of cullinald younger . viii . act for a company tradeing to affrica and the indies . june 26. 1695. our soveraign lord taking into his consideration , that by an act past in this present parliament , intituled act for encouraging of forraign trade ; his majesty for the improvement thereof , did with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , statute and declare , that merchants more or fewer may contract and enter into such societies and companies , for carrying on of trade , as to any subject of goods or merchandise to whatsomever kingdoms , countries , or parts of the world , not being in war with his majesty , where trade is in use to be , or may be followed , and particularly , beside the kingdoms and countreys of europe , to the east and west indies , the streights , and to trade in the mediterranian , or upon the coast of affrica , or in the northern parts , or elsewhere as above : which societies and companies being contracted and entered into , upon the terms and in the usual manner , as such companies are set up , and in use in other parts consistant always with the laws of this kingdom : his majesty with consent foresaid , did allow and approve , giving and granting to them and each of them all powers , rights and priviledges , as to their persons ; rules and orders , that by the laws are given to companies allowed to be erected for manufactories ; and his majesty for their greater encouragement , did promise to give to these companies , and each of them his letters patent under the great seal , confirming to them the whole foresaid powers and priviledges , with what other encouragement his majesty should judge needful , as the foresaid act of parliament at more length bears . and his majesty understanding that several persons as well forraigners as natives of this kingdom , are willing to engage themselves with great sums of money in an american , affrican , and indian trade to be exercised in and from this kingdom ; if inabled and incouraged thereunto by the concessions , powers and priviledges needful and usual in such cases . therefore , and in pursuance of the foresaid act of parliament , his majesty with advice and consent of the saids estates of parliament , doth hereby make and constitute iohn lord belhaven , adam cockburn of ormistoun , lord justice clerk , mr. francis montgomery of giffen , sir iohn maxwell of pollock , sir robert chiesly present provest of edinburgh , iohn swintoun of that ilk , george clark late baillie of edinburgh , mr. robert blakewood , and iames balfour merchants in edinburgh , and iohn corss merchant in glasgow , william paterson esquire , iames fowlis , david nairn esquires , thomas deans esquire , iames cheisly , iohn smith . thomas coutes , hugh frazer , ioseph cohaine , daves ovedo , and walter stuart merchants in london , with such others as shal joyn with them within the space of twelve moneths after the first day of august next , and all others , whom the foresaid persons and these joyned with them , or major part of them being assembled , shal admit and joyn into their joint-stock and trade , who shal all be repute , as if herein originally insert to be one body incorporate , and a free incorporation , with perpetual succession , by the name of the company of scotland trading to affrica , and the indies : providing always , likeas , it is hereby in the first place provided , that of the fond or capital stock that shall be agreed to , be advanced and imployed by the foresaid undertakers , and their co-partners ; the half at least shal be appointed and allotted for scottish men within this kingdom , who shal enter and subscribe to the said company , before the first day of august , one thousand six hundred and ninety six years : and if it shall happen , that scots men living within this kingdom , shal not betwixt and the foresaid term , subscribe for , and make up the equal half of the said fond or capital stock , then and in that case allannerly , it shall be , and is hereby allowed to scots men residing abroad , or to forraigners , to come in , subscribe , and be assumed for the superplus of the said half , and no otherwise : likeas , the quota of every mans part of the said stock whereupon he shal be capable to enter into the said company , whether he be native or forraigner , shall be for the least one hundred lib. sterl . and for the highest , or greatest three thousand lib. sterl . and no more directly nor indirectly in any sort : with power to the said company to have a common seal , and to alter and renew the same at their pleasure , with advice always of the lyon king at arms ; as also to plead and sue , and be sued ; and to purchass , acquire , possess , and enjoy lordships , lands , tenements , or other estate real or personal of whatsoever nature or quality , and to dispose upon and alienate the same , or any part thereof at their pleasure , and that by transferrs and assignment , made and entered in their books and records without any other formality of law , providing always , that such shares as are first subscribed for , by scots men within this kingdom shal not be alienable to any other than scots men living within this kingdom ; that the foresaid transfers and convoyancies as to lands and other real estate ( when made of these only and a part ) be perfected according to the laws of this kingdom anent the convoyance of lands and real rights , with power likewayes to the foresaid company , by subscriptions or otherways , as they shall think fit to raise a joint stock or capital fond of such a sum or sums of money , and under and subject unto such rules , conditions and qualifications , as by the foresaid company , or major part of them when assembled shal be limited and appointed to begin , carry on and support their intended trade of navigation , and whatever may contribute to the advancement thereof . and it is hereby declared , that the said joint stock or capital fond , or any part thereof , or any estate , real or personal , ships , goods , or other effects of and belonging to the said company , shal not be lyable unto any manner of confiscation , seisure , forfaulture , attachment , arrest or restraint , for and by reason of any embargo , breach of peace , letters of mark or reprisal , declaration of war with any forraign prince , potentate , or state , or upon any other account or pretence whatsomever ; but shal only be transferable , assignable , or alienable in such way and manner and in such parts and portions , and under such restriction , rules and conditions , as the said company shal by writing in and upon their books , records and registers direct and appoint , and these transfers and assignments only , and no other shal convoy the right and property , in and to the said joint stock , and capital fond and effects thereof above-mentioned , or any part of the samen , excepting always as is above-excepted , and that the creditors of any particular member of the company may by their real diligence affect the share of the profit falling , and pertaining to the debitor , without having any further right or power of the debitors part and interest in the stock or capital fond , otherwise than is above-appointed , and with this express provision , that whatever charges the company may be put to , by the contending of any of their members deceased , or of their assigney , creditors or any other persons in their rights : the company shal have retention of their charges and expenses in the first place , and the books , records , and registers of the said company or authentick abstracts , or extracts out of the same are hereby declared to be good and sufficient for evidents in all courts of judicator , and else where . and his majesty with advice foresaid , farder statutes and declares , that the said iohn lord beilhaven , adam cockburn of ormistoun , lord justice clerk , mr. francis montgomery of giffen , sir iohn maxwel of pollock , sir robert chiesly present provost of edinburgh , iohn swintoun of that ilk , george clark late baillie of edinburgh , mr. robert blakewood , and iames balfour merchants in edinburgh , and iohn corss merchant in glasgow , william paterson esquire , iames fowlis , david nairn esquires , thomas deans esquire , iames chiesly , iohn smith , thomas coutes , hugh frazer , ioseph cohaine , daves ovedo , and walter stuart merchants in london , and others to be joyned with , or assumed by them in manner above-mentioned , and their successors , or major part of them assembled in the said company , shall and may in all time coming by the plurality of votes agree , make , constitute , and ordain all such other rules , ordinances and constitutions as may be needful for the better government and improvement of their joynt stock , or capital fond in all matters and things relateing thereunto : to which rules , ordinances , and constitutions , all persons belonging to the said company , as well directors as members thereof , governours , or other officers , civil or military , or others whatsoever shall be subject , and hereby concluded ; as also to administrat and take oaths de fideli , and others requisit to the management of the foresaid stock and company . and the said company is hereby impowered to equipp , fit , set out , fraught , and navigat their own , or hired ships , in such manner as they shall think fit , and that for the space of ten years from the date hereof , notwithstanding of the act of parliament one thousand six hundred and sixty one years , intituled act for encouraging of shipping and navigation , where with his majesty with consent foresaid dispenses for the said time allanerly , in favours of the said company , and that from any of the ports or places of this kingdom , or from any other parts or places in amity , or not in hostility with his majesty , in warlike or other manner to any lands , islands , countreys , or places in asia , affrica , or america , and there to plant collonies , build cities , towns , or forts , in or upon the places not inhabited , or in , or upon any other place , by consent of the natives and inhabitants thereof , and not possest by any european soveraign , potentate , prince , or state , and to provide and furnish the foresaid places , cities , towns , or forts with magazines , ordinances , arms , weapons , ammunition , and stores of war , and by force of arms to de end their trade and navigation , collonies , cities , towns , forts , and plantations , and other their effects whatsoever ; as also to make reprisals , and to seek and take reparation of damnage done by sea , or by land , and to make and conclude treaties of peace , and commerce with the soveraigns , princes , estates , rulers , governours , or proprietors of the foresaid lands , islands , countreys , or places in asia , affrica , or america ; providing always , likeas , it is hereby specially provided , that all ships imployed by them shall return to this kingdom with their effects , under the pain of confiscation , forefaulture , and seizure of the ship and goods , in case of breaking of bulk before their return , excepting the case of necessity , for preserving the ship , company and loadning allanerly . and his majesty with consent foresaid , doth farder statute and ordain , that none of the leidges of this kingdom shall , or may trade or navigat to any lands , islands , countreys , or places in asia , or affrica , in any time hereafter , or in america , for , and during the space of thirty one years , to be counted from the passing of this present act , without license and permission in writing from the said company : certifying all such as shall do in the contrair hereof , that they shall forefault and omit the third part of the ship , or ships , and of the cargo , or cargoes therein imployed , or the value thereof , the one hal to his majesty as escheat , and the other half to the use and benefit of the said company : for the effectual execution whereof , it shall be lawful to the said company , or any imployed by them , to seize the saids ships and goods in any place of asia , or affrica , or at sea upon the coasts of asia , or affrica , upon the transgression foresaid , by force of arms , and at their own hand , and that without the hazard of incurring any crime , or delinquency whatsomever on account of the said seizure , or any thing necessarly done in prosecution thereof , excepting always , and without prejudice to any of the subjects of this kingdom to trade and navigat , during the said space to any part of america , where the collonies , plantations , or possessions of the said company shall not be settled . and it is further hereby enacted , that the said company shal have the free and absolute right and property , onely relieving and holding of his majesty , and his successors in soveraignity , for the onely acknowledgment of their allegeance , and paying yearly a hogshead of tobacco , in name of blench-duty , if required allanerly , in , and to all such lands , islands , collonies , cities , towns , forts , and plantations , that they shall come to establish , or possess in manner foresaid ; as also , to all manner of treasures , wealth , riches , profits , mines , minerals , fishings , with the whole product and benefit thereof , as well under as above the ground , and as well in rivers and seas , as in the lands thereto belonging , or from , or by reason of the same in any sort , together with the right of government and admirality thereof ; and that the said company may by vertue hereof grant and delegat such rights , properties , powers , and imunities and permit and allow such sort of trade , commerce , and navigation into their plantations , collonies , cities , towns , or places of their possession , as the said company from time to time shall judge fit and convenient : vvith power to them to impose and exact such customs , and other duties upon and from themselves , and others treading with , and coming to the said plantations , cities , towns , places and ports , and harbours thereof , as the company shal think needful for the maintainance and other publick uses of the same , holding always , and to hold the whole premisses of his majesty , and his successors kings of scotland , as soveraigns thereof , and paying only for the same , their acknowledgement and allegeance , with a hogshead of tobacco yearly , in name of blench duty , if required , for all other duty , service , claim or demand whatsomever . with power and liberty to the said company to treat for , and to procure and purchase such rights , liberties , priviledges , exemptions and other grants , as may be convenient for supporting , promoting , and enlarging their trade and navigation from any foreign potentate or prince whatsoever , in amity with his majesty ; for which the general treaties of peace and commerce betwixt his majesty and such potentates , princes , or states shal serve for sufficient security , warrand and authority , and if contrair to the saids rights , liberties , priviledges , exemptions , grants , or agreements , any of the ships , goods , merchandise , persons , or other effects whatsoever , belonging to the said company , shal be slopt , detained , embazled , or away taken , or in any sort prejudged or damnified ; his majesty promises to interpose his authority , to have restitution , reparation and satisfaction made for the dammage done , and that upon the publick charge , which his majesty shal cause depurse , and lay out for that effect . and farder , it is hereby statute , that all ships , vessels , merchandise , goods , and other effects whatsoever belonging to the said company , shal be free of all manner of restraints , or prohibitions , and of all customs , taxes , cesses , supplies , or other duties imposed , or to be imposed by act of parliament , or otherwise , for and during the space of twenty one years , excepting alwise the whole duties of tobacco and suggar , that are not of the growth of the plantations of the said company . and farder , it is enacted , that the said company by commission under their common seal , or otherwise as they shal appoint , may make and constitute all and every their directors , governours , and commanders in chief , and other officers civil or military by sea , or by land ; as likewise that the said company may inlist , inroll , agree and retain all such persons subjects of this kingdom , or others whatsoever , as shal be willing and consent to enter in their service or pay , providing always that they uplift or levy none within the kingdom to be soldiers , without leave or warrand first obtained from his majesty , or the lords of his privy council , over which directors , governours , commanders in chief , or other officers civil or military , and others whatsoever in their service and pay , the company shal have the power , command and disposition both by sea and land. and it is farder statute , that no officer civil or military , or other person whatsoever within this kingdom , shal impress , entertain , stop or detain any of the members , officers , servants or others whatsoever , off , or belonging to the said company , and in case the said company , their officers or agents , shal find or understand any of their members , officers , servants , or others aforesaid to beimpressed , stopped or detained , they are hereby authorized and allowed to take hold of , and release the foresaid person impressed or stopped in any part of this kingdom , either by land or water ; and all magistrats and others his majesties officers civil and military , and all others are hereby required in their respective stations , to be aiding and assisting to the said company , under the pain of being lyable to all the loss , dammage , and detriment of the said company , by reason of the foresaid persons their neglect . and farder that the said company , whole members , officers , servants , or others belonging thereto , shal be free , both in their persons , estates , and goods , imployed in the said stock and trade , from all manner of taxes , cesses , supplies , excises , quartering of souldiers transient or local , or levying of souldiers , or other impositions whatsoever , and that for and during the space of twenty one years . and lastly , all persons concerned or to be concerned in this company , are hereby declared to be free denizons of this kingdom , and that they with all that shal settle to inhabit , or be born in any of the foresaid plantations , collonies , cities , towns , factories , and other places that shal be purchast and possest by the said company , shal be repute as natives of this kingdom , and have the priviledges thereof . and generally , without prejudice of the specialities foresaid , his majesty with consent foresaid , gives and grants to the said company , all power , rights and priviledges , as to their persons , rules , orders , estates , goods and effects whatsoever , that by the laws are given to companies allowed to be erected for manufactories , or that are usually given in any other civil kingdom or common-wealth , to any company there erected for trade and commerce . and for the better establishment and greater solemnity of this act and gift , in favours of the said company , his majesty doth farder ordain letters patent to be expede hereupon , containing the whole premisses vnder the great seal of this kingdom , for doing where of per saltum ▪ thir presents shal be sufficient warrand both to the director and chancellor , or keeper of the great seal , as use is in like cases . ix . act adjourning the session till the first day of november 1695. iune 27. 1695. whereas , by a former act in this session of parliament , the sitting of the session was adjourned until the first day of iuly next , which time being found yet too short , his majesty , with advice of the estates of parliament , continues the foresaid adjournment until the first day of november next to come , in the terms , and with the qualifications contained in the said first act of adjournment of the session in all points . x. act for pole-money . iune 27. 1695. the estates of parliament taking to their consideration , that in regard of the great and eminent dangers that threaten this kingdom from forraign enemies , and intestine disaffection , and the designs of evil men , and that our coasts are not sufficiently secured against privateers ; and that therefore it is necessar , that a compleat number of standing forces be maintained , and ships of war provided for its necessary defence ; as also considering , that beside the supplie upon the land-rent , other fonds will be requisit for the foresaid end , do for one of these fonds freely and chearfully offer to his majesty an subsidy to be uplifted by way of pole-money , and for making of which offer effectual , his majesty , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament foresaid , doth statute and ordain , that all persons of whatsoever age , sex , or quality , shal be subject and lyable to a pole of six shilling , except poor persons who live upon charity , and the children under the age of sixteen years , and in familia of all these persons whose pole doth not exceed one pound ten shilling scots . that beside the said six shilling imposed upon all the persons that are not excepted : a cottar having a trade shal pay six shilling more , making in the hail twelve shilling for every such cottar . that for each servant shal be payed by the master , for which the master is impowred to retain the fourtieth part of his yearly fee , whereof bountieth to be reckoned a part , ( excepting livery cloaths ) in the number of which servants are understood , all who receive wages or bountieth for any work , or imployment whatsoever , for the term or the year as they have , or shall serve , and in case they be not alimented in familia with their masters , then if they be not above the degree of a cottar or hynd , they are to have two third parts of wages and bountieth , or if above the said degree one third part of wages and bountieths , first deduced for their aliment . that all sea-men pay twelve shilling scots in name of pole. that all tennents pay in name of pole to the king , the hundreth part of the valued rent , payable by them to the master of the land , and appoints the master of the ground to adjust the proportions of this pole amongst his tennents , according to the respective duties payable by them in money or victual , effeiring to his valued rent . that all merchants , whether sea-men , shop-keepers , chapmen , tradesmen and others , whose free stock and means ( not including workmens tools , houshold-plenishing , nor stocks of tennents upon the farms and possession ) is above five hundreth merks , and doth not extend to five thousand merks , shal be subject and lyable to two pound ten shilling of pole. and that all these ( not including as above ) whose free stock and means is above five thousand merks , and does not extend to ten thousand merks , shal be subject to four pound of pole. that all merchants , whether sea-men , shop-keepers , chapmen , trades-men and others ( not including as above ) whose free estate and stock extends to , or is above ten thousand merks in worth and value , shall be lyable to ten pound of pole. that all gentlemen so holden and repute , and owning themselves to be such , and who will not renounce any pretence they have to be such , and which renunciations shal be recorded in the herauld . register gratis , shal be subject and lyable to three pound of pole-money , if they be not otherways classed , and upon another consideration be subject to a greater pole. that all heretors of twenty pounds , and below fifty pounds of valued rent , be subject and lyable to twenty shilling of pole-money . that all heretors of fifty pounds and below two hundred pounds of valued rent , be subject and lyable to four pounds of pole-money . that all heretors of two hundred pounds , and under five hundred pounds of valued rent , be lyable to nine pounds of pole-money . that all heretors of five hundred pounds or above the same , and under one thousand pounds of valued rent , be subject and lyable to twelve pounds of pole-money , and that they pay half a crown for each of their male-children living in familia . that all heretors of one thousand pounds of valued rent , and above the same , and all knight baronets and knights , be subject and lyable to twenty four pounds of pole-money , and that they pay for each of their male-children in familia three pounds . that all lords pay fourty pounds of pole-money . that all viscounts pay fifty pounds of pole-money . that all earls pay sixty pounds of pole-money . that all marquesses pay eighty pounds of pole. that all dukes pay an hundred pounds of pole. that the sons of noblemen pay according to their ranks , viz. all dukes eldest sons as marquesses , and their youngest sons as earls . all marquesses eldest sons as earls , and their youngest sons as viscounts . all earls eldest sons as viscounts , and their younger sons shal be lyable in twenty four pounds of pole. all viscounts , and lords sons shal be lyable in twenty four pounds of pole. that all widows whose husbands would have been lyable to one pound ten shilling of pole or above , are to be subject and lyable to a third-part of their husbands pole , except heiresses , who shal be subject to the same pole their predecessors would have been . that all nottars and procurators before interior courts , and messengers at arms , are to be subject and lyable to four pounds of pole-money . that all writers not to the signet , agents and clerks of inferior civil courts , and macers and under-clerks of session , shal pay six pounds of pole-money . that all advocats , clerks of soveraign courts , writers to the signet , sheriffs and their deputs , commissars and their deputs , doctors of medicine , appothecaries , chyrurgeons , and others repute doctors of medicine , pay twelve pounds of pole. that all commissionat officers of the army upon scots pay shal be lyable in two days pay for their pole. that all persons who are to pay the said respective poles , tho they be poled in different capacities , are only to pay at the highest rate above-mentioned , and that always over and above the general pole. and for the better stating , ordering and uplifting of the said pole , his majesty with advice foresaid , a statutes and ordains , that the commissioners of assessment or their quorum , shall meet and conveen at the ordinar place of their meeting , upon the second tuesday of august , one thousand six hundred ninety five years ; or shall appoint such other heretors as they shall think fit , and there shall divide the whole commissioners , whether present or absent , or shall appoint such other heretors as they shall think fit , into such divisions as they shall think meet , appointing paroches one or more for commissioners one or more , as they shall see convenient , to meet the last tuesday of the said moneth of august , at the respective places to be appointed , impowering the saids commissioners to take up rolls and lists of all the poleable persons within the respective bounds appointed to them , containing the names , qualities and degrees of the several persons , and of the value of the estates belonging to them , conform to the said act. and ordains the magistrats of burrows royal to meet the third tuesday of the said month of august , and to take up rolls and lists of all the poleable persons within the respective burghs , containing their names , qualities and degrees , and the value of their estates ; and which commissioners and magistrats of burghs are to give intimation at the kirk-door upon a sunday , upon three days warning at least to the persons to be poled , to compear before them at the paroch-church , and give up their names , qualities , degrees , and values of their estates , to the effect the respective poles may be stated and set down by the said commissioner , or commissioners of assessment , or magistrats of burghs respective , and which rolls the saids persons are to give up , or send under their hand , if they can write , otherwise if they cannot write , their name , quality , degree , and estate , shal be marked by the clerk , as they give it up , excepting tennents , whose names , and the pole-money payable by them , shall be given and sent by their masters under their hand , with certification , that such as do not compear , or send under their hands their names , qualities , and value of their estates , or do give up their quality , degree , or value of their estates , otherways than it should be , they shall be lyable in the quadruple of their pole , the equal half whereof shall belong to the informer , who shall make the same appear . and which lists and rolls , being so made up within the respective sub-divisions , shall be recorded and booked in a register of the shire , or burgh for that purpose : whereof there shall be an abstract sent to the lords of the thesaurie , betwixt and the first of october , one thousand six hundred ninety five years , containing the number of the persons in the several classes and ranks above specified , with the extent of their pole. and his majesty , with advice and consent of the saids estates of parliament , ordains the foresaid pole-money to be payed at the term of martinmass , one thousand six hundred ninety five years , or within thirty days thereafter , at the respective paroch kirks , where the persons concerned dwell , for which discharges are to be given to the payers gratis . and requires the commissioners of assessment , and magistrats of burghs , or the farmers , in case the same shall be set in farm , to cause intimation to be made for the payment thereof , at the kirk-doors of the several paroch-kirks upon the first sunday of october one thousand six hundred ninety five . certifying such as shall not make punctual payment at the said term of martinmass , one thousand six hundred ninety five , or within the said thirty days thereafter , shall be lyable in the double , if paying within other thirty days thereafter , or if failzieing after both the saids thirty days , in the quadruple of their pole : and ordains execution to be used against them for the same , by poynding of their readiest goods , or imprisoning their persons ; the foresaid poynding and imprisonment alwayes proceeding upon the sentence of one of the commissioners for the assessment , or any other inferior judge where the person lives . likeas his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , hereby impowers the lords of privy council , to order and appoint such furder methods and courses as they shall judge fit for stateing and inbringing of the pole-money aforesaid , and to allow out of the said pole-money such charges and expenses as shall be necessary for execution of this act. and his majesty and estates aforesaid , do hereby strictly appropriat , destinat , and appoint the sums to be raised by this act , for the ends and uses above-specified , conform to his majesties letter , whereof three hundred thousand pound to be bestowed in the first place , for providing and maintaining of the ships of war for one year , and which money the lords of thesaury are hereby ordained to furnish and answer to the commissioners of admirality , when called for , to the effect above-specified : and also the lords of privy council are hereby fully impowered to decide and determine all questions and difficulties hereby undetermined , that may arise anent the premisses . and lastly , it is hereby declared , that no persons lyable in payment of this pole , shall be holden to produce their discharges , or receipts of the same , after the term of martinmass , one thousand six hundred ninety six years , conform to his majesties letter . xi . act against blasphemy . june 28. 1695. our soveraign lord with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , does hereby ratifie , approve , and confirm the twenty first act of the first session of the first parliament of king charles the second , intituled , act against the crime of blasphemy , in the hail heads , clauses , and articles thereof , and ordains the same to be put to due and punctual execution : and farder , his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , statutes and ordains , that whoever hereafter , shall in their writing or discourse , deny , impugn , or quarrel , argue , or reason against the beeing of god , or any of the persons of the blessed trinity , or the authority of the holy scriptures of the old and new testaments , or the providence of god in the government of the world , shall for the first fault be punished with imprisonment , ●ay and while they give publick satisfafaction in sackcloth to the congregation , within which the scandal was committed . and for the second fault , the delinquent shall be fyned in an years valued rent of his real estate , and the twentieth part of his free personal estate , ( the equal half of which fines , are to be applyed to the use of the poor of that paroch , within which the crime shal happen to be committed , and the other half to the party informer , ) besides his being imprisoned , ay and while he make again satisfaction ut supra . and for the third fault , he shall be punished by death as an obstinat blasphemer : likeas , his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , hereby authorizes , and strictly requires , and enjoyns all magistrats , and ministers of the law , and judges within this kingdom , to put this present act in execution as to the first fault . and does hereby impower and require all sheriffs , stewarts , baillies of bailliaries , and regalities , and their deputs , and magistrats of burghs , to put this present act in execution as to the second fault . and as to the third fault , his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , remits the execution of this present act to the lords of his majesties justiciary . xii . act against irregular baptisms and marriages . iune 28. 1695. our soveraign lord considering , that the baptizing of children , and solemnizing of marriage by the laws and custom of this kingdom , and by the constitutions of this church , have alwise been done by ministers of the gospel authorized by law , and the established church of this nation ▪ and that notwithstanding thereof , several ministers now outed of their churches do presume to baptize children , and solemnize marriage without proclamation of banns , or consent of parents , and sometimes within the forbidden degrees : therefore , his majesty with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , strictly prohibits and discharges all outed ministers , to baptize any children , or solemnize marriage betwixt any parties in all time coming , under the pain of imprisonment , ay and while he find caution to go out of the kingdom , and never to return thereto , and remits the execution of this act to the ministers of the law , who are to assist to the execution of the twenty third act of the fourth session of this parliament , for settling the quiet and peace of the church : declaring alwise , that this present act is without prejudice to the acts of parliament already made against privat and clandestine marriages , which are hereby declared to stand in full force , and that execution may proceed on the saids acts at the instance of the parties concerned , or of the procurator-fiscals of the jurisdictions , where they shall happen to be questioned . xiii . act against prophaneness . iune 28. 1695. our soveraign lord , and estates of parliament , considering that the twenty fifth act of the second session of this current parliament , intituled , act against prophaneness , and the acts generally and particularly therein-ratified , has not taken the wished effect , through the negligence of the magistrats , officers , and others concerned to put the same in execution ; do hereby authorize , and strictly require and enjoyn all sheriffs and their deputs , stewarts and their deputs , baillies of baillities and regalities and their deputs , magistrats of burghs-royal and justices of peace within whose bounds any of the sins forbidden by the saids laws shal happen to be committed , to put the saids acts to exact and punctual execution , at all times , without necessity of any dispensation ; and against all persons , whether officers , souldiers , or others without exception ; with this certification , that such of the saids judges as shal refuse , neglect or delay to put the saids laws in execution , upon application of any minister , or kirk-session , or any person in their name , giving in information , and offering sufficient probation against the offender , that every one of the saids judges swa refusing , neglecting , or delaying , shal toties quoties be subject and lyable to a fyne of one hundred pounds scots , to be applyed for the use of the poor of the parish , where the scandal complained on was committed : declaring hereby that the agent for the kirk , the minister of the parish , or any other person , having warrand from him , or from the kirk session within the parish whereof the scandal complained on was committed , shal have good interest to pursue before the lords of session , any of the foresaid judges , who shal happen to refuse , neglect , or delay to put the saids laws against prophaneness to exact and punctual execution , who are hereby ordained to proceed summarly , without the order of the roll , and that it shal be a sufficient probation of their refusal , neglect or delay , if the pursuer instruct by an instrument under a nottars hand , and witnesses thereto subscribing and deponing thereupon , that he did inform the saids judges of the said scandal , and offered a sufficient probation thereof , unless the judge swa pursued condescend and instruct , that within the space of ten days after the said application , he gave order to cite the party complained on , to compear before him , within the space of ten days , and that at the day of compearance he was ready and willing to have taken cognition and tryal of the scandal complained on , and instruct and condescend on a relevant reason , why the said laws were not put in execution against the person complained on . xiv . act for restraining the prophanation of the lords day , by keeping weekly-mercats on munday and saturnday . iune 28. 1695. our soveraign lord considering , that there is much occasion given for profanation of the lords-day , by keeping of weekly-mercats on munday and saturnday , and that for preventing of this abuse , there are several acts of parliament prohibiting the keeping of weekly-mercats the saids days within royal-burghs ; but the saids acts not comprehending the burghs of regality and barrony , and weekly-mercats in villages and kirk-towns , the saids burghs , villages and kirk-towns are necessitate to keep their weekly-mercats on the saids days , conform to the special acts of parliament made in their favours ; and yet many of the saids burghs , villages and others would most willingly alter and change the saids mercat days , if they were but impowered and authorized for that effect . therefore , his majesty with the advice and consent of the estates of parliament , does not only ratifie and approve the saids acts of parliament made against the keeping of weekly-mercats upon mundays and saturndays within royal-burghs , but likewise does declare it leisume and lawful to all burghs of regality and barrony , and villages , and kirk-towns , whose weekly-mercats are kept the saids days , to change and alter the same : and the saids burghs , villages , and others are hereby authorized to choise and appoint any other days of the week they think fit for the keeping and holding of the saids weekly-mercats , they always making timous intimation of the said change to the next adjacent burghs , and providing they pitch not upon the mercat-day of any burgh-royal next adjacent , or of an other mercat-town within four miles . and that this act be not extended against fleshers within royal-burghs , who may keep mercats of fleshes in their respective burghs , upon these days , this act notwithstanding . xv. act for encouragement of preachers at vacant churches be-north forth . iuly 5. 1695. our soveraign lord considering that there are many churches vacant upon the north-side of the water of forth , which cannot be soon legally planted , nor in the interim otherways supplyed than by the presbytries in whose bounds they ly , theit imploying some preachers who are not setled in churches to preach in the saids vacant churches for some time , and that the intertaining of these preachers out of the first end of the vacant stipends of the paroches to which they preach , during their service , is a most proper pious use within the paroch : therefore his majesty , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , for encouraging of the said preachers swa to be imployed by the presbytries , doth hereby destinat , appoint and allow out of the first end of the vacant stipends of the respective churches , at which they shall preach by invitation or appointment , of the respective presbytries within whose bounds the samine do ly , to every one of the said preachers twenty merks scots , for their preaching each lords day , forenoon and afternoon , in the said vacant churches , and that whether the saids preachers be imployed by the presbytry to preach at one church , or at several churches by turns within their bounds ; declaring hereby a testificat under the presbytries hands , bearing that such a person hath upon their invitation preached so many lords days at such a church within their bounds , or at such and such churches within their bounds by turns , shall be a sufficient probation thereof , whereupon the saids preachers shall by vertue of this present act , have power and undoubted right to al 's many twenty merks , out of the first and readiest of the vacant stipends of the respective paroch-churches , as the said certificats shall bear them to have preached lords days thereat : and for preventing the trouble and expenses the said preachers would be put to in recovering payment of the saids allowances hereby granted effeiring to their services , if each of them should pursue for their own part , out of the particular vacant stipends of the respective churches at which they shall preach . his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , doth hereby impower the respective presbytries within whose bounds the respective vacant churches do ly , to grant commissions to such persons as they sha'l think fit for uplifting al 's much out of the first end of the vacant stipends , within their bounds where the said preachers shal serve at their invitation , as will pay and satisfie the saids allowances hereby granted to the persons invited by them to preach thereat , accompting ut supra for each lords days service ; with power to the said factors , to uplift , and if need be , to pursue for the same before the judge ordinary of the bounds ; discharging all advocations , as also suspensions , save upon consignation , and with this declaration , that if at the discussing of the suspension , the letters shall be found orderly proceeded , the wrongous suspender shall be decerned in a fifth part more , which factor shall be obliged to compt to the said preachers , who shall be imployed by the presbytries for the said allowances , to be uplifted by them ▪ according to the number of days to be contained in the presbytries certificat . likeas , his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , for encouragement of the said factors , and defraying their expenses , does hereby allow to every one of the said factors so to be appointed by the said presbytries , as much as corresponds to a tenth part of the said allowances , which they are to uplift further for their own use , out of the first end of the said vacant stipends , and with the benefit of the provisions above-mentioned . xvi . act anent the ease of annualrents due by persons restored , and anent the creditors diligence to be vsed against them . iuly 5. 1695. for as much as by the general act rescissory of fines and forfaultures in this current parliament , the consideration of the ease that was to be given to the persons thereby restored of the bygone annualrents due by them , and if the same ought to be granted to their cautioners , and what time diligence should be superseded against them , for payment of their principal sums , and such annualrents to which they were to be lyable , was remitted to the commission of fines and forfaultures therein-named , that they might report their opinion thereof to the parliament , which is not yet done ; and it being the interest of the persons restored , and their creditors , to have the same now determined : therefore his majesty , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , statutes and ordains , that during the time the persons restored by this present parliament were dispossessed of their estates , they and their cautioners are to be free of the payment of annualrents , unless that the party restored either hath recovered all or some part of his rents , from which he was excluded by the forfaulture ; in which case the person restored , and not the cautioner , shall be lyable to the payment of the annualrents during the time of his being dis●ossest , in swa far as he hath recovered the same , or otherways that the party restored may recover all or some part of the said rent due during the years that he was dispossest , in which case the party restored shall have no ease of any by gone annualrents , but upon his assigning to his creditors , with warrandice from his own fact and deed , any action competent to him for recovering all or any part of the said rents due during the time of his being dispossest ; declaring always , that when a cautioner for a person restored , did actually pay without collusion before the revolution , either principal sum or by gone annualrents ▪ or any part thereof , or had his lands adjudged therefore before the said revolution , or having given a bond , or suffered decreet before the revolution , hath made payment , or had his lands adjudged since the revolution , the foresaid ease and benefit granted in favours of the person restored , is no ways to be obtruded against the cautioner in that case . as also , it is hereby statute and ordained , that where persons restored have made payment since the revolution of any annualrents , for these years during which they were dispossest of their estates , it shall be leisume for them to retain al 's much in their own hand of the principal sums and annualrents yet resting , as extends to the foresaid annualrents swa payed by them , ( the annualrents unpayed being always discounted in the first place ) and where the debt is altogether payed , the party restored shall by vertue of this act , have action of repetition against his creditor , for refounding the said annualrents payed out by him for the years during which he was excluded from the possession of his estate by the forfaulture . likeas , his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , statutes and ordains , that it shall be leisume to the creditors of persons restored by this parliament , to affect the debitors estate for payment of their principal sums and annualrents resting ( except such annualrents whereof they are liberat by this present act , ) and that immediatly furth and after the date hereof , discharging hereby all personal execution against the persons restored for payment of any principal sums due by them before their forfaulture , till wh●●sunday next to come , in the year of god one thousand six hundred and fourscore sixteen years , after which all personal diligence shall be competent against the persons restored , unless they dispone and put the creditor in possession of as much of their estate ( whereof the creditor is to have his election , except as to the house , park and mains ) as will satisfie the principal sum and annualrents thereof resting , and not hereby given down at the ordinar rate of the countrey where the lands ly , and that free of incumbrances , which is to be done at the sight of the lords of session in a suspension , to be raised by the persons restored , upon the said offer redeemable , nevertheless within the space of five years for payment of what is resting of the creditors debt , discounting his intromissions ; and declaring always , that how soon the creditor shall be excluded from the possession of the saids lands swa to be disponed to him by the person restored , it shall be leisume to the creditor , immediatly thereafter , to use all manner of diligence personal and real for recovering of his debt for which the lands were disponed to him . likeas , his majesty , with advice and consent foresaid , statutes and ordains , that where a person restored offering to dispone his lands to his creditors , cannot purge and disburden the lands offered of real incumbrances , by the sight of the lords , and put the creditor in the free possession thereof , swa that he will be lyable to the personal diligence of his creditors after whitsunday one thousand six hundred fourscore sixteen years , that then if he demand the benefit of a cessio bonorum , the lords of the session are hereby allowed to grant the same to him upon his calling of his creditors , and making faith , and disponing in the common form , without necessity of his being imprisoned the time of raising or obtaining thereof , or of wearing the habit , after obtaining of the same . and likeways , it is hereby declared , that where any person during the standing of the said forfaulture now rescinded , did acquire any debts due by the person restored , they shall have action allannerly against the person restored for the sums truely payed out by them , and annualrent thereof , and shal lose all benefit of their compositions & eases , and his majesty and the estates of parliament , do hereby remit the case of the deceast william muir of caldwell , for repetition of by-gone rents , and all other cases of forfault persons restored depending before them , to be determined by the lords of session , excepting such cases wherein reports have been prepared by the commission for fines and forfaultures for the parliament , in which the pursuer may at his option futher insist , till the decision thereof before the parliament or lords of the session . xvii . act anent the mint . iuly 5. 1695. our soveraign lord , considering that by the act of parliament one thousand six hundred and eighty six intituled , act anent an humble offer to his majesty for an imposition upon certain commodities , for defraying the expense of a free coinage , and other matters relating to the mint ; the foresaid expense of a free coinage , and several matters relating to the mint were indeed settled , but neither so perfectly nor so fully as experience hath since discovered , but that there is still need and place for a further regulation : doth therefore , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , statute and ordain , that notwithstanding it be recommended by the said act to the lords of his majesties privy council , to try by some of their number , every journal of coin by it self distinctly , and that twice every year , viz. in the month of iuly and december yearly , yet seing the foresaid distinct tryal of every journal hath been found both a tedious and superfluous labour , and is not practised any where else , it shal be leisom for the said lords of his majesties privy council , to make the said tryal by such of their number as they shal think fit , not of every journal of coin by it self distinctly , but by taking and making tryal of any one or more single journals , as they shal think fit , and then to cause melt down in one mass or lignat , the rest of the journals , to be at that time tried , and to take an essay of the mass so melted down , as said is , which shal stand for the whole , but prejudice always to the said lords of council to make distinct tryals of the hail foresaid journals , as they shal see cause , as also , still recommending to them the exact tryal of all matters relating to the coinage , at the foresaid two times above-specified , in manner mentioned in the said act , and that notwithstanding of the foresaid act , which is innovat in so far as the same is inconsistent with this present act. xviii . act anent the quorum of the commission of teinds . iuly 5. 1695. our soveraign lord the kings majesty , considering that there are many actions depending before the lords , and others commissioners , for plantation of kirks , and valuation of teinds , which cannot be decided and determined , in respect that the saids commissioners have not met so frequently as was necessary , by reason of the difficulties of getting a quorum , whereby the leidges have been much prejudged ; for remei●ing whereof , our soveraign lord , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , statutes and ordains , that seven commissioners , whereof one of every state shal be an sufficient quorum , who being present at the down-sitting and constituting of the meeting : the withdrawing of one or more of any of the three states , after constituting of the meeting , shal not breach the quorum , seven of the commissioners of the other state or states being still present , without prejudice to the officers of state to be still members of the said commission , tho the presence of one or more of them be not necessary to constitute the foresaid quorum . and his majesty , with consent foresaid , does hereby ratify and approve the twenty fourth act of the fourth session , and thirtieth act of the second session of this current parliament , in the hail heads , articles , and clauses thereof , excepting in so far as the samen is innovat be this present act ; and the saids commissioners are hereby appointed to meet every wednesday in the afternoon , during the sitting of the session . xix . act anent the duty on scots muslin . iuly 5. 1695. our soveraign lord , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , statute and ordain , that in all time coming , all muslin , plain or stript , or camrick , and all sorts of linen under whatsomever name or designation , manufactored within the kingdom , shal at the exporting thereof pay custom only as scots linen , conform to the book of rates . xx. act anent the post-office . iuly 5. 1695. our soveraign lord considering , that for the maintainance of mutual correspondence , and preventing of many inconveniences that happen by privat posts , several publick post-offices have been heretofore erected , for carrying and receiving of letters by posts to and from most parts and places of this kingdom , and that the well ordering thereof , is a matter of general concern , and of great advantage , as well for the conveniences of trade and commerce , as otherways ; and to the end that speedy and safe dispatches may be had , and that the best means for that end , will be the settling and establishing a general post-office : therefore , his majesty with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , statutes , ordains , and appoints an general post-office to be be keeped within the city of edinburgh , from whence all letters and pacquets whatsoever , may be with speed and expedition sent into any part of the kingdom , or any other of his majesties dominions , or into any kingdom or countrey beyond seas , by the pacquet that goes sealed for london , at which said office , all returns and answers may be likeways received ; as also , that a master of the said general-letter-office shall be from time to time appointed by his majesty , his heirs , and sucessors , by letters , patents , under the privy seal of this kingdom , by the name and title of his majesties post-master-general ; or otherways , that the said office may be set in tack by the lords of his majesties thesaury and exchequer , as his majesty and his saids successors shall think most expedient : and that the said master of the said office , or tacks-man for the time respectively , and his deput or deputs authorized by him for that effect , and his and their servants , and no other person or persons whatsoever , shall from time to time have the receiving , taking up , or ordering , dispatching , sending posts with speed , and delivering of all letters and pacquets whatsoever , which shall from time to time be sent to and from , all and every the parts and places of this kingdom , to and from his majesties dominions , or places beyond seas , where he shall settle , or cause to be settled , posts or running messengers for that purpose : excepting such letters as are sent by any person or persons , to and from any place within this kingdom by their own servants , or by express sent on purpose about their own affairs , and letters directed along with , and relating to goods sent , or to be returned by common carriers allenarly : and where post-offices are not erected , and posts settled , his majesty with consent foresaid , allows the custom of sending by carriers or others as formerly , ay and while such offices be established and no longer . and farder , his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , statutes and enacts , that the said post-master-general , or tacks-man and their respective deputs and substitutes , and no other person or persons whatsoever , shall provide and have in readiness , sufficient horses and furniture for ryding post to all persons , ryding to and from all the parts and places of scotland where any post roads are , or shal be settled and established : but prejudice to the use of hyring of horses , which are not to ride post as formerly . and sicklike , his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , statutes , enacts , and ordains , that it shall be lawful for the said post-master general , or tacks-man and their saids deputs , to ask , exact , and receive , for the portage and convoyance of all such letters , which he or they shall so convoy , carry , or send post as aforesaid , and for providing and furnishing horses for ryding post as aforesaid , according to the several ra●es and sums after-mentioned , which they are not to exceed , viz. all single letters to berwick , or any part within fifty miles of edinburgh two shilling , double four shilling , and so proportionally ; all single letters to any place above fifty miles , and not exceeding a hundred miles , to pay three shilling , double six shilling , and so proportionally , all single letters to any place in scotland above a hundred miles , to pay four shilling , double eight shilling , and so proportionally : declaring nevertheless , that all single letters with bills of loadning or exchange , envoys , or other merchant accompts inclosed and sent to any place within the kingdom , shall be onely considered as single leters ; all pacquets of papers to pay each one as triple letters : and it shall be lawful for the said post-master-general , tacks-man , and their deputs , to ask , exact , take , and receive from every person , to whom he or they shall furnish horses , furniture , and guide for ryding post in any of the post roads aforesaid , three shilling scots for ilk horse hire for postage for every scots mile . and in like manner , his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , strictly prohibits and discharges , all other person or persons whatsoever , as well single , as bodies pollitick or incorporat , excepting the said post-master-general , or tacks-man , and their deputs , and the servants of noblemen , gentlemen , and others , in the cases particularly above-excepted allenarly , to carry , receive , or deliver any letters for hire , or to set up or imploy any foot post , horse post , or to settle post-masters within their jurisdictions , under the penalty of twenty pounds scots for every transgression , and an hundred pounds scots for each moneths continuance thereof , after intimation be is made to them in the contrair , and the saids penalties to be pursued for , before any judge competent , the one half thereof to be applyed for the use of the informer , and the other half for the use of the said post-master-general , or tacks-man respective ; and that no common carrier presume to carry any letters to , or from any places within this kingdom , where post-offices are settled , excepting the case aforesaid : certifying all such as do in the contrary , that upon seizure of any such carrier with the letters about him , or being convicted thereof before any judge competent , he shall be imprisoned six days for ilk fault , and fyned in the sum of six pounds scots , toties quoties : and because , it is not onely expedient for his majesties government , but likeways for the advancement of the trade of this kingdom , that a settled correspondence by weekly posts , be established with his majesties subjects in the kingdom of ireland , and that the said kingdom of ireland , will not be at the expense for maintaining the pacquet boats for passing to and from this kingdom ; therefore , his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , ordains and appoints the said general-post-master or tacks-man , to keep and maintain pacquet boats to go weekly , ( wind and weather serving , ) from port-patrick in this kingdom to donachadee in ireland , to carry and receive all letters to be sent betwixt this kingdom and the kingdom of ireland , and that the expense bestowed on these pacquet boats , be allowed to the said general-post-master or tacks-man , in part of his intromissions with the profits of the said general-letter office , or out of the tack duty when the same is set in tack or farmed , not exceeding the sum of sixty pounds sterling money yearly . and his majesty with consent foresaid , ordains and commands all the sheriffs , stewarts , baillies of regalities or royalties , magistrats of royal burghs , justices of peace , and all other judges and magistrats whatsoever , al 's well in burgh a● landward , to concur with and assist the post-master-general , tacks-man and their deputs , in the discharging of his trust , for rendring this act effectual for the ends above-written , and putting the same to all due and lawful execution within their respective bounds . and his majesty with consent foresaid , statutes and ordains , that no person or persons of whatsoever degree or quality , presume to stop , molest , hinder , or impede the several posts , al 's well foot posts , as horse posts authorized by , or bearing warrand from the said post-master-general , tacks-man , or their successors in office , by night or by day , under the pain and penalty of one thousand pound scots , attour the reparation of the damnages to any party lesed thereby ; far less to detain , rob , or take away any pacquets , under the pains contained in the acts of parliament . and his majesty with consent foresaid , ordains and appoints the said post-master-general , tacks-man and his said deputs , and their successors in their several offices , to take the oath of allegiance and subscribe the same with the assurance , appointed to be taken by all persons in publick trust , by the third act of the third session of this current parliament . and his majesty with consent foresaid , ordains general letters to be directed at the instance of the said general-post-master , or tacks-man , and their successors in office , against their several deputs , for the tack-duties of their respective offices , as is allowed for in-bringing any part of his majesties revenue . and lastly , the lords of his majesties privy council , are hereby authorized and impowered to take care , that particular post-offices be established over all the kingdom at places most convenient , and the times of parting of posts with letters , and of their running , be duly settled and published ; and generally , that this act be punctually observed and execute , and do all other things to make the same effectual for the true end and intent thereof . and ordains this present act to be published and printed , that none may pretend ignorance . xxi . explanatory act anent the excise of brandy . iuly 5. 1695 ▪ forasmuch as many actions have been commenced and pursued before the lords commissioners of thesaury and exchequer , to the great vexation and expense of the leidges , anent the meaning of the act of parliament first of december 1673 , intituled , act concerning the importation and excise of brandy ; by which act six shilling scots are imposed upon each pint , to be payed by the retailers in small 's ; and under pretence of the word retailers in the said act , the sub-taxmen and collectors have forced the leidges to pay for the same two or three times , and the merchants importers have been likewise charged therefore , notwitstanding that by the said act retailers are onely lyable . for remeid of which , our soveraign lord with consent of the estates of parliament , does hereby declare , that the six shilling upon the pint of brandy , shall hereafter be payable onely by toppers and retailers in small 's , who sell brandy by pints , gills , and lesser quantities than pints in taverns , shops , cellars , and the like , where the same is immediatly consumed , and by no others , notwithstanding of any former practice in the contrair . xxii . act against intruding into churches without a legal call and admission thereto . iuly 5. 1695. our soveraign lord considering , that ministers and preachers , their intruding themselves into vacant churches , possessing of manses and benefices , and exercing any part of the ministerial function in paroches , without a legal call and admission to the saids churches , is an high contempt of the law , and of a dangerous consequence tending to perpetuat schism . therefore , his majesty with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , statutes and declares , that whoever hereafter shall intrude themselves into any church , or shall possess manse or benefice , or shall exercise any part of the ministerial function within any paroch , without an orderly call from the heretors and eldership , and legal admission from the presbytry within whose bounds it lies , shall be incapable of enjoying any church , or stipend , or benefice within this kingdom , for the space of seven years after their removeal from the church , and quiting possession of the stipend and benefice into which they intruded : likeas , his majesty with advice and consent foresaid , does hereby remit the execution of this present act to sheriffs , stewarts , baillies of bailliaries , and regalities , and their deputs , and to magistrats of burrows royal , who are hereby authorized and required , to remove and declare incapable , ut supra , all these , who shall hereafter intrude into churches within their respective jurisdictions , upon complaint from the presbytry , or any person having warrand from the presbytry , within whose bounds the saids intrusions shall happen to be made hereafter ; and that upon citation of ten days : ordaining hereby letters of horning and caption to be direct in communi forma , upon decreets to be given by the saids inferior judges , for compelling the saids intruders to remove from the saids churches and manses , and to quite possession of the saids stipends and benefices , and to desist and cease from exercing any ministerial acts within the saids paroches , into which they shall hereafter intrude . likeas , his majesty doeth hereby recommend to the lords of his majesties privy council to remove all these , who have already , since the establishment of this present church government , intruded into vacant churches , without an orderly call from the heretors and eldership of the paroch , and a legal admission from the presbytry within whose bounds the saids churches lies : as also , to take some effectual course for stopping and hindering these ministers , who are , or shall be hereafter deposed by the judicatories of this present established church ; from preaching or exercising any act of their ministerial function , which they cannot do after they are deposed , without a high contempt of the authority of the church , and of the laws of the kingdom establishing the same . xxiii . act anent lands lying run-rig . iuly 5. 1695. our soveraign lord and the estates of parliament taking into their consideration , the great disadvantage , arising to the who●e subjects , from lands lying run-rig , and that the same is highly prejudicial to the policy and improvement of the natio● , by planting and inclosing , conform to the several laws and acts of parliament of before made thereanent : for remeid , his majesty with the advice and consent of the said estates , statutes and ordains , that wherever lands of different heretors ly run-rig , it shall be leisum to either party to apply to the sheriffs , stewarts , and lords of regality , or justices of peace of the several shires where the lands ly ; to the effect , that these lands may be divided according to their respective interests , who are hereby appointed and authorized for that effect ; and that after due and lawful citation of all parties concerned , at an certain day , to be prefixed by the said judge or judges . it is always hereby declared , that the saids judges , in making the foresaid division , shall be , and are hereby restricted , so as special regard may be had to the mansion-houses of the respective heretors , and that there may be allowed and adjudged to them the respective parts of the division , as shall be most commodious to their respective mansion-houses and policy , and which shall not be applicable to the other adjacent heretors : as also , it is hereby provided and declared , that thir presents shall not be extended to the burrow and incorporat acres , but that notwithstanding hereof , the same shall remain with the heretors to whom they do belong , as if no such act had been made . xxiv . act for obviating the frauds of appearand heirs . iuly 10. 1695. our soveraign lord considering the frequent frauds and disappointments that creditors do suffer , upon the decease of their debitors , and through the contrivances of appearand heirs , in their prejudice : for remeid thereof , and also for facilitating the transmission of heretage in favours of both heirs and creditors , his majesty , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , statutes and ordains , that if any man since the first of ianuary one thousand six hundred and sixty one , have served , or shal hereafter serve himself heir ; or by adjudication on his own bond , hath since the time foresaid succeeded , or shal hereafter succeed , not to his immediate predecessor , but to one remoter , as passing by his father to his goodsire , or the like ; then , and in that case , he shal be lyable for the debts and deeds of the person interjected , to whom he was appearand heir , and who was in the possession of the lands and estate to which he is served , for the space of three years , and that in so far as may extend to the value of the said lands and estate , and no further ; deducing the debts already payed : as also , with this order , as to the time past , that all the true and lawful debts of the appearand heir , entering as said is , and already contracted , with the true and real debts of the predecessor to whom he enters , shal be preferred in the first place . as also , his majesty , with advice and consent foresaid , statutes and ordains , that if any appearand heir for hereafter , shal without being lawfully served or entered heir , either enter to possess his predecessors estate , or any part thereof , or shal purchase , by himself , or any other to his behoove , any right hereto , or to any legal diligence , or other right affecting the same , whether redeemable or irredeemable , otherwise than the said estate is exposed to a lawful publick roup , and as the highest offerer thereat , without any collusion ; his foresaid possession or purchase shal be repute a behaviour as heir , and a sufficient passive title to make him represent his predecessor universally , and to be lyable for all his debts and deeds , sicklike as if the said appearand heir , possessing or purchasing , as said is , were lawfully served and entered heir to his said predecessor : declaring always , likeas , it is hereby declared , that the said appearand heir may bring the said estate to a roup , whether the estate be bankrupt or not . and it is further statute , that where rights or legal diligences , affecting their predecessors estates , shal be found settled in the person of any such near relation , to whom the appearand heir to the foresaid predecessor may also succeed as heir , the appearand heirs possessing by vertue of the said rights and diligences , except upon lawful purchase by publick roup , as said is , shal not only be a passive title , but the said rights and diligences in the person of the said near relation , shal only be sustained as valid to exclude the predecessors creditors , in so far as can be qualified and instructed , that these rights and diligences were truly and honestly purchased for payment of sums of money , and no further . and moreover , his majesty , with advice and consent foresaid , statutes and ordains , that for hereafter any appearand heir shal have free liberty and access to enter to his predecessors cum beneficio inventarii , or upon inventary , as use is , in executories and moveables , allowing still to the said appearand heir , year and day to deliberate , in which time he may make up the foresaid inventary , which he is to give up upon oath , full and particular as to all lands , houses , annualrents , or other heretable rights whatsoever , to which the said appearand heir may , or pretends to succeed ; which inventary to be subscribed by him before witnesses , duly insert and designed , shal be given in to the clerk of the sheriff court of the shire , where the defuncts lands and heretage lye ; or in case the defunct had no lands or heretage requiring seasin , to the clerk of the shire , where the defunct deceased : to which inventary , the sheriff , or sheriff-deput , with the clerk of the court , shal also subscribe in judgement , and record the same in their registers , and give extracts thereof , for all which , the upgiver of the said inventary shal pay no more to the court and clerk thereof , on any account , than the ordinary price of extracts in that court , for an extract of the said inventary : and this inventary is to be given in , recorded , and extracted as said is , within the said year and day , to deliberat ; and thereafter the foresaid extract thereof , shal within fourty days after the expiration of the said year and day , be again presented and registrated in the books of council and session , in a particular register to be appointed by the clerk register , for that effect : and the appearand heir entering by inventary , in manner foresaid , is hereby declared to be only lyable to his predecessors debts and deeds , secundum vires inventarii , and in as far as the value of the heritage , given up in inventary , will extend , and no farther . providing always , likeas , it is hereby specially provided , that if the aforesaid appearand heir shal have any intromission with the defuncts heretable estate , or any part thereof , otherways than necessary intromission , for custody and preservation , before his giving in , recording and extracting of the said inventary in manner foresaid ; or if he shal fraudfully omit any thing out of the said inventary , that is , which yet he shal be found to have intrometted with , or possessed , then , and in either of these cases , he shal lose the benefit of the inventary , and be universally lyable , as if entered heir without inventary . and farder , that if any part of the said heretable estate shal be without fraud omitted to be given up by him in the foresaid inventary , and shal not in the mean time be affected by the diligence of a lawful creditor , he shal have liberty , so soon as he comes to the knowledge thereof , and within fourty days thereafter , to make an eik of the same , to the said inventary ; which eik is to be made and subscribed , given in and recorded , in the same manner with the principal inventary above-mentioned . and lastly , it is hereby declared , that appearand heirs , if they please , may enter without inventary as formerly in all points , and that whether they enter with or without inventary , they are still to enter by service and retour , or by precepts of clare constat , in manner formerly accustomed . xxv . act anent the repetition of fines . iuly 10. 1695. our soveraign lord considering , that by the eighteenth act of the second session of this current parliament , intituled , act rescinding the forefaultures and fines , past since the year one thousand six hundred sixty five ; all fines then unpayed , which were imposed by sentences , from the first day of ianuary one thousand six hundred sixty five , to the fifth of november one thousand six hundred eighty eight upon any person or persons for church irregularities or non-conformities , or refusing of publick bonds , subscriptions or oaths , or for not obeying acts , proclamations and orders thereanent , resetting or conversing with rebels , for the causes foresaid , refusing to depone in lybels against themselves , in capital cases , albeit restricted to an arbitrary punishment ; with all hornings , denunciations and intercommunings , given , pronounced , and issued furth in parliament , or by an other court or commission against any persons , for the saids causes , are expresly discharged : and further , that by the foresaid act , it was remitted to the commission , appointed for fines and forefaulters , to consider the grounds of repetition of such of the said fines as were payed to donators , or others having right from them , and other privat parties : and also considering that the said commission hath given no decision or determination upon the foresaid remit , whereby the parties lesed , who made payment of the said fines in manner foresaid , to donators , and others , have as yet received no redress : therefore his majesty , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , doth statute and declare , that where fines were imposed by sentences from the first of ianuary one thousand six hundred sixty fives to the fifth of november one thousand six hundred eighty eight , upon any person for church irregularities and non-conformities , or refusing of publick bonds , subscriptions and oaths , for not obeying acts , proclamations and orders thereanent , resetting of , or conversing with rebells for the causes foresaid , refusing to depon upon lybells against themselves in capital cases , albeit restricted to an arbitrary punishment , and that the persons so fined , have made payment of the hail of the said fines , or any part thereof , to donators or others , that it shal be leasom for them to pursue the said donators or others for repetition , and who are hereby declared lyable to refound what they have received , together with the annualrent thereof since martimass one thousand six hundred eighty eight . and furder , his majesty , and the estates of parliament , having considered the act made in the year one thousand six hundred and ninety , rescinding fines and forefaulters , and that thereby the forefaulted persons are restored to their lands , rents and possessions , and the composition made by them or others in their name , ordained to be repayed by the donators or others ; and seing it is just , that the annualrents of the said compositions , since the date of the foresaid act be likewise payed . therefore , his majesty , with advice and consent foresaid , statutes and ordains , that annualrent from the date of the said act be repayed , with the compositions themselves , excepting always furth and frae this act , all fines imposed by mr. iohn meinzies advocat , while sheriff-deput of lanerk , in regard it is notorly known he fined not for any advantage to himself , but for prevention of rigorous execution from others , and remits all causes for repetition of fines depending before the parliament or commission to be discussed by the lords of session summarily , without abiding the course of the roll. and it is furder declared , that where any person forefaulted and restored as above , shal be found to be postponed in diligence , either for his payment as a creditor , or his relief as a cautioner , by reason of his forefaulture , he shal now , after his restitution be in the same case for preference , as if he had done all diligence possible for him , if not forefaulted . xxvi . act discharging popish persons to prejudge their protestant heirs in succession . iuly 11. 1695. our soveraign lord understanding , that parents , and others of the popish religion , and that are so affected , do restrain and overawe their children , and appearand heirs , so as they cannot , though convinced in their consciences , by the light of the truth , abandon the popish errors and superstitions of their said parents , for fear that they may be by them dis-inherited , and deprived of any benefit of succession , that they may have , by their said parents , and others foresaid ; do therefore , and for remeid thereof , statute and ordain , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , that it shal not be leisom , nor in the power of any profest or known papist , to make any gratuitous deed , or disposition in prejudice of their appearand heirs , and the benefit they may have , by their succession to , and in favours of any other person , or persons whatsomever ; declaring , likeas , it is hereby declared , that no such disposition or deed , shal be of any force , but shal be judged to be gratuitous , unless that both the person granter , and the writer and witnesses in the deed , shal declare upon oath , and also qualify satisfyingly , before the judge ordinary of the bonds , that the foresaid disposition and deed was made and granted , for true , onerous , and adequat causes ; or otherways that the same shal be null and void , in manner above-statute . xxvii . act concerning the church . iuly 16. 1695. our soveraign lord , being sensible of the hurt and mischief that may ensue , upon the exposing of the peoples minds to the influence of such ministers , who refuse to give the proofs required by law of their good affection to the government ; and withal desirous , that in the first place , all gentle and easie methods should be used to reclaim men to their duty , whereby the present establishment of this church , may be more happily preserved , the knowledge of the truth , with the practice of true piety more successfully advanced , and the peace and quiet of the kingdom more effectually settled : hath thought good to allow , and with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , hereby allowes to all ministers that were at the time of his majesties happy accession to the crown , and have since continued actual ministers in particular paroches , and no sentence either of deposition or deprivation past against them , and have not yet qualified themselves , conform to the act of parliament 1693 , intituled , act for taking the oath of allegiance and the assurance , a new and farther day , viz. the first of september in this present year 1695 , to come in and take the said oath of allegiance , and to subscribe the same with the assurance betwixt and the said day , and that either before the sheriff , or sheriff-deput of the shires , or the provost or baillies of the respective burghs , or any other inferior magistrat of the bounds where they live , or before any privy counsellor , with a certificat under the hand of the said inferior judges , or privy counsellor , to be reported to the lords of his majesties privy council , or their clerk , within the space of twenty one days after the date of the said certificat : declaring , that all such as shal duely come in and qualify themselves as said is , and shal behave themselves worthily in doctrine , life and conversation as becomes ministers of the gospel , shall have and enjoy his majesties protection , as to their respective kirks and benefices , or stipends , they always containing themselves within the limits of their pastoral charge within their said paroches , without offering to exerce any power , either of licensing , or ordaining ministers , or any part of government in general assemblies , synods , or presbytries , unless they be first duely assumed by a competent church judicatory ; in which case , it is hereby farder declared , that the foresaid ministers first qualifying themselves as above , may be assumed by the respective church judicatories to which they belong , and shall apply to partake with them in the present established government thereof : providing nevertheless , that as the said ministers who shal qualifie themselves as said is , are left free to apply or not , to the foresaid church judicatories : so the said church judicatores are hereby also declared free to assume , or not assume the foresaids ministers , though qualified as they shall see cause : with certification , that such of the said ministers , as shall not come in betwixt and the said day , are hereby , and by the force of this present act , ipso facto , depriof their respective kirks and stipends , and the same declared vacant without any further sentence . and his majesty being purposed , that his grace shall be still patent to all ; doeth further declare and statute , with consent foresaid , that at what time soever any minister , either settled in a church , or not , shall upon application , be judged fit to be assumed by any competent church judicatory as said is , the foresaid minister , upon a certificat thereof from the said judicatory , shall be admitted and allowed to qualify himself , by taking the oath of allegiance , and subscribing the same with the assurance in manner foresaid , albeit the said first of september be past and elapsed . and his majesty with consent foresaid , allows , declares , and statutes as above , any thing in the foresaid act 1693 , or in the other act of the same session of parliament , intituled , act for settling the quiet and peace of the church , notwithstanding . and his majesty with consent foresaid , for the greater encouragement of all ministers of the gospel , not only ratifies the act of parliament 1669 , forbidding all suspensions of special decreets and charges for ministers stipends , or the rents of their benefices , except on production of discarges , or upon consignation in manner therein provided : but further statutes and ordains , that there be no advocation , or sist of process granted of actions for the said stipends , or rents of benefices , when pursued before inferior judges , and that in the case of a decreet , there be neither suspension nor sist of execution granted , except on production of clear discharges or consignation as said is , and if any suspension be past , that the same be summerly discussed at the instance of the charger , without abiding the order and course of the roll : and that if the letters be found orderly proceeded , the suspender be also decerned at least in a fifth part more than the sums charged for , with what more the lords shall judge reasonable to be payed to the charger for his expense and damnage . and if any minister shall happen to pursue for his stipend by way of ordinary action before the lords , it is hereby farther ordained , that the same be summarly proceeded in , and discussed without abiding the course of the roll. and lastly , for a more ample declaration of an act made in this session of parliament , for encouraging of preachers at vacant churches be north forth , his majesty with consent foresaid , extends the same not only to preachers who are not settled in churches , but also to such ministers who though settled in churches , are yet sent from time to time from any presbytry or synod of this church , without their own presbytry , to supply the said vacancies , to the effect , that the said ministers settled , as well as the said preachers not settled , may equally have the benefit of the said act , in the terms thereof . xxviii . act for the additional and annexed excises . iuly 16. 1695. the estates of parliament , taking to their consideration , that for the maintaining of the present standing forces , and the necessary defence of the kingdom , and coasts thereof , against the dangers that continue to threaten from the present war ; an additional fond , to the supplies already given , in this present session of parliament , is requisit : do therefore , for the said fond , and over and above the excise of two merks upon the boll of malt , and the excises on strong waters and brandy , and forreign beer annexed to the crown , heartily offer to his majesty , an additional excise of two pennies upon the pint of ale and beer , browen to be vended and sold ; as also , of two shilling upon each pint of aquavitae and strong waters , brown or made of malt , to be vended and sold within the kingdom : and likewise an additional excise of two shilling upon each pint of aquavitae and strong waters brown , not made of malt , excepting what is made of wine ; and that during the space of twelve moneths , commencing from the first day of september next . and his majesty , and estates of parliament , considering the advantages of a greater consumption , and better liquor arising , both to the heretors , brewers , and the whole leidges of the kingdom , by laying all excises upon the liquor , and not upon the malt ; as also the manifest conveniency that the said annexed excise formerly on the malt be converted upon the liquor , that both these excises may be uniformly raised and uplifted , with less charges and expenses , with which reasons , and the truth thereof , after mature deliberation , the estates of parliament are satisfied , and fully convinced , that his majesty getting an equivalent , the same are just and important , concerning both his majesties interest and the publick good and welfare of this kingdom . therefore his majesty , with consent of the said estates , hath dissolved , and hereby dissolves the foresaid annexed excise of two merks upon the boll of malt , from the crown and patrimony thereof . rescinding , likeas , his majesty hereby rescinds the act of parliament 1685 , giving , and annexing the foresaid excise of two merks upon the boll of malt to the crown , in so far as , it gives and annexes the same allannerly , and no farder : together with all tacks , contracts or commissions , made , or granted , of , or concerning the foresaid annexed excise , hereby dissolved and taken away ; declaring the said tacks , sub-tacks , contracts , and commissions to be fallen therewith in consequentiam , after the first day of september aftermentioned : in place of the which annexed excise , and as an equivalent , in lieu thereof , the estates of parliament , for the usefulness of this grant , to support the interest of the crown , do humbly and unanimously offer to his majesty , over and above the foresaid two pennies , and other additional excises abovementioned , an excise of three pennies more upon the pint of all ale and beer browen to be vended and sold as said is ; as also , of three shilling more upon ilk pint of aquaviae or strong waters , not made of malt browen and sold within this kingdom : six shilling upon ilk pint of forraign aquavitae , brandy , or strong waters ; and thirty shilling upon ilk barrel of imported forreign drinking beer ; and this excise hereby given in lieu of the foresaid annexed excise of two merks upon the boll of malt , and ordained to commence from the foresaid first day of september : his majesty , and the estates of parliament , by the force of this present act , have united and annexed , and unites and annexes the same to the crown of this realm , to remain therewith , as annexed property in all time coming . and his majesty , with advice and consent foresaid , do appoint the payment of the said two excises , unannexed and annexed , extending to five pennies upon the pint , so long as they shal concur , to be as follows , viz. for the first two moneths , upon the first day of november next to come , and thereafter quarterly , and proportionally , so long as they shal concur , and stand together ; and thereafter the foresaid new annexed excise to be payed at such terms as his majesty and successor : shal please to appoint ; and for making of the said two excises effectual for their respective endurances , his majesty , with consent foresaid , doth impose and ordain the foresaid two excises upon ale and beer , to be raised and uplifted from all brewers of the said liquors , brown and made to be vended and sold , as said is ; and the said excises upon aquavitae and strong waters to be raised and uplifted from all retailers thereof . and for the raising and inbringing of the said excise , his majesty , and the estates of parliament do hereby appoint and authorize the commissioners of the new supply , appointed in another act of this present session of parliament to be the commissioners of the excise , during the respective endurances of the said two excises , for the several shires , for the end foresaid , and the royal burghs to have the same number of commissioners , as was appointed by the fourteenth act of the parliament 1661 , impowering them fully for that effect , conform to the rules and orders formerly enacted for raising and inbringing the former annexed excise upon malt : as also to set down and cause observe such other rules as they shal judge necessary , agreeable always to the acts of parliament already made about the foresaid excise . and that the said excises on liquor may arise more equally , it is hereby statute , that during the concurrence of the said two excises , the lowest price of ale or drinking beer to be brewed and vented and sold for hereafter , shal in all burghs , where the burgh hath an particular imposition on malt or liquors , be twenty eight pennies for the pint , to be payed by the buyer to the ventner or tapster , and in all other places , both to burgh or landward , two shilling the pint , with certification that the ventner transgressing , by selling under the said rates , shal be fined by the said commissioners in the sum often pound scots at the instance of any other brewer or other complainer toties quoties , to be applyed by the saids commissioners for pious and publick uses , within their respective shires ; and further , be either put under sufficient surety to observe this rule for hereafter , or if he cannot find surety , discharged to brew in time coming , at the fight of the saids commissioners . and further , his majesty , with advice and consent foresaid , doth hereby declare and enact , that if any brewer in use to brew for sale and change , shal give over brewing after the date of this act , without an allowance in writing from the commissioners of excise , for good and seen causes , the said brewer shal not be permitted to brew for change , for the space of five years thereafter ; but shal be , and is hereby discharged and rendered uncapable to do the same ; as likewise , it is hereby statute and ordained , that no person whatsoever , who have not been in use to brew for the service of themselves and their family in time by past , shal presume to brew after the first day of september next to come , for their own and their families use , and if they contraveen , that they shal be lyable in payment of the value of what they shal brew . and his majesty , with consent foresaid , doth ordain the said commissioners to meet the first tuesday of september next , at the head burgh of every shire respective , and afterwards upon the first tuesday of ilk moneth where they shal appoint . and it is hereby specially provided , that if either collector or farmer , shal presume to raise or levie the said excise upon the malt , or otherwise than upon the liquor , he shal incurr the pain of an 100 merks , toties quoties , to be decerned and exacted by the said commissioners , or by the lords of privy council , in case the saids commissioners shal overlook the same : as also , that the brewer assenting thereto , or complice therein , shal incurr the pain of fifty merks , and also amitt and lose the liberty of brewing , which fines are also hereby appointed to be applyed ut supra : and it is hereby declared , that if any tacks-man or collector , or other person shal exact any thing over and above his excise for the discharges thereof , or for the discharge of any other publick dues whatsoever , it shal be repute as oppression , and punished accordingly by the said commissioners , who are hereby impowered to proceed against the persons guilty . and his majesty , with advice and consent foresaid , do authorize and impower the lords of privy council to prescribe such other methods and orders as they shal judge necessary for making this act effectual . xxix . act for continuing the additional excise till march 1697 , with three months farder cess . iuly 16. 1695. the estates of parliament taking to their further consideration , the present state of the kingdom , and publick exigencies thereof ; have thought fit to offer , and do hereby humbly & heartily offer to his majesty , that the additional excise of two pennies upon the pint of ale and bear , and other liquors imposed for an year , beginning the first of september next , by an act of this session of parliament , be continued from and after the expiring of the said year , until the first of march 1697. and sicklike , the sum of two hundred and sixteen thousand pound , being three months cess upon the land-rent of this kingdom , payable at the term of lambmas 1696 years , and that over and above the six months cess already granted by another act of this session of parliament : and accordingly his majesty , with advice and consent of the said estates , statutes and ordains , that the said additional excise hereby continued as said is , and the said three months cess payable at lambmas 1696 , granted by this present act , shall be raised , uplisted and ingathered from the persons lyable in payment , in manner and for the ends appointed by the saids two respective acts above-mentioned . xxx . act for preservation of meadows , lands and pasturages lying adjacent to sand-hills . iuly 16. 1695. our soveraign lord considering that many lands , meadows and pasturages lying on the sea-coasts , have been ruined and overspread in many places of this kingdom , by sand driven from adjacent sand-hills , the which has been mainly occasioned by the pulling up by the root of bent , juniper and broom-bushes , which did loose and break the surface and scroof of the saids hills ; and particularly considering that the barony of cowbin , and house and yards thereof , lying within the sheriffdom of elgin , is quite ruined and overspread with sand , the which was occasioned by the foresaid bad practice of pulling the bent and juniper . therefore his majesty , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , for preventing of the like prejudices in time coming ; does strictly prohibite and discharge the pulling of bent , broom , or juniper off sand-hills for hereafter , either by the proprietors themselves , or any other whatsomever , the same being the natural fences of the adjacent countries to the saids hills ; certifying such as shall contraveen this act , they shall not only be lyable to the dammages that shall there-through inshew , but shall likeways be lyable in the sum of ten pounds of penalty ; the one half thereof to belong to the informer , and the other half to the judge within whose jurisdiction the said contravention shall be committed . xxxi . act for turning the tack of the pole 1693 , into a collection . iuly 16. 1695. our soveraign lord considering , that albeit the pole granted by act of parliament , in the year 1693 , was set by the lords of thesaury and exchequer , to the lord ross , sir iohn cochran of ochiltrie , and others mentioned in the tack thereof , for the sum of fourty four thousand one hundred pounds sterling of tack-duty , as the tack in it self bears : yet the levying of money by pole being new , and the countrey and others concerned , not observing the rules and ordinances contained in the act of parliament thereanent , but through their failzying , incurring the quadruples appointed by the said act by way of penaltie ; the foresaids tacks-men were not able to pay the foresaid dutie , unless they had been allowed to exact the foresaid quadruples , which had visibly tended to the great oppression and disturbance of the whole kingdom . therefore , and in so singular a case , which his majesty is resolved shal never be drawn into example , his majesty with the advice and consent of the estates of parliament hath liberated and hereby liberates the foresaid tacks-men , and all others concerned therein , from the said tack and tack dutie , discharging and exonoring them of the samen , but with this condition and provision . likeas his majesty with advice foresaid , hereby statutes and provides , that the foresaid tacks-men shal make just compt and reckoning of all their intromissions with the said pole-money , sicklike as if they had only been collectors , and instead of the said tack had got a commission allanerly for that effect , with and under always the particular conditions following , first , that the said tacksmen be lyable for all the sub-collectors and managers imployed by them . secondly , that all their books be made patent , and examined . and that the tacks-men and their sub-collectors be examined upon oath , as to the verity thereof , and whether there be any thing omitted . thirdly , that in case it be found , there was any thing received from the countrey , not given up in the books : that the tacks-men , or their sub-collectors be lyable in twenty shilling , for each shilling so omitted . fourthly , that the rolls of the poleable persons taken up by the several justices of peace , magistrats of burghs , and others be produced to be compared with the books . fifthly , that a few comptrollers be appointed to examine books , and accompts , and adjust the whole matter , and that the leidges be invited & encouraged to comptroll the said accompts , and that they be patent at a publick office for a reasonable time to all the leidges for that end . sixthly , that the order of payment , viz. of the countrey in the first place , and then of the forces , as prescribed by act of parliament , be duely and strictly observed by the commission after-mentioned . seventhly , that upon accompts instructed and liquidat , in due manner , retention be allowed by the commission to those to whom the said accompts are due , in the terms of the act of parliament . eightly , that where any sub-tack hath been set by the said tacks-men , the sub-tacksmen have in their option , either to pay the sub-tack-duty , or make compt , reckoning and payment of their intromission , as sub-collectors . ninthly , that no sallaries be allowed , or given to the said tacks-men , or their sub-tacks-men for their collecting . and to the ef-fect , the said compt and reckoning may proceed ; his majesty with advice and consent foresaid ; hereby nominats and appoints the duke of queensberry , the earls of linlithgow and levin , sir iohn lauder of hattoun , the laird of livingstoun , the laird of torwoodlie , sir william hamilton , sir archibald mure , and william menzies commissioners , three of every state , chosen by the parliament , for that effect , whereof any five to be a quorum , to meet at edinburgh the first lawful day after the riseing of this session of parliament , and thereafter at such days as the said commission shall appoint . likeas one of the commissioners of his majesties theasury is allowed to be present , with right to vote , but so as his presence shall not be necessary to make up the foresaid quorum , with power to the said commissioners to take in the accompts of the said tacks-men their intromission , as if they had been collectors , and to make them accompt for their collection , in manner , and under the conditions above set down ; and to determine all differences betwixt the said tacks-men and the countrey , and the officers , and souldiers , anent the premisses : as also with power to the saids commissioners to do every thing necessary , for inbringing of what , is yet resting unpayed of the said pole by the countrey , and for making the same effectual ; and also to decide , and finally determine all questions , that may arise concerning the preferrence of the officers of the army interested , or their being brought in equality to get their shares of payment out of the subject of the said pole , as likeways with power to them , to allow , or not to allow expenses for inbringing the said pole to the said tacksmen , and their subtacksmen now turned to collectors , and sub-collectors as they shal see cause : and generally to do all other things anent the premisses , that they may bring the foresaid tacksmen their intromission and collection to a clear state and ballance , and also for in-gathering what shal be found resting of the said pole-money , either in the hands of the said tacksmen , or in the hands of any other person lyable therein , and cause pay in the same to his majesties general-receiver of the crown rents , providing that the said commissioners use the same and no other method or diligence for ingathering than what is prescribed for in-gathering of the new pole : the quadruples in the act anent the pole 1693 being hereby expresly discharged , and farder , with power to apply the whole neat product thereof by precepts on the said general-receiver , conform to the destination contained in the act of parliament , and in the order , and under the certification therein specified : and it is hereby farder declared , that for what shal be still found resting by the said tacks-men , after just compt and reckoning , their cautioners for the foresaid tack-dutie shal be lyable therefore , notwithstanding that the foresaid tack be hereby disolved and turned to a commission or collection as said is ; and it is farder hereby provided that the commissioners above-named shal be , and are hereby appointed to be , commissioners for calling for , examining , and concluding the accompts of the three months cess , viz. and of the hearth-money , imposed in the year 1690 , with power to them to call all collectors , intromettors , and other persons concerned , in so far as they have not compted to , and got discharges from the lords of thesaurie , and make them compt , reckon , and pay as accords ; and farder to take such methods as they shal think fit , to uplift and bring in the rests of the said hearth-money yet resting by the countrey , according to the orders and proclamations already given and emitted in that matter , and to appoint collectors for that end , or farm the same as they shal think fit , and generally to do all other things necessary , for the full and final clearing of the said three months cess and heart-money ; and farder the said commissioners are hereby impowered to put the whole of the said pole-money hereby ordered to be compted for , to a roup , and assign , and ajudge the same to the highest offerer , with this provision that it shal not be rouped for less than thirty thousand pound sterling , and that the said highest offerer have the , whole powers hereby given to the said commission for in-gathering thereof , and this power is also extended to the rouping of the rests of the said hearth-money as they shal see cause . and lastly it is hereby declared , that if any of the saids commissioners shal happen to depart this life , his majestie shal have the naming and appointing of one in his place out of the same state to whom the person deceasand belonged . xxxii . act for encouraging the exportation of victual . iuly 17. 1695. his majesty and estates of parliament considering , that the grains of all sorts , are the greatest product and commodity of this nation ; and considering how necessary it is for the promoving of tilladge , and improvement of trade , to the best advantage of the kingdom , that an effectual encouragment be granted for exportation of corns and victual furth thereof . therefore his majesty , out of his royal bounty , with consent of the estates of parliament , statute and ordain , that all sorts of grains exported out of the kingdom after martinmas 1696 , shall be free of any dues formerly payable for exportation ; and that for encouraging export after the said term , there shall be given out of the customs to the exporter , upon his oath of verity , of the number of the bolls exported , subscribed with his hand , and attested by the collector of the next adjacent custom-house , eight merks for ilk chalder of grain , that shall be exported by sea or land , when they shall not exceed the prices following , viz. when wheat is at or under twelve pound the boll ; bear , barley , and malt , at or under eight pound per boll ; pease , oats , and meal , at or under six pounds per boll ; all the saids grains being of linlithgow measure . with this provision always , that the said exportation shall be by scots men , or in scots ships ; and that the master and three fourth parts of the seamen of the said ships , shall be scots men : as also , with this provision , that when the grains exceed the foresaids rates , the lords of his majesties secret council may discharge the exportation of victual of all sorts , ay and till the grains fall to the prices foresaid . xxxiii . act for the levies . iuly 17. 1695. the estates of parliament considering how necessary it is , that during this present war , which so much concerns the defence and security of the protestant religion , and of his majesties kingdoms , certain rules and orders should be laid down for recruits and levies , as they shall be found needful , whereby both the kingdom may be delivered from the frequent disorders and oppressions of pulling away poor men from their wives and children , that cannot subsist without their handy-labour , and the engaging and seising of other unfit men , no ways proper for the service , which hitherto hath been found a most sensible grievance , and whereby also his majesties service , for the maintaining and carrying on of the said war , may be more effectually promoted : and the said estates taking likeways into their consideration , that all heretors , and the superior sort of his majesties leidges , do really contribute to the foresaid war , by their paying of supplies , pole-money and excise , and other publick burdens ; whereby it seems most reasonable , that the inferior sort , that contribute little or nothing , specially such who are young men , without wives or children , and do earn their living by dayly wages , or termly-hire for their handy work , and who by the laws of the land may be compelled to serve , his majesties other good subjects should be made lyable to contribute their service for a certain space in the foresaid war , which is manifestly most necessary for the defence and security of themselves and the whole kingdom , beside the other advantages of profit and honour that thereby may accrew to them . therefore his majesty , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , statutes and ordains , that until the next session of this parliament , and for the service of the present war , either at home or abroad , there shall be furnished to his majesty , the number of one thousand men yearly , when his majesty shall require them , to be proportioned and levied , conform to the rules and proportions contained in the act 1663 , intituled , an humble tender to his sacred majesty of the duty and loyalty of his antient kingdom of scotland , as to the twenty thousand foot therein-mentioned ; which thousand bodies of men , shall be furnished and levied , without any charge or burden of money on the country whatsomever , in this manner , viz. that the commissioners of supply for the respective bounds where the said proportions shall fall , first design , and cause be given , the idle , loose and vagabond persons , lyable by former acts of parliament , to be seised by sheriffs , and who have not wife and children , to make up the foresaid number ; and in the next plate , shall cause all the young feasible men of the bounds , not having wife and children , and who are not menial or domestick servants to any heretor , but earn their living by dayly wages , or by termly hire payed them by other masters for their handy-labour ; to meet at certain days and places , and there by lot , and throwing of the dyce , or otherways as they shall think fit , determine which of them shall go furth to serve as souldiers , with this provision , that the foresaid persons being all first listed by the said commissioners , and appointed to meet as said is , if any of them shall be absent , any heretor to be appointed by the said commissioners , shall throw for him , and if the lot shall fall on that person absent , or if he shall be otherways designed to be put furth by the said commissioners , he shall be lyable in all time thereafter as a deserter , sicklike as if he had been present ; and with this encouragement to the whole foresaid persons , to be put furth in manner foresaid , that they shall have twenty pounds scots payed them in ready money , by the officer who receives them , at the sight of one of the said commissioners ; and in the next place , that their being put furth and engaged as said is , shall not oblige them longer to be and continue souldiers , then for the space of three years , and the first of november after the said years , from the time of their said engagment , at which time they shall have an authentick free pass , unless they subscribe a new consent to continue longer in the service . and the further execution of this act , that the foresaid levies and recruits may be effectually raised in the most easie manner , is referred and recommended to the lords of his majesties privy council , who are hereby thereto fully impowered , during the continuing of this war , and no longer . and after so just a condescendance for facilitating of levies and recruits , it is hereby statute and ordained , that no officer , either at home , or from abroad , offer to take on or press any free leidge to be a souldier , unless the man be ta●en on by agreement , owned by him in presence of the judge of the bounds ; and if any officer shall contraveen this order , and press or compel any man , contrait to the rule hereby established , that it be reckoned oppression , and the transgressor punished by the fine of a months pay , and farder by imprisonment , or breaking and casheiring , as the lords of council shall think fit . and it is farder hereby statute and ordained that all officers exacting lodging , coal and candle gratis , for themselves , their wives or children , shall loss and tyne their commission ; and that all souldiers exacting lodging , coal and candle gratis , for their wives and children , shall be lyable for the parties dammage , to be payed by their commanding officers , at the sight and appointment of any magistrat within burgh , or other judges to landward ; certifying the officer failieing herein , that he shall be lyable in three months pay , and farder punished as the lords of council shall appoint ; which fines are also to be applyed for reparation of the parties in the first place , and the superplus as the council shall think fit . xxxiv . act for additional imposition upon forraign commodities imported . iuly 17. 1695. the estates of parliament , considering the great concessions granted by his majesty in this present session of parliament , in favours of the natural product of this kingdom , by the encouragment given for the exporting of corns , and the many priviledges allowed for the improvement of trade and manufactories , and that it is reasonable , there should be such additional duties and customs laid upon forraign imported commodities , in requital for his majesties gracious favour , do with all humble duty and thankfulness , offer to his majesty the additional duties upon the forraign commodities after-mentioned , and that by and attour what they were formerly lyable unto by acts of parliament preceeding the date hereof , as by the following table ,   lib. sh. d. imprimis , upon all wine imported from france of new-duty 18 00 00 which with the 30 lib. scots formerly imposed by the privy council upon the account of the sumptuary act , makes in all per tunn 48 00 00 item , spanish wine from spain , the imposition formerly imposed by the council , is hereby ratified , which is per tunn . 30 00 00 item , on brandy , the former duty of twenty pound sterling , being ordinarly reduced by the lords of thesaury and farmers to twelve pound sterling ; there is added of new-duty per tunn , by and attour the said 12 lib. 72 00 00 item , upon mum-bear , over and above the old duty , there is hereby added of new-duty per barrel 06 00 00 item , on tobacco in leaf , not from the plantations of new duty per pound 00 02 00 item , on tobacco in roll not from the plantations , of new-duty per pound 00 04 00 item , on all french wines imported from holland , or any where else not of the growth of the place from whence it is exported , by and attour the above-written duty , there is added of new-duty per tunn 30 00 00 item , on all spanish wine from any place except spain of new-duty per tunn . 48 00 00 item , on raisins and currens from any place not of the growth from whence they are exported per hundred weight , of new-duty . 02 8 00 item , on figgs imported after the same manner per 100 weight of new-duty 01 8 00 item , on sugar in loaf imported , of new-duty per 100 weight 03 00 00 item , on soap imported , of new-duty per barrel . 02 00 00 item , on all sorts of wrought silks , silk-plushes , stockings , of new-duty per pound weight 01 10 00 item , on all sorts of silks wrought of gold and silver , per pound weight of new-duty 03 00 00 item , on all silver and gold fringes , silver and gold laces , gallouns and embroideries imported , per pound weight of new-duty 03 00 00 item , on all forraign laces and points imported , of new-dutty ten per cent value item , on all forraign woollen cloath imported , of new-duty per eln 00 12 00 item , on all forraign sarges and worsted-stuffs imported , of new-duty per eln 00 06 00 item , on all forraign flannels , fingrums , of new-duty per eln 00 04 00 item , on all linen-cloath imported from forraign countries , of new-duty per whole piece at 36 elns 12 00 00 item , on the half-piece of forraign imported linen-cloath of new-duty 06 00 00 item , on all silesia-linnen , of new-duty per piece being 5 elns , 01 00 00 item , on all threed imported , of new-duty five per cent value which duties and customs above specified , our soveraign lord with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , statute and ordain to be payed by all merchants and other importers of the said forraign commodities , in the same manner as the other duties to which they were formerly lyable ; and ordains all farmers , collectors , surveyers and others , to in-gather the same , and that after the same manner they do his majesties other duties upon forraign imported commodities , and that from and after the term of martinmass 1696 years : and hereby discharges the said collectors , farmers , surveyers , and other in-bringers of his majesties customs to transact , abate or allow of any defalcation of the additional duties above-specified , under the pain of deprivation of their offices , and losing the benefite of their tacks . xxxv . act anent burying in scots linen . iuly 17. 1695. our soveraign lord , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , for the better improvement of the manufactory of linen within the kingdom , and restraining the import of all forraign linen , doth hereby ratify and approve the sixteenth act of the parliament 1686 intituled , act for burying in scots linen , in the hail heads and articles , thereof ; ordaining the same to be put to strict execution in all points , with this addition , that none presume to cause bury any in scots linen , in value above twenty shilling scots per ell , under the same pains set down in the foresaid act against burying in forraign linen : and for the better discovery of the said transgression , and execution of the foresaid act , and the addition hereby made to it , his majesty , with consent foresaid , statutes and ordains , that the nearest elder , or deacon of the parish , with one neighbour or two , be called by the persons concerned , and present to the putting of the dead corps in the coffin , that they may see the same done , and that the foresaid act , with this present addition is observed , and subscribe the certificat , mentioned in the foresaid act , and that whatever relation , or other friends of the defunct present , and having the charge of the burying , shal either fail in observing the foresaid act , with this addition , or to call the elder or deacon , with such neighbours as may be witnesses , or to send and give in the certificat , appointed by the said act , he or they shal be holden as transgressours , and lyable in the pains thereof ; which pains are also hereby intirely applyed , and given to the poor of the parish : and any elder or deacon of the parish is impowered to pursue for the same , for their use , nor shal any pursuit for the said fines be advocat from the inferiour judge competent , nor any sist of process given , nor shal any decreet therefore be suspended , but upon discharge or consignation allanerly . and it is further hereby statute , that it shal not be leisom to any person , to make or sew any sort of dead linen , contrair to the foresaid act , and this present addition , under the pain of fourty merks toties quoties , for the use of the poor , as said is . xxxvi . act anent the skinners . iuly 17. 1695. our soveraign lord the kings majesty , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , in pursuance of the many good acts made for the setting up , and maintaining of manufactories , and particularly , of the act 1661 , intituled act for erecting of manufactories ; and for the greater incouragement of the skinners of this kingdom , towards the improvement of the native commodities of wild-skins and lamb skins , and the art of that craft , do hereby discharge all and every person whatsomever , native or stranger , to export out of this kingdom any wild-skins , such as wild-hyds , dae and rae , roe and roe-buck , and kid , with the hair upon them , until they be made in work , or dressed leather , to the good of the kingdom . as also , his majesty , with advice and consent foresaid , discharges all and every person , native or stranger , to import any forraign made gloves , of whatsomever sort , certifying such as shal do in the contrair , either by export or import , as said is , that they shal not only forefault the foresaids goods , exported or imported , or the just value thereof , the one half to his majesty , and the other half to the informer , who shal prosecute the same before his majesties exchequer , but also be furder lyable to such pecunial fines , or other punishments , as the lords of his majesties exchequer shal think fit to inflict : declaring that this act shal commence and take effect after the first day of august next to come ; and impowering the saids skinners , and any merchands , or any others concerned with concurse of a magistrat , to search for , and make seizure of the foresaid goods hereby prohibited to be exported or imported . for the more effectual execution of the premises , and for the better improvement of the said skins , our soveraign lord , hereby ratifies and approves the act made be the convention of burrows , anent the sufficiency of skins , and ordains the magistrats of all burghs to put the said act to due execution in all points . and lastly , it is hereby declaired , that the foresaid act of parliament , for erecting of manufactories , and any allowance that may be therein given , for the manufactoring of the saids skins , shal be but prejudice to the rights and priviledges of the craft and incorporation of skinners , in all , or any of the burghs of this kingdom . xxxvii . act anent the iusticiary of the highlands . iuly 17. 1695. our soveraign lord considering , that there was an act of parliament , made in the year 1693 , for the justiciary in the highlands ; declaring , that his majesty , by vertue of his prerogative royal , might grant commissions of justiciary for the said bounds , with all power , necessary and usual : excepting thence , from the bounds lying within the heretable right of justiciary general , pertaining to the earl of argile , or any other person , providing nevertheless that the foresaids persons , whose bounds were excepted , should for the space of two years , be obliged to grant commissions to the same persons , whom it should please his majesty to commissionat for their saids bounds and lands , which two years being now near expired , and it being necessary that the foresaids commissions , after their expiration should be renewed : therefore , his majesty , with advice and consent foresaid , does hereby prorogate the foresaid provision , to the effect , and in the terms aftermentioned , viz. that when the commissions are granted by his majesty , for the necessary repressing of the depredations and robberies , so frequently committed in the highlands , for the saids bounds not above excepted , the foresaids persons having right to the said heretable justiciaries general , shal grant ample commissions for their respective bounds at the same time , and to the same persons ( at least to so many of them as are willing to act , by vertue of the saids justiciaries commissions ) to the effect the saids commissioners , acting unanimously , within any part of the whole foresaid bounds , the saids crimes may be the more effectually punished and restrained , and that these commissions may , and shal be granted , as said is , for the space of three years ; which is to begin after the present commission granted by his majesty is expired : which commissions shal continue all powers necessary and usual in commissions of justiciary , without prejudice always to the whole foresaid persons , and lords of regality , and all others of their several respective rights and jurisdictions , and also reserving the right of prevention , and the right of casualities and escheats , in manner provided in the said act. xxxviii . act concerning the dividing of commonties . iuly 17. 1695. our soveraign lord , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , for preventing the discords that arise about commonties , and for the more easie and expedit deciding thereof , in time coming , statuts and ordains , that all commonties , excepting the commonties belonging to the king and royal-burrows ; that is , all that belongs to his majesty in property , or royal-burrows in burgage , may be divided at the instance of any having interest , by summons raised against all persons concerned , before the lords of session● who are hereby impowered to discuss the relevancy , and to determine upon the rights and interests of all parties concerned , and to value and divide the same , according to the value of the rights and interests of the several parties concerned , and to grant commissions to sheriffs , stewarts , baillies of regality and their deputs , justices of peace , or others , for perambulating and taking all other necessary probation , which commissions shal be reported to the saids lords , and the said processes ultimatly determined by them . and where mosses shal happen to be in the said commonties , with power to the said lords , to divide the said mosses , amongst the several parties having interest therein , in manner foresaid ; or in case it be instructed to the said lords , that the said mosses cannot be conveniently divided , his majesty , with consent foresaid , statuts and declares , that the said mosses shal remain common , with free ish and entry thereto , whether divided or not , declaring also , that the interest of the heretors , having right in the said commonties , shal be estimat according to the valuation of their respective lands or properties , and which divisions are appointed to be made , of that part of the commonty that is next adjacent to each heretors property . xxxix . act discharging the venting of rum. iuly 17. 1695. our soveraign lord considering , that the brandy commonly called rum made of molossus , does hinder the consumpt of strong waters made of malt , which is the native product of this kingdom : as also , that the said rum is rather a drug than liquor , and highly prejudicial to the health of all who drink it . therefore , his majesty with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , prohibits and discharges the making of rum , except allenarly for export : certifying the contraveeners , that they shal lose and amit their priviledges granted to them as manufactories , and be otherways punished as the lords of privy council think fit . xl. act anent letters passing the signet . iuly 17. 1695. our soveraign lord with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , for reviving and preserving the good order that ought to be kept in the passing of writs under the signet , statutes and ordains , that all writs passing under the signet , called the signet of the lords of session , be subscribed by a writer as clerk to the said signet : excepting allanerly herefrom , letters of diligence in processes before the session , and letters of citation before the parliament , which are to be subscribed by the clerks of session . and his majesty with advice foresaid , prohibits the keeper of the said signet , to affix the same to any letters not subscribed as above , any custom or practice in the contrary notwithstanding , and that as he will be answerable upon his peril . xli . act anent executry and moveables . iuly 17. 1695. our soveraign lord considering , that the law is defective , as to the affecting with legal diligence , the moveable estate which pertained to a defunct , either for his own , or his nearest of kins debt , in such manner as a defuncts heretage , may be affected by charging to enter heir in the known manner : doth therefore , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , statute and ordain , that in the case of a moveable estate left by a defunct , and falling to his nearest of kin , who lyes out , and doth not confirm , the creditors of the nearest of kin , may either require the procurator-fiscal to confirm and assign to them , under the peril and pain of his being lyable for the debt , if he refuse ; or they may obtain themselves decerned executors dative to the defunct , as if they were creditors to him : with this provision always , that the creditors of the defunct , doing diligence to affect the said moveable estate within year and day of their debitors decease , shall always be preferred to the diligence of the said nearest of kin. and it is further declared , that in the case of any depending cause or claim against a defunct the time of his decease , it shall be leisum to the pursuer of the said cause or claim , to charge the defuncts nearest of kin to confirm executor to him within twenty days after the charge given , which charge so execute , shall be a passive title against the person charged , as if he were a vitious intromettor , unless he renunce , and then the charger may proceed to have his debt constitute , and the haereditas iacens of moveables declared lyable by a decreet cognitionis causa , upon the obtaining whereof , he may be decerned executor dative to the defunct , and so affect his moveables in the common form. xlii . act allowing the administrators of the common good of burrows , to adventure their stocks , or any part thereof , in the company of forraign trade . iuly 17. 1695. our soveraign lord with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , for the encouragement of the undertakers for forraign trade , conform to an act made in their favours in this present session of parliament , intituled , act for a company tradeing to affrica and the indies , doeth hereby statute and declare , that it shall be leisum to the magistrats and others , the administrators of the common good of burghs ; as also , to the deacon , masters , and other administrators whatsoever of any incorporation , or body , or company incorporat , or collegiat within this kingdom , to adventure and put in money belonging to their respective administrations , for a share and part to be purchased to the saids burghs and incorporations in the said company mentioned in the said act , bearing the name of the company of scotland tradeing to affrica and the indies , in the manner and in the terms provided within the said act , and that their putting in the money of the said burghs . incorporations , under their care and charge , and adventuring the same in the said company , shall be repute and held for a deed of lawful administration , and though the success and event thereof , should happen not to be prosperous , yet it shall never be construed to be a deed of lesion against the said administrators , but their acting in this behalf , is hereby declared to be lawful and warrantable , for the security of the foresaid persons in all events . xliii . act anent the poor . iuly 17. 1695. our soveraign lord with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , doeth hereby ratifie , approve , and revive all acts of parliament , and acts and proclamations of council , for maintaining of the poor , and repressing of beggers , and ordains them to be put to vigorous execution in all points . and further , impowers the lords of his majesties privy council , to take the most effectual course to make the said acts and proclamation effectual , conform to the true design thereof . xliv . act salvo jure cujuslibet . iuly 17. 1695. our soveraign lord considering , that there are several acts and others past and made in this session of parliament , in favours of particular persons , without calling or hearing of such as may be thereby concerned and prejudged : therefore his majesty , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , statutes and ordains , that all such particular acts and others past in manner foresaid , shall not prejudge say third party , of their lawful rights , nor of their actions and defences competent thereupon , before the making of the said particular acts ; and the lords of session , and all other judges within this kingdom , shall be obliged to judge betwixt parties , according to their several rights standing in their persons , before the making of the said acts ; all which are hereby expounded and declared to have been made salvo iure cujuslibet . xlv . act of adjournment . iuly 17. 1695. the kings majesty declares this parliament currant , and adjourns the same to the seventh day of november , next to come ; ordaining all members of parliament , noblemen , commissioners from shires and burghs , and all others having interest , to attend at edinburgh that day , at ten a clock ; and that there be no new elections in shires or burghs , except upon the death of any of the present commissioners . collected and extracted from the registers and records of parliament , by tarbat , cls. registri . a table of the printed acts. page 1 act for a solemn fast. 1 2 act regulating citations before the parliament . 3 3 act adjourning the summer-session till the first of iuly 1695. 4 4 act anent the justice-court . 5 5 act anent principals and cautioners . 6 6 act regulating the sale and payment of bankrupts estates . 7 7 act for six months supply upon the land-rent . 8 8 act for a company tradeing to affrica and the indies . 17 9 act adjourning the session till the first day of november 1695. 23 10 act for pole-money . ibid. 11 act against blasphemy . 27 12 act against irregular baptisms and marriages . 28 13 act against prophaneness . 29 14 act for restraining the prophanation of the lords days , by keeping weekly mercats on munday and saturnday . 30 15 act for encouragment of preachers at vacant churches be-north forth 31 16 act anent the ease of annualrents due by persons restored , and anent the creditors diligence to be used against them . 32 17 act anent the mint . 34 18 act anent the quorum of the commission of the teinds . 35 19 act anent the duty on scots muslin . 36 20 act anent the post-office . ibid. 21 explanatory act anent the excise of brandy . 39 22 act against intruding into churches without a legal call and admission thereto . 40 23 act anent lands lying run-rig . 41 24 act for obviating the frauds of appearand heirs . 42 25 act anent the repetition of fines . 44 26 act discharging popish persons to prejudge their protestant heirs in succession . 45 27 act concerning the church . 46 28 act for the additional and annexed excises . 48 29 act for continuing the additional excise till march 1667 , with three months farder cess . 51 30 act for preservation of meadows , lands and pasturages lying adjacent to sand-hills . 52 31 act for turning the tack of the pole 1693 , into a collection . ibid. 32 act for encouraging the exportation of victual . 55 33 act for the levies . 56 34 act for additional imposition upon forraign commodities imported . 58 35 act anent burying in scots-linen . 60 36 act anent the skinners . 61 37 act anent the justiciary of the highlands . 62 38 act concerning the dividing of commonties . 63 39 act discharging the venting of rumm . 64 40 act anent letters passing the signet . ibid. 41 act anent executry and movables . 65 42 act allowing the administrators of the common good of burrows , to adventure their stock , or any part thereof , in the company of forraign trade . 66 43 act for reviving the acts of council made anent the poor . ibid. 44 act salvo iure cujuslibet . 67 45 act of adjournment . ibid. a table of the acts and ratifications past in the fifth session of his majesties first parliament , which are not here printed . his majesties commission to iohn marquis of tweeddule produced . the earl of annandale named president to the parliament . protestations several noblemen , for their precedencies in the rolls of parliament . several excuses offered for several absent members , and received . his majesties letter , appointing the lord yester to sit and vote in parliament , in place of the lord high thesaurer . his majesties letter to the parliament . address of condoleance for the death of the queen . act anent the election of the burgh of anstruther-easter . an address by the parliament to his majesties high commissioner , for transmitting their humble thanks to his majesty , for ordering an enquiry in the matter of glenco . act anent the lords of session who are upon committees . act in favours of evan m cgrigor . decreet sir william scot of hardin , against george m ckenzie of rosebaugh . warrand the shire of clackmannan for a new election . warrand for pursuing the earl of broadalbane . act for a general contribution for relief of some captives . recommendation in favours of mrs. martin . decreet sir iames ramsey and his lady , against the earl and countess of seaforth . act in favours of sir thomas livingston . decreet against mr. thomas craven , mr. andrew burnet , and mr. alexander thomson . decreet the earls of roxburgh , haddington , galloway , and others , against the earl of lothian . decreet in favours of mr. thomas skeen . protestation the earl of lothian , against the earl of roxburgh and others . act in favours of the kings colledge of old aberdeen . decreet the co-heirs of carnock , against nicolson of tilly-cultry . act in favours of the children of the first marriage of the earl of melfort . decreet of forefaulture , against the earls of midleton● melfort , and sir adam blair . act in favours of collonel hill. reference the city of edinburgh and earl of melvill . recommendation in favours of sir david carnegy of pittarow . recommendation in favours of the laird of lundy . act in favours of gilbert meuzies of pitfoddels . act in favours of mr. thomas craven , mr. andrew burnet , and mr. alexander thomson . act and remit the town of edinburgh and aeneas m cleod . act in favours of iames lyel . act in favours of sir alexander hope of kerse and others : remit process of forefaulture against the rebels in france , depending before the parliament to the justice court. order for apprehending lieutenant collonel hamilton . order anent mr. alexander barclay . act anent mr. bernard m ckenzie . order anent mr. gilbert ramsey . act in favours of the burgh of cullen . order for re printing of the act for the supply . address to his majesty anent the slaughter of the glencoe-men . protection in favours of the glencoe-men . recommendation in favours of the laird of grant. act for a manufactory of white-paper . order anent the clerks and collectors of supply . act and remit the laird of rothemay and abernethy of mayens . act in favours of the linen-manufactory . act in favours of the lord frazer . decreet sir iohn dempster of pitliver , against the earl and countess of seaforth . remit in favours of the lady dowager of beilhaven . remit clara and patricia ruthvens , and sir alexander hope of kers . recommendation in favours of alexander duff of braco . recommendation in favours of the synod of argile . recommendation in favours of the late bishop of argile . order and warrand anent iohn dick and the town of stirling . recommendation in favours of heriots hospital . act in favours of the laird of hoptoun . act and commission for reviseing the laws . act in favours of his majesties advocat . act in favours of the town of air. act in favours of the city of aberdeen . act in favours of the town of irwin . act in favours of the laird of colloden . act in favours of the earl marischals colledge of aberdeen . recommendation in favours of sir thomas stewart of kirkfield . recommendation in favours of sir colin campbel of abberuchil . recommendation in favours of duncan forbes of culloden . recommendation in favours of the children of the first and second marriage of sir andrew dick. recommendation in favours of elizabeth duncan and her son. recommendation in favours of mrs. gillespy . recommendation in favours of captain walter lockhart of kirktoun . remit mr. iames da●s and iames hay of carribber to the session . act and recommendation in favours of iames bain . remit in favours of iames crawfurd of montquhanny , sir thomas kennedy , and others . recommendation in favours of the laird of kilmaronock . remit in favours of the laird of glenkindy and sir adam blair . remit mr. alexander heggins and iohn callender . act in favours of george baylie of ierviswood . recommendation in favours of william boig . recommendation in favours of the laird of culbin . order the city of edinburgh and the laird of comistoun . act in favours of the laird of langtoun . act in favours of william beatty . recommendation in favours of the burgh of fortross . recommendation in favours of iohn spotswood . decreet in favours of mrs. lilias stewart . act in favours of iames curry late provost of edinburgh . act in favours of comb-makers . act in favours of alexander fearn . act in favours of william scot and iohn heislop . act anent the earl of broadalbane . recommendation in favours of the macers and keepers of the parliament house . act in favours of robert douglass . act in favours of iohn adeir and captain slezer . act in favours of whitefield heyter , and others . act in favours of the heirs of taylzie of mauldsly . act for erecting a publick bank. act in favours of the burgh of dysart . act in favours of the burgh of culross . acts for several fairs and weekly mercats . act and ratification in favours of sir iohn hall of dunglass . ratification in favours of the chyrurgions and chryurgion-apothecaries of edinburgh . protestation the town of edinburgh against the same . ratification in favours of the nine trades of dundee . protestation the walkers and litsters of dundee against the same . ratification in favours of the burgh of breichen . ratification in favours of the candlemakers of edinburgh . ratification in favours of the walkers and litsters of dundee . protestation the town and trades of dundee against the same . ratification in favours of alexander spittel of leuchit . ratification in favours of the piriwig-makers of edinburgh . ratification in favours of iames lindsay of dovehill . ratification in favours of the cowpers of glasgow . protestation the town of glasgow against the same . ratification in favours of william rai●ly of brunsfield . ratification in favours of the laird of rowallan . ratification in favours of sir william stewart of castle-milk . ratification in favours of the viscount of tarbat . protestation the city of edinburgh against the same . ratification in favours of sir iames falcon●r of ph●sdo . ratification in favours of william cunningham brother to gilbertfield , of the lands of kilbryde . ratification in favours of james turner . finis . these are allowing the two acts , past in parliament on the twenty second day of iuly , one thousand six hundred and ninety years , in favours of sir patrick home of polwarth , now lord polwarth , to be printed . tarbat , cls. registri . act rescinding the forefaulture of sir patrick home of polwarth . edinburgh , iuly 22. 1690. our soveraign lord and lady the king and queens majesties , and the estates of parliament considering , that the meeting of the estates of this kingdom , in the claim of right , dated the eleventh of april , one thousand six hundred eighty and nine years , have declared , that the causing pursue and forefault persons upon weak or frivolous pretences , or upon lame and defective probation , is contrary to law ; and also , that all forefaultures are to be considered , and the parties laesed to be redressed : and having considered the process of forefaulture led and deduced before the three estates of parliament , upon the twenty second of may , one thousand six hundred eighty and five years , against sir patrick home of polwarth in absence , with the decreet and doom of forefaulture following thereupon , and that the pretences insisted upon in the said proces of forefaulture , against the said sir patrick home , viz. his meeting with the deceast mr. robert martine , and other persons at the places therein lybelled , and discoursing with them of the extream hazard that threatned the protestant religion , the laws and liberties of this kingdom ; in case iames then duke of york would succeed to the crown , and of the ways and methods then talked of in england , and such as might be taken in scotland for preventing the same , and for his exclusion from succession to the crown ; are weak and frivolous pretences , to infer the crime of treason ▪ as likewise , that the probation wa● lame & defective , seing it did confe●● of the depositions , and testimonies of persons , who a little before hade been accused of the same pretended crimes , and who , after submission made , and when their lives and fortunes were at the late kings mercy , had predetermined themselves by their confessions and depositions then emitted ; for albeit they were secured , as to their lives , when they deponed before the parliament , yet they having emitted their declarations , when they were under the fear and apprehension of being forefaulted themselves , and when they renewed their confessions before the parliament , they could make no alteration , unless they had declared themselves to be perjured , they having only adhered to the very same testimonies formerly emitted , by them except the earl of tarras , who depons of new , and not upon his declaration formerly emitted , but proves nothing against the said sir patrick home . and also considering , that there is nothing proven by the witnesses , in habit , as they were against the said sir patrick , of his being upon , or privy to any design or contrivance against the person and life of king charles the second , and that the testimonies do not concur and agree in any particular fact , which by the common law or custom could infer the crime of treason against the said sir patrick . and likeways having considered the act of adjournal of the justice court , of the date the day of one thousand six hundred eighty years , upon which the said sir patrick home was denounced fugitive , for not compearance ; and that there was no relaxation raised , until a few days before the dyet of compearance in parliament ; though neither he had the offer of an indemnity , nor was for the time in open rebellion , so that he had not tutus accessus , and that the saids pretended crimes , lybelled in the said act of adjournal , are the same contained in the foresaid sentence of forefaulture before the parliament . therefore , their majesties , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , do hereby , by way of justice , rescind , retreit , cass , and annull , the foresaid decreet , and sentence of forefaulture , pronounced against the said sir patrick home , and all gifts of forefaulture , if any be granted , by the late king iames , of the said sir patrick his estate , or any part thereof , to any person or persons whatsomever : and the foresaid act of adjournal , with all that has followed , or may follow thereupon : and declares the said decreet and sentence of forefaulture , and act of adjournal to have been from the beginning , to be now , and in all time coming void , null , and of no avail , force , strength nor effect : and restores the said sir patrick home , his children and posterity against the same , in integrum ; and rehabilitating them to their blood-right , and benefit of succession , name and fame , sick-like , and as freely in all respects , as if the said decreet and doom of forfaulture had never been given , nor pronounced . rescinding hereby the act of annexation of the said sir patrick , his estate to the crown ; and dissolving the same therefrae . as also , their majesties , with consent foresaid , decerns and ordains , all the intrometters with the lands , rents , goods and gear , or other estate , moveable or immoveable , pertaining and belonging to the said sir patrick home , to be lyable for , and refound the famine to him , his heirs , executors or assigneys , and that letters may be direct for that effect , in form as effeirs ? and their majesties , and estates of parliament , statute and ordain , that this present act shal have full force , strength , and effect of a publick law , in favours of the said sir patrick home , and others aforesaid . and it is hereby declared , that this present act is , and shal be understood to be excepted from the act salvo iure to be past in this present parliament . act dissolving sir patrick home of polwarth his estate from the crown . iuly 22. 1690. forasmuch as , by an act and sentence of this present parliament , the doom and sentence of forefaulture , pronounced in anno one thousand six hundred eighty and five , against sir patrick home of polwarth , is ex iustitia , reduced and rescinded : and that by an act of the sixteenth of iune , one thousand six hundred eighty and five , the estate and lands belonging to the said sir patrick home were formerly annexed to the crown ; which act of annexation is now also by the said act reductive in his favours , rescinded , and declared void : therefore , and for the said sir patrick his more full and effectual restitution , and without any derogation to the said act reductive , in his favours , but accumulating rights to rights , our soveraign lord and lady , the king and queens majesties , with advice and consent of the estates of parliament , have dissolved , and hereby dissolves from the crown and patrimony thereof , the lands and barrony of polwarth , the lands and barrony of grein-law and reid-path , with the right of patronages , and whole pertinents thereof ; and lands of with all other lands , rights and estate , pertaining to the said sir patrick home , and that in favours of the said sir patrick himself , that he may bruick and enjoy the same as if he himself had never been forefaulted , or as if the saids lands and estate had never been annexed . declaring that this present act shal have the strength and effect of a general law and act of parliament ; and shal be al 's valid and effectual to the said sir patrick , his heirs and successors , for their security of the whole premisses , as any other act of dissolution made and enacted at any time bygone , in favours of whatsomever person : and conform to all the conditions required by law , in acts of that nature . and farder , that this present act of dissolution , is , and shal be understood to be excepted from the act salvo iure , to be past in this present parliament . extracted furth of the records of parliament , by george viscount of tarbat , lord m cleod , and castlehaven , &c. clerk to the parliament , and to his majesties councils , registers and rolls . the discovery of a late and bloody conspiracie at edenburg in scotland related in a letter sent to mr. pym and the rest of the committes of the house of commons / from the committes of scotland, octob. 14, 1641, and read in the house of commons assembled octob. 20 ; with the names of those lords that should have bin slaine ; and the names of the conspirators. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a36121 of text r17407 in the english short title catalog (wing d1637). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 4 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a36121 wing d1637 estc r17407 12865055 ocm 12865055 94723 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a36121) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 94723) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 255:e173, no 13) the discovery of a late and bloody conspiracie at edenburg in scotland related in a letter sent to mr. pym and the rest of the committes of the house of commons / from the committes of scotland, octob. 14, 1641, and read in the house of commons assembled octob. 20 ; with the names of those lords that should have bin slaine ; and the names of the conspirators. armyne, william, sir, 1593-1651. fiennes, nathaniel, 1607 or 8-1669. hampden, john, 1594-1643. stapleton, philip, sir, 1603-1647. [2], 4 p. printed for iohn thomas, london : 1641. signed: john hampden, nath. fines, wm. armine, phil. stapleton. reproduction of original in thomason collection, british library. eng pym, john, 1584-1643. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649. a36121 r17407 (wing d1637). civilwar no the discovery of a late and bloody conspiracie at edenburg, in scotland. related in a letter sent to mr. pym, and the rest of the committes [no entry] 1641 705 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. 2006-02 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2006-05 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2006-09 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2006-09 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2007-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the discovery of a late and bloody conspiracie at edenburg , in scotland . related in a letter sent to mr. pym , and the rest of the committes of the house of commons . from the committes of scotland , octob. 14. 1641 , and read in the house of commons assembled octob. 20. with the names of those lords that should have bin slaine . and the names of the conspirators . london printed for iohn thomas . 1641. the discovery of a plot by some of the anti-covenanters in scotland , and sent to m. pym in a letter , octob. 14 1641. sir , things were lately in a very hopefull way of accommodation . but on monday night last , there fell out a great interruption , for upon information given to marquise hamilton , the earle of argile , and the earle of lanericke , that there was a designe to seize upon their persons that night , they removed presently from their lodgings , and stayd in the city all night , and the next morning , the relation being made to the parliament , there was present order given for the shutting of the ports , and setting of the guards of the towne , which continue so still , and the same day , the marquesse hamilton , the earle of argile , and the earle of lanericke , departed hence to a house of the marquesses , about 12-miles of , where they continue still . the depositions of one captaine stewards and the lievtenant colonell hurry , and hume were read upon tuseday in full parliament ; the king being present , and upon the reading whereof , the parliament thought fit to restraine the earle of craford , col stewart ; and col. cockron , who are not yet examined , before this conspiracy fell out wee had the treaty delivered unto us , under the great seale of scotland , and that which remained of our businesse , being to get the two regiments disbanded , and their workes sleighted , to perfect an accompt betwene the king and some inhabitants of new-castle and the scots , about some armes which was taken away in their late troubles , and the assisting of some english in their demands , of the reparations ( of losses , which they sustained by the scottish army ) were put into such a way , as we expected to have seene them all at an issue presently . but this plot hath put not onely ours , but all other businesses to a stand , and may be an occasion of many and great troubles in this kingdome , if almighty god in his mercy doe not prevent it , which being an accident of such great moment ( as well to prevent as farre as in us lyes ) the many inconveniences that may arise by false reports , as also in discharge of the trust reposed in us , we thought fit to send you timely advertisement of it , and we shall give you a more full accompt , when by examination it shall be further discovered . edenburgh castle , octob. 14. 1641. sir , we are your friends and servants , iohn hamden , nath. fines , io. armine . phil. stapleton . subscribed to our worthy friend iohn pym , esquire , and to the rest of the committe of the house of commons , these present . the names of those lords that should have beene cut off in this plot of scotland . the marquise hamilton . the earle of argile . the lord balmerido . the lord lowden . generall lesly . the lord lindsey the marquisses brother , and some others . the conspirators names . the earle of craford . the lord aymond , lieutenant generall . the lord carre , the lord craford , committed as a prisoner . these were discovered by the depositions taken in the parliament house at edingburgh in scotland , of lieutenant colonell hurry , captaine stewart , and lieutenant colonell hume . finis . nevvs from the north: or, a true relation of the affaires in those parts, and in scotland. being a letter sent to a friend from penrith in cumberland, the 23. of june, 1648. and published for the satisfaction of those that desire to be truly informed of the present condition of those places. h. h. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a86971 of text in the english short title catalog (thomason e450_11). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 7 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 5 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a86971 wing h41 thomason e450_11 99864575 99864575 161900 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a86971) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 161900) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 71:e450[11]) nevvs from the north: or, a true relation of the affaires in those parts, and in scotland. being a letter sent to a friend from penrith in cumberland, the 23. of june, 1648. and published for the satisfaction of those that desire to be truly informed of the present condition of those places. h. h. [2], 6 p. printed by richard cotes, london : 1648. signed on p.6: h. h. the word "published" is preceded by a square bracket. annotation on thomason copy: "june 29". reproduction of the original in the british library. eng great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. a86971 (thomason e450_11). civilwar no nevvs from the north:: or, a true relation of the affaires in those parts, and in scotland. being a letter sent to a friend from penrith in h. h. 1648 1089 4 0 0 0 0 0 37 d the rate of 37 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the d category of texts with between 35 and 100 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-12 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-12 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-01 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-01 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion news from the north : or , a trve relation of the affaires in those parts , and in scotland . being a letter sent to a friend from penrith in cumberland , the 23. of june , 1648. and published for the satisfaction of those that desire to be truly informed of the present condition of those places . london , printed by richard cotes , 1648. news from the north ; or a trve relation of the affaires in those parts , and in scotland . honoured sir , although i have but little to acquaint you with since my last , yet because i would omit no opportunity of letting you understand our condition , i have directed these to your hands ; providence hath so ordered it , that through exceeding unseasonablenes of the weather in these parts , and the continued expectation of assistance out of lancashire , we have done little but secured our owne quarters at this towne , which are now eaten up ; to morrow or next day we advance towards carlisle : the lancashire ▪ foot and horse ( so they are called here ) comming up to us as we expect , they are now but 16. miles from us , their number 2000. horse and foot ; our head ▪ quarters i presume will be about berwick bridge three miles from carlisle , it being judged the best place to enforce the enemy without the towne to an ingagement or a flight , whose numbers are not above halfe so many as reported , all not exceeding 3000. in the field in these parts ; some part of their horse are advanced into northumberland to marpeth , between anwicke and newcastle ; if our advance to berwicke bridge doe not cause their retreat , ours setled there we intend to send after them . many dayly come out of scotland to us , both english and scottish , but few olive branches brought by either ; the tydings sad relating to honesty , or honest men , some ministers already executed , more imprisoned , all that indeavour to oppose or obstruct the present furious proceedings of the now prevalent party , are by power given to a committee for that purpose to bee secured , their goods to be confiscated . their oath is framed and urged already upon the nobility and peers , but none other ; upon it lowden the chancellour , and louthian , warriston , and severall other lords and gentlemen are fled , but not knowne whether . orders are issued out to all ports to make stop of them ; there was a purpose of the honest gentlemen , and others well affected to honesty , in the west part of that kingdome , to have embodyed to the number of 10000. but prevented by the advance of leivtenant generall middleton thither , so as not above the number of 1500. got together , those he summoned and willed to return to their homes ; this drew off most , yet fearing it was but a design to catch their persons , resolved to outbid all adventures , and would ot stir , 300. of these leivtenant middleton forced to a water side , that they must either yeeld or fight , the latter of which they chose & did it wth much courage , that they beat off his horse , and put them to a rout and flight , thereby got opportunity to secure themselves in galloway a garrison of argiles , 500. more being all that stayd of the 1500. which had been old souldiers , got into a bog for their own preservation , which was after beset by the horse , but as yet wee know not what is become of them . argile hath been sent to by the now late committee of estates , to know the reason why his two regiments now with him yeeld not obedience to the commands of the present officers of the army ; he replyed he would examine it , and shortly return them an accompt or a reason of it . middleton , bartlett , vrry , ( not colonel vrry ) gibbs of essex , these all have accepted of commands under the generall hamilton . old leven , david lish●y , holbourne , carr a collonel at plimouth ; leivtenant colonell carr leivtenant colonell to middleton , and severall , yea most of the officers formerly imployed by themselves , and we in england have refused . honest men say , never was there such a sad persecu●ion in that kingdome , yet god hath exceedingly emboldened the spirits of the ministry and others to withstand them , as if deliverance were behind the curtaine for them ; all confesse , no visible helpe to them but by this army , or part of its suddain advance into that kingdome , which how god may please in his wise providence to order i cannot tell ; much hath god been pleased to teach them of a spirit of forbearance towards such as they deemed brethren , confessing their error in their rigid pressing to a conformity . i am almost perswaded in my owne heart , god hath a designe in this to unite the spirits of the saints in both nations each to other , by making them see a need of one another . it made my heart almost to bleed , to hear some of them confesse it was a wise dispensation of the almighty , that they who had it in purpose , and indeavour to persecute others , should first taste of that cup , yea from the hands of such which they thought to have made instrumentall for the other , and that god should so order it , that those whom they judged could not upon prudentiall grounds be suffred to cohabit with them , or be so much as their neighbours , should now become the onely visible safety , or hopes of such under god to them . i have done with this ; i have no further to acquaint you with , but the increase of the enemy about pomfret , and their late indeavours to surprize nottingham , yorke , hempsley , and bolton castles . sir , i am your most affectionate kinsman , h. h. finis . manifest truth, or, an inversion of truths manifest containing a narration of the proceedings of the scottish army, and a vindication of the parliament and kingdome of england from the false and injurious aspersions cast on them by the author of the said manifest. bowles, edward, 1613-1662. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a28914 of text r19508 in the english short title catalog (wing b3873). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 176 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 42 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a28914 wing b3873 estc r19508 12258618 ocm 12258618 57679 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a28914) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 57679) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 172:7) manifest truth, or, an inversion of truths manifest containing a narration of the proceedings of the scottish army, and a vindication of the parliament and kingdome of england from the false and injurious aspersions cast on them by the author of the said manifest. bowles, edward, 1613-1662. [8], 74, [1] p. printed by m.s. for henry overton ... and giles calvert ..., london : 1646. in reply to david buchanan's "truth its manifest, or, a short and true relation." attributed to edward bowles. cf. halkett & laing (2nd ed.). "published by authoritie" reproduction of original in huntington library. eng buchanan, david, 1595?-1652? -truth its manifest, or, a short and true relation. scotland. -army. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649. a28914 r19508 (wing b3873). civilwar no manifest truths, or an inversion of truths manifest. containing a narration of the proceedings of the scottish army, and a vindication of th bowles, edward 1646 32396 11 0 0 0 0 0 3 b the rate of 3 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the b category of texts with fewer than 10 defects per 10,000 words. 2003-07 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-07 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-09 john latta sampled and proofread 2003-09 john latta text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-10 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion manifest truth , or an inversion of truths manifest . containing a narration of the proceedings of the scottish army , and a vindication of the parliament and kingdome of england from the false and injurious aspersions cast on them by the author of the said manifest . prov. 18. 17. he that is first in his own cause seemeth just , but his neighbour commeth and searcheth him . published by authoritie . london printed by m. s. for henry overton in popes-head-alley , and giles calvert , at the spread eagle at west end of pauls , 1646. the preface . though all possible care shall be taken , that this ensuing discourse may need no apology , yet the misconstruction it is lyable to in this quarrelsome age , may require a preface ; in which i shall not , as the author of truths manifest , goe about to quicken the appetite of my reader , by a self-commendation , but ( if i regarded the praise of men ) should much rather choose to be commended by another , in the end of my worke , then by my selfe in the beginning . but out of a great , and just tendernesse of doing , or being thought to doe any thing , which might tend to any alienation betwixt these happily united kingdomes , i thought fit to declare , as followeth . first , that a hearty union betwixt the two kingdomes of england and scotland , as it is most agreeable to religion , and the solemne covenant , so it is eminently requisite to their mutuall preservation , both from the illegall intrenchments of their owne king , and from the attempts of forreigne princes or states ; for by such an inviolate conjunction ▪ they shall be kept from being instrumentall to each others ruine , which hath lately been designed upon both successively by their owne king , that he might become absolute lord of them both , to the prejudice , if not ruine , of religion and liberty . as also , strangers , especially the french , shall be prevented in their wonted designe , which hath been to raise , and foment differences betwixt these kingdomes , and have been forward to assist scotland against england , not for love to scotland , but hatred or feare of england , which they have looked upon as a dangerous neighbour . and let me adde further , that the continuation and confirmation of this union , will not prove onely an ornament to the protestant religion , but a great advantage to the propagating of it , and will also make us more capable of righting our selves , confederates , and allyes against any injuries or usurpations , that are or shall be offered . and i hope these apprehensions shall over-awe my pen , that it walke very circumspectly in the ensuing discourse . secondly , give me leave to say , that this union doth not necessarily inferre a confusion or mixture : but may as well , and it may be better stand , with a full reservation to each of their peculiar lawes , priviledges , governments , and possessions . it is hard , if not impossible , to find two persons , that shall concurre to an universall compliance in their friendship , but are glad to find a correspondence in some things , and content to yield a mutuall forbearance in others . this is more difficult to be found in states , who have besides their diversities of lawes and government , more differences of generall and particular interests , then private persōs are capable of . and though through gods mercy , these two kingdomes are more happy then other confederates , who like bodies exactly sphericall touch but in a point , as they have occasion , by their ambassadours , yet the nature of affaires , and men permits not they should meet , as two bodies exactly plaine in every point . for , though their interests be the same , sc ▪ the conservation of their liberties against tyranny , and religion the choycest fruite of their liberty , against any thing destructive to it , yet the customes and constitutions of the kingdoms , and the dispositions of the people may be so different ( besides other incident disadvantages ) that an universall close is rather to be desired then expected and something must be left to time , and more to him , who alone challenges the prerogative of fashioning mens hearts alike . and it may be added , that such an union is not onely not possible , but not necessary ; for conjunction , being but a meanes to some further end , is no further requisite , then it conduces to that end of mutuall preservation . there is indeed , beside the benefit , a native beauty in unity : but to be violent in pressing of it , is to scratch the face that it may be beautifull , and when accomplishd ( as it is thought ) it will be found rather to be a paint , then a naturall complexion : i shall onely take liberty to adde further , that the pressing an exact uniformity in church , or a union of mixture in state , ( the nature of persons and things not admitting it ) may hinder a union of conjunction in those things , which are possible and necessary : and i pray god , it be not the designe of some under the pretence of union , in things presently impossible , to promote a difference in that which is necessary . thirdly , as this discourse springs not from any principle of disaffection to the scottish nation , so i hope none will force any such conclusions from it , beyond my meaning , though without my guilt . for my part , i freely professe , that i think it may in its owne nature , as well as its intent , tend more to the preservation of union , then the occasioning of distraction . upon this ground , we have patiently received and read two manifests , to which the questionist from st. andrewes hath added something , not a little reflecting upon the parliament , and kingdome of england ; the first untouch'd produced a second , this second may bring forth , and in the close of it intimates a third , and possibly a worse , till under pretence of justification of our brethren , the charges against our selves may grow intolerable , and occasion greater inconveniences . fourthly , i hope the distance of time intervening , betwixt the booke and the answer , cannot afford an objection against it . first , i staid to see , if somebody that was more able , or more concerned , would undertake it . secondly , it is a businesse of great tendernesse and importance , and occasioned many thoughts of heart , which did long delay it , but could not prevaile against it . for i am able truly to say , with the author of truths manifest , that not so much the love and honour of my own nation , which yet i hope shall be alwayes deare to me , as covenant , and conscience , and consideration of the good of both kingdomes , have put me upon this worke , and carried me through it , for it is found , that unequall complyances , especially with natures not so good , doe but make way for greater disadvantages , which cannot alwayes be borne . and though it be alwayes better to suffer wrong then doe it , and sometimes better to receive wrong , then require right , yet the most beaten path to peace and justice , which i thinke now it becomes me , and others to walk in , is neither to doe wrong , nor to suffer it . for though a man may part with his owne right for publick advantage , yet i know no rule of parting with other mens right for my owne advantage . and therefore though not without sense , yet without feare of any danger that may spring from men , impatient and mindfull of oppositions , i enter upon the worke , in which i shall observe this method . first , to give a true and short narrative of the proceedings of the scotch army since they came into england , wherein i shall endeavour to doe them all possible right . and secondly , make some animadversions upon divers passages in truths manifest , wherein though something may be said against the manifest , yet nothing against the truth , for we can doe nothing against the truth . the narrative . after that the parliament of england had conflicted for the space of a yeare ' with the dangers and difficulties of this unhappy warre ( god in his wisdome and justice not seeing fit to direct us to the right improvement of our owne strength , ) they dispatch commissioners to the kingdome of scotland , to treat with them about the raising , and bringing in an army to their assistance against the combination of papists , prelates , and malignants , endeavouring to subvert religion and liberty ; the commissioners being foure members of the house of commons , accompanyed with two reverend divines of the assembly , went from london towards the latter end of iuly , 1643. and in the beginning of august came to edenburgh , where they were expected before they came , and when they came , welcome . the commissioners upon their coming addresse themselves to the convention of estates then sitting , as also to the generall assembly , that they would contribute their help so farre as they were concerned ; after few dayes a covenant was propounded , and agreed on by the commissioners , and a committee appointed to consider of that businesse with them , which was sent immediately into england for approbation , and received it with little or no materiall alteration , and was returned to scotland in a short time , and so was generally taken in both kingdomes ; while this was in hand , a treaty also was offered and debated , about bringing an army for the assistance of the parliament of england , which was also mutually agreed betwixt the kingdomes , and is of late published . after this foundation laid , though the time of year was something unseasonable for building upon it , being winter , the estates of scotland having received 50000 l. of the 100000 l. mentioned in the treaty , bestowed their power and diligence in levying men , so that about the middle of ianuary , an army well cloathed and armed was brought to the borders of england , which they entred about the twentieth of that moneth , at which time lieutenant generall lesley passed over barwick bridge with some troopes of horse ; for the towne of barwick , by the care of the commissioners of parliament then in scotland , who sent one of their owne number for that purpose , was happily made a garrison for the parliament ; and after that , by treaty betwixt the kingdomes , assigned to the scots for a magazine , and retreat , while there should be use of their army in england . a little after the entrance of those horse and foot , that came in by the way of barwick , the lieutenant generall of foot , baly , passed the water at kelsey by the advantage of a great frost , which bore the ordnance , and met the noble generall the earle of leven about alnwick . the enemy commanded by sir thomas glenham made no opposition in northumberland , but retreated from the borders to alnwick , and so to morpeth , and then to new-castle ; where the earl of new-castle met him with more forces ; so that the scottish army had a free passage to the workes and wals of new-castle , which they came to about the beginning of february . at their approach after some slight skirmishes of horse , there was an attempt made upon a strong fort at the east-side of the towne , but without successe ; a little after , it was thought fit to dispose the army to some quarters neare the towne , on the north-side of the river tyne . during the time of their lying there nothing of moment fell out , but the fight at corbridge , where there was not much hurt done , but the scots had the worse , losing some prisoners , and retreating , yet not so hastily , but they tooke collonel brandling in their returne , who after that became a proselyte ; this was all that passed on the north-side tyne , saving that the castle of warkworth was surrendred to the marquesse of argyle , who marched by the way of the sea with some forces to the army , of which castle he made one captain lysle governour ; after some time spent on the north-side trent , the lying of the army there was found uselesse , and inconvenient , and a resolution was taken towards the end of february to passe the tyne , leaving onely some forces at bedlington , and blythesnooke , to secure that little harbour being very convenient for provisions . the enemy at the passing over tyne made no opposition , but were so kind as to let them march over newbridge , a very inconvenient passage had it beene disputed , and so take possession of sunderland , a place which proved full of advantages to the army afterwards , in respect of provisions which were brought thither in great plenty from london , and other places , and exchanged for coale . during the aboade of the army about sunderland , in the moneth of march , ending the yeare 1643. they fortifyed sunderland as well as the place was capable , and tooke a strong fort at southshields over against tynmouth castle , at the second attempt ; in the meane time the enemies head quarter was at durham , where were the earle of new-castle lieutenant generall king , sir charles lucas ( lately come from the south with a supply of horse , and a very considerable army ; ) they came and faced the scots army twice within two miles of sunderland , first on the south side , then on the north-side the river were . at first we heard of nothing memorable , but very cold nights , in which the scots army had good advantage of the kings , and made good use of it , for by keeping close to them many of the enemies horses were reported to be strayed , and their souldiers courage cooled ; which was found true at their next appearance . shortly after , when they drew up about hilton and bowdon , at which time also the scottish army was drawn out against them , but no ingagement of consequence , each army kept its advantage , onely there was some slight skirmishing amongst the hedges , where for ought i ever heard , the number of the slaine was equall , or little different ; but at last the kings army drew off , and being discerned so to doe by the scottish armie , they fell upon their reare and tooke some prisoners , but killed very few , not the tenth part of the number mentioned in ( truths manifest ) and so they parted . after this the scottish army not being well able to endure their straitnesse of quarters , tooke a resolution to march towards the enemy , and either fight with him , or enlarge their quarters ; about this my lord fairefax who had beene long confined to hull , tooke the field againe , and with sir thomas fairfax ( a gentleman who must not be mentioned without honour , for god hath honoured him ) and sir iohn meldrum ( whose faithfulnesse to this cause and diligence in it was very eminent ) made their first attempt upon selby , where god was pleased to give them great and seasonable successe in storming , and taking that towne , and in it a number equall to those that assaulted , notwithstanding the many horse that were in it , where also was the governour of yorke , mr. iohn bellasys , who was taken prisoner . this businesse has hardly been parallelled since this warre , save at wakefield , when generall goring was taken in like manner by sir thomas fairfax , and his party rather then army . new-castle hearing this newes , and fearing lest yorke also ( the receptacle of most of the northerne papists , who were not in armes , whom he had most reason to respect ) should be surprized or surrendred , thought best to move southward with his armie , and did accordingly , and getting start of the scots armie , by a sudden march came to yorke about the middle of aprill , and lodged the remainder of his foot there , ( for his northerne expedition had lost him many men who were wearied out with the hardinesse of the scots ) and sent sir charles lucas away southward with his horse , which were followed by some scottish and yorkeshire horse , but not overtaken . the scottish army followed southward , and joined with the forces under command of my lord fairfax , betwixt wetherby and selby , where after consultation they draw neare to yorke , and if a sufficient strength could be made up by the accession of the earle of manchesters forces , which was desired and hoped , they resolved to sit downe before yorke , which was accordingly done ; generall leven pitching his quarter at midlethorp , my lord fairfax at foulford , and my lord manchester at heslington , the scots quarters kept in the towne on the west-side of the river , the earle of manchester and lord fairfax on the east-side ; and to my lord fairfax his assistance , was sent a very noble gentleman and able commander , sir iames lunsdaine , with a regiment or two of foote , who lay at foulford ; the horse of all the armies in the meane time were sent towards the west of yorkshire , which was the onely way the enemy had to come , and interrupt the siege , the other wayes by the advantage of rivers , being impassable upon opposition ; this siege was carried on with very commendable unanimity , and correspondency of counsels on all sides , each acting their part . the scots tooke in a fort on the south-side of the town , attempted another neare the great fort , but held it not , and had severall skirmishes with the enemies horse , in one of which they lost a gallant gentleman , leiutenant collonel ballantine , who not content with a little honour , to gaine more lost his life ; my lord manchesters men made their approaches very neare at bowden , and monk-barres , my lord fairfax his men at wolmsgate , where they tooke a church and divers prisoners in it , onely major generall crawfurd , a valiant and forward man , made an unhappy attempt upon the mannor house , without due notice to the other forces , and was beaten out with the losse of many men . after this siege had continued two moneths or thereabouts , towards the end of iune prince rupert comes to the reliefe of yorke , by the way of lancashire , draining garrisons and raising men with all diligence and severity , and thereto added an act of cruelty at boulton . at this time upon the importunity of lancashire , sir iohn meldrum ( after that by his conduct , the castle of cawood , and the strong fort of airesmouth were taken , which much advantaged our provisions from hull by water ) was sent with a party thither to doe what service he had opportunity , howsoever to secure , if possible , the town of manchester , which had been yet inviolate for the parliament , and accordingly did so . the prince after he had strengthned himselfe what he could , drawes neare to yorke by the way of burrowbridge , and comes upon the north-side of the river owse , whereupon the armies resolve to joyne and fight him , and so the last of iune , the siege was raised , the towne in some measure relieved ; but the prince not satisfied with that he had done , would needs draw over the river againe , about three miles from yorke to fight our forces , upon that side the river ; in which he made a desperate attempt , and as i am informed , was so told by lieutenant generall king , in regard our armie might fall upon him while he was passing the river . but he was resolved and gave command to the earle of new-castle , to draw his men out of yorke to his assistance ; which was done , though not so soone as was expected , but soone enough to a bad bargaine . our united armies were marching off , thinking to prevent the princes march southward , and were going towards tadcaster on the day of the fight , thinking to crosse some nearer way , and meet him in his return : but he saved them that labour , and drew up in their reare in a place called hessey-moore , neare long-marston , of which sir thomas fairfax ( having the reare ) gave speedie notice , and orders were presently given to face about to the enemy , which was accordingly done ; and the princes army being drawne up in the moore , our armies drew up into the fields adjoyning , and so much of the heath as was left them ; sir thomas fairfax commanded the right wing , consisting of his owne horse , and some from lancashire , lieutenant generall cromwell the left wing ; the scots horse were equally divided , three regiments on the right wing , and three on the left : on which wing also was there then generall major david lesley . my lord manchesters foote were drawne on the left wing next the horse , and the scots foote and my lord fairefaxes in the body , and right wing ; the battaile began about six or seven of the clock in the evening , iuly the 2. the right wing commanded by sir thomas fairfax was disordered , for he had among other disadvantages these two especially ; first , the worst part of the ground being so full of whinnes as that his horse could not march up , and was next the hedges possessed by the enemy . secondly , he had also many new raised horse which had never seene service , who did not play the part of reserves as became them , so that after his owne regiment and collonel lamberts had charged , with valour and good successe , for want of supplies that wing was wholly routed , himselfe stayed in the field , where he received a marke of honour on his face ; the scots horse also on that side quit the field , and left the earl of lyndeseys regiment of foot standing bare , which yet acquitted it selfe well , for sir charles lucas coming up with horse to charge them , his owne horse was shot in the head of his regiment , and he was taken prisoner . but , whilest this was doing on the right , our friends on the left wing sped very well ( through gods mercy ) and wholly routed the enemy , and came about to the right , and at last cleared the field , became masters of the enemies carriages and artillery , and left more dead bodies then hath been at any battell since these warres began , and had slaine more , but that the shelter of night , and a neare garrison hindred pursuit . the lot of the body of foot , especially of scots and my lord fairfaxes , was so promiscuous , some standing , some flying , that i can give no perfect accompt of it . as for the passage in truth its manifest concerning lieutenant generall cromwell , and their lieutenant generall lesley , i should be loth to meddle in it , and wish the author of the manifest had not ; but something must be said in the animadversions . thus was god pleased to use the scots army in doing its part to the breaking of the strong army of the north , and the defeating of the prince , who brought into the field that day an army very strong and well accomplisht . quem dies vidit veniens superbum , hunc dies vidit fugiens jacentem . if any will make a further enquiry , and say who did best , i could wish i might be put to no other answer then ( god did all ; ) which is the best way to decide controversies of this kinde ; for no man loses when he gaines honour . after this happy victory , the discouraged enemy take severall courses , prince rupert with his retinue ( for his army was gone ) marched on northward to allerton , and so by richmond back againe the way that he came . the earle of newcastle with his deare confidents , widrington and carnaby , went to scarborough , and so beyond sea ; and with them lievtenant generall king . the government of yorke by this meanes was devolved upon sir thomas glenham , who still undertakes desperate cures . our own forces , after the generalls had time to meete , and the confusion of the fight ( which lasts longer then the time of it ) was over , and our wounded men provided for , fall to work againe , and the fight being on tuesday iuly 2. on thursday or friday following a party of horse were sent under the command of lesley and cromwell to follow the enemy , but they were first gotten into the dales , and became almost uncapable of annoyance . the body of the army returned to the siege of yorke , which about a fortnight after was surrendred to the parliament upon treaty betwixt commissioners on both parts . and thus was god pleased to blesse these united forces with a victory and city , in which the scots as they had their part of pains and hazard , so deserve their proportionable share of thanks and honour . after this my lord manchester marched away towards lincolne , his forces taking some castles in yorkshire by the way , as sheffield , and tickhill . the lord fairfax remained in yorke , and disposed his forces to the blocking up of some castles in yorkshire . the scots army marched northward againe . and that i may not omit any thing concerning that army , while generall leven was imployed in these services about yorke , the northerne parts , and that part of the scots army left behind , passed some danger and hardship in northumberland . morpeth castle , held by lieutenant collonel somervill , was delivered up with the provisions and goods in it to collonell clavering . and the fort at south-shields , though not gotten sine sanguine , was lost sine sudore , upon a bare summons from montrosse and clavering . at this time also sunderland was faced and outfaced by the mentioned cavaliers , who came to bishops wermouth , and plundred some of their victualls , but the towne was preserved , where amongst others the english sea-men being much concerned ( for their ships were then in the harbour ) well acquitted themselves . but the earle of callander then comming into england with an additionall force ; among whom the lord sinclare , montgomery , and levingston , dispelled these mysts , and before the returne of the scots army tooke in hartlepoole and stockton upon surrender , and placed garrisons in them as seemed best to him ; and a little before the returne of the noble earle of leven from yorkshire , he had entred gateshead , town of the south-side of newcastle , parted from it onely by the river , by which means the town of newcastle was wholly blocked up on the south-side . after the returne of the generall , a bridge was made over the tyne , and he disposed his army on the northside , and approached close to the towne with his foote , the horse being sent westward towards cumberland and westmerland . during this siege , which continued above two moneths , the enemy made frequent and sharpe sallies , and the generall frequent and faire offers , to which the upstart knight marlay returned very peremptory and sometimes abusive answers , which were reckoned for at last ; if they be not , they may be . but at length after much diligence and patience , the generall and the commanders then resident with the army , resolved upon a storm , and to that end prepared mines and batteries , and upon october 19th fell on at severall parts of the towne , at the breach made by cannon there was no entrance , and the most losse on the scots part was there , but the mines taking well , especially one at white-friers tower , they entred , and both to our and their benefit tooke that strong and rich towne . sir iohn marly the governour , with the scottish earl of crasurd , and others , retreated to the castle , expecting thence to make their termes , but could get none but those of mercy , which considering the persons , was too good for them , though lesse could not be granted . after the entrance there was little bloud shed , but the common souldier betooke himselfe to what he could , the officer almost to what he would . for herein the scots are more orderly then the english . among our armies commonly the souldier gets the greatest share of the spoile , the officers generally being not so earnest at the prey ; and the english souldiers are not so easily commanded as the scots in such a case . for the scots souldiers will very orderly stand sentinell at the dore they are appointed to , and for some small matter preserve a house with its appurtenances for their commanders , so that the towne was not ( especially the best houses ) spoiled in specie , but onely purged by a composition , which was fortuitous , according as the nature of the chapmen was , some good bargaines , some ill . and thus was newcastle reduced , which ( to speake as much truth as the manifest ) was a very remarkable service , being the onely thing of moment wherein that army hath been engaged apart from other forces in england these two yeares . and to make this good successe compleat , that the passage from the coale-indies might be cleare , tynmouth castle , commanded by sir thomas riddell , out of a sympathy betwixt the towne-clerke and the major of newcastle , was surrendred upon articles , and garrisons placed in both towne and castle , by order of the scots commanders and generall . after these places thus taken , and in this manner setled , and the businesse of fines & compositions at newcastle dispatched , it was time to dispose the scots army ( which had been most of the precedent winter in the fields ) to their winter quarters . to that purpose two or three regiments of horse , and a regiment of dragoones were alotted to abide in cumberland , and westmerland ; three regiments of horse sent into the north-riding of yorkshire : northumberland and bishopricke of durham , were appointed to the foote , and some odde troops of horse . the horse in cumberland had by this time made some entrance upon the siege of carlile ; sir wilfrid lawson , and others cumberland ▪ men being joyned with them , who had raised both horse and foote for that service ; of which more in the animadversions . after the army thus was disposed of , the committee also and the generall disposed themselves into scotland , and left our english commanders and the souldiers to dispute matters of assessement and provision , impar congressus . during this time of winter i have not heard any thing of service from that army , onely that some foote were sent to the assistance of sir iohn meldrum at the siege of scarborough-castle ; and some also were sent to pontfract , but had not libertie to stay the end of these works , in regard of other employment . so that wee have free leave to passe on to the spring ; at which time the scottish committee for the army after the dispatch of their own affaires in parliament and assembly returned . the generall himselfe being come before into england toward the end of ianuary . in the second yeares service , the first thing that offers it selfe was lievtenant generall lesleys going with a party of horse and foote to the assistance of sir william brereton , who was then besieging beeston-castle , and intending chester , but hearing that prince rupert was drawing towards him with a considerable force , sent to the committee of both kingdomes at westmorland for ayd , who desired that lievtenant generall lesley might goe with a party of horse to his assistance ; which accordingly was done . a party of yorkshire horse being also joyned with him ; but of that conjunction wee had no further newes or fruit , but that the enemy came not far enough to fight us ; and our forces stood upon the defensive . whereupon the lieutenant generall shortly after returned into the west-riding of yorkshire about hallifax , where he remained for a space . about this time the parliament finding ground to new-mould the severall armies under the command of the earles of essex and manchester , and sir william walter , ( a course of equall hazard and necessity ) which god hath since blessed with successe to admiration , into one body , under the command of the valiant and victorious sir thomas fairfax ; by this means , and especially by the forwardnesse and opposition of some , who made it their great businesse to crosse this worke , ( so little did they value the publique good in respect of their owne conceits , wills , and interests ) it came to passe that we lost some ground in the start at the spring , but through mens diligence , and gods blessing , it was quickly recovered . about this time ( i say ) the parliament sent to the scots army and their committee , that they would hasten the advance of that army southward with all possible speed , in regard that this change and opposition had brought their affaires into some distraction ; and to enable and encourage them for their march , sent them 30000. li . and accordingly about the time that sir thomas fairfax , upon order from the committee of both kingdomes , marched from windsor westward with a piece of an army , which was the first of may ; the scots army came to rippon in yorkshire , where there were severall debates betwixt their committee and our commanders , about matter of provisions , the english commanders still pressing the necessity of marching southward ( the king having drawne his army into the field ) and promising all possible care for accommodation ; but in the midst of these disputes , the king drawing northward , and the scots having intelligence out of cheshire of the kings intendment , to send a flying army over the hills through lancashire into scotland : the debate about marching southwards , and making provisions for it , was turned into a dispute which was the best way into lancashire ; for the journey was resolved by the scots . the english commissioners told them , if they must goe , the neerest way & passable enough , was the way that prince rupert marched from lancashire to the reliefe of yorke , which was by skippon ; but they chose rather to goe about by the way of stainmore ( commonly called in those parts , the devills gallary , for the uncouthnesse of it ) into westmerland , which had a little before resisted : some scottish officers requiring contribution ( as they say ) beyond their power , and beside the parliaments authority . there they stayed some time , but the flying army being not to be found or heard of , the scots march back againe the same way to rippon about the beginning of iune . first , having sent some more commanded men to carlisle , which was shortly after reduced by the joyned forces , scots and english , which i onely mention now left in the narrative i should be thought fit to omit an action of moment , but reserve the story of it to another place , at which time the parliament sent downe two of their owne members , to waite on the scots army , and hasten their march southwards , who accompanyed the army to nottingham , and from thence the chiefe officers of the scots army sent a letter to the parliament , which the author of truth 's manifest thinks fitter to print , though neither they that writ it , nor they that received it , judged meet to doe . within two dayes after the date of the letter , it pleased god to honour the army under the command of sir thomas fairfax , and blesse these kingdomes with an eminent , and seasonable victory over the royall army at nazeby , which was a happy foundation of the recovery of leicester within three dayes after , and many other successes , wherewith god hath followed their valour and diligence to this day . by this meanes the heat of the warre was over for that yeare , especially in these parts , the king having no field forces left , but those under the command of goring in the west . after this the scots army with all readinesse march southward through warwickshire , worstershire , and so towards hereford , whither some commissioners were sent from parliament to joyne counsels and endeavours with them ; a field enemy not appearing they resolve to besiege hereford , the reducing which place was thought very necessary for the prevention of the kings recruits commonly fetch't from those parts . the siege went on hopefully , mines and batteries were prepared , and the taking of the city ( which never was accounted very strong ) continually expected : but in the meane time , it pleased god to suffer montrosse with his wicked crue to give our brethren in scotland a sad overthrow ( i am sure all good people had reason to accompt , it so ) at kylsyth , where many good men were lost , and the forces of that kingdome almost totally dissipated ; which occasioned the recourse of many eminent persons to barwick , and discovered a more generall malignancy in scotland , then was expected . the newes of this coming to the army , after some consultation had , they raised their siege , to which they were induced , as by the condition of their owne country , so by the report , of the kings coming towards them with a strength of horse , which might endanger them , they having sent lieutenant generall lesley away towards the north , where he stayed with respect to scotland , as also to interrupt the kings intentions northward , whither he most applyed himselfe . when sir thomas fairfax was gone westward with his army , it was expected , that the partie with lieutenant generall lesley , and the english with him should have pursued , or fallen upon the enemie at that time , but the king marching southward towards huntington , and the scottish horse being bound northward , it could not be . at this time , the necessities of scotland so requiring , the lieutenant generall marched into scotland , where suddenly after his arrivall , he happily fals upon montrosse now divided from kilketto , and not looking for him so soone , and obtaines a happy victory over him , and seasonably ( through gods mercy ) alters the face of things in scotland . this newes meets the scottish armie ( marching northwards ) in yorkshire , and staies their journey further , and gives them libertie to repose in the north and west ridings of that county , which by the calamitie of these warres are now almost wasted , and will be brought either to utter ruine , or some dangerous way of preventing it , unlesse the parliament afford timely reliefe . while the army was quartering here , the lord digby comes with a party of horse , as is said , for scotland , he surprizes the english foot , quartered at sherburne , but by the seasonable pursuit of collonel copley and collonel lilburne was defeated , lost his booty and his baggage , with divers letters of moment into the bargaine ; and was forced to take a hilly way to cumberland , where sir iohn browne got an advantage of him as his remnant was passing over a water , where the tyde hindered one part from the reliefe of the other ; and so he was forced to the isle of man , and thence hath betaken himselfe into ireland , from whence we daily heare from him . this passage concerning my lord digby ( though his greatest blow was by the yorkeshire forces ) i thought fit to insert that i might not omit that action of sir iohn brownes , which the parliament was pleas'd to take notice of . after the scottish army had lyen sometime in yorkeshire , about november , at the desire of the parliament , and the committee of both kingdomes , they marched to block up newarke on the north-side , where they had possession given them of muskham bridge ( which the enemy had intended to burne , but did it not ) and the fort in the island that commands it , which makes their worke on the north-side trent very easie , in regard the towne , forts , and castle stand on the south-side the river . since their blocking up newarke there hath not beene much of action ; once the enemy by the advantage of the ice fell into their quarters , killed the adjutant generall of foot , but received as well as did hurts : since that the enemy made a sally upon the scots , who were making a fort in the island , but after some little losse on each part , were very well repelled and beaten in . and let me not forget the readinesse of the lieutenant generall , to send some foot to collonel poyntz , for the strengthning his quarters at stoake . and so have we followed the scots army , consisting now of about seven or eight thousand horse and foote , most horse , ( according to a muster lately taken by the english commissioners ) to the siege of newarke , where also is a committee of lords , and commons from the parliament , contributing their best assistance to the carrying on the service against newarke , who have above these three moneths expected a committee from scotland , to joyne with them according to the treaty , but they are not yet come ; it is hoped ( notwithstanding ) that there shall be such mutuall care and concurrence betwixt the forces , as that strong garrison shall in due time be reduced to the great advantage of the north , and happinesse of the whole kingdome , which is very much concerned in the successe of it . and thus have you a true narrative of the entrance , and proceedings of the scottish army since it came into england , where i have not willingly , nor ( i hope ) negligently omitted any thing materiall ; more circumstances might have been brought in to attend the substance of this discourse , but many of them being not acceptable , it was thought best to omit them , or at least referre them to the second part , which containes animadversions upon some passages of the manifest , and other papers printed to the disadvantage of truth , and reflecting upon the parliament of england . the animadversions first , the whole booke and the printing of it , to me , deserves an animadversion . who is this man that makes so bold an adventure , to intermeddle in things of highest consequence , betwixt the two kingdomes , their parliaments and armies ; which their wisdome and tendernesse made them forbeare ? me thinks their silence might have prompted reverence to the author . he calls indeed his booke an answer , pag. 4. and alleadges scripture for it ; but to whom is it an answer ? none had put pen to paper in this businesse , it came not into the thought of any wise man to meddle , and the very diurnals which bespatter every body , were very modest , as to the scots and their army . therefore is the gentleman constrained for want of work to make himselfe an adversary , which he calls by the name of sinisirous reports in the second line of his relation . had it not been better to have suffered these reports to have vanished in the ayre , then to give them the advantage of an eccho ? i feare lest the work prove unprofitable , as unnecessary works use to doe ; forward vindications sometimes occason untoward questions , and controverted things have sometimes more advantage by silence then debate . but well meaning men ( as they are styled ) must be undeceived ; let that be put to the issue whether so , or rather whether those that have been before deceived by reports , be not now cousned in print . if it be found so , it is a double fault , the falshood in the booke is one , truth in the title another , — per amici fallere nomen tuta frequensque via est , sed via crimen habet . but to the particulars the first thing is his animadversions upon the commissioners of scotland , for not being so popular in their applications , and satisfactions to the multitude as he thinks fit ; in which , notice may be taken of his expressions and of his charge ; the expressions to mee seeme disproportionable to the honour , and employment of so honourable and worthy persons . he tells them , pag. 3 , that he cannot esteeme their prudence in this . pag. 4. you have mistaken the right way sirs , ibid. you are hugely mistaken . pag. 11. he chargeth them with being meale-mouth'd , and with remissenesse , and concludes with his magisteriall hopes , pag. 13. that being freely admonished , they will mend this slip : and addes a resolution , that till the commissioners did the thing he advises , he would take a commission from himselfe to doe it . to al which i say no more then , indignus tu qui diceres tamen . for the charge i may adde , neque hoc opprobrio digni sunt . men in trust and authority should take care that the people may rather have the advantage , then the knowledge of their proceedings . things that are to be done by them are necessarily to be made knowne to them , and to satisfie them in their obedience , the ground of the command , or something shewing the equity and necessity of it , is usually premitted , as is done in the preamble of acts , ordinances and declarations . but to make knowne the debates , and those humane passions incident thereunto , it were sometimes to discover nakednesse where it ought not , to minister strifes , to make the people judges of them whom they have made so . i have heard that the custome of scotland is otherwise , where there is a diligent eye had to the presse ( which is not as here ( which is one of our faults ) prostitute to the lust of every pamphlet ) and a reverend reservednesse kept upon their counsels and actions : onely so farre as the people are concerned in obeying , things are carefully made knowne to them , and difficulties removed . and certainly , those that are reserved at home , will not judge it meet to be very open elsewhere : for though the proverb is not strictly to be applyed , yet it carries a generall equity and decency ; in alien●m domum cum veneris mutus & surdus esto . the gentleman makes some objections which he answers , he that hides can finde , but unawares ties some knots which he cannot easily undoe . for instance his second objection , in the answer to which he affirmes , that the commissioners of scotland doe not sufficiently discharge their duty , in making knowne to the parliament and assembly to the full , the truth of all things by their papers , which he proves by an assertion , which for want of other strength he doubles , that what is de facto concerning all , must be made knowne to all . the sounder axiome were , what concernes all to know must be made knowne to all , for otherwise who will deny , but the people are concerned in counsels , deliberations , and conclusions of things to be done , they being the subject and end of them , and yet this author grants , that these things are to be made knowne to the trustees of state ? but i have no mind to wrangle . let us see the strength of the argument , which is this . the trustees of the state and church are not lords of them , but servants : therefore the commissioners of the parliament of scotland are to impart to the people of england their papers , and proceedings . this conclusion seemes to me larger then the premisses , and like to have the lot of a building wider then the foundation ; the true inference from the antecedent is rather this . therefore the commissioners of scotland , as good servants , should give an accompt to them , that intrust them so farre , as is expected or required . but shew me where the people of england conferred that trust upon the commissioners from scotland , or where they required any accompt ; doubtlesse those honourable persons doe give accompt , and satisfaction to them , from whom they received their commission and trust , and need not doe it to any other . and though that expression of servants , as opposed to a lordly usurpation , is good as to the thing , yet the word seemes to give too specious a ground for such a corrupt inference as this ; if the rulers be servants , the people are masters ; whereas the truth is , the magistrate serves the good of the people rather then the people , as the apostle expresseth it , rom. 13. they are the ministers of god to the people for good . ministers or servants of god , that this their appellation , to the peoples good , that is their use . thus the angels serve the saints , who are yet lower then the angels , and pastours the people , whom yet they rule over in the lord . me thinks those that hate independency in the church , should not affect popularity in the state , but any thing for a turne . but let me leave this rule with my friends and country-men , that though it be fit that all exorbitant usurpation , and arbitrary dominion of rulers have a seasonable stop , lest publike liberty suffer , yet must it be done without debasing those in authority , whose honour and esteeme with the people , is necessary to the order and conservation of the whole ; alwayes provided , that this tender regard need not be had to any of what place soever , that are in open hostility against the people , who make no other use of their power and reputation , then to deceive , and destroy the people ; of which our instance is too neare . as for the freedome of iohn knox , and george bucanan mentioned pag. 12. i could well consent it were revived , so it be rightly bestowed , as by them it was , sc. against the popery of the then queen , and the self-interests of great men in publick works , and against tyranny in princes : king charles deserves a severer schoolemaster then ever king iames had . secondly , after this expostulation with the commissioners ending pag. 14. the narration begins , in which the author layes open in the first place , the carriage of things betwixt the scots , and the king at their first entrance , which i meddle not with , onely give this note on the behalfe of england , that whatsoever was then done ( as is alleadged ) contrary to justice and faith , must not be set in the least degree upon the accompt of this kingdome , whose proper representative is the parliament , who disclaimed the whole businesse , it was the work of the king , not the kingdome , of the faction , not the nation . but i rest in the thoughts of the act of pacification . thirdly , the next thing to be insisted on , is of more consequence , and will require a full clearing , which is found at the 18. pag. sc. the scots under god , are the cause of assembling the parliament , of the continuance of it , and of the preservation of it from totall destruction and ruine . and to this purpose , there are divers passages , which i think fittest to summe up together , and give them some dilucidation rather then opposition . another expression of this kind is , pag. 94. the scots were in a kinde the onely hinderers of the kings compassing his designe . pag. 99. 100. for whom they have hazarded , and many lost their lives , when they might all this while have sate at home quietly . pag. 112. they make our quarrell theirs , have undergone the burthen for our sakes , to free us from it . they are become miserable to pull us out of misery , a thing not to be parallel'd . pag. 114. they have crucified themselves for their brethren . pag. 142. who have ventured , yea , lost themselves in a manner , with all that is deare unto men , for their sakes , to doe them a double good , to help them out of trouble , and settle a reformation among them . god forbid , that i should be one of those ingrate children , mentioned and cryed out on by this author . it is farre from my thought or purpose , to deny , or to diminish the kindnesse of our brethren , whose help was desired and was seasonable , but let us understand our selves , and how the matter stands betwixt these two kingdomes . we are indebted to scotland , i wish an even reckning , and long friendship , but i am not yet of opinion we owe our selves to them : and if the author of the manifest be consulted , you shall find an intimation of some other obligations then meere kindnesse unto us . as for instance , pag. 24. it is said , that the scots ( when they began to interesse themselves in this businesse , ) they could not in conscience , and honesty sit quiet any longer , and neither say nor doe : but i take no advantage of this , we are beholding to men for doing what in conscience and honesty they are bound , though they should hurt themselves more in violating conscience and honour , then in suffering us to be violated . to this you shall find a more externall ground added , pag. 28. viz. now the state of scotland , seeing the common enemy come to that height , that nothing will satisfie him , but totall subversion of church and state , inthese dominions , onely they perhaps , might be kept for the last , though in intention they had been the first , judge it not enough for their interest in the common cause , to keepe an army in ireland , but to bee upon their guard at home , and to help their brethren in england with the sword , since all other meanes so often tryed were disappointed by the malice of the enemies : and this resolution is said to have been taken , before commissioners were sent from england to desire their assistance , pag. 30. so that you may observe the enemy was a common enemy , the cause a common cause , the danger to these dominions ; the scots like to suffer as deep , though not so soone , if they had sate still . but give me leave , paulo altius repetere , and to consider the ancient mutuall tyes , and later friendships betwixt these kingdomes , which may be a good meanes to continue , and confirme their present correspondence . so long as these kingdomes were under divers ( especially popish ) princes , their condition was like that of israel , 2. chron. 15. 3. when it was without a true god , without a teaching priest , and without law . at which time , there was no peace to him that went out , nor to him that came in , but great vexations were upon all the inhabitants of the countries , and nation was destroyed of nation , and city of city . the mutuall spoyles and losses of these neighbour kingdomes , being well considered by that wise prince henry the seventh , he layes a probable foundation of conjunction , in giving his eldest daughter to the king of scots , whose posterity upon the failing of the issue of his sonne , henry the eight , might inherit both kingdomes , which hath since come to passe . in the time of edward the sixt , it was thought fit by that prince ( whose wisdome and vertue was beyond his yeares ) and his councell , to make the conjunction more sure , and therefore agreed with the kingdom of scotland for a match betwixt this young king , and the daughter of iames the fifth , afterward queen of france and scotland . but the polititians of those times in scotland chose rather to marry their young princesse to france then england ; it may be , forecasting , upon the faile of issue in henry the eights children , that it would be more for their advantage to have a scottish-man or a french-man king of england , then an english-man of scotland , though ( if i may speake it without offence ) i think they might have had more comfort in that young prince edward 6. had god continued his life and reigne , then england hath had of the two kings they have had from scotland ; of whom truths manifest sayes ; that there hath been more christian bloud shed in these latter yeares , under the end of king iames his and king charles his reignes , by their commissions , approbations , connivences , and not forbidding what at home , and what abroad , all which upon the matter , they might have stopped , if it had been their pleasure , then were in the time of the ten romane persecutions . but although the english had received some dis-ingagement by the non-performance of that match , which was aggravated on both parts by a fight at musselborough field ; yet when the scots were sore troubled , and their religion & liberty indangered by the said queene , returned from france into scotland , who called the french in to her assistance against her native subjects ; the renowned queene elizabeth , and her prudent councell , though this kingdome had continuall warre with spaine , yet feared not to provoke the french , by affording seasonable helpe to her distressed neighbours , sending to their reliefe 6000 men , which were maintained at the charge of the kingdome of england ; which was then thankfully and justly called to minde by the kingdome of scotland when this last treaty was to be made . so that if we breake off here , the kindnesse rests not on our part . but i shall as gladly proceed to repeate the good turnes done to this kingdome , as by it , and rejoyce in the mutuall obligation . and that i may not breake in too suddenly upon the late affaires of these kingdomes , give me leave as a manuduction thereto to give a briefe touch of the method of reformation in this island , and but a word , for the body of the story may be had elswhere . it pleased god at the bringing of this island out of popery , to honour scotland with a more full departure from romish idolatry and superstition , for though england wholly renounced their doctrine , yet some dregges of discipline and superstitious ceremonies remained . the scots had indeed some advantages that wee had not ; their queene was obnoxious , their young king in his nonage , they had some nobles and ministers zealous and well affected , so that through gods blessing they obtained a reformation in that point , though not with so little difficulty as should give them ground to expect it should be done here on a suddaine . but as for england , in queene elizabeths time , shee had so much trouble for holland , with spaine , and in ireland , that her councell thought not fit to adventure upon the trouble of an alteration in this point , which they foresaw , and wee finde to be great . and besides , many of our reformers being bishops , could not so well understand the convenience of their own abolishment . in king iames his time , though wee might have expected to have been better , in regard he came from a reformed kingdome , yet it was far worse with us , for he came with an innate bitternesse against puritanes , which was fomented by our english bishops , so that he became a great persecutor of unconformity ; and according to the proverb , seldome comes a better , since the reigne of this king , especially since the preferment of the late archbishop of canterbury , it hath been much worse with us , for in stead of reforming , we were deforming , and , in stead of renouncing , returning to rome apace . but all this while england wanted not its honour in the eyes of god and good men ; for god favoured it with men eminent in learning , able and earnest assertors of the doctrine of the gospel , against the champions of rome , bellarmine and his fellowes , such were whitaker , reynolds , iewel , fulke , perkings , &c. with more practicall preachers and writers , and a greater measure of the power of godlines , then other reformed churches . thus we see , non omnis fert omnia tellus . scotland had its advantages , and so had england , that neither they without us , nor wee without them might be made perfect , but that we might contribute to the reformation of each other , and both to our neighbours . you will pardon this digression , i returne . after king iames had outgrown his tutors , hankered after spaine , and was come into england , he went about to pull downe what was built in scotland for matter of discipline , and interrupted the liberty of the assemblies , as at perth more especially , though his nature was to accomplish his designes rather by artifice then by violence ; king charles succeeds him in his crowne and intention , but drives more furiously then his father , and ventures the overturning all ; and so am i come to the late troubles of scotland , about the yeare 1638. at which time both kingdomes had bishops , but scotland first cast them off , to which they had these advantages . first , their naturall antipathy against episcopacy , which is generally remarkable in that nation . secondly , the absence of the king , who was not there to countenance them with his presence , and support them with his interest and authority , as here . it is no small advantage to have an absent king . a king prevents the factions of an aristocracy : his absence takes away the enormities of a court , and the advantages to tyranny . and as they had more advantage , so had they more reason to begin ; they had a service-book put upon them against law , more corrupt then ours , which was established by a law then in force . their worke was but to assert their rights against innovation , ours to inlarge our reformation , and adde something de novo , which is a much harder and a more questionable worke . but however it was very happie for them and us , that they had such an opportunitie , & hearts to use it as they did , in standing in the breach like to be made upon the religion and liberties of both kingdomes . to come yet nearer , this dispute betwixt the king and his party on the one side , the lords and ministers of scotland on the other , growes to blowes , and armies are prepared on each hand . how stood the affection of the commonaltie of england in this cause ? how backward were they to raise men , to pay money ? the souldiers that were raised in many places fell to pulling downe altars , breaking images , as a worke which pleased them better then to goe against scotland in that cause . and whilst some were preparing to fight against them , many were actually stirring and wrastling with god for them in prayers ; such was the affection they bore to that cause and kingdome . and when the parliament was called , to which god made the scottish broyles an advantage , ( though the affaires of england could not long have stood in that temper they were in ) how tender were they of contributing any thing to the warre against them , and chose rather to adventure their own dissolution then a breach with them . and when they were the second time conveened , even to this present parliament , how readily did they gratifie their brethren with a competent sum called brotherly assistance , to be paid by this kingdome for the injuries done by a faction in it ? and this carriage of the parliament is acknowledged to be worthy , and obliging by the convention of the estates of scotland , in their declaration premitted at their entrance . so that hitherto wee were not behind-hand with them . it remaines then that this great obligation must arise from the present conjunction . but if we consider the grounds , the termes , and issue , it may appeare not to be extraordinary . as for the grounds , if this author in his 28. pag. already mentioned , be not authenticke , let me alledge those that are ; sc. the convention in the short declaration premitted at their comming into this kingdome in ianuary 1643. where beside and before the law of love requiring us to beare each others burthen , you may finde a law of nature mentioned , injoyning them to preserve themselves by preventing their neighbours ruine . it is indeed a kindnesse for a man to helpe to quench a fire in his neighbours house , though his own be next ; but if his house had not been so neare , it may be the man had been further off . so that it was not a sole respect to us that brought them , for that is no fiction , though it be poetry , tua res agitur paries cum proximus ardet . so much for the ground . the termes were as betwixt strangers and mercenaries , though we love and embrace the title of brethren , as appeares by the treaty , wherein it is required and agreed that england be at the whole charge of paying this army , ( the termes upon which they serve france and holland ) and expected that this kingdome be responsable for incident charges and losses . what could be further asked ? and looke to the issue , if god grant it , when this kingdome will be found to have afforded all the charge and most of the force for the preservation of england and ireland directly , and scotland as really , though by consequence ; for prius and posterius makes no great difference , which was the case as this author acknowledgeth , pag. 28. and thus have i given accompt of the true state as neare as i could learne it of the obligations betwixt these two kingdomes , which afford this result ; that wee should love one another . as for the particular words which occasioned this discourse , which are three times repeated in the manifest , sc. that the scots were the cause of calling , continuing , preserving from ruine this present parliament , let me say thus much to them . as for the calling it , they were the occasion , but not the cause . as for the continuance of it , this is the account , wee feeling the smart of broken parliaments , as also our debts and necessities calling for money , it could not be borrowed but upon publique faith , this was not to be given but in parliament ; whereupon a noble gentleman , mr pierrepont by name , ( who was not then much acquainted with the scots ) moved upon those grounds for an act of continuance of this parliament , and it passed . as for the preservation of it from ruine , this clause following immediately upon the authors discourse of the scots refusing the kings offers which he made them of the foure northerne counties , &c. if they would lend their hand to the parliaments ruine , induceth me to beleeve , he meanes that not destruction for preservation . but doe not the publicanes so ? could they doe lesse then forbeare the attempt of ruining that parliament which had been so carefull to hinder all means of furthering the wrong or ruine of scotland . i know not what kindnesse it was not to doe it , i am sure it had been barbarous cruelty and injustice to have done it ; but if the gentleman meane they were the cause of our preservation positively , by affording their seasonable helpe , it is acknowledged upon the grounds and termes already mentioned , sc. their own preservation as well as ours , and full satisfaction . the manifest proceeds in declaring the readinesse of the scots for the helpe of ireland : i will by no meanes extenuate the courtesie , but that also is easily reducible to their own interest , which they had reason to regard , their labour being bestowed in ulster which lay neare to scotland , and would have been a very ill neighbour in the rebels hands . as also it may be considered that they had divers scottish plantations in those parts , which it concerned them to doe their best to preserve for their love to their countrymen , and to keep off the burthen of their comming over to themselves . but i deny not but they have suffered something from ireland , and done something for it , and nodoubt with respect to religion , and the common good of these kingdomes . but i being not so well acquainted with those affaires , forbeare to speake more of them ; let the brittish in ulster speake . after the narration of the scots interposing with the king by commissioners sent to oxford , and their resolution upon the successe of it already mentioned , he proceeds to the parliaments sending into scotland for assistance , and to aggravate the kindnesse of their comming , he reflects upon the parliament for not sending till their affaires were almost in despaire , adding the danger of not calling for helpe till things were too low . this low condition is described by him in the same page , viz. the overrunning of the north , the beating sir william waller at the devizes , surrendring bristoll and banbury castle basely ( as he calls it . ) toward the clearing of the truth in this , the author affords us some helpe , which i shall endeavour to make out as farre as truth will suffer ; his words that i shall make use of are these ; for the parliament to try if they could do the businesse themselves without troubling the scots was wisdome ; for what need you call for ayde , and trouble your neighbours , when you can do your businesse alone ? certainly , the hopes of compassing our businesse without the helpe of an army thence , was the ground of their being no sooner called , though this author alledgeth other mysticall grounds , pag. 30. but wee staid too long ; not so long as the gentleman mentions , neither were our affaires so low as he expresses . wee have good reason to remember the time of our sending thither , which was in iuly 1643. but whereas it is said , that sir william waller was ruined at the vies , and bristoll taken , before our sending . the latter is absolutely denied , for our commissioners had not newes of the losse of bristoll till they were in scotland . as for sir william wallers defeate , it is true he was scattered before the commissioners went from london , but the commissioners were named , and the instructions preparing , and the journey fully resolved on before that defeate , even when sir william waller had utterly spoyled hopto's army with continuall fighting . and as for the subjection of the north to the earle of newcastle , except hull , it is not strictly true , for wraisell-castle likewise held out , and was never taken by the kings forces . but i acknowledge that added not much to the state of our affaires ; i seek not advantages , i have too many given me . pag. 31. as also pag. 56. upon mention of the covenant for setling of the church according to the word of god , and conforme to the best reformed churches , he addes , and by name to the church of scotland . this i take to be a falsification of the covenant , which when i tooke i understood to have no more reference to one reformed church then to another , no more to scotland then new-england ; though i beleeve old england uncapable of that government is in new . all that is particularized ( with respect to church-government ) on the behalfe of scotland , is that wee joyno in preservation of it against the common enemy , supposed by all to be pupists and prelates ; the plaine intent of which to me seemes to be an endeavour to preserve scotland from any relapse to the corruptions they had escaped , and not to preclude it from any further reformation , if need should be . i can hardly forbeare urging you with that of iob , cap. 13. ver. 7. let us alledge faire and argue accordingly , especially since your title is truths manifest , and mine manifest truths . as for the relation of their passing northumberland with so little opposition , yet so much want , you are referred partly to the narrative , which is true ; as for the want spoken of , it was not so great as is pretended , neither was the countie of northumberland so much then wasted ( for it hath indured very much since ) but that it afforded many sheep , which were killed by the scots the first or second night of their entrance . if their want had been greater , the fault had been partly their own , who undertook to bring in fortie dayes provision , which if it had been done would have given libertie for getting provisions before-hand . pag. 35. 36. he gives a relation of the raising the siege at yorke , and the battell at marston moore , where the fault is laid wholly upon the yorkeshire horse , which was not so , but i referre to the narrative ; onely , i must take notice of his extolling the service of the major generall of the scotch horse , who is certainly a very able commander . but i must differ in that point , with truths manifest . for the scotch horse which he commanded on the left wing , were none of them drawne up in the front that day , nor yet the next reserve , ( as i am informed ) but as a reserve to the reserve , and being weaker horse then my lord manchesters , were designed rather to the chace ( if god should so blesse us ) then to the charge . what whole bodies they charged i know not , but have made the best inquirie i can . as for the provocation which the author had to magnifie the fore-named gentleman , by the unseemly appellation of the saviour of the three kingdomes , ( for so i beleeve he meanes , though it be printed the savour ) given to lieutenant generall cromwell , for ought i heare , it was attributed to him by a scottishman , major generall craford by name , which he could not help , and i hope , and thinke , i may say that he is angry at the expression , his modesty and piety in that respect hath been answerable to his valour and successe ; and upon a strict examination , you will find that he was in the field to the last , though his service might be a little hindred , after the first charge by the shot , which though it was not very dangerous , being but a rake in the neck , yet the pistoll being discharged so neare , that the powder hurt his face , and troubled his eyes , was a better excuse for withdrawing ( if he had done so , which yet he did not ) then many a gay man had that day . pag. 37. it is said that the scots upon the taking of new-castle carryed themselves with such moderation , that the enemies who had been in armes against them , were constrained to speake well of them . their moderation is acknowledged as to violence , but as for the testimony fetched from the mouth of the enemies , there was too much reason for it , in regard that they , especially one of the principall of them , sir nicholas cole , a person excepted from pardon , in the propositions of both kingdomes sent to the king at oxford , was detained for some time from the justice of the parliament of england ( who sent a warrant for him ) by the generall of the artillery ( then commanding in chiefe , in the absence of the noble generall , ) who kept him company frequently , let him live in all freedome and jollity , and would not part with him , till by an order from the parliament of scotland , procured by a commissioner sent thither , he was constrained so to doe : and for other enemies they sought and found protection in some regiments of the scottish army , which occasioned their speaking well : but i have no mind to aggravate , but must adde , that the excuse he makes of military order in the next page , satisfies not ; for as i take it , our military force serves for nothing , but the establishment of civill power and peace ; i know no military order could keep the party above named , from being disposed according to the will of the parliament , from the 20. of october , till the february after , and till the parliament of scotland very justly , and honourably interposed their authority . pag. 38. and 39. he makes a digression to set forth the malignancy and poverty of the north , thereby to prejudice many of their just complaints , and to make the stirring of the westmoreland-men the more inexcusable . i shall give you as true an account as the manifest of the north , both in generall , and with respect to the particular mentioned of the rising in westmoreland . first , as for the malignancy of the north , it had three disadvantages , first , its distance from the parliament and city of london . secondly , the want of good ministers , which i wish the parliament and assembly would heartily consider of , there being not above foure ministers in the foure northern counties capable of persecution by the enemy , when these warres began . the people are destroyed for want of knowledge ; if some of that strength which hath been spent at london in endlesse debares about discipline , had been bestowed in doctrine in the north , and such like barren places , heu quantum terrae potuit pelagique parari , hoc quem civiles , &c. i wish ministers were more of the temper of that holy apostle , who laboured more abundantly then they all , who strived to preach the gospel , not where christ was named , lest he should build on another mans foundation . but the warmth and accommodations of the south , and principles of self-love in men too suitable to them , are fundi nostri calamitas . this hath been the principall means , how the northern parts both of england and scotland , have proved so disadvantagious to this cause . and lastly , the nobility of these parts , who were well affected , lived out of the countrey , and the gentry , ( through the want of the powerfull preaching of the gospel ) were not so sound , which hath made the north in the condition it was : but yet give me leave to say , that for ought i ever observed or heard , the commonalty of these parts were never so ill affected , but if due care had been taken to ingage them , they had been as serviceable to this cause as any other , northumberland , as norfolke . but more particularly for cumberland and westmoreland , they have shewed themselves the least disaffected of any other , for first , though they were arrayed , by sir philip musgrave , under the pretence of the defence of their owne countries , yet they never would be perswaded to goe out of them , to the prejudice of the parliament , ( for ought i have heard ) they were willing to agree with laneashire , and when they were in armes , and might have resisted the scotch horse , ( for they had that strength , which the horse thought not fit to force , ) yet upon a letter from mr. barwis , they gave way for the scots to come in among them . and the county of cumberland raised 1800. foot , and 400. horse at their own charge , under the command of sir wilfred lawson , for the reduction of carlile . and these counties were not so poore , but that in the space of six moneths , or little more , the scottish horse and dragoones had from thence about the value of one hundred thousand pounds , in mony and provisions , more then ever the earle of newcastle had from them , which argues they were not so poore , and spent , as that they were sensible of the least thing could be demanded . and to speake more particularly of westmoreland , where the resistance to the scots was , though i know no man justifies the action , for they should have addressed to the parliament , yet these things may be considered . first , they had expended for the entertainment of the scotch army , 40000. l. or thereabouts : as much as they could well indure without intermission , so that now indeed they began to be sensible . secondly , the generall had so farre resented their charge , that he had under his hand forbidden his souldiers levies of money . thirdly , the parliament had also made an ordinance for the entertainment of the scottish army , dated february 20. laying the charge of it upon all parts of the kingdome , in their power , that the north might be eased , ( which for ought the scottish officers then knew , might be effectuall for their pay . ) fourthly , the scottish horse there quartered , had so full pay for the winter , that the necessities of the county were beyond the necessitie of the souldier . these things considered , will make the westmorland mens resistance , though ( it may be ) not justifiable yet not wholly inexcusable , seeing their ground was necessity , and their end the vindication , not onely of the authority of parliament , forbidding arbitrary impositions by armies , and ordering other wayes of provision for souldiers : but of the scottish generall who had strictly forbidden the continuance of the assessement . there is added , pag. 39. a bitter , and i think unjust reflection upon the commissioners , employed by the parliament in the north , who were sir william armyne , mr. hatcher , mr. robert goodwin , mr. barwis , mr. darley , mr. fenwick , who put too much power in the hands of wicked malignants , as recusants , prelaticks , men lately in actuall rebellion , who spoyle the countrey , oppresse honest men , &c. a high charge : but no proofe except the assertion , he sayes indeed that men without exception ( and that is strange , seeing mr. musgrave the chiefe of them is a sectary ) are sent up to the parliament , to acquaint the houses with the state of businesse . these mentioned gentlemen were troubled , that they had no more , or better choyce to make committees in the north , but certainly , they did to their apprehension chuse the best and most serviceable , and they challenge you to name the professed recusants . as for prelaticks and common prayer-booke-men , in that country where they knew no other government , or service , it 's no considerable exception : as for men that have been in actuall rebellion against the state ; it may be granted , that they employed men , who according to ordinance of parliament had been delinquents , though not active against the parliament , for want of other ; and for this ; besides their necessity , they had such examples on both hands of them , in england , but especially scotland , for the employing of neutrall , and not so well affected men , that it may be they passed over this rub with the lesse difficulty . and as for the spoyling the country and oppressing honest men , the committee are willing to joyne issue , whether they or the scottish army ( for you put me to it ) have most spoyled the countrey , and oppressed honest men . as for the men deputed from cumberland , to complaine of mr. barwis and the rest ; some of them may be honest , as i hope mr. musgrave and his partner are , but certainly they are inconsiderate in this point , they find faults , and 't is easie so to doe , it 's like , in that , and other committees there are too many , as covetousnesse and partiality ( of which who ever are guilty , for their owne sake and the kingdomes , let them amend it ) but to goe about to disgrace and displace men in authority , faithfull for the maine ( as they have shewed it ) and not to be able to name men fit to succeed , is but to give advantage to the destruction of their countrey by the division of it , and to make a gap for some body else , who it may be will lesse mind their good , to strike in . i much suspect the drift of this author , when he would goe about to possesse us , that all our affaires in the north are in ill hands , but i will not insist upon suspitions . and that gentleman with some other well-affected to the publike , viz , . have been too forward in charging the proceedings of parliament , and their committees , pleading magna charta , and the libertie of the subject : alas , our ancestours never made provision for such times as these , and if all the lawes which are to have free passage in times of peace , should now be urged , we could have no martiall law , no pressing men , fortifying other mens houses , cutting through their grounds to make workes , and so should lose our liberty , whil'st we are defending knowne lawes ( which was the kings old snare ) cannot serve for dangers unknowne , when the lawes were made : i hope the parliament will be as carefull to countenance law and liberty as may be , but we must not expect , but that in many cases it should be broken , and onely that it may be preserved . as the case stands with us , it may goe for malignancy or high indiscretion , to oppose and quarrell with the proceedings of the parliament ; god hath made them instruments of much good , and i hope will of much more . the reader is desired to pardon this digression , the discontents fomented by some against the authority of the houses , is so dangerous , that it hath inforced it . from the 41. to 44. pag. the author of the manifest gives an accompt of the advance of the scottish army southward in the spring , where he tells of their march from newcastle to rippon , and from rippon into westmoreland , and so to rippon againe , and then to nottingham , and casts in the story of the printed papers called the manifest . the excuse of the scots , and the fault of the countries is declared to be in the slack providing of draughts , and provisions . but let us examine the true state of the businesse , concerning their marching or not marching southward , that is , over the trent , till the later end of iune . the parliament upon the grounds mentioned in the narrative , sent for their speedy advance southward in march , and sent them 30000. l. in money , their desired proportion of armes and ammunition to fit them for service . the manifest sayes , that the delay of the march from newcastle to the first of may , was from the unreadinesse of draughts . the losses and wants of the parts about newcastle sustained in the siege , and by assessements all the winter , had made them , though not so able , yet very willing to forward the advance of the scots , knowing their ease by it ; and it will be proved , that in the midst of the complaints for draughts , divers of their officers , tooke money of those that brought them in , and released them : but that is a small matter : they came to rippon , or at least part of them about the beginning of may , how comes the stop there ? it 's alleadged to be want of draughts and provisions . first , for draughts , certainly the county of yorke could not so little understand their own condition ( of which their suffering could not but make them sensible ) if they had not had an apprehension of the publique service , as not to afford them all possible requisites to their march southwards : for as for the county , it did undergoe ten times the charge by their stay there ; and as for my lord fairefax , and the committee , they were so apprehensive of the inconveniences of their not marching , that they saw besides the disappointment of the parliament , their owne forces in danger of ruine by the quarter and assessements of the scottish army . concerning draughts , i adde this further . the not relieving draughts by the way , and not restoring them when they served their proportion , and exacting money for freeing them , makes the people more backward then they should , or otherwise would bee . for it 's certaine , that the heresordshire men were some of them at northallerton in yorkeshire seeking their draughts this winter , and the yorkeshire , cumberland , and westmoreland men , were forced to give money for releasing their draughts , and some to sell their oxen at under rates , and leave their waynes behind them . and truly i am not satisfied , how the scottish army should come by draughts so easily to march back into westmoreland , as to be ready on a sudden , without further trouble to the committee to march thither , but could get no accommodation for marching southward . if they used the same rigour for draughts for service ( which is more reasonable ) as they doe for money for subsistance , they would never want them long : will you give me leave to say , that was not the onely reason , but that time was not the season of their marching . for when our commissioners came to a randezvous at bramham-moore , lieutenant generall lesley upon their appearance , came gallopping up with this expression , i have it , i have it , and tells them he had received intelligence from sir vvilliam brereton , that the king was sending a flying army through lancashire into scotland , but the letters were not produced to our commissioners , who therefore moved for surer intelligence , before they marched toward westmoreland , and went away with that expectation : but the next newes they heard was , the scottish army marched early next morning , and were gone twenty foure miles before they heard of them : and thus went they backe into vvestmoreland , where they were when the king tooke leicester . and since the manifest addes , they had come sooner from westmoreland , but that they also were slow , and unwilling in providing draughts and provisions : give me leave to say this for truth ; that when they were to march back from westmoreland , the yorkeshire draughts which brought them thither were not gone back , and thereupon mr. barwis and the committees there , ( to spare the paines and hazard of their owne draughts ) would have agreed with the yorkeshire men for a summe of money , to let their draughts be employed back againe , which was refused by the scots under pretence of trouble to the yorkeshire men . so that westmorland draughts must needs goe , and warrants were granted for 75 by the committee of cumberland & westmorland , which came in so well that the generall of the artillery gave a very good testimony to the readinesse of the committee and county , notwithstanding all their pretended disaffection : and so much for the businesse of draughts ; unlesse i should adde the story of that officer who at the siege of newcastle sent for draughts to barwick , and then sold the oxen. now for provisions , let me adde something . first , it was expected that the scottish army upon the receipt of 30000. li. to inable them to advance , should have made some provision of victualls to be carried along against a time of necessitie , for in their ordinary marches not neare an enemy the country would afford it . secondly , the scottish generall sent to the committees of yorke onely to cause provisions to be brought to the places where the army should lodge from night to night , and not the provision of a magazine , which they would have done rather then have occasioned their stay in yorkshire , to the prejudice of the publique and themselves . thirdly , when they came and demanded provisions , the committee used all possible diligence to procure them , onely they desired a full resolution for their march southward , before they delivered them . and when the army was marching into westmorland , the provisions were going toward brambam-moore , and those parts . fourthly , why could not they as well march southward toward nottinghamshire , a very plentifull countrey , without such a stocke of provisions , as over stainemoore , a most barren place , and goe into westmorland , a country which the manifest sayes was so spent , that they were sensible of the least demands ? and for provisions when they came from westmorland , in a very short space , they had foure or five dayes provision , according to their demand of 18000 weight per diem , made ready for them , by the speciall diligence of mr barwis , to whom i cannot but give the testimony of a very honest and faithfull man to the publique , and one who hath deserved better at some mens hands then he hath found . and so about the beginning of iune they began their journey southward againe , and passed speedily through yorkshire , without any of those difficulties which hindred ( as is said ) their march before . and in the meane time lieutenant generall cromwell being a man not acceptable to the scots , and excepted against as one whom their army would not joyne in service with , was called back , and collonel vermuden sent with a party of horse to strengthen their army , but he not finding them , being gone into westmorland , he marched back , not without hazard , and came and resigned his regiment before naseby fight . i have no more to adde in reference to this part of the manifest , but to remark his observation on the yorkshire horse , which he saith were not a third part of the thousand armed . give me leave to answer ; the yorkshire-men had been better horsed and armed both , had it not been for the very great burthen upon that county , by reason of the scottish army , which was one reason of the distraction of those forces . as for what he saith about publishing the papers delivered in to the houses of parliament , by the scottish commissioners , under the title of the scots manifest , by i know not whom . if the commissioners hand was in the printing , sure they would not have disclaimed it , as this author saith they did , if their hand was not in it , it was printed underhand , contrary to the passage of play underboard and clandestine dealing , pag. 51. as also the letter from nottingham , signed by the chiefe officers of the army , which was sent to the parliament and not to the people , and i thinke ought not to have been published without the consent of them to whom they were written : i suppose them that wrote it knew as little of the printing it as they that received it ; but if printing letters be so convenient , you may soone have enough of that worke . in the 46. & 47. pag. he addes a word or two about moneys received by the scottish army , provisions made for , and the behaviour of the army . to which first he gives an assurance in the name of the scots ( which i know not what authorlty he hath to use ) that they desire an universall tryall of all things , it may be so , but his warrant is not sufficient . to these he gives briefe answers ( scil. ) short of money , scant of provisions , of their carriage indifferent . give me leave to adde something more . first for money , it cannot be denied , but that the proportion of money allotted them by the treaty was not paid monethly , neither doth the treaty undertake it shall exactly , for ( knowing the want , and distractions of the kingdome ) there is an addition made of publique faith , for the part unpaid ; but i adde these things . first , that the parliament hath not been able to give them their expected pay , for all the counties of this kingdome , except london , and the association for the maintenance of the english army , have either wholly or in some part been under the enemy , or been constrained to maintaine a force for their defence ; so that they could not afford much ( especially through the wast , and depopulation following the warre , the estates of delinquents which was principally intended for the way of their maintenance being made little of ) and whether the parliament should so dispose the part left free , as not to have some maintenance for an english army , for the service of england , let reasonable men judge . secondly , though they have not had so much as might be expected in an orderly way , yet some way or other , by their own unwarranted assessements and otherwise they have had no small sums : the particulars must rest till the accompt : and they were so vigilant ( let me not say violent ) in making provision for themselves , that it gave occasion to many to remit their care and indevour in providing for them . and lastly , although the foote souldier doth not abound , for he is kept to his foure pence a day in provision , yet the officers and horsemen have not felt any want this long time , as appeares by their very liberall expences in clothes and drinkings , which every market-towne neare their quarters can witness . if the parliament could have paid them duly , and did not , they have been very ill husbands , for certainly it were farre better for this kingdome they received money to disspend here , and pay their quarters , then to referre to the confused reckoning for quarters , and sending money into scotland . i could wish that this kingdome were not so forward in their promises and undertakings , for no man lookes at our willingnesse in promising , but reflects upon our weaknesse in performing . as for their pay comparative to other armies , wee can affirme that in other armies there is as much want among their foote , who sometimes have neither money nor provisions , and not so much excesse among the horse : wee know forces in england , that have had as little pay as this author saith this army had , a moneth in seven , and yet never assessed the country without leave from the parliament , nor used violence towards the people , but were content with free quarter , who have yet done very good service too . as for provisions , the instance of hereford shall be satisfied in its place : as for other places i am sure there are many have been very glad to give what they could , or had , and be glad if they might so escape ; and as for that foule imputation of some mens detaining provisions , that so the army might be dis-inabled for service ; certainly those men as they are no friends to the scots army , so are they enemies to the parliament and good of the kingdome ; and this author is bound to discover them by his covenant ; we have had more need of their service , especially before naseby , then to hinder them from it : as for the disorders of the army , the author is in some measure ingenuous , and confesses the necessitie of some miscarriages which will be in an army , especially unpaid , but i may say safely i know armies better ordered ; want of pay is some excuse for free quarter or pillage , but for rapes , murthers , violence , swearing , drunkennesse , i know none , neither doe i beleeve them to be punished , according to ecclesiasticall and military law , as is pretended . and take it not ill , that i say , if you love the presbytery , reforme the army , for it is very scandalous . pag. 51. he proceeds to the constitution of the committee of both kingdomes ; and pag. 56. & 57. to the corruptions of some of the english of that committee , let us consider of both . it 's true , the parliament out of their earnest desire of a most arct union with their brethren , desired a conjunction not onely of forces , but of councels , which so long as both kingdomes doe earnestly and entirely promote the common interest of both in the same way , hath its advantages ; but giveme leave to say , that as the matter is ordered , the conjunction is not equall in every point , for scotland hath besides their committee joyned with ours for the regulating their army in our service , commanders interested in the knowledge of our especiall affaires , and the ordering of our english forces , we have not so in scotland , but are meere strangers to the businesse , and armies of that kingdome , notwithstanding the great dependance that our affaires have upon theirs while wee have a common enemy . and further , they have committees joyned with ours for the raising and receiving money , as at goldsmiths hall , and at newcastle , where at first a lock was set upon the customehouse-dore by the appointment of the scottish cōmittee , with an intent solely to administer the money-businesse there , afterward they were content with a mutuall key , of so ill credit are our english officers ( i know not the reason ) but wee have no joyned muster-master nor pay-master of that army to take accompt how the money is expended , but these are things i have little to doe with , yet they are manifest truths . the constitution of the committee , i know none disallowes when the parliament hath consented to it : but let us looke to the corruption where it is found , that contrary to the order of that committee where the scots have a negative voyce , and nothing is done , or at least ought to be done , without their knowledge and consent , concerning peace , or warre , publiquely or privately , directly , or indirectly , &c. two things have been foully carryed on the english part. first , the naming and assembling a sub-committee without knowledge of the scots , this was in my lord savills case , who came with overtures of getting oxford delivered to the parliament , and gorings horse brought over to us , where it seemes the lord say , mr. soliciter , and mr. crew were appointed to speake with him , which they had like to have paid deare for , in regard that a minister of london , unadvisedly being set on by a scottish minister , and commissioner , went to the exchange , and misreported the busines , that some men of speciall note in our parliament , were treating with the enemy about delivering our townes to them , to the amusement of the city , and the danger of the gentlemen . let the reader consider the time , and circumstances of this accusation , and judge whether it were not a designe fitted for the ruine of the new-model'd army , and those who had been active in it . but they that knew the order and , practise of that committee , affirme this was not unusuall , nor had been before excepted against , to appoint a sub-committee all english without a scottish commissioner . and the house of commons after solemne hearing the whole businesse , adjudged that the sub-committee had done their duty , and order'd mr. cranford to acknowledge his fault , and pay 500. l. to each of them , though i beleeve they regard no pecuniary benefit . as for the latter concerning pat: napar , i am informed the case was this , the lord lauderdaile told the committee , there was a scottish man had businesse to impart to them concerning oxford , a sub-committee was appointed ( the committee sitting ) whereof the said lord was one to examine the man , and receive his information , which was concerning the forces and provisions in oxford : but his information being only coincident with intelligence formerly received , it was the lesse regarded : but as for that secret of the easie place , it is easier to say then to prove it , for the gentlemen of that sub-committee knew of no such advantage , and therefore could not disclose it , and therefore let patricke lay his hand upon his heart , &c. as is advised , pag. 57. but why will you give me so just , nay so necessary occasion by the mention of these deviations ( as you make them ) of the english members of the committee of both kingdomes , from the rule , to put you , and others in minde of the carriage of things betwixt the scots committee , joyned with the english commissioners in the north , for ordering the scots army , where the english have been so farre from having a negative in any thing , that in many things they have had no vote at all ? how often have those forces been disposed of , diminished , increased , removed from place to place , from england to scotland , and back againe , without the knowledge and consent of our commissioners ? how are some garrisons put into english townes and castles , without their consent required , others without their consent obtained ? for there is no scottish garrison in any english towne , or castle , which hath the consent of the parliament , except barwicke , where a governour was placed with the approbation of the english commissioners , to whom equally with the scots , the disposall of the army is by treaty committed , and this hath been done , or at least not altered , by the scots committee of themselves without sending to the parliament , or convention of estates in scotland , as we are constrained to the parliament of england , in case of the dissent of the scots , so that there we have no negative , or to no purpose , which is here so strictly expected ; i am sorry you have put me to this discourse . pag. 54. 55. as also 59. 60. you will pardon my going backwards and forwards , i must follow my leader ; the manifest gives an accompt of the divers correspondencies of the scots commissioners , sometimes with one sort of men , sometimes with another : i suppose the gentleman may be bolder with them then i : they are men in publick employment , and should not be bandied by a private pen , i shall say nothing to their disadvantage , they notwithstanding any alteration of their company have kept constant to their principles , and counsels , which have been to set up the presbyteriall government in england ( which is their declared businesse ) and that in full power and vertue , without connivence at sects , schismes ; this could not be done till the common enemy was weakned , and therefore both the scots and independents might well joyne , for they both had hopes : but when the scots saw the sectaries not altered in opinions , but expecting the liberty of their owne practise , the grow strange to each other , as being bound severall wayes , and to supply their place another party strikes in , partly out of concurrence with the scots in church-government , and partly out of envie and opposition to the independents , who as they thought had supplanted them : but since those men who were most averse to the coming in of the scots , greatest strangers afterwards , most forward to have them gone , are so handsomely come about to an intimate conjunction with the scots , quid non speremus ? the world may turne once againe , and the old friendship may be renewed , let us not be too much prejudiced . and the author reduces this mistake to the church-government ; as i doe ; onely he speaks of a stipulation given from the english commissioners to the scots when in scotland , to goe heartily along with them in setling church-government , i know no private stipulation , as for the covenant , which is the mutuall publique stipulation , i hope we shall all stand to , to endeavour reformation according to the word of god ; but if my observation faile me not , the distances ( though i desire not to meddle with them ) have been also kept with men like affected with them , for the maine of church-government , and was occasioned also by the businesse of the new modell , of which more by and by . pag. 57. 58. there is mention made of the unreasonablenesse of the siege at oxford , while the enemy was ranging abroad , and calling back the party that followed the king , both being against the advice of the scots , and how fit it was , rather for sir tho : fairfax his army to follow the king at that time , then the scots , and herein referre to the condition of each army . and since we are called upon to try these things , and not suffer them to be carryed away in hugger mugger ( as the word is ) let it be tryed . first , for the siege at oxford , of which i thinke this a true accompt , it is well knowne how earnest endeavours there were almost on all parts , to hinder the new moulding of the armies , how when seven thousand horse and foote were got together about redding , and windsor , they were dispatched into the west , and when they had marched as faire as blairford , which is about seventy miles from windsor , they were by order from the committee of both kingdomes divided , and sir thomas fairfax with 3500. commanded back towards oxford , where the king had joyned his horse , and almost compleated his army for the spring , so that sir thomas fairfax with his party could not march through wiltshire , but was constrained to goe through hamshire for safety ; before his returne the king marched from oxford , lieutenant generall cromwell , and major generall browne followed him as neare as they well might , with another part of the army , so that , that army was already in three parts , farre distant from each other ; the desires of the parliament were sent downe to the north , for the speedy advance of the scots army , which was fitter for the field then sir thomas fairfaxes , for they had twelve or fourteen thousand men in a body , in yorkeshire , and besides the yorkeshire horse , a party of the new modell ( which makes another division of the army ) was sent under collonel vermuden to joyne with them , so that they wanted neither men , money ; ( for 30000. l. was sent them in order to their advance ) armes , nor ammunition , which also they had received in good proportion : as for draughts and provisions we have said enough before : but sir thomas fairfaxes army , when joyned with cromwell , rosseter , and when vermuden not finding the scots army , which was gone into westmorland , was returned , and when he had the accession of some association , and northampton horse , was but eleven hundred , or thereabouts , and therefore was it thought but reasonable that his army should have a little time to gather together ; and that the pretence of sitting still might not be made against it , it was appointed rather to lie upon the enemies quarters about oxford , then our owne , that the reduction , and recruiting of it might be perfected . as for the calling back the party following the king , they were too weak to follow him , because too weake to fight him , for they were but equall ( when joyned with the other part of the army ) at naseby fight . and besides if they had advanced , it had been under the command of lieutenant generall cromwell , with whom the scots had no mind to joyne , and so the service might have been prejudiced . and so have you the story of the siege of oxford , in which you think there is so much disadvantage to the publick on our part . pag. 62. we have a story of the treaty at uxbridge , wherein this author ( as if he meant division ) is not content to extoll the faithfulnesse , resolution , prudence , knowledge of the scottish commissioners , which never was questioned : but he reflects unworthily upon the english commissioners in these words . the kings commissioners feeling the pulse of the parliament commissioners , did promise unto themselves , upon what ground they know best , or at least should know , that they could carry all things to their minds , if it were not for the rude and stiffenecked scots , ( it 's his owne language ) who were so firme to their principles , and resolved rather to follow on the worke with honour and conscience , then to yield to a base agreement to the prejudice of church and state . consider here , first the charge , that had it not been for the scots , distinct from the english commissioners , the court commissioners had compassed their ends , which were certainly very disadvantagious , if not destructive to the parliament and kingdome , which without straining amounts to thus much ; that the parliament sent commissioners to the treaty , that were either so unwise , or so unfaithfull , as that , had it not been for the scottish assistants , the cause of the parliament and kingdome , had been through them prejudiced , if not betrayed . and to this in opposition to the english , he makes an addition of the firmenesse , honour , conscience and resolution of the scottish commissioners . i wonder at this in stead of answering it . let us consider who were employed , men we alwayes had an honourable opinion of , and shall have , notwithstanding any such unjust and unworthy suggestions , which have no proofe nor can have , to whom we must give this testimony , that in that , as in other our affaires , they carryed themselves with all diligence and faithfulnesse , so that the treatie ended without our prejudice , and there an end of it . pag. 63. the next thing in order is the new modell , wherein the parliament is a little beholding to him , for he justifies that action of the parliament , by the necessity of it , in regard of the faults of some who were imployed in the armies , which the parliament had attempted to amend in a faire way , but to small purpose . to which let me adde another reason , that by the reduction of the armies , the officers were abated , especially the most costly ones , as generall officers , and the charge lessened , that the parliament might be the better able to pay other officers in their service . we are told of the interposition of the scottish commissioners in that affaire , advising the parliament by their paper put in to that purpose , to chuse ( as this author sayes ) men of ability and experience , and faithfull to the cause , which latter he expounds to be men , not inclined to sects , and schismes ; i remember that paper of the scottish commissioners , was then wondred at , but now it is not ; if their counsell were followed , as this author confesses in some degree it was , there is the lesse reason to complaine , but who ever complaines , i thank god for the new modell . and before wee passe from the new modell , two exceptions must be cleared , which this author makes concerning it . first , concerning the covenant , pag. 64. where he wonders and doubts , he wonders it should admit any debate in the parliament , whether the armies should be put to the oath ; and then why the common souldiers should not be put to it : and then doubts that the order for the taking of it by the commanders is not so well observed . for the debates and orders of the parliament , i doe not use to debate them over againe , especially when satisfied in these two things , that a common souldier that hath not taken the covenant , may doe very good service to the kingdome , and that there is not the same reason why it should be pressed upon them as upon the enemies coming in , because we doubt them more then we doe these , and therefore offer them a discovery and engagement . but for the covenant i have taken it , and approve the taking of it , though i have neither power nor will to compell it . as for the doubt that the officers take it not , i cannot satisfie it , but i am sure they doe the things that it obliges to , better then many that have taken it , and to mee a covenant not taken is much better then a covenant not kept . to which i adde , novimus & quite , wee can tell you when and where , the scottish army hath in articles of treaty and surrender agreed to an article in these words ; that the nationall covenant shall not be inforced , either upon officer , souldier , gentleman , or clergy-man , as in the capitulation for tinmouth-castle , and to the like purpose at carlisle , though our armies have alwayes ( for ought i ever heard ) refused to accept of any such article , as at bristoll ; but require a subjection to all ordinances of parliament . so that notwithstanding this exception , it seemes our commanders either love the covenant better then they , or castles not so well . as for the reason of some mens backwardnesse to the covenant , which is alledged to be their aversenesse to the presbyterian government , i see no reason why that should be a reason , because there is no mention of the presbyteriall government in the covenant , nor ( for ought i know ) any intention of it any further , then it is found agreeable to the word of god , which wee all professe a submission to . and it is well knowne that learned and godly men , though not satisfied in the presbyteriall government , have taken the covenant , as knowing that no particular government , but the word of god , is set up as the rule of reformation . it may be your interpretation of the covenant to reach so farre , and your addition of the church of scotland , may discourage men from taking it , lest not interpreting it as you , they should give you the scandall of covenant-breaking . here comes in the ●●rned dispute of active and passive obedience , where it is affirmed that passive obedience is a great absurditie ; that is onely an absurditie in language , which is an absurditie in use , for use makes propriety ; but this expression being very common ( and that among scholars ) is not absurd . and therefore this author gives so much respect to divines , as not to except against their use of this expression , with respect to christ . obedience is taken either positively , for performance of the command ; or privatively , for not resistance or submission , as phil. 2. 8. he became obedient unto death ; which is ordinarily called passive obedience . he saith all vertue consists in action , moralists say so , but yet they allow silence and patience to be vertues , which cannot be said to be actions , but rather forbearances of action ; though some intimate act of the minde belongs to them , as also to this submission ; it is accounted a great vertue or rather grace in christ , that being reviled , he reviled not againe , yet there was no action . but your principle makes well for the new modell , if all vertue consists in action , sir thomas fairfax his army being active , must be concluded , vertuous , notwithstanding independency . before i come to the second exception about the new modell , scil. the leaving out the scottish officers , notice must be taken of a loose discourse , pag. 67 , 68 , 69. occasioned by a speech uttered publiquely , by one to this purpose , that the maine quarrell the parliament stood for at first , and thereafter , did take up armes for , was not religion , nor the reformation of the church , but the freedome and libertie of the subject . which saying he pleads to be injurious , but handles it injuriously ; for he makes the sense of that speech to be this ; the parliament did not from the beginning intend a true reformation of religion , wch it affords not , the parliament may intend reformation , and yet not fight for it . and without prejudice to the parliament , let me declare my opinion . the parliament ( i doubt not ) did looke at religion as the foundation and perfection of the kingdomes happinesse , and had it chiefly in their eye . some indeed have thought them more intent to liberty , upō a mistake they could not be earnest for religion , unlesse they were for liberty , ( which is the fence and preservative of the practise of it ; ) but yet if i were asked the ground of the parliaments taking up armes de facto , i should not answer the reformation of religion , ( for i make some question whether religion , especially the reformation of it , be so proper a quarrell for the sword ) but that seeing the king instead of suffering justice to be executed upon offenders , prepared violence against the parliament , and in it against our liberty , with all the fruits of it , ( of which the enjoyment of religion was the choicest ) they raised an army to defend us and themselves , that they might sit with freedome and liberty to performe their trust , for the preservation and reformation of the kingdome , which they have attended as much as the difficulties and distractions of the times would permit . and to that end called an assembly of divines , that they might from them receive some light to direct them in the execution of their power in matters of religion . he spends some further time in discussing that position , whether liberty were the maine quarrell . i answer , they looked at libertie , primò , but not primariō , religion as the furthest end , but liberty as the next meanes : the infringement of libertie gives advantage to corruption in religion , as our adversaries well know , when they with equall pace brought on slavery and superstition . here the author takes a needlesse ground to tell the people that which is not true , that they are in a worse case in respect of liberty then formerly , by paralleling committees with the star-chamber , and taxes with ship-money . this sounds more like sedition then truth ; for howsoever committees may be guilty of partialities and miscarriages , yet their maine intent is our preservation , not our burthen , as the other courts were . and we have now a better appeale from a committee to the parliament , then we had from the star-chamber to the king . injury may be done now as well as then , but not so professedly , or with so little remedy . and as for taxes heavier then shipmoney , i wonder either at your face or at your judgement . in the beginning of the 70 pag. you make a plaister of the necessitie of taxes , but it is not so wide as the wound : the wiser of the people see and discover your fallacious dealing , and see a great deale of difference betwixt the kings destroying their right in ship ▪ money , and the parliaments preserving their right notwithstanding taxes , which i hope will not last long . i passe to the second exception against the new modell , pag. 72. 74. which is led up by a story of the kings courting the scottish officers , and his successe , which i meddle not with . the exception is , that at the making of the new modell , were cashiered of the scots in one day above two hundred brave fellowes . i answer , the parliament were entring upon a way of good husbandry in reducing their armies , and it may be , they thought these brave fellowes would be too chargeable . but in earnest , you say two hundred of the scots were cashiered , you should have used a milder terme , and said reduced . cashiering implyes a fault , reduction none . as two hundred scots , so soure hundred english were at that time put out of employment , and brave fellowes too for ought i know . it 's strange to mee that the parliament of england should not ( without exception ) forme an army as seemes best to them for their own defence and the kingdomes ; especially when the scots had so great an army in england , and another in ireland , where employment was to be had . but the parliament to shew they had no nationall respect , named foure colonels of the new modell , and some captaines , besides a lievtenant colonel , who is adjutant generall of their foot , a place of great trust ; who all except the last refused to serve . the grounds of their laying downe are said to be three : first , because the rest of their countrymen were not employed ; there was no use of them , if we had men of our own nation , they were , in reason , to be preferred , ●eteris paribus ; and it is not without its exception , that they will not serve unlesse so many together . secondly , they were nominated to inferiour employments , that is a question , they were but major generalls to major generalls , and commanders of parties , but i stand not upon that ; let the earle of manchester , & sir william waller be generalls , yet those gentlemen knew , that in the places they came from beyond sea , if they returned they must accept of such employments as these , or lower , and i hope we shall not have a perpetuall warre in england . sudden risings from a lieutenant colonell to a lieutenant generall must have fudden falls . thirdly , men unacquainted with warre and averse to the covenant , should have been employed with them , from whom they could not expect true sellowship or obedience to orders . the men have confuted your exception for military vertue , by their diligence and valour ; and though there be in the army men that have taken the covenant , and make conscience of it , yet if there be any that have not , there is no discord , but all unanimously prosecute the ends in the covenant , so farre as they are matter of warre . as for your question , whether the parliament in leaving out some , or the officers not left out , in laying downe their commissions were more in the wrong ? it 's answered , neither of them in the wrong . me thinkes he that considers how faithfull and how succesfull the army under sir thomas fairfax hath been , and reckons up naseby , leicester , langport , bridgewater , sherborne , bristoll , basing , winchester , barkley , and other honour which god hath put upon that army , should be well content with the new modell . but an objection followes ; but god hath blessed the honesty and piety of some men extraordinarily in the new army , so that great things are done by it . this is a sad objection : but you answer'd it by acknowledging the good done , but no thanks to the profession of holinesse of this , or that man ; they will joyne with you , and say in the apostles language , acts 3. 12. neither their own power or holinesse , much lesse the profession of holinesse hath done any thing , but the name of christ , in which they have troden downe their enemies . as for the passage concerning the generall , that he is little spoken of for doing much ; he sees the hooke and neglects the baite ; god and all good men love and honour him . he proceeds in this 76. page , to shew how fit it is to employ fit men , lest god be tempted ; it 's granted , and was practised ; the gentlemen imployed were fit men , they were many of them godly men : slight not that , godlinesse is profitable for all things . they were , and have approved themselves diligent men . another speciall requisite in a souldier ; they were , as hath often appeared , stout and valiant men : but what shall we doe for experience ? i answer : some men gaine more experience in two yeares , then others in ten , because they are more advertent , and have better parts . and for our english warres , our english experience is as good as any , and we have had more experimentall service in these three , or foure yeares warre in england , then falls out in other parts in a farre longer time . but we desired men of forraigne experience , and they refused , therefore we must take english . let me here adde an advertisement to my countrey-man ( for i suppose i am taken to be an english-man ; ) it hath been , as the usuall disposition ▪ so no small fault of this nation ( contrary to the good example of their neighbours ) to depresse one another , admire and adore strangers for unknowne vertues , which hath kept this kingdome lower in its reputation then it deserved : i shall not doubt to deliver it for a position , that you have at this time ( especially for our english affaires ) souldiers of your own nation , so able and active in service , that if you goe further , for ought i know , you may fare worse ; and if god give us but grace to imbrace union instead of faction , wee may doe him a great deale of service , and ourselves and neighbours right . a word more , pag. 77. the author accounts it a misery , why in the framing an army , there should be more regard had of the piety and honesty of the officers , then the souldiers . this mystery is very clear in scripture , and reason . first , god lookes more at commanders then inferiours , ier. 5. 4. 5. loe , these are poore tnd foolish , i will get me to the great men , if they breake the bands , a lyon out of the forest comes in . secondly , in reason ; good officers may reclaime and restraine souldiers by authority , and example , and so cannot good souldiers ill officers . but i have done ; a businesse of moment followes concerning carlisle . pag. 77. the author of the manifest enters upon the businesse of the siege and reduction of carlile ; and to make this businesse cleare , since i omitted the relation of it in the narrative , i must adde it here . carlisle was in the possession of the enemy , when the scots entred . after yorke was taken ( it being thought a considerable place , to hold footing in the north ) sir thomas glenham was sent thither to command the towne . in september , about the beginning of it , the commonalty of cumberland and westmorland , laying downe their armes , upon the desire of mr. barwis , sir wilfrid lawson , and others , the scots horse being six regiments , and one of dragoones , commanded by lieutenant generall lesley , went into those parts , yet went not direct to carlisle , but stayed at penrith , in which time carlisle was further victualled ; after that they draw neare , and with the assistance of sir wilfrid lawson ( who had raised some strength of horse and foot ) blocked up the towne . after this in the latter end of october , some regiments of the scots horse were removed , and onely two and the dragoones remaining , which with the forces of the county , were thought sufficient for the service , and as many as the country could well beare ; thus was carlisle straitned , in which service the english kept five and sometimes six posts , and the scots but two all that winter . toward the beginning of aprill , those two counties of cumberland and westmorland , having lyen under heavie burthens , amounting to 80000. l. or thereabouts , which the scots horse had received ( besides the charge of maintaining their owne forces ) began to grow impatient of their burthen , and after they saw that ( notwithstanding the ordinances of parliament ( forbidding all arbitrary assessements , and appointing a way of provision for the scots army ) and the order of the generall , to forbid all taxes from the first of march ) their oppressions were still continued , the westmorland men resisted the collection of them , thereupon the committee of both kingdomes at newcastle , sent a letter to the committees of those counties , dated aprill 21. 1645. subscribed leven callander , william armine , declaring that , if those two counties would undertake to raise , and maintaine sufficient forces , to keepe in the garrison of carlisle , the scots horse should be removed ; hereupon the committees of cumberland , and westmorland consulted , and agreed to undertake the service , and gave notice thereof to the committee at newcastle , and the scots generall in a lotter , dated aprill the 25. 1645. and provided three thousand foote and six hundred horse , which with the advantage of the workes , they had made , were sufficient to the worke : but in stead of removing the scots horse , a regiment of foote were sent to carlisle , with three peeces of ordnance , when the scots marched southward from newcastle , and sir iohn browne sent word to the westmorland men , coming up according to agreement , to the service against carlisle , that he would fight with them if they came on . after this , the whole army marches into westmorland , and sends more commanded men to carlisle , and impose seven thousand pound a moneth upon these two counties , for the maintenance of their force before carlisle ; ( besides the maintenance of their owne ) and that , after declaration made under the hands of the earle of leven , calander and armyne , dated aprill 25. 1645. that no taxe should be laid upon them , but by authority of parliament . about this time the lord kirkbright , who commanded the scots force therefor that present , sent orders to lieutenant collonel beecher , sir wilfrid lawsons lieutenant collonel , to quit a fort which he had made at bockerby mount , and to resigne it to three hundred commanded foot of the scots army ; the lieutenant collonel refused unlesse his collonel gave consent ; thereupon the noble lord replied , he desired no better occasion to cut them all in pieces , and said he would command my lord fairfax , if there , and sent his foot and some horse to beleager the sconce , instead of the towne , which was not well . after this ( about the middle of iune ) when the time of carlisles surrender drew neare , the english commissioners , having received instructions from the parliament , concerning the place , and the government of it when it should be reduced , went thither , but no scottish commissioners to joyne with them , the english and scots were both desirous to be possessed of the towne , the english thought it but reasonable , to be trusted with carlisle on the scots borders , as well as the scots with barwick on the english , especially , they having garrisond newcastle , and foure other places besides : the english commissioners ( no scotch committee being there to joyne with them ) sent to sir tho : glenham , that if he would surrender the towne , they would propound him conditions , and the security of the parliament for performance . the lord kirkabright meets the drum , examines his businesse , and gives way to his going in ; sir thomas glenham desires the security of a generall , for the performance of articles , and thereupon , a messenger of his owne , one captaine philipson is sent to my lord fairfax and the earle of leven to know their pleasure , having a passe from the english commissioners , and the lord kirkabright , and being accompanied with an english captaine from the commissioners , and a scotch officer from the lord kirkabright ; he goes to my lord fairfax , but finding my lord of leven to be gone out of yorkeshire , and the time for his returne well-nigh expired , he durst not adventure to goe into nottinghamshire , to the earle of leven , his passe being limited onely to yorkeshire , and therefore he returned to carlisle , and my lord fairfax writes to the earle of leven about that businesse . david lesley in the meane time , was sent with all speed towards carlisle , he comes thither before the messenger returnes and forbids his going in , whereupon sir thomas glenham seeing his messenger stopped by the scots commander , notwithstanding the passe of the english commissioners , and the lord kirkabright , he supposes they had most power , and falls to treaty with him , which lieutenant generall lesley never acquainted our commissioners with , but notwithstanding their minding him of the treaty , and covenant , their protestation against his proceedings without them ; he concludes the treaty , set guards of horse upon the english , enters the towne , and puts a garrison in it , where it yet remaineth . this is a true and briefe account of the siege and taking of carlisle . some annotations must be made upon the narrative in truths manifest . first , he chargeth the english souldiers , that lay there , of being false to the service , in shooting powder , suffering provisions to goe in , entring into combination with the enemy , to fall upon the scots , and promising not to help them . these accusations are as false , as foule ; it is strange these things were never questioned , nor complained of , till now the towne is taken . we can assure that a scottish officer being desired to relieve collonel cholmleys men , when the enemy sallyed out , he refused to stirre being at the next post , and neare at hand , and suffered the men to be lost , shew us such a carriage of the english . if want of orders be pretended as it was by him , either the orders were defective or the man . the english desire also to put it to the issue , who let most provision goe in , captaine philipson indeed sallyed out with a party of horse , on the scottish post , and fetched fourty head of cattell , or thereabout , and two pieces of ordnance out of their sconce ; parallel that act also ; as for the point of the treacherie , they disclaim it and defie it ; why should you compell me to say that on the scottish side , sir iames lesley and his lady with her sister , who were both papists , had ingresse , and regresse into carlisle , by their meanes , that sir timothy fetherston was suffered to come to penrith , and there dranke the parliaments confusion , and yet was afterwards suffered to come forth againe , at which time he broke his paroll , and went either to ireland , or the king ; that denton and carleton , notorious malignants , were suffered to goe up and downe , and disaffect the people , and raile upon the parliament ; and when sent for by the english commissioners , were protected against their power and justice ? the foulnesse of your imputations hath forced from me these things , which no slight occasion should , but by this you may judge who favoured malignants most . it is further charged , that those double minded leaders enter into a private treaty with the enemy , and offer him great conditions . this was a mistake or worse , there was no leaders medled , but the english commissioners who proceeded no further , then the narrative relates , and never offered any conditions at all ; as for the scots offering reasonable conditions , lesse advantagious to the enemy then the english . you have heard the english offered no conditions ; let us see what the scots offered , they were such as they would never impart , neither to our commissioners nor the parliament : but a copy was obtained which they deny not , wherein was granted almost what was asked , as liberty to goe to any garrison they should name , to have a convoy ▪ as they had to worcester , above a hundred miles distant ; the immunities of the church and church-men , freedome to take the covenant or not , libertie to goe with what they would , ( except towne and ordnance ) whither they would , and to have free quarter ; in a word , never so high articles given to any town , never any town had lesse reason to expect it , had things been fairely carried : for they were eating dogs and horses , and could not subsist three dayes . what followes is almost wholly false , that the enemy tooke the scots conditions , because he could not trust the english officers . the english officers medled not in the businesse , because a committee was present there of english ; scil. sir vvilliam armine , mr. darley , mr. barwis , whom the generall would not , much lesse should the lieutenant generall have dealt so with , as not to acquaint them with the treaty . and as for the commission given to lieutenant generall lesley , to take in the towne , upon what conditions he thought fit , he shewed no such in writing ; if he had , it had been unjust , we having commissioners upon the place : and he concludes this strange story of carlisle , with the pretended reasons , why the scots put in a garrison into carlisle , ( scil. ) because they had found base , and wicked dealings , by some of the chiefe men in the northerne counties , and to keep it out of the hands of malignants ; and especially , sir vvilfrid lawson , who under the name of the chiefe commander , is no better then railed on ; consider the condtion of this gentleman , it 's true , he cannot be justifyed throughout ; he lived in an ill aire , and was infected with it , but never stirred out of the county , to doe any prejudice to the parliament : but suffered imprisonment for his not ready complyance with the commissioners of aray . when it was to any purpose for him to appeare on the behalfe of the parliament , he raised a regiment of horse , and another of foot , for the service of the parliament , which he applyed himselfe to with all diligence , and can produce testimonies of his care and fidelity , under the hands of those you say distrusted him ; and was of very good reputation with the scots , till the time of the surrender drew neare , and then his appearing for an english garrison , and refusing to quit his fort , caused all this bitternes . is it possible that the scots should distrust him , so little guilty of delinquency , in respect of them they have upon all occasions embraced , as major craister , and procured to be imployed , as collonel brandling in northumberland , and their own urrey ? and are not there now divers whom they trust in their army , who have served against the parliament ? so that it may appeare , their enmity to malignancy was not the cause ; but what need we seck further for a reason then the letter of generall leven , dated at mansfield , june 20. 1645. wherein he informes our commssioners , then upon the place , that he had sent lievtenant generall lesley , with full power and instructions , in such things as concerne the interest of the scots nation , and desires their compliance with him , which he never asked ; the interest is there declared to be the businesse , a word that troubles all the world . and hereto i might adde a letter from two scottish ministers , ( one a commissioner at london ) to our commissioners ( it seemes the kirke also is concerned in this garrison ) in which are these words ; wee interpose our earnest desire to you , that there may be a chearful condescending to lieutenant generall lesley , so farre as that the towne of carlisle may be delivered into his custody , untill the further declaration of the parliaments pleasure . hereby as you shall preserve your reputation of being good friends to our nation , so wee verily beleeve you shall do good service to the parliament and kingdome , and shall never have cause to repent it . these are the words of the letter transcribed here from the originalls ; i was loath to trouble the reader with the whole , the treatise being already growne into a bulke beyond intention ; onely this ; it is said that the forces there had starved , had not the generall sent part of the mony to them which was sent to newcastle , to inable the scots to take field ; because a double use may be made of this , as not onely in this place , but also to excuse the scots , being no better provided in their march , which caused them to stay in yorkshire for provision , when they were expected southwards ; it is answered , those two counties of cumberland , and westmorland , had been so pressed , that generall leven , the earle of callander , & the english commissioners had under their hands acquitted them of further burthens , and therefore offered them to undertake their siege at their own charge , with their own force . and if the generall had according to agreement recalled his men , he needed not to have parted with the money to carlisle : but enough of carlisle , and more then enough . pag. 83. the gentleman puts to sea , and finds fault with the parliaments ships not doing their dutie , by reason of which divers ships of the well-affected were taken , and the coasts of scotland not guarded , to their great prejudice ; and in the issue reduces this fault , not onely to neglect , but secret connivence , that is , unfaithfulness : for the imputation of unfaithfulness , let those that were imployed answer it , if this author will plainly accuse them . as for the mischances , we know we daily suffer at land , the sea is more hazardous . but i observe men deale not so well with our mariners , as they doe with fortune-tellers , and almanack-makers ; for if they tell you but one thing that falls out accordingly , you admire them , and almost adore them , but take not notice of twenty lyes ; here on the contrary , let our sea-men doe many good turnes ( as divers of them have done ) ( let mee name the noble earle of warwicke , vice-admirall batten , capt. moulton , &c. ) they are never thought of , but any mis-fortune is sure to be set upon their score . as for the guarding the coasts of scotland , i beleeve it hath not been so well as was expected or intended , the multiplicity and distraction of affaires with us hath been such . but there is no reason to lay the damage of scotland upō the want of that guard ; for the irish were but very few hundreds , as this author acknowledgeth , pag. 90. that came over , and the passage is so short , that notwithstanding ships upon the coast , men might easily be transported from ireland to scotland , or the isles , as appeares by divers ships , who have got into our english harbours with armes and ammunition , notwithstanding all our guards . pag. 84. he proceeds , as he saith , to another businesse , and such a one as if he had not wanted businesse , he would have omitted , the businesse is to cast all possible odium upon independents , where for want of a good argument , he loads them with ill words , calls them factious and fantasticall head-strong ones , men without love to the peace of the church of god . pag. 84. seekers , ( scil. ) such as seek themselves under the pretence of truth , and set up their own fancies , men that will not settle upon any thing , unlesse it be in continuing in phreneticall fancies . and as if he were not content to weary men , he provoketh god also , and saith , god knowes they are destitute of all charity . sir , where is your charitie the whiles ? he that loves the smell , may have a bundle of these flowers , pag. 86. all the corne in this chaffe , the charge in this clamour , beside generall invectives , is ; that those men will not absolutely and positively professe what they would be at , but they have manifested the contrary , declaring the things wherein they would be forborne , in their paper at the committee of accommodation . i have nothing to say to this , but that unlesse you give better words , or better arguments , you will by such language and carriage make men independents . they are further charged with abominable lying , in perswading the people of the rigidity of the presbyterian government , and the diminution of christian liberty thereby , and confutes him with the lenity of the churches of scotland and france . i doe not say that both are true , but both may . it is possible for a church to be too strict in their principles , and too loose in their practice . but why should the man be so angry , since the businesse concerning church-government , as himselfe acknowledges pag. 89. is concluded maugre independents ? in the same page the author goes on to mention and remove two rubs in the way to a compleating presbyteriall government : the first is that some will not allow it to be of divine right ; the second , that some are willing to reserve the power of excluding from the sacrament to the civill magistrate . these are so tender points , in which others of greater abilitie are engaged , that i dare not meddle , though me thinkes i could deale with this author : first , he saith it is demonstrated to have its ground in scripture so clearly that it cannot be denied , and practised by the apostles , and their successors . for the demonstrations , they are not so cleare for all the parts of the government , but that they may be ( as they are ) denied . that of lay-elders was found in the assembly a very difficult point , and the superinduction , of provinciall , nationall , presbyteriall assemblies , to congregationall , though for my part i approve of them , yet i beleeve they are not demonstrable in scripture with undeniable clearnesse . and as for the practice of the apostles , they cannot be adequately urged , because they were not parochiall presbyters , but had a generall care , and superintendency over the churches , and a greater authority then ministers now adayes . the councell at ierusalem where they were was occasionate , not menstruall , or annuall : as for the successors of the apostles , it is doubtfull what they did , antiquity is so fallible , but it is not doubtfull , that whil'st the apostles lived , the mystery of iniquity worked , and preeminence was loved , so that all the practises of their times , much lesse of their successors cannot be urged . i am no enemy to the presbyteriall government , as it may be ordered . appeales are naturall , and necessary ; aristocracy is the most even government , if faction can be avoided : but i could wish that all the people of god , especially the ministers of christ , who should goe before them , would tread in that more excellent way , charity mentioned by the apostle , 1 cor. 12. ult. and be more carefull to advance the power of godlinesse then their own ; but manum de tabula ; if we have the government , as we are like to have , let us not fall out for the title ; i have knowne men spend more about a title , then the land hath been worth . for the second impediment which is alledged to be the great stirre about admitting or keeping of people from the table of the lord . the case seemes to be thus , wee have a multitude of people in this kingdome ignorant and prophane , many who have a name to live , but are dead , as by their dead workes appeares , these are to be formed into churches by vertue of their externall profession . this is fundi nostri calamitas , and makes the matter so difficult , i beleeve the abstention , unless in cases of great difficulty , lyes in the particular congregation , though not without appeale , which if it were constituted and ordered as it ought , the strife would cease . but in this condition that we are , where many a good man is in danger to straine his charity , why should there be so great and dangerous a stirre , if there be a recession from the rule , which is not so cleare ? i know as little ground for the busines of tryers for election of elders , which tells us already , wee must have congregations not fit to choose their own officers , but we submit to it in regard of the difficulty of our condition : and better ( if i may so say ) were it if the ministers would exercise the power they have , which they shall find will give them many troubles in this businesse , then to presse it with publique prejudice , and ( not to prejudge the parliament ) for the parliament to grant what is desired , were better then to run a greater inconvenience . but i recall my selfe , and to make satisfaction for the adventure i have made , i will passe by the discourse of the author , in straitning the bounds of power betwixt the magistrate and the minister , i am afraid of medling with power ; power especially in the ministers of the gospel any further then absolutely necessary to the service and edification of the church , is very troublesome and dangerous , and so they will finde it ; the power of the word is great , the power of love is not little . pag. 89. upon the mention of the scots desire to the parliament , that having had so good successe in their affaires of late , they would send to the king for peace ; he declares the equitie , and yet improbabilitie of it , in regard , as he sayes , the king is chiefe agent in the designe of spirituall and temporall slavery , in which he is upheld by forein nations against his subjects . the parliament hath been carefull to apply themselves to the king , for a safe and well grounded peace upon all occasions ; whether they are alwayes bound to strive with him , it is not for me to determine . but if he be the chiefe agent , as this author sayes , i would gladly understand why we court the chiefe agent , and punish the accessary instruments . as for the interest of particular princes in the kings cause , i omit them , as also the narrative of the scottish affaires , which i know little of the transaction of them , but heartily resent their sufferings , i pray god give them a right use of them , and full deliverance . as for calumnies and affronts , wherewith some are complained to have repaid them , i dislike and detest them with this author , if any such be . pag. 101. he passeth on to another story of two severall attempts of cajeoling upon the parliaments party by the court ; the first , by commissioners , richmond and southampton ; the second by savill , as i suppose , wherein , he sayes , they found their designe upon the scots to be the blowing of a cold coale , and with this coale he smites the independents , at least with some suspicions and surmises , and referres to intercepted letters and papers . but if wee regard papers , who will be without blot ? you know here hath been a great rumour about the scots treating with the french , and it may be that papers and letters mention it ; but shall wee beleeve it ? no surely : i am confident they will not stretch out their hands to a strange god ; but consider rather the latter end of 44 psal. if ever that should come to passe , i would goe into some protestant monastery , and say , miserere mei , for there were no conversing in this world any more . pag. 103. the author enters upon the march of the scottish army , from nottingham to hereford ; in the way he takes notice of the committee of worcester there , who are charged with misguiding the army : but i wonder not that a plot should be found out in worcestershire committee , whereas the removing of the scottish commissioners from the citie to the good aire , and accommodation of worcestershire house , is also found guilty of a designe . pag. 52. which is said to be an endeavour , to make them strangers to the city , but i beleeve , that distance hath been made up with double diligence . in this businesse of hereford , there are two imputations laid : one more generall , that the army for want of provisions were constrained to live upon fruits ; it is well that god made some provision when men failed : but we all know , that unlesse resolutions be timely made knowne , that endeavours may be used proportionably ; it is almost unavoydable , for an army to undergoe some want , when they pitch before a towne , in regard that the ability of the quarters is overnumbred , and the country cannot provide so soone as is wished , or wanted . but it is said , pag. 105. that at last some provision came , but then ammunition wanted : that 's hard , were it not necessary that there must be some necessity , the thing may be true , but how it should come to passe , is out of my reach ; when the army having received ammunition in good proportion at newcastle , with a particular respect to their march , had no considerable occasion to spend it , betwixt that and hereford . the second charge is more particular against some members of the committee of both kingdomes , who withdrew , that so for want of a full committee , order could not be given for the dispose of some horse , to strengthen the siege , which default occasioned the raising of it : sure that man who hindred the continuance of the siege ( if without greater disadvantage it might be done ) was as little a friend to the publick service , as to the scottish army , and it had been well he were named ; and did not i barre recrimination , i could tell you , when there hath been no committee , for regulating the scots army for the space of three moneths , and more , for want of commissioners from scotland : but , as for the possibility of sending horse from the siege at bristoll ; he that knowes the very hard duty , that sir thomas fairfaxes horse had there , and the great danger in regard of the enemy in the west ; and withall , considers the great importance of that service , both in regard of gaining the city , and preserving the army ; i beleeve , will consent with the truth rather then the manifest . but i will make a faire motion , that all the disputes concerning the carriage of the businesse of hereford , might be ended in that happy act of oblivion , which was done by the vigilance , and dexterity of collonel morgan , and birch , and the gallant adventure of the lieutenant , who surprised the guard ; the city is taken , and we have all reason to be satisfyed . pag. 111. upon occasion of the sad newes from scotland ( which the author acknowledges was heartily resented , as by divers well affected , so , especially by the houses of parliament , ( who appointed a publick fast on that behalfe ) some reproches are cast upon the independents , who are also said to have leaped for joy of the infortune of the scots ; it 's answered that revilings need no answer : as for what is laid to the charge of independents ; because , sometimes the army under the command of sir thomas fairfax , goes under that notion , i must not conceale how earnestly the chiefe officers of that army were affected with the ill tydings from scotland , and how heartily they expressed it in a most affectionate letter , sent from the generall , lieutenant generall crumwell , and other commanders , which i am confident they will make good in actions , if the necessity of that kingdome should ever so require , for they are not so voyd , neither of charity nor gratitude , as this author pretends . i know no kingdome , that england is behind hand with in reall kindnesse , i hope they will not begin with scotland . as for the objection made , pag. 112. concerning lieutenant generall lefleyes going into scotland , upon notice of the ill condition of affaires there given by the chancellor , he can best answer it that made it . i thinke he wanted respect to the good of both nations , who expressed any unwillingnesse to the reliefe of that kingdome , in such necessity , but i cannot but take notice of what is said , pag. 114. of the cold comfort yielded by this kingdome to their neighbours , when things were made knowne . to which it is returned , that the parliament of england , waited onely for the desires of scotland , to be made knowne to them in that behalfe : but the scots were farre more shye in asking help , then the english in affording it ; we had commissioners then at barwick , witnesses of their condition , to whom indeed , some noble-men , and gentlemen of scotland , made a proposition for sending for collonel poyntz , and rosseter , to come to their reliefe , and that the forces about hereford might march for supplying , and securing the northerne counties , and opposing the attempts of the enemy there , which our commissioners not having power in , speedily represented to those that had , by a paper from the scots lords , as a memoriall of their desires therein ( for the scots were no committees ) and the next day after upon receipt of letters from david lesley there at bawtry ; a nobleman , and a gentleman of that kingdome , and of the committee , were sent to our commissioners , and in the name of the rest , receded from their desires in the fore-mentioned paper , which put our commissioners upon a contradiction of their former intelligence , represented to the parliament ; and though it was propounded by some of our commissioners ( in that time of so great necessity ) that a considerable number of scottish forces might be drawn out of the towns , and castles in the north of england , ( besides the towne of barwick ) which might be able to make up a competent strength to oppose the enemy ; yet that advise was not approved of by the scots . so that it easily appeares , where the ground either of delayes , or denyals of help were . as for the parliament , they readily yielded to the march of the scots army northward , for the reliefe of their owne kingdome , notwithstanding their engagements in the south , which was as much , as was , or could be desired . so that i suppose the severe intermination , that the setting the promise of a small help at the rate was then offered , will be blamed by posterity , when it shall be recorded what scotland hath done , and undergone for their brethren , and what thanks the scots have for their paines , might have been left out , notwithstanding the particulars which said to be spared till another occasion . pag. 116. i find an unfitting parallel betwixt cardinall richelieu , and the english parliament , ( for though the parliament be not named , yet those who are carefull of the english armies , are , which must needes be they ) who are made to agree in this point of politick unjustice , to set men on worke , and purposely deny them necessaries , that through their miscarriage , others might be advanced . certainly , though that cardinall must needs be acknowledged a man of eminent parts and policy , of which he hath left a monument that yet stands ; yet after that this author had branded him , with pride , ambition , tyranny , and atheisme , which are no cardinal vertues ; me thinkes he might have used more brotherly kindnesse to the parliament of england , then to make such an unworthy reflection . but as for the wants of the scottish army , if enough have not been already said , let me adde this , the way not to want in england is to worke , and i am confident , that had they done the proportion of worke , that other armies have done , they would have had the same proportion of wages , and if others had done no more , they had got as little . this page is closed with an injust , though not unusuall bitternesse ; against the once governour of bristoll , whose returne to sit in parliament , is said to be matter of astonishment to the world . the world is wide sir , and so are you . but why so angry ? me thinks the taking the city so considerable , might have softned your spirit . we use to grace solemne ▪ occasions with some acts of favour : why not the taking of bristoll , with receiving mr. fiennes ? especially the retaking of the towne , affording an argument à majore ad minùs . what is the quarrell ? the gentleman had before surrendred it , for which he was sentenced by a councell of warre . as for the councell of warre , i beleeve they were guided by honour and conscience in what they did ; and by vertue of the article , obliging the governour of a towne , to hold out to extremity , condemned the gentleman . the generall remitting the summum jus , concurred not for execution of the sentence : the gentleman lives and does well , may he long do so ; he hath left the camp , he followes the counsell , a worke sutable to his parts acknowledged by this author , to be fit for a senate . you complaine of his friends , for putting him upon an imployment ; of which ( you say ) he was not capable ; but are you free from blame to deny him an imployment , for which you acknowledge him so well fitted ? he never was engaged neither in counsell , nor in armes against this cause , as some who are to be found in other counsells or armies : but parciùs ista , i adde but this , the gentleman hath received some wrong by this charge , but the parliament more , it being an injust reflection upon their wisdome , and priviledge , that they should be taxed for dealing with their owne members , as they thinke best for the publick good of the kingdome . as for that passage , of souldiers bawling in the fields , coblers pratling in tubs in stead of preaching , — ne saevi magne saeerdos ; quam scit uterque libens censebo exerceat artem . pag. 122. he proceeds to exagitation of a piece of a letter , written from lieutenant generall cromwell , upon the taking of bristoll : first , he wonders the latter part of the letter now published by him , was suppressed by that authority , that printed the other part . it is no wonder , that the parliament intending to recommend to the people matter of thanksgiving , should not with-hold that part of the letter , wherein there were some passages , tending rather to doubtfull disputation , then undoubted gratulation , which i conceive was the reason of it ; it is a greater wonder to me , that this author should so confidently print it , when the parliament had forbid it . as for the expressions of the letter recited , and animadverted ; i hold not my selfe obliged to say any thing , i am no mans champion but an advocate to the truth , and a servant ( not as i am like to be taxed ) a parazite to the parlialiament : but if i were minded to call the letter , and the annotations upon it to a review , it were easie to find as may irregularities in the notes , as the author of the manifest doth in the text . from hence the manifest finds an easie passage to the independents , aggravating their ill , pag. 127. extenuating their good service , pag. 128. i am loath to leave so ill a relish in the minds or mouthes of the readers , as to repeate the imputations , but take them as they are ; men that serue themselves into imployment , engage the pamphleteers to set forth lyes and tales for them , causers of disturbances , blasphemies , heresies , violation of the covenant , underminers , factious , guilty of a malicious plot , bringers of confusion into the church , and consequently , anarchy into the state , men that doe all for by-ends , that joyne with others , as the papists with malignants for their own interests . tantaene animis coelestibus irae ? to this i answer in the words of the apostle iames ; my beloved brethren , let every man be swift to heare , slow to speake , slow to wrath , for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousnesse of god . i cannot conceive how they that are singly independents , that is , men dissenting from other governments in the constitution , and ordering of a congregation , should deserve so much bitternesse ; first , they desire a liberty of collecting their members from severall parishes , and would have an union of hearts rather then a neighbourhood of houses to make up a congregation . it cannot be denied , but that this would produce many inconveniences , which no doubt will be remonstrated ; but me thinkes , if it be not tolerable for its consequents , it should be pardonable for its grounds , arising from a desire of all possible puritie in an assembly . wee shall all be in this point independent in our desires and endeavours , and must be constrained to set up a congregation within a parish , when wee debarre one halfe from the sacrament , and admit the other , which is like to be the case in many places . secondly , they defire a liberty to ordaine their own officers . this is the practice of presbyterians also for all officers but pastors : to their admission also the reasonable consent of the people is allowed , and the approbation which gives life to the ordination . thirdly , they desire a freedome from the presbyteries , and synods ; an association of churches , me thinks they should not deny ; a necessitie of synods they allow , the difference is , whether the acts of such meetings should be by way of advice , or authority , whether the meetings should be setled or occasionall : for reconciling these let us consider , the one would have state-meetings , the other upon emergencies , both agree they should be as ost as necessity is , and no oftner ; in case it be oftner , it is as nothing to that congregation which hath no reference thither . as for that of advice , and authoritie , i have read a position in voetius the professor of theology at utretcht , a very learned man and a presbyterian , to this purpose , potestas ecclesiae est directiva , non jurisdictiva , it is to be found in a disputation de unione & regimine ecclesiarum , wherein are many things that sound to moderation ; but this difference i beleeve will finde more dispute in notion then opposition in action , i should wave both the debates of jus divinum in presbyteries , and the authority of assemblies , and remit things to the practice . if the dictates , or rather directions of a presbytery , or synod be agreeable to the word of god , and publique peace , and edification , i should embrace them , were the authority of a synod never so little , were they repugnant to these rules , and ends , either in themselves , or my apprehension , ( which yet i should strive to get informed with all diligence and humility ) i must be spared , were their authority never so great . the next , and indeed the last thing of moment is the london-petition , which this author approves , and prints , and contests with the parliament about the receiving petitions in generall , and this in particular . but this gentleman and i are of so different tempers , that i shall not take so much liberty to dispute on the behalfe of the parliaments priviledge and practice in this particular , as he doth against it ; they best know their own priviledges , and how to maintaine them . this i know , that there is no better way to preserve the peoples liberty , then by keeping inviolate the parliaments priviledge . if there be a necessity of rulers , for the conservation of liberty ( as there is ) there is an equall necessitie of preserving the authority of those rulers , especially employing their endeavours for publique good , as the parliament doth . the petition was well framed for the substance of it , and is granted for the maine , if the parliament thought it too binding , and particular , and judged better to grant the thing , then receive the petition , who need find fault when they that petition are gainers , and they that grant are no losers ? as for the citie of london , their deserts are such of this cause , and kingdome , that i am confident , no reasonable thing , much lesse religious , will be denied them , and i am as confident they will aske no other . they understand the need and use the parliament have had , and have of them , and they also apprehend the neare relation , and dependance , they have upon the parliament , and may easily foresee the fractions would arise in so great a multitude , did not the countenance and authoritie of parliament restraine . their mutuall advantage depends upon their agreement , which whosoever goes about to interrupt , let them be divided in iacob , and scattered in israel ▪ for a close , let me take that passage of the manifest concerning the endeavour of the enemy to divide the nations , and his own hopes , ( to which i adde mine ) that they shall not prevaile . certainly , our endeavour should be to prevent the fulfilling of theirs , especially in a thing so important to religion and the good of these kingdomes . the scrupulous thoughts of offence made me sometimes to forbeare this answer : which yet i have endeavoured so to order as not to give any offence ; if it be taken , i shall be sorry , yet glad that it is not given . it may possibly breed me some disquiet , but why should i purchase my own peace , with the losse of truth ? if i have incurred one trouble , i am sure i have avoided another , which was to me a great one , sc. to see the obligations of this kingdome aggravated , their ingratitude recorded , the parliament affronted , the commissioners abused , the people deceived ; these are things i have endeavoured to right ; forgive me this wrong , i will trouble you no more , unlesse this author continue in a resolution of a fuller discourse ( as he intimates in the end of his manifest ) which i desire might be forborne ; for if there be no remedy , we shall also find a reserve . finis . postscript . whereas it may be said that this labour might have bin spared , in regard of the censure adjudged by parliament to truths manifest ; i answer , that there is as much difference betwixt a censure and an answer , as betwixt the offence in writing the booke , and the hurt done by spreading it . the parliament have taken just notice of the fault , but have not thereby prevented the mischiefe ; for since the author was call'd in question , the book hath been studiously dispersed , and ( as i beleeve ) reprinted , and hath found some readers so confident , as to say , that the book was censured , because it could not be answered , the contrary of which doth now appeare . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a28914e-4670 pag. 23. pag. 29. rom. 15. 20. jam. 1. 19 , 20. the abridgement or summarie of the scots chronicles with a short description of their originall, from the comming of gathelus their first progenitor out of græcia into egypt. and their comming into portingall and spaine, and of their kings and gouernours in spaine, ireland and albion, now called scotland, (howbeit the whole number are not extant) with a true chronologie of all their kings. their reignes, deaths and burials, from fergusius the first king of scotland, vntill his royall maiestie, now happily raigning ouer all great brittaine and ireland, and all the isles to them appertaining. with a true description and diuision of the whole realme of scotland, and of the principall cities, townes, abbies, fortes, castles, towers and riuers, and of the commodities in euery part thereof, and of the isles in generall, with a memoriall of the most rare and wonderfull things in scotland. by iohn monipennie. monipennie, john. 1612 approx. 255 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 65 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-07 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a07619 stc 18014 99899031 99899031 15691 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a07619) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 1569) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 996:12, 1999:11) the abridgement or summarie of the scots chronicles with a short description of their originall, from the comming of gathelus their first progenitor out of græcia into egypt. and their comming into portingall and spaine, and of their kings and gouernours in spaine, ireland and albion, now called scotland, (howbeit the whole number are not extant) with a true chronologie of all their kings. their reignes, deaths and burials, from fergusius the first king of scotland, vntill his royall maiestie, now happily raigning ouer all great brittaine and ireland, and all the isles to them appertaining. with a true description and diuision of the whole realme of scotland, and of the principall cities, townes, abbies, fortes, castles, towers and riuers, and of the commodities in euery part thereof, and of the isles in generall, with a memoriall of the most rare and wonderfull things in scotland. by iohn monipennie. monipennie, john. [4], 100, [20] p. printed at brittaines bursse by iohn budge [and simon stafford], [london] : 1612. "a short description of the vvesterne iles of scotland .." (caption title) has separate register, and colophon reading: printed at london by simon stafford. some copies have the imprint date altered by hand to 1614. copy at reel 996:12 has altered date. reproductions of originals in: harvard university library (reel 996:12) and henry e. huntington library and art gallery (reel 1999:11). imperfect: reproduction on reel 1999:11 lacks all after p. 100. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database 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illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng nobility -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -kings and rulers -early works to 1800. scotland -description and travel -early works to 1800. scotland -history -early works to 1800. hebrides (scotland) -description and travel -early works to 1800. 2003-02 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-03 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-04 olivia bottum sampled and proofread 2003-04 olivia bottum text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-06 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the abridgement or summarie of the scots chronicles , with a short description of their originall , from the comming of gathelvs their first progenitor out of graecia into egypt . and their comming into portingall and spaine , and of their kings and gouernours in spaine , ireland and albion , now called scotland , ( howbeit the whole number are not extant ) with a true chronologie of all their kings . their reignes , deaths and burials , from fergvsivs the first king of scotland , vntill his royall maiestie , now happily raigning ouer all great brittaine and ireland , and all the isles to them appertaining . with a true description and diuision of the whole realme of scotland , and of the principall cities , townes , abbies , fortes , castles , towers and riuers , and of the commodities in euery part thereof , and of the isles in generall , with a memoriall of the most rare and wonderfull things in scotland . by iohn monipennie . printed at brittaines bursse by iohn budge . 1614. to the most high and mightie monarch , iames by the grace of god , king of great britane , france , and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. it may be by many iustly ( most gracious soueraigne ) imputed to me for no small presumption , to present to your royall maiestie , a prince of so great learning and excellent iudgement , these simple fruits of my vnskilfull endeuours taken in this short abridgement . in most humble and obedient manner , i do preferre vnto your highnesse these my weake and vnlearned labours , according to my ability , which how vnworthy they be of so great a princely fauour , as wel for the meannesse of me the writer , as for the plainnesse and rudenesse of the stile , yet if for the worthinesse of the matter , and of your maiesties great accustomed clemency , vouchsafe then your highnesse fauourable regard , they shall be as fortunate , as if they had beene composed by greater & more learned men , wherein briefly ●…ay be seene , the great and infinite mercy of god towards your royall person , that it hath pleased his superexcellent wisedome by his mighty power to preserue your highnesse ancient kingdome of scotland , vnconquered vnder the empire and gouernment of one hundreth and sixe kings , your maiesties royall progenitors : and in speciall when almost the whole world was brought vnder the romane empire by the sword . also to reduce in one peaceable monarch , these ancient mighty landes & many ilands , which haue bene diuided in many seuerall kingdomes , one of britons seuen of saxons , one of scots , one of pictes , one of orkenay , and sixe of ireland , : also some of the valiant and illustre noble actes of your highnesse most royall and ancient progenitors , and of their raignes , liues , deathes , and burials . accept them most mightie monarch , i most humbly beseech your royall maiesty , in your highnesse gracious protection , and according to my bounden dutie incessantly with all humility , i will pray the great god of all might and power ( to his eternall glory ) long to preserue your royall maiestie , and your gracious queene in blessed health and peace , to raigne ouer these your highnesse great vnited kingdomes , and to enlarge the same , and your maiesties most royall and hopefull posterity to the worlds end . your maiesties most humble , and obedient subiect , iohn monipenny . the abridgment or svmmary of the scots chonicle . with a short description of their originall from the comming of gathelvs , their progenitour out of graecia into egypt , and of their kings and gouernours in spaine , ireland , and albion : ( howbeit the whole number are not extant ) with a true chronologie of all their kings , lineally descended from fergvsivs the first king of scotland , vnto his sacred maiestie , now happily reigning ouer all great britaine , ireland , and all the isles to them appertaining . gathelvs son of cecrops , king of athens , by his insolence made many inuasions , in macedonia , and achaia , in graecia . and because he could not suffer correction , he with many valiant grecians came into egypt , & followed pharao in his warres against the aethiopians ; who with great cruelty had wasted the most part of egypt , vnto memphis the principall citie of that realme ; pharao with support of gathelus vanquished and ouercame the aethiopians in a most dangerous battell . and gathelus valiantly vanquished and wanne their principall citie called meroe . after this great victory , he being a lusty person , strong of body , and of a great spirit , wan great fauour with the king and his familiars , that the kings daughter scota was giuen in marriage vnto gathelus , with many lands . shortly after pharao died , and another pharao succeeded ; who opprest the israelites with great seruitude and tyranny . gathelus abhorring such cruelty , conferring with moyses ; also hauing respons of the oracles of egypt , was foreseene of the plagues to come vpon egypt , made prouision for all things necessary for sayling , and tooke shipping with his wife scota , his valiant grecians , and many egyptians from the riuer nilus , the yeare of the world 2453. after long sayling and trauell he arriued at the land of numidia , being stopped to land , he pulled vp sailes , and with dangerous and painfull passage through the straites , he landed in one part of spaine then called lusi●…nia , by his arriuall called portgathel , now portingall : at his landing the olde inhabitants came against him with arrayed battell , whom he vanquished . he builded one citie vpon the riuer munda , then called brachare , now called barsolona . then after he came into the north part of spaine , now called gal●…ia ; where he builded a citie called brigance , now compostella , where he reigned with princely dignity , and instituted lawes , and named his people scottes , after his wife scota : for she had born vnto him two sonnes twinnes , hiber and hemicvs . he brought with him from egypt the marble fatall chaire , which was transported to ireland , and to albion , now called scotland ; wherein all their kings were crowned , vntil the time of king edward the first , who transported the whole ancient regall monuments of scotland , with the marble fatall chaire to westminster , where it remaineth to this day : the scots shall brooke that realme , as natiue ground , ( if words faile not ) where euer this chaire is found : gathelus sitting in his marble chaire within this citie of brigance , gouerned his people with princelydignity peaceably , and instituted lawes . and seeing his people encrease with such great multitude , and not willing to violate the bande , made with the old inhabitants , being informed by diuers expert explorators , that there was an isle opposite to spaine on the north , with a rude people inhabited , hauing no lawes nor manners . therefore he brought all the shippes he could get with expedition to the next sea port , with sufficient prouision , with hiber and hemicus , accompanied with valiant warriours , and ordeyned hiber to be admirall to passe the said isle , which they obeyed : & hoisting sayles with fortunate windes , arriued the fift day after in the said island . immediately landing , their people then pitched their tents on the next trenches . the rude inhabitants amazed at the arriuing and landing of such a multitude of warriours , fledde with their cattell and goods into their cauernes . hiber commaunding certaine of his warriours to passe forth ; and if the inhabitants would bee willingly subdued , no slaughter to be committed vpon them . the inhabitants being brought as prisoners to the admirall , and seeing him mercifull , rendred themselues and their goods : and he receiued them with such beneuolence , that he suffered the olde inhabitants to encrease with his people , vnder one name and lawe , and called the land hibernia , now ireland . hiber returning into spaine , left his brother himecus with a strong garrison of valiant warriours , with wiues and children to inhabite the land , and to holde the same vnder obedience and subiection . at his returne into spain his father being deceased , he succeeded king , and augmented his empire , and conquered sundry lands from the spaniards , hauing with him at all times a strong guard of valiant men . by his puissance and ch●…alrie he subdued the people in such manner , that he was holden in great estimation and reuerence , that they were constrayned to seeke his peace ; the land being named after hiber , hiberia : the scots and olde inhabitants grew vnder one name and bloud with such tender and friendly beneuolence ( not remembring of old iniuries ) each one willing to defend his neighbour ( as well in peace as warres ) as his brother or father . of hiber descended by long progression , a great posterity lineally succeeding , amongst whom were many noble and famous kings ; howbeit the whole number of them are not extant . himecvs gouerned ireland in great felicity iustice , and tranquility , both the scots and the olde inhabitants during his life time . immediatly after his decease , arose an odious controuersie betweene the scottes and the olde inhabitants for the gouernement , euery nation contending to haue a gouernour of their owne blood , which contention enduring long time , at last they created two gouernors , betweene whom was continuall battels and great slaughter on eyther side , through ambition and burning desire to be sole gouernor of all ireland . after long and dangerous battels , the two people broken with sundry displeasures , were constrained to take peace ; howbeit the same endured but a short time , each one of them pursuing other with battell ; and yet they dwelt many yeares together , by enterchange of peace and warres , while at the last the scots suffering many iniuries , sent their embassador to metellivs , who was then king of the scottes in spaine , desiring to haue support against the old inhabitants of ireland , declaring them to be a rude wilde people , impatient to suffer any empire aboue them ; so that the scots can haue no tranquility , vnlesse the said people were the more speedily tamed and subdued . this foresaid message was the more acceptable to the king metellius : for it concerned the common-wealth both of the scots nation in spaine and ireland , descending ( by long progression ) of our lineage and blood , and willingly satisfying the aforesaid ambassadours request , trusting the same to be no lesse honour and glory to himselfe as profite to his friends . therefore the king sent his three sonnes hermonevs , ptolomevs , and hibert with a great armie of valiant men into ireland , where they with right dangerous battels vanquished the olde inhabitants , and brought them vnder subiection . hermonens returning into spaine , left his two brethren to gouerne the land , who gouerned the same long time after in great tranquility and iustice , ins●…ituting lawes , and instructed the priests to make insence and sacrifice in the same manner as the egyptians vsed : so both the people encreased many yeares in great felicity , peace and riches during the gouernement of ptolomeus and hibert , and long after their decease . but too great prosperity engendreth euill maners , and causeth men to worke often displeasures vpon themselues , finding no forraigne enemies to inuade them at home . the people after long peace were diuided for the gouernement , contending for the same with great rigour and slaughter on both sides , vntill the one had almost vtterly destroyed the other , if they had not been reconciled by a noble man , named thanaus , principall ambassadour , sent by the king , then raigning ouer the scots in spaine ( reioycing of the felicity succeeding to his friends ) and to cause them by his prudent consultation , to encrease together vnder one minde . thanaus being a prudent man , bearing nuturall affection to both the parties , perswading them at sundry conuentions to remoue all contention , and to elect one ( whom they thought most expedient ) to be their king , and to be obedient to him in all their gouernment . through this perswasion the whole people had such feruent desire to haue one king , that all olde iniuries being forgotten , they appointed thanaus to elect a king , whom he thought most expedient ) and hee seeing their mindes willing to haue a nuturall king , declaring to them that there is in spaine a noble prince of great seuerity and iustice , named simon brek , well accustomed with your lawes , and lineally descended from the ancient king metellius , whom he thought most fittest to be their king. the whole people hearing the name of simon brek , were well content to haue him their king , because that name was esteemed very fortunate in those dayes . then after with consent of the whole people , ambassadours were sent into spaine , to request the said simon to come into ireland , to be their king. hee knowing by graue aduisement the intent of the ambassadours , prouid●…d a great fleete of ships with all things necessary , and finally by prosperous windes arriued in ireland , where hee was solemnly receiued , and crowned in the chaire of marble , which he brought out of spaine , esteemed as a most rich jewel in those dayes ; from the beginning of the world 3314. from the floud of noah 1658. from the building of rome 102. before the birth of christ 651. he reigned with great felicity peaceably forty yeares , being specially counsailed by the aforesaid thanaus , to whom he gaue sundry lands , lying in the south part of ireland , beside the riuer birsus , which lands are now called dowdall , where hee dwelt with the people he brought with him out of the famous citie brigance , now called compostella . they were called brigandes ; of whom after by processe of time descended many valiant and noble men , who came with fergusius the first king in scotland , by whom al the lands now called galloway , were then called brigance , whose inhabitants were euer full of manhood and strongest enemies against romanes , britaines , and pickes : simon deceased , his sonne fandvf succeeded king : after fanduf succeeded ethion : after ethion succeeded glavcvs : after glaucus succeeded nathasil : after nathasil succeeded rothesay . rothesay was the first king that brought scots with him into albion . the first isle that he inhabited he called after his owne name rothesay , the remanent isles were called hebredes : after hiber the eldest sonne of gathelus . rothesay hearing the death of his father nathasil , returned into ireland , and was there crowned king. the yeare that scots were brought out of ireland into albion , was from the empire of simon brek in ireland 216. yeares : from the beginning of the world 3530. the scots spread in sundry parts of albion , lying farre north , and inhabited many isles . the first part that they tooke possession of was named ardgael , from gathelus , which now is called ardgile . they being diuided into sundry tribes , elected certaine captaines to euery tribe , to gouerne them both in peace and warre , hauing the name of their captaine in great reuerence , swearing by their names ; which custome was long obserued in those isles and the high lands . then after about 150. yeares , a banished people named pickes , came forth of denmarke to search a dwelling place , and after they were inhibited to land in fraunce , britaine , and ireland . they landed in albion , first in orknay , of olde called the olde realme of the pickes . the seas betweene orknay and caithnes is called pentland firth , & the lands now called loutheane ( was of old called pentland ) after the name of the pickes . then after they came into caithnes , ros , murray , merms , angus , fiffe and loutheaue , and expelled all the olde inhabitants . they were a ciuill people right ingenuous andcrafty both in peace and warres . after their planting in the aforesaid parts , they elected a king to gouerne them , and hold them in iustice , and made great policy in building of munitions , townes , and castles . and because they knew all people , without issue to succeede , should perish , they sent their ambassadours to the scots , to haue their daughters in marriage , shewing ( though they were of strange blood ) they should not be so smally regarded , seeing they with no lesse prudence then manhood haue sustained incredible dangers both by sea and land . and now lately conquered ( through the beneuolence of the gods ) right plenteous lands with such peace and tranquility , that no other people may claime them by reason : trusting surely ( if the gods support them ) by their owne industry to be equall to any their neighbors , both in peace and warre . further if the scots condescended to their honourable desires , it might be they encreasing together ( so strong vnder one bloud ) that they might resist the fury of their enemies the better , when it hapned them to be inuaded . this ambassage was not pleasant to the scots at the first , thinking it vnworthy to haue any society or marriage with an vnknowne and banished people : but by graue aduisement , and being profoundly resolued , and finding themselues as yet not able to resist the force of the britaine 's their olde enemies , they determined to giue their daughters to the pickes in marriage , and to haue a band of peace with them , with conditions that euery one of them shall enioy the lands which perteyned vnto them before the marriage , and to concurre together with their whole puissance , as oft as they were inuaded by enemies . any that did offence to any of them should be reputed as enemy to them both . and as often as the crowne of the pictes should come in question for lacke of an heire , the king to be elected of the neerest of the womans bloud . these conditions accepted on all sides , the scots gaue their daughters in marriage to the pictes . the britaines suspecting this marriage , and dreading the encreasing of this confederate people vnder one bloud in short time , that neyther might the britaines for the time present , nor their posterity resist the puissance of these two vnited people . therfore being minded to destroy them both , and to inuade them with fraudulent sleights , rather then with any force of battell . and sending their ambassadorus to the pictes , allured the pictes to violate their band with the scots . by great perswasion & crafty dealing of the britains , the band was dissolued ; & mouing occasion of battel against the scots , commāded by general edict , no scots to be found in their boūds at a prefixed day , vnder paine of death . the day being expired , all scots within their bounds were killed without mercy , as breakers of their lawes . the scots impatient to sustai●…e such iniuries , killed as many of the pictes ; so there followed continuall killing and murder on all sides , not regarding affinity , bloud , time , nor pl●…ce . in this manner the peace dissolued , the pictes denounced battell to the scots : then after followed continuall incursions and inuasions on eyther parties . the scots assembling in ardgiel , were sufficiently resolued , that the battell that they were to holde , was not onely against the pictes , but also against the britaines . therefore it was agreed , to send their ambassadors to their ancient progenitors and friends in ireland , to haue their support and counsaile in this most dangerous matter , and for that plurality of captaines ( as often occurreth ) raiseth sedition : the best is to elect one to haue empire aboue the rest , by whose manhood and counsaile , they might defend their liues and liberties , against a false and periured people , inuading them without any occasion . the ambassadours being directed to ireland , complained of the wicked offence done by the pictes , and desired support . ferqvhardvs ( then being king of the scots in ireland ) greatly moued for the displeasure done to his friends in albion , sent his sonne . fergvsivs a wise and valiant prince , with many valiant souldiers , and to giue them the more esperance , and assurance of permanent and good fortune , hee sent with them the fatall marble chaire . fergusius was the more pleasantly receiued by the scots of albion , because their common-wealth approched to great danger , by a most perillous apparant battell . then after a councell was called in ardgiel , where fergusius made a large oration , and acceptable speech . therefore by graue consultation , they condiscended to be gouerned by empire of one king , as well in peace as in any trouble appearing against their enemies . furthermore to remoue all suspition of hatred ( because euery tribe desired , a king of their owne linage ) they elected fergusius , both for his noble bloud , and other his excellent vertues , to be their king : moreouer he was so approued in martiall deedes and iustice , that no captaine of the tribes might be any wayes compared vnto him . fergvsivs the first king of scots ( in albion , now called scotland ) sonne to ferquhard king of ireland , was crowned in the fatall marble chaire , which hee brought with him ( by respons of the gods ) to establish his reigne in scotland . the yeare from the creation of the world 3641. before the comming of christ 330. in the first yeare of the 112. olimpiade . in the 421. yeare after the building of rome , about the beginning of the third monarchy . when alexander the great vanquished darius the last monarch of persia , in the reigne of chimarus king of britaine , the king employed his whole minde to resist the iniury of this battell , moued by the pictes ; hee calling all the captains , ordeyned them to be prepared with forty dayes prouision . to passe with him , he made an greement and concord amongst all his nobles and captaines , commanding his people to be obedient to their captaines , hee making sacrifice to his gods ( as the custome was ) praying the gods to take vengeance of the partie that was the first occasion of battell against other , and to graunt him such felicity in his iust defence ; that victory might succeed to him without any great damage of his people . the picts assembled an army , wich many britaines concurring to their support , appear'd on eyther side a wicked & vnnatural battel between two confederate people , friends , fathers and sonnes . the pictes came first i●…o the scots lands ; against whom with no lesse courage then manhood , the king with his valiant scots , with auncient armes displayed in forme of a banner , in which was a ●…dde lion rampant in a fielde of golde , whilst the scots and pictes were in array in each others fight : the armie of britaines stood in array also , deuising what way they might destroy them both , with f●…me purpose when the scots and pcties were vanquished , the one by the other , that the party victorious should vtterly bee destroyed by their fresh army : and when both these peoples were destroyed by this fleight , the britaines might enioy both their realmes in albion , without any impediment . this subtill sleight was discoured to king fergusius by a banished britaine , through which both the armies moued no lesse by feare of enemies , then by their own proper damage , prolonged the battell certaine dayes . king fergusius desiring communication with the king of picts , who willingly with some of his nobles , had communication a long time together , after long conference , and deliberate consultation with their counsellors on both parties , and ruefull crying of the pictes wiues , being the scottes daughters , peace was finally concluded , betweene the two confederate people , vnder these conditions , redresse of all iniuries , being made on all parties . the britaines ( mouers of this battaile ) shall be reputed enemies to them both ; all other charges to be at the pleasure and will of the two kings . and when any enemy occurred , that they and their people should conioine together , vnder one minde and ordinance . this peace being more strongly corroborate , the kings returned home . king fergusius in a most dangerous battell , assisted by the pictes , vanquished the britains , which time king coyl or chimarus ( vnwatily kept by his nobles ) was killed in the land after his name then called coyll , now kyle in scotland . after this victory the king called his whole nobles and subiects to a general conuention ; and hee making a large and plausible oration and speech , the nobles and subiects condiscended and agreed , that king fergusius and his posterity should possesse the crowne of scotland ; whereupon charters and euidences were graunted to him and his sucessors for euer . the kingdome of scotland being confirmed to king fergusius , his heyres and successors , with deliberate counsell of his nobles , he diuided the whole lands then inhabited by the scots amongst his nobles and captaines of the tribes by lots or cauils . the first lot chanced or fell vnto cornath , captaine and his tribe ; the land of caithnes , lying ouer against orkeney , betweene dum misbye and the riuer of thane : secondly to captaine lutorke the landes betweene the water of thane & nesse , now called ros . this lutorke came with a band of valiantmen , out of ireland with king fergusius into albion . this land of ros lyeth in breadth from cromarte to the water of lochtie . in this countrey was the famous castle of vrquhart , of which the ruinous walles remaine in great admiration : thirdly , to captaine warroth , the lands lying betweene spey and neffe , from the almaine to the irish seas , the people inhabitants of this part ( after their captaine ) were called wars , being seditious , they were expelled , and the murrayes possessed that land , and called the same land murray land : fourthly , to captaine thalis the lands of boyne , aynie , bogewall , gariot , formartyn , and bowquhan . these landes were then called vnder one name , thalia by the name of their captaine : fiftly , to captaine martach , all the lands of marre , badzenoth and loth quhabar . the sixth to captaine nouance , the landes of lorne and kyntier , with the high places and mountaines thereof , lying from marre to the irish seas . the seauenth to atholus the lands of athole , for he was descended of the scots of spain , and came out of spaine into ireland , and with fergusius he came into scotland . the eight to creones and epidithes , two captaines of the tribes , the lands of strabrawne and braidawane , lying west from dunkeld . the ninth to captaine argathelus , the lands of ardgile , his people were named argatheles from gathelus their first progenitour ; but now they are called men of ardgile . the tenth to captaine lolgonas , the lands of leuenox and cliddisdale . the eleuenth to captaine silurch , the lands of siluria , which region is now diuided into kyle , carrike , and cunningham ; the inhabitants were right ingenuous and strong . the twelfth to the brigandes , the lands of brigance , now called golloway . king fergusius after the diuiding of these lands , he instituted lawes to represse vice ; he builded the castle of berigone in longhquhaber . he past the remanent of his dayes in good peace with the britaines and pictes . at the last he was elected as iudge arbitrall to discerne vpon certaine high controuersies , chancing amongst his friends in ireland . he accompanied with certaine of his nobles , past into ireland and pacified them of all matters , returning home , by a very dangerous tempest perished with all his nobles that were in his company , vpon a rocke in the sea , called after his name craigfergus , the fiue and twentieth yeare of his raigne . in his raigne was morindus king of britaines , and cruthneus camelon king of pictes , who builded vpon the water of carron the citie of camelon , the principall and strongest citie of the pictes , which resisted the romanes and britaines , vntill that kenneth king of scotland ( who exiled the pictes out of albion ) brought it vnto vtter subuersion . this cruthneus camelon builded also the towne and castle of edinburgh , sometime called the mayden castle ; for all the noble young women of the pictes were nourished , and learned in all skilfull labour of their hands , vntill they were ready to marry . fergusius departing this present life , as aforesaid a conuention was holden by the nobles , for election of a king. after a long disputation and reasoning , it was concluded by plaine consent of parliament , and enacted when it hapned their king to decease , and hauing heyres gotten of his body , being children ; the neerest of the kings bloud , and fittest to doe iustice , shall possesse the crowne for his time ; after his death , the kings sonne shall succeed to the crown without impediment , if he were able thereto : by the same acte it was prohibited children to be kings . this custome endured long time , which raised much discord in this realme of scotland ; for the fathers brother raigning in the minority of his nephew , cast his chiefest busines to destroy him , and likewise the nephew to the fathers brother for ambition of the crowne , through which occurreth continuall killing of kings and nobles , to the great damage of the realme and common wealth . 2 fezitharis brother to fergusius , by the aforesaid act , began his raigne the yeare of the world 3666. before the comming of christ 305. yeares , from the beginning of the raigne of scotland 26. yeares : he was a good king and seuere iusticer , and was willing to haue discharged himselfe of the kingdome , in fauour of ferlegus , eldest sonne to his brother fergusius ; which his nobles would not condiscend vnto , because of the statute and acte of parliament lately made , which continued vntill the time of the raigne of king kenetvs the third almost 1205. years : he was killed by the aforesaid ferlegus the fifteenth yeare of his raigne . ferlegus the murtherer , and all other participant with him being banished , were fugitiues among the pictes , and finding no security of his life , he past into britaine , where he spent the rest of his dayes in great miserie . 3 mainvs king fergusius second sonne , succeeded in the yeare of the world 3680. before christ 291. after the beginning of the raigne 41. he was a noble king , a good iusticiar ; for he exercised iustice aires , for repressing of trespassors , and ratified the old league with crinus king of pictes , holding good peace with his confederates and britaines . he died peaceably the nine and twentieth yeare of his raigne . 4 dornadilla succeeded his father mainus in the yeare of the world 3709. before christ 262. after the beginning of the raigne 70. hee was a good king , and confirmed peace with the pictes and britaines , he delighting greatly in hunting , races and hounds , made certaine lawes profitable for hunting , which were obserued many yeares after : he died peaceably the eight and twentieth yeare of his raigne . 5. nothatvs succeeded his brother dornadilla , ( whose sonne revvther was a childe not able to gouerne by vertue of the aforesaid statute ) the yeare of the world 3738. before christ 233. after the beginning of the raigne 98. he was an auaritious cruell tyrant : hee was killed by dowall one of his nobles , captaine of the brigandes , the twentieth yeare of his raigne . 6 revthervs dornadella his sonne succeeded the yeare of the world 3758. before christ 213. after the raigne 118. he being young , ( assisted by dowall ) raysed great contention by the perswasion of ferquhart , captaine of kentire and lorne ( cousen to nothatus the tyrant late killed ) a man of subtill wit , and hauing great ambition to the crowne . betweene the aforesaid parties there was cruell warres : ferquhart being fugitiue in ireland returned being assisted with many irish men , with the inhabitants of kyntire , lorne , ardgile , caithnes , murray , and with a great armie . dowall res●…ing , came with a great power ( accompanied with the young king and the king of pictes ) and many other his friends ; there was a cruell battell and killing of chiefetaines and nobles on both parties . the king of pictes with many of his nobles pittifully killed reutherus , the young king pursued and taken at the castle of calender . by this vnhappy battell was such terrible slaughter , that neither scots nor pictes were left liuing sufficient to inhabite their realmes , nor to withstand their enemies . afterwards the scots and pictes were most cruelly inuaded by the britaines , and a great multitude killed , the rest exiled . king reutherus and his people past into ireland , and the pictes past into orkney . king reutherus returning from ireland , and the pictes with their king gethus returning from orkney , they gaue battell to the king of britaines , and obtayning victory by the high and soueraigne manhood , and valiantnesse of the foresaid king reuthorus , the britaines rendred all the forts , landes , and townes pertayning to the scots and pictes , with faithfull promise neuer to inuade them in time comming . this peace being concluded , the scots , pictes and britaines continued in great tranquility many yeares after : the king enduring the rest of his dayes , had good peace , and died the sixe and twentieth yeare of his raigne . 7 rhevda succeeded his brother reutherus in the yeare of the world 3784. before christ 187. after the beginning of the raigne 144. he was a good king , he caused sepultures to be made for noble & valiant men : he brought artificers into his realme , and instituted sundry good lawes . in his time came certaine orators , philosophers from king ptolomeus of egypt , who were pleasantly receiued and well entertained , because they were descended of the egyptians his auncient forefathers . these orators did write and consider the situation of the hilles , mountaines , vallies , riuers , lockes , frithes , isles , townes , and forts within the realme of scotland , and the lands thereto pertayning , as also to the pictes . he raigned peaceably sixteene yeares , and resigned the crowne to therevs , sonne to king reutherus . 8 therevs reutherus sonne succeeded in the yeare of the world 3799. before christ 171. after the raign 158. he appeared in the first sixe monethes to be a vertuous prince ; but after he became an vnwise cruell tyrant . therefore being degraded of all honor , he was exiled . and conan captaine of the brigandes elected to be gouernor , who gouerned the realme peaceably during the exile of thereus , who died in the citie of yorke in misery the twelfth yeare of his raigne . 9 iosina succeeded his brother thereus the yeare of the world 3810. before christ 161. after the raigne 170. he was a peaceable and good king , ratifying peace with his confederates the pictes , and also with the britaines : he was a good medecinar and herbestar . in his time were brought to his presence in berigone . two venerable philosophers , pleasant of visage almost naked , being priests of spaine , passing from portingall to athens , and by vnmercifull tempest , were ship-broken at ros , their shippe and company with marriners all perished , they onely saued . after refreshing and good entertainment , the king desired and demaunded of them , what they vnderstood by their science of the nature of the ground of scotland , after good and deliberate aduisement ( so farre as they might coniecture ) there was more riches and profite to be gotten within the veynes of the earth of scotland then aboue ; for it was giuen more to the winning of mines and mettals then any production of corne . they knew this by the influence of the heauens . also they learned the people to worship onely god the creator , prohibiting them to make sacrifice ( as their custome then was ) to isis and apis , the gods of the egyptians , but only to make their sacrifice , prayers , and adoration in their temples ( without any imagery ) to the eternall god , creator of heauen and earth , which the people for the most part obserued long time . king iosina being a vertuous prince died in peace the foure and twentieth yeare of his raigne , and buried at berigone . 10 finnanvs succeeded his father iosina the yeare of the world 3834. before christ 137. after the raigne 194. a wise and vertuous king , a good iusticiar , with aduice of his nobles , rewarding them honourably after their deseruings , winning the hearts of his people , ruled with great felicity , encreasing in riches : hee did institute prelates and clerkes to be in the isle of man , instructing noble mens children in their youth . this vertuous king married his sonne durstius with agafia , daughter to the king of britaines : he wan great fauour among them ; he visited the king of pictes , who was vexed with a vehement feuer in camelon : he died there the thirtieth yeare of his raigne , and was brought to berigone , and there buried among the sepultures of his progenitors . 12 dvrstivs succeeded his father finnanus the yeare of the world 3864. before christ 107. from the beginning of the raigne 224. a cruell and traytercus tyrant , killed in battell by his nobles the ninth yeare of his raigne . 12 evenvs primus succeeded his brother durstius the yeare of the world 3873. before christ 98. after the raigne 133. a wise , iust , and vertuous king. he was the first that caused his nobles and subiects to giue their oath of fidelity ; he executed iustice seuerely in all the partes of his realme . at length there came ambassadours from the pictes , shewing that the britaine 's were in armour , purposing to besiege their citie camelon : the king to assist his confederate friends , came with expedition against the britains , scots and pictes , went forward with great courage : the britaines with no lesse audacity on the other part , followeth a very dangerous battell , with vncertaine victory , vntill the night seuered them . the confederate kings seeing their armie broken , retired in the night . the britaines so broken , and dispayring of new support retired in the same manner as discomfited people ; their campe standing with their carriage . the confederate people aduertised hereof , returned and parted the spoyle by custom of armes . the king returned to berigone , rewarded their friends that were slaine in the said battel , and others promoted to publike offices , some with riches and goods : and the rest of his dayes he was a seuere iusticiar , and died in peace the nineteenth yeare of his raigne ; buried in dunstaffage . 13 gillvs bastard , sonne to euenus , vsurped the crown , and trayterously killed two sonns of durstius , contending for the crowne in the yeare of the world 3892. before christ 79. after the raigne 252. a crafty tyrant , killed in battell by cadellus captaine of the brigandes ; the second yeare of his raigne his head cut off , his body buried in dunstaffage . 14 evenvs secundus , donallus sonne , king finnan●…s brother , succeeded in the yeare of the world 3894. before christ 77. after the beginning of the raigne of scotland 254. a good iusticiar , ciuill , vertuous and peaceable king. cadallus after the killing of gillus , returning out of ireland with his victorious army , by rage of tempest were almost all perished ; cadallus was truely rewarded with many landes by the king , and comforted by him concerning his great losse of nobles and friends . king euenus marrying siora daughter of gethus , king of pictes , confirmed the olde band . after that hee vanquished balus king of orkney , who finding no way to escape , killed himselfe : hee builded innerlothy and innernes : hee resigned the crowne to ederus , giuing him wise and good counsaile : he died in peace the seuenteenth yeare of his raign , buried in dunstaffage . 15 edervs durstius sonne●… , succeeded in the yeare of the world 3911. before christ 60. after the raigne 271. a wise , valiant , and good king. bredus of the isles ( cousen to gillus , killed as is before mentioned ) made insurrection . shortly after the king pursuing him and his associates , they were all taken captiues , and many with the said bredus killed . cassibilian king of britaines , sent his ambassadours to the king of scots , desiring support against iulius caesar the romane emperour , who was ready with most dreadfull ordinance to come into albion . the king and nobles receiuing the ambassadours courteously , androgeus speciall . ambassadour , after a large and serious oration , the king and nobles being aduised , sent vnto london tenne thousand chosen men , vnder the conduct and gouernment of cadallan and dowall , captaines of the brigandes and lorne . also an army of pictes came at the request of king ederus . the britaines were raised in great esperance of victory by the aide of scots and pictes ; for they had no little confidence in their manhood and chiualry : king cassibilian went forward with his whole power , against the romanes there ensued a dangerous and doubtfull battell ; at the last the romanes were fugitiue , and being minded to renew the battell , iulius ( hearing of the great destruction of his ships ) changed his minde , hoisted sayles in the night , and returned into fraunce , leauing behinde them a great prey of goods , when iulius caesar was forced to auoide albion . the britaines , scots and pictes parted the spoyle gotten in his campe by custome of armes , reioycing of this glorious victory . cadallane and dowall , richly rewarded by cassibilian , returned with the scots army ; at whose comming the king was greatly reioyced ; then followed such loue and kindenesse betweene the britaines , scots and pictes , that it appeared them to liue in perpetuall peace . the king passing to innernes , was certainly enformed by sundry merchants strangers , that iulius had pacified fraunce to his empire , and making prouision for a new armie , to returne into britaine , to reuenge the iniuries done vnto him the last yeare , he sends his ambassadours to cassibilian , promising ( if he pleased ) to send ten thousand chosen men vnto his aide and support . the britaines ( moued with vaine arrogancy ) refused to haue any supply of scots or pictes : iulius returning into britaine , was three sundry times put backe , but at the last cassibilian was vanquished , and his whole valiant captaines taken or killed , and his lands made to pay three thousand pound of siluer to the romanes for tribute . iulius sendeth his ambassadours to the scots and pictes , offering them conditions of peace two seuerall times . they were resolute to remaine free , not to be subiect , and refusing all conditions of peace , were willing to defend their liues and liberties . iulius being minded to inuade the scots and pictes , was aduertised of a suddaine vprore in fraunce ; for which cause he passed into fraunce : murket gildus nephew made insurrection against the king. therefore he sent cadallane with armed men , who hanged murket with his complices . the king continued in good peace the rest of his dayes ; hee died peaceably the forty eight yeare of his raigne : buried in dunstaffage . 16 evenvs tertius succeeded his father ederus , the yeare of the world 3959. before christ 12. after the raigne 319. he was a luxurious , auaritious tyrant , retayning a hundred concubines , and not being saciate with them , he was taken in a battell captiue , and imprisoned , and was killed by a yong childe the first night , the childe was executed on the morrow , the seuenth yeare of his raigne , buried at dunstaffage . 17 metelianvs ederus brothers son , succeeded the yeare of the world 3966. before the comming of christ 4. years ; after the beginning of the raigne of scotland 326. a very modest , ciuill and good king , peace being vniuersally at the birth of our sauiour christ. the romane emperour augustus sent his ambassadours into britaine , requesting the britains to continue peace , with whom the king sent manyrich jewels to augustꝰ to be offered in their capitoll : he wan sure amity of them , which endured long . in this time were in rome v●…rgil , horace , o●…d , tullius , marcus varro , straba , titus , liuius salustius , with many other learned men : he died peaceably the nine and thirtieth yeare , of his raigne ; buried in dunstaffage . 18 caratacvs metellanus sisters sonne succeeded in the yeare of the world 4005. in the yeare of christ 35. after the beginning of the raigne of scotland 365. he enioying the great treasure and riches , left by king metellanus , exceeded all the kings in albion in riches , being wise and valiant , pacifying his realme from all vprore and rebellion , specially in the isles , and executing seuere iustice . the britaine 's at this time rebelling against the romanes , sent their ambassadors to caratacus , desiring support against the romanes , he first reproching them for their wilfull refusall . the scots offering them support , wisely counselling them to solicite the normanes , picards , barteners and all them on the sea coast , to rebell against them , and to kill the souldiers , promising assistance of the kings of albion , with money and valiant warriours , both by sea and land . the romanes shortly inuading the britaines in a dangerous battell vanquished them , and killed their king claudius emperour : and vespasian comming into britaine subdued them againe , and passing into orkney subdued the same , and brought ganus king of orkney his wife and children in his triumph to rome . the britaines comming to yorke , made new insurrection , assisted by caratacus king of scots , and congestus king of pictes , against whom plancius romane gouernour , and aruiragus then king of britaines came with a great armic . caratacus being elected generall , there followed a cruell and dangerous battell , with vncertaine victory vntill the night separated them on either parties : plancius on the morrow seeing his great losse , specially of his horsemen , returned to london , and caratacus returned to yorke : the next yeare vespasian with many legions of romanes were sent into britaine . aruiragus assisting with the rest of the britains , conuened at yorke threescore and fiue thousand chosen men . the consederate kings came with threescore thousand valiant warriours : there was a terrible and cruell battell . the albions ( notwithstanding their great valiantnesse , were discomfited by the prudent gouernement of vespasian , the king of pictes killed , the whole britaines being killed except sixe hundred with their king. caratacus returned with a few number to brigance . vespasian wintered in yorke , and in the spring besieged and wanne camelon , wherein was found many rich monuments and jewels , with a precious crowne of gold , set about with many precious stones of diuers colours , with a sword with hilts of golde , which uespasian vsed in all his warres , hee remayning in camelon . cara●…s assembled a new armie , against whom plancius was sent with a great armie ; a cruell battell ensued . the victory at last succeeded to the romanes . the rest of the scots ( that escaped this sorrowfull battell ) were fugitiue to the mountaines . king caratacus sore wounded , was brought with great difficulty to dunstaffage . vespasian sending his messengers to caratacus , promising ( if he would be obedient to the romane empire ) that he should remaine in honours , and be reputed and holden as a friend to the senate , and people of rome ; who answered that the kingdome of scotland was as free to him as the kingdome of romanes was to caesar. vespasian returning to rome caratacus assembling a new army ; the romanes encountering him with a great multitude , there followed a cruel and terrible battel , long with vncertaine victory ; at the last the romanes obteyned victory . caratacus returned to dunstaffage . plancius dying at camelon , ostorius scapula was sent by the emperor in his place , who after sundry rebellions of the britaine 's conquered them , he came within the bounds of scotland . caratacus gathered a new armie of forty thousand valiant men ; there ensued a dangerous and terrible battell , the victory succeding at last to the romans . caratacus wife , his daughter and brother were taken , himselfe returning to cartamunda his step-mother , queene of scots ( in whom he trusted ) but vnworthily he was by her betrayed , and rendered to the romanes . king caratacus was sent with his wife , daughter and brother to rome , where he was greatly admired , and honourably of the emperour entertayned , and remitted freely with his queene , daughter , and brother to returne home , restoring all his lands againe , he remayning the rest of his daies in good peace , died the twentieth yeare of his raigne , and buried in dunstaffage . 19 corbredvs primus , succeeded his brother caratacus in the yeare of the world 4025. in the yeare of christ 55 after the raigne 385. a wife king and good iusticiar . he conuented his nobles , and tooke counsaile of venisius , the husband of cartamunda his step-mother , queene of scots , who by erafty sleights had taken the aforesaid venisius her husband , and sundry of his friends , and deteyned them prisoners , purposing to render them into the romanes hands . the king impatient thereof , came and relieued them , commaunding her to be buried quicke : after a cruell battell betweene the romanes and the scots and pictes , peace was concluded . the romanes shall possesse the lands of britaine by them conquered , without inuading of scots or pictes , then after by commaund of nero . veraneus was sent into britaine , who shortly died , woada , sister to corbredus queene of britaine , sent to her brother , complayning of her miserie & trouble , her daughters deflowred , her selfe shamefully beaten by vnmercifull romanes . corbredus moued herewith , renued the band with the pictes , and they raysing a great armie , killed all the romanes they might apprehend , and wanne in their iourney barwicke , being then the most populous towne of that region . in this time there came a people called murrayes out of almaine , with their captain rodrik , put forth and expelled out of their natiue land , being inhibited to land in france and britain , arriued in forth between louthiane and fiffe . they were sworne enemies to the romanes , reioycing greatly that they might haue occasion to be reuenged vpon their enemies ; requesting the confederate kings to suffer them to passe formost , in support of their people ; and ( if it chanced the romanes to be vanquished ) to graunt them wiues that they might encrease vnder one bloud with the scots . their conditions were graunted to the murrayes . the confederate king with the murrayes went forwards , and ioyning with the valiant queene of britaines woada , who reioycing of her brother king corbredus and the king of picts comming , after an oration and comfottable speech made by her : proffering her with fiue thousand ladies , armed to passe in the front of the battell , against the vnmercifull and shamefull deflowrers of virgins and matrons , the cruell romanes . the confederate kings allowing her courage , past forwards , cattus the romane gouernor with arrayed armes came to resist them : there followed a sharpe battell : the horsemen of the romanes being vanquisht , the rest were fugitiue with cattus , sore wounded escaped and returned into fraunce . the albions departed the spoyle and riches of this field amongst them , and killed the romanes in all parts where they might apprehend them : in this battell were killed threescore and ten thousand romanes , and thirty thousand albions , had not swetonius romane legate come hastily into britaine , with two legions and ten thousand warriours of sundry nations , the albions had beene perpetually deliuered of the romanes : woada the queene hearing of the new armie of romanes , assembled a new and great armie of britaines , scots and pictes , and murrayes ; there followed a bloudy and terrible battell . at last the albions being vanquished , fourescore thousand killed : the murrayes almost killed with their captaine roderik , woada killed her selfe , to escape the iniury of the romanes ; her two daughters were taken and brought armed to swetonius . the eldest daughter was married vnto a noble romane named marius , who after was by command of caesar made king of britaines . corbredus broken with this sorrowfull battell , returned with the rest of his armie into scotland , and gaue to the rest of the murrayes ( that escaped out of the field ) all the lands betweene spey and innernes , which lands were called after them murray land : for the olde inhabitants being seditious and troublesome were partly expelled . the murrayes were then marryed vnto scottish virgins , and remained vnder one bloud & friendship . corbredus the king continued the rest of his daies in peace , and died the eighteenth yeare of his raigne : buried in dunstaffage . 20 dardanvs nephew to metellanus succeeded , being a lusty person , faire of visage and body : hee was welbeloued of the people , in the yeare of the world 4042. the yeare of christ 72. after the raigne 402. he appeared in the beginning to be a good king ; but being within three yeares degenerate , became an odious tyrant , and would haue trayterously caused to be slaine , the two sonnes of corbredus remayning in the isle of man vnder discipline . this tyrant at last was killed in battell , and beheaded by his nobles the fourth yeare of his raigne , without buriall . 21 corbredvs secundus , surnamed galdus , corbredus primus son succeeded , an excellent person , endowed with sundry vertues and high prerogatiues , in the yeare of the world 4046. the yeare of christ 76. after the beginning of the raigne 406. a valiant and couragious king. he renewed many battels against the romanes , and was often victorious : at this time arriued in forth a company of almaines , named vs●…pians , banished out of their natiue land ; for killing of a romane captaine and his band , they were pleasantly receiued , and ordayned certain lands to be inhabited by them , beside the murrayes , for they were of one bloud . agricola remayning in britaine eight yeares with his romanes , had sundry victories against the scots and picts . domitian the emperour , enuying agricolaes prosperous estate in britaine , sent hastily letters for him ; at whose comming to rome he was poysoned by commaund of the said domitian . gvenvs tabellivs was made gouernor of britaine , dissention engendred among the romanes for the gouernement . king corbredus surnamed galdus ( being by his explorators ) aduertised hereof , came with a new armie of scots and pictes against the romanes : and finally their captain with many romans were killed . the scots with the picts following the whole day ; and killing them where they might apprehend them . the king assembling the scottes and pictes , parted the rich spoyle of their enemies amongst them as they had deserued . afterward the scots and pictes pursued cruelly in all parts the romanes . the romanes conuenting them , elected chelius to be their gouernour , there followed a most dangerous battell , at last the romanes were vanquished and pursued with continuall killing vnto calidon wood . the confederate kings came with their armies into brigance : the romanes assembled themselues in most fearefull ordinance , a company of britaines ( sent by marius their king , in support of the romanes ) came to the confederate kings . there followed a terrible and bloudy battell , the romanes being vanquished and compelled to retire to their tents with great killing of them , defended their tents with great manhood , vntill the night approched . the scots were vigilant all night , and attending that their enemies should not escape ; others were making engines to breake downe their tents , and trenches . the romanes seeing so great preparation against them , and no way to escape the danger , sent their orators to the confederate kings , most humbly entreating peace , on what conditions pleased them . after long consultation , peace was graunted . the romanes to passe and render all lands , forts and munitions pertayning to scots and pictes , with all the goods taken violently from them during the warres , and to remaine their friends at all times after . after this most valiant king corbredus galdus , came to epiake the principall citie then of scotland . the rest of his dayes he continued in peace , exercising seuere iustice : he died peaceably the fiue and thirtieth yeare of his raigne : buried in dunstaffage . 22 lvctacvs succeeded his father corbredus galdus in the yeare of the world 4080. in the yeare of christ 110. after the raigne 440. an odious and cruel tyrant , killed by his nobles the third yeare of his raigne : buried in dunstaffage . 23 mogaldvs corbredus secundus sisters sonne , succeeded the yeare of the world 4083. the yeare of christ 113. after the raigne 443. a good king and victorious in the beginning of his raigne , gouerning his people with great iustice , and obtayned a great victory against lucius and his romanes , by the assistance of the pictes in westmerland and camber ; obteyning a rich spoyle of the romanes , which they parted by law of armes . afterwards the king did degenerate into a cruell tyrant . in his time adrian the emperour came into britaine , and builded the wall of adrian , deuiding the britaines from the scottes and pictes a great wall made of fewell , and earth , and turues , from the mouth of tyne , ouer against the almaine seas , to the floud of eske , at the irish seas fourescore miles in length : he was killed by his nobles for his tyrannie and odious life the thirty sixt yeare of his raigne : buried at dunstaffage . 24 conarvs succeeded his father mogaldus the yeare of the world 4119. the yeare of christ 149. after the raigne 479. a cruell tyrant , degraded and imprisoned by his nobles ( and ardgadus captaine of ardgile , made gouernour , a good and seuere iusticiar ) he died in prison the foureteenth yeare of his raigne : buried in dunsstaffage . 25 ethodivs primus mogaldus sisters sonne , succeeded the yeare of the world 4133. the yeare of christ 163. after the raigne 493. a good iusticiar , who holding sundry battels against the romane captaines victorine trebellius and pertinax , neere the wall of adrian , & ministring good iustice , oppressing rebels , was trayterously killed by an harper ( whom he trusted ) the three and thirtieth yeare of his raigne ; buried in dunstaffage . this harper was most cruelly executed . 26 satrael ethodius primus succeeded the yeare of the world 4165. the yeare of christ 195. after the raigne 525. a cruell tyrant : he was slaine by one of his courtiers the fourth yeare of his raigne : buried in dunstaffage . 27 donaldvs primus , firstchristian king of scotland , succeeded his brother satrael , in the yeare of the world 4169. in the yeare of christ 199. from the beginning of the raigne of scotland 529. a good and religious king ( in his time seuerus the emperour came into britaine ) after many incursions made by the scots and pictes , in abolishing the wall of adrian . anthonius seuerus sonne gouerned britaine , and builded and repaired the wall of adrian strongly with towers seuerus dying . anthonius killing his brother getus , was emperour . he was the first that coined money of golde and siluer , and imbraced the christian faith : he died in peace the eighteenth yeare of his raigne ; buried in dunstaffage . 28 ethodivs secundus ethodius 1. sonne , succeeded in the yeare of the world 4186. the yeare of christ 216. after the raigne 546. anvnwise and base minded king : the realme prudently gouerned by his nobles , he was killed by his guard the sixteenth yeare of his raigne , buried in dunstaffage . 29 athirco succeeded his father ethodius , the yeare of the world 4201. the yeare of christ 231. after the raigne 561. a good prince in his beginning ; afterwards being degenerate , and pursued by his nobles , for his vitious life ( killed himselfe ) the twelfth yeare of his raigne . 30 nathalocvs succeeded in the yeare of the world 4212. the yeare of christ 242. after the raigne 572. a cruell tyrant , killed by his nobles ( vsurped the crowne ) the eleuenth yeare of his raigne . 31 findocvs athicroes sonne , succeeded the yeare of the world 4223. the yeare of christ 253. after the raigne 583. a good and valiant king : hee was killed at a hunting , by instigation of his brother carance , and donald lord of the isles . the traytors killers of him being tormented to death , and carance exiled the eleuenth yeare of his raigne , buried in dunstaffage . 32 donaldvs secundus , succeeded his brother findocus the yeare of the world 4234. the yeare of christ 264. after the raigne 594. a good king : he was wounded in battell ; and being vanquished by the insurrection of donald of the isles , three thousand of his armie killed , and two thousand with their king taken , the third day with melancholy died , the first yeare of his raigne , buried in dunstaffage . 33 donaldvs tertius lord of the isles ( vsurped the crowne ) the yeare of the world 4235. the yeare of christ 265. after the raigne 595. a cruell tyrant , killed by crathalinthus his successor ( at which time there was vniuersall persecution of the christians vnder the empire of decius ) the twelfth yeare of his raigne . 34 crathilinthvs findocus son , succeeded the year of the world 4247. the year of christ 277. after the raigne 607. a valiant good iusticiar , and godly king. hee purged the land of superftition , planting the true christian religion . in this time chaunced in the hunting betweene scots and pictes discord , so hastily that there were many killed on both parties . carance brother to findocus or carasus 77. britaine king , exiled for suspition of his slaughter , was long in the romanes warres , with dioclesian emperour , and vsing himselfe valiantly , returned into albion with many valiant warriours and great riches , placed his people in westmerland , being reconciled with the king , he at length agreed the two long confederate kings & people . carance assisted by the twoconfederate kings with a great army in three battels , comming to yorke , was resisted by quintꝰ bassianus , captain of britains , whom he killed , with many valiant romans . after this battell victoriously won , against the romans , & the rich spoyle , parted according to the law of arms , carance with his victorious armie , past to london , where he was receiued with great reuerence , and possessed the crowne of britaine , contrary to the empire of the romans ; reteyning in his companytwo thousand scots & picts continually for a guard , he being assaulted in battel by the romanes and britaines , was alway victorious . the seuenth yeare of his raigne in britaine hee was killed by alectus romane captaine . king crathalinthus ended the rest of his dayes in good peace , and died the foure and twentieth yeare of his raigne , buried at dunstaffage . 35 fincormacvs father , brother sonne to crathilinthus , succeeded the yeare of the world 4271. the yeare of christ 301. after the raigne 631. a godly valiant king : he was a worthy promoter of christian religion in scotland ; at which time traherus romane captaine with many legions sent by constantinus emperour into britaine , to represse octauius then king of britaines , being expelled , was fugitiue in scotland . traherus assembling a great armie against the king of scots , and octauius king of britaines ( whom the foresaid king of scots refused to render ) being solicited friendly , and therefore sharpely and proudly manaced by the said traherus , followed a cruell and dangerous battell ; the romanes finally vanquished , and sixteene thousand of the romanes killed , and fifteene thousand albions . fincormacus and octauius pursued vntill they came to yorke , where the two kings were pleasantly receiued by the nobles of britaine . octauius restored to the crowne fincormacus for his assistance was perpetually confirmed with an oath to him and his successors , the lands of westmerland and cumber ( which carance had graunted in his time to the scots and pictes for the assistance of him by king crathilinthus against the romanes ) king fincormacus continued the rest of his dayes in peace with the britaines and pictes , and died the seuen and fortieth yeare of his raigne , buried in dunstaffage . 36 romachvs brother , sonne to crathilinthus , succeeded in the yeare of the world 4318. in the yeare of christ 348. after the raigne 678. a cruell tyrant , killed and beheaded by his nobles : the third yeare of his raigne ; in whose time arrius beganne , and ireland became christians . 37 angvsianvs crathilinthus brother sonne , succeeded in the yeare of the world 4321. in the yeare of christ 351. after the raigne 681. a good and valiant king ; nectanus king of picts , to reuenge the killing of romanes , gathered an armie against the scots , there followed a sharp battell . the scots being victorious , and many of the nobles of the pictes killed , and their king fugitiue vnto camelon their principall citie . after that the pictes renued battell , and came to the wood of calidone , where the king of scots with a great armie ioyned battell , with great cruelty , both the kings were killed , and many of their nobles , the third yeare of his raigne , buried in dunstaffage without succession . 38 fetheimachvs another brother , sonne to crathilinthus succeeded in the yeare of the world 4324. in the yeare of christ 354. after the raigne 684. hee was a good and valiant king , and victorious against the pictes , and killed their king in battell : he was trayterously murthered in his owne chamber by two distembling pictes and an harper . the third yeare of his raigne , buried in dunstaffage . the murtherers were apprehended and most cruelly tormented . at this time s. andrewes church was builded by the king of pictes , at the request of saint rewell . 39 evgenivs primus fincormacus sonne , succeeded in the yeare of the world 4327. in the yeare of christ 357. after the raigne 687. a vasiant , iust , and good king : he was killed in battell , his brother taken , and all his nobles killed with fifty thousand of his armie by the cruelty of the romanes , britains , and deceitfull pictes , and the whole nation of scottes , exiled a long time , the third yeare of his raigne . 40 fergvsivs secundus , erthus sonne to ethodius eugenius , the first brother , returning into scotland by support of danes , gothes , and his owne countrey men gathered vnto him out of all partes ( where they were dispersed ) conquered his realme of scotland , out of the romans and pictes hands , beginning his ragne in the yeare of the world 4374. in the year of christ 404. from the beginning of the realm of scotland 734. he was a wise , valiant , good and godly king , being confederate with the pictes : he was sundry times victorious against the romanes : at the last he was killed in a battell by the romanes the sixteenth yeare of his raigne , buried in icolukill . 41 evgenivs secundus , fergusius second sonne , succeeded his father in the yeare of the world 4390. in the yeare of christ 420. from the beginning of the raigne of scotland 750. he was a valiant and good king ; in sundry battels victorious against the romanes and britaines : at which time maximian the romane gouernour of britaine made insurrection against the romanes , and cruelly inuaded the land then called armorica , and killed the most part of all the people there , that it should not be a prey to frenchmen their neighbours ; he brought out of britaine a great multitude of people to inhabite the same , some authours write there came a hundred thousand men out of britaine with conanus , who was made king of that land , and called the same land bartany , or litle britaine , after the britaines that came to inhabite there . then after they sent into britaine for women to bee their wiues : at whose request vrsula ( called s. vrsula ) with eleuen thousand virgins were imbarked to passe bartany . they all by contrary and tempestuous windes were compelled to arriue in the low countreyes , iourneying by land to bartany , were all lamentably murthered and killed , because they would not suffer deflowring of their bodies , but rather offered themselues to be cruelly and vnmercifully murthered and killed , after this vnhappy and cruel murther , other women and virgins were sent in great number into bartany , who inhabite that land continually to this day . britaine being desolate of romane support , was occasion that the confederate kings inuaded them after so hardly : for the valiant graham , who was descended of an ancient house of denmarke , and borne of a noble lady of the same countrey , married with a scots noble man , that was exiled out of scotland with ethodius ( brother to king eugenius afore rehearsed , killed in battell by romanes and pictes . this graham married a virgin of the bloud royall of denmark , to whom she bare a daughter of excellent beauty , who was married to fergusius the second king of scots : of him descended the auncient surname of grahams : hee was a great enemy to the romanes ; for hee destroyed to the ground the wall of abircorne , called then after grahams dykes , and past and all vtterly abolished the wall of adrian ouer against the irish seas . the confederate kings accompanied with valiant graham , past with fire and sword through al the bounds betweene tyne and humber : there followed a most dangerous battell , in the which were killed fifteene thousand britains , with the most of the princes and nobles of britaine , and foure thousand scots , and the whole romanes being exiled out of britaine by the confederate kings ; and peace being concluded betweene the confederate kings and the britaines , all the lands lying beyond humber shall remaine perpetually vnder the empire of the confederate kings , and presently to be paide threescore thousand pound to their men of warre , and twentie thousand pound yearely to the confederate kings : and for obseruing hereof , the britaines deliuered one hundred pledges , being within age of thirty yeares , at the will of the confederate kings . in the seuenth yeare of the raigne of eugenius second king of scottes , britaine was deliuered from romane tribute 496. years after that iulius caesar began the first tribute . eugenius encreased in riches and policy , his realme with continuall peace . in the same time the britaines falling at great diuersity , betweene the nobles and commons there were many of both parties miserably killed , he died in peace the one and thirtieth yeare of his raigne ; buried in icolmkill . 42 dongardvs succeeded his brother eugenius the yeare of the world 4421. the yeare of christ 451. after the raigne 781 a godly , wise , and valiant king , in a dangerous and cruell battell betweene constantine , new elected king of britaines , wherein were killed sixteene thousand britaines and foureteene thousand scots and pictes ; the victory falling to the confederates , the king of scottes valiantly fighting , was killed the fift yeare of his raigne ; and buried in icolmkil , which was the buriall for the kings vntill king malonus camors dayes . 43 constantinvs primus , succeeded to his brother dongardꝰ the year of the world 4427. in the year of christ 457. from the beginning of the raign 787 a vitious & odious king killed by one of his nobles , whose daughter he had defloured the 22. yeare of his vnwort hy raigne . 44 congallvs dongardus sonne succeeded in the yeare of the world 4449. the yeare of christ 479. after the raigne 809. a valiant king , he vanquished the brittaines in a cruell and daungerous battaile , wherein were killed 20000 brittaines with many nobles , with gvytell prince of wales , vortigern vsurping the crowne of brittaine , sent into almaine to fee warriours against the confederate kings , at which time came into brittaine hengest and horsus bretheren with 10000. saxons , immediately the brittaines and saxons past with arrayed battaile to humber , before the confederate kings were admonished of their comming , killing in all parts , without mercy where they came . the king of picts asse●…bled his army and ioyned battaile ( without support of the king of scots , ) where he was vanquished by the saxons and brittaines . the saxons proude of this victorie , and being resolued to conquer the kingdome of brittaine , past further . against them came king congalus with a great army , with the picts there followed a cruell battaile , with vncertaine victorie , at last the brittaines ( that fought in the right wing , against the scots ) being fugitiue , there chaunced a mighty shower of haile with great darknesse : hengist by sounde of trumpet gathered his people to his standard . the scottes and pictes ( hoping their enemies to be vanquished ) followed on the bir●…taines without array . hengist the brittaines vanquisht and the confederate people without order killing and spoyling , he came with his saxons in arrayed battaile , and killed all the confederates that might be ouertaken . this battaile was right sorrowfull to the confederate people , and not pleasant to their enemies , for the most part of the army of brittaines were killed , hengist obteyning new support out of saxony , the next summer came with vortimer king vortigerus sonne , with a great armie : there followed a cruell and long battell , valiantly debated on all parts , with sundry chances ; for many scots and britaines being killed congallus euill wounded , was brought out of the field . long time then after ambrosius ( when he had vanquished uortigern ) and being crowned king of britaine , confederate with the scots and pictes , he assisted by them , and killed with his owne hands hengist , and exiled the rest of the saxons . king congallus ( holding good pcace with britaines and pictes , vexed with long infirmity ) died peace ably the two and twentieth year of his raign , and buried in icolmkill . 45 coranvs succeeded his brother congallus in the yeare of the world 4471. the yeare of christ 501. after the raign 831. a good king and seuere iusticiar . in this time arriued in britaine occa and passentius , sonnes of hengist , with a great multitude of valiant souldiers ( assisted by the princes of almaine , against whom came king ambrosius . there followed a doubtfull and dangerous battell ; the victory enclining to ambrosius , yet very vnpleasant ; for at the same time there were many britaine 's killed . neuerthelesse they parted the spoile of saxons by right of armes . occa being aduertised of the comming of the confederate kings to assist ambrosius , sent his brother passentius to bring greater support out of almaine , by contrary windes he arriued in ireland , where he gathered a great number of hyred warriours , and returned into britaine . occa perswaded one coppa a fained mediciner to poison king ambrosius ; the confederate kings comming with a strong armie to assist ambrosius , were aduertised of his death : therefore they not knowing who was friend or foe ; and being vncertaine how he died , they returned home : arthurus being king of britaines , assisted by the scots and pictes , obtayned sundry victories against the saxons . the confederate nobles abode certaine dayes in london . and being richly rewarded by king arthurus , returned home . the realme of scotland was gouerned in great felicity and iustice by king coranus . then after certaine traytors ( assisted by donald captaine of athole ) murthered the king in his chamber the foure and thirtieth yeare of his raigne , in the sixteenth yeare of the raigne of king arthurus , and in the twentieth yeare of iustinian emperour , the yeare of christ 535. he was buried at icolmkil . 46 evgenivs tertius congallus first sonne , succeeded in the yeare of the world 4505. in the yeare of christ 535. after the raigne 865. a wise godly king , and good iusticiar : he continued in good peace all his dayes , and died the three and twentieth yeare of his raigne , and buried at icolmkill . 47. congallvs secundus , succeeded his brother eugenius the yeare of the world 4528. the yeare of christ 558. after the raigne 888. a good , iust , and godly prince : he instituted many good lawes concerning churches and churchmen : hee died in peace the eleuenth yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill ; in whose time was s. colme and s. mungo . 48 kinnatellvs succeeded his brother congallus , the yeare of the world 4539. the yeare of christ 569 after the raigne 899. a good and godly king : hee died in peace the first yeare of his raigne , and buried at icolmkill . 49 aidanvs coranus sonne , succeeded in the yeare of the world 4540. the yeare of christ 570. after the beginning of the raigne of scotland 900. he was a valiant and good king , and seuere iusticiar : he confederated with the britaine 's against the saxons and pictes : there followed sundry battels ; at last the britaines and scottes came into northumberland against the saxons , and pictes ; and vanquished them in a dangerous battell ; the tenth part of the spoyie obtained in the field was dedicated to the churches of scotland , and the banners or ensignes gotten at that time , sent to icolmkill : he died in peace the fiue and thirtieth yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . 50 kennethvs primus , congallus second sonne , succeeded in the yeare of the world 4575. the yeare of christ 605. after the raigne 935. a good and peaceable prince . he died the first yeare of his raigne , and was buried in icolmkill . 51 evgenivs quartus aidanus sonne , succeeded in the yeare of the world 4576. the ye●…re of christ 606. after the raigne 936. he was a godly and good iusticiar , and instituted many godly and good lawes for the common-wealth of his subiects : he raigned peaceably , and died in peace the fifteenth yeare of his raigne ; buried in icolmkill . 52 ferchardvs primus , succeeded his father eugenius , the yeare of the world 4591. the yeare of christ 621. after the raigne 951. a vitious tyrant , degraded by his nobles , and imprisoned : he killed himselfe in prison the eleuenth yeare of his raigne . 53 donaldvs quartus succeeded his father ferchardus the yeare of the world 4602. the yeare of christ 632. after the raigne 962. a good and religious king. holding peace , with his neighbours , being at fishing with his seruants for pastime , he perished in lothay the foureteenth yeare of his raign , his body being found , was buried in icolmkill . 54 ferchardvs secundus succeeded his brother donaldus , in the yeare of the world 4616. in the yeare of christ 646. after the raigne 976. an auaritious and vitious tyrant , bitten by a wolfe in hunting , whereof ensued a dangerous feuer , being penitent of his euill life . he died the eighteenth yeare of his raigne , buried at icolmkill . 55 maldvinvs donaldus sonne , succeeded in the yeare of the world 4634. in the yeare of christ 664. after the raigne 994. he was a godly and wise king , and a seuere iusticiar , holding good peace with his neighbours . he was strangled by his wife in the night by suspition of adultery the twentie yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill , on the morrow his wife was taken with her complices , and burned to death . 56 evgenivs quintus , malduinus brother sonne succeeded in the yeare of the world 4654 in the yeare of christ 684 after the raigne 1014. he was a valiant and good king , he obteyned a great victory against edfreid king of northumberland , being killed with 10000 saxons , and bredius king of pictes fugitiue , he dyed the fourth yeare of his raigne , and buried in icolmkill . 57 evgenivs sixtus ferchardus secundus sonne , succeeded the yeare of the world 4658 the yeare of christ 688 after the raigne 1018 a good religious and peaceable king , he died in peace the 9. yeare of his raigne . buried in icolmkill . 58 amberkelethvs succeeded in the yeare of the world 4667. the yeare of christ 697 after the raigne 1027 an auaritious euill king , killed by a shot of an arro●… . the second yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . 59 evgenivs septimus succeeded his brother amberkelethus , in the yeare of the world 4669. in the yeare of christ 699. after the raigne 1029 a good king , contracting peace with the king of pictes then called garnard , married his daughter spontana , who being with childe , in the next yeare , was murthered in her bedde insteed of the king , by two brethren of athole ( who had conspired the kings death . ) the murtherers at length were apprehended , and cruelly put to death . he continued a religions and vertuous king , he endewed sundry churches liberally , holding good peace with his neighbours , died in peace the 16 yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . 60 mordacvs sonne to amberkelethus , succeeded in the yeare of the world 4685 in the yeare of christ 715 after the raigne 1045 an humble and liberall prince , he caused peace to be made in all brittaine , amongst the brittaines , saxons , scots and pictes , he repaired many decayed churches , and builded quhitthorne . in his time was saint beda , he died peaceably the 16. yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . 61 etfinvs eugenius seuenth sonne succeeded in the yeare of the world 4700. in the yeare of christ 730. after the raigne 1060. a godly wise king , and seuere iusticiar , holding his realme in good peace , his people encreasing in riches and religion , he being aged elected foure regents . the thaues of ardgiele , athole , galloway and murray to doe iustice to his subiects , which was not obserued , he died in peace the 31. yeare of his raigne , buried at icolmkill . 62 evgenivs octauus mordacus sonne succeeded in the yeare of the world 4731. in the yeare of christ 761. after the raigne 1091. a good king & seuere iusticiar in the beginning , for he executed to death donald the tyrant , lord of the isles , and the earle of galloway for assenting to his vices , then after he being degenerate vnto all abhominable vices , he was killed by his nobles , the third yeare of his raigne , and buried in icolmkill , his familiars and seruants asisting to his vicious life , were all hanged vppon gibets , to the great contentment of his whole subiects . 63 fergvsivs tertius etfinus sonne succeeded in the yeare of the world 4734. in the yeare of christ 764. after the raigne 1094. he married ethtolia daughter to the king of pictes , he was a leacherous adulterer , and being admonished continued still in whoredome , at last he was murthered by his wife , and sundry of his familiar seruants , who being sharply therefore accused , his wife hearing thereof , came into iudgement and relieued those innocent men , confessing the fact , and imediately stabbing her selfe to the heart with a dagger , died in presence of the whole people . the king was buried in icolmkill the third yeare of his raigne . 64 solvathivs eugenius eight sonne , succeeded in the yeare of the world 4737. in the yeare of christ 767. after the raigne 1097. a noble valiant king , he married the king of brittaines daughter , she bare to him two sonnes and one daughter . he being troubled with the gow●…e gouerned his people , by his captaines and commaunders , seuerely executing iustice , and subduing sundry rebels , especially banus captaine of the isle of tyre , who assembled a great company of rebels and calling himselfe king. he died peaceably of the gowt , the 20. yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . 65 achaivs etfinus second sonne began his raigne in the yeare of the world 4757. in the yeare of christ 787. after the beginning of the raigne of scotland 1117. a good godly and peaceable king , he pacified insurrection both in scotland , and ireland , he contracted the band of amitie with charles the great , king of fraunce and emperour of germanye , which band hath continued inuiolably obserued vnto this present time . he married the foresaid charles the great his daughter , who bare to him three sonnes and one daughter . the amitie and confederation of frenchmen and scottes , to be made for euer both for the people present and their successours , and for corroborating of the said band . king achaius sent his brother gviiliam with sundry nobles into fraunce with 4000. valiant warriours to assist the foresaid charles in his warres , in any part he pleased to passe against the enemies of the christian faith , at which time the armes of the kings of scotland , were the red lyon rampant in a field of gold , there was augmented a double treasour with contrary lillies or flower-deluce including the lyon on all parts : guilliam , achaius brother assisting charles in his warres with his valiant scots , purchased great honour , and being so beloued and holden in great estimation among the princes of fraunce , that he was called the knight without reproach , and purchased great riches and lands , he prospered greatly in all his warres & vanquished sundry nations , rebelling against the emperour , he obteined great honours , the time that king charles restored pope leo the third to his seate , after that he was put out of rome by iniury of the romaines , he conquered great honours , when charles passing thorough tuskany , restored the cittie of florence to their auncient honours , after it was destroyed by the gothes , these and many other honourable acts were performed by scottish guilliam , howbeit they were done vnder the name of charles emperour , for he remained not long in italy , but left the charge to guilliam , who did all things with such prouidence , that he augmented the dominion of florence greatly . the florentine in recompence of guilliams humanitie towards them , ordeined solemne playes , to be made in their cittie , in which a lyon is crowned with sundry ceremonyes , they commaunded also quick lyons to be yearely nourished vpon the common purse , because the lyon was the armes of scottish guilliam . this is yet obserued in perpetuall memory . guilliam after infinite trauailes taken with charles the great , for the defence of christian faith grew in age , and because he had no succession of his body ( for he was all his daies giuen to chiualry ) he made christ his heire , and founded many abbaies in italy , almayn , and germanie , liberally distributing vnto them rich rents and lands , and ordeined that scottishmen onely should be abbots , to the same abbeyes . in witnesse hereof are many abbeys in almaine and germanie nothing changed from the first institution . at comming first of scottish guilliam there came two learned clarks with him from scotland , holden in great honour by the emperour for their singular learning , they obteined a place in paris which was giuen to them with certaine lands , to susteine their estate , and to instruct the noble mens children of fraunce , in sundry sciences . to these men came such confluence of people out of all parts , desiring learning , that in short time by their exact diligence in erudition of young children , the cittie of paris was made a solemne vniuersitie of resolute men in all science . the emperour charles hauing great delectation that learning began to flourish in his realme , by the great industry of those two scottish men , commaunded that clement should remaine as principall regent of paris : and iohn his colleague to passe to pauy , a towne of lumbardy for encreasing of learning there . this small beginning was the origenall of the famous vniuesitie of paris : king achaius , continuing in good peace , the romaine empire was deuided , for emperour charles the first emperour of germanes was emperour of the west and constantiue emperour of the east : achaius married fergusiane sister to hungus king of pictes who bare to him one sonne called alpine , who after succeeded to be king of scotland and right inheritour to the king of pictes . king achaius being aged died in peace , the 32. yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . 66 congallvs achaius cousen germane , began his raigne the yeare of the world 4789. in the yeare of christ 819. after the raigne 1149. a good and peaceable king. he died in peace the fift yeare of his raigne , buried at icolmkill . 67 dongallvs saluathius sonne , beganne his raigne the yeare of the world 4794. the yeare of christ 824. after the raigne 1154. a valiant and good king , sending his ambassadours to the pictes after the death of dorstologvs their king , killed by his brother eganus , who marrying his brothers wife brenna , daughter to the king of marches ; who after murthered the said eganus in his bedde ( notwithstanding his armed guard ) to reuenge the murther of her first husband . the scots ambassadours at commaund and in the name of alpinvs king achaius sonne , begotten betwixt him and fergusian , sister to hungus late king of pictes . the two brethren aforesaid being murthered , without succession , the right and title of the crowne of pictes , succeeded by the law of god and man to the aforesaid alpinus . therefore desiring the pictes to accept him as their naturall prince , both of scotland and picts land : which they refusing , elected feredech to be their king. the scots ambassadors denounced battell to the pictes . king dongallvs preparing a great armie to passe against the pictes , perished in a boat passing ouer the water of spey , the seuenth yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . 68 alpinvs achaius sonne , began his raigne the yeare of the world 4801. the yeare of christ 831. after the raigne 1161. a valiant and good king , being right heire to the crowne of pictes , in a dangerous and cruell battell , killed feredech their king : then after the pictes elected brvdvs his sonne king , who was killed the first yeare by sedition among the pictes . his brother kenneth was made king , who comming with an armie against the scots , rent off his coate armour , and was fugitiue to the mountaines , where hee was shamefully killed by a countryman ( not knowne who he was ) . the pictes immediatly elected a fierce and valiant prince brvdvs , to be their king ; who directing ambassadors to alpinus , desiring peace , all matters to be redressed , and the olde band to bee renued . king alpinus answered that he would make no peace vntill the crowne of pictes were deliuered vnto him as righteous inheritor . brudus raised a great armie , and came ouer the bridge of dunkeld to angusse . the night afore the battell he caused all the carriage men and women ( that came with his armie ) to stand in arrayed battell with linnen shirts aboue their clothes , with such weapons and armour as they might furnish for the time . this done , hee ordayned an hundred horsemen , to gouerne them , without any noyse or din in the next woode ; commaunding none of them to come in sight vntill the battels were ioyned . king alpinus was at this time in a castle , which was situate on a hill , not farre from dundee , and beheld the armie of pictes , marching forwards , incontinent he arrayed his scots , then the battel 's ioyned with great slaughter on all parts . immediatly the carriage men and women afore rehearsed , came mouing forwards vpon the backe of the scots ; who belieuing that a fresh armie of pictes were to come against them ( not looked for ) at the last the scottes were fugitiue : for this hidden sleight before rehearsed , was the discomfiture of the scots armie . the pictes followed with cruell killing of all they might ouertake . in this battell was king alpinus taken and beheaded . the place where he was beheaded , is called pasalpin , that is , the head of alpin ; his body was buried at icolmkill , the third yeare of his raigne . after this great victory obtayned against the scots , bredus king of the pictes returned to camelon , and conuocated a councell , making their oathes neuer to desist from battell , vntill they had vtterly destroyed the scots , and made a statute , what euer he was that laboured to haue peace with the scots , hee should be beheaded . some of the wise pictes , not allowing their oathes and statutes , counsailed to vse victory with measure ( who were exiled ) and came into scotland . 69 kennethvs secundus ( surnamed the great ) succeeded his father alpine the yeare of the world 4804. in the yeare of christ 834. after the beginning of the realme of scotland 1164. a good and valiant king : he married the lord of the isles daughter , who bare to him three sonnes . the pictes comming against the scots , they contended amongst themselues for a thing of nought : thus was their armie diuided , and many slaine ( vntill night seuered them ) king brudus could not pacifie them ; therefore hee with the rest of his armie past home ; and hee shortly after died for displeasure . donsken his brother was elected king , and redressed all iniuries that he might . three yeares continued sundry incursions on both parts . king kenneth setling his wits to defend his realme , putting strong souldiers in all forts , adioyning to the borders of the picts , and commaunded his people to be daily exercised in chiualry , to be ready against euery trouble that might occurre . in the fourth yeare king kenneth made a conuention of his nobles , consulting how hee might reuenge his fathers slaughter , and obtayne the crowne of pictes ( rightfully appertayning vnto him ) . the season of the yeare being expedient to raise their armie , the nobles not consenting thereunto for the great slaughter lately made on their king and nobles ; therefore the king conuenting all his nobles , perswading them that hee had greater matters to propound . by solemne banquet within his palace , he royally entertayning them , vntill darke night : after they were brought to seueral chambers within the palace : and when they were in profound sleepe , the king caused sundry men to passe to euery seuerall bedde ( where the nobles did lie ) cladde with fish skinnes , hauing in their handes a clubbe of muscane tree , which with the fish skinnes in the darke did shew a marueilous glaunce and light all at one time ; each one holding in the other hands a bugle horne , and speaking through the horne ( appearing to be no mortall mans voice ) did shew they were angels sent by god to the princes and nobles of scotland , to cause them to obey the desires of the king ; for his desire was so iust and right , that the pictes for repulse thereof shall be brought to such extermination , that no puisance nor wisedome of man can resist : their speeches ended , they obscured their clubbe and skinnes vnder their cloathes ; their light vanishing at one time . the nobles seeing this vncouth vision , were astonisht , and tooke little rest that night : on the morrow at their conuention , each one declaring their visions , ( all being at one time ) concluded firmely the same to be no fantasie , but an heauenly vision ; assuring them of victory and felicity , reuealing the same to the king , who assured them that the same vision appeared to him the samehoure ( howbeit he would not first reueale it ) least his nobles should esteeme him glorious . by generall statute all able persons were commaunded sufficiently prepared to meet the king on an appointed day . in two battles the king being victorious against the pictes , to their vtter extermination , king donsken and all his nobles being killed , his sword and coat armour , were sent to icolmkill in perpetuall memory . the citie of camelon after long assault , was vtterly destroyed , and the pictes , men , wiues and children killed , after they had raigned in albion 1181. yeares . king kenneth instituted many good lawes , and brought the fatall chaire from ardgiel to scone , adding the realme of pictes to his dominion . this victorious king died the twentieth yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . 70 donaldvs quintus , kennethus brother began his raigne in the yeare of the world 4824. in the yeare of christ 854. after the raigne 1184. a vitious & odious king ; his people made effeminate by his vices and sensuall pleasures ; his nobles admonishing him to reforme his euill life ; he continuing still without reformation . the pictes that were fugitiue amongst the englishmen , requesting osbraed and ella , two great princes of england , to moue warres against the scots : these two princes , with englishmen , britaines , and pictes , came into the warres , where king donaldus vanquished them in a great battell at iedbrugh . donald right insolent after this victory , came to the water of tweed with his armie ; and finding two ships laden with wines and victuals , which were taken and parted amongst his warriours . king donald was giuen to such voracity and lust of his wombe ( the whole campe vsing the same ) and being ful of tauernes , brothels and whores , followed dicing and carding , with contention and killing one another . king osbraed being aduertised hereof , preparing a new armie , came suddenly on the scots , and killed twenty thousand , being without armour , full of wine and sleepe . and king donald was taken in manner aforesaid , and ledde through the countrey in derision to all people . at which time king osbraed conquered great landes in scotland , assisted by britaines ; so that striuiling bridge was made marches to scots , britaines , and englishmen . king osbred coined money in the castle of striuiling ( by whom the striuiling money had first beginning ) . king donald being ransomed , returned into scotland , continuing in his vitious and abhominable life . he was taken by his nobles , and imprisoned ; where hee desperately killed himselfe the fift yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . 71 constantinvs secundus kennethus sonne , began his raigne in the yeare of the world 4829. the yeare of christ 859. after the raigne 1189. a valiant king : hee married the prince of wales his daughter : she bare to him two sonnes and one daughter . hee instituted sundry good lawes for churchmen , and repressed all vitious vices engendred amongst his subiects by donald the ●…yrant , his predecessor ; in whose time hungar and hubba with a great fleete of danes landing in fiffe , vsed great cruelty ; a great number of religious persons being fugitiue in the isle of maye , with adrian their bishop , were all cruelly tormented and killed by the vnmercifull danes . constantine came with a great armie against hubba , and vanquished him . the scots being proude of this victory , and neglecting themselues , there followed a cruell and desperate battell : at last the scots were vanquished , and king constantine with his nobles , and ten thousand of his armie , killed in the fifteenth yeare of his raigne ; buried in icolmkill . 72 ethvs surnamed the swift , constantinus secundus fonne , began his raigne the yeare of the world 4844. the yeare of christ 874. after the raigne 1204. a luxurious prince , taken by his nobles and imprisoned ; where he died the third day of melancholy the second yeare of his raigne and buried in icolmkill . 73 gregorivs magnus , dongallus sonne , began his raign in the yeare of the world 4846. the year of christ 876. after the beginning of the raign of scotland 1206. he was but two moneths olde when his father perished in the water of spey , a valiant and greatly renowned prince in ●…ll parts : he instituted good lawes for his subiects ; and being very religious , ordeyned good lawes for churches and churchmen , and that all kings his successors at their coronation , should make their oath to defend the christian religion . he obtained great victory against danes and britains : and recouering all his lands lost in king donalds time , enlarged his bounds with northumberland , cumber and westmerland ; and being confederate with alurede king of england , the foresaid lands to remaine perpetually to be possessed by the scots . then after the king to represse irishmen , that were come into scotland , who had robbed the people , and made sundry incursions , he followed with a great armie ; and landing in ireland , vanquished brennius and cornelius , two princes of ireland with the whole nobles of ireland , and vanqu●…shed sundry townes , and besieged dublin with a strong siege , where their young prince duncane was , to whom the crowne of ireland appertained : at last the towne was rendred ( and the king made protector during the princes minority ) with all the fortes , and threescore pledges . the king returning with his victorious armie , and the pledges of the nobles of ireland ; and holding good peace the rest of his dayes , he died in peace the eighteenth yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill : he builded thecitie of aberdene . 74 donaldvs sixtus sonne to constantinus secundus , began his raigne in the yeare of the world 4864. in the yeare of christ 894. after the raigne 1234. a valiant prince and godly : he punished with great seuerity the blasphemers of the name of god : he married the king of britains daughter ; she bare to him one sonne and a daughter . at this time rovvland king of denmarke , gathered or conuened a great multitude of danes out of england , norway , swed●…icke , and denmarke ; and pastthrough fraunce , committing great cruelty vpon the people there . and because charles the great then emperour , was implicat with frequent warres in italy , against the sarazens . the danes raged with such open cruelty , that great bonds of france appeared to come vnder their dominion . emperour charles after his returne from italy , came with a great armie to resist the danes , and they ( nothing affraid ) went forward to meete him in their awfull manner . the princes of fraunce , knowing the great ferocity of the danes , proued and exercised in all partes where they were assayled ; and seeing them by frequent victory so insolent , that but by great slaughter they might not be vanquished , perswaded the emperour charles to make peace with the said rowland , that their realme should not be in ieopardy or put to extreme danger , through the wers both in italy and fraunce . peace was corroborate and contracted with the danes on this manner : the emperour charles his daughter shall be giuen in marriage to rowland , and hee with all the danes , shall receiue the christian faith , and in the name of dowry , shall haue all the landes which were named newstria , lying betwixt deip , picardy , paris , and bartany . these landes were then after rowland called normandy . rowland made king of normandy by receipt of baptisme , was named robert , and ordayned to pay for the said lands one yearely tribute to the aforesaid charles and his posterity , to signifie that the said landes were not conquered , but onely giuen from the crowne of fraunce in marriage . the yeare that the normans began to raigne in normandy , was from the incarnation of christ 886. yeares . the valiant deedes done by the danes , in sundrie parts of the world was in great admiration to all people . rowland called robert begat on the emperour charles his daughter . william who succeeded after his father . to william succeeded richard the first , to him succeeded richard the second , who had two sonnes robert and gvstard : robert begat william the bastard , duke of normandy , who conquered england , and vanquished both englishmen and danes , and possest the crowne thereof . and gustard past into italy , and made many and cruell inuasions in cicill calabre and naples . in this time the murrayes and rosses inuading each other with cruell killing 2000. men were killed on either parties , the king came vppon them with a great army , and punished the principall mouers of this trouble to the death , he dyed in peace the 11. yeare of his raigne : and buried in icolmkill . 75 constantinvs tertius ethus sonne began to raigne the yeare of the world 4874. in the yeare of christ 905. after the raigne 1245. a valiant prince , not fortunate in warres , he married the prince of wales his daughter : she bare to him one sonne , being vexed with warres in the time of king edward and athelstane his bastard sonne , he became a chanon in saint andrewes and died the 40. yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . 76. milcolvmbvs primus donaldus sonne began his raigne in the yeare of the world 4913. in the yeare of christ 943. after the raigne 1283. a valiant prince and good iusticiar , he married the lord of twylths daughter : she bare to him two sonnes and one daughter . a confederacy was made betweene england and scotland , that cumber and westmerland shal be perpetually annexed to the prince of scotland raigning for the time , to be holden in fee of the kings of england . by vertue whereof indulfus sonne to constantine the third , ( as prince of scotland , ) tooke possession both of cumber and westmerland . the king passing the rest of his dayes in peace & seuere iustice , which caused a conspiracy in murrayland , where this noble king was traiterously killed , the 9. yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . the murtherers and their assistants all apprehended , were cruelly tormented and put to death . 77. indvlfvs constantinus tertius sonne , began his raigne in the yeare of the world 4922. in the yeare of christ 952. after the raigne 1282. a noble valiant prince . he vanquished in battaile hagon prince of norwaye and helricke prince of denmarke , and was killed by a stratageme of warre , the 9. yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . 78 dvffvs milcolumbus sonne began his raign the year of the world 4931. the yeare of christ 9●…1 . after the ragin 1291. a good prince & seuere iusticiar . he was trayterously murthered by one donalde captaine of forres in murrayland , and his wife was buried secretly vnder a bridge at kinlus . the murtherers being apprehended were seuerely executed and put to death the 5. yeare of his raigne , and buried in icolmkill . 79 cvlenvs indulfus sonne began his raigne the yeare of the world 4936. the yeare of christ 966. after the raigne 1296. he was marryed to the king of brittaines daughter , a vitious prince killed by rodardus a noble man at mesfen , whose daughter he had defloured , the 4. yeare of his raigne , and buried in icolmkill . 80 kennethvs tertius duffus brother began his raigne in the yeare of the world 4940. in the yeare of christ 970. after the raigne 1300. one valiant and wise prince and seuere iusticiar , for one time he caused 500. notable theeues to be hanged on gibbets , and inhibited their bodies to be taken downe , beside the castell of bertha to giue example to others . the danes with a great fleete of ships arriued in the mouth of taye , and destroyed the towne of mountrose , killing all the people & demolishing the wals , wasting the whole country comming thorough angus , with great cruelty , and laying a strong siege to the castle of bertha . the king came with a great army , there followed a dangerous and cruell battaile , with vncertaine victorie , valiantly defended on both parties . at the last one haye with his two sonnes , enforcing the scots that were fugitiue , to returne , and by their valiant courage renewing battaile , the danes were vanquished and fugitiue , the most part of them being slaine . the king enriched haye and his sonnes , giuing them a great part of the spoile of the danes , with as much land as a falcon flew ouer , of one mans hand vntill she lighted , called the falcons stone . so he obteined the whole lands betweene tay and arrole , sixe miles of length and foure of breadth . this was the beginning of the noble and ancient surname of hayes decorate with great honours , riches , and lands , valiant defendours of the realme of scotland : this noble king , ( so long decorate with iustice , ) the blinde and immoderate affection ( that he had to his sonne ) was occasion that he killed by poyson malcolme prince of scotland , and lord of cumber and westmerland . he abrogated the old lawes concerning the kings , and instituted . the king being deceased , his eldest sonne or nephew notwithstanding what age soeuer he were of , and though he were borne after his fathers death , shall succeed to the crowne . the nephew borne on the kings sonne shal be preferred before the nephew gotten on the kings daughter , and the nephew gotten by the kings brother shal be preferred before the nephew gotten on his sister : these lawes to be obserued amongst all other nobles in succession of their heritage . when the king is young , one noble man of great prudence and authoritie , shal be chosen gouernour of the realme vntill the king come to age of fourteene yeares , and then the king to gouerne his realme by his owne authoritie . all other inheritours shall succeede to their fathers heritage after the expiration of one and twentie yeares , and within that time they shal be gouerned by curatours or guardians , and vntill those yeares be outrunne , they shall not be admitted to claime their heritage : he proclaimed his sonne malcolme prince of scotland and lord of cumber and westmerland . once when the king was lying in his bed , he heard a voice saying , o kenneth belieue not , that the cursed killing of prince malcolme is hid from god ( o thou vnhappy tyrant which for desire of the crowne ) hast killed an innocent , inuading thy neighbour with treasonable murther , which thou wouldest haue punished with most rigour , if it had bin done by any other person then thy selfe . therefore thou hast incurred such hatred of god , that thou and thy sonne shal be suddainly killed , for thy nobles are conspired against thee . the king was greatly affrayde of this voice , and being very penitent , confessing his offence to a bishop , who comforting him , he did sundry good workes , appertaining to a christian prince . at the last king kenneth comming to the castell of fethercarn was ( as appeared ) thankfully receiued by fenella lady thereof , where in the midle of the castle most curiously wrought was an image of brasse , the similitude of the king , with a golden apple in his hand . the king perceiuing the same ( suspecting no treason ) counselled by the said lady being alone in the tower , the castle being apparelled with rich tapestries of golde & silke ouerlayed or thicked with copper . the king taking the apple with violence out of the hand of the image , immediately the titups of the cross-bowes were throwne vp ( being made with such engyne ) one of them shot the king thorough the body . the lady was fugitiue . there he died the 24. yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . 81 constantinvs quartus surnamed caluus . culenus sonne began to raigne ( vsurping the crowne ) in the yeare of the world 4964. in the yeare of christ 994 after the raigne 1324. he was killed in battaile at the town of crawmond in louthaine , the second yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . 82 grimvs duffus sonne began his raigne in the yeare of the world 4966. in the yeare of christ 996. after the raigne 1326. ( a vitious vsurper of the crowne ) killed in battaile by malcolme his successour the eight yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . 83 milcolvmbvs secundus kennethus third sonne beganne his raigne the yeare of the world 4974. in the yeare of christ 1004. after the raigne 1334. a valiant and wise king , he was often victorious against the danes . in his time beganne the auncient noble name of keith , whose house is decorated with great honours , being marshall of scotland . the king repaired and enlarged the cit●…y of aberdene then called murthlacke , he was killed by conspiracy of some of his nobles in the castle of glammess . the 30. yeare of his raigne he married the duke of normandies daughter , who bare to him three sonnes and two daughters , buried in icolmkill . the murtherers fugitiue in the night , chaunced into the loch or poole of forfarr , being frozen ouer , couered with snowe , were all drowned therein , by the righteous iudgement of god. 84 dvncanvs primus malcolme second daughter beatrix her sonne , began to raigne in the yeare of the world 5004. in the yeare of christ 1034. after the raigne 1364. a good and modest prince . in his time was thane or earle of lochquhaber banquho . of whome are descended the auncient and royall name of stevvarts . he was trayterously killed by makbeth the 6. yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . 85 macbethvs ( dowoda malcolme second daughters sonne ) began to raigne in the yeare of the world 5010. in the yeare of christ 1040. after the raigne 1370. in the beginning he was a valiant prince , and seuere iusticiar instituting many good lawes , at last by illusion of witches and sorcerers , he became a cruell tyrant and oppressor , at last killed in a battaile , vanquished by his successor king malcolme cammore , and killed by makduff thane or earle of fiffe the 17. yeare of his raigne , buried in icolmkill . 86 m●…lcolvmbvs surnamed cammore , duncane the first his sonne began to raign in the year of the world 5027 in the yeare of christ 1057. after the raigne of scotland 1387. he was a religious and valiant king , he rewarded his nobles with lands and offices , and commaunded that the lands and offices should be called after their names , he created many earles , lords , barons , and knights . they that were called thanes as fiff , menteith , athole , lenex , murray , caythnes , ros , angusse , were made earles : many new surnames came in at this time as calder , lokart , gordoun , seytonne , lawder , wauane , meldrome , schaw , liermond liberton struchquhan , cargill , rettray dondas , cock●…urne , mirtoun , me●…es , abercrummy , listye , names of offices steward , du●…ard , bannerman . at this time william duke of normandy conquered england holding battaile with king harold , and killed him in the yeare of christ 1066. edgar within age rightfull heire of england , seing the crowne conquerd , was desperate to succeed any way to the gouernement . to eschew all apparant d●…unger he tooke shipping with purpose to returne with his mother and sisters into vngerland , by contrary winds he arriued in forth in a part called the queenes ferrey . king malcolme was at that time in dunfermling , he came and tenderly receiued the said edgar with his mother and sisters , and married margaret eldest sister to the said edgar , william the conquerour hearing of his marriage , exiled all the friends of the said edgar , wherefore they came into scotland , many people to king malcolme whome he receiued and gaue them lands as their surnames , maxwell●…nd ●…nd sundry surnames , came out of vngerland to queene margaret as creitchton fotheringham , giffard melwill , borthuike out of fra●…nce came into scotland fraiseir , scincler , boswell , moutray , montgomery , cambell ▪ boyes , beton , taylifer and bothwell . in king malcolmes time was the recrosse erected , with the king of englands image on the one side , and the king of sotlands on the other , this stone crosse ( was march betweene the two realmes , standing in the middle of stan-moore ; queene margaret foresaid daughter to edward , sirnamed the outlaw , sonne to edward ironside , king of england , a very religious queene , after called s. margaret , who beare vnto king malcolme sixe sonnes ; edward the prince , edmund , etheldred , edgar , alexander and dauid , and two daughters , matilda or mawde ; sirnamed bona , wife to henry the fourth , sirnamed beauclerke , king of england , of whose vertues are extant an epigram . prosperit ie reioyced her not , to her griefe was no paine , prosperity affrayed her al 's , affliction was her gaine , her beauty was no cause of fall , in royall state nor pride , humbly alone in dignitie , in beauty onely good . she founded the church of carliel . the other daughter was married to eustatius earle of bolloigne : king malcolme builded the church of durham and dunfermling . hee was killed at the siege of anwike , by one robert mowbray , who vnarmed vpon a light horse , came out of the castle of anwike , with a lance in his hand , the keyes of the castle vpon the point of the launce , king malcolme looking earnestly thereunto , the aforesaid robert mowbray ran the king through the left eye , and ran hastily into the next wood . king william changed the name of this valiant knight , calling him percey , of whom are descended the earles of northumberland . king malcolme died the six and thirtieth yeare of his raigne , and his sonne prince edward , both buried in dunfermling . 87 donaldvs septimus , malcolme cammore his brother ( vsurped the crowne ) sirnamed bane , beganne to raigne in the yeare of the world 5063. in the yeare of christ 1093. after the raigne 1423. hee was expelled by duncane , bastard to malcolme , the first yeare of his raigne . 88 dvncanvs secundas bastard aforesaid ( vsurped the crowne ) killed by mak-pender thane of mernis , by procurement of donald the seuenth , who after was crowned . he gaue the north and west isles to the king of norway , to haue his assistance to recouer the crowne : he was taken captiue by his nobles , and his eyes put out : he died miserably in prison the third yeare of his second raigne , buried in dunfermling . 89 edgarvs malcolme cammors sonne , began to raigne in the yeare of the world 5068. in the yeare of christ 1098. after the raigne 1428. a good and religious king , the first annoynted king : he builded the priory of coldingham , and died peaceably the ninth yeare of his raigne , buried at dunfermling without succession . 90 alexander the first , sirnamed fierce , succeeded his brother the yeare of the world 5077. in the yeare of christ 1107. after the raigne 1437. a good and valiant king : he builded the abbeyes of scone and saintcolms inch ; he married sibilla , daughter to william duke of normandy , the seuenteenth yeare of his raigne , he died in peace , buried in dunfermling . 91 david . primus , king malcolms third youngest sonne , began his raigne the yeare of the world 5094. the yeare of christ 1124. after the beginning of the raigne of scotland 1454. a good , valiant , and very religious king : he builded many abbeyes , as holy-rood-house , kelso , iedborugh , melrose , newbottell , holmcultrane , dundranane , cambuskenneth , kinlosse , dunfermling , holme in cumber , two nunneries , one at carliel , the other at north berwick ; he founded two abbeyes , besides new castle , the one of s. benedicts order , the other of white monkes : hee founded 4. bishopricks , ros , breichin , dunkeld & dunblane ; ordeyning them great lands , rents and possessions , al out of the patrimony of the crown . king dauid of scotlād in his time possessed northumberland , cumber , huntington and westmerland ; he married the inheritrix of the aforesaid lands called mawde , daughter to the earle of northumberland , and iuditha daughters daughterto william the conquerer king of england . in the time of king stephen of england he repaired the towne of carliel with new wals : his sonne prince henry died with great lamentation of the whole realme , hauing three sonnes and three daughters . king dauid caused malcolme , ( eldest sonne vnto prince henry late deceased ) to be declared prince of scotland . after that he past into northumberland , and made william his second nephew earle thereof ; after he went to carliel , where he made henry ( the empresse her sonne prince of england ) knight , taking his oath hee should neuer take northumberland , cumber , westmerland and huntington from the empire of scotland : afterwards this victorious and religious king dauid died in peace , being greatly honoured and beloued of his subiects and neighbors , the nine and twentieth yeare of his raigne : he died in carliel , and buried in dunfermling . milcolvmbvs quartus ( sirnamed the mayden ) nephew to king dauid , began his raigne in the yeare of the world 5123. in the yeare of christ 1153. after the raigne 1483. a good and milde prince : he builded cowper abbey in anguisse , and subdued sundry rebellions , died at iedbourgh , buried at dunfermling the twelfth yeare of his raigne . 93 gvilielmvs ( sirnamed the lion ) succeeded his brother malcolme , in the yeare of the world 5135 in the yeare of christ 1165. after the raigne 1495. ( a good & valiant king vnfortunate ) he married emigerda , daughter to the earle of bewmont , who beare to him two sons and two daughters : he builded the abbey of abirbrothoke , she builded the abbey of bamerinoch , after that the castle of bertha was demolished by inundation of waters ( king guilliam narrowly escaping with his wife and children ) his young sonne and nurse perished , and sundry others : he founded and builded the towne called perth , and graunted sundry great priuiledges thereunto , now called s. iohns towne . the king continuing in peace died the nine and fortieth yeare of his raigne , buried in abirbrothoke . 94 alexander 2. succeeded his father in the yeare of the world 5184. in the yeare of christ 1214. after the raigne 1544. a valiant and good king , and seuere iusticiar : hee pacified all rebellion in his realme ; he agreed with king henry of england , and married his sister , reteyning northumberland , westmerland , cumber and huntington , and king alexanders two sisters were married vnto two great princes of england . he past into france , and renued the auncient band : in the meane time iane his queene died without any succession . the next yeare he married at roxbourgh mary daughter to ingelram , earle of coucey in fraunce , of great beauty , who bare to him a sonne , alexander who succeeded after him : he died in peace the fiue and thirtieth yeare of his raigne , buried in melrosse . 95 alexander tertius , succeeded his father in the yeare of the world 5219. in the yeare of christ 1249. after the raigne 1579. a good young prince , being at his coronation nine yeares of age . after that the kings of england and scotland , with their nobles conuened in yorke , where king henry the third of englands daughter margaret , was married to king alexander of scotland . enduring his tender age the realme of scotland was wel gouerned by his nobles ; be comming to perfect age , willing to execute iustice , summoned the earles of mentieth , athole and buchquhane , and the lord of strabogy , which were all of the name of comminges , and for non comperance denounced them rebels . they with their assistance being a great number , because there was of the same name ( by the aforesaid lords ) thirty knights and landed men . they imprisoned the king in striueling a certaine space . king acho of norway came into the isles with many danes . king alexander to resist him came with a great armie ; there followed a cruell and dangerous battell , long with vncertaine victory , at last the danes being vanquished , and foure and twenty thousand of them killed , acho was fugitiue to his ships : his whole nauie by tempestuous storme being spoyled ( returned with foure ships left of his whole fleete into norway ) . then after his sonne magnus renouncing all title to the isles , contracted his sonne hanigo ( to be married with king alexanders daughter one yeare of age ) at their both perfect age . at this time alexander earle of carrike past to the holy land , hauing a daughter martha , who succeeding in his heritage , who married a nobleman robert bruce , sonne & heire to robert bruce lorde of anandale in scotland , and lord of cleueland in england . this martha aforesaid inheritrix of carike , in the third yeare beare the noble and inuincible champion , robert bruce king of scotland : margaret sister to king henry the third of england , beare to king alexander two sonnes , prince alexander and dauid , one daughter margaret , married vnto hanigo magnus sonne , king of norway , who beare to him margaret called the mayden of norway . in this time died dauid king alexanders second sonne . alexander the prince was married at roxburge , vnto the earle of flanders daughter , whereat many of the nobles of scotland and england were present for thetime . the third yeare after prince alexander died at lundors the twentieth yeare of his age , to the great lamentation of the whole realme ; for in him failed the whole succession of king alexander the third ( except the mayden of norway ) who was begotten on his daughter margaret before rehearsed . king alexander by counsell of his nobles ( after the death of his first queene ) married ioleta the earle of drux daughter in fraunce , by whom he had no succession . he builded the crosse church of peblis . he died of a fal off his horse , ouer the west craig at kingorne , the seuen and thirtieth year of his raigne , buried in dunfermling . the day before the kings death , the earle of march demaunded of one thomas rymour , what wether should be the morrow ? thomas answered , that on the morrow before noone there shal blow the greatest winde that euer was heard in scotland : on the morrow being almost noone ( the ayre appearing calme ) the earle sent for the said thomas , and reprouing him , said , there was no appearance . thomas answering , yet noone is not past , immediatly commeth a post , and sheweth that the king was falne and killed . then thomas said to the earle , that is the winde that shall blow , to the great calamity of all scotland . after the death of king alexander the third , the realme was gouerned by sixe regents ; for the south side of forth , robert archbishop of glasgiue , iohn comming , and iohn the great steward of scotland . for the north side of forth vvilliam frester archbishop of saint andrewes . makduffe earle of fif●…e , iohn comming earle of buchquha●…e : they gouerned the space of seuen yeares . during which time edward the first king of england sent his ambassadors into scotland , for marriage of the mayden of norway aforesaid . the nobles of s●…land being agreed in all points , with the said king edward ( sirnamed longshankes ) the ambassadors of scotland directed to bring the mayden of norway , the right inheritrix of scotland with them : before their arriuing she was departed this present life , by meanes whereof great contention arose betweene robert bruse and iohn balioll , the deciding of the said matter was by the nobles of scotland ( vnwisely ) referred to king edward . 96 iohannes balliolvs was preferred before robert bruse , by king edward , sirnamed longshanke , who being elected iudge in the foresaid controuersie , admitting him king , with condition that the said baliol should acknowledge him for his superiour : which condition ( refused by rob●…rt bruse ) hee as an auaritious vnworthy man receiued , began to raigne in the yeare of the world 5263. in the yeare of christ 1293. after the raigne 1923. a vaine glorious man , little respecting the good of his country , in the fourth yeare he was expelled by the aforesaid king edward into france , where he died long after in exile , scotland being without king or gouernour the space of nine yeares : during which time king edward cruelly oppressed the land , destroyed the whole auncient monuments , and shedde much innocent blood . about this time william wallace , sonne to sir andrew wallace of cragy knight , of huge stature and maruellous strength of body , with good knowledge and skill in warlike enterprises ; hereunto such hardinesse of stomacke , in attempting all maner of dangerous exploits , that his match was not any where lightly to be found : he bare inward hate against the english nation , when the fame of his worthy actes were notified , many nobles and commons were ready to assist him : therefore hee was chosen gouernor vnder the baliol , to deliuer the realme from bondage of england . at this time many abbeyes and spirituall benefices were in englishmens hand , which he by commission of the archbishop of s. andrew , auoyded and put forth of all partes , and receyuing the whole armie that was vnder the conduct of iohn cuning earle of bucquhan ; he conquered many castles , fortes and strengths out of english mens hands , king edward being in fraunce , hearing hereof , sent his lieutenant hugh crassingham with a great armie into scotland , where vvilliam vvallace encountring him at striueling bridge , killed the said crassingham , with the most part of his armie , many being drowned , and few escaping away with life : great dearth being in scotland , he gathered a mightie armie , and past into northumberland , wasting and spoyling the countrey to newcastle ; for he with his armie remained in england , almost the whole winter from the feast of all saints , vntill candlemas , liuing vppon the spoyle of englishmens goods . king edward being in fraunce , hearing the deedes of vvallace , sent his ambassadour , so●…e menacing him that had inuaded his realme , which he durst not haue done , if he had beene at home . vvallace answered , that he had taken the aduantage , as he had done in the wrongfull conquest of scotland ( he being chosen by the nobles as indifferent iudge , and further sent word vnto king edward , that ( if god fortunate him to liue ) he purposed to holde his easter in england : and comming with an armie of thirty thousand valiant men into england at the appointed time , king edward was readie with an army of threescore thousand vpon staines moore to giue them battell . being ready to ioyne , the englishmen drew backe , hauing at that time no lust to fight , as appeared : the scots seeing them draw backe would haue followed , but vvallace fearing deceit , stayed them and returned ( with infinit spoyle and booties gotten in that iourney ) into scotland . king edward being aduertised that vvallace was greatly enuied by the cunings , & robert la bruse , raised a great armie , and came to falkirke , and vvallace not knowing of any deceit , raised a great armie to resist being in sight of englishmen , there began a great contention for the leading of the vantguard , and by their owne misgouernance , many noblemen were killed , robert bruse was against the scottishmen that day . shortly then after vvallace came , and renounced in perth the gouernement , and also refused great and large offers of king edward , to be his subiect , and true man : iohn cuning and simon froser being admitted gouernours , king edward sent a great armie to perth , subduing the countrey . the aforesaid gouernours raised an armie of eight thousand valiant men . king edward sent with ralph comfray thirty thousand men , deuiding them in three armies , to passe in three sundry parts through the countrey and to meete at rosling . the gouernours aforesaid , encountring with the first ten thousand defeated them , and so at three sundry times in one day the scots obtained the victory : king edward impatient hereof , gathered a mighty army of sundry nations , and subdued with great cruelty the most part of the scottish nation . about this time was willam wallace traiterously betrayed by sir iohn menteith at glascoe , and deliuered king to edward , and being brought to london , was cruelly executed in smithfield . king edward accusing robert bruse of a contract made betwixt him and iohn cumyng , and he straitly denying the same was aduertised by the earle of glocester , of the kings displeasure , causing a smith to shoe his horses backward in the winter , the ground being couered with snow he came into scotland , howbeit he was sharply pursued , and mee●…ng with his brother and some friends , and being aduertised that the cumyng was in the friers at dumfreis . after hard commoning , he suddenly killed him , wherethrough hee purchased many enemies , both english men and scottish men , and was hardly pursued ( especially by the cumyngs being then very potent and rich , and a great number of them . 97 robertvs brvss●…vs ( sonne to isabell king vvilliams brothers daughter ) began his raigne in the yeare of the world 5276. in the yeare of christ 1306 after the beginning of the raigne of scotland 1636. a valiant king , good and wise ( in his beginning subiect to great affliction and persecution . at last being assisted by iames dowglasse ) cosen to william lambertō archbishop of saint andrewes ) tooke all his gold and horses , with sundrie young valia●…t men of his opinion , who remained with the said king robert , both in warres and peace to the end of his life . of this iames dowglasse descended the valiant and illuster surname of dowglasse the sure target , and defence of scotland , as in old verse sheweth . so many good as of the dowglasse hath beene , of one surname was neuer in scotland seene . king robert hauing van quishet king edward the second of carnaruen being of sundrie nations to horse and foote three hundreth thousand warriours , and king robert not aboue thirtie thousand olde , well exercised valiant men at the battell of bannockburne , deliuered scotland free from all seruitude of england : all englishmen being expelled out of the land . hee married first isabel daughter to the earle of marre , who bare to him margery , married to walter the great steward of scotland , after her death he married the daughter of haymerus de burck earle of haltouia or hulster in ireland , who bare to him dauid the prince , margaret countesse of sudderland , and mawde that died young . iohn balioll transferred his right of the crowne of scotland vnto king robert and his heires . in this time hanton an englishman ) for the killing of one spencer came into scotland , and was courteously receiued by king robert , and rewarded him with the lands of cadyowe , whose posteritie is spread in great number , now called hamiltons endowed with great honour and riches . king robert died at cardrose the 24. yere of his raign , buried in dumfermling . after this time sir iames dowglasse ( as most worthy champion ) was chosen by the nobles to passe with king roberts heart to ierusalem , and there to cause to bury the same within the temple beside the sepulchre of our lord , conforme to the said kings direction , because he had auouched or vowed , till he had past with a great armie in defence of the christian faith against the turkes and saracens ( if he had not beene hindered or stayed by warres at home ) and now preuented by death . sir iames dowglasse willingly obeyed , as he that most faithfully had serued king robert in his life time , and inclosing the heart in a case of gold , enbalmed with sweet spices , and precious oyntments , accompanied with sir william sinclair , and sir robert logane , with many other noble and valiant men , past and buried the said heart with great reuerence and solemnity at the place appointed . therefore the dowglas buries the bloudy heart in their armes or coat . there after sir iames dowglasse with his noble and valiant men accompanied with other christian princes then present : many times obtained great victorie against the turkes and sarazens . so that by his often victories he purchast great honours of the christian name . purposing to returne home , by tempestuous winds , was compelled to land in spaine vpon the borders of granad , where he assisting the king of aragon in his warres against the sarazens , obtaining great victories . at last ( being negligent of himselfe ) was inclosed with one ambushment purposely lead for him by the sarazens , he and his most valiantly defending were vanquisht and killed with all his nobles and valiant men . thus ended the noble and valiant dowglasse , one of the most worthy and renowned knights that was in his daies . it is chronicled that he was victorious against the turks and sarazens , thirteene times , and against others his enemies in battell fiftie seuen times in memory of the dowglasse , in our time there was a port or gate in danskin called the dowglas port . now reedified sumptuously ( called the hochindure ) the high port , also there are sundrie earls in the easterne parts of that name , and specially one was called graue or earle scotus , a great nicromancer , his title was ieronimus scotus , graue or earle of dowglasse , his brethren dwell in italy . 98 david brvssivs succeeded his father the yeare of the world 5300. in the yeare of christ 1330. after the raigne 1660. a good prince subiect to much affliction in his youth , being first after the death of earle thomas ranulph his regent , forced for his preseruation to passe into france , and returning home at the battell of durham , was taken and detained prisoner in england twelue yeares , after he was at liberty , hee married the foresaid iane , daughter to edward the secōd , king of england , after her death he married margaret logy daughter to sir iohn logy knight , and died at edenbourgh without succession , the fortieth yeare of his raigne , buried in hollyrood house . 99 edvvardvs balliolvs , sonne to iohn balioll , assisted by king edward the third , vsurped the crowne the yeare of the world 5302. in the yeare of christ 1332. after the raigne 1662. hee was expelled by king dauids regents , and king dauid established . 100 robertvs stvartvs , the first king of the stewarts , sonne to vvalter the great steward , and margery bruce , king robert bruce his daughter , succeeded his mothers brother in the yeare of the world , 5●…41 . in the yeare of christ 1371. after the beginning of the raigne of scotland 1701. a good , valiant , and victorious king , hee married eufame , daughter to hugh earle of r●…sse , who bare to him , dauid earle of straitherne . vvaler earle of athole , and alexander earle of buchq●…ham , lord badyenoch , after her death for the affection hee bare to his children begotten before his marriage , hee married elizabeth mure , daughter to sir adam mure knight ; who had borne to him iohn , after called robert the third , earle of carricke , and robert earle of fiffe , and menteth and eufame , wife to iames earle of dowglasse , hee died at dundonald , and buried at scone the nineteenth yeare of his raigne . 101 robertvs tertius ( sirnamed iohn fernyar ) succ●…eded his father , in the yeare of the world 5360. in the yeare of christ 1390. after the raigne 1720. he was a modest and peaceable prince : hee married annabill drummond , daughter to the knight of stobhall , who bare to him dauid the prince , duke of rothsay , who died in prison in falkland , by procurement of robert duke of albany ( who aspired to the crowne ) and iames his second sonne , taken prisoner in his iourney into fraunce , and deteyned by englishmen the space of eighteene yeares . king robert died of displeasure ( when he heard his one sonne deceased in falkland , and the other sonne taken prisoner the sixteenth yeare of his raigne , buried in paslay . robert duke of albany , earle of fiffe and mentieth , gouerned scotland the yeare of the world 5376. in the yeare of christ 1406. after the raigne 1736. iames the first being captiue in england , a noble and valiant prince : he died the fourteenth yeare of his gouernment , duke murdo earle of fiffe and mentieth , was made gouernour foure yeares , iames the first returning home from captiuitie , caused the said murdo and his sonne to be executed for oppression of his subiects . 102 iacobvs primus began his raigne the yeare of the world 5394. in the yeare of christ 1424. after the beginning of the raigne of scotland 1754. a godly , wise , learned and vertuous prince , and a seuere iusticiar ; hee married iane daughter to the duke of somerset , marquesse dorset , sonne to iohn of gaunt , third sonne to edward the third , the victorious king of england ; who did beare to him two sonnes twinnes , alexander who died shortly , and iames the second , who succeeded his father , and sixe daughters ; margaret wife to lewes the eleuenth dolphin , then after king of fraunce , elizabeth duchesse of britaine , iane countesse of huntley , elenor duchesse of austria , mary wife to the lord camphier , and annabella : he was killed at perth trayterously , by walter earle of athole . robert grahame and their complices , who were all apprehended and cruelly tormented to death the thirteenth yeare of his raigne , after his deliuerance out of england , and the one and thirtieth yeare after the death of his father , buried in the charterhouse of perth , which he founded . 103 iacobvs secundus succeeded his father in the yeare of the world 5407. in the yeare of christ 1437. after the raigne 1767. ( a prince subiect to great troubles in his youth ) hee married margaret daughter to arnold duke of gilder , sisters daughter to charles , sirnamed audax , the last duke of burgundy , who bare to him iames 3. alexander duke of albany ; hee married the earle of orkneyes daughter , and begat on her alexander bishop of murray : hee parting with her , married in fraunce the countesse of boloine , and begat on her iohn stewart duke of albany , who was many yeares gouernour of scotland . the third sonne iohn was earle of marre , died in the canon-gate without succession : the first daughter married one thomas boyd earle of arran , after his death married the lord hammilton ; and by that way the house of hammilton is decorated by the kings bloud . this king was killed at the siege of roxebourgh the foure and twentieth yeare of his raigne , buried at holy-rood-house . 104 iacobvs tertius succeeded his father in the yeare of the world 5430. in the yeare of christ 1460. after the raigne 1790. a good prince ( corrupted with wicked courtiers ) hee married margaret , daughter to the king of denmarke ( sirnamed diues ) and king of norway , who in his fauour renounced all title that hee had any manner of way to orkney , schetland and the isles for euer , who bare to him iames the fourth , alexander bishop of s. andrewes and duke of albany , and iohn earle of marre . they died both without succession ; he made peace with king henry of england , who ( like a liberall prince ) for the fauour he had receiued in scotland , restored the towne of berwicke to the king. thomas cochrane and vvilliam rogers ( his peruerse courtiers ) were hanged at the bridge of lawder . the king was killed at bannockburne the nine and twentieth yeare of his raigne , buried at cambuskenneth . 105 iacobvs quartus succeeded his father in the yeare of the world 5459. in the yeare of christ 1489. after the raigne 1819. a noble and couragious prince , both wise and godly : he made peace with england , and married margaret , eldest daughter to henry the seuenth king of england , & elizabeth , daughter to edward the fourth , in whose persons the cruell warres betweene the houses of lancaster and yorke were pacified , the foresaid margaret bare to him iames the fift : he was killed at flowdon in battell the fiue and twentieth yeare of his raigne , buried at holy-rood-house . 106 iacobvs quintus succeded his father in the yeare of the world 5484. in the yeare of christ 1514. after the beginning of the raigne of scotland 1844. a wise valiant prince , and seuere iusticiar : he married magdalen daughter to the king of fraunce , who died shortly after ; he married mary of lorraine , duchesse of longeuile , daughter to claude duke of guise , who bare to him two sonnes and one daughter marie : hee died of displeasure at falkland , the nine and twentieth yeare of his raigne , buried at holy-rood-house . 107 maria succeeded her father in the yeare of the world 5513. in the yeare of christ 1543. after the beginning of the raigne of scotland 1873. ( a princesse vertuously enclined ) she married francis dolphin , after king of france ; after whose death she returned into scotland , and married henry stewart duke of albany , &c. lord darley , a comely prince , sonne to mathew earle of lennox ( pronepnoy to henry the seuenth king of england ) to whom she bare charles : iames the sixth now our most gratious soueraigne king , afterwards comming into england , was receiued with greathumanity , and after she was captiue , at length put to death the eighth of february . 1586. 108 carolvs iacobvs sixtus , succeeded to his mother in the yeare of the world 5537. in the yeare of christ 1567. after the beginning of the raigne of scotland 1897. a godly learned prince , indued with singular knowledge , and a sincere professor of the gospell : he married anna daughter to fredericke the second , king of denmarke and norway ; and sophia onely daughter to ulricus duke of meckleburgh , our most gratious queene , who hath borne the royall and hopefull prince , henry frederikc prince of wales , duke of rothsay and cornewall , earle palatin of chester , great steward of scotland , and earle of carect , the nineteenth of february , 1593. in the castle of striueling ; elizabeth the nineteenth of august 1596. charles duke of yorke and albany , earle of rosse , the nineteenth of nouember 1600. his maiesty is now king of great britaine , france and ireland , defender of the faith . the lord of his great mercy , for christ his sake , encrease all royall vertues in his highnesse , that he may remaine a comfort vnto christs church , within his maiesties dominions . to the authour . the romane tullie , rose of all that race , of facund mercurs ; boldly vnaffrayde in milos fence , to clodius deface this sacred sentence in the senate sayd : nought only for our selues we 're borne to toyle , but for our friends , and for our natiue soyle . thou wisely weighed hes these words i finde , thou cairs to cleere thy countrey from obscure , to please thy friends , thou fram'st thy wit and minde , and by thy light thy countries light is pure : she brought thee forth to light , thou takes like paine , who made thee see , to make her shine againe . w. t. a trve description and division of the whole realme of scotland , of the situation , distance , and commoditie in euery part thereof , and of the principall cities , townes , abbeyes , palaces , forts , castles , towres , and riuers . scotland is diuided from england by certaine marches , from the east sea , called the scottish sea , to the west seas , called the ireland sea , from the mouth of tweed , vp the same riuer , till it come betwixt werke and hadden , where the march leaues the riuer , and passing south-west by dearne wayes , knowne onely to the inhabitants of that countrey , till it come to redden-burne , or water ; and so vp the said burne , while it come to the height of the fellis of cheuiot , and so west by the toppes of the fellis , 'till a march ditch ( called the meir ditch ) and so endlong in the meir ditch , till it fall in the riuer of carshope , and downe carshope while it fall in liddail , and downe liddail while eske and liddail meete , and taking aiffe at the north side of eske , goeth endlong a ditch , while it come to the riuer of sarke , and so downe sarke while it fall in sulwait , where the waters of annan , and nith , running seuerally in sulway , all in one channell in the irish sea : maketh plentie of fishes : also by ●…owing and ebbing of furious tides , made through many lands ends , and partly by inundation of the said waters , there is very dangerous quicke sands , called sulway sands , that no man may passe safely ouer them without perill ( except they haue one accustomed guide ) because of sinking holes that are frequent in them , being euery tyde ouerflowed with the sea. the trauellers take their iourney through them at a low or ebbe water : if any man or horse fall in , his fellow trauellers casting their clokes or other clothes about that part where he sinkes in , and so running often about , the sand swels vp in a height , and so vomits out that which is fallen in the sinking hole . vpon the banckes of sulway in iune and iuly , the countrey people gather vp the sand within the flood-marke , bringing it to land , and laying it in great heapes . there after taking the salt spring water , and casting it vpon the sand ( with a certaine deuice ) causing the water to runne through the sand to a hollow pit , purposely made to receiue the water : which water being boiled in a little vessell of lead , there is made thereof good white salt , and sometimes gray salt , after the temperance of the weather . this part is called the salt ●…oats . the reason of the variation of the foresaid marches was , vpon diuers debates and controuersies , arising betwixt the borderers of both the realmes ; which being referred to the arbitr●…ment of sundry commissioners , of both the nations , were set down according to the power of the parties . thus the marches being set forth particularly , beginning at the mers , wherein at the mouth of tweede stands the auncient and martiall towne of barwicke , and strong castle , well walled and strengthned : the chiefe town of the mers , the scottish sea on the east . next is the towne of haymouth , with the castles of aytowne , hutonhall , mander●…own , cockburne , easter and wester nisbets , with wedderlie , the towne and abbey of coldingham by the sea. south-west from barwicke lies the towne of duns , the towne of langton with the castle , the abbeyes of coldstreame and ecklis demolished , the castles of craighame , the earle of homes principall residence , and wedderburne , the very strong castle of fastcastle . the riuers in the mers are ei , whittitur , blakitur , and ednem water . this countrey is plenteous and abundant in all things necessary for the vse of man. west from the mers lies tewiotdail , liddisdail , ewisdail , eskdail , wauchopdail , and annandail , taking their names from t●…ot , liddil , ews , eske , wauchope , and annan , running seueraily through the said dailes . in tewiotdail lies the auncient strong castle of roxbourgh demolished . the castle of cesfurd , the lord of roxbourgh speciall residence : the castles of little-deane , and makerstowne , the auncient towne and abbey of kelso , with the castle of flures , the towne and abbey of iedbourgh , the castles of bown-iedburgh , hunthill , hu●…delie , crailing , and edyarstowne , with many other stone strong houses , tedious to describe , the towne and abbey of melrose , the towne and abbey of driburgh , the towne of hawicke , the castles of kaiwers and branxholme , the lord of balcleuchs special residence . the riuers in tewiotdail are tiot , tweed , kail , auchnom , ied , rewl , slitricke , borthuike and eall . in liddisdail is the auncient castle of harmetage : the castles of prickinhauch , mangerstowne and whittow in eskdail is the castle of langhome . in annundaile is the castle of lochmabane , inuironed with a number of loches , replenished with diuers goodly fishes . the lord maxwels speciall residence . the townes of annandaile are , the towne of annanwich , a strong demolished castle , the towne of lochmabane , the towne of moffat , the castles of bonschaw , newby bred-kirk , hoddon , howmanis , and hoddamstans , next standeth the watch tower of repentance . the castles of loch-house , loch-wood , speldings , ros , and kirk-michael . the riuers in annandaile are annan , sark , kirtill milk , ey , kinnill , ewan , and moffat , a fertile countrie , and good for pastoring : west from annandaile lies niddisdaile , taking the name from the water of nith , where stands the towne and castle of dumfreis with a pleasant bridge of large fine stones , the towne and castle of sanquhar . the lord sanquhars speciall residence the town of disdeare , the colledge of lincluden , the abbey of haliwode . in niddisdaile are diuers ancient houses , and castles demolished : and yet standing , the strong castle of carlauerock , the ancient castle of drumlainrig , and disdeir , the ancient castle of mortoun demolished , the castles of closburn , the castle of torthorrall , the lord of torthorrails , principall residence , the castles of muswell and glencarne . north from niddisdaile a little inclining to the east lies cliddisdaile . cliddisdaile taking the name from the riuer clyde beginning at crawfurd moore , wherein lies crawfert-iohn , dowglasdale , ewendaile ; carne-wath moore , bodwell moore , the townes of cliddisdaile are lanarke , hamilton towne and palice . the marquesse of hamiltons speciall residence with the castle demolished , boithwell with the colledge . the citie and castle of glasgow , the archbishop seate , verie populous with a sumptuous cathedrall church containing a lower and ouer church , couered with lead , also a flourishing vniuersitie in liberall sciences and theology : adiacient to this citie is a large stone bridge ouer the riuer clide , wherein falles diuers other the riuers as ewen , dowglasse●… , lismehago , there is an abbey of the same name , the water of ewan , the water of cadder , the two maidens , and cutter water . in cliddisdaile is the castle of crawfurde , the ancient castle of dowglasse , the earle of anguish principall residence . the castles of crawfurd-iohn , lamington , couthley , the strong castle of draffan . this countrey is plentifull of all necessaries . in the ouer ward of cliddisdaile , there is a hill or mount where ou●… springs three riuers , tweed running in the scottish sea , ann●…n in the irish sea , and clide in the great ocean , south-east from cliddisdaile lyeth , tweddaile , named so from tweed , the speciall towne is peblis with a religious house called the crose church , and the castle of drochellis , with the strong castle of neid●…eth , the lord z●…steris residence . the castles of traquhair , grisum , ormstoun , horsburge , dawicke , dremmelger , smithfield , cringeltie , and dearn-hall . the waters of tweddaile are tweede , quair , mamier , higger , tarffe , lyne peblis water , and lithnops . this countrey is good for pasturing . east from tweddaile lieth heriot moore , galla water , and lauderdaile , with the towne and castle of lauder , taking the name from the water of lidder , there being pendicles of other shieres , i omit particularly to describe them , south from tweddaile lieth forrest shyre , ●…he speciall towne is sel-kirk , three miles distant therefrom is the old castle of neuwark . there is two goodly riuers , zara , and ethrik , both falling in tweede , zara cometh out of a great loth called the loth of the lowis , wherein is abundāce of fishes , this country is also good for pasturing . lothian , taking the name from loth king of the pi●…s is deuided from the mers , by one part called the easter peece , & by lammer-mure on the south from tweddaile on the southwest . in east lothian are the castles of dunglasse , innerwick , broxmouth , and spot , stanypeth , waigtoun , whittingham , nunraw , harmostoun , saltoun , kieto , winttoun ; ormestoun , the townes in lothian are dumbarre , with a stong castle demolished the townes of tuningham , and north barwicke with an abbey , dirltoun and castle , fentoun towne and castle , seitoun towne and pallace . the earle of winton speciall residence , the strong hold and castle of tamtalloun , the towne of aber-lady . haddingtun towne and abbey , the castle of lethingtoun , the lord thirlstans speciall residence , the the castle of creichtoun , sowtray abbey , the towne of prestoun with the castle , the towne of prestoun pannes , the townes of tranent , mussilburgh , and enneresk . the towne of dalkenh with the castle , the earle of mortons speciall residence , the towne of new-botlie , with the abbey : the earle lothians residence , the towne of letth a commodious hauen for ships , and the sea port of edinburgh right well shipped . edinburgh , the speciall and headburgh in scotland , chiefe iustice seate of the realme , strongelie builded with stone . the most part of the houses are fiue , sixe , or seuen stories high , wherein is a goodly vniuersity , florishing in all sciences , for instruction of the youth ; fortified on the west , with a most strong castle builded vpon a high rock , kept by the kings captains , which castle commands the said burgh , called of old the maiden castle , founded by cruthneus camelon , the first king of picts . before the birth of our sauiour 330 yeares : circuite vpon the east , south and west with a stone wall , and vpon the north strengthned with a loch . it is also decored with the kings pallace , and abbey of holy rood-house vpon the east part : within seuen miles to this burgh , vpon the east , south and west parts , and within two miles vpon the north part , there is of noble and gentlemens pallaces , castles and strong builded towres and stone houses ( not as yet nominated ) aboue an hundreth . also the towne of cramond , lying vpon almond . the riuers in lothiane , are tene , aske , the riuer of leith , the water of almond , lothiane is very plenteous & right abundant in all things necessary for the vse and sustentation of man. next east lothian lies in west lothian , the shirifdome of linlithgow , with the towne of linlithgow , and the most pleasant kings pallace , with a very commodious parke and loch vnder the pallace wall . not farre distant is the strong fortresse and castle of blacknesse , inuironed with the sea. the ancient demolished castle of abercorne , the towne of the queenes ferry . the castles of dundas , barnbugall , cragiehall , didestowne , newlistowne , the towne of kirklistown , the castles of neddrie , cadder , torphican , kinneil , the towne of bareston nes. auenne water , whereon there is a stone bridge , deuides sterling shire from west lothean at the south : the firth or forth at the east ; which firth piece and prede becommes narrow , till it grow to the quantity of a reasonable riuer , neerer vnto striueling bridge . there is but one water worthy to make account of , that runnes thorow it , named carron . there are two little earthen knols , builded as may appeare , by men , ( being auncient monuments ) called duini pacis , that is , the knols of peace . two miles downward vpon the same water , there is a round building without lime , made of hard stone , in such sort that one part of the vppermost stones i●…denied with the stone that lies directly vnder it ; so that the whole worke , by this coniunction mutuall , and burthen of the stones , vphold it selfe ; growing narrow by little and little from the ground to the head , where it is open like a doue-coat . the common people call it anthurs ouen . vpon carson was situate the famous citie of camelon , chiefe citie of the pictes , founded by cruthneus camelon , afore the birth of christ three hundred and thirty yeares , destroyed and abolished by king kenneth the great , about the yeare of christ 846. in this country is the abbey of manwell ; the castles of haning , powerile , and cummernald , the earle of wigtowns residence , with the woode , the ●…ore wood , and tore wood side , the towne of falkirk , the castles of kers , and calender , the earle of linlithgow residence . the castles of donipace , harbertshire , west quarter , arth , poffowles , carnoke , bruse castle , the palace of elphigstowne , the lord elphingstones residence , the castles and towers of easter and wester polmais , and chattrishall . the auncient towne , with the most strong fortiesse and castle , and sumptuous palace of striueling , builded vpon a high rock , with a pleasant and commodious parke vnder the castle wall . in this shire is the castles and towres of towch , gargunnok , broich , lekke , dundaffe , kilsyith , manners , and powes . beyond the bridge of striueling lies the abbey of cambus , kinneth , with the castle , the towne and castle of alloway , the towne and castle of clackmannan , the castles of tulliallan & sawchy , blair , valeyfeild , kinnedder , aikinhed , menstre , the town and abbey of culrosh , with the new builded palace . next adiacent to striueling shire lies lennox , diuided from the barony of renfrew , by clyde : from glasgow , by the water of heluin , at the foote of the hilles of grangebean , loch-lomond runnes downe a low valley foure and twenty miles of length , and eight of breadth , hauing more then twenty foure islands within the same . this lo●… besides abundance of other fishes , hath a kinde of fish of the owne , named pollac , very pleasant to eate : the water of leuin runneth out of loch-lomond southward , which water hath giuen the name to the country , running so strong , that no man ( without danger ) may passe the same . lenin entreth into clyde , neere to the most strong and inuincible fortresse and castle of dumbarton , standing vpon very high rockes , with abundance of fresh water springs , one spring being in summer wholsome cold , and in winter sweete , warme : no rocke nor hill , being within more as a mile to the foresaid strength and castle . next adiacent is the towne of dunbarton , pleasantly situate vpon the riuer of leuin , the principall towne in the duchie of lennox ; within the which there is many strong castles , towers and stone houses , as the castles and towers of kirkmichael , rosdo , tarbat , arnecaple , kilmahow , ardeth , kilmarannoch , buquhannane , drummakeil , cragiuarne , ballindalloch , kilcroch , balglas , fentrie , duntreith , craigbarnut , clorct woodhed , cochnoch , balquhannaran , drumry , dunglas with sundry others tedious to declare . the duke of lennox is superior to the most part of the gentlemen inhabitants in this countrey , and many in the barony . next lies the barony of renfrew , taking the name from the towne of renfrew , wherein the session of iustice is kept to the countrey . it is diuided in the midst by two waters , both called carth. the towne of paislay pleasantly situate vpon the riuer carth , with the abbey thereof , the earle of abircornes speciall residence , with most pleasant orchards and gardens . in this countrey lies the castle of sempil , the lord sempils special residence , with the castles and towers of crukstone , marns , cathcart , hag , vpper pollok and nether polloke , hakket , the lord ros residence . cardonald the lord of blantyrs residence , blackhall , caldwel , stanelie , ellerslie , ihonstown , waterstowne , ramfuley , dochail , raalstowne , biltries , craganis , housloun , barrrochane , dargewell , blackstoun , selwiland , walkinshaw , inchchennā , arskin , bishoptoun boghall , funlastown , new werke , grinoke , ardgowan , glengarnoch , kilburne , & lady-land , with many others , strong stone houses tedious to rehearse . these countries aforesaid are plenteous in cornes bestiall and fishings . next lies cuningham , deuided from kyle , by the water of vrwine : at the foote thereof is situate the towne of vrwine , a goodly marchant towne , with a strong stone bridge . the towne of kilmarnocke , the towne and castle of kilmaris , the earle of glencarnes residence , the town & castle of newmils , the towne of salt coats , where great store of white salt is made , the towne of largs , the town and abbey of kilwinning , the castle of deane the lord boyds residēce , the castle & palace of lowdon the lord lowdons speciall residence , the castles of eglintowne , kirelaw , ardrossin , the earle of eglingtowns residence , cuningham-head , blair , robertland , gyffin , eastwood , calwel , rowallen , law , fairly , kelburne , arneil , knock , skelmurly . in the towne of vrwine the iudge ordinary holdes iustice . kyle and cuningham were called of olde silu●…a . their countries are fertile in cornes and bestiall . next lies kyle , diuided from carricke , by the water downe , which descends out of loch-downe , wherin there is a strong tower builded vpon an isle . this water runnes west in the firth of clyde , in the midst of kyle runnes the water of air , which diuides kyle in kings kyle , and kyle stewart , a part of the princes principalitie . at the mouth of the water , on the south side is situate the auncient marchant towne of air , taking the name from the water , the principall bourgh of the whole shire , pleasantly builded in a plaine field , hard on the sea , very populous , and well shipped , with faire stone houses , most couered with blew sklate , with a large stone bridge , passing to the new town of air , with a castle and palace . the towne and castle of machling , the town and castle of cumnoke , the towne of preseike , the iustice seate of kyle stewart , the townes of gastown and ricardtown , the castles of dundonald , sundrum , the lord of cathearts residence . the castles of ochiltrie , with the towne , the lord ochiltres residence . the castles of caprintown , gaitgirth , cragie , entirkign , gastown , sesnocke , carnal , bar , loc●…oreis , terringean cars , drongane , sorne , dregornie , sornbeg , monton , afflecke and barskymmyn , the loch of martuane , with a strong tower . loch fergus , with an isle , with many growing trees , where great plenty of herons resort , with the loch of feal : there is a decayed monastry in it . the riuers in kyle are air , luggar , feal and sesnocke , luggar and feal runnes in the water of air , and so in the firth of clyde . the water of sesnocke runnes in the water of vruing , and so in clyde . this countrey abounds in strong & valiant men , where was borne the most renowned and valiant champion william wallace , in the barony called ricardtown , then his fathers style , thereafter of craigy and ricardtowne . fiue miles from air is a place called coels field , where the king of britons called coell was killed , by the scots and pictes , vpon the water of dewne . this countrey is plenteous of bestiall , reasonably corned with abundance of cornes . next kyle lies carrick , bordering with galloway , vnder lochrean , of old called loch-calpin , declyning while it come to clydis-firth : in carricke are two goodly waters , plenteous of fishes , the water of stinchar , at the foot thereof stands the towne of ballintrea ; where is great plentie of herrings and other fishes , the castles of arstinchar , craigneil , builded vpon a strong rocke with the castle of knockdolean . vpon the water of girwane are the castles of bargany , blairquhan , dalwharran , cassils , dunure , the earle of cassilis residence . the castles of the koe , ardmillanx , careltowne , killoquhan , baltessane , keirs , auchendrane , the abbey of corsraguel . there was a goodly merchant towne , of olde called carrike , founded by caratake king of scots , whereof remaines nothing : the principall towne is now mayeboll , where the iudge ordinary holds iustice . next adiacent with carricke lies galloway , of olde called brigantia , bordering with niddisdail , almost declyning to the south ; the shire whereof inclosed , all the rest of that side of scotland is more plentifull store of bestiall thane cornes . the waters of galloway are vre , dee , terfe , fleit , kenne , cree , and losse ; which runne all in the ireland sea. there is almost no great hils in galloway , but it is full of craggie knols : the waters gathering together in the valleyes betwixt those knols , make almost innumerable loches ; from whence the first floud that comes before the autumnall equinoctiall , causeth such abundance of waters to run , that there come forth of the said loches incredible number of eeles , and are taken by the countrimen in wand creeles , who salting them , obtaine no small gaine thereby . the farthest part of that side is the head , called nouantum , vnder the which there is a hauen at the mouth of the water of lossie named rerigonins . in the other side of galloway , ouer against this hauen from clyddis-forth , there enters another hauen named commonly lochryen , or vidogora : all that lieth betwixt those two hauens , the countrey people call the rynes , that is , the point of galloway : also nouantum , the m●…le , that is , the becke , in galloway are the townes of kirkcubright well situate for a merchant towne a good harbery , with a castle whithorne is the bishops seat there . wigtoun a goodly market town , the towne of innermessane , minigooff , and saint iohns clachane . the abbey of new abbey glenluse , sall-syde , dundrenan , and tongland , the castles of the treaue , barcloy , hillis , orchartoun , bomby in lochfergus , cumpstoun , cardenes , wreythis , kenmure , kirkgunze . the great strength and castle of crowgiltoun , builded on a rocke hard on the sea , the castles of garleis , large , the greate castle of clare , the castles of dunskaye , corsell , lochnee , the loches of galloway are ruhinfranco , carlingwork , myretoun which neuer freezes , for any frost that chances . the westmost of the hils of grangebean make the border of lennox , the hilles are cutted by a little bosome of the sea named for the shortnesse thereof gerloch at the entrie thereof standeth the castle of roseneth , beyond this loch there is a greater loch named from the water that runneth in it lochlowng , this water is the march betweene lennox and cowall , this cowall , argyle , and knapdall altogether called argyle are deuided in many parts by many narrow creekes that run out of the firth of clyde into them . in cowall is the castle and towne of dunnone , where is the bishop of argyle his seate , there is one most notable loch called loch fyne , which is in length threescore miles : vpon lochfyne is situate the castle palace and towne of inraray , the principall residence of the earle of argyle : also doth the sheriffe of argyle keepe his courts of iustice , this loch is most plentifull of herings and all other fishes : on this loch are situate diuers castles and gentlemens places , as castle lauchlane , the otter and dunetrewne in knapdall is loghaw , and therein a little ile where there is a strong castle of the same name , there is also the castle of tarbat . in argyle is the strong castle of carriek , builded vpon a rocke , within loch goyle , there is also the colledge of kilmun , the water of awe runneth out of loch-how , and is the onely water of all that countrey that doe run in the dewcalidon sea. south and by vvest from knapdall lieth kantere : the head land of the countrey right ouer against ireland , deuided by the sea , of the breath of sixteen miles onely . in kantere is the castles of dunauerty , and sadell , the towne and castle of kilkerraine , situate in the loch of the same name kantere is more long then broad , ioyning to knapdal by so narrow a throat about one mile of breadth , which ground is sandy , and lieth so plaine and low that marriners drawing along , their vessels as gallies and boats through it makes their iourney a great deale shorter then to passe about kintire which is the common passage lorne lies next , & contaygne with argyla on the backe thereof where standeth the most ancient castle of dunestaffage , in which were the kinges of scotland in old times crowned , where also the marble fatall chaire remained more then one thousand yeares . in lorne are also the castles of carnacery , and that of makdules built vpon a right rockie mountaine . the countrie of argyle , knapdall & cowell do abound of bestiall , kye , sheepe and great store of venison , and abundant in fishes . lorne marcheth still with argyle vntill it come to haber , or rather loch-haber : a plaine countrey not vnfruitfull . the countrey where the hilles of grangebean are , most easie to be trauelled , named broad alben , that is to say , the highest part of scotland . and the highest part ●…of broad-albin is called drumalbin , that is the backe of scotland so termed . for forth of the backe waters doe run in both the seas . some to the north , and some south . habre or rather lochaber marcheth with badzenoch , which hath as it were a backe running out through the midst of it , which spouts forth waters in both the seas , lochaber marching with badzenoch , tending by little and little towards the deucalidon sea , a country aboundant in cornes and great plenty of fishes , for besides the abundance of fresh water fishes produced by a great number ot waters , the sea runnes within the countrey , in a long channell , and being narrow at the mouth , the water kept in betwixt two high bankes , and spreading wide inward , makes the forme of a stanke , or rather of a loch , a place where ships may lie sure as in a hauen adiacent with calkmananshire , lies fyffe , beginning at the towne of torre-burne , with the castles of torre , cromby , pickfirran , pictincreiff , the towne of dumfermling and abbey thereof , founded by king dauid the first , the kings of scotland were buried there a long time , the pallace therof now repaired by the queenes maiesties cōmand , & charges where the earle of dumfermling chancellor of scotland hath his residence . the towne of lymkellis with the castle of rossynh , the towne of the queens ferry vpon the north. in the middle of forth , vpon a rocke is the fortresse & decayed castle of inchgaruy . by east lies in the same water saint colmis inch , with a demolished abbey , abundant with conies , and good pasturing for sheepe . next in the mid firth lies inchkeith with a demolished fortresse fertile of conies , and good for pasturing of sheepe . east from inchkeith , within forth lies a very high and big rocke inuironed with the sea ; called the basse , inuincible hauing vpon the top a fresh spring where the solane geese repaires much , and are very profitable to the owner of the said strength . next the basse in the mouth of forth lies the i le of may a mile long , and three quarters of a mile in breadth , there was a religious house , with many fresh water springs , with a fresh loch abundant with eeles : this i le is a goodly refuge for saylers in time of tempest . by east the i le of may twelue miles from all land in the german seas , lies a great hidden rocke called inchcape , very dangerous for nauigators , because it is ouerflowed euery tide . it is reported in old times vpon the said rocke , there was a bel fixed vpon a tree or timber , which rang continually , being moued by the sea , giuing notice to the saylers of the danger . this bell or clocke was put there , and maintained by the abbot of aber-brothok , and being taken downe by a sea pirote , who a yeare thereafter perished vpon the same rocke with ship and goods in the righteous iudgement of god. returning to the ancient towne of innerkething , adioyning thereto is the most comfortable and safe refuge for saylers in time of storme , called saint margarets hope . the castles of dunnybirsill , dalgatie , and fordell , the towne and castel of aberdour , the loch of cowstoun , the castell of orterstoun , the towne of brunt-iland , with the castle , the castels of balmuto , balwery , hal-randes , and raith . the towne and castell of kingrne , the castles of seyfield , and abbots-hall : the towne of kirkealdy , the castles of bogy & rauens-houch , the lord sinclairis speciall residence , towne of dysart , the towne of vvesterwemis and the castle , the castle of easterwemis , the lord colweil chiefe residence , the townes of buckhauen , and lewynis mouth , so named from the riuer of lewin out which comes of loch-lewin , the towne of kenneway , the castles of dury , lundy and largow , with the towne thereof , the castles of rires , bulchares , and kinnochar , with the loch thereof , the towne of earles ferry , the castles of kelly and ardrosse , towne of eliot . the towne and castles of saint monanes , carnbie , and balkaskie , the towne and abbey of pictonweme , the lord of pictonwemes residence , the townes of anstruther with the castle , the castles of bofy , pitterthy , the townes of innergelly , and siluer-dikes : the castles of erdry , third part , west-berns , the towne of craile , with the prouestry and demolished castle , the castles and towres of balcomy , wormestoun , randerstoun , newhall , camno , kipper , pitmille , kinkell , strawithy , lamberletham , lachochar . the citie of sanctandros , the metropolitane and archbishops seat , with a strong castle and abbey decored with three vniuersities for learning in all sciences . in old time the churches in this citie most curionsly and sumptuously builded , and now decayed from this citie west vpon the water of eddin lies the castles of nydy , rumgary , dairsey , blebo . the towne of cowper , the chiefe iustice seate , the castle of corstoun , the castle of struther , the lord lendsayes principall residence , the castles of inglishtarwet , craighall , bruntoun , balgony , the towne of merkinsche , the towne of falkland with the kings palace , with a pleasant parke aboundant , with deares and other wilde beasts . the towne stramiglo with the castle , the loch of rossy , with the tower thereof hill-carney and nachtoun . the two promontories called the loumonds , the towne of leslie with the castle , the castles of straith-endrie , and arnat , the loch of inchgaw , with the castle within , the castles of dowhill , killerny , ady , cleisch , the loch of loch-lewin with a strong castle , aboundant in all fresh fishes , with the new-house adiacent thereto , the castle of burley , the lord burleyes residence , the castle of balluaird , the towne of newbrough , the abbey of lundors , the lord of lundors residence . the castle of bambreich , the earle of routhous speciall residence . the abbey of balmerinoch , the castles of collarny , ferne , perbroth , mordocarny , maquhany , forret , kynneir , the towne of lucers , with the castle , the castles of earleshall , colluthy , the townes of east and west ferreis , the riuers in fyiff are lewin , eddin , ore , lochty , the two quichis , the waters of largo , kendlie , and stramiglo . this countrey is abundant in cornes , fruits bestiall , and all sort of fishes , with abundance of coale and salt : and all the aforesaid sea townes , very populous and wel shipped . straitherne taking name from erne , which runneth out of locherne . the principal country of perth-shire is diuided on the south from part of fiffe , kinroshire & clakmananshire by the ochel hilles , the tops of the hils seruing for march : for as the water springs doe fall towards the north , they belong to straithern , and as they fall towards the south they appertaine to kinroshire , culroshire , and clakmananshire , by ambitiō diuided : in old times all their three shires were vnder the iurisdiction of perth . the stewartrie of mentieth , liand in perth shire , wherein lies the abbey of inch-mahomo with the castles and towers of cardrose , archopple , balinton , quolze , burnbanke , row , keir , knockhill , calendar , leny , cambusmore , torre and lainricke , lying vpon teith water , giuing the name to montieth . the strong fort and castle of downe . nowtowne , argatie and kirk-bryd , the earle of monteiths residence . next lies in perthshire , the citie of dumblane , the bishop of dumblans residence , the castles and towers of kippinrose , cromlix , buttergasse and castle campbell . returning to the towne of abirnethy , sometime the metropolitane citie of the pictes , liand in straithern , marching with fiffe , where the earle of angusse hath there sepulchres . by mugdrum and balgony runneth the riuer of erne in tay , which is the greatest riuer in scotland . at the foote of the ochellis lies the castles & towers of craigpotte , & knight-potte , fordel , ardrose balmanno , exmagirdle and forgon , where the water of meth flowed from the ochellis , giuing name to the castle of innermeth , the lord of innermeths residence . the castles and towers of condie , keltie , garuoke , duncrub , newtowne , glenaigles , the towne of doning and auchtirardour , the castle of kincardin , the earle of montroze speciall residence , the castles of nether gaske and tullibardin , the earle of tullibardin speciall residence , the castles and towers of aurchtermachonie , orchell , pannels , ardoch , braikoch and craigrossie . the castle of drymmen , the earle of perths residence : the castles and towers of balloch , petkellany , and boreland . betwixt erne and tay lieth easter and wester rindes : the castles and towers of fingaske , kinmonth , elcho abbey and castle , easter and wester montcreiffis , malar , petthewles , balhoussie : the ancient bourgh of perth , pleasantly situate vpon the riuer of tay , betwixt two commodious greene fields or inches , founded by king william , sirnamed the lion , after the abolishing of the castle of bertha by inundation of waters , about the yeare of christ 1210. the king giuing great and ample priuiledges to the said burgh , decored with a large and long stone bridge ouer tay , of eleuen arches , partly decayed , & now reedifying ; hauing reasonable commodities for shipping , with goodly fishings , of olde decored with sundry monasteries , and specially the charterhouse now demolished . the strong castle of dupplin , the lord oliphants speciall residence : the castles of huntingtore ( of olde called ruthwen ) the castles and towers of methwen , bachilton , logyalmond , cultmalindis , tibbermure , tibbermallow , keillour , gorthy , trewn and strowane , the town of fowlis , the castles and towers of cultoquhay . abircarny , inchbreky , monyuard , carriwechter , fordee , comrre , williamstowne and durndone , with the town of creiffe , octhirtyre and milnabe : the abbey of incheffrey , the lord of incheffreyes residence , innerpeffry , the lord of mathertyes speciall dwelling . betwixt almond and tay lies the stormond of straitherne , wherein is the castles and towres of strathurd vpper bāchels , inchstrewy , ochtirgewin , arlywicht tullibeltane , innernytie , inchstuthil , murthlie , the auncient demolished castle of kinclewin , where the water of ila runneth in tay. in their countries are the riuers of farg , meth , erne , vrdachy , schiochy , and lochtre , falling in almond , where lous werke made of stone , receiues a great channell of water , passing to perth , whereon stands many mils , and filling the ditches to spey tower , the rest of perth is compassed with a stone wal . the citie of dunkeld the bishops seat situate vpon tay , with little dunkeld , the water of brane fals in tay , giuing the name to straitbrane , wherein is the castle of trocharry : adiacent to dunkeld lies the castles and towers of rotmell , carny , cluny , loch and castle gowrdy , mekilhour , lethandy , glesclun , drumlochy , gormoke , blair , ardblair , craighall , rettray and forde . in straithardell , named from the water of ardell , lies the castles and towers of morkley , assintulle , and innerthrosky : in athole liand in perthshire , is the great and strong castle of blair , the earle of atholes speciall residence ; the castles and towers of strowane , ballachan , balladmyn , the olde demolished castle of muling , the old demolished castle of logyrait , where the water of tynmell , flowers in tay , the castles of garntully , the strong fortresse of garth vpon a great rock , the castles of weme , balloch , finlarge , glanurquhar , lawers , and miggerny in glenlyon where the water of lyon runneth in tay. the water of tay commeth forth of lochtay , in broad-albin , which loch is foure and twentie miles of length . there is other countries ( as rannoch , balquhidder ) lying betwixt athole , argyle , lorne and lochaber vnknowne to the author . returning to gowry , and the rest of perthshire lying betwix tay and angusse , where lies the castles and towers of stobhall , campsey , byrs , petcur , ruthwens , banff , camno , balgillo , moncur , inchstur , the ancient and renowned abbey of scone , where the kings of scotland were crowned , from the exterminion of the picts , vnto the time of king robert bruse , at which time the fatall marble chaire was transported to westminster by edward the first ( surnamed longshanks ) king of england . this abbey was sumptuously builded , now wholy decayed : a part whereof is reedified , and pleasantly repaired by the lord of scone , being his speciall residence : the castles and towres of poknyll , pitsindy , balthiok , rait , kilspindie , fingask , kynnarde , meginshe , murey , hill , petfour , the towne and pallace of arroll , the earle of arrols residence , leyis , inchmartine , monorgund , huntley and innergowry . these countreyes ( all in perthshire ) are right plenteous and abundant in all kind of cornes , bestiall , and all sort of fishes , and all other necessaries for the sustentation of man , and athole abounds in all kind of wild beasts and fowles with wild horses . next adiacent to gowry lies angusse , beginning at the bridge of innergowry , with the castle of fowles , the lord grayes residence , the castles of balfour , lundy , and dinnun . the towne of kethens , the towne and abbey of copar , the castle of newtyle , the towne and castle of glammis , the lord glammis speciall residence . the towne of killy-mure , the castles and towers of lowry , brigtoun , thorntoun , innerrichtie , kilkaudrum and quich , clouoy , with parks and woods , innerquharitie , and quich , glen-ilay , wain , dysart , rossie , the castle of fyn-heauin , the earle of crawfurds speciall residence . the castles and towers of melgund , flemyngtoun , woodwre , bannabreich , old bar , with the parke carrestoun and balhall , the citie and castle of brechin the bishops residence . the castles and towers of dun , craig , edzell , balzordy , and newtoun . the towne or brugh of dunde , strongly builded with stone houses , right populous , and industrious with good shipping , and a commodious hauen : a pleasant church with a right high stone steeple , the castles of duddope and autherhouse , the earle of buquhans special residence . the castles & towers of strickmartin , clawers , mayns , wester ogyll , ballumby , and claypottes , the strong fortresse & castle of bruchty , vpon a rocke inuironed with the sea. the townes of north ferrey , and monyfuth , the castles and townes of auchinleck , easter and wester powreis , glen , drumkilbo , and teling , the towne of forfarre with a demolished castle , with a loch and an i le therein with a tower , cassie , logymegle , barnzstaird , innerkelour , the demolished abbey of resenneth , with a loch , and the loch of reskobow , the castles and towers of woodend , balmeshannoch , hakerstoun ; balmady , with a loch balgayis demolished , the castles and towers of turings , carsegowny , guthrie , garne , fernell , and boshane : the lord ogilbies speciall residence , the townes of barre , and panbryde ; the castles of duniken , pammure ; and kelly , the towne and ancient abbey of abirtrothok ; with the castle , the castle of lethame , and ethy ; where a falcon engendes yearely vpon a high rocke past memorie of man. the castles and towers of enblackmond , callistoun , bisack , ardbeky , and the red castle , the castles and towers of dunnenald , vsum , craig , bonytoun and kinnarde . the ancient towne of mont-rosse , with a commodious harbery for shipping , and well shipped , this towne is all builded with stone , and populous , aboundant with all kinde of fishes : the towne and castle of olde mount-rosse , and the castle of westerbracky . the riuers in anglusse are the water of innergowery deuiding gowry from angusse : the riuers of dichty , carbat , ila , brothat lunnen , north and south askis . this countrey of angusse is plentifull and abundant in all kinde of cornes great store of bestiall , with all sort of fishes withall other commodities necessary for man. next adiacent to angus is the mernis , where are the townes kincardin , fordoun , & beruy , cowey and stanehyue , galguein , with the castles of halgrein and lowristoun , the most strong castle of dunotter , with many pleasant buildings within the same , situate vpon a rocke , inuironed with the ocean sea , and well furnished with ordinance and all warlike prouision for defence , the earle martiall his residence , with the castle fatteresso , there is also the castles of glenberuy , puttarrow , arbuthnet , thornntoun , balbegenat , hakertoun , morphie , benholme , allardes and maters . this countrey is plentious of beere , and wheat , abounding in bestiall and fishes : the barrons and gentlemen deteste contention in law , remitting and submitting alwaies their actions debatable , to amicable arbitrements among themselues . north from the mernis is the mouth of the water of dee , where is situate the ancient burgh and , merchant towne of abirdene , wel builded & renowned for the salmond-fishing thereof , well shipped , it hath a florishing vniueruersitie for instruction of the youth , a pleasant bridge builded of stones , at the mouth of the riuer done , is situate the old citie of aberdone , which is the bishops seate , where also is a goodly colledge for learning in sciences specially in philosophy . betweene dee and done beginneth the countrey of mar , growing alwaies wider and wider till it be threescore miles length and comes to badezenoch . in mar is the towne of kinkardin of neil , the castles of drum , leyes , skein , monimusk , halforrest , the towne of kyntor , the castles of abirgeldy , lenturke , corsse , aslun , kyndrymme , innerbuchat , cluny , corsinda , muchall , cragywar , torry and cowgarth , klenkindy , buchholly , and new. lochaber , badzenoch and mar , comprehends the breadth of scotland betweene the two seas . next mar vpon the north lies the gareoch , wherein is the towne of innerwry . the castles of balquhan , fethernere , caskybane , auchenhuiff , meldrum , pitcaple , pittodrie , harthill , not farre distant is the most high mountaine of bannachy , the highest mountaine in the north for saylers , comming from the easter seas , takes vp land first by this mountaine . the castles of lesly and wardens , the ancient castle of dinnedure vpon a high mountaine called the golden mountaine , by reason of the sheepe that pastures thereupon : their teeth are so extraordinary yealow , as if they were coloured with gold , there is also the castle of drumminor , the lord forbes residence . next gareoch vpon the north-east lies bucquhan , wherein is situate the towne of newburgh , vpon the water of itham , aboundant in salmond and other fishes , the townes of peterhead and frisselburgh , the castles of fophern , asselmond , arnage , tochone , kelly , straloch , vdney , & vpon the north-east side therof there is a rocke where are found sundry well coloured stones of diuers hewes , very pleasant , some quadrant pointed , and transparant , resembling much the orientall diamond for they are proued to be better then eyther the virginean or the bohemian diamond . the time of the comming of hengistus in britaine , there came with him one noble germane prince called woden , about the yeare of christ 477. ( as writeth pomarius ) who adioyning their forces with vortiger , then king of the britaine , against the scots and picts , continuing in their fury were called vodenay , conforme to the old saxon language ( as writeth olaus magnus , beda and vliterpius ) of whom by long progression and abbreuiation of speech is descended the ancient name of vdny . there are also the castles of pitmedden , hadde , gicht , fywie , the ancient castle of slanes , watterton , enderrugy , with the strong castle of the craig of enderrugy , the castles of fillorth , pitsligo , feddreth , towy , balquhaly , dalgatie , the tower of torrey , and the castle of mures . this countrey stretches farthest in the germane seas of all the countries of scotland fertile in store , and cornes : and in it selfe sufficient in all other commodities necessary for the countrey , there is abundance of salmon and other fishes taken in all the waters thereof , except the water of rattry , whereunto this day there was neuer any salmon seene . next buehquhan vpon the north lies boyne , and enze in boyne . in boyne is the towne of bamst , and castle thereof , situate vpon the riuer of diuern , there is also the castles of boyne , findetar , and bogygieht , with the towne of culane , situate vpon the sea coast . next lies the lands of straithbogy , where is the castle and pallace of straithbogy , the speciall residence of the marquesse of huntley , the castles of fendrough , pitlurge , carnbarrow , rothemay , the lord saltouns chiefe residence , kinnardi , crombie , achindore , lesmore , balwany , blarsindy , drymmyn , dusky , ballindalloch , balla castle and aikenway , these foresaid countries are plenteous in cornes , bestiall , and in fishings . next vpon the north is the water spey , abundant in salmond and all new fishes , endlong spey lies murrey-land , wherein is situate the citie of elgyn vpon the water of lossy , the bishop of murreyes seat and speciall residence , with a church most curiously and sumptuously builded , which now in part decayes . in murrey are many strong castles & other strong houses , as the castles of blairy , monynesse , the ancient strong castle of vrquhart , the castles of spynay with a pleasant loch abounding in fishes , the castles of innes and duffus , the castle and towne of forres , the great castle of tornuaye , the principall residence of the earle of murrey : the castles of cadall and kilrauicke with diuers gentlemens strong stone houses adiacent about the towne of olde erne . in murrey are two famous abbeyes , pluscardy , and kinlus , the castle of louat the lord louats residence . there is also the most ancient towne of innernes , and the strong castles thereof situate on the water of naes , which descends from a loch , named loch naes thirtie foure miles in length : this water of naes is alwaies warme , and neuer freezeth , in such sort as in winter time , yee falling into it is dissolued by the heat therof : west from lochnes , there lies eight miles of continent ground : and that small peece is the onely impediment that the seas ioyne not , and make the remanent of scotland an iland : for all the land that lies betwixt the strait and the deucalidon sea , is cutte by creekes and loches of salt water running into the land . from the mouth of naesse , where it enters in the germane sea , north lies rosse , shooting in the sea in great promontories or heads . the countrey of rosse is of greater length nor breadth , extending from the germane to the deucalidon sea , where it riseth in craggy and wilde hils , and yet in the plaine fields thereof , there is as great fertilitie of corne as in any other part of scotland . there is in rosse pleasant dales with waters , & loches full of fishes , specially lochbroome : it is broad at the deucalidon sea , and growes narrow by little and little turning southward from the other shore , the germane sea ( winning the selfe an entrie betwixt high clintes ) runs within the land in a wide bosome , and makes an healthfull port and sure refuge against all tempests and stormes : the entrie of it is easie , and within it is a very sure hauen , against all iniuries of sea , and a hauen for great nauies of ships . loch-broome is abundant of salmond and all other fishes . the townes in rosse are the city of the channory , the bishops seat with a strong castle , the towne of rosemarky , the castles of read-castle , dingwall , the abbey of bewly , the castles of cromarty , miltoun , fowlis , ballingoun , the town of tane , the castles of catboll , torbat , loselun , & kayne with many others , the waters in rosse are cromarty , the water tane , the water of naes : also mountains of allabaster and hils of white marble , there is many other parts in rosse too longsome , to describe . next rosse lies sutterland , the speciall towne is d●…norch with a strong castle : the castls of skibow , pulrossy , skelbo , clyne , dunrobene , the earle of sutherlands residence , with goodly orchards , where growes good saphron : the riuers are ferryhuns , brora helmsdeaill , abundant in salmond and other fishes , and good store of bestial , there is also hilles of white marble , with salt and coale . next sutherland lies stranauern , the castle of far , where the lord of makky hath his speciall residence : the castles of tunge , this countrey & stratleigh , with sundry ilands , as ship-iland , hyp-iland marten-iland , conne-iland are vnknown to the author . next lies caithnes , where it marches with stranauerne is the furthest north countrey of all scotland : and those two draw the breadth of scotland in a narrow front . in thē are three promontories or heads : the highest wherof is in stranauern , called orcas , or taruidum , the other two not so high are in caithnes , veruedrum now named hoya : and b●…rebrum now called dunsby , at the foot of this hill there is a pretie hauen for them that trauell from orknay by sea , there is mountains called ordhead , hoburnhead , madēs pape , the castle of berydale , with a riuer abundant in salmond & other fishes . the castle of dumbeth with a goodly riuer , with the towns of wcik & thirso , with ichone a riuer . the castle of gerniggo , the earle of caithnes special residence . the castles of akergile , keis pressik , old weik , ormly , skrabstar , dunray , brawl , and may , dunnethead isa hil of marble , the riuers are the riuer of berridale , dunberth , weik , thirso fors. this countrey is abundant in cornes , bes●…all , salmond , & all other fishes . of the iles of scotland in generall . now refleth it to speake somewhat of the iles , they are diuided ( which as it were crowne scotland ) in three classes or rankes , the west iles , orknay iles , & shetland iles , the west iles lye in the deucalidon sea , from ireland almost to orkenay vpon the west side of scotland , they are called hebrides , and by some aebudae : they are scattered into the deucalidon sea , to the number of three hundreth and aboue : of old the kings of scotland kept these iles in their possession , vntill the time of donald brother to king malcolme the third , who gaue them to the king of norway , vpon condition that he should assist him , in vsurping of the kingdome of scotland , against law and reason . the danes and norway people kept possession of them for the space of 160. yeares : and then king alexander the third , ouercomming the danes and norway men in a great battell , thrust them out of the iles : yet afterward they attempted to recouer their libertie , partly , trusting to their owne strength ; and partly , mooued by seditions in the maine land of this countrey , creating kings of themselues , as not long ago , iohn ( of the house of clandonald ) did vsurpe the name of king , as others had done before . in foode , raiment , and all things pertaining to their family , they vse the ancient frugalitie of the scots . their bankets are hunting and fishing . they seeth their flesh in the tripe , or else in the skinne of the beast , filling the same full of water . now and then in hunting , they straine out the bloud , and eate the flesh raw . their drinke is the broth of sodden flesh . they loue very well the drinke made of whey , and kept certaine yeeres , drinking the same at feasts : it is named by them , blandium . the most p●…rt of them drinke water . their custome is to ●…ake their bread of oates & barly , ( which are the onely kinds of graine that grow in those parts : ) experience ( with time hath taught thē to mak it in such sort , that it is not vnplea sant to eat . they take a litle of it in the morning , & so passing to the hunting , or any other businesse , content themselues therewith , without any other kind of meat til euen . they delight in marled clothes , specially , that haue long stripes of sundry colours : they loue chiefly purple & blew . their predecessors vsed short mantles or plaids of diuers colours , sundry wayes deuided : and amongst some , the same custome is obserued to this day : but for the most part now , they are browne , most neere to the colour of the hadder : to the effect , when they lie amongst the hadder , the bright colour of their plaids shall not bewray them : with the which , rather coloured , then clad , they suffer the most cruell tempests that blow in the open field , in such sort , that vnder a wrythe of snow , they sleepe sound . in their houses also , they lie vpon the ground , laying betwixt them and it , brakens , or hadder , the rootes thereof downe , and the tops vp , so prett●…ily laid together that they are as soft as feather-beds , & much more wholesome : for the tops themselues are dry of n●…ture , whereby it dries the weake humours , and restores againe the strength of the sinewes troubled before , and that so eu●…dently , that they , who at euening goe to rest sore and weary , rise in the morning whole and able . as none of these people care for feather-beds and bedding , so take they greatest pleasure in rudenesse and hardnesse . if for their owne commoditie , or vpon necessity , they trauell to any other countrey , they reiect the feather-beds and bedding of their host. they wrap themselues in their owne plaids , so taking their rest : carefull indeed , lest that barbarous delicacy of the maine land ( as they tearme it ) corrupt their naturall and countrey hardnesse . their armour wherewith they couer their bodies in time of warre , is an iron bonnet , and an habbergion , side almost euen to their heeles . their weapons against their enemies , are bowes and arrowes . the arrowes are for the most part hooked , with a barble on either side , which once entered within the body , cannot be drawne forth againe , vnlesse the wound bee made wider . some of them fight with broad swords and axes . in place of a drum they vse a bag-pipe . they delight much in musicke , but chiefly in harpes and clairschoes of their owne fashion . the strings of the clairschoes are made of brasse-wire , and the strings of the harpes , of sinewes : which strings , they strike either with their nailes , growing long ; or else with an instrument appointed for that vse . they take great pleasure to decke their harpes and clairschoes with siluer and precious stones : and poore ones , that cannot attaine heerevnto , decke them with cristall . they sing verses prettily compounded , containing ( for the most part ) prayses of valiant men . there is not almost any other argument , whereof their rimes entreat . they speake the auncient language , altered a little . finis . a short description of the westerne iles of scotland , lying in the deucalidon sea , being aboue 300. also the iles in orkenay , and schetland or hethland . the first is the i le of man , of olde called dubonia , there was a towne in it named sodor●… , the bishop of the iles seat . it lyes almost midway betwixt ireland and cumber in england , and galloway in scotland , 24. miles in length , and 18. in bredth . next vnto man is ailsay , into the firth of clyde , with a castell therein , an hard high craig on all sides , except at one entrie , vnmanured . there comes a great number of boates there to fish ●…éeling . there are many comes , and solayne géese in it . it lyes betwixt ireland vpon the northwest , carrik vpon the northeast , and kyntire vpon the southeast . 24. miles from ailsay , lyes arrane , almost direct north , 24. miles of length , and 16. of bredth . the whole iland riseth in high and wild mountaynes , manured onely vpon the sea side , where the ground is lowest . the sea runnes in , and makes a well large créeke into it : the entryes whereof are closed by the iland molas : a very sure hauen for shippes : and in the waters , which are alwayes calme , is great abundance of fish , that sundry times the countrey people taking more then may sustayne them for a day , they cast th●… 〈◊〉 ●…ne in the sea , as it were in a sta●…ke . next 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i le flada , fertill of conyes . further in it is situate the ●…se of b●… within the firth of clyde , eyght miles in length , and foure in bredth , from arrane eyght miles , southeast , and from argyill , southwest , halfe a mile . cwnnyngham lyes , by east of it , 〈◊〉 m●…es . it is a low countrey , commodious for corne and store , with a towne of the same name , and the old castle of rosa ; with another castle in the middest of it , named cames . the i le m●…rnoca , a mile of length , and halfe a mile of brédth , lyes low , southwestwards , well manured and fertill . within the firth of clyde lyes little cambra , fertill of fallow déere : and great cambra fertill of cornes . from the mule of kyntire , little more then a mile , is porticosa auona , getting that name from the creeke of water , th●… kept the danes nauie there , at what ●…e they had the iles in their hands . northwest from the mule , ouer agaynst the coast of ireland , lyes rachuda . and from kyntire , foure miles , is the i le caraia : and not farre from thence gigaia , sixe miles of length , and a mile and a halfe of bredth . twelue miles from gigaia lyes iura , foure and twentie miles of length . the shore side of iura is well manured : and the inward part of the countrey is ●…led with wood , full of déere of sundry kinds . two miles from iura lyes scarba , foure miles in length , and a mile in bredth . the tide of the sea , betwixt this i le and iura , is so violent , that it is not possible to passe it , e●…ther by sa●…le or a●…re , except at certayne times . at the bache of this i le , is the i le ballach , ge●…istaria , gearastilla , longaia , the two fidlais , the thrée barbais , culbremna , d●…num , co●…p , cuparia , 〈◊〉 , vikerana , vitulina , lumga , scila , scana . these thrée last ilands are fertill of corne and store , pertayning to the earles of argyle . next vnto them is sklata : named from a sklait quarry , that is in it . then naguigosa , and eisda●…a , and skennia , and the i le thiania , vderga , and the kings iland : then duffa , that is black●… : and the iland of the church , 〈◊〉 triaracha : and then the iland ardu●… , humlis , viridis , and ericea . item , arboraria , capraria , cunicularia , and the i le named , the i le of idle men : and abridita , and li●…mora , where sometimes was the bishops seat of argyle , eyght miles in length , and two in bredth . in this i le are mines of mettals , with other good commodityes . then ouilia , the iland traiecte , the iland garna , the iland of the stane , gressa , and the great iland ardiescara , mus●…dilla , and bernera , sometime called , the holy girth , notable by the trée taxus , that growes in it . mo●…ochasgia , drinacha , full of thornes and bourtrée , ouercouered with the ruines of old houses . wricht●…un , fertill of wood. item , ransa , kernera . the greatest iland , next vnto iura , westward , is yla , foure and twentie miles in length , and sixetéene of bredth , extended from the south to the north , abundant in store , cornes , déere , and lead : there is a fresh water in it , called , lai●… ; and a créeke of salt water ; and therein are many ilands . there is also a fresh water loch , wherein stands the iland , named , falingania , sometime the chiefe seate of all the iles men. there the gouernour of the iles , vsurping the name of a king , was wont to dwell . neere vnto this iland , and somewhat lesse then it , is the round iland , taking the name from counsell : for therein was the iustice seat , and fouretéene of the most worthy of the countrey , did minister iustice vnto all the rest , continually , and intreated of the waighty affayres of the realme , in counsell , whose great equitie and discretion kept peace both at home and abroad : and with peace , was the companion of peace , abundance of all things . betwixt ila and iura , lyes a little iland , taking the name from a cairne of stones . at the south of ila , doel ye colurna , muluoris , ossuna , brigidana , corskera , the low iland , ●…mersga , beathia , texa , ouicularia , noasiga , vinarda , caua , tarsheria , the great iland auchnarra , the iland made like a man , the iland of iohn s●…badis . at the west corner of il●… iyes ouersa , whereth●… sea is most tempostuous , and at certayne houres ●…gable . the marchants iland : and south westwards from it , vs●…brasta , tanasta , and nefa . the weauers iland . 8. miles from ila , somewhat north , lyes ornansa . next vnto it the swines iland . halfe a mile from ornansa , col●…ansa . north from col●…ansa , lyes the mule , 20. miles from ila . this i le is 24. miles of length , and as much in bredth , fruitfull of cornes : there are many woods in it , and many heards of déere , and a good hauen for ships : there are in it two waters well spred of salmond fishes , and some stripes not empty thereof . there are also two loches in it , and in euery one an iland , and in euery iland a tower. the sea running in this iland at 4. sundry parts , makes 4. salt water loches therein , all 4. abounding in herring . to the northwest lyes columbaria , or the dowe iland : to the southeast , era : both the one and the other profitable for bea●…iall , cor●… , and for fishings . from this iland lyes the iland of sanctcolm●… , two miles of length , and more then a mile of bredth , fertill of all things , renowned by the ancient monuments of the countrey . there were two abbeyes in this iland , and a court or a parish church , with many chappels , builded of the liberality of the kings of scotland , and gouernours of the iles. there is as yet remayning amongst the old ruines , a buriall place , or church-yard , common to all the noble families of the west iles , wherein there are thrée tombes higher then the rest , distant one from another a little space , and thrée little houses , situated to the east , builded seuerally vpon the thrée tombes : vpon the west side are stones grauen , which stand in the middest , bearing this title , the tombes of the kings of scotland . it is sayd , there were 48. kings of scotland buried there . the tombe vpon the rightside hath this inscription : the tombes of the kings of ireland . it is recorded , that there were foure kings of ireland buried there . upon the left side it hath this inscription : the tombes of the kings of norway . the report is , that there were 8. kings of that nation ●…uryed there . the notable houses of the iles haue their t●…nbes in the rest of the church-yard , seuerally by themselues . about this iland , and ●…re vnto it , there are s●…e ilands , right fruitfull , giuen by the ancient kings of scotland , and gouernours of the iles , to the abbey of sanctcolme . so●… is a very profitable ground for shéep , but the chiefe commodityes of it consist in sea fowles that build there●…t , specially of their egges . next vnto it is the i le of women : then rudana . néere vnto it be●…nira ; and from that skennia , halfe a mile distant from the mule. the sea sides of it abo●… in c●…es . fiue miles hence lyeth fro●… . all their iles are subiect to sanctcolmes abbey . two miles from fresa lyeth v●…lua , fiue miles of length , fruitfull of corne and shore , with a commodious hauen for gallies or ●…ates . upon the south side of it lyeth toluansa , with a wood of nut●…s , reas●…able fruitfull . about thrée hundred paces from this iland lyeth gomatra , two miles long , and one mile bro●…d , extending from the north to the south . from go●… , foure miles southward , lye two s●…affae , both full of ●…ing places . from thence , foure miles southeast , lye the two ke●…burgae , the more and the lesse , enui●…oned with such sho●…e , high , and furious fide , that by their owne naturall de●… ( supported somewhat by the industrie of man ) they are altogether inuincible . one mile from them lyes an iland , the whole earth is blac●…e , whereof the people make peat●… for their 〈◊〉 . next lyeth longa , two miles of length , and b●…cha halfe as much . from bacha sixe miles lyes tiria , eyght miles in length , and thrée in bredth , most fertill of all the ihon●…s , it 〈◊〉 in store , cornes , fishings , and sea to wie●… . in this ●…and , there is a fresh water lorh , & therein an old castle , with a good hauen for boates. from this iland two miles lies sunna , and from sunna as farre lieth colla , 12. miles of length , and 2. miles of breadth : a fertill iland . not farre from it is culsa , almost full of wood : and then two ilands , named mekle viridis , and little viridis . item , other two of the same names . ouer-against the mules head , and not farre from it lye two ilands , named glassae , and then arden-eider , that is , the high land of the rider . then luparia , or the woolfe iland : and after it a great i le , lying north from colla , extending east and west . then ruma , 16. miles in length , and 6. in bredth : the sea-fowles lay there eggs here and there in the ground : in the middest of spring time when the eggs are layd , any man may take of them . in the high rocks the solayne géese are taken in aboundance . from this iland , foure miles north-east-ward lyes the horse iland . from it halfe a mile , the swine iland , fruitfull enough in all things necessary : the falcon builded in it , with a good hauen . not farre from it , lyes canna and egga , fertill enough . in egga are solayne g●…ese . soabrittella profitable for hunting . from this iland is the i le of skye , the greatest of all the ilands that are about scotland , lying north and south 40. miles in length , and 8. miles broad in some places , and in other places 12. miles , rising in hills , in sundry places full of woods and pastorage : the ground thereof fertill in corne and store : and besides all other kinds of bestiall , fruitful of mares , for bréeding of horse : it hath fiue great riuers rich in salmond , and many little waters , plenty of salmond and other fishes . the sea running in the land on all sides , make many salt waters : thrée principall , and 13. others : all rich in herring . there is in it a fresh water loch , and ●…e castles . about the skye , lye little ilands , scattered here and there . oronsa , fertill in corne and store . cunicularia , full of bushes and connyes . next is paba . 8. miles frō paba southwest , lyes scalpa , which ( besides sundry other commodities ) hath woods full of troopes of déere . betwixt the mouth of zochcarron and raorsa , lies crulinga , 7. miles of length , and two of bredth : there is a sure hauen in it for ships : there are in it also woods full of bucke and déere . halfe a mile from crulinga is rona , full of wood and hadder , with a good hauen in the innermost lorh thereof : in the mouth of the same lorh , is an iland of the same name , called ger-loch . from rona sixe miles northward , lyes flada : two miles from flada , euilmena . upon the south side of skye , lyes oronsa , and a mile from it , knya , pabra , and great bina : and then fiue little ilands . next vnto them is isa , fertill in cornes . beside it is ouia ; then askerma , and lindell●… . 8. miles from skye southward , lyes linga and gigarmena , benera , megala , pana , flada , scarpa , veruecum , sandara , vatersa , which by many other good commodityes , hath a hauen commodious for a number of great ships , whereinto fishermen of all countreys about , conuene certayne times of the yere ordinarily . these last nine ilands are subiect to the bishop of the iles. two miles from vatersa is barra , running from the northwest , to the southeast , seuen miles in length , fruitfull of cornes , and aboundant in fish : there runneth in it a lorh , with a narrow throat , growing round and wide within : in it there is an inche , and therein a strong castle . upon the northside of barra , there riseth an hill full of hearbs , from the foote to the head , vpon the top whereof , is a fresh water well : the spring that runneth from this well , to the next sea , caryes with it little things , like as they were quicke , but hauing the shape of no beast , which appeare ( although obscurely ) in some respect , to represent the fish that is commonly called , cockles : the people that dwell there , call the part of the shore whereunto these things are carryed , the great sands : because that when the sea ebbes , there appeares nothing but dry sands , the space of a mile . out of these sands the people dig out great cockles , which the neighbours about iudge , eyther to grow ( as it were ) of that séede that the springs doe bring from the well , or else ( indéede ) to grow in that sea. betwixt barra and wist lye these ilands : oronsa , onia , hakerseta , garnlanga , flada , great buya , little buya , haya , hell s●… , gigaia , lingaia , foraia , fudaia , erisoaia . from these ilands vistus lyes northward , 34. miles of length , and 6. of bredth . the tide of the sea , running in two places of this i le , causeth it to appeare thrée ilands , but when the tide is out , it becommeth all one iland . in it are many fresh water loches , specially one , thrée miles long . the sea hath worne in vpon the land , and made it selfe a passage to this loch , and can neuer be holden out , albeit the inhabitants haue made a wall of 60. foote broad , to that effect . the water entereth in amongst the stones , that are builded vp together , and leaues behind it , at the ebbe , many sea fishes . there is a fish in it like to the salmond in all things , except , that with the white wombe , it hath a blacke backe , and wanteth scales . in this iland are many fresh water loches , sundry caues , couered with hadder . in it are fiue churches . eyght miles west from it lyes hel●…ther vetularum , pertayning to the nunnes of the i le of ione . a little further north riseth haneskera : about this iland , at certayne times of the yéere , are many sealches , they are taken by the countrey men . southwest , almost 60. miles , lyes hirta , fertill in cornes and store , and specially in shéepe , greater then any other shéepe , in any other ilands . about the 17. day of iune , the lord of this iland sendeth his chamberlayne to gather his dutyes , and with him a minister , who baptizeth all the children that are borne the yéere preceding : and if the minister come not , euery man baptizeth his owne child . this hirtha is the last and farthest ile in albion : so that betwixt the i le of man , being the first i le in albion , and this i le , there is 377. miles . returning to wistus , from the north point thereof , is the iland velaia , two miles long , and one mile of bredth . betwixt this point , and the iland 〈◊〉 , lyes soa , stroma , pabaia , barneraia , e●…saia , keligira , little saga , great saga , harmodra , scaria , grialinga , cillinsa , hea , hoia , little soa , great soa , isa , great seuna , little seuna , taransa , slegana , tuemon . all these ilands are fruitfull of cornes and store . aboue horea , is scarpa . and halfe a mile towards the west equinoctiall , from the lewis , lys seuen little ilands , named flananae , some holy place ( in old times ) of girth or refuge , rising vp in hill●…s full of hearbs . further , north , in the same ranke , lyes garn-ellan , that is , she hard i le , lamba , flada , kellasa , little bernera , great bernera , kirta , great bina , little bina , vexaia , pabaia , great sigrama , cunicularia , plenty of conyes , little sigrama . the iland of the pigmeis , wherein there is a church , in which the pigmeis were buried , ( as they that are neighbours to this iland beléeue . ) sundry strangers , digging déepely in the ground , sometimes haue found , & yet to this day doe find very little round heads , and other little bones of mans body , which seemes to approue the truth and apparance of the common bruite . in the northeast side of the iland leogus , there are 2. loches , running foorth of the sea , named , the north and south loches , wherein at all times of the yéere , there is abundance of fish , for all men that list to take them . from the same side of the loch , somewhat more southerly , lyes fabilla , adams iland , the lambe iland . item , hulmetia , viccoilla , hana , rera , laxa , era , the dowe iland , tora , affurta , scalpa , flada , senta : at the east side thereof , there is a passage vnder the earth , vaulted aboue a flight shoote of length , into the which , little boates may eyther sayle or row , for eschewing of the violent tide . somewhat eastwards lyes an iland , named , old castle , a roome strong of nature , and plenty of cornes , fish , and egges , of sea fowles , to nourish the inhabitants . at that side where lochbrien enters , is situate the iland ew . more northerly lyes the iland grumorta : both these ilands full of wood. the iland , named , the priests iland , lyes the same way , profitable for pastorage of shéepe , and full of sea fowles . next vnto it is afulla , and great habrera : then little habrera : and néere vnto it , the horse i le ; and then marta ika . these last mentioned ilands lye all before the entrie of lochbrie●… : and from them , north , lye hary , and lewis , 16. miles of length , and 16. of bredth : these 3. make an iland , which is not deuided by any hauen 〈◊〉 port of the sea , but by the seuerall lordships of the heritours thereof . the south part is named , haray : in it sometime was the abbey roadilla , builded by maccleude har●…is , a countrey fertill inough in cornes , and good pastorage , with a high hill , ouercouered with grasse , to the very top : many shéepe are séene féeding there masterlesse , pertayning peculiarly to no man ; for there is neyther woolfe , foxe , or serpent séene there : albeit , betwixt that and lewis , there bee great woods full of déere . in that part of the iland is a water , well stored of salmond , and other fishes : upon the north-side it is well manured : upon the sea side there are foure churches , one castle , 7. great running waters , and 12. lesse : all plentifull of salmond , and other fishes . the sea enters in the land in diuers parts , making sundry salt water loches , all plentifull of herring , with abundance of shéepe . in this countrey is great abundance of barley . in this iland is such abundance of whales taken ( as aged men report ) their tenth will extend to 27. whales : also a great caue , wherein the sea at a low water abides two faddome high , and at a full sea , foure faddome déepe . people of all sort and ages sit vpon the rocks thereof , with hooke and line , taking great multitude of all kind of fishes . southeast from lewis , almost 60. miles , there is a fertill iland , low and playne , ●…alled , rona , well manured : the lord of the ground limits certayne number of households to occupy it , appoynting for euery household , few or many , shéepe , according to his pleasure , whereon they may easily liue and pay his rent . in this iland is a chappell , dedicated to saint ronan , wherein ( as aged men report ) there is alwayes a spade , wherewith , when any is dead , they find the place of his graue marked . besides other fishes in this iland , is great plenty of whales . sixetéene miles from rona , west , lyes suilkeraia , a mile of length : but in it growes no kind of hearbe , not so much as hadder . sea fowles lay egges there , and doe hatch . they of leogus , next neighbours vnto it , get great profit thereby . in that iland is séene a rare kind of fowle , vnknowne to other countreyes , called , colca , little lesse then a goose : they come in the spring time , & euery yéere hatch and nourish their young ones . they cast their feathers , which haue no stalke , like vnto downe . now follow the iles of orknay , ( of olde called , the realme of the picts ) lying scattered , partly in the deucalidon sea , partly in the germane seas . the common people to this day are very carefull to kéepe the ancient frugality of their predecessors , and in that respect they continue in good health , for the most part , both in mind and body , so that few dye of sicknesse , but all for age . they haue barley and oates , whereof they make both bread and drinke . they haue sufficient ●…ore of quicke goods , neate , shéepe , and goates , great plenty of milke , chéese , and butter . they haue innumerable sea fowles , whereof ( and of fish , for the most part ) they make their common foode . there is no uenemous beast in orknay . there is is no kind of trée , except hadder . they haue an old cup , amongst them , called , saint magnus cup , the first man that brought the christian religion in that countrey . there are about 33. ilands in orknay : whereof 13. are inhabited : the remnant are reserued for nourishing of cattell . the greatest ile is named , pomona . the firme land , thirtie miles of length , sufficiently inhabited . it hath 12. countrey parish churches , and one towne , called kirkwaa . in this towne there are two towers , builded not farre the one from the other . one of them appertaynes to the king , the other appertaynes to the bishop . betwixt these 2. towers stands one church , very magnifique : betwixt the church and the towers , on eyther side , are sundry goodly buildings , which the inhabitants name , the kings towne , and , the bishops towne . the whole iland runnes out in promontories or heads , the sea running in , and makes sure hauens for ships , and harbours for boates. in 6. sundry places of this i le , there are mynes of good lead and tinne , as is to be found in any part of britayne . this iland is distant from caithnes about 24. miles , diuided by the picts sea. in this sea are diuers ilands , scattered here and there : of whom , stroma , lying 4. miles from caithnes , is one , very fruitfull : the earles of caithnes being lords thereof . northward lyes south ranalsa , 5. miles long , with a commodious hauen ; with 2. little ilands , or holmes , good for pastorage . toward the north lyes burra , suna , flata , fara , hoia , and vvalles . in these ilands are the highest hilles , that are in all orknay . hoia , and walles , are 10. miles of length , distant from ranalsay , eyght miles , and more then twentie from dunkirke in caithnes . north is the i le granisa , and cobesa . siapinsa , turning somewhat east , lyes , two miles from kirkwaa , euen oueragaynst it , sixe miles of length . right west from siapinsa are garsa , and eglisa , 4. miles of length . in this iland , they say , saint magnus is buried . next , and somewhat neerer the continent land , is rusa , foure miles of length , and thrée miles of bredth , well peopled . westward lyes the iland broca . some ilands lye to the north , as stronza , next linga , fiue miles of length , and two of bredth . haa , fiue miles of length , and two of bredth . by east lyes fara . and north from fara , lyes wastra , running out in the sea , in promontories or heads . aboue stronza , at the east end of etha , lyes sanda , northward , 10. miles of length , and foure of bredth , most fertill of cornes of all the iles of orknay ; but it hath no kind of fire within it , making exchange of cornes for peats . beyond sanda , lyes , north , ranalsaa , 2. miles of length , and two of bredth . upon the south si●…e of pomona lyes rusa , 6. miles of length : and from it eastward eglisa : south veragersa : and not farre from it westraa ; from which , hethland is distant 80. miles ; and papastronza lyes 80. miles from hethland . in the midway betwixt lyes fara , that is , the ●…yre iland , standing in the sight of orknay , and hethland both : it riseth in thrée promontories or heads , and shore craig round about , without any kind of entrance , except at the southeast , where it growes little lower ; making a sure harboro●… for small boates. next is the greatest ile of all hethland , named , the mayne-land , 16. miles of length : there are sundry promontories or heads in it , specially two , one long and small , which runnes north : the other broader , in some part , 16. miles , runnes northeast , inhabited vpon the sea coast . there is good fishing in all these parts ; the peoples commodity standing most by the sea. ten miles north lyes zeall , 20. miles of length , and 8. miles of bredth : the bremes marchants doe bring all wares néedfull . betwixt this iland and the mayne-land , lye linga , orna , bigga , sanctferri . two miles northward lyes vnsta , more then 20. miles of length , and sixe miles of bredth , a pleasant countrey and playne . via and vra , are betwixt vnsta and zeall . skenna and burna , lye westward from vnsta , balta , hunega , forlora , seuen miles long : and seuen miles eastward from vnsta , mecla , with the thrée ilands of east skennia , ●…hualsa , nostwad●… , brasa , and musa : vpon the west side lye west sche●…niae , rorira , little papa , veneda , great papa , valla , trondar , burra , great haura , little haura , and many other holmes , lying scattered amongst them . the hethlandish men vse the same kind of foode that the orkney man vse , but that they are more scarce in house kéeping . in this iland no kind of shée beast will liue 24. houres together , except ky , ewes , conyes , and such like beasts , as may be eaten . the people are apparelled after the almayne fa●…ion , and according to their substance , not vnséemely . their commodity consisteth in course cloth , which they sell to norway men , with fish , oyle , and butter . they fish in little cockboates , bought from norway men that make them : they salt some of the fish that they take , and some of them they dry in the wind . they sell th●…se wares , and pay their masters with the siluer thereof . ¶ of the great plenty of hares , red deere , and other wild beasts in scotland . of the strange propertyes of sundry scottish dogges : and of the nature of salmond . hauing made this speciall description of the realme of scotland : now touching some things concerning the same in generall . in the fields , and in al places of the countrey , ( except the parts where continuall habitation of people makes impediment ) there is great abundance of hares , red déere , fallow déere , roes , wild horses , wolues , and foxes , & specially in the high countreys of athole , argyle , lorne , loch-aber , marre , and badzenoch , where is sundry times séene 1500. red déere , being hunted all together . these wild horses are not gotten but by great sleight & policy : for in the winter season the inhabitants turne certayne tame horses and mares amongst them , wherewith in the end they grow so familiar , that they afterward go with them to & fro ; and finally , home into their masters yards , where they bee taken , and soone broken to their hands , the owners obtayning great profit thereby . the w●…lues are most fierce and noysome vnto the heards , and flockes , in all parts of scotland . foxes doe much mischiefe in all steads , chiefly in the mountaynes , where they be hardly hunted : howbeit , arte hath deuised a meane to preuent their malice , and to preserue the poultry in some part : and especially in glenmoores euery house nourishes a young foxe , & then killing the same , they mixe the flesh thereof amongst such meate as they giue vnto the fowles , and other little bestiall : and by this meanes , so many fowles or cattel as eate hereof , are safely preserued from the danger of the foxe , by the space of almost two moneths after , so that they may wander whither they will : for the foxes smelling the flesh of their fellowes , yet in their crops , will in no wayes meddle with them , but eschew and know such a one , although it were among a hundred of other . in scotland are dogs of marueylous condition , aboue the nature of other dogs . the first is , a hound of great swiftnes , hardines , and strength , fierce and cruel vpon all wild beasts , and eger against thieues , that offer their masters any violence . the second is a rach or hound , very exquisite in following the foote ( which is called drawing ) whether it be of man or beast , yea he will pursue any maner of fowle , and find out whatsoeuer fish , haunting the land , or lurking amongst the rocks , specially the otter , by that excellent sent of smelling , wherewith he is indewed . the third sort is no greater then the aforesayd raches , in colour for the most part red , with blacke spots , or else blacke & full of red marks : these are so skilfull ( being vsed by practize ) that they will pursue a thiefe , or thiefe-stollen goods , in most precize maner , and finding the trespasser , with great audacity they will make a race vpon him , or if he take the water for his safegard , he shrinketh not to follow him : and entering and issuing at the same places where the party went in and out , he neuer ceaseth to range , till he hath noysed his footing , and be come to the place , wherein the thiefe is shrowded or hid . these dogs are called sleuthhounds : there was a law amongst the borderers of england and scotland , that whosoeuer denyed entrance to such a hound , in pursute mads after fellons and stollen goods , should be holden as accessary vnto the theft , or taken for the selfe same thiefe . of fowles , such as ( i meane ) liue by prey , there are sundry sorts in scotland , as eagles , falcons , go●…hawks , sparhawks , marlions , and such like : but of water fowles there is so great store , that the report thereof may séeme to excéede all credit . there are other kinds of fowles , the like are rare to be séene , as the capercaily , greater in body then the rauen , liuing onely by the rindes & barks of trées . there are also many moore cockes and hennes , which abstayning from corne , doe ●…éede onely vpon hadder crops . these two are very delicate in eating : the third is reddish , blacke of colour , in quantity comparable to the pheasant , and no lesse delicious in taste and sauour at the table , called the blacke or wilde cocks . salmond is more plentifull in scotland , then in any other region of the world : in haruest time they come from the seas , vp in smal riuers , where the waters are most shallow , and there the male and female , rubbing their bellies , or wombs , one agaynst the other , they shed their spawne , which foorthwith they couer with sand and grauell , and so depart away : from hencefoorth they are gaunt and ●…lender , and in appearance so leane , appearing nought else but skin and bone : and therefore out of vse and season to be eaten . some say , if they touch any their full fellowes , during the time of their leanenesse , the same side which they touched will likewise become leane . the foresayd spawne and milt , being hidden in the sand , ( as you haue heard ) in the next ●…pring doth yéeld great numbers of little fry , so nesh and tender for a long time , that till they come to be so great as a mans finger ( if you catch any of them ) they melt away , as it were gelly or a blob of water : from henceforth they go to the sea , where within 20. dayes , they grow to a reasonable greatnesse , and then returning to the place of their generation , they shew a notable spectacle to be con●…idered . there are many lin●…es or p●…oles , which being in some places among the rockes , very shallow abou●… , and déepe beneath , with the fall of the water , and thereto the salmond not able to pierce through the channell , eyther for swiftnesse of the course , or depth of the discent , hee goeth so n●…re vnto the side of the rocke or damme as he may , and there aduenturing to leape ouer , and vp into the linne , if he leape well at the first , he obtayneth his desire , if not , he assayeth e●…soones the second or third time , till he returne to his countrey . a great fish , able to swimme agaynst the streame : such as assay often to leape , and cannot get ouer , doe bruise themselues , and become meazelled : others that happen to fall vpon dry land ( a thing often séene ) are taken by the people ( watching their time : ) some in cawdrons of hot water , with fire vnder them , sit vpon shallow or dry places , in hope to catch the fattest , by reason of their waight , that doe leape short . the taste of these are estéemed most delicate , and their prices commonly great . in scotland it is straightly inhibited to take any salmond from the 8. of september , vntill the 15. of nouember . finally , there is no man that knoweth readily whereon this fish liueth , for neuer was any thing yet found in their bellyes , other then a thicke s●…ymy humour . in the deserts and wild places of scotland , there groweth an hearbe of it selfe , called , hadder or hather , very delicate for all kind of cattell to féede vpon ; and also for diuers fowles , but bées especially : this hearbe , in iune , yéeldeth a purple flower , as swéete as hunny , whereof the picts , in times past , did make a pleasant drinke , and very wholesome for the body : but since their time , the maner of the making hereof is perished in the subuersi●…n of the picts , neyther shewed they euer the learning hereof to any but to their owne nation . there is no part of scotland so vnprofitable ( if it were skilfully searched ) but it produceth either iron or some other kind of mettall , as may be proued through all the iles of scotland . a memoriall of the most rare and wonderfull things of scotland . among many commodityes , that scotland hath common with other nations , it is beautified with some rare gifts in it selfe , wonderfull to consider : as for example . in orknay , the ewes are of such fecundity , that at euery lambing time , they produce , at least , two , and ordinary thrée . there bee neyther venemous nor rauenous beasts bred there , nor do liue there , although they were tr●…ported thither . in schetland , the iles called , ●…hulae , at the entring of the sunne in cancer , the space of 20. dayes , there appeares no night at all . among the rockes growes the delectable lambre , called , succinum , with great resort of the mertrik , for costly furrings . in the west , and northwest of scotland , there is a great repayring of the erne , of a maruelous nature ; the people are very curious to catch him , & punze his wings , that hee flie not : he is of a huge quantity , & a rauenous kind , as the hawkes , and the same quality : they do giue him such sort of meat , in great quantity at once , that he liues contented there with 14. 16. or 20. dayes , and some of them a moneth : their feathers are good for garnishing of arrowes , for they receiue no rayne nor water , but remayne alwayes of a durable estate , and vncorruptible : the people doe vse them eyther when they be a hunting , or at warres . in the most of the riuers in scotland , beside the maruelous plenty of salmond , and other fishes gotten there , is a shell fish , called , the horse-mussell , of a great quantity ; wherein are ingendred innumerable faire , beautifull , & d●…lectable pearles , conuenient for the pleasure of man , and profitable for the vse of physicke : and some of them so fayre and polished , that they may be equall to any orientall pearles . and generally , by the prouidence of almighty god , when dearth and scarcity of victuals are in the land , then the fishes are most plentifully taken , for the support of the people . in galloway , the one halfe of loch mirton , doth neuer fréese . by innernes , the loch ; called , lochnes , and the riuer flowing from thence into the sea , doth neuer freese but on the contrary , in the coldest dayes of winter , the loch and riuer doe both smoke and réeke , signifying vnto vs , that there is a myne of brimstone vnder it , of a hote quality . in carrik are kyne and oxen , delicious to 〈◊〉 , but their ●…esse is of a wonderfull temperature : all other ●…estable beasts fatnesse , with the cold ayre doth congeale : by the contrary , the fatnes of these beasts is perpetually liquid , like oyle . the woo and parke of commernauld is replenished with kyne and oxen , and those , at all times , to this day , haue béene wild , & of a wonderfull whitenes , that there was neuer among all that huge number there , so much as the smallest blacke spot found to be vpon one of their sainnes , hornes , or cl●…e . in kyle is a rocke , of the height of 12. foote , and as much of bredth , called , the deafe craig : for although a man should cryneuer so loude to his fellow , from the one side to the other , hee is not heard , although hee would make the noyse of a gunne . in the countrey of stratherne , vpon the water of farg , by bal●…ard , there is a stone , called , the rock and stone , of a reasonable bignesse , that if a man will push it with the least motion of his finger , it will mooue very lightly , but if he shall addresse his whole force , he profits nothing : which mooues many people to be wonderfull merry , when they consider such contrariety . in lennox is a great loch , called loch-lowmond , 24. miles in length , & in bredth 8. miles , contayning the number of 30. iles : in this loch is obserued 3. wonderfull things : the one is fishes , very delectable to eate , that haue no fynnes to moue themselues withall , as other fishes do . the second , tempestuous . waues and su●…ges of the water , perpetually raging , without winds , & that in the time of greatest calmes , in the fayre pleasant time of sū●…r , when the ayre is quiet . the third is , one of these iles , that is not corroborat , nor vnited to the ground , but haue béene perpetually loose : and although it be fertill of good grasse , and replenished with neate , yet it moues by the waues of the water ; & is transported , sometimes towards one poynt , and other whiles towards another . in argyle is a stone found in diuers parts , the which laid vnder straw or stubble , doth consume them to fire , by the great heat that it collects there . in buquhan , at the demolished castle of sl●… , is a ca●… , from the top whereof ●…illes water , which in short time doth congeale to hard white stones : the caue is alwayes emptied . in louthian , 2. miles from edinburgh , southward , is a well spring , called , saint katherins well , flowing perpetually , with a kind of blacke famesse or oyle , aboue the water , procéeding ( as is thought ) of the parret coale , being frequent in these parts : this fatnes is of a marueilous nature : for as the coale , whereof it procéedes , is sudden to conceiue fire or flame , so is this oyle of a sudden operation to heale all salt scabs and humours , that trouble the outward skinne of man : commonly the head & hands are quickly healed by this oyle : it renders a maruelous swéet smell . at abridene is a well , of marnelous good quality to dissolue the stone , to expell sand from the rey●…es & bladder , & good for the collick , being drunke in the moneth of iuly , & a few dayes of august . little inferiour to the renomed water of the spaw in almaine . in the north seas of scotland are great clog●… of timber sound , in the which are maruelously ingendred a sort of géese , called , clayk geese , and doe hang by the beake , till they bee of perfection , oft times sound , & kept in admiration of their rare generation . at dumbartan , directly vnder the castle , at the mouth of the riuer of clyde , as it enters in the sea , there are a number of clayk geese , black of colour , which in the night time do gather great quantity of the crops of the grasse , growing vpon the land , and carry the same to the sea : then assembling in a round , and with a wondrous curiostly , do offer euery one his owne portion to the sea floud , & there attend vpon the flowing of the tide , till the grasse be purified from the fresh taste , and turned to the salt : and left any part thereof should escape , they labour to hold it in with their nebs : thereaster orderly euery fowle eats his portion : and this custome they obserue perpetually . they are very fat & delicious to be eaten . finis . errata . pag. 〈◊〉 . lin . 〈◊〉 . word●… , for wierds . p. 42. l. 35. malonus , malcolme . p. 66. l. 35. buries , beares . p. 77. l. 10. higger , bigger . ibid. l. ●…5 . peece , p●… . p. 7●… . l. 〈◊〉 . t●… , ty●… p. 87. l. 17. hal-●…ds , halyards . ibid. l. 31. & 32. pictonweme . pittinweme . ibid , l. 〈◊〉 . bufy , bufy . p. 88. l. 〈◊〉 . kipper , kippo . p. 92. l. 〈◊〉 . po●…yll , po●…yll . p. ●…6 . l. 1●… . new , other . 〈◊〉 . pag. 5. 〈◊〉 . 2●… . rocira , 〈◊〉 ro●…ia . ibid. 〈◊〉 . 2●… . trondar , for trondra . printed at london by simon s●…afford . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a07619-e240 originall of the most ancient surname of murrayes . the originall of the noble surname of the grahams . the comming in of the saxans in brittaine . the beginning of the league with fraunce . beginning of the normanes . originall of the noble surname of hayes . original of the noble surnames of keith . original of the royall and auncient name of stewarts . first earles . originall of surnames , the time of the conquest . originall of the perceyes . originall of the ancient , noble , and vali●…nt sùrname of dowglasse . notes for div a07619-e12190 tewiotdail . liddisdail . eskdail . annandail . edinburgh . west-lothian . linlithgow . the originall of the name of wdny . rosse . sutherland . stranauern . notes for div a07619-e13020 i le of man , pertayning now to england . arrane . an ancient castle rosa. iura . taxus like the fir●…e tree , the fruit thereof is venemous . yla . iland like a man. the weauers iland . the mule. buriall places of the kings of scotland . kings of ireland . kings of norway . horse iland . swine iland . iland of pigmeis . lewis . rona . a maruell . colca , 〈◊〉 fowle vn knowne . orknay . saint magnus cup. kirkwaa . hethland . notes for div a07619-e16840 wild horses . wolues . foxes . three sort of dogs . otter . sleuthhound . capercaily . moore cocke . blacke cocke . salmond hadde●… . notes for div a07619-e17220 the erne . pearles . lochmirton . lochnes white kyne & oxen. deafe craig . rockand stone . lochlowmōd s. katherins well . the well at abridene . clayk geese . blacke clayk geese . the defence of the scots settlement at darien answer'd paragraph by paragraph / by philo-britan. harris, walter, 17th/18th cent. 1699 approx. 187 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 47 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a45661 wing h881 estc r9419 12090948 ocm 12090948 53874 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a45661) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 53874) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 72:11) the defence of the scots settlement at darien answer'd paragraph by paragraph / by philo-britan. harris, walter, 17th/18th cent. fletcher, andrew, 1655-1716. foyer, archibald. [2], 92 [i.e. 90] p. [s.n.], london : 1699. "attributed to walter harris or herries"--scott, j. bibl. of ... the darien company, 1904, p. 22. also attributed to andrew fletcher of saltoun and archibald foyer. cf. bm. includes the text of the defence. reproduction of original in yale university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng darien scots' colony, 1698-1700. scotland -history -1689-1745. scotland -commercial policy. panama -colonization. panama -discovery and exploration. 2007-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-07 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-08 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2007-08 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the defence of the scots settlement at darien , answer'd , paragraph by paragraph . by philo-britan . london , printed , and sold by the booksellers of london and westminster , 1699. the defence of the scots settlement at darien , answer'd . when this pamphlet came first to my hands , these bold and unaccountable insinuations , with which i found it stuff'd up from the very beginning to the end , invited me to make some reflections upon it , for my own diversion , and the use of some few of those whom i knew to be both my friends , and constant adherers to the present government in england ; not questioning but that some more able pen than mine would take this task in hand , and convince the world of the unreasonableness of such an undertaking by a private hand , which amounts to no less than charging both his majesty , and the present english government with injustice , and a mistake of their own interest ; as will more evidently appear out of the following sheets . the dedication , which if rightly considered , is nothing else but an introduction to the rest , is to make the world believe , that the english stand much indebted to the scots , for suffering themselves to be united with them under one head , and cannot discharge this obligation , unless they maintain them in their present settlement of darien , which if they don't do , they must expect to be treated as an ungrateful and unjust people , by the scots , who , if we will take this gentleman's word for it , are powerful enough , either by themselves , or with the assistance of their allies , to reduce us to a more pliable temper . that this is the main design of the dedication , as well as the whole treatise , will sufficiently appear to any one who will take the pains carefully to peruse them ; for tho' he is pleased to tell his majesty at the beginning of the dedication , that his design is to vindicate the settlement of the scots in darien , against the aspersions of the spanish memorial ; yet , when not long after he says , that those cannot be look'd upon as friends to his majesty's dignity as king of scots ▪ who call in question what he enacts in the parliament of scotland ; i say , these words are an undeniable proof , that the whole is more levell'd against england than spain . i will not pretend to make particular reflections upon each passage here , because i shall have occasion to do it hereafter , but i cannot forbear to take notice of that unaccountable arrogance which has emboldened some of our modern writers to foster the inventions of their own brains , and their speculative politicks upon the world , under the cloak of the royal authority : will not posterity stand amazed when they see a person , whose faith has not only been call'd in question , but also condemn'd by a legal sentence , to cover his zeal , self-interest , and private passion , under the veil of his sacred majesty's name ? but we will proceed to the book it self , which begins thus . defence . the heads propos'd to be insisted upon in the following sheets , are , the legality of the scots establishment : the advantage or disadvantage that may redound from it to england : whether the scots without the assistance of the english , may be able to maintain their footing in america ; and what may probably be the consequences if the scots should be oppos'd therein by the english , and miscarry in the vndertaking . answer . these s●veral heads give us sufficiently to understand , what i mentioned just now ; to wit , that the chief aim of this author was against the english ; and that what is said in relation to the spaniards , is only a preparative to the rest , as will more plainly appear out of the following sheets . upon the first head he says further thus : defence . the chief objections against the legality of their establishment , arise from the memorial delivered in against it to the king , by the ambassador extraordinary of spain , may 3 : 1699. o. s. as follows : answer . as these animadversions were intended at first only for a private use , so i had not the opportunity of informing my self , whether the following spanish memorial be authentick in all its parts or not , which therefore i insert here barely upon our author's credit , as it is extant in his defence , &c. the vnder-subscriber , ambassador extraordinary from his catholick majesty , finds himself oblig'd by express orders , to represent to your majesty , that the king his master having receiv'd information from different places , and last of all from the governour of havana , of the insult and attempt of some scots ships , equipp'd with men and other things requisite , who design to settle themselves in his majesty's soveraign demains in america , and particularly the province of darien , his majesty receiv'd those advices with very much discontent , and looks upon the same as a rupture of the alliance betwixt the two crowns , ( which his majesty hath observed hitherto , and always observes very religiously , and from which so many advantages and profits have resulted both to your majesty and your subjects ) as a consequence of which good correspondence , his majesty did not expect such sudden insults and attempts by your majesty's subjects , and that too in a time of peace , without pretext , ( or any cause ) in the very heart of his demains . all that the king desires , is , that this may be represented to your majesty , and that your majesty may be acquainted , that he is very sensible of such hostilities and unjust procedures , against which his majesty will take such measures as he thinks convenient . given at london , may 13 / 3. 1699. it were easie ( says the author of the defence of the scot's settlement ) to make proper remarks upon the weakness , insolence and ingratitude of this memorial , but it is not worth while ; all the world knows what the crown of spain owes to his majesty of great britain ; and therefore a more civil application might reasonably have been expected to a prince who had not only sav'd the netherlands , but prevented his catholick majesty from being insulted on his throne at madrid . but these things we pass over , and come to the chief point in the memorial , which is , that the scots have posted themselves in the king of spain 's demains in america , contrary to the alliance betwixt the two crowns . if this be prov'd to be false , then the cause of the great complaint ceases , and his majesty of great britain hath reason to demand satisfaction for the affront offered thereby to his justice and sovereignty . to prove the falshood of the allegation ▪ that the province of darien is part of the king of spain's demains : it is positively denied by the scots , who challenge the spaniards to prove their right to the said province , either by inheritance , marriage , donation , purchase , reversion , surrender , possession , or conquest ; which being the only titles by which they or any other people can claim a right to those or any other dominions , if the spaniards cannot make out their right by these or any of these , their claim must of consequence be null and void . answer . it is a most surprising thing to see the author charge one of the greatest kings in europe , who thinks himself touch'd in the most sensible part of his sovereignty , with insolence and ingratitude against his britannick majesty ▪ when he , who owns himself a private person , and his subject , uses so many reflecting expressions throughout the whole treatise , upon the english government . that spain owes in a great measure its preservation to his majesty of great britain , is scarce disputed by any , but he must be but indifferently vers'd in the politicks of europe , who does not know , that the councils of princes are sway'd more by the considerations of their present interest , than by the remembrance of pass'd obligations . amongst all those titles which he assigns for the spaniards to prove their claim by , the three last seem to be the most likely to do their business ; and supposing they should be able , by either one of them , or perhaps all three together , to prove their claim , what will then become of our author 's bold challenge ? but let us hear what he further says upon this head. defence . it is evident , ( says he ) that the spaniards cannot pretend a title to that country by inheritance , marriage , or the donation of prince and people ; and as to conquest it would be ridiculous to alledge it , since the dariens are in actual possession of their liberty , and were never subdued , nor receiv'd any spanish governour or garrison amongst them . nay , they w●re so far from it , that wafer , dampier , and others that have wrote of that country , do all agree , that they mortally hate the spaniards , were in war with them , and that the spaniards had no commerce with those indians , nor command over them in all the north-side of the isthmus a little beyond porto-bello . captain sharp in the journal of his expedition , published in captain hacke's collection of voyages , gives an account , that in 1680 , he landed at golden island with 330 men ; and being join'd by one of the darien princes , whom they call'd emperor ; and another to whom they gave the title of king golden cap , with some hundreds of their men , took sancta maria , attempted panama , and made prize of several spanish ships ; which is the more remarkable , because captain sharp was afterwards tried in england for robbery and piracy on this very account , but acquitted , because of his commission from those darien princes ; which is a plain demonstration , that the government of england did then look upon darien to be no way subject to spain , whatever some who are enemies to the scots , do now say against the legality of their settlement in that country . this same expedition against the spaniards , by the assistance of the darien indians , is confirm'd by mr. dampier in his introduction to his new voyage round the world. and the bishop of chiapa , a prelate of their own , in his relation of the spanish voyages and cruelties in the west-indies , pag. 217. owns , that the spaniards had no title to the americans , as their subjects , by right of inheritance , purchase , or conquest . we have likewise a large account , and a full confirmation of the war and perpetual enmity betwixt the dariens and spaniards in the history of the buccaneers of america , vol. 2. part 4. wrote by basil ringrose , who was one of their company . there he informs us , that the indians of darien , and the spaniards , are commonly at war with one another ; and that the buccaneers were invited into that country , and join'd by the darien princes , captain andreas , captain antonio , and the king of darien , who assisted them in the taking of sancta maria , and their attempt upon panama ; and the king , whose daughter the spaniards had stole away , promised to joyn the buccaneers with 50000 men. this is the more remarkable , because those very princes or their successors are now in league with the scots , and have joyfully receiv'd them into their country . so that it is the strangest position that can be put upon any nation , and one of the most audacious affronts that ever was put upon so great a prince as k. william , for the spaniards to pretend a right to darien , and accuse him of a breach of the peace , because a colony of his subjects have settled themselves there : when it is so well known to the world , that the crown of spain has no manner of title to that province . then as to any claim by virtue of possession , the spaniards have not the least ground of plea : all they can alledge on this head , is , that they were once admitted by the consent of captain diego , another of the darien princes , to work on some golden mines within 15 leagues , or there abouts , of the scots settlement . but it is plain that this makes nothing for their purpose . that prince admitted them only as labourers , but not as proprietors ; and when they broke the conditions on which they were admitted , viz. to allow the dariens such ●●d such shar●● of the product , they were expell'd again by force ; and ever since that time , the dariens refuse to have any further dealings with the spaniards , who made themselves odious to them by their treachery and insolence : so that mr. wafter tells us , pag. 133. they allow a distinguishing mark of honour to him who has kill'd a spaniard : and pag. 179. that cascata , one of the chief of the darien princes , did in his converse with him , express his sense and resentment of the havock made by the spaniards in the west of america , at their first coming thither . answer . our philo-calydon , as he calls himself , pretends to prove here , that the spaniards can lay no claim to darien as a conquest : his reasons are ; because they were never subdued ; but i would fain ask this gentleman , how he came to know this ? 't is possible some of his countrymen have been told so , by some of the dariens ; but this will be but a slender argument against the spaniards . it is most unquestionable , that there is much more probability on the spaniards side than on the other . for how can it be supposed , that the spaniards , who have conquer'd such a vast tract of america , and several plantations there , should not have been able to force a few petty indian-lords , who are enclosed within their dominions , to a submission ? his arguments , by which he would prove them a free people , is much more ridiculous , than the pretended conquest of the spaniards ; it being evident , that a few cottages , inhabited by a barbarous and unarmed people , headed by many leaders , resembling the heads of clans in scotland , did require neither a spanish governour nor garrison . what he alledges concerning the hatred they bear to the spaniards , and their joyning with the buccaneers against them , does not in the least invalidate the title of spain to darien ; and all what wafer , dampier , and the history of the buccaneers , says , upon this subject , proves no more , than that those petty indian lords , who formerly , either voluntarily or by force , submitted to the spaniards ; took this opportunity to shake off the spanish yoke , and to revenge themselves upon their conquerors ; for if they had been in a condition to make war against them without a foreign assistance , what need had there been for them to call in the buccaneers , and to allow them so large a share in the booty ? our calidonian gentleman further tells us , that the spaniards have no other plea for possession , but what was granted them by one of the darien princes , to work as labourers in some golden mines : i must confess this is somewhat difficult to be contradicted at so vast a distance , and i would have pass'd by this point in silence , if pag. 78. he had not himself furnish'd me with an argument against his assertion , where he says : that they had been informed by a frenchman , who married one of the natives there , that the spaniards have gold and silver mines on the isthmus , which they might make themselves masters of with a 100 m●n : this , i say , and the hostilities committed already by the spaniards , against the scots in their new settlement , does ▪ i think , carry with it a great probability , that to this day they are not excluded from the province of darien , but remain in actual possession of so much of that province , as they think consistent with their own interest . what he alledges of captain sharp's being acquitted in england , by reason of his commission from one of the darien princes , can in no wise affect the spanish title ; for , supposing the court of england was at that time not sufficiently inform'd concerning their pretensions , what detriment could that be to their real pretensions ? if our author could have given us an instance of a person who had been acquitted upon the same account in spain , his argument would have been of unquestionable validity , which bears not the least weight now , at least not in reference to spain . but , let us hear the rest of his arguments against the spanish title . defence . it remains then that the spaniards can lay no other claim to darien but what they plead from the pope's general grant of america , its being bounded by their dominions , and the treaties with england , which shall be consider'd in their order . to urge the pope's grant amongst protestants is ridiculous , and amongst papists themselves but precarious : but admitting it were sufficient to justifie their title , it is easie to prove that the spaniards have forfeited all the right they can claim by virtue of that grant. the church of rome will not publickly own her power to grant a right of conquest , but in order to propagate the faith , and not that neither , except the infidel prince or people be guilty of a breach of treaty . so that the pope's grant with those restrictions is so far from establishing the title of the spaniards , that it plainly overthrows it . that the indians were committed to the spaniards by pope alexander vi. on condition that they should teach them the christian religion , is prov'd by don bartholomew de las casas , bishop of chiapa , in his account of the first voyages and discoveries made by the spaniards in america , and the relation of their unparallell'd cruelties , pag. 195. and there he likewise owns , that by their acquitting themselves so ill of that commission , they ought to make restitution of all they have taken from them under this pretext . and pag. 200. he charges them with breach of the terms prescrib'd by the apostolical brief , tho' queen isabella , to whom it was granted , earnestly intreated them in her last will to keep exactly to it . pag. 218. he says , that the title of the king of spain to the indians , is founded only on the obligation he had taken upon himself to instruct them in the true faith , as appears by the apostolick brief : which they were so far from performing , that instead of converting their souls , they destroyed their bodies ; having in those early days , viz. in the time of the emperor charles v. mur●her'd above 40 millions of them ; and took so little care to instruct them in the christian religion , that they perfectly obstructed their conversion , and sold those very idols that some of the poor people had th●own away with abhorrence , to others of the indians ; ib. p. 194. which , together with their other horrid impieties , created an aversion in those poor infidels for heaven it self ; according to the known story of hathwey an indian prince , ibid. pag. 21. who being fasten'd to a stake by the spaniards in order to be burnt , for no other crime but indeavouring to defend himself and his subjects against their cruelties , ask'd a friar that was discoursing to him of heaven , promising him eternal happiness there if he would believe ; and threatning him with hell if he did not , whether heaven was open to the spaniards ; and being answer'd that it was to such of them as were good , replied immediately , that he would not go thither for fear of meeting such cruel and wicked company as they were , but would much rather chuse to go to hell , where he might he deliver'd from the troublesome sight of such kind of people . so that their forfeiture of all right or title to darien by the pope's grant , if it were of any validity , is plainly demonstrated . answer . our author takes a great deal of pains to demonstrate , that supposing the pope's grant of america to be valid in its self , they have forfeited the same . i believe there will scarce be any body so void of humanity , who is acquainted with the most barbarous cruelties committed by the spaniards against the poor natives of that country , as to take upon himself the defence of them in this point : but how far this affects their title is the matter in question at present . not to enter upon the topick here , how far the miscarriages of governours and other officers , who transgress the bounds of their commission , affects the titles of their sovereigns . i will only insist upon this head , which i believe will scarce admit of a contradiction by any body who has a true insight into the matter ; that supposing some of those cruelties to have been committed by publick authority , there is no body who can be acknowledg'd a competent judge of the forfeiture of the spanish title , but the pope himself ; who , admitted he has a power to grant it , must of necessity be the only person who can recal it ; and till any such thing be done , their title will stand unshaken upon that bottom , at least on the spaniards side ; whatever our author may alledge against it out of the bishop of chiapa , whose authority is in sufficient to maintain his assertion in this point , as being only a bishop under the jurisdiction of spain ; and , as being a church-man , he might as well make use of a dragoon for a pilot , as make those of his profession competent judges of the titles of princes . but let us see further . defence . their next plea , is , that darien is bounded or inclosed by their dominions , viz. by porto-bello and carthagena , with their territories on the north , and panama and sancta maria on the south . to this it is answered , that darien is bounded only by the sea on both sides , without so much as a spanish for● or garison , from nombre de dios to the gulf of darien on the north sea , or from the river of che●o to the river congo on the south sea. the territories of the spaniards confining on both ends of the isthmus are not unlimited , but are restricted on both sides by the dariens , who has been already said , were never subject to spain . nor is it any new thing in the world for independent soveraignties to lie inclos'd within the dominions of other princes ; to instance in no more than orange and avignon in europe , ceuta , metilla , &c. possessed by the spaniards themselves in africk , which lie in the very bosom of morocco , and yet the spaniards don't think their title to them e're a whit the worse . the dutch and portugueze have both of them settlements on the coast of brasil , to which the spaniards pretend a right . the french have settlements in hispaniola and guiana , notwithstanding the neighbourhood of the spaniards . the english and french have both of 'em plantations in newfound-land . the dutch in time of peace settled on long island in the middle of the english plantations , yet no war ensued upon it . the english possessed themselves of bahama islands , tho' the spanish fleet passed betwixt them and florida : and the english have several times settled at port-royal in campechy bay , to cut logwood , &c. and remov'd and settled as they found convenient . king charles ii. in time of peace grantted a patent to dr. cox to settle a colony in the bay of mexico , which was never question'd by the spaniards : and the french have now since the conclusion of the last peace , planted a colony on the river messissipi in that same bay , against which we hear of no complaints from madrid . so that the plea of the spaniards from this topick is perfectly over●urn'd by common practice , the law of nations , and their own concessions in parallel cases . answer . if the matter be well weighed , it will be no difficult task to find out , that these cases mentioned by our calidonian , are so far from being parallel to the scots settlement at darien , that they are of a quite different nature . dr cox's patent came to nothing , and what occasion was there for the spaniards to complain then ? and because the english have now and then landed in campechy bay , to cut log-wood , is this , i say , to be put in comparison with the scots attempt upon darien ? some dutch settled themselves among the english in long island , but in a peaceable manner ▪ and tho' no war ensued , yet complaint was made of it , and the matter brought to an agreement . the dutch and portuguese have both settlements in brasil , the french in hispaniola and guiana , and the english and french in newfoundland ; what argument is this to the scots settlement in question ? for whoever questioned but that different nations might settle their colonies upon waste grounds in the same place , provided they were not in any bodies possession before . the instances he gives of orange , avignon , ceuta , and metilla , which lie ( as he says ) in the bosom of other prince's dominions , seem to carry something of more weight with it , in so far as they prove that there is a possibility of independent sovereignties being inclosed by the dominions of other princes ▪ i could furnish our author with a great many more of this nature , as the imperial cities in germany , the lordship of vianen in holland , the morlacks in dalmatia , and the cossacks on the frontiers of poland and muscovy ; but all duly considered , it will appear , that they are still of a different nature from the matter in question . for orange and avignon are the remnants of those many lordships and principalities ▪ which formerly composed the empire of france , before it was brought in subjection under one head : their situation is such , that they cannot be relieved from abroad , and their strength so inconsiderable , as not to be able to hold out against the first attack of the prince who commands round about it : the case is quite different with the spaniards in america , who when they established themselves there by their sword , had not the least reason ●o leave those petty principalities unattempted , which lay in the very heart of their conquests , and by reason of their convenient situation on the sea-shoar , might one time or other prove dangerous neighbours , if not brought to submission either by force of arms , or a voluntary surrender . if the emperour of morocco's strength were equivalent to his title , he might very justly drive the spaniards from the african coast , where they have no other title but possession ; and those places which i have mentioned are so engaged either by alliances or other contracts to those princes , in whose dominions they are inclosed , that without offering a notorious violence to those engagements , they cannot submit themselves to any foreign power . defence . the next plea ( says our author ) of the spaniards , is from the treaties betwixt them and the crown of great britain , of which they alledge the settlement of the scots at darien to be a breach : but that there 's no ground for this allegation , will appear to those that peruse the said treaties , viz. that of may 23 ▪ 1667. and that of july 1670. wherein there 's not the least mention of excluding either party from enlarging their dominions in america , upon wastes , or by consent of the natives , in such places as have never yet been possest by spain , or great britain . so that all that can be infer'd from those treaties , is , that they were a mutual security for the peaceable possession of what each crown enjoy'd in that country , and no more ; which is sufficiently confirm'd by the patent granted to dr. cox , and the settling and removing of the english in campechy bay , &c. without controul , as before mention'd . answer . if it were granted by the spaniards , or sufficiently proved by the scots , that their settlement at darien was made in such a place as never had any dependency on spain , it might easily be granted , that their establishment there was no breach of those treaties ; but i hope they will allow at the same time that till the same be proved beyond contradiction , we ought at least to suspend our judgment in this point , which hitherto has not appear'd so evident in the english , as ours to our calidonian : for thus he says further . defence . having thus made it evident that the spaniards have no manner of title or right to darien , it is natural in the next place to shew that they themselves are guilty of the breach of treaty by proceeding in this affair as they have done . by the third article of the treaty between the crowns of great britain and spain , concluded at madrid , may 12 / 23. 1667. it is provided , that if any injury shall be done by either of the said kings , or by the people or subjects of either of them , to the people or subjects of the other , against the articles of that alliance , or against common right , there shall not therefore be given letters of reprisal , marque , or countermarque , by any of the confederates , until such time as justice is follow'd in the ordinary course of law. yet the spaniards without any such procedure , or offering in the least to prove their title to darien , present a virulent and huffing memorial , at the very first charging the king with want of friendship , and a breach of alliance , and threatning to take such measures as the● shall think meet : when their sickly monarchy has not yet had time to breath , since rescu'd from the common danger wherein europe was involv'd , by the arms of that very prince , whom they treat so ungratefully . but this is not all : for contrary to the express words of that same treaty , they attack the scots by sea and land , who had done them no injury , but acquainted them that they came thither peaceably , without any hostile design against them , or any other people , and were so generous as to reject the motion of captain andreas , one of the darien princes , and their ally , when he offer'd to make them masters of panama , if they would but joyn him with 500 of their men. the spaniards have also , contrary to the 10th and 11th articles of the treaty concluded at m drid , july 8 / 18 1670. concerning america , detain'd the scots and english prisoners who were forced a shoar at carthagena by shipwrack , tho all such practices be expresly provided against by the said articles : and they have also violated the 14th article of that treaty which forbids reprisals , except in case of denying or unreasonably delaying justice . from all which it is evident that the king of great britain has just reason to demand satisfaction of the spaniards for attacking his subjects contrary to treaty ; and that the scots being thus injuriously treated , may very lawfully , not only make reprisals upon the spaniards for themselves , but joyn with the king of darien in taking sancta maria , panama , or any other place belonging to the spaniards in that country , of which the dariens are natural lords , and the spaniards tyrannical usurpers , as is pleaded by the king of darien himself ; and therefore he invited the english buccaneers to assist him to retake it : and by this capt. sawkins justified his proceedings in a letter to the governour of panama , asserting that the king of darien was true lord of panama , and all the country thereabouts ; and that they came to assist him . history of buccaneers , vol. 2. part 4. p. 32. and we have mentioned before that capt. sharp , who was accused of piracy , for that same expedition , and succeeded sawkins in his command , was acquitted in england , because he had that prince's commission . answer . if it had been made so evident as our author imagines , that the sp●●iards h●ve no title upon darien , i would soo●●● 〈◊〉 with him in opinion , that they themselves had 〈◊〉 guilty of that breach of these treaties , whic● 〈◊〉 charge upon the scots ; but this being look'd upon by the now unbyass'd , as a case , which at the bes● is yet undetermin'd , the question is , whether as su●h they have controvened against several of the articles of these two treaties . i will not pretend here to patronize or defend every step the spania●ds have made since the scots settlement , this ought to be left to the determination of his majesty of great britain , who , as he is the true judge of it , so no question , but he will in due time demand reparation for the miscarriages committed against the said treaties : i will only put the reader in mind of that most ancient and general maxim founded upon the law of nations , vim vi repelere licet . what wonder is it , if the spaniards when they saw a foreign nation , without their permission , land good store of men , and other warlike instruments , in a place which they look'd upon as their own propriety , and which is of the utmost consequence to them ? what wonder is it , i say , when they saw them erect fortifications , and enter into alliance with those who were at that time their declared enemies ( according to our author 's own confession ) they endeavoured to draw that thorn out of their feet , without seeking first for redress at so many thousand miles distance . i would have our author turn the tables , and let the scots make the case their own , whether they would not force any foreign nation from their shoar , that should pretend to come in the same manner to settle themselves without leave in any place under their pretension or jurisdiction . if it be considered , what a considerable traffick the english have in spain , it is evident , that it had been in their power to make themselves an ample amends by way of reprisals ; but since they have not taken any such measures , their endeavours to dislodge the scots from darien , at such a distance from england , may admit of a much more favourable construction , than our zealous calidonian would put upon it . he goes on further . defence . having fully prov'd that the spaniards have no title to darien , it remains to be prov'd that the scots have as good and just a title to their settlement there , as any people in the world can have ; which may easily be demonstrated thus : they were authorized by an act of parliament , and the king's letters patent , to plant colonies in asia , africa , or america , upon places not inhabited , or any other place , by consent of the natives , not possest by any european prince or state. being provided with this authority , than which there cannot be a greater ▪ or one more duly and honestly limitted , they equipp'd their ships , and landed on the north side of the isthmus of darien in november 1698. where the spaniards , as has been fully prov'd , never had any posseis●on , and no other european prince or state pretends any claim to it . being arriv'd there , they fairly obtain'd the consent of the princes and people of the country , and particularly of captain andreas , who is the chief man in that tract ; and after a solemn treaty and alliance deliberately made , and wrote in spanish , because the said prince understands that language , they peaceably enter upon their new colony , without either force or fraud . so that they have religiously kept to the conditions of the act and patent , which is a plain demonstration that they have a just and legal title to their settlement , and a right to the protection of the government , against the attempts of the spaniards , or any other people whatsoever . answer . the scots title to their settlement at darien , pursuant to their patent , might pass for very good , if they could make it evidently appear , that the same had not been possess'd before by any european prince or state , according to the tenure of the said letters patent ; but till that be done upon a more sure foundation than our calidonian has pleas'd to lay , they ought not to be angry , if the government is not so forward in granting them the d●sired protection ; and i suppose , the scots ▪ for all our authors threats , will be better advised 〈◊〉 they join with the natives in making an 〈◊〉 upon panama , or any other strong 〈…〉 spaniards , for fear they should by 〈…〉 their commissions , forfeit all the righ●● 〈…〉 invested with by virtue of the said grant● 〈…〉 other irreparable mischiefs upon their 〈◊〉 . but let us now hear , what our author says to the next point , which has a more particular relation to england . defence . the next topick to be insisted upon , is , the advantage or disadvantage that may redound to england from this settlement . we shall begin with the disadvantage which consists in the supposed damage it may do to the trade of england ; and that it may , as is pretended , occasion a rupture betwixt them and spain . to this we may easily reply , that being a distinct and independant nation , we are not oblig'd to consult their interest , any further than they consult ours ; and that we have as much reason to maintain this colony , because of the advantage it may bring to our selves , as they have to oppose it , because of the disadvantages that they fancy may arise from thence to england . but withal we deny that it can be any damage to their trade , which from that part of the world consists chiefly in sugar and tobacco , neither of which are yet to be found in new calidonia . but that which we look upon to be a compleat answer to the objection , is this , that they may be sharers with us in the settlement if they please , and by consequence partners in the profits and trade , and lay it under such regulations as may prevent its endamaging the commerce of england . and whereas it is further objected , that by the great immunities and freedom from customs granted to the scots company for so many years , we shall be able to under sell the english company , forestall their markets , and lessen his majesty's customs : we answer , that this objection is in a great measure obviated , since we do not now pretend to set up an east-india trade ; but admitting it were true , it will be to the general advantage of the english nation , since the buyers are always more than the sellers . it must certainly ●e better for the kingdom in general , that every one who has occasion for muslin or indian silks , &c. should save so many shillings per yard or piece in their pockets , than that some two or three merchants should once in an age get money enough to make a daughter or two a countess or dutchess . nor can it be denied , but it 's better for england , that house-keepers in general should save that money to buy provisions for their families , which consumes our own product , than that a dozen of merchants should be enabled by the extravagant prices of those commodities to keep their coaches . add to this , that the english if they please by joining with the scots may have an equal share of all those immunities ; and if there should be for some time a lessening of the king's customs , of which there is at present no manner of prospect , it will be sufficiently made up in time to come by a large addition , if that colony prospers ; so that the king's bounty in that respect is but like the bestowing of charge to improve barren or waste ground , which will return with treble interest to him or his heirs . there 's another objection made against the scots company , that by their constitution such ships as belong them must break bulk no where but in scotland , which will diminish the number of english ships and seamen , and make scotland the only free port of all those commodities . to which it's replied , that tho' our own ships are obliged to break bulk no where but at home , they don't lay the same obligation upon others , but , allowing them a free trade to darien , they may carry their goods where they please ; or upon fair proposals , there 's no doubt but the parliament of scotland will give the english all possible liberty as to that matter . answer . allowing the scotch nation to be independant , ( tho' this has been questioned by some ) our author , tells us , they are not obliged to consult the interest of england further than they consult theirs ; which indeed is the best argument he has made use of hitherto in the defence of the new settlement : but then i hope , he will also grant , that this being reciprocal betwixt these two nations , he ought not to blame the english , if they won't sacrifice their own interest to that of the scots , and take all necessary and legal precautions against their encroachments , to the disadvantage of our trade . this objection , he says , may be answered , by making such regulations as will prevent the endamaging the commerce of england . this is much sooner said than put in practice ; for if the scots could have found out an expedient , which might be satisfactory both in respect to the honour and interest of the english nation in that point , why was it not proposed and put in execution before the english saw themselves under a necessity to represent their grievances against the scots new company to his majesty , and to take such further measures against it as they judged most suitable to their own interest ? he further would perswade us . that the immunities from paying customs , granted to the scots company , cannot be any detriment to england ; because muslin , indian silks , &c. will be sold cheaper for the general benefit of the buyers ; but what would in such a case become of our east-india trade , who being obliged to pay heavy customs , could not afford to sell at the same rate ? what would become of our silk manufactory , and the turkey company ? it is certain , that a great many thousands of people , who maintain their families by the silk manufactory , must be reduced to a starving condition , if those east-india silks were sold at a cheaper rate than they are now . this is indeed the way to make our merchants go on foot , and s●t the scots on horseback . by the constitution of this new scots company , their ships are obliged to break bulk no where but in scotland : this advantage he pretends to balance , by assuring us , that the scots parliament will dispence with the english upon that score ; but pray , what reason is there for the english to depend on the favour of a scots parliament , when they may carry on the east-india trade in their own country without it ? especially , since it remains doubtful , under what restrictions and limitations this liberty might be granted to the english . but let us hear what he says , in reference to the danger of a rupture with spain . defence . then as to the hazard of a rupture with spain , we reply , that the spaniards are in no condition to break with england , when they are not able to maintain themselves against the insults of the french by sea and land ; and the only way to secure them in the british interest , is to have a powerful colony in darien , which lying in the very centre of their american dominions , and within reach of their silver and gold mines , will be an effectual curb upon them , and not only prevent their own hostilities , but their joining at any time with our enemies ; or if they do , being masters of their money , we shall speedily cut the sinews of their war. answer . that spain is no match for england at this time , in case of a rupture , is scarce to be denied by any who have the least insight into the affairs of europe ; but this does not answer the question in hand ; which is , whether it be for the interest of england to run the hazard of a rupture with spain , on the account of the scots settlement ? which i answer in the negative . for , tho' the monarchy of spain be brought to so low an ebb , as not to be formidable to us , yet at this juncture , when the french as well as the austrian family , endeavour to court this crown at any rate ; i see not the least reason , why the english should run the hazard of such a rupture , which at the best , would ruin their traffick in spain , endanger that in the mediterranean , or at least put us to the charge of keeping a great fleet at sea for the security of our commerce ; and all this for what purpose ? to maintain the scots settlement , which we look upon as against our own interest ; but if it was not , who would reimburse the charges ? i question whether the scots company , or perhaps the whole kingdom , would be able to do it . but if , notwithstanding all this , the spaniards should transgress their bounds , we have a king who knows how to maintain his authority , and the glory of the british nation , of which he has given us an instance in the spanish ambassador , but a few days ago . but let us hear , how our auther proceeds further . defence . in the next place we urge , that it will be very much for the interest and advantage of england , to incourage and support us in this settlement . 1. because by this means the scots will increase their shipping , and come in time to have a naval force , capable of assisting the english in the common defence of the island , in maintaining the soveraignty of the seas , and convoying their merchantmen in time of war. the english can't always promise to themselves the amity of the dutch , who are their rivals in trade , and differ far enough from them both in temper and interest , there 's nothing to cement them but the life of our present soveraign : whereas the scots being united with the english , under the same government , and inhabiting the same island , must of necessity have the same interest as to trade , and to defend the country against all foreign invaders , as they constantly did in former times , against romans , danes , saxons , and normans , notwithstanding their living then under a separate prince , and their frequent wars with england . nor is that brave resistance which a few of them made to the dutch at chatha● , to be forgotten , which did in a great measure repair the honour of england . answer . our caledonian puts the probability of increasing the naval strength of scotland in the front , which he supposes to be absolutely necessary for the english interest at sea. but i am afraid it will be a great while before the scots will be able to make any considerable addition to it . it is the more safe way for us , to encourage our own commerce , and naval force , which is such , that if rightly managed , we need not be beholding to the scots , for what assistance they are able in all likelihood to give us at sea. but , says he , the dutch may not be always our friends , because they differ from us in temper and interest : and so do the scots as the case now stands , in reference to the last ; and as to the first , i know not whether it be not as different from the english , as that of the dutch : besides , if we may take this gentleman's word for it , the scots may not be always our friends neither , but look for alliances abroad , to support their interest against ours , which is a seasonable caution he has been pleased to give us , as we shall see anon . defence . 2. as scotland increases in shipping , they will increase in wealth , and by consequence be able to bear a greater share of the burden of any foreign war , which will save men and money to england , and lighten their taxes . 3. the success of the scots in their american colony , will be an additional strength to the english plantations in the west-indies , as well as an advancement of their trade , by consuming their product , and giving them theirs in exchange . 4. the success of the scots at darien , will be of great advantage to england ▪ for the more money the scots acquire by their trade , the more they will spend in england , which being the seat of the government , must frequently be visited by their nobility and gentry , who generally furnish themselves in england with their best apparel , houshold furniture , coaches and horses , &c. besides the money that the young noblemen and gentlemen spend in their passage through that nation , when they go and come from their travels . these things occasion their laying out vast sums of money annually in the city of london , which being the seat of the government , will as certainly draw money from scotland , as the sun draws vapours after it . answer . we will take it for granted , that the scots would consume more money in england than they do now , if they were more wealthy , but i deny that thereby we should draw money from scotland : for if they could under-sell our east-india commodities , that would be such an over-balance to what they can in all likelihood spend in england , that it bears not the least proportion to it ; whereas now the scots are obliged to england for all these things ▪ they having no considerable manufactures among themselves , or any better conveniency to supply the want of them but from england , which , considering how little we stand in want of the products of their country , and how little it affords , must needs draw money from scotland . the products of our west-india plantations consisting chiefly in sugar and tobacco ▪ i don't see what great prospect of advantage the consumption of them in one colony , can bring to the english , when they furnish the greatest part of europe with them to a much greater advantage ; and as to the scots be●●ing a share in the burthen of a foreign war , the supposition of it is built upon so an uncertain a foundation , that it scarce deserves to be mentioned considering especially , that the scots hitherto have not been the most forward in parting with their money upon that account . defence . 5. the success of the scots in their foreign plantation , will not only ease england of great numbers of their pedlars , so frequently complain'd of in parliament by country corporations and shopkeepers , but it will occasion the return home , and prevent the going out of vast numbe s of their youth , who follow the same sort of imployment , or betake themselves to the sword in denmark , sweden , poland , m●s●●oy , germany , holland and france ; by which means the government of g●●at britain may furnish their fleets and armies ●t a much cheaper and easier rate than formerly ▪ and with as good mariners and soldiers as ●ny in the world. 6. the english by joyning with the scots and supporting their ●olony at darien , may have their p●a●e brought home in their own bottoms and from their own mines , with which we are assured that country abounds , without being obliged to touch at cadiz or any foreign port , being liable to the vexatious indulto's of foreign princes , or in such hazard of being intercepted , as they many times were during the late war. 7. the english may by joyning with the scots render themselves more capable than ever of keeping the balance of europe in their hands ; a trust which nature and providence seems to have assign'd 'em , since their situation and naval force not only makes it proper for them , but they have had an opportunity put into their hands in little above the revolution of one century , of twice breaking the chains of europe when threatned with slavery ; first by the spaniards , and then by the french. this is so much the more evident , that by being possess'd of darien , they will be able either to prevent the uniting the spanish and french monarchies ; or if not so , to render that union so much the less dangerous , when it will be in their power to seize their treasure and dominions in the indies , without which , that bulky monarchy must fall by its own weight this is likewise of so much the greater importance , that it may very probably either prevent a religious war , towards which the papists discover so much inclination , or at least bring it to a speedier conclusion : for we have as good reason to look upon the spanish mines in the west-indies , to be antichrist's pouch , by which he maintains his war against the church , as the old taborites had to call the silver mines in bohemia by that name . it is certainly the surest method of destroying antichrist , to seize his purse ; for if he once be depriv'd of judas's bag , he will quickly drop st. peter's keys . it 's by the charms of her gold that the babylonish whore hath made the whole world to wonder after her , and the kings of the earth to be drunk with the cup of her fornication . answer . by this cant of antichrist's pouch , the babylonish whore , and some other expressions our calidonian makes use of in this treatise , one would shrewdly suspect him to be a disciple of the old covenanting crew , the more because i find he has a great itch after the spanish mines , a property belonging in a most peculiar manner , to that gang , who sold their king for money , as judas did christ. but to return to our more serious considerations . i think we have all the reason in the world to hope , that , since england , has been twice instrumental in breaking the chains of europe , and keeping up that balance which is absolutely necessary for the repose of europe , without the assistance of the scots , it may be able to maintain its ancient glory without their new settlement at darien ; which , in my opinion , will contribute but very little either to prevent the union of the spanish and french monarchies , or to render it less dangerous ; for , i am well convinced , that if the last should happen , the french would soon tell the scots , veteres migrate coloni : for if they would not take the compliment , they would find some other way to send them back to the highlands . he promises the english golden mountains , and that without any trouble , free from all imposts and danger ; but if these mines should prove abortive , if it should happen with them as the poet says , parturiunt montes , would not the english deserve to be laugh'd at , to expose their spanish commerce to hazard , for the uncertain hopes of some imaginary mines promised them by an unknown gentleman , who can give no better account of them , than what has been told him by others , who perhaps have it no more than by hearsay themselves . we are obliged to this gentleman however , for the kindness he is pleased to shew for england , in easing us of the scotch pedlars , but the danger is , that , in case the scots should be permitted to furnish england with muslins , silks , &c. as he mentioned before , they would all turn wholesale men , and those that now are gone to carry their packs upon their backs would go about the country with as many pack-horses , as a carrier that comes to london freighted with all sorts of commodities . defence . 8. by this means the english may be better able to prevent the ruine of their trade in the mediterranean and west-indies , if the french should possess themselves of the kingdom of spain : and they will likewise be the better able to prevent their possessing themselves of the netherlands ; which if once they should do , and get ports there capable of holding a fleet , they would also ruine their eastland trade , and put a period to the liberties of great britain . 9. it will effectually unite the scots to england by an inseparable tie , if the english join us in this undertaking : their ancestors would have gladly purchased this union at a much dearer rate , but were always outbid by france : and the want of that union made the english not only an easie prey to their successive conquerors , but lost them all the large provinces that they enjoy'd beyond sea , which were their natural barriers , gave them a free access to the continent , and made the english name so glorious in the days ▪ of their ancestors . answer . i can't for my life conceive how this scots settlement should prove of such vast consequence , as to support our mediterranean and west-india trade against the french , if they should become masters of spain , much less how it should influence our affairs so near home , as to prevent them from possessing themselves of the netherlands , unless the whole be built upon the hopes of his mines ; but as the same hitherto are but imaginary , so he would have done very well to have given us some more satisfactory reason for this assertion . what he says of the english being made an easie prey to their conquerors , for want of an union with scotland , ought to be look'd upon as a piece of romance ; and this gentleman , has forgot what he alledged not long before , viz. how instrumental the scots had been in defending the island against any foreign invaders : all that the scots have to brag of in this case is , that the great distance and unkindness of their climate secured them against the attempts of those who being possess'd of the fertile grounds of england , did not think it worth their while to look after them among the cold and barren mountains . it must be confess'd that their frequent inroads in england , gave the french a fair opportunity of ridding their hands by degrees from the english , but it was not so much for want of such an union , as he would make us believe , but because they were glad of any opportunity to supply their wants at home , by plundering and ravaging the borders of england ; and because , as he himself confesses , the french paid them very well besides for their pains ; so that we may well apply to scotland , what jagurtha , if i mistake not , said of rome : o romam venalem , dummodo emptorem invenisset : for the scots were always for him that did bid most . but let us hear his last argument upon this head. defence . 10. it will be of general advantage to the protestant interest , and contribute to the advancement of pure christianity , without any of the romish sophistications : which certainly ought to weigh much with all true protestants ; and so much the more , that the pope and the conclave of rome have espoused the quarrel of the spaniards in this affair as a cause of religion . doubtless the poor americans will be more in●linable to imbrace christianity , when they find the difference of the morals and doctrine betwixt protestants and papists , and see that the former treat them with humanity , and seek their welfare both in body and soul ; whereas the spaniards have render'd themselves , and the religion they profess , odious , by the inhumane cruelties and brutish lusts which they have exercis'd upon so many millions of the natives . this is so far from being a calumny , that an unexceptionable author of their own , don bartholomew de las casas bishop of chiapa , formerly mention'd , who was an eye-witness of their cruelties , gives an account that they had in his time destroyed above 40 millions of the poor indians ; tho' they receiv'd them with the greatest kindness imaginable , were ready to do 'em all the friendly offices that one man could desire of another , and testified their great inclination to have embrac'd the christian religion . but the spaniards aim'd at the destruction , and not at the conversian of the indians ; and are avowedly charg'd with it by the said bishop , who in many places of his book declares , that after they had sent for the chiefs of the countries to meet them in an amicable manner , which the poor harmless creatures did without suspicion of any fraud , these merciless tyrants murder'd them by wholesale , on purpose to make themselves terrible to them . this was a practice so inconsistent with humanity , that all the people ●f the world ought to have resented it : as having much more reason to declare the spaniards to be enemies to mankind , than ever the roman senate had to declare nero to be such . but this sort of treatment compar'd with what they made others to suffer , may well be call'd mercy : for tho' it was death , the indians were hereby quickly deliver'd from their misery ; whereas they put multitudes of others to lingring deaths , that they might feel themselves die gradually ; and yet this is not so intolerable neither as the condition of those poor people that had the misfortune to survive that cruelty ; for the whole time of their lives under that miserable servitude , is but death prolong'd or making his attacks upon 'em by intolerable labour , and continual hunger , the most insupportable of all plagues ; those poor creatures that toil in the mines , and are imploy'd in pearl-fishing , &c. having no more sustenance allow'd them , and that too of the coarsest sort , than is just enough to keep soul and body together , in order to prolong their misery . then let any man , who has but the least remains of humanity left him , judge whether the scots could be criminal , if they should have actually landed upon a spanish settlement , and have seiz'd the same , in order to deliver their brethren the sons of adam , from such hellish servitude and oppression as the above mention'd bishop describes ; and if no man that has any bowels of compassion within him can say they could , what shadow of reason is there to blame the scots for erecting a colony where the spaniards never had any footing ? answer . if this could be proved beyond contradiction , i must confess no body could blame the scots for settling themselves at darien , but till that be done , we must ask our author'● pardon , to suspend at least our judgment , as to the legality of their title to it . if i mistake not the matter , he does not seem to build altogether upon that foundation so much as upon their having forfeited their title by their unheard of cruelties ; for , to what purpose else this tedious repetition , when he had enlarged himself sufficiently before upon that theme ? which indeed may serve to render the spaniards odious but in my opinion is but a slender addition towards the strengthning of their title upon darien , since with the same right , not only the scots , but any nation whatsoever might lay claim to all america , as far as it is in the possession of the spaniards . we will therefore hear what he has to alledge for us caledonians in the third head. defence . the next thing to be consider'd is , whether the scots without the assistance of england , may probably maintain their footing there , which there 's no doubt may very well be determin'd in the affirmative . 1. because the whole kingdom of scotland being more zealous for it , and unanimous in it ▪ than they have been in any other thing for forty or fifty years past , it is not to be doubted , but they will use their utmost efforts to support themselves in it by their own strength ; or if that will not do , by making alliances with other nations that are able to assist them with a naval force . 2. if they meet with no other opposition but what the spaniards are able to make to them , it will be easie for the nobility , and gentry , and royal burroughs of scotland , to raise money upon their lands , &c. to increase their stock for the american trade , and buy ships of force to protect it . nay , without that it 's but giving commission to the buccaneers to become an over-match for the spaniards . 3. supposing the french should offer to join with the spaniards , and assist them to drive the scots from darien , as some say they have already proffered ; we are not to imagine that the spaniards will accept their proffers in this case , when they refused them as to the driving the moors from before ceuta . the reasons are obvious : they declin'd the accepting their proffers as to ceuta , because they would not thereby give the french an opportunity of possessing themselves of any of their towns in africa , as it is but too common for foreign auxiliaries to do in such cases . then certainly they have much greater reason to refuse their proffers as to darien , america being of infinitely more value to them than some african towns : and if once the french should get footing there , it would be in vain for the spanish grandees any further to dispute the succession of france to their crown ; for they would immediately seize upon their mines and treasures in the west-indies , without which the spanish monarchy is not able to support it self . or supposing the king of spain should live for many years , and by consequence keep the french out of possession ; yet having once goot footing at darien , which they will certainly do , if the scots be expell'd by their assistance , the spaniards will quickly be convinc'd to their cost , that they are more dangerous neighbours than the scots ; not only because of their greater power to do them more mischief , but because of their incroaching temper , which all europe is sensible of ; and being of the same religion with the spaniards , and having of late years set up for the champions of popery , they will by the influence of the clergy , bring all the spanish settlements of america to a dependence upon them , and a love for them as the great protectors of the catholick faith ; which will at once destroy the interest of spain in america . this will appear to be no vain speculation , to those that consider the temper of the popish clergy , and the insolence of the spanish inquisitors , who so daringly reflected upon the late alliance of spain with protestant princes and states , tho' absolutely necessary to preserve that nation from being swallowed up by france . whereas the scots being zealous protestants , and for that very reason hateful to the popish clergy and laity , they are under a moral impossibility of having so much influence to withdraw the american settlements from the obedience of spain : and besides , being under an obligation by the principles of their religion , and their fundamental constitution , not to invade the property of another , the spaniards have no cause to fear any thing from them , provided they forbear hostilities on their part ; but on the contrary may find them true and faithful allies , and useful to assist them in the defence of their country , if attack'd by the french as in the late war : it being the interest of the scots , as well as of the spaniards , to prevent the accession of the crown of spain to that of france . these things , together with the known endeavours of the french to procure an interest amongst the natives of that country , and especially with don pedro and corbet , in order to a settlement , make it evident enough , that it is the interest of spain the scots should rather have it than the french , who have already been tampering with the spaniards as well as with the indians , and doubt not to have a large share of america whenever the king of spain dies . answer . most people , i am apt to believe , will soon agree with our author in this point , that the french would be by far the more dangerous neighbours to the spaniards in america , both in respect of their power , and the influence they might have over the spaniards in america upon the score of their religion ; but i hope he will also grant me , that it is much more for the spanish interest , not to be troubled with any neighbours at all there , that may be in any probability to interfere with them either in power or traffick ; but whether the spaniards will be able , as the case now stands , to gain this point , is what must be the present object of our consideration . i will for once suppose the scots to be so unanimous in this matter , as our author would have them , yet it is much to be doubted whether they would be so fond of a project that is subject to so many casualties , and to no small danger of succeeding , as the nobility , gentry , and others , to mortgage their estates upon that score ; but supposing they should , it would still be a question , whether they could be in a condition to procure time enough , such a number of serviceable ships , and other necessaries requisite for the maintaining themselves at darien even against the spaniards alone . for , granting they should not be in a capacity to force the scots from their fortifications , they have other means to annoy and intercept their convoys , which , considering a communication betwixt the english west-india plantations , and the scots settlement , is taken off , may in all likelihood reduce them to a starving condition there , or at the best put the scots east-india company under a necessity of providing their ships with such strong convoys , at so great a distance , that the charge may surmount the profit , notwithstanding the hopes of their rich mines . what our calidonian says of giving commissions to the buccaneers , is little to the purpose , it being evident that they have no power so to do by vertue of their letters patents , and that consequently by so doing , they must put themselves in the same range with them , which would be the ready way for them to forfeit all the title they can pretend to upon that settlement . but supposing the scots should put the spaniards so hard to it , as to be obliged to seek for aid by the french , who at this juncture seem to be very forward to purchase their good will at any rate , it is very probable that they may have their assistance upon much easier terms , than the surrender of darien into their hands ; neither is it to be questioned , but that the spaniards , who are jealous of the french to the highest degree , might take such sure measures as to the number and other circumstances of the french auxiliaries , as might free them from the danger of being surprized by them , especially at this time , when the french are so cautious of creating a jealousie in that nation . what our author alledges of ceuta , is no parallel to this ; the only reason of the spaniards refusing the offers of the french as to the relief of that place , being no more , than that they thought it inconsistent with their grandeur , to leave the glory of relieving a place , which is so near them , to a foreign nation ▪ when as yet they were sufficiently able to defend it against the moors . it may also be consider'd , that the french have not shewn so much inclination to get a firm footing in america , as our author would fain perswade us ; for what reason i will not pretend to determine ; but certain it is , that when monsieur de ponti had made himself master of carthagena , they might with as much probability have defended themselves there against the spaniards , as the scots in their settlement at darien . and if darien was of so much consequence to france , what could hinder them from settling there , when monsieur de ponti touch'd at that place in his way to carthagena . which makes it very evident that the french did not think it for their interest to plant any colonies at this time in america , or at least not at or near darien . defence . but admitting ( says our caledonian ) that the spaniards should so far mistake their interest , as to accept of the proffers of the french to expel the scots , it is not impossible for the latter to find other allies than the english to assist them with a naval force to maintain their possession . the dutch are known to be a people that seldom or never mistake their interest : they are sensible how useful the alliance of scotland may be to them , both in regard of their liberty to fish in our seas without controul , and of being a curb upon england , in case the old roman maxim of delenda est carthago , should come any more to be applied by the english to that republick , as in the reign of king charles ii. they are likewise sensible of the advantage it would be to their trade to be partners with the scots at darien ; and how effectual it may be to disable the french to pursue their claim to spain , and by consequence to revive the old title of that crown upon their own seven , as well as to swallow up the other ten provinces . these things , together with a long continued amity and trade betwixt scotland and holland , and their union in religion and ecclesiastical discipline , are sufficient to evince that the dutch would become our partners in america with little courtship . that they are able to assist us in that case with a naval force sufficient , is beyond contradiction ; and that they would soon be convinc'd it is their interest to do it , to prevent that monstrous increase of the french monarchy , is obvious enough from the part they acted in the late war. but admitting that none of those considerations should prevail with the dutch , and that they should likewise abandon us ; it is not impossible for us to obtain an alliance and naval force from the northern crowns : it 's well enough known that those kingdoms abound with men and shipping , and that they would be glad with all their hearts to make an exchange of these for the gold and silver of america ▪ which they might easily carry from town to town , and from market to market , without the trouble of a wheel-barrow , as they are now obliged to do with their copper . from all which it is evident enough that it is not impossible for the scots to maintain themselves in darien without the assistance of england . answer . tho' it may not be altogether impossible , yet it appears to me very improbable , that the scots shou'd be able to maintain their settlement without the assistance of the english , who , by reason of their many and considerable plantations in the west-indies , are the only people from whom the scots might have seasonable assistance , especially with provisions ; what our caledonian says concerning the alliances with the dutch or the northern crowns , are meer chimera's : for , first i would ask him , how the scots can enter into any such alliance in opposition to england ? but supposing they could , the dutch , who as he tells us himself , seldom mistake their interest , have the same reasons that england has , to oppose the scots east-india company , because of their vast commerce in those parts ; and the spanish trade is of such consequence to them , that they will scarce be perswaded by our author , to break with spain , and consequently to lose the advantage of their traffick in that kingdom , for the uncertain hopes of his darien mines . what he says of the usefulness of the scots alliance to holland , in case of a rupture with england , is said to no purpose at this time of the day , and is besides this founded upon another supposition , viz , that the scots must be in a condition to assist them , which they are not likely to do as long as they are united with england under one head. but our caledonian tells us strange wonders about the northern crowns ; he takes a great deal of pains to give us to understand , that gold and silver would be much more convenient for the swedes and danes , than copper ; truly , i will not quarrel with him upon this point , but i am apt to believe , that they will scarce part with their men and shipping before they are better convinced what share they are to have of them , and whether the scots are able to make good their promises ; for without that , they had better keep to their copper , which yields them good money in foreign countries . besides that their great distance makes their assistance very difficult and uncertain , if not quite useless , it being the opinion of most people who have a true insight into this matter , that the want of seasonable supplies , which must be sent at so great a distance , will oblige the scots to quit their settlement of darien , unless they will rather chuse their graves amongst their imaginary mines , where we will leave them to their own destiny , and apply to them the epitaph the poet made upon the hare-brain'd phaeton . hic situs est phaeton , currus auriga paterni quem si non tenuit , magnis tamen excidit ausis . but we must hear what he further says upon the fourth and last head. defence . the next thing to be discours'd of , is , what the consequences may probably be , if the english should oppose us in this settlement . we could heartily wish there had never been any ground for this suggestion , and that the opposition we have met with from england hath been less national than that which we had from both their houses of parliament , after the passing an act for an african company , &c. in ours : and it were to be wished that so many of the english had not given us such proofs of an alienated mind , and aversion to our welfare , as they have done since by their resident at hambourgh , and their late proclamations in their west-india plantations : and we could have wish'd above all that his majesty of england had not in the least concurr'd , or giv'n his countenance to that opposition ; and we could wish that his english counsellors , who put him upon those things , would remember that strafford and laud lost their heads for giving king charles i. that fatal advice of oppressing and opposing the scots . answer . it is not denied but that those two lords were , by the presbyterian party , sacrificed to their covenanting brethren in scotland , but what is that to the point in question , since what has been done in opposition to the scots settlement , is , by his own confession , a national concern , back'd by the authority of both houses of parliament in england ; and it cannot be look'd upon any otherwise , than as a most unaccountable arrogance in our caledonian , who stiles himself a private man in his dedication , to call in question , and that in so gross a manner , what has been done in this matter by his majesty and his parliament , for the promoting and maintaining their own commerce : but let us see how he proceeds further upon this head. defence . we did verily think ( says he ) that the suffering of our crown to be united with that of england in the person of king james their i. and our vi ; our seasonable coming to the rescue of their expiring liberties in the reign of king charles i. our being so instrumental to rescue them from anarchy and confusion , by the restoration of king charles ii. and above all , or generous and frank concurrence with them in the late happy revolution , and advancement of king william iii. we did verily think , that all these things deserv'd a better treatment : and to evince that they did , we shall beg leave to insist a little upon the first and last . the english have no cause to think that we were ignorant of the reason why their politick henry vii . chose rather to match his eld●st daughter with the king of scots , than with the king of france , because he foresaw , that if the king of scots should by that means come to the crown of england , he would remove the seat of his government thither , which would add to the grandure and riches of england : whereas if the king of france did by that means fall heir to the english crown , he would certainly draw the court of england to paris . this the scots were so far from being ignorant of , that many of the nobility and gentry did express their dislike of the union of the crowns , as well knowing that it would reduce our kingdom into a subjection and dependance upon england , and drain us of what substance we had ; and therefore some of them express'd themselves on that occasion , that scotland was never conquer'd till then : yet such was our zeal for the common welfare of the island , the interest of the protestant religion , and of europe in general , which were then almost in as much danger by spain , as they have been since by france , that we quietly and freely parted with our king , and suffer'd him to accept the english crown , rather than that nation should be involv'd in war and confusion , and the protestant religion endanger'd by another successor , as it must necessarily have been , had the infanta of spain , whose title was then promoted by the popish interest , succeeded . and all the reward we had for this condescension and kindness , was a contemptuous and disdainful refusal , on the part of england , of an union of the nations when proposed , tho' the same would visibly have tended to the benefit of the whole island , the general advantage of europe , and the security and increase of the protestant interest . and our king was so little thankful on his part , that tho' he promis'd solemnly in the great church of edinburgh before his departure ▪ that he would visit his ancient kingdom once in three years , he never saw it after but once , and that not till fourteen years after . and by the influence of that same faction in england , who are still our enemies , he made innovations both in church and state. these were the first advantages we had by the union of the crowns . his son king charles i. had scarce ascended the throne , when we had new proofs of the disadvantages we labour'd under by that union ; for he by the advice of some enemies to our nation , did in an imperious and arbitrary manner send for our crown , tho' the only monument almost left us of our independency and freedom ; but was generously answer'd by him that had it in keeping , that if he would come and be crown'd in scotland , he should have all the honour done him that ever was to his ancestors ; but if he did not think it worth his while , they might perhaps be inclin'd to make choice of another soveraign , or to that effect ; as recorded in the continuation of sir richard baker's history . another disadvantage we had by that union of the crown , was this , that that unfortunate prince being inspir'd with an aversion to the constitution of our country , by his education made war upon us to bring us to a conformity with england in church-matters . we shall not here offer to debate which of the churches was best constituted , or most agreeable to the scripture-pattern : it suffices for our argument , that we were injur'd in having a foreign model offer'd to be obtruded upon us , which was the consequence of the union of the crowns , and of having our king educated in another nation ; but that was not all , another mischievous effect of the union was this , that whatever king charles had deserv'd at our hands , yet out of natural affection , conscience and honour , we were oblig'd to do what we could to prevent his illegal trial and death , and to defend his son's title , which threw us into convulsions at home , occasion'd us the loss of several armies , and expos'd our nation afterwards to ruine and devastation , by our implacable enemy the usurper , which together with the ungrateful retributions made us by the government after the restoration , were enough to have wearied any nation under heav'n , but our selves , of the union of the crowns ▪ answer . our caledonian , as i believe , being somewhat mistrustful of the strength of the scot● title , as well as of his arguments , to perswade the english , that it is for their interest to maintain the scots in their new settlement , thinks it best to take other measures now , and to try whether he can hector them into a compliance with the scots ; he sets the best countenance upon the matter , and labours very hard to give the world to understand , that the english are highly indebted to the scots , for suffering , as he terms it , their crown to be united with that of england . i will not enter into a dispute with him , about the design of henry vii . in marrying his daughter to the king of scots . i will allow him to have acted in this point as much for the interest of england , as our author would have him ; but what is all this to their suffering the two crowns to be united under one head. i hope he will grant me , that both the english and scots crowns were hereditary ; and being such , how was it in the power of the scots to alter the succession upon that score ? i will further allow him , that whenever two kingdoms , or states are united under one head , the less potent will in some measure be independent on the other : but i would also have him grant me this position , that if at that juncture the infanta of spain had succeeded in england , the protestant interest both in england and scotland , must have been brought into no small jeopardy , and our author would have had no great occasion at this time to brag of the soveraignty and independency of the scots . he makes a large rehearsal of the miscarriages in the reign of king james i. and king charles i. especially of their innovations in church matters in scotland ; but our author might have remembred if they introduced episcopacy among them , they were not behind hand in furnishing england with presbytery . what he alledges concerning their sufferings in the civil wars , for the defence of k. charles i. and his sons title , ought not to be put upon the english score . i wonder how he can be so forgetful as not to remember , that the scots covenanters were of that gang that begun the dance , and all the reason in the world they should help to pay the fidler ; and this is so unquestionably true , that many of the wiser sort are of opinion , that the presbyterian faction would never have carried matters to that heighth , under that unfortunate prince's reign , if they had not been back'd by the covenanting party in scotland ; so that england may in a great measure lay the calamities of the late civil wars , and its fatal consequences , to their doors , which our author would fain put altogether upon the english . but let us see how he goes on in magnifying his beloved scots . defence . yet such was our zeal for the protestant interest , the welfare of the island , and the liberty of europe , that tho' we had a fair opportunity of providing otherwise for our security and the advancement of our trade , and of forming our selves into a commonwealth , or of bringing england to our own terms , yet we frankly and generously concurr'd with them to settle our government on the same persons , and in the same manner as they did theirs , and all the reward we had from them , is , that an union of the nations , tho' twice propos'd by his majesty in parliament , hath been rejected : to this they have added an opposition to our receiving foreign subscriptions at hamburgh and elsewhere , refus'd us a supply of corn for our money , to relieve us in our distress ; and discourag'd our settlement at darien , by forbidding their subjects to trade with us there . if these continued slights be not enough to make us weary of the union of the crowns , let any man judge . to discover a little of the unreasonableness of this sort of treatment , we dare appeal to the calm thoughts of such of our neighbours in england , as prefer the interest of the publick to private animosities , and foolish ill-grounded piques , either as to church or state ; whether at the time of the revolution , and before we declar'd our selves , they would not have been willing to have assur'd themselves of our friendship , at the rate of uniting with us as one nation ? had we but demurr'd upon forfeiting the late k. james , or made but a proffer of renewing our ancient league with france , and joyning with that crown to keep that prince upon the throne of great britain ; they know we might have made what terms we pleas'd with the late king and louis xiv . on that condition , and might have been restor'd to all the honours and privileges that our ancestors enjoy'd in france , which were almost equal to those of the natives ; and yet that gallant nation thought it no disparagement to them , however we be despis'd and undervalued now by a certain party in england . had we but seem'd to have made such overtures , the english must needs have foreseen that the natural consequences of such a design , if it had taken effect , must have been these , viz. the late king's adherents in england would certainly have join'd us , and our nation would have afforded them a safe retreat , in case of any disaster , till they could have concerted matters to the best advantage ; the late king would not have yielded himself such an easie conquest , not disbanded his army in such a manner as he did ; ireland had certainly revolted , since every one knows that the revolution was begun , and in a great measure perfected there by the scots of the north ; so that england must have become the theatre of the war , and been liable to an invasion from france . these must certainly have been the consequences of our adhering to the late king , and the english would have thought they had had a very good bargain if they could have bought us off in that case with uniting both the kingdoms into one , and granting us a joint trade to their own plantations ; whereas now they will not allow us to settle a foreign colony of our own , and treat us as foreigners in theirs . answer . our author has so entangled himself in pleading for the scots , that he is almost beyond his senses ; for what man , who is in his right wits , could propose an alliance with france , ( which is in effect no less than to make scotland a province of france ) as more advantageous to the scots than their concurrence with england in the last revolution ; for if they were become so indifferent as to their so much bragg'd of liberty and soveraignty , and their religion to boot , what need they have chang'd masters ? since king james would have eased them of both ; and it appears to me , as if our caledonian was rather for the last , since he takes so much pains to represent to us the consequences of it in the most passionate manner that could be : but if the matter be duly weigh'd , he has shot much beyond the mark ; for supposing the scots to have stood it out against england for king james , ( tho' i must confess it implies almost an absurdity to suppose it ) the consequences would not have been half so terrible as he would persuade us ; for scotland , being , by reason of its situation , not easie to be relieved by france , as long as the english and dutch were masters at sea , they might perhaps have proved troublesome , but not so dangerous neighbours , as to make england the theatre of war ; and it is , i think , odds on the english side , that they might have served them as cromwel did ; that is , to bring them under an entire subjection , whereas they now enjoy many priviledges beyond other foreigners , and have born but a very slender share in those vast sums expended for the glory and interest of the island in general . it is not to be denied , but that their ready concurrence did hasten the conquest of ireland ; but i am apt to believe , that their refusal would scarce have appear'd so dreadful to the english , as to make them receive laws from the scots . i cannot pass by in silence here with what arrogance he is pleased to reflect upon the measures taken in england on the account of the scots east-india company , when it is beyond all question , that every independent nation has an inherent right to secure their commerce against the encroachments of a neighbouring nation , which is the true state of the case ; which our author terms ingratitude , and i know not what , in the english , who did no more than to represent their grievance to his majesty's consideration . he runs on further thus . defence . to shew that this is not a mere conjecture , that has no other ground but a vision of the brain , they may be pleas'd to consider the honourable privileges granted us by their ancestors , and some of the greatest princes that ever sway'd their scepter , viz. king edward and william the conqueror , who by the consent of the states in parliament assembled , enacted , that the scots should be accounted denizons of england , and injoy the same privileges with themselves , because of their frequent intermarriages with the english , and that they did ever stood stoutly as one man with them for the common vtility of the crown and kingdom , against the danes and norwegians , fought it most valiantly and unanimously against the common enemy , and bore the burden of most fierce wars in the kingdom . this they will find in a book , call'd , archaionomia , translated from the saxon by william lambard , and printed at london by john day , in 1568. it must be granted , that the reasons of such a grateful retribution are redoubled now : intermarriages betwixt the two nations are more frequent than ever ▪ the union of the kingdoms under one crown for almost 100 years ; the generous concurrence of the scots in the last revolution ; their loss of so many gallant officers and brave soldiers in the common cause during the late war , and the preservation of ireland , which hath been twice owing to our country-men , might reasonably entitle us to the same privileges now , that our ancestors were formerly allow'd by k. edward and william the conqueror . we need not insist on another sort of obligation , that we have put upon england twice within this 60 years , viz. the delivering them from their oppressions in the time of k. charles i. the anarchy of the rump , and several models of armies and junto's , by encouraging general monk's undertaking ; for it cannot be denied that we had the balance of europe in our hands at the time of the last revolution , and that we turn'd the scale to the advantage of england in particular , and of europe in general , which must be allow'd to be as great a service , as that which was so thankfully rewarded by edward , and william the conqueror ; whence it is evident , that those englishmen , who at present oppose our settlement in america , don't inherit the gratitude of their ancestors , when they not only will not allow us to trade in conjunction with them , but withstand our doing any thing that may advance a trade by our selves . if they object , that what we did in all those cases was no more than our duty , and what we ow'd to our own preservation as well as to theirs ; it is easie to reply , that admitting it to be so , yet by the laws of god and men , people are incourag'd to perform their duties by rewards ; and their ancestors were so sensible of this , that tho' they knew we were equally concern'd to defend the island against foreign invaders as well as they , yet they thought themselves oblig'd in policy as well as gratitude , to reward us ; which they not only did by that honorary praemium of allowing us to be denizons of england , as above-mention'd , but sometimes gave to us , and at other times confirm'd to us the three northern counties of northumberland , westmorland , and cumberland , to be held in fee of the crown of england . it is likewise very well known with how much honour the parliament of england treated us , when they courted our assistance against king charles i. and what large promises that prince made us , if we would have but stood neuter ; which tho' we had reason to think many of those that opposed him had no great kindness neither for our civil nor ecclesiastical constitution , yet the sense that we had of the common danger that our religion and liberties were in at that time , made us proof against all those tentations ; so that after all endeavours for a reconciliation betwixt the king and the parliament of england prov'd unsuccessful , we sent in an army , which cast the balance on the side of the latter ; who before that time were reduc'd low enough by the king's army , as is very well known to such as are acquainted with the history of those times , and is own'd by my lord hollis in his memoirs lately publish'd . answer . our caledonian most extreamly misses his aim , in relating those matters as obligations done to england ; for which they have but little reason to be thankful to them : their behaviour under the reign of k. charles i. was such , that the english ought to keep it in eternal remembrance ; and in lieu of acknowledgment , rather ought to take care of them , so that they may not be able for the future to be the incendiaries of a civil war , as they were at that time . for , after they had put all england into confusion by their encouraging , and afterwards declaring for the presbyterian faction ; after , i say , they had been instrumental in bringing this unfortunate prince to his fatal end , they took the opportunity of siding with his son ; not out of any love to his person , or to maintain his rightful title , as may appear by those conditions they imposed upon him ; but to revenge themselves upon those , who had wrested the power out of their hands , and afterwards made them bear their share in those miseries they had brought upon england . certainly our author must think the english to be very ill versed in their own history , when he alledges , the scots to have had any share in general monk's undertaking , who can be so ignorant as not to know , that all what this general desired from , and was granted by the convention of the scots , was to furnish him with so much money , as might maintain his army in their march to london ; and there is no question , but they understood their interest so well , as that they would have parted with a far greater sum to rid their hands of a conquering army in their bowels , and to set the english together by the ears among themselves , by which means they might hope to recover their lost liberty ▪ for the rest , it is sufficiently evident , that if general monk had at that time any thoughts of recalling the king , ( which i much question ) he had more prudence than to communicate it to the scots or any body else ; for if the rump had had the least suspicion of his design , they would scarce have made him general of all the forces in the three nations . this is the true state of the case , as to the first of these obligations , our calidonian brags of : what he says of scotland's turning the balance in the time of the late revolution , when it was in their hands , shews so much vanity and want of judgment in point of policy , that it deserves no answer ; and i am apt to believe , the wiser sort among the scots will owe him but little thanks for representing them as a people who could fall under a possibility of mistaking their own interest and preservation so far , as to let slip so extraordinary an opportunity , as was offered them by providence , to secure their religion and liberty , and in lieu of that to embrace a foreign protection ; or to speak truer , to submit their necks under a foreign yoke , rather than to unite themselves with the english under one head ; who perhaps , notwithstanding their foreign alliances , might have taken this opportunity to bring them once for all to reason , as cromwel did , who 's title to scotland , as their conqueror , was own'd by all europe . he goes on thus : defence . but to return to the last revolution : tho' we must own , that we owe our deliverance to his majesty , and were oblig'd in conscience and honour to concur with him ; yet who could have blam'd us to have stood upon terms before we had fallen in with england ? especially , considering how ungratefully ( nay villainously ) we were treated by cromwel and his party , after we had sav'd them and the parliament of england from the scorpions that the cavaliers had prepar'd to chastise them with ; as is own'd by the said lord hollis . nor could we have been any way culpable , if we had stood upon surer terms , considering how unthankfully we were used , and enslav'd by our late kings , for whom we had acted and suffered so much . and tho' we must own , that no less present than that of our crown was sufficient to testifie our gratitude for what the prince of orange had done for us , yet we were under no necessity of gratifying him in that manner , since our deliverance was effected before-hand , and that he himself , in his declaration , express'd it to be no part of his design to come for the crown ; so that our reward was as frank and generous . then as to england , we were under no manner of obligation to continue the union with them : we might have insisted upon having our king obliged to reside as much amongst us as amongst them : that we should be govern'd without any consideration or respect to their interest , any further than it fell in with our own . we might have insisted upon an act that we should not be oblig'd to attend his majesty at any time at the court of england , about our affairs ; but that he should either attend upon our administration in person pro r● nata , as he does now upon the affairs of holland , or lay down methods to have his pleasure signified to us at home in such cases as it was requir'd ; which would save a vast deal of money annually to the kingdom of scotland . then as to the succession , we were under no necessity of settling it in the same manner as they did in england : for since they had made a breach in the line , they could not handsomly have blam'd us to have made an improvement of it ▪ and either to have limited the reversion after his present majesty's death , as we should have thought best , for the security of our civil and religious liberties ; or we might have settled it upon the prince of orange , and his issue b● an● other wife , there being cause enough then to conceive that he was never like to have any by his late excellent princess : had we taken any of these methods , it must be own'd that england would have been considerably weakned by it ; that we should have thereby had an opportunity of making such foreign alliances with france , as formerly , or with any other nation as would have made england uneasie , and perhaps unsafe on occasion ; and therefore it must be reckon'd highly impolitick in our neighbours , to treat us continually at such a rate , since we have so many open doors to get out at . they must not think that we have so far degenerated from the courage and honour of our ancestors , as tamely to submit to become their vassals , when for two thousand years we have maintain'd our freedom ; and therefore it is not their interest to oppress us too much . if they consult their histories , they will find that we always broke their yoke at long run , if at any time we were brought under it . the best way to assure themselves of us , is to treat us in a friendly manner : tho' we be not so great and powerful as they , it is not impossible for us to find such allies as may enable us to defend our selves now , as well as formerly . none of these things are suggested with an ill design to raise animosity betwixt the nations , or to perswade to a separation of the crowns , but merely to shew those of our neighbours , who use us so unkindly , that they are bound in gratitude , and interest , to do otherwise , and particularly to support us in our american settlement , and not to discourage us in that undertaking , as they have hitherto done , and continue still to do in their american colonies , by their proclamations against having any commerce , or trade with the scots at darien ; tho' they be settled there , according to the terms of an act of parliament in scotland . answer . it is a most unaccountable piece of insolence ( not to say worse ) in our caledonian , to make use of such harsh expressions , for no other reason , but because the english parliament represented to his majesty in a most humble address , the danger the commerce of england was likely to be exposed to by the encroachments of the new scots company ; and his majesty's answer to their address , might have been a sufficient warning to our scots polititian , that he was sensible of the justice of their request ; and , that , as he had shewn himself a good king to the scots , in granting them his letters patents , he thought it reasonable not to deny his english subjects any legal means to relieve themselves against that danger . but our author is so much overcome with the conceits of his own politicks , that he spares the scots convention , as little as the english parliament , whom he boldly accuses for want of conduct , at the time of the late revolution , because they did not make better terms with the english , before their concurrence with them . but those wise patriots who compos'd that great assembly , were too sensible of the danger that threatned them , if in lieu of uniting their strength with ours , they should miss this opportunity of rescuing themselves from the weight of those oppressions they had groan'd under for some years before , and spend their time in insisting upon such trifles as are mentioned here by ou● caledonian , and don 't deserve any answer . i will only insist upon one point ; i believe there is scarce any body but what will grant me , that considering they had a considerable party headed by the lord dundee , who were their enemies within their bowels , it was impossible for them to stand neuter ; and considering how dangerous an alliance with france might have proved at that juncture ; nay , how useless it must have been to them , when the english and dutch were masters a● sea , what other way had they left for their own preservation , than to settle the government upon the same bottom as they did , which being most conformable to the true ancient constitution of an hereditary monarchy , did free them from the danger of falling into new dissentions at home , in case of any sinister accident . he goes on in his plea. defence . we are not insensible that the present juncture of affairs obliges the kingdom of england to carry fair with spain , and may admit that in part as an apology for some of that opposition we have met with from them ; but the questioning our act of parliament at first , and their hindring our subscriptions at hamburgh afterward , before ever they knew what our design was , make that excuse of little weight : but allowing it all the force they would have it to bear , it may be worth their while to consider whether it be more their interest to incourage the spaniards in an unjust opposition to our american settlement ; or to support the scots in maintaining their right . it is certain that the spaniards are in no condition to break with england ; or if they should , it 's in the power of the english to reduce them speedily to reason : whereas if the scots should miscarry in their undertakings by the discouragements from england before-mentioned , which exposes our ships to be taken and treated as pirates by any nation that pleases , the infallible consequence of it will be , that the ruine and impoverishment of scotland , which must necessarily follow such a miscarriage , will immediately affect england both in her trade and strength : the city of london and the northern road , will soon feel the effects of it , when the money spent by our gentry and merchants continually for cloaths , provisions , and goods , ceases to circulate there : england may become an easier prey to a foreign enemy ; since it will not be only the loss of a tribe , but of an entire sister-nation . or supposing that scotland should be able to bear up under the weight of it , it will lay the foundation of an irreconcileable feud , and may perhaps issue in a war betwixt the two nations ; which did never yet terminate at long-run to the advantage of england , and is as unlikely to do so now as ever : for in such a cas● they would find us unanimous as one man against them : and therefore those who are enemies to the peace of the nations , being aware of this , labour to effect their design by another method , and endeavour as much as they can to dash the government and us against one another . but they are mistaken in the people of scotland : we are sensible of our obligations to king william , and know so well what is due to our deliverer , that it surpasses all their art to create in us the least ill thought of him ; it is not in the temper of our nation . the world knows that however frequent and successful we have been in reducing our bad kings to reason , yet there was never any people under the sun more loyal and affectionate to good princes than we have been ; and if , when we have been forc'd to oppose our monarchs , private persons have sometimes carried their resentments too high , yet the publick justice of the nation was always govern'd with temper . we could multiply instances to prove this , but need go no higher than the three last kings , who tho all of them enemies to our constitution , as appear'd by their principles and practices , yet it s very well known what we both did and suffer'd for them , and particularly for king charles i. tho' the malice of a faction in our neighbouring nation , fix'd a scandalous reproach upon us , as if we had sold him ; from which reflection we are sufficiently vindicated by the lord hollis's memoirs before-mention'd ; wherein that excellent person makes it evident , that tho' our war against that prince was just , yet we had all possible respect for his persons , made the best conditions we could for his safety and honour , and to avoid greater mischiefs , and the playing of our enemies game to the ruine of our selves and his majesty , we were necessitated to leave him in england . memoirs p. 68. then since we carried it so to a prince that had been no way kind to us , it will be impossible to create a breach betwixt us and a prince , to whom , under god , we owe all that we enjoy as men and christians : but at the same time our neighbours , who think to drive that nail as far as it will go , would do well to consider , that we never believ'd that doctrine in scotland , that it is unlawful to resist a king , or any that have a commission under him , upon any pretence whatsoever : we left that doctrine in scythia , from whence some authors derive our origin , and think it only fit to be sent back to turkey , from whence it came . we know very well how to distinguish betwixt a lawful power , and the abuse of it ; and our ancestors rightly understood how to obey the lawful commands of their princes , when masters of themselves , and how to govern by their authority , and in their name , when they were not ; tho' they did not think themselves obliged to obey their personal commands , when the fortune of war , or other accidents had put them into the hands of our enemies . thus we refused obedience to k. james i. when detain'd prisoner in england , contrary to the law of nations , and carried over into france , to command his subjects there not to bear arms against the english army , where he was in person . we told him we knew how to distinguish betwixt the commands of a king , and those of a captive . answer . here is a flourish indeed upon the behaviour of the scots towards their good and bad kings , to comment upon which , would require a whole volume , we will only take notice here of what he says concerning their selling king charles i. to the english , of which he clears his countrymen , but very indifferently , the whole amounting to no more , than that they made the best terms for him and themselves too , which does not take away the stain of surrendering their prince to his enemies when they had a good army to back their pretensions . the rest is taken up with his arguments to convince the world ; that the englesh ought at this juncture , to prefer the interest of scotland before that of spain , upon which head we have said so much already , that i think it needless to make a fulsome repetition of it here . i will only add thus much ; that it may be hoped that those who have the management of the scots east-india company , will have more prudence than to venture their all upon that bottom ; and , that consequently scotland , if they miscarry in this undertaking , will not be in so much danger of being utterly ruin'd , as this gentleman imagines . his threatning speculations about a war betwixt the two nations , and the unanimity of the scots against us , s●a●ce deserves to be taken notice of since i see no reason why he should suppose the english so unconcerned at their own interest , as to act with less vigour against them , than they would against us , which i am apt to believe would not turn to the advantage of scotland , all this time , when the english are more potent than ever , and the scots have not the same prospect of being back'd by a foreign power , as they were in former times , when by reason of our civil dissensions they proved sometimes troublesome , but never were dangerous neighbours . but let us see , what he has further to say upon this head defence . to return to the point of what may probably be the consequences if the english should proceed to any further degree of opposition ; or if the scots should miscarry in the design . it 's reasonable to believe that the english will be so wise as to forbear hostilities , tho' we are very well satisfied there is a party in that nation who bear ours no good will ; it 's to be hop'd they will never be able so far to leaven the sound part of the english nation , as to occasion a rupture betwixt them and us : yet we must needs say that we look upon their way of treating us to be a very unaccountable thing , and that it was no small surprize to us , to find that the english should look on our taking subscriptions in england , in order to admit them joint-sharers with our selves , in the benefit of the act to encourage our trade , to be no less than a high misdemeanour . we have reason likewise to complain of their constant practice of pressing our seamen in time of war , as if they were their own subjects , and that they should treat us in other respects as if we were aliens : and sometimes confiscate ships , by reckoning scots mariners as such : so that the english have not only depriv'd us of the warm influences of our court , the want of which is a considerable addition to the natural coldness of our climate , but they likewise oppress us on all occasions , and do manifestly endeavour to prevent our application to trade . we know there 's a party in that nation , who think we sustained no great loss by the removal of our princes ; but we would wish them to consider what a murmuring they themselves make when the king goes annually to the netherlands ( tho' the safety of europe requires it ) because of the damp it puts upon trade , and the money it carries out of the kingdom . let them consider then what our nation has suffer'd in that respect now for almost an hundred years , besides the lessening our esteem in the eyes o● the world , and yet they will neither admit us to the privileges of fellow-subjects with themselves , nor suffer us to take such measures as may inable us stand on our own bottom . we know that it was a maxim in some of the late reigns , that it would never be well till all that part of scotland on this side forth , were reduc'd to a hunting-field ; but we were in hopes the bitterness of those days had been past : yet it seems that party have still so far the ascendant amongst our neighbours , as to procure a publick opposition to all our endeavours for raising our nation by trade . it will upon due examination be found as bad policy as it is christianity , to urge , as some of our neighbours do , that it is the interest of england to keep the scots low , because they are an independent and free nation , and were our ancient enemies ; and therefore may be dangerous neighbours if they grow rich and potent . nothing but rancour and inveterate malice can suggest such sour thoughts as these . it were fit that sort of men should be purg'd of their choler . the scots to obviate all dangers from that head , have , tho' they be much the ancienter nation , condescended so far as several times to propose an union , which the gentlemen of that kidney have hitherto prevented ; and therefore we would wish them to look back into their histories , and upon casting up their accounts , make a true estimate of whatever they gain'd by a war with scotland . they will find that their ancestors , as well as the romans , have been sensible , as tacitus expresses it , qu●s sibi viros caledonia sep●suerit ; and that as it was true what our historian says of the war made upon us by edward i. that scotorum nomen pene delevit ; it was also true , what he says on the other hand , that angliam vehementer con●ussit : so that those gentlemen take the direct way by opposing us to run into those dangers they would avoid ; for they may assure themselves that if the english opposition to our american settlement should once break out into hostilities , the scots will find some allies , ancient or new , that will be glad of the opportunity to join with them . or if , which is most probable , tho' highly impolitick , the english should so far neglect the scots , as to suffer them to be over-power'd by the french , they may be sure that the scots , when put to their last shift , can always make an honourable capitulation with france : it 's not to be doubted , but that crown would be very willing to renew their ancient alliance with us ; and besides allowing us a share at least in the trade of darien , would on condition of giving them the possession of new caledonia , restore us likewise to all our ancient privileges in france . they would think it a very good purchase if they could secure themselves of that colony by doing so , granting us what security we could resonably desire for the uninterrupted injoyment of the protestant religion , and a freedom of trade to all places of the world where it did not actually interfere with their own settlements and colonies . so that if this should be the case , we leave it to our neighbours to judge what would become of their east and west-india trade and plantations , and whether they would not find it difficult to stand out against france and us , now that they have no footing on the continent , since formerly , when they had so many provinces of that kingdom in their possession , they found it a hard matter to do it , and at last lost every foot of their french dominions : whereas had they been in union with us , they might certainly have retained them , and by consequence have prevented the great calamities that europe hath since groan'd under by the prodigious increase of the french monarchy . this we think sufficient to convince those angry gentlemen in our neighboring nation , that are so very much disgusted with our american settlement , that it is the interest of england to join with us and support it , and that it may be of dangerous consequence to them either to oppose or neglect us : whereas by joyning cordially in this matter , they may unite us inseparably to themselves for ever , inrich their own nation , secure and advance the protestant interest , keep the balance of europe in their hands , and prevent the returns of its danger , their own expence of blood and treasure to save its being threatened with slavery any more , either by the house of bourbon or austria . therefore we cannot believe after all , but our wise and politick neighbours will at last see it their interest to protect and incourage us in this matter , that we may mutually strengthen and support one another against the french , who are loudest in their clamours against our settlement , because if incouraged and improved it will defeat all their ambitious and antichristian designs ; and thereby we shall also be in a condition to assist the english plantations in the west-indies , who as we find by the proceedings of the earl of bellamont and the assemblies of new england and new york , are sufficiently sensible of their danger , from the incroaching temper of the french , which increases every day ; and it is evident , that their new design'd colony in mississipi river , looks with a dangerous aspect upon all the english plantations in america , and may be more justly esteemed an incroachment upon spain , as being in the bay of mexico , than our plantation in darien : which argues the humour of that nation , to make such an out-cry against the scots who have invaded no man's property , when they themselves are so notoriously guilty of it ; and therefore it would seem to be the interest of england rather to strengthen themselves by our friendship , and to look after the french , than to provoke us to look out for other allies by their opposition and neglect . answer . i am apt to believe , our caledonian begins to have but a very indifferent opinion of the success of their new settlement , and so , like a desperate gamester , who is reduced to the 〈◊〉 stake , throws at all ; and is for sacrificing the ●●rien settlement , nay their own religion and 〈◊〉 as well as that of europe , rather than to 〈…〉 ●hare in it ; for what he says of security to be g●●●n by the french for the enjoyment of the prot●●●●nt religion , are nothing but chimerical notions , as indeed are all the rest . for , supposing the french should be so fond of the possession of darien ▪ ( which they don't seem to be , as has been dem●●strated before ) it is only a vain speculation , th●●●●●●eby they would become so potent , as to become an over-match for england and its allies , who are so nearly concern'd in its preservation ; and it is more than probable , that the scots in such a case would pay the fidler ; since , considering the situation of scotland , its want of good harbours ▪ and barrenness in many places , it would be very difficult for the french to send them any considerable supplies of men , or provisions , when the english and dutch are masters of the channel ; which was the reason that the french never so much as attempted the relieving of my lord dundee , who gave them the fairest opportunity in the world of getting a footing in scotland , if they had either thought it practicable , or worth their while . but we must go on to see how he winds up the thread of his arguments . defence . we shall conclude this matter with one or two more arguments to prove , that it is the interest of england to joyn with us in this affair ; by which also it will appear that there is nothing advanc'd in these sheets out of any ill design against the english nation , or to persuade to a disuniting of the crowns ; but on the contrary , that a stricter union is absolutely necessary , that both nations may have but one interest , which will render us less liable to convulsions and intestine commotions at home , and put us out of danger of being attacked by enemies from abroad . the first argument is this ; that by incouraging our settlement at darien , english ships that have occasion to pass by those coasts will there be certain of a place of retreat in case of attack either by enemy or tempest , without danger of being confiscated by the spaniards , and having their men condemn'd to be perpetual slaves in the mines . 2. if we be incouraged in our american colony , it will contribute much to heighten the consumption of the english product ; since what we have not of our own , or wherein we are wanting either as to quality or quantity , we shall supply our selves , for the use of our plantation , in england ; which may be of great benefit to the northern counties especially , whence we may conveniently furnish our selves with beeves for victualling our ships , our own cattel being for the most part too small for that use ; besides many other things that we shall have occasion to export from england for the use of the plantation , and to maintain a commerce with the natives . 3. by joining with us in this colony , and securing a post on the south-sea , which the princes of darien will no doubt very readily agree to , they may shorten their voyages to the east-indies , and by that means be able to out-do all their rivals in that trade ; but if they will be so far wanting to themselves , as to suffer those advantages to fall into the hands of others who are enemies to our religion and common country , they cannot blame the scots , who have made them such fair offers . 4. if after all , the english should continue in their opposition to us , as their late proclamations in america , and other passages would seem to imply they have a mind to , the world cannot blame the scots to provide for themselves by such other alliances as they shall think meet ; since the english are so unkind , especially since the restoration of k. charles ii. to which we did so much contribute , that without our concurrence it could never have been effected . this will appear to be incontrovertibly true , if we consider that in the time of k. james i. we were under no restrictions as to matters of trade more than they , except as to the exportation of wool , and a few other things of english product ; and so we continu'd till the restoration , when k. charles ii. and the english did very ungratefully lay such preclusions and restrictions upon us contrary to the laws relating to the postnati , by the 12 car. ii. for the incouraging and increasing shipping and navigation ; and the 15 car. ii. for the encouragement of trade ; by which we are put in the same circumstances as to traffick with france and holland , and in a worse condition than ireland that is a conquest ; which is so much the more unreasonable , since we are always involv'd and ingag'd in the wars betwixt england and other countries : and those with whom they have most frequent wars , being holland and france , the only two nations with whom the scots have almost any commerce , our trade must of necessity sink during such wars , whereas england hath still a great trade to other parts of the world ; and by this means we are forc'd to be sharers in their troubles , tho' they will not allow us to partake of their profits , nor suffer us to take any measures to procure such as we may call our own . it is plain from the instance of darien , and the proclamations in the english american colonies against their subjects entertaining any commerce with our settlement there , that we are in a worse condition than ever ; for when any thing happens wherein the interest of england seems to be contrary to ours , it is certainly carried against us ; so that in this respect we are in a worse condition than any foreigners , with relation to england ; for if a foreign people discover any thing that may be of advantage to them , they are at liberty to pursue it by themselves , or to take in the assistance of others ; and if they find themselves aggriev'd by england , they have their respective governments to make application to for redress . to let them see that it is their interest as well as ours it should be so , we shall only desire them to consider how fatal it may be , if by any emergency we should be forc'd to break off the union of the crowns , and enter again into a french alliance . it 's in vain for them to object , that in such a case we should betray our religion ; for we see the persecuted hungarians were protected in that by the turks , tho' sworn enemies to it : nor is it impossible but there may be a change as to that matter in france ; l. xiv . is not immortal : and even julian the apostate himself found it his interest for some time to protect the orthodox christians , whom he mortally hated . but supposing , ( as indeed there 's no great likelihood of it ) that no such alliance as this should ever happen ; yet however , if these two nations be not more closely united , it may be of ill consequence to england if any of their kings at any time should be so far disgusted as to betake themselves to us : what a field of blood and slaughter must england have become , had we carried off k. charles i. when he came to our army , or i● we had join'd him against the parliament of england ? what great efforts did a party of our nation make to inthrone k. charles ii. when england was against him ? and how did our concurrence afterwards with general monk effect it ? how soon did our espousing the duke of york's interest turn the tables upon those that opposed him in england ? and if our nation had likewise espous'd his cause before the revolution , the viscount of dundee gave a sufficient proof what we could have done for him . this makes it evident , that it is not the interest of england to slight an union with us so much as they have done : for so long as we remain divided , any king that is so minded , may make use of us ; and any envious neighbour , whose interest it is to keep this island low , will be sure to blow the coals . if they 'd but turn the tables , and make our case their own , they would quickly be satisfied of the truth of what we advance . supposing that the government of scotland should traverse the actings of the government of england , in relation to their trade , &c. as they have done ours ; and supposing that a parliament of scotland , when the king were there , should question him for the navigation act , and that for the incouragement of trade in england by king charles ii. which lays us under such hard circumstances and restrictions , the english would certainly very much resent it , and speedily tell us we meddled with what did not belong to us : then why should they deny us the like liberty in reference to their proceedings against us , seeing we are a free nation as well as they ? nor can any thing less than joining with us , and protecting that settlement against all opposition in case of attacks by the french , or others , sufficiently atone for what is already done , or heal the wound those proclamations have giv'n to the common interest of the island . answer . these several pages are no more than a repetition of what he has urged before ; with this difference only , that he intermixes them with some bitter and unseemly expressions , which are altogether insufferable in a private person and a subject . he as good as denounces war against england in case the scots should miscarry , and sounds alarm without any publick authority . i cannot forbear to take notice of one passage ; when he says , that if the scots had carried off k. charles i. when he came to their army , what a field of slaughter and blood must england have become ; whereas before , to excuse the scots for their surrendring the said king , he had told us with a great deal of confidence , that they were necessitated so to do . what he says concerning their endeavours to inthrone king charles ii. is not altogether to be denied ; but he might also have remembred upon what terms they did it , which is i think a sufficient warning to any king not to relie upon their gencrosity ; and he might have very well saved himself the trouble of offering the assistance of the scots to the english court , there being no great likelihood , thanks be to god , at this time , that they will have any occasion for them ; or if they should , they would scarce think fit to accept of them . their concurrence with general monk has been spoken off before , as most of all the other points , which he treats of here ; so that we think it needless to make a repetition of them here : and so , will take a short view of his description of darien . we come in the next place to give a description of the isthmus of darien . it lies betwixt the 8th and 10th degrees of northern latitude , and in the narrowest place is betwixt 60 and 80 italian miles over . we shall not trouble our selves with the description of any more of it than is in the possession of the natives , which is in length from e. to w. on the n. side from the mouth of the river darien to port scrivan , above 140 italian miles ; from caret bay to the river of cheapo on the southside , it is about 160 in length . it is supposed to take its name from the great river of darien , that bounds its northern coast to the eastward . it is bounded on the north and south with the vast oceans that carry the names of the north and south seas . it s situation is very pleasant and agreeable , and very commodious for a speedy and short communication of trade betwixt the north and south seas , and preventing that vast compass that must otherwise be fetch'd round either of the extremes of north and south america . by this means also it lies convenient for a speedier communication of trade betwixt europe and the east indies than any that hath hitherto been found out . mr. dampier says , that from cheapo , or santa maria river , a man may pass from sea to sea in three days , and that the indians do it in a day and a half . there are abundance of valuable islands on both sides the isthmus , which prevent the breaking in of the ocean upon it at once ; and besides the conveniences of wood , fish , fowl , and water , afford good and safe riding in all weathers , to any number of ships , especially those call'd the sambaloes , that lie along the northern coast . the continent is agreeably intermix'd with ●●ills and valleys of great variety , for height , depth , and extent . the vallies are water'd with rivers , brooks and springs , which take their rise from a great ridge of hills that run along the isthmus , but nearest to the northern shore , from which it is seldom above 15 miles distant , and from whence the sambaloes islands , and the various makings of the shore , and the continued forest all along the country gratifie the eye with a very fine prospect . the rivers on the northern coast are generally small , because their course from the above-mentioned ridge of hills is but short ; yet the river of darien is very large , but the depth of its entrance not answerable to its width , yet further in it is deep enough , and hath a good harbour in caret bay which is some leagues up the river , hath two islands of pretty high land , cloath'd with variety of trees lying before it , and two or three streams of fresh water falling into it . from this bay to the promontory near golden island , the shore is indifferently fruitful , and the soil on the northern coast is generally good , but swampy here and there to the sea. to the westward of the promontory , at the entrance of the river , is a fine sandy bay with three islands , one of them golden island lying before it , which make it an extraordinary good harbour . golden island is rocky and steep all round , except at the landing place on the south side , so that it is naturally fortifi'd . the land of the isthmus over against it to the s. e. is an excellent fruitful soil . west of this island lies the largest of the three ▪ being swampy and covered with maingroves . to the north of these lies the island of pines , cover'd with tall trees fit for any use . from the point against these islands for three leagues westward ▪ the shore is guarded by rocks , so that a boat cannot land ; but at the n. w. end of the rocks there 's ▪ very good harbour , and good riding as h●s been said in all winds , by some or other of those isl●nds , which with the adjacent shore make a lovel● l●●dskip off at sea. the channel betwixt them and the isthmus is two three ▪ and four miles bro●d ●nd navigable from end to end , and the ground opposite to them within land an excelle●t soil , and a continued forest of stately timber-trees . on the south-side there 's the river sambo that falls into the sea by point garachina . this is a ●●rge river . then there 's the gulph of st. michael , made by the outlet of several considerable rivers , as those of santa maria and congo , and the gold-river , so call'd because of the great plenty of gold dust it affords to the spaniards . the river congo may be entred at high-water , and affords a good harbour . the gulph has several islands in it , and affords good riding in many places . the country on this side , as on the other , is one continued forest ; and forms a bay call'd the bay of panama , abounding with fine islands , and affording good riding for ships . the soil of the inland country is for the most part a black fruitful mold . the weather is much the same as in other places of the torrid zone in this latitude , but inclining to the wet extreme , for two thirds of the year , the rains beginning in april . the most remarkable of their trees are the cotton tree , which bears a cod as big as a nutmeg full of short wool or down , and affords timber for canoes and periagoes ; they abound with stately cedars and macaw trees , which bear a fruit as big as a small pear , of a tart but not unpleasant taste ; bibby tree , the wood hard and black as ink , and being tapp'd ▪ affords a liquor call'd bibby , of a pleasant tart taste , which the indians drink . they have abundance of plantains set in walks , which make very delightful groves , and yield an excellent fruit , and being green and sappy , are cut down with one stroak of an ax. they have also plenty of bonanoes another sort of plantain , which eats best raw as the plantain does boil'd . they have great store of that excellent fruit call'd pine-apples , which tastes like a mixture of all delicious fruits , and ripens at all times of the year . they have also prickle-p●ar which is a very good fruit ; and sugar-canes , of which they make no other use but to suck out the juice . the maho-tree , of which they make ropes , cables for ships , and nets for fishing . the calabash whose shells serve for cups and other occasions , is curiously painted ; the sweet sort of 'em is eatable , and the bitter sort medicinal . they have also gourds of the like nature . there 's a plant they call silk grass which resembles our flags ; this they beat into strings like fine flax , much stronger than our flax or hemp ; of these they make ropes , cordage of all sorts , nets for small fish ; and the spaniards and others use it for shoemakers thread , stockings , and a sort of lace . they have a tree call'd lightwood , as large as an elm , but so light , that a man may carry a great quantity of it on his back . it is in substance like cork , and made use of by the indians for rafters to go to sea , or pass rivers . they have a tree call'd whitewood of a finer grain , and whiter than any european wood , and fit for inlaying . they have tamarind , locust-tree , bastard cinnamon , bamboes , and maingrove-trees in plenty . they have shrubs that bear store of pepper of two sorts , call'd bell pepper , and bird-pepper . mr. wafer , to whom we owe this description , takes notice of a redwood , whereof there grow great quantities on the northern coast ; the indians make use of it for dying , and mix a kind of earth they have with it . it makes a bright glossy lively red , which no washing can fetch out again . this we suppose to be the nicaragua wood. their roots are potatoes , kams , and cassava ; of the last of which they make bread. they have likewise tobacco , but don't understand the planting and manuring of it ; it is not so strong as that of virginia . their beasts are the peccary , and waree a kind of wild hogs , which are very good meat . they have considerable store of deer and rabbits , and great droves of monkies , which are extraordinary fat and good to eat . they have an insect call'd a soldier , somewhat resembling a crab , which seeds upon what falls from the tree , is a delicious meat , and yeilds an oil that is an excellent salve . they have no european cattle . their birds are the chicaly-chicaly , which makes a noise somewhat like a cuccoo , is a large bird ▪ has feathers of divers colours very beautiful and lively , whereof the natives sometimes make aprons . this bird keeps mostly on the trees , feeds on fruit , and is pretty good me●t . the quam feeds in the same manner , his wings are dun , his tail dark ▪ short , and upright . he is much preferable to the other for meat . there 's a russ●t colour'd bird , resembling a partridge , runs most on the ground , and is excellent meat . the corosou is a large fowl as big as a turky , and of a black colour . the cock has a fine crown of yellow feathers on his head , and gills like a turky . they live on trees , and eat fruit. they sing very delightfully , and are so well imitated by the indians , that they discover their haunts by it . they are very good meat , but their bones make the dogs run mad , and are therefore hid from them by the indians . they have abundance of parrots , for size and shape much like those of jamaica , they are very good meat . their parakites are most of them green , and go in large flights by themselves . they have macaw birds which are as big again as parrots ▪ and resemble them in shape . they have a bill like a hawk , and a bushy tail , with 2 or 3 long stragling feathers , either red or blue ; but those of the body are of a lovely blue , green and red . the indians tame those birds and them to speak : and then letting them go into the woods amongst the wild ones , they will return of their own accord to the houses . they exactly imitate the voices and singing of the indians , and call the chicaly in its own note . it is one of the pleasantest birds in the world and its flesh sweet and well tasted . they have also w●odpeckers which are p●ed like our magpies , and have long claws that they climb up trees with they are not pleasant to e●t . they have plenty of dunghil fowl resembling those of e●●●pe and their flesh and eggs as well tasted as ours . about the sambaloes the● h●ve great store of sea-fowl , and particularly pelicans which are large birds , having legs and feet like a goose and a neck like a swan , the feathers are grey . it has a bag under its throat , which when fill'd is as large as a man's two fists ; and when dry , will hold a pound of tobacco ; they feed upon fish and the young ones are good meat . they have also cormorants resembling ducks for size and shape , are of a black colour , have a white spot on the breast , and pitch sometimes on trees and shrubs by the water side . they are too rank to be eaten . they have abundance of sea-gulls and pies , which are pretty good meat , but eat fishy , which is cur'd by burying 'em 8 or 10 hours in the sand with their feathers on . they have flying insects too , and among others bees , which form their hives on trees , and it 's observ'd , that they never sting any body : the natives mix the honey with water , and so drink it , but know not the use of the wax . they have shining flies , which in the night time resemble glow-worms . their fish are the tarpom , which eats like salmon ; some of 'em weigh 50 or 60 pound : they afford good oil. they have sharks , and another fish that resembles a s●ark ▪ but much better meat . the c●vally is much of the size of a maccarel , and very good meat . they have a fish call'd old wives , which is also very good to eat . their paracoods are as large as a well-grown pike , and very good meat ; but in some particular places poisonous , which are distinguished by the liver . their gar-fish is good meat , they have a long bone on their snout , with which they will sometimes pierce the side of a canoe . they have also sculpins , a prickly fish , which when strip'd , is very good meat . they have likewise string rays , parrotfish , snooks , conger-eels , conchs . periwinkles , limpits , sea-crabs , and craw fish ▪ and other sorts whose names we know not , that eat very well . the inhabitants are most numerous on the north of the ist●●us ; the men usually 5 or 6 foot high , streight , clean limb'd , big-bon'd , handsomely shap'd , nimble , active , and run well . the women are short and thick , and not so lively as the men ; the young women plump , well-shap'd , and have a brisk eye : both sexes have a round visage , short bottle noses , large and grey eyes , high forehead , white even teeth , thin lips , pretty large mouths , well proportion'd cheeks and chins , and in general , handsome ; but the men exceed the women . both sexes have streight long lank black hair , which they generally wear down to the middle of their back . all other hair but that of their eye-brows and eye-lids they pull up by the roots , cut off the hair of their heads , and paint themselves black by way of triumph , when they kill a spaniard . their natural complexion is a copper colour , and their eye-brows black as jet . there are some among them of both sexes , which bear the proportion of 2 or 3 to a hundred , who are milk white , and have all their bodies cover'd over with a milk white down ; their hair is of the same colour , and very fine , about 6 or 8 inches long , and inclining to curl . they are less in stature than the other indians , and their eye-lids point downwards in form of a crescent ; they don't see well in the sun , their eyes being weak and running with water if the sun shine upon them , therefore they are call'd moon-eye'd . they are weak and sluggish in the day time , but in moon-shiny nights all life and activity , and run as fast through the woods by night , as the other indians do by day : they are not so much respected as the other indians , but look'd upon as monstrous . the natives go naked both men and women , only the men have a thing like an extinguisher of silver or gold plate tied round their middle to cover their yard , and the women tie a piece of cloth before them , which comes as low as their knee ; but they use none of those precautions till they come to the years of puberty ; the men that have not those extinguishers , make use of a piece of a plantain-leaf of a conick figure . they are in general , a modest and cleanly people , and have a value for cloths if they had them . the better sort have long cotton garments shap'd like carmens frocks , which they use on solemn occasions , as attending the king or chief , &c. for an ornament to the face , besides their general painting and daubing , the men wear a piece of plate hanging over their mouths , and the chief of them have it of gold. it is of an oval form , and gently pinching the bridle of the nose with its points , hangs dangling from thence as low as the under lip ; and instead of this the women wear a ring through the bridle of the nose : they lay them aside at their feasts . they likewise wear chains of teeth , shells , beads , or the like ; the heavier they be , they reckon them the more ornamental . their houses lie mostly scattering , and always by a river ▪ side , but in some places they are so many as to form a town or village . their walls are made up of sticks , and daub'd over with earth : the fire is in the middle of the house , and the smoke goes out at a hole in the roof : they are not divided into stories or rooms , but into hovels ; every one has a hammock for a bed in one of those hovels . they have no doors , shelves , or seats , other than logs of wood. every neighbourhood has a warr-house of 130 foot long , the sides and ends full of holes , whence they shoot their arrows on the approach of the spaniards . in their plantations they set so much plaintain , maiz , &c. as serves their occasions : they likewise make drink of maiz , which they ferment by grains of the same chewed in their mouths : they have also another sort of drink , which they make of plantains . most of the drudgery is perform'd by the women with great cheerfulness , being very well condition'd , and dutiful to their husbands , who are otherwise very indulgent to them , and their children . the women wash the mother and child in a river within an hou● after delivery . the boys are bred to the bow , hunting , and fishing , &c. at which they are mighty dexterous ; and th● girls help the women in dressing their victuals , weaving , making cotton cloth , cordage , nets , &c. and the men make baskets very neat , dying the materials first with lively colours ▪ they allow poligamy , but punish adultery with the death of both parties : they punish theft also with death ; and fornication with thrusting a briar up the man's yard , whereof they commonly die. the facts must be prov'd by oath , which is a swearing by their tooth . when they marry , the father or nearest kinsman keeps the bride privately in his own apartments the first seven nights , and then she is deliver'd to her husband : all the neighbours for some miles round are invited to a great feast , and bring provisions with them : the fathers of the young couple bring them forth in their hands , and the bridegroom's father makes a spcech ; then he dances about in antick gestures till all on a sweat , when he kneels down , and gives his son to the bride , her father also having danc'd himself into a sweat , and presenting her to the bridegroom in the same manner ; then they take each other by the hand , and so the ceremony concludes . after this all the men take up their axes , and run shouting to a tract of wood-land , to prepare a plantation for the new couple . that being done , they have their feast , and afterwards drink hard , all their arms being first put out of the way , to prevent danger in case of quarrelling . they divert themselves by dancing , and piping on a small hollow bamboe , but without distinction of notes : the men and women never dance nor feast together , but apart . the women accompany them likewise in their hunting expeditions , which sometimes last 20 days : they tie their hammocks betwixt two trees cover them with plaintain leaves , and have fires all night by their hammocks : such of their prey as they take a ●unting , and design to keep for future use , they barbecue in the woods ; and what they make use of for present sustenance , they mix with roots plantain ▪ bonanoes , and pepper , and stew it together till it be brought to a pulp ; which they take up with the two foremost fingers of their right hand bent hookwise , and put into their mouths . they travel by direction of the sun , or the bending of the trees , according as the wind is . none of the english authors take notice of their worship or religion , but give an account that they pawaw , or consult the devil to know futurities : and it would seem they are as ignorant in matters of physick and chirurgery , since when they would let a patient blood , they set him upon the bank of a river , and with a little bow , and small arrow , gag'd that it may enter no further than our lancets , they shoot as fast as they can at all parts of the patient's body ; and if they chance to hit on a vein , that the blood spurts out a little , they testifie their joy by antick dances . we come next to give an account of their settlement of our men there ; how they were receiv'd by the natives ; what indian princes there are in their neighbourhood ; in what state they found the affairs of the country ; and of the situation of our colony . on the 27th of october 1698. our ships came to an anchor in a fair sandy bay , three leagues w. off the gulph of darien ; upon which , two canoes , with several indians came on board , were very free with our men , told them they had been long expected , and were very welcome : our men gave them some old hats , looking glasses , and knives , with which they were extremely well pleas'd , and went off . when our ships stood further into the bay , they saw about 20 indians drawn up on the shore , being arm'd with bows and lances ; upon which a boat being sent ashoar , and making a signal of peace , they unstruug their bows , talk'd familiarly , and told our men , that two great captains would in a little time come on board our ships . accordingly , on november the 2d , in the morning , captain andreas , one of their princes , accompanied by 12 men , came on board , and ask'd their business : he was answered , that we came to live among them , and trade with them , and would afford them european commodities cheaper than any other people . he ask'd if we were friends or enemies to the spaniards ; and was answered , that we were at peace with all men , and would make war upon no man , except they injur'd us . he took us for buccaneers , and told us , he knew captain swan and captain davis in the south-sea , and commended them as men of valour . we heard that part of his discourse with much coldness , and told him we came on no such design as those men did , but had authority for what we undertook . we treated him civilly , gave him a hat lac'd with gold , and some toys : and so he parted , promising in a little time to come again ; which he accordingly did , and brought don pedro , another of their princes or captains , with him . captain andreas was freer with us than at first , plainly own'd that he took us for buccaneers , and complain'd that some englishmen of that sort had after great pretences of friendship , carried off some of their people ; and therefore don pedro would not come aboard us till he had further assurance of us . captain andreas is a person of a small stature ; he affects the spanish gravity , as having been often among them at the mines of santa maria , panama , &c. and formerly had a commission under them as a captain , upon which he values himself above others : the french hate him mortally , because of something he did against some of their nation formerly . when he came on board us , he had a sort of a coat of red loose stuff , an old hat , a pair of drawers , but no stockings nor shoes ; and the rest that came with him were all naked , excepting their penis , which was covered by extinguishers , as formerly mention'd . upon further communing , captain andreas was very well pleas'd with us , offered us what part of the country we would chuse , and accepted a commission from us ; and at the same time we gave him a basket-hilted sword , and a pair of pistols ; upon which he promised to defend us to the last of his blood. some of the princes on this side the isthmus had been in peace with the spaniards for several years , and suffered a few of them to reside amongst them , to give notice to panama of what ships came upon these coasts ; but upon some fresh disgust , about two months before we arriv'd , captain ambrosio , who is the most noted prince amongst 'em , had oblig'd them to enter into a common alliance against spain , and cut off ten spaniards , who liv'd upon golden island . the place where we are settled is four miles east of golden island , within a great bay. we have an excellent harbour , surrounded with high mountains , capable of holding a thousand sail land-lock'd , and safe from all winds and tempests . the mouth of the harbour is about random cannon-shot over , form'd by a peninsula on the one side , and a point of land on the other . in the middle of the entrance there is a rock three foot above water , upon which the sea breaks most terribly when the wind blows hard ; and within the points there is a small rock that lies a little under water . on both sides these rocks there 's a very good wide channel for ships to come in : that on the south-side is 3 cables long , and 7 fathom deep ; and that on the north two cables long . from the two outermost points the harbour runs away east a mile and an half ; and near the middle , on the right hand , a point of land shoots out into the bay ; so that by raising forts on the said point , on the rock in the middle of the entrance , and the two outer-most points , it will be the strongest harbour , both by art and nature , that 's in the known world. the bay within is for the most part 6 fathom water , and till you come within a cable's length of the shoar , three fathom and an half : so that a key may be built , to which great ships may lay their sides , and unload . the peninsula lies on the left-hand , is a mile and a half in length , very steep , and high towards the sea : so that it would be very difficult for any body to land , till you come to the isthmus , where there 's a small sandy bay that little ships may put into , but is easie to be secured by a ditch and a fort. there are several little rivers of very good water that fall into the bay ; and it abounds so with excellent fish , that we can with ease take more than it 's possible for us to destroy , having sometimes caught 140 at a draught : amongst others there be tortoises , which are excellent meat , and some of them above 600 weight . the peninsula was never inhabited , and is cover'd all over with trees of various sorts ; as stately ced●rs , brasil-wood , lignum vitae , box-wood , fustick-wood , yellow sanders , manshinel , &c. and the like sorts , besides others whose names we know not , grow on the continent ; and we doubt not of finding out the nicaragua-wood : we have found cabbage-trees , the fruit of which eats like colly-flowers . the natives have no plantation within two miles of us . we have a watch-tower upon an high hill adjoining to our plantation , about a mile south of the bay ; from whence we can see the ships in the bay , the fort we have raised on the bay , and as far as the mouth of the river darien : we can see above 30 miles southward , and have a fine prospect of golden island , and the isl● of pines , westward towards porto-bello , and northward towards jamaica . the hill is about a mile in height ; so that we can see any ships before they come within some leagues of the harbour . we compute our selves to be about 50 leagues north of carthagena , and as much south of porto-bello . the four indian kings or captains on this coast visit us frequently in their canoes ; and the natives are very kind to us , and sell us plaintains , fowls &c. for toys or old shifts . a frenchman , who hath married one of the natives , informs us , that the spaniards have silver and mines on the isthmus , which we might make our selves masters of with a 100 men ; so that if they commit hostilities upon us , as we hear they threaten to do , it 's not unlikely that we may visit them . we found some french refugees in the country , who are willing to settle under us ; and having been several years in these parts , and understanding the language of the natives , are very useful to us . we have seen some sand in the rivers , which looks as if it were mixt with gold , and in some places the earth seems to be very much mixt with it : so that it 's concluded there 's more gold-dust here , than in any part of guinea . the indian princes or captains on this coast do somewhat resemble our heads of clans in scotland ; and by their converse at times with the spaniards , and other european nations , affect christian names . the first of these princes we shall name is captain diego ; he commands from the bottom of the gulph of orba on this side caret bay , and has 3000 men under him ; he has been at war with the spaniards several years , occasion'd by an insult his people had receiv'd from them , when they came to demand their share in the mines which they had discover'd to the spaniards in their country , on condition of being partners with them : but when they came to demand it , the spaniards treated them villanously ; beat and abus'd them ; upon which they attack'd the spaniards , cut off 20 of their men , and three priests that belong'd to the mines . the next is captain pousigo . he is an indian clergy-man , and brother-in-law to captain andreas . the peninsula that we possess , lies betwixt his territory and that of captain andreas , who together with his brother , commands from golden island to the river pinas . their command is greater than that of pousigo , but not so great as that of diego . these princes are very useful to us , because of their neighbourhood and consanguinity to one another . captain ambrosio commands from the river pinas to the samballoes : he is a man of about 60 years of age , but strong and vigorous , well limb'd , and of a stern countenance : he is a mortal enemy to the spaniards , with whom he hath had a long war : he is esteemed the bravest of all the indian captains . his son-in-law don pedro having been taken by the spaniards , and kept by them as a slave at panama , he can never forget nor forgive it them : this young man is a great friend to the french , who they are made to believe design to come and settle among them . ambrosio and his son-in-law prest us much to come and settle in their dominions , and join with them to make war on the spaniards : we gave them fair words , and promis'd to come and view their coasts , which we accordingly did ; and in our way thither , four leagues westward of our settlement , we found an excellent harbour , capable of 10000 sail ; but it can't be defended without many forts : here the privateers us'd to come and careen . captain ambrosio's house lies about a league from the water-side , on the bank of a river , having twelve lesser houses about it : when we drew near it , he advanced 50 paces to meet us , being attended by 20 men in white loose frocks with fringes round the bottom , and arm'd with lances : he saluted us kindly , and gave us a calabash of liquor almost like lambs-wool , made of indian corn and potatoes . his house is 90 foot long , 35 broad , and 30 in height , curiously thatch'd with palmetto-royal , and over that cotton-leaves . the floor is of firm earth like tarras , very smooth and clean . the sides are compos'd of large canes , as thick as a man's leg. in this house live ambrosio and his son-in-law don pedro , with both their families , consisting of about 40 persons . we saw ambrosio's grandmother there , who is 120 years old , and yet was very active in getting things ready for an entertainment . she has six generations descended from her now in the house with her . the people live here to 150 and 160 years of age ; but those that converse much with europeans , and drink strong drink don't live so long . from the samballoes to the river of conception , the country is commanded by one corbet , who is altogether in the french interest , he having contracted a friendship with their priveteers 7 years ago , and done them many good offices . they promised to reward him if he would go to petit guaves , and in his way thither he was taken by an english privateer and carried to jamaica , whence the governor of petit guaves got him releas'd . he was with ponti at the taking of carthagena , and has a commission from the french to be general of all the french and indian forces on that coast , and to take , sink , and destroy spaniards or any other enemies . yet the french themselves , and the sensible part of the indians , don't put any confidence in him ; and ambrosio , who is the bravest of all those indian captains , keeps him in awe and within bounds . next to corbet , there 's another of their captains call'd nicola , who is said to be a wise , brave and good natur'd prince ; insomuch that the indians had a mind to have set him up instead of ambrosio , who is of a rugged military temper . but ambrosio's authority and power is so great , that they did not find it practicable . nicola is a mortal enemy to the spaniards , and can never entertain a good thought of them , since the governor of porto-bello robb'd him of a curious fusee that had been presented him by some of the buccaneers ; and being out of order , he sent it thither to be mended ; upon which the governour taking a liking to it , kept it to himself , and sent nicola another sorry piece instead of it . since we came hither , there have been an english , a dutch , and a french ship in our bay. the english ship was captain long in the rupert prize ; he had been in the gulf of o●ba , but he himself and his men own'd , that they had not then been ashore there . he hath some way or other disoblig'd the captains ambrosio and diego . tho' we treated him with all possible civility , yet we are since inform'd that he hath been a days journey into the gulf , and endeavour'd to incense the indians against us , telling them that we were privateers , and that the king of england would not protect us . he left some men in the bay , who had since kill'd some spaniards , and came to us for arms and ammunition , but we told them , we could not grant them any , and that they had done what they could not justifie . we gave them however what was necessary for sitting up a boat ; and as a reward , they intic'd away the carpenter and mate of one of our ships call'd the vnicorn . the dutch ship that came hither was afraid of the spanish barl●vento fleet , and put in here for protection , that fleet having made prize of another dutch ship of 32 guns ▪ and of two english sloops for trading on those coasts . the french ship that put in here , was that which was order'd to carry back the church plate , &c. to carthagena , did afterwards bulge on a rock , and was cast away in our harbour . we sav'd all their lives , and captain pincarton our commodore endanger'd his own life to save that of the french captain . he inform'd us , that the french had four men of war of 50 guns each , who thinking we had a design on the river mississipi , were gone to the gulf of mexico in quest of us . the french have been very industrious in cultivating their interest , both with the natives and spaniards in this part of america , and doubt not of having a good share in those countries after the king of spain's death . they have got a great interest with captain ambrosio by means of his son-in-law don pedro , whom they caress extreamly , and design'd to have carried him to petit guavus , and from thence into france , to acquaint the french king with the favourable sentiments the indians have entertain'd of the french , and of their design to surrender themselves to his majesty . this has been projected by the french a long time , but the king of spain's indisposition ▪ and their pretensions to that crown , made them refer it : and there 's no doubt but our settlement will quicken those resolutions . captain andreas , captain pedro his brother , captain diego , and captain pousigo our neighbours have no manner of correspondence with the french. the latter hath acquainted us that there are several gold mines within two miles of our settlement which he hath promis'd to shew us ; and he hath actually let us see several samples of fine gold. this being the substance of several journals that were sent from our colony in darien upon their first settlement there , we hope it 's sufficient of it self to satisfie our neighbours in england of the justice of our cause , of the equity of our proceedings , of the true reason why the french are so much our enemies in this matter , of the greatness of the providence that has put us in possession of that post , and that it is england's interest to joyn with and protect us , by which the designs of the french against europe in general ▪ and great britain in particular , may be defeated ▪ and the english west-india trade secur'd . but since by the proclamations before ▪ men●●on'd ▪ our ships may be in danger of being attack'd by other nations as pirates , and our colony discountenanc'd , and oppos'd on that account by the natives ; there 's no reason that our neighbours should think strange if we complain of that unkind usage , and endeavour to lay before them what may probably be the consequences of such proceedings ▪ without being construed either to threaten or to wish that any such things should happen : ●t being evident that by offering to admit the english as joint-sharers in our trade , we entertain no sentiments but what are friendly towards that nation , being satisfied that all those who wish well to the protestant religion and true liberty , are enemies to any thing that may occasion a breach of the union and good understanding betwixt us . yet it must be own'd , that we have but too great reason to complain of the hardships we suffer , which it is in the power of england to remedy , by complying with the gracious proposals of uniting the nations , repeated in parliament by his majesty , who like a true father of his country , has expos'd himself to the greatest of dangers to procure the welfare and peace of his subjects , by which he has made an absolute conquest of the hearts of all good men , who are unanimous to join in the like prayer for him , that the israelites of old put up for their kings , viz. that he may live for ever . finis . his majesties gracious proclamation and indempnity, to those in the late rebellion. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) 1667 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b02070 wing c3038b estc r173762 53981618 ocm 53981618 180155 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b02070) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180155) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2819:9) his majesties gracious proclamation and indempnity, to those in the late rebellion. scotland. sovereign (1649-1685 : charles ii) charles ii, king of england, 1630-0685. 1 sheet ([1] p.) by evan tyler, [edinburgh : 1667] caption title. imprint suggested by wing. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. text primarily in black letter. intentional blank spaces left in text. dated at end: given at our court at whitehall, the first day of october, one thousand six hundred and sixty seven, and of our reign the nineteenth year. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng covenanters -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1660-1688 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-12 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-12 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion c r honi soit qvi mal y pensea royal blazon or coat of arms his majesties gracious pardon and indempnity , to those in the late rebellion . charles r. charles , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france and ireland , defender of the faith ; to all and sundry our lieges and subjects whom these presents do or may concern , greeting : forasmuch as it hath been alwayes our greatest care , that our good subjects may live in peace and happiness under our government , so we have for that purpose been more desirous to make use of our mercy , to induce them to a dutiful submission to our laws , then to take special notice of any disorders committed by them , as the acts of indempnity and grace lately granted by vs will witness . and the same tenderness towards them still possessing us , in order to those who have been seduced and misled in the late rebellion and insurrection that appeared in some of the western shires , in the moneth of november last , we are resolved that our mercy to them shall far exceed our iustice : and therefore , out of our special grace and favour , we do by these presents grant our full and free pardon and indempnity to all persons who were engaged in the said rebellion , or who had accession thereto , from all pain or punishment , which by the law they are lyable to for the said rebellion , and for all deeds done by them in the same , or in relation thereto : excepting alwayes from this pardon , the persons and fortunes of colonel james wallace , major lermonth , maxwel of montief younger , macklellan of barscob , gordoun of parbrek , macklellan of balmagechan , cannon of burnshalloch younger , cannon of barley younger , cannon of mordrogget younger , welsh of skar , welsh of cornley , gordoun of garrery in kells , robert chambers brother to gadgirth , henry grier in balmaclelan , david stot in irongray , john gordoun in midtoun of dalry , william gordoun there , john macknacht there , robert and gilbert cannons there , gordoun of bar elder in kirkpatrick-durham , patrick macknacht in cumnock , john macknacht his son , gordoun of holm younger , dempster of carridow , of dargoner , of sundiwall , ramsay in the mains of arnistoun , john hutcheson in newbottle , patrick listoun in calder , william listoun his son , james wilkie in the mains of cliftoun-hall , the laird of caldwell , the goodman of caldwell younger , the laird of kersland younger , the laird of bedland-canninghame , porterfield of quarreltoun , alexander porterfield his brother , lockhart of wicketshaw , mr. trail , son to mr. robert trail , sometime chaplain to scotstarbet , david poe in pokelly , mr. gabriel semple , john semple , mr. john guthry , mr. john welsh , mr. samuel arnot , mr. james smith , mr. alexander pedden , mr. orr , mr. william veitch , mr. patton preacher , mr. cruikshanks , mr. gabriel maxwel , mr. john carstairs , mr. james mitchel , mr. william forsyth , and of all others who are forfaulted , and who are under process of forfaulture : as also excepting all such , who , since the late rebellion , have been accessory to the robbing of ministers houses , and committing violences upon the persons of ministers , and who shall be processed for the same , and found guilty thereof , betwixt and the first day of december next ensuing ; but with this express condition alwayes , that this pardon shall only extend to such , who betwixt and the first day of january next shall make their appearance before such as are authorized for that effect , and shall give bond and security for keeping the pubick peace of our kingdom ; and that such of them as shall give their oath that they cannot find security and caution , give their own bond for that purpose . and this our royal favour and grace , we appoint to be published at the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and other royal burroughs of these shires . given at our court at whitehall , the first day of october , one thousand six hundred and sixty seven , and of our reign the nineteenth year . the cyprianick-bishop examined, and found not to be a diocesan, nor to have superior power to a parish minister, or presbyterian moderator being an answer to j.s. his principles of the cyprianick-age, with regard to episcopal power & jurisdiction : together with an appendix, in answer to a railing preface to a book, entituled, the fundamental charter of presbytery / by gilbert rule ... rule, gilbert, 1629?-1701. 1696 approx. 299 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 64 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a92075 wing r2218 estc r42297 36272713 ocm 36272713 150243 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a92075) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 150243) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2237:16) the cyprianick-bishop examined, and found not to be a diocesan, nor to have superior power to a parish minister, or presbyterian moderator being an answer to j.s. his principles of the cyprianick-age, with regard to episcopal power & jurisdiction : together with an appendix, in answer to a railing preface to a book, entituled, the fundamental charter of presbytery / by gilbert rule ... rule, gilbert, 1629?-1701. [6], 120 p. printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh, anno dom. 1696. reproduction of original in the william andrews clark memorial library, university of california, los angeles. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng sage, john, 1652-1711. -principles of the cyprianic age. sage, john, 1652-1711. -fundamental charter of presbytery. cyprian, -saint, bishop of carthage. episcopacy. scotland -church history -17th century. 2007-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-06 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-04 john latta sampled and proofread 2008-04 john latta text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the cyprianick-bishop examined , and found not to be a diocesan , nor to have superior power to a parish minister , or presbyterian moderator : being an answer to j. s. his principles of the cyprianick-age , with regard to episcopal power & jurisdiction . together with an appendix , in answer to a railing preface to a book , entituled , the fundamental charter of presbytery . by gilbert rvle , one of the ministers of the city , and principal of the colledge , of edinburgh . edinbvrgh , printed by the heirs and successors of andrew anderson , printer to his most excellent majesty , anno dom. 1696. the preface . of this controversie about episcopacy , the learned vitringa , de synagog . vet . lib. 2. c. 2. p. 474. hath this observation ; à quo tempore ecclesia reformati nominis , secessionem fecit à pontificia romana , & diversam recepit regiminis formam , tantopere praeferbuit litibus , de vero typo regiminis ecclesiae , ut nulla controversia fere eruditorum calamos tam diu , tam seriò , & pertinaciter , & tanto utrinque studio & contentione , & vincendi tam spe , quam desiderio , exercuerit , atque haec ipsa . it also hath long divided the church in these nations , and seemeth , in our days , to be further from accommodation , than ever : presbyterians , on the one hand , growing daily more and more clear , and confident , that parity is of divine institution , and cannot lawfully be changed , tho' mean while , they have charity to good men who are otherwise minded : and some of our episcopal brethren , on the other side , beginning to talk higher for a jus divinum to be for prelacy , than their predecessors did : and counting all the societies of christians which are without bishops , to be no churches of christ , but a company of damnable schismaticks ; among whom there can be no salvation : if these men be for peace , let any judge . but it is unaccountable , that in a matter that salvation does so much depend upon , in their opinion , they should lay so much stress ( as they commonly do ) on the opinions of men , and the testimonies of the antient church : seing , 1. all , except papi●●s , agree , that matters of faith , and which salvation dependeth on , must be determined only by scripture : and that god speaking in his word , is the only judge in such controversies . secondly , the fathers themselves plead for this , and disown both each himself , and one another as either judge , or sufficient witness in such debates : optat. milevit . contra parmen . lib. 5. de coelo quaerendus est judex , sed ut quid pulsamus ad coelum cum habeamus hic in evangelio testamentum . jerom in a debate with august . had cited seven fathers for his opinion , and craved leave to err , ( if he did err ) with so many learned doctors , to whom augustine replyed , ipse mihi pro his omnibus , imò supra hos omnes , apostolus paulus occurit , ad ipsum confugio , ad ipsum omnes qui aliud sentiunt provoco , &c. augustin . hieron . ep. 19. the same august . ep. 3. fortunatiano . neque enim ( saith he ) quorumlibet disputationes quamvis catholicorum , & laudatorum hominum velut scripturas canonicas habere debemus , ut nobis non liceat salva honorificentia , quae illis debetur , aliquid contra &c. and tom. 2. ep. 112. paulinae : nunquid ullo modo evangelio nos comparabis , aut scripta nostra ( he speaketh of himself and ambrose ) scripturis canonicis coaequabis ? profecto si recte in judicando sapis , longe nos infra vides ab illa authoritate distare . yea , in particular , this mark of insufficiency to prove a divine truth , is set on cyprian ' s authority , by augustine , l. 2. contra crescon . cap. 32. hujus epistolae authoritate ego non teneor ; quia literas cypriani non ut canonicas habeo . et ibid. c. 31. nos nullam cypriano facimus injuriam , cum ejus quaslibet literas à canononica divinarum literarum authoritate distinguimus . thirdly , it is observable , that even the affrican fathers , after cyprian , do not speak so high of episcopal praelation , as cyprian doth ; as augustine , cited in the book it self , his secundum honorum vocabula , and usus obtinuit ; are two considerable diminutives , and derogate the one from the degree of episcopal authority , the other from the perpetuity and divine right of it . and primasius uticensis calleth the presbyterate , secundus , & penè unus gradus cum episcopatu ; sicut multis scripturarum testimoniis comprobatur . in tim. 1. c. 3. now these two affrican bishops could not but know cyprian ' s mind , and therefore they either differed from him in this matter , or ( which i rather think ) cyprian used higher , and more keen expressions , for the same things , and that out of a peculiar zeal , that he had for the dignity of the church ; and to magnifie his office. fourthly , it is evident that the antient bishops , and other divines , when they gave marks of the true church , brought them always from the scripture , not from humane testimony . august . ep. 50. bonifacio comiti : in sanctis libris ubi manifestatur dominus christus , ibi & ejus ecclesia declaratur : where also he chargeth them with wonderful blindness , who seek christ in the scripture , and the church in humane writings . also cyprian . ep. coecilio ; and in that to pompeius , proveth that we must follow christ and his written word only , as our rule , and not old customs and practices . the same thing gerson proveth , in a sermon before the pope , and asserteth that the scripture is sufficient for the government of the church : and calleth it blasphemy to say , that it can be better done by mens inventions . fifthly , the antient bishops ( even such of them as were holy and humble , ) might have too high thoughts of their own praelation , and too much inclination to greaten it . that temper appeared among the apostles , while christ was with them . great corruptions in the church have insensibly had their beginning from good and zealous men. sixthly , many famous and learned bishops , much later than these called fathers , and yet before the reformation from popery , held that bishops and presbyters were by divine institution every way one , so anselm arch-bishop of canterbury on philip. 1. and tit. 1. rich. armachan . in quaest . armenorum : aeneas sylvius , ( afterward pope pius secundus ) ep. 130 ; which is concerning his conference with the ministers of the taborites . also in the time of the reformation , the english bishops and clergy , who still were popish , in the book called the institution of a christian man ; chap. of the sacrament of orders . cassander in his consultation art. 14. saith , non convenit inter theologos , & canonistas , an episcopatus ponendus inter ordines ecclesiasticos : convenit autem inter omnes , apostolorum aetate inter episcopos & presbyteros nullum discrimen , &c seventhly , even mr. dodwell ( as high as he is for episcopal authority , ) saith , that the first bishops were made by presbyters : and that it behoved to be so , otherwise the succession could not be secured in the first times of persecution . how this consisteth either with our author's book or with his own , against separation from the episcopal chairs , let the reader judge . it 's true , mr. dodwell ( it is 521 , 522. ) pretendeth not to be afraid of the consequence of this assertion , with respect to the bishop's absolute power , because kings also are invested by their subjects , ( this paralell i might , but shall not debate with him , ) but how can he , on this supposition , defend their sole power of ordination to be of divine right ; i cannot see , but shall be glad to be instructed . i insist not on the suspicion , that cyprian ' s epistles are corrupted ; tho' augustine ep. 48. vincentio ; hath these words , neque enim potuit integritas atque notitia literarum unius quantumlibet illustris episcopi , ( cyprian scil . ) custodiri quemadmodum scriptura canonica , &c. what is said , may derogate much from the testimonies that my antagonist bringeth , and warrant our putting a sense on them , different from the sound they have in the ears of this author , and some others of his perswasion . the reader may know , that our debate is not about the jus , but factum ; not how the church should be governed , but how it was done in the age mentioned . in which , i affirm that tho' it is manifest , that the bishop was above the presbyter in dignity and order , yet he did not rule the church by himself , but the presbyters had equal power with him in managing church-government . the cyprianick-bishop examined , &c. some of the episcopal clergy of scotland , who have lost their places , wherein they sat silent , without troubling the presbyterians with their controversal writings ( for they then dealt with them by other weapons ) are now at leasure to maintain the stickle that way : and some are so irritated by their losses , that much more of their passionat resentment , and personal reflections against such as never did them wrong , appeareth in their books , than strength of arguments for what they hold in our present debates ; i have with much weariness and reluctancy considered some of these pieces : and hoped our debates had been at an end , after their silence for some time , and that we should no more be that way diverted from our more necessary work : till i lately met with a treatise called the principles of the cyprianick age , &c. which i find to be written in a more schollar like and less unchristian strain , than what i have hitherto seen from these men . he dealeth fairly by arguments , tho i am not terrified nor convinced by the strength of them , and i am resolved to treat him with the same civility , and for the weight of my reasonings , let the reader judge . it is not victory , but the clearing and maintaining of truth , that i design ; and shall not be ashamed to become his proselyte , if what i hold be found to be an error . § . 2. before i consider his book in the particular contents of it , i shall make a few general remarks about it . 1. then , if we should grant all that he pleadeth for , it would not ruine the cause of presbyterians , nor establish prelacy : it would amount to no more but this , that one presbyterian , and he among the meanest of them , did mistake in matter of fact , as it is related in the antient history . he might know , that neither the presbyterians generally , nor that author in particular , did ever lay the stress of their cause on the practice or principles of the church , after the apostolick age : tho' we will not yield the suffrage of later antiquity to be for our adversaries : yet that is the antiquity that we build upon ; for it is divine , not humane authority that we take for the rule of our belief and practice , in the matter of church-government , and managing the affairs of the house of god. timothy was to be guided by it , 1 tim. 3 14 , 15. and so will we . and even the defender of the vindication against the apologist , or his friend , ( as our author calleth him , p. 4. ) hath fully declared his opinion to this purpose ; rational defence of non-conformity , p. 158. which book our author seemeth to be no stranger to ; for he is ( p. 69 ) at pains to cite and try his critical skill upon a passage in it . he could not then , think to silence presbyterians by this his attempt : we have other grounds , if we were beaten from this , as i hope we shall not . if his book was written only to convince the world , that he who wrote the defence of the vindication against the apologist , is not infallible in all that he asserteth ; he might have spared his pains : that should easily have been yielded to him . to write a book of twelve sheets on such a subject , is such work as we have no time for . egregiam verô laudem , & spolia ampla — he had read cyprian's epistles ( which are not very voluminous ) and had made a collection of citations ; and thus they must have a vent . § . 3. the passage that he buildeth his whole fabrick upon , was by the defender ( which is my second remark ) set down with that brevity that was sutable to the purpose in hand ; tho' may be not sufficient to preclude all the critical notes that a man of this author's skill and learning could make , when he is so disposed to do ▪ the apologist had , in a rambling and incoherent way , started a number of debates that are between us and the prelatists , insisting on none of them : and the defender thought not fit to make a large treatise on each of these heads , but answered what he proposed , with a sutable succinctness ; if he had then thought it convenient , or had imagined that so large a book as our author 's , would have been built on this passage , he would have made the foundation broader , tho' not more commodious for what this author buildeth on it : he could have told him , that tho' he might be bold to venture his credit on the cyprianick age , being more on our side than on that of our adversaries ; and tho' our cause , duely and distinctly stated , should suffer no loss by being tryed at that barr , yet neither did he venture any bodies reputation but his own , nor will he quit the more divine letters patents that we have for presbytrey , to rest in this , either as our only ▪ or our chief strength . notwithstanding of what i have now remarked concerning this author snatching at a fancied advantage against us , i hope to make it evidently appear that he hath wholly missed his aim , and that these two or three lines of my book will stand against the shock of his long treatise . § . 4. i thirdly observe that this author , who is so profuse in his refutation of a few lines in my book , hath , in his own , given occasion ▪ to any one who were of as scripturient a disposition as himself ) for vast volums : as in his sarcastick denyal of ruling elders , p. 8. that presbyters , in the cyprianick age , were seldom called pastors . p. 9. that there can be no church without a bishop . p. 19. that the bishops power is monarchical . p. 22. that the bishops deed is the churches act. p. 24. that episcopacy is of divine institution . p. 26. that he is subordinate to none . p. 27 , 28 , 35. that the bishop is a supream ecclesiastical magistrat . p. 43. and majesty is ascribed to him , ibid. he is called a soveraign and peerless governour . p. 65. supream and unaccountable power is ascribed to him . p. 67. these , and many more such assertions , are the stars by which his treatises is bespangled : and each of them might afford matter for a long discourse , to one who hath nothing else to do . a fourth remark is , that through the whole course of his argumentations he useth such confidence , and these pretences to conclusive and irrefragable evidence , as may fright an unintelligent or unwarrie reader ; while the strength of his ratiocinations is no way proportionable , but apparent to be built on words rather than matter . every one knoweth that the signification of several words used about ecclesiastical things in cyprian's time , was far different from what is our modern dialect . the truth of this will , i hope , be more fully manifest in our considering his particular arguments . § . 5. my assertion against which his book is levelled , he seemeth to wonder at , as strangely rash , and a putting our being , or not being . schismaticks , on a desperate issue . the assertion is , a bishop in cyprian's time was not a diocesan , with sole power of jurisdiction and ordination : if he prove that , we shall give cyprian , and him , leave to call us schismaticks . a bishop , then , was the pastour of a flock , or the moderator of a presbyterie : if he can prove that we separate from our pastours , or from the presbytery , with their moderator , under whose inspection we ought to be , let him call us what he will : but we disown the bishops in scotland from being our bishops ; we can neither own their episcopal authority , nor any pastoral relation they have to us . he seemeth p. 1. to divide his book into two parts : first , to take to task what i had said ; to wit , the words above set down . 2. to add , perchance , something concerning our main argument . the first part he hath largely insisted on : with what strength or success , i am now to examine . of the 2 , i find nothing , but that , p. 94. he hath fairly waved it ; but with confidence that he could accomplish it : and leaving to the person to whom he directeth this long letter , to command him to prosecute what is left undone . the import of which is , that it is much more his inclination to write ad hominem , against a particular person ; than ad rem , for that which he taketh to be the truth of god. § . 6. his first work is to expose the above-mentioned passage in my book , as yielding a large field , if one had a mind to catch at words , and that it were easie to insist on such escapes , if one had a mind for it . his first remark is , suppose the word diocess was not in use in st. cyprian's time , as applyed to a bishops district , doth it follow that the thing now signified by it was not then in use . answ . pray sir , who made that consequence : the words cited ( catch at them as much as you will ) import no such consequence , and design no more but that which we call now a diocesan bishop , with sole power of jurisdiction and ordination , was not in that age. his next remark is in this question , what could move him ( the author of the passage now under debate ) to insinuate that we assign the sole power of jurisdiction and ordination to our diocesan bishop . answ . it is a greater wonder , what should move this author to except against our thinking that they assign such power to their bishop , seing himself ascribeth all that power to the cyprianick-bishop , and affirmeth him to be of divine institution ; as hath been already observed : hath he not said , that the bishops power is monarchial , pag. 23 , 32. and expresly , pag. 38. near the end he saith , the bishop had the sole power of ordination : and saith , it hath been frequently and fully proved by learned men , that he need not insist on it : and pag. 39. telleth us of cyprian's ordaining without asking the consent of the clergy or people : and pleading for this as the right of all bishops . if he do not ascribe this sole power to his scots-bishops , then ( ex tuo ore ) they are not the bishops that christ instituted : nor these of the cyprianick-age ; nor these for whom the learned men that he speaketh of , hath pleaded : neither can i guess what kind of animals he will make them : they must be a species of bishops that never man pleaded for but himself . i suppose his lords the bishops will give him small thanks thus for pleading their cause . what i have now observed , sheweth his questions to be impertinent , viz. when did our bishops claim that power , and when was it ascribed to them by this constitution ? when did they exercise it ? when was it thought necessary for raising a bishop to all the due elevations of the episcopal authority ? i give this general answer to all these questions : our scots bishops look on themselves , and are lookt on by their underlings , and by this author , as scripture-bishops ; or at least , as primitive-bishops , and the bishops that the learned men of this , and the preceeding ages have pleaded for : but our author saith these had the power we now speak of : and therefore he must say , that that power was given them by the institution ; that they do claim it , and ought to claim it , that it is necessary for their due elevation . if they shun to exercise it , at least openly , by not laying on of hands without presbyters ; it is because they know that practice cannot take , nor be born with in a nation where parity hath been so much known , and generally liked : i always understood that the main thing debated between us and the prelatists , was about the sole power of jurisdiction and ordination : and i am not alone in this ; the synod of london , vindication of presbyterial government ; pag. 24. proposeth the controversie in the same words . so doth also smectymnus , § . 8 , 9. and i think he will not find many ( if any one ) of either side , who handleth this controversie without respect to this power . to his question , when was it ascribed to them by the constitution : i answer , it was done , with respect ●o ordination , anno 1635 , in the canons and constitutions ecclesiastical , chap. 2. § . 3. where the examination of the candidate ( and consequently the power of determining who shal be ordained ) is laid on the bishop : and he is allowed to perform this examination by himself , or his chaplain . and for jurisdiction , a person ordained to a charge may not preach , unless he be also licensed by the bishop , ibid. chap. 7. § . 5 nor may he refute error preached by another , unless he first ask and obtain leave of the bishop , ibid. § . 7. yea , a presbyter may not go a journey for some time , without the bishops leave : nor stay unduly at edinburgh , but he must be censured by the bishop ; chap. 4. § . 3 , 5. and in general , in all these canons , all church-discipline is laid on the ordinary ; that is the bishop : not a word of censure inflicted by the presbyters . without the bishop no minister may appoint a fast ; not in his own congregation , chap. 14. and chap. 18. § . 10. the sentence of deprivation of a presbyter is pronounced only by the bishop : no consent of presbyters is sought ; only the presence of three or four , whom the bishop calleth , is required . § . 7. the import of the distinctions he useth for illustrating this matter must be , that our scots-bishops have in jurisdiction and ordination , a chief power , tho' not a sole power : a power superior to , but not exclusive of other powers : a power without , and against which no power can act ; but not a power destroying and disabling all other powers . we should better have understood him if he had opened the terms of these distinctions : i confess , qui bene distinguit bene docet , but not qui obscurè distinguit . i observe none of these distinctions clear to us , whether he thinketh our bishops can ordain , depose , &c. without the concurrence of presbyters , acting authoritatively with them : as he alledgeth the cyprianick-bishops might do : and seing he doth not determine this , i know not what his distinctions serve for , but to make a noise with words . his first distinction between chief and sole power , if easily made ( as he saith ) is not so easily applyed to the case in hand : for our question is about sole power , and if he deny that to them , whatever other power he give them , he maketh them no such bishops as he after pleadeth for . beside , the word chief is ambiguous ; it may be taken either for dignity , that the bishop's power tho' the same with the presbyters , yet is more conspicuous because of the dignity of the bishops person or office : or that the bishop can do some acts of power which the presbyter cannot do : or that the presbyter's power is derived from the bishop , or that he cannot exercise it unless the bishop pleaseth : the first sense , i suppose will not please our bishops , for it importeth no imparity of power . in all the other senses , the bishop's power is sole ; at least as to these things about which he hath that power . his second distinction is the same , in different words : the third differeth little ; for if presbyters cannot act except the bishop please , and if they must follow his light , whatever be their own , i see not what power they have . what power is given to our bishops by their constitution , i shall not farther determine ; but it may be made appear , that they have exercised , and consequently claimed a power over whole presbyteries , which maketh void all their power , while they have commanded them to desist from proceeding to censure scandalous offenders ; of which i can give instances . his third and last remark is , that that part of my definition of a bishop is loose and ambiguous , wherein i call him the pastour of a flock : for saith he , may not a bishop and his diocess be called a pastour and his flock , as well as a presbyterian minister and his parish ? answ . he might easily have understood my words in our ordinary dialect , now in use ; and then all ambiguity had evanished : but i cannot make him understand my words unless he will : we use not to call a bishops diocess the flock , nor him the pastour : nor did scripture so use these terms ; seing the pastour is to feed the flock , act. 20. 28. which he must do , not only by ruling , but also by teaching ; which i am sure a bishop cannot to his diocess . that a bishop in our modern sense , was called the pastour , and such a diocess as ours , his flock , in cyprian's time , we deny : and shall consider his proofs of this , when he shall propose them . i have run over his large field , and find not what fruit he hath reaped from it : nor the escapes that he thinketh it so easy to insist on , p. 2. at the end . § . 8. in the sense he giveth of what i had asserted , which he enlargeth upon , p. 3. i have little to observe : for i am ready to maintain all that he there maketh to be my opinion ; except , ●hat he saith , that in the presbyterian sense , a moderator , as such , is no church-governour ; which i cannot agree to : but because he hath this over again , and improves against us that notion , ( which is his own , none of ours , ) p. 35 , 36. i shall there consider it , viz. § . 20. it is true , the vindication of ch. of s. in answer to the the ten questions , q. 1. § . 5. saith , that a moderator as such , is no church-governour ; but it is evident to any who impartially considereth what is there said , that no more is meant , but that he is not a church-governour of another species from the rest , or who hath another sort of authority than they , or a superior power to them : not , as our author would improve it , that it is not needful that he hath the same church power with the rest ; but may be a heathen , as he affirmeth , p. 35 , 36. also because he inferreth from what i had said , that my opinion is , that in cyprian's time , the church was governed by presbyters acting in parity , after the presbyterian model , p. 4. it will be needful , before i examine his arguments , to give a more full and distinct account of my thoughts in this matter , than is done in that short hint which his whole book is imployed against : and this is the rather needful , because my antagonist doth not so plainly as were to be wisht , state the controversie , when he saith ; p. 4. if i shall prove , first , that a bishop in cyprian's time , was more than the pastour of a flock or moderator of a presbytery , in the presbyterian sense . 2. that he had really genuine episcopal or prelatick power . 3. that he acted in a real superiority over , not in parity with pastours ; our author is bound to acknowledge himself and his brethren to be schismaticks . i shall state the question a little more distinctly ; but not disown any of the terms in which he hath put the questions , all which three , are indeed but one question . § . 9. let it then be considered first , that we never thought , nor said , that church-government was in all it's modes and circumstances in the third century , ( in which cyprian lived ) the same with what it is now among scots presbyterians : the substance of government may remain , and yet considerable alterations be made in the modes of mannaging it , in the succession of years ; much more of ages : we confess many words relating to church-offices , officers , and administrations , signified another thing then , than they do in our modern dialect : these we call moderators , and my antagonist calleth bishops , were then constant ; among us they serve in that station but for some small time , and give place to others : in the affrican church these they called primates , ( whom yet we deny to have had either sole , or superior jurisdiction ) were the eldest minister of every province ; which afterward was changed ▪ and they chosen according to their personal qualifications : and metropolitans were the bishops of the chief cities ; which had no superior power ; but only sometimes praesided in synods . cyprian disowned that any of them was episcopus episcoporum . see no evidence for diocesan churches or bishops , p. 28. also l' arroque adversar . sacr. lib. 2. c. 14. maketh this plain . and leidecker . dissert . de statu eccles . affric . § . 7. he sheweth that primates were above metropolitans in dignity , and that they first attained that degree by their age , reckoning it from their ordination : and the other from the city where they had their charge . yea there hath been no age of old , or in later times , in which there have not been some lesser differences in management , even among churches which used the same species of church-government , for substance : as at this day , in scotland , low-countries , geneva , among the switzers ; &c. some churches are more and some less pure , and near to the pattern : and yet all governed by presbyters acting in parity : and among the prelatists , prelatick power is higher in one church than in another ; as in england now , and in scotland of late ? wherefore our author must not think to triumph , if he can shew some difference between the cyprianick age , and our way . cypr. ep. 75. § . 5. firmilian writing to cyprian , hath instances to shew , that in diverse churches , they had diverse practices , and yet kept peace , one with another . 2. we deny not that in cyprian's time , there was some advances made towards some sort of prelacy ; tho' the parity of power was not then wholly taken away : as the mystery of iniquity , in other things , so in that , did begin early to work even in the days of the apostles , when diotrephes did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , affected to be primus presbyter , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or moderator , in their meetings : and this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 becoming fixed , and constant after the apostles times , ( these good men not fore-seeing the ill use that others would make of that handle given them ) it did , by insensible degrees , degenerate into an undue usurpation : ( as it is hard to get power kept within it's due bounds , even among the best men ) and the primitive power of presbyters , was gradually wrested out of their hands , by the ambition of some , and by the innocent simplicity of others . many other corruptions had crept into the church by that time , and this declension from absolute parity went along with them : the name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 began to be appropriat to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; and that custom being confirmed by a little time , made even humble men imagine , that some different power was signified by that name , that they had distinct from others ; which the rest , who were so usurped upon , did too easily yield ; minding more the work of feeding , than of ruling the flock : and not seeing the fatal consequents of it , which afterward appeared , and were not discovered , till it was too late to retrieve them . 3. it is evident from the history of the first ages , that as episcopacy did not arrive to it's height of a sudden ; so it was not at the same time settled in all the places where it obtained at last : the ambition of some , or at least their too big thoughts of the power that belonged to them , and the easyness of their com-presbyters , made it in one place make quicker advances , while the humility , and sound judgment of others , together with the vigilancy of these who with them govern'd the church , retarded it's progress in other churches . and it is certain , that , for as much as this contagion of the church walked in the dark ; yet it was observed , and opposed by some , as aerius , jerom , and others ; as will appear in our progress . leidecker . dissert . de statu eccles . affric . § . 7. namque ( inquit ) uti ab origine episcopatus ordinis & praesidentiae in presbyterio titulus erat , ( quamvis alibi suos terminos egrederetur ) in affrica vetus libertas presbyterii est retenta ; dum episcopi praesidentium honore non dominatu in ecclesiam , aut presbyteros gauderent . this he not only asserteth , but proveth by diverse testimonies . § . 10. hence we may conclude , that our author cannot prove what he pretendeth , unless he make it appear , that episcopal power , ( such as he pleadeth for ) was not only acted by some , but generally , in the churches of the first , second , and third centuries ; or approved by general consent . wherefore , if we can bring testimonies to prove a parity of power among presbyters , and that domination over them by one was condemned ; his bringing some testimonies to the contrary , will not be found concludent . i say not this , as if i were afraid he can prove what he undertaketh , by the authentick suffrage of any one of the fathers of the first three centuries : but that he may see what weakness and fallacy is in his reasonings on more accounts than one . i may here add a conjecture , on which the reader shall be desired to lay no more weight than he pleaseth : that , seing it is confessed by the best antiquaries , that we have but little historical certainty of the first ages of the church , it is probable that more opposition might be made to the tendency toward church-domination , than we have account of : for the topping party might carry all before them , and others might be suppressed , or what they did , buried in silence : especially considering that meek men are often too apt , rather to suppress their sentiments , than to make much noise with them , to the hazarding of the peace of the church : and to groan under grievances , rather than cast the church into a convulsion by struggling ; when they do not foresee the greatness of the hazard that they fear . this , i conceive , may be one part of that sleep , that giveth the enemy advantage to sow his tares . i ground this conjecture on the great difference that is between the scripture-account of church-government , and that of after ages ; and that the further we come down from the scripture-times , the difference seemeth to be the greater ; and yet we have but often , small account of any sensible change made at any one time . § . 11. the learned author , to his main proofs ( as he speaketh p. 4. ) premitteth a shrewd presumption against what i hold : that generally , the great champions for presbytery acknowledge that episcopacy was in the church long before cyprian's time : and he nameth chamier , blondel , salmasius , the synod of london , spanhemius , &c. what his &c. may contain in it's vast belly , i know not , but i am not afraid of any of them he hath mentioned ; they are all friends to the cause i maintain , and say no more than i have already said ; but much against his sentiments . it had been easier for me to make this appear , if he had thought fit to point at the books , or places of them , on which he groundeth his assertion ; for some of these authors have written much : however i hope to find out in them what is sufficient to my purpose . i begin with chamier ; who , panstrat . catholic . tom. 2. lib. 10. discourseth on this subject copiously : but i find not one word in him , asserting that in the first three centuries , bishops had the rule of the church above presbyters , further than that they were above them in dignity , and by a priority of order ; not of jurisdiction : far less that they had the sole jurisdiction , which our author pretendeth to prove . on the contrary , that learned writer proveth , c. 3. that there was no domination allowed in the church , c. 5. that the government of the several churches was aristocratical : and he sheweth that all presbyters at first were equal ; but that afterward , ( as he citeth ambrose and jerome ) unus electus est , qui omnium primus esset , & episcopus diceretur . and on this he maketh two observes : first , in ecclesiae primordiis , nullos tales episcopos fuisse , qui postea instituti fuere , qui suo jure reliquis è clero praeessent . and he thence inferreth the absolute parity of presbyters , de jure . his second observation is , ne tunc quidem , cum hic episcoporum a presbyteris distinctorum ordo est constitutus , fuisse episcopos ut monarchas , ( see how he agreeth with our author , p. 23 , 32. ) qui potestatem haberent in clerum ; sed principes electos , qui rebus deliberandis praeessent , ut necesse est in omni aristocratia . where he seemeth exactly to describe a moderator , such as is in our presbyteries , and other church judicatories . after that c. 6. he had proved , that jure divino episcopus non est major presbytero , ( contrary to our author , p. 26. c. 7. he proveth that the government of provinces was also aristocratical ; and doth evidently make an arch-bishop or metropolitan , no more than we make the moderator of a synod , or of a general assembly : i mean he alloweth them no more jurisdiction . now let any judge , with what brow my antagonist could bring chamier for his voucher , who so flatly contradicteth the whole of his book . § . 12. his next author is blondel ; who will be found to do him no more service : for the whole design and strain of his apologia pro sententia hieronomi is , to prove that episcopus and presbyter were the same , as both in name and power , in the apostolick age of the church ; so in power in the first , second , third , and much of the fourth century ; tho' he confesseth that the name , & some majority ( not higher jurisdiction ) was sooner given to the bishop . this is evident , for s. i. p 4. he saith that jeromes toto orbe decretum est ut unus de presbyteris caeteris superponeretur , occasioned by the divisions among christans , and saying , ego sum pauli , &c. that this , i say , was quarto a corinthiorum turbis saeculo : and that jerome said it , de sui temporis hominibus ; and proveth it from jerome's own words , which are , quando non idipsum omnes loquimur , & alius dicit , ego sum pauli , ego appollo , ego cephae , dividimus spiritus unitatem , & eam in partes & in membra discerpimus . and he saith , that jerome torquebat verba paulina de corinthiis , in eos : nempe , sui temporis homines , & p. 6 , 7. he fully sheweth , that jerome believed the identity of bishop and presbyter , from his blameing them who made deacons equal to presbyters . i. e. to bishops also p. 8. that in alexandria ( of which jerome saith , that à marci temporibus ad heracleam , dionysiumque presbyteri unum ex se electum in excelsiori gradu collocatum episcopum dixerunt ) it was but jusprimae cathedrae presbyteri inter collegas fratrem spontanea hac dignatione honorantes , sedentis . and ibid : he saith , ex hieronomi sententia episcopalia omnia ex aequo competebant : and that every one of them was equal vrbico papae . s. 2. blondel proveth all the fathers of the three or four first ages , to have been of the same opinion with jerome . and p. 8. hath this transition , prodeant jam 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 patrum acies , qui sanctum virum ( hieronymum ) seu solitarium in tecto passerem non relictum , doceant . this he proveth from clemens of rome , from polycarp of smyrna , from hermes , from pius the pope of rôme , justin , papias , irenaeus and the gallican church in his time , victor the pope , clemens of alexandria , tertullian , origen . cyprian also : on whose opinion in this matter , my antagonist stateth the whole controversy . wherefore i shall a little further consider what account blondel giveth of his opinion . he saith , p. 41. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 toto administrationis tempore aggressus est , sed partita ( quasi ex concepto voto , cum comministris cura ac potestate , carthaginensem plebem gubernavit : and citeth cyprian himself saying to his clergy ; sed cum per dei gratiam venero , tunc de iis quae vel gesta sunt , vel gerenda ( sicut mutuus honor exposcit ) in communi tractabimus : and in another epistle , quae res cum omnium nostrum consilium & sententiam spectet , praejudicare ego , & soli mihi rem communem vindicare non audeo . he sheweth also ; p. 43. that cyprian doth always speak of the clergy as divided only in two parts , the praepositi and the deacons , and he calleth both the episcopi and the praepositi apostles : if i should cite all that blondel bringeth out of cyprian to this purpose , i behoved to transcribe almost four pages of his book , of which citations we shall have further occasion given by our author to discourse . it is then more evident than what he in most of his reasonings talketh highly of , that either this author hath not read blondel , but cited him at adventure , or hath a confidence to assert what he will , tho' absurd and unaccountable . § . 13. he is full as unhapy in his next witness , salmasius , who both in his book de episcopis & presbyteris is against this author , and in walo messalinus , that is commonly ascribed to him , doth strongly maintain the identity of bishop and presbyter , against petavius the jesuit , in the first ages ; and is far from acknowledging any further difference between them till jerome's time , ( which was after cyprian's , about which we now contend ) than of greater dignity ; for chap 3. he sheweth that the primacy among presbyters was from their seniority ; and more fully , ch. 4. p. 273. credibile est ( saith he ) circa medium secundi saeculi non alias in ecclesia fuisse cognitos episcopos quam qui primatum in presbyterio adepti essent , cum primos faceret non electio , ex merito sed ordinationis tempus : quem morem diu in ecclesia durasse , testis est ille author qui ambrosii nomine , commentarios in epistolas pauli scripsit : and a little below , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dabatur ei qui ordinatione antiquior caeteris esset . c. etiam . 6. ostendit jurisdictionem episcopalem ortam partim ex distinctione nominis episcopi a presbyteri appellatione ; partim principum christianorum indulgentia , partim pontificum romanorum aliorumque ambitione & usurpatione . who then can imagine that he thought that in cyprian's time ( which was before the church had christian princes ) the bishops had sole jurisdiction . the last of his authors that he citeth is , the provincial assembly of london ; what book he meaneth , i know not : neither doth he himself , for what appeareth : for the vindication of presbyterian government & ministry by the ministers and elders of the provincial synod of london , hath not a word on that head , neither for him nor against him : wherefore i can guess at none but jus divinum regiminis ecclesiastici , written ( as the title page beareth ) by sundry ministers of christ within the city of london : in that book i find nothing that hinteth the concession that he alledgeth : but on the contrary , p. 140. ( interpreting 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mentioned , 1 cor. 12. 28. ) they have this passage , not the prelatical bishops , pretending to be an order above preaching presbyters , and to have the reins of all church-government in their hands only : for in scripture bishop and presbyter are all one order , — hereunto also the judgement of antiquity evidently subscribeth , accounting a bishop and a presbyter to be one and the same office in the church ; as appeareth particularly in ambrose , theodoret jerome , and others . i shall not hope to say any that is convincing , if what i have brought do not perswade the unbyassed reader that our famous presbyterians have the same sentiments of the judgement of the first antiquity , about the power of presbyters in the church , that i expressed in the place that our author maketh such a pother about : he bringeth also spanhem against me , which i wonder at ; seing the words himself citeth amount to no more than manifesta 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which none of us ever denyed to have crept early into the church : but he dealeth not fairly with that learned writer , ( if this appellation may be used without his offence ) for he curtaileth his words , leaving out what displeaseth him . viz. quanquam de primis ( episcopis ) controversum , diversine an superioris ordinis haberentur . he dealeth yet less christianly with the same author , both in detracting from his knowledge of antiquity ; and also in mis-representing his words , out of which he would make good his charge : in that he saith spanhem denyeth exorcists to have been in the church in the third century : whereas he doth not mention exorcists in that place , but only ostiarios , copiatas , acolythos : these last our author will prove to have been in the church in cyprian's time , out of cyprian , ep. 7. 34 , 45 , 59 and 77. and mentioneth several names of men in that office. i was at the pains to read over all these epistles on this occasion , and find not a word in any of them , either of acolyths , or of any of the persons whom he nameth : it is like the epistles of cyprian are diversly numbred in diverse editions : my edition of cyprian is 1593 , cum notis pamelii . i find the epistle of cornelius in eusebius , lib. 6. c. 42. ( he calleth it 43 ) how genuine that epistle of cornelius is , or the account that ensebius giveth of it , i shall not now enquire : what i am now concerned in is , that the learned world beareth testimony to spanhemius , so as this author will not be able to derogate from his credit : and i doubt not but he can give grounds for what he wrote . i hope i have said enough to shew that i am not so arrogant , nor so rash , as to reced in this matter , from the sentiments of these great patrons of presbytery that he hath brought against me . § . 14. he proceedeth ( pag. 5. ) to his other arguments . his first argument ( which he manageth to pag. 11. ) is built on three foundations , or pillars ; the first is , that every church was , in cyprian ' s time , ruled by a bishop , presbyters and deacons . this i deny not : only i observe a few things : one is , that our controversie is not about the name bishop , being appropriat to one and not given in common to all the presbyters , as at first ; but about that bishop , or first presbyter's power ; ; which this his discourse doth not touch . another thing that i observe is , that it cannot be denyed that the deacons , in that age , and may be sooner , had more hand in the government of the church than was allowed by divine institution ; by which they were only servants , not rulers ; and their work was only about the poor . i thirdly observe our author's unwarriness , in here asserting that the church was ruled by bishops , presbyters , and deacons ; and yet he pleadeth for the bishops sole jurisdiction , in most of his book : this i impute to want of a good memory . what he hath p. 6. of superinducing a bishop where one already was , and that there could be but one bishop in a church , will after fall in to be considered : where he insisteth more directly and fully on it . his second ground that his argument is built on , is , that the presbyters in that age were preaching-presbyters , and not ruling-elders , such as we have in the presbyterian church . that the bishop in that age was distinct even from preaching-elders , or ministers , we deny not ; and that there were many such where was but one bishop , we acknowledge : so it is with us ; there are many ministers where there is but one moderator , and many ruling-elders , where there is but one minister or parochial bishop . what sort of officers in the church the presbyters , distinguished from the bishop were , in the primitive times , is controverted among some : dr. hammond held that only bishops were of divine institution , and were in the apostolick-church ; the consequent of which is , that presbyters must be a device of men and brought in afterward : this is solidly refuted by the learned mr. durham on revelation , ch . 3. p. ( mihi ) 230. the author of the book intituled , an inquiry into the constitution , &c. of the primitive-church in the first 300 years , who pretendeth that this work is done by an impartial hand , he also hath a like notion , p. 72. and maintaineth that presbyters are not necessary to the constitution of a church ; that they are equal to a bishop in order ; and have all the power that he hath ; but inferior in degree ; that they were ordained preachers ; but had no particular charge ; but were imployed by the bishop in any piece of church-work , as he thought fit , and so were his curats , or assistants . but of this afterward . i deny not that there were presbyters in the third century , such as our author contendeth for , that is persons authorized to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments , distinct from bishops . for his sarcasm against ruling-elders , who have no authority to preach , affirming pag. 8. that there is as profound silence of them in cyprian ' s writings and time , as there is of the solemn league and covenant , or the sanquhar declaration ; this sheweth more of his spite against that church-office , than of his skill to refute it . § . 15. it might have been expected from this peremptory confidence , that he should have attempted a refutation of what many learned men have written on that subject ; if he lookt into that controversie : the london ministers , ( whom he citeth ) could have taught him , at least , to speak more soberly : so blondel de jure plebis , p. 79. &c. smectym . l'arroque conformity of the discipline of the church of france with the primitive church . calvin . p. martyr . and many later writers : at least he might have had some regard to arch-bishop whitgift , ( a zealous pleader for prelacy ) as he is cited by synod lond. vindication of presbyterial government . i know ( saith he , ) that in the primitive church , they had in every church seniors , to whom the government of the church was committed ; but that was before there was any christian prince , or magistrat . i hope then that it was in cyprian's time will not be denyed . may be , on second thoughts , he will abate a little of this confidence , when he considereth these few citations following : which do plainly prove that both before and after cyprian's time , there were ruling elders , who were not preachers , acknowledged in the church , origen . lib. 3. contra celsum : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. there are some appointed , who do enquire into the life and manners of them who are admitted ; that they may debar from the congregation , such as commit vile things ; and receive such as abstain from these ; and make them daily better . tertul. apol. c. 3. praesident probati quique seniores , honorem istum non praetio , sed testimonio adepti . these were before cyprian . after him were jerom , on isaiah 3. 2. et nos habemus in ecclesia senatum nostrum , &c. august . ep. 137. dilectissimis fratribus , clero , senioribus , & vniversae plebi ecclesiae hipponensis . where he maketh a plain distinction between the clergy , and these other elders , and also the body of the people : these elders then were not teachers , and they were above the people . the like he hath , contra crescentium , lib. 3. c. 1. omnes vos episcopi , presbyteri , diaconi , & seniores scitis . et ibid. c. 56. peregrinus presbyter , & seniores ecclesiae musticanae , &c. the same augustin , in his account of the purgation of caecilianus , and felix , accused by the donatists , mentioneth several letters recorded in the publick acts , ( which must certainly speak the language of that age , ) wherein ruling elders distinguished from preaching presbyters , are plainly , and often mentioned : as episcopi , presbyteri , diaconi , seniores : again , clerici , & seniores cirthensium : also a letter directed clero & senioribus : and another , clericis & senioribus : likewise the epistle of purpurens to sylvanus hath these words , adhibe●e clericos , & seniores plebis , ecclesiasticos viros , & inquirant diligenter quae sint istae dissentiones : where it is clear that the ecclesiastical consistory was then made up of these elders , as one sort of its constituent members ; and that they had authority to take course with disorders in the church , in conjunction with the teachers of the church . even gregorius magnus the pope , in the end of the sixth age , sheweth that such elders were still in the church ; tabellarium ( saith he ) cum consensu seniorum & cleri memineris ordinandum . also , lib. 2. epist . 19. si quid de quocunque clerico ad aures tuas pervenerit , quod te justè possit offendere , facile non credas , sed praesentibus ecclesiae tuae senioribus est perscrutanda veritas , & tunc si qualitas rei poscit , canonica districtio culpam feriat delinquentis . is it imaginable that there were no ruling elders in cyprian's time , in the third century , and yet after three hundred years , they were revived again ; when episcopal tyranny , and manifold corruptions in the church were come to a greater height ? isidor . hispal . sent. lib. 3. c. 43 ▪ prius docendi sunt seniores plebis , ut per eos infra positi facilius doceantur . § . 16. it is yet more fully against this author's bold assertion , that even in cyprian's time it self , this office was in the church ; as witness the writers of that age , basil . in psal . 33. quatuor gradus ministrorum constituit , quod sciz . alii sunt in ecclesia instar oculorum , ut seniores ; alii instar linguae , ut pastores ; alii tanquam manus , ut diaconi ; &c. and optat. milevit . lib. 1. adv . parmen . telleth us of certain precious utensils of the church , which in a time of persecution , could neither safely be transported , nor hid in the earth ; and therefore they were committed to the custody of the faithful elders of the church . from all this it is evident , that if express and distinct mention be not made of this sort of elders by cyprian , it is either because he had no occasion ; or that he comprehended them under the general name of presbyters , as the scripture sometimes doth under the name of bishops : for it is not to be imagined that cyprian , in this , was of a different sentiment from the church , before , in , and after his time . § . 7. his third foundation for his argument is , that the bishops power , authority , pastoral relation , extended to all christians within his district : and a little after , the bishops prelation , what ever it was , related not solely to the clergy , nor solely to the laity ; but to both equally and formally : this we are no way concerned to oppose ; for we think every minister hath a relation to the universal church , and authority with respect to all the members of it : and more particularly within the presbytery whereof he is a member : and yet more fully toward these of the congregation he is set in , whether elders or people . neither is our question about the extent of the bishop's power , as to persons , so much as about the solitude of this power ; whether church power reside in his person alone , or be in the community of presbyters . i might dismiss this whole section ; but that his proofs seem not so much levelled at this conclusion ; as at some other things which we cannot so easily comply with : he telleth us of cyprian's defining the church , to be a people united to the priest , and a flock adhering to their pastour : he bringeth citations to prove , that where a bishop is wanting , the people hath no ruler , the flock no pastour , the church no governour , christ no prelate , and god no priest : and he will have presbyters to be but vice-pastours . now how far is all this from his conclusion ; viz. that the bishop's power extendeth to all the people ? all this tendeth to prove the bishop's sole jurisdiction , which is afterward to be considered , where he insisteth on that point on purpose : but here here he doth nothing but make a parade with a parcel of impertinent citations : i shall only now tell him ; that this may be well understood of a parish bishop or minister . for presbyters being vice-pastours , that is afterward answered . wherefore i now consider his application of his three conclusions to what he would prove ; viz. that a bishop in cyprian's time , was neither the pastour of a flock , nor the moderator of a presbytery ; in my sense of the terms : not the first for cyprian at carthage , cornelius at rome , &c. had many such pastours under them : yea , it was so over all the world. not the second ; because a presbyterian moderator as such , is no church governour at all : hath no direct , immediat , formal relation to the people , but only to the presbytry . this is the goodly argument in which our author early triumpheth , as sufficient , if there were no more , to ruine our cause . § . 18. this triumph will be found to be before the victory : that i may give a full and direct answer to his argument , i must distinguish what our author confoundeth , viz. the signification of the word bishop in the apostles time , it signified any ruling , ordinary officer in the church : hence phil. 1. 1. all church-officers are so called , except the deacons . and 1. tim. 3. 1 , 2 , &c. the apostle giveth directions to all the ruling-officers in the church , and then vers . 8 , &c. telleth what manner of men the deacons should be . if the apostle had known any other ordinary church-officers , these canons had been very lame : and indeed it is no wonder that the bishops ( not being here comprehended ) do what they will ; for we know no scripture , rules neither for their qualifications , nor work : and tit. 1. 5 , and 6. the elders that were to be set up in every city are called bishops , v. 7. the same word in after ages , as it was sometimes given to pastours of particular congregations , so it was ordinarily given to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the primus presbyter or moderator in the colledge of presbyters : and the same that sustained the later of these relations had also the former , and laboured in the word and doctrine , and managed congregational-discipline in a particular parish , taking the word parish in our modern sense . wherefore if the citations he bringeth for episcopal power can rationally be applyed to either of these notions of a bishop , our cause is safe from his assaults . that the moderator of the colledge of presbyters is called bishop , not only is evident from jerom , vnus è presbyteris electus est qui caeteris superponeretur — episcopi noverint se magis consuetudine quam dispositionis dominicae veritate , presbyteris esse majores , & in communi debere ecclesiam regere : but this author cannot deny it ; tho' he pleadeth for an extravagant power to that his moderator ; about which power i now debate with him . § . 19. that the pastour of a particular flock was also ( in the primitive times ) called a bishop , is certain from this , that the scriptures dividing the church-officers in bishops and deacons , are by the fathers so applyed : as i have shewed elsewhere . likewise we find bishops in small villages , where were no number of pastors , over whom the bishop might praeside : as is fully proved by the learned mr. clarkson , primitive episcopacy stated , &c. c. 2. p. 19 , &c. and that by multitudes of instances , as also testimonies of fathers , asserting it to be then usual , sozomen hist. l. 7. c. 19. telleth us that in arabia 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : he saith the same of cyprus , and extendeth his assertion to other countries , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . mr. fuller ( tho' episcopal , yet a person of more ingenuity than many others ) history of the holy war , lib. 2. cap. 2. p. 45 , & 46. speaking of palestine , at this time ( saith he ) bishops were set too thick for all to grow , and palestine fed too many cathedral-churches to have them generally fat : lydda , jamnia , and joppa , three episcopal towns , were within four miles one of another : — neither let it stagger the reader , if in that catalogue of tyrius , he light on many bishops seats which are not to be found in mercator , ortelius , or any other geographer ; for some were such poor places as they were ashamed to appear in a map. — for in that age , bishops had their sees at poor and contemptible villages . concil . antioch . in their epistle concerning paulus samosatenus they mentioned bishops 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . i know dr. maurice pretendeth to refute mr clarkson's book : neither shall i judge who hath the better in most parts of that debate ; but i see no sufficient answer to what i have here quotted . yet do i not joyn with mr. clarkson in the whole design of his book . these two notions of a bishop being familiar in the primitive times , it is no wonder if we find the fathers , sometimes speaking of a bishop in the one sense , and sometimes in the other . § . 20. i now answer his argument : a bishop in cyprian's time was always the pastor of a particular flock , and moderator in the consistory of ruling-elders ; but sometimes he was also the moderator of a colledge of presbyters ; and so might have many presbyters under him ; that is , he was above them in dignity ; and we deny not but that by reason of his fixation in that office , he by custom had crept into some more power over them than was due : but that in cyprian's time , he had the sole power of jurisdiction , and ordination , or such authority as our diocesans pretend to ; i utterly deny . for the other part of his argument , that he could not be a moderator , because a moderator as such , hath no church power , nor is a church governour . i answer first ; the assertion he here reflecteth on , cited by him pag. 3. that a moderator , as such , hath no church power , was not meant , that there might be a moderator who hath no church power , and so taking as specificative : as he absurdly improveth it , p. 36. affirming that a heathen may be the moderator of a presbytery without repugnancy to any principle of christianity , tho' not without indecency and inconvenience . i say this is a most absurd assertion , both because a heathen moderator could not understand the affairs of the church ; and because he would embarasse them : and because it is against common sense , and the sentiments of mankind , that an enemy of the true religion should have the conduct , and main hand in mannaging the affairs that do so nearly concern it : yea , this his assertion contradicteth it self : for he acknowledgeth that this were indecent and inconvenient , and i hope he will not deny , that it is a principle of the christian religion , that all things be done decently , and in order : and that both nature and religion require , that we should shun what is inconvenient , especially to so high concernments as are these of religion . that assertion then , that he aimeth at , is to be understood reduplicative ; that is , that a moderator acquireth no church power by his being moderator , above what he had as a pastor of the church : and here a sub-distinction is to be used , he acquireth indeed an ordinative power , in that he ordereth the meeting to avoid confusion , and many call it pre re natâ ; but he acquireth no decisive power : he getteth a power to be their mouth , not their will , or commanding faculty : to keep order in the management of what cometh before them , not to determine what is debated among them , as it is expressed in the place he citeth ; and which might have prevented this cavil , if he had heeded what was said . to conclude what i have to reply to this his argument , it is no proof of such a prelacy in cyprian's time as he pleadeth for , that it related to the laity , as well as the clergy : for so doth that of our moderator : that is , he ordereth the affairs which concern them , which are managed in the presbytery : and that cyprian did more , or , that he managed the affairs concerning the laity , without the same authoritative concurrence of the presbyters , is the question , and is not concluded by this argument . § . 21. he undertaketh , p. 11. easily to collect another demonstration against my notion of a bishop , from the way , how in cyprian's time , he was promoted to his chair ; to that sublime top of the priesthood , as he calleth it . this is to fright us with big , bur empty words : if he bring a concludent probable argument , tho' short of a demonstration , we must stoop . to cyprian's words , the sublime top of priesthood , i should not doubt to give a satisfying answer , if i could find the place , and consider the purpose he is speaking of ; but my antagonist hath made my work very difficult ; not by the strength of his arguments , but by leaving me at uncertainty where to find any one of his citations , unless i either stumble on them casually , or read all cyprian's epistles for every place that is cited : for he knoweth there are several editions of cyprian ; and he hath neither told what edition he useth , ( i have no other at present , but that printed by le preux , 1593. ) nor nameth he to whom the epistle is directed : whether this be done de industriâ , or not , i shall not judge : but i am sure it is a great neglect : especially considering that cyprian's epistles are quite otherways numbred by scultetus , than in the edition mentioned , but i find neither of these can help me to find his citations . all that i shall say about this sublimity he talketh of , is , that the fathers used to speak big words concerning the gospel ministry ; which both papists and prelatists have abused : also the bishops power was elevated to a higher dignity , tho' not greater authority , than the presbyters , and that was their sublime fastigium sacerdotii . this his argument also , he buildeth on several propositions . the first is , there could be no lawful promotion to a bishoprick , where a bishop had been setled , unless there were a clear , canonical , and unquestionable vacancy : it was a received maxim then , that there could be but one bishop at once in a church . our present debate is no way concerned in this principle , whether it be true or false . for taking a bishop for moderator ; we think there should be but one at one time : and that another ought not to be chosen till the place be void , by death , deposition from that office , or cession . if by bishop you understand the pastor of a flock , whether there be one or more over a congregation , is nothing to our purpose ; seing the question is about the power of the bishop , whether it be in one , or more persons . § . 22. yet i shall observe a few things on his discourse of this his principle . 1. if i were willing to be very critical , i would ask him , what did they in those days , when there was a real , and lawful vacancy ; but not clear , nor unquestionable ; as in the contest between cornelius and novatianus at rome : and many other instances that might be given , of most unchristian , and sometimes bloody contentions , between bishops pretending to the same see : i hope the sound party might , and did place a bishop ; tho' the vacancy was questioned . next i oppose to his principle , dr. hammond , on rev. 11. p. 662. who telleth us , there were two bishops at once in jerusalem , antioch , ephesus , and rome , he nameth them : and giveth reasons why distinct congregations under their respective bishops in each city were necessary : he saith also it was so in other cities : and his reasons do prove that it must be so in all cities : where there are many people . i insist not on the bishops at philippi , phil. 1. 1. at ephesus , whom the holy ghost had made bishops , act. 20. 20. thirdly , i observe that all the citations he here bringeth , hath this tendency , to shew that novatus in intruding himself in the bishop's see at rome , was to be blamed , seing cornelius was already duly setled in that place . this was a plain case , the presbyters and people of rome had chosen cornelius to be pastor of a flock , and their constant moderator , as was the practice of that time : novatianus was not only unsound in other things , but he got a faction to choose him for pastor and their moderator , and he with them , set up another presbytery , in opposition to that wherein cornelius was fixed : i know no presbyterian who would not condemn this practice as much as cyprian did : and it is observable that the citations here brought by our author , do not so much concern the unity of a bishop ; as the unity of a church , which indeed novatianus had broken : i confess cyprian here used expressions a little too vehement , in that he not only denyeth them who make such rents to be pastors , being unduly chosen , and ordained ; but denyeth them to be christians : it was a great sin , , and deserved the highest censure ; but it is hard to unchristian all who make a schism : but i impute this fervor to the temper of that age , rather than of the holy and meek cyprian : and it is like , these wise men saw a peculiar reason at that time , for thus opposing the seeds of ruine to the church , which often lurk unobserved in schism . § . 23. his second pillar of this argument is this assertion ; there was no canonical vacancy but where the bishop whose the chair had been was dead , had ceded , or was canonically deposed . let this pass . the third is , when a see was thus canonically vacant , the bishops of that province met , choosed and ordained one in presence of the people whom he was to govern . i object nothing against this , save that the bishops choosed the man to be ordained : we say the people had the choice , with the eldership : but this controversie he waveth , as not belonging to this argument ; and so do i. his fourth proposition is , that the person elected received new imposition of hands , and new ordination ; tho' he had been ordained a presbyter before : this he prosecuteth p , 14. and citeth many testimonies to prove what he alledgeth : he saith , no doubt that each of these was raised to the episcopacy by a new ordination : and of sabinus , that he was ordained by imposition of hands : i deny not that even an ordained presbyter behoved to be chosen to the office of bishop , before he could exercise it : so it is with our moderator . that there was more solemnity in installing a bishop then , than we use in making a moderator , cannot be denyed : that was consequential to the bishops being constantly and for life in that office , and to that prelation , or dignity above other presbyters that he then had . neither shall i contend with him about imposition of hands to have been in that case used ; ( tho' after search , i cannot find the place he citeth ) for it is well known , that in the apostolick church ( and it is like it continued in after ages ) imposition of hands was used when men were sent into a special piece of work , tho' no new office , or new power was given ; as act 13. 3. i hope he will not say , that saul , by that imposition of hands , was promoted unto a higher ; or new office , being already an apostle . but our question is , whether the bishop had a superior power over presbyters , which resided in his person alone : this we deny , and affirm that it is not proved by the citations he hath brought . the zeal that even false bishops used to have all the formalities in their promotion that were used by any other ( which is one of his topicks ) is as little probative ; nor should i wonder if they exceeded : they had need of all the pomp that could be , to make up the want of real right , to strenthen their weak title . he concludeth , p. 15. that now my definition of a bishop is routed a second time . let the reader judge . § . 24. he cometh to apply his former propositions , and to conclude his argument from them . how ( saith he ) can the maxime of but one bishop at once consist with the bishops being a single presbyter ; seing in rome and carthage were many presbyters , and yet each of these was but one church . ans . 1. it consisteth well with the notion of a moderator . 2. it consisteth well with the notion of a bishop in lesser places , where was no such plurality of presbyters ; of which before . 3. i have said enough above to discredit this maxime , in the sense our author useth it 4. there might be a plurality of presbyters in a particular congregation ; not only presbyters that were only ruleing , but-preachers also : for it is observed by some , that in the primitive times , they ordained many more preaching presbyters in churhes than they had present work for : so mr clerkson , primitive episcopacy , ch. 5. p. 93. and he buildeth on nazianzens authority , who orat. 1. sheweth that the officers in churches were some times as many as these whom they had the charge of . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( saith he ) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . it is probable , that then the christians having no universities , the churches , especially in great cities , or where were learned bishops , were colledges for breeding men to the ministry , and that when they were ripe , they ordained them and imployed them ; that so they might be seminaries out of which vacant parishes might he provided : and if any will say , that the bishop had such authority over these presbyters as our professors of divinity have over the students , it may pass for a probable conjecture : only these were ordained , ours we do not ordain till we fix them in churches : and in that time i find no such unordained licentiats as we have . § . 25. he again asketh , if a bishop were but a single presbyter , why such a do , and so many bishops conveened to elect and ordain him . this is in part answered above . i add , we also have a meeting of many ministers to ordain a presbyter to a single flock : and also when a moderator is chosen . as for calling bishops of a whole province to elect and instal a bishop at rome , and at carthage , that was needful , because these were the fixed moderators in these provinces ; so our moderator of a provincial synod is chosen by no fewer than the ministers of a whole province : and the moderator of the general assembly by ministers from the whole national church . what he saith about their new ordination is already answered . that which he calleth ridiculous is pretty ridiculously by him proposed : viz. that so much ado was made about making two men presbyters of rome , who were already presbyters of rome . he meaneth cornelius and novatianus . it was about making them moderators of the colledge of presbyters , not in rome , but in the whole province : and indeed it was lamentable , rather than ridiculous : both that that promotion began then to be more esteemed than was meet ; and was lookt on as a prelation above the other brethren ( tho' it was far short of what our author contendeth for ) and also that there should be such unchristian contests made about it alas some such things have fallen out where a diocesan episcopacy was not pretended to . our sentiments about a constant moderator he entertaineth in ridicule , p. 16. rather than refuteth them by arguments : this i do little regard . had the excellent men of the cyprianick age seen , or known the fatal consequents of it , as we have ; i judge they would not have allowed it as they did . i. refer the reader for satisfaction in this point , to mr. baillie , vnlawfulness and danger of limited episcopacy : and another peice bearing the same title , which he defendeth against a reply made to it . that the presbyters of rome did often meet during the vacancy of the see ; and that they had a moderator in their meetings , none will deny : but what he inferreth is in consequential ; that they might as easily have chosen a bishop , if he had been but moderator . for not only the custom of having the moderator fixed , made it more hard than to choose one to be their mouth for one meeting , or two ; but also , ( as i have said ) the whole province was to be concerned in him . he argueth p. 17. in many words , if he were moderator , why the people was to choose him , or why was it needful that he should be chosen in their presence . a. because also he was to be pastor of that flock . that he was no church-governour as moderator , is answered above : but it cannot be said he was no church-governour under another relation ; viz. as pastor of the congregation of rome , or a congregation in it . that he was chosen by 16 bishops . i. e. saith our author , sixteen moderators was not then needless , seing he was to be moderator over them to ; that is over that province . if sixteen parochial bishops met to choose a moderaror of a presbytery , or sixteen moderators from sixteen presbytries met to elect him who was to praeside continually in the synod ; this cannot infer either sole or superior jurisdiction . further if we should grant that in these days , a presbyterie used to take the help of other presbyteries , or their moderators , or that help was by custom imposed on them , this will indeed prove that some of the priviledges of presbyters began then to be abridged ; but not that their ruling power in the church was transferred on a single person , the bishop . what he further argueth p. 18. from the bishops new ordination , is already answered . § . 26. his next argument ( and some that follow ) is taken from the bishops relation to his particular church ; viz. that he is the principle of vnity to her : who ever adhered to him was in the church , a catholick christian ; who separated from him , was out of the church , and a schismatick . under this head , he hath no less than six considerations , which either are intended as arguments , or signifie nothing . before i come to examine these , i shall take some notice of his argument , as it is here generally proposed . and 1. i observe , that this very argument is fully with as much strength mannaged by the papists , for the pop's universal headship over the christian church : they plead that we are not of the church catholick , are not to be reputed christians , are dividers of christ's body , &c. because we do not adhere to the pope , whom they hold to be the principle of vnity to the christian church : and the papists reckon the protestants as hereticks , because they do not believe this ; and schismaticks , because they live not in communion with the pope , and that church whereof he is head. 2. this doctrine , as it is by our author crudely , and indistinctly proposed , will un-church some of the best and soundest christians : for have there not been bishops , who had as good title to their sees ( to speak in his own dialect , ) as any could have ; who afterwards turned hereticks ? how many arian bishops were there , whose right to their places was not contested ? will he say that all the orthodox who separated from them , were guilty of schism , and all the aggravations that his citations , p. 19 , 20. load it with ? are we not commanded to withdraw from them who teach unsound doctrine , 1 tim. 6. 3 , 4 , 5. and our lord warnes his people against wolves ; and the apostle gave warning to the elders of ephesus , that of themselves , ( and our author will say they were diocesan bishops , ) should men arise speaking perverse things , and drawing disciples after them . this argument will prove , ( if it hath any force ) that these their followers were the sound christians , and the rest schismaticks ; because the one sort adhered to their bishop , the principle of vnity ; and the rest departed from him . i am far from charging my antagonist with owning these consequents ; but i see not how he can shun the consequence , unless he retract this his inconsiderat opinion . thirdly , i wish he had explained this term , the principle of vnity : which he ought the rather to have done , because he saith , p. 18. near the end , this is a point of great consequence . what he saith for clearing it , is very insufficient : his metaphors out of cyprian , de vnitate ecclesiae ; prove nothing : viz. that of the sun and beams , the root and branches , the fountain and streams : if they prove any thing , they prove more than , i suppose , our author will allow : for cyprian , in the very page where he useth these similitudes , ( p. mihi 297. ) speaketh of peter's primacy , and placeth the unity of the christian church in him : tamen ut vnitatem manifestaret , unam cathedram constituit , & vnitatis ejusdem originem ab uno incipientem sua authoritate constituit : hoc erant utique & caeteri apostoli quod petrus , pari consortio praediti & honoris & potestatis , sed exordium ab vnitate proficiscitur . and a little below , quam vnitatem firmiter tenere & vindicare debemus , maxime episcopi , qui in ecclesia praesidemus ut episcopatum quoque ipsum unum atque indivisum probemus . where it may be observed , 1. that either cyprian was absolutely for the pope's supremacy , or he had no such meaning as our author designeth . 2. that cyprian doth not so much speak of the peoples adhering to their bishop , ( which in a sound sense i am for , ) as bishops cleaving together , and not breaking the churches peace , by divisions among themselves . 3. that he is to be understood of a principle of origination , rather than of a principle of dependance : that peter first was in commission by christ , ( the truth of which i shall not now enquire into , ) and that all were obliged to adhere to that one doctrine that he taught : not that he had authority over the rest ; and they must not dissent from him in any case : cyprian plainly teacheth the contrary , in that very place : that the rest had equal authority with him . and if we should apply all this to a bishop , or minister in a parish , it amounteth to no more but this ; he receiveth the word from the lord , and delivereth it to the people ; and if they depart from this , they are schismaticks , and break the unity of the church : which we all acknowledge . i observe , 4. that this his principle is indeed of so great moment , that if it be true , there are neither churches nor christians in the world , but such as owne a diocesan bishop : few in our days are christians , but these of the romish , and church of england communion : all the reformed churches must be re-baptized , and their ministers re-ordained : ( as cyprian , and some other thought of the schismaticks of that time , ) i hope all his brethren are not of this opinion . yea it hath been condemned by the most famous of his party . when , anno 1610. some scots bishops were to be consecrated at london , some moved that they might be first ordained presbyters ; their ordination without a bishop being null : bancroft arch-bishop of canterbur●y withstood that motion , and told them , that thereof there was no necessity : seing where bishops could not be had , the ordination given by presbyters must be esteemed lawful : otherwise that it might be doubted , if there were any lawful vocation in most of the reformed churches . this was applauded by all the other bishops . spotswood . hist. lib. 7. ad an. 1610. p. 514. whence i infer that either cyprian was not of this author's opinion , nor can his words be so understood ; or that the english bishops were opposite to him and cyprian too . § . 27. what he saith further for clearing this his notion about the principle of vnity , is both absurd and groundless : viz. that he ( the bishop ) was the head of all the christians living within his district , and they were one body , one society , one church , by depending on him , by being subject to him , by keeping to his communion . i say this is absurd : because then separating from the most heretical superstitious , yea , idolatrous bishop , were unlawful , as above noted . it is also groundless ; for neither cyprian , nor any other , uses such indistinct , and universal assertions in this matter . i come to examine his several propositions , by which he pretendeth to make out this his argument . the first is , that the antients highly valued church vnity , and laid no more stress on any thing than it ; and no sin they represented as more hainous , or more criminal than the sin of schism : and here he is at the pains to fill almost two pages , with the commendations of unity , and hard names given to schism , out of cyprian , firmilian , and concil . carthag . i do not find that he is so copious , and mustereth up so numerous forces against any disputable point , as in this where he hath no adversary : for who ever spake against unity in the church , and took the defence of schism . wherefore all this i pass with a few short observes . first , tho' we have account of seven several councils at carthage in the antient records , yet this author always citeth concil . carthag . without any discrimination : if he miscite places , how shall this error be discovered : for i think few will be at pains to read over all the acts of these councils , for every one of his citations ; which are not a few . 2. we may from this discourse gather what sentiments this author hath of presbyterians ; seing the design of his book is to prove them schismaticks ; that is ( according to his citations ) renegadoes , apostats , antichrists , malignants , paricides , false christs , christ's enemies , blasphemers , the devils priests , retainers to korah , to judas , villains ; and much more of this stuff . either he applaudeth all this , or not : if not , his citations are impertinent ; if so , he chargeth us with all this guilt : and i ask him , if he thinketh it just , that we should throw back all this dirt on himself and his party , whom we reckon to be the authors of this schism that is now in this church : for my part , i am far from dealing so by them : i think they are in an error , and that that error misleadeth them into some practices that are sinful , and that have bad consequecens to the church ; but i hope there are good men among them for all that . 3. the schisms that occasioned these vehement discourses among the fathers , were chiefly these of the donatists and novatians ; which were like to ruine christianity , and to make the world cast at it , while it was not well setled , nor universally received . i hope our differences tho' they have sadder effects , than i am willing to mention ; yet go not that far . 4. it is well known that the holy zeal of the fathers , and the excellent rhetorick they were endowed with , made them overlash sometimes in their expressions : and it is evident that not a few of the popish errors had their original , and some seeming patrociny , from their flights of rhetorick ; their figurative expressions , and some logical niceties that they used . this is not my apprehension alone ; the learned daille , right vse of the fathers , hath the same observation , chap. 5. the fathers themselves were aware of this , with respect to the writings of one another : hieron . ep. 139. ad cyprian . plerumque nimium disertis accidere solet , ut major sit intelligentiae difficultas in eorum explanationibus , quam in iis quae explanare conantur . and in matters of greater moment , they spake sometimes unwarily , not foreseeing what ill use might be made of their expressions ; as jerom also giveth us ground to think ; apolog. contra ruffin . vel certe ( saith he ) antequam in alexandria quasi daemonium meridianum arius nasceretur , innocenter quaedam & minus cautè locuti , — & quae non possunt perversorum hominum calumniam declinare . petavius maketh also the same observation , tho' a jesuit , in panar . epiphan . ad haer. 6 , 9. yea , the same author hath this passage ; not. in epiphan , multa sunt à sanctissimis patribus presertim à chrysostomo in homiliis aspersa , quae si ad exactae veritatis regulam accommodare volueris , boni sensus manca videbuntur . § . 28. i observe , 5. that tho' our author would fright us also with what the scripture saith of unity , and against schism , ( which i confess is enough to make us love the one , and hate the other , ) yet i do not find this strain used against all divisions , in scripture without discrimination ; but that another spirit appeareth in these inspired writings , and that more of christian forbearance is recommended , 1 cor. 1. 11. and 3. ch. 1. divisions are reproved , and with strong reason condemned : so 1 cor. 11. 18. but that weight is not laid on them that our author speaketh of : and philip. 15. 16. forbearance , and joyning in uncontested truths and duties is enjoyned . and i am sure the differences of these times , were things of more moment , than our bishops mitres , or lordly domination are : the church might be in peace , if they either would shew us divine warrant for their prelation , or not trouble us with their usurpations . § . 29. his second proposition is , for the preservation of vnity , and preventing of schism , in every particular church all were bound , in cyprian's time , to live in the bishop's communion , and to owne and look upon him , as the principle of vnion to that church of which he was head and ruler . i see not wherein this differeth from the former proposition : i am sure it containeth no new matter : and therefore i should have taken no notice of it ; but that p. 21. he bringeth some citations that need a little to be examined . altho' i can by no diligence find some of the places that he citeth , yet by chance i have light on these : and the words he useth afford a plain answer to his argument brought from them . for his first citation out of ep. 33. ( i find it in ep. 27. ) it maketh nothing at all for the bishop's sole power , nor for his being further the principle of vnity , than what i have above granted . the case was this , some of the lapsed who had been received to the peace of the church , ( as they pretended ) by the means of some martyrs ; wrote to cyprian that they were now received by the church , and desired that they might be more fully restored by cyprian and the church with him : cyprian took it ill that they should write to him as from a church , whereas they that had received them , nor they themselves , were no church ; but in this had neglected the authority of them who were truly the church . in all this cyprian saith nothing but what is according to the principles of presbyterians : if any should pretend to receive penitents , even tho' they were elders in a congregation , or ministers in a presbytery , without the moderator , without the elders , or the presbytery , respectivè ; we should blame them , for usurpation , and disorderly walking . and it is very observable , that cyprian in this very passage saith , that ecclesia in episcopo & clero , & omnibus stantibus est constituta : then it is not the bishop who is the church : what he saith of the church as being built on the bishop , is already cleared : he saith indeed , omnis actus ecclesiae per eosdem praepositos gubernatur : in which our author sheweth but little skill , when he translateth these words , all her ( the churches ) affairs are ordered by them as the chief rulers : where it should be turned , by the same who are set over her ( the church : ) and i think that it will not be denyed that presbyters are praepositi , and are set over the church : he saith no more then , but the church is founded on the bishop , that is , his sound doctrine , as was before explained , and her affairs are ruled by the same praepositi ; that is , the bishops , and others having ecclesiastical authority with them : for presbyters are the same with bishops in this ; and that cyprian meaneth so , may be gathered from his varying the word episcopus into praepositus . again granting , that all the acts of the church are ruled by the bishop , this will not prove that they are ruled by him alone . his other testimony out of what he calleth epistle 43 , is far less to his purpose ; felicismus , with his faction ( who formerly had opposed cyprian's election to be bishop ) in his retirement , not only without him , but without the concurrence of the presbytery , or congregational eldership , ( i shall not determine which of these the church of carthage was then governed by ) received some of the lapsed : which i , as well as my antagonist do reckon a very disorderly action ; this cyprian doth justly blame : and that on this ground , that they set up another altar in that church , that is , they threw off the church authority that was regularly placed in carthage ; and set up another beside : we also would blame them who would cast off the authority of the presbytery , or kirk-session , and set up another . what is cyprian's meaning is yet clearer from what our author unwarily citeth out of his book de unittae ecclesiae . an esse sibi cum christo videtur qui adversus christi sacerdotes facit ? qui se à cleri ejus & plebis societate secernit ? where he describeth schisme to be when some depart from the rulers and members of the church ( not from the bishop alone ) and that is to be understood , while they keep god's way . § . 30. his third preposition is , that cyprian maketh the contempt of one bishop , or undutifulness to him , the original of schisme . i am so far from opposing him in this , that i think when people begin to quarrel with the meanest of christs ministers , ( unless his life , or doctrine , or government , give just cause ) that they sin against god , contemn his ordinance , and are on the brink of schisme ; if not haeresie also : and i am sure all that he citeth out out of cyprian on this head , amounteth to no more except a word or two , which i shall a little consider . when he speaketh of one bishop , i understand him of one praeses , whether in a congregational , or classical presbytrey , and that in conjunction with them : who opposeth such authority opposeth christ's institution . he mentioneth p. 23. as also p. 32. the bishops monarchical power in the church ; and maketh cyprian prove it by the bees who have a king , the beasts who have a captain , and robbers who have a chiftain . it is evident to any who consider cyprian's other writings , that he never arrogated to himself a monarchical power over the church ; for he plainly disowneth it as we shall after have occasion to shew : but he is here dealing with one pupianus , who had reproached cyprian as proud and arrogant , here cyprian defendeth himself , and retorteth the same charge of arrogance on pupianus in that he took on him to arraign the bishops and rulers of the church ; and had denyed his power in the church : and he sheweth what inconveniency it were to the church , if all this time the church of carthage had been governed by a man who had no authority : and in this he bringeth the similitude of the bees , &c. will any think that cyprian was so weak as to take this for a sufficient argument to prove monarchical power in the church : he only bringeth it as a similitude to illustrate this truth , that there must be a government in the church , and it had been ill with the church of carthage , if so long a time they had one over them who was no lawful ruler : which is no determination of the extent of cyprian's power ; neither was that the question between him and pupianus . § . 31. i proceed to his fourth proposition , p. 24. the bishop was so much the principle of vnity ; the people had such dependence on him , and was so virtually in him , that what he did as bishop , was reputed the deed of the whole church ; which he ruled . and to confirm this , he bringeth instances , that churches were blamed for communicating with criminal bishops , and that they did not separat from them ; and are commended for the bishops owning the truth . had our author thought fit to peruse and consider his papers before he printed them , it is like we should not have been troubled with such crude notions . for 1. how can this be reconciled to what he had a little before-pleaded , concerning the horrid sinfulness of separating from their bishop ; and this without any distinction or limitation . 2. he is so unwise as to add one word that spoileth all his design , viz. as bishop , for what a bishop acteth as bishop , he acteth in the consistory , or the presbytery ; and by the plurality of their votes : and that is indeed the fact of the church representative , and of the church diffusive too , if they shew no dislike of it ; but this is no semblance of proof of the power of bishops that he pleadeth for . cyprian's rhetorical flourish in saying , that when cornelius confessed the faith before the persecutors , the whole roman church confessed ; is no more but that cornelius gave a faithful testimony to that doctrine , that he had preached among that people , and that they received , and did still owne ; is this an argument that cornelius had the sole power of church-government in rome . yea , all this might have been said of any member of that church who had so confessed , and the church did not reclaim , but professed the same truth ; it is far less probative , that cyprian desired to suffer at carthage , rather than else where , that he might in confession be the mouth of them all . and least of all is it an argument , that he calleth them his bowels , his body , their grief was his grief , &c. we must abandon all sense and reason , if these pass for concludent arguments . of the same weight is what he bringeth out of pontius , of the blessedness of the people of carthage , who suffered together with such a bishop . i beg the readers pardon for troubling him with such silly arguments , which need no answer . § . 32. his fifth proposition , that the bishops being the principle of vnion to his church , was held before the cyprianick age : this , i say needeth no further animadversion : for it bringeth no new thing ; neither is it to be imagined that ignatius , whom he citeth , meant that the sole authority of the bishop , rather than the doctrine that he taught from the infallible word of god , was the principle of vnity to the church : or , that they who belong to christ are with the bishop , whether he teacheth truth or error : it is a vast mistake that he saith , that cyprian , ep. 33. pleadeth for the divine right of episcopacy in that ep. ( which is ( mihi ) 27 ) he pleadeth for the divine authority of the church , and her bishops ; that is , pastours : not for a divine warrant for the praelation of some of them above others : nothing can be more evident than the concurrent testimonies of antiquity against this fancy : scripture , and the most antient of the fathers speak of bishops and presbyters indistinctly ; when the distinction began to be taken notice of , jerome saith that it was brought in by the presbyters themselves : ep. ad evagr. as also on tit. and aug. ep. 10. referreth to ecclesiae usus . yea , concil . nic. 1. can. 6. maketh the distinction of bishops , as metropolitans , &c. to be mos antiquus : all that followeth , § . 37 , 37 , 36. doth also confute this opinion . but this i insist not on , because our author hath put off the proof of that divine institution of episcopacy , to his next essay , p. 94. his sixth and last proposition is , that the principle of the bishops being the center of vnity is most reasonable and accountable in it self . we may now expect some herculean argument , and the highest effort of his skill : and i am willing that the whole controversie be hanged on this pin. all that he bringeth for argument is , every particular church is an organical , political body ; and there can be no organical body without a principle of vnity , on which all the members must hang , and from which being separated , they must cease to be members ; and who so fit for being principle of vnity to a church as he who is pastour , ruler , governour , captain , head , judge , christs vicar , &c. not his conclusion only , but an assumption is understood , viz. the bishop is all this , ergo he is the center of vnity ; and his quod erat demonstrandum followeth a little after , it is scarce possible to prove any thing of this nature more demonstratively . one might make sport with this argument , which is introduced , and backed with such parade : but i am in earnest in this debate . there are here no less than three premisses expressed , and a fourth necessarily understood , before we can reach the conclusion ; which every logician will condemn ; and when we are at last , through all these stages , arived at the conclusion , it is above distinguished , and his argument can reach no more than is by us confessed : besides this , it is hard to shew how these his premisses hang together , or what connection they have . further , that the principle of vnity in a political body is one person and cannot be a society , the consistory , or the presbytery in the church , will hardly be proved : by this argument there can be no unity in a common-wealth , but only in monarchy , aristocracy , and democracy in a nation are here not only made unlawful , but impossible . that the bishop is fittest to be the principle of unity in the church is gratis dictum : yea , it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : notwithstanding of the metaphorical appellations that our author giveth him , from some of the antients . yea , if a society cannot be the center of unity in a particular church , who shall be the center of unity among bishops ; we must surely have the pope for this use , which is indeed the native conclusion of our author's argument that he braggeth so much of . but this will afterward occurre . § . 33. he cometh now ( p. 27. ) to another argument : a bishop in cyprian's age , was supreme in his church , immediatly subject to christ , had no ecclesiastical superior on earth : the church was one , but divided into many precincts , each had its bishop who was their supreme . i am no further concerned in what he saith on this head ; but what he bringeth for the bishops supremacy . wherefore i insist not on his first proposition , concerning the equality of bishops ; i only observe that he is for parity in the church ; and if it be found among bishops , i know no scripture nor reason that condemneth it among presbyters . to the same purpose is his second preposition , and his third , all which are levelled against the supremacy of the bishop of rome ; whose cause i do not intend to plead . wherefore i come to examine his 4th proposition , p. 31. by the principles of these times , every bishop was christs vicar , within his own district : so , say i , is every minister of the gospel ; understanding by vicar , one who deriveth his power from christ , and to him must give account of it . he saith further , that a bishop had a primacy in his own church . if he mean that he was primus presbyter ; i denyed it not , if that he had the sole power in his own person , or that the presbyters had not a coordinate power with him in the government of the church , i deny it . neither is it proved by cyprian's words , which he citeth ; cathedram sibi constituere , & primatum assumere : which i cannot find by what directions he giveth , and therefore cannot tell what might be further said for vindicating them . the next expression admiteth of the same answer , viz. that he managed the ballance of government ; it is not said that he did this by himself ; our moderator manageth the ballance of government , but with the presbytery . the sublime sacerdotii fastigum , signifieth no more than primus presbyter : the antients use as big words for as low things : neither do i know any higher degree in those days : if my antagonist will prove it , he must use other topicks , than words that may admit various significations . the same i say of the expressions that follow , the vigor episcopatus , the sublimis & divina potestas gubernandae ecclesiae ; this last may agree to the meanest member of a presbytery ; are not presbyters called by cyprian such as are divino sacerdotio honorati : and gloriosi sacerdotes as himself citeth . p. 7. to what purpose he citeth jerome for the parity of bishops , and saith that i will not reject his testimony , i understand not . i shall neither oppose him nor jerome in that principle . § . 34. he bringeth another argument , ( p. 32. ) from the high priest among the jews , and saith , that a bishop was the same to christians , that he was to the jews . i see the learned author is very unhappy in stumbling upon popish arguments , and he can say litle for his bishop , but what they say for their pope : and it is evident , that the papists from this medium , argue with much more shew of reason : for the high priest had universal supream authority over the universal church , that then was ; the papists infer the pope's universal head-ship : tho' i am far from thinking this argument concludent for them ; yet what shew of confequence can it have for a bishops power in his diocess ? or with what face can this author say , that a bishop is the same to presbyters and deacons , that he was to the levites , unless he say that a bishop was the same to all the presbyters and deacons in the world that the high priest was to all the levites in the world . cyprian's reasons , brought from the high priest , have much more sense in them than these of our author : for he pleadeth no more from that topick , but that as the high priest was to be obyed , and not resisted , so is the bishop . as the high priest was reverenced , even by christ , so is the bishop ; we say the same : that a bishop acting in his sphere , with his consistory , or presbytery , should be obeyed and respected : and we count it the same sort of sin in schismaticks , who rebel against this church authority , with kora's rebellion against aaron : but it is utterly inconsequential to infer church monarchy from aaron's power . i wish he had brought any thing that might look like proof of this consequence . he saith , p. 34. that the christian hierarchie was copied from that of the jews ; and he bringeth arguments for it , such as they are , one is from the names , priest , priesthood , altar , sacrafice , &c. which he calleth a pregnant argument ; i cannot but still observe how much the papists owe him ; not only for their pope , but for their unbloody sacrifice , what ? must we have all that of the old testament whereof we retain the names ? if so , we must have a new gospel . this argument is easily delivered of its pregnancy , by denying the consequence . his other argument is from an ep. of clement of rome , who lived in the apostles times : wherein he exhorteth to order , and every ones keeping his station , and then reckoneth up several subordinations under the old testament . a. clement useth the old testament hierarchy as a simile , to illustrate new testament subordination of officers in the church ; ergo we must have the same officers , and they must have the same power that these had , non sequitur : neither was such a consequence intended by clement : for a second answer , our author may know that that , and others of the epistles that go under clement's name are rejected , as none of his , by learned men , and on solid grounds . § . 35. he hath a long discourse , beginning p. 34. at the end , to shew that my definition of a bishop , is consistent with none of the three principles last mentioned , which were current in the cyprianick age ; much less with all three together . i have already shewed , how far these principles were held in that age ; and how our notion of a bishop agreeth with them all . what seemeth to be further argumentative in this harangue , i shall consider . he saith the bishops being the principle of vnity , doth not consist with his being a single presbyter ; where there were fourty six presbyters ; as at rome : there would rather be fourty six principles of divisions , and make the church a monster with fourty six heads . answ . 1. i retort this argument : in the first council of nice , ( for example ) where were three hundred bishops , what was the principle of unity ? or , were they three hundred principles of division ? and a church meeting , or a church representative , that was so monstrous as to have three hundred heads ? what he will answer in the one case , i will answer in the other . and indeed this argument destroyeth the parity of bishops , which he pleadeth for , as well as of presbyters ; and its native conclusion is , we must either have the papacy over the church , or anarchy in it . a. 2. where there are many such presbyters as our author pleadeth for , we say the bishop was the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and not a single presbyter . a. 3. in a particular flock , where are many ruling , but not teaching presbyters , the bishop or minister , is such a principle of vnity , as i have above owned : and where there are more bishops in one church , the principle of unity , is their teaching the same doctrine : as is above explained . he next alledgeth , that a moderator cannot be the principle of vnity in a presbytery ; seing as such , he is neither pastor , governour , nor christian ; but may be a heathen . a. this wild notion , that a heathen may be moderator in a presbytery , i have fully refuted , § . 8. to the first part of his argument , i say , that not the moderator alone , but with the presbytery , is the principle of vnity , while they all teach the same truths , and adhere to the one rule of our faith , and practice , the word of god : any other bond , or cement , by which men can be united , which lyeth in the authority of a man , rather than in the true doctrine , is an antichristian fancy ; and tendeth to enslave the conscience to the will of man. we know no such uniting head as he telleth of , but christ , ephes . 4. 15 , 16. neither did ever cyprian dream of such a head of the church next he will make our notion of a bishop inconsistent with his other principls , the bishop's supremacy , and independency . i have already shewed , that the church in cyprian's time , knew no such supremacy , nor independency : but held , and practised a subordination , not of many to one , but of every one to the collective body , and of every lesser body to the greater , of which it was a part . i see no reason nor scripture ground for independency , whether of single pastors and congregations , or of presbyteries , or of bishops ; and their provincial synods . his third principle , the hierarchy under the gospel , being the same with that under the old testament , i have refuted , as a groundless fancy ; and therefore am under no obligation to shew the consistency of our parity with it . § . 36. from p. 37. he layeth down principles that would afford stronger , and more pertinent arguments , than any we have yet met with , if he can but sufficiently establish these principles . he mentioneth three , viz. 1. the bishop's sole power in many acts of government and discipline . 2. his negative in all . 3. that all presbyters were subject to his authority and jurisdiction . if all this be true , our cause is lost : but we are not afraid to try it with him , through his help whose cause we plead . before i engage in this debate with him , i desire the reader will reflect on what i observed , § . 10. that if we can bring testimonies to prove a parity of power among presbyters : and that domination over them by one , was condemned , or disowned in cyprian's time ; his bringing testimonies to the contrary , will not be found concludent : for contradictory assertions derogate from the authority of the asserter : or seeming contradictions must be reconciled by a fair exposition : or , such testimonies will prove , that the practice and principles of the churches of that age , were not uniform ; any of which would weaken his cause . i shall not here repeat the citations that are full to this purpose , which i have on diverse occasions mentioned . nor need i confine my self to cyprian's age alone : seing our author pretendeth to no less antiquity for his way , than from the apostles down ward ; yea , all the ages of the church ; and all the churches of every age : and we acknowledge that after the third century , church-government was much altered to the worse . i shall begin with ignatius , both because his testimony is argumentum ad hominem , at least , seing my antagonist , and his party , lay so much stress on his epistles : also , because if he speak for parity , it may abate the force of all that they bring out of his writings to the contrary . what i shall alledge from him , i find cited by the famous arch-bishop vsher , in his original of bishops and metropolitans , ignat. ep. ad trallianos . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. be subject to the bishop as to the lord ; and after ▪ be subject to the presbytery as to the apostles of jesus christ our hope . also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. he that doth any thing without the bishop , and the presbyters , and the deacons , such an one is defiled in conscience . and again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. farewel in christ jesus , being subject to the bishop , and also to the presbyters . here it is plain that church authority , to which the people must be subject , is not given to the bishop alone , but to the presbytery also ; and indeed to them both acting conjunctly . i need not transcribe what is , with much plainness , cited to our purpose , by blondel ; out of both the clements , polycarpus , justin ; and others of the first of the fathers . i only mention clem. alexand. strom. lib. 7. penes presbyteros est disciplina quae facit homines meliores . tertullian apolog. c. 39. praesident probati quique seniores . viz. in their meetings for discipline : where were admonitiones , castigationes , & censurae divinae . he is speaking of the discipline of a congregation ; and ascribeth the government of it to a community , not to a single person . the clergy of rome in their epistles to cyprian , ( which is ep. 31. ) do plainly declare their opinion about the receiving the lapsed ; that it should be done collatione consiliorum cum episcopis , presbyteris , diaconis , confessoribus , & stantibus laicis : this they mean of the general method that should be laid down for it ; it should be advised about by as many as can give counsel : but when they speak of the authoritative sentence ; they say , it should not be done ab uno : then not by a bishop acting by sole authority . cypr. ep. 10. § . 3. writing to the clergy of carthage , and shewing the evil of overturning church discipline , as had been done by some of their number ; he telleth them , erunt rei qui praesunt , & haec fratribus non suggerunt , ut instructi à praepositis faciant omnia cum dei timore . where it is evident that they owned them as praepositi ; and charge on them the duty of giving faithful warning , according to that their character : whence it followeth that he did not look on himself as being the only praepositus , or ruler of that church . and ep. 28. he commendeth the clergy of carthage , ( while himself was absent from them ) that they had debarred from communicating with them gaius presbyter diddensis , and his deacon , who had communicated with the lapsed : and he telleth them that they had acted like men of integrity , and according to the discipline of the church : integre & cum disciplina fecistis . if he had the sole power , this fact of theirs had been quite contrary to church discipline . if any say , that they did this with the advice of some of cyprian's collegues , that is , bishops . a. whether these were bishops or not , we know not : but they only gave advice , the authoritative act was by the clergy of carthage . ep. 55. § . 17. cyprian compareth the number of presbyters and deacons who had concurred in condemning ( affuerunt judicio & cognitioni ) some schismaticks ; with the number of them that stood for them : which is a clear argument that the clergy , with the bishop , not onely consulted , but judicially determined , in church affairs . and in the same epist . § . 21. speaking to cornelius bishop of rome , he expresly mentioneth the clergy as ruling the church with cornelius : his words are , florentissimo clero illic tecum praesidenti . also epist . 58. he hath words of the like importance , § . 2. qui cum episcopo presbyteri sacerdotali honore conjuncti . it is also evident in many of cyprian's epistles , that he divideth the clergy in praepositos ( which word doth manifestly signifie rulers ) and deacons . so epist . 62 , 65. and elsewhere . i only add out of cyprian epist . 6. § . 4. doleo enim quando audio — nec à diaconis aut presbyteris regi posse . pamelius's note on this passage maketh it yet more plain for us ; tho' he was a papist , and no presbyterian . hinc ( saith he ) non obscurè colligitur , viguisse adhuc carthagini , aetate auctoris , praerogativam presbyterorum & diaconorum primitivae ecclesiae ; qua communi totius presbyterii , i. e. presbyterorum & diaconorum collegii , consilio , administrabantur omnia ab episcopis : and he citeth to confirm this , ignatius , as i have before cited him . if any say pamelius attributeth to the presbytery but consilium ; it is plain that cyprian speaketh of their ruling power . § . 37. contemporary with cyprian was firmilianus bishop of caesarea in cappadocia ; who doth fully declare for presbyterial government , in his epist . to cyprian , which is the 75. of ep. cypr. for § . 3. he hath these words , qua ex re necessario apud nos fit ; ut per singulos annos seniores & praepositi in unum conveniamus ; ad disponenda ea quae curae nostrae commissa sunt ; ut si quae graviora sunt , communi consilio dirigantur . and § . 6. omnis potestas & gratia in ecclesia est constituta , ubi praesident majores natu ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) qui & baptizandi , & manum imponendi & ordinandi possident potestatem . it is to be observed , that frequent mention is made in this epistle of episcopi , bishops , and pamelius thinketh that this ep. being turned out of greek into latine by cyprian , to whom it was written , by praepositus is meant bishop , and by senior presbyter , whence it is evident , that here all church power is ascribed to the presbyter that is given to the praepositus or bishop . at the same time was pontius one of cyprian's deacons ▪ and his constant attendant , and who well knew his principles ; he wrote cyprian's life , and in that history he hath these words , nulla mora , nulla dilatio presbyterium & sacerdotum statum ( that is presently after his conversion to christianity ) accepit : quis enim non omnes honorum gradus crederet tali menti : where it is plain that pontius thought that all church degrees were included in sacerdotium & presbyterium ; which he taketh for one . and a little below he joineth sacerdotium & episcopatus as the same office that cyprian was chosen to , while he was neophytus , and as was thought novellus . from all this it appeareth that cyprian was made priest , presbyter and bishop all at once , as being the same thing . gregor . nazianz. ( who flourished in the fourth century ) in his apology , telleth us of the apostles making canons for bishops and presbyters , 1 tim. 3. and tit. 1. whether their office may be called a ministry , or rule of government ; his words are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . he saith likewise of them , that they ( by their promotion to be presbyters ) ascend from being ruled to be rulers : that they have authority , not over a flock ; but over mens souls : and other very sublime powers he ascribeth to them . and in his orations , he is as profuse in extolling the dignity and authority of presbyters , as any other in exalting bishops . he saith , as many as are ordain'd , are chosen to the high thrones of presbytery 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that he speaketh not of bishops as distinct from presbyters , is plain , for the design of his discourse , especially in his apology , is to shew how the apostle directed bishops and presbyters by the same canons , without distinguishing them , or their work ; and that onely custom had raised the bishop above them as their praeses . § . 38. i next bring ambrose as a witnes for us ; in his epistle to syagrius , he sheweth , that when he and syagrius had severally passed sentence on a delinquent , the church was unsatisfied with the sentence of syagrius , and gave the reason , because he had done it by himself , sine alicujus fratris consensu ; but acquiesced in the sentence passed by ambrose , because ( saith he ) hoc judicium nostrum cum fratribus & con-sacerdotibus participatum processit . whence it is plain to have been the principle of those days , that the bishop had not sole jurisdiction : however some were then grasping at it . chrysostom . homil. 11. in 1. tim. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. omitting the order of presbyters , he ( the apostle ) passeth to the deacons . why so ? because there is no great difference : for they are ordained for teaching and governing ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) the church ; and what he had said of bishops , he applyeth to the presbyters . if then chrysostom was for the bishop's sole jurisdiction , let any judge . august . ep. 19. quanquam secundum honorum vocabula quae jam ecclesiae usus obtinuit , episcopatus presbyterio major sit , tamen in multis rebus augustinus hieronymo minor est . where it may be observed , to our purpose , 1. that augustine placeth the praelation of a bishop above a presbyter , in the title of dignity , but speaketh not a word of superior power . 2. he not only insinuateth , that that difference ( such as it was ) had its original , not from divine institution , but humane custom ; but he speaketh of it as lately setled , jam obtinuit : this was after 420 years : it was neither constant , nor universal , till then . salvianus maketh the levitae & sacerdotes to be the apostles successors ; not mentioning bishops as distinct . so gildas frequently speaketh of bishops and presbyters promiscuously . i hope i may also adduce jerom , a presbyter , as a witness , as well as they do other fathers who were bishops . he giveth all manner of church power to presbyters , and not to bishops only . ep. ad heliodorum . presbytero ( saith he ) si peccavero , licet me tradere satanae in interitum carnis . et ep. ad demetrium ; sunt quos ecclesia reprehendit , quos interdum abjicit , in quos nonnunquam episcoporum & presbyterorum censura desaevit . ambrose giveth account , ep. 80. of the excommunication of jovinianus , and others with him , by syricius bishop of rome ; whose words to ambrose were , omnium nostrum tam presbyterorum , quam diaconorum , quam totius cleri scissitata fuit sententia . it is shewed , § . 37. that penitents were to be received by the bishop and clergy ; as cypr. ep. 12. it were then strange , if they were cast out by the bishop alone . i desire the reader ( who can ) for further satisfaction , would read paul baynes diocesan's trial : and mr. peregrin letters patents of presbytery : they having somewhat that is singular on this subject . § . 39. let us now examine what he is pleased to bring for the bishop's sole power in the church ; and against the parity that we have asserted . and first , i shall examine his three principles above-mentioned . the first of which is , there were several considerable acts of power , belonging to the government and discipline of the church , which belonged solely to the bishop ; several powers lodged in his person , which he could manage by himself , and without the concurrence of any other church-governour . of this sort he reckoneth eight , viz. confirmation , ordination , settling presbyters , disposal of church revenues , imposing charitable contributions , convocating the presbyters and deacons , indicting publick fasts , delegating two of his presbyters . these i shall consider distinctly , with his proofs for what he asserteth about them . for the first of these , confirmation of the adult , who had in their infancy been baptized ; at first it was no more , but after diligent instructing them in the grounds of religion , bringing them to the pastor of the church , ( and probably before the eldership ) that they might be tryed in their proficiency , and so declared fit to receive the lord's supper : in which nothing can be blamed . afterward it came to be more theatrically managed , and imposition of hands was the ceremony by which it was set off : till at last it came to be esteemed a sacrament . now when it was thus turned from the simplicity of god's ordinance , to be a pompous device of man , ( not a few of which were crept into the church in , yea before cyprian's age ) it is not strange , if they committed not the managing of it to all , to whom christ had committed his ordinances ; but to one of their own chusing . our debate is , whether the bishop had sole power of managing any of christ's ordinances ; of which number this is not . yet i find litle strength in our author's arguments for this power in the bishop . his first proof is , cypr. ep. ad jubajanum , it was the custom to offer such as were baptized to the bishops , that by their prayers , and the laying on of their hands , they might receive the holy ghost , and be consummated by the sign of our lord : which our author taketh to be the sign of the cross . here cyprian useth the word praepositis , which our author is pleased to translate bishops ; whereas presbyters also were called by that name . for cyprian , ep. 3. § . 1. the roman clergy , ( when they had no bishop , ) said of themselves , that it appeared that they were praepositi ; and thence inferred , that it was incumbent on them to take care of the flock : and they speak of idle shepherds as neglegentes praepositi , whose reproof was to be a warning to them . and cypr. ep. and jubajan . which is 69. § . 4. plainly calleth the successors of the seventy disciples , as well as these of the apostles , praepositos : for of them that place luc. 10. 16. which he citeth , is to be understood . and ep. 62. § . 1. he sheweth how church discipline is to be regarded , à praepositis & plebe . and ep. 65. § . 4. he mentioneth episcopos & praepositos , as distinct . and ep. 21. which is celerini ad lucium , § . 3. quorum jam causa audita , praeceperunt eos praepositi sic esse donec episcopus constituatur . and de lapsis , § . 4. praepositos superbo tumore contemnere : it is spoken of all the rulers of the church . for a further refutation of this his principle , it may be observed , that this confirmation , of which cyprian here speaketh , is not that which in our days goeth under that name ; but that used in the apostolick church , the effect of which , was the giving of the holy ghost ; as is clear from his citing act. 8. 14 , &c ▪ for the pattern of what they did , and their warrant for it . now that imposition of hands was not given to all the baptized ; but only to such as were ad ministerium ordinandi , saith lightfoot : it was not ad sanctificationem , sed ad dona extraordinaria ; saith the same author . piscator , beza , grotius , do also so expound this place : wherefore it proveth nothing , except our author can tell us what cyprian meant by it : which i can not ; seing the extraordinary gifts of the holy ghost were then ceased , for any thing that we know . his next citation , out of firmilian , destroyeth what it is brought for ; for he ascribeth to bishops the power of baptism , confirmation , ordination : his word is , they possess this power : i hope he will not say that presbyters had no power in baptism : wherefore by bishops here firmilian must mean the pastors of the church ; all of whom were frequently called bishops at that time : yea , himself confesseth , that these spoken of , were the majores natu , whom he most absurdly pleadeth to be bishops , as distinct from preaching presbyters . of as little weight is what cornelius saith of novatianus ( eusebius maketh cornelius say this of novatus , chap. 42. ) that he was not confirmed by the bishop ; for in that place cornelius questioned not only the confirmation of novatus , but his baptism : and that he speaketh not of the ordinary confirmation , but of that which belonged to priests , is clear ; for he saith , how then came he by the holy ghost ? and he is there pleading his incapacity to be a bishop , on that account . but of this too much : for it doth not hurt our cause if it be granted that bishops then were so far distinguished from other presbyters , that they usurped a power which our lord had not given to them , nor any man else , at that time ; what ever he had before done to them whom he immediatly sent , and extraordinarly endowed . § . 40. the second act of power that he ascribeth to the cyprianick bishop alone is , he had the sole power of ordination ; and that of whatsoever clergy-men within his district . ordinations could not be performed without him : but he could perform them regularly without the concurrence of any other church-officer : and he saith , this hath so frequently and fully been proved by learned men , that he need insist little on it . all which we deny : neither do i find any argument here brought by him , nor have i found in the writings of his learned men ( and i may , without vanity , say , i have seen the strongest of them ) which might be a rational ground of conviction . before i examine his proofs for this assertion , i shall prove the antithesis : that presbyters did , in that age , and before , joyn in the ordination of presbyters . and first , it is evident from jerom's words , so much insisted upon by our episcopal brethren , alexandriae , a marco evangelista usque ad heracleam & dionysium espiscopos , presbyteri semperunum ex se electum , in excelsiori gradu collocatum , episcopum nominabant . whence it may fairly be deduced , that till an. christi 246 , all the power or authority that the bishop had , was given him by the presbyters ; they elected him , nor had he any other ordination , or communication of power , but what he had from them ; in the opinion of jerome . if then the presbyters made a bishop ; it could not be he alone , but the bishop with them , and as one of them who made presbyters . 2. hilarius , who lived in the midle of the fourth century , in eph. 4. hath these words , apud aegyptum presbyteri consignaverunt , si praesens non fuit episcopus . whether ye interpret consignaverunt of confirmation , as some , or consecration of church-officers , as others , it cometh to the same conclusion : seing our author and his complices , reserve both these powers to the bishop ; and it is probable they were not divided . that they did it absente episcopo , doth imply that they had that authority ▪ for without it they could not have done it at all . 3. novatus a presbyter in carthage , while cyprian was bishop : ordained felicissimus : this ordination ( tho' no doubt it was irregular , being done without the moderator and the presbytery ) yet it was not lookt on as null , but novatus was , after that , owned by cyprian : and felicissimus continued to be a deacon . to this our author answereth p. 42. that not novatus , but neighbouring bishops by the procurement of novatus , did it . but cyprian's words are plain ; felicissimum diaconum sua factione constituit . that this deacon was ordained by bishops is gratis dictum . i have also elsewhere proved , that in scotland there were presbyters ruling the church , long before they had bishops : which could not be if none but bishops could ordain them . § . 41. cyprian ep. ( mihi ) 33. in ordinationibus clericis , solemus vos ante consulere , ut mores & merita singulorum communi consilio ponderarem , &c. in that ep. he telleth the church what was his usual practice ; and we have cause to think that he lookt on it as his duty not to ordain without the presbyters : commune consilium here can import no less than deliberation and authoritative decision , for it was common to him and them . in the following part of the epistle , he excuseth his ordaining anrelius a lector , without them , from the evidence of a divine call : and the present distress and scattering of the church might excuse this necessary diverting from the common road : yet he telleth them , he did not this by himself , but hunc igitur fratres dilectissimi , à me & à collegis qui praesentes aderant ordinatum sciatis ; quod vos scio & libenter amplecti , & optare tales in ecclesia nostra quem plurimos ordinari . he maketh the like excuse , ep. 24. for his ordaining saturus a lector and optatus a sub-deacon : only here he had before hand the common consent ; but his circumstances ( being in his retirement ) did not suffer this to be done in and with the presbytery ; but that he did it not alone , we may gather from the former instance . this doth sufficiently shew that ordinations were not performed without the determination of the presbytery . but it is also manifest , that in the solemnizing of them , by imposition of hands , the presbyters had their share with the bishop . cypr ep. 10. § . 2. there is mention of impositio manum episcopi & cleri , and that two several times . if it be said , that this imposition of hands was for absolving penitents ; the consequence is good from the one to the other , seing our author joyneth confirmation in order to communion ( of which this is a sort ) with ordination , as two powers reserved to the bishop alone . ep. 67. § . 4. he saith of cornelius bishop of rome , that he was ordained suffragi● , cleri & plebis , concil . carthag . 3. canon . 22. nullus ordinetur clericus non probatus , vel episcoporum ( not episcopi ) examine , vel populi testimonio . concil . carthag . 4. can. 3. presbyter cum ordinatur ; episcopo eum benedicente , & manum super caput ejus tenente , etiam omnes presbyteri qui adsunt manus suas juxta manum episcopi super caput ejus teneant . this is exactly our practice , if ye allow the moderator to be the cyprianick episcopus . our author himself seemeth to insinuat , that the presbyters with cyprian , used to concur in ordination ; while he premiseth to his proofs for sole ordination , that passage out of ep. 14. ( as he quoteth it ) a primordio episcopatus mei statueram nihil sine consilio vestro & sine consensu plebis , mea privatim sententia gerere . i say , if this be not meant of ordination , it is here very impertinently brought in . nor can his comment on cyprian's words help him , viz. that this was his voluntary condescendence , that he was not bound to : to prove which he putteth statueram in majusculis as if it were not usual with good men when they enter on an office , to resolve to keep within the bounds of their power ; to manage it lawfully ; as well as to cede in what is their right . but that cyprian's words cannot bear that sense , i prove by the reason he giveth ; sic mutuus honor exposcit : the mutuus honor must be that due regard that he had to their authority in the church , and they ought to have to his : it had been a dishonouring of them , and setting them lower than christ had set them in his church , for him to mannage her affairs without them . and ep. 18. he maketh this matter yet clearer ; quae res , cum omnium nostrum consilium & sententiam spectet , praejudicare ego , & soli mihi rem communem vindicare non audeo . where it is manifest , that it was conscience of duty , and not good nature onely , that induced him to this conduct . also that he attributeth to presbyters not consilium onely , but sententiam ; not onely a consultative power , but also definitive , or decisive . the apostle who had indeed a sole jurisdiction , spake in another dialect , 1 cor. 5. i have judged already . cyprian durst not do so , because he knew he had not that sole power . § . 42. let us now hear his proofs for the bishop's sole power of ordination . the first is , what is said of the ordination of aurelius , which i have already shewed to be against him . wherefore i shall onely take notice of his observes on this passage , by which he would force it to speak for him . 1. that his power was the same in all ordinations . i shall not much contend about this : only , if they put the power of ordaining officers of their own devising into the hands of whom they would ; it doth not thence follow that they might , or did so dispose of ordaining power with respect to these whom god had appointed , and about whose ordination he had given rules in the word . 2. he used only to ask their counsel about the manners and merits of the person to be ordained ; not their concurrence in the act of ordination . this is a mistake , he asked not their counsel only , but their joynt suffrage , as is above shewed . that their concurrence in the act of ordination is not here mentioned , is not to his purpose ; seing it is consequential to their office , and church power . that it is fairly imported in the instance of aurelius that they used not to concur , is a groundless imagination ; for this is a single instance in an extraordinary case , and he spendeth a whole epistle in making apologie for it : yea , he more than insinuateth the contrary , when he telleth what he used to do , and giveth a singular reason for what he now did . i wonder that common sense doth not teach him that such an act doth not import a custom . 3. that it was intirely of his own easiness and condescendency that he consulted them in the matter : this i have above refuted ; and it is inconsistent with what himself elsewhere saith , that the bishop was the monarch , and the presbyters his senate : i hope he will not say that it is ex beneplacito that kings consult their parliaments : unless he be for the turkish government both in church and state. § . 43. another testimony ( which he calleth remarkable p. 40. ) is cyprian ep. 41. had given a deputation to caldonius and some others , to examine the ages , qualifications , and merits of some in carthage , that he , whose province it was to promote men to ecclesiastical offices , might be well informed about them , and promote none but such as were meek , and humble , and worthy . his remark is , he speaks of himself in the singular number , as having the power of promoting ; and he founds that power , and appropriats it to himself , upon his having the care of the church , and the government of her committed to him , for a. i observe a few things on this discourse . 1. this delegation of caldonius and the rest , was not to carthage , as our author dreameth ; which appeareth by the end of the epistle , in which he bids caldonius , &c. read this ep. to the brethren , and transmit it to carthage to the clergy : which had been incongruous if their errand and work had been at carthage . next , this is in consistent with what cyprian , and our author saith was his practice ; viz. to consult the presbyters about who were fit to be ordained : it is strange that he should send strangers to carthage for such enquiry , and to inform him , with the neglect of the presbytery . 2. it is also clear from the epistle , § . 1. that this negotiation was about some sufferers who belonged to the church of carthage ( may be , banished , or imprisoned , or confined some where ) where they were in necessity ; for he saith he sent them , ut expungeretis necessitates fratrum nostrorum sumptibus , &c. that they might pay their debts ( as pamelius expoundeth it ) and that they might furnish them for following their trades , if they so inclined : and the enquiry about their fitness for church-work seemeth to be intended on the by ; for he bringeth it in with simul etiam . 3. that he speaketh of himself in the singular number , doth no way infer that he alone was to promote any who were qualified among these sufferers : neither his having the care of church government committed to him : for ego cui cura incumbit promoverem , saith nothing at all of sole care , nor of sole power . not only a moderator , but any member of a presbytery , to whom the ordination of ministers belongeth , might say as much ; might desire to know worthy persons , and give the reason , that it is not curiosity , but it belongeth to my office to ordain such as are fit , and therefore i desire to know their qualities . his next citation hath no more strength : for it saith no more than that some in a state of schisme have been ordained by false bishops ; whence he inferreth , that all ordinations in the true , and in the false church were performed by bishops . this is not the question ; but whether they were ordained by bishops acting each of them alone . § . 44. he next bringeth ep. 39. where cyprian writeth to his clergy , that he had ordained celerinus ; and ep. 29. saturus , and optatus ; and that tho' some of them were but young , and he ordained them to inferior offices ; yet he designed they should sit with him in their riper years : that is , ( saith our author ) he designed them for the presbyterate . and he very learnedly observeth , that cyprian telleth his presbyters this in a very authoritative stile , even in a stile by which superiors used to signifie their will and pleasure to their subjects ; with a be it known unto you . here a little reflection will serve . 1. here is still the old fallacy ; cyprian ordain'd these persons , ergo , he did it alone . 2. it is so far from that , that of celerinus he saith expresly , it was done by him and his collegues , ep. 34. § . 1. as in the former , ep. 33. he had said of aurelius . 3. the present dissipation of the church , made some things necessary , which were neither usual , nor commendable out of that case : as that cyprian , with such as he could then get to concur with him , ordained some persons without the concurrence of the presbytery ; who then , it seems , through the persecution that was at carthage , could not get that work managed . 4. for cyprian's stile in his epistle to the presbytery , i think many moe will smile at his fancy , than will be convinced by the strength of his reason drawn from it : cyprian's word is , sciatis , which our author putteth in majusculis , to give his argument some more pith : but who knoweth not that this expression signifieth barely a notifying of a thing to another ; and is commonly used ( especially in the latine tongue ) to superiors , inferiors , or equals . it is a token of a mind deeply impressed with the majesty of a bishop , ( as he elsewhere expresseth himself , ) when this word doth so sound in his ears . the ordination of novatianus , which he next bringeth as an argument for him , rather is against him : it was an act condemned by the clergy and people , by cyprian's constant practice ; and that which he lookt on as duty , ( as hath been shewed before , ) and was the practice of an aspiring pope : yea which himself promised should not be made a praecedent . can any body think this is a good argument to prove the custom of that age ? neither can it be made appear , that this ordination was performed by the bishop alone : especially seing our author saith , the bishop prevailed and ordained him . it is like he prevailed with some , at least , of the clergy , tho' they did at first much resist it . he saith , p. 42. that any concurrence of presbyters with the bishop in ordination , is not to be found in cyprian ' s works , nor in his age. i hope the reader is by this time convinced of the contrary . he next , p. 43. bringeth for proof , the second canon of the apostles , commonly so called , which is , let a presbyter be ordained by one bishop , as likewise a deacon , and the rest of the clergy . but our author might know , that the authority of these canons , is controverted even among papists : as sixtus senensis , lib. 2. ad vocem clemens , p. ( mihi ) 62 , 63. and caranza . summa . concilior : and others shew . the contentions that are about the number of them , make them to be all suspected . rivet . critic . sacr. lib. 1. c. 1. p. 93. and p. martyr . loc. com. class . 4. c. 4. p. ( mihi ) 779. bring sufficient grounds for rejecting them , as neither done by the apostles , nor collected by clement , as is alledged . again if this canon were admitted , it proveth not the conclusion : for one bishop ordaineth , when the moderator with the presbytery doth it : and that canon is observed , when no more are called together to the ordination of a presbyter . his comparison of the bishop's power in this , with the rights of majesty in giving commissions , is vain talk : unless he can prove a monarchy , and that absolute in the church , which can never be done : for the canon mentioned , being universally received in cyprian's time , it is not without doubt , as he alledgeth , for all beveregius's arguments which he boasteth of ; but produceth none of them . one thing i cannot pass , p. 44. he telleth , that after cyprian's time , it was appointed by the canons , that presbyters should concur with the bishop in ordinations : which overthroweth all his discourse of the bishop's majesty , soveraignty , incontrollable and vnaccountable power , &c. and it is evident to any who is conversant in the history of the church , that episcopal power did rather continually increase , than suffer diminution , till it arrived at the height of the papacy , ( which in the best sense , is his sublime fastigium sacerdotii . ) and then indeed the pope began to clip the wings of other bishops , that he might crow over them . § . 45. his third prerogative of the bishop in cyprian's time , is his full power , without asking the consent or concurrence of either clergy or people , to setle presbyters within his district . and on this occasion he ridiculeth our principle of the peoples power of choosing their own ministers . all the prooff of this confident assertion , and insolent contempt of them who are otherwise minded , is , cyprian ep. 40. wrote to carthage , that they should receive numidicus as a presbyter among them : and our author addeth , probably he was ordained before . 1. if our author had pleased to state and argue the question about the power of election , i should have been willing to joyn issue with him . or if he had thought fit to answer what i have elsewhere written on that head , in a book that he hath seen , and cited , when he thought he could say something against it , i should have considered the strength of what he would say : but he doth wisely shun that controversie : neither shall i dip in it , further than is necessary for answering his book . 2. if numidicus was ordained before , then was he also placed in carthage before ; and we have cause to think that he was ordained by the consent and concurrence of the presbyters of carthage : at least our author cannot prove the contrary , which is necessary for establishing his conclusion . 3. he who animadverteth on pamelius's notes on cyprian , hath these words , on the beginning of the epistle , etsi vocatio numidici magis erat extraordinaria quam ordinaria , tamen non sine plebe carthaginense presbyterio ascribitur : whence he inferreth , that ordinations without their consent , are profanae & irritae . 4. his work is to prove that it was the practice and principle of the cyprianick-age , that a bishop by himself placed ministers : this cannot be inferred from one single instance ; and that in a time of persecution and dissipation ; and where there was so signal appearance of divine determination , that cyprian's words are , admonitos nos , & instructor dignatione divina , sciatis , ut numidicus presbyter adscribatur presbyterorum carthaginiensium numero . any who desireth to be fully satisfied in this point of election of pastors , let him read blondel . apolog. pro sententia hieron . from p. 379. to the end , even to p. 548. where it is traced through all the ages of the church . § . 46. the bishop's fourth priviledge is , he had the disposal of all the revenues of the church . this our author maintaineth p. 44 , &c. he had the full power of this , saith he , ibid. i here observe , that if we should yield all that he asserteth , it maketh nothing for the sole power of the bishop in jurisdiction , or government of the church : for these distributions were always reckoned a service , not any act of government in the church : the object of church power are not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . further , i observe , that the authoritative direction in managing these matters , did belong to all church rulers : the apostles had the power ; but they were not at leisure to attend the managing of these things , as our author's bishop is ; but committed it to deacons , who were officers appointed for that very end , act. 6. i observe thirdly , that however to be thus imployed , might sute well with the way and temper of the the bishops of our time ; who generally are more imployed about secular affairs , than in preaching : it was not consistent with the labour of the primitive bishops about the gaining of souls . fourthly , it is evident , that in the ages after the apostles , the deacons had the charge of the bona ecclesiastica ; ergo , not the bishop only . origen in matth. 16. mensis ecclesiasticarum pecuniarum diaconi praesunt . item , diaconi qui non bene traetant pecuniarum ecclesiasticarum mensas , & semper de eis fraudant , & ipsas quas dispensant non secundum justitiam dispensant & divites fiunt de rebus pauperum , ipsi sunt numularii pecuniarum , mensas habentes quas evertet dominus . it is fifthly to be observed , how absurd it is , and what a snare , for any one man to have the sole disposal of all the goods of the church , who may take what he will of them , for his propria portio , ( to use our author's words ) and give what he will to the other church-officers , and to the poor . this is a trust might make bad bishops ( and such there were even in cyprian's time ) a scandal , and might expose the best to obloquie : and lay a foundation for perpetual grumblings and discontents in the church : to prevent which , the lord by his apostles , appointed deacons to superintend that affair , act. 6. let us now hear what our author pleadeth for his opinion : he telleth us that the bishop not only had his propria portio , which he will have to be the third of all ; and he observeth , that this made fortunatianus and basilides so earnest for restitution to their sees , after deposition , ( and in our days maketh many sell , or ruine the church for these lucrative promotions ) but he affirmeth the bishop had also the disposal of the rest . for which his proof , first as to the clergies part ; felicissimus is blamed for contending about his share , contrary to his duty to his bishop : and others are praised who took their shares as the bishop should please to dispense them . a. 1. that the bishop here is meant in his sole , or single capacity ; and not rather in conjunction with the presbytery wherein he praesided , is denyed , and can never be proved . yea , the contrary is evident , ep. 41. ( which he citeth ) where speaking of them who were so tractable , he useth these words , & vobis acquiescere maluisse ; that is , submitted to their ( the presbyteries ) determination about their shares . 2. if a school boy should make such a version of latine into english , as our author here doth , he would be lasht for it . he turneth , episcopo dispensante , as the bishop should please to dispense them : whereas the bishop's dispensing , was nothing but his giving out sentence as the presbytery had determined ; not as he , by himself , pleased . likewise , he taketh no notice of these words , & vobis acquiescere maluisse : which is a great error in translation . 3. it is evident from cyprian's own words , that he did not act solely in this matter , but with the authoritative concurrence of the presbytery ; for a little before the words cited , he saith , cumque post haec omnia , nec loci mei honore motus , nec vestra authoritate & praesentia fractus , &c. where he blameth felicissimus for despising the bishops honour , and the presbyters authority : clearly insinuating the difference of the bishop and presbyters of his time , that he had more honour than they ; but not more authority . the same way are we to understand cyprian's promoting aurelius and celerinus only to the degree of lectors ; but entitleing them to the maintenance of presbyters : viz. that cyprian might propose this to the presbytery , tho' he could not effect it without them : his words are , presbyterii honorem designasse me illis , & ut sportulis iisdem — he designed it , because they were choice young-men , but it was the presbytery concurring with him , that must make this effectual . he saith for the poors part , the bishop's power in distributing it , is so evident from ep. 5. and 41. that i need not insist on it . a. in ep. 41. ( which is that we were just now debating about ) there is not one word to that purpose ; but that he had sent some to relieve the necessities of some sufferers : but out of what fond , whether his propria portio , or any other , is not said . and if it were out of the churches stock , it is not said he did this without the presbytery : he might very well say he did it , when the presbytery appointed it , and he put it in execution . what he saith in the 5. ep. is as fully against our author's design , as any thing can be . he bids them , both in discipline and diligence , act both their own parts and his . and he hath these words quantum autem ad sumptus suggerendos , sive illis qui gloriosa voce deum confessi , in carcere sunt constituti , sive iis qui pauperes & indigentes laborant , & tamen in domino perseverant , peto ut nihil desit : cum summa omnis quae redacta est , illic sit apud clericos distributa propter ejusmodi casus , &c. is it not here evident , that the clergy are intrusted with the poors money , and are to distribute it as need requireth : and that this distribution in cyprian's absence , was a doing of their own work and his ; so that they acted not as his delegats . further , they acted their own part and his , when one of them did praeside in their meetings in his absence : which was , in these days , his peculiar work ; neither do we find that he deputed one to praeside ; but left it to the presbytery , to choose whom they thought fit . he next bringeth the 38. and 41. canons of the apostles , to prove what he designed . i have above shewed what weight is to be laid on their authority . nor do they give this power to the bishop alone ; but the bishop is to be lookt on , with respect to what is there said , as praesiding in the presbytery . what he citeth out of justine martyr , saith no more , but the bishop hath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the care of the ecclesiastical goods : which we willingly yield to him , and to every one of the presbytery : but it is not said , he alone hath this care. he would have us believe , that this sole power of the bishop , is fairly founded on scripture : but citeth no place . i know no more where to find these places of scripture , than i know where to find some places of cyprian that he citeth . i am sure act. 6. maketh nothing for him ; but on the contrary . neither 2 corinth 8. and 9. chapters . for paul was a delegate in carrying that contribution to judea : and if he had claimed more power ; it will be hard to prove the bishop's power to extend as far as that of an apostle . § . 47. the bishop's fifth power that he alone possessed is , of imposing charitable contributions on all the christians within his district , for the relief of strangers , &c. for which he referreth to ep. 62. and 78. but citeth no words . i can find nothing to that purpose in either of them , as in my book . for his alledging soter bishop of rome , whom dionysius of corinth commendeth for this practice , cited by eusebius , lib. 4. cap. 23. ( mihi 22. ) there is no more in it , but that dionysius commendeth that church for their wonted charitable distributions to other churches ; and that soter had observed , and improved this custom : this may be fairly expounded of exhorting to charity without authoritative imposing of contributions ; which any minister may do . and if he did impose , it is not said he did it by himself , tho' he is only mentioned ; as , perhaps , being singularly active in stirring up both the presbytery and the people : and he was to publish in the church , the presbyteries determination in this . what is there in all this for a sole power in this matter ? his next full power is , indicting of fasts : for which he citeth tertullian de jejun . but it is observable that tertullian speaketh of bishops in the plural number ; now it is not to be thought that no fasts were indicted but by a meeting of diocesans : wherefore episcopi must be the presbytery . or if he mean the several bishops in their several churches : it may be rationally understood of the bishop's intimating to the people , what is by common consent determined ; not what he enjoyneth by his sole authority . the seventh branch of the bishop's prerogative is , to convocate the presbytery and deacons . and let him enjoy it , for it is what we grant to our moderator : and there is a natural necessity , that it be in the power of some person to call them together , when any emergent doth require it . and seing in cyprian's time , the bishop was the constant moderator , it was consequential that he should be the constant conveener . but what prerogative , or sole power this doth infer , or what ecclesiastick authority above the brethren it importeth , i cannot understand . let any who hath clear use of reason judge , how this proveth the bishop's managing the affairs of the church like a chief governour , as our author dreameth , p. 48. neither doth it appear , that the bishop might convocate the presbyters at pleasure , ( as he fancieth ) but when there was cause : as in the instance he bringeth there was . he bringeth in , on this occasion , an observation , that cornelius received these persons about whom he called the presbytery , without asking the peoples consent ; but acquainted them after it was done . but our author hath forgot what he had a few lines before said , that after they were received in the presbytery , the people were made acquainted with it ; not one word of the bishop's receiving them by himself . this is nothing contrary to presbyterian principles and practices . yea ( as if he had design'd to refute himself ) he citeth a letter of these persons , shewing that they were reconciled to the bishop , and to the whole clergy : where is then the bishop's sole power of receiving penitents ? he propoundeth to himself an objection ; that the presbyters at rome met in a vacancy , after the bishop's death : and at carthage , in the time of cyprian ' s retirement . to the second instance he answereth , that cyprian left a delegation for their meeting : which he proveth strangely : he wrote , ( ep. 5. ) that they should faithfully perform his office and their own : where , saith he , we have distinct offices , and an express setling of a delegation . a. for distinct offices , his mistake of the latine word hath misled him ; it is fungamini illic & vestris partibus & meis : i see not but one presbyter may say this to another . for his delegation , i think few others can perceive it in these words ; may not any member of a presbytery , but especially the moderator , say the same , by a letter to the presbytery ? it importeth no more but a warning to be vigilant in their work. see § . 46. his next citations is out of ep. 14. ( it is ep. 6. ) where cyprian commands them to perform the office of vicars to him . cyprian's words are , hortor & mando ut vice mea fungamini circa gerenda ea quae administratio religiosa deposcit . here is no more but what any of christ's ambassadours may say ; he chargeth them to do their duty ; and he had authority from christ , not as bishop , but as a pastor of the church , and christ's ambassadour , to enjoyn this . if cyprian had our author's meaning , then all religious administration must cease , without the bishop's presence , or delegation : which is absurd . for his mea vice , it signifieth no more , but that his absence might be supplied by their diligence . cyprian's warm recenting what some of them did without his allowance ; shall be elsewhere considered : it was , that some presbyters without both their moderator , and the presbytery , received some of the lapsed : which was wholly irregular , and blame worthy . he next , to the presbyters meeting , sede vacante , answereth ; that they might meet ; but they might only determine in ruled cases . that is gratis dictum : but if they might act in any case , it is an argument that they had church power in their persons ; and that it was not solely in the bishop . the last of the bishop's prerogatives that he pleadeth for , ( tho' he telleth us , p. 50. that he could collect more , ) is , his delegating , not his presbyters in common , but two of them , rogatianus and numidicus , with two bishops , caldonius and herculanus , to consider the state of the poor at carthage , and to pronounce the sentence of excommunication against felicissimus and augendus : which they executed against them , and some others . if this discourse prove such a power of delegation , it will also prove such a power in one bishop over another ; which our author will not allow ; seing he asserteth , p. 27 , 28 , 35. that every bishop is supreme , and hath no ecclesiastical superior on earth . 2. sending a messenger to do for us , what we are restrained from doing , is not always an act of authority : one friend may send another , if he yield to it , as well as a master may send his servant . 3. that which hath most weight in our main cause , ( tho' it be impertinent to the present purpose , ) is , that these persons were to excommunicat felicissimus , &c. to which i answer , that this excommunication might be determined by the presbytery , and it was cyprian's part , as moderator , to intimate it ; for which he substituteth the persons named . here is no sole power of excommunication . this is countenanced by cyprian's own words , in that ep. § . 2. that felicissimus had despised both him and the presbytery . nec meo honore motus , nec vestra authoritate fractus : it seems he had been tried before them , and sentenced for contumacy . further , he was also suspected of adultery ; which cyprian would not judge by himself ; but referred it to their meeting , ibid. § . 48. having now examined our author's first principle , i proceed to the second , which he advanceth , p. 50 , &c. it is , that in every thing relating to the government of the church , and her discipline , the bishop had a negative over all the other church-governours , within his district : he had the supreme power of the keyes . he setteth about the proving of this point with a high degree of confidence : but let not him that putteth on his armour boast as he that putteth it off . he pretendeth to shew , that presbyters could not baptize , nor administer the lord's supper , nor excommunicate , nor absolve , nor make , nor rescind ecclesiastical laws , without the bishop's allowance . for a foundation to our answer to all his discourse on this head , i shall re-mind the reader of a distinction of presbyters above-mentioned . they were in cyprian's time , of three sorts . 1. the ruling elders , who were no preachers , and who with the bishop , ( or parish minister , ) and other preaching presbyters , ( if there were any , ) made up the consistory , by which the affairs of the congregation were managed . these , i confess could administer no sacrament , neither without , nor with the bishop's licence . and for acts of ruling in the church , it is probable enough , that they could do nothing without him who was praeses in their meetings , except , may be , in some extraordinary cases . 2. there were in some churches , ( especially in great cities ) some presbyters who were ordained to the work of the ministry , but had no particular charge , and were as our probationers , or students in divinity schools , ( only with this difference , that ours are not ordained , ) these might not baptize , nor administer the eucharist , yea , nor preach without the allowance of the bishop , or parish minister . and it is so also among us : if some ordained ministers happen to live in a parish , whereof they are not pastors , ( as sometimes falleth out in great cities , ) it is disorderly for them to exercise their ministery within another man's charge , without his call or allowance . these presbyters , in cyprian's time , were in somethings , like evangelists , whom the bishops imployed , when themselves could not overtake all their work : and if these be called the bishop's curats , ( as our author doth all presbyters , ) i shall not much reclaim . these were , as the sons of the prophets , bred by the bishop for the ministery : of this sort of presbyters , see p. baynes diocesan's tryal , p. 63. a third sort of presbyters , were the ministers of the several parishes , among whom the moderator of the presbytery , or other church judicatory , was in a peculiar manner , called the bishop : and they also often were called bishops , with respect to their own parochial charge . now , if our author mean , that a bishop in a city had such power over the presbyters , or ministers in the villages , or places about , that they might not baptize , &c. without his allowance , i utterly deny it ; and maintain that every such presbyter , minister , or parochial bishop , ( by what ever name ye design him , ) had in cyprian's time , as full power in his parish , as the great bishop had in his , tho' the one was more in esteem than the other . § . 49. i shall now consider his proofs for what he affirmeth . he beginneth with baptism , and pretendeth to prove , that presbyters could not baptize without the bishop's leave . his first citation is , cyprian saith , bishops give the first baptism to believers . which we deny not , if ye understand it of parish ministers . but if he mean bishops in cities , who were the praesidents in presbyteries , we deny that cyprian asserteth that . his next testimony is out of cyprian , ep. 73. and firmil . and fortunatus bishop of thurobaris : but it is evident , and he confesseth it , that the question by them treated , is , whether presbyters , who by heresie , or schism , had departed from the communion of the church , might baptize , and if they they did , whether that baptism was valid , or the person was to be again baptized , and that baptism esteemed null : and in this we do so far agree with these fathers , as to think that all the administrations of such hereticks , or schismaticks are irregular , and to be condemned : and that none ought so to separate from the church , while she keepeth the way of truth , and requireth no unlawful terms of communion of her ministers , or other members . but none of these fathers , did ever assert , that in the church , a sound presbyter could not baptize without the bishop's leave , within the limits of his own charge . that they mean no more than i say , is evident , for they plead , that none can baptize out of the church , nor bind or loose out of the church , and they say expresly , that none can baptize , but they who are founded in the evangelical law : and i hope it will not be denyed , that ministers of congregations are founded on that law , as well as these of great cities , who were then called bishops , because of their praecedency in church meetings . that bishops are named ▪ in these reasonings , as having the power of baptizing , maketh nothing against us , because all parish ministers were so called ; and none without their allowance ought to intrude on their charge , in this , or any other administration : and because the authority for baptizing , and other church work was communicated from the presbytery , by their praesident , the bishop : he indeed gave the power ; but not by his own sole authority , but by that of the presbytery . the testimony of tertullian cometh next : who saith , de baptismo , cap. 17. the high priest , who is the bishop , hath the power of baptizing , and after him , ( or in subordination to him , saith our author , ) presbyters and deacons . a. 1. tertullian doth not speak of bishops , as distinct from the pastors of particular flocks ; but from presbyters who had no charge : if this author put another meaning on his words , let him prove it . 2. tertullian a little above , puto autem licuit & tingere , cui licuit praedicare : i hope he will not say , that tertullian thought , that no minister might preach without the bishop's leave ; tho' he might think that the unsetled presbyters , ought to preach in no man's charge without his leave . 3. tertullian a little below , alloweth laicks , yea , women , to baptize , in case of necessity , without the bishop's leave : as he doth in the place cited , the deacons to do it with the bishop's leave , all which i look on as spoken without warrant . 4. tertullian groundeth his discourse on this ; that the honour of the church requireth , that the bishop's allowance should be had ; and on this occasion , condemneth emulation , as the mother of schism : and citeth that place , all things are lawful , but all things are not expedient . from all which it is easie to gather , that he only condemned them who baptized without church authority , which the bishop , as mouth of the presbytery , did communicat . 5. it is wholly without warrant that this learned author addeth to tertullian's words , and in subordination to him : dehinc ( which is that father's word ) doth neither signifie , nor can import so much : all that can be built on it , is a prior dignity to the bishop ; in this , and other parts of the ministerial work. his last citation is ignatius , it is not lawful to baptize without the bishop . a. that is , without the authority of the presbytery , which the bishop as their praeses , conveyeth . § . 50. he asserteth next , ( p. 52. ) that no presbyter could administer the eucharist within the the bishop's district , without his leave , or against his interdict . to this , what hath already been said , is a full answer . no presbyter might do this within the charge of a parish bishop , without his leave : nor yet in a presbyterial district , without the allowance of the presbytery , given out by their episcopus praeses . his proofs are exactly like the former ; cyprian ( severely and justly ) lasheth some schismatical presbyters , who by themselves , without cyprian , and without the presbytery , did administer the lord's supper to some of the lapsed , who were not duely reconciled to the church : i know no presbytery that would not condemn this , if it were done within their bounds ; yea , they would think their authority contemned ; and their moderator slighted , who should have been applyed to , to call the presbytery for consulting about this : who , with them , should have authoritatively determined in this matter : and this neglect of the bishop was in that time , the more conspicuous , that his praecedency was constant , and known to all ; which was the cause the bishop is so often named , in these things that concerned not him alone , but the whole community . it is to the same purpose , which he next alledgeth of dionysius bishop of alexandrià , giving a command that any lapsed , in danger of death , if supplicating for it , should have the eucharist . for that may be understood of dionysius enjoyning this to the unfixed presbyters of alexandria , that it should be done within that parish , whereof dionysius was pastor : or of the presbytery , by dionysius their praeses , to be observed within their district . what ignatius saith , that that is only to be esteemed a firm , and valid eucharist , which is celebrated by the bishop , or by his authority : this , i say , admitteth of the same answer ; that none ought to celebrate that holy ordinance in any congregation , but the pastor of it , or whom he doth call to do it for him : i might call in question the authority of these epistles of ignatius which he citeth ; but i will not digress into that controversie ; sub judice lis est , theologi certant . there is nothing of any more weight in his next citation ; where cyprian , against the novatians , declareth that there could be no true sacrament among them , because they are out of the church ; and had assumed to themselves an episcopal chair , and a power of baptizing ▪ and offering . it is plain that this is meant of them , who had cast off the churches authority , that was exercised by her pastors , ( who are here called bishops , ) but it no way proveth , that some pastors of the church , must depend on one of them , for this authority . it is tedious to repeat the same thing so often ; in answer to so many arguments , which are materially the same . after all these numerous testimonies , he cometh p. 55. to an artificial argument , in which kind of arguings , he seemeth not to be very formidable ; he supposeth he hath fully proved the bishop to be the principle of vnity ; the chief governour , that by consequence the supreme power of the keyes belongeth to him : that he was the visible head of the church ; it is highly reasonable on that account , that he should have the chief power of dispensing the sacraments : and that they might not be dispensed without him . i have already shewed the weakness of all these grounds he buildeth upon : and therefore the consequence built on them , must fall to the ground : we are no less sensible than he is , of the evil of receiving , and continuing unworthy persons in the church ; and that the governours of the church must be judges in this matter ; but we are not yet convinced , that the bishop by himself , rather than the community of church rulers , are that judge : and i must take leave to tell him , that ( however it was in the primitive times , ) in our days , the excluding of unworthy persons , ministers and others , hath been much more to be observed , where the church is ruled by a parity of presbyters ; than where it is governed by one prelate . § . 51. this learned author , supposing that he had proved the bishop's negative in administration of the sacraments , hence inferreth his soveraign interest in excommunication , absolution , enjoyning pennance , &c. which consequence i shall not contest with him : but i hope the reader is now satisfied , that he hath not sufficiently established the antecedent : nor will we yield that cyprian , or his contemporaries had , or laid claim to such a prerogative . but our author , tho' he thinketh he might supersede the proof of his negative in these other things , yet , because he will give all possible satisfaction , he undertaketh a deduction of further powers in the person of cyprian : of which we have a long history , beginning at p. 56. i have nothing to observe on the account he giveth of cyprian's conversion , promotion , ( save what i have observed out of pontius , of his promotion to be presbyter and bishop simul & semel : but what ever be in that , it hath no great influence on our cause , ) the opposition he met with , his eminency for grace and gifts , the wicked courses his enemies took , while , under the persecution by decius , he retired from carthage ; how they got some of the confessors and martyrs to countenance them ; and they upon this , were emboldened by themselves , to absolve some of the lapsed . nothing of this i contradict , except what i now said . he hath run thus far without a check ; and therefore ariveth at the confidence to say , p. 58. now consider what followeth , and speak your conscience , and tell me , if st. cyprian was not more than either single presbyter , or presbyterian moderator , i shall yield him yet a little more , in what he saith of cyprian's meekness and humility ; of his being alarmed with this practice , that this was an unparalelled practice , and that cyprian did zealously and vigorously oppose it . and for all this i shall speak my conscience , and shall give reason for my light , that cyprian was no diocesan bishop , in our modern sense ; and that he neither had , nor claimed sole power , nor a negative , in the government of the church ; and that , bating what i yielded in stating the question , § . 9 , 10. he was no more but a single presbyter , that is a parish minister , or presbyterian moderator . and indeed all that he here bringeth , and looketh on as so strongly argumentative , is already answered , he having cited all , or most of the places before , which he here quoteth . he bringeth three epistles of cyprian to prove his assertion . § . 52. the first is that to the confessors and martyrs : where i find nothing but a sharp reproof of them for going without their line : and he blameth those presbyters who had absolved the lapsed so disorderly : only what seemeth here to contain an argument is , that they should have petitioned the bishop for restoring of these lapsed , and not done it without him . the answer here is easie ; and often before given , that the fault of these turbulent presbyters was , that they took this act of church power on themselves , without the presbytery ; whereas the regular way had been to petition the bishop , that he might call the presbytery , and that he with them might cognosce of that affair . i have laid down sufficient warrant for thus understanding his words , from his declared purpose , founded on conscience of duty , to do nothing without the concurrence of the presbytery , see § . 12. and it is like , i may after bring yet further evidence , that his principles led him to this conduct : at present , i take notice of that plain passage , ep. 15. ad clerum , speaking of receiving the lapsed , quaeres ( saith he ) cum omnium nostrum concilium , & sententiam spectet , praejudicare ego , & soli mihi rem communem vindicare non audeo . and he desireth that that affair might be put off ; donec pace nobis à domino redditâ , in unum convenire , & singulorum causas examinare possumus : if cyprian seem to my adversary to speak in pure prelatical stile , as he saith , p. 6. he seemeth to me here , to speak in the stile of a presbyterian moderator . of the same importance is the next epistle cited , which was to the clergy of carthage , ( he doth not call them his clergy , as our author wordeth it ; and if he had , there had been no argument in it , ) he sharply reproveth ( not the presbyters in common , as our author fouly representeth the matter ; for he writeth in a loving stile to them : but ) some of the presbyters who had received some of the lapsed most irregularly ; and that because they had not taken the due course for receiving these lapsed , which should have been done per impositionem manuum episcopi & cleri , not by the bishops sole authority . he doth indeed here speak like a bishop ; that is a faithful pastor ; but not as a bishop pretending to sole jurisdiction ; or a negative in the government of the church . his third epistle is to the people ; where we have the same complaint of the irregularity of the schismatical presbyters ; and complaineth that the honour of his priesthood , and of his chair , was not reserved to him . this can never evince that cyprian pretended to a power to manage that affair by himself : i see nothing here inconsistent with the power , or the stile of the moderator of a presbytery , or pastor of a congregation : save that the moderator then , being constant , his part in the management of publick affairs was more obvious , and therefore more taken notice of . he hath yet a further citation , wherein cyprian telleth the clergy , that they ought to inform him of every thing that happens ; that so i may ( saith he ) advisedly and deliberatly , give orders concerning the affairs of the church ; let any one compare this translation with cyprian's own words , which are faithfully enough set down by our author in the margin : is limare consilium to give order ? it is to polish , and amend his advice ▪ and make it more exact : he then , in his retirement , wills them to write often and distinctly to him of all occurrences , that he , as making such a figure in their society , might give the more accurate advice about what was to be done : this is no prelatical , but a plain presbyterian stile . § . 53. on this occasion he is pleased p. 61 , 62. ) to take notice of , and tragically aggravate a passage in rational defence of non-conformity , p. 179. where he thinketh cyprian is reflected on as shewing too much zeal in that cause ( viz. of his episcopal authority being neglected ) and that possibly he stretched his power a little too far , as afterward many did : he was a holy , and meek man ; but such may be a little too high : this he stretcheth his invention to expose , as contradictory to it self ; injurious to cyprian , and an uncharitable , or ignorant sugestion : his more sedate thoughts after all this huffiness , may inform him better : that author as he was not so straitned with his learned adversaries arguments , as he imagineth ( they being the very same which now i have examined ) so he was far from speaking contradictions , nor did he seek to reconcile pride and patience , superciliousness and self-denyal , huffiness and humility , carnal hight and christian holiness : he was far from thinking on such ill qualities with respect to that excellent person : further than that the best of men have sinful infirmity mixed with their graces , and best gifts . he might know and i shall not charge him with ignorance in this ) that sin and grace are consistent in gradu saltem remissiore : and that tho' it were ridiculous to say , that moses was the meekest man on earth , and yet he was huffie , and proud , and passionate : or that job was most patient , and yet he was impatient notwithstanding it may be said , with our author's leave ; that neither of these holy men was so perfect in the grace for which he is commended , as to have nothing of the contrary evil : further i am of opinion , that what might be imputed to the excellent cyprian , was rather the fault of the age he lived in , than his personal fault , there was then a tendency toward church-domination , which did shew it self much more afterward : tho' i still maintain it was not arrived at that pitch that this author imputeth to that time . he spendeth a great many words to prove that cyprian did not stretch his power too far in this matter : all which is lost labour ; for that was no otherways imputed to him , than with a possibility ; and on account of his mentioning his own episcopal power more than he did the power of the presbytery ( which power of the presbytery he doth yet clearly owne , as i have proved ) this had a shew of usurpation ; and did in time introduce it : it was the genius of that age , to have too big thoughts of that praelation of being primus presbyter : and the best of men in that time were tinctured with this mistake . wherefore he might have superceded his proving what figure the martyrs then made , i know their interest went far , as to receiving the lapsed ; yet i still think that they neither pretended to , nor was then ascribed to them , formal church-authority . what he largely discourseth , p , 64. of cyprian's dealing with the disorderly presbyters , not by huffing , but by reason and argument , is as little to our purpose ; in that , he did rationally , and christianly : yet in these reasonings , as he in words , taketh more notice of his episcopal authority , than of the presbytries power , so upon the matter doth not derogate from the one , nor unduely highten the other : as hath been already shewed . i wonder at the insinuation that my learned antagonist maketh , p. 65. as if any had imagined it questionable , whether cyprian , or the presbyters that he blameth , were guilty of vsurpation : they did usurp most intollerably in doing that by themselves , which should have been done by cyprian and the presbytery : and it was no usurpation to reprove , and threaten them with censure for so doing . the power of the presbytery was not here questioned ; but the power of particular presbyters who took the power of the presbytry upon them : and therefore the presbytery who were not guilty , had no right of their own to defend against cyprian ; but had just cause to joyn with him against these usurpers . it is as insignificant , that the seditious presbyters repented , excused themselves , and desired a form from cyprian : for it is ordinary for some to go from one extreme to another . besides that seeking a form from him was to ask it from him , and the presbytery , not from him alone . that these presbyters were generally condemned for their factious practices , i think none doubteth , and it is to little purpose to prove it so laboriously as our author doth . § . 54. yet because in his proofs of it some things are interspersed which may look like arguments against what i plead for , i shall make some observes on this discourse . he giveth us account of cyprian's writing to the presbytery at rome , they having then no bishop . this i hope is a token that cyprian thought not that all church power at rome dyed with the bishop ; but that presbyters are church rulers , and not the bishop only : in the return that the presbytery at rome , made to cyprian , he fancieth that he findeth some arguments for episcopal sole power : which i shall a little consider : he saith they ascribe to him a supreme and unaccountable power : i find no words that can be so constructed in either of the two epistles that they write to him on that subject ; but on the contrary , they seem to insinuate a parity with him , while they frequently call him frater . it would be thought great sauciness , in our days , for presbyters to write in that stile to so great a bishop as cyprian was esteemed to have been , by our prelats . next , they compare him to the master of a ship ; who doeth not act in parity with the other sea-men ; a. omne simile claudicat . a moderator of a presbytery may be so compared , as having a main hand in the conduct of affairs . again the words of that epistle import no more than making cyprian the steersman : who tho' he be at the helm , and the safety of the ship dependeth much on his skill and management , yet he is not always the commander of the ship ; and the safety of the ship should yet more depend on the steersman , if he were fixed , and always so imployed ; as cyprian was in the ecclesiastical ship at carthage . he saith , that the roman clergy tell cyprian ( and pray take notice of it , saith he ) that they could determine nothing in that matter , wanting a bishop . this is a misrepresentation : for they tell their mind plainly in the first of their two epistles to cyprian ; that he did well in repressing that insolency of some presbyters ; that the lapsed should not be suddenly received , and give the reason , recens est hoc lapsorum vulnus , & adhuc in tumorem plaga consurgens ; & idcirco certi sumus , quod spatio productioris temporis , impetu isto consenescente , amabunt hoc ipsum ad fidelem se delatos medicinam . and in the second epistle they add another reason why it was fit to delay that affair of of censuring the lapsed , because they wanted a bishop , not because the bishop was to be the sole judge in that matter ; but because the bishop was he , qui omnia ista moderetur ( these are their own words ) he was to preside in that affair . seing then there was another reason for delaying , even where there was a bishop , as in carthage , it was a superadded reason why at rome it should be delayed , the presbyterie being incomplete , by the want of a significant member . if it be said , could they not choose a moderator ? answ . that office through custom being then fixed , and the honour and revenue that belonged to it being so considerable , it was not easie to get it done of a sudden ; and the iniquity of that time of persecution did add to the difficulty , as themselves express it ; nondum enim episcopus , propter rerum & temporum difficultates constitutus . our author vitiareth their words , when he maketh them say , who onely could define , &c. there is no such words in this epistle : it is said indeed of the bishop , eorum qui lapsi sunt possit cum authoritate & consilio habere rationem . but that saith nothing of sole authority , but such as was to be acted in the presbytery , and with their concurrence . § . 55. he observeth likewise , that they commend cyprian , that he did not determine in that matter by himself alone ; but took the advice of many : and this they impute not to the incompetency of his authority for it ; but to his condescendence . ans . he doth wholly mistake this matter , for the roman clergy , in their letter to cyprian , do not at all take notice of what he did , or might do , with respect to his own district , nor his advising with his own presbytery ; but that he had taken the advice , in such a weighty case , of general concernment , of other bishops , and of the clergy at rome , and it is certain , that he , with the presbytery at carthage , might have determined in this matter with respect to themselves ; and it was prudence , and not want of power , that made him advise with others . he bringeth another testimony to the plenitude of episcopal power , from an epistle from the clergy of rome , while they wanted a bishop , to the clergy of carthage , when their bishop was in his retirement : in which case , saith he , they had the best occasion of speaking their mind freely , of the power of presbyters , and the usurpation of bishops : in this epistle he fancieth that he findeth arguments for episcopal sole power : as first , they say , of themselves , and these at carthage , that they were only seemingly the governours of these respective churches ; and only keep the flock instead of the respective pastors , the bishops . i had occasion to consider this passage before , i blame his want of wisdom , that seing he is pleased to give us this translation of this passage , he hath yet set down the latine in the margine : out of which one may easily discover his error , without turning to the epistle it self : it is a strange translation , videmur praepositi , that is , we only seem to be governours . i am sure , the marginal notes on this epistle saith , they were pastores constituti . and pamelius from this passage argueth for the authority of the church of rome over other churches ; and he that animadverteth on pamelius saith , clerus romanus carthaginensem agnoscit , quemadmodum & alios aliarum ecclesiarum pastores , esse christiani gregi praepositos : wherefore videmur must rather signifie certainty than doubting , in this place ; it appeareth not only to our selves , but to all , we are acknowledged for such . and that they did not mean by vice pastoris , a vicarious power delegated from the bishop , is manifest , for the bishop was dead , and we find no power he left them ▪ neither could he do it . yea it is evident that they lookt on a power residing in themselves , of which they were to give an account : si negligentes inveniamur — quoniam perditum non requisivimus , &c. what is said of the lapsed continuing in their penitency , that they might obtain indulgence from them who can give it : the word being ab eo qui potest praestare . it might be understood of pardon from christ , on their sincere repentance , seing he alone can make indulgence effectual : but if that seem strained , the bishop with the presbytery , not by himself , may fitly here be understood . he doth again , pag. 69. misrepresent the question , in these words , let any man judge whether st. cyprian or his presuming presbyters had taken too much on them at carthage : but this mistake i noted before . another argument he bringeth , is from some martyrs and confessors , in an epistle to cyprian , commending him for his conduct in opposing and censuring these presbyters . i also commend him for it : ergo i think he had sole power to manage that affair : the consequence is naught . he haleth in another argument into this discourse : these martyrs and confessors desire , that cyprian being so glorious a bishop , would pray for them : which they would not have done had they thought him a proud aspiring prelat , that is a limb of antichrist , as this author would fain give him out to have been : it is an injurious calumny : i never said , nor thought so : and no man can wire-draw my words ( with any sense or reason ) to that meaning . i esteem cyprian's grace , virtues , and learning as much as he doth : and do judge that his prayers , while he was on earth , were worth asking : and that he was a glorious bishop ; but all this will not infer his sole power , nor his negative . — cyprian ' s excommunicating these presbyters , and that fact being approven by others , is not argumentative , unless he can prove that this cyprian did by himself , without the presbytery . he next bringeth the canons of the apostles ( the insufficiency of which authority i have above-shewed . ) and ignatius , that nothing should be done without the bishop , nor in opposition to him : and that the bishop should be honoured . all this is sufficiently answered above . when a bishop that is any minister of the gospel , acteth in his sphere , and keepeth to the rule the word of god , to oppose him , to depart from him , not to honour him , is highly sinful . but i am sure cyprian nor ignatius never meant to enjoin absolute & illimited obedience to a bishop , nor any man else . as for doing nothing without the bishop , we grant that they who are under a ministers charge , prebyters or others , should act nothing in the consistory without him ; but this also must suffer a limitation ; if he should prove so perverse as to oppose , and hinder every thing that is good , or what is necessary to be done ; i do not think that ignatius would blame the presbyters for acting without him : otherwise there were no remedy but the church must be ruined . if it be said , in that case they should complain . to whom must this complaint be made : for a bishop hath no superior on earth ; if we believe this author . § . 56. the last of his three principles , which he advanceth p. 72. is , that . all the church-governours within his district , presbyters as well as others , were in st. cyprian ' s time , subject to the bishops authority , and obnoxious to his discipline . this principle and all that he saith for establishing of it , we might safely yield , without any hazard to our cause : for we always maintained , that a bishop , considered as a paroch minister , hath authority over the ruling-elders , and the unfixed preaching-presbyters , if any be within his parish ; also considered as moderator of the presbytry , he is still a minister , and hath rule over all the ministers , and people and elders within the district , over which that presbytery hath the oversight : but our question is , whether he , by himself , hath the sole authority ; or he , as a member of the consistory , or presbytery , hath a share in that authority which resideth in that body , or community . this last we grant : the former we deny . his proofs can never reach the conclusion that we deny : the first of which is , that cyprian saith , that our lord chose apostles , that is bishops and governours ( where by the way note , that cyprian owneth other church-governours , beside bishops , and therefore they have not the sole authority ) and the apostles chose deacons to be the bishops and churches ministers . any body may see that this doth concern all church-rulers , not sole power in the bishop . next he telleth us that cyprian called fabianus superior , with respect to the roman-clergy : which is a mistake : he calleth him simply praepositus ( which as i have above-shewed , was a title given to bishops & presbyters ) and if he had not called him their praepositus , that doth not import sole power . in an epistle to rogatianus , cyprian insinuateth that he was ruler of the church , ergo he had sole power : it is a ●●lish consequence : this may be said of every elder of the church . he is scarce of arguments when he is forced to falsifie cyprian's words : qui in ecclesia praesidemus : he translateth , who have the chief power in the church ; beside that it is easie to distinguish between chief power , and sole power ; to which all are subject . also praesumus he turneth govern the church . that the bishop is said to be one , and set over the church , may well agree either to a parish-minister , or the moderator of a presbytery , who was called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . his next essay is from the bishop's calling the clergy his clergy ; for which he is at pains to cite many places . if this were constantly done ( which was not ) what doth it signifie : that manner of speaking is as common among presbyterians , as it was in cyprian's time : and it signifieth no more but elders of the church , whereof cyprian was pastor ; as the elders of any parish are called the elders of such a minister : and elders usually call their minister our minister . it is a frivolous question , by what rule of grammer , rhetorick , logick or politick could he be so called if he had no power or jurisdiction over them . a. there is no rule in any of these faculties against it : tho' he have no sole power ; if he have a share of the power that the whole hath over every one , and have the conduct in managing that power , by being their moderator . § . 57. he will let all this pass for a mere praelusion , not being scant of arguments . wherefore we must now expect what is more pungent : that is , the three principles he had before proved so fully , viz. the bishop being the principle of vnity ; having supreme power : being the same with the high-priest under the old testament , do prove this point . to this formidable argument i oppone what hath been discoursed on these heads : i leave the reader to judge whether he hath fully proved these , or i have fully overturned them : next he argueth from cyprian's saying he could by his episcopal power , depose or excommunicate a deacon who had rebelled against him , and praising another bishop for so acting , yea i shal allow him what he after faith , that this power extended also to censuring of elders : do not our moderators usually so practise when there is cause : but not by theit sole power , but with the consistory , or presbytery . we presbyterians may tremble at his next blow : for he saith , he will leave his reader no imaginable scruple . but these big words dwindle away into this feeble argument ; that cyprian might have censured felicissimus and some with him , who first opposed his promotion , and after he had taken them into favour , apted disorderly in receiving some of the lapsed , without the praeses , and the presbytery : of this case before : it is wholly insignificant here , unless he can prove , that cyprian might do this by himself , without the presbytery : which himself disowneth , as i shewed above : all that followeth ( which is a repetition of what he hath often alledged having little to say , when he braggeth of superabundance ) is already plainly answered . he is run a little weak ; but he reinforceth his arguments with confidence and repetitions . § . 58. hitherto he hath set forth his cyprianick bishop in his majesty , absolute and sole power , &c. in his own particular church ; p. 78. he giveth us account of him , as he stood related to the catholick church : and here he expecteth matter enough for another demonstration : which is a big word in disputation . we shall here also , by divine assistance , try his strength ; and tho' we will not brag of demonstrations ; yet shall endeavour to bring what light and strength the subject doth afford . his long discourse about the colledge of bishops , i have read with attention ; and considered with what application i am capable of , but cannot find his demonstrations in it : yea cannot see wherein it is conducive to prove his point : only some hints he hath interspersed that seem to have somewhat of argument , which i shall consider , after i have taken a general view of the whole . he observeth that all bishops were collegues , and made up one colledge . next that this colledge was the principle of vnity to the catholick church . thirdly , that the grand concern of the episcopal colledge was to preserve and maintain the one communion ; which together with one faith , made them capable to be the principle of vnity to the catholick church : and that this was their work he proveth first , they thought themselves bound to maintain peace . 2. every bishop was a member of this colledge ; and therefore great care was taken about their promotion . 3. he being promoted sent communicatory ▪ letters to other bishops , giving account of his promotion . 4. if there was any debate whether his promotion was canonical , the rest of the bishops enquired into it . 5. if he turned heretick , or schismatick , he was turned out . 6. while he kept the faith and vnity of the church , he was encouraged , consulted , corresponded with , &c. 7. while he continued a sound member of the colledge , all letters concerning the peace and vnity of the church , were directed to him . lastly , p. 87. he observeth ( cum nota ) resist this evidence saith he , if ye can ) that every heretical , or schismatical bishop , with all that retained to him , was ipso facto out of the church : at last , p. 88. he thinketh he hath another demonstration against my notion of a bishop in cyprian's time : for how could a single presbyter , or presbyterian moderator , have born such a part in relation to the catholick church , and her vnity and communion . § . 59. i must examine the strength of this long demonstration ; and what he addeth to fortifie it : and then shall return to take notice of what he intermixeth in the several parts of it , in which our debate may be concerned : for answer then to this argument , as it standeth . i deny the assumption , viz. that what he hath here asserted cannot agree to a single presbyter , or presbyterian moderator . his three assertions do well agree to every presbyter ; that is , pastor of a congregation : he is a collegue to all bishops , that is such pastors . the meeting of such ( either by their delegats ; or if they could all come together ) is as capable to be the principle of unity to a provincial , or national church , yea , to the universal church , as if so many diocesans should meet . it is as much the concern of these presbyters , or parish bishops ( and i hope they do as much mind it ) to maintain one faith and one communion . doth he think that our ministers do not think themselves bound to maintain peace : or 2. that there is litle care taken about their promotion or giving them charge of the people , and admitting them to a share of the government . 3. tho' it be not our custom to send communicatory letters of our settlement in a charge ; yet every presbytery notifieth to the neighbouring presbyteries the name of him who is to be fixed in a charge : that they may have opportunity to object : and the names of all who are ordained , are recorded . 4. if a presbytery ordain any person unduely , or if there be competition , the superior judicatories enquire into it . 5. we also turn out , not only heretical and schismatical ministers ; but them also who are scandalous in their conversation , or supinely negligent in their ministerial work. 6. we also encourage and admit to the government , them that do well . 7. letters that concern a particular congregation ; are , with us , directed to the minister : these concerning the presbytery , to the moderator : we also cast out bad ministers , and such as adhere to them ; if the cause be weighty : but we use moderation to the people who are led away by schismatical ministers , when their separation is founded on lesser mistake : & if in this we differ from the cyprianick age , his party should not blame us ; having tasted so much of our lenity . let it then be considered how impertinent this whole discourse is , and how insufficient to prove the episcopacy of the cyprianick-age that he pleadeth for . § . 60. he useth several enforcements of this argument , p. 88 , & 89. which i shall briefly consider . 1. the colledge of bishops are still considered as church-governours notoriously distinguished from presbyters . answ . this distinction lay in the dignity that the declensions of that time from apostolick simplicity gave them : not in any power that they had which presbyters had not . 2. a presbyter was never called a bishops collegue . answ . if this were granted , such a negative argument , and that drawn from words , and ways of speaking ( which doth often vary ) is not very concludent . i have shewed that the same power is ascribed to them , see ▪ § . 62. where the contrary of what he asserteth is shewed . 3. we have no vestige of a presbyterian moderator in these times . answ . there was then a moderator , who was called the bishop ; who presided in their meetings : tho' there was no such changing of the moderator as is among us : that i have yielded : but the fixedness of the moderator , and the parity of the power are consistent : tho' i deny not that the one made way for destroying the other ; as after-ages did shew . 4. our author repeateth all the acts of , and concerning bishops , that he had insisted on , and affirmeth that they could not consist with a single presbyter , or moderator , which i have above-denyed , and made the contrary evident . that he calleth all the acts of government and discipline his ( the bishops ) and his alone ; is to beg the question , for we deny it , and he should prove it . § . 61. i must now return to p. 78 , and glean some passages , which i was obliged to overlook , that i might have this long argument ( stretching from thence to p. 90. ) intirely in view , and give a general answer to it . he maketh the bishop the principle of vnity to a particular church , and the colledge of bishops the principle of vnity to the catholick church ; and christ the principle of vnity to that colledge . and addeth , i hope not being a romanist , you will not require that i should prove the highest step of this gradation . here i observe first , the discourse is about a visible head , or principle of vnity to the church ; which cannot be ascribed to christ . wherefore this is wholly impertinent ; or , if it have any sense , it tendeth to make his reader a romanist , whom he supposeth not to be one already . for if the particular and catholick church , have a visible principle of vnity ; and that which he maketh to be the vniting principle , have nothing that is visible to make them one among themselves , they who can receive his doctrine about a principle of vnity , will see a necessity of a pope to unite the bishops , as much as of a bishop to unite the presbyters . 2. if christ be the vniting principle of the colledge of bishops , why doth he not serve for the same use to presbyters , yea , to all christians . and indeed he is the real vniting principle to all ; they only are in the union of the church , who cleave to his doctrine , and observe his laws ; even tho' they separate from the bishop who departeth out of that way . 3. i desire to know of him , why he thinketh the romanists will put him to prove the highest step of this gradation , more than protestants will ? doth any of them deny christ to be the principle of vnity to the church ? they only make the pope his vicar in this , because they think such an one is needful in the church , who is visibly conversant among men : and doth not our author suppose the same necessity of such a visible uniter till he come to the colledge of bishops , and he leaveth them headless , that is , without a visible head. where it may be rationally concluded that this doctrine is either popish or palpably absurd . the next thing i notice is , p. 79. he saith all christians hold one faith to be necessary to the vnity of the church ; but in cyprian's time one communion was thought as indispensible : they held there is but one church , and that this could not be without one communion . if by one communion , he mean ( for he walketh in a cloud in this matter , whether of design or not , i know not , ) that communion of saints which is an article of the creed ; which consisteth in union of them all with christ , and unity in faith and love , &c. i acknowledge the necessity of it , but i know not what respect it hath to episcopacy , more than presbytery . if he mean local communion , it is impossible either in the catholick church , or in the diocess of a modern bishop . if he mean communion by having the same ceremonies and government in the church . tho' i confess that is desireable , and by all good means should be endeavoured : ( for we should have no ceremonies , but these which are of divine institution , and the one church government that he hath appointed , should be every where exercised , ) yet there may be one church , where this communion is not : and if the cyprianick age was somewhat too strick in this matter , it was their mistake , ( of which above , ) but it is no proof of episcopacy , ( in the sense of our debate , ) to have been in that age. and indeed , if our author maintain this principle , he will ( consequentially to it ) unchurch most of the reformed churches , as the papists do them all on the same score : if by this one communion he mean , that all christians must be united to some one bishop or other , which bishops agree among themselves , and have communion in the episcopal colledge ; he will find hard to prove that cyprian taught so . yea , then there is no communion in the church , without an oecumenick council of bishops , which we have litle hope to see : and many doubt that the world did ever see it : tho' there have been councils so called ; because in them were represented all the churches of the empire . further , if this was the opinion of cyprian's time , how will he prove that these bishops in whom churches were to be united , were any more than parish ministers , and that the one communion of that time , was more than that every christian must be the member of one church , where christ's ordinances are dispensed by a bishop , that is , a minister of the gospel . § . 62. tho' i am not concerned to question the practice of bishops sending their communicatory letters , to signifie that they were promoted . yet i see no sufficient proof of it from the two or three instances that he bringeth . it must be either a law , or a great train of instances , in many several nations , in greater and lesser churches , and under diverse circumstances and cases of these churches` that will bear the weight of so universal a conclusion . but i pass this : for it doth not much concern our main question . he will find it also hard to prove , that these letters were sent to all other bishops , ( as he affirmeth , p. 80. ) that had been a work of no small labour : i suppose they did thus correspond with some next adjacent bishops , or who were of special note ; which we also do , as i shewed before . that there were metropolitans in cyprian's time , he asserteth ; and i deny it not . but they were but moderators of the greater meetings , ( as the bishops were of lesser ones , ) of the parochial ministers and elders : as also were the primats , and in affrick especially , the eldest bishop or minister , had this dignity : but it was praecedency , and dignity , wherein they were above their brethren , not power and authority , but this our author toucheth but transiently ; and so i shall not insist on it : only i ask him ; how do metropolitans , in our modern sense , agree with his opinion that every bishop was supreme , and had no ecclesiastical superior on earth : see § . 9. p. 82. where he is discoursing of purging out a heretical bishop ; his thoughts seem to run somewhat muddy . he saith the colledge of bishops might do ( to him ) the equivalent of a formal deposition ; they could refuse him their communion , and thereby exclude him from their episcopal colledge : and they could oblige all the christians within his district to abandon him . and because he saw that his former assertion of the supreme power of a bishop , and his having no ecclesiastical superior , would be objected ; he saith no bishop was superior to another in point of power and jurisdiction . how to make all this hang together , is not easie to know . 1. to wreath the yoke of the bishop's domination on the church , he establisheth independency among bishops : whereas no reason can be given , why parishes should not be independent on one another , as well as provinces . i look on both these sorts of independency , as contrary to the unity of the church ; and on subordination , as of natural and divine right . 2. if the colledge of bishops had not formal power to depose a heretical bishop : by what authority could they oblige the christians to abandon him , and to choose another : if he say , the fundamental law of sound faith and unity ; or as he speaketh , of one faith , and one communion , obliged the christians to this . a. that is antecedent to the interposing of the authority of the episcopal colledge , and they were obliged to it , tho' there were no such colledge . 3. that no bishop hath power over another bishop , is no more than we say of presbyters . but it is strange that the community of bishops , hath not formal and direct power over every one of their own number ; both with respect to his communion with them ; and with respect to his particular charge ; that maketh a wider door both for heresie and schism , and for peoples beeing , without remedy , under the plague of bad ministers , than any thing that parity can be charged with . 4. the people are here left judges of the bishop's haeresie , and other incapacitating ill qualities ; and so to determine whether they will leave him or not : the colledge of bishops can do no more but inform them , and tell them what they are obliged by the laws of one faith , and one communion to do . 5. what if the bishop will not leave his charge , nor the people abandon him , hath christ left no ordinance in his church , as a remedy of this case ? the colledge of bishops cannot excommunicat him , nor them : that were to exercise formal authority over him or them : if they then , will not yield to the colledges information or advice , they may go on in their way without further controlement . thus we see that men will venture to ruine the soundness , peace , and purity of the church , that they may establish a lordly prelacy over the people of god. what he insisteth so much on , p. 86 , 87. about directing publick letters to the bishops , and their being signed by them : is not worth our notice . we also count it regular for our moderators to be so treated : but there was some peculiar reason , why it was so punctually observed in that age , because the praeses of their meeting was fixed , and it was interpretatively a degrading of him , or questioning his title , to do otherwise : but this importeth no superior jurisdiction . he telleth , p. 87. that every haeretical , or schismatical bishop , and all who adhered to him , were ipso facto , out of the church . this i do not believe , for how shall a man be known to be haeretical , till he were tryed and judged ? his proofs amount to no more , but that such were dealt with as out of the church ; and may be the manner of process against them , is not mentioned : but such a negative argument , will not prove that no more was done to cast them out : if that be the episcopal course of censure , wee intend not to follow it : and if that were the way in the cyprianick age , it maketh its example less venerable and argumentative , but it saith nothing for the bishop's sole power : he saith p. 89. that a bishop never called a presbyter his collegue . a. if it be understood of presbyters without a charge , there is reason for it : he had no joynt charge of the congregation , we use the same way of appellation . but if it be meant of a moderator , with respect to the other brethren ; i answer we find presbyters calling the bishop brother ; as was noted before : yea , concil . carthag . 4. canon . 35. it is decreed , that tho' a bishop in consessu presbyterorum sublimior sedeat , intra domum collegam se presbyterorum cognoscat . this , its true , was a litle after cyprian's time : but it was when church-domination was rather growing than decreasing . § . 63. his strength is now far spent , when in the end of his book , he wasteth so many words to set off an argument , which is fitter to be smiled at , than laboriously answered . it is that the christian bishops in cypria ' s time , made such a figure in the church , that they were the chief butt of the malice of persecutors : others might live in peace at home , when they were forced to flee . and he is at pains to prove this , which i think was never questioned in any age of the church . their station made them conspicuous , ( for i deny not they were above presbyters in dignity , ) their parts ( some of them ) made them to be jealoused : their zeal for god , made them hateful to the promoters of satan's kingdom . but all this can never prove that they had the sole government of the church ; nor that they had jurisdiction over presbyters , who were fixed in the church , to oversee any part of it . many presbyters , deacons , yea private christians , who were eminent for ability to confound the adversary : for zeal and holiness ; or for their station in the world , were persecuted as well as their bishops . that this is neither strange , nor concludent of episcopal power , is evident ( not to fetch an instance from far , ) in the late episcopal persecution among our selves : the ministers were mainly hunted , intercommuned , imprisoned , forced to hide or flee : and the more eminent or zealous they were , the harder it went with them : yea , some who were freer than many others , of what was thought sedition , disorder , or rebellion , yet were hardly used , for the hurt that it was thought they might do to that which was the great diana of the ascendent party . and yet all this will not prove that they had , or pretended to , or were thought to have jurisdiction over their brethren . i do therefore deny the consequence , the bishops ( some of them for i will not say it was the lot of them all ) were mainly persecuted ; ergo , they and not the presbyters had the authority in governing the church . if decius had such a dread of a bishop being setled in rome , that he would more patiently have endured a prince to rivall it with him for the empire : i am sure he had not so much cause as his successors had ; from the successors of that bishop : of no more force is his argument drawn from galienus directing his edict to the bishops , when he stopt the persecution : for we deny not that they had an eminent station in the church , and had a chief hand in the direction of her affairs , whether ye consider them as parish-pastors , as they all were ; or moderators in greater church-meetings , as some of them were . i have ( as he willeth his reader to do ) considered and weighed his arguments without partiality , and in the ballance of justice : but am not yet convinced , that the schisme that is in the church is chargeable on us ; but on his party . let the reader judge whether of us have best grounds for our opinion . § . 64. he concludeth with making excuse , from the bulk of his book , that he doth not ( as he first intended ) prove episcopal praeemenencie to be of divine right , as being christ's ordinance , and handed down to us from the apostles in the constant practice of the vniversal church . this is the constant cant of that party ; but i have met with none who was able to evince this tho' the learnedest among them ; and not a few of them , have essayed it . if this author shall think fit to make another effort , as he declareth himself ready to do , if commanded by him to whom he writs this long epistle ) and if he bring any thing new ; and not fully answered already : i doubt not but his arguments will be examined to better purpose , than what is , or can be done , by such a mean hand as mine is . appendix . after the former sheets were almost printed , i met with two books at the same time , which i had not before seen : the one called the fundamental charter of presbytry , &c. with a preface of 167 pages , by a nameless author : the other an inquiry into the new opinions ( chiefly ) propagated by the presbyterians in scotland ; with some animadversions on the defence of the vindications of the kirk : by a. m. d. d. this latter book seemeth to have more of argument than some others which i have seen from some scots episcopalians , if not from the same hand : i have much desired that our debates might run in that more pure channel ; and rejoice to see any hopes of it . i am sorry that now i have no time from necessary , urgent , and daily work , to consider this book so as to answer it , if i shall not be proselyted by it . i intend to try it's strength as soon as i shall have leasure , if the lord give life and health ; and if it shall not be sooner answered by some other hand ; which i do much wish . § . 2. the former of these two books is expresly levelled against an act of the parliament of this nation ; and is a direct refutation of it : and therefore the examination of it is out of my road ; and is most fit for such as are conversant in the affairs of state , and know the politick which moved the parliament so to contrive their act. i do judge that he who shall undertake it will find no hard task . beside , the presbyterian ministers did never look on the inclinations of the people ( which that act mentioneth in it's narrative ) as the fundamental charter of presbytry ; however the parliament might wisely consider it in their consultation and determining , and mention it rather than what did more sway some of them . we always did , and do , found the government of the church by parity , on divine institution ; and look on prelacy as contrary to christ's appointment . § . 3. what i now undertake is , a transient view ( such as the press hastening to an end of the former discourse , will allow ) of his preface : which i hope may be lookt on as a due refutation of it : nor can i imagine that any judicious and unbyassed man will judge , that such a parcel of stuff , deserveth a laborious ▪ examination : he hath need of a hardened nose who can insist long in an exact anatomatical scrutiny into such a rotten carion . the author hath out-done his brethren ( yea , and himself too ) in billingsgate-rhetorick : he seemeth to be eminently gifted that way ; to the silencing of who ever will oppose him ; as some learned acute men have quickly had their mouths stopt when the tongues of some of these good women have been let loose against them . i had rather own in my self all the dulness that he is pleased to impute to the man whom he designeth to expose , than enter the lists with him at that weapon : and i do freely confess i am not qualified for it ; and if i were , i should think it unsutable to my character ( however mean ) and inconsistent with a good conscience . such impotency of mind , and such injurious defamation , is not well consistent with christianity ; nor is sutable to that learning that is required in them who write polemick divinity : for , scolding is no scholarship . if his adversary was weak , he should have knockt him down with strong arguments ; not bespattered him with dirty revileings : the one would have ruined his cause , the other but bedawb'd his person ; and it may be easily wiped off . if the cause which my adversary owneth , need this conduct , it is weak , and not worth contending for : if not ; they who do so manage it are no credit to it . § . 4. i refer the reader who would have a view of this author's qualities more truly than he characterizeth other men , to the bishop of sarum ' s vindication : where , if he be not aimed at , he is very plainly chastised in effigie : for g. b. & g. r. seem to have been stung with the same kind of serpent ; if not the same individual . he had dealt more wisely , if he had not convinced the reader , by this management , of the very same ill qualities in himself , that he so frankly attributeth to another . i am sure he hath shewed litle wisdom in bringing instances to prove his confident assertions : had he contented himself with bold saying , and quibling insinuations , of what he thinketh fit to load one with ; some who know neither him , nor the person who is the butt of his malice , might have believed some part of what he alledgeth ( they who know that person , however they cannot but see many infirmities in him , have other thoughts of him ; and indeed better than ever he could deserve : and they who know this author will judge that his tongue , nor pen , is no slander . ) but now his proofs are so exceedingly unsuted to what they are brought for , that a litle attention may serve to improve them as weapons against himself , and as evidences of these things in himself which he designeth by them to fasten on another . i perceive he hath been at pains to read all that hath been written by g. r. on several occasions ; and what he thinketh fit to ascribe to him ; to see what he could pick up in these papers wherewith he might reproach the author : in which also he hath ( innocently and without design ) done him a kindness : for if so critical an eye could find no more to try his skill upon in all these writings , it is like there are many things in them which he could not blame : for , exceptio firmat regulam in non exceptis . it is a wonder if such a person as he exposeth could say so much to any purpose . § . 4. i shall not insist on his civility to the parliament , and their act ; nor his modest reflexion on himself ; nor his great care exprest to sute his discourse to the english-nation , even in the words and phrases : nor on the account he giveth of the helps he used . only i take notice how much pains he is at to prove ( through 14 pages ) that the book commonly called knox's history was not written by john knox : i know none , who is much conversant in our scots affairs , who is contrary to him in this : and if g. r. was so absurd as to cite that book under the name by which it is commonly called ; if it hence follow that he thought john knox was the author , let him pass for as ignorant as our author will have him to be : if this be no good consequence , i hope it is no great evidence of this author's learning so to infer . that john knox did not compose that book , ( tho' much of the materials of it was taken from his manuscripts ) hath been held by presbyterian brethren , before this author went to school : neither do i know any of them who are earnest to have it believed that he wrote it : yea , this author himself citeth it always under the name of john knox ; as he confesseth : and why might not another do so too , without debating about the true author of it ; which had been a needless digression from his purpose . § . 6. after he has disgorged a great deal of gall against g. r. and declined him for an antagonist ( who hath the same aversion from entering the lists with him , unless he deal more like a christian , and a disputant ) we might ( but it is in vain ) expect he should be more composed : his bile overfloweth through all his sheets . he mentioneth some passages in my writings that he will not insist on ; only noteth them with a nigrum theta , as proofs of my unquestionable ignorance : they are , that i hold ruling-elders , who are no preachers , to be of divine institution ; that the fathers , and scripture also , owne them under the name of bishops . that patronages came not in till the seventh or eight century , or later : ( where his own ignorance , or somewhat else , appeareth ; the word is , they were not setled till then : it is well-known , that many usages crept into the church long before they were setled , either by law , or universal practice . ) that , most , and the most eminent of the prelatists acknowledge , that by christ's appointment , and according to the practices of the first ages of the church , she ought to be , and was govern'd in common by ministers acting in parity , ( which is a gross misrepresentation ; for that is said of christ's equally intrusting all his ministers with power of preaching and governing : which is asserted and fully proved by the learned stillingfleet in his irenicum : and what followeth is that author 's own words , not attributed to christs appointment as unalterable , nor to the practice of the church . yet i shall not decline debating of both these with him ( tho' i say not they are the opinion of prelatists ) that diocesan episcopacy was not setled in cyprian ' s time , &c. ( what ignorance is in this , is to be judged by the foregoing book , that the decretal epistles of anacletus are genuine , is neither asserted nor supposed , nor is any opinion given about them : only they are used as an antient writing ; and argumentum ad hominem . if this one witness be cast , we have enough beside . that it is asserted , rational def. of nonconf . p. 10. that episcopacy is not in any protestant church but in england : is neither truly , nor with candor said ; the expression is , as in england : and it is easily demonstrable , that in no protestant church , it is in that height , or doth so entirely swallow up the ruling power of presbyters , as it doth in england : if my exposition of jerom's toto orbe decretum est , be ignorant , or erroneous ; i must so abide , till this profound doctor enlighten mine eyes ; which he hath not vouchsafed to do . another of jerom's sayings , quid facit episcopus , &c. excepta ordinatione : he saith my gloss on it , hath been sufficiently exposed , hist. of the general assembly 1690 : and i say , it hath been sufficiently vindicated , in answer to that , and other four pamphlets ; and def. of vindic. in answer to the apology , p. 24 , 25. i shall now add , that very exposition of that passage , was given by marsilius patavinus , cited in the end of the preface to paul bayn's diocesan's tryal : that author lived about anno 1324. in his book called defensor pacis , against the pope ; he hath these words , ( speaking of that passage of jerome , ) ordinatio non significat ibi potestatem conferendi , seu collationem sacrorum ordinum ; sed oeconomicam potestatem regulandi , vel dirigendi ecclesiae ritus atque personas , quantum ad exercitium divini cultus in templo : unde ab antiquis legum ▪ latoribus , vocantur oeconomici reverendi . this we maintain to be competent to every parish minister ; tho' not to the elders of the congregation , to manage these in the publick assembly . i hope no man of sense , will reckon that author an ignorant person , of whom papir . masson . saith , cujus libri extant , non cuidem verborum , sed rerum aepparatu , prorsus admirandi . his instance of my ignorance , in citing some greek authors , out of the latine translations of them , is so ridiculous , as it needeth no answer . § . 7. he next cometh to some instances , that he seemeth to lay more weight on . the first amounteth to no more but this , that i cited chrysost . out of bellarm. and i had not chrysostome then by me , ( as our author saith , he had not bellarmine , when he wrote this preface , ) and answered bellarmine and chrysostom's words , as he brought them : if he doubt , ( as he seemeth to do , ) whether i did faithfully transcribe bellarmin's words , let him consult the place : and now , when i have seen and considered chrysostom's own words , i am sure that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is not the same way ascribed to the bishop alone , as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are to him , with the presbyters : for he deriveth these from christ's institution , which he doth not pretend concerning that : nor indeed could he , seing he had said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : he must then mean , that in his time , the bishop had an election , and may be , also ordination to a superior degree of dignity , ( which was without a superior power , ) or that to him , was committed the performance of the ceremonie in clerical ordinations , viz. laying on of hands : tho' i am sure , and have shewed , this was not the constant practice . what our author blameth in my sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is fully vindicated , gillesp . eng. pop. cer. p. 3. c. 8. diggress . 1. p. 164. his next instance , is out of ration . def. &c. p. 199. where i prove the peoples power in electing their pastors , from act. 14. 23. and that from the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ( not barely from the force of the word , as he , by oversight , or ignorance , mistaketh ; but ) by the force of the word , and it's circumstances in that place . if scapula be not a good voucher for the signification of a greek word , both in profane , and ecclesiastical writings , his lexicon is little worth : if he be , our author has litle judgment in declining his authority ; seing not one of the instances he giveth of the word , is for ordination ; but generally , for giving suffrage . if we consult scripture , it is used act. 10. 41. and 2 corinth . 8. 19. in both which places , it is used for election . and its importing also ordination , which i alledged , he is pleased to mock at : but thinketh not fit to take notice of the grounds brought for that interpretation , from the best criticks : which i impute to his unacquaintedness with that sort of learning ; if we may be so bold , as to question the skill of one , who so looketh down on other poor mortals , as ignoramus's . § . 8. the next proof of ignorance is , i was bold to reprove one of my adversaries for commending ministers from their understanding christian philosophy : hence our auther spendeth about 10 pages to prove , that that phrase was used by the fathers : all which is easily granted , and was never questioned by any that i know . only i still think ( and if that be to be ignorant , i cannot shun that blame ) that however the fathers did pertinently use it , and even at this time it may to very good purpose be used in some cases , yet that in a time when socinianism aboundeth , and when revealed religion is so much decryed , by not a few , and all religion is by some resolved into nature , and humane reason , the improvement of which is philosophy : i say in that case , it is not so very proper a commendation of a minister , that is taken from christian philosophy , as that which is taken from that knowledge of divine things , which is built on revelation , as superadded to what we have by nature , and is attained by ratiocination from scientifick principles . § . 9. he next thinketh fit to charge his antagonist with nonsense , the instances are first , ( animadvers . on stillingf . jrenic . p. 30. ) i had said that all ceremonies of god's worship , are worship themselves . he should have minded that it is there said that the learned stillingfleet saith the same , irenic . p. 65. which i still aver : and if he will not ascribe non-sense to that unquestionably learned author , why may not such an one as i take shelter under his shadow . but if this author had understood the distinction , that i ( and many more learned than i ) have elsewhere cleared between circumstances , rites and ceremonies , and that this last sort , is peculiar to religious actions , and hath place in no other kinds of actions , he might have understood , that such actions are religious , and acts of worship , and that they are true worship , if instituted by christ , and false , if divised by men . this cannot be judged nonsense , by any who hath , with judgement , lookt into the controversie about ceremonies ; but it must be nonsense to judge so of it . the fetch , ( as he calleth it ) of ceremonies that are in the place of competentes , or catechumeni ; called in the same place candidate ceremonies , is no more nonsense than other metaphors are , if the author be so ignorant , as to understand that phrase literaly , it is his own nonsense , and none of mine . the next peice of nonsense is , that the affirmative of the second commandment is , that we should worship god in the way that he has prescribed in his word : rational def. p. 125. if this be nonsense , i have for my compurgators , the whole assembly of divines at westminster , who in the shorter catechism , gave this answer to the question , what is required in the second commandment ? the second commandment requireth , the receiving , observing , keeping pure and entire , all such religious worship , and ordinances as god hath appointed in his word . it is like this author will not stick to charge that venerable assembly with error , but if he dare charge them with nonsense , it is no great matter if poor i take a share with them . i am so dull as to understand as litle what nonsense is in owning the lutherian churches , as sister churches , and so having communion with them , and yet refusing to joyn with them on their instituted ceremonies . if any thing here look like nonsense , it is from a typographical error , ( which i confese that book aboundeth with , the correcting of the press being commited by that author to a negligent person , while himself was at the distance of some hundrdes of miles ) it is in the manuscript uninstituted worship : and is meant of parts of worship not appointed by christ , but devised by men : we can have communion with them in owning the same truths , ( seing they own the same fundamental truths with us ) and in these parts of worship that christ hath appointed ; but we cannot joyn with them in worshiping god , by their devices , and if they intermix these with instituted worship , we must forbear communion with them in both , rather than pollute our selves with uncommanded worship : if this be nonsense , i must bear that imputation . another instance of nonsense is , second vindication , p. 14. that the two governments ( presbytery and monarchie ) of church and state , have suited one another many ages , since the nation was protestant : the authors antagonist had expressed his wonder , how presbytery could suit monarchie in the state. i confess i was not so critical , as to impute to him , that he meant presbytery in the state , and monarchy in the state ; ( for i cannot discover non-sense where it is not , even in an adversary , as this sensible man can ; ) and i plainly answered , that these two governments ; ( viz. presbytery in the church , and monarchy in the state ) did suit one another . whether the non-sense is in my expression , or in my adversaries apprehension , let the reader judge : also whether a handle is here given for a cavil ; or malice , or ignorance , hath supplyed it . § . 10. another thing wherein he hath a mind to find non-sense , is animadvers . on stillingfleets irenicum , p. 5. where the learned dr. having asserted , that where there are different opinions ▪ and probable arguments on both sides ; if it be not a matter necessary to salvation , it giveth ground to think that that matter in controversy was never intended for a necessary mean for peace and vnity in the church : on this occasion , g. r. was bold to say , that if things not necessary to salvation , must needs be thus clearly revealed , much more this clearness is needful in things necessary to salvation . the non-sense of this i cannot yet perceive : and i think this author ( not by his piercing judgement , but by this tinctured fancy ) was the first that discovered it . and i cannot shun still to think , that the fundamental truths should be , and are revealed with more evidence , than the inferior truths ; and that the lord would not have us to venture our salvation , on that obscurity of revelation , that we may not venture the peace of the church on ; if that were at stake . but the best is , that the peace of the church dependeth not so much on oneness of opinion , about some inferior truths , as in honest endeavours after that , and in mutual forbearance where it cannot be attained . i am litle concerned in his not believing a typographical error , in a passage about the decrees of god ; which a friend of his , ( if not himself ) had observed , and i had solemnly disowned , and do still disowne , as what i never thought , spoke , nor wrote : it seems he measureth the veracity of others by his own . but he will prove what he affirmeth ; that book was re-printed in england , without alteration , or correction ; ergo it was the authors , not the printers error . a wise consequence indeed : if it went abroad with that error , ( as i deny not it did ) it is no wonder it was re-printed with it : but that it was ever re-printed , is more than i know , or ever heard before : if he will not believe me in this , i hope some others will. he next setteth the black mark of non-sense , on the arguments i bring against a stinted liturgy of mans composure : rational def. p. 226. i can see nothing but tollerable sense , and some strength of reason , in these arguments ; when i review them after many years : and our author thought not fit to discover it to us , and therefore they must even stand as they were . only this great judge of non-sense , sheweth us that the lords prayer is a set form and disowned by presbyterians , and therefore that must be here included : answer , that prayer ( if a set form ; that is , if it be enjoined to be rehearsed in publick worship ) is not a set form of mans devising , and therefore falleth not under the arguments that he opposeth . neither do presbyterians disown that prayer , but use it as a directory for prayer , and if any will repeat the words in solemn worship , they do not censure them . he hinteth , ( tho' so confusedly , that i cannot make sense of his refutation of non-sense ) that we are quakers , because against liturgies . we find no liturgies in the apostolick church ; and yet they were no quakers : if all praying without book were enthusiasm , ( as he ignorantly insinuateth ) many episcopal men must be such , for they do not always use the book . his retorting the argument on extemporary prayer , is strangely wide , and hath been often answered : but this author's business is not to clear truth , but to run down a certain person whom he hath in chase : extemporary prayer imposeth neither matter , nor frame , or composure , on the hearers , and joyner , further than nature it self maketh necessary , where people pray together : but set forms do . § . 11. yet more non-sense : his antagonist speaketh of the popish church of scotland , and of the protestant church , also often of the episcopal and presbyterian church there , whereas the church is but one : which this author is at much pains to expose : but by mishape , exposeth himself in so doing : i list not to contend about words , whether you call a divided church ( as scotland was while partly popish , and partly protestant : and novv is vvhole partly presbyterian and partly episcopal ) two churches , or one church rent in two peices ; i think is not material , i see no non-sense in either way of speaking : both parties or churches if permitted must have their government , and governours , neither is it fit that they should rule that church , or part of the church to which they are opposite , and which they would destroy . it is wholly beside this purpose that he bringeth in , of my blaming dr. stillingfleet for making the vnity of the church of england , consist , in two convocations ( which our author doth so grosly mistake for the upper and lower houses of one convocation , whereas that author doth make two convocations in two distinct provinces , p. 300 ) for that is one church united in it's parts , not divided into parties as the church we speak of . and it 's less intelligible , how that should have two heads , than in this case : why two parties may not be called two governing bodies , in a divided church , i cannot yet understand , for all his story of the platonick monster : that no head is mentioned , why should he wonder ; unless he think a visible head of the church in a single person is necessary ; in such metaphorick speeches , there is no matter of moment ; whether ye call the governing part of a church a body , or a head : but enough of this quibling on this head. § . 12. our author's next essay , is to set forth his antagonist's ill nature : in which discourse , every one may see , how manifestly and fully he setteth forth that temper of mind in himself , which he blameth in another : most of the passages he insisteth on , were written against some pamphlets , which contain the most false and injurious imputations , and that not against a person only , but against all the presbyterians without discrimination : yea , against the whole nation , in it's representative , the parliament ; and many of these assertions are proved to be false , and if a certain author , by a book which gave less occasion , was by every line , provoked to the indecency of passion , what wonder , if just indignation was warmly expressed against such abusive treatment . if i have called any thing lies , railing , sauciness , impudence , which was not so , i am content to underly the just sentence of unbyassed men , but this author and his complices , take a boundless liberty to reproach , and if they be told of it , they are clamorous beyond measure . it is not inconsistent with all that civility that is due to men , to give things their true names , especially where the rank and behaviour of the persons we deal with , plead no extraordinary respect . he mistaketh , when he saith , that i knew , that the author of the memorial was dead , before i answered his book : i do not to this day , know who was the author of it . what was said about giving up king charles the first to england , should have been refuted by reason , not by quibling : i have no answer for such arguments : neither have i time to examine how fairly all the words are cited , which he adduceth , nor to shew on what occasion , or on what necessity they were written : what he representeth as spoken of the prelatists , is injuriously blamed , it was spoken of a party of them , ( who are but few , ) who reproached the presbyterians in general , and in the most universal terms ; which never was my way against them . § . 13. if any thing hath dropt from my pen , which may be judged uncivil , or short of due respect toward the learned , and reverend dr. stillingfleet , i am ready to crave him pardon , for i designed the contrary : what this author chargeth me with that way , is partly false , as what he citeth out of the preface to animadv . on irenic . for both the prefaces , ( i have seen one at some copies , and another at other copies , ) were written by another hand , without the knowledge of the author : partly they are fouly misrepresented ; to give an instance : this author faith , that i said of dr. stillingfleet , p. 18. that for the most part he doth nothing , but magno conatu nihil agere . this is misrepresented : i said that he insisteth most on things not controverted , and thence inferred the blame mentioned . it is one thing to charge one directly with an opinion or practice : and another , to make an inference from it : seing many do or say that , the ill consequence of which they do not observe , but will disowne . his other citations are but a just censure one some passages of that learned author's writings , which i was examining , which cannot be shunned in polemick writings : to call that a contradiction that i make appear to be such , is no injury nor breach of that civility , that is due to a stated adversary : many things are fair enough in open war , which were not so in a state of peace . this author is yet more injurious , in expounding all that i have said of a few men of imbittered spirits ; among the prelatists , who have in their writings reproacht the presbyterians , and imputed to them , things that they are innocent of , or abhor , applying all this , ( i say ) to all them who are of the episcopal perswasion ; or to the party in general , as that they are esaus , serpents , spiteful , &c. i challenge him to prove what he saith : i deny it : if i have said any thing of immorality among the clergy , it is too evident , tho' i know some of them are innocent , and lament it . what he citeth as spoken against the church of england , and her clergy , is either what is in controversie between us , and them : i have been so bold , as to call their liturgy and ceremonies superstition , and to mention what is the native concomitant of superstition , that men will be wiser than christ or his apostles . this is no more a crime , than it is a fault to be opposite to their way . what is said of immoralities , and insufficiency for the ministery , and other corruptions that are among them , is not chargeable on me , yea nor on presbyterians alone , but it is the complaint , of the best among themselves , see the five groans of the church , and mr. bold ' s serm. these authors were truly sons of the church of england ; thousands among them , complain of these things , who yet adhere to that communion . i might well disowne that principle of sentencing , & executing kings by their subjects , about which some of the church of england had informed forreign divines , as the principle and doctrine of presbyterians : because the generality of presbyterians in scotland , ( very few excepted , and these turned independents after , ) shewed their abhorrence of that fact committed on king charles the first , so they did in england , and some of them suffered death , for owning his son. is it incivility to the church of england , that i thought , at the time of the late revolution , it was fit for parties to put in their claim , for what they thought the way of god , that it might be judged of by them who had authority ? if the church of england think , we ought not to mutter against the corruptions of their way , nor seek a remedy in an orderly and legal way , they may know that we pretend to no such civility , as is inconsistent with faithfulness to the truth , and ordinances of christ . we are for the purity of the church of england , and for her peace too , so as not to meddle with her without our sphere : but if speaking , or writing for the good way that we owne , do disquiet her , with respect to her corruptions , we must be excused . it is a wise assertion , he exhorteth his readers to purge the church of england , &c. i exhorted none to this attempt , but in their station , such as many have not : his expression soundeth , as if i had stirred all up , that should read this book , to fall on the church of england , and pull her down . § . 14. impudence is the next epithet , that he laboureth to fix on the man of his wrath. instances are ; it is abscribed to cunning , that their books reproaching the presbyterians were spread in england , but hard to be found in scotland : which he imputeth to want of liberty for printing such pieces in scotland , and hazard in importing them : but it is sufficiently known , that many books of that strain have been imported , and none seized ( that i hear of ) but one parcel , which was of another strain . next it is impudence to assert the loyalty of presbyterians . answ . it is more impudence to ascribe to presbyterians , what was the practices of some few , with which the far greatest part , neither did , nor would concur . what was said on this head , was also proved ; and it is impudence to put such a mark on any assertion , and yet not attempt to answer the arguments brought for it . another impudence is to speak of the harmlesness of presbyterians , and that they are no persecutors . and that any one of many of them suffered more hardships , and barbarous cruelty , than all the espiscopalians have endured : the impudence of this , he proveth very learnedly : how could one man suffer the deprivation of five or six hundred livelyhoods . that there were so many episcopal ministers turned out , ( i suppose these he meaneth ) i know not ; but it is not a wise comparison , of one man to have so many families to maintain on nothing , and each to have his own : i affirm that one man who suffered torture , intercommunning , was forc'd to lodge in dens and woods , and in daily hazard of his life , who was sold for a slave in the remote places of the earth , suffered more ( tho' his loss of money did not amount to so great a sum ) than all they did . i find nothing in what followeth to disprove what i had said , and therefore pass to another piece of impudence , ( which yet is a repetition of what he had said before ) that presbyterians are no rebels . to prove this he ( very pertinently ) alledgeth a contradiction between first vindic. ad q. 2. § . 3. where it is said that episcopacy raised a tumult , and § . 5. they ( the episcopal men ) raised no tumults . ( this last is ad q. 3. § . 5. ) answ . the former is spoken ( as plainly appeareth to them who will see ) of the war between the king and parliament . the other of such tumults as our author chargeth the rable with , and it is expresly said that they did what they could to raise a war. here then is that horrible contradiction that he findeth , or fancieth : a war managed by potent armies and for a long time , is in one place called a tumult ; and yet scuffles among a confused rout , which are soon over , are distinguished from such a war. here is neither contradiction nor impudence : the impudence that followeth is injuriously imputed to me ( it is vindicating the presbyterians from being rebels ) for what himself seemeth to applaud in other more modest persons , he might find frequently said by me . but if it be impudence to deny presbyterians to be rebels , what kind of quality must he be of who chargeth them with it , while his own party is guilty of actions of the same nature , and were as universally engaged in them . what hath lately fallen out , might teach him either to justifie what he so freely calleth rebellion , or to lay the blame of it on protestants , and not presbyterians only : and then if no share of it fall on himself , let us know what party he is of . § . 15. he next challengeth some insinuations , as if the presbyterians in scotland were the only protestants ; which cannot be inferred from any words he citeth . neither can it be inferred that i thought , or said that the gospel was not preached but by the presterians . one word he layeth weight on , that if the presbyterians had not used the indulgence given to them and papists ; these would have occasion to mislead people , without any to oppose them . none who had a mind to understand words as they are plainly meant , would so construct this passage ; such universal expressions most frequently suffer a limitation : also in that case they had done what in them was , that none should oppose popery : as if a batallion in an army flee , they act such a part as tendeth to hinder any opposition to be made to the enemy . beside all this , tho' there were some privat episcopal ministers appear'd faithful in this case : it is well known how litle most of the bishops , and the generality of the clergy appeared , and how they that did speak any thing that way , were discouraged by some bishops . i wish he had better cleared to us , how absurd it is to say , that the true protestants in the nation were for the late revolution , than by telling us , that being against it was no popery : most men think it was too much to favour it , and was a defect in that zeal that should have , in such a juncture , been shewed against it . the secret instructions from holland that he giveth as the cause of presbyterians complying with the dispensing power : i never heard of them , but from that epistler whom he mentioneth : and i could answer nothing to it but by denying it : and now when he calleth for an answer to it , i say , first , presbyterians did never comply with the dispensing power , but groaned under it as a grievance : their using the indulgence could not be so constructed , as i have else-where shewed . secondly , i solemnly declare that i know nothing to this day of these secret instructions . thirdly , what moved such presbyterians as i was acquainted with to scruple using the indulgence at first , and to accept it at last , was , that some conditions and limitations , that they could not submit to , were left out in the last edition of it . the villany that he chargeth the presbyterians with , in addressing king james for his indulgence , while they were on intrigues to supplant him , must be charged on them who were so guilty : i knew of no such intrigues , nor any such design then on foot , tho' now i perceive that such designs were then hatching : neither can i name one person among all that accepted of the indulgence who knew of such designs . § . 16. he next bringeth instances of impudent shifts used by g. r. when he , or his cause is put to it . the rabbled ministers were not deprived of their possessions ( i mean stipends ) by an act of parliament ( as he alledgeth , ) but thrust from their places by the rabble ; and the state judged that they could not relieve them without palpable inconvenience ; and because of the notoriety of the scandals of not a few of them which had been so outed ; ( as appeareth from the then prince of orange's declaration , ) on which followed the loss of their benefices . what the state did , they can best give reasons for . i never defended what the rabble did that way . for what is said of parliaments calling king james's retirement from england , his abdicating the government : that is plain to be meant of the parliament of england : for tho' it was written by a scots-man , it was said of english ▪ affairs : of retirement from england , not from scotland : wherefore here is no impudence , ( unless on his own side , ) tho' the scots parliament speak nothing of abdication . this , and what followeth , is picking a quarrel without cause given . the long story he hath of the viscount of dundee's plot , and the forces that came from the west to defend the convention , containeth such matters of fact , as he contradicteth what is confidently affirmed by them who were on the place , and had occasion to know these things , as well as he ; and are fully as credible persons as he is . let the reader judge who deserveth most credit . i was witness to none of these things : but shall give my vouchers , if duely called to it : if he can do the like , let unbyassed men judge of the whole history . if i had said the whole nation knoweth the whole of this passage to be true , as he affirmeth that the whole nation knoweth it to be a figment ; i might have been branded with impudence , on better ground than any thing that he hath brought to prove his charge against me . § . 17. what was said against dr. strachan's defence , he spendeth many words upon it : on which i observe a few things . first , i expresly referred that objection to be answered by some seen in state-affairs ; it being political rather than theological . 2ly that i pleaded an inter-regnum in the time of the rabbling , and would not allow it in the dr's case , is no inconsistency : for in the first case the exercise of government was impossible ; in the other there was actual exercise of it . 3ly when it was said the representative of the nation had owned william as their king : it was not meant ( as he hath a mind to understand it ) as complexly such ; but as exercising the supreme regal power , and designed to be compleatly king. i could give scripture-instances of such manner of speaking of kings : if it were fit to enlarge as much on this head as he doth . 4ly if it was not a contempt of the authority of the nation , to disobey the command of it's highest power for the time , even tho' one should attempt to give reasons ( unless these reasons were also sufficient , of which none of us are judge ) let any give sentence . 5ly he subtilizeth the distinction too much between being king , and exercising the regal power : but to help out his fine notion , he behoved to alter the phrase , putting right to exercise for exercising it self : i hope these two may be distinguished ; and that there may be not only a physical , but a moral impediment , for a time , of a moral right . his notion of exercising the regal power before taking the oath , and that there is no obligation to take the oath before the coronation ; i cannot yield to ; but leave to statesmen , and lawers to debate it with him . i say the same of his discourse of hereditary and elective kings . § . 18. that i called k. j. our lawful soveraign , he saith , was a striking at the root of the present settlement . answer , if i had so called him , with respect to the time of the present government , what he saith were true . but to say that he was so before this government had it's being , and before the nation in its representative had found and declared the contrary , is far from that blame . next , he unfairly representeth what i had said , that episcopacy cannot be restored : i hope it never shall , and i am sure it never can , without crossing the institution of christ . but whether the restoring of it be consistent with the civil rights and priviledges of the nation , as things are now stated , i leave it to states-men and lawers to discuss . his commendation of the cameronians , and blaming me for speaking to their disadvantage , is not out of kindness to them , but in odium tertii ; that he might make the sober presbyterians ( for i cannot be bantered out of that distinction ) more hateful , as being worse than they . i should think it lost time , to examine his quibbles about the presbyterian ministers not preaching so much as he and his complices thought was meet against the rabling : these things were sufficiently declared against by some , and that where such disorders were most rampant and regnant : but preaching could not stem that tide , many of these men would hear non of us , nor will they to this day ( tho' , through mercy , not a few of them are reclaimed ) and some who listned to other doctrine , would not hear that . he hath a wise inference , i had said , these courses were preached against both before they were acted , for preventing them : and after for reproving them ; ergo , saith he , it was a consulted and deliberat politick ; and the ministers were privy to it ; and yet did not warn the poor men , that they might have escaped being rabled : i shall not give this its due name ; as he frequently giveth ill and undue names to my words . ministers knew an inclination to disorders in some , that they went beyond their stations , by an ill guided zeal : and this they warned against , yea , and some presbyterian ministers did protest against all these exasperated men , when they beheld it : but that they knew designs for these disorders in particular , is false , and doth not follow from what was said ; he saith , he can name more than one or two of the first rank of sober presbyterian ministers , ( such a blunder and repugnancy in me would have been called ignorance , non-sense , impudence , and what not ) who advised to these courses . i solemnly declare i know not any of them , and if i did , i should blame them . § . 19. he cometh next to contradictions : some of which are fancied ; others are real ; but of his own making , by mis-citing words ; one is i have said , where there are bishops the presbyters have no power , in another book , we do not say that bishops take all power from presbyters . any who will be at the pains to consult the places that he citeth , will find that the first speaketh of governing power ; the other speaketh of power in general , which comprehendeth preaching power , but it is there expresly said , that they take away all governing power : where is then the contradiction : next it is said , ( he knoweth not where it seems ; nor do i ) that king james's indulgence was against law. and yet 2d vendic . p. 43. the parliament had given the king such power . the first assertion i find not ; another assertion that to him will infer it , is , the law was for publick meetings , ergo , privat meetings were against law ; it is a pitiful consequence , where liberty is allowed , ( as now in england ) the law is for both ways . wherefore the second assertion maketh no contradiction . but if both had been said , there are just laws , and unjust : which may without a contradiction in the assertion , be said to contradict one another . this distinction removeth also the next pretended contradiction , between a forefeiture being unjust , that the authority of the nation laid on , and ministers having no legal right to their stipends , when the authority of the nation have determined otherwise ; parliaments may both do right , and do wrong . another contradiction he fancieth : animadv . on stillingf . jrenic . it is asserted that all ministers having got equal power from christ , they cannot so devolve their power on one of themselves , as to deprive themselves of it : their power being not a license only , but a trust . this he thinketh is contradicted indirectly , by delegating members to the general assembly . to this i answer , delegation to the general assembly , is a temporary , transient thing , for the exercise of one or a few acts : and necessity doth warrant it , seing the ministers of a whole nation , cannot meet , without leaving almost the whole nation destitute of preaching , and other ordinances , for a considerable time . this is not to be compared with devolving of the power of the ministers of a whole province on one bishop , who is perpetually ( ad vitam aut culpam ) to exercise the whole power of the church , in all the acts of it ; so as all the rest are deprived of it , and cannot exercise it , nor give account to god for the management of it . the one is very consistent with that parity that christ made in communicating church power to his servants , the other is not . he saith also , that i contradict the former position directly , in true representation : & 2d vindic. by allowing the taking ruling power from the prelatical clergy . beside the necessity , and unsettled state of the church in these places , brought for justifying this conduct , which he rather mocketh at than solidly answereth , i there at length insisted , to shew that there is no inconsistancy between this , and our principle concerning parity : i need say no more , till he answer what is already said . § . 20. another contradiction he will needs make , between my disowning some grounds of separation in england , and owning the same in scotland . the one in my rational defence against dr. stillingfleet , the other in my second vindic. of the church of scotland , this he prosecuteth with a great deal of clamor : what strength is in his discourse , let us now try . i hope i shall be found semper idem , for all this noise . three grounds of separation he mentioneth , wherein this contradiction lyeth , first episcopacy . answer , i said the setting up episcopacy in england , was not a sufficient ground for people to forbear hearing of the word in their parish churches , i say the same with respect to scotland . i said episcopacy was a good ground for ministers to withdraw from church judicatories , where they must ( at least interpretatively ) own that authority : i say the same of england . if he can find any thing in my words , that doth import any more than this , i shall owne a contradiction , and the shame that it may infer . the second is episcopal ministers were vsurpers , or intruders . the third is they had not the peoples call. i am sure , i never made these to be two distinct things : but this author 's subtile wit , hath divided them . here i cannot own either contradiction or contrariety . i approved the conduct of many people in england , who by a tacit , and after consent , owned these men , as their pastors , and heard them , tho' they did not joyn with their unwarranted ceremonies : i never condemned the same practice in scotland ; but approved it by my practice , and doctrine . only i pleaded , that what ever might be said of their not giving consent , ( which was also the case of many in england , ) they could not be charged with separation , while these men were obtruded on them , against the laws of the gospel , especially when they might hear their own lawfully called ministers , tho' in a corner . i find no contradiction here , neither in what he saith about the covenant , which i still think never made any new duties , or sins for the matter ; but was a superadded tie to former moral obligations . i said indeed that the covenant national , and the solemn league , made setting up of episcopacy more sinful than before : but i never said , that either it made episcopacy sinful , where it was not so before : nor that it made owning of it such : tho' i am sure it aggravated the sin of both . § . 21. his next effort is to expose my rejecting the testimony of some , who were brought to attest the rabbling : but in his way , ( i know not what freak took him , ) he digresseth to consider the preface to animadv . on stillingf . irenic . which he will needs have to be written by the author himself , on which he discanteth after his own manner , that is , not very learnedly , nor convincingly ; i assure him , and ( if he will not be assured , he having no great esteem of my veracity , ) i can assure the reader , that the author neither wrote that preface , nor what is in the title page , nor knew that the book was printed , till after it was done ; but was at 300 miles distance from where it was done . the metaphorical death , spoken of in it , taken from the english phrase , of being dead in law , as the nonconformist ministers then were , was but a sorry subject for a learned divine to practise upon , but he had a mind to write much , and had little to say , tho' he often pretendeth to have great plenty of matter . it is true i did , and do question the truths of many circumstances , whereby the rabblings were aggravated : and tho' he is pleased to say , that the whole nation knoweth them , i affirm the generality of the people , where these things were said to be acted , know the contrary : let the reader , who hath not occasion to enquire into the matters of fact , believe as he seeth cause , or suspend his belief . i did never defend , nor deny the hardships that some of the episcopal clergy met with from the rabble : only i said , and i insist in it , that they were represented most disingenuously in several parts , and circumstances of them : his vouchers i reject , ( i mean some of them , ) ours he rejecteth ; which is ordinary in such contendings , wherefore unless the thing could come to a legal tryal , every one must believe as he seeth cause . that i rejected by the bulk all the matters of fact , is false , and injurious . i did acknowledge several of them , and condemned them as unaccountable disorders . it is a foolish inference , no man can be a fit witness before a court , because we are not to believe all the stories that men tell of themselves , or their friends . that i had my informations in these things mostly from rabblers themselves , is falsly asserted , as may be seen by any who impartially consider the second vindication . his exposing that second vindication , because i had the accounts of matters of fact from other hands , and was not eye , nor ear-witness to them , is odd ; for what historian is there , who may not be , on the same account , blamed . the book he speaketh of , account of the late establishment of the presbyterian government , by the parliament , i have not seen , nor heard of it before . i thanked the parliament , in the preface to my sermon before them , for their act , establishing presbyterian government , can any wise man thence infer , that i commended whatever was beside incorporated into that act ? therefore all his long discourse on that head , is impertinent . another terrible contradiction is , i say field meetings were sometimes necessary : and yet they were condemned by the wisest and soberest presbyterians . if i had said they were in all cases so condemned , he might have insulted : but may not i always , that is at all times , be of opinion , that a thing should not be done , as i see it often done , and without necessity , and yet think that there may be a case of necessity , where it may be done ; this is to cavil , not to reason . § . 22. the envenomed words , in some pages that follow , wherewith he concludeth his preface , and these of the same sort , wherewith it interspersed , i disregard : he doth himself more hurt by them , than me : i resolve not to be hector'd , nor banter'd out of my principles , nor scarred by malice , or reproach from casting in my mite , for the defence of truth , tho' he , and such as he conspire to overwhelm me , partly with their books , and partly with their calumnious imputations . it is not usual for satan so to rage against a bad cause . these few pages i have written raptim ▪ the press waiting for them : if he , or any other will examine them fairly , with that candor that becometh a christian , and a disputant ; i shall be willing to be corrected , if any thing have escaped my pen ; if he or they write in the same strain of this preface , i will despise them , as also will all sober and intelligent readers . finis . scotland's grievances relating to darien &c., humbly offered to the consideration of the parliament ridpath, george, d. 1726. 1700 approx. 159 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 30 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-05 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a57287 wing r1464 estc r1580 08206501 ocm 08206501 41094 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a57287) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 41094) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1238:10) scotland's grievances relating to darien &c., humbly offered to the consideration of the parliament ridpath, george, d. 1726. [1], 54 p. s.n.], [edinburgh? : printed 1700. errata: p. [1] (1st grouping) reproduction of original in the huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng company of scotland trading to africa and the indies. darien scots' colony, 1698-1700. scotland -commercial policy. 2002-12 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-02 olivia bottum sampled and proofread 2003-02 olivia bottum text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion scotland's grievances , relating to darien . &c. humbly offered to the consideration of the parliament . vos quibus potior est turpis cum securitate servitus , quam honesta cum periculo libertas , istam , quam magni estimatis , fortunam , amplectamini , ego in patria , saepe defensa liber & libens moriar : nec me prius ejus caritas quam vita relinquet . vallas ad brussium . buchan . hist. lib. 8 : which for the benefit of those that don't understand latin , is english'd thus . you who had rather like cowards submit your necks to a yoke of ignominious slavery , than expose your selves to any danger in asserting the public liberty ; hugg that fortune which you value so highly : for my part , i shall cheerfully sacrifice my life to die a free-man in my native country , which i have so often defended ▪ nor will i cease to love it , till i cease to live : wallace to bruce , when he join'd with the english against his country . printed , 1700. errata . our nation being so unhappy , that those who write or act against it are rewarded and carested ; whereas those that write or act for it , must do it at their perril ▪ it is not to be wondred at , that many faults should escape the press in those few sheets , when all must be done in hurry and fear . and therefore the readers are not only desired to pardon , but also to amend the following errata , before they peruse the book , because they marr the sense . page line     9 36 read the claim   12 18 councellors   16 36 for too late read truly 20 24 for wrought wrote 21 37 prove pave — 44 care taken taken care 24 28 unequal equal 25 2 for made by by — 14 pact pack'd 26 26 for question mention 27 43 read the government   28 24 read that nation   32 9 read the parliament   part . i. since our nation bethought themselves of advancing their trade , by the act for establishing a company trading to africa and the indies , a greater invasion hath been made upon our sovereignty and freedom , than hath happened at any time since we were ingloriously betray'd by baliol. 't were needless to offer instances to prove this , had we not to do with a sett of men who having basely betray'd us , would willingly bereave us of our senses , that we should neither perceive nor resent it . the matters of fact being notorious , we shall only mention them here with some short reflections , and take them in order of time as follows . the addresses of both houses of parliament in england against our act above-mentioned , was such an invasion , as to which it may be a proper enquiry for our parliament , whether those addresses were not contriv'd and promoted by some about the k. as the last address of the house of lords was ; and whether any native of scotland was concern'd in contriving or promoting the same ? in the next place it will appear . that the parliament of scotland has as much right to signifie to the king by address or otherwise , that the said addresses were contrary to the law of nations , and an intrenchment upon the sovereignty of scotland , as the english parliament had to present the said address to him against our act. they that advis'd the king's answer to the said address , are guilty of such an invasion , as to which it would seem that the parliament of scotland have as much right to resolve , that whoever advis'd his majesty to the said answer , had done as much as in them lay to create a misunderstanding betwixt him and his people of scotland , as the commons of england had to resolve so upon his majesty's answer to their resolves about the irish forfeitures . the memorial given in to the senate of hamburgh , april 7th , 1697. against our company 's making any convention or treaty with that city for promoting our commerce , was such an invasion . this may certainly be a just cause of enquiry to the parliament of scotland , whether the said memorial was not a breach of the law of nations , since the king of england has no right to take cognizance of what is done by the subjects of scotland out of the dominions of england . if the faction say he did it as king of scots , let them produce their authority . in the next place they have cause to enquire , whether the assertion in that memorial , that the commissioners of our company were no ways authorized by his majesty to make the said treaties was not false ? and whether the said memorial was not an actual dispensing with , and acting contrary to the law establishing our company , which empowers them to treat for , and to procure exemptions and other grants as may be convenient for supporting , promoting and enlarging their trade and navigation from any foreign potentate or prince whatsoever , in amity with his majesty . it would also seem to be a proper enquiry for the parliament of scotland , whether all the dammages the company has sustained by the said memorial , and other opposition made them by the court , ought not to be made good out of the estates of those who gave his majesty those advises , and that in order thereunto his majesty be address'd to know who they were , or else that he would be pleased to make good the said dammages some other way ; for effecting of which he stands obliged by the said act , to interpose his authority upon the publick charge . since in the close of the said memorial , his majesty's ministers threaten the hamburghers with the consequences of a breach of friendship and good correspondence with england , if they did not put a stop to the proceedings of our commissioners in that city . this together with the before-mentioned proceedings of the parliament of england gives the parliament of scotland a more just ground to address his majesty to put a stop to those intrenchments made by an english faction ( for we don't charge it upon the whole nation ) upon the sovereignty and freedom of scotland , than the english parliament had to address his majesty against our act. it may also deserve the enquiry of the parliament of scotland , why the king of england's ministers should dare to have call'd themselves ministers to the king of great britain in that memorial , which was in direct opposition to a scots act of parliament and letters patents granted by the king of scotland : since our country is included in the denomination of great britain , and that his majesty , as king of scots , neither did nor could give them any authority to present that memorial , this deserves their enquiry so much the more , that by this means our own authority and name may always be made use of against our selves , as it was in this case , if care be not taken to prevent it ; and besides , it may in future ages be made use of as an argument by the english histor●●ns , to prove that the scots were subject to england , as their former historians ignorantly made use of it as an argument to prove the same thing , that some of their kings were said to have commanded over all britain , by which no more was meant but that part of it which was subject to the romans , and secur'd against the incursions of the scots by adrian's or severus's walls . that the company 's address of iune 28th 1697. complaining of that memorial , and asserting like true scotsmen their own right , and those of the nation against the invasions of our neighbours , should have no answer from the king till the 2d day of august after , deserves also the enquiry of our parliament ; but much more that his majesty's promise according to the said answer was never fulfilled ; nor a declaration to indemnifie the hamburgers against the said memorial granted , by which the company was so much injured , and the independency of our nation openly violated . yet it 's still more to be wondred at , and deserves our parliaments most serious enquiry , why after so many repeated addresses from the company , and one from the parliament it self iuly 22d 1698. our nation should be so much contemned and injured , and the authority of a parliament which had been so kind to his majesty , so much trampled upon and undervalued , that the said memorial was so far from being recalled , that mr stevenson , the company 's agent acquaints them in his letter of the 4th of october , that the english there did constantly say , the company would never be redress'd ; and in his of the 18th of october following , that he understood by mr. cresset the english envoy to the court of lunenburgh , that if the memorial were yet to be given in , it would have been done ; and that the said cresset had private orders to act quite contrary to our company 's expectations . this was such a black piece of treachery , and shews so much contempt of our nation , and such rancour and malice against it , that we cannot see how the parliament can in honour to themselves , and honesty to the kingdom which they represent , omit addressing his majesty to discover the authors of such pernicious councils , that they may be proceeded against according to the law of nations ; or at least to make a resolve , that the authors and abettors of such councils , if scotsmen , are traytors ; and if foreigners , are enemies to the kingdom of scotland ; and that the company has a right of reprisal against them and their supporters when discovered . this may perhaps seem too severe , for which we shall make no other apology ; but if what followed upon the company 's representing this information to the lord seafield be duly considered , it will appear that our nation has no reason to be much softer in the matter , for by that it is evident that mr. stevenson's information was but too too true , and that the same wicked counsellors who had advised that opposition , still o●tain'd the ascendant : what else is the meaning of the lord s — s trifling answer upon the receipt of the company 's letter with mr. stevenson's inclos'd ; could any man think that a sufficient answer , that he could not as yet expect an opportunity of representing the matter to the king , because he was so very much employ'd in the affairs of his english parliament : had his lordship forgot that he himself , as president of the parliament of scotland , had sign'd their address to his majesty to have this very grievance removed , and did his lordship think the parliament of scotland so very contemprible ; that an affair of theirs might not find room amongst the affairs of the parliament of england ? did his lordship never know his majesty go a hunting all that season , and could not he have prevailed with him to have allowed a hunting day or two , to consider of an affair wherein the parliament of the scotland was so much concerned ? what pity 't is his lordship should not give our parliament an account whether this answer was made by himself , or put in his mouth by somebody else to paum a new delay upon our company . the contempt put upon our nation in this affair is further demonstrable , from that continual series of trifling with the company , and their having no other answer to those important letters of theirs abovementioned ( tho they wrote another to seafield to put him in mind of them , da●ed ianuary 13 th ) till the 7 th of february following ; and then he sends to them , that he was commanded by his majesty to let them know that there being accounts that the ships belonging to the company were arriv'd upon the coast of america , and the particular design not being communicated to his majesty , he therefore delays giving answer , till he receive certain information of their settlement . whoever advis'd his majesty to deal thus by our company took as little care of his honour , as they did of our welfare : such evasive and disingenuous answers in a private person would have been call'd by very hard names : what consistency is there betwixt this answer and the promise , made by the two secretaries , the 2 d day of august , 1697 ? that he would order his ministers at hamburgh and lunenburgh not to make use of his name and authority for obstructing our company in the prosecution of their trade with the inhabitants ' of that city . this promise was absolute , and the court stands now charg'd by mr. crescet , with giving private instructions contrary to this , and other publick promises ; yet tho his majesty's honour , and the interest of scotland be so much concern'd , that the scandal should be wip'd off by a speedy and punctual performance of his promise , here 's a new delay put upon the company , and a promise which was absolute before , now made conditional a year and an half after , and before they are to expect an answer whether it shall be fulfil'd or not : his majesty requires certain information of the collonie's settlement , as if those pernicious counsellours , who advis'd to this conduct could think this sufficient to absolve his majesty from a promise he had made so long before , to take off the stop he had put to their subscriptions at hamburgh . but that the pernicious counsellours design'd this only as an amusement and delay without any design that our grievances should be redress'd , will appear by the sequel : for after the company had acquainted his majesty with the settlement of their colony in the terms of his own act of parliament , and that a very loyal and pertinent address was also presented to his majesty from the colony it self ; yet this interdict laid upon our subscriptions at hamburgh was never taken off to this day , tho the company did again press it in their letter to his majesty ; with an account of their colony's settlement : nor had they ever any redress for capt. long , of the rupert prizes , traducing their colony as a company of rogues , vagabonds , and broken officers , without any commission from the king , and that his majesty would not own them ; all which makes it evident that there was nothing of sincerity in the conduct of those who were his majesty's counsellours , as to the affairs of our company . this will still be further evident from the proclamations publish'd against our colony in iamaica , barbadoes , and new england , which were not only treacherous to the highest degree , but such an invasion upon the sovereignty and independency of our nation , as ought not to be pass'd over by our parliament without a protestation against them , and a strict enquiry after the authors and advisers of them . that they are full of treachery and malice against our country , is plain from their being emitted ( as appears by their dates ) before ever any complaint was made against us by the spaniards , before we were heard what we could say in our own defence ; and at the same time whilst our lord president and advocat were sent for from scotland , to hear what they could say in justification of our colony's settlement . the treachery is also plainly demonstrable , because the said proclamations were publish'd without consulting the council of scotland , and that they were contrary to the solemn promises , made by the commissioners and presidents in our parliaments from time to time ; wherein his majesty promis'd to encourage and protect our trade , of which those proclamations are utterly subversive . if it be objected that his majesty was obliged to publish those proclamations out of regard to the english nation and his foreign allies . we answer that his majesty by his coronation oath as king of scotland , is oblig'd to govern us by our own laws , and not by any consideration of foreign interests ; but admitting that he ought in this case to have giv'n the preference to the english nation , and his foreign allies : it will by no means acquit the pernicious counsellors of treachery towards us , since the least they could have advis'd in this case was , that we should have had notice of such proclamations before-hand , that we might have been upon our guard , and have done what we could to have prevented our colonies being frightened or starved from darien ; the omitting of which alone , had there been nothing of an actual concurrence to destroy us , makes those counsellors chargeable with the blood of our men , the loss of our treasure , and the disappointment of the just expectation we had from that expedition . that the publishing of those proclamations was an unsufferable intrenchment upon the sovereignty and independency of our nation is undeniable , since thereby the king of england takes upon himself to condemn the subjects of scotland as invaders of the dominions of spain , and thereupon forbids his english subjects to have any correspondence with them , or to supply them with any necessaries , which by the law of nations must be interpreted an act of hostility , when done by one nation to another . that this being done by the king of england is an invasion upon the sovereignty of scotland , is evident , because he hath no right neither as a liege-sovereign , nor conqueror to judge of our actions . if he did it as king of scots , then it concerns our parliament to enquire by what law he could do it without their consent , or what scotsmen advis'd him so to do , and whether it be true what mr. vernon said , that it was done with the lord s — 's privacy and consent . that the emitting of those proclamations was a deliberate action of the pernicious counsellors , and full of malice and treachery against the kingdom of scotland appears further . from the publishing a second proclamation , sept. 5. 1699 , at barbadoes , against entertaining any correspondence with the scots at darien , tho the lord president and advocate had so long before given in sufficient ▪ reasons to justify our settlement . this will appear yet more plainly if the tenor of that proclamation be considered , which is not so positive as that at iamaica in condemning our settlement at darien , as contrary to the peace with his majesty's al●ies , but is express'd doubtfully ; lest the same should derogate from the treaties his majesty hath entered into with the crown of spain , or be otherwise prejudicial to any of his majesty's colonies in the west-indies . whence it is evident that we have a positive injury done us , tho the court could not be positive , but only suppo●'d that our settlement might derogate from his majesties treaties with spain , or be prejudicial to his majesties colonies in the west-indies . the authors of this proclamation knew well enough the state of our colony's provisions , and how fatal those proclamations would be to them ; and therefore no art can palliate their malice and treachery . that the said proclamations were emitted with a design to ruin our colony is demonstrable from this , that tho our company upon the dismal news of its disaster , did in a very dutiful manner petition his majesty , put him in mind of the several acts of parliament , and his letters patent , authorising the natives of this kingdom to settle plantations in asia , africa and america ; upon the faith and encouragement of which they form'd themselves into a company , and had made a settlement at darien , precisely according to the terms of the said acts and letters patent ; at the same time informing him , that they had too much reason to believe that the said proclamations had been of fatal consequence to our company and colony ; desiring that the effect of the proclamations might be taken off , and that they might be supplied from the english plantations in the ordinary way of commerce . yet notwithstanding all this application they had a meer trifling answer returned them , and couch'd in such ambiguous terms as might leave room for farther trifling , viz. that we should have the same freedom of trade and commerce with the english plantations as ever we had formerly ; which was just none at all . so that this was nothing but a meer evasion , and no direct answer to our companies necessary and reasonable petition . certainly it concerns our parliament to enquire who were the authors of this scandalous breach of publick laws , upon the faith of which our country ventur'd so much to sea , and by the violation of which in such a manner the sovereignty of our nation is trampled under foot , and we have lost so much blood and treasure . the malice of these pernicious counsellours against our country and colony , is further display'd by their doing all that 's possible ●o preclude us from having our grievances redressed ; we have in vain petitioned the court ever since the last sessions of parliament , and therefore had no way left us but to petition that the parliament may meet again at the day appointed in november next , that his majesty may have the advice and assistance of the great council of this nation , in such a weigh●y and general concern . this those blessed counsellours are so far from thinking fit to be granted , that they advise his majesty to adjourn our parliament further till the 5th of march following ; just when they heard this petition was coming up ; and at the same time we are told , that his majesty will order the parliament to meet when he judg'd the good of the nation did require it ; as if any could be better judges than the nation it self which groan'd under oppressions , and knew no other way of being delivered from them ; or as if the advice of the council general of our company , wherein the flower of our nobility and gentry , and a great number of the members of our parliament are included , were not more proper to give his majesty advice in this matter , than an english and dutch faction mixt with some scotchmen who have so little interest in their country or affection to it , as to betray it for bread , or the favour of the court. thus the honour and interest of our country are still trampled upon . tho those continued slights and marks of contempt were enough to have wearied our company out , and might justly have provok'd the nation to have taken other measures ; yet the company out of their zeal to the publick welfare , continue their applications to his majesty , and send up an address to him by the lord basil hamilton ; wherein they acquaint his majesty , that capt. pincarton , commander of their ship the dolphin , being forc'd ashoar under the walls of carthagena ; to avoid shipwrack was with all his company ; some of them gentlemen , belonging to the best families of the nation detain'd prisoners , and inhumanly us'd , contrary to the treaties betwixt the crowns of spain and great britain , that the colony had in the name of his majesty and the company sent to demand them ; but instead of having it granted , their messenger was threatned to be put in chains , and not allow'd to see any of the said prisoners ; and therefore they thought themselves bound in duty and conscience to lay their deplorable case before his majesty , and for that end commissioned the lord basil hamilton , one of their number , to present their address to his majesty , and to give him a further account of their other affairs , not doubting but his majesty would take speedy and effectual measures for redressing their dammage , and obtaining the freedom of those distressed prisoners . tho this address , and the calamities which our nation at home , and colony abroad labour'd under , might one would have thought force compassion , and speedy relief from the breast of generous enemy ; yet such is the continued prevalency of the per●icious counsellours , that the accepting of this address is put off ; and by consequence the redress of our grievances , and the relief of those wretched gentlemen , and others delay'd , on a trifling and frivolous pretext , that the lord basil hamilton had not waited upon his majesty , when formerly at london , had never since given any publick evidence of his loyalty , nor acknowledg'd his majesty's government . this was above a month after the address was sign'd , and must needs be taken , as the company themselves rightly understood it to be a signification of his majesty's displeasure at the commission it self , which my lord basil brought up : there being no prince in europe , but would with open arms embrace a subject of my lord basil hamilton's quality and character , upon his return to his duty , and presenting an address that own'd his majesty's title and government ( if he had ever acted against it ) but much more a person of his high birth and merit who was never charged with any thing inconsistent with the duty of a loyal and peaceable subject . it would seem then to be incumbent upon the parliament of scotland , to enquire who they were that advised his majesty to delay his endeavours , which by law he was obliged to exert , for obtaining the liberty of capt. pinearton and his company , and the restitution of his ship and goods , though the company had never addressed him upon that head : it would , we say , seem to be incumbent upon the parliament to enquire who it was that advised to the dispensing with a positive law , because the commissioner who presented that address , had neglected a ceremony which he was by no law obliged to perform . if the nation of scotland is become so contemptible that its rights must be neglected ; and if the blood of our illustrious nobility and gallant gentry be now so vile that the omission of a meer ceremony is thought sufficient cause to connive at hostilities committed upon our people , and to suffer gentlemen related to the best families of the kingdom to perish in infamous slavery ; it 's in vain for us to pretend to be a free nation : if we cannot have such injuries redress'd , we had as good send our coronation oath and claim of right to his majesty of england in a present , and tell him , that henceforward we will become his most obedient slaves and vassals , and will hang our selves whenever he shall be graciously pleased to send us a letter and bow-string for that end . some we know will object that his majesty did not refuse to to receive the petition , though he would not allow my lord basil to present it , and promised to receive information of what is demanded from his secretaries ; and if my lord basil would give in in writing to them what he had to represent , his majesty would give his answer to the company . to which we can readily answer , that this is the direct path to the tyranny of the late reigns , which o●dered that no petition should be presented to the king but by his council : if his majesty must appoint who shall deliver the petition , it 's all one as if he should dictate the petition too . we would wish the pernicious counsellors to consider how they will reconcile this to that claim of right , and what an answer they will be able to give out parliament , if they think fit to tell them , that his majesty's beloved secretary had formerly neglected delivering the companies petitions , on pre●ence that he had not an opportunity of doing it , because his majesty was so much taken up with the affairs of his english parliament ; and therefore they had no reason to entrust him with any more petitions . besides , it is visible that this delay proceeded meerly from a design to ruin our company entirely : it was known to the world how much they suffered in their reputation and interest , by the disaster of their colony , which nothing in probability could retrieve , without the countenance and concurrence of his majesty and parliament ; this the enemies of our nation were sensible of , and therefore take such measures as procure us all possible marks of his majesty's displeasure , and an obstinate refusal of a parliament . by this opposition they had little reason to doubt , that we should be so baulked in the prosecution of our american design , as utterly to abandon it : when we saw the court resolved to thwart us in every thing relating to it , and so unmerciful as to delay procuring the liberty of so many gentlemen that were detained prisoners , and cruelly used contrary to the laws of nations . from all which it necessarily results , that it's incumbent upon the parliament of scotland to enter a protest against this continued violation of their laws and authority , and to enquire who they are that gave his majesty such council that they may be punished according to demerit . we come next to consider his majesty's answer to the contents of the address brought up by my lord basil hamilton , viz. that he was resolved in the terms of the treaty , to demand that capt. pincart●n and those of his crew who are detained prisoners at carthagena be released and set at liberty . that the subjects of scotland shall be allowed the same liberty of trade that others enjoy with the english plantations ; that it was his resolution to promote and advance the trade of the kingdom : and the three frigats they demand , having been given by parliament for guarding the trade of the coasts , he was not resolved to dispose of them till he had the advise of his parliament . by this his majesty owns that capt. pincarton and his crew were detained prisoners by the spaniards contrary to the treaty . then what can his counsellors in scots affairs say for their not having advised his majesty to demand him sooner , especially since he was obliged to it by the act establishing our company ; had the zeal of those counsellors who pretend to be concerned for the wellfare and honour of our nation ; been equal to the malice of those that advised his majesty to issue proclamations against our colony in the west indies , before he knew whether we had done any thing in contravention to his treaties with spain or not , they would certainly have put him upon demanding satisfaction sooner for a manifest breach of those treaties . this we conceive deserves also the consideration of our parliament . in the next place , by his majesty's promise that we should have the same liberty of trade that others enjoy with the english plantations . it is owned by the advisers of it , that it was in his majesty's power so to do ; and that he might lawfully do so , which is a plain con●ession that we had acted nothing contrary to his treaties with spain , nor to the detriment of his english plantations , and that the former prohibition was the act and deed of those pernicious counsellors ; for had it been contrary to the laws of england , or treaties betwixt the crown of great britain and spain , that our colonies should be supplied with provisions , &c. from the english plantations , it had not been in his majesty's power to dispence with it now . the matter then being so , it concerns the parliament of scotland to enquire who they were , and upon what motives they advised his majesty to emit those proclamations against supplying our colony with provisions , &c. since it was settled in the precise terms of the act of his scots parliament , and his own letters patent ; and that our colony had done nothing contrary to his treaties with spain , or to the interest of his english plantations : at the same time it may be proper for them to enquire why capt. pincarton and his company , as also the ship and goods , are not restored all this while ! and whether the promise of demanding them from spain hath not been as ill performed as was that of recalling the memorial at hamburgh . as to his majesty's promise of our having the same liberty of trade to the english plantations as others have , it is worth the while to observe the management of the pernicious counsellors in this point . it would seem they were sensible that his majesty's promise , if performed , might be of advantage to our colony , and would make shew to the world , that he really countenanced our undertaking , and by consequence oblige those that oppose us to greater precautions ; and therefore though this promise was made us to calm the spirits of our people , whom they knew to be in a general ferment , they were resolved it should never be performed ; but how to bring his majesty handsomly off , was their next enquiry . this they found a method to do , by endeavouring to have the parliament of england approve what his majesty had done against our company and colony , and they thought no doubt , that his majesty would be sufficiently absolved , and the mouths of our nation for ever stopped , as having neither courage nor power to call the kingdom of england to an account . this was in vain attempted upon the house of commons , but carried at last in the house of lords , viis & modis , yet not without a pro●estation against it , and several sharp speeches inveighing against the courtiers who had promised that very thing to the scots , against which they were then soliciting the house to address his majesty . the address it self we shall view anon , after some further considerations on his majesty's promise to our company , as to the three friga●s they demanded , which , he says , because they were given by the parliament for guarding the trade of the coasts , he is resolved not to dispose of till he have the advice of our parliament . it is certainly an essential part of our constitution , for a king of scots to advise with his parliament ; why then was not the parliament summoned to meet speedily at the companies desire , since the honour and interest of our kingdom required it ? and we would willingly know of those that advise his majesty in scots affairs , whether they think the parliament meant those ships ▪ when the peace had rendred the guarding our coasts unnecessary , should have been denied for guarding the trade of the nation , and the coasts of our new settlement at caledonia . and in the next place we would willingly know of them why the granting of this necessary demand should be deferred till the parliament can be advised with concerning it , since the granting of it in all common interpretation , must be supposed to be according to their act , and why their advice was not also staid for or desired , before the emitting the proclamations against our colony in the west indies ? this is certainly worth our parliaments enquiring into . for 't is not to be supposed that they entrust our kings to do whatever pernicious councils advise them to , against the interest of the nation , and only to delay doing what is visibly for its advantage , till they have the consent of parliament : upon the whole it is demonstrable beyond contradiction , that they who have his majesty's ear as to scots affairs , and by whose advice he has governed himself as to our kingdom , designed no good to our company , colony , or country , otherwise such reasonable requests as they have from time to time desired of his majesty , could not have been refused as they have constantly been , in manifest violation of our laws , and to the irreparable disgrace of our nation . this will appear convincingly to those that consider the proclamation issued in scotland by his majesty's order , against carrying on a na●ional petition for a parliament in order to redress our grievances as to darien , &c. the frivolous pretext of the pernicious counsellors , that the same was promoted by persons who had given no proofs of their affections to the government ; and that they endeavoured to charge the miscarriage of the darien colony , upon proclamations published against their having any supplys from the english west indies , whereas it was chargeable upon other causes ; this frivolous pretext we say is so very thin , that it may easily be seen through , and was contrived on purpose to draw a vail over the manifest injustice of this proclamation , so diametrically opposite to the claim of right , on which his majesty accepted the crown , wherein it is expresly declared , that it is the right of the subject to petition the king , and that all prosecutions and imprisonments for such petitioning , are and were contrary to law. here is no exception made of subjects that have not given proofs of their affection to the government . it is sufficient if they be subjects , to certainly petitioning in it self infers an owning of the government ; but admit it were so that the said petition was promoted by such , must the whole nation when injured in its honour and interest , be denied the liberty of petitioning for a redress of their grievances , because persons that are not well affected to the government , when they suffer in the common loss of their country , and likewise in their own personal property are willing to concur with them , and to promote such a petition ? this is doctrine fit for turky , or for france ; and indeed not digestable there , much less to be obtruded upon us . but the truth of the matter is this , the mischeivous counsellors were not willing the nation should be acquainted with the treatment they had met with by their means , and therefore did not care to hear of a national application for a redress . but did those gentlemen think we would take their word for it , that the miscarriage of our colony was not chargeable upon their west-india proclamations , since they know they never yet suffered his majesty to keep his word to us , as is but too too evident from the hamburgh memorial , the said proclamations , and other steps of opposition made to our company contrary to express law ? was it not but reasonable then , that we should desire a parliament to enquire into the matter , and examine whether the company 's charge be true or false ? or when the practises of pernicious counsellors gives the country just cause to complain of grievances , must they not petition for a redress , because some ill men may perhaps improve it against the government ? we hope our parliament will think it worth their while to enquire , whether they that gave the occasion for such a petition , or those that make such a petition be most culpable . ay , but says the faction , such petitioning is an invasion of his majesties prerogative , it being he only who is to call a parliament . to which we answer , that the claim of right sets bounds to his prerogative beyond which he is not to go , since upon those terms he accepted our crown ; and that claim having reserv'd to the subject the right of petitioning , the denial of it is an invasion of their property . and besides , tho his majesty only is to call a parliament , it 's not left absolutely or solely at his disposal when . by the claim of right he is obliged for the redress of grievances to call them frequently , and to allow them to sit . so that the denying of the parliaments meeting , and adjourning them from time to time , as in the present case , when the whole nation complains of their grievances in relation to their colony , is another manifest infraction upon the claim of right , which our parliament is concern'd to enquire into the authors of , that they may be punish'd ; otherwise our claim of right will by degrees come to be of no more use to us than an almanack out of date . we come now to the address of the house of lords in england , concerning our colony at darien , which we think convenient to insert here at large . london , february 13th . yesterday his majesty received the following address from the house of lords . we the lords spiritual and temporal in parliament assembled , being according to our duty solicitous for the preservation and encrease of the trade of this kingdom , on which the support of your majesties greatness and honour so much depends , as well as the security and defence of your people , have been very apprehensive , that the steps lately made towards a settlement of your subjects of the kingdom of scotland at darien , may tend to the great preiudice of this nation , and possibly to the disturbance of that peace and good correspondence with the crown of spain , which we conceive is very advantagious to us all : vve have therefore taken the same into our serious consideration , as a matter of the greatest importance , and proper to be laid before your majesty , as the common father of both countries . and as we are truly sensible of great losses our neighbour kingdom hath sustained , both by men and treasure , in their expeditions to that place , which we very heartily lament , so we should not endeavour by any interposition of ours , to defeat the hopes they may still entertain of recovering those losses by their further engaging in that design , but that we judge such a prosecution on their parts must end not only in far greater disapointments to themselves , but at the same time prove very inconvenient to the trade , and quiet of this kingdom . on this occasion we humbly presume to put your majesty in mind of the address of both houses of parliament , presented to your majesty on the 17th of december 1695. in the close of which address your majesty will see the unanimous sense of this kingdom in relation to any settlement the scots might make in the west-indies , by virtue of an act of parliament past about that time in the kingdom of scotland , which was the occasion of the said address . and we humbly represent to your majesty , that having received information of some orders your majesty had sent to the governours of the plantations on this subject , the house did , on the 18th of january last , come to this resolution , that your majesty's pleasure signified to the governours of the plantations , in relation to the scotch settlement at darien , was agreeable to the address of both houses of parliament , presented to your majesty on the 17th of december 1695. and on the 8th of this instant february , this house came to this further resolution , that the settlement of the scots colony at darien is inconsistent with the good of the plantation trade of this kingdom . all which we humbly hope your majesty will take into your royal consideration , and we are confident that your majesty cannot be thought too partial to the address of this house , if your majesty shall in the first place consider the advantage and good of this trade of this kingdom , by the preservation and improvement of which , both these kingdoms , and all your other dominions , must on all occasions principally be defended . if this address be not a manifest invasion of our sovereignty and independency never any thing was ; and therefore 't is to be hop'd our parliament , against whose act they have so expresly declared themselves , will protest against this address , and declare it to be an invasion of our freedom , and such an interposition in our affairs as is inconsistent with the sovereignty and independency of scotland . we have already taken notice that this address was the procurement of the court , which shews how fraudulently the pernicious counsellors have all along acted with us , and what our nation is to expect so long as we are governed by such advice : but to come to the address it self . it is evident that the natural tendency of it is to render our kingdom subject to that of england , and a plain declaration against our settlement at darien , or any place in the west-ind●es . it is also plain from this address , that they presented it on purpose to defeat the hopes that we might still entertain of recovering our losses , by further engaging in that design ; and that they have taken upon themselves the loss of the blood and treasure which we have sustained in the west-indies , by declaring that his majesties pleasure , signified to the governours of the plantations in relation to our settlement at darien , was agreeable to the address of both houses of parliament , of the 17 th of december , 1695. it 's observable also , that by this address the lords take upon them to say the commons are of the same mind with themselves ; which since the commons seem to comply with by their silence , wants very little of a formal declaration of both houses against our trading either in the east or west-indies . it is also evident from this address , that they demand his majesty should prefer the advantage of their trade to ours ; from all which together its demonstrable , that they have no more to do but to alledge any branch of our trade they please to be inconsistent with and disadvantagious to theirs , and so may at last deprive us of our whole trade ; since those who are his majesties counsellors in our affairs think it sufficient it seems to absolve him from his coronation oath to us , or any other obligation he is under to govern us according to our own laws , if what he does against our interest and honour be but agreeable to the mind of his parliament of england . these things make it evident beyond contradiction , that except some speedy redress be had , not only our company but all other individual merchants of this kingdom , must from henceforward conclude that all their rights and freedom of trade are and may be further violently wrested out of our hands by our neighbours : as our company well express'd it in their address to his majesty , iune 28 th . 1697. by those barefac'd and avow'd methods , the conjecture of our company , in their address to the council of scotland of december 22 d 1697 , hath been also too much verified , viz. that if effectual means were not taken for putting an early stop to such an open and violent infringement of so solemn a constitution , its hard to guess how far it may in after-ages be made use of as a precedent , for invading and overthrowing even the very fundamental rights , natural liberties , and indisputable independency of this kingdom , which by the now open and frequent practises of our unkind neighbours seem to be too shrewdly pointed at , and give cause of apprehensions and jealousies , not only to our company in particular , but even to the whole body of the nation in geneneral . it is no less evident , by those proceedings that the authority and credit of our parliament is struck at through our companies sides : as the company likewise truly express'd it , in their address to the parliament , iuly 22 d , 1698. and from this address they may as well foresee that they are to expect all the opposition from the faction that can be , as they formerly predicted , but too late in their address to the parliament — that their enemies would either directly or indirectly pursue their designs of ruining all their measures . for we may assure our selves that those persons about his majesty , who were so officious to procure proclamations against our colony ( when there was no such address to countenance their proceedings ) will not be wanting to press his majesty to oppose us to the utmost , since they have been at so much pains to procure this address , tho at the expence of his majesty's reputation , who had promis'd us the contrary : this is but too evident from the advices we have already receiv'd , that the captain of the sloope who brought 2 of our colony from darien to iamaica , since our repossessing our selves of it , was imprison'd there , and his vessel seiz'd on that account . we come next to the causes they assign for this address , viz. that our settlement may occasion a breach of the peace betwixt them and spain , and be prejudicial to their plantation-trade . the first they have no cause to fear , since there is no offensive and defensive league 'twixt us and england , that we are a distinct and independent nation , and that they have sufficiently declar'd their opposition to our settlement , to the loss of our blood and treasure ; the second is frivolous and against the law of nations , since every free and independent kingdom has a right to seek their own advantage without any regard to the interest of another , as much as two freemen of the same employment have a right to set up a shop in the same street , or next door to one another , if they find their account in it . if it were otherwise , the english have as much right to oppose the old french settlements in the west-indies , and their new one at mississipi , as they have to oppose ours ; so that their proceedings against us in this matter is a piece of the black●st injustice that one nation can be guilty of towards another : and we wonder very much at it , since some of their council of trade , who are amongst the chief of those that advise to this way of proceeding against us , seem to place all their hopes of heaven upon justice 'twixt man and man , and yet seem to have no sense of justice betwixt nation and nation , we come next to consider his majesties answer . his majesties most gracious answer to the address , was to this effect , viz. his majesty having received a very dutiful address from the house of peers , in relation to the endeavours lately used by some of his majesties subjects of the kingdom of scotland towards making a settlement at darien , in which they humbly represent to him their opinion , that such a settlement is inconsistent with the good of the plantation-trade of this kingdom : is pleased to let the house know , that he will always have a very great regard to their opinion ; and to assure them , that he will never be wanting by all proper means ▪ to promote the advantage and good of the trade of england . at the same time his majesty is pleased to declare , that he cannot but have a great concern and tenderness for his kingdom of scotland , and a desire to advance their well-fare and prosperity , and is very sensibly touched with the loss his subjects of that kingdom have sustained by their late unhappy expeditions , in order to a settlement at darien . his majesty does apprehend that difficulties may too often arise with respect to the different interest of trade , between his two kingdoms , unless some way be found out to unite them more nearly and compleatly : and therefore his majesty takes this opportunity of putting the house of peers in mind of what he recommended to his parliament , soon after his accession to the throne , that they would consider of an vnion between the two kingdoms . his majesty is of opinion , that nothing would more contribute to the security and happiness of both kingdoms ; and is inclined to hope , that after they have lived near 100 years under the same head , some happy expedient may be found for making them one people , in case a treaty were set on foot for that purpose ; and therefore he does very earnestly recommend this matter to the consideration of the house . this answer is indeed something more like the answer of a king of scots , than that to the address of both houses , of the 17 th of december 1695. yet the m●nagement of our friends , his majesties counsellors in scots affairs , is still obvious to our view , in this answer ; the transports of joy they were filled with upon the receipt of the lords address , discovers it self by visible ebullitions in the very first line . his majesty having received a very dvtifvl address . what pity 't was that new patents of honour were not sent to every one of those lords that were for this dutiful address . but when it comes to be weighed in a scots ballance it appears to be undutiful to the highest degree . 1. because they take upon them to advise his majesty to act contrary to what he had promised to the scots . and , 2. because instead of owning him as an independent sovereign of scotland , they treat him like their vassal , as he is king of scots , by pretending to direct him in the affairs of our nation , where they have nothing to do ; and that also in opposition to the sentiments of the parliament of scotland , who must rationally be suppos'd to understand the interest of our nation better , and to consult it more , than they either can or will do . certainly they must have a very mean opinion of the wisdom of our nation , if they think we can be gull'd with their pretending to be sorry for our great loss of men and treasure ; when at the same time , they charge themselves with advising to those measures which occasioned the loss of both , and indirectly threaten us ( for we cannot interpret it otherwise ) with far greater disappointments in the prosecvtion of ovr design : for justification of which they have already form'd their declaration , viz. that our settlement at darien is greatly prejudicial to their nation , and disturbs their peace with spain ; when all this while the spaniards have never offered to make the least reprizal upon them for it , whereas they have committed actual hostilities upon us . his majesty's declaring that he cannot but have a great concern and tenderness for his kingdom of scotland , and a desire to advance our welfare and prosperity , discovers a paternal affection to us ; but considering how he is circumstantiate , is like to be of as little use to our nation , as the affection of a natural father to his own children , for whom he dares not do any good office , because of a cursed ill-natured step-mother , that has him at command : thus his majesty was graciously pleased to grant us an act for encouraging and promoting our trade , but by the malice of our enemies , who have him in their hands , was forced to counteract it : thus he has been pleased again to promise our colony the same liberty of trade that others have to the english plantations , but must be forced to recal his word , or at least to be worse than his promise , because he is told that the sense of both his houses of parliament in england is against it . to these straights those pernicious counsellors have reduced his majesty ; for though the faction will promise to support him in a●ting contrary to law , and his coronation oath , against us ; yet they will not suffer him to do any thing against what they are pleased to call the interest of england , but he is in danger of being lop'd off or abdicated . they will not allow us to complain of our kings when misled by ill council , or to say that by our ancient constitution , they were accountable to their parliaments for male-administration , but strait they will burn our books as false , scandalous , and trayterous ; yet they themselves fly in the face of their prince every day , suffer his administration to be tamely libelled , and his person reflected on , in all their pampblets against a standing army ; they will tell him to his face , that they who advised him to the irish grants , had not consulted his honour — and that they who advised him to such and such answers , had done as much as in them lay to create a misunderstanding betwixt him and his people . if we quote our historians , or laws , for asserting that the supreme power of our government risided formerly in the state● , who could dispose of the lives and fortunes of our princes , they strait condemn it as trayterous ; but at the same time they quietly suffer books to be published , asserting their own power of doing so by their kings , and justifie the cutting off of king charles the i. as milton's works , and others : if their own kings dispence with their laws , and invade the rights of their church , they kick them from their thrones , and then tell the world they have abdicated ; yet at the same time they support them in acting arbitrarily , and contrary to law against us ; and tell them that in so doing , they act according to the sense of both houses . if we complain of injuries done us , and affronts put upon us by a faction of theirs , in conjunction with some ill men of our own , straitway we are accused of reflecting upon the honour of both nations ▪ and endeavouring to stir up war and sedition , and proclamations are issued , offering 500 l for discovering the authors of such complaints ; yet at the same time they suffer us to be libelled , railed upon , vilified and belied , and god himself and the holy scriptures blasphemed , in villanous pamphlets , without taking the least notice of it . thus in a scurrilous pamphlet called , a history of darien , we are bantered and laughed at with romantick and foppish stories ; in the defence of the scots abdicating darien , the honour of our nation is outrag'd , our company belied , and religion blasphemed ; yet the author rewarded and caressed by mr. v — n , now a minister of state , but formerly a licenser of books , for taking off the penal laws , and overturning the protestant religion . in a villanous lampoon called , the pedlar turn'd merchant , we are exposed to publick redicule and contempt , without any animadversion upon authors or publishers . nor had any of our own secretaries of state the courage to take any course with those libellers , or to complain of them , though app●ication was made to them for that end . but if any thing be wrought to vindicate our nation from such foul ca●umnies , a greater reward is offered for discovering the authors than was offered for apprehending some of the regicides : proclamations are published with more zeal and virulency for that end , than against popish priests and jesuits , who by their principles and practises destroy mens souls and bodies : what eagerness did our enemies at court evidence , in prosecuting booksellers for the enquiry into the causes of our colonies miscarrying at darien ? what pa●ns and expence to find out the very porters that carried the books a●out ? vvhat illegal and barbarous treatments and threa●s did they make use of to a poor fellow taken up on suspicion on that account , keeping him close prisoner for a week without an● oath against him , when his wife lay-in in child-bed , and and his family at the same time in a starving condition , having nothing else but his labour to depend on ? with what fury and heat did they prosecute some people in ireland , for but reading it in publick ? and what pains and expence were they a● to bring over a scots bookseller from thence to witness against another scots bookseller in london , that he had sent him a parcel of those books ? what ca●e to have extravagant b●●l from that london bookseller and o●he●s ? and what threats to ruin that dublin bookseller , if he would not c●n●rary to conscience and knowledge , swear against the scots bookseller in london ? and at the same time did not prosecute english booksellers that were taken up for actually selling the books . and what pains and expence were they at to discover the author , though they had all the reason in the world to think that he was not within the jurisdiction of england ? and yet at the same time they suffer our nation to be daily abused and ridiculed impunè . these things are so plain and notorious , that the faction cannot but think the world takes notice of them , and curses their scandalous partiality from their very souls . that pernicious faction ( for still we would be understood to be far from charging any thing here said , upon the whole english nation ) may very well remember , that they looked upon it to be a good justification of their war against holland , because the dutch reflected upon the honour of the english nation with their their pens and pencils , drew their king with his pocket turned inside out , and his hands in his breeches running after his whores ; and represented the english nation by their three lions with their tails cut ; and some such device as this ( if we remember it right ) angli castigati latrant non mordent . is it not strange then , that a nation so jealous of their own honour , should suffer their neighbours to be so scandalously revil'd in theirs ; but such is the temper of the high tory faction , and some sneaking court wigs that are fallen in with them , in opposition to us , that it seems they would have the power of calling kings to an account , or cutting them off , appropriated to england alone ; the latter we believe our country will scarcely grudge them , since they have been in the sole possession of it this 100 years , and therefore have a right to it by prescription ; but as to the former we must beg their pardon . by our claim of right it is possible still for our kings to forfeit their crowns by maleadministration , whether they abdicate or not . we were under no obligation to mince the matter , nor to manage the credit of passive obedience , and save our own reputation for acting contrary to that pretended principle , by imposing a falshood upon the world. we had no need to say that that prince had voluntarily resign'd his crown , when he was obliged to quit it by an armed force ; therefore we acted fairly above-board , according to the genius of our nation , and declared he had forfeited his right , by acting so and so , which being according to former presidents , may prove the way for , others to come : whereas there 's no great likelihood of our neighbours being so happy , as to have all their ●uture tyrants run away , and perhaps it 's for that reason they are so ambitious to ingross the right of lopping off kings to themselves ; this we have the more reason to say , since they were so mild in their censure to mr. stevens , who on the 30th of ianuary defended that practise before them , and yet were so severe upon the author of the scots enquiry , for a meer historical relation of what power our ancestors cl●imed over their kings . the next thing we are to consider , is the project of an union 'twixt the english and us . we shall not of●er to call in question his majesty's sincerity in the proposal , because he made it formerly , when there were none of those controversies on foot betwixt us ; but we have all imaginable reason to question the sincerity of those from whom it came now , and to look upon that , and his majesty's promise of holding our parliament in person , to have been both of them contrived to gull and amuse us : the very making of such a proposal , and the forwarding it , by those lords that had almost in the same breath charged themselves with the loss of on● blood and treasure at darien , and all the disappointments that our company had met with , was enough to make us suspect that no good to us was intended by it . they that had just declared our trading to the east and west indies to be inconsistent with the trade of england , were not like to come to any union , that would allow us a share in their trade , when they will grant us none of our own ; yet it must be confess'd , that we can never mention with honour enough , those noble lords who with a generous and impartial justice protested against that unaccountable address , about our american settlement : but to return to the union , the unmanly and scurrilous reflections thrown upon us in the house of commons by some noted torys on that occasion , are indications sufficient , that such an union as they design , would only compleat our ruin : but at the same time we must own that our nation is eternally obliged to those worthy members of the lower house , who declared they rejected the bill , because they would not concur in putting a sham upon their neighbouring nation , that had been so much injured , and so barbarously treated by the west india proclamations , &c. it were easy to shew that an union upon good and honourable terms would be the greatest happiness this island could enjoy , that it would certainly enrich and strengthen it , and secure our religion and liberties against all attempts from abroad and at home ; that it would bless bo●h nations , with an oppo●tunity to rectify what is amiss in their respective constitutions , and make us the impregnable bulwark of true christianity , and human liberty ; but some those about his majesty discover sufficiently by their conduct , that those are the things in the world they are most afraid of ; and therefore think it their interest , instead of uniting , to divide us , and instead of reforming to debauch us : what else is the meaning of the prodigious increase of popery and profaneness , and the perpretation of so much unnatural , and formerly unheard of villany in the nations ? what else is the meaning of it , that foreign protestants were so little care taken of at the reswick treaty ; that since the conclusion of the peace , they have lost more than they did during the whole war , and are every where expos'd to be devour'd by the papists in france , germany , hungary , &c. without any interposition in the name of great britain . whence comes it to pass else , that now , when the power of these three nations and holland are in the hands of one prince , the hero of his age , and the representative of a family , that for 100 years past hath been the scourge of popery and tyranny ; that the church of rome should sport her self with the blood and misery of the protestants every day , and kindle a war amongst the protestant powers of the north , when it were easy for us , humanly speaking , with the united naval force only of protestant princes and states to oblige all the popish princes in europe to come to a better temper , in relation to their protestant subjects , or to sack rome the seat of the antichristian empire , make the whore desolate , and burn her flesh with fire . but instead of such great and generous designs , we are rendred uncapable of protecting our selves ; that popish in●erest grows within our own bowels : proclamations against priests are not obtain'd without sollicitation ; new laws against them are but faintly carried on , the three nations are dash'd one against another ; each of them subdivided into factions within themselves : and the endeavours of the protestant kingdom of scotland to settle a trade , which hath a promising aspect for the protestant interest , opposed with more vigour , industry , and cunning , by some about court , than ever they oppos'd any thing else ; whether it be the influence of some spanish and french gold , or the effects of some secret and unknown bargains , god knows : but we think our nation has very great reason to enquire into the cause of it , and together with their trade , to take more than ordinary care of the protestant interest amongst our selves , and not to suffer this kingdom to be a receptacle to any of the priests banished from england . this we humbly conceive we are the more oblig'd to look after , since that part of the administration is wholly devolv'd upon our selves , because his majesty , who is of a larger soul than to do any thing that looks like persecuting people upon the account of principles , declin'd being any ways obliged to use force in matters of religion , by taking that article of our coronation oath which obliges him to root out heresy , with an explanation ; and therefore it is the more incumbent upon us to see the laws against popery put in execution our selves , lest our lenity to them prove a cruelty to our country ; it being very well known that their principles and practises have a natural tendency to subvert all civil societies , which makes the execution of laws against them a prosecution as necessary as that of other criminals ; and so much the more necessary amongst us , that it is by the interest of those of that opinion , and of them that are addicted to their superstition , that the advancement of our trade is so keenly and maliciously oppos'd . whilst publick affairs a●e under the influence of such men as have testified so much rancour against our country , those gentlemen who spoke of an union with us in such unbecoming terms , as one civiliz'd nation ought not to allow towards another , need not trouble themselves with the fears of our pressing it : it 's better to be alone , than with ill company . how desirous soever we may seem to have been of a union , our neighbours may assure themselves that our nation never design'd to purchase it at the expence of their sovereignty and honour . we are under no obligations yet to treat upon such disadvantagious terms ; what we may be reduc'd to , when the faction begin that war which capt. baker the king of england's sollicitor threatens us with , we cannot tell . we doubt not he speaks the sentiments of the courtiers that are so much imbittered against us ; but we despise it as a b●utum fulmen . this they may be satisfied of , that by proposing an union we never design'd to become a province to them , and to resign our parliament , without a proportionable share of the legislative and executive power , and of the presence of the government and all its influences ; without which the union would make us worse instead of making us better . nor must they think that we design to give up our consciences to be new molded , according to the pattern of damascus , or their pleasure . there 's no question to be made but an union without any of those inconveniences might be effected to the honour and advantage of both nations , were things in a proper disposition for it ; but if our neighbours grasp at a larger government than what they are already possessed of , it s not our interest to become the subjects of it : great governments like other great bodies become unweildy , and where one member has too much and another too little , the frame will quickly come to decay . mutual affection and an unequal distribution of advantages are the best cement of civil society ; but where some engross too much , and allow others too little , friendship can never be firm nor durable . if they design to be our masters , and not our neighbours , they may assure themselves that our design and theirs is not the same , and that we shall never unite with them upon those terms . thus we have taken a brief view of some of the principal grievances we labour under , as to our american settlement ; to which we may add the discourting of those who have shew'd themselves zealous for advancing our trade , and the advancement and continuing of such in great posts as ingloriously concur with those measures , that are taken to ruine their country . the great difficulty lies in ge●ting those grievances redress'd and in falling upon methods to have the like prevented in time to come ; neither of these are to be done without our parliaments assuming to themselves the ancient spirit and courage of the nation : if we tamely digest those invasions upon our soveraignty our enemies will be encouraged to go on , and if we don't take effectual measures to restrain all stretches of prerogative , we shall unavoidably fall into the tyranny of the late reigns . the invasions made upon our soveraignty and freedom made by the english court , are such as we cannot once doubt that our parliament will take care to assert the honour of the nation against them , but perhaps there may be some difficulty in getting proper resolves taken against the late measures of some courtiers , in opposition to the interest of the country , such are the trifling and fraudulent dealing with us as to the hamburgh memorial , the like as to the west india proclamations , the denying of the companys reasonable petitions , the proclamation against the national petition , &c. the unreasonable delaying of the meeting of the parliament , when the honour and interest of the nation did so londly call for it , &c. it is not to be suppos'd that a parliament who have retriev'd so much of our ancient constitution ( that was usurp'd upon , or giv'n away by pact parliaments , during the fr●ntick transports and prevalency of the cavalier faction in charle● ii. time ) will be huffed or frighten'd out of their rights by the bugbear words of treason and sedition ; those are crimes with which parliaments lawfully call'd , and acting with the consent of the people , can never justly be charg'd , freedom of speech and debate in parliament being retriv'd by the claim of right , members who speak freely for the honour and interest of their country are not now to be frighten'd by red coats , and other court pensioners with the castle , the castle , as in the late reigns . if any such thing should now be offered , the said claim will justify sending the proposers of it to the same quarters . by the same instrument of government or claim of right , we are also deliver'd from that overgrown prerogative or excrescence of tyranny , that made it treason to say the king is accountable to his parliament , since a freedom from those incroachments upon the liberties of the subject that the late reigns were guilty of , are made the foundation of this present government , and that his majesty accepted our crown upon those terms in the claim of right , promising to protect us from the violation of those rights we therein asserted , and from all other attempts upon our religion laws and liberties ; all which were to no purpose and a meer empty piece of formality on both sides , if our representatives in parliament might not freely remonstrate against the breach of one or all of them , and if upon obstinate refusal of redress when such of them are violated , as tend to the overthrow of our constitution , they have not a right to betake themselves to the last remedy , from all which it follows as a natural conclusion , that all those tyrannical usurpations upon the people , and stretches of prerogative , since king charles the ii's restoration , contrary to the said claim of right , are as fully abrogated as if there were an express act of parliament annulling every one of them ; and his majesty's agreeing to that other clause to protect us from all other attempts upon our religion , laws and liberties , extends to the things now under consideration ; but more especially to those that have been made upon our sovereignty , independency and trade . his majesty has no reason to think this a hardship or innovation upon him , since it 's evident from our histories and acts of parliament , that our ancestors did many times claim a much greater freedom in relation to their princes , than any thing here demanded . we know there were a sett of judges and clergymen in the late reigns , that condemn'd this as treason and sedition from the benches and pulpits , but without a grain of truth on their side , as hath been sufficiently evidenc'd , since others had liberty to write and speak as well as they . sir george mackenzy was one of the ablest penmen on their part , but his character and interest are too well known in scotland to suffer any man to lay much stress upon what he wrote on that head in his ius regium , or other pieces . his ipse dixit must not outweigh the credit of all our historians and old acts of parliament in this matter , and so much the less since his wild conceptions about the form of our original government , as being an absolute monarchy , are sufficiently contradicted by caesar tacitus , and other contemporary historians . they do all of 'em expresly say , that the spaniards , gauls , irish and britains , had each of them many kings , and in britain particularly ; that kent alone had 4 kings , and that almost every city had its own king. he describes cassibelan's boundaries , and gives an account of his making war with other cities : the silures and bigantes had each their own kings ; and question is made of gethus , a king of orkney ; all which proves the truth of what buchanan asserts of our ancestors , who first inhabited this island , that they livd ' sine rege ac certo imperio per cognationes tributim sparsi ; which fully overthrows what sir george mackenzy hath asserted as to our government , being originally an absolute monarchy , and overturns all the train of consequences he would deduce from thence . this was so much the more inexcusable in sir george ; that being a highlander , he could not but know that that manner of government by clans or kindreds continues still in the highlands ; and that the experience of all ages hath made it apparent , that ( generally speaking ) they paid a greater defference to the respective heads of their clans , than to the kings themselves , and seldom sail'd espousing their quarrels against their princes ; so little did absolute monarchy ever obtain in scotland . this is so much the more remarkable in our nation , because the heads of those clans , tribes , or families , had not their original or estates from the gifts or patents of their princes , on condition of military service , &c. as happen'd in those countries where the feudal law took place , and where conquerours , such as charlemagne , divided their conquests amongst their captains , on condition of serving them in their wars , or other occasions ; and they again subdivided their lands amongst their vassals , on condition of the like service ; but on the contrary , our kings receiv'd their power originally from those heads of families or clans , who were in being long before the feudal law was heard of , which is generally agreed to have had its rise in lombardy , came from thence into france , was first practis'd there by charlemagne , and brought into britain by william the conquerour . we don't deny however , that our people might afterwards incorporate some things from the feudal law into their own customs ; but this is plain , if our histories may be credited that our ancient great families don't owe their original to our kings , and that from time to time , those heads of families , who were our real nobility ( when the pompous titles of duke , marquis , earl and lord , were all together unknown ) chose and gave laws to our kings , who without them could do nothing ; and when they acted contrary to their advice , and the constitutions of the country they were by them call'd to an account , and dethron'd or continued in the government , as they saw cause . this is so plain from our histories , that they must have a very large stock of confidence , or a great share of ignorance that will deny it . nay , tho we have the longest , and most uninterrupted line of succession , that any nation in europe can boast of ; yet we were so far from owning an hereditary lineal succession , that we regulated that matter from time to time as we thought fit , and never allow'd our princes to claim our sovereignty as their paternal inheritance , but as depending upon our choice ; and therefore sometimes elected them afresh , and at other times confined their succession , to make them sensible that they deriv'd their power from the people , which the present parliament , when a convention , have so far gallantly retriev'd , as to make our succeeding princes uncapable of the government , until they take the coronation oath , which is a formal stipulation with their people ; and that alone that confirms them in the throne . from all which it follows as a necessary consequence , that if our kings violate their part of the stipulation , our parliaments have a right to put them in mind of it , and to demand a redress and security against such practises in time to come , which is all that our nation requires in the present case . so much was thought necessary to be said for information of those that may perhaps be wi●held from doing what they owe to their country , in its present circumstances , by a clamour of sedition , treason , and disaffection , rais'd by those who are the authors of our grievances against such as endeavour to have them redress'd . malice it self must needs own that our comp●ny and nation have behaved themselves with that loyalty , moderation , and steady affection towards that government , in the present juncture under such pressing grievances , and provoking treatments from the hands of the perni●ious counsellours , as bespeaks their due sense of what they owe to his m●jesty king william , our great deliverer , and sufficiently vindicates them from the stain o● all such noisy and ill grounded reflections . part . ii. it is absolutely necessary that our parliament take into their serious consideration the state of our trade , with respect to our neighbours of england and france . it is very well known , and hath been hinted at several times already , that upon the union of the crowns it was granted to us by the agreement of commissioners of both nations , that we should be under no restrictions in matter of trade more than the english , except as to the exporting of wooll , and some few things of english product : matters continued thus , without any considerable alteration from that time , to the administration of the parliament in 1641 ; and during oliver's usurpation , our privilidges that way were rather increased than diminished ; but soon after the restauration of king charles ii. we were put under the same hardship with aliens , by the act for encouraging and encreasing shipping and navigation ; and the act for the encouragement of trade . so that we are much worse treated than the irish. this is sufficient to convince all mankind , that the design of the english court upon our trade is not of yesterday , and that the present opposition they make to us , is the effect of a premeditated contrivance ; against which it 's hoped our parliament will take effectual measures to secure us . it will be also proper for them to enquire into the gradual increase of their imposts upon our commodities imported into england , to the utter ruin almost of our trade with the nation , particularly as to our linnen cloth , which was so much the more unreasonable , that at the same time when this additional imposition was laid upon our linnen , we were so complaisant to the engglish , as to concur with them in forbidding the exportation of wooll from scotland ▪ without prohibiting the importation of the woollen manufacture of england ; so that every one wears english cloth without any notice taken of it by our government , because they pretend it would lessen his majesty's customs if they should ; by this means we are ruined in our linnen manufacture , our own woollen manufacture is perfectly undermin'd , and we are not at liberty to export our own wooll neither . it would seem necessary that our parliament should make an enquiry what passed betwixt the lord s — and blathwait the english secretary of war on that occasion ; what promises his lordship made to mr. blathwait to hinder the exporting of wooll from scotland , and upon what consideration ? whether there was any bribery in the case ? or whether mr. blathwait did not out-wit him in this matter , by making a fraudulent promise , which s — knew he could not perform ; to wit , that the parliament of england should take off the imposition from our linnen . this is so much the more necessary , because blathwait denied any such promise to s — when some of our country-men , traders in london , went to him and told him of it , in order to have had it fulfilled ; he answered them , that he only advised the scots first to discharge the exportation of wooll , and that then the english might probably take off the imposition on our linnen . it were worth while to enquire if the bargain had been real , who it was that impowered s — to treat of that matter ? and since he had not wit enough himself , to transact a thing of that importance , why he should not have called for the assistance of others that were more capable . since we are so treated by the english court , it results naturally that we should discharge their woollen cloth of all sorts , and apply our selves to the encouragement of our own woollen manufacture at home , which will employ our poor , raise the value of our lands , and the prices of our cattel . this we have so much the more reason to do , not only because it will be a just retribution to the english cou●t , who have not only discharged in a manner , our linnen manufacture , but have set up manufactures of that sort of their own , and encouraged the irish to do the like , which must certainly prove fatal to ours . the argument is also reinforced by this consideration , that a great part of the flax we made use of , was foreign product , which exported our money , and yielded us no great profit ; whereas our wooll is our own : and if the parliament could fall upon methods to encourage the making of bays , kerseys , and other things in a regular manner , at home : it would advance a foreign trade , furnish materials for our consumption , from our own product , and save money , which is constantly exported for those things . we hope , considering the outrage done to our sovereignty and freedom , by the english court , it wi●l not be an argument of weight with a scots parliament , that they ought to keep measures with them , since they think it so much below them to keep any with us . the only objection of seeming weight that can be made against this is , that the english may thereby be provoked to forbid the importation of our cattle : but this is easily answered ; that it 's not out of any respect to us , that the english allow that importation , but they find their own account in it , because they buy them cheap , find them better meat , when fed , than their own ; and that they eat up the g●ass which their own cattle will not touch , and by consequence would be absolutely lost to them , were it not for our c●●tle ; and ●esides , they would not be able to provide their fleets and merchant ships so well without ours , which puts them in a condition to disp●se o● their own larger cattle for that end : but that which is an answer once for all , we do not in the least bou●t , if those of our own count●y be consulted , who have most cattle to dispose of , but they will satisfie our parliament , that this o●jection is of no weight ; and we know the common proverb , that interest will not lye . beside , if the parliament pleases to take effectual methods to encourage our se●tlement in caledonia , and our foreign trade elsewhere , we have reason to expect ( by the blessing of god upon our endeavours ) that we shall have every year less occasion than other , to be obliged to our neighbours for taking off our cattle ; and so much the less ; since we know now by experience , that our own beef will endure s●le so as to make it fit for sea. it likewise deserves the enquiry of ●ur ●arliament , whether it be not pr●per to discharge the english from fishing in our seas , creeks and harbours , which their company , called by the name of the royal f●shery , pretend a right to , by a ●atent from king ch. ii. who had no power ●o grant it , without the consent of our parliaments . the english themselves cannot justly find fault if we do this , they know their selden maintained a mare clausum , against grotius's mare liberum ; so that out of there own mouth we judge them ; and we have so much the more reason to do this , because of their late insolence to come into our own harbours and roads , where they search our ships , and take out what they think fit , in defiance of the laws of nations , to the great interruption of our trade and the dishonour of our country . these things together with their pressing our seamen out of our merchant ships in time of war , as if they were their own subjects , are grievances which we ought not to put up , but insist upon an effectual redress of them , as being utterly inconsistent with our liberty and freedom . if the faction object , that such proceedings may occ●sion a war with england , we can soon answer them , that it is not the english nation , but a court-faction supported by some hot headed ecclesiasticks , and their superstitious bigotted adherents , that is at the bottom of this unneighbourly treatment of our country . england is a wise and clear-sighted nation , and will never make war against us upon such a quarrel ; their present conduct proves beyond contradiction , that they have no such design , they disarm , instead of putting themselves in a posture for war ; and are sensible of the danger they are in themselves , from that very faction that are now oppressing us , and therefore will not intrust them with a standing army , nor mon●y sufficient to keep one on foot . so that we have so litt●e rea●on to fear a rupture with the english nation on that account , that we rather have cause to expect their favour , if we imitate ●●●ir conduct , ●nd take the same , or the like measures that they do for securing our liberty and property , from the invasions of court parasites and pernicious counsel●ors . we hear every day what brave effor●s they make for advancement of their trade , and pulling arbitrary government up by the roots ; they are no ways afraid of tel●ing their kings freely when they are misled , and act any thing con●rary to the honour and interest of the nation they make no scruple of s●●pr●aching the chief ministers of state and favourites , when they find them guilty of any thing th●t may be p●ejudici●l to their constitution . they boldly order their kings speeches and promises and their own resolves upon them , to be published to the wor●d in justification of their conduct , and make laws to disab●e those that have a dependence upon the court , from being mem●ers of parliament . these and much greater are and were our b●rth right as well as theirs ; and it 's evident to the world we have much more reason to assert and demand them , which will demonstrably appear if we consider . 1. that since the union of the crowns , our kings prefer their interest to ours , in all matters relating either to church or state. 2. that ever since that time we have nor been governed by our own councils , but by theirs , and with a prospect of advancing their interest , though utterly subversive of our own . 3. that ever since then , our interest has been by turns either sacrificed by our kings to them , or by them to our kings . thus king iames i. and the two charles's made a sacrifice of our church to theirs , and they in requiral did , together with a mercen●ry faction of our own , make a sacrifice of our civil liberty to them ; witness the great army they furnish●d king charles i. to carry on the bellum episcopale against us , and the treachery of our own mercenary tools at home , by procuring and agreeing to the 18 th act of the duke of york 's parliament , which enac●ed that all i●●isdictions did so reside in his majesty , that by himself or his commissioners , he might take the cognizance of any cause , and deci●e it as he pleased . thus king charles ii did a so make a sacrifice o● our interest in trade to theirs , by the acts above-ment●oned ; and thus our interest in trade in this reign has been also made a●rince to their● , and their house of lords in requ●●al with the concurrence no doubt of many of their commons have again made a sacrifice of us to the king , by their address , approving his west india proclamations , &c. against us . thus we are bandy'd about with the utmost disregard and contempt , according as their different interests and humours require it . these things demonstrate that we have more reason to insist upon those above-mentioned priviledges than the englsh have ; nor can we expect to have our present grievances redressed , or future grievances prevented till we obtain , if not all , at least some of the most material of those things , that that parliament of england insist upon . there ordering an address to the king on the 10th of april last , that none but natives of his dominions , prince george excepted , be admitted to his councils in england or irelond , is a pattern fit for our imitation , and what we have as good a right to demand as they . none but scotsmen ought to be consulted with in scots affairs , for experince teaches us , that since we have had secretaries of state , who consult english ministers in every thing , the honour and welfare of our nation hath gone retrograde . nor indeed is it enough that none but scotsmen be consulted in our affairs ; it 's also requisite that our parliament should have the chusing and swearing of the privy councillors , as our ancestors had ; and a power to call them to an account , and punish them for male-administration , the present calamities our nation groans under makes the necessity of this more evident than ever , which if obtained , we might then have hopes that the addresses of our trading companies should not be thrown over the council bar , nor our american settlement opposed , as if our privy councillors were rather chosen by a king of spain , than by a king of scotland ; then might we hope that our arcana imperii should not be betray'd to our enemies , and that the affairs of our church and state should not be managed by the capricio's of favourites , english courtiers , or prelates , who improving the opportunity they have to debauch covetous , necessi●ous or weak ministers , that attend our affairs sometimes at the court of england , make them the instruments of ruining our country . that this is no groundless suggestion will appear but too plain , if our parliament think fit to enquire into the truth of that report , that a spanish consul at iamaica should have generously told some of our caledonians there , that we were betray'd by one of our country men that was entrusted with our affairs at court ; and perhaps it may yet appear more plain , if they enquire whether any of our own secretaries knew of the west india proclamations against our colony before they were issued , as it 's confidently said the english secretary v — n hath given out , that one of them did . we have found by woful experience , that 't is not safe to trust the management or representation of our affairs to one or two men , chosen for that end at the discretion of the court of england ; therefore it seems highly necessary that we should be reinvested with our native right of chusing our own publick officers our selves ; or at least that none be advanced to posts either civil or military without the advice of the council of scotland ; otherwise , since our kings can now no more be said to be scotsmen , it 's a parting with our sovereignty , and lays us open to have all our considerable posts fill'd with such men as will certainly fall in with the measures of the english court and govern themselves , wholly by the dictates of princes , that must now of necessity be educated in a country who think it their interest to keep us low , and to thwart us in every thing that our own parliament and people think most conducible to our honour and advantage . nay , they are so jealous of us , that they are unwilling any of our country-men , though unexceptionably well qualified , should be so much as concerned in the education of those princes in whom we have as great a right as they . thus they removed a scots gentleman of the name of murray , from having the charge of ch. the first 's education , learing he might have inclined him to presbytery , and thereupon made him such a bigot the other way , that he himself and the three nations had occasion afterwards to bewail it in tears of blood ; it 's well enough known what attempts of the like nature have lately been made upon the duke of glocester . because under the conduct of a scotsman , though a bishop , whose order we have thought fit to abolish in our nation . if our parliament should insist upon the having the nomination of our privy-council , as it 's no more than our birth-right , so it 's no more than what his majesty in effect granted to our neighbours in england , when he submitted the list of his first councillors to the judgment of their convention parliament . the next thing we shall propose to consideration , is that a restraint , if possible , might be laid upon the creation of lords . as it 's only vertue that can truly make noble , so advancement to the degree of nobility ough : only to be the reward of vertue . it 's an unreasonable thing the power of making hereditary law-givers to our nation , should be at the sole disposal of our princes who are now kings of england , and by that means have an opportunity of strenthening an english faction among us , by conferring peerage , or the higher degrees of it upon ambitious persons who devote themselves to their interest , and perhaps are advanced for no other merit sometimes , but for having been ministers to their impure pleasures , or instruments of tyranny : what pity is it that the illustrious nobility of scotland , many of whom a●● noble without a patent ( as being the heads of ancient and gre●t families ) should be mixt with such a base alloy . it would certainly redound much to the honour of the nation , and much inhance the value of the present nobility , if none were admitted into their rank but with consent of parliament , and on the account of true merit . what pity is it that the freedom and honour of a country should be endangered by such an hereditary power of legislation , when experience shews us but too often that wisdom and vertue is not entail'd upon the posterity of nobles more than others . we come next to propose the state of our trade with france . the loss of our ancient alliance with that famous and great kingdom , and of the honourable and advantagious priviledges we enjoyed there ; is one of the great dammages we sustained by the union of the crowns ; neither our princes nor our neighbours have thought fit to allow us any compensation for this hitherto , but have rather pleased themselves to see our honours and priviledges there gradually wrested out of our hands ; so that now they are brought to a woful and final period ; instead of having the preference there of all other nations in point of honour and trade as formerly we had , we are now , because of our union with england , not only deprived of the same , but are in a worse condition than other people : thus our salt fish is discharged there , and the dutch have engrossed that part of our trade , and sell them dearer to the french than we offered them , but could not be accepted , though at the same time great sums of money are exported yearly from our kingdom to france for wine and other commodities . this is a thing that certainly deserves our parliaments consideration ; it ought to be a subject of enquiry whence it came to pass , that the honour and interest of our nation was so much neglected and despised , as never once to be mentioned at the treaty of rijswick ; our council and ministers about the king ought to be examined as to this matter , for we cannot think that his majesty who took so much care of the honour and interest of the little principality of orange , would , had he been put in mind of it , have so much neglected his ancient kingdom of scotland , since he owes all his present grandeur to his descent from our royal line , and his alliance with it . this deserves the thoughts of our parliament so much the more , that we sustain affronts and dammages by the interposition of his majesty of great britain's name , as is evident from the hamburgh memorial , the pretended breach of treaty with spain , and the loss of our trade with france ; but there 's no care taken o● our interest in any of those general treaties . there 's no way of retrieving this , but by our parliaments asserting our independency and freedom against all those invasions and neglects , and by making it appear to the world , that we are still a sovereign nation , and have as much right to consult our own interest , without any regard to that of england , as they have to do so by us . it would seem necessary , that until those impositions be taken off our trade with france , and till we be restor'd to our privileges there , that we should forbid the importation of french commodities , wine and brandy particularly , either immediately from france , or immediately by way of england or holland ; and either content our selves with ale , and other liquors of our own making ; which might in that case be made stronger than usual , would consume our own product , and raise the value of our lands . if the necessity of wine for health be objected , the answer is easy ; that let us take all the precautions we can to exclude it , there will always be enough found for that use : and besides it's evident from the high lands , and other remote places of the country , that the people are as strong and long-liv'd where they never see wine nor brandy ; nay , rather more than in those places where they abound most . if this should be thought an hardship upon families of quality , they may have an allowance ; or if we must have wine , it were more reasonable to import it from those places that don't impose upon our trade , than from those that do . it were also worthy our parliament's consideration , whether it might not be proper to forbid the sending our youth abroad into france , which exports so much money out of the kingdom every year , exposes them to be corrupted in their principles , both as to religion and politicks ; and also in their morals by such trifling fellows as musicians , dancing masters , and fencing masters : that sort of men live upon the vices and folly of youth , and therefore think it their interest to nourish their vicious inclinations , and many times effect it to the ruin of their souls , bodies and estates ; so that instead of a well accomplished gentleman we have but too often nothing in return for our money but ill principles , empty purses , and bad morals . there was some necessity for sending our young men of quality thither , during the alliance betwixt us , for then france was like a second native country to us ; there we enjoy'd a share of the greatest offices in court and camp , and were distinguish'd from all other nations by peculiar priveledges ; but now it s quite otherwise , our subjects , or at le●st their children and relations are denied the freedom of religion there , or to return home ; but are barbarously us'd in their persons and estates : nor is there any that have shew'd themselves greater enemies to our american settlement than the french court , who from time to time proffer to assist the spaniards to drive us from thence ; and if some people may be credited , the opposition made to our colony proceeds more from some private league with france , than from any dammage that may redound to from it to spain . we don't mean by this that our nobility and gentry should be depriv'd of the accomplishments they aim at by travelling . as for the exercises they commonly learn in france , and the acquisition of their language , which is now become so much in vogue : we have as good an opportunity as we can desire , of erecting academies of french protestants to teach them ; or of having them taught privately at home under the guardianship of their relations ; and then if our nobility and gen●ry have a mind to send their sons to travel , they will be under no tentation of being corrupted by such trifling popish fellows , as teach those things abroad ; they need not stay so long in foreign countries , and yet improve themselves more by conversing with men of note , and observing the customs , constitutions , and products of countries , which before they had not time to do , because of those exercises ; and above all there ought to be care taken that they be well vers'd in the constitution of their own country before they go abroad , of which no nation in europe has so good and easy an opportunity as we have by buchannan's history ; an author ●it to be read by all persons of quality , both for ornament of mind and stile . if our youth were taken care of in this manner , and solidly , instructed in the principles of their religion before they went abroad , they would raise the reputation of our country , and not be so liable to be corrupted as now , being usually sent abroad in their blooming years , when they are most apt to be seduc'd by ill conversation as for the study of the law ; it 's a shame for our country , that from time to time hath had such famous civilians , that we should not have a colledge for the study of it at home , which would save both our money and reputation ; so that our youth that had a mind to travel for further accomplishment in it , needed do little more but visit foreign universities . the next thing to be considered is , the relieving of our poor oppress'd and impoverish'd country , which hath suffer'd so much of late ( by the justice of god , and the wickedness of men ) from all unnecessary burdens , amongst which that of a standing army , may well be accounted the most needless and insupportable ; and for keeping up of which , by the advice of some cour●iers , we have been so ungratefully rewarded . that it is unreasonable for us to have a greater army in time of peace , than we had in time of war , cannot well be controverted ; and that to keep up a standing army in time of peace is against our claim of right , can as little be denied● let us learn wisdom of ou● neighbours ; we see they who are nearest the enemy , that the c●urtiers pretend to be most afraid of , have reduc●d their standing force to guards and garsons ; their number is little , if any thing more at present , than what we have now on foot in scocland ; so that if we should disband according to that proportion , we shou●d not keep one man in pay , for guard nor garrison ; for guards , since we have no king , there seems to be little need of them , and so much the less that it is but of late our kings had any . formerly they entrusted themselves with their subjects , and administred justice in person from county to county , without any other guards but their own domestics , and such persons of quality as thought fit to attend them with the sheriffs of the respective counties ; and for our garrisons a very few men may serve . in king charles i's time we had but one regiment of foot , and a troop of guards ; in king charles ii's time the number was increas'd ; in king iames vii th's time they grew still more , and now they are more numerous than ever . it 's evident there is no necessity for such numerous troops , we are now in peace at home and abroad ; nor are we like to have any occasion of quarrels , except it be with the spaniards in the west indies ; and in that respect , if we may guess of what is to come , by what is past , our courtiers are more like to make use of our troops against us than for us . we hope the parliament will 〈◊〉 now be impos'd upon with a necessity of keeping them up to o●●raw the disaffected party ; and particularly the highland clanns . it 's known their chiefs have submitted to the government , and the greatest of the clans are intirely in the interest of our present constitution : it 's very well known , that when it was otherwise , and that most of them were on king charles i's side , under their famous leader montrosse ; and when so many of them declar'd for the late king iames since the revolution , they were never able to cast the balance , or do any thing considerable , in comparison of the low-lands : the western-shires alone were able to overaw all the late king iames's party at the revolution , and to set the crown upon king william's head. these things being considered , we hope that all s — 's arguments from the highland clans , though seconded by his good table , of whose wonderful effects he boasted so much last sessions , will not be able to prevail with our parliament , to continue a standing army this sessions . whatever arguments the courtiers may pretend for keeping them up , from such or any foreign considerations , we may assure our selves , that the pernicious counsellors who put those things in their heads have other reasons for it . they know they have given our nation just cause of disgust , and to demand that they may be punished according to demerit : therefore they think a standing army necessary to overawe us , to swallow up our liberties by degrees , and to put us out of a condition to revenge the i●jury they have done us . this will appear to be no uncharitable conjecture , if it be considered that instruments of tyranny are always afraid of the people they tyrann●ze over , and therefore hate them . the oppression the country groans under , by maintaining these forces is undeniable , and the uselessness of them is equally demonstrable . england is the seat of the government , nearer fo● any foreign enemy , and much more capable of furnishing them subsistence than our countrey ; being the seat of government , it is by consequence the receptacle of intelligence , and yet we have not heard of one word signified to them of any apprehensions from abroad , this last sessions of parliament . the case being so , if the english be so secure we have less reason to be afraid . the world must own that they are zealous for the defence of their country , and that its a subject well worth their zeal . therefore there 's no reason to think that they would neglect their safety , if they saw it in hazard . then since they are the first that will probably be attack'd , we shall have time enough to arm in our own defence . to this we may add , that standing armies not only oppress the people , but corrupt the manners , and overturn the liberties of all countries where they are kept up ; and that since the pernicious counsellors have already made an invasion upon our most valuable and fundamental liberty , viz. o●● sovereignty and independency : we shall be look'd upon as the most foolish and unthinking nation upon earth , if when it is in our power to disband them , we suffer them to keep up a standing army , to compleat that slavery which hath already made such formidable advances upon us . at the same time , it is not our opinion that the country should be laid naked , without a defence ; and therefore it 's necessary the parliamen● should consider of regulating the militia , so as to make it most useful . in which , particular regard ought to be had to the qualifications of those who are entrusted with the command of them , viz. that they be men of estates and interest in the country , and well affected to the present constitution , both in church and state , that they be duly train'd and arm'd , and as many of the present officers as are men of probity imploy'd in the command as may be , nor would it be amiss to mix them with such of the soldiers as are best disciplin'd , and of the most commendable conversation . if our militia be so regulated , there 's no doubt of their being more servicable in the defence of our country , and for the support of the government , according to our present constitution , than a standing army can ever be . we may readily believe that a militia so modelled will have more zeal for the honour of their country , than that part of the standing army which yielded their post of honour to the dutch in flanders ; it were but just that our parliament should enquire into the authors of such a dishonour done our nation , and to call them to an account for it . however some courtiers may palliate this ; we are sure they can never defend it . their pretence that the dutch were in english pay , and therefore took the post as english guards , is frivolous and trifling ; our troops were in english pay as well as the dutch , who by the treatment they have had since by the parliament of england that sent them away as foreigners , appear never to have been look'd upon by the people of england as english guards . we come next to consider the practises of the faction upon the last general assembly of our church , in order to abate the peoples zeal for our establishment at darien . this of it self is sufficient to demonstrate that the pernicious counsellours have still the ascendant against us . it 's well enough known how those of the assembly that were for the interest of the colony were forc'd to fight for every inch of ground ; that those who were manag'd by the influence of the faction , appear'd more openly against the interest of the country in the committees , than they dar'd to do in the assembly . nor is it to be forgot what opposition they made to the name caledonia , which however was all they were able to carry . a noble victory ! well becoming the antesignani of church and state , and for which no doubt they ought to be well rewarded out of the treasury . we are sensible that many of those ministers who were deceiv'd by the agents of the faction , have now seen their error , and that notwithstanding all the tricks made use of , things were set in a clearer light there ; and that the interest of the country carried it , as is evident from the act enjoyning a fast , which owns our plantation abroad to be a great national concern , and the disappointments it hath met with to be national rebukes . yet since the compliance of that assembly so far , with those that are enemies to our colony , hath in a great measure disgusted the people , it 's the more incumbent upon the presbyterians in parliament to retrieve it , and by a steady and firm adherence to the interest of the nation , to oppose a standing army , and to concur in every thing that may tend to the security and advancement of our colony , we are sure if they don't act contrary to their own principles they must do so . the poor country ministers , who for the most part have more honesty than policy , may be imposed upon by the sly insinuations of crafty ill men , that if the presbyterians don 't fall in with the party , another parliament shall be call'd to establish episcopacy : but we hope gentlemen , and members of parliament , know better things . admitting it to be true that the faction hath threatned to do so ; it is contrary to the divine rule , to do evil that good may come of it , or to commit sin to avoid suffering . nor will it be in the power of the faction to abolish presbytry , so long as it has the affections of the people . it is likewise evident , that if the presbyterians adhere at this time to our civil rights , the nation will be more and more endeared to their constitution , and it will be one of the most effectual means to convince its enemies , that our discipline is not only best accommodated for the preservation of religion ; but likewise for the support of civil liberty . it 's also evident , that if the presbyterians adhere to the interest of the nation , it will be impossible to overturn their church constitution , without shaking of the throne ; since it is one of the fundamental articles in the claim of right upon which his majesty received the crown . but if the presbyterians should at this time take part with the wicked counsellors against their country , and by that means lose the affections of the people , they infallibly ruin their church constitution , which may be demonstrated thus . presbyterian government was first settled in scotland , at the time of the reformation , by the affections of the people ; it hath been supported by that same means against all our courts to the late revolution , and was restor'd to be the national establishment then , because most agreeable to the inclinations of the people , and 't is for that only reason it hath been continu'd since , because the court found it the best method for securing their interest in scotland . but if once it lose its ground in the hearts of the people , as it must unavoidably do , if the presbyterians at this juncture act contrary to the interest of the kingdom , then the court will overturn presbytery of their own accord , both from a principle of interest and inclination . that it will be their interest so to do is plain , for if presbytery once lose the affections of the people of scotland , it can be of no more use to the court , but will afford them as good an opportunty as heart can wish , to ingratiate themselves with the church of england , which is by much the greatest interest in that nation . that it 's the inclination of the courtiers so to do ▪ we have no great reason to doubt ▪ it being well known that they have several times broke in upon our laws since the revolution , in favour of the episcopal party . witness the long time they took to consider whether they should allow us presbytery or not , after prelacy was annull'd by the convention of states ; and their adjourning and disolving the general assemblies of our church , contrary to the express statute when the e. of lothian was commissioner , besides several arbitrary letters sent to the assembly , and commissions of assemblies to put a stop to the exercise of the jurisdiction the law had invested them with . it 's no way improbable , that the pernicious counsellours , who endeavour to make tools of the presbyterians , for carrying on their present purposes , have also the ruin of presbytery in view in conjunction with their other designs against our nation , they put them upon those measures to disoblige the people , and divert their inclinations from presbytery , that so they may have a fair pretence for getting the law that establishes it repealed , since it 's founded upon the peoples inclinations . if they be able to effect this , all the laws in f●vour of it will be but so many cobwebs ; our parliament themselves will be provok'd to annul them , or if they should not think it their interest so to do , the faction will certainly break through them . it 's in vain to suppose the contrary , for since they have broke in upon our sov●reignty and trade , which all but those who depend upon the faction , are unanimous to defend ; they will find it a much easier task to overturn presbytery , when back'd by the church of england abroad , and a strong party at home . we heartily wish this may never happen to be the case , for abstracting from all theological arguments in favour of presbytery ▪ which we are satisfied are unanswerable ; we are fully convinced that it 's as much the political interest of our nation ▪ to maintain that form of church-government in opposition to episcopacy , as it 's the interest of the wise venetians to exclude church-men and their dependants , from having any share in the civil government , and upon the same account too that sage republick excludes their ecclesiasticks because they depend upon a foreign head , and therefore are liable to tentations , to espouse an interest opposite to that of their country . it always has been , and must be the same with bishops in scotland , since we have no king of our own but in partnership with another nation who claim ten ●arts in twelve ; or to speak the plain truth , allow us no share in his government at all , but in order to subject us to themselves , or to secure or promote their own interest ; and therefore since all our bishops must depend upon the king of england for their nomination , and conge d'eslire , since they must be acted by the church of england , an irreconcilable enemy to our nation , since we have found by our own experience , that the bishops went always along with the court to enslave the country , and since they concurred in parliament to exalt the prerogative to that blasphemous hei●h● over church and state , it arrived to in the late reigns . it must of necessity be the interest of scotland to oppose that form of government , and so much the more , that our episcopal party don't think it of divine institution , as appears by the first act of lauderdale's second parliament . by parity of reason it 's our interest to maintain presbytery , because that form has no dependence on the king of england , our ministers have no honours nor benefices from him , and ●y consequence are under no such ●entations as the bishops are , to a●● contrary to the interest of their country . besides presbytery admits laymen into all its courts , which is absolutely necessary to prevent ecclesiastical ambition ; it 's an effectual restraint upon them from decreeing such doctrines as passive obedience , and hinders them from preaching mankind out of their lives and e●ta●es , into a slavish subj●ction to princes ; had it been otherwise , we have good reason to think that the interest of the country would not have carried so much as it did in the last general assembly . from all this it will naturally result , that it's incumbent upon our parliament to take measures for securing the church against such threats as the faction made use of to induce the ministers to a compliance ; this is so much the more reasonable , because tho' pres●yterian ministers may comply with the designs of courts against the liberties of the subjects , bishops must , and they are so much the more dangerous , because they have a power in the legislation , and are commonly so many votes on the courts side ; whereas by the present constitution , the clergy have no such power . i● the parliament of scotland should demand from his majesty a further assurance for the constitution of our ●hurch , it 's no more than what our neighbours in england have from time to time done as to theirs , and wherein his majesty did as readily comply with them . to this end it would seem to be no unreasonable demand if the revenues of the bishopricks that are not already appropriated to pious uses , were applied to the use of our american colony . this is so much the less to be objected against , because the establishment of our plantation tends to the propagation of the true christian faith , it would be an effectual way to prevent the restitu●ion of episcopacy in this nation , which can never be done without throwing all into confusion again , which would utterly obstruct our trade ; besides it were but a just reprisal , since it is from those of the episcopal party in england that our american settlement me●●● with the greatest opposition there . if ●t b● objected that those revenues have fa●len to the king as vltimus hoeres , we answer , that as we never see a king amongst us , there 's no reason we should augment his revenue , that the parliament of england have appropriated to publick use , the irish for●eitures ▪ which by the ordinary course of law sell to the king , and that his majesty is obliged by the act establishing our company , to obtain a reparati●n of their loss at the publick charge , all this being considered , such a dem●nd cannot any ways seem unre●sonable , and so much the less that this fund is already settled , and would be no new burden to the subject . these things we have insisted the more upon , because some people took the opportunity to improve the proceedings of the assembly to the disadvantage of the presbyterians , and openly boasted of it , as a handle to restore episcopacy . but we hope that neither this nor any fu●ure parliament of scotland will be so impolitic as to attempt that . it 's well enough known the presbyterians look upon their form of church-government to be of divine institution , that most of them have suffered for it , and some hundreds of them have sealed it with their blood ; therefore 't is no wonder they should prefer it to all temporal advantages whatever ; and shew more than an ordinary compliance with what they are told is the mind of a prince whose family and person they have reason to esteem , and to whom they have been more obliged than ever they were to any ; there 's so much the less reason to wonder at their compliance , when we consider what endeavours there have been to persuade them , that the greatest zealots for our american settlement , are their mortal enemies and seek their overthrow : nor indeed have we any reason to wonder at the opposition of the court , when his majesty is informed that the aff●ir of darien is a jacobite design at the bottom , and that a presbyterian lord should be so far possessed with this calumny , as to assert it in opposition to our colony in the english house of peers . therefore it would seem to be incumbent upon our parliament to enquire into the authors of such malicious suggestions . this is so much the more necessary , because our enemies endeavour to maintain their own cause , by creating in us a mutual distrust of one another , and dividing us amongst our selves by false reports . thus some of the greatest men of ou● kingdom , as well as the greatest friends of our colony are sometimes traduced as carrying on a jacobite design , and at other times r●proached as falling in with the factions a● court , that have declare● themselves so openly against our country . but to return to the presbyterians , as we would not be thought to disuade them , or others , from entertaining high and dutiful thoughts of our most gracious sovereign king william , yet on the other hand , as they never believe● kings to be in●allible , we would have them to beware how they fall in with such measures as ill men about his majesty may put him upon in relation to our country and colony . we would not have them to lick up the vomit of passive obedience that the church of england hath ●pewed out , and though we would have them and all good subject● to account his majesty's person inviolable and sacred , yet there 's no reason that all a●out him should have the same priviledge , or be protected from justice when they invade the fundamental laws of ●ur nation , nor would we have them to obstruct the peoples demanding a redress of grievances , or not to concur with the parliament to maintain their authority which is so manifestly violated , for this would be a direct breach of the solemn league and covenant , which ob●●ges the nation to maintain the authority of parliaments , as well as his majesty's just right and prerogative . it had been time long ago to have drawn to a conclusion , but the pressures we labour under are so many , that we hope they will make an apology for the length of this discourse . it being evident that most of our grievances proceed from his majesty's absence , and our circumstances being so unhapy , that we are no more to expect our kings should reside amongst us . we have no other remedy but to address our selves to our parliament , that they would take care to make up that want by good and wholsome laws , which it 's hoped his majesty will very readily agree to . many particulars might be insisted upon , but those which seem most necessary , are , a law for a new parliament once in three years , as our neighbours in england have , that in future reigns we may not be liable to be undone by a band of pensioners , under the notion of representatives . 2. that we may have the benefit of a habeas corpus act as well as our neighbouring nation , and so much the more , that we seem intitled to demand it by the article of , the claim of right , against imprisoning persons without expressing the reason , and delaying to bring them to tryal . 3. that some effectual method be taken to prevent spending so much of our money in england by our nobility and genty ; this is a disease which feeds upon the vitals of our nation , exhausts our treasure , and consumes our substance , which ought to circulate at home amongst our own poor people , who labour for it with the sweat of their faces . it depraves our principles and morals , as is but too demonstrable from many sad instances . how many of those who liv'd unblamably at home , have been debauch'd by the licentious practises , and the example of the court of england , and the bad conversation they have met with in london ; and how much has their bad example tended to spread the contagion , when they return'd to their native country . there 's nothing in the world that renders our nation more contemptible in the eyes of the english , than the frequent recourse of our nobility and gentry , to their court , for they presently conclude that we are come either to complain of one another , or to sue for places and pensions , and in any of these cases they are sure to make their advantage of us . they know well enough that the favour of minions , or of that party that has most interest at court , is absolutely necessary for such parties or persons in our nation as would succeed in their suits to the king , and that we must either bribe the favourites , or make a sacrifice of the interest of our country to the court ( if not both ) before we can obtain what we seek ; they know likewise that for our own honour , we must make a figure there answerable to those of the same quality in england , which occasions our consuming a gre●t de●l of 〈◊〉 in their country , and many times obliges persons of qual●●y 〈…〉 tr●a●esman's debts at london , and to mortgage their 〈…〉 security : all these things together keep us in a sl●vish subjection to the english , which they being willing to perpetuate , use all possible endeavours to nourish discord amongst us , and to keep us low. this was plain from those barbarous proceedings against the presbyterians , which the court of england fomented , and from the successive imposts upon our commerce , which they enacted in the late reigns ; and is equally demonstrable now , from their practises against us , and raising divisions amongst us , in relation to our tr●de . this one would think should be sufficient to put our parliament upon finding out methods to prevent this constant recourse of our nobility and gentry to london , and to take effectual measures to have our affairs duly represented to his majesty , by such as it shall not be in the power of the english court , either to bribe , or to frighten from their duty . it 's humbly conceiv'd a committee of parliament , chosen by the parliament it self at every sessions , and accountable to them for their administration , were most proper for that end , and that they should depute one or two of their number to attend his majesty constantly , with power to send and recall them as they saw meet : fo● his majesty's secretary , being his own domestick , and by consequence under command , and liable to be turn'd out at pleasure , cannot be presum'd to be so fit to be intrusted with the af●●i●s of a nation , which is unhappily depriv'd of the presence of their sovereign , as persons who are chosen by the nation it self . this it 's humbly conceiv'd would oblige the court to have more regard to the welfare of our nation , and to be more cautious how they invade our freedom and rights , than hitherto they have been . it is not reasonable that we should be govern'd at home by his maiesty's domesticks , and such as he pleases to join with them for privy counsellors . it 's enough for them to attend his majesty's houshold affairs : nor is it at all proper that we should be govern'd by the servants of a prince , who in relation to us is not his own master . the english courtiers will be very angry at this assertion ( we doubt not ) as they were at some of the like nature in the enquiry into the miscarriages of our colony at darien ; and particularly that the k. of scots was a prisoner in england ; for which though they burnt the book as ●al●e , they themselves have now prov'd it to be true beyond contradiction , by telling h●● in their ad●ress , that what he had done against us was agreeable to the se●e of both houses ; and acquainting him further , that our settlement at darien is inconsistent with the plantation trade of england . this is so far from convicting us of f●lshood , for ●ayi●g they keep our king prisoner , that on the contrary it is 〈…〉 him in chains , to prove it to be true ; having thus 〈◊〉 , th●t our settlement is contrary to the interest of engl●●d 〈…〉 they had bid him look to himself , if he 〈…〉 to encourage it ; for by their treatment of him in other respects , we may rationally infer that they would never have digested such invasions upon their sovereignty and trade . so calmly as we have done . we know that his majesty's circumstances , as to england and holland , are made use of by our courtiers to excuse those invasions , that have already been made upon our soveraignty and trade : but we hope this will be so far from prevailing with a scots parliament , to comply with the measures of the court , that it will rather put them upon effectual methods to secure us against them ; since our king is so unhappily circumstantiate , that he is not in a condition to perform his duty to us , it 's so much the more incumbent upon our parliament to perform theirs , and to supply what his majesty cannot do . he is as much our king , as if he were no way concern'd with england or holland , and is as much oblig'd to promote our interest , as if he had no other to promote but ours . if the union of the crowns make it otherwise , it is a fundamental and insupportable defect in our government , that makes it uncapable of answering its end , which by the laws of god and man is the good of the people , or govern'd society ; therefore the states of the kingdom are concern'd to look to it , and redress it , as they will answer it to god , to the nation , and their own consciences . it 's plain from the 13th of the romans , which hath been so much wrested to maintain the wicked doctrine of passive obedience , and non-resistance , that before governments can lay any claim from that text , to submission or revenue from the subjects , they must make it appear that they are such powers as are there described , viz ministers of god for good to the subjects , which is plain and demonstrable the king of england can never be to the people of scotland , if the union of the crowns make him prefer or espouse their interest to the dammage of ours , which the houses of parliament in england do plainly demand in their addresses . from whence it 's evident , that if these grievances cannot be redress'd , such a government is not what we are oblig'd to submit to , by the law of god. as to our own constitution , it 's well enough known what our ancestors did , in relation to those kings that subjected us to the english , and how they vindicated themselves from that invasion , both by their pens and swords , when we were reduc'd much lower by the court of england , in conjunction with our own traytors than we are now , as to the laws of nations , whatever gulielmus cardinalis may possess some of his brethren of the clergy with , to the contrary ; we are sure that alexander , cardinalis , iason , and imola maintain , that a prince who governs a free people cannot render them slaves , or subject to the dominion of another prince , nor can the barons of that kingdom transfer the prerogative of that liberty they have receiv'd from their ancestors , upon any other than their own lord : and the famous bodinus says , if a king who is subject to none , do either of his own acco●d , or be forc'd against his will to serve and obey another ▪ be loses the title and rights of majesty . we see then in what a condition these pernicious counsellors , who have advis'd the king of scots to do such things as make the kingdom of scotland subject to that of england , would bring his majesty ; we never lov'd any prince so well as king william , and are willing still so sacrifice our lives and fortunes for him as our lawful sovereign : but there 's no reason we should make a surrender of our freedom and trade to the humour of those pernicious counsellors about him , who betray his honour and sovereignty in betraying ours : it being certainly more for his majesties glory to be sovereign of two ●ndepen●ent kingdoms , than to be but sovereign of one , and v●ssal to himself for another . from all this it follows , that the parliament of scotland have a right to address his majest● , that such persons as advise him to those things ought to be remov'd from his presence and councils forever , as enemies to the dignity of the crown , and the peace of the nations . it were also proper for retrieving the honour of our publick justice , that an address should be made for removing those from his presence and councils , that stand charg'd with being privy to a design to assassinate king charles ii , with having pensions in the late reigns for secret service , and with accession to the massacre of glenco , and that the actors in that barbarous murder should be punish'd according to merit . nor ought it to pass without enquiry , by what means those persons under condemnation for a b●rbarous rape , and other inhuman treatment of the lady lovett , come to be reprieved from time to time , to the scandal of the justice of the nation , and that one of them should be suffer'd not only to lurk in engl●nd , but have access to our great men in the government , tho a declared rebel and traytor , and ought to have suffered in scotland for theft and murder . certainly it is not for his majesties honour that the court should be made a sanctuary for the blackest of criminals , and much less that we should be govern'd by the advice of any such , who besides have no estate nor interest in our kingdom . but this is the effect of our not having insisted to have the chief instruments of the tyranny and cruelty of the late reigns made publick examples . others are not only encourag'd to follow their steps , but it seems our administration must be chiefly entail'd upon men of that kidney . it would also seem absolutely necessary , that an enquiry should be made into those that advis'd the turning so many persons of quality out of council , and other posts of honour and advantage , for opposing a standing army , &c. last sessions . this is not only contrary to the claim of right , which demands freedom of debate and speech in parliament , but tends to the utter subversion of all our liberties ; for parliaments are of no use if members may not have liberty to vote there , according to the dictates of honour and conscience : this is a plain ●emonstration that the courtiers design to carry on an interest opposite to that of the country ; and that we are riding post to the tyranny of the late reigns . it shews also the height of contempt for our nation , since our neighbours of england are not so treated ; it being well enough known there , that lords of the bed-chamber , and officers of the army , voted against a standing force in that kingdom , without being turn'd out of their posts , or any ways disgrac'd for it . to what a miserable condition are we reduc'd then , when the parliaments of scotland , that formerly gave laws to our kings , cannot now espouse the interest of their country without being thus trode upon . this proves the absolute necessity of keeping officers , and others that h●ve dependence upon the court , or pensions from it , out of our parliaments . let us do all we can in that matter , the court will have always more than its proportionable influence there , by such lords as have a dependance upon them , and those officers of state that are allow'd to be in the house . the farming of the customs by the royal burroughs , ought also to be taken into consideration ; for if that be found to have an influence on their votes in the house , i'ts ● much against the claim of right , as these proceedings complain'd of there , that were judg'd to be equal to the king 's naming that entire state of parliament . it 's therefore hop'd that the royal burroughs will , by their behaviour in parliament , vindicate themselves from all suspicion in this matter , and that they will not concur with any design against the trade of the nation , wherein they have so great a concern ; especially when they consider that the more restraints there are upon it , of the less value will their farm be , if it be thought fit that it should be continued . we might enlarge in i●finitum , the grievances and wants of our country are so many ; but must draw to a conclusion , after having proposed some few things more . it seems absolutely necessary our parliament should enquire what good laws are needful to secure our constitution , and to provide for it accordingly . in order to this it would seem requisite , that a committee should be appointed to consider what our states insisted on in 1641 , as our native right , and what the english have obtain'd since the revolution for securing their liberty and property . his majesty if he be allow'd by our enemies , to testify his paternal affection towards us , cannot , nor will not think it hard if we demand that , and more , since we are reduc'd so low by the oppressions of former reigns , have lost so much by the absence of our kings , now almost for 100 years , and are depriv'd of all hopes of having them reside amongst us any more . the damage we must of necessity sustain by that alone is very great , and not to be compensated by any equivalent we can propose ; for do what we can , our princes must be educated in a country , that as his majesty himself has been pleas'd to express , it is like to interfore too often with us in point of trade ; and he plainly sees they have no disposition to an union with us , by which it might be prevented . since we are so unhappy , as to have our princes educated by those who differ from us , both as to church and state , and that by consequence they must needs be bred up in an aversion for our constitutions : it 's absolutely necessary we should have laws to secure otherwise it will be a perpetual source of discord betwixt prince and people , and a seminary of division betwixt the two nations ; to prevent which as it's the duty , so it ought to be the care of every prince that wou'd shew himself to be a true father to his country . that this fear of creating in our princes an aversion for our nation and constitution , is but too well grounded ; time past hath prov'd beyond contradiction , and we wish that time to come may not prove it farther . if we take but a cursory view of the behaviour of our kings to us since that union , the marks of their aversion towards us , stare us in the face . k. iames our sixth , and their first , tho a native of scotland , and swore at his accession to the crown of england , he would visit us once in three years , never came near us afterwards but once ; and that only to strengthen the faction amongst us , that had joined with him , in endeavouring to inslave us . k. charles i , tho likewise a native of scotland , the first time that ever he came near us was with an armed force to subdue us , because of our struggling against that slavery , of which his father had laid the foundation . having after this , under pretence of a mock treaty ▪ sown the seeds of an unnatural war , which soon after broke out in our nation , by montrosse , and the irish rebels that join'd him , he never came near us more , till necessity constrain'd him to flee to our army . at that time , it 's known we made honourable terms for him with the english , and such indeed , as neither his circumstances , nor our own could oblige them to make good ; which , considering the provocations he had given us , and the slights put up●n us , in all treaties during that war , as is testified by whitlock in his memoirs , and other english writers , could proceed from nothing but an exuberrant affection , to a prince that all along had testified such an asiersion for us . his son k. char. ii. he came to us in his distress , or to speak more truly , we invited him to a crown when he had not so much as a cottage , and exposed our selves to ruin and devastation for his sake ; yet after the restauration he never came near us , but ungratefully overturned our constitution in church and state , cut off the marquis of argile's head that set our crown upon his own , and made those injurious acts which ruined us in our trade with england . king iames our vii . and their ii. when chased from england as a traytor , and in danger of being excluded from their crown , we received him with open arms , settled our succession upon him , and turned the balance in england on his side . yet he never once came near us afterwards , but by his despotical proclamations overturned the small remains of our liberties that his brother had left , and wounded our religion and laws both at once . king william for whom we have shed so much of our blood in britain , ireland , and the netherlands , and whom we allowed a standing army when the parliament of england would scarcely allow him his guards . he hath never yet honoured us with his presence , and we see how we have been treated by wicked counsellors about him , how our sovereignty is trampled under foot , our trade opposed , our men starved , and our colony by that means deserted . certainly these instances are enough to justifie our demands of having laws for the security of our liberty as good at least , if not better than those of our neighbours , since our kings have ever since the union been in the hands of our enemies , and that there 's little probability of its ever being otherwise . to come to a conclusion our trade is the thing that 's now struck at , and tho' we be a soveraign free people , have heads , hearts , hands , commodities , harbours , some measure of shipping , and good laws to encourage our carrying it on ; yet our neighbours will not allow us to do it , but break through all the laws of god and man to put a stop to it : our king that should protect us and go in and out before us , is in the hands our enemies , that plainly tell him our trade is inconsistent with theirs , and that they expect the preference ; and in a word , he is forced to act against us : what shall we do then ? because our king is a prisoner must our parliament be so too ? because he cannot do what he would and what he ought , must not they do it neither ? because some of our country-men about him , and who have posts under him concur with our enemies to betray us , must not the representatives of our country redress us ? must we who never allowed our princes when at home and governed by our own councils , to plead their prerogative contrary to law , suffer our princes now , when govern'd by foreign councils , to swallow up our laws and constitution by pretended prerogative ? we see that no kings can either by the laws of god or man plead any prerogative that 's inconsistent with the good of the people , and our kings least of any . our neighbou●s may boast of their magna charta , and other priviledges granted them by their kings . we have something more glorious to boast of , ond that is , our kings have no prerogative but what was granted them by us . our ancestors who first inhabited this island , did not receive their lands from the gift of a conqueror or general , who afterwards made himself prince , as happened to most other nations in europe , but being possessed of a country , we sent for fergus and made him king , and let his eldest son ferlegus know to his cost , that we chose a king for our own good , to be our general , fight our battles , and not to to luxuriate in wealth and pleasures ; that ambitious youngster was quickly made sensible that we never intended our crown should be hereditary in such a manner as to be entailed upon the heads of fools and madmen ; in like sort when we were banished the island by the britains , picts and romans , we sent from the western islands where we kept possession , for fergus ii. and made him king , and under his conduct recovered our country . in a word , in all the revolutions of time and government , it 's plain from our histories , that our kings always received their crowns at our hands , upon such conditions as we thought fit in the respective junctures ; from whence it follows that our kings have no prerogative but what they must plead from act of parliament , and that whatever they cannot justifie that way , is an usurpation of that right which we still keep in our hands . our case is not like that of other nations who obtained their priviledges from the favour and clemency of their conquerors , without whose consent they could make no laws ; on the contrary we always reserv'd the sovereign power in our selves , and hence it was that our ancient parliaments or meetings of the states did so frequently call our kings to their bar , and met without their consent when the urgent affairs of the nation did require it . hence it was that their resolves had the force of a law , whether their kings consented or not ; and that they dethron'd them for male-administration , as happened to baliol , q. mary , and others ; and by that same authority they forfeited the late king iames. is it not strange then , that we should now suffer our selves to be bubled out of our sovereignty and trade by the idle stories of parasitical courtiers , who tell us his majesty is forced to grimace to please the english ? will not all the world cry shame upon us , and posterity curse us if we be hectored out of our liberties by the bugbear of a prerogative cryed up by a mercenary lawyer or two , who betray all causes that ever they take in hand ? such gentlemen , we doubt not , will presently cry our treason , and plead that this book ought to be burnt as the enquiry was in england ; but if what is here said be not our ancient and true constitution , let us burn our histories and acts of parliament that mislead us ; let us cancel all our acts establishing the reformation ; let us condemn our claim of right to the flames , and abjure parliaments for ever ; let us cancel our coronation oath and to crown the work ; let us send over to st. germains and pray the late king to return again , and govern us by his absolute power , uncontrolable authority , and proclamatious cassing and annulling all our laws ; and to this let us promise him obedience without reserve . if it be not this , it is something as bad the faction seem to be a●ming at , when they make invasions upon our sovereignty and commerce , give frivolous answers to all our complaints , falsify promises of redress , murder our subjects abroad by fraudulent proclamations , delay the meeting of our parliament , though our bleeding honour and interest require it ; forbid petitioning for a redress of those things by proclamation , and seem rather to upbraid than to answer us when it is presented : if to give money to keep up a standing army to protect the advisers of those grievances , and compleat our slavery be of more consequence to the nation than to have those grievances redressed , let us begin with that the faction calls the kings business , but if the crys of an ancient , and gallant , though oppressed nation , that reach up to the heavens be of any weight , let 's give the redress of those grievances the preference . our company for trading to africa and the indies , have by their memorials and addresses , asserted our rights as became true patriots of their country . may it never be said we are so much degenerated , that our parliament shall not as much outdo the company in this , as they are superior to them in interest and power . this company is the creature of our states , ( for the faction will not suffer his majesty to own it ) therefore they are oblig'd in honour and duty to support it ; we hope then it will be no unreasonable request if the nation desire , that the money that was spent on a mercenary army to enslave us be given for the support of a trading company to enrich us , and that our law-givers would likewise be pleas●d to consider the groans of our poor opp●ess'd people throughout the kingdom , m●ke laws for encouraging our husband-men to plant and inclose , to advance and incourage our foreign and fishing trade , and to prevent the levying of our men for english , or any foreign service : must we be perpetually condemn'd to breed up men to be destroy'd in the defence of other nations , after we have been at the expence of their maintenance and education ? must we still be depriv'd of the fruits of their labour that should rewa●d us , and of their off●pring which would strengthen and enrich us ? what vast sums do we lose every year by the multitudes of our people , that are forc'd to go abroad for want of imployment at home , and how much our want of good laws to incourage their industry , and secure their property discourages such of them from returning again , as acquire estates and substance abroad , is obvious from many instances ; but from none more than that late one of sir william brown , the great dantsick merchant , who , upon that account chuses rather to become a purchaser in england , than to return to his native country . thus we have spoke our mind freely , as we think it incumbent upon all true scots-men in this present juncture to do . the grievances here pointed at , are to be remedied no otherwise but by parliament , and tho it be scarcely consistent with our safety , that one parliament should continue so long as this hath done , because of members being liable to tentations by pensions or places ; yet there may perhaps be a providence in it , that god would reserve the honour of compleating our deliverance from tyranny , by the same parliament that had so gloriously commenc'd it . our kingdom never had greater provocation to resent the treatment of wicked counsellours than at present , nor could we expect a more favourable opportunity for it . the house of commons in england have set us a noble example , pour'd ignominy and contempt upon some of those evil counsellours , and have squeez'd the purses of others : we have as good reason as far as our case requires it to take the same method . we have reason to apprehend that our grievances proceeds from some of the same persons . it 's well enough known that those by whom we are chiefly govern'd have all their dependance upon them ; and since we find them to be such as are capable of bribes , to give his majesty such advices as are inconsistent with his promises to the parliament of england , and by them declared capable of creating a misunderstanding and jealousy betwixt him and that people . why should we not think they are guilty of the same things , in relation to us . if they be such as take money to act contrary to the interest of that potent nation , what should hinder them from taking bribes to ruin the honour and trade of ours ; if they shew such favour to irish papists against the interest of great britain , and the protestant religion , why may they not take bribes from the spaniards or french , nay from the pope himself , to oppose our settlement in america , since he dreads it so much . at the same time it s known we have enemies nearer home , and such as understand the art of bribing too : they have declar'd themselves so much in opposition to our foreign trade , as demonstrates they would not grudg some money to have it totally obstructed . this makes it necessary to enquire how our treasury has been manag'd at home , which way our forfeitures here have been dispos'd of , and whether we have any within our own bowels , that have the art of taking money , or are possess'd with souls mean enough to become deputy pensioners to those great ones : it were one good way to try it , to see who would oppose a vote in parliament , that such as shall be found guilty of taking bribes , pensions , or places to vote for a standing army , and against a tax for maintaining our american colony , be for ever declar'd uncapable of sitting in parliament , or of bearing any publick office in the kingdom . this is so much the more necessary , that 't is openly discours'd in england , as if a great sum of money were to be dispos'd of for that end , and that precepts are drawn to pay it accordingly upon the opening of our parliament . it 's to be hop'd that none of our nobility and gentry , who have been formerly so renown'd for gallantly defending their country , will be bought off from espousing its interest in this critical juncture . pensions and places can't be assur'd to their posterity ; where as the shame and ignominy of such a practise will render their name and memory as execrable to the scottish nation as are those of the infamous baliol and menteith , and be eternal monuments of disgrace and reproach to their families . vitam quam patriae debeo , ei devovi ; cui si aliam opem affere non possim , piis , erga eam conatibus immoriturus sum . finis . a proclamation against field conventicles, and offering a reward for apprehending iames renwick, alexander shiels, and houstoun, seditious field preachers. scotland. privy council. 1687 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05454 wing s1589 estc r183327 53981732 ocm 53981732 180360 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05454) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180360) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2826:48) a proclamation against field conventicles, and offering a reward for apprehending iames renwick, alexander shiels, and houstoun, seditious field preachers. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1687. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. intentional blank spaces in text. dated at end: given under our signet at edinburgh, the eighteenth day of october, one thousand six hundred eighty seven. and of our reign the third year. signed: will. paterson, cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng renwick, james, 1662-1688. shields, alexander, 1660?-1700. houston, david, -covenanter minister. covenanters -legal status, laws, etc. -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -sources. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-12 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2009-01 scott lepisto sampled and proofread 2009-01 scott lepisto text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion royal blazon or coat of arms i r 〈…〉 a proclamation , against field conventicles , and offering a revvard for apprehending iames renvvick , alexander shiels , and houstoun , seditious field preachers . james by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith to our lovits _____ macers of our privy council , or messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severaly , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as we having by our gracious proclamation of the twentieth eight of june last , given so full and comprehensive a tolleration and indulgence to tender consciences , that there can be no pretence left for field conventicles , these readezvouzes of rebellion , against which , by the foresaid proclamation , we have left all our laws and proclamations of council in full force and vigour , and have thereby of new again , strictly required and commanded all our judges and officers , civil , criminal and military , to surpross the saids field conventicles or seditious assemblies in the fields , and to punish all persons preachers or hearers thereat , conform to the outmost rigour of our laws ; yet nevertheless , one james renwick , a flagitious and scandalous person , ( whom we by our royal proclamation of the ninth day of december last by-past , have declared an open , notorious and avowed traitor , and discharged all our leidges , all manner of intercommuning with him ) having with alexander sheils , and _____ houstoun , and some others their associats , shaken off all fear of god , as well as alledgiance to us his vice-gerent , do presume to keep numerous conventicles in the fields , and in their preachings disown us and our authority , endeavouring to seduce some of our unwarry commons , from their duty and allegiance to us their native monarch , and expresly teaching the doctrine of rebellion and resistance ; we therefore , with advice of our privy council , do hereby prohibit and discharge all such rebellious assemblies in the fields , and strictly require and command all our judges , and all in authority under us , particularly the officers and souldiers of our standing forces , to surpress the saids rebellious field conventicles with all rigour , and all our judges and others concerned , to punish all persons present thereat , conform to the prescript of our laws ; requiring hereby , and authorizing all our officers , civil or military , and all our other good subjects , to apprehend and secure in firmance the persons of the said james renwick , alexander sheils , and _____ houstoun , wherever they can be found ; for whose incouragement in this our service , we with advice foresaid , do hereby promise and ensure to them , the sum of one hundred pound sterling mony for each of the saids three persons who shall be apprehended and secured in manner foresaid , forth of our thesaury , as a reward ; and to the end these presents may be made known , our will is , and we charge you strictly and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat cross of edinburgh , and remanent mercat-crosses of the head-burghs of the shires of this kingdom , and other places needful , and there , in our name and authority , by open proclamation , make publication of our royal will and pleasure in the premisses , that none pretend ignorance . given under our signet at edinburgh , the eighteenth day of october , one thousand six hundred eighty seven , and of our reign the third year . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . will. paterson , cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1687. the grounds & reasons of monarchy considered in a review of the scotch story, gathered out their best authours and records / by j.h. hall, john, 1627-1656. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a45001 of text r16160 in the english short title catalog (wing h346). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 111 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 69 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a45001 wing h346 estc r16160 13031623 ocm 13031623 96770 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a45001) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 96770) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 740:9) the grounds & reasons of monarchy considered in a review of the scotch story, gathered out their best authours and records / by j.h. hall, john, 1627-1656. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a45001 of text r16160 in the english short title catalog (wing h346). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread [10], 127 p. s.n.], [s.l. : 1650. reproduction of original in union theological seminary library, new york. eng monarchy -early works to 1800. scotland -kings and rulers. scotland -history. a45001 r16160 (wing h346). civilwar no the grounds & reasons of monarchy considered. in a review of the scotch story, gathered out of their best authours and records. by j.h. corr hall, john 1650 20736 2 5 0 0 0 0 3 b the rate of 3 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the b category of texts with fewer than 10 defects per 10,000 words. 2005-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2005-04 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2005-05 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2005-05 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-10 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the grounds & reasons of monarchy considered . in a review of the scotch story , gathered out of their best authours and records . by j. h. corrected and reprinted according to the edenburgh copy . anno mdcl . the preface . there is nothing hath more confounded knowledge among men , then the reciprocall violences of the understanding and the will ; or , to speak plainly , the passion of the one and blindnesse of the other : since some by chance or interest take up principles whith they force the understanding by strained arguments to maintain : others by the custome of some opinion so bewitch the will into confedracy , that they can never quit it after confutation ; to remedy this , since i had purposed with my self to say somewhat to this point ( which though it be but a small wyer , yet the great weight of civill felicitie lyes upon it ) i knew no better method then to take the scales off the eyes of the understanding , and shew the will how better to bring about her great design of good : and in the prosecution of this , i would not skirmish with every argument which had been a thing of immense slavery and not for every eye ; but i choosed rather to strike at the foundations , that the understanding might loose his passion , and more freely consider upon what quick-sands they lay ; and in this i needed not to be positive , because i take a task which most men-are rather happy in , that is , to supplant errour rather then to assert truth : hence i consider king-ship simply , not troubling my self to maintain any other form , or consider oaths , ends , changes of government , or particular necessitie or reasons of safety : they being distinct considerations and tasks by themselves . now if this negative way satisfie not , i see no such great cause to be discouraged , for ( i confesse ) i do not perceive it so easie a thing to find an errour , and i had rather tell a man he was out of the way , then in endeavouring to lead him to the end of his journey , lead him further about : and it is my opinion , that as sceptiscime is not onely uselesse , but dangerous ; if in setting our thoughts in a posture of defence , it makes us absolutely wavering and incredulous : so had i rather be scepticall in my opinion , then maintain it upon grounds taken up and not demonstrated . the second part is meerly an instance as to the arguments of the first , wherein i would not be understood to be a writer of an epitome ; ( i have other imployments for my time and thoughts ; and nobler too ) but to set down a true series by way of example , and therefore i was onely to note accesses and recesses to governments , and the effects proceeding from the persons of governours , and here as i needed not much trouble the chronologie : so lest it might be a bare sceleton , i sprinkled some observations , that came to hand , and seem to afford either pleasure or use . thus much left i might be misunderstood , i thought necessary to premise . the grounds of monarchy . the first part. i have often thought it strange that among all the governments , either past or being , the monarchicall should so far in extent and number exceed the popular , as that they could never yet come into comparison . i could never be perswaded , but it was more happy for a people to be disposed of by a number of persons jointly interested and concerned with them , then to be numbred as the herd and inheritance of one to whose lust and madnesse they were absolutely subject ; and that any man of the weakest reason and generosity would not rather choose for his habitation that piece of earth , whereon there were accesse to honour by virtue and no worth could be excluded ; rather then that where all advancement should proceed from the will of one scarcely hearing and seeing with his own organs , and gain'd for the most part by means lewd and indirect , and that in the end to amount to nothing else but a more splendid and dangerous slavery . to satisfie this , i considered how inscrutably providence carryes on the turns and stops of all governments , so that most people rather found them then made them ; the constitutions of men , some not fit to be masters of their liberty , some not capable , some not willing : the ambition of setled tyrants , who breaking their own bounds have brought in violent alterations , and lastly , civill discord , which have either corrupted or altered better settlements . but these are observations , rather then arguments , and relate to fact , rather then reason . that which astonished me most was to see this heroick learned age , not onely not rising to thoughts of liberty , but in stead thereof foolishly turning their wits and swords against themselves in the maintenance of them , whose slaves they are , and indeed they can be no weak causes that produce so long and settled a distemper though some of them i supposed , if not most of them , are these . he knoweth nothing that knoweth not how superstitiously the generality of mankind is given to hold up traditions , and how pertinatious it is in the maintenance of its first prejudices , insomuch that a discovery or more refind reason is as insupportable to them , as the sunne is to an eye newly brought cut of darknesse ; hence opiniatritrie ( which is commonly proportioned to their ignorance ) and a generous obstinacy sometimes to death and ruine : so that it is no marvell if we see many gentlemen whose education enabled them onely to use their senses and first thoughts , so dazled with the splendor of a court , prepossessed with the affection of a prince , or bewitched with some subdolous favour , that he chooseth rather any hazard then enchantment should be broke up . others perhaps a degree above these , yet in respect of some title stuck upon the family ( which hath been as fortunate a mysterie of kingship as any other ) or in rereverence to some glorious former atchievements ( minding not that in all these cases the people are the onely effective means , and the king onely imaginary ) they think they should degenerate from bravery in bringing on a change . others are with-held by sloth and timerousnesse , either not daring or unwilling to be happy ; some looking no further then their private welfare , indifferent for the multiplication of publick evils . others ( and these the worst of all ) out of pravity of nature sacrificing to their ambition and avarice , and in order to that , following any power concurring with any machinations , and upholding their authours : whilst princes themselves , ( trained up in these arts , or receiving them in tradition ) know how to wind all their humours to their own advantage , now foisting in the divinity of their titles into pulpits , now amuzing the people with magnificencies and inter-ludes , now diverting their hot spirits to some unprofitable forrain war ( making way to their accursed ends of revenge or glory , with the effusion of that bloud which should be as dear to them as their own : ) now stroaking the people with some feeble but enforced law ( for which notwithstanding they will be paid ; ) and 't is observed , the most notorious tyrants have taken this course ; now giving up the eminentest of their ministers ( which they part with as indifferently as their robes ) unto the rage and fury of the people , so that they are commanded and condemned by the same mouth , and the credulous and ignorant believing their king set over them , sit still , and by degrees grow into quiet and admiration , especially if lulled a sleep with-some small continuance of peace ( be it never so unjust , unsound , or dangerous ) as if the body politick could not languish of an internall disease , whilst its complexion is fresh and chearfull . those are the reasons , which ( if i conceive aright ) have stupified the lesse knowing part of mankind , now how the more searching part hath so odly miscarried , will fall under consideration . first , then , we need not take the pains to demonstrate how easie a thing it is for men of acutenesse , not conversant in civil things not onely to miscarry in the apprehension , but even in the judgement of them ; for they instead of bringing the series and reason of affairs into rule and method , use contrariwise to measure them by their own presupposed speculation ; and by that means become incapable of weighing rightly the various incidences and circumstances of businesses : for it is to be observed , that the theorems of no art or profession are more easily found , or of difficulter practice , then those of policy ; so that it is no wonder if men meerly contemplative , fail so oft in the very laying of grounds , as we shall anon instance : now how fruitfull dainties are errour and absurdity , we all know . but more especially the contentions of contemplative men are most numerous , various and endlesse ; for wrangling is with them an art , and they are endued with that ungenerous shame never to acknowledge : besides their principles are most times ill rivetted , and it is to be feared , that in their superstructions , they as often call in their imaginations , as their judgement to frame arguments . besides , these men fighting onely with pen , ink , and paper , seldome arrive at a means to decide the quarrell , by which he that gains the last word is supposed conquerour . or the other leaves almost as inglorious a conquest to the victor as if he had been overthrown that which i would say from all this , is , that the generality of speculative men , for the most part guiding their understandings by those notions which they find in books : fall not seldome by this means into considerable errours : for all books , those i mean that are humane , and fall directly under consideration , either lay down practicall things , and observations of king-ship , or some generall and universall notions , or else controversially assert monarchy against some opposers . now in the two latter there are generally found two grand and insupportable fallacies , the first whereof is , that they fraudulently converse in generals , and ( to borrow the school-term ) speak of that in the abstract , which they should do in the concret : as for example , where they should assert the particular right of this or that prince , they cunningly or ignorantly lay out most of their discourse in generall about monarchy , and not seldome weary and amaze the dispute , before they come to the true ground and stating of the quarrel , whereby the readers diverted by such prepossession , and entangled by generall notions of authority , power and government , seldome descend into the consideration of particulars ; where the great scruple and difficultie for the most part lies . so that any king ( be his accesse to the government never so fraudulent and unjustifiable ) becomes to be look'd on as sacred authoritative , and by degrees begins to blush at the attributes of sacred majesty , grace , and highnesse ; or any other terms that the servile flattery and witty barbarity of courtiers can give unto them ; nay some even of the wicked roman emperours , could be content to be saluted with perennities and divinities , whereas if men would call their reasons into councel , they might find that these blazing stars were opake bodies , and shone onely by reflection : these men having no more then either the cabal of their own state and distance . or the wretched imposition upon the people cast on them ; for would men divest the authority from the person , and then commonly find it inconsiderable , if not positively evil . and again , consider authority in it self as a thing fixt , veritable , immutable , and ( when justly administred ) sacred , they might find , that granting a prince to be the most regular just person in all the world , yet many men as good , joyned with him , and intrusted , and concurring to the same end , might do much more good ; and that to deny this , were to be as irrationall , as to deny that one person could do no good at all . but however , this i take to be certain and demonstrable out of their own principles , that kings being onely to be considered in respect of the trust and power that lies on them , a number of men by as just means ( to say not better ) invested with the same trust and power , are every jot as sacred , and of as much divine right as any monarch is ( the power being essentially the same united or divided , as if a commission be to one or three ) it will then result , that republicks may be as just and authoritative , as king-ships , and then their radicall argument of the jure divino of king-ship is wholly enfeebled , and the other rendred equally as soveraign . and i am to note ( but this is but transiently ) the poornesse , or to say better , the blasphemy of that argument , that flourishes out kings as the eclypes of divinity , and vainly lavishes some metaphysicks , to prove that all things have a naturall tendencie to an onenesse ; nay , the itch of some merry wits , have carried them to run over most of the attribuies ( as some english lawyers have talkt of the legal , i must say phantasticall ubiquity and omniscience of our kings , though we see the contrary , and some civilians about the emperour , have gone before them ) whereas they should consider , that the immense simplicity of god flows out in its severall workings , with ineffable variety , god being every-where and the same , or as the platonists say , a center in every part of his circle , a spirit without quantity , distance and comprehension ; whereas man is a determinate narrow thing , who doing one thing , ceaseth to do another ; and thinking of one thing , is forc'd to quit his former thought . now how fit he is to be a shade of this archytipe , let any judge , unlesse he could be refined from his corporeity , and inlarged into a proportionable immensity . besides , i know not whether it be safe to think or no , that as god , who for the most part , suits men with gifts sutable to the places to which he calls them , would in some measure poure out his spirit proportionate to these men , whereas as most commonly we find them , notwithstanding their extraordinary advantages , of society , education and business , as weak men as any other , and good princes being swayed by the advice of men , good and wise , and the bad seduced by men of their own inclinations ; what else are all monarchies , but in reallity optimaces for a few only essentially govern , under the name of one who is utterly as unable as the meanest of those over whom hee claimes superiority . the second fallacy or paralogism is this , that men , while they labour thus to support monarchy tell us not what kind of monarchy it is , and consequently gain nothing , although we should grant , them the former proposition to be true ; for what does it avail to acertain me of the title of such a prince , if i know not by what title he holds , grant it were visible to me that such a man was markt out by providence to be my governour , yet if i cannot tell what kinde of one , whether absolute , mixt , limited , meerly law-executive , or first in order , how shall i know to direct my obedience ? if he be absolute , my very naturall liberty is taken away from me , nor doe i know any power can make any man such ; the scripture holding out just limitations and restrictions to all governours . if mixt and limited , i must know the due temperature and bounds , or else he may usurpe or be mistaken , and i oppressed or injured . if law-executive , the power fundamentally resides not in him , but in the great counsell , or them intrusted by the people , then i adore onely a shadow : now if any prince of europe can really clear up these mistes , and shew the lines of his government drawn fairly , and his charter whole and authentick , like that of venice and the first rome : for my part , i le be the first man shall sweare him allegiance , and the last that will preserve him . but you will finde that they will tell you in generall about their office , and in particular of their claimes of succession , inheritance and ancestors , when look but three or foure stories back , and you will meet either some savage unnaturall intrusion ( disguiz'd under some forc'd title or inexistent cognation ) or else some violent alteration , or possibly some slender oath or articles hardly extorted and imperrfectly kept . now if any man thawill but run over these rules , and apply them to any history whatever ( as we shall exemplify in that which for the present we have pitcht upon ) and not finde most titles ambiguous , the effects of former monarchies ( for where , in a catalogue of forty kings , can you almost shew me three good ones , but things meerly strugling to maintain their titles and domestick interest ) ruinous to the people ( who , for the most part , considering them no otherwise then as to be rescued from violent confusion , not as they conduce to the positive happinesse of a civil life ) my small conversation in books is extreamely false : and truly i conceive it may be the rationallest course to set any judgement aright , because it instructs by experience and effects , and grounds the judgement upon materiall observation , and not blindly gropes after notions and causes , which to him are tantum non inscrutable , but of that anon : a main mistake under this topick , hath been an erroneous comparison and application of matters civil and military ; for men observing that mixt councels about generals , plurality , equality of commands , often and sudden military alterations , have brought on no small distempers and dangers to severall governments and attempts ; therefore they presently collect , that in civils also it is the safest to continue a command in one-hand for the preventing of the like disturbances : but here they are deceived , civill matters consist in long debate , great consideration , patient expectation and wary foresight , which is better to be found in a number of choice experienced heads , then in one single one , whose youth and vigor of spirit innables him rather to action , and fils him with that noble temerity , which is commonly so happy in martial things , which must be guided alwayes to prevent occasions ( which are seldom to be found again , and which , mistaken , are to scarcely amended ) besides the ferocity of daring spirits , can hardly be bounded while they stand levell , so that it is no wonder if they extinguish all emulations , by putting the power into the hands of one , whereas in the citty , it is quite otherwise ; and factions ( unless they be cruelly exorbitant ) doe but poyse and ballance one another , and many times like the discord of humors upon the naturall body , produce reall good to the politicks . that slender conception , that nature seems to dress out a principality in most of her works , as among birds , bees , &c. is so slender ( in regard they are no more chiefs then what they fancy them , but all their prepotency is meerly predatory or oppressive , and even lyons , elephants , crocodiles and eagles , have small inconsiderabe enemies , of which they stand in fear , and by which they are often ruined ) that the recitall confutes it ; and if it were so , yet unless they could prove their one man to be as much more excellent as those are , and that solely , i see not what it would advantage them , since to comply with the designe of nature in one , they would contrary it in others , where shee were equally concerned . but these phylologicall and rhetoricall arguments , have not a little hindered the severer disquisition of reason and proposessed the more easy mindes with notions so much harder to be layd aside , as they are more erronious and pleasing . these are the fundamentall errours that have misled the judgement ; now those which have misguided the conscience , have principally proceeded from the mis-interpretation of scripture , and therefore seeming sacred , have been less examined and doubted , as carrying the most authority . thus in the old testament , there being such frequent mention of kings , which notwithstanding , were given in wrath , they superstitiously hold forth , not only the necessity , but the impunity of kings , whereas wee know not their powers and limitations , and it is in consequentiall to argue , that because judea was so governed , wee should follow the paterne , when we find neither precept consequence , nor necessity convincing . and it is mad to think that while the spirit of god so freely and vehemently exclaimes against the iniquiries of men , that god would authorize it so far as to leave it in them unpunishable . as for the antiquity from adam it is true , before his fall his dominion was large and wide , but it was over the beasts ( that after his fall learned to rebel against him ) and aconomically not despotically over his wife and children , but what is this to civil government ? in the new testament ( for i the brieflyer pass over this head , in regard it hath been so copiously treated upon by those under whose profession it falles , and that it doth not immediatly conduce to my designe ) the principall hath been the meeknesse of christ and his complyance with civill powers , which certainly if he had been disposed to have resisted , he could as easily have overthrown , as with a few cords whip the buyers and sellers out of the temple . but hee that was the wisdome of his father , rather thought fit to build up his kingdom , which is never earthly , nor known of men of earth , in meeknes and obedience to civill powers , which are perpetually changed and hurried at the will of the first mover , otherwise he would never have concerned himself so much in giving dues to caesar , and to god , what is gods ; intimating the distinct obediences owing by all men , as christians , and citizens , when granting monarchy , the most and the onely lawfull government , yet every one knoweth , that knoweth any thing of the roman story , that augustus had no more title to that government , then any of those over whom he usurped , and that his accesse to government was as fraudulent and violent as could be . another is the mistaking of the powers {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , when its clear , the scripture speaketh of it in a latitude , as extending it to all established governments . now men have falsly assumed that those powers were only meant of kings ; and what by an indiscreet collation of the places of the old , and violent restings of others of the new , they perfected the other grand mistake , which since it hath been already cleared up ( and as we said is but collaterall with us for the present ) we shall no further mention . as for the alleadged examples and and speeches of primitive times , i see not much in them considerable , for through insurrections against princes cannot be produced , or rather much is said against them ; we are to consider , that the gospel of christ ( which was at that time not much defiled by the world ) ingages not to any domination , but wholly taken up with its own extasies , spiritual delights and expectations , neglects all other affairs as strange and dangerous . and more over ( though i know what hath been said to the contrary ) i cannot finde ( after consideration of those ages ) any probable ground how , if they would have risen , they could have bodied . they were indeed numerous , but then they had legionaries among them , and who knows not what an ineffectual thing a people is ( be it never so desirous ) when overawed by the soldatesque : and they were a people ( as greatness to god and man is different ) not for their wordly power ( for how few considerable commanders were converted in the first ages ? ) but out of his own choice , so that it was not strange , if they could not do much . for god as he chose the weakest means in the planting of the gospel , fishermen ; so , in the primitive propagation he called the weaker men , though christianity afterwards grew ample and august , and kings were proud to give their names unto it . as for the fathers ( granting them f●ee of their many bastardizations , interpolations , and all those errors and uncertainties which the process of time and fraud of men hath foysted into them ) they are to be accepted as witnesses , not as judges , that is to say , they may prove matter of fact , but none of their words matter of right , especially if we consider their writings either homilies , commentaries , or controversies , which are ever directed to another end then this is , and they themselves ( men secluded from business ) are so much more unable to judge and resolve civill controversies ( as this is ) in regard the unhappiness of the latter times hath produced many controversies : not know or thought of in their days , which falling directly under their profession , cannot receive any light or authority from them . having considered kingship , how well it hath appeared through the false lights of understanding , we shall now consider , whether ( taking it by it self ) its foundations be laid upon a cylender or upon a cube , and this me thinks we are the likeliest to do , if we consider them in their rights and uses , or to speak plainer ; in their legality and policy , so that if we finde that none of the wayes of the retaining of their crowns can be authenticall save one , and that one make against them , we shall finde we have no such just causes of blinde adoration or implicite enforcement to truckle under any of their commands . and if again we discover that the government it self is not so profitable as to the end of civil happiness , but rather diametrically opposite to it , we may suppose that men are either strangely obstinate , or else they might eradicate an error , which not onely offers so many prejudices to their understanding , but hath such an evil influence upon their outward well being . we have then to consider , that for one man to rule over many , there must necessarily be some right , though it be but colourable ; for either he must be chosen by the people as their arbitrator and supream judge , or else he must by force of arms invade them , and bring them to obedience , which he by force preserving for his sons of successors , makes way for a third claim , which is inheritance . a fourth , some have invented , though were it real , it is but a difference of the last , and i therefore shall mention it under that head . but to the consideration . first therefore election , supposing the people either finding themselves unable to weyld their own happiness , or for preventing of disorder , make choice of one to be set over them , it here instantly followeth , that authority is in the people , and flowing from them ; for choice argues a power , and being chosen elected a subordination to it , in the end , i mean , though not in every act : now there is none chosen but for some , end , or for some intentions reciprocall betwixt both partyes , for otherwise such a choice were but dotage , and consequently invalid : now thus it will follow that those who pretend to king it upon this topick , must either shew a formal election , which i think many kings are not able to do , or if he can shew one , the conditions and ends for which he was chosen . now all parts being either implicite or explained , let him produce the covenant , that it may be known whether he govern according to it or not , for if he transgresseth , he forfeits , and the other are disobliged . if the agreement be unwritten or intentional , either party is relatively tyed , and then if he do any thing against the welfare of the people ( that soveraing law and end of all governments : ) the people may not onely justly suppose the form capitulation broken , but even endeavour , by what possible means they can , to restore themselves to their former rights : for why should the making of a compact prejudice any when it is once broken ; and here cometh in another fallacy , which the assertors of royalty have so flourished with , that an agreement between a people and one man , should inure , as the english lawyers terme it , to his descendants , when as it is to be considered , that the people choosing of one man , is commonly in consideration of his person and personal merit , which not being the same in his son ( as commonly families in the horizon are in the meridian , the founders being braver then any that follow after them ) that very intent is frustrated and ceaseth , and the people providing for the happiness of a few years , which are determinable with uncertainty of the latter part of the life of one man , run themselves and their posterity into an eternal inconvenience ( for any thing they know ) of bad governours ; neither if the people would never so formally agree with him that in regard of his merits or felicity of actions , his son should be received in that place , yet would they not do it , that very pact expiring with the life of either : for my father may leave me notionally a slave in a tenure ( a thing frequently with our ancestors ) or as civilians term it , it a feodary , which i ā content with , in respect of the advantage it brings me , or because my own estate is to little to be independent , and therefore i think it good prudence to be sheltered under the protection of the greater , but my naturall liberty , that is to say , to make my life as justly happy and advantagious to me as i can , he can no more give away from me then my understanding or eye-sight , for these are priviledges which god and nature hath endued me with , and these i cannot be denyed , but by him that will deny me a being . but to go on , suppose a second generation should accept the son , and a third a grandsire , yet this confirms not a fourth , and they very impolitickly strengthen , and confirm the power by continuance , and in a manner with their own hands lay the foundation of absoluteness ; their governours themselves growing in interests , increasing in aliances and gleaning forces , so it is very improbable but within a little they grow to big and formidable , and leave nothing of the liberty save the name and ( if they be less cunning ) not that . a pertinent example of this , it is so near us , that i cannot pass it , we see in young orange and the low countries at this day , who continuing his progenitors for their signall services , and him for theirs , are now punished for their generous and indiscreet rewarding of vertue , that their liberty was lately blown up before they well perceived it to be undermined , and they are at charge to maintain their own oppression . as for that formall election and stipulation , who sees not what a vain and ridiculous cheat it is , they coming with swords in their hands to demand the scepter of a weak and stupid multitude that appears onely to gaze upon the ceremonies , and whose refusal were ineffectual ; but it is a gracious piece of the caball of tyrannie to deceive the people with shadows , fantasmes , and names of liberty . as for those that intrude in by force , they cannot certainly have a fore-head to infer a right , they being but as the pyrat said to alexander , publique and more magnificent robbers : certainly these are the nimrods , the great hunters , gods scourges , and the burdens of the earth ; and whether they be founders of empires , or great captains ( as boccalini distinguisheth them ) ought rather to be remembred with horror and detestation , then that undue reverence which they commonly meet with . but these are they that lay the the foundations of succession , and from these do the successors claim , and enjoy with the lesse reluctance , because the regret of the violences and hate of the first , dayly weares out ; whether it be by the continuance of peace , that charmes men into a love of ease , or that the continuance of slavery enfeebles their mindes , that they rather chose to look at their present enjoyment , then reall happinesse , so that it is not strange if the person of their oppressour become in time adorable , and he himself think that confirmed and justified to him in the processe of time , which in the beginning he had no right to . but if he will consider the businesse a little higher , we might find that since neither the people ( as we have proved before ) have power to make themselves vassals , nor the intruders themselves cannot pretend any just title ; their domination is meerly illegall , and apt to be shaked off with the first conveniencie , it being every whit as equitable , that these men should be judged enemies of mankind , and condemned to die the death of parricides for usurping a power , as nero for mis-using it . but i would fain ask the regions defenders , by what law they can maintain governments , to be inherent in one , and to be transmitted to his off spring ? if they say by the law of god i would again demand how they can make this law appear to me ? if they say that the scripture holds forth the right and sacreity of kings , i ask them again , how they know that god extends that priviledge and authority to this king ; if they say , that he is involved in the generall right , they do but run into the circle ; unlesse they can show me , that all his approches to government were regular , and such as god was pleased with , or else god had by some signe and wonder declared his approbation of him ; for without these two , they must make god an authour of evil , which is impious , and pretend commission for an unlawfull act ; and by the same right , any other may to an action never so unjust , it being no unusuall thing to borrow the face of divinity , even upon some foul impostures , ( as to forbear further instances ) numa his conference with aegeria , scipio's retirement into the capitol , and sertorius his white hart. now , if they pretend the law of nature , they must demonstrate unto us , both that she endowed men with unequall freedome , and that she shaped out such a man to rule , whereas it appears on the contrary , that all men naturally are equall : for though nature with a noble variety hath made different the features and lineaments of men , yet as to freedome , till it be lost by some externall means , she hath made every one alike , and given them the same desires . but suppose she had intended such a family for government , and had given them some illustrious marks , as we read of some had ( whether by the imagination of their mothers , or by deceit yet then would nature fall into a double irregularity ; first in deserting her method in making all free ; and secondly in making her generall work meerly subservient , and secondary to her particular , which how contrary it is to that beautifull harmony of hers , i need not much insist . now if they say , they are fathers of the people ; as for that which they call themselves the heads , inferring the people no more then a trunk , it 's onely metaphoricall , and proves nothing : for they must remember , that since father hath a correllative upon which it depends , & upon whose removall it vanisheth , they themselves cannot bring any such ; for by physicall procreation they will not offer it . and for metaphoricall dependence it will come to nothing , we seeing people languish when their princes are fullest , and like leeches , rather willing to burst then to fall off . and on the contrary the people upon the removall of a prince , cheerfull and relieved . now if there were such a strict union between these two , such a contrariety and antipathy could never appear : for certainly when any two persons endeavour to gain one upon another , there is an enmity what ever is pretended ; besides , if these men would be fathers , it were then their duty to do like fathers , which is , to provide for , defend and cherish , whereas on the contrary , it is themselves that eat the bread out of the mouths of their children , and through the groans of the poor . and whereas flattery hath said , that what they draw up in vapours they send down in showres , yet are we sure , such are for the most part unfruitfull , if not ominous and infectious : if they pretend the law of nations , it were well , they would declare unto us at first what this law is , and whether generally agreed on or no by nations : if they say , yes , they must resolve whether explicitely or implicitely ; if they say the former , let them produce them ; if the latter , they must demonstrate , that all nations are agreed in such and such notions ; now if all men of these nations since every one must be of equall capacity ; when on the contrary , though the understandings of most men whom we know or have conversed with , seem to flee to some generall maximes ( yet unpolished , unnumbered , and unmethodixed ) yet we see many nations differing from us in many things , which we think clearly , fundamentally and naturally true , neither do climate and education onely so diversitie the minds of men , but even their understandings , and the different wayes of thinking so distinguish them , though of one countrey , that though we may please our selves in thinking that all mens thoughts follow the fantasticall method of ours , yet we might find , if we were perfectly conversant with all men of the world , and well read in their wits ( as we are not with half of them , no , nor any one man with the twentieth part ) that there are scarce four or five axioms would be universally received . now ( for i have been the longer in this , by reason that this imaginary law hath been so held up by the civilians , and made the subterfuge of so many considerable disputes ) if it be so weak as that we can scarce tell whether it be or no , for even that which we account the most sacred piece of it , the violation of publick messengers , the taertar and muscovite , unlesse withheld by fear , break it every day ) what are the arguments deducted from it ? or if there were such a law , what would it avail such a particular man , for why should other nations impose a governour were they are not concerned ; and if they pretend this law , as to the preservations and impunity of their persons , the same answer will serve again , with this addition , that they make an offender uncapable of punishment , it is but to give them a commission to offend : now if they run upon that distinction of suspending onely , and not punishing ( as if forsooth this kind of people must be preserved , though by the ruine of mankind , to immediate vengeance ) now , i say , that suspension is really a punishment , and if his demerits can deserve that , i see not but that upon a proportionable increase , they may deserve dethronization or death , as clearly as two and two make four , and four make eight . if they alledge positive or municipall laws , and number homages , they are not much the nearer , since that all such laws are but rivulets and branches of those we before examined ; and since we found that those speak so little in their favour , that which these do , cannot signifie much , especially since princes , who are ever watchfull to prevail themselves of all occasions of this nature , can either by terrour or artifice draw assemblies or the major part , to their own lure ; nay , even the worst of them have not forgot to be solicitous in this case : but it must be set down , that whatsoever positive laws are repugnant to those generall , they are injurious , and ought to be repealed : and truly it is a sad observation , that as monarchs grow , either out of the weaknesse of government , and ( as i may say ) pupillage , as romulus and theseus did at rome and athens , or else out of the disease or depravation of them , as caesar again invaded rome , so have the people been never more enamoured of them , then when manners were at the highest corruption , which ever gave accesse of strength to them ; nor have they more distasted them , then when their spirits and discipline were the most brave and healthfull ; so fatally disagreeing are true liberty , which is the very source of virtue and generosity , and the impotent domination of a single tyrant , who commonly raign by no other means , then the discords of braver citizens , who can neither indure equality or superiority among themselves , and rather admit a generall vassalage , then just equality , or the vices of the baser , which reconcile them and concern them in a bad example . but suppose succession a thing sacred and inviolable , yet once break and interrupt it , it is little worth , either the usurper being to be acknowledged regular , or the whole series dash'd out of order : nay , we see aspirers themselves , either so blinded with their pretences , or with animosity , so crying their own up , that it is almost impossible for any private judgement to do right in this case , themselves thwarting one another , and it not being in the power of nature that both should be right : but who can instance one monarch , whose crown is come to him by untainted succession ? and what history will not confirm the example , i shall anon bring : certainly though succession were a thing that had not so little reason or being , yet i see not why men should with such a strange pertinacy defend it : matters of government ought to be governed by prudence , but this is to put them into the hands of fortune , when a child uncapable or infirm , under the regiment of a nurse , must ( possibly ) be supreme governour , and those whom either their abilities or vertues fit for it , subordinate or laid aside : but what if the person whom necessity hath set at the stern , be uncapable , lunatick , weak or vicious , is not this a good way to prevent controversies ? with all this enervates all good councel , when a king should have need of tutours , and that a masse of people should be commanded by one who commands not himself , and when we scarce obey even excellent princes , to adore shadows and weak ones . as for boxhornius distinction of successive , wherein the next heir must necessarily succeed out of the originall right of the former , i would ask him , whether the predecessour were a possessour or usufructuary ; if the former , all our former arguments fall on him ; if the latter , it makes not for his successour , the people being owners ; and besides , the distinction is one of his own coyning , never pretended before , upon the first controversie it is invalid , although the first founder had a right , as we have proved the contrary . having with what brevity i could , brought to an end my first intention . i shall now fall upon the second , which is the intrinsical value and expediency of this government , and some little comparison with others ; but herein we shall be short , and onely so far as concerns this : and indeed it is a businesse so ticklish , that even mr. hobs in his de cive , though he assured himself that the rest of his book ( which is principally erected to the assertion of monarchy ) is demonstrated , yet he doubts whether the arguments which he brings to this businesse be so firm or no ; and malvezzi contrarily remonstrates ( in his discourses upon tacitus ) that optimacies are clearly better then monarchies , as to all advantages . and indeed if we look on their arguments , they are either flourishes , or meerly conceptions , such are the reference and perfection of an unity , which must needs work better and more naturally , as one simple cause ( besides that it stills and restrains all other claims ) then many co-ordinate , whereas they never consider that though among many joynt causes , there may be some jarring , yet like crosse wheels in an engine , they tend to the regulation of the whole ; what violent mischiefs are brought in by the contentions of pretenders , ambiguities of titles , and lawlesse ambition of aspirers , whereas in a setled republick all this is clear ; and in case any particular man aspire , they know whom to joyn against and punish as a common enemy . as for that which alledges the advantage of secresie in businesse , it carries not much with it , in regard that under that even most pernicious designs may be carryed on ; and for wholsome counsels ( bating some more nice transactions ) it matters not how much they be tost , among those who are so much entrusted and concerned in them , all crosse designs being never in probability so feeble and ineffectuall , as when there are many eyes to over look them , and voyces to decry them . as for that expedition in which they say monarchs are so happy , it may as well further a bad intention , as give effect to a just councell , it depending on the judgement of a single man , to whose will and ends all must refer ; whereas a select number of entrusted persons may hasten every opportunity with a just slownesse as well as they , though indeed ( unlesse it be in some military criticall minuts ) i see not such an excellency in the swiftnesse of heady dispatch , precipitation in councels being so dangerous and ominous . as for what concerns private suitors , they may as ( if not more ) speedily and effectually be answered in staid re-publicks , as in the court of a king , where bribery and unworthy favourites do not what is just , but what is desired . with these and many others as considerable , which partly willingly , and partly in this penury of books , forgettingly i passe , do they intend to strengthen this fantasticall and airie building ; but as sly controverters , many times leave out the principall text or argument , because should it be produced it could not be so easily answered ; so these men tell us all the advantages of monarchy , supposing them still well setled , and under men virtuous , but you shall never hear them talk of it , in statu corrupto , under lewd kings and unsetled laws ; they never let fall a word of the dangers of inter-reigns , the minorities and vices of princes , misgovernments , evil councels , ambitions , ambiguities of titles , and the animosities and calamities that follow them , the necessary injustices and oppressions by which monarchs ( using the peoples wealth and bloud against them ) hold them fast in their seats , and by some suspension of divine justice die not violently . whereas , other governments established against all these evils , being ever of vigour and just age setled in their own right , freed from pretences , served by experienced and engaged councels , and ( as nothing under the moon is perfect ) sometimes gaining and advantag'd in their controversies , which have not seldome ( as we may see in old rome ) brought forth good laws and augmentations of freedome , whereas once declining from their purity and vigour ; and ( which is the effect of that ) ravisht by an invader , they languish in a brutish servitude ( monarchy being truly a disease of government ) and like slaves , stupid with harshnesse and continuance of slavery , wax old under it , till they either arrive at that period which god prescribes to all people and governments , or else better stars and nephews awaken them out of that lethargy , and restore them to their pristine liberty , and its daughter happinesse . but this is but to converse in notions , wandring , and ill abstract from things , let us now descend into practicall observation and clearly manifest out of the whole series of time and actions , what circumstances and events have either ushered or dog'd one race of kings , that if there were all the justice in the world , that the government of a nation should be entailed upon one family , yet certainly we could not grant it to such an one , whose criminall lives and formidable deaths , have been evidences of gods wrath upon it for so many generations . and since no countrey that i know , yields such an illustrious example of this as scotland does , and it may be a charity to bring into the way such as are misled , i have pitched upon the scottish history , wherein as i have onely consulted their own authours , as my fittest witnesses in this case ; so have i ( not as a just history , but as far as concerns this purpose ) faithfully and as far as the thing would permit , without glosses represented it , so that any calm understanding may deduce , that the vengeance which at the present is levell'd against the nation , is but an attendant of this new introduc'd person , and that he himself , though for the present he seems a clog among his frogs , and suffer them to play about him , yet god will suffer him ( if the english army prevent not ) to turn stork and devour them , while their cries shall not be heard , as those that ( in dispight of the warning of providence , and light of their own reasons , for their own corrupt interest & greedy ambition ) brought these miseries upon themselves . the instance out of the scottish history , which is the second part. and now we come to our main businesse , which is the review of story , wherein we may find such a direct and uninterrupted series , such mutuall endearments between prince and people , and so many of them crowned with happy reigns and quiet deaths ( two together scarce dying naturally ) that we may conclude , that they have not onely the most reason , but a great deal of excellent interest , who espouse the person and quarrell of the hopefull descendant of such a family ; nor shall we be so injurious to the glory of a nation , proud with a catalogue of names and kings , as to expunge a great part of their number ; though some who have done it affirm , there can be no probability that they had any other being then what hector boyes , and the black book of pasley ( out of which buchanan had most of his materials ) bestow on them , there being no mention of the name of scot in any authentick writer , till four hundred years after christ : no , we shall no more envy these old heroes unto them , then their placing the red lion in the dexter point of their eschutcheon : but though we might in justice reject them as fabulous and monkish , yet since themselves acknowledge them , and they equally make against them , we shall run them over like veritable history : the first of this blessed race was fergus , first generall , and afterward got himself made king , but no sooner cast away on the coast of ireland but a contention arises about the validity of their oath to him , and uncles are appointed to succeed , which argues it elective ; so feritharis brother to fergus is king , but his nephew enters a conspiracy against him , forces him to resigne and flie to the isles , where he died . foritharis dying soon after , was suspected to be poisoned : after him comes in main ( fergus second sonne ) who with his sonne dornadilla reigned quietly fifty seven years . but reuther his sonne , not being of age , the people make his uncle nothat take the government , but he misruling , reuther , by the help of one doualus , raised a party against him and beheads him ; makes himself king with the indignation of the people that he was not elected , so that by the kindred of nothat he is fought with , taken and displaced , but afterward makes a party and regains : his son thereus was too young , so that his brother rhoutha succeeded , but after seventeen years was glad to resigne . well , thereus reigns , but after six years declines to such lewdnesse that they force him to flie , and govern by a prorex after his death ; josina his brother , and his son finan are kings , and quietly die so . but then comes durst , one who slaies all the nobility at a banquet , and is by the people slain ; after his death the validity of the oath to fergus is called in question , and the elective power vindicated ; but at length even his brother is admitted , who though he ruled valiantly and well , yet he had gillus a bastard son , vaser & regni cupidus : the next of the line are two twins docham and dorgall ( sons of durst ) they while they disputed of priority of age , are by the artifice of gillus slain in a tumult ; who makes a strong party , and seizing of a hold , sayes he was made supervisor by his father , and so becomes king , cuts off all the race of durst , but is after forc'd out of the kingdom , and taken by even the second his successor ( who was chosen by the people ) and by him put to death in ireland : after even comes eder : after eder , his son even the third , who for making a law , that the nobility should have the enjoyment of all new married women before they were touched by their husbands , was doomed to prison during his life & there strangled ; his successor was his kinsman metellan ; after whom was elected caratac , whom his brother corbret succeeded ; but then came dardan ( whom the lords made take on him the government , by reason of the nonage of corbrets son ) who for his lewdness was taken by the people and beheaded . after him corbret the second , whose son luctac for his lewdness was by the people put to death ; then was elected mogald , who following his vitious predecessors steps , found his death like theirs , violent . his son conar one of the conspirators against him succeeded , but mis-governing , was clapt in prison and there dyed . ethodius his sisters son succeded , who was slain in the night in his chamber by his piper . his son being a minor , satrael his brother was accepted who seeking to place the succession in his own line , grew so hatefull to the people , that not daring to come abroad , he was strangled in the night by his own servants , which made way for the youngest brother donald , who out-did the others vices by contrary vertues ; and had a happy raign of one and twenty years . ethodiis the second , son of the first of that name was next , a dull un-active prince , familiarum tumultu occisus . his son athirco promised fair , but deceived their expectations with most horrid lewdness , and at length vitiated the daughters of nathaloc a nobleman , and caused them to be whipt before his eyes , but seeing himself surrounded by conspirators , eluded their fury with his own sword ; his brother and children being forced to flie to the picts . nathaloc turning his injury into ambition made himself king , and governed answerably , for he made most of the nobility to be strangled , under the pretence of calling them to councell , and was after slain by his own servants . after his death , athirco's children were called back , and findor his son , being of excellent hopes , accepted ; who made good what his youth promised ; he beat in sundry battels donald the islander , who seeing he could not prevail by force , sent two , as renegadoes , to the king , who ( being not accepted ) conspire with his brother , by whose means one of them slew him with a hunting spear when he was a hunting . his brother donald succeeds ( the youngest of the three ) who about to revenge his brothers death hears the islander is entred murray : whom he encountring with unequal forces , is taken prisoner with thirty of the nobility , and whether of grief , or his wounds , dyes in prison . the islander , that had before assumed the name , now assumed the power ( the nobles , by reason of their kindred prisoners , being overawed ) this man wanting nothing of an exquisite tyrant , was , after twelve years butcheries , slain by cratherinth son of findor , who under a disguise found address and opportunity . the brave tyrannicide was universally accepted , and gave no cause of repentance , his raign is famous , for a war begun between the scots and picts about a dog ( as that between the trojans and italians for a white hart ) and the defect on of carausius from dioclesian which happened in his time . his kinsman fyncormach succeeded , worthy of memory for little but the piety of the culdys ( an order of religious men of that time overborn by others succeeding ) hee being dead , three sonnes of his three brothers contended ; romach as the eldest strengthned by his alliance with the picts , with their assistance seized on it , forcing others to fly , but proving cruell , the nobility conspired and slew him . angusian , another pretender , succeeds who being assailed by nectam king of the picts , who came to revenge romach , routed his army in a pitcht battel , but nectham coming again he was routed and both he and nectham slaine . tethelmac , the third pretender came next , who beating the picts , and wasting their fields ; hergust when he saw there could be no advantage by the sword , suborned two picts to murther him , who drawing to conspiracy , the piper that lay in his chamber ( as the manner was then ) he at the appointed time admitted them , and there slew him . the next was even son of fincormac , who was slain in a battell with the picts , to the almost extirpation and banishment of the scots ; but at the last the picts taking distaste at the romans entred into a secret league with the scots , and agreed that fergus , ( whose , uncle the last king was ) being then in banishment , and of a militari breeding and inclination should be chosen king : with him the danes maintained a long war with the romanes , and pulled down the picts wall , at last he and the king of picts were in one day slain in a battell against them ; this mans access to government was strange , ignotus rex ab ignoto populo accersitus , and may be thought temerarious ; he having no land for his people , and the roman name inimicall , yet founded he a monarchy , there having been kings ever since ; and we are to note , this is the first man that the sounder writers will allow to be reall and not fabulous . him succeded his son engenius ( whose grandfather grahame had all the power ) a warlike prince whom some say slain , some dead of a disease . after him his brother dongard , who after the spending of five superstitious years , left the crown ( as they call it ) to his youngest brother constantine ; who from a good private man turned a lew prince , and was slain by a nobleman , whose daughter he had ravished ; he was succeeded by congall constantines son , who came a tolerable good prince to a loose people , and having spent some two and twenty years in slight excursions against the saxons , left the rule to his brother goran , who notwithstanding he made a good league against the brittains , which much conduced to his and the peoples settlement , yet they in requital , after thirty four years , made away with him ; which brought in eugenius the third of that name , the son of congall , who was strongly suspected to have a hand in his death , insomuch that gorans widow was forced to flie into ireland with her children : this man in thirty three years time did nothing but reign , and make short incursions upon the borders ; he left the rule to his brother congall , a monastical , superstitious and unactive prince , who reigned ten years . kynnatell his brother was designed for successor , but aydan the son of goran laid his claime , but was content to suspend in respect of the age and diseases of kynnatell , which after fourteen moneths took him out of the world and cleared the controversie , and aydan by the consent of columba ( a priest that governed all in those dayes ) came to be king ; a man that after thirty four years turbulently spent , being beaten by the saxons and struck with the death of columba dyed of grief . after him was chosen kenneth , who hath left nothing behinde him but his name . then came eugenius the fourth , son of aydan ( so irregular is the scots succession that we see it inverted by usurpation or cross elections in every two or three generations ) this man left an ambiguous fame , for hector , sayes he was peaceable , the manuscript implacably severe , he reigned sixteen years , and left his sonne ferchard successour , who endeavouring to heighten the prerogative by the dissentions of the nobility , was on the contrary impeached by them , and called to an account , which he denying was clapt in prison , where he himself saved the executioner a labour : so that his brother donald succeeded , who being taken up with the piety of those dayes , left nothing memorable , save that he in person interpreted scots sermons unto the saxons : he was followed by his nephew ferchard , sonne of the first of that name , a thing like a king in nothing but his exorbitancies , who in hunting was wounded by a wolf , which cast him into a feaver , wherein he not observing the imposed temperance , brought upon himself the lowsie disease , upon which discomforted , he was by the perswasion of colman ( a religious man ) brought out in his bed covered with hair-cloth , where he made a publick acknowledgement to the people , and soon after died . maldwin , donalds son followed , who after a twenty years ignoble reign was strangled by his wife . eugenius the fift succeed , son ( they say ) of king dongard , though the chronologie seem to refute it : this man spent five years in slight incursions , and was succeeded by eugenius the sixt , son of ferchard : this man is famous for a little learning , as the times went ; and the prodigie of raining of bloud seven dayes , all lacticinia turning into bloud . amberkelleth nephew to eugenius the fift , succeeded this rude prince , while he was discharging the burden of nature , was slain by an arrow from an unknown hand . eugenius the seventh followed , who being attempted by conspiratours , had his new-married wife slain in bed beside him ; for which he being accused produced the murderers before his triall , and was acquitted , and so ended the rest of his 17. years in peace , recommending unto the people mordack , son of amberkelleth , who continuing a blank raigne , or it may be a happy one , in regard it was peaceable , left it to etfyn , son of eugenius the seventh ; the first part of his reigne was peaceable ; but age obliging him to put the government into the hands of four of his servants , it hapned to him , as it doth to other princes , whose fortunes decay commonly with their strength , that it was very unhappy and turbulent : which miseries , eugenius the eighth , son of mordack restrained ; but he it seems , having a nature fitter to appease tumults , then to enjoy rest , at the first enjoyment of peace , broke into such lewdnesse , that the nobility at a meeting stabb'd him , and made way for fergus the sonne of etfyn , one like his predecessour in manner , death , and continuance of reigne , which was three years ; the onely dissimilitude was , that the latter's wife brought his death ; for which , others being impeached , she stept in and confessed it , and to elude punishment , punished her self with a knife . soluath , son of eugenius the eighth , followed him , who though his gout made him of lesse action , yet it made his prudence more visible , and himself not illaudable , his death brought in achaius the son of etfyn , whose reign was innobled with an irish war , and many learned men , besides the assistance , lent hungus to fight against the northumbrians , whom he beat in famous battell , which ( if i may mention the matter ) was presignified to hungus in a dream ; saint andrew appearing to him , and assuring him of it , and in the time of the battell , a white crosse , ( that which the heraulds call a saltier , and we see commonly in the scots banners ) appeared in the sky ; and this i think to have been the occasion of that bearing , and an order of knights of saint andrew , sometimes in reputation in scotland , but extinguished for ought i can perceive , before the time of james the sixth , though the collar and pendent of it are at this day worn about the scots arms . to this man congal his cousin succeeded , who left nothing behind him but five years to stretch out the account of time . dongal the son of soluath came next , who being of a nature fierce and insupportable , there was an endeavour to set up alpine son of achaius , which designe by alpine himself was frustrated , which made the king willinger to assist alpine in his pretension to the kingdome of picts , in the which attempt he was drowned , and left unto alpine that which he before had so nobly refused , who making use of the former raised an army , beat the picts in many signall victories ; but at last was slain by them , leaving his name to the place of his death , and the kingdome to his son kenneth . this man seeing the people broken with the late war , and unwilling to fight , drew on by this subtilty , invites the nobility to dinner , and after plying them with drink till midnight , leaves them sleeping on the floor ( as the manner was ) and then hanging fish-skins about the wals of the chamber , and making one speak through a trunk , and call them to warre : they waking , and half asleep , supposed something of divinity to be in it , and the next morning not onely consented to war , but ( so strange is deluded imagination , ) with unspeakable courage fell upon the enemy , and put them to the rout : which being confirmed by other great victories , utterly ruined the pictish name . this man may be added to the two ferguses , and truly may be said to be the founder of the scots empire , not onely in making that the middle of his dominion , which was once the bounds : but in confirming his acquests with good laws , having opportunitie of a long peace which was sixteen years , his whole time of government being twenty . this was he that placed that stone , famous for that illusory prophesie , ni fallat fatum &c. ( which first was brought our of spain and ireland , and from thence to argyle ) at scown ; where he put it in a chair , in which all his successours ( till edward the first brought it away ) were crowned , and since that , all the kings of england , till the happinesse of our common-wealth made it uselesse . his brother donald was his successour , a man made up of extreamities of virtues and vices , no man had more bravery in the field , nor more vice at home , which increasing with his years , the nobility put him in prison , where either for fear or scorn , he put an end to his dayes , leaving behind him his brother constantine , a man wanting nothing of him but his vices , who struggling with a potent enemy , ( for the picts had called in the danes ) and driving them much into despair ( a bravery that hath not seldome ruin'd many excellent captains ) was taken by them , put into a little cave , and there slain . he was succeeded by ethus his brother , who had all his eldest brothers vices , and none of his seconds virtues ; nature it seems , making two extremes , and a middle in the three brethren : this man voluptuous and cowardly , was forced to resigne ; or , as others say , died of wounds received in a duell from his successour , who was gregory son of dongal , who was not onely an excellent man , but an excellent prince , that both recovered what the others had lost , and victoriously traversed the nothern counties of england , and a great part of ireland , whose king a minor , and in his power , he generously made no advantage of , but setled his countrey , and provided faithfull and able guardians for him . these things justly yield him the name of great : donald son of constantine the second by his recommendation , succeeded in his power and virtues , notwithstanding some say he was removed by poyson : next was constantine the third , son of ethus , an unstable person , who assisted the danes , which none of his predecessours would do , and after they had deserted him basely , yet yielded them succours , consisting of the chief of the scots nobility , which with the whole danish army were routed by the saxons ; this struck him so , that he retired amongst the culdys ( which were as the greek caloyers , or romish monks at this day ) and there buried himself alive : after him was milcom , son of donald the third , who though a good prince , and well skill'd in the arts of peace , was slain by a conspiracy of those to whom his virtue was burthensome : his successour was judulf ( by what title i find not ) who fighting with the danes , that with a navy unexpectedly came into the frith , was slain : duffe his son succeeds , famous for an accident , which if it be true , seems nearly distant from a fable ; he was suddenly afflicted by a sweating disease , by which he painfully languish'd , yet no body could find the cause , till at last a girl , that had scattered some words after torments , confessed that her mother and some other women , had made an image of wax , which , as it wasted , the king should waste , by sweating much ; the place being diligently searched , it was found accordingly ; so the image being broke , he instantly recovered : that which disturbed his five years reign , was the turbulency of the northern people , whom , when he had reduced and taken , with intent to make exemplary punishment , donald the commander of the castle of forresse , where he then lay , interceded for some of them , but being repulst , and exasperated by his wife , after he had made all his servants drunken , flew him in his bed , and buried him under a little bridge , ( lest the cutting of turfs might bewray a grave ) near kilross abbey ; though others say , he turned aside a river , and after he had buried him , suffered it to take its former channel : culen the son of induffe , by the election of parliament , or convention of people succeeded , good onely in this one action of inquiring and punishing his predecessours death , but after , by the neglect of discipline , and the exquisitnesse of his vices , became a monster , and so continued three years , till being weakned and exhausted in his body , and vext with perpetuall diseases he was summoned by the parliament , and in the way , was slain by a thane ( so they then called lieutenants of counties ) whose daughter he had ravished . then came kenneth , brother to duff ( though the forepart of his keign was totally unlike his ) who being invaded by the danes , beat them in that famous battel , which was won by three hays , husbandmen ( from whom all the hays now give three shields gules ) who with their sythes reinforced the lost battel , but in his latter time he lost this reputation , by poysoning milcolm sonne of duff , to preserve the crown for a son of his name , though of lesse merit ( for sayes bucanan , they use to choose the fittest , not the nearest ) which being done , he got ordained in a parliament , that the succession should be lineall , the son should inherit , and be called prince of scots ; and if he were a minor , be governed by some wise man ( here comes the pretence of succession , whereas before it was clearly elective ) and at fifteen , he should choose his guardian himself ; but the divine vengeance , which seldome , even in this life , passes by murther , overtook him ; for he was insnared by a lady , whose son he had caused to be executed , and slain by an arrow out of an ambush she had laid . constantine the son of culen , notwithstanding all the artifice of kenneth , by his reasoning against the act , perswaded most of the nobility to make him king , to that milcolm the son of kenneth and he made up two factions , which tore the kingdome , till at length milcoms bastard brother ( himself being in englaend assisting the danes ) fought him routed his army , and with the losse of his own life , took away his , they dying of mutuall wounds . grime , of whose birth they do not certainly agree , was chosen by the constantinians , who made a good party , but at intercession of forard ( an accounted rabbi of the times ) they at last agreed , grime being to enjoy the kingdome for his life , after which milcolumb should succeed , his fathers law standing in force ; but he after declining into lewdnesse , cruelty and spoil ( as princes drunk with greatnesse and prosperity use to do ) the people called back milcolumb , who rather receiving battel then giving it ( for it was upon ascention day , his principall holy-day ) routed his forces , wounded himself , took him , pulled out his eyes , which altogether made an end of his life , all factions and humours being reconciled . milcolumb , who with various fortune fought many signall battels with the danes , who under their king sueno had invaded in his latter end he grew to such covetousness and oppression , that all authours agree he was murthered , though they disagree of the manner ; some say , by confederacy with his servants ; some , by his kinsmen and competitours ; some , by the friends of a maid , whom he had ravished . donald his grandchild succeeded , a good natur'd and unactive prince , who with a stratagem of sleepy drink , destroyed a danish army that had invaded and distressed him , but at last being insnared by his kinsman mackbeth ( who was pricked forward by ambition , and a former vision of three women of a sour-humane shape , whereof one saluted him , thane of angus , another of murray the third king ) he was beheaded . the severity and cruelty of mackbeth was so known , that both the sons of the murthered king were forced to retire , and yield to the times , whilest he courted the nobility with largesses : the first ten years he spent virtuously , but the remainder was so savage and tyrannicall , that macduff thone of fife fled into england to milcolm , son of donald , who by his perswasions , and the assistance of the king of england , enterd scotland , where he found such great accessions to his party , that mackbeth was forced to fly , his death is hid in a such a mist of fables , that it is not certainly known . milcolumb , the third of that name , now being quietly seated , was the first that brought in those gay inventions and distinctions of honours , dukes , marquesses ( that now are become so ayery , that some carry them from places , to which they have as little relation as any , as island in america , and other from cottages and dovecoats ) his first trouble was forfar mackbeths son , who claimed the crown , but was soon after cut off : some war he had with that william , whom we call falsly the conquerour , some with his own people , which , by the intercession of the bishops , were taken up : at length , quarrelling with our william the second , he laid siege to alnwick castle , which being forced to extremity , a knight came out with the keys on a spear , as to present them to him , and yield the castle , but he not with due heed receving them , was runne through the eye and slain ; some from hence derive the name of piercy ( how truly i know not ) his sonne and successour edward following his revenge too hotly , received some wounds , of which , within a few dayes , he died . donald bane ( that is white ) who had fled into the isles for fear of mackbeth , promised them to the kings of norway , if he would procure him to be king , which was done with ease , as the times then stood , but this usurper being hated by the people , who generally loved the memory of milcomb , they set duncan milcombs bastard against him , who forced him to retire to his isles ; duncan a military man , shewed himself unfit for government , so , donald waiting all advantages , caused him to be beheaded , and restored himself ; but his reign was so turbulent , the islanders and english invading on both sides , that they called in edgar sonne of milcolmb , then in england , who , with small assistances , possest himself , all men deserting donald , who being taken and brought to the king died in prison . edgar secure by his virtues , and strengthened by the english alliance , spent nine years virtuously and peaceably , and gave the people leave to breathe and rest after so much trouble and bloudshed . his brother alexander , sirnamed acer , or the fierce , succeeded , the beginning of whose reign , being disturbed by a rebellion , he speedily met them at the spay , which being a swift river , and the enemy on the other side , he offered himself to foard on horse-back but alexander car taking the imployment from him , foarded the river with such courage , that the enemy fled , and were quiet . the rest of his reign some say he had the name of acer , for that some conspiratours being by the fraud of chamberlain , admitted into his chamber , he casually waking first , slew the chamberlain , and after six of the conspiratours , not ceasing to pursue the rest , till he had slain most of them with his own hands , this with the building of some abbeys , and seventeen years reign , is all we know of him . his brother david succeeded , one whose profuse prodigality upon the abbeys brought the revenew of the crown ( so prevalent was the superstition of those dayes ) almost to nothing , he had many battels with our stephen about the title of maud the empresse , and having lost his excellent wife and hopefull sonne in the flower of their dayes , he left the kingdome to his grandchildren , the eldest whereof was david a simple king , baffled , and led up and down into france by our henry the second , which brought them to such contempt , that he was vext by frequent insurrections , especially them of murray , whom he almost extirpated ; the latter part of his reign was spent in building of monasteries , he himself tyed by a vow of chastity , would never marry , but left his successor his brother william , who expostulating for the earldom of northumberland gave occasion for a war , in which he was surprized and taken , but afterwards releast upon his doing homage for the kingdom of scotland to king henry , of whom he acknowledged to hold it , and puting in caution the castles of roxborough ( once strong , now nothing but ruins ) barwick , edinburgh , sterling , all which notwithstanding was after released by richard ceur de lyon , who was then upon an expedition to the holy war , from whence returning , both he , and david earl of huntington , brother to the king of scots were taken prisoners : the rest of his reign ( saving the rebuilding of saint johnstone , which had been destroyed by the waters , whereby he lost his eldest son ; ) and some treaties with our king john was little worth the memory ; only you will wonder that a scottish king could reign fourty nine years and dye in peace . alexander his sonne succeeded , famous for little , save some expeditions against our king john , some insurrections , and a reign two years longer then his fathers . his sonne was the third of that name , a boy of eight years old , whose minority was infested with the turbulent cumins , who at riper age , being called to accompt , not onely refused , but surprized him at sterling , governing him at their pleasure ; but soon after he was awaked by a furious invasion of acho king of norway ( under the pretence of some islands given him by mackbeth ) whom he forced to accept a peace and spent the latter part amidst the turbulencies of the priests ( drunk at that time with their wealth and ease ) and at last having seen the continued funerals of his sons , david , alexander , his wife , and his daughter , he himself with a fall from his horse broke his neck , leaving of all his race , onely a grand-childe by his daughter , which dyed soon after . this mans family being extinguished , they were forced to run to to another line , which that we may see how happy , expedient , immediate succession is for the peace of the kingdom , and what miseries it prevents ; i shall as briefly and as pertinently as i can , set down . david , brother to king william , had three daughters . margaret marryed to allan , lord of galloway , isabell marryed to robert bruce , lord of annadale and cleveland ; ada marryed to henry hastings , earl of huntington now allan begot on his wife dornadilla married to john baliall after king of scotland , and other two daughters , bruce on his wife robert bruce , earle of carick , ( having married the heretrix thereof , ) as for huntington he desisted his claime ; the question is , whether balial in right of the eldest daughter , or bruce being come of the second ( but a man ) should have the crown , he being in the same degree , and of the more worthy sex ; the controversie being tost up and down , at last was referred to edward the first of that name of england he thinking to fish in these troubled waters , stirs up eight other competitors , the more to entangle the business , and with twenty four councellors , half english , half scots , and abundance of lawyers , fit enough to perplex the matter , so handled the business , after cunning delayes , that at length he secretly tampers with bruce ( who was then conceived to have the better right of the businesse ) that if he would acknowledge the crown of him , he would adjudge it for him , but he generously answering that he valued a crown at a less rate , then for it to put his countrey under a forraign yoke ; he made the same motion to baliall , who accepted it ; and so we have a king again , by what right we all see , but it is good reason to think that kings , come they by their power never so unjustly , may justly keep it . baliall having thus got a crown as unhappily kept it , for no sooner was he crowned , and had done honage to edward , but the abernethys having slain macduffe earl of fife , he not onely pardoned them , but gave them a peice of land in controversie , whereupon macduffs brother complainis against him to edward , who makes him rise from his seat at parliament and go to the bar , he hereupon enraged , denyes edward assistance against the french , and renounses his homage , edward hereupon comes to berwick takes and kils seaven thosand , most of the nobility of fife and lowthian , and after gave them a great defeat at dunbar , whose castle instantly surrendred : after this , he marched to montrosse , where baliall resined himself and crown , all the nobility giving homage to edward , baliall is sent prisoner to london , and from thence after a years detention into france . whilest edward was possest of all scotland , one william wallace arose , who being a private man , bestirred himself in the calamity of his countrey , and gave the english severall notable foyles . edward coming again with an army , beat him ( that was overcome with envy and emulation as well as power , upon which he laid by his command , and never acted after , but slight incursions ) but the english being beaten at roslin , edward comes in again , takes sterling , and makes them all render homage ; but at length bruce , seeing all his promises nothing but smoak , enters into league with cumen to get the kingdome ; but being betrayed by him to edward , he stabbed cumen at drumfreis , and made himself king . this man though he came with disadvantage , yet wanted neither patience , courage , nor conduct ; so that after he had miserably lurk'd in the mountains , he came down , and gathering together some force , gave our edward the second such a defeat near sterling , as scotland never gave the like to our nation , and continued war with various fortune with the third , till at last , age and leprosie brought him to his grave . his son david a boy of eight years , inherited that which he with so much danger obtained , and wisdom kept ; in his minority he was governed by thomas randolf earl of murray , whose severity in punishing was no lesse dreaded then his valor had been honoured , but he soon after dying of poyson , and edward balial , son of john , coming with a fleet , and strengthend with the assistance of the english , and some robbers , the governour the earl of mar was put to the rout , so that balial makes himself king , and david was glad to retire into france ; amidst these parties ( edward the third backing balial ) was scotland pitifully torn , and the bruces in a manner extinguished , till robert ( after king ) with them of argyle and his own familie and friends , begin to renew the claim , and bring it into a war again , which was carried on by andrew murray the governour , and after by himself ; that david after nine years banishment durst return , where making often incursions , he at length in the fourth year of his return , march'd into england , and in the bishoprick of durham was routed , fled to an obscure bridge , shewed to this day by the inhabitants , where he was by iohn copland taken prisoner , where he continued nine years , and in the thirty ninth yeare of his reigne died . robert his sisters son , whom he had intended to put by , succeeds , and first brought the stewarts ( which at this day are a plague to the nation ) into play : this man after he was king , whether it were age or sloth , did little ; but his lieutenants and the english were perpetually in action ; he left his kingdom to john his bastard son by the lady more his concubine , whom he married , either to legittimate the three children ( as the manner was then ) he had by her , or else for old acquaintance ( his wife and her husband dying much about a time ) this john would be crowned by the name of robert ( his own they say , being unhappie for kings ) a wretched unactive prince , lame , and onely governed by his brother walter , who having david the prince , upon the complaint of some exorbitancies , delivered to him to take care of , made him to be starv'd ; upon which the king intending to send his son james into france , the boy was taken at flamburgh , and kept by our henry the fourth ; upon the hearing of which , his father swounded , and soon after died : his reign was memorable for nothing , but his breaking with george earl of march , to whose daughter , upon the payment of a great part of her portion ( which he never would repay ) he had promised his son david for an husband : to take the daughter of douglas who had a greater , which occasioned the earl of march to make many in-rodes with our henry hot-spur ; and a famous duel of three hundred men a piece , whereof of the one side ten remained , and of the other one , which was the onely way to appease the deadly feuds of two families : the inter-reign was governed by robert , who enjoying the power , he had too much coveted , little minded the libertie of his nephew , onely he sent some auxiliaries into france , who , they say , behaved themselves worthily ; and his slothfull son mordac , who making his sons so bold with indulgence , that one of them kill'd a faulcon on his fist , which he denied to give him ; he in revenge procured the parliament to ransom the king , who had been eighteen years prisoner . this james was the first of that name , and though he was an excellent prince , yet had a troublesom reign ; first in regard of a great pension raised for his ransome , next for domestick commotions , and lastly for raising of money , which though the revenue was exhausted , was called covetousnesse , which having offended robert graham , he conspired with the earl of athol , slew him in his chamber , his wife receiving two wounds , endeavouring to defend him . this james left the second , a boy of six years , whose infancy by the mis-guidance of the governour , made a miserable people , and betrayed the earl douglas to death , and almost all that great family to ruine ; but being supplanted by another earl douglas , the king in his just age suffered minority under him , who upon displeasure rebelled , and was kill'd by the kings own hand ; afterwards having his middle years perpetually molested with civill broils , yet going to assist the duke of york against henry the sixth , he was diverted by an english gentleman , that counterfeited himself a nuncio ( which i mention out of a manuscript , because i do not remember it in our stories ) and broke up his army : soon after besieging roxburgh , he was slain by the bursting of a cannon in the twenty ninth year of his age . james the third left a boy of seven years , governed by his mothe , afterwards the boyds through the perswasions of astrologers and witches to whom he was strongly addicted , he declined to cruelty , which so inraged the nobility , that headed by his son , they conspired against him , routing his forces near sterling , wherein he flying to a mill , and asking for a confessor , a priest came , who told him , that though he was no good priest , yet he was a good leech , and with that stabb'd him to the heart : a parliament approved his death , and ordered indemnities to all that had sought against him . james the fourth , a boy of fifteen years , is made king , governed by the murtherers of his father , a prodigall vain-glorious prince slain at floddon field or as some suppose at kelsey , by the humes , which ( as the manuscript alledges ) seems more probability , in regard that the iron belt ( a ring to which he added every year ) which he wore in repentance for the death of his father , was never found , and there were many the day of the battell habited like him . his successor was his son , james the fifth of that name , a boy of not above two years of age ; under whose minority , what by the mis-government of tutors , what by the factions of the nobility , scotland was wasted almost into famine and solitude , yet in his just age , he proved an industrious prince , but could not so satisfie the nobility but he and they continued in a mutuall hate , till that barbarous execution of young hamilton , so fill'd him with remorse , ( he dream-that hamilton came and cut off his arms , and threatned after to cut off his head ) and displeased the people . that he could not make his army fight with the english then in scotland , whereupon he dyed of grief , having heard the death of his two sons , who dyed at the instant of his dream , and leaving a daughter of five dayes old , whom he never saw . this was that mary , under whose minority ( by the weaknesse of the governour , and ambition of the cardinall ) the kingdome felt all those woes that are threatned to them whose king is a child . till at length the prevalency of the english arms ( awakes for her cause ) brought the great designe of sending her into france to perfection , so at five years old she was t●ansported , and at fifteen married to the daulphin francis , after king , ( whilest her mother , daughter of the guise , in her regency , exercised all rage against the professours of the pure religion then in the dawn ) who after two years , left her a childlesse widow , so that at eighteen she returned into scotland to succeed her mother ( then newly dead ) in her exorbitoncies . this young couple in the transport of their nuptiall solemnities , took the arms and title of england ; which indiscreet ambition we may suppose first quickned the jealousie of elizabeth against her , which after kindled so great a flame . in scotland she shewed what a strange influence loose education hath upon youth , and that weaker sex , all the french effeminacies came over with her , the court lost that little severity which was left . david rize was the onely favourite , and it too much feared , had those enjoyments which no woman can give , but she that gives away her honour and chastity . but a little after , henry lord darnly , coming with matthew earl of lenox his father into scotland , she cast an eye upon him , and married him . whether it were to strengthen her pretension to england , he being come of henry the sevenths daughter , as we shall tell anon , or for to colour her adulteries , and hide the shame of an impregnation , ( though some have whispered , that she never conceived , and that the son was supposititious ) or some phrenzy of affection drew her that way ; certain it is she soon declined her affection to her husband , and encreased it to david ( he being her perpetuall companion at board , and managing all affairs , whilst the king with a contemptible train was sent away ) insomuch that some of the nobility that could not digest this , entred a conspiracy , which the king headed , and slew him in her chamber . this turn'd all the neglect of her husband into rage , so that her chiefest businesse was to appease her favorites ghost with the slaughter of her husband ; poyson was first attempted , but it being ( it seems ) too weak , or his youth overcoming it , that expectation failed . but the devil and bothwel furnish'd her with another that succeeded , she intices him being so sick , that they were forc'd to bring him in an horse-litter to edenburgh , where she cherisht him extreemly , till the credulous young man began to lay aside suspition , and hope better ; so she puts him in a ruinous house near the palace , from whence no news can be had , brings in her own bed , and lyes in the house with him ; and at length when the designe was ripe , causes him one sunday night , with his servant , to be strangled , thrown out of the window , and the house blown up with gun-powder , her own rich bed having been before secretly conveyed away . this and other performances made her favour upon bothwel so hot , that she must marry him , the onely obstacle was , he had a wife already ; but she was compell'd to sue for a divorce , which ( so great persons being concern'd ) it was a wonder , was in granting so long as ten dayes . well , she marries but the more honest nobilitie amazed at those exorbitances , gather together , and with arms in hands begin to expostulate : the new-married people are forc'd to make back southwards , where finding but slender assistances , and the queen foolishly coming from dunbar to leith , was glad at last to delay a parley till her dear was escaped and then ( clad in an old tottered coat ) to yield her self a prisoner . being brought to edenburgh , and used rather with hate of her former enormities , then pity of her fortune , she received a message , that she must either resign the crown to her son james ( that was born in the time of her marriage with darnby ) or else they would proceed to another election , and was forc'd to obey : so the child then in his cradle was acknowledged james the sixth , better known afterwards by the title of great brittain . the wretched mother flying after into england , was entertained ( though with a guard ) by queen elizabeth , but after that being suborned by the papists , and exasperated by the guizes , she entered into plots and machinations , so inconsistent with the safety of england , that by an act of parliament she was condemned to death , which she after received by an hatchet at fothering-gay castle . the infancy of her son was attended with those domestick evils that accompany minority of kings : in his youth he took to wife the daughter of denmark ( a woman i hear little of , saving that character salust gives sempronia , she could saltare elegantius quam necesse est probae ) with whom he supposing the earl gowry too much in league , caused him and his brother to be slain at their own house whither he was invited , he giving out , that they had an intent to murther him , and that by miracle , and the assistance of some men ( whom he had instructed for that purpose , and taught their tale ) he escap'd . for this deliverance ( or to say better assasination ) he blasphemed god with a solemne thanksgiving once a year all the remainder of his life . happy had it been for us , if our fore fathers had laid hold of that happy opportunity of elizabeths death ( in which the teuthors took a period ) to have performed that which ( perchance in due punishment ) hath cost us so much blood and sweat , and not have bowed under the sway of a stranger , ( disdained by the most generous and wise at that time , and onely supported by the faction of some and sloth of others ) who brought but a slender title , and ( however the assentation of the times cryed him up a solomo ) weak commendations for such an advancement . the former stood thus , margaret , eldest daughter to henry the seventh , was married to james the fourth , whole son , james the fifth , had mary the mother of james the sixth . margaret after her first husbands death , martyrs archibald douglas , earl of angus , who upon her begot margaret , wife of matthew earl of lenox , and mother of that henry darnly , whose tragical end we just now mentioned . now upon this slender title , and our internal dissentions ( for the cecilians and essezians , for several ends , made perpetual applications ) got jammy from a revenew of 30000. li. to one of almost two millions , though there were others that had as fair pretences ( what else can any of them make ) the statute of 25. ed. 3 expresly excluding forreigners from the crown ? and so the children of charls brandon by mary the second daughter , dowager of france , being next to come in . and the lady arbella , being sprung from a third husband , ( the lord stewart ) of the said margaret , and by a male lyne , carried surely a formidable pretention ( it should seem ) that even that iniquitie which was personally inherent to her , made her dayes very unhappy and most part captive , and her death ( 't is thought ) somewhat too early , so cruel are the persecutions of cowardly minds , even against the weakest and most unprotected innocence . and indeed his right to the crown was so satisfactorie even to the most judicious of those days ; that tobie matthew having a suit about some priviledges which he claimed to his bishoprick ( which was then durham ) wherein the king opposed him ; having one day stated the case before some of his friends , and they seeming to approve of it ; yes , sayes he , i could wish he had but half so good a title to the crown ; and 't is known that some speeches of sir walter rawley , too generous and english for the times , was that which brought him to trial and condemnation for a feigned crime , and afterwards so facilitated that barbarous design of gundamar , to cut of his head for a crime , for which he was condemned fourteen years before , and which by the commissions he after received ( according to the opinion of the then lord chancellour , and the greatest lawyars ) was in law pardoned . this may besides our purpose , but we could not sever this consideration , unless we would draw him with an half face , and leave as much in umbrage as we expressed . that which most solemnized his person , was , first the consideration of his adhering to the protestant religion , whereas we are to consider that those slieght velitations he had with bellarmine and the romanists , tended rather to make his own authoritie more intrinsecally intense , and venerable , then to confute any thing they said , for he had before shakt them off , as to forreign jurisdiction , and for matter of poperie , it appeared in his latter time that he was no such enemie to it , both by his own compliances with the spanish ambassadours , the design of the spanish match ( in which his son was personally imbarkt ) and the slow assistances sent to his daughter , in whose safetie and protectiod protestantism was at that time so much concerned . for his knowledge , he had some glancings and niblings , which the severitie of the excellent buchanan , forc'd into him in his younger time , and after conversatian somewhat polisht , but though i bear not so great a contempt to his other works , as ben. johnson did to his poetrie , yet if they among many others were a going to the fire , they would not be one of the first i should rescue , as possibly expecting more severe and refin'd judgement in many other . and knowing that he that had so many able wits at command , might easily give their their oracles through his mouth : but suppose the things generous and fit to live ( as i am not yet convinced ) yet what commendations is this to a king ( who should have other ausinesse then spinning and weaving fine theories , and engaging in school ciquaneries ) which was well understood by henry the fourth , who hearing some men celebrate him with these attributes ; yea ( answers he very tartly ) he is a fine king , and writes little books . 't is true , he was a good droll , and possibly after greek wine somewhat factious . but for substantiall and heroick wisdome , i have not heard any great instances ; he himself used to brag of his kingcraft , which was not to felicifie his people , and prosecute the ends of a good king ; but to scrue up the prerogative , divert parliaments from the due disquisition and prosecution of their freedoms , and to break them up at pleasure , and indeed his rendition of the cautionary towns of the low countreys , and that for so small a sum , shewed him a person not so quick-sighted , and unfit to be overreach'd . for his peaceable reigne , honourable and just quarrels he wanted not , but sloth and cowardize withheld him , and indeed the ease and luxury of those times , fomented and nourished those lurking and pestilent humours , which afterwards so dangerously broke out in his sons reign . we shall not trouble his ashes with the mention of his personall faults , onely , if we may compare gods judgements with apparant sinnes ; we may find the latter end of his life , neither fortunate nor comfortable unto him , his wife distasted by him , and some say , languishing of a foul disease ; his eldest son dying , nimis apertis indiciis , of poyson , and that as is feared by a hand too much allied : his second ( with whom he ever had a secret antipathy ) scarce returned from a mad and dangerous voyage ; his daughter ( all that was left of that sex ) banish'd , with her numerous issue , out of her husbands dominion , and living in miserable exile ; and lastly , himself dying of a violent death ( by poyson ) in which his son was more then suspected to have an hand , as may be infer'd by buckinghams plea , that he did it by the command of the then prince ; his own dissolution of the parliament that took in hand to examine it ; and lastly , his indifferency at buckinghams death ( though he pretended all love to him alive ) as glad to be rid of so dangerous and so considerable a partner of his guilt ; yet the mitred parasites of those times , could say , one went to heaven in noahs ark , the other in elisha's chariot , he dying of a pretended feaver , she ( as they said ) of a dropsie . charles having now obtain'd his brothers inheritance , carried himself in managing of it , like one that gain'd it as he did . the first of his acts , was that glorious attempt upon the isle of rhee . the next that noble and christianly betraying of rochell , and consequently in a manner the whole protestant interest in france . the middle of his reign was heightening of prerogative and prelacy , and conforming our churches to the pattern of rome ; till at last just indignation brought in his subjects of scotland into england , and so forc'd him to call a parliament ; which though he shamelesly say in the first line of the book ( call'd his ) was out of his own inclination to parliaments , yet how well he lik'd them may appear by his first tampering with his own army in the north , to surprize and dissolve them , then the scots ( who at that time were court-proof ) then raising up the irish rebellion , which hath wasted millions of lives ; and lastly , open secession from westminster , and hostility against the two houses , which maintain'd a first and second sharp war , which had almost ruined the nation , had not providence in a manner immediately interposed and rescued us to liberty , and made us such signall instruments of his vengeance , that all wicked kings may tremble at the example . in a word never was man so resolute and obstinate in a tyrannie , never people more strangely besotted with it , to paint the image of david with his face , and blasphemously paralel him with christ , would make one at first thought think him a saint : but to compare his protestations and actions ; his actions of the day , his actions of the night , his protestant religion , and his courting of pope , and obedience to his wife , we may justly say , he was one of the most consummate in the arts of tyranny that ever was . and it could be no other then gods hand that arrested him in the heighth of his designs and greatnesse , and cut off him and his familie , making good his own imprecations upon his own head . our scene is again in scotland , who hath accepted his son , whom for distinction sake , we will be content to call charls the second . certainly these people were strangely blind as to gods judgement perpetually poured out upon a familie , or else to their own interest , to admit the spray of such a stock ; one that hath so little to commend him , and so great improbabilitie for their designs and happiness , a popish ( or very near it ) education , if not religion too ( however for the present he may seem to dissemble it , france , the jesuites and his mother good means of such improvement ) the dangerous maxims of his father , ( besides the revenge he ows his death , of which he will never totally acquit the scots ) his hate to the whole nation , his sence of montrosse his death ; his backwardnesse to come to them till all other means failed ( both his forreign begg'd assistances , his propositions to the pope , and commissions to montrosse ) and lastly , his late running away to his old friends in the north ; so that any man may see this his compliance to be but histrionical and forc'd , and that as soon as he hath led them into the snare , and got power into his own hands , so as he may appear in his own visage ; he will be a scourge upon them for their gross hypocrisie , and leave them a sad instance to all nations , how dangerous it is to espouse such an interest , which god with so visible and severe a hand fights against , carried on by , and for the support of a tyrannizing nobilitie and clergie , and wherein the poor people are blindly led on by those affrighting ( but false and ungrounded ) pretensions of perfidy and perjury , and made instrumentall with their own estates and bloud , for the enslaving and ruining themselves . finis . to his grace, his majestys high commissioner, and the honourable estates of parliament the petition of several nobles and barrons [sic] concerned in burghs of regality and barrony, and other inhabitants within this kingdom. 1698 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b06103 wing t1363d estc r185109 53299317 ocm 53299317 180044 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b06103) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180044) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2811:11) to his grace, his majestys high commissioner, and the honourable estates of parliament the petition of several nobles and barrons [sic] concerned in burghs of regality and barrony, and other inhabitants within this kingdom. scotland. sovereign (1694-1702 : william ii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n., [edinburgh : 1698?] caption title. place and date of publication suggested by wing (2nd ed.). reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng foreign trade regulation -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -commerce -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-02 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion to his grace , his majesty's high commissioner . and the honourable estates of parliament the petition of several nobles and barrons concerned in burghs of regality and barrony , and other inhabitants within this kingdom . humbly sheweth that there being an act offered to your grace and lordships , for explaining the import of the words in the act of parliament 1693 ( anent communication of trade ) discharging all persons whatsomever to exercise any kind of trade ; which we humbly conceive did not extend to the trading in the native commodities of the kingdom , or to handycrafts-men following their several imployments , or to retailing forreign commodities bought from burgesses of royal burghs ; the saids priviledges being secured to us by former laws , no ways abtogat or rescinded . when the said act was moved , after some little debate it was laid aside and delayed . and seing the explaining of the saids words is a matter of universal concern to this kingdom , may it therefore please your grace and lordships to call for the said act , which lyes in the clerk's hand , and to explain and declare your meaning by the forsaid words ; that the leidges may be determined thereanent , and freed from the expenses of further quibbling thereupon . a proclamation dissolving the parliament scotland. privy council. 1686 approx. 2 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05594 wing s1779 estc r183460 52612322 ocm 52612322 179626 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05594) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179626) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2794:20) a proclamation dissolving the parliament scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : anno dom. 1686. caption title. royal arms at head of text; intial letter. dated at end: given under our signet at edinburgh, the eighth day of october, 1686. and of our reign the second year. signed: will. paterson cls. sti. concilii. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -parliament -dissolution -early works to 1800. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-08 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion i7 r diev et mon droit honi soit qvi mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a proclamation dissolving the parliament . iames by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith : to our lyon king at arms , and his brethren heraulds , macers of our privy council , pursevants , messengers at arms ; our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as we , by our royal proclamation of the twentieth and second day of july last by-past , did continue the adjournment of the present current parliament of this our ancient kingdom , until the twentieth first of october instant : and whereas upon diverse good considerations of great importance to our service , we have now thought sit to put an end to that our parliament , by a dissolution thereof ; do therefore with advice of our privy council , hereby dissolve our said present current parliament , and declare the same to be actually dissolved . and that our royal pleasure herein may be known , our will is , and we charge you strictly , and command that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of edinburgh , and all other places needful , and there in our royal name and authority , by open proclamation , make publication of our dissolving of our said present current parliament , and that the same is actually dissolved . given under our signet at edinburgh , the eighth day of october , 1686 , and of our reign the second year . per actum dominorum secreti concilii . will. paterson cls. sti. concilii . god save the king . edinbvrgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1686. a letter from the marqves of argile and sir william armyn in the name of themselves and their confederates, to sir thomas glemham, dated at barwicke, january 20 : with the answer of sir thomas glemham and the commanders and gentry of northumberland, dated at newcastle, january 23. argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a25790 of text r40743 in the english short title catalog (wing a3659). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 11 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 5 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a25790 wing a3659 estc r40743 18885588 ocm 18885588 108451 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a25790) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 108451) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1680:20) a letter from the marqves of argile and sir william armyn in the name of themselves and their confederates, to sir thomas glemham, dated at barwicke, january 20 : with the answer of sir thomas glemham and the commanders and gentry of northumberland, dated at newcastle, january 23. argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of, 1598-1661. armyne, william, sir, 1593-1651. glemham, thomas, sir, d. 1649. 8 p. printed at york by stephen bulkley, [york] : 1643. imperfect: tightly bound with loss of print. reproduction of original in bodleian library. eng scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649. a25790 r40743 (wing a3659). civilwar no a letter from the marques of argile and sir william armyn, in the name of themselves and their confederates, to sir thomas glemham, dated at argyll, archibald campbell, marquis of 1643 1897 20 0 0 0 0 0 105 f the rate of 105 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the f category of texts with 100 or more defects per 10,000 words. 2003-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-05 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-08 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2003-08 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-10 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a letter from the marqves of argile and sir william armyn , in the name of themselves and their confederates , to sir thomas glemham , dated at barwicke , ianuary , 20. with the answer of sir thomas glemham and the commanders and gentry of northumberland , dated at newcastle , ianuary , 23. printed at york by stephen bulkley . 1643. gentlemen , although we justly presume , that the solemne mutuall covenant entred into by both kingdomes , hath long since come to your hands , & likewise that you have had notice of the raising of this army desired by the parliament of england , for the prosecution of those ends therein expressed , ( viz. ) the preservation and reformation of religion , he true honour and happinesse of the king , and the the publique peace and liberty of his dominions . yet that it may appeare both to you and all the world , how unwilling we are to make a forcible use of those armes , we have been constrained ( by the disappointment of all other means of safety ) to take up : we the commissioners and committees of both kingdomes , have thought sit beside that declaration , ( a coppie whereof wee herewith send ) lately emitted in the name of the kingdome of scotland , for the satisfaction of the people concerning the entrance of this their army ; to take more perticular notice of you the chiefe gentlemen and commanders , hoping likewise that things of so great and considerable consequence , will find with you such an entertainment , as will answer the weight and importance of them . we will not so much wrong the cause we have undrtaken , as to goe about after so many demonstrations of the necessity of our present posture , to dispute it with you , but rather instead of arguments , we thinke it reasonable to acquaint you with our well weighed resolutions which are through the assistance of that god in whose cause we are ingaged , and whose strength alone we trust in , with our utmost industrie and hazard , to endeavour the prevention of that imminent danger , not onely of corruption , but of ruine , which we see evidently intended to the true protestant religion , by the popish and prelaticall faction , who●ever wanted will , but now thinke they want not strength and opportunity to accomplish it , as also the rescuing of his majesties person and honour , so deeply and unhappily intangled in the councels and practice of them whose actions speake their ends , to be ●ittle better then poperie and tyrannie , and the redeeming the peace and libertie of his dominions , in which the irish rebellion , and the sad and unnaturall divisions in england have made so great a breach . to the accomplishment of those so just and honourable designes we have reason to expect the concurrance of all men , who either owe , or pretend a due love to their religion , king , and countrey , and shall be very sorry to want yours ; but if mis-information or any other unhappy grounds shall so farre prevaile with you , as to reckon us in the number of your enemies , which certainly we are not , if you be friends to those ends mentioned in our covenant : and in stead of that concurrance with us , which we with and hope to deserve we find from you opposition , and acts of hostilitie , the law of nature and your owne reason will tell you what you are to expect . we onely adde , that though it will not a little trouble us , to see men withstanding not onely us but their owne good and happinesse ; yet it doth in good measure satisfie us , that we have not neglected this , or any other meanes to the best of our power , or understanding , to prevent those inconveniencies and mischiefes that may arise from those acts of force which we shall be necessitated unto . subscribed at barwick the 20. of ianuary , 1643. by the warrant , and in the name of the committee of both kingdoms . by us your friends , w. armyn . m. argyll . my lord , i have this day received yours , together with one to the gentlemen of the countrey , and having communicated with them , wee returne you this answer , that without the sight of that letter , we could not have beene induced by any flying rumours to beleeve , that the scottish nation or a prevailing party for the present in that nation , would have attempted an invasion of england : so contrary to the lawes of god , of nations , of both kingdomes , and especially to the late act of pacification : so opposite to their allegiance , and gratitude to his majesty , to that neighbourly love which they pretend , to that discreet care which they should have of their owne safety . we could not otherwise have imagined , that they who by his majesties goodnesse enjoy a settlement of their church and state , according to their own desires , should needlesly and ingratefully imbroile themselves in a businesse that concernes them not , forfeit their rights , disoblige his majesty , and hazard the losse of their present happinesse . no order of any committee or committees whatsoever of men , or angels , can give them power to martch into the bowels of another kingdome , to make offensive war against their naturall soveraigne , upon the empty pretence of evill councellours , who could never yet be named . and for the english agents we cannot beleeve them to be any commissioners , lawfully authorised , either by the parliament , or by the two houses , or yet by the house of commons , where so many of the members are expelled by parciall votes , so many banished by seditious tumults , so many voluntarily absent themselves out of conscience ; where desperation or want of opportunity to depart , or feare of certaine plunder , are the chiefest bonds which hold the little remnant together from dissepation ; where the venerable name of parliament is made a stale to countenance the pernicious counsailers , and acts of a close committee . for subjects to make forraigne confederacies without their soveraignes assent , to invade the teritories of their undoubted king , to goe about by force to change the lawes and religion established , is grosse treason without all contradiction : and in this case it argues strongly , who have been the contrivers and fomenters of all our troubles . no covenant whatsoever , or with whomsoever , can justifie such proceedings , or oblige a subject to run such disloyall courses . if any man out of ignorance , or feare , or credulity , have entered into such a covenant , it binds him not , except it be to repentance , neither is there any such necessity as is pretended of your present posture , your selves cannot alledge that you are any way provoked by us , neither are we conscious to our selves of the least intention to molest you . those ends which you propose are plausible indeed to them who doe not understand them : the blackest designes did never want the same pretences . if by the protestant religion , you intend our articles which are the publicke confession of our church , and our booke of common prayer , established by act of parliament , you need not trouble your selves ; we are ready to defend them with our bloud . if it be otherwise , it is plain to all the world , that it is not the preservation , but the innovation of religion which you seeke , howsoever , by you stiled reformation . and what calling have you to reforme us by the sword ? wee doe not remember that ever the like indignity was offered by one nation to another , by a lesser to a greater . that those men who have heretofore pleaded so vehemently for liberty of conscience , against all oathes and subscriptions , should now assume a power to themselves by armes , to impose a law upon the consciences of their fellow subjects ; a vanquished nation would scare indure such tearmes from their conquerers : but this we are sure of , that this is the way to make the protestant religion odious to all monarchs , christian , and pagan . your other two ends , that is , the honour and happinesse of the king , and the publicke peace and liberty of his dominions , are so manifestly contrary to your practise , that there need no other motives to with-draw you from such a course , as tends so directly to make his majesty contemptible at home & abroad , and to fill all his dominions with rapine and bloud . in an army all have not the same intentions , ( we have seen the articles agreed upon , and those vast summes and conditions contained in them , as if our countrey-men thought , that england was indeed a well that could never be dry . and whatsoever the intentions be , we know right well what will be the consequents : if it were otherwise , no intention or consequent whatsoever , can justifie an unlawfull lawfull action . and therefore you do wisely to decli●● all disputation ●bout it . it is an easie thing to prete●● the cause of god , as the jewes did the temple of 〈◊〉 lord , but this is farre from those evident demonstratio●● which you often mention , never make . consider that there must be an account given to g●● of all the bloud which shall be shed in this qu●rrell . t●● way to prevent it , is not by such insinuations , but to ●●tire before the sword be unsheathed , or the breach made too wide : you cannot think that we are grow●● such tame creatures , to desert our religion , our ki●● our lawes , our liberties , or estates , upon the co●●mand of forreiners , and to suffer our selves and 〈◊〉 posterity to be made beggers , and slaves without 〈◊〉 position . if any of ours shall joyne with you in t●● action , we cannot looke upon them otherwise , then 〈◊〉 traitours to their king , vipers to their native co●●trey , and such as have been plotters , or promoters this designe from the beginning . but if mis-infor●●tion or feare hath drawne any of yours ignorantly or ●●willingly into this cause , we desire them to with-dr●● themselves at last , and not to make themselves acce●●ries to that deluge of mischiefe , which this seco●● voyage is like to bring upon both kingdomes . subscribed at newcastle , ianuary 23 tho. glemham . &c. finis . a short and true relation of some main passages of things (wherein the scots are particularly concerned (from the very first beginning of these unhappy troubles to this day short and true relation of some passages of things buchanan, david, 1595?-1652? this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a29957 of text r521 in the english short title catalog (wing b5273). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 218 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 61 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a29957 wing b5273 estc r521 12241120 ocm 12241120 56773 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a29957) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 56773) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 130:5) a short and true relation of some main passages of things (wherein the scots are particularly concerned (from the very first beginning of these unhappy troubles to this day short and true relation of some passages of things buchanan, david, 1595?-1652? [16], 104 p. printed by r. raworth for r. bostock ..., london : 1645. also published with title: truth its manifest, or, a short and true relation of divers main passages of things. attributed to david buchanan. cf. wing. "published by authority" reproduction of original in thomason collection, british library. imperfect: text often illegible. eng scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649. a29957 r521 (wing b5273). civilwar no a short and true relation of some main passages of things (wherein the scots are particularly concerned (from the very first beginning of th buchanan, david 1645 40902 5 0 0 0 0 0 1 b the rate of 1 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the b category of texts with fewer than 10 defects per 10,000 words. 2005-05 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2005-06 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2005-07 andrew kuster sampled and proofread 2005-07 andrew kuster text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-10 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a short and true relation of some main passages of things ( wherein the scots are particularly concerned ( from the very first beginning of these unhappy troubles to this day . published by authority . zech. 8. 16. these are the things that ye shall do : speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour : execute the judgement of truth and peace in your gates : 17 and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour , and love no false oath ; for all these are things that i hate , saith the lord . london , printed by r. raworth , for r. bestock , at the kings head , in pauls-church-yard , 1645. to the faithfull reader . christian reader , may it please thee , at this time , to receive a free and true discourse of sundry and main occurrences of businesses , here amongst us , tendred unto thee by a reall friend , and faithfull servant of thine , in the lord ; who makes it a good part of his earnest study , to enquire in all seriousnesse after the truth of those things , which thus busie us all in these miserable dayes of ours , every where ; ( what in thoughts , what in words , what in deeds ) with the motives , occasions , reasons , and ends thereof ) and this forsooth not to content his vain curiosity , and meerely to feed his empty brains with notions ; as many read books and bearken after news ; but , for the good of the publike , unto the service whereof , he freely and cheerfully devotes his pains and labours ; and so with pleasure , he , in all freedom of heart , imparts unto others , of what he jugeth to be true , and conducing to the good of church and state , without unjust partiality , or base siding with any faction , the great disease in these our evil dayes , of foolish and weak men : and the principall occasion of those our great and long sufferings , with the tedious delays , and many hinderances of carrying on the publike work , by action in the field , and counsell at home , to the benefit of church and state . this he doeth , without regard to the persons of any whosoever , having no intent to offend the least by cynicall mordacitie , nor mind to curry favour with the greatest , by insinuating flattery , being ( by gods great mercy towards him , unworthy worm ) pretty free from the chief cause of these distempers , ordinary to most men : for , on the one part , he knows no man who hath so far wronged him , in his own particular , as to move him unto anger or wrath against the person of any ; and he hath ever thought it contrary to good christianity , and dissonant from morall honesty , to inveigh scurrilously against mens persons , as pamphleteers do now adayes . wherefore , he speaketh of the failings in divers kindes and degrees , wherewith he is highly offended , and much scandalized , of men of all ranks and conditions in both kingdoms , without designation of their persons by name : yea , he is so far from naming any man in particular , for his errors , that he makes mention but of a very few by name , and those with eloge and praise , wishing from his heart that he had just occasion to name all those to their advantage , at whose faults he points at . further , he heartily blesseth god , who in his fatherly care towards him hitherto , ( and he hopes will do so to the end , being assured that he , who giveth the principall , will not deny the accessory , if he thinks it fit for his own glory and our good ) hath provided for him wherewith to sustain his nature , without great excesse or much want , and hath schooled him both by precept and practice , to live and be content of little , and so , not being so urged by a neer nipping necessity , or imaginary poverty , as to selt or betray the truth for a morsell of bread , nor so led away with the exorbitant desire of preferment or profit , as to cog in upon any terms by flattery , lying , and faining with those , in whose hands , for the present , the disturbation of such things is amongst us now adayes ; he dare be bold to speak home to the point , and tell down-right the truth of things wherein the church and state are so much concerned , not fearing to be crossed in his private interest , and put back from his hopes , by displeasing the gods . moreover , he preferreth the possessing of himself with calm and freedom of spirit , having his little viaticum , such as it is , simple and course , to the glistering slavery , with toiling and moiling of ambitious and covetous ones ; to whatsoever hight with lustre and fair shew they attain unto , in the eyes of the world , and opinion of men , knowing that it is dear bought , with losse of time , and often of credit and conscience , and to be nothing but a meer shadow , which in a moment vanisheth . to the performance of this usefull and necessary duty , he conceiveth himself bound in conscience , before god and man , for these respects and reasons ; first , every one of us all , in our severall ranks and stations , ought , so far as in us lyeth , advance the glory of god , and hinder whatsoever is contrary to it , or against it ; for , he is the lord our god : then being bound to the hearty love of our neighbour , we ought with earnestnesse procure his true good , and hinder him from receiving evil , or committing sin whereby evil may come upon him : this is inculcate in the scripture over and over again ; yea , we are bidden rebuke our brother , or neighbour , plainly , when he sinneth , in any kinde : otherwise we are said to be haters of him ; namely , we are to hinder him from walking about with lyes among the people , and from conspireing with the wicked . read levit. 19. 16 , 17. next , the church whereof we are children , and the countrey whereof we are members , requireth and expecteth of us all , that with our whole power and might , we procure , in all uprightnesse and singlenesse of heart , their true good , and stop whatsoever appears to be against the same , either word or deed ; thoughts being onely known to god . to this we are not onely bound at once , by a generall tye ; but we iterate and renew it from time to time , as we receive benefits by them , or from them , according to the ordinary practice of us all . thirdly , are we not all obliged by our late nationall covenant , and sworn , to advance the setling of the church-reformation , according to the word of god , and conforme to the best reformed churches , and to the setling of a solid peace to the good of the people , by putting forward the service , and opposing the open and declared enemy , with the crafty malignants , of whatsoever kinde , secretly undermining us in the pursuance of this our good cause , by cabales , factions , lyes , devises , and plots , and with whatsoever else the wicked heart of man full of wyles for his own and his neighbours ruine . all those tyes and bonds are shaken off and broken by the most part of us , either through negligent lazinesse , and remisse slacknesse , not minding them , and not having before our eyes as we ought the least part of our duty ; or through base connivence and treacherous compliance to the wicked courses of the enemies against the cause , we say we maintain , i am sure at least we ought ; or by open and professed apostasie , we have joyned our hearts and affection with the common enemy , who so actively by all means opposeth this cause of god , and persecuteth his people for it . this is done both in scotland and england , not by a few , but by many ; not by little and small ones , but by the chief and leaders of the rest ; not by stopping things of humane infirmity and weaknesse , but with study and an high hand . here we shall say a word or two of the carriage of those two nations , in the going on with the work of the lord , for the setling of the church , and quiet of his people . we shall begin at those of scotland , who some few yeers ago were lifted up with praises among men , for their faithfull minding and following earnestly this great work of god , all by-ends laid aside , for which god blessed them from heaven , and made them be called happy among men ; for they had their hearts desire in the businesse , and their enemies were subdued by them : but now , leaving off their former integrity and sincerity to the cause of god , and their love unto him , following the devices and desires of their own corrupt hearts , in pride , coveteousnesse , and factions , & notwitstanding the earnest and pressing admonitions , both in private and publike , of the prophets and ministers of god , they continue in their evil courses , preposterously minding themselves , and their worldly foolish interest of ambition and avarice , more then god , and the cause of his church and people . for this , god ( as it were by an essay to try them if they would , laying aside their lewd by wayes , mind him and his service heartily and sincerly ) sends amongst them an hand-full of contemptible , profane , and wicked villains ; whom , at first , they despise and neglect ; but , going on in their wonted wayes , while the holy name of god is profaned by those sons of belial , a part of their land is wasted , the poor people spoiled and slain , with all other barbarous usage ; and so these number and power of the slaves of iniquity growing , they are plotting , caballing , and devising how to supplant another , and increase their severall faction , the seed of dissension being sowed amongst them by the enemy , to divide , and so more easily compasse his ends upon them , which they would not and could not see , blinded with their corrupt passion . then god , to admonish them anew , suffers some of those , whom they had employed against the sons of rebellion , to betray their trust , and omit divers good occasions , in all appearance , to make havock of these villains , yea , some to run over unto them in the hour of fight : and so , these enemies of goodnesse , to advance their pernicious designe , do what they list . yet , all this will not die with those hard-hearted and stubbling men , still employing and busying their thoughts how to bear down one another ; yea , some there were amongst them , who were not sorry in their hearts , of the progresse that those despisable villains made in the countrey against the service of the common cause , conceiving it did help to the setting up of their faction . but , since the affronts and blows , they received at divers times from those contemptible fellows , did not move these ingrate children , god sends a pestilence amongst them , which rageth with such fury , that hardly the like hath been heard of in that land ; to try if at last they would leave their slacknes & remissenes in pursuing the service of the cause of gods church and people , their conniving and complying with his enemies , yea , their helping those villains with means and advice , in opposing the cause of god and oppressing his people . but , they remain obdured , like children of disobedience , in their perverse wayes . so , at length , god in his wrath delivers them up to the hands of their wicked enemies , making them as far to be scorned and misprised , for their not heartly minding him & his service , as they had been before esteemed and extolled , for their adhering to him , and doing his service faithfully . yea , the chief men of them , who had been cried up for valour and wisdom , are constrained to flie away , and have their lives for a prey . so god , who from the beginning of all those unhappy disturbances , till this last time , had made scotland a mirrour of his mercy , in testimony of its faithfulnesse , adhering unto him ; makes it an example of his justice for its back sliding from him . and thus , judgement begins at the house of god ; now let england look seriously to it ; for the same very sins , which have been committed in scotland , and for which it now lieth under the heavy rod of a chastising and angry god ; are now raigning in england , namely , ambition and avarice , with many more , which have not been seen in scotland ; example , heresies , errors , and sects of all sorts , to the dishonour of god , and to the withdrawing of the people from his truth , are connived at and countenanced by those who are in authority . then , there be some of power and credit , who are so far from furthering the reformation of the church ( as they and we all are sworn to by the covenant ) that they hinder the same , not onely by secret undermining , and by plots ; but by a continued open profession against it . next , there be great oppressions , vexations , concussions , and injustices done unto the people , by divers in authority ; the cry of all which , is as loud if not louder unto heaven then the cry of the sins of scotland . it may be that god , as he hath not be gun so soon to shew his mercy unto england as he did unto scotland , will not send his judgement upon it so speedily ; yet , doubtlesse , without a serious repentance and a true turning unto god , judgement will come , and the longer it is a coming , the heavier it will be . it is not the good cause of church and state that will do englands turn , more then the temple and the law of old did save judah from ruine ; nor the same good cause hath kept scotland from punishment ; the good cause ill managed , by negligence , ambition , avarice , faction , self-conceit , and other vices of that kinde , draweth vengeance upon those who have the managing of it , and make the cause to be in derision . never good cause hath been worse managed by the ignorance of weak ones , and the malice of other wicked . at last , god will maintain his cause , ( no thanks to thee ) without thee , for he needs not thy help to do it ; but , since he hath been pleased to make use of thee in the service of this his cause , he expects faithfulnesse and zeal to it from thee , free from worldly and humane interest : otherwayes vengeance is at thy door ; for god , as he will not , in his worship and cult , have linsey-wolsey of mens inventions intermingled with his pure and sacred ordinance , so he will not , in managing the service of his cause and of his people , that men bring in the mixture or addition of their own interest ; for god will have our work wholly for himself ; and if we be faithfull in it , he will not forget to give us what we need to have for our selves ; otherwayes he will not onely cast us off and our work , but will curse both it and us . again i say , let england take example at her neighbour ; yet i am sure god in his judgement will remember his mercy unto scotland , and for his own name sake will keep his promise unto his faithfull ones , whereof he hath a great number of all ranks and conditions in that distressed countrey , and will not suffer this proud insulting enemy to domineer thus ever his poor people , far lesse set up again his abominations and profane his holy name ; but god will arise and throw his enemies to the dust , for it is against him they fight , and for his sake they thus trouble , vex , & now oppresse his people . and although that all men , at this great last blow , were struken with astonishment , yet many take courage to go on with the service of the cause of god , with their whole heart and strength , acknowledging gods justice in this his thus chastising them , and confessing heartily their sins by which they have so provoked god to anger , and are truly sorry , not so much for their sufferings they now lie under , as for their offending their good god , on whom they are resolved to rely , and in whom they will constantly trust , and to whom they will more neerly adhere then ever ; let him deal with them as he pleaseth , they are the servants , he is the lord , they are the pot , he is the porter , they are the creatures , and he is the creator , whose will is alwayes good , not onely it self , but for us , if we be obedient and faithfull unto him . but , i will hold thee here no longer . so recommending thee to god , i go to the discourse it self . a short and true relation of divers passages of things , wherein the scots are particularly concerned , from the first beginning of these troubles , to this day . it is not unknown to men of understanding ; how that , many sinistrous reports , one after another , raised of the scots ( for their faithfulnesse & constancy to the cause of religion and liberty , in these dominons ) by malignants , that is , by atheists , libertines , papists , prelatists , and sectaries of all kindes , officiating in their severall wayes for the common enemy , and spred abroad by the contrivers thereof , with the help of their instruments , agents , and favourers ; then received by the simpler sort , not knowing the truth of things , lesse the drift of the malignants , in these calumnies ; otherwayes well-meaning people , ( for the truth is no sooner made known unto them , but they willingly lay hold on it ; and being admonished of the pernicious designe of the adversaries , they do abhorre and detest both it and them : ) hath done , and yet doeth great prejudice , according to the intent of the enemy , unto the service now in hand , of the common cause of church and state , these two inseparable twins , which both kingdoms do now maintain , and intend to do unanimously with heart and hand , as they stand bound and united to lay aside all other and former tyes , by the nationall covenant , through the great providence of god , in mercy to both , so that they prove faithfull and constant to this cause of his and of his people , according to the said covenant , against all opposition whatsoever , whether by declared and open war , or by clandestine and indirect undermining . wherefore , after long forbearance with grief of mind , and compassion to see faithfull men and earnest in this common cause , so maliciously traduced , and , in them , the good cause so much wronged ; as likewise , so many well-affected men to the said cause , so grosly abused by crafty lyes , and impudent untruths : i have thought fit , for the good and service of the common cause , to the advancement whereof , every one is obliged to contribute according to what he hath , as he will answer one day to him , whose cause first and principally it is , to undeceive many well-minded men , and to right , in some measure , those faithfull men to the cause , who are so wickedly slandred , in giving unto the publike this true and short discours ; whereby the truth of divers things will be made more known , lyes in a kind repressed , and the service of the common cause somewhat furthered ; at least it will not be so far kept back , as it hath hitherto been by these undermining courses . and the rather do i undertake this task , that those in a manner are silent , by whom most men do expect the clear truth of things of this kinde not so generally known , should be conveyed to all by a particular publication of them in writing , to the end that this course of so maliciously lying against trusty men may be stopped , and the well meaning men no longer thus abused . but these , of whom men look for performance of this duty , going about the main work they are come hither for in all earnestnesse , and singlenesse of heart , with care and diligence , and not without a great deal of drudging to and from , as faithfull and trusty labourers , do take but little notice of this wicked practise of their and the cause its enemies , by lyes , howsoever industriously devised , and cunningly set forth , as altogether below them , chosing rather that their own good carriage , with constant resolution , and faithfull endeavours , and that of their country-men engaged with them in the same businesse , although in another way , in sincerity of heart , advancing the publike work now in hand , should speak for them both , then either a flourishing tongue , or a nimble pen . here , although i value much the goodnesse of these men to relye rather upon their own & their countrey-mens honesty and integrity , in and about the work , then upon the setting forth of any declaration , by writing of their own and their friends faithfull proceedings , and fair carrying on of things , in the publike service : yet , in this i cannot esteem their prudency ; for , albeit native beauty ought not to be set forth by painting and patches , being compleat in it self ; yet it must be kept free from spots and and dirt , and made seen unto all , under a modest and comely dressing , by which means it is more pleasing and better liked of every one . and although where there is no fault , no apologie ought to be made , yet , to make the truth openly known , ( when it is desguised ) for the information of those who take things meerly upon trust , and to stop the going on of wicked men with lyes , is not only an act of wisdom , but of piety , yea , of necessity , if men will not abandon the interest of a good cause to the malice of the enemies thereof : and , as it is said by the wise man , thou art not to answer a fool according to his folly , that is , in exorbitancy , &c. lest in so doing thou become like unto him ; even so by the same wise man thou art ordained to answer a fool as is fit and convenient , for the repressing of his folly , lest he think himself wise , and so go on in his evil course , to the dishonour of god the father of truth , and to the prejudice of both church and state , who are to be directed by the truth . surely , if ever at any time the lye and calumny of the fool ( for so i call the calumniator , how cunningly soever he lyeth ) is to be repressed with a fit answer , it is at this time , when there lieth so much at the stake in both kingdoms , as religion and libertie , with whatsoever else is , or ought to be dear unto men . now then , to answer unto the calumnies of those malignants , & to make the simple truth known to all , is absolutely necessary at this occasion , to the end that not onely the lyer may find his craft to be folly , but also his wicked intent to be disappointed , which is no lesse then a breach betwixt the two nations , and hath been such from the beginning ; and consequently the ruine of both , now so united and joyned in the common interest of church and state , that they must sink or swim together ; for if they should once devide , as the one doubtlesse will be presently undone ; so the end of the other will not be far off . wherefore he that doth any evil office , to raise or increase jealousie betwixt them , under whatsoever pretext , is worse then any open enemy , and what he intends to the publike , will come upon himself , that is , ruine , with disgrace . but , me thinks i hear you , whom i blame for silence in so necessary a case , and so needfull a time , say , we have not been wanting in this very thing you find fault with : for we have constantly and diligently communicated all things of any moment , freely and ingeniously , in all truth and simplenesse of heart , to some chief leading men , our particular good friends , upon whom we have relyed , from our first hither-coming , in all things concerning us and our countrey-men , employed in the service , to the end that they should convey the truth of businesse , as in discretion they thought fit , and did see cause , for the publike good , and for the right of us their friends , to the houses , and from thence to the publike . to this i answer , you have mistaken the right way , sirs , for you should have made your addresses to the whole parliament , or at least to the committee appointed by the parliament to hear you , consult with you , in a word , to deal or treat with you of all things , wherein you and they are jointly concerned ; and not suffer your selves to be engrossed by some few , howsoever they be prime men : and what do you know , if by thus suffering your selves to be as it were led by them , hath not increased their credit ? for men may say , that they have reason to follow those , by whom you of so much reputation of wisdom and resolution , are guided , &c. further , should not you have thought , that particular men , howsoever they serve the publike , have ordinarily particular ends of ambition and avarice , which the publike cannot have ? and although those your friends be free of these distempers , yet you are not assured of their constancy unto you ; for many things fall out betwixt man and man , which makes them not onely fall from intimacy of one with another , but makes them adverse and opposite one to another oftentimes . and , although your friends be free of this infirmity ; are you wise men to relie upon others , for doing the things you should do your selves without a procure ? he that trusteth another to do a thing fitting for himself to do , must expect to have the thing done , if at all done , neither so timely , nor so well , at least not so soon , nor so to his mind , as is it falleth out often : of extraordinary occasions and occurrences , there is no certain rule . next , i know , you will say , we have acquainted the houses of parliament to the full with the truth of all things , by cut severall papers given unto them at divers times , upon divers occasions , and we have made known unto the synode what concerneth church businesses , and so we think we have done enough in this . but give me leave , sirs , under favour , herein also you are hugely mistaken ; you do well to communicate freely and carefully unto the houses of parliament all things , and to acquaint them with your proceedings , wherein they have common interest with you , for the publike service of church and state , in these dominions ; i hope they do so with you , at least , they ought to do it , for the common good of both ; otherwayes , the work wherein both kingdoms are so ingaged , and you both are employed , will go but slowly and limpingly on : yet this is not enough ; for , first , the main passages of publike things done , and the chief reasons of the doing thereof , are to be made known to the whole church and state , since the whole hath the chief interest in things common to all : although you are to communicate your counsels , deliberations , and conclusions of things to be done , for fear of miscarriage , onely to the trustees of church and state , as your selves are : yet i say again , what , is de facto concerning all , must be made known to all ; for the trustees of the state and church , are not lords of them , as kings and popes pretend to be ; but servants , as they avouch themselves , set on work by them , for the good of both , upon trust , which if they betray , they are double traitors : first , they falsifie their truth to the state and church , whereof they are members and children , and unto whom they owe all under god . next , they betray the trust imposed upon them , for the good and benefit of both church and state . yea , the houses of parliament themselves , shew you the way how to carry your selves in this very particular ; for they , not onely for the satisfaction of the whole kingdom , cause publish the things done by those whom they , as trustees , have employed to carry on the service of the publike in the fields ; but also , they publish unto the kingdom declarations of their honest intentions , and fair proceedings , with votes and ordinances , for the good of church and state : and i am sure , the trustees of your nation for your church and state , have done so , from the beginning , in your particular troubles ; and that , not onely to your own countrey , but also to your neighbour , which hath done no harme , neither to the advancement of your affaires at home , nor to your reputation abroad . although the houses of parliament rest satisfied in themselves of the honesty of your proceedings : yet this giveth but small satisfaction unto the kingdom . yea , when you send in your papers to the houses , it may happen that divers members are absent at the time , and so remain as ignorant of your affaires , as before the in-giving of the papers ; for the houses are so taken up with other thoughts and businesses , that they cannot acquaint the absents with your own affaires ; yea , some who are present in the houses , at the reading of your papers , are carried of their attention unto you , by divers distractions , and so receive but small knowledge by them : far lesse can the houses take leasure to publish your affaires unto the world ; yea , i know not if in rigour they are tyed to do it . although i confesse , it would be a good turn for the publike , and a brotherly office , if they would take the pains to do , or cause do it : howsoever , i am sure , the houses are not so obliged to this duty , as your selves are ; neither although they were , can they do it so fully as you , not being so particularly acquainted with things . in a word , in duty you ought to make known unto the publike your own proceedings , and these of your countrey-men , employed in the service of the common cause ; that it may be made manifest what good you have done alone , either by counsell in the houses , or by action in the field ; what you have been assistants in , and what you ever have been willing to do , and are still minded to do , providing you be not stopped ; and if you have been stopped , let it be declared where the fault lieth , and not you bear the burden of other mens mistakes and errors . next , is it not fit , that it be published what you have done for such vast summes of money raised upon the publike for your use , as is given out , and how much you have received of it ? that if you have received all , you may make known what you have done for all ; and if you have received more then your due , you are in conscience and honour to do the publike the service you are pay'd for beforehand : as likewise , if you have not received all which is raised for you , that it may be known how much of it is wanting , and enquiry may be made what is become of the rest ; and so , if you make it appear unto the world , that there is much still due unto you of your pay , far above what you have received ; then all honest people , being truely informed of things , will approve your faithfull and fair carriage , acknowledge your love and kindnesse , thank god for your help and assistance at such an exigence , and be heartily civill unto you , till god enable them to recompence you for your faithfull pains , according to your just deserts and their earnest desires ; and so things will redound to your credit and advantage . you may know and feel all this , what i have been saying unto you , to be true , according to sense and reason , by one seule instance , to lay aside all others at this time : and it is this of the papers you gave into the houses , about the latter end of may last , upon occasion of high murmurings against you , in and about the houses , by information of malignants , which gave abundant satisfaction to so many of both houses , as either heard it them read ( as is well known ) or read them themselves with attention : but , others of the houses , who are not acquainted with your papers , partly not hearing them , although present when perhaps they are delivered in , by reason of their other thoughts ; partly being absent , at that time , remained still ignorant of your affaires , and possessed with calumnies against you : far more the rest of the kingdom . after some dayes , one copy of these your papers having fallen , by chance , in the hands of a well-wisher to the cause , and no enemy of yours , was published under the name of the scots manifest , without your knowledge , which hath done more despite to the enemies of the truth , than any thing you have done this long time , and more right unto you then you looked for , yea , nor your silence deserved ; yet not so much as is needfull for you and your friends ; for it did stop the mouths of the wicked calumniators , and inform many well-meaning men : and divers members of the houses there were , who had not heard of such a thing , before it was printed ; to say nothing of the generality of the people , every where . yea , i am told , it went beyond sea , and there stopped the mouths of malignants , and gained those who were indifferent , and confirmed your friends . but what , you will say , must the hid things or mysteries of state be divulged ? no , i do not mean it , nor do i say it ; for i leave the mysteries of state to the mystes thereof ; onely my simple meaning and honest desire is , that these things which are not , and ought to be , made known to all , be not kept in a mist by a mysterious prudency , but communicated to the publike ; such are the things de facto , and of reason , wherein all are concerned : and these are the things i spake of . besides , you must think , there be many men not particularly employed in the publike service , who have both hearts and brains , to serve the common cause ; but cannot do it , while all is thus kept in a cloud , as in the romish church , where the mystes think all men idiots but themselves , and keep from the people the things of god . then you will say , to tell plainly and openly , the truth , perhaps , will not be pleasing to all , yea , perchance not to some of our fellow-labourers . my advice is not , that you say or write any thing , in intention to displease the least of men , far lesse to displease these your fellow-labourers : but let truth be said above all things , when the publike requires it for its service ; and we our selves are bound upon our own credit to do it . be angry who will ; god keep me from neglect and contempt , for lying or suppressing the truth ; i fear not anger for any publishing of truth : he that is not bold to publish the truth , for timorousnesse , belyeth his own knowledge , and i dare say , betrayeth the truth . you that are trusted with the carriage of things , in truth , and for the truth , are not onely bound to make known the truth of what you do and say , to the world , as it hath been said ; but , further you are obliged in conscience , and the publike expects it of you , that you presse home the truth with vigour & resolution , in all freedom , down-right , in all places , and at all occasions , where you meet for consultation , deliberation , debate , and conclusion of things concerning church or state , in politike and ecclesiastike assemblies ; and in so doing , you will gain the price , having all honest men to stand to you ; and will put such a terrour in malignants , that their malice will be much abated . surely , i am perswaded , had you been stouter in the synode , these strong heads , and factious few ones , who hitherto have troubled the setling of church-affaires , and are likely to trouble the state , if it be not well looked to and neerly , had long ere now been quashed ; and so , if you had not been so meal-mouthed with the sollicisme in reason , of the time and place , i humbly conceive you had not met with so many rubs in your publike meetings , nor had your wholsome counsels found such opposition , nor your men of war been so kept off field action . all which hath not onely done prejudice to the publike service ; but hath brought things to great hazard , yea , almost to the undoing of all : but , god in his mercy hath turned the balance , no thank to your remissenesse , wherein god sheweth , although men will not do what they ought and can do for his service , upon i cannot tell what consideration , he will do the work of men , by no men . when i think on john knox , and george buchanan , how freely they spoke and writ , at all times , and upon all occasions , when the church and state were concerned , without fear of any man or assembly whatsoever ; having nothing before their eyes , but the glory of god , and the good of his people . they were weak and infirm men , as we are all ; but their stout zeal to the publike was admirable , and is ever to be remembred by us ; not onely to their praise , but also to spur us up to imitate them in this heroike vertue . for me , i value the zeal and stoutnesse of these two champions of the truth , more than all their other vertues , howsoever eminent they were . but , you will say , it is now another age , and consequently another way of carriage of things is required . it is true , we live now in another age , which is worse than that of these men : wherefore , we must then strive with greater zeal and vertue , to oppose the wickednesse of this time ; for although , by a prudentiall preventing and declining , by clear-seeing men , many plots and devises of the wicked , may be for a time shunned : yet , there is no way to make the wicked leave or weary of resisting and oppressing goodnesse , but by a vigorous and stout opposing of them . besides , although the cards be new we play with all ; yet it is the same very game that our fathers had in scotland , and our neighbours had lately , in our dayes , in france ; where and when nothing did prevaile , or do good unto the cause , but resolution and zeal in carrying on the things , not onely against the common enemy ; but also , against the false friends , and they that walked then any other way , betrayed the cause , and purchased unto themselves the title of silly inconsiderable men , of whatsoever rank or degree they were . to say nothing of the judgement of god that fell upon them , and to this day hangs upon them and theirs . i shun examples in this case ; for i love to reprove faults , and spare mens persons . moreover , since the malignants , every where , are so busie running to and fro , like so many bees , with great care and heat , and so bold , to forge and invent lyes , by word and writing , to abuse the world , and so wrong treacherously the publike service : why should not then faithfull men be diligent and stout , in all freedom , to make known the truth of things , for the confirming of the well-affected , and for stopping of the mouth of the wicked , and so consequently , for the better carrying on of the work now in hand ? now , being thus friendly and freely admonished by one who wisheth well to the common cause you now serve , with his whole heart , and unto your selves in particular , in so far as you are faithfull and earnest , zealous and stout in this cause of god and his people , laying aside all humane prudence , which is not subservient to zeal and stoutnesse , as well as to faithfulnesse and earnestnesse : i hope you will take care to minde this slip , by giving unto the publike a true and free relation of all things from time to time , as the occasion shall require ; and in your meetings , about church and state , to be stout and free , for the advancing of the publike service to the glory of god , to the good of his people , and to the contentment and satisfaction of well-affected men , in despite of malignancy . in the interim , till you perform this duty , give me leave , in this place , plainly and homely to put unto the view of the world , the relation of some things of speciall note , hardly well known to many , at least taken notice of but by a few , concerning the carriage of the scots ever since the very first beginning of these unhappy troubles to this day : the knowledge whereof , will do good , i am sure , to the publike service , and will help to right , in some measure , men both faithfull and constant in the work : yea , the commemoration of these things , although known , i am perswaded , will give content to all honest and well-meaning men , unto whom the publike good is dearer than the interest of any particular man whatsoever , with whom they ought to go along no further than the particular man goeth on with the publike of church and state , laying aside all other relation . as for other men , i value them no more than the open declared enemies , who preferre the pleasure of one abused prince , under pretext of obligation they have to him , unto the good of church and state . and thus i begin . the common enemy having designe to bring these dominions under spirituall and temporall slavery , all things disposed for his ends , according to his mind ; thinks fit for his purpose to begin this great work in scotland , promising unto himself to find least opposition there , for reasons which hitherto , by gods mercy , hath deceived him . the scots being pressed to receive the corrupt liturgy , ( to say nothing in this place , of what was before put upon them ) fairly decline it , by iterate supplications and humble remonstrances unto the king : but nothing will do the turn , they must receive the prelats master-peece , and romes essay , the nove-antic-service-book , either by fair play or foul . the scots on the other side , constant to their principles , refuse to receive the book ; for which they are published by the prelats and the court , to be refractaries and rude fellows , without god or religion : which gave occasion to the scots to make known , not onely unto their own people , at home ; but , to all men abroad ; namely , to their brethren of england , by a publike declaration , their condition , how they were wronged , the equity of their cause , their lawfull proceedings , and their good intentions : by this means , their friends good will is confirmed unto them , and their enemies designe , in some measure , is broken ; who did intend , by lyes , to steal from them the good affection of their friends . next , the scots being constrained to have recourse to the sword , for their just defence , all other means tryed failing , were back-bitten as mutinous , taking arms for poverty , with intention to cast off the just authority of their native and lawfull prince , and to invade england for the spoile thereof . to these most pernicious calumnies , the scots replyeth by another declaration , particularly addressed unto england ; whereby , they made known the absolute necessity of their taking up arms , with their honest intentions therein : all which , they made good thereafter , in due time , by reall performance . for , so soon as they had occasion to shew their respect to the king , they did it , with all readinesse and submission ; and when they might have undone the kings army , and consequently invaded england , if they had pleased , and that with small opposition , instead of doing wrong to any english , they supplied the wants of those who were come against them , with victuals , which then did abound in the scots army , but was very short in the kings ; & having the flower of the kings army in their power , i mean the party that went to dunslaw ; they suffered it to return back in safety , and used it with all civility , notwithstanding these chosen ones had come against promise , and without cause , to destroy them , and to invade the countrey . thereafter , the peace being made , the scots according to the agreement , went quietly home , and laid down their arms , as was promised . then the plot the abused king and his good counsell had at berwick , to draw the chief men of scotland to him , for to destroy them ; and the breach of the parlement ; the burning in london of the articles of agreement made at the borders , and many other like things , did not move the scots , to recede in any measure from their dutifull respects to the king , nor from their love to the english nation ; neither the imprisonment of their commissioners , against the law of nations , and the safe-conduct granted unto them upon publike faith ; nor the great forces prepared against them , by sea and by land ; nor the many lyes spred against them , through all england ; nor the prelatical excommunication so canonically spewed out against them , in all the churches and chappels of england : all these things , i say , did not make them give the least expression of disrespect to the king , nor disaffection to the english . upon this , the scots published a declaration anew unto the world , whereby they made known unto all , how hardly they were dealt with all ; for , not onely the things stipulated with them , were not kept to them ; but also , more and greater wrongs than formerly , were done to them : yea , a second expedition of war undertaken to destroy them ; and to fill up all , more lyes of no lesse importance , than the conquering of england , made and spred abroad of them , with other thunderbolts of the prelaticall censure , shot against them : also , they make known by this declaration , their christian resolution , and just enterprise , with their good intentions in taking arms again , for their own defence , and the cause which they maintain ; and by it , assureth their brethren of england , although they were resolved to come into their countrey to seek out their enemies , who were there gathering against them ; and not to suffer these wicked ones to come unto them , and so make their own countrey the seat of the unhappy war : yet , they had not the least thought to do any hurt to any body in england , except to their professed enemies : so far were they from having the least thought of making a conquest . and that , when they had brought their enemies to reason , they would go home in peace . all which , was thereafter performed by the scots to the full : for , first , being entred into england , and having rencountred one party of their enemies , and routed it ; when it was in their power to pursue the victory , they stayed at new-castle till things were agreed upon , betwixt the king and them . this incoming of the scots , gave occasion and liberty to divers of the nobles of england , ( of whom , some since have betray'd the cause of god , & of his people ; what by open warfare , and what by clandestine undermining : ) to desire , of the king , a parliament , for the good of the kingdom . the king then durst not refuse their demand , by reason of the scots , more then the continuance of it , which he granted likewise therafter , for the same cause . then the king , finding that the parliament did not onely crosse , but quite spoile his designes , be plots with his army , which he had raised against the scots , to come and destroy the said parliament , and to take the spoile of london , for their reward . but the businesse being discovered , faileth ; besides , they durst not undertake , howsoever they had promised , for fear of the scots , who then were so neer . the king continuing in his wonted courses , after a little pause , tryes the scots if they will do the deed ; and offers unto them for recompense , not onely the spoile of london , but also the foure counties next adjacent unto their countrey , to be adjoyned hereafter to it , with jewels of great value in pawn for performance , if onely they would be engaged into the businesse . all these great offers , could not make the scots willing to give their consent in any kinde to this wickednesse : for , they not onely rejected the kings offers ; but also , giveth notice of the plot , to the parliament , and to the city of london , that they might make their best use of it . so , you may see , how that the scots , under god , are the cause of the assembling of the parliament , of the continuance of it , being assembled , and of the preservation of it , from totall destruction and ruine . the king , seeing that he was stopped by the scots , first , in their own countrey , next , in england , to carry on his great designe , takes the irish papists by the hand , rather then be alwayes disappointed ; and they willingly undertake to levie armes for his service , that is , for the romish cause ; the kings designe being subservient to the romish cause ; although he abused thinks otherwayes , and beleeves that rome serveth to his purpose . but , to begin the work , they must make sure all the protestants ; and , if they cannot otherwayes , by murthering and massacring them ; for they knew them , according to the principles of religion and state , to be forward , either for the covenanters of scotland , or for the troublesome parliament of england , if not for both . but the irish , neither would , nor durst enter to any open action , so long as the scots army , in england , was afoot ; therefore by all means , it must be sent home and cashiered : and to facilitate the businesse , the court-parasites , instruments of iniquity , with their emissaries , must raise and spread abroad , jealousies of the scots , among the people of the countrey and city , namely in and about the houses of parliament ; who having not before their eyes , the reall honesty and integrity of the scots , known by so many faithfull and loyall expressions ; and not keeping in their mind the many good offices done to them by the scots ; giveth , in sillinesse of mind , ear and place to the crafty tales and apprehensions , invented by the agents of the common enemy , to bring them to confusion and trouble . so the plot taketh by the silly ones , and is set forward by the hid malignan's . yea , in a word , it is managed with such addresse and successe , that the scots must go home ; and till they had done it , there could be no quiet , but increase of jealousies . the scots , although they were not acquainted with the hight of mischief that was intended against the church and state in these dominions , by the common enemy , nor with the wayes of it ; yet , albeit they thought it very dangerous , after so many attempts of evil doing by the enemy to retire them from england , not as yet well setled ; and to cashiere their army , remitting the event of things to god , resolve to return home , and dismisse their army , and so make known unto all the world their candour and integrity , and to take away all jealousies ; both from the king and from england ; which they do according to promise , not failing in the least circumstance , yea , not of the day . well , the king having gained this point , to send home the scots , and to make them lay down their arms , resolveth to follow them into scotland , and to trie once more to draw them to his designe ; no perswasion being able to stay or to stop his voyage : he goeth in haste from london , and overtaketh the scots as their were upon their removall from new-castle for scotland : he vieweth their army by the way , and talketh with the prime officers thereof : he giveth order to some of the good physicians about him , to feel the pulse of the scots softly , but they found the scots pulse did not beat as they could have wished . he goeth on in his journey into scotland , whither he is no sooner arrived , but he puts another designe afoot , premeditated with many more before : for , it is the custome of the wise court , to have , at one and the same time , divers undertakings in designe , of which , it is a very hard matter , it one or other do not take effect . yea , they have found but too true , to our wofull experience , that many have taken effect , and that not of the lesser ones , wherefore the court will never cease to devise and invent enterprises . the plot then set afoot by the k. in scotland , was to make a considerable . party there for his ends : and to make the businesse more facile , he resolveth to make sure the chief men of scotland , who were likely either to stop the designe , or not further it . but , this plot is also discovered , and so it failed . the next recourse was to the irish papists , his good friends , unto whom , from scotland , a commission is dispatched , under the great seal ( which seal was at that instant time , in the kings own custody ) of that kingdom , to hasten , according to former agreement , the raising of the irish in arms ; who no sooner receive this new order , but they break out , and at the first beginning of their rebellion , declared that they had no ill will against any scots in ireland , for they were afraid of the scots going over to the help of their countrey-men , and so they would be stopped to go on with their work ; but their spleen was against these english protestants , who were friends to that wicked parliament in england , so untoward to the good king , and so adverse to their catholike cause . this declaration of the irish , did not ( although in favour of their country-men ) hinder the scots to offer their present service , for the repressing of the rebellion before things grew worse ; the king fairly refuseth the offer , and answering with verball thanks , said that he neither could , nor would do any thing in the businesse , without the advice and assistance of the parliament , now a foot in england ; whereunto he was to repaire in all haste . so he leaveth scotland , saying that every day he stayed there , was the losse of a county to him . he cometh to london , a little before christmas ; the rebellion having begun in ireland in october : but he goe's very seldom to the parliament , and when he goeth thither , he sayeth nothing concerning the irish rebellion , till by importunity he was constrained to it ; and then what he said , was little , cold , and ambiguous . and when the scots , by their commissioners , who had followed him from scotland hither , did offer again a considerable help of ten thousand men , things were so carried , both in the counsell and in the parliament , by the corrupt and ignorant party then , that the scots were delayed from day to day , by one shift or other , for a long space , before that conditions could be agreed upon with them , for the sending of their help unto ireland . and it was a longer time after the agreement , before things could be furnished unto them , for their voyage . by those means , the rebels had ado with lesse opposition ; and consequently , with lesse difficulty carried on their barbarous work of spoiling , burning , and massacring innocent people of all rank and condition , without regard to sex or age . the scots are no sooner gone to ireland , but they assist their friends with such affection and successe , that after some skirmishes and renconters with the rebels , the north countrey of ireland , whereunto their help was particularly assigned , became pretty well cleared of the rebels , although much wasted and and spoiled by them . in this course , hath the scots continued to this day , constantly opposing these bloody wretches , notwithstanding the change that hath fallen in the south part of that kingdom , by the treachery of those whom the parliament employed and trusted to . then when the king made a cessation with these barbarous cannibals , the scots resolutely declared against it , and have manfully opposed it to this day : without which opposition of the scots , it had been received every where in ireland , and the rebels then , having nothing to do at home , had come hither in bands and troups into this island . thus did and still doth the scots pursue their point , notwithstanding all the hardship they have suffered , and yet suffer in the service , partly by reason of the great troubles here of the parliament , not being able to supply their friends , as they would , and as they need ; partly by the negligence and unfaithfulnesse of those , who have been employed by the parliament , and intrusted to have a care of supplying this need ; which hath been so great , that the scots army in ireland , had absolutely starved for cold and hunger , if they had not been helped from scotland , in a high measure . to return unto england : the misled king having left the parliament , accompanied , or at least followed by numbers of men of divers degrees , traytors to god and to their countrey ; namely by those double traytors , who were members of the houses of parliament : for , they not onely have been dishonest and unfaithfull to the church and state , whereof they are born members and children ; but , they have betray'd the trust wherewith they were trusted in both . by the assistance of which , he sets his designe on foot , to make open war against the parliament , ( although under a hid notion ) to destroy it ; all other devices and plots , contrived by him and his , having failed as we have seen . upon this , the scots , in their respect to the king , love unto their brethren in england , and above all , in their affection to the cause of the church of god , send commissioners unto the king , and from him to the parliament , as the occasion should serve . they found the king at york , where he was pulling his sword out of its sheath , with all his might , and shaping it in all haste , which god in his jugements hath suffered him to thrust in the bowels of so many thousands of his people , here , so unnaturally and barbarously ; not onely afar off , by not stopping it , by connivence or by commission to his agents and instruments , as in ireland and scotland ; but being present in person , and taking pleasure in doing of it in his own sight , and seeing of it done . in this place i do affirm , that there hath been more christian blood shed in these latter yeers , under the end of k. james and k. charles raigns , by their commissions , approbations , connivences , and not-forbidding , what at home , and what abroad , all which upon the matter they might have stopped , if it had been their pleasure , then were in the time of the ten roman persecutions . god turn the kings heart towards him first , otherwayes he will never turn it toward his people . the scots , as we were saying , send to him , to desire him to leave off the designe of embroiling himself and the people in a civill war , in this kingdom of england ; withall , to offer him their dutifull service of mediation and intercession , for the taking away of all mistakes , and smoothing of things in a fair way , betwixt him and the parliament . the misled king resolved to go on in evil courses , not onely neglects the respective and hearty offer of the scots ; but sends them home , not suffering them to come unto the parliament , according to their order and desire , which was to trye all fair means for the hindering of a war in england , and to stop the massacres in ireland . the king having thus dismissed the scots , goe's to his work , which , having overcome some rubs at the first , he carrieth on apace ; for having gathered together considerable forces at shrewsbury , from thence with his army he marches towards london , notwithstanding the parliaments-army lay , as it were , in his way , who met with him at edge-hill , and ( contrary to his expectation ) fights with him . he , after the battel , having recollected the remnant of his men , although he had had the worse , continues his designe for london , and drew very neer unto it ; but being , by strong hand , constrained to retire , he goeth to oxford , where he hath kept his court constantly ever since till this day . the scots seeing the commotions increasing in england , and considering the chief instruments of those evils , could not in conscience and honesty , sit quiet any longer , and neither say nor do , while the state and church of their brethren in england , were thus in so great troubles ; send first a commissioner from their church unto the parliament , to desire them , that as god , in his good providence , had furnished them just occasion to cast out the prelats from among them , not onely as unusefull members of their assembly ; but also , as enemies to all their just proceedings for the good of church and state ; so they would be pleased to thrust out these tyrants and belly-gods from the church , as main instruments of all the disturbances , troubles , and miseries which are come , and of more , in all appearance , yet coming , if god in his mercy prevent them not . the commissioner , after some debate , having obtained his demand , returneth homeward , and taking his way by the court , then about shrewsbury , made known to the king how he had sped in his errand , wherewith he had acquainted him before , as he was going to the parliam . and he desireth the king to give his consent unto the casting of the prelats out of the church , as he had done to the putting them out of the assembly of parliament . to which the king did reply little or nothing ; but he told the commissioner , that he , and they who sent him , were hugely mistaken , if they did think that the houses of parliament doth intend any setled reformation , namely , as in scotland ; for , said , he , you see how they do not represse the schismes and sects of all kinds , which abound in and about london ; yea , these evils are countenanced by some under-hand . would to god that the commissioner had had as just reason then , to answer unto the king , that he had been misinformed , and that an untruth had been told him concerning sectaries , as he hath been mistaken in the intention of both houses of parliament , for the setleing religion , according to the best way , as it expressed in the nationall covenant . then , after that things , by degrees , had come to a great hight betwixt king and parliament , much blood being shed , not onely in skirmishes and rencounters , but also in pitched battel , to wit , at edge hill . the scots not being able to forbear any further , to try once more by fair means , if it were possible , to stop the course of those miseries , too far already gone on , send word to the king , then at oxford , and to the parliament , of their good intentions ; and demand a passe and safe-conduct from both , for commissioners from them , to go unto both , and return home , as also to go to and fro betwixt them as cause should require . of the parliament , they had easily what they demanded , with thanks for their good will : but the king , not liking their offer , was loth to grant a passe ; yet being put to it , he could not fairly deny , and so at length , after some reluctancy , he sends a passe as was desired , and safe-conduct to the scots ; which being received , they send their commissioners straight to the king , unto whom they remonstrate home how that he had , by bad counsell , cast himself in a labyrinth of evil , and the people of his dominions ; which , doubtlesse , would bring both him and them to utter ruine , if not timely stopped in gods mercy , by his wisdom and good counsell . the commissioners , instead of any positive answer , receive nothing but doubs , ambiguities , delays , and shifts , whereof nothing could be made , but that the misled king was resolved to his own and his peoples ruine . after a time , the scots commissioners told the king , that , according to their order and instructions , they intended to go unto the parliament ; which they hoped he would think well of , and approve . but the king , notwithstanding the passe and safe-conduct he had granted them to that purpose , would not suffer them to go unto the parliament ; yea , they were not permitted to speak with the commissioners from the parliament , who were then sent thither to the court to treat when they were there . such was the adversenesse of the court to peace , notwithstanding all the kings protestations . further , the scots commissioners were so hardly used by the court , namely , by the prelaticall crew , that they could not in safety go openly and freely abroad . this is not all . at that time the rulers of the court send abroad their agents , to tell every where , namely , in and about london , what indignity the scots did offer , first unto the king , then unto the parliament , and to the whole english nation , by taking upon them ( being but subjects ) to examine the disterences betwixt the king and parliament , to compose them , and to make a peace ; it being more honourable both for the king , and parliament , and the whole nation , to be beholden for this unto a neighbour-state or prince , then unto the kings own subjects , not so good as others in many respects . as this discourse was invented , and spewed up and down by malignants , so it was received by the simpler sort , not knowing the interest of states , lesse , wherein the true honour of princes , states , and nations consisteth : yet , they might have considered , that it is better to take up things quietly at home , then to trouble the neighbours with our affaires . the scots commissioners , after some moneths abode at court , seeing they could do no good with the abused king , desire him to dismisse them , which he did put off from day to day , till at last he was written to by the state of scotland , that if he sent not home in safety the commissioners betwixt such and such a day , they would hold it as an open breach of the peace , and that they would provide for businesses accordingly . upon this the commissioners , loden with fair , but conditionall promises from the king ( who yet would not anger them ) of love and care of that his native kingdom , so that they would be quiet , ( for he could not stop his mouth to say unto them , that if they would not stirre , he could easily compasse his ends in england ) take their leave at court , and go home . at their arrivall , they find a number , in the south-west of their countrey , of papists and other malignants , men of broken for tunes , risen to disturbe the peace of the kingdom , by order from the king , notwithstanding his fair words ; which commotion was presently quashed , through gods mercy , by the diligence and forwardnesse of the good gentry and nobility in those parts , who did rise like one man against these sons of belial . as the scots commissioners retired home , the houses of parliament of england were made acquainted how that their good intentions were frustrated , themselves hardly used for a long time , but at last , with difficulty had gotten home . now , the state of scotland seeing the common enemy come to the hight , that nothing will satisfie him , but totall subversion of church and state in these dominions ; onely they , perhaps , might be kept for the last , although in intention they had been the first ; jugeth it not enough , for their interest in the common cause , to keep an army in ireland ; but also to be upon their guard at home , that they might stop any enterprise the common enemy should undertake against them to have any progresse in their countrey , if they did not altogether prevent it : and to help their brethren in england with their sword , since all other means so often tryed , were disappointed by the malice of the enemies . and so much the rather were they moved to this , that the enemy was prevailing almost without let , for by that time he was master not onely of the field , but also of all the strong hold in the north , except hull alone , with a numbrous and victorious army of horse and foot , domineering and spoiling every where : likewise the west being almost altogether gone by the losse of excester , the defeat given to the parliaments forces at the vyses , and the base surrendring of bristol , banbury , &c. the enemy did think to carry all before him , ready to enter into the associated counties , yea , to come to the gates of london ; which they had done in all appearance , without the let of that noble and never enough praised exploit of the earl of essex , of relieving of glocester , almost at the last extremity , although valiantly defended by that brave governour massey , in despite of the proude enemy ; and thereafter in beating of him at newbery . while the parliament was thus low , many faint-harted , yea members of the two houses , ran away to the enemy , and others did withdraw , studying , to their eternall shame , to make their peace more plausibly with the enemy , and not to run over to him at discretion as others had done . but when things are thus almost in despaire , then it is thought fit time to have recourse to the scots , and to call them for help : the parliament , to try if they could do the businesse themselves , without troubling the scots , was wisdom : for what need you call for aid , and trouble your neighbours , when you can do the businesse alone ? but not to call for help till things be too low , it is very dangerous , say those who dive more deeply in affaires of this nature . but , the reason why the scots were so long a calling in for help , was , not that the english were not willing to trouble their brethren the scots , for , why should they think of troubling the scots , since their fathers had been so ready to help scotland , in its distresse then ? generous hearts will as freely receive a courtesie as they do one , otherwayes they were proud , and self-conceited : but , the true cause , ( say they who know the mysteries of the time ) first was , that the sectaries , prevailing with the rulers of affaires , did so keep them from medling with the scots , whom they knew to be no lesse adversaries to schismes and sects , then to popery and prelacy : next , there were some who yet kept still a bit of a bishop in their belly , although by both houses declared to be not onely unusefull in church and state , but also enemies to both . howsoever , these considerations must be laid aside for a time , and in such extremity the scots must be called to help ; yea , some of those who are said to be the greatest sticklers for sectaries , must at last be employed in their calling in ; which was long of coming , after it was resolved upon , by the shifts of the enemies of church and state . the scots , notwithstanding all that had been signified unto them , concerning the favouring of sectaries by the parliament , and of their retaining somewhat of the old leaven of prelacy ; seeing that their help was altogether needfull to save the church and state of england from ruine ; heartily received the call , being already resolved beforehand upon the point , and undertaketh , with a christian and manly resolution , to engage themselves in a seen danger , and to undergo the hazard ( but , for christ and his people no hazard is to be regarded ) to help their afflicted brethren : yet , with this precaution , that the parliament should sincerly joyn with them in the setling of the church , as they were heartily willing to assist them against the common enemy . this condition was granted unto the scots by the commissioners from the parliament of england ; and to this end , it was agreed upon , at the desire of the scots , that there should be one covenant and league made betwixt both kingdoms , and sworn to , for the setling of the church according to the word of god , and conform to the best reformed churches , and by name , to the church of scotland ; with the just liberty of the people , and against all opposition whatsoever . but , because the english commissioners would not take upon them to draw up and to make the covenant there in scotland , they desired that there might be commissioners sent from scotland unto the parliament of england , for the drawing up of the said covenant , and so was done ; for the scots commissioners assisting , the covenant , after divers debates , was made , and thereafter subsigned , sworn first by the houses , synode , and the scots commissioners , and then by the people , and sent unto scotland , where it was received , subsigned , and sworn by the convention of states , and then by the people : with all , in testimony of their true meaning , the houses of parliament desireth the commissioners of scotland to assist in the synode , in their deliberations and conclusions concerning the church . the covenant is no sooner taken , but the king leaveth off to accuse the parliament of continuing schismes and sects , and thereafter tells us , that he will have care of tender consciences , and this to make faction and division , as we have seen since . while things were thus managing at london , about the covenant , the english commissioners in scotland , are agreed with the scots , concerning the army they were to send into england : the articles of agreement being drawn up , and consented to by both parties ; commissions were given for twenty thousand men ; who with all the haste possible , were gathered together , and then immediatly set forth : so in january they march , when it was both great frost and snow , and entering into england , with small opposition come as far in as tyne : the countrey , much burdened before , was either all wasted and utterly spoiled by the enemy , hearing the scots coming with a great number of men , & great power ; so they could likely find nothing in that countrey , but what by strength of arm they could pull out of the hands of the enemy . thus did the scots fight for a while with their enemies , to wit , with a multitude of men well armed , with evil weather , in the most intemperate time of the year , and with want of victuals , which was the worst of all : and truely , it had gone hard with them , if it had not been for the provisions sent to them from home , which came but by difficile and uncertain carriage by sea , by reason of the storms which fell out then : yet , these resolute men were still gaining ground upon the enemy , in number of men as great as they , at least , and far exceeding them in horse , till at last they passed the river tyne , haveing so wearied and harrassed the enemy with continuall skirmishs and onsets , obliging him to lie without , and keep so strait and constant guard and watch , that in the end he was constrained to retire , and give way to the constant for wardnesse of the scots ; divers of his men leaving him for wearinesse and want , others falling sick , and numbers being killed at divers rencounters ; at one namely there was eight hundred of them slain at bauden . for all this , while the scots were thus fighting with these three enemies above-named , for the common cause expressed in the covenant , some men at london , and that not of the meaner sort , did not stick to whisper in the ear one to another , that the scots did not carry themselves neither as military men , nor as men of courage : this was the lesse regarded , that it was made by those , who , against their will , did give way to their calling in . the scots did so take up the enemy in the north , about new-castle and duresme , that sir thomas fairfax , assisted by sir john meldrum , took the field again , ( having for a long time been confined to hull , ) and tries fortune : he begins at selby , which he manfully assaults , and happily takes . then those who had not been well pleased at the coming in of the scots , did begin to say , now since selby was taken in , the scots might retire , they could do the work without them ; but this discourse did not take by many . the enemy hearing the news of this brave exploit , fearing for york , least sir thomas should carry it , run as fast as they could towards that city . the scots , as soon as they hear of the enemies removall , go after him on his heels , taking some of his men and bagage , and follow him unto the gates of york . upon this , my lord fairfax and sir thomas joyn with the scots ; who send to the earl of manchester for his help , to besiege york , the town being of such circuit , that the scots alone , having left of their men in sunderland and other places taken by them from the enemy , neer new-castle , were not able to compasse it with such circumlineation as was needfull , and keep the fields , so full of adversaries ; yea , not with the help that my lord fairfax brought unto them . manchester joyns with the scots : there were some here that were against manchesters going north-ward to the scots , not caring how much work the scots had , and how little successe . a little hereafter , to be short , while the forces of manchester and fairfax , joined with the scots , are about the siege of york unanimously ; there is one who goe's from hence to sow some dissention betwixt the generals , lesley , fairfax , and manchester ; which designe is disappointed by gods mercy : then , there is another set a foot by others , to wit , by the sectaries , which , although it did not rise to a breach , yet it did come to a distaste and dislike ; for the sectaries under manchester his command , seeing that the way of the scots was set absolutely against their intentions , concerning the church-businesses , as mainly did appear by the pressing of church-government by the scots in the synod , and their oppositions of sects , think themselves , that since they were come to some strength , they must not rely so much upon the scots , now being able to stand upon their legs with their own force , and do somewhat to eclipse the scots whom they had so far extolled formerly , which , while they were weak , and in dislike with the people , for the miscarriage of things , ( say those who pretend to know the main passages of businesses ; ) now at the siege of york they begin to shew themselves , who had been under a cloud , and by some notable action , think to make the world take notice of them : so a party of them , without order of their general , enter in the town of york , thinking to carry all before them : but , not acquainting their friends of their designe , they could not be seconded , and so were repulsed with great lose , and became wiser thereafter then to undertake any thing more in this kinde ; wherein they did shew , that when they did think it time for them to do , they would depend upon no order ; and so , neglecting military discipline , bring all to confusion . this fault was excused for once by ignorance . after some moneths siege , the united forces before york hearing of prince rupert his coming towards them , send a party of both nations into the town of manchester to secure the place , and to busie the enemy in his way towards them , till they had advanced their work at york : the enemy taking no notice of that place , and passing through with his daily increasing army , goeth on as he was approching , the united forces send scouts to know his march and his strength ; upon whose relation , they leave the siege , and go to meet and fight him , thinking if they had dispatched his forces , they would have lesse add in the work they had stook so long to : upon misinformation , they take the wrong way to meet the enemy ; so he had , upon this mistake , free accesse to the town . the united forces , seeing their mischance , turn their course to stop the enemies further coming south-ward ; he , puft up with the successe of gaining free accesse to the town , resolves to follow the united forces , and fight them , promising unto himself , that his good fortune would continue ; and if he had given a blow to their forces , he would easily put an end to the designe in hand ; for the scots being once routed , the main let and hinderance to the proceedings of the court , would much diminush the reputation of the parliaments party . on the other side , the united forces perceiving the enemies mind , turn head towards him , fight with him with gods blessing , and rout him ; but , not without losse ; for , notwithstanding all the care taken by the old and experimented chief commanders , first to put all in as good order as time and place could permit , and to keep things in order in time of battel ; the new raised horses of york-shire , neglecting the command and example of their noble and gallant leader , who in this occasion , as in all other , carried himself valorously ; fall in disorder themselves , and turning towards these of their own side that were to second them , put many in such confusion , that they would take no notice of any commander or leader ; yea , they carrie some away with them by violence . in this battel , divers gallant men of both nations had an honourable share of the victory : but , none i hear of , without disparagement to any , did appear so much in action that day with gallantry , as david lesley . here , the sectaries , to indear themselves to the people , attribute unto themselves the honour of the day , and stick not to call their champion the savour of the three kingdoms , when god knows , he that they extoll so much , did not appear at all in the heat of the businesse ; having received at the first a little scar , kept off , till the worst was past . after the victory , and the town of york taken in , the generalls write to the houses of parliament to give thanks to god ; and , in token of their thankfulnesse to setle the businesse of the church , and trye once more if it were possible to reconcile differences with the king , in a peaceable way . things being setled at york , by common consent , the scots go to new-castle , to besiege it , as the fittest service they could do for the publike then , neer the place they joyn with the earl calender his forces , who had come from scotland to represse the raging enemy about new-castle , while lesley was at york with his army ▪ the scots drawing neer new-castle , calender and david lesley , with six men more , went to view the place , from which there issued two troops of horse , which the eight men routed , having charged twice through them . the scots for a long time endeavoured to take in the town by fair means , but at last , through the obstinacy of those who were within , they were constrained to storm it , and so carried it . those very men , who at the battell neer york were put in disorder and fled with others , gave the assault , and took new-castle . thus , the scots being masters of the town , wrong no man , woman , nor child , takes a mediocre composition for the spoile ; in a word , they carry themselves with such moderation , that the enemies who had been in arms against them , were constrained to speak well of them . few dayes after the taking of new-castle , the castle of tinmouth is taken by the scots . the winter by this time beginning , after so hard employment of the last winter , and so toyling a somerwork , as the siege of york and the battell , besides divers skirmishes and rencounters with the enemy , then the long siege of new-castle , and at last the storming of it ; they resolve to put their men in garrisons . during the siege of new-castle , many calumnies was raised against the scots , and spewed abroad by malignants , and received here by the simpler sort . as the taking of new-castle , was the most important peece of service of that kinde , that could be done to the kingdom of england , namely to the city of london ; so it did rejoyce all honest men : but , on the other side , the malignants of all kindes were sorry at the doing of it ; but more sorry , that it was done by those , who are so constantly opposite to their courses . the scots are not sooner peaceable masters of new-castle , but the trade is renewed again betwixt it and london , to the comfort of the poor of london , who were starving for want of fire , and to the benefit of the richer sort . the coales above and under ground , were rated & disposed on in equity , to the best use of the publike , not wronging the particular , according to the advice and by the order of the committee of both kingdoms , then residing in the north , as the commissioners appointed by the parliament can be witnesses ; to whose consciences i appeale , if all this be not true . and the english prifoners , taken by the scots , have been disposed on according to the will of the houses of parliament , as soon as it was possible to be done by military order . now the scots , after the taking of new-castle , although they were free of the open opposition of the common enemy for a time , yet they were molested , vexed , crossed , and traduced by the malignants , agents to the enemy , in the northern parts , besides those in and about london . here you must know , that those of the northern countreys of england , have been constantly given to superstition , as men neglected in their instruction , or of purpose detained in ignorance by the prelats , fore-castingby that means to make them the furer for their designe : and so , the king himself , at two severall times , did find them ready for his designe : the earl of new-castle thereafter , did find them likewise ready to follow him : so , what by breeding , and what by latter yeers custome , they are for the most part in that country malignants . next , the heavy pressures of souldiers for so many yeers , with the barrennesse of the soile ( the seots now coming upon them ) made them clamotous , things not going according to their mind ; for , first , not liking the cause ; next , being already so spent , they were very sensible of the least thing could be demanded of them ; joint the malice of some of the chief men in the countrey , made the people murmure at first , them rise up in arms ; but , blessed be god , the insurrection was soon calmed . further , those who are employed by the parliament to manage the affaires of these countreys , have put all the power in the hands of these who are wicked malignants , being either professed recusants , sectaries of divers sorts , or at the best prelatiques , sticking to the old service-book ; yea , some of those who have been in actuall rebellion against the state under the earl of new-castle , who are of the committees of these countreys , now having the power in their hands , spoile the countrey , and oppresse good men , laying the blame of all upon the scots , as hath been of late represented unto the house of commons , by men without exception , deputed hither from these countreys , in the name of many good men , to acquaint the houses with the state of businesses there . the malignants of the north countreys carrie their businesses so , that they find favourers and agents to excuse them , and to further their evil courses . let this , what i say here , be throughly sifted out , & it will be found too true , to the prejudice of the good cause . god help us , and amend us ; for , what can we expect , when lyers and other wicked men find this favour and patronage ? the winter declining , the scots dispose themselves for the field-service , so soon as the provisions demanded , in a very moderate proportion , could be had from hence ; which went but late to them , by reason there was a time spent for obtaining the ordinance from the parliament ; next , a time for making ready ; thirdly , a time of sending of things . in the interim the scots , although busied in keeping the ill-affected of the countrey in obedience to the state , sends parties now and then , upon occasion , as the publike service required , for example , to sir william brer●ton , and to scarbor ough , &c. at last , the rendivous is assigned to the army the 15 of aprill : to this effect , they require the committee of that countrey to provide draughts against the day aforesaid ; but , they could not have any in readinesse till the first day of may , at what time they marched to rippon , with intention to come straight south-ward , according to the direction of the committee of both kingdoms , if they could have some few dayes provision ( upon all hazards ) and draughts . but , notwithstanding all their care and pains , they could obtain nothing but delays and incertainties , with promises onely of provision from night to night . if the scots had had their reasonable demands for provisions and draughts , they had been neer the enemy before he had done the evil he did at leicester and elsewhere . while the scots were at rippon , it was resolved that david lesley should go into lancaster-shire with a party , and he was to have a thousand york-shire horses to assist ; but , what performance there was of this , god knows , for he had not the third of armed men , although a thousand was promised . by this time , the scots are advertised that the enemy was with a flying army to passe through lancaster-shire to carlile , and from thence into scotland : upon which advice , resolution is taken , by the consent of the committee , that the scots should go into lancaster-shire , and stop the enemies passage northward . after a serious enquiry made , the onely way for them to go , is by all means through westmer land : from rippon , notwithstanding the roughnesse and difficulties of the countrey , in foure dayes they are upon the borders of lancaster-shire with their whole army ; whither being arrived , they have intelligence of the enemies turning back again south-ward ; immediately they desire some small provisions for their souldiers , and draughts , at the committee of westmerland and cumberland : but they found them very slow and unwilling . likewise , the scots being so neer , they desired that their forces before carlile should be supplyed so far with victuals , as to keep them from starving ; wherein they were the more earnest , that they saw how slackly those who were with their forces , followed the businesse : doubtlesse , if they had left then carlile , the enemy had been supplyed , and had kept it to this day ; which in all appearance was the desire of these committees . after the scots had ordained things the best they could concerning carlile , they march south-ward in all haste beyond ordinary ; for , some dayes they marched above twenty miles : but after , they were constrained to stay in some places , one , two , and three dayes , for draughts . while the scots were strugling with these difficulties , news are sent to the parliament that the scots were gone , no body knew where , and that they spoiled all the countrey : and this was not done by open and declared enemies , but by those whom the parliament trust in these countries with the managing of affaires ; yea , by some who formerly did professe hearty friendship unto the scots : but the wheel of their own interest turning about , not onely have they delinquished the scots ; but also , have declared themselves opposite unto them , and this without any cause : so far prevaileth private interest with men , who seems to be best . then , great murmures rise , that the scots would abandon their brethren at such a necessary time , leaveing all the burden of the war unto the forces of the parliament in the south . thus were the scots innocently traduced by malignants . upon this , the scots commissioners here , take , occasion to sent a gentle-man to the army , to know the truth and veritie of things ; and within a day or two thereafter , seeing the sinistrous reports increaseing , sent two of their own number to be satisfied of all things more fully , and hasten their coming south . in the mean time , the houses of parliament presse to know what was become of the scots , and why they had gone this unexpected way , and why , after so many and earnest calls , they did not march south-ward , the good of the publike service so requiring . whereupon , the scots commissioners gave in two papers to the houses , containing a plain and full relation of the naked truth and reason of things desired ; the ignorance of which had , by the shifts of malignants officiating for the common enemy , occasioned a great murmure against the scots up and down . these papers gave such satisfaction to all those who heard them read , and gave attention to them , that nothing was to be replied to the least circumstance mentioned in them ; yea , not by those who had been most enclining to give credit to sinistrous repors . yet these papers were so little divulged , that divers of the house of commons , who either had been absent when they were given in , or not attentive when they were read , did not know of any such thing . next , although the papers had given full content to the houses , yet the slanders of malignants not onely continued , but increased daily more and more against the scots . after some few dayes , there falleth a copy of these papers into the hands of one , which being shewed by him to some well-affected men , and lovers of the common cause , were thought sit by all means , for the publike good , to be published . as this was adoing , some malignants get notice of it , and strive to stop it , by dealing with him who had the chief care of the businesse ; but in vain , for he was resolved to go on with his designe : so , he giveth the papers to the presse , which the printer intitles the scots manifest : this being published , opened the eyes of many men , to see the truth of things which formerly had been kept in a cloud . the publishing of this manifest , did much vex the malignants ; but , they then were more grieved to see it so well received , and the truth therein contained , so greedily laid hold on by the people , whom they hitherto had so grosly abused by their malicious lyes . upon this , these lye-inventers bethink themselves of another shift , to cozen the world in this same businesse , and they go this way to work ; seeing they could not hinder the printing of the manifest , they resolve to know whether , or no , the thing had been done by order from the commissioners , who being enquired if they had caused print the manifest , they answered no ; and so it was , for without their knowledge the thing was done ; because that those who had a care of the printing of it , knew very well that the commissioners , going on in their ordinary course , upon i know what prudentiall scrupulosity , do make known nothing of that they acquaint the houses with , fearing to offend , howsoever needfull to be opened for the publike service , and their own credit ; but , if there be any thing to be said against them , although without ground , they must hear of it on the deaf-side of their ear , and it must be in every bodies mouth . then the forgers and publishers of lyes gave out , that the manifest was a false and supposed thing , since the commissioners did not own it ; when as they onely did say , that they had no hand in the printing of it , although they ayouch the thing to be in it self most true . thus in this place i have set down a full relation of the publishing of the manifest , whereof i touched somewhat before , upon another occasion , to make more known unto the world , with what cunning and crafty malice the malignants of all kindes do oppose the truth upon all occasions , and how they study to hide it from those whom it doth concern , to the end they may feed them with lyes more easily , the truth being kept from them . after that the commissioners had sent , as we have said , to the army two severall dispatches , the house of commons think it fit likewise to send some of their number to the scotish army , to see how things went in the said army , and to hasten it south-ward ; who met the army about rippon , and come along with it no nattingham , where those gentle-men leave the army , and come back to the houses , whom they acquainted with the truth of all things , as namely , of the good condition of the army , consisting in a fair number of brave commanders and lusty souldiers , of their ability and readinesse to do service . which relation , as it did content and please honest men , so it did gal and vexe the malignants of all kindes . but with what difficulties of want of provisions and of carriage the army had to struggle with in this march , and hath had formerly , yea , hath to this day , for any thing i know , except things be mended of late , as now i hope they are , or at least will be shortly , is beyond expression , partly through the neglect of some , partly through the malice of others , ( and that not of the meaner sort ) who make their study , not onely to furnish no encouragement to these who are come for their help ; but also , give them all the distaste they can , to make them weary of the service , yea , to make them do things by the law of necessity to keep themselves from starving , which otherwayes they would not , and so make them odious to those for whose good they are come into this countrey . if this were done by an open enemy , yea , by those who declare themselves to be indifferent , it were to be in some kinde digested ; but , it is done by those who would make men beleeve , that they are not onely most addicted to the good cause ; but also , that they are advancers of the service , whereas they make onely the cause serve for a cloke to their ambition and avarice , in their heart caring for nothing , howsoever they make a shew otherwayes , but to compasse their own ends , whereunto a shew of affection to the good cause doth contribute , namely , where they have any credit . but , to leave off complaining of those who are neither faithfull nor honest to the cause , in thus useing the scots , i ( going on in my discourse ) will say a word or two , in this place , to the clearing of three things , whereof the first is concerning the moneys received by the scots for their pay , since their first undertaking either in ireland or in england unto this day . the next is , how and what provisions they have had for their going on with the service , either here or in ireland . the third is , of the disorders committed by the scots in their armies , either in england or in ireland . first , i assure you , in the name of the scots , that their earnest desire is , that all these things in particular be exactly tryed by the law of arms , and in equity judged , where the failings are , and by whom and how , to the end that every one may have his due of praise or of shame , of thanks or of blame , of recompense or of punishment , of remembrance or of oblivion , according as the cause shall require : and the sooner this be done , the better it will , for the service of the publike , and the encouragement of honesty , and the repressing of wickednesse . in the mean time i will tell you in generall , that what money is received by the scots , is far short of what they ought to have , and that they could wish their armies in england ( to say nothing of their forces in ireland ) had as much money for six weeks , as the other forces , employed in the service with them , have in two weeks ; and this without jealousie , or envie that others are look●d and cared for ; yet there is no reason why they should be neglected , since they are constantly following the publike service with activity and faithfulnesse . there is a great stir of sending money to them , and far greater of raising it for them , although they receive but a very small proportion , in regard either of what is allowed for them , and lesse of what is due unto them , and least of all , what is said to be levied for them ; wherefore , i say again , they are most desirous of fair reckonings among friends ; let the payment come when it may , the most pressing necessity being supplied . next , for provisions , besides the smalnesse of them , they come so slowly , i must say again , that when they are upon their march , they are constrained to stay three dayes in one place against their will , for one dayes provision , and draughts can hardly be had for their march : as it hath been in their march , so it is in their abode , witnesse their being ten dayes before hereford , not seeing bread but one day , all the rest liying upon beanes , green corn , and fruits . in these they are so crossed , that it seems to be done expresly , for the disenabling them , so far as may be , to do the publike service answerable to their own desire and readinesse , and to the expectation of the kingdom . as for the disorders said to be done in the army , as it is acknowledged that they are not angels of light , without feeding , being but poor infirme men , they cannot but fall and do amisse , in many and many a thing ; so they are not cameleons to live upon the air , but are of such constitutions , that they must have more solid food of necessity for their subsistance , which now and then they cannot come by so orderly as should be . yet i dare be bold to say , that the scots army is as well regulated , as most armies are , without vanity be it said ; and that exorbitancy or scandall is no sooner known , but it is censured & punished according to its degree , by ecclesiasticall and military law ; and that no complaint is made , but it is heard and answered , according to equity and reason : yea , proclamations are made to incite every one that hath any complaint , to repaire unto the prime-officers , or counsell of war : yet let the leaders do what they can , some slips will fall out among the souldiers that are not allowable ; and indeed the commanders cannot be altogether so exact as otherways they would be with the souldiers , since the pay is so slow , and so little of it at a time , and provisions so scarce and so hardly had ; for when the bellie is thus extreamly pinched , it were hard measure to beat the back . when the scots army came to nottingham , the generall sent a letter subscribed by himself , and two more , unto the committee of both kingdoms , whereby , in few words , he tels how that the scots employed in this service of the common cause , have had , and have to this day , very harsh usage and hard measure in divers fashions , even from these who not onely by the common interest of both nations , are bound to be then friends and brethren ; but also , from these who formerly made a particular shew of friendship unto them : yet , notwithstanding all this , he declareth how that with hearty earnestnesse , they are in readinesse to go on faithfully and resolutely with the work : but , judging that a view of the letter it self , would give satisfaction to many , i have thought fit to set down here a true copy of it , furnished unto me by a friend . a letter of the scots generall at nottingham to the committees of both kingdoms . my lords and gentlemen , the continuance of a firme union and good correspondance betwixt the kingdoms , is so much in our thoughts and wishes , as that without it , we can expect no better then the weakning , yea , the undoing of this common cause , and the strengthening of the common enemies ; and , although there be neither few nor small occasions and discouragements from the misrepresentation of our actions , and misapprehension of our intentions , from the cooling , if not changing , of that affection formerly expressed , both towards our selves , and towards divers of our countrey-men , who have deserved well for their abilities and faithfulnesse in the publike ; and from the usage and entertainment of this army , which is neither to that which other armies in this kingdom do receive , nor according to the treaty between the kingdoms , nor at all certain , such as can avoid the hatred and discontent of the people , whose affections and good will we desire to carry along with us ; yet , notwithstanding all these , and the like discouragements , our actions have been , are , and shall be reall testimonies of our constant resolution to pursue actively the ends expressed in the covenant , and to adventure our selves , and whatsoever is dearest to us , in this cause ; and that , as we had great reason to march into westmerland , in regard of the intelligence both then and since confirmed to us , so we have been as ready and willing to come south-ward , as we were desired by the honourable houses of parliament and by your lordships : and we have marched with more speed , and lesse interruption , then is usuall in such cases ; yea , our march had been more speedy , if we had not been stayed in some places , for want of draughts and provisions ; and now we are , with the assistance of god almighty , to undertake any action which may be fittest for the cause and safety of both kingdoms . but , if ( which god forbid ) for want of the conjunction and assistance promised , or for want of necessary provisions , the publike work be retarded , or disappointed , we shall be blamelesse . and therefore we do recommand to your lordships most serious deliberation , that some more effectuall and speedy course may be taken for necessary provisions to this army , that both officers and souldiers may have in all orderly and constant way , not onely a part of their pay in victuals , but , a part in money , for their other necessary uses : and in case of our conjunction with any other forces of this kingdom , that then the provisions of this army be no worse then of those other forces : which things as they are just in themselves , so they are the rather desired , that this army be not burthensome , nor hatefull to the counties where we come , and that we may not be redacted to the unhappy necessity of not punishments wrongs and disorders strictly , which as we have not onely forbidden by the strictest edicts , but have exemplarly and severely punished , so shall we ever be ready upon complaint and proof of the fact , either to punish the same by death , or other condigne punishment , according to the quality of the offence . we further intreat and expect , that this war might be managed according to the treaty by the committees of both kingdoms upon the place ; and for that end , that a quorum of the commissioners from the honourable houses of parliament , may be constantly with this army ; and that your lordships may entertain charitable thoughts of our proceedings , confident that according to the knowledge which god hath given us in the matters of our profession , we shall improve all opportunities to the best advantage . we shall not need to put your lordships in remembrance how necessary it is , that before the armies of either or of both kingdoms undertake the besieging of any town , they first endeavour a totall dissipation of all the forces which the enemy hath in the fields ; and so much the rather , because , by the blessing of god , the dissipation shall be more easie , if the armies of both kingdoms be continually aiding and assisting each one to other , and that each act their part and attend the enemies motions . what we have written to your lordships , we desire it may be made known to both houses of parliament , and city of london . and above all , that your lordships would with all earnestnesse presse the expediting of the reformation of religion , and uniformity in church-government , together with the speedy prosecuting and ending of this war , that we may return home with the comfort of religion , and peace setled , the fruits of our endeavours , much wished and longed for , by nottingham 12 june , 1645. your lordships most humble servants leven . calendar . hamilton . we have heard how the parliament of england sent commissioners into scotland , to call in the scots unto its help , and to capitulate with them concerning their in-coming : we have heard also , how that commissioners were sent from scotland hither , to be at the drawing up of the covenant betwixt the two nations ; who ever since have constantly assisted the synod in the discussion of church-affaires , more according to agreement betwixt the nations : thereafter , there was other commissioners sent hither to share with the parliament in the managing of state-businesses of peace and war , wherein now both kingdoms are jointly ingaged . to this effect , the houses of parliament chuseth a certain number of lords and commons , to treat of all things concerning peace and war jointly with the scots , and so together they make up the committee of both kingdoms , wherein the scots have a negative voice ; and nothing is done , or at least ought to be done , without their knowledge and consent , concerning peace or war , directly or indirectly , all play under boord , and clandestine dealing , being forbidden to both equally , upon the reason of the common interest of both . those who had been adverse unto the in-coming of the scots to help the parl. were much against the setting up of this committee ; but at last , after some debate , the thing is done in spite of opposition : so the committee is set afoot for a certain time of some few moneths , by ordinance of both houses . the time prefixed for the sitting of the committee is no sooner expired , but those same men , with the aid of others , whom they had stirred up to that purpose , cast in difficulties , and will by no means give consent for the continuance of this committee : so for some dayes it is broken up ; then earnest work there was to get it restablished again ; but all to small purpose , till in the end , there is found one clause in the ordinance for the setting it up at first , which did serve for the restablishing of it , maugre those who did oppose it . since that time , it hath continued constantly to this day , although not without vexation to some , namely , because the committee could not sit without the scots being present . now the scots called and joined with the english to manage the affaires of the publike service , for the common cause of church and state ; at first , they did think that they were to have nothing , or at least , little ado , but to put forward the publike service with earnestnesse and vigour , against the common enemy , without any let here by any of their own party ; and so , they resolve with themselves to be very modest and tender , with all warinesse in their proceedings with their brethren of england , who had called them hither upon such assurance , and were so kinde unto them in their expressions , yea , so carefull of them , that they would have them to lodge neerer for their own convenience , and that of their friends going to visit them ; and so the scots remove from the city , where they had lodged in former time , and are placed in worcester-house , where now they lodge . those who pretend to know more of the mysteries of the world then other men , tell us , that the removing of the scots from the city to worcester-house , was not so much the convenience of the scots , or of their friends , which was intended , although so given out , as their weaning from their old friends in the city , who formerly had been so usefull and so respective to them , by a cunning forcasting of some men , to wear them out of acquaintance and intimacie with the city , being afraid not to carry on things so easily , according to their intent , if the scots were constantly intime and familiar with the city . whatever the end of removing the scots from the city was , it is fallen out so , that the scots being at such a distance , have not been able to cherish and nourish their former intimacie and old friendship with the city , as they are bound in gratitude carefully to do , and as the publike service requireth , joint with their own advantage . thereafter , the scots finde a harder task then they had promised unto themselves in the beginning ; for , besides the great and main work against the common enemy , they find some few men , here in the party whereunto they are joyned for the service of the common cause of religion and liberty in all the three kingdoms , who do not onely shew them but small favour ; but also , as far as can be without open breach , crosse and oppose them , and , in them , the publike service : first , those who from the beginning did not approve of their in-coming , for fear they should eclipse their lustre , and diminish their power , was cold and adverse to them . next , some others of those who had most bestirred themselves , and most appeared in the calling in of the scots to help , having done the work of their in-bringing , lay down a new ground for the reparing the breach of their own credit , which by the miscarriage of things , namely in the west , as we have said before , had been much diminushed , and by degrees make up their credit upon the decline of the others ; whereunto their earnestnesse for the scots did much serve , and the scots intimacy with them , for many gave willingly way unto them , when they did see them so intime with the scots , whom they knew to have no by-ends ; and those men , on the other side , did endear themselves unto the scots by sundry good offices for a time , which they did unto them in things concerning their forces in england & ireland , employed in the common service ; and by their constant and frequent courting of the scots , they did so take them up , that they alone , almost , were admitted to any privacy : then some did laugh in their sleeve , to see a few , not so considerable before , bear such a sway and the scots , led thus by the nose ; and others did complain , saying , why should this be ? it was expected , the scots commissioners should have been open and free to all honest men , namely to those of worth ; yea , they ought to have been so for the good of the publike service , and for their own credit , not captiving themselves as it were to some few ones . further , it was said , that they should have pressed home businesses more stoutly and more freely then they did , as they had done in former times in their own particular affaires , when they had not so many professed and powerfull friends , letting nothing passe of that was , clearly for the good of the publike . by this complying complaisance , the scots commissioners have given such advantage to those who for a time courted them most for their own ends , as it seems ; for , if it had been altogether for the publike , the scots remaining constant to their point and principles , although with lesse vigour , i confesse , then i could wish , those men had not changed , for ends , which when they had obtained , one after another , did withdraw from the scots , and in a short time point-blank oppose them , by whose help , they chiefly had raised their hight of reputation and opinion among men . the first and main occasion of mistake betwixt those men and the scots , was the church-government . when the scots did engage themselves in this common businesses , they did stipulate with the english commissioners , then in scotland , that they should go heartily & freely along with them , in setling the government and discipline of the church , as it was thereafter sworn to by both kingdoms , in the national covenant . and when the scots commissioners came hither , and entred into the synod , they found it had sat long , and advanced but small businesses ; as for the government , they had not touched it at all , which in all appearance was kept off by a slight of prelatists and sectaries , to stop the setling of the church according to the best way , expressed thereafter in the covenant . the scots seeing the losse of time , and the evils which were likely to follow , if there were no set government in the church ; presently moveth the synod to fall to the discipline and government ; which they do , and therein a great deal of pains is taken in setting out the truth , and refuting the errors of ignorants , and oppositions of head-strong wilfull men , who prefer the setting up of their own chymerick fancies , and utopian dreams , to the peace of the church ; wherefore i may justly say , whatsoever gifts or endowments they have , whether of preaching or of praying , of languages , or sciences , since they want charity , they have nothing ; for , if they had the least grain of charity , they would not thus disturb the church . i adde , he that sacrificeth the peace of the church to the idol of his own imagination , is as he who causeth his children passe through the fire to moloch . after much strugling , things being brought neer a conclusion , some of those upon whose friendship the scots had till then so much relyed , did declare themselves to be altogether adverse to the government the scots were so desirous of : whereat , the scots were much astonished : first , because the assurances given by those men unto them , in the beginning of their engagement , for furthering the church-government intended ; next , by reason of the covenant , whereby the scots conceive us all to be bound unto the government of the church according the word of god , and the best reformed church abroad , and namely to the government of the church of scotland . ever since that day to this day , those men having withdrawn their temporary affection from the scots , have opposed their counsells , and crossed their proceedings , in every thing wherein they are concerned , as far as in them lieth : and this they do not onely themselves , but , draw others for humane respects , to side with them in so doing . yea , some there be of this phantasticall opinion in this kingdom , who stick not to say , that they will rather choose to joyn with popery , prelacy , and with whatsoever blasphemy , or heresie , then to submit to the government of the church by presbyterie : such is the phrenesie of those mad men . as those men we spoke of a little above , were , in what they could , against the in-bringing of the scots , and thereafter did oppose the setting afoot and the continuance of the committee of both kingdoms ; so those second men , of late , have grumbled , yea to some of them words have escaped , that it was a trouble for the committee to have the scots adjoints : yea , it seems there was a designe to do busines without the scots , and that of great moment , wherein the both nations are concerned , as may appear , namely , by naming and assembling of a sub-committee without knowledge of the scots : wherewith the scots acquainted the houses by their papers , given in by them about the midle of may last . further , the secret intelligence for the surprising and taking of oxford , ( at aneasie place ) then unfurnished with provisions , given by one patric naper , to a sub-committee of three , whereof , there was one of them a scot , is neglected : notwithstanding the scots did presse it much , that the thing should be tryed ; they could not prevaile : the excuse was , that till the army , then a moulding , was in a perfect frame , they would undertake nothing . more , the enemy is acquainted with the secret advice of the enterprise , and that particularly , who before had not taken notice of the weaknesse of the place named by the advice ; which the enemy finding to be true , repaires and strengthens . all this then , is known to be true by intercepted letters , which have not been communicated to the scots commissioners , notwithstanding the common interest . i am much mistaken , if it was the scot who discovered the advice to the enemy : be it who will , let him lay his hand to his heart , and giving glory to god , confesse his own wickednesse ; for at last , it will be discovered to his shame , i am perswaded . when the army was moulded , according to the mind of some few men , then oxford must be besieged , and the enemy suffered to run up and down , increase his forces , and spoile the countrey , yea , to bring all to a great hazard . yet the new army must lie before oxford , wherein there was not the men by third part requisite to such a siege ; far lesse to take in the town : yea , those men who were there , were not furnished with materials for the the siege . but , many think there was no intention to take the town by open siege , by those who were contrivers of the designe , since they neglect to trye if it could be done by surprise & secret enterprise : all this while , the chief commander was most ready to act his part faithfully and gallantly , as he hath done happily since . from this siege , the scots not onely do openly dissent , but also , did protest against it : yet , when the thing was cried out upon , not only at home , but abroad , by forrainers , who said , that the enemy was devouring the flesh , while the parliaments forces were gnawing the bone ; & they did not stick to say , that fair dealing was not every where . more , the party of horses which were ordained to follow the enemy , was recalled back , against the advice of the scots ; who having acquainted the houses of parliament with those passages , should have made known to the whole world , that after their own constant integrity , & simple sincerity , more and more made known to all , in these things , and the faults of others sifted out , and they not bearing the blame of other mens errors , the service of the publike might go the better on . further , it was given out , that the scots notcoming south-ward , was the occasion of all these disorders committed by the enemy . but , let reason judge , whether or not , it was easier for an army , provided with all things for the field and marching , within very few miles of the enemy , to follow him , disturbe him , and stop him from increasing his forces , and doing evil , then to an army above two hundred miles distant , who notwithstanding their willingnesse and readinesse to march , according to their calling southward , could get neither draughts , nor absolutely necessary provisions for a march , in such a proportion as was thought very reasonable . the truth of this may appear , what troubles generall lesley found at rippon , to get provisions and draughts , and how he went to york to that effect , but to very small purpose . let things be tryed , and no longer thus carried in hugger-mugger , to the prejudice of the publike service . we have heard , how that , and upon what occasion , some of those , who had been so intimate with the scots commissioners , leave them , neglect them , and oppose them in their proceedings , so far as they can in a smooth-way above board , to say nothing of what is done under-hand . so in this place , you shall take notice , how that , on the other side , there be divers of those , who formerly had cared so little for the scots , that they neither favoured their in-coming , nor thereafter had assisted them so willingly , in their honest & faithful endeavour for the advancement of the publike service ; now , at last , bethinking themselves of their own error , and how that , without reason , they had been jealous of the scots , they begin to go along with them more freely and earnestly in the publike work , then they had done heretofore ; which the scots , minding mainly the furthering of the service of the common cause , take kindly at their hands , and welcome the expressions of their good affection to the service , with respective civilitie ; wishing from their heart , that those who are now withdrawn from them , would return unto their wonted correspondence , in sincere and brotherly unanimity , for carrying on the heavy and tedious work , now lying upon them all . upon this , there is great murmuring against the scots , that they had quite left off honest and well-affected men , and taken semi-malignants by the hand , who not onely had been slack and backward in the pursuance of the publike service ; but , adverse unto themselves in particular . to all this , the scots do declare truely , that as when they came hither at first , they took no interest in any man more then they judged him , in all appearance , to interest himself heartily , without by-ends , in the common cause ; and , as yet , they do the same , resolved to continue so unto the end , constant to their first principles : and , if any men have withdrawn themselves from them , not willing to go constantly along with them in this necessary course , they are sorry for those , of whose constancy they were in a kind assured : and they declare to the world , that they neither gave , nor intend to give any just distaste in their particular to any : but , if men will snuff , because they are not humeured in all things , who can help it ? the scots did think , at their coming in , to have nothing a do with children and women , who must be humeured ; but , with set and staid rationall men , without any by-respects , or private fancies , wholly constants to the cause both of church and state , as we are all sworn by the solemn oath of the nationall covenant : as for those , who having cast off their former mistakes , now go along with them more earnestly then formerly in the businesses , they cannot but welcome them , as all those , who put to their helping-hand heartily in the least kinde to the great work of god , and of his people ; howsoever their carriage have been towards their persons , for the publike ( they having no spleen nor grudge at any ) forget whatsoever hath been amisse towards them , praying god to forgive , that his work may be carried on more cheerfully and unanimously , and they are likewise disposed and enclined towards those ( who have left them off ) to go along with them , so freely and so brotherly as at the first ; & they will imbrace them cheerfully , in carrying on the businesses of church & state with them . this they declare not to captive men by cunning insinuation , as factious ones do ; but to invite all men fairly to go on with the work of church and state , according to the covenant , as they hope a blessing from heaven , if they be zealous and faithfull , without equivocation ; and may expect judgement , if they either faint or be not sincere . of this enough for this time . yet , there is one thing i cannot passe , and it is this : there be hardly any divisions among these of this side , of which the blame is not laid upon the scots ; as if they had not had their jealousies one of another , and grudges one against another , by reason of particular interest and private opinion , before the scots did join with them ; when it is well known , that the scots assistance , faithfull in the counsell , and active in the field , is not onely usefull and necessary for the opposing and repressing of the common enemy ; but also , for keeping together those , who otherwayes in a likelyhood , would fall asunder , and so the publike service suffer , at which the enemy aimes . then i adde , that the enemy , howsoever low he seems to be at this instant , desires to have no better game , then that the scots would retire and withdraw their helping hand from the service ; for he that of nothing made a party so great as to carry all before it , till he was repressed by the scots , would raise up his party again . but , in despite of the devil , and all opposition , whether clandestin or open ; the scots will stand firm and faithfull , for the carrying on of the work of god , and of his people . after a certain time , the states of both kingdoms , resolved to try yet again if they could reclaime and recall , upon any reasonable terms , the abused and misled prince , from his evil courses of undoing thē people and himself , cause draw up certain propositions by common counsell of both nations , which they send by commissioners of both states , to the king ; in whom they find nothing but shifts and delays : so they return without effectuating any thing . a while thereafter , the infortunate prince intending to make the simpler sort beleeve , that he was defirous , at last , of a reall agreement , sends hither commissioners ( of whose honest meaning , the people did least doubt ; but in the end , they were found to be cajeolors ) to draw things towards a treaty , unto which the scots declared themselves to be inclined , ( the main businesses of church and state being secured ) as willing to try all means possible , upon all occasion , to take up the differences in a fair way , to save further effusion of christian and brothers blood , and further ruine of those countreys . for this , the scots are cried out upon , as evil men , ( by inconsiderate persons , set on by malignants ) notwithstanding the treaty goe's on , but to small purpose ; the kings commissioners feeling the pulse of the parliaments commissioners , did promise unto themselves , upon what ground they know best , or at least should know , that they could carry all things to their mind , if it were not for the rude and stiffe-necked scots , who were so firm to their principles , and resolved rather to follow on the work with honour and conscience , although with hazard and danger , then to yeeld to a base agreement , to the prejudice of church and state . upon this , the court-commissioners cry out against the scots , as the onely hinderers of their ends , and the stoppers of their designes , first at home in their own countrey , next here , both in the fields and in the counsell . by this , you may see , if there were no other instance , with whom and against whom the scots have ado : what was the carriage of the scots commissioners , in the treaty of both church and states affaires ; let both parties freely tell , if they did find in the least point of honesty , faithfulnesse , resolution , prudence , knowledge , or respect amissing in them . but , the treaty ends , without any conclusion for good , nothing being intended by the court in it , but to gaine time , & more & more to abuse the people , and so make the best advantage of businesses . things having been carried in the field , almost ever since the beginning of these wars , namely the last summer , not so well as they might have been , for the advancement of the publike service , by the fault of some of those who were employed in the said service ; whether it was want of skill , want of care , or want of sincerity and uprightnesse , in pursuance of the businesse , i will not in this place enquire , lesse will i resolve ; but , a fault there was , and that a great one , and much amisse . wherefore , the parliament , upon just reason , having tryed divers times to amend the errors of the armies , and correct what was wrong in them in a fair and smooth way , but all to small purpose ; takes resolution to reform wholly the armies , and cast them in a new mould . whereof the scots commissioners heairng , for their interest in the common cause , think fit for them to remember the parliament of two things principally upon the point ; whereof the first was , that in the new mould wherein the armies were to be cast , care should be taken to make choice of men of experience and ability , so far as was possible , to do the better the duties of the service ; for although now and then men ignorant of what they undertake , may do perchance a thing well ; yet it stands that it should be so , not with reason , which must rule all actions . the next was , that diligent care should be taken , for admitting none to employment in the armies , but such as were trusty and faithfull to the cause now in hand , as it is expressed in the nationall covenant : wherefore , it was desired , that every one employed , in testimony of his honesty and faithfulnesse to the cause , should take the covenant publikely . the scots took occasion to give these advices to the parliament , upon information given them , first , that divers new men , and of little or no experience , were preferred by indirect means , and were to be employed in places of command , for by ends : then , that there were divers likewise named for preferment and employment , who not onely were suspect to be enclining to schismes and sects ; but also , professed enemies to what is expressed in the nationall covenant concerning the church , and consequently , to the common cause we are all sworn to . these advices of the scots , although they were not so much regarded as was needfull , yet they did produce this effect , that divers men of known worth and experience , were named to be kept in the new mould , although many were put out , and new men unknown for military vertue put in their places . next , after a great debate in the houses , it is ordained that all the commanders should take the covenant , under pain of cashiering , betwixt such and such a day : but how this order is observed , i know not , i doubt it is not so well as it should be : as for the common souldiers , it was not to be pressed upon them , which makes men admire , not well knowing the reason of things , how that the prisoners souldiers taken of the enemy should have the oath tendred unto them , in token of their embracing the parliaments party and cause , and these souldiers of the parliaments own side , are not to be tyed to the oath of the nationall covenant : further , all suspected men brought before the committees , namely of examination , have the oath put to them , which if they refuse , they are censed malignants ; yet the parliaments souldiers are to be free from the oath , if they please . yea , many were astonished to hear that it was debated in the houses , whether those of the armies should be put to the oath of the solemn league , or no , whereunto the houses themselves are sworn to , and for the maintenance of which , we all now stand , or at least we ought to stand , being sworn to it . the reason why some men are backward to take the oath , is that they are adverse to the government of the church by presbytery , which the parliament is now a setling , although the businesse do not go on so quickly as by many is wished , by reason of so many rubs cast in by severall sorts of men , partly through ignorance , partly in opposition to the thing , for reasons far others then those they hitherto have given out , howsoever specious . at this occasion , it was spoken publikely by one who is a prime man among those who are adverse from the government above-named of the church , that , although in his judgement , he did not approve presbyteriall . government in the church , yet he , at all times , would submit to whatsoever church-government the parliament should settle , either by passive or active obedience . to this is answered ; whosoever sayeth that he will obey an order or law by passive obedience , is already actively in disobedience . further , to call obedience passive , is as great an absurditie , as to call black white : for obedience is nothing at all but the act of obeying , and to call an act passive , is absurd , action and passion being more different then black and white , for they are toto genere , distant ; and black and white are under unum genus , not onely summum of quality , but also subaltern of colour . further , all vertue consists in action ; so obedience being a vertue , cannot be said to be passive , that is , in passion . wherefore , he who first did invent the expression of passive obedience , did not weigh what he said , no more then those who since , not considering the exact distinction of things , have taken it up at the second hand , and have made so generall use of it . he who thinks that , by his passion , he giveth obedience unto the law , is mightily mistaken ; for , suffering , or passion , is laid upon a man for his not obeying , and to make him obey . example : a man for debt is put in prison ; the emprisonment which the debtor suffers is not obedience to the law , but one means employed to bring him unto the obedience thereof , that is , unto the paying of the debt . i know , divines speak much of the passive obedience of christ ; but this is of another condition , and so it belongs to another place . besides , he who offers unto the houses his passive obedience , endeavours what he can , and pleads earnestly to be free from it , as we have seen published by writing . then also , it was said publikely by one , that the main quarrell the parliament stood for at first , and thereafter did take up arms for , was not for religion ( which is as much to say , the main different betwixt the parliament and the corrupt court-papists , prelatists , atheists , and divers other instruments of iniquity , who having sworn inimity to the truth , opposeth it with all their cunning and power ) not the reformation of the church ; but , the freedom and liberty of the subject . which saying is injurious , in my mind ; for , to aver or publish , that the parliament did not from thē beginning intend a true reformation of religion , is a great wrong done to the wisdom of the parliament ; for how can the parliament be said or thought to be wise in god , without it hath his fear before its eyes ? and how can the parliament be said to have the fear of god before its eyes , if it hath not care of the establishing the truth of religion , and to represse the errors ? i cannot conceive ; for without the true worship of god , there can be no true fear of him : then it is most false ; for , from the first beginning , did not the parliament expresse , that it namely intended a true reformation , by divers instances , although now and then it hath been at a stand how to go through with it , by reason of the lets that the enemies of the truth have cast in , and cast still in to this day , by open opposition , and clandestine undermining ? witnesse the pulling down of the high commission-court , the courbing of the prelats tyranny , the making silenced ministers freely preach ; and so soon is the occasion offers it self , is it not embraced , to throw the prelats out of the church as enemies to the truth of god ? then the calling of the synod : which things , with divers more , the parliament had never done , if it had not intended mainly the reformation of the church and of religion . i must confesse , the businesses in the synod did go on but very remisly , before the scots joyning , by the nationall covenant , with the parliament , who hath since pressed it somewhat more home ; and yet it goeth on but very slowly , not so much by the open opposition of the professed enemy , as by the crafty infinuations of some phantasticall and factious men , who having endeared themselves by some expression of good offices to the people , have buzzed the parliament in the ear , they must not anger them for fear of losing so many good friends , who give themselves out to be in great number , although if things were tryed , it should be found that their number is far short of what is said of it , and their affection to the publike lesse ; for , i shall never beleeve , that those who are for confusion in the church , are for the setled ordering of the state . further , if the parliament did not make religion at first its main quarrell it stood for , and took arms for , i pray you then , when did the parliament begin to make the reformation of the church its main quarrell , at the joyning of the scots by the nationall covenant , perhaps you will say ? if so be , when england hath a setled reformation of the church , according to the word of god , the practice of the first ages , and of the best reformed church now adayes , it may thank their poor friends distressed at this time for their sake . i am assured , he that sayeth that the parliament did not intend mainly reformation from the beginning , careth but little for it himself . next , he makes the main quarrell of the parliament to be the freedom and liberty of the subject : if under the notion of freedom and liberty , were understood first a free & libr● profession of the truth in a setled reformed church , as aforesaid , it were well ; and in the second place , the honest freedom and just liberty in externall things ; such is the freedom that the truely reformed churches abroad , have constantly sought for to this day , who when they obtain the first , they stand not so much upon the second . but , let us see a little what can be the meaning of the freedom and liberty of the subject , without religion : is it to be free from the vexation of monopolies , projects , ship-moneys , &c. and of some exorbitant courses of judicatory , as of that of the star-chamber ? if in those alone , and no other things , better and more , i beseech you , what benefit hath the subject by the freedom from the court of the star-chamber ? the people say , the committees of one city or county , doeth more wrong in one yeer to the city or county , then the starchamber-court did to the whole kingdom in seven yeers , if all things be well considered ; for it did reach but one man here and there ; but the committees reach almost every man . it is true , the wounds of the star-chamber were very sore & deep , but they were not so frequent , and now then they were mollified by some moderation ; which divers committees will not admit . as for the freedom from ship-money , monopolies , projects , &c. vox populi , sayeth , there be more in taxes and contributions laid upon the people in one yeer , now adayes , then for many yeers in ship-money , &c. yea , which is the worst , this burden must continue , god knows how long , besides the way of levying it by the inferior officers , if the taxes are most grievous ; and the best affected men , for the most part , are most loaden ; such is the cry and complaint of the people through the city and county . so , if the subject had not the gain of a reformed setled church and religion , he were in a worse case then formerly . next , there is found but very little more just and honest liberty for the subject , then before ; onely the sectaries take greater licence then they were wont to do , and phantasticall men , to vent their idle imaginations , and to abuse the simpler ones ; as likewise scurrilous fellows take upon them to say and write what they list against men . all this is a meer licentiousnesse and libertinage tending to the trouble of the people , and not to their good , so far is it from the liberty of honest and discret men , who desireth and ought to live , within the borns of good and wholsome constitutions both of church and state . what is said here of taxes , is not to blame them , for it is known ther must be tribute levied for the supporting of the burdens of the common-wealth , namely , in time of war , for its good and benefit . at the beginning of these wars here in england , betwixt the king and parliament , both parties did draw unto them so many of the scots officers as they could conveniently ; neither of them having in their own opinion such commanders , or , at least , in such number as to make their armies compleat to their mind , of their own men . so the scots were employed in chief and prime places of command , on both sides : hence divers men indifferent , not as yet engaged by affection to either party , conceiving that neither party could have known how to manage , or go on with the war , without the scots commanders , wished them many miles beyond s●n . to the king went and took service of him , not onely divers who had been malignants from the first beginning ; but also , some superficiall covenanters , who not diving in businesses , did make small scrupule to serve the king in this war , it not being against the letter of their covenant , as they conceived : for , the king protesting from day to day , that he would stand firm to the true religion , and maintain it , his intention in taking up arms , being onely to represse some factinus persons who had affronted him : and the parliament not then making it so clear to every one , by their expressions , that the main quarell the adversary had , was the subversion of religion , made some not to discern things so clearly as otherwayes they had done , if things had been more plainly set down . to the service of parliament , come divers in good affection , being perswaded that the quarrell of england , was one and the same with that in scotland , howsoever by the cunning of the adversary disguised , and although not then so cleared by the parliament as was need . the enemy seeing that sundry scots officers and commanders were undertaking service under the parliament , by his emissaries up and down , doeth what he can to draw them on his side , or at least , to make them keep off from serving the parliament . in this , he did prevaile with some , who will have their just reward in due time . then , after the war began , and some fieldactions being done , the enemy perceiving how that divers scots officers had carried themselves gallantly , in the service of the parliament , returns again to his former courses , and deales by his instruments and agents here , to corrupt and debauche those men of command , upon whom the eyes of many were ; the agents of the enemy go craftily to work , to compasse their ends upon those men ; for , first , by cunning insinuations , they enter in privacy with them ; next , they make them fair promises , with specious words of the kings good intentions towards the publike good of both church and state , and of the esteem he had of their worth and deserts : then those good agents for the enemy , under-hand cause give distaste to the scots officers , by neglecting of them , and otherwayes , yea , by some boutefeux there were of them quarelled in westminster-hall , with reproch that they took the meat out of the english months , who could manage and pursue the war as well , atleast , as they . if this quarell had not been timely taken up , by the wisdom of the parliament , it had grown to a great hight , according to the designe and desire of the enemy . this crafty dealing of the adversary , by his agents , did prevaile so far , that some of the scots officers , not so touched with the interest of the good cause , as they ought to have been , nor as they outwardly professed , left off the service of the parliament for a time , upon i know not what foolish excuse ; and thereafter , upon a change , fell to the work again . next , there were others so far perswaded , as to lay down their commissions , and go to the enemy and serve him for a while ; and thereafter leaving him , returned hither again . the scots officers with the enemy , were in high esteem , and in good respect among those they did serve , till the state of scotland joyned with the parliament of england , in action for the common cause ; from thence , by little and little , the scots , with the enemy , became so to be neglected and ill thought of , that there were many of them constrained to go away , and others have been taken and killed by this side , so that , for the present , there be very few , at least of any note , with the enemy . on this side likewise , the scots officers , notwithstanding the state of scotland was now interessed and joyned with the parliament , by degrees came to be littler regarded , neglected , and divers of them laid aside , after that sundry of them had lost their lives , fighting valiantly for the cause , others had loosed their blood , and others suffered imprisonment , at last ; the moulders of the new modell cashier at one dash above two hundred of them , brave fellows , who constantly had carried themselves with honesty , and gallantry , without giving them any satisfaction , or at least , very little , for what is justly due unto them , and had cost some of them very dear : the reason given out against them , was , that it was to be feared they would not be so earnest and so forward , as was required , in this new frame . then , those cashiered scots commanders having danced attendance a long time , to small purpose , in pursuance of their just demands , constant to their grounds , although they were thus harshly used , they would not abandon the service of the common cause : so , they resolve to go to the forces of their countrey-men , and serve with them in the same cause ; and sends some of them , accompanied with a number of good fellows before , towards the scots army , till the rest were ready . those scots who went away first towards their countrey-men , being upon their journey , they chanced to be at and neer leicester , when the enemy made his approches to that place . the scots , in meer kindnesse and love to those who were engaged with them in the common cause , without any commission from the parliament , or from the scots generall , stay and help their friends : and how manfully their carriage was , in the assistance of their brethren , is so known , that it will never be forgotten , when there is any mention of leicester-businesse . in generall , i will say this of them ; that , if they had been seconded , the town of leicester had not been taken by the enemy ; but , having expected assistance from those whom they came to help , after divers had prodagalized their blood , and that some were killed , with the losse of their liberty and of all they had , they were constrained to yeeld to force , not without being admired by the vainquors for their valour . thereafter , those that were taken prisoners , finding their opportunity , lays hold on it at the first , and they carry the businesse so , that they not onely gaine their own freedom , but make themselves masters of those in whose hands they were . if those things had been done by some other men , all the pamphlets about the city of london , should have been full of them . in this businesse , albeit the scots did expresse their kindnesse really to their friends , and made known their valour to all ; yet , here , i must tell you , they did not shew their prudence ; for , if the enemy had known them to have no commission , ( as they had none ) by law of arms , he had given them no quarter . on the one side , the ignorance of the enemy did hinder him to deal with the scots , being in his power , according to the rigour of the law of arms ; on the other side , their valour and kindnesse , did prevaile little for thanks or recompense , from those , for whose service they had undergone such hazard . when the framers of the new modell cashiered the scots officers we have been speaking of , they named four generall officers of the scots to be kept in the new army ; which some did for the good opinion they had of the worth and usefulnesse of those men , for the service : others did it , lest the people should enquire , why all the scots , at one time ; should be thus put out of service , whose faithfulnesse and forwardnesse was known , being free of the guilt of the late miscarriage of things in the fields . those few officers , although they were named to be kept in the new modell ; they did conceive , that they had tacitcly their quienis est , first , by cashiering their countrey-men , who were known to be well deserving and faithfull men unto the covenant , ( which is the rule of that we fight for ) and by naming them to inferior employments in this new modell , to what they had come to be prefered to by their own vertue . next , by bringing in new men , not acquainted with war , in equall command with them , and under them , and some of these professed not to favour the covenant , unto which the scots were resolved to stick to : so they thought sit to take the course of their other countrey-men , and to lay down their commissions , for fear of further inconvenience , namely , if any mischance should fall out , apprehending the blame should be cast upon them ; and then , they could not expect true fellowship not obeying to orders in the service , of those men , who had another-mind then theirs , which is expressed in the covenant . the disobedience thereafter of some , in the new modell , to the expresse ordinances of parliament , made this apprehension good . upon this , there is a great cry given out against those few scots , who had abandonned the service at such a time of need ; but never a word how that two hundred scots had been put of the service . here , it may be asked , whether those few scots were more in the wrong to the publike service , by laying down their commissions , serving still the same cause , with those who are constant to their principles with them ; then those who put off the service , at one time , two hundred valiant and well deserving men . i could have wished , for my part , that those few men had laid aside all consideration and apprehension , howsoever just , and continued in the modell , leaving the event of things to god . now , it is said , that god hath blessed the honesty and piety of some men extraordinarily , in the new army , so that great things are done by it . i acknowledge with a thankfull heart to god , that he , in his mercy , hath done great things of late by that army ; but , no thank to the honesty and piety of some men ; for , i do not find piety more really in them , to speak with modesty , then in other men : howsoever their externall profession is , let their carriage towards god and man speak for them , and not profession onely ; for , profession oftentimes is a clock of knavery and faction . then , howsoever god , in his good providence , doth great things by weak and inconsiderable men ; yet , i am certain , it is the surest way to employ men of skill and of experience , in any work we are going about ; and surely , we cannot look for a good successe of any businesse whatsoever , when we neglect to employ those whom god hath fitted with ability for the work , if we can have such . i know , god is above all rule ; but this is the ordinary course , both with god and among men ; the examples are so clear in all businesses among the sons of men , that it is idle to alleadge any ; onely i shall say , that there is more of this choice of fit men to be remarked in the war , then in any other thing among men , as it hath been observed of old , by judicious men : yet god , in war , more then in any thing else , sheweth his over-ruling power , and that he is above the ordinary course of things . but , to put god to shew here his over-ruling hand , in a extraordinary way , without need , is a kinde of tempting of him ; for , since he hath , in his wise dispensation , ordained an ordinary course for doing of businesses , to be used by men fitted by him for the work , he promised tacitely his blessing thereunto , providing alwayes that we rely more upon him , then the second causes . more , in all this successe there was never more seen of god , and lesse of men ; and those men who would make men beleeve , that their honesty and piety shines above others , have but small share in action , for any thing i can yet hear . a word more : it was not without a mystery , that so many gallant officers of both nations , were cashiered under pretext of want of piety and honesty , being free of any guilt of the former miscarriages ; and yet the ordinary souldiers kept still in the service , whose piety is known to be lesse , as men of little and small breeding , and so , of lesse knowledge of god and of themselves , and consequently , not so given to the practice of goodnesse , and so abstract from evil ; having but small light , they cannot do so well as others , who have better breeding then they ; and , upon mistake , they may more easily be brought over to do what is amisse , for themselves and for others , yea , for the publike service of church and state , and so become a prey to abusers and deceivers . moreover , there is a great stir about carlile , now in the hands of the scots , for the service of the parliament . for the better understanding of things , we shall take them at a further rise . so long as these two kingdoms were under two severall princes , carlile and berwick were two garison-towns upon the frontiers ; but so soon as these kingdoms did come unto one princes hands , those places were ordered to be forsaken , and their fortifications rased , and to be no more a partition-wall ; which was done accordingly , and so they remained for many yeers , till of late , that is , till the beginning of the first troubles of the scots with the abused king , who caused then repair those places in some kinde , and put garrisons in them . thereafter , at the first pacification upon the frontiers , betwixt the king and the scots , those places were to be relinquished , as they had been formerly . by the articles of agreement , at the second pacification , the same was confirmed , and that by the authority of this same parliament , now sitting , gathered together , continued and preserved by the help and aid of the scots . the king , beginning his barbarous war against the parliament , makes carlile sure , which by degrees insensibly he furnisheth with a strong garison & munition accordingly , as a place fit for his purpose , for vexing of the scots , upon occasion , whom he did foresee would not side with him in this wicked designe , if they were not opposite unto him ; and for receiving his irish rebels , to do mischief to both kingdoms as they pleased , if they were not stopped . and so , since then , he hath kept it , till within these few dayes ; and it hath served for a seat and a passage for troubling both kingdoms . the houses of parliament , on the other side , a little latter , possesse themselves of berwick , which the king did not regard so much , as not so considerable for his purpose , and also , it was too much in the eyes of men to be seised upon , by him , at the first beginning . when the scots come into england , at this time , to help their brethren , who had been so kinde unto them in their troubles , and whose fathers had assisted their fathers , in the cause of reformation and liberty ; by agreement betwixt the parliament and them , they had berwick delivered up unto them , for facilitating their entrie , and advancing the service they engaged themselves in : and if carlile had been in the power of the parliament then , it had been delivered unto the scots , without any more ado , as freely as berwick was for the very same reason . yea , more , if it had been required then , it had been promised unto the scots : i do not mean of necessity ; but of meer consideration to the publike cause . now , the northern countrey of england , through gods mercy , being pretty well cleared , by the help of the scots , of the open professed and declared common enemy ; it is thought fit , first to block up , and then to besiege carlile : the scots undertake the businesse , and to this purpose , sent of their army thither a party of both horse and foot , under the command of a generall officer , and he hath some forces of the countrey to assist and help him , in the performance of the service ; which the scots did not so hardly presse as to storm the town , for sparing of blood , which they are loth to shed , if the businesse can be carried on otherwayes , ( witnesse new-castle , where they shunned to shed blood , and being constrained to it , they did shed as little as ever hath been seen upon such an occasion ) so they resolve to take the town by want of necessary provisions . those of the countrey , who were joynt with the scots in the service , were so far from helping them , that , by the treachery of their leaders , they did what they could not onely to hinder the businesse ; but also , to wrong the scots in what was in their power ; for , when they were ordered to keep their own quarters strictly , and suffer nothing to go unto the enemy ; and if he fallied out of the town , to fall upon him : they were so far from performing their order , that when it was in their power to hurt the enemy , they shot powder without bullets at him , and privately , they suffered provision to be carried unto him through their quarters ; yea , by secret combination , they agreed with the enemy , that if he would salley out , and fall upon the scots , quarters , they should yeeld no help unto them , although they were joynt with them in the service . which proceedings of the north countrey-men , by the knavery of their commanders , whereof the chief lately had been in open rebellion against the parliament , under the earl of new-castle ; being made known unto the scots , they had a neerer eye to their actions , and oblige them thereafter to play fairer play : those false and deceitfull leaders , seeing themselves disappointed of their former intents by the care of the scots , go another way to work ; and perceiving by the vigilance of the scots , that the town , receiving no help from without , must render it self ; underhand , and not acquainting the scots , enter in a private treaty with the enemy , and offer him great conditions . this being also discovered by the scots , caused them summon the town , and offer to it reasonable conditions , which the enemy did accept , although they were not so advantagous for him , in all points , as those offered by the others . the reason why the enemy did accept the scots conditions , and not the others , was , first , he could not trust to any condition from those who were so wicked , that they were not trusty to the party they professed themselves to be of , and to their associates . next , the enemy seeing the chief man , among those double ones , to be but an inferior officer , and one who never had seen greater war then the plundering and spoiling of his own countrey , under the earl of new castle , with whom he had been a lievtenant-colonel at the most , and now at this time prefered , for some ends , to be a colonell . then , there was no committee there who could authorize him to capitulate , or make good his capitulation , where the scots were ; for , by agreement betwixt the scots and the parliament , things of consequence in the war , wherein the scots had a hand , were to be ordered by the committee of both kingdoms upon the place , or with the scots army , and that not being , ( as there was none then ) by the scots generall his order ; and so he ordained , according to the first agreement , lievtenant generall david lesley to take in the town , upon such conditions as he should think fit for the good of the publike service , and put a garison in it . those who came out of the town , were conducted unto worcester , who were but six score when they arrived thither , the rest being fallen away in their march , either upon consideration of the publike , or of their own private interest . thus carlile is put in obedience of the parliament , for the publike service , according to the first agreement : and if the scots had not followed the businesse , in all appearance , it either had still remained in the hands of open enemies , or , at least , had fallen in the hands of those malignants , who neither have respect to the credit of the parliament , nor regard to the good of the people ; for they dishonour the one , and waste the other . all the while that the siege was before carlile , there was not onely a neglect , but such a malice against the scots , who were at it , that they had starved for want , if the scots army had not sent a good part of the moneys that they had for their marching and taking the field . thus is the publike served by the countrey-committees , abusing the authority they have from the parliament . after all this , the scots are cryed out upon by malignants ; yea , they write to the houses against them , as enemies to the publike good , to the parliament , and to the people of england , notwithstanding that since the very first beginning of those troubles they have carried themselves faithfully , honestly , and kindly towards england , in despite of all enemies , and particularly towards the parliament , who were the cause of assembling it , continuing it , and preserving it , first , from the great plot made against , next , by actively upholding it when it was very low , as it was at their in-coming . the reason why the scots have put a garison of their own men in carlile , for a time , is from the constitution of the present affaires in both kingdoms ; for , having found such knavery and wicked dealing , by the chief men in the northern countreys , they did not conceive it fit , for the publike service , to put the place in the hands of those , who already possessed with power ( by the unfaithfull commissioners , trusted by the parliament with the ordering of things in those places ) do nothing but oppose the designe of the parliament expressed in the covenant , and oppresse the people , as is made known unto the parliament by the commissioners from those countreys , ( men of credit and worth , who have done and suffered much for the cause against the common enemy ) sent hither from many good people , to complain against those wicked ones , enemies to god and to his people : and when it shall be thought fit for the common good of both nations , now so united , it will with all cheerfulnesse be left by the scots ; and to this , the state of scotland will willingly ingage it self , by all the assurances can be require in reason . the common enemy , since he could not keep out carlile in open war , against the parliament , doth his next best to have it in the malignants , his friends , hands , that at least indirectly , he may do his work ; and since he failed of both those , he striveth by his emissaries and agents to make it an apple of discord betwixt the two united nations : but , this will faile him also , how cunningly soever he goe's about this designe ; for , the wisdom of both states is such , that the mistake will be taken away shortly , and that the state of england will see clearly , the scots , in possessing themselves of carlile , and excluding those wicked ones above-mentioned , have not onely done a good peece of service to the publike and the common cause of both kingdoms ; but also , in particular , to the well-affected people in those parts , who are under the heavy pressure of those wicked ones , and had been far more , if they had more power , whereunto the possession of carlile were such an addition , that it would make them double tyrants and brigants . as the common enemy , not onely by open war by land ; but also , by false undermining by his agents and instruments , who partly are absolutely addicted to his wicked designe , partly by interest of preferment and benefit , although they care but little for his ends in the field , or in the counsell , in the city or in the countrey ; do what they can , with all care and forecasting , to stop the publike service by many and many wayes ; this is known too well to be so little regarded : even so , by sea , he steereth the same course ; for , not onely by open war he doeth oppose the publike work , now in hand , in taking and destroying all that he can ; but likewise , he useth indirect means by the help of his instruments , for the hinderance of the service of the common cause , now in hand . hence it is that the parliaments ships , not so vigorously opposing the enemy , and not giving timely assistance to their friends , interessed in the cause ; so many of the enemy his ships , without resistance , go up and down so freely , and that there are so many ships , barks , &c. both english and scots , taken by the enemies . further , the coasts of scotland are not so carefully garded and kept , as they were promised to be , by agreement ; which hath given and giveth still a great advantage to the enemy , and hath done a great hurt to the friends who are employed in the cause against the enemy , and , in them , to the service of the cause . these things have given occasion of complaints to many men , bemoaning their own condition , and how that the good of the people and the service of the common cause , are no more and better looked to ; yea , some in grief of heart , after their great sufferings , hardly taken notice of by those of whom they expect some redresse , say that not onely there is a great neglect , but , in appearance , there is some secret connivence , by those who should follow this service . but to another businesse : it is known to every one , almost , how that for many and many dayes and meetings , there hath been a great deal ado in the synod , with some few factious and phantasticall head-strong ones ( men without love to the peace of the church of god ) for the government of the church by parochiall presbyteries , subaltern to classicall , and classicall subaltern to synodicall ; which all being , after so many debates with patience , goodnesse , and charity towards those men , demonstrated evidently to be according to the word of god , wherein it is grounded , conform to the practice of the church planted and governed by the apostles and their successors , for above two hundred yeers after christ ; and conform likewise , to the best reformed churches now adayes . but , at length , the thing is concluded upon by the synod , and approved by the houses of parliament , maugre all opposition made by the disturbers of the peace of the church , in the synod , and of the sticklers for them anywhere else . yet , those restlesse spirits will not be quiet ; for , they give out , that they will perform at last the thing they have been so much urged to , and for so long a time ; to wit , they will give unto the publike , the modell of government they would be at , & to which they will stand to : but , those who have a shrewd ghesse at those men , and at their wayes , assure us , that , as they will not tell what they absolutely and positively professe , nor what they would be at ; they will never give a set modell of government unto the publike , whereunto they mind to stand : for , whatsoever they do in opposition of the government above named , they cannot agree among themselves unto any one thing , for , so many heads so many wayes dissonant one from another , according to the nature of untruth and errour , which is uncertain , and not constant to it self . yea , there be some who say , that those men will not settle upon any thing at all , except it be upon continuing in phrenaticall fancies ; and those of the most exacter sort amongst them , are named seekers , not of god , or his truth , and of peace ; but of themselves and of novelties , at the best ; which ever hath , and will be troublesome to the peace of the church . truely , as those factious ones , by rejecting all dependancy , and subalternation of inferior presbytereis to superior , in church-government , have acquired unto themselves the name of independents ; so , if you cast your eyes upon the courses of those mens seeking of preferment and benefit , they may justly all be called seekers : for , there was never a generation , among men , so nimble and so active about preferment and benefit , as those men are . the jesuites are far short of them , howsoever cryed up through the world for this ; for , they run up and down with care and cunning to lay hold on power and moneys , wherin they have come to good speed by their crafty insinuations , and the sillinesse of other men : divers of all ranks , not excepting the higher amongst men , seeing their wayes advantageous , side and cog in with them , for profit and employment . they , on the other side , receive none in their society but those of means and gifts ; poor people and simple are profane in their account : they work hugely with rich mens wives , widdows , and daughters ; and stirring fellows , in any kinde are good for them : and to carry on their businesse more smoothly , they plead for charity , that there may be a charitable interpretation of their carriage and proceeding , when god knows , they are destitute of all charity , first towards the church , in generall , whose peace they disturbe in a high measure , and towards particular men , for they oppresse and afflict every honest man they can reach , in hatred to faithfulnesse unto the good of the church and state , if all were well known and considered ; for those who strive so much for confusion in the church , aime all anarchie in the state , doubtlesse . it is true , there be divers simple well meaning men that are insnared in the opinion of those men , of church-government ; but , good people , who are not of the cabale , nor of the secret faction ; who , i doubt , upon fuller information , will leave the error , and follow the truth . so there be many honest and well meaning people , who adhere and follow the jesuites , who are not acquainted with the mysteries of their iniquity . then , with a great deal of deceit , they cry out igainst the rigidnesse of presbyteriall-government , as aforesaid , to make the people beleeve that it will tye them to such a strictnesse and rigidity , or austerity , that all christian liberty will be taken away from them . wherein they do lye most abominably against the practice of all the reformed churches where this government hath place , namely in scotland and france , where if there be any thing amisse of this kinde , it is towards lenity rather then austerity . yet , those fellows give out , that they are more holy then other men , and of a stricter life , and will not admit to their society any who will not bind himself to the strictnesse they professe externally ; but , their carriage , being neer looked to , will be found as far distant from what they professe , as the capuchins hypocrisie is from true piety . the businesse is no sooner ended concerning the church-government , maugre independents , but there arise other difficulties and rubs in the way , to hinder the setling of government : such obstacles are cast in by the enemy , to stop the building of the temple : first , some will not allow it to be of divine right , notwithstanding it is demonstrated to have its ground in the scripture , so clearly that it cannot be denyed , and practised by the apostles and their successors . then , there is a great stir concerning the power of the presbytery , to admit and keep off people from the table of the lord ; and to receive men unto the communion of the church , or to seclude them from it : which power some will have to be onely in the civill magistrate : wherein there is a great mistake . from the beginning of the world to the giving of the law , both functions of the spirituall ministery concerning god and religion , and of the civill ministery concerning the externall society of men , being in one man , to wit , in the father , and the eldest son in the fathers room ; things were not so clearly distinct : but then , at the giving of the law , god in his appointed time , and in his wise dispensation , ordained the functions of his spirituall ministery of church , and of the civill ministery of state , to be in distinct persons ; so the power belonging severally to each ministery was to be exercised distinctly by those who were set aside severally , for the severall ministeries : and that the one minister had power over the things concerning his ministery , as the other over his , it is clear by scripture . thus , things did continue from moses to christ , although now and then not without some alteration or change , by reason of the revolutions of affaires , in the state of israel and of judah . in the christian church , the distinct ministeries being in distinct persons , the power belonging to the severall ministeries , must be in distinct persons , according to their ministeries ; and although the civill magistrate , or minister of state , is not to exercise the spirituall ministery , nor what belongeth to it ; yet he is obliged to oversee the minister of spirituall things , to do his duty faithfully and diligently . of those , much hath been said and written in former times , and of late , by men of the clearest judgement , and of most understanding in things of this nature . besides , the fear of men , that the spirituall scepter and rod of christ should be prejudiciable to their wordly authority , the frequent encroaching of the ministers of the church upon the civill minister , to wave what is done elsewhere , and hath been in former times here in those islands , not onely of old , but in those latter yeers , churches-ministers , ambition , & avarice , having cast us in all those troubles ; doth furnish just occasion of wearinesse to the civill magistrate , to keep the ministery & power of church men within the precinct of the church ; but it must not be so as to make them like the trencher-chaplain , to say a short grace and no more . as the church ministers are not to meddle with civill affaires , so the civill ministers ought not to meddle with things meerly spirituall ; such are the censures of the church , which is commonly called the power of the keyes . further , as prelats with their emissaries , have put christ out of his throne in a kinde , making themselves lords and masters of his flok and heritage ; so on the other side , those who take away the due power of the keyes from the ministers of christ in his church , doth him a great deal of wrong in his spirituall kingdom . therefore , let us look to it , lest when we have pulled down one tyranny antichristian out of the church , we do not leave it to confusion and anarchie , and so to be inslaved to the phancie and to the humour of weak men . but of this , let it suffice in this place . moreover , as the scots did constantly in all their own troubles ever from the beginning to this day , lay hold upon all the occasions they could meet withall , to try if it were possible by fair means to redeem the misled king from his evil wayes , and to calm all things with the least noise or stir that could be ; so it hath been their constant course here , both before and since their conjunction in action with the english in this common cause , to try by fair means , if the king could be prevailed with , for his own good and that of the people ; and now at this time , after so many advantages obtained of late upon the adverse party , they have thought it fit to desire the parliament to send to the king , to try him yet again , if at last he will condescend to what is fitting in reason and conscience for the setling of church and state , as it hath been proposed unto him , with a ripe deliberation , after a serious debate , and laying aside all evil counsell , where with he hath been so long misled , come home to the parliament , the great counsell of the land . this advice of the scots , as it is liked by the wiser and better sort of men , who have mainly the publike service before their eyes ; so , by the hotter kinde of people , who breath nothing but violence and extremity , it is cryed out upon as prejudiciable unto the common cause , and will give an advantage to the enemies , since the king is not to be reclaimed by fair means , and will never yeeld to reason but upon meer necessity . it is but too true , i am assured , and i must confesse there be but very small hopes of doing any good with the king , or gaining any good upon him in that way ; for , besides that nothing hath been gained by all the former messages sent to him , or by treaties with him , the violation of the peace made twice with the scots , the many plots both in scotland and in england to undo all , the bloody businesses in ireland , the last intercepted letters , wherein he expresseth his mind , and the intelligence we have from all places abroad , tells us sufficiently that he will continue still in this persecuting way of church and state , so long as he can hold out . the reason of this his perseverance in those courses , is clear to any rationall man , and it is this : there is a great designe now afoot in these dominions , which is to bring all to spirituall and temporall slavery and thraldom more then it was in the blindest times ; which will be kept up with all might and slight , so long as is possible ; and the abused king , who is the chief agent in this businesse , will be kept to it and not suffered to give over the work , but go no so long as they who set him about it , can furnish him with any encouragement , by hopes , counsell , and intelligence , moneys , arms , or by any other assistances whatsoever , to keep life in the businesse . now , if you will ask who be those who have set this great designe afoot , and have engaged the king in it , i will tell you , rome , france , and spaine : the pope , to have all under him , at least , as formerly : the spaniard and french , first , both in respect of the holy father , as christian and catholike sons ; then , each of the two hath his own private interest besides : the spaniard , by the means , hopes for a number of good friends here , ( the work succeeding ) by reason of the common catholicity , and to have ireland absolutely at his devotion , to side with him upon such occasion as he shall require ; for it is every where remarked , that the popish of those dominions have a double dose of catholicon in their bellies , and to be spanish , and as they are addicted to the tyranny of rome over the inward man , also they are affected to the tyranny of spaine over the outward man ; so ingrate are they towards god , and so unnaturall towards their own countrey . the french hath his particular interest in the work ; for , since he could by no means get the king to side with him in opposing the austrian , and to help his neerest allies and confederates against his and their enemies ; in spleen and revenge , hath put many irons in the fire to give work at home , to undo himself and his people . next , the french , by the putting the king to work at home , and by keeping him to it , goe's on with his own work against the austrian , namely in flanders , wherein these dominions have the most interest to look to , by reason of the neernesse and the narrow seas . then , the french hath a further drift , who when he hath any leasure from his wars with the austrian , either by an accommodation , or by an absolute victory , he may send hither a party to make the hola , with a vengeance , little to the content of either prince or people ; yea , to seek by a strong hand that which the norman offered to the then french king , and he refused . these are the shares and parts that rome , spaine , and france take in our troubles , howsoever they give out otherwayes , for prove of this , to lay aside many things which might be here alleadged : first , for rome , i pray you put before your eyes the constant and neer commerce the corrupt court and the wicked clergie have had with rome , and have to this day , with the letters betwixt the king and the pope , and the sending agents hence to rome , and from thence hither , and a nuntio into ireland , who is now so far as the neerer coasts of france , in his way for ireland . next , for spaine and its adherents in the catholike cause , to say nothing of what is past in the kindling of the fire among us , by severall underblowings : i pray you to consider the residents now of castille , portugall , of venice , florence , lorraine , &c. what their carriage is , how enclined to the court , and how adverse to the parliament . as for france , the late factotum of that court , did acknowledge it to be one of his master-peeces , to have kindled the fire in all those dominions , first in scotland , next in ireland , and last , a little before his death , in england ; whereabout he had above a dozen of agents at one time , acting their severall parts in this act here with us . those who have succeeded in his place , carry on things his way very neer , namely , in what concerns us , as may appear by the sending into scotland , to hinder the scots joyning with the parliament , and by the continuall supplies which are sent from france to the enemies in england , scotland , and ireland , and the residents of france their expressions in favour of the enemies . all this is done really , albeit not avouched by publike authority . notwithstanding that both spanish and french give out they will keep fair with the states of both kingdoms , and indeed the commerce in some kinde is continued ; but , they receive in their sea-towns pyrates with the spoiles they take from both nations , who are now consederate in this common cause . then some others , who , at first , although they had not perhaps put their hands to cast us in those troubles ; yet , seeing us enclining thereunto , have put them forward , and have given help to our miseries . such are some of holland , who , against the principles and grounds of their own state , have by their late ambassadour , declared themselves to be enslaved to our corrupt court , for their own private interests , and for that of him who namely set them awork . when i spake of holland , spaine , france , yea , of rome it self , i do not mean the common people ; but of those who have chief hand in affaires and in government : for , god knows , the people of those countreys are as innocent of any evil office done unto us now , as our people were free from doing harm to the protestants of france and germany . the king of danemark would fain have had his hand in the businesse ; but he hath found other things to do . yet , after all this , since we constantly pray for our king both in publike and in private , if it were gods will , to reclaim him unto himself ; and then that we might have godly , sober , and quiet life under him ; i see no reason why we should not try upon all occasion to regain him , leaving the event and successe to god , as the favourable hearing of our prayers for the king , to god his sacred will ; which not being declared unto us upon the point , we demand it upon the condition of his good will and pleasure , and not absolutely as the salvation of our souls , concerning which he hath manifested his will , in his word , unto us . now in this place , and at this time , i know it will be expected to have somewhat said of the present condition of scotland : so , to discharge this duty in some measure , i give you this discourse in few words , and as neer the truth as i can , being at such a distance not having so full intelligence ; which i pray you to take thus . the common enemy seeing himself disappointed of effectuating , to his mind , his wicked designe by his enterprises of war , and his failing plots in scotland ; then the scots refusing in england to serve him in this designe , as thereafter their helping the protestants in ireland , and last of all , their aiding england when they were very low , against his bloody agents ; finds if it had not been for the scots , he had not had such rubs and obstacles , and so had gone more freely on with his work : wherefore , since the scots were the onely , in a kinde , hinderers of his compassing of his designe , he thinks how to be revenged of them , and to make them leave off this active opposing of him and his designe . after many things proposed and tryed to small purpose , at last it is resolved by the court to send home the malignant lords , to see what they can do ; whom , according to orders , go home , submit to the state , and take the covenant . divers other malignants who had been lurking in and about the countrey , do the same , and so they make all their peace . more , there were other double minded lords , who hitherto had carried themselves so warily , albeit they were known to be disaffected , yet the laws of the land could not lay hold on them , receiving a favourable interpretation by the help of their kinred , friends and allies . at this time , a good part of the best affected men were employed abroad , either in england or in ireland , what in action in the field , and what in counsell ; and the military men , who had been most stirring in their own last troubles , were employed in either of these two places , and some were gone to france to serve that king in his wars . the countrey being thus emptied of men of counsell and of businesse , as also of men of war ; the agents for the common enemy bethink themselves that they have fair occasion to do somewhat for the designe they in their heart affect and follow : but to go more smoothly to work , they must be employed in the service of the countrey , which being emptied ( as is said ) of honest and able men , did admit them , and was in a manner of necessity constrained to make use of them in the counsell of state , and in divers others assemblies , and in all committees almost . this point being gained , resolution is taken to make a party of some stirring men to go into scotland , and the west islands are designed to be the only fit place , the chance being tryed so often before to no purpose , because they were negligently kept ; the lords and chief men of those parts being in england , with divers of the prime men of the countrey : they pitch upon an alexander macdoneld nicnamed kilkitterch , that is to say , little theef , an epithet fit for a man who lives on spoile and prey . this man as an outlaw had left scotland , and gone over to ireland , where he joyned with the rebels , and fought for them against the protestants for a time ; and after some dislike he leaves them , and joyns with the scots , and bringeth some few hundereds of such men as himself with him . the generall receives him , and he serves the scots against the rebels for a while : he tells the generall that he had a great mind to have pardon for his former errors , and make his peace with his native countrey : the generall undertakes it , but finds not the thing so easie to be done , and so soon , as he expected , by reason ( as is given out ) of the naughtinesse of the man ; others say more ; truely there was a particular spleen that stopped it . at this , macdoneld frets , and goe's back again to the irish rebels , who received him kindly , partly by reason of his activity , partly in regard of his new kinred with the earl of antrim . to be short , resolution being taken to send over into scotland , and that into the isles , choice is made of him , who having chosen out , from among the rebels , some few hundreds of desperate fellows what native irish , what scots habituated in ireland , what islanders and highlanders of his own humour and friends , goe's for scotland , and lands in the west among the isles and hills , where he finds but little , if any opposition . at his thus arrivall without any rub , divers of his old acquaintance and outlawes with him , repair unto him ; so he increaseth his number : at the first , the businesse was laught at : but , seeing the number did increase by those men , it is thought fit to look after them . he that had most interest , was in england for the time , who upon the news , goe's home , and takes commission , with divers other noble gentlemen , to pursue the enemy ; but the pursuit was with such slacknesse , that the enemy gains daily ground , and his number increaseth . by this time , montrosse who had secret correspondence with macdoneld , upon advice , goe's privatly from the north of england , where he had bestirred himself as in the south of scotland , but he had been repulsed by the english and scots forces in those parts , with few men incognito , and joyns with macdonald . the two being joyned , montrosse declares himself generall of the party , and sheweth his commission , with many fair pretences to stand for the covenant , and to continue the government of the church as it is now setled , and also , to ease the people of the burthens laid upon them by some factious men : this he promiseth , assisted with papists , atheists , forsworn men , and outlaws ; which he performeth much at the rate of him who set him a work , spoiling , burning , and slaying men , women , and children ; in a word , using all kinde of barbarous dealing where he could be master ; yea , divers were not spared upon their beds . then , those nobles and gentlemen who had commission from the states of scotland , go against the despicable enemy , and the first rencounter was about the bridge of jerne , where some betraying the commission they had , run to the enemy , others astonished fled away , and others sell their lives at the dearest rate they were able to do : so with a few , he had the better of a great number . the enemy had another rencount a while thereafter , by the same way , and with the like successe : after which his courage and number increased so , that the people began to apprehend and fear him . upon this , the states send more men to help , and think fit to employ an old officer to command in chief against those rebels , who seeing this preparation made against them , retire to the hills , and seeing the army of the countrey could not stay altogether in one place , but must be divided into divers squadrons , the enemy , from the hills , upon intelligence given him by malignants of the countrey in the army , falls now and then upon gentlemens houses , villages , and towns , which he spoiles and makes a prey of , and sometimes falls upon one quarter or other of the states forces , where , although he found even honest men that fought most valiantly against him , and killed many of his men , yet , by the treason of some commanders or others , for the most part , he hath come off with advantage ; and now within these few dayes , he hath had the greatest with a handfull of men . he never , to this day , could make up at one time three thousand men , when the countreys forces were together neer twice , thrice , yea four times his number . although god be the lord of hosts , and it is he that giveth wisdom and resolution for victories ; yet since men have a hand in this businesse , we cannot but enquire if the men employed in the work have done their part according to their trust and abilities wherewith god hath inabled them . i know , that it is ordinary with people , ( who rise little higher then to men ) when there is any good successe obtained by any , to adore him , and when things go amisse to lay the fault upon man , yea , perhaps , upon the same man whom they had a little before adored . yet here , although i cannot say positively , there hath been a continued treachery in the carriage of things , by divers of the officers , namely , by him that did command in chief ; there be shrewd presumptions to guesse that there is a great deal of knavery ; as , first , the great complaints of the honest and true commanders , who , being neerest , could see best , and judge best of fair play or foul . next , the posture of the countrey , when this party entred into the land . then , the correspondence the enemy hath with some of high note and employment in the countrey , with the favour and connivence of others . further , by the open treason of those who have run unto him , although employed against the enemy ; yea , there be who have run unto him in the field , when they should have fought against him . more , the assurance that the malignants had of victory long before it came , at home , in the countrey , here in england , and beyond sea . to this exigence , with the now unsuffering barbarous enemy and of false brethren , have honest men brought themselves to ; and the poor countrey , who had carried on their own businesse with such resolution and wisdom , & had kept under them the sons of belial and children of falsehood and lyes , that they durst not grumble , but submit quietly , for their kindnesse to their neighbours , among whom they have dispersed themselves for their service , and for overplus , they are payed with ingratitude , neglects , yea calumnies and affronts for their pains , by many of these people , for whom they have drawn all this upon them , and for whom daily they hazard and lose their lives , when they might all this while have sat at home quietly : but , they hope that the same god , who set them first about his work , for all this , will inable them in mercy to be stedfast to his cause , for which they now so much suffer ; will , at last , free them from trouble , and end the businesse to his own glory and the good of his people , in despite of all malignancy and opposition whatsoever ; for , when god hath chastised his own for a time , he will throw the scourge in the fire , and shew them his great power in redeeming them from the hand of the wicked , upon whom the tempest of the lord goe's forth , and the whole wind that hangeth over shall light upon their heads ; yea , the fierce wrath of the lord shall not return untill he have done and performed the intent of his heart upon his enemies : and the lord will say unto israel , thou people , who hast escaped the sword , hast found grace in the wildernesse , and i will go before thee to cause thee to rest , for i have loved thee with an everlasting love ; wherefore , with mercy have i drawn thee , and i will make a new covenant with thee , thou hast broken the old which i made with thee when i brought thee out of egypt ; and this shall be the new covenant i will make with thee , i will put my law in thine inward parts , and write it in thine heart , and thou shalt be my people , and i will be thy god . let us therefore wait upon the lord with patience , who will not faile in his promise , if we return unto him with true repentance for our sins , and with a serious resolution to stick constantly close unto him , with our whole heart . there hath been of late a great blustering of some secret under-hand dealings with the common enemy , by some few men , without the knowledge of the publike ; of which i have thought fit to say these few words ; and to understand the thing more at length , we shall call to mind bow that the king , this last winter , sends hither his cajeoling commissioners , who , according to their order , did cajeole the scots and the independents ; but , how far they prevailed then with the independents by their cajeolerie , i cannot tell : but , i am sure , they did not gain of the scots the least point of any thing , yea , not of any expression or thought of businesse , which could be in any kinde interpreted to have an ill meaning in it against the churches and states advantage , in the three kingdoms ; as the scots have made appear in their constant fair carriage , in all businesse of church & state , maugre envie , namely in the last treaty , where they did shew really what honesty and faithfulnesse they had in their heart , as i have said before . the treaty being ended without any agreement , the court , after a time , sends one hither ; for , although he gives out that he stole away , yet he came with the knowledge of the court ; and things being tryed really , it may happily be found that he came hither by order expresse , with instructions ; who is a great cajeolor to use the courts own words , that is , in plain language , a meer cheater , who hath vowed to cozen , by his lyes : this cajeolure , as the former two , endeavours , first , to cajeole the scots ; but , finding he had a cold coale to blow , he leaveth off the designe with them , and makes his addresses unto the independents ; but how he hath sped with them , it is not as yet fully known , things not being manifested ; but some fidling businesses there have been betwixt him and them , whether or no , by the whole cabale , or by some few of the prime of the faction , it is uncertain . first , that there was some under-hand-dealing by them , the intercepted letters of digby unto leg , give a shrewd proof of it . next , the papers found since in the cajeolors friends closet , under the cajeolors own hand . when these things are tryed to the full , we hope the light of all will appear , which all honest men wish it may be done exactly and speedily : and till then , mens minds will not be satisfied , and they will hardly refrain to speak of these things , howsoever it be taken ; for they conceive not onely by the opennesse of the time they are free from the thraldom of the corrupt court ; but also , since they have interest in the businesse , and have hazarded all what they have or had for the publike service , they may expresse their thoughts freely of occurrences , so it be with discretion , sparing mens persons , till things be cleared : and sincerely i think , no innocent man can be angry at this ; if any in conscience finds himself guilty in any kinde , that he will do well to suffer it patiently , for fear he suffer more , if things go exactly on to a triall . the light that happily may be found out of this , will not be and cannot be by a mathematicall or metaphysicall demonstration , yet by so certain proofes as the nature of the thing can suffer or require ; for , businesses of this nature take probable arguments for demonstration , as we are taught by the doctors of of the politicks . i know some have suffered for their free expression of these things , yet , i am confident , it had been greater wisdom ( under favour ) to let go free speeches , rather then to examine them too neerly , namely , when they proceed , without malice or scurrility , from honest men , who in their zeal , perhaps , now and then , may exceed the exact terms of moderation ; and this i am perswaded , hath been the constant practice of wise men , grounded upon this : if the discourse be groundlesse , it fals of it self . if there be any ground by stirring and ripping up speeches , things will appear openly , which otherwayes in a short time , would have been buried in oblivion . i forbear instances as in all my discourse , keeping my self to generalls , although i could have furnished divers examples upon every point i have touched ; for , albeit it be said , he that speaks in generall of all and to all , speak of none and to none , yet every one may make use of what is said in generall , and apply it unto himself , for the good of the publike and of himself ; which i wish every one that reads this discourse , may do in all singlenesse of heart , as it is set forth by him in sincerity , who hath no other end in it , besides the glory of god , the good of church and state , and the true advantage of every honest man , without any wrong-meaning , but an earnest desire that every one who is right and honest in this cause , without by-respects , may continue so till the end ; and that those who have gone a wrong way may return into the true , to the glory of god , the advancement of his cause and of his people , with their own praise and benefit . before i conclude , i will say this in truth , there was never a people in any age , who , by gods blessing , did carry on the work of reformation with more wisdom , and resolution , and successe , then the scots did in their own countrey , and no more compassionate of their neighbours in distresse , nor more forward to help them by action and counsell , and to carry on the work of reformation amongst them , then the scots have been and are to this hour : so , there was never a people so harshly used in divers kindes , by some of those for whose good they have been and are so earnest : if this coarse usage went no further then their own persons , means , and reputation , they could passe it with silence , and not so much as think of it , laying it aside in christian charity and brotherly love , although they suffer much in all these by it , since they have joyned with their neighbours to help them : but , since , by the neglecting , opposing , and in a word ill-dealing with the scots , the service and work they are about is wronged , stopped , and delayed , which is mainly and namely to help the setting forward the reformation of the church of god , as it is expressed in the nationall covenant ; they cannot but take it heavily to heart for the name of gods sake . surely those factions ones , who have used , and , at this time , use thus their brethren , who have ventured , yea , lost themselves in a manner , with all what is dear unto men , for their sake , and to do them 2 double good , that is , to help them out of trouble , and to settle 3 true and through reformation amongst them ; have much to answer , not onely for their malice , unthankfulnesse , and ingratitude to those who have spent themselves for them ; but also , for their stopping and hindering , so far as in them lieth , the good work of god , and by that means give occasion of the continuance of these miseries wherein we are all now involved , and almost overwhelmed . god forgive these men , and turn them truely unto him , if it be his will ; otherwise let them have no power to hinder his good cause . and thus , good reader , i have thought fit to give a little touch of divers main passages of these our troublesome businesses , leaving a fuller discourse of things to another time and another place . finis . the antiquity of the royal line of scotland farther cleared and defended, against the exceptions lately offer'd by dr. stillingfleet, in his vindication of the bishop of st. asaph by sir george mackenzie ... mackenzie, george, sir, 1636-1691. 1686 approx. 262 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 122 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; 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(eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a50442) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 97803) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 427:2) the antiquity of the royal line of scotland farther cleared and defended, against the exceptions lately offer'd by dr. stillingfleet, in his vindication of the bishop of st. asaph by sir george mackenzie ... mackenzie, george, sir, 1636-1691. [12], 212, [8] p. : folded geneal. table printed for joseph hindmarsh ..., london : 1686. "licensed, nov. 2, 1685. ro. l'estrange" advertisements: p. [6]-[8] at end. reproduction of original in library of congress. marginal notes. imperfect: geneal. table lacking on film. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng stillingfleet, edward, 1635-1699. -origines britannicæ. o'flaherty, roderic, 1629-1718. -ogygia. scotland -history -to 1603. scotland -kings and rulers. 2004-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-04 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-06 judith siefring sampled and proofread 2004-06 judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-07 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the antiquity of the royal line of scotland farther cleared and defended , against the exceptions lately offer'd by dr. stillingfleet , in his vindication of the bishop of st. asaph . by sir george mackenzie , his majesty's advocate for the kingdom of scotland . licensed , nov. 2. 1685. ro. l'estrange . london , printed for ioseph hindmarsh , at the golden-ball against the royal exchange . 1686. to the king . sir , it is not my practice to plead any thing for your majesty with zeal , untill i find it a matter of some importance ; and my self likewise convinced that i cannot answer my own arguments : by this rule , when i first saw the bishop of st. asaph's book , i took some pains to persuade my self , that it contain'd nothing prejudicial to that right of precedency , which is due to your royal race , as the most ancient monarchy which we know . but finding that there was no way to secure this precedency to the royal family , against those consequences which necessarily arose from his positions ; i thought it my duty , at that time , to answer his lordship's book , as i do now dr. stillingfleet's : especially , since they , in overturning the ancient settlement of the royal line in scotland , destroy one of the great foundations , whereby your majesty's grandfather , your father , and your last parliament , have farther engag'd , and encourag'd the loyalty of this your . ancient kingdom : wherefore , sir , these reverend divines will now , i hope , hold me excus'd , in regard that i pleaded first for them , with my self , before i pleaded against them , for your majesty : and if i could have found any man to have satisfied me , as to the inconveniences arising to the crown in these points , i had never printed that book in defence of the royal family , and of my native country . but , now humbly to satisfy your majesty as to the dangerousness of these positions ( even supposing the authours innocent of any ill design , as i am apt to think they are ) and to convince them , how impartial i am upon any national account ; i beg leave to mind your sacred majesty , that some of our own historians having erred with as little ill design as they , touching the succession of king robert the second ; an argument was drawn from it , in favour of bastards , and was much boasted of by the enemies of the true royal line , and thereupon , i did , to the satisfaction of all indifferent men , refute our own historians in that point , as , i hope , i do now these gentlemen in the points controverted . scarce any thing , sir , can be thought inconsiderable , wherein a crown is concern'd ; or any consequence so remote , but should be adverted to , in a season when a long rebellion has so far debaucht the inclinations of too many of your majesty's subjects : but certainly , nothing can be thought inconsiderable , which kings and parliaments have judg'd so usefull for establishing the precedence of the sovereign , and for confirming the affection and loyalty of the subject . and the doctor 's way of telling us , ( in place of all other defence ) that the irish carry up the royal line within six degrees of japhet , and so we shorten it , is not serious enough in a subject we ought to treat of with veneration ; since the doctor , in the same book , does but make himself merry with offlahertie , the assertor of this pretended antiquity . sir , the agreement of men of different professions , almost at the same time , against the royal line , is very remarkable ; some endeavouring by their swords to cut it short at that end which lay next to them ; whilst others , by their pens , have undertaken what derogates from its glory , by lopping off its remoter end ; which i 'm sure lay far out of their way : and i wish , that as your majesty has most successfully defeated the one , by your victorious arms ; so i may be so happy , in your prudent reign , as to contribute somewhat to disappoint the other , by what i have said in vindication of its antiquity . sir , the dutifull inclination i have to serve your majesty , is , i confess , much heightned , by the royal obligations you have been pleased to lay upon our nation ; not onely in your gratious protection of it , but in the glory you have added to that royal family , under which we have been so long happy . your majesty owes your success ( next to that mercifull and miraculous providence which still attends your sacred person and family to your own wise conduct , and to the great iustice of your cause ; and not to your councils or servants , though it is your majesty's goodness to be as kind to them as if you did . and therefore , sir , i am so far from valuing my self , upon any success i may , or can pretend to have , in pleading for your majesty , either in print , or at the bar ; that i shall still ascribe whatever advantages i may gain that way , to the iustice of your majesty's cause , without arrogating any part of it to my own skill or eloquence . and now your majesty having by your own royal influence , and the prudence of your proper conduct , overturn'd in so short a time all the designs of a rebellion , so deeply rooted ; and by your gentleness and clemency overcome the obstinacy of your most inveterate enemies , which is by far the more wonderfull victory , thereby contracting into one year the glories of a long reign : i can never have the vanity to imagine , your majesty should yet any way need the mean assistence of , sir , your majesty's most dutifull loyal and obedient subject and servant , george mackenzie . the contents . chap. i. the king's advocat in duty bound to defend the antiquity of the royal line . this debate , as it was unnecessarily started , so it 's unwarrantably continued . the authour's answers to buchanan's jus regni clear'd , and defended . chap. ii. that the scots were placed here before the tear 503. chap. iii. what the bishop of st. asaph and dr. stillingfleet say against our histories , from fergus the first , examined . chap. iv. our authours vindicated in the accounts they give of the genealogy of our kings . chap. v. the irish genealogy of our kings compared with the accounts given by the chronicle of melross , and both compared with the genealogies contained in our histories ; with a full proof , that our historians are to be preferred to the irish annals as to this point : ogygia examin'd . the antiquity of the royal line of scotland farther cleared and defended , against the exceptions lately offered by dr. stillingfleet , in his vindication of the bishop of st. asaph . chap. i. king iames , having in his basilicon doron , p. 201. founded his royal prerogative upon king fergus's having made himself king and lord , as well of the whole lands , as of the inhabitants of scotland ; and king charles the first , having in a letter to his parliament , an. 1641. founded that kindness , which he expected from the scots , upon this ; that they and their predecessours were sworn to maintain that race of their kings which he now represented , after 108 descents : i leave it to all indifferent men , if i , as king's advocate , was not in duty oblig'd to answer a book written by the reverend and learned bishop of st. asaph , to prove that king fergus , and 44 posteriour kings were merely fabulous and idle inventions , since that assertion did not onely give the lye flatly to two of our most just and learned kings , but overturned the foundations on which they had built the duty and kindness of their subjects : and since precedency is one of the chief glories of the crown , and that for this , not onely kings , but subjects fight and debate ; how could i suffer this right and privilege of our crown to be stoln from it by this assertion ; which did expresly subtract about 830 years from their antiquity ; and , in consequence , lessen'd it by other 500 ? for we can produce no evidences for these also , which may not be quarrel'd , if our adversaries be allow'd to reject what is here controverted ; consequentially to which , ubbo emmius , magnified by the doctor , has brought down their antiquity to kenneth the third : and since nothing can be answered to these grounds , which i may conclude , because dr. stillingfleet has answered nothing to them , nor to the many reasons whereby i prov'd that episcopacy was no otherways concerned in this debate , than in as far as it was made a pretext for the more secure opposing our monarchy : i admire how dr. stillingfleet could adventure to continue the debate , especially after a whole parliament of zealous episcopal members , ( and wherein there did sit 14 bishops ) had unanimously , after many of them had read , and all had heard of the bishop's book , thought of new again , this antiquity a solid and necessary basis for their loyalty . all that the doctor answers , is , that our kings are still ancient by the irish race , and so were kings in another place : but he should have consider'd , that the conquest of an ancient kingdom brings not to the conquerour the antiquity of those he conquers ; and our kings succeed onely to the irish by the scotish kings now controverted ; and if he rejects ours for want of sufficient proofs , he must by a stronger consequence reject the proofs ▪ that can be produced for them , and he does so indeed with much scorn and gayety ; nor can he prove our kings to be descended from fergus the second , if he allow not my proofs for fergus the first ; nay , which is more , i have proved the descent of fergus the second , from the irish , in their way , to be impossible , and all the authours for this opinion to have contradicted one another : so that these two loyal divines toil much to prove their king to be , not onely not the most ancient , but one of the last kings in christendom ; and are angry at me , though the king's advocate , for daring to say , that this was a king of lese majesty : by which i meant onely then , a lessening and wronging of the majesty of our common kings , though i qualified this rhetorical expression , by adding , that i was sure the learned bishop of st. asaph had written this with a design rather to gratifie his order , and countrey , than industriously to injure our kings or us ; and thus , in that matter , i have been gentler than my employment could well allow , or my present treatment does require . the doctor being resolv'd to found every thing upon his own authority , knowing of little other help , tells us , that such as are to write in matters of antiquity , should be extraordinarily vers'd in the best authours , and should have a deep judgment , able to compare them together ; and this being the preface of his own origines britannicae , may be , i am afraid , so constru'd , as if he would have us take his own word for his being a most learned and judicious antiquary and critick , for else he would not have undertaken this sublime and hard task ; as also he tells us by the same art , that it was not every advocate us'd to plead eloquently at the bar , and who took citations at second-hand , who could manage so weighty matters ; making it thus great insolency in me to grapple with him in our own history , which , a scotchman , and in the latin authours , which a civilian should understand best of all others ; for this debate requires little other learning beside these , and the reading of some few passages in others , which i have read in the authours themselves with as great attention as the doctor , without taking any of my citations at second-hand , or using them without considering first their full import , and remotest consequences , as several learned men here can prove , and will better and more convincingly appear from this debate it self ; in which , beside the main positions , i hope to prove that either the doctor has not understood so well , or at least has not used them so ingenuously as i have done . to reflect somewhat on me , and much on our historians , without contributing any thing else to the present debate , save what may arise from the weakning our credibility , the doctor asserts that i should have in my answer to buchanan's ius regni , deny'd that any respect was due to arguments brought from our histories , to prove his republican principles , and i should have decry'd our histories as fabulous , and invented merely to sustain those principles . to which my answer is , that i should be glad to find dr. stillingfleet as firm a friend to the power and interest of kings , as i have been , though i think he gives no great evidence of it , in urging unnecessarily all buchanan's popular arguments , with the same exactness that those do who wish them to prevail ; but none can-lessen the esteem of the book here in question , without reflecting upon the famous university of oxford , whose testimony i have subjoyn'd to this , and which i think the next to that of a good conscience . but to the point : i must remember our readers , that buchanan having urged against the absolute power of our kings , that they were limited by a contract betwixt king fergus and the people ; my answers were , that first this contract was deny'd , and a history may be true , though some points be foisted in upon design , else few histories are true ; and this is dr. heylin's doctrine as well as mine . ( 2. ) that fordon , whom they call our first historian , now extant , did expresly say , that fergus constituit se regem ; and this is clear also by the book of pasley , and i have clear'd that it could not be otherways ; and if boethius , has onely copied fordon , and buchanan , boethius ( as our adversaries contend ) they must be all regulated by fordon's loyalty . ( 3. ) that if boethius be urg'd against us ; we must consider all he says , and if so , we will find that he derives the monarchy from gathelus , and he was king without contract , before fergus , whose reign i assert not there , though i use it justly against such as object that tradition as argumentum ad hominem . ( 4. ) these limitations being found inconsistent with the safety of king and people ( as indeed all limitations are ) they were repeal'd by express laws in the reign of king kenneth the third , and by many and clear posteriour statutes , founded upon sad ▪ experience : and if such limitations could be introduc'd , they could be abrogated , by express consent , and so our kings are now freed from them . ( 5. ) i clear that these expressions crept into our histories by the humour which most churchmen were in at that time , of having kings depend on the church , and so not absolute ; in which our historians are less guilty than those of other nations , whom in friendship i will not now name . and as to the instance brought from our histories , to prove that the people depos'd kings ; that concluded onely that the people were rebels , but not that our kings were limited ; but to have deny'd our histories , in as far as they prov'd this , it concerned me to have denyed them till kenneth the third's time , which had been very ridiculous , according to the bishop of st. asaph's own opinion , and had justly defamed my book amongst my own countreymen . and how should we acknowledge this to be a peculiar guilt in our historians , except we deny the truth of all english histories since william the conquerour's time : because they mention limitations extorted from their kings ; murthers committed upon many of them ; and the right of election to be stated in the people , as i have prov'd in a letter to dr. stillingfleet , unfit to be exposed to publick view for the same reasons , that i think the doctor should have supprest that undutifull dis-respectfull part of his debate , against our historians who deserve much less to be taxt than his own friends , for their ill founded conceptions of the rights of monarchs in those days ; and to reform which , i have been somewhat more instrumental than the doctor . but such injurious and national excursions as this , seem to prove to conviction , more partiality than consideration in the doctor , though otherways an honest and learned man in cold bloud . but to shew that he is not a dis-interessed critick , i must observe , that he ingenuously confesses that he ow'd so much service to so worthy and excellent a friend as the bishop of st. asaph ; for though he adds , that if my arguments would hold good , they would also overthrow several things in his late book , yet this is but a mere pretext , for nothing in my book relates any way to any part of that subject which he treats upon , except in the second and fifth chapters wherein he takes also my book expressly to task in the same points . and therefore i conclude that if he , though a church-man , thought himself concerned in honour to own his friend , albeit an aggressour ; i as a king's advocate may be more justly allow'd to own our kings when attacked unjustly , and unnecessarily , by their own subjects , and beneficiaries ; and though it may be instanced , that the antiquity of the royal-line has been controverted in other nations , yet it cannot be instanced that this has been done by subjects , after their kings and parliaments have seriously founded the loyalty of the nation upon that antiquity , and the kings have asserted that antiquity under their own hands , upon so solemn occasions , which is our case , and where the antiquity it self is not absolutely fabulous ; but on the contrary , is in it self so reasonable , and is warranted by the testimonies of contemporary historians , and allowed by the most judicious criticks . chap. ii. that the scots were placed here before the year 503. now without either vanity or levity , or any distracting digressions , i must put the reader in mind that in my book i did onely undertake to prove against the bishop of st. asaph , that the scots did settle in britain before the year 503. and after i had prov'd this sufficiently , by the clear and positive testimonies which i adduced , and had made it appear by some of the same testimonies , that we settled here before iulius caesar's time ; and particularly that reuda , one of our kings , was expressly acknowledged by beda , one of the authours i cite ; i proceeded to prove that our historians are to be believed as to king fergus , there being onely a hundred and thirty years betwixt these two kings . as to which , our historians being many , and men of reputation , they ought to be believed , they having narrated nothing that is improbable , and having declared that they were sufficiently warranted so to write , by the records delivered to them by authority out of our ancient monasteries then extant ; and that oral tradition , universally received of a whole nation , is a great fortification of so short a step as a hundred and thirty years . and in the last part of my book , i clear against archbishop usher , and the bishop of st. asaph , that this countrey was called scotland , and we scots , before the year 1000 , a position they were driven to maintain in defence of their former paradox . dr. stillingfleet , without taking notice of these points which i treated separately in the method now mentioned , would more cunningly than ingenuously , make his reader believe that i have undertaken by every citation and reason to prove the truth of all the parts of our history from fergus downward : and therefore when i adduce a citation for proving that we were settled here before the year 503 ; or that this countrey was called scotland before the year 1000 : he asks , where is there mention in these citations , of fergus ? and takes no care to consider my citations , with relation to the particular points for which they are produced , as in my * citation of scaliger , concerning the scotobrigantes , and in my † citation of claudian , &c. to return then to my first method , for the readers fuller conviction , i must put him in mind that i did prove the first of these positions , viz. that we were setled in scotland before the year 503. ( 1. ) by the authority of the british historians within the isle , ( 2. ) by the roman historians , who could not but know us well , because that nation fought long with us , ( 3. ) by ecclesiastick writers and historians , who prove that the scots were acknowledged to have been a christian nation here before that time , and therefore behov'd to have been setled here , ( 4. ) i fortifie these citations by most clear reasons , ( 5. ) because the import of some of these authorities is controverted , i appeal to the best historians and criticks , as the most competent judges betwixt the reverend prelate and my self ; and these i hope will be found to have asserted the truth of this my position , and the justness of my citations . the first citations i used were from gildas and beda , the most ancient and esteemed of all the english writers : and i did begin with beda , because he transcribes and explains gildas ; and i shall repeat the argument as i stated it in my first book . the venerable beda , though a saxon himself , and so an enemy to us , having written an exact chronology according to the periods of time , does in his first chap. de priscis incolis , tell us , that god was praised in five languages in this isle ; that of the english , britons , scots , picts and latines ; and then proceeds to tell that the britons were the first possessours , and possest the south parts ; after which , came the picts to the northern parts , and the scots under reuda thereafter made a third nation in that part belonging to the picts , getting the western part of scotland , north from the picts called dumbriton or alcluith , and he inculcates their fixing here by three several , but concurring expressions . 1. progressi ex hiberniâ , they left ireland . 2. sedes vindicârunt in britanniâ , they setled in britain . 3. in britanniâ , britonibus & pictis gentem tertiam addiderunt ; they added a third nation to the britons and picts , and that this was very ancient , is clear ; for he fixes them in britain in that chapter , wherein he treats de priscis incolis : and having thus setled the scots and picts , in his first chapter with the britons , he proceeds in the second chapter , to setle the fourth nation , viz , the latines or romans , beginning with these words : but this britain was unknown , and not entred upon by the romans , till julius caesar's time . and having described the wars betwixt these three nations and the roman emperours , in a due gradation marking every period of time , through the reign of their consecutive emperours : and how at last the romans had abandoned the island , and aetius the roman consul had refused the petition of the miserable britons , so often defeated by the scots and picts : he in the fourteenth chapter relates , how the britons upon deep consultation brought in the saxons , and from thence continues the saxon history . the second argument i brought from beda , was from the 5th . cap. l. 1. eccl. hist. where he says , that severus built a wall to defend against the other unconquer'd nations , and in the 12. cap. he tells that britain was vexed by the scots and picts ; two over-sea or transmarine nations : and thereafter , as if he had been afraid , that this word transmarine might have been mistaken , he adds , that they were not called transmarine , because they lived and were setled out of britain , but because they were separated from that part of britain by the two seas which did almost meet . and in this he agrees exactly with tacitus , who in the life of agricola says , that there being a wall built betwixt these two seas , the roman enemies were closed up as in an isle . to these arguments the learned doctor answers first that beda , in the beginning of his history , doth set down the five nations that inhabited britain , and so if the scots and picts be ancient , the romans and saxons must be ancient inhabitants too in his sense : for they are likewise reckoned before the war with the romans , his business being to give an account of the present inhabitants , and not merely of the ancient . to which i reply , that this is a mere imposing upon the reader : for beda , when he names the five nations , speaks of them in relation to the present languages wherein god was praised within the isle , but when he speaks of the old inhabitants , he speaks onely of the britons , picts and scots ; and the reason why he sets not down the particular time wherein these fixed in the isles , as he does when he speaks of the romans and saxons , is because he knew the one but the other was so ancient , that the exact time of their first settlement was not known ; for certainly a chronologue would not have omitted that if he had known it . for speaking of the romans settlement , he condescends upon the particular year : but when he speaks of the settlement of the scots and picts , he onely saith [ ut fertur ] as they say , a word which he could not have used here , had it not been in matters of the remotest antiquity . and if so , certainly they must be much more ancient than the 503. and the inquisitive beda was not able to reach so far back in the year 700. wanting the helps of the old manuscripts in our monasteries , which onely could tell him the exact time , and so he was forced to rest in the general remark of our being fixed here time out of mind even before his own age which was so near to the 503. that his own father might have told him precisely when we setled , if we had not setled here till then . the doctor 's second answer is , that beda does not at all intimate that the scots were in britain before the romans and saxons . to which it is replyed , that beda is a chronologue , and is carefull of the notation of time where he knows it : and therefore it seems still to me and has done so to such as understand well chronology , as sure a demonstration as that science can allow , that the scots being named as one of the three ancient nations inhabiting this isle , and their actions against the britons and romans , being narrated before the saxons are said to have entred , that therefore their settlement must be the elder , though it be not said in express terms , and if any account of kings , or memorable actions , were set down by a chronologue , without adding the years , these things behov'd to be considered ancient , according to the order wherein they are exprest ; especially in this case , since the * defeat of the britons by the scots and picts is made the cause of bringing in the saxons ; and the cause must necessarily precede the effect . in fortification of all which , we must mind , that this will agree better with the following citations , which clear , that the scots settled here before the year 404 ; at which time the saxons entred , and that they were here before the romans , is likewise clear : for after they are marked to be setled in this isle , * britain is said to be unknown to the romans . and as the romans are acknowledged to have been here before the saxons , and so to be set down by beda before them ; why should not the scots be likewise acknowledged to have been setled here before the romans , since their settlement is first mentioned ? the doctor 's third answer is , * that though severus's wall was acknowledged to be built against the unconquer'd nations beyond it ; yet it is not said , that the scots and picts were these unconquer'd nations , else the controversie had been ended : but on the contrary , dion , by whom we may understand beda's meaning , tells us , that these nations were the maeatae and caledonii : to which it is reply'd , that beda , in his first chapter , mentions onely the scots and picts , as setled here with the britons : in the second he brings in the romans , and gives an account of their progress under iulius caesar : in the third under claudius : in the fourth under marcus antoninus : in the fifth , under severus , he mentions the building of the wall to secure the roman conquest against the unconquer'd nations . after which , in the 12th , he recapitulates the war betwixt the britons and romans , against these unconquer'd nations , whom afterwards he still calls scots and picts . and again , he mentions the scots and picts , as the onely invaders of this wall , built against those nations whom he called unconquer'd , without speaking of the maeatae or caledonii : so that from beda it is clear , that these unconquer'd nations were the scots and picts ; and therefore , by dr. stillingfleet's own confession , the controversie is at an end . and these moeatoe and caledonii were in effect the scots and picts , considered as highlanders and lowlanders : for bochart canaan , l. 1. 42. tells us , that camdenus rectè deducit galedonios à britannico caled , quod durum sonat ; duri enim & asperi erant incolae , & terra etiam tota horridis & confragosis montibus attollitur . caledoniis opponuntur moeatoe , camd. de britannia septentrionali , p. 3. incoloe ol●m in myatas & caledonios distincti erant , id est , in campestres & montanos . idem , p. 501. decheumeath , i. e. planities ad austrum . and he derives caled and meath , from hebrew and arabick of the same signification . and this farther appears by comparing dion cassius cited by the doctor , with claudian ; for dion onely says , britannorum duo sunt proesertim genera , caledonii & maeatoe : nam coeterorum nomina ad hos ferè referuntur . incolunt moeatae juxta eum murum , qui insulam in duas partes dividit ; caledonii post illos sunt . and claudian tells us who were these against whom the wall was built . venit & extremis legio proetenta britannis , quae scoto dat fraena truci , ferróque notatas . perlegit exanimes picto moriente figuras . from which i observe , that the moeatoe were in effect the picts , who dwelt in the low countrey nearest the wall , and that the caledonii were the scots who then lived in the hills . so that dion is so far from proving that the wall was not built against the scots and picts , that he agreeth with the other authours cited here and elsewhere , who all concur to prove , that the wall was built against the scots and picts . and the doctor might as well conclude , that our actions done here this day , are not done by the scots , because our histories speak oft-times of the highlanders and lowlanders , which are the maeatoe and caledonii . and i do conclude , that either the doctor is not a man to parallel authours with authours , or else he is not of that candour i did formerly take dr. stilling fleet to be . the doctor 's fourth answer is , that when beda makes the scots a transmarine nation , as dwelling beyond the friths , and not out of britain ; this is onely said in his own defence ; because in his first chapter he had setled them in britain : and no more respect should be had to this , than if a scotish writer in beda's time had spoken of the transmarine saxons , using the words of an authour who lived before their coming into britain , and then should explain himself that he does not mean the german saxons , but these who lived in britain beyond the two friths : would this prove that the saxons lived here before iulius coesar's time ? all this i confess is a piece of odd reasoning : for certainly we must either deny all authority and reason , or confess that beda , who was so ancient an authour , and liv'd so near to gildas's time , and to our countrey , behoved to know whether the scots liv'd in ireland or not : and it is not to be thought , that beda would have written so distinctly and positively such a great and palpable lye , merely to maintain his own assertion : and therefore his acknowledgment , that we were setled here beyond the friths , and not in ireland , proves sufficiently quod erat probandum ; and it seems to me a descension below the gravity of so great a doctor , to sport himself over and over upon the empty criticism of my calling this a demonstration ; neither is it any wonder , that the doctor is angry at me when i cite beda : for both the bishop of * st. asaph and † he , treat beda so , because what he writes makes for us . to gildas's authority it is answered by the ‖ doctor , that by these seas must not be understood the friths of forth and clyde , but the sea betwixt ireland and scotland ; because that gildas speaks still of them as carrying away their prey beyond seas ; and the passage over the frith behoved to be as large as that over the seas , being 40 miles in some places ; whereas the passage betwixt scotland and ireland , is , in some places , but 13 miles . to this it is reply'd , that the friths are called mare scoticum , both by our laws and the english writers : and to these i now add their own * luddus . his words are , bernicia verò à tissa ad mare scoticum , quod nunc frith vocant . to which the doctor neither has , nor can make any answer . and so the word trans mare is not impropriated when it is applyed to our mare scoticum : and though in some places the frith of clyde be so broad at the very entry to the ocean , where it is rather sea than river , yet many parts betwixt scotland and ireland are much broader than the broadest part of the friths . and the scots in their corroughs did not pass at the broadest part , but near the wall at dunbritton , where they were nearest the picts , and it is not a mile broad there , and is little broader for a long tract of the river under it ; and the broadest part of it is exceedingly more calm and passable than the irish sea ; the one being but a river and within land , and the other being a strait of the wide and open northern ocean , where the sea , by how much it is straitned , becomes the more turbulent . and therefore when claudian expresses our invasions and flights , he does it by oars . fregit hyperboreas remis audacibus undas . but that of the saxons by sails . — venturum saxona ventis . which presupposes sails . nor were the corroughs mention'd by coesar ( l. 1. de bello civili ) cited by the doctor , made for seas , but rivers , as is clear by the words , nec pontes perfici possent ; and these militésque his navibus flumen transportat . edit . variorum 1670. & 492. it does not therefore appear probable , or reasonable , that a whole fleet should be made by poor pilferers of such stuff fit to carry an army , with its prey , over so turbulent a sea , and in the winter time , they having fought and pillaged all the summer , and the prey being then ordinarily either cows or horses , there being little else to be plundered ; and if they had passed at cantyre , which is that narrow place , they behov'd to have travell'd likewise over a whole tract of ground , and two other seas , before they had come to the frith of clyde , and the britons countrey . and beda explaining gildas's own words , tells us , that they ceas'd not to drive preys from the britons ; and agere praedam , to drive a prey , is what can onely be done by land , and so could not have been done in corroughs . nor is that driving by corroughs ever called a piracy , as it would have , if it had been from one island to another . but the carrying of beasts over a river is consistent enough with the driving a prey , though that this , in the doctor 's sense , infers an impropriety in the words , as well as a contradiction to common sense . whereas it is in the last place , urg'd , that a wall against the scots and picts had been ridiculous , if the scots could have come against the britons by sea. it is replyed , that the doctor ( not knowing the geography of the place so well as we , who have seen it ) does not consider that this argument proves rather against himself ; for if the scots had dwelt in ireland , which is almost to the south from dunbritton , it had been ridiculous to have built a wall against them from east to west : for against these incursions from ireland by sea in corroughs , it should have been built along the mouth and coast of clyde , from south to north , and the doctor will allow me at least to call this a demonstration ; it being a thing that may be seen . but the true reason why the wall was built , is very obvious , viz. because the incursions were made by the scots and picts , who were not formidable except when united , and they had no passage for an army when united , but over the wall : whereas any injury they could doe in their corroughs over the frith was very inconsiderable , and could have been easily stopt ; and so the wall was still usefull against conquest , thoughnot against piracy . and to conclude ; all this is most consistent with beda's sense of transmarine , but not with the doctor 's : and therefore we should rather believe the venerable beda speaking of things very near his own time , when they are very probable , than a paradox , broacht lately , far distant from these times , and defended now by our too partial adversaries : especially since beda shall be prov'd to agree thus , not onely better with common sense , but with all the authorities of the roman authours and criticks . and i must still mind my readers , that received histories are not to be overturned without infallible proofs brought against them . but who can be a more favourable judge for the doctor , than the saxon and so his own countrey-man , albertus crantzius ? or who can better understand the time of the saxons descent , and the history of beda , than he who is himself the famous saxon historian ? he * then tells us , that in the year 449 the saxons were first invited here , but he says , let us write from a higher rise . and so he proceeds to tell how the picts setled here , and he adds , that within a very little after them , the scots , resolving not to stay in ireland , sailed sometime into scotland ; and being for a little time resisted by the picts , * both nations setled in that part , which is of very old called scotland . after which , he proceeds to † settle the romans , and to relate our wars with them , and he gives an account that the wall built by severus , was against the scots and picts , without mentioning , either the maeatae or the caledonii . from which it is clear , that crantzius not onely makes our settlement much elder , than that of the saxons , and that we were here before them by way of settlement ; and not by way of incursion ; but also expressly acknowledges , that our settlement was very near as old as the picts , who are beyond all dispute own'd to have been here long before iulius caesar's time . and ( which is very remarkable ) he cites none of our historians for confirming his opinion , and cites onely beda , whom he interprets , and understands as we do , and as indeed all th world does , except our prejudiced adversaries . it is also objected by the doctor , that gildas * tells us , that the scots and picts two transmarine nations , did first invade the britons , under maximus , which was long after caesar's time . to which it is answered , that gildas there designs not to speak of the first invasion of the scots and picts , upon the britons , but onely of the first of the three vastations made by them : for the scots and picts did often invade the britons formerly , as is clear by eumenius and others , yet they were never able to waste their lands , untill that maximus disarm'd the britons altogether , as gildas relates . and after this , gildas sets down the other two vastations , and names them all , under the express numbers of first , second and third vastations . ( 1. ) it is most clear by this passage , that the scots who made this vastation , liv'd not in ireland but in scotland , beyond the wall and friths ; for gildas calls both the scots and picts , transmarine , without distinction . and certainly the picts lived not in ireland at that time , and therefore neither did the scots : and consequently , beda did most justly interpret the word transmarine to be ; not because they liv'd without britain , but beyond the friths , and beda intimates that that was the common acceptation of the word transmarine , which is imported in the phrase , transmarinas autem non dicimus , &c. because it's 〈◊〉 by the bishop and the doctor , that gildas can onely mean in all these passages , the irish residing in ireland ; since he says * the irish returned home ; and where could the home of the irish be , but in ireland ? i think fit to refer the reader to the seventh section of my former book ; where i have fully prov'd , that by the irish , in these citations , is meant the irish inhabiting scotland , and which i shall again more fully vindicate in the fourth chapter of this book , from the objections urged in this new answer . i urged also in my book , many authorities to prove , that it was the general opinion , even of the english historians , that we were setled here , even before iulius caesar's time , to which the doctor returns no answer . and this having proved my position by authorities within the isle , i 'll now pass to the foreign authours . against the citation urged from eumenius in his panegyrick to constantius , the doctor does very little else but repeat what the bishop had said , and i had 〈…〉 ly refuted ; and seeing he can make none but such inconsiderable additions , i wonder to find that argument renewed , unless the doctor thinks that his authority is greater than the bishop of st. asaph's , for i have already observed , that the comparison is strong enough in buchanan's sense , which is all that is requisite . and i wonder to hear him say , that it was not a greater advantage , and more for constantius's honour , that he did beat the britons after they had been long trained up to fight , even by the romans , than when they were altogether rude , and had never seen any enemies but picts and irish in iulius caesar's time : for as common reason teacheth us , that they could not but considerably improve , in near four hundred years time of frequent wars ; so the bishop of st. asaph tells us , * that , to the end they might more easily resist the scots and picts , the romans taught them the art of war , and furnisht them with arms ; which is sufficient to sustain the strength of the oratour's comparison , when he asserts , that constantius's victory over the britons was greater than that of caesar's : and albeit the next paragraph mentioneth other advantages , yet it does not follow , that these advantages were not very considerable , and these advantages are no part of the former comparison , but make a new paragraph , and are a new heightning of constantius's victory , from other grounds , ( 2. ) i could never see how it could be truly said by the oratour , that the britons were used to fight against the irish and picts , if by the irish be not meant there , the scots : for as i have prov'd that we were called irish in those ages , so i desire to know where the britons were used to fight against any other irish save those , who inhabited britain ? nor do the irish pretend that ever there were any wars between the britons and them , save onely in egbert's time , which was many years after caesar ; and even this is but a conjecture of a late authour , usher and flahartie do adduce no more ancient authour for it . and so that cannot verifie the oratour's saying , that they were accustomed to fight against the irish in caesar's time . it is also very considerable , that the picts here are joyned , as used to fight joyntly against the britons , for it can never be instanced that the picts joyned with any against the britons , save with us . and it is indeed incredible , that the scots should be accustomed to fight from caesar's time to constantius's , and to the year 503 , ( which must at least include about six hundred years , allowing onely one hundred years to verifie that word ) and yet never settle where they fought , venturing their lives for the defence of other mens lands for a prey , which could be of very little use to be plundered in those days , there being little to be taken save cattel , which could have been hardly transported in corroughs over such boisterous seas , ( 3. ) the doctor tells us , that britannicum , and not britannum is the adjective , or at least that this authour useth onely britannicum for the adjective ; and so soli britanni were not good grammar , if constructed in the genitive . but to this i reply , that the doctor adverts not that i have prov'd by citations , which he answers not , that britannum is an adjective and so soli britanni , good grammar in the genitive , and there is nothing more ordinary for oratours than to vary their phrase , using sometime one way of expressing , and sometime another , variety in such cases giving both delight and ornament : nor can i see why , if this had been ill grammar , cambden would not have carped at it , as he did not ; or how scaliger would not have taken notice of it , he having decided for us , after buchanan had put this construction on this expression : for though scaliger doth not expressly take notice of the construction , yet after he had fully considered the debate betwixt buchanan and luddus ( wherein this was one chief argument ) he decides for buchanan , which upon the matter is a clear approbation of buchanan's construction . this is all i contended for , by citing scaliger ; onely the citation of him on tibullus is wrong printed , for that of his on eusebius . and that this is a clear consequence drawn from scaliger in his notes on eusebius , is undeniable . and if so , then certainly the opinion of scaliger and buchanan , with cambden's acquiescence , is much to be preferred to our prejudiced enemies , whose learning does not lye so much that way . the argument from the pointing adduced by the doctor , in puteanus's edition of eumenius is not onely contrary to that of stephanus and plantin , which i have cited ; but even from that way of pointing , there is no advantage to the doctor . for to sustain the words soli britanni to be nominative , there should have been a comma after soli britanni : for as they now run , et soli britanni pictis modo , & hibernis assueta hostibus , they cannot be constructed otherwise than thus , natio rudis & assueta hostibus , pictis & hibernis , soli britanni : and if soli britanni likewise had been nominative , the oratour to make good grammar , should rather have said natio rudis , & soli britanni assueti , ( and not assueta ) pictis & hibernis . but abstracting from both the pointing and the grammar , it is undeniable from this place , that this ancient roman oratour did in the days of constantius before the year 503. consider our colony as accustomed to fight against the britons , and as a distinct people joyned in this war with the picts , which cannot be applyed to any other nation but to us . and therefore cambden and usher , more reasonably fly to another subterfuge , viz. that eumenius spoke according to the conception of that age , wherein he lived ; and it is undeniable , that that age considered onely us , and the picts , as fighting against the britons , and as two nations fixt here . but this answer is also very ridiculous ; for if our antiquity had not been very considerable in eumenius's days , the oratour would not have exposed himself so far , as to found the comparison upon a palpable lye , where he might have been traced ; and so i confess if such kind of answers as these be allowed , no nation can prove its antiquity . but agreeably to all these objections , this citation proves at least , that the * bishop of st. asaph's position , that the scots were not at all in britain , neither by incursion , nor by any other way , till the year 300. is inconsistent with this roman authour , as well as our story , and the general belief of rome at that time . the next authour whom i did cite , was latinus pacatius , who , in his panegyrick to theodosius upon his victory in britain , complements him for having reduc'd the scots to their own marishes ; which shews , that the scots had their own marishes in britain before the year 503. to which the doctor answereth nothing . and from the same authours calling ( in another place ) the same marishes , the marishes of the caledonians , i infer , that these marishes were in britain , and not in ireland ; and that the scots were called caledonians . and thereafter i adduce valerius flaccus and martial , to prove our antiquity . to all which , the doctor answers nothing , but that the caledonians were britons , without answering my citations , which i have adduc'd to prove this . and as to the criticks whom i cite for us , * he says very wisely and profoundly , that we are not to follow modern writers in their improprieties . this answer , so injurious to all the learned world , he also returns to my proving from lipsius , bergier and others , that galgacus was a scot. and when from tacitus himself i prove , that he must necessarily have been a scot , for the irish kings never came to fight in britain . he could not be a briton , because he was speaking to those who had never been under the roman slavery . and tacitus tells that he was a king of a nation unknown , and but newly discovered , whereas the romans formerly knew the britons . neither was he ever pretended to be a pict , nor is he in the genealogy of their kings . to all this the doctor answers nothing . all then that is answer'd to my testimony from tacitus , is , that those who fought under galgacus , were britons , and not scots , as appears by galgacus's speech to them , wherein he says , that they are the noblest of the britons , and fight to recover the liberty of the britons : and if tacitus had known that they came out of ireland , he had told it ; nor could that irish king who was with agricola , have omitted to inform him of this . to which i reply ; that agricola wrote not this relation himself , but it is written by tacitus , who had it from agricola , and so cannot be exact , being but the relation of a relation ; and probably agricola knew more of it from that irish king. but there is enough in tacitus to prove , that we were setled in britain at that time , and were of spanish extraction from ireland , which was all that irish king could inform . for it is clear , ( 1. ) that those who fought under galgacus were caledonians , and past not under the general name of britons ; for galgacus exhorts them , to shew by their valour , * what brave men caledonia had separated from the rest ; and though they were britons , yet that proves not that they were not caledonian britons , ( 2. ) galgacus tells , that they were yet † unconquer'd and untoucht , which is not applicable to the old britons , for they were conquer'd before that time ; but is so far peculiar to the picts and us , that we are still called indomitae gentes . ( 3. ) tacitus describes two different people in britain , one big and white , which shewed them of a german extraction ; another black in hair and face , said to be of a spanish extraction . and can any thing agree better with our histories , and the description of the picts , who are said to have come from germany , and of us who are said to be a colony of spaniards , that rested for some time in ireland ? and tacitus's saying , that it could hardly be known then , whether these nations were * originally britons , or strangers , shews , that we were there very anciently ; which is also clear'd by beda , and confirms what he and eumenius say . and immediately after tacitus , we are known under the names of scots and picts ; and the ablest criticks , who have compared histories , call galgacus expresly , king of the scots ; whose interpretation , because that is their trade , and they are disinterested , must be prefer'd to the doctor 's ; and i add now to lipsius , bergier and others , whom the doctor acknowledges to prove that galgacus was a scot , keppingius , who , though he doubts of some of our antiquities , places amongst these things , which are certain , that in agricola's time , galgacus , king of scotland , fought bravely to retain his liberty : and farnabius , a learned and judicious english critick , in his commentary upon martial , lib. spectaculorum , epigram . 7. l. 3. who on these words , nuda caledonio sic pectora praebuit urso . saith , the ursus caledonius is è scotia . and on these words , lib. 10. epigram . 44. quinte caledonios ovidi visure britannos . he interpreteth caledonios britannos to be scotos , conform to his exposition of the foresaid words . [ nuda caledonio , &c. ] schrevelius also , in his edition of martial , cum not is variorum , is altogether of farnaby's mind , and useth his very words in his commentary upon the two fore-cited places . i will finish this period with gretius , who , speaking of our barclay , calls him gente caledonius , &c. and with scaliger the father , who , in his exercitations against cardan , declares the ursi caledonii to be ursi scotici : which authours , and many others , have prevail'd with church-hill , in his divi britannici , to differ from our doctor , in confessing that the caledonii were the scots . by the same magisterialness , with which he contemn'd lipsius , and the other criticks , in the former citation , he does also condemn the authority of scaliger , and salmasius , in my urging the citations of scotobrigantes , in seneca , and of the scoticae primae , in spartian . but however i must beg leave , notwithstanding this , to consider , those two ancient authours , seneca and spartian , to be sufficient proofs of our antiquity , till the doctor 's friends can prove to me that he is a greater critick , and as impartial in this case as scaliger and salmasius are . but however , the doctor answers not the reasons i adduced , for proving these their criticisms to be most just : and these are abstract from all authority , and i recommend the reading of them to any impartial judge . claudian may be justly called by us , the scotish poet , as beda is the scotish antiquary : for claudian's whole poem is , in effect , a continued confirmation of our history . for he having written a panegyrick to honorius , and in it magnifying theodosius his grandfather , he describes all along his fighting with the scots , which sigonius calculates to be in the year 367. as isackson on this year observes . and i refer my reader to my former book , as to these passages cited by me , none of which passages can be applied to the scots in ireland , with whom theodosius never fought , but onely to the scots in britain , with whom it is certain he did fight , many monuments whereof are extant in that part of our countrey called ierna . but the doctor says , though this were granted , yet it would fall much short of alexander , or iulius caesar's time : and what then ? for i never intended that this should prove either , but onely that we were elder than the 503. but ( says he ) there appears no demonstration . more wonderfull still ! for i called it no demonstration , though i think it weighs as much as any thing in the doctor 's book . and i take notice onely of this raillery , and sophistical way of answering , to detect the two great engines which the reverend doctor useth all along in his book . that which he answers here speciously is , that by ierna , is meant ireland by the poet , and does he not mention the scots moving all ierne ? — totam cum scotus iernen movit , & infesto spumavit remige tethys . and is it not poetical ( says the doctor ) to say he mov'd all a little part of scotland ? to which my replies are , that first scotland was called ireland in these days , as i have prov'd in the seventh section of my former book , and shall prove more fully in the fourth chapter of this . onely at present i shall add , the * english polychronicon , which expresly tells us so , prior to fordon . ( 2. ) did theodosius conquer ireland , or persue them over to ireland ? and does any authour call ireland , [ glacialis ierne ? ] so then when a name is proper to two places , which of the two is meant , should be determined by the action which is said to be done in the place . and how agrees this with beda's telling , that we were setled here long before that time , and were not transmarine ? or with latinus pacatius , who says , that claudius , before that time , triumph'd over britain , and reduc'd the scots ad suas paludes ? and where have the irish any monuments and histories of these victories , as we have ? ( 3. ) does not iuvenal expresly make us , iuverna , which is the same thing with ierna ? — arma quidem ultra littora juvernae promovimus . which cannot be applied to ireland , because the romans never went thither , much less went they beyond it ; and the adding — et modo captas orcadas , & minimâ contentos nocte britannos . does not all agree with ireland : for it is neither joyn'd to , nor is it near the orcades , nor has it so short nights as we have . but ( 4. ) the name of ierna was not confin'd to the little conntrey of stratherne , but was extended to all the northern highlands , as far as innerness , and so the raillery of [ moving all a certain little part ] is insipid : nor is there any thing more ordinary than to give the denomination of a part of a countrey to the whole ; and thus , when it is said , the king beat the hollanders ; by this , is meant , the whole netherlands , though holland be onely a part : and this figure is so frequent in all the latin poets , that it were a mark of ones ignorance either to deny it , or insist on it . thus petronius arbiter expresses the defeat given by caesar to aphranius in spain , per funer a gentis iberae , though iberia be but a little part of spain , so called from the river iberus , because the battel was fought there ; which holds in every circumstance with our case , wherein the poet describes the trouble of all scotland , by ierna , because the battel was fought there , though ierna be onely a part of scotland , called from a river of that name . and all scotland , by the same poet , and to this day , is called caledonia , though caledonia be but a small part of it about dunkeld . and though i should grant that by ierne here was meant ireland , yet that cannot make against our being setled here before that time ; for it is very reasonable to think , that the irish , hearing that the romans had penetrated so far into scotland , as to have defeated so many of these as came originally from ireland , they would have sent over men to assist us ; especially knowing that it might be their lot , next : even as if the french should beat and ruine the scots now setled in ireland , our whole countrey would certainly be in a commotion , and we would send over men to their assistence , as we did in the late wars . i confirm'd this citation of claudian , by that of sidonius apollinaris , which is likewise an original proof of our antiquity . to which the doctor answers , that sidonius distinguishes the caledonian britons from the scots and picts ; this is , indeed , just such another , as if , because i call my self , in latin , scoto-britannus , i should distinguish my self from the scots and britons . but i would fain know who were these caledonian britons , who were different both from the scots and picts ; for after he has named the caledonian britons , in general , he specifies afterwards both the sc t s and picts . there is no answer made to the testimonies from hegesippus , ammianus marcellinus , nor orosius : and therefore i now proceed to the ecclesiastick writers cited . after i had made it very probable that this nation received , very early , the christian faith , because the christians , who were persecuted by the romans , would fly hither to us who had never submitted to the roman tyranny : i cited , in general , for our nations being converted under the reign of king donald , baronius , as the standard of ecclesiastick history amongst the papists , and the magdeburgick centuries among the protestants . and it is strange , if they , being disinterested , and having the help of their respective parties , should fail in so remarkable a matter as that of the conversion of a whole nation . nor can baronius be thought interested , because he would design to make our first mission flow from pope victor , and our first bishop to be sent from pope celestine : for it was all one to baronius , as making as much for the court of rome , that our first bishop came from any posteriour pope . and if our single and interested adversaries ( though so mightily extolled by one another , ) should be preferred to these authours , and as infallible as they would fain be thought , there is indeed an end of all controversie . but i am sure the rejecting of all authorities , i have cited , and which are not so much as controverted , will not take with the indifferent world , and that satisfies me . but however , beside the authorities of these great men , let us consider the grounds upon which they are founded , and which i have considered as well in all the editions of baronius i could find , as the doctor could have done , though the doctor in his wonted way magisterially says , that it seems i never looked into him . i am used in my employment to be contradicted , which makes me look exactly to my citations . and whereas the doctor tells , that what baronius says , relates to the conversion of the scots , and not to their antiquity , this is very ill reasoned : for it baronius concludes , that we were a distinct christian nation from the irish ; and had a church distinct from theirs long before the year 503. it must necessarily follow , that in baronius sense , we were a nation settled here long before the year 503. prosper does expresly say , that palladius was sent to the scots believing in christ , to be their first bishop , ordain'd by pope celestine . this mission is acknowledged to be in the year 431. and consequently there were scots before that time , believing in christ , so nationally , as to need a bishop . the controversie then is , whether these scots , to whom palladius was sent , were the scots in ireland , or the scots in britain for these reasons . ( 1. ) because beda says so in those chapters , wherein he speaks onely of us , and not of the irish , and dr. stillingfleet onely repeats here what i have formerly refuted . and beda could not but understand best of any man the conversion of a nation , to which he was so near a neighbour , to a church , in which he is accounted so eminent an historian and teacher . ( 2. ) the universal tradition of the christian church , and of ours in particular , makes palladius our first bishop , and our monasteries and church-men could not but carefully transmit such a point as that to us ; especially in an age wherein learning and letters were freqeent enough to be usefull , in remembring so extraordinary a point . and st. patrick is acknowledged by the irish themselves , to be their first bishop , which could not be if palladius had been before him so that the doctor here is forced to ove 〈…〉 all history and tradition , to establish his own . ( 3. ) the same prosper does elsewhere say , that palladius being ordain'd bishop for the scots , whilst he studied to preserve the roman isle , catholick , he made the barbarous , christian. and that our countrey was called an isle , is acknowledged by all writers , after the building of the wall. but i now farther evince this point by hadrianus valesius , an authour much commended by the doctor himself , who , lib. 3. rer. francicar . pag. 144. ad annum 429. has this most clear and unanswerable passage . sic igitur britanniae provincias quinque quae romanis paruerant , angli occupavere . reliqua picti scotique incolebant : et cum antea ut prosper docet , pars britanniae imperio romano subjecta , romana insula , pars à pictis , & scotis habitata , barbara insula appellaretur , omnis britannia barbara insula facta est . with whom agree petavius & car. sigon . de imper. occident . p. 291. so that dr. stillingfleet does unwarrantably turn this our argument into an objection . and the matters of fact narrated , being onely applicable to scotland , as i have said , and as is clear , by the best interpreters that must determine the case betwixt the irish and us. ( 4. ) baronius and the magdeburgick centuries make palladius our first bishop and the mission to be to us : and though they be not allowed by the doctor to be absolute judges , yet certainly they must be allow'd to be the best interpreters , and baronius expresly says , una omnium cum prospero est sententia , &c. that all others were of this opinion . the learned bishop of st. asaph , and dr. stilling sleet , to overturn this undeniable point , have invented a new hypothesis of palladius , having been first sent to ireland , but that his mission being unsuccessfull , he came back and died in the confines of the picts , and then the same pope celestine , sent st. patrick ; which hypothesis i may now think is fully overturned , since dr. stilling fleet answers nothing to the many absurdities and inconsistencies which i urged against it ; and to which i onely now add that since the bishop confesses that he dares not deny , that there were several conversions made before palladius in ireland about the year 400 , it is strange that palladius should have met with so much opposition , as to make him so soon despair , that he returned notwithstanding his zeal , and st. patrick posted from france to rome , and from thence to ireland within less than a year : and so palladius is onely called the first bishop in nomination , and st. patrick the first in success . rare reasoning , rare despairing , rare posting , and rare distinctions to over-turn the universal traditions and histories of all the nations concerned ! upon which account the bishop of st. asaph * doth very ingenuously confess , that this doth not consist well with our hypothesis , nor with prosper's own words . and all this is founded upon nennius , as the doctor † acknowledges , and the ‖ bishop of st. asaph , and yet they confess that he is but a fabulous authour , and cites prosper most falsly , saying that palladius missus est ad scotos in christum convertendos , and upon a notation of time falsly imputed to baloeus , which i formerly urged , and is not answer'd . and the doctor in the forecited 2d . chapter , p. 53. would have us believe that prosper contradicts himself in making the scots to be converted by palladius , and yet to have been christians before his time , which are inconsistent . but he knows better things , for there were christians here before palladius : for he was sent to be the first bishop which presupposes christians already converted , and a church ready to be established ; and he being sent also to convert us from the pelagian heresie , as baronius petavius and others observe , it must necessarily follow that we were a church before that time , and remarkable too , for having a heresie ( which is an errour long , and obstinately maintain'd ) spread amongst us , and consequently we must necessarily have been a nation long before that time . but all men must be ignorant , and inconsistent , when they make against the doctor , and he cannot answer them . and why doth the doctor lay the stress of this * objection upon prosper : if he be such an authour as is not consistent with himself , as the † doctor says ? and therefore i may be allowed to say that prosper's testimony is for us . i must beg the doctor 's leave to say , that the learned dr. hammond differs not from me in the point here controverted ; for i have proved clearly from him , that we were christians long before the year 503. by dr. stillingfleet's own confession , pag. 63. praef . for if we were converted before the year 503 , we were setled before that year . but so it is , that dr. hammond confesses , we were converted before celestine's time , and that palladius was sent to our scotia , and not to ireland ; to which dr. stillingfleet makes no solid answer at all . and where the doctor says , that i concealed dr. hammond's asserting that we received the first rudiments of the christian faith from the britains , in rejecting the roman customs ; it is answered , that whether we received christianity from the greek or romish church , or whether our conversion was rude or perfect , is not here controverted ; but whether we received it before palladius's mission : and that we were christians before his time , is clear from dr. hammond's own express words . and though i relate our conversion by pope victor , as the common opinion , yet i am so little tyed to that opinion , that i also , from beda , relate our agreement as to easter and other points , with the greek church , in contradiction to that of rome ; and from which , archbishop spotswood did , before dr. hammond , think that our conversion was from the grecian church . to conclude this whole point , concerning palladius , i am sure it s very irreconcileable , that dr. stillingfleet should acknowledge that the bishop of st. asaph mis-cited baloeus , for proving that palladius dyed anno 431. ( upon which , his whole hypothesis depends ) and yet that he should positively assert , that the bishop's onely fault was , that he was too exact in that hypothesis . the next ecclesiastick authour i did cite was tertullian , who about the year 202. says * that the british nations that could not be subdued by the romans , yet willingly yielded their necks to the yoke of christ. to this the doctor onely answers , that this must be understood of the moeatoe and caledonii . but this is inconsistent with baronius's applying that passage to us : and that sense is not so much for the honour of the christian religion , these being but sub-divisions of a nation . but since this passage of the conquer'd nations in britain , and that i have proved unanswerably by beda , that the picts and we were these unconquered nations , it necessarily follows , that this passage is onely applicable to us . the doctor answers st. ierome transiently , applying likewise what is said there of the scots , to the scots in ireland , without giving any special answers to the citations . but i have so fully refuted this in my book , that it needs no reply . but if the reader please , he may likewise consider st. ierome , where , speaking of pelagius , he says , * his extraction was from the scotish nation in the neighbourhood of britain . and though some contend that pelagius was a briton , none ever contended that he was an irish man , and the neighbourhood of the britons cannot be extended so properly to ireland , as to us . but whether briton or scot , yet it is clear from this citation , as well as from the former , that in ierome's opinion there was a scotish nation living then in britain , and that this was the common opinion of the age , else so good an authour would not have written so . to the citation from epiphanius , nothing is answered . i confirmed all these citations by several reasons , which are not so subject to quibbling as citations are ; for these are founded on common sense , and therefore the doctor answers little or nothing unto them . but i hope the reader will duly weigh them . but how can it be imagined that the irish would have sent no colonies to settle , till after the 500. year of god , they having been time out of mind , acknowledged to have been setled in ireland , and being a very broody people , and having no wars ( whereas the design of colonies is to dis-burthen the nation by foreign settlements ) or that they would not have assumed to themselves the glory and advantage of these wars ? or that the scots here would have fought for the picts above six hundred years together , without setling in the countrey , which they conquered , contrary to the custome of all other nations , who made incursions ? or how can it be imagined that the romans would not have resented against the irish , all their inrodes , if they had been made from ireland ? or that the picts could have subsisted without the scots , the romans and britons staying all the year within the isle , and the scots going home always in the winter ? or if they had not been setled among the picts , till the saxons were setled among the britons , how is it imaginable , that the picts would have invited them to setle then , when they had seen how the britons were ruined by their auxiliaries ? or why would the picts have invited them to setle among them , when the picts were become more numerous , by the generations of six hundred years , and after that they themselves were straitned in their possessions by the irruptions of the saxons ; a new nation who had gained all betwixt the two walls , which was , in effect , the far better half of what they possest ? and since the scots and picts were still joyned in all the actions that were performed , and are spoken of still in the same way , and phrase , how should we think the one was setled , and the other not ? and that no mortal historian , or other , should have observed this , till luddu's time ? all these reasons supporting one another , and joyned to our citations , should be at least allowed to maintain the authority of so many historians and histories , in possession of belief . having thus established my own position , by authorities and reasons , i appealed in this difference betwixt interested countries , to the dis-interested judgment of the greatest criticks and historians , and all whom i have cited are acknowledged to be on our side , as i have formerly cleared in the respective citations . to which nothing is answered , but that we must not believe them ( being modern writers ) in their improprieties : an answer indeed , not worthy of so undertaking an antiquary . that we must not believe antiquaries in their own art , nor dis-interested authours in differences between interested nations . but since scaliger is the onely critick , who is alledged not to be positive for us , i here insert his own words . in tibullum , lib. 4. te manet invictus ? invictus sane adhuc eo tempore . nam hactenus ne caesar quidem illos subjugavit . primus caesarum , claudius de illis triumphavit : cujus rei amplissimum testimonium habes in catalect . meorum lib. 1. nempe elegantissimos versus à quodam ejus temporis poeta scriptos quos inde petas licet . sed & seneca , in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , idem testatur in choricis anapoestis , & coeruleos scotobrigantes , pro quo ineptissimè hodie editur scutabrigantas . quare & scoti hanc gentis suoe antiquitatem mihi debent , qui primus illum locum emendavi , quum ipsi hactenus gentis suoe testem claudiano antiquiorem non haberent . and in eusebium n. 20. 60. et caerulei scotobrigantes , ut olim feliciter à nobis emendatum esse asserimus : adversantur tamen quidam , in quibus boni , malique ; docti , indocti ; aiunt scotos ante tempora senescentis , imperii notos non fuisse . utinam demonstrationem attulissent quâ nobis jugulum peterent . ante constantini tempora , inquiunt , notum scotorum nomen non erat . acutum sane telum , nisi plumbeum esset . burgundiones & longobardi , decrepitâ oetate imperii coeperunt notescere . qui eorum meminerunt , de vetustissimis velleius , & ptolomaeus , extant hodie . si periissent , ut multi alii , ideo longobardos tunc primum , quum in italiam irruperunt , burgundiones quum viennensem & secundam narbonensem occuparunt , esse , & vocari , coepisse diceremus — qui igitur ex hiberniâ in britanniam ferocissimi trajecerunt , non esse coeperunt , nisi postquam in britanniâ fuerunt ? quid stultius ? quid ineptius ? sed eorum nulla mentio apud ptolomaeum & cornelium tacitum , atqui nec burgundionum , longobardorum , anglorum & gothorum , apud plinium , strabonem , melam , alios . quam indignoe sunt hoe velitationes liberalibus ingeniis ? — postquam per multum tractum temporis septentrionalem oram britanniae excursionibus & latrociniis vexassent , tandem ab antonino pio in ordinem redacti , finibus suis sese continuerunt . from which i argue thus , scaliger there concludes , that we were one of the nations against whom claudius fought , and that we were never subdu'd till then . for claudius never fought against the irish ; and the scots here spoken of by scaliger , must be those whose antiquity scaliger did formerly prove out of seneca : for he says , * the scots owe to him the antiquity of their nation . but so it is , that the irish living in ireland , do not owe the antiquity of their nation to him : for it is not deny'd on either side , that they were much more ancient ; and i am sure the irish were not called scots , in scaliger's time . and both this passage of tibullus , and that of seneca , joining the scots to the britons , must certainly be interpreted onely of the scots in britain , according to usber's own rule . the passage likewise cited by me out of eusebius , ad m. m. l. x. does also prove , that scaliger thought us elder than the declension of the roman empire , as is now alledged , for he speaks there of that nation , of whom he had formerly spoken out of seneca . but so it is , we were these scots , and not the irish : and it was never controverted ; but the irish was a nation long before that time , as i said formerly : and consequently , scaliger contemns very justly those authours , who deny , that we were a nation before constantine's time , because no authours spoke of us till then : for , says he , the longobards and burgundians were established nations long before they were known by these names . and the nation of which scaliger speaks , is that nation quae trajecit ex hiberniâ in britanniam : and it were ridiculous to apply this to the scots in ireland , or deny that scaliger thought we setled here while the roman empire flourished . scaliger also there says , that after we had troubled britain by incursions , we were at last forc'd to contain our selves within our own bounds . which shews , ( 1. ) that we had made incursions long before antoninus's time , which was about 100 years after christ , contrary to what the bishop of st. asaph saith . ( 2. ) antoninus forced us to contain our selves within our own bounds , and therefore we had bounds and marches of our own , before that time , and so we were setled long before 503. and all this agrees with eumenius and pacatius , and proves that what they write relates to us . ( 3. ) pausanias , ( whom scaliger there cites ) tells us , that antoninus took much land from them ; ergo , they had land before that time , for that land could not be in ireland , for antoninus never took land from the irish. and whoever these brigantes were , yet scaliger there makes us the brigantes , and the question there is onely concerning scaliger's opinion of us . nor am i concerned at his calling us brigantes : for i can prove that brigantes signifies not robbers , but highlanders , from the word briga , which signifies an hill. and i receive kindly the apology made by the doctor for the bishop , that his lordship called us not robbers , but onely produced a testimony from gildas , whom i excuse for abusing us , he being of that nation which was over-run by us ; and probably our spoiling of them might be the ground of his quarrel . the doctor likewise argues against my citations from favin and paulus aemilius , as speaking onely of an alliance betwixt achaius and charles the great , and nothing as to fergus , nor the succession of kings for 330. years before christ's nativity : but , alas ! how trivial is this reflexion ! for i never adduced these authours for proving directly , that part of our history relating to fergus ; but did justly argue , that we must have been setled here much earlier than the year 503. because about the year 790. we were a very considerable nation , and entered into a league with charles the great , which these authours do fully prove . and i likewise produced this citation , to shew how unwarrantably the bishop of st. asaph confined us to some few countries now erected into the earldom of argyle . as to sigonius , i shall set down some citations which formerly i forgot to place on the margin . but it is strange that the doctor could not find them , though he uses not to search much for what makes against him , his words are , * eodem anno ( qui fuit 360 post christum ) julianus apud parisios hibernans , scotos , pictósque britannos incursantes audiens , lupicinum magistrum armorum in britanniam destinavit . and in another place he says , anno verò christi 449. britanni namque à pictis & scotis ( qui pictis adjuncti partem insulae ad aquilonem tenebant ) desperato romanorum auxilio ad anglo-saxones germaniae populos confugerunt . from which citations , it is undeniable that sigonius thought that we were possest of the northern part of this isle before the year 360. and that at that time we were joyned with the picts , in possessing the same . i cited also selden's clear authority , to which nothing is answered . and when i said in the first impression of my book , that all historians had own'd our history ; i meant all who wrote before luddus , and camden , which i still believe to be true . and yet to prevent quibbling , i ordered the expunging of the word [ all , ] in the second impression , before i knew of any censures but my own . and now the doctor produceth onely two , who wrote since their time , and are not of such weight as these cited by me . and if ubbo emmius had considered what i now produce , he had at least acknowledged our history before the year 503 , whereas he does not so much as allow our history till after the year 829 , which , even the bishop of st. asaph will think ridiculous , and which being after the french league is redargued by unquestionable proofs , neither is boxhornius special , and has been misled by usher . thus , i hope , i have again overturned the bishop of st. asaph's two chief positions relating to us , viz. that there were no scots in britain at all , before the year 300 , which is expresly contrary to what is said by eumenius , tertullian , latinus , pacatius , seneca , spartan and beda ; and that other position , viz. that we were onely here by way of incursion , from the year 300. till the year 503. which was all that i did chiefly undertake , and for which , though i needed not to have produced arguments , but onely answered his citations , ( for according to dr. stillingfleet's own position , a received history is not to be overturned , but by very convincing proofs ) yet because i found that neither the bishop nor the doctor could bring any proofs to overturn our history , i have likewise proved , the truth of it as to these periods of time , by authorities which i may modestly say very learned men have thought unanswerable , and which the doctor 's answers ( being so insufficient after the assistance he has got ) shew to be so . chap. iii. what the bishop of st. asaph and dr. stillingfleet say against our histories , from fergus the first , examined . though i was not obliged to maintain our history beyond the year 503. that being sufficient to overturn the two positions laid down by the bishop , yet i think it fit and reasonable for me to examine also , what our two learned adversaries say against our histories in general , even as to these dark times , in which , neither our neighbours nor we can get such a sequel and chain of authours , as these i have produced to prove our being here before the year 503. let us then remember ( 1. ) that we are onely obliged to produce historical , not mathematical , nor legal proofs . ( 2. ) that we are onely maintaining our origine to be from a neighbour nation , and very near to the age of letters , and that there is nothing in this our origine , either vain or fabulous , we neither deriving our selves from aegyptians , grecians nor trojans , nor contradicting even in these first dawnings of our history , the uncontroverted tract of foreign historians : and so all these long digressions , which the doctor , to shew his own learning , produces , concerning berosus , manetho , suffridus and others , and particularly of their rejecting their own fabulous descent from brutus , is absolutely impertinent ; there being nothing that can be alledged in our history to contradict foreign historians , which i have not taken off in my first book , without any answer made to it . and though there should be some errours in the tract of a history , yet the whole history for that must not be rejected , else no english historian should be believed more than ours , we seeing in our own age , matters of fact , especially relating to our own countrey , very much mis-represented , to say no worse at this time ; and i desire to know what warrant luddus , ou first adversary , had for asserting the descent from brutus , and for his promising to prove it ; and yet this authour passes for a great critick , and camden states the debate betwixt buchanan and him , as the debate betwixt a great antiquary and a great poet : well decided indeed , and this is a great proof of camden's being an impartial antiquary , and since most of the old english historians who wrote their general history , tell of this descent from brutus , we may controvert in the same way the truth , even of their latter histories ; because they are founded on their old histories which assert brutus , and so contradict the whole tract of the roman story as ours do not . ( 3. ) the bishop and the doctor do both wrong us , very much , in observing , that all our neighbour nations have thrown out the old and fabulous beginnings of their history , but that we still retain our ancient fables , for any man that reads our history will see that most of our historians have omitted the old irish fables of gathelus and scota , and all that long line from iaphet to fergus the first , narrated lately again by ogygia , and much used by our reverend critick dr. stillingfleet in this answer against us . it is acknowledged by the doctor himself , that boethius and ioannes major do very ingenuously pass from many later things , because they smell of that fabulous age , but the doctor does charitably make these to be the effects , not of sincerity , but of craft : so nothing can stand in judgment before such criticks . the first thing i say then for our historians , is , that what they say from rheuda's time , is not onely made probable , but is undeniably proved by beda and eumenius , who do clear that we were here before iulius caesar's time ; and if we were , certainly we had kings , nor did the genius of our nation ever encline to a common-wealth as others have done : rheuda is made a scotish king by beda , galgacus by tacitus , donald by baronius and the ecclesiastick historians , and all this before the year 300. from rheuda then to fergus the first , are but by our computation 130 years , and to what purpose should so many honest men have conspired , and a whole nation have concurred so zealously , to maintain a lye ; so little usefull , as the lengthning our antiquity , for so short a time as 130 years ? and though there were nothing for it but oral tradition , why might it not be received for so short a period ? and since a father might have told this to his son , in an age wherein men lived so long , and especially as to the descent of a nation , and the race of kings , of which men are very carefull : to fortifie which , i adduced livius saying , per ea tempora rarae literae fuere , una custodia fldelis memoriae rerum gestarum , & quod etiamsi quae in commentariis pontificum aliisque publicis privatisque erant monumentis , incensâ urbe , pleraeque periere . but because there is a debate betwixt the doctor and me , concerning the translation of these words , i urge from common sense , that oral tradition was to be livius's best authority , in the beginning of his history , and in many things afterwards ; for though , after several years , the romans were exact in preserving their history by keeping publick and distinct records , which the doctor does needlesly prove , since it was never controverted ; yet certainly in those things which he narrated before the building of rome he could have no warrant but tradition . ( 2. ) after the building of rome , it 's not to be imagin'd , that a nation onely given to wars , would for many years fall upon the exact keeping of records . ( 3. ) these records might possibly bear the names of magistrates , which is all that is proved , and in a monarchy could have been preserved without these , as to their kings : for i will undertake there are few here but know who reigned these 130 years by-past among us , though they can neither read nor write : and though private magistrates might be forgot , yet hardly kings , and very memorable actions could be so : and i dare say , that in our own , and in most of the considerable families like ours , not onely the succession , but the chief accidents which befell the family are remembred for two or three hundred years by many hundreds in the family , though there be no written history of such families ; so far does interest and affection prompt and help memory and tradition to supply letters . ( 4. ) though these records might have preserved names of magistrates and treaties , with the conditions thereof , yet what were the occasions of war , the considerable exploits and strategemes done in them , and many other such matters of fact , could onely be preserved by tradition ; for these were never recorded in any nation , and could have no warrant save oral tradition , without mentioning the harangues , and such like historical matters : so that livie , as well as boethius must have wanted flesh to fill nerves to support it , and colour to adorn this history . ( 5. ) since the city , and most of these records were burnt , we have as great reason to doubt of their history as of ours ; for albeit we cannot now produce the warrants of them after vastations as remarkable as their burning was , yet we have others who say they saw such books , even as dionysius halicarnassius cites antiochus syracusanus , for whose history no more is said by the said dionysius , but that he took his history out of ancient and undoubted words , and he is but one authour who says so of himself ; whereas we have many historians , who say that they with their own eyes saw the records , out of which they took the things they have . these things being premised , i renew the argument which i proposed in my first book for proving the truth of our histories . thus , these histories must be believed , and are sufficiently instructed , in which the historians who writ them had sufficient warrants , for what they wrote , and we have fiv● or six historians , men of untainted reputation , who when they wrote their histories , declare that they wrote the same from authentick records and warrants , which , being a matter of fact , is sufficiently proved from the testimony of so many honest witnesses , who declared they saw good warrants for what they wrote : and if this be controverted , what can be true in humane affairs ; or why should we believe livius , iosephus or others , since the authours which they cite are not now extant ? this is all the subject can allow , and what the learned bishop pearson and heylin think not onely sufficient , but all that is possible to be done in such cases , the one , proving by my method and arguments , that st. ignatius's epistles are genuine , and the other , that there was such a king in england as lucius ; and that he introduced into it the christian religion , in which the doctor agrees with him , against the bishop of st. asaph , and i hope our authours will at least give a deference to the opinion of two such emnent english divines . the laws also of all nations allow , that when papers are lost , the tenour of them may be proved , providing a probable way of losing of them to be instructed , which the lawyers of all nations call casus amissionis . but so it is , we assign two remarkable occasions and sufficient reasons , to instruct this casus amissionis . the first in the reign of edward the first , who industriously did take away our records . which in the process before the pope , we offered to prove by most famous witnesses in presence also of the said king , who , by his not contradicting , did acknowledge this matter of fact. the second in the time of our reformation , in which , the blind zeal of some , and the interested avarice of others , prevailed with them to destroy the records of our monasteries . and so far are these accidents true , not onely in history , but in our sad experience , that we want in matter of private right , what might have been furnisht us both from our records , and monasteries : and so it were ridicuous to think , that we abstracted those vouchers upon design ; especially seeing long after that , and till luddus time , no nation , nor authour , ever controverted our history ; and i challenge the doctor to produce any such authour , as certainly they would have done , if the matters of fact had been either ridiculous in themselves , or inconsistent with the tract of other histories . of this fundamental argument the doctor takes no notice , and makes no answer to it ; but i , to fortifie this argument , having insisted upon the probability of what our historians relate , and the reputation of the relaters , he runs out in an answer to both these , to which i shall make a reply : but i conceive nothing can take off the strength of my argument , except he either prove , that there could have been no such warrants , and that what is related is in it self inconsistent with the history of other nations , or that he had produced to us good authours contemporary with these things which he denies , and we assert , and had shewed that these authours deny these transactions , or deliver things inconsistent with them ; neiof which he has done , nor can doe . the first general ground insisted on by the doctor , is , that we have no historians who wrote in the time in which the things related were alledged to have been acted ; to which it is answered , as formerly , that an authour writing from sufficient records , is as much to be believed as if he had lived in the time ; and that is our case : and i again renew my query , if the doctor thinks that dr. burnet's book of the history of the reformation , should not be believed in the next age though the warrants of it were burnt , which is very possible ; and had it not been great folly , and impudence , in five or six honest men to have separately written , that they and each of them had the said records , when they wrote from them ? and though the doctor insinuates that this has been formerly done by one or two which he cites , yet there were not many concurring there , as here ; and it is a very different thing , for one authour to say that he wrote from such a record , a particular passage , in which none was concerned , and for many worthy men to say in their epistles to their kings and nation , that what they wrote was true from the records which they had given them from monasteries and other publick records , and to appeal to them as then extant : and certainly many would be very desirous to see these records in the time of the writing these histories , especially seeing the first historians who appear in print have both rivals , and enemies , as well as curious criticks , and the monasteries themselves , and the keepers of the pretended records , could not but have known the forgery , if any such had been . or durst so many ingenious men , though they had been careless of their conscience , have trusted their reputation in so nice and quick-sighted an age , as that , wherein all of them wrote , to the discretion of so many who could have discover'd the cheat ? nor do we find , even from what the doctor himself writes , that the single testimony of these who pretend to have written from records , is rejected , except where what they say is redargued , as inconsistent with other uncontroverted histories , and authours ; or narrate things , in themselves incredible , as is evident from the instances of humbald , geoffery , annius and others : so that to reject our histories , lest the world should be obliged to believe these , is no solid , nor just way of reasoning . but the bishop himself , to shun this , did with a greater shew of reason urge that our historians were but to be accounted as one , since they followed one another in a file : but i did fully take off this , by proving that each of them saw some few of these records , and warrants , a part ; and that they differed enough , to shew that they were in no conspiracy : and this i hold as acknowledged , since the doctor returns no answer to it . that there could be no sufficient warrants for our history , from the annals of our monasteries , is contended , because the monasteries themselves are much later than fergus the first , who is to be proved by these annals . but to this it is answered , that iona and abercorn , are monasteries acknowledged by beda , as long prior to beda's time ; and though the monasteries were later , yet they might have records as old as fergus , for this is very probable in it self , and consequently ought to be believed , since it is proved by famous witnesses . and whereas it is answered , that bare probability is not sufficient to sustain a history , but the annals themselves out of which it is taken must be produced : my return to this is , that if bare probability were onelyproposed , the answer is good , but it is not so when i say the thing is probable of it self , and is actually proved by witnesses beyond all exception . and whereas , to overturn this , it is contended from the irish annals , that fergus , whom we call the second , was our first king. to this i need say no more , but that i proved in my former book , that all the accounts which the irish gave of our entry into this kingdom , are inconsistent , and contradictory one to another , and to which the doctor has made no answer , and therefore they are not to be believed in themselves ; but much less are they to be believed when contrary to the annals of all our monasteries , attested by famous witnesses who saw them , and in a matter in which we were more concerned than they : and so it is probable we would have been more carefull to preserve it's memory , ( 2. ) i have proved in the first chapter , not onely by the assertions of our own historians , but by all the historians who speak of us , both without , and within the isle ; that we had kings long before fergus the second , and that we had even christian kings ; and it is almost impossible , that our monasteries could have been mistaken in that , or at least that they would not have condescended , who was the other christian king , if donald was not : and at least , our adversaries should be put to prove who was our first christian king , or acquiesce in him whom we assign . and it is also very strange , that not onely we , but the romish church it self should be mistaken ; they being very positive in concurring with us , whereas no other nation nor church condescends , as i have said , upon any other first christian king , or authours to prove it . and to conclude this period , i must say that it is wonderfull , that positive witnesses , that say they saw old annals , fortified by their histories both at home and abroad , pagan and christian , should be less believed than the ballads and traditions of another nation , who have none of these advantages : that beda should be of less credit than iocelin , and legends , in which i dare say the bishop and doctor believe but very little , if any thing at all , save this ; and why are not the legends of st. congall and st. brendan , who mention the settlement of st. fergus the first , as good as iocelin , and others , produced to prove that fergus the second was our first king ; especially seeing they likewise concur with beda in his rheuda ? whereas the other contradict him , and that our histories which have rejected gathelus and simon brek , because that too great antiquity is improbable , should be overturned by those who positively own a lineal , well proved descent from iaphet , and condescend upon days , and months , and that our historians which are many , and very much esteemed over all europe , should be overturned by the authority of rhimes , and rags of history , which no man adventured to form into any body whatsoever , till of late some specimen is given , in which , amongst other rare marks of veracity , our league with france was alledged to have been made with their kings ; as if france understood as little their own leagues , as they would have rome to understand their own conversion ; or that all the nations of europe should have been mistaken , as to this palpable point . i reflect not on the publishers of the manuscript of the abbacy of melros , printed at oxford ; for i honour every thing that comes from that learn'd society , in a special manner ; but it is no reflexion on them , to say that we have another , much fuller , in what makes for scotland , though it could not be so exact as the other monasteries , since it was ofttimes of old , under the saxons , who would certainly lessen what relates to us ; and thus the fault lay in the copy , and not in the publishers , for the authour of that manuscript calls beda our countreyman , so he must have been then our enemy ; but however it begins not with alpin , as the doctor alledges , though i mention that , because he is not mentioned in the oxford edition : for it declares , that it is to continue where the reverend beda left , and so is a proof of our nation , and history , from that time , and the differences of that from ours shall be printed , and i have at present printed these few . and though buchanan had the books of pluscardin and pasley , yet it does not follow that therefore the best and most part of the books of our monasteries were not carried to rome , or destroyed , and so cannot be recovered from rome ; and how can it be imagin'd , that those who burnt all our magnificent churches , would have spar'd a few books , written by monks , and which were so little esteem'd in those times amongst our zealots ? the doctor , in proving there was no such authour as veremund , forgets that i have prov'd by two famous witnesses , a lord of the session , and a principal of a college , ( both learned , and devout men , much esteem'd abroad where they travell'd ) that they had seen the book ; and here is no bare probability . and i hope it is uncontroverted , that the depositions of two witnesses cannot be taken away by probabilities ; nor can it be alledged that chambres followed boethius's faith in this , for he says he had it , and he cites many things material out of veremund , nor does the learned doctor pearson prove any other way the truth of st. ignatius's epistles , than by producing the testimonies of origin and others , who have cited passages out of those letters , as letters written by st. ignatius , though none of these authours liv'd in the age with st. ignatius ; and so they did not legally prove that these letters were written by him which are not in boethius . but however , let us a little examine the doctor 's probabilities . the first is , that many have forg'd authours , as annius : good ! ergo , these two learned men did it ; à posse ad esse non valet consequentia . ( 2. ) we have nam'd other authours , who are not now extant : ergo , veremund never was : good again ! and if fordon had been lost , or elphinstoun , whom we have not yet seen , such authours had been both denied , and so had that learned manuscript written by craig , which we have but lately recovered . ( 3. ) fordon cites not veremund , though he cites many others ; this is such another consequence , as if i should argue against the doctor , that boethius cites not fordon ; ergo , fordon never was . but i chuse rather to argue thus ; the bishop and doctor both think that boethius did onely transcribe fordon , and yet he never cited him , which they think he did , that he might have the honour of being thought our first general historian himself : and yet it is prov'd , there was such a book as fordon , then extant ; and therefore i conclude , by the same reason , that fordon transcribed much of veremund , and therefore conceal'd his authour . ( 4. ) bishop elphinstoun mentions him not ; but to this i answer , that the manuscript is not ours , and so may be gelt ; but i conceive , by the doctor 's epitome of it , that it is it self but an abridgment of fordon , and therefore he mentions not veremund , because fordon had not mentioned him , and it was very ordinary in those days , to write epitomes of fordon , some whereof are extant with us , and boethius tells us that elphinstoun never wrote an history , but onely prepar'd some materials for one ; and if he wrote a history , here is again another historian , who being a devout and learned bishop , must be thought not to have written without sufficient warrants . though then probabilities could overturn the deposition of witnesses , yet these have no weight , but what the doctor 's authority gives them . and though it were prov'd , that baker , baloeus , and the other english historians whom i cite , had not seen veremund , yet surely they thought it not onely probable , but certain , that there was such an authour . against fordon it is urg'd , that he mentions not our first kings from fergus the first ; to fergus the second ; and that he confesses he knew not how long any of these kings after fergus reign'd ; and from this also it is concluded that we have no manuscripts to instruct the same . nam , says he , ad plenum scripta non reperimus , to which it is answered , that this is a great argument of his ingenuity , for if he could have written without sufficient warrants , why could he not have made up this , as well as the rest ? but the true reason is ; that the warrants did then lie in the monastery , especially at icolmekill , where veremund's history was likewise kept . and it is clear , by boethius's dedication to the king , that he thanked his majesty for ordering that these should be delivered to him : and if the doctor should at present write such another dedication to the king , thanking him for letting him have the use of the alexandrian mss. of the bible out of his bibliotheque , could any man afterwards think that there were no such mss ? and that the warrants of the histories us'd so to be kept , as not to be got without publick authority , is clear by the custome of nations acknowledg'd by the doctor out of livy , and asserted by me in my first book . as to our nation , from paulus iovius , who was not interested in us , and consequently , it was no wonder that fordon , who was but a mean priest , could not have veremund and the other warrants which were necessary for filling up the history of our kings , between the two fergusses , which boethius himself could not recover without the king's command , the treasurer's assistance , and his own great expence and labour : and i know not whether it would not have been a greater villany and folly in him , to have asserted all this , if it had not been true , himself and all persons interested being alive , or a proof of fordon's ingenuity , in not filling up what was deficient through want of the warrants . against boethius , it is urg'd by the doctor , that he could not have had veremund , and other sufficient warrants from icolmekill , as is pretended , because his history is printed in the year 1526. and he had not these records from icolmekill , till the year 25. so that the history could not be compil'd , printed and revis'd in a year . to which it is answered , that hector boethius is acknowledg'd to have had a better invention , than to have forg'd so improbable a falsity , especially in a thing he might have contriv'd as he pleas'd , and in which the honour of the nation was not concern'd , and as to which , the king , treasurer and monks of icolmekill could have controll'd him ; but this is easily reconcil'd , without a miracle , for certainly boethius was writing his history long before he got these records , and doing what he could , as fordon had done , without them before ; and having at last got them , after the third message , tertio nuncio , which shews he was writing before , he might have easily added from the beginning through the whole book , what was to be expected from veremund , and others , and which , i dare say , the laborious dr. stillingfleet could have done in a month , and there was time enough from the beginning of 25. to the end of 26. ( as we may well enough suppose ) being near two years to have done all this ; and this was a far less miracle than for the bishop and doctor to have sent palladius from rome to ireland , to preach there long enough to have a sufficient proof of the irish being obstinate , and to despair of success , to return , and to die in a countrey of the picts all in one year : and st. patrick , who was not then present , but was in france , to have got the news of this death , to have formed the resolution , and to have gone to rome , and prevail'd with the pope to ordain him , and all this in the small space betwixt the 25th of december , and the 6th of april following : at which time the pope died ; whose preceding sickness could not but have retarded that affair . i admire the doctor , for insisting on the printer's mistake , not mine , in calling turgot , archbishop of saint andrews , for i call him , p. 26. edition the first , bishop of st. andrews , and so the calling him archbishop afterwards could not have been ignorance in me , and the printers thought all bishops of st. andrews must be archbishops ; and by the mistake of the same kind , without any observation , martial is made to have liv'd in augustus's time , whereas i plac'd him in domitian's , and sent a copy so corrected , in print , to the bishop of st. asaph , and the half of our own printed copies are right in this , but in the second edition , i expung'd these , and some other literal faults , before i knew that the doctor or any else was to write an answer : and , i am glad the doctor is so fashionable a gentleman , as to understand martial better than i do : nor would i have insisted on the mistakes about fordon , and dempster , if these had not been material to my purpose , whereof the one is not yet answered , and the other not at all notic'd by the doctor . i urg'd upon this head also , that the sacred history was for many hundreds of years preserv'd by oral tradition : for though the iews and we acknowledge , that the scripture was penn'd by divine inspiration , yet in arguing against pagans , we must make this probable by other arguments . and the doctor , in his origines sacrae , ( which book i esteem very much ) uses the same common places with me , and amongst other things tells us , that men lived so long in those days that they were able to transmit historical relations with much more certainty than now . and iosephus , for proving the sacred history against appion , cites foreign authours that are all lost now , and yet we believe there were such historians . and albeit afterwards the priests did preserve their histories with great exactness , yet that way of preserving history by records , took not place for many ages . and though our monasteries are not to be compared with their priesthood , yet they were sufficient , especially in these sincerer times , to preserve our histories . and though what they preserv'd is not to be believ'd with a divine belief , yet they ought to have an historical one allowed them , especially since they are fortified by the probability of what they preserv'd , and the concurrence of as much roman history , as france or spain can pretend to . nor are the citations from our old laws to be contemn'd : for these at least might have been preserved by practice , as lycurgus's laws . and it is undeniable that skene , our famous register and antiquary , did within these 100 years declare , he had old manuscripts bearing these our old laws , though they are now lost , without weakning our esteem or observance of them , and he has printed many of them . and though historians might have adventur'd to print some historical passages without sufficient warrant , yet neither they , nor our register , durst have adventur'd to print laws , nor would our governours have suffered this , without sufficient warrants . and we must be believ'd in what concerns us , and us onely . nor does it follow that because the laws of alexander the third were lost ; therefore the macalpin laws might not have been preserv'd , they being the foundations of the rights and successions of our kings . and therefore , as they were preserv'd with more care by us , they should have been attack'd with less zeal by the doctor , for his monarch's sake , whose partiality i tax in this , and not his disloyalty . and to conclude this period , in opposition to the doctor , i do think that the most fundamental of all laws were in all nations preserv'd by mere tradition , and are not written to this very day , save when some accident forces it , as in our late statute for the succession . which position , since able lawyers must acknowledge , i do not contend for it with a divine , who seems here to be out of his sphere , and more dogmatical than his profession will well allow . but why may not our laws be as old as about 800 years ; since selden and church-hill tells us , that there are laws yet extant in london , older than any the romans had ? and the doctor 's raillery , that probably these laws were in another chest at icolmekill with the mss. which boeth says fergus brought from the sacking of rome in the time of alaric , to be contemn'd : for as great criticks , as the doctor , believe this to be true , as one may see by morhosius's learn'd book de patavinitate livianâ . from this received principle also i conclude justly , that since lycurgus's laws , and the old laws of other nations have been preserv'd , most of them without writing , and by mere tradition , why may not the same tradition be trusted for the names , and for some general and probable actions of our kings for 130 years , viz. from rheuda , to fergus the first ? or why might not our monasteries have received these traditions from such as lived nearer these times than gildas did , to the first planting of christianity in britain ? and yet his , and other ecclesiastick traditions , are generally receiv'd , and acknowledg'd , and founded on , by our severe doctor , and churchmen ought to be tender of them , because without these , fanaticks and sectarians might press them very much . another ground whereby i endeavoured to render it probable that there were such warrants as these declar'd to have been seen by our historians , was , that what they declar'd was probable , and ordinary , for our countrey , and other northern countries , as ireland , and domestick historians call'd sanachies , and bards , who as poets preserv'd their histories . this varaeus observes in ireland , and powell in wales . * bardi custodiebant etiam nobilium insignia & genealogias . and in these were probably the memory of the names of our kings , and their considerable actions preserv'd . nor can it be imagin'd , that a family can rise without getting their lands from some kings ; nor could they have done considerable actions , except in their service : and so in remembring their own genealogies and actions , could not omit to record those of their kings . and livie , in the place cited , † tells us , that the histories of private families were us'd as the warrants of the general history , and those luddus does cry up as the warrants he us'd . nor does buchanan decry them , except in opposition to luddus his using them as proofs of these positions onely , that are inconsistent with the roman contemporary , and other histories . and in so far i acknowledge they ought not to be received ; but that cannot be alledged against us . i urg'd also that it was very probable , that we had ancient written histories ; because we had the druids amongst us who were priests under paganism , and they are acknowledged by caesar to have had the use of letters . and though caesar does observe that they were averse from consigning to letters the mysteries of their religion , yet it does not follow that therefore they us'd them not , in preserving the memory of their kings and memorable actions . the one proceeded from a design to keep their mysteries from being subjected to an examination , which they knew these principles could not bear ; and to conciliate a veneration to their religion from the ignorance of the admirers , as varaeus also confesses * . but without the other , letters had been altogether useless : for in what could they have employed them , if not in this ? and since caesar † is positive , that they us'd the graecian letters , in privatis publicisque rationibus , what can be meant by publicae rationes , save their historical account of things ? and this seems the more probable , that many of our towns and ports especially , have greek names . and to the doctor 's difficulty how the druids could have preserv'd their chronology in these ancient times , i answer from pliny , who tells , that they numbred time by the course of the moon , and not of the sun * : which proves , that very anciently they used chronology . nor does it follow , that because some of the druids are said to have oppos'd the conversion of their people to christianity , therefore others of them were not zealous for their conversion : even as though the ancient philosophers were generally severe opposers of the settlement of christianity , yet many of them , when converted , were eminent lights in their time . and therefore i may conclude , that since it is very probable , that our predecessours would be curious to preserve the names of their first kings , and the way of their first settlement : and since they had letters wherein these might have been preserved : therefore it is probable that they were accordingly preserved . and that these traditions and records , as well as the histories of private families relating these were consigned to the custody of the monasteries with us , as elsewhere . so that since four or five worthy historians declare , they saw these each a-part , their testimonies concurring in a probable matter of fact must be as sufficient , as if the warrants were yet extant ; for since these would prove and satisfy in a legal trial , much more ought they to be allowed in an historical one , quod erat probandum . chap. iv. our authours vindicated in the accounts they give of the genealogy of our kings . the doctor being convinced from these undeniable proofs , that neither fordon , nor boethius did forge the ancient genealogy of our kings , which the bishop of st. asaph did positively assert , but that they had warrants and authorities before their times ; he falls upon a new device , and contends that boethius did insert many things contrary to the account of the genealogy preceding him . for as to the particular genealogy from fergus the first to fergus the second , he hath no account of this from fordon , who hath ( as the doctor says ) professed , that he could find nothing particular concerning them ; though he cites several chronicles ; and though fordon mentions an old high land gentleman , a genealogist , who gives an account of the first line betwixt the two ferguses ; yet the genealogy by him given differs from that , which is owned by boeth and buchanan , both in the number , and in the names of our kings . and this is alledged to have been done of purpose , to put in regents not owned by the genealogists , and to support the law of incapacity , and that he might get mention made of reutha , galdus , caratacus and donald . and the genealogist thus having extended the first line , doth as much shorten the second line , betwixt fergus the second and alexander the third ; whereof the doctor endeavours to give particular instances . so that the modern historians had added more kings in the race from fergus the second to alexander the third , than are contained in the genealogy betwixt fergus the first and fergus the second . and , upon the matter , the genealogist hath made no more kings in both races , than the historians make in the last race from fergus the second . and therefore the doctor is as culpable in shortning the royal line , as the bishop of st. asaph . he adds also , that fordon mentions another genealogy of st. david , made at the time of his death , which ought not to be attributed to baldredus , but to cardinal walter wardlaw , which exactly agrees with that of the highlander , except in the spelling of some few names , from fergus the second upwards , to fergus the first . but the latter part of the genealogy from st. david to fergus the second , being corrupted before fordon's time , he would not have it stand in record against his history , but cut it off with an &c. from david to fergus ; which caution he forgot , when he did specially insert the highlander's genealogy from alexander the third , to fergus the second . this is the meaning , as near as i can understand , of the doctor 's words , being in themselves somewhat perplexed . but the doctor takes notice of a third genealogy in fordon , which supplies , in some measure , the defects of that of king david , and it is the succession of kenneth , the first monarch of scotland ; and there he takes notice of the difference betwixt the genealogy and our historians . for he acknowledgeth that he doth agree with the highland genealogy , except that it hath dongare the son of donald braick , which the highlander doth omit , and makes onely ten kings betwixt fergus and kenneth , whereas our historians make twenty eight . in answer to this objection , i shall follow the method of the highland genealogist , which proceeds ascending from alexander the third , and the nature of the objection it self , which insists most upon the difference in the genealogist from our historians as to the second line , there being no objection made as to the first , except as to some small difference in the names ; and the onely considerable difference is betwixt finnanus and caratacus , which will easily be cleared in answer to the objection against the second line . and though the race and line be the same with fergus downwards ; yet with the doctor we shall make an imaginary distinction of first and second race : and first ; as i applaud the doctor , who hath better thoughts of fordon ( than the bishop had , who asserted him to have dreamed the history of our kings ) that he was so cautious , as not to set down the accounts that were imparted to him otherwise than in his sleep , because he could not give a full account of them ; so i must likewise vindicate boeth , who in his history hath neither differed from , nor contradicted fordon , nor any other of these mentioned genealogies . for as to fordon , though he gives not a particular account of the names , times and actions of all the kings betwixt the ferguses , yet he doth not profess , that he could find nothing in particular concerning them , as appears by the words cited by the doctor himself ; sed & horum sigillatim distinguere tempora principatuum ad praesens omittimus , nam ad plenum scripta non reperimus . for here he tells the full number of our kings , and five more , which may be true by taking in of fergus's father and grand-father , and some other three collaterals omitted by other historians ; and that they reigned in the isle , and not in ireland . onely he forbears at present to distinguish the time of their reigns , not having then gotten a full account of them , which he seems thereby to insinuate he expected before he finished his book , wherein he was prevented by death . but as he left materials for the last and great part of his book , so he might have increased the first part of his book in distinguishing these particular reigns . but it is likely , these authours he cites , viz. legenda brendani , congalli , grossum caput , and the several chronica , had nothing concerning these kings ; or that fordon himself had found nothing particular concerning them , when he knew so well their genealogy , both upon the occasion of the death of st. david , and the coronation of king alexander ? and as he gives the account of the most considerable persons , as fergus , reuther , eugenius ; so he distinguisheth their times , and tells how long the whole kings reigned , and gives disticks containing the periods of their reigns : albion in terris rex primus germine scotus illorum turmis rubri tulit arma leonis fergusius fulvo ferchard rugientis in arvo , christum trecentis tricenis praefuit annis . and in the place cited by the doctor , he asserts , that the forty five kings were ejusdem generis & gentis , and fergus's return is set down : ad natale solum properat relevare jacentes , rex fessos regni cespite sospes adit : intrepidus propria pandens vexilla leonis , terruit occursu quem fera nulla ferox . ocyus advenit , fuerat quae turbine diro subdita plebs x quater & tribus haec congaudens patrio [ regi servire , parata ad libertatem quicquid in orbe volat . and again , fergusius universas regni regiones , cis citraque vadum scoticum à patribus ab antiquo possessas , de muro lapideo , viz. & inchgaell ad insulas orcadas sub sua composuit ditione . doth the doctor think , that this was to profess , that he could find nothing concerning them ? and that after him , boeth could make no distinct and particular account of that succession , unless he feigned them for some partial end ? but to come to the highland genealogist , there is no difference betwixt him and our historians : for though his number be fewer than that in our records and histories , yet the reason is , because our historians mention all that did reign , whether by right or by usurpation , or whether in the direct or collateral line ; the genealogist doth ascend from alexander the third from son to father in the direct line , considering that line onely , whereof that king was descended , amongst whom some were never kings . the genealogist begins , alexander the son of alexander , the son of william , the son of henry , the son of david . here the doctor objects , that malcolm the fourth the maiden mentioned by our historians , is omitted , and henry placed for him . but this was very reasonable : for st. david had onely one son henry earl of northumberland , who died before his father : and so was never king , but left three sons ; malcolm the fourth , who succeeded his grand-father , and was called maiden ; he never married , and he had for his successour william his second brother , grand-father to king alexander , in whom also the race of that brother failed . and then from david earl of huntingtoun , the third brother by the families of bruce and stuart , the royal race is continued in a direct line till king iames the seventh , who now reigns . so then , if the genealogist had said , that william was son to his brother malcolm the maiden , and not son to henry his father , instead of agreeing with our histories , he had both contradicted them and common sense and reason . the doctor next complains , that betwixt malcolm , canmore and st. david four of our kings are omitted , and , we say , very justly for the same reason : for donald the seventh was malcolm's brother , and duncan his bastard son , none of whom had right to reign . and though malcolm had two elder sons , edgar and alexander the first , who did successively reign , yet they having no children of their own , the succession did devolve upon st. david the youngest son. the third objection is , that betwixt duncan , and malcolm canmore the historians put machaboeus , whom the genealogist omits , and very reasonably : for he was a collateral by dovada second daughter to malcolm the second , and usurped the succession before malcolm canmore , who was son of duncan . and was great grand-child to malcolm the second by his eldest daughter beatrix , whom the genealogist inserts , though she was never a queen , because by her the succession was continued . the doctor 's fourth and main objection is , that betwixt malcolm the second , and kenneth the son of alpin , the genealogist inserts none , whereas our historians insert thirteen ; viz. donald the fifth , constantine second , ethus sirnamed alipes , gregory the great , donald the sixth , constantine the third . malcolm the first , indulphus , duffus , culenus , kenneth the third , constantine the fourth , grimus . here indeed i acknowledge the doctor hath discovered an errour ; but i think it must be of the writer , or at worst in the highland genealogist his memory or expressions . and it is very happy , that it hath fallen out in this place , otherwise fordon as well as boeth might be suspected of partiality , or that they inserted these kings to serve their own ends : for even the doctor 's worthy antiquaries ubbo emmius and boxhornius , who have deserved so well of him , because they are most injuriously extravagant ; as to the antiquity of our kings , do admit the truth of this genealogy , after kenneth who subdued the picts . there are four indeed here omitted in the direct line ; constantine the second son to kenneth the second , donald the sixth , malcolm the first , kenneth the third , malcolm the second's father : besides nine collateral , viz. donald the fifth brother to kenneth the second , ethus alipes , constantine the second's brother , gregory son to dongallus , constantine the third son to ethus , indulphus constantine the third his son , duffus , malcolm the first his eldest son , culenus , indulphus his son , constantine the fourth culenus his son , and grimus , duffus his son , who were all collateral to malcolm the second . i shall give a very probable account of the mistake of the genealogist in this place . we see that it is twice kenneth and malcolm ; kenneth the second and malcolm the first , and kenneth the third , who was father to malcolm the second . the transcriber hath thought , he had transcribed the first kenneth and malcolm , and constantine , and donald that were betwixt them , and so hath omitted them , and proceeded to kenneth the third , who was father to malcolm the second . as in reading or writing , if two lines begin with one word , the reader or writer ordinarily omitteth one of the lines by mistake . and as this was no design in fordon , so it could not be ignorance : for he describes particularly all those omitted kings , and there is also a particular genealogy of them subjoyn'd to the end of fordon's book in the genealogy of king iames the second . and if any man make a history of persons , and draw out a summary of their genealogy , if there be any difference , the summary must be regulated by the history , and not the history by the summary . the doctor 's fifth objection is , that betwixt alpin and achaius the historians put convallus and dongallus ; and very reasonably , because convallus was fergus's third son , and dongallus was solvathius's son , and so collateral , to shew the exactness of our historians , as well in the collateral , as in the direct line . the degree of proximity of every person is proved by our historians from kenneth the second till fergus the second . the next objection is , the difference betwixt the genealogist and our historians , from king othabin son of aydan , whom fordon calls ethodius bind , and our historians , eugenius ( a grand difference indeed ) and achaius the second son of etfin , who was son of eugenius the seventh , who was son of findan who was never king , son of eugenius the fifth , son of dongard never king , second son to donald braik , second son to eugenius bin : for here there is both difference of kings , and many omitted . it is true , that here there is the like errour committed in transcribing with the former : for the genealogist , betwixt eugenius the seventh , ( whom he calls ethac ) and donald braik , he omits dongard , eugenius the fifth ; and fordon's genealogy of kenneth the great , to fergus the second , mentions dongard , but omits eugenius and findan . which errour of the writer seems to have proceeded , because there are two of the name of eugenius so near together , that he thought , when he wrote eugenius , he had written all that had preceded eugenius the seventh , and did the more easily forget dongard and findan , because they were not so well known , as never having been kings . but the mistake cannot be interpreted to be a design , seeing there is no advantage in it , and it is in omitting and not in adding any that never were of the right line , and falls happily out , where our antiquity is not questioned by any but by ubbo emmius , and boxhornius . for even iocelin and st. asaph do acknowledge the scots to have been setled under aydan mentioned by beda , as the father of this ethodius bind . and the doctor himself does settle this scepticism concerning the original of the settlement of the scots in britain under aydan , in the beginning of the seventh century ; but is uncertain , if , or how much longer before that time . and it could not be ignorance in fordon , who describes all the particular reigns of these kings . and in the opinion of boeth , findan is not omitted ; for he makes eugenius the seventh not to be grand-child to eugenius the fifth by findan , but immediately son to eugenius the fifth . the rest of these intervening kings were collaterals , viz. ferchard the second son of ferchard the first , malduine eldest son to donald braik , eugenius the sixth ferchard's second son , amberkelethus findan's eldest son , murdach his son , eugenius the eighth and solvathius , these four lineally descending from one another in the collateral line ; fergus the third eldest son of etfin and elder brother to achaius , ethas , or ethachi , or whether etfin or ethafind . but i cannot remark , that the genealogist calls ethafind son to ethdre , but he calls him son to ethachi ; or that the genealogist calls eugenius ethac . indeed the genealogist calls him ethachi , whom fordon in the genealogy of kenneth calls eugenius . but these are idle remarks . his objection betwixt fergus the second and eugenius the fourth is , that the genealogist makes dongall to succeed fergus , and , leaves out eugenius the second ; very reasonable indeed , because eugenius the second though eldest son , had no succession , and to dongard cobren succeeds , and to him aydan the father of eugenius . and there are left out from amongst our kings mentioned by our historians constantine the first , whom the doctor calls constantius , because he was dongard's younger brother , and congallus dongard's eldest son , because he did not continue the line , his line being extinct after the death of eugenius the third , convallus and kinnatell his three sons , and kenneth the first son to convallus his grand-child . but the doctor makes no mention of kenneth , but in place of him saith , that conranus is omitted by the genealogist , as if conranus and cobrenus might not pass for one . against the first race , his objections are much lighter , and so i shall not be so special in giving answer . his noticing the difference of names is very pretty , betwixt arnidal and dornadill , rowen and rether , not nothatus , as the doctor mistakes ( for nothatus being dornadill's brother a collateral , he is left by the genealogist as such ) and rutha for reuda , and ther for thereus , and rosine for iosin , and corbre for corbred , and daradiamore for dardanus , and that corbre's sirname of galdus was forgot ; and luthach for lugtacus , and mogalama for mogallus , and coner for conarus , ethach for ethodius , and fiachrach for satrahell , and athirkin for athirco , findachar for findochus , thrinkline for crathilinthus , fencormach for fincormachus , romaich for romachus , and enegussa , which the doctor acknowledgeth is plainly angusianus , though it be not so plain as many others of the rest he quarrels , fethelmech for fethelmachus , and engusafich and etheat for eugenius and ethodius , erthus for eirch . and so to have named this objection is to refute it , being the difference onely betwixt a latine termination and a vulgar , betwixt a highland and a lowland . and if he will take the pains to compare , how these same names are written in fordon , and how in major , he will find the like difference . and if he will not rest satisfied , he is referred to flahertie in his preface for a fuller answer . but feritharis and king donald , the first christian king , and nathalocus , and other two donalds are excluded by this ancient genealogists ; and very reasonably , because feritharis was brother to king fergus the first ; and donald , because he was brother to satrael . nathalocus was an usurper , concerning whose contingency of bloud , our historians generally make no mention ; all the collaterals proved by boeth * , buchanan † and lesly ‖ . and the doctor himself in his preface acknowledgeth , that nathalocus and donald were usurpers , and so could not be mentioned in the genealogy of the right line ; donald the third called of the isles , an usurper , and donald the second brother to findoch . and what though the genealogist by mistake hath called rosin the son of ther , when he was his brother ? and ethodius the son of eugenius , when he was his brother ? if the genealogist had mentioned all our kings that did reign , and had called the next always son to the former king , he had committed this errour oftner . and it hath not been fordon's ignorance : for he tells that ethodius was brother to eugenius . but the doctor says , after this you find a greater difference : for instead of finnanus , durstus , evenus , gillus , evenus the second , ederus , evenus the third , metellanus , caratacus , we find there onely dethach , iau , aljelah , even , ederskeoli , comermore . it seems , the doctor hath taken this at second hand ; for if he had looked either the genealogy of king alexander or king david , he would have found fin , which is the same with finnanus . but the doctor might have known , that such a small difference in names and numbers doth not overthrow the verity of a genealogy from his friend flahertie in his epistle to io. linceus , who takes the name of lucius gratianus in cambr. evers . as in the genealogy of the scripture cainan is interposed betwixt arphaxad and sala , who tells , that such like errours may proceed from one person 's having two names , or by taking a brother for a father , or the like mistake of the writer ; where the line may be a little lengthned or shortned , the tract of it remaining the same . but here , besides the difference of highland and lowland language , wherein alexander is called alaster , and archibald gillespie , gillus was a bastard usurper , and evenus a collateral to durstus , as appears by our historians boeth , buchanan and lesly . as to the genealogy of st. david , it is subjoyn'd immediately to baldredus his lamentation about him ; and , whether it be his , or cardinal wardlaw's , it furnisheth still another ancient and more credible authour , a cardinal . but perhaps he was not cardinal , when he told fordon the genealogy , but thereafter , and the transcriber of the scotichronicon hath given him his most honourable name . and though he died in robert the first of the stuart's time , yet he was archidiaconus of lothian , and secretary to king david the bruce , as appears by the * scotichronicon . and fordon saith of the account from him , dudum acceperat , and prefixeth a preface , in which he asserts , that st. david was descended from a glorious and ancient race of kings , who had preserv'd their kingdom free from slavery longer than any other race of kings had done , and had resisted or expelled all such enemies as had invaded them . post britones , dacos , pictos , anglósque repulsos , viriliter scoti jus tenuere suum ; et romanorum spreverunt vim validorum , exemplo quorum pensarunt praeterit rum inclyta scotorum proles laudem genitorum . this doth not agree with the doctor 's origin of us after the saxons , and our dependence upon them . this wardlaw bishop of glasgow is design'd in scotichronicon cardinal of scotland and ireland , and the account and verses appear to be far ancienter , than either wardlaw or fordon , otherwise fordon had hardly ever cited the relation of one contemporary with himself , and of one who was perhaps a younger man. and as to the pretence , that the passing from the first line before fergus the second will cut off the pretence of establishing the regents , and incapacitating the sons of kings being minors , this appears evidently to be false . for long after fergus the second's time , the collaterals did certainly succeed , till that evil custome was abrogated by kenneth the third , about 700 years agoe . and albeit many murthers and encroachments were committed upon these kings of the first race , their times being more barbarous , what is that to the purpose ? were they therefore never in being , or not kings ? doth not flahertie tell us , that of the first hundred thirty six kings of ireland ; centum ferrum sustulit , septemdecim naturae concesserunt , sex pestis absumpsit ; tres fulmine percussi , & decem diversis aliis modis , singuli vivis excesserunt ? were there not murthers and usurpations in our second race , and hath not the like been every where ? and doth not the doctor remember of richard the third of england , who murthered edward the fifth and his brother , who were his own nephews , and usurped the crown ? and the inserting these , to lengthen the line in favour of regents had been ridiculous : for by a clear law these were cut off in kenneth the third's time ; and so our historians needed not the help of forged genealogies in this . so that i can see no design nor politick in fordon nor boeth , in this number and account they give of our kings , nor that they have differed from the genealogist , nor that the highland genealogist hath shortned the royal line , as the bishop of st. asaph hath done . and the doctor ought to have remembred , that i did undertake onely to maintain the antiquity of our royal line at the least ; to refute the bishop of st. asaph's hypothesis , of a settlement in the year 503 , and not to vindicate every passage and part of our history which cannot be done , as to any profane history . by all which i may conclude most convincingly , that these three accounts given of the genealogies of our kings are so far from contradicting our history , that they agree with it , and being inserted in three several genealogies , prior to fordon , and being exprest by them upon very solemn occasions they do fortifie much the truth of the genealogy of the royal line , and that fordon did not dream the same , but inserted these genealogies in his history from good authours and by good authority . the reader may for his better understanding the answers formerly made , take a general view of this complex matter , as sum'd up in these short positions . i. that the highland gentleman was obliged to ascend from son to father , as all genealogies do ; and consequently he was obliged to name some who were not kings , because they were fathers to kings . ii. he was obliged to omit collaterals , because , though they were kings , yet they were not such as were comprehended within the gradation from son to father , whereas our history rightly sets down those who succeeded as brothers , as well as sons . iii. in this genealogy some are omitted , as bastards , and other usurpers ; and so should not have been insert in a genealogy to be repeated before the king , though they were likewise expressed in our histories , they having reigned de facto , though not de jure . iv. the greatest doubt , that is made by the doctor himself , as to our kings , is since fergus the second , after which , the irish and others acknowledge our historical genealogy ; or after kenneth the second , since which time even ubbo emmius does assert the truth of our history . and so any difference betwixt our history and genealogy must arise from the mistake of the genealogist's memory , or the transcriber's negligence ; and i have condescended upon a probable ground of mistake . v. most of the difficulties arise from the difference of names of the same persons , which is very ordinary in all genealogies . vi. there could be no design in our historians inserting any to favour the right of regents : for the succession of regents was condemn'd by a positive law , before some of these controverted kings did succeed . vii . it is not imaginable , that our historians would insert in their histories contradictory genealogies : for that were so palpable , that , though it could have escaped one historian , yet it could not have escaped many . viii . to illustrate farther the whole matter , i have subjoyned the tree of alexander the third his predecessours , both in the direct and collateral line , whereby it doth evidently appear , that all his predecessours mentioned by the genealogist were in the direct line , and that these kings of whom the genealogist made no mention , were onely collaterals to king alexander ; whose genealogy was recited . and i have also farther continued this genealogy in a direct line from st. david by the families of bruce , and stuart to king iames the seventh , who now reigns . chap. v. the irish genealogy of our kings compared with the accounts given by the chronicle of melross , and both compared with the genealogies contained in our histories ; with a full proof , that our historians are to be preferred to the irish annals as to this point : ogygia examin'd . i having urg'd , that our historians were to be believed in matters of fact , such as are the genealogies of our kings , they being many , and men of authority ; and having declared , that they extracted their histories from authentick records , though now lost : and these matters of fact being probable in themselves , and adminiculated by the current of foreign histories and authours , except our adversaries should redargue them by authours living in the time , or more credible , which were inconsistent with them . the doctor did therefore urge the inconsistency of our genealogies amongst themselves , which i have fully answered in the preceding chapter , and their inconsistency with the irish annals , which he contends are to be preferred to ours , we being descended from the irish , and they having more ancient annals than ours ; which i am to answer in this chapter . and , for the preference of our histories in the point of credibility , i adduce these following arguments . 1. no history can be discredited , as uncertain and fabulous , upon the testimony and authority of another history , except that other history be acknowledg'd by both the debaters ; but much less , where it is reprobated by him , who urges an argument from it . but so it is , that dr. stilling fleet himself does treat the irish annals in ridicule , as to the remote part of their antiquity , in his preface , page 33. and chap. 5. p. 272. where he proves , that they had not sufficient warrants before the eleventh century , which is long after the time , wherein both the bishop of st. asaph and he acknowledges that we were setled here . and consequently the authority of their history is not sufficient to overturn the time of our settlement , as it is asserted by our historians . 2. we desire to know , what warrants the irish had within six generations of iaphet ? especially to warrant them , not onely to condescend upon particular actions , mentioned , and adminiculated by no other histories , but even to be special in the coming of some from ireland , just 40 days before the floud . and that partholanus , and others , arrived in ireland , anno 312. after the floud , in the month of may , the 14th of the moon , and upon wednesday . and how the doctor should urge this history against ours , as sufficient to overturn the credibility of ours , when he will not allow us to know so much , as when our nation at first setled in scotland , and who was our first king , about 2000 years after that time , when the romans , who lived long in our neighbourhood , in france , and fought long with us , are acknowledged to have had the use of letters , and the way of calculating time : both which were absolutely unknown in the ages mentioned in the irish annals . and either the irish had the exact knowledge of letters , and the calculation of time , when our first colonies came over from them , or not : if they had them ; why not we likewise ? and so the doctor does unjustly object to us , that our histories are not to be believed , because we wanted both these . or if the irish had them not , our history cannot be overturned by the authority of theirs . 3. it 's acknowledg'd by all the irish , except iocelin ; that we were at least setled here since the year 503. and so since that time we must understand the history and descent of our own kings better than any other nation can doe ; nor should any man debate with these that deny this principle . but so it is , that since that time , the irish accompt of the descent of our kings differs extremely from ours ; for they will have loarn to have been our first king , and elder brother to fergus , whereas our story makes no mention at all of any such king , but makes fergus the second the restorer of our monarchy . and their catalogue calls him fergusius magnus , a title never given to him who founds , but to him who augments the monarchy . and how can any man imagine , that a nation would have forgot who was the founder of their monarchy , and being so late , and yet have remembred his brothers , and all the rest of the line ; especially since loarn is said to have reign'd ten years , as offlahartie says . we make eugenius the second to have succeeded to this king fergus , but they make domangardus to have succeeded to him . they make congallus to have succeeded to domangardus , but we make constantine the first to have succeeded to dongardus , whom i conceive they make domangardus . to our corranus , whom he calls gouranus , did succeed eugenius the third ; but he makes conallus to have succeeded to him . to congallus succeeded truly kenatellus , but he makes aydanus to have succeeded to him . to aydanus succeeded keneth the first , but he makes achaius the first to have succeeded to him . the differences after him , will best appear in these columns , which may likewise be observed from the beginning of this period . the genealogy as in our histories from fergus ii. to murdoch . the genealogy as in the irish from loarn to murdoch . fergus ii. loarn eldest son , and eugenius ii. eldest son , fergusius magnus second son to erik , dongardus the second son of fergus the second . domangardus son to fergusius . constantine i. third son , all three sons of fergus ii. congallus domangardus ' s son. congallus i. dongard ' s son , gauranus congallus ' s brother . goranus dongard ' s son. conallus congall ' s son. eugenius iii. congallus ' s son. aidanus gauran ' s son. congallus ii. congallus ' s son. acbaius i. aydan ' s son. kinnatellus congallus ' s son. conadius achaius ' s son. aidanus goranus ' s son. ferqhardus i. conadius ' s son. kennethus i. convallus ' s son. danaldus i. brother to ferqhard . eugenius iv. aidanus ' s son. conallus ii. achaius ' s son. ferchardus i. eugenius ' s son. dungallius i. donald brec ' s son. donald iv. eugenius ' s 2d . son. donaldus ii. conallus ' s son. ferchard ii. ferchard ' s son. malduinus conallus ' s son. malduinus donald ' s grandchild by dongard no king. ferqhardus ii. eugenius v. donald ' s son. achaius ii. grandchild of donald i. by his son dongard . eugenius vi. ferchard ' s son. amberkelethus son of ferqhard ii. amberkelethus findan ' s son , who was son to eugenius . selvathus brother to amberkelethus . eugenius vii . brother to amberkelethus . achaius iii. son of achaius ii. and then murdachus amberkelethus ' s son. muridachus son of amberkelethus . so that , comparing . flahertie's account with ours , we shall find them to differ in names , the times of their reign , and degrees of their consanguinity , the irish omitting some who did reign , and inserting others who never reign'd , or at least , who reign'd not near these times , in which they are placed . my fourth argument shall be , that after the year 503 we are acknowledged to be setled , and to have had a distinct kingdom from ireland , and to have had the learned monastery of icolmkill , from which swarms of learned men were sent to all places ; but especially to the saxons in lindesfarne , to whom aidan , finan and colman were sent bishops , as st. asaph and flahertie acknowledge . and therefore it cannot be denied , but that our histories must be much better believed , than either the irish annals , or the chronicle of melross , though they agreed in what they differed from our histories ; but much more , when they contradict one another ; especially when their differences are very considerable . and since the chronicle of melross is judged so authentick by the bishop and the doctor ; it must be concluded , that , when that chronicle differs very much from the irish , and comes near to ours , ours must be preferred to the irish in point of credibility . but so it is that all this will appear by comparing the three , in so far as concerns the genealogies of our kings , from murdachus , to kenneth the second . by our histories and genealogies , murdachus was son to amberkellethus , and began to reign anno christi 715 , whereas by the chronicle of mailross he is made the son of ewam as he was indeed successour to ewam , or eugenius his uncle , though not his son , and he is called murizant , and he is said there to begin his reign anno 741. but by the irish catalogue of the scotish kings in ogygia , his reign is said to begin anno 733. by our history , etfinus , son to eugenius , begun his reign anno 730. by the chronicle , ewen , son to murizant , anno 744. by the catalogue , dongallus son of selvachus , is said to succeed his cousin german murdachus , anno 736. whereas dongallus did not succeed till the year 824. nor did solvathius succeed till the year 767. to etfin succeeded eugenius , who began to reign anno 761. according to our history . by the chronicle , hedobbus , the son of ewen , succeeded to ewen , anno 747. by the catalogue achaius the fourth succeeded to dongall , anno 743 , and offlahartie the authour of the catalogue subjoyns to this king an observation , that in divers copies of this poem or catalogue . selvachus , achaius the third , achaius the fourth , and achaius the fifth , and gregory are wanting ; which shews , of how small authority this poem or catalogue should be : for achaius and gregory are two of the most considerable , and uncontroverted of all our kings in these periods . for achaius did make the league with charlemain , and is mentioned in many histories beside ours . and gregory lived after the time of kenneth the second , and is sirnamed the great , because of the victory over the britains , irish and saxons , and this is acknowledged , and is cited as such in the famous debate betwixt us and the english before the pope . selvachus also is acknowledged by the chronicle of mailross . but the secret and true reason of this suggestion is , that he might obviate the objection from the difference of the number , and suppress achaius , because they will have the league not to be made with him , but with the irish ; and gregory , because he invaded ireland . o! how witty are these contrivances ? to eugenius succeeded fergus the third , who began his reign anno 764. by the chronicle to hed succeeded fergus his son , anno 777. by the catalogue , aidus fin the first , corrupted ethfinn , succeeded to achaius the fourth his father , anno 748. whereas truly achaius was not father to etfin ; but etfin was father to achaius . according to the catalogue there are nine kings without any special chronology from 778 to 838 ; viz. our kings from fergus 3 to kenneth 2 , are by our histories . according to the chronicle of mailross . donall iii. solvathius . selvand . conall iii. achaius . eokall . conall iv. congallus . dungall . constantine i. dongallus . alpine the son of eokall , which shews that eokall was achaius , and then aeneas . alpinus and then kined son to alpin . aidus ii. kenneth ii.   eugemanus aeneas son.     achaius fifth son of aidus .     alpine the son of achaius , and then kenneth alpine's son.     here are many kings , of whom the nation , where they are said to have reigned in a very late and uncontroverted time , know nothing , and in which the irish not onely differ from us , but also from the chronicle of mailross , which seems to have been written by some english borderers , who though they have somewhat carelesly observed what was doing among us ; yet because of their neighbourhood and commerce , have understood the same better than the irish. it 's likewise observable , that by collationing that period of the genealogy of our kings , from fergus 2 to malcolm 3 ; the irish catalogue in ogygia , allows from the 503 to the 1057 , being 554 years for 51 kings which is very short , whereas we allow from the 404 to 1057 , being 653 years for 46 kings , which is far more probable in it self , and more agreeable to the doctor 's observation , who allows twenty five years to a generation , according to the most received opinion ; whereas this calculation allows onely ten years , and about ten months to every king , even in those ancient times when men lived long . and whereas it is still objected against hector boethius , that he augmented the number of our kings , by inserting collaterals to support the law of incapacity ; and to make the long account of time seem probable . it 's answered , that this objection is fully satisfied , both by the authority of the chronicle of mailross , and this irish catalogue , which insert collaterals , as well as those of the direct line . and if all these kings named by them had been in the direct line , that great number of fifty two joyned with the collaterals , had made the number of our kings in that period to have come near to an hundred , and thus each king to have had about six years allow'd him . i had not fully considered the irish genealogies when i insisted upon that argument from carbre lifachair , and now i acknowledge that my own argument from that book was of no moment , and to shew my ingenuity i pass from it . but the reason why i said then , that there might be a hundred years allowed for a man's life , is because the civil law allows so much , and a man is never presumed to be dead , till it is proved he lived an hundred years ; but i confess the doctor 's calculation from censorinus , of what makes a generation , holds ordinarily true ; and is to be preferred in the accounts of genealogy . my fifth argument against the irish genealogy is , that it differs not onely from ours and from that account in the abbacy of mailross , but from all the french historians , and our ancient records yet extant ; by which it is clear , that our king achaius entred in league with the french king charlemain : whereas the exact offlahartie , makes onely this french league to have been entred into with charles the sixth in the year 1380 , which fell in the time of king robert the second , and adds , that this league was made by robert stewart , lord d'aubigny , in which he confounds two known stories , that he may contradict wardaeus his countreyman ; for it is indeed true , that the ancient league was renewed with king robert the first of the stewarts , anno 1380 , the original whereof is yet extant in our records , and whereof the copy is in fordon : but this league was treated by cardinal wardlaw for us , and the count d'bryan for the french , and the same league was again renewed , anno 1425 , by iohn lord darnly constable of france , for the french ; and wardaeus makes this last treaty to be the first that was made betwixt our kings and the french : and offlahartie , not to contradict him , has joyned the persons who treated the one league , with the time wherein the other was treated . but that there was a league betwixt our achaius and charlmaigne , or at least long before the year 1380 , is most uncontravertable for these reasons : 1. the french historians acknowledge that this league was betwixt achaius and charlemain ; and i have proved by eguinard secretary to the said charlemain , that there was great correspondence betwixt them ; and that he esteemed very much the king of scotland . as also , i have proved from italian authours , that there were families descended of our scotland setled in italy , who came over with william brother to the said achaius . 2. not onely does chambers of ormond , who lived then in france , set down the articles of that treaty , and the several times it was renewed ; but fordon * does expresly insert the league that was betwixt robert the second , first of the stewarts , and the king of france . wherein the king of france acknowledges even at that time , the old confederacies and leagues , à longo tempore , inter praedecessores nostros reges firmatae & connexae ; and the king of scotland on the other part expresses , confoederatio inter illustres reges franciae & avum nostrum , this was robert the bruce ; and adds , et ab olim facta & diutius observata . and to instruct this part of fordon's story , as well as the league it self , we have the original league with king robert the first yet extant , and iohn baliol ( then pretended king of scotland ) refused to joyn with edward of england against philip of france , because of the ancient league made by their predecessours charlemain and achaius , et usque nunc inconcusè servata . whereupon a league is renewed and confirmed by a marriage , the tenour whereof is also extant in fordon , who also sets down the tenour of the pope's bull , prohibiting alexander the second , our king , to continue in his league with the king of france , but to joyn with the king of england ; and , as an effect of these leagues , marianus ( whom the irish call their countrey-man , albeit they also confess , that he called our countrey scotia ) mentions , that anno 1070 , the scots and french wasted the english : which shews , that this alliance was much elder , than either the 1425 , or the 1380 , as o flahertie asserts : and therefore , that excellent historian the sieur varillas relates , that charles the fifth's governour did advise him not to expect , that the king of scotland would enter into his interests , because the alliance of that nation with the french had lasted seven hundred years , without interruption , from king to king , before that time . and by these we may see , what a just authour ubbo emmius is , who rejects our history for many years after this alliance , and how judiciously he is produced by the doctor . but , though the french could have been mistaken in all their histories , yet it is not imaginable , that they would have bestowed great privileges and rewards upon us for services done by the irish ; and that the families , who came over at that time , would not have own'd themselves to be descended from the irish , and not from us . the doctor , to induce his readers to believe , that we are mistaken in the genealogies of our own kings , pretends that the true reason of the mistake of the scotish antiquities was , that we finding , that there was a fergus in the irish genealogy called fortis or fortamalius , who reigned truly in 3775 , and that in the descent of that fergus there was a conar ; and from him rieda called by the irish carbre rieda , and by us eoch and ried ; and that there were several other names in our genealogies agreeing with the genealogies of the irish , as eochoid , who was father to erk , and is acknowledged by both to be father to fergus the second ; the doctor from all this concludes , that the original mistake lay in applying the irish genealogy to the kings of scotland , and that we either imagined , or would have others believe , that all the kings mentioned before fergus the son of erk were kings in scotland , and so went back by degrees , till we made up a formal story of forty kings . to this we answer ; that it were a strange thing , that our story , which we have so well prov'd , should be overturned by the doctor 's mere conjecture ; especially , seeing there is no ground for such a conjecture from any of these steps on which the doctor founds his probability . no authour , for ought we can see , concurs with the doctor in this conjecture , as to fergus ; and o-flahertie , who pretends that he understands the differences betwixt the descents and the reasons thereof , goes no higher than conar the second . and speaking twice of fergusius fortis , he makes not at all him to be the first authour of our race . 2. if we had not had a sure warrant of the settlement and genealogy of our kings , but had onely inserted the kings of ireland , as ours , from a vanity to be thought ancient ; it is more probable by the same reason , that we would have improved it to a story of twice forty kings backwards . and why should the doctor make us to have sisted in fergusius fortis rather , than in fergusius rogius , or fergusius denti-niger , both kings in ireland before fergus the second ? 3. that there could be no ground for our sisting in fergusius fortis , is very clear : for he reign'd anno mundi 3775 , whereas our fergus began to reign anno mundi 3641 , and so we had lost 134 years of our antiquity ; and we should rather have fixed upon hugonius magnus , who began to reign 3619. and consequently agreed with the true time of our settlement , and there had been a more probable conjecture from what is said in ogygia , in the reign of reactus immediate predecessour to hugonius , in whose time it 's said from the manuscript of o-duveganus , that one ferc made a descent into albania , and conquered it ; and this ferc might have been more probably said to have been ferqhard , and so to have made way for the settlementof fergus his son as king here . the next step of this conjecture is , that wherein o-flahertie agrees with the doctor , and o-flahertie asserts , that all the antiquaries of scotland and ireland agree , that our kings are descended from carbre ried the son of conar the second , who was king of ireland . which step is also ill founded . for 1. though indeed we had a king called conar ( as we had but one conar ) yet here our conar does not at all agree with the irish conar in time : for our conar began to reign in the year of christ 149 , whereas the irish conar the second began to reign anno christi 212. so that here we had lost 63 years again of our antiquity . and the conjecture from the agreements in names is very silly , we being neighbours , and speaking one language ; and kings even in remoter kingdoms use to give their children , one another's names 2. the other part of that position , that we are all agreed , that our kings are descended from carbre ried the son of conar , and that our countrey is called dalrieda from him , this is false : for we own our being called dalreudini from king reuda or reutha , in which our historians follow beda's express words ; and rieda and reutha differ much in time , reutha having in beda's opinion setled here before iulius caesar ; whereas carbre rieda behov'd to be born long after that time , for his father conar reigned onely 112 years after christ. 3. we had no carbres , who could be sons to conar the second , for we had onely one conar , and so no conar the second , and he was posterior to both our carbres ; for carbredus galdus reign'd in anno 76 , and carbredus the second reign'd in anno 113 , and so long prior to the reign of conar in 212. 4. as to the pretence , that eochoid ried , or etdach ried is the same with carbre ried , and that our genealogy had an eochoid ried posterior to conar ; this is groundless : for both our genealogies , and the irish have both eochoids and carbres , as distinct names , nor do the names appear the same any manner of way . 5. though it might be pretended , that our countrey was call'd dalrieda from a countrey in ireland , and not from reutha ; yet non conslat , that it was so called from a countrey call'd dalrieda , and so from the sirname of ried ; but from araidh king of ireland , seeing the same , o-flahertie gives an account of a king of ulster called fiachus araidh , from whom also a countrey in ulster is call'd dalaradia and dalriadia , and the inhabitants dalaradii . and this king araidh was also after conar : for he began to reign anno 240. and as it was more honourable to have a countrey called after reuda a scotish king , than from araidh , who was but a king of ulster , and so one of the kings of a province in ireland ; so it is yet more dishonourable , to have our glorious monarch , who now reigns , descended from carbre ried , who was but a dynastie in this provincial kingdom of ulster ; and so a subject , each provincial kingdom having five dynasties , as o-flahertie tells us . and from all this i leave to my readers to judge , whether dr. stillingfleet and his authours doe the king greater honour , in making him to be descended from a petty subject ; or our historians , who make him still to be descended from absolute monarchs . i cannot here omit to laugh at good o-flahertie for asserting , that our kings , even till the 590 , were but dynasties , tributaries and subjects to the kings of ireland , and that aidanus got an exemption from paying tribute at the parliament of dromcheat ; where he appeared . and the doctor does great honour to our king in following such authours , and rather to follow them , than the venerable beda . the bishop of st. asaph has a different derivation of dalrieda from all the former authours : for he brought it from r● which signifies king in the irish , and eda the king's name ; so that eda was a different king ( and authour of this appellation ) from rheuda , carbre ried , echoid ried or araidh . and are our histories to be overturn'd by such irreconcilable authours ? the fourth step of this conjecture is , in the agreement of our history with the irish in the persons of eric , eochoid , mainreamhere , oengus fear , the father , grandfather and great grandfather of our fergus the second , though there be a difference in the rest of the line , from carbre to fergus , our historians making this line to consist of thirteen persons , and theirs of ten . but against this last period it is represented , that the small agreement in this step , as to the names of father and grandfather of fergus , with their residence in ireland , the grandfather having been expell'd from scotland , and fled to ireland , when king eugenius was killed by the romans under maximus , gave a rise to some unexact irish writers to imagine , that the return of this fergus the second from ireland , after forty four years absence , was our first settlement in britain . but the want of three in this period of thirteen in a direct line does much over-balance the small probability , that is urged against us from the agreement in two names , and some resemblance in other two , viz. in carbre ried , and eochoid ried , and aenegusa tich and angus fear . it is also very observable , that this irish genealogy allows 283 years to these ten , viz. from the death of conar carbre's father ( who dyed anno 220 , arthur his successour having begun his reign that year ) to the year 503 , wherein laorn eldest brother to our fergus the second ( as they say ) began his reign ; and yet to fifty one kings from that laorn to malcolm the third , they allow onely 554 years . and from the reflexion it is also more probable , that there were thirteen in this period , and that conar began to reign in the year 149 , and fergus the second in the year 404 , as our historians assert . to all these i add the irreconcilable differences amongst the irish authours , as to the first founder of our monarchy , and the time wherein it was founded ; as also the irreconcilable consequences following thereupon , wherein our three great adversaries camden , usher and bishop of st. asaph did so widely differ , as i have fully prov'd in my first book , without any answer ; and by which contradictions dr. stillingfleet himself is so misted , that he cannot determine , whether we setled in the fourth , fifth , sixth or seventh centuries , professing , that in matters of so great obscurity he could determine nothing . my last argument to prove , that our histories cannot be overturn'd by the irish , shall be from comparing the warrants of both . but , before i enter upon this , i must again regret in this book , as i did in my last , that the irish should mistake so far their own interest , as to suffer or furnish theirs to overturn the credibility of ours : since , because we acknowledge our selves to have come last from ireland , it were our common interest to unite together , and to sustain one another's antiquities , as their authours did before bishop usher , who was of foreign extraction . for , though they controverted some of our saints and monasteries , because of the common name scoti , yet till then they never opposed our antiquities , knowing that in so far as we prov'd our antiquity by roman and foreign authors , which they had not the occasion to do , they in so far were proved to be ancient , which stanihurst well observ'd , as i did remark , in my first book . and upon seeing the use that is made of authours against us , who are really for us ( as beda and others ) we are apt to believe , that theirs are not , if we saw them ; and that the irish rather omit our remote antiquities , than contradict them . nor would we have controverted the authority of their annals , though some of the english had produc'd them against us , if some of the irish had not by ignorance or mistake concurr'd of late with them . we likewise desire them to consider , how our adversaries , and particularly dr. stillingfleet railly their antiquities and authours ketin , wardoeus and o-flahertie , and yet seem ( which is severe ) to allow their antiquities , to the end they may encourage them to oppose us , laying still foundations in the mean time to overturn theirs also , when they have serv'd their turn , which i now proceed to discover . first , the milesian race is accounted by the irish their fourth race ; and yet this is controverted by dr. stillingfleet . and the authority and learning of the druids , upon which the irish do chiefly found the authority of their histories , is absolutely denied ; as it also is , that the irish had use of letters , till after st. patrick's time : and all the antiquity he does allow them is , as to general things , as , from whence they were peopl'd , and that they had successions of kings time out of mind ; and does magnify the tygerneck annals for confessing , that the irish antiquities , till the reign of kimbacius their 73d king , are very uncertain , and he liv'd within 59 years of our fergus . and the doctor adds , that he might have gone farther , and done no injury to truth ; and at last brings down this truth to fergusius fortamalius , who liv'd anno mundi 3775. which is 134 years after our fergus ; whereas we necessarily conclude the irish to have a much greater antiquity : for there were many descents made here from ireland , to prepare the settlement of fergus ; and ireland lying in the neighbourhood of britain and spain , and describ'd by the ancientest geographers and other writers , as inhabited , and without any mention of conquest , it necessarily follows , that they must have been aborigines there . and , by the same reason , they having been very ancient , and wanting wars , must have eased themselves by colonies ; and , this countrey being within 13 miles of them , our settlement must have been very ancient . and so the one does necessarily infer the other , and should not be made use of to contradict it ; and the english , who have conquer'd them , are interested to humble them , but we to maintain them . albeit then it is our own interest to support their antiquities ; yet in as far as they are now produc'd to overturn what relates to our countrey , they are not to be preferr'd to ours , as the doctor asserts : for who would maintain , that the accounts given by the saxons , celtae or spaniards should be preferr'd to the british , or english , or irish histories for the times , after the britains , english or irish were acknowledg'd to be setled ? and as to the irish writers themselves , this poem selected and preferr'd to all other annals by o-flahertie , as not onely containing an acknowledgment of our settlement , but a genealogy of our kings , we have prov'd , that it is not preferable to our historians in point of credibility . and besides all that i have said of it , i must add , that o-flahertie * acknowledges , that there were several different copies of it , and even this , which he follow'd , was not intire , some distichs being wanting , else he doubted not to make an intire catalogue . and even this , such as it is , is onely written in malcolm canmore's time , whom it mentions , who reign'd in the 1057 , of which lateness all the other irish annals allow'd by the doctor are . the main ground insisted on by the doctor for preferring the irish in the point of credibility to us is , that we neither had , nor could have so ancient annals as they , our monasteries being onely founded by st. david , and after him , and so ●osterior to their annals . which argument is founded upon a false supposition : for the doctor himself acknowledges that the psalter of naran contains onely matters of devotion , as the irish antiquaries cited by him confess . this is the eldest , and was written in the latter end of the eighth century . the next is the psalter of cashel , which he rejects as not well founded , and allows none as credible , but those which are written after the year of christ 1000. and it cannot be deny'd , but we might have had well-warranted annals before that time ; which the doctor denies . for first , we were then fully possess'd not onely of our own first part of scotland , but even of the pictish part of it , and also of the northern ( now english ) countries confirm'd to malcolm the first ( by the english own acknowledgment ) who reign'd anno christi 943. and so we were masters of icolmkill , abercorn , abernethie , mailross , lindisfern , and other monasteries , which lay within that great extent ; and which extent dr. stillingfleet acknowledges , since severus's wall is by him confess'd to be built betwixt tine and esk. we had also the number of our bishopricks increased by the subduing of the picts , as is not onely probable in it self , but is clear by the acknowledg'd catalogues of bishopricks in fordon . icolmkill is by beda said to be founded about the 560. and to be the chief of all the monasteries in britain or ireland . abernethie was founded in garnard's time , who was next pictish king to brudeus , in whose time columba liv'd , and so about the 600. and fordon relates , that this monastery was founded 200 years before the church of dunkeld was founded . and here is not onely a monastery mention'd , which might have had annals higher than the psalter of naran , suppose it had created history ; but he cites the chronicle of abernethie , which the doctor acknowledges to be an old chronicle ; and beda also acknowledges ; that there was such a monastery as abercorn . and though the doctor cites buchanan , saying , that it was so demolish'd , that no vestige of it did appear ; yet , the pictish kingdom being quite ruin'd , the argument , that there was no such monastery , is of no force : for the records of many demolish'd monasteries are preserv'd . and , though the abbacy of mailross was rebuilt by st. david ; yet , that it was a famous monastery in beda's time , is clear ( for he tells , that the abbat of mailross was translated to lindisfern ) and has probably remained long demolish'd by the wars , as abercorn did ; and the writers did thereby express the rebuilding as an original foundation . and the reason , why i said in my former book , that this abbacy was ( before it was rebuilt ) called rivallis , was because i have seen in a collection of foundations made by our lord register skeen a copy of the foundation of mailross , wherein the lands of mailross and others are given to the monks of rivallis . but , whether mailross or rivallis are distinct or not , is not material to our point ; and , if they be distinct , it is more for our advantage , since by that concession we have two monasteries doted by st. david . it contributes much to the preference of our histories beyond the irish in point of credibility , and to the establishment of the credibility of our histories against all our adversaries , that in the debate before the pope at rome , about the year 1300. ( where the roman antiquities must certainly be best understood , and when the debate was against the learn'd english , who were very much concerned to contradict us ) we did own this our settlement before iulius caesar his entry into this isle ; and that we as a setled nation , and not as a vagrant company of irishes , maintain'd that long series of wars related by beda and our own historians . and in that debate we assert justly , that the visible ruines of the two walls built by the romans against us and the picts are certain proofs of our antiquity , and that we were the people who maintain'd the war. as also in a letter from our nobility to the pope about the year 1320. we again assert our antiquity , and that haec collegimus ex antiquorum gestis & libris . and all this debate and letter being yet extant , these are surer warrants for our antiquity , than any thing that can be urg'd against us from the irish annals , the eldest whereof are in the year 1100. written by natives at home , without any contradiction or warrant , for ought we have yet seen . nor has the learn'd dr. stillingfleet answered the same objection , when urged in my first book , though with less force than it is now urg'd . dr. stillingfleet answers to all that is urg'd from the antiquity of our monasteries , that this proves onely , that we might have had , but not that we had sufficient warrants , since we produce not the annals of these monasteries . to which my answer is , that ( 1. ) this at least overturns his position , that we neither had , nor could have sufficient warrants for a greater antiquity than the irish. ( 2. ) the irish produce no warrants for their annals , though much later than ours ; and , as we are equal in other things , so we are stronger in this . ( 3. ) we have formerly prov'd , as convincingly as can be in any such case , that we had such annals in these our monasteries , and that our historians compil'd our histories from them ; and that they were lost by the invasions of the english , and by the demolishing of our monasteries in an age , wherein all their records were thought reliques of popery . the doctor 's own chief grounds for preference , in point of credibility , are * testimonies founded upon ancient credible writers , having a concurrent probability of circumstances , and that amongst these ancient writers , consideration is to be had of their abilities , opportunities , care and diligence , according to which rules , i have formerly produced many concurring testimonies from ancient credible authours , relating things credible , and probable : and now in competition with the irish , as to the abilities , and opportunities of our authours , and their care and diligence in collecting our histories , i contend , we ought to be preferable ; because , beside the grounds above urg'd , i must remember my readers , that the doctor denies the irish any opportunity of transmitting their histories by letters , till after st. patrick's time . but so it is , that i have prov'd that palladius's mission was to the scots in britain , and the doctor has acknowledg'd , that this mission of palladius was prior to that of saint patrick : and which is higher , the doctor acknowledges that the unconquer'd nations beyond the roman wall , were the christians spoke of by tertullian ; and i have prov'd that we were one of these unconquered nations . and therefore , since we had the use of letters before the irish , letters being the surest vehicles of history , and christianity the chief nursery of letters , it follows necessarily from the doctor 's own rules , that our histories are more credible than the irish. and this argument holds equally good , whether we our selves were the unconquer'd nations , when christianity was first planted , or became masters by conquest of these christians here , who had the early use of letters : even as the english , or saxons , had good grounds of knowledge , from the letters and learning of the britans , whom they conquer'd . the next is , that we had greater opportunity to know our own histories , and greater reason to use care and diligence in writing them , than the irish , who were strangers . the third is , that the irish having err'd so grossly in the last , and most uncontroverted part of our history , and in which they contradict the foreign and contemporary historians of other nations , it cannot be urg'd that their credibility is of any moment , in the more ancient and darker part of our antiquities , and history , wherein they differ from us . and lastly , our historians have for their abilities been very famous for many ages , in foreign nations , and amongst the best criticks ; whereas we have seen no histories from ireland till of late , and much later than ours . and though we are far from having any low esteem of the irish abilities , yet we conceive , that the doctor should remember that by the suggestion of his countrymen , pope adrian gives the kingdom of ireland to henry the second of england , ad declarandum indoctis , & rudibus populis christianoe fidei veritatem , &c. whereupon they writ a letter to pope iohn , wherein they complain , that they were severely and cruelly us'd as beasts , and therefore desire that his holiness would confirm the election they had made of edward , brother to king robert the bruce , for their king. the learn'd bishop usher was pleas'd , in partiality to his own country , to assert that this his majesty's kingdom was never called scotland , till 1000 years after christ. but the reverend bishop of st. asaph finding that this was not tenable ; he onely asserts , that after the year 900. we got the rest of the country , and then it onely came to be called scotland . both these opinions i have endeavoured to refute in the seventh section of my book , where i have clear'd all this matter in nine positions , to all which the doctor is pleased to answer nothing , save ( 1. ) that i have unwarrantably asserted that the name of scots , doth originally belong to the scots in britain , and onely by way of communication to these in ireland . but i beg his pardon , to tell him , that i have no such position , though for confirming my answers to these two reverend bishops in the former debates , i did onely for farther clearing the matter , assert that the old name under which ireland was known to the greeks was ierna , and to the latines hibernia , which i prov'd from bishop usher himself . ( 2. ) i asserted that before the year 400. there was no author that made mention of scotia , or scoti , but when they meant our country , and country-men : and this i have prov'd without any answer . but in the ( 3. ) place , i positively say , pag. 143. of my first book , that i was not concerned to debate the antiquity of the names of scotia , or scoti , but onely when we first setled here . and therefore though our historians do assert that the irish were first called scots , that contradicts not any of my positions . for though very anciently the irish might be called scots , yet about the time that the romans and others begun to write of the scots , the books now extant do onely apply these names to us , and to our country . and the authour of ogygia does himself acknowledge , that the romans first invented the name of scotland : and if so , it was probably applicable to us : for they had much commerce with us , but none with ireland . amongst the many citations which i adduced for proving that scotland was called ireland , in bede's time , one was from his ecclesiastical history , wherein bede relates , that egfrid , king of northumberland , having sent an army into ireland under bertus , he wasted the country , and the innocent people : and the next year , having sent an army to waste the province of the picts , contrary to the advice of his friends , and of st. cuthbert , god suffered that army to be destroyed , because the former year he had rejected their advice , that he should not invade scotland which did not wrong him . and to clear that the scotia here exprest was not ireland , he adds the english and scots who abide in britain . this passage ( as well as the others , which i have cited , and shall cite ) proves ( 1. ) that scotland then has been promiscuously called by the names of hibernia , and scotia : for the same thing is said first to have been done in scotia , and then in hibernia . and this answers the objection , hiberni revertuntur domum , and where could their home be but in ireland ? ( 2. ) it proves that this our country was called scotia in beda's time , and so long before the year 1000. which the bishop denies . nor can it be prov'd that the king of northumberland went to make war in ireland , otherwise than from offlahartie's late book , which is not to be put in balance with beda , who was disinterested , and liv'd in the very time . to which the doctor answers , that by scotland must be there meant ireland , because the nation which egfrid invaded , had been always kind to the english ; which cannot be said of our scotland . but to this it is replied , that i have prov'd in my book , from the same beda ( who must be the best interpreter of his own words ) that the english at that time were very kindly entertained by the scots , and furnished with all things necessary : which kindness proceeded from an union in religion , which in those happy , and pious days , was the foundation of all kindness : and thus i have answered the doctor 's argument , but he has not answered mine . but to prove that scotland was called ireland in those days , and that this place of beda's is applicable to our country , and not to ireland ; i cite the english polychronicon , who says many evidences we have that this scotland is ofttimes called ( heght ) hibernia , as ireland does : for which he cites many proofs , and particularly this passage in beda . if it is a common saw , that the country which now is nam'd scotland , is an outstretching of the north part of britain . this lond hete sometime albania , and hath that name of albanactus , afterwards the lond hete pictavia , for the picts reigned therein 1070 years : and at last hete hibernia , as ireland hyght . and thereafter it is said at the end of that page , many evidences we have out of this scotland , that it is oft called and hyte hibernia , as ireland has : and particularly amongst many citations out of beda , he cites egfridus , king of northumberland , destroyed ireland , &c. which is the passage controverted . this polychronicon is cited by fordon , and was prior to him , for as vossius tells us , it was written by ranulphus higden , who died , anno christi 1363. and was translated by iohannes trevisa , who continu'd it to the year 1398. from which i draw these conclusions . ( 1. ) that this country was called scotland before the year 1000. which overthrows the bishop of st. asaph's assertion . ( 2. ) that our country was called hibernia , which answers most of all our adversaries arguments . ( 3. ) that this place in bede is to be ascrib'd to us , notwithstanding dr. stillingfleet's reason , and offlahartie's history . for proving likewise that scotland was called hibernia , in beda's time , and by him , i produced among many other passages that very clear one , where he says that aidan was sent from the isle which is called hy , which is the chief of the scotish and pictish monasteries , and belongs to britan ; et ad jus britanniae pertinet : albeit , speaking of hy , in other places , he says it is in hibernia . to which the doctor answers , doth not beda in the same place say , that the island hy was given by the picts , and not by the scots to the scotish monks that came from ireland ? but what a paralogism is this ? for it might have been given by the picts , and yet have been within the territories of the scots : for these neighbouring nations did seise oft-times places belonging to one another . and the picts being sensible , that they were not able to keep this place which was so remote from their own territories , they did therefore the more easily mortify it to a monastery . nor could it otherwise have belong'd to the picts : for it was never pretended that the pictish dominions extended to our western isles , or that they did reach farther than clyd : and beda himself does march them so . and the shire of argyle , and many isles such , as bute , lie betwixt clyd and icolmkill , or hy : and it was never question'd , but that these belong'd to us , and were the seat of our kings . and usher thinks that beda was mistaken , in saying that the picts gave this isle to this monastery . but ( 2. ) does this answer prove , that it belong'd to ireland , which is the onely point here in debate . or can there be any thing more inconsistent with that , than beda's own words , which are , that it belong'd to britain as a part of it ? and if it be a part of britain , it cannot be in ireland , otherwise , than because scotland , which was a part of britain , was then called ireland . nor does the situation of the place contribute less to clear this , than beda's clear authority . for it was never pretended by the irish , that our western isles , which lie upon our coast , belong'd to ireland . and the first thing that is known of them , is , that they belong'd to scotland ; and since this monastery and isle is now in the possession of the scots , and has been so for many ages ; we desire the learned doctor , and his irish evidences , to condescend when , and by what war or transaction the irish lost that , or the other isles : for if it had been theirs , we could not have got it , but by one of these two ways . since then hy was a part of our scotland , it necessarily follows , that aidan came not from the northern scots in ireland , as doctor stillingfleet asserts : for the bishop of saint asaph acknowledges , that aidan was ordained at hy , by the bishop of hy , and dunkeld * , which he supposes with usher to be then founded , and cites bede † for his voucher : and adds , that after firian's death , colman succeeded in the bishoprick , who was also sent from scotland , that is , from hy ; and that he was a bishop of scotland : which must be our scotland , for the reasons aforesaid , notwithstanding of what the doctor says . and from all this we wonder , with the doctor , that any that can carefully reade beda , can dispute , what is so clearly said in him , that scotland was called hibernia ; and so we 'll conclude against him in his own words . but we wonder what the doctor means , when he acknowledges that from beda it appears , that the scots had a kingdom in britain . but when he speaks of the religion of the same scots , he means the scots of ireland : this is indeed beyond my understanding : but i am sure , it can have no colour , from making the ireland , wherein icolmkill , or hy is , an isle distinct from britain ; having in my former book cleared , that our part of scotland , was called an isle , as contradistinguished from britain , by the two firths , clyd , and forth , being clos'd up by a wall , and is therefore called an isle by tacitus , and others whom i formerly cited . to whom i now add several english authours , as william of malmsbury , who speaking of britain , says , & per se , velut insulam , à scotia divisa . and bartholomoeus anglicus says , that scotia regnum promontorium est , montibus & maris brachiis à britannia separata : & anglorum progenies , britanniam insulam possidet . and therefore beda speaking of weremith in northumberland , he tells us , that it is near to scotland , and adds , that by this it may appear , that the remotest part of the isle of britain towards the north is northumberland . which could not have been true , if it had not been spoken upon the supposition , that our country had been an island ; for our country lies benorth northumberland ; in the isle of britain . all which are to be found in the third chapter of the second book of fordon , with several others , which i here omit , rather as unnecessary , than impertinent . i add to these paulus diaconus , who speaking of wars betwixt the britains and saxons , from the time of ambrosius aurelianus , says , that the victory hung uncertain betwixt them , donec saxones potentiores effecti , tota per longum insula potirentur : and this must be onely understood of england , for the saxons did not in his time , nor since conquer that part of britain which belong'd to us . but by that he onely meant , that the saxons conquer'd that part which belonged to the romans , and was called an isle , as contra-distinguished from ours . i prov'd this also from the martyrologium romanum , abredonioe in hibernia , sancti beani episcopi , to which nothing is answered : and i now add to it , baronius in not is , beani vetera manuscripta ex quibus molanus hac die fuit hic episcopus abredonensis . having thus cleared the antiquity of our kings , and the truth of our histories , by so solid reasons , and from so good authority . i hope the reverend dr. stillingfleet will be as ingenuous , in retracting what he has written against the state , in these points ; as he did very commendably retract what he had written against the government of his own church , in his irenicum : at least he will retract that insolent expression , praef. pag. 72. that our antiquities are universally dis-esteem'd , amongst all iudicious and inquisitive men : since all men have not written their opinion , nor has he read all writers ; and this at least contradicts the many parts of his book , wherein he acknowledges , that lipsius and other great criticks are of our side . and i have cited most of all the considerable criticks , and have fully satisfied the insignificant answers made by dr. stillingfleet to them ; and if i have left any expression in all the book unanswered , it is because it was unworthy of having been urged by dr. stillingfleet , or answered by me . and , though i could add many new authours , who have owned our antiquities ; yet , loving rather to reason , than to cite , i produce one , who not onely owns our antiquities , but makes our antiquities a strong argument against the supremacy of the pope . for ( says he ) the bishop of rome cannot pretend , that the church in britain received the christian faith from rome , since scotland , a part of it , was christian before the romans had access to it . the authour is the learned lomeierus ; * who tells us , that the britains had the knowledge of letters 270 years before christ : for dornadilla king of the scots wrote , before then , the laws of hunting observed to this day amongst the subjects of that kingdom , as sacred even to this age. and they were not amongst the last , who received the christian religion : for tertul. advers . iud. cap. 7. tells , that the places which were unaccessible to the romans , had yielded to christ. and from this he concludes , that they are parasites , who flatter the bishop of rome , as universal mo narch of the church , since here were christians , to whom the romans had never access . from which i also draw these conclusions : 1. here is a proof of our ancient learning , and consequently a foundation for the credibility of our annals . 2. here is an acknowledgment of a king before fergus the second , and long before the year 503 , proved too by laws yet observ'd , which was a sure way of preserving his memory ; and the matter of fact is true , for we remember those laws as his to this very day . * 3. here is an acknowledgment , that tertullian's citation is applicable to us . 4. it seems by this more just , that the bishop of st. asaph should rather have sustained our antiquities , as an argument against popery , than rejected them for answering an argument against episcopacy , religion being of greater consequence than government , and the inference being stronger in the one case than the other ; for he should have urg'd that it is not probable , that we who were enemies to the roman nation would have submitted to the roman church ; but would have rather lookt upon their missionaries as spies , especially in those barbarous times , when nations were considered more than doctrine : for though religion already received , might have cemented us ; yet before it was submitted to , so great an enmity as was betwixt us , might have obstructed commerce and kindness ; from which probably proceeded our aversion to the romish rites as to easter , and other points for many ages , in which we followed the greek church in opposition to the romish . but leaving this argument to be prosecuted by dr. stilling fleet , it cannot be denied but both the learned blondel cited by the bishop of st. asaph , and lomeierus were both convinced , that our antiquities were undeniable , for no man in his wits draws arguments from premisses which himself thinks uncertain . possevinus also the jesuit , in his bibliotheca selecta , inserts among the historians whom he recommends as most authentick , an account of our antiquities : wherein among other things , we are asserted to have had a christian church here in the year 203. and the citations from tertullian and st. ierom are appropriated to us , and to these are added three other citations , agreeing with them , one from st. chrysostome in serm. de pentecost . a second from the same authour , in his homilia quòd deus sit homo , and a third from petrus venerabilis , lib. 8. epist. 16. and therefore , as in my last book i did conclude , that our antiquity behoved to be very remarkable , since before bishop usher's time , every nation made us most ancient , next to themselves ; so in this book i may conclude , that our christianity must be much ancienter , than those reverend divines would make even our settlement , since men of all persuasions concur in it , and speak of it with great elogies , and draw consequences from it , for the honour of their own church : which according to the doctor 's principles cited by me , are the surest marks of conviction . thus i hope i have sufficiently illustrated this subject , and therefore i am not resolved any farther , either to burthen it , or my readers . for clearing some passages in this book , the reader may be pleased to consider seriously , these following additions and alterations . pag. 3. lin . 4. for kenneth iii. reade kenneth ii. pag. 5. lin . 10. add to what i have said concerning lese majesty ; that dr. stillingfleet , praef. p. 5. calls this , the sharpest and most unhandsome reflexion in all my first book , and i am glad he does so ; for if there be any severity in these my words , luddus is to be blamed , and not i : for my words in my letter to my lord chancellour , p. 11. are — and since luddus owns , that he durst not deny the british descent from brutus ; lest he might thereby wrong the majesty of the english nation ; i admire , that any of the subjects of great britain did not think it a degree of lese majesty , to injure and shorten the royal line of their kings . by which it may very easily appear , that i did take the word lese majesty in a rhetorical , and not in a legal sense , though i find , that dr. stilling fleet does not answer my objections , even supposing the word to be there otherwise taken ; for it seems for ought that 's yet answered , that to injure and shorten the royal line , is a degree of lese majesty ; that is to say , it tends ( in luddus's own words ) to wrong the majesty of the british monarchy . pag. 8. lin . 10. put out these words , — and this is clear also by the book of pasley . pag. 9. lin . 17. instead of these words , that the people deposed kings ; reade , that the people sometimes de facto deposed kings in those ancient barbarous times ; ibidem , lin . 23. instead of these words , till kenneth the third's time , reade , long after fergus the second's time . pag. 20. lin . 19. for these words , and the inquisitive bede was not able to reach so far back in the year 700. reade , that bede made it not his business , to search out secular antiquities , having onely design'd ( as is clear by his book ) to write of us in so far as was necessary , for his ecclesiastical history , which needed not the helps of the old manuscripts in our monasteries . ibid. l. 14. put out the words , ut fertur , as they say , a word used in the remotest antiquity . for farther clearing pag. 22 , 23 , 24. cap 2. whether the meatae and caledonii were britains distinct from the scots and picts , whom dion calls the unconquered nations , and who the doctor says , were different from the scots and picts ; it 's fit to add to what i said on this subject , that our adversaries differ among themselves , and contradict one another in this point ; for cambden , whom st. asaph follows , makes the picts caledonians , or extraprovincial britains , thinking it thereby more easie to make the settlement of one nation late , than to make both so ; because thus he differs less from received histories : but the doctor sticks not to make the settlement of the picts later , than that of the scots ; because he never finds the name of the picts mentioned , till about the time the scots are , and therefore refutes cambden : whereas offlaharty rejects this reason , contending , as we do , that it is ridiculous to say , that a nation is no older , than from its being mentioned in history under such a name . pag. 29. lin . 18. for &c. 492. reade &c. pag. 492. pag. 32 lin . 3. after the word piracy , add , and whereas the doctor objects , that this wall was unnecessarily built betwixt the two seas to hinder the incursions of the scots and picts ; seeing , i supposed , the custome was to cross over the two firths , and to land on this side of the wall ; for so they landed on the british side , and left the wall behind them , and consequently the expence had been unnecessary , and the romans and britains very idle in building it . to this it is answered , that i very justly supposed that the invasions were over the firths ; and though they had left the wall behind them after their landing , yet the objection concludes not , that therefore the building of the wall was unnecessary ; for the britains being separated and distinguished from the scots and picts by two firths which did meet onely in a short neck of land , they completed this natural fortification of water , by building a wall on the land where it was wanting , thereby defending themselves against the irruptions of their enemies ; so that the scots and picts being debarred from entring by this neck , which was the easie and ordinary way before , were after necessitated to invade by water , formerly the more difficult way . and this is not onely a conjecture arising from the clear probability of the thing ( which were sufficient to answer the doctor 's objection that is onely founded on a bare conjecture ) but it 's the express reason given by beda , who lived so near the time and the place , and who speaking of this wall , saith , fecerunt autem eum inter duo freta , vel sinus ( de quibus diximus ) maris per millia passum plurima , ut ubi aquarum munitio deerat , ibi praesidio valli fines suas ab hostium irruptione defenderent — from which i must also add , that the seas we came over , were our own firths abovemention'd , and not the irish sea ; for the wall is said to be betwixt the two firths and bays of the sea , and thereafter in the same chapter it's said fugavit eos transmaria , which are also the words of gildas : all which is appliéd to our firths , and not applicable to the irish sea , which can neither be called firth nor bay in the singular number , nor maria in the plural , it being called mare hibernicum , as our seas are called mare germanicum , or deucaledonicum . and that the irish sea was not passable , nor fit for such anniversary invasions in corroughs , is ( beside all i have said formerly ) clear from the english writers themselves , bartholomaeus anglicus , and the english polychronicon in their descriptions of ireland . but the sea that is between britain and ireland is all the year round full of great waves , and uneasie ; so that men can seldom sail it securely . this sea is sixscore miles broad , and bartholomaeus anglicus says of it , — mare autem hibernicum versus britanniam undosum & inquietum est , & toto anno vix navigabile . the doctor , to evite the force of our arguments , makes the caledonii and meatae to differ from the scots and picts , and to be britains dwelling near the wall ; who being forced to attend there for the defence of the wall against the romans , left the more northern parts of the isle waste , which they formerly inhabited , as the bloud doth the extremities , when it runs to the heart : whereupon the scots invaded their possessions from the west out of ireland , and the picts from scandanavia . but besides the arguments i urged formerly in my second chapter , i now add , that first , beda makes onely mention of five nations , who inhabited britain , viz. the britains , romans , picts , scots and saxons , whereas if the caledonii and meatae had been different from the scots and picts ( and not the highlanders and lowlanders of the scots and picts under different names ; as i have formerly proved them to be ) then there had not onely been five , but seven nations inhabiting britain . whereas the doctor contends that dion must interpret beda's words , it 's more reasonable that beda , who wrote long after dion , should interpret his words ; since beda is so express in describing who were inhabitants of old , and in his time ; and dion , who was before beda , could not interpret him . 2. either the scots and picts came into the possessions of these caledonii and meatae before the romans , or after : if they came in before , then the scots and picts must have come and setled here before the year 412. because the romans left this isle altogether about that time , without ever returning , and consequently were setled here before the year 503. which is the bishop of st. asaph's position : but if after the romans left the isle , then it was not when the caledonii and meatae were necessitated to come for the defence of the wall against the romans , which is doctor stillingfleet's position . if the irish had overcome the extraprovincial britains , whom , as the doctor confesses , the romans could not overcome ; this conquest must needs have fallen out near to those times wherein gildas and beda lived , and whereof they write the wars and vastations so particularly and exactly ; and especially since the learned doctor gives as a rule , that a negative testimony is concluding , where the writer is knowing , and had opportunity to know , and the thing omitted is of importance to the subject treated of ; all this quadrats exactly with this case : and though these authours had omitted this conquest , yet it is incredible that these ancient irish annals ( by the doctor alone so much preferred to ours ) would have omitted the full and clear relation of a conquest so very glorious to them , as the overcoming nations , who could never be conquered by the mighty power of the romans ; especially since this must have been , not some particular victories onely , but one intire extinction of the meatae and caledonii , for these are never after so much as mentioned : and it 's yet more incredible to think that we could have overthrown these extraprovincial britains , after the romans had been forced to leave the island , and yet never be able to prevail so far against them , when they had the britains , romans , and us to be their enemies ; it being acknowledged that we were by continual incursions endeavouring to settle here about 200 years before the romans left the isle . whereas the doctor cites fordon distinguishing the picts and scots from the caledonii , and meatae ; and making them to be the extraprovincial britains in the 36th chapter of the third book of his scoto-chronicon , i have considered the place cited , but i find no such thing in that chapter . indeed in the 37th chapter of the second book i find fulgentius is called dux britannorum albanensium , and that the britanni boreales , are distinguished from the britanni australes ; but there is no mention made in that place of the caledonii and meatae ; nor does the division of south and north britains make any thing against us , but on the contrary , it seems very clear by that chapter , that the scots and picts had been long setled in scotland , before the romans left this isle ; for it 's said there , that the scots and picts having ( according to their accustomed manner ) over-run the countrey , notwithstanding the assistence given by the romans to these britains , fulgentius was forced to make a peace with them . pag. 36. lin . 2. for fourth chapter , reade fifth chapter . and here add , that by these words ( totam cum scotus iernam movit ) may be meant of our being forced to retreat or return to ireland , when we were expelled by maximus ; which agrees with the time here describd by claudian . pag. 36. lin . 10. for this , reade thus . pag. 38. lin . 16. the comma is before , but should be after usher . and for do , reade doth . pag. 41. i desire the reader may be pleased to observe , first , that offlahartie himself confesses , that the words ( soli britanni ) in eumenius , are understood to be in the genitive , as scaliger and we contend ; and not in the nominative , as the bishop and the doctor alledge . and here i would have the doctor to mind that true maxime of law cited by himself ; a witness which a man bringeth for himself ought to be admitted against him . secondly , that the bishop of st. asaph makes use of plantin's edition in the catalogue prefixt by him , and in that edition eumenius's words are pointed as i have cited them . thirdly , i wish the reader to observe that in my first book against the bishop of st. asaph , pag. 70. lin . 8. the particle & ( in eumenius his words , natio adhuc rudis & soli britanni ) is printed ( it ) and so the force of the argument is not understood , which was , that ( & ) copulat diversa , and so the natio rudis could not be the same with soli britanni , but must needs have been of the genitive case , and the words must have run , pictis & hibernis soli britanni , the picts and irish of the british isle . pag. 45. for britons , reade britains . and here add , that the words in tacitus are nobilissimi totius britanniae , which does not at all prove galgacus his men to have been britons , but britains ; and so this agrees very well with the scots , who were caledonian britains . pag. 41. lin . 19. for scotice primae , reade scoticae pruinae . pag. 51. lin . 2. for fourth chapter , reade fifth chapter . pag. 57. lin . 17. add , and that he was sent to the scots in britain is clear . pag. 60. lin . penult . for nomination , reade omination . pag. 65. lin . 3. for the conquered nations , reade relates to the unconquered nations . pag. 68. lin . 10. put a comma after the word mortal . pag. 72. lin . 15. in place of , a nation before constantius ' s time , say , a nation setled here before constantius ' s time . ibid. lin . 22. add , that these words in scaliger , & scoti sunt adhuc in hibernia , must be so interpreted as to consist with scaliger's former arguments for proving our early settlement here , and therefore the sense must be ; that there are yet in ireland some of these ancient scots , or that the nation from which the albanian scots are descended are yet in ireland ; neither of which contradicts our ancient settlement here . pag. 76. lin . penult . for these words , neither is buxhornius special , and has been misled by usher ; reade , and buxhornius has been misled by ubbo emmius , whom he cites , and is later than usher . pag. 77. lin . 8. for spartan , reade spartian . ibid. lin . 12. for all that , reade that which . pag. 81. lin . 16. add , that the doctor , pref. p. 23. is very unjust in saying that our antiquities went not down with iohn major , and that he gave little credit to the being of fergus the first ; for it 's clear that he repeats onely the story of gathelus , scota , and simon brek , but is very positive in asserting the story of fergus the first , and shews particularly that beda did not contradict that part of our history , but gives the true and reconciling distinction , that fergus laid the foundation of the monarchy , and reuda or rether enlarg'd it ; and reckons above 700 years betwixt the two ferguses , and relates the genealogy of alexander the third , as it was repeated by that highland gentleman at the coronation . pag. 83. lin . 13. for these words , he could have no warrant but tradition , reade he could have no sufficient warrant without tradition . pag. 94. lin . penult . put out the word saint from fergus . pag. 97. lin . ult . immediately after the word verimund , add these words , many material things which are not in boethius . pag. 98. lin . 11. put out these words , which are not in boethius . pag. 108. lin . 25. after alarick , add the word is . pag. 116. lin . ult . when kenneth is called the first monarch of scotland , the meaning is , he was the first monarch of all scotland , having subdued the picts , and therefore he is so termed by fordon . pag. 119. lin . 17. for , it is likely , reade is it likely . pag. 121. for de muro lapideo , reade de mora lapidea . i. e. the stony moor. pag. 129. lin . 16. for ferchard's second son , reade ferchard the second his son. pag. 167. lin . for tich , reade fich . pag. 175. lin . 14. for created , reade treated of . the reader is intreated to excuse these mistakes in the printing , since they were occasion'd by the authour 's great distance from the press . and if the reader doubt of the old alliance betwixt france and scotland , the articles of the old league shall be printed , for they have been lately found upon record in an old register at paris , and bear date 791. agreeing exactly with what i have said page 109. of my first book ; and with page 74. of this : and this proves us to have been a nation setled long before , and of very considerable reputation abroad in the world : for how is it imaginable that charles the great , king of france , and emperour of the west , should have thought it either his honour or interest to engage in so strict an alliance with a pack of pilsering vagabond robbers , confin'd to the then very insignificant county of argyle , as is most unjustly alledg'd against us . the end . the reverend dr. stillingfleet is pleased to reflect upon the authour 's ius regium , but that the famous university of oxford had other thoughts of that book , the reader may understand by the following letter , which passed their publick seal , and was sent , as it 's here set down , to the authour . honorabili plurimum domino , domino georgio m'henzie , equiti aurato regio regni scotiae advocato . illustrissime & clarissime domine , cum regio principum iure & majestate nihil sit sanctius , utpote quod iis inviolatis & regni gloria & subditorum pax unice conservantur , facile possis credere , quam acceptissimos academiae , quae regi semper fida gloriatur perstitisse , honores contuleris , cum vestras regiae causae vindicias nobis non tantum transmiseris , sed & in publicum simul , iniquo hoc tempore vocaris patrocinium . si quae enim ( post probatam bellis civilibus fidem , ignibusque traditos impios libellos , de quibus originem & vires sumserat perduellio ) ulterioris officii partes supererant , eas omnes vestro explevimus beneficio qui causam principis una videmur defendisse , quod doctissimi laboris effeceris participes . qui ipsa fundamenta penitus convellens quibus , inimica semper regibus , plebis improba innititur causa , de ipsa seditione vel bellicâ potiorem reportasti victoriam ; cum enim armis miles rebelles cogat in tempus tantum gladios recondere , tu , invictissimae rationis viribus , imperas ne iterum stringantur . languet quidem tantum quae debellatur , non extinguitur seditio , devictumque licet humilis & abjecti vulgus imperii patiens videatur , vel minimâ elucente spe res novas continuo molitur . adeo ut regias partes verius sustentet qui suadet quam qui cogit parere , rebusque imperii honestius consulat , qui inconcussae fidei divinam statuens originem , reverentiam principum non metum incu●it , regibusque ex officio docet , non re , vel tempore turpiter inservire . hinc fit ut quamvis scotorum virtuti plurimum debeatur , quod rebelles bis prosligaverint , tibi plus sit referendum quod buchanum & miltonum : quorum licet de scriptis derivatum plurimas regni partes venenum infecerit , tu tamen grassante diu malo , tam felici tandem remedio subvenisti ut conscientiae , rationi , legibusque regni antiquissimis necesse est renuncient si qui in posterum sint qui in deum regemque una rebelles audeant iterum movere arma . quod itaque nostra ex parte unicum possumus , inter libros aeternae memoriae sacros , vestros academia reponet , honores autori exoptans quos ipsa nequit conferre , soliusque possit principis munificentia : nimirum ut penitus fractis per te fanaticorum viribus , sentiat rex quantum possit vel unius subditi literata fides , & ipse experiaris quantum mereatur . haec eo , quo mittimus animo accipias , & inter affectûs indicia aestimes quo te prosequitur illustrissime domine nomini vestro addictissima , universitas oxoniensis . e domo nostrae convocationis v. id. iunii , mdclxxxiv . books printed for , and sold by joseph hindmarsh . davelas's history of the civil wars of france . poems by several hands , and on several occasions , collected by n. tate . miscellany ; being a collection of poems by several hands , collected by mrs. a. behn . the works of mr. iohn oldham , together with his remains . a discourse of monarchy ; more particularly of the imperial crowns of england , scotland and ireland , with a close from the whole as it relates to the succession of i. duke of york . practical rules of christian piety , containing the sum of the whole duty of a true disciple of christ. history of count zozimus translated into english. the doctour's physician , or dialogues concerning health , translated out of the original french. butler's ghost ; or hudibras 4th part , with reflexions on these times . ienkinsius redivivus ; or the works of that grave , learned , truly loyal and courageous judge ienkins whilst a prisoner in the tower , and newgate , by command of the rebellious long parliament , begun at westminster , november the 3d , 1640. wherein is plainly set forth the just power and prerogative of the king , the privilege of parliament , the liberty of the subject , and what is treason according to the laws of the land. the familiar epistles of collonel henry martin found in his misses cabinet . a true account of the captivity of thomas phelps at machaness , in barbary , and of his strange escape in company of edmund baxter and others , as also of the burning two of the greatest pirat ships belonging to that kingdom , in the river of mamora , upon the 13th of iune , 1685. by thomas phelps . the perjur'd phanatick ; or the malitious conspiracy of sir iohn croke of chilton , henry larimore , and other fanaticks , against the life of robert hawkins , clerk , and late minister of chilton , occasioned by his suit for tythes . an historical treatise of the prerogatives of the church of rome , and of her bishops ; written in french by mounsier maimburg , translated into english by a. lovell . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a50442-e220 praef. pag. 5. chap. 5. pag. 267. & passim . notes for div a50442-e650 praef. p. 3d. praef. pag. 72. notes for div a50442-e1520 pag. 2. * dr. stillingfl . praef . pag. 23. † cap. 5. p. 285. c. 5. p. 285. * bed. l. c. 14. * verum eadem britannia romanis usque ad caium julium caesarem incognita suit . * l. 1. c. 5. * page 18. † c. 5. p. 285. ‖ pref. p. 60. * brit. descript. p. 24. * c. 18. * utraque gens eam inseder at provinciam quae jam diu scotia est appellata . † c. 19. * p. 13. edit . iocelia . * hiberni revertuntur domum . * p. 21. * c. 1. parag. 5. * c. 5. p. 283. * quos sibi caledonia viros seposuerat . † integri & indomiti . * indigenae an advecti . hist. univers . de reb . gest . reg . scot. * lib. 1. c. 37. many evidences we have that scotland is oft call'd and hecht hibernia , as ireland doth . agente palladio scotorum episcopo a coelestino in britanniam misso ut pelagianam haeresin extingueret . rationar . tempor ad . an . 429. * p. 59. † c. 2. p. 53. ‖ p. 56. * p. 68. † p. 53. * c. 7. contr . iudaeos as it is translated by st. asaph , praef . p. 8. * habet enim progeniem scoticae gentis de britannorum vicinia . * et scoti hanc genti suae antiquitatem mihi debent . * de occident : imp. l. 6. p. 141. notes for div a50442-e13300 * antiquit. hibern . c. 5. † praef. p. 28. * de antiq. hibern . c. 5. † de bell. gal. l. 6. * l. 17. c. ult . notes for div a50442-e16540 pref. p. 5. lib. 3. c. 2. lib. 5. cap. 60. which is not lib. 4. but l. 3. lib. 2. c. 12. 13. ●● . and lib. 3. ● . ●● . et in 〈◊〉 recapitulatione . lib. 3. c. 1. ford. l. 8. c. 1. l. 1. c. 39. l. 12 , 13 , 14. fol. 48. 57. l. 5. passim . boeth . l. 11 , 12 , 13 , & 15. passim . euch. lib. 7 , 8 , & 9. passim . les● . lib. 6 , & 7. passim . ford. lib. 5. at the beginning . maj. lib. 3. c. 5. boeth . lib. 12. buch. l. 7. les● . l. 5. ford. lib. 3 , & 4. maj. lib. 3. boeth . lib. 8 , 9 , 10. buch. lib. 5. chap. 5. * lib. 2. 5 , & 6. l. 4. † lib. 2. & 3. ‖ pag. 10. * lib. 14. cap : 27. notes for div a50442-e21570 pref. p. 47. ogyg. part 3. cap. 1. ogyg. part 3. cap. 2. chron. mail. p. 136. edit . oxon. 1684. ogyg. p. 480. praef. p. 25. ogyg. pr. p. 27. * lib. 14. c. 44. lib. 11. c. 15. education du prince , l. 1. chap. 1. p. 39. praef. p. 4. 46. ogyg. p. 468. ogyg. p. 114 , & 264. pag. 165. 190. 327. ogyg. p. 475. chap. 5. pag. 282. praef. & chap. 5. passim . praef. p. 45 , 46. * ogyg. p. 467. verum aliquot desider at is distichis , integrum apographum reperire non contigit ; aliàs absolutum ex eo catalogum contexere non dubitaremus . stillingfleet , chap. 5. p. 271. praef. p. 51. praef. p. 48. * still . chap. 1. p. 35. vid. bul. in fordon , lib. 12. cap. 33. fordon , ibid. p. 348. lib. 4. cap. 26. lib. 3. cap. 27. lib. 1. cap. 37. lib. 1. de scotia cap. 39. lib. 4. cap. 22. voss. de hist. lat. lib. 3. lib. 3. cap. 3. * cap. 5. p. 103 , 104 , 105. † hist. 3. 5. pag. 171 , 172. & 3. 5. p. 166. praef. p. 69. scotiae propinquum . ex quibus patet quod ultima pars insulae britanniae versus boream est northumbria . epit. hist. rom. p. 672. decr. 16. pag. 783. pag. 784. * joh. lomeierus de bibliothecis , p. 149. edit . 2. ex germaniâ transfretamus ad penitus toto divisos orbe britannos , qui quidem literarum cognitionem diu ante christi tempora habuisse dicuntur : anno enim ante christum natum 270. dornadilla maini silius , scotorum rex , praecepta venandi scriptis commisit , & subditis suis servanda proposuit : quae leges & nostro adhuc seculo , seu sacrae , observantur . fidem christianam non postremi receperunt . tertull. adv . judaeos , cap. 7. britannorum inaccessa romanis loca , christo vero subdita . audiant hoc romani pontificis gnathones , qui ejus universalem monarchiam in ecclesiam quovis modo stabilire conantur . britanni fidem acceperunt in illis locis quo romanis aditus non patebat . qui posset dari episcopus universalis , cùm nullus unquam fuerit monarcha politicus , qui sibi totum terrarum orbem subjecerit ? quamvis romanorum imperatores hac vanâ opinione inflatos spiritus gesserunt , ut se totius orbis dominos crederent , cùm sanè modicam ejus partem obtinerent . * and though it may be objected that he had this from our historians , yet it still proves that he and others believe our historians . lib. 16. cap. 5. notes for div a50442-e32910 camb. brit. pag. 82. chap. 5. p. 240. lib. 1. cap. 12. polychr . lib. 1. cap. 32. lib. 15. cap. 80. scotlands holy vvar a discourse truly, and plainly remonstrating, how the scots out of a corrupt pretended zeal to the covenant have made the same scandalous, and odious to all good men, and how by religious pretexts of saving the peace of great brittain they have irreligiously involved us all in a most pernitious warre / by h.p. ... parker, henry, 1604-1652. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a56284 of text r40061 in the english short title catalog (wing p421). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 206 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 41 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a56284 wing p421 estc r40061 18676085 ocm 18676085 108155 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a56284) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 108155) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1658:13) scotlands holy vvar a discourse truly, and plainly remonstrating, how the scots out of a corrupt pretended zeal to the covenant have made the same scandalous, and odious to all good men, and how by religious pretexts of saving the peace of great brittain they have irreligiously involved us all in a most pernitious warre / by h.p. ... parker, henry, 1604-1652. [2], 78 p. printed by fran. neile ..., london : 1651. errata: p. 78. reproduction of original in the harvard university library. eng great britain -history -commonwealth and protectorate, 1649-1660. great britain -politics and government -1649-1660. scotland -history -1649-1660. scotland -politics and government -1649-1660. a56284 r40061 (wing p421). civilwar no scotlands holy vvar. a discourse truly, and plainly remonstrating, how the scots out of a corrupt pretended zeal to the covenant have made t parker, henry 1651 36905 148 5 0 0 0 0 41 d the rate of 41 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the d category of texts with between 35 and 100 defects per 10,000 words. 2007-06 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-07 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-04 john latta sampled and proofread 2008-04 john latta text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion scotlands holy war . a discourse truly , and plainly remonstrating , how the scots out of a corrupt pretended zeal to the covenant have made the same scandalous , and odious to all good men : and how by religious pretexts of saving the peace of great brittain they have irreligiously involved us all in a most pernitious warre . tantum religio potuit suadere malorum . curs'd man , what canst thou hope for , what desire ? to thee christ brings a sword , his gospel fire . be man no more , abjure thy wretched kinde : lest mannah poizen , sun-beams strike thee blinde : by h. p. esquire . london : printed by fran : neile , in aldersgate-street . 1651. reader , i have lately seen in print an apologie for such ministers , and people , as out of conscience did not observe the thanksgiving-day dedicated by the parliament to almighty god , for giving us victory against the scots : and the apologist had prefixed this title in his front : sad and serious politicall considerations touching the invasive warre against our presbyterian protestant brethren in scotland , their late great overthrow , and the probable dangerous consequences thereof to both nations , and the protestant religion . as soon as i had read it over ; i saw heavy , and bitter charges in it against the power now governing , and by consequence against our nation , and religion , but all was built upon such premisses , as were left utterly unproved . i doubt not therefore but all schollers will deride the author , as void of wit and ingenuity : and will think that pamphlet unworthy of an answer , which can challenge nothing besides a flat denyall . but when i consider the multitude , who scarce discern betwixt arguments and invectives , or points that require solid proofs , and such as sometimes are not worth prooving : when i consider this multitude may be dangerously imposed upon by confident writers indeed , such as have effrontery enough to grant themselves any thing under dispute : i dare not be wanting to a distressed cause , and vitiated truth . what the apologist though affirmant has left unproved , viz : that the parliament has broken covenant with the scots , and made an invasive warre upon the presbyterians : the same i though respondent shall endeavour to leave disproved . and i hope i shall remonstrate by something more then averments , my antagonists best arguments : 1 ▪ that the covenant was first violated by the scot● , and 2ly , that this warre of great brittain was raised by the presbyterians . of the covenant . about 11. or 12. yeers since , the late king began to take arms against the scotch nation upon ecclesiastical quarrels , but his successe was so ill therein , that he could neither hopefully pursue , nor yet handsomly compose those broils . the reason was , because his popish subjects could not , and his protestant subjects in england would not support him with their effectuall assistance in that causless warre . so this parliament was then convened to extricate the said king out of those difficulties : and had ●here been any other remedie that possibly could have releasd him ( so intangled , as he then was ) either by pacifying the scots without force , or forcing them without pacification , this remedie had never been thought on : for there was nothing in the world more adverse to his tyrannicall ends ; then the freedome , and controuling authority of that high court . long it was not therefore after the sitting of our great councell , before the said king gave open testimonies , how odious it was to him to see his boundles prerogative so checkt : nay many months had not elapsed before disgusts had hacht & ripend bloody & dangerous plots against the whole representative bodie of our state , 2. armies were now in the north out of all military imployment , and this put the king in some hopes , that either one of them or both might be woone to his partie ; and so help to rid him of his loathed rivality . strong endeavours were used accordingly : but god blasted them all : the scotch army thought it too horrid a thing to attempt the ruin of that court which was so true to their preservation , and so assured to the ends of their late declaration : and the english army durst not attemp● any thing , having the power of london to mate them before , and the scots behinde , yet the parliament truly apprehending danger from these , and other like machinations to for●ifie themselves the better , frame a protestation for all the people to take , and whosoever should refuse the same , he was voted unfit to bear office either in church , or common-wealth . this protestation was taken in 1641. and the protesters did thereby in the presence of almighty god binde themselves to defend religion , the king , the parliament , publick liberty , the union , and peace of the three kingdoms , with a clause to be assisting to all that adhered to this protestation , and to be at enmity with all its opposers . the king stomacht much this new way of imbodying the people in leagues , and parties , and knew well that the contrivers of it intended it for a combination against his unlimited pretensions : but seeing his interests were here as specially provided for as any other , without any insinuated subordination , and that it left his pretensions as unprejudiced as they were before : he smothered much of his distaste against it . ordinary affronts , and misadventures did rather quicken then quash this kings resolutions , wherefore upon this account he made the more haste into scotland upon some concealed reasons of state : and his hope was , that by his passing through both the armies in the north , he should finde an opportunity to be his own negotiater with all the chief commanders . all these royall arts neverthelesse miscarried , and were not able to debosh the armies , for either the commanders were jealous of the soulderies integrity , or the souldiery of one army suspected the sincerity of the other , or else the parliaments sollicitations proved as efficacious , as the kings : somthing there was that concurred to the abortion of that mischief . the king therfore speeds away to scotland with super●etations of further plots in his unquiet head ; but his old fate still accompanied him , for there he was soon disburthened of some of his monstrous conceptions , to the great detriment of other men : but he scarse ever prospered in any one designe for the advancement of himself . some noblemen that were invited to a bloodie supper , got timely advertisement of the royall assassinators , and so by flying privily out of edenburgh secured themselves : but that ever to be execrated insurrection in ireland , by the irish papists against the british protestants , came to effect at that time ; and t is known well enough that the chief actors in that tragedie alledged a commission from the king under the great seal of scotland , to justifie all that they then perpetrated . here was an issue of blood spent , that is not stanched to this day : little lesse then 500000 christians were sacrificed , and devoted to slaughter by that commission ( and the king himself never took any effectuall course to wipe off that stain ) but what prosperity has that dismall deluge of blood brought at last to the kings cause ? hitherto the king keeps from open defiance with the parliament of england : but now gods flaming minister of warre begins to brandish his sword against this nation : now the king is returned from scotland : and now begins the year 1642. wherein arms are openly taken up , and avowed on both sides . scotland for two or three years before had seen war , but without slaughter ▪ ireland had been miserably the yeer before imbrued with slaughter , yet saw no war : but england must now prepare her self both for war , and slaughter . at the first harnessing , and making ready for the field both sides pretended to be on the defence : and both pretended to stand for the defence of the same persons , and rights ; the parliament declares for the kings rights aswell as the subjects liberties : and the king for the subjects liberties , as well as his own rights : the matter of the protestation is the cause they both ●ight for ; insomuch that by their professions it might be thought the protestation were equally favoured by both . neither were their successes much unanswerable to their professions : for after a bloodie battell fought neer keinton in octob : and another hot encounter at brainford , and after divers other conflicts in severall other places of the northern , western , and middle counties of england either side got blows , but neither side carried away any great advantage , or conquest : only the kings secret correspondence with the irish began now to grow more evident , as well by their declaring for the kings pretences , as by his diver●ing the preparations made here against them . at this time the threed of the kings councels was exceeding finely spun , the more zealous he seemed against the i●●sh openly , the more zeal he attested to them privately , and they themselves could not but see by the kings seizing our irish provisions here , and assuring himself of our forces sent thither , that the more we exhausted our selves in sending supplies against them , the more unable we should be in the end either to resist the king here , or to reduce them there . howsoever as was noted before , though the most subtill threeds of the king , were strong enough sometimes to fabricate toils and nets for his subjects , yet they never could be twisted into ladders for the mounting of him to his aspired grandour . about the beginning of the year 1643. another black desperate designe against the city of london was discovered , scarce inferior to any of those former impregnations of the kings inraged brain : whereupon the parliament again had recourse to this new religious guard of vowing , and covenanting . and herein after the covenanters had humbled themselves before god for the nations sins , and judgements , and promised by gods grace to endeavour for the future , an amendment of their wayes , they the second time ingaged themselves by vow , and covenant , in the presence of almighty god , to be adhering faithfully to the forces raised by the parliament for defence of religion , and liberty . &c. but notwithstanding the vertue of both these holy remedies against the kings uncessant stratagems : about the latter end of the same summer the parliaments affairs came to a great declination , and till they obtained aid from the scotch nation , their condition was thought very tottering . in august the english commissioners began to treat at edinburgh : and about the depth of winter the scots advanced with a compleat , well appointed army . yet this may not be wholly pre●ermitted , that the scots were long deliberating about their march , and though they saw their ruin involved in ours , and their faith no lesse pre-ingaged to us for mutuall assistance , then ours was to them : yet they advanced not at last but upon these strict conditions : 1. that we being then but a wasted part of england , yet should presently imburse them out of our afflicted affairs with a great summe of ready money : 2ly , that they should be payed as mercenaries , and yet have a share in government here , as if they were our joyntenants . and 3ly , that we should enter with them into a new solemn league and covenant upon oath , as it was by them composed , and conceived . so disproportionable , and unsuitable is their amity to their enmity : for when they had a pretence of a quarrell contrary to former treaties with england , in 1648. t was in their power to invade england readily without assurance of present advance-money , or establisht pay afterwards : and such able enemies we found them in all ages : but when they were to be ayding to part of england , in observance of former treaties , in 1643. there is no moving in such a work without ample covenants : so much more difficult amongst them is the enterprise of helping , then is the enterprise of undoing . it is manifest now , by that which has been hitherto premised , that the first occasion of flying to such conscientious tyes and expedients as these , was that the late kings plots , and conspiracies might be thereby the better disappointed , and that the people might be thereby the better confirmed in their opposition against him . and this makes it now seem the more strange to us , that the scots at present should make their covenant so main an engine for the king against us , which at first was certainly excogitated as a main engine for us against the king. 2ly , it is hereby as manifest that the scotch covenant which is now insisted on by that nation , and was pressed on us at first with so much rigor , did add no new obligation at all to the english : religion , liberty , monarchy , and the peace of the nations were as much secured before , and as sanctimoniously by the protestation in 1641. and by the vow , and covenant in 1643. as they were afterwards by the solemn league and covenant , when the scotch army was to enter england . 3ly . we cannot observe by any remarkable blessing from heaven , that the hand of god did ever give any gratious testimony in behalf of these new sacramentall obligations . the protestation was thought ineffectuall till the vow , and covenant came in with a greater supply of religion : the vow , and covenant was not able to break the kings armies till the solemn league of scotland had superinduced its further sanctity : and when that was superinduced and came accompanied with 20000 armed men from scotland , the king subsisted , yea and thrived a long time after : and without doubt those oaths which he imposed within his quarters did asmuch service against us , as ours did for us in our quarters . we all know that t was not a new oath but a new modeld army that by gods most gratious hand first gave check to the kings prosperity : and t is not so visible that ever we trampled on the royalists formerly by observance of the covenant , as that we are now miserably ingaged in blood against the scots , by misprisions , and false glosses of the same . the lord of his boundles mercy grant at last that we may return to our old wayes of humiliation , seek to appease that majesty by fasting , and praying , which is to be feared we have provoked by superstitious vowing , and swearing . 4ly , we cannot finde that ever the people was rightly fitted , or at all benefited by these new sacramentall leagues , or rather politicall sacraments : for in england we had too many that would take the kings oaths when he was prevalent , and the parliaments also when they were prevalent : and in scotland montrosses victory left lamentable spectacles of humane treacherie and impietie as to the covenant : no sooner had he in 1644. woon one pitcht field but the nation generally flow'd in to him , to submit unto his new royall bonds , with curses upon them that had forcibly clogd their consciences by contrary ones before ; and no sooner had d : lesly routed him , but the same people again shifted montrosses bonds with detestations as high , and bitter , as they had the parliaments before . this is a prodigious example , exceedingly to be deplored not onely by the scots , but by all mankinde . but to proceed : the breaches , and hostilities which at this day are sprung out of the covenant betwixt the covenanters of both nations are too visible : the question is therfore , whether we shall charge these mischiefs upon the ill composure of the covenant it self , or upon the malice of the covenanters : and if upon the covenanters , whether are more guilty the english , or the scotch ? and first as to the covenant it self , it seems to me that even that was not compiled so briefly , so clearly , and so impartially as it might have been , and that has given some occasion of stumbling to some : but certainly blood had never been drawn by brethren so leagued together , as we are , had it not been for the ignorance , arrogance , and high injustice of the covenanters . antiquity which was famous for ingenuity , had not any use to charge their humane contracts , much lesse divine , with so various and heterogeneous branches , as this covenant is charged withall : some points of it are divine , some morall , some civil : some are of higher , some of meaner concernment : and all of them thus odly compacted together swell it up into too rude a lump . moreover , since variety of parts made it more grosse , and by consequence more obnoxious to doubts , and intricacies , there ought to have been more care to distinguish betwixt those parts which were coordinate , and those which were subordinate : and in case some provisoes proved inconsistent with others , it should have been predetermined which should supersede , and which should be superseded . the king by one clause , as he is king , is to be maintained equally with religion , &c. yet by another clause , as he is a profest enemy to the covenant , is to be pursued by arms , and brought to condigne punishment . the safetie of religion may possibly be irreconcileable with the safety of the king : and the safety of the king confessedly owes a subordination to the safety of religion : yet it is left dubious by the covenant how far the inferior here shall give way to the superior . the unity , and peace of the nations is the scope of one article in the covenant , and that article had a high place in the intent of those which indighted the covenant : yet neither does this article condemne all war as unlawfull betwixt the nations , nor yet prescribe when it may be judged lawfull , nor by whom . the scots by one interpretation of the covenant are more strictly imbodied with us then formerly , and so to be assisting in our reformation : yet by another interpretation , they are to maintain to us our nationall rights , and not at all to interpose in judging of our english affairs : and how can they reform where they may not judge , or how can they judge where they have no propriety ? or how can they challenge more by vertue of this covenant-union in england , then we do in scotland ? or how can confusion of interests be introduced , where there remains a coordination so equally , and justly preserved ? in the next place , there is a palpable partiality in the covenant whereby is easie to be perceived in which nation it received its being : for the church of england , and ireland are to be reformed , but the church of scotland is to be preserved in its perfection of doctrine , worship , discipline , and government . in summe , all three nations are to purge away whatsoever is contrary to sound doctrine , and the power of godlines : and the only true standart for such purgation is the book of god , and forasmuch as that is as truly a standart to the scots as to the english , they , though the covenant prejudges and presumes them perfect , are to be tryed by this book as well as we are , and as that which is defective in them must be rectified by this standart : so that which is not defective in us must be justified by the same . we conclude therefore justly , that either the article it self pre-judges us , or is by them ill prejudged when they assume , that we are to conform to them , more then they are to conform to us : for so much as there is but one only book to which we are bound equally both of us to conform ▪ and of that book they are no more authenticall interpreters then we are . these exceptions , and perhaps more , might be taken against the covenant it self , and the manner of obtruding it : but we fix not hereupon , nor will we mention it , as to the genuine intent of it , without reverence : the main offence that has been given to the world , has been given by the takers of it in a false sense , not by it self . the inquirie therefore at this time is , whether the english , or scots , whether the presbyterians , or independents are most blameable before god , and men , for the scandall which has been given by occasion of this solemn league , and covenant . for the better discussion hereof , we shall do well to observe , first , which of the parties has been most clamorous against the other ▪ ●ly , what the principall matter of those clamors has been ▪ 3ly , what may be most probably aymed at by the raisers of those clamors : 4ly , what the issue has been ▪ as to the first it is apparent , that the scoch presbyterians , were the first compilers of the covenant , and that they still continue to set a sacred value upon it , even unto a great degree of superstition : and t is as apparent , that they had not been so strangely transported with rage against us , but for our attributing lesse then they do to it . the covenant is their word in the day of battell ; the covenant in specie is carried along by their priests , when they march into the field , as if it were held oraculous , and had the same presence of god ingaged to it , as the ark had amongst the jews : the covenant in law is made transcendent to an act of parliament ; nay if both nations should agree in one act of parliament , that act could neither make more intense , nor more remisse the obliging force of this covenant . this covenant is sometimes call'd gods covenant , and inscribed by the scots in the same table with gods covenant of mercy to his church , and therefore when they will animate the people against us in war , they tell them that god cannot deliver up his turtle dove , and his covenant into the hands of such enemies . now because we come not up to this hight of adoration , we seem despisers of the covenant in the scots eyes ; and because we seem despisers of so holy a thing ( accounted by them the very soul of religion , and policy ) their gall flows out most violently against us . they tell us ▪ we have brought great scandall , and reproach upon the name of god , the name of his people , and the study of piety ▪ that we have not onely broken the solemn league and covenant betwixt god and these nations , but have in effect rejected it , and trampled upon it , are become enemies to all the ends of it , yea persecuters of the servants , and people of god for their adherence to it . this in effect has been their burthen against us for divers yeers , though it be as void of truth , as it is of charity : and though we ( who may more justly instance in this , and divers other things as breaches of the covenant on their parts ) have never made the covenant any ground of quarrell , or reproach against them . t is far from us to under-value the covenant : we hold it a religious tie of mutuall assistance betwixt the nations against the common enemies of religion , liberty , and union , and so we think honorably of it : only we make it no spell , nor idol : nor can we beleeve that it ties us to any duty , which our pretestation , and vow , tied us not to before , nor did our protestation , and vow create any new duties to us when we first entred into them . in the next place , though there be many heavy breaches of covenant ubrayded to us : yet all of them resolve into these two , that we make not good what we have covenanted for either to god , or to the king . they could never say till this last summer ( nor can they truly say so of us last summer ) that we ever entred their countrey to disturbe their peace , to claim , or usurp any share in their government , to lay taxes , seize towns , waste villages , and destroy natives amongst them , as they have done amongst us : all that they can object to us is , concerning injuries done to other parties , within our own territories , where by the covenant they have no jurisdiction at all . in the behalf of god , they complain , that our professed faith is nothing else but a mixture of arrianisme , socinianisme , antinomianisme ▪ familisme , antiscripturisme , anabaptisme , erastianisme , and independency : but they know well that for matter of doctrine , we still retain the old articles of our church , without any staggering at all in the least : and for matter of discipline , we are willing to comply with them so far as they comply with gods word : but in this we have our eyes in our heads as well as they , and t is no law for us to damne the opinion of erastus , or the person of any independent , because they by them are dishonorably spoken of . the truth is , the independent departs not so far from erastus , as the presbyterian : and erastus is no freind to the supreme power of synods , nor the uncontroulable dominion of priests ; and this makes the independent so injurious to god , otherwise call'd the kirk , otherwise call'd kirkmen ; were it not alone for this sin in the independent , arrainisme , socinianisme , &c. ( though we were therewith more infected then the scots , as we are not ) would make no breach of covenant at all amongst us . in behalf of the king , they complain , that we have treated him not onely as an enemy to the covenant , but also irreconcileable to the very being of our state : and hereupon they take upon them to bewail the hard condition of the english , that they are loaded with so many , and so great taxes , and subjected so rigorous , and obdurate laws : which shall receive answers in due place . but in the mean time , t is neither the kings , nor the peoples sufferings that stirs such a deal of compassion , and zeal in the bowels of our fellow-covenanters ; t is the change of our government , by which they perceive at last , they themselves are verie great loosers . the truth is , the difference betwixt the king and us heretofore was of great advantage to them : and this advantage ( though it was no property , or right of theirs , but a wrong , and damage of ours ) is now faln away from them . the king shall now have no more occasion to give them pensions in scotland , nor gratifications here to do us dis-service in behalf of his prerogative : nor shall we be any more bound to hire their service against the crown : and we must know , that these double offices , or ambidextrous versatile arts of doing services , and dis-services was as great a revenue to them ( especially since these last troubles ) as the intra does of all scotland . now this therefore in the third place , may save us our labour of further inquiry about the ends , and aims of the scots in their exclamations , and expostulations against us , when they contest in behalf of the covenant . we see what the clergie in scotland , and here , are so thirstie of , they would fain have consistories in every parish , where they might have a free power to dispence the ordinances of christ to such as prove observant of them , and to cast out all that are not submissive enough : and for fear lay judges should ballance too much there , they would have classes above better defecated of such secular persons : and for fear lest those classes should be controuled by parliaments : they would have assemblies above all to act for christ in all matters whatsoever military , or judiciall , wherein christs throne , that is the kirk may be concerned . no protestant bishops ever aspired to so sollid a power on earth : nay except in the popes own patrimony , where he is a prince , no bishops in europe und●r any other lay princes are allowed to sit and act so independently , upon a commission so large , as the scotch assemblies do : and therfore we cannot wonder if such a new hierachy , as this of the presbyterians be so desirable amongst our kirk-men . furthermore , when such impetuous appetites of all the clergie in scotland , backs with some thousands of ours in england , shall also fall in at the same time with the interests of so many of the nobility , gentry , and souldiery in scotland , as drove a very thriving trade heretofore by siding sometimes with the king against us , at other times with us against the king : and these things can be no other way compast , or pretended to but by the ambiguous sense of the covenant : we cannot wonder , if the covenant be held so venerable a thing as it is in scotland , and made the price of blood and war , as to every puntilio in it . more then this needs not be said of the scotch presbyterians , if as much could be said of the english independents , and that they may have as fair hopes , and probable ends against the scots by suppressing the covenant unduly , as the scots have against us by inforcing it immoderately : i would willingly quit this as a nugatory , weightles presumption . the last thing that may deserve to stay and take up our thoughts a little is , the issue , and event that both sides have met with , and this may justly sway our censures in such a question , as this is . the king being driven to extremities in oxford , and being privy to the differences betwikt both nations about some constructions of the covenant , chose rather to cast himself into theirs then our hands ▪ and we cannot imagine that the king which so hated and feared the true intent of the covenant , would rather intrust his life to those which he thought more true , then those whom he thought more false to the covenant ▪ but what successe had that trust of his ? it cost him his ruine in the end ; for they which interpreted the covenant for his purpose whilest he was to put ● great prize into their custodie , soon found out a contrary interpretation , when the parliaments money out-weigh'd that prise . this end their animating him divers times against our propositions tendered , when the king was thereby , and by other secret correspondencies rendered more dangerous to us , and more uncouncellable to himself was fatall to him . but now since in favour of his son the former interpretation is resumed the second time : how has the case been altered ? the case in truth is even thus , the young king has repented of his coming amongst them , the kirk begins to repent of his admission amongst them : the hand of god has been heavy upon both : and t is almost come to this , that the most conscientious presbyterians in scotland must read the covenant in a new sence amongst us : whilest all the rest must lay afide the covenant wholly amongst the ancient , professed enemies of it . i will not strain this argument of successe too high : but this is to be remarked , that the successe here put , is not ordinary , or meer successe : forasmuch as it has been sent from heaven after solemn appeals thither made by two religious parties , and as the honour of god was much concerned in it , so the manner of sending it was more then ordinary . we draw nearer now to the covenant it self , and shall consider it first in the whole , and then in its parts . the first clashing we had with the scots was about the right which each nation had past to the other meerly by joyning in such a mutuall , sanctimonious stipulation : for when we objected to them upon severall occasions , that they interposed too far in the affairs , and councels of england , they as often gave us this answer , that we were not since our conjunction with them in the covenant and treaties to look upon them as strangers , or so far distanced , in the interest of england , as they were before . this was at large refuted , and silenced by the parliament , and therefore little need to be said in it : and indeed leagues , and pacts are common amongst all other nations , yet no man ever argued such a state is united to such a state as to such a particular war , or as to the attaining of some other particular purposes , therefore they are incorporated into one state , and united as to all other purposes whatsoever . this is ridiculous : sense , and experience is sufficient to explode it . and if the scots plead further , that there is something extraordinary in this bond of the covenant , which knits faster , and closer then all other bonds : proof will fail them herein : and yet if proof were not failing : their equality of interest with ours in england would not follow notwithstanding . for either the covenant has reduced our two states and dominions into one , or not . if it has not ; then the english mans interest is as intire , and remains as distinct from the scochmans as it was before : confusion of properties is a thing as abhorred in policy , as a vacuity is in nature . but if both the governments by our covenant adunation be compacted into one , and the same : then where is that one and the same supreme tribunall , which is equally to determine all nationall disputes , and may legally challenge submission from all aggrieved parties ? should an army be committed to 2. generals , and the commission specifie nothing concerning the partition of their commands , and prevention of their rivalities , nothing but ruin could be expected . therefore the very letter of the covenant was so far from intending to take away all severality from us , that it clearly puts each nations liberties and rights amongst those other things , which it proposes to it self to save by this promised assistance of each nation : ordring likewise this assistance , that no man should yeeld the same otherwise then in his severall place , and calling , and according to all our severall places , and interests . t is the more immodesty also in the scots to arrogate to themselves an equall share in the rich common-wealth of england , which the english never made any pretence to in the like barrener soil of scotland . but if a moity of our english government in all cases whatsoever be not due to the scots , as they are our brethren in covenant with us , and equall parties in the same stipulation : yet in the next place we cannot deny them an equall share in the judgment of the covenant , and all disputes about the same . if they be contractors with us , and by vertue of the same contract are as well inabled to require performances of conditions from us , as they are obliged to perform conditions to us , it stands with all manner of equity and reason that they should have as great a latitude and freedom , as we , in determining what is to be performed on either part . we deny not to the scots the same extent of judging in england , as to covenant differences , which we claim in scotland : this onely is denied by us : that either they are as properly judges of matters in england , as they are in scotland , or we in scotland , as in england . this was the fallacy that should have blinded us , but there is no such great depth of sophistry in it . the states of england and scotland are equally independent ▪ & the covenant cannot grant to one equall a jurisdiction over another . so long as both nations stand upon equality , and confesse no superiority to be in either : so long it is vain , injurious , and against the ends of the covenant for one to passe sentence upon the other . t is vain , because the sentence has no operation at all , the party sentenced protests justly against it , and all third indifferent parties look indifferently upon the sentence and protestation . t is injurious ; because he that condemns his equall , does that to another , which he would not have another do to himself : and if there be no other superior judge on earth , he intrud● into the chair of god himself . lastly , t is against the covenant , because the intent of the covenant is to settle peace , and amity by offices of justice and humanity betwixt the nations : whereas there can be no end of controversies and hostilities , when sentences shall be spoken against parties that are no inferiors , and that by parties that are no superiors . the scots therefore in this have been exceedingly too blame , and there is no doubt but the ruine of the king , and all the late miseries of their own wasted countrey have been derived from this strange insufferable arrogance of theirs . t is frequent with them to protest against the parliament of england as no lawfull authority ; to denounce against all the souldery of england as sectaries , rebels , and regicides ; to upbraid all the gentry , and comminalty of england submitting to the present government , as men that prostitute their consciences to a sinfull shamefull thraldome : to incite all the presbyterians , and discontented persons in england to the kindling of new flames amongst us . and this is more then to invade a moity of the legislative power of england , this is to seize all : this is more then to claim a jurisdiction in covenant affairs , this is to in vas● all us totally in all cases whatsoever : this is more then to pronounce judgement against us at home in civill cases , this is to pursue us with fire , and sword , as well forrein , as domestick . should our nation now descend to the like outragious recriminations , or rather feminine altercations ▪ being first provoked , and having juster grounds , what an odious noise would this trouble all europe with ? well : but still there is something to be said for the scots : if they may not call us to their own barre , as they are our fellow covenanters , and as they are equally parties in so religious a league with us , yet there is another bar to which they may cite us , there is still here upon earth a barre of common equity and reason ; and at this bar●e the english are accountable for all their delinquencies against the covenant . to this we agree , and shall appear a● is required by the citation . the late king some years before the eruption of these troubles had made many dangerous attempts against the purity of the protestant religion , and the liberties of the subjects in all the three nations . now in 1643. when arms were taken up on all hands either for assisting , or opposing the king in those his designes against religion , and liberty : the covenant was formed by that party which rose up against the king , and the main , primary use , it was formed , & intended for was to protect religion , and liberty against him , and his adherents : the formers of it also at the same time took notice , that the cases of religion , and liberty could not be well separated , forasmuch as the king if he prevailed against the one , would more easily prevail against , the other . religion was the richer free-hold , but liberty had the stronger fence to preserve it from the violence of intruders . it was likewise visible that religion would make the people more zealous for liberty , and liberty would impower the people the better to defend religion . besides , suppose the taking away of the people , and you suppose with all the taking away of religion , and suppose the taking away of liberty , and you do in a manner suppose the taking away of the people ; for the life of a bodie politick consists not in living , but in living free . the covenant therefore primarily , and ultimately proposes to it self the safety and prosperity of the true protestant religion in the safety and liberty of the three nations , and the safety and liberty of the three nations in the safety and prosperity of the true protestant religion . all other articles in the covenant are but secondary , and subordinate hereunto : and they are to have respect from us not as they stand higher , or lower in order , but as they are more , or lesse serviceable to those higher purposes , for which they were at first ordained . upon this ground , that branch in the covenant which obliges us , to seek god in this sacred ingagement by a speciall amendment of our lives , and reformation of our own private wayes : at such a time as this , merits the honor of the first place . and next hereunto worthily may succeed those 2. branches by which the nations are so strictly confederated in peace , and amity : and by which all parties to this confederation have past their solemn pacts to be assisting to each other , & bringing all opposites to condigne punishment . that branch which was inserted in favour of the king ( at that time the principal enemy of the covenant ) and for saving of his prerogatives ( so desperately at that time disputed by the sword ) if it could challenge any place at all , could certainly challenge none but the last and lowest , how soever the scots had ranged it , and do still propugn it . nothing surely could more cloud the meaning of each part in the covenant , or more pester , and perturbe the whole frame of it , then this insertion . the same oath to god now binds us in one clause to pursue with fire , and sword all that are enemies to this oath , and yet the grand enemy of this oath by another clause in the same oath , is preserved inviolable : nay that clause which preserves one enemy , has a local preference before , that which pursues all . hereupon if a commission be taken from the king to destroy this solemn league , he that takes it dies ignominously as a traytor , but he that gives it , has that indemnity given by the covenant , which his kingly office could not have given him . the very penning also of this article leaves us very dubious , and perplext , how far the kings royalty is saved to him : for the saving is not absolute ; but refers to some thing in order above it : and that is the saving of religion and liberty ▪ here therefore two new doubts meet with us to intangle us : 1. in what degree the king may be proceeded against , when in such a degree he indangers religion , and liberty : 2ly , how we shall exactly judge of these degrees , when our judgements are wholly left at liberty , without any limits , or marks set by the covenant . the scots have proceeded so far as to imprison the kings person , and to sequester all his royall power , which is a temporary dethroning , and deposing ▪ because they suppose religion , and liberty was so far impugned by him : but they suppose that from an imprisoned , sequestred king no further offence , or danger can arise : and therfore he ought not further to suffer . this is sufficiently erroneous : but this is not all yet , for they will not only thus expose religion and liberty to greater hazards in their own countrey , but they will over-rule us with their errors , and inforce us to run the same hazards in our countrey likewise : and this is more , we are sure , then the covenant enforces us unto . and doubtles this is very hard . for besides that there is no nation , nor scarce any individuall person in any nation , who is not judge of his own danger : in this case our judgement is wrested out of our hands , and resigned into theirs , who are the creators of our dangers , and have declared for , and thereby diverse times exasperated our greatest enemy against us . in novem. 1643. before the covenant was consummated , the lord generall essex moved in parliament for the shortning of our war , that the king ( who perchance was then encouraged to prolong the same out of hope of impunity at last , in case his arms should miscarry ) might have a peremptory day set him to come in , or else to know his danger : and this was consented to by both houses , but obstructed by the scoch commissioners : what service was done to the king by this obstruction of the scots , and divers other the like ambidextrous dealings , since that time , and how much longer the war was protracted by it , and how much mischief the same has at last drawn upon the scots , as well as us , time has clearly enough demonstrated . and yet still , upon this the meanest , and most intricate article of the covenant , they think they may break the unity , and peace of great brittain against one of the most indisputable , fundamental tyes of the covenant , and that onely to shew their zeal to an anti-covenanter : which is a breach as indisputable , and fundamentall , as the former . the intrinsecall form of the covenant binds one party to assist the other against a common enemy : it binds not one party to be assistent against the other : for how can that be call'd assistence , which is direct opposition ? besides , it binds specially to assist against such an enemy , as is injurious to the others right , freedom , and property : and can the scots perform this bond to us , when that which they call assistance to us , is opposition against us , even by taking away our right , freedome , and property ? for what right can remain to us , whilest we are subjected to their forces , what freedome , whilest we are to be judged by their discretion ? what property , when we have lost the independency of equals ? certainly if we covenanted with the scots as equall parties , we did not covenant with them , as superior judges ; and if we had so covenanted with them , our covenanting by oath with god had been superfluous , but we hope that will not be held superflous : and therefore we will not endeavour to assoil our selves before the scots , we will onely in charity let them know , how we have hopes , to be assoiled before god . the change of government in england , which could not be without the execution of the late king , and rejection of his posterity ( more then they could be without change of government ) was urged upon us ( and god , before whom we plead , knows we had not long premeditated it before , nor imbraced it willingly at last ) by two unanswerable , irresistable arguments . the first was drawn from our duty to god : the second from the naturall , necessary care of our own preservation . the first argument pressed us hard , that what god had commanded could not be reversed by any act , or pact of man : that god had commanded us , to punish blood with blood in all persons whatsoever under the power , and force of our laws : and therefore our covenant could not exempt the king himself ▪ if it be said , that the king of england was above all law ; that has been disputed by the sword these many years , and decided for us by signall victories : and the scots have appeared as far upon that triall , as we have done ; and after that triall , t is unequall for us to descend now , to any other . we prescribe nothing to other nations , whose kings have a legislative power , and thereupon are solati legibus , and have their very wils interpreted , and observed as laws : nor do we censure such states as have princes subject to laws , yet use not rigor in all cases whatsoever . we are willing that every one should stand , or fall to his own master . onely , when immuring , sequestring , deposing , impoysoning of princes has been very frequent in the world , that no nation can be excused thereof at some time or other : this seems beyond admiration , that our judiciall , publick execution upon the late charles should undergo an harsher censure then all these , meerly because it wanted not the due solemnities of law , and justice to attend it . may a prince be reduced from his publick capacitie , and when he is made a private person shall he be treated so , as no private person may be treated ? shall he be subjected to clandestine , unlawfull proceedings , belowe the right of a common person , because he was once more then a common person ? and shall either jurists , or statists that have any insight into the laws of god , and nations , stand for a secreted veiled justice , such as blushes , and dares not shew her face in open court , yet passe neglects upon that justice , which as far abhors darknes ? and disdains the use of masks ? our next argument was drawn from the hard necessity that was incumbent upon us for saving our selves from utter ruin . divers times we had made humble addresses to the king for a cordiall pacification , the lord knows our sincerity therin : and the scots that are now our accusers were for divers years our witnesses in that behalf : but before 1646. the k : had too much confidence in his english , and irish abettors , and so would not hearken . in the year , 1646. the kings english forces in england failing , we made new addresses at newcastle , where the king was in the nature of a prisoner : but we soon found at newcastle that the kings confidence was still supported there also by something that had been infused unto him by the scots , and so that hope prooved frustrate likewise . the dealing of the scots herein was very close , the english that were in commission with the scots for governing the affairs of that army in the scotch quarters , knew nothing by what invitation the king was drawn from oxford thither , nor to what purpose montreil the french agent was there solicititing ; but when our propositions were rejected , and that the scots ( who joyned with us in tendring them ) began to dispute the kings interests , & their own against us in other things : and that their learned mouth louden professed against the rigour of our capitulations , in the same elaborate oration to the king , wherein he so zealously laid open the necessity of them , we could not but discern a halting in that nation : and that that halting had as strange an operation upon the king . the king thought now he had gotten as great a strength of scots in the north , the same being likewise fain away from our strength , as he had lost of the english at nasby , and in the west : and for our parts , had the scots been gold-proof , we should have thought so too . the disposing of the king was the matter in question : the scots were not desirous to take him into scotland , nor would leave him in england : but being under our pay within our own territories , where we had publick persons in commission with them : without the parliaments or their commissioners consents , they would be a guard to him in england , till their parliament at home were further satisfied . in the mean time after a long consuming war ended , england was constrained still to pay and maintain two armies : the scotch to prevent a new war if that were possible , the english to sustain a new war , if prevention proved unpossible : so that every moment was irksome to us , whilst the kings pretentions was an occasion to draw so much treasure from our coffers , and it was as irksome to the king to see the scotch arrears , or any thing else besides his pretentions brought into debate , but at last the scotch arrears took place , and justled out the kings matters ; for after a great sum agreed upon , the scots quite contrary to the high expostulations of some of their papers , thought it honorable to leave the king in england , and the english thought it as profitable to buy the scots out of england . this probably might prepare the king for new pacificatory addresses , partly by damping his hopes in the scots , and partly by defeating the next privy applications of the scots to him : and partly by giving a better rellish of the english whose prisoner then he was , & yet had been treated very honorably ; but this would not do , new propofitions were once and again sent , and denyed , and new assurances from the scots were admitted , which procured thosy denyalls . nay , after that hamilton in 1648. commission'd by the parliament and presbyterians in scotland , had invaded us with 20000 men , and was beaten , and a new party of kirkmen of a contrary party to hamilton , had gotten the sway of the state into their hands , by the help of our forces who pursued the hamiltonians beyond the tweed ; the english still received further repulses . so vowedly inflexible was the king against all that could be tenderd by the english , though even when his condition was grown lowest , and the parliaments propositions not at all raysd higher , and so vowedly obstinate were the scots , and all parties , and factions among them upon all changes of affairs whatsoever , to make all agreements of the english with the king , disadvantageous to their fellow covenanters . their voluminous papers yet shew what they pretended to in disposing of the kings person in england : what a negative voice in the parliament of england they would assign to him : what revenues , and signiorys out of the court of wards and elsewhere they would secure to him : what power military , and judiciall they would intrust him with in england : and how all should be managed by the joynt advice and consent of scotland . in summe , the king must again be more humbly sought to then ever : he must be discharged of imprisonment , received in pomp at london , to treat about what we had to propose : and his freedome must be such that he must sent for , and advice with what delinquents he pleasde : if we granted the scots this , we left our selves nothing : if we denyed , all ireland was at the kings devotion , all ormonds , all oneals adherents , all the old irish , all the english irish : all the protestants , all the papists were against us : we had then scarce three considerable towns left in that countrey : in scotland all that montrosse , all that huntly , all that hamilton , all that arguile the kirks champion had any power in , even jo : cheesly himself to get a dubbing at the last hand was for the royall cause : in england the clergie had imbitterd the city , and the city had sharpned the countrey against the army , and against all that had not forgotten the first quarrel with the king . the parliament it self had some leading men in it that had secretly capitulated with the king , and those false leaders had many other ignorant followers that would beleeve no such matter . at such a time as this , when all forrein states desired , and contributed something to our ruin besides ; and the king had as free scope to sollicite and treat them as ever , and did make use of his time , especially to conclude with the irish : what should the army do ? to execute the king , and eradicate monarchy , was to expose themselves to a thousand hazards , and extremities : to spare the king , and monarchy , and submit to the scoch presbyterian faction , was to perish inevitably : to treat with the king brought them upon this perplexity : either they must propose things safe for the state , and then they had no hopes of prevailing : or they must propose things unsafe , which would be sinfull , dishonorable , and ruinous to them , as well as others in the end . i am confident england never travail'd with such sharp throes , or strugled through such gasping agonies since she was first a mother : and none but god could have given her such a deliverance . when the king was retrograde to his trust , and with the swinge of his train had swept all the chief luminaries out of our firmament : when the clergie was generally disaffected , and with their doctrines had almost poysoned all the city , and almost half the countrey , when the remaining part of the parliament that had stoodout the brunt so long , and wetherd so many gusts became recreant at last , then did an army inspirde with strange courage but stranger counsell from above , step in to save their sinking countrey , over-powring all the windes , and waves that raged against them . the wonderfull dispensations of god bringing great matters to passe by such crosse meanes must be observed , and adored by all that are not aliens from religion : and i doubt not but future parliaments in future ages will be amazedly affected with them : but of all men we that now live , and see the effects of that critical time , and what a prospering posture we are now in , within so short a space , in england , scotland , ireland , and round about by the seconding mercies of god since , must needs most gratfully recent these things , except we have sold our selves to atheism & rebellion against heaven . the chiliasts from hence and from the race ordering of all our commotions , since , 1640. & something before may assure themselves that christ is to reign upon earth , and that he ha's already taken the scepter out of the greater warriors and counsellors hands of the earth into his own : for the hills are now plained , and the vallies are raised , and yet there is no humane hand appearing in it . some men thinke all successe unworthy of all regard , as if there were no difference between the administrations of god in his church in times of distresse , and his disposing of other mens ordinary affaires at other times : or as if alexander , hector , caesar , had foyled their enemy by the same inward promptings as joshua , david , and judas machabeus did : but this certainly is an irreligious error : for as there is a generall providence of god by which the course of all naturall things is steered : so there uses to be a speciall interposition of god in some things and is to be acknowledged , when his owne honour and interest is specially concerned : and this speciall interposition is sometimes of the finger of god , when the effects are lesse supernaturall ; but when the effects are more stupendious , and beyond reason ; the scripture it selfe stiles this the making bare , and the stretching forth of gods arme . they which are disaffected to the late egregious proceedings of god in the world will not , but they shall see , and owne this truth . but let us returne to the procedure of our affaires ; when the army saw it selfe surrounded with so many dangers , and insulting enemies ; it began by some faintnesses , and carnall doubts to grow dangerous , and an enemy to it self ; it began to receive suggestions that the removing of a king and kingly power was like to prove more unfeaseable , then to treat a king into reason . and this was likely to have proved the more banefull , because the king by speciall graces was as ready to draw them into this ambuscado as they were prone by their irresolutions , and diffidencies to run into it themselves ; for 't is thought all agreements with the king would have been short lived , but if any had been made with the army , that would have bin but as samsons wit hs , and ropes , which was the reason , that the king , upon whom five addresses of the parliament had wrought nothing , seemed to lay the armies proposals , though little differing in substance , exceedingly to heart : howsoever it pleased god at this low ebbe of things , when the army was weakest , and most apt to be inveagled , and when the king was securest , and had most hopes to inveagle , to break off that treaty , and then was brought on the last with the parliament in the isle of wight ; which when it was likely to overturne all by accepting of the kings concessions ; then also did god make the army his instrument , in preventing that sad conclusion . the debate in parliament after the returne of the commissioners , was ; whether the kings concessions at that treaty had been such , as might make further applications hopefull , or no : and after a very long time ▪ spent , the affirmative was voted . this vote struck a true apprehension of an universall imminent danger into the army ; for , now an accord with the king by the sense of the parliament was to be hoped for , whereas in truth any accord ( besides an absolute submission of the king ) was sufficient to take away all hope ; for since the king unsubmitting , had no visible obstacle betwixt him , and his long , eagerly pursued ends , but the army : and any accord was certaine to discard , or new form that army , the security of all our laws , and rights ; yea , and lives was solely to depend upon the kings honour : and what was honour in his sense , who was so principled , and who had now for diverse yeares waded through so much bloud , and exposed himself , and posterity to so certain a disinherison , only to be true to his principles , any ordinary man may determine ; immediatly therfore after this vote past , the army saw no other remedy to prevent their eminent overthrow but to lay a hand of force upon the affirmative voters in parliament , and to bring the king to a tryall , which were done accordingly , and so both they prevail'd and we were preserved as to this day . some say t was more noble to trust the king too much , then too little : but these consider not that trust is not always alike free ; in this case distrust could ruin but a few , and that by a legall course ; but trust was likely to have ruin'd millions , and the laws to boot . some of the scotts say ; god was able to save religion and liberty in despight of the king : had he prov'd perfidious , and therefore if the king was not to be trusted , yet god was . these consider not that god holds himselfe tempted , not trusted , when we leave the use of ordinary hopefull meanes on earth , and rely upon unprovmist succour from heaven . some say if the king was not to be trusted , yet the army had no lawfull warrant to judge of him , and the parliament , but these consider not that extream , eminent , and otherwise insuperable dangers give private persons ; yea , single private persons , an extraordinary warrant to defend themselves , and others : and this warrant will be avowed by necessity , the exception , that all law admits to be within the reach of no law ; and the danger was here extream , because it concerned life , religion , liberty , and all that could be endeared to man : it was likewise eminent , because another day might have prevented them by disbanding , or some other way . lastly , it was otherwise insuperable ; for that there was no other judge , or hand on earth that could hear and relieve them . others say still , the danger was not so existent or manifest to other men , as to the army . let it be considered by these ; 1 that nature has entrusted to every man a speciall custody of his owne safety ; and there is none of us all , but would be loath that the same should be transferred to another mans care , viz. in cases extraordinary , where legall remedy cannot be had in a common way . 2 in matters of fact , where no full proof can be had , every mans judgement is to be lesse peremptory , and to take in as much of charity as is possible . whether the king would indeed have broken his trust , or no : and whether the army did falsly pretend such a fear , or no : neither of these is matter of law , nor liable to any infallible proof , as to the fact : wherefore i may sin against charity if i passe my judgement against either , but i cannot sin , if i leave the judgement of both to god , and to waite for his determination . some in favor of the king frame conjectures that he was probably very firme in performing because he was so slow , and circumspect in ingaging : and that if he had been lubricous or profuse of his faith , he would not have refused an accord with the parliament so long upon what tearms soever . others make use of contrary conjectures to a contrary purpose ; alleadging that 't was but art in the king to dally , and to trifle away some time with the english , to set the higher esteem upon his constancy , and make them the more assured of his performance : that he was absolutely secure of the englishmens facility , and plain-dealing , and never made any doubt to be received at his own pleasure : that he was never to his last day void of other confidences , or destitute of other plots to compasse his designe by force , that for his fidelity , and the value he set upon promises ▪ and oaths , and the infinite subtilty he had to evade any ingagement whatsoever , scarce any forraign state or prince in europe was ignorant in that point . that scarce ever any just , or innocent man fell under the weight of such transcendent , unparraleld calamities . but i list not to leane upon such reeds , as conjectures are ▪ t is enough for me to know that whatsoever man intends , or acts wickedly and perversly , god orders , and disposes rightly , and profitably ; may he so do for england , scotland and ireland , in all these late mutations . it remains now , that we cleer our selves in point of church-reformation : for having covenanted to reform in doctrine , discipline , &c. according to the word of god , and the patterns of the best reformed churches , we are bound ( as the scots maintain ) to take our pattern from them , and that , we , as yet refuse to do . this is the grand , and most heynous charge the scots have against us : and because we follow not the modell of scotland , which they hold the best reformed church in christendom , they seek to overwhelm us with a thousand calumnies , and labour to possesse the world that wee are nothing else but a lerna of heresies , and a sinck of all uncleannesse . to this we answer , 1. when wee are bound to reform according to the word of god , and the examples of the best churches ; wee conceive the word of god signifies all , & the examples of other churches signifie nothing at all ; for those are the best churches that reform neerest to the word of god , and what churches have neerest reformed cannot be known but by the word of god it self , so that that instance might have been spared . 2. if it come to tryal by the word of god , whether the scots reformation be the best or no , the scots therein can challenge no more priviledg of judging , then we or any other church . when we were governed by bishops , the gospel of christ was as purely delivered in england , and as heartily embraced by the english ( any being judges besides the scots ) as ever it was in scotland : and shall it be said , that because wee have cast off bishops , and thereby come some steps neerer to the scots , our doctrine remaining still the same without all innovation , shall it be said that our very approaches have ●●st us backward ? it will be required at their hands who are intrusted with the government of christs church , that his word and ordinances be piously and duly dispensed : and it will be required at their hands who are governed , that the dispensation of christs words and ordinances be faithfully and sincerely entertained : but if the governors rightly discharge their duty , and the governed fail of theirs , the governors shall not answer for what they cannot help ; 't is god that gives the encrease , and does the saving , inward work : the minister cannot go beyond planting , watering , and doing that which is the outward work . 't is one thing therefore for the scots to upbraid the flock , and another thing to upbraid the overseers of the flock , and yet the scots constantly take an advantage against us by confounding these two things . for the people of england , we must confesse they have been of late too much tainted with heresies , and monstrous opinions : pudet hae● opprobria nobis , & dici potuisse , & non potuisse refelli : i hope all good men are grieved and humbled for it ; but let the scots consider , 1. that growing of tares in gods field , does not alwayes shew that the husband-man sowed ill grain , the contrary rather is true : inasmuch as the more busie the good husband-man is culturing and improving the earth , the more sollicitous ever the enemie is in casting in his malignant seeds , & the more readily eager he is to debosh & mar the crop . it was so with the church of christ in it's infancy ; it was so under constantine in it's maturity ; it was so in luthers dayes , when it began to recover out of a long lethargy : and we must expect the like now , when our aces are set upon the last , and greatest calcination as ever the church saw : as reformation now in the ends of the world , when the chiefe mysteries of iniquity begin to be revealed , will most annoy sathan , so sathan will double his rage to annoy us accordingly . hornius the dutch-man , a great friend of the scots , and who in favour of the scotch presbytery , has written a bitter tract in latine , to defame us in germany ; after he has represented us as the most leprous , contaminated nation in the world ; yet confesses withall , that to the prodigious revoltings of some amongst us , there is an answerable improvement of others in burning zeale , and shining sanctity . in religion beauty and deformity are not inconsistent : those times often which have been most glorious for divine dispensations of knowledge and grace , have been likewise most deplorable for persecutions and apostacies ; and this has ever been a great stumbling block to carnall minds . if therefore the great lyon range and roare , and ramp lesse in scotland then in england , let not our brethren boast of it , or think themselves the more safe . 2. let not partiality blind the scots ; strangers think scotland ha's as great cause of humiliation as england , if not greater . iliacos intra muros peceatur , & extra ; it were more christian-like in them , and lesse pharisaicall , to aggravate their own sins , and extenuate other mens , then to extenuate their own sins , and aggravate other mens : and if they wil remit nothing at all of their rigour against us , yet let them not stuffe their long catalogues of pseudodoxies with such wandring terms as familisme , erastianisme , independentisme , &c. which taken improperly , may reach the best saints of god , and are seldome used properly by any . 't is a sad thing to offend gods little ones , 't is a more sad thing to deprave many congregations of gods most precious ones . 3. whatsoever judgement the scots will take upon them to passe against the people in england , yet let them not alway set upon the magistrates , or ministers account what they find reprovable in the people ; let them not call us fedifragous for not redressing things beyond us , and such as none can redresse besides god ; but this has been toucht upon already . let us therefore see what is peculiarly objected to the present governing power in england . the magistrate in england is charged to be an enemie to magistracy , a strange charge certainly . the very last answers we had this last summer to our declarations upon the march of our army into scotland , tell us from the committee of estates , and commissioners of the assembly , that our expedition into scotland is to overturn religion , and government civill and ecclesiasticall , and to set up amongst them the same vast toleration of religion , as we have done in england . now if this were true , the sins of the people would become the sins of the magistrate , but what credite can this obtain in the world . as for the overturning of civill power , that is answered already ; we confesse a change of the form , but we deny any overturning of the thing cal'd government in england ; and wee hope our actions here , and in ireland , and in other forreign parts , yea , & our war in scotland also will quit and essoyn us of anarchy and ere long make the scots swalow downe their own untruths with open shame . as for the overturning ecclesiasticall also , that may be as resolutely and justly denyed as the other ; for that lawfull power which was in bishops before , is still in being ; and though we have not committed it so intirely unto presbyteries and assemblies , as the scots would have us , to the dishonouring of our common wealth ; yet we have preserved it from abolition and utter dissolution . the truth is , in pursuance of our covenant , we have consulted with a synod of divines about the best method of discipline : and they are not able to satisfie us , that the word of god ( the rule limited by the covenant for our reformation ) does invest any convention of clergy-men , who claim to be the only due representants of the church , and immediate vice-gerents of christ , with supremacy of independent power in all causes ecclesiasticall . the pope claims no more in the pale of the italian church ; the popish cardinals and bishops in spain , france , &c. claim lesse ; and the protestant prelates , whom we lately ejected for usurpers , never claimed halfe so much . now the word of god is so farre from holding forth to us any such vast power in persons ecclesiasticall ; that it's information is contrary , viz. that the apostles and disciples of our saviour for many years after his death assumed no more authority on earth then he assumed : that our saviour plainly disclaimed all jurisdiction and dominion in this world : that by pract●se as well as precept , he quasht all rivality about power , or precedence amongst his own dearest followers . besides , if any such spirituall supremacy were vested by divine right in any such representants of the church , and vicars of christ : it were necessary that exact obedience in all things should bepayd them by all inferiours : and if such obedience were due , it would be consequently necessary , that they should be free from errour , else the alleadged supremacy would serve to no great purpose : and we know god and nature produce not great matters , but for purposes as great . this made the romish hierarchists rationally assert an infallible spirit , when they had once asserted an ūlimitable power in the church ; for where the scripture is clear , there needs no soveraign judg , every man is a sufficient interpreter to himselfe : and where the scripture is doubtfull , the doubt is to be cleared by something else of the same indisputable authority , or else that defect is not supplyed , no● can the same submission be demanded . wherefore upon this account we say , that unlesse our supream church lords ( when they take us off from our own judgments , & cannot convince us by divine authority of cleer scripture ) wil not convince us of some other divine authority in themselves of the same alloy as scripture is for the inforcing of our acquiescence : they deale worse with us then the pope does with his vassals . moreover that power in the church , which eclipses , and perturbes civill power cannot be supposed to be of christs institution : but such is the power of the clergy in scotland many ways ; ergo , for first clashings may be about what is purely a civill case , and what is purely ecclesiasticall , and all such clashings are exceeding dangerous . 2 since there are very few cases that are not mixt , and as few mixt cases that are not unequally mixt : great questions may arise , to whether tribunall the case shall be first refer'd when it is equally mixt ; and how the tribunalls shall agree upon executing their decrees , where the case is unequally mixt , especially if the decrees be contrary , as they may be . in the year 1648. the representative state of scotland , voted a war with england necessary : the representative kirk voted the same unlawfull ; which contrary votings might have confounded both , for if the war was necessary , the state might suffer much by the churches seditious malediction : and if the war was unlawfull , yet the people having no more warrant to obey the ecclesiasticall then civill power in matters of that nature must needs be in a strange distraction , and that distraction at that time might have created ethquakes in the whole nation . it should seem want of force in the party adhering to the kirk preserved them at that time from a bloodie ingagement against the contrary party , which might have devoured , and swallowed up all . for as soon as hamilton was defeated in england , the kirk party got help from the english army , and by force wrested the government out of lannericks hands : and then again had not lannericks side been too weak , another flame might have been kindled , and perhaps have continued unquenched to this day . now if the temporal sword be in part spirituall , and the cases of warre be held so equally mixt in scotland , that both the supreme independent councels claim an equall judgement in them , and do sometimes judge contrarily : and there can be yet no certain rule given for the reconciling of those contrarieties : it is manifest , that these two coordinate powers may be destructive to the people : and it is as manifest that no destructive institution can derive it self from god . much more might be said of the encroachments of the clergie upon the laity in cases mixt , by pretending sometimes to an equality of interest in some cases , where the laities ought to be greater : and pretending to all at other times , where the laities interest ought to be equall : the popish clergie scarce ever used more jugling and trumperie in these affairs , then the presbyterian ministery now uses . in the stating of the present war in scotland , the kirkmen go hand in hand with the committee of estates , and in their answers to our english declarations they interpose in all points whatsoever , whether religious , politick , juridicall , or military : and whether they be points of law , or matters of fact . but if a minister preach sedition in a pulpit , this appertains not to the secular magistrate ; for though sedition be a secular busines , and sedition may be preacht by a minister in a pulpit , yet a ministers pulpit sedition is no matter for secular cognizance . was the laity ever worse bridled , when it was the popes asse ? but of this no more , i will onely touch briefly upon the end of all this spirituall coordination , and so shut up this point . the clergie of scotland have spoken great , and magnificent things of the use of their spirituall sword : and the principall allegation for it was , that without such a sword in the hands of the kirk secular princes , and grandees could not be awed , and restrained in many enterprises , and crimes very dangerous to the church . but who can imagine they ever beleeved themselves herein ? when in the processe of all our late wars , that very kirk it self which told the king he was guilty of a deluge of blood , and had made himself , and his throne , and his posterity obnoxious to gods high indignation thereby , yet never offered to strike with the weapon of excommunication all that while ? if there was any correcting , restraining , healing , recovering vertue in that weapon , why did they uncharitably forbear to use it ? why did they not pitie those multitudes of innocents that perished daily under his fury ? why did they suffer the king himself to run on , and die in his persecutions ? and if their pretended weapon had really no such vertue in it , why do they brandish it so ludicrously onely to dazle our weak eyes ? the next objection of the scots is , that we have not onely sequestred a great part of christs spirituall power , and detained it in lay hands , but have also abused the same power ; tolerating thereby , and countenancing all manner of heresies , which is directly contrary to our covenanted reformation . our answer is , that we are neither intensively , nor extensively lyable indeed to this objection . for , 1. all sects , and scandals are not permitted by us : nothing is more distant from truth , then this suggestion . all grosse sins , and seducers are supprest with as quick severity as ever : nay since the norman conquest there have not been so many sharp laws made against adultery , swearing , blaspheming , sabbath-breaking , and open prophanation , as have been made within these few yeers . all the remission , and relaxation that our parliament has indulged of late is only towards tender consciences , where men comport themselves civilly , and inoffensively towards their neighbours , and attempt to innovate nothing in the church for perturbing of religion ; and even in this also we havenot extended our indulgence so far as the united states of the netherlands have , and divers other protestant princes in germany . the truth is , we do not finde such danger in erastianisme , independentisme , anabaptisme , round-headisme , &c. as our rigid presbyterians suspect : and this would not dislike the presbyterians themselves , if they were men willing to do to others , as they are willing others should do to them ▪ for they themselves are sensible , that we can never desire more gentlenesse from them to us , then is now shewed by us to them . 2ly , that toleration which we are accused of , is but a non persecution in its most intensive degree : for we use all christian means , besides force , to reduce such as wander , and divide from us : and we are far from cherishing schismes and broyls either in church , or state . our saviours own parable allows us where weeds have gotten head , and are as numerous as the standing corn , rather to spare the weeds for the corns sake , then to indanger the corn for the weeds sake . howsoever , it would be some charity in our traducers , if they would advisedly consider how the growth of our weeds came at first to be so rank amongst us : and thereupon joyn with us in humiliation for it , not exult over us in scorn , and derision . upon the first defiance given by the king to the parliament , half the clergie at least fell away from this cause : and before that rent could be sowde up , there happened a second distance betwixt us , and the scots partly upon a royal , and partly an ecclesiasticall account , and that distance drew on as great a revolt of the clergie as the former . and how can any man imagine , but that strange disorders must needs follow and abound in a church so deserted ? when the dressers of the vineyard do not onely quit their charge , but throw down the mounds , how can it be expected but that bores and foxes should break in ? and indeed the parliament is still ill beset , for either they must deny preaching to the people , to three parts of foure , or else they must yeeld the pulpits to their seditious enemies : and to such as shall seek to wound the magistrate through the souls of the people . this being the parliaments hard case , it may better become the scots , to whom may be attributed a great part of these disturbances , to afford some pitie , and help , then to adde miserie to our miserie . this is sufficient to plead for our indulgence , let us onely advise the presbyterians not to take unjust offence thereat , or to stumble into the contrary extreme . t is wofull to see how rigidly the ministers carrie themselves towards the poore people in many places , and what an absolute discretionarie power they challenge in many places over the ordinances of god . there are many parishes in england where the people have not been admitted to the sacrament of the lords supper , nor some infants to the sacrament of baptisme for a long time . this deserves much bewailing ; for certainly god gave these rich legacies to the diffusive body of his church , for the spirituall comfort of the meanest servants of his , and not to that which cals it self his representative body , to be a trade , and monopolie for their advantage in this world . but i have done : if the world now finde cause to condemne us of dealing treacherously with the covenant , and our fellow-covenanters , in that we have not submitted to the scots , and for their sakes disclaimed our own judgements and interests to gratifie the king , and the presbyterian clergie , with our perpetuall servility : let us fall under their condemnation . or if the world can justifie the scots as pursuers of that union , freedome , and fidelity which was aimed at in the covenant , when they made themselves our lords to give us laws in our own dominions , and when they did not onely raise sedition here in our own bowels , but came in with an army of 20000. men to devour us : let them stand upright here , and injoy their wished triumph . our finall assurance , and comfort is , there sits a judge in heaven , who can neither deceive , nor be deceived , a judge that hears all appeals , made above , and does right at last to all that groane under oppression , and injustice belowe . of the scoch warre . vvee have seen how the covenants waxen nose has been turned and moulded into many forms : wee see now cause to suspect , that 't was made so large at first , and compacted of such materials , that like the grecian wooden horse , it might tear our walls the wider upon its entrance , and discharge the more discords , and dissentions amongst us after its entrance was procured . we see it was intended by the honest party in england for cement to unite the nations in a more arct , faithfull confederation , then ever our ancestors knew : but the couching of it was obscure , and left liable to so many false glosses , that it soon became {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . our brotherly offices of assistance soon degenerated into harsh expostulations : harsh expostulations begat secreet feudes , and secreet feudes heightned themselves into open hostilities . the question is only , when open war commenced betwixt these nations , whether the scots first invaded us by their duke hamilton , above two years since , or whether the english first invaded scotland this last summer under the command of the lord gen. cromwell . for a year or two after reception of the covenant in england , a good correspondence was kept betwixt us : the scotch commissioners sat in our committee of lords and commons at darby house , whereby they were admitted into the knowledge of our highest and secretest affaires , and had opportunity to frame parties amongst us for promoting of their own interests . out of these kindnesses sprung our first unkindnesses , for the more honour was given to the scots , the more still they thought was due , and the more they thought was due , the worse use they made of all that was or could be given them . so all jealousies could not long be supprest , for in time some of our lords and commons saw cause to conceale some things concerning this state from them , and this was extreamly ill taken , and indeed no otherwise then if it had been a reall piece of injustice to the kingdom of scotland ; but moderation as yet kept both within reasonable bounds . mr. a. henderson was then living , and conversant in those businesses , and surely he was a man of an apostolicall spirit , and though a great lover of his countrey , yet he knowingly durst not interpose in an ill action , for his countreys advantage : and i am perswaded he did very good offices and kept us from further jars during his life : and if he had lived longer , would have prevented much of what has hapned since , ▪ besides , presbytery the scotch clergies darling seemd plausible at first to the english , and soon grew indeared to our synod , and for a good space it got such footing in england , that the scots had no cause of dissatisfaction in that behalf . the king also the other darling of the scotch nation , till about the latter end of summer 1645. prosperd so that he more slighted the scots then he did us , and so about him , there was no great cause of animosities : and if any did appear , they were more easily to be digested ; but when the english army under the lord gen. fairfax had in one summer defeated , and utterly broken two very great armies of the kings , and taken in divers other considerable cities , and strengths without any help at all from the scots , many emulous considerations began to breed strange alienations in the hearts of our brethren . the easie warfare of the scots all this while had afforded them , besides good store of pay and plunder , an absolute signiory over the northerne counties ( our northerne men tell us wofull stories till this day ) and now they saw that rich service , or rather absolute dominion was likely to come to an end , they thought sit to strengthen themselves in berwick and newcastle , and they got carlile also by very foul play in spight of our commissioners , as if they were resolved and certain to have a dispute with us . likewise in 1646. when oxford grew straitned , and unsafe to the king , and when it was visible also that presbytery after so many years experience , did not altogether rellish with the english , the scots presently resolved ( as was related before ) to expound the covenant in favour of the king , at least for setling and securing their arrears , and making a commodious retreat out of england . accordingly that article which provided for the kings interest , served their interest wel enough , and war so well commented upon by them , that it held us at a bay , till their contract was perfected , and then after a long dispute very chargeable to our nation at the instance of an army , and 200000 li. they delivered up newcastle , barwick and carlile , and took time to study the kings article a little longer . in the year 1647. there was no notable businesse for the souldier , england took a little breath , having nothing to do but to squench the few remainders of war , and scotland kept at home to share the late gotten spoiles of england ; yet this year there past some new cajoleries betwixt the scots and the king , and some contests betwixt the scots , and us about the king : and no doubt , the next years action was now in forging , and all preparatory hammers were on working . and now enters the memorable year of 1648. a year never to be forgotten by the english , in regard of the unparralleld dangers that then overspread it , and the unspeakable mercies of god that then protected it . all the enemies of this poore common-wealth were now in a solemn conjuration against it . in ireland all was held past recovery : ormond the parliaments revolted servitor , was complying with the bloody irish , and betraying his own religion into the bargain to get some of their forces into england : in wales , in kent , in essex , in surrey , great bodies of men rose up , some upon the old royall account , some upon a new , whilst many also of the navy fell away from the parliament to make the case the more desperate . no lesse then 40000 english did their endeavours this summer to make way for hamilton , from whom ( by good intelligence doubtles ) they expected 20000 scots . great was the goodness of god that all these confederates could not be in a readiness at one and the same time , and that all the forreign princes round about us which favoured them , could not be assistent to them that yeer : god had so ordained it , that the welsh should be reduced before the scots entred , or else our condition had been altogether hopelesse in the eye of reason . but to the scoch businesse . the solemn league , and covenant was now brought under a new debate in the parliament of scotland : and the main matter in question was , how they could be absolved of that holy stipulation , if they did not imploy all their power to reform religion , and to restore the king in england : and for the fuller agitation , and ventilation of this matter , severall grave harangues by persons affected severally were drest , and we may well imagine to what effect . agent : of the kirks party seeing the parliament filled with so great a party of the hamiltonians is supposed to begin . my lords and gentlemen : the covenant presses us all to endeavour the reformation of religion , and the restauration of the king in england by a brotherly way of assistance in our severall places , and callings : and so , as that these ends of the covenant , may stand , and agree with all the rest . but withall , it behoves us to use a great deal of caution ▪ and circumspection in a matter of so high importance , wherein the honour of god , and good of the nations is so religiously involved , not to be mistaken either in the mark we all shoot at , or in the arrows we are to shoot . as for the point of religion i am perswaded , it wants reformation in england , and i beleeve i dissent not therein from any here : but this scruple sticks by me : i doubt whether i am so properly a judge in england of religion , as i am in scotland , and if i am not ; then i fear i step out of my place , and calling , whilest i take upon me there to reform by force , which sure the covenant requires not , but excludes in expresse terms . the account of my scruples i give thus : first , if we are now judges of matters ecclesiasticall in england . we are so constituted by the covenant , for before the covenant we pretended to no uch thing and in the covenan● it self , i finde no such constituting words . 2ly . if the covenant creates us judges in cases eccles : it creates us the same in all other things civil , military , and judiciall : for all the interests of the king , and subjects in parliament : and out of parliament : are inclosed within the verge of the covenant : and yet no man here supposes himself bound by any words of the covenant to look after the whole administration of justice , and the whole managery of the government in england or els to stand answerable for all abuses whatsoever , that are not there redressed . 3ly . if the covenant give us a power so large in england , it must by the same reason give the eng : the same in scotland : for the bonds are equall , and reciprocall : and so here are discords raised betwixt us , contrary to the principall drift of the covenant , such as never can be pacified : the sword it self can never give any decision in the busines : victory may take away equallity betwixt . 2. brethren : but meer victory can never take away the true right of equallity . 4ly . the covenant injoynes us precisely to assist one another in reforming , now the word assistence intimates a concurrence with the party covenanting against some joynt opposer , it cannot be forced to intimate any violence against the party covenanting . 5ly , not onely the tenor of the whole covenant , but also the particular clear purport of the fifth article in the covenant mainly intends to tye a firmer , closer knot of union , and conjunction betwixt the nations , then ever was before : and therefore to rescinde a knot so manifest upon expositions , and glosses of things not manifest seems to me to be a wilfull violation of the covenant . as to the other point about the kings inlargement : much may be resumed of what i said before against our judging in england : but i forbear that : the scruples that here suggest themselves to me are these . 1. if the kings liberty may not be restrained , then neither any other of his royall prerogatives , honours , and powers : and yet we our selves hold all these here under sequestration , and for divers yeares of late , we have entred upon , and administred the whole royal● office ourselves : shall we then maintaine , that the k : has a right to that in england , to which he has no right in scotland . 2ly , if the k : has a right now to his liberty being amongst the english : it will follow upon the same reason that he had a right to the same , two years since when he was in our quarters at new●rk , and newcastle : yet all men will s●● : amongst us he had no command at all , but was under such a guard , as had a strict charge of his person , and were as rigorously answerable for the same , as any jaolers whatsoever . besides , all men know he was by us delivered up to the english against his will : and that upon contract ▪ and valuable considerations : and that we could not have justified , if we had thought he was at full liberty , and could not be thereof abridged . thirdly . a speciall● article in our covenant obliges us to bring all enemies of the covenant to condigne punishment : and we do punish daily capitally such of the kings adherents as have offended against us by his commissions , and shall we think that death is due to the actor , and instrument , when imprisonment is not due to the author and principall ? fourthly . if we dispute not about the kings imprisonment , but as it is such ; that is , as he is imprison'd by the souldiery in england without consent of the parliament there : then do we take upon us to vindicate the consent of that parliament , without consent of that parliament : and since we hear not that there is any change of the kings restraint , save onely of the persons under whom he is restrained , nor do the parliament in england think fit to use force , nor to desire our assistance therein , i doubt if we should obtrude our force therin without any call , we should offend against another proviso in the covenant , by intrenching upon the parliaments priviledge there , and by invading the subjects property likewise , which the charge of this war must necessarily draw after it . these things deserve a sober deliberation before we resolve upon the justice of this war : but then the justice being cleered , yet i conceave we are bound to all mankind , much more christians and brethren in covenant , to give what evidence we can of the justice of our cause , that if possible they may be convinced , and do right before bloud be shed . and since the parliament of england , upon reports of our preparations ha's dispatcht commissioners hither to treat about all points in difference , and we specially by treaty were held to send the like to them , and after all to give three months previous warning , before we could have recourse to the sword : i hope no man here will offer any thing against a treaty with the english commissioners , that satisfaction before blood may be either given , or taken : and if not , yet the due space of warning may be observed ; if we should faile herein , i fear we should proclaim our selves to the world abusive simulatory pretenders of the covenant , only to prophane the high gods name to whom we have all lifted up our false hands . next , since the english in observance of their faith to us , ingaged freely for our better assurance in them , have left their frontire towns berwick and carlisle ungarrison'd , notwithstanding the notice they have of our present posture : i hope we shall scorne to make their plain dealing with us a ●nare to themselves ; and thinke to chastise their fidelity with our infidelity , at such a time as this is , when we wage war with holy thoughts , and only for religious purposes . and lastly , since we are to engage out of pure conscience to the ends of the covenant , one whereof is to bring all enemies of the same covenant to a legall triall , i hope we shall not receive langdale , and the rest of the english fugitives , whose swords have drawne much bloud of covenanters to fight under our covenanters banners . this will convince us of insincerity before men , this will provoke the eyes of gods jealousie against us in the day of battail ; god must be served justly , as wel as in just actions , and when bloud is the meane , and holinesse the end , god uses to be more jealous , and expects more exactnesse then ordina●ily : oh let not any occasion be given by a parliament of scotland to lay stumbling blocks before others ; let not the world say we wrest the covenant to what sence we please , and use it as the papist do the word of god : the case is of grand consequence , it may concerne us and our posterity for ever , i pray let it be throughly scand and sifted . hereunto a gentleman of hamiltons party may be supposed to answer : my lords and gentlemen , you have heard it granted , that religion in england wants reformation , and that the king ought to be set free from his forced durance under the souldier : you have heard likewise granted , that our solemn league and covenant requires these things to be done : but divers scruples have been cast in withall , about the manner of doing these things , in regard that a juste is required , as well as a justum . the main thing is , that we are not qualified by the covenant to do these honorable things in england : alas , if the covenant does not add any new qualification to us to serve religion , and our king : i hope no man will suspect that it takes away any such qualification from us as we had before : and i hope ther 's no man here but thinks before any covenant taken he had a warrant and capacity good enough to do honorable service to his religion , and his native prince : let me speak plainly , and bluntly , i doubt these scruples do not arise against us , as we are scotch men , and so have no power of judging in england , but rather as we are of such a party in scotland , that the kirk dares not confide in us : & this is lamentable halting before god . let us not therfore be driven into any unmanly irresolution by logicall niciti●s , and school-puntilioes : let us beleeve that such just ends as we aime at inservingour god and prince have just avenues belonging to them , and that god ha's not hedgd in , or inscons'd goodnesse from the approaches of men , as he did once the tree of life . my lord , and gentlemen : shall pure reformed religion want an advocate in this presence ? no : it were labour lost here to recommend the excellencies of her ; you all are confident you cannot , but be certaine that god hath rather sent a cherubim to invite and wast you to her assistance in england , then to affright you and drive you from her embraces with a flaming sword . then , as for the king , you have a greater interest in him then the english have , and he ought to have a greater interest in you , then he has in the english : let me tell you if you should prove oblivious of his favours , he might upraid divers of you with your fields and vineyards , as saul did once his benjamites . do we not all know , that his graces towards us ha's made him the lesse acceptable to the english ? and does not the whole world taxe us of our ill requitall at newcastle ? i speake of that in your ears : what can be said then , either we must requite him better , and acquit our selves better now , or all generations to come will call us ungratefull and unjust ; and for my part i cannot ever construe the covenant as that it intends to render us ungratefull or unjust . t is true the enterprise we goe upon must cost blood , and fall heavie upon some of our fellow covenanters in england : it were else impossible almost , it should be great and honorable : let this be our comfort : the work is great , and honorable , and being so it must be acceptable to god : and that which god accepts cannot but be fea●able : for qui dat finem , dat media ▪ let the justice of this war fix our resolutions upon the pursuance of it , and when we are upon its pursuance , let us pursue it wisely , and strenuously as becomes souldiers : let no scruples defraud us of the opportunities and advantages that attendit , for such in war are irrecoverable & pretious : to be brief , let us not be held up with treaties by the english commissioners , let us not wave langdale , nor leave berwick and carlisle to the enemy : when we are in peace let the laws of peace order us when we are in war , let the maxims of war sway &c. the rather for that advantage lost in peace may be regained , but an error committed in war can never be redeemed . the next gentleman was of a different opinion from either of these , and you may suppose his oratory was as followeth . my lords and gentlemen . you have heard how much may be said for a present war with england , and how much may be said against it : you have heard in what extreams the arguments both of a meer souldier , and a meer scholler run , and now having heard both , and compar'd both , you may the better extract out of both that which is truly counsellable at this present , and that doubtlesse , teaches warily to decline both extreams : the gentleman that spake last maintained well the justice and necessity of the worke that is to be done : such a service to god and the king cannot but be just and necessary ; and our covenant cannot obstruct any thing that is of it self just and necessary ; therefore to oppose our covenant against this war , is to undervalue our covenant , and to entangle our selves in such nicities as are more fit for the schools , then this senate . on the other side the gentleman that spoke first interposed some necessary advertisements about the manner of our prosecuting this high undertaking , not fit to be neglected , for doubtlesse it concerns gods honor , the safety of the king , and the perpetuall peace and safety of these nations , that this affair be wisely managed , as well as it is religiously intended . we all know that the taking of some advantages in war , if they be at too far a distance with religion , may prove our disadvantages : and so the parting with some opportunities in some cases , may be a gayn of better to us ; hast ha's overthrowne some undertakings , as well as delay others . wherefore i desire leave to counterpoise with a little moderation , that which hath been pressed by both the gentlemen that spoke before me . and first t is my humble motion , that the kirk here may have all possible satisfaction given them in the forming , and heading of this army , and in the conduct , and steering of the great designe ; forasmuch as without this condiscention we cannot expect their concurrence , and without their concurrence , we cannot expect that readinesse , or confidence in our friends at home , nor that stupidity & consternation in our enemies abroad , as is to be desired . secondly , that if wee admit not the english commissioners to treate , and then allow three moneths warning after the end of that treaty : yet we may instantly dispatch away an expresse to the parliament of england with particular demands , and a cleere denunciation of warre within a moneth , if those particulars be not instantly agreed to . thirdly , that some reasonable space before wee march a declaration may be emitted to satisfie our friends in england with our sincere intentions towards them : and that the buisines of the kirke being setled , and the king reinthroned , wee have no intention to intrench upon the priviledges of the parliament there , or to breake that bond of confederation and union that was intended to be confirmed by the covenant . fourthly , that langdale may be countenanced at a distance , and with much reservation , and that no other use may be openly made of him , then of a forlorne hope to seize the english frontire garrisons for our use , and to ingage upon other the like hazardous services . how well these things are calculated for the meridian of edenburgh , i leave every man to guesse freely : but this is certain , there were few in the scotch parliament , who gave their judgements the first way : many went the second way : and all went the third way , except onely in complying with the kirke : and if there be any credit to be given to hamilton , who affirm'd it religiously at the time of his arraignment in england , the kirkes party refused to comply with him , and his party , more out of emulations , and particular state-animosities , then out of any dislike of the cause , or condemnation of the undertaking . and time ha's since made this more manifest , for even the commissioners of the kirke in their declarations since , and by their ingaging against us with their yong declared king , have even by the covenant , and the same constructions of it , owned every part of the quarrell against us , which they condemned in hamilton , setting only aside his entring upon us without three moneths previous warning , well : the scotch parliament having sufficiently commission'd hamilton for his march into england , rose without any audience , or intercourse granted to our commissioners . hamilton being so commission'd , makes present use of langdale , and his train , speeds away with 20000. men for england , seizes barwick and carlile , commits infinite barbarous cruelties , and destructions in the foure northerne counties , before previous warning given according to our treaties , but within some few weeks fights with the lievtenant-generall cromwell in lancashire , is taken prisoner , se●s his army defeated , and the remainders of it chased back into scotland . out of this matter of fact so stated , a dispute now arises , whether this hostile action of hamilton , that was then chargeable upon the parliament of scotland , be still justly to be answerd and accounted for to the state of england , by the present state of scotland . the scots deny it upon these grounds . for their first evasion , they say , the good party that now governs is not the same , as the party was , that then governed . whereby they would have us understand , that the state of scotland is changed since , 1648. and does not remaine the same as it was at that time , and therefore ought not to be responsal for what was then done . after the committee of estates , and the kirk-commissioners have condemned hamiltons invasion without antecedent warning , and his other miscarriages in taking barwick and carlile , &c. and confest that nothing can be offerd in excuse thereof : they yet adde , that never any people in the world in a time of defection did more evidence their freedome from guilt ; then they ( they meane the party now governing ) did . here is a defection confest in a parliament lawfully chosen , and in the major part of the people adhaering to that parliament : but there was a remnant of good people which at that time evidenced their freedome from that guilt , and that remnant since by force , and assistance of the english army , ha's gotten power into their hands , and therefore the magistrate that is now , is not guilty of that defection , nor consequently the state of scotland liable to make any reparation . this evasion must be thus stopt up . 1. in all states where there is a representative , the publick act of that representative , or of its major part , bindes all , and every person . and though the next representative may repeale laws formerly made , and recede at pleasure from what its predecess●rs acted erroneously , or temporarily : and these new repeals , and recessions shall be binding to all persons therein represented : yet even these alterations also must be without fraud , salv● semper jure tertij : they must be without any prejudice to ●orrein states , and persons there not represented . nay , if the state of england passe an interest in land to a subject of england upon a good consideration and contract , that act shal be binding perpetually , and may not under favour be avoyded by a new representative , because that avoydance will appeare fraudulent in the state : and because such avoydance is to the damage of one that is as it were a third person , and contracts with the state upon equall terms ; and it seemes , that a speciall consent is necessary in such a case of his disinherison , and that his generall consent given by his representatiues ought not to divest him . and if it be here objected , that the constitution of the state of scotland is different from other states , inasmuch , as it consists of two representatives , one civil and the other ecclesiasticall ; and in this ingagement of hamilton the ecclesiasticall representative did not act , nor concurre , but dissent , and protest against it , and so made the civil act the lesse authoritative . we answer ; first , the ecclesiasticall representative of scotland ha's no power but in cases meerly ecclesiasticall , such as this was in 1648. was not . secondly , if the scots will tell us , that hamiltons action , and case was in ordine ad spiritualia : wee must not suffer such collusion to be turnd to our prejudice . the state of scotland must not thinke it sufficient to stroke us in their spirituall capacity , whilst they strike us in their temporal capacity : the duplicity of their powers must not justifie , or excuse duplicity in their dealings : when wee sustaine publick injuries , whether it be from a jurisdiction parliamentary , or synodical , the whole state of scotland must be answerable for satisfaction . thirdly , if the ingagement of hamilton was the lesse valid in law ( if we did grant this , as we doe not ) because all that feared the lord in the land did petition , and pray against it , and expose themselves to some persecution for not complying with it , yet this does not render the same ingagement the lesse mischievous to us . there was not one drop of english bloud the lesse shed then , nor is there one drop the lesse to be accounted for now . fourthly , wee are not without some strong presumptions , that the small number of the religious party in scotland , which were enemies to the ingagement then , were not so much enemies to it as it was mischievous to us , or unjust in it selfe , as because it promoted hamiltons●action too high , and had an ill aspect upon their owne particular interest in scotland . else , what makes them so zealous against our receiving of right now , which pretend they were so zealous against our receiving of wrong then ? it seemes strange to us , that the english which had never a friend in scotland two yeares since to warde one blow from their throats , or to do any real act of resistance to hamilton , should now finde never an enemy in scotland , obnoxious to their challenge of satisfaction : and that the same men should be the most forward to debarre us of reparation now , which were then most forward to protest against our suffrings . secondly , where two representatives have been legally chosen , if it be not honorable for the later to anull the formers act in prejudice of a third person that ha's right : much lesse honorable is it for a representative brought in by the sword to derogate from the acts of a former representative , that had a faire , and free election from the people . wherefore , let the present power in scotland apply this to themselves : and the rather for that they complain of forcible alterations amongst us , onely upon pretended discommodities to our selves , whilst they themselves make use of forcible alterations amongst themselves , to the defrauding of their neighbours . thirdly , admit the parliament , by which hamilton was commission'd , was an unjust parliament ; admit it was no parliament at all ; and admit that hamilton with a lesse party , and without any commission at all had broke in upon us in a hostile manner : yet even this would not leave the english altogether remediles ; for in this case upon a just demand of satisfaction made by the english , the scots must disowne the act , and see the outrage legally expiated upon the actors ; or else they owne it themselves , and so become as obnoxious as the actors . that which was the sin of one towne in benjamin at first , became the sin of the whole tribe of benjamin afterwards ; and doubtlesse , that which was the sin of one tribe in israel at first , had become the sin of all israel at last , if justice had not been lawfully executed ; let the scots look upon this with sad eyes , for that blood of the english shed by hamilton , which is now the guilt of a party only in scotland , upon the deniall of just ice , may be made the guilt of all scotland . the second evasion of the scots is this ; they say , if they were persons challengeable of satisfaction , yet they that sit now in the parliament of england , are not persons , that can duly challenge , or require satisfaction : it should seeme as scotland before was not to be found in scotland ; so england is now not to be found in england : so hard a matter it is to get right from them that can thus easily transforme , and deforme whole nationall bodies . the meaning is , government in england has been of late changed ; two of the estates in parliament are removed by force , and the third estate usurpes , what was due to all : wherefore as they cannot treate with us about satisfaction , but they must acknowledge us a lawfull authority ; so conscience forbids them to acknowledge our authority lawfull . to this wee answer . 1. the change of rule in a nation , does not change the nation ; forasmuch as the manner of rule is changeable , and accidentall , and so does not give beeing , or support the essence of a state . if wee in england beeing a monarchy owe three millions to the hollander , the change of monarchy in england will not exempt us from , our obligation : and if we in england , beeing a democracy , have three millions due from the hollander , our returne to monarchy will not denude us of our remedie . the devastations and hostilities of hamilton were suffred by the english nation , and the parliament of england demands justice , and restitution for the same in behalfe of the english nation : now 't is not agreeable to justice , or reason , that a slight exception taken against the substitute , should disable the principal , or any incapacity of the demandant redound to the prejudice of him which is the true interessent . secondly , if the usurpation of the parliament of england shall bar the state of england from its due course of justice , yet how does it appeare to the scots , that the power of our parliament is an usurp't power ? if god or man ha's given them any warrant to judge of our actions , and affaires in england , let them shew it : for without some such warrant they are but our equalls : and one equall ha's no power of judging another . if they plead any undeniable principle in nature which condemnes all alteration of government as unlawfull : and all extrusion of governours as usurpation , and of this maxime , they say , all men are equally judges ; then how will they justifie their extrusion of lannerick , and their new moulding of their committee of estates after the defeature of hamilton , which without armes , and our assistance they could not have compast ? is that a naturall , indispensible principle in england , which is not so in scotland ? away with such partiall shifts ; let the scots shew us that nation under heaven that ha's not severall times been driven to mutations of governments , and governours , and been at last justified therein by the plea of necessity , and common safety : and wee shall confesse their lordly power over us . thirdly , if the scots be our lords , and will give judgement against us in this case , yet they must know , that wee are now upon our appeal before almighty god , and have accordingly taken armes into our hands for the prosecution of that appeal . and does not one of the primary lawes of warre teach them what a hazard it is to deny right to him that beares his ●aked sword in his hand ? arma tenenti — omnia dat qui justa negat . will the scots lay an incapacity of treating upon us first , and then of fighting afterwards . the difference now betwixt us is , whether wee have justly enterd scotland , or no , to seeke redresse of many injuries , and depredations by tryall of battaile , which was denide us by debate in a friendly intercourse : and doe the scots thinke now to argue us out of our armes ? doe they think , that the same condemnations of our usurp't power , by which they insulted over us , when wee sought a treaty , will be seasonable now , when the cause is preferd to a higher court ? this were to cut us off from all remedie whatsoever ; this were to detrude us below the miserablest of men ; this is beyond all ordinary strains of tyranny : there is no client , nor subject , nor slave whatsoever , but by way of his last appeale , may repell force with force , when his case is beyond all other decision : and this is held no more then a making an humble addresse to heaven , or laying the cause before the lord of hosts his footstoole : will the scots then which have droven us their equalls to this , last resort , prejudge and foreclude us in this also , and so make us worse them the worst of inferiors ? certainly , if we may not treate before wee confesse our selves usurpers , wee may fight till god declares us to bee so ; or that our enemies have usup't over us . the third advantage or exception of the scots against our demands of satisfaction ▪ is taken from the space of time that interlapsed betwixt the overthrow of hamilton , and our solemne denouncing against them for that hostilitie : as also from some reciprocall kindnesses , and testimonies of accord and pacification , which past betwixt the nations in the mean while . of both these i shall now give this faithfull account . the victory of of l : g : cromwell against the scots was about the latter end of summer , 1648 : and our forces following that chase stayed in scotland till about mid-winter following . during the stay of our army in scotland a good understanding was betwixt us , and the kirk party there , for we had both the same ends against the hamiltonians , and so whilest we extorted the sword out of lannericks hands , and put it into arguiles , we did our own businesse and the kirks too , and the kirks more immediately then our own . howbeit a treaty was now begun in the isle of wight with the king , where the scoch commissioners appeared great sticklers for the king to our nations great dis-service , and this gave us some glimpse , that even in the kirk party , restored so lately to power by our means , all was not so sound , and sincere , as it ought to be . the treaty not succeeding about the last of januar : the king was brought to the block : and then the insolencies of the scoch commissioners , and their haughty intrusions into the managery of our english state affairs , and their despicable subjecting of our parliament to their over-ruling wils , grew so intolerable , that upon the 17. of febr : the parliament declared publickly against them . this begat another paper from the commissioners dated the 24. following more imperious , and controuling then formerly , and this was presently after voted a designe in the contrivers of it to raise sedition , that so under specious pretences they might gain advantage to second their late perfidious invasion . the 6. of march following , the state of scotland wrote a letter to us ( as they now inform us ) to avow their commissioners last paper , and withall disallowing our construction of it , for that they judged it no incroachment upon our government , nor any indeavour to raise sedition . they likewise signified in the same , that if any prevalent party in either kingdom had , or might break the bonds of union , yet those sacred tyes ought not to be layed aside or cancell'd , but preserved for the benefit of such as were innocent in both nations . the scoch commissioners to whom this letter was sent for delivery of it were now upon their return for scotland , and so the same never came to our hands , though the scots untruly tax us of suppressing it . but why should they suspect any designe in us of suppressing this letter ? the letter , if we had received it , would not have healed our grievances , it would rather have made the wounds wider : for the scots commissioners had charged us of treason , perjury , usurpation , &c. for doing those things within our own government , which were required at our hands by justice , and reason of state : now their principals in scotland tell us that this charge is true : but being true : it molests not , it shakes not , it justles not us out of any part of our power , nor stirs the people at all against us . what is this but to tell us ; that they are more truly judges in england of treason , perjurie , usurpation , &c. then we ? that 't was not injurious in them to condemne us , nor seditious in the people to rise up against us in observance of their commands ? sometimes they pretend they aime at nothing beyond a simple protesting against us , and that a freedome of protesting is due to all men : but this is meerly to delude , and infect the people the more : for t is evident to all men , that such protestations as their papers have exhibited , have ever been fraighted with the worst of calumnies , the severest of sentences , and have been received by the people , as warlike defiances . in this case therefore when so many insurrections , and broils have been actually bred against us in our own bowels , and so dangerously seconded by forrein forces , we call in all men to be judges betwixt us , whether we may not more justly cast out protestations when they do but palliate seditious conspiracies , then to submit to seditious conspiracies , because they cover themselves with the names of protestations . this letter miscarrying , and our parliament having waited awhile for some other return by some expresse , or other , in may following , about nine months after the scoch rout , a complanatory letter was sent from hence about divers grievances in generall , and satisfaction was therein desired by treaty in a peaceable way . an answer hereunto came in june following , recomplaining that the scots justly found themselves aggrieved at the late proceedings in england , in reference to religion , taking away the kings life , and change of fundamentall government , which they had protested against . that in case the english would disclaim their late proceedings against covenant and treaties , they were contented to authorise commissioners for a treaty . otherwise they were resolved to keep themselves free from all complyance with malignants on the one hand , and the enemies of kingly government , on the other . that in regard of the covenant , the treaties , and many declarations of both kingdoms , they could not acknowledge that to be a parliament , from whom the last proposition came to them about a treatie to be appointed . here was a flat deniall of any satisfaction , by declining all means of treating about the same : here was a reason given of that deniall , as full of enmity and hostility as could be : instead of making any compensation due to the state of england for the bloodshed , and rapine of hamilton , here was a strange coacervation and accumulation of new ●landers , and defamations upon the parliament of england . letters from the parliament are now as it were interdicted , no such subscription is to be admitted , hereupon in july following , our parliament issued forth a declaration for the better stating of these matters ▪ the endeavour of that declaration was to remove yet all nationall misunderstanding i● possible : and to demonstrate that the english yet had not laid aside all thoughts of peace : but concluding that if still they were diverted out of the wayes of peace unwillingly , the fault was not theirs . this declaration was made as publick , as ever any was in england , and we have thousands here of the scotch nation disaffected enough to us ▪ and ten thousands of english presbyterians besides more imbittered then the scoch , and all these can attestate the evulgation of this declaration , yet the scots call it a dormant declaration , and most dis-ingenuously would infuse it into the people that they had never , nor could have any notice of it . a letter of theirs to us in the hands of a single messenger could not be intercepted : but a manifest of ours printed , and intitled to the whole world must needs miscarry , and that by our collusion . some reply was expected by us to the matter of this declaration , and some months past away hanging our expectation : but none came : the first news we heard was that about the middle of march following there was a treaty agreed on to be at bredah betwixt the scots , and their yong declared king : and that the principall subject of that treaty , was about the pretensions of the yong king to england , and the quarrels of the scots against england . this to us , that had so little hopes of reconcilement before , was a sufficient alarme , and upon this our l : generall cromwell was sent for out of ireland , all warlick preparations were made ready , and our army this last summer , ( as soon as we got notice of the agreement made at bredah , and how far it concerned the life of this common-wealth ) made its entrance into scotland . this relation gives the true procedure of all memorable matters betwixt summer 1648. and summer 1650. with the reasons of the slow motions of the english : and amongst them all whether there was any composure made betwixt the nations for hamiltons●aedifradous irruption , either by satisfaction given , on the one side , and taken , or confest by the other , t is left to judgement . but the scots alledge still , that immediately after the breaking of hamilton in england , and the dis-arming of his brother in scotland , there were given divers clear demonstrations of amity , and good accord betwixt the nations : letters will yet testifie , that the godly party in scotland satisfied the english in their innocency , and that the english did accept of the same , as good satisfaction . for example : in septemb : and octob : the l : generall cromwell wrote in behalf of the kirk patty , by him then seated at the stern , and his letters did recommend them to the parliament as men carefull of the unity of the nations , and the interest of england . on the other side the scots remitted hither an honourable testimony of the fair comportment of our souldiery there , together with a thankfull acknowledgment of the benefit , and advantage which our seasonable assistance had afforded them . likewise from the parliament here it was written back , that the religious , and well affected people in scotland were excused from those impious , and unwarrantable actions , and that there was no willingnes in the english to impute those evils to the nation in generall . as for the l : generals letters , questionlesse they contained his true , plain , meaning : he did believe at that time , that the interest of england , and the unity of the nations was valued by the kirk , and the arguilians in scotland : but what discharge was this to the rest of the nation ? nay what discharge is this to any of that nation ? his commission extended not to compound for the dammages sustained by us : nor did he ever treat about the same : nor did he at last finde his loving recommendations justly answered by that godly parties actions . out of this therefore there follows nothing but that our l : generall was more charitable , then the scots were gratefull . as for the scotch letters , they serve well to shew the single dealing of our l : generall towards them , and their double dealing towards him : but they serve not at all to shew any act of oblivion , or any other pacificatory conclusion that was consented to by both nations . therefore the good that they then bore witnesse to in our souldiery , we hold it to be just , and according to merit : but when they publish retracting contradicting papers after the intermission of two years , and therein complain ( as they did this last summer ) tha● the l : generall came in un-invited , that the manner of his entrance was not guided by their instructions , and that the proceedings of his army were very unsatisfying in many other things : this is an argument of their profound dissimulation . as for the parliaments letters : although the parliament at that time was too full of kirkmen , yet if they had any full words of release in them , we should no● prolong our contestation hereupon : but the utmost that can be extracted out of them , is a charitable exemption of some that had the testimony of wishing well to the unity of the nations , and interest of england from the pen of the l : generall . the parliament was unwilling , that the scotch nation in generall should be charged with the guilt , and blood of the hamiltonians , and therefore it did acquit , and hold exonerated thereof all the religious , and well-affected people of scotland . without question the religious , and well-affected people here excused , are understood to be no other then such as had been adverse to hamiltons exposition of the covenant upon sincere grounds , and not for any factious , or particular respects . but how few such there were in scotland at that time is now manifest , by the general adhering of that nation to their new king against us . for there is not one man in scotland that assists this young king against us now , but he expounds the covenant in the same manner as hamilton did then : and he might have as safely complyed with hamilton in that ingagement , as he may with the yong king in this : as will be further demonstrated in due place . these are the main subterfuges which the scots flie unto , when we tax them of that cruell , barbarous ingagement against us in 1648. the rest of their pleas whereby they seek not to shelter themselves from the whole guilt , but onely to extenuate it , or rather to qualifie our demanded satisfaction are scarce worth the mention . they say , they have received some dammage in scotland by the ●●ish , and have demanded satisfaction of us , but as yet received none . a strange objection , have not the irish been prosecuted by us these nine yeers as enemies ? and though they owe allegiance de jure to england : yet are they not as mortall enemies de facto to us , as to the scots ? do we any way abet , justifie , or spare them ? to vouchsafe more to this , were to disparage right . they say moreover , that some satisfaction has been made us by the booty , and pillage which hamiltons army lost in england . some few scoch arms , and horses , which falling amongst the souldiers as due prize were like water spilt upon the ground , neither received in satisfaction by the state of england , nor so given by the state of scotland , must come in upon the account of the english to satisfie them for all the plunders , murders , and wasts which a scoch army perpetrated contrary to treaties , and sworn covenants . no more of this , here ends the first part of the scoch warre , whose scene was layed in england : we come now to its second part ▪ where our scene by gods abundant grace , and goodnesse is removed into scotland . and in this transition from past , to present , imminent hostilities we doubt not but to evidence the necessity of our war in scotland , à parte post , as well as we have done the justice of it a parte ante . the treaty at bredah in march last , betwixt the scots and their declared king : both being upon termes of hostility with us : had little busines to be debated , that was peculiar to scotland : the main thing to be proposed by both parties , was the removing some mis-understandings amongst themselves , that they might thereupon the better double their powers , and twist their pretensions against england . the kings interest was monarchy , the scots was monarchy and presbytery : the english were held to be advers to both these interests : and the covenant therfore to favour both the treators , against the english : so mis-understandings amongst the treators could no● be hard to be removed , or at least their slight jars could not be hard to be laid asleep for a while , when they had so little to loose to each other , and yet so much to gain from a third party . all that the scots desired of the king as humble suitors was but this , that he would take the covenant ( if that were but swallowed down in its literall sence , they thought all their further aims sufficiently provided for ) and this could not be much more bitter to him , then the masse was formerly to his french grand-father in the like case : and if it were , yet divers dulcifications might be added , and accordingly divers mixtures were used , to qualifie , and make more potable that draught . advertisements had been sent from the yong kings devout mother in france , and from her most holy father at rome , that in such an extremity the oath was compulsory , that the matter of the oath was subject to many severall , yea contrary interpretations : that he should therefore be either left to be his own interpreter at last in case he prevailed , or if not ▪ yet he should be discharged of any contrary strained interpretation . the truth was , the present power in scotland had condemned hamilton for invading england in behalf of an anti-covenanting king , and so it would be now too grosse for them to do the same thing till they had a covenanting king : whereupon it became impossible to them to relax the king of this condition . the young king , it may be , might demand why they should more scruple fighting for an anti-covenanting king , then to fight against a covenanting brother , since the covenant lost no more credit by the one , then by the other : and perhaps he might further demand ▪ why their conditions to him were so rigorous ; since his to them pressed nothing but what was pleasing , viz : a joint concurrence against a common enemy . but his mothers councellors thought not fit to clog the debate with such intricacies . all scoch punctilioes being at last waved ( for the young king was so far from capitulating about his reception in scotland , that he was more forward to capitulate against his trusting himself there ) it came to the question , what he should obtain at their hands in relation to england . for satisfaction herein , it was assured , that the scots had already proclaimed him king of great brittain , that they had alreadie protested against the governing party in england , as guilty of usurpation : that they did now ingage to contribute their utmost endeavours , by all necessarie , and lawfull means , according to the covenant , and duties of loyall subjects , to restore him to the peaceable possession of his other dominions , according to his undoubled right of succession . this was the tenor in briefe of that parlee : here is an inthroning promist to the yong king by all necessary and lawfull meanes according to the covenant : and here force of armes is not openly profest , as a necessary , and lawfull meanes according to the covenant , that the english might be ●u●d in the more security : but ●is ambiguously implyed , and secretly so explained to the young king and his counsell , that he might proceed with the more vigor and confidence . hereupon now rises the contest , whether this ambiguity of expression , and mentall , equivocall reservation in the agreement be such as ought to delude the english , or not . the scots still say , no force of arms is threatned against us , and that if we flie unto force of arms against them either upon this , or former hostilities , we do cau●l●sly invade them . they solemnly invoke god as a witnesse , and judge , that they have denyed us no right , that they have done us no wrong : that in this preventing warre , we are meer invaders and returners of evill for good . yet we must understand to make this good before the bar of almighty god himself , they waver , and d●llie , and double , and seek to collude in their own plea : for they do not simply deny their ingaging to use force against us , but unlawfull force , nor yet are they willing to confesse their force intended , and justifie it openly as lawfull by the covenant . surely in an appeal to almighty god , the case need not be presented with so much art , and under the cover of such dubious reservations . let us take a little notice ; first , how far they deny ; secondly , how far they justifie their forcible assisting the yong king against us . after the king was well satisfied with their meaning by private insinuations , and had adventur'd his person into scotland ; then further craft was thought fit to be used to blinde the english , and retard their preparations : and therefore the committee of estates in scotland publisht , that the article in the treaty of bredah concerning restoring the yong king to his crowne of england was not to binde , till the parliament and kirke of scotland had taken a previous consideration , and given their determination concerning the lawfullnesse , and necessitie thereof . behold the ingenuity of the scots , they conclude a warre , and no warre ; to all the enemies of england 't is a declared warre against england : to the english themselves 't is no warre till the scotch parliament and kirke have further declared in it . the enemies of england have hereupon just warning and timely summons to arme , and colleague for englands offence : but in the presence of god they speake it , the english themselves have no just ●a●●● ▪ no● provocation to provide for any defence at all ▪ though this agreement was made by the enemies of england , with the enemies of england , and ref●rres to the covenant which ha's alwayes been expounded to the justifying of a warre with england upon this quarrell : and though this agreement must signifie a full defiance against england to all others , yet to the english it must signifie nothing , god himselfe being admitted judge . the english had been once before invaded by the parliament of scotland upon the same pretex●s of the covenant without any warning given , when both the nations were not onely in profest amity ▪ but also under the religious ties of a solemne league : and yet now when the parliament of scotland ha's per●idiously violated that amity , and those ties , and i● moreover f●stned in a new agreement and covenant with the most active foe , that england ha's , in the world by sea , and land , and by the words of that agreement and covenant , ha's obliged it selfe to recover the throne of england to him : yet now , 't is expected that the english should sit still , and attend till the parliament and ki●ke of scotland had further deside them . alas , the prevention of a wound that is likely to be mortall , is as necessary , when it is possible , as the warding of it : and some stroakes are of that nature that they cannot be repelled by the buckler , if they be not anteverted by the sword . therefore the fictions of the cockatrices eyes want no ground in policy , whatsoever they doe in nature : and 't is often seene in warres ▪ and seditions , that the party which surprizes not is sure to be surpriz'd . this caused the parliament of england this last summer to send a preventing army into scotland , yet with an intension of defence , not offence , for it was manifest to us , if wee did not pitch the warre there , and there draw the first bloud , wee did necessarily expose our selves to the first charge , and impression of our enemies here , and choose to erect the theater of warre within our own dominions . moreover , had wee been meere assaylants , or had wee been defend●nts in an equall cause , against enemies that had observed feciall rites with us by giving us antecedent warning , wee would not have been wanting in the due formalities of defiance towards them . nay , had there been any reall doubt how the parliament and kirke of scotland would have determin'd of the justice , and necessity of a warre with england , or had there been any certain time prefixt when that determination should have been given : or had wee been assured of any just time to prepare our selves afterwards for a compleat defence , wee had not been so forward in seeking out the hardships of that cold , and sterill soyle , but as our case was , wee were great sufferers , wee were sufferers by perfidious enemies , wee were delusorily referd fine die , to judges that were bound to no meetings , for the resolution of a case that was before resolved against us : and in the meane time whilst wee were brutishly thus to waite upon such judges , all our conjured foes were contriving our ruine , and were certain to prepossesse irrecoverable advantages against us . but now wee shall see in the next place , the same scots that before the judgement-seat of god charged us hitherto for entring upon them when wee were in no danger , nor under any provocation , seeing all their transactions at bredah more fully come to light , betake themselves from denying to confessing and avoyding . such is their faultring , such is their doubling : if their deniall could be maintained , they needed not descend to any confession : and if their confession were avowable , they needed not to fly to denyalls : but the truth is , they can neither absolutely deny , nor absolutely justifie their hostile machinations , and combinations against us , and therefore they shufle , and trifle , and play fast , and lose betwixt both . in august last , when the scots saw the english would not yeeld themselves to be deluded , or disappointed , or forecluded of any advantages in war by the false pretexts of peace , they stated the case of their war in a declaration , which they forced the young king to publish in his name at dunferlin , and according to the case there stated , they resolved to joyn upon the issue of a battail , and in the field to expect gods own decision from heaven . the battail was fought , and the decision of heaven dissavoured the scots : but the successe of a pitcht feild is not now held an argument weighty enough to sink a cause so stated . let us therefore more narrowly look into the particulars of that declaration , and examine upon what sure rules of equity and piety the cause of the scots , as it is there drawn up , stands founded . at first the march of our army was held meerly invasive , & causlesly ▪ offensive : the scots denyed any hostile intentions against us at all : now t is granted there was an intention of force , but it was no other then what was justifiable by the covenant , inasmuch as it threatned none but such as were enemies to the covenant . this seems to mean , that the parliament of england with all their armies and adherents , had had just cause to prevent an invasion from the scots , if they had been true to the covenant , that is , if they had interpreted the covenant in the scotch sense : but since they are judged to have dealt treacherously with the covenant , they are not worthy of any defence , they ought not to claim so much priviledg , as to prevent any danger , or enmity ; for if the scotch design had been meerly to plunder and inslave us , then we might have stood upon our guards , or used means of prevention lawfully : but since the designe was meerly to reforme us , and reclaime us to our loyalty , and to reconcile us to our covenant : 't was arrogance in us to thinke any resistance at all reasonable : is not this a candid honest meaning ? does not this high pitch of prejudice become a faire noble enemy ? but to the effect , and purport of our scotch declaration : by that declaration we are satisfied in two things . first , what conditions were proposed by the scots to the king both in behalfe of scotland and england , and secondly , what laws were agreed upon by them both to be imposed upon the english . of the kings conditions little need be said : by taking the covenant explicitly , he did implicitly bind himselfe to admit the scots to be his interpreters of it , and by admitting them to be his interpreters , he did ingage to follow the advice of a parliament in all civill cases , and of an assembly in all businesses of the church : and t is to be understood that the same advice was to sway him as well when he was to consult about his affaires in england , as about his scotch affaires . for a proof hereof , we see when this very declaration , so neerly concerning the government of england , was to be issued in the young kings ●ame , and he to avoid the same was withdrawne to dunferlin : commissioners were sent after him from the kirk and states , to let him know , that by the covenant he was bound to signe , and own this their act , and that by his refusall if he separated his interest from gods , and the churches , they would endeavour the preservation of both without his . but let us passe to the ●aws imposed upon us by the accord ●t bredah , and let us view sadly those heavy iron yoak● that are there ●●eathed for the neck of england . after that the young king ●● obliged to stand to the advice of the scots in the supream counsels and concernments of england . let us consider ●ow ●ar that advice is converted to our confusion . the first thing that we are to submit to is , we are here to yeeld up the crown of england to be disposed of by the scots ▪ we must suppose there lies a duty , and is conferd a power by the covenant upon them to see to our line of succession , and to take order that in all questions betwixt the people , and any pretendor , the throne may be duly filled , and possessed . if a traytor ( that ha's been ) an enemy in arms ( that is ) claime by inheritance the soveraignty of england , the scots may justifie force to invest him here , & 't is breach of coven : in us to oppose ▪ 2. though the same k. may ●e under ▪ sequestration in sco●● : til he has given publick satisfaction there ; yet there is no satisfaction due in engl ▪ of which the english are to be judges , for the english are to rest satisfied in this , that the scots rest satisfied : & if the scots rest satisfied ▪ the english sequestration becomes vac●ted : nay , though that which the scots●all satisfaction , be apparently extorted by force , and almost confessed to be mee●●imulation ; yet the english in spight of their understandings and senses must accept of it . the scots say , their young king is truly humbled for his fathers tyranny , and his mothers idolatry , the young king abhors ther hypocrisie therein ▪ and for divers days together puts all his hopes in this world upon eminent hazard , rather then he will subscribe their dictates , yet the english must neither question his , nor their sincerity . thirdly ▪ all these rigo●s , and impositions of the scots our backs must bow● , and crouch under for the covenants sake , and that we may prove true to the most high god , to whom we have lifted up our trembling hands . though we have discovered the covenant to be a f●la●●ous , lubricous , ambiguous contract ( as others besides the contractors themselves now wrack it ) so that in the scotch sense it makes us enemies to them , in our sense it makes the scots enemies to us , in a third sense it serves the papists against us both : and though we are throughly informed , that the young king is not onely licensed but enjoyned to take it by all his popish patrons and allies , and to make use of it as a s●are to both nations : yet we must take no exception against it . hamilton , in 1648. expounded the covenant in behalfe of the king , and kirk to the raising of a war against us ; yet the same powers in scotland that condemned that war in him , raise the same against us now upon the same exposition . all the difference is this ; hamilton fought for a king that had not taken the covenant , because he was never so far necessitated , whereas the present powers in scotl : ●ight for a king t●at has covenanted against his will , choosing rather to perjure then ●o perish : but let us aske the scots seriously , whether is the greater enemy of the covenant before god , he that refuses to take it because it is against his conscience , or he that takes it against his conscience , because he dares not refuse it ? well , gods judgements herein is by us both implord , & we cannot doubt but god in his due time will judge , & make his judgement undeniable . fourthly ▪ though we indeed are not enemies to the covenant , but can justly plead for our selves , that we are zealous for a true reformation , even whilst we dislike the scotch patterne , and that we are well-wishers to monarchy elsewhere , even whilst we make choise of democracy in england upon diverse urgent emergent considerations : yet all our pleas are rejected ▪ the very last plea of armes , from which no necessitated men besides are barred , is in us most imperiously condemned as well after open tryall , as before . nay when wee know our selves condemned by the scots as enemies to the covenant , and that the yong king ( to be brought in by force over us ) is particularly sworne against us , in that he is generally sworne against all enemies of the covenant , we must take it as a sufficient answer to all our complaints ▪ that the king has no power to annoy any , but enemies to the covenant . this is to heape scornes upon the rest of our endurances ; for this all one , as if they should insolently tell us , that no man can hold any thing but by the covenant , and the covenant can have neither enemies nor friends , but such only as they declare to be such . to pursue these scornes also and improve them the higher against us , they make their young king in his declaration at dunferlin , revoke all his commissions granted against us by sea , and land , to any of his instruments that adhere not to the covenant . do not we know , that such a revocation is meerly ●udic●ous , and jocular ? could the scots imagine that either rupert at sea , or the irish papists by land would obey such a revocation so signed at dunferlin ? and if ante-covenanters should lay down their commissions , would it be more ease for us to be spoiled and destroyed by the hands of false covenanters , then by the hands of ante-covenanters ? may not this king do what hamilton did ? may he not prevaile over a faction of covenanters , and by them assaile us , as hamilton did ? and if not so ▪ may he not be impowred ; nay is he not already bound by all the covenanters in scotland , nemine con●radicente , to treat us as enemies ? will not god in earnest look down upon the makers of such jests ? fifthly . as we must prostrate our selves to a king , to such a king exercised many years in bloudy feats against us before his pretensions to the crowne , obtruded upon us by such faedifragrous neighbours ; and further hardned against us by such religious incentives : so we must also stoope and kneel to him upon the most servile , odious conditions that can be . for first , wee must come to a new change of government for his sake . by the present , setled forme ; government is now devolved , and as it were naturally resolved into the hands of the people : and as monarchy cost us a vast effusion of bloud , before it necessitated its own ejection , so it is likely to cost as much now , before it can be reestablisht . lyons , and elephants doe not teeme , and propagate so often , and easily as mice , and ferrets doe : nor can wee expect , that such great alterations in great states as these are should be compast without much sore travaile , and long continude throwes . the scots doe know well enough , that our sectarian party in england , which they charge of usurpation , ha's a great army in scotland , ready to cope with all their levies , another as great in ireland , a militia not unequall to both in england , besides a puissant armado at sea : and can they imagin that the suppressing of this sectarian party , and re-investing of monarchy is likely to prove an unbloudy busines ? secondly , as wee must be forced from the government that now is , so we must be forced into a new module of government , that never was before in england knowne , or heard of . the supreme power of england must now suffer a partition , and have its residence in two severall councells ; the one ecclesiasticall , the other civil , and so whilest in imitation of scotland , it transforms it self into an amphisbaena , and submits to the motions of two heads , it can hardly avoid dangerous disputes , and dissentions . in cases of the kirk , the king must hearken to divines , in matters politick the king must be observant of his parliamen●s : but if there happen a difference in mixt matters , t is left to the peoples discretion to side , and adhere , as they see cause . surely t will be an uncooth innovation in england to see kirkmen sit in an assembly , and publish declarations concerning peace , and warrs , as they do now in scotland ; and whether such an innovation may be conducing to a good accord , and understanding in the state , or no , we leave to conjecture . 3ly , as we must subject our selves to these grand innovations , so they must also be purchased by us with the price of some of our best blood : some few of our principall patriots heads must be payed down in hand for them . it should seem , their idol the covenant requires some sacrifice to make an attonement for the indignities , and prophanations it has lately suffered in england , and so foure or five mens lives are demanded , as a just oblation . but the scots might understand that we are not yet so tame , and that the demand of such an oblation from us , is all one , as the demand of many hecatombes : and therefore perhaps t is not parsimony of blood that makes them so parsimonious in their demands of blood . 4ly , as our pretiousest friends must lye under this discretionary danger , so the most fatall of our enemies must be secured from all danger of our laws : for in the close of all , an act of oblivion is to overwhelme all things ▪ and all men whatsoever , royallists , presbyterians , independents , papists , protestants are to be put into an equall condition . what is this lesse then to spoil us of all advantages , and exempt our enemies from all disadvantages that the event of these late wars have cast upon us both ? especially when the act is to passe as a grace from our masters in scotland , and not of reconcilement from us ? by this state of the cause so formed , and owned by the scots themselves , 't is now apparent , that if the english had yielded stupedly to all the conditions , and laws that are here imposed upon them , they had left nothing remaining to themselves : the whole english nation had been given up to vassalage under a forreign power . those very royalists , and presbyterians which should have survived the independents , and could have severd themselves from the ruin of the parliament : ( as was very difficult to do ) yet should have seen the old government of england overturned , and have served a master , that should have served other masters . the scots neverthelesse in the declaration before mentioned recommend these impositions of their young k : as his gratious condiscentions , and they expect that hereby he offers satisfaction to the just , and necessary desires of his good subjects in england , and ireland . and because they see there are many thousands in england , who have utterly forgotten that ever they were born on this side the twied : they use many arguments of conscience and honour to arm all such against the parliament : and to in amour them with that freedom , and happinesse that this declaration promises under them . so wonderous a thing it is , that any liberty under a parliament of england should be thought worse by englishmen then any servitude under the kirk ▪ and state of scotland ; but here are the true grounds of our expedition into scotland : the justice whereof lookt backward to the incursion of hamilton in 1648. whilst its necessity lookt forward to the treaty at breda , and to the accord that was there made in march last . there is a justice of warre sometimes that derives it self onely from necessity : but in the war that is now waged by our parliament in scotland , we may truly avow , that our arms are just because they were necessary , and we as truly avow , that they became necessary by being so egregiously just : inasmuch as the magistrate often is restrained from dispensing with the subjects right . now it appears by what ha's been here related , that the scots unprovoked powred in upon us 20000. men in a maner most perfidious , and at a time most disadvantagious ; that after satisfaction peaceably sought they rejected us as unworthy of any treaty with them : that at breda they have since conspired with ●●r open enemy against us , making their cause his , and his theirs : and therefore directly contrary to the scots declarations emitted the last summer , we draw this conclusion , that we have received wrongs insufferable , that we have been denied rights indispensible , and that we have been forced into a war unavoydable . for we hope , since no place , nor time secures us from the offensive arms of their young king , and his commissions officers , whose cause they have espoused by taking him into a forced covenant ; no time , nor place ought to secure him from our defensive prosecution . let the scots flatter themselves as they please with fond umbrages , that they observe their covenant whilst they fight against us that are parties to it , and whilst in the young k. they abet p. rupert , and the irish , that are parties ingaged against it ; god is not mocked , he sees throughly the ill temper of that morter , wherewith their ruinous cause is daubed . the same god knows likewise how unwillingly we drew our swords in this quarrel , and how far all aims of ambition , domination , revenge , or spoil were distant from these our undertakings . the same words which were once used by our army after the great defeat given to hamilton in england , the same do we still resume after as great a successe neer dunbar in scotland . we believe god ha's permitted his enemies at several times to tyrannize over his people , that we might see a necessity of union amongst them . we likewise hope and pray that his glorious dispensations of successe against our common enemies may be the foundation of union amongst gods people in love and amity . to this end ( god assisting , before whom we make this profession ) to the utmost of our power , we shall endeavour to perform , what is behinde on our parts : and when we shall through wilfulnesse fail herein , let this hypocritical profession rise up in judgement against us , before him who is and ha's ever appeared the severe avenger of hypocrisie . this we direct now to all the mislead , yet well meaning people of scotland as cordially after a second signal victory , as we did then after the first . reader , i here often mention the scots , and seem to intend the whole nation ; but i pray thee make no such interpretations : for i doubt not but there are many good people there , that either know not their magistrates hypocrisie , or bewail it in secret . i my self know many excellent men of that nation , and these to me are as dear as if they were english . sit tros , sit tyrius , nullo discrimine habebo . of the ingagement . there was lately printed a sheet of considerations against our common ingagement of allegiance , to this common-wealth : the author seems to be a presbyterian of the scoch faction , by some thought able and learned : his arguments are very brief , and i will answer him , as briefly as may be : the arguments by which our ingagement is impugned , and as it were on every hand beleaguerd are eleven , as i take it . the first is against the ingagements inconsistency with former obligations . 2. its partiality towards malignants . 3. its obscurity , and ambiguity . 4. its illegall penalties . 5. its inefficacie . 6. its want of charity . 7. its rigor to harmless , conscientious men . 8. its enmity to reconciliation . 9. its diffidence in god . 10. its excesse , and extremity in punishing . 11. its opposition to christian liberty . the raising of this seige , i hope will not prove very difficult . considerator . this ingagement , to some that have already taken six or seven oaths , may possibly seem contrary to some of those former obligations : and such ingagers must now suffer , or sin against their doubting consciences . answ : 1. no state can enact , or ordain any thing , but the same may be lyable to some mens doubts ; ( in christian religion it self all mens scruples are not prevented ) those acts , and orders therfore which are not lyable to just doubts , are sufficient , and ought to binde . now the ingagement , which in truth is not repugnant to any of our former oaths , or obligations , is lyable to no just doubts . for our former oaths , and ingagements , if we rightly understand them , did not so intentionally oblige us to the form of government , as to government it self ; nor to this or that changable medium of governing , as to the fixt , perpetuall end of government . forms , and means are sometimes very expedient , and so long they are necessarily to be observed : but the question is how far they ought to be observed , when they clash , and by some emergent alteration in the state are put out of tune , and so jar , as it were , with substances , and ends : and all wise men know : subordinata non pugnant : the matter of lesse moment gives way to the greater . the law of the sabbath was strict in all its rites , and requir'd an exact obedience in all its duties which were suitable to its end : but when mans being which was the end of the sabbath came in question , all its subordinate offices , and solemnities submitted . the jews thought man must rather perish , then the sabbath be broken by any labour to save him : and if man had been created for the celebration of that day , they had judged rightly : but since that days rest was ordained for man , our saviour gives a contrary judgement . the same reason reaches our case . our allegiance has been formerly ingaged to the state of england governed in such a form : that form is now changed ▪ and now our allegiance to the state cannot be continued in the old form , without danger to the substance , without ruine to the end , for which allegiance was so ingaged . in this case , if we grant , that the form of government is but a mean , and that it was ordained for the convenience of government , not government for the forms : we have nothing to do , but to conclude with our saviour , that necessity makes the change lawfull , and the violation of the form no violation : forasmuch as there is no repugnance in subordinate things . dunkirk was yesterday under the spaniard , t is to day under the french : the loyalty which the dunkirkers payed yesterday to the spaniard is now due to the french : that dunkirker which now keeps his loyaltie to the spaniard breaks it , and may justly suffer for treason : but that dunkirker which departs from his former loyalty , keeps it , and the truth of his loyalty will be justified by the end of all loyalty . consider : known malignants whose consciences are too hard for such scruples , readily take the ingagement , and so get trust and imployment , whilest the tendernes of conscience shuts honest men out . answ : 2. this objection has no more force against the ingagement , then it has against preaching the word , administring the sacraments , and all the best ordinances that ever were past by god , or man : for there was never any duty so holy , nor injunction so equitable but some scrupulous men perplexed , and intangled themselves with fears about it , and some men of ill conversation would rush , and intrude rudely into it . t is impossible for the magistrate either to ease tender consciences , or to discriminate hard hearts in all cases : wherefore let us not require impossible things of our magistrates . consider : this ingagement is so pressed , that scruples arising none is permitted to clear them to himself , nor can the tendrers of it prescribe the sense wherein it is to be taken : so it must be subscribed blindly in the implicit meaning of the imposers . this agre●s not with the nature of a solemn obligation . answ : 3. the ingagement is most injuriously accused of any obscuritie ; no art of man could pen any thing more clearly , or succinctly : nay i am verily perswaded , that the same men that cavil at the ingagement for ambiguity : can scarce produce one law or rule in all the book of god , which might not be made as subject to cavillations as this bond of allegiance . by our subscriptions , we onely binde our selves to be true , and faithfull to the common-wealth of england , as it s now governed without king , or lords . to ask , what the common-wealth of england is , is ridiculous ; t is the same now under this form of regiment , as it was before under monarchy . to ask , how it can be governed without king or lords , is more ridiculous , our senses discover to us , that we have a government ; that we have a government without king or lords : and if we please we may further inform our selves , that there have been other such governments in all ages , amongst all nations . to ask how we may be true , and faithfull to this government , is most ridiculous of all : for truth , and fidelity in england , is the same as gods law commands every where . no law of gods is more perspicuous , then that which enjoyns obedience , and subjection to powers and magistrates ; and yet the same law of god which injoyns obedience , and subjection , intends true obedience , and faithfull subjection : they cannot be divided : false obedience is no obedience , unfaithfull subjection is no subjection . therefore let our considerator cavil at god , and his word , to which our ingagement refers him , let him not cavill at those which refer him . consider . the subjects liberty is saved to him by divers laws , and oaths : yet the not subscribing of this ingagement hercaves any man now of the benefit of law , the greatest of all liberties , and rights . answ . 4. liberty is the due birth-right , of every englishman : but liberty has its bounds , and rules ; and the liberty of every member must be subordinate to the liberty of the whole body . by the laws of liberty every man is to injoy , that which is his own : but since one man has far greater , and better things to injoy , then another , the liberties of one may extend further , then the liberties of another . likewise , when our liberties are equall extensive , one man may voluntarily renounce , or maliciously forfeit , that which another does not . therfore we must not suppose , that any man in england by the protestation , or covenant , or any law else , has such an estate , or inheritance in his liberty , as is altogether indefeasible , and unreleasible , whatsoever he does , or saies . but in the last place , there is a liberty of the whole state , aswell as of any particular subject : and that liberty of the whole state must supersede the liberty of every particular subject , whensoever both accord not : the lesser , to avoid repugnance , must alwaies give place to the greater . the con●iderator is very erroneous , when he thinks , the law allowes him any right , or freedome to disturbe the law , or to oppose any constitution , upon which publick right , and freedom is founded . consider . these kinde of ties have commonly prooved uneffectuall : nay they have often proved mischievous , like artillery turned against the first planters , and devisers of them . witnesse the bishops canonicall oath : witnesse the late covenant , &c. answ : 5. religious ties , and pacts are not unlawfull in themselves , but we hold the use of them unlawfull when they are inforced without sincerity , without necessity , and without due authority . as for the bishops canonicall oaths ; we are not satisfied that there was a sincere meaning in them , or any cleer law for them : and we are certain there can be no necessity pretended to uphold them : wherefore t is no marvell , if they proved fatall . as for the covenant also , it was rigorously obtruded upon the english by the scots , without any pretext of authority : and as we have found since a want of ingenuity in the obtruders , so we are sensible the pleas of its necessity were mistaken : forasmuch as it has wrought contrary effects , and produced hostility , instead of amity . wherfore if this miscarried also t is no great wonder . neither does the line , that runs betwixt our ingagement , and those obligations prove a true parallell : for those were religious , so is not this : and those were utterly unnecessary , to say no worse of them , so is not this . god has required us to be loyall , and true in our obedience to the higher powers : to obey god in this is necessary : and therfore to promise obedience in this , even when our promise is a necessary part of our obedience : and is moreover a medium so aptly disposed to reach the end of all obedience , the securance of publick peace : we cannot but conclude it necessary . besides , the considerator might take notice , that his objection here is generall against all stipulations , as such : so that by the force of his objection , the very bonds of matrimony ; the military sacraments of souldiers : all the obligations almost betwixt man , and man , by which humane society is preserved , finde themselves struck at , and shaken . there was scarce ever any nation yet so barbarous , as wholly to neglect ties of allegiance ; and amongst all ties of publick allegiance ; there scarce will be any found so modest , brief , cleer , easie as our english ingagement : the obligation is no more then civil , and the extent of it scarce equals the petie homages , and fealties which we pay in leets , and in our courts baron . consider . if we raised trouble , or sedition under the present government , these proceedings against us might be justified : but we are now punisht because we dare not offend god by subscribing . what is our case now was the subscribers ease , when they were formerly over-ballanced in the government by men of another judgment : let them therfore do as they would be done to , for we desire now , what they desired then , that conscience may not be forced . answ : 6. the case of the non-ingagers is not the same now , as ours was formerly : nor are we so uncharitable as to violent mens consciences , or to exact that from others which we would not have exacted from our selves : these charges are void of truth , and ingenuity . necessary oaths , and naturall stipulations properly tending to the preservation of humane society , we never were enemies to : nor ought any good mans conscience check at them : and if the non-ingagers can shew , that we require now in this promise any fidelity or obedience to the state , besides what god himself requires : and the naturall usage of all nations justifies , we will acknowledge our error , and harshnes to them at present . or on the other side , if the considerator will shew , that the oaths which we formerly were scandaliz'd at in the bishops and other oppressors were of such necessity , and so tenderly moderated , as this ingagement is , we will acknowledge our refracto●ines in former times : but if neither of these things can be shewed , the considerator cannot say we deal unequally or partially with other mens consciences , t is want of charity in him , that charges this want of charity on us . consider . the non-ingagers can have no other ends of refusing , and becoming obnoxious to the sharp censure of the act , besides conscience : because they are few , and cannot compasse any alteration : and they further see , it could not be compast without a great effusion of blood , if they were more , and stronger . again : if men offend by disturbance of the government , under which they live : let them receive severe punishment , let them not be punisht before offence given . again , this ingagement involves many conscientious men ▪ fearfull to subscribe , who yet verily believe they must stand , or fall with the present government : and are wholly for them in their judgment . answ : 7. we must by no means grant , that there is truth in these suggestions . for : 1. we know there are diverse , which refuse this ingagement out of meer dis-affection to the present government . 2. there are diverse neutral minded men which do subscribes ▪ his ingagement not without some unwillingnesse , which neverthelesse will the rather be true , and faithfull because they have so ingaged . fear of penalty will be as potent to keep some men from breaking , as it has been to keep others from refusing the ingagement . 3. t is impossible for us to beleeve that pure conscience restrains any man at all from subscribing : it must be peevishnes , of humor , and opinion , it cannot be conscience . our reason is : because there is no third thing betwixt being a friend , and an enemy : betwixt being true , and false : betwixt being obedient , and disobedient . can we possibly admit , that they are wholly for us in their judgments ; that they expect to stand , and fall with us , that they are conscientiously bound up from attempting against us : which think it a sin to promise any truth , or fidelity to us ? either it is a sin to be true , and faithfull to this common-wealth , or it is not . if it be a sin : in the judgment of our non-ingagers ; to be true , and faithfull ; then are our non-ingagers worse then enemies : for enemies themselves may without sin passe pacts of truth , and ●idelity to each other : and if our non-ingagers be worse then enemies , t is treacherous in them to pretend they are lesse . pure conscience cannot permit them to say , they are wholly of our judgement , their safety is involved in ours , they are no way disaffected to the present government : whilest at the same time it suggests to them that they sin if they prove true , and faithfull to us . on the other side , if they allow there is no sin in being true , and faithfull to us : then they must allow withall , that there is no sin in promising truth , and faithfulnesse . nay without doubt , the thing being lawfull , the promise of the thing becomes lawfull , if not necessary when t is required by the magistrate for securance of the publick peace . t is a strange thing to imagine , what now predicament the non-ingagers must finde out for themselves . protest enemies they abhor to be , their judgements , their safeties , their own interests force them to disclaim that name : profest friends neverthelesse they dare not be ; some scruples of conscience deter them from any such obligation . neuters they cannot be , because they are natives , and members of this state , and owe allegiance to government , howsoever they may except against this , or that form of government . forreiners that have no dependence upon us , nor owe allegiance to us , may professe neutrality , and if they be not against us , we repute them as if they were for us : but t is otherwise with the english subjects . ambidexters they will disdain to be : for of such the contrary rule is true : if they be not with us , they be against us : a seeming , simulatory , friend to two contrary parties is a reall , assured enemy to both : our saviours mouth has left it unquestionable , that no man can serve two masters . it will therefore well become our non-ingagers , to be plain dealing with us in this , though they may not be true to us , and let us know under what notion they would be lookt upon . if they be neither friends , nor enemies , nor neuters , nor ambidexters , let them give themselves some fifth name , onely let it be such a name , as may fall under some definition . consider . the covenant , we see , is a great hindrance of reconciliation with scotland , which shews the pernitious consequences of laying obligations upon the people . for to oblige the people , and not interpret , nor limit those obligations , is a way to perpetuate strife , to multiply disputes , and conscientious entanglements . answ : 8. how ill our plain , necessary ingagement , that comes recommended to us by good wholsome precedents from all ages , and nations is compared to the many intricacies , and inconsonancies , of the scoch covenant has been already shewed . the various interpretations of the covenant might perhaps beget , and perpetuate strifes betwixt two emulous nations : but our ingagement is so liquid , facile , and concise a tie of truth , and fidelity from english men to their common mother : that even they which have most tortur'd their brains to raise quaeres , and scruples about it , at last , know not how to stile themselves , nor where to place themselves : nor can they teach us how we should understand their chimeraes or resolve their fond aenigmas . let not that therefore be ado●sed of creating quarrels , which is so hard to be quarrell'd it . consider . it were more for the glory of god , if magistrates would trust god with their government , not thinking themselves the safer by tying man to them , especially by means that have so often failed . oh beware of unbelief . answ : 9. to use honest , well proportioned means allowed , and appointed by god , with a trust that god will blesse the same to us , is rather to honour , then distrust god : and t is not a trusting , but rather a tempting of god , when we sit still , and let slip opportunities upon a vain expectation that god will supply us with extraordinarie , unpromis'd helps . constant experience instructs us , that promises and other sacramentall obligations have been ever honorably , and profitably made use of for religious , and civill purposes : they have been sanctified by god himself both giving , and accepting of them : they have not onely bound man to man , but man to god , and god to man . therefore to argue against such expedients in this case , upon the strength of such propositions as are generall , and as concludent against all humane expedients in all cases whatsoever , must needs savour of a spirit too litigious , and acrimonious . consider : by this ingagement persecution of godly men is grown higher in divers respects then it was in the times of prelaticall power : in regard that non-ingagers are now more in number then non ▪ conformists were formerly : and whereas imprisonment was formerly the penalty of puritans , non-subscribers now are put ●ut of the laws protection as to their estates : if 10000 livre. be owing them , they are at the debtors courtesie , whether he will pay one penny , or not . answ : 10. the common-wealth of england denyes no protection to any , that will promise truth and fidelity in their reciprocall subjection : nor does it deprive any of the benefit of law , that ingage to be friends to the law . wherefore since the common-wealth is in the place of a mother , and every particular man is but in the place of a son : t is not fit the son which first rejects his mother , should complain afterwards that he is rejected by his mother . away with such stupid gross●● partialities : he which out-la●● himself , cannot complain of an out-laws hard condition : and he that joyns not with the people in all necessary expedients to uphold the law , out-laws himself . t is double injustice for a subject undutifully to forfeit the states favour first , and then to expostulate against its dis-favour : as it is double ingratitude in a son to deny filial duty first , and then to cry out against paternall severity after . the subject here is his own persecuter , and the son his own true dis-inheritor : forasmuch as both with-hold that which was due absolutely , and naturally , yet have nothing with-held from them , but what was due conditionally , and secondarily . consider . we deny not that the magistrate may require security for the obedience of men , that give occasion of suspition : but we deny the magistrates power , and rule over mens consciences . for christ has redeem'd us to himself , that we might serve him without fear , and not suffer our selves to be brought in bondage to the wils of men . so calvin : insti : l : 3. c : 19. s : 14. the conclusion is : what a christian may not lawfully act , he may not be lawfully constrained to act by the magistrate : but a christian may not lawfully act against his conscience though erring : therfore he may not lawfully be constrained thereunto . answ : 11. t is confessed there are high prerogatives of liberty ( to use calvins own words ) which christ has purchast with his blood for faithfull consciences , to exempt them from the power of men : and that these prerogatives are lost to such consciences , as yeeld themselves to be snared with bonds of laws , and ordinances at the will of men . but we must understand with all , that no exemption from the bonds of the law moral , or any civil ordinances not crossing the law moral , is here intended , or reckoned amongst christs purchased prerogatives : for christ himself was obedient to the higher powers : and did professe that he came not to destroy , but to fulfill the law . we must therefore restrain calvins meaning to a freedom from leviticall ceremonies , or humane , unnecessary impositions in matters ecclesiasticall : or to commands evidently sinfull . inasmuch as the consciences of faithfull christians cannot be properly said to be snared with any other laws , and ordinances . for that we are to be subject to government , and governors for conscience sake : and that a faithfull , pure conscience is a thing very different from the ignorant fears , or rash presumptions of a mis-guided minde , is very cleer by the scripture . therefore when the considerator argues that a man may neither act , nor be enforced to act against an erring conscience . he seems to me to utter meer non-sense , forasmuch as that opinion which may be false , and erroneous , is so far from being a mans conscience , that t is inconsistent with conscience . shall we call the papists blinde zeal which makes him thirst after protestant blood an erroneous conscience ? and shall the magistrate forbear all force , and restraint towards him , because he onely follows the dictates of an erroneous conscience ? we may aswell call that conscience which leads the ranter into uncleannesse : which urges the arrian to blaspheme christ , and which induces the poore indian to offer humane blood in sacrifice to the divill . no : conscience in st. pauls sense ( whom calvin follows ) is that agent of god in the soul which holds forth to us the lamp of nature ( or rather of god creating us ) improved further with the oyl of grace ( or rather of god redeeming us ) to shew us the uglines of ●in , and the beauty of righteousnes : and as this agent of god never mis-instructs us , so neither are its instances with us ever to be rejected under pretence of any humane ordinances and powers whatsoever contradicting . whatsoever is not of faith is sin : and that cannot be of faith , which is not clearly warranted ●y the word of god : therefore to follow an erroneous perswasion , under the name of conscience , is sinfull , unfaithfull , and unwarranted by the word of god . the considerator pleads his doubts , and scruples , and fears , as the dictates of his conscience against the ingagement : alas conscience , i● i● be unde●iled , pure , and faithfull ( such as calvin out of st. paul intimates ) is above all doubts ▪ fears , and scruples , at least it is far predominant over them . and let the considerator deal ingenuously with himself , and search strictly into the darkest retirements of that , which he cals conscience : and he shall finde , that doubts , fears , and scruples assail him on the one hand , as well as on the other . if the considerat●n be not fully satisfied in this , that he may be true , and faithfull to the present government ; i dare tell him , and that from his own mouth too , he is as ill satisfied in this , that he may disobey the magistrate under whose protection he lives , in denying an assurance of his truth and loyalty , when it is not onely a command , but a command so necessary for securance of the publick peace . can we then imagine , that conscience gods resident in the soul is divided against it self ? or can we imagine , that that trumpet which sounds points of war so contrary is to be obeyed , above all laws , and ordinances ? and revered as gods resident ? the considerator will say : if i have my dissatisfactions both wayes , how shall i extricate my self either way ? how shall i ingage , or not ingage without sin , since neither ingaging , nor refusing is of faith with me ? is it not in this case my safest course to obey that instinct , or prompting of my conscience which is most powerfull , and least opposite to faith ? i answer , god has not left thee without an issue , and a way to escape out of the midst of these perplexities . for all cases are either certain , or dubious ; and in all cases certain god has made every man a judge : and has left in every man that which we call conscience to negotiate in his behalf ; and the judgement which conscience passes herein , is beyond all other laws , and jurisdictions . but i● dubious cases , god has not left every man a judge ; private men against their own opinions are to conform to the sentences of their commissioned magistrates ; and in so doing they violate not their consciences , they rather do that for which they have a sure warrant , such a warrant as faith may rest upon , and conscience be quieted by . by this warrant , the apostles , and their followers did pay due allegiance to the caesars , the worst of men , and most injurious of usurpers : though it was more then probable in those daies , that their titles were gotten , and maintained by force , fraud , and bloody rapine . who knows not , that in that infancy of the church herod had newly usurpt over the jews , that the romans usurpt over him , and were in like manner presently after usurpt over by the caesars : yea that even in the family of the caesars , there were almost continuall usurpations ? but the considerator will still say : can conscience permit me to dispence with oaths formerly taken by submitting now to contrary , inconsistent ingagements ? is not this a thing evidently , and indubitably evill ? and is not conscience a sufficient judge of things so evident , and indubitable ? i answer . 1. where man is hem'd in , with two unavoidable evils , the lesse is to be chosen : and the choise of the lesse , is no sin , but a duty . when man cannot preserve himself , or some other living creature without transgressing a sabbath duty , the transgressing of that duty becomes an office of charity : because the means by its subordination was necessarily to give way to the end . 2ly , to submit to a new obligation which is conducent to the publick good , and to wave a former contrary obligation , when it is become opposite to its first end is no evident , indubitable evil . the law by oath bound the king , and all under him to maintain the ancient rights , usages , and statutes of the land : yet when any change of those rights , usages , and statutes became necessary for the publick good , we are all satisfied that the king and all under him gave way to that change without perjury . so if we have been sworn to maintain monarchy , the form of government being but subordinate to an higher end , when monarchy becomes destructive to that end , the force of our oath ceases : for laws create forms , and laws uphold forms by oaths ; but neither forms , nor oaths binde longer then the laws : and we see , there is a subordination even amongst laws themselves , and by the rules of that subordination , temporary laws are to yeeld to perpetuall laws , conditionall to absolute ; mediate , to finall . when nature permits heavie bodies contrary to the law of heavy bodies to ascend , for the prevention of some greater breach of some law that concerns all the elements , and the peace of the universe : it teaches us , what we are to do in politicks . i leave these things to the considerators own application . the magistrate which is now girt with gods sword , requires an assurance from him of his allegiance for the better preventing of future broils , and disturbances . his private phancie tels him that assurance is due to some other magistrate , which if he may judge of secret reasons of state , and things above him , has more right to the sword : yet in the mean time doubts , whether god has intrusted him with any such judgement , or no : and he sees his example keeps the publick peace the more unsetled , and he forfeits the protection of law to himself , by denying his obedience to the same : i say no more : the considerator here is hedged in with two inevitable evils , let him consider , whether is the greater . errata . page 29. line ●2 . for dishonouring , read dischotomizing . finis . memorialls for the government of the royal-burghs in scotland with some overtures laid before the nobility and gentry of several shyres in this kingdom : as also, a survey of the city of aberdeen with the epigrams of arthur iohnstoun, doctor of medicine, upon some of our chief burghs translated into english by i.b. / by philopoliteious (or,) a lover of the publick well-fare. skene, alexander. 1685 approx. 392 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 145 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2005-12 (eebo-tcp phase 1). 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(eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a60328) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 106993) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1130:21) memorialls for the government of the royal-burghs in scotland with some overtures laid before the nobility and gentry of several shyres in this kingdom : as also, a survey of the city of aberdeen with the epigrams of arthur iohnstoun, doctor of medicine, upon some of our chief burghs translated into english by i.b. / by philopoliteious (or,) a lover of the publick well-fare. skene, alexander. johnstoun, arthur, 1587-1641. barclay, john, 1582-1621. 288 p. printed by john forbes ..., aberdeen : 1685. author's name on t.p., "philopoliteious", in greek characters. attributed to alexander skene by wing and nuc pre-1956 imprints. reproduction of original in the cambridge university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project 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was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng municipal government -scotland. scotland -politics and government -1660-1688. aberdeen (scotland) -history. 2005-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2005-06 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2005-08 olivia bottum sampled and proofread 2005-08 olivia bottum text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-10 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion memorialls for the government of the royall-burghs in scotland . with some overtures laid before the nobility and gentry of the several shyres in this kingdom . as also , a survey of the city of aberdeen , with the epigrams of arthur iohnstoun doctor of medicin , upon some of our chief burghs translated into english by i. b. by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( or , ) a lover of the publick well-fare . aberdeen , printed by john forbes , printer to the city and university , 1685. by the blessing of the vpright the city is exalted : but it is overturned by the mouth of the wicked . prov. 11.11 . when the righteous are in authority the people rejoice , but when the wicked beareth rule the people mourn . prov. 29 2. vvhen themistocles was mocked by his companions that he was ignorant in some of the liberall sciences . he answered , that he could not sing to the harp , nor make use of the psaltrie : but he could make a little village , or a small town a great and famous city . plutarch on the life of themistocles . vnto the right honorable , sir george drummond of milnab , lord provest . thomas robertson , bailie . thomas hamilton , bailie . alexander brand , bailie . david spense , bailie . charles murray of hadden dean of gild , george drummond thesaurer . and to the rest of the honorable councill of the city of edinburgh . right honorable , i being a person who ( without vanity ) may say , that heaven hath blessed with so much of a publick spirit , that i feel in my heart an inclination that would do good unto all men ; but since my ability quadrats not with my desires , ( that being gods peculiar priviledge , whose omnipotencie can onely equall his will , ) i must rest satisfied with the extent of my cordiall good wishes for the wellfare of all : from which principle , ( though i am not in a capacity to act , ) i could not forbear to express somethings in these memorialls , whereby i humbly conceive , the good and wellfare of the burrows of this kingdom may in some measure be advanced , if acceptably improven . it would be from a defect of charity , if any apprehend i have wrot these out of conceit of my own abilitie , for i am not so fond of any talent i have acquyred , that if my earnestness to cast in my mite into the treasurie for the publick good , had not overballanced the mean thoughts i have of any thing i can do of this nature , i should never have dared to present you with them . but now here they be , and such as they are i presume to lay before you , who are the representatives of the chiefest city of this nation . it is your discretion , your zeall for the publick-good , your christian wisdom and behaviour , your righteousness and piety , that influences not only the rest of the burrows , but also most of the subjects of this kingdom . i am not ignorant how much i expose my self to the critick censures of many , in permitting the publishing of this tractat , considering the politness and learning of this age , and my own imperfections in undertaking such a task : yet if ye shall be pleased favourably to accept hereof , charitably constructing my zeal , and covering my defects and over-reachings , i need care the less what thoughts others have of me or it . and because it is frequent with many , to measure their esteem of books by the respect or disrespect that is had to the author , i have therefore suppressed my name , that it may neither be undervalued , or possibly by some overvalued upon my account : but that all may be left to consider what is said , then to enquyre who said so . and how ever it be , it shall be the cry of my heart , that ye may acquit your selves in all your places and administrations like men and christians , and that with jehoshaphat ye may prepare your hearts to seek the lord . to whose wisdom , counsell and direction , i commend you all , as becomes right honorable the cordiall well-wisher of the prosperity of your city , and to serve you in the lord , philopoliteius . epistle to the reader . it hath been a great question amongst the ancients , what kind of government was most conduceable to the happiness and wellfare of the life of men some preferring the government of one wise , iust and discreet man for making laws , and commanding obedience to all others , and this is called monarchie simply : others preferring the government of many , who may perhaps disscerne better what is needfull for the publick good then one , according to that saying p●us vident oculi quam oculus . but forbearing to trouble any with the opinions of plato , xenophon , aristotle or cicero , who have severally written books concerning civil society , and wherein they have differed one from another ; they having treated of these governments , to which soveraignity and supream authority belonged . but the subject of this following treatise being onely of ro●all-burghs within this kingdom , i think it the duty of all persons concerned therein to be thankfull to god , that they live under the power and protection of a potent monarch , who governs according to the laws made by him and his royall-ancestors , with consent of the three estates of this kingdom , and preserves all the priviledges of his subjects accordingly ; so that by the foundamentall constitution of government ; we are under the best temper and composure of any nation in the world and if we will be good christians , good subjects , and a vertuous happy people ; we have the advantage of the best laws of any kingdom in europe . as to the particular improvment of that power , which every city in this nation hath within it self to contribute to its own happiness and prosperity , i have taken the freedom to set down these few memorialls for the benefit of all , not out of any conceit of my ability for such an undertaking , ( as i can truely say ) but out of a desire to be usefull according to my mean talent to young-men , who perhaps are not acquainted with such things , though these that have had experience are probably farr beyond me in knowledge and parts . and seeing there are books written for every science , art or employment , from the highest to the lowest , i have fallen upon this essay , if it were but to stir up some of more pregnant parts and acute engine then ever i laid claim to , whereby they might benefit their native-countrey , seeing the government of burghs within this kingdom is a subject that might very well beseem the exactest pen , till which appear , let these concerned admit of this testimony of my respects , who am , a cordiall well-wisher to all the burrows of this kingdom . philopoliteius . to the author of these memorialls . well may thou own to have a publick sp'rit , and philopoliteius nam'd for it ; and for this book , the royal-burrows all may ratifie thy name , and thus thee call : thy wholsome counsells if practised be , our nation happy we shall shortly see . our burrows prosperous by forraign-trade , our countrey to make famous : all made glade to see our kingdoms-glory every way encrease by vertue : and what ever may its praise advance , which surely will not miss , if all our rulers shall account of this . then these memorialls shall esteemed be , and by our cities keept in memorie . a friend to the author . another to the author of these memorialls . here doth a publick spirit breath , tho by a privat pen , both to provock and to incit like minds in powerfull men : more to preferr the publick good , and seek that to advance ; then property or interest or breeding , brought from france . and if ambition laid some men to seek renown and praise , how much more should religion then above this region raise ? true christian vertue doth aspyre ; to eternize their fame before the lord , by doing so as he 'll approve the same . a lover of the publick good , here is this authors name : let all who read this book , make choise of this habituall frame . a lover of the author . the contents or index of the memorialls contained in this treatise . chap. i. anent the diversitie of burghs . viz. burghs of barrony , regality , and burghs-royal . pag. 17 chap ii. anent government in generall and in speciall , and the advantages of the burghs-royall , by the ingredients of the severall sorts of government . pag. 19. chap. iii. of the councill and their duties in generall , and their two chief ends they should aim at . pag. 25. chap. iv anent religion and holiness , wherein it consists not , and wherein it doth consist . pag. 27. chap. v. anent iustice and righteousness , and the branches and effects thereof in a city . pag. 32. chap. vi. anent sobriety and moderation . pag. 34. chap vii . anent bearing down ambition , and joyning in elections of magistrats and councill . pag. 38. chap viii . anent sloath and neglect in rulers , and their publick administrations . pag. 44. chap. ix . anent envy and vain-glory , being both enemies to vertue . pag. 55. chap x. anent love and concord , as the surest foundation of a kingdom , city or common-wealth . pag. 62. chap. xi . anent observation of laws , both nationall and municipall . pag. 70. chap. xii . some select acts of parliament , anent royal-burghs , the conservator , & anent the staple . pag. 74. chap. xiii concerning some means in generall , by which a burgh may flowrish pag 88. chap. xiv . concerning merchandising . pag 94. chap. xv. concerning some general overturs for improvement of trade , mostly relating to the chief rulers of the kingdom . pag. 98. chap. xvi . concerning mechanick-trades . pag. 111 chap. xvii . concerning planting , both for profit and pleasure . pag. 115. chap. xviii . concerning charity , and care of the poor . pag. 120. chap. xix concerning magistrats in generall , and the qualifications requyred in them . pag. 125. chap. xx. concerning the duties & office of the provest pag. 134. chap. xxi concerning the office and duties of the bailies pag. 137. chap. xxii . concerning the office and duty of the dean of gild. pag. 140. chap. xxiii . concerning the office and duty of the towns-thesaurer . pag. 146. chap. xxiv . concerning the office and duty of the town-clerk or recorder . pag. 148. chap. xxv . concerning some duties incumbent upon the magistrats joyntlie . pag. 151. chap. xxvi . concerning iustice of peace courts , to be holden within burgh by the magistrats thereof . pag. 159. chap. xxvii . concerning some considerations laid before the youth , in every city or corporation . pag. 165. chap. xxviii . directed to the inhabitants , and free●men of cities . pag. 176. chap. xxix . some overtures , humbly offered to the nobles and gentry of the severall shires in scotland . pag. 182. memorials for the government of royall-burghs in scotland . chap. i. anent the diversitie of burghs , viz. burghs of barrony , regality , and burghs-royall . in the kingdom of scotland , there are three sorts of burghs , some are burghs of barrony , some are burghs of regality , and some are royal-burghs . burghs of barrony are such as the barrons hath full power to choise their bailies . burghs of regality are such as the lord of the regality hath the full power to choise their bailies ; unless power be given them in their infestments be him to their commonalitie , to choise their own bailies ; whereof there are diverse instances in the kingdom . some are royal-burghs , so called , because they hold immediatly of the king ; and by their first erections , have power to choise their provest , bailies and councill : and have the onely priviledge of forraign-trade and merchandising ; and have their own common-lands holden of the king , their houses and burrow-lands holden in free burgage of the king , can enter an heir to tenements of land within burgh ( brevi manu ) without service or retour , and enter them thereto and give them seasing by hesp and staple : and have many more priviledges conferred on them , ( some of them being sheriffs within themselves , as edinburgh , aberdeen , striviling &c. ) having briefly set down the differences betwixt the three severall sorts of burghs my design relating onely to royal-burghs , i shall set down first the manner of the government thereof . 2 dly shall set down the nature of the town-councill , and the duties incumbent unto them in reference to god , and the wellfare of the city . 3 dly . shall set down the qualifications of an able and fit magistrat , upon whom a chief part of the prosperitie and happiness of a town depends . and then the particular duties , relating to each of the severall magistrats in particular , and next of their duties joyntly together . chap. ii. anent government in generall and in speciall , and the advantages of the burghs-royall , by the ingredients of the severall sorts of government . as to the government of our cities and towns , severall politick writers have concluded , that a well mixed government , made up of all ●states and ranks of persons , is to be preferred , to any of the three sorts of governments that hath been ; or at this day is in use in kingdoms common-wealths or cities as they are simply considered ; as democracie : which is , when the people , or mixed multitude , have the supream power in them , magistrats are chosen by them , laws are made by them , and that which is carried by the greater part , is esteemed to be the judgement of the whole : their great end is liberty to live as they please , and do what they think fit ; and this kind of government degenerats often into confusion , and many gross abuses have been committed by it . secondly , aristocracie , which is , when a few persons have the soveraign power in them , and this often degenerats into faction and division . thirdly , simple monarchie , when one person hath absolutely the whole power in himself to make what laws he will , and do whatsoever he thinks good , and this often degenerats into tyrannie . but as is said , a well mixed government , made up wisely of all estates and ranks of persons , is preferred before any of these . such is the government of this our ancient kingdom , and in some respect , our cities are mostly so constitute ; for since a common-wealth or citie , consists of severall degrees of men of different conditions and imployments , some merchants some considerable heritors that live upon their rents , some tradsmen and handicrafts , the want of which , would make a great defect in a common-wealth , all the members are usefull , and make but one body , that as 1. cor. 12.21 , 22. the eye cannot say to the hand i have no need of thee : nor again , the head to the feet i have no need of you : nay much more these members of the body , which seem to be more feeble are necessary . it cannot then but agree with reason , that every estate and condition of men , should have their own share in the manadgement of these things , according to their proportions and interests in the whole . we have matter to bless god , for the equal and just constitution of government not onely of the whole kingdom ( which of it self is as good as any in the world , ) but also for that well tempered mixture , granted to us by our kings , & left unto us of our worthy ancestours , which is in our cities , and more particular common-wealths , being thus . our town-councills is chosen out of the whole citizens and burgesses of the burgh , the citie-roll being read at every election of councill , that if aristotle were alive , he would not censure us as he did the government and lawes of the gretians , given by minos and radamanthus : for their cosmi or magistrats were not chosen out of all the people , but out of some few of every tribe ; though they did pretend that all their laws were made by jupiters advyce : and for this , the most of the grecian re-publicks did imitate them , particularly lycurgus the lacedemonian , there being a large list drawn up of all amongst us , where is set down every one whom any person of the present council desires or nominats : then they choose the prefixed number , that are appointed to be new counsellours for the ensuing year : next they choose out of their own number , who have been ruling the year preceeding , so many as are by the law appointed to continue , ja. 3. p. 7. c. 57. and lastly , so many of the deacons of the trades , as should compleat the number of the councill , all which being presently called and conveened , they with the old councill , and the whole deacons of the trades , ( besides these tradsmen that are on the old and new councill ) do elect of these that are chosen for counsellours for the year to come , provest , bailies , and all other office-bearers requisite . thus bretheren of gild , and tradsmen , of which our cities consists , have all their equall share in the government of our royal-burrows . when any matter of more then ordinary importance comes to be consulted of , if the councill find it meet , they call the former years council , and joyns both in the consultation and determination and if it be a business of setting on of a tax , or levying of money ; whether for nationall , or particular use , or such like , the consent of the whole is called for in a publick head-court conveened by authority of the magistrats : for the reasons of the said tax , or imposition is holden out to them , so that by this , it may be evident to the judicious , that we have the best ingredients and advantages of all the severall sorts of governments . though some are priviledged to be sheriffs within their jurisdiction , and so have power of life and death in some cases , yet we may look on our selves as more happy in severall respects , under the government of the well constitute monarchie we live in , then if soveraign power were in our own hands , as many free cities and common-wealths have . first , because we are hereby fred from the fear of overthrow , oppression , or subjection to the lust of any proud or ambitious neighbour , that perchance might have more strength then we , being under the fatherly care and protection of such a powerfull monarch . when we look back upon the manyfold dangers , that famous and renowned cities have frequently been assaulted with in elder times , or at present beholds the many staggerings , and violent agitations , that free towns have been surprised with in this our age ; by reason of the power , ambition , and avarice of their insidious neighbours : we may bless god for our peace and security . secondly , if any intestine jarrs may unhappily arise amongst citizens , which may draw parties to factions , and great animosities and seditions ; wherethrough not onely the names , fames , and estates of the inhabitants might be in hazard : but the lives , liberties , and interests of the common-wealth might utterly be destroyed and subverted thereby . we have the supream authority of this kingdom , to prevent all these evils , and to crush them in the bud ; whereby our concord , unity , and at least our peace and security is through gods blessing safer then the great imperiall citie of rome , when lyklie to have teared out her own bowells , by that unnaturall war betwixt sylla and marius , which destroyed the chiefest and best of her senators , and so many thousands of her own citizens . the like apparent fate , being wisely and seasonably prevented , ( when that unhappy difference arose in aberdeen , about the year 1590 , called the common-cause ) by the prudence and authority of king james the sixth , and the interposition of the convention of burrows , who by the kings approbation , did determine the controversie , which before , through slaughter and blood , had drawn to that hight , which if not timely adverted unto , might have brought with it destruction and desolation . whereas , since the government is so regulated , as is above shewed , and established upon surer fundations then formerly ; that through gods blessing thereupon , no such thing hath had any appearance since , not ( we hope through mercy ) shall ever again . next , though it would be pertinent to speak of the magistrats , and their qualifications , yet , i shall refer it till i intend to speak of their duties in particular , where , to hold out immediatly before their qualifications , will be more recent and proper , and therefore shall speak of the council in general . chap. iii. of the council and their duties in general , and their two chief ends they should aim at . a council is a certain assembly , lawfully chosen to give advyce to him , or them , that have the power of administration of affairs within the common-wealth . the romans called the counsellors senators , for their ●ravity and age , and sometimes they were ●●lled fathers , from the care they had of the ●●mmon-wealth , as parents are careful to pro●●de and see for their children , what they stand 〈◊〉 need of , or what their condition may re●●ire , counsellors should do the same for the ●●-publick . they are custodes legum , the keep●●s of the laws , and appeals are made to them ●●●m the magistrats , when any person conceives ●●mself wronged by them , the grecians , and the romans for the most part , composed their councils of old wise and expert persons . it is a great prejudice to a citie , to have persons chosen , more out of a design to strengthen a faction ; then for their worth and abilities especially when an oath is taken by every counsellor at his admission , to be a faithful counsellor , in all , and every thing that concern the common-wealth . in all royal burrows the council acts are th● rules ( for the most part ) by which all th● affairs are ordered , and according to whic● the magistrats should walk in all their adm●nistrations , next to the publick laws of th● nation . wherefore , though the magistra●● were never so well disposed , or qualified ; cannot be but a great discouragement , and a● impediment to them , if the council be not composed of wise , judicious , and able men : mu●● more , if they be wicked , or vicious , alway● opposing good things , discouraging the godl●● and virtuous , and strengthning the hands ●● the wicked . i shall hold out something of the counc●● dutie in common . it 's their dutie , both a●● and every one , to propose to themselves , a●● seriously to mind two great and honorab●● ends , wherein all their consultations and a●● should terminat . viz. the glory of go● 2 dly . the good and prosperity of the cit● ▪ ●●ese two generals comprehend all the par●●●ulars of their duties , and they cannot be se●●rated ; for in honouring of god , much of 〈◊〉 happyness of the citie consists : and in ad●●ncing the happyness and prosperity of the ci●● there will redound glorie and honour to ●od . chap. iv. anent religion and holines , ●●erein it consists not , and wherein it ●●th consist . there is no way , whereby god is more honoured amongst men , then when they live according to the rules of true religion , as is holden forth in the scriptures of truth , and these are plain , spiritual , and universal ; according to ●●at place in titus 2.11 12. for the grace of ●od that bringeth salvation , hath appeared to ● men teaching us that denying all ungodly●●●s and worldly lusts we should live soberly , righ●●●usly , and godly in this present world . this comprehends all true religion , to wit , a turning from all evil , and a doing of all good . there are two things specially requisit in al● that would serve god aright , and worshi● acceptably , one is a serious conversion of the heart from all worldly lusts and ungodly corruptions . 2 dly , a measur of a humble holy spiritua● lively frame upon the heart : without the former , all religious duties are but acts of hypocrisie , according to micah 6.7 . and though they would multiplie their services and duties t● the uttermost bounds of human powers , it wer● to no purpose , if there be not a washing from filthiness , lusts , and unrighteousness ; according to isa. 1. from the 11. to 18. verse . so isa. 66.1 . to 6. verse . without which , any may see , how the lord hates and despises all the services and acts of worship in his people ▪ see this at length in amos 5.21 . &c. i hate and despise your feast dayes , and i will not smel in your solemn assemblies , though ye offer me burnt offerings , and your meat offerings , i will not accept them neither will regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts and so furth . but let judgement run down as waters , and righteousness as a mighty stream &c. i mention this the rather , and these clear scripturs , because it is a common fault amongst many professors , to lay the stress of religion and holiness upon the bare observation of ordinances and outward duties ; though the ●●ide , greed , and vanity of the hearts , and in ● word , the spirit of conformity to the fashions ●f this world , remains and is in the dominion ●ith many of them , contrary to rom. 12.2 . see psal. 51.16 , 17. there are sacrifices ●hich god cares not for , and there are that ●hich he regards : a pure heart , and a brocken ●●ontrite spirit , are the most acceptable sacrifices to ●od . a pure mind is the best service of god ●●e most religious worship of god , is to ●●llow and imitate him , and the way to honour ●od is not to be evil , sayes senec. lauct . merc. trism . yet i would not in this be so understood , as ●● i were crying down all outward duties , seeing ● is their abuse my testimony is onely against . ●nd therefore , my 2 d. requisit i speak of , was ●hat they ought to be performed with a measure ●f a humble , holy , spiritual , and lively ●rame of heart ; without which , duties are ●ut dead , and will be as abominable in the ●●ght of the lord , as if they under the law , ●ad brought a dead carcase of a beast , to offer ●p in sacrifice before the lord . but not to insist further in this , i shall set ●own a testimony or two , of a judicious and ●earned man , concerning true religion . peter ●harron in his second book of wisdom , cap. 5. ●oncerning religion , sayeth thus . that of so many diverse religions , and manners of serving god , which are in the world or may be , they seem to be the most noble , and to ha●● greatest appearance of truth , which without gre●● corporal , and external service , draw the soul in it self , and raise it by pure contemplation to a●mire and adore the great and infinite majestie ● the first cause of all things , and the essence of essence without any great declaration or determination the●●of ; or prescription of his service , but acknowledgi●● it indefinitely to be goodness , perfection , and infi●●ness wholly incomprehensible , and not to be know● . again , ( sayeth he ) religion consisteth in t●● knowledge of god , and of our selves , ( for it a relative action betwixt both , ) the office thereo● is to extol god to the uttermost of our power , a●● to beat down man as low as may be , as if he w● utterly lost ; and afterwards , to furnish himself wi●● means to rise again , to make him feel his misery and his nothingness , to the end he may put his wh●● confidence in god alone . again , ( sayeth he● the office of religion , is to joyn us to the author a●● principal cause of all good , and to reunite man , a●● fasten him to his first cause , and to his root ; where●● so long as he continueth firm and setled he prefer●eth himself in his own perfection ; and contrarywis● when he is separated , he instantly fainteth a●● languisheth . next , as to religion , all in authority a●● to evidence their zeal for the lord , i● bearing down all open scandalous vices , a●● drunkenness , whoredome , cursing and swearing , ●hest , oppression , blood-shed , cheating , and all ●njuries that are not consistent with the good ● civil societies : and on this account he is the ●inister of god , and is not to bear the sword ● vain . rom. 13.1 , 2 3 &c. next , he is to honour true religion in his ●wn personal walk , in all his private or publick ●ctings : he is to shew himself exemplary , and ● guard and watch against any scandalous fail●ngs ; for as one sayes , magistratus ubi enim de●nqunt , longè majus exemplo quam culpa peccare vi●ntur , minores namque omnes eorum vestigia se●uuntur , vixque se errare putant , cum ejusdem cri●inis reum aliquem senatorem ostendunt . that ● , when a magistrat doth transgress , they ●em to sin more by their example then fault ; or all their inferiours follow their footsteps and ●arce imagine they erre , when they can hold ●ut a ruler guilty of the same crime . pat. ●inensis instit. reipub. lib. 3. tit. 3. and as he would wish to be honoured of god ●o be an instrument of good in his place he ●ust make conscience to look up to god , ●nd wait upon him for his blessing in all his ●ndertakings . prov. 3.6 . if we acknowledge ●e lord in all our wayes , he will direct our ●aths . and without this waiting on the lord or his blessing , how can any expect to prosper ● their undertakings and consultations . the forecited author , sayes in that same place . ib● nunquam res humanae prospere succedunt , ubi ne●gliguntur divinae . there human matters never succeed well , where divine are neglected . and he adds , tit. 4. let the council be diligently carefull , that what ever is done in the senate , they may have god for their author , whose favour being obtained , by the sacrifices of spiritual prayer nothing can succeed ill , nor fall out wrong in th● common-wealth . when a popish prelat goe● thus far in this matter , professors of truth should much more depend upon god , and acknowledge him , having many promises annexed to the dutie , as ierem 29.12 13. zach. 13.9 . psal. 10.17 . philip. 4.6.7 . prov 15.8 , 29. ioh. 16.23 . thus for the dutie of holiness , which is the● first branch of religion . chap. v. anent iustice and righteousness , and the branches and effects thereof in a city . cities that would honour god aright , would studie in all things to be just and righteous . this righteousness and justice of all the blessings o● civil society is the greatest : for ●t layes the foundation of civil societie , and without it there could be no civil societie , or corporation whatsoever : yea , without it , all ●he duties of holyness and religion will prove ●o be but formality and hypocrisie : accor●ing to amos 5.21 , 22. the propertie of this divine vertue , is to do wrong to none , and ●s the civilists desyne justice , it is to render ●o every one their due . to those that have ●eserved well , thanks , praise and reward ; ●nd to offenders , rebuke and punishment . it is verie notable duty , and a branch of this vertue , to keep promises , pactions , ●nd covenants ; and all such engagemen●s ; ●nd that not onely with citizens or strangers with whom we have to do , but also with our enemies . there can be no baser imputation ●pon these who have the charge of the common-wealth , then to break promises and engagements , which reproach can never be ob●iterated by any progress of time , as we read of the carthaginians , whom ennius called covenant breakers , which was the chief cause of the overthrow of that famous citie , which had so long contended with rome for the empire of the world. cicero calls this fidelity , a constancie of words and counsells , that all ●e done which are promised . let these therefore , who have charge of a city embrace righteousness , from which , neither fear nor favour , hope nor prom●ses , nor any other allurement ought to di●ve●t them . let this righteousness appear in all concernments , both publick and private weights and measures , in guarding against oppression of any , doing wrong to none encouraging and defending the just and vertuous , and punishing the unjust and vicious . from this vertue , ( when carefully made conscience of , ) their will spring forth many more , which will contribute much for the good of an corporation . as innocencie , freindshipe , concord , kindly love , thankfullness , courteousness , gentleness , all which are ornaments of the best citizens . the righteous lord loveth righteousness psal. 11.7 . and blessings are upon the hea● of the just . prov. 10 6. the righteousness of the perfect shall direct his way : the righteousness o● the upright shall deliver them : and to him that soweth righteousness , shall be a sure reward prov. 11.5.6.18 . chap. vi. anent sobriety and moderation . the third thing that most immediatly relates to the honour of god , is a christian sobriety and moderation , whereby all pride inordinate passion or hastiness , excess of meeat drink and vanity of apparell will be evited . pride and self-conceit hath occasioned manie evils both in church and state : but i shall say as the apostle said , rom. 12 3. for i say through the grace given to me , to every man that is amongst you , not to think of himself more highly nor he ought to think , but to think soberly , according as god hath dealt to every man the measure of faith . this vertue will not permit any rash course to be taken , but will make men carry themselves moderatly ; both in prosperity and adversity . this will not let rulers imperiously command , as through passion or hastiness to abuse the citizens , and to encroach upon their just liberties and priviledges ; but wisely and moderatly perswade and exhort where that can take effect , and to do nothing by force ; because power is in their hands , which is very unsuteable , yea most detestable in a free city , and amongst a free people , unless inevitable necessity require it . this will not permit a magistrate to be elated or lifted up in his mind , but will suppress that vanity and ostentation that many are subject to . valerius publicola was most imitable in this : that when the people of rome had expelled their kings , and they with the senate had conferred the supream authority upon him ; yet he used it most soberly and modestly , and of his own accord , assumed spurius lucretius for his collegue , and because he was a man of a greater age , caused transferr the rods or magistraticall ensignes on him . by the exercise of this vertue , all excess in meat and drink will be eschewed , and all vanity or prodigality in apparell evited and curbed ; and here i cannot but mention the commendable laws made by zaleucus to the locrenses , to this purpose . amongst many good laws for that common-wealth to bear down the pride of women , he appointed that no woman whatsoever should wear gold , or any precious or costly garments ; unless they did publickly profess themselves whores : nor that men should wear gold-rings , or milesian-garments , unless they should be looked upon as whore-masters or adulterers : whereby diodorus sayes , through fear of reproach and shame , he did most wisely curb all excess and superfluitie , which are amongst the vices that wrong a citie or common-wealth . if there were more of this vertue in cities , there would not be such unlimited deboarding in rich and costly apparell ; that there is nothing the most noble in the land can wear , but citizens wives and daughters , yea sometimes of the meaner quality must have it , if they can reach it . it were very suteable to the wisdom of a grave senate ; by penall laws , to restrain these excesses which neither gods law , nor conscience can bear down . it s sad to see , when diverse acts of parliament have been made to restrain this excess , and yet , that magistrats and councils should let them perish , through their slackness and want of zeal to the publick good. the best fruits of this prodigalitie in a citie , is to uphold and increase pride , emulation , lust , and to diminish particular mens estates ; which should relieve and uphold the common-wealth under incident burdens . it were more praise worthie , if the expense made upon costly apparel , ( beyond what might serve a comely and due decency ) were bestowed upon gardens and orchyards , in and about each town , which would be more usefull for the health , life and pleasure of mankind ; and would be comely ornaments to a citie , and yeeld in time good profit . i would have all christian women minding that command , 1. pet. 3.3 , 4 , 5. whose adorning , let it not be that outward adorning , of plaiting the hair , or wearing of gold , or putting on of apparell : but let it be the hidden man of the heart , which is not corruptible even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit , which is in the sight of god of great price . for after this manner of old time , the holy women also who trusted in god adorned themselves , being in subjection to their own husbands . in this was the bravery of holy women in old times , who desired to be in more esteem with god then with men . and thus i have spoken a little to these three particulars , whereby men may most grorify god , and which more immediatly tendeth thereunto . chap. vii . anent bearing down ambition , and joyning in elections of magistrats and councill . having in the third chapter , proposed what were the two great and honorable ends which the councill should aim at , to wit , gods glory , and the cities wellfare and prosper●ty ; and having spoke at some length concerning these duties vvhich relate most immediatly to the glory of god , in recomending holiness , righteousness and sobriety : i come novv to ●peak of these duties vvhich more ●mmediat●y concern the good and prosperity of the ci●y , and first i shall speak of some evils which ●re very proper for a councill to conside● ; the prevention or reformation vvhereof may tend ●o the good of the vvhole body , as the abuse hath often times hazarded the prosperity of a common-wealth . one is , that it is a very concerning business for a senate to consider and use all means that may crush ambition , brybing or unlavvfull suteing for places of magistracy , vvhich is called by the latins , crimen ambitus ; and in some cities thir fourty years bygone being termed joyning by this factions are made , heart-burnings kindled , discords multiplyed , malice and wrath fostered , pride nourished , and the best and worthiest depressed , vvhen the emptiest and vvorthless are advanced , the good of the publick neglected , yea many times overturned , if not destroyed : as may be seen in the example of sylla and marius , pompey and cesar , through vvhose ambition and inordinate desire , to have all the government in their persons , rome lost a greater number of citizens , then she did by the propagation of her empyre over the vvorld , and though vve vvho live under monarchical government , are not in such hazard to ruine our selves , that parties and factions dare come to that hight , as these cities that had soveraign povver , and none above them to overavv them ; yet sure i am , great are the prejudices and decayes these ambitious and factious persons bring upon a city , for vvhatever one person speaks or does , vvhether it be according to reason or not , the other does alvvayes oppose it . it is reported of themistocles betvvixt vvhom and aristides there vvas a great emulation and hatred , they tvvo being the most famous and worthy persons in athens ; yet alvvayes opposed each other , so that the senate at a time rysing vvithout any thing concluded by reason of their janglings , themistocles cryed out , unless ye throw him and me into the dungeon , the athenian common-wealth can never prosper nor be safe . in a vvord , by this many vvorks of the devil are caried on , and the spirit of god greatly grieved and provocked . all these sad effects vvould be carefully cured by removing the cause , vvhich is this joyning . i think it vvill be belovv the spirit of an ingenious man , to abase himself to these reproachfull vvayes , that many ambitious persons falls upon for putting themselves into offices of magistracie in towns , and for strengthning their factions vvhereby they may rule as they list , and bear dovvn their competitors . ● knovv not vvith vvhat faith they can ex●ect direction from god , or strength from ●im under difficulties , or success in their un●ertakings or consultations for the common-wealth , seeing they did not vvait for his call ; but did run unsent , vvhereas one that never had a hand in his ovvn election , but onely by the esteem and good opinion that the e●ectors had of him , is called to place or office of trust ; he may look on it in some measure as a call from god , and confidently seek wisdom , direction and success from him in all his undertakings , and may expect strength and furnitur for cutbearing of him at all occasions accordingly . now this ambition and joyning work is for the most part carried on with the inferiour sort of people , that have hand in elections as some deacons of trades . i desire not that i should be so understood , as meaning by all deacons of trades in generall , for i doubt not but many amongst them are discreet , vertuous and sober men , that will not comply with any design prejudiciall to the publick wellfare of their respective towns : for these who are greatest sticklers for strengthning of factions and promoting of themselves , finds themselves concerned to invite these to taverns , and keep meetings at drinkings and collations at unseasonable houres , whereby to work upon the minds of these men , to gain their votes and secure their designs , without considering that by such means any naughty person may be gotten easily preferred to the most deserving , that cannot comply with these wayes or the humors of such men . even as it fell out with pub. scipio nasica , ( to whom the senate of rome for his many notable services to the common-wealth , had given the title of a brave and most excellent man , ) when he was upon the list to be aedilis , or master of the publick works or houses , taking an labouring man by the hand , which he found very hard , ( as hardy craftsmen uses to be ) asked in jeast , whether he walked on his hands or feet ? which the tradsman taking so ill , many being round about him , it went presently through all , and was the cause of an repulse to that excellent man , because they thought he mocked them . yea , was not paulus aemilius often repulsed , because he would not joyn : and was not that brave fabius maximus repulsed , and terentius varro preferred to be consul by the votes of the vulgar , ( though he was none of the patricii or nobility , but come of the plebeian sort , ) and had thereby almost ruined and lost the whole estate of rome , and the city it self , after the famous battell of cannae , lost by his temerity and folly . wherefore it were a work worthy not onely of the councils of particular burghs , but of the grave and judicious meeting of the convention of the whole burrows , to take away so far as can be , this bitter root which hath troubled the burghs of these kingdoms so long with so many sad fruits . the romans made laws against it , other cities to cure it , did choose their senators and councils by lot , as florence and sienna , which often proves dangerous . the venetians mix lots and elections together unto this day , of purpose to bear down ambition , whereby great concord is preserved , and their state hath flowrished wonderfully , having stood above eleven hundred years . and if the zeal of these wise and potent cities for the preservation of their civil liberties be such , in the care they take in their elections , though these things amongst us be of so far less importance , even beyond all comparison ; yet christians in their sphere though never so low , ought to be no less carefull to bear down sin , and to be tender of the honour of god , which suffers not a little often times by these things . wherefore , i must recommend it to be thought upon in an effectual way , being confident , the king , parliament and council , will be ever ready to ratify what may be in this for the honour of god , and the good of such a part of the body of the kingdom . chap. viii . anent sloath and neglect in rulers , and their publick administrations . the next evil a carefull senate and faithfull rulers should beware of , both in themselves and others , of whom they have the charge , as they would wish matters go well , is neglect and sloth . it s too common a fault amongst many in publick trust , they look more to the dignity then duty of their charge ; but a person whom god hath called will make conscience of their imployment , and mind their business , and study a faithfull discharge of their duty . 2. chron. 19.3 . it s said , that king jehosophat prepared his heart to seek god , which is as much as to say , he seriously bethought himself , how he might most advance the honour of god , in that high station the lord had placed him in , and we have excellent fruits of that seriousness , mentioned 2. chron. 17.6 , 7 , 8. and 2. chron. 19.4 . and to the end of that chapter . 2. where this sloth and neglect hath place , there is no good minded nor acted , even although men be of great and pregnant parts , otherwise , whereas carefull and diligent persons , though they may be far short of that quickness and abilities which others have , yet may do more good , and to better purpose prosecute their business , then they from whom more might be expected . it s reported that the famous and most eloquent orator demosthenes , had no great promptness or naturall parts , but onely by pains and industrie , became to outstirpt all in greece ; yet when provocked , he would speak nothing immediatly , till he had premediated in his nocturnall lucubrations what he was to say : which occasioned pythius an athenian orator to say , that demosthenes orations did smell of a lamp . also , when expediency would require , that he should speak for himself ex tempore , demades behooved to plead for him , who was very prompt , and did excell all others in an extemporanean discourse , being by nature and ingyne far above all others in athens , tho by pains and industrie demosthenes did far outstrip them all . it falls often out , that painfull and diligent men will do far more , then many that are of much greater naturall parts ; for care and diligence will supply what is wanting in nature and engine : on the contrare , these o● sharpest wits , trusting to the strength of their parts ; oftentimes are slothfull and lazie while they remain too confident in their gifts of nature . 3. my meaning is not here to condemn seasonable and suteable divertisment , for i know the nature of man is such , that his spirit cannot alwayes keep upon bend , except it debilitate and loss its vigor and activity ; for nature it self craves refreshment by sleep in the night , after the travell in the day ; so the earth ceaseth to bring forth her herbs and fruits at all seasons , but being spared be the cold nipping frosts of winter , returns with new strength to shut forth her tender buds in the spring . it s reported in ecclesiastical history , that when some persons came to see john the apostle , through the fame they heard of his holiness and gravity , they found him feeding a bird , who perceiving they wondred some what at him , as being disappointed of their expectation , takes the bows which were in their hands , and asks them why they did not alwayes keep them bended ? they answered it would weaken them much , and render them more unfit for service when they should have use for them : even so said the apostle , must i take some divertisment , else my spirits should fail . 4. augustus caesar having changed capreae for the island of inarime with the neapolitans , that he might retire thither for his health , did build there a glorious palace , which he made use of for honest recreations when wearied with business . recreations are not onely lawfull but expedient , yea sometimes necessary , but when men are too much in them , and at unseasonable times , they are sinfull and very unbeseeming any , but especially publick persons ; for then not onely is time lost , but oft times needfull and weighty business neglected , justice delayed , the poor and oppressed not relieved . even as tiberius abused that island exceedingly , which augustus did use soberly , for he went thither to befool himself thorow sordid neglect and sloth , and when he was to depart from rome , set out an edict that none should call for him , and sent some of his train before , that all who in his journey thither were like to meet him , might be put out of the way and no person to come to him ; that being entered this isle , he might lay all care of the empyre aside : whereby he permitted armenia to be taken by the parthians , mysia by the dacianes and sarmatianes , and france by the germans , with great disgrace and hazard of the whole empire . he in the mean time taking liberty through the secrecy of the place , which was guarded on every side with high rocks , and no entry thereto but a narrow shoar , did abundantly and freely discover the ill dissembled vices of his mind : and with pomponius flaccus , l. piso spent both dayes and nights in feast●ng and drinking . to the one he gave the province of syria ; to the other , the government of the city of rome , calling these his most joviall friends and companions for all seasons . his greatest delight of that isle was , that there he could execute his cruelty more easily , ( wherein he took singular pleasure ) for whom ever he did hate , after most exquisite and long torments , he caused throw them into the sea. it s sad when the lawfull recreations of some , are turned into such excess by others , that they become their shameful snares and sins . 5. demetrius king of macedon , in the beginning of his reign , was exceedingly given to sluggishness , and delighted onely in solitary idleness , that it was very hard and difficult to get access to him , which was the more recented by his subjects , that king philip had been so accessible , that any might have got audience from him at all times . it fell out that an old woman finding the king not busie , requested him to hear her graciously : the king replyed somewhat passionatly , that he had not leasure to hear her , but she fastning her eyes cryed out , that he should not be a king if he irked to hear : demetrius considering and becoming more mild , gave her audience at great length , and did her business and sent her away with very affable words ; and after he had pondered the words of the old woman , he changed his way and became very accessible and gracious to all that made address to him , so that a great part of the day he spent in hearing and giving answers ; not without great profit and delight . 6. by all this , i would desire a due diligence in all affairs , with that seriousness that becomes , not excluding seasonable and moderate divertisment , which will rather whet then blunt the rational faculties for their proper exercises . and that neither magistrat nor council may satisfie themselves with the name of their charge , nor with the forme of their appointed dyets and meetings : but labour to consider the particular affairs of the town , and of their respective charges and to consider of every good and laudable motion that concerneth the same , and not think it sufficient to approve the same in words , or with a verbal consent ; but so to entertain it , and prosecute all these publick concernments , as not onely to stop the mouth of any that may challenge them of neglect ; but fully to have the answer of a good conscience towards god , before whom they have lifted up their hands to be faithful in their charges and imployments . 7. and here i judge it not unfit to offer it to consideration , that as this is a duty of persons in publick trust to mind their own administrations ; so it were worthy of a judicious senate , that would advert to every thing commendable in a common-wealth , to study all wayes and means to check the idleness and negligence of all within their corporation : especially of the youth , whose spirits being naturally in the greatest heat , and consequently fittest for action , would be carefully keept at vertuous imployments , which by the favour of god may greatly conduce to the good of the city , and preservation thereof in its prosperity ; otherwayes if idleness get liberty , all the activity of their spirits will vent it self in vice , which is not onely their personal ruine , but the decay of the whole body in a short progress of time . 8. homer the famous graecian poet , when he would mock and jeer idlesit and lazines , he brings in the cyclops , or antient gyants who passe their whole time in idleness , and esteems it their chiefest happiness to be doing nothing , he allots lands to them that neither needs ploughing nor sowing , but all fruits grow there naturally of their own accord , by which they are plentifully fed : and least they should be troubled with the meanest thought , he commits all care to the woman . his verses are rendered in latine to this purpose . omnia per sese nullo nascuntur aratro , non fora , non causas agitant non sancta senatus jura , sed in celsis habitantes montibus antra et puer , & magnis de rebus judicat uxor . englished thus . all things grow of themselves without the pleugh , they plead no causes nor in courts do sue , regarding not the senats sacred laws , but in high hills they dwell and dungeon caves : they to their wife and children do commit to judge of weighty things , as they think fit . this kind of idlesit is most hatefull , because it is to be esteemed the greatest enemie to vertue , and opposes every commendable art and calling : and because it abhores the meanest care , therefore it s called by the antients incuria , and by the graecians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is without care . i would have all ( especially of the meanest rank ) to hate idlesit , because it hath three evil companions attending it , reproach , poverty and famine , which are three exceeding feirce destroying beasts . 9. but though i was saying something in the former chapter against unlawfull hunting after places and preferment , i cannot but take occasion from this , to shew such a fair way to satisfie their desires , and for this let them take notice of the word : prov. 22.29 . seest thou a man diligent in his business , he shall stand before kings , he shall not stand before mean men . here a promise of honour and preferment to the carefull and the diligent , and this is a commendable and most lawfull way of seeking preferment , if when a man from a right principle out of conscience of duty , studies a sedulous carefulness and diligence in all he is called to go about . upon the contrare , idleness , sloth and laziness is threatned with difficulty vexation and pain . prov. 15.19 . the way of the slothfull man is an hedge of thorns . so prov. 13.4 . the soul of the sluggard desireth , and hath nothing . prov. 21.35 . the desire of the slothfull killeth him , for his hands refuse to labour . see eccles. 10.18 . prov. 24.30.31 . i wish all persons both in private and publick imployments may seriously mind these threatnings , relating to this common guiltiness of idleness and neglect . 10. but for the incouragement of any who are grieved for their sloth , and aversation from pains , industry and vertue ; i shall give them two or three instances , that may raise their hopes and preserve them from utter despondency , and sinking under this burden : but i must say it were a ground of good hope , if such as have been usless in their generation , either through a naturall sluggishness of spirit , or depraved manners , frequenting loose and dissolute company , that they were so far come to themselves as is said of the prodigal , luke 15.17 . to reflect upon their folly and sloth , and thereby become weighted with it , so as not onely to desire , as prov. 21.17 . but seriously and effectually to resolve , to set a work after duty with all their might : to such i will set before them these instances . 11. we read of manlius torquatus , son to lucius torquatus , ( a most brave and excellent roman , ) that he was of such a blunt and blockish nature , that his father did appoint him to live remotly in the countrey as being unfit for either private or publick business ; yet notwithstanding , a little after being wearied with his sluggish disposition , he so bestirred himself , that he relieved his father ( being found guilty ) from the hazard of the law , and by the war and victory he had over the latins , he obtained a triumph with the great applause and consent of the whole people . what greater corruption could appear , then in fabius maximus in his youth , but when he came to ryper years , there was nothing wanting in him that could be for compleating the gallantest of men ; to whom the surname of allobrogis was given , in honour of the victory obtained over the gaulis or frenches by his particular care and conduct , which surname never wore out of his posterity . neither is that passage concerning famous themistocles to be past over in silence , whose profligat and abominable-life was so despaired of , that his mother did hang her self for grief , yet afterward coming to more years , he attained to such excellency , that the most eloquent cicero stood not to call him the prince of greece , and not unworthily , seeing he gathered the distressed forces of greece , when xerxes with his innumerable navy began to burn athens and other towns , and became the valiant avenger of his countrey , and compelled that king whom the seas seemed not sufficient to bear , to return with trembling into his own countrey in a smal fishing boat . o that such may be the fruits of many that have long stood as barren plants in their generation ! let all that are sensibly touched with a deep impression of their unfruitfulness and usless life , improve by faith and prayer , that refreshing promise , psalm . 92.12 , 13 , 14. the righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree : he shall grow like the cedar in lebanon . those that be planted in the house of the lord , shall flourish in the courts of our god. they shall still bring forth fruit in old age : they shall be fat , and flourishing . now the lord is faithfull , and his truth endureth for ever . psal. 117.2 . chap. ix . anent envy and vain-glory , being both enemies to vertue . in the next place , i would have counsellours and citizens watching against envy , whereby a man grieves at his neighbours good , prosperity and success , and rejoices at his hurt ; or when any cross event befalls him . if the good of the common-wealth were sincerely aimed at , it would be the joy of all the members that the body were well . if any were blest to be an instrument of good to the publick , every ingenious person that hath a publick spirit would rejoice therein , and esteem more of the person , and give all the glory to god the cheif author thereof : and would be far from that venemous disposition , to detract , misconstruct , defame or look with an envyous eye upon such as did deserve better from all . 2. this evil of envy rages most against the best deserving , and therefore the more hatefull . if any one be blessed to be an instrument of good , and because thereof , be commended by some according to demerit , this stirs up envy in others , and occasions detraction and misconstruction of the best deeds or endeavours , contrare to the rule of love , 1. cor. 13.4 5. charity envyeth not , thinketh no evil . 3. envy hath brought ruine to many famous cities and persons . it was the misery of athens , that could never endure to see one citizen become more famous and deserving beyond his fellow citizens , but either he was killed , banished , forefaulted of his estate , or otherwise tempted to put hand in himself . it was envy that was the death of that moral and most strick philosopher socrates , whom , when his wife xantippe ( tho a most perverse woman , and had been a daily tryall to the good man , yet , ) when she saw the executioner reaching the cup of poison , which he was sentenced to drink , cryed out , that he was an innocent man that was now to dye . socrates answered , what ? thinks thou it better i should dye guilty ? what may be said of other famous athenians , whose glorious actions both in peace and war , at home and abroad , did not honour them with the glory of trophies or triumphs , but procured the punishment of an miserable exile . themistocles after he had beatten xerxes in a sea-fight , and had delivered his countrey and all greece from the command and tyrrannie of the barbarians , behooved to yeeld to envy . he is rewarded with ten years banishment , and the best excuse the athenians could put upon it , was that they might bear down his spirit , lest otherwise by power and glory , he might be lifted up and transgress the bounds of that popular equality that was fit : yea , they permited tymocreon a rhodian poet to defame him in verse , and to accuse him of covetousness , unjustice , wickedness and perjury . 5. aristides who by vertue and the glory of his actions was most honourable , and through his zeal to justice , was surnamed just ; was ejected and banished out of his countrey , though he had preserved , enlarged it , and with so great honour made it famous . when he was going out of the town , he lift up his hands to heaven , not with imprecations against his citizens , but prayed to the most high god , that all things hereafter might befall the athenians so happily and successfully , that there might be no more occasion to remember aristides . examples might be multiplied , to show how envy hath depressed many excellent men , and rendered them uncapable to do their countrey or common-wealth service . 6. but because this is the thing that envyous ones most desire , i shall mind them of some scripturall instances , that may deterr them from so base a vice. let such consider , that envy is a disease that torments themselves , more then it can do the person whom they envy ; therefore antisthenes said , that as rust eats iron , so does envy the person that envyeth . solomon sayes , its rottenness of the bones . prov. 14.30 . so david , psal. 112.10 . speaking of the envy of the wicked to the righteous , sayes , they shall gnash with the teeth and melt away . iob. 5.2 . envy slayes the silly one . 7. it was envy that made corah , dathan and abiram provoke the lord , to cause the earth open her mouth and swallow them up . so psal. 106.16 . compared with num. 16.30 , 31. verses . envy was the first rise of the ruine of pharoah and the egyptians , exod. 1.9 . behold the people of the children of israell are more and mightier then we . god who is love it self , and takes pleasure to do good , and also in the wellfare of all his people , cannot endure envy ; wherefore , if we would approve our selves to be of one spirit with him , we would not envy the honor , esteem , riches or any vertue which others do happily procure , but when ever providence should bless any , to be instrumentall of publick good , we take the obligation as our own , thinking our selves bound to recent it as done to our selves . 8. but because naturally the spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy : iames 5.5 . all persons would need to watch against vain-glory and vaunting , as they would wish to be fred from envy , for nothing provokes others more to envy , then the vanity of boasting of their vertues , worth , and of any good they have done . it s good to keep an equality and carry soberly , not permiting our selves to be blown up with any wind of vain conceit or applause from others , nor to hunt after it . many heathens have given eminent examples of moderation in shunning all causes of envy , some have removed themselves from their native countrey of purpose to eschew the envy of their citizens ; others have refused rewards for their most notable services . as pittacus mytelaeneus , who was holden for one of the seven wise men of greece , for when he had fred his countrey from tirrany , and had killed phrynon the athenian generall in a singular combat , when the supream command of the common-wealth was offered to him he refused it , and when his countrey-men offered him great and large lands , he requested that they would not give him what many would envy , and many more covet : wherefore of all these ( sayes he ) i will have no more , but so much as may declare the moderation of my spirit , and be testimony of your good will towards me ; for lesser gifts and rewards are of greater duration , and great things are scarce thought a mans own . i might add many more instances of the like sobriety and moderation in great persons from several histories , & particularly from the famous and ever to be honoured common-wealth of venice , where it may be observed , that there was very little personall ambition , or affection of airie applause , for all they contended was for the good of their native countrey , and wealth and honour thereof ; for they would not admit of sumptuous tombs , nor magnifick statues , nor the warlick ensignes of their glorious victories to be set up as the lasting monuments of their vertuous atchievments : but to give one of the many of such instances , caspar conterenus that noble venetian , in the description of the venetian common-wealth , showes for proof of this , that andreas contarenus duke of venice dying shortly after that most remarkable overthrow he had given the genoaves , prohibited by his latter-will that no ensignes or ducall coat of armes , neither his own propper escotcheon or name should be engraven on his tomb , that no person might know where such a worthy and well deserving person was interred . this and the like , may check the airie and vain spirits that hunt after the vain applause of the world. 9. the apostle gives an excellent direction , ( which all that have a right esteem of gospel rules will walk by , ) philip. 2.3 . let nothing be done through strife , or vain glory , but in lowlyness of mind , let each esteem other better then himself . again , gal. 5.26 . let us not be desirous of vain glory , provocking one another , envying one another . 10. as for avarice which is a most dangerous and destructive evil to a common-wealth , when it gets place in the hearts of rulers , it s so gross a vice in publick persons , and i having never seen , nor known any prejudice done by any in power within the city i live in , to the common treasurie or damnage thereof : i shall not insist on it , god himself having by jethro given it as a speciall qualification of all that should be in authority , that they should be men hating covetousness , exod. 18.21 . thus having touched at some speciall evils very prejudiciall to a city , i shall in the next place , fall to speak somewhat of the particulars , which the town-councill should be carefull to cherish , for promoving the good and wellfare of their corporation . chap. x. anent love and concord , as the surest foundation of a kingdom , city or common-wealth . the foundation of all kingdoms , common-wealths , cityes , societies and families , is love and concord ; for as our lord said , mat. 12.25 . every kingdom divided against it self is brought to desolation , and every city or house divided against it self shall not stand . this may alone suffice to discover the absolute necessity o● concord and sweet harmony in a city and common-wealth , therefore have i chosen to lay i● down in the first place , as the only and sur● foundation of a happy and prosperous city . for what is the origen of a city or civil society but an harmonious concord and agreement to live together for mutuall aid and assistanc● in all common concernments : and when thi● common and necessary principle is forgotten and every one minds mostly his own things , with the utter neglect of the common-good ; it may be said , that people and place are going to ruine . and in no age since the world was , can any instance be given , where such a city or people did prosper ; multitudes of instances may be given where it was the dismall presage of an inevitable destruction , and that of the most famous and magnificent cities in the world. to forbear the many miserable effects , which at first view are obvious to any judicious beholder , where this vertue is wanting , i shall instance but this one evil , which is an inevitable consequent thereof , and it is this ; every motion that can be made for the publick good , though with demonstration of never so much advantage , if it but cross the particular interest of any partie or person , yea , because it proceedeth from such a person or partie , it is forthwith opposed , crushed and utterly husht down by these concerned ; and all their witt , power and moyen laid out for that end : whereas , ●f there be love and harmonious concord amongst ●he inhabitants , all will joyn as one-man , to ●romote every motion that may further the publick good. 2. wherefore , i judge it a chief duty ly●ng upon all in charge , or that have any place ●r authority in a common-wealth to lay them●elves out in the pursuit of so great a benefit : and seeing this is so necessar and conduceable for the good of a corporation , i shall propose these few means that may contribute for the attainment and preservation thereof when attained . 3. in the first place , let there be care taken that all ranks of persons have their due liberties and priviledges preserved , according to the rules and constitutions of the common-wealth ; for incroachments upon these have caused great agitations , yea many alterations in the governments of cities , and sometimes have hazarded the ruine thereof ; from this general i shall instance some particulars . 4. let the people bewar , first of encroaching upon the priviledges of the councill and magistrats , which cannot be done without mutinies and seditious meetings , and the most effectuall way to prevent this . secondly , that the magistrats and councill be very tender of the priviledges and liberties of the people , to do nothing against them by force or oppression . hence it was that the people of rome rose up against the decem-viri , when they perceived them to exercise tirranny and oppression under the covert of authority : therefore , by sedition and slaughter they were thrust out , and a new government erected . so also the thirty praetors of athens ( whom lysander the lacedemonian had set up , after they had with poison and sword destroyed many famous worthie men ) were destroyed and overturned by thrasibulus , which socrates that divine philosopher foretold before he drank that deadly poisonous cup at their decree . therefore , magistrats would rather moderate their power by authority , then bend and strain it up to the hight . thus wisely theopompus did bow the royal authority amongst the lacedemonians to a certain mediocrity , and was the first setter up of the epheri from amongst the common people , ( like the tribuns amongst the romans ) and when he was taxed by his wife , as in scorn : thinks thou not shame ( said she ) that thou leaves thy son with less royal authority and power , then thou got from thy ancestors . he answered wisely , o woman ! i do not leave them less , but a far more strong and lasting authority . magistrats would be milde and sober , as well as severe , as in wisdom and prudence the severall caises may call for . 5. let not 3 dly the bretheren of gild incroach upon the just liberties of the trades , which i think were rather to be enlarged for the encouragement of vertue , then peremptor●ly to be hem'd in : where there can be but small prejudice thereby to the bretheren of gild , and yet great benefit to them . by this the trades might be engaged to consent more freely and cordially to all good overtures , that might advance the publick interest of the town ; therefore , any favour may be allowed them with publick consent , that may not tend to set them up in a stated faction and thereby make a rent in the body , but all things which may evidence the good respects of the town to them , and encourage them in their trades to be vertuous and diligent , ought freely and kindly to be condescended to 4 ly . on the other hand , the trades ought not to envy the priviledges of the brethren of gild , but each should be subservient in their places to another , neither of them seeking to remove the antient land-mark which their fathers have set , prov 22.28 . 6. in the second place , let due care be taken to suppress factions and all factious persons , which hath a direct tendency to discords , hatreds emulations and many such like bad vices ; if this evil were seriously laid to heart , all the means that wisdom and prudence could help men to fall upon , would be imployed and improven to bear down this , of which i have spoke somewhat in the seventh chapter , and therefore shall forbear it now . 7. in the third place , let justice be duely administred to all without respect of persons with out fead or favour ; according to 2. chron. 19.6 , 7 i but name this , & for brevities sake forbear , having mentioned it at more length in the 5. chap. 8. let fourthly , all the inhabitants study a loving , discreet and respectfull cariage to one another , according to their rank in the fear of the lord , and discountenance and bear testimony against all miscariages that may cross love and concord , and let all live in a courteous and peaceable disposition ; and if there be any mistakes , which may readily fall in amongst neighbours , let every one according to their relation and place study to clear it , and reconcile all disagreeing parties , and look upon these that are apt to kindle discords and prejudices amongst citizens , ( under what ever pretence ) to be unworthy to live in civil society . if we be bound to offices of love to enemies , exodus 23 45 , how much more to our neighbours and fellow citizens . this would be very lovely both in the sight of god and man , according to psalm 133.1 . &c throughout . o how good and pleasant it is to see bretheren to dwell together in unity , &c. 9 for begetting and mantaining this desirable blessing of love and concord in a city and common-wealth . fifthly , it would be very conducible to have societies , fellowships and fraternities set up in a town , and they to have frequent meetings for conference about such affaires as are most pertinent to their societies , and for this end , it were good there were commodious publick houses for their respective meetings , with wayes set down and setled for all accommodations convenient , ( whereby meetings in taverns might be evited , where there is oftentimes too much money lavished , and the creatures too much abused , and much time mispent , ) where , with much sobriety and mutuall assistance they might with due moderation argue and debate about improvement of traffick in merchandise , and advancing of trades and arts , and propose overtures , and set down wayes for the same , as need should require , to call for the aid , assistance and authority of the magistrats and councill , and in all these meetings , care should be taken that no motion might be heard , much less entertained , that did tend to division , just irritation or offence to any within the common-wealth ; but let all have one eye to the glory of god , their own good , and the prosperity and advantage of the whole incorporation . bodinus in his third book of his reipublick , and seventh chapter towards the end , shewes severall advantages of these meetings and societies in countries and provinces , and particularly in the province of languedock in france , what great and good things they did , which i shall refer to the reader to peruse , but generally , there is much good to be done to the whole town when they are discreetly and well ordered . by them , all abuses may come to be rectified , and what is defective supplyed ; and in a word , much reformation attained , and advantages improven for the good of every partie and members of the body , and much love , harmony and concord attained and mantained among all the inhabitants . 10. it were good 6 ly . and very expedient , that the inhabitants could come to that degree of freedom and brotherly kindness , as cheerfully to entertain each other at table , ( my meaning is not by feasting , or in any extraordinary way , which might tend rather to a prejudice then increase of love and friendshipe ; but that neighbours might be so free and friendly together as to both give and take a part of any homely fare as occasion did offer . ) cicero called the table , parens & nutrix amicitiae , the parent and nurse of friendship . lycurgus caused the lacedemonians eat all together at publick tables , and upon the common charges . the christians in the primitive times , ( when love was most remarkable ) had their love feasts , and all these were but to nourish and entertain so noble and necessary a grace , as love and sweet concord is . 11. by this blessing of love and concord , how joyntlie all should joyn together in every overture and motion made for the advantage of the publick , and good of the whole body , ( that as prov. 24.26 . every man should kiss the lips of him that gave a good advice , ) though it were with some apparent prejudice to our own particular , if it were for a far greater good to the publick . 12. by this we should make the motto of all the burrowes be most deservedly called bon-accord , and that upon all commendable and praise worthy accounts , that it should be a delight to all to live together , a good example and refreshment to strangers that should see our love , and if we did entertain this peace within our walls , the lord would add that inseparable blessing with it , prosperity should be in our pallaces , psal. 122.7 . and for my part it shall be my prayer , as verse 8. for my brethren and companions sakes , i will now say , peace be within thee , and i will seek thy good . chap. xi . anent observation of laws , both nationall and municipall . there are two sorts of laws that our cities are to observe , one is nationall laws , which are made by the supream authority , for the good of the wholl kingdom , these ought to be carefully observed , and if their be a negle●t of them , we are lyable to the penaltie contained in the lawes ; and in so far as the law is just and praise worthy in it self , and is thro●gh neglect , or ( which is worse ) willfully slighted and transgressed ; it leaves a staine of unjustice and baseness upon the guilty : wherefore , it is not onely the reverence which we ow to authority , but the justice and equity of the lawes that should engage all good men to yeeld obedience to the statutes of the nation . 2. it may be asserted without prejudice to truth , as these that are best acquaint with the lawes at home and abroad knowes , there are few nations ( if any ) that can be said to have better lawes then we of this nation have had : so that if there should be found any neglect , it would be the default of care and diligence , yea of the fidelity of those to whom the execution of them is committed . the best remedy whereof , is to have good , able and conscientious office-bearers . 3. yet i shall not desire to be so understood , as if i thought it duty implicitly to obey all publick lawes , for i know a state may erre , and have erred as well as a church ; and therefore parliaments have found cause to repeall and nullifie many acts and lawes made by former parliaments , and in caise of errour ( which a man by his private judgement of discretion may discern ) it is sin to obey . for though the authority be lawfull , yet it may make wrong acts , which according to the law of god , ( who is the onely supream law-giver ) cannot be lawfully keeped , upon this account israel is threatned , micah 6.16 . for the statutes of omri are kept and all the works of the house of ahab , and ye walk in their counsels , that i should make thee a desolation , and the inhabitants thereof an hissing : therefore ye shall bear the reproach of my people . in this caice , i say when a lawfull authority acts unlawfully , our duty is to suffer rather then to sin . it is therefore the duty of all to pray earnestly for law-givers , that they might be governed of god to make no acts but what are good and observable , and what are sinfull may be repealled . it is so far from being a duty to obey sinfull ordinances , which are contrary to the commandment of god , that it argues a people to have no sound principle of the fear of god , but to have more fear and respect unto men that shall die , and to the sons of men that shall be made as grass ; then to the living god , who hath streached forth the heavens , and laid the foundations of the earth . isa. 51.12 , 13. and god in his righteous judgement not onely threatens , but oftentimes executs that threatning , hos. 5.11 . ephraim is oppressed , and broken i● judgement : because he willingly walked after the commandment . it s no strange thing to see a people oppressed by those , whose sinfull commands they have willingly obeyed . the other kind of lawes that are to be punctually observed , are municipall , such as are made and enacted in councill , and if expediency require , ratifyed in a publick head court , by consent of the whole town : for lawes of greatest and most common concernment , are of greatest authority , when approven by all or most of an incorporation . it is a well governed town , where lawes bear the whole sway of the authority , when neither fead nor favour , fear nor reward prevails , but all men are judged according to the law impartially . wherefore , i shall say no more to this purpose , but that it concerns all men in councill and magistracie strictly to take notice , what nationall lawes are most to be observed , that may conduce most to the good of the town , and honour thereof , and carefully to see these put in execution . and as for lawes occasionally made be themselves , or by their predecessors , for advancing of the common good , let them be observed with ●hat veneration , and executed with that dis●retion , as is most becoming their honour ●nd gravity . chap. xii . some select acts of parliament , anent royall-burghs and the conservator , and anent the staple . because magistrats and inhabitants of burghs may probably not have the acts of parliament at hand , to make use of at all occasions , i have thought it not amiss , to extract out of the abridgment of the acts of parliament , such as i judged most propper to be known by all , with this caution , that every discreet and intelligent person may take heed to distinguish betwixt times elder and latter . that in all burghs there be eight or twelve persons after the quantity of the town , chosen of secret councill and sworn thereto to decide matters of wrong or un-law , to the avail of five or eight pounds , within eight dayes warning . ja , 2. p. 11. c. 46. that no man in burgh be found in man-rent , nor ride in rowl , in fear of weir with any but the king and his officiars , or the lord of the burgh ; and that they purchase no lordship in oppression of their neighbours under pain of confiscation , and their lives to be in the kings will. ja. 2. p. 14. c. 77. ja. 4. p. 3. c. 34. and ja. 5. p. 4. c. 27 that all merchants be freemen indwellers in burghs . ja. 3. p. 2. c. 11. that officiars in burghs be not continued further then a year , that the old-councill first choise the new ; and then both old and new choise the officiars : and that ilk craft have vot in election of officiars , by one to be chosen be the craft yearly , and that no captain , nor constable of any castle may bear office in the town . ja. 3. p. 5. c. 30. in all burghs four of the old-council should be chosen yearly to sit with the new , notwithstanding the preceeding acts. ja. 3. p. 7. c. 57. that the election of officiars of burghs be without partiality or mastership . ja. 3. p. 14. c. 108. that all officiars in burgh be changed yearly , and that they be persons useing merchandise within the burgh . ja. 4. p. 6. c. 80. honest and and substantious burgesses , merchants and in-dwellers thereof , under the pain of tinsell of their freedom who does in the contrare . ja. 5. p. 4. c. 26. that none be capable of magistracy , or any any other office within burgh , except merchants and actuall traffickers within the said burgh allennarly , and no others . and that the said magistrats and commissioners of burghs to parliaments wear such decent apparel in all solemn occasions as his majestie shall prescribe . ja 6. p. 20. c. 8. that the commissioners of burrowes conveen yearly in ennerkeithing , the morn after st. james day , to treat about the wellfare of merchandise , and their own common profit , and the burgh absent , to pay five pounds to the coast of these present , and that letters be direct thereupon ▪ ja. 3. p. 14. c. 111. that all ships , strangers and others come to free burrowes , and there make their merchandise , and that strangers buy no fish but salted and barrelled , and shall make no merchandise at the lewes , and that no subject take ships to fraught in defraud o● the king under the pain of tinsell of life and goods ; and strangers contraveening , tyne ship and goods . ja. 4. p. 1. c. 3. this act ratified , and further that none buy from the said strangers , but from free-men , at the ports of the saids burrowes under the pain of escheat of their moveables : q. ma. p. 6. c. 59. but this act is called , an act anent liberty of merchants at the west-sea . and these acts again ratified , and that strangers neither buy nor sell any merchandise but at free burrowes and with free-men : and that none conduct , fraught , nor pilote any stranger to the isles , under the pain of tinsell of life , lands and goods . ja. 6. p. 7. c. 120. that strangers-merchants lodge in the free burrowes or principall towns of the ports where they arrive , and that their hosts give an account to the king of their goods inward and outward . ja. 4. p. 4. c. 41. that the common-good of all burrowes be spent for their common profit , by the advice of the town council , and deacons of crafts where they are : and that the chamberlane enquire into this yearly , and that the rents of burrowes be not set but for three years allennarly , under pain of nullity . ja. 4. p. 3. c. 36. ratification of the priviledges of burrowes , and that none dwell out of burrowes , use merchandise , nor tap , nor sell wine , wax , silk , spycerie , wad , nor sicklike stuff , nor stapple-goods , nor pack nor peil in leith or other places outwith burrowes , under the pain of escheat of the goods . ja. 4. p. 6. c. 84. that commissars or head-men of burghs be warned to the giving of taxes , as one of the three estates . ibid. c 88. that magistrats of burghs bring yearly to the exchequer , their count-books of their common good , under the pain of tinsell of their freedom , and that fifteen dayes before , they warn all that pleases to come and object against their accounts . ja. 5. p. 4. c. 26. that no earl , lord , barron , nor others molest burrowes , their officiars or merchants , in using their liberties , under the pain of oppression . ibid. c. 27. that no man pack nor peil wool , skin or hide or loss nor laid outwith from burghs and priviledges thereof . ja. 5. p. 7. c. 107. item , that no persons strangers or inhabitants within the realm , pack or peil any hides or skins in the isles out free burghs , under the pain of tinsell of the saids hides or skins ; and the sheriffs and over-lords of the land where the same is done , are ordained to put the act in execution . ja. 6. p. 23. c. 12. he that tines the cause within burgh payeth the winners expense . ja. 5. p. 7. c. 110. and also , 12 pennies per pound to the poor . ja. 6. p. 6. c. 92. that the officiars of burghs have the onely power to punish forstalers within the same , ja 5. p. 7. c. 113. renewed , but the power of accusing ( because of the negligence of burrowes ) given also to the thesaurer , or his majesties advocat . ja. 6. p. 12. c. 148. that burrowes have an universal weight . ja. 5. p. 7 c. 114. that the officiars in burghs search and apprehend all havers of false money , or counterfitters of the kings irons for coynzie . ibid. c. 124. that magistrats of burghs cause deacons , craftsmen , and hostlers , set and take reasonable prices for their work and victuals , or else deprive them of their office and priviledge . q. ma. p. 5. c. 23. ratification of the priviledges of burrowes and burgesses , and that letters be directed upon their priviledges , and acts of parliament made thereupon , without calling any partie . q. ma. p. 6. c. 49. p. 9. c. 86. ja. 6. p. 1. c. 26. p. 5. c. 64. p. 6. c. 85. and p. 19. c. 5. that all common high gates to and from free-burrowes , and to and from dry-burrowes , from and to sea-ports next adjacent , be keept and no stop made thereuntill , under the pain of oppression . q. ma. p. 6. c. 53. ratified , and ordaining such as shall stop or impede the same , to be charged summarily on six dayes before the lords of session , ( as onely judges thereto appointed ) to be decerned to have done wrong and to desist , and find caution for that effect , under such pains as shall be modified , half to the king , half to the partie grieved , and the probation to be by famous witnesses , and not by an assize . ja. 6. p. 12. c. 156. act in favours of burrowes of the west , discharging unwarrantable exactions of fishers in lochfyne , or other lochs of the isles ; by bringing their fishes within this realm for serving the countrey allennarly , under the pain of oppression . q. ma. p. 6. c. 54. that none make privy convention , put on armour , display banners , sound trumpet or talbron within burgh , without the queen or the magistrats license , under pain of death . q. ma. p. 9. c. 83. ratified , and that none convocate or assemble within burgh except they have license of the magistrats , and that they do nothing in their meeting against the acts of parliament , and quiet of the burgh , otherwise the saids meetings are declared seditious . item , all the inhabitants are ordained to assist the magistrats and their officiars for suppressing of tumults , under the pain to be punished by the magistrats and councill of the burgh as fosterers of the saids tumults . ja. 6. p. 18. c. 17. that the burrowes may meet four times in the year , by a commissioner for ilk burgh , and two for edinburgh , at what burgh they please ; for matters concerning their state. ja. 6. p. 5 c. 64. ratified , and that the burgh not keeping the convention when appointed by the most part , o● by the burgh of edinburgh , or any six or eight of the rest : and warned by a missive from the provest , and bailies of the burgh , where the convention is to be held or otherwise lawfully cited ; be fined in twenty pounds towards the charges of them that meet , and that on the act of convention , letters of horning and poinding be summarily direct at the instance of the burgh of edinburgh for payment of this fine . ja. 6. p. 7. c. 119. that the taxation of burrowes be not altered , but stand as formerly ; that is to say , that it be the sixth part allennarly of all generall taxations . ja. 6. p. 11. c. 111. that no free burgh sell or annailzie their freedom in whole or in part to any other burgh , or any other wayes ; without license of his highnes and three estates of parliament , under the pain of tinsell of freedom of the burgh , either buying or selling . ibid. c. 112. act ratifying all former acts of new statuting , that none exercise merchandise not being free burgesses , under the pain of escheat of their whole moveables , half to the king , and half ●o the burgh , whose commissioner shall apprehend the same ; but prejudice to landed-men ●o have some merchandise to their own use and ●ehoofe , provyding they sell not the same again . ja. 6. p. 12. c. 152. that all inhabitants in burghs , whether they ●e admitted burgesses or not , exercising traffick , or having change within the same , bear their part of all taxes , stents , watchings , wardings and all duties and services touching the king or burgh , without respect to any priviledge granted , or to be granted , except that the king may exeem one of ilk craft for his own service , and without prejudice to the members of the colledge of justice . ibid. c. 153. that there be three burghs bigged , one in kintyre , another in lochaber , and a third in lewes , with all priviledges of burghs . ja. 6. p. 15. c. 263. see the act in the highlands . that there be no exercise of crafts in the suburbs of burrowes , but that the magistrats and their officiars may intromit with , and escheat all work wrought or working there , to whomsoever the materials may appertain . ja. 6. p. 12. c. 154. and thir two acts ratified , extending the former to free and unfree , and having their commodity within burgh , and having no other dwelling , and bearing no other burden without the same . ja. 6. p. 14. c. 225. but declared thus , that all residing within burgh with their families , who may spend a hundred pounds a year , or are stented to be worth two thousand merks , be subject to burdens with the rest of the inhabitants , exeeming and excepting ut supra . ja 6. p. 15. c 275. that all unfree persons , not actuall burgesses of the royall burrowes where they dwell , and payes no taxt nor stent , desist and cease from using merchandise , or any of the liberties of the saids burghs , under the pains statute against unfree traffecters : and that letters of horning be thereon direct , charging the said unfree men to find caution to obey this act , as also , upon the decreets of the convention of burrowes , betwixt burgh and burgh , and burgesses and free burrowes upon ten dayes . ja. 6. p. 19. c. 6 that letters of horning , on a simple charge of ten dayes be direct on all decreets of acts of burrowes , inter concives , and others subject to their jurisdiction , and the officiars execution thereof given on fyfteen dayes . ja. 6. p. 13. c. 177. that the common good of burrowes after the yearly rowping and setting thereof , be yearly bestowed at the sight of the magistrats and councill , to the doing of the common affaires thereof . ibid. c. 181. that the magistrats , at the instance of the heritors , take summar cognition upon citation of the partie , of the condition of bands lyferented within burgh , and ordain the liferenter to repair them within an year ; wherein if the liferenter failzie , the heritor may enter to the possession , upon security found to pay the liferenter or conjunctfier the mail the house may give the time of the cognition , and this extended to all burnt and wast lands . ja. 6. p. 14 c. 226. that burghs and their stent-masters do onely stent persons according to their rents and holding within burgh , but not according to their livings and rents lying without the same . ja. 6. p. 15. c. 276. ratification of all priviledges and acts in favours of free burrowes and burgesses , and especially of the acts of ja. 3. p. 2. c. 11. ja. 4. p. 6. c. 84. ja. 6. p. 12. c. 151. and p. 19. c. 6. all here above declaring the liberties contained in these acts , to be onely proper and competent to the free royal-burghs that have vote in parliament , and bear burden with the rest car. 1. p. 1. c. 24. but this act corrected , and it is ordained , that free-men of royall-burrowes , and none else , may buy or sell in great or whole sale , wine , wax , silk , spyceries , and wad , or other materials for dyeing ; and that none may import or export the same , or import any other commodities except as thi● act allowes , but prejudice to noblemen , prelates , barrons and others of their priviledge o● importing for their own use . but it is declared leasome to any subject , or any who shal● buy from them , to export corns of the growth of the kingdom , all manner of cattell , nolt● sheep , and horse ; coal , salt , and wool , ski● ▪ and hydes , and all other native commodities . and burghs of regality and barrony and other burgesses and members of societies , may export all their own manufacture , and such goods as they shall buy in faires and markets ; and all these exporters may import for their return or fraught and hyre of their ships , timber , iron , tarr , soap , lint , lintseed , hemp , onyons and necessaries for tillage , or building for the use of their manufactories and also may tax and retail all commodities whatsomever . and if any unfree-men shall be found to have any goods to be bought or sold , exported or imported , contrary to this statute , if within burgh royall , suburbs or pendicles thereof , then the goods may be summarily ceised upon as escheat , but if without , then they may be onely arreasted and pursued as escheat , half to the king , and half to the burgh-apprehender . but they may not onely in this last call be summarly ceised by way of fact by any burgh , or any for them , under the pain of a riot . and all acts and ratifications contrary thereto are rescinded , and letters of horning are ordained to be direct on this act at the instance of burghs royall . car. 2 p. 2. sess. 3. c. 5. that where houses are ruinous within burgh by the space of three years , the magistrats may warn these known to have interest therein of property or anuallrent personally , or at their dwelling houses , and them and all others at the parish kirk and mercat cross , and incaice of absence out of the realm , at the cross of edinburgh , and pier and shoar of lieth on sixty dayes , to repair them within year and day , or otherwise that they will repair them within the said space , or if none will buy , then the magistrats may buy and rebuild them , and this right to be an unquestionable security to the builders . car. 2. p. 1. sess. 3. c. 6. that no royall burgh keep mercats on munday or saturday . car 2 p. 1. sess. 3. c. 19. burgesses and indwellers in burghs royal may onely arreast strangers living without the burgh for horse-meat or mans-meat , abuilziements or other merchandise due to themselves originally , without bond or security given thereof , otherwise the magistrats may be pursued for wrongous imprisonment . car. 2. p. 2. sess. 3. c. 5. acts of parliament anent the conservator . that the conservator have jurisdiction to judge with six or at least four honest merchants with him , betwixt merchant and merchant beyond seas , and that no merchant pursue another before any other judge under the pain of five pounds , and the parties expense● ja. 4. p. 6. c. 81. that the conservator come home yearly , or send a procurator to answere for him , under pain of tinsell of his office and of twenty pounds great to the king . ibid. c. 82. that the conservator admit no cocket except the merchants , skipper and factors swear that they have no forbidden goods , nor no lawfull goods besides what is in the cocket ; and that they know of none in the ship pertaining to others , and that so far as they know , all the goods pertain to free-men : as also , that before the loadning of the ship for her return , they swear that the goods pertain to themselves , and not to strangers ; otherwise , the conservator may arreast the ship and goods , at least all the goods of the refuser . ja. 6. p. 15. c. 257. the conservator should put the acts against usurie in execution upon all scots merchants , skippers and factors in the low-countries , and compt thereupon to the thesaurer . ibid. c. 259. acts anent the staple . that an incorporation be made of scots in the low-countries , and their priviledges , ordaining the scots residing there , and pretending to the saids priviledges , to give their oath of obedience to the king and his laws as if they were dwelling in scotland , and that they pay for their entries ten pounds fleemish , and the persons refusers to be deprived of all benefite or commerce with his highnes liedges . ja. 6. p. 6. c. 96. that no ships passing to the low-countries land any mans goods but at campvere , or the ordinary staple , and that no person go on land , or take any thing out of the ship untill her arrivall there , under the pain of ten pound fleemish , and the conservator should take the merchants and skippers oathes thereanent . ja. 6. p. 15. c. 258. that merchants coming from the low-countries , give to the conservator an account of the quantity and quality of the goods , under the pain of confiscation thereof , and that a subscribed cocket thereof be sent home to the thesaurer . ibid. c. 260. chap. xiii . concerning some means in generall , by which a burgh may flowrish . it ought to be the care of a faithfull senate , and vigilant rulers over a city and common-wealth , seriously to consider , by what means a town may most flowrish , grow in greatness , prosper in riches , and increase in numerous and vertuous inhabitants . i shall name some of these . 1. religion was a mean whereby jerusalem was not onely made head of that kingdom , but also greatest in all asia , because all the males behooved to appear there thrise a year . there was the temple of the lord , there the high priest and all solemn oblations and sacrifices , hence it was called the holy city : but now there are no places that have any holiness in them under the gospel , joh. 4.21 , 22. for god may be worshiped every where , and any where , if it be in spirit and in truth . i know not any religious concernment that might more greaten a city , nor be a more attractive motive for strangers , that had any principle ruling in them of the fear of god , then a holy people . isa. 4.3 . and 60.21 . when the inhabitants of a city generally did walk so christianly and so sweetly together , according to gospell rules , that they might give evidence of the fullfilling these blessed promises , isa. 1.25 26. upon which account a town might be justly termed a city of righteousness , the faithfull city , this was a sure foundation of all true prosperity and greatness , therefore let all profane and ungodly persons be esteemed the chiefest enemies to a cities wellfare and the pious and truely godly the chiefest jewells and blessing thereof . a 2 d. mean of making a town flowrish , is a dilligent care to have trade and merchandise thriving by all due encouragement thereunto , and to endeavour ( if possible ) to have some distinct and particular commoditie to be exported or imported , that no other neighbour town hath , or some usefull manufacture that is not in any other place of the nati●● : or at least not so good or cheap . it we●● a desireable thing in scotland to see every town to improve their situation● , and soyle their rivers , lochs , trades , arts and engines , and in a word their particular properties and advantages by industrie , that each of them might be found to have some special and distinct commodity to vent , for their own great benefit and their countries service . a 3 d. mean is to cherish industry , and arts and handy-crafts , see botero on the greatness of cities , pag. 84. and to procure excellent wits and persons of eminent qualifications for that end . 4 ly . the erecting and maintaining schools of learning , and professors of all usefull and commendable sciences , which may draw the youth of the countrey to be bred in cities and towns in doing whereof , speciall care would be had that strict laws and orders might be set down for the good and quiet behaviour of the students , and these duly execute by faithful masters , and carefull magistrats , that parents and relations may send their children thither in a measure of confidence and security , and so the inhabitants be preserved in peace . 5 ly . inviting by immunities from taxes and tolls all that have any commodities to sell , to frequent mercats and great faires within burgh , which would need to be procured from the king and parliament for that end ; by which a town may have severall advantages , though the taxes were quited , at least very low . as monethly mercats in every great town , for horse and oxen , by which the countrey may be served at all seasons , and the burgh be benifited by the change that the countrey people should make . 6 ly . that all the judicatories that may be had be set up within burgh , whereby the subjects may have occasion to make frequent resort to the town . 7 ly . to endeavour to order well all necessaries for food and fireing , and for keeping and mantaining families within burgh , that all persons of quality may be encouraged to buy and build houses in towns , which would undoubtedly contribute much for the prospering of trades and arts in a town by their change , and greatly enlarge the city . 8 ly . if there be any speciall blessing of nature in or near to the town , that may be for pleasure or profit to strangers , that the same may be published and set forth with the best advantages , for inviting the concurse of strangers to the place ; as the waters of bath in england , the medicinall wells and fountaine at spa in germany , and orges in france ; and that health giving spring for gravel , gout , hydropsie and collick at aberdeen , being drunk ( according to dr. william barclay his printed prescriptions ) in the summer-moneths . or if there be any notable or curious device invented , or illustrated by art , which may adorn or ennoble a town , the same will influence , and not a little concur to advance it . all these former means have been drawn from profit , it is to be considered , that pleasure hath been a special mean to draw strangers to a city . and for this , 9 ly . curious gardens , fruitfull orchards , in , or about a city , especially when so so placed as may most beautify the town , which may be no less profitable then pleasant , according to the saying , omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci. i shall in the next place enlarge upon some of these in particular , in the fourth-chapter i did treat of religion at some length , and shall not therefore insist now , but regrate that superstition hath served to greaten more towns in many kingdoms of the world , then the true fear of god ; and that love that should be amongst christians . witness rome , which is so much frequented upon the imagination of her pretended holy places , and false relicts of saints departed , and the supream authority of her ecclesiastical affairs , and her judaick jubilies , by which and many more such like impostures , she hath made many nations drunk with the wine of her fornications and whoredomes , and thereby keeps her self in such greatness , till the lord by powring out the vialls rev. 16. burn and consume that seat of the beast . many other cities and towns are also greatly frequented upon superstitious accounts by strangers , as loretto in italy , s michael in france , compostella in spain , and many other places altho rough and almost inaccessible . but now when light hath discovered these antichristian-delusions , i think we should study upon more christian accounts , to invite strangers ( as was said in the beginning of this chapter ) by being through divine grace a holy people , living in the true fear of god , and in love to his holy image , where ever it is to be seen by an holy and blameless conversation . though there be a difference in judgement in most cities now in brittain , let it be our care to love all men , and seek thee good of every one if so be the lord may bring them to the knowledge of himself , and the acknowledgement of the truth , and walk according to that rule , phillip . 3.15 16. this as it is very sutable to christian charity , and that meekness and moderation that becometh the gospell , so it is very conducible to the greatning of a city and common-wealth . chap. xiv . concerning merchandising . having touched some generalls necessary for the prosperity of a town in the last chapter , i come now to speak of some of them more particularly at some more length , and the first is merchandising . rulers ought to have a speciall care to give all due encouragement to trading that can be thought upon , for by it a burgh is mostly distinguished from a countrey-village ; rather then by strong walls or fortifications as some distinguish , without trade a town were little better : so that traffick is the very essence , and by it the being and vitalls of a burgh or city is mantained . first , it therefore concerneth magistrats and councill to assist , yea , to own as their propper concernment , all the intetests that may impare or prejudge the traffick in all staple-commodities , when the supream authority makes any act , or are like to do any thing that may damnify the same ; as in highting customs or bulzeon : these things would be adverted to , and all opportunities carefully attended when matters of that nature may be best helped , especially at parliaments , for this there is a great necessity to make choise of understanding , able and active men to be commissioners at such times , otherwayes it may fall out to be done at such a time , that possibly cannot be gotten helped in an age. secondly , it were good to look well upon all these wayes whereby trade is prejudiced amongst our selves , as to take condign order with fore●allers of mercats , and such raisers and highters of the prices of common commodities , and these that studie to enhance one particular commoditie in their hands , that they may sell and oppress others at their pleasure , and many more wayes which others can more easily fall upon that are better acquainted nor i am with the like . thirdly , it were very commendable for all that have charge in a city , not onely to look to these particulars above mentioned ; but to be carefull that the dean of gild and his councill of assessors ( to whom it would be very propper ) may set themselves to fall upon the best overtures for removing of impediments , and advancing all means that may make every trade whether of scottish commodities outward , or such forraign commodities as are brought homeward to prosper and flowrish , and then the councill after mature deliberation had ; that the means be propper , and may be practised without the breach of any duty to the setled laws of the kingdom , may put to their authority and so effectually prosecute the samen that no covetous or selfish stickler ( that may possibly find himself hem'd in from his avaricious and greedy way ) may be able to gainstand what the councill hath enacted for the good and prosperity of the whole merchants in common hobbs in his 2 d. part of his rudiments of dominion , sayes to this purpose , that every society of men that live in a corporation together , intending the publick good of the whole , would not rest upon a bare consent to prosecute that , and unless there be restraints for fear of punishments on those that out of selfish ends &c would obstruct the wee ll of the publick , so that all mens particular wills must run in the will of the councill , or such as are the governours , viz. the major part thereof . fourthly . i will not take upon me to mention any particular ways how traffick may be advanced in towns , it being more propper for a dean of gild court ( which would be needfull to be alwayes of the ablest and most judicious of the merchants , and such as are of most publick spirits , ) yet it may not be amiss to offer these things to consideration . consider to what good improvement one man ( as i have seen in my time ) did bring the manufacture of stockings , viz. g. p. in aberdeen , whereby there was a trade in some measure keeped up not onely with merchants at the south and west , but also with severals that carie them both to england and ireland ; and if one man by his own private industrie , did bring the countrey people to such a perfection in good stockings , what may a corporation do , if a serious care were had for such improvements in this and many other things . secondly , seeing we have commodities of our own nation sufficient to bring us home all necessaries from france , holland , and the nations on the baltick-sea , to serve our towns and countries about us , onely we have little of our own to send to london , and our neighbour-nation of england ; wherefore , such of our nation as travel thither , are constrained to ca●ry in money to their great expense and hazard , ●or to draw money upon bill at a dear rate . to prevent this , if it shall please the lord , ( who hath in his good providence united both nations under one king , as well as in one protestant religion and language , ) to take off these acts which are made to obstruct the mutuall freedom and trade betwixt the kingdoms , or to make up a compleat union , ( which were rather to be wished ) it were most expedient to consider what commodities we have in our countrey , that would go best off there , as our linning-cloath , linning-yairne , stockings of all sorts and syzes , furrs , feathers &c , and such like things as active merchants might easily find out , and would need to keep a good correspondence at london , seeing the merchants there traffeck with both the indies , and in all places where the netherlanders trade in any part of the world : it is probable that our commodities might in some progress of time make a good mercat there also . chap. xv. concerning some general overtures for improvement of trade , mostly relating to the chief rulers of the kingdom . but seeing i have been recommending the care of merchandise to the rulers and councils of our cities and burghs , merchandise being an imployment whereby not onely burghs , but kingdoms and common-wealths doeth mostly prosper and flowrish , if well and rightly improven , therefore it not onely concerns the merchants of the burghs to endeavour the advancement and improvment of trade , but with due submission it is conceived , the powers and rulers of the kingdom may lay themselves out seriously to encourage it as a speciall concernment lying upon them to promove , seeing it mostly advances the good of the whole nation , and the decay thereof tends so much to the publick prejudice . therefore first , it is humbly to be wished , that our rulers would take speciall care and make diligent enquiry by the custom-books and other evidences that are propper , to know whether the kingdom or common-wealth be losers or gainers by their trade , by casting the ballance betwixt the value of the goods imported into the kingdom , and the goods exported yearly ; for if there be a greater importation then there was of exportation , there is so much loss to the nation by how much the importation exceeds the exportation , because the superplus beyond the value of the goods exported exhausts so much money which is drawn forth of the kingdom to pay it , and so gradually if the super expense continue , the trade and nation must come to ruine . a second mean of improvement is , that our rulers would be pleased to take a speciall care of the coine of our own nation , and of the value of foreign coine imported , and that the money payed in by the merchants for bullion may be imployed for buying of bullion , so that the mint-house lose not the benefit of the mixture which they must needs lose if they melt forraign coine . a third is , that they would take care that the princes and states of forraign nations may grant favour that there be no impositions laid on upon the product of our countrey , whereby to debar us from trade with them , as that denmark and norway may not obstruct the trade of our victuall , &c. a fourth is , that there be an encouragment given to the fishing , such as code , herring , and whale-fishing , both as to the exportation , and the goods to be imported by the money that is purchassed by the same ; and withall , that strangers may be debarred from having the advantage that is more propperly due to the natives , for it is reported that the governours of our north-isles are more kind and favourable to the hamburgers then to our own natives , in selling their fishes to them rather then to our own countrey-men . a fifth is , that speciall notice may be taken how to improve the naturall product of our land , such as coal , salt , and all kind of grain wool , hyde , tallow , skins , linning-cloath , plaiding , fingrams , stockings , salmond , herring , &c. as first , that coal and salt may be appointed to be transported to the propper ports as shall be thought most fit , where men may be appointed as factors to have care thereof , that the exporters be not necessitated to sell at the time of fallen mercats , since they are commodities that may wait for a better mercat without loss , and are such as cannot be wanted . secondly , as to corne and grain , that care may be had as is said in the third mean , or paragraph foresaid . thirdly , as for skins and hydes , if we had access to american-plantations , or if a liberty could be procured to a select company , and no others to have trade there but they , then skin and hyde would be a good commodity , being well tanned or barked , or made in shoes ; which would not onely tend to the great profit of merchants , but would occasion many trades-men to be set on work at home in our own countrey , seeing we have attained to a good perfection both in barking , tanning and currying . fourthly , as for wool it needs not be exported at all , if our manufacturies at home were carefully looked to ; for though we have few or no select manufacturies in this land , yet we can improve the whole wool of the kingdom to better purpose , and sell cheaper abroad then any forraign manufacture in the world can afford it , particularly upon plaidings , fingrams , or any kind of raw-cloaths ; in respect saving of charges is the life of all manufactures , for particular select manufactures must have servants well appointed both as to bedding and dyet , whereas all the wool of scotland may be wrought by the commons of this nation at a very easie rate , because of their sober way of living , and working but at such times as their other countrey-work permits . for illustration whereof , it will not be amiss an instance that fell out severall years ago in my own time , which may evince that the plaiding and fingrams made by the commons in the countrey , is to much greater advantage , then by setting up a particular manufacture for the said imployment . there was a substantious merchant in edinburgh , called mr. barnes , who considering the great sumes of money that was brought in to this kingdom by the plaiding trade , especially by the merchants of the town of aberdeen , who bought mostly all their wool from edinburgh and the south parts ; so that they had it but at the second hand , and did sell it out in small 's to the countrey-people there about , after they had been at charges for transporting and born the hazard by sea , &c. whereas he considering , that he might have wool without any such expense or hazard , and causing make plaiding in a particular manufacture , there he could not but make greater profit in holland then they of aberdeen could make , seeing he could save such a considerable expense which they were necessitated to ware out : whereupon he sets up his manufacture and wrought about ten sea-packs of plaiding , which might be reckoned worth twenty thousand pounds ; but when he perceived the merchants in aberdeen did sell their plaiding at as low a rate as his stood himself at home , and yet with advantage , he fell a wondering what could be the reason , and meeting with alexander farquhar a merchant in aberdeen his acquaintance , enquired how it could be , laying before him the former considerations , to which alexander farquhar replyed , that the people that wrought their plaiding , had not by farr such entertainment as his servants had , and that they drank oftner clear spring water than ale : and therefore they had their plaiding much cheaper than he had his , whereupon he quickly gave over his manufacture . notwithstanding that our commons live at such a sober rate , they are so set at work upon the account of their advantage in the north parts of scotland , that in former years the product of their labours hath brought into this kingdom yearly , upwards of an hundreth thousand rex dollars for many years together ; without this the nobility and gentry in thir parts could not get their money rents well payed , which trade and employment hath been thir severall years under great decay , so that the plaiding and fingrams are become to be sold at the half of the value which they did formerly , neither is the half exported , which is mostly upon the account of their deceitfull mismannadgment thereof , which may be helped by appointing particular knowing men , and giving them allowance to attend the mercats for visiting and judging the sufficiency of the cloath , which would augment the quantity , and advance the price to the value of all the wool that is vented abroad , and unless some such qualified persons be impowred , and by an setled allowance induced to a diligent inspection and judging of the samen , all our acts of parliament which hath been so commendablie enacted for regulating these things , will prove but ineffectuall as constant experience hath too much evidenced . the fifth countrey commodity is stockings , which hath been within thir few years admirably improven by one man in aberdeen , ( as was instanced before ) to wit george pyper , who encouraged the countrey people so , by giving them a little money or some linning at times , that from five groats the pair , he caused them work at such a fynness that he hath given twenty shillings sterling and upward for the pair : but as the su●ficiency of plaiding and fingrams may be recovered by carefull visitors to the great advantage of the countrey , so the stockings may be made the more saleable , if the su●ficiency of them with the due length and shape both of men and womens be diligently observed , for which a gage may be made according to the principall gage , and dispersed through all the countrey , that no stockings may be censured , or confiscated through ignorance of the owners , and the visitors allowance for his mark and seal appointed , that all forraign-countries may come to know the due esteem that our stockings are to be had in . as the neglect of the sufficiencie of plaiding and fingrams have been a great cause of the decay of trade , so the loss of the plantations by the dutch west india companies is likewise a considerable cause thereof ; which requires that we should wisely consider , how and where we may recover a good off-tract of these commodities , for it was the dutch plantations in brasile ( which the portuguyes now possess ) that were furnished with our plaiding and fingrams and it were worth the while to consider , if we could find a way with any of these that have plantations in america now , or if we could fall upon a way of furnishing the french king his armies with these scottish cloaths , seeing there is no nation in europe can serve them at an easier rate , not onely in plaiding and fingrams but also in such other cloaths , as perpetuanes and sairges . the sixth countrey commodity named , is salmond and herring , they would be carefully , seen unto , that they be in all points according to the acts of parliament , particularly the 33 act of the first parliament , k. charles the 2 d. and magistrats to be diligent in their inspection of cowpers , by which that trade also may flowrish . a sixth mean for improving the trade of the nation , is that the estate of the burrowes would humbly petition our rulers in the next parliament that sits , that they would be pleased to consider the great damnage the royall-burrowes sustain , and the great discouragment it is to the trade of the nation , that burghs of regality and barrony have got so great priviledges by the 5 th . act of the 3 d. session of the 2 d. parliament of k. charles the 2 d. seeing they may not onely buy in mercats and faires all scots commodities , the product of the countrey , and bring all staple ware , but they may also export the same to other nations , and bring home with the money or value thereof , what commodities for the use of the countrey they think fit , very inconsiderable exceptions being reserved , notwithstanding that the royal-burrowes payes the sixth part of the kings taxation , and the burghs of regality and barrony bear no part nor proportion thereof less or more , notwithstanding of their enlarged priviledges and great traffick , which makes little difference betwixt them and royall-burrowes , as any understanding man may perceive . and it is the more remarkable , there were severall acts of parliament rescinded that had been made in favours of the royall-burghs , which the next parliament may be intreated to take into their consideration , and what was the cause and grounds of these acts. as the 24 act of the first parliament of k. charles the first . so the act of ja. 4. p. 6. c. 84. so ja. 6. p. 12. c. 152. ja. 6. p. 19. c. 6. let the burrowes consider that the convention of burrowes and the priviledges of the deans of gild &c are now of little significancy by this late act. seventhly , it is worthy of consideration if it be not for the advantage of trade , that the custome and excyse of merchant goods were set and fermed by the generall taxmen to the speciall burghs and the precincts of the same , whereby severall inconvenients might be remeded , as the customs and excyse of these goods that are brought home to burghs of regality and barrony which are concealed and no count thereof gotten , whereas the sub-taxmen of the speciall burrowes would be concerned to look more narrowly to it then any other . next , whereas there are heavy burdens of taxations lyes on the royall-burghs , so that many inhabitants remove from them , and others set up in these other burghs , seeing they enjoy so great priviledges of trading to the great decay of the royall-burghs , as may be evidenced , that a great large lodging with all accommodations may be had in some of the royall-burrowes at a great dale more easie rate than a very common thack house in some of these burghs of barrony , as may be easily instanced . next , the burgesses of the burghs of regality and barrony getting mostly their merchandise stollen free of custome and excyse , thereby are in a capacity to under-sell the merchants of the royall-burghs in such commodities very considerably , to the no little discouragment of the royal-burghs , for they may sell their wares as far below others as the custome and excyse will extend to , so that the merchants of royall burghs need look for no change , so long as the other hath these commodities . eightly , it would be much for the advancement of trade as is conceived , if our rulers would ordain a competent number of knowing merchants out of the principall burrowes of the kingdom , to meet at such seasons and places as shall be appointed and thought most expedient , for considering and fixing upon a solid way , for puting in practise all good overtures , which they or any other may suggest unto them for promoving the prosperity of the trade of the nation . and for the further assistance of these , it were good that the convention of burrowes would appoint the magistrats of every royall-burgh , to ordain some of the most understanding of their inhabitants , to meet at such times as they shall judge fit to consider , debate and argue anent the trading with these commodities which are most in use by the merchants of the respective burghs ; and what overtures they can fall upon for improving the samen and when they have agreed and condescended there upon , to give an account thereof subscribed with their hand , or the hand of their praeses chosen by them , to the provest , bailies and councill of the place , and they to give in the same after a serious revieu and consideration to the convention of burrowes , or any committie deligated by them for that effect , and that they may consider , and approve or disapprove the samen , and give in their reasons accordingly to the committie of trade ; that so after a serious and solid consideration thereof , it may be recommended to the parliament , or the kings councill for their approbation and authority . but if it be said that few will be at the pains to wait upon such meetings to consider things so rypely , to the neglect of their own affaires , as the proposall seems to require . to which it may be answered , if the importance of the matter be duely weyed , and the weighty results seriously considered , it will be found well worth all the pains and expenses that can be wared , if the affair be not altogether turned into a meer formality . but particularly let all concerned consult and consider the great revenue these improvment would raise to the crown , by the customs and excyse , the honour , fame and esteem it would purchase to our nation abroad , the great increase and encouragment it would be to sea-men and shipping , the plentifull and comfortable livelyhood of severall hundreds and thousands of familie● in our land : and with all , the vertuous and praise worthy improvment of all these commodities that are the naturall product of our countrey , by which not onely the strength and stock of the kingdom would be augmented , but the wealth and riches of many privat● men greatly multiplyed , providing that in all our deportment and industrie we walk so , as we may upon good ground expect a blessing from the lord our god. see psa. 127.1 , 2. chap. xvi . concerning mechanick-trades . it were a most commendable piece of government , if rulers would be at pains to set down wayes how every idle person within cities and towns might be discovered , and strict accounts thereof be exacted accordingly , that all persons of every rank might be known , how , and by what means they live , by what trade , industrie and vertue they mantained themselves and families . diodorus reports that it was a law amongst the egyptians that every one should give up his name to the magistrat within whose precinct he lived , and show by what trade , and by what gain he lived ; and if any were found to lye , or to live by unlawfull means , they were put to death , which severity was reckoned the more just , because idle lazie persons are the poyson of a city , it s they that are most pron to whordom , drunkenness , and all debauchrie , it s they that hate the best men , are covetous of others goods , are seditious , mutinous and unworthy to be permitted to live amongst civill and vertuous people . wherefore seeing every one hath not a competency of money to be a stock for merchandising , it were good policie to advert to the naturall genius and disposition of young boyes , for what trade or employment they may be fittest , if they are skilled in writing and arithmetick and of lively active spirits fit for merchandising , that they might be employed accordingly . if their talent lye in a disposition for any mechanick trade ▪ that fit masters may be pitched upon for their education , in the particular employment their minds are most inclyned unto . and if there should be found a remarkable acumen or mind more then ordinary , that such might be sent abroad to other nations ( after some time of breeding at home . ) where he may be best perfected in his art upon the publick expense , with speciall provision and surety that he should return and serve the town in his calling as he should be employed ; which would be a good mean to furnish our towns with all excellent arts and manufactures . if we would lay our selves out to improve such means and wayes , there is no doubt but this would in a few years tend much to the good of our cities and the reputation of our nation . for my own part , i ever looked upon an excellent artist and one who had a good engyne or ability for working excellent things in his calling , beyond the ordinary strain and common custom o● men of his trade , to be an usefull o●nament to a town in his own sphere . therefore vertuous men in every calling ought to be regarded and encouraged with all respect due to their merit and carriage , and idle , drunken and thriftless persons rebuked , punished , yea declared incapable of any place or trust within the corporation . if this were , there would be more industrie and commendable diligence amongst all sorts ; and less extraordinary drinking and sinfull spending of time in taverns and ale-houses amongst tradsmen then there is , for it is both shame and sin for men to consume their health and time in doing nothing but satisfying their lusts and carnall appetites . m. cato in his book of manners wrot exceeding well in comparing the life of man to yron ; which if ye use it wears away , but yet with beauty and splendor ; but if ye use it not , it is consumed with rust . vertuous persons by honest exercises spend themselves so , as they have inward peace , glory and reputation in the world ; whereas vicious and idle wretches gain nothing but ignominy and contempt . the same cato spoke well to his souldiers at numantia consider with your selves souldiers , ( said he ) if ye do any good thing with travel or labour , the labour soon passes away ; but the good remains ; but if ye do any business for pleasure , the pleasure soon evanishes but the shame remains . which expression showes nothing worse than idlesit , and nothing better than vertuous industrie . what a comely thing is it to see all persons in towns diligent in their callings , and al● tradesmen in their usefull occupations industriously laborious like bees , all joyning their pains to provide what is usefull to humane society ▪ what can render a town more illustrious then usefull arts and trades , inviting neighbours and strangers to resort thither to take away our manufactures , and bringing their best things to supplie what we need ? so much lyes on rulers to bring from abroad the best of tradesmen , and to encourage our own that they may not onely be able to gain their livelyhood , but may live comfortably and be usefull in the common-wealth as occasion requires . also rulers would guard against all abuses and oppressions committed readily by tradesmen upon new intrants , whereby they are brought so low in their condition and so plunged in debt before they can be free in their trad● that they are hardly able in many years to recover and get themselves out of burden . chap. xvii . concerning planting , both for profit and pleasure . having touched severall things that may seem worthy of a councils consideration , for making a town flowrish , in the foregoing chapters or partitions , i cannot ommit to offer it to their judgments to deliberat , if it be not very expedient both for profit and pleasure to consider how their cities may be beautified with planting of usefull trees in all places in and near the town , where it may be most conveniently had , for it is no small reproach upon the generality of our nation , that our people are so negligent and careless in this particular , notwithstanding of the great contentment and satisfaction that may be reaped thereby , for planting is not onely delightfull to the eye , and in a manner exhilirating the heart of every beholder , by its beauty and greeness , inviting the cheerfull birds to chant and express their melodious notes to the great refreshment of the hearers oft tymes , but also , in few years ( due diligence and care being taken to plant them aright , and to prune and keep them ) they are very usefull for publick and private use as need and expediencie shall require . we find that the most flowrishing and rich nations have great abundance of many so●ts of planting , and that not onely by nature , but by art and industrie of the inhabitants ; and divine providence hath evidenced her bounty in a liberall measure to us in that matter , no less then to others our neighbours round about us , as may be witnessed by the many woods and forrests that have been well furnished with oakes , elmes , firrs , ashes , &c. and fruit-trees , which in every generation are much destroyed and cut down , and few or none to repair them ; and how can we but undergo the just reproach of a careless and lazie people in this thing , and the rather , that no laws and acts of parliament made by our gracious and vertuous kings , and estates of the kingdom ; particularly by k. james the 5 th . in his 9. act of parl. 4. and our late k. charles the 2 d. parliament 1. act 41. cannot prevail . it is obvious to the sence of every beholder , what an ornament planting is to great mens houses who are worthie of their due commendation that have taken paines herein . i think it worthie the considering , that when god created man in his primitive innocency and integrity , he placed him in a garden , and put that exercise upon him , even in a sinless state to dress and keep it . gen. 2.8 , 15. whence it may be observed , that planting and the care thereof is an exercise not unbecoming the best of saincts , nor the greatest of men , we may see many proofes o● this , as first in that good and holy man that found grace in gods sight , when all the world ( save a few with him ) perished , gen. 9.20 . and noah began to be an husband man and he planted a vyne-yard . secondly , abraham the friend of god , and father of the faithfull , planted a grove in beersheba , and called there on the name of the lord . gen 21.33 . next , king solomon a great and wise king eccles. 2.4 5. i made me great works i builded me houses , and planted me vyne-yards . i made me gardens and orchards , and i planted in them all kind of fruits . so uzziah delighted in this employment , 2. chron. 26 10. he had husband-men and dressers of vynes , &c. yea our blessed lord jesus did honour this industrie , by his frequenting the garden , joh 18.1 . when jesus had spoken these words , he went over the brook cedron , where was a garden , into which he entered with his disciples . ver. 2. and judas also who betrayed him knew the place : for jesus oftentimes resorted thither with his disciples . i could name many great men that have taken pleasure in planting , as cyrus the younger , king of persia , who planted orchards and gardens with his own hand . see cicero de senectute p. 210. but i shall forbear to insist , onely desiring our cities and towns may seriously consider the profit and pleasure , and that it will very far counterballance the expense and paines , by a constant and yearly recompense , i mean a well furnished garden and orchard when carefully keept and waited upon . therefore , i shall close this purpose with a friendly desire that all magistrats and town-councils may seriously consider , how they may in this give best obedience to the laudable acts and laws of the land , and with most profit and satisfaction to their respective incorporations , and that it may be remembered , when adam sinned he was sent forth from the garden of eden to till the ground , which was a more painfull and inferiour employment and not permitted to enjoy that sweet and refreshful mansion of the garden . it was a part of gods curse upon a land , when trees were smitten and taken away from it . exod. 9.25 . amos 4.9 . joel 1.12 . and it is a promised blessing , to plant gardens , and eat the fruit of them . jer. 29.5 . amos 9.4 . ezek. 34.27 . therefore these precepts may be pertinently applyed to this purpose . tit. 3.14 . let ours also learn to mantain good works for necessary uses . and that of philip. 4.8 . whatsoever things are true , whatsoever things are honest whatsoever things are just , whatsoever things are pure , whatsoever things are lovely , whatsoev●r things are of good report : if there be any vertue , and if there be any praise , think on these things . much of our corne-fields about some towns have been improven for herbs and roots by common gardners , and why not some of the choisest soyles and situations be also made use of for pleasant gardens and fruitfull orchards , which are to be seen frequently in well ordered and flowrishing towns abroad , to their great profit , health and delight without their towns , and few of our nation have little worse grounds for such things ; save that walls and dykes may be found expensive , and sparing many unnecessary superfluities in other things , and bringing home tyle for ballast in ships from holland &c may help that , and the profit accrewing by a fruitfull and well ordered orchard in a few years will recompense all expensses ( with gods blessing ) abundantly . chap. xviii . concerning charity , and care of the poor . though there may be many duties incumbent upon magistrats and town-councils , who are governours of cities and burghs , which the judicious will understand as their occasions and stations will discover unto them , that there is one dutie , ( which is none of the least ) that all are bound to consider , because the supream governour of heaven and earth takes speciall notice thereof , and hath carefully recommended to all his people : and that is a tender care over , and a cordiall charity towards the poor . see for this deut. 15.7 , 8 9 , 10 , 11. if there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren , within any of thy gates , in thy land which the lord thy god giveth thee , thou shalt not harden thy heart , nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother : but thou shalt open thy hand wide unto him , and shalt surely lend him sufficiently for his need in that which he wanteth . beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart , saying , the seventh year , the year of release is at hand : and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother , and thou givest him nought , and he cry unto the lord against thee , and it be sin unto thee . vers. 10. thou shalt surely give him , and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him : because that for this thing the lord thy god shall bless thee in all thy works , and in all that thou puttest thy hands unto . for the poor shall never cease out of the land : therefore i command thee , saying , thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother , to thy poor and to thy needy , in thy land . this scripture is so full and pungent to this purpose , that all that fear the lord will find it more binding than any act of parliament , or any humane law whatsomever ; for it hath in its bosome , both threates to the disobedient , and comfortable promises to the due observers of this command . wherefore , christian magistrats should seriously consider upon suitable wayes how the poor within their gates may be most carefully and discreetly provided for . i know in most of the considerable towns in the land , there are hospitals , some for men , some for women , some for orphans and children , and there are summs of money have been mortified and appointed for that end , that the rents thereof might be furthcoming for such uses by pious and charitable citizens . of this the rulers , and all that are in charge should be carefull , lest any part of such summs should be delapidated , and that the revenues thereof should be duely and discreetly destributed to the fit objects , and that care may be had that the wills of the mortifiers be punctually observed , lest others perceiving a negligence herein , might be discouraged from such pious mortifications and donations . but where these are wanting or comes short to answere the urgent necessities of the numerous poor people that are in a town , care would needs be had , and paines taken that all poor ones whether elder or younger that are in a capacity to work or go about any profitable employment may be set to work , and young ones , whether males or femals put to learn at schools and trades according to their capacities and inclinations , and for this , by the prudence of wise magistrats , wayes may be fallen upon , and collections of moneyes obtained with consent of the inhabitants , that may supply what will be found requisite for such charitable and pious uses : as supplying the aged , decrepit that are not able to work , and setting the young poor to sutable callings and employments . sure i am , where this care is christianly and charitably minded , they have the promise of a faithfull god , that for this thing the lord shall bless them in all their works , and in all they put their hand unto , therefore all would need to beware of resting upon a bare formality of making a triffling offering in publick upon dayes for worship , but look upon the duty as seriously recommended by him , who is the author of all our mercies , and giver of all our good things : see for this , isa. 58 7. when this hypocriticall formalists were dissatisfied , that god took no more notice of their fastings , and frequenting of ordinances , as vers . 2 , 3. of that chapter holds forth : the lord showes them the reasons , vers . 4.5 . and shewes them plainly vers . 7. that the fast that he regardes is , to deal thy bread to the hungrie , and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house , when thou seest the naked that thou cover him , and that thou hid not thy self from thine own flesh . mind that command , heb. 13.16 . but to do good , and to communicate forget not , for with such sacrifices god is well pleased . and they that mind most the pleasing of god , he will never be behind hand with them , for psal. 41.1 . blessed is he that considereth the poor , the lord will deliver him in time of trouble . it was jobs glory , and did afford him no small peace and comfort in the day of his sad distress , that he could say from a testimony of a good conscience , job 31.19 . if i have seen any perish for want of cloathing , or any poore without covering . ver . 20. if his loyns have not blessed me , and if he were not warmed with the fleece of my sheep . this man was a blessed magistrat , and happy were it if all that are in authority in the nation could have such a testimony from their own hearts , and that the power●ull and rich in the land could employ their abundance to such commendable , yea acceptable uses before god , they might upon good ground expect jobs reward , and such an outgate from all their troubles , as job 42.10 . yea they have a promise from his mouth who is faithfull and true , yea truth it self , that not so much as a cup of cold water given to a disciple shall in no wise lose his reward . mat. 10.42 . let all consider this , and so i proceed . chap. xix . concerning magistrats in generall , and the qualifications requyred in them . intending ( if the lord will ) to hold out the duties of the particular office-bearers in our royal-burghs in the chapters following , i judge it expedient to set down in the first place the qualifications of a magistrat in generall , for the happiness of a town depends very much upon well qualified and faithfull magistrats . and for this , it is the duty of all citizens to endeavour ●o be good men , whereby they may be in a capacity to do good service when called to places of trust in their respective towns , and all that ●ears god should pray fervently to the lord to ●aise up many such amongst them . a magistrat is an officer , or office-bearer , who hath power to command in a state or city . there be many office-bearers that are not magistrats , because they have not power to command , nor to punish offenders . now we shall point out some of their qualifications , and what kind of persons they ought to be . a magistrat or ruler ought to be carefully chosen after the draught of scriptur-magistrats , exod. 18.21 . according to these properties , first , let him be an able man of body and mind to do the common-wealth service , not an ignorant , that can do nothing without the clerk. this ability comprehends three qualities , first , he must be a man of understanding , and must know the duties of his place , and know how to discern in all matters that comes before him , else he is unfit to be a magistrat : he must distinguish betwixt the weight and justice of the complaint and malice of the plaintiff , and must be one that can speak the law , and judge according to the rule thereof , not weak for abilities of government . thus william shepherd in his epistle to the reader before hi● book on the justice of peace , who hath set down these qualifications that none needs expres● them better , to which i referr the reader . secondly , he must be a man of courage , that will doe what ever he finds to be his duty , notwithstanding of all opposition from men , psal. 82.3 , 4. defend the poor and fatherless , deliver the poor and needy , and rid them out of the hand of the wicked . men that would perform such duties would needs be men o● spirit , for so doth the word defender and deliverer import : hence it is , that faithfull rulers are called patres patriae , fathers of their countrey , because defenders of their countrey , because defenders and deliverers . therefore one that will be boasted , and put from their duty by the threat of a greater person , or down cast of countenance from men , or the like ; is not fit to be a magistrat . men of spirit and courage will not be frighted from their duty by any thing , but will hazard all that is dearest to them in the discharge of a necessary duty , ( the rules of prudence being duely and discreetly observed ) and for this ought not to be judged as proud or willfull , for the work is the lords , and therefore hath the promise of his presence and out-bearing . 2. chron. 19.6 , 11. thirdly , an able man is a wise man , and this teacheth not onely the duties themselves , as to the matter , but reacheth the circumstances of them , as the time , place and manner of doing them . so prov. 8.15 . by me ( sayes wisdom ) kings reign , and princes decree justice . and vers . 20. i lead in the way of righteousness , in the midst of the paths of judgement . so that a man by wisdom will propose not onely a good end , and endeavour to perform a good duty , and also will use right means , and so circumstantiat it , as every very step and path of his way shall be in righteousnes . a wise man ponders all his actions . psal. 112.5 . he will guide his affairs with discretion , discerning when to doe , and when to forbear ; and the manner how , and how not every thing is to be done , thus much for an able man. fourthly , he must be a man fearing god , not a man wicked in life and conversation , for power without piety is but armed injustice , and if he be an active man that can do much , he will be sure to do much mischief . i think it a bad maxime , that an ill man may be a good magistrat , it seems to have more truth in it , that he that hath no care to reforme himself , will never have care to reforme others . magistrats are called gods , psal. 82.6 . i said ye are gods. and it were well that they did represent more of divine perfections , and it is a shamefull thing to see a man in honour have no likness to god in holiness . the emperour constantius said , when he had made a discovery of these courtiers who were easily tempted to forsake the christian religion , they can never be faithfull to me , that are not faithfull to god. it is the fear of god that makes a magistrat behave himself as one that god takes special notice of in all his administrations , and will be more affraid to do any wrong , than if all the men on earth were to judge him for his actions , ever remembring that word , psal. 82.1 . god standeth in the congregation of the mighty , he judgeth among the gods. thirdly , he should be a man of truth , that is , a plain upright man , that loves truth in himself and others , and counts it his duty and dignity to sift it out in all things , and having found it , to embrace and mantain it to the uttermost ; for he will easily prove a false friend that will at any time dare to falsifie truth for his friend : such men cannot be stable and firm in any good duty , neither will he stand for the truth and righteousness in an hour of temptation ▪ jam. 1.18 . the double minded man is unstable &c. fourthly , he must be a man hating covetousness , there is little ground to expect justice from such as are covetous , for prov. 28.21 . solomon sayes , for a piece of bread that man will transgress , that is , for any carnall advantage or gain that man will wrest justice , for coveto●sness is not onely idolatry , but it makes a judge an idol as psal. 115.5 , 6. that hath eyes and see not , eares and hear not , and a mouth but speaketh not . fifthly , he should be a just man , equall to all , not partiall nor respecting persons , this is holden out from 2. sam. 23.3 , 4. he that ruleth over men must be just , ruling in the f●ar of god , &c. rulers should doe as the lord himself would doe , 2. chron. 19.7 . with the lord there is no respect of persons , nor taking of gifts . sixthly , he must be a man , gentle , affable , not a froward , hasty or passionat man , for such will not patiently endure to hear many complaints of the poor . moses a great ruler is highly commended for his meekness , numb . 12.3 . so christ as a king is said to be meek . mat. 21.5 . seventhly , he should be an active man , and diligent in prosecution of duty and not lazie . eightly , he should be a man of good repute , and known amongst the people , as deut. 1.13.15 . not an obscure and mean man , for power will arme skill , i say not that every magistrat in a town must be worth so many thousands &c , but he had need to have so much as he may live honestly upon , without being necessitated to use any trade or employment unbeseeming his office. it was a fault amongst the carthaginians , justly taxed by aristotle , and esteemed to be one of the causes of the ruine of that great and mighty common-wealth , that in their choise of their magistrats , they had a greater regard to rich men then to men of worth and vertue , and their reason was , because men of great estates might the more easily attend the effaires of the common-wealth : therefore , when men are rich and vertuous also , they are preferable to all others . but this was a ready way to open a door to all avarice and fraud said that great philosopher , and to take the government from the noble and truely vertuous , and monopolize it into the hands of a few covetous ambitious rich men , whereas they might have easily , and in duty ought to have prevented it , by taking such order that the best men , and these of greatest abilities and vertues might not onely abstain from base callings and employments when they were actually magistrats , but also when they were out of office , so that corporation in their government might have been cured , and their ruin happily prevented . it were good policie to prefer the vertuous though meaner , than the vicious and unworthy though richer for it were fit he did excell other men though not in riches and estate , yet in wisdom , piety , courage and better qualifications . prov. 12.26 . the righteous is more excellent than his neighbour . it s such that prepares their heart for their duty and will make conscience of diligence therein , and seek the advancement of the interests of christ , the cities prosperity and the good of all and every one under their charge , and for this i would recomend to all magistrats to study these scriptures well . psal. 75.2 . psal. 101.8 . psal. 82. throughout . but some say , we cannot find magistrats with such qualifications in every town , and therefore we must take them as we have them . i answere , that should not hinder to set down all the best qualifications which are to be wished in magistrats , and which all good magistrats ought to study to have , and cities are to choise the best they can have , seeing the holy scriptures have recomended such qualifications , we ought to pray that god would raise up many such , and then we must do as we may , when we cannot do as we would . wherefore , having hinted at the good qualities magistrats should have , i shall also touch a little what a sad thing it is for a city to have ill men to be their rulers , because contraria juxta se posita clarius elucescunt . contraries set together , make both the more discernable . psal. 82.5 . david regrates this as a sad judgement in his time , that men in authority were ignorant and perverse , &c. they know not neither will they understand , they walk on in darkness : and therefore he subjoyns , all the foundations of the earth are out of course . they know not , this implyes not so much a blockish ignorance , for it is like they might have naturall parts like other men , but they know not that god stands among them , that his eye is on them taking speciall notice of their iniquity and injustice and bearing more favour to the wicked , nor to the poor and innocent . next , though they may read in the scriptures that god stands among them , and notices their doings , yet they will not understand , this holds out their perversness , and willfull atheism , as psal. 10.11 . he hath said in his heart , god hath forgotten : he hideth his face he will never see it . vers . 13. he hath said in his heart , thou wilt not require it , and therefore he boldly dares to do any injustice that his lusts will put him to , though it be really in the presence of his great judge . they walk on in darkness , though their duty were never so clearly hold out to them , they will not yeeld to the obedience of it , but walk on after the perverse dispositions of their own hearts , and their obstinate wills , and not the pure word of god , and his revealed will. in this caise the psalmists conclusion will hold , that all the foundations of the earth are out of course , that is , all judges and judicatories which ought to be refreshfull to the poor , needy and oppressed , that ought to strengthen the hands of them that do well , and to be a terrour to evil doers , are now running in a just contrary course and when the foundations are destroyed , what can the righteous doe , psal. 11.3 . sure they need look for no relief from all their oppressions and inj●ries from men , but commit themselves to god who is the helper of the fatherless , psal. 10.14 . and 12.5 . from all this it may be seen , the great blessing it is to a city or town to have faithfull , able and pious rulers , prov. 29.2 . when the righteous are in authority the people rejoyce , but when the wicked beareth rule , the people murmur . it is therefore an incumbent duty on all to pray , that the lord would raise many able men up in their respective towns , and also to seek it of god to make all the present incumbents that are in authority among them , to be such as they ought to be . chap. xx. concerning the duties and office of the provest . having recommended severall duties , which the magistrats and councill in generall are to take notice of , for the good and prosperity of the town , in th● foregoing part of this treatis● i presume next , to set down the duties of the severall magistrats and office-bearers , that use to be chosen out of the number of our councils at every years election . this is not that i presume to know these duties better than others , but for the satisfaction of new entrants , who have not had occasion to be acquainted with such employments . the first and chiefest magistrat in all burghs-royal is the provest . who in england is called mayor , the romans called him consul . quia bene rei-pub . consulat its his place to have a chief care of all the effaires and concernments of the common-wealth and therefore he is not onely to discharge this duty in ordinary and emergent affaires , but he is to forsee and provide for all things that may conduce to the good thereof ; and this care will require serious consideration of all that may advance the wellfare of the publick , or any part thereof , and of any danger or evill that may fall out to the damnage thereof , to prevent it and guard against it . secondly , it is his place to preceed in councill , and moderat the samen and to take speciall notice of all the referrs thereof that are to be done . thirdly , he is to conveen the councill upon extraordinary dayes , in all doubtsome matters or emergent occasions . fourthly , he is to oversee the rest of the magistrats and office-bearers , that they all doe their duties and acquit themselves diligently in all things that relate to their charge , for it s not enough to give good advice and counsell , if the samen be not put in execution tymeously and seasonably . fifthly , he is to be carefull that all the charters and evidents , and every paper that is of importance to the towns concernments be punctualy keeped in the towns-charter-chists , or where they ought to be preserved ; and not left in any other hands else where , least they may come to be missed , and be in seeking , to the great neglect of these that have the charge of keeping them , which ordinarly is the provest chiefly and some of the bailies . sixthly , and above all , he is to have a care he be just , innocent and of singular integrity in all his behaviour , for an ill example in a magistrat is far greater than a fault in inferiour persons : therefore the chiefest magistrat should have the chiefest care of his publick charge , and of his own personall behaviour . i need the less insist upon this which concerns him as the chiefest magistrat , having so fully holden furth the qualifications he should aim at in the last chapter . chap. xxi . concerning the office and duties of the bailies . the next office of magistracy is the bailies , whom the english call aldermen , and the ancient romans called praetores , quia praeerant . they have the same authority with the provest in all our burghs , as to decreets and execution of justice , hence it is , that some have called the provest primus balivorum . the bailies being four in number in all our chief burghs , their charge is one and the same though for order , and easing the burden in some things they are divided , and so they divide the town in four quarters , and every one of them hath his propper quarter alloted to him by choise or lots according to agreement . first , it is his duty to take up an exact account of all the families and persons living within his quarter , and to know what they are , if citizens or strangers , and what is their trade or occupation , and by what means they live and mantain themselves , that so no idle , suspect , or scandalous person be there without due notice taken . secondly , they are to wait ( per vices ) every one a moneth about in the towns publick house , or clerks-chamber thereof , so many hours every day , that is , from ten to twelve forenoon , and an hour or two afternoon , to hear complaints , examine parties and witnesses , and accordingly if there be cause to set down convictions , and bring them to the next ordinary councill-day , that the guilty persons be censured by the whole councill according to merit . thirdly , it s his duty to wait on the weekly and publick courts of judgement , which are but two dayes ordinarly every week with some , to wit , every tuesday and saturday of the week be ten of the clock in the forenoon , where he sits in the publick town-house as sole judge in all legal processes that are amongst citizens in civil differences , that are not peculiarly competent to be determined by the lords and senators of the colledge of justice , ( who are the supream judges in all civil controversies for the whole nation , ) and so in this place bills are read , summonds are called , officiars or serjants faithfull executions thereof carefully noticed and cleared ; agreements proposed , and reasonings pro and contra heard from the advocats of the respective parties , processes carried on to interloquitors and finall decreets , as is usuall before any other civil judge in the kingdom . in matters of great difficultie , the bailie is to have the advice and judgement of the towns consulter , who ought alwayes to be the most learned , judicious and discreet lawier that conveniently may be had . and yet the magistrat ought not wholly to captivat his judgement to what ever he advises , but is bound to ponder well , and advise if his information and judgement be according to the known laws and common pratticks of the nation , and according to conscience ; for this it concernes every magistrat that sits in judgement , to be a judicious and intelligent person , and one that is carefull to have knowledge of the acts of parliament and civil pratticks , lest otherwise he may ignorantly be made to pronounce decreet which is not according to equity and justice , through the partiality of the consulter , who possibly hath been solicited or brybed by the injurious partie , and therefore the consulter should be not onely able , but a person of singular integrity . next , i judge the whole magistrats , provest and bailies , should advert to all the particulars in the foregoing chapters , which are laid before the councill for the good of the town , as opportunities may be offered and occasion given , seeing the magistrats are as the hands , as well as the heads of the councill , to put in execution what ever they enact ; for though a council did make all the profitable acts and constitutions imaginable for the publick good , it were to small purpose if diligent and active magistrats be wanting . therefore , let magistrats notice these desireable qualifications , that they should be endued with , mentioned in the former chapter of this treatise . chap. xxii . concerning the office and duty of the dean of gild. the next office-bearer to the provest and bailies is the dean of gild , whose duty is according to the charge usually given him after his election . first , he is the towns-fiscall , and therefore is to accuse all fore-stallers of staple commodities , and see them convicted by the magistrats according to law , and so to be censured by the council at their next siting ; also , to accuse all other publick transgressors , as incroachers upon the towns priviledges or magistrats thereof , or brakers of the paenall statutes . secondly , he is to receive and count for all the fines and unlawes of the convicted persons censured by the councill , and if personall punishment be inflicted with an alternative , as to be redeemed therefrom by such a summ of money , he is to see that the sentence be executed accordingly , and cause the clerk insert it in the book of convicts and fines , otherwise he is to be countable for the money , it being alwayes to be supposed by the auditors of the towns counts , that where there is no evidence of inflicting of the personall punishment , that in that caise the dean of gild hath received the money as the alternative thereof , he is likewise to receive the fines of fore-stallers as convicted , and then censured by the councill . thirdly , he is to receive all the money for casualities belonging to his office ; as for instance , if there should come a stranger with any merchant commodities to the town , that could not be divided amongst the merchants according to their due proportions , but it would cause mistakes and strifes to arise , if some got thereof and others nothing , in which caice it is his duty to conveen the merchants by publick intimation with the hand bell , and represent the caice to them , and with their consent obtained , to roup the commodity , and what profit he gains more than he is to pay the stranger , he is to charge himself therewith , either amongst the common accidents belonging to the whole town , or in his count of the gild-box for their poor , as shall be condescended by the meeting . fourthly , he is to have speciall care that no privat person buy any forraign commodity from a stranger , but to buy it himself ; yet with all to be sure that it be taken off his hand at the rate agreed for and with profit , seeing strangers are not burgesses and not free to trade , therefore the stranger is holden to make his first offer to the dean of gild , and not to sell to any other privat burger till then , and that no privat person shall have it under wha● he offered it for to the dean of gild. fifthly , it is his duty to look carefully that the towns statutes be keept , as to the prices of all things which the council hath se● down for that year . sixthly , he is to see that all the weight and measures whether publick belonging to the town , as the publick weights in the weigh● house , barrells , kinkins , firlots , pecks elnes and metts : as also these of privat person in their trading and privat shops or malt-men , wine and ale-sellers , their elnes , stoups , weights , &c that all these be according to the act of parliament , and the severall standards appointed and approven thereby , for he being censor morum & delictorum hath a very great charge lying on him , and who ever they be that are faulty or short in these things he is to accuse them and see them convict and censured by the magistrats and councill , and therefore he ought to take in the help of his assessors , in consulting what abuses are to be noticed in the town , as being of alse great moment to his place as to give judgement in matters of controversie betwixt merchants in his court. seventhly , he is to be carefull to recommend to the councill , that they elect for his assessors the wisest , gravest and most experimented persons in the town , who will make conscience to assist him in the faithful discharge of his duty , and with those he is to keep court every week once and as occasion requires ; where he is to preceed for hearing and judging of all causes and differences betwixt merchants amongst themselves , and merchants and sea-men , according to jac. 6. parl. 13. c. 180. eightly , with these his assessors he is seriously to consider how to increase , preserve and distribute the money of the gild-box , for relief of decayed and poor bretheren of gild , their relicts and children , according to discretion and charity . ninthly , he is seriously to propose at the meeting of his court , if any have an overture to offer that may be made practicable , for promoving , securing and advancing the trade of merchandising in the town , and gravely to debate thereanent , and prosecute it after due deliberation according to reason and discretion . tenthly , he is to press them earnestly to consider , if there be any abuses or transgression of publick laws , or towns-statutes by any that keeps the weekly mercats in any kind of these things that contraveen the statutes , that redress may be made and the guilty punished , and for this , the towns-statutes for regulation of prices would every year be written in the gild-court-book , and often read for memories sake . eleventhly , he is to consider what reparation the towns-house or tolbooth , pack-house , weigh-house , or other publick works that belong onely to his charge requires , and to cause the same diligently be performed by the respective artists and tradesmen : and if there be any thing whereby the town may be better accommodated or adorned without profusness , or prodigall expenses , he is to think upon such things and propose them to the councill . by these foresaid particulars this charge may be seen to be very weighty , for if there should be found gross disorders in the town in matters relating to his office as before mentioned , it may be justly imputed to the neglect and unfaithfulness of the dean of gild more immediatly than to any other of the magistrats , though it still lyes upon them to put him to his duty if he shall be found wanting . but if a man shall worthily acquit himself in all duties belonging to this charge , which is without doubt one of the weightiest in the common-wealth ; he may remember how the famous roman cato was surnamed the censor , all his life and ever since also , not as if there had been none in that office but he : there were many be ore and after him in that charge at rome , but because he did discharge his duty most faithfully and diligently , he obtained that designation , as if in that office he had obtained a victory or gotten a triumph . even as scipio was sirnamed africanus , from these heroick victories he obtained there . wherefore , i shall onely say as paul the apostle said of an elder that ruled well , 1. tim. 5.17 . that he that dischargeth the office of dean of gild well , is to be counted worthy of double honour . chap. xxiii . concerning the office and duty of the towns-thesaurer . the next office-bearer is the thesaurer , of whose duty he is to receive a particular account yearly after his election from the towns-clerk . it is alwise expedient he be a person who can command ready money , for if his predecessor be super-expended he is to pay him at the term immediatly ensuing to the election , and to advance any money due to the towns-stipendiaries at the said term ; as also any other ordinary , and some times extraordinary advancements , which the publick good of the city may require . for which he is to gather in the towns propper revenues , whether they be fwes of lands within the freedom of the town , or as some towns have fwes of salmond-fishings , and all their ferm duties as of mills , pack-house and weigh-house , customs and tolls , and all other such like duties as are insert in his charge ; and if all these will not serve , he is to advertise the magistrats and council thereof , that either moneys belonging to the town , and resing be other persons may be called for , or an taxation to be imposed upon all the free citizens , may be tymously granted and collected for his satisfaction , before the year of his office expyre i must add for the encouragement of any person that shall be in this office , i never knew any a loser in their debursments for the town , unless it had been through their own neglect , in not timely taking up and using diligence against the per●ons and estates of those who are indebted to the town ; and if it fall out otherwise , it is a reflection upon the magistrats and councill as defective of discretion , in not timely provyd●ng for his satisfaction if the thesaurer have given them timely warning . there are severall other office-bearers next to these formerly mentioned , and they are according to the different constitutions of the severall royall-burghs in the kingdom , some have the charge of the kirk-works and bridge-works , some have the charge to the mortified-moneyes , and some have the charge of the hospitals , and some have the charge of the shoar or harbours , or works belonging to them , &c. but seeing the setled office-bearers that are fixed and constant in every royal-burgh are spoke to at some length , i need say little to the other , seeing every one of them are to have their distinct charge which is sufficient to instruct and direct them in their duty , and by consulting the magistrats and any other that are best skilled in their effairs , they may be counselled what to do and how to behave in all these concernments , as become judicious and discreet persons that are chosen to these employments . chap. xxiv . concerning the office and duty of the towns-clerk or recorder . though the clerk have no vote in councill , yet he is a necessary constituent member in every judicature and court , and ought to be a wise , sober and faithfull man : a person well acquainted with the laws both nationall and municipall ; eloquent in speech , an able pen-man , and one addicted to diligence in all the duties of his charge , and one that will make conscience to serve god and man in his station . he should be first , wise and judicious , that thereby he may discern what is legall and just , and expedient to be done , and if he perceive somethings done otherwise , he may modestly and reverently express it in councill , or to the magistrats as the caice requires . secondly , he should be sober , otherwayes he will ( as one puft up with self-conceit ) incroach upon the duty of a magistrat or counsellour , and take upon him to carry more highly than becomes , which is most unseemly in him , and seldom without a tacit reflection on those who should command him , to wit , the magistrats . thirdly , he should be faithfull , else it is like he may be carried with faction , and by●assed with respect of persons in his collecting and marking of votes , and conceiving and recording of acts which is most detestable , and were sufficient to render a man uncapable of all trust . fourthly , he should be well acquainted with the laws of the kingdom and municipal-laws of the town , that thereby he may order processes , and keep the courts for common pleas , where the bailies sit judges in due form , and happily may be capable according to his abilities to consult the bailies indifficult law caices , seeing it may fall out , and oftentymes de facto doth fall out , that some young men are made magistrats that are little acquainted with many such like things incumbent to his office , which an intelligent and discreet clerk may be often very instrumentall to help . fifthly , eloquent in speech , for it may fal● out that need require an able man to expres● the respects of the city to a prince , o● some eminent noble person , or to represen● the caise or cause the town hath to lay before him , and therefore it were very requisit● he were eloquent and confident to discharg● this duty , since it is to be supposed his breeding and education may prompt him more to it , then men , that are frequently magistrats i● cities , though otherwayes they may be jud●cious and su●ficiently qualified . sixthly , he would needs be an able pe● man , not onely for conceiving clearly acts an● decreets , but missive letters to persons of a● qualities , he onely and propperly being th● towns secretarie . seventhly , addicted to be diligent in all th● duties of his charge , because he is intrust● with recording all acts of councils , and all d●creets of bailies and dean of gild courts ; bo● and all such publick concernments in the tow● he is to beware of loytering or leaving hi● self behind in filling up of books and registers , and therefore the councill may deligat some in particular , to see that the minute of their acts be rightly drawn up and carefully looked to in their publick register before their next meeting . lastly , he would needs be one that makes conscience to serve god and man in his station , and if he hath this quality joyned to his other abilities , all the forementioned requisits will be the better performed . he will not covetously extortion any he hath to do with in his employment , but rest contented with such rewards as the magistrats and councill appoint for him according to his severall duties , which in discretion they ought to do , and not leave him to exact what he lists . chap. xxv . concerning some duties incumbent upon the magistrats joyntly . having briefly touched the duties of the council in severall chapters , and pointed at the office and duties of the magistrats and every office-bearer by themselves apart , i crave liberty to mention somethings that may concern the magistrats in common and jointly together . as first , it s ye that are to visit the schools at least every quarter , with such persons as ye think fit to call to go along with you for examina●ion of grammer-rules , themes , and interpretation and analizing of authors : and for this it were fit before ye went , 1. to cause read s●ch mortifications as concern the grammer-school , if there be any , that ye may discharge your trust according to conscience . 2 ly . at every visitation read over the laws of the school , which in some towns have been severall times printed , and are recorded in the publick register of the school . 3 ly . be carefull there be no partiality in distributing the praemia or rewards , that the best schollars may be most encouraged . 4 ly . that every visitation be particularly registred in the school-register , with the names of the visitors , and the schollars that gain the praemiums may set down their own names , with the ground upon which they did obtain the praemium , and thus the putting their names upon record , will be as considerable an encouragement as the praemium it self . 5 ly . the masters attendance and faithfull discharge of duty , and the observance of the appointed hours would be carefully enquyred into , and their exercise of discipline towards the schollars , and defects when they are found reproved and recorded in the register , that it be amended against the next visitation , and if so , the amendment to be recorded , and so the last blot taken off . this much for the visitation of schools , and if there be any further requisit , i leave it to your ryper considerations , as the constitution of schools in the several burghs may require . secondly , ye would need to meet together shortly after your election when every office-bearer hath got his charge from the clerk , and take every one a day a part , because this work would be done to purpose and not posted over , and cause read over his charge whom ye call first , and recommend it to his care and diligence what is incumbent : with all adding that in respect he will have more time and opportunity to perceive what is amiss under his charge , and what will be fit to be done by him , that upon discovery thereof he may acquaint the magistrats or councill that course may be taken therewith as shall be found most convenient . this would be done exactly with every office-bearer . thirdly , it would be a work very suitable to your place , to fall upon the most prudent , judicious and discreet men in the town , few or more as ye think fit , with some of your own number , and call them and lay it upon them authoritatively , to take notice of all differences , plyes , mistakes , discords or heart-burnings that fall out amongst neighbours to reconcile them ; and accordingly ye ought to call the parties , and shew them that as magistrats ye look upon your selves as engaged before god amongst other duties , to keep the citizens in peace and love one to another : and that timely notice be tak●n of all pleas in law , that expenses may be prevented and love and friendship preserved in the town . justitia & benignitate pax inter concives . if there be any incendiarie , or bad instrument in a town , let such be noticed and rebuked . fourthly , it were a commendable thing if ye that are magistrats would meet among yourselves once every week , and probably it might seem fit at an afternoon before your councill-day , that ye might prepare and rypen matter● that are under refer for the councill , or what else ye may think fitest to be done in the towns effaires , this would not onely shorten your work upon council-days , but would evidence that your actings were done with good advysement and deliberation . fifthly , it will be worth your consideration , to fall upon a way to make up a publick liberary of such books as are most fit for qualifying magistrats and persons in publick trust , such as these that treats of kingdoms and common-wealths &c , and laws thereof and histories , geographie , that treat of the manners of nations , our own acts of parliaments , regiam majestatem , and generally all other such like books that may become civil rulers to be acquainted with . but it may be there are but few acquainted with the latin-tongue or french-language , that afford severall such , as bodin that writs copiously of a common-wealth in french. so franciscus patricius senensis that writs of the institution of a common-wealth , and of the institution of a kingdom ; wendilini polititia , but these are in latine and are old ; but there are many modern that may be found at london . also books fit for a dean of gild and his assessors , as lex mercatoria , roberts map of commerce , the knowledge of the sea-laws , as the roll of oleron , or consolato of barcellona , &c. which being keept in some publick place , where the magistrats and counsellours ( by the persons that had the trust of them under inventour ) might at all occasions have access unto . sure i am , it were a very commendable thing to have such a liberary in your council-house which would be at hand , and continually under your eye and care , and might be made use of at any time convenient . sixthly , ye are with the rest of your neighbours of the town once every year to ryde your land-marches , both outward and inward marches ; the outward is that ye see that none of your neighbour-heritours encroach upon your freedom-land , nor upon the properties of your fewers . and the inward marches is , that ye may see none of the heritors of the burrow-roods encroach upon the high-wayes or beyond the bounds of your march-stones : and while i mention this , it were fit ye should take some effectuall cou●se with the high-wayes or avenues that come into the town , that horses with loads may come into the town all the seasons of the year , in winter as well as in summer and the rather , that ye have the advantage of the publick acts and orders for your assistance therein . seventhly , were it not worth your serious consideration , to fall upon some suitable way to stirr up all magistrats and privat persons to perform notable services to the wellfare of the town , and to bethink your selves what may be of greatest efficacie to encourage all sorts of persons thereto ? i think amongst many other wayes ( which ryper judgements may fall upon ) it might be a good one to imitate the lords own way , set down in mal. 3.16 . then they that feared the lord spoke often one to another , and the lord hearkened , and heard it , and a book of remembrance was written before him , for them that feared the lord , and thought upon his name . see vers . 17. and they shall be mine , saith the lord of hosts , &c. this was a bad time , for they that wrought wickedness were set up , and they that tempted god were delivered ; and the proud were called happy , and because it was rare to hear any speaking aright of the wayes of god , yet they that feared the lord did speak often together , and god hearkened and heard it , and insert it in a book of remembrance for time to come . for they shall be mine saith the lord of hosts , in that day when i make up my jewels , and i will spare them , as a man spareth his own son that serveth him . this was the way the lord took , even to record notable service , that in due time he might reward them . so when the lord blesses any man to do any notable act for the common good of the town , either for profit or reputation , i think such an act ought to be recorded even in a register apart , that they and theirs may find the more respect , if there fall an opportunity to manifest it in t●me to come . the puting mordecai's good service on record , was the occasion of his exaltation , the jews preservation , and hamans destru●tion . esther 2.23 . and 6.1 , 2 , 3. the romans and graecians had their own wayes for stirring up their citizens to all heroick acts , but they were deeply tainted with vain glory as their triumph and lawrel-crowns , as their corona ovalis of myrtle , for a victory gotten with little hazard , corona civica made with leaves of oake for him that saved a citizen from the enemie : so also corona populea , for young men that were found industrious and studious in the exercise of vertue which was made of poplar leaves . these were but triviall things , but much intended to gratifie vain glorious humours . but the puting notable services and acts upon record , is for the encouragement of the posterity , and others that may be observers thereof ; and therefore may be done with such solemn circumstances as may be thought fit and most consistent with modesty and sobriety so as the posterity may be influenced to the same , or such like exercises . rom. 13.3 , 4. they that do good are to have praise and rewards from rulers as well as evil doers are to be punished by them who are to be a terrour to such . if these had been recorded , there had been honourable mention made of many stately buildings and monuments in many of our royall-burghs , which long ere now , or shortly will be quyte forgotten . neither these artists and privat persons that do good service , or find out good inventions for profit or ornament to the town should be neglected . chap. xxvi . concerning iustice of peace courts , to be holden within burgh by the magistrats thereof . in the foregoing chapters i have presumed to suggest severall particulars which may conduce to advance the polilcy , good government and prosperity of a city or common-wealth as men , and in his i am to mind the rulers more particularly ●ow they shall order it as christians , in evi●enceing their zeall against sin , for the honour ●nd glory of him who is the prince of ●he kings of the earth ; and upon whose ●houlders the government is laid , from whom ●lone all blessings of peace , prosperity and pre●ervation can be expected , and without whose ●racious favour , no skill , power , wisdom or ●eans that men shall use can profit , according ●o psal. 127.1 . except the lord build the ●ouse they labour in vain that build it . except the lord keep the city , the watch-men waketh ●●t in vain . then seeing all our mercies spring from this fountain , it concerns all magistrats very near , to be carefull that no gross sin be indulged amongst them , such as whoring , drunkenness and swearing ; these are the most common scandalls unsuitable to the gospel and such as profess it ; that are to be found in cities and towns. these are sufficient to provock god to withdraw his mercies and to send sad plagues and rods ; and to confound all your counsells and blast your best endeavours : for suppressing whereof , i know no better outward mean then a conscientious , faithfull and diligent court of justice keeped by well principled magistrats , assisted by pious , honest and zealous constables weekly now i hope no tender christian will judge me too presumptuous , to offer to propose a rule to the royall-burrowes , how they shall bear down these common vices , seeing i can say it in sincerity , it is more from a respect that i owe to gods glory , and the reall regard i have to the honour and wellfare of all the burrowes of scotland , that i humbly hold out my mind unto them in this matter . therefore i wish that all magistrats in their respective towns , would choose out of every quarter of their town , four , five or six , well qualified , sober and discreet men , to be constables ( it were expedient that some of them were members of the church-session ) that with them they might meet and hold a court every week upon such a day as shall be judged most convenient , and there the constables may give in their delations upon those persons they have found guilty in whoredom , drunkenness or swearing , who may be ordered to be summoned against the next court day , that then and there they may be censured and punished according to their merit by fynes , imprisonment or so as the magistrats in their discretion shall think fit , not exceeding the censures imposed by acts of parliament . and for the more effectuall bearing down of swearing , it will be found fit that one of the constables with one of the towns officiars or serjants should go through the town on every mercat day per vices , when the countrey people are conveened , and greatest confluences of people to be seen ; and whatever person they find taking gods holy name in vain , or swearing any other oath , that they may immediatly exact some small money from every one that are found so doing : and after the mercat give in all that money to the collector , or to the magistrat , to be laid up for publick use , and a note thereof to be keept in the register . i know by experience , that in few moneths this way diligently gone about in a town where thousands of people have frequented the mercat place , there hath not the meanest oath been heard in that place ; but it is sadly to be regrated that this zeal waxes too soon cold . but if any shall object , that church-sessions or consistories are sufficient to take order with these evils ▪ and are fitter than any magistrat or civil court ? i answere , it is true , that ministers and church-sessions continue to do some thing of this according to the custome in countrey parishes , and some acts of parliament authorizing them therein ; but in this polemick-age when many things are controverted , which were not questioned formerly , it is found a matter very extrinsick to church-officers or guids , to meddle with any thing that is propper to the civil-magistrat , such as fynes , imprisonments , or corporall punishments , seeing magistrats within burghs may easily perform that duty , whereas in countrey parishes they cannot be so conveniently had . secondly , it may be easie to any understanding men to perceive , how heteroclit a thing it is to see preachers speaking to such delinquents more magisterially liker a civil magistrat than ministerially , menacing their persons and exacting on their purses , whereas it were more becoming ministers of the gospell to endeavour to awaken and convince their consciences which is their propper work , because the weapons of their warfare should not be carnall . 2. cor. 10.4 . thirdly , neither is this design to weaken their hands , but to strengthen them in their propper work ; seeing the end of both courts is to suppress sin , and it is the more likely to take the desired effect , when civil and ecclesiastick rulers do every one their duty in their propper sphere . it is more sutable to a christian magistrat , to execute justice by civill punishments upon delinquents with a tender compassionat heart , and to speak to the consciences of sinners , then for a preacher of the gospell to threaten corporall punishments ; tho they can pretend to no more zeall then james and john , luke . 9.54 , 55. whom christ rebuked , saying , ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of , for the son of man is not come to destroy mens lives , but to save them . but some may say , why may not this court take order with blood-wicks and ryots , and the breach of all other paenall-statutes ? i answere , not , because this were to encroach upon the priviledge of the dean of gild , whose duty it is to accuse and see these convicted and punished that are guilty of the breach of these civill-statutes , and to collect their fynes , but he used not to notice persons guilty of whoreing , swearing and drunkenness , but most ordinarly these were either laid over to church-sessions , or altogether neglected and little noticed , unless it was whoredom , and the unfitness and inexpediency of this is spoke to before , which i referr to the readers serious consideration . happy were every city and town in this land , if the zeal ( which in some places is often times too apparent for self-interest , ) were running in no other channell , but that which is pure , holy and harmless , for the honour of god , and the wellfare of souls , which in christian meekness and love might sweetly vent it self to the joy of gods spirit , edification of all pious and sober minded people and the conviction of the most stubborn and obstinat offenders . but as the best and most religious duties of gods worship may degenerat and turn to a form of godliness without the power , as 2. tim. 3.5 . which feed the fancy , and in some the itching ear with rhetoricall flowrishes and specious outsyde dresses . 2. tim. 4.3 , 4. rather then building up souls in the most holy faith . jude 20. so these means tho never so much strengthned and established by law , may through remissness and want of true zeal be also turned into a meer form , without any fruit or effect according to the temper and disposition of the instruments , or the iniquity of the times when sin lifts up its head and comes to that hight of arrogancy and pride , that it will not admit of a check : but however a duty remains a duty , and when we cannot do what we would , and impediments become insuperable , in magnis voluisse sat est . the great and many advantages that will or may accrue by a diligent prosecuting of this justice court weekly may be easily perceived , for thereby sin may be duely punished , swearing and all oaths banished out of the streets , and a considerable sum of money collected for the poor and other pious uses , the clerks pains liberally rewarded as a punctuall register keeped for that end may evidence , for , as uno dato absurdo multa sequuntur . so one good cometh never alone . chap. xxvii . concerning some considerations laid before the youth , in every city or corporation . having written at some length of the duty of rulers that have the government of burghs , i cannot close this treatise till i lay some considerations before the young-men of all our cities and towns in the nation , that are born and bred therein : as also , to the inhabitants and free-men of our cities . as to the youth , i would have them consider that they are the seed and seminarie of their respective corporations , and that the blessing and happiness of a town doth much depend upon them and their behaviour ; for if they be vertuous , wise and sober , they may procure in due time , a great commendation to the place of their nativity and residence ; if otherwayes , they do what in them ly to draw disgrace and contempt upon it . see prov. 11.11 . by the blessing of the upright the city is exalted , but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked . for by riotousness and debauchrie they ruine themselves , and make way for strangers to be inhabitants . see prov. 2.21 , 22 for the upright shall dwell in the land , and the perfect shall remain in it ; but the wicked shall be cut off from the earth , and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it . wherefore in the first place , i recommend to them in the fear of the lord , that they would above all make it their care to know god and his living motions in their hearts , whereby he bears witness against all the sins they are inclyned unto , and points out their duty and the way they should walk in , according to eccles. 12.1 . remember now thy creator in the dayes of thy youth , for tho they follow the corrupt wayes of their hearts in the dayes of their youth , yet ( sayes solomon ) knew thou for all these things god will bring thee into judgement . eccles. 11.9 . wherefore o young men ! be faithfull to the light of gods spirit in your hearts , for it s there ye shall here a word behind you , saying , this is the way walk ye in it : when ye turne to the right hand , and when ye turne to the left . this is a teacher which shall not be removed into a corner . isa. 30.20 , 21. and therefore , be much in reading and studying to know the mind of the lord in holy scripture , and joyn prayer therewith , and be serious n it , and let it not be a bare form ; but look up to god in all , and wait on him till thou obtain the desired blessing . see prov. 2.1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6. my son , if thou wilt rceive my words , and hide my commandments with thee ; so that thou encline thine ear unto-wisdom , and apply thine heart to understanding : yea , if thou cryest after knowledge and liftest up thy voice for understanding : if thou seekest her as silver , and searchest for her as for hid treasure : then shal● thou understand the fear of the lord , and find the knowledge of god. for the lord giveth wisdom : out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding . next i recommend to you to set your hearts to prosecute some vertuous calling or employment , whether it be merchandiseing or mechanick-trade , particularly ( in the lord order it ) to choise every one of you the trade of your father , though herein ye are not to be limited , but by a diligent and skillfull prosecution of some vertuous calling and employment , ye will not onely be able to preserve that portion left to you by your patents , but by the blessing of god to augment the samen to your great credit and reputation . the sooner ye betake your selves to your callings , the better . parents are oftentimes b●ame-worthy , that keep their sons at schools and universities though their talent and inclina●ion run not in that channell , till they are unit for breeding in their callings , whereas the knowledge of the languages and arithmetick mi●ht be sufficient to qualifie them , as men mee● to live in these civil employments fit for a c●tizen . it hath been observed frequently by wise and sober men of all ranks , that it hath been the ruin of burgers children that they followed not their fathers trade , but i● their parents purchased any considerable estate by their trade and industrie , the childre● ( bred up at a far higher rate both in appar●ll dyet and breeding , then their parents were or their trade could allow , ) became more high-minded , proud and vain , that they judged it below them to stoup to do many things which their parents did . hence thorow want of fit education , and foolish pride and conceitedness , many have become idle men , and spent their whole life without any calling , and so have become poor and left their children in a mean condition , or have been necessitated to go off the countrey to seek a livelyhood else where : from hence it needs not seem strange to see old families in cities wear quyt out , and to have no posterity to preserve any memory of them , for how soon any competent estate is gained by the parents , the children ( as i have said ) become vain and riotous oftentimes , and forbear any vertuous or commendable calling , and live an idle life , which does not a little reflect upon the rulers and their government ; and upon the reputation of the town . wendelin in his 2 d. book 12. chap. cites cicero in his 7 these pag. 198. saying , tamdiu duravit in civitate gloria , quamdiu adolescentibus romae vagari otiosis non licuit . that is , glory or renown remained in the city , so long as idlesit was not permitted to the youth in rome . it s reported that marcus aurelius the emperour in his time , did condemn all those to the publick works that walked in the mercat-place without the bage of their particular calling . if such laws had place , it would serve to abate the vain conceitedness in many that will not abase themselves to keep shops , or these employments which their predecessors did use ; and i● may be , were the first mean of their riseing , or coming to any respect in a world : forgeting that word , prov. 12.9 . he that is despised and hath a servant , is better then he that honoureth himself and lacketh bread , which plainly speaks out to this purpose , that it is far more commendable to trade and use any lawfull employment , and thereby to live comfortably , then out of a vain conceit of themselves of being above such mean employments , to spend their time idlely , and so bring inevitable want upon them and theirs : whereas it were far more commendable , to see the children of old-burgers continuing to follow their parents trade whereby they might prevent inevitable poverty , and spend their dayes with much comfort and peace both outwardly and inwardly , and give good example and means of education to their posterity , and retain the respect and esteem which their parents or themselves have gained in their city . these are the fruits of that vertue which is the product of a truely wise , humble and sober spirit . it is a matter worthy of consideration for all that are in power and authority in burghs and cities , who would rejoyce to see their fellow-citizens prosper , and vertue to grow amongst them , to give all due encouragement not onely to trade in generall , but particularly to such as evidence a vertuous disposition in following the trade and way of their parents and predecessors , especially seeing this hath been so little in use these many years , yea generations . and as this duty is not onely blessed with many personall and domestick advantages , to these that carefully and prudently follow the same , so it hath its own advantages for the good of the city . as first , the off-spring of old families will not be a burden to the town , which oftentimes gives occasion of reproach to latter-in-comers to upbraid them , and burie the vertues and good offices their worthy ancestors have manifested in their time , to the advantage of the common-wealth in utter oblivion . it could not but move the beholders to see m. hortalus , the onely stock of the noble hortensian family , to plead for charity with his four children in his hand , before the emperour tiberius , and the lords of the senate of rome , laying out his poverty before them , tho he was descended of so many consuls and dictators , yet through want of honest industrie , or that frugality requisit , had fallen into extream necessity : whereas if he , or his immediat parents had not through ambition wasted , or through idleness suffered their estates to ruine , as the emperors answer to him did insinuat , he and they might have prevented this shame . cor. tacitus lib. 2.8 . secondly , in like manner , by this the town is better furnished with able and understanding men for rule and government , and better management of the towns effairs , seeing it is evident , that these who are born and bred in the town , are for most part better educated in learning and brought up more carefully at schools then strangers , or countrey-people are , who for most part come from the countrey to be merchants and trades-men in burghs . as also , many towns-youths have occasion to be bred in forraign countries , and thereby to attain better accomplishments then others who never had such opportunities , so that they may be farr more usefull and skilfull for publick effaires then others . thirdly , by this old families may be continued to many generations through the blessing of god , if not in growing prosperity in wealth , credit and esteem ; at least in a continuance of what hath been already attained thereof , as hath been seen in many great and flourishing cities abroad , whereof abundance could be instanced . and this would wear out the common reproach put upon cities by the indiscreeter sort of gentrie , who look on them as carles and base spirited-men which is mostly occasioned by the frequent access of too many that are such who take up trafficking and merchandising , and supplie the roomes of many of these who think themselves too good to trade . and seeing there is nothing can make a man more properly a gentleman then vertue and descent from vertuous persons , by birth and antiquity joyned with a competent estate and living , and good accomplishments of the mind , our cities being furnished with the off-spring of old inhabitants well educated and bred , and vertuous in their callings and behaviours , might upon good ground be reputed gentlemen as well as many others that without question are held so ; seeing that merchandiseing in it self , may be esteemed as consistent with a gentleman as tillage of the land may be to these gentlemen who labour their own lands , which doubtless is very commendable in it self and becoming the greatest persons : seeing the spirit of god gives this counsell by a royall and princely hand as the pen-man , prov. 12.11 . he that tilleth his land shall be satisfied with bread , but he that followeth vain persons is void of understanding . the meaning whereof is very plain , preferring industrie in the most common and ordinary calling to an idle life , under what ever pretence of gentility , esteeming such in plain termes fools and void of understanding . fourthly , by this our cities and towns would be better furnished of publick spirits , that would be more tender of the good of the common-wealth ; for it is without all doubt , that when the inhabitants are born and bred in the town , and it may be , descended of severall generations of ancient citizens , they will not onely be more ready to lay out their pains and labour for the credit and good of the town , but will more willingly spend and be spent , yea , lay down their lives if called thereto , then probably can be expected from new-incomers , who cannot have that naturall love and respect to the place which others cannot but have . hence it is reported of the generous romans , that after the battell at cannae , when almost all ground of hope was lost of preserving rome , florus lib. 2. cap. 6. said , aerario deficiente privati opes suas reip. conferunt . that is , when the thesaurie was exhausted all the privat men bestowed their wealth upon the publict . i would have all citizens to consider the way and manner of the most flowrishing cities abroad , where traffick and all kind of trade is vigorously prosecuted to the great encrease of wealth and prosperity , and that by the most considerable men in their towns , some one way and some another by mechanick-trades , as well as by merchandiseing . let all inform themselves , of the industry of the inhabitants of the towns of the united-provinces , who by their pains and industry in their severall callings are become so great and powerfull , yea ●ormidable , that there is no king nor prince ●n europe but will honour them with the title ●f high and mighty lords : whereby they have ●aunted the pride of the spaniard , and more ●hen once coped with the most powerfull princes in christendom . let also the in●ustry of the hans-towns in germany , and ●he cities on the baltick sea be considered , and that it is that makes each of them so considerable as they are . it is reported , that the grand-seigneor a●ongst the turks , who is one of the greatest princes of the world , that even he must ●lso have some handy-trade , such is the re●pect , that even infidels put upon vertue , when ●any that are called christians are in this worse ●en infidels , who refuse to provide for their ●amilies by commendable and vertuous cal●●ngs and employments . by these and the ●ke considerations , i earnestly intreat that all ●ur inhabitants , of what ever rank or quality ●ey be , would seriously ponder the great im●ortance of trading , every one according to their talent and ability , and that the meanest may be encouraged in all fit wayes becoming , especially young men. the romans thought this much worth the noticeing , for they crowned publickly all young men that were studious of vertuous exercises and employments ; with corona populea , with poplar leaves as i touched in the twentyfifth chapter of this book . chap. xxviii . directed to the inhabitants , and free-men of cities . it may be easily beleeved , how much of the wellfare of every particular citizen depends upon the well-being of the publick estate and condition of their respective towns , for a city or common-wealth is but one body , as was well expressed by one showing it was as absurd for the members of the common-wealth to grudge to contribute their uttermost endeavours for the publick good , as it were for the members of the naturall body of a man to repyne against the stomack , because the hands work , the feet walk , and goe about business , &c , whereby the stomack might be brought to utter indigencie and want through famine , it is easie to conjecture how soon the hands should hang down , the feet wax feeble , the eyes become dim &c. the application of this is clear that it will be no otherwayes with every member of the common-wealth where the publick is neglected . it was the sense of this ( as i hinted before ) that made the generous romans after the bat●ell of cannae , every one both senators , knights , and privat-citizens , to cast in their privat-wealth into the common-thesaurie , when it ●as quite exhausted : yea , this made the tradesmen , as measons and carpenters &c , to employ their pains and labours without wages in that ●xtremity for the good and preservation of their city , by which publick spiritedness , they ●on recovered their pristine glory , renown and wealth , being thereby delivered ( by the ●rovidence of the almighty ) from that ●minent danger , which then did threaten ●eir utter ruine , by a powerfull and prevail●g enemie hanniball and his victorious army . see walter raleighs history , and florus . let all therefore consider , if a town or common-wealth be under a great decay and heavy burdens , that are like to ruine the same , if surable and seasonable remedies be not provided , whither it be not as needfull for citizens to deny themselves , and give up their private interests to be disposed of for relief of the publick , as it is for a diseased person that is threatned with death by a deadly disease , to submit to let blood and to purging evacuations , though the potion were never so bitter and unpleasant to the taste , especially if there be hope of health and life thereby . we must not be as children who are led meerly by sense , but as men who by reason can deny sense and force themselves to submit to such medicines as may effectuat the cure , though never so unpleasant to the pallat . it is therefore an unbeseeming thing in any , to grudge at any impositions that may relieve the publick burdens of the common-wealth . and surely those towns whose inhabitants voluntarly consent to such reliefs , without the imposition of the supream authority , are highly to be commended , as dundee and glasgow , such cannot but flowrish and prosper , as is to be seen by the considerable acquisitions which the city of glasgow hath made within thir few years , yea in building a new town at the mouth of their river with all accommodations for trade , &c. i could be glade that all the citizens in this kingdom would but inform themselves of the publick spiritedness of that people thir many years by gone , and emulat with them ; and to give but one instance of this . in the time when the englishes had the government of this nation , when gess and excyse was great ; they of their own accord did agree to pay six shillings-sterling upon every boll of malt , whereby they payed all the publick dues , and the whole sallaries of their stipendiaries ; and had their publick revenue of their thesaurie still free from any out-givings all that time , whereby they shortly after acquyred lands of great rents . an old-provest of that town j. g. told me , that though they were divyded among themselves in some things , yet if any one should make a motion that might tend to the publick good , they all agreed as one man. so that it may be said in some respect of them , as florus in his second book ; chap. 6. said of rome , after the battell of cannae . o populum dignum omnium faevore & admiratione hominum ! compulsus ad ultimos metus ab incepto non destitit : & de sua urbe solicitus . ( that is ) o people ! worthy of the favour and respect of all men ; and of their admiration ; though redacted to the last extremity ; yet carefull of their town . if such a spirit did act the citizens of our nation , our towns would be in a more prosperous condition by far then they are : and in order to this , i will lay before you this consideration , either ye are citizens born or not . if ye be natives ? it is but naturall to all men to love the place of their nativity . many have not thought their lives dear to them , and to undergo all perills and hazards for the honour and well-being thereof , according to that old saying . dulce est pro patria mori . it is gratefull to die for their native-countrey . and they that are not born , but now made free-citizens may mind that their children are born there , and parents for most part travell and toyl for their children , and so in freeing the publick debts and burdens , ye free your posterity of burdens . but some possibly may jealous the administration of their magistrats as unfaithfull , &c. to which i can say , ( having severall years born office in our own town , ) i never knew any cause for such a thought , nor that ever a magistrat was so base as to be guilty of such a crime , which the romans called , crimen peculatus : when magistrats or others took of the publick money to make their personall gain , which is to be abhored by god and man , and is enough to procure a curse upon them and their posterity , who ever should be guilty of such baseness . i have read of severall brave men amongst those we call heathens , that have been persons of greatest trust , who have been so faithfull , that rather then appropriat of the publick to their privat use , they have preferred to dye poor : so that they have been buried on the publick expense , and their children educated and provyded by the same means . it ought to be far more abhorrent to these that profess christianity . but because it is frequent with many to admit of a dissatisfaction with their rulers , and apprehend their might be had many fitter to govern then they who are present incumbents , i suppose if they had their choise , it would fare with them as it did with the people of capua , when they were about to have murthered their whole senat , had not clavius pacuvius , who had great respect amongst the people desired them ( being conveened in a publick assembly ) to fall upon the choise of a new senat before they destroyed the old. there was not a man that any could name , but he was rejected by the multitude for some fault or other , or as base and unworthie : wherefore he prevailed with them to spare the senators and to take a new triall of them . i apprehend it would be even so in many cities , where the people are most dissatisfied with their present magistrats are they could agree amongst themselves . therefore seeing the best of men are but men , let none discover their fathers nakedness , but patiently and charitably bear with human infirmities , and all concur in their stations , to seek the wellfare of the publick . chap. xxix . some overtures , humbly offered to the nobles and gentrie of the several shires in scotland . having written some memorialls for the burghs of this nation , i crave favour , that i may with freedom make this address to you , in laying humbly before you suggestions , which being better pollished by your mature and sharper understandings , may tend to the universall good of the whole kingdom . in order to which . i wish you all consider , that its the fear of the lord that teacheth wisdom , without which no project nor purpose can attain a blessed success , or arrive at a happy end . it s onely they that acknowledge the lord , that have the promise to be directed and guided in their paths . it were a great mercy to this land , if this were practically beleeved by all , especially by you who may greatly influence your inferiours , and it were but a sutable effect of that gospel-light which hath shined in most parts of this nation since the reformation , and to stir you up the more effectually to this . look back and consider the many mercies the lord god hath bestowed upon this land since ever we were a people , that though we be far short of many other nations in outward advantages ; yet it hath been our happiness to receive both honour and spirituall blessings beyond the most in europe , for both which i shall give some instances . as for honour , it was the glory of our naion after long and many bloody conflicts with the romans , to set bounds to the roman empire , that we had matter to say as god himself said to the sea , job 38.11 . hitherto shalt thou come , but no further : and here shall thy proud waves be stayed . though it s our duty to say as psal. 115.1 . not unto us o lord , not unto us , but unto thy name give glory . for though this was the lords mercie , yet he made use of the valour and conduct of that renowned king corbredus , surnamed galdus , the twentyfirst king of scotland , and the courage and valiant indefatigability of your noble ancestors , so that the roman-armie consisting of above ten legions , or sixty thousand men , when they first came under the command of julius agricola , they were so beaten and worn out by the scots and pights , that they came to twenty thousand , who came to be so beleaguered within their trenches , and brought to that straite , that they sent their ambassadors to our king who commanded in chief , which because it may be looked upon as a greater glory ( in the vulgar esteem ) then any other kingdom in europe can boast of : i have thought fit to insert their address and speach here , as not unworthy of record which is as followeth . upon this occasion , ( having granted them liberty and cessation of armes ) there came four grave and venerable men from the roman-camp , ( cloathed with roman-gowns , no less decent then gorgious , ) to these confederated kings sitting in the assembly of the nobility of both nations , when they approached to the presence of the kings , did prostrat themselves upon the ground : who ( immediatly at the command of these kings , being raised up ) one of them who was appointed as spoksman , said . most invincible princes , the roman-army and their commanders , though conquerors ●f the world , implores your favour : whom they ●ave these many years prosecuted by hostile-war , ●nd humbly begs your pardon and mercy . neither ●ould there any thing fall out amongst such glorious actions for your honour and renown , or more wor●hy of memory amongst your posterity , then that the roman-ambassadors should have fallen down at our feet , to whom all kings and people being sub●ued are forced to pay obedience . ye have over●ome us we acknowledge , with you is the power of ●ur life and death , by reason of the anger of the gods whom we have found to be highly offended for ●ac war which we have most unjustly engaged you ●●to . use these at your own pleasure , so as 〈◊〉 may advance your glory and renown . all we ●eg is , that ye may overcome your wrath , who have ●vercome the conquerors of the world. or if ye ●ill rather choose to be subdued by your passion , kill ●very one of us to the last man , for we cannot deny ●●●t we have deserved it . but it is a small matter ●●at ye who inhabit the uttermost ends of the earth , ●ould conquer by your valour all other mortalls , by ●hich ye do transcend the highest pitch of human ●ower : but it will be yet more when ye have over●●me many more powerfull , if yet ye shall preserve ●ive so many brave men . we have felt the force of your armes , we have felt the wrath of the gods , we humbly implore we may feel your mercy and clemency , and because we acknowledge our selves beaten and rendered unto you , what ever conditions of peace ye shall appoint us , we are willingly to accept . these things being said , they all weeping did throw themselves down at the feet of thes● kings , and with many tears prayed they would spare their conquered and submissive petitioners ▪ and intreated they might be satisfied , that th● gods had so aboundantly avenged themselve● upon them for this unjust war , and the impious wrongs they had done unto them . this is particularly related by our scots historian hector boyes , in the life of this king corbr●dus galdus , who asserts the most he had se● down concerning our conflicts and wars wit● the romans , he had it not onely from th● famous brittish historians , but from the roma● writters themselves ; particularly , from co●nelius tacitus , lampridius , herodianus , paul● diaconus , elius spartanus , strabo , &c : as ma● be seen in boyes his epistle dedicatory to k. jam●● the fifth . now i suppose , that neither france , spain ▪ germany , nor england , &c : can boast of suc● an honour as the lord god did he● by put upon this our nation , according a● honour is ordinarly esteemed by the most 〈◊〉 people of the world . scaliger in his epitaph upon geo. buchanan our ●ountrey-man , and our historian closes it up ●ith thir two lynes , imperii fuerat romani scotia limes , romani scotia eloquii finis erit . again , as to spirituall blessings , consider , ●cotland was amongst the first of the nations ●ho embraced the christian-religion , which ●as at the time when donald the first did reign 〈◊〉 scotland , about the year 187 after christ's ●irth . and also , were amongst the first that ●id forsake the idolatrie and superstition of the roman-antichrist , and all this by the speciall mercy and providence of god , who all a●●ngst hath given eminent evidences of his great ●egard and compassion unto scotland , both be●ore christianity was embraced , and when we ●ere heathens : and also , when we were lying ●nder the darkness of popish-delusions , as was ●imessed by our deliverances from the tyrra●y of the danes , obtained by signall victories ●nder severall of our kings , of some of which ●he famous predecessors of the families of ●rroll and marischall were eminently instru●entall at luncartie and barrie . and from the powerfull invasions of the ●orvegians under acio , who was defeated by king alexander the third : and from the mi●●culous deliverances , from the unjust and hor●●d devastations by the edwards the first , second and third of england : by the incomparable valour of william wallace , and that never enough admired prowess and conduct of that famous and most renowned king , robert bruce . wherefore it remaineth , that when the lord god hath blessed you with times of peace and tranquillity , that ye should say with king david , psal. 116.12 . what shall we render unto the lord for all his benefits towards us , that we are not under the power and constant fear and slavery of cruell and enraged enemies , killing our children and dear relations , ravishing our virgins , wives and daughters , spoiling our goods , burning our houses , depopulating our towns and cities , and in a word ruining , laying desolat our countrey without inhabitants . this hath been the lot of many of your ancestors in sundrie former generations , and should not these considerations move and excite you to bethink yourselves , what shall we do for the honour of the god of our mercies , for the good of our native-countrey in these our dayes , and for the advantage of our children and posterity in succeeding generations . though i doubt not , but there are many brave and eminent spirits amongst the nobility and gentry of scotland , that can judge wha● ●hings are most conducible to all these hono●able ends now mentioned ; yet under favour , ●nd with your liberty , i shall presume to men●●on a few things unto you . it is reported by plutarch in the life of theseus ●●at such was the barbaritie of ancient times , ●●at men placed their vertue and valour in kill●●g , slaughtering and destroying of men , and 〈◊〉 best in oppressing of others and making of ●●●ves , yea , it is to be regrated , that in our ●●me , they are by many reckoned the sharpest ●●d prettiest men , that can over-reach and go ●●yond or oppress their peaceable neighbours . whereas the doctrine of christianity teach●●h its professors more myld and righteous ●●ings , not to render evil for evil : thes. 5.15 . ●ath . 5.44 . much less to do any evil with●●t a cause . the primitive christians were 〈◊〉 a far other spirit , as is testified by origen , ●●stin martyr , tertulian in their apologies , par●●●ularly by that famous letter which marcus ●●relius antoninus emperour wrote to the senat ●●d people of rome , wherein he showes , that 〈◊〉 his great distress he had called the christians 〈◊〉 his assistance , who came without weapons , ●●munition , armour or trumpet ; as men ab●●ing such preparation or furnitur , but onely ●●●●sfied in the trust of their god , whom they ●●●ry about with them in their consciences . this 〈◊〉 far contrary to the old barbaritie , which alace hath revived to the full , under the defection and apostacy from the purity and simplicity of christianity , as is evident by the fr●quent and bloody wars amongst both papists an● protestants . but now it is that the lord god i● calling for these illustrious and splendid ve●tues , which are most sutable and congru●● to the spirit and light of the gospell , whic● if they were more in esteem and practice , y●● should have little use for that valour and ve●tue which heathens and infidels do so muc● cry up and admire . if ye were laying you● selves out to honour god , by seeking aft●● truth , and doing righteousness , the lord god would doubtless employ his power an● providence to preserve you in peace and pro●perity . exod. 34.23 , 24. and in order to this , it were requisit in th● first place , that the sheriff head courts in eve●● shyre ( which meet twice or thrice every year were improven to better purpose , then me●●ly to cite the names and to make the absen● lyable to fynes , and these present to give mone● upon instruments , both which might be do●● to good purpose , if the courts when co●veened did improve their meetings to bett●● ends as first , every court would notice the di●cords within their respective shyres and p●●vinces , for what ever cause the difference were , ●hich was a speciall effair that some of the best ●f our kings did ever much concern them●elves in , to agree all discords amongst sub●●cts that were at variance . see buchanan , in ●●e beginning of the reign of k. gregorius , ●ag . 177. and to forbear mentioning more , k. james the sixth took much pains in this to ●ood purpose , see spotswood , pag. 364. see ●sal . 133.1 . throughout , behold , how good , ●●d how pleasant it is , for brethren to dwell to●●ther in unitie , &c. so these courts might appoint fit persons , ●●ch as are preferable for prudence and skill 〈◊〉 the effair , or are of most probable qua●●y as near in relation , or in great favour and ●●spect with the parties , so the difference may 〈◊〉 taken away , friendship and union made 〈◊〉 , unnecessary charge and expense prevented 〈◊〉 being heard at law , that so there might 〈◊〉 no distance , heart burning , rancour or ●ath in any of the respective shyres : but love ●●d mutuall friendship , which is one of the ●●iefest ends and designs of the law of god ●●d men. this would transcend the laws of justice ●●d righteousness , for where true love and ●eaceable and friendly disposition were in the ●●minion , parties would rather condescend to 〈◊〉 losers of their due right , then brake the ●●s of friendship and love . it is reported by some of the historians of our nation , to the great commendation of the old-barrons of the mearns that there never fell out any debate amongst them , but their neighbours did so concern with it , that they took no respit till the matter was put to a friendly close . if this were the custom and way of the whole nation , what a mercy it would be to our countrey and whole kingdom ? what great advantage it would be to the publick and to particular families ? it is easie for every one to judge . concordia res parvae crescunt , discordia maximae dilabuntur . this was an old saying in salustius , and holds true in all ages and in all respects . next , it were fit that in these head-courts consideration were carefully and cordially had of such acts of parliament , whether old or late , that did most concern the good of the countrey , and in order thereto , that some of the most fit persons , and of most publick spirits and activity in every corner and precinct of the respective shyres , were appointed to see these put in execution , and to report at the next head-court their diligence . first , if this were , our hye-wayes for travellers would be neatly repared . secondly , bridges , where most danger is would be builded carefully up , though upon the account of the publick charge in each respective province . thirdly , sturdy-beggars , theeves , robbers , ●dle-persons notably supprest . fourthly , our countrey in planting , parking , hedging and dycking beautifully trimmed . fifthly , all pollicie , as dove-houses , war●ands , or cunningers , commendably advanced . sixthly , the poor in every parish conscien●●ously provyded . seventhly , the young-ones put to schooles and trades timely and in fit season , and all vertue , ●iety and good order should eminently flowrish . eightly , scandalous and provocking sins , ●s drunkenness , whooring , swearing and oaths , ●nd idle gaming at cardes and dyce &c , punc●●ally punished . whereby the lord god of all our ●ercies would graciously be pleased to multi●●y his blessings of peace , plenty and prospe●●ty upon us , according to isa. 62.4 . thou ●●alt no more be termed forsaken , neither shall thy ●●nd any more be termed desolate ; but thou shalt be ●●lled hephzibah , and thy land benlah , for the ●ord delyteth in thee , and thy land shall be ●arried . it is well worth the noticeing , what bodin 〈◊〉 his third book of his republick , chap. 7. pag. ●2 . writs of the province of languedock in france at the nobility and gentry of that countrey , in their conventions , had ordered 1200 livers , or an hundred pound sterling yearly , for training up the youth of that whole countrey in the city of nimes : besides what was done by other societies , and that they builded brave fortresses , or forts , in the kingdom . that they caused execute buzac who was the most noble and notable volens or robber in that age , whom neither judge nor magistrat , no nor the parliament of tholouse it self could get any order taken with . also they appointed other great sums , for other brave uses and ends of publick concernment . and so goeth on to shew the great profit which accrues to a nation or countrey by such conventions and societies : and showes that these were better governed in the cantons of the switzers then in any other part of the world ; for every canton , yea every rank of men , as merchants and trades had their common and general meetings there , for the good of the publick . also , that the ten circuits of the empire of germany have their distinct meetings a part , all which are in such order and correspondence one with another , that the empyre ( sayes he ) would have long agoe been brought to ruine , had not this policy and government prevented it . it were much to be wished that there were appointed dyers of meeting from that love and friendship which ought to be amongst neighbours and relations , in the bounds of every presbitry or parish , and it were expedient , that some justice of peace might be present , where conveniently they may be had , to confer what might tend to the good of the bounds within their precincts , and accordingly ●o put such things in practice , and to prepare overtures at every such meeting for the good of ●he whole . this questionless would greatly ●end to the good of the land , and would ●ypen matters not onely for more publick conventions ; but also for a parliament , when ●uch occasion offered , or for any other meet●ngs which the kings councill appoints , as they ●id lately for repairing hye-wayes and bridges . every parish might have their heritors , with ●uch others of the discreetest of their yeomanrie , ●o meet once or twise every moneth in a con●enient house , unless it be in winter ; which ●ere a mean to preserve freedom and friendship ●n the parish : where they might confer at large ●nent the general concernments thereof as the ●roportioning of the cess or other subsidies , ●nd laying down a way for a publick purse , ●r defraying publick charges of the parish , ●roviding for the poor , mending hye-wayes , bridges and calsies within their bounds , and ●●king course with idle persons . numa pompilius ; king and law-giver to the ●omans ; solon and lycurgus these graecian-law●●vers , were much for such meetings and fraternities , and all such means as might tend to beget and confirm friendship and love , and advance the common interest ; see plutarch on solon and lycurgus lives . these are but a few hints of such vertuous employments and improvments as our great men might lay themselves out in , which is humbly conceived might tend much to the honour of god , good of the countrey , and profit of posterity , if effectually prosecuted . but because many great wits are ready to reject every motion which flowes not from themselves , or from some of a higher station then they are , and for●this end raise objections against such things . i shall answere this with one singular observation of the forementioned french author , bodinus in his fourth book pag. 593. there are ( sayes he ) two remarkable faults , which oftentimes men of sharpest spirits fall into concerning the government of societies , &c. one is , that they look narrowly to the inconvenients of a law , or of a good motion , without considering the good that may flow from it . the other is , they run from one extream to another . so i shall wish the benefits which may flow from this , may be laid in the ballance against any inconvenients which men can imagin can follow upon this . next , i wish such may not run from the diligent and carefull observation of such good overtures and profitable motions , to a supine and totall neglect of all that may tend to the glory of god , good of the countrey , and of their posterity : but rather ( as i hinted in the beginning ) may improve their accutest parts , and more noble enduements , to fall upon a way of prosecuting these honorable ends ●o the compleatest period . in which caice , i have attained all i ever aimed at , being a true zelot of the publick good , and in soberness ●hall close with one that was a good countrey-man in his time , who said , vive , vale si quid novisti rectius istis , candidus imperti , si non his utere mecum . englished thus . live and farewell if better things thou knows , impairt them freely , if not make use of those . philopoliteius . a succinct survey of the famous city of aberdeen , with its situation , description , antiquity , fidelity and loyalty to their soveraignes . as also , the gracious rewards conferred thereon , and the signall evidences of honour put upon many chief magistrats thereof . with a catalogue of them since the city was burn'd for loyalty , about the year 1330. together with the epigrams of arthur johnstoun doctor of medicin upon the said city , and severall other of the principall royall-burghs in this ancient kingdom of scotland : translated into english by i b. by a zealous lover of bon-accord 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . aberdeen , printed by iohn forbes 1685. bon accord insignia vrbis abredonie psal. 87 4. i will make mention of rahab , and babylon , to them that know me ; behold philistia , and tyre , with ethiopia : this man was born there . vers 6. the lord shall count when he writeth up the people , that this man was born there . prov. 17.6 . the glory of children are their fathers . philip. 4.8 . finally , brethren , whatsoever things are true , whatsoever things are honest , whatsoever things are just , whatsoever things are pure , whatsoever things are lovely , whatsoever things are of good report : if there be any vertue , and if there be any praise , think on these things . unto the right honorable , sir george skene of fintray , lord provest . alexr. alexander , bailie . walter robertson bailie . alexander gordon , bailie . andrew mitchell , bailie . patrick gellie dean of gild , john gordon thesaurer , and to the rest of the honorable councill of the city of aberdeen . right honorable , it hath been the ●avourable advantage and signall providence that hath attended aberdeen for many ages , that it hath had a honorable character among the burghs of scotland , ( which i wish may never declyne ) the sense whereof made me recollect what i knew or had read concerning it , at least since the fatall overthrow thereof in the dayes of king david bruce about the year 1330 , by the totall burning of it , and the universall slaughter of those that did not escape . and finding that sir robert sibbald , dr. of phisick the kings geographer , by a warrant from authority ; had emitted an advertisement for a true information of the several shyres , burghs , universities &c , of this kingdom . i looked on it as a fit opportunity to communicat what i knew unto ●ou , that ye might dispose thereof ●s ye should see meet . i have there●ore set down a survey of aberdeen at some length , that all may see ●nd perceive what a city it is , and ●ath been ; not onely for conside●able buildings , but also as to the ●enown of its inhabitants . if there ●e ought judged worthy of praise ●r remark , ye may look upon that ●s an incitement for imitation , and ● quickning motive for your pos●erity to endeavour a studious pro●ress in the commendable wayes of vertue ; for here may be seen the ●minent evidences of that loyaltie which was conspicuous in your ancestors : also , the princely rewards and royall marks our ●overaignes did bestow upon your city and magistrats . here also may be seen the assiduous care and diligence our magistrats have at all occasions evidenced for advanceing vertue , and what might tend to the honour and reputation of the city . if rome had matter to glory of her heroes in severall generations , aberdeen hath not wanted occasion to speak well of many of her rulers in diverse ages ? i love not to be guilty of giving the least appearance of evil , or what may savour of flatterie or ostentation . one thing i aim at , is , that ye may out-vye all that have gone before you in vertue , wisdom , fidelity , and care of the wellfare of your common-wealth . and in a word , that i may say as the wise-man said of the vertuous woman , that your own works may praise you in the gates , which is the earnest desire , of right honorable a cordiall well-wisher to the prosperity , true honour and wellfare of aberdeen , and all its rulers . philopoliteius . epistle to the reader . courteous reader , it may be lookt upon by some , that this survey of aberdeen may savour of ostentation , seeing there are few , or perhaps no other town in the kingdom that is descryved , or hath any of their acts published : to which i may say , that such vanity in so doing far from my mind , seeing there is nothing more ordinarie amongst all nations , then to set down what hath been the most remarkable providences of god to their countries and places of their nativity ; whereby posterity may observe the mercies of the lord to their ancestors ; the neglect or ommission of such thankfull remembrances is threatened psal. 28.5 . because they regard not the works of the lord , nor the operations of his hands , he shall destroy them and not build them up . amongst the many sins for which the lord is pleading a controversie with this nation , this may have its own weight , that we are not thankfull , that the lord did furnish us with well qualified and able men to bear rule in cities and shyres , which when they are removed without successors sutable to fill their roomes , is no small stroak on a nation , according to isa. 3.1 2 , 3. for behold , the lord , the lord of hosts will take away from jerusalem , the mighty men , and the man of war , the judge and the prophet , the prudent and the ancient , the captain of ●iftie and the honorable man , the counsellor and the cunning artificer , and the eloquent orator . wherefore , i hope none will misconstruct me ●or making a respectful remembrance of these whom the lord honoured and doth at this time honour ● be worthy magistrats of our town in their day and generation , for it is said prov. 17.6 . the glory of children are their fathers . another reason is , that it may be , these who are in authority in the nation over us , nay be induced to have a respect to some great persons , who in their place deserve to be honored with all that respect which is due , yet not to the ●rejudice of the interest of burghs : to obviat which judge it not amiss to shew forth what good sub●●cts , and of what due esteem a burgh or city ●ight to be had in ; that in times of greatest need ●ave been so usefull in their soveraignes-service , ●● particularly aberdeen hath been many times , ●● history and records can witness . it were to be wished , that all the most considerable burghs in this kingdom , would set apart some of their ablest men to collect out of their ancient records , what hath been most remarkable in their towns in former ages , or at present ; that the nation might be convinced of their usefulness , and of that respect and honour that ought to be put upon them , so as it might be seen , they ought not to be born down or discouraged when any weighty concernment of theirs comes in question . upon these accompts i have made this short essay , hoping at least it may be a motive , to induce and stir up a more accurat pen to be employed in this or the like ; not onely in reference to our city , but also , to the rest of the cities and towns of the nation , who without vanity , shall subscryve my self at present according to truth philopoliteius . a succinct survey of the famous city of aberdeen . chap. i. concerning the situation of aberdeen , its longitude and latitude . aberdeen is a city in the north of scotland , near the mouth of the river of dee , within the province of marr , which is a part of the shyre thereof . it lyeth within the north temperat zone , though much inclyning to the colder side thereof , being much nigher to the pole then to the equinoctiall-line ; for its latitude or distance from the equinoctiall-line , is 57 degrees and 10 minuts , and its distance from the pole is onely 32 degrees and 50 minuts . it s longitude , or distance from the meridian of the canarie islands , is 22 degrees and 30 minuts . it is a parallell , or equall latitude and climate with the merchant-isles in nova-britannia in america , the southmost cape in norway , called the noas of norway , stockholme in swedland , lavonia , and the middle parts of russia , and territories of muscovia in europe , the cosacks , and other middle countries in tartary , in asia . in which parallell , the longest day is of length in sun-shine 17 hours , and 40 minuts ; being within the tenth climate , reckning the first climate to begin where the longest day is 13 hours long , and every climat to be that space in latitude , wherein the longest day is half an hour longer , and consequently the length of the shortest day at aberdeen is 6 hours , and 20 minuts , viz. as much as the longest day wants of 24 hours . from the first day of the moneth may to the twentytwo day of july , it is constant day light , the sky all that time never fully setting even at midnight , for the twi-light never goeth fully down till the sun be 16 degrees under the horizon : whereas all that time at aberdeen , he is not so low at midnight , the suns depression below the horizon in the longest day , being onely 9 degrees 20 minuts at midnight , and his meridian-hight in the shortest day just as much . his meridian-altitude in the equinoctial-line , is here 32 degrees , 50 minuts , and the greatest hight the sun ever comes to at aberdeen in the longest day at 12 hours , is onely 56 degrees and 20 minuts , near a degree less then the hight of the pole on the north-side . 560 myles be-north aberdeen , the frozen-zone begins , where , on the longest day the sun doth not set at all , nor ryseth in the shortest : the fixt-stars within 57 degrees 10 minuts of the north-pole do here never set , and these within as much of the south do here never rise nor appear . it lyeth almost directly under the middlemost star of the great boar's tail , and under the constellation of cassiopeia . a degree of latitude is , as over all the earth , sixty scots miles from south to north , and a degree of longitude in this parallell , is onely 32 miles , answering to a degree of latitude , by ●eason the circles of longitude grow allwayes ●esser the nearer to the pole. it flowes at aberdeen south and by west , and north and by east , and consequently is full-sea at the change and full-moon at 12 hours and 45 minuts . the sun at his greatest hight wants 33 degrees 40 minuts from being verticall at aberdeen . this much for the longitude and latitude and the appendixes thereof . chap. ii. concerning the description of aberdeen . aberdeen is pleasantly seated upon three hills , which are all joyned together by easie descents , so as in the middle of the streets they are scarcely discernable . it is of circuit about 2141 double spaces , through which six gates enter , being built as it presently stands , it is difficult to be fortified , in the ordinary and regular way of fortifications , though it hath been diverse times attempted in this our age since the late troubles began . in the beginning of the late troubles , it was able to set forth eight hundred men in good array and military furniture to the fields , well trained for service when called thereto . it being seated between the rivers of dee and don , is said by george buchannan , our scots-historiographer , to be piscatu salmonum nobilis , that is , excellent , or famous for salmond-fishing . as for the accommodations and ornaments of our city , we have an indifferent good entrie to our harbour for ships , especially since that great ston called craig metellan was raised up out of the mouth of the river of dee , and transported out of the current thereof , so that now , ships can incurr no damnage , which was done by the renowned art and industrie of that ingenious and vertuous citizen , david anderson : as also , by that considerable bulwark , the magistrats of late years caused erect , at the mouth of the south-side of the river ; extending up the shoar such a great length , so that very great ships may enter and be safely preserved when they are in , without hazard . it will not be impropper here to insert this following information , for the benefit of seamen or strangers , who may have occasion to come by sea to aberdeen , which skillfull mariners have observed and been at pains to sett about at the magistrats desire , which is as followeth . a ship coming from the south , bound for the road and harbour of aberdeen , a mile to the southward of the road , ye will see a bay with a countrey church standing in the middle thereof , called the kirk of nigg ; to the north-ward lyeth the girdle-ness ( or aberdeen-ness , ) which when ye come by , come no nearer the same then a long cable length , and so soon as ye come by it , ye will see two sharp spire steeples , which steeples ye must run to the north-ward untill ye open the west-most steeple a sailesbreadth to the north-ward of the east-most , there ye may anchor on nine or ten fathom water , where ye may ride with southerly , northerly , or westerly winds . as for the harbour , in the entrie thereof is a barr , whereon at low water there is scarce on it two foot water : on the south-side of the barr there stands a beackon , which in the incoming ye must leave on your larboard-side a ships breadth free thereof , where commonly the best of the channell doth run . from the beackon to the east-ward even to the girdleness is all rocks . at spring-tydes there will be thereon about 15 foot water ; at neep-tydes there will be no more then about nine or ten foot . but i shall not advise a stranger to seek that harbour without a pilot ; because it is a pilots fair way : and as soon as ye come to the road , ye can allwayes have a boat for putting out a vaiffe at all occasions , for piloting you into the harbour . the nearest rake of the said harbour is north-east and south-west , and when ye are within the said harbour ye lye land locked for all winds , but at low water , your ships lye dry on very good ground . if ye be bound for the harbour coming from the north-ward ye may borrow into the land or upon the shoar four or five fathom , and with westerly-winds into three fathom . the flowings of the said harbour within , are south and be west ; and in the road south-south-west . aberdeen hath ever had since the time of poperie a great and fair fabrick , containing two great and spacious churches for publick worship ; the greatest towards the west is called the old-church , the lesser towards the east is called the new-church , with a stately spire or steeple , the churches and steeple are covered beautifully with lead , and within plenished neatly with good dasks and galries of excellent workmanship of wainscot , and great and large lights and windowes . in the steeple are three great and harmonious bells , in sound each descending below another , but by one musicall note as upon a bimull-clieff , and these three bells strick 24 stroaks at every half hour in a sweet and pleasant concord , the great clock having four fair horologes with conspicuous figures clearly guilded , one to every airth , viz. south , north , east and west , for use to every part of the city and suburbs . these bells being rung for conveening to publick worship , on the sabbath dayes there is but one bell rung first , at the second two bells , and at the third three bells , which make a grave and melodious melodie . also there is another fabrick in the midst of the city , of a large length called the gray-friars-church , with a little spire or steeple , and a bell , which is alwayes rung for conveening to all publick lessons in the colledge , and a publick clock . also , another fabrick called the trinity-church , with a little steeple lately repaired by the trades . there is a chappell at the castle-hill called st. ninians , it had wont to be employed for the comissar court , and the rest of it for the common use of the cities-effairs , but now the bishop hath taken back that court to the old-town , as being his priviledge . there is a smaller fabrick builded by the citizens for the inhabitants of the village of futtie , appointed for catechiseing that people which since hath had a minister to preach , though not as a distinct parish . all the citizens and that people being under one session or consistoriall for discipline . there is a great towns-house in the mercat-place called the toll-booth , which hath a fair and spacious rowm for the courts of judicature to sit in , such as the head-courts of the shyre and city , with the sheriff and bailie courts : above which there is a magazine or store-house ) for warlike ammunition , &c. it hath also another large stately rowm , where the magistrats and town-councill conveen , under which is the low councill-house , where the dean of gild and his assessors meet , for effairs peculiar to the brethren of gild : as also , the commissioners of the shyre , for cess or such like common concernments : together with an other rowm called the clerks-chamber , which hath accommodations for clerks and writters . upon the east end thereof there is an high-tower with two battlements , upon which there ●s erected a high and stately spire , or steeple , ●overed with lead , under which is a great clock and bell , and under the samen are severall rowms for prisoners both high and low . there is also a large and high house , called ●he pack-house and weigh-house , wherein are a ●reat many rowms for merchant-wares of all ●orts near to the shoar , the shoar being ( as ● said ) of late years greatly enlarged , so that it ● a pleasant considerable walk from the city to go to the furthest end thereof , which leads to the fields , and towards the harbour-mouth . the mercat-place is larger then in any town of the kingdom , being an hundreth twenty and four double space in length , and about a third part thereof in breadth where it is narrowest , so that two regiments of foot souldiers may be drawn up in rank and fyle , tho in open order . there is one of the stateliest bridges in the kingdom , over the river of dee , of seven arches of a like and equall largeness , within two short myles of the city : and there is another be-north the city , of an high and great arch over the river don , both which are mantained by the city , upon propper rents mortified for the same use . in the middle of the city there is a philosophie-colledge the houses whereof were purchased by the city , in consideration , that george earle marischall , grandfather to this present earle , out of his zeal to the publick good , and his respect to the city of aberdeen , did mortifie publick rents for the principall and four regents of the said colledge , whence it is called the marischall colledge , and makes up an half of the carolin-university for it hath a principall and four regents o● teaching-masters , and now hath a publick professor of school-divinity , who teacheth a publick lesson two dayes every week during the sitting of the colledge : also a professor of mathematicks , who upon other two dayes every week teacheth two lessons . there are also lessons of arithmetick and geometrie taught by ●ther masters thereunto appointed , by that renowned famous and learned physician dr . duncan liddell who mortified a con●●derable rent to the professor of mathematicks , and six mathematicall and philosophicall bursers or six years . there are many summs of mo●ey mortified to the said colledge since the e●ection thereof , ( whereto the town-councill of aberdeen are mostly patrons ) so that it appears , ●here hath been more charity extended within ●hir hundred and twenty years , since the re●ormation of religion from popish idolatry and superstition , then hath been in all the ages be●re , which our towns counts of mortified mo●ies , for schools , colledge , hospitalls , gild-box common poor &c. can evidence . this colledge hath a copious library , which was at first plenished by the city of aberdeen , who ●ook all their books they had laid up in the ●pper rowm above their session-house , and trans●itted them to their own library in the col●dge , for the uses of all concerned : and dr. reid secretary in the latine-tongue to king charles the first , left a sallary to the keeper ●f the said library . which library hath been ●ugmented in its books by severall mortifiers , ● by the said dr. reid , the forementioned dr. liddell , who mortified about 2000 merks worth of books , and 20 merks yearly to buy mathematicall books and instruments , and dr. william johnstoun phisician and professor of the mathematicks here : and by dr. patrick dun a learned physician , and principall of this colledge . also there is a grammar-school , which hath a chief master , and three teaching masters under him , to whom the said dr. dun mortified 1200 merks of yearly rent , by which the city is disburdened of what they payed yearly to the former masters thereof . we have a school for musick , which was taught of old by very eminent musicians in this city . there wants no opportunities in this city for youth both male and female to learn any manner of good , and commendable skill or knowledge in such things as may best qualifie them . there are four hospitalls in this city , one for decayed brethren of gild. a second for indigent widowes and virgins of brethren of gild , lately purchased by a sum of money , mortified by dame marion dowglas daughter to the somet●me earle of buchan , and late lady-drum , for the honour the magistrats and citizens conferred on her deceased husband at his buriall in aberdeen 1632. the rents whereof were augmented by a considerable summ , mortified to this hospitall by james milne elder , merchant , who also mortified 100 pounds yearly to two philosophicall bursers in this colledge , with 500 merks to this kirk-session . a third hospitall for trades-men , founded and built by the deceast dr. william guild , sometime preacher in aberdeen , and lately principall of the kings colledge in the old-town . this hospitall hath a spacious comely rowm , where the deacon or conveener-courts meet . a fourth hospitall for litsters , the rent whereof was mortified by archbald beans , litster , by which they have builded a goodly house , with a stately entry . the use of this rent is for the benefit of decayed litsters , their wives children and servants , severall of whose daughters have been provyded with sutable portions out of the said rent , and thereby honestly married . there are eight mills belonging to the city , and lands thereunto pertaining , whereof a new wind-mill is builded of stone and lyme at the south-entrie of the city , which may be of excellent use if carefully keeped . there are two water-mills within the suburbs of the city , and five near by in the adjacent territories belonging to the city . we have a choise medicinall spring , called the well of spa , at the wool-man-hill , built with hewen-ston , very specifick for gout , gravell , collick and hydropsie , as the late famous dr. william barclay , physician , did learnedly describe 1615 , which is now re-printed when the well was re-built 1670 , the copies whereof the dean of gild hath in his custody , to which every person concerned to know its vertues , and how to use the same , is referred . chap. iii. concerning the antiquity of aberdeen . as for the antiquity of the city of aberdeen , it is certain that ptolomie , the most ancient geographer , who lived about 1500 years since , in the dayes of antonius pius the emperor , in his geographicall-tables , making a description of the isles of brittain , to wit , albion and ireland , with the little adjacent isles he calls this city devana , and the river adjacent thereto diva : whom camdenus the english historiographer , in his britannia cites , for proving the antiquity of aberdeen , whose words are these . devana urbs per-antiqua a ptolemeo , nunc vero aberdonia , id est , devae ostium britannica dictione ab ipsis scotis appellatur so that for antiquity this city may be reckned amongst the most ancient of this isle . this city was erected into a burgh-royall by gregorius , who for his justice , temperance and fortitude , was surnamed the great , and was the 73. king of scotland ; whose honorable acts , both in scotland , england and ireland are at length set down in hector boyes history , and in buchannans in the year after the birth of christ 893 years . so that since bon-accord was erected in a burgh-royall it is seven hundreth fourscore twelve years , this year being the year 1685. after the decease of the said king gregory , the erection and infeftments given by him to this city ( by the iniquity of the times , and many incursions ) were lost : for edward the first king of england , called langshanks , made it his work to burn and destroy all the old evidents and monuments within this kingdom where ever he came , or his power could reach . moreover in the time of king david bruce , the city being surprysed with an army of englishes , sent by edward the third of england : most of the inhabitants , men , wives and children were all put to the sword and killed ; the city burnt for six dayes together , as spotswood and boyes histories declare , all our registers and old evidents were destroyed about the year 1330 , because the citizens a little before had killed the souldiers that keeped garison in the castle ; who had sorely opprest them , and taken it and rased it to the ground . it being then re-built upon the hills where it is now seated ( having formerly , been cituated from the green , and eastward under the hills except the castle-gate , ) hence it is called the new-town of aberdeen , and not with relation to that burgh of barronie , which is now the bishops seat , since is was translated from mortlick , in the time of king david , anno 1137 , according to spotswood pag. 101. when nectanus was bishop , the foundation of which bishoprick was by king malcome the second anno 1010 at mortlick . in king james the fourth his time ; bishop william elphinston builded the kings colledge in the old town ; that town being seated near the river of don , about a 1000 space from aberdeen , is commonly called the old town of aberdeen , not , as if it were of greater antiquity then the burgh-royall of aberdeen , for i was informed by a very intelligent gentleman near that place that there were some old evidents designing it the old town of seatoun after the lands thereto adjoyning . but the bishop of aberdeen hath had his residence there , ever since his seat was translated from mortlick , where there was a magnificent structure of a cathedrall builded thereafter , as also a stately colledge ; custome and i●norance calls it the old-town of aberdeen , it having been erected in a burgh of barrony in favours of the bishop of the diocess of aberdeen . it is reported that some call aberdeen only urbs , a town , and the old-town where the bishop's seat is , civitas , a city . but i take that distinction betwixt a town and a city ; as it relates to a bishop's-seat to be the spurious product of a popish-institution ; because many towns were called cities before there was a bishop in the world . a town propperly re●ates to the buildings and houses ; a city denotes the citizens and free-men that are the inhabitants : but for this let these that would ●ppropriat the name of a city to a bishop-seat , ●ead the bishop of cajetan de institutione reipub. ●●b . 1. tit. 3. sub fine , and he will show what 〈◊〉 city is . chap. iv. concerning the government of the city of aberdeen . we have matter to bless god for the equall and just constitution of government , which is in our ctiy and particular common-wealth , granted to us by our kings , and left unto us by our worthy ancestors , which is thus . our town-councill is chosen yearly out of the whole citizens and burgesses of the city , the roll of our whole brethren of gild being first read at every election of the council , which holds upon the wednesday before michaelmess-day , there being a large catalogue drawn up of all the brethren of gild amongst us , every person ( whom any of the old-councill desires to be lifted among these out of whom the new-councill is to be chosen ) is presently set down in that new list , and when the list is compleated , by the reading over the whole brethren of gild of the town , there is an indefinit number set down upon a large sheet of paper , with lines drawen after every one of their names , and this is given to the present provest , bailies , and whole old-councill , that every one may make choise of thirteen brethren of gild to be named for the new-councill for the year to come , and most votes or marks make up the number . next , they of the old-councill choose out of their own number four , who are called the old-four , which being added to the former thirteen , make up the number of seventeen brethren of gild. and lastly , having got the roll of all the present deacons of trades , there are two of these deacons chosen which make up the compleit number of ninteen for the councill the year ensuing . the new chosen counsellors being all sent for , and come in the afternoon , the whole old and new-council with the six deacons of trades , and the four deacons of the old and new councill , which make up ten deacons of trades and thirty brethren of gild , making up in all , the number of 40 votes , they altogether choose first the provest : then four bailies , a dean of gild , a thesaurer , a master of the kirk-work and bridge work , a master of the mortified moneys a master of the gild hospital , a master of the shoar , called master of the impost , and six single counsellors who bear no office , but sit and vote in all effairs that come before the councill with the two new deacons of trades . if in this election there fall to be one having equall votes , the provest in this caice hath the casting vote . this way of election was determined by the convention of burghs , and ratified and approved by king james the sixth , after the difference that ●ell out at the common-cause 1593. when any matter of more then ordinary importance comes to be consulted off , if the present councill find it meet , they call the former years councill , and joyne both in consultation and determination . and if it be a business of setting on of a tax , or levying of money , whither for nationall or particular us● , or such like ; the consent of the whole city is called for in a publick head-court conveened by authority of the magistrats , where the reasons of the said tax or imposition are holden forth by the provest &c. unto them . so by this it is evident to the judicious , that we have the best ingredients and advantages of all the severall sorts of government : and to compleat our power , our provest and bailies are made sheriffs within their own city and freedom-lands , by k. charles the first 1633 by which our citizens are fred from the power of any sheriff that at times have sought to oppress them , yea to pannell them for life without a just cause , as in allexander rutherford provest his time , when the sheriff-deput pannelled a burger , called patrick corser for resetting stollen brass which he had bought on a ma●ket-day innocently and would not admit of surety for any summ of money whatsoever offered by the provest ( the sheriff having a pick against the man pannelled , ) which the provest perceiving that no reason could prevaill , commanded patrick corser down staires upon any hazard that might follow , and so fred him . as also , the magistrats a moneth or thereby before the yearly election , cause the drummer go through the town , inviting all the inhabitants free-men , to come and hear the accounts of all the office-bearers counted , fitted and subscrived by the magistrats , and the rest of the auditors of the counts chosen in the day of the election for that end , so that any that pleases may see how uprightly all the towns-revenues and moneys received , are bestowed . chap. v. concerning the fidelity and loyall-duty , which the citizens of aberdeen have alwayes payed to their soveraignes , together with the gracious rewards conferred thereon , and the signall evidences of honour put upon many chief magistrats thereof . this city having been erected into a burgh-royall by king gregorie the great and priviledged with many donations by him as some notes and scrolls bear record , gathered by the recorders and town-clerks afterwards . the principall evidents being destroyed in the common callamities of these sad times formerly hinted at . this city was had in speciall favour with many of the succeeding kings , as by king william , surnamed for his valour and fortitude , the lyon. he built a palace in aberdeen where sometime he remained with his court , which afterward he dedicated to a new order of friars ( called the trinity-friars ) for setting up an abbacie for them , two of that order , which pope innocent the third had newly erected , being recommended by the pope and sent from rome . to this abbacie he gave gifts , and some rents intending if he lived to give them greater , this order was erected 1211. which abbacie was burnt when the city was destroyed , where now the trades-hospitall stands , being re-edified but of late years by dr. william guild . likewise it is recorded that the three kings alexanders had here in this city a pleasant pallace , which afterwards was translated to the friars-predicators or dominicans . alexander the second did greatly adorn this city , and give it liberties and priviledges the like with pearth 1214 : which was the first year of his reign , immediatly after the death of his father king william . boyes holds forth in his history , pag. 283. ver . 65. that this king came to aberdeen with his sister isobell , ( after he returned from england , ) and honored it with many priviledges , as king gregory , king malcome the second , and david brother to king william had done before . it is said , he called this city his own city , the infef●ments of the said king alexander the second under his seal in green wax is yet extant , as a record of the priviledges given by him to this city , having ( by providence ) escaped from the common calamity . king robert bruce in these most troublesome times , wherein he began to reign or recover his kingdom out of the hands of edward the first king of england , being beaten severall times , and finding all his attempts unsuccessfull retired to aberdeen , as a place of safety where he found that his enemies and his former bad success might be overcome : for when he had no hope of his effai●s but despaired of all victory , intending to go out of the kingdom , till better times might fall out , and get forraign forces for his assistance . incontinently the citizens of aberdeen came and exhorted him to better hopes , and more confidence , and gave him assistance both in men and money , and followed him to the town of inverurie where they fought with the enemie , and obtained his first victory , whereof they were the speciall instruments and helps , the king being so sickly that he was carried in his bed , as boyes ●elates , fol. 312. whence there began to be a method setled to recover the kingdom . by which service he was moved to bestow upon the city of aberdeen , the whole lands of the kings-forrest , called the stock●d-wood , with the whole parts and pendicles of ●he same , with the mills , waters , fishings , ●mall customs , tolls , courts , weights , mea●ures , free port and haven ; and all other priviledges and liberties whatsomever , pertaining or that might pertain justly to a royall-burgh within this realm . under the reign of king david bruce , john randell earle of murray , being for the ●ime governour of the kingdom , amongst ●his chiefest designes for recovering the kingdom , he saw it was most expedient to pursue david cumming earle of atholl , whom king edward of england had appointed governour for him , and having collected his forces , came ●traight to aberdeen , where ( notwithstanding ●he tyrrany of the enemies they were under , ) ●he was informed where david cumming was , knowing their loyaltie to king david bruce ●heir naturall king , and so straight way pursued him . some years after , the englishes having con●inued their rapine and cruelty in aberdeen , ●y keeping a strong garison in the castle , the citizens taking counsell how they might free themselves of that yoke and servitude , at last resolved to fall upon the garison whom they cut off , and thereafter levelled the castle with the ground . whence it was , that in honour of that resolute act , they got their ensignes-armoriall , which to this day they bear : witness that late book of heraldry , set forth by sir george mckenzie of rose-haugh knight , his majesties advocat , who hath blazoned the arms of aberdeen particularly , thus . the arms or ensigns armoriall of the burgh royall of aberdeen , beareth gules , three towres triple , towered in a double-tressure counter flowred argent , supported by two leopards propper , the motto in an escroll above , bon-accord , whence there are these verses . arx triplex , arcem testatur ab hoste receptam , hostis utrinque doces , tu leoparde genus . lillia cum clypeo , voti rex pignora jussit esse , color fusi signa cruoris habet . haec hostes sensere , bona at concordia ( virtue qua res usquè viget publica ) culta domi . in english thus . the threefold towres , the castle showes regain'd from enemies , who it by force mantain'd . the leopards , which on each hand ye view , the cruell temper of these foes do shew . the shield and lillies , by the kings-command as pledges of his great good-will do stand . the collour , calls the blood there shed to mind , which these proud foes unto their cost did find . and bon-accord , by which doth safely come to common-wealths ) establisht was at home . i. b. and upon the reverse of the seal of the said burgh is insculped in a field azure , a temple argent , st. nicholas standing in the porch mytered and vested propper , with his dexter-hand lifted up to heaven praying over three children in a boylling caldron of the first , and holding in the sinister a crosier ore : these were the old-arms of the burgh-royall of aberdeen as his majesties advocat , in his book above-mentioned relates after the castle was thus taken and ruined , the english being deeply affected therewith , as also with the loss of their men , did gather their forces together to avenge this injury against aberdeen : the citizens then following joannes fraser , who commanded these forces that adhered to the interest of king david bruce , did most stoutly fight the english in their own church-yard , and although with much blood , and the loss of many of their men , yet at last obtained the victory . hence four years after , edward the third having sent a great navie to recover his loss in thir northern-parts , his forces fell upon aberdeen after they had spoiled the religious-houses and the city , they coming by surprize and greatly incensed for the loss of their men , ( which they had sustained both in the garison and in the forementioned fight , ) did cut off men , women and children , none being spared except such as had by flight saved themselves : they burnt the city six dayes together , as hath been touched above , and being thereafter re-built , is ever after called the new-town of aberdeen . king david bruce had ever after a great favour and respect for aberdeen , and sometimes dwelt in it , and set up a mint-house here , as some peeces of money not long since extant with the inscription of aberdeen did testifie , and the king did ratifie and approve of all the donations of lands , waters , fishings and all other priviledges , which king robert his father , or any of his predecessors had formerly given or granted to the said burgh , because of their good service , both to his father and himself against the common enemie . also , all the king james's , 1 st . 2 d. 3 d. 4 th 5 th . and 6 th . did all ratifie and approve all these priviledges and donations of what ever any of their predecessors had done before ; and some of them witnessed their favourable respects to the magistrats thereof upon severall occasions . as for instance , king james the fourth , upon a complaint made against sir john rutherford of tarlane after one of the elections , when he had been chosen provest ( having for many years enjoyed that office , ) the king wrot to the town councill , desiring an exact account of the ground of the complaint made against his loved familiar sir john rutherford , as the kings letter , dated november 5. 1487. recorded in the towns books doth bear . again , king james the fifth was often in aberdeen , and did singularly shew favour and respects to the familie of the menzieses , who for many years did wisely and happily govern our city . also , king james the sixth , did not onely confirme in parliament , all the ancient priviledges and liberties given to this city by his royall predecessors , but likewise , when ●s by the laws of this nation the king might have exacted his burrow-mailes in sterling-money , which would have been nothing else but the utter undoing and extirpation of this re-publick : he out of his princely clemency , and favour which he did ever bear to this his ancient-city , did of new again re-erect and found the samen ; and did quite abolish and ab●ogat the payment of sterling-money , by dissolving the same from the crown in parliament , so far as concerns this city allennarlly : the like benefit being denyed to any other burgh in the kingdom : as also , disponning and giving of new the burgh , common-lands , fishings and all other liberties thereof whatsomever , for payment of current money allennarly . and at the same time , honored our then present provest , thomas menzies of durne or cults , with the title of knight-hood in his own privy-chamber , in the presence of the best sort of the nobility of both the kingdoms , whom he acknowledged ( before them then present , ) worthy of that honour , be reason of his birth , besides the good service lately done by him and the city of aberdeen to the king , by the gentle entertainment of his honorable servants , who came at that time to visit aberdeen by the kings appointment 1617. this sir thomas menzies of cults having procured that famous pearl which was found in the brook or burne of kellie , as it runs into the river of ythan , which pearle , for beauty and bigness , was the best that hath been at any time found in scotland : our said provest having found by the judgement of the best jewelers in edinburgh , that it was most precious and of a very high value , went up to london and gifted it to the king , this was in the year 1620. who in retribution gave him twelve or fourtteen chalders of victuall about dumfermling , and the custom of merchant-goods in aberdeen during his life . but it pleased god he dyed at wooller on the border in england , in his return home . nevertheless , this did signifie the speciall favour the king did bear to our then provest , though he did not live to enjoy the effects of the kings royall and princely respects . this pearle was reported to be one of the jewells of the crown of england . likewise , when the king called the commissioners of both kingdoms to treat anent the union betwixt scotland and england , alexander rutherford provest of aberdeen , being one of the four chosen for the state of the burrowes , the king did put it upon him to speak in behalf of the burrowes , who did acquite himself so satisfyingly to the king , that pulling a rich diamond ring from his finger , he gave it him as a token of his royall-respects . i have heard some relate , that when he had delivered his discourse in our scots-dialect , which was not so intelligible at that time to the english commissioners , he spoke to the same purpose in latine , that the bishops might understand : then gave a like account to the nobility amongst the english commissioners in the french-language , which did affect the king with very much complacency , who carried a singular respect to the subjects of this his native-country and ancient kingdom , and made every thing acceptable that had a tendency to the repute thereof . the battell of harlaw did witness the zeal of aberdeen against the enemies of the king , and for the peace of the kingdom 1411. where the provest and many of the best citizens did assist to gain the victory of that day with the loss of their lives . also that fatall battell of pinkie , where there were lost and killed many brave towns-men of aberdeen , that went thither ( though at so far a distance ) for the honour of their soveraign and of the nation . king charles the first in the year 1633 at his coronation in this kingdom , confirmed and ratified all our above written priviledges and liberties of new , given and granted by his royall father and progenitors with this addition , making and constituting the provest and bailies , sheriffs within their burgh and freedom-lands , and the priviledge of having an unground malt-market , and honored paul menzies of kinmundie then present provest with the honour of knight-hood . in the year 1649 , when the parliament of scotland , out of their dutifull respects , and loyaltie to their undoubted soveraign , king charles the second , had proclaimed him king of great britain , france and ireland , and immediatly did choose commissioners of all the three estates of this kingdom , to invite their king to this his ancient kingdom , to receive the crown which had now of right descended to him from 108 kings . the parliament made choise of alexander jaffray of kingswells commissioner for aberdeen , to be one of the two burrowes to go over to holland to the king , who was a wise , pious and discreet man all his time . and he ( to be faithfull to the city he had his commission from ) intreated the parliament to consider the most important article in his commission , that so he might undertake that weighty employment with the greater alacrity , which was to visit the counts of the extraordinary losses of aberdeen relating to the publick . the parliament had that respect to him , and was so desirous to grant his so just demand , that forthwith they did deput some fit members , who after hearing and considering , made their report , and thereupon the parliament by an act did acknowledge themselves , ( as the representative of the nation ) to be justly resting to the city of aberdeen the summ of nine hundreth threescore and nine thousand merks , and did grant the cess of the city to be allowed to them for as many moneths as drew to eighteen thousand merks ; because this great summ that was due to them had exhausted the summs of money that was mortified to hospitals schools , the colledge , and the common-poor of that city ; and had ruined almost the common thesaurie thereof ; but this was all they could spare at that time , till an opportunity might fall out to make them more full payment , which hitherto hath ever failed , and hath been the cause of the severall heavy burdensom taxations that have of late years been laid on , and of procuring that relief which hath been obtained thir five or six years bygone by the magistrats , who withall have made themselves lyable to the grudge of such as are so selfiish , that before their particular suffer but a little , they could let the publick come to utter ruine and perish without remedy and unavoidably : but of two evils the least is to be chosen . but to return , our abovenamed commissioner obtained also an act of parliament , that no souldiers should be quartered in aberdeen for three years thereafter , such was the great respect the parliament had to him , whereupon he went to the king with the rest of the commissioners of the three estates . and after his return , being commissioner to the convention of burrowes at queensferrie , obtained half a merk down of aberdeens proportion of the 100 pound of stent-roll , which was a great advantage to the city . he being chosen that year provest of aberdeen , went with the rest of the commissioners the next year 1650 to the hague in holland , where it pleased god so to prosper their endeavours , as to bring the king home with them . aberdeen being the first city of the kingdom he came to , there he was received with all the demonstrations of joy and cheerfullness that the magistrats and inhabitants could evidence : as also , the silver-keyes of the city were delivered to him by the provest ( who tame sometime before to prepare for the kings , reception ) with an eloquent and pertinent harrangue therewith made by mr. james sandilands , of cotton , the cities recorder , or clerk. in the end of february and beginning of march 1651 , the king came to aberdeen , where he stayed a week at which time , mr. robert farquhar of munie was provest , ( alexander jaffray who had been provest the former year , having been taken prisoner at dumbar-fight which was on the third of september 1650. ) the king was pleased to honour our then present provest with the honor of knighthood , together with patrick leslie of eden who had been provest some years before with the like honor. as also , in the year 1681 , george sken● of fintray was honoured with the title of knighthood at edinburgh , by james duke of albany and york , then commissioner to the parliament of scotlamd , for the late king , charles the second , his royall-brother . chap. vi. concerning the state of aberdeen . as for the state of aberdeen , if it be taken for the yearly revenue of their thesaurie , it is not so considerable as some lesser towns in the kingdom . it is mostly exhausted in paying stipendiaries and other incidencies , especially since the time of queen mary , at which time our freedom-lands and salmon-fishings were all fewed out to particular men ; which though it brought in considerable summs at first , yet now the fewes both of lands and waters are but very inconsiderable : all of them extending but to seven hundreth sixteen pounds ten shillings scots money . yet that it may appear how considerable this city is in reference to the kings exchequer , if we consider the customs and excyse of merchant-goods , one with another ; as also , the excyse of ale , beer and aquavitae or strong-waters ; with the yearly supplie given to the king , by act of parliament , this city one year with another , will be of in-come to the exchequer about thirty thousand pounds of scots money . if this were duely considered , it might easily be perceived , that the prosperity and flowrishing of this city is of speciall concernment to the king , and the publick interests of the nation ; and incaice of its decay , the prejudice of both will be no less considerable . we acknowledge , we have severall of the chiefest staple commodities in the kingdom , as plaiding , fingrams , stockings , salmond , stuffs , serges , sheep-skins and lamb-skins . when plading was giving good price in holland , the old conservator sir patrick drummond frequenty reported that the kingdom of scotland was more obliedged to the city of aberdeen for the abundance of money the merchants thereof brought to the nation , then to all the towns of this kingdom besides : but the trade of this so profitable a commodity is greatly decayed and become very low . the rivers of dee and don , besides what is brought from ythan and ugie , ( which two last rivers belong to the earle marischall and some other heritors of the shyre ) these two first rivers afford our merchants above an hundreth and twenty lasts of salmond or thereby one year with another , which are carried to france , holland and sometimes to spain and other forreign places . i knew a merchant in my time who sent to dantzick thirty thousand lamb-skins in one year ; but our trade is much decayed by what it hath been fourty or fifty years ago , before our late intestin troubles began . chap. vii . a catalogue of these who have been provests in aberdeen , whereof any record may be had , either by scrolls , charters or infeftments , before or since the burning of the said city . anno dom. 1310. duncanus melavill found in the bishop of aberdeens old registers . 1326. simon gilchach found in an authentick scroll . 1329. willielmus de strabrok in a scroll . 1142. david de fingask in a scroll . 1349. simon lynto in an old evident . 1350. robertus de edynhine in an old evident . 1352. willielmus leith in a scroll . 1360. thomas mercer in an authentick scroll . 1361. thomas mercer in an authentick scroll . 1366. laurentius garvock in a scroll . 1367. laurentius de fety in authentick scrolls . 1382. alexander bannerman in authentick scrolls . 1384. laurentius de fety . 1385. laurentius de fety . 1392. willielmus de camera pater . 1393. willielmus de camera pater . 1395. willielmus filius andreae . 1396. willielmus de camera pater . 1398. willielmus de camera pater . the oldest court-book of this city , is of this years date , which is in the latine-tongue . 1399. adam de benyn , tenet cum libro . 1400. adam de benyn , tenet cum libro . 1401. laurentius leith , tenet cum libro . 1403. laurentius de leith . 1404. willielmus de camera filius . 1405. robertus filius david . 1406. robertus david . 1407. robertus david . 1408. robertus filius david . 1409. ioannes fitchet . 1410. robertus filius david , slain at harlam . 1411. andreas giffurd . 1412. thomas de camera . 1413. willielmus jackson , from this forth we can find no court book till gilbert menzeis time 1426. 1416. thomas roule in an old charter . 1419. andreas giffurd . 1423. gilbertus menzeis . 1425. ioannes vaus . 1426. gilbertus menzeis , tenet cum libro . 1427. gilbertus menzeis , tenet cum libro . 1428. ioannes vaus 1429. ioannes vaus . 1433. thomas de camera , tenet cum libro . 1434. thomas de camera . 1435. ioannes scroggis , tenet cum libro . 1437. ioannes fyffe , tenet cum libro . 1438. thomas de camera , tenet cum libro . 1439. gilbertus menzeis . 1440. ioannes fyffe . 1441. matheus fitchet . 1442. ioannes marr junior . 1443. alexander de camera . 1444. ioannes vaus . 1445. ioannes vaus . 1446. alexander de camera . 1447. willielmus sherar . 1448. ioannes fyffe . 1449. ioannes de scroggis filius . 1450. ioannes de scroggis filius . 1451. ioannes fyffe . 1452. ioannes de fyffe . 1453. ioannes marr. 1454. andreas menzies . 1455. ioannes de scroggis filius . 1456. ioannes de fyffe . 1457. ioannes de fyffe . 1458. ricardus kintore . 1459. ricardus kintore 1460 , 1461 , 1462 , 1463 , 1464 , 1465 , 1466. totidem annis . 1467 , alexander cameron 1468 , 1469 , totidem . 1470. andreas allanson . 1471. ricardus kintore . 1472. andreas sherar . 1473. andreas allanson . 1474. alexander de camera . 1475. alexander menzeis . 1476. andreas sherar . 1477. alexander de camera . 1478. andreas sherar . 1479. alexander de camera . 1480. alexander menzeis . 1481. iacobus lesty . 1482. robertus blinshell . 1483. ioannes rutherford de migvie . 1484. alexander de camera . 1485. ioannes ' rutherford de tarlane miles . 1486. alexander menzeis . 1487. ioannes rutherford de tarlane miles . 1488. david menzeis . 1489. ioannes rutherford de tarlane miles . 1490. ioannes rutherford de tarlane miles . 1491. ioannes cullen . 1492. ioannes rutherford de tarlane miles . 1493. alexander reid . 1494. david menzies . 1495. alexander chalmer de murthill . 1496. ioannes rutherford miles . 1497. ioannes rutherford miles . 1498. ioannes rutherford miles . 1499. ioannes rutherford miles . 1500. ioannes rutherford miles . 1501. alexander menzeis . 1502. alexander menzeis . 1503. alexander menzeis . 1504. ioannes lesly de wardes . 1505. gilbertus menzeis . 1506. andreas cullen . 150 , gilbertus menzeis 1508 , 1509 , 1510 , 1511 , 1512 , 1513. totidem annis . 1514. ioannes marr. 1515. ioannes marr. 1516 , 1517 , 1518 , 1519 , 1520. gilbertus menzeis totidem annis . 1521. ioannes collison , nota , electus fuit ante diem ordinariam , virtute literarum regiarum desuper directarum . 1522. gilbertus menzeis de findon . 1523. gilbertus menzeis de findon . 1524. gilbertus menzeis de findon . 1525. thomas menzeis de pitfoddels . 1526 gilbertus menzeis . 1527. gilbertus menzeis . 1528. gilbertus menzeis , 1529 , 1530 , 1531 , 1532. totidem annis . 1533. thomas menzeis de pitfoddels . 1534. thomas menzeis de pitfoddels . 1535. andreas cullen . 1536. gilbertus menzeis de findon . 1537 , thomas menzeis de pitfoddels , 1538 , 1539 , 1540 , 1541 , 1542 , 1543 , 1544 , totidem annis . 1545. georgius comes de huntly , dominus gordon & badzenoch ac locum tenens generalis boreae . 1546. georgius comes de huntly &c. praepositus . 1547. thomas menzeis de pitfoddels , annuatim electus fuit praepositus ad annum 1576. 1576. gilbertus menzeis de coullie . 1577. gilbertus menzeis de pitfoddels . 1578. gilbertus menzeis de pitfoddels annuatim ad annum . 1588. 1588. mr. thomas menzeis de durne . 1589. mr thomas menzeis de durne . 1590. alexander cullen . 1591. alexander rutherford . 1592. thomas menzeis apparens de durne . 1593. mr. ioannes cheyn . 1594. ioannes collison . 1595. thomas menzeis de durne . 1596. alexander rutherford . 1597. alexander chalmer de cults . 1598. alexander rutherford . 1599. alexander cullen . 1600. alexander rutherford . 1601. alexander cullen . 1602. thomas menzeis de durne . 1603. alexander rutherford 1604. david menzeis senior . 1605. alexander rutherford . 1606. alexander cullen . 1607. alexander rutherford . 1608. alexander cullen . 1609. alexander rutherford . 1610. alexander cullen & quia vitam obiit penultimo octobris , alexander rutherford electus fuit in ejus vicem 1610. 1611 , alexander rutherford 1612 , 1613 , 1614 , totidem annis . 1615 , thomas menzeis de cults , 1616 , 1617 , in qua anno factus fuit miles . 1618 , 1619 , 1620 , totidem annis , & quia dictus dominus thomas vitam obiit in mense septembris 1620 , in suo itinere in rediundo ab anglia , mr. david rutherford electus fuit praepositus in ejus vicem . 1621. mr. david rutherford . 1622. georgius nicolson . 1623. ad annum 1633. paulus menzeis de kinmundie & eo anno nominatus dominus paulus , miles . 1634. patricius lesly de eden , ab officio privatus 14. januarii 1635 , & dictus d. paulus menzeis electus fuit praepositus in ejus vicem ; sed postea patricius leslie anno 1639. electus & restitutus fuit . 1635. robertus johnstoun de crimond , remotus fuit per decretum dominorum secreti concilii , & mr. alexander jaffray de kingswells virtute dicti decreti , electus fuit praepositus in ejus vicem . 1636. mr. alexander jaffray , de kingswells . 1637. robertus johnstoun , de crimond . 1638. mr. alexander jaffray . 1639. patricius lesly de eden . 1640. patricius lesly . 1641. mr. alexander jaffray . 1642. patricius lesly . 1643. patricius lesly . 1644. mr. robertus farquhar , de munie . 1645. mr. thomas gray . 1646. mr. thomas gray , in mense februarii . 1647. patricius lesly electus fuit . 1647. patricius lesly electus apud gilchonstoun , quia pestis erat in urbe . 1648. mr. thomas gray . 1649. alexander jaffray de kingswells . 1650. mr. robertus farquhar . 1651. alexander jaffray . 1652. georgius morison de pitfour . 1653. georgius morison . 1654. georgius morison . 1655. mr. thomas gray . 1656. georgius cullen qui obiit in dicto officio . 1657. ioannes jaffray de dilspro . 1658. ioannes jaffray . 1659. ioannes jaffray . 1660. gilbertus gray . 1661. gilbertus gray . 1662. gulielmus gray qui vitam obiit eo anno . 1663. gilbertus gray . 1664. mr. robertus patrie de portlethin . 1665. mr. robertus patrie . 1666. gilbertus gray qui vitam obiit in dicto officio . 1667. mr. robertus patrie . 1668. mr. robertus patrie . 1669. mr. robertus patrie . 1670. mr. robertus patrie . 1671. robertus forbes de robslaw . 1672. robertus forbes . 1673. robertus forbes . 1674. robertus patrie . 1675. robertus forbes . 1676. georgius skene de fintray , ad praesentem annum 1685. this city hath not been a barren mother or nurse in our israell , in bringing forth and breeding up many eminent men and brave spirits , whereof there might be set down a large catalogue , not onely in bypast years , but even of men eminent for abilities in their severall professions in this same age , whom i have known by face in my own time , and that both in grammar , musick , philosophy , medicin , mathematicks , poesie , the civill and cannon-law , school-divinity , the art military , who have in their times been not only ornaments to this city , but even to the whole kingdom . but lest this might favour of ostentation , and upon severall other considerations i forbear , and shall leave it to any other to performe this task , if it be found needfull ; and therefor shall summ up the description of this city , with the elogies written upon some of the ancient citizens and families thereof in these epigrams made by dr . arthur johnstoun as followes . chap. viii . the epigrams of dr . arthur iohnstoun , phisitian in ordinary to king charles the first upon the city of aberdeen . arthuri johnstoni epigrammata , de aberdonia urbe . cune populo quisquis romanam suspicis urbem , et mundi dominam , deliciasque vocas ? confer aberdoniam , thytis hanc servilibus undis alluit , urbs famulo nec procul illa mari est . utraque fulta jugis subjectos despicit amnes : utraque fulminea spirat ab arce minas . illa suos fabios , invictaque fulmina belli scipiadas jactat , caesariamque domum . mennesios urbs haec proceres , gentemque culenam , et collissonios , lausoniosque patres . urbe quirinali minor est urbs grampica , caves sunt tamen hig animis , ingeniisque pares . englished thus , by i. b , who e're thou art , that rome do'st magnifie , and her extoll as people fondly , do : entitling her the earths delight and queen , compare with her the city aberdeen : a city which doth neighbour with the sea , to which the oceans waves do constantlie flow up at handmaids ; yet ere they approach they stoop as fearing too far to encroach . from lofty hills both cities view with pryd , the little brooks which through the vallayes glyd : both from their stately and their thundering tower , defye with threatnings all unfriendly power . rome of her tabii and unconquer'd hosts , of scipios , and of great caesars boasts . this city of her menzeises great worth , of cullens , and of lawsons here brought forth ; and collisons , all men of great esteem : of these she boasts , these doth her glory deem i● bigness may 'mongst praises reckned be , rome is indeed of greater bulk then she ; but in all gifts , and ornaments of mind , rome may her equalls in this city find . aberdonia-nova . urbs-nova piscosi quam dictant ostia devae , urbibus antiquis praeripit omne decus . hanc delubra a beant totum cantata per orbem , templaque mortali non fabricata manu . haec prope romuleis aedes sacrata camaenis surgit , athenaeum non procul inde vides . ardua sideriis rutilant praetoria primis , hic ubi planities panditur ampla fori . adspicis hic procerum vicina palatia coelo , et populi pictos , aureolosque lares . quid memorem ternos , trita propugnacula , colles qualibus urbs surgit qua caput orbis erat . hanc quoque lanaris mons ornat , amaenior illis , hinc ferrugineis spada colorat aquis . inde suburbanum jamesoni despicis hortum , qu●● domini pictum suspicor esse manu . salmonum dat deva greges , maris equora gazas , memphi , tuas , & quas india jactat opes . pons septem gemino cameratus fornice devam integit , authorem juncta tiara notat . haec celebret vulgus . solos ego prae●ico cives , his collata nihil caetera laudis habent . martia mens illos commendat & aurea virtus , rebus ●● in dubiis saepe probata fides . hospita gens haec est & comis & annula divum , quaeque regnunt alios , huic famulantur opes . si locus est meritis , urbs haec regina vocari et dominae titulum sumere jure potest . caetera mortales producunt oppida , solos urbs haec haeroas , semi-deosque parit . englished thus . new-aberdeen enrich'd by dees clear streams all praise from ancient cities justly claims ; it 's bless'd with churches famous in all lands , and temples framed by no mortall hands . muses alse famous as once rome did grace , have hallowed a house into this place . a colledge may be seen not far from thence , where learning fixed hath its residence . the mercat-place where men resort for gain , is stretched out into a spacious plain : there you the stately judgement-house may view whose battlements are of a starry-hew : there palaces of peers you may espy , whose lofty-tops approach unto the sky , and towns-mens-houses there you may behold , which garnish'd are and shining like the gold. what need i further the three hills to name , which as three-bulwarks fortifie the same . like these on which that city doeth stand , which once as head did all the earth cōmand . the wool-man-hill which all the rest out-vyes in pleasantness , this city beautifies : there is the well of spa , that healthfull font , whose yr'ne-hew'd-water colloureth the mount. not far from thence a garden 's to be seen , which unto jameson did appertain : wherein a little pleasant house doth stand , painted ( as i guess ) with its masters hand . dee doth afford of salmon wondrous store , the neighbour-sea brings up into the shore . the riches whereof egypt makes her boast , and indian-treasures come into this coast. a bridge doth reach along the river dee , wherein seven double stately arches be : who built this sumptuous-work if ye would know , the myter which is carv'd thereon doth show . but let the vulgar sort these things commend , the citizens to praise i do intend . if all these things with them compared be , they do deserve no praise no memorie : that martiall-mind which oft appeared hath , that golden vertue and unstained faith which lodges in them all these joyntly doe concur to raise their name and fame on high : they are a courteous people and a kind , men of aspiring spirits , and noble mind : riches which doth the baser sort enslave , they have them ; but they them as servants have if worth have place , of cities this may be entitled queen , and claim sov'raigniti ' . all other cities mortalls bear ; but this , of demi-gods and hero's parent is . i could add many more verses in latine and english upon aberdeen ; but being loath to nauseat the reader i forbear ; i have some verses made in latine by mr. john johnstoun , and also some latine-verses upon the learned-men that lived in this same age ; but shall forbear to multiply these poeticall-elogies : let these suffice to stir up the citizens and their posterity so to behave themselves in all their deportments , as they may most imitat their worthy-ancestors in every vertue purely imitable , and not be accessory to occasion the old renown and esteem that aberdeen had gained , to fail in their persons . chap. ix . dr. iohnstouns epigrams , upon several of the royall-burghs in this kingdom ; as may be found in his poems printed at middle-burgh 1642. translated into english , by i. b. having taken pains to write this survey of aberdeen my respects to the other burghs are such , that i have prevailed so far with my good friend mr. john barclay person of cruden , as to translate the epigrams of dr . arthur johnstoun out of latine into english to show my good-will and desire , and to evidence my real respects to them when i can but catch an occasion : the ability of the translator and his justice may be seen in the latine and english translation of his epigrams on aberdeen , which may serve as an embleme to the rest that follow , and as the burghs of the kingdom see it needfull , they may set able persons on work , to satisfie the desire of the printed advertisement and queries thereof , set forth by sir robert sibbald , ( physician in ordinary and geographer to the late king charles the second , within the kingdom of scotland , ) for answering the then kings mynd in reference to the compleating the description of this kingdom . tho these epigrams being printed in latine might satisfie strangers ; yet i suppose they will be no less acceptable to our own countrey-men to have them in english , hoping the discreet reader will not impute the superstitious or hyperbolicall-expressions which appear in these epigrams to me or the translator , seeing the author of them in latine ( who was one of the most excellent poets of his time ) did expect the common-liberty allowed to such . edinburgh . that edinburgh may view the heav'n● at will it s built upon a lofty rysing hill , the fields and rivers which its handmaids be it thence views , and the tributary-sea . here where the sun displayes its morning-light , the palace doth present it self to sight . that princely-dwelling under arthures-seat , adorn'd by most ingenious art of late . toward the west the raised castle stands , which with its thunders giveth loud cōmands a church appears in middle of the town which is this cities and the earths-renown . a structure rear'd by ancient pietie , within its walls all things most stately be , its gilded top which is of marble-fine shap'd as an interwoven crown doth shine . the hall of judgement by the temple stands , a building of most curious artists hands . each citizen hath such an house that it might peeres of highest quality befit . the threats of foes do not make them affrayd , nor need they be by their assaults dismay'd . tiber doth rome , the sea doth venice fright , but edinburgh defyes the waters might . trust me , no city worthier is to be with presence grac'd of royal-dignitie : and for a kingly-city none can wish a seat that 's more convenient then this . the translators addition . of late pure waters hither are convey'd , the citizens are thereby well supply'd : who views the distant springs from whence they run , the conduits which are deep under ground : the wells which in the street these streams do fill , will judg't a work of more then human-skill . leith . leith , by that water which is nam'd by thee , to thee a thousand favours granted be ; thy bosome is a safe and happy port , to which a thousand veshells do resort : thou art a pilot-town , thy ships are such as are ambitious to out-sail the dutch. the utmost parts of earth thy sailes descry , through eastern and through western-seas they fly . thou knows the paths by which the glorious sun fullfills his course , and where the moon doth run . and where the sparkling stars themselves do roll , and counts the shyning signs of either pole. when in the ocean thou displayes thy sail , both wind and waves to thy commands do vail . thou worthy town who hast the sailing-art , from typhis learn'd , or didst to him impart . lithgow . lithgow's a noble town , first look upon its coastly temple built of polisht ston . for splendor doth the palaces near by with it contend , which other shall outvy . these towred-buildings which more precious are then both the houses of the sun by far . an unwald lake is near unto the town , wherein the scaled-flocks float up and down : when grampion-arms their enemies defeats , these ponds afford them their triumphal-treats . this of the kings-lake doth enjoy the name , as caesar that in company did claim . the lucrine-lake for luxurie serv'd more , but lithgow's yeelds the most delicious store . stirling . who is by verses able to set forth , or to declare the lovely stirlings worth : our kings oft in this place of safety , secure into their little cratches † ly . its air is pure by heav'ns near influence ▪ from foes assaults no town hath more defence ▪ a castle on two rocks stands here so fair , that with tarpeian-joves it may compare . the arched-bridge here meets forth ▪ glyding-streams , and to its vault obeysance from 't doth claim : as in the phrygian-coasts maeander runs , and winds it self about in various turns : the river here doth force its passage so , flowes and returns is tossed too and fro . the traveller whose found of daily change , and through the earth with tedious steps doth range ; when hither he doth happen to retire , this town and countreys wealth he doth admire . these strange things do deserve the sweetest layes : but warlick-vertue mertits further praise . the roman pride how oft hath stirling queld , their conquering swords it more then once repell'd . the flood wherewith this cities-fields are wet did bounds to their o're-running empire set . pearth . berth first , now pearth thou town of ancient fame , art called by a great apostles name ; in praise thou do'st deserve to have thy share , for cleanliness and for thy wholsome air : and for that river by which thou do'st stand , whose streams make fertil all its neighbouring land : these ruines of thy bridge we yet do see , it s well cut stons , thy wealth do testifie : the swelling floods their force upon it spent , the showres made them impatient of restrent . their violence ( so heav'n will'd ) did break down that sumptuous bridge the glory of thy town . the grampian poets to commend , there 's found an isle here , which the wattrie streams surround a little isle , but by the highland lords a battell fought therein to 't fame affords . here the brave youth the noble horses train , with which the wing'd-ones could no race mantain . this isle , mars field may be intituled , by light scots chariots oft enobelled . near by thee , there are woods where one may kill the staigs and roes ensnare , with nets at will : and from the carse ( not far off is ) which bears most fragrant aples and most luscious pears : whilst thus thou do'st a happy mixture make , a gain with pleasure nothing thou do'st lake : and so the crown of praise and dignitie as thy just due doth appertain to thee . dundee . an ancient town , to which tay's entrie do willing obedience , and subjection shew . the bones of conquer'd and slain danes are found here scattered , ill buried in the ground . when genoa thee views , it doth despise ●s marbles , nor doth barbarous egypt pryse her pyramids , and gargara doth deem ●s harvests to deserve but small esteem . the lyburne land thinks not her veshells fair , when as she them doth with thy ships compare . venice her self in poverty thinks-lost , and cnidus of her fishes dare not boast . the spartan youth to equall thine doth fail , romes senators unto thy consuls vail . he as an artless fool should branded be , who from tay's-gulph did beg a name to thee ; since thou by more then human-art are fram'd don-dei the gift of god thou should be nam'd . glasgow . glasgow to thee thy neighbouring towns give place , ●bove them thou lifts thine head with comely grace scarce in the spatious earth , can any see a city that 's more beautifull then thee . towards the setting sun thou' rt built , and finds the temperat breathings of the western-winds . to thee the winter colds not hurtfull are , nor scorching heats of the canicular . more pure then amber is the river clyde , whose gentle streams do by thy borders glyd ; and here a thousand sail receive commands to traffick for thee unto forraign-lands . a bridge of pollisht ston , doth here vouchase to travellers o're clyde a passage safe . thyne orchards full of fragrant fruits and buds come nothing short of the corcyran woods . and blushing roses grow into thy fields . in no less plenty then sweet paestum yeelds . thy pastures , flocks , thy fertile ground , the corns , thy waters , fish , thy fields the woods adorns , thy buildings high and glorious are ; yet be more fair within then they are outwardly . thy houses by thy temples are out done , thy glittering temples of the fairest stone : and yet the stones of them how ever fair , the workmanship exceeds whlch is more rare . not far from them the place of justice stands , where senators do sit and give commands . in midst of thee † apollo's court is plac't , with the resort of all the muses grac't . to citizens in the minerva arts mars valour , juno , stable wealth impairts : that neptune and apollo did ( its said ) troy's fam'd walls rear , and their foundations lai● but thee , o glasgow ! we may justly dee● that all the gods who have been in esteem , which in the earth and air and ocean are have joyn'd to build with a propitious star. upon the arms of the city of glasgow , viz. an salmon , an oak tree , with a bird sitting on it , a bell , a gold-ring found in the salmon's mouth . the salmon which a fish is of the sea , the oak which springs from earth that loftie tree . the bird on it which in the air doth flee , o glasgow does presage all things to thee ! to which the sea or air , or fertile earth do either give their nowrishment or birth . the bell , that doth to publick worship call , sayes heaven will give most lasting things of all . the ring , the token of the marriage is of things in heav'n and earth both thee to bless . drumfrise . apollo , from amphrysus banks did see the goodly pastures at drumfrise which be : and when he he view'd them he did freely tell that all admetus hills they did excell . the fatted flocks which here in meadows feed , are numerous as grass which earth doth breed : to stranger nations they are sent abroad , and often do the english-tables load . the cornes yet more abound upon the field . the river beareth ships , and fish do yeeld , and store this town from bounteous sea doth find : whose waves are smoothed here by western-wind . diana's temple , and all else which grace the greeks land , to the temple here gives place . here cumming who betray'd his native land , his blood and life lost by the bruces hand . drumfrieses altars should much honor'd be , for here did scotland gain its libertie . air . this city doth with heavens good gifts abound the air in it is pure and wholsome found ; from whence its name it hath , or from some mine of brase , wherewith its ground perhaps do shine . it s small in bulk ; but in its worth by far it doth excell towns which more greater are . in worth smal gemms , the biggest rocks exceed , the mighty oak growes from a little seed . the overflowing nilus seven-fold springs , are unto men almost unknown things . take cowrage then , for tibers famous town which seas and lands and empires did tread down . the great and mighty rome it self ( its told of it , ) that it a village was of old . haddingtown . next unto berwick , haddingtown fac'd all the greatest dange●s , and was scotlands wall : by valiant arms oft guarded it from woes , and often carried home the spoyls of foes . by force , not valour , it hath been o'recome , gave many wounds , when it receaved some . believe it not , that onely here should be brave captains and the flower of chevalrie who in this city did make their abodes ; but here dwelt scotlands titularie-gods . the coast-side towns of fyffe . a tract of towns by forth 's streams watered , from northern-blasts the grampian-hills you shed : neptune you taught to handle oares and sailes , to spred forth to the clowdy-southern-gales . no scylla , no charibáis , no such sea as dampt uli●es ships you terrifie . if ragged-rocks to pass you do essay , or through quick-sands , through these you● force your way : and as 't were not enough the seas to plow , the earth its intralls must make bare to you . you search the fires which in its bosome be , scarce from your view are hells-dark-regions free by your unmatched skill you do not fail to cause the waters into stones congeall . the ocean with that salt your borders fills , which saxons boast they hew from rockie-hills let scotland praise your industrie and art , for if it lack'd those gifts which you impart ; too fie●ce and nipping were its winter frosts , and all its denties-savour should be lost . st. andrews . thou wert regarded by the world of late , the earth affording no more sacred-seat . thy temples whilst by jove with blushing seen he his tarpeian-chapell thought but mean. had he diana's-temple who adorn'd view'd thyne , he his own work had surely scorn'd the vestments of the priests were no less fine , all here did with an heav'nly-lustre shine . here scotlands-primate in great state did sit , to whom its patriots did themselves submit . but this thy ancient-honour now is gone , and thou thy former glory do'st bemoan . thy temples almost to the ground are laid . thy bishops wonted grandeur is decay'd ; yet art thou by the muses honour'd still , the ministers of phoebus here distill . the streams of learning and an honour , this no greater then thou well deservest is . the eastern-sun who doth the muses love , it s carefull rayes darts on thee from above . and when the mornings-blushes beautifie the muses-dwellings , likewise doth the sea with noise of tumbling-waves to them resort , and bids their children make their sleep but short the tyred students in a field that 's near refresh themselves , and do their spirits cheer . phocis of old did great apollo's love , as acte did the wise minerva's move : both of them now aggreed seem to be to have their fixed-residence in thee . cowper of fyffe . o venus wilt thou residenter be 'mongst scots , choose cowper as a seat for thee : near it the flowers adorne the hills and fields , to which idalium and proud eryx yeelds . under the rockie hill which herbs o'regrow , swift horses running make a goodly show . elis which the olympick-games did grace , did carrie some resemblance of this place . here may'st thou see the handsome youths , whose hearts with fyre-brands thou may smit , or with thy darts . the water aden , by this cities side , as pure as ac●dalian streams do glyde . here thou'lt behold the lovely swans in flight , here myrtles grow , which in the shoars delight with these ( thou goddess ) shalt environ'd be a double swan's fair wings do carrie thee . thy vail'd adonis here is blushing found , crocus hurt by thy fires doth haunt this ground . the fields yeeld corns , despise not ceres aid , without which love doth quickly freez and fade heer cheerfull gides delicious aples pull , and pleasant cherries rypned to the full : and all the fruits are here expos'd to view , which in the fam'd hesperian-gardens grew . heast hither venus from all other parts , bring here thy chains , thy fire-brands and thy darts , the name of cypria thou from cyprus claim'd from cowper , cupria thou'lt be henceforth nam'd . farfar . the ruines of a palace thee decore , a fruitfull lake and fruitfull land much more . thy precincts ( it 's confest ) much straitned be , yet ancient scotland did give power to thee : angus and other places of the land , yeeld to thy jurisdiction and command . nobles unto the people laws do give , by handy-crafts the vulgar-sort do live . they pull off bullocks-hydes and make them meet when tann'd , to cover handsome virgins feet : from thee are sandals to light umbrians sent , and solls with latchets to rope-climbers lent : and rullions wherewith the bowrs do go to keep their feet unhurt with yce and snow . the ancient greeks their boots from this town brought as also hence their ladies slippers sought . this the tragedians did with buskings fit , and the commedian-shooes invented it . let not rome henceforth of its puissance boast nor spartans vaunt much of their warlick-host they laid their yoak on necks of others land farfar doth tye their feet and leggs with bands . breechin . this fertile town doth 'twixt two rivers stand one to the north , one to the southward hand : the watters down betwixt the rocks do glyde , both bridges have and many foords beside . the vict●rie of the northren king doth much commend this city , since its men were such as stood and by their valour vanquished , when as their neighbours treacherously fled . here is a bishops-house , and near to it a tower seems built by phidias art and wit. its bulk so little , and its top so high , that it almost doth reach unto the sky : its structure's round , look to it from a-far , you would imagin it a needle were : it s built so strong , it fears no wind nor rain , and joves three-forked-darts it doth disdain . compare the fabricks , breechins tower exceeds ( proud egypt ) all thy stately pyramides . montrose . the noble town from rosie-mount doth claim its present , as from heaven its ancient name : near it 's a hill by which a river glydes , both which to it delicious fare provyds : the hill doth flocks , salmon the flood brings forth , or what in nero's ponds was of more worth . the lillies on the banks refresh the sight , the roses on the hills afford delight . towards the east the seas themselves do spread , which with a thousand ships are covered . a large field by the sea is stretched fo●th , begirt with waters both at south and north. some youth train horses here , some use the bow , and some their strength in rolling great stons show . some wrestle , some at pennie-stones do play . the rolling balls with clubs some drive away . should jove or venus view this town , sure he his capitoll , her ida leave would she. the old-town ( vulgarly . ) called old-aberdeen . a pious bishop dwells and rules in thee . don makes thee prosperous , and the neighbouring sea : don by a wondrous bridge is overlaid of one arch , which the gods belike have made such was the rhodian coloss work of old , where ships with hoised sailes to pass were bold : near this the salmon swim , and snares are set for them , and they are catcht in every net. in thee an old , and stately temple stands , the rest demolisht are by strangers hands : that temple with two towers doth rise , which be ( as pharos guids ) to travellers at sea : phoebus and pallas palaces not far , from that fair temple to be viewed are . buildings fit for these guests and over them there is a gilded-cross and diad●m . an holy bishop rais'd this fabrick , which the king did with fair revenues enrich . and rome which doth by words her bounty show did names of honour upon them bestow . so many greeks ( who ruin'd troy by force , ) did not brake forth out of the trojan-horse ; as that brave house of learning hath brought , forth , of shyning-lights , and men of greatest worth. thou dost not need thy praises should be sung thou noble town by any strangers tongue : since by this people who reside in thee , thyne honour fitly published can be . kintore . look to kintore , nor thou eleusis shall , nor cicily thereafter fertile call ; its fields are wat'red by the river don , then which in scotland pleasanter there 's none therein are fishes in such plenty found , that it may be call'd richer then the ground . here pearls are gathered which much better are then in hydaspes or reid-sea by far . hence was the union into egypt sent , which cleopatra on a vain intent , her humour and her pride to gratifie , in vinager would have dissolv'd to be . the people yearly view into this place , the scotish youth to run the horses-race : his boon who doth the rest o'recome by speed , is such as doth th'olympick pryze exceed . here first i suck't the muses breasts when young , it was here first i learn'd the latine-tongue . let athens by maeonian songs be rais'd , it 's fit kintore be by my verses prais'd . inverurie . thou art the town i love which uries stream doth water and thou' rt called by its name . don's christal-waters also flow to thee , which joyn'd to urie much increased be . what is the cause ( my dearest town ) that thou can no migdonian pillars in thee shew : why doth there not in buildings which are thine some pyramide with splendid-titles shine . why doth heath-shrubs thy lovely houses stain , to which the lawrell rather doth pertain . here formerly the bruce his foe defeat , and still hereafter prosperous was his state. nere thee did stewart beat the rebells down and with their blood , harlaw almost did drown of thee if i do boast , it is no shame , in thee some speciall-interest i claime . the land which fewell furnisheth to thee , it was the land of my nativity . near thee it was i first drew vital breath , i wish near thee ( when old ) to meet with death . bamff . bamff near the ocean doth thy self confess in bulk then trica , or hypaepe less : yet art acknowledg'd by the neighbouring-lands to be their regent and the boyne commands : nor cornes nor pastures wanting are to thee , nor stately ships which do lanch forth to sea. thou art adorned by a temple-great , and by the muses and astrea's seat. a place is near which was a field untill our ancestors did raise it to an hill. hither the sea flows up to diveron's-food , a stately-castle also on it stood . a warlick-fort , its rubbish yet appears , the rest 's consum'd by time , which all things wears . the buildings which joyn to the mercat-place , the parian-pillars which uphold them grace : strong for defence , and specious to the sight , in them doth dwell a noble ancient knight : a vertuous people doth inhabite thee , and this o bamff ! thy greatest praise must be . elgin . to elgin's praise the ancient bajae yeelds hesperian gardens , and brave tempe's fields : both sea and land doth still thy needs supplie , that fishes , this cornes doth afford to thee . corcyra , aples unto thee hath sent , damascus , pruns , cerasus , cherries lent . the bees seem to have left their attick hyve , and come to thee , their honey-trade to dryve . the silver streams of lossie here doth glyde , by crooked paths unto the sea they slyde . with stately-castles thou' rt environed , within with pleasant buildings garnished . all here is lovely and delights the eye , but the torne-walls and rubbish when you see of that great temple , which e're yet appears , bid scotland now bedew her cheeks with tears . inverness . a town not far from sea in fertile land , even near unto our north-most coast doth stand , with palaces of kings thou' rt garnished and lakes with blood of pights oft coloured . with ness pure streams thy borders watered be , where ships float and approach for serving thee : this river freezeth not by winter cold , its water to the sea flow uncontrol'd . the earth doth plenteous harvest here dispense in spite of northern stars cold influence . thule and iernie which thy neighbours be and all the northern isles send wealth to thee : forth long ago the chief command doth claim , and edinburgh yeelds not to thee the name of the chief city ; yet they eve● shall thee an emporium of this kingdom call . both nature and the genius of the place , have with this honour joyned thee to grace . inverlochie . this town where kings did dwell , now utterly is ruin'd , and its ashes here do lye : consuming time its forts hath undermin'd , which pights could not , when they 'gainst it combyn'd . if yet there here remain a marble-stone , let muses grave this lasting verse thereon : let none henceforth prefer safe peace to war , the evils of that , do this exceeed by far . war to this town a mother was ; but peace a step-dame hath become unto this place . these are all the towns upon which dr . arthur johnstoun wrote his epigrams , though there be many towns that are royall-burghs in scotland to the number of three-score and two : severall of which are comprehended under that designation of the coast-side towns of fyffe , as dysart , kircaldie , anstruther easter , burnt-island , ennerkything , kinghorn , pettenweem , dumfermling , anstruther wester , cryle , culrose , and many more such like towns , on which he wrote no epigrams . the conclusion containing some few lines , composed by mr. william dowglas advocat in edinburgh , upon the city of aberdeen . apelles stareing long , did look upon the learning , policy and generous mind of that brave city , plac'd 'twixt d ee and done ; but how to paint it , he could never find : for still he stood , in judging which of three , a court , a colledge , or , a burgh , it be . the contents ( or index ) of the survey of aberdeen . chap. i concerning the situation of aberdeen , its longitude and latitude . pag. 209 chap. ii. concerning the description of aberdeen . 212 chap. iii. concerning the antiquity of aberdeen . 222 chap. iv. concerning the government of the city of aberdeen . 226 chap. v concerning the fidelity and loyal-duty which the citizens of aberdeen have alwayes payed to their soveraignes , together with the gracious rewards conferred thereon , and the signall evidences of honour put upon many chief magistrats thereof . 230 chap. vi. concerning the state of aberdeen . 244 chap. vii . a catalogue of these who have been provests in aberdeen , whereof any record may be had , either by scrolls , charters or infeftments , before or since the burning of the said city . 246 chap. viii . the epigrams of dr. arthur iohnstoun ( physician in ordinary to king charles the first ) upon the city of aberdeen . 256 chap. ix . dr. iohnstouns epigrams , upon severall of the royall-burghs in this kingdom ; as may be found in his poems printed at middle-burgh 1642. translated into english , by i. b. 261 finis . it is expected , that the courteous reader will be pleased ( before he peruse this book , ) to take notice of and correct with his pen these few escapes of the press ( for the most exact and vigilant will have some , ) whereby he will be keept from a stop when he comes to them in his ordinary reading . page , page , line , errors , corrected . 131 16 , 17 corporation corruption 139 2 agreement arguments 155 11 politita politica 194 7 volens voleur 252 24 qua quo notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a60328-e37480 † or gradles † the colledge . a publication of the royal authority, of the most serene, most mighty, and most august monarch, james the seventh by the grace of god king of scotland, england, france, and ireland, defender of the faith, &c. scotland. privy council. 1685 approx. 5 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-10 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05740 wing s1993 estc r183596 53299302 ocm 53299302 180031 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05740) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 180031) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2810:56) a publication of the royal authority, of the most serene, most mighty, and most august monarch, james the seventh by the grace of god king of scotland, england, france, and ireland, defender of the faith, &c. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii). 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson ..., edinburgh, : anno dom. 1685. caption title. initial letter. title vignette: royal seal with initials j r. reproduction of original in: national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng charles -ii, -king of england, 1630-1685 -death and burial -sources. james -ii, -king of england, 1633-1700 -early works to 1800. scotland -kings and rulers -succession -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-02 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2008-08 spi global rekeyed and resubmitted 2008-10 mona logarbo sampled and proofread 2008-10 mona logarbo text and markup reviewed and edited 2009-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion j r honi soit qui mal y pense royal blazon or coat of arms a publication , of the royal authority , of the most serene , most mighty , and most august monarch , james the seventh , by the grace of god , king of scotland , england , france , and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. the earl of perth , lord high chancellor . the lord arch-bishop of st. andrews . the duke of queensberry , lord high thesaurer . the lord arch-bishop of glasgow . the lord marquess of athol , lord privy seal . the lord duke of hamilton . the lord marquess of douglas . the earl of drumlanrig . the earl of wintoun . the earl of linlithgow , lord justice-general . the earl of southesk . the earl of panmure . the earl of tweedale . the earl of balcarras . the lord yester . the lord kinnaird . l. president of the session . l. register . l. advocat . l. justice-clerk . l. castlehill . general lieutennent drummond . drumelȝeer . abbotshall . collonel grahame of claver-house . gossfoord . forasmuch as it hath pleased the almighty god , to call charles the second , our late soveraign lord , of glorious , and ever blessed memory , from a temporary crown , to inherit an eternal in the heavens ; whereby the undoubted right of succession , to him , in the imperial crown of this realm , was immediatly devolved on the sacred person of his royal ; and dearest brother , our present sacred soveraign ( whom god long preserve ) therefore we , the lords of his majesties privy council , authorized in that capacity , by his majesties royal letter , bearing date at whitehall , the sixth day of february instant , do , with the concurrence of several other lords , spiritual , and temporal , barons , and burgesses of this realm ; hereby declare , and proclaim to all the world , that our soveraign lord james the seventh , is by lawful and undoubted succession and descent , king of scotland , england , france , and ireland , and the dominions there unto-belonging , defender of the faith , &c. ( whom god preserve and bless with a long , glorious , happy life and prosperous reign ) and whom we shall humbly obey , dutifully and faithfully serve , maintain and defend , with our lives and fortunes against all deadly , as our only righteous king and soveraign , overall persons , and in all causes , as holding his imperial crown from god alone . and for testification whereof , we here , in presence of the almighty god , and a great number of his majesties faithful people , of all estates and qualities , who are assisting with us , at this solemn publication , of our due , humble , and faithful acknowledgement of his supream soveraign authority , at the mercat cross of the city of edinburgh , declare and publish , that our said soveraign lord , by the goodness and providence of almighty god , is of scotland , england , france , and ireland , and dominions thereunto-belonging , the most potent , mighty , and undoubted king . and hereby give our oaths , with up-lifted hands , that we shall bear true and faithful alleadgeance , unto our said sacred soveraign , james the seventh ; king of great-britain , france , and ireland , defender of the faith , &c. and to his lawful heirs and successors , and shall perform all duties , service , and obedience to him , as becomes his faithful , loyal , and dutiful subjects . so help us god. per actum dominorum secreti cancilii . will. paterson , cls. sti. concilii . god save king james the seventh . edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty , anno dom. 1685. a bitte to stay the stomacks of good subiects, or, a suddaine and short vindication of the scotts commissioners papers intituled, the answer of the commissioners of the kingdome of scotland, &c. from the imputations laid upon them, in the declaration of the lords and commons assembled in parliament, concerning the papers of the scots commissioners, &c. martij 13 by a.h., scoto-britan. a. h., scoto-britan. this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a42981 of text r4885 in the english short title catalog (wing h1). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 24 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 6 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a42981 wing h1 estc r4885 11889937 ocm 11889937 50429 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a42981) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 50429) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 32:3) a bitte to stay the stomacks of good subiects, or, a suddaine and short vindication of the scotts commissioners papers intituled, the answer of the commissioners of the kingdome of scotland, &c. from the imputations laid upon them, in the declaration of the lords and commons assembled in parliament, concerning the papers of the scots commissioners, &c. martij 13 by a.h., scoto-britan. a. h., scoto-britan. 9 [i.e. 11] p. s.n.], [s.l. : 1647. "the answer of the commissioners" appeared dec. 27, 1647. reproduction of original in harvard university libraries. eng scotland. -parliament. -scots commissioners answer to his majesties quaeres. great britain -history -civil war, 1642-1649. a42981 r4885 (wing h1). civilwar no a bitte to stay the stomacks of good subiects. or, a suddaine and short vindication of the scotts commissioners papers intituled the answer a. h., scoto-britan 1647 4041 7 0 0 0 0 0 17 c the rate of 17 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2005-11 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2005-11 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2006-02 jonathan blaney sampled and proofread 2006-02 jonathan blaney text and markup reviewed and edited 2006-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a bitte to stay the stomacks of good svbiects . or a suddaine and short vindication of the scotts commissioners papers intitvled the answer of the commissioners of the kingdome of scotland , &c. from the imputations laid upon them , in the declaration of the lords and commons assembled in parliament , concerning the papers of the scotts commissioners , &c. martij 13. by a. h. scoto-britan . printed anno dom. 1647. history informes us . that when a dumbe sonne of craesus king of lydia , saw one ready to stab his father , he conquered the naturall impediments of speech , and distinctly cry'd out kill not the king that which wrought this wonder , was the power of naturall affection by the operation of an extraordinary sympathy : surely those are justly chargeable , with a more then bruitish , ( even insensate ) want of affection , and sympathy who wil not now use , what nature ordinarily affords unto all ; ( speech , ) to rescue the father of their country the kings majesty , from the killing wounds ready to be given unto him : this duty puts the pen into my hands ; and without the paint of apology , makes me ( in the absence of an intrusted , and my farre more able countryman ) to shew unto you , how dangerously the states empetiques practise upon the body politique of great brittaine , and make it as the ( evill one ) their worke to propogate the sinne of their rebellion : unto all others , especially unto my dear countrimen , and these poysonous pills , are guilded with the pretence of undeceiving the people of both kingdomes : this worke begets in them , decla . p. 6 and delivers them of , a declaration of the lords and commons assembled in parliament , concerning the papers of the scots commissioners , entituled the answer of the commissioners , &c. and horrid impiety that what men themselves wilfully reject , they should envie unto others ; repentance , the scots through misprison of zeale ( as paul did christ ) have persecuted their soveraigne , but now are divinely converted , and will no longer engage with the parliament in this sin , as they have published unto the world in their answer , upon the new propositions of peace , and the foure bills sent unto his majesty , full of honor , and honesty , cleare from all the cavills of these desperate contrivers , and the ripe consultations of men , of singular iudgement , and exemplary integrity : who sincerely represented the sence of their nation ; and therefore , ( although they are burthened with forgetfulnesse of the worke about which they came , p. 8 with interpositions in things concerned them not , and deviation from the trust of the kingdome of scotland ) they received as the guerdon of true patriots , and experienced states-men , before their departure from this city , a publique instrument of thankefull approbation , from almost all the nobles of scotland , for their good carriage and wise conduct of the affaires of that kingdomes heere : so that wherein they quarrel the proceedings of the commissioners they might have been pleased , p. 7 ( but it made not for them to intend the kingdome of scotland . that which is first noted by them to disgust the scots , was the alteration of the propositions sent to newcastle from those of oxford , p. 8 in the management of the militia of the three kingdomes , the war , of ireland , the education and marriage of the kings children , &c. the concluding peace or war with forrain princes &c : p. 10 as though these were not principall interests of the kingdome of scotland , as well as of england , and was the prosecuting these interests in the kingdome of england , the offensive exercise of an interest in that kingdome ; it were much to be wished this distinction , had beene offered , before the scots army left england : surely these alterations the post na●i tells us , leaves them worse then you found them , and takes from them their birth-right of equall capacity with your sectes joyne with you in your rebellion at first , with much of your own , [ as the devill unto our saviour ] you tendred more then was your owne , and now your worke is done , will you deny unto them , what is their owne in a word the sence of your resolution , never to grant them the exercize of interest in this kingdome , p. 62 is to recede from the articles of the treaty between both kingdomes ; p. 76 to debarre them of all places and offices of trust , p. 80 and profit in this kingdome , and to reserve them for your selves and your confiding creatures , which is a right , and interest of the kingdome of scotland , will be further claimed , and disputed with you : yet the waving these interests for the time , by the scots , could not but be acknowledged to proceed from transparent inclinations unto peace ; but now , because by the progresse of your unlimited vsurpations upon his majesties royall rights , ( in which the interests of the scotts are especially included ) being better informed , they differ in iudgement from your propositions ; p. 22 this causes your wonder . are further results of judgement , upon further and more cleare information no wayes to be permitted ? this were to obstruct all passages , unto humare certainty of knowledge , which is perfected by experience , ( the child of time : ) but these men ( because they will compleat their sinnes with obstinacy ) will admit of no variation from their first principles ( to unthrone the king ! ) and now much wonder that the scots will not arrive with them at that point of impiety : because the scots cannot grant that his majesty ▪ & royal succession , should be devested of the power of the militia , p. 11 and conferring titles of honour , ( the essentiall rights of regality ) for which they liberally affoard them solid reasons ; the parliament retrive nothing to procure further satisfaction ; but blow them of with , p. 12 that they are the transcript of the kings arguments about hvll : which amounts unto this ; that what comes from the king ( how consistent soever with reason , ) cannot be of force , or worthy the answering : it is no marvell the kings reasons are no higher rated by them , when that the word of god , can have but that authority , and acceptation with them , it hath with the devill ; but wherein they can force it unto a specious ( though false ) consistency , with their owne ends , and interests : and it cannot certainely , without astonishment , and horror , p. 24 p. 38 he observed , with what slighting , and indignation they mention his sacred majesty throughout the whole series of their declaration , as though they were resolved to lay him altogether aside , as some monstrouse or accursed thing : how do they abhorre from a personall treaty , so often pressed by the commissioners , as the only expedient of a safe , and well grounded peace betweene his majesty , and his people ; in order whereunto when the disbanding of the army was propounded by them , how they discover a tyranny awed with continuall feare , and only supported by the power of an army : had sir thomas fairfax his army beene disbanded , then indeed ( say they ) they might have brought the king to london , p. 13 whether the parliament would or no , and have brought the parliament unto a personall treaty with him , and therein unto what tearmes , he and they pleased : this is the greatest crime they charge the scotts commissioners , with : a personall treaty at london is first in their thoughts , and discourse : p. 18 19 the most secret , and greivous sinne doth not more abominate light , and manifestation , then treason the sight of regall majesty abused by it ; the presence of the king at london might give him opportunity ( say they ) to caiole the citizens ; i. e. to cozen and cheat them as themselves have done : ) their diligence employes it selfe , ( with achan ) to hide the goulden wedge , and goodly things they espied in this city , to convey it into their owne stuffe , and makes the riches thereof serve unto their own ends , with which , it can no wayes stand , to admit king charles unto loudon : no the undeceived citisens , would have too many representations , in his majesties presence , of their sufferings , occasioned by his absence . a treaty there , say they ( and contrary unto their custome most truely , ) would treat us out of what wee have fought for , ( i. e. the soveraigne dominion , ) draw the whole guilt of this effusion of blood , p 20 upon our selves , and tend unto the apparent destruction of the persons , ( i. e. themselves ) that have engaged : this proposition of the scots commissioners , is too much for the advantage of his majesty , and indeed too honest for this pack't partie , the present partie-colourd parliament , to yeeld unto : and therefore , whilst he is at this distance of affection with them , ( they say not of judgement , ) for what good man can close with them ? p. 22 his locall absence is necessary : but nothing more startles this crue , then that the scots , should now varie from that , wherein they formerly concurred with them : or what reasons they have thought on since , which they iudge more effectuall then those , ( formerly . ) i will assigne them some few , of many ; naturall affection and loyalty , quickned by the word of god and conscience informed ; honor , their owne interest , and the perfidie and irreligion of this present parliament , all which , by a joynt and respective influence upon them , now , powerfully dispose them unto their duty of subjection , and christian obedience , wherein they are obliged unto their dread soveraigne . they were formerly decoyed into this kingdome , under those winning pretences , of reformation of religion corrupted , and the preservation of the just liberties of the subject encroached upon , and fearing the inconveniences which flow from these , might reach unto themselves , they willingly engaged in this war : but now [ contrary unto their hope ] finding the successes of their armes , to have beene the fruitfull parents , of infinitely more corruptions , in church and common wealth , and that the intentions of these reformers , ( what ever they pretended ) never aymed at or were directed unto these good ends , but at the subversion of monarchy , and placing a supreame power in themselves , and the driving on of particular ends and interests of their own ; and an arbitrary government ; to support which , as they tollerate all religions , and even the most damnable here●●es ; so they do all illegall practises ; and the most unwarrantable , and violent actions of those who adhere unto them . these things visible ( unto all who have eyes ) appearing unto the scots , they do now , [ not without just resentment ] reflect upon themselves , and are resolved no more to partake with these men , in their sins , but to do their first workes , returne unto their first love , and as [ the tribe of judah did by king david , ] being bone of his bone , and flesh of his flesh , they will [ by gods assistance ] industriously endeavour to bring their natural king unto his owne house ; and that with honor , safety , and freedome ; maugre the opposers . nor will his majesty be ever pressed by them to take the covenant , having so often protested his aversenesse thereunto , there being more reason herein [ what they upraid the commissioners with , ] p. 36 to take the measure of their desires , from what may please the king ; then what they ( with ieroboam ) doe , to establish their owne throne , and new erected dominion , to set up so many calves and idolls , such multitudes of reidiculous teachers , and abominable sects , and heresies : for what else is it to conive at and tollerate them , yea to countenance them : yet this sect [ forsooth ] must be convinced by the word of god , p. 50 with gentlenesse , and reason , and not beaten out of it by force : thus must anabaptists be dealt withall , yea pleaded for also , and supplyed with a better argument then ever they could find for themselves , that it is onely a difference in the circumstance of time , in the administration of an ordinance it is admirable that moses could not hit upon this distinction , unto the angell who was ready to kill him for his deferring the circumcision of his sonne eleazar equipollent unto baptisme . independents , also under which notion , antinomians , libertines , brownists , seperatists , p. 53 arminians , familists , erastians ; seekers , shakers ) all the rable of heretikes shelter themselves , must have indulgence granted unto them , yea , and the chiefe places , of honor , trust , and profit , in church and common wealthe , conferred upon them ; [ how ever we are borne in hand with the settlement of the presbyteriall government , p. 38 ] and yet because the comissioners would have the king complyed with and the conviction of his iudgement , and satisfaction , expected : this must be in them a coznage : nor will such as have adhered unto his majesty in the late warre , be [ through the scots procurement , ] pressed unto the covenant , which hath bin truely made an hooke only to draw the kings partie into danger . a meere cobweb to catch flyes in , the weakned kings partie , whilst the stronger reptilia ( bred in their owne intralls ) can breake through it when they list : surely an equall respect is due ( nay a farre greater ) unto those of the kings judgement , for the antiquity of their reformation , and uniformity , then unto your independents , and sectaries , so that ( what you will not extend , ) p. 45 indulgence , to tollerate unto them , the use of the common prayer , will bee left unto his majesty to give unto them : it being much more ( in the apprehension of the scots ) tollerable , that prelacy ▪ ( some excercise of which government , they have seene in other kingdomes embraceing the reformation ) should be restored , then instead thereof such thick weeds of heresies as now daiely spring up in the church , and are ready to choak the seed of gods word ▪ be permitted a full growth . and herein they say much lesse , then that great patron of independencie mr. iohn goodwin , the bellweather of that flock doth , p. 26 who tells us , that there was more of the power , and truth of religion in england , under the late prelaticall government , then in all the reformed churches besides which ( they say not in others ) in this church is most true : but this parliament likes not , ( as not likely to thrive by it ) uniformity in religion , being certainely ( for the greater part of them , ) of kinne unto that english man , our countrey man barkely speaks of , who seperating from his neigbours , first placed the true church in his owne family , and having severall sonnes , these afterwards being different in judgement , there became at length , so many churches and religions , as there were persons in the house , from which many of the grandees at westminster , are probably extracted . and as unto that grand exception taken against the commissioners , for propounding that an act of oblivion , without any caution or limitation , should be passed in both kingdomes , whereby delinquents shall be set upon an even flowre , p. 33 with those that have engaged against them in that cause : the scots conceive themselves obliged in the strictest points of honour , to advance what they possibly may , the good of those high noble and loyall spirits , which no obliquity of worldly respect , no distortion of danger or weight of suffrings , hath beene able to divorce from his majesties service : and as they acknowledge it their great unhappinesse , that they have not had the honour to be sharers with them hitherto in this glory ; so now it is their ambition , to have part and fellowship with them in this most noble worke , and just undertaking , of re-establishing his sacred majestie into his unquestionable rights ; in pursuance whereof , ( what the parliament object unto the scots commissioners , that through all these and many former papers they plead the cause of the king and his partie ) they will hence forward , p. 34 urge that cause with the most powerfull and now onely arguments , the parliament of england can yeild unto , gnash they never so much with their teeth ; such favorites are delinquents now growne with them , p. 35 as by their reception at edenburgh they may guesse . nor can lesse be expected from the scots , as on whom the parliament of england , hath so notoriously imposed , as to have his majestie left unto them , by them , upon such tearmes and assurances of high regard unto his majesties person and royall rights : the contrary whereof , in every point they have unto their eternall infamy ) performed ; p. 41 which assurances though they evade and deny them , shall be justified unto the world , by the publication of the transactions , betweene the commissioners of both nations at new-castle , and also by the overtures ever sithence : his majesties person and royall rights , being of equall concernment unto the scots with the english , although the parliament of england call these [ exclusively ] their owne rights — for which they hold it not fit to capitulate : p. 41 and for this abuse of brotherly confidence in the houses , the scots doubt not , in gods mercy to bring them unto such an account , as shall leave the whole reckoning of his majesties unparalel'd sufferings upon themselves , who now seeme to have no way of iustification left , but by further progresse in crimes : so that it is not to be marveiled at , they seeme so much to undervalue his majesties regall power , of conferring titles of honour , and labour to render the scots ridiculous , for that they are so extreame thirsty , p. 75 to drinke of the fountaine of honour , so they stile the king , say they , because indeed the parliament of england ( as to the over-ruling partie thereof , many being led aside by their fraud , and violence ) have left off to be honest , honour being but the proper seat , and stall of honestie : neither can it be presumed that they desire to taste of this fountaine , when they make it their worke , to damme and fill it up with the rubbish of their new government , and yet unshapen tyranny , wholy trampling under their feet , all the divine and glorious prerogatives , and royall priviledges of monarchy exercised in all ages by the kings of england and scotland ( the sunne in his greatest splendor , is not more manifest then this ) by their endeavour to take away his majesties prerogative in the settlement of religion , his legislative power , the negative voyce , the militia , the disposing of offices , conferring of honours , the disposing of his children , the election of his servants , with many other rights that append unto these ; in which transcendent usurpations upon their owne borne king , should the scots concurre , they should most justly render themselves the shame of all nations , and the off-scouring of the world : the perfidie of the leading partie in the present parliament , hath already given too great a staine unto their honour ( by their dealing with his majestie ) which they will sooner wash off with prodigall streames of the dearest and best blood of scotland , then they will suffer to remaine or rest longer upon them ; and whereas they lay an heavy load upon the commissioners of unthankfulnesse unto their armie , who shewed such tender fellow-f●●ling of their sufferings and their true-heartednesse towards them ▪ p. 88 89 the armie might well pay them with words , for thy many blowes they received , and with which they discharged their scores in scotland , and saved their heads ( with the losse of many thausand of their owne lives ) in england ; they no wayes being able to have matched , much lesse to have mastred his majesties party without their conjuncture ; no english man all this while loosing one drop of blood for the cause in scotland ; and as the scots have very dearely earned their whole pay ( had it beene more , and more truly paid ) with the vast expence of their blood , the impoverishment of their county , and a bloody engagement against their owne bowells , so hath it cost them most , by incurring the forrain censure of disloyalty ; into which the hypocrisie , and avarice of the parliament of england principally led them , and to discharge themselves of this burthen , now become intollerable , and to shew unto the world , that the present practises of the parliament of england were not the motives of their advance into the kingdome ; they resolve ( with gods leave ) to manifest the contrary , and speedily to come nearer unto them , to debateface to face the royall rights of his majesty , p. 76 80 and their joynt interests so eluded by them , with such demonstrations ( as by gods helpe ) will be of force manifestly to prove by their power , what by their commissioners they have propounded in their papers . reader , take this for the first light skirmish of a reply unto the declaration , untill the maine battell of more manifest demonstrations , for the truth of what is here set forth in the behalfe of the answer of the scots commissioners , can be drawne up and rallied . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a42981e-180 sion coll. visited . icon ani. an account of the late establishment of presbyterian-government by the parliament of scotland anno 1690 together with the methods by which it was settled, and the consequences of it : as also several publick acts, speeches, pleadings, and other matters of importance relating to the church in that kingdom : to which is added a summary of the visitation of the universities there in a fifth letter from a gentleman at edinburgh, to his friend at london. sage, john, 1652-1711. 1693 approx. 212 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 55 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2003-05 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a59415 wing s284 estc r13590 13135655 ocm 13135655 97929 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a59415) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 97929) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 750:17) an account of the late establishment of presbyterian-government by the parliament of scotland anno 1690 together with the methods by which it was settled, and the consequences of it : as also several publick acts, speeches, pleadings, and other matters of importance relating to the church in that kingdom : to which is added a summary of the visitation of the universities there in a fifth letter from a gentleman at edinburgh, to his friend at london. sage, john, 1652-1711. [8], 100 p. printed for jos. hindmarsh ..., london : 1693. errata: p. 100. reproduction of original in huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng presbyterianism. scotland -church history. 2002-12 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-02 apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-03 olivia bottum sampled and proofread 2003-03 olivia bottum text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an account of the late establishment of presbyterian-government by the parliament of scotland anno 1690. together with the methods by which it was settled , and the consequences of it : as also several publick acts , speeches , pleadings , and other matters of importance relating to the church in that kingdom . to which is added a summary of the visitation of the universities there ; in a fifth letter from a gentleman at edinburgh , to his friend at london . si tibi vitae nostrae vera imago sucourret , videberis tibi videre captae cum maximè civitatis faciem , in quâ , omisso pudoris , rectique respectu , vires in consilio sunt , velut signo ad permiscenda omnia dato . non igni , non ferro abstinetur : soluta legibus scelera sunt : nec religio quidem quae inter arma hostilia supplices texit , ullum impedimentum est ruentium in praedam , &c. seneca de benef. lib. 7. cap. 27. — quid nos dura refugimus aetas ? quid intactum nefasti liquimus ? unde manus iuventus metu deorum continuit ? quibus pepercit aris ? horat. carm. lib. 1. od. 35. london , printed for ios. hindmarsh , at the golden ball over-against the royal-exchange in cornhil . m dc xciii . advertisement by the publisher to the reader . i have ever thought that justice and candor require not only , that we should not utter any thing against our adversaries which we know to be false ; but also that we should suppress nothing which we know would vindicate them , or extenuate that whereof they are accused ; and therefore , having come to the knowledge of a particular , which escap'd the author's diligence at the writing of this relation , i am satisfied it will be as grateful to him , as fair to our adversaries to acquaint the reader with it here . the thing is concerning mr. james kirton's taking the benefit of the act of parliament made in favour of the old presbyterian ministers , as is related p. 24 of this book : and after a diligent enquiry , made by my self and others , i find that that account is true to a tittle from the beginning to the end of it . but that which i will not conceal , is , that mr. kirton having preached two sundays in august 1690 , at martin , and thereby secured to himself the benefice from whitsunday 1689 , was persuaded by friends to give mr. meldrum , the episcopal minister , one half year of the benefice of martin . i designed to have told this in its proper place , p. 24 , but this was prevented , that sheet being printed off sooner than i expected . the contents . a short introduction . pag. 1 act of the privy council at edinburgh , december the 24th 1689. prohibiting all inferiour iudges to give or execute any decrees in favour of such of the episcopal clergy , as had been thrust from their charges by the rabble before the 13th of april 1689. ibid. this act furnishes a pretext to these , especially of the western shires , where rabbling had most prèvailed , to refuse payment for what was due of the year 1688 , and preceding years . p. 2 the misery , this act reduced the clergy to , induced them to endeavour to have it repealed or favourably explained , but their endeavours are in vain . p. 3 the parliament meets april 25 , 1690. their first act rescinds the first of the second parliament of king charles the second , 1669. entituled , act asserting his majesties supremacy over all persons , and in all causes ecclesiastical and civil . p. 4 , 5 the thorough pac'd presbyterians nickt , for this rescissory act does not reach many other acts , which assert the supremacy to a degree inconsistent with their pretensions ; yet it encourages the presbyterians to go on , and ask an intire settlement of their whole scheme . ibid. the address they presented to the commissioner , and the estates of parliament . p. 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 remarks upon this address . p. 10 , 11 the case of the presbyterian ministers , who after the first of january 1661 were turned out of the churches they then possessed , and the act restoring them . p. 12 , 13 the account upon which these presbyterian ministers were by act of parliament 1662 put from the churches , which they possest ; was their refusing to give obedience to the law requiring them to take presentations to their churches from their lawful patrons . p. 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 the act entituled an act concerning such benefices and stipends as have been possest without presentation from the lawful patrons : for non-compliance with which the presbyterian ministers were outed 1662. p. 18 , 19 that act justified . p. 20 an account of the act of the privy council at glasgow in pursuance of the foresaid act of parliament . p. 21 the severity of the act restoring the old presbyterian ministers : by it the episcopal incumbents were not only ejected out of their benefices , but deprived of a whole years rent , for which they had served the cure , without any ground of hope to be provided of other churches , and this notwithstanding their compliance with the government . p. 22 , 23 the rigorous execution of this act ; instances of this . p. 24 , 25 an account of the act ratifying the confession of faith , and settling the presbyterian government . p. 26 the arts used to prepare the parliament for this act : for this end the press employed , and pamphlets published recommending presbytery , and disgracing and defaming prelacy , speeches made by the high commissioner and president of the parliament . p. 27 , 28 , 29 the pulpit tun'd to serve their design , with an account of such sermons as were printed . p. 30 to 36 endeavours of the zealots for promoting the good old cause , and of their agents and pensioners . p. 36 an account how the act was prepared , debated , voted ; list and account of the committee nominated for church affairs , to whom this act was recommended . p. 37 , 38 the act as it was made a law. p. 39 , 40 , 41 the confession of faith read in the house and ratified ; the ratification of the directory and catechism , required in the presbyterian address , and yet these not mentioned in the act. 42 , 43 , 44 act 2. parl. 2. car. ii. entituled act acknowledging and asserting the right of sucession to the imperial crown of scotland repealed in this act establishing presbytery . sir james montgomery of skelmurly reasons for repealing the act. the duke of hamilton and lord staires reason against repealing it . reflections made out of the house upon the repealing the act about succession . 45 , 46 that article of the act establishing presbytery which puts the government of the church entirely in the hands of the known , sound presbyterians considered . 47 those episcopal ministers , who had given obedience to the civil government , petition the parliament against that article , and beg to be allowed a share in the ecclesiastical iurisdiction . ibid. & 48 their petition presented , and back'd by the duke of hamilton , and yet rejected with scorn . ibid. mr. ross , a member of the house , proposes , that those presbyterian ministers , who had been deposed by their own ecclesiastical iudicatories , before the re establishment of episcopacy , an. 1662. might not be included in the number of those sound presbyterians in whose hands the government was to be established in the first instance : this proposal rejected . 49 duke hamilton reasons against putting the government solely in the hands of those known , sound presbyterians , but without success . ibid. the kng's power in ecclesiastical matters debated in parliament . 50 the petition of the episcopal ministers , who were thrust from their churches by force and violence of the rabble , in december 1688 , or at any time thereafter before the 13th . of april 1689. 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 the article concerning the rabbled clergy considered , and three amendments the duke of hamilton procured to be made in it . 57 , 58 , 59. proposal , that such ministers as had not free access to their churches , and so could not obey the proclamation of the convention , april 13. upon the day appointed , but were willing to obey when they should have access , might be excepted out of the number of those who were to be declared deprived of their benefices , rejected . ibid. reasons of the duke of hamilton , that the deed of the rabble might not be ratified , i. e. that those episcopal ministers , who had been forced from their benefices by the fury of the presbyterian mobb , might not for that be deprived . 60 the petition of the rabbled clergy presented , and back'd by the duke of hamilton , but rejected without being read , and the article approved . 62 the duke resents the approving the article , and leaves the house . 63 in his absence the act is voted in cumulo , and receives afterward the royal assent . ibid. & 64 remarks on the commissioner's behaviour . ibid. the consequences this act produced , 1. thanks . 2. printed sermons . 3. presbyterian ministers got plurality of benefices , vacant by the ejection of so many episcopal ministers by that act , instances of this . 65 , 66 , 67 the duke of hamilton and some other councillors procure a gift of a year's revenue of their own benefices , to some of those episcopal ministers , who had been turned out by the mobb . restrictions the presbyterian lords got put on this . 68 , 69 the petitions of many of those ministers rejected by the privy council . the case of mr. skeen minister of dunsyre . 70 to 77 draught of an act , given in by the earl of linlithgow , that a toleration might be granted to those of the episcopal persuasion , to worship god after their own manner ; and particularly , that those who were inclined to use the english liturgy , might do it safely . 77 this rejected . the party , especially the preachers , incensed at the design , and in their sermons declaim vehemently against it . ibid. patronages abolished , and a new strange model of electing ministers established . 78 act of parliament , prohibiting those ministers who were deprived by the committee of estates , and by the privy council , an. 1689. for not reading in their pulpits the proclamation against owning the late king iames , and not praying publickly for william and mary , as king and queen of scotland , to exercise any part of their ministerial function , till they swear and subscribe the oath of allegiance , and also engage themselves under their hands , to pray for k. william and q : mary , as king and queen of scotland , and not to own the late king james vii . for their king in any sort . 79 , 80. they are likewise obliged to subscribe a declaration called a certificate of assurance , which explodes the distinction of a king de facto and de jure . 81 they do not comply , but for sometime cease from the publick exercise of their ministry . 82 after some time they begin again to exercise their ministry in their own houses ; the presbyterian preachers perplexed at this , and move the privy council to prosecute them . 83 instances of episcopal ministers prosecuted upon this account . ibid. the presbyterians attempt to obtrude a presbyterian preacher on the parish of errol . a tumult upon that account . 84 dr. nicolson indicted , and libelled before the privy council . the narrative of his libel , with the cause why this narrative is inserted . 85 , 86 , 87 , 88. a short account of the visiting the universities . 89 to 95 the proclamation of april 13. 1689 , against owning the late king james , and appointing publick prayers for william and mary , king and queen of scotland . 95 , 96 the speech of william earl of crawfurd , president to the parliament of scotland , april 22. 1690. 97 , 98 , 99 , 100 sir , although i am satisfied , that the papers already in print concerning the persecutions , the episcopal church in scotland has suffered of late , do furnish matter enough to move the compassion of a friend , and glut the malice even of the most inveterate enemy ; yet finding by your last , that you earnestly desire to know more about them ; and not being able to resist your importunity , i have been at the pains to send you this following account . the former relation , as i remember , brought things no farther down , than that act of privy council , dated december 24. 1689. by which all inferiour judges within the nation , were prohibited to give decrees in favour of such of the clergy , as had been thrust from their charges by tumult and rabble , before the 13th of april preceding . notwithstanding you have that act in print already , yet being it must give the rise of this brief supplement , i shall here again transcribe it . an act of council , at edinburgh , dec. 24. 1689. the lords of his majesties privy council , considering , that by the ●ot of the meeting of estates of the date the thirteenth day of april last , there is a difference made betwixt the ministers then in possession , and exercise of their ministry , at their respective churches , and those who were not so . and that the case of the ministers who were not in the actual exercise of their ministerial function , the thirteenth day of april last , lies yet under the consideration of the parliament , and lest in the mean time they may call and pursue for the stipends ( alledged ) due to them , or put in execution the decrees and sentences already obtained at their instance for the same , before the estates of parliament can meet , and give the determinations in the points . therefore the said lords of privy council , finding that the case foresaid depending before the parliament is not obvious to be cognosced upon , and decided by the inferiour iudges , but that the same should be left entire to the decision of the parliament , have thought fit to signifie to all inferiour courts and ministers of the law , that the matter above-mentioned , is depending before the parliament , to the effect they may regulate and govern themselves in the judging of all processes to be intented before them upon the said matter , or in executing the sentences already pronounced thereupon , as they will be answerable . sic subscribitur , crawford , i. p. d. s. con. no sooner did that act pass , than copies of it were instantly sent by the councils order , to all inferiour judges , within whose jurisdictions those parishes lay , from which the ministers had been forced before that 13th of april , so fatal to our clergy : and forthwith a stop was put to the course of justice . for generally , those who were liable to pay the tythes in the western shires , where rabling had most prevailed , refused to pay one farthing of what was due for the year 1688. or any years preceding ; having for them the pretext of this act of council : neither would the judges grant sentences in favour of any such ministers , as had the hard fortune to stand in these unlucky circumstances . and indeed it was no wonder , if the judges were shy to meddle with such an act ; considering on the one hand , how darkly and indistinctly it was worded ; and on the other , how ticklish the times then were ; and how natural it was for the council , to have turned them out of their places , if they had chanced to give it an interpretation ( however consonant with the rules of justice ) unsuitable to the designs of the government . no man , i think , needs to doubt but this treatment seem'd grievous enough to the poor sufferers . they had entered to their respective churches according to law. they had never been summoned to appear before any court , ecclesiastical or civil ; nor tryed , or convict of any crime or scandal that might infer a deprivation . only they had been thrust from their stations by lawless force and violence ; a thing so far from being criminal in them , that it rather ought to have engaged the government , to have taken particular care for their redress and restitution . what then may be thought of this precluding them the benefit of the common law , for what was uncontrovertibly due to them ? especially considering , that most of them had numerous families ; and not one of twenty , any stock of his own ( besides his benefice ) wherewith to maintain them ? hard enough sure . well . necessity , you know , sir , is a rigorous taskmaster , and puts one upon all imaginable shifts to be eased of its burthen . and so it is not to be doubted , but these poor men would bestir themselves as effectually as they could , to have that act , if not repealed , at least explained and made more favourable : as indeed they did ; but without success . for though some consellors ( such as the duke of hamilton , in whose absence the act was made ) were inclin'd to do them justice ; yet at that time the earl of crawford , and the lord cardrosse , ( two lords , who had some reason to commiserate the needy ) and their adherents of the presbyterian party , made greatest numbers at the council board ; and they had made the act , and so they would not so much as hear of admitting it to a new deliberation . this , as soon as they knew it , made the afflicted ministers ( though they had prepared their petition ) quite give over the design of addressing to the council , and betake themselves to the last remedy , patience , till the parliament should meet , to which their case by the act of council was refer'd . i have hitherto given you but a very slender account of this matter ; but if you will be pleas'd to read on , you shall have what may satisfie you before i have done . now proceed we strait to the parliament : in the mean time , i must tell you , that it is no part of my present undertaking , to meddle with any thing , but what concerns the church or the clergy . and even of that too , you are not to expect the most perfect account . the parliament met upon the 15th of april 1690. and the first thing they did in relation to the church , was the abolition of the kings supremacy in ecclesiastical matters . but alas , the thorough-pac'd presbyterians were sadly nick'd in that matter ; for it was only the act which was made anno 1669. that was rescinded ; and other acts that asserted the supremacy to a degree entirely inconsistent with the prerogatives of the kirk , were kept in force and unrepeal'd . at least , this i am sure of , mr. andrew melvill , a great promoter , if not the first parent of presbyterian parity in scotland , and mr. david black , and such antient worthies of the sect , reckoned them intolerable , when they called them , the bloody gullies of arbitrary power ; [ i. e. the cut-throat knives . ] but that 's no great matter ; only one thing let me add further concerning the first act , which is , that it founds the repeal of that sixty nine act upon this reason , that , that supremacy was inconsistent with the establishment of the church-government ( not now in being , for presbytery was not erected till six weeks after ; but ) now desired ; which what sense it may make in law or politicks , it is not my purpose to enquire . but i remember many thought then , that it was a pretty odd fetch in common reason to abolish that act , because the supremacy , as explained in it , was inconsistent with what had no real existence , but only an imaginary one in the desires of a party . but however that was , the making this act , was an encouraging step to the presbyterian ministers : for no sooner had they found by this , that their party was strongest in the parliament , than they presented their petition to it , craving an entire settlement of all their new and peculiar scheme : which petition , because it was of so considerable consequence , and so far as i can learn , though twice published here , yet never reprinted in england , and so perhaps you have not had occasion to consider it ; i will here set down , and give you some short animadversions upon it . to his grace his majesties high-commissioner , and to the right honourable , the estates of parliament . the humble address of the presbyterian ministers and professors of the church of scotland , sheweth , that as we cannot but acknowledge and adore the holy and righteous dispensation of the lord in all the great and long continued afflictions , wherewith he hath afflicted us for our sins ; so we are not a little filled with admiration at the great and wonderful providence of our most gracious god , who alone doth great wonders , for his mercy endureth for ever : that at such a time , when our strength was gone , and there was none to deliver , he mercifully stirred up that pious and magnanimous prince william , then prince of orange , now by the good hand of god our gracious soveraign , to espouse the interest of the protestant religion , and of the afflicted ministers and professors thereof in these kingdoms , and hath blessed him in so heroick and noble an undertaking with agreeable success : as also , hath raised up your lordships , our most noble and honourable patriots , to joyn heartily with his majesty , in appearing zealously for securing of the protestant religion in this kingdom , and for what may tend to the better establishment thereof in all its concerns ; and in evidencing your just indignation against the corruptions of church and state , in your lordships claim of right : and particularly by freeing us of the yoke of prelacy , and of the undue powers , and ecclesiastical supremacy in church matters , formerly established in the supreme magistrate . and these your lordships zealous beginnings for appearing for the interest of the protestant religion , and professors thereof , have been , and are great matter of joy to our hearts , and of blessing and magnifying our lord and master in your lordships behalf : so they are a door of hope to us , and to all that love the true reformed protestant religion in this land , that his grace , his majesties high commissioner , and this honourable court of parliament , will in your station , go on zealously in your work of purging this poor oppressed church , from all corruptions brought into it , by ambitious and covetous church-men , who sought their own things , but not the things of iesus christ ; and from all the sad consequences , which have followed upon the erecting of prelacy ; such as were the driving several hundreds of ministers all at one time out of their churches , without either accusation or citation ; and the filling of their places with ignorant and scandalous persons ( which his majesty is graciously pleased to notice in his declaration for scotland , as an occasion of all this poor churches miseries , and from which unsupportable sufferings , he declared his resolution to relieve and rescue us , ) and we may add , with many also erroneous and unsound in the faith , enemies to the reformation , and who have now appeared disaffected to the present civil government ; as also framing of a numerous train of severe laws , severely executed both on ministers and people of all degrees ; so for that even while we were counted and treated as sheep for the slaughter , we might not petition or complain , without rendring our selves highly criminal by the laws and acts then made . all which , we hope , the commissioner his grace , and your lordships in this present parliament will take to your serious consideration , and will free this poor oppressed church from such oppressors and oppressions , and settle it again upon the right foundations of government and discipline , agreeable to the word of god , and established in this church by law , near an hundred years agoe . which settlement , we are confident , will prove the best remedy of all our otherways incurable distractions , and the mean of quieting and uniting the whole country , in a joynt and firm opposition against all his majesties , and your lordships enemies . we therefore , his majesties most loyal subjects , and your lordships most humble and dutiful servants in christ , humbly beseech the commissioner his grace , and honourable estates of parliament , seeing the kings majesty hath declared , and your lordships with him , have zealously appeared for the protestant religion , you will be graciously pleased , by your civil sanction , to establish and ratifie the late confession of faith , with the larger and shorter catechisms ( which contain the sum and substance of the doctrine of the reformed churches ) the directory of worship , and presbyterial church government and discipline , all agreeable to the word of god , and formerly received by the general consent of this nation . and seeing prelacy , and all who have entered under prelacy , have been imposed upon the church , without her consent , in any of her free general assemblies ; and that presbyterial government , cannot be secure in the hands of them , who are of contrary principles ; therefore we humbly petition that the church-government may be established in the hands of such only , who by their former carriage and sufferings have evidenced , that they are known sound presbyterians , and well affected to his majesties government ; or who , hereafter shall be found to be such , ( which are hopeful by the grace of god , shall be managed with such christian prudence , moderation and tenderness , as shall leave no just matter of complaint to any ) and that not only these ministers yet alive , who were unjustly thrust from their churches , may be restored thereto ; and these parishes and flocks at that time , no less violently imposed upon , may be freed from intruders ; but also , all other presbyterian ministers , who either are already , or may be , by respective flocks orderly called hereafter , may have access to be settled in churches after the presbyterian way , as they shall be ecclesiastically approved and appointed , and may have your lordships civil sanction added thereunto . and we also request , that the church thus established may be allowed by your lordships civil sanction , to appoint visitations for purging out insufficient , negligent , scandalous and erroneous ministers . and seeing patronages which had their rise in the most corrupt and latter times of antichristianism have always been a great grievance to this church , as the source and fountain of a corrupt ministry , that these may be abolished ; and that the church may be established upon its former good foundations , confirmed by many acts of parliament , since the year one thousand five hundred and sixty . and that all acts contrary to this government , that ratifie ceremonies , and impose punishments on presbyterians for non-conformity , and for worshiping of god according to their principles , may be abrogate . and as a good and necessary mean for preserving the purity of the church , your lorships take care that learned , sound and godly men be put in universities , and seminaries , of learning ; ( humbly submitting to your lordships wisdom the method of considering and effecting these our desires ) . thus all things being done for the house of the god of heaven , according to the commandment of the god of heaven , by your lordships pious and wise managing these affairs of the church of christ : this poor , long oppressed , and tossed church ; may at length , through god's blessing , arrive at a safe and quiet harbour ; and the true honour and happiness of his majesty and your lordships , as the signal nursing fathers of the church of christ in this land , may be advanced and continued to future generations : and so the blessing of the church that was ready to perish , may remain still upon his majesty and your lordships . and your lordships petitioners shall ever pray , that god may bless and protect the persons of their majesties king william and queen mary long to rule and govern this nation , and your lordships under them . this petition word for word ( unless it was in one or two sentences ) had been presented by them to the parliament the year before ; ( for a man may be against set forms in their petitions to god , yet for them in petitions to parliaments ) while the duke of hamilton was commissioner , but his grace was no ways pleased with it for several reasons , but principally that they craved , that the church government might be established in the hands of such only who by their former carriage and sufferings had evidenced , that they were known sound presbyterians . for what was this ( said his grace ) but to pull down one sort of prelacy , and set up another in its place ; to abolish one that was consistent and intelligible , and establish another that imply'd contradictions ? and indeed there was no answering this difficulty . for there were but about fifty or sixty such ministers alive in the whole nation ; and it was craved that the government of the church should be established in their hands in the first instance ? which what was it else but instead of fourteen prelatical , to give us about fifty or sixty presbyterian bishops ? but such was the posture of their affairs at that time , that there was no other way they could see for securing their interest , and so they made necessity justifie a little nonsense ; and this year they had a more favourable commissioner to deal with , the good earl of melvill . but then there is a great deal of considerable stuff in it . for observe , i pray you , the charitable judgment they make of the bishops and episcopal clergy . all the distractions have been in this kingdom will continue still incurable , unless this poor oppressed church be purged from all corruptions brought into it , by ambitions and covetous church-men , ( it is well they are allowed to be church-men ) who sought their own things , but not the things of iesus christ. and with whom were the churches filled when prelacy was erected , and the presbyterian ministers turn'd out ? with ignorant and scandalous persons , nay with many erroneous , and unsound in the faith , and enemies to the reformation , and till the church is freed from these oppressors , and oppressions she can never be right , is not all this charitably said ? yet this is not the worst of it . for , consider the whole strain of the petition , and they are the only protestants of the nation ; for if we may believe them . god stirred up the prince of orange to espouse the interest of the protestant religion , and of the afflicted ministers and professors thereof . and yet i am very sure many will confidently affirm he did not espouse ( at his first coming to britain at least ) the interest of the afflicted ministers of their persuasion in scotland . further , god raised up their lordships ( the members of parliament ) their most noble and honourable patriots to prejoyn heartily with his majesty in appearing zealously for serving the protestant religion in this kingdom , and for what may tend for the better establishing of it in all its concerns . now what is all this , but that though king iames had given a toleration to the presbyterians , yet that put them only in a very weak , uncertain , and arbitrary state , and they could not be well enough till they had a legal establishment exclusive of all popish prelates , and their adherents . and not only so , but the steps the parliament have already made , have opened a door of hope to them , and to all that love the true reformed protestant religion in this land , that they will go on zealously , &c. which words are not capable of another sense than this , that whosoever is not zealous against prelacy and for presbytery , is not a lover of the true reformed protestant religion . there are a great many other things in this petition which deserve their proper remarks ; but i will not take notice of them any more , but as they fall in naturally in the progress of this paper , and then they shall be considered : the first of which , shall be the case of the presbyterian ministers who were turned out of these churches , they possessed , after the first of january , 1661. where in this petition you see the great injury which was done them is mightily aggravated : several hundreds of them , all at one time , were driven out of their churches , without either accusation or citation . and this was so palpable a persecution , so manifest an effort of oppression and tyranny ; that his majesty was graciously pleased to take notice of it in his declaration for scotland , 1688. which 't is very true he did , for his words are : that the dissenters in scotland have just cause of distrust , when they call to mind , how some hundreds of their ministers were driven out of their churches , without either accusation or citation . nay our petitioners are at it again , in another place of the same petition , and crave ; that these ministers who were unjustly thrust from their churches may be restored thereto ; and these parishes and flocks , at that time no less violently imposed upon , may be freed from intruders . this case , i say , i shall in the first place consider ; because it was the first thing in the petition , which was redressed by the parliament . for within a day or two after this petition was presented , this act was made , which i have transmitted to you . act restoring the presbyterian ministers , who were thrust from their churches since the first of january , 1661. april 25. 1690. forasmuch , as by an act of this present parliament , relative to , and in prosecution of the claim of right , prelary and the superiority of church-officers above presbyters , is abolished ; and that many ministers of the presbyterian persuasion , since the first of january , 1661. have been deprived of their churches , or banished for not conforming to prelacy , and not complying with the courses of the time. therefore their majesties with the advice and consent of the estates of parliament , ordain and appoint that all those presbyterian ministers yet alive , who were thrust from their churches since the first day of january , 1661. or banished for not conforming to prelacy , and not complying with the courses of the time , have forthwith free access to their churches , and that they may presently exercise the ministry in those parishes , without any new call thereto ; and allows them to brook and enjoy the benefits and stipends thereunto belonging and that for the whole crop 1689. and immediately to enter to the churches and manses , where the churches are vacant , and where they are not vacant , then their entry thereto is declared to be the half of the benefice and stipend , due and payable at michaelmass last , for the half year immediately preceeding betwixt whitsunday and michaelmass : declaring that the present incumbent shall have right to the other half of the stipend and benefice payable for the whitsunday last bypast : and to the effect that these ministers may meet with no stop or hinderance , in entring immediately to their charges , the present incumbents in such churches are hereby appointed upon intimation hereof to desist from their ministry in these parishes , and to remove themselves from the manses and glebes thereunto belonging , betwixt and whitsunday next to come , and that the presbyterian ministers formerly put out may enter peaceably thereto . and appoints the privy council to see this act put in execution . which act you see uses the same colours for representing the odiousness of the usage these presbyterian ministers had receiv'd , that the declaration and the presbyterian petition had made use of before , especially in the statutory part , where it says in express terms , that they were thrust from their charges , ( which can import no less than force and violence in opposition to law and iustice , it calls the churches from which they had been thus thrust , their churches ) : as if notwithstanding their dispossession they had still continued to have a title good in law , and it restores them forthwith to the exercise of their ministry in their parishes , without any new call thereto ; each of which singly , much more altogether make it evident , that this their restitution was intended by the parliament not as an act of favour , but of justice , as if these ministers had been unjustly and illegally dispossess'd , and now sir. when all these things are laid together , so solemn a declaration , the presbyterian ministers so earnest petition , and the parliaments so publick an act , all conspiring to represent that matter so very odious and unjust , i hope it shall not be displeasing to you , if i shall endeavour briefly to set it in its due light . it is true indeed a good many of these ministers were dispossessed anno 1662. how many , i confess i cannot tell exactly , but i doubt much if they were so many as they are commonly said to be . i shall likewise grant , that they were dispossessed without either accusation or citation . herein i acknowledge they speak truth , and yet i doubt if you shall find so much as one jot of iniquity in their dispossession when it is considered impartially . the case was truly this , as before the reformation of religion in this kingdom ( which as to its legal establishment is variously dated , some reckoning from the year 1560. others from 1567. ) patronages of churches in this kingdom were in force ; so when the church was reformed , ( notwithstanding of all the changes which were then , and have been since ) our law did still continue them , and no man was ever judged to have a legal title to any church or benefice ; unless he had a presentation from the patron , and a collation from the bishop , whilst episcopacy was the legal establishment ; which it continued to be for many years after the reformation , without interruption : or from a presbytery after presbyterian government began to prevail . and as this was still our law without any shadow of interruption , so it was likewise the constant practice of the nation , not only before the late presbyterian rebellion against king charles the first commenced , but even for a good number of years after , that is , till about the year 1646. or 1647. when the rebellion by divine permission turn'd prosperous , and the kings affairs were reduced to a very low ebb , and the presbyterian interest was in a very flourishing condition : till that time i say , presentations by patrons to churches were in constant practice ( as well as warranted by law ) in this kingdom . but then indeed the kirk-men , sensible of their strength , began to adventure amongst other illegal usurpations ( to say no worse ) to take upon them the disposal of churches and benefices , by bringing that cheat , which they called popular elections , in vogue , and presentations by patrons in desuetude . i call popular election a cheat ; for in effect it was no other : and the poor deluded populace had no more true power than before , and ministers were as much impos'd on them then as ever , as might easily be made appear , not only from the common methods were then taken in managing elections , but also from the express limitations and restrictions with which even the general assemblies clog'd them . however the sound of the name , for a while , enchanted the unthinking multitude ; and the party had a turn to serve by it : and so it was push'd on with a great deal of zeal in many places , without any considerable opposition ( as indeed who durst then adventure to oppose what the ministers were for ) . the party thus finding their strength successful in so many single instances , gathered suitable degrees of courage ; and pursued their design so effectually , that at last they got patronages abolished , and popular elections set up by a certain meeting of some noblemen , gentlemen and burgesses , who were pleas'd to call themselves a parliament anno 1649. and this act of that pretended parliament , if it even deserves that name , was all the pretence of law that ever was for popular elections in this church since the reformation ; but it was enough for the then kirk ; any shadow or colour of a pretext , being still both law and gospel to them , when it makes for their purpose . and accordingly all the ministers who were setled in any churches after that time , till the happy restitution of the monarchy , that is for eleven or twelve years , were promoted after this new method . no man , i think , can doubt but this was a palpable encroachment upon the rights of patrons , and a trampling on law , and by consequence a thing that called loudly for redress , when the king was restor'd , and the government began to turn upon its proper hinges , and so no wonder if the first parliament which was called by his majesty took notice of it , as indeed they did , in their first session which was holden anno 1661. for in that session two acts were made which demonstrate , that the parliament still look'd upon patronages as subsisting by law , notwithstanding the illegal interruption which had been made by the act of the pretended parliament in 1649. for instance in act 36. 1. parl. ch. 2d . session 1. it is statuted , and ordain'd , that all patrons shall be carefull in time coming to grant presentations only to such as shall give sufficient evidence of their piety , loyalty , literature and peacable disposition , and who before they receive the presentation shall take the oath of allegiance , &c. and in that same act it is narrated : that the king's majesty has given a commission , under the great seal , as to all presentations , to all parsonages , vicarages , and other benefices , and kirks at his majesties presentation : and all this without so much as once taking notice of that act 1649. and the 54th . act of that same first session is altogether in favour of laick patrons . now both these acts , i say , were made anno 1661. and so , before episcopacy was restored , which was not till may 1662. which i observe , because , our present presbyterians in their so often named petition make the turning out of their ministers anno 1662. one of the sad consequences of the erection of prelacy . for seeing the parliament before the restitution of prelacy had considered patronages as still subsisting by law ; as is evident from these two acts. 't is evident if they were to act consequentially they could not forbear to make some such act as was made anno 1662. ( of which i shall instantly give you a further accompt ) though episcopacy had never been established . nor can there be any imaginable difficulty to any man in this matter unless it be made a question , whether the parliament when they thus supposed patronages as still subsisting by law made a just supposition . but that i think may be very soon determined : for as i have said all the old laws of the kingdom were positive for patronages ; only that act of the pretended parliament anno 1649. could be pleaded for popular elections ; and what a parliament was that ? a convention of rebels , who had presumed to meet without being called by any authority , except what they treasonably assum'd to themselves . for all the world knows that king charles the i. at that time was dead , i need not tell you how ; and king charles the ii. was not within his dominions , and was so far from calling that parliament , or being present himself , or having any commissioner or representative at it , that i doubt much if he knew that there was such a meeting till it was dissolved . all which ( and many more such nullities , which for brevity i forbear to mention ) was so recent and notorious , anno 1661. that the parliament , tho it casted and annulled all the acts of the pretended parliament holden in the years 1640 , 41 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , by its 15th act , yet did not so much as make the least mention of that meeting in the 49th , not thinking it worthy of the name , so much as of a pretended parliament . for which , whether they had not reason , i leave to the world to judge . but to proceed . the parliament having laid such a foundation , an. 1661. and continuing to act consequentially anno 1662. they made an act about the middle of may , which because it so distinctly clears the whole matter in its narrative , i have transcribed at large . act concerning such benefices and stipends as have been possessed without presentation from the lawful patrons . the kings most excellent majesty , being desirous that all his good subjects may be sensible of the happy effects and fruits of the royal government , by a free , peaceable , and easie enjoyment of their due interests and properties under his protection . and that in his restitution they may find themselves restored to those rights which by law were secured unto them , and by the violence and injustice of the late troubles and confusions have been wrested from them : and considering that , notwithstanding the right of patronages be duly setled , and established by the ancient and fundamental laws , and constitutions of this kingdom , yet divers ministers of this church , have and do possess benefices and stipends in their respective cūres without any right or presentation to the same from the patrons . and it being therefore most just , that the lawful and undoubted patrons of kirks be restored to the possession of the rights of their respective advocations , donations , and patronages . therefore his majesty with advice and consent of his estates of parliament doth statute and ordain , that all these ministers who entered to the cure of any parish in burgh or land within this kingdom , in or since the year 1649. ( at and before which time the patrons were most injuriously dispossessed of their patronages ) have no right unto , nor shall receive , uplift , nor possess , the rents of any benefice , modified stipends , mause or glebe for this present crop , 1662. nor any year following , but their places , benefices , and kirks , are ipso jure vacant . yet his majesty to evidence his willingness to pass by , and cover the miscarriages of his people , doth with advice aforesaid declare , that this act shall not be prejudicial to any of these ministers in what they have possessed or is due to them since their admission , and that every such minister who shall obtain a presentation from the lawful patron , and have collation from the bishop of the diocese where he liveth , betwixt and the twentieth of september next to come , shall thenceforth have right to , and enjoy his church , benefice , mause , glebe as fully and freely as if he had been lawfully presented and admitted thereto at his first entry , or as any minister within the kingdom doth or may do . and for that end it is hereby ordained , that the respective patrons shall give presentations to all the present incumbents who in due time shall make application to them for the same . and in case any of these churches shall not be thus duly provided before the said twentieth of september , then the patron shall have freedom to present another betwixt and the twentieth day of march 1663. which , if he shall refuse or neglect , the presentation shall then fall to the bishop jure devoluto , according to former laws . and such like his majesty with advice foresaid doth statute and ordain the archbishops , and bishops to have the power of new admission and collation to all such churches and benefices , as belong to their respective sees , and which have valted since the year 1637. and to be careful to plant and provide these their own kirks conform to this act. this act you see is so very clear and plain , that it would be superfluous to insist on any long explications of it , only three things i would desire you to remember in it . the first is , that , as i noted before , the parliament insists mainly on the rights and privileges of the patrons in the narrative and form of this act ; so that the presbyterians talk wide in their petition , when they say that this act was one of the sad consequences of the erection of prelacy . nay secondly , as it is obvious to any who considers this . this act does not at all consider these ministers as presbyterian , for then it would have considered all presbyterian ministers equally , which it does not : for it only considers such as had illegally possessed themselves of such churches and benefices from the year 1649. at least so far as laick patrons are concerned . but not so much as a word of such as had entered before that year , and yet there were many such : and this act was so far from depriving them that they continued in the exercise of their ministry , and enjoy'd their benefices for many years after that act was made , and put in execution . the third thing is , the clemency of the then government even towards these who had possessed themselves illegally of churches after the year 1649. for you see the act declares that the parliaments sentence , pronouncing all such churches ipso jure vacant , was without prejudice to any of these ministers , who should apply themselves to the lawful patron , and obtain his presentation . what greater temper could the government then shew ? would they have had it to have downright authorized their illegal usurpations ? was this to thrust them from their charges , when they might have kept them upon so equitable terms ? and was this a grievous persecution ? but to go on , notwithstanding that this act was as peremprory , as it was just and reasonable , yet a great many of these ministers who had entered illegally after the year 1649 , from what principle i am not now to enquire , turn'd obstinate , and refused to take the benefit offered by the act of parliament against the time prefixt : and therefore the privy council meeting at glasgow after the term was expired , in pursuance of the design of the act of parliament , made an act declaring all such churches ipso facto vacant . this was that famous act which commonly passes under the name of the act of glasgow . and god knows how many ill things it has been called since by the party , but with what reason , let any man consider . but , perhaps that act has been executed with some wonderful rigidity , and that hath raised the clamour : no such matter , for in effect they themselves prevented all the trouble of a rigid execution ; for immediately upon the publication of the act of glasgow , they generally forbore the exercise of their ministry , and deserted their flocks : whether they did so from a mistaken conceit , that the church could not be served without them , and that ere long the government would find it self obliged to give them their will , and court them to return to their charges , as many then judged , i shall not now affirm ; but that they actually did so , is so very notorious that to this very day they themselves dare not deny it . and there is nothing better known , than that they have more than once condemned themselves , and been condemned by the most judicious of their parry , for parting so tamely with their churches . and now sir , considering all i have said , where was the necessity of either accusation or citation . how ordinary is it in all kingdoms and commonwealths to prescribe such terms by law , as whosoever shall not perform , shall be deprived of such and such publick encouragements without further process of law ? need i rub up your memory for example ? or have you not one fresh before your eyes in the kingdom of england ? besides it had been absolutely improper in their case , for the parliament was not to punish them ; as indeed it did not , but only it did declare , that they had no title , as it was evident they had none . i will only add one thing more upon this head ; suppose nothing could have been said in vindication of their deprivation , or rather dispossession , but it had been truly unjust ; yet methinks it will very ill become the presbyterian party ever after the years 1688. and 1689. to open their mouths about it ; considering how many ministers , ( who had without controversie entered to their charges according to law ) were most barbarously turn'd out of their churches by pure force and rabble ; and all this was justified , and their churches thereupon declar'd vacant , by i need not tell you whom ; but of this more afterwards . and so much at present about the dispossession of the presbyterian ministers , anno 1662. but i have not yet done with our act of parliament which restored them . for , besides the good office it did them , we must try if it did any bad offices to any other : and here , i think we may make short work of it . for you can no sooner set your eye upon it , than you may see , that where the churches were not vacant ( i. e. where at the date of the act , viz. the 25 of april 1690. they were possessed by the episcopal clergy ) from which the presbyterians had been thrust out , their restitution to them is declar'd to be to the half of the benefice , and stipend due and payable at michaelmas anno 1689. for the half year immediately preceding betwixt whitsunday and michaelmas , and the present prelatical incumbent shall have right only to the other half , payable at whitsunday : and withal to the effect the presbyterian ministers may meet with no stop or hinderance in entering immediately to their charges , the present incumbents in such churches are appointed upon intimation of this act to desist from their ministry in these parishes , and to remove themselves from the mauses and glebes thereto belonging , betwixt and whitsunday next to come ; that is in six weeks time , or perhaps six days , just as the intimation shall be made . now , not to insist on their case who had made no compliance with the civil government , because i know not what severities their sin may merit . i would only ask you what may be thought of the case of those who had complied with the present civil government , and had still continued in the exercise of their ministry at their respective churches , many of them till near whitsunday 1690. and some of them after it , whether was it equitable or not thus to deprive them of a whole years benefice , for which they had served , and notwithstanding they were as good subjects as their majesties could desire , to turn them out of their churches to which they had entered according to law , without the least ground of hope to be provided of other churches or livings ? are they protected and encouraged according to the merit of their compliance ? will this usage they have met with be a good motive for prevailing with the scrupulous , to bring them into a dutiful submission to the government ? well ; the good old cause is a wonderful thing , what can it not justifie ? but enough of this . and so i have done with the second act of the last session of parliament , which concerned the church , or the clergy . only , before i proceed to the next , it will not be amiss i think to hint at some of its effects . i think you will not be very unwilling to believe , that those known sound gentlemen in whose favour it was made , would be forward enough to have it put in execution , and indeed there was no want of zeal that way , but whether according to the strictest rules of christian simplicity and self denial in all instances , you may judge by these two at the present . the first shall be the famous mr. iames kirtoun , one of the most noted presbyterian preachers in the whole kingdom . this ( known sound ) man had entered , by the thing called the popular call , to the church of martin in the last times of presbytery , and had been deprived with the rest in the year 1662. when k. iames gave his toleration , anno 1687. he was preferred to a meeting-house in edinburgh where , it seems , he found better encouragement than he expected to meet with , if he should return to his own country-parish of martin : and in this meeting-house he continued , till after this act of parliament passed . mr. meldrum the episcopal minister at martin had complied with the civil government , and done all duty ; and so continued still in the exercise of his ministry there till toward the end of august 1690. that is ten or twelve weeks after whitsunday ; and not till then it was , that good mr. kirkton went to visit his poor old parish . but then he went indeed with energy sutable to his party : for no sooner arrived he there , but presently he turned peremptory , demanded the benefit of the act of parliament , thrust meldrum from the parsonage-house and the church ; preached two sundays there , and secured thereby his title to the whole benefice , from whitsunday . 1689. and then returned to edinburgh , where ( as i hear ) he has still resided since , without ever more minding his old flock at martin ; and who can blame him ? for every one who knows them both , knows that edinburgh is a much better place , and now he has left his meeting house , and possessed himself of a church in that city , after a certain sort of providential manner : but i will not trouble you with an account of it at present , hoping that you may learn it shortly from another hand : in the mean time martin continues still vacant . kirkton is wiser ( as i have said ) than to put it in the ballance with edinburgh : the rest of the presbyterian divines think it reasonable to take the best benefices , so long as they have so much scope for choice ; neither will they suffer meldrum the prelatist to return at any rate . and they are in the right , for the first book of discipline saith , it 's better to have no minister at all than a bad one . now the subsumption is easie , if the man ever owned episcopacy . the other instance shall be mr. william violent , one of the gravest and ablest men of the party ; he had been minister before the restitution of the government , at east-ferry in the shire of fife , and was also dispossessed with the rest , anno 1662. but he wanted a benefice no longer ( i think ) than till k. charles ii. granted his indulgence for planting some churches in the west with-presbyterian ministers , which was in the year , 1669. for he was among the first that embraced that indulgence , and was possessed of the church of cambus-netham ; where he continued till about the year 1684. when that indulgence was retracted , and the laws were put in execution . but after k. iames his toleration came out in the year 1678 , he took the benefit of that too , returned to cambus-netham ; got a meeting-house ( for the church was planted with a regular minister ) and continued there ( without ever minding the ferry , where there was no such encouragement ) till he had this act of parliament for him , and then about whitsunday , 1690. to the ferry he comes , dispossesses mr. white a very old man , who by reason of his age was not able to officiate by himself . but his assistant , one mr. wood , had complied in all points with the civil government ; secures to himself the benefice according to the act ; and then returns to his better provision at cambus-netham , where he had the benefice also , by another act of the same parliament , and where he still continued till he got a call to be a professor of theology in the new college in st. andrews : and so in one year he got the rents of no less than three benefices . now this is pretty strange , considering that it was wont to be one of the principal common places of the party in their invidious declamations against the pretended corruptions of the church of england . for none was represented in blacker dress , than the business of pluralities , unless it was her antichristian hierarchy and idolatrous liturgy . but i remember i heard a rare note of a sermon , which was preached within these three years . the godly may sin , but the wicked must not . and so i leave that second act of the late parliament and all its appendages . proceed we now to consider the next , which concerned the church and clergy ; namely , that wonderfully famous one . intituled , act ratifying the confession of faith , and setling presbyterian church-government , dated at edinburgh iune the seventh , 1690. this presbyterian church government is the great diana of the party , and the true parent of all these tumults , rabbles and confusions , which ruined religion , desolated the church , and oppressed the clergy : and therefore , this act that establishes it , deserves a little more fully to be considered , which i shall do by these steps . 1. i shall briefly deduce the arts were used , and the methods were taken , to work up the parliament to a suitable temper , before this weighty point came to be debated , and voted in the house . 2. i shall consider the treatment it met with in the house . and , 3. what consequences it hath produced since . to begin with the first , indeed all hands were never more busie at work , than on that occasion . prelacy , as no doubt you know already had been declared an intolerable grievance and trouble to this nation , and contrary to the inclinations of the generality of the people ever since the reformation , the year before , in our new claim of right . this the meeting of estates had done in an hurry ( how truly and honestly , you may perhaps learn more fully on another occasion ) after the whole ecclesiastical state ; and a great many members of both the other two had deserted the house ; in pursuance of the same article of the claim of right . the same intolerable prelacy was abolished by the same meeting of estates , after it was declared a parliament about the 8th of iuly the same year . but then the house could not agree about a new form of government , to be introduced upon the church . several schemes were drawn and presented , but none pleased all parties , and so no form at all was established , but the church continued in a state of meer matter , without form and void of government , for eleven months after . a strange state , sure , for a christian church : i doubt if you shall find its parallel , since ever there was one ; for there was much more in it than a sede vacante . but to go on , during this state of anarchy in the church , some people's heads began to settle ( as indeed they had need , after such an universal giddiness ) and the sudden zeal many had lately taken up for presbytherian parity began to cool and relent , if not to decay and languish : people turned thoughtful , and began to reflect and examine , whether they had found prelacy so intolerable a burthen , as the meeting of the estates had declared it to have been ; and their own sense not telling them any such thing : but finding their necks not so much galled by that yoke , which for some 27 or 28 years had lain upon them , and withal , calling to mind how many necks had smarted so very sharply under the former reign of presbytery , that they were no longer able to bear their heads . they began to compare things , and to consider if it was not better to continue at blunt cudgels with prelacy , than come streight to downright sharps with parity . in short , so far did such reasonings and recollections prevail , that the inclinations of the generality of the people , which had been made the standard in april 1689. were beginning to discover themselves to be very much different from what the party expected , about the end of that year , and the beginning of 1690. and there was no little solicitude among them , lest they had mistaken their measures , and their dear parity might chance not to be established , according to their wishes : and therefore i say , all hands were most actively at work , and the whole sect were studying to acquit themselves with a sutable diligence and application , about the time the parliament was a meeting . for instance , not only had the preachers their old petition in readiness to be presented whenever it should be seasonable , of which i have discoursed already . but also , that same week , if i remember right ; the very day before the parliament met , a worthy piece came hot from the press , intituled , a true representation of presbyterian government , &c. it was written by one mr. gilbert rule the pamphleteer general for the party . we had no less than three editions of it in a very few days , and the last the most considerable : for besides several corrections and enlargements in the book , it had the addition of a preface , wherein we were told that the book was written half a year before , and endured an examen rigorosum of the most judicious of the party ; which was news indeed , for no body would have known that by reading the book . it is truly a marvellous work , for in it you have not only the divine right of parity among churchmen , and kirk-sessions , and presbyteries , and provincial synods , and national assemblies , and ruling elders , and popular elections , &c. most doughtily asserted ; ( it was no part of his task to prove ) but also presbytery and monarchy reconciled to an ace : and the putting the government intirely in the hands of the known sound men most mysteriously justified . doubtless it has been an unaccountable negligence in some body , that it has not been , before this time , reprinted in england , and carefully dispersed all over that kingdom . for who knows what light it might have diffused , and what reformations it might have wrought among you . but that which i am concerned to take notice of in it at present , is only this , that though the author is content , that by the bye , it should advance gods glory , and do good to souls ; yet he confesses neither of these was his principal end for publishing it , at that time . for that was especially that presbyterian government might stand right in the opinion of the king and parliament , &c. and as presbytery was thus represented and recommended , so the like care was taken to disgrace and defame prelacy , in pamphlets and pasquils , as the very vilest of all vile things . and to all such dirt , trash , &c. the press was open ; but a prelatist might as well expect to subvert the government , as to get one sheet published in defence of his cause . but this was not all , it was not fit that the fate of the good old cause should stand on nothing else but paper supporters : the influence of two or three principal states-men ( and if you please , you may joyn with them states-women ) , commonly carries on a cause more effectually than a thousand printed volumes ; and therefore it was necessary , that tool should be tried also , as vigorously as was possible . and therefore the great lord melvill a constant friend to the good cause , and now their majesties comissioner , must give vent to his zeal , in his speech he made to the parliament ( they say with very little assurance ) the first day they met . but whatever his influence or zeal might be , his rhetorick was , no doubt , infinitely short of the florid and genuine eloquence of that learned as well as potent lord w. e. of c. who , the next meeting , which was april 22. delivered a sermon to the house , wherein it was easie to discern no less zeal , than art ; and no less art , than wisdom . it was forthwith published , so that i cannot think , but you have seen it already . however to make all sure i have herewith sent you a copy of it . it 's true blue all over , and you may be much enlightened by it . his lordship was president of the parliament , and that gave him the precious opportunity to open his mouth and speak . thus were the commissioners place , and the chair filled , and the press imployed . and who can imagine that upon such an exigence the pulpit would be silent ? that sure is not to be supposed : and indeed it was never exercised more warmly : for not only had they been still making it their work to promote their interest by melancholy declamations against prelacy , prelates , and prelatical church-men , after they had got footing in the churches : a theme they are generally better skilled in , than in the substantial things of christianity ; but especially at that time , their fears quickening their zeal , they were extremely eager , and every one as he had the fortune to preach before the parliament , was sure to signalize his fervour , as much as any other of his good qualities , in behalf of christ's kingdom , as they call their yesterdays parity . i must confess indeed i had neither the opportunity nor inclination to hear their sermons ; but as i was told by some who did , and as i learned by such of them as were published , no man needed condemn them of coldness or indifferency ; thus , mr. george meldrum of whom you have a sufficient account in the history of our late general assembly , in his sermon preached before the parliament april 27 , exhorts them to go on zealously in settling the government of the church of christ , according to his own appointment , recommends unto them that word of artaxerxes , ezra , 7. 23. ( this text was scarce ever missed by any of them ) whatsoever is commanded by the god of heaven , let it be done diligently for the house of the god of heaven , &c. commends them , and blesses the lord , that with so much unity and harmony ( for the party had been infinitly afraid of the * club , that it should have marred all their designs , but by that time it was found too weak ) they had gone some footsteps already , ( that is , had abolished prelacy and the supremacy , and restored the presbyterian ministers ) exhorts them to go on , and prays that god may be with them , &c. was not this pretty fair for an old conformist ? but , good mr. spalding clerk to the late general assembly , who had sat many a day in a little shop in the town of irwin , and measured out in retail many a noggan of brandy , was a man of much finer metal , for in his sermon which he preached before the house upon the eleventh of may ( the second that was published ) he tells them in truer stile , that now god was making way for the utter ruine and fall of antichrist and popery , in all the formes of it , ( two of which , to be sure , are episcopacy wherever it is , and the liturgy of england ) that not so much as a rag of the whore may remain , and his church may sing in triumph babylon the great is fallen , is fallen : for why ? god is now carrying on the establishment of zion upon her right basis and foundation . and to shew that he was not a flattering gospeller , who respected persons . he tells them in a parallel betwixt king saul and king david on the one hand , and king iames , and king william on the other , ( at least i protest , i can make no other sense of it ) that king william is not yet absolutely right , because he has carnal fears to bring the ark ( presbytery ) , into his own city ( the church of england ) and again , labour to perfect the reformation which ye have begun happily , and is greedily expected ; and that speedily , and in the first place command , as in ezra 7. 23. that whatsoever is commanded , &c. let reformation , i say , be perfect , and throw to the door all that belongs to the whore , even the rags which she left behind her for an errand to return again ( all prelacy and ceremonies and set forms ) and let none of babels cursed timber and stone be taken to build the lords house with . ( let not so much as one prelatist continue in the exercise of his ministry , thrust them all out , that the whole kirk may be planted with true presbyterians ) . further yet , ye have under your care and tutory christ's own bride , she is a tender virgin , and hath yet but little breasts , she hath been wounded in the house of her friends ( that must needs be , either by the cameronians , or the politick presbyterians , if i may so call them , for sure in our preachers opinion , all the prelatists come under the next denomination ) as well as by her enemies , and she is not yet heal : her wounds are yet bleeding : for the lords sake prove to her as the compassionate samaritan . luke 10. 24. bind up her wounds , pour oyl into them , and take care of her , she is nobly born , she is a kings daughter , psal. 45. 13. new come from her banishment : ( for christ , you must know had no spouse in scotland while prelacy was in it . she had been banished the kingdom ) and for her fathers blessing , for her bridgroom's blessing , and for her own blessing , who is ready to perish , deal kindly with her , and be faithful tutors to her : yea , ye have christs crown , his glory among your hands , ( that is presbyterian government ) and if you take away , or suffer one iewel of it to be lost or robb'd , not only your estates and lives , but your souls may go for it , &c. once more yet : what will ye say when ye shall be sisted at the great assise , before the tribunal of christ , to that question ? what iustice and vote gave you to me , and my afflicted church in the first parliament of king william and queen mary in scotland ? was you for me or against me ? and then he concludes telling them for their encouragement to vote right for presbytery , that , as the eyes of the lord , his holy angels , and all his people in this land , yea of all the protestant churches , are upon them , ( for who dares doubt but all the protestant churches were extremely concerned to have presbytery set up in scotland ) so they are upon the wings of the prayers of the flower of the godly in scotland : and who would not be animated by such a flight as this ? here was preaching for a parliament ! a third sermon , which was printed , was preached by the learned mr. rule , whom i mentioned before , on sunday the 25th . of may , the sunday next before the wednesday on which the act was voted ; and so it was time then , or never to speak , which forsooth , the man did accordingly : for after he had insinuated enough of dislike to the club , ( as none of them omitted to do ) , and had particularly chastised sir iames montgomery of skelmurly , though he did not name him ; for sir iames had made a long speech in the house some days before , wherein he had pleaded zealously for setting up true fourty-nine presbytery in all its dimensions ; and had made use of this as one of his principal arguments ; that presbytery thus established , would prove the best and most effectual mean , could be devised for curbing and restraining the extravagancies and excesses of princes ; which was interpreted by those of the gang , as intended of design to screw up presbytery to the highest peg , that so it might turn the sooner intollerable , and by consequence be the sooner turned down again : for though sir iames the year before , had shewed a singular zeal for the good cause , yet he was now one of the leading men of the club : and it was confidently talked , that he kept a correspondence with king iames , and so he was look'd upon by the party , as a false friend as they term it . after our preacher , ( i say ) had fairly chastised sir iames for this , he comes to his purpose by cunning and smooth advances ; for first he tells them , what a glorious nation they would make scotland by erecting presbytery in it . the warlike philistines , the rich trading tyre , the ancient ethiopia wou'd be nothing to it . make poor scotland a well reformed church ( set up presbyterian government in it ) and you shall please god , and do him better service , than if you could make her richer , and more potent and splendid than any of her neighbour nations . this was a good beginning : but what was the next step ? why a necessary fling at prelacy : we plead not for a papacy to be cardinals or prelates , &c. as if it were unquestionable that prelacy hath an essential connection with papacy or cardinalism . after this again , another very courteous humble one for presbytery . we pretend not to make church laws , but declare those christ hath made , and to impose them ( not what we think fit ) by his authority , and to censure such as will not obey his laws , not as we will , but as he hath appointed . we set up no imperium in imperio , but a ministerium &c. wonderful fine cant alamode . then another fling , yet not so much at the scottish as the english prelatists . neither is the church preferred , nor religion promoted by setting up a pompous , gaudy , theatrical kind of worship , by pretending to adorn it by modes and religious rites that christ hath not instituted &c. our preacher was owing the church of england this , because one of her bishops ( dr. cousins bishop of durham i think it was ) , had excommunicated him ; from which sentence , i believe , to this very hour he was never released ; having thus made his address , he comes home at length to his business . let christ's church enjoy all the prvileges that he has granted her . if any man withhold any one of them , they do not advance the mountain of the house of the lord as they should . sound doctrine , pure ordinances , a godly ministry , a government drawn from christ's institution , and apostolical practice , and that tendeth to advance holiness ( for prelacy , no doubt , tendeth to advance nothing but atheism and irreligion ) that it be managed by its friends , ( by the known sound presbyterians , and not by them that would supplant it ) not by these juggling prelatists , who would now be content to call themselves presbyterians , so that they may be permitted to keep their benefices ) that they assemble as oft as is needful for this end , ( i. e. have the power of calling , ordering and disolving general assembles independent on the crown , &c. ) that church-officers be look'd out and chosen by the people of god , and not imposed upon them by mens will : that the fountains out of which a godly seed for the church may issue , be kept pure , ( i. e. that no prelatist be permitted to stay in the universities ) that discipline may be duly exercised , and whatever letts to religion , and snares to the serious godly , men have framed into laws ( i. e. all the penal statutes against the presbyterians ) may be removed : this would conduce much to the advancement of the church ; and ( n. b. ) and if any of these be neglected , she is not set upon the top of the mountains , but somewhat else is preferred to her : at this rate dogmatized mr. gilbert . the fourth whose sermon was published , was that able man mr. david williamson : 't is true indeed it was not preached till after presbytery was established ; and so you may think it is inartificially done to bring it in here ; but i had rather take a reproof for transgressing the rules of history , than not record the testimony of such a vigorous witness ; especially considering how notable it is ; for it is in real sense , that christ was a martyr for presbyterian government . his very words are these ; church-government is no light matter , it is an ordinance of god , the royal diadem of christ , he was a martyr on this head , it was his ditty on the cross. joh. 19. 19. iesus of nazareth king of the iews . a wonderful sermon this was as ever you read , i was once at the pains , to number the particulars he had amassed in it : and if my memory serves me , they were about 180. i have thus given you this tast of their sermons , at once , though it is not so exactly agreable to the true order of things , that you may have the fuller view of them ; and i might not be obliged to make so many interruptions as another method would have required . and by this sample you may judge both of the parts and zeal of the rest of the brethren ; for it is not to be doubted but those whose sermons were not judged accurate enough for the press , were yet every whit as much heated with the holy fire , according to the proportions of their capacities , as these first rate-men . but neither was all this yet enough for securing the precious interest : it was necessary to set other tools also a going . one there was , which i believe had no inconsiderable influence ; there was a generation of female advocates , ( belike some of them disciples of such as mr. david williamson ) ladies and gentlewomen , who came at that time and stay'd at edinburgh , and made it their work by all imaginable ways , to influence the members of parliament into a zealous disposition to carry on the work . there was also great throngs of the preachers still in town , who could not have any other business , but to do what they could for advancing the cause ; but i believe the holy sisters , the citizens wives , and some of themselves too were as successful in making proselytes as the preachers ; for they had better occasion to traffick with such of the members , as stay'd at their houses , or were of their acquaintance : and besides they had t'other shilling in greater readiness to give for a pint of sack ; and that goes very far with well disposed people . after all these , there was a certain company of planets , little luminaries , members of parliament ( some of whom i could name if it were needful ) who made it their trade early and late , in season and out of season , in all companies and on all occasions , to vex the more intelligent , and to fright the less discerning ( and very many were such ) into a forwardness for presbytery . nay , more yet , it was confidently talked , that not a few of the meaner sort of members got money , and were kept upon pension , that they might be servicable . by these and other such arts was the cause carried on , and no methods were left unessayed , till a competent number of votes were secured for every thing , that the commissioner intended : while in the mean time the club was entirely broken , and the generality of the kingdom , who were of other principles , found themselves obliged to live quietly and wait a more proper season for diligence , and action . and so much for the first part of my undertaking : come we now to the second , which is , to give you a brief account how this act was prepared , debated , voted , and at last got the royal assent in the house . it was introduced according to its quality , by the earl of sutherland , who presented an act to the house concerning it , upon the — day of — i have seen a copy of it , and thought once upon transcribing it for your use , but it was tediously long and coarsely worded , and it contained little more than what you have in the printed act , and therefore after some more thinking , i judged it not worth the pains . although it was believed that it was compiled by some of the brethren , who were best studied in the matter ; some other schemes were also given in by some other members , but his lordship 's got the preference : it was most regarded and best liked by melvil and crawford , ( who probably had seen it before ) and so it was particularly recommended to the committee which was nominated for church affairs . eighteen were at first named to be of that committee , viz. noblmen . barons . burgesses . earl of crawford , sir iohn maxwell , sir tho. stewart of coltness , e. of sutherland , sir patrick hume , anderson for glascow , v. of arburthnet , sir iohn monro , smith for st. andrews , v. of stair , laird of levingston , william heggins , l. cardross , laird of brodie , iames kenman , l. carmichael . laird of dalfoilly . patrick mordock . all of the true stamp except the laird of levingston , who , it was thought was named merely for shew , or that it might not be said , they were all presbyterians : besides these first eighteen , i think other two were added afterwards , but i have forgot their names . this committee met very often , and commonly they had some of the leading ministers with them , for advice : at last after many an hour , and much pains spent about it , it was returned , by the committee to the house on friday the 23d . of may , more briefly and distinctly digested indeed , and much more smoothly worded ; and yet without any substantial alteration , or difference betwixt it , and the e. of sutherland's copy . being thus prepared and returned to the house , in the first place , it was twice read over , all the members composing themselves to a diligent and headful attention : this done , not a few points in it were debated , and several amendments were made . but before i proceed further , i will set it down , as it was at last agreed upon , and made a law , and then give you a brief account of some particulars in it , which may perchance contribute something to your better understanding of it . act ratifying the confession of faith and settling presbyterian church-government . iune 7. 1690. our soveraign lord and lady the king and queens majesties , and the three estates of parliament , conceiving it to be their bound duty , after the great deliverance that god hath lately wrought for this church and kingdom , in the first place to settle and secure therein , the true protestant religion according to the truth of gods word , as it hath of a long time been professed within this land : as also , the government of christ ' s church within this nation , agreeable to the word of god , and most conducive to the advancement of true piety and godliness , and the establishing of peace and tranquillity within this realm ; and that by an article of the claim of right , it is declared , that prelacy and the superiority of any office in the church above presbyters , is and hath been a great and unsupportable grte vance and trouble to this nation , and contrary to the inclinations of the generality of the people ever since the reformation , they having reformed from popery by presbyters , and therefore ought to be abolished : like as by an act of the last session of this parliament , prelacy is abolished , therefore their majesties , with the advice and consent of the said three estates do hereby revive , ratifie and perpetually confirm all laws , statutes , and acts of parliament , made against popery and papists , and for the maintenance and preservation of the true reformed protestant religion , and for the true church of christ within this kingdom in so far as they confirm the same , or are made in favours thereof . like as , they by these presents , ratifie and establish the confession of faith now read in their presence and voted and approven by them , as the publick and avowed confession of this church containing the sum and substance of the doctrine of the reformed churches ; ( which confession of faith is subjoyned to this present act ) . as also , they do establish , ratifie , and confirm the presbyterian church-government and discipline : that is to say , the government of the church by kirk-sessions , presbyteries , provincial synods , and general assemblies , ratified and established by the 114 act jac. vi. parl. 12. anno 1592. entituled , ratification of the liberty of the true kirk , &c. and thereafter received by the general consent of this nation to be the only government of christ's church within this kingdom ; reviving , renewing and confirming the foresaid act of parliament , in the whole heads thereof , except that part of it relating to patronages , which is hereafter to be taken into consideration : and rescinding , annulling , and making void the acts of parliament following , viz. act anent restitution of bishops jac. vi. parl. 18. cap. 2. act ratifying the acts of the assembly . 1610. jac. vi. parl. 21. cap. 1. act anent the election of arch-bishops and bishops . jac. vi. parl. 22. cap. 1. act intituled ratification of the five articles of the general assembly at perth . jac. vi. parl. 23. cap. 1. act intituled , for the restitution and re-establishment of the ancient government of the church , by arch-bishops and bishops . charl. ii. parl. 1. sess. 2. act 1. act anent the constitution of a national synod . charl. ii. parl. 1. sess. 3. act 5. act against such as refuse to depone against delinquents , ch. ii. parl. 2. sess. 2. act 2. act intituled , act acknowledging and asserting the right of succession to the imperial crown of scotland . ch. ii. parl. 3. act 2. act intituled , act anent religion and the test. ch. ii. parl. 3. act 6. with all other acts , laws , statutes , ordinances and proclamations , and that in so far allanerly as the saids acts and others generally and particularly above mentioned , are contrary , or prejudicial to , inconsistent with , or derogatory from the protestant religion , and presbyterian government , now established ; and allowing and declaring , that the church-government be established in the hands of , and exercised by , these presbyterian ministers , who were outed since the first of january 1661. for non-conformity to prelacy , or not complying with the courses of the times , and are now restored by the late act of parliament , and such ministers and elders only as they have admitted , or received , or shall hereafter admit or receive : and also , that all the said presbyterian ministers have and shall have right to the maintenance , rights and other privileges , by law provided , to the ministers of christs church within this kingdom ; as they are , or shall be legally admitted to particular churches . like as in pursuance of the promisses , their majesties , do hereby appoint the first meeting of the general assembly of this church , as above established , to be at edinburgh , the third thursday of october next to come in this instant year , 1690. and because many conformed ministers either have deserted or were removed from preaching in their churches preceeding the 13th . day of april 1689. and others were deprived , for not giving obedience to the act of the estates made the said 13th . of april 1689. entituled , proclamation against the owning of the late king iames , and appointing publick prayers for king william and queen mary . therefore their majesties with advice and consent aforesaid do hereby declare all the churches , either deserted , or from which the conformed ministers were removed or deprived , as said is , to be vacant , and that the presbyterian ministers exercising their ministry , within any of these parishes ( or where the last incumbent is dead ) by the desire or consent of the parish , shall continue their passession , and have right to the benefices and stipends , according to their entry in the year 1689. and in time coming ay and while the church as now established , take further course therewith . and to the effect , the disorders that have happened in this church may be redressed : their majesties with advice and consent foresaid do hereby allow the general meetting and representives of the foresaid presbyterian ministers and elders , in whose hands the exercise of the church-government is established , either by themselves , or by such ministers and elders as shall be appointed and authorized disitors by them , according to the custom and practice of the presbyterian government through the whole kingdom , and several parts thereof , to try and purge out all insufficient , negligent , scandalous and erroneous ministers , by due course of ecclesiastical process , and censures , and likewise for redressing all other church disorders . and further it is hereby provided , that whatsoever minister , being convened before the said general meeting , and representatives of the presbyterian ministers and elders , or the visitors to be appointed by them , shall either prove contumacious in not appearing , or be found guilty , and shall be therefore censured whether by suspension or deposition , they shall ipso facto be suspended from , or deprived of their stipends and benefices ▪ if one had a mind to dispute , how much matter might this act afford him ? but that 's no part of my present task , i will therefore , as i promised , only give you a brief account how some things in it were debated before it received the sanction . first then , though any man who reads it may easily observe , that all along the framers of the act have had their eyes fixed on the presbyterian petition , which i have given you already ; yet it is observable , that the confession of faith is only ratified and approved , and the catechism and directory ( whose ratification was likewise craved in the petition ) are omitted . how came this to be done ? the truth , in short , is this , all these things were in the act as it was prepared by the committee : but when they began to consider that article in the house , beginning with the confession of faith , the duke of hamilton moved , that it might be read all over with an audible and distinct voice , and attentively considered before they should give it the legal sanction ; for ( as he argued ) that confession of faith had never been ratified in parliament before : and it was not suitable to the weight and importance of such an affair , nor to the wisdom and care of a parliament to ratifie what had never been publickly considered in parliament . this reason had such force with it , that it was agreed it should be read ; and the laird of craiginsh moved that if it must be read , it might be read on the lords day ; having doubts probably , that it might be a prophanation of it to read it on another day : however it was agreed it should be read on monday the 26th . as soon as the parliament should meet , and so it was , and heard with what attention the members were pleased to give it . i believe it was the first time a good many of them had ever heard it . however it passed without any exception , which was pretty fair for such a vast number of propositions as are contained in the westminster confession . the confession of faith thus approved , it was moved next that the catechism might be read over also : but the confession had worn out some three or four hours to them ; and most part were wearied with it , and beginning to discover , some by looks , some by whispers , that they were no way willing at that time to hear any more such long lectures , and so it was moved by the d. of hamilton ( who was probably well enough satisfied to escape the hearing them also ) that the catechism and directory might be forborn : for ( as he said ) they had now voted the confession of faith , and that was a sufficient standard , and so they might leave the rest to the ministers to be managed according to their discretion . this proposal was greedily snatched at by the most part : but there were some of the ministers in the house who were not a little surprized , that the parliament appeared so unanimous to neglect what they had so expresly craved in their petition , and so they were like to fall a muttering ; which the commissioner perceiving he left his throne , and went out of the house to another apartment , the earl of crawford first , and then the ministers following him . what passed among them there , whether the d. of h. his reasoning , after they had pondered , satisfied them , or they themselves stumbled upon some new discovery , i am not able to tell : though there wants not probability , that there might be something of the latter : of this at least , i am sure , a very good reason for forbearing the pressing the ratification of the catechism and directory any further , was very obvious : for , the directory positively and peremptorily appoints the scriptures to be read publickly in churches , one chapter out of each testament at least , every sunday before sermon , as being part of the publick worship of god , and one means sanctified by him for the edifying of his people , which the presbyterians in scotland have been so far from observing these many years , that not only has there been no such practice among them , but even in some very considerable churches , they lately got a custom of reading the sermon which was last preached , as it was taken from the speakers mouth , by some zealous and swift handed brother , instead of the scriptures , before the preacher come to the pulpit . and besides this , the same directory , because the prayer which christ taught his disciples , is not only a pattern of prayer but , it self , a most comprehensive prayer , i recommends it to be used in the prayers , of the church ; and the larger catechism is express to the same purpose . and yet as the guise goes now , it would be a mighty scandal to the sect , if any brother should say that prayer : for this reason ; i say , it seems to me very consequential ; that the ministers needed not have been very earnest for having the cateohism and directory ratified : but , as , i said , i cannot tell if this reason occurred to them on that occasions but it seems some one or other did . for after they returned to the house the matter was compounded , and the duke's motion was agreed to , and so the article was framed as you now have it , without mentioning the catechism or directory . the second thing that i shall take notice of in this act , shall be the repealing of a former act of parliament ; intituled , act acknowledging and asserting the right of succession to the imperial crown of scotland , ch. 2. parl. 3. art. 3. i need not send you a copy of that act , for doubtless you have seen it : in short , it is an act , declaring , that , according to the fundamental constitutions of the scottish monarchy , the crown descends by lawful succession , according to the proximity of blood : so that , in that same instant , in which the present sovereign dies , the next in blood is setled on the throne . this act was not named with rest which were to be repealed , as inconsistent with the protestant religion and presbyterian government , in the act as it was prepared by the committee : but no sooner came they to consider these acts which were to be repealed in the house , but sir iames montgomery of skelmurly made mention of this , and pleaded earnestly that it might be likewise inserted and annulled : his reason was , because that act was utterly inconsistent with the security of the protestant religion : for by that act , the next heir might come to the throne , and actual administration of the government , without taking the coronation oath , which was the only security the king could give for the protestant religion : and it was possible the next heir might be a papist ; and then he insisted to shew how all this was contrary to the claim of right . the duke of hamilton pleaded on the other hand , that to rescind that act , was to cut the lineal succession , that he remembred very well , that act was made as much , if not more , to exclude the duke of monmouth , as to make way for k. iames. and that it was a very tender point , and dangerous to speak about . the lord stair added , that it was treason even in parliament ( unless one had a good backing ) to move the rescinding of it : nor was it necessary to rescind it , seeing whatever was prejudicial in it to the protestant religion , or presbyterian government , was ipso facto to be rescinded by this act they were now a forming : but sir iames montgomery of skecmurly's reasons prevailed ; and so it carried that it should be inserted , and rescinded with the rest , in so far at least as it was inconsistent with the just now named interests . the making so great a stir about this act , i remember at that time made no little noise , and underwent several censures out of the house . some wondered what had moved sir iames to start such a matter . was it merely to rub up old sores ? as we say : for where was the difficulty of securing the protestant religion , though that act had stood in force ? is the protestant religion inconsistent with a lineal succession ? or was it inconsistent with the protestant religion to say , that god almighty is an earthly sovereign's immediate superiour ? none of these could ever enter into a mans head who had so much sense as sir iames montgomery ; so it was conjectured , he had some other thing at the bottom . on the other hand , it seemed as strange to many , that the duke of hamilton should have pleaded so zealously for the continuation of that act and for the lineal succession ? it 's true indeed , ( said they ) consider him as duke of hamilton and he had good reason to appear for it , it being so nearly the concern of his own family . but consider him as a president of the late meeting of estates , and the principal person who deposed k. iames , and excluded him whom he himself had sometimes acknowledged to be the prince of scotland , without ever offering at a reason for it , and transferred the crown upon their present majesties , and they could not see how he was consistent with himself . but , as for my lord stair , few thought it strange that he should have so reasoned . it was treason to move the rescinding of that act , even in parliament , unless a man had a good backing , which was readily interpreted to be just as much , as if he had said , that a man that had a good backing power and party enough , might say any thing in parliament , or out of parliament without being guilty of treason : but perhaps , you may be apt to say , what is all this but digression ; for wherein is the church or the clergy concerned in this matter ? to which i shall make no other reply but , was not all this stir made about this act , in behalf of the protestant religion ? the next thing i would have you to consider , is the establishing the whole government of the church in the hands of the known , sound presbyterians , &c. as it was craved in the petition : i have told you already how this article displeased the year before , while the duke of hamilton was commissioner : but now , you see it was granted : yet not without some opposition . for , on friday may 23. the first day that the act was debated in the house , a petition was given in by some of these episcopal ministers who had given obedience to the civil government : i am affraid the copy i have of it is not corrected , and therefore i will not transcribe it in form , but it was this for substance . they for themselves , and others of the episcopal persuasion , who have submitted to the government of their present majesties , according to law , do humbly supplicate ; that , according to the protection promised them they may be secured in the possession of their offices and , benefices : they humbly conceive , that , to put the ecclesiastical jurisdiction intirely into the hands of the presbyterians , and establish them the sole judges of their life and doctrine , will be in effect to turn them out of that protection : for they shall not only thereby be deprived of all share and interest in ecclesiastical government , though they have every way as good a right to , and are as capable of managing that trust , as the presbyterian ministers , and do very far exceed them in numbers ; but also shall be subjected to the arbitriment of a party who profess it , their duty , to purge the church of all ministers who have at any time declared for the lawfulness of episcopacy : whom therefore ( though they are not afraid of the strictest impartial tryal ) they decline as their judges ; which declinature , the presbyterian ministers themselves cannot but in reason acknowledge to be just and equitable , considering that they have all along refused to submit to the jurisdiction of the bishops upon the like reason . that it has been still matter of regret of them , that the differences upon the account of opinion about church government have been so much kept up ; that therefore it would please the parliament to appoint a conference betwixt some ministers of both persuasions , which they most humbly conceive may prove a good expedient for curing the distemper , or at least for finding where it lieth . they do not take upon them to prescribe to the high and honourable court , but in all humility supplicate for these things : to the end that the true protestant religion , for which they have still declared their zeal , may flourish ; and they and others for their opinions about church-government , ( which they are ready to maintain and justifie ) may not be oppressed in their consciences and interests . the petitioners did not expect that the grand point of the church-government should have been so soon brought to the house , so that this their petition was penned in such haste , that they had not time to wait upon the commissioner , and acquaint him with it before it was presented : however while the duke of hamilton was disputing the equity and reasonableness of that article in the house , one iames more of stonywood presented it , and craved that it might be read : the duke of hamilton back'd him warmly ; so it was read , but then it was immediately hissed at : the noise was great , and the cry was loud that it was indiscreer , unmannerly , arrogant , and what not ? and all this , forsooth , because they called themselves ministers of the episcopal persuasion ; compar'd themselves for abilities with the presbyterian ministers ; declin'd them as their judges ; craved a conference , and undertook to maintain the lawfulness of episcopacy : extravagant impudence sure ! this petition being thus rejected with disdain , the duke thought it not fit at this time to insist any longer ; so there was no more that day concerning that article ; except that one mr. ross , a commissioner for some northern burgh , moved ; that at least these presbyterian ministers who had been deposed by those of their own persuasion before the restitution of episcopacy , anno 1662. might not be included in the number of those known sound presbyterians , in whose hands the government was to be established in the first instance : but his motion was not regarded : and indeed it had been a great oversight if it had , for thereby the worthy master kennedy who was moderator of the late general assembly , and some other such zealous brethren had been excluded , which might have been of very sad consequence to the kirk . but , the duke was at his purpose again on wednesday the 28. and insisted largely on the iniquity of putting the government solely in the known sound presbyterians hands . he argued from the prince of orange's declaration for the kingdom of scotland ; from the great purpose of his coming to britain , from his declaration for keeping the peace in the kingdom of scotland dated february 6. 1688 / 9 from the proclamation of the estates , april 13. 1689 ; from the nature of the thing , and from many other topicks , but all to no purpose : for when it came to a vote , it carried easily , that the article should stand as you now see it in the act : thus were some hundreds of the episcopal persuasion , by act of parliament , exposed to the fury of fifty or sixty sworn enemies , without any imaginable necessity : for had it not been easie for the parliament , if they had had a mind to it , to have setled presbyterian government , so , as that all who owned the civil government , and were willing to continue in their charges without bishops , might have been obliged to live peaceably together , and carry on the common work of the ministry ? but it seems the parliament were resolute to support a party . but enough of this . there was some dispute also about a clause which was in the act , as it was prepared by the committee ; in that article , which grants the power to the presbyterian ministers and elders ( even before the general assembly should meet ) to appoint and keep visitations , for trying and purging out all insufficient , negligent , scandalous and erroneous ministers ( that is , all who were void of the grace of presbyterianism ) by due course of ecclesiastical process and censures , and redressing all other church-disorders ; for here it was subjoined ; to all which censures the civil sanction is hereby interposed . about this clause , i say , there was some dispute ; but it lasted not long , for the duke of hamilton his reasoning prevailed ; which was , that that clause must necessarily import an implicite faith in the presbyterian ministers inerrability ; for if it was possible that they might judge wrong , should the civil sanction for all that , be still interposed ? how strange would that be ? and what might be its consequences ? so , that clause , as you see , was expunged . indeed the civil sanction had been interposed very laudably many a time since , if that clause had been retained : and many a sweet sentence had it backed : but it is no part of my present task to meddle with these : i might insist upon a great many other things , which bred no little dispute ; such as the kings power in ecclesiastical matters , and especially in calling and dissolving general assemblies , &c. the duke of hamilton and sir iohn dalrymple were advocates for the prerogative of the king ; and sir iames montgomery of skelmurly and others for the prerogative of the kirk : it was a nice point ; and vast harangues were made on both sides . it was debated all the three days ( i. e. the 23. 26 and 28 of may , ) and at last left in sufficient obscurity . but to be brief , i will only insist on one article more , which deserves a little more fully to be represented . it is that famous article in the act , concerning the rabled ministers . i think i need not tell you how they were turned out of their churches by force and tumult , about the beginning of the late revolution , nor how they were directly excluded the protection of the government by that admirable proclamation of the meeting of estates , dated april 13. anno 1689. these things and many more which concern these poor people , you cannot be ignorant of , if you have ever read the four letters , or the case of the present afflicted clergy in scotland : and sure i am , any man that understands how they were treated in that wonderful year 1689. cannot but think they met with very hard measure : yet for all that they had still some hopes of redress : for they could not believe , but the government sometime or other would take their case to consideration , and do them something like justice : in this faith , i say , they lived till this act was forming : so that when they heard of the article that concerned their case , it was no wonder if they were sadly disheartned ; as indeed they were , to such a degree , that the most part of them who were then at edinburgh , had once very near resolved calmly and silently to sit still , and receive the blow which was design'd them , without ever giving the parliament the trouble of any address or petition . yet after the first consternation was over , i know not how , but some of them collected so much courage as to think of giving in a petition , which might represent their case , and crave a remedy . what ( said they ) may the world think of us ? how may it condemn us of an unaccountable negligence , if , having received such notorious injuries , we shall seek no redress ? it is not to be supposed but a parliament which calls it self christian , will shew at least , that they are so much men as to pity our case when it is represented to them . but if they will not , if they shall take no notice of such oppressions , if the worst shall happen , if they shall make such an act as is now before them : 't is no great loss to lose the pains of drawing a petition : one effect it cannot miss to have , which will easily counterballance all that expence : it will put a thorn in their foot , and be a witness against them , and render them inexcusable before the world , if they make such an act concerning us . having reasoned with themselves after this manner , i say , upon saturday the 24th of may some of them met , and resolved upon this form , which because it contains the true state of their case in few words : i will here thanscribe as followeth . unto his grace their majesties commissioner , and the honourable estates of parliament . the petition of the ministers who were thrust from their churches by force and violence in december 1688. or at any time thereafter , before the 13th . day of april 1689. humbly sheweth , whereas your petitioners , ( though they entered to their offices and benefices , at their respective churches according to law , and were in uncontroverted possession of them ) were thrust from these their offices and cures , by notorious force and violence ; cast out of their dwellings , with their families and furniture , and threatned with death , if they should offer to return to the exercise of their ministry at their respective churches . whereas your petitioners , upon such violent treatment , made application to his present majesty , then , his highness the prince of orange , ( who , at the humble desire of divers lords and gentlemen of this kingdom , had then taken upon him the government and administration of the affairs of this realm ) by their humble petition for protection , of the date at glasgow the 22d . of january 1688 / 9. presented to his majesty by dr. robert scott minister at hamilton , impowered by your petitioners for that effect , as will appear from his commission of the same date ; and upon that application his majesty did emit a declaration , for keeping the peace , &c. in the kingdom of scotland , of the date at st. james ' s the 6th . day of february 1688 / 9. whereby he did expresly prohibit all disturbance and violence , upon the account of religion , and authorise all protestants , to enjoy their several opinions , and forms of worship , whether in churches or meeting-houses , whether according to law , or otherways , with the same freedom , and in the same manner , in which they did enjoy them in the month of october preceeding , as the said declaration at more length bears : whereby it is evident that his majesty and his councellours and advisers for scotish affairs , at that time , were clearly convinced of the violent wrongs your petitioners had met with , and of the irregularity and illegality thereof . whereas , notwithstanding the said declaration the persecution of your petitioners continued as hot as ever ; as is evident from a second tumult at glasgow upon the 17th . day of february , and year abovesaid , being the lord's day , on which both minister and hearers ( having assembled for divine worship according to law , and upon the protection and security , contained in the said declaration ) were most violently assaulted by an enraged multitude , in the high church of that city ; and a great many other instances which may be easily adduced ; and a representation of that tumult in glasgow , and a second application for protection , were made to his majesty by dr. james fall principal of the college of glasgow : and his majesty referred the matter to the meeting of estates , indicted by him to sit at edenburgh the 14th . of march ; and year aforesaid . whereas the said meeting of estates , did not think it convenient , in that interim , by their authority , to repossess your petitioners of their just , legal , and undoubled rights , as appears from their proclamation , of the date at edenburgh the 13th . day of april 1689. so that your petitioners , wanting protection , durst never since , without the manifest peril of their lives , adventure to return to the exercise of their ministry at their respective churches . whereas your petitioners ( beside the unspeakable grief it is to them to be thus restrain'd from the exercise of their sacred function ) are generally reduced to great necessities , and many of them with numerous families , are at the point of starving , having no livelihood but their stipends , and being refused payment of these , by the debiors thereof , upon pretence of an act of council dated december the 24th . 1689. whereby intimation is made to all iudges , that the case of the ministers , who are not in the actual exercise of their ministerial function the 13th . of april 1689. lyeth under the consideration of parliament , and they are required in executing of sentences already recovered , and in iudging of processes to be intented at the instance of such ministers to behave themselves as they will be answerable , which act not only the debiors of your petitioners stipends pretend for not paying the same , as said is , but also many inferiour iudges do so construct , that they will grant no decrees in favours of your petitioners . and , whereas by the laws of this realm , your petitioners ( being ministers of the gospel of christ , and having entered legally to their offices and benefices , as said is ) have right to protection in the exercise of their ministry , at their respective churches , and to their benefices , ad vitam vel culpam , and can neither be deprived of either without a legal sentence ; and now your grace and the estates are met in parliament , to which , the case of your petitioners is referred by the aforesaid act of privy council . may it therefore please your grace and the honourable estates of parliament to take the premises under consideration , and interpose your authority , for restoring your petitioners to the exercise of their ministry at their respective churches ; for causing make payment of the stipends that are due to them by law ; and for protecting them both in their offices and benefices , according to law. the framers of this petition made it their work to put it in as smooth and modest a dress as they could ▪ that it might not be condemned of superciliousness and arrogancy , as that had been which was presented the day before . as for the form , one of these who were concerned produced king charles the first his large declaration , and therein turned to the petition which was given by the presbyterians anno 1638. to the presbytery of edenburgh , against the bishops ; affirming it would be best to imitate that pattern as near as could be ; for so , the presbyterians in the parliament could not find fault with it , without casting dirt upon their own predecessors . the fancy was relished by the rest ; and this was the true reason , why there were so many whereas's in it . having thus formed their petition , their next work was to wait upon the commissioner and shew him a copy of it : but that night they could not have access ; it was a post-night , and his grace was busie writing letters : so they returned on monday morning , and were at last , admitted into his grace's presence , where one of them in very few words told him ; they were of the number of these ministers , who had been thrust from their churches by force and violence before the 13th . of april 1689. that they were informed , that the parliament had now their case under consideration ; that therefore , they had formed a petition , which they were to present to the parliament , and so , were come to acquaint his grace with it , and give him a copy of it , that he might thereby understand the true state of their case ; and with these last words he offered his grace a copy of the petition : he received it ; and after a little pause , he asked this question : what ? are ye the gentlemen who gave in the petition to the parliament on friday ? the person to whom he directed this question , understanding very well what he meant by it ( viz. that his grace had a mind to be at them , for their arrogancy , if they had been the men ) replyed instantly , they were not : and then deduced their case , over again , briefly : then was there another pause , his grace still holding the petition in his hand , without ever offering to read it : at last , he broke his silence , with this very christian sentence ; ( had he been ingenuous in it ) gentlemen , i can say no more , but that i am for doing just and righteous things to all men . to which it was forthwith replyed ; that they sought nothing but justice ; give them that , and they were satisfied ; and with that they left him . the next thing to be done was to search out some member of parliament who might do them the favour of presenting the petition to the house : at last they found sir patrick scott of ancrum , a discreet gentleman who undertook it : for you must know , it was not every body that had courage for such an imployment , as matters then went. well , on monday the 26th . of may , there was no opportunity for it : the reading the westminster confession ( as i have said ) wearied the whole house ; so , that article about the rabbled clergy was not considered till the last and great day wednesday the 28th . of may : the day on which the whole act was voted ; but before i come to the work of that day , i must give you an account of some skirmishings had been concerning it , on friday the 23d . for , the duke of hamilton obtained no less than three amendments in that article , that day , which that you may the better understand , i will set down the article , as it was prepared by the committee ; and then tell you briefly upon what reasons the amendments were made . the article , as it was prepared by the committee , ran thus : and because many conform ministers either have deserted , or are removed from their churches , preceeding the 13th . of april 1689. and ought not to be reponed ; and others were deprived for not giving obedience to the act of the estates of the said 13th . of april 1689. therefore their majesties with advice and consent foresaid , do hereby declare all the churches , either deserted , or from which the conform ministers were removed or deprived , as said is , to be vacant ; and that the presbyterian ministers , exercising within any of these parishes , or where the last incumbent is dead , shall continue their possession , and have right to the legal benefices and stipends forth and from the time of their entering , and in time coming , ay and while the church as now established take further course therewith . in the article thus digested , you see that 't is said , that conform ministers who had deserted , ( which none had ) or were removed from their churches , ought not to be reponed . the duke was not pleased with this clause : and pleaded , that it was not only needless , ( as 't is evident it was ) but also that by necessary consequence , it would infer , that these who had been removed , ( alias rabbled , for in this case , these are truly equivalent terms ) since the 13th . of april , ought not to be reponed neither : for if their being thus removed , was a sufficient reason , in one case , why they ought not to be reponed ; why not in all ? which reasoning prevailed , and so that clause was left out . another amendment was : you see , by the article as it was prepared by the committee , the presbyterian ministers , simply , upon their exercising in such a parish , should have the benefice , which the duke excepted against , and said that many presbyterian ministers had exercised their ministry in several parishes , and possessed themselves of the churches from which the conform ministers had been forced , who had neither presentation , nor call from the greater or better part of the parish : and what title could such men have to the benefice ? this was pungent also ; and so this clause was added as you see it in the printed act ; exercising their ministry by the desire , or consent of the people . the third was this ; in the article , as prepared by the committee , the presbyterian ministers were to have the benefices forth and from the time of their entering without specifying any definite term or year from which that entering might be dated : the duke said this was very strange ; for many presbyterian ministers had exercised their ministry in several parishes , even since king iames's toleration ; which was in the year 1687. so that this clause gave them title , even since that year , though both in that year , and the next , there was a legal incumbent in the actual and uninterrupted exercise of his ministry in the parish : what iniquity was this ? hereupon the time of their entering was limited to the year 1689. as now you have it . i have represented these things , that you may see , as severe as the act is , how much more so it had been , if the committee's draught had passed ; or , if the duke of hamilton had not been at very much pains . besides these amendments in this article procured by his grace , on that 23d . of may , there was another thing proposed by the laird of kellburn one of the commissioners ( i think ) for the shire of bute ; it was , that such ministers as had not had free access to their churches , and by consequence could not give obedience to the proclamation of the estates april the 13th . upon the days appointed , but were willing to obey , when they should have opportunity , might be excepted out of the number of these whom the parliament was to declare deprived , and their churches vacant : but that was rejected with scorn . come we now to our wednesday on which the great point in the article was debated , viz. whether the deed of the rabble should be justified , and all these ministers who had been driven from their churches by the rabble should be deprived . the duke of hamilton pleaded earnestly that this article might not pass . it was wonderful to call these men deserters : for was it not notorious all the kingdom over , that they were violently forced from their churches by tumult and rabble , and could not , without the evident peril of their lives , continue in the exercise of their ministry at their respective churches ? it was as wonderful , to declare their churches vacant , because of their being removed from them : for what would be the sense of the word removed in the present case ? was it not plain , that it was just neither more nor less than rabbled ? and what might the world think of the justice of the parliament , if it should sustain that as a sufficient ground , for declaring their churches vacant ? these men had entered to their churches according to law ; how then could they be deprived without a legal tryal ? what evil had they done ? they had never had opportunity to disobey the government : they were violently thrust from their churches by the rabble before the 13th . of april 1689. so , it was impossible for them to obey the authority of the meeting of the estates , in that days proclamation : nay consider that proclamation , and it will be found that it did not bind them . were they chargeable with any other crimes , or scandals ? why then , let them be first tryed , and convict , and then deprived by due course : was it ever heard , that ministers of the gospel of christ were turned out of their offices and livings , without the least guilt fixed on them ? what a reflection would it cast upon the king , if such an act should be made ? did not he come to these kingdoms , to deliver us from arbitrary power ? to secure liberty , and property , as well as religion ? but how was it consistent with this , to deprive so many protestant ministers of their churches and livings , for no imaginable reason in law , or equity ? besides , when first the government of this kingdom was transferred on his majesty , did he not receive these men into his protection , by his declaration dated february the 6th . 1688 / 9. but how was it consistent with the common protection due to subjects , to deprive them of their undoubted rights so very arbitrarily . these and many other such unanswerable arguments did his grace insist on . neither did any one man so much as once offer at shewing how such a thing could consist with law , justice or reason . while the duke was thus pleading , sir patrick scott presented the petition , and craved it might be read : he was assisted by the duke , who prest it very warmly : and then there was no little stir in the house : for such as were resolved to vote the petitioners out of their rights , knew very well , if it should be read , they were not able to render a solid reason , why what it craved should not be granted ; and therefore they had no inclination , that the house should hear it : but then it was as difficult to find a colour of reason why it should not be read . crawford said , it could not be read in the midst of the act ; a wise tale indeed ; for when was it proper to read it , if not , when the case it concerned was under consideration ? cardross said , he did not know but all these men were enemies to the government ; and why then should the house be troubled with their petitions ? but he knew as little , but they were all friends to the government ; for ( as hath been said ) they had never had opportunity to shew how they were affected to it . at last , after a great deal of such impertinent stuff , sir patrick hume , now lord polwart , moved , that the house might first go on in the act , and after that was voted , they might hear the petition . a judicious overture , to shut the stable door ( as we say ) when the steed is stollen : for the great purpose of the petition was , that no such thing might be voted . however this motion , because , it seems they could stumble on none better , was greedily entertained by the party : and so it was carried , that the reading of the petition should be delay'd till the article was first voted : which , what was it else , but downright to reject it without an hearing ? then the duke of hamilton was at the point again , and renewed his endeavours , but to no purpose : for the cry immediately arose , that there was no need of further debate , in the case ; it had been disputed enough already , put it to a vote , &c. so there was no help for it : the vote came to be stated . the duke of hamilton craved it might be stated thus . approve , or not approve , the deed of the rabble ; and this twice or thrice over he pressed : but though that was the true state of the case , it was too bare faced ; and therefore it was put in these smoother terms , approve , or not approve the article . i need not tell you which carried ; you may see that by the act ; how almighty is a vote ! what can it not do ? yet i must acknowledge , there were some fifteen or sixteen negative voices , and which is remarkable , some of these , by persons who in the hight of their zeal , the year before , had been amongst the most forward , for refusing these poor men the protection of the government ; such as the lord ross , sir iames montgomery , &c. after this article was thus voted and approved , the duke of hamilton , not able to bridle his indignation , told the house plainly , he was sorry he should ever have sat in a scottish parliament , where such naked iniquity was established into a law ; that it was impossible presbyterian government could stand , being built on such a foundation , and it grieved him to the heart , to consider what a reflection this act would bring upon the government , and justice of the nation . while the duke was thus insisting , a certain member stood up , and said , the duke would do wisely to temper his language ; for , what was this , but to reflect on the house , and flee in the face of an act of parliament ? the duke instantly replied , it was a mistake , it was but a vote of the house , and had not yet got the royal assent , so it was no act of parliament : but seeing matters went so , though he was very much afraid the reflection would go further than the house were aware of , for his part he should say no more , but put his hand upon his mouth : and with this he left his seat ; and went out of the house , a good number of members folowing him . well , what was my lord melvil's behaviour all this while ? why , his grace sat upon the throne , heard all that the duke of hamilton had said for the rabled clergy , and all that passed concerning their petition , and yet never so much as once opened his mouth in the matter ; but perhaps prelatical people are not men ; and though they were , is not dominion founded upon grace ? and so what pretensions can conformists make that justice should be done them ? but enough of this . there was now only one thing more to be done , and that was to vote the whole act in cumulo , which before had only been voted by parcels . this was immediately proposed upon the dukes departure . now it must not be forgotten , that as soon as this began to be talk'd of , a little presbyterian preacher who had got into the house , cried out to the members who were next him , fie ! make haste , dispatch , now that he is gone , lest he return again , and create more trouble . this he meant of the duke . whether it was in obedience to this seasonable warning , or not , 't is no great matter ; but so it was , that instantly the thing was done ; the whole act was approved , and so prepared for the royal assent . and indeed it was no wonder , considering what members were in the house , even few or none who were not frank for the good old cause , except some four or five who stayed to vote against presbyterian government , that it might not be said , that it carried nemine contradicente , and some few others who would not vote for that establishment of presbytery ; because as they pretended , it was not established in its proper plentitude of power and independency : except such , i say , there were none in the house , but those of the gang ; for a great many noblemen and gentlemen ; such as the duke of queensberry , the earls linlithgow and balcarras , &c. would not be present on that occasion , and , as i have said the duke of hamilton , and a good many members had left the house before that great vote was moved . thus was this act prepared for the royal assent on wednesday the 28th of may : but it got it not till the 7th of iune : for that same night that it was vored , an express was sent to the king to give him an account what was done , and his majesties answer and allowance was necessary , before the act could be touched . and now that i have mentioned his majesties granting his allowance to his commissioner to touch the act , and give it the form of a law ; i cannot forbear to tell you , that i am fully persuaded , he did not get a just and impartial information about the nature of the several articles in it : which had he got , it was impossible that he should ever have approved or ratified the act : for why ? that article concerning the rabled ministers is plainly inconsistent with the express words of the coronation oath . now who can believe that the king would have consented to such notorious oppression , as more than three hundred protestant ministers met with him from this act , if that matter had been duly represented to him ? but i cannot find what can be said for my lord melvil , who knowing very well the whole matter , abused his master by not fairly representing it to him . thus i have given you a brief account how this act was made , i shall make no more reflections on it , knowing very well , how the writers of former accounts of this nature , have been lash'd for making so bold with the government , and intituling it to the persecution of the clergy . for my part i shall leave it to you sir , or any to whom you shall communicate this paper , first , to consider matter of fact , which i have plainly and freely told you , and then to make your own reflections . and so i cometo the third thing which i promised concerning this act , which was to tell you , what consequences it produced : and , that which deserves to be put in the front was , the pious gratitude of the presbyterian ministers to the parliament , for making so gracious an act : how they thanked the commissioner , and crawford , and sutherland and such others of their good friends , in private , i am not able to tell : but in their sermons , they were extremely careful to express a deep sense of the wonderful favour was done them . i shall only take notice of two that were published , viz. mr. gilbert rules , and mr. david williamson's . mr. gilbert's sermon , as i told you was preached before the act was voted , and therefore he was at the pains to embelish it with a preface to the reader , when it was a printing , wherein he harangues thus , as the interest of religion was our solicitude when these thoughts were conceived and delivered : so now we are filled with joy , while we behold the religious regard ; which the high and honourable court of parliament have shewed to the mountain of the lords house above other mountains ( which they truly are and ought to be concern'd about ) in the great step towards the establishing thereof , that they made by their vote of the 28th instant . and then he concludes , that the lord may help them to go on as they have begun and hitherto acted , and reward them for their good deeds towards his house — is the earnest prayer of , &c. but was worthy mr. david inferiour to him ? that 's not to be thought : neither indeed was he ; for thus he bespeaks them in his sermon preached iune 15. which i cited before , honourable worthies , i incline not by panegyricks to offend your modest ears , whose praise will be in the church : but we bless god , we have such a king and queen to rule over us , and such a representative of their majesties in this honourable court , and so many noble and worthy patriots in this assembly , who befriend the interest of our lord : we bless the lord , and we bless you from the lord with our hearts , for what you have done for the house of the lord , &c. i believe he never complemented lady more zealously . thus these two eminent lights . and it is not to be doubted but the rest were as forward : but to this very hour , i never so much as heard of one of them , who either publickly or privately condemned that article concerning the rabbled ministers : and now , when i think on it , who can blame a commissioner , or a parliament for making such an act , when they were thus not only authorized and justified , but prais'd and magnified by such infallible casuists ? and indeed laying aside all notions of right and wrong , and heaven and hell , and judgment . the brethren had all the reason in the world to be thus thankful . for , not only were they secured of all these benefices , where they had set up at their own hands , after the rabbling trade begun , for the year 1689 ; which they had still in their prospect ; and in order to which , that act of council dated december 24. 1689. whereof i have spoken sufficiently already , was made ; but they had also another fair opportunity of gaining considerably by it : for they had not so many preachers of their gang as filled the half of these churches , from which the conformists had been forced ; so that there were some hundreds of vacancies , whereby they had an excellent occasion to petition the the council for the vacant benefices to make up their pretended losses : this was a blessed providence , and with them it had been to resist a divine call , to have neglected it : and therefore it was their great business in the months of august , september and october , &c. to make hay while the sun shined , that is , to petition the council for vacant stipends : thus mr. william veitch had been a great sufferer , for why ? he had been forced to appear actually in rebellion against k. charles ii. at pictland hills , for which he was not hang'd indeed , but declared rebel and fugitive : but now that the fields were fair , and he had endured so much undeserved persecution , would he not have been to blame , if he had not studied his own interest ? and therefore he petitioned for no less than five vacancies , viz. creiland , eckfurd , yettam , marbottle , and oxnam . 't is true , the council were so hard-hearted as to grant him only three of them , viz. creiland , eckfurd , and yettam : this was hard enough : but alas ( tho he had confidently affirmed in his petition the contrary , ) it was afterwards found that the minister of creiland had not been deprived before michaelmas 1689. so that mr. veitch could not get that benefice , which was certainly a very disappointing persecution to him . no doubt you have heard of this mr. veitch before , for he is the same who had the inward call to be minister at peebles , ( because the benefice was far better ) rather than at several other places , where he was far more earnestly desired . thus also , one mr. iohn dickson , who had sometime preached at rutherglen , ( but as i am told was never admitted to the ministery there ) before the restitution of episcopacy 1662. petitioned not only for that , but other four benefices : and a great many more i could instance if my design'd brevity would allow me . in short , if they had preached but one or two sermons in a parish casually , or upon an invitation from one or two of the parishioners in a whole years time , it was sure to be put into the bosom of the petition , that they had served the cure in such a parish ; and that was enough . thus did that act of parliament caress the presbyterians : while in the mean time it behoved the poor deprived rabbled clergy , who had an undoubted title in all justice and equity , patiently to endure want , and see their estates disposed of to other people , without daring to say , that any wrong was done them : until at last the duke of hamilton and some other councillors , who were not entirely of the fashionable metal , began to encourage some of them to petition the council , and promised them their assistance : and so indeed , some of them got gifts of their own benefices . but then two or three things are observable : for 1. if there was a presbyterian preacher who pretended to have exercised his ministery in such or such a parish ; it was in vain for the rabbled man to petition for it ; the càse was clear ; it belong'd to the presbyterian by the act of parliament ; so that there was no place for any man to petition for his own benefice , but where no presbyterian could pretend that he had served in that parish . 2. whoever petitioned , was carefully to forbear pleading any thing like right or title , for that was downright to flee in the face of the act of parliament ; which crawford , who was seldom or never absent from the council board , was sure to entertain with very terrible resentments . 3. if the duke of hamilton was absent , it was folly to petition , for it was sure to be rejected . nay , sometimes when he was present , yet if two or three of these who used to vote with him , were not at the board , it was extremely dangerous to venture ; for if a petition was once rejected , it was hard to get it considered a second time : for then crawford was furnished with a pithy argument against it . once , indeed ( for i must do him justice ) i heard his lordship was forward to grant a conformist's petition , so very forward , that he was clear it should be granted before it was read : but there was a singularity in the case , which when you understand , perhaps you will not be much surpriz'd at this his lordships forwardness ; even though there was a presbyterian minister concerned : for alas ! the man , weary of his wife , had fallen into the sin of adultery with another woman : and his lordship was mightily afraid lest this should have been mentioned in the petition , or by some ill natur'd person at the council-table , who knew the story , if his lordship had made any bustle about it , as he used to do on other occasions , which he had no mind for . this was the reason of his frankness in the matter . but , besides my lord crawford , there were some other councillors , who sometime did obstruct the reading of petitions , perhaps on more odious grounds than his lordship : for example , i could name a certain privy councillor , who for several days hindered a certain rabbled minister's petition to be read , until the poor man was forced to come to him , and offer to quit him some twelve or thirteen pounds sterling , which he was obliged to pay of the benefice : and then his lordship appeared for him indeed , and obtain'd both the reading and granting of his petition . had he been as poor as my lord crawford , perhaps he had been the more excusable , but he is a man of a good estate , which makes the trick the baser ; however , i will not name him at present . from what i have said , you may competently understand the whole matter of the petitioning , which was some while on foot , and of which perhaps you have heard . i cannot deny but many were the better for it : but they ow'd all the thanks to the duke of hamilton ; and some other councillors , but none to the parliament . and yet , for all this , perhaps it were possible to give you as many instances of petitions that were rejected , if not more than were granted : but i will only insist on one man's case , whereby you will clearly and distinctly perceive , in what sense both the council , and session ( the two chief judicatories in in the nation ) understood our act of parliament : which to represent in its true colours , is the chief aim of this part of this letter . the case shall be that of one mr. robert skeen . this gentleman had entered to his church at dunsyre , within the shire of lancick , according to law ; and served there in the holy ministry , faithfully and painfully for a good many years ; a man of very good abilities and unblameable in his life . in the year 1684. a circuit court was kept in these parts , for executing the laws against nonconformists ; and so one mr. anthony murray an old presbyterian minister , who had been still connived at before ; because he would not then conform , was deprived of the church and benefice of coulter . this mr. murray had a little estate in the parish of dunsyre , where mr. skeen was minister : thither he retired after his deprivation , and lived quietly , without making any disturbance to mr. skeen , or keeping any conventicles , till the year 1687. that k. iames granted his fatal toleration . but then , with the advice of his brethren of the gang , who had resolved in their clubs to carry on a schism in the church : he began to set up again , not in his old parish of coulter , to which one would think he should rather have returned ; but in the parish of dunsyre , and endeavoured to draw the people after him . and true it is , some of the meaner sort he got : but mr. skeen still kept the church , and the better part of the parish adhered to him till april 1689. that he was turn'd out by the rabble ; or rather till after whitsunday , as you shall hear instantly . skeen thus forced away , murray continued to preach a while after he was gone : and therefore , after this our act of parliament passed in iune 1690. he resolved to take the benefit of it , and so petitioned the council for the benefice of dunsyre for both years 1689. and 1690. and obtained his request without difficulty : skeen in the mean time knowing nothing of it . one would think that this was even but course iustice ; for granting the act of parliament declaring all their churches vacant , who had been rabbled before the 13th . of april 1689. had been never so iust and righteous , yet how did it appear to their lordships that skeen was rabbled before that day ? was it enough that they had murray's word for it in his petition ? ought not skeen to have had notice to appear for his interest ? but let that pass with the rest . mr. skeen is a very poor man , and no wonder , considering , that he had no patrimony of his own , his benefice was but small , and his family was numerous . and so it was as little wonderful if he was surprized when he heard the unwelcome tydings of mr. murray's having got a gift of his benefice for these two years : but how to right himself was the question . he knew very well already in what sense the council understood the act of parliament ; but the session had never yet had occasion to give their sense of it : so he resolves to try his title before their lordships , and accordingly charges those who were lyable in payment of the stipend , for the whole year 1689. and the half of 1690. to make payment to him . this was done about the middle of ianuary 1691. it is not to be doubted but murray would soon get notice of this charge ; so he makes his address to some of the lords of the session , and obtains letters of suspension against skeen , till the case should be debated before their lordships . and so the case came to be fairly stated , before that judicature . sir david thoris was advocate for skeen , and iames stuart for murray : for whose title he produced these three arguments . 1. murray had an act of council for him , so that it was res hactenus iudicata . 2. skeen had deserted and was removed from his church before the 13th . of april , and so was deprived by the act of parliament . 3. murray had officiated , as a presbyterian minister in the parish of dunsyre , during these years for which he had got his gift . to these arguments , sir david thores gave these following answers : to the first : that skeen had legally entered to the church of dunsyre , and had a good and undoubted title and right , which ought in all law and reason to be preferred to murray's gift , especially considering that it had been obtained clancularly , & parte inanditâ alterâ . to the second , that skeen had not deserted , but was barbarously forced from his church by notorious rabble and violence as was evident from this deduction . 1. about candlemas , first , and then several times after , in the month of february and march 1688 / 9. a godless rabble which was then overrunning the country , and thrusting out the regular clergy where ever they came , sent to him peremptory orders to remove from his church , and desist from the exercise of his ministery , under no less hazard than tearing him in pieces , notwithstanding which he still continued in the exercise of his office. 2. the rabble finding those their menaces unsuccessful , no fewer than sixty of them , all armed , under the command of one steel , came to his dwelling house upon the 21st . of march , and committed such outrages , that they frighted the poor gentlewoman his wife , then big with child , into her pangs , before the time ; in which she continued till the first of april , that she brought forth her child , dying her self within three hours after the birth , and leaving him the weighty burthen of eight motherless children ; yet neither for this did he forbear to exercise his minstry in the church of dunsyre ; until , 3. upon the 13th . of april ( the same day that the proclamation was ordered by the estates ) another barbarous , and numerous rabble came to his house , and threatned to murther him , if he should offer to possess the pulpit the next day which was sunday ; and then indeed for fear of his life , he went not to the church ; yet he preached in his dwelling house to such of his parishioners as came to hear him . 4. the proclamation being ordered to be read by him upon sunday the 21st . of april , the rabble returned upon saturday the 20th . and by violence barricado'd the church doors , and carried away the keys , and such utensils as they could find , belonging to the church , and not only so , but on sunday morning they planted guards of armed men , at the doors of the church , by which they kept him out by force ; yet even that day too he preached in his dwelling house : nay , 5. he continued still to preach in his dwelling house on sundays , and to baptize children , and visit the sick , and perform all other parts of his ministry as he had occasion ; till after whitsunday , that another rabble came , and most outragiously and inhumanely cast him , his family , and all his furniture , out of doors ; so that he was then forced to retire elsewhere for shelter . all these things were offered to be proved positively and evidently by many famous and unquestionable witnesses ; and so the lords were desired for these reasons , to give their judgment upon this point : whether skeen having thus continued in the exercise of his ministry , in the church , and parish of dunsyre , notwithstanding so much barbarous usage and so many forcible interruptions and oppositions , could , in law , reason , or common sense , be reputed a deserter of his charge before the 13th . of april . to mr. stuart's 3d. argument , it was answered first that granting it had been true that murray had officiated as a pesbyterian minister , in the parish of dunsyre , yet he could plead no title to the benefice , because he had neither been presented , collated , nor orderly instituted and admitted to be pastor of that parish ; all which were necessary to constitute a legal right : nay he could not pretend to so much as a call from either the greater or better part of the people ; so that he ought to be look'd upon as an intruder , who had forced himself upon another mans charge , against law , and in a schismatical manner . but then secondly , it was not true , that he had officiated as a presbyterian minister , but on the contrary , it was offered to be proved , that he had refused to preach , and did forbid the people to come to him , nay that he had refused to baptize the children of his next neighbours , in case of extreme necessity , in so much , that the presbyterian party in the parish had actually called one mr. donaldson another presbyterian preacher , to supply their necessities . thirdly , murray was reponed by act of parliament of the date april the 25th . 1690. to his church at coulter , had actually got the benefice there for the year 1689. and was to get it for 1690. why then should he have the benefice of dunsyre for these years too ? what title could he plead for both benefices ? and then fourthly , it was pleaded , that of all men in the world , murray was in pessimo dolo to be skeen's competitor for the benefice of dunsyre , because , as skeen offered to prove , and make as evident as light , ( and indeed he was able to have done it by a sufficient number of witnesses ) , murray had not only never endeavoured to quiet the rabble , which he could easily have done , had he applyed himself to it , notwithstanding skeen several times demanded it of him ; but on the contrary , he had openly and avowedly sent to skeen and threatned him if he did not desist from the exercise of his ministry , saying , he could not be answerable for what he had done already , and he should smart severely for it , &c. so that murray ought truly and in law to be reputed one of skeen's rabblers . for all which reasons , and in respect , that the stipend for which skeen had charged ( besides that it belong'd to him incontrovertibly in law and justice ) was all the reparation and assithment , he expected for the murther of his wife , and the violences and outrages done to himself and his children : the lords were desired to prefer him to murray : but nothing could prevail , for the sentence was this word for word . edinburgh 26th . of february 1691. upon report of the lord anstruther , the lords find , that , seeing mr. robert skeen , was not exercising the ministry in the kirk of dunsyre , upon the 13th . of april 1689. the church was vacant by the act of parliament ; and therefore prefers mr. anthony murray . sic subscribitur , stair i. p. d. here sir you have the lords of session giving their sense of the act of parliament with a witness . but i must beg their lordships permission to tell them plainly , that many judicious people think , their lordships did even stretch the act of parliament , which i am sure was needless , in all conscience : they stretch'd the act of parliament , i say , for skeen did actually exercise his ministry in the church of dunsyre upon the 7th . of april , which was the sunday immediately before that 13th . of april , so that he ought to have been reputed in possession of his church till the end of the week , for he was not obliged to be in it till next sunday unless it was upon some extraordinary occasion , which is not pretended to have happened that week . in effect when this their lordships sentence is considered it amounts to just neither more nor less than this . skeen upon such a saturday ( for such was that 13th . of april ) was not in the exercise of his ministry , had not publick worship and sermon , and therefore the act of parliament declared his church vacant : and is not this a probable consequence ? i could easily say a great deal more ; but perhaps even what i have said is a digression : leave we therefore the session , and let us accompany skeen now to the council . his pinching circumstances prompted him to make another attempt , before he should quite give over , and that was , to petition the council that they would retract their gift to murray ; and restore him to his right : or if they would not do that , that their lordships would at least allow him . the equivalent for the year 1689. out of some other vacancy . you may easily collect reasons enough to recommend this petition , from what i have already set down i. e. the usage he had received from the rabble ; the death of his wife ; the numerousness of his family ; his poverty ; his continuing so long in the exercise of his ministry after the 13th . of april ; his never , to that hour , being under any sentence , civil , or ecclesiastical ; his never being heard for his interest . murray's procuring that gift surreptitiously , &c. and a great many more . all these he had in his petition : but the result was , the council would neither recall their gift to murray , nor supply the poor mans needs from any other fund ; so that all this while , he has nothing but the charity of good christians to subsist by . thus i have briefly hinted at such things , as may give you a sufficient tast of the consequences of our act of parliament that settled the presbyterian government . 't is now time for us to return to the parliament house again , and see what more was done there concerning the church or the clergy . and that which comes next in order of time , was a draught of an act which the earl of linlithgow gave into the parliament , the next day after the act establishing presbytery was voted : the design of it was to give toleration to those of the episcopal persuasion to worship god after their own manner , and particularly : that whoso were inclined to use the english liturgy , might do it safely . being presented by so considerable a member , they could not refuse it a reading : but it never got more ; indeed , i am apt to believe his lordship , who presented it , did not expect that it should meet with better entertainment . however one thing was gain'd by it , even that it was rejected ; and that the party who had so thankfully embraced king iame's toleration before , now that they were mounted on the sadle , refused to tolerate any of a different persuasion . this themselves were sensible of , and that it was a thorn put into their foot : but it was inconsistent with their principles to grant it , and so that such a thing should have been moved , incensed them exceedingly ; especially the preachers , who for several days after , made it their work to declaim vehemently against all tolerations ; particularly worthy mr. david williamson in his famous sermon , which i have cited already , was at it , with a great deal of warmth , and that oftner than once ; for not only towards the end of his sermon did he harangue directly and copiously against it , calling it a backset to all that was done , and a mystery of iniquity , &c. but even near the beginning , with more zeal than discretion ; he made it an infallible mark of infidelity in a prince to grant tolerations : do not think i am injurious to him ; you shall have his own words : in respect of religion , some ( princes ) are believers , as ioshua ; some infidels , and so are either such as persecute religion , as herod and iulian ; or tolerate it , as a trajan . thus the zealous man , not considering , that king william had granted a toleration in england . nay so much was the mans teeth set on edg , that such a thing should have been once muttered in parliament , that he was earnest in his exhortations to the house , that they would , if not hang , at least banish all the prelatists . thus he tells them , it is not the wisdom of magistrates to overlook dangerous persons by cruel indulgence ; one achan spared , may endanger the whole camp of israel ( is not this as bad as hanging ? ) traytors to kirk and king would be duly noticed . and again , persons of a dangerous complexion , to undermine the state , would be incapacitated , ( and a rope is the best way for that ) and put out of reach to hazard the commonwealth : if he were a churchman , an abiathar , he might be sent to anathoth . this last fling i am apt to believe , was design'd against the archbishop of glasgow , for possibly mr. david dreaded , he was upon the plot of the toleration . stubborn parliament , that would not provide halters , or at least prisons for all these rogues , when such a godly man advised them ! the next thing wherein the church was concerned , was an act which passed iuly 29. 1690. abolishing patronages , and setting up in their stead , what ? popular elections , according to the presbyterian profession ? nothing less . what then ? a new model for electing ministers , for which it will be very hard to find a ius divinum in all the scripture : for now the heritors and elders are to name and propose the person for whom they encline , to the whole congregation , to be either approved , or disapproved by them ; and if they disapprove , the disapprovers must give in-their reasons to the effect the afsair may be cognosced upon by the presbytery of the bounds , at whose judgment , and by whose determination , the calling and entring of a particular minister , is to be ordered and concluded , &c. i am not at present to debate the reasonableness or conveniency of this new model : but it surpriz'd me at first , that the presbyterian preachers were so easily pleased with this , after their so warm and frequent protestations for the ius divinum of the popular elections : but this surprize was soon over when i found that this method in the result brought the whole power as effectually into their hands , and perhaps more easily than popular election could have done , and that was all they were aiming at : and here it is that the divine right of any thing , with them , doth commonly terminate . at least i am very far mistaken , if this is not all the divine right , that shall be found at the bottom of the most part of their glorious pretences . the next thing i am to take notice of concerns a set of men , whom , i know not if you will allow to be called in a state of persecution , viz. those who had been deprived by the committee of estates and the council , anno 1689. for not reading the proclamation against the owning the late king james , and not praying publickly for william and mary as king and queen of scotland . some of these , though they had obeyed their sentence so far , as not to exercise their ministry in their own churches , yet had adventured to preach in neighbouring churches : and for this they pretended they were only deprived of the exercise of their ministry at such a place : the council though it had deprived them , had not unminister'd them ; it was still lawful for them to preach the gospel when they had occasion : and as they thought they had but too much of that , considering how many vacancies were made , and how few of these churches were planted ; so very few that in many corners of the country you should have found six , eight , ten churches all empty in one neighbourhood : besides , as they still pretend , they preached nothing but the solid and substantial points of christianity , faith and repentance , &c. they did not meddle with crowns and scepters , and government , but made it their work to persuade people to a sober , righteous and godly life . however , this irritated the government , or at least the presbyterian party in the government exceedingly , and therefore upon the 22 of iuly , 1690. this act mas wade about them . the estates of parliament taking into their consideration , that several ministers deprived for not praying publickly for king william and queen mary as king and queen of this realm , and not reading the proclamation of the estates , emitted upon the 13th of april 1689. for that effect , are vp their sentence of deprivation , expresly prohibited to exercise any part of their ministerial function , within the parishes from which they were deprived , do nevertheless , now far more perniciously and dangerously , diffuse the poison of their disaffection , by taking the liberty to preach and pray at other churches and elsewhere , where they neglect to pray for king william and queen mary , in manner enjoined by the said proclamation , to the manifest contempt of publick authority , and the stirrrng up and fomenting the disaffection of the people to their majesties and the present government , and the encouragement of all their enemies . therefore our sovereign lord and lady the king and queen's majesties with advice and consent of the said estates of parliament , do hereby prohibit and discharge the whole foresaid ministers , deprived as said is , to preach or exercise any part of the ministerial function , either in churches or elsewhere , upon any pretext whatsoever , until first they present themselves before the lords of their majesties secret council , and there , in presence of the lords thereof , cake , swear , and subscribe the oath of allegiance , and also engage themselves under their hands to pray for king william and queen mary as king and queen of this realm , and not to own , or acknowledge the late k. iames the 7th for their king in any sort , conform to the tenour of the said proclamation : certifying such ministers as shall do in the contrary , that they shall be proceeded against , as persons disaffected & enemies to their majesties government , with all rigour . and further , their majesties , with advice and consent foresaid ordain the said proclamation , and act of the estates of the kingdom to be put to further execution against all such ministers , who have not as yet given obedience thereto , by praying for their majesties in manner foresaid ; and that the lords of their majesties privy council proceed therein , or impower the sheriffs or magistrates of burghs to do the same , within their respective bounds , as they shall see cause . neither was this thought enough , for within a few days after , another act was made against the distinction of de iure , and de facto , and appointing a certain declaration ; which they call the assurance to be taken by every person in publick employment ; and amongst the rest , the deprived ministers ; for it is an express clause in the act , that all shall take it , who are obliged by law to swear the oath of allegiance to their majesties . i am now almost wearied , and therefore i cannot be at pains to transcribe that act of parliament , but i am afraid you may be angry if you get not a copy of the assurance , and therefore take it as follows , iab , do in the sincerity of my heart , assent , acknowledge and declare , that their majesties king william and queen mary , are the only lawful undoubted sovereigns , king and queen of scotland , as well de iure , as de facto , and in the exercise of the government ; and therefore i do sincerely and faithfully promise and engage , that i will with heart and hand , life and goods , maintain and defend their majesties title and government , against the late king iames , his adherents , and all other enemies , who either by open , or secret attempts , shall disturb or disquiet their majesties in the exercise thereof . thus the parliament thought fit to seeure their majesties government , by exploding that pitiful distinction of de iure , and de facto , rationally sure , and consequentially : for in a kingdom where the government is incontrovertibly monarchical and hereditary , such as scotland is , how is it possible that one can be king de facto , if he be not first such de iure ? an usurper he may be , but can never be a king ; a king in such a constitution being necessarily nomen iuris . but to let this pass , because it is no part of my present concern ; were not our non-complyers , our non-readers , and non-prayers , our clergymen who were deprived anno 1689 , pretty well taken notice of by these two acts of parliament ? i believe you will not readily imagine that many of them would incline to qualifie themselves according to these laws , for the further exercise of their ministry ; neither indeed ( so far as i can learn ) has one of them done it in all the kingdom . they were forced therefore to chuse the other side of the alternative , and cease from the publick exercise of their ministry either in churches or elsewhere , and did so for a certain time ; that they look'd about them , and considered a little better : and then in several places , they adventured to have divine worship somewhat publickly in their own houses that is , they prayed and sung psalms according to the scottish fashion : and also gave their families a sermon , but so as they did not shut their gates , but left them open , that whosoever pleased might meet with them . this gave mighty provocation to the presbyterian preachers : for wherever this was done , it emptyed their convinticles , of a great many of the common sort ; and besides , the gentry generally flocked to these private meetings of the deprived men : which was an unsupportable grievance and trouble to the brethren ; for so long as that was the guise , they concluded , it would be impossible , their interest ( what ever pretences of law they might have on their side ) could be secured . but what remedy was proper for such a dangerous disease ? should they cite them before their presbyteries , or synods , and enter in ecclesiastical process against them ? but that would be to no purpose : for they would be sure not to appear ▪ and if the pursuit should proceed to the outmost , if they should excommunicate them , nothing would be gain'd ; for the sting was taken from that sentence , by act of parliament : no man being , now , by law in scotland , to suffer in his temporal interest , by vertue of his being excommunicated : and it was manifest enough , these episcopalians would not value a presbyterian excommunication upon spiritual accounts . what then should be done ? why ? there was no choice : there was no other way imaginable but to importune the privy council , that their lordships would take some course with such a criminal enormity . but then , even this required prudence , and due season ; for if such a matter should be proposed when the duke of hamilton was present , he might breed difficulties , and make opposition : so , it was fit to take the opportunity of his absence ( when he was at court ) in may and iune 1692. and then it was , that the rebellious and intollerable practices of the deprived men , came to be considered in council . there was a long list of such given in to their lordships , but i know not how it happened , it seems it was thought fit to cite only two at first , viz. dr. richard waddel archdeacon of st. andrews , and dr. iohn nicolson parson of errol . the first had been deprived for not reading the proclamation enacted by the states against the owning king iames , and not praying for william and mary as king and queen of scotland , before whitsunday 1689. and by consequence before the accounts came to scotland that william and mary had sworn the coronation-oath , without which , according to our claim of right , they could not be king and queen . the other , for the same crime , had been afterwards deprived by the council : dr. waddel's late crime was , that in his own dwelling house at st. andrews , he had preached some sundays , without qualifying himself according to law , that is , without swearing the oath of allegiance , and giving it under his hand , that he should pray for william and mary as king and queen and taking the assurance : but dr. nicolson's transgression had many different circumstances : which , that you may apprehend the better , i will give you this view of his case . errol is a considerable parish : it lies in one of the most fertile places in scotland , commonly called the carse of gowrie : and so there are a great many gentlemen who have estates in it : but all generally malignants , or antipresbyterians , except two or three : so that it was very difficult to get it planted with a fashionable preacher . but zeal for the good cause must surmount all difficulties : and therefore these two or three presbyterian lairds , with a small number of inferiour people , whom they had cajoll'd into their own temper , resolve they will have a presbyterian preacher , once possess'd of the pulpit of errol , and accordingly upon a sunday morning , ( i think it was on the tenth of may 1691 ) they bring along one tullidaff , a young forward man to preach to them in the church ; but it seems besides those in the village of errol , all the commons in the parish generally had got notice of the design , and therefore they convened in a considerable number , and met tullidaff and his guards , as he was entring ; and ask'd what the matter meant , &c. one of those presbyterian lairds , who were in his company , began to harangue to them , how presbytery was now established by the law of the land , that here was a presbyterian come to preach in the church , that it would be dangerous to make any opposition , and a great deal more of such stuff : but the resolute clowns were not to be wrought upon by such whining rhetorick , and therefore they told that gentleman briskly , that that preacher would do best to be gone without further noise , for that day he should not enter the church of errol : the laird began to expostulate further with them but in vain , for one of them told him , they were not to reason matters : but they would have nothing to do with that preacher ; he should not come there . upon this one of that gentlemans servants ( more couragious , it seems , though not more zealous than his master ) offers a stroke at that fellow , and then it came to earnest , in short tullidaff the preacher found it convenient to try if his horse could ride , and his guards got sufficient pay for that days muster . all this time dr. nicolson was in the parsonage-house ( for by the forbearance of a worthy young nobleman the earl of northesk his patron he had still continued to to inhabit it , notwithstanding his deprivation ) no ways concerned in the tumult , but as he used to do , going about divine worship in his own family . methinks it needs be no hard task to persuade you that this opposition would be warmly resented by those of the party , and indeed so it was ; for within a few days after the matter was brought before the privy council , and summons were issued out charging those who had made that tumult to appear before their lordships , and among the rest doctor nicolson , as one who had instigated and encouraged the rabble . the privy council banished doctor waddel out of the town of st. andrews , and doctor nicolson out of the parish of errol . but it is not much my present business to insist on this ; that which i have had in mine eye all a long , is the libel that was given in against doctor nicolson ; or , which is all one upon the matter the charge that was given him to appear before the council : it was a very large one , no less than three full sheets of paper ; so that it would be both a tedious and a needless work to transcribe it all : and therefore i will only give you the narrative of it ; which was this word for word . william and mary , by the grace of god &c. forasmuch as it is humbly meant and shown by our lovit sir william lockhart our sollicitour , and john blair agent for the kirk ; that where , albeit by the common law , the laws and acts of parliament , and daily practique of this and all well governed nations , the sacred function of the ministry is to be holden in great respect or esteem , and ministers should be secured in their persons , and goods against all assaults , outrages and violences ; and the perturbers of divine service , and those that shall hinder the performance thereof are severely punishable , and particularly it is provided by act 4. parl. 3. jac. ii. that the hally kirk be kept in freedom , and that nay person vex kirkmen in their persons and goods , &c. and by many subsequent laws the liberty and freedom of the hally kirk is to be observed , and the persons of ministers and church-men in the sacred function are to be had in special reverence , and no ways to be assaulted , hurted or affronted , especially when they are about going to divine service , and in the execution of their office. and by the 27. act parl. 11. jac. vi. 't is statuted that whatever person or persons , shall happen to perturb the order of the kirk , or make any tumult or raise any fray , where through the people convened shall happen to be disturbed , disordered and dispersed , the same shall be a point of a ditty against the persons that shall be convict thereof , and they shall tyn all their moveable goods to be escheat to the king , for their offence ; but prejudice of a greater punishment , if there happens any offence , as slaughter , blood , mutilation , and whosoever invades any minister or puts violent hands upon them , shall be punished with all rigour , and incur the pain of their moveable goods , for the said invasion or violence , albeit no slaughter nor mutilation follow thereupon ; all which is ratified by the 7th . act ch. i. by which it is declared that because the insolence and violence may be committed by lawless and irresponsable men ; who cannot be gotten detected ; it is statuted that the landlords , heretors , chief of clans , and others within whose bounds they dwell , shall be holden , upon complaint to the lords of secret council to exhibit and produce the malefactors , to be censured and punished at the discretion of the iudge ; and the heretors and others in whose land they reside are obliged to exhibit them , under the like punishment after intimation made to them that they stay upon the place . and by the 4. act , session 2. parl. 2. ch. ii. it is statuted and declared , that whatsoever person or persons shall be found guilty of assaulting of the lives of ministers or actually attempting the same shall be severely punished , &c. thus , i say , did the narative of the doctors libel proceed , and then upon this foundation was the rest of it built , viz. that notwithstanding he was deprived , and the church of errol declared vacant , yet when by the presbyteries appointment mr. iohn tullidaff came to preach there , such a tumult was raised : and the doctor was accessary as an instigator , &c. now , i could easily tell you a great many things that might be worth your notice : and that a great many more acts of parliament might have been cited : for we have had enough to that purpose , occasioned by the insults , invasions and murthers committed by the presbyterian party in king charles ii. his time : but that for which i have transcribed this narative is chiefly this , that as on the one hand you may see the piety of our former parliaments , in the protection of clergy-men , so on the other , you may take occasion to consider what a spirit prevailed in the last session of our parliament , which justified and approved the deed of the rabble against so many ministers : and whether we have not now a very impartial government , when the same laws , which must be buried in deep silence , when the case concerns the episcopal clergy , are thus awakened , and made cry so lowdly , when the presbyterian interest stands in need of them , not as if i were to justifie tumults of that nature , no : i abhor them with all my soul : but why should not all alike guilty be equally punished ? thus , sir i have according to your desire , given you a short deduction of the usage the episcopal clergy in scotland have met with , from the civil power since the 24th . of december 1689. i have endeavoured all along to represent matters faithfully and truly , as well as succinctly . two other things there are which are important , and would not a little gratifie your curiosity . viz. the proceedings of the presbyteries and synods since the power was put in their hands by the parliament , against those prelatists who complied , and the purging the universities . as to the first , i thought it convenient at this time not to meddle with it , both because it would swell this letter infinitely beyond its due limits , and i have reason to believe you may confidently expect to se that fully done by another hand . and for the universities , those seminaries of learning , as they stood under the episcopal constitution , were a great eye-sore to the party ; and therefore none could expect that the presbyterians could be satisfied , unless the publick schools were put into their hands . besides the education of youth added much to their strength and national settlement ; so they are resolv'd at any rate , quo jure , quáve injuriâ , to seise very speedily the most conspicuous , and most eminent places . the ministers were so warm in this design , that they importun'd their patrons in the state to remove such masters as they judg'd most opposite to their government , even before the affair was considered by the parliament . but the wiser sort among them withstood this precipitancy ; for since they might frame an act of parliament such as they pleas'd , it was thought most convenient to delay their revenge for a little while ; because the masters of the universities might be more effectually turn'd out under the covert of an act of parliament , than by the methods that they first advis'd . these consultations toss'd to and again at last produc'd that act of parliament , that appoints all masters and professors in universities and publick schools : 1. to sign the westminster confession of faith , as the only standard of theological orthodoxy . 2. to swear allegiance to k. william and q. mary . 3. to sign the declaration and assurance , which i have had occasion to mention above . 4. to submit to the presbyterian government in its last and latest figure , as it was lodged in the hands of about fifty or sixty old presbyterian ministers . it was easie to foresee that there were but few masters whose deprivation this act would not occasion . the trust of visiting universities , colleges and schools was devolv'd on some noblemen and gentlemen ( whose names are inserted in the act of parliament ) that were most addicted to the interests of presbytery . a full quorum of them met on the twenty third day of iuly 1690. and subdivided themselves into four lesser committees : one for st. andrews , one for edinburgh , one for glasgow , and one for aberdeen . the committee appointed to visit the university of st. andrews was managed by the earl of crawford , and they could not commit it to one more bigotted to the interests of their party . so that their design was accomplish'd in that place , in a very few meetings , when the earl made report to the general visitation at edinburgh , they were deprived the 25th day of september , ad unum omnes ; nor did they expect to be otherways treated ; but this merciless sentence rais'd the odium of many against the party : for both the heads of houses and the subordinate professors in that university are learned and deserving men , dr. alexander skeen rector , and provost of the old college by his singular dexterity , industry and constant application , chang'd the rubbish and ruins of that house into beautiful and convenient habitations both for masters and students . and dr. iames weems principal of s. leonard's college minded nothing in the world more than the welfare of that house . and there is little doubt to be made but that the learned and reverend dr. lorimer , principal of the new college , if he had lived had been treated as his brethren were , since his principles were as different from presbytery , as theirs are from the catholick church . the next place to be visited was the college of edinburgh , and because that house was in the eye of the nation , they peremptorily determin'd to have the government of it in their own hands . and it must be confess'd , that the first professors in that house , did frequently and freely despise the faction : and therefore could not but expect to be censur'd accordingly . the presbyterians were very much afraid that dr. monro and dr. strachan would comply with the late test , as it stood in their act of parliament . this put their invention upon the rack , and therefore a strict enquiry is made into their lives , actions , private behaviour , words and conversation ; that if they had comply'd with the act of parliament , they might be turn'd out on other heads ; but this inquisition and toil was very needless . for after four years sufferings , they 'd venture upon the greatest calamities , rather than comply with a test of such consequences as that is . however it was , this is certain , that the professors of the college of edinburgh were prosecuted with the greatest solemnity , bitterness and indignation that was possible . the first masters knew very well , that they could not hold their places under the present scheme of things , yet they made particular answers to all the articles libell'd against them : for otherwise the presbyterians would have propagated amongst the people , that they were not turn'd out , because of their refusing the publick test , but rather for immoralities and scandalous faults . there is already published a particular account of the methods that they took in turning out the masters of the college of edinburgh , yet i must beg the author of that narrative pardon , if i add some things to what he has written . and i do it the rather , because they are material , and because i have undeniable authority for them . in the general it is very observable , that the libels against the masters of the college of edinburgh were own'd and subscrib'd by no particular accuser , and yet the committee proceeded upon such libels , as if they had been brought before them in the most orderly and legal manner . by a publick proclamation they had invited , in a manner , all the nation , and every particular man in it , to bring libels against the masters , but all this to no purpose : and therefore sir iohn hall then provost of edinburgh ( who was contented with the humble glory of being a drudge in this affair ) cajoll'd mr. andrew massie , one of the regents of the college , to draw up libels against all his brethren . mr. massie had in all the periods of his life some affected singularities , that made him apt to quarrel with his collegues ; and always had so much religion as to worship the rising sun ; and therefore he ( foreseeing that dr. monro must needs be turn ' out ) undertook this generous and honourable employment of being the accuser of his brethren . these libels form'd and contriv'd by mr. massie , were afterwards in several private conferences conserted with sir iohn hall , and mr. henry ferguson , and then at length read in the town council , the clerks being remov'd , to the end that sir iohn might be furnished with all necessary preparations when the committee for visiting the college of edinburgh sat . by such kind offices mr. massie recommended himself at once to sir iohn hall and mr. gilbert rule , who , a twelve-month before the visitation , was design'd to succeed dr. monro as principal of the college . let none of the inhabitants at edinburgh think that this is a piece of forgery vented by ill-nature and envy ; for i appeal to all who were members of the town-council of edinburgh at that time , and i have my intelligence from one of their number , who still makes a considerable figure in the city . and if any sober man be unsatisfied concerning the several steps of this knavery and disingenuity , he may ask his neighbours who were then members of the town-council . but the most extravagant piece of partiality was , that mr. gilbert rule himself , who had all possible assurances and promises of succeeding ▪ dr. muro , was one of the judges in that committee ; and 't was told by a gentleman , who observed very punctually what passed in the general visitation , that when dr. monro was remov'd five or six times , the other presbyterian ministers members of the visitation all of them by turns rose up and spoke against him , some once , some twice , but mr. rùle spoke thrice . upon which some said , that that was to kill and take possession . the masters were never acquainted with the libels until they appear'd before the committee , and even then they were not read all at once , but one article after another , for since most of the articles libell'd against them related to matter of fact ; to oblige the masters to answer ex tempore , was the most proper way to entangle them ; and so the members of the committee took all possible advantages to make them say things inconsistent , or to make their defences in great hast and confusion . in the next place i must acquaint the reader , with what i have from good hands , viz. that the only reason why dr. monro and dr. strachan return'd particular answers to the unsubscribed libels against themselves , was , that the presbyterians might not propagate among the people , and leave it upon record , that they were turn'd out for immoralities of life , not that they thought it possible in that juncture , to stand their ground against presbyterian malice . at this visitation there were five of the masters turned out . the two professors of divinity , mr. iohn drummond professor of philology , mr. alexander douglas professor of the oriental languages , and mr. thomas burnet professor of philosophy , dr. gregory professor of the mathematicks was conniv'd at for a while , though he had refus'd the test as it stood in the act of parliament . the college of glasgow was visited by a committee whereof my lord carmichael was president : and he ( you may be sure ) would take a method different from sir iohn hall ; for though my lord favours the presbyterian party , yet he is a man of great modesty and calmness of temper , and he managed that trust with great moderation and equality : dr. fall principal of the college of glasgow refused the complex test as it stood in the late act of parliament , and so must needs be turned out , and upon the same account , his collegue dr. weems professor of divinity , and two of the subordinate masters , mr. blair , and mr. gordon . by doctors fall's prudent and frugal management of the publick revenues he advanced the college of glasgow to a very flourishing condition . as for the university of aberdeen , the presbyterians were not so zealous to turn them out , because they were remote from the center of the nation ; and partly because they had but few of their own number , who were willing at that time to undergoe the toil and pedantry of speaking latin. it was more convenient for their interest , and more agreeable to their nature to preach little stories to the people , and since most of the churches of the southern shires of scotland were vacant , they might plant themselves in the most plentiful livings , and so leave the aberdonians for a while in possession of the northern university ; whether for the reasons lately mentioned , or because , perhaps the present professors of aberdeen are of a more yielding temper than their inflexible predecessors dr. baron ; and dr. forbes , &c. they continue still in their places . they are all of them very deserving men , and it is good for that part of the nation , that they have been more gently treated , than their neighbours . i have given you this short touch of the visiting our universities and colleges , but no doubt you have the acquaintance of some in all of them , to whom you may write as freely as to me , and from whom you may expect greater satisfaction than i am able to give you . and now i hope you will allow me to draw to a conclusion for this time : and pardon all the failings in language and method . i am &c. a proclamation against the owning of the late king iames , and appointing publick prayers for vvilliam and mary , king and queen of scotland . april 13. 1689. the estates of the kingdom of scotland having proclamed and declared william and mary , king and queen of england , france and ireland , to be king and queen of scotland , they have thought fit by publick proclamation , to certifie the leidges , that none presume to own or acknowledge the late king james the seventh for their king , nor obey , nor accept , or assist any commissions or orders that may be emitted by him , or any way to correspond with him ; and that none presume upon their highest peril , by word , writing , in sermons or any other manner of way to impugn or disown the royal authority of william and mary king and queen of scotland , but that all the leidges tender their dutiful obedience to their majesties ; and that none presume to misconstrue the proceeding of the estates , or to create iealousies , or misapprehensions of the actings of the government ; but that all the ministers of the gospel within the kingdom publickly pray for king william and queen mary as king and queen of this realm : and the estates do require the ministers within the city of edenburgh , under the pain of being deprived and losing their benefices , to read this proclamation publickly from their pulpits , upon sunday next , being the 14th . instant , at the end of their forenoons sermons ; and all the ministers on this side of the river of tay to read the same upon sunday thereafter , the 21st . instant ; and those benorth tay , upon the 28th . instant ; under the pain foresaid . discharging hereby the proclamation of the council , dated the 16th . of september 1686. to be read hereafter in churches . and the estates do prohibit and discharge any injury to be offered by any person whatsomever to any ministers of the gospel , either in churches or meeting-houses , who are presently in the possession and exercise of their ministry therein , they behaving themselves as becomes under the present government ; and ordains this proclamation to be publisht at the mercat-cross of edenburgh , with all ordinary solemnity that none may pretend ignorance , and that the same may be printed . the speech of william earl of crawfurd , president to the parliament of scotland , the 22d . of april 1690. my lords and gentlemen , i may say with nehemiah , to the nobles , rulers , and rest of this honourable assembly ; the work before us is great , let us not be separated upon the wall one far from another , and our god will do for us . our religion , church-government , publick safety , laws , and liberties , are all at stake ; and the enemy is watching for our halting in our endeavours , for every one of them : yet if god countenance us , so that duty be made plain , and we be helped to follow it , we are under the protection of a prince , who is a great iudge where our true interest lies , and i am convinced , will frankly deal to us , whatever upon a just claim , we shall apply for . his majesties printed instructions for last session , are plain evidences of his tender regard of his people , and contain greater condescensions , than we have seen , or read of in the reigns of any of our kings , for many ages : but i trust this new dyet will compleat that tranquillity , which we so impatiently wish and wait for : and that we shall be engaged to say of his majesty , as the queen of sheba did of solomon ; blessed be the lord thy god , which delighted in thee , to set thee on the throne , because the lord loved us , therefore made he thee king to do judgment and justice . it were a suitable return to his majesty , for the great things he hath done for us , to repose an intire trust in him , and evidence a true zeal for his service ; which in this critical time , as it would be most satisfying , and engaging to so generous a prince ; so it would be of notable advantage to his , and our affairs . were it not a seasonable part to guard against prejudices towards one another , and when all is at stake , to part with trivial differences , ( our enemies only reaping advantage by them ) and to employ our selves to the outmost , for the settlement of our church , the defence of the kingdom , and the enacting of other good laws , now under our consideration : that we may comfortably and fully partake of the wonderful deliverance god hath wrought for us . if in our last session we had begun at the house of god , other things might have framed better in our hands ; hath not the church suffered sadly by our differences ? and have not our delays made the work more difficult ? the opposition at home , and clamour abroad , had certainly been less , and many honest suffering ministers ere now had been relieved of their pinches , if a greater dispatch had been made . but what if any remaining obstacle should prove a real disappointment in the establishing of our church , would not the blame be lodged at our own door ? some are at the same language that was spoken in haggai ' s days ; the time is not come that the lord's house should be built : to such i shall give the prophets answer , is it time for you to dwell in your cieled houses , and this house lie wast ? we have occasion with ezra , to bless the lord god of our fathers , that the stop is not at the king's door , but that he hath put such a thing as this in his heart , to beautifie his house with that model , which shall be suited to the inclinations of the people , which i trust will be squared to the pattern that was shewed in the mount , and not meerly regulated by humane policy . we are threatned by a foreign enemy , our country is infested at home , and the kingdom sadly exposed to many great inconveniencies ; what should become of us , if his majesty withdrew his special protection , and we were left to the rage of our enemies ? though our church were settled to the greatest advantage , and our other grievances likewise redressed , the nation cannot be safe , without a supply , suitable to the present exigency . it is matter of heavy regrate , that so many are groaning under the load of forfeitures and fines , and his majesty willing to relieve them , and as yet no issue put to those desirable purposes . may the wisdom and goodness of god , so over-rule all our counsels , that we be not imposed upon by false notions of things : let neither partiality on the one side , nor passion on the other , either keep up former differences , or give a rise to new ones , lest it he said of us , as was spoken by ezra upon the like occasion , and after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds , and for our great trespass , seeing that thou our god hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve , and hast given us such deliverance as this , should we again break thy commandments ? what my lord commissioner spoke the other day , 〈◊〉 delivered to such advantage , that any enlargment i could make on it , would be like a rash touch of a pencil , by an unskilled hand , upon a compleat picture ; so i forbear every thing of that kind . it is beyond debate , that in this honourable assembly , the hearts of a great many are very warm to his majesty , and that his ▪ though at a distance from us , is no less filled with thoughts of favour to us : so if the result of our councils be not comfortable to our selves , and of national advantage ; i am afraid , the present opportunity of doing well , if neglected , shall prove a heavy charge against us , in the day of our accounts . but as the lord's hand hath been eminently seen in every step of our late escape from popery , and begun reformation ; so i trust the head-stone shall be put on with shouting , and we shall in the issue be forced to acknowledge , this is the lord 's doing , and it is marvellous in our eyes . finis . errata . pag. 1. lin . 18. read ●ise to . p. 2. l. 10. dele the. ibid. r. determination . p. 4. l. 2. r. the greate . p. 7. l. 2. r. power . ibid. l. 29. d. for. p. 18. l. 30. r. we are hopeful . p. 11. l. 25. r. the episcopal persuasion . ibid. l. 27. r. ioin ▪ ibid. l. 28. r. preserving . p. 18. l. r. cassed . p. 21. l. ult . r. examples . p. 37. l. 28. d. [ . ] before although . ibid. l. 39. put [ . ] after matter . p. 41. l. 31. r. representatives . p. 45. l. 9. r. the rest . p. 48. l. 8. r. to them . p. 55. l. 10. r. debitors . and so l. 19. p. 63. l. 25. after matter . r. is this doing just and righteous things to all men ? p. 64. l. 17. r. earls of . p. 65. l. 3. d. him. ibid. l. 19. r. is. ibid. l. 30. r. embellish . p. 70. l. 5. d. in. p. 74. l. 13. r. cases of . p. 77. l. 1. r. in to . p. 86. l. 27. going about divine . p. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 r. just now . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a59415-e2050 vid. paper at the end of this book . * a company of noblemen and gentlemen members of the convention and parliament , who had been very zealous at first for king william , and had not a little promoted the revolution in scotland , turned afterward malecontent ; because ( as themselves said ) the claim of right was not observed ; or ( as their adversaries alledge ) because they were disappointed of the preferments and rewards , they thought due to their early services . to these joyned some other members , who had been thought jacobites , and they altogether were called the club. they struggled for some time against the designs of the commissioner , &c. but at length were defeated . vid. presbyt . inquisition as it was lately practis'd against the professors of the college of edinburgh . a relation of the death of david rizzi chief favorite to mary stuart queen of scotland; who was killed in the apartment of the said queen on the 9th of march 1565. written by the lord ruthen [sic], one of the principal persons concerned in that action. published from an original manuscript. together with an account of david rizzi, faithfully translated from geo. buchanan's history of scotland. ruthven, patrick ruthven, lord, d. 1566. 1699 approx. 82 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 26 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-08 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a57983 wing r2397b estc r218070 99829696 99829696 34139 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a57983) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 34139) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2001:14) a relation of the death of david rizzi chief favorite to mary stuart queen of scotland; who was killed in the apartment of the said queen on the 9th of march 1565. written by the lord ruthen [sic], one of the principal persons concerned in that action. published from an original manuscript. together with an account of david rizzi, faithfully translated from geo. buchanan's history of scotland. ruthven, patrick ruthven, lord, d. 1566. buchanan, george, 1506-1582. rerum scoticarum historia. english. selections. aut 51, [1] p. printed for a. baldwin in warwick-lane, london : 1699. reproduction of the original in the harvard university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng riccio, david, 1533?-1566 -early works to 1800. scotland -history -mary stuart, 1542-1567 -early works to 1800. 2004-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-03 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-05 rachel losh sampled and proofread 2004-05 rachel losh text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-07 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a relation of the death of david rizzi , chief favorite to mary stuart queen of scotland ; who was killed in the apartment of the said queen on the 9th of march 1565. written by the lord rvthen , one of the principal persons concerned in that action . published from an original manuscript . together with an account of david rizzi , faithfully translated from geo. buchanan's history of scotland . london , printed for a. baldwin in warwick-lane . 1699. some remarkable passages concerning david rizzi , translated from the history of scotland , written by george buchanan . edit . edinburg . folio 207. among the servants of the court was one david rizzi born at turin : his father was an honest man , but so very poor , that all he could do was to maintain himself and his family , by teaching the elements of musick . having nothing to leave to his children , he taught them , both sons and daughters , to sing . of these , david being young and brisk , and trusting to his voice that was not disagreable , and to his skill in musick which he had learned from his father , he resolved to try his fortune ; and in order to this went to nice , where the duke of savoy , who had lately been restored to his dominions , kept his court. but matters there not answering his expectation , he came to be in such extream want , that he knew not well what to do with himself , when be hapned to fall in with signior moretti , who was then ( as the duke's envoy ) preparing for his iourney to scotland , he waited on him thither . but being there , moretti having but a small allowance for himself , and no great need of his service , dismissed him ; however david resolved to make some stay , and try his fortune again : he was chiefly encouraged to this , being told that the queen delighted in hearing of songs , and was not altogether unskilful in musick . to make his way to her , he made an interest with the musicians ( who were for the most part french ) that he might appear amongst them . thus being heard to sing once or twice , she liked him so well , that he was immediately added to their number . having got into this post , and observed the queen's humour and way , he , partly by flattering her , partly by carrying stories to her of the other servants , came in a little time to be as much in her favour as he was hated by the rest of the family . however , all this good fortune could not satisfy him ; but having either lessened with the queen such as seemed to be on the same foot of favour with himself , or got them turned out of the family by his false suggestions , he began insensibly to aspire to meddle in greater matters ; till at last he was employed to write her letters , and then he had a fair pretext to be with the queen alone , which afforded him opportunities of doing business with her under-hand . all this could not but make a great noise , to see a man who was little better than a beggar , raised on the sudden to great riches ; a man whose fortune did far exceed his merit , and yet his arrogance in despising his equals , and vying with his superiors , surpassed even his fortune . it was the meanness of a great many of the nobility that served chiefly to encourage this fellow in his extravagant vanity : they slavishly made their court to him , cringing to him upon all occasions , admiring and applauding whatever he said ; waiting at his apartment , and presenting themselves in his way when he went in or out ; only the earl of murray , one that could never dissemble , instead of making his court to him , shewed even by his countenance , for the most part , the contempt he had of him . which behaviour of the earl's offended the queen her self no less than it did david . he on the other hand , to have a support against the hatred of the chief of the nobility , courted with all the arts of flattery and insinuation , henry lord darley , who was to marry the queen ; and got into that degree of familiarity with him , that darley made him his companion and bedfellow , and entirely trusted him . he perswaded the unwary young man , who was forward to believe whatever suted his inclinations , that it was by his means chiefly that the queen had been induced to cast her eyes upon him . he was also daily sowing discord betwixt darley and the earl of murray ; for he flattered himself , that if he could once get rid of that earl , he might for the rest of his life take his full career without opposition . by this time the queen's intended marriage with darley , and his private meetings with her ; as also her strange familiarity with david , were much talked of and censured every where . vpon which the earl of murray finding there was nothing to be done , and that the good advice he gave served only to irritate his sister against him , resolved to leave the court , lest he should seem to have any hand in what was doing . fol. 207. these marks of the peoples affection * so incensed the queen against her brother , as to quicken her to put in execution the design she had premeditated against his life . the manner was agreed to be thus : that the queen who was then at perth with little company , should send for the earl of murray thither , where the lord darley should enter into discourse with him ; and as it was not doubted the earl would speak plainly and freely , the dispute by that means growing warm , david rizzi should give him the first wound , and then the rest-should dispatch him upon the place . of this conspiracy the earl of murray was informed by his friends who were in the court ; yet being resolved to go , he set forward on his iourney , but receiving a second admonition from * patrick lord ruthen , he turned out of the way , and went to visit his mother at her house , which stands situated on the lake of leven . fol. 208. there was also another reason which prevailed not a little with the queen to use expedition in this matter ( of her marriage ) she knew her † vncles were averse to the match , and feared , if any longer delay should intervene , that some obstruction might be laid in the way by them , which might disturb the whole business . for when that secret resolution was taken , of making a holy war throughout all christendom for extirpating the pure doctrine of the gospel , the duke of guise who was designed for commander in chief of all those forces , having conceived the most unwarrantable and immoderate hopes , resolved by the means of his niece , to embroil britain in domestick troubles , that they might not be able to send the least assistance to their friends abroad . but david , who was in great credit with the queen , insisting that the intended marriage would be advantageous to religion , on account that henry and his father were most strenuous assertors of the papal sect , agreable to both nations , allied to divers noble families , and supported by many friends , the thing in dispute was at last forced that way . notwithstanding all which , two things seemed to cross david's designs , if the marriage should succeed with the consent of the queen of england , and of the nobility of scotland : the first , that he should lose the honour of being accounted the author ; the second , that provision would be made for the security of religion : whereas if the queen would join her self with the council of trent , he promised himself honours , benefices , infinite treasures , and uncontrouled authority . for these reasons he left nothing unattempted to precipitate the marriage , and effected it ; the scots being not well pleased , and the english most highly offended . fol. 209. in the mean time david finding the court cleared of the principal persons of the nobility , that he might confirm his intemperate hopes of power , còntinually laboured by rash advice to excite the queen to use the coercive power of the sword against the heads of the several parties , assuring her that if a few were removed , the rest would not dare to attempt any thing : but conjecturing that the queen's guards , being scotsmen , would not easily consent to the murder of the nobility , he made it his principal business to turn them out from that post , and to introduce foreigners ( which has almost ever been the rise of all tyranies ) into that body . to that end a motion was first made to send for germans , that nation being esteemed to be of great fidelity to their masters : but david having attentively consider'd the matter , concluded it to be more commodious for the carrying on of his designs , that italians should be admitted to that imployment ; being perswaded that men of the same nation with himself would not only be more intirely under his power , but that having no tincture of any religion they would be also the most proper instruments of embroiling affairs ; and making no distinction between what is just and what unjust , might easily be driven to perpetrate any kind of villany : besides which , men indigent and wicked , born and educated under tyrants , accustomed to unjust war , and who being far from home esteemed nothing in britain dear to them , seemed most fit to support the innovations intended . to this end he began by degrees to send for vagabond souldiers from flanders and other countries upon the continent , who came single , and at different times , that what was doing might not appear : but to offend one of these was more dangerous than to offend the queen . in the mean time , as the power and authority of david with the queen increased daily , so the king became daily more contemtible to her ; and to treat him yet with greater indignity , david was substituted to sign divers publick acts in the place of the king. fol. 209. the queen not contenting her self to have raised david from the meanest obscurity , and exposed him to the view of the people in this high degree of elevation , contrived another way of honouring him in a domestick and more familiar manner . she had for some months admitted more persons than had been usual at her table , that david might have a place there with less envy , on account of the number of those who received that honour ; not doubting by this shew of popularity , the numerous company , and daily use , the strangeness of the spectacle would by degrees not only wear off , but the stomach of the stoutest be insensibly accustomed to suffer any thing . at last david with only one or two more was permitted to eat with her ; yet that the straitness of the place might in some measure diminish the envy of the action , they sometimes eat in a little closet , and sometimes in david's chamber . but instead of lessening the publick envy by these means , they increased their own infamy , confirmed former suspicions , and afforded matter for sinister discourses . another thing fell in also to inflame the minds of men already disposed to believe the worst , that david for surpassed the king in rich furniture , cloths , number and goodness of horses ; which indignity seemed so much the greater , by how much his face contributed more to destroy the effect of every ornament about him , than any of those advantages to grace his person . therefore the queen , since she could not correct . the faults of nature , endeavours by heaping honours upon him to advance him into the highest order of men , that the meanness of his birth and his personal deformity might lie concealed under the cover of a fortuitous nobility ; but most especially that by this means having a right of voting in the publick assemblies , he might be enabled to manage those councils as the queen should direct . and because it was thought necessary to advance gradually , and that he might not seem to be an indigent and mercenary senator , their first attempt was made upon a lordship , called by the seots malvil , and situated near edinburgh . the possessor of the lordship , with his father-in-law , and such friends as were thought to have the most influence upon him , were sent for to the queen , who endeavoured to prevail with the lord to deliver up his possession quietly , and to induce his father-in-law , with the rest of his friends , to perswade him so to do . but this way not taking effect as was desired , the queen interpreted their refusal as an affront to her ; and which was more pernicious , david was highly offended . the people ( for these things were not done in the dark ) began to deplore the present evils , and to expect worse every day ; if men of the most antient families and honour might be expelled from the seats of their ancestors at the will of an indigent rascal . the old men called to mind , and frequently mentioned the time when cockeran , after the barbarous murder of the king's brother , was advanced from a porter to the earldom of marr , and filled the whole kingdom with fire and sword ; which desolation terminated in the death of the king , and almost total s●●bversion of the kingdom : to these things which were publick , men in private discourses added many more , as is usual in undecent and scandalous cases . but the king resolving to credit nothing , save what he should discover by himself , being informed that david was gone into the queen's chamber , he went to the door , of which he always carried a key ; and contrary to custom , finding it to be bolted within , he knocked ; but no one answering , he departed in a great rage ; and being agitated by most violent passions , passed the greater part of the night without sleep . fol. 210. about that time letters were brought from the queen of england , in which many things concerning the present state of affairs in scotland were kindly and prudently treated , with a gentle and affectionate admonition to her kinswoman to lay aside her passion , and to entertain more moderate counsels . the queen understanding that the lords knew such letters were arrived , and that no one doubted the contents , called divers of them to her ( hoping the favour would be interpreted to proceed from inclination ) and began to read them in their presence . but as she was in the course of her reading , david openly admonished her that she had read enough , and commanded her to stop : which action was accounted by all to be rather insolent than new ; for they were not ignorant how arrogantly he used to carry himself to her , frequently reproving her with more sharpness than her husband durst adventure to do . few days after this the cause of the exiles was warmly debated in parliament , where some to gratify the queen , moving they might be punished as traytors , and others affirming they had done nothing which deserved so great severity ; david in the mean time surrounded the members one by one , and endeavoured to penetrate the intention of each towards those that were banished , if he should be chosen president by the rest of the assembly ; not doubting openly to discover that the queen would have them condemn'd ; and that whoever should oppose her , would not only take pains to no purpose , but incur her high displeasure . a relation of the death of david rizzi , chief favorite to mary queen of scots , &c. written by the lord ruthen . in the first , the lord ruthen of scotland , a man of forty and six years , was visited by the hand of god with great trouble and sickness , having two infirmities , the one called the inflammation of the liver , and the other the consumption of the reins and kidneys , wherethrough he kept his bed continually by the space of three months , and was under the cure of physicians , as of the queen's french doctor , dr. preston , and thomas thompson apothecary ; and was so feebled and weakned through the sickness and medicines , that scarcely he might walk twice the length of his chamber unsitting down . in this mean time the king , husband to the queen's majesty of scotland , conceived hatred against an italian called david riccio ; and about the 10th day of february the said king sent his dear friend and kinsman george douglas son to archibald , sometime earl of angus , and declared to the said lord ruthen how that the said david riccio had abused him in many sorts , and lately had staied the queen's majesty from giving him the crown matrimonial of scotland , which her majesty had promised to him divers times before : besides many other wrongs that the said david had done to him , which he could not bear with longer , and behoved to be revenged thereof . and because the said lord ruthen was one of the nobility that he confided and trusted most unto , in respect that his children and he were sisters children ; therefore he desired his counsel and advice what way was best to be revenged on the said david . the said lord ruthen hearing the message aforesaid , gave answer to george douglass , that he could give no counsel in that matter , in respect he knew the king's youth and facility ; for he had sundry of the nobility that had given him counsel for his own honour and weal , and immediately he revealed the same again to the queen's majesty , who reproved them with great anger and contumelious words : so the said lord ruthen would have no medling with his proceedings until the time he could keep his own counsel . the said george departed with the said lord's answer to the king about the 12th of february : the said king hearing the answer , was very miscontented , and said , it is a sore case that i can get none of the nobility that will assist me against yonder false villain davie . the said george answered , the said fault was in your self , that cannot keep your own counsel . then the king took a book and swore thereon , that what counsel soever the lord ruthen should give him , he would not reveal , neither to the queen's majesty , nor to any others ; and immediately directed the said george to the said lord ruthen again , declaring what oath the king had made . notwithstanding the said lord ruthen was eight days thereafter e're he would give any counsel therein ; howbeit the said king sent the said george to him every day three or four times . after eight days were past , the which was toward the 20th day of february , the said lord ruthen perceiving that the king 's whole intent was but only the slaughter of davie , the said lord resolved in his mind , and considered that he had a good time to labour for certain of the nobility his brethren that were banished in the realm of england and in argile ; and specially the earls of argile , murray , glencarn and rothes ; the lord boyd and ocheltrie , and lairds of pittarro and grange , with many other gentlemen and barons . wherefore so soon as the said george was directed again from the king to him , the said lord ruthen answered , that he could not meddle with the king's affairs , without that he would bring home the noblemen before rehearsed , who were banished only for the word of god. and after long reasoning , and divers days travelling , the king was contented that they should come home into the realm of scotland ; so that the said lord ruthen would make him sure that they would be his , and set forward all his affairs . the said lord gave answer to the king , and bad him make his own security , and that he should cause it to be subscribed by the aforesaid earls , lords , and barons . immediately thereafter the king directed the said george douglass to the said lord ruthen with certain articles , which he desired the said lord to put in form of writing , to be subscribed by the lords banished ; the which the said lord caused to be put in form . and having consideration that the said king desir'd them to be bound to him , the said lord caused to be drawn certain articles in the said lords names for the king's part towards them ; which the king himself reformed with his own hand in the margent , like as it is to be produced . the articles being penned for both parties , and the king reading and considering the same , he was contented therewith , and subscribed his part , and delivered it to the said lord ruthen , who sent the other articles to the earl of murray , and the remanent being within england ; and to the earl of argile and the remanent being with him in the west , who subscribed the same , and sent them to the said lord ruthen to be kept till their meeting with the king , and every one to have their own part : the tenour whereof followeth . certain articles to be fulfilled by james earl of murray , archibald earl of argile , alexander earl of glencarne , andrew earl of rothes , robert lord boyd , andrew lord ocheltrie , and their complices , to the noble and mighty prince henry king of scotland , husband to our sovereign lady : which articles the said persons offer with most humility , lowliness and service to the said noble prince , for whom to god they pray , &c. imprimis , the said earls , lords , and their complices , shall become , and by the tenour hereof become true subjects , men and servants , to the noble and mighty prince henry , by the grace of god , king of scotland , and husband to our sovereign lady : that they and all others that will do for them , shall take a leyal and true part with the said noble prince in all his actions , causes and quarrels , against whomsoever , to the uttermost of their powers ; and shall be friends to his friends , and enemies to his enemies , and neither spare their lives , land , goods nor possessions . 2. item , the said earls , lords , and their complices , shall at the first parliament , and other parliaments that shall happen to be after their returning within this realm , by themselves and others that have voice in parliament , consent , and by these presents do consent now as then , and then as now , to grant and give the crown matrimonial to the said noble prince for all the days of his life . and if any person or persons withstand or gainsay the same , the said earls , lords , and their complices , shall take such part as the said noble prince taketh , in whatsoever sort , for the obtaining of the said crown , against all , and whatsoever that let or deny , as shall best please the said noble prince . 3. item , the said earls , lords , and their complices , shall fortify and maintain the said noble prince in his just title to the crown of scotland , failing of succession of our sovereign lady , and shall justify and set forward the same at their utmost powers . and if any manner of person will usurp or gainsay the just title , then the said earls , lords , and their complices , shall maintain , defend , and set forwards the same , as best shall please the said noble prince , without fear of life or death ; and shall seek and pursue them the usurpers , as shall please the said noble prince to command , to extirp them out of the realm of scotland , or take or slay them . 4. item , as to the religion which was established by the queen's majesty our sovereign , shortly after her arrival in this realm , whereupon acts and proclamation was made , and now again granted by the said noble prince to the said earls , lords , and their complices ; they , and every of them , shall maintain and fortify the same at their uttermost powers , by the help , supply , and maintenance of the said noble prince . and if any person or persons will gainsay the same , or any part thereof , or begin to make tumult or uproar for the same , the said earls , lords , and their complices , to take a full , true , and plain part with the said noble prince , against the said contemners and usurpers , at their uttermost . 5. item , as they are become true subjects , men and servants , to the said noble prince , so shall they be leyal and true to his majesty , as becometh true subjects to their natural prince ; and as true and faithful servants serve their good master with their bodies , lands , goods and possessions ; and shall neither spare life nor death in setting forward all things that may be to the advancement and honour of the said noble prince . 6. item , the said earls , lords , and their complices , shall labour at the queen of england's hands for the relief of the said noble prince his mother and brother , by themselves and such others as they may procure , to the uttermost of their power , that they may be reliev'd out of ward , or remain in england freely , or repair into scotland , as they shall think most expedient , without stop or impediment to her self , her son , their servants and moveables . 7. item , the said earls , lords , and their complices , shall , by themselves and others that will do for them , labour and procure , at the queen of england's hands , that the said noble prince may have her kindness , good-will and assistance in all his majesty's honourable and just causes , against whatsoever foreign prince . certain articles to be fulfilled by the noble and mighty prince henry , king of scotland , husband to our sovereign lady , of his majesty's mere clemency and good will , to james earl of murray , archibald earl of argile , alexander earl of glencarne , andrew earl of rothes , robert lord boyd , andrew lord stuart of ocheltrie , remaining in england , &c. item , first , the said noble prince shall do his good will to obtain them one remission , if they require the same , for all faults and crimes by-past , of whatsoever quality or condition they be . and if that cannot be obtained at the first time , shall persevere in suing of the same until it be obtained ; and at the last shall give them a free remission of all crimes so soon as we are placed , by their help and supply , to the crown matrimonial : and in the mean time shall stop and make impediments , so much as lieth in us , that they be not called nor accused for whatsoever crime : and presently remits and forgives the aforesaid earls , lords , and their complices , all crimes committed against us , of whatsoever quality or condition they be ; and do bury and put the same in oblivion , as they had never been : and shall receive them at their returning , thankfully , and with heartiness , as others our true and faithful subjects and servants . 2. item , we shall not suffer , by our good wills , the foresaid lords and their complices , to be called or accused in parliament , nor suffer any forfeitures to be laid against them , but shall stop the same at our uttermost power : and if any person or persons pretend otherwise , we shall neither consent to the holding the parliament , nor yet shall grant to their forfeiture willingly , but shall stop the same to our uttermost power , as said is . 3. item , that the said earls , lords , and their complices , returning within the realm of scotland , we shall suffer or permit them to use and enjoy all their lands , tackes , steedings and benefices that they or any of them had before their passage into england . and if any manner of persons do make them impediments in the peaceable enjoying of the said lands , steedings , tackes , benefices , and possessions , it being made known to us , we shall fortify and maintain them to the uttermost of our powers , to the obtaining of the same . 4. item , as to the said earls , lords , and their complices religion , we are contented and consent that they use the same , conform to the queen's majesty act and proclamation made thereupon , shortly after her highness's return out of france . and if any person or persons pretend to make them impediment thereunto , or to trouble them for using the same religion , we shall take part with the aforesaid earls , lords , and their complices , at our uttermost power . and after their returning , upon their good bearing and service to be done to the said noble prince , shall by their advice consent to the stablishing the religion now professed , and shall concur with them , if any persons do withstand them . item , we shall fortify and maintain the said earls , lords , and their complices , as a natural prince should do to his true and obedient subjects ; and as one good master should fortify and maintain his true and natural servants against whatsoever , in all their just causes , actions , and quarrels . all this while the king kept secret from the queen's majesty the whole proceedings ; and as her majesty sought by subtil means to learn of him what was in his mind , so crafted he with her to seek out her mind : and in the same time he daily sent to the lord ruthen , saying that he could not abide davie any longer ; and if his slaughter was not hastned , he would slay him himself , yea , tho it were in the queen's majesty 's own chamber . the said lord ruthen counselled him to the contrary , and thought it not decent that he should put hand on such a mean person : yet always the king could not be content , without the said lord ruthen affixed a day when the said davie should be slain . the said lord considering with himself that it was not convenient nor honourable to slay the said davie , notwithstanding the offences he had made ; but rather to take him , and give him judgment by the nobility , the king's majesty answered , it was cumbersome to tarry in such a cause ; but always he could be contented that he were taken and hanged , or dispatched otherwise . in the mean time the king and queen's majesties rode to seaton ; the king so burning in his desire towards the slaughter of david , he sent divers privy writings written in his own hand , and also messages by tongue to george douglas , to be shewed to the lord ruthen , to have all things in readiness against his repairing to edinburgh towards the slaughter of david , or otherwise he would put the same in execution with his own hands . in the mean time the said lord ruthen was practising with the earl of morton , who was the king's near kinsman , and with the lord lindsey , because his wife was a douglas , and of consanguinity to the king ; and with a great number of barons , gentlemen , and freeholders , to assist the king in such affairs as he had to do ; and then they should have their religion freely established conform to christ's book , and to the articles that the king had subscribed to the lords . and after the king's return out of seaton , he directed george douglas to the said earl of morton and lord ruthen , to see what day should be appointed , with place and time , for the performance of the enterprise against david . the said earl and lord sent answer to the king , and declared they should have a sufficient number ready against friday or saturday the 8th or 9th of march , to do what he pleased ; and enquired of the king what time he would have it the ratherest performed ; for according to the said earl's and lord's opinion , they thought it best to take time when david should be in his own chamber in the morning , or in passing through the close : which the king refused simpliciter , and said he could not be well taken in his own chamber , nor no time in the morning , by reason that at night he tarried late with the queen's majesty ; he lay in the over cabinet , and otherwhiles in signior francisco's chamber , and sometimes in his own , to which he had sundry backdoors and windows that he might escape at ; and if so it were , all were lost . therefore he would have him taken at the time of the supping , sitting with her majesty at the table , that he might be taken in her own presence ; because she had not entertained him her husband according to her accustomed manner , nor as she ought of duty . to the which the said earl and lords were very loth to grant , and gave many reasons to the contrary , that it was better to have been done out of her presence , not in the same . notwithstanding no reason might avail , but the king would have him taken in her majesty's presence , and devised the manner himself , as after followeth : that upon the saturday at supper-time the said earl of morton , lord ruthen , and lord lindsey , should have ready so many as would be assistants and partakers with the king , in their houses , against he should send them word : and so soon as he sent them word , that the earl of morton should come in , and come up to the queen 's utter chamber , and a company with him ; and the said lord ruthen to come through the king 's secret chamber ; and that the king would pass up before by a privy passage to the queen's chamber , and open the door , wherethrough the said lord ruthen and his company might enter : and that the king himself should be speaking with the queen's majesty sitting at supper ; the remanent barons and gentlemen to be in the court of the palace for keeping of the gates , and defending of the close , in case any of the lords or officers would endeavour to gain-stand the king's enterprize . the said earl of morton and lord ruthen having consideration of the king's devise towards the taking of davie in the queen's majesty's chamber , were loth to grant thereto ; yet the king would not otherwise , but have it done as he had devised . the said earl and lords considering he was a young prince , and having a lusty princess to lie in his arms afterwards , who might perswade him to deny all that was done for his cause , and to alledg that others perswaded him to the same , thought it necessary to have security thereupon ; and a band was made in the king's name to the earls , lords , barons , freeholders , merchants , and craftsmen , declaring all that was to be done was his own devise , invention , and fact ; and bound and obliged himself , his heirs and successors , to them , their heirs and successors , to keep them skeithless , and unmolested or troubled for the taking and executing of davie in the queen's presence or otherwise , like as the band more at large specified hereafter word by word . be it kend to all men by these present letters : we henry by the grace of god , king of scotland , and husband to the queen's majesty ; for so much we having consideration of the gentle and good nature , with many other good qualities in her majesty , we have thought pity , and also think it great conscience to us that are her husband , to suffer her to be abused or seduced by certain privy persons , wicked and ungodly , not regarding her majesty's honour , ours , nor the nobility thereof , nor the common-weal of the same , but seeking their own commodity and privy gains , especially a stranger italian called davie : which may be the occasion of her majesty's destruction , ours , the nobility , and commonweal , without hasty remedy be put thereto , which we are willing to do : and to that effect we have devised to take these privy persons , enemies to her majesty , us , the nobility , and commonwealth , to punish them according to their demerits ; and in case of any difficulty , to cut them off immediately , and to take and slay them wherever it happeneth . and because we cannot accomplish the same without the assistance of others , therefore have we drawn certain of our nobility , earls , lords , barons , freeholders , gentlemen , merchants , and craftsmen , to assist us in our enterprise , which cannot be finished without great hazard . and because it may chance that there be sundry great personages present , who may endeavour to gain-stand our enterprise , where-through some of them may be slain , and likewise of ours , where-through a perpetual feud may be contracted betwixt the one and the other ; therefore we bind and oblige us , our heirs , and successors , to the said earls , lords , barons , gentlemen , freeholders , merchants , and craftsmen , their heirs and successors , that we shall accept the same feud upon us , and fortify and maintain them at the uttermost of our power , and shall be friend to their friends , and enemy to their enemies ; and shall neither suffer them nor theirs to be molested nor troubled in their bodies , lands , goods , nor possessions , so far as lieth in us . and if any person would take any of the said earls , lords , barons , gentlemen , freeholders , merchants , or craftsmen , for enterprizing and assisting with us for the atchieving of our purpose , because it may chance to be done in presence of the queen's majesty , or within her palace of holyrood-house , we by the word of a prince shall accept and take the same on us now as then , and then as now ; and shall warrant and keep harmless the foresaid earls , lords , barons , freeholders , gentlemen , merchants and craftsmen , at our utter power . in witness whereof we have subscribed this with our own hand at edinburg , the 1st of march 1565. upon saturday the 9th day of march , as is conform to the king's ordenance and device , the said earl morton , lords ruthen and lindsey , having their men and friends in readiness , abiding for the king's advertisement ; the king having supped , and the sooner for that cause , and the queen's majesty being in her cabinet within her inner chamber at the supper , the king sent to the said earl and lords , and their complices ; and desired them to make haste and come into the palace , for he should have the door of the privy passage open , and should be speaking with the queen before their coming , conform to his device rehearsed before . then the said earl of morton , lord ruthen and lord lindsey , with their complices , passed up to the queen 's utter chamber ; and the said lord ruthen passed in through the king's chamber , and up through the privy way to the queen's chamber , as the king had learned him , and through the chamber to the cabinet , where he found the queen's majesty sitting at her supper at the middes of a little table , the lady argile sitting at one end , and davie at the head of the table with his cap on his head , the king speaking with the queen's majesty , and his hand about her waste . the said lord ruthen at his coming in said to the queen's majesty , it would please your majesty to let yonder man davie come forth of your presence , for he hath been over-long here . her majesty answered , what offence hath he made ? the said lord replied again , that he had made great offence to her majesty's honour , the king her husband , the nobility and commonweal of the realm . and how ? saith she . it will please your majesty , said the said lord , he hath offended your majesty's honour , which i dare not be so bold to speak of : as to the king your husban's honour , he hath hindred him of the crown matrimonial , which your grace promised him , besides many other things which are not necessary to be expressed . and as to the nobility , he hath caused your majesty to banish a great part , and most chief thereof , and forefault them at this present parliament , that he might be made a lord. and as to your common-weal , he hath been a common destroyer thereof , in so far as he suffered not your majesty to grant or give any thing but that which passed through his hands , by taking of bribes and goods for the same ; and caused your majesty to put out the lord ross from his whole lands , because he would not give over the lordship of melvin to the said davie ; besides many other inconveniences that he sollicited your majesty to do . then the said lord ruthen said to the king , sir , take the queen's majesty your sovereign and wife to you , who stood all amazed and wyst not what to do . then her majesty rose on her feet and stood before davie , he holding her majesty by the plates of the gown , leaning back over in the window , his whiniard drawn in his hand . arthur erskin and the abbot of holy-rood-house , the laird of cr●ch master of the household , with the french apothecary , and one of the grooms of the chamber , began to lay hands upon the said lord ruthen , none of the king's party being present . then the said lord pulled out his whiniard , and freed himself while more came in , and said to them , lay not hands on me , for i will not be handled ; and at the incoming of others into the cabinet , the said lord ruthen put up his whiniard . and with the rushing in of men the board fell to the wallwards , with meat and candles being thereon ; and the lady of argile took up one of the candles in her hand : and in the same instant the said lord ruthen took the queen in his arms , and put her into the king's arms , beseeching her majesty not to be afraid ; for there was no man there that would do her majesty's body more harm than their own hearts ; and assured her majesty , all that was done was the king's own deed and action . then the remanent gentlemen being in the cabinet , took davie out of the window ; and after that they had him out in the queen's chamber , the said lord ruthen followed , and bad take him down the privy way to the king's chamber ; and the said lord return'd to the cabinet again , believing that the said davie had been had down to the king's chamber , as said is : but the press of the people hurl'd him forth to the utter chamber , where there was a great number standing , who were so vehemently moved against the said davie , that they could not abide any longer , but slew him at the queen 's far door in the utter chamber . immediately the earl of morton passed forth of the queen's majesty's utter chamber to the inner court for keeping of the same and the gates , and deputed certain barons to keep davie's chamber till he knew the queen's majesty's pleasure , and the king 's . shortly after their majesties send the lord lindsey and arthur erskin to the said earl of morton to pass to david's chamber to fetch a black coffer with writings and cyphers , which the said earl of morton delivered to them , and gave the chamber in keeping to iohn simple son to the lord simple , with the whole goods there , gold , silver , and apparel being therein . in this mean time the queen's majesty and the king came forth of the cabinet to the queen's chamber , where her majesty began to reason with the king , saying , my lord , why have you caused to do this wicked deed to me , considering i took you from a base estate , and made you my husband ? what offence have i made you that ye should have done me such shame ? the king answered and said , i have good reason for me ; for since you fellow davie fell in credit and familiarity with your majesty , ye regarded me not , neither treated me nor entertained me after your wonted fashion ; for every day before dinner , and after dinner , ye would come to my chamber and pass time with me , and thus long time ye have not done so ; and when i come to your majesty's chamber , ye bear me little company , except davie had been the third marrow : and after supper your majesty hath a use to set at the cards with the said davie till one or two of the clock after midnight ; and this is the entertainment that i have had of you this long time . her majesty's answer was , it was not gentlewomens duty to come to their husbands chamber , but rather the husband to come to the wive's chamber , if he had any thing to do with her . the king answered , how came ye to my chamber at the beginning , and ever , till within these few months● that davie fell in familiarity with you ? or am i failed in any sort of my body ? or what disdain have you at me ? or what offence have i made you , that you should not use me at all time alike ? seeing that i am willing to do all things that becometh a good husband to do to his wife . for since you have chose me to be your husband , suppose i be of the baser degree , yet i am your head , and ye promised obedience at the day of our marriage , and that i should be equal with you , and participant in all things . i suppose you have used me otherwise by the perswasions of davie . her majesty answered and said , that all the shame that was done to her , that my lord , ye have the weight thereof ; for the which i shall never be your wife , nor lie with you ; nor shall never like well , till i gar you have as sore a heart as i have presently . then the lord ruthen made answer , and besought her majesty to be of good comfort , and to treat her self and the king her husband , and to use the counsel of the nobility , and he was assured her government should be as well guided as ever it was in any king's days . the said lord being so feebled with his sickness , and wearied with his travel , that he desired her majesty's pardon to sit down upon a coffer , and called for a drink for god's sake : so a french man brought him a cup of wine , and after that he had drunken , the queen's majesty began to rail against the said lord : is this your sickness , lord ruthen ? the said lord answered , god forbid that your majesty had such a sickness ; for i had rather give all the moveable goods that i have . then , said her majesty , if she died , or her barn , or common-weal perished , she should leave the revenge thereof to her friends to revenge the same upon the said lord ruthen and his posterity ; for she had the king of spain her great friend , the emperor likewise , and the king of france her good brother , the cardinal of lorrain , and her unkels in france , besides the pope's holiness , with many other princes in italy . the said lord answered that these noble princes were over-great personages to meddle with such a poor man as he was , being her majesty 's own subject : and where her majesty said , that if either she , her barn , or the commonweal perished , the said lord ruthen should have the weight thereof ; the said lord answered , that if any of the three perished , her majesty's self and her particular counsel should have the weight thereof , and should be accused as well before god as the world : for there was no man there within that palace , but they that would honour and serve her majesty , as becometh true subjects ; and would suffer no manner harm to be done to her majesty's body than to their own hearts ; and if any thing be done this night that your majesty mislikes , charge the king your husband , and none of us your subjects ; which the king confessed was of verity . in the same instant one came knocking fast at the queen's chamber-door , declaring that the earls huntly , athol , bothwel , cathness , and sutherland , with the lords fleming , levingstone , secretary , tillibarn the comptroller , and laird of grant , with their own servants and officers of the palace , were fighting in the close against the earl of morton and his company , being on the king's party . the king hearing the same , would have gone down , and the lord ruthen staid him , and desired him to intreat the queen's majesty , and he would go down and take order amongst them . so the said lord passed to the close , born under the arm ; and before his coming the officers were dwong into their houses ; and the lords were holden in at the gallery door by the earl of morton and others being with him , and were constrained to pass up to the gallery and to their chambers . so the said lord ruthen passed up to the earl bothwell's chamber , where he found the earls of huntley , sutherland , cathness , the laird of grant , and divers others , to whom he shewed that the whole proceeding that was done that night , was done and invented by the king's majesty 's own devise , like as his hand written was to shew thereupon ; and how he had sent for the lords that were banished in england and argyle , who would be there before day : and because there was some enmity unreconciled betwixt the earls of huntly and bothwell , and the earls of argyle and murray , and their colleagues ; the said lords promised in their names , that it should be mended at the sight of two or three of the nobility , they doing such like to them ; whereupon the said earls of huntley and bothwell gave the lord ruthen their hands , and received his for th' other part : and after they had drunken , the said lord ruthen took his leave of them , and passed to the earl of athol's chamber , accompanied with the earls of cathness , sutherland , and the laird of grant ; and found with the said earl the comptroller , secretary , mr. iames balfour , and divers others : and because of the familiarity and kindness betwixt the earl of athol and the lord ruthen , the said earl began to be angry with the said lord , for that he would not shew him what enterprise soever that he had to do ; whose answer was , that it was the king's action and the king's devise , and that none of them had further medling therewith than the king had commanded , like as his hand written did testify . yet the said earl enquired further upon the said lord ruthen , why he would not let him wit thereof : the said lord answered , it was the king's secret ; and feared if he had given knowledg thereof , he would have revealed it to the queen's majesty , which might have been a hindrance of the purpose , and caused the king have holden me an unhonest man for my part . the said earl perceiving that all that was done was the kings own deed , desired the said lord ruthen to pass to the king , and get him leave to pass to his country , and so many as were presently in the chamber with him . in this mean time the earls of bothwell and huntly taking a fear of the other lords returning out of england , and argyle , and because they were hardly imprisoned before , thought it better to escape too than to remain ; so they went out at a low window , and passed their ways . in the mean time while the lord ruthen was with the earl of athol , the king declared to the queen's majesty , that he had sent for the lords to return again ; whereunto she answered , she was not in the blame that they were so long away : for she could have been content to have brought them home at any time , had not been for angering the king ; and to verify the same , when her majesty gave a remission to the duke , the king was very miscontent therewith : whereto the king answered , that it was true that the king was miscontented then , but now he was content , and doubted not but she would also be content to persevere in the good mind to them as she had done before . at the same time came the provost of edenburgh , and a great number of men of the town with him in arms to the utter court of the palace of holyrood-house , where the king called out of the window to them , commanding them to return to their houses , like as they did ; for he declared to them that the queen's majesty and he were in good health . the lord ruthen being come up to the queen's chamber again , where the king was beside her , he shewed them that there was no hurt done , and that the lords and all others were merry , and no harm done . then her majesty enquired what was become of davie . the said lord ruthen answered that he believed he was in the king's chamber ; for he thought it not good to shew her as he died , for fear of putting her majesty in greater trouble presently . then the queen's majesty enquired of the said lord what great kindness was betwixt the earl of murray and him , that rather than he and the remanent should be forfaulted , that he would be forfault with them . remember ye not , said she , what the earl of murray would have had me done to you for giving me the ring ? the said lord ruthen answered , that he would bear no quarrel for that cause , but would forgive him and all others for god's sake ; and as to that ring , it had no more virtue than another , and was one little ring with a pointed diamond in it . remember ye not , said her majesty , that ye said it had a virtue to keep me from poisoning ? yea madam ( said he ) i said so much , that the ring had that virtue , only to take that evil opinion out of your head of poisoning , which you conceived that the protestants would have done ; which the said lord knew the contrary , that the protestants would have done no more harm to your majesty's body than to their own hearts ; but it was so imprinted in your majesty's mind , that it could not be taken away without a contrary impression . then said her majesty to the the said lord , what fault or offence have i made to be handled in this manner ? inquire , said he , at the king your husband . nay , said she , i will enquire of you : who answered , madam , it will please your majesty , ye well remember that ye have had this long time a few number of privy persons , and most special davie a stranger italian , who have guided and ruled you contrary the advice of your nobility and counsel ; and especially against these noblemen that were banished . her majesty answered , were ye not one of my council ? what is the cause that ye should not have declared , if i had done any thing amiss against them that became me not ? the said lord answered , because your majesty would hear no such thing : for all the time that your majesty was in glascow or dumfriese , let see if ever ye caused your council to sit , or to reason upon any thing , but did all things by your majesty's self and your privy persons , albeit the nobility bare the pains and expences . well , said her majesty , ye find great fault with me , i will be contented to set down my crown before the lords of the articles ; and if they find i have offended , to give it where they please . then answered the lord ruthen , and said , god forbid madam , that your crown should be in such hazard ; but yet , madam , who chose the lords of the articles ? not i , said she . saving your majesty's reverence , said the lord ruthen , ye chose them all in seaton , and nominated them : and as for your majesty's council , it hath not been suffered to wait freely this long time , but behoved to say what was your pleasure . and as to the lords of the articles , your majesty chose such as would say whatsoever you thought expedient to the forfaulters of the lords banished : and now when the lords of the articles have sitten fourteen days reasoning on the summons of treason , have ye found a just head wherefore they ought to be forfaulted ? no , madam , not so much as one point , without false witness be brought in against them ; whereunto she gave no answer . the said lord ruthen perceiving that the queen's majesty was weary , he said to the king , sir , it is best ye take your leave at the queen's majesty , that she may take rest : so the king took his good-night and came forth of the queen's chamber , and we with him , and left none there but the ladies , gentlewomen , and the grooms of the queen's majesty's chamber . and so soon as the king came to his own chamber , the said lord ruthen declared the message he had from the earl of athol to the king , that he might have license to return home to athol : which the king was loth to do without he gave him a band that he should be his . the lord ruthen answered , that he was a true man of his promise , and would keep the thing he said , as well as others would do their hand-writing and seal . then the king desired the said lord ruthen to fetch the earl of athol to him ; which he did : and after the king and earl of athol had talked together , he desired the said earl to be ready to come whensoever he should send for him . his answer was , that whensoever it pleased the queen's grace and him to send for him , that he would come gladly : and the said earl desired the king that he might speak with the queen's majesty , which the king refused . and then the said earl took his good night , and passed to his chamber , and the lord ruthen with him , where he made him ready and his company to pass forth , like as they did ; and in his company were the earls of sutherland and cathness , the master of cathness , the secretary , and controler , mr. iames balfour , the laird of grant , with divers others . immediately the king directed two writings , subscribed with his hand , on saturday after the slaughter of davie , to certain men of edenburg bearing office for the time , charging them to convene men in arms , and make watch within the town upon the calsay ; and to suffer none others to be seen out of their houses , except protestants , under all highest pain and charge that after may follow . and on the morrow after , which was sunday the 10th of march , the king directed a letter , subscribed with his hand , making mention that it was not his will that the parliament should hold , for divers causes , but discharged the same by the tenor thereof : and therefore commanded all prelats , earls , lords , barons , commissioners and barrowis , and others that are warned to the said parliament , to depart from edenburg within three hours next after that charge , under the pain of life , lands , and goods , except so many as the king by his special command caused to remain ; which letter was openly proclaimed at the market-cross , and fully obeyed . the gates being locked , the king being in his bed , the queen's majesty walking in her chamber , the said lord ruthen took air upon the lower gate , and the privy passages : and at the king's command , in the mean time , davie was hurled down the steps of the stairs from the place where he was slain , and brought to the porter's lodg ; where the porter's servant taking off his clothes , said , this hath been his destiny ; for upon this chest was his first bed when he entred into this place , and now here he lieth again , a very ingrate and misknowing knave . the king 's whiniard was found sticking in davie's side after he was dead ; but always the queen inquired of the king where his whiniard was ? who answered , that he wit not well : well , said she , it will be known afterwards . on the morrow , which was sunday , march 10. the king rose at eight of the clock , and passed to the queen's majesty's chamber , where he and she fell to reasoning of the matter proceeded the night afore , the one grating on the other till it was ten a clock , that the king came down to his chamber ; and at his coming from her , she desired him to let all the ladies and gentlewomen come unto her ; which the king granted , and at his coming down shewed the same to the earl of morton and lord ruthen , who were not contented with the same ; and shewed the king , that they feared that the queen's majesty would traffick by them with the lords , and all other that would do for her , like as it followed indeed : for instantly her majesty wrote some writing , and caused them to write others in her name to the earls of argile , huntly , bothwel , athol , and others . after that the king had dined , on sunday he passed up to the queen's majesty's chamber , where the queen made as she would have parted with barn , and caused the midwife come and say the same . so her majesty complained that she could get none of the gentlewomen to come up to her , scots nor french. the king sending this word to the earl of morton and lord ruthen , all were let in that pleased . at the same time the queen's majesty thought that the lord ruthen would do her body harm , and sent iohn simple , son to the lord simple , to the said lord ruthen , to enquire what her majesty might lippen unto in that behalf : whose answer was , that he would no more harm to her body , than to his own heart ; if any man intended to do otherwise , he should defend her majesty body at the uttermost of his power . and further the said lord said , her majesty had experience of his mind in that night's proceeding , when he suffered none come near her majesty to molest and trouble her . the said iohn simple brought this message to the said lord ruthen at two of the clock afternoon , on sunday , sitting then in the king 's utter chamber at his dinner . at four of the clock the king came down to his chamber , where the lord ruthen shewed him that the queen's majesty was to steal out among the throng of the gentlewomen in their downcoming , as he said he was advertised . so the king commanded him to give attendance thereto ; which he did , and put certain to the door , and let no body nor gentlewoman pass forth undismuffled . after , about 7 or 8 of the clock , the earls of murrey and rothes , with their complices , came out of england , and lighted at the abbey , and were thankfully received of the king ; and after certain communing , the earl of murrey took his good-night of the king , and passed to the earl of morton's house to supper . immediately thereafter , the queen's majesty sent one of her ushers , called robert phirsell , for the said earl of murrey ; who passed to her majesty , whom she received pleasantly , as appeared ; and after communing , he passed to the earl of morton's house again , where he remained that night . at this time the king remained communing with the queen's majesty , and after long reasoning with her , she granted to lie with him all night , he coming to her chamber , and putting all men out of his utter chamber , except the waiters of his chamber , and made a complaint that her gentlewomen could not go forth at the door undismuffled at the king 's coming down . he shewed the said earl of morton , and lord ruthen , the whole manner of his proceedings with the queen's majesty ; which they liked no way , because they perceived the king grew effeminate again ; and said to him , we see no other but ye are able to do that thing that will gar you and us both repent . always he would have the said earl and lord to rid all the house , conform to the queen's majesty's desire ; which they did , and the said lord ruthen passed and lay in the king's wardrobe : and after he was lien down , george douglass came to him , and shewed him that the king was fallen asleep . the said lord caused george to go to wake the king ; and after that he had gone in twice or thrice , finding him sleeping so sound , he would not awake him . thereat the said lord was very miscontented ; the king slept still till six in the morning , that the lord ruthen came and reproved him , that he had not kept his promise to the queen's majesty , in lying with her all that night . his answer was , that he was fallen on such a dead sleep that he could not awaken ; and put the blame to william tellor one of his servants that permitted him to sleep . but always , said he , i will take my night-gown and go up to the queen . the said lord ruthen answered and said , i trust she shall serve you in the morning as you did her at night . always the king passed up , being monday the 11th of march at six of the clock , to her majesty's chamber , and sat down on the bedside , she being sleeping , or at least made her self so , and sat there by the space of one hour e're she spake word to him . then when her majesty waked , she enquired of the king , why he came not up yesterday night conform to his promise ? he answered , he fell in so dead a sleep , that he awaked not afore six . now , saith he , am i come , and offered to lie down beside her majesty ; but she would not suffer him , for she was sick , and said , she would rise incontinent . then the king fell in reasoning with her majesty towards the returning of the said lords-that were banished , and forgiving of them all offences , and likewise for the slaughter of davie : and as appeared to him , her majesty was content ; for the king came down to his own chamber at eight of the clock very merrily , and shewed the said earl of morton , and lord ruthen , the proceedings betwixt him and the queen's majesty : who answered him , and said , all was but words that they heard . for look how ye intend to perswade her majesty ; we fear she will perswade you to follow her will and desire , by reason she hath been trained up from her youth in the court of france , as well in the affairs of france as scotland , in the privy council . well , said the king , will ye let me alone , and i will warrant to dress all things well . and after that the king had put on his clothes , he passed at nine to the queen's chamber , where he reasoned of many things with her majesty : and at his returning to his dinner at eleven , he declared to the earls of murrey and morton , lords ruthen and lindzay , that he had dressed the queen's majesty ; that the said two earls , and lord ruthen , should come to the presence of the queens majesty , and she would forgive , and put in oblivion all things by-past , and bury them out of her majesty's mind , as they had never been . the said earls and lords answer'd , that all that speaking was but policy ; and suppose it were promised , little or nothing would be kept . always the king took freely in hand , and bad them make such security as they pleased , and the queen's majesty and he should subscribe the same . and then after dinner the king passed up again to the queen's chamber , where the midwife was made to come to him , and said , that the queen would not fail to part with barn , if her majesty went not to some other place where there were more freer air ; and in like manner divers of the lords said the same . and the king returning to his chamber at three afternoon , declared the same to the said earls , and lord ruthen : and in the mean time in came the french doctor , who declared to the king , that it was unable to the queen's majesty to eschew a fever ; which if she take , she will not fail to part with barn , without she were transported from that place to some better aired place . after they were departed , the king inquired of the said earls and lords , what they thought of their speaking ? who answered , they feared all was but craft-and policy that was spoken and done . always the king would not trow the same , and said , that she was a true princess , and that thing she promised , he would set his life for the same . and between four and five afternoon , the king passed to the queen's chamber , and took the earls of morton , murrey , and lord ruthen with him ; and after they had come to the queen 's utter chamber , the king went in and left the lords , to know her pleasure , whether her majesty would come out of her utter chamber , or if the lords should come into her majesty . she took purpose , and came out of the utter chamber , led by the king ; the said earls and lords sitting down upon their knees , made their general oration by the earl of morton chancellor , and after , their particular orations by themselves . and after that her majesty had heard all , her answer was , that it was not unknown to the lords , that she was never blood-thirsty , nor greedy upon their lands and goods , sithence her coming into scotland ; nor yet would be upon theirs that were present , but would remit the whole number that was banished , or were at the last dead ; and bury and put all things in oblivion as if they had never been ; and so caused the said earls , lords and barons , to arise on their feet . and afterwards her majesty desired them to make their own security in that sort they pleased best , and she should subscribe the same . thereafter , her majesty took the king by the one hand , and the earl of murrey by the other , and walked in her said utter chamber the space of one hour ; and then her majesty passed into her inner chamber , where she and the king appointed , that all they that were on the king's party , should go forth of the place after supper . the king coming down to his chamber afore six of the clock , the articles which were the security that were on the king's party , were given by the earls of murrey and morton , and lords ruthen and lindsey to the king , to be subscribed by the queen , which the king took in hand so soon as he had supped to be done ; and he desired the said lords to remove themselves out of the palace , to that effect , that her majesty's guard and servants might order all as they pleased . the lords answer was to the king , you may well cause us to do that thing that is your pleasure , but it is sore against our wills ; for we fear all this is but deceit that is meant towards us , and that the queen's majesty will pass away secretly and take you with her , either to the castle of edenburg , or else dunbar . and here the lord ruthen protested , that what end followed thereupon , or what blood was shed for the same , that it should come upon the king's head and posterity , and nought upon theirs . the king said , he should warrant all . so they departed and took their leave of the king , and passed all forth of the palace of holyrood-house to the earl of morton's house , where they supped ; and after supper directed mr. archibald douglass to the king , to see if the queen's majesty had subscribed the articles of the lords and barons security . the king gave answer , that he had let the queen's majesty see them , who found them very good ; and because she was sick and going to her bed , she delayed the subscribing of them to the morning ; and immediately after mr. archibald returned to the lords with answer . the laird of traquair master of the guard made an arrant to the earl of murray to see what the lords were doing , and after he was departed , the whole earls , lords , and barons , with gentlemen , passed to the town of edinburgh to their beds , believing surely the queen's majesty's promise , and the king 's . the same night about one a clock after midnight , the queen's majesty and the king with her , went out at one back-door that passed through the wine-cellar ; where arthur erskin the capt in of the guard , and other 6 or 7 persons , met her majesty with her horses , and rode toward dunbar ; and on the morrow , which was tuesday , the 12th of march , the lords hearing how the queen's majesty was departed , and taken the king with her , convened the earls , lords , barons , and gentlemen , and after the matter was appointed , enquired every man's opinion , which concluded all to remain in the town of edinburgh , till such time they might send some noblemen to her majesty for performance of the articles promised for their security ; and to that effect sent for the lord simple , and desired him that he would pass to dunbar with a writing of the lords , which he granted to do , and received the same , with a copy of the articles that the king received before , and promised to do his utter diligence to get the same immediately sped , if it were the king and queen's majesties pleasure so to do . after the lord simple's coming to dunbar , having presented the lords writing to their majesties , he was evil taken with the queen's majesty , who caus'd him to remain three days ; he reported at his returning , that there was no good way to be looked for there , but extremity to the earls , lords , and gentlemen , who had been at the slaughter of david , notwithstanding her majesty's promise made before . at that time her majesty being in dunbar , wrote to all earls , lords , barons , to meet her in haddington town the 17th or 18th of march , and likewise directed universal letters , charging all manner of men betwixt 60 and 16 to be there , day and place aforesaid , being in arms in fear of war ; and also sent divers charges to the lord eskin captain of the castle of edenburgh , to shut up the town , unless the lords departed out of it . in this time it was declared to the earl of murray , that if he would sue address to the queen's majesty , he would obtain the same , who shewed the same to the lords , who counselled him to write to her majesty to that effect ; which he did , and received her majesty's answer with certain articles . in this time the earl of glencarn and rothes took their appointment of the queen's majesty . the earl of morton , lord ruthen , and remanent their complices perceiving that the queen's majesty was willing to remit the lords banished into england and argyle , and bare her majesty's whole rage against them that were with the king at the slaughter of davie , thought best to retire themselves into england under the queen's majesty of england's protection , till such time as the nobility of scotland their peers understood their cause : for they have done nothing without the king's command , as is before mentioned , and doubt not but their cause shall be found just and honest whensoever the same be tried ; and lament the extream handling contrary to order and justice , that they may not compear for fear of their lives ; in respect that her majesty hath caused a band to be made , and all earls , lords , and barons that resorted to her majesty , to subscribe the same , that they shall pursue the said earl morton , lord ruthen , and lindsay and their complices with fire and sword ; which is against all order of the law : and on saturday the 22d of march her majesty hath caused to be summoned the said earl of morton , lords ruthen and lindsay , the master of ruthv●n , lairds of ormyston , brinston , halton , elvelston , calder , andrew carr of faldomside , alexander ruthen brother to the lord ruthen , patrick murray of tippermure , william douglas of whittingham , mr. archibald douglas his brother , george douglas , lyndzay of prystone , thomas scot of cambysmichet , of perth , william douglas of lochleven , iames ieffert of shreffal , adam eskin commendator of camskinnel , mentershfear of kars , patrick ballenden of stenehouse brother to justice clerk , patrick wood of conyton , mr. iames magil clerk of registers , with others , to compear before her majesty and secret council within six days , under the pain of rebellion , and putting them to her horn , and eschetting and bringing of all their moveables goods , the which like order is not used in no realm christened ; nor is it the law of scotland of old ; but new cropen in , and invented by them that understand no law , nor yet good practise : and how her majesty hath handled the barons of lothian our brothers , it is known ; and in likewise our poor brethren of edinburgh , merchants and craftsmen , and how they are oppressed by the men of war god knoweth , who will put remedy hereto when it pleaseth him best : and how the lords and barons wives are oppressed in spoiling of their places , robbing of their goods without any fine for the same , it would pity a godly heart . and where her majesty alledgeth , that night that davie was slain some held pistols to her majesties womb , some stroke whiniards so near her crag , that she felt the coldness of the iron , with many other such like sayings , which we take god to record was never meant nor done ; for the said davie receiv'd never a stroke in her majesty's presence , nor was not stricken till he was at the farthest door of her majesty's utter chamber , as is before rehearsed . her majesty makes all these allegations to draw the said earl morton , lords ruthen and lindsay , and their complices , in greater hatred with other foreign princes , and with the nobility and commonalty of the realm , who have experience of the contrary , and know that there was no evil meant to her majesty's body . the eternal god who hath the rule of princes hearts in his hands , send her his holy spirit to instruct her how she should rule and govern with clemency and mercy over her subjects . written at berwick , day of march 1565. buchanan , fol. 211. in the first place * she took care that the body of david , which had been buried without the doors of the next church , should be removed by night , and placed in the sepulchre of the last king and his children : which unworthy and unexempled action , gave further occasion to disadvantagious reports of her . for what , said they , can be a more manifest confession of her adultery , than to make ( as far as in her lies ) a sordid villain , who had nothing commendable in himself , nor had done any thing useful to the publick , equal in the last of all honours paid to men , with her father and brothers ; and ( which seemed yet to be almost a great indignity ) to put an impure fellow , raskal , as it were , into the arms of the late queen magdalen de valois ? in the mean time she never ceased from menacing her husband , deriding him with bitter raillery , and using the utmost of her power to extinguish his authority with all men , and to render him as contemptible as she could . strict inquiry was made concerning the slaughter of david : many of those who were suspected to be concerned , were banished to different places ; more were fined in sums of mony , and some who had hardly any part in the action , and for that reason thought themselves secure , were punished capitally with death ; for the principal persons engaged in that affair , had either escaped into england , or concealed themselves in the mountainous countries of scotland . all offices of the magistracy , and places of trust , were taken away from every one who was in the least suspected , and conferred upon their enemies . and a proclamation was published , forbidding men to say that the king had any knowledg or part in the death of david : but this , notwithstanding the publick calamities , was entertained with a general laughter . in april following , these disturbances being a little calmed , the earls of argile and murrey were receiv'd into favour , the queen retired into the castle of edinburg , ( the time of her lying in approaching ) and on the 19th of june , a little after nine , she was brought to bed of a son , who was afterwards called james the 6th . equinoctialem . it was reported that one john damiette a french priest , who was accounted a magician , had often admonished him ( david ) that having got much wealth , he should be gone , and so secure himself from the hatred of the nobility , who were too strong a party for him ; and that his answer was , that the scots were more ready to talk than to fight : and that a few days before his death , being advised to beware of the bastard ; he said , that so long as he lived , the bastard should not have such power in scotland as to cause him to fear : he thought the earl of murrey was meant by that name . but whether this warning was fulfilled , or eluded , so it was in fact , that george douglass , a bastard of the earl of angus , gave him the first wound . buchanan , l. 17. finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a57983-e160 * to the earl of murray . * author of the following relation . † the duke of guise , and cardinal of lorrain . notes for div a57983-e5240 * the queen . a proclamation, for delivery in of the arms and ammunition &c. lately brought into this kingdom by the late earl of argile, and other rebels. scotland. privy council. 1685 approx. 4 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-iv tiff page image. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2009-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). b05654 wing s1862 estc r183512 52612328 ocm 52612328 179632 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. b05654) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 179632) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 2794:26) a proclamation, for delivery in of the arms and ammunition &c. lately brought into this kingdom by the late earl of argile, and other rebels. scotland. privy council. scotland. sovereign (1685-1688 : james vii) 1 sheet ([1] p.) printed by the heir of andrew anderson, printer to his most sacred majesty, edinburgh : 1685. caption title. royal arms at head of text; initial letter. intentional blank spaces in text. with a list of those present in council under title. dated at end: given under our signet at edinburgh, the twenty fourth of july, 1685. and of our reign the first year. signed: col. mackenzie, cls. sti. concilij. reproduction of the original in the national library of scotland. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng argyll, archibald campbell, -earl of, 1629-1685 -early works to 1800. treason -scotland -early works to 1800. scotland -history -1660-1688 -early works to 1800. broadsides -scotland -17th century. 2008-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2008-03 elspeth healey sampled and proofread 2008-03 elspeth healey text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a proclamation , for delivery in of the arms and ammunition , &c. lately brought into this kingdom by the late earl of argile , and the other rebels . present in council , the earl of perth , lord high chancellor . the duke of queensberry , lord high th●s●●●●… . the earl of dramlanrlg . the earl of ma● . the earl of sout●erk . the earl of p●●●…re . the earl of tweddale . the earl of belcarras . the l. viscount tarbet . the l. livingstoun . the l. yester . general dalyell . the l. advocat . the l. justice-clerk . the l. castlehill . the laird of drumelzi●● . james by the grace of god , king of great britain , france and ireland , defender of the faith , to _____ macers of our privy council , or messengers at arms , our sheriffs in that part , conjunctly and severally , specially constitute , greeting : forasmuch as , we understanding that several of the arms and ammunition , and other warlike provision , lately brought into this kingdom , by archibald late earl of argyle , and his traiterous accomplices , are intrometted with , seized on and dispersed through the countrey , which may be of ill consequence to our government , if remeed be not provided there-against , both for in-bringing of what of the saids arms and ammunition , and other warlike provision remains yet undisposed of , and discovering what thereof has been given , bought or sold in the countrey . we therefore , with advice of our privy council , hereby strictly require and command , all our subjects , who have any ways intrometted with the saids arms , ammunition , &c. either by seizing or buying , or otherwise been delivered to them , to bring in , and deliver the same to our magazines of our castles of edinburgh , or dambartoun , within the space of one moneth after the date hereof ; certifying them , if they ●ailzie so to do : and that if any part of the saids arms , or ammunition &c. shall be found with them thereafter , that they , and these who have , or shall any ways intromet therewith , shall not only be proceeded against , and punished as thieves , and resetters of thift , but as disaffected to our government , and incouragers of our enemies , with the outmost severity of law : and that oar pleasure in the premisses may be known : our will is , and we charge you strictly , and command , that incontinent these our letters seen , ye pass to the mercat-cross of the head-burghs of the shires of this kingdom , and other places needful , and there in our name and authority , by open proclamation make publication of this our royal proclamation , that none concerned may pretend ignorance . given under our signet at edinburgh the twenty fourth of july , 1685. and of our reign the first year . per actum dominorum secreti concilij . col . mackenzie , cls , sti. concilij . god save the king. edinburgh , printed by the heir of andrew anderson , printer to his most sacred majesty . 1685. an aduertiseme[nt] to the subjects of scotland of the fearfull dangers threatned to christian states; and namely, to great britane, by the ambition of spayne: with a contemplation, of the truest meanes, to oppose it. also, diverse other treatises, touching the present estate of the kingdome of scotland; verie necessarie to bee knowne, and considered, in this tyme: called, the first blast of the trumpet. written by peter hay, of naughton, in north-britane. hay, peter, gentleman of north-britaine. 1627 approx. 490 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 82 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-05 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a02833 stc 12971 estc s118431 99853638 99853638 19031 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a02833) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 19031) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1176:07) an aduertiseme[nt] to the subjects of scotland of the fearfull dangers threatned to christian states; and namely, to great britane, by the ambition of spayne: with a contemplation, of the truest meanes, to oppose it. also, diverse other treatises, touching the present estate of the kingdome of scotland; verie necessarie to bee knowne, and considered, in this tyme: called, the first blast of the trumpet. written by peter hay, of naughton, in north-britane. hay, peter, gentleman of north-britaine. [14], 144, [4] p. printed by edward raban cum privilegio, in aberdene : 1627. "an heroicke song" has caption title. imperfect: title page defective, with some loss of print. reproduction of the original in the folger shakespeare library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the 25,363 texts created during phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 january 2015. anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -early works to 1800. 2004-01 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2004-02 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2004-03 emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread 2004-03 emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an advertisement to the subjects of scotland , of the fearfull dangers threatned to christian states ; and namely , to great britane , by the ambition of spayne : with a contemplation , of the truest meanes , to oppose it . also , diverse other treatises , touching the present estate of the kingdome of scotland ; verie necessarie to bee knowne , and considered , in this tyme : called , the first blast of the trumpet . written by peter hay , of navghton , in north-britane . in aberdene , printed by edward raban cum privilegio . 1627. bon. accord insignia vrbis abredonie , to the most royall , and mightie monarch , charles , by the grace of god , king of great britane , france , and ireland , defender of the fayth . most gracious , and most sacred soveraigne , this tyme , and this subject , doe joyne and meete so vvell together , that it is novv , if ever ; and in this , if in anie thing , that i dare be bolde expresse the desire i haue to doe service to your majestie , and to my countrey . i vvish the occasion had not beene so faire for venting 〈◊〉 ambition ; but rather that it had lyen buried in my breast , and i my selfe had beene vnknovvne of your majestîe to my liues ende . but god , vvho putteth marches to peace and warres , and periods to tyme ; and ●vho hath his apt and proper instruments , for everie disposition of tyme ; hee hath encouraged mee , to offer to your majestie , this treatise , as a necessarie , and vsefull inter-course of this tyme . i did stryue , so much as i could , to make it short ; but by reason of so manie histories , discourses , and examples , as vvere to bee pertinentlie and profitablie brought in , i could not confyne it to a more narrovv compend . and yet , vvhen your majestie shall consider it , it vvill bee found minus mole , quam facultate , a great deale lighter in paper , than in matter : for vvhy ? it contayneth the large extent and misteries of the spanish ambition , vvith a contemplation of the truest contrapoyse to bee made therevnto by neighbour states ; graue and weightie theorems indeede , but vvhich fevv of them doe speculate so deeplie as neede vvere ; the greatest part beeing vvhollie carried to things sensible , present , and of nearest commoditie to them-selues in particular , al-be-it it should import a manifest danger to their common-peace and prosperitie : vvithout the care , and curious mayntaynance vvhere-of , neyther can anie one of them flovvrish by it selfe , nor yet the most flovvrishing , long endure . farther , sir , heere are contayned diverse purposes and passages , touching the present estate of this kingdome of scotland , most expedient for avvaking your majesties subjects , to looke to that vvhich the great exigence of this tyme doeth require at their handes ; together vvith a varietie of delicate conceits , verie fit to season both the understanding and humour of a young prince : and those not hatched in my braynes , but sought , and sucked by me , from the richest hyues of politicke wits , vvhich haue beene committed to registers in anie age gone . heere also is contayned , a new reason , brought from the mysticall theologie , for the holinesse and perfection of the number 10 ; and vvhy god did choose it to be the quotient of the ecclesiasticke goods , in the leviticall churches . so that if your majestie shall vouchsafe to reade it once , i haue good hope that ye shall do● it tvvise , al-be-it i knovv , that it is not your majesties calling , to cast over bookes , tu regere imperio popul . rom. mem . hae tibi erunt artes : but such bookes doe belong vnto that same arte. demetrius phalereus did counsell king proleme , to buy all bookes vvritten , de regno imperioque eosque lectitaret , quia ( inquit ) quae amici non audent reges monere , ea in ejusmodi libris descripta esse . alexander the great did sleepe vvith homer's poësies vnder his head . iulius caesar , amidst the combustion of bloodie warres , did spende most part of nights , in reading and vvryting . therefore , sir , let it please your majestie , to take paynes , remembring hovve the same homer , vvhome that great monarch did so affect , and vvhome the philosophs esteemed to be a source of humane sciences , hee hath left this aphorisme for a king , non decet principem solidam dormire noctem : a prince must not take a vvhole nights sleepe . a thing vvell proved by that arch-prince for civill vvisdome , augustus , vvho vvhyles at a certaine tyme hee could not rest in the night , having his mynde loaden vvith anxieties and cares of the state , hee sent for the pillovv of a knovvne bancq-ruptier , greatlie indebted , vvho vvas reported to sleepe vvell . god hath called your majestie vp in-to this mountayne of paynfull governament ; not lyke vnto helias , vvho vvhyles hee vvent vp , too much delyted vvith the pleasant vmbrage of the iunopre tree , hee fell a-sleeping there-by : but lyke to moses , to vvhome it vvas sayde , ascende in montem , & esto ibi . upon vvhich vvordes , esto ibi , another doeth vvell note , non dicitur venisse , qui non steterit . wee doe not reade that moses sleeped in that voyage to the mountayne : it vvas a significant hyerogliffe , vvhich the aegyptians had of a king , oculum cum sceptro , one eye , and one scepter : shevving , that princes are to joyne vigilance vvith power ; and ought to haue aquiline eyes , able to penetrate the hidden thinges of the vulgar valleyes belovve them : even as the eagle doeth espy the prey vnder him , before him-selfe can bee perceived of fowles . nazianzen , speaking of governament , he sayeth , it is , ars artium , to rule a people : and seneca , speaking of man , nullum morosius animal , nec majori arte tractandum ; there is not a more enorme and insolent creature than man , nor vvhich is to bee managed vvith more cunning . and , as plutarch sayeth , that as beasts can not bee guided , nor commanded , but by men ; so men cannot bee governed , but by him vvho is more than a man , and hath a great measure of deitie into him. certaynlie your majestie hath neede of eyes vnder wings , as is sayde of the spanish cuttuio ; that yee might flie abroade , to explore the manners of your subjects , and malice of your enemies : to see that no backe-doore bee left for those to enter at , nor no fielde commodious , vvhere they may cover their insidious nettes : but that the vvhole sea of your majesties governament bee calme and peaceable : vnderstanding hovv the spanyard is skilfull to fish in drumblie waters . hee can practise as vvell protestants as papists , if hee finde them loose and vvavering . which particular your majestie vvill see examplified in this treatise : besides testimonies of french wryters , vvhich might bee suspected of partialitie , and malicious detraction , it is verefied by naturall spaniards , namelie , antonio peres , vvho vvas a chiefe secretarie of estate , vnder philip the second ; and vvhose relation in some thinges touching the sayde king , and estate of portugall , i haue trusted , and follovved , for tvvo respects : first , because none could haue knovvne those better : and secondlie , because hee did handle the lyke theame to this , by vvay of shovving to king henrie the fourth of france , the necessitie of making warres to spayne . your majestie knovveth , that it vvas a braue embleme for kings , vvhich cyrus had , of putting his foote vpon the midst of a hard and dry hyde , vvhere-by he kept it close at earth : for if he had set his foot vpō the borders , or extremities thereof , the vvhole should haue revolted : to note the golden rule of the mid-way in governament , & forbearing of extremities : and to shovv , that kingdoms are never sure to princes , vntill they be in the middest of the hearts of their people , and guarded round about vvith their affections . your majestie seeth hovv the example of david is a perspicuous mirrour for kings to looke vnto ; of vvhom vve reade , 2. sam. 7. when the king sate in his house , and the lord had given him rest round about from all his enemies , he said vnto nathan the prophet , beholde , idwell in a house of cedar trees , & the arke of god remaineth within the curtaines . hee resolved to provide for building of the lord's house : therefore , can vvee not deny , sir , that the orient of your majesties reigne , doeth breake vp in just & holy actions , in favours of the house of god , by setting out a navie against the mightie enemies of christian peace , and true religion ; and by vvhom the over-throvv there-of hath bene so directly sought in these your majesties kingdomes , that numbers of vs yet liue , vvho did see their proude armada , put even to the parts of our countrey for that ende . your majesties intentions at home , to restore the mayntaynance and splendor of god's worship , doe argue the like zeale : and vvho doubteth , but god vvill grant to your majestie the same spirit of wisdome , vvith david , rightly to choose your tymes , for offices of peace , & offices of warres . the prudence , and happie successes of actions , doe consist in discret & sure application of circumstances . with a little tyme & patience , your m. vvill get your good subjects , not only to contribute after your desires , to the house of the lord , to the cōmon-wealth , & vvorks of pietie ; but to doe it vvillingly , as those israelits did vnto david , 1. chron. 29. then the people rejoyced , for that they offered willingly ; because with a perfect heart they offered willinglie to the lord. and david the king also rejoyced with great joye . and then , sir , their sacrifices shall bee savorie vnto god , vvhen they come not from hearts dyed into murmuration , grudge , or blacknesse , like vnto the swan , vvhich for the same cause vvas anciently forbidden to bee sacrificed to the gods . i doe most humbly recōmend these my christian endevours to your m. patronage & protection . if they be acceptable to your m. i hope they shall displease none of your faithful subjects . if they doe not fully correspond the judicious quicknesse of your m. great spirit , it is not my fault ; my smal vessell could hold no more . the lord , vvho is the giver of all good thinges , and vvho hath sovven into your m. heart these seedes of royall pietie and vertue , hee may be pleased to nourish them , vvith the daylie influence of his grace ; vntill they grovv to that glorious and fruitfull harvest , vvhich they doe novv prognosticate and promise in their spring . that god , vvho hath set your m. over a great and mightie people , hee may blesse your m. vvith the true vvisdome of governament , the trustinesse of faythfull counsellers , the vpright loue of your subjects , and a prosperous & fortunate reigne vnto the ende . your m. most humble , faythfull , and affectionate subject and serviture , peter hay. to the reader . courteous reader , i speake to as manie as bee vpright subjects of this kingdome ; of which number i am sure , there is not one , to whome the principall scope of this discourse will not bee gracious and plausible . if some passages doe perhaps displease , it is for too narrow compting in your particulars . and if i haue toutched these points moderatelie , and haue in them also my interesse equall with yours , it doeth absolue mee from anie meaning to wrong you ; and sheweth , that the acting hereof hath not beene intended for you , or mee , or for another , but for the common-wealth . wee haue spent our whole yeares gone to our private studies , pleasures , or emolument , without the meanest distraction by anie sort of tyrannie , or state-calamitie , our dayes haue beene like vnto that jubilant age of the romane empyre , vnder augustus , of whom sayeth the po●t , ille meos errare boves , ut cernis , & ipsum ludere , quae vellem , calamo permisit agresti . ille erit , ille mihi semper devs . but now this tyme doeth require vs to carrie publicke , and not private mynds ; which is the reason , why i doe finde my selfe in this action , pene th●m quam antea . there is ( sayeth salomon ) a tyme for peace , and a tyme for warre : a tyme to gather and keepe , and a tyme to cast away : and god doeth these things that men should feare before him. the golden tyme of peace , and collection , that wee haue enjoyed , vnder our late king of blessed memorie , hath so besotted our myndes , with securitie , that wee are even ignorants of the ordinarie vicissitude of the world ; so farre , that the verie first threatnings of change , doe confound vs ; where as by the contrarie , they should make vs turne to our god , and feare before him : resolving to accept at his hands , patientlie , and thankfullie , after so long prosperitie , the corrections , for our sinnes proper to vs ; and in the nature of thinges common with vs , to all people . i haue presented before you , in this treatise , as vpon a board , a summarie portract of the estate of this tyme , and of the dangers where-of wee are so much affrayde : which if yee shall diligentlie contemplate , it will helpe both your knowledge and your resolution . as for some few particulars , that for the first face , may bee some-what disagreeable with you , yee shall finde here also conjoyned with them , their soveraigne remeadies and solaces . if yee will but ascende a while , with mee vpon this stage , to agitate the cause of your prince , your countrey , your common-wealth , and religion , when wee shall looke backe vpon the invincible couerage of our predecessours , against so manie mightie nations , for the standing of this kingdome , before they were christians ; and that more than humane magnanimitie of the heathen codrus of athens , and others lyke to him , the bruti of rome , deciosque caput fatale voventes , and these heroicke decij , how in sacred extasies of resolution , they did devote and sacrifice their lyues , for safetie of the states where-of they were members ; such speculations shall make vs ashamed of some of our discontentments , and languishing amidst so great exigence , and appearance of publicke distresses . i know there is no generose spirit , but will bee much delighted with this subject , nor anie wise-hearted man , who will not esteeme it a vertuous and laudable part , to bee fore-seeing of so capitall dangers . with-in these three , or foure yeares , the palatinate did lesse dread the spanyard , than wee doe now . tum tua res agitur , paries dum proximus ardet . if wee doe feare the lord , obey our prince , and bee of vnited myndes , tymouslie to employe the meanes that god hath given vs , to with-stand so strong an enemie ; then there is no doubt , but wee shall bee bastant to oppose him : but if wee bee relenting in these , then i would say , as one of the parthian kings sayde , long before they were conquered , by the romanes , timeamus , ●●●eamus , magnum illum romanorum genium , qui tam brevi spacio torrentis instar effusus est per orbem terrarum . wee haue great cause to project feares , and long before to parralele the flowrishing destinies of the spanish empyre : which , lyke vnto a torrent , hath with-in these hundreth yeares , over-flowed the fairest and strongest countreyes of europe . certainlie , it is no time for vs to delay in murmurations , and to object our povertie , amongst infinite examples that bee in histories , of the fatall ruine that hath followed to princes and people , by such doing : the pittifull and mercilesse sackage of constantinople , by mahomet the second , may onelie serue , to terrifie vs from the lyke : the citizens of that towne being full of ritches , did so misregard their late emperours , that one of them , baldwine , after hee had solde his silver plate , iewels , and best moueables , hee was forced to pawne his sonne to the venetians , for money to maintaine warres against the turkes . the last of them , constantine the eight , being desperatelie besiedged by the saide mahomet , was not able to furnish pay to his souldiours , by reason of exorbitant vsuries , exercised by his merchands ; nor corne , nor victuals , by reason of their monopolies , although there was great store of both with-in . where-vpon , after some weekes of mutuall grudges , and exclamation of the emperour against his subjects , and of them against him , that glorious citie , so commodiouslie seated ( for dominion over the world ) vpon the shoulders of europe and asia , so emperesse-lyke over-looking both , was taken by the turkes , her miserable prince and people cruellie murthered , her beautifull churches turned in stables , her hudge ritches possessed by the enemies , and shee made a port for that bloodie and barbarous nation , to come in vpon the necke of christendome . i will no more insist thus in this place , because the treatise is full of practises and examples , convenient for your present vse : i will onelie say againe , that it is no tyme for vs now to contest with our king , when question is for preservation of the state : and i exhort you to reade this , with that disposition as i wryte it : not of private subjects , but of states-men , and kyndlie children of this common-wealth : that wee may all in one voyce say with pericles of athens , when his citie was reduced to great straites , for want of money , in tyme of hote warres , ne cernere cogamur cuncta nostra in servitutem rap● , mensae , cubilis , supellectilis , ac dierae , superflua abscindamus , no●●que & liberos , servemus , ut quum pinguior fortuna aspiraverit , nobis rursus ea restituere valeamus , let vs curbe our humours , controll the delicacie of our dyet , make sober our moueables , and cut off what-so-ever is superfluous in our manners , for our owne safetie ; and let vs referre the farther fruition of those , to more propitious and fortunate tymes . thus much more must i say ( tout●cing the myste●ie of the number 10 here treated ) to some of you , who d ee disdaine to heare from an-other , that whereof your selues are ignorant : i wish yee bee not scandalized , by the mention of remote , or naturall theologie : remembring how sainct paul , 1. cor. 15 , calleth him a foole , who in the analogie of god's workes , cannot finde a naturall argument , to corroborate his supernaturall beliefe , for the resurrection of his bodie . and the learned scaliger , in his exercitations against cardan , discoursing of the angelicall nature , hee calleth that kinde of knowledge fastigium omnis scientiae , the top of humane wisdome : and doth verie confidentlie censure the contemners there-of , saying , irridebuntur ista à quibusdam sectis nebulonum qui otio & supinitate marcentes fastigium scientiae contemnunt titulo curiositatis : noting two sorts of them , who ( sayth hee ) doe constantlie barke against the search of anie other thing than the naked and literall sense in the scripture : one is of those who bee meerlie naturalists , & nunquam assurgunt ad supremam causam : another , of some presumptuous , but shallow-brained theologues , who covering their ignorance , with pretext of holinesse , semper assurgunt ad supremam causam , they are ever speaking , and talking of the knowledge of god , but may not abyde one word of nature ; contemning the high contemplations there-of , which are the verie paeth-way that doe leade vs vnto that knowledge , neither of which two ( sayeth hee ) haue tasted this sweet science of analogicall harmonie , that is betwixt the intellectuall and visible world : whereof sayeth the divine plato , that , that is the reall substance , and this but the shadow depending there-fra ; that trueth , and true subsistence are there , and heere nothing but as a flowing and transition of images , nulla sunt vera nisi quae sunt aeter●● , ista autem quae vide●us non sunt vera , sed ve●i similia : the things that wee see , are but temporarie shadowes of things true and eternall : and as the shadow of anie creature doeth perfectlie declinate vnto vs the shape , the forme , the space , and name there-of , although wee doe not see the bodie it selfe ; so ( sayth hee ) into this great bodie of visible nature ( which is the image of that intellectuall and infinite world ) there is the true deliniation and viue images of the severall creatures which bee there , and of the heavenlie governament , and blessed harmonie that is amongst them . and briefe , ( sayth plato ) wee haue no knowledge in this world , but that which is symbolicall , having reference to things invisible , as the shadow hath vnto the bodie . the prophets of the olde law did receiue their revelations from the angels in symbolicall speaches , and ( sayeth christ him-selfe ) litera occidit , spiritus vivificat ; the letter is dead , but it is the spirit that quickeneth . and of him sayeth sainct marke , that without parables hee spake nothing to them : and twelue severall parables of the kingdome of heaven hee did delyver to them , all which doe thus begin , simile est regnum coelorum : and the prophet david sayeth , i shall open my mouth by parables . certayn●●e , if ever there was an age of the world , where-in the super-natural light of christ's gospel had neede to haue annexed vnto it the darke light of nature , for alluring and intertayning the weaknesse of our spirituall sight it is even this which we now liue into , where-in the heresies of doctrine are so pregnam 〈◊〉 , and the loue of the world , pryde of lyfe , and singularitie of opinion so predominant in the professors of the trueth , that we may say not onlie with ●lato , but with hosea the prophet , non est veritas in terra : the pure veritie hath left the earth . so that i say to you , yee must not be disgusted if vpon the sudden ye cannot comprehende everie symbolicall veritie that is propounded vnto you : which , if it could bee , then wee should vilipende the mysteries of god , as things triviall and vulgar . it is sayd in eccles that god hath made the world beautifull , & did set it in the heart of man , even that he may admire it , and vexe him-selfe to explore the nature there-of : vexatio dat intellectum , sayeth the same salomon . and i say , that as the intellectuall spirits of our brayne , which are the scarchers of the veritie , are most subtile in them-selues , and closed vp from our eyes , within diverse cabinets of our head : even so the veritie it selfe , which is the thing searched by them , is much more subtile , and involved from our sight . the first ages of the world did embleme the veritie , by a triton , standing aboue the temple of saturne , with a trumpet in his mouth : signifying , that her habitation was most high , & with the most ancient gods , and that therefore she must be sought laboriouslie , and from afarre . god him-selfe , who is onlie veritie , hath made his mysteries to bee vmbragious , and as at wee-light before vs , ( whiles he him-selfe doeth inhabite the inaccessible light , as is sayd , 1. tim. 6 , ) represented to vs by the seraphims , esa. 6. beholding him through two wings ; and by the darknesse of the clowde , where-through moses did enter into the light of mount sinai , to receiue the law ; and by that pillar of fyre , that conducted israel , which was in lyke manner locked vp in a clowde . all these doe figure vnto vs , that al-be-it the veritie ( lyke to the branch of golde , that did secure the voyage of aeneas , vnto the elisean fields ) shall at length open a passage for vs , to the inaccessible light. yet for the present of our mortall lyfe , there be infinite mysteries of the veritie , which wee cannot see other-wayes , than through darke and doubtfull clowds : amongst the which , this of the number 10 , hath fallen in myne hands ; it may be , as a precious iewell commeth to an vnskilful gold-smith ; who , although he cannot mount it curiouslie , yet he setteth it so , as it may be carried , viewed , and valued , of all men . the ancient persian and aegyptian theologues , did call the bodie of god , light ; and his soule , veritie : to declare vnto vs , that the veritie , when it is found by vs , it should by our means shyne to others . and , as a lanterne carried by a man in the night tyme , is better seene of those who bee about him , than by him-selfe ; even so , perhaps , this noble mysterie , once poynted at by me , shall bee now vnderstood better by manie of you , than it is by mee , who did marke it vnto you : and i pray god it may be so . your true , and loving friend , peter hay. an advertisement to the subjectes of scotland , of the dangers threatned to christian states ; and namelie , to great britane , by the ambition of spayne . there are some yeares-gone , since partlie my age , ( novv about 60. ) and partlie my retired lyfe , free from anie publicke charge , did make me to disgust all civill meditations , and exercise of the more humane letters ; where-in i had given satietie to my mynde in my youth-head , both by diligent reading of histories , and by traveling abroad thorow the world , to looke vpon the severall governaments there-of . and now i had gotten place vpon an higher stage , and was become familiar with the muses more sublime and divine , where i did studie to vnderstand the policie of nature , the bountie , beautie , and order of the visible creatures : and that magicall spirit , which doeth by a common sympathie connect and vnite in one common-wealth so manie contrarieties , as are with-in the enclose of the supreame heaven , and which doth maintaine whole , and inteire this great bodie of the vniverse , whilst her members doe daylie perish , and passe away before our eyes . i did consider , whether this hudge frame was animate , or inanimall , & where was the residence of that mightie spirit , where-by it is governed , how scripture telleth mee that , spiritus dei implet orbem terrarum , the spirit of god doeth fill the whole earth : and how philosophie perswadeth mee , that god is , into nature , as the soule of man with-in his bodie : that even as our soule doeth fill the bodie , with lyfe and motion , and furnish to the organes of our senses , their faculties of severall operation ; and having its seate hidden into the braines , yet is it not confined there , but goeth out at randome , to run over the whole earth , to penetrate the centre , to travell through the spheares , to flie aboue them , and to discourse of things imaginable to bee without the purprise of the heavens : that even so , god hath his habitation and seat into the inaccessable light , ( as the head and hidden braines of nature ) and there-fra doth disperse the spirit of lyfe , and motion thorow all : putting into the starre● ( as organes seated into the face of that great bodie ) the influences which minister to all her partes , inspiring into the vast bellie there-of , the blowing wyndes , which are the breathing spirit of nature : and againe placing the occean , as the livare and fountayne that doth ramifie & spreade so manie veines through the earth , ( as it were of blood , through the fleshlie bodie , and trunke of nature ) and lastlie , these rockie craiges , as the bones of that bodie . then i did dispute with my selfe , how farre these visible things did beare the characters of the invisible governament of god , into the intellectuall or architypicall world : where onlie ( as plato sayeth ) there is reall and true subsistence , and where-of these caduc creatures that wee see , are but a shadow , or a mirrour , where-in god letteth vs beholde the image of that order and governament that is in heaven : according to which , sayeth sainct paul rom. 2. the invisible things of god , from the creation of the world , are clearlie seene , being vnderstood by the things that are made . farther , i went on , to ponder that discourse of plato in his 6. de rep. where hee maketh the mynde of man to haue that relation to god , which his eye hath to the sunne ; where-fra , as a visible light , proceedeth to illuminate the eye , and maketh it to see the sunne it selfe , that giveth it light : so doeth a spirituall light , proceeding from god , illustrate our myndes , with that splendor where-by wee doe beholde god himselfe : which light of god , hee calleth in that place , foetum , sive prolem dei , the birth , or chylde of god. where-vpon i was begun to debate with my selfe , from what good warrand the learned marcilius ficinus , could affirme , that plato did there-by meane the eternall sonne of god , manifested to vs in the scriptures : of whom sayeth sainct iohn , in the first of his evangell , in termes not vnlyke , est lux illuminans omnem hominem venientem in hunc mundum : that hee is a light , which doeth illuminate everie man that commeth in this world. but now , while as my spirit had ascended to this height of heavenlie transportation , little thinking of anie worldlie retract , or encombrance , alace for pittie ! the late deplorable death of our blessed king , of sacred memorie , did intercept my joyes , and make me icarus-lyke , to fall backe into the seas , once againe to saile a-long the coasts of that wicked circe , where nothing is to bee seene , but the dead bones of those who are daylie naufraged amidst her inchanted allurements , & once againe to set my selfe vpon the bloodie theatre of the world , to partake of the publicke sorrowes , where-with so many good soules are afflicted , for the losse of so precious a iewell , whose royall worth , his divine vertues , his happie tymes , and miraculous fortune ( if fortune may bee spoken of , where god did so manifestlie rule ) as i am not bastant to expresse them , so it is not my intention to touch them in this discourse , because as plutarch sayeth , praeclara gesta praeclaris orationibus indigent ne gloria defraudentur : curable griefes are spended , and consumed with words of lamentation , or washed away with teares , but deepe and irrecoverable displeasures will haue none other style , nor other mourning-cloath , but astonishment and silence : therefore , i will onlie say this for all , to a-wake our myndes , in thankfulnesse to god , who is the giver of all good things ; that if it were true which plato supposeth , that there are certaine habitable regions in the aire , for an heroicall , and more coelestiall kinde of men , who liue to manie ages , and feed onlie of the vapors , and fragrant smels of fruites , that grow there , for their nowrishment ; or if so bee , that paradise hath beene , or doeth yet remaine there , which some christian wryters spare not to affirme , that as lucifer , after his rebellion , was throwne from the heavens , downe-ward in the ayre , so adam , after his fall , was detruded from an higher habitation , to a lower . if i say , either of the two were extant , wee of this kingdome , might contend with anie of them , for publicke prosperitie and peace , of a whole age , without interruption . i make the challenge to those imaginarie and airie people , because i finde none vpon the knowne earth , who may enter the lists , with vs , in that behalfe . the sanctified reigne of our sweet soveraigne , who doeth now enjoy his crowne in the eternall glorie , who lived 60 yeares a king , and the hundreth and sixt king of one stocke , who banished idolatrie , planted the gospell , superadded two diaedemes to the third , making a confluence , of a naturall and statelie monarchie ; and all this , siue saenguine , aut sudore ; yea , without the putting one launce to the fielde : let vs weigh this well , and then say truelie , qui poterunt similiter gloriari nobis . but as nothing which is vehement , or extraordinarie , can endure into this ordinarie vicissitude of mortalitie , so were the verie funerals of this great prince . followed with the doubting and feares of all his good subjects ; as if with the death of our holie and peaceable king , the period of our countreyes-peace had also expyred . whether it bee that some malignant constellation , vnable to perturbe so rare a sainct of god , hath lyen in waite till now , to spew vpon vs some mischievous influence ; or that god , for his sake , hath forborne hitherto , to inflict the punishments due for our sinnes : it is no new thing indeede , but vsuall for people subject to kings , to bee taken with some feare of innovations , or change , at the entrie of a young prince . the philosophers say , that the coelestiall orbs , doe some-time suffer their motum trepidationis , a motion ( as they call it ) of trembling . what marvaile then , if when the axiltree of a state is changed , the bodie which is carried vpon it , doe shake a little ? but because i haue perceived by conversation with diverse of graue and constant minds , that such feares begin to bee apprehended of them more deeplie , than is agreeable with the loyall affection , that wee ought to carrie to , and trust that wee should place in our naturall and kindlie prince , of so great expectation : therefore it is , that i out of that common sympathie , which one member hath with an-other of the same bodie , and being now vpon the publicke stage of the world , ( i meane , a deepe and serious contemplation of the present condition of things ) where the matter and nature of dangers threatned , doe lye open , and discovered to mine eyes , i haue resolved for information , and solace of manie others , whose sight perhaps cannot penetrate so farre , to deduce and examine the causes of our feares , for a tymous advertisement , to all the vpright subjects of this kingdome ; that everie man may the better vnderstand the case of the present time , and everse man may provide to contribute the best of his wits , of his cowrage , and of his goods , to the service of our prince , whom god hath set over vs , to fore-see and obviate our dangers , the feares which haue possessed our myndes , bee of two sorts , either flowing from forraigne , or from domesticke occasions : from forraigne , because that our mightie enemie of spayne , is irritated against vs , and hath alreadie gotten great advantages : our intestine feares , bee one of three , either for aggravations and pressures , which the great exigence of this tyme seemeth to put vpon vs : or secondlie , for the intended reformation , or innovation of session , counsell , or state-officers : because it seemeth to chop at the arch-pillars of our governament , who haue beene placed , and long pratticked by a king most famous for solide wisdome : or thirdlie , for the large extent of the revocation made by his majestie who now is , which doth touch so manie of vs to the quicke , and as it were rankle vs to the verie bones . of all which three , i shall treate a little with that modestie and reverence which becommeth a private and faithfull subject . and first , because our forraigne dangers are most manifest , i will speake of that , ( instar montis equum ) that monstruous and formidable pryde of spayne , the common enemie of christian tranquillitie . this king , with his pope , are the two furies , who doe enrage all neighbour-princes , and states ; the nemesis and pandora , who disperse christian plagues ; the two insatiable daughters of the leech , mentioned in the scripture , who still cry , giue , giue , and who sucke the blood , not of beasts , but of the saincts of god. they are the two starres of our wretched constellations : and when-so-ever it falleth in their courses , to bee ascendents of this occidentall hemispheare , then let not christian people expect other than fyre and sword , and the blood of legions , vnlesse the conjunction of other princes doe make an aspect happilie and rightlie opposed to them . this great king , hath long tyme gone , devoured in his mynde the occydentall empyre : the designe of which ambition , is not so remarked by neighbour-states , ( which is their great fault ) nor so with-stood , as is necessarie for cutting the threed there-of in tyme , before it grow to greater length : and that because it seemeth in the meane whyle to advance but sl●wlie , as the highest spheares , who haue longest periods , doe moue most insensiblie to vs ; yet they cease not to make still progresse , till they come to their stations . will wee but cast backe our eyes a short way , even to the beginning of charls the fift , the grandsire of this present king , there wee shall see the swift march of that ambition , so farre , that if they had brooked , that which they gripped , since then , they had matched the romanes , for dilatation of empyre , in the lyke tract of tyme. the generous romanes did not found their empyre vpon oppression and spoyle , nor rayse it by artes of tyrannie : they were a just and magnanin ious people , concitate by god , to deliver the oppressed , and purge the worlde from prowde tyrants ; to introduce communitie of conversation amongst countreys , common lawes of iustice , civill policie , and learning : for the which , sayeth one of the fathers , that god did favour their empyre , and the growing ther●-of : donec eo tandem deventum esset , ( sayth he ) ut sieret totus terrarum orbis , quasi unum cultissim●m imperiirus : that it came to passe , that the whole worlde was as a well manured husbandrie , or fame , of that empyre . where , by the contrarie , these late kings of spayne haue not onelie interverted the moste laudable and vertuous ambition begun , and prosequuted manie yeeres , by their predecessours , for plantation of religion and policie , amongst the insidels of africke , of the levantine indies , and diverse yles of the mayne occean : but they haue turned vp-syde downe , this christian ambition , as fayre lucifer did change himselfe into a devill ; and haue converted the edge there-of , to the confusion of the fayrest countreys of europe , so sufficientlie adorned with pietie , iustice , and policie , that they might haue beene called the gemmes of the worlde . and if the moneyes , and forces of armes , which haue beene spent to the sackage of these , within an hundreth yeares gone , had beene employed against barbarians , and ignorants of god , then the best part of africke , of the easterne and westerne ●dies , might haue beene at this day vnder the peaceable domini● of that king ; and hee , by that conquest , more justlie called a catholicke king : as may bee easilie vnderstoode , by the stories extant , of the prosperous and happie beginninges of his antecessours , against the infidels of those nations : vvhich , because it doeth most clearlie paint out the vglie and odious face of his detestable and execrable ambition , i thinke it not amisse , to make a short relation there-of , out of their owne histories . about some more than 800 yeares by-gone , roderico , a christian king of the gothes in spayne , having ravished and deflored the daughter of the earle iuliano , his owne subject , was casten out from his kingdome , & slayne by tariffio , a barbarian king , brought from africke , by meanes of the sayde iuliano , for just revenge of the ignominie done to him . those barbarians did possesse the whole countrey ( few cities excepted ) of spayne , with the vtter exterminion of the gothicke empyre , and were begun to spreade them-selues over the perenees , when pelagius , sonne of the duke of biscaglia , ( of vvhome is descended this present king of spayne , by succession not yet interrupted ) having a sister of rare beautie , in lyke sort violented and raped , by a cosin of this barbarian king : and beeing a great spirit , full of valour and pietie both , hee did plot some stratagems , for the revenge of this injurie : where-in his cowrage and good fortune were so conspicuous , that the gothes ( now oppressed by the barbarian servitude ) did comfort him to publicke armes , for restitution of their christian libertie : where-in hee made so good progresse , that they did elect and erect him to their kingdome . the ravishment of the daughter of iuliano , was the introduction of the moores in spayne , and the dejection of the gothicke dominion . the rape of the sister of pelagius , did procure the restitution of the same , and the ejection of that barbarian king. there is not certainlie a vyce , which hath procured greater ruine to mightie princes , than this of raging and voluptuous lust. tyrannie hath throwne out manie from their crownes , but moe yet haue beene cast out by immunditie . be-lyke , as beeing a g●osse , lo●rde , and sensuall vice , the lord doth more punish it i● princes , than private men , who are set vp , aboue their people , to spreade abroad the rayes of their exemplarie pietie and vertue . this pelagius did spende the rest of his dayes against those infidels , whom hee swept out of diverse corners of that countrey , although they were so numerous at that tyme , that there were found of them in one battell in aquitane , 400000 , which made the vvorld adore , in a sort , his name , because hee was the first prince , who with extraordinarie zeale did enterpryse holie and heroicke vvarres , against those impious barbarians , who were begun to treade over all christian people . vertuous beginnings , if with length of tyme they grow to large extent of prosperitie , they are much honoured by after-comming ages ; and great reason : for why ? the tree , how tall soever it bee in the fielde , yet it was once all in the seede . this is the just rewarde of vertue past , and the chiefe spurre of that which is to come . this pelagius is most renowned in the histories . buchanan , amongst others , in his iure regni apud scotos , doeth introduce him for the image of a most vertuous and temperate prince . the second of these kings , memorable in histories , was ferdinando , called magno , who no lesse than pelagius , to the glorie of god , and his immortall fame , did pacifie his controversies with some christian neighbours , to his great disadvantage , to manage warres against the moores ; of whom hee over-threw , and banished the king of toledo , and the king of siviglia , with all their people . this prince is so honoured by their wryters , for a wonderfull temperament that was in him of fiercenesse against the barbarians , and religious humilitie of carriage , and conversation with his subjects , that they doe equall him vnto that perfect cavalliere , that virgill descrybeth in the person of aeneas . for the third , i will remember ferdinando , called santo , who did holilie bend him-selfe to cleanse the countrey of spayne from the remnant of that vermine , with such zeale and fervour , that hee was noted thus to speake of the ambition of princes , that in their warres they had diverse ends ; some vindication , some extention of dominions , some glorie of the world , and loue of popular ayre : and all these , sayde hee , were vaine , as david speaketh of them , periit memoria illorum cum sonitu : their m●morie passeth away with that same sound , which doeth so much inveagle them for the tyme. others , sayde hee , haue for the scope of their warres , iustice , and the peace of people : and these doe not willinglie moue warres , but for succouring of the oppressed , and extinction of pryde and tyrannie . and lastlie , others for propogation of the fayth , and that ( sayde hee ) is the top of all glorie , to bee purchased by warres . although ( hee saide ) that seldome were christian princes happie in that sort , to haue their designes in warre simple , and incommixed vvith ambition , pride , or avar●ce : vvhich● ( saide hee ) vvas the true reason vvhy christian empyres doe flowrish so slowlie . this prince did purge granada , valenza , sainct lucar , and cartagena ; and planted diverse bishops seates , ritchlie rented . this prince vvas after his death , not onlie of christians , but even of infidels so honoured , that halamar , one of their kings , did yearlie sende an hundreth great torches , vvith numbers of his friends , to assist a commemoratiue celebration , vsed to bee yearlie of his funerals . hee vvas so modest in acceptation of honours vvhilst hee lived , that vvhen the barrons of his kingdomes had resolved to erect some statues , to remaine as famous ensignes of his glorious victories , hee vvould not suffer it to bee done ; saying , it vvas to ascrybe to man the honour vvhich is onelie due to the lord of hoastes . for the fourth , i vvill make mention of the spanyards predecessoures maternall . alphonso the fift , king of portugall , vnder vvhom vvere discovered , possessed , and made open for christian traffique , the coasts of aethiopia , the yles of capo-verde , arguim , medera , sainct thomas , those of terzere , vpon the coast of africke . hee made conquest of alcazar , and arzilla , vvith their territories . after these hee did knight fiue of his sonnes , for their great and hardie adventures , about these exploits : and before their instalment of cavallerie , hee did publicklie in a church , oblish them by a sacramentall oath , to hard points of pious magnanimitie , for giving their lyues , if neede vvere , for their fayth , their honour , their countrey , their prince , their friends , and all oppressed . this prince vvas often heard to say , that it importeth ●othing to the common-wealth of christendome , vvhether this or 〈◊〉 province vvere vnder the dominion of spayne , or france , or of almaignie , or anie others , provyding all vvere good christians . for the fift , i vvill say some-vvhat of emanuell , king of portugall . alphonso the first , did cleanse vvhole portugall from the moores . alphonso the fift , as i haue sayde , did vvarre against them in afrik . and this emanu●ll did persecute them even to asia , and manage hote warres against them , vvith extraordinarie good fortune , and is counted amongst the most nominate , and glorious kings that haue beene in anie age : who without removing his person from portugall , did place the trophees of his victories in africke , arabie , persia , and the indees , and fill the earth with the splendor of his name . hee made him-selfe full master of the barbarian occean , and of the indish traffique : hee over-threw diverse of their kings , and did over-run the levant , as the stories show , even to the ports of china : hee daunted the aethiopians , about the cape of bona-speranza : hee built the fortresses there , called sofala , and mozambi : discovered , and made tributaries , the noble yles of sainct lorenzo , quiloia , and socotera : fortified the yle of ormus , and made the king homager , and vassall of portugall . hee planted a colonie in goa , which at this day is esteemed one of the most opulent cities of the levant . hee tooke in moluca , and frequentlie assaulted calicute , hee did brooke the things left to him in afrike , and super-adjoyned there-to , safin , and azamor . hee bestowed one of the hundreths of all his revenewes , and the tenth part of the tributes of his conquests , for plantation of the fayth amongst them . hee sent learned church-men to the king of congo , ( vvith vvhom hee vvas in friendship ) and procured the comming of the saide king , his sonne , brother , and diverse noble-men , to portugall , vvhere they vvere taught , and received to the christian fayth . hee sent priests into brasilia . and briefe , their histories presume to equall this prince , to salomon . of this emanuell , charles the fift , emperour , did marrie a daughter , of vvhome is descended the present king of spayne , charles , did follow the same foot-steps of the christian ambition of his predecessours , against the infidels . hee conquered the kingdom of peru , where-fra hee brought into the countreyes of europe , 〈◊〉 infinite number of golde and silver , vvhich did on the sudd●e , ( as yee will finde noted heere-after ) alter the manners , estates , and traffiques of merchandise , vniversallie of all men . hee restored the king of tunis , and made him vassall of the crowne of spaine . hee did employ mightie forces , at sundrie times , against solyman the great , who did then gape most greedilie for to haue devoured germanie . but aboue all , the memorie of him doeth rest most sacred for the longsome toyles and troubles endured by him , and worlds of money , which hee spent , for the pacification of christian religion , and reformation of the church of rome . if this fatall and wretched emulation , and iealousie of neighbour-princes , had not made king francis the first , to oppose and marre him : and if that same had not like-wise made the pope , his cardinals , and all the prelates , and princes catholicke of germanie , his enemies fearing both the greatnesse , the good naturall , and sinceritie of this prince , of whose fraudelent and vnchristian proceedings with him , the historie of the counsell of trent , published with-in these few yeares , hath the full and perfect deduction . alwayes , not-with-standing that hee was a rare king , whose fame and credite is aboue envy , full of royall magnanimitie , religious toward god , and fortunate to greatnesse ; a-like to whom there hath beene in these latter ages , if some , yet surelie not manie , never-the-lesse , i say , even in him began to bee seene the markes of this inclination , of the spanish ambition , to vniversalitie of empyre in europe : the testimonie where-of , was by his owne direction , publicklie set vp vpon the ports of such famous cities as hee conquered ; as i my selfe haue seene vpon those of naples , and milan , that too superbe and glorious superscription , carolus 5. imperator , ad colligenda regna dispersa , & plantaudam fidem christianam , à deo destinatus : charles the fift , emperour , destinated by god , to collect together dispersed kingdomes , and to make plantation of the christian fayth . i confesse indeede , that hee in his time went about this designe of vniversall dominion , by more laudable and christian wayes , than his successours haue done since : that is to say , by seeking to curbe the papall tyrannie , and to revnite the church of god , in one fayth , one governament , vnder one civill law , and , i warrand , vnder one prince , if hee could : and to giue him his due , assuredlie , hee hath had a most braue and heroicke minde , like to that of alexander the great , of whom sayeth plutareh , to his immortall fame , ni devs ille qui alexandri huc animam demiserat eam praepopere revocasset , haud scio an lex una cunctos homines regeret , unumque jus veluti commune lumen , ad omnes pertineret . o blessed ambition of those braue princes before mentionated● now-a-dayes , their successours doe exhaust their treasures , their wits , their forces , to make desolate christian states , as is said , and to destroy christian people ; whilst their predecessours did seeke vnder heavens vnknowne , to finde out desarts vnpeopled , or else plenished with savages , and haue reduced them to fruitfull agriculture , civill policie , and christian discipline . o damnable , and cursed iealousie of christian kings , and states ! which doe not permit thir ambition to extende it selfe , to the glorie of god , the encrease of their owne dominions , and their immortall fame . this globe of the world lyeth abroad by 360 degrees in longitude , and as manie in latitude : the english haue made navigation to within 77 , toward the north , and the portugals and castilians , to within 56 , toward the south ; so there doe rest 228 to discover : and what a fairer field , or richer spoyles , can bee wished for christian ambition , or avarice , than this ? yet what shall i say of this emulation of neare , and neighbour-princes ? it seemeth to bee fatall in effect ; and what is fatall , is necessarie : for fatall wee call , quasi fatum , sive dictum a deo : a thing pronounced by god to bee . for if wee shall take a view of his whole works , wee shall see nothing but a temperament , and contrapoysing of naturall extremities , in such equalitie of ballance , that none bee able to excrease to the over-throw of the other . the heavens are placed into that equilibrie , that everie side is jumpe with the other , and may not over-shoot it . the contrarie motions of the heavens , doe not confound , nor impede one an-other . the coldnesse of saturne , and the heate of mars , doe not eate vp one another , because iupiter commeth betweene , as the axiltree of their contrapoyse , by the serenitie of his temperature . so is it in the elements , the fyre and water are kept from desperate conflicts , by the ballance kept by the ayre , attempered to both . so it is amongst beastes , where-of those that bee of fierce and savage kindes , least vsefull vnto man , ( as lyons ) god hath made them more barren . those agayne of the weaker sort , which be more necessary , and serviceable for man , he hath made more broodie and foecund ; to the end , the stronger should not be able to destroy that which is more infirme ; but the multitude of weake ones , should bee sufficient to contrapoyse the paucitie of the mightier . there is no beast , which is not afrayd of the lyon , & trembleth at his presence ; yet some-thing hath he to contrapoyse his awfulnesse : for he may not abide himself the crying of the cocke , but is astonied there-by . so the bellicose elephant , whom all the terrors of battell cannot make afrayde , he may not endure the cry of a swyne , but presentlie fleeth , & , as is said in eccles , intuere opera omnia altissimi , & videbis semper unum contra aliud : doe contemplate all the workes of the most high & you shall find aye one against another . even amongst the intellectuall creatures , the good angels , agaynst the bad , god this way showing the height and deepnesse of his vnsearchable wisedome , by lodging , and ruling of so manie contrarie things , peaceablie within this one house of the vniverse . shall wee not thinke then , but the lord , who hath so moderated and brydled everie extreame & contrarietie , who hath placed mountaines , and steepe shores , to keepe in the raging sea , that shee rise not over her marches , and ordinarie bankes ; but hee hath like-wise , in the governament of the world , by severall great kingdomes , and monarchies , appointed and allowed the same contrapoyse , that no prince become so mightie , as to devour his neighbour ; that no pryde , or insolencie , doe excrease without limitation ? certaynlie , i thinke it hath a warrand in nature : and reason telleth vs , that as it is lawfull , to with-stand force , by force ; it is also lawfull , to provide , if we can , that no case come , that may constrayne vs to doe so ; or , that may put vs to the employing of force , or violence : so that it seemeth lawfull to princes , or states , to impede , so farre as they can , suspected neighbour grandour , lest it become at length to master them . hieronimus , king of syracuse , beeing demaunded , ( as polibius wryteth ) why in the meane-tyme of his beeing confederate , and friende of rome , hee did ayde and supplie the carthagenians against them ? hee aunswered , that it was to the ende hee might brooke the friendship still of the romanes : whome , if hee shoulde suffer to over-throw the carthagenians , then of his friends , they should become his masters . or , will a wyse king , within his owne dominion , permit a particular states-man , to carrie away the whole sway of governament , by too much of authoritie ? no , but he will contrapoyse him with a colledge of a contrarie disposition , to keepe him in order . hence is it , that the lord god in all ages , hath suffered one nation to combate with an-other , one king to beate an-other , and one man to holde in the hornes of an-other , that nothing should shoot out aboue that just proportion which doeth corresponde to the communion of nature : yea , if wee should come to consider and weigh the particular fabricke of everie one man's bodie , if the like equilibrie of contra-ballance did not attemper our contrarie humours of complexion , certainlie our constitution were not able to subsist ; but either the choller shall burne vp the flegme , or the flegme extinguish the choller , if the interjection of these median humours of sanguinean and melancholicke , did not impede that conflict . and hence are all the leagues of mutuall defences amongst weaker states contracted against the more mightie . having thus shortlie shewed how the ambition of castile and portugall was vertuous , and laudable , vnto the death of charles the fift , i come now to philip his sonne , and successour , who did spot the glorie of his noble predecessours , by turning his thoughts to the conquest of christian people . hee it was , who did complot and conduct all the tragedies which thence-foorth haue beene acted in christendome . this king finding him-selfe debouted of his designe to the crowne of england , by the death of marie ▪ queene thereof , who was his wyfe , returning into spaine , his first practise was , for excluding the light of the gospell , ( which then began to breake foorth over all ) to strengthen against christians , that fearfull inquisition , which his antecessours had erected against the infidels , iewes , and moores : where-of this farre may bee affirmed , that if satan him-selfe had beene king of spaine , hee could not haue brought from the bottomlesse pit , a more horrible plague , more cruell , more barbarous , and beyonde all humanitie ; the wicked invention where-of , no words can suffice to expresse , in sort that it doeth rather resemble hell it selfe , than that wee can finde anie example ever heard of the like , vpon the face of this earth : where innocent men , yea , good , and holie men , after being straitlie incarcerate diverse yeares , spoiled of their lands and goods , afflicted with famine , rent with tortures , and in ende , falselie and vnjustlie condemned , to the number of 800 in one yeare vnder that king were brought to publicke spectacles to bee burnt , with buckels and bullets in their mouthes , to stop all apologeticall speaches , and againe , and againe casten in the fyre , and taken out of the fyre . it is hard , that anie christian should thinke of it , without trembling , and teares : the farther discourse where-of , were but vnpleasant heere , al-be-it most necessarie for demonstration of that hatefull tyrannie : and who so is curious to vnderstand more of it , he may finde a treatise done at large on that subject , by reginaldus consalvus montanus , de artibus sanctae , inquisitionis hispanicae : one who hath for manie yeares knowne , and behelde it with his eyes . the next thing that king philip went about , was the joyning of portugall to the other kingdomes of spayne alreadie in his possession , and there-by to make the bodie of that monarchie perfect and entire : and finding nothing that could serue him for pretext , or colour to moue open warres , the king there-of , don sebestian , being his neare cosin , of one religion , free from anie controversies with him for dominion ; and knowing the saide sebestian to haue a kinglie and cowragious mynde , with-all hardie and temerarious , hee did corrupt and suborne some of his chiefest favorites , to puisse him to the enlarging of his conquests in africke , against the moores , where-of his predecessours had alreadie layde so good foundations : and for his easier inducement there-to , hee did promise him large ayde , both of souldiours , & of money ; and when don sebestian had embarked himselfe for africke , and did expect the arrivall of the promised succours , hee found nothing but letters of new expectation , while in the meane time philip did practise , by claudestine meanes , both discontentment and mutinie with-in his owne armies , and treyes with the barbarian kings , against whom hee went. where-vpon ensued the overthrow and death of the saide prince , ( without children ) in that battell which hee fought against the kings of fesse and moroco : after the which the portugals did receiue the next lawfull heyre to their crowne , don antonio , whom the saide philip did eject by open warre ; and violence , and forced the subjects to declare himselfe righteous successour of that kingdome , by his mother . then hee perceiving that king henrie the third of france , did sende a sea-armie to portugall , in favours of don antonio , hee resolved to stirre vp and kindle a civill warre in france , that might constraine them to forbeare the farther assaulting of his new conquest in portugall : and by a publicke deliberation with his counsell in the citie of tison , anno 1577 , hee layde the grounds of that confederacie , called the holie league , which did almost reduce in ashes , that auncient and flowrishing kingdome of france : and to that effect , sent thither secret practises , with 200000 crownes , to draw and assure to his course , the chiefest of the nobilitie , and gentrie catholicke : which did succeede well enough to his mynde , and to the great dangers and disasters of all the neighbour-states of europe , as the stories doe at length record . and then , that those who were enraged by him to armes , should not want an enemie , on whō they might consume thē-selues , he sent also to negotiate privatelie , with king henrie the fourth of france , ( being then styled king of navarre , and head of the protestant faction in france ) offering to marrie the saide king's sister , whose children to philip , should succeede to the kingdome of navarre , with the yles of majorque , minorque , and sardinia : also , that the saide king of navarre should haue in marriage the infanta of spayne , eldest daughter of philip , with condition to bee established king of guyene , at the adventure , and charges of philip ; and with-all , should haue the right and possession of the duchte milan , with a present advancement of 200000 crownes , for the provision of forces competent against his enemies of the league . who doeth not see by these , the insatiable thirst of wicked ambition , after the blood of their neighbours ? never an hungrie beare did hunt more fiercelie for to fill his panches , than hee was enraged for the conquest of france . but the saide king of navarre , guided by a better spirit , did refuse all these ouvertures , as treacherous , and tending to the dissipation of france , with-in it selfe , that it should bee more open and obnoxious for the spanish invasion . and by his refusall , hee layde the first stone , where-vpon there-after hee did builde his reconciliation with as manie papists , as were true hearted french-men , and his peace with his predecessour , king henrie the third , to whom hee did impart all these secret practises , anno 1583 , and who permitted him to assemble the whole reformed churches of france . at montaban , the yeare there-after , for tryall , and punishment of the negotiators of the same . for by this tyme , the sayd king henrie the third , was begun with bitter griefe and repentance , to acknowledge his errour , in retiring his forces from portugall ; which he was forced to doe , by the furie and hote persecution of the leaguars . and the yeare 1589 , he did send ambassadours to the queene of england , ( who was alreadie engaged to the protection of don antonio ) to treat with her , that shee would sende him backe to portugall , with a sea-armie , promising for him-selfe , to joyne there-vnto 5000 men , never-the-lesse that hee was then mightilie agitated with the manie forces of the league , and that the hottest flames thereof did burne about his eares , having even then surprysed the lyues of the duke , and cardinall of guyse , at blois . this was easilie obtained of the saide queene , who perceiving well that there was no other way to free her owne countreyes , ( the spanish armie having threatned her coasts the yeare before ) nor to liberate her confederates of france , and the netherlands , from the tyrannie and oppression of spayne , but by making vvarres to him in spaine ; shee did set foorth with don antonio , an armie for portugall , vnder two generals , the lord noris for the land , and darke for the seas , together with the earle of essex . but nothing of importance was performed by that armie : the causes where-of are diverslie agitated , and alleadged ; the english historie affirming , that their generals then had no warrand to make warre , except that they had seene an vniversall revolt of the portugals , from the spaniard , to don antonio , their king : where-of , say they , there was no appearance . but antonio peres , in his treatise to the french king , vpon that subject , doeth impute the causes to mislucke , and misgovernament , the lingering and longsomnesse of the voyage , their lying manie dayes at plimmouth , and manie at the groine ; where-by the enemie had too much leasure to fortifie him-selfe , a mortalitie of their people , where-of their best canoniers , and other souldiours , died ; the want of horses , and wagons , for transportation from the coast of lisbone : so that they were forced to quite great part of their armes , and in place there-of carrie bottels of vvyne , and other things , for their mayntaynance . the distraction of the sea-generall , drake , from the land-generall , who when hee should haue entered the port of lisbone , finding a fleet of easterlings to passe by him , hee set him-selfe to the hazard of that prey , neglecting al-together the enterpryse against lisbone . about the which , when the land-armie did lye in siedge , there was a great confluence ( as hee sayth ) of the portugals , to don antonio : but by reason they were addressed , in base and course apparell , they were esteemed by the english , to bee but commons , and none of the gentrie , and therefore contemned . but ( sayeth hee ) if the enterpryse had beene followed , the towne of lisbone had beene taken in most easilie ; for that the cardinall of austria , who commanded within , and so manie castilians as were vnder him , were readie to leaue it vpon the first arrivall of drake with-in the harberie : that hee had alreadie hyred thirtie galleyes , for his transportation : and that with such seare and consternation , that hee conduced to giue them 300 duckates a-piece , for three leagues of sea. alwayes , in the diversitie of opinions , concerning that voyage , for my part , i doe more trust the english historie , for two ( as i thinke ) infallible reasons : first , the world knoweth , that in those dayes there was not in christendome , a more solide , sure , and reverenced counsell , than was in england : so that it is not to bee doubted , of that which their historie beareth ; that their generals of that armie did obey their warrand : secondlie , i finde antonio peres contrarie to him-selfe ; for first hee sayeth , that by the longsomnesse of the english navie , the enemie had leasure to provyde and guard him-selfe : secondlie , sayeth hee , the whole gentrie of portugall did repare to joyne with don antonio , and the english armie . but heere i doe trap , and convict him from his owne mouth : if ( as hee sayeth ) the spanyard had leasure at his pleasure to provide for him-selfe , who then is so simple , as to thinke , but hee did in the meane tyme remoue from portugall the nobilitie , namelie , the favourers of don antonio , with the whole gentrie , without the leaving of anie man sufficient to allure a multitude , or to leade them to a revolt ? i thinke hee hath forgotten him-selfe a little here , out of an ardor of his spirit , to haue removed all shew of impediment to the french king , for putting of warres in portugall . in the meane-tyme , thus farre may bee said , that as obedience and discipine , militarie in the bodie of an armie , vnder a trustie and skilfull generall , is of that importance in actions of warre , as , sine quo nihil , a point where-in lyeth the chiefe suretie and successe of all things , except of fortune ; yet a strict limitation of generals , hath for the most part marred , both good fortunes , and good successes of warre , where the opportunities , advantages , and ouvertures are meerelie casuall , and inpendent from precise tymes . to prescribe to their generals , was not the custome of the wyse , valiant , and fortunate romanes , sed videant ne quid resp. detrimenti cap●at . and what should haue become of that great state , if their generall , fabius maximus , had not so stiffelie followed his private will of cunctation and protracting of tyme with hannibal ? contemning the infamous reproaches and exclamations , both of senate and people against him : namelie , of his magistrum equitum : whom if hee had not at length rescued in his temerarious recountre with hannibal , he had perished , with all those whom hee commanded . now , what were the practises lyke-wise of philip , even then also in england and scotland , by corruption , and iesuisticke artes , to haue drawne the subjectes of both kingdomes to vnnatural revolts , from their soveraigne princes ? it is better known , than that i need heere to make mention of it : i wish the wryters of our countreyes historie , may over-passe that interlude , of those insidious tymes , as lucan did the cruelties vnnatural , committed mutuallie amongst the romanes at pharsalia : quicquid in hac acie gessisti roma tacebo ( saide hee . ) by these few circumstances , shortlie related of the progresse of the spanish empyre , wee may easilie and vsefullie obserue these three things : first , the growing and fearfull greatnesse there-of , as it standeth at this day . maximilian , emperour , and duke of austria , did marrie catherine , only chyld and successor of charles , duke of burgundie ; where-by were annexed the 17 provinces of the nether-lands , to austria . of this marriage issued philip , who being duke of austria , burgundie , and flanders , did marrie the heretrix of castile , daughter of ferdinando , and isobella , the mother of charles the fift , and so did conjoyne the estates fore-saide , vnto the crowne of castile . charles the fift , by his owne vertue , did super-adde vnto it , the kingdome of peru , the dutchie of milan , the peaceable possession of the kingdome of naples , and the kingdome of sicilia , with the yles of sardinia , majorque , minorque , and their possessions , which they yet haue into the westerne indees . his sonne againe , philip the second , of whom i speake , besydes that , hee had once within his clawes , france and england : ( which both hee lost againe ) hee did conjoyne with these , that which made the integritie and perfection of the spanish empyre , portugall ; the importance where-of may be remarked by these three : first , by their glorious conquests before rehearsed , into the levant , into africke , and through the maine occean : secondlie , by the great multitudes of people , which doe inhabite the territories there-of . antonio peres doeth affirme , that vnder sebestian , their last king , of whom i haue before remembered , there were thorow-out the realmes of portugall , vnder militarie discipline , 1200 companies of foot-men , where-of there was no gentle-man , other than commanders ; and in everie companie at least 200. which being allowed , doeth amount jumpe to 240000 men. and that portugall did yearlie send out to their conquests , 6000 men , where-of the third part did never turne home againe . thirdlie , by the riches there-of , it being affirmed by him , that their kings did in this one point of greatnesse , surpasse all the princes of europe ; being able in halfe an houre , to giue vnto their subjects , ten , or fifteene millions , or more , to bee received by ticquets , for dispatches of governourships , captainships , receits , offices , licences , to make voyages by sea , to the indees , and yles of the occean . but heere i judge , that hee hath beene too large , out of a great fervour , to perswade christian princes , to set their hearts vpon so noble a prey : at least-wise , to provyde and prevent , that it should not fall into the hands of their common enemie . but certainlie , the best part of these , are well approved to bee true , by this that philip the second of spaine did put him-selfe at so great expence , for the purchase and prefervation of portugall , by kindling and feeding the fyre of civill warres , through christendome , namelie , in france and flanders : exhausting to that ende , the richest mines that bee vnder the heaven , and by making so ignominious and impious peace with insidels ; to bee the more able to maintaine portugall , and to incroach farther on christian neighbours . vnder king philip the third againe , his sonne , there was no accession indeede to this empyre : the mightiest conquerers that ever haue beene , in the nature and necessitie of things , needed their owne intervals , cessation , and repose , for breeding of new fortitude and strength : and anie man may finde into the romane warres , there hath beene at diverse tymes , longer intervalles of peace : and now wee see , that this present king of spaine , after these refreshments , is begun to rake and extende the marches of his dominions . the second thing to bee observed by the former discourse , is , the prowde designe , and large extent of the spanish ambition : when this king , of whom i treat , ( philip the second ) durst , together , and at once , adventure to set him-selfe a-worke for the purchase of portugall , france , the netherlands , england , and scotland , who should doubt , or call it in question , that by length of tyme they intende not to subjugate the whole estates of christendome ? wee finde it written by them-selues , that when hee was about the taking in of portugall , being demanded by one of his greatest favourites , what was the reason why hee did neglect his thinges of east india , and suffer friezland , and so manie good townes , to bee invaded and possessed of heretickes , his enemies , and all to maintaine the league , and civill warres in france ? where-vnto hee aunswered , that those might bee forgotten for a tyme , because the setling of portugall did import no lesse to him , than the securitie of his whole empyre : which once done , hee would easilie make all those his neighbours , to become his homagers and tributaries : yea , it was the common theame of discourse amongst his captaines , and souldiours , both in italie , flanders , and france , or where ever they were , that since portugall was now theirs , that france and england could not escape them . and more , ( which is a publicke testimonie ) the wryters of the spanish storie affirme thus farre , that if it had not beene , that the saide king philip had resolved before anie thing , to brydle portugall , hee should haue before then sufficientlie daunted france , and haue put strong armies in england . farther , the extent of this ambition of spayne , is clearlie seene by their authoritie , vsurped over the consistorie of rome ; where they haue made them-selues perpetuall dictators , which is one of the surest fundaments of the encrease of their grandour now-a-dayes : that consistorie being , as the alembicke , where-in are fyned all the counsels , projects , and designes of christendome , and the pope arrogating to him , power at his pleasure , to excommunicate , and consequentlie depose christian princes , and to transferre the succession of their crowns , where-of onlie the riches must belong to that catholicke king , as of england , and yreland , to philip the second , ( by pius quintus , who did excommunicate queene elizabeth of ●england ) and of navarre , to his predecessours , by the same title of beeing heyre and successour , to excommunicate princes , keeping still in their owne hand , the raygnes of the papall election , and invading of their patrimonies , as that of sicilie ; and being in effect popes them-selues , governing at their will the church rents thorow-out their kingdomes , exacting a verie great part vniversallie of all , for their owne vse . the third point of observation , vpon the preceeding discourse , is the iusidiation , and latent attempts of this ambition , by godlesse perfidies , and treacherie , where no fayth is kept , nor conscience , nor religion , nor humanitie , nor vere●unditie , where neighbour-princes cannot brooke their lyues , by reason of the excessiue rewards , and honours promitted , to trayterous executioners of claudestine murthers . what shall i say of enemie princes ? no , i say of what-so-ever persons , publicke , or private , suspected enemies to their prowde tyrannie , sparing neither papist , nor protestant ; pope , nor cardinall ; bishop , nor priest , nor nearest kinsfolkes , nor their most faithfull counsellers , or most fortunate generals , if they but once , vpon the lightest occasion , become jealous of them : no , not their owne children , when their blood may bring the smallest accession vnto the strength of that diabolicke ambition , they doe murther , poyson , embotch , and bewitch at their pleasure : so that this same philip , of whom i speake , hee caused to bee made away in his tyme , as wryters haue observed , more than 200 nominablie recorded in diverse histories , whereof i will remember but seaven , of the most abominable paricidies ( i will call them all so ) ever heard of , and yet best knowne . king henrie the third of france , a christian prince , of equall qualitie with him-selfe , to whome hee was bound by that fraternitie , and by the vnion of one fayth , besydes some degrees of blood ; yet it is well knowne , that hee did contryue the death of this king , as truelie , as hee did plot the league against him . pope sextus the fift , whome hee professed to bee head of the church , and his holie father , because that pope fearing the spanish tyrannie , if his conquest of france had proved good , hee did favour the said henrie the third , in his last distresses ; philip made him away by poyson : a thing so well vnderstood , that they haue it for a common speach yet at rome , ( which i haue heard with mine eares ) that if a pope doe enter without the approbation of spaine , hee will goe the way of sextus the fift . hee did betray , to the eyes of the world , don sebestian , king of portugall , his cousin , alexander farnesse , duke of parma , his kins-man , and generall in flanders , that valiant and renowned captaine , who had done him so great services , immediatelie after the misfortune of his armada set out for england , 1588. ( which hee did impute to the slownesse of the saide duke ) hee fell into a lingering disease , and died by poyson , ministred from philip : the world doeth know it . don bartholomew carenzae , arch-bishop of toledo , who had beene the preceptor , and father of his owne youth-head , as seneca to nero , because hee would not publicklie maintaine his title to the crowne of portugall , hee also did dispatch him . his brother , don iohn de austria , ( whose great and ambitious spirit hee began to suspect ) hee was stricken with the plague of pestilence , immediatelie after the receit of a letter from spaine , whilst there was no post in the countreyes about , and where-of hee died . but aboue all , that most deplorable and nefarious paricidie , publicklie committed , avowed by himselfe , authorised by the church , the murthering of prince charles , his owne eldest sonne . hee did price the life of don antonio , at 100000 crownes , and of elizabeth queene of england , and of the late prince of orange , at as-much a-piece . hee was not ashamed to receiue certaine townes from the king of moroco , vpon bargaine , to betray ( as hee did ) don sebestian , king of portugall , his cosin , nor to render vnto those infidels , arzilla , ( which his predecessours had noblie conquered ) vpon condition , they should not furnish in preste to don antonio , 200000 crownes , as they had promised to doe at the intercession of the saide queene of england . these are not mine assertions , but taken and collected from spanish wryters . of all the fore-sayde perpetrations , the killing of his sonne , prince charles , being in it selfe most fearfull , and execrable of the whole ; it is also most clearlie verified , not onlie by the histories of neighbour-countreyes , as by the french recordes of majerne , of matthew of paris , of thuanus ; but so stood to , by the church of rome , that into that deede , they doe place the triumph , and glorie of the pietie of the saide king , advancing his fayth aboue that of abraham , who did onelie offer to sacrifice his sonne , and comparing him to god him-selfe , witnessed by hieronimus catena , wryting vpon the life of popius quintus , the which pope , by a publicke panegyricke , did celebrate the praises of the sayde philip , for that fact , saying , e cosa multo notabile , & stupenda ch' el re facesse sacrificio d'ella carne sua , & del suo sangue à dio , dicendo , che ' non come abrahamo , ma come dio stesso , propter salutem ecclesiae , non pepercit vnico filio : that is to say , it is a thing most notable , and admirable , that this king did sacrifice vnto god , his owne flesh , and his owne blood , for nought , like vnto abraham : but like vnto god himselfe , for the safetie of the church , hee would not spare his onlie begotten sonne . farther , it is affirmed by the english wryters , namelie , sir francis hastings , in his watch-word to queene elizabeth , against the spanish insidiation , that the same philip , did by his agents , the count of fuentes , then generall in the low-countreyes , and secretarie ibarra , induce doctor lopez , a iewish physician , at london , for fiftie thousand crownes , to poyson queene elizabeth : which he him-selfe , vpon his triall , did confesse , and two others , manoel lois , and stephen ferraires , did depone , and all three suffered death for it , as the processe criminall led against them , and yet extant , will verifie . what shall i say vpon this fearfull kinde of policie ? ah for pitie ! quid non mortalia pectora cogit , reg●andi dira libido ? what is that so odious , which the loue of domination will not perswade the ambitious heart to perpetrate ? the publicke crueltie of the inquisition on the one part , and the covert crueltie of ambushes practised by the king , and his iesuites , on the other part , seeme to bee a chiefe misterie of this ambition , as two arch-pillars , which doe for the time sustent the great spheare of their empyre , and the wicked source , where-fra haue flowed so manie chastels , clements , ravillacks , babingtons , fauxes , garnets , &c. as haue beene actors of the wofull assassinates , sorceries ; pests , powder treasons , poysons , &c. that haue surprysed the liues of so manie anointed kings , and others of lawfull authoritie , and doe still lye in waite for the like executions , against those who are present , or to come heere-after . and heere is a case to bee lamented eternallie , that those parricidies , committed now in spayne , after the manner of the mahumetane superstition ; not as crymes to bee repented , but as religious traditions , and deeds of great merite , when the life of one man , or a few men , if it were of our brethren , or children , are taken , and sacrificed , for preservation of the publicke tranquillitie both of church and state , chiefelie in great and monarchicall kingdomes , where religion doeth shoot out , with a growing and flowrishing empyre . alace ! is not this the fyre of moloch , and the sacrificing of our children to those bloodie and savage gods ? this is a fascination and stupiditie of the mynde in the highest degree : and heere it is , where that powerfull circe of superstition , hath transformed those kings reallie into beastes , that wittinglie , and willinglie , they haue cast off both sence , and as it were shape of humanitie ; that the greatest vlysses of the world , is not able by anie oratorie , to reclaime them . in the meane-time , it is a case that doeth admonish neighbour-princes , to bee of constant pietie , and devotion towards god ; and their domesticke servants , to bee vigilant , and studious , for the avoyding of that kinde of claudestine dangers . and , o what great cause wee haue to render thankes to the most high , for that , that our late soveraigne , of blessed memorie , did escape the insidiation , and bloodie knyfe of such butchers ! hee who was the most conspicuous marke whereat they did shoot , and of whom their curious casters of horos●ops , and malignant astrologues , did so often prognosticate , that his ende should not bee peaceable . fourthlie , wee are to weigh the strength and soliditie , of this great and growing empyre , to see if wee can explore should not furnish in preste to don antonio , 200000 crownes , as they had promised to doe at the intercession of the saide queene of england . these are not mine assertions , but taken and collected from spanish wryters . of all the fore-sayde perpetrations , the killing of his sonne , prince charles , being in it selfe most fearfull , and execrable of the whole ; it is also most clearlie verified , not onlie by the histories of neighbour-countreyes , as by the french recordes of majerne , of matthew of paris , of thuanus ; but so stood to , by the church of rome , that into that deede , they doe place the triumph , and glorie of the pietie of the saide king , advancing his fayth aboue that of abraham , who did onelie offer to sacrifice his sonne , and comparing him to god him-selfe , witnessed by hieronimus catena , wryting vpon the life of popius quintus , the which pope , by a publicke panegyricke , did celebrate the praises of the sayde philip , for that fact , saying , e cosa multo notabile , & stupenda ch' el re facesse sacrificio d'ella carne sua , & del suo sangue à dio , dicendo , che ' non come abrahamo , m● come dio stesso , propter salutem ecclesiae , non pepercit vnico filio : that is to say , it is a thing most notable , and admirable , that this king did sacrifice vnto god , his owne flesh , and his owne blood , for nought , like vnto abraham : but like vnto god himselfe , for the safetie of the church , hee would not spare his onlie begotten sonne . farther , it is affirmed by the english wryters , namelie , sir francis hastings , in his watch-word to queene elizabeth , against the spanish insidiation , that the same philip , did by his agents , the count of fuentes , then generall in the low-countreyes , and secretarie ibarra , induce doctor lopez , a iewish physician , at london , for fiftie thousand crownes , to poyson queene elizabeth : which he him-selfe , vpon his triall , did confesse , and two others , manoel lois , and stephen ferraires , did depone , and all three suffered death for it , as the processe criminall led against them , and yet extant , will verifie . what shall i say vpon this fearfull kinde of policie ? ah for pitie ! quid non mortalia pectora cogit , regnandi dira libido ? what is that so odious , which the loue of domination will not perswade the ambitious heart to perpetrate ? the publicke crueltie of the inquisition on the one part , and the covert crueltie of ambushes practised by the king , and his iesuites , on the other part , seeme to bee a chiefe misterie of this ambition , as two arch-pillars , which doe for the time sustent the great spheare of their empyre , and the wicked source , where-fra haue flowed so manie chastels , clements , ravillacks , babingtons , fauxes , garnets , &c. as haue beene actors of the wofull assassinates , sorceries ▪ pests , powder treasons , poysons , &c. that haue surprysed the liues of so manie anointed kings , and others of lawfull authoritie , and doe still lye in waite for the like executions , against those who are present , or to come heere-after . and heere is a case to bee lamented eternallie , that those parricidies , committed now in spayne , after the manner of the mahumetane superstition ; not as crymes to bee repented , but as religious traditions , and deeds of great merite , when the life of one man , or a few men , if it were of our brethren , or children , are taken , and sacrificed , for preservation of the publicke tranquillitie both of church and state , chiefelie in great and monarchicall kingdomes , where religion doeth shoot out , with a growing and flowrishing empyre . alace ! is not this the fyre of moloch , and the sacrificing of our children to those bloodie and savage gods ? this is a fascination and stupiditie of the mynde in the highest degree : and heere it is , where that powerfull circe of superstition , hath transformed those kings reallie into beastes , that wittinglie , and willinglie , they haue cast off both sence , and as it were shape of humanitie ; that the greatest vlysses of the world , is not able by anie oratorie , to reclaime them . in the meane-time , it is a case that doeth admonish neighbour-princes , to bee of constant pietie , and devotion towards god ; and their domesticke servants , to bee vigilant , and studious , for the avoyding of that kinde of claudestine dangers . and , o what great cause wee haue to render thankes to the most high , for that , that our late soveraigne , of blessed memorie , did escape the insidiation , and bloodie knyfe of such butchers ! hee who was the most conspicuous marke whereat they did shoot , and of whom their curious casters of horos●ops , and malignant astrologues , did so often prognosticate , that his ende should not bee peaceable . fourthlle , wee are to weigh the strength and soliditie , of this great and growing empyre , to see if wee can explore , and finde out anie weaknesse , breach , or advantage to bee gained , since they are our capitall , and mightie enemies ; of whom it is not likelie , that long wee shall bee fred . al-be-it it be true , that it is not so much governed by the sword , as by graue and sage councell , which is never a whit diverted from their plots , and purposes , by the death of anie king , where-in standeth , no question , a chiefe point of the firmnesse and perpetuitie thereof . yet it cannot bee denyed , that for aboundance of money , for militarie discipline , and for great numbers of good souldiours , ( which three bee as the nerves , veines , and grosse bodie of the warres ) they too farre exceede their neighbours . alwayes , for the first , i say , that the light of reason sheweth mee , that the greater fortitude , doeth aye consist in the greater vnion , vis vnita fortior . there is no perfect strength , but in god , because there is nothing meerelie and simplie vnike , but god : the strength of nature , dependeth from her compaction , vnion , and sympathie of her well-conjoyned members . this made augustus to abandone and neglect the longinque provinces , beyond caucasus and taurus , and here in great britane : by mayntaynance where-of , they did receiue greater domage , than could bee countervalued by anie benefit to bee had there-fra in time of peace : saying , that as there were two defaultes , that made the naturall bodie imperfect ; that which was too small , and vnder a proportion naturall ; and againe , that which was aboue , too big , superstuous , and vnwealdie , called by the physitions , plethera , and endeiat even so it was in the civill bodie of the state , and there-fore did hee recommend to his successor , the limitation of the empyre vnited and consolidated within the marches of euphrates , danubius , and the westerne occean : forbearing to haue more care of the most remote and disjoynted provinces , which did not other , but teach the discipline militare , to barbarous nations , who were ignorant of it : where-vpon sayeth tacitus , longa oblivio britanniae etiam in pace , consilium id augustus vocavit , maxime tiberius . henrie king of castile , who died anno 1217 , without children , having two sisters , of whom the elder had beene married to lewes the eight of france , the youngest to alphonsus , king of leon in spaine : the castilians , by publicke parliament , did declare the youngest to the crowne of castile ; albeit against their law , yet convenient in the nature of things , ( sayde they ) seeing castile and leon , were cosines , and easilie did incorporate : they had one language , and manners nothing different , where-as france was naturallie divided from them by the mounts pirenees , of diverse languages , and discrepant manners , thinges difficill to bee vnited vnder one king. of examples of this kynde , the histories bee full , of princes and states , who stryving to possesse thinges farre removed , and dis-joyned from them , and disconvenient in nature , albeit their titles to them were just , yet after manie yeares enjoying of thē with much warre & trouble , they haue bene in end forced to quite them , being things altogether improfitable , a● the english of aquitane and guyen , the french of naples , the venetians of pisa , and some territories of genua , the germane emperour of some cities in italie : of all which they haue nothing this day , but the burials of their predecessours : in which respect , ( to returne to the purpose ) i may say of the spanyard , that it is not all gold , that glistereth : his great empyre is patched , of things dismembred , discommodious , and disconvenient in nature : hee hath navarre divided by the pirenees in part , and naturallie incorporate to the mightie kingdome of france : hee hath milan divided by the alpes , naples by both those , and by the apemmie too , and both but members of the bodie of italie : flaunders separated by interjection of france and switzerland ; the indees , by the great occean ; that if wee shall consider all the mightiest monarkes , wee shall finde none so weake and obnoxious in that behalfe : so farre , that it is more easie for france , england , holland , and denmarke , to put into spaine 50000 souldiours , than for spaine it selfe , to transport thither from their owne provinces 20000. againe , kings are set aboue their people , as the sunne aboue the earth , and seas , who draweth vp the moistures , where-with hee doeth partlie feed his owne flames , and partlie converteth them in raines ▪ to refresh the seas , and nowrish the earth : yet it is thought , that hee beholdeth his provinces often-times as clowds without raine ; hee draweth nothing from them , but glorious and airie titles of ambition : yea , hee must goe search the bellie of the earth , vnder another hemispheare , to sucke the vapours that must entertaine them : for if it were not by his treasures of the indees , it is judged , that hee were not able to brooke them . the yeare of their last pacification with holland , i did heare into brusels , by some of his entire counsellours , that since the first entrie of those vvarres , hee had spended of his proper fiances , aboue the rents of flaunders , 60 millions . i did heare about that same tyme , at naples and milan , by those of good intelligence in his affaires , that his whole revenewes there were morgadged , and that hee was greatlie indebted aboue ; and that hee was often-tymes so scarced of moneyes , that at antwerpe , genu● , and other bankes , hee did pay more than thirtie for the hundreth : which inconveniences doe all result from this , that his provinces are not contiguous , nor incorporate . and yet , it being so , wee are not to vilipende our enemies , no , even those provinces doe bring notable increase to his grandour ; they are as the heads or hearts of the countreyes where they lye ; they are most fertile , flowrishing , and rich for themselues ; and vpon extraordinarie necessities , able to advance to him infinite summes of money : planted they are , to the full , with industrious people : they are the seminaries of his milice , which doe breede vnto him good store of wittie counsellours , skilfull commanders , and braue souldiours . and how-so-ever they yeelde nothing to his coffers , yet the vice-rayes and governours sent thither , ( who commonlie are of his nearest parentage ) they doe loade them-selues with ritches , by the mechanicke tyrannies that they are permitted to exercise : and at the ende of their three yeares , which is the period of their reigne , they doe returne to spaine , as clogged bees , with honey to their hyves : which i confesse to bee of as great importance and profite to him , as if those did come directlie to his owne coffers ; for why ? a great monarch hath not so good a treasure , as trafficable countreyes , and subjects vertuous , and full of vvealth : for then doe moneyes abound , and people doe serue their prince in offi●es of peace , or vvarre , with contentment and splendor both . but if an avaritious prince doe studie to collect and amasse ritch●s to lay in store , by too much pressing of his subjectes , then they are discowraged from their trades , the fruites where-of they are not suffered to enjoy , vertue decayeth , that should enritch the countrey , and the cowrage of men fayleth , when time of vvarre doeth come : so that the best politickes that haue beene , holde , that the ritches of mightie kings , are not so much to bee esteemed , by their ordinarie rents , as by the extraordinarie meanes they haue to lift moneyes vpon great necessitie : of the which meanes , that prince doeth robbe him-selfe , who maketh his subjects poore , to fill his coffers . and they doe thinke , that as ritch was lewes the twelft of france , whose yearlie rent ▪ did not exceede one million , and an halfe , as francis the first , vnder whom it arryved at three ; or henrie the second , who doubled that , or yet the third , who did multiplie it to ten millions . those provinces of flaunders , being courteou●●e ruled by charles the fift , and by his sonne philip , with more moderation , after the returne of the duke de alva , they are found in the histories to haue advanced willingl●e to those two kings , in the space of nine yeares , twentie-three millions of crownes , which made them to bee called the northerne indees of the saide empyre ; and which they could not possiblie haue done , if hee had lifted grosse yearlie rents from them . so that the prince , who doeth thus tender his people , is saide to haue his treasures more sure in the custodie of his subjects , than if they were collected to his coffers . for as they wryte , hardlie can treasures bee saved in the hands of princes , even in tyme of peace , by reason of so manie occasions as they embrace to disperse them , to the splendor of their courts , their bountie to their favorites , publicke and popular showes , employment of ambassadours vpon light causes , which perhaps had not beene taken notice of , if the coffers had beene emptie , and such like : or it may bee ( say they ) that aboundance of present moneyes doeth a-wake ambition and pryde , more than is expedient for their prosperitie , and quiet of their people . and it is even a difficill thing of it selfe , to keepe thinges that are much desired , and of manie , namelie , hard to great kinges , vpon whose bountie so manie greedie and importune suters doe depende and hing ; difficilis magni custodia census . or if a temperate and prudent prince , can saue them from all these , and leaue them to his successour , yet seldome doe we find in the stories , that they haue bene converted to anie happie vse . tiberius the emperour , left behind him 67 millions , and his successour devoured them in one yeare . domitian , and antonius caracalla , did consume at their pleasures and ryot , the treasures of vespasian , and of septimius severus . cyrus left 50 millions of golden crownes : his enemie did carrie them : darius left 80 millions : alexander the great , did spend them . sardanapalus left 40 to his enemies . pope iohn the 22 , did leaue 33 millions to the avarice of his successours , nephewes , and favorites : stephen , king of bosna , had his skinne fleede from his bodie , by mahomet the second , because hee did not employ his treasures ▪ to the safetie of him-selfe . david ( as wee finde , 1. chron. last chap. ) left behinde him 120 millions , ( which was the greatest treasure ever heard of ) not to the arbitrement or appetites of his successour , but by the speciall appointment of god , to the building of the temple . farther , wee may draw an argument from an article of the law of god , deut. 17 , where kings are forbidden to multiplie silver and gold to them-selues , either for taking away the occasions of aggravations and imposts on subjects , or of excessiue prodigalitie of their courts , or pryde of moving vnjust and vnlawfull warres , or to invite them to employ the superplus of their yearlie rents , to present workes of pietie , or charitie , or advancement of the common-wealth , one way or other . augustus did furnish great summes of money to the people , without interesse , sayeth suetonius : quoties ex damnatorum bonis pecunia superflueret , vsum ejus gratuitum iis qui cavere in duplum possent indulsit : to those of meane and sober estate , who were able to set cautioners for the double of the principall . and of the emperour alexander severus , sayeth lampridius , foenus publicum trientarium exercuit , & pauperibus plerisque sine usuris pecunias dedit ad agros emendos , ●eddendas paulatim de fructibus : that is , foure for the 100 , to those of middle & reasonable estate , and to the poore , without interesse . and of antoninus pius , iulius capitolinus doth affirme the same . so that it hath beene thought by manie , that treasures reserved in the handes of princes , bee but like cisterns , and reserues of water , which may be soone exhausted , by daylie taking from them , because they haue no fountaine : and againe , that the same being in the hands of the people , exposed to daylie exchange and traffique , is like vnto a running river , whose source cannot bee dryed vp . as cornes doe not yeelde encrease that are locked in g●rnels ; but the seede dispersed through the ground , is the thing that doeth multiplie ; so are the moneyes dispersed in popular trades , onelie fruitfull . neither doe i alleadge anie of these , as if kings , and speciallie great ones , must not haue royall and magnificke rents : for it is not possible for vs , who bee private subjects , to know how manie necessarie occasions doe daylie occurre to them , of great and vast expenses ; neither must wee bee curious for that part . that princes are to liue with that pompe and dignitie , which is requisite to conserue majestie , that wee doe know and see : that they must bee at hudge charges , by sending out , and accepting in of ambassadours , that wee also see : that they must giue pensions and fees to counsellours , statesmen , noble-men , captaines , and serviceable gentle-men , that wee see : lyke-wise , the exorbitant debursment vvhich is in warre . but vvhat secret bountie must bee bestowed through the vvorlde , amongst sure friendes , in the courtes of other princes , by which kynd of practising they doe often-times best assure their affaires , when all men thinke them in greatest perill : that , and manie such , wee doe not know , neither must wee enquyre : but when after their death , the histories of their lyues come to bee devulgate , then wee finde and reade , what these policies , of having latent friends abroad , haue imported to the greatest kings . doe not wee reade of king francis the first , that to almanes , italians , english , spanish , switzers , he payed during all his life-time , great yearelie pensions , vnknowne to the world for the tyme ? and of lewes the eleventh , who was a sort ( i may say ) of sorcerer , or enchanter , in that kynd of subtiltie , to make mercinarie the counsels of neighbour-princes : so farre , that there was none of them free from his corruption : by which doing , hee did render himselfe a miracle to the world , for dexteritie of wit , to dissolue the strongest leagues of his enemies , without the drawing of a sword : hee did pay by publicke paction to king edward the fourth of england , 50000 crownes yearelie : but with-all , secretlie to his counsellours , and domestickes , 17000 , also yearelie ; which ( sayeth the wryter of the historie ) was the truest meanes of the two , for the continuance of that pacification . in consideration of these necessarie and weightie charges , ancientlie subjects were wont to giue freelie to their princes , and frequentlie a portion of money , that they called oblations . augustus did leaue behinde him in testament , eleven millions , to bee distributed amongst the people of rome : where-into hee did subjoyne this testimonie of the mutuall benevolence of the romanes towards him , saying , that with-in few yeares preceeding his death , hee had gotten of voluntarie donatiues , to the availe of 35000 golden crownes . but now-a-dayes , subjects haue for borne these voluntarie gratuities in time of publicke indigence to their princes , by reason that some avaricious kings haue preassed to convert , the same to an annuall and ordinarie duetie , as philip le long of france , having in his ●necessities granted by his subjects the first impost vpon the salt , of foure denieres on the pound ; with this condition , to stand but vntill his debts were defrayed . yet philip de valois there-after , did incorporate the same to the perpetuall domaine of the crowne , saying , that there could not bee a more competent thing to come vnder tollage , than salt , where-of all sort of people , poore and ritch , young and olde , had the necessarie and daylie vse . or as king philip the second , ( of whom i haue spoken ) having of before annexed to the crowne patrimonie , the third part of the ecclesiasticall rents ; yet for the support of the warres , where-with hee was greatlie charged , had granted to him by the prelates , a certaine summe of money also of the two-part , which they called subsidie , on condition to stand but some few yeares : hee also did perpetuate the same to the crowne . but to returne to the purpose of cases of weaknesse to bee found into the empyre of spaine , wee cannot thinke , but , to bee feared of all , and hated of the greatest part , is a weaknesse , if it were of the mightiest that ever haue beene : passimus custos diaturnitatis metus , sayeth the great statesman cicero , that feare can never make diuturnitie of greatnesse . and all men know it to bee true , that the spanyard is feared of all : i proue it shortlie , by the church of rome , ( the iesuites excepted ) hee is feared vniversallie , to whom hee is most nearlie linked of anie forraigne amitis : ergo , much more by anie other neighbour-prince , or state , the trueth of mine antecedent , is showed by two famous and infallible testimonies ; one of the historie of the counsell of trent , where a man shall clearlie see , how this feare did make the sea apostolicke , directlie to oppose the grandour of charles the fift , where-of i haue alreadie discoursed . for the second , i take mee to cardinall baronio , the most learned and most sincere , that hath beene amongst them in these late ages , in his treatise written against the spanish vsurpation of the kingdome of sicile , where hee wryteth thus of philip the second , in whose dayes hee lived , in one place , sub vocabulo ( inquit ) monarchiae , praeter vnum monarcham , quod vn●m visibile caput ecclesiae est cognitum , aliud in monarchia siciliae obortum , pro monstro & ostento caput ecclesiae : that is to say , aboue one monarch over sicilia , who is the onlie one visible head of the church , having right vnto it , there is risen an other monstrous head and monarch of the same . and in another place there-after , ista sunt quae manus audax , ad sacrilegium prompt● , abstulit , à recitato papae diplomate : those things haue that bad and bolde-hand , readie to sacriledge rest from the papall title . this cardinall had an offer of the papall diademe , made him from philip the second , if hee would call in this opinion ; but did refuse it , preferring his conscience to what-so-ever palinodie . next , vnto the pope , the nearest neighbour allyed to him , is the french king , his brother in law , of whose daylie feares , and iealousies of the spanish ambition , i were ydle to treate heere , it being so well remarked of the world. since it is so with his most entire confederates , i neede not , neither i hope to call it in question , whether the other potentates , and states of christendome , doe much more feare him . therefore , leaving those , i come to try what probablie is the disposition of his owne people towards him . portugall is of all his thinges in spaine , of greatest importance , betwixt whom and the castilians , there hath beene from all antiquitie , not onlie neighbour emulation , but inveterate malice , and as it were , a fundamentall and naturall antipathie of myndes and manners , as their owne histories doe confesse . the heate where-of , no doubt , must bee greatlie encreased by this castilian tyrannie , so latelie and vnlawfulie throwne vpon them . there bee yet manie aliue there , who did spende their blood , to haue withstood that castilian pryde . it is an ordinarie speach of the portugals , to say , that the castilians bee worse th●n the moores , who did first inhabite castile . the portugals are sayde to bee descended of the gaules , their language approaching vnto the latine . the castilianes againe of the vandales , iewes , and moores , their accent annearing to the morasque ; where-of it is saide , that the castilians being amongst the turkes , are easilie induced to deny the christian fayth . and in this point appeareth to bee a noteable weaknesse of that empyre : portugall accoasting to the sea , so opportune and commodious for great navies , the people manie , and malicious against their conquerers , and having their sores yet open and quicke . to come to their other subjects , wee heare that the arragonees haue their myndes in like sort wounded , with the remembrance of the late conquest made of them , and to speake generallie , of all the nobilitie of spayne ; yea , even of those of castile it selfe . it hath beene ever so , that as thieues haue beene studious to provide backe-doores , so great noble-men vnder kings , in all ages haue wished , that some adjacent prince might bee in tearmes of emulation with their master , to whose protection they might haue recourse , in case at anie time they should happen to fall vnder their masters wrath , by their ambitious and insolent carriage : things familiar eneugh to potent subjects in everie countrey . now spaine , being as it is at this day , conjoyned vnder one crowne , in manner of an yland , where-fra the princes and lords there-of , cannot easilie with-draw them-selues in such a case , they are by that meanes brought vnder greater feare , slaverie , and subjection . when there were severall kingdomes in navarre , arrogone , and portugall , the castilian nobles vpon anie distraction , or variance with their king , did finde easie retract and protection , with some of these neighbour-princes , perhaps with more honour , and preferments than at home , by reason of neighbour iealousies and contention , the examples where-of , are most frequent in anie historie : as in our owne , wee finde , that before the vnion of great britane , it was more easie and secure for scottish noble-men , to offende their princes , and leape out from their obedience , having so neare a sanctuarie , in the hospitalitie and armes of england , by reason of neighbour distractions , than it is now , when their nearest refuge should bee spaine , or flanders . and as ancientlie that advantage did often a-wake the pryde of our great men , and giue way to rebellion , against their kings : so the solide incorporation that now is , hath put a brydle into the teeth of that kinde of ambition , that no stirre can bee heere to trouble a king , vnlesse it were , by generall revolt of the whole countrey , or receiving of forraigne armes with-in our bowels , and joyning with them . and as the supposed prowde and tyrannous governament of spaine , is thought to enstrange the hearts of their nobilitie from their king , and to make them more practizable to rebellions , if they should see the occasion faire ; so there is no doubt , but dure and rigorous governament , should even in this kingdome , or anie other else , produce the like consequences . al-wayes , the nobilitie of spaine , at this day , doeth want this sanctuarie of refuge , that the skurviest marshall is able to arrest the greatest of them : and now with much griefe they doe resent the effectes of that , which was prognosticated vnto them , when king charles the fift began to extende the wings of his domination ; for the which cause they did show them-selues notablie displeased with the conjunction of portugall , as don francisco de ivara , a noble man of castile , being ambassadour at paris , during the league , anno 1579 , hearing by a french gentle-man , newlie come from africke , that the moores were in feare , having intelligence that king philip did put together great forces , for to conquer them , vnder pretext to revenge the slaughter of don sebastian , king of portugall . ( for so did philip make the world belieue , when hee did conveane his armies against portugall ) but the saide francis did answere this gentle-man , saying , it is well , that the moores bee in feare , but it is better that your master , the king of france vnderstand the intention of that armie , to bee against portugall ; which if hee doe conquere , your master , and the pope , and all the princes of europe may lay compt , by length of time , to bee his tributaries . which speach doeth well enough demonstrate the aversnesse of the spanish nobilitie , from the fearfull greatnesse of his empyre . the state ecclesiasticke indeede doeth more affect him , yet i haue tolde you , that hee doeth skumme the fat of their p●t : but of this weaknesse , which wee gather , of discontented humours of their nobilitie , there is no advantage to bee gayned by secret practises , because of the terrour of the inquisition . his iesuites , and perfidious ambassadours , get libertie with other princes , to traffique & to traytor at their pleasure ; whereof wee haue late experiences to our owne coastes , but none dare adventure that kynde of doing in spayne . al-wayes , out of those it may bee surelie enough presumed of the nobilitie , ( namelie , of their late conquests of spaine ) that when they should see a puissant enemie amongst them , the fyre of their indignation should breake foorth so much more violentlie , by how much it hath bene long & masterfullie suppressed amongst the ashes of their servitude , sayeth scip. african . in that oration to the senate , for sending of forces in africke , during hanniballes being in italie , non speraverat hanniball fore , ut tot populi in italia ad se deficerent , post cannensem dedem , quanto minus quicquam in africa firmum a● stabile sit carthaginensibus , infidis sotiis , gravibus dominis ? hanniball did not looke for so great revolting of people with-in italie , from the honest and generous romanes , after his victorie at cannas : how much lesse can things bee firme and sure in africke , to the carthagenians , a nation treacherous , and vntrustie to their associates , and tyrannous to their subjects ? which saying howe properlie it may bee applyed to the present purpose , anie man doeth see it . next , it is thought , that there bee small store of armes in spaine , the numbers of cities and people considered ; partlie because they goe for the furnishing of his warres abroade , and partlie because it is not thought expedient by his counsell , that multitudes but latelie conquered , whose myndes are yet suspected , should bee armed at their pleasure : remembering well vvhat had almoste befallen king philip the third , if the moores , called n●vos christianos , ( vvho then had a neare designe agaynst him ) had not beene suddenlie disarmed , and cast foorth of the countrey . moreover , the prowde and tyrannous nature of the spanyard , is no small point of weaknesse : for why ? the lord god doeth humble the prowde , and punish the oppressour ▪ tolluntur in altum ut lapsum graviora cad●nt . i doe not onelie speake of that dominant and monarchicall pryde , mayntayned by so manie cruelties , perfidies , and impieties bore-saide ; but vniversallie of the verie vulgar pryde , chiefelie of the castilians . even as the fumes of strong wyne , doe inebtiate , and make gidd●e the braines of man , transporting them from the centre of their place ; so doeth pryde blynde and confuse the vnderstanding : ( and as seldome prudence doeth accompanie youth-head ) even so is wisdome rarelie conjoyned with too much prosperitie . neither shall it bee out of purpose to speake a few wordes of the spanish nature in generall . they are extreamelie melancholious , which everie ●ot of their carriage doeth verifie , their graue apparell , their sober dyet , their dauncing , their musicke , their hunting of buls , their personall march , their austere phisnomie , obscure colour , vnpopular presentation ; where-of everie thing is disgustfull to m●n of other nations . melancholie is a tenacious and vis●uous humor , where-from proceedeth their slowe and lingering deliberations , the longsomnesse of their actions , their constant prosecution of their enterpryses , their obstinate adhering to auncient customes , abhorring imitation of forraigne manners , their superstition in religion , their silence from discourse , and reservednesse from conversation ; which indeede doe make them , being contemplatiue , more capable of solide knowledge . they goe heere and there , through neighbour-countreyes , but never procure familiaritie of friendship with anie man : yea , there is small interchange of kindnesse or courtesie amongst them-selues , because , attour beeing thus concentricke and contracted with-in them-selues , they doe make profession of punctualitie , which is contrarie to friendship , that in its owne nature is open and communicable , liberall of discourse and complements , and of steadable actions , thinges opposed to those who stand vpon pointes , measure their paces , and number their wordes , fearing to perill their reputation for a syllabe more or lesse ; as if they durst not adventure to goe without the confines of their melanch●lie : where-as by anie experience , one would thinke , that punctualitie is not onelie enemie to friendship , but contrarie to great actions , because what convenience can bee betwixt greatnesse , and that which is small ? a point ( as everie man knoweth ) doeth verie nearlie approach to nothing , and punctualitie , to nullitie . therefore is it , that hee who standeth vpon points in businesses , often-times attaineth nothing ; which , men say , was the chiefe reason of their bad successes against england , and algiers , where the designes of their enterpryses were founded vpon such subtilties , moments , and points of time , as was not possible for anie generall to obserue , except him who could controll tyme , and make the sunne fixed , as to ioshua , or retrograde , as it was vnto ezechias . lastlie , to come without the confines of spaine , to consider what trust they haue with their next neighboures , if men of experience should enter to dispute , on what side it were most advantagious for enemie-forces to enter vpon spaine , one might ●ay , that even navarre were not vnfit , al-be-it it bee vnlawfullie possessed by them , yet those are the naturall subjects of the french king , and there should bee found at this day , the grand-children of them who did lose their lyues and goods in the service of his predecessours , against the tyrannie of spaine , and who them-selues would vnder-goe willinglie the like , to haue him restored to bee their king. adjacent to navarre , are the countreyes of france , whose bravest men doe even now carrie into their faces , the honourable seat , and marks of the bloodie woundes which they did couragiouslie sustaine , when the spanyard did employ all his forces to extinguish the glorie of that nation . wee neede goe no farther , for if wee should travell to the worlds ende , wee shall never arryue there , where they are not either feared , or hated , or both . now , since so it is , that this catholicke ambition aimeth over all , everie man seeth that it doeth require a strong opposition , the meanes where-of , and easiest possibilities , is not an vnfit contemplation for vs of this yle , who for the present seeme to bee most threatned by the same . it cannot bee opposed , but by warres : and these are not to bee wished . al-be-it god and nature haue their good endes in warres , as god to purge the sinnes where-with a land is defiled , and chieflie of the gentrie , by pryde , oppression , and lust : and nature againe , to cut , as it were , and crop the over-grouth of the civill state , when people doe multiplie aboue the proportiō of the countreys means ▪ yet wee are not to desire warres , but rather wish the sending out of multitudes to neighbour-warres ; or by transportation of colonies , where wee can finde anie possibilitie to plant them ▪ vvhich is the most laudable and lawfull meanes of the two , for the disburdening of populous countreys ; because warres are never without too much crueltie , and effusion of innocent blood : yea , even where the pretences , and claymes of princes and states seeme to bee most just , the grosse of their armies are brought to the shambles , and innocentlie murdered ; at least , they are guiltlesse of the ambition which did moue the warre , al-be-it it pleased god to punish them that way , for other sinnes , and to purge the land there-from : but by transportation of colonies , god did people the earth , as the sacred historie showeth : nature doeth the same ; for are wee not all of this occidentall worlde descended of the trojan , aegyptian , or other forraigne colontes ? nature hath imprinted this politicke instinct into beastes : when the eagle hath taught her young ones to flye , and catch their prey , shee doeth no more admit them to her nest , but dryveth them away : and if shee finde anie one laysie , and vnwilling to labour for it selfe , shee killeth it . the bees constraine their brood , when they once can flie abroad , to seeke new habitationes . all well-governed states haue followed the same , there being no surer rule in policie , than the imitation of nature , which things i neede not heere to discourse , being of daylie practise in the world , so notorious in histories , and latelie so well set downe , by a vertuous and worthie gentle-man of our countrey , sir william al●xander , now secretarie for scotland , in his treatise for plantation of nova scotia ; of which enterpryze , and of all such like , i must say thus farre , that they are not onlie vertuous , and noble , but in a degree heroicke , aboue ordinarie vertue , and nobilitie : and for this assertion , i giue my reason thus ; god did frame the world to the ende , that by length of time it might bee peopled , and that no corner there-of might bee emptie of holie altars , priests , and people , to celebrate his worship : so that hee that putteth his handes to such workes , for plantation of countreyes disinhabited or desarted , hee doeth second the first intentions of god toward the world , and doth puisse the course of nature , so farre as in him lyeth , to her destinate perfection : and al-be-it this braue enterpryze of the fore-saide gentle-man , bee some-what with-stood , by that vnluckie genius of our nation , ever esteemed to bee averse from such publicke vertues , witnessed by manie particulars in our dayes , namelie , by the bad successe of the late yron works , long gone about by inexhaustable paines of another great spirit amongst vs ; and falling in the ende , for want of concurrance : not-the-lesse , let not vertue want her due , to bee honoured of men , sat magnum est voluisse magna : and seeing no nation hath greater cause than wee , to try the fortune of transplantation , let vs bee a little ashamed to bee so contrarie to this designe of nova scotia , that wee doe not onelie refuse to embarke our selues into it , but wee seeme to haue an heart-sore , that his majestie should conferre the marks of honour on such as doe joyne therevnto ; while as wee cannot deny him to haue the more high and noble mynde , who doeth it , than hee who refuseth , by as farre as hope is more heroicke than despare . rome was not builded in one day , and manie glorious works haue beene founded vpon doubtfull and difficill beginnings : although manie of vs doe holde it an ydle project , yet vnderstanding men haue seene and contemplate the countrey , who intende to returne and remaine there-in , certaine , it is more ydle , and more vnreverend with-all , to thinke , that god hath placed a region vnder a degree so temperate , which hee will not suffer to bee peopled by tyme. al-be-it men haue often builded houses , and never dwelt into them , much lesse haue plenished them ; it is not so with god , whose endes are infallible . for my part , i doe holde , that that insearchable wisdome hath framed no part of this whole globe , which is not capable of man , and sufficient for the mayntaynance of his lyfe . but as touching the nature and condition of warre , such are the distresses that come by warres , that even the best fortunes of the victors doe seldome contrapoyse them : in pace causas & merita spectari , ubi bellum ingruat innocentes ac impios juxta cadere , sayeth one . what warre was there ever in the world , which was not damnable , for desolation of cities , exterminion of noble houses , spoyle of poore people , rape of women , violation of churches , and of holie things ? and happie is that warriour , whose sword hath not beene defiled with christian blood. augustus , that mightie emperour , did abhorre warre , and adore peace : his successour tiberius , did arrogate to him , as the greatest of all his glories , when hee had pacified anie tumult , rather by practising , than by warre . the emperour adrian , did compare peace to argent content , and his forces were most strong , and when hee could quyer his bordering nations vvith peaceable wayes : jactabat palam ( sayeth aurelius victor ) plus se ocio adeptum quam armis caeteros : hee bragged openlie , that hee had done more in peace , and quietnesse , then his neighbours had by armes . i know farther , that when god hath brought a state to a sort of maturitie , and perfection , that it is , as compacted and limited naturallie ; as presentlie is this monarchie of great britane , consolidate with-in it selfe , and confyned with-in the occean , that then it is good , to feare the instabilitie of thinges . and seeing what-so-ever thing is vnder the moone , yea , the moone it selfe , is subject to ordinarie changes ; it must bee an heroicke , and more than an humane , yea , a divine worke , the mayntayning of great kingdomes to great length of tyme : and this is not done , but by a prudent warinesse and moderation , when states are once come to a maturitie for reasonable greatnesse , or for antiquitie , as this kingdome ( i say againe ) of great britane . it is written of scipio , that when hee had ruinated carthage , and destroyed numantia , the two competitors , and emulators of rome , then hee did not so much wish the farther increase , as the continuation of the romane state : so farre , that beeing himselfe censor a whyle there-after , and making the lustrum , at the pubilcke sacrifice , the master of their religious ceremonies , according to their forme , hee prayed for the daylie growing of their empyre . scipio did correct and change the style of that invocation : satis inquit bonae ac magnae sunt res romanae , itáque deos precor vt eas perpetuo incolumes servent , ac protinus in publicis tabulis ad hunc modum carmen emendari voluit , sayth the historie : hee would haue the gods to be invocated only for the continuation of the empyre , because it was alreadie great enough : and hee would haue that phrase of prayer to remaine there-after in the bookes publicke of their priests . in which case , i say , it were madnesse for vs of this yle to cry for vvarres , out of pryde , or for extention of empyre . the mightiest kings of england ( as i haue before touched ) did finde their forraigue , ambition but troublesome and fruitlesse , that after the possession of manie ages , they were contented to quy●e the things that they and their predecessours had lawfullie , justlie , and long brooked in france . but now it is one thing to wish vvarre , and another thing to embrace tymouslie a most necessarie and inevitable vvarre . omne bellum necessarium est justum , said that captaine of the volsques , in livius , when the romanes had determined to conquer his countrey . and no man can deny it that vvarre which is necessarie , is just ; because wee defyne necessarie , that which can bee no other-wyse . the volsques behooved to quyte their countreyes libertie , or fight with the romanes . againe , that vvarre which is mooved to procure peace , and is defensiue , it is a just vvarre : god and nature doe warrand that . so , i say , for ought i see , wee are to embrace a vvarre most just in all these three respectes ; and i show it by this argument : to doe that which may stop the comming against our countrey , a mightie enemie , whose designe to conquer vs is hereditarie to him ; it is both necessarie , defensiue , and tendeth to purchase peace : but to make vvarre to such an enemie , within some part of his owne dominions , is to impeach and stop his comming : ergo , the mooving of vvarre against him , is just , defensiue , and tendeth to procure peace . the major of this syllogisme is so cleare , that it needeth no probation : the light of reason doeth show it . the minor is verified by the ordinarie experience of all ages gone , and histories bee full of examples of the same , where-of i will alleadge , for brevities cause , but three or foure , of the most famous , and most frequentlie cited by everie man , vpon this kynde of theame : the noble yland of sicilia , seated betwixt rome and carthage , ( the two mightie emulators for the empyre of the vvorld ) was long stryven for , and often-times assaulted by them both , as a thing that would downe-swey the ballance of their emulation , and draw after it vniversalitie of dominion . amongst others , agathocles , king there-of , beeing hardlie besiedged with-in his towne of syracuse , by the carthagenians , hee did closelie convoy him-selfe foorth , and went with an armie into africke : by meanes where-of , they were forced to lift the siedge , and turne home for defence of their owne countrey . which exploit scipio afri● . did object in these termes to fabius maxintus , who went about in the senate , to hinder the sending of an armie with scipio against carthage , during hanniball his beeing in italie : car ergo agathoc●e●● sy●● . regem 〈◊〉 sicilia punico bello vexaretur , transgressum in hanc eandem africam avertisse eo bell●●n , vnde venerat , non rofers . there-after the romanes perceiving that amilcar , the father of hanniball , was likelie to adjoyne sicile to carthage : therefore , to prevent that a conquering people should not spreade over their armes to italie , they resolved to make vvarre with them in sicil●a it selfe . from the same ground , the carthag●nian● , after the fulling of sicile , into the handes of the romanes , fearing lyke-wyse their comming into africke , they did sende hanniball , with strong forces into italie , to keepe them at home : where-of sayeth the same scipio , in the same place and to the same purpose , sed quid veteribus externisque exemplis opus est majus praesentiusque ●llum esse exemplum quant hanniball potest . from the same ground , yet the romanes , by sending of scipio to make vvarre in africke , made hanniball constrainedlie to bee called out of italie ; quasi eodem telo saepius retorto , ( sayeth one ) as by a naturall , necessarie , and ordinarie meane , for keeping of anie state peaceable , and free from enemie-invasion , namelie , of the weaker , from the more mightie . for even in lyke manner , when the great persian monarchs did often afflict the weake and dismembered estates of greece , gaping at length after the conquest of all , agesilaus , king of lacedemon pitying his countreys calamit●e , and to divert those mightie kinges from greece , he did put him-selfe with a maine armie into the midst of persia , where hee did so daunt the pryde of xerxes , that it behooved him to practise the same policie , for liberation of his kingdomes , from forraigne powers , hee sent 10000 great pieces of golde , bearing the image of an archer : on the one side ( the current stampe then of his coyne ) to corrupt ( as it did ) the orators of athens and thebes , and concitate the people , to make warre to lacedemon , in absence of their king , and countreyes forces : where-vpon the ephorie were compelled to recall agesilaus , who in his returning , saide , that 10000 persian arcbers had chased him out of asia . againe , of the lyke practise to this of xerxes , with athens and thebes , for mooving and keeping of warres in enemie-countreyes , that wee may remaine within our selues free from their invasion , wee reade in the histories of scotland , that the renowned prince , charles magne , having an holie and christian resolution , to prosecure ( as hee did ) warres against the barbarians : and finding the english begun in their prosperitie , to crosse the seas , and to molest the borders of his kingdome of france , hee sent ambassadours to aebains , king of scotland , to negotiate with him a perpetuall league , in these termes , that when-so-ever the english should molest either of their countreyes , the other should moue warre to england , and so constraine them to call home their armies . which ( after great controversies of opinions amongst the scottish nobilitie , and frequent orations of the french ambassadours ) was finallie concluded , and stood to , by their successours , in all tyme following ; with often mutuall advantages against their common enemie . for late examples , i haue alreadie tolde you , how king philip made warres in france , and intended against england , and that to the ende they should retire their forces from portugall : hanniball did ever affirme , namelie to king antiochus , that it was impossible to vanquish the romanes , but at home in italie , as the same livius doeth testifie . now i thinke yee will come to the hypothesis , and put mee to prooue , that the spanyard is that mightie enemie , who intendeth to trouble this kingdome . that hee is mightie a great deale aboue that , which wee would wish , i haue alreadie showed , and that hee is our enemie , not onelie by actions intended , or projected , but diverslie alreadie attempted , these are the circumstances , which doe qualifie it : first he is enemie to all christian states , by the vniversalitie of his ambition : ergo , also to vs ; secondlie , his grandsire , philip the second , did once obtaine a matrimoniall right to the crowne of england , by his marriage with queene marie . thirdlie , & a papall right , by excommunication of queene elizabeth . fourthlie , hee did set foorth a great armada , to haue reconquered it , as is before rehearsed . fyftlie , hee hath ever since , and as i thinke , doeth yet maintaine with-in it , a claudestine traffique of iesuites , and seminarie priests , to alienate the hearts of subjects from their naturall king , or to keepe them vmbragious , and suspended in myndes , vntill his better occasion . and i doe thinke , that besides ambition puissing him there-vnto , there bee no neighbour-states that hee so much feareth , by reason of their strong and skilfull navigation , as yee will heare heere-after more particularlie . but this king that nowe is in spayne , hath proceeded farther : hee hath reft , and taken away , the whole estate of the palatine , who is brother-in-law to his majestie , our soveraigne : and by that deede , hath made this warre to bee defensiue to vs : non enim nobis solum nati , &c. wee are not onelie borne to our selues , but our prince , our parents , our children , our friendes , common-wealth ; and religion : everie of these haue their owne part and interesse in vs , and all these together doe concurre to move vs to so just a warre : so far , that if that prince palatine were not linked to vs by so near allyance , and by communion of one fayth ; yet , tum tua res agitur paries dum proximus ardet , the propulsion of a fearfull enemie approaching nearer to our coastes , and seeking to do mineire over all , is sufficient enough to make all the braue heartes of christendome to boyle : besides these , hee hath put vpon vs intollerable indignities , in a verie high degree : hee hath made vs , by false , and persidious promises , to bee as indifferent beholders of his conquest of the pal●tinate : yea , more , to facilitate his engresse there-to , hee hath made vs to seeke peace , perhaps , to haue beene accepted vpon disadvantagious conditions , and hath refused the same . and hee who refuseth peace , by necessarie consequence , doeth intende warre . the marriage of our king , hath beene agitated by him , and illuded : and hee who doeth containe so neare friendship of neighbours , appearinglie intendeth to bee their superiour . and so hee hath left vs no hope of peace , but in armes : therefore wee may conclude with that captaine of the volsques , of whom i spake before , iustum est bellum , quibus est necessarium : & pia arma , quibus nulla nis● 〈◊〉 armi● relinquitur spes : their warre is just , whose warre is necessarie , and their armes bolie , to whom there is no hope relinquished but in armes . since then i holde it granted , that of necessitie there must bee warres , it followeth to consider the forces to bee employed there-to , and those must either bee properlie our owne , or of conjoyned confederates . wee are bred into , and doe inhabite , a northerne region , naturallie generatiue of great multitudes , of more bellicole kynde , and of more robust bodies , than those of the southerne climates : and al-be-it wee haue for the first face , but small opinion of our vulgar sort , because an hard condition of living hath some-what dejected their hearts , during these late vnfruitfull yeares : yet there bee manie strong persons of men amongst them , who pressed for the milice , and once made acquainted there-with , and being fred from the povertie and basenesse of their carriage , they will more gladlie follow the warres , than the plough . wee haue numbers of braue gentle-men , wanting vertuous employments , and , for the most part , necessarie meanes . wee reade in our countrey annals , how our auncient kings did lose in battels , yea , and frequent battels , ten , or twentie , or thirtie thousand men , when scotland was not so populous . what should wee then doubt , nor wee bee able now to make great numbers ? and that is alwyse easilie tryed , by rolles of weapon-showes , if they bee diligentlie noted : and so what doe wee lacke of warre , but armour , discipline and mayntaynance ? and certainlie , it is strange , that in this great appearance of warres , the two or three yeares by-gone , no order hath bene given , to bring able men vnder discipline . wee heare , and haue read , that even in spaine , when the countrey-youthes of vulgar kinde are in-rolled for the milice , and brought to cities for discipline , they doe looke as most vile and abject slaues : if one haue sockes , hee wanteth shooes ; and manie doe want both : if another haue breaches , hee wanteth the doublet : pitifull bodies , and our of countenance : but when they bee exercised during two moneths , and once put into apparell , then they are seene of most haughtie carriage , and to walke as captaines in the streets . why then are wee not to expect the lyke of our people , if lyke paines were taken ? and if in everie shyre 〈◊〉 men expert in the souldierie were set a-worke to in-roll , and bring vnder capt●ines , and discipline , those who were most fitting for the warres , no doubt but our basest clownes should grow both to civill conversation and cowrage . there hath never beene yet anie great state carelesse of the militarie seminaries , not in times of most solemne and sworne peace . as for allyance , leagues , or confederacio in warres , they are indeede not onelie necessarie , but as i haue saide before , even naturall to bee , for the safetie of smaller states , or princes , from the tyrannie and violence of the mightier : but with-all , they haue beene often-times subject to one of two great inconveniences , either to pryde , for preferment , or prioritie of place during warres : where-thorow what dangers did ensue in that famous confederacie for the battell of lepanto , because of emulation betwixt don iohn de austria , and vinieri , the admirall of venice , the storie doeth beare it at length : and al-be-it it pleased god in his mercie , to favour the present action , yet the rememberance of that contestation , did debrash all farther prosecution of that glorious and holie enterpryse , and vtterlie dissolue that christian vnion . neyther is it a new thing , al-though i bring this late example for it : the romanes in their beginnings , being confederate with the latines , in a league offensiue , and defensiue , the latines did challange paritie of governement : si societas aequa●io juris est ( sayeth livius ) cur non omnia aequantur , cur non alter ab latinis consul datur , vbi pars vivium , ibi & imperij pars ? tum consul rom ▪ audi iupiter baec scelera , perigrinos consules , &c. if societie bee an equalitie of things , why are not all things made equall to vs ? and why should not one of the two consuls bee a latine ? where-vnto the romanes did answere , by attesting iupiter , that it was an impious demande , to haue a stranger consullover them . or againe , leagues are subject to fraudfull desertion of some of the sociation , in time of greatest danger : wherof the world is full of daylie experience . i will remember that of lodowicke duke of milan ▪ who vpon malice against the aragones of naples , did procure king charles the eight of france , ( pretending some title to naples ) to bring a great armie into italie , & joyned with him , a confederacie of divers of his friends in italie : but seeing the said king , to passe thorow so fortunatelie , and to behaue him-selfe as a conquerour in manie of their townes , and to enter peaceablie in naples , without that anie teeth were showed against him , as the king returned from naples home-ward , the same duke did negoti●te a league of the greatest potētates against him , who did constrayne him to fight a battell at forum novum , vnder the apennine , where hee did hardlie escape with his lyfe , although hee over-threwe them . i haue tolde you alreadie , how philip the second of spayne did desert don sebastian of portugall , and betray him by a league : but of all examples for this purpose , that is most remarkable , of the confederacie drawne by charles of burgundie , with the whole princes of france , agaynst lewis the eleventh ; where-vnto they were so bended , and willing , that they did call it , bellum pro rep. a warre vnder-gone for the common-wealth . which confederacie , that subtill king did dissolue , as clowds dispersed with the wind , before they could grow to raine : where-vpon , sayeth the wryter of the historie , de comines , that hee holdeth one partie stronger for him-selfe , who doeth command absolutelie over 10000 , than are ten confederates against him , al-be-it everie of them doeth command over 6000. to come to our purpose : there are as manie christian princes , and states , true enemies to the spanyard , as are able to devoure him , in two or three yeares , if it were possible to contract amongst them a confederacie , or league of salt : that is to say , which might endure without corruption , of fraude , or emulation . and therefore heere must i say , that all the actions belonging to a king , are of light importance , compared to this , to maturelie deliberate both of his owne forces , and of the trustinesse of confederates , before hee doe enterpryze vvare . alwyse , when wee take but a single view of our associates against spayne , wee should thinke it strange , why they may not stand vnited , beeing al-readie conjoyned , by vi●initie of neighbour-hood , by consanguinitie , affinitie , communion of one cause , against a common enemie , communion of one fayth : connected , i say , everie one of them , by diverse of these bandes , our soveraigne , the king of great britane , the french king , his brother-in-law , the king of denmarke , his vncle , the princes of germanie , all knit to the prince palatine , eyther in blood , in religion , or participation of one feare of the house of austria : the duke of savoy , who lyeth nearest to the thunders and threats of spayne , having a great part of his territories circumscribed by them : the venetians , who beholde his garrisons daylie vpon their frontiers , gaping for some good oportunitie of assault ; holland , and her estates , who haue beene so long protected , and as it were , fostered in the bosome of the crowne of england : now , who would not conjecture , that this tygers vvhelpe might bee surelie impailed amidst those mightie hunters ? and that it were easie for them to bring him to his latter sweate . i scorne heere to call in question , what invincible armies they might assemble by sea and land , sufficient to robbe him of all that hee hath : for it is thought , that if after the taking in of portugall , england , france , holland , and other confederates , had then put into it amongst them all , but 30000 men , with sufficient shipping , and munition , they had beene bastant to recover it , and king philip had beene forced to forbeare from the farther troubling of france or holland . and yet to treat this point of so great consequence , with candor and sinceritie , i finde , that men of great experience for warre , doe holde opinion contrarie to this , beeing of the mynde of king francis the first , who saide , that longsome vvarres , and small armies , served rather to exercise men in the artes militarie , than to daunt the enemie : and that without grosse armies , and quicke dispatch , it was not possible to compasse great enterpryses : saying with-all , that the maintainance of small armies , and longsome vvarres , was much more chargeable than the other . they tell vs , that the empyre of the turke beginneth to decline for his pretermission of two thinges , which his predecessours did obserue and follow : one , that hee goeth not in person , to bee over his armies , as they did : another , that they are not so numerous and grosse as they had them , and that light exploits , and often leading of small armies to and froe , doeth but teach the milice to his enemies , and spoyle his owne countreyes , thorow vvhich his souldiours so frequentlie doe passe . where-of they giue vs this example : amurat the third , kept vnder the commandement of his bussaes , a lingering vvarre , of more than twelue yeares , employing not verie great armies against the persian , vvhere-by , al-be-it hee conquered great partes of his countreyes , yet vvere his losses knowne to bee greater , because hee spended the flowre of his forces , of young souldiours , and lustie horses , 200000 horses , and more than 500000 men , from the beginning to the ende , and made desolate the countreyes that hee tooke in : so farre , that osman bassa alone ( besides what vvas done by others ) did cast to the ground , and burne , 100000 houses , besides that the persians , their enemies , during that great length of tyme , did become more skilfull warriours than themselues . the spanish warres against holland , zealand , and friezland , haue vvrought the same effects . agesilaus , king of lacedemonia , in his longsome warres against the thebaus , having one day received a dangerous blow in his person , was tolde by one of his friends , that hee deserved vvell to haue it , because hee had taught his enemies to bee good souldiours . i confesse indeede , that in this point of teaching the arte militarie to enemies , vvee can lose nothing , beeing rather to learne from them : but whether the employing of small or grosie armies against them , shall bee most hurtfull to them , before vvee say to that , wee must consider vvhat parts of his dominions doe lye most open for our invasion , and most easilie and profitablie brooked : for i take it also as granted , that as there must bee warres , so they must bee with-out our countrey , and into that of the enemie . never an actiue prince was knowne to looke on , vntill the enemie should bee seene with-in his bowels . there be thousands of examples of ignorants , who by so doing haue cast away their kingdome from them-selues . antiochus , persius , iuba ptolome the last of aegypt , darius , some of the french kings , as king iohn , taken vvith-in his owne countreyes , by edward , the blacke prince of england : and for this cause , philip of france , called the conquerer , vnderstanding that the emperour , otho the second , and the king of england , were to assault his kingdome , hee fortified sundrie strong places , and led his armie without the frontiers , vvhere hee did combate , and defeat them . wee reade in our scottish histories , how frequentlie armies haue bene convoyed beyond our marches , to find the enemie , before he should enter amongst vs. so long as a countrey is free from open hostilitie , as long it doeth not feele extreame calamitie ; sayeth scipi● afric . for putting of armies into africke , plus animi est inferenti periculum quam propulsanti , ad hoc major ignotarum rerum est terror , &c. the assaulters of anie countrey must haue greater cowrage than the defendants , who having mo● things , and more deare , in perill their houses , their rit●●es , vvyues , and children , are more taken with feare : besides , being with-in the enemies countrey , yee doe discover all his weaknesses , whylst your strength and possibilities , the more they bee vnknowne to him , they doe the more encrease his terrour . but to speake of places in generall , most proper for this vvarre , there is none more honourable than the palatinate , ( al-be-it most difficill to come vnto , by reason of remotenesse from the sea : ) without the restitution where-of , there can remaine no credite with the parties and princes of the league . i heard a scottish captaine of good experience in those countreyes , latelie say to mee , that it was impossible to recover the palatinate , but by sea advantages over the spanyard , because it was so farre remooved from friends ; and i did aske him , how the late prince of parma did leade 10000 men to paris , in the teeth of a mightie king , amidst his armies ? hee answered mee , that those were carried as in trenches , and the way was easie , without impediment of mountaines , or rivers . againe i demanded , how did the christian kings ancientlie of england , scotland , and france , convoy their armies to the holie vvarres of hierusalem , and most part over land ? or how alexander the great , an armie of with-in 40000 , from macedon , to the easterne occean , and did subjugate all the nations by the way ? or how iulius caesar , a smaller by the one halfe , from the occident of france , to pharsalia in greece ? or hanniball from carthage , by the way of spaine and france , thorow so manie alpestiere and precipitious mountaines , even to naples , and brooked italie fifteene yeares ? although themselues were excellent , and incomparable captaines , and of extravagant fortunes , yet their souldiours appearinglie haue beene but such men , as doe yet liue in the vvorld , the difference and ods of tymes excepted : for softnesse and delicacie in some , and contemplation , and loue of letters in others , haue so daunted , and as it were emasculate the cowrage of men , who now are , that none is able to endure that austeritie and hardnesse of living with hanniball him-selfe , let bee his souldiours . the next fielde fitting for this vvarre , is that which were most easie to come vnto , and likelie to bring the businesse to a short and prosperous ende , and this is the countrey of vvest flanders , if this fatall iealousie of neighbour-princes , which hath beene so manie tymes contrarious to the best designes and enterpryses of christendome , did not heere with-stand : that is to say , if the french king did not call to mynde , how that was the port where-at ancientlie the english did so often enter to trouble his predecessours . it is a wonderfull thing , if kings so nearelie allyed , and so nearelie touched by one common danger , cannot bee assured from mutuall iealousies in the meane tyme , nulla fides regni sociis . therefore , leaving that to the event which god shall grant , i will speake of putting armies into spayne by sea , wherevnto , it may bee , yee will object the small successes ; now , of a second navigation of the english to portugall ; and that his majestie had better kept his navie at home , careat successibus opto , quisquis ab eventu facta not and a putet . i answere to you , that counsels and designes , are not to bee weighed from the event , that was so good a purpose , as in my judgement , will not yet be left . but yee will say , wee haue wakened the sleeping dog , and made spoyle of our best occasion : i confesse , that is more considerable , than anie losse ; and yet who doubteth , for the dog , but hee was a-wake before ? diabolus non dormit . how can he sleepe , that lyeth in ambush , for all the world ? as touching the credite of the enterpryse , it is so farre from bringing vnder question the reputation of our soveraigne , that by the contrarie , both that , and his personall going to spaine , are things where-of wee should rejoyce ; as being infallible arguments of his royall magnanimitie , and preambles of much greater things . king philip of macedon , being brought for the first time , to see the noble horse , bucephalus , commanded his best horse-man to ryde him : which when hee could not doe , by reason of his fiercenesse , the king did set another to him , and the third , who in lyke manner did not suffice ; vntill at length , alexander his sonne , being but a young stripling , did adventure him-selfe to it , and did performe it : which when his father behelde , shedding te●res for joy , hee apprehended there-by , the greatnesse of his spirit , saying , that greece was too small for him . where such sparkles breake foorth , before the fyre of a young prince his cowrage bee well kindled , it is like enough once to spreade manie flames abroad . yea , i will say farther , that the successe of that businesse went better , than if it had beene to our wishes , for that it is not good , that fortune should bee too indulgent to the beginninges of a young king , or should lay the reignes vpon his necke : but rather that he runne his first cariers with a borne head ; to the ende , that hee may learne the wayes of true wisdome , and fore-sightfulnesse in matters of greater consequence . the ancient theologues ▪ amongst the gentiles , did never introduce their goddesse fortune in the counsell of the gods. there is nothing that doeth more rectifie the judgement to action , than experience , where-of one tricke , in our youthhead , is more worth to vs , than twentie in our age. besides that , wee are certainlie but ignorant , to thinke , that great things can bee gone about , or compassed , but by adventuring somethings also of the lyke kynde : but lest wee bee anie way discowraged , by those two fruitlesse voyages of the english to portugall , wee may reade in the stories , how that nation ancientlie hath beene no lesse victorious in spaine , than in france , al-be-it not so often , because they were olde , and long inheriters , and inhabiters of diverse parts of france . edmund , called de langley , duke of yorke , and iohn of gaunt , duke of langcaster , both sonnes of edward the third , king of england , having obtained diverse glorious victories against the castilians , in favours of the kinges of portugall , sought to bee ejected by the saide castilians : not-the-lesse where-of , they did at length marrie the two daughters of peter , king of castile : who dying without other children , the saide iohn of gaunt , who was married to the eldest , did stile him-selfe king of castile , and passe from gascoigne , ( then being vnder the english dominion ) into castile , with 8000 footmen , & 2000 horse ; where he did quickly make himselfe master almost of the whole countrey : but partlie , by famine then in castile , and secondlie , because of new troubles betwixt the english and french , then in gascoigne ; and thirdlie , by reason of hote broyles in england , which was likelie to cut him from succourse of his friends , hee did transact with most honourable and advantagious conditions , even at his owne option , that his onelie daughter and chylde , should marrie the eldest sonne of the castilian king , that him-selfe should haue the present possession and profites of foure chiefe townes of castile , with sixtie hundreth thousand frankes , in argent content , to defray his charges , and fourtie thousand franks of yearlie rent . what then ? shall wee thinke , but the english , who are the naturall off-spring of those generose stockes , haue also braue mindes , and aboundance of cowrage , to invade , by way of just and necessarie vvarre , their olde and sworne enemies of castile , if they were once set on edge , after this long intervale of peace ? haue they not all the whyle bene exclayming agaynst the dayes of peace ? and was it not much for a pacificke king , to contayne them ? did they not yearne after the spanyard , as hounds long kept vp after hares ? and may we not hope , that armies which bee not verie grosse , well disciplined , vvell armed , and vvell mayntayned , can doe great thinges in portugall , being of so easie accesse and recept ? when wee reade of scanderbeg . or of the late prince of transylvania , or in our owne annals , of vvilliam vvallace , what miracles were done by small numbers against worlds of men ? it is the lord , who stirreth vp the heart , to persecute pryde , and punish tyrants : it is hee , who doeth deliver into the hands of israel , their mightie enemies . 2000 men , that charles the eight of france gaue to his cosin , henrie , earle of richmond , were sufficient for him to passe into england , and giue battell to richard the third , the tyrant , and to slay him . the kingdome of spaine was once alreadie ( as i haue related ) taken from roderico , a licentious prince , by 12000 moores . but , to returne to the particular : navarre , or portugall , shall bee the first revolters from spayne , when-so-ever the tyme shall come , where-in god hath appoynted to dissipate that empyre : there shall the stone bee first moved , which rolling along , shall bruise and breake the hornes there-of . portugall must bee the chiefe port of our hopes in spayne . the world holdeth , that his majestie of great britane , and the hollanders , his protected confederates , haue more shipping than will command the whole occean , let bee to get footing in portugall , or to stop the trafficke of the west indees . and if wee would make a likelie conjecture , what they are able to doe in portugall , let vs but call to mynde , what great conquests were made by the portugals them-selues , with no great numbers of ships ( as is showne in the former part of this discourse : ) there bee manie yet alyue , who know , that when those few of england and holland did last invade , and tooke the towne of cales , king philip did presentlie sende for his galleyes of naples and sicilia , and would haue borrowed from genua and malta : hee called his forces out of britanie , and had beene compelled to call home all that hee had anie where , if the english had remayned longer . it is greatlie to bee marveled , why the ritches of the vvest indees should not before now haue allured both english & flemmings , and others , who are powerfull by sea , those beeing the treasures that doe fortifie and assure the spanish tyrannie . the romanes and carthagenians , when they began to flowrish , and to haue mutuall iealousies , fore-seeing that sicilia ( beeing a store-house of fyne cornes and people ) was the thing which would determine their emulation , as i haue said before , they fought cruell battels for it . the carthagenians had it , and lost it often . at length it did incline to the romanes , and with it , the soveraignitie also of empyre . wee cannot erre , to thinke , that never a monarch , or mightie state , did possesse such probable meanes , and such inexhaustable mines , more commodious for extension , and vniversalitie of dominion , as are the west indees to the spanyard , if hee bee suffered to enjoye them peaceablie , together with the other ritch mines of silver , and great revenewes that hee hath else-where . plinius helde spayne the ritchest for silver mines in the world , then in his tyme : it is wonderfull , sayde hee , to see one onlie silver mine in spayne , broken vp by hanniball , and which yeelded to him 300 pound weight daylie , to continue still now vnder vespasian . hee hath diverse of the most fruitfull and questuous countreyes of europe , as naples , milane , sicilie , flanders , beeing all of the superlatiue degree , for ritches , and for vertuous traffickes , ( which are the fountaynes from whence ritches flow ) so it is indeed : for wee reade in the histories , that charles the fift of spayne , emperour , did draw yearlie more moneyes out of the dutchie of milan , than king francis the first , who lived with him , did from whole france ; and more out of the low-countreyes , than the king of england of his whole kingdomes . ( this is affirmed by french wryters . ) it beeing so , may not i say , with good vvarrand , that ( saving fatalitie , and the secret providence of god ) the kinges of spayne shall bee once masters of the occidentall worlde , except that neighbour princes and states take it more in heart , to oppose him , than hither-to they haue done ? bio● , the philosopher , sayde , that money was the nerue of action , and of all the effayres of men. and of him sayeth plutarch , that his speach doeth most touch the actions of warre , where-in there was no doing at all without money : for why ? sayde hee , a captayne hath onlie two thinges to goe about ; eyther to draw men together for services of warre ; or being together , to leade them to their services ; vvhere-of he can doe neyther vvithout money . thucitides sayth , that the people of pelop. did often vexe them-selues , and over-runne their owne territories , by short warres , and small exployts , because of their povertie , and want of money to attende warres . the foundator of that state , lycurg●s , having by a law prohibited the vse of money there , agesil . their king , were into aegypt , with great forces , to bee mercenarie , and serue for money , where-with hee might bee able to keep vvarres agaynst the theb. who had almost ruinated his countrey . alexander the great , before hee enterpryzed his vvarres , did alienate what-so-ever hee had for provision of money , leaving no-thing to him-selfe but hope . pompey the great , the tyme of his vvarres in spayne , agaynst sertorius , hee wrote to the senate , that if they did not sende him quicklie store of money , his armie would goe from that province . hanniball after he had defeated the romanes , by three great battels , did wryte as much to carthage . so , if money bee the strength of humane actions , as bion sayde , and principallie of warre , as plutarch did subjoyne , i say , it is a thing no lesse than fearfull , to suffer the spanyard to brooke peaceablie his traffique of the west indees , having there-by a greater meanes to enlarge his dominions , than either rome , or anie others haue hitherto had ; that of rome was the greatest of anie tymes past ; plinius calleth it , a sunne-shyning to the world , but when their towne was taken by the gaules ( who were irritated by the vnjust dealing of the three fabli ) they were forced to robbe their people , of their whole golde and silver , and did scarcelie finde so much as to pay the ransome : manie yeares there-after when they were so broken by hanniball ▪ they were compelled to doe the same , and were in such paine , for want of money , that they had no meanes to redeeme 8000 prisoners , who were taken by him at the battell of cannas . now i doe not doubt , but some men will thinke , that i haue sayde too much , in affirming , that the west indees , and moneyes , which the spanyard hath , may by length and tract of tyme , purchase vnto him the western vvorld : therefore i would preasse to show it this way , by posing the case , that two things may concurre together , which are possible enough to meere , by progresse of tyme : first , if the spanyard should light at once vpon the lyke treasure as hee got at the taking in of peru , where there was such plentie of golde and silver , that the bottle of wyne was solde for 300 duckates there , a spanish cape , at 1000 , a gennet of spayne , at 6000. and besides the fift part of all moneyes generall in that countrey payed to the king , charles the fift , the king there-of , atabalipa , payed to him , for his ransome , ten millions , three hundreth , twentie , and sixe thousand duckates , in pure golde , at one tyme : which was the first thing that made in these countreyes of europe , the great alteration of all sorte of merchandize , vivers , and of the pryces of land , and , al-most , of the manners of men : even as it fell out in rome , when iul. caes. brought thither the ritch spoyles and treasures of aegypt , that made vpon the sudden the vsurie of money to be diminished by the one halfe , and the pryce of land to be haughted by the other halfe . for the second , i put the case , that together with this casualitie , the spanyard should finde the humours of france so easie to bee practised , and such distemper , and distraction of myndes amongst them , as his grand-father , philip the second , did finde , then when hee broached the holie league in france . if these two should meere , i put it to anie man's contemplation , if anie lesse could follow there-on , than the conjunction of france , to the empyre of spayne ? which philip had even then obtayned , if his conquest of portugall had not diverted him from it . and may not these supposed two cases arriue , and come to passe together ? vnlesse the vigilance , and diligence of neighbour princes , doe stop the wayes where-by they must come , assuredlie it is a thing most possible : for why ? the french , how-so-ever after they be beaten with the miseries and calamities of warre , they can for a whyle bee content to refresh them-selues , with peace and quyetnesse : yet that is but a digression , or a by-strype , from the current of their naturall humour , which is to be volage , and remoueant , much delighted with present things , having no long projectes , given to change , both of apparell , and mynde , joviall ; and of open conversation , of easie familiaritie , of amiable countenance , never silent , but still in complement , and discourse , full of noble , and courteous carriage , inclined to all sort of gallantri● , which doeth require great charges , of moderate devotion , suden , and precipitant in their resolutions , and loving innovations of state , aboue all things : that it is a wonder , to see such antipathie everie way betwixt them , and the spanyard , divided but by one mountaine of the pirenees , and no other-wise . thus haue i discoursed on this last point , to let you see , what great necessitie haue princes , who vvould make warres , to bee vvell provided of moneyes , vvhich , because it doeth no lesse touch and concerne vs , vvho bee subjectes of this kingdome , than it doeth our soveraigne king , it shall bee verie expedient to treate some-what seriouslie of it , as the weightiest article wee haue to speake of . that wee are bound to contribute to just and necessarie warre , vnder-taken by our prince , pro aris & focis , not onelie our goods , but our lyues , it is a position that no man will contradict : and to know , that vvee of this kingdome are most obliedged of anie people in the world , not onelie to doe so , but to accept the necessitie of so doing , vvith much patience , and thankfulnesse to god , for the great peace and quietnesse , vouchsafed on vs , during a whole age by-gone , vvithout the smallest interruption , which , what an extraordinarie blessing it is , wee cannot vnderstand , never having felt nor knowne the afflictions of vvarre . but if vvee shall set before our eyes , ( as portracts of those calamities ) the fearfull naufrages of our neighbours , during the time of our quyetnesse ; and the disastrous , and sorrowfull dayes , of our owne predecessours , before our times , whilst this yle remained disvnited , and vnder discordant kinges , wee should not then forbeare to fall vpon our faces , and to adore that bountie of the most high , who did reserue so happie dayes for vs. as for our neighbours , wee haue so often heard the thunders of their troubles , sounding in our eares ; and , as it were , securelie standing vpon the s●oare , so often behelde the spoiles of their tempests , that i neede not to particularize anie examples of things that are so recent . when those of that noble citie of paris , ( the queene of all the townes of the world ) were forced by this tyrannie of spaine , to nowrish them-selues with the bodies of horses , of dogs , cats , and rats , we were fed , the greater part of vs , to superfluitie , and all to sufficience , when those of her countrey about , were glad to get an houre of sleepe in their armour , vnder some covert in the fieldes , the lord did grant to vs , mollibus incumbere toris , & pingues exigere somnos . as for our predecessours , if wee shall cast over the annals of our nation , wee shall finde it the most cruent and bloodie historie , where-in , since the establishment of our crowne , ( not-with-standing of the matchlesse antiquitie , and lawfulnesse there-of ) wee shall not reade of an age , nor halfe , nor third part of an age , free from desperate warres , now with peghts , now with dane● , now with saxons , now with romanes , now with english , ( tantae molis erat romanam condere gentem : ) where not onlie men , but women , did ordinarilie goe to battell : ordinarilie , i say , for manie ages , after manie testimonies of our famous historiographer , hector bo●ce , where-of i will ci●e to you but one , in his sixt booke , where hee setteth downe that fearfull battell foughten against them by maximus , the romane generall , with the assistance of the saxones , and perfidious peghts , where-in our king , eugenius , with the whole nobilitie , gentyle , commons , and their aged parents , were nearlie extinguished , without anie hope of farther memorie of our race , except that it pleased god to reserue miraculouslie amidst their ashes , some sparkles of lyfe , which did after some yeares reviue , and restore the progresse of our nation , convenere ( sayeth hee ) ad e●genium regem frequontes viri , foeminae que ad militiam , ex veteri gentis instituto , vrgentibus extremis , conscriptae , clamantes aut eo die moriendunt sibi omnibus fortiter dimicando , aut vincendos infensissin os hostes , &c. there did conveane ( sayeth hee ) vnto the king e●gemus , multitudes of men , and women , to stand in battell , according to the ancient and observed custome of the countrey ; protesting , that day either to vanquish , and destroy their deadlie enemie , or other-wise , to lay downe their whole lyues into the sepulchers of valour and dignitie . and a little there-after , speaking of their ardor , and fiercenesse in that battell , whylst the furie of the enemie did approach vnto the king's person , the noble men assisting nearest vnto him , did perswade him ; yea , with akinde of violence pressed him , to retire his person , and saue him-selfe to a better fortune , and to the common-wealth : but hee casting from him his kinglie ornaments , did thrust him-selfe amongst the vulgar ranks , to the maine of the battell ; where , with incredible cowrage , and contempt of death , hee did sacrifice his heroicke spirit . few of men , and of women , al-most none , did escape this calamitie : and whylst the romanes did too insolentlie , and fiercelie persue the small numbers of those , who at the length did flee , they did recounter a new sort of combate , never of before knowne vnto them : for why ? the remnant of the aged people , men and women , vnable for warres , did follow a-farre , vpon the armie , to know what should be fall there-vnto : and finding the event so bad , and infortunate , they did runne vnto the vveapons , and armour of their dead children ; and forgetting both age and sexe , did encowrage those few that yet did rest aliue , to make a new assault vpon the romanes : which they did , more like vnto savage and enraged beasts , than puissed by anie humane instigation : where they were all consumed , and not without great slaughter of their enemies . these are the verie words of the vvriter , by my translation , from the latine text. of the lyke to this , the historis hath manie , to show what was the bitter cup of our antecessours , compared with our delicacie ; and what they did vnder-lye , for mainta●nance of that libertie , where-of wee haue enjoyed the sweetnesse . this and thus was the foundation , which it pleased god to blesse , and to build vpon it a statelie and vnited monarchie , after the which the spanyard doeth no lesse greedilie gape now , than did the romanes then . heere is an object of yeelding infinite thankes to god , and honour to the memorie of our generose antecessours : they kept constant vvarres , in expectation , and wee beginne now to bee called to vvarres , for that where-of wee haue had long fruition : they were as the israelites in the desarts , vnder moses , and wee like vnto israel vnder salomon : we are but gentlie pressed , as yet , ( god grant it hee so long ) to sende foorth some of our able youthes : and that is an advantage to vs , it being a liberation of our countrey , from that it may want commodiouslie : and then to contribute some tryfles of our goods , for their entertainment . and wee haue better store of men , and ten times more moneyes , ( praised bee god ) than our antecessours had , who did render willinglie both lyues , and goods , and vvyfe , and children , and all for the service of their prince and countrey . and because it may bee , this bee compted a rash or temerarious speach , i thinke it may bee easilie prooved in this manner : al-be-it it bee so , that onelie god can multiplie the earth , yet it is of veritie , that wee , since the dayes of our predecessours , haue multiplied the fruites of the earth ; so farre , that for everie three plough gate of land , ( as wee doe call it ) manured , which was in scotland an hundreth yeares by-gone , there are foure now . and if yee answere , that the people are multiplied proportionallie to that , so that i should not esteeme it to be encrease of ritches , which doeth bring with it encrease of people to consume them ; i will reply to you , that is the point i intende to prooue , for multitudes of people industrious , are both the ritches and strength of a countrey ; and that vvee doe exceede our antecessours both for numbers of people , and of moneyes , yee shall vnderstand it this way : they wanted first the two seminaries for breeding of people , which wee haue : everie one knoweth , that the multiplication of ground-labourers , and husband-men , ( as wee call them ) haue peopled the land-warts of scotland , farre aboue that it was ancientlie ; for wee see now vpon a maines ( that of olde was laboured by a barron him-selfe ) twentie or thirtie severall families of those retite husband-men , vvhere-of everie one hath a good number of children . next againe , it is well knowne to bee the sea trade , which hath peopled our maritine townes , and that also , our predecessours wanted : so farre , that i may say , there bee now twentie ships of trafficke amongst vs , for everie one that was in their dayes . then , who doeth not know , that by the trafficke of the sea● , our countrey hath twentie times more moneyes , than was an hundreth yeares by-gone ? or if yee doe doubt of it , yee may soone learne , that our grand-fathers could haue bought as much land for one thousand marks , as wee can doe for twentie thousands , and farre more . farther , our predecessours had a meanes for stopping the growing of multitudes , and encrease of people , that wee want : and it was by the great numbers of men and women , who tooke them-selues to the caelibate and monasticke lyfe , of whom there was no off-spring . and if yee would know of what great importance that was , doe but consider how manie bishoprickes , abbacies , pri●ries , nunueries , with the number of their convents , arch-deanries , deanries , personages , and places of cure for secular priests , was into scotland , in time of p●perie : and when yee haue taken vp their number , doe conferre them with the 70 of the house of iacob , who went into aegypt , and how in the fourth age there-after , there came foorth 600000 , fighting men , besides women and children , all descended of them . which vvhen yee haue consideratelie done , i thinke yee shall bee affrayed of the hudge multitudes , that before now , should haue issued from the professed religious of scotland , if they had followed the matrimoniall life . if yee will yet insist , to object the povertie of our countrey , by reason of the broken estates of noble-men , and gentle-men , who haue our lands morgadged for great debts of money , i answere to you , that ( by the contrarie ) it is an argument of the ritches of our countrey : for if the noble-mans grand-father , by predigalitie , pryde , wilfull pleying in law , or anie other such misgovernment , had brought him-selfe to neede the like summes of money , twentie lords could not haue gotten so much then , as one can get now . and i will finde now a base-borne man advance to a noble-man in prest , 30 , 40 , or 50000 pounds , whose grandfather , and all his parentage , was not valiant of the twentie part there-of : ergo , the personall distresses of noble-men and gentlemen , doeth not argue the povertie of the countrey in generall . wee see into nature , that her severall members , as of plantes , beasts , and men , doe daylie decay and die ; and others doe shoot vp in their rowmes , vvhilst nature it selfe remaineth in entire and full strength . in the dayes of our predecessours , there were in scotland but victuall rents , where-as now , by the vertuous trades , vvhich haue beene since introduced , a great part of men doe liue by silver rents . things being manifestlie so , shall wee refuse to furnish out , and mayntayne , two or three thousand souldiours , to so just and necessarie warres ? certaynlie , it cānot be heard abroad , without our great ignominie , & ( which is worse ) adding of cowrage to our enemies , when they shall know vs to be so base and degenerose . well , let vs not be vngrate towardes god. it is true , indeed , that nature and ty●●e doe favour the growing of monarchies , namelie , vvhere they are just and temperate , as being the vi●e image of god , for governament of the world ; but it is also true , that vnthankfull people doe procure short periods of great kingdomes . the throne of israell was established in the person of david , after manie toylsome and laborious years of the preceeding rulers of that people , and great sheeding of blood , and so much in david his owne tyme , that god would not suffer his bloodie hand to be put to the building of the temple : but the glorie , peace and prosperitie there-of did expyre , with the death of salomon his sonne . there-after the lord did set manie wicked kings over that wicked people . the greatest punishment that god threatneth to inflict vpon a rebellious nation , is to giue them evill kings : vvhere-vpon the divines doe note , that it is the highest transgression , vvhereof a people can be guiltie before god , when by their ingratitude they make princes , of their nature perhaps seren● and temperate , to turne to tyrannous governament , and to lay vpon their neckes the yoake of perpetuall grudge and murmuration : and so not onlie them-selues transgresse agaynst god , but make their kings also to doe the lyke , who most of all men should obey & feare the lord : so that often tymes a wicked people , maketh a wicked king. but to returne : if wee doe question for small thinges now , vvhat would we doe , si hannibal astaret portis ? if our enemies were at the ports of our countrey , or within the bowels of it ? we would be forced to doe even as the romanes did against hannibal , to run and offer all our moneyes , and our iewels , and our eare-rings , for safetie there-of . wee would vndoubtedlie say , as that famous vvarriour did , the late king of france , vvho after the recoverie of cain from the spanyard , by transaction , after hee had spended a great part of his lyfe in vvarres , hee saide , they were not wyse , who would not make a bridge of gold , for their enemies to passe out vpon . but as we say , it is better to hold out , than to put out : durius ejicitur quam non admittitur hostis . haue wee not seene our kinges vse all possible practises , for procuring of peace all this tyme by-gone , by toyling of ambassadors to and froe , by super-spending their rentes , exhausting their coffers , and indebting of them-selues ? are vve not naturall members , as they are naturall heads ? are they more bound to doe for vs , than we for our selues ? al-be-it the kings spheare hee higher and greater than ours , yet everie man doeth fill his own spheare , and everie man's estate , is a kingdome to him-selfe . perseus , that mightie king , having beside him infinite treasures , and refusing to bestow some of them to gentius , a neighbour-prince , and others , who offered to combate the romanes in italie , he suffered them to over-throw him-selfe , in his owne countrey . darius cōmitted the lyke errour with alexander , and stephanus , king of bosna , the lyke with mabomet the second : as i haue remembered before , wee may prayse god , that wee haue not such avaricious kings . what is it , that good and naturall subjects will not doe for the safetie of the sacred persons of their kings ? let bee of their kingdomes , vvhere-in wee haue our portion , and common interesse with them . we may reade in the histories of france , what domage that countrey did sustaine , for the liberation of their king iohn , taken by edward , the blacke prince of england , at the battell of poiteou , and of king francis the first , taken at the battell of pavie : and in our owne histories , what our predecessours did , for the redemption of king david bruce , led captiue in england , and there detained eleven yeares : liberatus ( sayeth the historie ) undecimo ex qu● captus est anno , numeratis quingentis millibus mercarum sterlingarum in presenti moneta . hee was redeemed vpon payment of fiue hundreth thousand marks sterling , in argent contant . a thing most admirable , the scarcitie of moneyes in those dayes considered . if a physition should cōmand vs , in time of a dangerous sicknesse , to take a little blood , for preservation of the whole bodie , wee should bee glad to obey him : why not by the like reason , when our king ( who cureth and careth for the bodie of the common-wealth ) doeth command vs , to bestow some of our goods , for safetie of our whole estate , ought wee not to obey ? if wee were versed in the french annals , to know what innumerable spoile of goods was there , before the spanyards could bee pyked out of the nests , which they did build vpon their coasts , and with-in their bowels , wee would bee content to spende to our shirt ( as it is saide ) before they should plant their tents amongst vs. i haue alreadie told you , how they are of melancholious , and fixed mindes , not easilie raysed , or remooved , where once they are set downe : where-of wee see the present experience into the palatinate . to take , and then to giue backe againe , is not the way of their designe to vniversall empyre , over their neighbours . if anie would object , that the palatinate is detayned for reparation of the wrongs and injuries done in bohemia , hee hath little skill in the effaires of the vvorld : for why ? these might haue bene long since composed , or redressed : but it is done to facilitate their conquest in germanie , to enclose the nether-landes from succourse of their friendes there , and to open a gate into england , by length of tyme , vvhen they shall finde the occasion fitting . so that if the kings of great britane , and france , together with their confederates of germanie & the netber-lands , doe not joyne their forces , to banish them tymouslie , from the palatinate , as the romanes did the carthagenians from sicilia , ( vvhich i did note in the beginning here-of ) doubtlesse they vvill bee vpon their owne neckes at the length . there vvas a great intervale of tyme betwixt the first and second warres of the romanes , against the carthagenians ; and yet the last did come to passe , and there-with the vtter over-throw of the carthagenian state. and here i must recount a thing , ( vvhich i haue often called to mynde , since his majesties comming from spayne , and that the treatie of his marriage did there expyre ) how i my selfe , the yeare of their pacification vvith holland , beeing in the towne of brussels , in familiar discourse , touching our late soveraigne his cōming to the crowne of england , vvith a scottish gentle-man , of a fine wit , experience , & in-sight in the spanish designes , and vvho had beene long tyme a coronell , and counsellor of warre amongst them , coronell semple ; hee sayd to me , that al-be-it king iames vvas an aged & wise prince , vvho had providently practized his peaceable entrie to england , that yet he vvas much beholden to that tyme so fortunate , as it vvas for him , vvhen spayne , being so broken vvith longsome vvarres , had al-most begged their peace frō holland . and how-so-ever ( sayd he ) your king may be free of vs , during his lyfe , yet if ye shall surviue him , ye shall see no more peace betwixt england and spayne : adding vvith-all , this speach , laus non solum hominum est , sed etiam temporum . where-vnto i did answere , that by these it seemed , that the spanyard intended to conquer england . then he rehearsed to me , the manie & notable injuries done to them , by the english nation , by their prowde and fascuous ejection of king philip , before the death of marie ; by their fostering of their rebels in flanders ; by their protection of don antonio , king of portugall , and ayding of him vvith sea armies ; but namelie , by their ordinarie sea rapines , and insolent navigation , vvithout the controlling and coercing vvhere-of , spayne could not be in so good case , as vvas hoped for to be , in progresse of tyme . and in the ende , hee did subjoyne thus farre , if your catholicke noble-men of scotland , with whom my selfe ( sayd he ) did negotiate from spayne , had bene wyse , and constant , your countrey might haue bene , long before now , in a twentie-folde more happie condition , vnder the dominion of spayne , than ever it can be vnder the crowne of england ; the yoake of whose servitude and tyrannie , shall questionlesse become intollerable to you , so soone as that king shall be gone , who doeth so well know you : for why ? by reason of their vicinitie , and nearnesse vnto you , they shall be ever preassing to draw great rents from you into england , which cannot fayle to impoverish your countrey : where-as by the contrarie , the spanyard should not only spend it amongst your selues , but should also yearlie send in great summes of money to you , according as he doeth here in flanders , & in his other provinces . this storie did i , after my returning to london , relate to his majestie , who is nowe with god ; and who having heard it , did answere me , that semple was an olde traytor , and dangerous companie for his subjects , which went beyond the seas . thus the spanyardes know not when the fish will swimme , but they doe keepe their tydes diligentlie , and haue their nets hung in all mens waters : so that if anie of vs would thinke , that the present quarrell against spayne , is more sibbe to the king , our soveraigne , than to vs , by reason of the palatinate , it were absurd ignorance also : for first granting it vvere so , yet there can bee no separation betwixt the head and the members : whome god and nature haue knit together , there is none can loose : next agayne , it is well knowne , that our late king , of blessed memorie , could haue gotten to marrie his onlie daughter , greater , and the greatest of christian princes , if it had not beene to prevent the falling of our crowns succession , into the person of some papisticall prince , to the dangering of the libertie evangelicall , and vnitie of this kingdome of great britane : of both which the lord hath made him-selfe the instrument to establish them . our latest histories doe record , that scotland , england , and ireland , haue alreadie beene almost devoured by forraigne ambition , by way of marriages with papall kings , as of queene marie , the grand-mother of our present king , with the dolphin of france ; & of marie , queene of england , to philip the second , king of spayne ; vvhere-of vvhat blood-sheeding , cruell warres , and persecution of the professors of the gospell did follow , even to publicke martyrdome , the stories doe mention at length : vvhich moved our proto reformator , iohn knoxe , to publish that treatise agaynst the regiment or reignes of women . if so be , that the onlie daughter of great britane , ( and of that king ) capable of the greatest marriage in christendome , vvas couched in so narrow bounds , out of the holie projects of her father , to assure the peace and liberties of this kingdome , to vs & our successours , then can anie quarrell in the world be so deare to vs , & more pricke our consciences and honour , nor the restitution of her estate , although the spanyard were resolved , to march his ambition there , and come no farther ? having treated thus farre concerning vvarre , or the necessitie of warre with spaine , i come now to speake of things that may breede into vs distraction of myndes , or coldnesse of affection towards this businesse : and first , ( because it is most easilie answered vnto ) i vvill remember how it did sticke in manie mens teeth , and could not at the first bee digested , that vvee did not know , no , not the lords of our counsell , vvhat vvas the course of his majesties navie : that a publicke fast and praying vvas enjoyned for the successe of vvee know not what ; and that this fast vvas not limitated , but during the king's vvill , contrarie the custome of the scottish church , and diverse from anie example to bee found in scripture . the last of these two being a question theologicall , and impertinent to this discourse , i will not touch : but for the first , i say , and it is approved in all ages , that nothing doeth more advance great enterpryses , than secrecie ; so farre , that secrecie is the verie soule of the actions of kings : and their secrets once published , are but lyke vented wyne , which can no more be drunken . and most actiue princer , haue brought to passe amongst puissant enemies , most noteable exploits , onlie by meanes of secrecie : as wee doe finde speciallie in the lyues of iulius caesar , charles the fift emperour , lewis the eleventh of france , whose cover plots , secret friendes , voyages , dyets , and dayes of battell , were kept in their breasts , vnto the time of present execution : which kinde of doing , was the chiefest thing that made them so redoubted , and feared of all their enemies ; as the spanyard , even to this day , delighteth to holde his neighbours in perpetuall feare , by this secrecie of counsels and courses . withall i doe confesse , that such doing requireth a solide wisdome in princes , and that other-wise it vvere verie dangerous : in the meane time it is sure , that wee who bee private subjects , are not to craue a compt of their counsels ; no more than the members of the bodie , doe question for that which they are commanded to doe , by the intellectuall reason that lodgeth in the head. the next point , shall bee to consider of our doubts , and feares domesticke , as i did terme them in the beginning : and first , touching the reformation , or innovation of counsell and session , intended by his majestie ; it is certaine , that princes both may and ought to reforme , and if they please , innovate where there is neede ; there being no meanes in this corruptible world , to keepe things in due temper , but after long progresse of time , and growing of abuses ; to reduce them to their first institution . plato holdeth , that an the length , god shall reforme the worke of the whole world , and reduce it to the first puritie ; and that other-wise it is not able to endure and stand , i know not how that accordeth with sainct iohn apoc. who sayeth , that wee shall see new heavens , and a new earth . and a great politicke saide , that if some late reformed franciscan friers , and the late order of the austere caputchines , bad not risen to maintaine some credite to the pope's church , that it had beene before now disgustfull even to all the world , by reason of his obstinate denyall , to reforme his church , against the nature of thinges . but to the purpose● there is indeede no small importance in the auncietie of senators , long experienced in the mysteries of a state , and with the humours and conditions of a people● and these are onelie they , who can bee called olde counsellers : and diverse of the wisest emperours , sayde it was more dangerous to haue an olde king , and a young counsell , nor a young king , and an olde counsell . where of wee see the good experience in the spanish government , where the death of a king doeth no more interrupt the course and prosperitie of that empyre , than it were of anie private person . the verie name it selfe of a senator , doeth signifie agednesse , as a senectute . the greekes called the senate , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; to show , that both greekes and latines did choose aged men to their counsellers : yea , suppose they could haue found numbers of young men , wyse , graue , and of good experience , yet they would not haue them to bee senators , because that were ( said they ) to turne their senate into a iuvenat . solon and lycurgus , did prohibite by a law , the comming of anie vpon the senate , with-in the age of 40 , although they were never so sufficient . but to leaue them , the scripture telleth vs , ( which is a warrand infallibl● ) that in the setling of the iewish governamēt , god commanded to choose 70 , not of the best , nor the most learned , nor of greatest experience ; but sayeth the text , of the most aged , to whom hee gaue the spirit of wisdome , in aboundance . yet whilst it is so , even good politickes of the latter tymes , and consequentlie of greater experience , will holde the opinion , that it is expedient for the common-wealth , to change and innovate magistrates : and for it they doe bring this reason , they tell vs , that the ende of good governament is vertue ; and the scope of everie prudent prince , should bee to render his subjects vertuous : and therefore the rewards of vertue , ( which are publicke offices of the state ) ought to bee patent to everie vertuous mynde , and the hopes of them set before it , as the marke where-at it must aime : which cannot bee , if offices of state be lyfe-rentallie established in the persons of a few , who whilst they , and onlie they , doe enjoy the publicke honours , and emoluments , it doeth beget an heart-burning , and envy , into other good spirits , who finde themselues neglected ; and so doeth breede , and nowrish the seedes of civill sedition . farther , ( say they ) it doeth procure to those who possess● chiefe offices in perpetuitie , too much grandour and authoritie : it draweth away after it , the eyes and dependance of the people ; and , as it were , stealeth a little of that splendor , that is due to the royall majestie : and beeing in the persons of great subjectes , prepareth the way to popularitie , and ambition . agayne , they vvho reason agaynst the frequent change of magistrates , they vse that argument , vvhich the wittie tyberius vsed , vvhen his friendes tolde him , that he did continue men in great offices too long , agaynst the custome of that state : hee sayde , it vvas better for people , to endure those , vvho were al-readie satiate , and full of their blood , ( meaning their goods ) than vnder-ly the hunger , and avarice of a new entrant : nec enim parcit populis regnum breve . with-all ( they say ) that the changeable magistrate hath no cowrage , nor boldnesse , to administer iustice ; but feareth the displeasure of men , being shortlie him-selfe to descend to a private condition , perhaps inferior to manie , over whome hee is iudge for the tyme : so that betwixt these two extremities , one vvould thinke the mid-way verie fitting to bee followed by prudent princes , vvhere they may neyther bee perpetuall , nor much frequentlie changed ; vvhere they be only to the pleasure of the prince , and with-all made syndicable , and censurable . for certaynlie , ( as all men know , vvho vnderstand policie & histories ) there was never a magistracie invented by men , that did ad more to the vertue , increase , and stabilitie of a state , than that of the censor amongst the romanes ; vvhen once a yeare , the consuls , the senators the generals , the knightes , the captaynes , the tribunes , the pretors , the questors , & all vvho had the meanest intromission vvith the state , did compeare , & tremble , in presence of a censor ; fearing disgrace , or deposition from their offices , or dignities . the spanyardes keepe in their provinces of italie , an image of this sort of magistrate , called by them , syndicator : and so they doe in the state of genua . of this they haue some shadow in england , al-be-it not in the person of one man , by those who are called their court of conscience . and of this it seemeth that our soveraigne king hath now erected an image amongst vs , ( if i be not misse-taken ) in establishing the iudicatorie of grievances . of the which iudicatorie ( because men doe dispute diversly , as of a thing newe , and vnknowne amongst vs ) i will shortlie consider two circumstances , which i trust shall serue some-what for our information , touching the importance there-of : first , the vse and ende of it : secondlie , the warrand and auctoritie where-by it may be established . for the first , the scope there-of is not onlie politicke and vertuous , but of most necessarie and profitable vse , for the common-wealth : that is , to purge the land from devowring cormorants , and those who sucke the blood of the people : to wit , corruption of iudges , and officers of state , if anie be , extorsion of seale-keepers , and wryters to seales , exorbitant vsurers , transporters of coyne , detracters and traducers of his majesties counsels , and actions : all which ( being the ground and source of publicke povertie , and pillage ) are particularlie ordayned to vnder-ly this iudicatorie . and if there-with the commission had bene also granted , expresselie agaynst transporters of oxen , kyne , and sheepe , whereby our countrey is incredibly damnified ; and also agaynst all prodigall and profligate persons , who by ryot of lascivious and distemperate lyfe , doe destroy their patrimonie , and there-with their wyues and children , that such might bee punished , according to the custome amongst the ancient greeks and romanes : then , i say , these beeing committed to the censures of entire and intelligent men , there is no policie that could more reallie yeeld manie popular comforts . there is indeed a generall clause in this commission , vvhere-by his majestie taketh power to him-selfe , to referre there-vnto what-so-ever shall please him : agaynst the which wee seeme to take this exception , to say , that this may import a controlling & reduction of the decreets of our session , ( if his majestie would so : ) a practise thought too too extravagant , and extraordinarie : and yet this may be rather mistaking , than true iudgement of those who thinke so ; vvhich i doe demonstrate in this manner . we say , there hath not beene , neyther ought there to bee , anie appellation agaynst the supreame iudicatorie of our session , vnlesse it were ordayned by a parliament ; this is our exception : but leaving the hypothesis touching our session , i will take me in generall agaynst the thesis it selfe , to say thus farre , that it is not onlie agaynst christian practise and profession , but agaynst humanitie , to holde , that there should bee no soveraigne power aboue all ordinarie iudges , to soften and mittigate the rigour of lawes , quia summum jus summa injuria : the rigour of the law , is a rigorous oppression : for example , a poore man is found yeare and day at the king's horne , beside his knowledge , & perhaps for a naughtie matter , of fiue or sixe shillings striveling , where-by his lyfe-rent of such things as he hath , falleth into the hands of the lord his superiour , who presentlie getteth before our session , a declarator there-vpon in his favours . these iudges cannot helpe this disstressed partie , because there is a law standing agaynst him , and they are sworne to the king , who did place them , to administrate iustice , according to the law. so manie such , yea , and more pittifull cases , doe daylie occurre before ordinarie iudges , vvhere-in conscience and iustice stand in contrarie tearmes , that i need no more to exemplifie it . the iudges must giue way to iustice , and haue no power to mittigate : yet no man will deny , that this kynd of iustice ; is a grievous oppression . here wee see a manifest necessitie of appellation , to some soveraigne power , who may dispense with legall rigour , in favours of weake and distressed parties . none can dispense with a law , but a law-giver : no subject is a law-giver ; ergo , no subject may dispense with a jot of the law , except he haue cōmission from him who gaue the law. the power to moderate legall extremitie , or to absolue from lawes , hath ever bene properlie annexed to that soveraigne majestie that gaue the law , in anie state , whether that soveraignitie was popular or princelie . before the ejection of king tarquinus , by the romanes , it was annexed to the royaltie , as their histories doe clearlie show . after the expulsion of their kings , that soveraigne majestie of giving lawes , vvas transferred to the people , as wee may perceiue by the wordes vsed by the senate , when they did present anie law to the people , quod bonum faustum felixque sit vobis & reipub. velitis , jubeatis : that is , ye will be pleased , to authorize this law , which the gods may grant may bee for the happinesse of your selues , and of the common-wealth . and therefore vnto the people also ( as then the onlie law-givers ) was transferred the power , to dispense and absolue from lawes : and to that effect , a latter appellation was ordayned to bee , from the senate it selfe , vnto the people , by the law valeria ; which is sayd by livius , to be the fundament , & mayne strength of the popular soveraignitie . the practise here-of , we reade in the case of sergius galba , the orator , who being convinced of lese-majestie , by cato the censor , did appeale vnto the people , & had his absolution from them . agayne , when this popular state of rome was reduced in a principa●tie , by caesar the dictator , the mittigation of lawes , or absolution there-from , did returne , and rest into the person of the prince : as we reade of cicero , pleading for pardon to ligarius , at the hands of caesar : when i pleade , sayth he , before other iudges , i speake not of pardon to my client , but stand to my defences , that the accusator is calumnious , the cryme forged by envie , the witnesses infamous : but beere , sayeth hee , i eraue grace , quia poena legi gratia principi debetur . agayne , we reade in contareno , vpon the venetian governament , that the first law that was made , for the establishment of that republicke , was , for a last appellation , from all iudges ordinarie● vnto their great counsell , into the which the soveraigne majestie was placed , that state beeing aristocraticke : so that this power , to absolue , or dispense from lawes , by a last appellation , hath ever beene incorporate in the soveraignitie geaue lawes , as naturallie belonging there-so , and inseparable from the same . thus there beeing a necessitie , which no man can deny , of appellation from legall rigour , to some soveraigne power , who may mittigate the same ; and that being proper to the supreame majestie of the state , ( as i haue showed ) those haue led me vpon the second circumstance , touching the commission of grievances ; that is , to speake of the authoritie , where-by it may bee established , and whether or not his majestie may doe so much by his prerogatiue royall , without the approbation of a parliament added there-vnto . and that i should not seeme to corrupt the veritie of so soveraigne a point , with flatterie of the prince , or for feare of subjects , for the first , i will confesse , that i am not of the opinion of melancton , who helde , that those hard and imperious practises of kings , objected by samuell to the israelites , when they did demand a king to rule over them , were the true and naturall priviledges of the soveraigne majestie : but i doe thinke , that they were rather permitted acts of god his iudgement , against a wicked and rebellious people : for other-wayes samuell being then their supreame prince , him-selfe would not haue justified the vprightnesse of his governament , by saying , whose oxe , or whose asse haue i taken ? if it had beene lawfull for him to take them ; as hee doeth there pronounce , that the following kings should take them : besides that , the text of samuell , in that place , doeth not say , that a king shall haue right . to take their sonnes , daughters , and fieldes , and to employ them to his vse and service : but onlie , that it shall be the manner and fashion of doing of their kings . neither doeth the hebrew word mishpat , in that same place signifie a right to doe , but a custome and fashion of doing : and therefore the greater part of the learned holde it true , which some hebrewes haue written of samuell , that the booke composed by him , a part of the priviledges and prerogatiues of the soveraignitie ( mentioned in his text of the scripture ) was suppressed , and destroyed by the succeeding kings , for their greater libertie , to exercise the artes of tyrannie . but whylst it is so , yet wee are to vnderstand , that there is nothing more sacred , next vnto god , in this world , than soveraigne kings : they are the lord his anointed , they carrie his image , they holde the charter of their authoritie , immediatelie of him , they are like vnto the highest spheares , receiving the first influence and emanation from god ; they are his lieuetenents , to command over all men , holding them-selues onlie of him : so respected of god , that wee are commanded by the spirit of god , to obey kings generallie , without restriction , whether they bee good , or bad , because they are of god : if they bee good , hee hath ordained them , for the quyetnesse , and prosperitie of good people : if they bee bad , hee hath ordained them , for the punishment of wicked , and rebellious people : so farre , that in my judgement , wee can finde no lawfull warrand , for subjects to dethrone the bad , more than the best : in which respects , it is most necessarie , that we should rightlie know the qualities of their persons , and dignitie of their high calling ; to the ende , that wee may vnderstand what kynde of obedience is due vnto them . it is not ydle , nor without great reason sayd , that soveraigne kings are lyke vnto god. there are in god manie thinges communicable to his creatures , his iustice , mercie , veritie , loue , wisdome , providence , of all which his creatures doe in some degree participate . agayne , there are in god thinges mierlie incommunicable to creatures , and which can never bee spoken of them , but privatiuelie , as his omnipotencie , infinitie , eternitie , and these are the proper markes of the deitie that can never fall in anie creature what-so-ever . even so , there bee in kinges ( vvho represent god on earth ) diverse and manie thinges communicable to ) subjects , besides honour and ritches , vvhich from princes doe reflect and shyne vpon subjects . a subject may resemble his prince in some proprieties , both of bodie & mynde ; but with-all ( in that also lyke vnto god ) they haue some inseparable marks of soveraignitie , vvhich cannot be communicated to subjects , vvithout the over-throw or laesion at least of their majestie . as for the first , to bee law-givers , the disputes and decreets of their counsels , sonates , and parliaments , are but a dead letter , vnto the tyme that the royall word , scepter , signe , or seale , doe giue lyfe and authoritie there-vnto : senatus decrevi● , rex jussit . if this point , to giue lawes , were communicable vnto subjects , then subjects also might dispense with lawes , & so participate of the soveraignitie . another inseparable marke of soveraigne majestie , is to decreet of peace and warre : counsels and parliamentes may agitate , the prince onelie may resolue . i grant indeed , that in christian kingdomes , vvhich holde more of aristocracie , than of monarchie , the things of peace and warre doe much depende vpon the voyce of the nobles , but the seale of authoritie is onlie from the king. a third marke inseparable of soveraignitie , is the institution , or deposition of chiefe magistrates , which by the fore-sayd law valeria , was annexed to the popular state , as due to the soveraigne majestie then popular . and certaynlie here-in lyeth not onlie a conspicuous marke of soveraignitie , but also a mayne poynt of the fortitude and strength of the same . a fourth marke of soveraigne majestie , and which is of it selfe most soveraigne , & incommunicable , is this latter appellation of subjectes to their soveraignes , in the cases of legall rigour , from what-so-ever iudge : vvithout the which , the light of reason doth show to anie man , that there can bee no true soveraignitie : lyke as wee see , that the consent of the world , the practise of all ages , & these of our owne nation , doe giue to kinges the royall priviledge of granting grace and remission , from lawes , even where the law of god doeth ordayne punishment by death . and the most temperate christian kings , doe assume and exercise this priviledge , to pardon persons criminall for slaughter , at their owne pleasure . it beeing so , how much more ought the royall soveraignitie to haue this latter appellation annexed vnto it , from all iudges , and causes civill , vvhere legall decreets are found to be hard and tyrannous ? or if a king cannot bestowe this grace vpon a distressed subject , to repledge him from the tyrannie of law , how can hee bee sayde to carrie in his person , a soveraegne power ? this priviledge , of a last appellation , in difficult cases , is not onelie proper to soveraignitie , but lykewyse a thing ever sought and challenged by subjects , as due vnto them to bee granted by their kings . nero and caligula , princes givē to private laesciviousnesse , they did ( for their owne ease , and freedome from effaires ) ordayne , that no appellation should be frō the senate vnto them : but yet the romanes would never quyte that benefite of a latter refuge to their emperours . and if we shall try thinges well , wee should find , that the present practise of almost all christian princes , hath put commissioners , or lieuetennants in their place , to exercise that poynt of the soveraigne majestie , for receiving of latter appellations , in causes compassionable : as the foure courts of spayne , to which , as to the royall soveraignitie , there are appeales from all iudges . their syndicators in their provinces abroad , are instituted to the same end , and that so profitablie , that there is not in any christian state , a surer means for mayntaynance of peace & iustice amongst people . the chamber imperiall in germanie , vvhere-vnto there are drylie appellatious from all the cities , dutc●ies , counties , baronies , within the whole empyre . in england they haue their court of conscience , for the same vse and ende . so that i doe thinke , for this commission for grievances , here presenting the king his owne person , to receiue these latter appellations due to the soveraignitie , albeit it seeme to bee a newe iudicatorie of late invention , yet it is not so , because it was ever incorporate , and inseparablie included in the soveraigne maiestie . i trust we will all thinke , that nothing is more agreeable with pietie , & good conscience , than the allowing of such appellations from legall rigour and extremitie : neyther anie thing more becomming the soveraignitie that god hath placed in christian kinges , than to receiue and heare them ; since iudges ordinarie may not doe it in the nature of their office , being sworne to administrate iustice in legall tearmes , & wanting power to dispense with lawes : vnlesse that his maiestie vvould grant to the lords of our session , the same commission and power ; appoynting some of them for lawe , and others for conscience , and so consolidate both the offices in one . alwayes , if the king ought or may heare the grievances of his subjects , as due vnto his soveraignitie : and if he may doe so much in his own person , then there is no doubt , but he may doe it by commissioners ; and must doe so , because of remotenesse of pla●e for our ease , and because of multitude of effaires for his owne ease . i thinke it not amisse , heere to declare , how our historiographer , buchanan , treating of the originall election of our colledge of iustice vnder king iames the fift , hee did esteeme it a meere tyrannie , if no appellation should bee there-from ; quando collegiam iudicum ( sayeth hee , in his fourteenth booke ) edinburgi constitutum fuisset , tamen qui sperabatur eventus non est consecutus , nam cum in scotianullae pene sint leges praeter conventuum decreta , eaque , pleraque non in perpetuum , sed in tempus facta , judices●que quod in se est lationem legum impediant , omnium civium bona quindecem hominum arbitrio sunt commissa quibus & perpetua est potestas , & imperium plane tyrannicum : that is to say , when the colledge of iustice was planted and authorized at edinburgh , there did not follow there-on the good events which were expected ; for there beeing no other lawes in scotland , almost , but actes of parliament , and iudges , given , so farre as lyeth in them , to hinder the promulgation of lawes ; the lands & goods of all the subjects were committed to the arbitriment of fifteene men , to whome was granted a perpetuall power and authoritie , playnlie tyrannous . now to proceede touching ordinarie magistrates : as lawes are not perpetuall , so are not magistrates everie-where , nor at all tymes ; neyther is it absolutelie expedient , or necessarie , to be so : albeit we must all confesse , that it is not without great & publicke detriment , that old and faythfull magistrates should be often changed , yet the current of states is so fluxable , & subject to so manie casuall changes , that very good princes haue changed verie good magistrates , for verie good causes . marc. aurol , going abroad , through his provinces , to view and consider the administration and order of iustice , he did displace , & hang even of the best and speciall magistrates , because that hee vvould suffer no man to beare office in the countrey where hee dwelt , namelie , a great man : as if his majestie should not permit a noble-man , inhabiting the north of scotland , to bee heritable shyreffe , or lieuetennant there , and respected there by that meanes , as a prince . which kinde of doing , as i vnderstand , is observed thorow all spaine , where everie iudge ordinarie , is a stranger there where hee judgeth . and oft-times , as wee may reade into their histories , it hath beene acted by the parliaments of france , that two of one familie should not bee of one session ; and most sufficient magistrates , to haue beene remooved for that respect : and briefe , there is no question , but princes not onlie may change their magistrates , but doe often finde it verie good policie to doe so , being alwayes oblished to place into their rowmes , men truelie sufficient for knowledge and sinceritie . plutarch , a rare man , both for morall and statelie vvisdome , saide against those who would establish perpetuall magistrates , videmini aut non multi facere magistratum , aut non multos magistratu dignos habere . but i come to speake ( which appearinglie is not yet in head ) of another point of reformation , into our seate of iustice , than the which there is nothing that would breede greater solace to the whole bodie of this kingdome : and would to god his majestie should take it to heart , and bee truelie enformed of the importance there-of . and this is of the great numbers of advocates , who for their commoditie particular , doe breed the longsomnesse of processes , that spoileth so manie good people , and which manie good and great kings haue endevoured to correct . by this abuse , the seate of iustice is turned to bee a sinke , that draweth into it the greatest part of the ritches of the land : and this , aboue all thinges , doeth make so manie vnable to serue their prince and countrey . these are the men ( whom cuiacius who knew them well ) did call , foecem & vomitorium juris , forensia pecora , vulturesque togates , the dreg and extrement of lawes , confounders of lawes , men who spue out their braines , in subtill inventions , to maske lawes , and make them of endlesse dispute : which is the reason , why so manie of them , doe possesse the pallaces and castels of their clients . this is an abuse , that the greatest of states haue beene by times forced to resent , and goe about to reforme it . the ancients , who were so contrarious to haue anie new sort of imposts vpon their people , they did ( for repressing of the noysome multitude of advocates , & the wrackfull iniquitie of lingering processes ) invent an impost vpon everie processe of law , even to the tenth part of the whole that parties did pleade for , as we reade in festus pompeius , and varro , in his bookes de lingua latina . diverse of the french kinges , namelie , lewis , called le sainct , who went into africke , against the saracens , hee did almost vtterlie extinguish this trade of advocation , and did appoint as well disputers as hearers , and iudges of processes , who were not mercenarie : and hee him-selfe gaue ordinarie audience to causes , in pallaces , and gardens , at certaine affixed houres to that vse : so did hee hate the cavalli● ( as he did contemptuouslie call them ) of advocates . it was for manie ages in france , acted and observed , ( for stopping of this streame of iniquitie , and spoile that commeth vnder pretext and name of law ) that who did lose the processe , should pay the whole charges and expenses made by the partie gainer , during the pley . this indeede seemeth to bee hard and rigorous , and yet ( say these who stand for it ) that being compared with the other extreame , ( that is to say , with this insolence and libertie of advocates , to make lawes and processes to bee endlesse ) it is the most easie and tollerable of the two , and ten times more tollerable : for why ? it should but restraine this foolish frequencie of the lawes , and constraine parties to more friendlie appointments of their controversies at home . for example , if his maiestie should make a law by advice of his parliament , that all processes vnder the availe of 10000 marks , should bee referred to so manie noble-men , or barrons , with so manie church-men , dwelling nearest vnto the parties , and that none should be heard to speake , but the partie him-selfe , or his best informed friends , it were a great reformation of this evill of lawes . and who doubteth , but the bodie of the people would gladlie embrace it ; for is there anie thing more ordinarie now , than to see men in the sute of a thousand pounds , spende as much perhaps , before hee can haue it ? againe , wee reade of another practise assayed in france , for avoyding of this inconvenient : they had a kinde of impost on their subjects , called capitation ( census ) where-by everie man payed so much , as for having libertie of a naturall subject : this they did abrogate , as an ignominious exaction , and in place there-of , did erect an impost vpon lawyers , wryters , and superfluous prodigalities , as parthian furres , perfumes , fairding , cloath of gold , indigo , and such as these , thinking that the most honourable and innocent impost , that could be layd vpon a people . wee reade againe , into the lyfe of that famous emanuel of portugall , of whom i spake before , that hee was vvonderfullie given to this kinde of reformation , of the evils and abuses of advocation . hee sent yearlie visiters to all the seats of iustice , with power , to punish , some vvith remoue all from their places , some vvith mults of their goods , yea , and with death , if the weightinesse of the matter of their transgressions did merite so much . he went about him-selfe , to giue personall audiences . wee reade againe , that in rome , vnder pope gregorie the tenth , and iohn the twentie one , and nicolaus the third , it was intended , and vrged by those popes , to eradicate and cast out , that multitude of advocates and notars , who as a noysome vermine , did gnaw the bowels of their people : but by reason of the brevitie of their lyues , ( which as everie one knoweth doeth intercept manie good intended policies , there ) it tooke no effect . againe , in switzerland , almanie , and other northerne regions , all processes are decerned by deduction of causes , onelie by the parties them-selues , without anie advocate at all . in venice their supreame seate of civill iustice , called quarantia , consisting of 40 , of the nobilitie of venice , they doe sende out , at ordinarie times of the yeare , a sort of syndicators , vvho goe to all the iustice seats through-out their territories , to censure their proceedings : and where they finde them to haue exceeded the short dyet of tyme appointed for decyding of causes , they doe remoue them : and where they finde matter vvorthie of appellation , they bring it before the quarartia , where the advocates get two severall audiences , everie of them to an houre-glasse , and there is all . where-as heere , our advocates must haue , not houres , nor dayes , nor moneths , nor yeares , but vvhole ages , if they please : neither is there anie possibilitie of correcting this , but by a soveraigne and absolute misericord of his majestie : absolute , i say , even to take vpon himselfe● by his regall authoritie , to breake downe that devowring monster , which they call the order of their house ; consisting of so manie steps , and degrees of processe , that it were better for a meane man , to goe through the fyre of purgatorie , than through these . if his majestie would weede foorth the most subtill advocates , and make them iudges , banish the most ignorant , and employ to the office of advocation , those of mid-ranke ; assigning vnto them so manie dayes of pleading , without more . as for multiplication of iudges , it is rather profitable than perilous , quia multum aquae difficilius , quam tantillum corrumpitur : et melius omnibus , quam singulis creditur : et nemo omnes neminem unquam omnes fefellerunt . certaynlie , without some reformation of the barre , the reformation of our session , for the vse of the subjectes , will bee without much perceiueable good . if reformation of things should bee by reducing of them to their first institution , doubtlesse the foundation of our session hath bene free from these multitudes of advocates ; and as yet manie people doe liue vertuouslie , and happilie , where there be none permitted at all . it were a notable reformation , if what subiectes in scotland doe employ this way , to the mutuall over-throwe one of another , it were saved , and exacted for the service of the common-wealth . alwayes , to proceed for reformation : we reade in the french histories , that lewis the eleventh finding manie bayliries & shyreffships heritable , annexed to the houses and successions of great men , he did revoke , and annull them ; making them not onlie changeable , but syndicable . of such wee haue great numbers in scotland , with verie great necessitie also of reformation at least , as is well knowne , there beeing nothing more aliene , and averse from iustice , than the verie name & nature of an heritable magistrate : nor anie thing more absurd in policie , than the administration of iustice to be perpetuate , and tyed to one house , or clan , where-in women , children , or fooles , may come , by tyme , to succeede ; all which three are vncapable of that kynde of charge . and if the best of them , who haue the right heritable of a magistate , doe put in the place some of their ignorant kins-men , to exercise the same , who can doe nought , but practise trickes of lewd & base oppression , these must be comported by the bodie of the common people , and often times by the better sort : & why ? because my lord is heritable shyreffe , & the king cannot remoue him . is not this to suffer some subject●s , to play the prince over their neighbours ? or can anie thing bee more derogatiue to the royall soveraignitie ? for why ? it taketh away one of the proper marks-there-of , which is inseparablie annexed vnto it : that is , of placing chiefe magistrates ; a thing onelie due to the prince . states-men and counsellers , may nominate , but the free election belongeth to the king. and in tymes , when factions are pregnant , princes are even to bee jealous of the trustinesse of primè states-men in that poynt : for ambition is often tymes more curious to fortifie it selfe , than the common-wealth . alwayes , if heritable offices haue bene ancientlie granted , for great and speciall services done to the king , or common-wealth , by particular men , from whom such rights haue descended to their posteritie ; then conscience , aequ●tie , and royall magnanimitie , doe requyre that such persons bee condignlie satisfied for their dimissions , according as his majestie hath alreadie condescended . as on the other part , if such a subject should be difficill , or intractable with his prince , in a poynt of that qualitie , it should bee thought contrary to the modestie of mynd and carriage , which in duetie he ought to his king , and should argue in him , too much loue of soveraignitie . the lyke may certaynlie bee sayde of the la●e lords of church-lands : no , we rather call them petite princes , so much power doe they arrogate to them selues , over those who bee within their lordship , preassing to exercise the same bastard domination over their tennantes , by the tyrannie of their heritable courtes , which ancientlie the pope , and his abbots , did practise , who did mierlie appropriate to them selues , the vassallage & homage of so manie of the king's subjects , as were within the purpryze of their lands : they did so before , and nowe the new-erected-lord doeth the same , and much worse : nec dominium vitavimus , sed dominum : we haue changed the dominator , but are not fred from that bastard dominion . the olde abbot , and his convent , ancientlie following the monasticke lyfe , exempted from publicke offices , or travelling to court or session , or any else-where abroad they were content with the payment of their rentall in easiest manner , and often tymes with lesse , & did bestow great part there-of in hospitalitie to the payers : and albeit their poore tennants were oblished to them , for service of harriage and carriage , yet they did impeach them no more , but once a yeare to leade in to their clost●r , vpon the cl●strall ch●rges , some fleshes , fishes , & fewell : this vvas all . but nowe , vvith the change of the lord , the tennant hath changed the happinesse of his poore condition . for vvhy ? to speake sincerelie , the tyrannie of the papall abbots vvas exercised most in that case , against their king , by spoyling from him the vassallage of his naturall subjects : otherwyse , they were most bountifull , and indulgent to their poore tennantes , vvho nowe by this change , are brought to as pittifull slaverie , as the israelites vvere vnder pharaoh . their lord , hee is not a church-man , nor of the clostrall profession : he hath continuall a-doe vvith court and session : he hath daylie occasion of sending carriages , & bringing from abroad : the basest of his servants must not goe a foot , he must be carried , if it vvere vpon the necke of his poore tennant : hee must labour his lord's vine-yards , and make his bricke , vvith much hunger in his bellie the meane vvhyle . the king cannot helpe him , because his lord hath the authoritie of an heritable court , & is absolute over him : he will not lead his tithes , but still he must haue more than the worth in bolles : & when it is so , greater pryces than be ordinarie : if he haue to send thorow the countrey his cookes , the poore man must bring his horse from the harrowes , al-be-it the season were never so faire : and a number of like things , vvhich if they bee not presentlie done , hee taketh decreets to him-selfe , in his owne courts , ( vvhich no christian king doeth ) and sendeth his officers , to poynd the poore creature ; vvith such rigour , that if there vvere no more in his house , but the pot , vvhere-in his sillie portion of meat is preparing , it must be taken from him : that verie sure it is , that christian people bee not so oppressed vnder the turke . i vvish that his majestie vvould deliver his subjects , from the yoake of their grievous servitude , and oppression , and extinguish the tyrannie of heritable courts : to the ende , that gentle-men , and others , haue but one master to looke vnto , and one sunne , to draw their light from : and this is most necessarie to bee , although his majestie should suffer them to brooke the lands . for vvhether the domaine of the crowne ( vvhere-from those lands vvere given ) bee alienable , or vvhether being devoted to the c●urch , they may returne to the regall patrimonie , al-be-it i vvill not take on mee to define , yet according to my knowledge , i shall deliver mine opinion , vvith reverence , and correction . that the domaine of republicks is not alienable , it is certaine , and hath beene so maintained , by the chiefest of them , to vvit , athens and rome , where two pryme-men , themistocles , and cato the censor , did take backe , as vvee reade in plutarch , brevi manu , what-so-ever had beene alienate of the publicke domaine , although manie yeares before , holding that the prescription of an hundreth yeares : vvhich doeth qualifie and assure all possessions , cannot take away the publicke patrimonie , ( because there is no prescription , saide they , of men against god , nor of particulars against the common-wealth ) but vvhether the royall soveraignitie going aboue them in manie absolute points , doeth also goe aboue their in that kinde of priviledge , one would thinke it some-what incertaine , because of th● diverse practises of princes in that behalfe , according to their humours , to the condition of the time , and to the weightinesse of services done by those , to vvhom they haue beene bountifull . some princes haue esteemed the domaine publicke so sacred , and inviolable , that vvee reade of that romane emperour , pertinax , how hee caused to bee defaced , and put away his name and image , that was engraven vpon the publicke pallaces , saying , that the houses belonging to the common-wealth , ought not to beare anie markes of impropriation to him . and of antonini , called the pious , that hee did not for the same respect , dwell but vpon his peculiar heritages , and spend the rents belonging to him , other-wise , than by the publicke . but the case is so farre altered , that at this time , and in these latter dayes , princes more by an inspiration of private favour , or for to exercise the libertie and vse of their royall prerogatiues , than for anie knowne worth , or merite of men , haue even made them great , as it were , in imitation of the goodnesse of god , who made man of nothing : omne bonum sui diffusivum : it is the nature of goodnesse , to diffuse and communicate it selfe , even as god doeth , other-wyse it cannot bee called goodnesse . the glorie of the occean , is more for the bountifull spreading of his branches vpon the face of the earth , than for his greatnesse . the stateliest tree , maketh the most statelie vmbrage : noble-men are the shadowes of kings : as it is glorious for the sonne , to bee accompanied and followed with so manie bright starres , and planets , whose bodies doe receiue the beames of his light , and there-with doe beautifie the heaven about him ; so are vvaiting noble-men to kings , as diamonds and rubies planted about their throne , to receiue and reflect the splendor of the royall majestie . and yet whyles it is so , we see that christian kings , at the acceptation of their crownes , doe giue their oathes , for defence of religion , of iustice , and the common-wealth , and preservation of that publicke dowayne , vvhich the common-wealth doeth present vnto her prince , as a dote , or tocher-good , to be saved for her mayntaynance ; and vvhere-of hee hath the onlie vsu-fruit , and cannot alienate it , but with her owne consent , and for some extraordinarie service done to her , or to the prince , vvho is her head : extraordinarie , i say , because services ordinarie in the state , haue annexed vnto them , their ordinarie fees , and pensions . extraordinarie i call some act of singular valour for the countrey , agaynst a common enemie ; or some hazard vnder-gone , for safetie of the prince his lyfe . although the patrimonie of the crowne bee sacred , yet such services are to bee esteemed more sacred : and donations , or rewards for these , are to stand inviolable : for here are the ods betwixt a republicke , and state royall , that the 〈◊〉 hath no head particular , who should challenge the priviledge of such bountifulnesse , or for vvhose sake it should bee granted : for seldom●● doeth the death of anie one man what-so-ever breede any commotion , crosse , or alteration to a republicke , quia non moritur respublica : vvhere-as by the contrarie , the death of a good prince , and often tymes of an evill , doeth shake the verie foundations of a kingdome : vvhich made caesar to say , non tam 〈◊〉 interest quam reipub. quam diutissime vivam . this maketh their lyues to bee so precious and sacro-sanct , they being the verie heart , and head of the bodie of the common-wealth . so that to holde absolutely , that no kynd of services are remunerable , with anie thing belonging to the crowne , it is not onlie to cast loose the estates of the nobilitie , and gentri● , ( whose houses everie where through christendome , haue bene made vp , and erected by the bountie of kings for nominate and famous services done to them , or to their countreyes ) but it were also to perill the personall securitie of princes thē-selues ; when men should see that a king could giue noght to one , who should hazard or loose his lyfe for his safetie , but that vvhich his successour may recall , it is to ●urbe the royall soveraignitie too farre . and albeit the extens of majestie 's late rev●cation , did seeme so fearfull to vs at the first , as if it had comprehended so much ; yet wee are still to remember , vnder what a gracious and just prince wee doe liue , and to take it rather for a warning & awaking of our gratitude in his first entrie : and therefore i must here craue pardon of all , to call to mynd , how often since i haue heard from wyse and sincere men , that a little more of readinesse to doe him service in the last cōvention of our estates , had bene sufficient to disperse the chiefest clowds of that tempest . i doe acknowledge , that it is not licentiate to me , nor tollerable in anie private subject , to censure the reverend and long approved magistrates of this kingdome , neyther will i presume to doe so , but onlie to expostulate , and regrate , with manie good men , the infortunate proceedour of that counsell , whereby neyther prince nor people did receiue contentment . whether wee should lay it vpon mistakings possible to haue bene amongst the lordes of those commissions ; or , vpon the iealousies and competences ordinarie to bee betwixt new and olde states-men , at the entrie of a king ; or , vpō the basenesse of some countrey-commissioners , whose avaryce would not suffer thē to resent the common danger of this yle , as appertayned ; or , vpon a popular disgust , & generall feare , conceived for religion , by reason of some noble-men of contrarie mynde , employed from the court about that businesse ; or , lastlie , vvhether vpon the backwardnesse of this tyme , so disposed as it is , to breed distraction , and disturbance of the state. whatsoever was the cause moving , certaynlie the debacts of that convention vvere , as appeareth , principia malorum , speaking of effects : for vvas it then a right tyme , to answere majestie 's demaundes thus , that a convention could not goe higher in taxing the countrey , than a parliament had done before ? at the last parliament , king iames had a necessitie to sende ambassadours abroad , to negotiate peace : vvhich i confesse , was a graue and great cause for subsidies : but at this convention , peace was given vp , warres begun , and it stood vpon the losse of germanie , and invasion of great britane : vvherevpon might haue ensued hastilie greater damnage , than of manie taxations . or , was it then tyme , to refuse the mayntaynance , during warres , of 2000 men , to keepe the seas free , and open for our trafficke ? when wee shall reckon our losses sustayned since by sea-traders , & by so manie mariners wanting employment at home , and by losing so faire a commoditie , as was this last yeare , for transporting our corne● to profitable markets , in neighbour countreyes , then wee shall decerne the errour of that convention . wee will say , wee haue not beene accustomed to beare so great charges : a weake argument . since it hath pleased god , to change the custome of our fortune , will wee contemne his visitations , and as senselesse men , bee carelesse of our countrey ? wee will say , that our countrey hath suffered manie distresset , by these late bad yeares , and by sea-misfortunes ; and i know it to bee so : but must wee not for all that defend our countrey ? and what if wee must not onlie maintaine two thousand men , but also fight our selues ? a thing which wee haue great reason daylie to expect . and i will come to the most pricking poi●t of all : his majestie 's revocation hath discowraged vs. where-vnto i answere , by asking , what more hath his majestie done , than anie earle or lord in scotland doeth , who after the death of his father , chargeth his vassals and tennants , and preasseth them by lawes , that hee may know their holdinges ? yea , and some-times by manages and threats , force them to quite their lawfull ritches , although they were their neare kins-men . alwayes , what wise vassall , or tennant , will not stryue to over-come his lord , with reverent and humble carriage , and there-by to moue him to accept the tenth part perhaps of that which he did demand for entrie ? and shall it not bee borne with in a great king , that which is ordinarilie done by his subjects ? bis duo dena pet as , his duo sena feres . what if a young prince haue gotten too large information touching these ? or if his infor●ators be mistaken in their judgement there-anent ? shall there not bee patience granted , and time to digest and condescend ? and shall not our behaviours be in the meane-whyle , correspondent to that loyaltie , loue , and obedience , that subjectes ought vnto their naturall prince , and that should procure his compassion & kyndnesse towards all the members of this kingdome ? with god's blessing let vs be doing so , and let vs expect nothing , but christian and vpright dealing , from a king , in vvhome there is so great appearance of good and iust meaning : and let vs haue still in our mouthes , that word , which now ( prayse to god for it ) our noble-men begin liberallie to professe , that let him bee holden accursed , who will not contribute to his verie shirt , for the safetie of his majestie , and of the countrey . alwayes , for the point of revocation , who doubteth , but three thinges may justlie fall vnder the consideration of young princes ? first , whether this kynd of gracious and divin● bountie , exercised by their predecessours , giving extraordinarie thinges , for ordinarie services , or for private affection , haue bene too exorbitant . secondlie , what may bee the merit , or worth , so such as haue pocked them . lastlie , what is the exigence of the tyme , and howe these things may be wanting vnto princes . but otherwyse , we finde in all christian histories , that crowne-lands haue bene alienated , & given away by kings , for one of three causes , vvhich to this day haue remayned vnquarrelled by their successours : one is for reward of those , who haue exposed their lyues , to manifest danger , for the safetie of their persons : as for example , the landes given by his majestie , our late soveraigne , for services done agaynst the traytors of gourie , or for practises of discoverie , and prevention of the powder treason at london : another for valiant and personall services , done for preservation of the countrey , agaynst invasion of forraigne enemies , or of the state , from intestine : as we reade of our braue king malcolme the second , who seeing the magnanimitie of the scottish gentrie , agaynst the fierce and enraged danes , by fiue or sixe bloodie and desperate battels , in diverse partes of the countrey , where he him selfe did assist in person : therfore in a publicke parliamēt , he did divide almost the whole crown-lands in baronies , & dispone them to the gentry , in publico ordinum convent● ( says my text ) cunctas ●pes , agrosque regios , pene omnes meritorū habita rations distribuit , regno in partes quas baronias vocāt divisio . in regard wherof , those barons , as by compaction , did at that same time , annex to the crown , the wardes and reliefes of their lands : which together with the other casualities , and dues belonging to the crowne , was esteemed and accepted as a sufficient mayntaynance then of the royall dignitie . if either of those two should bee revocable , kings , countreyes , and common-wealths , should not bee compted so sacred , as they ought to bee . thirdlie , princes haue mortified their crowne patrimonie , to pietie and devotion ; as king david the first of scotland , for plantation of fifteene abbayes , & foure bishoprickes , ri●chly rented : such are recalled in this latter age , because of the nefa●tious & damnable abuses , wherewith the possessours of them were commonlie polluted . and , o how greatlie it were to bee wished ! that neyther king david , nor other christian kinges , had beene so prodigall of their crowne patrimonies , in favours of church-men : for the world knoweth it nowe , that by so doing , they did ●urne religious priests , into temporall princes , and did put into their hand , that sword , vvherewith to this day , they not only doe cut the throats of kinges , and their authoritie , but haue spoyled the puritie and pietie of the church of god : and in place there-of , haue introduced this pollution , pryde , avarice , & superstition , which shall never haue an ende , so long as they remayne so ritch as they are : devotio peperit divitias , & filia devoravit matrem : devotion ( sayth gerson ) bred ritches , and the daughter devoured the mother . next , it were to be wished , that when those lands of the church , anciently belonging to the crowne , vvere agayne dissolved from the church , and annexed to the crowne , by our late soveraigne , of blessed memorie , that they had bene suffered to remayne therewith , for the avoyding of so great discontentment and confusion , as is lyke to grow thereof , if they should nowe bee taken in to the crowne , vvithout restitution to so manie gentle-men , and others , as haue employed the best parte of their meanes , for buying of those things from the newlie-erected-lords , without anie warrandize at all for their money . which , albeit it doe greatlie perplexe the mynds of manie good subjects , yet we are vndoubtedlie to hope for reparation , some way of these , since we liue vnder a christian prince , who is alreadie honoured of the world , for the equitie of his mynd● ; and who hath alreadie declared his iust intentions there-anent . there is , beside another cause , that maketh our noble-men and gentrie , to thinke themselues the sibber to the church-rents : and this is it ; because their predecessours did also enjoye them in effect , albeit not titularlie , as well then , as they doe now . their sonnes were presented by the kings , to the benefices of the church . themselues did often tymes feede at their tables , and gather vp the super-plus of the rent . the sonnes of meane gentle-men , vvent to the monasticke lyfe everie where : if they had manie daughters , they did sende some of them to the religious convents of women : vvhich was a singular disburden and reliefe , both of greater and smaller houses , ( speaking civillie , & in civill respects : ) and this is yet the chiefest cause , vvhy the ritches of the papall church , are so tollerable by princes , and people of that profession : so that whyles numbers of men and women , of all sortes , were nowrished anciently by the church revenewes in scotland , it would bee thought strange , to bestow them vpon so few church-men as now be , vvho , i confesse , are worthie of augmentation . but that they should bee made so ritch , or great , wee see what a pestilent gangren● that hath beene alreadie . : and it is sure enough , that the same causes , will ever produce the same effects . the worlde is aye lyke to it selfe , and men are still men : et omnia vertuntur in circulum . there is not , of humane things , a more extravagant , and rare contemplation , than to consider , how princes , states , and people of christendome , haue beene so blinde-folded , or hood-winked , that they could not perceiue the fearfull encrease of the church rents , and ritches , with the pernicious evils , bred , and brought in with them ; vnto the time , that things were past remedie almost , and that the church had nearlie devoured the state in everie part . we reade in the histories , that before the separation of the church of rome , made by luther , tryall being taken , and explorations by kings , and states , who began to bee jealous of the church ritches , it was found , that through all the christian countreyes of europe , the hundreth part of the people , did possesse the tenth part of the revenewes of all , at least , aboue the fisque of testaments , of lands , and mooueables , largelie legaced to them . wee finde againe , in the french wryters , that the yeare 1513 , the like search beeing curiouslie made in france , it was proved , that the whole rents , and emoluments of that countrey , being set to twelue parts , the ecclesiasticall persons did possesse seaven there-of : there being found , by this disquisition , with-in the provinces of france , 12 archbishoprickes , 104 bishopricks , ●40 abbayes , 27400 curies● and danger to haue beene hudge manie moe curies , if pope iohn the twentie two , had not abolished the decreet of pope nicolaus , who permitted , that all mendicant religious , should enjoy the fruits of lands left to them by laicke persons , the propertie of the land being sayde to belong to the popes them-selues . an impudent subtiltie , to cover the violation of the mendicant his oath of povertie : seeing as the law sayeth , the proprietie is vnprofitable to one , where the vsu-fruit is perpetuall to another . so that kings and states perceiving , that if this kind of claudestine purchase of the church , and the daylie growing of her ritches , were not interrupted , their people & territories would by tyme be stollen away . they begā everie-where almost to intercept it . king edward the first of england , prohibited by a law , that anie church-man should conquish lands , or succeed to legacies . king henrie the eight , tooke from the church . king charles , the fift of spayne , made the lyke prohibition to the former , in the low-countreyes , agaynst church-conquishes , and legacies . and at this day , the venetians ( besides the exterminion of the iesuites ) haue done the same ; and so haue florence , and other princes of itali● done the lyke : otherwise , it had come to passe , with-in few yeares , that whole italie had bene as one closter . but wee are not to bee jealous of this point here : our church is plagued with the contrarie extreame . comming now ( according to the order proposed in the beginning of this treatise ) to speake of our conceived feares , for the reformation intended of tythes : first , it is a question of theologie , and i am no doctor there : next , it belongeth but per accidens to this purpose : lastlie , it is a subject vnplausable to treat of in this tyme , by anie , who would speake vprightlie . but as sainct iohn sayeth , the trueth shall make thee free , i shall neede no other apologie , but to follow the veritie , in that i meane to write , where-of i shall make no long discourse , ( which were both impertinent , and vnnecessarie , in a thing so current , & well vnderstood alreadie , and so largelie & learnedlie written of , by manie , both scottish & english ) but restraining my selfe , to two or three circumstances , where-of some haue not beene remarked by anie that i haue yet read vpon this argument . the originall mention of tythes in the scripture , by the practise of abrahā in genesis● the devoting of thē by god's own mouth to moses , in leviticus : the end & vse of thē in deuternomie : and the execratiō & cursing of things once devoted & made sacred , by god himselfe , in numbers , & in ioshua , are texts so cleare & indisputable , that at least , for the tyme of the law , no man doth questiō . all that we goe about , who be opponents to evangelicall decimation , is , to enforce , that tenthes were ceremoniall in the mosaicke , ending with consummatum est , and haue no warrand in the gospell , where christ in two places only doth speak of tythes of the mint and annise : these ought yee to haue done , and not omit the other . and againe , in luke , comparing betwixt the publicane and pharisee , who vaunted of the just payment of his tenthes , christ did blame onlie his ostentation , & not his payment of the tenthes , to both which places , wee make this answere , that at that time the ceremoniall law was in full strength , and aye vntill consummatu●●est . and for that respect , christ did suffer the payment of te●●es : and wee say , seeing christ hath changed both the priesthood , and the law , and supplied their rowmes , and hath given no order for the church revenewes of tenthes , therfore he hath abolished the same . againe , christ about the sending foorth of his apostles , and speaking of their mayntaynance , matth. 10. provide neither silver nor golde in your purses , for the worke-man is worthie of his meat . here he maketh no mētion at all of tenthes , as the place did require , in case the tenthes had bene due to the church . thus wee cast it over to the apostles , and there wee doe also pretend the same argument . that where sainct paul , 1. cor. 9. doth pleade at large for mayntaynance , he keepeth him-selfe vpon generall termes , without anie mention of tenthes : who feedeth a flocke , & doeth not eate of the milke thereof ? if we haue sowne spirituall things to you , is it a great thing , if we reape your carnall thinges ? thou shalt not muzzell the mouth of the oxe , that treadeth out the corne. and so we say , albeit christ and his apostles , haue allowed livinges for preachers , yea , let thē bee never so ample , yet they haue not tyed vs to a nūber , wherevnto the answeres are made , that sainct paul in the same chapter , hath included the tenthes , by the generall , in these wordes , hee that ministreth about holie thinges , must liue of the temple ; and the wayters on the altar , on the thinges thereof . that by the things of the temple , and the altar , are signified the tenthes , albeit hee did not expresse it , in regarde they vvere then in the hands of the pharisees , and could not be challenged , nor gotten by law , by private and poore men , as the apostles were ; but contrarie should haue increased the malice of the iewes agaynst them , in case they had beene sought . farther , we studie to proue , that tythes were ceremoniall : first , by reasō of an absolute & only place , whervnto they were broght , to hierusalem . secondly , because of the number , whereby speciallie we contend , to exclude the moralitie of tenths , & astrict them to a ceremonie , seeing naturall reasō would as wel alow the eleventh , as the tenth portion , or the twelft rather , because the levites were one of the xij tribes . and lastly , for their employment at hierusalē ▪ as we haue it , deut. 14. if the way be long , that thou art not able to carrie thy tenthes , where the lord hath chosen to set his name , then thou shalt turne them into money , & goe to the place , & thou shalt bestow the money for whatsoever thy soule lusteth after , oxe , sheepe , wine , or strong drink●● & thou shalt eat , & rejoyce before the lord , thou , & thy familie : thou shalt not forsake the levite within thy gates , nor the strāger , nor the widow , nor the fatherlesse . al which things do smell a ceremoniall institution , as we alleadge , & wherevpon there be great & learned disputes agitate by diverse of our countrey-men : amongst all which , & all that can be said for tenths , it seemeth to me , that the truest light is to bee drawne from the practise of abraham ; by which it appeareth , they were evangelicall , before they were mosaicall . if long before the ceremoniall or writtē law , abraham payed tythes to melchisedec , how can we hold tenths to be ceremoniall ? albeit we had not that cleare explication therof , by s. paul , heb. 7 , where in the person of melchisedec , he proveth the excellencie of christ's priesthood , aboue that of aaron : he proveth melchis . to be a priest frō two things : from the discharge of his office , he blessed abraham : and from that which was annexed to his office , he tythed abrahum . if any would object , that abraham did offer to him those tenthes , not of bound duetie , but out of his private charitie , or from a custome that was vsed before him , or from the light of nature only , ( wherof i shal speak somewhat herafter ) that were to annull the proofe of melchis ▪ his priesthood , set downe by th' apostle , yea , it were to change the text , because the actiue word , is in the person of melchis . and not of abrah . for it is not said , that abr. tythed himselfe , but that melchis . ty●hed abrah . melchis . decimavit abrah . and the greeke word , vers. 6. of that chap. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doeth import no lesse , how-so-ever the english translation is received . next again , that by melchis . th' apostle vnderstandeth christ , it is evident , when he saith of him , vers. 8. here men die , that do receiue tythes , ( meaning the levi●s ) but there he receiveth them , of whom it is written , that he liveth : which is vndoubtedly spoken of christ ; for so are the words , vers ▪ 13. & 14. he of whom these things are written , pertayneth to another tribe , whereof no man serveth at the altar , for it is evident , that our lord sprang out of iudah . farther , it is plaine , that the priesthood there spoken of , is an eternall priesthood , thou art a priest for ever , according to the order of melchis . whervpō it must follow , that tythes being the due of an eternal priesthood , must also themselues be eternall ▪ abraham saw my day , and did rejoyce , saith christ . and i put the case , this poynt were not so cleare as it is , vvee might find another ground , wherby we should see our selues tyed to this burden of tythes evangelicallie : and that is by the devoting of them , done by christian princes , people , and states , vvho wee may thinke , before the church ( i suppose ) could challenge them by anie warrand , haue beene moved to giue vnto her a warrand , by that same spirit , that moved abraham , manie years before the law was given out for tenthes . constantine the great , and charlemayne , did begin this plantation of the church rents , authoritie , and priviledges , and others everie-where did follow them . then we know , vvhat is the nature of thinges once devoted to god , levit. 27. vers. 28. no devoted thing , that a man shall devote to the lord , both of man and beast , and of the possession of his fielde , shall bee redeemed : everie devoted thing , is holie vnto the lord . and levit. 5. vers. 15. if a soule doe sinne , through ignorance , in the holie thinges of the lord , hee shall make a mendes in the holie thing , and shall adde a fift part there-vnto . the popes them selues , haue acknowledged their possession of tythes , to bee aliene from the practise or pleading of the primitiue church , and that their titles therevnto haue flowed from the onlie devotion and donation of christian kings , as may bee seene in can. futuram ecclesiam , & cap. videntes , 12. q. 1. vvhich bellarmine doeth stand to , tom. 1. contra 5. lib. 1. cap. 25. and we may try it to bee so , by the entrie of the christian fayth in scotland , anno 203. king donald the first did procure , by his ambassadour sent to pope victor , the cōming of some priests into this kingdome , for receiving of him , his familie , & nobilitie , to the church , by baptisme : where there is no mention of anie title pretended , or anie sute made by the sayd pope for tythes . but vvhole foure ages thereafter , to wit , anno 578 , our king convallus , vvithout challenge or requisition frō the pope , hee of him selfe did authorize the terrour and force of excommunication , & established to the church , the tenthes of scotland , edixit ut decimas omnium terrae nascentium cuncti in sacerdotū horrea deferrent : by vvhich it appeareth , that everie man then had his owne tythes . farther , hee gaue to the priests , mansions and dwelling places , neare to the churches : praedium in templi vicinia ubi secretus à vnlgo habitaret . withall two thinges are to bee vnderstood : first , that a great part of those rentes were employed to the ritch deco●ing of church fabrickes , christi templa valde ornari voluit . secondlie , that before then , there were multitudes of religious people in scotland , ( that age of the occidentall world being , as it were , an influence , or inundation of pietie , and zeale to gods glorie ) for the historie telleth , that he sent to yreland , for that renowned abbot , sanctus columba ; by whose advyce , contraxit monachos spars●s ad id tempus , & soliv●g●s ; inunum , indeque per caeno●ia quae convalli pietas struxer at , distribut●s 〈◊〉 & vitanon vulgatae observationis instituit . where the author ( to let vs see , how the devoting of tythes , and foundation of monasticke places , vvent alwayes together ) hee maketh mention of the benedictine order their frequencie in scotland before then , & manie abbayes erected for them : where it is most worthie observation , his iudgement of the revenewes and ritches of the church , plurima inter nostrates celeberrima su●t hujus ordinis caenobla , hactenus viris pietate clarissimis habitata , virtute fortassis insigniori , majorique veneratione apud posteros perseveratura , si ad otium & luxum regum munificentia , tanta sagina ea non oner asset : that is to say , there were then in scotland , manie famous abbayes , of the benedictine order , hitherto inhabited by men of singular pietie , and wherein the sinceritie of religious vertue might haue 〈◊〉 flowrishing , & recommendable to all posteritie , if the too great bountie of princes did not over-bardē them with the fatnesse of ydle-seat and ri●●hes . by this doing of conva●● , i say , it seemeth , that the church hath gotten a sufficient warrand to our tythes , by positiu● christian lawes , albeit vve should repyne at the warrand●s brought out of the gospell . and even the most learned of the protestant syde , doe holde it the surest title of the two . the greatest part of the reformed churches of france , doe holde it after the mynd of the learned calvine , vvho hath left behinde him the same opinion to the world , in his treatise vpon iob , & vpon the 18 of nu●s vers. 20 , sed eas à lai●is occupari quo passus fuisset papa , si jure divino ( ut in●●lse garriunt ) sacra fuisseut cleri hereditas . which opinion is thought to haue begun from the old valdenses , who did inhabite there about : vvho seeing the great abuse of tythes vnder the church of rome , did hold , that tythes vveremeere almes● and no vvay belonging to the church . this also vvas the mynd of iohn hu● . and that great divine perkins , on gal. 3. and 25. the allowance of tythes , sayth he , standeth not in force , in this and other common-wealths , by the iudiciall law of god to the iewes , but by positiue lawes of countreys . these men thinke it no fault to giue tythes to the church , but hold it not necessarie from anie warrand of the gospell● they doe allow of a sufficient church mayntaynance , but not the same quetum . and when it is objected to them , why should these beggarlie iewish rudiments , and that perishing priesthood of the law , haue so ritch a patrimonie , and the glorious revelation of the gospell , a poore and necessitous ministrie ? they doe answere , because their ritches and formes are diverse , and perhaps contrarie ; that consisting in show , and this in substance ; that being altogether earthlie , and this altogether spirituall : and being in this point too much possessed by puritane humours , they doe not admit that splendor and decorement of churches , nor that externall pompe and majestie , of publicke worship , which in my mynde is not discommendable in the popes church . where-vnto they are in all things opposed , as well in the best points of government , and indifferent ceremonies , as in the maine grounds of fayth . and farther , it is not to bee doubted of , but that so profound a divyne as cal●●ne , vnderstanding so well as hee did , the arts of the papall pryde , hee thought it a good way , for destroying of superstition , and tyrannie in the church , to deny her anie right of tythes , other than by donation , and charitie of christian princes , so long as she should remaine free from heresie , and wicked abuses , and otherwise might bee taken from her . now i come to the circumstance of the quotum , to consider if there might haue beene anie matter of sanctitie , ceremonie , or type in the number of 10 , why god choosed the tenth portion , to bee sacred vnto himselfe , rather than the ninth , eleventh , or twelft ; and whether abraham did light vpon that number , by anie instinct of nature common to other people . and first , i will tell you , that there was never hitherto anie nation heard of , so barbarous , in whose hearts nature did not ingraue this law , to adore the deitie by externall ceremonies of worship , consisting in statelie temples , costlie altars , and images , daylie oblations of sumptuous sacrifices , and mayntaynance of multitudes of sacrificators ; that it is admirable to beholde , how ge●tiles in externall zeale , haue gone beyond even true worshippers , so farre , that manie of them , did allot and dedicate to religious service , much more than tythes . wee reade in dionys. halicarn . that romulus , the first found●●r of rome , divided the whole territories there of in three parts ; one for the priests , and publicke worship ; another for the domaine of the common-wealth ; the third for the people ; there being of people for that time 3000 , and 18000 iugera of land , where-of were reserved 6000 , for the sacrifices , and sacrificators . and that this division of romulus , according to diadorus , was an imitation of the aegyptians , who in like manner , did originallie make a tripartion of the revenewes of the land , where-of the first was for the priests , and sacrifices , the second for the king , and publicke charges of the state , the third for the calasyres , who were souldiours , and men of armes . and from the most esteemed histories of antiquitie , wee haue numbers of testimonies , that the gentiles knew by the light of nature , that tythes were sacred vnto god , namelie , of their spoyles , and victories ; and therefore did offer and sacrifice them vnder the name of victimae , quasi vi ictae . herpocration , dydymus , and pausamas , doe witnesse , that the greeks gaue the tenth of their spoyles in vvarre , vnto their gods. cyrus the lesse , gaue the tenth of his money taken from captiues , to apollo , and diana , at ephesus . agis gaue his at delphos : agesilaus in two yeares , aboue 100 talents of tythes , to the same place . plinie relateth , that the sabeans might not sell their frankincense , vnder the paine of death , vntill the priests had their tythes : the aethiopians divided with a staffe , the bundels of caunell and casia , and first gaue god his part . plutarch is author , that hercules did sacrifice everie tenth bullocke , that hee tooke from geiron by force . the tenthes of the spoyles of the platean vvarres , were dedicate to the gods ▪ socrates hath in his ecclesiasticall kalendars , that alcibiades gaue commandement for tenthes to the gods , from all those that sailed from pontuu : when the veii were taken prisoners , and the romanes made peace with the v●lfians , camillus made the romanes to pay to apollo , the tythes of their spoyles , and it was allowed of the senate . plutarch writeth of lucullus , that hee became incomparablie rich , because hee observed the paying of tonthes to hercules . xenophon witnesseth , that others payed in the countreyes about , their tythes to apollo . festus sayeth , decima quaeque veteres diis suis offerebant . which so vniversall a practise doth show some evidence to haue proceeded from the true light of nature , before the written law , and from the dayes of noa , to haue beene de●yved to all nations ; otherwise , how was it possible , that such a religious due , so a-nearing vnto the trueth of god's vvorship , could haue beene so generallie followed of the gentiles ? it beeing so , wee are not to doubt , but that abraham , with this d●ke light of nature , common to the gentiles , where throgh hee did see , as with the left eye , his religious duetie , concerning tythes : hee had also the divyne light ; which as a right eye , did demonstrate vnto him the secret of that mysterie ; wherefore the lord god did choose his owne portion vnder the number of 10 , as most holie , and most perfect in it selfe . and heere i will borrow ( for more clearing of the nature of tenthes a little of your patience , for a pleasant intercourse , to set downe , as i haue found it in the remote and mysticke theologie , the reason of the number 10 , and of the holie respect , and perfection that is into it , and which hath beene naturallie ingraven into the hearts of men , even amidst the greatest darknesse of gentilisme . we reade in the scripture , that god in the creation of the world , did imploy an instrumentall wisdome , omnia fecisti domine , in numero , pondero , & mensura , which is called , the created wisdome of god , where-of it is saide , the lord created her thorow the holie ghost , hee hath seene her , numbred her , measured her , and powred her out vpon his creatures , remēbered by esa● , who measured the waters ▪ in the hollow of his hand , who met the heavens with the span , & weighed the mountaines in a ballance . the lord iesvs christ being the increated , and eternall vvisdome , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 se● sermo patris , that word , vvhereby all things vvere created , and vvhereof sayth the gospell , in him , for him , and by him. of these three instrumentes , vvhereby god framed nature , number hath the prioritie & precedence , as having nearest allyance vnto god , by reason of infinitie : god is infinite , and so is number , non datur numerus quo non possit dari major . no number is so great , wherevnto addition may not hee made . agayne , the angels , who be nearest & lykest vnto god , they are onelie capable of number : they doe not receiue eyther dimention or weight , because they are pure spirits , occupying no place circūscript●uelie , but definitiuelie , habent suum●●bi , as i may say , definitiuelie , my mynd is at london , paris , or rome , although it occupie there no place . the coelestiall orbs vnder the angels , are capable both of numbers & dimension : the extent & limits of their place wee doe see , but they admit no weight : and being mediant creatures , betwixt the angels , and element arie corporall things , that doe receiue all three , numerum , mensuram , & pondus . the orbes haue into them , no ponderous matter , quia omnis materia est capax & appetens novarum formarum : all ponderous matter , is subject to daylie mutation of forme , whereas the forme of the coelestiall spheares is perpetuallie one , and the same . to returne to the first of these three , ( number ) the auncient theologues , did vse three vvords , for expressing of the nature and essence of god , so nearlie as they could , deus est vnitas , veritas , bonitas , & haec tria unum sunt : noting by bonitie , his goodnesse ; by veritie , his vvisdome ; there is vvisdome , but in veritie ; and by vnitie , his power : in vnione potestas , as we say , the greater strength , doth consist in the greater vnion : vis unita fortior . therefore sayeth plato , anima est multitudo mobilis , angelus multitudo immobilis , deus immobilis vnitas . now ( say the arithmeticians ) of vnitie , that it is mater numerorum . the mother of number : & of number , numerus est multipli●atio vnitatis : that is , the multiplication of vnitie , even as the goodnesse of god , is the mother and fountaine where-from did flow , all those good creatures ; and they againe are the number of the species and particulars of god's goodnesse , diffused through the world : so that god beeing vnitie him-selfe , hee did by diffusion of his goodnesse , in diverse wayes multiplie this vnitie , both in number , and thinges to bee numbred . vnitie in number , is like the centre of the circle : if yee take a circle ( for example , a compasse of two armes that artisanes vse ) and doe close the armes thereof in one , it is no more a circle , but a centre : doe extende and spreade it foorth againe , and it is a circle . the sea of the glorious godhead , did rest before the creation , into the centre of it selfes contemplation , and thereinto was whole nature latent , as the tree into the seed : there-after by vertue of that eternall vvord , was blowne vp , and expanded this circamference of the vniverse , as so manie lynes from the centre , and so manie numbers from the vnitie . the iewish caballe , doeth celebrate a kinde of omnipotencie of this vnitie , because it maketh all numbers , beeing without beginning or ende it selfe . before there were varietie of things created , vnitie was : neither can wee suppo●e so great a number of thinges , where-vnto wee may not adde one more . so that , lyke vnto god , it hath neither beginning nor ●nde . now , if we will holde , that god doeth comprize severall things , vnder severall numbers , by guesse , or casuallie , as that he placed sixe planets in the heavens , and the seventh to fill them with light , and but two eyes in a man's head , to receiue that light. hee did reveale his vvill towardes his chvrch , by his vvord in the apocalipses , vnder seaven tymes seaven , and planted but two eares in our head , to heare that vvorde . hee made sixe laborious dayes in the weeke , and the seventh of rest , and the worlde as a weeke of 6000. toylsome and travelling yeares , and the seaventh thousand as a sabbath of quietitude and rest : noting that way once the creation and enduration of the worlde , and then the visible light of the worlde , and the spirituall light , vnder this number of 7 : yea , in diverse places shadowing vnder the same number , the worke of our redemption . the candlestickes of the church , were seaven . god tolde to the prophet , that he had yet 7000 , who had not bowed their knee to baall . naman was commanded , to be washed seaven tymes in iordan . the fever left the sonne of the centurion the seavēth houre . david praysed god seaven tymes a day . eliseus , by seaven tymes breathing , did restore the sonne of the sunamitish ; vvhich interpreted captiue , and by the mysticall theologie , is sayd to figure the sonnes of adam , then lying dead vnder the law , which was no more able to restore them , than that rod in the hand of giesi , eliseus servant , did restore that chyld , but eliseus did it himselfe , by seaven breathings , oscitavit septies . to hold , i say , that god doth not see in everie nūber , & everie nūbred thing , a reason of convenience naturall in his insearchable wisdome , it were both ignorance and impietie : vve cannot deny it , when-so-ever we remember , howe wee wold think that architector vnworthie his wages , who could not contryue our house with a competent number of lights , according to the proportion of r●wmes , & cōmoditie of the sun beames . as i haue sayd of vnitie , that it is so much esteemed , not only resembling god , by the possibilitie of infinite multiplication , but implying good thinges in its owne nature , simplicitie , veritie , strength , which made aristotle , in one of his metaphysickes , to say , that the ancients did so honour this vnitie in number , quod ex ejus materia generarent ipsum ens , that they sayde , attour the vniverse , the eternall beeing it selfe , did consist there-of . so to come to dualitie , vvee shall finde a naturall reason , vvhy a weaknesse and evill doe frequentlie followe vpon that number , as if it vvere cursed ; because it is the first number that breaketh the blessed vnitie , and maketh division , vvhich in it selfe is evill , omne regnum in se divisum , desolabitur . exemples heere-of , the first mention that vvee finde of this dualitie , in the first of genesis , god created heaven and earth : and the earth was barren and emptie . two lightes in the heaven , and one of them is monethlie defectiue . lucifer parted the court of heaven in two . christ is one , satan two ; heaven . one , hell two ; mercie one , iustice two. god did separate the light from the darknesse : that vvas one , and this two. so did god in the creation in a sort execrate this number , as the enemie of vnitie , and a proper number of evill , or of thinges defectiue : for so it is frequentlie found in the scripture , two testimonies agaynst christ , two debters vnable , two blynd beggars , two trayterous eunuches , two larrouns hanged with christ , two insatiable leeches , two doubting disciples , going to emmaus : and , as saith eccles. looke throgh all the works of the most high , and ye shall ever find , vnum contra duo , one agaynst two . a man hath two feete , two handes , two eyes , but one of them is backward . man and woman are a joyned dualitie , but one of them is impotent : there bee two testamentes in the booke of god , but one of them is full of terrour and damnation . the scripture sayeth , cor duas vias ingrediens non inveniet requiem : an heart that vseth double wayes , shall finde no rest . and by a common word , wee doe call a man , double , vvho is knowne to bee false , and deceitfull . of the other severall proprieties given by god to severall numbers , i could indeede dilate a long discourse , but impertinent heere , and tedious : i make haste to that i haue to doe with at this tyme , the number ten. as the vnitie is lyke vnto god , so is the novemarie , or nyne , lyke vnto his works in this fabricke of the vniverse : as the worlde comprehendeth all things in it , and cannot be comprehended it selfe , but of god , vvithout whome it should remayne imperfect , wanting head and lyfe ; so doth the number 9 contayne into it all the numbers , and parts of number , vvhyles it selfe cannot bee closed , nor made perfect , but by one , which is not a number , but the mother of number : vvithout the addition whereof , to make vp ten , which is the fulnesse & perfection of number , this 9 seemeth vnhappie , vveake , necessitous , and indigent , albeit it contayne all the species of number : for of paritie , it hath two , & foure ; and of imparitie , three & fyue . the perfection of 10 is seene by sensible trueth ; for when we once arriue at 10 , there is no more numbring , but by iteration of 10 , or the parts thereof ; as everie man knoweth , it is the fulnesse of number : for the cabbalists , to showe the vvant and indigence of 9 , for lacke of this vnitie , they put vp on a board , 999 , saying the nakednesse thereof is publicklie seene by anie eye that looketh vpon it . see plato , 234. next againe , it is to bee vnderstood of 10 , as it is a full and perfect number , so it is the quotient and continent of nature , comprehending the whole severall species of god's creatures : first , will wee consider those that are intellectuall , and invisible , all the divynes agree , that there bee nine hierarchies of angels , that christ him-selfe is the tenth : hee is that great angell , of the testament promised to come to the church , statim veniet ad templum angelus testamenti quem vos expectatis . hee is that angell , sent before moses , of whom god saide vnto him , bee aware of him , and offend him not , because my name is into him. the full name of god can bee into none , but in christ , of whom sayeth the gospell , in quo habitat omnis plenitudo deitatis . will wee againe consider the visible vvorks , wee shall finde them for species , comprysed within the quotient of ten. the spheares , the intelligences , or spirits that moue them , the lights into them , the three elements , the minerall creatures , the vegitable , the sensible , and man , who was made to the perfect image of god , super-added for the tenth , without the which tenth , the other nyne ( as anie man may see ) were so naked and indigent , that in a sort they did serue to no vse : but the whole vvorld , before the creation of man , did looke as a glorious pallace , of magnificke artifice and furniture , in all things , inhabited with myse and rats , who could make no vse there-of , nor yet honour or admire the builder . onelie this accomplished tenth creature , man , did serue to rule those others ; to explore and contemplate their nature , to make vse of them , and there-vpon to found and sound the prayses and vvorship of their maker : yea , ( as the platonicks say , and which i thinke cannot be disproved ) after the change of nature , and consummation of tyme , the specificke kindes of all those 9 , are conserved eternallie , by the eternitie of man , whose constitution doeth participate , and is contryved of all their kynds , as we know : for vvith the minerals , he hath being ; with the plants , hee is ●egitable ; with beastes , sensible ; with the heavens , moueable ; and with the angels , intellectuall . and when adam by his fall having tossed this tenth perfectiō and dignitie , vvas casten from paradise , & whole nature accursed , and made defectiue for his cause ; then the lord god did send his eternall sonne , in the fulnesse of tyme , to vndertake the person of man , for restitution of that pittifull decadence of nature , and to be that sacred tenth , vvhich should agayne renew and accomplish her fulnesse and glorie in that perfect number , figured in this mysticall theologie , by that new song of david . devs cantabo tibi canticum novum , in psalterio decacordo psallam tibi : my god , i shall sing vnto thee a new song , & shall play before thee vpon a psalterie of ten cords . the vvorks of nature are sayd to be a musicke & harmonie , and thereof theologues ancientlie haue written vvhole books . next agayne , we know , that in scripture sinne is signified by the olde man , or the olde garment , and wee are bidden put on the new man , iesvs , the new adam , the new tythe , typicallie expressed by this propheticall newe song of david , vpon these ten cords of nature foresayde , by his incarnation then refreshed , and made new . agayne , they holde this mysterie of ten , to be figured by that signe which was given by god , of the restitution of ezechias , vvhen the sunne came backe ten degrees , or lynes , vpon the horologe of achaz , reverti faciam umbram linearum , per quas descenderat in horologio achaz in sole , retrorsum decem lineis . christ is the sunne of the vvorld , called by the prophet es. sol oriens ex alto , and by the gospell , lux illuminans omnem hominem . there is no true restitution of lyfe , nor salvation , but in him : hee descended by these ten orders or species of god's creatures , rehearsed by me , even to the helles , and returned by the same , reversus est sol per gmdus per quos descenderat . farther , that the same is figured by that tenth piece of silver in the gospel , for the which when it was lost , by that vvoman in luke , she neglected the nyne , to goe and seeke it : and by the 99 sheepe , which also were neglected , vntill that one was found , that made even ten tymes ten . vvith this kynd of theologie , they conjoyne a naturall reason , thus , the figure of the vvorld is rotund and circular : more , it is limited , and not infinite , both which are manifest . next , say they , a circle is never perfectlie ended , vnto the time that the lyne of the circumference goe about to cloze at the point where-at it did begin : this also is sensible true . the beginning of things , was the incarnate word , as sayeth sainct iohn , in principi● erat verbum : not the beginning mosaicke ( which was but principium principiatum , the beginning of tyme ) but principium principiaus , the beginnining that did begin all things , ex quo , iu quo , & per quam omnia . so christ being the beginning , and as we know , man the last created of all things , and hindmost made of god , the circular lyne of nature could never bee concluded , vntill the first point was joyned with the last , that the beginning should be the ende , and the ende the beginning , one point , both alpha and omega : the sonne of god , who was the first , conjoyned with man , who was the last : god becomming man , and man becomming god , did in the fulnesse of tyme cloze this circle , in beeing the holie and perfect second tenth , of all th● creatures now renewed , and by descending and returning through these ten degrees , which made rabb . mos. hardasan , in mysterious words to say of christ , whilst hee wryteth vpon genesis , and citeth this text of david , psal. 50 , ostendam tibi salutare dei. this is a scripture ( sayeth hee ) of great weight and importance , that the salvation of israel , is the salvation of god : that is to say , the preservation and perfection of his works , for god himselfe shall bee the pryce and payment of his owne redemption . vt qui non nihil frumenti ex se●onda decima reliquum habet , & id redemit : as hee who had resting some corne of his second tythe , hee did redeeme it . this first and second tythe , are even as that beginning mosaicke , and that of sainct iohn , principians & principiatum . christ being the first tythe predestinate in the eternall counsell of god , and man the second , began with the beginning of tyme , where-of ( christ issuing of man , according to his humanitie ) is sayde by him , to bee that rest of that second tythe , reserved by god , for the perfection and glorification of whole nature , by the pryce of his precious blood. by those it seemeth that god , who as the scripture sayeth , omnia suaviter disponit : hee disposeth all things sweethe . and as another sayeth , et mirabilite● disponit adeo ut aliquid semper nisit humano captu majus : hee also disposeth them miraculouslie , that still there is somewhat beyonde the horiz●n of humane sight . it seemeth , i say , that god hath chozen that portion of ou● goods due to his worship and service , to bee of that perfect number , of the perfect and consummated sacrifice of christ , into the full quotient and continent of nature ; and that withall hee hath respected the number of people , who were to liue vpon the tenthes , as bellarmine doeth reason , to prooue tythes not ceremoniall , but iudiciall , de clericis , lib. 1. cap. 25. nam non ordinantur immediate ad colendum devm , sed ad aequitatem inter homines : hee sayeth , that tythes were commanded to bee payed to levie , because hee was about the tenth part of the people , that there might bee a proportion betweene his estate and the rest . thus haue i broght in a ●iversitie of opinions , cōcerning tythes ; some holding thē onlie iudiciall , to the iewes ; others , that they belong to god , by way of alms , but not to the church ; others , that they appertaine to the church , but by positiue lawes of princes ; others , that they are so by the law of nature ; & finallie , ( some inclined to follow this remote & naturall theologie ) affirme , that by all these titles , they are to the church , as franciscus iunius , 〈◊〉 omni jure post omnem hominum memoriam deo fuerunt sacrae . for what lesse can omni jure , import , than a law , as well stamped naturallie in the consciences of men , as approoved by positiue lawes of princes , and warranded by the written word of god : but hitherto can i finde none to say , that tythes are temporall , or civill goods ; scarcelie wee who doe possesse them : for why ? wee holde , that whatsoever wee bestow to mendicant poore people , to necessitous friends , or neighbours , for mayutaynance of the ministrie , or schooles of learning , all that hath allowance for tythes in the sight of god : neither are wee oblished , nor can bee , to sustaine the poore , by anie law , other than by that of tenthes : this i doe hold , albeit ambitious men , to abuse the world with faire colours , will perhaps holde the contrarie . but i doe not doubt , but this new reason , which i doe put in from the mysterie of the number , will bee thought of manie a ●aprit●h , or raveri● of a phantasticke braine . in the meane time , if wee would possesse them still , wee haue neede of some new doctrine vnheard of , for to qualifie our possession , and purge it from the sacriledge ; seeing our owne teachers , whose other opinions in everie thing , numbers of vs do superstitiouslie follow and adore , they doe affirme vs to bee sacrilegious in this point : i meane , puritane preachers , and their sectators . it is of notable observation , to consider , howe throughout this whole yle , there haue ever beene opponents to episcopall governament and rents : two sorts , i may say , of factious men ; the clergie factious , and the laicie factious : the clergie factious haue striven for it , that all the church patrimonie appertayneth vnto them , their presbyteries , and disposition . and this ground they haue so hardlie mayntayned , that in a supplication given in , to a parliament in england , in name of the commonnalitie , anno 1585 , they set it downe , for an article of doctrine , that all abbay lands , once dedicated for sacred vses , should by the word of god remayne in that condition for ever , and may not bee taken backe . their disciples agayne , the laycie factious , say , that their preachers ought to conforme themselues to the mayntaynance of the apostles , who had no silver , nor gold● , nor possessions , nor tythes , nor rents . wherevnto their teachers doe aunswere , that that is as much , as who would say to the base popular , that noble-men haue more than their part in the world , which they spend vpon horses , halks , dogs , ryot of lyfe , whiles their t●nnands doe sterue for famine . that in the apostles tymes , men had all things in common , moneyes and meanes were layde at their feet , and equallie distributed by them ; and that such insolence , and wealth of noble-men , vvill but spoyle pietie and zeale , if they be not reformed according to the apostolicke tymes , no man can deny : but this proposition is as resonable as the other , albeit both should bee but an anabaptisticall practise . alwayes , out of a treatise written by english arch-puritanes , of discipline ecclesiasticke , these haue i extracted , ad verbum , whyles they ( meaning their owne disciples ) beare vs speake agaynst bishops , and cathedrall churches , it tickleth their ears ; looking for the lyke prey , as they had before of monasteries : yea , they haue alreadie devoured the church inheritance : they care not for religion : they would crucifie christ , to haue his garmentes : they are cormorants , and wicked dionysians : they doe yearne after the prey , and would there-by , to their vtter confusion , purchase a fielde of blood : they consume their goods , with sacrilegious impudence , & boldnesse , in courtlie braverie . herein any man may see , how the one sort of them doe vrge vs with the church policie , which ( say they ) was vnder the apostles , presbyterian ; but they would haue the livings of our latter tymes . the other sort concurre with them in policie , but vpon condition , that for mayntaynance , they will embrace the apostolicke povertie , to the ende , that they may enjoye the church patrimonie themselues . therefore , may it not be justlie sayd , to the laycie factious , that they oght eyther to denude themselues of ecclesiasticke goods , or provide themselues of other teachers , than such as daylie condemn thē to their fact ? & that they shold not be so shamelesse , as to vtter one worde , agaynst the present governament of the church , or the repetitiō of tythes to the church , vntill they haue done eyther the one , or the other ; lest otherwyse they bee despysed , as men vvho make some little show of religion , but haue none at all . now , if anie man doe hold sincerelie , that tythes are not due to god , i am sure , that he will yet grant , that a competent portion vnder some other number , must be for the worship of god , and works of pietie . and if the retention of tythes be sacriledge , there is a fearful curse pronounced against it , malach. 3. a curse of the devourer ; because ( sayth the lord ) yee haue robbed my tythes ; and left no meat in my store-house . and is this the only meat of priests , that is robbed heere ? no , but this is also the store-house of the people , non ex solo pane vivit homo , sayeth the spirit of god , man doeth not onely liue vpon bread , but on everie word that doeth proceed from the mouth of god. there must be into the house of god , store of the bread of lyfe , of that heavenlie manna , which feedeth our soules : and this cannot be , without sufficient provision of temporall bread , to the preachers of the word , labia sacerdotis custod●●n● legam dei , & in pectore ejus conduntur or acula divina . certaynlie , the pover●ie of the church , doeth make a scarce & vnlearned ministerie . amongst the persecutions of the christian religion ; recorded in histories , there are two most remarkable ; one vnder dio●lesian , another vnder iulian , called the apostate . the first of them did slay the priests : not the lesse wherof , the christian fayth did so greatlie flowrish , as it was thence forth sayd ; sanguis marty●● , 〈◊〉 ecclesiae : the blood of the martyrs , was the semmarie of the church . but the second did supplant religion , in a more pitthie and pernicious sort , albeit it was not bloodie : he robbed the church revenewes , where-thorow both preaching , and christian schooles , did decay , occidere presbyteros parum erat : to slay the priests , it was a small thing , ( which dioclesian did ) compared with the insidious opposition of iulian , ipse enim occidit presbyterium , he cutted the throat of the presbyt●riall possession . wherethorow great ignorance did shortlie after ensue : for , as theodore● wryteth , who would go to spend their youth , in the studie of theologie , to haue no mayntaynance in their age ? and here vpon this faire occasion , i must remember the neglect of that moste royall and necessarie policie , of plantation of a sufficient ministerie , schooles of learning , and burgall societies , in our northerne yles , and hie-landes of scotland , for exterminion of berbaritie , and incorporation of that people , to the bodie of this kingdome , vvho for the present haue no markes to bee natiue members there-of , neyther by their manners , their habite , nor their language , the three speciall evidences of naturall vnion : for , as for religion , that doeth moste vnite of anie thing , i thinke they know none . the necessitie , and mayne importance of this policie , is verie soone seene : for in the assurednesse and strength of borders , doeth chiefelie consist the suretie of a great state. agayne , everie one knoweth , howe there is not a better meanes , to reduce a people , naturallie fierce and rebellions , to obedience , than by infusing into the heartes of them , the loue of knowledge , and of civill carriage : vvhere-of vvee haue a most proper example , and most pertinent heere , of the romanes , vvho by that kynde of artes , did goe about to breake and addouce the bellicose cowrage of our owne predecessours in britane , as wee reade of agricola , vvho vvas generall heere of the romane legions , vnder the emperour domitian , sayeth taci●us , i am vero principum filios liberalibus artibus erudire , & ingenia britannorum studiis gallorum anteferre , ut qui modo lingaam roman . abnuebaent eloquentiam concupiscerent , ●ude etiam h●bitus nostri honor & frequens tog● , pa●latimque discessum , ad delinimenta ● vitiorum , porticus , balnea , & conviviorum elegantiam , idqu● apud imperit●s huma●itas vocabatur , cum pars servitutis esset . the luchantment , in some , of the romane schooles , then made the britans 〈◊〉 despyse , piece and piece , their owne manners , and roughnesse of their owne language , and brought them to admiration of the romane tongue , and loue of their apparrell , and , at length , to softnesse and delicacie of lyfe ; by which thinges , they did for the tyme , greatlie effeminate their myndes . that our yles , and hie-landes , haue nowe great neede to bee tamed , by the lyke artes , beeing a dangerous , rebellious , and vncivill people , it is verie easilie proved ; for our scottish historie is full of it , that those yles , and northerne partes , haue not onelie beene portes , and receptacles of forraigne armies , invading our countrey , and a sanctuarie for domesticke rebelles : but the lordes of the yles , haue manie tymes threatned the crowne of scotland , and haue foughten bloodie and desperate battels for it . vve reade in our historie , that our king , findocus , after hee had bene afflicted with the mightie rebellions of donaldus , vvho styled himselfe , king of the yles , hee was in ende murdered by his insidi●tion : and the king succeeding to him , ( called also donaldus , ) vvas slayne by the same man , in open battell : after the vvhich , he did vsurpe the crowne of scotland , and exercised most bloodie tyrannies , for the extinction of the greatest part of the nobilitie . againe , vnder king eth●inus , another donaldus of the yles , did so boldlie revolt , that hee came vvith displayed . banners to the countrie of galloway , and all-to-gether spoyled it . the thirde donaldus of the yles , in the tyme of king iames the first his beeing in england , hee did oppresse and subdue our vvhole northerne partes , yea , even to the honourable citie of aberdene , vvhich hee intended to destroy , if he had not bene diverted , and drawne to that famous battell of har●-law , vvhere so manie barones , knights , honourable gentle-men , and burgesses of best sort did lose their lyues . these serue for sufficient documents , to after-comming princes : for there is nought that hath beene , vvhich may not come to passe agayne , tyme it selfe beeing but a circulation of the same things . these examples did moue the valiant & wyse king , robert bruce , in his testamentall counsels , to his private friends , it being the minoritie of his sonne , to leaue this direction , tanquam arranum imperii , vel domus augusti : that there shold never be a lord , nor great man in the yles , but they shold remaine perpetuallie impropriate to the crown : ea-enim oportunitate ( saith the writer ) sitae sunt , eaque incolarū mobilitas ut levissimam 〈◊〉 causam ad rebellionem impelluntur , nec deficientes facile reducantur . as much i say of our hie-landes , that in all ages by-gone haue beene the strong refuge of bloodie traytors , and those vvho haue violated the sacred ly●es of our kinges ; for the which cause we reade very neare to the beginnings of this kingdome , that evenus the second , who was but the fourteenth king from the first , having with much businesse , repressed the tyrannie of gillus , who pretended to be king : and trusted himselfe to the rebellious hie-lands and yles . thereafter , for the better assuring of that barbarous people , and reducing of them to civill knowledge and carriage , hee builded two cities , in two severall countreyes , ennernesse , which is to this day a flowrishing towne , in the northerne partes , and ennerlochtie , vpon loch-tay . and in our owne tymes we haue seene amongst them , such proude and incorrigible oppressions of neighbour people , such cruelties , and nefarious perpetrations , as if they did not feare eyther god , or the devill . whyles the romanes were so politicke in britane , is it not much more easie for his majestie , who now governeth here , to reforme that 〈◊〉 , by frequent plantation of god's vvord , which of all thinges is the greatest dau●ter of the mynd ? certaynlie , it is more easie , & by twentie to one more necessarie for his majestie to performe , than it was for the romanes then . the perfect plantation chiefely of these yles , with burgall cities , civill people , and christian clergie , were a most glorious and emperiall vvorke : for besides the clozing of that backe-doore , to the suretie of the crowne , and quietitude of the kingdome , it should be the meanes , to erect the fishing of our scottish seas , a ritch trade , esteemed sufficient for the employment of 50000 persons , a thing of great consequence for our countrey , wherein there be even swarmes of indigent & necessitous people , and a thing of greater importance to the yearlie finances of the crowne , than anie that hath bene excogitate in tymes by-gone . the discourse of the nature of tythes , hath carried mee too farre , from the poynt thereof which is most proper for this treatise : that is , of what discontentment may justlie aryse to vs , by reason of the reformation intended by his majestie , of tythe-abuses , or oppressions done by tythe-masters , vvhere-in i neede not to insist much to debate it : for if oppression bee a crying sinne , it will speake for it selfe . i haue onelie two words , if the noble-man can put a bridle in a gentlemans month , by any right to his tenthes , although hee were his nearest kinsman , hee can ( as everie man seeth ) command him , as his horse . hee causeth the poore labourers of the ground , to leade his tythes to a milne , perhaps to his barne-yard too : and whereas they vvere illuded , in the beginning of reformation of religion in scotland , and made to belieue , that they should pay but the fifteenth sheaffe , now it is so rigorouslie exacted , that if there bee a stucke ruffled with the weather , or with the beasts , that the tenth-master will not haue : hee must haue the best . and in place to shaue the poore man's haire gentlie , by a violent pull , hee bringeth with him a portion of his hyde . if reformation of these bee intended , it is no matter of discontentment , but of common ioye : yea , even to noble-men , it should bee so , that the wayes of oppression bee stopped , for stopping the current of god's wrath against them , or their posteritie . i doe reverence the iudgements of god , and will not take on mee definitiuelie to pronounce , wherefore hee doeth inflict them : a case oftentymes hidden from the eyes of men : but surelie , it is great pittie to see the desolation of so manie honourable houses , as haue beene overthrowne in this land , since the first casting downe of churches , and religious houses , and turning of tythes into temporall goods . and if noble-men were to brooke them still , they shall doe well to agree to the reformation of abuses , or ( which were better , in my opinion , for them , and all others ) to submit our selues to god , and to the goodnesse of our prince , who hath alreadie by publicke declaration , manifested the benignitie of his meaning towards these things : that all rights of his subjects lawfullie purchased , shall bee confirmed , everie man shall haue his tythes vpon easie conditions , ( which seemeth agreeable to their first institution by god , where the payer and his familie , were admitted to the participation of tythes ) and that all men shall bee fred from servitude , and forced dependances . and since tythes are bona eceles . bona pauperum , bona reip. there is no doubt , but a christian king , who is father of the church , of the poore , & of the common-wealth , may dispense and dispose of them , and of ecclesiasticke effayrs , as david did , and salomon , and the christian emperours , in the primitiue church ; which is the reason , why in their coronation they were anoynted with the oyle of the priesthood , & why the kinges of england were at their inauguration cloathed stola sacerdo tall , to testifie their ecclesiasticke power . the church is sacred , and so is the common-wealth ; the church being served , and the poore , who be members of the church , and schooles provided for , the prince may employ the superplus , as they shall please , for the common-wealth . but now , because the speciall scope of this treatise , is to show as well the necessitie of makeing warre , as the meanes to doe the same , therefore i must speake of one thing , vvhich appeareth to bring a notable inconvenient and di●tresse to this tyme , if it bee not prevented : and that is the great scarcitie that shall bee of readie money in this countrey , before it bee long ; by reason , that the greatest part of our best coyne is either exported by merchands , or looked vp in their hands ; and by reason of the exorbitant summes that his majestie must of necessitie daylie sende beyond seas , for mayntaynance of the warres : where-anent , before i set downe my opinion touching the stabilitie , or iustabilitie , of money-pryces in scotland , i will say some-what of the nature thereof in generall ; for disquisition vvhereof , i vvill goe no farther backe in antiquitie , than to the romanes , vvho before their first punicke warres , to vvit , anno 490 , of their state , had no other coyne , but of the asse in brasse , because the septentrion regions wherin there be mines of silver , but not of golde ; & the indees , where there bee both of silver and golde , were vnknowne to them at that time : some yeares before they had gold , but neither in coyne , nor in quantitie . camillus , beeing dictator , when rome was taken by the gaules , anno 364 , could not finde amongst them all , aboue 1000 pound weight of golde , to make redemption of the towne , there being in the meane tyme ( as their subsidie books did verifie ) 152580 free citizens in rome : an argument , that golde was then verie rare . but as their empyre did extend it selfe to africke , and asia , not onelie golde and silver were brought to them , in g●eat plentie , but there-with also the perfect science of those mettals . plinius , and all the naturalists , holde , that no golde is found without a mixture of silver ; nor silver , without commixtion of worse than it selfe : and certaine it is , that golde cannot bee employed to anie worke , nor reduced in coyne , without a mixture of silver , to the 35 part at least , which wee doe now call of 35 carret fine : and this is the best and most vpright golde , obrizum , of fyrie reddish colour . againe , the most base is of pale and whyish colour , having a fift part of silver in it , called electrum . vpon he degrees betwixt these two of fift part , and 35 , doth run the fynnesse of gold through the world ; & of silver , betwixt 13 pennie , and 9 penuie fine , as wee call it : that is to say , having into it so much of copper , everie nation following their owne pleasure there-anent , and manie striving to haue more base coyne than their neighbours , and heighting forraigne money , which is better than their owne , that they may brooke it within their countrey ; and if they please , mixe it with their owne , suffering merchands , by subtilties of their trafficke , to wait the commodities of exportation , or importation : that sometimes doth benefit the state in common , some other tymes only the merchand himselfe : the ground of all vvhich abuses , is the fraudulent commixtion of golde , silver , and copper , by coyners , and gold-smiths , vnder and below that fynnesse vvhich is authorized by princes & states . wee reade , that in the dayes of francis the first , the saids artizans being ordained by law , to vvorke the golde of 24 carret ; tryall beeing taken , all vvas found to bee but of 19 : so that in everie 24 marks of golde , there vvere 5 marks of silver , vvhich did vvonderfullie damnifie the subjects , and vvas punished by death and confiscation . and albeit amongst the romanes , vvhen they began to haue store of coyne , it had course of 32 carret fynnesse , wherof there are diverse pieces extant to this day , vnder the stampe of vespasian , yet the best fynnesse , now current in europe , is about 23 , and of silver , betwixt 11 , and 12 pennie : the most base againe , in diverse places ; is little better golde , than the electrum of 7 , or 8 carrets , and silver of 8 , or 9 pennie . so that it is the great negligence , and over-sight of state-masters , in manie nations , who doe not duelie collation the worth of countrey coine , with that , vvhich is forraigne , thereby to know vvith vvhom the advantage doeth rest . and as it vvere a good meane , for mayntaynance of humane societie , that all people should professe one fayth , for our vnion in religion , which is the surest band of loue , and that all should acknowledge the same civill lawes , for concordance of our actions , in the rules of iustice ; so it vvere the onlie way , to conserue vprightnesse , and equitie in commerce of merchandize amongst diverse nations , that there should be a stable pryce , and stable fynnesse of coyne common over all . but that as the other two are rather wished , than expected , amidst the great diversitie of the myndes and manners of men ; where-vpon the often alteration 〈◊〉 of money , speciallie by heighting of pryce , and basing of fynenesse , haue bene frequentlie practised . and , albeit it seeme to be vnjust in it selfe , and to import manifest wrong , to particular members of the cōmon-wealth ; as when he who advanceth money in prest to his neighbour , must by those means receiue in payment lesse than the same weight & fynnesse which he gaue vnto him : or , vvhen he who hath no state , but of silver rents , & the poore artizans , vvho get noght for their work , but money , are constrayned , by the heighting there-of , to buy everie thing at a double rate perhaps than of before , because it is true , that the pryces of all thinges doe followe the pryce of money : yet not the lesse of these , i will reason thus , with such as doe stand for the stabilitie of money at this time amongst vs : first , i say , there are no things of men , which are not subject to vicissitude : vvee see no stabilitie of governaments , either in church or state. is there any thing more ordinarie , yea , more necessarie , than the change of positiue lawes , according to the occurrent behooffulnesse of the tyme ? second●ie , i say , the alterations of money-pryces , are naturallie & reasonably as incident as of other thinges . if aboundance of landes , put to open selling , great store of bestiall , hudge increase of cornes doe make the pryce of those more low and easie : if scarcitie agayne , of the same doe rayse their pryce , why not in lyke manner , the greater plentie of money , the lower pryce , and the greater penuritie there-of , the higher pryce ? so that i say , vvhen cornes are scant , yee cannot choose , but there must bee dearth : lykewyse , vvhen money is much scarce , yee are not able to keepe it at the old pryce , vnlesse yee will marre all , or else that we had nought to doe with money . thirdlie , i say , it is not a good argument , because a thing doeth prejudge this or that particular man : ergo , it is no common good : omnis magna lex habet aliquid iniquit at is : what law hath ever bene made , which is not of that kynd , and hurtfull to some in particular ? nature it selfe is contented to be violated in a member , for the preservation and prosperitie of a whole . we will snead and cutte the branches , that the bodie of the tree●ay ●ay shoote vp more stronglie . albeit the spirit of our lyfe bee ●nto our blood , yet we will take some ounces there-of , to prevent 〈◊〉 remoue mortall diseases . fourthlie , i say , that ●he bodie of our ●eople , yea , all of thē ( except some ydle men , who liue onlie on silver rents ) are in best condition , when our cornes are at reasonable grosse pryces : provyding there bee no scarcitie , everie mank noweth it to be so . but this cannot be , except the pryces of money bee haughted , or that ye find other means to put aboundance there-of in the countrey . yee will say to mee , yee shall provyde howe the merchandes with tyme may import store of silver and golde , as they did the yeare by-gone . and i answere to you , that is not at all tymes in the option of the merchand , but then when he doth fore-see his owne advantage , and all was forraigne money that he brought , but none of our own coyne which goeth abroad at an higher rate than here : so that i knowe not a better way , than by haughting the pryce there-of , to let them see a second gayne , by importation of the same . will yee aske mee , what shall bee the benefit of the common-wealth ? or what well-governed state hath practised such things ? i answere to you , that it is never done , but vpon necessitie , and in that case , hath beene done by the strongest and most politicke . the romanes , ten yeares before their first warres against carthage , vvere begun to haue silver coine , called denarius , and the parts thereof quinarius , and sestertius ; the deniere beeing worth ten asses , and the asse beeing a pound of brasse , in coine , at 12 ounces the pownd . but the citie being exhausted , and endebted by that warre , vnable to defray the charges , they raised the worth of the brazen money , by diminishing the weight ; ordayning the asse , to bee onelie two ounces : where-by the exchecquer of the state , did gayne fiue partes of sixe , and so vvas soone made free from debt . here was indeed an exorbitant heighting : the necessitie was great , the common-wealth in danger , & the practise vpon brasse . ye will say to me , that heighting of our money , will more prejudge , than profit the king , for mayntaynance of warres . for example , if everie twentie marks of money , were by authoritie called in , to the coyning-house and put foorth vnder the same weight and fynnesse , for twentie one markes ; by this meanes his majestie should presentlie get the 21 parte of all the coyne in scotland : but there-after , in yearlie payment made of his rentes , impostes , and casualities pertayning to his treasurie , and taxation of everie 21 marks , hee should want one , that now is made , according to the present pryce : and it cannot bee denyed . but for helpe of that , and safetie of the subjects , from inconvenientes , and wronges of that kynd , our money may be heighted , vpō that reasonable condition , as we find it to haue bene done vnder king iames the third : to wit , that all bands , contracts , obligations , infeftments for annuall rents , few-mails , sums of money , tackes of lands , or of impostes for money , made of before that heighting , shold be payed of the same pryce and eynnesse , which was current , when the sureties were made , and that the newlie-heighted-pryce should onelie stryke vpon future trafficke and commerce : vvhich seemeth to haue bene a verie reasonable middle , for multiplication of money , and raysing of victuall , vnto discret and competent pryces , for the common good of the greatest part of people . i confesse , that such thinges are to bee done seldome , and then fore-sightf●llie . philip le bell of france , did once base his coyne , so farre , by mixtion of copper , and brasse , that the italian poët , dante 's , did call him , falsificatore di moneta : vvhich hee did excuse , from the necessitie of the tyme , and did there-after repent it much , because it was followed with great harme , & mutinie of his subjects . alwyse , i trust none will deny , that it is more profitablie done , to height money , than to base i● : and it is well knowne , what notable losse did ensue to this countrey , by the last crying downe of our coyne . but seeing that land ( which is bonum immobile ) is subject to daylie change of prices , to holde that golde ( beeing in the account of bona mobilia ) is not in the same condition , as a thing more sacred in it selfe , it is a scorne , vnlesse wee would draw our argumentes from the great vertues and excellencies , which no doubt are latent there●nto , albeit mystious , and vnknowne to vs , and whereof we make no vse of that aurum potabile , so soveraigne for removing of diseases , and corroboration of man's health ; whereof the aleamistes make moses to bee the first inventer , by reducing of the golden calfe , into powder potable . and that the specificke spirit of the golde , doeth ( as they say ) transforme other mettalls into golde , and is sufficient to mayntayne perpetuitie of youthhead : affirming their elixer to bee that same , wherevnto sainct iohn , apocal. 21 , did compare the holie citie , it was of pure golde , lyke glasse : saying , that the spirit of god doeth not vse to comparison , but thinges which are indeede in rerum natura : and citing for this their chiefe patron , paracels . in the 9 of his metaph. nostra tinctura rubea est in se astra auri continens , translucida instar crystalli , fragilis ut vitrum . and in diverse places of his minerall treatises , giving the cause , in most admirable termes , why god ▪ shall conceale from the world , that secret vnto the comming of elias artista , within the seaventh thousand yeares , which is presumed by the remote theologie , to bee the finall iubilie of the world , and the triumph , both of naturall , and metaphysicall operations . and albeit that suidas doth alleadge , that this science of the multiplication of the golde , did rest amongst the aegyptians , even to the reigne of dioclesian ; who ( as augurellus wryteth ) did much feare them , by reason of their chymicall skill ; not the lesse , i say , wee know how these disquisitions haue hitherto , but exhausted the braines , and treasures of manie great princes , who haue gone about them , so that wee are not to make estimation of golde , for such subtill theorems , but even as of other temporarie things . next , i know yee will pretend , that there is no penuritie of money in scotland , but that , that is kept vp in the hands of ritch merchands , and that yee will finde in some burgh , more silver and golde , with two or three , than is in the whole towne beside , and the whole shyreffdome about ; but that they refuse to vent it , and if that case were cured , wee should haue great plentie of coyne : so , for the more cleare discussion of this businesse , i will heere suppose my selfe , having commission to dispute this question with the merchand who doeth thus . commissioner . i come to show you merchand , that his majestie and counsell , are highlie commoved against you , because in this time of so great scarcitie of silver , and of so maine a necessitie , to haue it current through the countrie , yee doe locke it vp in your coffers , not onelie to the common prejudice and perill of the who●e state , but also to your owne hurt in particular : for your father was accustomed to say , that a laying henne , was better , than a lying crowne . merchand . i doe praise god , for that i haue alreadie gained sufficientlie by the merchand trade : the vvorld is evill , both at home , and abroad , and my money is sure in mine owne possession , commissionar . doe yee not consider the great wrongs in the meane time , by the detention there-of ? merchand . what are those vvrongs ? for why ? i doe retaine no man's goods , but mine owne . commissionar . first , yee are vnthankfull to god , and to your countrey , who having acquired so great aboundance , doe deny the profitable and necessarie vse of your things , without your owne hurt , to your prince , and common-wealth , who both are in paine , for want of money : farther , yee doe vvhat yee can , to over-throw the citie , where-in yee dwell , and vvhere-of yee , are a member incorporate : in the which citie , a great number , and of the ablest men , haue no other meanes of their lyfe , but by maritine trade , whilst yee , and such as yee , haue weakned and deboshed the shipping of that towne , so farre , that there is not amongst them all , so manie ordinance , or sea-munition of gunnes , as i haue seene in my time , to bee in one of your shippes : by the which doing , the poore ma●iners are now in this dangerous time , brought to this desperate case , that they dare not adventure to sea ; partlie for want of employment , and partlie for want of munition and equipage . merch. i did follow the trafficke so long as i could gaine anie thing for my paines ; now there is nought to be had : for why ? his majesties imposts are so great , that by three voyages to bourdeaux , i haue found , that in name of impost , his majestie hath gotten all my whole stocke . commiss . that is an ambiguous speach ; for i thinke yee would say , that his majestie hath gottē as much as your stocke , so that your gaine is not so great as it was wont to bee , when at one voyage , yee did double , or triple your stocke . and i aske you , if that bee not a most laudable vertue , whē sitting in your house at home , ye cā by employing of 3 voyages , avance to his majesties coffers , the aequivalent of your stocke , when yee can mayntayne the means of their living to numbers , vvho serue in your ships , & keepe your stocke vvith reasonable gayne , although it vvere but small , rather than to roust your moneys in your cabinet ? how vvould ye liue in holland , vvhere there is not a loafe of bread , nor a pot of biere , vvhich doeth not pay more of impost , than it is vvorth , before it come to anie man's table ? and yet none doeth complayne , or finde harme by it : but contrarie , that common intercourse of money , vvith the dexteritie vvhere-by they rule it , hath bene the onlie thing to sustayne their longsome warres : and is not money appoynted for such vses ? merch. our condition is not alyke to theirs : their traffique is great , and questuous : they doe cōmand the seas , we haue no such doing here . commiss . what if his majestie , and his counsell , should make a law , ( not so much respecting the importance of his impostes , as for the common-wealth , & standing of maritine towns ) that everie rich burgesse inhabiting the same , should employ at least the two part of his state to the sea trade ; doe yee not thinke , it were a princelie policie , for the conservation of them , & good of the whole countrey ? merch. but who thē should buy the gentle-man's land , vvhen he is not able to brooke his estate ? commiss . his creditors behoved to accept them , in payment ; and it should teach vs to liue more frugallie , in tymes comming , vvhen wee should see such difficultie , to turne lands into money . alwayes , because we must haue your silver to come foorth , to serue this tyme , i vvill insist farther with you , to aske , why ye doe not bestow it vpon lands , and annuall rents , since yee haue with-drawne it from the sea trade , that the countrey may haue the necessarie vse there-of . merch. landes are not so readie at hand , as they haue beene some years by-gone : almost all who needed , haue sold : that market is nearlie past : besides that , the tyme is dangerous , & great appearance of warres , and of a broken state. commiss . then it were rather to vent your money for eight or seaven of the hundreth , to trustie debtors , who could assure you against all your fears . merc. before wee doe that , wee will keepe it in our coffers : a man may vse his owne proper goods , after his owne mynde , if it vvere to consume them , by ryot and drunkennesse . commiss . that is a bad and intollerable speach : as if wee countrey gentle-men should say , it is lawfull for vs , to vse our landes as wee please , and to cast barren and vnlaboured the best part , that wee may plague you burgall people , with scarsitie and famine . howsoever it is neglected heere , yet in the most politicke states , which haue beene , that libertie was not permitted to men to doe as they would , even with their owne goods or lands . wee reade in the lawes of the 12 tables , amongst the romanes this caveat , that hee who was a prodigall debosher , should bee intradicted as a foole , situ ●ona patria , avita●que vel tua , nimia nequitia disperdere liberos●que tuos ad egestatem perducere volueris , tunc hoc commercio tibi interdicendum est . and by the lawes of solon , and of the areopagits , such persones , ( called patrimoniorum de coctores ) devourers of their patrimonies , were with infamie , debarred from honourable assemblies , accused as criminall persons , cast into prison , and derobbed of farther commerce amongst men. and heere i must tell you , it had bene happie , that such lawes had beene amongst vs in this countrey these thirtie yeares by-gone , where-in manie vertuous men vndergoing cautionriēs , for their profused and prodigall friendes , haue bene naufraged by you merchands , who will not persue the principall debtor , nor comprize his lands , but doe still attake you to the cautioner . now to the purpose : if the common-wealth should bee dearer to vs , than our children , because shee doeth nowrish vs both ; then if lawes may interdict vs , for the sake of our children , much more it must bee so for the sake of our mother , the common-wealth : from the safetie where-of , doth depend the vniversall good of all her members . so that when question is of the weale of the state , neither must yee bee so absolute master of your moneyes , nor i of my lands , as ye doe imagine . alwayes , i suppose , that i know certaine meanes , where-by your silver may bee exposed to publicke trafficke , without your losse , or discontentment : but because it toucheth a secret of policie , i will forbeare anie mention of it heere , and take mee to propone another thing , for increase of money , where-of ( it being common to others , as well as to you ) i will speake in common , and make an ende of my conference with you merchands in particular . amongst other thinges that haue made so great scarcitie of coyne amongst vs , there is one , which with great reason ought , and with great advantage may bee reformed : and this is the aboundance of silver plate , chaines , girdles , bracelets , and such as haue crept into scotland , since our vnion with england . it is acknowledged in histories , that the pryde of emperours , in guilding with golde , spacious pallaces , temples , and towne-houses , was the first thing that did scarce the golde , and haught the pryce there-of ; as that large fabricke builded in rome , by nero , all beguilded , where-in there were diverse galleries of 1000 spaces : and as the capitoll , to the beguilding where-of vespasian did employ seaven millions , and two hundreth thousand crownes , of finest golde : and the temple pant●eon , ( which wee see yet extant ) beguilded by agrippa , for saving the copper and brasse from roust . there-after they became so prodigall , to beguilde also the yron and silver , that it should not bee subject to roust . wee reade in the french histories , that so great hath beene the prodigalitie of that nation , for the vse of clinkarts , lace , and cloath of golde and silver , that lawes haue beene set downe , to bring those thinges from merchands , to the coyning-house , with strict penall statutes , against any more of that kynde for apparell . which things when i consider , they giue mee boldnesse to say , that his majestie , our soveraigne , should doe well , to ordaine all the vncoyned golde and silver in scotland , to bee brought in , and stamped in current money . it is in the hands of noble-men , barons , and burgesses , who can lose nothing by it , but by the contrarie , gaine : for even they them-selues in the meane time , doe more delight to bee served in glasse , which of it selfe is as civill , and more pure , for that vse . and lest our noble-men should thinke it dishonourable to bee emptied of ritch cup-boards , i will show how this sort of thirst hath beene followed by great personages , without indignitie . scipio afric . when hee died , did leaue no more silver plate , and coyne both , to his heire , than amounted to 32 pound weight : and yet when hee roade in triumph , for the subjugation of carthage , he did ostent publicklie , and placed in the exchecquer of the state , an incredible summe , that hee obtained of the conquered , quater millies , quadringena , septuagena millia pondo , sayeth plinius , foure thousand , foure hundreth , and seaventie pound weight , a thousand times counted . about the same time ( as the same author wryteth ) their best and most ancient captaines were degraded , for having fyne pound weight of silver plate to serue them at table . king ferdinandus of spaine , called magno , having wholly exhausted both his treasures , & his credite , in making lōgsome wars against the infidels in valenza & toledo , & for want of readie meanes , in dāger to be oppressed by those barbarians , his wyfe ( a ladie of an excellēt spirit ) did put to port sale , not onlie al her gold & silver plate , and precious iewels , but also all her best furniture of her palaces , yea , and the richest pieces of her bodilie apparrell : vvhereby she did furnish her husband in such sort , that he prevayled mightily over his enemies , and conquered their cities , with large treasures and commodities therein . the french storie showeth , that king charles the ninth , did reduce , vpon vrgent necessitie , his whole golde and silver plate into coyne . i need not here object agaynst our selues , the simplicitie of manners of our antecessours , and their ignorance of such prodigalities : but lest wee should thinke it base and ignominious to follow them , i will tell you how plinius in his tyme did wryte thus ; before our grand-fathers , no senator did weare gold rings ; and in the remembrance of our grand-fathers , those who had the office of the pretorship , in their olde age did weare rings of yron . of his owne tyme agayne , ( sayd hee ) all thinges that the worlde by , land or sea could produce , were become so familiar , & sought for at rome , that everie yeare it did cost the state , to furnish a voyag● into india , fiftie millions of sesterses : for which the indians did send backe their merchandize , which were solde at rome , for an hundreth tymes as much as they were bought for . so bent are people , to precipitate swiftlie , and in short tyme , to corruption and insolence , vvhere they once find themselues in the way that leadeth into it . nowe , supposing there were aboundance of money in the countrey , there can bee nothing more pertinent to a treatise of this kynd , than ( for saving thereof to publicke , necessarie , and vertuous vses ) to propound a thing , whereof wee haue great neede , and which hath bene frequentlie practized by the best & greatest common-wealths , in the tyme of exige●ice and distresse for want of coyne , to preserybe moderation , both of dyet and apparrell , often tymes done by the romanes , and frequentlie since by the french and venetians , and by tymes everie-where . it is well knowne , howe farre wee haue deboarded in this sort , since our conjunction with england : and i finde in our historie , that the lyke abuses did creepe in amongst our predecessours , from the same countrey , to the manifest danger of the common-wealth then , and that it was at two severall tymes grievouslie and p●●hilie resented by the counsel of scotland , to their princes , and reformation vrged , first vnder k. malcolme the third , whose queene , margaret , being english , was attended with numbers of their gentrie , and much introduction of forraigne manners : secondlie , at the comming home of king iames the first , after manie yeares being in england , by a notable oration publicklie delivered to that ende , by the arch-bishop of sainct andrewes for the time : to which two places , i doe referre them , who are curious to know , how manie wayes , and how soone , prodigalitie and ryot doe leade a state vnto ruine . and if wee would esteeme such reformations to bee disagreeable with noble and generose mynds , it were to show the povertie and ignorance of our owne mynde ; because in the simplicitie of manners , and moderation of lyfe , doeth consist all the actiue vertue of the mightiest states ; there-vpon were republicks founded , cities builded , lawes established , empyres extended , the world conquered : sayeth the same author , plinius , there was not a baker knowne at rome , 580 yeares after her plantation , nor no bread , other than that which was driven out by womens hands , lyke vnot the cakes which are vsuall amongst our commoners : where-as in the ende , that most puissant and invincible empyre , whome all the nations of the earth could not daunt , was overthrowne by excessiue prodigalitie of lyfe , as the poet sayeth , nunc patimur longae pacis mala , sevior armis luxuria incubuit victum●que ulc●scitur orbem . finallie , i will turne my speach to you , o mightie king ! orient monarch of the northerne world ! successour of that wise salomon of great britane , whose heart so emptie of ambition and avarice , the lord his god did fill with the true wisdome of governament , and did exalt him as a new pole-starre , or lanterne of light , to bee beheld a-farre , and sought to , by those who sayle into the naufragious seas of southerne darknesse . the lord indeede did employ him as a salomō , to the like function of building his tēple : for vnder him was poperie , & the altars of idolatrie casten down , the gospell planted in this kingdome , and the church restored to the ancient primitiue governament ; that like vnto that solide conjunction of the tribes of israel , vnder salomō , the bodie of this whole yle standeth firme and vnited : and therefore would not god suffer him to bee a man of warre , nor those hands to touch the sword of blood , which he had concluded to vse to the sacred worke of his temple . but , sir , your majestie , hee hath chosen , to be that david , who should over-come and breake the mightie enemies of his people : i should be sorie to trouble your royall eares , with tedious discourse , ( yea , if my shallow wits could choose ) with one ydle word : i will but briefelie bring before your majestie , some few of the practises of augustus caesar , whom all the politicke wryters , and histories , since his dayes , haue set vp for a perfect examplar of imitation , to all the actiue princes of following ages . the first whereof , and first in the actions of his lyfe , was his incredible diligence , in the oppressing & extinction of intestine enemies : for finding that the clemencie of his predecessor , iul. caes. in pardoning his capitall foes , in dismission of his personall guards , his carelesse carriage , and contempt of diverse advertisements , given him from his friends , of treasons complotted agaynst his lyfe , having nothing more frequent in mouth , than this , non tam mea interest , quam rep. ut quam diuttssime vivam : i say , that augustus finding that by these errours , his predecessor had prepared an easie way of his own destruction , he did with all expedition , make away the whole enemies of caesar , without mercy : not so much out of splene & vindication , as for establishment of th● state , & safetie of his own lyfe . he kept 40 legions , vpon his b●●de●ing provinces , vnder the cōmandement of his most trustie friends , & strong guards about himself . i know the ods are great betwixt your majestie & him , because that was a new conquest , & a change of a repub. into a monarchie , where the doer could not be secure without violence , and severitie of governament . but withall , everie one doeth remember of the dangerous stratagems , and pernicious attempts , against the sacred person of your majestie 's father , often tymes intercepted . we know , that there be within the bowels of your majestie 's dominions , enemies to your governament : even of men , who i thinke doe tender your lyfe as their owne : i meane , of papists and puritanes , whereof the first is avowedlie opposed to your majestie 's lawes : and that the seconde is a perillous enemie to monarchall governament ; yea , most perillous it is knowne to all the worlde , by the recordes of the geneva discipline , vented over all , manie yeares agoe ; and by our owne histories of the church of scotland , written by our proto-reformtors , and by our iure regni apud scotos , of master george buchanan : and most clearlie of all , by a certayne treatise , printed in london , anno 1593 , intituled , dangerous positions , published and practized within the yle of britane , vnder pretence of reformation , and for presbyteriall discipline : which i am perswaded , if your majestie should take leasure to cast over , yee would thinke it expedient , to haue it current and publicke , to the view of all your good subjectes , for the better information of manie , who bee ignorantlie affected therevnto . neyther doe i heere suggest anie thing , that may irritate your majestie to rigour agaynst such . and if it were asked me , what then doe i meane ? this is it , sir ; wee vnderstand , that your majestie hath many and mortall enemies , even of your lyfe and crowne : and those of the greatest potentates abroad , and their insidious instrumentes , vvho lye in wayte , to slyde into your majestie 's kingdomes vnperceiveablie , vvhen they shall finde the waters troubled . in which case , the vnanimitie of subiectes , especiallie in matters of religion , and ecclesiasticke governament , is the onelie bād of our securitie : for even where subiectes are naturallie loyall to their princes , destracted myndes in such poyntes are moste perillous . and as wh●n a great disease , or evill , doeth enter vpon the bodie , it invadeth first that parte or member , vvhich had anie weaknesse , or contusion of before : even so , vvhen forraigne treacheries , or intestine seditions , come to bee practized in a state , they doe first assault those of vnstayed and divyded myndes : and namelie , from the pryde of puritanisme , haue sprung the seedes of the most badde and bolde things that haue bene committed agaynst our princes in these last ages . and i must say it , out of the sinceritie and simplicitie of a most humble affection , to the stabilitie of your maiestie's reigne , there is not a more malignant gangrena latent within your bowels , than that , nor more able to quarrell the credite of royall authoritie , if thinges were never so little turned loose . your majestie hath neede againe , to set over the ports of your kingdome , the eyes of argos , to see that no enemie doe enter . the iesuit is a proteus , vvho can transforme himselfe in anie shape . hee can passe by your majestie , vnder covert and silence . hee is lyke to the skeilling goose , vvho when shee flyeth alongst the mount taurus , carrieth a stone in her bill , to stoppe her crye , that shee should not be heard of the eagles , vvhich continuallie doe keepe the toppe there-of . chiefelie , your majestie hath neede to be ●urious of your owne court : for as never heresie did come into the church , vvhich began not amongst the clergie ; even so , seldome are treasons contryved agaynst princes , vvherevnto some of their court are not conscious . when augustus had caused great numbers to die , and thought himselfe free from domesticke fears , he found cinna , a lurking serpent in his bosome : therefore we say , that kings should bee vigilant , lyke to the lyon , who is king of beasts , and sayd to be of such sollicitude , that he sleepeth vvith open eyes . and if your majestie should at any time discover disloyall practises , then indeede the example of augustus were well to bee followed , to punish such persons , vvithout anie mercie at all . as for puritanes , this i holde , that your majesties doe admit none to episcopall governament , vvho hunteth after it , for loue of ritches or preferment , and then doth nothing differ from the puritane in all his carriage thereafter : and that no bishop be bold , to ordayne a preacher , vvho doeth not in his owne person obey , and make his flocke obey the present discipline , and authorized ordinances of the church . your majestie of clemencie may suffer to expyre in peace , such olde puritanes , as had tollerance and conni●ence vnder your father , provyded they be modest and reserved : but that eyther poperie should be endured , or in anie corner of the countrey an arch-puritane to bring foorth seminaries of his sect , for the ministerie ; certaynlie , that were to keep a backe-doore open , for anarchie and confusion , sometyme to re-enter both into church and state. for the present , your majestie hath watch-men over our church approved enough , by your blessed father , vvho did preferre them . the second , sir , notablie remarked in the gubernatiue wisdome of augustus , vvas the great honour done by him to the senators of his counsell , and his confidence in them . the principall thing that did comfort those conspirators agaynst the lyfe of his predecessour , being his misregards to the senate , that he would not deigne himselfe to ryse from his chayre , when they came in , and that by the perswasion and flattery of cornelius balbus , puissing him too much , to vndertake emperial dignitie : augustus by the contrarie , did dispatch no matter of importance , but by the advyce of the senators , vvhome hee did so greattie respect , that after a perfect setling of all his difficulties , hee did beare in his owne person , the office of a consull , another tyme of the censor , which both he did discharge faythfullie , and paynfullie , beyond anie that had exercised those functions before him . your majestie knoweth howe there haue not bene better princes , than titus , & trajan , vvhome the histories doe call the s●aviters and delightes of men , and none so much as they did honour the senate : none againe more badde than nero and domisian , who most of anie did vilipend the same . we reade howe greatlie it was to the prayse of the french king , charles the fift , called le sage , vvho having received some appellations and complayntes from those of guyen , beeing for the tyme subjects to the king of england : vvhich when he remembered to bee done agaynst the articles of peace betwixt him and the sayde king , hee conveaned his parliament , to bee judged of them , for that which had escaped him . and agayne , for the danger that is in the meere absolutenesse of princes , your majestie hath that famous testimonie , given by lewis the eleventh of fran●e , a moste subtill king , most jealous of soveraigne pointes , and in his counsels most absolute of anie : who acknowledging , that by such kynde of doing , hee had almost ruinated himselfe : therefore hee would not suffer , that his sonne , charls the eyght , should be taught more than three wordes of latine : to the ende , that want of learning ( which is commonlie accompanied with presumption of wi● , a perilous poynt in princes ) should constrayne him the more to governe his things , by advyce of his counsell . some joyne herevnto , that he thought , ( as all politickes doe ) too much , curiositie of learning , not fitting for kings : the opinion being generallie helde , that delight of letters doeth ( as i haue sayd before ) in a sort emasculate the cowrage to action , in all men , and draweth them away to contemplation , kings being appoynted for the actiue lyfe , tu regere imperio populos romane memento hae tibi erunt artes pacique imponere morem parcere subjectis & debellare superbes . alwayes , sir , to returne to augustius : he did not onlie honour the senate , but did also fore-see , that none were of that order , but men most worthie of honour : when a place did vake , hee would haue the entrant , olde in years , and olde in experience , of knowne vertue , & vnspotted fame , able to vnder-lye the sentence of a censor ; and then , of honourable meanes , valiant at least of 40000 crownes , whereof what was wanting , hee did himselfe supplie : neither durst any man bring in question the name and credite of a senator , other than the censor , who was indeed a fearfull & penetrant explorator of their manners : where-of our iudges for grievances , newlie erected , seeme to bee an image . that libertie for anie to accuse counsellers , did creepe in vnder the insidious reigne of tyberius ; and those were called , delatores & instrumenta imperij : and such doings haue ever since beene sayde to bee artes tyberianae . o , sir ! how much it were to bee wished , that youthhead could know the wisdome of age ! or that young princes might vnderstand the precious worth of aged counsellers , who bee faythfull ! darius , who was the father of xerxes , and an excellent king , having by manie experiences proved the loyaltie , loue , and actiue services done to him by zopyrus , and having at length also taken in the towne of babylon , by the vvit & industrie of the same zopyrus , who whylst he went about that businesse , did sustaine deadly wounds , and mutilation of his person . and when his master did possesse the towne peaccablie , hee saide , that he rather did wish to haue zopyrus restored to the integritie of his bodie , than to haue an hundreth babylons . sir , i doe most humblie craue your majesties pardon , to say thus much ; that if your majestie should be pleased to cast over the stories of scotland and england , & to consider there , vvhat bad carriage hath beene in both , betwixt princes and their people , what tyrannie , vvhat revolts , vvhat intestine blood , and crueltie vnnaturall , vvhat fearfull perpetrations , your majestie should finde reason to thinke , that it vvere good at all times , to multiplie your senators , vvith the most choyse and privie men , for goodnesse and sufficiencie , that bee in either kingdome . as for examples of the perillous evils vvhich doe infalliblie ensue , vvhen young princes doe attake themselues to young counsellers , that one of rheboboam may serue for a thousand : from the lyke to vvhich , i doubt not , but god ( vvho hath chosen your majestie to great actions ) vvill deliver you . i doe confesse vvithall , that the best counsellers , are no vvo●se to bee super-intended , and looked to , seeing men are but men , and there is none who cannot erre , vnlesse it bee the pope : in the vvhich case , your majestie may vse , in your owne person , the office of the censor , as augustus did , and at your owne pleasure , examine their carriage . the third thing , sir , vvhich is greatlie commended to princes , in the policie of augustus , vvas his particular painfulnesse in all the effaires of that great state , vvhose example hath beene vvell followed by the bravest of emperours , and kings that haue beene since , tyberius , vespasian , trajan , adrian , and the antonines , vvho lived all to great age , and were masters of civill governament . after augustus had attained 74 yeares , whereof hee reigned aboue 50 ( counting from the death of iulius caesar ) hee left behinde him three bookes , vvritten vvith his owne hand , one contained the severall actions of his publicke governament : the second , the order of his testament : the third , ( which is the point i doe recommend to your majestie ) did beare a register , of the whole estate of that vast empyre , the finances and rents over all , the number of the provinces , the legions mayntayned there-into , the armes , the munitions , the fortresses , the shipping , the colonies , the allyes and confederates , with speciall records of the debursments , dues , and charges , necessarie for everie of them , donatiues ordinarie to friends , expenses of publicke and theatriall showes for the people , pensions to captaines , nobles , and other serviceable men , and that monethlie hee knew what proportion was betwixt those debursments and their present moneyes . such indefatigable paines of this kynde did hee vndergoe ; that being mooved , at the request of the senate , after his victorie over antoni●us to accept in his person , the office of the censor , and made prefe●us morum , hee did three severall tymes make numeration of the whole romanes , as well resident at rome , as dispersed abroad , and of the subjectes of the whole provinces , with severall estimation and reckonings of everie man's goods in particular . the persian empyre , was yet greater than that of augustus , having vnder it 27 provinces : and the stories doe tell vs , that their kinges haue ordinarlie lying on a table before them , a register like vnto this of augustus . your majestie may reade in the sacred historie of hester , that when artaxerxes had escaped the treason of the eunuches , by the meanes of mordechay , there-after hee did himselfe enroll mordechay to the condition of his reward . and tho histories make mention , that this same was the practise of the late kings of spayne ; vvhether it bee so for the present , your majestie doeth better know . this , sir , is a diligence worthie the greatest monarches , this doeth let them see , the right addresses of their effaires , this doeth import a necessarie over-watching of their treasures , and receivers , vvhich maketh them frugallie and thriftilie to conferre their necessarie debursements , with their present means , and to make tymous provision for what is wanting : it teacheth them , wherefore pensions and donatiues are bestowed , and to measure them according to the proportion of mens services ; that some haue not too much , whylst others get nothing . your maiestie may reade of philip of valoys , that he did revoke all pensions , which did not beare speciall mention of the service done for them , to him , or his predecessors . and of charls the eight , who did annull all pensions , exceeding a very smal sum , wherof i do not in particular remember . this kynd of diligence will teach your maiestie to avoyde great and greedie numbers of the receivers of your rents , who doe devour so much of them , before they can come to your maiesties coffers , even as burnt and sandie groundes drinke in the waters that passe through them . to charls the fift of france , were presented complaints in publicke parliamēt , by the whole estates , because he had fiue treasurers , wheras before there were but two ; and a world of receivers , whereas before there was but one resident in paris . and by francis the first , it was ordayned , that there should be foure keyes of the treasure house ; whereof the king should haue one himselfe , without the which , no other should enter , nor no summes given foorth , but in his personall presence . the fourth and last thing , sir , which i finde most speciallie observed in the politicke wisdome of augustus , was his indulgence towardes that people , and his fatherlie care of them , in procuring dispatch of their actions , without longsome processes of law ; the censurall inquisition over the magistrates , his personall audidnce of their causes , and frequent going abroad for that effects ; the exemplar practize of his personall equitie , wherinto he did so much delight , that having once , by sound of trūpet , made offer of 25000 crowns , to any who would bring to him crocatas , a captayne of certayne voleurs in spayne , who did greatlie molest that countrey : whereof crocatas being advertized , he came willinglie , & presented himselfe before the emperour , demaunding payment of the crownes , which hee caused to bee given him , in argeht content , together with his pardon , lest hee should bee thought to take his lyfe , for the sake of the money . these , sir , made him to bee loved as a father , and feared as a prince , whilst hee lived , and adored as a god , after hee died . in ende of all , sir , i will conclude with a most humble supplication to your majestie , in favours of vs , who bee your subjects of scotland ; where-vnto i am the more encowraged , because this paraneticall discourse , hath beene intended by mee , for no other vse , but to comfort them , to your m. service and obedience in everie thing : which i haue preassed to doe , by the pitthiest perswasions , that i could bring from the best wits of the best wryters . wee reade , sir , of alexander the great , that when hee was readie to lift his armie from macedone , to goe into the levant , his master , aristotle , did counsell him , to rule over the greekes , as a father , but over the nations whom hee should happen to conquer , as a lord , and emperoar . where-vnto hee answered , that not so , but that hee would bee over all people , who should bee his , in common as a father , because it was his purpose , to reduce the whole world , vnto the vnitie of one citie , as plutarch doeth report his speach , vnaut sit vita , perinde ut mundus unus , veluti unius armenti , compascuo in agro , compascentis . sir , we are not onlie no new conquest of your ms , but we are your first & most natiue subjects . there is no thing which is vnnaturall or extravagant in nature , that doth long endure ; & therfore , amongst states & kingdomes , that which is most ancient , must be most naturall : that is the reason , why we are your ms most naturall people . here are to be seene vpon the ports of your ms towns , & vpon the frontespieces of your pallaces , that scepter & crowne , where-of your blessed father said , nobis haec invicta miserunt centum sex proavi . the like to which , no king that we know vnder heaven , may brag of . here standeth that noble order of the thistle , whose honour hath hitherto remained vnviolable , and vnstained with disgrace , witnessed by that cowragious superscription , nemo me impune lacess●i . here standeth that generous red lyon , whō the mightie & bellicose romans were never sufficient to daunt . here were founded the sober beginninges of that crowne , which hath by progresse of so many ages , risen into this height of a monarchicall diademe . here is the ground , wherin was sown that small seed , that hath shot vp to this strong & staselie tree , whose boughes doe over-shadowthis whole yle ; whose branches extend themselues beyond seas , & whervnto forraigne nations haue recourse , in time of tempests , to be refreshed vnder the vmbrage therof . here , sir , is the ground , which your majestie should haue in a sacred account , that doeth conserue the royall-bodies of so many of your predecessours , and keepeth about them , the ashes of so manie thousands of noble gentle-men , as haue frō the beginning of your m. race , so valourouslie laid down their lyues , in fierce battels , & presence of their kings , for propagation of the same . and here , sir , is your mother ground , which gaue to your m. the first light , and did nowrish your tender infancie . the fowls of the aire , & fishes of the seas , by a naturall instinct , do affect the places wherin they were hatched ; so farre , that some of them wil come frō the most longinque regions , to make yearlie visits of their natiue soyle . therefore , sir , although we be most remote from the seat of your m. court , yet let it please your m. that we enjoy our priviledges , to be your m. most naturall subjects , and to haue your m. our king , not by conquest , but by nature , remember , sir , how wel it was sayde , by him who spake so , that the kingdome was happie , where the subjects did obey the law of the prince , and the prince obey the law of nature . if your m. will looke vpon the historie of your predecessors , ye will find , that it is naturall to vs , most of anie nation , to sacrifice our lyues & goods , for the preservation of our prince and countrie , when there is necessitie to doe so . consider , sir , a little , our decayes , since the transportation of the royall court , to london : partlie by introduction of prodigalitie , and forraigne manners , vvhich commonlie doeth accompanie the dilation of empyre : partlie by too much reparing of our countrey-men , of best sorte , there , and spending of moneyes in england , vvhich were wont to entertain our merchand traffick at home , ( now , by that means , so farre decayed ) & partlie by the great malheure of these last bad and vnfruitfull years . and when your m. hath pondered these , then doe lay vpon vs , sir , such burdens as your m. findeth vs able to beare : and that your m. be pleased , not to discover our nakednesse too much , nor make vs to answere , as the adrians did to themistocles , when hee came to charge them with an impost , farre aboue that which they were able to perform , he told them , that he had brought two puissant gods , to assist him in that businesse , to wit , loue and force . they answered , that they were to oppose him , by two more puissant , povertie , and impossibilitie . i confesse indeede , that your m. hath to doe with great summes of money , and must haue it : but yet , sir , doe not suffer that to derogate a jot to your m. royall bountie & magnanimitie . and here i cannot forbeare , to bring before your m. that glorious , and superlatiue prayse , given by plutarch , to alexander the great ; who altho in his youthhead , immediately after his father's death , he did perceiue the towns of greece , conquered by him , inclyning to rebellion , vniversa grecia-post philippica demum bella veluti ab animi deliquio palpit abunda subsaltabat , ad haec exhaustis philippi thesauris foenusetiam accesserat ducentorum talentorum , in tanta ille rerum inopia , tam turbulentis temporibus adolescens , vixdum adeo puerili aetate exacta , babylonem ausus est susaque illa sperare , babylonem susaque dico , immo vero gentium omnium imperium spondere ipse sibitriginta peditum millium quatuor equitum numero fretus . although , sir , that your majestie doe not at once , and together , compasse all your desires , that is to teach your majestie , that great thinges are not performed , but with great patience , and great length of tyme : vvherein , sir , yee are to imitate the working of that great god into nature : vvhereof , albeit hee bringeth foorth no creature , but slowlie , and insensiblie , yet hee dryveth them on , vnto their perfection . the ●ll , and robust oake of the forrest , springeth from a verie small graine , and yet it groweth vnperceivablie with tyme , to that strongnesse , that greatest tempestes cannot over-throwe it : even so , if your majestie can conjoyne this patience vvith tyme , there is no doubt , but yee may make of vs what your majestie will. doe consider , sir , that it is the fayre aurora , vvhich giveth vs hope of the vvhole dayes serenitie ; and that the orient of the pleasant morning , is farre more sweete and delectable in our eyes , than even the verie meridian of the brightest dayes . and , as the persons of men are more amiable to bee looked vpon , in their youthhead , than anie tyme there-after , though they were never so comelie : even so , vvhen the first actions of youth , are douce and temperate , they doe purchase more tender loue & admiration , than their greatest things can do therafter : and on them wee doe found the prognostickes of happie and vertuous progresses : so if your m. doe gentlie leade vs , to our first yokes of your obedience , it will make vs to remoue our fears & doubts , and to fill our hearts with ioyfulnesse , & expectation of your m. goodnesse . your m. is already most famous over all , for the opinion that the world hath conceived of the equitie and iustice of your mynd . and therefore , sir , let your maiestie's royall cares be extended , to repare the decadence of our countrey : deliver vs from longsome lawes , and from prodigality of manners : stop the resort to your maiestie's court , of such as doe nought , but molest your maiestie , and spoyle their private estates : erect amongst vs such publicke industries , and libertie of sea trafficke , as doe enritch our neighbour countreyes . philip de valoys of france , was not ashamed , to settle in his owne person , a monopolie of the salt , which doeth import to his coffers the annuitie of great moneyes . if your majestie would erect the trade of fishing in your northerne seas , so questuous to strangers , and so greatly to our ignominie and losse ; and if your maiestie would bring vs vnder militarie discipline , provyde for store of armes , munition , and shipping , employ numbers of people , to fortifie your coasts : these , sir , are the true meanes , to make of vs a mightie nation , and formidable to our enemies . the strength of a countrey doeth mayntayne vertue within it , and maketh it traffickable without . vertue and trafficke doe breede ritches : and these two the sure groundes of yearlie increase to you● maiestie's finances : and all three together shall make your maiestie able for the prosecution of the great actions , which god hath appointed you for . that god , vvho sayd vnto ioshua . bee thou strong , and cowragious ; neyther doe feare thyne enemies , who shall not stand before thee , because i will be with thee , and shall not fayle thee , as i was with moses : that god , who was with your blessed father , in the building of the temple , bee still with your maiestie , to grant you victorie over all your enemies : that having established the peace and tranquillitie of your kingdomes , your maiestie may haue leasure and delight , to attende those cares vvhich are necessarie for this common-wealth : a men. finis . an heroicke song , in prayses of the light , most fitting for the nightes meditation . by the same avthor . now downe is gone the statelie globe of light , which thou , great god , create●st for the day : and wee are wrapt into the glowds of night , when sprites of darknesse come abroad , to prey . our bodie 's from its functions releast , our senses are surpryzed vnto sleepe : to guard our soules , lord iesus christ , make haste , desarted thus , into a fearfull deepe . keepe light into the lanterne of our mynde , for to direct our watching sprite aright : that though our foes were all in one combynde , they may not yet attrap vs by their slight . light was the first-borne daughter of the lord , who with her beams did buske and beautifie that vaste chaos , before of god abhord , and made her members lonelie , as wee see . yet is this light nought but a shallow streame , of that aboue , in glorie infinite : and so hut of his shadow hath the name , who did into that narrow globe confyne it . the bodie of the sunne if wee compare , vnto the spheare , that rolleth him about ; that shall his smallnesse vnto vs declare , beside that light which rounds the heaven without . the ambient circle of the divine fyre , th' eternall dwelling of the deitie ; which to descrybe , is none that dare aspyre , who hath not tasted immortalitie : for if the sphears were of transparent kynde , then suddenlie that glorie should confound those caducke thinges within the poles confynde , and all this frame , that nature hath compound . the prowdest sprites durst never yet presume , to thinke where-of these orbs contryved bee : it is aboue the low flight of our plume , alwayes they close that glorie from our eye . that infinite circumference of light , for centre , hath this vniverse of thinges : there god is seene by single angelicke sight , and heere this ball , but as a mirrour hings : where-in but showes of reall things wee see , and vmbers , which are from that light let fall : where they doe liue , vnto eternitie ; heere are no true things , nor true light at all . as princelie portracts close in cabines plac'd , where phoebus findes no hole to enter at : by torch or candles are set out and grac'd , this clozed house of nature's lyke to that . with-in her walles are manie pictures bright , yet may no eyes of mortall man sustaine , to view them through the beames of divine light as by a torch , they by the sunne are seene . not as a torch , but as a sillie sparke , confer'd with light of infinite extension ; to shadow which , whole nature is too darke , to thinke of which , doeth spoyle th' apprehension . things vnto hourlie changes made subject , and daylie death doe not truelie subsist : so that our bodies fatall to defect but for a space , as vmbers doe exist . light , lyfe , and trueth , these three things are but one , whose tyme and place , and power doe exceede , the search of thought , and number , two alone , esteem'd to match infinitie indeede . o sacred light ! whose subtill rayes doe pier●e the center , as the sunnie beames doe show : which grace the golde , and gemmes , that are so scarce , of the ( pure light ) vncleane sprites stand in awe . light that appear'd to moses in the field , and on his front , the hornes of splendor planted : vnto that light , let all things honour yeelde , the power of darknesse by the same is daunted . the orient sunne of our salvation , who from the fountaine of this light came out , approach vnto this habitation , with saving light to compasse me about . who of that light , so pompous pauelons made , for those prophets , into mount tabors glore : now whilst my sense lyes in my body dead , grant that my sprite may to that mountaine so are . that light that shyn'd into sainct peter's prison , o sacred flame ! vouchsafe t' illuminate , this darke house , with some sparkes of divine reason , where-in my soule so long is carcerate . the light that did th' apostle paul convert , and persecuter in a preacher turne , if it but once doe glaunce vpon nine heart , no darknesse then shall make mee for to mourne . that light it did it selfe to steven reveale , amidst the tortures of his martyredome ; transporting him , that hee no paines did feele , and from the earth , shew christ in his kingdome . that to the prophet's servant did point out , the fyrie charrets , and forces of the lord , when hee was sore confused , and in doubt , and feare of death almost had him devourd . that light where-by the divyne angell , iohn , was wrapt , and to the holie citie brought : so farre aboue the flight of phaëton , of all those sacred lights what shall bee thought ? and of that majestie of light displayde , betwixt the cherubs , there to bee ador'd : haue they not of the godhead this bewrayde , that with the light it 's cloathed and decor'd ? that light is god , and god alone is light ; his creatures , a reflexe of his beames : this world , a mirrour , or a table tight , where light 's but shadow'd vnder diverse names . vpon that light , great moses durst not looke : the sight of god no sinfull eye may byde ; th' eternall flames , no mortall thing may brooke , therefore the hand of god his face did hyde . into the bosome of that light was hatcht , the trueth and substance of all thinges that bee : till perfectlie , th' ideas were dispatcht , of creatures , whose shadowes wee but see . there , in that light th' exemplars still exist , but heere the image quicklie doeth decay : of sillie points of tyme wee doe consist , but what is there , it doeth endure for aye . the veritie is firme , and permanent , and falsehoods are subject to nullitie : whylst shadowes bee but cases remeante , therefore they perish daylie , as wee see . as vmbers are , and then they disappeare , so persons are , and then they turne in dust : that if wee will this mysterie disquire , our parallele shall bee with shadowes just . yet when a man is dead , w●e doe retaine , his shape and feature , sealed in our mynde : and everie thing that in him wee haue seene , as if those were not vnto death confin'd . if our weake sight , thus paint our memorie , the light of that eternall intellect , can it not keepe vnto eternitie , those ideas which hee did him-selfe perfect ? or if wee holde ideas to bee vaine , wee must deny things intellectuall ; and vnto shadowes take our selues againe , scorning that light , which is angelicall . light , as it is a thing incorporall , our sight also , that doeth the same beholde , and al 's , the objectes are spirituall , as wee may prooue , by reasons manifolde . else , could the shape of all this hemispheare , enter the narrow port of humane eyes ? and leaue his portract full imprinted there ? hence followes then , that men but spirites sees ; or things abstract , and mathematicall , as numbers , figures , and dimensions ; and colours , which vnder the light doe fall , although they haue most ample their extensions . for surelie man is nothing but a sprite , his fluide bodie , a vapour of the grasse ; or picture , that 's presented in the streete , with sprites , wee finde , his senses doe converse . the sprite of light , is object to the eye , the trueth of light , doeth enter by the eare , t' informe the soule , these two ordained bee , wee haue , wee heare , wee see light , and no more . the eye , it is the globe of all our glore , the port whereat the soule goeth in and out ; by it wee see his works , vvhom wee adore , and get knowledge of things disperst about . the eare , the subtile nerue , that doeth admit his word , to bee the lanterne of our lyfe : our hopes of heaven , and fayth come in by it , to serue the bodie , other senses stryue . our gust , wee know , and smelling , are but grosse ; they smell no light , nor taste of veritie : compar'd with those , their function's in drosse , and most part doe suggest to luxurie . as for the thinges subjected to our touch , they 're pieces of the olde deformed masse : their light once spent , returning to bee such , into that chaos daylie they doe passe . and finallie , when tyme shall take an ende , and when the world her glasses haue run out : when ayre no longer shall it selfe extende , nor shall the seas embrace the earth about : nor yet the spheares distinguish day from night , when fyre shall fill the vniversall globe : the efficacie , almightie of this light , shall force great nature for to change her robe . her mortall partes , those flames shall purifie , no bodies , but transparent , shall subsist : renewed heavens , lyke glassie golde shall bee , and all grosse earth from beeing shall desist . that mightie flame , shall eare the ocean ; the earth to her virginitie shall bring : the ayre from vapours shall bee cleansed then : in summe , it shall make light of everie thing . the saincts of god shall wasted bee with light , and ponderous bodies they shall feele no more : their walkes shall swifter bee than anie flight , for with their lord they shall bee chang'd in glore . looke-what is then incompatible with light , ( as excrementes into a sinke let fall ) it will the way vnto the center right , a den of darknesse , without light at all . before that change , no true light can bee heere , and then no more of changes shall wee see : the light in everie corner shall appeare , no place for shadowes thence-foorth shall there bee . god shall triumph , at that great iubilie of nature , in her full perfection : where hee his works shall whollie glorifie , and darknesse throw into confusion . since true light , and true things are so remote , and clozed inaccessiblie with god , take heede ( my soule ) no paintrie thee besot , which thou beholdest , on this worldlie brod. but contrarie , delight thee in the night , there are no pictures , to distract thee then : flie to the citie of the divyne light , that is aboue the sight of mortall men. expatiate into the sacred fieldes , of the expanded faire infinitie : which millions moe , than earthlie beautie yeeldes , the pallace of the blessed trinitie . though narrow be our myndes to comprehend one point of god , where each is infinite ; yet to that search , our spirites may ascend , by visions , which are to our weaknesse fit . there thou shalt see , how god hee is a light , with-in the which all things subsisting bee : whole nature's birth , thou shalt see at one sight , the pleasant object of the deitie . hee much delighteth in that architype , the glasse , where-in hee on his goodnesse 〈◊〉 : the boxe that d●eth the seedes of nature keepe , and all his workes recorded , as in bookes . as cunning paynters gaze vpon that face , which they pretende by portract to present ; and iakob's sheepe lookt in that watrie glasse , that hee did for their fruitfulnesse invent : so doeth the sprite of nature thinges beget , by looking in that architype of all : and there-from doeth these images canceit , that wee see set and spred through natures hall. and there thou shalt comparatiuelie thinke , our clearest dayes , to bee no thing but night : and that of heaven , this world is the sinke , repleat with sorrow , sinfull care , and plight . or lyke a caue , polluted with the smoake , of chymicke forges , and deadlie mercurie : where worke-men as anatomies doe looke , who haue consum'd themselues in sophistrie . o that thou mightst not heere agayne returne , but still shouldst liue into that lights fruition ! for on this earth thou canst doe nought but mourne , where toyles , teares , and fears , must bee thy portion . there thou shalt see christ setled in his throne , as golden phoebus , in his silver sphaero , amongst nyne chores of angels , lord alone ; lyke planets plac'd about his royall chayre . where troups of saincts , lyke starres doe moue astray , as skalie squadrons sporte into the deepe : so in that lightsome ocean they play , and still an heavenlie harmonie doe keepe , of musicke , that can never bee exprest : yet by a sensible similitude , wee may imagine , that it is addrest , by foure chiefe partes of men , so vnderstood . and th●● by severall alternatiues , a mutuall and mightie melodie , one theatre t'another aye deryues , sounding the glore of that great maiestie . the alto angels sing , as i suppose , of stablisht ranke , the foremost stage they fill : to celebrate his providence , they choose , and divine names , belonging there-vntill . the tenor by the voyce of saincts , resounds the prayses , of his sanctitie they sing : and this echo from stage to stage rebounds , holie , holie , is our almightie king . the basse is tun'd by harmon of the sphaeres , the sweet consent , that wee see them among , the true characters of his wisdome beares , and learned holde them vocall in their song . the hallelu of the church militant , mounts vp , to make the counter-basse perfyte : with loftie straynes of musicke resonant , his goodnesse , and his mercie , they endyte . the subtill alchymist can separate the quintessence , and make it to ascende : so●are the church prayers alembicate , by that great sprite , who doth her still defende . my soule , bee ravisht with these visions , and they shall make thy nights more splendescent , by true light , and not by illusions , than are estivall dayes most relucent . high essence of the inaccessible light , whose sacred word the darknesse did command : to cloathe her selfe into this beautie bright , so dayntilie portrayde by natures band. say , lord , vnto the dungeon of myne heart , let there bee light , and strayght it shall bee so : blynde ignorance and pryde shall then depart , and in the light securelie shall i goe . possesse ( sweet light ) the temple of my breast , thy lampes may feede of multiplyed oyle , which ( since , my god , thou hast made mee a priest ) still on the altar of myne heart may boyle . those starrie vaults , that round our night about , as curtayns full of flaming eyes , where-by thyne holie angels constantlie looke out , and all our dangers surelie doe espy . grant mee , o lord , to trust to thy reliefe , that whylst the organes of my soule doe sleepe , it may bee fred from the n●ctur●all thiefe , that no vncleannesse in my bosome creepe . enioye , my soule , the beautie of true light , count not of paynted shadowes that are heere : those are the clowds that keepe thee from that sight , which vanish then , when wee holde them most deare . so when thy stage is finallie concluded , as floods returne vnto their ocean , thou of this bodie fullilie denuded , shalt bee reduced to thy light agayne . though for a wish , possesse a world thou might , yet to the ende doe wish nothing but light . finis . index of the chiefe things contained in this treatise . the preamble , meerelit metaphysicall pag. 1. 2. the death of the late king of blessed memorie 3. the occasion and order of the treatise . 4. the pope and king of spaine , troublers of christian states 5. the ambition of the ancient kings of spaine and portugall , vertuous , and heroicke : with particular narration of the most nominate and famous amongst them 6. charles the fift , emperour , the first projecter and founder of the spanish ambition ov●● europe 10. contrapoyse & jealousie of christian princes , war●anded by nature 12. the spanish inquisition , and practises of philip● the second , against neighbour states 14. hee did negotiate intelligence with the protestants of france , being of head of their enemies , the holie league 16. the voyage of the english navie vnder queen elizabeth to portugall , in favours of dan antonio 17. antonio peres doeth wrong the english , in his narration of that voyage ibid. strict limitation of generals in warre 19. the greatnesse and swift progresse of the spanish empire ibid. the large extent of the spanish ambition 21. the insidiation of spaine , by claudestine , and fearfull arts of murthering 22. patricidie practisedin spaine , as amongst the turkes ; by a religious tradition 25. the stabilitie of the spanish counsell never intercepted , by the death of a king , doth assure the stabilitie of their empyre 26. what weaknesse in the spanish empyre , by reason of dis-joyned provinces 27 dis-vnited conquestes vnprofitable , and examples there-of . ibid. traffickable countreyes , and ve●tuous people , the onelie true treasure of princes . the evils resulting of the being of great treasures , in the hands of princes 28. kinges haue manie necessarie occasions of profitable debursments , nor knowne , nor to bee enquired , of subjects 31. it is a weaknesse of the spanish empyre , to bee feared of all , and hated of the greatest part 32. the pope and catholicke states of germanie , against charles the fift 33. cardinall baronio , against philip the second ibidem . why the nobilitie of spaine doe hate their king 34. a weaknesse supposed in spayne , for want of armes , and why it is so . 36. their naturall pryde , a weaknesse ibid. description of the spanish nature 37. spayne to bee opposed by making warre with-in their owne dominions 38. plantation of nova scotia 39. when a kingdome is perfect , and naturallie compacted in it selfe , then to bee slow to warres 41. the definition of a just warre , and our warres against spayne , proved to bee just 42. emulation of the romanes , and carthagenians , for vniversall empyre . 43. agesilaus being but a poore king , did invade the persian empyre ibidem . first confederacie of the scots with the french sought by charles mayne . 44. how the spaniard is proved to bee our enemie ibid. how scotland is furnished of men for warre 46. nature of leagues , with examples auncient and moderne 47. confederates against spayne 48. whether small or grosse armies to bee sent to enemie-countreyes , shewed by contemplation of the turkish warres 49. the palati●●te the most honourable seat for warres against spayne . 51. king alexander , hannibell , and iulius caesar , did leade their armies to more remote countreyes ibid. going of his majestie in person to spaine 52. the english auncientlie victorious in spai●e 53. the vvest indees in the possession of a great monarch , proved to bee an infallible meanes of vniversall empyre , by length of tyme 55. money the nerue of warre , and greatest monarches , and states , much distressed for want thereof 56. the hudge moneyes gotten by charles the fift , in peru 57. the naturall humours of the french nation ibid. speculation of neighbour calamities , during our peace , in this age going , and of our predecessours troubles many ages by-gone 58. more of money , and of men , in scotland now , than in the dayes of our antecessours , and the proofe thereof . 61. a wicked people , doe make a wicked king 63. a bridge of golde to bee made , for enemies to passe out vpon ibid. great ransome payed by our predecessors , for king david bruce 64. the palatinate , detained to make a way , for the conquest of germanie , and england 65. a remarkable conference of coronell semple with the author of this treatise ibid. iohn knoxe against the regiment of women 67 , the going of his majesties navie , to portugall , and what a great point is secrecie in great enterpryses , and the examples thereof ibid. the reformation , or innovation of magistrates , and the commodities , or inconvenients following thereon . 68. plato holdeth , that after the current of that great yeare , god shall reforme the whole worke of nature , and reduce it to the first puritie ibid. vtilitie of the censor amongst the romanes 70. commission for grievances ibid. great men not to beare offices where they dwell 76. two of one familie , not to bee of one session of iudges 77. reformation of advocates , most necessarie of anie thing , with the examples of kings , and states , enemies to the trade of advocation . 78. lewis the eleventh of france , did revo●ke and annull heritable shyre●●ships 81. abuses of late erected lordships of church land●s , necessarie to bee reformed 82. if the domaine of regall crownes , or of republickes bee allienable 83. noble men , are the shadowes , and reflects of kings 84. why the lyues of kinges are so precious 85. the last convention of the estates of scotland , and his majesties revocation 86. the first donation of the crown lands , and division of them in baronies ibid. ritches did spoyle the pietie of the church 89. before the separation of the church of rome , made by luther , the hundreth part of christian people , did possesse more than the tenth part of the revenewes 90. the number of ecclesiasticall prelasies , benefices , churches , curies of france ibid. the nature of . tenthes 91. the first dedication of tenthes in scotland 94. puritanes , foolishlie opposed to the pope's church , in good things 96. mysterie of number . 98. the vnitie doeth represent god 99. the number . 7 , is proper to the creation , induration , and finall glorification of the world 100. the novenarie doeth comprehende the whole species of nature , man excepted 101. ten , is the quotient , or fulnesse of nature 102. man was the first tenth . ibid. christ was the second , and perfect tenth 103 two sort of puritanes , opponents to episcopall rents , and governament , discordant amongst themselues 106. persecution of iulian , worse than of dio●l●sian 107. plantation of our northerne yles , and hielards , a most royall , and most necessarie policie . 108. battell of hare-law . 109. abuses , and oppressions by way of tenthes to bee reformed 110. discourse , of the nature and course of moneyes 112. what benefite , or inconvenient , vpon the heighting of money 113. what order to bee taken with moneys , kept vp in the hands of merchands 117. decay of our shipping , how to bee restored 118. prodigall persons , ancientlie interdicted , and punished by lawes 119. against the vse of silver plate , and guilding 120. ferdinandus magn●s of spayne , charles the ninth of france , and manie great princes , did sell their silver plate , or reduce it in coyne 121. prescription , for dyet , and apparell , practised by great states , in time of publicke distresses 122. speach to the king's majestie 123. wisdome of augustus , in making away of his enemies 124. who are enemies to his majesties person , or to his governament ibid. vigilance , necessarie over the admission of bishops , and ministers , in the church 126. honour done by augustus , to the romane senate ibid. condition of senaters , chosen by augustus 127. great affection of king darius , to an olde faythfull counseller 128. mechanicke vertues , and diligence of augustus 129. watchfulnesse of the parsian monarches , over their finances ibid. supplication , in favours of the subjects of scotland 132. the admirable magnanimitie of alexander the great , whilst he wanted moneys 133. finis tabulae . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a02833-e4130 death of our late soveraigne . his late majesties death , followed with great feares of his subjects . causes of our feares , what these be . the king of spay●e , and the pope , troublers of christian princes . ambition of spaine different from that of the romanes . different from that of their predecessours . the origine and antiquitie of the present house of spayne . notable punishment of lust , in princes . pelagius . pelagius honoured of the world. ferdinandus magnus . ferdinando santo . charles the fift , emperour . contrapoyse of christian 〈◊〉 , warranded in na●ure . hieron . king of syras . philip the second , king of spaine , his first action , his marriage in england . spanish inquisition , his second action . his third action , the betraying of the king of portugall his cosin . his fourth action , was to plot the holie le●gue in france , against don antonio . philip did also practise the protestants of france . elizabeth , queene of england . the voyage of the english navie , to portugall , vnder queene elizabeth . antonio pe●es , wrongeth the english , in in his relation of that voyage . too strict limitation of generals in vvarre , hurtfull . the patience and wisdome of fabius maximus . the first thing to bee observed of the former discourse . the first , the greatnesse of the spanish empyre . the importance , and worth of portugall . the second to be marked of the former discourse , is , the extent of the spanish ambition . the spanish vs●●pation over the consistorie of rome . ● 3. observation vpon the former discourse , is , the insidiation of the spanish ambition . n●melie , antonio 〈◊〉 . parricid●e practised in spaine , as in turk●e , by a religous trad●tion . christian princes , to be a●ware of spanish treacheries . 〈…〉 . parricidie practised in sp●tne , as in turkie , by a religous tradition . christian princes , to be a●ware of spanish treacheries . a tryall of what vveaknesse is into this great empyre . the state and counsell of spay● , not interrupted , or altered , by the death of a king. fortitude of empyre , standeth in 〈◊〉 of 〈◊〉 . examples of dis-vnited conquests . the spanish provinces , disjoin●ed members . the spanyard draweth nought from his provinces . the commodities of his pro●nees . what is the greatest treasure of a prince . inconvenientes following vpon the being of treasures in the hands of princes . treasures collected by great kinges , most often vnhappilie spended . publicke charitie of augustus . princes haue manie occasions , not knowne to subjectes , of necessa●ie debursments . oblations of money ancientlie made to princes . first impost of the salt in france , a gratuitie temporall , but turned to be annuall . another vveaknesse of spaine , to bee feared of all . cardinall 〈◊〉 , against 〈◊〉 the second of spaine . the portugals doe hate the castilians . the origine of the portugals , and 〈◊〉 . the whole 〈◊〉 of spaine , doe hate their prince his greatnesse , & why they doe so . it is not so easie for our noble men to rebell now , as before our conjunction with england a cleare testimonie there-of . a 〈◊〉 supposed in spaine , for 〈◊〉 of armes , and how it is so . their naturall pryde , a great vveaknesse . vi●e description of the spanish h●mour . the spanish punctualitie approacheth to nullitie . de●cription of punctualiti● . a quicke observation , for punctualitie . the navar●oies doe hate the spanyard . and the french too . the pryde of spayne , to bee opposed by vvarre . colon●es . plantatio● of nova scotia . incommodities , and evils following on vvarr● . when a kingdome is i●perfection , then bee aware of warres . great b●itane alreadie a perfect monarchie . wisdome , and moderation of scipio 〈◊〉 . forraigne 〈◊〉 f●uitlesse for our princes . the definition of a just warre . our warre against spaine just , in three maine respectes . livius dec . 3. lib. 8. ag●silaus , ● poore king went against the persian empyre . 〈…〉 how the spanyard is proved to bee our enemie . how scotland is furnished of men for warre . neglect of militarie discipline . thenature of leagues and consederacies . confe● for the battell of lapanto . confed . of the romanes and 〈◊〉 . confed . betwixt car●es the eight of france , & the duke of milan . confederacie against lewis the eleventh of france . leagues , or confederacies of salt. deliberation for war , the weightiest matter belonging to a king. confederates against spayne . whether small , or grosse armies to bee sent to enemie countreyes . the longsome warres of amurat the third , improfitable . ● prudent prince will not manage warres within , but without his countreyes . palatinate , the most honourable place of this vvarre . vvest flanders , a proper seat for wars against spayne . going of the navie latelie to portugall . cou●sels not to bee pondered by the events . the going of our king in person to spayne . the english auncientlie most victorious in spaine . scanderbeg , vvilliam vvallace . henrie , earle of richmond , against richard the third , with 2000 french. portugall and navarre , the first revolters from spaine . the vvest indees in the possession of a great monarch , aninfallible meanes to vniversalitie of empyre , & the proofe there of . money the nerue of vvarre , and the proofe there-of . greatest states and monarches , straited for w●nt of money . the hudge moneyes gotten by charles the fift , into peru. the naturall humour , and manners , of the french nation . a 〈◊〉 of the re●sor● which should encowrage vs agaynst the spa●y●rd . co ●emplat●on of our 〈…〉 , during our p●ace , this 〈◊〉 by●gone . calamitie of the citie of paris , and of whole france . contem●lation of the troubles of our predecessors . maximus , the romane generall , against the scottish king , euge●●● . encowragement , from great reasons . it is proved , that there is more by a great deale of money and men now , than our predecessours had . it is showne that the broken estates of particular me● , doeth not argue the povertie of a countrey . the d●ngerous consequence of ingratitude in people . a wicked people , doe make a wicked king. a bridge of golde to bee made , for enemies to passe out on . iust and true encowragements , from solide causes . captivitie of king iohn of france , and of francis the first . great ransome payed by our antecessours , for king david bruce , if the author was not a little mistaken . philip de cominit sayth , fiue hundreth thousand crownes . the causes why the palatinate , is detained by the spanyard . a remarkable speach , of coronell semple , to the author of this treatise . the quarrell of the palatinate , most ●ib to vs , & why . iohn knoxe , against the regiment of women . of our domesticke discontent , or feares . the going of the navie to the seas , and our publicke fast. secrecie advanceth great enterpryses . secresie of iulius caesar , charles the fift , 〈◊〉 the eleventh , and of the 〈◊〉 councell . the reformation , or innovation of magistrates . 〈…〉 . senators are to bee of good age , & experience . num● . 11. inconvenients that follow the perpetuitie of magistrates . inconvenientes by the innovation of magistrates , and counsellers . vtilitie of the censor amongst the romanes . the spanish syndicator , in place of the censor . nature of the comiss. for grievances . a latter appellat . due to soveraignitie . two of one familie , not to bee of one session , of iudges , approoved in france . ●efo●mation of the barre , & advo●ats , low necessarie . imposts m●●ent●e layde vpon processes . 〈◊〉 sainct , enemie to me●cena●ie advotation . emanuel● , king of portugall , enemie to mercenarie advocation . in what christi●n countr●yes , no advocation . in venice advocates haue two audiences , and no more . multitude of iudges , profitable . heritable magistrates . bod. in repub. erected church lands . if the patrimonie of the crowne bee alienable . domaine of republickes not alienable . how christian princes doe accept their crownes . princes like vnto god , doe creat men of nothing . the last convention of the 〈◊〉 of scotland . to be wished , that the church-lāds had ever remained with the crowne . ritches haue spoyled the pietie of the church . the laici● did spend the church-rents in , even in time of pope●●ie . the stupiditie of princes and people , not observing the evils following vpon the ritches of the church . the number of the ecclesiasticall estates in 〈◊〉 how princes doe remember these evils . the nature of tythes . of tenthes . the arguments vsed against evangelicall tenthes . why they ar● thought ceremoniall . the priests of melchisedek . tythes devoted by positiue lawes . when dedication in scotland . the benedi●●ne order frequent , and ●amous in scotland . calvin● , and perkins , deny tythes evangelicall . puritanes opposed to the pops church , even in good things . tythes vnderstood by naturall light of the gentiles . mystorie of the number ●0 . created , or instrumentall wisdome . vvisd . salom . 7. eccles. 1. esai 40. ch. the nature of number in generall . nature of angels . god is vnitie , veritie , and bonitie . definition of vnitie . god is the centre of all things . god hath particular respects , for particular numbers . great vse of the number . 7. nature of the dualitie . nature of the novenarie , or number 9. ten , is the quotient , or fulnesse of nature . man , was the first tythe . christ was the second tythe . psal. 144. christ began , and clozed th● circle of nature . a speach of robo● mes. hardas . worthie observation . the opinion of iunius , concerning tythes . two sorts of puritane opponents , to episcopall governamēt , and rentes , discordant amongst themselues . persecution of iulian , worse than of dioclesian . plantation of the north yl●s of scotland , of what importance . battell of hare-law . abuses , and oppressions , by way of tythes . discourse of the nature , and courie , of moneyes . gold cannot be employed , without a ●ixtion of ●ilver . fraude of gold-smiths , and of coyners . what the heighting of money doth impo●t . a great heighting of moneyes amongst the romanes , in their punicke warres . soveraigne vertues of the golde . elias artista . of moneyes kept vp by merchands . decay of ships , and the 〈◊〉 why . meanes to restore shipping , in maritine town● . prodigall perso●s interdy●●d by ●aw . no private man is absolute lord of his lands , or goods . against the prodigalitie of 〈◊〉 plate , and guilding with golde . ritches of scip. asri● . ferdinandus magn. did sel his silver plate , and iewels . charles the ninth of france , did coyne his silver plate . lib. 33. prescription for dyet , and apparell . hector bo●●● , lib. 12. speach to the king's majestie . diligence of augastus , against his enemies . who be enemies to the present governament of this kingdome . vigilance over the admission of bishops , and ministers . honour done by augustus , to the senators . the modellie of ●●aries the fift of france . lewis the eleventh of france , would not suffer his son to learne the latine tongue . the condi●●on of senators chosen by augustus . great affection of king darius , to zopyrus . diligence mechanicke of augustus , to know the revenewes , and debursments ordinarie of the empyre . vigilance of the persian kings , over their finances . diligence of augustus , to ease the people , immatters of law processes . supplication , in favou●s of the s. 〈◊〉 of scotland . plutare . de fortuna aut virtute , alexandri . the notable magnanimitie of alexander , whilst he wanted money . god maketh althings in nature , with tyme and patience . the youth-head of every thing in nature , most observed and looked to . the monopole 〈◊〉 the salt , in france . ekskybalauron: or, the discovery of a most exquisite jewel, more precious then diamonds inchased in gold, the like whereof was never seen in any age; found in the kennel of worcester-streets, the day after the fight, and six before the autumnal æquinox, anno 1651. serving in this place, to frontal a vindication of the honour of scotland, from that infamy, whereinto the rigid presbyterian party of that nation, out of their coveteousness and ambition, most dissembledly hath involved it. urquhart, thomas, sir, 1611-1660. 1652 approx. 417 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 164 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2008-09 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a95749 wing u134 thomason e1506_1 estc r203867 99863665 99863665 115875 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a95749) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 115875) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; 193:e1506[1]) ekskybalauron: or, the discovery of a most exquisite jewel, more precious then diamonds inchased in gold, the like whereof was never seen in any age; found in the kennel of worcester-streets, the day after the fight, and six before the autumnal æquinox, anno 1651. serving in this place, to frontal a vindication of the honour of scotland, from that infamy, whereinto the rigid presbyterian party of that nation, out of their coveteousness and ambition, most dissembledly hath involved it. urquhart, thomas, sir, 1611-1660. [30], 284, [8] p. printed by ja: cottrel; and are to be sold by rich. baddely, at the middle-temple-gate., london, : 1652. the last two leaves (quire 3*² ) bear an address from the author and errata. annotation on thomason copy: "may. 4"; the 2 in the imprint date has been altered in ms. to a "3". reproduction of the original in the british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp 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(ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng scotland -civilization -early works to 1800. scotland -biography -early works to 1800. 2007-04 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2007-04 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2007-06 robyn anspach sampled and proofread 2007-06 robyn anspach text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion εκσκυβαλαυρον : or , the discovery of a most exquisite jewel , more precious then diamonds inchased in gold , the like whereof was never seen in any age ; found in the kennel of worcester-streets , the day after the fight , and six before the autumnal aequinox , anno 1651. serving in this place , to frontal a vindication of the honour of scotland , from that infamy , whereinto the rigid presbyterian party of that nation , out of their covetousness and ambition , most dissembledly hath involved it . distichon ad librum sequitur , quo tres ter adaequant musarum numerum , casus , & articuli . o voc . thou' rt a nom . book in 1 abl . truth with 2 abl . love to dat . many , done by 3 abl . and for 4 abl . acc . the free'st-spoke scot of gen . any . efficiens & finis sunt sibi invicem causae . london , printed by ja : cottrel ; and are to be sold by rich. baddely , at the middle-temple-gate . 1652. the epistle liminary . the scope of this treatise is ( for the weal of the publick , in the propagation of learning & vertue throughout the whole isle of great britain ) in all humility to intreat the honorable parliament of this commonwealth , with consent of the councel of state thereof , to grant to sir thomas vrquhart of cromarty his former liberty , and the enjoyment of his own inheritance , with all the immunities and priviledges thereto belonging . the reasons of this demand in an unusual ( though compositive ) way , are so methodically deduced , that their recapitulation here ( how curt soever i could make it ) would afford but little more compendiousness to the reader ; unless all were to be summed up in this , that seeing the obtaining of his desires would be conducible to the whole land , and prejudicial to no good member in it , he should therefore be favoured with the benefit of the grant thereof , and refusal of nothing appertaining to it . by reason of his being a scotish man , a great deal therein is spoken in favor of that country , and many pregnant arguments inferred for the incorporating of both nations into one , with an indissolubility of union for the future , in an identity of priviledges , laws & customs . as by the praising of many the coetaneans and compatriots of his no-less-deserving predecessors , scotland is much honored : so , to vindicate the reputation thereof from any late scandal , it is fitly represented how the miscariage of a few should not occasion an universal imputation . the unjust usurpation of the clergy , the judaical practices of some merchants , and abused simplicity of the gentry , have in the mindes of forraigners engraven a discredible opinion of that nation , which will never be wiped off under a presbyterial government : for where ever it bears sway , &c. here i must stop ; for should i give way to my pen to decipher the enormities of that rule , i would , by outbulking the book with this epistle , make the porch greater then the lodging ; enter into a digression longer then the purpose , and outstrip the period with the parenthesis . therefore out of that inclination which prompts me to conceal the faults of those , in whom there may be any hope of a cordial penitency for having committed them ; i will not at this time lanch forth into the prodigious depth of presbyterian plots , nor rip up the sores of their ecclesiastical tyranny , till their implacable obduredness , and unreclaimability of nature , give open testimonies of their standing to their first erroneous principles , and not acknowledging a subordination to a secular authority . for the present then , it shall suffice , that i bestow upon them a gentle admonition , to refrain from that ambitious designe of spiritual soveraignty ; or ( to use the phrase of their patron knox ) that i warn them with the first sound of the trumpet , to give the civil magistrate his due : but if after this diansounding , they ( instead of apparelling their consciences with the garment of righteousness ) come forth to the field of publick affaires , with their rusty armor of iniquity ; then let them not blame me , if for the love of my country , whose honour they have defaced , and the best inhabitants whereof they have born down with oppression , i refuse not the employment of taking up banner against them , and giving them a home charge with clareens , under the conduct of reason and common sense , their old and inveterate enemies . now seeing that in this introitory discourse ( to avoid the excursive pomp of a too large ranging at random ) i am limited to some few pages , should i employ them all to attend the presbyters greatness , it would argue in me great inconsideracy , in preferring him to his betters ; therefore till i have the leisure to bestow a whole sheet by it self upon honest sir john ( who in that kind of liberality towards the fornicator and malignant , was the non-pareil of the world ) that therein ( as in a habit of repentance , he may be exposed to the publike view of the honest men of scotland , whom he hath so much injured : i must confine my self now to so much bounds ( without more ) as barely may suffice to excuse the superficial errata's both of pen and press . this treatise ( like the words of mass , dinner , supper , and such like , which besides the things by them signified , do connotate the times of morning , noon , night , or any other tide or season ) importing beyond what is primarly expressed in it , a certain space of time , within which unto the world should be made obvious its final promulgation ; and that being but a fornight ( lest a longer delay , by not giving timely information to the state , might prove very prejudicial ( if not totally destructive ) to the aforesaid sir thomas vrquhart , in whose house ( as he is informed by letters from thence ) there is at this present an english garison ; and whose lands are so over-run and exhausted by these publike pressures , that since he hath been a prisoner of war , which is now half a yeer , he hath not received the value of one farthing of his own means ) and having designed for the press at first , but 5 sheets , viz. the three first , and some two about the latter end , i deemed the aforesaid time of two weeks , of extent sufficient for encompassing a work of so short a breath . but by chance two diurnals having been brought to me , in one whereof was contained the relation of the irrational prooceedings of the presbytery of aberdeen , against sir alexander iruin of drum , together with his just appeal from their tyrannical jurisdiction to colonel overton , the then only competent judge that was there ; and in the other a petition or grievance of the commons of scotland , against the merciless and cruel task-masters that the presbyterian zeal had set above them these many yeers past ; wherein ( whether that petition was supposititious , or no ) there was not any thing , the truth whereof might not be testified by thousands of honest people in scotland , and ten times more of their roguery , then in it is specified : and besides all that , there being nothing in the mouthes almost of all this country more common then the words of the perfidious scot , the treacherous scot , the false brother , the covetous scot , and knot of knaves , and other suchlike indignities fixed upon the whole nation for the baseness of some : i resolved on a sudden ( for the undeceiving of honest men , and the imbuing of their minds with a better opinion of scotish spirits ) to insert the martial and literatory endowments of some natives of that soyle , though much eclipsed by their coclimatary wasps of a presbyterian crue . thus my task increasing , and not being able to inlarge my time , for the cause aforesaid , i was necessitated to husband it the better , to over-triple my diligence , and do the work ( by proportion of above three dayes in the space of one : wherefore , laying aside al other businesses , and cooping my self up daily for some hours together , betwixt the case and the printing press ; i usually afforded the setter copy at the rate of above a whole printed sheet in the day ; which , although by reason of the smallness of a pica letter , and close couching thereof , it did amount to three full sheets of my writing ; the aforesaid setter nevertheless ( so nimble a workman he was ) would in the space of 24 hours make dispatch of the whole , and be ready for another sheet . he and i striving thus who should compose fastest , he with his hand , and i with my brain ; and his uncasing of the letters , and placing them in the composing instrument , standing for my conception ; & his plenishing of the gally , and imposing of the form , encountering with the supposed equivalue of my writing ; we would almost every foot so jump together in this joynt expedition , and so nearly overtake other in our intended course , that i was oftentimes ( to keep him doing ) glad to tear off parcels of ten or twelve lines a peece , and give him them , till more were ready ; unto which he would so suddenly put an order , that almost still , before the ink of the writen letters was dry , their representatives were ( out of their respective boxes ) ranked in the composing-stick ; by means of which great haste , i writing but upon the loose sheets of cording-quires , which ( as i minced & tore them ) looking like pieces of waste paper , troublesome to get rallyed , after such dispersive scattredness , i had not the leisure to read what i had written , till it came to a proof , and sometimes to a full revise : so that by vertue of this unanimous contest , and joint emulation betwixt the theoretick and practical part , which of us should overhye other in celerity , we in the space of fourteen working-daies , compleated this whole book ( such as it is ) from the first notion of the brain , till the last motion of the press ; and that without any other help on my side , either of quick or dead ( for books i had none , nor possibly would i have made use of any , although i could have commanded them ) then what ( by the favour of god ) my own judgment and fancy did suggest unto me ; save so much as , by way of information , a servant of mine would now and then bring to me , from some reduced officer of the primitive parliament , touching the proper names of some scotish warriors abroad , which i was very apt to forget . i speak not this to excuse gross faults ( if there be any ) nor yet to praise my owne acuteness ( though there were none ) but to shew that extemporaneanness , in some kinde of subjects , may very probably be more successeful , then premeditation : and that a too punctually digested method , and over-nicely selected phrase , savouring of affectation , diminish oftentimes very much of the grace that otherwayes would attend a natural ingenuity . if the state of england be pleased with this book , i care neither for zoil nor momus ; but if otherwaies , then shall it displease me , whose resolution from its first contrivance was , willingly to submit it to their judicious censure . it is intituled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because of those few sheets of sir thomas vrquharts papers , which were found in the kennel of worecester-streets ; they being the cream , the marrow , and most especial part of the book ; and albeit they extend not in bulk to above two sheets and a quarter , of that small letter as it lieth in an octavo size ; yet that synecdochically the whole should be designed by it , lacketh not its precedent : for logick sometimes is called dialectica , although it be but a part of logick : and that discipline which treats of the dimensions of continuate quantity , named geometry , albeit how to measure the earth be fully instructed by geodesie , one of the smallest parts of that divine science . that which is properly france , is not the hundreth part of the kingdom of that name . moscovy , fez , and morocco , though empires , have their denominations from cities of the same name : so have the kingdoms of leon , toledo , murcia , granada , valencia , and naples , with the isles of mayorca , minorca , sardinia , malta , and rhodes , and so forth through other territories . it mentioneth sir thomas vrquhart in the third person , which seldom is done by any author in a treatise of his own penning ; although virgil said , ille ego qui quondam ; and scaliger the younger , ego sum magnus ille josephus : nevertheless , to satsfie the readers curiosity , and all honest men of the isle of britain , rather then to write anonymos , i will subscribe my self , christianus presbyteromastix . the names of the chiefs of the name of vrquhart , and of their primitive fathers ; as by authentick records and tradition , they were from time to time , through the various generations of that family , successively conveyed , till the present yeer 1652. 1 a dam. 2 seth. 3 enos . 4 cainan . 5 mahalaleel . 6 jared . 7 enoch . 8 methusalah . 9 lamech . 10 noah . 11 japhet 12 javan . 13 penuel . 14 tycheros . 15 pasiteles . 16 esormon . 17 cratynter . 18 thrasymedes . 19 evippos . 20 cleotinus . 21 litoboros . 22 apodemos . 23 bathybulos . 24 phrenedon . 25 zameles . 26 choronomos . 27 leptologon . 28 aglaestos . 29 megalonus . 30 evemeros . 31 callophron . 32 arthmios . 33 hypsegoras . 34 autarces . 35 evages . 36 atarbes . 37 pamprosodos . 38 gethon . 39 holocleros . 40 molin . 41 epitimon . 42 hypotyphos . 43 melobolon . 44 propetes . 45 euplocamos . 46 philophon . 47 syngenes . 48 polyphrades . 49 cainotomos . 50 rodrigo . 51 dicarches . 52 exagastos . 53 denapon . 54 artistes . 55 thymoleon . 56 eustochos . 57 bianor . 58 thryllumenos . 59 melleffen . 60 alypos . 61 anochlos . 62 homognios . 63 epsephicos . 64 eutropos . 65 coryphaeus . 66 etoimos . 67 spudaeos . 68 eumestor . 69 griphon . 70 emmenes . 71 pathomachon . 72 anepsios . 73 auloprepes . 74 corosylos . 75 daetalon . 76 beltistos . 77 horaeos . 78 orthophron . 79 apsicoros . 80 philaplus . 81 megaletor . 82 nomostor . 83 astioremon . 84 phronematias . 85 lutork . 86 machemos . 87 stichopaeo . 88 epalomenos . 89 tycheros . 90 apechon . 91 enacmes . 92 javan . 93 lematias . 94 profenes . 95 sosomenos . 96 philalethes . 97 thaleros . 98 polyaenos . 99 cratesimachos . 100 eunaemon . 101 diasemos . 102 saphenus . 103 bramoso . 104 celanas . 105 vistoso . 106 po●●●o . 107 lustroso . 108 chrestander . 109 specta bundo . 110 philodulos . 111 paladino . 112 comicello . 113 regisato . 114 arguto . 115 nicarchos . 116 marsidalio . 117 hedumenos . 118 agenor . 119 diaprepon . 120 stragayo . 121 zeron . 122 polyteles . 123 vocompos . 124 carolo. 125 endymion . 126 sebastian . 127 lawrence . 128 olipher . 129 quintin . 130 goodwin . 131 frederick . 132 sir jaspar . 133 sir adam . 134 edward . 135 richard. 136 sir philip. 137 robert. 138 george . 139 james . 140 david . 141 francis. 142 william . 143 adam . 144 john. 145 sir william . 146 william . 147 alexander , 148 thomas . 149 alexander . 150 walter . 151 henry . 152 sir thomas . 153 sir thomas . the names of the mothers of the chief of the name of vrquhart , as also of the mothers of their primitive fathers . the authority for the truth thereof being derived from the same authentick records and tradition on which is grounded the above-written genealogie of their male collaterals . 1 eva 2 shif ka 3 mahla 4 bilha 5 timnah 6 aholima 7 zilpa 8 noema 9 ada 10 titea 11 debora 12 neginothi 13 hottir 14 orpah 15 axa 16 narfesia 17 goshenni 18 briageta 19 andronia 20 pusena 21 emphaneola 22 bonaria 23 peninah 24 asymbleta 25 carissa 26 calaglais 27 theoglena 28 pammerissa 29 floridula 30 chrysocomis 31 arrenopas 32 tharsalia 33 maia 34 roma 35 termuth 36 vegeta 37 callimeris 38 panthea 39 gonima 40 ganymena 41 thespesia 42 hypermnestra 43 horatia 44 philumena 45 neopis 46 thymelica 47 ephamilla 48 porrima 49 lampedo 50 teleclyta 51 clarabella 52 eromena 53 zocallis 54 lepida 55 nicolla 56 proteusa 57 gozosa 58 venusta 59 prosectica 60 delotera 61 tracara 62 pothina 63 cordata 64 aretias 65 musurga 66 romalia 67 orthoiusa 68 recatada 69 chariestera 70 rexenora 71 philerga 72 thomyris 73 varonilla 74 stranella 75 aequanima 76 barosa 77 epimona 78 diosa 79 bonita 80 aretusa 81 bendita 82 regalletta 83 isumena 84 antaxia 85 bergola 86 viracia 87 dynastis 88 dalga 89 eutocusa 90 corriba 91 praecelsa 92 plausidica 93 donosa 94 solicaelia 95 bonta dosa 96 calliparia 97 creleuca 98 pancala 99 dominella 100 mundula 101 pamphais 102 philtrusa 103 meliglena 104 philetium 105 tersa 106 dulcicora 107 gethosyna 108 collabella 109 eucnema 110 tortolina 111 ripulita 112 urbana 113 lampusa 114 vistosa 115 hermosma 116 bramata 117 zaglopis 118 androlema 119 trastevole 120 suaviloqua 121 francoline 122 matilda 123 allegra 124 winnifred 125 dorothy 126 lawretta 127 genivieve 128 marjory 129 jane 130 anne 131 magdalen 132 girsel 133 mary 134 sophia 135 eleonore 136 rosalind 137 lillias 138 brigid 139 agnes 140 susanna 141 catherine 142 helen 143 beatrice 144 elizabeth 145 elizabeth 146 christian let such as would know more hereof , be pleased to have recourse to the book treating of the genealogy of that family , intituled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which together with this , is to sold by one and the same stationer . i must beg this favour of the ingenious reader , that with his pen ( before he fall to the perusal of the book ) he be pleased to correct these ensuing errata's ; which though not all to be found in any one of the copies , yet each of them being in the whole impression , i chused rather to insert more , then that an industrious spirit should be debarred the conveniency of amending any . page 12. line 11. for shinread fashion of the hebrew shin . p. 34. l. 11. r. you words of ●he . p. 38. l. 19. r. parts . p. 42. l. 17. r. negation . p . 55. lines 5 , 6 , 8. for ready r. already . for conderable r. considerable . for eixibilty . r. enixibility p. 74. l. 2. r. kill . p. 77. l. 17 ▪ dele so . p. 28. 19. r. vigour and freshness . p. 82. l. 25. r. this . p. 91. l. 2. r execute . p. 91. l. 3. dele for . p. 97. l. 4 . r . was . p. 103. l. 11. r. worlds . p. 104. l. 18. r. of verses of his composing p. 105. l. 16. r. sight l. 24. r. the intermediate . p. 146. l. 3. r. autochthony . p. 154. l. 7. r. the. p. 158. l. 15. r. furthered . p . 167. l. 15. r. logerheadistick . p. 186. l. 23. r. astricted . p . 188. l. 15. r. periscians . p. 208. l. 6. r. he . p. 215. l. 2. r. subtilis . p . 218. l. 8. r. sint . p. 239. l. 28. r. zeal-legerdemaim . p . 240. l. 20. r. to be atchieved . p. 248. l. 20. r. examined . he should obtain all his desires , who offers more then he requires . no sooner had the total rout of the regal party at worcester , given way to the taking of that city , and surrendring up of all the prisoners to the custody of the marshal-general and his deputies ; but the liberty customary at such occasions to be connived at , in favours of a victorious army , imboldened some of the new-levied forces of the adjacent counties , to confirm their conquest by the spoil of the captives . for the better atchievement of which designe , not reckoning those great many others that in all the other corners of the town were ferreting every room for plunder , a string or two of exquisite snaps , and clean shavers ( if ever there were any ) rushing into master spilsbury's house , ( who is a very honest man , and hath an exceeding good woman to his wife ) broke into an upper chamber , where finding ( besides scarlet cloaks , buff suits , arms of all sorts , and other such rich chaffer , at such an exigent escheatable to the prevalent soldier ) seven large portmantles ful of precious commodity ; in three whereof , after a most exact search for gold , silver , apparel , linen , or any whatever adornments of the body , or pocket-implements , as was seized upon in the other four , not hitting on any thing but manuscripts in folio , to the quantity of sixscore & eight quires and a half . divided into six hundred fourty and two quinternions and upwards , the quinternion consisting of five sheets , and the quire of five and twenty ; besides some writings of suits in law , & bonds , in both worth above three thousand pounds english , they in a trice carried all whatever els was in the room away , save those papers , which they then threw down on the floor , as unfit for their use : yet immediately thereafter , when upon carts the aforesaid baggage was put to be transported to the country , and that by the example of many hundreds of both horse and foot , whom they had loaded with spoil , they were assaulted with the temptation of a new booty , they apprehending how useful the paper might be unto them , went back for it , and bore it straight away : which done , to every one of those their camarads whom they met with in the streets , they gave as much thereof , for packeting up of raisins , figs , dates , almonds , caraway , and other such-like dry confections and other ware , as was requisite : who doing the same themselves , did , together with others , kindle pipes of tobacco with a great part thereof , and threw out all the remainder upon the streets , save so much as they deemed necessary for inferiour employments , and posteriour uses . of those dispersedly-rejected bundles of paper , some were gathered up by grocers , druggists , chandlers , pie-makers , or such as stood in need of any cartapaciatory utensil , and put in present service , to the utter undoing of all the writing thereof , both in its matter and order . one quinternion nevertheless , two days after the fight on the friday-morning , together with two other loose sheets more , by vertue of a drizelling rain , which had made it stick fast to the ground , where there was a heap of seven and twenty dead men , lying upon one another , was by the command of one master braughton taken up by a servant of his ; who , after he had ( in the best manner he could ) cleansed it from the mire and mud of the kennel , did forthwith prefent it to the perusal of his master ; in whose hands it no sooner came , but instantly perceiving by the periodical couching of the discourse , marginal figures , and breaks here and there , according to the variety of the subject , that the whole purpose was destinated for the press , and by the author put into a garb befitting either the stationer or printer's acceptance ; yet because it seemed imperfect , and to have relation to subsequent tractates , he made all the enquiry he could , for trial , whether there were any more such quinternions or no : by means whereof , he got full information , that above three thousand sheets of the like paper , written after that fashion , and with the same hand , were utterly lost and imbezzeled after the manner aforesaid ; and was so fully assured of the misfortune , that , to gather up spilt water , comprehend the windes within his fist , and recover those papers again , he thought would be a work of one and the same labour and facility . therefore , because he despaired of attaining to any more , he the more carefully endeavoured to preserve what he had made purchase of : and this he did very heedfully , in the country for three months together , and afterwards in the city of london ; where at last i getting notice thereof , thought good , in regard of the great moan made for the loss of sir vrquhart's manuscripts , to try at the said sir thomas , whether these seven sheets were any of his papers or no. whereupon , after communication with him , it was found that they were but a parcel of the preface he intended to premise before the grammar and lexicon of an universal language ; the whole preface consisting of two quires of paper , the grammar of three , and the lexicon of seven : the other fivescore & sixteen quires and a half treating of metaphysical , mathematical , moral , mythological , epigrammatical , dialectical , and chronological matters , in a way never hitherto trod upon by any ; being brought by the said sir thomas into england for two reasons : first , lest they should have been altogether lost at sterlin ; and next , to have them printed at london , with the best conveniencie that might stand with the indemnity of the author ; whom when i had asked if his fancie could serve him to make up these papers again , especially in so far as concerned the new language ; his answer was , that , if he wanted not encouragement , with the favour of a littie time , he could do much therein : but unless he were sure to possess his own with freedom , it would be impossible for him to accomplish a task of so great moment and laboriousness . this modest reply , grounded upon so much reason , hath emboldened me to subjoyn hereto what was couched in those papers which were found by master braughton ; to the end the reader may perceive , whether the performance of so great a work as is mentioned there , be not worth the enjoyment of his predecessors inheritance , although he had not had a lawful title thereunto by his birth-right and lineal succession , which he hath . the title of those found papers was thus . an introduction to the universal language ; wherein , whatever is uttred in other languages , hath signification in it , whilst it affordeth expressions , both for copiousness , variety , and conciseness in all manner of subjects , which no language else is able to reach unto : most fit for such as would with ease attaine to a most expedite facility of expressing themselves in all the learned sciences , faculties , arts , disciplines , mechanick trades , and all other discourses whatsoever , whether serious or recreative . the matter of the preface begun after this manner , as it was divided into several articles . 1. words are the signes of things ; it being to signifie that they were instituted at first : nor can they be , as such , directed to any other end , whether they be articulate or inarticulate . 2. all things are either real or rational : and the real , either natural or artificial . 3. there ought to be a proportion betwixt the signe and thing signified ; therefore should all things , whether real or rational , have their proper words assigned unto them . 4. man is called a microcosme , because he may by his conceptions and words containe within him the representatives of what in the whole world is comprehended . 5. seeing there is in nature such affinity 'twixt words and things , as there ought to be in whatever is ordained for one another ; that language is to be accounted most conform to nature , which with greatest variety expresseth all manner of things . 6. as all things of a single compleat being , by aristotle into ten classes were divided ; so may the words whereby those things are to be signified , be set apart in their several store-houses . 7. arts , sciences , mechanick trades , notional faculties , and whatever is excogitable by man , have their own method ; by vertue whereof , the learned of these latter times have orderly digested them : yet hath none hitherto considered of a mark , whereby words of the same faculty , art , trade , or science should be dignosced from those of another by the very sound of the word at the first hearing . 8. a tree will be known by its leaves , a stone by its grit , a flower by the smel , meats by the taste , musick by the ear , colours by the eye , the several natures of things , with their properties and essential qualities , by the intellect : and accordingly as the things are in themselves diversified , the judicious and learned man , after he hath conceived them aright , sequestreth them in the several cels of his undeastanding , each in their definite and respective places . 9. but in matter of the words whereby those things are expressed , no language ever hitherto framed , hath observed any order relating to the thing signified by them : for if the words be ranked in their alphabetical series , the things represented by them will fall to be in several predicaments ; and if the things themselves be categorically classed , the word whereby they are made known will not be tyed to any alphabetical rule . 10. this is an imperfection incident to all the languages that ever yet have been known : by reason whereof , foraign tongues are said to be hard to learn ; and , when obtained , easily forgot . 11. the effigies of jupiter in the likeness of a bull , should be liker to that of io metamorphosed into a cow , then to the statue of bucephalus , which was a horse : and the picture of alcibiades ought to have more resemblance with that of coriolanus , being both handsome men , then with the image of thersites , who was of a deformed feature : just so should things semblable in nature be represented by words of a like composure : and as the true intelligible speices do present unto our minds the similitude of things as they are in the object ; even so ought the word expressive of our conceptions so to agree or vary in their contexture , as the things themselves which are conceived by them do in their natures . 12. besides this imperfection in all languages there is yet another , that no language upon the face of the earth hath a perfect alphabet ; one lacking those letters which another hath , none having all , and all of them in cumulo lacking some . but that which makes the defect so much the greater , is , that these same few consonants and vowels commonly made use of , are never by two nations pronounced after the same fashion ; the french a with the english , being the greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; and the italian b with the spanish , the hebrew vau. 13. this is that which maketh those of one dominion so unskilful in the idiome of another ; and after many yeers abode in a strange land , despaire from attaining at any time to the perfect accent of the language thereof , because , as the waters of that stream cannot be wholesome , whose source is corrupted ; nor the superstructure sure , whereof the ground-work is ruinous : so doth the various manner of pronouncing one and the same alphabet in several nations , produce this great and most lamentable obstruction in the discipline of languages . 14. the g of the latin word legit , is after four several manners pronounced by the english , french , spanish , and dutch : the ch likewise is differently pronounced by divers nations ; some uttering it after the fashion the hebrew shin , as the french do in the word chasteau , chascun , chastier , chatel ; or like the greek kappa , as in the italian words , chiedere , chiazzare , chinatura ; or as in italy are sounded the words ciascheduno , ciarlatano ; for so do the spanish and english pronounce it , as in the words achaque , leche ; chamber , chance : other nations of a guttural flexibility , pronounce it after the fashion of the greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . nor need we to labor for examples in other letters ; for there is scarce any hitherto received , either consonant or vowel , which in some one and other taking in all nations , is not pronounced after three or four several fashions . 15. as the alphabets are imperfect , some having but 19 letters , others 22. and some 24. few exceeding that number : so do the words composed of those letters in the several languages , come far short of the number of things , which to have the reputation of a perfect tongue , ought to be expressed by them . 16. for supply of this deficiencie , each language borrows from another ; nor is the perfectest amongst them , without being beholden to another , in all things enuncible , bastant to afford instruction : many astronomical and medicinal terms have the greeks borrowed from the arabians , for which they by exchange have from the grecians received payment of many words naturalized in their physical , logical , and metaphysical treatises . as for the latin , it oweth all its scientifick dictions to the greek and arabick : yet did the roman conquest give adoption to many latin words , in both these languages , especially in matters of military discipline , and prudential law. 17. and as for all other languages as yet spoke , though to some of them be ascribed the title of original tongues , i may safely avouch there is none of them which of it self alone is able to afford the smattring of an elocution fit for indoctrinating of us in the precepts and maximes of moral and intellectual vertues . 18. but , which is more , and that which most of all evinceth the sterility of all the languages that since the deluge have been spoke , though all of them were quintescenced in one capable of the perfections of each , yet that one so befitted and accommodated for compendiousness and variety of phrase , should not be able , amidst so great wealth , to afford , without circumlocution , the proper and convenient representation of a thing , yea of many thousands of things , whereof each should be expressed with one single word alone . 19. some languages have copiousness of discourse , which are barren in composition : such is the latine . others are compendious in expression , which hardly have any flection at all : of this kinde are the dutch , the english , and irish . 20. greek hath the agglutinative faculty of incorporating words ; yet runneth not so glib in poesie as doth the latine , though far more abundant . the hebrew likewise , with its auxiliary dialects of arabick , caldean , syriack , aethiopian , and samaritan , compoundeth prettily , and hath some store of words ; yet falleth short by many stages of the greek . 21. the french , spanish , and italians , are but dialects of the latine , as the english is of the saxon tongue ; though with this difference , that the mixture of latine with the gaulish , moresco , and gotish tongues , make up the three first languages ; but the meer qualification of the saxon with the old british , frameth not the english to the full , for that , by its promiscuous and ubiquitary borrowing , it consisteth almost of all languages : which i speak not in dispraise thereof , although i may with confidence aver , that were all the four aforesaid languages stript of what is not originally their own , we should not be able with them all , in any part of the world , to purchase so much as our breakfast in a market . 22. now to return from these to the learned languages ; we must acknowledge it to be very strange , why , after thousands of yeers continual practice in the polishing of them by men of approved faculties , there is neither in them , nor any other tongue hitherto found out , one single word expressive of the vice opposite either to temperance or chastity in the defect ; though many rigid monks , even now adays , be guilty of the one , as diogenes of old was of the other . 23. but that which makes this disease the more incurable , is , that when an exuberant spirit would to any high researched conceit adapt a peculiar word of his own coyning , he is branded with incivility , if he apologize not for his boldness , with a quod ita dixerim parcant ciceronianae manes , ignoscat demosthenis genius , and other such phrases acknowledging his fault of making use of words never uttered by others , or at least by such as were most renowned for eloquence . 24. though learning sustain great prejudice by this restraint of liberty to endenizon new citizens in the commonwealth of languages , yet do i conceive the reason thereof to proceed from this , that it is thought a less incongruity to express a thing by circumlocution , then by appropriating a single word thereto , to transgress the bounds of the language ; as in architecture it is esteemed an errour of less consequence to make a circuitory passage from one room to another , then by the extravagancie of an irregular sallie , to frame projectures disproportionable to the found of the house . 25. thus is it , that as according to the largeness of the plat of a building , and compactedness of its walls , the work-master contriveth his roofs , platforms , outjettings , and other such like parts and portions of the whole : just so , conform to the extent and reach which a language in its flexions and compositions hath obtained at first , have the sprucest linguists hitherto bin pleased to make use of the words thereto belonging . 26. the bonification and virtuification of scotus's hexeity , and albedineity of suarez are words exploded by those that affect the purity of the latine diction ; yet if such were demanded , what other no less concise expression would comport with the neatness of that language , their answer would be altum silentium : so easie a matter it is for many to finde fault with what they are not able to amend . 27. nevertheless , why for representing to our understandings the essence of accidents , the fluency of the form , as it is in fieri ; the faculty of the agent , and habit that facilitates it , with many thousands of other such expressions , the tearms are not so genuine , as of the members of a mans body , or utensils of his house ; the reason is , because the first inventers of languages , who contrived them for necessity , were not so profoundly versed in philosophical quiddities , as those that succeeded after them ; whose literature increasing , procured their excursion beyond the representatives of the common objects imagined by their forefathers . 28. i have known some to have built houses for necessity , having no other aime before their eyes , but barely to dwell in them ; who nevertheless in a very short space were so enriched , that after they had taken pleasure to polish and adorn , what formerly they had but rudely squared , their moveables so multiplyed upon them , that they would have wished they had made them of a larger extent . 29. even so though these languages may be refined by some quaint derivatives and witty compositions ; like the striking forth of new lights and doors , outjetting of kernels , erecting of prickets , barbicans , and such like various structures upon one and the same foundation ; yet being limited to a certain basis● beyond which the versed in them must not pass , they cannot roam at such random as otherwise they might , had their language been of a larger scope at first . 30. thus albeit latine be far better polished now , then it was in the days of enntus and livius andronicus , yet had the latinists at first been such philosophers as afterward they were , it would have attained to a great deale of more perfection then it is at for the present . 31. what i have delivered in freedome of the learned languages , i would not have wrested to a sinister sense , as if i meant any thing to their disparagement ; for truly i think the time well bestowed , which boyes in their tender yeers employ towards the learning of them , in a subordination to the excellent things that in them are couched . 32. but ingenuously i must acknowledge my averseness of opinion from those who are so superstitiously addicted to these languages that they account it learning enough to speak them , although they knew nothing else ; which is an error worthy rebuke , seeing philosophia sunt res , non verba ; and that whatever the signes be , the things by them signified ought still to be of greater worth . 33. for it boots not so much , by what kind of tokens any matter be brought into our minde , as that the things made known unto us , by such representatives , be of some considerable value : not much unlike the innes-a-court-gentlemen at london , who usually repairing to their commons at the blowing of a horne , are better pleased with such a signe ( so the fare be good ) then if they were warned to courser cates , by the sound of a bell or trumpet . 34. another reason prompteth me thereto , which is this , that in this frozen climate of ours , there is hardly any that is not possessed with the opinion , that not only the three fore-named languages , but a great many other , whom they call originals ( whereof they reckon ten or eleven in europe , and some fifty eight more , or thereabouts , in other nations ) were at the confusion of babel , immediately from god ▪ by a miracle , infused into men : being induced to believe this , not so much for that they had not perused the interpretation of the rabbies on that text , declaring the misunderstanding whereunto the builders were involved by diversity of speech , to have proceeded from nothing else , but their various and diserepant pronunciation of one and the same language , as that they deemed languages to be of an invention so sublime , that naturally the wit of man was not able to reach their composure . 35. some believe this so pertinaciously , that they esteem all men infidels that are of another faith ; whilst in the mean while , i may confidently assever , that the assertors of such a tenet , do thereby extreamly dishonor god , who doing whatever is done , by nature , as the actions of an ambassador ( as an ambassador ) are reputed to be those of the soveraign that sent him , would not have the power he hath given to nature to be disclaimed by any , or any thing said by us in derogation thereof . 36. should we deny our obedience to the just decree of an inferior judge , because he from whom his authority is derived , did not pronounce the sentence ? subordinate magistrates have their power , even in great matters ; which to decline , by saying , they have no authority , should make the averrer fall within the compass of a breach of the statute called scandalum magnatum . 37. there are of those with us , that wear gowns and beards longer then ever did aristotle and aesculapius ; who when they see an eclipse of the sun or moon , or a comet in the aire , straight would delude the commons with an opinion that those things are immediately from god , for the sins of the people ; as if no natural cause could be produced for such like apparitions . ¶ here is the number of twelve articles wanting . 50. for which cause , they are much to blame , that think it impossible for any man naturally to frame a language of greater perfection then greek , hebrew , or latine . 51. for who , in stead of affording the true cause of a thing , unnecessarily runs to miracles , tacitely acknowledgeth that god naturally cannot do it : wherein he committeth blasphemy ; as that souldier may be accounted guilty of contumacie and disobedience , who rejecting the orders wherewith an inferiour officer is authorized to command him , absolutely refuseth compearance , unless the general himself come in person to require it of him . 52. as there is a possibility such a language may be , so do i think it very requisite such a language were , both for affording of conciseness , and abundance of expression . 53. such as extol those languages most , are enforced sometimes to say , that laborant penuria verborum ; and thereunto immediately subjoyn this reason , quia plures sunt res quam verba . 54. that is soon said ; and , ad pauca respicientes facile enuntiant . but here i ask them , how they come to know that there are more things then words , taking things ( as in this sence they ought to be taken ) for things universal ; because there is no word spoken , which to the conceit of man is not able to represent more individuals then one , be it sun , moon , phoenix , or what you will , even amongst verbs , and syncategorematical signes , which do ●●ely suppone for the modalities of things 〈◊〉 ●●…ore is each word the signe of an universal thing ; peter signifying either this pet●● or that peter ; and any whatever name , surname , or title , being communicable to one and many . 55. thus though both words and thoughts , as they are 〈◊〉 universal ; yet do i believe that those w●●●…ld attribute less universality to words then things , knew not definitely the full number of words , taking words for any articulate pronunciation . 56 nay , i will go further : there is no alphabet in the world , be the calculator never so well skill'd in arithmetick , by vertue whereof the exact number of words may be known ; because that number must comprehend all the combinations that letters can have with one another : and this cannot be done , if any letter be wanting ; and consequently , by no alphabet as yet framed , wherein ( as i have already said in the twelfth article ) there is a dificiencie of many letters . 57. the universal alphabet therefore must be first conceived , before the exactness of that computation can be attained unto . 58. then is it , when having couched an alphabet materiative of all the words the mouth of man , with its whole implements , is able to pronounce , and bringing all these words within the systeme of a language , which , by reason of its logopandocie , may deservedly be intituled the vniversal tongue , that nothing will better merit the labour of a grammatical arithmetician , then , after due enumeration , hinc inde , to appariate the words of the universal language with the things of the universe . 59. the analogie therein 'twixt the signe and thing signified holding the more exactly , that as , according to aristotle , there can be no more worlds but one , because all the matter whereof worlds can be composed , is in this : so can there be no universal language , but this i am about to divulge unto the world , because all the words enuncible are in it contained . 60. if any officious critick will run to the omnipotencie of god for framing more worlds , ( according to the common saying , nothing is impossible to god , that implies not a contradiction ) so he must have recourse to the same omnipotent power for furnishing of man with other speech-tools then his tongue , throat , roof of the mouth , lips , and teeth , before the contexture of another universal language can be warped . 61. that i should hit upon the invention of that , for the furtherance of philosophy , and other disciplines and arts , which never hitherto hath been so much as thought upon by any ; and that in a matter of so great extent , as the expressing of all the things in the world , both in themselves , actions , ways of doing , situation , pendicles , relations , connexions , pathetick interpositions , and all other appurtenances to a perfect elocution , without being beholding to any language in the world ; insomuch as one word will hardly be believed by our fidimplicitary gown-men , who , satisfied with their predecessors contrivances , and taking all things literally , without examination , blate rate , to the nauseating even of vulgar ears , those exotick proverbs , there is no new thing under the sun , nihil dictum quod non dictum prius , and beware of philosophers ; authoridating this on paul , the first on solomon , and the other on terence . 62. but , poor souls , they understand not that in the passage of solomon is meant , that there is no innovation in the essence of natural things ; all transmutations on the same matter , being into formes , which , as they differ from some , so have an essential uniformity with others preexistent in the same kind . 63. and when it was said by paul , beware of philosophers , he meant such sophisters as themselves , who under the vizzard of i know not what , corrupt the chanels of the truth , and pervert all philosophy and learning . 64. as for the sayings of terence , whether scipio couched them , or himself , they ought to be inferred rather as testimonies of neat latine , then for asserting of infallible verities . 65. if there hath been no new thing under the sun , according to the adulterate sense of those pristinary lobcocks , how comes the invention of syllogisms to be attributed to aristotle , that of the sphere to archimedes , and logarithms to neper ? it was not swart , then , and gertudenburg , that found out gunpowder and the art of printing ; for these two men lived after the decease of solomon . 66. had there been canon in solomons dayes , rehoboam ( by all appearance ) would have made use of them for the recovery of his inheritance ; nor had some mention of artillery been omitted in the books of the mac●habees . 67. pancorola's treatise de novis adimpertis ( although polydor virgil were totally forgot ) would be had there been no new thing since solomon penn'd ecclesiastes , but as a discourse of platonick reminiscences , and calling to minde some formerly-lost fancies . 68. truly , i am so far from being of the opinion of those archaeomanetick coxcombs , that i really think , there will alwayes be new inventions , where there are excellent spirits . 69. for as i ascribe unto my self the invention of the trissote●rail trigonometry , for facility of calculation by representatives of letters and syllables ; the proving of the equipollencie and opposition both of plaine and modal enunciations by rules of geometry , the unfolding of the chiefest part of philosophy by a continuated geographical allegory ; and above a hundred other several books on different subjects , the conceit of so much as one whereof never entered into the braines of any before my self ( although many of them have been lost at worcester-fight : ) so am i confident , that others after me , may fall upon some straine of another kind , never , before that , dreamed upon by those of foregoing ages . 70. now to the end the reader may be more enamored of the language , wherein i am to publish a grammer and lexicon , i will here set down some few qualities and advantages peculiar to it self , and which no language else ( although all other concurred with it ) is able to reach unto . 71. first , there is not a word utterable by the mouth of man , which in this language hath not a peculiar signification by it self ; so that the allegation of bliteri by the summulists , will be of small validity . 72. secondly , such as will harken to my instructions , if some strange word be proposed to them , whereof there are many thousands of millions , deviseable by the wit of man , which never hitherto by any breathing have been uttered , shall be able , although he know not the ultimate signification thereof , to declare what part of speech it is ; or if a noune , unto what predicament or class it is to be reduced ; whether it be the signe of a real or notional thing , or somewhat concerning mechanick trades in their tooles , or tearmes ; or if real , whether natural or artificial , compleat , or incompleat ; for words here do suppone for the things which they signifie ; as when we see my lord generals picture , we say , there is my lord general , 73. thirdly , this world of words hath but two hundred and fifty prime radices , upon which all the rest are branched : for better understanding whereof , with all its dependant boughs , sprigs , and ramelets ; i have before my lexicon set down the division thereof ( making use of another allegory ) into so many cities , which are subdivided into streets , they againe into lanes , those into houses , these into stories ; whereof each room standeth for a word ; and all these so methodically , that who observeth my precepts thereanent , shall at the first hearing of a word , know to what city it belongeth , and consequently not be ignorant of some general signification thereof , till after a most exact prying into all its letters , finding the street , lane , house , story , and room thereby denotated , he punctually hit upon the very proper thing it represents in its most specifical signification . 74. fourthly , by vertue of adjectitious syllabicals annexible to nouns and verbs , there will arise of several words , what compound , what derivative , belonging in this language to one noune or to one verb alone , a greater number then doth pertaine to all the parts of speech , in the most copious language in the world besides . 75. fifthly , so great energy to every meanest constitutive part of a word in this language is appropriated , that one word thereof , though but of seven syllables at most shal comprehend that which no language else in the world is able to express in fewer then fourscore and fifteen several words ; and that not only a word here and there for masteries sake , but several millions of such ; which , to any initiated in the rudiments of my grammer , shall be easie to frame . 76. sixthly , in the cases of all the declinable parts of speech , it surpasseth all other languages whatsoever : for whilst others have but five or six at most , it hath ten , besides the nominative . 77. seventhly , there is none of the learned languages , but hath store of nouns defective of some case or other ; but in this language there is no heteroclite in any declinable word , nor redundancie or deficiency of cases . 78. eighthly , every word capable of number , is better provided therewith in this language , then by any other : for in stead of two or three numbers which others have , this afafordeth you four ; to wit , the singular , dual , plural , and redual . 79. ninthly , it is not in this as other languages , wherein some words lack one number , and some another : for here each casitive or personal part of speech is endued with all the numbers . 80. tenthly , in this tongue there are eleven genders ; wherein likewise it exceedeth all other languages . 81. eleventhly , verbs , mongrels , participles , and hybrids , have all of them ten tenses , besides the present ; which number , no language else is able to attaine to . 82. twelfthly , though there be many conjugable words in other languages defective of tenses , yet doth this tongue allow of no such anomaly , but granteth all to each . 83. thirteenthly , in lieu of six moods which other languages have at most , this one injoyeth seven in its conjugable words . 84. fourteenthly , verbs here , or other conjugable parts of speech , admit of no want of moodes , as doe other languages . 85. fifteenthly , in this language , the verbs and participles have four voices , although it was never heard that ever any other language had above three . 86. sixteenthly , no other tongue hath above eight or nine parts of speech ; but this hath twelve . 87. seventeenthly , for variety of diction in each part of speech , it surmounteth all the languages in the world . 88. eighteenthly , each noun thereof , or verb , may begin or end with a vowel or consonant , as to the peruser shall seem most expedient . 89. nineteenthly , every word of this language declinable or indeclinable hath at least ten several synomyma's . 90. twentiethly , each of these synomyma's , in some circumstance of the signification , differeth from the rest . 91. one and twentiethly , every faculty , science , art , trade , or discipline , requiring many words for expression of the knowledge thereof , hath each its respective root from whence all the words thereto belonging are derived . 92. two and twentiethly , in this language the opposite members of a division have usually the same letters in the words which signifie them ; the initial and final letter being all one ▪ with a transmutation only in the middle ones . 93. three and twentiethly , every word in this language signifieth as well backward as forward ; and how ever you invert the letters , still shall you fall upon significant words : whereby a wonderful facility is obtained in making of anagrams . 94. four and twentiethly , there is no language in the world , but for every word thereof , it will afford you another of the same signification , of equal syllables with it , and beginning or ending , or both , with vowels or consonants as it doth . 95. five and twentiethly , by vertue hereof , there is no hexameter , elegiack , saphick , asclepiad , iambick , or any other kind of latine or greek verse , but i will afford you another in this language of the same sort , without a syllable more or less in the one then the other , spondae answering to spondae , dactil to dactil , caesure to caesure , and each foot to other , with all uniformity imaginable . 96. six and twentiethly , as it trotteth easily with metrical feet , so at the end of the career of each line , hath it the dexterity , after the maner of our english and other vernaculary tongues , to stop with the closure of a rime ; in the framing whereof , the well-versed in that language shall have so little labour , that for every word therein he shall be able to furnish at least five hundred several monosyllables of the same termination with it . 97. seven and twentiethly , in translating verses of any vernaculary tongue , such as italian , french , spanish , slavonian , dutch , irish , english , or whatever it be , it affords you of the same signification , syllable for syllable , and in the closure of each line a ryme , as in the original . 98. eight and twentiethly , by this language , and the letters thereof , we may do such admirable feats in numbers , that no cyfering can reach its compendiousness : for whereas the ordinary way of numbring by thousands of thousands of thousands of thousands , doth but confuse the hearers understanding ; to remedy which , i devised ; even by cyfering it self , a far more exact maner of numeration , as in the treatise of arithmetick which i have ready for the press , is evidently apparent ; this language affordeth so concise words for numbering , that the number for setting down , whereof would , require in vulgar arithmetick , more figures in a row then there might be grains of sand containable from the center of the earth , to the highest heavens , is in it expressed by two letters . 99. nine and twentiethly , what rational logarithms do by writing , this language doth by heart ; and , by adding of letters , shall multiply numbers ; which is a most exquisite secret . 100. thirtiethly , the digits are expressed by vowels , and the consonants stand for all the results of the cephalisme , from ten to eighty one , inclusively ; whereby many pretty arithmetical tricks are performed . 101. one and thirtiethly , in the denomination of the fixed stars , it affordeth the most significant way imaginary : for by the single word alone which represents the star , you shall know the magnitude , together with the longitude and latitude , both in degrees and minutes of the star that is expressed by it . 102. two and thirtiethly by one word in this language , we shall understand what degree , or what minute of the degree of a signe in the zodiake , the sun or moon , or any other planet is in . 103. three and thirtiethly , as for the yeer of god , the moneth of that yeer , week of the moneth , day of that week , partition of the day , hour of that partition , quarter and half quarter of the hour , a word of one syllable in this language will express it all to the full . 104. four and thirtiethly , in this language , also , words expressive of herbs , represent unto us with what degree of cold , moisture , heat , or driness they are qualified ; together with some other property distinguishing them from other herbs . 105. five and thirtiethly , in matter of colours , we shall learn by words in this language the proportion of light , shadow , or darkness commixed in them . 106. six and thirtiethly , in the composition of syllables by vowels and consonants , it affordeth the aptest words that can be imagined , for expressing how many vowels and consonants any syllable is compounded of , and how placed in priority and situation to one another . which secret in this language , is exceeding necessary , for understanding the vigour of derivatives in their variety of signification . 107. seven and thirtiethly , for attaining to that dexterity which mithridates king of pontus was said to have , in calling all his souldiers of an army of threescore thousand men , by their names and surnames , this language will be so convenient , that if a general , according to the rules thereof , will give new names to his souldiers , whether horse , foot , or dragoons , as the french use to do to their infantry by their noms de guerre ; he shall be able , at the first hearing of the word that represents the name of a souldier , to know of what brigade , regiment , troop , company , squadron or division he is ; and whether he be of the cavalry , or of the foot ; a single souldier , or an officer , or belonging to the artill●●y or baggage : which device , in my opinion , is not unuseful for those great captains that would endear themselves in the favour of the souldiery . 108. eight and thirtiethly , in the contexture of nouns , pronouns , and preposital articles united together , it administreth many wonderful varieties of laconick expressions ; as in the grammar thereof shall more at large be made known unto you . 109. nine and thirtiethly , every word in this language is significative of a number ; because , as words may be increased by addition of letters and syllables ; so of numbers is there a progress in infinitum . 110. fourtiethly , in this language every number , how great soever , may be expressed by one single word . 111. one and fourtiethly , as every number essentially differeth from another , so shall the words expressive of several numbers , be from one another distinguished . 112. two and fourtiethly . no language but this hath in its words the whole number of letters , that is , ten vowels , and five and twenty consonants ; by which means there is no word escapes the latitude thereof . 113. three and fourtiethly , as its interjections are more numerous , so are they m●●… emphatical in their respective expression of passions , then that part of speech is in any other language whatsoever . 114. four and fourtiethly , the more syllables there be in any one word of this language , the manyer several significations it hath : with which propriety no other language is endowed . 115. five and fourtiethly , all the several genders in this language , are as well competent to verbs as nouns : by vertue whereof , at the first uttering of a verb in the active voice , you shall know whether it be a god , a goddess , a man , a woman , a beast , or any thing inanimate , ( and so thorow the other five genders ) that doth the action : which excellencie is altogether peculiar unto this language . 116. six and fourtiethly , in this language there is an art , out of every word , of what kinde of speech soever it be , to frame a verb ; whereby , for expressing all manner of actions , a great facility is attained unto . 117. seven and fourtiethly , to all manner of verbs , and many syncategorematical words , is allowed in this language a flexion by cases , unknown to other tongues , thereby to represent unto our understandings more compendious expressions then is possible to afford by any other means . 118. eight & fortiethly , of all languages , this is the most compendious in complement , & consequently , fittest for courtiers and ladies . 119. nine and fourtiethly , for writing of missives , letters of state , and all other manner of epistles , whether serious or otherways , it affordeth the compactest stile of any language in the world ; and therefore , of all other , the most requisite to be learned by statesmen and merchants . 120. fiftiethly , no language in matter of prayer and ejaculations to almighty god , is able , for conciseness of expression , to compare with it ; and therefore , of all other , the most fit for the use of church-men , and spirits inclined to devotion . 121. one and fiftiethly , this language hath a modification of the tense , whether present , preterite , or future , of so curious invention for couching much matter in few words , that no other language ever had the like . 122. two and fiftiethly , there is not a proper name in any country of the world , for which this language affords not a peculiar word , without being beholding to any other . 123. three and fiftiethly , in many thousands of words belonging to this language , there is not a letter which hath not a peculiar signification by it self . 124. four and fiftiethly , the polysyllables of this language do all of them signifie by their monosyllables ; which no word in any other language doth , ex instituto , but the compound ones : for though the syllabical parts of exlex separately signifie as in the compound ; yet those of homo do it not , nor yet those of dote , or domus , as in the whole : and so it is in all other languages except the same : for there are in the italian and latine tongues words of ten , eleven , or twelve syllables , whereof not one syllable by it self doth signifie any thing at all in that language , of what it doth in the whole ; as adole scenturiatissimamente , honorificic abilitudini tatibus , &c. 125. five and fiftiethly , all the languages in the world will be beholding to this , and this to none . 126. six and fiftiethly , there is yet another wonder in this language , which although a little touched by the by in the fifty eighth article of this preface , i will mention yet once more ; and it is this , that though this language have advantage of all other , it is impossible any other in time coming surpass it , because , as i have already said , it comprehendeth , first , all words expressible ; and then , in matter of the obliquity of cases and tenses , the contrivance of indeclinable parts , and right disposure of vowels and consonants , for distinguishing of various significations within the latitude of letters , cannot be afforded a way so expedient . 127. seven and fiftiethly , the greatest wonder of all , is , that of all the languages in the world , it is the easiest to learn ; a boy of ten yeers old , being able to attaine to the knowledge thereof , in three moneths space ; because there are in it many facilitations for the memory , which no other language hath but it self . 128. eight and fiftiethly , sooner shall one reach the understanding of things to be signified by the words of this language , then by those of any other , for that as logarithms in comparison of absolute numbers , so do the words thereof in their initials respectively vary according to the nature of the things which they signifie . 129. nine and fiftiethly , for pithiness of proverbs , oracles , and sentences , no language can parallel with it . 130. sixtiethly , in axioms , maximes , and aphorismes , it is excellent above all other languages . 131. one and sixtiethly , for definitions , divisions , and distinctions , no language is so apt . 132. two and sixtiethly , for the affirmation , negotation , and infinitation of propositions , it hath proprieties unknown to any other language , most necessary for knowledge . 133. three and sixtiethly , in matter of enthymems , syllogisms , and all manner of illative ratiocination , it is the most compendious in the world . 134. besides these sixty and three advantages above all other languages , i might have couched thrice as many more , of no less consideration then the aforesaid , but that these same will suffice to sharpen the longing of the generous reader , after the intrinsecal and most researched secrets of the new grammer and lexicon which i am to evulge . to contrive a language of this perfection , will be thought by the primest wits of this age , a work of a great undertaking ; and that the promover of so excellent an invention , should not lack for any encouragement , tending to the accomplishment of a task of such maine concernment . if any say there are too many languages already , and that by their multiplicity and confusion , the knowledge of things having been much retarded , this fabrick of a new one may be well forborn , because it would but intangle the minde with more impestrements , where there was too much difficulty before : i answer , that this maketh not one more , but in a manner comprehendeth all in it ; whereby it facilitates , and doth not obstruct : for by making greek , latin , and all the other learned languages the more expressive , it furthers the progress of all arts and sciences , to the attaining whereof , the uttering of our conceptions in due and significant tearms , hath , by some of the most literate men in former ages , been esteemed so exceeding requisite , that for attributing a kind of necessity thereunto , they are till this houre called by the name of nominal philosophers ; it being thus very apparent to any well affected to literature , that the performance of such a designe would be of a great expediency for scholars : equity it self seemeth to plead , that unto him by whom a benefit redounds to many , is competent by many a proportionable retribution : yet seeing nothing ought to be charged on the publick , but upon considerations of great weight ; i will premise some few infallible principles , that upon them the world may see , how demonstratively are grounded the authors most reasonable demands . 1. each good thing is desirable , because goodnesse is the object of the will. 2. every thing that ought to be desired , is really good ; because a well-directed will is not deceived with appearances . 3. the better a thing be , the more it is to be desired ; because there is a proportion betwixt the object and the faculty . 4. the mind is better then the body ; because by it we are the image of god. 5. the goods of the minde are better then those of the body ; because they give embellishment to the nobler part . 6. the goods of either minde or body are better then wealth ; because wealth is but subservient to either , and the end is more noble then the means which are ordained for it . 7. learning is the good of the minde ; because it beautiefith it . 8. this new language is an invention full of learning ; because the knowledge of all arts and disciplines is much advanced by it . 9. a discovery is the revealment of some good thing , which formerly was either concealed , or not at all known ; for in a discovery two things are requisite ; first , that it be good ; secondly , that it be revealed . 10. who discovereth a secret of money , should have the fifth or third part thereof ; because there is an act of parliament for it . 11. if there be any discovery in learning , the act ought to extend to it ; because the state is endowed with a soul as well as a body . 12. this new-found-out invention is a discovery of learning ; because the two requisita's of a discovery , together with the description of learning , are competent thereto . 13. who discovereth most of the best good , deserveth the best recompense ; because merit and reward are analogical in a proportion of the greater reward to the greater merit . 14. though mony be not proportionable to learning , yet seeing the learned man may have need of money , he should not lack it ; if not as a full recompence , at least as a donative or largess , should it be given unto him , in testimony of his worth , and the respect of others toward him , & withal to encourage him the more to eminent undertakings : for were it otherwise , the more deserving a man were , the worse he would be used ; there being nothing so unreasonable , as to refuse a little to any that stands in need thereof , because a great deal more is due unto him : as if in time of famine , there being no more but one peny-loaf to give unto a prince , he should be made starve for the want of it , because of his deserving better fare : for , that which comprehends the more , comprehendeth the less . 15. in matter of recompence for good things proceeding from the minde , which in in the midst of flames cannot be conquered , and by vertue whereof a gallant man is alwayes free , and invincible in his better part , we ought altogether to prescind and abstract from the conditions of the native country , and person of the deserver , whether that be fertil , or barren ; or this , at liberty or indurance ; for these being things quae non fecimus ipsi , we ought to say , vix ea nostra voco : and therefore seeing punishment and reward should attend the performance of nothing else , but what did lye in our power to do , or not to do ; and that the specifying of good or bad actions , dependeth upon the qualification of the intention ; no man should be either punished , or rewarded , for being either a scotish man , or a prisoner , or both , if no other reason concur therewith ; because the country of our birth , and state of our person , as being oftentimes the effects of a good or bad fortune , are not alwayes in our power to command . 16. if by means of the aforesaid discovery , may be effectuated the saving of great charges to the subjects of the land , a pecunial or praedial recompense will ( in so far ) be very answerable to the nature of that service : because in matter of merit , and the reward proportionable thereunto , money is with money , and things vendible , no less homogeneal , then honor with vertue . 17. the state no doubt will deal proportionably with their prisoners of war , without prosopolepsie , or any respect to one more then another ; and that by a geometrical equity , because it is just . 18. the state assuredly will grant the same freedom to one prisoner ( caeteris paribus ) which they do to another , and upon the same terms , those of a like condition not being unequally faulty ; because they will not be unjust . 19. if any one prisoner of a like condition and quality , at the least ( in caeteris ) with another that hath obtained his liberty , represent to the publick somewhat conducible thereunto , which the other is not versed in , common equity requireth , that he have a compensation sutable to that additional endowment ; for , si ab inaequalibus aequalia demas , quae restant sunt aequalia ; and the act for discoveries maintaines the truth thereof . 20. though it be commonly maintained amongst the protestants , that we cannot supererogate towards almighty god , ( albeit those of the romish faith be of another opinion ) for that god cannot be unjust , how severely soever he inflict his afflictions ; and that all the favors he conferreth on mankind are of his meer grace , not our deserving : yet that a subject may be capable of supererogation towards any sublunary state or soveraignty , is not only agreeable with all the religions of the world ; but also a maine principle of humane society , and ground unalterable of politick government ; for who transgresse not the limits of those good subjects , whose actions , thoughts , and words , shew at all times faithfulness , loyalty , and obedience to the soveraign power under which they live , are universally esteemed ( by so doing , to discharge their duty so to the full , that in reason no more can be required of them . if therefore it happen , besides this general bond of fidelity whereunto all the natives and inhabitants of a country are by their birth and protection inviolably ingaged , that any one more obliging then others , performe some singular good office , unto which he was not formerly tyed by the strictness of his allegiance , there is no doubt , but that the publick ( whom nature exempteth not from thankfulness , more then private persons ) should and will acknowledge such an action , exceeding the reach of his fellow-patriots and co-habitants , to be meritorious , and therefore worthy of recompense ; upon which consideration , according to the peoples diversity of carriage , in the well or ill demeaning of themselves , are built the two maine pillars of reward and punishment , without which the strongest commonwealth on earth on earth is not able to subsist long from falling to peices . that it is so , i appeal to scipio , who ( with the approbation of all that lived since his dayes ) exclaimed against rome , in these words , o ingratam patriam ! as likewise to those many great statesmen and philosophers , who from age to age twitted the athenians with ingratitude for the ostracizing of aristides ; for if humane frailties were not incident to princes , states , and incorporations , as well as unto individuals in their single and private callings , and particular deportments ; there would never be any need of protestations , declarations , or defensive war against the tyranny , usurpations , and oppressions of misrule . hence do i think that in a well pollished state , reward will not be wanting to him that merits it for his good service ; because punishment , by the law , attends the offender ; and contrariorum eadem est ratio . 21. it is acknowledged by the laws and customs of this island , that the subjects thereof have a right of propriety to their goods , notwithstanding the titles of dominion and supremacy remaining in the persons of others above them ; and that if for erecting a castle , fort , church , hospital , colledge , hall , magazine , or any other kind of edifice tending to publike use , the state should be pleased to incroach upon the land of any private person , who doubteth but that such a man ( of how mean soever a condition he be ) will in justice be heard to give up , and require the full value of his land , that a compensation suitable to the worth thereof , may be allowed to him ? founding the equity of so just a retribution upon ahabs case in naboths vineyard . now the soul and body of man being more a mans own ( they being the constitutive parts whereof physically he is composed ) then are the goods of fortune , which totally are accidental to him , it follows clearly that a man hath a full right of propriety to the goods of his own mind , and consequently such goods being better ( as hath been evidenced by the sixth axiome ) then any external means , what can be more manifest , than that he who is endowed with them ( so careful a course being taken for the satisfaction of any in matter of outward wealth ) may at the best rate he can , capitulate for their disposal , with what persons he thinks most concerned in the benefits and utility by them accrescing ; because it is an argument a minore ad majus , and therefore a fortiori . 22. if such a one nevertheless voluntarily accept of a lesser recompence , then by his deserving he may claim right unto , he is not unjustly dealt with ; quia volenti non fit injuria , and pactum hominis tollit conditionē legis . these specious axiomes , definitions , and uncontroulable maximes thus premised , i must make bold , in behalf of the author , to deduce from thence the equity of his desires , in demanding that the same inheritance , which for these several hundreds of yeers , through a great many progenitors , hath by his ancestors , without the interruption of any other , been possest , be now fully devolved on him , with the same priviledges and immunities , in all things , as they enjoyed it . but , the better to make appear his ingenuity in this his suit , and modestie in requiring no more , it is expedient to declare what it is he offereth unto the state , for obliging them to vouchsafe him the grant of no less . may the reader therefore be pleased to understand , that it is the discovery of a secret in learning , which , besides the great contentment it cannot chuse but yeeld to ingenious spirits , will afford a huge benefit to students of all sorts , by the abridgement of their studies , in making them learn more in three yeers , with the help thereof , then , without it , in the space of five . this saving of two yeers charges to scholars in such a vast dominion as this is , although i speak nothing of the sparing of so much time , ( which , to a methodical wit of any pregnancie , is a menage of an inestimable value ) cannot be appreciated , how parsimonious soever they be in their diet and apparel , ) at less then ten thousand pounds english a yeer . that this is a secret , it is clear by this , that never any , since the laying of the foundations of the earth , did so much as divulge a syllable thereof ; which undoubtedly they would have done , had they had any knowledge therein . and that none now living ( be it spoken without disparagement of any ) either knoweth it , or knoweth how to go about it , save the aforesaid author alone , who is willing to forfeit all he demands ( although by birth-right it be his own already , and worth neer upon a thousands pounds sterlin a yeer ) if , without his help , any breathing ( notwithstanding the instructions may possibly be had by his lost papers , and by what in the preceding articles hath been in this little tractate promulgated ) shall , within half a yeer after the date hereof , give any apparent testimony to the world , that he hath any insight in this invention . which , that it is good and desirable , is evident by the first and second axiomes : and that it is a discovery , and a discovery of learning , by the ninth and twelfth : that the discovery of a matter of less moment then it , deserveth great sums of money , is manifest by the tenth and thirteenth : and that a retribution of great value should attend the disclosure of so prime a secret , by the eleventh and fourteenth : that the knowledge of this invention is of more worth then either strength or wealth , is proved by the fifth and sixth : and that it is more to be desired then any thing that is at the disposure of fortune , by the third and fourth : that it doth promove reason , illuminate the judgement , further and improve literature , by polishing and imbellishing the inward abilities of man , and faculties of his minde , is clear by the seventh and eighth . thus much of the invention , or thing invented ; which ( as the fruit is to be accounted of less worth then the tree , which yeerly produceth the like ; cistern-water , that daily diminisheth , then that of a fountain , which is inexhaustible ; and a hay-mow , then the meaiudow on which it grew ) being ( as in reason it ought ) to be estimated at a rate much inferioasir to the inventer , from whose brains have , ●●ready issued off-springs every whit as con●●derable , with parturiencie for greater births if a malevolent time disobstetricate not their e●…ixibility , it followeth of necessity that he shou●d reap the benefit that is due for the invention , with hopes of a higher remuneration for what of the like nature remaineth as yet unsatisfied . and although his being a scot , and a prisoner of war , may perhaps ( in the opinion of some ) eclipse the splendor of so great an expectation ; yet that it should not , is most perspicuously evinced by the fifteenth axiome . that he is a scot , he denieth not ; but that he thereby meriteth to be either praised or dispraised , is utterly to be disavowed , because it lay not in his power to appoint localities for his mothers residence at the time of his nativity , or to enact any thing before he had a being himself . true it is , that nothing is more usual in speech , then to blame all , for the fault of the greater part ; and to twit a whole country with that vice , to which most of its inhabitants are inclined . hence have we these sayings : the spaniards are proud , the french inconstant , the italians lecherous , the cretians lyers , the sicilians false , the asiaticks effeminate , the crovats cruel , the dutch temuleucious , the polonians quarrelsome , the saxons mutinous ; and so forth thorow other territories , nurseries of enormities of another kinde : although nothing be more certain , then that there are some spaniards as humble , french as constant , italians chaste , cretians true , sicilians ingenuous , asiaticks warlike , crovates merciful , dutch sober , polonians peaceable , and some saxons as loyal , as any in the world besides . by which account , all forreigners ( for such are all the inhabitants on the earth , in relation to those that are not their compatriots ) yeelding to the most and some of each stranger-land , in its respective vice and vertue ; it may safely be avouched , that there is under the sun no national fault , nor national deserving , whereby all merit to be punished , or all rewarded ; because the badness of most in each , destroys the universality of vertue ; and the good inclination of some in all , cuts off the generality of vice . but to come neerer home : seeing scotland was never loaded with so much disreputation , for covetousness and hypocrisie , as it is at this present ; and that the knight for whom this treatise is intended , hath , as a patriot , some interest in the good name thereof ; it is not amiss , that , for the love of him and all honest scots , i glance a little at the occasion ( if not the cause ) of so heavie an imputation ; especially that country having been aspersed therewith , long before it had sustained the loss of any battel , wherein the several miscarriages looked rather like the effect of what formerly had procured the said reproach , then any way as the causes thereof : for where covetousness is predominant , fidelity , fortitude , and vigilancie , must needs discamp , if mammona give the word : the concomitancie of vices ( seeing contrariorum eadem est ratio ) being a sequele from that infallible tenet in the morals , the concatenation of vertues . how this covetousness , under the mask of religion , took such deep root in that land , was one way occasioned by some ministers , who , to augment their stipends , and cram their bags full of money , thought fit to possess the mindes of the people with a strong opinion of their sanctity , and implicite obedience to their injunctions : to which effect , most rigidly israelitizing it in their synagogical sanhedrius , and officiously bragging in their pulpits ( even when scotland , by divers notorious calamities of both sword , plague , and famine , was brought very lowe ) that no nation ( for being likest to the jews of any other ) was so glorious as it ; they , with a pharisaical superciliosity , would always rebuke the non-covenanters and sectaries as publicans and sinners , unfit for the purity of their conversation , unless , by the malignancie or over-mastering power of a cross winde , they should be forced to cale the hypocritical bunt , let fall the top-gallant of their counterfeit devotion , and tackling about , to sail a quite contrary course , ( as many of them have already done ) the better at last to cast anchor in the harbour of profit , which is the butt they aimed at , and sole period of all their dissimulations . for i have known some , even of the most rigid zealots , who , rather then to forgo their present emoluments , by continual receiving , and never erogating ; by never sowing , and always reaping ; and by making the sterility of all men prove fruitful to them , and their fertility barren to all ▪ would wish presbytery were of as empty a sound , as it s homaeoteleft , blitery ; and the covenant , which asserts it no less exploded from all ecclesiastical societies , then plautus exolet phrases have been from the eloquent orations of ciceron . but this affecting only a part of the tribe of levi , how the remainder of new palestine ( as the kirkomanetick philarchaists would have it called ) comes to be upbraided with the same opprobry of covetousness , is that which i am so heartily sorry for , that to wipe of its obloquy , i would undertake a pilgrimage to old judea , visit the ruines of jerusalem , and trace the foot-steps of zodekiahs fellow-captives to the gates of rabylon . yet did this so great an inconvenience proceed meerly from an incogitancy , in not taking heed to what is prescribed by prudence the directress of all vertues , ) and consequently of that which moderates the actions of giving and receiving ; ( although it be nobilius dare quam accipere ; the non-vitiosity whereof , by her injunctions , dependeth on the judicious observing of all the circumstances mentioned in this mnemoneutick hexameter quis , quid , ubi , quibus auxiliis , cur , quomodo ' quando , whose last particle , by the untimely taking of a just debt , and unseasonable receiving of what at another time might have been lawfully required , being too carelesly regarded by the state and milice of that country , gave occasion to this contumely ; the staine whereof remaineth still , notwithstanding the loss in money ( besides other prejudices ) sustained since , of ten times more then they got . i heard once a maronite jew to vindicate the reputation of the family and village of the iscariots , in which he pretended to have some interest , very seriously relate , that according to the opinion of rabbi ezra , the thirty peeces of silver delivered to judas , was but the same sum which , long before that , when christ went up from galilee to celebrate the feast of tabernacles at jerusalem , malchus the servant of caiaphas had borrowed from him ( whilst he had the charge of his masters bag ) with assurance punctually to repay it him again , at the subsequent term of the passover , as the fashion was then amongst the inhabitants of judea : but although it were so ( which we are not bound to give ear to , because it is plainly set down in the fifth verse of the two and twentieth chapter of the evangile according to saint luke , that the high priests made a covenant with judas ) yet should he not have received the mony in the very nick of the time that his master was to be apprehended . this i the rather believe , for that i likewise heard a minister say , that he offends god who stretcheth forth his hand to take in the payment of any debt ( how just soever it be ) upon a sunday ; and that though a purse full of gold were offered unto himself , whilst he is a preaching in the pulpit , he would refuse it . these collateral instances i introduce , not for application , but illustration sake ; not for comparison , but explication of the congruent adapting of necessary puntilio's for the framing of a vertuous action . another thing there is that fixeth a grievous scandal upon that nation , in matter of philargyrie , or love of money ; and it is this : there hath been in london , and repairing to it , for these many yeers together , a knot of scotish bankers , collybists , or coinecoursers , of trasfickers in merchandise to and againe , and of men of other professions , who by hook and crook , fas & nefas , slight and might ( all being as fish their net could catch ) having feathered their nests to some purpose , look so idolatrously upon their dagon of wealth , and so closely ( like the earths dull center ) hug all unto themselves ; that , for no respect of vertue , honor , kinred , patriotism , or whatever else ( be it never so recommendable , will they depart from so much as one single peny , whose emission doth not , without any hazard of loss , in a very short time superlucrate beyond all conscience an additionall increase , to the heap of that stock which they so much adore : which churlish and tenacious humor , hath made many , that were not acquainted with any else of that country , to imagine all their compatriots infected with the same leprosie of a wretched peevishness ; whereof those quomodocunquizing clusterfists and rapacious varlets have given of late such cannibal-like proofs , by their inhumanity and obdurate carriage towards some ( whose shoos-strings they are not worthy to unty ) that were it not that a more able pen then mine , will assuredly not faile to jerk them on all sides , in case , by their better demeanor for the future , they endeavor not to wipe off the blot , wherewith their native country by their sordid avarice , and miserable baseness hath been so foully stained ; i would at this very instant blaze them out in their names and surnames , notwithstanding the vizard of presbyterian zeal wherewith they maske themselves ; that like so many wolves foxes , or athenian tim●ns , they might in all times coming , be debarred the benefit of any honest conversation . thus is it perceptible how usual it is , from the irregularity of a few , to conclude an universal defection ; and that the whole is faulty , because a part is not right ; there being in it a fallacy of induction , as if because this , that and the other are both greedy and dissembling , that therefore all other their country-men are such : which will no wayes follow , if any one of these others be free from those vices ; for that one particular negative ( by the rules of contradictory opposites ) will destroy an universal affirmative ; and of such there are many thousands in that nation , who are neither greedy nor dissemblers . and so would all the rest , if a joint and unanimous course were taken to have their noblemen free from baseness , their church-men from avarice , their merchants from deceit , their gentlemen from pusillanimity , their lawyers from prevarication , their tradesmen from idleness , their farmers from lying , their young men from pride , their old men from morosity , their rich from hard heartednes their poor from theeving , their great ones from faction , their meaner sort from implicit sectatorship , the magistrates from injustice , the clients from litigiousness , and all of them from dishonesty , and disrespect of learning ; which , though but negatives of vertue , and ( at best ) but the ultimum non esse of vice , would nevertheless go near to restore the good fame of that country to its pristine integrity ; the report whereof was raised to so high a pitch of old , that in a book in the last edition of a pretty bulk , written in the latine tongue by one dempster , there is mention made , what for armes and arts , of at least five thousand illustrious men of scotland , the last liver whereof dyed above fifty yeers ago . nor did their succession so far degenerate from the race of so worthy progenitors , but that even of late ( although before the intestine garboyles of this island ) several of them have for their fidelity , valor , and gallantry , been exceedingly renowned over all france , spaine , the venetian terriotries , pole , moscovy , the low-countryes , swedland , hungary , germany , denmark , and other states and kingdoms ; as may appear by general ruddurford , my lord general sir james spence of wormiston , afterwards by the swedish king created earl of orcholm ; sir patrick ruven governor of vlme , general of an army of high-germans , and afterwards earl of forth and branford ; sir alexander leslie governor of the cities along the baltick coast , field-marshal over the army in westphalia , and afterwards intituled scoticani faederis supremus dux ; general james king , afterwards made lord ythen ; colonel david leslie commander of a regiment of horse over the dutch ; and afterwards in these our domestick wars advanced to be lieutenant-general of both horse and foot ; major general thomas kar , sir david drumond general major , and governor of statin in pomer ; sir george douglas colonel , and afterwards employed in embassies betwixt the soveraigns of britain and swedland ; colonel george lindsay , earl of craford ; colonel lord forbas , colonel lord sancomb , colonel lodowick leslie , and in the late troubles at home , governor of berwick , and tinmouth-sheels ; colonel sir james ramsey governor of hanaw ; colonel alexander ramsey governor of crafzenach , and quartermaster-general to the duke of wymar , colonel william bailif , afterwards in these our in testin broyls promoved to the charge of lieutenant-general : another colonel ramsey , besides any of the former two , whose name i cannot hit upon ; sir james lumsden , colonel in germany , and afterwards governor of newcastle , and general major in the scotish wars ; sir george cunningham , sir john ruven , sir john hamilton , sir john meldrum , sir arthur forbas , sir frederick hamilton , sir james hamilton , sir francis ruven , sir john junes , sir william balantine ; and several other knights , all colonels of horse or foot in the swedish wars . as likewise by colonel alexander hamilton , agnamed dear sandy , who afterwards in scotland was made general of the artillery , for that in some measure he had exerced the same charge in dutchland , under the command of marquis james hamilton , whose generalship over six thousand english in the swedish service , i had almost forgot , by colonel robert cunningham , colonel robert monro of fowls , colonel obstol monro , colonel hector monro , colonel robert monro , lately general major in ireland , who wrote a book in folio , intituled monroes expedition ; colonel assen monro , colonel james seaton , and colonel james seaton , colonel john k●nindmond , colonel john vrquhart , who is a valiant souldier , expert commander , and learned scholar ; colonel james spence , colonel hugh hamilton , colonel francis sinclair , colonel john leslie of wardes , colonel john leslie agnamed the omnipotent , afterwards made major general ; colonel robert lumsden , colonel robert leslie , colonel william gun , who afterwards in the yeer 1639. was knighted by king charles , for his service done at the bridge of dee neer aberdeen , against the earl of montross , by whom he was beaten ; colonel george colen , colonel crichtoun , colonel liddel , colonel armestrong , colonel john gordon , colonel james cochburne , colonel thomas thomson , colonel thomas kinindmond , colonel james johnston , colonel edward iohnston , colonel william kinindmond , colonel george leslie , colonel robert stuart , colonel alexander forbas , agnamed the bauld ; colonel william cunningham ; another colonel alexander forbas , colonel alexander leslie , colonel alexander cunningham , colonel finess forbas , colonel david edintoun , colonel sandilands , colonel walter leckie , and divers other scotish colonels , what of horse and foot ( many whereof within a short space thereafter , attained to be general persons ) under the command of gustavus the caesaromastix ; who confided so much in the valour , loyalty , and discretion of the scotish nation , and they reciprocally in the gallantry , affection , and magnanimity of him , that immediately after the battel at leipsich , in one place , and at one time , he had six and thirty scotish colonels about him ; whereof some did command a whole brigad of horse , some a brigad composed of two regiments , half horse , half foot ; and others a brigade made up of foot only , without horse : some againe had the command of a regiment of horse only , without foot : some of a regiment of horse alone , without more ; and others of a regiment of dragoons : the half of the names of which colonels are not here inserted , though they were men of notable prowesse , and in martial atchievements of most exquisite dextetity ; whose regiments were commonly distinguished by the diversity of nations , of which they were severally composed ; many regiments of english , scots , danes , sweds , fins , liflanders , laplanders , high dutch , and other nations serving in that confederate war of germany under the command of scotish colonels . and besides these above-mentioned colonels ( when any of the foresaid number either dyed of himself , was killed in the fields , required a pass for other countryes , or otherwise disposing of himself , did voluntarily demit his charge ( another usually of the same nation succeeding in his place ) other as many moe scotish colonels ( for any thing i know ) as i have here set down , did serve in the same swedish wars , under the conduct of the duke of wymar , gustavus horne , baneer , and torsisson , without reckoning amongst them , or any of the above-recited officers , the number of more then threescore of the scotish nation , that were governors of cities , townes , citadels , forts , and castles in the respective conquered provinces of the dutch empire . denmark ( in my opinion ) cannot goodly forget the magnanimous exploits of sir donald mackie lord reay , first , colonel there and afterwards commander of a brigade under the swedish standard ; nor yet of the colonels of the name of monro , and henderson , in the service of that king ; as likewise of the colonel lord spynay , and others ; besides ten governors at least , all scots , intrusted with the charge of the most especial strengths and holds of importance , that were within the confines of the danish authority ; although no mention were made of exempt mouat living in birren , in whose judgment and fidelity , such trust is reposed , that he is as it were vice-king of norway : what obligation the state of france doth owe to the old lord colvil , colonel of horse ; the two colonel hepburnes , sir iohn hepburn by name , and colonel heburn of wachton , and colonel lord iames dowglas ( the last three whereof were mareschaux de camp , and ( had they survived the respective day wherein they successively dyed in the bed of honor ) would undoubtedly very shortly after have been all of them made mareschals of france , one of the highest preferments belonging to the milice of that nation ) is not unknown to those that are acquainted with the french affaires : and truly as for sir iohn heburn ( albeit no mention was made of him in the list of scots officers in the swedish service ) he had under gustavus , the charge of a brigad of foot ; and so gallantly behaved himself at the battel of leipsich , that unto him ( in so far as praise is due to man ) was attributed the honour of the day . sir andrew gray , sir iohn seatoun , sir iohn fulerton the earl of irwin , sir patrick morray , colonel erskin , colonel andrew linsay , colonel mouat , colonel morison , colonel thomas hume , colonel john forbas , colonel liviston , colonel iohn leslie , ( besides a great many other scots of their charge , condition , and quality ) were all colonels under the pay of lewis the thirteenth of france . some of those also , though not listed in the former roll , had , before they engaged themselves in the french employment , standing regiments under the command of the swedish king. the interest of france , swedland , and denmark , not being able to bound the valour of the scotish nation within the limits of their territories ; the several expeditions into hungary , dalmatia , and croatia , against the turks ; into transylvania against bethleem gabor , to italy against the venetians , and in germany against count mansfield and the confederate princes , can testifie the many martial exploits of colonel sir john henderson , colonel william johnston , ( who shortly thereafter did excellent service to this king of portugal , and is a man of an upright minde , and a most undaunted courage ) colonel lithco , colonel wedderburne , colonel bruce , and of many other colonels of that country , whose names i know not ; but above all , the two eminent ones , colonel leslie , and colonel gordon ; the first whereof is made an hereditary marquess of the empire , and colonel-general of the whole infantry of all the imperial forces ; and the other gratified with the priviledge of the golden key , as a cognizance of his being raised to the dignity of high chamberlain of the emperours court : which splendid and illustrious places of so sublime honour and preeminence , were deservedly conferred on them , for such extraordinary great services done by them for the weal and grandeur of the caesarean majesty , as did by far surpass the performance of any , to the austrian family , now living in this age. but lest the emperour should brag too much of the gallantry of those scots , above others of that nation ; his cousin the king of spaine , is able to outvie him , in the person of the ever-renowned earl of bodwel ; whose unparallel'd valour , so frequently tried in scotland , france , germany , the low-countries , spain , italy , and other parts , in a very short time began to be so redoubtable , that at last he became a terrour to all the most desperate duellists and bravo's of europe , and a queller of the fury of the proudest champions of his age : for , all the innumerable combats which he fought against both turks and christians , hoth on horse and foot , closed always with the death or subjection of the adversary ( of what degree or condition soever he might be ) that was so bold as to cope with and encounter him in that kinde of hostility : the gasconads of france , rodomontads of spain , fanfaronads of italy , and bragadochio brags of all other countries , could no more astonish his invincible heart , then would the cheeping of a mouse a bear robbed of her whelps . that warlike and strong mahometan , who dared ( like another goliah ) and appealled the stoutest and most valiant of the christian faith , to enter the lists with him , and fight in the defence of their religion , was ( after many hundreds of galliant christians had been foyled by him ) thrown dead to the ground by the vigour and dexterity of his hand . he would very often , ( in the presence of ladies , whose intimate favourite he was ) to give some proof of the undantedness of his courage , by the meer activity of his body , with the help of a single sword , set upon a lyon in his greatest fierceness , and kil'd him dead upon the place . for running , vaulting , jumping , throwing of the barr , and other such-like feats of nimbleness , strength , and agility , he was the only paragon of the world , and unmatched by any . whilst , in madrid , genua , milan , venice , florence , naples , paris , bruxelles , vienna , and other great and magnificent cities , for the defence of the honour and reputation of the ladies whom he affected , he had in such measure incurred the hatred and indignation of some great and potent princes , that , to affront him , they had sent numbers of spadassins , and acuchilladores , to surprise him at their best advantage ; he would often times , all alone , buckle with ten or twelve of them , and lay such load , and so thick and threesold upon them , that he would quickly make them for their safeties betake themselves to their heels , with a vengeance at their back ; by which meanes he gave such evidence of his greatness of resolution , strenuitie of person , excellency in conduct , and incomparable magnanity of spirt , that being comfortable to his friends , formidable to his foes , and admirable to all ; such as formerly had been his cruellest enemies , and most deeply had plotted and projected his ruine , were at last content , out of a remorse of conscience , to acknowledge the ascendent of his worth above theirs , and to sue , in all humility , to be reconciled to him . to this demand of theirs ( out of his wonted generosity , which was never wanting , when either goodness or mercie required the making use thereof ) having fully condescended , he past the whole remainder of his days in great security , and with all ease desirable , in the city of naples ; where , in a vigorous old age , environed with his friends and enjoying the benefit of all his senses till the last hour , he dyed in full peace and quietness : and there i leave him for , should i undertake condignly to set down all the martial atchievements and acts of prowess performed by him , in turnaments , duels , battels , skirmishes , and fortuite encounters , against scots , french , dutch , polonians , hungarians , spaniards , italians , and others ( were it not that there are above ten thousand as yet living , who , as eye-witnesses , can verifie the truth of what i have related of him ) the history thereof to succeeding ages would seem so incredible , that they would but look upon it ( at best ) but as on a romance , stuft with deeds of chivalrie ; like those of amades de gaule , esplandian , and don sylves de la selve . next to the renowned count bodwel , in the service of that great don philippe tetrarch of the world , upon whose subjects the sun never sets , are to be recorded ( besides a great many other colonels of scotland ) those valorous and worthy scots , colonel william sempil , colonel boyd , and colonel lodowick lindsay earl of crawford ; there is yet another scotish colonel that served this king of spain , whose name is upon my tongues end , and yet i cannot hit upon it : he was not a souldier bred , yet , for many yeers together , bore charge in flanders under the command of spinola . in his youth-hood , he was so strong and stiff a presbyterian , that he was the onely man in scotland made choice of , and relied upon for the establishment and upholding of that government , as the arch-prop and main pillar thereof : but as his judgement increased , and that he ripened in knowledge , declining from that neoterick faith ; and waining in his love to presbytery , as he waxed in experience of the world , of a strict puritan that he was at first , he became afterwards the most obstinate and rigid papist , that ever was upon the earth . it is strange my memory should so faile me , that i cannot remember his title : he was a lord i know , nay more , he was an earle , i that he was , and one of the first of them : ho now ! pescods on it , crauford lodi lindsay puts me in minde of him ; it was the old earl of argile , this marquis of argile's father : that was he , that was the man , &c. now as steel is best resisted and overcome by steel ; and that the scots ( like ismael , whose hand was against every man , and every mans hand against him ) have been of late so ingaged in all the wars of christendome , espousing , in a manner , the interest of all the princes thereof ; that , what battel soever , at any time these forty yeers past hath been struck within the continent of europe , all the scots that fought in that field , were never so overthrown , and totally routed ; for if some of them were captives and taken prisoners , others of that nation were victorious , and givers of quarter ; valour and mercy on the one side , with misfortune and subjection upon the otherside , meeting one another in the persons of compatriots on both sides : so , the gold and treasure of the india's , not being able to purchase all the affections of scotland to the furtherance of castilian designes , there have been of late several scotish colonels under the command of the prince of orange , in opposition of the spagniard ; viz. colonel edmond , who took the valiant count de buccoy twice prisoner in the field ; sir henry balfour , sir david balfour , colonel brog , who took a spanish general in the field upon the head of his army , sir francis henderson ; colonel scot earl of bacliugh , colonel sir iames livistoun , now earl of calander , and lately in these our tourmoyles at home lieutenant-general of both horse and foot , besides a great many other worthy colonels , amongst which i will only commemorate one , named colonel dowglas , who to the states of holland was often times serviceable , in discharging the office and duty of general engineer ; whereof they are now so sensible , that , to have him alive againe , and of that vigour freshness in both body and spirit , wherewith he was endowed in the day he was killed on , they would give thrice his weight in gold ; and well they might : for some few weeks before the fight wherein he was slaine , he presented to them twelve articles and heads of such wonderful feats for the use of the wars both by sea and land , to be performed by him , flowing from rhe remotest springs of mathematical secrets , and those of natural philosophy , that none of this age saw , nor any of our fore-fathers ever heard the like , save what out of cicero , livy , plutarch , and other old greek and latin writers we have couched , of the admirable inventions made use of by archimedes in defence of the city of syracusa , against the continual assaults of the romane forces both by sea and land , under the conduct of marcellus . to speak really , i think there hath not been any in this age of the scotish nation , save neper , and crichtoun , who , for abilities of the minde in matter of practical inventions useful for men of industry , merit to be compared with him : and yet of these two ( notwithstanding their precellency in learning ) i would be altogether silent ( because i made account to mention no other scotish men here , but such as have been famous for souldiery , and brought up at the schoole of mars ) were it not , that , besides their profoundness in literature , they were inriched with military qualifications beyond expression , as for neper , ( otherwayes designed lord marchiston ) he is for his logarithmical device so compleatly praised in that preface of the authors , which ushers a trigonometrical book of his , intituled the trissotetras , that to add any more thereunto , would but obscure with an empty sound , the clearness of what is already said : therefore i will allow him no share in this discourse , but in so sar as concerneth an almost incomprehensible device , which being in the mouths of the most of scotland , and yet unknown to any that ever was in the world but himself , deserveth very well to be taken notice of in this place ; and it is this : he had the skill ( as is commonly reported ) to frame an engine ( for invention not much unlike that of architas dove ) which , by vertue of some secret springs , inward resorts , with other implements and materials fit for the purpose , inclosed within the bowels thereof , had the power ( if proportionable in bulk to the action required of it ( for he could have made it of all sizes ) to clear a field of four miles circumference , of all the living creatures exceeding a foot of hight , that should be found thereon , how neer soever they might be to one another ; by which means he made it appear , that he was able , with the help of this machine alone , to kill thirty thousand turkes , without the hazard of one christian . of this it is said , that ( upon a wager ) he gave proof upon a large plaine in scotland , to the destruction of a great many herds of cattel , and flocks of sheep , whereof some were distant from other half a mile on all sides , and some a whole mile . to continue the thred of the story , as i have it , i must not forget , that , when he was most earnestly desired by an old acquaintance , and professed friend of his , even about the time of his contracting that disease whereof he dyed , he would be pleased , for the hunour of his family , and his own everlasting memory to posterity , to reveal unto him the manner of the contrivance of so ingenious a mystery ; subjoining thereto , for the better perswading of him , that it were a thousand pities , that so excellent an invention should be buryed with him in the grave , and that after his decease nothing should be known thereof ; his answer was , that for the ruine and overthrow of man , there were too many devices already framed , which if he could make to be fewer , he would with all his might endeavour to do ; and that therefore seeing the malice and rancor rooted in the heart of mankind will not suffer them to diminish , by any new conceit of his , the number of them should never be increased . divinely spoken , truly . to speak a little now of his compatriot crichtoun , i hope will not offend the ingenuous reader ; who may know , by what is already displayed , that it cannot be heterogeneal from the proposed purpose , to make report of that magnanimous act atchieved by him at the duke of mantua's court , to the honour not only of his own , but to the eternal renown also of the whole isle of britain ; the manner whereof was thus . a certaine italian gentleman , of a mighty , able , strong , nimble , and vigorous body , by nature fierce , cruell , warlike , and audacious , and in the gladiatory art so superlatively expert and dextrous , that all the most skilful teachers of escrime , and fencing-masters of italy ( which , in matter of choice professors in that faculty needed never as yet to yeild to any nation in the world ) were by him beaten to their good behaviour , and , by blows and thrusts given in , which they could not avoid , enforced to acknowledge him their over commer : bethinking himself , how , after so great a conquest of reputation , he might by such means be very suddenly enriched , he projected a course of exchanging the blunt to sharp , and the foiles into tucks ; and in his resolution providing a purse full of gold , worth neer upon four hundred pounds english money , traveled alongst the most especial and considetable parts of spaine , france , the low-countryes , germany , pole , hungary , greece , italy , and other places where ever there was greatest probability of encountring with the eagerest & most atrocious duellists ; and immediately after his arrival to any city or town that gave apparent likelihood of some one or other champion that would enter the lists and cope with him , he boldly challenged them with sound of trumpet , in the chief market-place , to adventure an equal sum of money against that of his , to be disputed at the swords point , who should have both . there failed not several brave men , almost of all nations , who accepting of his cartels , were not afraid to hazard both their person and coine against him : but ( till he midled with this crichtoun ) so maine was the ascendent he had above all his antagonists , and so unlucky the fate of such as offered to scuffle with him , that all his opposing combatants ( of what state or dominion soever they were ) who had not lost both their life and gold , were glad , for the preservation of their person ( though sometimes with a great expence of blood ) to leave both their reputation & mony behind them . at last returning homewards to his own country , loaded with honor and wealth , or rather the spoile of the reputation of those forraginers , whom the italians call tramontani , he , by the way , after his accustomed manner of abording other places , repaired to the city of mantua , where the duke ( according to the courtesie usually bestowed on him by other princes , vouchsafed him a protection , and savegard for his person : he ( as formerly he was wont to do by beat of drum , sound of trumpet , and several printed papers , disclosing his designe , battered on all the chief gates , posts , and pillars of the town ) gave all men to understand , that his purpose was , to challenge at the single rapier , any whosoever of that city or country , that durst be so bold as to fight with him , provided he would deposite a a bag of five hundred spanish pistols , over-against another of the same value , which himself should lay down , upon this condition , that the enjoyment of both should be the conquerors due . his challenge was not long unanswered : for it happened at the same time , that three of the most notable cutters in the world , ( and so highly cryed up for valour , that all the bravo's of the land were content to give way to their domineering ( how insolent soever they should prove ) because of their former constantly-obtained victories in the field ) were all three together at the court of mantua ; who hearing of such a harvest of five hundred pistols , to be reaped ( as they expected ) very soon , and with ease , had almost contested amongst themselves for the priority of the first encounterer , but that one of my lord dukes courtiers moved them to cast lots for who should be first , second , and third , in case none of the former two should prove victorious . without more adoe , he whose chance it was to answer the cattel with the first defiance , presented himself within the barriers , or place appointed for the fight , where his adversary attending him , as soon as the trumpet sounded a charge , they jointly fel to work : and ( because i am not now to amplifie the particulars of a combat ) although the dispute was very hot for a while , yet , whose fortune it was to he the first of the three in the field , had the disaster to be the first of the three that was foyled : for at last with a thrust in the throat he was killed dead upon the ground . this nevertheless not a whit dismayed the other two ; for the nixt day he that was second in the roll , gave his appearance after the same manner as the first had done , but with no better success ; for he likewise was laid flat dead upon the place , by means of a thrust he received in the heart . the last of the three finding that he was as sure of being engaged in the fight , as if he had been the first in order , pluckt up his heart , knit his spirits together , and , on the day after the death of the second , most couragiously entering the lists , demeaned himself for a while with great activity and skill ; but at last , his luck being the same with those that preceded him , by a thrust in the belly , he within four and twenty hours after gave up the ghost . these ( you may imagine ) were lamentable spectacles to the duke and citie of mantua , who casting down their faces for shame , knew not what course to take for reparation of their honour . the conquering duellist , proud of a victory so highly tending to both his honour and profit , for the space of a whole fortnight , or two weeks together , marched daily along the streets of mantua , ( without any opposition or controulment ) like another romulus , or marcellus in triumph : which the never-too-much-to-be-admired crichtoun perceiving , to wipe off the imputation of cowardise lying upon the court of mantua , to which he had but even then arrived , ( although formerly he had been a domestick thereof ) he could neither eat nor drink till he had first sent a challenge to the conqueror , appelling him to repair with his best sword in his hand , by nine of the clock in the morning of the next day , in presence of the whole court , and in the same place where he had killed the other three , to fight with him upon this quarrel , that , in the court of mantua there were as valiant men as he ; and , for his better encouragement to the desired undertaking , he assured him , that , to the aforesaid five hundred pistols , he would adjoyn a thousand more ; wishing him to do the like , that the victor , upon the point of his sword , might carry away the richer booty . the challenge , with all its conditions , is no sooner accepted of , the time and place mutually condescended upon kept accordingly , and the fifteen hundred pistols hinc inde deposited , but of the two rapiers of equal weight , length , and goodness , each taking one , in presence of the duke , dutchess , with all the noble-men , ladies , magnifico's , and all the choicest of both men , women , and maids of that citie , as soon as the signal for the duel was given , by the shot of a great piece of ordnance of threescore and four pound ball ; the two combatants , with a lion-like animosity , made their approach to one another ; and being within distance , the valiant crichtoun , to make his adversary spend his fury the sooner , betook himself to the defensive part ; wherein , for a long time , he shewed such excellent dexterity , in warding the others blows , slighting his falsifyings , in breaking measure , and often , by the agility of his hody , avoiding his thrusts , that he seemed but to play , whilst the other was in earnest . the sweetness of crichtoun's countenance , in the hotest of the assault , like a glance of lightning on the hearts of the spectators , brought all the italian ladies on a sudden to be enamoured of him ; whilst the sternness of the other's aspect , he looking like an enraged bear , would have struck terrour into wolves , and affrighted an english mastiff . though they were both in their linens , ( to wit , shirts and drawers , without any other apparel ) and in all outward conveniencies equally adjusted ; the italian , with redoubling his stroaks , foamed at the mouth with a cholerick heart , and fetched a pantling breath : the scot , in sustaining his charge , kept himself in a pleasant temper , without passion , and made void his designes : he alters his wards from tierce to quart ; he primes and seconds it , now high , now lowe , and casts his body ( like another prothee ) into all the shapes he can , to spie an open on his adversary , and lay hold of an ndvantage ; but all in vain : for the invincible crichtoun , whom no cunning was able to surprise , contrepostures his respective wards , and , with an incredible nimbleness of both hand and foot , evades his intent , and frustrates the invasion . now is it , that the never-beforeconquered italian , finding himself a little faint , enters into a consideration , that he may be over-matched ; whereupon , a sad apprehension of danger seizing upon all his spirits , he would gladly have his life bestowed on him as a gift , but that , having never been accustomed to yeeld , he knows not how to beg it . matchless crichtoun , seeing it now high time to put a gallant catastrophe to that so-long-dubious combat , animated with a divinely-inspired fervencie , to fulfil the expectation of the ladies , and crown the dukes illustrious hopes , changeth his garb , fails to act another part , and , from defender , turns assailant : never did art so grace nature , nor nature second the precepts of art with so much liveliness , and such observancie of time , as when , after he had struck fire out of the steel of his enemies sword , and gained the feeble thereof , with the fort of his own , by angles of the strongest position , he did , by geometrical flourishes of straight and oblique lines , so practically executed the speculative part , that , as if there had been remora's and secret charms in the variety of his motion , the fierceness of his foe was in a trice transqualified into the numness of a pageant . then was it that , to vindicate the reputation of the duke's family , and expiate the blood of the three vanquished gentlemen , he alonged a stoccade de pied ferme ; then recoyling , he advanced another thrust , and lodged it home ; after which , retiring again , his rig●t foot did beat the cadence of the blow that pierced the belly of this italian ; whose heart and throat being hit with the two former stroaks , these three franch bouts given in upon the back of other : besides that , if lines were imagined drawn from the hand that livered them , to the places which were marked by them , they would represent a perfect isosceles triangle , with a perpendicular from the top-angle , cutting the basis in the middle ; they likewise give us to understand , that by them he was to be made a sacrifice of atonement for the slaughter of the three aforesaid gentlemen , who were wounded in the very same parts of their bodies by other such three venees as these , each whereof being mortal : and his vital spirits exhaling as his blood gushed out , all he spoke was this , that seeing he could not live his comfort in dying was , for that he could not dye by the hand of a braver man : after the uttering of which words he expiring , with the shril clareens of trumpets , bouncing thunder of artillery , bethwacked beating of drums , universal clapping of hands , and loud acclamations of joy for so glorious a victory , the aire above them was so rarified , by the extremity of the noise and vehement sound , dispelling the thickest and most condensed parts thereof , that ( as plutrach speakes of the grecians , when they raised their shouts of allegress up to the very heavens , at the hearing of the gracious proclamations of paulus aemilius in favour of their liberty ) the very sparrows and other flying fowls were said to fall to the ground for want of aire enough to uphold them in their flight . when this sudden rapture was over , and all husht into its former tranquility , the noble gallantry and generosity , beyond expression , of the inimitable crichtoun , did transport them all againe into a new extasie of ravishment , when they saw him like an angel in the shape of a man , or as another mars , with the conquered enemies sword in one hand , and the fifteen hundred pistols he had gained , in the other , present the sword to the duke as his due , and the gold to his high treasurer , to be disponed equally to the three widowes of the three unfortunte gentlemen lately slaine , reserving only to himself the inward satisfaction he conceived , for having so opportunely discharged his duty to the house of mantua . the reader prehaps will think this wonderful ; and so would i too , were it not that i know ( as sir philip sidney sayes ) that a wonder is no wonder in a wonderful subject , and consequently not in him , who for is learning , judgement , valour , eloquence , beauty , and good-followship , was the perfectest result of the joynt labour of the perfect number of those six deities , pallas , apollo , mars , mercury , venus , and bacchus , that hath been seen since the dayes of alcibiades : for he was reported to have been inriched with a memory so prodigious , that any sermon , speech , harangue , or other manner of discourse of an hours continuance , he was able to recite , without hesitation after the same manner of gesture and pronuntiation , in all points , wherewith it was delivered at first : and of so stupendious a judgement and conception , that almost naturally he understood quiddities of philosophy : and as for the abstrusest and most researched mysteries of other disciplines , arts , and faculties , the intentional species of them were as readily obvious to the interiour view and perspicacity of his mind , as those of the common visible colours , to the external sight of him that will open his eyes to look upon them : of which accomplishment and encyclopedia of knowledge , he gave on a time so marvelous a testimony at paris , that the words of admirabilis scotus , the wonderful scot , in all the several tongues , and idiomes of europ , were ( for a great while together ) by the most of the eccho's , resounded to the peircing of the very clouds . to so great a hight and vast extent of praise , did the never too much to be extolled reputation of the seraphick wit of that eximious man attaine , for his commanding to be affixed programs , on all the gates of the schooles , halls , and colledges of that famous university , as also on all the chief pillars and posts standing before the houses of the most renowned men for literature , resident within the precinct of the walls and suburbs of that most populous and magnificient city , inviting them all ( or any whoever else versed in any kinde of scholastick faculty ) to repaire ▪ at nine of the clock in the morning of such a day , moneth , and yeer , as by computation came to be just six weeks after the date of the affixes , to the common schoole of the colledge of navarre , where ( at the prefixed time ) he should ( god willing ) be ready to answer ; to what should be propounded to him cencerning any science , liberal art , discipline , or faculty practical or theoretick , not excluding the theological nor jurisprudential habits , though grounded but upon the testimonies of god and man , and that in any of these twelve languages , hebrew , syriack , arabick , greek , latin , spanish , french , italian , english , dutch , flemish , and sclavonian , in either verse or prose , at the discretion of the disputant : which high enterprise and hardy undertaking , by way of challenge to the learnedst men in the world , damped the wits of many able scholars to consider , whether it was the attempt of a fanatick spirit , or lofty designe of a well-poised judgement ; yet after a few dayes enquiry concerning him , when information was got of his incomparable endowments , all the choicest and most profound philosophers , mathematicians , naturalists , mediciners , alchymists , apothecaries , surgeons , doctors of both civil and canon law , and divines both for conttoversies and positive doctrine , together with the primest grammarians , rhetoricians , logicians , and others , professors of other arts and disciplines at paris , plyed their studys in their private cels , for the space of a moneth , exceeding hard , and with huge paines and labor set all their braines awork , how to contrive the knurriest arguments , and most difficult questions could be devised , thereby to puzzle him in the resolving of them , meander him in his answers , put him out of his medium , and drive him to a non-plus : nor did they forget to premonish the ablest there of forraign nations not to be unprepared to dispute with him in their own maternal dialects ; and that sometimes metrically , sometimes otherwayes , pro libitu . all this while , the admirable scot ( for so from thence forth he was called ) minding more his hawking , hunting , tilting , vaulting , riding of well-managed horses , tossing of the pike , handling of the musket , flourishing of colours , dancing , fencing , swimming jumping , throwing of the bar , playing at the tennis , baloon , or long-catch ; and sometimes at the house-games of dice , cards , playing at the chess , billiards , trou-madam , and other such like chamber-sports , singing , playing on the lute , and other musical instruments , masking , balling , reveling , and ( which did most of all divert , or rather distract him from his speculations and serious employments ) being more addicted to , and plying closer the courting of handsome ladyes , and a jovial cup in the company of bacchanalian blades , then the forecasting how to avoid shun , and escape the snares ; grins , and nets of the hard , obscure , and hidden arguments , ridles , and demands to be made , framed , and woven by the professors , doctors , and others of that thrice-renowned university : there arose upon him an aspersion of too great proness to such like debordings & youthful emancipations , which occasioned one less acquainted with himself , then his reputation , to subjoyn ( some two weeks before the great day appointed ) to that program of his , which was fixed on the sorbonegate , these words : if you would meet with this monster of perfection , to make search for him , either in the taverne or bawdy-house , is the readyest way to finde him . by reason of which expression ( though truly as i think , both scandalous and false ) the eminent sparks of the university ( imagining that those papers of provocation had been set up to nother end , but to scoff and delude them , in making them waste their spirits upon quirks and quiddities , more then is fitting ) did resent a little of their former toyle , and slack their studyes , becoming almost regardless thereof , till the several peals of bells ringing an hour or two before the time assigned , gave warning that the party was not to flee the barriers , nor decline the hardship of academical assaults : but on the contrary , so confident in his former resolution , that he would not shrink to sustaine the shock of all their disceptations . this sudden alarm so awaked them out of their last fortnights lethargy , that calling to minde , the best way they might , the fruits of the foregoing moneths labour , they hyed to the fore-named schoole with all diligence ; where , after all of them had , according to their several degrees and qualities , seated themselves , and that by reason of the noise occasioned through the great confluence of people , which so strange a novelty brought thither out of curiosity , an universal silence was commanded , the orator of the university in most fluent latine , addressing his speech to crichtoun , extolled him for his literature , and other good parts , and for that confident opinion he had of his own sufficiency , in thinking himself able to justle in matters of learning with the whole university of paris . critchtoun answering him in no less eloquent terms of latine , after he had most heartily thanked him for his elogies , so undeservedly bestowed , and darted some high encomions upon the university and the professors therein ; he very ingenuously protested , that he did not emit his programs out of any ambition to he esteemed able to enter in competition with the university , but meerly to be honoured with the favour of a publick conference with the learned men thereof : in complements after this manner ultro citroque habitis , tossed to and again , retorted , contrerisposted , backreverted and now and then graced with a quip or a clinch for the better relish of the ear ; being unwilling in this kind of straining curtesie , to yeeld to other , they spent a full half hour and more : for he being the centre to which the innumerable diameters of the discourses of that circulary convention did tend , although none was to answer , but he , any of them all according to the order of their prescribed series , were permitted to reply , or comence new motions , on any subject in what language soever , and howsoever expressed ; to all which he being bound to tender himself a respondent , in matter and form suitable to the impugners propounding , he did first so transcendently acquit himself of that circumstantial kinde of oratory , that , by well-couched periods , and neatly running syllables , in all the the twelve languages , both in verse and prose , he expressed to the life his courtship and civility : and afterwards , when the rector of the university ( unwilling to have any more time bestowed on superficial rhetorick , or to have that wasted on the fondness of quaint phrases , which might be better employed in a reciprocacyof discussing scientifically the nature of substantial things ) gave direction to the professors to fall on , each according to the dignity or precedency of his faculty , and that conform to the order given : some metaphysical notions were set abroach , then mathematical ; and of those , arithmetical , geometrical , astronomical , musical , optical , cosmographical , trigonometrical , statical , and so forth through all the other branches of the prime and mother-sciences thereof : the next bout was through all natural philosophy , according to aristoles method , from the acroamaticks , going along the speculation of the nature of the heavens , and that of the generation and corruption of sublinary things , even to the consideration of the soul and its faculties : in sequel hereof , they had a hint at chymical extractions , and spoke of the principles of corporeal and mixed bodies , according to the precepts of that art. after this , they disputed of medecine , in all its thereapeutick , pharmacopeutick , and chirurgical parts ; and not leaving natural magick untouched , they had exquisite disceptations concerning the secrets thereof . from thence they proceeded to moral philosophy , where debating of the true enumeration of all vertues and vices , they had most learned ratiocinations about the chief good of the life of man : and seeing the oecumenicks and politicks are parts of that philosophy , they argued learnedly of all the several sorts of governments , with their defects and advantages ; whereupon perpending , that , without an established law , all the duties of ruling and subjection , to the utter ruine of humane society , would he be as often violated , as the irregularity of passion , seconded with power , should give way thereto . the sorbonist , canonical , and civilian doctors most judiciously argued with him about the most prudential maximes , sentences , ordinances , acts , and statutes for ordering all manner of persons in their consciences , bodyes , fortunes , and repuon : nor was there an end put to those literate exercitations , till the grammarians , rethoricians , poets and logicians had assailed him with all the subtleties and nicest quodlibets their respective habits could afford . now when , to the admiration of all that were there , the incomparable crichtoun had , in all these faculties above written , and in any of the twelve languages , wherein he was spoke to , whether in verse or prose , held tack to all the disputants , who were accounted the ablest scholars upon the earth , in each their own profession ; and publickly evidenced such an universality of knowledge , and accurate promptness ln resolving of doubts , distinguishing of obscurities , expressing the members of a distinction in adaequate terms of art , explaining those compendious tearms with words of a more easie apprehension , to the prostrating of the sublimest mysteries to any vulgar capacity ; and with all excogitable variety of learning ( to his own everlasting fame ) entertained , after that kinde , the nimble witted parisians from nine a clock in the morning , till six at night ; the rector now finding it high time to give some relaxation to these worthy spirits , which during such a long space had been so intensively bent upon the abstrusest speculations , rose up , and , saluting the divine crichtoun , after he had made an elegant panegyrick , or encomiastick speech of half an houres continuance , tending to nothing else but the extolling of him for the rare and most singular gifts , wherewith god and nature had endowed him , he descended from his chaire , and , attended by three or four of the most especial professors , presented him with a diomond ring and a purse ful of gold ; wishing him to accept thereof , if not as a recompense proportionable to his merit , yet as a badge of love , and testimony of the universities favour towards him . at the tender of which ceremony , therewas so great a plaudite in the schoole , such a humming and clapping of hands , that all the concavities of the colledges there about , did tesound with the eccho of the noise thereof . notwithstanding the great honor , thus purchased by him for his literatory accomplishments ; and that many excellent spirits , to obtaine the like , would be content to postpose all other employments to the enjoyment of their studyes ; he , nevertheless , the very next day ( to refresh his braines , as he said , for the toile of the former days work ) went to the louvre in a buff-suit , more like a favorite of mars , then one of the muses minions ; where in presence of some princes of the court , and great ladies , that came to behold his gallantry , he carryed away the ring fifteen times on end , and broke as many lances on the saracen . when for a quarter of a yeer together , he after this manner had disported himself ( what martially , what scholastically ) with the best qualified men in any faculty so ever , that so large a city ( which is called the words abridgement ) was able to afford , and now and then solaced these his more serious recreations ( for all was but sport to him ) with the alluring imbellishments of the tendrer sexe , whose inamorato that he might be , was their ambition ; he on a sudden took tesolution to leave the court of france , and return to italy , where he had been bred for many yeers together ; which designe he prosecuting within the space of a moneth ( without troubling himself with long journeys ) he arrived at the court of mantua , where immediately after his abord ( as hath been told already ) he fought the memorable combat , whose description is above related . here was it that the learned and valiant crichtoun was pleased to cast anehor , and fix his abode ; nor could he almost otherwayes do , without disobliging the duke , and the prince his eldest son ; by either whereof he was so dearly beloved , that none of them would permit him by any means to leave their court , whereof he was the only privado : the object of all mens love , and subject of their discourse : the example of the great ones , and wonder of the meaner people ; the paramour of the female sexe , and paragon of his own ; in the glory of which high estimation having resided at that court above two whole yeers , the reputation of gentlemen there was hardly otherwayes valued , but by the measure of his acquaintance : nor were the young unmaryed ladies , of all the most eminent places thereabounts , any thing respected of one another , that had not either a lock of his haire , or copy of verses of his composing . nevertheless it happening on a shrove-tuesday at night ( at which time it is in italy very customary for men of great sobriety , modesty , and civil behaviour all the rest of the yeer , to give themselves over on that day of carnavale ( as theycall it ) to all manner of riot , drunkenness , and incontinency , which that they may do with the least imputation they can to their credit , they go maskt and mum'd with vizards on their faces , and in the disguise of a zanni or pantaloon to ventilate their fopperies , and sometimes intolerable enormities , without suspicion of being known ) that this ever renowned crichtoun ( who , in the afternoon of that day , at the desire of my lord duke ( the whole court striving which should exceed other in foolery , and devising of the best sports to excite laughter ; neither my lord , the dutchess , nor prince , being exempted from acting their parts , as well as they could ) upon a theater set up for the purpose , begun to prank it , a la venetiana ) with such a flourish of mimick , and ethopoetick gestures , that all the courtiers of both sexes , even those that a little before that , were fondest of their own conceits , at the fight of his so inimitable a garb , from ravishing actors , that they were before turned then ravished spectators . o with how great liveliness did he represent the conditions of all manner of men ! how naturally did he set before the eyes of the beholders the rogueries of all professions , from the overweening monarch , to the peevish swaine , through all intermediate degrees of the superficial courtion or proud warrior , dissembled church-man , doting old man , cozening lawyer , lying traveler , covetous merchant , rude seaman pedantick scolar , the amourous shepheard , heard , envious artisan , vainglorious master , and tricky servant ; he did with such variety display the several humours of all these sorts of people , and with a so bewitching energy , that he seemed to be the original , they the counterfeit ; and they the resemblance whereof he was the prototype : he had all the jeers , squibs , flouts , buls , quips , taunts , whims , jests , clinches , gybes , mokes , jerks , with all the several kinds of equivocations , and other sophistical captions , that could properly be adapted to the person by whose representation he intended to inveagle the company into a fit of mirth ; and would keep in that miscelany discourse of his ( which was all for the splene , and nothing for the gall ) such a climacterical and mercurially digested method , that when the fancy of the hearers was tickled with any rare conceit , and that the jovial blood was moved , he held it going , with another new device upon the back of the first , and another , yet another , and another againe , succeeding one another for the promoval of what is a stirring into a higher agitation ; till in the closure of the luxuriant period , the decumanal wave of the oddest whimzy of al , enforced the charmed spirits of the auditory ( for affording room to its apprehension ) suddenly to burst forth into a laughter ; which commonly lasted just so long , as he had leasure to withdraw behind the skreen , shift off with the help of a page , the suite he had on , apparel himself with another , and return to the stage to act afresh ; for by that time their transported , disparpled , and sublimated fancies , by the wonderfully operating engines of his solacious inventions , had from the hight to which the inward scrues , wheeles , and pullies of his wit had elevated them , descended by degrees into their wonted stations , he was ready for the personating of another carriage ; whereof , to the number of fourteen several kinds ( during the five hours space that at the dukes desire , the sollicitation of the court , and his own recreation , he was pleased to histrionize it ) he shewed himself so natural a representative , that any would have thought he had been so many several actors , differing in all things else , save the only stature of the body ; with this advantage above the most of other actors , whose tongue , with its oral implements , is the onely instrument of their minds disclosing , that , besides his mouth with its appurtenances , he lodged almost a several oratour in every member of his body ; his head , his eyes , his shoulders , armes , hands , fingers , thighs , legs , feet and breast , being able to decipher any passion , whose character he purposed to give . first , he did present himself with a crown on his head , a scepter in his hand , being clothed in a purple robe furred with ermyne : after that , with a miter on his head , a crosier in his hand , and accoutred with a paire of lawn-sleeves : and thereafter , with a helmet on his head , the visiere up , a commanding-stick in his hand , and arayed in a buff-suit , with a scarf about his middle . then , in a rich apparel , after the newest fashion , did he shew himself ( like another sejanus ) with a periwig daubed with cypres powder : in sequel of that , he came out with a three corner'd cap on his head , some parchments in his hand , and writings hanging at his girdle like chancery bills ; and next to that , with a furred gown about him , an ingot of gold in his hand , and a bag full of money by his side ; after all this , he appeares againe clad in a country-jacket , with a prong in his hand , and a monmouthlike-cap on his head : then very shortly after , with a palmers coat upon him , a bourdon in his hand , and some few cockle-shels stuck to his hat , he look't as if he had come in pilgrimage from saint michael ; immediatly after that , he domineers it in a bare unlined gowne , with a pair of whips in the one hand , and corderius in the other : and in suite thereof , he honder spondered it with a pair of pannier-like breeches , a mountera-cap on his head , and a knife in a wooden sheath dagger-ways by his side ; about the latter end he comes forth again with a square in one hand , a rule in the other , and a leather apron before him : then very quickly after , with a scrip by his side , a sheep-hook in his hand , and a basket full of flowers to make nosegayes for his mistris : now drawing to a closure , he rants it first in cuerpo , and vapouring it with gingling spurrs , and his armes a kenbol like a don diego he strouts it , and by the loftiness of his gate plaies the capitan spavento : then in the very twinkling of an eye , you would have seen him againe issue forth with a cloak upon his arm , in a livery garment , thereby representing the serving-man : and lastly , at one time amongst those other , he came out with a long gray beard , and bucked ruff , crouching on a staff tip't with the head of a barbers cithern , and his gloves hanging by a button at his girdle . those fifteen several personages he did represent with such excellency of garb , and exquisiteness of language , that condignely to perpend the subtlety of the invention , the method of the disposition , the neatness of the elocution , the gracefulness of the action , and wonderful variety in the so dextrous performance of all , you would have taken it for a comedy of five acts , consisting of three scenes , each composed by the best poet in the world , and acted by fifteen of the best players that ever lived , as was most evidently made apparent to all the spectators , in the fifth and last hour of his action ( which according to our western account was about six a clock at night , and by the calculation of that country , half an hour past three and twenty , at that time of the yeer : ) for , purposing to leave of with the setting of the sun , with an endeavour nevertheless to make his conclusion the master-piece of the work , he , to that effect , summoning all his spirits together , which never failed to be ready at the cal of so worthy a commander , did by their assistance , so conglomerate , shuffle , mix and interlace the gestures , inclinations , actions , and very tones of the speech of those fifteen several sorts of men whose carriages he did personate , into an inestimable ollapodrida of immaterial morsels of divers kinds , sutable to the very ambrosian relish of the heliconian nymphs ; that , in the peripetia of this drammatical exercitation ▪ by the inchanted transportation of the eyes and eares of its spectabundal auditorie , one would have sworne that they all had looked with multiplying glasses , and that ( like that angel in the scripture whose voice was said to be like the voice of a multitude ) they heard in him alone the promiscuous speech of fifteen several actors ; by the various ravishments of the excellencies whereof , in the frolickness of a jocound straine beyond expectation , the logofascinated spirits of the beholding hearers and auricularie spectators , were so on a sudden seazed upon in their risible faculties of the soul , and all their vital motions so universally affected in this extremitie of agitation , that , to avoid the inevitable charmes of his intoxicating ejaculations , and the accumulative influences of so powerfull a transportation , one of my lady dutchess chief maids of honour , by the vehemencie of the shock of those incomprehensible raptures , burst forth into a laughter ▪ to the rupture of a veine in her body ; and another young lady , by the irresistible violence of the pleasure unawares infused , where the tender receptibilitie of her too too tickled fancie was lest able to hold out , so unprovidedly was surprised , that , with no less impetuositie of ridibundal passion then ( as hath been told ) occasioned a fracture in the other young ladies modestie , she , not able longer to support the well beloved burthen of so excessive delight , and intransing joys of such mercurial exhilarations , through the ineffable extasie of an over-mastered apprehension , fell back in a swown , without the appearance of any other life into her , then what by the most refined wits of theological speculators is conceived to be exe●ced by the purest parts of the separated entelechies of blessed saints in their sublimest conversations with the celestial hierarchies : this accident procured the incoming of an apothecarie with restoratives , as the other did that of a surgeon with consolidative medicaments . the admirable crichtoun now perceiving that it was drawing somewhat late , and that our occidental rays of phaebus were upon their turning oriental to the other hemisphere of the terrestrial globe ; being withall jealous ; that the uninterrupted operation of the exuberant diversitie of his jovialissime entertainment , by a continuate winding up of the humours there present to a higher , yet higher , and still higher pitch ; above the supremest lydian note of the harmonie of voluptuousness , should , in such a case , through the too intensive stretching of the already-super-elated strings of their imagination , with a transcendencie over-reaching ela , and beyond the well-concerted gam of rational equanimitie , involve the remainder of that illustrious companie into the sweet labyrinth and mellifluent aufractuosities of a lacinious delectation , productive of the same inconvenices which befel the two afore named-ladies ; whose delicacie of constitution , though sooner overcome , did not argue , but that the same extranean causes from him proceeding of their pathetick alteration , might by a longer insisting in an efficacious agencie , and unremitted working of all the consecutively-imprinted degrees , that the capacity of the patient is able to containe , prevaile at last , and have the same predominancie over the dispositions of the strongest complexioned males of that splendid society ; did , in his own ordinary wearing-apparel , with the countenance of a prince , and garb befitting the person of a so well bred gentleman , and cavalier 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , full of majesty , and repleat with all excogitable civilitie , ( to the amazement of all that beheld his heroick gesture ) present himself to epilogate this his almost extemporanean comedie , though of five hours continuance without intermission : and that with a peroration so neatly uttred , so distinctly pronounced , and in such elegancie of selected termes expressed , by a diction so periodically contexed with isocoly of members , that the matter thereof tending in all humility to beseech the highnesses of the duke , prince , and dutchess , together with the remanent lords , ladies , knights , gentlemen , and others of both sexes of that honorable convention , to vouchsafe him the favour to excuse his that afternoons escaped extravagancies , and to lay the blame of the indigested irregularity of his wits excursions , and the abortive issues of his disordered brain , upon the customarily-dispensed-with priviledges in those cisalpinal regions , to authorize such like impertinences at carnavalian festivals : and that , although ( according to the most commonly received opinion in that country , after the nature of load-him ( a game at cards ) where he that wins loseth ) he who , at that season of the year , playeth the fool most egregiously , is reputed the wisest man ; he nevertheless not being ambitious of the fame of enjoying good qualities , by vertue of the antiphrasis of the fruition of bad ones , did meerly undergo that emancipatorie task of a so profuse liberty ; and to no other end embraced the practising of such roaming and exorbitant diversions , but to give an evident , or rather infallible demonstration of his eternally-bound duty to the house of mantua and an inviolable testimony of his never to be altered designe , in prosecuting all the occasions possible to be laid hold on , that can in any manner of way prove conducible to the advancement of , and contributing to the readiest means for improving those advantages that may best promove the faculties of making all his choice endeavours , and utmost abilities at all times , effectual to the long wished for furtherance of his most cordial and endeared service to the serenissime highnesses of my lord duke , prince and dutchess , and of consecrating with all addicted obsequiousness , and submissive devotion , his everlasting obedience to the illustrious shrine of their joynt commands . then incontinently addressing himself to the lords , ladies , and others of that rotonda ( which , for his daigning to be its inmate , though but for that day , might be accounted in nothing inferiour to the great colisee of rome , or amphitheater at neems ) with a stately carriage , and port suitable to so prime a gallant , he did cast a look on all the corners thereof , so bewitchingly aminable , and magnetically efficacious , as if in his eys had bin a muster of ten thousand cupids eagerly striving who should most deeply pierce the hearts of the spectators with their golden darts . and truly so it fell out ( that there not being so as much one arrow shot in vain ) all of them did love him , though not after the same manner , nor for the same end : for , as the manna of the arabian desarts is said to have had in the mouths of the egyptian israelites the very same tast of the meat they loved best : so the princes that were there did mainly cherish him for his magnanimity and knowledge : his courtliness and sweet behaviour being that for which chiefly the noblemen did most respect him ; for his pregnancie of wit , and chivalrie in vindicating the honour of ladies , he was honoured by the knights : and the esquires , and other gentlemen courted him for his affability , and good fellowship ; the rich did favour him for his judgement , and ingeniosity : and for his liberality and munificence , he was blessed by the poor ; the old men affected him , for his constancie and wisdome : and the young for his mirth and gallantry ; the scholars were enamoured of him for his learning and eloquence , and the souldiers for his integrity and valour ; the merchants , for his upright dealing and honesty , praised and extolled him ; and the artificers for his goodness and benignity ; the chastest lady of that place would have hugged and imbraced him for his discretion , and ingenuity : whilst for his beauty and comeliness of person he was ( at least in the fervency of their desires ) the paramour of the less continent : he was dearly beloved of the fair women , because he was handsom ; and of the fairest more dearly , becaus he was handsomer : in a word , the affections of the beholders ( like so many several diameters , drawn from the circumference of their various intents ) did all concenter in the point of his perfection . after a so considerable insinuation , and gaining of so much ground upon the hearts of the auditory , ( though in shorter space then the time of a flash of lightning ) he went on ( as before ) in the same thred of the conclusive part of his discourse , with a resolution not to cut it , till the over-abounding passions of the company their exorbitant motions , and discomposed gestures , through excess of joy & mirth , should be all of them quieted , calmed , & pacified , and every man , woman , and maid there ( according to their humour ) reseated in the same integrity they were at first : which when by the articulatest elocution of the most significant words , expressive of the choisest things that fancie could suggest , and ( conforme to the matters variety ) elevating or depressing , flat or sharply accinating it , with that proportion of tone that was most consonant with the purpose ) he had attained unto , and by his verbal harmony , and melodious utterance , setled all their distempered pleasures , and brought their disorderly raised spirits into their former capsuls , he with a tongue tip't with silver , after the various diapasons of all his other expressions ; and making of a leg , for the spruceness of its courtsie , of greater decorement to him then cloth of gold and purple , farewel'd the companie with a complement of one period so exquisitely delivered , and so well attended by the gracefulness of his hand and foot , with the quaint miniardise of the rest of his body , in the performance of such ceremonies as are usual at a court-like departing , that from the theater he had gone into a lobbie , from thence along three spacious chambers , whence descending a back-staire , he past through a low gallerie , which led him to that outter gate , where a coach with six horses did attend him , before that magnificent convention of both sexes , ( to whom that room , wherein they all were , seemed in his absence to be as a body without a soul ) had the full leisure to recollect their spirits ( which by the neatness of his so curious a close , were quoquoversedly scattered with admiration ) to advise on the best expediency how to dispose of themselvs for the future of that licentious night : during which time of their being thus in a maze , a proper young lady ( if ever there was any in the world ) whose dispersed spirits , by her wonderful delight in his accomplishments , were by the power of cupid , with the assistance of his mother , instantly gathered and replaced , did upon his retiring ( without taking notice of the intent of any other ) rise up out of her boxe , issue forth at a posterne-door , into some secret transes , from whence going down a few steps , that brought her to a parlour , she went through a large hall ; by the wicket of one end whereof , as she entered on the street , she encountered with crichtoun , who was but even then come to the aforesaid coach , which was hers ; unto which sans ceremony ( waving the frivolous windings of dilatory circumstances ) they both stepped up together , without any other in their company , save a waiting gentlewoman that sate in the furthest side of the coach , a page that lifted up the boot thereof , and walked by it , and one lacky that ran before with a kindled torch in his hand , all domestick servants of hers , as were the coach-man and postillion ; who driving apace ( and having but half a mile to go ) did , with all the expedition required , set down my lady with her beloved mate at the great gate of her own palace ; through the wicket whereof ( because she would not stay till the whole were made wide open ) they entred both ; and injunction being given , that forthwith after the setting up of the coach and horses , the gate should be made fast and none , more then was already , permitted to come within her court that night , they joyntly went along a private passage , which led them to a lanterne scalier , whose each step was twelve foot long ; thence mounting up a paire of staires , they past through and traversed above nine several rooms on a floor , before they reached her bed-chamber ; which in the interim of the progress of their transitory walk , was with such mutual cordialness so unanimously aimed at , that never did the passengers of a ship in a tedious voyage , long for a favorable winde with greater uniformity of desire , then the blessed hearts of that amorous and amiable couple , were , without the meanest variety of a wish , in every jot united . nevertheless at last they entred in it , or rather in an alcoranal paradise ; where nothing tending to the pleasure of all the senses was wanting : the weather being a little chil and coldish , they on a blew velvet couch sate by one another , towards a char-coale fire burning in a silver brasero , whilst in the next room adjacent thereto , a prety little round table of cedar-wood was a covering for the supping of them two together : the cates prepared for them , and a week before that time bespoke , were of the choisest dainties , and most delicious junkets , that all the territories of italy were able to afford ; and that deservedly : for all the romane empire could not produce a completer paire to taste them : in beauty she was supream , in pedigree equal with the best , in spirit not inferiour to any , and , in matter of affection , a great admirer of crichtoun , which was none of her least perfections : she many times used to repaire to my lady dutchesses court , where now and then the prince would cast himself ( as a l'improviste ) into her way , to catch hold the more conveniently of some one or other opportunity for receiving her employments ; with the favour whereof he very often protested , if she would vouchsafe to honour him , and be pleased to gratifie his best endeavouors with her only gracious acceptance of them , none breathing should be able to discharge that duty with more zeal to her service , nor reap more inward satisfaction in the performance of it ; for that his obedience could not be crowned with greater glory , then by that of a permanently-fixed attendance upon her commandments . his highness complements ( whereof to this noble lady he was at all times very liberal ) remained never longer unexchanged , then after they were delivered ; and that in a coine so pretious , for language , matter , phrase , and elocution , that he was still assured of his being repayed with interest : by means of which odds of her retaliation , she ( though unknown to her self ) conquered his affections , and he from thenceforth became her inamorato : but with so close and secret a minde did he harbour in his heart , that new love , and nourish the fire thereof in his veins , that remotely skonsing it from the knowledge of all men , he did not so much as acquaint therewith his most intimate friend crichtoun ; who , by that the sun had deprest our western horizon by one half of the quadrant of his orb , did , after supper , with his sweet lady ( whom he had by the hand ) return againe to the bed-chamber , wherein formerly they were ; and there , without losing of time ( which by unnecessary puntilios of strained civility , and affected formalities of officious respect , is very frequently , but too much lavished away , and heedlesly regarded , by the young adonises , and faint-hearted initiants in the exercises of the cytheraean academy ) they barred all the ceremonies of pindarising their discourse , and sprucifying it in a la mode salutations , their mutual carriage shewing it self ( as it were ) in a meane betwixt the conjugal of man and wife , and fraternal conversation of brother and sister ; in the reciprocacy of their love , transcending both ; in the purity of their thoughts , equal to this ; and in fruition of pleasure , nothing inferior to the other : for when , after the waiting damsel had , by putting her beautiful mistris into her nocturnal dress , quite impoverished the ornaments of her that dayes wear , in robbing them of the inestimably rich treasure which they inclosed ; and then performed the same office to the lord of her ladies affections , by laying aside the impestring bulk of his journal abiliaments , and fitting him , in the singlest manner possible , with the most genuine habit a la cypriana that cupid could devise ; she , as it became an obsequious servant , and maid observant of her mistrisses directions , bidding them good night with the inarticulate voyce of an humble curtesie , locked the doors of the room behind her , and shut them both in to the reverence of one another , him to her discretion , her to his mercy , and both to the passion of each other : who then finding themselves not only together , but alone with other , were in an instant transported both of them with an equal kinde of rapture : for as he looked on her , and saw the splendor of the beams of her bright eyes , and with what refulgency her alabaster-like skin did shine through the thin cawle of her idalian garments , her appearance was like the antartick oriency of a western aurore , or acronick rising of the most radiant constellation of the firmament : and whilst she viewed him , and perceived the portliness of his garb ▪ comeliness of his face , sweetness of his countenance , and majesty in his very chevelure ; with the goodliness of his frame , proportion of his limbs , and symmetry in all the parts and joints of his body , which through the cobweb slenderness of his cyllenian vestments , were represented almost in their puris naturalibus his resemblance was like that of aeneas to , dido , when she said , that he was in face and shoulders like a god ; or rather to her he seemed as to the female deities did ganimed , when , after being carryed up to heaven , he was brought into the presence of jupiter . thus for a while their eloquence was mute , and all they spoke , was but with the eye and hand ; yet so perswasively , by vertue of the intermutual unlimitedness of their visotactil sensation , that each part and portion of the persons of either , was obvious to the sight and touch of the persons of both ; the visuriency of either , by ushering the tacturiency of both , made the attrectation of both cōsequent to the inspection of either : here was it that passion was active , & action passive ; they both being overcome by other , and each the conquerour . to speak of her hirquitalliency at the elevation of the pole of his microcosme , or of his luxuriousness to erect a gnomon on her horizontal dyal , will perhaps be held by some to be expressions full of obscoeness , and offensive to the purity of chaste ears : yet seeing she was to be his wife , and that she could not be such without consummation of marriage , which signifieth the same thing in effect , it may be thought , as definitiones logicae verificantur in rebus , if the exerced act be lawful , that the diction which suppones it ; can be of no great transgression , unless you would call it a solaecisme , or that vice in grammar which imports the copulating of the masculine with the feminine gender . but as the misery of the life of man is such , that bitterness for the most part is subsequent to pleasure , and joy the prognostick of grief to come ; so the admirable crichtoun ( or to resume my discourse where i broke off , i say it hapened on a shrovetuesday at night , that the ever-renowned crichtoun ) was warned by a great noise in the streets , to be ready for the acting of another part ; for the prince ( who till that time from the first houre of the night inclusively , for the space of four hours together , with all his attendants , had done nothing else , but rant it , roar , and roam from one taverne to another , with haut-bois , flutes , and trumpets , drinking healths , breaking glasses , tossing pots , whitling themselves with septembral juyce , tumbling in the kennel , and acting all the devisable feats of madness , at least so many as in their irregular judgements did seem might contrevalue all the penance they should be able to do for them the whole lent thereafter ) being ambitious to have a kiss of his mistris hand ( for so , in that too frolick humour of his , he was pleased to call this young lady ) before he should go to bed ; with nine gentlemen at his back , and four pages carrying waxe tapers before him , comes to the place where crichtoun and the foresaid lady were ( though the prince knew nothing of crichtoun's being there ) and knocks at the outer gate thereof . no answer is made at first ; for the whole house was in a profound silene , and all of them in the possession of morphee , save that blessed pair of pigeon-like lovers , in whom cupid , for the discharge of hymenaean rites , had inspired a joynt determination to turne that whole nights rest to motion : but the fates being pleased otherways to dispose of things then as they proposed them , the clapper is up again , and they rap with a flap , till a threefold clap made the sound to rebound . with this the porter awakes , looks out at a lattice-window of his lodge , and seeing them all with masks and vizards on their faces , asked them what their desire was , or what it might be that moved them to come so late in such a disguise ? the prince himself answered , that they were gentlemen desirous onely to salute my lady ; which courtesie when obtained , they should forthwith be gone . the porter advertiseth the page , and tells him all ; who doing the same to the waiting gentlewoman , she , to receive orders from her mistris , opens the chamber-doore , enters in , relates the story , and demands direction from my lady ; who immediately bids her call the page to her : she does it ; he comes , and enquiring what the will of her signoria was with him , she enjoynes him to go down and beseech those gentlemen to be pleased to have her excused for that night , because she was abed , and not so well as she could wish , to bear them company ; yet if they conceived any fault in her , she should strive to make them amends for it , some other time : the page accordingly acquits himself of what is recommended to him ; for after he had caused open the wicket of the gate , and faced the street , he first saluted them , with that court-like dexterity , which did bespeak him a well-educated boy , and of good parentage ; then told them , that he was commanded by his lady mistris to intreat them ( seeing she knew not what they were , and that their wearing of vizards did in civility debar her from enquiring after their names ) to take in good part her remitting of that their visit to another time , by reason of her present indisposure , and great need of rest ; which if , they should have any pretext to except against , she would heartily make atonement for it , and given them satisfaction at any other time . the princes answer was , that he thought not but that he should have been admitted with less ceremony , and that though the time of the night , and his lady-mistris her being in a posture of rest , might seem to plead somewhat for the non-disturbance of her desired solitariness ; that nevertheless the uncontrolled priviledges of the season exempting them from all prescribed ( and at all other times observed ) boundaries , might in the carnavaleceve , and supremest night of its law transcendent jollities , by the custome of the whole country , very well apologize for that trespass . which words being spoken , he , without giving the page leisure to reply , pretending it was cold in the streets , rusht in at the open wicket even into the coutt , with all his gentlemen , and torch-bearers , each one whereof was no less cup-shotten then himself . the page astonished at such unexpected rudeness , said , with an audible voice , what do you mean , gentlemen ? do you intend to break in by violence , and at such an undue time enforce my lady to grant you admittance . look , i pray you , to your own reputations ; and if regardless of any thing else , consider what imputation , and stain of credit wil lye upon you , thus to commit an enormous action , because of some colour of justifying it by immunities of set times , grounded upon no reason but meer toleration , without any other warrant then a feeble inveterate prescription ; therefore let me beseech you , gentlemen , if you love your selves , and the continuation of your own good names , or tender anykind of respect to the honor of ladys , that you would be pleased of your own accords , to chuse rather to return from whence you came , or go whither elswhere you will , then toimagin anyrational man wil think that your masks & vizards can be sufficient covers , wherewith to hide and palliate the deformedness of this obtrusive incivility . one of the princes gentlemen ( whose braines the fumes of greek and italian wines had a little intoxicated ) laying hold only upon the last word ( all the rest having escaped both his imagination and memory , like an empty sound which makes no impression ) and most eagerly grasping at it ( like a snarling curr , that in his gnarring snatcheth at the taile ) ecchoes it , incivility ; then coming up closer to him , and saying , how now jackanapes , whom do you twit with incivility , he gave him such a sound thwack over the left shoulder with his sword , scabard and all , that the noise thereof reached to all the corners of my ladyes bed-chamber ; at which the generous page ( who besides his breeding otherwayes , was the son of a nobleman ) being a little commoved and vexed at an affront so undeservedly received , and barbarously given , told the esquire who had wronged him , that if he had but had one drop of any good blood within him , he never would have offered to strike a gentleman that wanted a weapon wherewith to defend himself ; and that although he was but of fourteen yeers of age , and for strength but as a springal or stripling in regard of him , he should nevertheless ( would any of those other nine gentlemen ( as he called them ) be pleased to favour him but with the lend of a sword ) take upon him even then , and on that place , to humble his cockes-comb , pull his crest a little lower down , and make him faine ( for the safety of his life ) to acknowledge that he is but a base and unworthy man. whilst the gentleman was about to have shapen him an answer , the prince , being very much taken with the discretion , wit , garb , and courage of the boy , commanded the other to silence ; and forthwith taking the speech in hand himself , commended him very much for his loyalty to his mistris ; and ( for his better ingratiating in the pages favour ) presented him with a rich saphir , to shew him but the way to my ladyes chamber , where he vowed that ( as he was a gentleman ) he would make no longer stay then barely might afford him the time to kiss her hands , and take his leave . the sweet boy ( being more incensed at the manner of that offer of the prince ( whom he knew not ) then at the discourtesie he had sustained by his aforesaid gentleman ) plainly assured him , that he might very well put up his saphir into his pocket againe ; for that all the gifts in the world should never be able to gaine that of him , which had not ground enough in reason for perswading the grant thereof without them . after that the prince and pomponacio ( for so they called the page ) had thus for a long time together debated to and againe , the reasons for and against the intended visit , with so little success on either side , that the more artifice was used in the rhetorick , the less effect it had in the perswasion : the prince unwilling to miss of his mark , and not having in all the quivers of his reason one shaft wherewith to hit it , resolved to interpose some authority with his argumentations , and where the foxes skin could not serve , to make use of the lyons : to the prosecuting of which intent , he with his vinomadefied retinue , resolved to press in upon the page , and , maugre his will , to get up staires , and take their fortune in the quest of the chamber they aimed at : for albeit the stradling as wide as he could , of pretty pomponacio at the door whereat they made account to force their passage , did for a while retard their designe , because of their chariness to struggle with so hopeful a youth , and tender imp of so great expectation , yet at last , being loath to faile of their end , by how indirect meanes soever they might attaine thereto , they were in the very action of crowning their violence with prevalency , when the admirable and ever-renowned crichtoun , who at the princes first manning of the court taking ●he alarm , step'd from the shrine of venus , to the oracle of pallas armata ; and by the help of the waiting gentlewoman , having apparelled himself with a paludamental vesture , after the antick fashion of the illustrious romans , both for that he minded not to make himself then known , that to walk then in such like disguise was the anniversary custome of all that country , and that all both gentlemen and others standing in that court , were in their mascaradal garments ; with his sword in his hand , like a messenger from the gods , came down to relieve the page from the poste whereat he stood sentry ; and when ( as the light of the minor planets appeares not before the glorious rayes of titan ) he had obscured the irradiancy of pomponacio with his more effulgent presence , and that under pretext of turning him to the page to desire him to stand behind him , as he did , he had exposed the full view of his left side ( so far as the light of torches could make it perceivable ) to the lookers on , who , being all in cuerpo carying swords in their hands in stead of cloaks about them , imagined really , by the badge or cognizance they saw neer his heart , that he was one of my ladies chief domestick servants : he addressed his discourse to the prince , and the nine gentlemen that were with him ; neither of all whereof , as they were accoutred , was he able ( either by the light of the tapers , or that of the moon , which was then but in the first week of its waxing , it being the tuesday next to the first new moon that followed the purification day ) to discern in any manner of way what they were : and for that he perceived by their unstedfast postures , that the influence of the grape had made them subjects to jacchus , and that their extranean-like demeanour towards him ( not without some amazement ) did manifest his certainty of their not knowing him ; he therefore with another kind of intonation ( that his speech might not bewray him ) then that which waited upon his usual note , of utterance , made a pithy panegyrick in praise of those that endeavoured , by their good fellowship , and bacchanalian compagnionry , to cheer up their hearts with precious liquour , and renew the golden age ; whence descending to a more particular application , he very much applauded the ten gentlemen , for their being pleased ( out of their devotion to the lyaean god , who had with great respect been bred and elevated amongst the nymphs ) not to forget , amidst the most sacred plying of their symposiasms , that duty to ladyes which was incumbent on them to be performed in the discharge of a visite : then wh●eling neatly about to fetch another careere , he discreetly represented to them all the necessary circumstances at such a visit observable , and how the infringing of the meanest title or particle of any one thereof , would quite disconcert the mutual harmony it should produce , and bring an unspeakable disparagement to the credits and honors of all guilty of the like delinquency . in amplifying hereof , and working upon their passions , he let go so many secret springs , and inward resorts of eloquence , that being all perswaded of the unseasonableness of the time , and unreasonableness of the suit , none of them , for a thousand ducats that night , would have adventured to make any further progress in that after which a little before they had been so eager : so profound was the character of reverence toward that lady , which he so insinuatingly had imprinted into the hearts of them all ; wherefore they purposing to insist no longer upon the visitatory design , did cast their minds on a sudden upon another far more haire-brained consideration ; when the prince to one of his chief gentlemen said , we wil do this good fellow no wrong ; yet before we go hence , let us try what courage is in him , that after we have made him flee for it , we may to morrow make one excuse for all , to the lady whom he serveth . do not you see ( sayes he ) how he dandleth the sword in his hand , as if he were about to braveer us , and how he is decked and trimm'd up in his cloaths , like another hector of troy , but i doubt , if he be so martial , he speaks too well to be valiant : he is certainly more mercurial then military ; therefore let us make him turn his back , that we may spie if , as another mercury , he hath any wings on his heels . this foolish chat no sooner was blattered out to the ears of three of his gentlemen , that were nearest to him , but the sudden drawing of their swords , though but injest , made the other 6 who heard not the prince , as if they had bin mad , to adventure the rashness wherewith the spirit of wine had inspired them , against the prudensequal & invincible fortitude of the matchless crichtoun ; who not being accustomed to turn his back to those that had any project against his brest , most manfully sustained their encounter ; which ( although furious at first ) appearing nevertheless unto him ( because of the odds of ten to one ) not to have been in earnest , he for twenty several bouts , did but ward their blows , and pary with the fort of his sword , till by plying the defensive part too long , he had received one thrust in the thigh , and another in the arme ; the trickling of his blood from the wounds whereof , prompted his heroick spirit ( as at a desperate stake to have at all or none ) to make his tith outvytheir stock , and set upon them all ▪ in which resolution when from the door whereat he stood , he had lanched forth three paces in the court ( having lovely pomponacio behind him , to give him warning in case of surprisal in the reer , and all his ten adversaries in a front before him , who , making up above a quadrant of that periphery whereof his body was the center , were about , from the exterior points of all their right shoulder-blades , alongst the additional line of their armes and tucks , to lodge home in him so many truculent semi-diameters ) he retrograding their intention , and beginning his agency , where they would have made him a patient , in as short space as the most diagrammatically-skilled hand , could have been able to describe lines representative of the distance 'twixt the earth and the several kardagas , or horary expeditions of the suns diurnal motion , from his aequinoxial horizontality to the top of his meridian hight ( which , with the help of a ruler by six draughts of a pen , is quickly delineated ) livered out six several thrusts against them , by vertue whereof he made such speedy work upon the respective segments of that debauch'd circumference , through the red-ink-marks , which his streightdrawn stroaks imprinted , that being alonged from the center-point of his own courage , and with a thunder-bolt-like-swiftness of hand radiated upon their bodies , he discussed a whole quadrant of those ten , whereof four and twenty make the circle ; and laying six of the most inraged of them on their backs , left ( in the other four ) but a sextant of the aforesaid ring , to avenge the death of their dismal associates . of which quaternity , the prince ( being most concerned in the effects of this disaster , as being the only cause thereof ( though his intentions levelled at another issue ) and like to burst with shame to see himself loadned on all sides with so much dishonour , by the incomparable valour of one single man ) did set forward at the swords point , to essay if in his person so much lost credit might be recovered , and to that purpose comming within distance , was upon the advancing of a thurst in quart ; when the most agil crichtoun pareing it in the same ward , smoothly glided a long the princes sword , and being master of its feeble , was upon the very instant of making his highness very low , and laying his honor in the dust , when one of the three courtiers whom fortune had favoured not to fall by the hand of crichtoun , cryed aloud hold , hold , kill not the prince : at which words the courteous crichtoun recoyling , and putting himself out of distance , the prince pulled off his vizard , and throwing it away , shew his face so fully , that the noble-hearted crichtoun , being sensible of his mistake , and sory so many of the princes servants should have enforced him , in his own defence , to become the actor of their destruction , made unto the prince a very low obeisance ; and setting his left knee to the ground ( as if he had been to receive the honor of knight-hood ) with his right hand presented him the hilts of his own conquering sword , with the point thereof towards his own brest , wishing his highness to excuse his not knowning him in that disguise , and to be pleased to pardon what unluckily had ensued upon the necessity of his defending himself , which ( at such an exigent ) might have befaln to any other , that were not minded to abandon their lives to the indiscretion of others . the prince , in the throne of whose judgement the rebellious vapours of the tun had installed nemesis , and caused the irascible faculty shake off the soveraignty of reason , being without himself , and unable to restraine the impetuosity of the wills first motion , runs crichtoun through the heart with his own sword , and kils him : in the interim of which lamentable accident , the sweet and beautiful lady ( who by this time had slipped her self in-a cloth-of-gold petticoat , in the anterior fente whereof was an asteristick ouch , wherein were inchased fifteen several diamonds , representative of the constellation of the primest stars in the signe of virgo ; had enriched a tissue gown and wastcoat of brocado with the precious treasure of her ivory body ; and put the foot-stals of those marble pillars which did support her microcosme , into a paire of incarnation velvet slippers embroydered with purle ) being descended to the lower door ( which jetted out to the courtwards ) where pomponacio was standing , with the curled tresses of her discheveled haire dangling over her shoulders , by the love-knots of whose naturally-guilded filaments were made fast the hearts of many gallant sparks , who from their liberty of ranging after other beauties , were more forcibly curbed by those capillary fetters , than by so many chaines of iron ; and in the dadalian windings of the crisped pleats whereof , did lye in ambush a whole brigade of paphian archers , to bring the loftiest martialists to stoop to the shrine of cupid ; and , arachne-like , now careering , now caracoling it alongest the polygonal plainness of its twisted threds ) seaze on the affections of all whose looks should be involved in her locks ; and , with a presentation exposing to the beholders all the perfections that ever yet were by the graces conferred on the female sexe , all the excellencies of juno , venus , and minerva ; the other feminean deities , and semi-goddesses of former ages , seeming to be of new revived , and within her compiled , as the compactedst abbridgement of all their best endowments ; stepped a pace or two into the court ( with all the celerity that the intermixed passions of love and indignation was able to prompt her to : during which time which certainly was very short , because , to the motions of her angelically-composed body , the quantity attending the matter of its constitution was no more obstructive , then were the various exquisite qualities flowing from the form thereof , wherein there was no blemish ) the eyes of the princes thoughts , and those were with him ( for the influences of cupid are like the actions of generation , which are said to be in instanti ) pryed into , spyed , and surveyed from the top of that sublimely-framed head , which culminated her accomplishments , down along the wonderful symmetry of her divinely-proportioned countenance ; from the glorious light of whose two luminaries , apollo might have borrowed rayes to court his daphne , and diana her endymion : even to the rubies of those lips , where two cupids still were kissing one another for joy of being so neer the enjoyment of her two rows of pea●les inclosed within them ; and from thence through the most graceful objects of all her intermediate parts , to the heaven-like polished prominences of her mellifluent and heroinal breast , whose porphyr streaks ( like arches of the ecliptick and colures , or azimuch and almicantar-circles intersecting other ) expansed in pretty veinelets ( through whose sweet conduits run the delicious streams of nectar , wherewith were cherished the pretty sucklings of the cyprian goddesse ) smiled on one another to see their courses regulated by the two niple-poles above them elevated , in each their own hemisphere ; whose magnetick vertue , by attracting hearts , and sympathy in their refocillation , had a more impowering ascendent over poetick lovers , for furnishing their braines with choise of fancy , then ever had the two tops of parnassus-hill , when animated or assisted by all the wits of the pierian muses : then from the snow-white galaxy betwixt those gemel-monts , whose milken paths , like to the plaines of thessaly , do by reflexion calefie , to that procuberant and convexe ivory , whose meditullian node , compared with that other , where the ecliptick cuts the aequinoxial , did far surpass it in that property whereby the night is brought in competition with the day : whence having past the line , and seeming to depress the former pole to elevate another , the inward prospect of their minde discovered a new america , or land unknown , in whose subterranean & intestine cels were secret mines of greater worth , then those of either tibar or peru , for that besides the working in them could not but give delight unto the mineralist , their metal was so reciptible for impression , and to the mint so plyable , that alchymists profoundly versed in chymical extractions , and such as knew how to imbue it with syndon , and crown the magisterum with the elixir , instead of treasures merchants bring from the inda's , would have educed little worlds , more worth then gold or silver . all this from their imagination being convoyed into the penitissim corners of their fouls in that short space which i have already told , she rending her garments , and tearing her haire , like one of the graces possest with a fury , spoke thus : o villains ! what have you done ? you vipers of men , that have thus basely slaine the valiant crichtoun , the sword of his own sexe , and buckler of ours , the glory of this age , and restorer of the lost honor of the court of mantua : o crichtoun , crichtoun ! at which last words , the prince hearing them uttered by the lady in the world he loved best , and of the man in the world he most affected , was suddenly seazed upon by such extremity of sorrow for the unhappiness of that lamentable mischance , that not being able to sustaine the rayes of that beauty , whose percing aspect made him conscious of his guilt , he fell flat upon his face , like to a dead man : but knowing omne simile not to be idem , he quickly arose ; and , to make his body be what it appeared , fixed the hilt of the sword wherewith he had killed crichtoun , fast betwixt two stones , at the foot of a marble statue standing in the court ( after the fashion , of those staves with iron pikes at both ends ( commonly called swedish feathers ) when stuck into the ground to fence musketeers from the charge of horse ) then having recoyled a little from it , was fetching a race to run his brest ( which for that purpose he had made open ) upon the point thereof ( as did cato vticensis after his lost hopes of the recovery of the commonwealth of rome ) and assuredly ( according to that his intent ) had made a speedy end of himself , but that his three gentlemen ( one by stopping him in his course , another by laying hold on him by the middle , and the third by taking away the sword ) hindred the desperate project of that autochtony . the prince being carryed away in that mad , frantick , and distracted humour ( befitting a bedlam better then a serralio ) into his own palace , where all manner of edge-tools were kept from him all that sad night , for fear of executing his former designe of self-murther : as soon as to his father my lord duke on the next morning by seven a clock ( which by the usual computation of that country , came at that season of the yeer to be neer upon fourteen hours , or fourteen a clock ) the story of the former nights tragedy was related & that he had solemnly vowed he should either have his son hanged , or his head struck off , for the committing of a so ingrate , enormous , and detestable crime ; one of his courtiers told him , that ( by all appearance ) his son would save his highness justice a labour , and give it nothing to do ; for that he was like to hang himself , or after some other manner of way to turn his own atropos . the whole court wore mourning for him full three quarters of a yeer together : his funeral was very stately , and on his hearse were stuck more epitaphs , elegies , threnodies , and epicediums , then , if digested into one book , would have out-bulk't all homers works ; some of them being couched in such exquisite and fine latin , that you would have thought great virgil , and baptista mantuanus , for the love of their mother-city , had quit the elysian fields to grace his obsequies : and other of them ( besides what was done in other languages ) composed in so neat italian , and so purely fancied , as if ariosto , dante , petrark , and b●mbo had been purposely resuscitated , to stretch even to the utmost , their poetick vein , to the honour of this brave man ; whose picture till this hour is to be seen in the bed-chambers or galleries of the most of the great men of that nation , representing him on horseback , with a lance in one hand , and a book in the other : and most of the young ladies likewise , that were any thing handsome , in a memorial of his worth , had his effigies in a little oval tablet of gold , hanging 'twixt their breasts ; and held ( for many yeers together ) that metamazion , or intermammilary ornament , an as necessary outward pendicle for the better setting forth of their accoutrements , as either fan , watch , or stomacher . my lord duke , upon the young lady that was crichtoun's mistris , and future wife ( although she had good rents and revenues of her own by inheritance ) was pleased to conferr a pension of five hundred ducats a yeer : the prince also bestowed as much on her , during all the dayes of his life , which was but short ; for he did not long enjoy himself after the cross fate of so miserable an accident . the sweet lady ( like a turtle bewailing the loss of her mate ) spent all the rest of her time in a continual solitariness ; and resolved , as none before crichtoun had the possession of her body , that no man breathing should enjoy it after his decease . the verity of this story i have here related concerning this incomparable crichtoun , may be certified by above two thousand men yet living , who have known him : and truly of his acquaintance there had been a far greater number , but that before he was full 32 yeers of age , he was killed , as you have heard . and here i put an end to the admirable scot. the scene of the choicest acts of this late heros of our time having been the country of italy , the chief state whereof is venice ; it cannot be amiss ( as i have done for spaine , france , holland , denmark , swedland , and germany ) that i make mention of these four scotish colonels , colonel dowglas , colonel balantine , colonel lyon , and colonel anderson ; who ( within these very few yeers ) have done most excellent service to the venetian commonwealth : nor can i well forget that sea-captain , captain william scot , whose martial atchievements in the defence of that state against the turks , may very well admit him to be ranked amongst the colonels : he was vice-admiral to the venetian fleet , and the onely renowned bane and terror of mahometan navigators : whether they had galleys , galeoons , galiegrosses , or huge war-ships , it was all one to him ; he set upon all alike , saying still , the more they were , the manyer he would kill ; and the stronger that the encounter should happen to be , the greater would be his honour , and his prise the richer . he oftentimes so cleared the archipelago of the mussulmans , that the ottoman family at the very gates of constantinople , would quake at the report of his victories : and did so ferret them out of all the creeks of the adriatick gulph , and so shrewdly put them to it , that sometimes they did not know in what part of the mediterranean they might best shelter themselves from the fury of his blows : many of their mariners turned land-souldiers for fear of him ; and of their maritime officers , several took charge of caravans , to escape his hand , which for many yeers together lay so heavy upon them , that he was cryed up for another don jean d' austria , or duke d' orea , by the enemies of that scythian generation ; in spight of which , and the rancour of all their unchristian hearts , he dyed but some eighteen moneths ago in his bed of a feaver in the isle of candia . now as besides those colonels above recited , many other scotish colonels since the jubilee of 1600. till the yeer 1640. have faithfully served the venetian state against both the christian and turkish emperours : so ; in the intervals of that time , have these following scotish colonels been in the service of the king of pole , against both the moscoviter , turk , and swed ; to wit , colonel lermond , colonel wilson , colonel hunter , colonel robert scot , colonel gordon , colonel wood , colonel spang , colonel gun , colonel robertson , colonel rower , and several others . and seeing we are come so far on in the deduction of the scotish colonels , who for the space of thirty or fourty yeers , without reckoning the last ten , have been so famous for their valour , in the continent of europe ( from whence the isle of britain excludes it self ) that neither thick nor thin , hunger nor plenty , nor heat nor cold , was said to have been able to restraine them from giving proof thereof ; and that from the hot climates of spaine , italy , and france , we have in prosecuting the threed of this discourse , travelled through those of a mediocer temper of the low countries , denmark & hungary even to the cold regions of germanie , swedland , and pole ; i hold it expedient before i shut up this enumeration of scotish colonels into a period , that the very scyths and sarmats , even to the almost subarctick incolaries , be introduced to bear record of the magnanimity of the scotish nation ; which , nevertheless ( because i would not trespass upon the readers patience , in making the nomenclature too prolixe ) i make account to do , by setting down only the names of those scotish colonels that served under the great duke of moscovy , against the tartar and polonian ; viz. colonel alexander crawford , colo alexander gordon , colonel william keith , colonel george mathuson , colonel patrick kinindmond , and colonel thomas garne , who ( for the hieght and grosseness of his person , being in his stature taller , and greater in his compass of body , then any within six domes about him ) was elected king of bucharia ; the inhabitants of that country being more inclined to tender their obedience to a man of a burly pitch like him , ( whose magnitude being every way proportionable in all its dimensions , and consisting rather in bones then flesh , was no load to the minde , nor hindrance to the activity of his body ) then to a lower-sized man ; because they would shun equality ( as near as they could ) with him , of whom they should make choice to be their soveraign ; they esteeming nothing more disgraceful , nor of greater disparagement to the reputation of that state , then that their king should , through disadvantage of statute , be looked down upon by any whose affaires ( of concernment perhaps for the weal of the crown ) might occasion a mutual conference face to face . he had ambassadors sent to him to receive the crown , scepter , sword , and all the other royal cognizances belonging to the supreme majesty of that nation : but i heard him say , that the only reason why he refused their splendid offers , and would not undergo the charge of that regal dignity , was , because he had no stomack to be circumcised : however this uncircumcised garne , agnamed the sclavonian , and upright gentile ( for that he loves good fellowship , and is of a very gentile conversation ) served as a colonel , together with the forenamed five , and other unmentioned colonels of the scotish nation in that service , against the crim tartar , under the command of both his and their compatriot , sir alexander leslie , generalissimo of all the forces of the whole empire of russia : which charge ( the wars against the tartarian beginning afresh ) he hath re-obtained , and is in the plenary enjoyment thereof ( as i believe ) at this same instant time ; and that with such approbation for fidelity and valour , that never any hath been more faithful in the discharge of his duty , nor of a better conduct in the ininfinite dangers through which he hath past . i shall only here by the way , before i proceed any further , make bold to desire the reader to consider ( seeing so short a space as thirty or four and thirty yeers time hath produced so great a number of colonels , and others above that degree of the scotish nation , universally renowned for their valour and military atchievements in all the forraign and transmarine countries , states , and kingdoms of christendome ) what vast number of lieutenant-colonels , majors , captaines , lieutenants , ensignes , &c. besides the collateral officers of an army , such as adjutants , quartermasters , commissaries , scoutmasters , marshals , and so forth through all the other offices belonging to the milice of a nation , either by sea or land , should be found of scotish men to have been since they yeere one thousand and six hundred , in the many several out-landish wars of europe ; which i cannot think ( if prejudicacy be laid aside ) but that it will so dispose the reader , that he will acknowledge the scotish nation to have been an honorable nation ( and that of late too ) in their numerousness of able and gallant men totally devoted to the shrine of mars ; of which sort as i have omitted many worthy and renowned colonels abroad , so will i not insist upon the praise of two of our countrymen , sir john hume of eatoun by name , and francis sinclair , natural son to the late earl of catnes ; the first whereof in his travels through italy , by his overmastering , both at the blunt and sharp , the best swordmen and fence-masters of that country , acquired the reputation of the skilfullest man in the world at the rapeer-point , yet being killed at a battel in denmark some few yeers agoe , to shew that there wanted not another of the same scottish nation to supply his place , and to inherit every whit as deservedly that hight of fame conferred on him for his valour , the most couragious and magnanimous acts of the aforesaid francis sinclair will manifest it to the full , with almost the universal testimony of all spaine , italy , and germany , which for many yeers together were the theaters of his never-daunted prowess . to relate all the duels wherein he hath been victorious , and but to sum them together , it would amount to a greater number , then all the lessons that the most consciencious master of escrime that is , doth usually give in a whole three yeers space , to him whom he intends to make a proficient in that faculty : therefore in stead of all ( as by the dimension of hercules foot , one may judge of the stature of his body ; and by the taste of a spoonful ( as the saying is ) to know what kinde of liquor is in a tun ) i will only make mention of two actions of his , one done at the emperours court in vienne , and the other at madrid in spaine . the first was thus : a cerrain gallant nobleman of high germany ( who by the stile of conquerour ( without any other addition ) in duels , wherein he had overthrown all those of any nation that ever coped with him ) having repaired to the great city of vienne , to accresce his reputation in some more degrees , by the subjection of any proud spirit there , eager in that sort of contestation , whereof he heard there were many ; and notice being given to him of this sinclair , who had a perfect sympathy with him in that kind of adventuring humour , they very quickly met with one another , and had no sooner exchanged three words , when time and place being assigned for debating the combate , they determined to take nothing in hand , till first it were made known , who should ( to the very hazard of their lives ) bear clear away the palme , and reap the credit of the bravest champion : but the news thereof being carryed to the emperor ( who being unwilling that the victor should terminate the concertation in the blood of the vanquished , and yet desirous for his own sport , that by them somewhat might be done before him , in matter of tryal which of them should prove most skilful in the handling of his armes ) he enjoyned them , at a perfixed time , in his own presence to decide the controversie with foyles : and for the better animating them thereto , assured them , that which of them soever should give the other the first three free bouts , should , for his salary or epinicion , have a paire of spurs of beaten gold set with diamonds . the combatants very heartily embraced the condition , and were glad to turn the sharp to blunt , to gaine the gold spurs : by which means , their hope of overcoming on both sides , having cheerfully brought them to the appointed place and time designed for the purpose , they had no sooner adjusted themselves in equal termes for foyles and every thing else befitting that jeopardless monomachy , but sinclair ( at first , before he came within full distance , to try the manner of his adversaries play ) made a flourish or two of very nimble and most exquisite falsifyings ; whereat the other ( conceiving them for really-intended thrusts ) was so disordred in his motion , that , offering to ward , where he needed not , and taking the alarm too hot , sinclair was so confident of his own sufficiency against that high-dutchman , that when he had askt the emperor , for how many franch bouts his majesty would adjudge the spurs to be gained , and that the emperor's answer was , for the first three ; sinclair replied , if he did not give him five on end , he should be content to forfeit the spurs , and two hundred crowns besides : whereupon immediately facing his adversary ( to let him know that many ward without a cause , that cannot pary when they should ) with the coinstantanean swiftness of hand and foot , gave him de pie-forme , a terrible slap on the breast , wherewith the german lord did so stagger , that before he could fully recover himself , the blow was doubled , and redoubled , with a sound thwack on the back of those , seconded with another bounce , not leaving him , till with a push , and a thump again he had hit him seven several times , and that with the same confidence & facility , that the usher of a fencinghall useth to alonge against his masters plastron . the emperour , by the thud of each stroak , which farthered his counting , having reckoned beyond the number of the five promised bouts , and unwilling sinclair should lack of his due , or the other have his ribs broken , cryed aloud , hola , forbear , enough : whereupon the duellists desisting , the emperor required them both to stand before him ; who seeing the seven marks which the button of sinclairs foyle , whitened with chalk , had imprinted in the others black sattin doublet , and how they lay in order after the manner of the situation of the seven stars of the little bear , laughed heartily ( for he was a peece of an astronomer , and a great favourer of mathematicians ) then addressing his speech to sinclair ( who had so much natural arithmetick , as to know that seven included five ) asked him , why in livering in of his thrusts he exceeded the promised number , seeing five was susficient for gaining of the prize ; and why being pleased to make them seven , he had fixed them in their stations after the fashion of a charlewaine ? sinclair ( to whom though astronomy might have signified somewhat to eat , for any thing he knew of the science , had nevertheless the perspicacity to make the word charlewaine serviceable to his present purpose ) very promptly answered , sir , i did so place them , in honour of my master charles king of great britain ; and gave in two venees more then i was obliged to , to give your caesarean majesty to understand , that , in the two kingdoms of england and scotland , whereof that isle consists , there are many thousands more expert then i , in matter of martial feats . at which answer the emperor was so well pleased , that he gave him the spurs as his due for the first five , and a gold chaine for the other two . in the mean while ( for the emperors better diversion ) a certain spanish hidalgo of the leopoldo's court , made bold to relate to his imperial majesty , how the said francis sinclair had in the city of madrid performed a more notable exploit , and of far greater adventure , which was this . eight spanish gentlemen being suspicious of sinclair's too intimate familiarity with a kinswoman of theirs ( whom they called prima , that is to say , a she-cozen ) did all together set upon him at one time , with their swords drawn ; which unexpected assault moved him to say , gentlemen , i doubt not but you are valiant men ; therefore if you would have your desire of me , my intreaty is only that you would take it as it becòmes men of valour , and that by trying your fortune against mine , at the swords point , one after another . the spaniards pretending to be men of honour , not only promised to do what he required , but , the better to assure him that they would prove faithful to him in their promise , swore all of them upon a cross which they made with their swords , that they would not faile therein , should it cost them all their lives . in the extremity that sinclair was , this kind of unhoped-for honest dealing did very much incourage him , especially he knowing that he and they all had but toledo-blades , whose fashion was then to be all of one length and size ; in a word , conforme to paction , they fell to it , and that most cleverly , though with such fatality on the spanish side , that in less then the space of half an hour he killed seven of them epassyterotically , that is , one after another ; gratifying the eighth ( to testifie he had done no wrong to the rest ) with the enjoyment of his life , who , rather then to undergoe the hazard of the destiny of his fore-runners , chused to abandon his vindicative humour , and leave unrevenged the blood and honour of his male and female cosens . much more may be said of him , but that i will not now supererogate in magnifying the fulfilment of the readers expectation , by the performance of more then i promised ; being resolved , for brevities sake , to pass over with silence many hundreds of our country ( such as robert scot , who was the deviser of leathern guns ) that were in other parts much esteemed for their inventions of warlike engines . and that since the yeer a thousand and six-hundred , before which time no action hath been performed anywhere , nor from that time , till this within the isle of britain , by any of those colonels and others , whom i have here before recited , for which i have praised them , or otherwaies mentioned any of them ; but by way of designation of their names , in relation to their service abroad : nor amongst them all have i nominated above five or six , that either served in , or did so much as look upon the wars of england , scotland , and ireland ; and yet i expect not to merit blame , albeit of those general persons , and colonels of the scotish nation ( whereof there is a great multitude ) that have served ( since the yeer 1641. ) in these our late wars of england , scotland , and ireland , i make no mention , because multitudo is no more virtus then magnitudo ; for though there be some ( and those but very some ) amongst them , that have been pretty well principled in reason , and had true honor before their eyes ; yet seeing the great mobil of the rest , by circumvolving them into a contrary motion , hath retarded their action , and made their vertue abortive , in not expressing their names , i do them favour , by such concealment obviating the imputation , which they deserve for having been in so bad company , and undersphering themselves to the bodies of those vaster orbs ( whether of the state , milice , or church of scotland ) whose rapidity of violence might hurry them into a course quite opposite to the goodness of their own inclination . for whoever they be ( whether civil or ecclesiastical ) of the scotish nation , whom the english can with any kind of reason upbraid with covetousness , the commons of scotland with oppression , or other states and countryes with treachery and dissimulation ; it is my opinion , that their names should not otherwayes be recorded , but as beacons are set up where there are dangerous passages by sea , that such thrifty navigators ( whether coetaneans or successors ) as intend to saile with safety into the harbour of a good conscience , may thereby avoid the rocks and shelves of their greedy , tyrannous , and hypocritical dealings : nor can it be a sufficient excuse for any of those officers to say they thought they could not offend god therein , for that the kirk did warrant them in what they did ; seeing they might very well know , that it becometh such , as would take upon them a charge over and against the lives of others in the respective preservation and destruction of their souldier-friends and foes , to have principles within themselves for the regulating of their outward actions , and not to be driven like fools for advice sake to yeeld an implicite obedience to the oracles of the delphian presbytery , whose greatest enthusiasts ( for all its cryed-up infallibility ) have not possibly the skill to distinguish betwixt rape-seed and musket-powder . if any say that by taking such a course , their motion seems to be the more celestial , because ( in imitation of the upper orbs ) it is furthered by the assistance of an external intelligence ; i answer , that according to the opinion of him in whose philosophy they read those separated animations , to each of the heavens is allowed an informant as well as assisting soul : and though that were not , the intelligences are so far different , that there is hardly any similitude , whereupon to fixe the comparison : for those superior ones are pure simplicissim acts , insusceptible of passion , and without all matter , or potentiality of being affected with any alteration ; but these are gross mixed patients , subject to all the disorders of the inferiour appetites , plunged in terrestrial dross , and for their profit or lucre in this world , lyable to any new impressions . that the gentry then , and nobility of scotland , whereof for the most part did consist those fresh-water-officers , should by their codrawing in the presbyterian yoak , have plowed such deep and bloody furrows upon the backs of the commons of their own native soyle , is not only abominable , but a thing ridiculous , and an extream scandal to the nation : for when some laird or lord there ( whose tender conscience could embrace no religion that was not gainefull ) had , for having given his voice ( perhaps ) to the augmentation of a ministers stipend , or done such like thing tending to the glory of the new diana of ephesus , obtained a commission for the levying of a regiment of horse , foot , or dragoons , under pretext of fighting for god against the malignants and sectaries ; then was it that by uncessant quarterings , exacting of trencher-money , and other most exorbitant pressures upon the poor tenandry of that country , such cruelty and detestable villany was used , and that oftentimes by one neighbour to another , under the notion of maintaining the covenant , and the cause of god , that hardly have we heard in any age of such abominations done by either turk or infidel : and all out of a devotion to the blessed sum of money , which the master of these oppressed tenants , for saving of his land from being laid wast , must needs disburse : for most of those kirk-officers of regiments , and their subordinado's , were but very seldom well pleased with the production of either man or horse , how apt soever they might seem to prove for military service , alledging some fault or other to the horse ; and that the man , for lack of zeal ( for any thing they knew ) to the covenant , might procure a judgement from heaven upon the whole army ; that therefore they would take but money , thereby the better to enable them to provide for such men and horses , as they might put confidence into . and if it chanced ( as oftentimes it did ) that a country-gentleman , out-putter of foot or horse , being scarce of money , should prove so untractable , as to condescend to nothing but what literally he was bound to ; then by , vertue of the power wherewith they were intrusted , to see their souldiers well clothed , armed , and accommodated with transport-money , and other such appurtenances , they had such a faculty of undervaluing whatever was not good silver and gold , that , to make up the deficiencies , according to their rates , would extend to so great a sum , that hardly could any lyable to a levy , that was refractary to their desire of having money save so much as one single sixpence by his emission of either horse or foot : so fine a trick they had with their counterfeit religion , to make an honest poor gentlemen glad to chuse the worst of two evils , for shunning a third of their own contrivance , worse then they both . and when at any time the innocent gentlemen , in hope of commiseration would present their grievances to the respectvie committees of the shires , seldom or never was there any prevention of , or reparation for the aforesaid abuse : especially in the north of scotland , of all the parts whereof , the committees of the shires of innernass and ross , whether joyntly or separately sitting , proved the most barbarous and inhumane ; it being a commonly-received practise amongst their loggerhead stick wisdoms , not only to pass these and such like enormities with the foresaid officers , but to gratifie them besides , for the laying of a burthen upon their neighbours , which they should have undergone themselves : yea , to such a height did their covetousness and hypocrisie reach , that the better to ingratiate themselves in the favors of the souldiery , for the saving of their pence , when the officers ( out of their laziness ) would be unwilling to travel fourty or fifty miles from their quarters for the taking up of mantenance , or any arreer due of horse and foot-levies ▪ they took this savage and unchristian course , they would point at any whom they had a peck at , pretending he was no good covenanter , and that he favoured toleration ; and for that cause ( being both judges and parties themselves ) would ordaine him , under pain of quartering and plundring , to advance to the insatiable officers so much money , as the debt pretended to be due by those remote inhabitants ( though meer strangers to him ) did extend to : by which means it ordinarily fell out , that the civillest men in all the country , and most plyable to good order , were the greatest sufferers ; and the basest , the greedyest , and the most unworthy of the benefit of honest conversation , the onely men that were exempted , and had immunities . now , when many of these laird and lord kirk-officers had , by such unconscionable means , and so diametrally opposite to all honour and common honesty , acquired great sums of money , then was it that , like good simeons of iniquity , they had recourse to their brother levi , for framing of protestations ; their conscience not serving them to fight for a king , that was like to espouse a malignant interest ; under which cover , free from the tempest of war ( like fruitful brood-geese ) they did stay at home to hatch young chickens of pecunial interest , out of those prodigious egs which the very substance of the commons had laid down to them ( with a curse ) to sit upon . yet , if for fashion sake , at the instigation of inferior officers , who were nothing so greedy as they , some shew of muster was to be made of souldiers to be sent to sterlin-leaguer , or anywhere else ; then were these same very men , whom ( out of their pretended zeal to the good cause ) they had formerly cast , either for malignancy or infencibility , and in lieu of each of them accepted of fifty or threescore dolars , more or less , inrolled in their troops or companies ; when for the matter of three or four dolars , with the consent of a cup of good ale , and some promise of future plunder , they had purchased their good wils to take on with them ; they approving themselves by such insinuating means , good servants , in being able by the talent of their three dolars , to do the state that service , for the which the poor country-gentleman must pay threescore , and be forced to quit his man to boot . truly those are not the scotish colonels whom i intend to commend for valour , it being fitter to recommend them to posterity , as vipers , who , to work out a livelihood to themselves , have not stuck to tear the very bowels of their mother-country , and bury its honor in the dust . such were not those scotish col. i formerly mentioned , whose great vassalages abroad , and enterprises of most magnanimous adventures , undertaken and performed by them in other countries , might very well make a poorer climate then scotland enter in competition with a richer soyle . yet seeing the intellectual faculties have their vertues as well as the moral ; and that learning in some measure is no less commendable then fortitude , as those afore-named scotish men have been famous beyond sea for the military part , so might i mention thrice as many moe of that nation , as i have set down , of war-like officers , who since the yeer one thousand and six hundred , have deserved , in all those aforesaid countryes of france , italy , spaine , flanders , holland , denmark , germany , pole , hungary , and swedland , where they lived , great renown for their exquisite abilities in all kind of literature ; the greatest part of whose names i deem expedient for the present to conceal , thereby to do the more honor to some , whose magnanimity and other good parts now to commemorate , would make one appear ( in the opinions of many ) guilty of the like trespass with them , that , in the dayes of nero , called rome by its proper name , after he had decreed to give it the title of neroniana . nevertheless being to speak a little of some of them , before i lanch forth to cross the seas , i must salute that most learned and worthy gentleman , and most indeared minion of the muses , master alexander ross , who hath written manyer excellent books in latine and english , what in prose , what in verse , then he hath lived yeers ; and although i cannot remember all , yet to set down so many of them as on a sudden i can call to minde , will i not forget ; to the end the reader , by the perusal of the works of so universal a scholar , may reap some knowledge when he comes to read his virgilius evangelizans in thirteen several books ( a peece truly , which when set forth with that decorement of plates it is to have in its next edition , will evidently shew that he hath apparelled the evangelists in more splendid garments , and royal robes , then ( without prejudice be it spoken ) his compatriots buchanan and jhonstoun , have , in their paraphrastick translation of the psalmes , done the king and prophet david . ) his four books of the judaick wars , intituled , de rebus judaicis libri quatuor , couched in most excellent hexameters ; his book penned against a jesuite , in neat latine prose , called rasuratonsoris ; his chymera pythagorica contra lansbergium ; his additions to wollebius and vrsinus ; his book called the new planet no planet ; his meditations upon predestination ; his book intituled the pictures of the conscience ; his questions upon genesis ; his religions apotheosis ; his melissomachia ; his virgilius triumphans ; his four curious books of epigrams in latin elegiacks ; his mel heliconium ; his colloquia plautina ; his mystagoguspoeticus ; his medicus medicatus ; his philosophical touch-stone ; his arcana microcosmi ; his observations upon sir walter rawley ; his marrow of history , or epitome of sir walter rawleigh ' works ; his great chronology in the english tongue ( set forth in folio ) deducing all the most memorable things , that have occurred since the macedonian war , till within some ten or twelve yeers to this time : and his many other learned treatises , whose titles i either know not , or have forgot . besides all these volumes , books , and tractates here recited , he composed above three hundred exquisite sermons , which ( after he had redacted them into an order and diction fit for the press ) were , by the merciless fury of vulcan , destroyed all in one night , to the great grief of many preachers , to whom they would have been every whit as useful as sir edward cooks reports are to the lawyers . but that which i as much deplore , and am as unfainedly sory for , is , that the fire , which ( on that fatal night ) had seazed on the house and closet where those his sermons were consumed , had totally reduced to ashes the very desks wherein were locked up several metaphysical , physical , moral , and dialectical manuscripts ; whose conflagration by philosophers is as much to be bewailed , as by theologically-affected spirits , was that of his most divine elucubrations . this loss truly was irrecoverable , therefore by him at last digested , because he could not help it : but that some losses of another nature , before and after that time by him sustained , have as yet not been repaired , lyeth as a load upon this land , whereof i wish it were disburthened ; seeing it is in behalf of him , who for his piety , theological endowments , philosophy , eloquence , and poesie , is so eminently qualified , that ( according to the metempsychosis of pythagoras ) one would think , that the souls of socrates , chrysostome , aristotle , ciceron , and virgil have been transformed into the substantial faculties of that entelechy , wherewith , by such a conflated transanimation , he is informed and sublimely inspired . he spends the substance of his own lamp , for the weal of others ; should it not then be recruited with new oyle by those that have been enlightened by it ? many enjoy great benefices ( and that deservedly enough ) for the good they do to their coaevals onely ; how much more meritoriously should he then be dealt with , whose literate erogations reach to this and after-ages ? a lease for life of any parcel of land is of less value , then the hereditary purchase thereof : so he of whom posterior generations reap a benefit , ought more to be regarded , then they whose actions perish with themselves . humane reason , and common sense it self instructeth us , that dotations , mortifications , and other honorary recompences , should be most subfervient to the use of those , that afford literatory adminicularies of the longest continuance , for the improvement of our sense and reason . therefore could i wish ( nor can i wish a a thing more just ) that this reverend , worthy , and learned gentleman master rosse , to whom this age is so much beholden , and for whom posterity will be little beholden to this age , if it prove unthankful to him , were ( as he is a favorite of minerva ) courted by the opulent men of our time , as danae was by jupiter ; or that they had as much of mecaena's soul , as he hath of virgil's : for if so it were , or that this isle , of all christendom , would but begin to taste of the happiness of so wise a course , vertue would so prosper , and learning flourish , by his encouragements , and the endeavours of others in imitation of him , that the christians needed lie no longer under the reproach of ignorance , which the oriental nations fixe upon them in the termes of seeing but with one eye ; but in the instance of great britain alone ( to vindicate ( in matter of knowledge ) the reputation of this our western world ) make the chineses , by very force of reason ( of whose authority above them they are not ashamed ) be glad to confess , that the europaeans , as well as themselves , look out with both their eyes , and have no blinkard minds . of which kind of brave men , renowned for perspicacy of sight in the ready perceiving of intellectual objects , and that in gradu excellenti , is this master rosse : the more ample expressing of whose deserved elogies , that i remit unto another time , will i hope be taken in better part , that i intend to praise him againe ; because laus ought to be virtutis assecla ; and he is alwayes doing good . therefore lest i should interrupt him , i will into france , spain , and other countries , to take a view of some great scholars of the scotish nation , who of late have been highly esteemed for their learning in forraign parts : of which number , he that first presents himself is one sinclair , an excellent mathematician , professor regius , and possessor of the chaire of ramus ( though long after his time ) in the university of paris : he wrote besides other books , one in folio , de quadratura circuli . of the same profession , and of his acquaintance , there was one anderson , who likewise lived long in paris , and was for his abilities in the mathematical sciences , accounted the profoundlyest principled of any man of his time : in his studyes he plyed hardest the equations of algebra , the speculations of the irrational lines , the proportions of regular bodies , and sections of the cone ; for though he was excellently well skilled in the theory of the planets , and astronomy ; the opticks , catoptricks , dioptricks , the orthographical , stereographicial , and schenographical projections ; in cosmography , geography , trigonometry , and geodesie ; in the staticks , musick , and all other parts or pendicles , sciences , faculties , or arts of , or belonging to the disciplines mathematical in general , or any portion thereof in its essence or dependances : yet taking delight to pry into the greatest difficulties , to soar where others could not reach , and ( like another archimedes ) to work wonders by geometry , and the secrets of numbers ; and having a body too weak to sustaine the vehement intensiveness of so high a spirit , he dyed young , with that respect nevertheless to succeeding ages , that he left behind him a posthumary-book , intituled andersom opera , wherein men versed in the subject of the things therein contained , will reap great delight and satisfaction . there was another called doctor seaton , not a doctor of divinity , but one that had his degrees at padua , and was doctor utriusque juris ; for whose pregnancy of wit , and vast skill in all the mysteries of the civil and canon laws , being accounted one of the ablest men that ever breathed , he was most heartily desired by pope vrbane the eighth to stay at rome ; and the better to encourage him thereto , made him chief professor of the sapience ( a colledge in rome so called ) where although he lived a pretty while with great honor and reputation , yet at last , ( as he was a proud man ) falling at some ods with il collegio romano , the supreamest seat of the jesuites , and that wherein the general of that numerous society hath his constant residence , he had the courage to adventure coping with them where they were strongest , and in matter of any kind of learning , to give defiance to their greatest scholars ; which he did do with such a hight of spirit , and in such a lofty and bravashing humour , that ( although there was never yet that ecclesiastical incorporation , wherein there was so great universality of literature , or multiplicity of learned men ) he nevertheless misregarding what estimation they were in with others , and totally reposing on the stock or basis of his own knowledge , openly gave it out , that if those teatinos ( his choler not suffering him to give them their own name of jesuites ) would offer any longer to continue in vexing him with their frivolous chat , and captious argumentations , to the impugning of his opinions ( and yet in matters of religion , they were both of one and the same faith ) he would ( like a hercules amongst so many myrmidons ) fal in within the very midst of them , so besquatter them on all sides , and , with the granads of his invincible arguments , put the braines of all and each of them in such a fire , that they should never be able ( pump as they would ) to finde in all the celluls thereof one drop of either reason or learning , wherewith to quench it . this unequal undertaking of one against so many , whereof some were greater courtiers with his papal holiness then he , shortened his abode at rome ; and thereafter did him so much prejudice in his travels through italy , and france , that when at any time he became scarce of money ( to which exigent his prodigality often brought him ) he could not as before expect an ayuda de costa ( as they call it ) or viaticum from any prince of the territories through which he was to pass ; because the chanels of their liberality were stopped , by the rancour and hatred of his conventual adversaries . when nevertheless he was at the lowest ebb of his fortune , his learning , and incomparable facility , in expressing any thing with all the choicest ornaments of , and incident varieties to the perfection of the latine elocution , raised him to the dignity of being possessed with the chair of lipsius , and professing humanity ( in italy called buone letere ) in the famous university of lovan : yet ( like mercury ) unapt to fix long in any one place , deserting lovan , he repaired to paris , where he was held in exceeding great reputation for his good parts and so universally beloved , that both laicks and church-men , courtiers and scholars , gentlemen and merchants , and almost all manner of people , willing to learn some new thing or other ( for , as sayes aristotle , every one is desirous of knowledge ) were ambitious of the enjoyment of his company , and ravished with his conversation . for besides that the matter of his discourse was strong , sententious , and witty , he spoke latine , as if he had been another livy or salustius ; nor , had he been a native of all the three countryes of france , italy , and germany , could he have exprest himself ( as still he did when he had occasion ) with more selected variety of words , nimbler volubility of utterance , or greater terity , for tone , phrase , and accent in all the three languages thereto belonging . i have seen him circled about at the louvre , with a ring of french lords and gentlemen , who hearkned to his discourse with so great attention , that none of them , so long as he was pleased to speak , would offer to interrupt him ; to the end that the pearles falling from his mouth , might be the more orderly congested in the several treasures of their judgements : the ablest advocates , barristers , or counselors at law of all the parlement of paris , even amongst those that did usually plead en la chambre doree , did many times visit him at his house , to get his advice in hard debatable points . he came also to that sublime pitch of good diction even in the french tongue , that there having past , by vertue of a frequent intercourse , several missives in that idiom , betwixt him and le sieur de balzak , who by the quaintest romancealists of france , and daintiest complementers of all its lushions youth , was almost uncontrollably esteemed in eloquence to have surpassed ciceron ; the straine of seatons letters was so high , the fancy so pure , the words so well connexed , and the cadence so just , that balzak ( infinitely taken with its fluent , yet concise oratory ) to do him the honor that was truly due unto him ) most lovingly presented him with a golden pen , in acknowledgement of seatons excelling him , both in retorick and the art of perswasion ; which gift proceeding from so great an oratour , and for a supereminency in that faculty wherein himself , without contradiction , was held the chiefest of this and all former ages that ever were born in the french nation , could not chuse but be acounted honorable . many learned books were written by this seaton in the latine tongue , whose titles ( to speak ingenuously ) i cannot hit upon . there was another scotish man , named cameron , who , within these few yeers , was so renowned for learning over all the provinces of france , that , besides his being esteemed for the faculties of the minde , the ablest man of all that country , he was commonly designed ( because of his universal reading ) by the title of the walking liberary ; by which he being no less known then by his own name , he therefore took occasion to set forth an excellent book in latine , and that in folio , intituled , bibliotheca movens ; which afterwards was translated into the english language . to mention those former scotish men , and forget their compatriot barclay , the author of argenis icon animorum , and other exquisite treatises , translated out of latine into the languages almost of every country , where use is made of printing , would argue in me a great neglect : it shall suffice nevertheless for this time , that i have named him ; for i hope the reader will save me a labour , and extoll his praises to as great hight , when he shall be pleased to take the paines to peruse his works . yet that the learning of the travelers of the scotish nation may not seem to be tyed to the climate of france ( although all scots , by the privilege of the laws of that kingdome , be naturalized french , and that all the french kings , since the dayes of charlemaine , which is about a thousand yeers since , by reason of their fidelity to that crown , have put such real confidence in the scots , that whither soever the king of france goeth , the scots are nearest to him of any , and the chief guard on which he reposeth for the preservation of his royal person ) there was a scotish man named melvil , who in the yeer 1627. had a pension of king philip the fourth , of six hundred ducats a yeer , for his skilfulness in the hebrew , caldean , syraick , aethiopian , samaritan , and arabick tongues , beyond all the christians that ever were born in europe . the service he did do the spanish king in those languages ( especially the arabick and caldean ( which , after great search made over all his ample territories , and several other kingdoms besides , for some able man to undergo the task , could not be got performed by any but him ) was to translate into latine or spanish some few books of those six hundred great volumes , taken by don juan de austria , at the battel of lepanto , from the great turk , which now lye in the great library of the magnifick palace of the escurial , some seven leagues westward from madrid , and otherwayes called san lorenço el real . of those and many other mental abilities of that nature , he gave after that most excellent proofs , both at rome , naples , and venice . that most learned latine book in folio , treating of all the mathematical arts and sciences , which was written by that scotish gentleman sempil , resident in madrid , sheweth that scotish spirits can produce good fruits , even in hot climates . another named gordon , of the scotish nation likewise , wrote a great latin book in folio , of chronology , which is exceeding useful for such as in a short time would attaine to the knowledge of many histories . another gordon also beyond sea , penned several books of divinity in an excellent stile of latin. of which kinde of books , but more profoundly couched , another scot named turneboll , wrote a great many . these four eminent scots i have put together , because they were societaries by the name of jesus , vulgarly called jesuits ; some whereof are living as yet ; and none of those that are not , dyed above fourteen yeers ago . methinks i were to blame , should i in this nomenclature leave out dempster , who for his learning was famous over all italy , had made a learned addition to rossinus , and written several other excellent books in lat in ; amongst which , that which doth most highly recommend him to posterity , is the work which he penned of five thousand illustrious scots , the last liver whereof ( as is related in the 64. page of this book ) dyed above fifty yeers since ; for which , together with the other good parts wherewith he was endowed , himself was truly illustrious . balfour , a professor of philosophy in bourdeaux , wrote an excellent book in latine upon the morals : so did another of the scotish nation , named donaldson , upon the same very subject and that very accurately . primrose a scotish man , who was a preacher in french at bourdeaux , and afterwards became one of the three that preached in the french church at london , wrote several good books both in latin and french. doctor liddel penned an exquisite book of physick , and so did doctor william gordon ; and both in the latine tongue : which two doctors were for their learning renownedover all germany . pontaeus a scotish man , though bred most of his time in france , by several writings of his obvious to the curious reader , gave no small testimony of his learning . there was a professor of the scotish nation within these sixteen yeers in somure , who spoke greek with as great ease , as ever cicero did latine ; and could have expressed himself in it as well , and as promptly , as in any other language : yet the most of the scotish nation never having astricked themselves so much to the propriety of words , as to the knowledge of things , where there was one preceptor of languages amongst them , there were above forty professors of philosophy : nay , to so high a pitch did the glory of the scotish nation attaine over all the parts of france , and for so long time together continue in that obtained hight , by vertue of an ascendant the french conceived the scots to have above all nations , in matter of their subtlety in philosophical disceptations , that there hath not been till of late , for these several ages together , any lord , gentleman , or other in all that country , who being desirous to have his son instructed in the principles of philosophy , would intrust him to the discipline of any other , then a scotish master ; of whom they were no less proud then philip was of aristotle , or tullius of cratippus . and if it occurred ( as very often it did ) that a pretender to a place in any french university , having in his tenderer yeers been subferulary to some other kind of schooling , should enter in competition with another aiming at the same charge and dignity , whose learning flowed from a caledonian source commonly the first was rejected , and the other preferred : education of youth in all grounds of literature , under teachers of the scotish nation , being then held by all the inhabitants of france , to have been attended ( caeteris paribus ) with greater proficiency , then any other manner of breeding subordinate to the documents of those of another country . nor are the french the only men have harboured this good opinion of the scots , in behalf of their inward abilitles ; but many times the spaniards , italians , flemins , dutch , hungarians , sweds , and polonians , have testified their being of the same mind , by the promotions whereunto , for their learning , they in all those nations , at several times have attained . here nevertheless it is to be understood , that neither these dispersedly-preferred scots , were all of one and the same religion , nor yet any one of them a presbyterian . some of them were , and are as yet popish prelates , such as the bishop of vezon , and chalmers bishop of neems , and signor georgio con ( who wrote likewise some books in latine ) was by his intimacy with pope vrban's nephew don francesco don antonio , and don tadaeo barbarini , and for his endeavoring to advance the catholico-pontificial interest in great britain , to have been dignified with a cardinals hat , which ( by all appearance ) immediately after his departure from london , he would have obtained as soon as he had come to rome , had death not prevented him by the way in the city of genua : but had he returned to this island with it , i doubt it would have proved ere now as fatal to him , as another such like cap in queen maries time had done to his compatriot cardinal betoun . by this as it is perceivable that all scots are not presbyterians , nor yet all scots papists : so would not i have the reputation of any learned man of the scotish nation to be buryed in oblivion , because of his being of this or this , or that , or you , or of that other religion ; no more then if we should cease to give learning and moral vertues their due , in the behalfe of pregnant and good spirits born and bred in several climates ; which to withhold from them ( whether perisians , heteroscians or amphiscians , would prove very absurd to the humane ingenuity or ingenuous humanity of a true cosmopolite . for we see how the various aspect of the heavens , in their asteristick and planetary influences , according to the diversity of our sublunary situations , disposeth the inclinations of the earths respective inhabitants differently ; whence ( as is said in the 56. page of this book ) the spaniards are proud , the french inconstant , the italians lascivious , &c. and every nation almost in their humour , not only discrepant from one another , but each having some disorderly motion , which another hath not , makes the other to be possessed with some irregularity which the former wants . we know the hollanders are more penurious then the high germans ▪ and they more intemperate then the spaniards , who againe are more lecherous then the hollanders . now seeing ex malis moribus bonae oriuntur leges ▪ and that vices , like diseases of the body , must be cured by contraries , it will cleerly follow , there being vices contrary to other , as well as vice to vertue , that the laws curbing thoses vices in the opposite extreams , must needs be very dissonant from one another . do not we see that in holland to play the merchant is accounted honorable , although it be thought disgraceful in high germany , for a gentleman to use anykind of traffick ? the spaniard holds him worse then a beast , that is at any time drunk ; yet the dutch-man esteems him no good fellow , that sometimes is not . the hollander deems him unworthy of the name of man , that fornicates before he marry ; but the spaniard hardly doth repute him a man , who hath not exercised those male-abilities whereby he is distinguished from the woman . thus , according to the genius of each climate , statutes , acts , and ordinances being instituted for the regulating of mens actions ; and our obedience to superior powers by custome becomming ( as it were ) natural , we by experience finde , that the religion wherewith men are most accustomed , lyes best to their consciences . for that it is so , we know by the vehemency of fidimplicitaries , of whom some will chuse to lose their lives before they quit their religion , although they be altogether ignorant of what they should believe till they ask the minister ; whose custome ( to make their consciences subservient to their choler ) is to principle them with the negative faith , without any great positive doctrine ( for so begins the covenant ) of which kind of zealous disciples was that covenanting gentleman , who burnt a great many historical and philosophical books , thinking they had been books of popery ; he taking them to be such , because of the red letters he saw in their titles and inscriptions . nor shall we need to think it strange , that in the world there are so many several religions , if we consider that the divers temperaments of our bodies alter our inclinations , from whose disparity arise repugnant laws , which long obedience makes it seem a sacriledge to violate . in my opinion , truly , there is nothing more natural then variety yea , and that sometimes with opposition . are not we composed of the four elements , which have their contrary as wel as symbolizing qualities ? and doth not the manner of their mixture , and the degrees ( by more or less ) of the qualities from thence flowing in the constitution of mens bodies , disagree in all the persons of the world ? hence some are melancholious , some phlegmatick , some cholerick , and some sanguinean ; and every one of those more or less , according to the humour that affects him in its quantity and quality . thus if men were left to themselves , every one would have a several religion ; but seeing to reap good from one another , we must to one another apply our selves ; & that this application without conformity , would prove destructive ; therefore is it that the individuals of mankinde have been still pleased to forego some natural interest they had in peculiar differences , the better to erect an uniformity in their society , for that self-preservation , which is the chief end of their designes . this making either a king or state , we come then to have laws imposed on us according to the climate or disposition of the people . and although i know there be a difference bewixt divine and humane institutions , and that it is fitting wicked thoughts be punished as well as words or actions : yet do i appeal to the judgement of any that will ( in casting his eye upon the world , as it is and still hath been ) consider but the various governments in the regulating of the deeds of the consciences of men ; if he finde it not to be true , that over the whole universe , amongst the christians , jews , paynims , and mahumetans , both in this and former ages , religions almost have been still distinguished by secular soveraignties , each state having its own profession , and the faith of one climate being incompatible with that of another ; and yet in the duties commonly observed 'twixt neighbor and neighbor in matter of buying and selling , trucking , changing , and such like sociable commutations , there is as great unanimity by the most part of the world , maintained even in the bonds of honesty , as if ( as they know what pleaseth god , should please them ) they were of the opinion of tamarlain , who believed , that god was best pleased with diversity of religions , variety of worship , dissentaneousness of faith , and multiformity of devotion . for this cause prescinding from the religion of any of my compatriots , which if displeasing to god , will no doubt at last displease themselves , and hurry upon them that punishment which we ought not to aggravate before its time , by detaining from them what praise to them is due for the natural and moral accomplishments wherewith god hath endowed them for our benefit ; for in praising them , we praise god , who hath made them the instruments of doing us good . these three profound and universal scholars of the scotish nation , tyry of the house of drumkilbo , mackbrek , and broun , deserve a rank in this list of men of literature , as well as chisum the bishop of vezon , and others of the romish faith above mentioned , and for whose praises i have already apologized . tyry wrote books of divinity in a most acurate straine ; and being assistant to the general of the jesuites , was the second person of all that vast ecclesiastical republick , which reacheth as far as to the outmost territories of all the christian kings and states of the whole continent of the world : a higher place then which amongst them , no stranger ever attained to in italy , which is the place of their supremest jurisdiction . mackbrek is eminent for his literature in pole , and broun in germany ; and both of them authors of good books . to hit upon the names of others such as these of the scotish nation , renowned for learning even in remoter parts of the world , it would be a task not so proper for any , as for the great traveler lithco , a compatriot likewayes of theirs , who in nineteen yeers space traveled three times by land over all the known parts almost of europe , asia , and africk , as by a book of a pretty bulk in quarto set forth by himself , is more evidently made manifest : the said lithco also is an author of several other books ; and so was simon graham a great traveler and very good scholar , as doth appear by many books of his emission ; but being otherwayes too licentious , and given over to all manner of debordings , the most of the praise i will give him , wil be to excuse him , in these terms of aristotle : nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae . some other eminent men for literature of the scotish nation , besides those formerly rehearsed , have been much esteemed of abroad , although they were no roman catholicks ; such as doctor john forbas , who was a professor of divinity in leyden , and wrote an excellent book of divinity in folio , called irenicon . doctor read likewise was an able scholar , as may appear by his book of anatomy , and other learned writtings . now seeing i am from beyond sea bringing the enumeration of my scholars homewards , i cannot forget the names of doctor baleanquel , doctor sibbalds , doctor stuart , and doctor michel , all able divines , and sometimes beneficed men in england . how much the protestant saith oweth to doctor robert baron for his learned treatises ( against turnebol the jesuite ) de objecto formali fidei , i leave to be judged by those that have perused them . to the conversatiof doctor william lesly ( who is one of the most profound and universal scholars now living ) his friends and acquaintance of any literature are very much beholding , but to any books of his emission , nothing at all ; whereat every one that knoweth him , wondreth exceedingly : and truly so they may ; for though scripturiency be a fault in feeble pens , and that socrates the most learned man of his time set forth no works : yet can none of these two reasons excuse his not evulging somewhat to the publike view , because he is known to have an able pen , whose draughts would grace the paper with impressions of inestimable worth : nor is the example of socrates able to a pologize for him , unless he had such disciples as plato and aristotle , who having seposited in their braines the scientifick treasures of their masters knowledge , did afterwards ( in their own works ) communicate them to the utility of future generations : yet that this caledonian socrates ( though willing ) could not of late have been able to dispose of his talent , did proceed from the merciless dealings of some wicked anites , lycons , and melits of the covenant ; the cruelty of whose perverse zeal , will keep the effects of his vertue still at under , till by the perswasion of some honest lysias , the authority of the land be pleased to reseat him into his former condition , with all the encouragements that ought to attend so prime a man. doctor john gordon sometime minister of elgin , doctor william hogstoun , and doctor james sibbet , are men who have given great proof of their learning , as well by treatises which they have divulged , as in all manner of academical exercitations . doctor william guild deserveth by himself to be remembred , both for that he hath committed to the press many good books tending to the edification of the soul , and bettering of the minde ; and that of all the divines that have lived in scotland these hundred yeers , he hath been the most charitable , and who bestowed most of his own to publike uses . the lovingness of his heart dilates it self to many , and the center of his desires is the common weal : in matter of great edifices , where he builds not , he repaires ; and many churches , hospitals , colledges and bridges , have been the objects of his beneficence . but to shew the vertue of this man beyond thousands of others richer then he , even of those that had a nearer and more immediate call to the performance of such charitable offices , when he was principal of the old colledge of aberdeen , and that at a time , when , by reason of the sword everywhere raging through the land , all schooles almost were laid waste ; so great was his industry , so prudent his government , and so liberal his erogations , that the number of the scholars there , all the time that he ruled , did by threescore and ten a yeer , exceed the greatest confluence that ever was therein since the foundation of that university ; to which i wish all happiness , because of him for whom this book is intended , who learned there the elements of his philosophy , under the conduct of one master william seaton , who was his tutor ; a very able preacher truly , and good scholar , and whom i would extoll yet higher , but that being under the consistorian lash , some critick presbyters may do him injury , by pretending his dislike of them , for being praised by him , who idolizeth not their authority . the same reason invites me not to insist upon the praises of master william lawder preacher at ava , a good divine , and excellent poet , both in latine and english . and for the same cause must i forbear to spend encomions upon that worthy gentleman master david leech , who is a most fluent poet in the latine tongue , an exquisite philosopher and profound theolog. seeing i am come to speak againe of scotish poets , which have flourished of late , the foresaid master leech hath an elder brother named john , who hath set forth four or five most excellent books of epigrams and eclogues in the latine tongue . one master andrew ramsey likewise hath been the author of books of very good epigrams in latine . several others in that nation are and have been of late very good latine poets ; amongst which i must needs commemorate doctor arthur jhonstoun , a physician by profession , yet such a one as had been so sweetly imbued by the springs of helieon , that before he was full three and twenty yeers of age , he was laureated poet at paris , and that most deservedly , as may appear by his par●rgon , his paraphrastick translation of the psalmes , ( wherein if he excell not , i am sure he equaleth buchanan ) and some other treatises by name to me unknown . his brother also doctor william jhonstoun was a good poet in latine , and a good mathematician , acknowledged to be such ( which was none of his meanest praises ) by master robert gordon of straloch , one of the ablest men of scotland in the mathematical faculties , and who , of all mathematicians , hath done it most honor , by having taken the paines to set down all the shires and countries thereof in most exact geographical maps ; which designe though intended , essayed , and blocked by many others , yet was never brought to its full and compleat perfection , but by this gentleman of the name of gordon , intituled the laird of straloch ; who being loath his vertue and learning should expire with himself , hath the most hopeful and best educated children of any whosoever within two hundred miles of his house . these mathematical blades put me in mind of that dr. liddel ( of whom , for his abilities in physick , i made mention in p. 186. which i had reason to do , because of his learned books written in latin , de diaeta , de febribus , & de methodo medicinae ) who for his profoundness in these siences of sensible immaterial objects , was everywhere much renowned , especially at francfort de maine , francfort on the oder , and heidelberg , where he was almost as well known , as the monstrous bacchanalian tun , that stood thre in his time . he was an eminent professor of the mathematicks , a disciple of the most excellent astronomer , tycho brahe , and condisciple of that worthy longomontanus : yet in imitation of aristotle ( whose doctrine with great proficiency he had imbued ) esteeming more of truth then of either socrates or plato , when the new star began to appear in the constellation of cassiopeia , there was concerning it such an intershocking of opinions , betwixt tycho brahe and doctor liddel , evulged in print to the open view of the world , that the understanding reader could not but have commended both for all , and yet ( in giving each his due ) praised tycho brahe most for astronomy , and liddel for his knowledge above him in all the other parts of philosophy . as this doctor liddel was a gallant mathematician , and exquisite physician ; so being desirous to propagate learning to future ages , and to make his own kindred the more enamoured of the sweetness thereof , especially in mathematical sciences , he bequeathed fourty pounds english money a yeer , to the new colledge of the university of aberdeen , for the maintenance of a mathematical professor ; with this proviso , that the neerest of his own kinsemen ( caeteris paribus ) should be preferred before any other . this any rational man would think reasonable ; nor was it truly much controverted for the space of fourteen or fifteen yeers together , after the making of the legacy ; at which time his nephew on the brothers side being a childe , and but then initiated to the rude elements of latine , one doctor william jhonstoun was preferred to the place , because there was none , at that time , of doctor liddels consanguinity able to discharge it : a reason verily relevant enough . but by your leave , good reader , when doctor william jhonstoun dyed , and that doctor liddels nephew , master duncan liddel by name , was then of that maturity of age , and provection of skil in most of the disciplines mathematical , as was sufficient for the exercise of that duty , and the meriting of his uncles benefice ; did the good men rulers at the helme there , make any conscience of the honest doctors latter will ? no , forsooth ; the oracle must be first consulted with : the ministerian philoplutaries ( my tongue forks it , i have mistaken it seems one word for another , i should have said philosophers ) thought fit otherwayes to dispose thereof ; for , say they , master duncan liddel hath committed the hainous sin of fornication , and begot a young lass with childe , therefore his uncles testament must be made voide , in what relates to his enjoyment of that dotation . o brave logick , and curious commentary upon a later will for the better explication of the mind of the defunct ! which presbyterian doctrine , had it bin in request in the daies of socrates , what fine pass would the world have been brought to ever since that time , by that ignorance which should have over-clouded us , through our being destitute of the works of plato , aristotle , and euclid , with all the scholiasts that have glossed on them these two thousand yeers past ; for , by all appearance , those three prime grecians would have been forced in their younger yeers to betake themselves to some other profession then philosophy , for want of a master to instruct them in the principles thereof ; for the presbytery of athens ( no doubt ) would have pearched up poor socrates upon a penitentiary pew , and outed him of his place , for having two wives at once ( neither whereof , whether xantippe , or myrto , was either so handsome or good as master liddels concubine ) and in lieu of that trespasser , supplyed the academical chaire with the breech of a more sanctified brother , whose zealous jobernolisme would never have affected the antipresbyterian spirits of plato , euclid , or aristotle ; nor gained to his schoole any disciples , who should have been able from such a muddy fountain to derive any clear springs of learning to after-ages , nor benefit posterity with any other kind of literate works , then such as the pretended holy men ( and accusers of socrates ) anitus , lycon , and melitus by name , did set forth ; which to the eyes of both body and minde , have ever since their time , been of the colour of the duke of vandomes cloak , invisible . but if one durst make bold to speak to those great professors of piety , i would advise them out of the evangile , to take the beam out of their own eye , before they meddle with the moat that is in their neighbors ; and to consider , that the sin of theft which they committed , in robbing master liddel of his due , is a far more hainous transgression , then that single fornication ; for which , besides the forfeiture of what was mortified to him , he was by them for a long time together most rigorously persecuted . nor do i think their fault can be better expiated , then by fulfilling the contents of the legacy , and investing liddal in his own right ; which that i may seem to avouch with the better ground of reason , i dare almost perswade my self , that there is not any within the isle of britain , with whom ( taking in all the mathematical arts and sciences together , practical and theoretick ) he will not be well pleased ( upon occasion ) to adventure a dispute for superiority in the most , and that with a willingness to forego and renounce any claim , title , or priviledge he can , or may pretend to for the chaire of mathematical professor in new aberdeen , in case of non-prevalency . this is more ( some will say ) then his outside doth promise , and that to look to him , one would not think he had such abilities . what then ? do not we see in apothecaries shops , pots of the same worth and fashion containe drugs of a different , value , and sometimes the most precious oyntment put in the coursest box ? so may a little and plaine man in outward shape inclose a minde high and sublime enough ; a giant like spirit in a low stature , being able to overtop a colossus with pygmaean endowments . but were there no other remora or obstruction to retard his intended progress in mathematical designes , the inward qualifications of his minde to the advancement of those sciences , would quickly raise his person to a greater estimation : yet truly as he is in london for the present , i can no better compare him , then to an automatary engine , wherein there are many several springs , resorts and wheels , which though when once put into a motion , would produce most admirable effects , are nevertheless forced , for want of a convenient agent to give them the due brangle , to lye immobile , and without efficacy . such an agent is a mecaenas , a patron , a promover of learning , a favorer of the muses , and protector of sholars : in the production of which kind of worthy men , were this land a lone but a little more fertil , not only great britain , but the whole world besides would be the better for it . as for such of the scotish nation as of late have been famous for english poesie , the first that occurs , is sir william alexander , afterwards created earle of sterlin : he made an insertion to sir philip sidneys arcadia , and composed several tragedies , comedies , and other kind of poems which are extant in a book of his in folio , intituled sterlins works . the purity of this gentlemans vein was quite spoiled by the corruptness of his courtiership ; and so much the greater pity ; for by all appearance , had he been contented with that mediocrity of fortune he was born unto , and not aspired to those grandeurs of the court , which could not without pride be prosecuted , nor maintained without covetousness , he might have made a far better account of himself . it did not satisfie his ambition to have a laurel from the muses , and be esteemed a king amongst poets , but he must be king of some new-found-land ; and like another alexander indeed , searching after new worlds , have the soveraignty of nova scotia . he was born a poet , and aimed to be a king ; therefore would he have his royal title from king james , who was born a king , and aimed to be a poet. had the stopped there , it had been well : but the flame of his honour must have some oyle wherewith to nourish it . like another king arthur , he must have his knights , though nothing limited to so small a number : for how many soever that could have looked out but for one day like gentlemen , and given him but one hundred and fifty pounds sterlin ( without any need of a key●or opening the gate to enter through the temple of vertue , which in former times was the only way to honour ) they had a scale from him whereby to ascend unto the platformes of vertue ; which they treading underfoot , did slight the ordinary passages , and to take the more sudden possession of the temple of honour , went upon obscure by-paths of their own , towards some secret angiports and dark posterndoors , which were so narrow , that few of them could get in , till they had left all their gallantry behind them ; yet such being their resolution , that in they would , and be worshipful upon any tearms , they misregarded all formerly-used steps of promotion , accounting them but unnecessary ; and most rudely rushing in unto the very sanctuary , they immediately hung out the orange colours , to testifie their conquest of the honour of knight-baronet . their king nevertheless , not to staine his royal dignity , or to seem to merit the imputation of selling honor to his subjects , did for their money give them land , and that in so ample a measure , that every one of his knight-baronets had for his hundred & fifty pounds sterlin heritably disponed unto him six thousand good and sufficient acres of nova scotia ground , which being but at the rate of six pence an acre , could not be thought very dear , considering how prettily in the respective parchments of disposition they were bounded and designed fruitful corne-land , watered with pleasant rivers , running alongst most excellent and spacious meadows ; nor did there want abundance of oaken groves in the midst of very fertil plaines ( for if they wanted any thing , it was the scrivener or writers fault ; for he gave order , as soon as he received the three thousand scots marks , that there should be no defect of quantity or quality , in measure or goodness of land ) and here and there most delicious gardens and orchards , with whatever else could in matter of delightful-ground , best content their fancies ; as if they had made purchase amongst them of the elysian fieldes , or mahumets paradise . after this manner my lord sterlin for a while was very noble ; & according to the rate of sterlin money , was as twelve other lords in the matter of that frankness of disposition , which not permitting him to dodge it upon inches & ells , better and worse , made him not stand to give to each of his champions territories of the best and the most : and although there should have happened a thousand acres more to be put in the charter or writing of disposition then was agreed upon at first ; he cared not ; half a piece to the clerk was able to make him dispense with that . but at last , when he had inrolled some two or three hundred knights , who , for their hundred and fifty peeces each , had purchased amongst them several millions of neocaledonian acres , confirmed to them and theirs for ever , under the great seal , the affixing whereof was to cost each of them but thirty peeces more , finding that the society was not like to become any more numerous , and that the ancient gentry of scotland esteemed of such a whimsical dignity as of a disparagement rather then addition to their former honor , he bethought himself of a course more profitable for himself , and the future establishment of his own state ; in prosecuting whereof , without the advice of his knights ( who represented both his houses of parliament , clergy and all ) like an absolute king indeed , disponed heritably to the french , for a matter of five or six thousand pounds english money , both the dominion and propriety of the whole continent of that kingdom of nova scotia , leaving the new baronets to search for land amongst the selenits in the moon , or turn knights of the sun : so dearly have they bought their orange riban , which ( all circumstances considered ) is and will be no more honorable to them or their posterity , then it is or hath been profitable to either . what i have said here , is not by way of digression , but to very good purpose , and pertinent to the subject in hand ; for as armes and arts commonly are paralleled , and that pallas goes armes with a helmet , i held it expedient , lest the list of the scholars set down in this place , should in matter of preeminence be too far over-peered by the roll of the souldiers above recited , that my lord sterlin should here represent the place of a king for the literatory part , as well as there did the great uncircumcised garne for the military ; and bring nova scotia in competition with bucharia . besides this lord alexander , drummon and wishart have published very good poems in english . nor is master ogilvy to be forgot , whose translation of virgil , and of the fables of aesop in very excellent english verses , most evidently manifesteth that the perfection of the english tongue is not so narrowly confined , but that it may extend it self beyond the natives on this side of barwick . i might have named some more scotish poets both in english and latine , but that besides ( as i often told ) i intend not to make a compleat enumeration of all , there is a latin book extant , which passeth by the name of deliciae poetarum scotorum , wherein the reader may finde many ( even of those that have lived of late yeers ) whom i have here ommitted ; as i have done several other able men of the scotish nation in other faculties , such as master david chalmers , who in italy penned a very good book , and that in neat latine , treating of the antiquities of scotland ; and had it printed at paris : as also one simson , who wrote in latine four exquisite books of hieroglyphicks : and one hart in the city of london at this present , who wrote the fort royal of scripture , &c. the excellency of doctor william davison in alchymy above all the men now living in the world , whereof by his wonderful experiments he giveth daily proof , although his learned books published in the latine tongue did not evidence it , meriteth well to have his name recorded in this place : and after him , doctor leeth ( though in time before him ) designed in paris , where he lived by the name of letu ; who , as in the practise and theory of medicine he excelled all the doctors of france , so in testimony of the approbation he had for his exquisiteness in that faculty , he left behinde him the greatest estate of any of that profession then ; as the vast means possest by his sons and daughters there as yet , can testifie . amongst those eminent doctors of physick , i ought not to forget doctor fraser ; who was made doctor at toulouse , with the universal approbation and applause of that famous university ; and afterwards succeeded to doctor jhonstoun's place of physician in ordinary to the late king. there is another scotish gentleman likewise , of the name of wallace ( in france called devalois ) who enjoyeth ( and hath so done these many yeers ) the dignity of a prime counsellor of the parlament of grenoble , the capital city of the province of dauphiné ; and is withal the chief favourite and the only trustee of the grand mareshal de criky . now as in this heterogenean miscellany we have proceeded from the body to the purse , that is , metonymically , from the physician to the lawyer : so after the same desultory method ( which may be well excused in this unpremeditated , and almost extemporanean treatise , ) we may for the souls sake ( which in this later age ( so far as metaphors may with proper significations enter in competition ) hath been no less subject to poverty and diseases than any of the former two ) have another hint at some of our late scotish divines ; the first whereof , and that prioritate dignitatis , that to my memory presenteth himself , is doctor william forbas , principal once of the colledge of new aberdeen , and afterwards made bishop of edenburgh ; who was so able a scholar , that since the daies of scotus subtiles , there was never any that professed either divinity or philosophy in scotland , that in either of those faculties did parallel him . he left manuscripts of great learning behind him , which as i am informed were bought at a good rate by doctor laud late archbishop of canterbury , and primate of england ; whose spiritual brother spotteswood , late archbishop of saint andrews , and chancellor of scotland , was likewise endowed with a great deal of learning ; by means whereof although he wrote many good books , yet that wherein he bestowed most pains , was a large book in folio , intituled the history of the church of scotland ; which i believe was never printed : yet the manuscript thereof , written with spotteswod's own hand , i saw presented at whitehall , in the lobby betwixt the little gallery and privy chamber , now called the admiralty court , by maxwel late bishop of rosse , to the late king , who even then delivered it to his secretary of state for scotland , william earl of lanerick by name , who was the same duke hamiltouu of hamiltoun , that was killed at worcester , and only brother to james duke by the same aforesaid title , who two yeers before that , lost his head at westminster in the palace-yard : but what became of that manuscript afterwards , i cannot tell ; but this i know , that the tenderer thereof ( upon his knees to his late majesty , as the gift of a deceased man ; for the author dyed but the very day before ) master john maxwel by name , was a very learned man , and author of some good books . yet lest the readers humour should be inflamed with the mentioning of these three malignant prelates , i must afford him for antidote another trinity of a contraryoperation , all in one dose , the ingredients wherof are henderson , gillespick , and rutherford ; named alexander , george , and samuel , all masters truly , and have been so to my knowledge these twelve yeers past ; which three have been or are ( for the first two of them are dead ) very able and learned men ; whose books nevertheless ( for they were all authors ) i will in some things no otherwayes commend , then andraeas rivetus professor of leyden , did the doctrine of buchanan and knox ; whose rashness ( in apologizing for them ) he ascribed prae fervido scotorum ingenio , & ad audendum prompto . truly , and without flattery be it spoken , ( for i believe none that knows me , will twit me with that vice ) the nation of scotland hath , besides those i have here nominated , produced several excellent spirits ( and that of late too ) whose abilities by the presbyterian persecution , and the indigence it hath brought upon them , have been quite smothered , and hid as a candle under a bushel . many learned books , written in scotland , for want of able and skillful printers , and other necessaries requisite for works of such liberal undertaking , have perished ; and sometimes after they are ready for the press ( if the author in the interim happen to dy ) the wife and children ( for the most part ) like rats and mice ( that preferr the chest where the bread and cheese is kept , to the coffer wherein is the silver and gold ) to save a little money , make use of the aforesaid papers ( without any regard to the precious things contained in them ) to fold perhaps their butter and cheese into , or to other less honorable employments . so unfortunate a thing it is , that either good spirits should be struck with penury , or that their writings should fall into the hands of ignorants . that poverty is an enemy to the exercise of vertue , and that non facile emergunt quorum virtutibus obstat res angusta domi , is not unknown to any acquainted with plutocracy , or the soveraign power of mony : but if the great men of the land would be pleased to salve that sore ( which possibly would not be so expensive to them as either their hawks or hounds ) then peradventure would these ingenious blades sing out aloud , and cheerfully , with martial , sunt mecaenates non deerunt flacce marones ; and it might very probably be , and that in a short space , that , by such gallant incitements ( through a vertuous emulation who should most excell other ) scotland would produce , for philosophy , astronomy , natural magick , poesie , and other such like faculties , as able men as ever were duns-scotus , sacroboscus , reginaldus scotus , and other compatriots of these three scots , whose names i would not insert in the roll of the rest , because they flourished before the yeer 1600. now as i have not mentioned any scotish man to praise him for eminent actions done by him , either in the field or schoole , preceding the yeer 1600. ( which if i had had a minde to do , i would not have omitted the naming of the several constables of france , admirals , and generals of armies , that have been of the scotish nation in the french service : neither would i have forgot the high and honorable employments the scots had of charlemaine the first occidental emperor , nor the great exploits performed by the scots under the conduct of godfrey de bullion in the conquest of jerusalem , and afterwards under his successors in the kingdoms of syria , antiochia , and egypt , against the saracens ; nor what was done by the scots in defence of the territories of spaine against the moores and aethiopians : as also , i would have spoken a little of the dukes of chasteau le roy , and dukes of aubigny that were scots ; and of count betun , and count de mongomery , who killed the king of france in tilting ) so is it , that of all those i have named , whether for milice or literature ( so far short i have faln in the number of the whole ) that not only hath the greatest part of them all been natives of the north of scotland , but hardly have both the south and west of that country , produced the fifth part of them : such a fruitful seminary hath that otherwayes obscure climate of the world , proved in the affording of excellent spirits both sor armes and arts . whether what i have related here of the warriors and scholars of the scotish nation that have been famous abroad , be not for uncontrollable truths received in other countries , by those that have been eye-witnesses to their actions , i appeal to sir oliver fleemin , master of the ceremonies , and to master dury ; who , as they are both men of good judgement , and have been travelers in other states and kingdoms ; so am i certainly perswaded that they cannot be altogether estranged from the report of the good reputation of those their compatriots in the places through which they passed : which i believe the rather , for that most of them do know sir oliver fleemin to be a man of excellent good parts , wise in counsel , experienced in affaires of state , true to his trust , and in six or seven of the chief languages of christendome , the ablest , liveliest , and most pertinent spokes-man of this age : and that also they are not ignorant of the most eminent endowments wherewith master john dury ( in germany and france , where his learning is highly extolled , intituled duraeus ) hath his minde qualified and imbellished : in reason he is strongly principled , and alloweth prudence to be a directress of his actions : he doth not subordinate his faith to the affaires of the world , although it agree not with his faith to gainestand an established authority : he holds it more lawful to yeeld obedience to a power set up above us , then , to the hazard of the ruine of a country , to erect another ; he loveth an honest peace , and the wayes that tend to it ; and with thankfulness payeth the favours of protection : he reverenceth the all-seeing providence in the change of government ; and where it commandeth , there he yeelds allegiance . but if the reader would have a more genuine character of his worth , and that which shall represent him with a greater liveliness , his best course will be to have recourse to the perusal of the several treatises composed by him , whereof he hath emitted good store . notwithstanding all i have written in praise of sir oliver fleemin , and master john dury , i would expatiate my pen a little more at large upon this encomiastick straine , in behalf of them both , but that i hope ere long to extoll them againe by way of duty , when they shall be pleased out of their love and respect to sir thomas vrquhart ( who is the only man for whom this book is intended ; for whether he be the author , or some other that is but a friend or servant of his , it is not material , seeing the furtherance of his weal , and credit of his country , is the meer scope thereof , and end whereat it buts ) to interpone their favour with the members of the parliament and councel of state ( seeing they are the only two of the scotish nation , that as yet have any kind of intimacy with either of these high courts ) and second him in his just demands , to the obtaining of what in this tractate is desired in his name . and although nothing of those kinde of good offices hath by them hitherto been performed to him , lest perhaps their offering to open their mouth for any in whom there was suspicion of malignancy , might breed dislike and diminution of trust ; yet must i needs desire them now to lay aside those needless fears , and groundless apprehensions , and like real friends indeed , bestir themselves to do that gentleman a courtesie , which cannot chuse ( though per impossibile he were unthankful ) but carry along with it , like all other actions of vertue , it s own remuneration and reward : and if by mischance ( which i hope shall not occur ) their forwardness in sollicitation procure a reprehensory check , then let them lay the blame upon this page , which i shall take upon my shoulder , and bear the burthen of all ; there is no inchantment there . but that , amicus certus in re incerta cernitur , was a saying of king james , of whom to make no mention amongst the literate men of the scotish nation , that have flourished since 1600. would argue in me no less debility of memory , then massala corvinus was subject to , who forgot his own name : for besides that he was a king , history can hardly afford us amongst all the kings that ever were ( solomon and alfonso of aragon being laid aside ) any one that was neer so learned as he : as is apparent by that book in folio , intituled king james his works , and several other learned treatises of his , which in that book are not contained . in this list of armes and arts-men , king james obtaines a rank amongst the scholars ; because the souldiery did repute him no favourer of their faculty . his majesty is placed last , as in a parliamentary procession , and bringeth up the reer , as general ruven leads on the van : for as ruven was such a meer souldier , that he could neither read nor write ; so king james was such a meer scholar , that he could neither fight by sea nor land . he thought james the peaceable a more royal stile , then william the conqueror ; and would not have changed his motto of beati pacifici for the title of sylla felix , although it had been accompanyed with the victory over a thousand mariuses ; yet in his dayes were the scots in good repute , and their gallantry over almost all countries did deserve it . then was it that the name of a scot was honorable over all the world , and that the glory of their ancestors was a pass-port and safe-conduct sufficient for any traveler of that country . in confirmation whereof , i have heard it related of him , who is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of his discourse , and to whose weal it is subordinated , that after his peragration of france , spaine ; and italy , and that for speaking some of those languages with the liveliness of the country accent ; they would have had him pass for a native , he plainly told them ( without making bones thereof ) that truly he thought he had as much honour by his own country , which did contrevalue the riches and fertility of those nations , by the valour , learning , and honesty , wherein it did parallel , if not surpass them . which assertion of his was with pregnant reasons so well backed by him , that he was not much gainesaid therein by any in all those kingdoms . but should he offer now to stand upon such high terms , and enter the lists with a spirit of competition , it fears me that in stead of laudatives and panegyricks , which formerly he used , he would be constrained to have recourse to vindications and apologies : the toyle whereof , in saying one and the same thing over and over again , with the misfortune of being the less believed the more they spoke , hath proved of late almost insupportable to the favourers of that nation , whose inhabitants , in forraign peregrinations , must now altogether , in their greatest difficulties , depend upon the meer stock of their own merit , with an abatement of more then the half of its value , by reason of the national imputation : whilst in former times , men of meaner endowments would in sharper extremities , at the hands of stranger-people , have carryed thorow with more specious advantages , by the only vertue of the credit and good name of the country in general ; which , by twice as many abilities as ever were in that land , both for martial prowess , and favour of the muses , in the persons of private men , can never in the opinion of neighbour-states and kingdoms , be raised to so great a hight , as publick obloquy hath deprest it . for as that city whose common treasure is well stored with money , though all its burgers severally be but poor , is better able to maintaine its reputation , then that other , all whose citizens are rich , without a considerable bank , the experience whereof history gives us , in the deduction of the wars betwixt the venetians and genois : even so will a man of indifferent qualifications , the fame of whose country remaineth unreproached , obtaine a more amicable admittance to the societies of most men , then another of thrice more accomplished parts , that is the native of a soyle of an opprobrious name ; which although , after mature examination , it should seem not to deserve , yet upon the slipperiest ground that is of honor questioned , a very scandal once emitted , will both touch and stick . this maintaining of the reputation of the scots in these latter dayes , hath at several times , in forraign countries , occasioned adventuring of the single combate , against such inconsiderate blabs , as readily upon any small ( though groundless ) misreport are prodigal of reproaches , and cast aspersions on men of the most immaculate carriage : many instances hereof i could produce ; but to avoid prolixity , i will refer the manifestation of the truth thereof to the testimony of captain john mercer , whom i might have nominated for his excellency in the sword , with sir john hume of eatoun , and francis sinclair but that in a treatise of this nature , where the subjected matter doth not all at once present it self to the memory , to place each one in order as he comes , is methodo doctrinae nothing repugnant to the true series of the purpose in hand . what ascendant he hath over others at the single rapeer , hath been many times very amply expressed by my lord of newcastle , and the late earl of essex , and ( as i am infomed ) by this same earl of salisbury , besides divers others , who have been eye-witnesses to the various proofs , he hath given of his exquisiteness in the art of defence ; amonst whom sir john carnegy , and sir david cuningham , are best able to relate , what with their own eyes they saw him do at angiers , a city in france , where , after many exasperating provocations , he at last , to vindicate both his own fame , and that of his native country , overthrew , in the presence of sundry gentlemen and ladies , one of the most renowned for the faculty of escrime , that was in all that kingdom . some such trials are reported to have been undergone by him here in england , with so much applause , and deserved approbation , as from the mouths of men very skilful in that gladiatory profession , hath extracted ( out of their sincerity of heart ) an unfained commendation of being the best sword-man of the isle of great britain ; which i say , not to disparage any of the english nation ; for that i know there are in it as truly valourous men , as any one breathing in the world : and of as good conduct for the improving of their courage , and making it effectual against their declared enemies ; but that he hath some secret puntilios in the exercise of the single sword-fight , by pursuing all manner of wards with falsifying , binding , and battering of the sword , after a fashion of his own , with all due observance of time and distance ; by providing , in case the adversary after a finda , going to the parade , discover his brest to caveat , & give him in a thrust in quart , with ecarting and volting the body : to alonge a stoccade coupee au ventre les deux pieds en sautant , and other such excellent feats , which the judgement conceiving , and the eye perceiving , the hand and foot , by vertue of a constant practise , execute with an incredible nimbleness and agility ; to the perfection whereof , although a martially-disposed gentleman do never attaine , it can no more derogate from his eminency in military employments , then it doth eclipse the credit of a commander in chief of cavalry , not to make a well-managed horse to go so neatly terre a terre , the incavalar , the ripolone , the passades , the corvetti , the serpegiar , the two steps and a leap , the mezere , the gallop galliard , le saut de mouton , and other such like pleasant aires , as would a cavallerizo or master of the noble art of riding . notwithstanding the frequent hazards , which many besids this capt. mercer , ( whom now i will not nominate ) have run themselves upon , in defence of the good name of the scots , the nature nevertheless of common spirits is ( without any forecast of danger ) to proclaim the disease of some , to be a leprosie cleaving to the body of the wholenation . which custom truly , as it is disapprovable , for that the innocent do thereby suffer for the fault of the guilty ; so do i the more dislike it , that the gentleman who in this treatise is the most concerned , when after that to my knowledge he had received some favour with expectation of greater ones , it no sooner happened , by his servants or some else , to be known of what country he was , but immediately the effectual courtesies formerly intended towards him , were exchanged into meer superficial complements , and general civilities ; with this assurance nevertheless , that out of their respects to him , they should abstaine , in all times comming , from doing any injury to his compatriots : which hope of preservation of his country-men , upon the basis of his single reputation , from the danger of future prejudice , did afford him no small contentment , although the name of his country , in matter of himself , did prove a very dismal obstruction to the prosecuting of his own good fortune : and to speak ingenuously , seeing it is the case of many good spirits and worthy gentlemen besides him , i could heartily wish , as no man is anywhere praised for his mothers being in such or such a place at the instant of his birth , that also nowhere any should receive the least detriment , either in his means or estimation , for his parents residence when he was born . those productions of meer chance , and concomitances of what is totally out of the reach of our power to command , were understood by the wise and generous men of old , to deserve so little influence for procuring good or bad to the enjoyers of them , that anacharsis , although a native of scythia , which was then a more savage country then at this time it is , albeit now it be the seminary of a wilder people then ever scotland did bring forth , was by greece , the most judicious nation in the world , with great applause inrolled in the sacred septenary of the most highly-renowned men , for prudence and true wisdom , that ever lived there : and oxales , notwithstanding his being a high-lander of genua , and born amidst the barren mountains of liguria , was nevertheless by the mighty emperour tamarlain , although a stranger and of a different religion to the boot , dignified with the charge and title of one of the prime generals of that vast asiatick army which overthrew the turkish bajazet . in imitation of which specious and remarkable examples , that the state of this isle , without regard to ephestian or exotick country , exterior concernements , adjuncts of fortune , or any thing beyond the sphere of our wills activity , should consider of men according to the fruits ( whether good or bad , true or false ) of the several acts and habits respectively , which , before the interior faculties by frequent iteration were therewith affected , did at first depend upon our own election , it is both my desire and expectation for that the gentleman , whose interest i herebyintend to promove , doth openly defie very calumny it self to be able to lay any thing to his charge , either for tergiversation , covetousness , or hypocrisie , the three foule blots wherewith his country is stained by those , that , for the blemish of a few , would asperse the whole , and upon all lay the imputation of faults done but by some i dare swear with a safe conscience , that he ntver coveted the goods of any , nor is desirous of any more in matter of worldly means , then the peaceable possession of what is properly his own : he never put his hand to any kinde of oath , nor thinks fit to tye his conscience to the implicite injunctions of any ecclesiastical tyranny . he never violated trust ; alwayes kept his parole ; and accounted no crime more detestable , then the breach of faith . he never received money from king nor parliament , state nor court ; but in all employments , whether preparatory to , or executional in war , was still his own pay-master , and had orders from himself . he was neither in duke hamiltons engagement , nor at the field of dunbar : nor was he ever forced , in all the several fights he hath been in , to give ground to the enemy , before the day of worcester-battel . to be masked with the vaile of hypocrisie , he reputes abominable , and gross dissimulation to contrast the ingenuity of a free-born spirit . all flattering , smoothing and flinching for by-ends , he utterly disliketh , and thinks no better of adulatory assentations , then of a gnatonick sycophantizing , or parasitical cogging : he loves to be open-hearted , and of an explicite discourse , chusing rather by such means to speak what is true , to the advantage of the good , then to conceal wickedness under a counterfeit garb of devotion . by vertue of which liberty , though reasonably assumed by him , and never exceeding the limits of prudential prescription , he in a little book lately published , of the genealogy of his house , had ( after the manner of his predecessors , who for distinction sake were usually entituled by appellative designations ) his proper name affected with the agnominal addition of the word parresiastes , which signifieth one that speaks honestly with freedom : not but that above all things he approveth of secrecy in the managing of affaires of moment , and holdeth the life of all great businesses to consist in the closeness of counsel , whilst they are in agitation ; but as a woman should not sit with her face masked , in the company of her friends at dinner , nor a man keep himself alwaies skulking behinde a buckler , where there is no apearance of a foe ; so should the affectedness of a servil silence utterly be exploded , when veracity of elocution is the more commendable quality . this bound he never yet transgressed ; and still purposeth to be faithful to his trust . i am not now to dispute the mutual relation of protection and obedience ; and how far , to the power god hath placed above us ( in imitation of christ ) we are bound to suceumb . those that are throughly acquainted with him know his inclinations , both that he will undertake nothing contrary to his conscience , that he will regulate his conscience by the canons of a well-grounded faith , and true dictamen of reason , and that to the utmost of his power he will perform whatever he promiseth . as for those that know him not , and yet would in the censure of him as liberally criticize it , as if they were his cardiognosts , and fully versed in his intentions ; if they be not men in whom he is concerned , as having authority above him , he will never vex his brain , nor toyle his pen , to couch a fancy , or bestow one drop of inke upon them for their satisfaction . it doth suffice him , that the main ground of all his proceedings , is honesty ; that he endeavoreth the prosecuting of just ends by upright means : and seeing the events of things are not in the power of man , he voluntarily recommendeth unto providence the over-ruling of the rest : he hath no prejudicate principles , nor will he be wedded to self-opinions . and yet ( as i conceive it ) he believeth , that there is no government ( whether ecclesiastical or civil ) upon earth , that is jure divino , if that divine right be taken in a sense secluding all other forms of government ( save it alone ) from the priviledge of that title ; those piae fraudes and political whimsies being obtruded upon tender consciences , to no other end , but that , without expense of war , theymight be plyable in their obedience to the injunctions of the vice-gerents of the law , meerly by deterring them from acting any thing contrary to the will of the primitive legislator , for fear of celestial punishment . as for pacts and covenants , it is my opinion that he thinks they are no further obligatory , ( and consequently being annihilated , no more to be mentioned much less urged ) when the ground whereupon they were built , or cause for which they were taken , are not in vigour to have any more influence upon the contracters : for idem est non esse & non operari ; non entium nullae sunt affectiones : and sublato fundamento tolluntur & emnia quae illi superstruuntur . i am confident the consistorian party will be so ill pleased with the freedom of this expression , that they will account him a malignant or a sectary that hath penned it ; therefore ( in my conceit ) to use their cavilling idiom , a malignant and independent wil better sympathize with one another , then either of them with the presbyter ; whose principles how consistent they are with monarchy , or any other kind of temporal soveraignty , let any many judge that is versed in the story of geneva , the civil wars of france and bohemia , and history of queen mary of scotland ; although what hath been done by the kirkists these last dozen of yeers , had been altogether buryed in oblivion , that nothing had been known of their unanimous opposition by the presbyterian armies at dunslaw , newburne , marston-moor , and hereford to the late kings designes , crowned by his own imprisonment at newcastle and holmby ; and that after proclaiming charles the second , at the marker-cross of edenburgh , king of the three realms of england , scotland , and ireland ; that they had wounded him , and shed his blood , in the persons of the peerage of huntely and montrose , had been utterly forgotten . what gallant subjects these presbyterians have been , are for the present , and will prove in times coming , to any kinde of secular power , you may perceive by king james his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the late king 's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and this young king 's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : they to basilical rule ( or any other temporal soveraignty ) being in all its genders ( and that at all occasions ) as infectious as ever was the basilisk's sight to the eye of man. for of a king they onely make use , for their own ends ; and so they will of any other supreme magistracie , that is not of their own erection . their kings are but as the kings of lacedemon , whom the ephors presumed to fine , for any small offence : or as the puppy-kings , which , after children have trimmed with bits of taffata , and ends of silver-lace , and set them upon wainscoat cupboards besides marmalade and sugar-cakes , are oftentimes disposed of ( even by those that did pretend so much respect unto them ) for a two-peny custard , a pound of figs , or mess of cream . verily , i think they make use of kings in their consistorian state , as we do of card-kings in playing at the hundred ; any one whereof , if there be appearance of a better game without him , and that the exchange of him for another incoming card is like to conduce more for drawing of the stake ) is by good gamesters without any ceremony discarded : or as the french on the epiphany-day use their roy de la ●ebve , or king of the bean ; whom , after they have honoured with drinking of his health , and shouting aloud , le roy boit , le roy boit , they make pay for all the reckoning ; not leaving him sometimes one peny , rather then that the exorbitancie of their debosh should not be satisfied to the full . they may be likewise said to use their king , as the players at nine-pins do the middle kyle , which they call the king ; at whose fall alone they aim , the sooner to obtain the gaining of their prize : or as about christmats we do the king of misrule ; whom we invest with that title to no other end , but to countenance the bacchanalian riots and preposterous disorders of the family , where he is installed . the truth of all this , appears by their demeanour to charles the second ; whom they crowned their king at sterlin , and who , ( though he be , for comeliness of person , valour , affability , mercy , piety , closeness of counsel , veracity , foresight , knowledge , and other vertues both moral and intellectual , in nothing inferiour to any of his hundred and ten predecessors ) had nevertheless no more rule in effect over the presbyterian senate of scotland , then any of the six foresaid mock-kings had above those by whom they were dignified with the splendour of royal pomp . that it is so , i appeal to the course taken by them , for assisting him whom they called their king , against them whom i must confess they hate more then him : for , admitting of none to have any charge in state , church , or army , but such as had sworn to the eternity of the covenant , and inerrability of the presbyterian see , lest otherwise , like achan's wedge , they should bring a judgement upon the land ; some lords , and many others so principled , after that by their king they had been intrusted with commissions to levie regiments of both horse and foot , together with other officers subordinate to them , did , under pretext of making the king a glorious king , and the covenant to triumph at the gates of rome , with a pseudo-sanctimonial trick of zeal , legerdemain-subtilty , and performing the admirable feats of making a little weak man , unfit for military service , a tall , strong , and warlike champion , and that onely by the sweet charm of laying twenty rexdolars upon his head and shoulders ; as also by the arch-angelical inchantment of fifteen double angels , had the skill to make an irish hobbie , or galloway-nag , as sufficient for their field-fight , as any spanish genet , or naples courser . in prosecution of which wonderful exploits , some of them approved themselves such exquisite alchymists , that many of both the cavalry and infantry , with their arms , ammunition , and apparel , were by them converted into pure gold and silver : by means whereof , although the army shrunk into half the proposed number , in both horse , foot , and dragoons , and all the most necessary accommodations for either camp , leaguer , or march , was chymically transformed into the aforesaid wel-beloved metal , they nevertheless put such undoubted confidence into the goodness of their cause , that , by vertue thereof , no less miraculous acts were expected and promised by the prophecies of their neo-levites out of scripture , atchieved by them against the malignants and sectaries , then those of gideon with his water-lappers , and jonathan with his armour-bearer , against the midianites and philist●●●… ▪ to so great a height did their presumption reach : and yet when it came to the push , those that had received greatest profit by the country assesments , and ruined with cruellest exactions the poor yeomanry , were the first that returned homewards , being loth to hazard their precious persons , lest they should seem to trust to the arm of flesh . notwithstanding this backsliding from martial prowess of the godly officers , with the epenthesis of an● ( in which number i inrol not al , but the greater part of those that were commissionated with the scot-ecclesiastical approbation ) their rancour and spleen being still more and more sharpned against the english nation , they in their tedious pharisaical prayers before supper , and sesquihoral graces upon a dish of skink , and leg of mutton , would so imbue the mindes of the poor swains ( on whose charge they were ) with vaticinations of help from heaven , against the sennacheribs that were about to infest hezokiah's host , and the peace of their israel , that the innocent sufferers having sustained more prejudice by quartering , plundering , and continual impositions of those their hypocritical country-men , then ever their predecessors had done by all the devastations of the ancient english , saxons , danes , and romanes ; the holier they were in outward shew , their actions proving still the more diabolical ; they , in recompence of those aerial , or rather fiery ejaculations , recommended the avenging of their wrongs to god , and heartily loaded them ( and that deservedly ) with as many curses and execrations as they had lost of pence ; the pretty effect of a good cause , and result sutable to the project of making the jure-divine presbytery a government , which , besides its universality and eternity , should , in matter of dominion , be , for its sublimity , placed above all the potentates ●n the earth ; preferring , by that account , a scotish moderator to a romane dictator ; although they minded not , that such as claimed most right to this generalissima-jurisdiction , were , unknown to themselves , chained in fetters of iron , as slaves to the tyrannie of two insolent masters , the concupiscible and irascible appetites . who doubteth , that is not blinded with the ablepsie of an implicite zeal , but that , by such contrivements , the three foresaid dominions , together with wales , were as fully projected to be subject to the uncontrolable commands of the kirk , as the territories of romania , vrbino , ferrara , and avignon , to the see of rome ; though with this advantage on the popes side , that joynt to the power wherewith he is invested by his papality , he ruleth over those parts by the right of a secular prince ; which title they cannot pretend to . were those kirk-men free from covetousness and ambition , whereinto that most of them are no less deeply plunged then any laick in the world , sufficient proof , within these two yeers , hath been given in scotland , by their laying claim to the fifth part of all the rents of the land , under the notion of tythes ; devesting noble-men of their rights of patronages , and bringing their persons to stand before them on penitentiary pews ( like so many varlets ) in mendiciary and gausapinal garments , not so much for any trespass they had committed , as thereby to confirm the soveraignty of their hierarchical jurisdiction , which is neither monarchical , aristocratical , nor democratical , but a meer plutarchy , plutocracy , or rather plutomanie ; so madly they hale after money , and the trash of this world . if so , i say , they were not guilty of such-like enormities ; and that , according to their talk of things above , their lives were answerable , or yet the result of their acts , when all together in assemblies , synods , or presbyteries they are congregated into one body ; then to require such matters , might in some measure seem excusable ; because an unfeigned zeal to the furtherance of learning , piety , and good works , should be seconded with power and wealth : but that for a meer aerial discourse of those , whose hearts are ingulphed in the dross of worldly affections , others should part from their own means and dignities to enrich the wives and children of hypocrites , is a crying sin before god ( contrary to saint paul's admonition , who accounteth men infidels that do so ) and the abusing of those benefits he hath vouchsafed to allow us , for the maintetenance of our families , and provision for posterity . is there any more common saying over all scotland in the mouthes of the laicks , then that the minister is the greediest man in the parish , most unwilling to bestow any thing in deeds of charity ? and that the richer they become , ( without prejudice be it spoken of some honest men amongst them ) the more wretched they are ? grounding that assertion on this , that by their daily practice , both severally and conjunctly , it is found , that for their splendour and inrichment , most of them do immire their spirits into earthly projects , not caring by what sordid means they may attain their aims : and if they make any kinde of sermocination tending in outward appearance to godliness ( which seldom they do , being enjoyned by their ecclesiastical authority to preach to the times , that is , to rail against malignants and sectaries , or those whom they suppose to be their enemies ) they do it but as those augurs of old , of whom aulus gellius speaking , saith , aures verbis ditant alienas , suas ut auro locupletent crumenas . i know i touch here a string of a harsh sound to the kirk , of a note dissonant from their proposed harmony ▪ & quite out of the systeme of the intended oecumenick government by them concerted : but seeing there are few will be taken with the melody of such a democratical hierarchie , that have not preallably been stung with the tarantula of a preposterous ambition , i will insist no longer on this purpose ; and that so much the rather , that he , whose writings i in this tractate intermix with my own , tempers his heliconian water with more hony then vinegar , and prefers the epigrammatical to the satyrick straine ; for althoug ( i think ) there be hardly any in scotland that proportionably hath suffered more prejudice by the kirk then himself ; his own ministers ( to wit , those that preach in the churches whereof himself is patron , master gilbert anderson , master robert williamson , and master charles pape by name , serving the cures of cromarty , kirkmichel , and cullicudden ) having done what lay in them , for the furtherance of their owne covetous ends , to his utter undoing : for the first of those three , ( for no other cause , but that the said sir thomas would not authorize the standing of a certain pew ( in that country called a desk ) in the church of cromarty , put in without his consent , by a professed enemy to his house , who had plotted the ruine thereof ; and one that had no land in the parish ) did so rail against him and his family in the pulpit at several times , both before his face , and in his absence , and with such opprobrious termes , more like a scolding tripe-sellers wife , then good minister , squirting the poyson of detraction and abominable falshood ( unfit for the chaire of verity ) in the eares of his tenandry , who were the onely auditors , did most ingrately and despightfully so calumniate and revile their master , his own patron and benefactor , that the scandalous and reproachful words striving which of them should first discharge against him its steel-pointed dart , did , oftentimes , like clusters of hemlock , or wormewood dipt in vinegar , stick in his throat ; he being almost ready to choak with the aconital bitterness and venom thereof , till the razor of extream passion , by cutting them into articulate sounds ; and very rage it self , in the highest degree , by procuring a vomit , had made him spue them out of his mouth , into rude indigested lumps , like so many toads and vipers that had burst their gall . as for the other two , notwithstanding that they had been borne , and their fathers before them , vassals to his house , and the predecessor of one of them had shelter in that land , by reason of slaughter committed by him , when there was no refuge for him anywhere else in scotland ; and that the other had never been admitted to any church , had it not been for the favour of his foresaid patron , who , contrary to the will of his owne friends , and great reluctancy of the ministry it self , was both the nominater and chuser of him to that function ; and that before his admission , he did faithfully protest he should all the days of his life remain contented with that competency of portion the late incumbent in that charge did enjoy before him : they nevertheless behaved themselves so peevishly and unthankfully towards their forenamed patron and master , that , by vertue of an unjust decree both procured and purchased from a promiscous knot of men like themselves , they used all their utmost endeavours , in absence of their above-recited patron ( to whom and unto whose house they they had been so much beholding ) to out-law him , and declare him rebel ( by open proclamation , at the market-cross of the head town of his owne shire ) in case he did not condescend to the grant of that augmentation of stipend , which they demanded , conforme to the tenour of the above-mentioned decree ; the injustice whereof will appeare , when examined by any rational judge . now the best is , when by some moderate gentlemen it was expostulated , why against their master , patron , and benefactor , they should have dealt with such severity and rigour , contrary to all reason and equity ; their answer was , they were inforced and necessitated so to do , by the synodal and presbyterial conventions of the kirk , under paine of deprivation , and expulsion from their benefices : i will not say , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but may safely think that a well-sanctified mother will not have a so ill-instructed brat , and that injuria humana cannot be the lawfull daughter of a jure divino parent . yet have i heard him , notwithstanding all these wrongs , several times avouch , that from his heart he honoureth the ministerial function , and could wish that each of them had a competency of livelihood , to the end that for not lacking what is necessary for him , he might not be distracted from the seriousness of his speculative imploiments , with which above all things he would have one busied , that were admitted to that charge ; and to be a man of a choice integrity of life , and approved literature : he alwayes esteeming philosophy , in all its mathematical , natural , and prudential demonstrations , rules , and precepts , so convenient for inbellishing the minde of him whose vocation it is , to be sequestred from the toil of worldly affairs ; that the reason and will of man being thereby illuminated , and directed towards the objects of truth and goodness , a church-man or pretender to divinity regardless of those sciences , might be justly suspected to be ignorant of god , by caring so little for the knowledge of his creatures , and upon a sacred text oftentimes to make an unhallowed comment . i have heard him likewise say , he would be glad , that in every parish of scotland there were a free schoole and a standing library , in the custody of the minister ; with this proviso , that none of the books should be embezeled by him , or any of his successors ; and he impowered to perswade his parishioners , in all he could , to be liberal in their dotations towards the school , and magnifying of the library : to the end that besides the good would thereby redound to all good spirits , it might prove a great encouragement to the stationer and printer ; that , being the noblest profession amongst merchants ; and this , amongst artificers . as also to intreat the civil magistrate , by the severity of the law , to curb the insolency of such notorious and scandalous sinners as should prove unpliable to the stamp of his wholesome admonitions . as for his wife and children , if he follow the footsteps of solomon , & ask sincerely for wisdome of god before he wed , he will undoubtedly endow him with wealth sufficient for both ; for whoever marieth , if he be wise , will either have a vertuous or a monyed woman to his mariage-bed ; by means of either whereof , the discretion and foresight of a judicious husband , will provide a dowry for her , and education for her issue ; which , in a well-policied country , is better then a patrimony . the taking of this course , will advance learning , further piety , improve all moral vertues establish true honour in the land ▪ make trades flourish , merchandise prosper , the yeomanry industrious , gentlemen happy , and the ministers themselves richer then when their mindes were totally bent on the purchase of money : for , as patterns of godliness without morosity , and literature without affectation ( being men qualified as aforesaid ) by their sweetness of conversation , and influence of doctrine , they would gaine so much ground upon the hearts of their acquaintance , that country-men would not onely gratifie them dayly , and load them with variety of presents , but would also after their decease rather chuse to starve themselves , then suffer the wives and children of persons so obliging , to be in any want or indigence : specially if the traffick and civility of scotland were promoved by a close union with england , not heterogeneal ( as timber and stone upon ice stick sometimes together ) bound by the frost of a conquering sword ; but homogeneated by naturalization , and the mutual enjoyment of the same priviledges & immunities ; which design being once by king james set abroach , although some of his compatriot subjects , out of ambition to be called rather profound scholars and nimble wits ▪ then good country-men and loyal counsellors , did pertinaciously withstand the motion . yet seeing a wedge of wainscot is fittest and most proper for cleaving of an oaken tree , and that sir francis bacon , othewise designed by the titles of lord verulam , and viscount saint albans , was pleased to make a speech thereupon in the honorable house of commons , in the fifth year of king james his raign in this dominion ; it is the humble desire of the author , that the states of this isle vouchsafe to take notice of his reasons ( he being both a wise man and a good english man ) after the manner as followeth . he begins his discourse thus : it may please you , master speaker , preface will i use none , but put my self upon your good opinions to which i have been accustomed beyond my deservings ; neither will i hold you in suspense what way i will chuse , but now at the first declare my self , that i mean to counsel the house to naturalize the nation of scotland ; wherein nevertheless i have a request unto you , which is of more efficacy to the purpose i have in hand , then all that i shall say afterwards , and it is the same request which demosthenes did more then once , in great causes of estate , make to the people of athens , that when they took into their hands the balls , whereby to give their voices ( according as the manner of them was ) they would raise their thoughts , and lay aside those considerations which their private vocations and degrees might minister and represent unto them , and would take upon them cogitations and mindes agreable to the dignity and honour of the estate . for , master speaker , as it was aptly and sharply said by alexander to parmenio , when upon their recital of the great offers which darius made , parmenio said unto him , i would accept these offers , were i as alexander , he turned it upon him again , so would i ( saith he ) were i as parmenio : so in this cause , if an honest english merchant ( i do not single out that state in disgrace , for this island ever held it honorable , but onely for an instance of private profession ) if an english merchant should say , surely i would proceed no further in the union , were i as the king , it might be reasonably answered , no more would the king , were he as an english merchant : and the like may be said of a gentleman in the country , be he never so worthy or sufficient ; or of a lawyer , be he never so wise or learned ; or of any other particular condition in this kingdome : for certainly ( master speaker ) if a man shall be onely or chiefly sensible of those respects which his particular affection and degree shall suggest and infuse into him , and not enter into true and worthy considerations of estate , we shall never be able aright to give counsel , or take counsel , in this matter ; for if this request be granted , i account the cause obtained . having begun his speech after this manner , he proceeds yet further ; and first , he fully answers all the arguments , concerning inconveniencies that have been alledged to ensue , in case of giving way to this naturalization : next , he discloseth what greater inconveniencies would assuredly befal this land , if they did not condescend to the union : and lastly , what gaine and benefit would redound to england by meanes thereof : all which he displayeth in that learned speech , with such exquisite reasons , and impartial judgement , that , without prejudicacie of opinion , and sense-perverting passion , there is nothing to be said against it . he resteth not here , but in another passage thereof , after his having acknowledged the difference or disparity betwixt the two nations in matter of external means , giving therein the advantage to england , as the richer country ; he expresseth himself in these words : indeed it must be confessed , that for the goods of the mind and body , they are alteri nos : for , to do them but right , we know in their capacity and understandings , they are a people ingenious , in labour industrious , in courage valiant , in body hard , active , and comely : more might be said , but in commending themwe , do but in effect commend ourselves ; for they are of one part and continent with us ; and , the truth is , we are participant both of their vertues and vices , &c. he says furthermore , in illustration of the inconveniences which england will incur , in case of non-naturalizing the scots , that whatsoever several kingdoms or estates have been united in soveraignty , if that union hath not been fortified and bound in with a further union , and namely that which is now in question ( of naturalization ) this hath followed , that at one time or other they have broken , being upon all occasions apt to relapse and revolt to the former separation . of this assertion the first example that i will set before you , is of the memorable union which was between the romans and the latines , which continued from the battel at the lake of regilla for many yeers , until the consulship of caius plautius , andlucius aemilius mammercus : calledbellum sociale , being the most bloody and pernicious war that ever the romane state endured ; wherein , after numbers of battels , and infinite sieges and surprisals of towns , the romanes in the end prevailed , and mastered the latines : and as they had the honour of the war , so looking back into what perdition and confusion they were neer to have been brought , they presently naturalized them all . immediately thereafter , setting before our eyes the example of sparta , and the rest of peloponnesus their associates , he saith thus : the state of sparta ofthebes , by certain desperate conspirators in the habit of masters , there insued forthwith a general revolt and defection of their associates ; which was the ruine of their state , never after to be recovered . in the same dicourse he introduceth another example , though of latter times , which is this , that ofaragon had in the persons of ferdinand andisabella been united with the rest of spain , and that it had so continued for many years , yet because it was severed and divided from the other kingdoms of spaine in this point of naturalization , it fell out so , that , long after that , upon the voice of a condemned man , out of the grate of a prison , towards the street , that cryed libertad , libertad , there was raised a dangerous rebellion ▪ which with great difficulty was supprest with an army royal : after which victory nevertheless , to shun further inconvenience , they were incorporated with castile , and the remanent regions of spaine ▪ pisa likewise being united unto florence , without the benefit of naturalization , upon the first sight of charls the eighth of france his expedition into italy did revolt ; yet afterwards it was reunited , and did obtain the foresaid benefit . a little after , the better to perswade the parliament to the said naturalization of the scots , he subjoineth these words . on the other part ( master speaker ) because it is true which the logicians say opposita juxta se posita clarius elucescunt ; let us take a view , and we shall find , that wheresoever kingdoms and states have been united ▪ and that union incorporated by the bond of naturalization mutually , you shall never observe them afterwards upon any occasion of trouble or otherwise , to break and sever again ; as we see most evidently before our eyes ▪ in our provinces of france ; that is to say , guyen provence normandy , britain , which notwithstanding the infinite infesting troubles of that kingdome , never offered to break again . we see the like effect in all the kingdomes of spain , which are mutually naturalized ; as castile , leon , valenicia , andaluzia , granada , murcia , toledo , catalonia , and the rest , except aragon , which held the contrary course , and therefore had the contrary success : and lastly , we see the like effect in our nation , which never rent asunder after it was united ; so as we now scarce know , whether the heptarchy was a true story , or a fable : and therefore ( master speaker ) when i revolve with my self these examples , and others , so lively expressing the necessity of a naturalization , to avoid a relapse into a separation , i must say , i do believe ( and i would be sory to be found a prophet in it ) that except we proceed with this naturalization , though not perhaps in his majesties time , who hath such interest in both nations ▪ yet in the mean time of his descendents , these realmes will be in continual danger to divide and break again . now if any man be of that careless mind , maneat nostros ea cura nepotes ; or of that hard mind , to leave things to be tried by the sharpest sword : sure i am , he is not of saint pauls opinion , who affirmeth that whosoever useth not foresight , and provision for his family , is worse then an infidel ; much more if we shall not use foresight for these two kingdomes , that comprehend in them so many families , but leave things open to the peril of future division . and so forth going on very efficaciously in confirmation of the premises , he proceeds to the benefits which arise to england by knitting the knot surer and straiter between these two realms , by communicating naturalization to scotland : his words are these . bytitus quintus the romane , touching the state of peloponnesus , that the tortoise is safe within her shell , testudo intertegumen tuta est ; but if there be any parts that lie open , they endanger all the rest . we know well , that although the state at this time be in a happy peace , yet for the time past , the more ancient enemy is the french , and the more the late spaniard ; and both these had as it were their several postern-gates , whereby they might have approach and entrance to annoy us : france had scotland , andspaine had ireland ; for these were but the two accesses which did comfort and encourage both these enemies to assaile and trouble us : we see that of scotland is cut off by the union of these two kingdomes , if that it shall be made constant and permanent ; that of ireland is cut off likewise by the convenient situation of the west of scotland towards the north of ireland , where the sore was , which we see being suddenly closed by meanes of this salve ; so that as now there are no parts of the state exposed to danger to be a temptation to the ambition of forrainers , but their approaches and avenues are taken away : for i do little doubt , but these forrainers , who had so little success when they had those advanvantages , will have much less comfort now , that they be taken from them . and so much for surety . he goes on : for greatness ( master speaker ) i think a man may speak it soberly , and without bravery , that this kingdom of england having scotland united , ireland reduced , and shipping maintained , is one of the greatest monarchies , in forces truely esteemed , that hath been in the world ; for certainly the kingdoms here on earth , have a resemblance with the kingdom of heaven , which our saviour compareth not to any great kernel or nut , but to a very small graine , yet such a one as is apt to grow and spread ; and such do i take to be the constitution of this kingdom , if indeed our country be referred to greatness and power , and not quenched too much with the consideration of utility and wealth . for ( master speaker ) was it not , think you , a true answer that solon of greece made to rich king croesus of lydia , when he shewed unto him a great quantity of gold , that he had gathered together , in ostentation of his greatness and might ? but solon said to him contrary to his expectation , why , sir , if another come that hath better iron then you , he will be lord of all your gold . neither is the authority of machiavel to be despised , who scorneth that proverb of state , taken first from a speech of mucianus , thatmoneys are the sinews of war ; and saith there are no true sinews of war , but the very armes of valiant men . nay more ( master speaker ) whosoever shall look into the seminary and beginning of the monarchies of the world , he shall finde them founded in poverty . persia , a country barren and poor in respect of media , which they reduced . macedon , a kingdome ignoble and mercenary , untill the time of philip ofamintas . rome had a poor and pastoral beginning . the turks ▪ a band of sarmachian scyths , that in a vagabond manner made incursion upon that part of asia calledturcomania ; out of which , after much variety of fortune , sprung the ottoman family , now the terrour of the world . so we know the goths , vandals , alans , huns , lombards , normans , theroman empire ; and came not at rovers , to carry away prey , and be gone againe , but planted themselves in a number of rich and fruitful provinces , where not only their generations , but their names remaine to this day ; witness lombardy , catalonia , a word composed of goth and alan , andaluzia , a name corrupted from vandalitia ; hungaria , normandy , and others : nay , the fortune of the swisses of late yeers , which are bred in a barren and mountanous country , is not to be forgotten ; who first ruined the duke of burgundy , the same who had almost ruined the kingdom of france , what time after the battel near granson , the rich jewel of burgundy , commonswisse , that knew no more what a jewel meant , then did aesops cock : and again , the same nation , in revenge of a scorn , was the ruine of the french kings affaires in italy , lowis the twelfth ; for that king , when he was pressed somewhat rudely by an agent of the swissers to raise their pensions , broke into words of choler , what ( saith he ) will those villains of the mountaines put a task upon me ? which words lost him his dutchy of milan , ofitaly . all which examples ( master speaker ) do well prove solons opinion of the authority and majesty that iron hath over gold . for confirmation hereof , a little after ▪ he says , seeing the nation of spaine , which of ancient time served many ages , first under carthage , then under rome , after under saracens , goths , and others , should of late yeers take unto them that spirit as to dream of a monarchy in the west , only because they have raised from some wild and unarmed people , mines and store of gold ; and on the other side , that this island of britain , seated and named as it is , and that hath , i make no question , the best iron in the world , that is , the best souldiers of the world , shall think of nothing but accompts and audits , meum and tuum , and i cannot tell what , is truly very strange . finally , he closeth that his speech with this period , i have spoken ( master speaker ) out of the fountaine of my heart , credidi , propter quod loquutus sum ; i believed , therefore i spake . so my duty is performed : the judgement is yours ; god direct it for the best . in another speech ( again ) used by the said sir francis bacon , in the lower house of parliament , by occasion of a motion concerning the union of laws , he spoke thus . and it please you ( master speaker ) were it now a time to wish as it is to advise , no man should be more forward , or more earnest then my self in this wish , that his majesties subjects of england and scotland were governed by one law ; and that for many reasons . first ▪ because it will be an infallible assurance , that there will never be any relapse in succeeding ages to a separation . secondly , dulcis tractus pari jugo ; if the draught lie most upon us , and the yoak lie least on them , or inverse-wise , it is not equal . thirdly , the qualities , and ( as i may terme it ) the elements of their laws and ours are such as do promise an excellent temperature in the compounded body ; for if the prerogative here be too indefinite , it may be the liberty there is too unbounded : if our laws and proceedings be too prolix and formal , it may be theirs are too informal and summary . fourthly , i do discern , to my understanding , there will be no great difficulty in this work : for their laws by that i can learn , compared with ours , are like their language : for as their language hath the same roots that ours hath , but hath a little more mixture of latine and french : so their laws and customs have the like grounds that ours have , with a little more mixture of the civil law and french customs . lastly , the mean to this work seemeth to me no less excellent , then the work it self ; for if both laws shall be united , it is of necessity ▪ for preparation and inducement thereunto , that our own laws be renewed and recompiled , then the which , i think there cannot be a work more politick● more honorable nor more beneficial to the subjects of the land for all ages ; for this continual heaping up of laws without digesting them , maketh but a chaos and confusion , and turneth the laws many times to become but snares to the people : and therefore this work i esteem to be indeed a work ( rightly to terme it ) heroical , and that which if i might live to see , i would not desire to live after . so that for this good wish of union of laws , i do consent to the full . a little after he sayes , that this union of laws should not precede the naturalization , nor go along with it paripassu ▪ but altogether succeed it , and that not in the precedence of an instant , but in distance of time , because the union of laws will ask a great time to be perfected , both for the compiling and for the passing of them ; during all which time , if this mark of strangeness should be denied to be taken away , i fear it may induce such a habit of strangeness , as will rather be an impediment then a preparation to further proceeding . and albeit in the conclusion of his speech he saith , that he holdeth this motion of union of laws very worthy , and arising from very good minds , but not proper for that time ; yet do i think that , for this time , and as the juncture of affaires is for the present , it is very proper and expedient . therefore , although , in some parcels of the foresaid discourse not here recited , many pregnant reasons to those that opposed the naturalization of the scots , because that nation was annexed to england by inheritance , and not conquest , be exhibited , to shew that the grant of the benefit thereof should not be obstructed , for that scotland was not a conquered country ; as also why the scots unwilligness to receive the english laws , should be no impediment to their naturalization : and that in calvin's case , which is extant to be seen in the seventh book of sir cook 's reports , many excellent things are deduced in favour of the post●ati of that realm , notwithstanding the diversity of laws , and scotland's then unacknowledged subordination to the meer authority of this land ; yet seeing the face of affairs is quite altered from what it was then , and that the english civility and good carriage may gain so much upon the affections of the people there , as to make them in a very short space to be of the same customs , manners , and language with them ; i do really believe if sir francis bacon and sir edward cook were now living , that both of them would unanimously advise the state and soverainty of this island to allow unto scotland ( which neither is nor never was a kingdom more then wales was of old ) the same priviledges and immunities ( in every thing ) that wales now hath , ( and which the scots have in france , a transmarine country ) to enjoy everywhere in all things , the emoluments and benefit competent to the free-born subjects of england ; and to this effect , to impower that nation with liberty to chuse their representattves to be sen hither to this their soveraigne parliament , that the publick trustees of england , scotland , and wales , may at westminster jointly concur for the weal of the whole isle , as members of one and the same incorporation . these two knights , one whereof was lord high chancellor of england ▪ & the other atturny general , and lord chief justice of the common pleas , were good and wise men , full of honour , free from prevarication and by-respects , learned lawyers , excellent scholars , fluent orators and ( above all ) worthy , loving , and sincere patriots of england ; for which cause i hope so many exquisite qualities meeting ( as it were ) in one constellation , by vertue of a powerfull influence upon the mindes of the supreame senate of the land , will incline the hearts of every one not to dissent from the judgement and approbation of these two so eminent judges and zealous english men ; and that so much the rather , that to the accomplishment of so commendable a work , we are conducted by nature it self , which , having made us divisos orbe britannos , sheweth , ( by the antiperistatick faculty of a fountain or spring-well in the summer season , whose nature is to be the colder within it self , the greater circumobresistence of heat be in the aire , which surrounds it ) that we should cordially close to one another , unite our forces , and the more vigourously improve the internal strength we have of our selves , the greater that the outward opposition and hostility appear against us of the circumjacent outlandish nations which inviron us on all sides . this was not heeded in ancient times , by reason of the surquedry of the old english , who looked on the scots with a malignant aspect ; and the profound policie of the french , in casting ( for their own ends ) the spirit of division betwixt the two nations , to widen the breach . but now that the english have attained to a greater dexterity in encompassing their facienda's of state , and deeper reach in considering what for the future may prove most honourable and lucrative , will ( like an expert physician to a patient sick of a consumption in his noble parts , who applieth cordials and not corosives ; and lenitives rather then cauters ) strive more ( as i imagine ) to gain the love and affection of the scots , thereby to save the expence of any more blood or mony , then for overthrowing them quite in both their bodies and fortunes , to maintain the charge of an everlasting war against the storms of the climate , the fierceness of discontented people , inaccessibility of the hills , and sometimes universal penury , the mother of plague and famine ; all which inconveniences may be easily prevented without any charge at all , by the sole gaining of the hearts of the country . by which means , patching up old rents , cementing what formerly was broken , and by making of ancient foes new friends , we will strengthen our selves , and weaken our enemies ; and raise the isle of britain to that height of glory , that it will become formidable to all the world besides . in the mean while , the better to incorporate the three dominions of england , scotland , and wales , and more firmely to consolidate their union , it were not amiss ( in my opinion ) that ( as little rivers , which use to lose their names when they run along into the current of a great flood ) they have their own peculiar titles laid aside , and totally dischaged into the vast gulph of that of great britain . but if upon any emergent occasion , it be thought fit to make mention of ireland , and the several dominions of brttain , in an orderly enumeration , to place ireland ( as i conceive it ) before scotland , is very preposterous ; not but that ireland is a far more fertil country , and that the irish may be as good as any men : that the scots in these latter yeers may be much degenerated from the magnanimity of their fore-fathers , and that the succeeding progeny may perhaps prove little better ; or as you will : for be the soile or climate never so good or bad , with a permanence , or rather immutability in either of those qualities , the respective natives and inhabitants thereof will nevertheless , according to the change of times , be subject to a vicissitude of vice and vertue , as may appear by the inclinations of the greeks and romans now , compared with those of their ancestors , in the days of xerxes and hannibal : but onely that i conceive priority to be more due to scotland ( although i should speak nothing of its more immaculate reputation both abroad and at home , and of a longer series of soveraigns that swayed scepter there in a continuate uninterrupted succession ) and that because of its greater conformity with , and proximity to the nation of england ; the people whereof , if they would imitate the fashion of the warlike romans , should say , scots and irish , as the romans did , latines and gaules , or latins and sicilians , by reason of the latins vicinity and nearer adjacence to rome ; although sicilie was more fruitfull and opulent then latium , and the gaules more populous and every whit as fierce in the field as the latins . i am afraid that i have trespassed a little upon the patience of the reader , by insisting so long in my discourse upon scotland : yet in regard of my obligation and bound duty to the author of the above-recited lost papers , whose native soyle it is , i could hardly do less , seeing it is for the good of him , that this whole tractate is compiled , and to his behalf , who expects not , ( as hath been said already in the 203 page , and abundantly proved by the fifteenth axiom ) either recompense or punishment for his countrys sake : he likewise hopeth , by vertue of the said axiom , that his being a meer prisoner of war , without any further delinquencie , will not militate much against him ▪ if the subjects of the land , by inventions of his , attain to what is conducible to them , in saving of expence , as by the discovery proffered to the publick , he is able to make good , when required thereto : that either money or lands , if not both , should be due to him for the disclosure of so prime a secret , is clearly demonstrated by the sixteenth : and that the state will be no less courteous and favourable to him , then to any other prisoner of war proportionably , is plainly evidenced by the seventeenth : that the supreme authority of the isle , in matter of the liberty of his person , and that of his brothers and menial servants , together with the enjoyment of his own houses , lands and rents , free from sequestration , confiscation , composition , and garisoning , should allow him the same conditions granted to any other no more deserving then himself , is manifestly proved by the eighteenth : that therefore he should obtaine the greater favours ( as aforesaid ) is proved by the nineteeth : and that if to no other prisoner of all his country be truly competent , but to himself alone , the ample character ( in all its branches , as it is specified in the 232 , 233 , 234 , & 235 , pages ) which i have given of him , and could not conceal , being much less then his due ; then , in stead of a recompence for the surplusage of wherein others are defective , which he covets not , none certainly of all the scotish nation , whether prisoner or other , should receive from the state so great favours and courtesies as himself , because ( without prejudice be it spoke to any man ) he did from the beginning of these intestine broyles walk in an even , if not a more constant track of blameless carriage , free from hypocrisie , coveousness , and tergiversation , then any of his compatriots : that notwithstanding the strictness of his allegience to supreme authority , and the many ties of obedience that lie upon any subject whatsoever , he may by vertue of his owne merit deserve a reward from the state , is clear by the twentieth : and that for the imparting of this invention and others , to publick acceptance , which are so properly his own , that no other braine , that ever was or is , did contribute any thing to their eduction , he may lawfully claim right to a competency of retribution , is made patent by the one and twentieth . and lastly , the author desiring no more but the grant of the foresaid demands , although by the strict rule of commutative justice , it should seem to be a reward by too many stages inferior to the discovery of so prime an invention ; yet that the state doth him neither wrong nor injustice therein , provided he be not denyed of what he requireth , is fully cleared by the two and twentieth or last axiome . this apodictick course by a compositive method theorematically to infer consequences from infallible maximes , with all possible succinctness , i thought fit to imbrace ; because , to have analytically couched those verities , by mounting the scale of their probatition upon the prosyllogistick steps of variously-amplified confirmations , would have been a procedure for its prolixity unsuitable to the pregnancy of the state , whose intuitive spirits can at the first hearing discerne the strength of manifold conclusions ( without the labour of subsuming ) in the very bowels and chaos of their principles . i could truly ( having before my eyes some known treatises of the author , whose muse i honour , and the straine of whose pen to imitate , is my greatest ambition ) have enlarged this discourse with a choicer variety of phrase ; and made it overflow the field of the readers understanding , with an inundation of greater eloquence : and that one way , tropologetically , by metonymical , ironical , metaphorical , and synecdochical instruments of elocution , in all their several kinds , artificially affected , according to the nature of the subject , with emphatical expressions , in things of great concernment with catachrestical , in matters of meaner moment ; attended on each side respectively with an epiplectick and exegetick modification ; with hyperbolical , either epitatically or hypocoristically , as the purpose required to be elated or extenuated , they qualifying metaphors , and accompanied with apostrophes ; and lastly , with allegories of all sorts , whether apologal , affabulatory , parabolary , aenigmatick , or paraemial . and on the other part , schematologetically adorning the proposed theam with the most especial and chief flowers of the garden of rhetorick , and omiting no figure either of diction or sentence , that might contribute to the ears inchantment , or perswasion of the hearer . i could have introduced , in case of obscurity , synonymal , exargastick , and palilogetick elucidations ; for sweetness of phrase , antimetathetick commutations of epithets : for the vehement excitation of a matter , exclamations in the front , and epiphonema's in the reer . i could have used , for the promptlyer stirring up of passion , apostrophal and prosopopocial diversions : and for the appensing and setling of them ▪ some epanorthotick revocations , and aposiopetick restraints . i could have inserted dialogismes ▪ displaying their interrogatory part with communicatively-pysmatick and sustentative flourishes ; or proleptically , with the refutative schemes of anticipation and subjection : and that part which concerns the responsory , with the figures of permission and concession . speeches extending a matter beyond what it is , auxetically , digressively , transititiously , by ratiocination , aetiology , circumlocution ; and other wayes i could have made use of : as likewise with words diminishing the worth of a thing ▪ tapinotically , periphrastically , by rejection , translation , and other meanes , i could have served my self . there is neither definition distribution , epitrochism , increment , catacterism , hypotyposis , or any schem figurating a speech by reason of what is in the thing to our purpose thereby signified , that i needed to have omitted : nor , had i been so pleased , would i have past by the figurative expressions of what is without any thing of the matter in hand ; whether paradigmatical , iconical , symbolical , by comparison , or any other kinde of simile : or yet paradoxical , paramologetick , paradiastolary , antipophoretick , cromatick , or any other way of figurating a speech by opposition , being formules of oratory , whereby we subjoyn what is not expected ▪ confess something that can do us no harme ▪ yeeld to one of the members , that the other may be removed ; allow an argument , to oppose a stronger ; mixe praise with dispraise , and so forth through all manner of illustration and decorement of purposes by contrarieties , and repugnance . all those figures and tropes ▪ besides what are not here mentioned ( these synecdochically standing for all , to shun the tediousness of a too prolixe enumeration ) i could have adhibited to the embellishment of this tractate , had not the matter it self been more prevalent with me , then the superficial formality of a quaint discourse . i could have firreted out of topick celluls such variety of arguments tending to my purpose , and seconded them with so many divers refutations , confirmations , and prosyllogistick deductions , as after the large manner of their several amplifications according to the rules of art would , contexed together , have framed a book of a great quarto size , in an arithmetical proportion of length to its other two dimensions of bredth and thickness ; that is to say , its bredth should exceed the thickness thereof by the same number of inches and no more , that it is surpassed by the length ; in which considering the body thereof could be contained no less then seven quires of paper at least ; and yet notwithstanding this so great a bulk , i could have disposed the contents of its whole subjected matter so appositely into partitions , for facilitating an impression in the readers memory , and presented it to the understanding in so sprucela garb , that spirits blest with leisure , and free from the urgency of serious employments , would happily have bestowed as liberally some few houres thereon , as on the perusal of a new-coined romancy , or strange history of love-adventures . for although the figures and tropes above rehearsed seem in their actu signato ( as they signifie meer notional circumstances , affections , adjuncts , and dependences on words , to be a little pedantical , and to the smooth touch of a delicate ear , somewhat harsh and scabrous : yet in their exerced act ( as they suppone for things reduplicatively as things in the first apprehension of the minde by them signified ) i could , even in far abstruser purposes , have so fitly adjusted them with apt and proper termes , and with such perspicuity couched them , as would have been suitable to the capacities of courtiers and young ladies , whose tender hearing , for the most part , being more taken with the insinuating harmony of a well-concerted period , in its isocoletick and parisonal members , then with the never-so-pithy a fancy of a learned subject , destitute of the illustriousness of so pathetick ornaments , will sooner convey perswasion to the interior faculties , from the ravishing assault of a well-disciplined diction , in a parade of curiosly-mustered words in their several ranks and files , then by the vigour and fierceness of never so many powerful squadrons of a promiscuously-digested elocution into bare logical arguments : for the sweetness of their disposition is more easily gained by undermining passion , then storming reason ; and by the musick and symmetry of a discourse in its external appurtenances , then by all the puissance imaginary of the ditty or purpose disclosed by it . but seeing the prime scope of this treatise is to testifie my utmost endeavours to do all the service i can to sir thomas vrquhart , both for the procuring of his liberty , and intreating the state , whose prisoner he is , to allow him the enjoyment of his own , lest by his thraldome and distress ( useful to no man ) the publick should be deprived of those excellent inventions , whose emission totally dependeth upon the grant of his enlargement and freedom in both estate and person : and that to a state which respecteth substance more then ceremony , the body more then the shadow , and solidity more then ostentation , it would argue great indiscretion in me , to become no other waies a suiter for that worthy gentleman then by emancipating my vein upon the full carreer of rhetorical excursions , approving my self thereby like to those navigators , gunners , and horsemen , who use more saile then ballast , more powder then ball , and employ the spur more then the bridle : therefore is it , that laying aside all the considerations of those advantages and prerogatives a neat expression in fluent termes hath over the milder sexe and miniard youth , and setting before my eyes the reverence and gravity of those supereminent men to whom my expectation of their non-refusal of my request hath emboldened me to make my addresses ; i hold it now expedient ( without further adoe ) to stop the current of my pen , and , in token of the duty i owe to him whose cause i here assert , to give way to his more literate and compleat elucubrations ; which that they may the sooner appear to the eyes of the world , for the advancement of both vertue and learning , i yet once more , and that most heartily , beseech the present state , parliament , and supream councel of great britain , to vouchsafe unto the aforesaid sir thomas vrquhart of cromarty knight , heritable sheriff and proprietary thereof , a grant of the releasement of his person from any imprisonment whereunto at the discretion of those that took his parole he is ingaged ; the possession likewise of his house of cromarty free from garisoning , and the enjoyment of his whole estate in lands , without affecting it with any other either publick or private burthen then hath been of his own contracting , and that with the dignities thereto belonging of hereditary sheriff-ship , patronage of the three churches there , and admiralty of the seas betwixt catness and innernass inclusively ( with subordination nevertheless to the high admiral of the land ) together with all the other priviledges and immunities , which , both in his person , and that of his predecessors , hath been from time to time accounted due by inheriitance to the house of cromarty , and that for the love of the whole island on which he offereth , in compensation , to bestow a benefit ( under pain of forfeiture of all he hath ) of ten times more worth . as this is my humble petition , so is it conform to the desires of all the best spirits of england , scotland , wales , and ireland . pity it were to refuse such , as ask but l●ttle , and give much . the list of those scots mentioned in this book , who have been generals abroad within these fifty yeers . sir patrick ruven . gen. ruderford . lord spence . s. alexander lesly , dux foederis . s. alexander lesly in moscovy . james king. marquis lesly . marquis hamilton . the list of other scotish officers mentioned in in this treatise , who were all colonels abroad , and some of them general persons . lieutenant generals . david lesly . s. james livingstoun . william bailif . major generals . lodovick lindsay . robert monro . thomas ker. s. david drumond . s. james lumsden . robert lumsden . s. john hepburn . lord james dowglas . watchtoun hepburn . john lesly . colonels . alexander hamilton , general of the artillery . alexander ramsay , quarter-master general . col. anderson . earl of argyle . col. armestrong . earl of bacluch . s. james balantine . s. william balantine . s. david balfour . s. henry balfour . col. boyd . col. brog . col. bruce . james cockburne . col. colon. lord colvil . alex. crawford . col. crichtoun . alex. cuningam . george cuningam . robert cuningam . william cuningam . george dowglas . col. dowglas . col. dowglas . col. edinton . col. edmond . col. erskin . alex. forbas . alex. forbas . arthur forbas . fines forbas . john forbas . lord forbas . s. john fulerton . thomas garne . alex. gordon . alex. gordon . john gordon . col. gordon . s. andrew gray . william gun. col. gun. s. frederick hamilton . james hamilton . john hamilton . hugh hamilton . s. francis henderson . s. john henderson . thomas hume . col. hunter . edward johnston . james johnston . william johnston . s. john innes . earl of iruin . william keith . jhon kinindmond . patrick kinindmond . thomas kinindmond . william kinindmond . walter lecky . col. lermond . alex. lesly . george lesly . john lesly . robert lesly . col. liddel . andrew lindsay . george lindsay . col. litheo . col. livingstoun . robert lumsden . col. lyon. col. mathuson . s. john meldrum . assen monro . fowles monro . hector monro . obstel monro . col. morison . s. pat. morray . col. mouat . col. ramsey . james ramsey . lord reay . col. robertson . col. rower . frances ruven . john ruven . l. sancomb . col. sandilands . robert scot. james seaton . james seaton . s. john seaton . william sempil . francis sinclair . col. spang . james spence . l. spynay . robert stuart . thomas thomson . john urquhart . col. wederburne . col. wilson . i have not mentioned here lieutenant general john midletoun , lieutenant general sir william balfour , nor general major sir george monro , &c. because they returned from the forraign countryes , where they did officiate ( though in places over both horse and foot of great concernment ) before they had obtained the charge of colonels . as for pricking down into colums those other scots in my book renowned for literature and personal valour , i held it not expedient ; for that the sum of them doth fall so far short of the number i have omitted , that proportioned to the aggregate of all who in that nation , since the yeer 1650. ( without reckoning any intrusted in military employments , either at home or abroad ) have deserved praise in armes and arts , joyntly or dis-junctively , it would bear the analogy ( to use a lesser definite for a greater indefinite ) of a subnovitripartient eights ; that is to say in plain english , the whole being the dividend , and my nomenclature the divisor , the quotient would be nine , with a fraction of three eights : or yet more clearly , as the proportion of 72. to 675. finis . a vindication of the authority, constitution, and laws of the church and state of scotland in four conferences, wherein the answer to the dialogues betwixt the conformist and non-conformist is examined / by gilbert burnet ... burnet, gilbert, 1643-1715. 1673 approx. 500 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 180 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : 2004-03 (eebo-tcp phase 1). a30478 wing b5938 estc r32528 12711648 ocm 12711648 66109 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a30478) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 66109) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1032:1) a vindication of the authority, constitution, and laws of the church and state of scotland in four conferences, wherein the answer to the dialogues betwixt the conformist and non-conformist is examined / by gilbert burnet ... burnet, gilbert, 1643-1715. [26], 362 [i.e. 332] p. by robert sanders ..., glasgow : mdclxxiii [1673] numerous errors in paging; numbers 113-142 omitted. reproduction of original in the bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p5 using tcp2tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large 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some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p5, characters represented either as utf-8 unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church of scotland -history -17th century. scotland -constitutional history. scotland -history -17th century. 2003-10 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-10 spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images 2003-11 john latta sampled and proofread 2003-11 john latta text and markup reviewed and edited 2003-12 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a vindication of the authority , constitution , and laws of the church and state of scotland . in four conferences . wherein the answer to the dialogues betwixt the conformist and the non-conformist , is examined . by gilbert burnet , professor , of theology in glasgow . glasgow , by robert sanders , printer to the city , and university . m. dc . lxxiii . to his grace the duke of lauderdale , &c. his majesies high commissioner for scotland . may it please your grace . the noble character which you do now so worthily bear , together with the more lasting and inward characters of your princely mind , did set me beyond doubting to whom this address was to be made : for to whom is a vindication of the authority and laws of this kingdom so due , as to your grace , to whom his majesty hath by a royal delegation , committed the administration of affairs among us ; and under whose wise and happy conduct , we have enjoyed so long a tract of uninterrupted tranquillity ? but it is not only your illustrious quality that entitles you to this dedication . no , great prince , greater in your mind , than by your fortune ; there is somewhat more inward to you , than the gifts of fortune ; which , as it proues her not blind in this instance , so commands all the respect can be payed your grace , by such who are honoured with so much knowledg of you , as hath fallen to the happy share of your poorest servant . but , my lord , since all i can say either of the vast endowments of your mind , or of the particular engagements i lie under to honour you , must needs fall short of my sense of both ; and what is just to be said , is not fit for me to express ; the least appearances of flattery being as unpleasant to you , as unbecoming one of my station : i must quit this theme , which is too great for me to manage ; and only add , that i know your understanding , in such debates as are here managed , to be so profound , and your judgment so well balanced , that as you deservedly pass for a master in all learning ; so , if these sheets be so happy as to be well accounted of by you , i shall the less value or apprehend the snarlings of all censurers . i pretend not by prefixing so great a name to these conferences , to be secure from censure by your patrociny , since these enemies of all order and authority ( with whom i deal ) will rather be provoked from that , to lash me with the more severity . i shall not to this add my poor thoughts of what this time and the tempers of those with whom we deal , seems to call for , since by so doing , i should become more ridiculous than phormio was , when he entertained the redoubted hannibal , with a pedantick discourse of a generals conduct . it is from your graces deep judgment and great experience , that we all expect and long for a happy settlement , wherein that success and blessings may attend your endeavours , shall be prayed for more earnestly by none alive , than by , may it please your grace , your graces most humble , most faithful , and most obliged servant . g. burnet . to the reader . how sad , but how full a commentary doth the age we live in , give on these words of our lord , luke 12.49 . i am come to send fire on the earth : suppose you that i am come to give peace on the earth ; i tell you , nay ; but rather division : for from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided . do we not see the father divided against the son , and the son against the father , and engaging into such angry heats and mortal feuds , upon colors of religion , as if the seed of the word of god , like cadmus teeth , had spawned a generation of cruel and bloud-thirsty men : but how surprizing is the wonder , when religion becomes the pretence , and seems to give the rise to these animosities , since the wisdom and goodness of god hath devised nothing more proper and powerful for over-ruling all the secret passions of the mind , and for mortifying of all boisterous disorders ? the doctrine delivered by our meek and lowly master , teacheth us the great lessons of humility , of self-diffidence , and self-contempt , guards against the undervaluing of others , and the over-rating of our selves , gives check to wrath , anger , emulation and envy ; hatred and malice , railing and censuring : and in a word , designs the moulding our natures into a conformity with its blessed author : who when he was reviled , reviled not again ; but practised without a blemish , those great lessons he taught his disciples , of doing good for evil , loving his enemies , and praying for such as despitefully used him . but how far have we fallen from that lovely pattern ? and how is the serene and peaceable visage of christianity transformed into a sour cankered and surly temper , as if that which obliged us to love all men , should engage us to look morose on all but a handful of a party : and that which should dilate our love to all mankind , is given for a ground of contracting it to a few as ill natured as our selves . is there not a generation among us who highly value themselves , and all of their own form ? but whoso differs from them , is sure of their fiercest spite , and bitterest censures . are the lives of such as differ from them vertuous , then they say they are good moral men : but , alas ! they know not what it is to be spiritual . again , are they devout and grave , then they are called monastick people , juglers , or papists . and if nothing can be fastened on them , the charge of hypocrisie is the last shift of malice : or if they have been guilty of any failings and mistakes , they are so far from covering or disguising of them ; that on the contrary , the relating , the aggravating , and the commenting on these , is the main subject of all their discourses . and if they go on a visit , the first civilities are scarce over , when these stories ( true or false , all is to one purpose ) come to make up their conversation . who can have the least tincture of the christian spirit , and look on without sad regrates , and see this bitter , fierce , and cruel venom poisoning the several sects and divisions of christendom ? the root and spring whereof is no other than a carnal , proud , and unmortified temper : for few are so atheistical , but they desire to pass , both in their own account , and in the opinion of others , for good christians : but when they find how hard a thing it is to be a christian indeed , and that they must mortifie all their carnal appetites , their fierce passions , and swellings of pride , despise the world , and be resigned in all things to the will of god , before they can deserve that noble character , then they pursue another method more grateful to their corrupt minds , which is to list themselves under a party , to cherish and value the heads and leaders of it , and to divide their kindness to all of their stamp : they stifly adhere to the forms , and maintain all the humors and opinions of that party to which they have associated themselves , and they whet their spirits and sharpen their tongues against all of another mould , which some do with an undisguised fierceness : other with a visage of more gravity , by which they give the deeper wounds . what sad effects flow from this spirit is too visible ; and i love not to play the diviner , or to presage all the mischief it threatens : but certain it is that the great business of religion lies under an universal neglect , while every one looks more abroad on his neighbor , than inwardly on himself ; and all st●dy more the advancement of a party , than the true interest of religion . i deny not but zeal for god must appear , when we see indignities done to his holy name , in a just indignation at these who so dishonour him ; but what relation have little small differences about matters which have no tendency for advancing the image of god in our souls , to that ; since both sides of the debate may be well maintained without the least indignity done to god , or his holy gospel ? what opposition to the will of god , or what harm to souls can flow from so innocent a practice , as the fixing some churchmen over others , for observing , directing , reproving , and coercing of the rest , that this should occasion such endless brawlings , and such hot contentions ? but supposing the grounds of our divisions , as great as any angry disputer can imagine them , then certainly our zeal for them should be tempered , according to the rules and spirit of the gospel . is it a christian temper that our spirits should boil with rage against all of another persuasion , so that we cannot think of them without secret commotions of anger and disdain , which breaks often out into four looks , ridiculous ●earings , bitter scoffings and invectives , and in attempts at bloud and cruelty ? how long shall our nadabs and ab●hus burn this wild-fire on the altar of god , whose flames should be peaceful , and such as descend from heaven ? when we see any endangering their souls by erroneous opinions , or bad practices , had we the divine spirit in us , it would set us to our secret mournings for them : our hearts would melt in compassion towards them , and not burn in rage against them : and we would attempt for their recovery , and not contrive their 〈◊〉 . the ●ne bears on it a clear impress of that nature which is love , in which none can have interest , or union , but such as dwell and abide in love : but the other bears on it the lively signature of him that was a murderer from the beginning : and all that is mischievous or cruel , is of that evil one , and tends to the subversion of mankind ; as well as the ruin of true religion . another great rule by which the peace and order of all human societies is maintained and advanced , is obedience to the laws , and submission to the authority of these whom god hath set over us , to govern and defend us ; to whose commands if absolute obedience be not payed , ever till they contradict the laws of god , there can be neither peace nor order among men , as long as every one prefers his own humour or inclination to the laws of the society in which he lives . now it cannot be denied to be one of the sins of the age we live in , that small regard is had to that authority god hath committed to his vicegerents on earth : the evidence whereof is palpable , since the bending or slackening of the execution of laws is made the measure of most mens obedience , and not the conscience of that duty we owe the commands of our rulers : for what is more servile and unbecoming a man , not to say a christian , than to yield obedience when over-awed by force ; and to leap from it when allured by gentler methods ? if generosity were our principle , we should be sooner vanquished by the one , than cudgelled by the other : or if conscience acted us , the obligation of the law would equally bind , whether backed with a strict execution , or slackened into more impunity . hence it appears how few there are who judg themselves bound to pay that reverence to the persons , and that obedience to the commands of these god hath vested with his authority , which the laws of nature and religion do exact . and the root of all this disobedience and contempt , can be no other , but unruly and ungoverned pride , which disdains to submit to others , and exalts it self above these who are called gods. the humble are tractable and obedient ; but the self willed are stubborn and rebellious . yet the height of many mens pride rests not in a bare disobedience , but designs the subverting of thrones , and the shaking of kingdoms , unless governed by their own measures . among all the heresies this age hath spawned , there is not one more contrary to the whole design of religion ▪ and more destructive of mankind , than is that bloudy opinion of defending religion by arms , and of forcible resistance upon the colour of preserving religion . the wisdom of that policy is ●●●hly , sen●●al and devillish , favoring of a carnal unmortified and impatient mind , that cannot bear the cross , nor trust to the providence of god : and yet with how much zeal is this doctrine maintained and propagated , as if on it hung both the law and the prophets ? neither is the zeal used for its defence only meant for the vindicating of what is past , but on purpose advanced for re-acting the same tragedies : which some late villanous attempts have too clearly discovered , some of these black arts ( tho written in white ) being by a happy providence of god ( by the intercepting of r. mac his letters which contained not a few of their rebellious practisings and designs ) brought to light . indeed the consideration of these evils should call on all to reflect on the sad posture wherein we are , and the evident signatures of the divine displeasure under which we l●e : from which it appears that god hath no pleasure in 〈◊〉 , nor will be glorified among us : that so we may discern the signs of the times , and by all these sad indications may begin to appehend our danger , and ●o turn to god with our whole hearts ; every one repenting of the works of his hands , and contributing his prayers and endeavours for a more general reformation . it is not by political arts , nor by the execution of penal laws , that the power of religion can be recovered from these decays , under which it hath so long suffered . no , no , we must consider wherein we have provoked god to chastise us in this fashion , by letting loose among us a spirit of uncharitableness , giddiness , cruelty and sedition : and the progress of these and other great evils , we ought to charge on our own faultiness , who have provoked god to plead a controversie with us in so severe a manner . this is the method we ought to follow , which if we did , we might sooner look for the divine protection and assistance : and then we should experience it to be better to put our confidence in god , than to put our confidence in men . indeed surh a reformation of our lives and hearts , would more strongly plead our cause , and advance our interest , than the most learned disputes , or the severest laws , tho followed with a most vigorous execution : let us not therefore repine at the contempt we lie under , or the hazard we are exposed to ; nor complain of the non-execution of laws ; but let us examine wherein we have walked contrary to the laws of christ in his gospel , by which we have provoked god to render us base and contemptible before the people . in a word , till we condemn our selves more , and others less , and think more of reforming our selves , and less of punishing others , we look not like proper objects of mercy , or fit for a deliveranee . but i shall quit this purpose to give some account of the following conferences . some years ago , a small book of dialogues betwixt the conformist and nonconformist was published , and received with the general applause and good liking of all , who were so far unprepossessed as to consider the plain and simple reasonings were there laid open ; but presently all the mouths of the enraged zealots were set a yelping and snarling at it , and at its suspected author : some laughed at it , others despised it , and all of them were angry : some threatned a speedy answer , others doubting of the performance , said , it deserved none . at length divers pens were said to have undertaken the task ; but in end we had an answer from beyond sea to it , which was received with an universal shout of victory and triumph : the answerer acting his part with so much confidence , and edging his smatterings with so much bitterness , as if he had engaged with a compound of ignorance and atheism . at first reading i could not but pity one who triumphed so confidently with so little reason , and regrate the bitterness of his spirit , who belched up gall and wormwood upon every occasion . yet in some matters of fact and history , i deny not but his confidence made me imagine truth might be on his side ; but when i examined things from their fountains , i know not wha verdict to pass on him , who fell in so many mistakes , and stumbled at every step . most of his errors i imputed to his second-hand reading , for he seems to have risen no higher in his learning than the reading of pamphlets : and it is like , hath that quarrel with antiquity , that there is not a forty year old author in his closet ; and so much is he beholden to the labours of others , that if one unplume him of what is borrowed , nothing will remain but scoldings , and non-sense . for when he meets with anything out of the road , it is not unpleasant to see how browillied he is ; and so unequal in his stile , that sometimes he flies high on borrowed wings , and immediately he halts and crawls when on his own legs . i was not soon resolved whether such a scribler deserved an answer , since all he said that was material , had both been printed and answered full often ; yet the confidence of the author , and the value which others , much about his own size of knowledg and modesty , did set on his labors , made me think it necessary to say a little more on these things , which were perhaps too overly glanced at by the conformist in the dialogues : and my interest in that person secured me from apprehending his mistakes of my interposing in this quarrel ; for indeed what he said was so far from being shaken by this pretended trifling answer , that as a person of great judgment and worth , said , no more pains was needful for refuting the answer , but the reading over the dialogues , whose strength remained entire after all his attempts against them . i was doubtful what method to pursue in the following sheets , since i ever loathed the answering of books by retail , as an endless and worthless labor : for when should i have done , did i call him to account for all his incoherencies and impertinencies , and examine all his simpering distinctions , and whiffling answers ? i resolved therefore at one dash to wave all that , and to examine the matters of greater and more publick concern , with that clearness of expression which befits such subjects , and with so much brevity , as might not frighten away the more superficial readers , nor surfeit the more laborious . therefore i have not stayed to make good all the conformists opinions or arguments , hinted in these short dialogues , but have left the examining of them , and the answers made to them , to the consideration of the unprejudged reader , and so have considered nothing of what he answers to the fifth and sixth dialogues . to the fifth dialogue , wherein set forms for worship are pleaded for , he answers by confessing their lawfulness , arguing only against the imposing them ; but this i meet with in my second conference , wherein i assert the binding authority of laws in all things lawful . and for his answers to the sixth dialogue , they concern me not , being made up of reflections : it is true , to shew his common place reading , he gives a long discourse of justification , but to very little purpose , since upon the matter the conformist differs nothing from him : and for the justifying or condemning some phrases or modes of speech , they are not worth the while to debate about them : all my quarrel at these long winded common places , being , that by a pretence of making matters clearer , they darken them with a multiplicity of words , and an intricacy of phrases . and as this is justly censurable on every head about which it is imployed , so it is more particularly in the matter of justification , which being the ground of our hope and joy , should be so cleared , that no difficulty , nor nicety get into our conceptions about it . what then can be clearer than that god in consideration of his sons sufferings , offers free pardon to all sinners , on the terms of their forsaking their sins , their accepting his mercy through his son , and their obedience to the rules of his gospel , which whosoever do , are actually in the ●avor of god , made partakers of his grace , and shall in due time be admitted to his glory ? this being the co●f●rmists sense on that head , i leave it with all to consider what reason there was for making such ado about it , or for charging him with so heavy imputations . but he shrouds himself under his own innocency , and will patiently bear all the insultings and ungodly rage of that adversary , without recriminating or answering him in his own style and dialect . i pursue the method of a conference , as being both more suitable to the purposes here canvassed , and more agreeable to the dialogues , only i furnish the scene with more persons ; and i am much mistaken if the answerer himself shall have ground to accuse me of not laying out the strength of his reasonings faithfully , since upon every occasion i put in isotimus his mouth the substance of his arguings , as far as i could reach them . but to make this unpleasant peace of contention go the more easily off , i have subjoyned to it an account of the form and rules of church government , as i found them to have been received in the first and purest ages of the church : but i add no more for preface to that work , since in the end of the last conference enough is said for introduction to it . i have divided my work in four parts and conferences : the first examines the opinion of resisting lawful magistrates upon the pretence of defending religion . the second considers the authority of laws , and the obedience due to them , together with the kings supremacy in matters ecclesiastical . the third examines the spirit that acted during the late times and wars , and continues yet to divide us by schism and faction . and the fourth examines the lawfulness and usefulness of episcopacy . i must now release my reader from the delay this introduction may have occasioned him , without the usual formality of apologies , for the defects the following papers are guilty of , since i know these generally prevail but little for gaining what they desire : but shall only say , that this morose way of writing , by engaging into controversies , is as contrary to my genius as to any mans alive : for i know well how little such writings prevail for convincing of any , and that by them the most part are rather hardened into more wilfulness , and exasperated into more bitterness : yet for this once i was prevailed on to do violence to my own inclinations , by this patrociny of the authority and laws of that church and kingdom wherein i live . i am so far from thinking my self concerned to make apology for the slowness of this piece its appearance in publick , that i encline rather to make excuses for its coming abroad too soon . that it was ready near a twelve-month ago , can be witnessed by many who then saw it . yet i was willing to let it lye some time by me , and my aversion from the motions of the press , put it often under debate with me whether i should stifle it , or give it vent : at length i yielded to the frequent importunities of my friends who assaulted me from all hands , and told me how much it was longed for , and what insultings were made upon the delay of its publication . and by what is near the end of the third conference , it will appear that it was written before the discovery of these who had robbed and wounded the ministers in the west of scotland . i let what is there said continue as it was written , before the discovery , but shall add somewhat here . in september last , after a new robbery had been committed on another conformable minister , whose actors no search could discover ; some few days had not passed over , when by a strange providence one of them was catched on another account by a brave soldier , and being seized , such indications of his accession to the robbery were found about him , that he to prevent torture , confessed not only his own guilt , but discovered a great many more : most of them escaped , yet three were taken , and had justice done on them , with him who had been their chief leader : and who continued to cant it out highly after he got his sentence , talking of his blood as innocently shed , and railing against the prelats and curats ; though before sentence he was basely sordid , as any could be . one of his complices who died with more sense , acknowledged , when he spake his last words , that bitter zeal had prompted him to that villany , and not covetousness , or a design of robbing their goods . yet i shall not conceal what i was a witness to , when a minister of the presbyterian perswasion being with them ( for two of them would willingly admit of none that were episcopal ) after he had taken pains to convince the chief robber of the atro●iousness of his crimes , which was no ●asie task , he charged him to discover if either gentlemen , or ministers , had prompted or cherished him in it , or been conscious to his committing these robberies , he cleared all , except a few particular and mean persons who went sharers with him . and by this fair and ingenuous procedure , the reader may judge how far the author is from a design of lodging infamy on these who differ from him , when of his own accord he offers a testimony for their vindication . but i shall leave this purpose , and the further prefacing at once . if my poor labors be blessed with any measure of success , i humbly offer up the praise of it to him f●om whom i derive all i have , and to whom i owe the praise of all i can do . but if these attempts bring forth none of the wished-for effects , i shall have this satisfaction , that i have sincerely and seriously studied the calming the passions , and the clearing the mistakes of these among whom i live : so that more lyes not on me , but to follow my endeavours with my most earnest prayers , that the god of peace may in this our day , cause us discern and consider these things which belong to our peace . the heads treated of in these conferences . the first conference examines the origine and power of magistracy , and whether subjects may by arms resist their sovereigns on the account , or pretence of defending religion against tyranny , and unjust oppression ? and whether the king of scotland be a sovereign prince , or limited , so that he may be called to account , and coerced by force ? the second examines the nature of humane laws , and of the obedience due to them , and the civil magistrates right of enacting laws in matters ecclesiastical . the third examines the grounds and progress of the late wars , whether they were defensive or invasive , and what spirit did then prevail ? and the grounds of our present schi●m are considered . the fourth examines the origine , lawfulness , and usefulness of episcopal government , which is concluded ; with an account of the primi●ive constitution and government of the churches that were first gathered and planted . the collocutors . eudaimon . a moderate man. philarchaeus . an episc●pal man. isotimus . a presbyterian . basilius . an asserter of the kings authority . criticus . one well studied in scripture . polyhistor . an historian . the first conference . eudaimon . you are welcome , my good friends , and the rather that you come in such a number , whereby our converse shall be the more agreeable . pray , sit down . philarcheus . the rules of custom should make us begin with asking after your health , and what news you have . eud. truly the first is not worth enquiring after ; and for the other , you know how seldom i stir abroad , and how few break in upon my retirement , so that you can expect nothing from me ; but you have brought one with you who uses to know every thing that is done . isotimus . i know you mean me : the truth is , i am very glad to hear every thing that passeth ; and think it no piece of virtue to be so unconcerned in what befals the church of god , as never to look after it : but you are much wronged , if notwithstanding all your seeming abstraction , you be not deeper in the knowledge of affairs than any of us : however since you expect news from me , i was just now reading some books lately printed at holland , and particularly an accurate and learned confutation of these virulent dialogues you were wont to magnifie so much : and it doth my heart good to see how he baffles the writer of them on every occasion ; for he hath answered every word of them so well , and so home , that i believe we shall not see a reply in haste . philarcheus . i suppose we have all seen the book , but it is like you are singular in your opinion of it : i shall not deny its author his deserved praises : he hath been faithful in setting down most of the arguments used in the dialogues , and no less careful to gather together all the vulgar answers to them , and truly hath said as much as can be said for his cause . neither writes he without art ; for when he is pinched , he drives off the reader with a great many preliminary things , to make him forget the purpose , and to gain a more easie assent to what he asserts . i confess his stile is rugged and harsh , so that it was not without pain i wrestled through it : but of all i have seen , he hath fallen on the surest way to gain an applause from the vulgar ; for he acts the greatest confidence imaginable , and rails at his adversary with so much contempt , and malice , that he is sure to be thought well of , by these who judge of a man more by his voice , and the impresses of earnestness , and passion he discovers , than by the weight of what he saith . eud. these things may well take with the ignorant rabble , with whom it is like he designs to triumph : but truly such as understand either the civilities of good nature , or the meekness of a christian , will be little edified with them . indeed i am amazed to see so much indiscretion and bitterness fall from any mans pen who hath read s. paul , condemning railings , evil surmisings , and perverse disputings . isot. who begun the scolding ? the truth is , there are some who think they may rail with a priviledge , and if any in soberness tell them of their faults , they accuse them of bitterness : but was there ever any thing seen more waspish than these dialogues ? whose design seems to have been the disgracing of a whole party , and all their actions for many years : if then the atheism , the blasphemy , the mockery , the enmity to god and religion , the ignorance , the malice , the folly and arrogance of such a confident babler be discovered , you are so tender der hooffed forsooth , as to complain of railings . eud. it seems these writings have made a deep impression on you , you have got so exactly into their stile : b●t this is a place where passion is seldom cherished , therefore we will expect no more of that strain from you . but to deal freely with you , there were some expressions in these dialogues with which i was not well satisfied ; but the whole of them had such a visage of serenity , that i wonder how they are so accused . it is true the conformijt deals very plainly , and yet ere we part , i can perhaps satisfie you : he said but a little of what he might have said : but withal , remember how severely , he that was meekness it self , treated the scribes and the pharisees , and he having charged his followers to beware of their leaven , it is obedience to his command to search out that leaven , that it may leaven us no more . and when any of a party are so exalted in their own conceit , as to despise and disparage all others , the love , ministers of the gospel owe the souls of their flocks , obligeth them to unmask them . as to these poor simple reproaches that are cast on the person of that author , as they are known to be false and unjust , so they are done in a strain that seems equally void of wit and goodness . but we shall meddle no more in these ●●●sonal difference● , afte● i have told you what i heard the author of that conference say upon this subject : he said , he was so far from being displeased with the author of this answer , that he was only sorry he knew not who he was , that he might seek an opportunity of obliging him . for the things charged on him , if he was guilty of them , he needed very many prayers ; but if innocent , the other needed no fewer who so unjustly accused him : but a day comes wherein a righteous judge will judge betwixt them : and this was the utmost displeasure he expressed ; adding , that he had another sense of the account he must give for his hours , than to engage in a counter scuffle , or to play at such small game , as a particular examen of that book would amount to : and he judged it unworthy of him to turn executioner on that man's reputation , by enquiring into all the escapes of his book which are too obvious . but he is willing to stand or fall by the decision of rational and impartial minds , only where he was either too short , or where the answerer hath raised so much mist as might obscure a less discerning reader : he will ( when he gets out of the throng wherein his employment doth at present engage him ) offer a clearer account of the matters in question , without tracing of that p●or creature , who , it is like , expects to be recorded among the learned writers of the age , and the champions of truth . bas. we have nothing to do with what is personal among these writers : but since so many of us have met so happily , and seem a little acquainted with these questions , let us according to our wonted freedom , toss these debates among us , without heat or reflections : which signifie nothing but to express the strength of his passions , and the weakness of his reasons who makes use of them . and indeed the matter of the greatest importance is , the point of subjects resisting their sovereigns , in the defence of religion , which deserves to be the better cleared , since it is not a nicety of the school , or a speculation of philosophers , but a matter of practice , and that which ( if received ) seems to threaten endless wars and confusions . crit. i am no great disputer , but shall be gladly a witness to your debate , and upon occasions shall presume to offer what i have gleaned among the critical writers on scripture : and i hope ij●timus's memory is so good , that he will carefully suggest the arguments used by the patrons of defensive arms. isot. i will not undertake too much , but shall take care not to betray this good cause , yet i will not have the verdict passed upon my defence of it ; however i shall not sneak so shamefully as the nonconformist did in the dialogues . eud. i hope i shall not need to caution you any more against reflections : but as for the alledged treachery of your friend the nonconformist , it may be referred to all scotland , if what he saith be not what is put in the mouths of all the people about these matters , and truly this answer adds so little to him , that nothing can free him so well of that treachery , as the reading of this new book . but to our purpose : the question is first in general , if subjects under a lawful sovereign when oppressed in their established religion , may by arms defend themselves , and resist the magistrates ? let this be first discussed in general , and next it shall be considered how far this will quadrat with our present case , or our late troubles . isot. i like your method well , and that we may follow it , consider ( see pag. 20. of the answer , and ius populi all over ) if their can be any thing more evident from the laws of nature , than that men ought to defend themselves , when unjustly assaulted ? and since the law of nature teacheth men not to murder themselves , it by the same force binds them to hinder another to do it , since he that doth not hinder another from committing a crime , when it is in his power so to do , becomes guilty of the crime committed ; he is then a self-murderer who doth not defend himself from unjust force . besides , what is the end of all societies , but mutual protection ? did not the people at first choose princes for their protection ? or do you imagine it was to satisfie the pride and cruelty of individual persons ? it was then the end of societies , that justice and peace might be maintain'd : so when this is inverted , the subjects are again to resume their own conditional surrender , and to coerce the magistrate , who , forgetful of the ends of his authority , doth so corrupt it . and since the great design of man should be to serve god , and to worship him in spirit and in truth , this is to be preferred to all things else , as being of the greatest importance . if then magistrates , whom s. peter ( 1 pet. 2.13 . ) calls the ordinances of men , or humane creatures , do force there subjects from the true worship of god , they ought to be restrained , and the cause of god must be maintained , notwithstanding their unjust laws or cruel tyranny . bas. you have indeed put such colours on your opinion , that i should be much shaken from mine , were not my persuasion well grounded . but to examine what you have said , you must distinguish well betwixt the laws of nature , and the rights or permissions of nature : the first are unalterable obligations , by which all men are bound , which can be reversed by no positive law , and transgressed by no person , upon no occasion : for the law of nature is the image of god yet remaining in some degrees on the souls of men , and is nothing else save certain notions of truth , impressed by god on the souls of all men that enjoy the exercise of reason . now self-defence cannot be a law of nature , otherwise it could never be dispensed with without a sin ; nay , were a man never so criminal : for as in no case a man may kill himself , were he never so guilty ; so by that reasoning of yours , he ought not to suffer himself to be killed , neither should any malefactor submit to the sentence of the judge , but stand to his defence by all the force he could raise . and it will not serve turn , to say , that for the good of the society he ought to submit ; for no man must violate the laws of nature , were it on never so good a design : and since the utmost standard of our love to our neighbors , is to love them as our selves , no consideration of the good of others can oblige one to yield up his life , if bound by the law of nature to defend it . crit. if i may interrupt you , i should tell you that as among all nations it hath been counted heroical to die for ones country , or for the good of others , so the apostle speaks , ( rom. 5.7 . ) of those who for good men would dare to die . but chiefly christ's dying for us , shews that self-defence can be no law of nature : otherwise christ who filled all righteousness , had never contradicted the laws of nature . bas. i thank you for your remark , which was pertinent . but next , consider there are some rights or permissions of nature , which are allowed us , but not required of us , as propriety of goods , marriage , and other such like things , which whose doth not pretend to , he cannot be said to violate the laws of nature , only for some greater consideration he forgoes these priviledges it allows . and take men out of a society , i acknowledge forcible resistance of any violent assailant , to be one of the rights of nature , which every man may make use of without a fault , or dispense with likewise at his pleasure : but societies being associations of people under a head , who hath the power of life and death , that sets it beyond doubt , that the head must only judge , when the subjects do justly fore-seal their lives or not : which before i go about to evince , i must remove that vulgar error , of a magistrate's deriving his power from the surrender of the people . none can surrender what they have not : take then a multitude of people not yet associated , none of them hath power of his own life , neither hath he power of his neighbors , since no man out of a society may kill another , were his crime never so great , much less be his own murderer ; and a multitude of people not yet associated , are but so many individual persons ; therefore the power of the sword is not from the people , nor any of their delegation , but is from god. isot. you will pardon me to tell you , that the people must give the power , since god did it never by a voice from heaven , or by a prophets command , except in some instances among the israelites , where even that was not done , but upon the previous desire of the people . and for what you say of the peoples having no right to kill themselves , they only consent to submit to the magistrates sentence , when guilty . basil. this will then infallibly prove , that forcible self-defence cannot be a law of nature , but only a right ; otherwise we could not thus dispense with it . but if though guilty , i ought not to kill my self , neither can i so much as consent that another do it : hence it is , that the original of magistracy must be from god , who only can invest the prince with the power of the sword. polyb. i could say much in confirmation of that , from the universal sense of all nations , who ever looked on the magistrates power , as sacred and divine : but these things are so copiously adduced by others , that i may well spare my labor . crit. nay , a greater authority is st. paul's , rom. 13.1 . who saith , that the powers that were then , were ordained of god : which on the way saith strongly , for asserting the right of a conquerour , after some prescription , since if either we consider the power of the roman empire over the world , or of their emperours over them , both will be found to have no better title than conquest , and yet they were ordained of god , and not to be resisted , but submitted to , under the hazard of resisting the ordinance of god , and receiving of damnation , ( p. 2. ) and it is like , the sacredness of the magistrates power , was a part of the traditional religion conveyed from noah to his posterity , as was the practice of extraordinary sacrifices . basil. it is not to be denied but a people may chase their own form of government , and the persons in whose hands it shall be deposited : and the sovereignty is in their hands , of whom they do thus freely make choice : so that if they expressly agree , that any administrators of the power , by what name soever designed , kings , lords , or whatever else , shall be accountable to them ; in that case , the sovereignty lies in the major part of the people , and these administrators are subject to them , as to the supreme . but when it is agreed in whose hands the sovereign power lies , and that it is not with the people ; then if the people pretend to the sword , they invade gods right , and that which he hath devolved on his vicegerent . and as in marriage either of the parties make a free choice , but the marriage-bond is of god , neither is it free for them afterwards to refile upon pretence of injuries , till that which god hath declared to be a breach of the bond , be committed by either party : so though the election of the sovereign may be of the people , yet the tie of subjection is of god , and therefore is not to be shaken off , without we have express warrant from him . and according to your reasoning , one that hath made a bad choice in his marriage , may argue that marriage was intended for a help and comfort to man , and for propagation ; therefore when these things are missed in a marriage , that voluntary contract may be refiled from ; and all this will conclude as well to unty an ill chosen marriage , as to shake off a sovereign . philarch. to this reasoning i shall add what seems from rational conjectures , and such hints as we can expect of things at so great a distance from us , to have been the rise of magistracy . we find no warrant to kill , no not for murder before the floud , as appears from the instances of cain and lamech , so no magistracy appears to have been then : yet from what god said to cain , gen. 4.7 . we see , the elder brother was to rule over the younger . but the want of magistracy before the flood , was perhaps none of the least occasions of the wickedness which was great upon earth ; but to noah was the law first given of punishing murder by death , gen. 9.6 . and he was undoubtedly cloathed with that power . so his eldest son coming in his place by the right of representation , and being by the right of primogeniture asserted before the flood to be over his brethren , was cloathed with the same power , and so it should have descended by the order of nature still to the first-born . but afterwards families divided , and went over the world to people it , whereby the single jurisdiction of one emperor , could not serve the end of government , especially in that rude time , in which none of these ways of correspondence , which after ages have invented , were fallen upon . these families did then , or at least by that law of god of the elder brothers power , ought to have been subject to the eldest of their several families . and another rise of magistracy , was the poverty of many who sold themselves to others that were richer , and were in all nations sub●ect to them , both they and their children : and this was very early begun , for abraham's family consisted of 318. persons , and the many little kings at that time seem to have risen out of these families : for the posterity of these servants were likewise under the masters authority : and these servants were by their masters pleasure to live or lie ; nor had they any right to resist this unjust force : but afterwards emancipation was used , some dominion being still reserved : and it is highly probable , that from these numerous families , did most of the little kingdoms then in the world spring up ; afterwards the more aspiring came to pretend over others , and so great empires rose by their conquests . crit. i know it is strongly pretended , that the state of servitude , or such a surrender of ones life , or liberty , as subjects it to the tyranny of another , is not lawful : but this will be found groundless : for though even the law of god counted the servants a man's money , so that he was not to be punished , though he had smitten them with a rod , so that they died , provided they lived a day or two after it , exod. 21.20 , 21. yet in that dispensation it was not unlawful to be a servant ; nay , nor unlawful to continue in that state for ever , and not accept of the emancipation which was provided to them in the year of iubily . neither is this state declared unlawful under the gospel , since s. paul saith , 1 cor. 7.21 . art thou called being a servant , care not for it : but if thou mayst be free , use it rather : by which we see the gospel doth not emancipate servants , but placeth that state among things which may be lawfully submitted to , though liberty be preferable . basil. from this it may be well inferred , that if a society have so intirely surrendred themselves that they are in no better case than were the servants among the romans or hebrews , the thing is not unlawful ; nor can they make it void , or resume the freedom without his consent whose servants they are : and as s. peter tells , 1 pet. 2.18 . the servants to submit to their masters , tho punishing them wrongfully . by whom all know that he means not of hired , but of bought servants : so if a people be under any degrees of that state , they ought to submit , not only to the good , but to the froward : and still it appears that the sword is only in the magistrates hand , and that the people have no claim to it . it is true , in case the magistrate be furious , or desert his right , or expose his kingdoms to the fury of others , the laws and sense of all nations agree , that the states of the land are to be the administrators of the power , till he recover himself : but the instance of nebuchadn●zzar , dan. 4.26 . shews , that still the kingdom should be sure to him when he recovers . i●●t now you begin to yield to truth , and confess , that a magistrate , when he grosly abuseth his power , may be coërced : this then shews that the people are not slaves . basil. the case varies very much when the abuse is such that it tends to a total subversion , which may be called justly a phrensie , since no man is capable of it till he be under some lesion of his mind ; in which case , the power is to be administred by others , for the prince and his peoples safety : but this will never prove that a magistrate governing by law , though there be great errors in his government , ought to be coërced : otherwise you must open a door to perpetual broils , since every one by these maxims becomes judge ; and where he is both judge and party , he is not like to be cast in his pretensions : and even few malefactors die , but they think hard measure is given them . if then forcible self-defence be to be followed , none of these should yield up their lives without using all attempts for res●uing them . eud. whatever other cases allow of , certainly the defence of religion by arms is never to be admitted : for the nature of christian religion is such , that it excludes all carnal weapons from its defence . and when i consider how expresly christ forbids his disciples to resist evil , matth. 25.39 . how severely that resistance is condemned by s. paul , and that condemnation is declared the punishment of it , i am forced to cry out , oh! what times have we fallen in ▪ in which men dare against the express laws of the gospel , defend that practice upon which god hath passed this condemnation , if whosoever break the least of these commandments , and teach men so to do , shall be called the least in the kingdom of god : what shall their portion be who teach men to break one of the greatest of these commandments , such as are the laws of peace and subjection ? and what may we not look for from such teachers , who dare tax that glorious doctrine of patient suffering , as brutish and irrational , and though it be expresly said , 1 pet. 2.21 . that christ by suffering for us , left us his example how to follow his steps , which was followed by a glorious cloud of witnesses ? yet in these last days , what a brood hath sprung up , of men who are lovers of their own selves , traytors , heady , high-minded , lovers of pleasures , more than lovers of god : having a form of godliness , but denying the power thereof ; who creep into houses , and lead captive silly women laden with sin ? it is our sins that provoke god to open the bottomless pit , and let loose such locusts ; but were we turning to god , and repenting of the works of our hands , we might hope that their power should be taken from them , and that their folly should be made known to all men . isot. who talk bigly now ? but let reason and scripture take place , and you shall find good warrants in the old testament for coërcing the magistrate , and subjecting the power in the peoples hands , ( see p. 12. ) for the people were warranted to punish idolaters , deut. 13.12 . and from the beginning of deuteronomy , it appears that book was directed to all israel , therefore any might have punished idolaters ; therefore the power of reforming is with the people : and again ( see p. 13. ) the law of the king is set down , deut. 18.14 . which gives a clear evidence , that the people might coërce him : otherwise why was that law delivered to the people ? crit. i am much deceived if these instances do conclude for your design , since the utmost they can prove , is , that some share of the executive power lay in the hands of the people among the iews ; but that proves nothing : where by law and practice it is clear the power is wholly in the hands of superior unaccountable magistrates . but that the law of the king , or of punishing idolaters was delivered to the people , proves not that they must execute it : for the law of sacrifices , and all the temple worship was also delivered to them : but i hope you will not from that infer , that the people were to judge in these matters , or to give laws to their priests ; neither will the law , because addressed to the people , prove themselves to be the executors of it ; otherwise the epistle to the corinthians addressed to all the saints in corinth , will prove the people the iudges of excommunication , and of the rules of church-worship , which are there delivered : so that though the law was directed to all the people , yet that proves not that every precept of it concerned all the people , but that the whole of the law was addressed to the whole people , and the respective parts of it , to all the individuals , according to their several stations : and after all this , you are to consider that some things were allowed by that law to private persons , which ought never to be made precedents : for the law allowed the friends of one that was killed by chance , to avenge the blood on the person that slew him , if he kept not within the city of refuge : but that being a particular provision of their judicial and municipal law , will be no warrant for such revenge in other states . isot. but what say you to the revolt of libnah , 2 chron. 21.10 which revolted from iehoram , because he forsock the lord god of his fathers : and of amaziab , 2 chron. 25. 27. who when he turned away from following the lord , his being killed by a conspiracy of these in ierusalem , and the fourscore valiant priests who withstood ●zziah , when he went to offer incense ? 2 chron. 26.17 . see p. 13 , 14 crit. as for your instances , consider that many things are set down in the old testament , that are undoubted faults , and yet so far are they from being taxed , that they rather seem to be applauded : so it is in the case of the midwives lie , not to mention the polygamy of the patriarchs ; therefore it not being clear to us by what special warrants they acted , a practice of that dispensation will be no precedent to us . but for that of libnah , it may be justly doubted if the libnah there mentioned , be that city which was assigned to the priests : for numbers 33.20 . we meet with a libnah in the journyings of israel ; and both the syriack and the arabick version , have understood the place of that city ; for they render it , the idumeans that dwelt at libnah . but whatever be in this , the particle because , doth not always import the design of the doer : which if you examine the hebrew , will be very clear ; and i shall name but one place to satisfie you , 1 sam. 2.25 . elies sons hearkned not to the voice of their father , because the lord would slay them . but , i doubt not , you will confess this was not their motive to such disobedience : so this will import no more , but that god in his providence permitted that revolt for a punishment of iehoram's apostasie : neither will fair pretences justifie bad actions : so the utmost that place can prove , is , that they made that their pretence . but that their revolt could not be without they had also revolted from god , will appear from this , that the priests were bound to give attendance by turns at the temple , so none of them could have revolted from the king without their rejecting of god's service , as long as the king was master of ierusalem , whither no doubt they would not have come during their revolt . as for your instance of amaziah , i confess it is plain dealing , and you disclose the mystery of defensive arms that it is but lamely maintain'd , till the doctrine of murdering of kings be also asserted : and indeed your friend by this ingenuity of his , hath done that cause a prejudice , of which many are sufficiently sensible ; for this was a secret doctrine to be instilled in corners , in the hearts of disciples duly prepared for it , but not to be owned to the world : for if that place prove any thing , it will prove that when a king turns from following the lord , his subjects may conspire and slay him ; how this would take among the fifth●monarchy men , i know not ; but i am sure it will be abhorred by all protestants : and particularly by these who made it an article of their confession of faith , that infidelity or difference of religion , doth not make void the magistrates just power : therefore this being a direct breach of both fifth and sixth commands , though it be neither marked as condemned , nor punished in that short account there given , yet it will never warrant the resisting the ordinance of god , upon which god hath entailed damnation . and whereas your friend alledgeth the justice of this may be evinced from scripture , it shews that in his judgment , not only tyranny , but the turning from following god , is a just cause for conspiring against , and killing of kings : but i cannot see where he finds what the cause of this conspiracy was , since the text taxeth only the time , but not the cause of it . and for the instance of uzziah , the priests indeed withstood him , as they ought to have done , as the ministers of the gospel ought yet to do , if a king would go and consecrate the lord's supper : but their withstanding of that , imports no violent opposition ; the strict signification of the word being only , that they placed themselves over against him , and so it is rendered by the lxx . interpreters ; and remember that s. paul withstood s. peter to his face , gal. 2.11 . yet i do not apprehend you will suspect he used force . as for what follows , that the priests did thrust him out , it will not prove they laid hands on him , that word signifying only , that they made him haste out of the temple : and is the same word which esther 6.14 . is rendered , hasted , where none will think that the chamberlains laid violent hands on haman : so all that the priests did , was to charge uzziah , when his leprosie appeared , to get him quickly out of the temple : and some copies of the lxx . have it so rendered : and the following words shew there was no need of using force , since himself made haste . and for the word rendered valiant , or sons of valor , that word is not always taken for valor , but sometimes for activity ; so gen. 47.6 . sometimes for riches , so ruth 2.1 . it is also rendered wealth , gen. 34.29 . so this will not prove that azariah made choice of these men for the strength of their body , but for the resolution of their mind , that they might stoutly contradict uzziah ; and thus you have drawn a great deal more f●om me than i intended , or these misapplied places needed , for clearing of them from the design you had upon them . isot. but is it not clear from 1 sam. 14.45 . that the people of israel rescued jonathan from his fathers bloody sentence against him , and swore he should not die ? see p●● . ● . 5 . crit. that will prove as little ; for no force was used in the matter , only a solemn protestation was made . next , the word rendered , rescued , is , redeemed , which is not used in a sense that imports violence in scripture : but rather for a thing done by contract and agreement : and the lxx . interpreters render it , the people intreated for ionathan : nor need we doubt but saul was easily prevailed upon to yield to their desire . besides any king that would murder his eldest son and heir of his crown upon so bare a pretence , after he had signalized his courage so notably , as ionathan did , may well be looked upon as one that is furious ; and so the holding of his hands , is very far different from the case of defensive arms. isot. but david , a man according to gods heart , gathered four hundred men about him , and stood to his defence , when cruelly persecuted by saul , 1 sam. 22.2 . basil. many things meet in this instance to take away any colour of an argument might be drawn from it : for david was by gods command designed successor to the crown , and so was no ordinary subject . next , saul was become furious , and an evil spirit seized on him , so that in his rage he threw javelins , not only at david , but at his son ionathan . now all confess ▪ that when a sovereign is frenetick , his fu●y may be restrained . further , we see how far david was from resistance , he standing on a pure defence , so that when he had saul in his power twice , he would do him no hurt ; yea , his heart smote him when he cut off the hem of his garment , 1 sam. 24.4 , 5. this was not like some you know of , who set guards about their king ( for the security of his person forsooth ) when he had trusted himself into their hands . and it is very doubtful if david's gathering that force about him was lawful ; for these who came to him were naughty men , and discontented and broken with debt ; whereas had that been a justifiable practice , it is like he should have had another kind of following . and his offering his service to the philistins , who were enemies to god , to fight for them against the people of god , is a thing which can admit of no excuse . but after all this , if the actions even of renowned persons in the old dispensation be precedents , you may adduce the instances of ehud , to prove that we may secretly assassinate a tyrant ; and of iael , to prove that after we have offered protection to one who upon that trusts to us , we may secretly murder him . isot. but what say you to the resistance used by mattatb●as , and his children , who killed the kings officers , and armed against him ? which resistance , as it was foretold by daniel , so it is said by the author of the epistle to the hebrews , that by faith they waxed valiant in fight , and turned to flight the armies of aliens : which by all is applied to the maccabees . and who are you to condemn that which the holy ghost calls the work of faith in them ? see p. 18 , 19. basil. i see criticus is weary of speaking , and therefore will relieve him for this once , and tell you , that the title anti●●hus had to command the iews , is not undoubted : for iosephus lib. 12. cap. 7. and 8. shews how the iewish nation was tossed betwixt hands , and sometimes in the power of the kings of egypt , and sometimes of syria ; and that the factions among the iews , gave the occasion to their being so invaded ; for ambitious pretenders to the high priesthood , sought the favour of these kings , and so sacrificed the interests both of religion , and their country to their own base ends : which was the case in ant●ochus epiphanes his time , who after his attempt upon egypt , came against ierusalem , to which he was admitted by the men of his party , who opened the gates to him : after which , he polluted their worship and temple , and fell on the cruellest persecution imaginable . now his title over them being so ill grounded , their asserting their freedom and religion against that cruel and unjust invader , was not of the nature of subjects ●esist●ng their sovereign . besides , what is brought from the epistle to the hebrews ch . 11. for justifying these wars , seems ill applied : for from the end of the 32. verse , it appears he only speaks there of what was done in the times of the prophets , and none of these being during the time of the maccabees , that is not applicable to them . next , as for mattathias , i must tell you that god often raised up extraordinary persons to judg i●rael , whose practices must be no rule to us : for god sets up kings and rulers at his pleasure : and in the old dispensation he frequently sent extraordinary persons to do extraordinary things , who were called zealots : and such was samuel's hewing agag in pieces before the lord , elijah's causing to kill the priests of baal , which was not done upon the peoples power to kill idol●te●s : but elijah having by that signal miracle of fire falling from heaven , proved both that god was the lord , and onely to be worshiped , and that he was his prophet , and commanding these priests to be killed , he was to be obeyed . of the same nature was his praying for fire from heaven on the captains who came to take him , and eli●ha his c●r●ing of the children who reproached him . from these precedents we see it is apparent that often in the old dispensation , the power of the sword , both ordinary and extraordinary , was assumed by persons sent of god , which will never warrant private and ordinary uninspired persons to do the like . isot. i acknowledg this hath some ground ; but the first instance of these zealots , was ph●nehas , in whom we find no vestige of an extraordinary mission , and yet he killed zimri and cosbi , for which he was rewarded with an everlasting priesthood : so a zeal for god in extraordinary cases , seems warrant enough for extraordinary practices . pag. 382. to 405. basil. if you will read the account of that action given by moses , it will clear you of all your mistakes : since phinehas had the warrant of the magistrate for all he did ; for moses being then the person in whose hands the civil power was committed by god , did say to the judges of israel , numb . 25.5 . slay ye every one his men that were joyned to baal peor . now that phinehas was a judg in israel at that time , is not to be doubted ; for eleazer was then high priest , and by that means exempted from that authority , which when his father aaron lived , was in his hand , numb . 3.32 . and he being now in his fathers place , there is no ground to doubt but phinehas was also in his , and so as one of the judges , he had received command from moses to execute judgment on these impure idolaters , which he did with so much noble zeal , that the plague was stayed , and god's wrath turned away . but if this conclude a precedent , it will prove too much , both that a church-man may execute judgment , and that a private person in the sight of a holy magistrate , without waiting for his justice , may go and punish crimes . from the instances adduced , it will appear how zealots were ordinarily raised up in that dispensation : but when two of christs disciples lay claim to that priviledg of praying for fire from heaven , he gives check to the fervor of their thundring zeal , and tells them , luk. 9.55 , 56. you know not what spirit you are of : adding , that the son of man was not come to destroy mens lives , but to save them : whereby he shews that tho in the old dispensation , god having by his own command given his people a title to invade the nations of canaan , and extirpate them , having also given them political laws for the administration of justice , and order among them , it was proper for that time that god should raise up judges to work extraordinary deliverances to his people , whose example we are not now to imitate : god also sent prophets , who had it sometimes in commission to execute justice on transgressors ; yet in the new dispensation , these things were not to take place , where we have no temporal canaan , nor judicial laws given us ; and consequently none are now extraordinarily called in the name of god , to inflict ordinary and corporal punishments . having said all this , it will be no hard task to make it appear that mattathias was a person extraordinarily raised up by god , as were the iudges . and though no mention of that be made , neither by iosephus , nor the book of maccabees , that is not to be stood upon ; for we have many of the judges of israel , of whose call no account is given , and yet undoubtedly they were warranted to act as they did , otherwise they had been invaders . but if that practice of mattathias conclude any thing by way of precedent , it will prove that church-men may invade the magistrates office , and kill his officers , and raise war against him . crit. i wonder we hear not isotimus alledging the practice of the ten tribes , who rejected rehoboam , and made choice of ieroboam , which useth to be very confidently adduced , for proving it to be the peoples right to give laws to their princes , and to shake them off when they refuse obedience to their desires . but to this and all other instances of this nature , it is to be answered , that the iewish state being a theocracy , as it is called by their own writers , their judges , and many of their kings had their title from god's designation , and the possession was only yielded to them by the people , according to the command , deut. 17.15 . to set him king over them whom the lord their god did chuse : so when they sought a king , they came to samuel , as the known prophet of god , and desired him to give them a king , which he afterwards did . in like manner was david designed to succeed saul , by the same prophet ; and upon sau●'s death , the tribe of iudah came and aknowledged , and anointed him king , which was the solemn investiture in that to which he had formerly a right . ieroboam being by the same authority designed king over the ten tribes by the mouth of ahijab in the name of god , 1 kings 11. ch. from v. 28. he derived his title from that : and there was as good warrants for the people to reject rehoboam , and follow him , as was formerly to quite ishbosheth , and follow david . another instance of this nature is elisha his sending one to iehu , where that young prophet saith , 2 kings 9.6 . thus saith the lord god of israel , i have anointed thee king over the people of the lord , even over israel : upon the notice whereof , v. 13. he is declared king. these instances will sufficiently prove what i have alledged , that the kings of the hebrews having their right from god , were to be changed when the most high who ruleth in the kingdom of men and giveth it to whomsoever he will , and setteth up over it the basest of m●n , interposed his authority and command . one word more , and i have done . when the law of the judge is set down , deut. 17.12 . all who do presumptuously , and hearkened not unto the judge , are sentenced to death , that evil might be put away from israel , whereby the people might hear , and fear , and do no more presumptuously . this shews that absolute submission was due to the judges , under the pain of death ; whereby all private mens judging of their sentence is struck out . it is true the other laws that prefer the commands of god to the laws of men , do necessarily suppose the exception of unlawful commands : but since no law warrants the resisting their sentence , it will clearly follow that absolute submission was due to these judges . basil. truly these things as they seem to be well made out from scripture , so they stand with reason , since no order can be expected among men , unless there be an uncontrollable tribunal on earth . our consciences are indeed only within god's jurisdiction : but if there be not a supreme power to cognosce and determine about our actions , there must follow endless confusions , when any number of people can be got to mutiny against laws : therefore there must be a supreme court. but the laws and settled practices of kingdoms , must determine in whose person this lies , whether in a single person , the nobility , or the major part of the people ? yet i desire to hear what decisions the new testament offers in this question . crit. truly that will be soon dispatched ; consider then how our lord , matth. 5. forbids us to resist evil ; where it is true , he enumerates only small injuries : so i shall not deny but that place will amount no farther , than that we ought to bear small injuries , rather than revenge or oppose them ; but you must yield to the doctrine of submission , if afterwards you consider how our lord tells us , matth. 11.20 . to learn of him , for he was meek ; and that he condemns the thundering fervor of his disciples , who called for fire from heaven , shewing the nature of the new dispensation to be quite different from the old , in that particularly , that the son of man came not to destroy mens lives , but to save them : and chiefly that when he was to give the greatest instance wherein we should imitate him , he refused the defence of the sword , and commanded s. peter to put up his sword , matth. 26.52 . isot. if you urge this too much , then must i answer , that by the same consequence you may prove we must cast our selves on dangers , and not flee from them : since we find christ going up to ierusalem , though he knew what was abiding him there : neither did he fly , which yet himself allowed . besides , you may as well urge against all prayer to god for deliverance , his not praying for angels to assist him . but the clear account of this is given by himself , that the scriptures were to be fulfilled which fore-told his death . see pag. 24. and answer to the letter about ius popul● . crit. i must confess my self amazed at this answer , when i find s. peter saving expresly , 1 pet. 2.21 . that christ suffered , leaving us an example that we might follow his steps , and applying this to the very case of suffering wrongfully ; and that notwithstanding of that , you should study to pervert the scripture so grosly besides : consider that christ was to fulfil all righteousness ; if then the laws of nature exact our defence in case of unjust persecution for religion , he was bound to that law as well as we ; for he came not to destroy , but to fulfil the law , both by his example and precepts . if then you charge the doctrine of absolute submission , as brutish and stupid , see you do not run into blasphemy , by charging that ●●oly one foolishly : for whatever he knew of the secret will of god , he was to follow his revealed will in his actions , whereby he might be a perfect pattern to all his followers : for god's revealed will was his rule , as well as ours . but i dwell too long on things that are clear . as for your ●nstances , they will serve you in no stead . for his coming to ierusalem was a duty , all the males being bound to appear three times a year before the lord at ierusalem , at the three festivals , the passover being the first of them , deut. 16. and this being a duty , our lord was to perform it , what ever hazard might follow . so we find s. paul on a less obligation , going to ierusalem , notwithstanding the bonds were fore-told to abide him there . and as for your other pretended consequence against prayer , from his not praying for legions of angels , it bewrays great inadvertency : for you find our lord a few minutes before , praying in the garden , matth. 26.42 . over and over again , that if it were possible that cup might pass from him . and there is our warrant from his practice , to pray for a deliverance from troubles or persecutions , if it may stand with the holy will of god : but for a miraculous deliverance by the ministry of angels , that our lord would not pray for , lest thereby the prophesies should not be accomplished : and by this , our praying for a miraculous deliverance , is indeed from his example condemned : but still we are to pray , that if it be possible , and according to the will of god , any bitter cup is put in our hands , may pass from us . next , let me desi●e you to consider the reason given s. peter for putting up his sword , matth. 26.52 . for they that take the sword , shall p●●●sh by the sword . isot. you ●i●apply this place palpably , it not being designed as a threatning against s. peter , but for the encouragement of his disciples , and being indeed a prophesie that the iews who now come against him with swords and staves , should perish by the sword of the romans , who should be the avengers of christ's death . see page 25. crit. you are beholden to grotius for this exposition , who is the first of the latter writers that hath given that sense to these words , tho he voucheth for his opinion some elder writers ; and he designing to prove that a private person may resist another private assaillant by force , being a little pinch'd with this place , which seems to condemn simply the use of the sword , escapes o●t of it by the answer you have adduced . but though this were the genuine scope of these words , still remember that our lord rejects the use of the sword for his defence : and if his fore-telling the destruction of the iews , was of force to bind up s. peter's hands , why should not also that general promise , rev. 13.10 . he that killeth with the sword , must be killed by the sword , also secure our fears , and sheath our swords , and the rather that it is there subjo●ned , here is the faith and patience of the saints ? which seems to imply , that since retaliation will be g●ven out by god upon unjust murderers , therefore faith and pat●ence must be the exercise of the saints , which to all unprejudged minds , will sound a discharge of the use of weapons of war. but after all this , the phrase of taking the sword , seems only applicable to s. peter ; for the band being sent out by a magistrate , could not properly be said to have taken the sword , it being put in their hands by these who were invested with it , though they now tyrannically abuse their power : but the phrase agrees much better with s. peter's drawing it , who had no warrant for it , and so did indeed tak● it . next , we hear no mention of the band of soldiers their using their swords ; therefore this prediction seems fitted for s. peter , and all such as mistaking the nature of the chr●●stian dispensation , do take the sword. but next , consider christ's words to pilate ▪ iohn 18.36 . m● kingdom 〈◊〉 n●t of th●● world : if my kingdom were of this 〈◊〉 , then w●ul● my servants fight , that i should n●t be ●●l●v●r●d to the ●●ws ; but now is my kingdom not from ●ence . and this being said upon the accusation the iews had given against him to pilate , that he call'd himself a king , charging him upon his friendship to cesar , to put him to death , christ ▪ s answer shews that earthly kings need apprehend no prejudi●● from his kingdom , since it not being about worldly things , was not to be ●ought fo● . isot. speak plainly , do you mean by this that christ should have no kingdom upon earth ? which i fear too many of you desire , since you press this so warmly . but consider you not that by this christ only means he was not to set up a temporal dominion upon earth , to ●ustle cesar from his throne , such as the iews expected from their messiah ; and therefore this place is indeed strong against the pretences of some carnal fifth-monarchy men , but is ill adduced to condemn defence , when we are unjustly assaulted by a persecuting tyrant . see p. 25. crit. it is no new thing to find the sincere doctrine of the gospel misrepresented by sons of belial ; but learn the difference betwixt a kingdom of the world , and in the world , and so temper your passion . christ must have a kingdom in the world , but not of it . and the greatest hazard of a pretending king , being the raising of wars and commotions upon his title , christ's words are not truly commented on by the practice of his servants , unless they sec●re princes from their fears of their raising wars upon his ●itle : therefore as the sighting at that time , for preserving christ from the iews , had been contrary to the nature of his spiritual kingdom ; to the rule of the gospel binding all the succeeding ages , of the church , no less than these to whom it was first delivered , what was then contrary to the nature of christ's kingdom , will be so still . and to this i might add the doctrine of peace so much insisted on in the new testament it being the legacy christ left to his disciples , which we are commanded to follow with all men , as much as is possible , and as in ●s lies . and if with all men , ●●re much more with the magistrate . and s. paul's words in the xiii . to the romans are so express , that methinks they should strike a terror in all men from resisting the superior powers , le●t they resist the ordinance of god , and receive damnation . and it is observable , that s. paul , who , as a zealot , had formerly persecuted the christians , doth now so directly contradict that doctrine , which was at that time so horridly corrupted among the iews . this place is so express , that it needs not the advantages may be given to it , either from the consideration of the power the roman empire had usurped over the world , or from the emperor who then reigned , who must have been either claudius or nero : and if the former , we find ▪ ac●s 18.2 . that he banished all the iews , from rome , and with them the christians , not being distinguish●d by the romans from the iews , were also banished : and here was a driving of christians from rome , which you will not deny to have been a persecution . but if it was nero , we know very well how the christians were used by him . but these words of s. paul being as at first addressed to the romans , so also designed by the holy ghost to be a part of the rule of all christians , do prove , that whoever hath the supreme power , is to be submitted to , and never resisted ▪ isot. if you were not in too great a haste , you would not be so forward , consider therefore the reason s. paul gives for s●bmission to superior rulers , is , because they are the ministers of god for good . if then they swe●ve from this , they forsake the end for which they are raised up , and so fa●l from their power and right to our obedience . basil. truly what you have said makes me not repent of any haste i seemed to make ; for what you have alledged p●oves indeed that the sovereign is a minister of god for good , so that he corrupts his power grosly when he pursues not that design : but in that he is only accountable to god , who●e minister he is . and this must hold good , except you give us good ground to believe that god hath given authority to the subjects to call him to account for his trust ; but if that be not made appear , then he must be left to god , who did impower him , and therefore can only ●oerce him . as one having his power from a king , is countable to none for the administration of it , but to the king , or to these on whom the king shall devolve it : so except it be proved , that god hath warranted subjects to call their sovereigns to account , they being his ministers , must only be answerable to him . and according to these principles of yours , the magistrate● authority shall be so enervated , that he shall no more be able to serve these designs , for which god hath vested him with power : every one being thus taught to shake off his yoak when they think he acts in prejudice of religion . and here i shall add one thing which all casuists hold a safe rule in matters that are doubtf●l , that we ought to follow that side of the doubt which is freest of hazard ; here then damnation is at least the seeming hazard of resistance ; therefore except upon as clear evidence you prove the danger of absolute submission to be of the same nature that it may ba●●ance the other ; then absolute submission , as being the securest ▪ is to be followed . next , we find saint peter , 1 pet. 2.13 . &c. who being ●et infecte● with the spirit of a iewi●h zealot , had drawn the sword ; afterwards when ind●e● with power from on high , at length pressing the doctrine of obedience adding that the p●et●nce of the christian freedom should not be made a cloak of maliciousness . and this submission he recommends not only to subjects , whose obedience was more easie , but to servants who were under a heavier yoak , according to the laws of servitude , both among the iews and the romans : and he tells them , that when they did well , and suffered for it , and took it patiently , that was acceptable . withal adding , for even hereunto were you called ; becau●e christ also suffered for us , leaving us an example , that we should follow his steps . further , it is to be considered how the iew ▪ s d●d upon the first prea●hing of the gospel persecute the ch●isti●●s every where : s. stephen was stoned , and saul got commissions for making havock of the church● b●● because this was done by the autho●ity of the san●●drim , no resistance was made them , though since at two sermons we hear of 〈◊〉 converts , we may be induced to believe their number was great . and from hence sub●●me that the case of persecution being then not only imminent , but also present ▪ besides the grievous persecutions were abiding the churches for three centuries ) it must be confess●● to be strange , that the matter of resistance being at least so dubious , no decision should be given about it in the new testa●●nt ; nothing being alledged from it that hath any aspect that way . and indeed i cannot conceal my wonder at them who plead so much the authority and fulness of scripture , to reach even the rituals of worship and government , and yet in so great a matter adventure on a practice without its warrant . truly isotimus , if these things prevail not with you , beyond your little small shufflings , i doubt it is because you have lost the standard to measure reason by , and have given up your j●dgment to your passions and interests . isot. i am far from denying the doctrine of the cross to be a great part of these duties we are bound to in the gospel ; but this must not be stretched too far , lest it infer an obligation on us to submit to a forein prince , the turk , or any other , if he come by force to impose on us the alcoran , under a pretence of suffering for religion . see pag. 27 , and 28. basil. truly when i hear how much weight is laid on what you have now said , as if it amounted to a demonstration against all hath been hitherto adduced ; i am in doubt whether to pity their weakness , or blame their perv●●sness , who dare adventure on that , the punishment whereof the holy ghost hath made damnation , upon such mistakes : for god hath put the sword in their hands who have the sovereign power , which they bear not in vain ; for they are the ministers of god , and his revengers , to execute wrath on him that doth evil : the magistrates then are both by the laws of god , and of all nations , the protectors of their subjects , and therefore tributes and customs are due to them , for defraying the expence to which that must put them ; and prayers are to be offered up for them , that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty . if then a forein prince invade a country , under whatever pretence , the sovereign is bound to defend his subjects , with the sword god hath put in his hand , which comes to be a most lawful war on his side ; nay such , as he were a betrayer of his trust , if he omitted it . i●ot . but what if our prince should consent to such an invasion , and expose his subjects to be a prey to such an invader , must they look on and see themselves destroyed , upon the pretence that god hath not put the sword in their hands , and therefore they must not take it ; and because christ's kingdom is not of this world , therefore they must not fight for him ? basil. you suppose a case not like to fall out in haste ; but were it real , that invader having no title to that peoples obedience , they may make use of the right of nature which allows to one out of a society forcible self-defence , if violently assaulted : and therefore such hostile invasion , be it upon what pretence soever , may be as lawfully resisted , as one private man may resist another in his own defence , if he threaten to kill him , unless he renounce god. if then one man may resist another , so may more men resist a great force coming against them : for to us who live here , the grand seignior is but a fellow of our nature , and hath no right over us , no more than one private person hath over his neighbour . and if you do not acknowledg a great difference betwixt such an asserting of our liberties , from one that hath no title to them , and the resisting of a lawful magistrate , though unjustly persecuting his subjects , you must be set to your horned book again . isot. but at least you will confess that private men living in a settled society , have no title to the sword , according to your principles ; must we then yield out throats to a robber that assaults us on the high way ? or to come nearer you , if one threaten to kill us . if we yield not to their religion , must we give way to their fury ? basil. remember still how i told you , that men living out of societies have a ●ight to self-defence , and when they come under societies , they retain all their former rights , such only excepted as are by the law● of the society judged inconsistent with its order and peace : therefore resisting of the supreme powers , or those having their authority , being only discharged , the right of self defence against equals still remains intire , so that a private person may claim it or not , as he will : and therefore in the case of such an aggressor , the laws of nature and nations do warrant me to use force when assaulted ; yet if a greater consideration appear , and it be evident that my giving way to such unjust force will be more for the honour of the gospel , if i resist , i do not sin , but do well ; but if i resist not , certainly i do better . end. i have been a witness to this discourse , not without much pleasure , and do acknowledg my self fully convinced of the necessity of obedience , and submission to the supreme power , since without that be once established , as the foundation of societies , i see not what peace or order can be looked for , but every one will take on him to judg the law-giver : and if he have so much power or policy as to make a party , he will never want pretences , chiefly about religion , considering in how many various opinions the christian world hath divided about it . and it is a poor answer to say , it must be the true religion that we should defend , since it is to be supposed every one judgeth the religion he is of to be the true one : if then according to that doctrine , religion be to be defended ; certainly though the religion be wrong , yet every one oppressed in his cons●i●nce , and judging it to be according to truth , is bound to defend it ; since even an erring conscience doth at least tie , if not oblige . for the common resolution of casuists being that a man under an erroneous conscience , is yet to follow its dictates , though he sin by so doing : then all parties that are oppressed , ought to vindicate what they judg to be the truth of god. and by this you may see to what a fair pass the peace of mankind is brought by these opinions . but mistake me not , as if i were here pleading for s●●mission , to patronize the tyranny or cruelty of persecuting princes , who shall answer to god for that great trust deposited in their hands ; which if they transgress , they have a dear account to make to him who sits in heaven and laughs at the raging and consultings of these kings or princes , who design to throw off his yoak , or burst his bonds in sunder . he who hath set his king upon his holy h●ll of zion , shall rule them with a rod of iron , and break them in pieces as a potter's vessel . and he to whom vengeance doth belong , will avenge himself of all the injuries they do his truths , or followers : but as they sin against him , so they a●e only countable to him . yet i need not add what hath been often said , that it is not the name of a king , or the ceremonies of a coronation , that cloaths one with the sovereign power ; since i know there are , and have been titular kings , who are indeed but the first persons of the state , and only administrators of the laws , the sovereign power lying in some assembly of the nobility , and states , to whom they are accountable . in which case , that court to whom these kings must give account , is the supreme judicatory of the kingdom , and the king is but a subject . isot. but doth not the coronation of a king , together with his oath given , and the consent of the people demanded at it , prove him to have his power upon the conditions in that oath ? and these oaths being mutually given , his coronation oath first , and the oath of allegiance next , do shew it is a compact ; and in all mutual agreements , the nature of compacts is , that the one party breaking , the other is also free . further , kings who are tied up , so that they cannot make , nor repeal laws , nor impose taxes without the consent of the states of their kingdom , shew their power to be limited , and that at least such assemblies of the states share with them in the sovereign power , which is at large made out by ius populi . basil. it is certain there cannot be two co-ordinate powers in a kingdom ; for no man can serve two masters : therefore such an assembly of the states must either be sovereign or subject ; for a middle there is not . as for the coronation of princes , it is like enough that a● first it was the formal giving their power to them ; and the old ceremonies yet observ'd in it , prove it hath been at first so among us : but it being a thing clear in our law , that the king never dies , his heir coming in his place the very moment he expires , so that he is to be obeyed before his coronation , as well as after ; and that the coronation is nothing but the solemn inaugurating in the authority which the king possessed from his father's death , shews , that any ceremonies may be used in it , whatever the original of them may have been , do not subject his title to the crown to the peoples consent . and therefore his coronation oath is not the condition upon which he gets his power , since he possess'd that before ; nor is it upon that title that he exacts the oath of alegiance , which he likewise exacted before his coronation . this being the practice of a kingdom passed all prescription , proves the coronation to be no compact betwixt the king and his subjects : and therefore he is indeed bound by his coronation oath to god , who will be avenged on him , if he break it , so the matter of it were lawful : but the breaking of it cannot forfeit a prior right he had to the peoples obedience . and as for the limitations kings have consented to pass on their own power , that they may act nothing but in such a form of law , these being either the king 's free concessions to the people , or restraints arising from some rebellions , which extorted such priviledges , will never prove the king a subject to such a court , unless by the clear laws and practices of that kingdom , it be so provided , that if he do malverse , he may be punished ; which when made appear , proves that court to have the sovereign power : and that never weakens my design , that subjects ought not to resist their sovereign . philar. you have dwelt , methinks , too long on this , though considering the nature of the thing , it deserves indeed an exact discussion : yet this whole doctrine appears so clear to a discerning mind , that i cannot imagine whence all the mist is raised about it can spring , except from the corrupt passions or lusts of men , which are subtle enough to invent excuses , and fair colors , for the blackest of crimes . and the smoak of the bottomless pit may have its share , in occasioning the darkness is raised about that , which by the help of the light of god , or of reason , stands so clear and obvious . but when i consider the instances of sufferings under both dispensations , i cannot see how any should escape the force of so much evident proof as hangs about this opinion . and if it had been the peoples duty to have reformed by the force of arms under the old dispensation , so that it was a base and servile compliance with the tyranny and idolatry of their kings , not to have resisted their subverting of religion , and setting up of idolatry , where was then the fidelity of the prophets , who were to lift up their voices as trumpets , and to shew the house of iacob their iniquities ? and since the watch-man who gave not warning to the wicked from his wicked way , was guilty of his blood , i see not what will exc●se the silence of the prophets in this , if it was the peoples duty to reform : for it is a poor refuge to say , because the people were so much inclin'd to idolatry , that therefore it was in vain to exhort them to reform ; ( see pag. 10 , 11. ) since by that argument you may as well conclude it to have been needless to have exhorted their kings to reformation , their inclination to idolatry being so strong : but their duty was to be discharged , how small soever the likelihood was of the peoples yielding obedience to their warnings . if then it was the peoples duty to reform , the o●ission of it was undoubtedly a sin ; how then comes it that they who had it in commission to cause ierusalem to know her abominations , under so severe a certificate , do never charge the people for not going about a popular reformation , nor co●rcing these wicked kings who enacted so much idolatry , backing it with such tyranny , nor ever require them to set about it ? i know one hath pick'd out some expressions , ( see answer to the letter to the author of ius populi ) which to his thoughts sound that way : but truly they are so remote from the sense he stretches them to , that i should wonder much at his glosses , did i not know that the bell seems often to ring the hearer's fancy . from these , let us pass to the instances of the first christians , who endured the sharpest persecutions with the greatest patience . polyh . here is a large theme for much discourse , if i should adduce all might be said on this head . indeed the persecutions the christians groaned under for three hundred years , are such , that scarce can they be read without horror ; the last especially , which continued for about twenty years under dioclesian , and his colleagues and successors ; and by the number that suffered , we may easily guess what the strength of the christians was . but this can be doubted by none who have ever looked upon history . pliny lib. 10. ep. 97. writes to trajan ( which is reckoned to have been the 104. year of christ ) that in pontus and ●ithynia , where he was then pro●onsul , there were many christians of all ages , ranks and sexes : and that not only in the cities , but through the villages and country places : that the temples were almost desolate , the sacrifices long intermitted , and that none almost were found to buy the victims . the number of the christians being so early risen to that height , we may easily imagine to what it swelled before constantine's times : not long after that , we find a whole legion of marcus aurelius his army to have been christians . and if we believe tertullian , their numbers were formidable in his time ; for after he had purged the christians of his times from the designs of doing mischief to their enemies by stealth , he adds , apol. cap. 37. should we carry towards you not as secret avengers , but as open enemies , would we want the strength of numbers and armies ? are the maurs , the marcomans , or the parthians themselves , or any nations shut up within their own country or bounds , more than the whole world ? we are strangers to you , and yet we fill all your places , your towns , your islands , your castles , your villages , your councils , your camps , your tribes , your decuries , your palaces , your senate , and your market place : only we come not to your temples , but abandon those to you . to what war had we not been both fit and ready , even tho our forces had been fewer , who are butcher'd so willingly , if our discipline did not allow us rather to be killed than to kill ? and he goes on , telling that such was the number of the christians , that would they but change their dwellings , and leave the roman empire , it would have thereby become an amazing solitude , since almost all their citizens were christians . and the same writer saith elsewhere , ad scap. cap. 2. that tho the romans who were idolaters , were found guilty of many conspiracies against their emperors , yet never were any christians found guilty of these practices . and adds , that a christian was no mans enemy , much less the emperors ; but knowing him to be constituted by god , he doth find himself bound to love , reverence , honor , and wish well to him , with the whole roman empire , as long as the world lasts . therefore , saith he , we worship the emperor so as befits him , and is lawful for us , as a man next god , who hath obtained all he hath from god , and is inferior to none , but god only . and a little after , cap. 5. he tells us of the numbers of the christians , and how undaunted they were at the persecution ; so that when one arrius antoninus in asia , was persecuting the christians , the whole city ran to his tribunal , declaring themselves christians . and he adds , if the like were to be done at carthage , what would become of all the thousands were there , of every sex , age and rank ? from this we may guess both of the strength and numbers of the christians of that time , and yet there was not the least inclination among them to resistance . if any doubt the truth of what tertullian saith , as is p. 30. he must charge him with very much impudence , who durst offer such writings to the heathens , in matters of fact , which could not but be notoriously enough known : neither do i adduce these places , because i lay so much weight on tertullian's opinion in this matter , but because he shews us what was the sense of the christians of his time . a little after him cyprian lived , who also tells us , ad demetrianum , that none of the christians when apprehended , struggled with those who seized on them , nor avenged themselves of that unjustice , though their number was great and copious : but their belief of the vengeance sh●uld follow on their persecutors , made them patient , so that the innocent yielded to the guilty . and we may judge of the number of the christians of that age , by what cornelius who was bishop of rome , anno 254. in euseb. 6. book , cap ▪ 43. tells of the state of the roman clergy in his time , how there were in it 46 presbyters , 7 deacons , 42 acolyths , 52 exorcists , lectors and porters , and of widows and poor persons 150● , and where so many poor were maintain'd , you must confess the number of the christians was very great . but if we go to d●●clesian's time , we find the number of the christians incredible ; and the cruelties used against them to have been such , that ●ell could devise nothing beyond them . some were burnt alive , others had boiling lead poured on them , others had their flesh and joints to●n off them by burning pince●s , others were broken to pieces , others stretched all out of joint , others hanged up by the thumbs and cut in slices , others hanged up by-the heels . and this was universal through the whole empire , and to such a degree , that it continued for many years ; and in egypt alone they were often killed by hundreds a day , as eu●ebius tells , who was a witness to much of it . and godean reckons , that in one month there were seventeen thousand martyrs killed : and during that persecution in the province of egypt , there were an hundred fo●ty and four thousand , who died by the violence of their persecutors , and seven hund●ed thousand who died through the fatigues of banishment , or of the publick works , to which they were condemned . i had almost forgot one sort of persecution , which as it was the most dreaded , so hath in it that which could not but provoke all to the utmost of horror and despair , which was the prostituting of their virgins , more dreaded than any death . but among all these vast numbers , none offered to resist with the sword● : and yet they were so marvellously assisted by god , that in their sufferings they expressed the greatest joy in god , by their hymns and psalms , and the most of mildness to their persecutors . and dare you say , isotimus , that these were a stupid self-murdering crew ? or do you think that had they been guilty of such a crime , as you seem to fasten on the doctrine of absolute submission ; god had appeared for them in such a signal manner , to the conviction and horror of their persecutors ? i confess there is no piece of story i read with such pleasure as the accounts are given of these martyrs ; for methinks they leave a fervor upon my mind , which i meet with in no study , that of the scriptures being only excepted . say not then they were not able to have stood to their own defence , when it appears how great their numbers were : or shall i here tell you the known story of the thebean legion , which consisted of 6666. who being by maximinus herculeus , an . 287. pressed in the oath they gave the emperor to swear upon the altars of the idols , withdrew from the camp eight miles off ; and when he sent to invite them to come and swear as the others had done ; they who commanded them answered in all their names , that they were ready to return and fight stoutly against the barbarians ; but that being christians , they would never worship the gods. whereupon the emperor caused tith them , which they received with such joy , that every one desired the lot might fall on himself . and this prevailing nothing on them , he tithed them a second time ; and that being also without effect , he caused to murder them all , to which they submitted without resistance . and it is not to be denied , but such a number being driven to such despair , and having so much courage as to dare to die in cold bloud , might have stood to their defence a great while , and at least sold their lives at a dear rate , especially they having got off eight miles from the army . were it my design to back these instances with the great authorities of the most eminent writers of the church in these times , i should grow too tedious : but this is so far from being denied , that the only way to escape so strong an assault , is to study to detract from these holy men by enquiring into any over-reachings , to which their fervor might have engaged them . isot. all their practices are not binding upon us , for many of them did precipitate themselves into hazards , others were against flight , & others against resisting of private assailants , who without warrant came to murder them ; therefore the spirit that acted in them , tho it produced effects highly to the honour of the gospel , is not to be imitated by us : yet on the other hand , i acknowledg we ought to be slow to judg them . one thing is observable , that maximinus was resisted by the armenians , when he intended to set up idolatry among them . constantine also invaded licinius when he persecuted the christians in the east : and the persians , when persecuted by their king , implored the help of the roman emperor . besides , i have seen a catalogue of many instances of resistance used in some cities , when their good bishops were forced away from them , which shews they were not so stupid as you design to represent them . see pag. 29 , &c. and ius popul● at length . basil. it is certain all christians have one law and rule ; and the laws of nature are eternal and irreversible : if then the law of nature engage us to self-defence , it laid the same ties on them : therefore except you turn enthusiast , you must say , th●t what is a duty , or a sin now , was so then likewise ; and so you must either charge that cl●ud of witnesses with brutish stupidity , otherwise acuse our late forwardness of unjust resistance , since one rule was given to both ; and contradicting practices can never be adjusted to the same rule . and for these invidious aspersions you would fasten on them , as if they had not unde●stood their own liberties , they are but poor escapes ; for it being already made out that violent resistance even of an equal , is not a law , but a ●ight of nature ; if they thought it more for the glory of the gospel to yield even to private injuries , who are we to tax them for it ? but for flying from the persecutors , it is true tertullian condemned it , but that was neither the opinion nor practice of the ch●istians in these ages . as for what you alledg about the resistance made by the armenians to maximinus , i wish your friend had vouched his author for what he saith of them ; for i am confident he is not so impudent as to prove a matter of fact done twelve ages ago , by a writer of this age. all i can meet with about that , is from euschius , lib. 9. cap. 6. who tells , that in these times the tyrant made war against the armenians ( men that had been of old friends and auxiliaries to the romans ) whom because they were christians , and were pious , and zealously studious about divine matters , that hater of god , intending to force to worship the false gods and devils , made to become enemies instead of friends , and adversaries instead of auxiliaries . and in the beginning of the next chapter , he tells how in that war he and his army received a great defeat . now how you will infer from this , that subjects may resist their sovereign for religion , i see not : for these armenians were his confederates , and no● his subjects : and it is clear by the account eusebius gives , that armenia was not a province , nor governed by a prefect , as were the provinces . besides , consider how maximinus came in the fag-end of that great persecution begun by dioclesian and herculius , continued by gal●rius , and consummated by maximinus himself , in which for all the numbers of the martyrs , and the cruelty of the persecution , there was not so much as a tumult : which makes it evident the christians at that time understood not the doctrine of resistance . but the armenians case varying from that of subjects , it was free for them to resist an unjust invader , who had no title to their obedience . for your story of licinius , the true account of it will clear mistakes best ( as it is given by eus. 10. cap. 5. ) constantine after he turned christian , being then emperor of the west , called for licinius , whom galerius had made emperor in the east , and they both from millain gave out edicts in favour of the christians , giving them absolute liberty , and discharging all persecution on that account , which is reckoned to have been in the year 313. afterwards he allied with licinius , and gave him his sister in marriage , and acknowledged him his colleague in the empire . but some years after that wars arose betwixt them , which zosimus and eutropius impute to constantine's ambition , and impatience of a rival : but if we believe the account eusebius gives of it , licinius provoked with envy at constantine , and forgetting the laws of nature , the bonds of oaths , alliance and agreement , raised a pestiferous and cruel war against him , and laid many designs and sna●es for his destruction , which he attempted long by secret and fraudulent ways , but these were always by god's providence discovered , and so constantine escaped all his designed mischief : at length licinius finding his secret arts did not succeed , he openly made war against constantine . and as he was preparing for it , he made war likewise against god , and persecuted the christians , because he apprehended they all prayed for constantine , and wished him success ; whereupon he made severe laws against the christians , forbidding the bishops ever to meet among themselves , or to instruct any women : afterwards he banished all that would not worship the gods , and from that he went to an open persecution ; and not content with that , he by severe laws discharged any to visit and relieve such as were in prison for the faith. yet notwithstanding all this , none that were under his part of the empire did resist him ; nay , not so much as turn over to constantine against him , for ought that appears : but upon these things a war followed betwixt constantine and him , wherein licinius was defeated , and forced to submit to what conditions constantine was pleased to give ; who took from him greece and illyricum , and only left him thrace , and the east . but licinius returning to his old ways , and breaking all agreements , a second war followed , wherein licinius was utterly defeated , and sent to lead a private life at thessalonica , where he was sometime after that killed , because of new designs against constantine . this being the true account of that story , i am to divine what advantage it can yield to the cause of subjects resisting thei● sovereign ; for here was a superior prince defending himself against the unjust attempts , and hostile incu●sions of his enemy , who was also inferior to him , as eusebius states it : whom consult . 10. book , 8. ●● . and 1. book of const. life , ch . 42. and 2. book , ch . 2 , &c. and for your instance of the persians imploring the aid of the romans , i am afraid it shall serve you in as little stead : for the account socrates gives of it ( lib. 7. cap. 18. ) is , that baratanes king of persia , did severely persecute the christians , whereupon the christians that dwelt in persia , were necessitated to fly to the romans , and beseech them not to neglect them who were so destroyed , they were kindly received by aticus the bishop of constantinople , who bent all his care and thoughts for their aid , and made the matter known to theodosius the second then emperor : but it happened at that tune the romans had a quarrel with the persians , who had hired a great many romans that wrought in mines , and sent them back without paying the agreed hire ; which quarrel was much heightned by the persian christians complaint ; for the king of persia sent ambassadours to remand them as fugitives : but the romans refused to restore them , and not only gave them sanctuary , but resolved by all their power to defend the christian religion , and rather make war with the persians , than see the christians so destroyed . now it will be a pretty sleight of logick , if from subjects flying from a persecution , and seeking shelter under another prince , you will infer that they may resist their own king. and for theodosius his war , we see other grounds assigned by the historian : and the politicks even of good princes in their making of wars , must not be a rule to our consciences : neither know i why this instance is adduced , except it be to justifie some who are said ( during the wars betwixt their own sovereign and the country where they lived ) to have openly prayed for victory against their country , and to have corresponded in opposition to their native sovereign . but i must next discuss that catalogue of tumults in the fourth and fifth century , which are brought as precedents for the resisting of subjects : and here i must mind you of the great change was in christendom after constantine's days , before whom none were christians , but such as were persuaded of the truth of the gospel , and were ready to suffer for its profession ; so that it being then a doctrine objected to many persecutions , few are to be supposed to have entred into its discipline without some convictions about it in their consciences : but the case varied much after the emperors became christian ; so that what by the severity of their laws , what by the authority of their example , almost all the world rendered themselves christian ; which did let in such a swarm of corrupt men into the christian societies , that the face of them was quickly much changed , and both clergy and laity became very corrupt , as appears from the complaints of all the writers of the fourth century : what wonder then if a tumultuating humor crept into such a mixed multitude ? and indeed most of these instances which are alledged , if they be adduced to prove the corruption of that time , they conclude but too well : but , alas ! will they have the authority of precedents , or can they be look'd upon as the sense of the church at that time , since they are neither approved by council or church-writer ? and truly the tumults in these times were too frequent upon various occasions ; but upon none more than the popular elections of bishops , of which nazianzen gives divers instances , and for which they were taken from the people by the council of laodicea , can. 13. it is also well enough known how these tumults flowed more from the tumultuary temper of the people , than from any doctrine their teachers did infuse in them . and therefore socrates lib. 7. cap. 13. giving account of one of the tumults of alexandria ( made use of by your friends , as a precedent ) tells how that city was ever inclined to tumults , which were never compesced without blood . and at that time differences falling in betwixt orestes the prefect , and cyril the bishop , who was the first that turned the priesthood into a temporal dominion , they had many debates : for orestes hating the power of the bishops , which he judged detracted from the prefect's authority , did much oppose cyril ; and cyril having raised a tumult against the iews , wherein some of them were killed , and the rest of them driven out of the city , orestes was so displeased at that , that he refused to be reconciled with him ; whereupon 500 monks came down from nitria to fight for their bishop , who set on the prefect , and one of them named ammonius , wounded him in the head with a stone ; but the people gathering , they all fled , only ammonius was taken , whom the prefect tortured till he died ; but cyril buried him in the church , and magnified his fortitude to the degree of reckoning him a martyr , of which he was afterwards ashamed . and their being in alexandria at that time a learned and famous lady , called hyppatia , whom the people suspected of inflaming the prefect against the bishop , they led on by a reader of the church , set on her , and dragged her from her chariot into a church , and stript her naked , and most cruelly tore her body to pieces , which they burnt to ashes . and this , saith the historian , brought no small infamy , both on cyril , and on the church of alexandria , since all who profess the christian religion , should be strangers to killing , fightings , and such like . truly , sir , he that will found the doctrine of resistance on such grounds , hath a mind on very easie terms to run himself upon condemnation . and yet such like are the warrants your friends bring from church history . therefore i see there is yet good ground to assert that doctrine was unknown in the christian church , till the times wherein the popes pretended to the temporal power over princes : all whose plea was managed upon the grounds of the great importance of religion to be preferred to all human interests , and that christ had told his disciples to buy a sword ; and that princes being the ministers of god , were to be no longer acknowledged , than they observed that design for which they were set up . only in one particular , less disorder may be apprehended from the pretensions of the roman bishops , than from these maxims that put the power of judging and controuling the magistrate in the peoples hands , which opens a door to endless confusions , and indeed sets every private person on the throne , and introduceth an anarchy , which will never admit of order or remedy ; whereas these who had but one pretender over them , could more easily deal with him , and more vigorously resist him . isot. you have said very many things from history , which i shall not at this time undertake to examine : but i am sure it hath been both the practice and doctrine of the reformed churches , that in case of unjust tyranny , the states of a kingdom may put a stop to the fury of a king : and therefore where the reformation was opposed by cruelty , it was also defended by arms. and let me add , that i believe your great quarrel at this doctrine , is , because the practice of it was so great a mean of preserving the reformation , which though , in good manners , you must commend , yet i am afraid you hate it in your heart . philar. whether you or we be greater friends to the reformation , let the world judge by this one indication , that you study to draw all can be devised for the staining it with blood , which is the constant calumny of its adversaries , whereas we offer with the clearest evidences to evince its innocence . but let me premise the distinction of doctrine from practices ; and tho some unjustifiable practices appear , these must never be charged on the reformed churches , unless it be made appear they were founded on their doctrine . besides , the reformers coming out of the corruptions of poper● , in which the doctrine and practice of resistance upon pretences of religion were triumphant , it will not be found strange tho some of that ill-tempered zeal continued still to leaven them . but for their doctrine , i take the standart of it to be in the confessions of the several churches ; all which being gathered in one harmony , we are in the right scent of their opinions , when we search for them there . now the doctrine of resisting of magistrates is by divers of their confessions expressly condemned , but in none of them asserted . it is true , there were some ambiguous expressions in our scots confession , registred in parliament anno 1567 , for art. 14. among the transgressions of the second table , they reckon to disobey or resist any that god hath placed in authority , while they pass not over the bounds of their office ; which seems to imply the lawfulness of resistance when they so transgress : but besides that it is not clearly asserted , and only inferred , this doth not determine what the bounds of the magistrate's office are : and if it be found that his office is to coërce with the sword , so as to be accountable to none but to god , then no resistance will follow from hence , except of a limited magistrate who is accountable to others . the same explication is to be given to that part of the 24. art. where all such are condemned who resist the supream power , doing that thing which appertaineth to his charge . but in the same article the magistrate is called god's lieutenant , in whose sessions god himself doth sit and judge . but with this , it is to be considered , when that confession was ratified in parliament , even when no sovereign was to look to the clearing of any ambiguities , which might have-been upon design by some , and through the neglect of others , let pass . the confessions of the other churches are unexceptionably plain , and without restriction in the point of subjection : for what seems like a restriction in the french confession ( that the yoke of subjection is willingly to be born , though the magistrates were infidels , provided that god's sovereign authority remain entire and uncorrupted ) imports nothing , but that our subjection to them , which takes in both obedience and suffering , is not to strike out the great dominion god hath over our souls , whom we should obey rather than man. and even the confession of the assembly of divines , ratified by the scots general assembly , speaks of submission to authority in absolute terms , without the exception of resistance in case of tyranny , cap. 22. art . 4. it is the duty of people — to be subject to their authority for conscience sake . infidelity or difference in religion , doth not make void the magistrate's just and legal aurity , nor fr●e the people from their due obedience to him . if then the doctrine of resistance be to be owned as a law of nature , and as a part of the christian freedom , how came it that it was not more expresly owned in this confession , especially since it is known to have been the opinion of most of both these assemblies ? but on the contrary , it seems condemned , and only the undiscerned reserves of just , legal , and due , are slip● in for the defence of their actings . truly this seems not fair dealing , and such an asserting of subjection at that time , looks either like the force of truth extorting it , or intimates them afraid , or ashamed to have owned that as their doctrine to the world. and by this time , i suppose it is clear that the reformed churches ought not to be charged with the doctrine of resistance . poly. nay , nor the reformed writers neither , with whose words i could fill much paper , and shew how they do all generally condemn the resistance of subjects : and when any of them gives any caveat to this , it is not in behalf of the people , but of the states of the kingdom , who , they say , perhaps are impowered with authority to curb the tyranny of kings , as the ephori among the lacedemonians , the tribuns of the people , and the demarchs in rome and athens . now it is acknowledged , that if by the laws of the kingdom it be found that the king is accountable to the states , then their coercing of him is not the resistance of subjects , but rather the managing of the supreme power which lies in their hands . if then you will stand to their decision in this point , of the peoples resisting of their sovereigns , though tyrants , the debate will not run long , they being so express . and this will be nothing shaken by any thing you may alledge in some corner of a peter martyr , or some other persons of less name ; for as from the same writers , other places may be brought to the contrary ; so what can these serve to enervate so much evident proof ? besides , we are not to consider the writings of some particular persons , so much as what hath been the generally received opinion among the protestant writers , and most taught in their pulpits and schools . and whoever will attempt the contradicting that this hath been for absolute submission , it must be confessed to be hard to determine , whether his ignorance be most to be pitied , or his confidence most wondered at . by these things all may guess , if there be not strong grounds to apprehend the reformed churches must be innocent of that , which both their confessions disown . and their writers condemn . isot. i confess the author of the dialogues did with great confidence undertake the refuting of what is generally acknowledged about resistance used by the reformed churches : but his answerer hath so refuted all he alledgeth from history , that i am confident he repents of his undertaking : and were it to be done again , perhaps he would think on other tasks , than to attempt what hath miscarried so in his hand , that truly i cannot but pity him in my heart . eud. it will be strange if he be so much mistaken as your author represents him , yet his design in that was so good to deliver the reformation from such a challenge , that methinks he deserved a little better usage than your friend bestows on him . but i am much deceived if he be not able to make good all was asserted by him : let us therefore hear what polyhistor saith on these matters . isot. begin then with the matter of the albigenses , where force was used against simon montfort , who had not only the permission of the french king , as is acknowledged , but was assisted by him by 15000. men , which is vouched by some authors : besides , that the cruelties then used ( which are made use of to aggravate their not resisting the king of france ) if pertinently adduced , prove the king of france guilty of accession to them . and the kings son , prince lewis , coming with an army afterward , shews all to have been done by the kings command . and what is alledged from the count of tolouse , his being a peer of france , by which he was a vassal , and not a subject , is to no purpose ; since by the feudal law , vassals are subjects ; and whatever authority they may have within their own dominions , they are still subjects to the lord of the feud . see p. 418. poly. i shall not with big words blow away what you alledg ; but shall examine it from the accounts are given of that war. it is true , the writers of that time do so strangely misrepresent these innocents , that little credit is due to most of the histories about them : but thus much is clear , that the waldenses were every where persecuted , both in dauphine , provence , piedmont , calabria , boheme , and other places , to which they scattered themselves , and fled for shelter : and notwithstanding all the persecutions they lay under , from the inquisition in france , they never armed against the king's authority . these about alby embracing the same doctrine with the waldenses , and called from the country they lived in albigenses , were thundered against by the pope , and a iacobin monk being killed in their country , pope innocent proclaimed a crotsade , promising paradise to all who came and fought against these hereticks , and avenged the blood of that monk : and in particular suspecting raymond count of tolouse , he excommunicated him , and absolved his subjects from their obedience , permitting any to pursue his person , and possess his lands ; with which he wrote to all christian princes to come into his croisade . but the king of france was imployed in wars both with the emperor and king of england , and so could not join in it , but gave way to his barons to take the cross : and here the king consenting to so cruel an invasion , did undoubtedly shake much of his right to these provinces , since he thus exposed them to the fu●y of an unjust invader ; so that tho they had absolutely rejected his authority , this had quadrated with the case of a kings deserting of his subjects . however the war went on , all managed by the legate , as the popes war. but raymond came and submitted himself to the pope , yet the legate went on against beziers and carcasson , who had a great deal of reason to resist such an unjust aggressor . afterwards the legate gaping for the county of tolouse , picked another quarrel with raymond , and did excommunicate him of new , tho he had got the popes absolution : whereupon he armed , with the assistance of the king of arragon , against the legate , and his general simon montfort : but afterwards the king of arragon was defeated , yet all this while the king of france lay neutral , and would not permit his son to go against the albigenses , because he had promised to the king of arragon to be neutral ; but the king of arragon being dead , he gave way to it , and so his son came to the army : and this must be that which gulielmus brito confounds with the beginning of the war. this also is that affair which the centuriators say philippus augustus had with the albigenses . but the legate fearing the numbers prince lewis brought with him , and apprehending he might have possessed himself of the other places which belonged to the albigenses , granted them all absolution , with the protection of the church ; and assumed the confidence to tell the prince , that since he had taken the cross , he was to depend on his orders , he representing the pope , and not to command in that army as the kings son ; reproaching him , because his father had given no assistance to the destruction of the albigenses when there was need of it : but that after the miraculous victories had been obtained , he was now come to reap the harvest of what was due to them who had hazarded their lives for the church . and for all this , i refer you to the history of the albigenses , compiled by m. perrin lib. 1. cap. 12 , &c. but what if by an overplus i should justifie the count of tolouse , tho he had armed against the king of france , upon the account of his being a peer of france , which exempted him from the condition of ordinary subjects , of whom pasquier recherches de france , lib. 2. cap. 8 saith . it was the vulgar opinion , that they were constituted by charles the great , who is believed to have given them almost as much authority as himself had , reserving only to himself the principal voice in the chapter : but he refutes that vulgar error , and shews how in the end of the carolovingian race , great confusions were in france , partly through the various pretenders , but more through their folly : at which time , the crown of france did likewise become elective : and he shews how eude , robert , raoul , lewis , surnamed beyond the sea , lot hair , and another lewis , were chosen kings of france ; and the chief persons who at that time were most active , were these dukes , counts , and bishops , who afterwards were made peers . hugo capet therefore taking possession of the crown , for securing himself peaceably in it , did confirm those peers in that great authority they had assumed ; which if he had not done , they had given him more trouble . and their constitution was , that if any difference arose , either betwixt the king , and any of the peers , or among the peers themselves , it should be decided by the council of the whole twelve peers . and he proves from an old placart , that they would not admit the chancellor , connestable , or any other great officer of france to judg them ; they being to be judged by none , but their fellow peers . these were also to be the electors of the king. but hugo capet apprehending the danger of a free election , caused , for preventing it , crown his son in his own time , which was practised by four or five succeeding kings . and lewis the gross not being crowned in his fathers time , met with some difficulty at his entry to the crown ; which to guard against , he crowned his son in his own time , and so that practice continued , till the pretence of electing the king was worn out by prescription . yet some vestigies of it do still remain , since there must be at all coronations of france twelve to represent the peers : and by this time , i think it is well enough made out , that the count of tolouse was not an ordinary subject . and as for your confounding of subject and vassal , bodinus lib. de rep. cap. 9. will help you to find out a difference betwixt them , who reckons up many kinds of vassals and feudataries who are not subjects : for a vassal is he that holds lands of a superior lord , upon such conditions as are agreed to by the nature of the feud , and is bound to protect the superior , but may quit the feud , by which he is free of that subjection : so that the dependence of vassals on their lord , must be determined by the contract betwixt them , and not by the ordinary laws of subjects . and from this he concludes , that one may be a subject and no vassal , a vassal and no subject , and likewise both vassal and subject . the peers of france did indeed give an oath of homage , by which they became the liege●men of the king , but were not for that his s●bjects : for the oath the subjects swore , was of a far greater extent . and thus i am deceived if all was asserted by the conformist in the dialogues on this head , be not made good . isot. but since you examine this instance so accuratly , what say you to those of piedmont , who made a league among themselves against their prince , and did resist his cruel persecutions by armies . see pag. 423. poly. truly , i can say little on this subject , having seen none of their writings or apologies , so that i know not on what grounds they went : and i see so much ignorance and partiality in accounts given from the second hand , that i seldom consider them much . isot. the next instance in history , is , from the wars of boheme , where because the chalice was denied , the people did by violence resist their king , and were headed by zisca , who gained many victories in the following war with sigismund ; and in the same kingdom fifty years ago , they not only resisted first matthias , and then ferdinand their king , but rejected his authority , and choosed a new king : and the account of this change , was , because he would not make good what maximilian and rodolph did grant about the f●ee exercise of their religion : and thus when engagements were broken to them , they did not judge themselves bound to that tame submission you plead for . see p. 424. poly. remember what was laid down as a ground , that the laws of a society must determine who is invested with the sovereign power , which doth not always follow the title of a king : but if he be accountable to any other court , he is but a subject , and the sovereign power rests in that court. if then it be made out that the states of bohemia are the sovereigns , and that the kings are accountable to them , this instance will not advance the plea of defensive arms by subjects . that the crown of bohemia is elective , was indeed much contraverted ; and was at length , and not without great likelihoods on both sides , of late debated in divers writings : but among all that were impartial , they prevailed who pleaded its being elective . yet i acknowledge this alone will not prove it free for the people to resist , unless it be also apparent that the supreme power remained with the states , which as it is almost always found to dwell with the people , when the king is elected by them . bodin doth reckon the king of bohemia among these that are but titular kings : and the provincial constitutions of that kingdom do evidently demonstrate , that the king is only the administrator , but not the fountain of their power : which is made out from many instances , by him who writes the republick of bohemia , who shews how these kings are bound to follow the pleasure and counsel of their states : and in the year 1135 , it was decreed , that the elected prince of bohemia should bind himself by his coronation oath to rules there set down ; which if he broke , the states were to pay him no tributes , nor to be tied to any further obedience to him , till he amended . see hagecus ad ann . 1135. and this oath was taken by all the following dukes and kings of bohemia ; which is an evident proof that the states had authority over their kings , and might judge them . to this also might be added divers instances of their deposing their kings , upon which no censure ever passed . these being then the grounds on which the bohemians walked , it is clear they never justified their resistance , on the account of subjects fighting for religion , but on the liberties of a free state , asserting their religion when invaded by a limited prince . the account of the first bohemian war , is , that iohn huss and ierome of prague , being notwithstanding the emperors safe-conduct burnt at constance , the whole states of bohemia and moravia met at prague , and found that by the burning of their doctors , an injury was done to the whole kingdom , which was thereby marked with the stain of heresie : and they first expostulated with the emperor and counsel about the wrong done them ; but no reparation being made , they resolved to seek it by force , and to defend the religion had been preached by huss ; and did declare their design to winceslaus their king ( whom the states had before that time made prisoner twice for his maleversation ) but at that very time he died in an apoplexy , some say through grief at that . after his death , sigismund his brother pretended to the crown of bohemia : but not being elected , was not their righteous king : so in the following wars that were betwixt him and zisca , the resistance was not made to the king of bohemia , and therefore all that time was an interregnum , and is so marked by their historian , who tells , that the bohemians could not be induced to receive him to be their king : he indeed invaded the kingdom , and crowned himself , but was not chosen by the states till fifteen years after that a peace was concluded , and he with great difficulty prevailed upon the states to ratifie his co●onation , and acknowledge him their king. see dub. lib. 24. & lib. 26. and by all this , i doubt not but you are convinced that the wars of zasca were not of the nature of subjects resisting their sovereign . and for the late bohemian war , besides what was already alledged of the power of the states , their war against ferdinand , and the reason why by a solemn decree they rejected him , was , because he invaded the crown without an election , contrary to the fundamental laws of the kingdom : hereupon they choosed the prince elector palatine to be their king. it is true , they rose also in arms while matthias lived , though he did not long survive these tumults : but in all their apologies they founded their plea on the liberties of the kingdom of bohemia . and yet though this say much for their defence , i am none of the patrons of that war , which had very few defenders among the protestants . isot. at length you must yield there was war for defence of religion : but if without the inclosure of bohemia we examine the history of germany , there we meet with that famous smalcaldick war , in opposition to charles v. who was designing the overthrow of the protestant doctrine , which the elector of saxony , with the landgrave of h●ssen , and other free cities , managed against him . see p. 427. poly. if any of the passions of men have mingled in the actions of protestants , must these therefore be fasten'd on them as their doctrine ; especially when they went not upon principles of religion , but of provincial law● ? as for germany , let me first tell you how far the protestants were against rebellion , upon p●etence of religion . at first the rustick war had almost kindled all germany , which indeed began upon very unjust causes ; but sleydan lib. 5. tells , that some troublesome preachers had been the cau●ers of that great and formidable war. now it is to little purpose to say they were in many errors , and so fought not for the true religion ; since it was befo●e made out , that if religion be to be fought for , every man believing his own religion to be true , is bound to take arms in its defence , since even an erring conscience binds : b●t as these tumults did ●p●ead through germany , luther published a writing , desiring all to abstain f●om sedition , though with ●l h● told he apprehended some strange ●udgment was hanging over the church-men : but that was to be l●ft to god. after which he explains the duty of the magistrates : and adds , that the people should be severely charged not to stir without the command of their magistrates , and that n●thing was to be attempted by private persons : that all sedition was against the command of god , and that sedition was nothing but private revenge , and therefore hated by god. adding , that the seditions then stirring , were raised by the devil , who stirred up these who professed the gospel to them , that thereby the truth might be brought under hatred and reproach , as if that could not be of god which gave occasion to so great evils . then he tells what means were to be used for advancing of the gospel , that they were to repent of their sins , for which god had permitted that tyranny of the church-men . next , that they should pray for the divine aid , and publickly assert the truth of the gospel , and discover the impostures of the popes . and he adds , that this had been his method , which had been much blessed of god. in a word , the whole strain of that first paper shews , that the great bait used to train all into that rebellion , was the pretence of the liberty of religion , and the tyrannical oppression they were kept under by the ecclesiasticks . but upon this the beures published a writing containing their grievances : the first whereof was , that they might have liberty to choose ministers , who might preach the word of god purely to them , without the mixture of mens devises . the other particulars related to their civil liberties . and upon these pretensions they appealed to luther , who wrote again , acknowledging the great guilt of these princes who received not the purity of the gospel ; but he warns the people to consider what they did , lest they lost both body and soul in what they attempted . that they were neither to consider their own strength , nor the faultiness of their adversaries , but the justice and lawfulness of the cause ; and to be careful not to believe all mens preachings ; for the devil had raised up many seditions and bloody teachers at that time . wherefore he forbids them to take god ' s name in vain , and pretend that they desired in all things to follow his laws : but minds them who threatned , that they who took the sword , should perish by the sword : and of the apostle , who commands all to be obedient to magistrates , charging on them , that though they pretended the laws of god , yet they took the sword , and resisted the magistrate . but he adds , you say , the magistrates become intolerable , for they take the doctrine of the gospel from us , and oppress us to the highest degree : but be it so , stars and seditions are not therefore to be raised , neither must every one coërce crimes , that belongs to him to whom the power of the sword is given , as is express in scripture . and besides , this is not only according to the laws , but is by the light of nature impressed on all mens minds : which shews , that no man can cognosce and judge in his own cause , since all men are blinded with self-love : and it cannot be denied , but this tumult and sedition of yours , is a private revenge : but if you have any warrant for this from god , you must make it out by some signal miracle . the magistrate indeed doth unjustly , but you much more so , who contemning the command of god , invade anothers iurisdiction . and he tells them , that if these things take place , there will be no more magistracy , nor courts of iustice , if every man exercise private revenge . and if this be unlawful in a private person , much more is it so in a multitude gathered together . whe●efore he counts them unworthy of the name of christians , nay worse than turks , who thus violate the laws of nature . then for proof of his opinion , he adduceth that of our lord's , resist not evil ; as also his r●proving of s. peter for smiting with the sword. these steps were to be f●llowed by you , saith he , or this glorious title must be laid down . and if you followed his example , god ' s power would appear , and he would undoubtedly have regard to you . and he adds , how far he had been always from such practices , and how god had blessed his wo●k in his hands : but for you , you advert not how much you obstruct that which you think to promove . these are a few of luther's words , by which it will appear both upon what pretences the●e b●ures went , and what his sense of them was . but i know it will be said , that as in the first ages of the church , these good simple men understood not their liberties nor privileges , but were whee●led into a sheepish tameness : so likewise when the re●o●mation was fi●st sp●inging , they ●●d not in that infancy understand the heroick doctrine , that the following ripeness of some martial spirits did broach and maintain . alas ! luther , poor man ! he had been bred in his monastery , and understood not the brave atchievements of christian chivalry . but who would bear with such disingenuity , as to say , that because he defines sedition to be private revenge , and afterwards condemns private revenge , therefore he must be understood as only condemning that ? pag 432. but as none that reads sleydan da●e say that i have alledged one word in luther's name , but what is faithfully translated out of these writings : so the parcels i have here inserted , will clearly discover that rebellion to have been coloured over with the p●etence of oppression , persecution , and hindering the doctrine of the gospel : and luther's opinion in that must not be looked upon , as only his private sense , but that which was undoub●e●●y received by the rest of the protestants in germany , as appears by the series of the story . and whatever passion luther might have expressed , that will no more brangle what i say , than any of his other unjustifiable f●rv●●s will shake the rest of his doctrine . for i do not adduce him here only as a private doctor speaking his single thoughts , but as the head of the protestants , delivering a doctrine which was then received among them . isot. but he afterwards changed his opinion when the league of smalcald was entred into , and then we find the protestants in another tune ; for upon apprehensions of mischief designed against them , they entred into a defensive league among themselves : tho the constitution of the empire being feudal , the emperor was their sovereign : yet both princes and free cities entred into this league , which afterwards broke out into war. see p 433. poly. before i examine that affair , i must first clear the way by removing a mistake , which truly i judged none capable of that had ever read any thing of the constitution of the german empire , or of the power of the electors , princes , and free cities . i must therefore since i have to do with so much ignorance or perversness , shew that the emperor is not sovereign in germany ; though the thing is so plain , that i am almost ashamed to go about it . the german empire was hereditary from the days of charles the great till henry the fowler , and then it begun to be elective : and as is usual in all such cases , they who had the right of election , got by degrees the authority transferred upon themselves : but the particular time when this begun , is not so clearly defined by the german writers . it is true , the diet of germany is not like the league of the united provinces , or of the cantons of switzerland , where the authority remains with the several states and cantons , and they only meet for counsel : but the diet hath the supreme authority , both of deposing of emperors , as was practised in the case of adolphus and wenceslaus , and of fining , banishing , and forfeiting , either princes or cities . and the princes declare after the emperor is crowned , that they are the vassals of the empire , and not of the emperor . and when the diet sits not , all things are judged by the imperial chamber , whose president must be a prince of the empire , who hath six assessors from the emperor , seven from the seven electors , twenty from the ten circles , two from each of them ; and by them all the differences among the princes or members of the empire are decided . upon greater occasions , the diet is called , which thuan compares to the assembly of the amphictyons in greece , that was made up of princes , who had no dependence one upon another . the diet is not called by the emperor , but by the decree of a former diet : or if the emperor call one , the princes are not bound to come to it . and so the princes refused to come anno 1554. and an. 1506. by the diet laws are given to the emperour , as well as to the other princes : and any mony is ●●●sed for the use of the empire , is not put in the emperors hands , but in the bank of some town , as shall be agreed on . bodin tells he saw letters from a german prince to m●nmorancy , telling him , that the king of france had reason to complain of charles the fifth , and of his brother , to the duke of saxony , and the count palatine , who were the vicars of the empire , because they had , contrary to the laws of the empire , and former customs , suppressed the kings letters to the states of the empire . and maximilian the first in a diet at constance , anno 1507. acknowledged , that the majesty of the german empire consisted in the princes , and not in the emperor himself . i might here add much from the way of the emperors treating with the princes , by sending and receiving of ambassadors that go betwixt them , by the state in which he receives visits from them , and returns them to them , by the princes treating and being treated with , by all forein princes , who write to them brother , and not cousin , by their making of peace and war among themselves : and should indeed run out into a long dig●ession , if i adduced all might be alledged for proving the princes of the empire to be none of the emperors subjects : but i have no mind to engage in a vain shew of reading upon so plain a subject . one thing i shall only add , that by the 12. chapter of the bulla aurea , it is expresly provided , that the electors shall meet together yearly in the four weeks that follow easter , for consulting about the affairs of the empire : and this is thus explained in the 4th article of the cesarean capitulation , that it shall be free for the six electors by the vigor of the bulla aurea , to meet together as often as they please , for consulting about the commonwealth , and that the emperour shall make no hinderance to it , nor take it in ill part . and hence it is that these who give account of the state of the empire , laugh at their ignorance , who through a childish mistake ascribe the sovereign power to the emperor . the same may be added of the free cities united together by a league at least 500 years old , called the hanse-towns , who came under the protection of the master of the teut●●●●k order , that possessed prusse : and an . 1206 , they were so free , that they sent a navy to henry iii. of england , and got great priviledges from him for their traffick in england . there were then 72. cities in the league , who renewed their league every tenth year , and consulted whom to receive , or whom to exclude from their friendship , and choosed a p●o●●●tor to themselves . and one of the conditions on which any city might be of this league , was , that they were free towns : and therefore it was that some towns in the netherlands being of this league , their princes were by oath to confirm their freedom , otherwise they could not be comprehended within that league ; the end whereof was to defend one another in any necessity they might fall in . let these things then declare whether germany be a monarchy or not , and it will never prove the emperor to be the sovereign , because the empire is feudal , and the emperor gives the investitures to the princes ; for they are not the feudato●ies of the emperor , but the empire : and the emperor by giving the investiture becomes not their lord : for in the interregn of the empire , the electors of palatine and saxe are the vicars of the empire , and give the investitures , who are not clothed with any authority over the rest , but only as they are the vicars of the empire , and not of the emperor . and most of the princes of itair receive still their investiture from the emperor , but are far from concluding themselves his subjects upon that account . and who thinks the king of naples the popes subject , tho he receive his investiture in that crown from him ? these things being thus cleared , it will be evident that the wars betwixt charles v. and the duke of saxony , will never be a precedent for subjects resisting their sovereign . and having said so much , it will be to no purpose to examine the rise and progress of the smalcal●● league and war , only thus much is clear , that the leaguing of the princes and cities together among themselves , or with other princes , was not held contrary to the laws of the empire : for after the smalcaldic league , both the emperor and other kings , as france and england , treated with them , and sent embassadors to them : yea , the pope sent a nuncio to the elector of saxe , and landgrave of hessen at smalcald , and yet never were they accused by the emperor for entring into that league of mutual defence : which shews it was not judged contrary to the duty of these princes to associate among themselves , or with others . and the city of strasburg , and after them the landgrave of hessen , made a league with the switzer cantons that received the reformation , for mutual defence against any invasion upon the account of religion . at ausburg the emperor did on the 11. of november 1530. declare , that since the protestants did reject the decree made about religion , he had entred in an agreement with the rest of the diet , not to offend any , but to defend themselves , if any force were used against these who owned that religion . and in the following december the protestant princes met at smalcald , and made an agreement among themselves in the same strain : neither were they ever condemned for so doing , but continued in a good correspondence with the emperor many years after that , till being invaded by the duke of brunswick the war took its rise , which is all along proved to have been according to the laws and liberties of the empire . and thus this case doth vary exceedingly from the matter of our debates . eud. if i may glean after your harvest , i could add , that the divines of germany were notwithstanding of all the immunity of the princes , and injuries they met with , very much against all warlike preparations . many vestigies of this appear through melanclon's letters , particularly in his 71. letter to camerarius an . 1528. where he gives account of the inclinations many had to war , and with how much diligence he had studied to divert them from it , though great injuries had been done them ; and that it was believed that many of the princes had signed a conspiracy against them . and scultet exer. evang. lib. 2. cap. 5. tells how grumbachius and iustus ionas animated the elector of saxe to the war , assuring him of the empire of germany , if he wo●ld adventure for it : which , he adds , the elector did : and his so doing , he compares to his throwing himself over the pinacle of the temple ; but all quickly repented them of the attempt , the elector being defeated , taken , and kept prisoner many years , and his ill counsellors were well served for their advice , grumbachius was quartered , and ionas was beheaded . thus you see how that war is censured by one of the best of the late german divines . by this time , i think no scruples can dwell with any about the german war , and that it agrees with the case of a prince defending his religion and subjects , against the unjust invasion of another prince , to whom he owes neither obedience nor subjection : and this will easily satisfie all that know either law or history , whether the author of the dialogues deserved to be treated as his answerer doth : but it is no new thing to find ignorants full of confidence , and cowards full of boastings . isot. but for sweden , you yield it , and acknowledge , that because their king came against them in an unjust invasion , designing to subvert their religion , they not only armed against him , and resisted him , but deposed him , and put his uncle in his place , than which nothing can be more express . see p. 441. poly. the design of the conformist was to prove that the first reformers did not teach the doctrine of subjects their resistance upon the account of religion ; but he meant not to make good all that followed after that : therefore left the more inconsiderat when they heard of the s●ares of sweden their deposing of sig●smund , might have mistaken that , as he knows some have done , and confounded it with the reformation , he gave the true account of that affair as it was : and it being seventy years after the reformation was first brought thither , cannot be fastened on the reformation . besides the whole tract of the swedish history proves , that the estates , as they elected , so also coerced , and frequently deposed their kings : and therefore bodin reckons sweden among these divided states , where the supreme power lay betwixt the king and the nobility : and tells how in his own time henry king of sweden having killed with his own hand , one that presented a petition to him , the states forced him to quit the kingdom to his brother : and that he had been for seventeen years a prisoner when he wrote his books de republica : it being thus frequent in sweden upon malversation , not only to resist , but to depose their kings , it was no wonder if when sigismund came against them with an army of polanders , whose sovereign he was not , ( for none are so ignorant to think the king of poland is a sovereign ) they resisted him : since that was a subjecting of sweden to foreign force , and so did totally overturn the whole foundation of the kingdom . but after all this , i may add , that charles duke of sud●rman , was not too well reported of , for that abrogation of his nephew , it being generally imputed to his ambition . and thus you see upon how many accounts that action of the swedish state will not serve your turn . isot. but these of zurich resisted the other five cantons , and being provoked by their injuries , they stop'd the pass●ges of victuals to them , upon which a war followed . as also at basel , the people did maintain and assert the reformation by arms against their superiors , and brake the images , and burnt them : they also made the senate turn off some of their number who favored the mass. see p. 443 , 444. poly. as for the war among the cantons , it is undeniable that it was not of subjects against their sovereigns , since the cities of helvetia have no dependence one upon another ; nor can any one city be tied to the opinion or decree of the rest , without their own consent : which shews that every canton is a free state within it self , and therefore their warrings among themselves , makes nothing for subjects resisting of their sovereigns . and what is alledged from the tumult of basel , is as little to our purpose : for these free cities being democratical , it was no wonder if the people off●nded with the senate , did raise that commotion : and the historian expresly asserts , that what they did , they openly declared , was not for defence of religion , but for vindicating of their own liberty . and in the end of the story it appears what they designed , for they made the senat receive 260. out of the companies of the citizens , whose counsel should be carried along in the greater concernments , that might be either for god's glory , or the good of the commonwealth . but if you lay claim to this story as a precedent , you must acknowledge that a reformation may be not only maintained by force , but that magistrats may be removed from their office , if they go not along with it ; and that the people may in their own authority , without waiting for the magistrats concurrence , go by violence and break down images , and throw out an established religion . but this belongs not to the case of subjects , since in these free cities the power is certainly with the people , and so they are not s●bjects to the senat. and for geneve , it is so fully proved , that it was a free imperial city , that i need add nothing to make it out one instance will abundantly suffice to prevail upon the belief of any who can doubt whether the bishop of geneve was their prince , which is , that the bishops of geneve did frequently become burgesses in it : in particular , peter de baul● , the last who sate there , was received a citizen by the senat of gen●ve 15. iuly 1527. which doth fully prove that he could not be their lord. but as for the reformation of geneve , it is true sleydan hints as if the bishop and clergy had left the city , being angry at the reformation : but in that he was mistaken , for their bishop left the city an . 1528. and made war against it upon some disputes were betwixt him and them about their privileges : for though he was not lord of the city , yet the countrey about it belonged to him . but an . 1533. he returned to the city , and left it in the iuly of the same year , fearing some seditious tumults , which he had the more reason to apprehend , because of his transactions with the duke of savoy , whereby he made over to him his interest in the city . and it was two years after this before the reformation was received by that city . for after he left them , they passed a decree for preserving the old religion , and discharging of the lutheran , and banished two of the ministers of that religion . and on the first of ianuary 1534. after the bishop was gone , his vicar published an edict , discharging all assemblies f●r divine worship , without the bishops permission ; and all bibles in the french or german tongues , were condemned to be burnt . and for the duke of savoy his invading them , and being resisted by them , it makes nothing for your design , this being a free imperial city , resisting an unjust invader . for all this , see geneva restituta . isot. but at least the states of the united provinces did maintain their religion by arms , when philip the second was introducing the inquisition among them : and tho these wars were upon mixed grounds , so that papists as well as protestants concurred in them , yet it is undeniable that religion gave the chief rise to them , and was the main consideration that engaged the protestants into that war. see pag. 446. poly. one error runs through all your smatterings , which is , that you never distinguish betwixt a state governed by a monarch , where subjection is due to him by the constitution of the state , and a limited prince , who by the laws of that society is accountable to , and censurable by the nobility and people ; which states so great a difference , that he must be very purblind who doth not observe it ; and therefore i will first shew you , that the prince of the netherlands was but a precarious prince , governing a free people at their pleasure and precariously , as heuterus and grotius de ant. re●p . batav . call him : and among the laws of the government of batavia , one was , that the old customs and laws should be sacred ; and that if the prince decreed ought against them , he was not to be obeyed : and so it was usual among them upon a t●an●gression , to depose their princes , of which many instances are reckoned by grotius , and therefore he compares their princes to the lacedemonian kings , upon whom the ephori and the senat might have cognosced . the brabantins had indeed looked better to their liberty than the rest , and so had guarded against the deceit of their princes ( who might have broken their laws upon the pretence of a publick good ) by an express agreement , that if their prince should violate the laws , they should not be tied to obedience nor fidelity to him , till their injuries were removed : and this was confirmed by the examples of their ancestors , gr. an. lib. 2. and a little after , he adds , that the other provinces in belgium , had by practice that same privilege , and that the rather , that being all united to brabant , by maximilian , they were to enjoy the same privileges with them . the brabantins had also a privilege of chusing a conservator in any great hazard , called ruart , strada tom . 1. lib. 9. whose power was equal to the roman dictators : this they had by the privileges of the laetus introitus . and upon this they chused the prince of orange their ruart , anno 1577. and to run no further for proofs of this , when philip was inaugurated their prince , he expresly provided , that if he broke their privileges , they should be free from obedience and fidelity to him : and this was the ground on which they deposed him , as appears by their decree , st. tom . 2. lib. 4. by these indications it is apparent , that the prince of the netherlands was not sovereign of these provinces , since they could cognosce upon him , and shake off his authority . but i shall next make out , that religion was not the ground upon which these wars were raised : the reformation came unto the provinces in charles the v. his time , who cruelly persecuted all who received it , so that these who were butchered in his time , are reckoned not to be under 100000. gr. annal. lib. 1. all this cruelty did neither provoke them to arms , nor quench the spirit of reformation ; whereupon philip designed to introduce the inquisition among them , as an assured mean of extinguishing that light. but that court was every where so odious , and proceeded so illegally , that many of the nobility , among whom divers were papists , entered in a confederacy against it , promising to defend one another , if endangered : upon this , there were first petitions , and after that tumults ; but it went no further till the duke of alva came , and proceeded at the rate of the highest tyranny imaginable , both against their lives and fortunes , particularly against the counts of egment and horn , suspect of favoring the former disord●●s . but ( it being needle●s to make a vain shew of reading in a thing which every boy may know ) after the duke of alva had so transgressed all limits , the nobility and deputies of the towns of holland , who were the depositaries of the laws and privileges of that state , met at dort , anno 1572. gr. de ant. bat. cap. ● . and on iuly 19 , decreed a war against the duke of alva , and made the prince of orange their captain , which was done upon his e●●cting the twentieth penny of their rents , and the tenth of their moveables , in all their transactions and merchandises . yet all this while the power was in the hands of papists , gr. an●al . lib. 3. no● wa● the protestant religion permitted till the year 1578. that in amster●●● , utrecht and harlem , the magistrats who were addicted to the roman religion , were tu●ne● out , which gave great offence to some of then confederates who adhered to poperv . and upon this the protestants petitioned the a●c● duke matthias , whom the states had chosen for their prince , that since it was known that they were the chief object of the spanish hatred . and so might look for the hardest measure , it they prevailed : it was therefore just they who were in the chief danger , might now enjoy some share of the liberty with the rest ; wherefore they desired they might have ch●rch●s allowed them , and might not be barred from publick trust , which after some debate was granted . and let this declare whether the war was managed upon the grounds of religion ▪ or not . the year after this , the states of holland , geldres , zeland , utrecht , and friesland , met at utrecht , and entred in that union which continues to this day : by which it was provided , that the reformed religion should be received in holland and zeland , but the rest were at liberty , either to chuse it or another , or both , as they pleased . so we see they did not confederate against spain upon the account of religion , it not being the ground of thei●●eague ; but in opposition to the spanish tyranny and pride . and in their letters to the emperor , ian. 8 , 1578. str. tom . 2. lib. 2. they declared , that they never were , nor ever should be of another mind , but that the catholick religion should be still observed in holland : and in the end of the year 1581. they decreed , that philip had forfeited his title to the principality of belgium , by his violating their privileges , which he had sworn to observe : whereupon they were ( according to their compact with him at his inauguration ) free from their obedience to him ; and therefore they chus●● the duke of alenson to be their prince . and now review all this ▪ and see if you can stand to your former assertion , or believe these wars to have proceeded upon the grounds of subjects resisting their sovereign , when he persecutes them upon the a●count of religion , and you will be made to acknowledge , that the states of holland were not subjects , and that their quarrel was not religion . isot. all this will perhaps be answered in due time : but from this let me lead you to france , where we find a long tract of civil wars upon the account of religion , and here you cannot pretend the king is a limited sovereign ; neither was this war managed by the whole states of france , but by the princes of the blood , with the nobility of some of the provinces ; and these began under francis the second , then about sixteen years of age , so that he was not under non-age : and tho they were prosecuted under the minority of charles the ninth , yet the king of navarre , who was regent , and so bore the king's authority , was resisted : and after charles was of age , the wars continued , both during his reign , and much of his brother's , and did again break out in the last king's reign . the protestants were also owned and assisted in these wars , not only by the princes of germany , but by the three last princes who reigned in britain . so here we have an undeniable instance of subjects defending religion by arms. see pag. 454. poly. i must again put my self and the company to a new penance by this ill understood piece of history , which you have alledged : and tell you how upon henry the second's death , francis his son , was under age by the french law , ( for which see thuan. lib. 16. ) which appointed the regents power to continue till the king was 22 years of age at least , as had been done in the case of charles the 6. which yet the history of that time saith , was a rare privilege , granted him because of his gracefulness , and the love was generally born him , whereas the year wherein the kings were judged capable of the government was 25. but francis , tho under age , being every way a child , did for away both the princes of the blood , the constable and the admiral from the government , which he committed to his mother , the cardinal of lorrain and the duke of guise . upon this the princes of the blood met , and sent the king of navarre who was the first prince of the blood , to the king , to complain of their ill usage : but tho he was much neglected at court , yet his simplicity was such , that he was easily whedled out of his pretensions . upon this the prince of conde having a greater spirit , and being poor , thought upon other courses , and as it is related by davila , lib. 1. gathered a meeting at ferté , where he p●●posed the injury done the princes of the blood , who in the minority of their king were now excluded the government : which , contrary to the salick law , was put in a womans hand , and trusted to strangers : wherefore he moved that ( according to the practices of other princes of the blood , in the like cases , which he adduced ) they might by arms make good their right , and assume the government in the kings minority . but the admiral considering well the hardiness of the enterprise , said , that another way must be taken to make it succeed , which was , that since france was full of the followers of calvin , who through the persecutions they had lain under , were now almost desperat , and had a particular hatred at the brethren of lorrain as their chief enemies , therefore it was fit to cherish them , and make a party of them , by which means assistance might be likewise hoped for from the princes of germany , and the queen of england : and to this advice all present did yield . upon this , saith thuan , lib. 16. many writings were published , proving the government of the kingdom in the king's minority to belong to the princes of the blood , and that by the laws of france , the regents power was not absolute , but to be regulated by the assembly of the states , wherein many instances of the french law were adduced : and whereas it was alledged that the king was major at 15. which was proved from an edict of charles the fifth , this was fully refuted ; and it was shewed that notwithstanding of the edict of charles the fifth , his son was not admitted to the government till he was full 22 years of age , and that in his minority the kingdom was governed by a council of the princes and nobility , which was established by an assembly of the states . i shall not meddle further in the debate which was on both hands about the year of the king's majority , or the power of the princes of the blood in his minority , but shall refer the reader to the sixth book of the voluminous history of france , for that time , whose author hath suppressed his name , where a full abstract of all the writings that passed on both sides about these matters is set down : but this shews how little your friends understand the history of that time , who take it for granted that francis the second was then major , since it was the great matter in controversie . but to proceed in my accounts . these grounds being laid down for a war , the p●ince of conde , as thuan relates , would not openly own an accession to any design , till it should be in a good forwardness , but trusted the management of it to one renaudy , who tho a catholick by his religion , yet drew a great meeting of protestants to nantes , in the beginning of february , anno 1560. where he stirred them up to arm : and in his speech , after he had represented all the grievances , he added , that the greatest scruples that stuck with many , was the king's authority , against which whos● rose●he did rebel : and he answered , acknowledging the obedience due to kings , notwithstanding their wicked laws ; and that it was without doubt , that all who resisted the power constituted by god , resisted his ordinance : but added , their resistance was of these traitors , who having possessed themselves of the young king , designed the ruin both of king and kingdom . this then will clear whether they walked on the principles of subjects resisting when persecuted by their sovereign , or not . upon this they designed to have seised on the king , but as it was to be executed , though it had been long carried with a marvellous secrecy , it was at length discovered , and the king conveyed to amb●i●e : and as the protestants were gathering to a head , the kin●'s forces came upon them , and defeated and scattered them . but a little after this the king died , in good time for the prince of conde ; for his accession to these commotions being discovered , he was s●ised on and sentenced to death ; but the king's death as it ●●livered him , did also put an end to the questions about the king's majority , his brother charles the ninth , being a child , so that the regency was undoubtedly the king of navarre his right ; yet not so entirely but that the other princes were to share with him , and the assembly of the states to direct him , as the lawyers proved from the french law. the consultation about the protestants took them long up , and a severe edict passed against them in iuly 1561. but in the ianuary of the next year a solemn meeting was called of all the prin●es of the blood , the privy counsellors and the eighth parliament of france , in which the edict of ianuary was passed ; giving the protestants the free exercise of their religion , and all the magistrats of france were commanded to punish any who interrupted or hindered this liberty , which edict you may see at length , hist. d' a●big . lib. 2. c. 32. but after this , as davila , lib. 3. relates how the duke of guise coming to paris did disturb a meeting of the protestants , so that it went to the throwing of stones , with one of which the duke was hurt , upon which he designed the breach of that edict , and so was the author and contriver of the following wars . after this the edict was every where violated , and the king of navarre united with the constable , and the duke of guise for the ruin of the protestants : upon which the prince of conde , as the next prince of the blood , asserted the edicts , so that the ●aw was on his side : neither was the regents power absolute or sovereign : and the prince of condé in his manifesto declared , he had armed to free the king from that captivity these stranger princes kept him in , and that his design was only to assert the authority of the late edict , which others were violating . upon this the wars began , and ere the year was ended , the king of navarre was killed : after which the regency did undoubtedly belong to the prince of condé . and thus you see upon what grounds these wars began : and if they were after that continued during the majority of that same king , and his successors , their case in that was more to be pitied , than imitated : for it is known that wars once beginning , and jealousies growing strong , and deeply rooted , they are not easily setled . and to this i shall add what a late writer of that church sieur d'ormegrigny hath said for them , in his reflections on the third chapter of the politicks of france : wherein he justifies the protestants of france from these imputations . what was done that way , he doth not justifie , but chargeth it on the despair of a lesser party among them , which was disavowed by the greater part . and shews how the first tumults in francis ii. his time , were carried mainly on by renaudy a papist , who had associates of both religions . he vindicates what followed from the interest the princes of the blood had in the government in the minority of the kings . and what followed in henry iii. his time , he shews , was in defence of the king of navarre , the righteous heir of the crown , whom those of the league designed to seclude from his right . but after that henry iv. had setled france , he not only granted the protestants free exercise of their religion , but gave them some towns for their security , to be kept by them for twenty years : at the end whereof , the late king remanding them , the protestants were instant to keep them longer , to which he yielded for three or four years : in the end , he wisely determined ( saith that gentleman ) to take them out of their hands . upon which they met in an assembly at rochel ; and most imprudently , he adds , and against their duty , both to god and the king , they resolved to keep them still by force . but at that time there was a national synod at alais , where m. du moulin presided , who searching into the posture of affairs in that country , where many of these places of strength lay , he found the greater and better part inclined to yield them up to the king : upon which he wrote an excellent letter to the assembly at rochel , disswading them from pursuing the courses they were ingaging in : where he shews , it was the general desire of their churches , that it might please god to continue peace by their giving obedience to the king : and since his majesty was resolved to have these places in his own hands , that they would not on that account ingage in a war. but that if persecution was intended against them , all who feared god desired it might be for the profession of the gospel , and so be truly the cross of christ : and therefore assured them the greater and better part of their churches desired they would dissolve their meeting , if it could be with security to their persons . and presses their parting from that assembly , with many arguments , and obviates what might be objected against it : and craves pardon to tell them , they would not find inclinations in those of the religion to obey their resolutions , which many of the best quality , and greatest capacity avowedly condemned , judging that to suffer on that account , was not to suffer for the cause of god. and therefore exhorts them to depend on god , and not precipitate themselves into ruin by their impatience . and he ends his letter with the warmest and serventest language imaginable for gaining them into his opinion . it is true , his letter wrought not the desired effect , yet many upon it deserted the meeting . upon the which that gentleman shews , that what was then done , ought not to be charged on the protestant churches of france , since it was condemned by the national synod of their divines , and three parts of four who were of the religion continued in their dutiful obedience to the king , without ingaging in arms with those of their party . amirald also in his incomparable apology for those of the reformed religion , sect. 2. vindicates them from the imputations of disloyalty to their prince : and after he hath asserted his own opinion , that prayers and tears ought to be the only weapons of the church , as agreeing best with the nature of the gospel , and the practice of the first christians , he adds his regrates , that their fathers did not crown their other virtues with invincible patience , in suffering all the cruelty of their persecutors without resistance , after the example of the primitive church , by which all color of reproaching the reformation had been removed . yet he shews how they held out during the reign of francis i. and henry ii. notwithstanding all the cruelty of the persecution , though their numbers were great . what fell out after that , he justifies , or rather excuses ( for he saith , he cannot praise , but blame it ) on the grounds we have already mentioned , of the minority of their kings , and of the interest of the princes of the blood. and for the business of renaudy in francis ii. his time , he tells how calvin disapproved it : and observes from thuan , that he who first discovered it was of the reformed religion , and did it purely from the dictate of his conscience . he also shews that the protestants never made war with a common consent , till they had the edicts on their side , so that they defended the king's authority , which others were violating . but adds withal , that the true cause of the wars , was reason of state , and a faction betwixt the houses of bourbon and guise : and the defence of the protestants was pretended , to draw them into it . and for the late wars , he charges the blame of them on the ambition of some of their grandees , and the factious inclinations of the town of rochel . and vindicates the rest of their church from accession to them , whatever good wishes the common interest of their religion might have drawn from them , for these whose danger they so much apprehended . and for the affaus of our britain , which was then in a great combustion , for which the protestants were generally blamed , as if the genius of their religion led to an opposition of monarchy , he saith , strangers could not well judge of matters so remore from them ; but if the king of england was by the constitutions of that kingdom a sovereign prince ( which is a thing in which he cannot well offer a dicision ) then he simply condemns their raising a war against him , even though that report which was so much spread of his design to change the reformed religion settled there , were true . neither are these opinions of amirald to be look'd on as his private thoughts ; but that apology being published by the approbation of these appointed to license the books of the religion , is to be received as the more common and received doctrine of that church . and what ever approbation or assistance the neighboring princes might have given the protestants in the latter or former wars , it will not infer their allowing the precedent of subjects resisting their sovereign , though persecuted by him , since it is not to be imagined many princes could be guilty of that . but the maxims of princes running too commonly upon grounds very different from the rules of conscience , and tending chiefly to strengthen themselves , and weaken their neighbors , we are not to make any great account of their approving or abetting of these wars . and thus far you have drawn from me a great deal of discourse for justifying the conf●rmists design of vindicating the reformed churches from the doctrine and practice of subjects resisting their sovereign , upon pretexts of religion . isot. a little time may produce an answer to all this , which i will not now attempt , but study these accounts more accurately . but let us now come home to scotland , and examine whether the king be an accountable prince , or not ? you know well enough how fergus was first called over by the scots , how many instances there are of the states their coercing the king , how the king must swear at his coronation to observe the laws of the kingdom , upon which allegiance is sworn to him , so that if he break his part , why are not the subjects also free , since the compact seems mutual ? i need not add to this , that the king can neither make nor abrogate laws , without the consent of the estates of parliament , that he can impose no tax without them . and from these things it appears that the king of scotland is a limited king , who as he originally derived his power from their choice , so is still limited by them , and liable to them . all which is at large made out by the author of ius populi . basil. now you are on a rational point , which i acknowledge deserves to be well discussed , for if by the laws of scotland the king be liable to his people , then their coercing him will be no rebellion . but this point is to be determined not from old stories , about which we have neither record , nor clear account for giving light how to direct our belief , nor from some tumultuary practices , but from the laws and records of the kingdom : and here the first word of our laws gives a shrewd indication that the king's power is not from the people , ( which is anno 1004 , according to sir iohn skeen's collection of them : ) king malcome gave and distributed all his lands of the realm of scotland among his men , and reserved nothing in property to himself but the royal dignity , and the mure-hill in the town of scone . now i dare appeal to any person whether this be not the stile of a sovereign , and if this prove not the king's title to the crown to be of another nature , than that of a voluntary compact ? the next vestige is to be found in the books of regiam majestatem , held to be published by king david i. anno 1124 , and declared authentical by following parliaments , where the third verse of the preface is , that our most glorious king having the government of the realm , may happily live both in the time of peace and of warfare , and may ride the realm committed to him by god , who hath no superior but the creator of heaven and earth , ruler over all things , &c. and let the plain sense of these words tell whether the king of scotland , hath his power from the people , and whether he be accountable to any but to god ? it is also clear that all were bound to follow the king to the wars , and punishment was decreed against those who refused it , see the laws of alexander ii. cap. 15. and iac. 1. parl. 1. cap. 4. iac. 2. p. 13. cap. 57. and this shews they were far from allowing war against the king. the parliaments were also originally the kings courts , at which all his vassals were bound to appear personally , and give him counsel , which proving a burden to the small barons , they were dispenced with for their appearance in parliament , 1. iac. parl. 7. cap. 101. which shews that the coming to the parliament was looked on in these days rather as an homage due to the king , than a priviledg belonging to the subjects , otherwise they had been loth to have parted with it so easily . and 2. fac. 6. parl. cap. 14. it is ordained that none rebel against the king's person nor his authority , and whoso makes such rebellion is to be punished after the quality and quantity of such rebellion by the advice of the three estates . and if it happens any within the realm openly or notoriously to rebel against the king , or make war against the king's laeges , against his forbidding ; in that case the king is to go upon them with assistance of the whole lands , and to punish them after the quantity of the trespass . here see who hath the sovereign power , and whether any may take arms against the king's command : and the 25. ch. of that same parl. defines the points of treason . it is true by that act those who assault castles , or houses where the king's person was , without the consent of the three estates , are to be punished as traytors : from which one may infer that the estates may besiege the king ; but it is clear that was only a provision against these who in the minority of the kings used to seize upon their persons , and so assumed the government : and therefore it was very reasonable that in such a case provision should be made , that it were not treason for the estates to come and besiege a place where the kings person were for recovering him from such as treasonably seized on him . and this did clearly take its rise from the confusions were in that king's minority , whom sometimes the governor , sometimes the chancellor got into their keeping , and so carried things as they pleased having the young king in their hands . the king is also declared to have full jurisdiction and free empire within his realm , 3. fac. parl. 5. cap. 30. and all along it is to be observed that in asserting his majesties prerogative royal , the phrases of asserting and acknowledging , but never of giving or granting , are used , so that no part of the king's prerogative is granted him by the estates , and iac. 6. parl. 8. cap. 129. his majesties royal power and authority over all estates , as well spiritual as temporal , within the realm , is ratified , approved , and perpetually confirmed in the person of the king's majesty his heirs and successors . and in the 15. parl. of that same king , chap. 251. these words are , albert it cannot be denied , but his majesty is a free prince , of a sovereign power , having as great liberties and prerogatives by the laws of this realm and priviledg of his crown , and diadem , as any other king , prince , or potentate whatsoever . and in the 18. parl. of the same king , act. 1. the estates and whole body of that present parliament , all in one valuntary , faithful and united heart , mind and consent , did truly acknowledge his majesties sovereign authority , princely power , royal prerogative , and priviledg of his crown over all estates , persons and causes within his said kingdom by this time i suppose it is past debate , that by the tract of the whole laws of scotland , his majesty is a sovereign unaccountable prince , since nothing can be devised more express than are the acts i have cited . for what you objected from the coronation oath , remember what was said a great while ago , that if by the coronation the king got his power , so that the coronation oath , and oath of allegiance were of the nature of a mutual stipulation , then you might with some reason infer that a failing of the one side , did free the other ; but nothing of that can be alledged here , where the king hath his authority , how soon the breath of his father goes out , and acts with full regal power before he be crowned ; so that the coronation is only a solemn inauguration in that which is already his right . next , let me tell you , that the king 's swearing at his coronation , is but a late practice ; and so the title of the kings of scotland to the crown , is not upon the swearing of that oath : and here i shall tell you all that i can find in our laws of the king 's swearing or promising . the first instance that meets me is , chap. 17. of the statutes of king robert the second , where these words are , for fulfilling and observing of all the premises , the king so far as concerns him in his parliament , hath obliged himself in the word of a prince , and his son the earl of carrict ( afterwards robert the third ) being constituted by the king for fulfilling of the premises , so far as touches him , gave and made his oath , the holy evangils being touched by him , and then the states of parliament did also swear to maintain the earl of carrict , made then lieutenant under the king. now the reason why these mutual oaths were then given , is well known , since the king's s●ccession was so doubtful . but after that , no oath seems to have been given : and tho king iames the second his coronation be set down in the records of parliament , there is not a word of an oath given by any in his name . it is true in the 11. parl. of that king , cap 41. for securing of the crown-lands from being alienated , it is appointed , that the king who then was , should be sworn ; and in like manner all his successors , kings of scotland into their coronation , to the keeping of that statute , and all the points thereof . but this is not such an oath as you alledg . likewise in king iames the fourth his reign , 2. parl. ch. 12. where the council was sworn , it is added , and our sovereign lord hath humbled his highness to promit and grant in parliament , to abide and remain at their counsels while the next parliament . but it is to be observed , the king was then but 17 years old , and so not of full age : this promise was also a temporary provision . besides , the very stile of it shews , that it was below his majesty to be so bound . but the first act for a coronation oath i can meet with , is cap. 8. of the 1. parl. of king iames the sixth , an. 1567. where the stile wherein the act runs , shews it was a new thing , it bearing no narrative of any such former custom : the words of the act are , item , because that the increase of vertue and suppressing of idolatry craves , that the prince and the people be of one perfect religion , which of god's mercy is now presently professed within this realm ; therefore it is statute and ordained by our sovereign lord , my lord regent , and the three estates of this present parliament , that all kings and princes , or magistrates what 〈◊〉 , holding their place , which hereafter may happen to reign , and bear rule over this realm , at the time of their coronation , and receipt of their princely authority , make their faithful promise by oath , &c. now you see the beginning of the coronation oath , and i need not here reflect on the time when that act passed , it being so obvious to every one . but i suppose it is made out , that the kings of scotland have not their authority from any stipulation used at their coronation . the next thing you alledg to prove the king of scotland a limited prince , is , because he must govern by laws , which cannot be enacted without the authority of the three estates in parliament : but this will not serve turn , unless you prove that the estates can cognosce on the king , and coerce him if he transgress : for which there is not a tittle in our laws . i acknowledg the constitution of parliaments to be both a rational and excellent model , and that the king becomes a tyrant when he violates their priviledges , and governs without law : but tho his ministers who serve him in such tyrannical ways are liable to punishment by the law , yet himself is subject to none but god. and from our kings their justice and goodness in governing legally by the councils of their parliaments , you have no reason to argue against their absolute authority ; for their binding themselves to such rules , and being tied to the observance of laws enacted by themselves , will never overthrow their authority , but rather commend it , as having such a temperature of sovereignty , justice , and goodness in it . isot. but was not king iames the third resisted and killed in the field of striveling , and afterwards in his sons first parl. act. 14. all who were against him in that field , were declared innocent , and his slaughter was declared to be his own fault , which was never rescinded ? as also cap. 130. of iac. 6. parl. 8. the honour and authority of parliament upon the free vote of the three estates thereof is asserted . and are not you an impugner of the authority of the three estates , who plead thus for the king 's sovereign power ? see answer to the letter written to the author of ius populi . basil. i shall not engage far in the story of king iames the third , which even as it is represented by buchanan , lib. 11. ( no friend to monarchy ) is very far from being justifiable on the side of those who fought against him : nor was it the least part of their guilt , that they forced his son , being then but fifteen years old , to own their rebellion : and what wonder was it , that they who had killed the father , and kept his son in their power , passed such an act in their own favors ? but king iames the fourth quickly discovered what a sincere penitent he was for his accession to that rebellion , as appeared by the iron belt he wore all his life , as a penance for this sin : yet the meekness of his spirit , and the power of that faction , made that things continued in the posture they formerly were in . it is true , that act was not expresly repelled , which perhaps was not safe at that time to have attempted : but it was really done by his revocation ratified in his 6. parl. cap. 100. wherein with consent of the three estates , he annuls and revokes all statutes and acts of parliament which he had enacted in his former years , that tended either to the prejudice of the catholic church , his soul , or of the crown , declaring them to have no force , but to be deleted , and cancell'd out of the books . and it is not to be doubted , but in this he had an eye to that former act : but for your act asserting the authority of parliament , look but what immediately precedes it , and you will find the king's authority and supremacy fully established : and i acknowledg , that whosoever impugns the authority of parliament , as the king 's great council , doth incur a very high punishment ; but this will never prove an authority in the states to coerce and resist the king. one thing i must mind you of from that act , which is , that none of the lieges must presume to impugn the dignity and authority of the said three estates , or to seek or procure the innovation , or diminution of the power and authority of the same three estates , or any of them in time coming , under the pain of treason . and can you be so ignorant of our laws , as not to know that the church was one of these estates : for the small barons which some called the third estate , came not in till three years after ? iac. 6. parl. 11. cap. 113. and now from all these premises , i think we may fairly infer with sir iohn sheen , title 8. of the heads of our laws drawn up by him , that all iurisdiction stands and consists in the king's person by reason of his royal authority and crown , and is competent to no subject , but flows and proceeds from the king , having supreme iurisdiction , and is given and committed by him to such subjects as he pleases . eud. i must confess my self pleased with this discussion of these points you have been tossing among you : and though i have sate silent , yet i have followed the thread of all your discourse with much close attention ; and was mightily confirmed in my former perswasion , both by the evidence of reason , the authorities of scripture , and these instances of history were adduced . but there are many other things yet to be talked of , though i confess this be of the greatest importance : and the satisfaction i have received in this , makes me long to hear you handle the other matters in debate . phil. i suppose we have forgot little that belonged to this question : but for engaging further at this time , i have no mind to it , it being so long passed midnight : we shall therefore give some truce to our debates , and return upon the next appointment . eud. i were unworthy of the kindness you shew me , did i importune you too much : but i will presume upon your friendship for me , to expect your company to morrow at the same hour you did me the favor to come here to day . isot. i shall not fail to keep your hour , tho i be hardly beset in such a croud of assailants ; but truth is on my side , and it is great , and shall prevail , therefore good night to you . basil. i see you are not shaken out of your confidence for all the foils you get , yet our next days discourse will perhaps humble you a little more ; but i refer this to the appointment wherein we hope to meet again , and so , adieu . eud. adieu , to you all , my good friends . the second conference . eudaimon . you are again welcome to this place , and so much the more , that your staying some minutes later than the appointment , was making me doubt of your coming : and indeed this delay proved more tedious , and seemed longer to me than the many hours were bestowed on your yesterdays conference : but methinks , isotimus , your looks , though never very serene , have an unusual cloud upon them ; i doubt you have been among the brotherhood , whom your ingenious relation of what passed here , hath offended . their temper is pretty well known to us all , some of them being as the pestilence that walketh in darkness , with the no less zealous , but scarcely more ignorant , sisterhood , they vent their pedling stuff : but of all things in the world shun most to engage with any that can unmask them , and discover their follies . and their safest way of dealing with such persons , is , to laugh at them , or solemnly to pity them with a disdainful brow. and that is the best refutation they will bestow on the solidest reason , or if any of them yelp out with an answer , sense or nonsense , all is alike ; the premises are never examined , only if the conclusion be positively vouched , as clearly proved from scriptures and reason , the sentence is irreversibly past , and you may as soon bow an oak of an hundred years old , as deal with so much supercilious ignorance . tell plainly , have you been in any such company ? isot. what wild extravagant stuff pour you out on better men than your self ? but i pity your ignorance who know not some of these precious worthies , whose shooe latchets you are not worthy to unloose . but the truth is , you have got me here among you , and bait me by turns , either to ease your own galls , or to try mine ; yet it is needless to attempt upon me , for as i am not convinced by your reasons , so i will not be behind with you in reflections : and i will ●●ow and fight both , as a co●k of the game . 〈◊〉 . hold , hold , for these serve to no use b●t t● 〈◊〉 p●●vish hum●rs , i will therefore engage you in another subject about the civil authority , which our yesterdays debate left untouched ; which is the obedience due to their commands : let us therefore consider how far subjection obligeth us to obey the laws of the civil powers . isot. had you not enough of that yesterday ? is it not enough that the magistrate be not resisted ? but will not that serve turn with you ? or do you design that we surrender our consciences to him , and obey all his laws , good or bad , and follow leviathan's doctrine of embracing the magistrates faith without enquiry ? which is bravely asserted by the author of ecclesiastical policy . this is indeed to make the king in god'● stead , and to render cesar the things that are god's , which is a visible design either for p●pe●● or atheism . phil●r . truly , sir , you consider little , if you ●u●ge submission to the penalties of the law● , to be all the duty we owe superiors . it is true , where the legislators leave it to the subjects choice , either to do a thing enacted , or to pay a fine ; in that case , obedience is not simply required ; so that he who pays the m●lct , fulfils his obligation . but whe●e a law is simply made , and obedience en●oined , and a penalty fixed on disobedience , in that case , n●thing but the sinfulness of the command can excuse our disobedience : neither can it be said , that he sins not who is content to submit to the punishment , since by the same method of arguing you may prove that such horrid atheists , as say they are content to be damned , do not sin against god , since they are willing to submit to the threatned punishment . the right of exacting our obedience is therefore to be distinguished from the power of punishing our faults . and as we have already considered how far the latter is to be acquiesced in , it remains to be examined what is due to the former . but here i lay down for a principle , that whatever is determined by the law of god , cannot be reversed , nor countermanded by any humane law : for the powers that are , being ordained of god , and they being his ministers , do act as his deputies : and the tie which lies on us to obey god , being the foundation of our subjection to them , it cannot bind us to that which overthrows it self : therefore it is certain god is first to be obeyed ; and all the laws of men which contradict his authority or commands , are null , and void of all obligation on our obedience : but i must add , it is one of the arts of you know whom , to fasten tenets on men who judge these tenets worthy of the highest anathema . for if it be maintained , that the magistrate can bind obligations on our consciences , then it will be told in every conventicle , that here a new tyranny is brought upon souls , which are god's prerogative , though this be nothing more than to say we ought to be subject for conscience sake . if again it be proved that the determining of the externals of government or worship , falls within the magistrate's sphere , then comes in a new complaint , and it is told , that here religion is given up to the lusts and pleasure of men , though it be an hundred times repeated , that command what the king will in prejudice of the divine law , no obedience is due . if again it be proved that church judicatories , in what notions soever , are subjects , as well as others , and no less tied to obedience than others ; upon this come in vehement outcries , as if the throne and kingdom of christ were overturned and betrayed , with other such like expressions in their harsh stile . what is become of mankind and of religion , when ignorants triumph upon these ba●ren pretences , as if they were the only masters of reason , and directors of conscience ? you know what my temper is in most differences : but i acknowledge my mind to be f●ll of a just disdain of these ignorant , and insolent pedlers ; which is the more inflamed , when i consider the ruins , not only of sound learning , but of true piety , and the common rules of humanity , which follow these simple contests they make about nothing . basil. to speak freely , i cherish reflections no where , therefore i shall not conceal my mislike of these invectives , which though i am forced to confess , are just ; yet i love to hear truth and peace pleaded for with a calm serene temper : and though the intolerable and peevish railings of these pamphlets do justifie a severe procedure , yet i would have the softer and milder methods of the gospel used , that so we may overcome evil with good . to take you therefore off that angry engagement , let me invite you to a sober examen of the magistrates authority in things divine . but before this be engaged in , let it be first considered whether ●●ere be any legislative power on earth about things sacred : and next , with whom it is lodged . isot. i will so far comply with your desires , that for this once without retaliating , i quit to philarcheus the last word of scolding . but to come to the purpose you have suggested , consider that christ hath given us a complete rule , wherein are all things that pertain to life and godliness . it is then an imputation on his gospel , ●o say any thing needs be added to it , and that it contains not a clear direction for all things ; therefore they accuse his wisdom or goodness , who pretend to add to his laws , and wherein he hath not burthened our consciences : what tyranny is it to bind a yoak upon us which our fathers were not able to bear ? whereby as our christian liberty is invaded , so innumerable schisms and scandals spring from no other thing so much , as from these oppressions of conscience , which are so much the more unjust , that the imposers acknowledging their indifferency , and the refusers scrupling their lawfulness , the peace of the church is sacrificed to what is acknowledged indifferent : neither can any bounds be fixed to those impositions ; for if one particular may be added , why not more and more still , till the ●oak become heavier than that of moses was ? which is made out from experience : for the humor of innovating in divine matters having once crept into the church , it never stopp'd till it swelled to that prodigious bulk of rites , under which the roman church lies oppressed . and besides all these general considerations , there is one particular against significant rites , which is , that the instituting of them in order to a particular signification of any grace , makes them sacraments , according to the vulgar definition of sacraments , that they are the outward signs of an inward grace : but the instituting of sacraments , is by the confes●ion of all , a part of christ's prerogative , since he who confers grace , can only institute the signs of it . upon all these accounts , i plead the rule of scripture to be that which ought to determine about all divine matters , and that no binding laws ought to be made in divine things wherein we are left at liberty by god , who is the only master of our consciences . see from pag. 172. to pag. 180. phil. you have now given me a full broad-side , after which i doubt not but you triumph as if you had shattered me all to pieces : but i am afraid you shall find this volley of chained ball hath quite missed me , and that i be aboard of you ere you be aware . no man can with more heartiness acknowledg the compleatness of scripture than my self : and one part of it is , that all things which tend to order , edification and peace be done , and the scene of the world altering so , that what now tends to advance order , edification , and peace , may afterwards occasion disorder ; destruction and contention , the scripture had not been compleat , if in these things there were not an authority on earth , to make and unmake laws in things indifferent . i acknowledg the adding of new pieces of worship , hath so many inconveniences hanging about it , that i should not much patronize it : but the determining of what may be done , either in this or that fashion to any particular rule , is not of that nature : therefore , since worship must be in a certain posture , a certain habit , in a determinate place , and on such times , all these being of one kind ; laws made about them upon the accounts of order , edification , or peace , do not pretend to prejudg the perfection of scripture , by any additions to what it prescribes ; since no new thing is introduced : indeed did humane law-givers pretend that by their laws these things became of their own nature more acceptable to god , they should invade god's prerogative ; but when they are prescribed only upon the account of decency and order , it is intolerable peevishness to call a thing indifferent of its nature , unlawful , because commanded : for the christian liberty consists in the exemption of our consciences from all humane yoak , but not of our actions , which are still in the power of our superiors , till they enjoin what is sinful , and then a greater than they is to be obeyed . i acknowledg , the simplicity of the christian religion is one of its chief glories , nothing being enjoined in it but what is most properly fitted for advancing the souls of men towards that wherein their blessedness doth consist : and therefore i never reflect without wonder , on that censure ammian marcellin , a heathen writer , gives of constantius , that he confounded the christian religion , which was of it self pure and simple , with doating superstitions : so i freely acknowledg that whosoever introduce new parts of worship , as if they could commend us to god , do highly encroach on god's authority , and man's liberty . but as for the determining of things that may be done in a variety of ways into one particular form , such as the prescribing a set form for worship , the ordering the posture in sacraments , the habit in worship , determinate times for commemorating great mercies , the time how long a sinner must declare his penitence , ere he be admitted to the use of the sacraments , and the like ( which is all in question among us ) they are quite of another nature . and it is a strange piece of nicety , if in these things , because superiours command what seems most proper for expressing the inward sense we ought to have of things , that therefore these injunctions become criminal , and not to be obeyed . for the significancy alledged to be in them , is only a dumb way of expressing our inward thoughts ; and as we agree to express them by word , so some outward signs may be also used : as by sackcloth the penitent expresseth his sorrow , and by a surplice a church man expresseth his purity ; so those habits are only a silent way of speaking out the sense of the heart . only here on the way , if you have a mind to ease your spleen a little , read what that late pamphlet saith , to prove a distinction betwixt these two ceremonies , pag. 111. that vulgar sophism of making sacraments , is the poorest cavil imaginable : for a sacrament is a federate rite of stipulating with god , wherein as we plight our faith to god , so he visibly makes offer of his gospel to us , which he accompanies with the gracious effusions of his spirit : and indeed to institute any such rite , were the highest encroachment on the divine authority : but what sophistry will fasten a pretension to this on the institution of a right , which shall only signifie that duty a creature ows his maker and redeemer , tending both to quicken the person that performs it to a sence of it , as also to work upon spectators by such a grave solemn rite ? to say men can institute means of conveying the divine grace , is justly to be condemned ; but how far differs it from that , to use signs , as well as words , for expressing our duty to god ? thus you see how ill founded that pompou● argument is , with which we have heard many triumphing among ignorants , or where none could contradict them . ●rit . if i may have liberty to add a little , i would suggest somewhat of the true notion of christian liberty , and how it is to be made use of or restrained . for the clearing whereof , we are to call to mind how upon t●●●●st p●o●●lg●tion of the gospel , a contention did early rise about the observation of moses law , the stipulation whereto was given in circumcision ; the iudaizers pleaded its continuance , and the apostles asserted the christian liberty : the iudaizers pretended a divine obligation from moses his law ; the apostles proved that was now vacated by the death of christ , which freed all from that yoak , and that therefore to be circumcised , as a stipulation to moses's law , was to continue subject to that yoak , and so to deny the messias was yet come , by which christ should profit them nothing . but the authority of paul and barnabas not being great enough to settle that question , they were sent from antioch to the apostles , and presbyters at ierusalem , who determined against the necessity of circumcision , and consequently of the observation of the mosaical law , and appointed that these who were proselyted from gentilism to the christian faith , should be received , not as proselytes of iustice , but as proselytes of the gates , who were only bound to obey the seven precepts of the sons of noah ; which i stand not to make out , it being sufficiently cleared already by others . here then the christian liberty was stated in an exemption from the law of moses . but for all this , we see into what compliances the apostles consented , for gaining upon the iews by that condescension , they circumcise , they purifie ( which was done by sprinkling with the ashes of the red cow ) they take the vows of nazarism , they keep the feasts at ierusalem ( which i wonder how that pamphleteer could deny , pag. 301. it being mentioned expresly , acts 18.21 . ) and upon the whole matter saint paul gives the following rules and assertions . the first was , that these things did not commend a man to god : for the kingdom of god consisted not in meat and drink , ( which clearly relates to the mosaical differencing of meats , clean and unclean ) that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision availed any thing . and if neither branch of that controversie did of its own nature commend men to god ; what judgments may we pass on our trifling wranglings ? whence we may infer , that we ought to instruct all christians in the faith , but not in these doubtful disputations . the next assertion is , that even in these matters men might be acceptable to god , on which side soever they were , so they judged what they did was done to god. he that made distinction of days , or meats , made it to the lord , and he that regarded them not to the lord , he regarded them not . so that god may be acceptably served by several men doing things contrary one to another . another rule is , that in these things every man must be fully persuaded in his own mind , and proceed out of a clear conviction in his conscience . a fourth rule is , that in these matters none ought to prescribe or dictate to another : such as had a liberty in them , were not to despise the scrupulous , as unreasonable ; neither were these who scrupled at them , to judg such as acted in a higher sphere of liberty , as profane or licentious : so that all were to be remitted to god's iudgment seat. another rule is , that for the peace of the church , many things which are otherwise subject to great inconveniencies , may be done for the gaining our brethren : but if such compliance harden people in their imperious humor , what was formerly to be done for gaining upon them , becomes unfit when so abused by them ; and therefore if after we have complied with the weak exceptions of others , in matters indifferent , they become so hardy as to presume upon our goodness to invade our liberty , by enjoying such things as necessary , pretending to an authority over us ; ●re are not to give place by subjection to such , ●● n●t for an hour . the last rule is , that in matters of indifferency , we are to postpone our own inclination , or desires , when the hazard of our brother's stumbling , or of the peace of the church lies in our way . all these are so clearly asserted by s. paul , and withal are so opposite to our present heats , that i wish they were more minded by the troublers of our israel , and they would certainly give a speedy decision to these feuds about doubtful disputations , which have so long preyed on the peace of the church . basil. and i am sure if so great a compliance may be given to the weakness of our brethren , much more is due to the commands of our superiors ; except you say , we are more subject to equals than to superiors , or that the weakness of a brother should weigh more than the authority of father : and in fine , that the obligations of charity should be more prevalent than those of iustice ; obedience being a debt we owe , whereas compliance is a benevolence given . i do not deny but great caution and tenderness must be used in making of such laws , and that their fitness for attaining the ends of order , edification and peace , should be well considered , and they no longer adhered to , than these effects can be drawn from them : so that if the nature of circumstances which vary all things indifferent , come to change , the same reason that exacted their being first imposed , will plead a change . i also acknowledge , that great abuse hath followed upon the innovating and prescribing in divine matters , and that nothing hath occasioned more divisions among christians , than the overstraining an uniformity . but if because of abuses you overturn all legislative power in matters sacred , nothing that is humane shall scape your fury , since every thing is subject to abuse . and nothing will curb ones career till he turn quaker , that follows these maxims . but one thing is still forgotten , that the dictates of reason are in their kind the voice of god ; reason being nothing , save an impress of the image of god on the soul of man ; which because much obliterated by the fall , was to be supplied by revelation : but wherein it remains clear , its directions not contradicting any positive or revealed law , are still to be followed as the laws of god. poly. for proving all this , i shall not run so far back as to examine the nature of the priesthood , and sacrifices were before moses , to consider whether these flow'd from a revelation conveyed by tradition , or from the dictates of reason ? but after moses his law was given , wherein all was modelled by divine prescript , yet what a vast heap of additions did flow upon that worship before our saviour's days , all that have written on the temple service do abundantly discover . here is a field spacious enough for any that designed a vain shew of much reading ; but a view of doctor lightfoot's temple-service will quickly convince any , that the whole service of the temple was interpalated by many additions , whose first author cannot be traced . they also used baptism to all who were proselyted from gentilism . and in the paschal festivity alone , how many new rites do we find ? every school-boy may know that they had a dish , called charaseth , which was a thick sawce of dates , figs , almonds , &c. pounded together , which looked like clay , to mind them of the clay in which their fathers wrought in egypt , which was a significative ceremony ; and was the dish wherein they dipped their hand , which we find was not wanting in our lord 's passover ; which proves significant rites , tho of humane appointment , cannot be criminal . and if to this i should add the several cups of wine , the divers removes of the table , and covering it of new , the frequent washing of their hands , and divers other things , i should grow tedious . but our lord never reproves these things ; nay , on the contrary he symbolized with them . it is true , when their zeal for their traditions made them break the commandments of god , or adhere so stifly to them , as to judge the consciences of such as did not comply with them in the use of them , then he checks their hypocrisie , and accuses them , not for the use of these things , but because they placed all religion in them , and imposed the precepts of men as doctrines . to this i might add the whole frame of the synagogues , both as to government , discipline and worship : for whatsoever scraps may be brought which may seem to prove there were synagogues before the captivity , which yet is much controverted ; yet the form of government in them , the rules of excommunication , and its degrees , together with their philacteries , and set forms of worship , will never be proved from scripture . now since the law of god was no less perfect in the old dispensation , than the gospel is now , it will follow that additions in things purely external and ritual , do no way detract from the word of god : for nothing can be brought to prove the new testament a complete rule for christians , which will not plead the same full authority to the old testament , during that dispensation ; since though the dispensation was imperfect , yet the revelation of god to them was able to make them perfect and throughly furnished foe every good work : and the scriptures which s. paul saith , were able to make wise to salvation , can be no other than the old testament writings . for besides that by scriptures nothing else is understood in the new testament , there could be no other scripture known to timothy of a child , but these of the old testament . if then they trespass upon the authority of the new testament , and its blessed author , who assert a power to determine about rituals in worship , or other matters of religion ; they committed the same crime who pretended to add to what moses prescribed , since he was also faithful in all his house . or if any plead a divine warrant for these institutions which were traditionally conveyed , this will open a door for all the pretences of the roman church , since the expressions that cancel traditions , are as full in the old testament , as in the new. and thus far i think i have evinced , that there were great additions in rituals made by the iews , and that these were not unlawful , since complied with by him who never did amiss , and yet these could have no higher o●iginal than humane authority . i go on to the new dispensation , wherein i doubt not to evince , that as for rituals , most of these they found in the synagogue were retained , without any other change than what that dispensation drew after it , and that they took both the rules of government , worship and discipline from the synagogue . therefore the epistles do not , when treating of these matters , speak in their stile , who are instituting new things ; but of those who are giving directions about what was already received and known : for if new rules had been to be delivered , the institution had been express , either in the gospels , acts , or epistles . now if any will read these without prejudice , no such thing will appear : of which manner of stile , no account can be given ; but that things , as to rituals continued as they were , the use of the sacraments being only instituted by christ , where the language of an institution is express . about two hundred years after christ , outward penitence was brought into the church , and scandalous persons were , according to the nature of scandals , debarred from the sacrament for a long space , and were by degrees , and according to the heighth of their penitence , received to the communion of the church , but not after some years had passed in outward professions of penitence : and the modelling of this became after that , the chief care of synods for divers centuries . now if one will argue , that though it be true a scandalous person should be excommunicated ; yet since god hath mercy at whatsoever time a sinner repents , so should the church ( which only judgeth of the profession ) forgive at whasoever time one professeth penitence . it will not be easie in your principles to answer this : and see how you will clear this practice of discipline from tyranny , since to debar men from the sacraments , is a greater dominion over consciences than the determining about rituals . but to come nearer home , there was a certain society you have heard of ycleped the kirk , which had divers books of discipline containing rules for that , and a directory for worship , which had no few rules neither : they had also a frame of government , the supreme judicatory whereof was composed of three ministers , and one ruling elder from each presbytery , a ruling elder beside from each burrough , two being allowed the metropolis , and a commissioner was sent from each university ; and in this high court the king came in with the privilege of a burgh : for though the metropolis had two , he was allowed to send but one with a single suffrage to represent him ; and this court pretended to an authority from christ , and their authority was sacred with no less certificate , than he that despiseth you , despiseth me . now how a power can be committed to delegates without any commission for it from the superior , will not be easily made out . and they will search long ere they find a divine warrant for this court , unless they vouch mary mitchelsons testimony for it , whose hysterical distempers were given out for prophesies . and whereas they are so tender of christian liberty , that no law must pass about the rituals of religion , yet their books of discipline and model of government , were not only setled by law , but afterwards sworn to be maintained in the covenant , wherein they swore the preservation of the reformed religion in scotland , in doctrine , worship , discipline and government . these were the tender consciences that could not hear of any law in matters indifferent , and yet would have all swear to their forms , many of which they could not but know were indifferent : which was a making them necessary at another rate , than is done by a law which the legislator can repeal when he will : and never were any in the world more addicted to their own forms than they were . an instance of this i will give , which i dare say will surprise you : when some designers for popularity in the western parts of that kirk , did begin to disuse the lord's prayer in worship , and the singing the conclusion or doxology after the psalm , and the minister's kneeling for private devotion when he entred the pulpit , the general ●ssembly took this in very ill part , and in a letter they wrote to the presbyteries , complained sadly , of a spirit of innovation was beginning to get into the kirk , and to throw these laudible practices out of it , mentioning the three i named , which are commanded to be still practised ; and such as refused obedience , are appointed to be conferr'd with in order to the giving of them satisfaction : and if they continu'd untractable , the presbyteries were to proceed against them , as they should be answerable to the next general assembly . this letter i can produce authentically attested . but is it not strange , that some who were then zealous to condemn these innovations , should now be carried with the herd to be guilty of them ? i am become hoarse with speaking so long , and so i must break off , having , as i suppose , given many great precedents from history for the using of rites in divine matters , without an express warrant , and for passing laws upon these , and have cleared the one of superstition , and the other of tyranny . eud. truly , all of you have done your parts so well , that even isotimus himself seems half convinced : it is then fully clear , that as nothing is to be obtruded on our belief without clear revelation ; so no sacred duty can be bound on o●r obedience without a divine warrant : but in rituals , especially in determining what may be done in a variety of ways to one particular form , there hath been , and still must be , a power on earth ; which provided it balance all things right , and consider well the fitness of these rites , for attaining the designed end , doth not invade god's dominion by making laws about them : nor will the pretence of christian liberty warrant our disobedience to them . it remains to be considered , who are vested with this power , and how much of it belongs to the magistrate , and how much to the church . basil. i now engage in a theme which may perhaps lay me open to censure , as if i were courting the civil powers by the asserting of their rights : but i am too well known to you to dread your jealously much in this ; and i am too little known to my self , if flattery be my foible . i shall therefore with the greatest frankness and ingenuity , lay open my sense of this matter , with the reasons that prevail with me in it : but i desire first to hear isotimus his opinion about it . isot. i do not deny the king hath authority and jurisdiction in matters sacred : but it must be asserted in a due line of subordination : first , to christ the king of kings , and the only head of his church . and next , to the rulers and office-bearers of the church , who are entrusted by christ , as his ambassadors , with the souls of their flocks , and who must give him an account of their labors ; therefore they must have their rules only from him who empowers them , and to whom they are subject : they must also have a power among them to preserve the christian society ; in order to which , they must , according to the practice of the apostles , when difficulties emerge , meet together , and consult what may be for the advancement of the christian religion ; and whoso refuseth to hear the church when she errs not from her rule , he is to be accounted no better than a heathen and a publican . and since the church is called one body , they ought to associate together in meetings , seeing also they have their power of christ , as mediator , whereas the civil powers hold of him as he is god , they have a different tenor , distinct ends , and various rules ; therefore the authority of the church is among the things of god , which only belong to him . and indeed christians were very ill provided for by christ , if they must in matters of religion be subject to the pleasure of secular and carnal men , who will be ready to serve their own interests at the rate of the ruin of every thing that is sacred . it is true , the civil powers may and ought to convocate synods to consult about matters of religion , to require church-men to do their duty , to add their sanctions to church laws , and to join with the sounder part for carrying on a reformation but all this is cumulative to the churches intrinsick power , and not privative ; so that if the magistrate fall short of his duty , they are notwithstanding that , to go on as men empowered by iesus christ , and he who desp●seth them ( be his quality what it will ) despiseth him that sent them . see p. 105. to p. 109. and p. 467. to p. 486. basil. in order to a clear progress in this matter , i shall first discuss the nature and power of the church , by which a step shall be made to the power the magistrate may pretend to in matters sacred . the apostles being sent by iesus christ , did every where promulgate the gospel , and required such as received it , to meet often together for joint worship , and the free profession of the faith , wherein they were particularly obliged to the use of the sacraments . the apostles , and after them , all church-men , were also endued with a double power : the one was declarative for promulgating the gospel : the other was directive , which properly is no power ; and by this they were to advise in such matters wherein they had no warrant to command : so s. paul wrote sometimes his own sense , which he did by permission , and not by commandment , only he advised , as one that had obtained mercy to be faithful . but because christ was to be in his church to the end of the world , the things they had heard were to be committed to faithful men , that they might be able to teach others . all church men being thus the successors of the apostles , they are vested with a divine authority , for solemn publishing the gospel ; but with this odds from the apostles , that whereas they were infallible , their successors are subject to error . and the power of church-men consists formally in this , that they are heralds of the gospel : and by their preaching it , a solemn offer of it is made to all their hearers , which to despise , is to despise him that sent them . but in this power they are bound up to the commission they have from god , so that what they say beyond that , is none of the divine message . yet because many particulars may fall in , about which it was impossible rules could be given , they have a directive authority , which if it be managed as s. paul did , we need fear no tyrannical imposition from it . and therefore in these matters their definitions are not binding laws , but rules of advice : for in matters wherein we are left at liberty by god , if church-men pretend to a dominion over our souls , they make us the servants of men. and indeed it is the most incoherent thing imaginable , for these who lay no claim to infallibility , to pretend to absolute obedience . it is true , the laws of peace and order bind us to an association , if we be christians : and therefore we ought to yield in many things for peace : but since we are all a royal priesthood , why church-men should pretend to authority or jurisdiction , except in that which is expresly in their commission , wherein they are purely heralds , i do not see . it is true , christians ought to assemble for worship , but for the associations of churches in judicatories , i cannot imagine in what corner of the new testastament that shall be found : in which i am the more confirmed , since all the labor of that pamphleteer from p. 126. to 144. could not find it out . for it is a strange method to prove a divine warrant , because some reasons are brought to prove it must be so : to have cited the words , where a shorter and clearer method of proof ; since to prove that such a thing must be , and yet not to shew that it is , is only to attempt against the scripture , for being defective in that which it ought to have contained . but if the phrase of one body conclude a proof for associations , then since the body includes all christians , the whole faithful must meet together in councils . for where have you a difference in that betwixt the clergy , and the faithful laicks ? but here yielding your laick elders of divine institution , and to have from god an authority of ruling , as well as the ministers have , then why do they not all come to presbyteries ? and why but one deputed from them ? was not this an encroachment on them ? for if they have from christ a power to rule , as well as ministers , why should not all the elders meet in presbyteries and synods , as well as ministers ? and why but one elder from every presbytery , when three ministers go to the national synod ? for it is folly to say , because ministers have a power of teaching , therefore in presbyteries and synods the elders must only equal their number , and in national synods be near half their number : for that will only say that in matters of doctrine the elders should be quite silent , but in matters of discipline , why all should not come if any have a right from christ , will not be proved . and is not this to lord it over your brethren ? and do not your ministers thus tyrannize over their elders ? but the reason of it was visible , lest the elders had thereby got the power in their hands , had they been the plurality in the judicatories : which was well enough foreseen and guarded against by your clergy , who though they were willing to serve themselves of them for a while , yet had no mind to part with their beloved authority . but for synods , if the obligation to them be from the unity of the body , then nothing under an oecumenical one will answer this , which yet is simply unpracticable . now as for your national synods , it is visible they are and must be framed , according to the divisions of the world in the several kingdoms : for according to the rules are pretended from scripture ( tell the church , the binding and loosing of sins , or the like ) it follows that parochial congregations , and the pastors in them , are vested with an authoritative power : now why they should be made to resign this to the plurality of the church-men of that kingdom , will be a great atchievement to prove in your principles . for why shall not a parochial church make laws within it self ? and why must it renounce its priviledg to such a number of church-men cast in such a classis by a humane power ? as likewise , where find you a divine warrant for your delegating commissioners to synods ? for either they are plenipotentiaries , or such as go upon a restricted deputation , but so as their votes beyond their commission shall signifie nothing , till they return and be approved by those who sent them ; if they go with a full power , assign a warrant for such a delegation , or that many church-men may commissionate one in their name , and that what shall be agreed to by the major part of these delegates , shall be a binding obligation on christians : and yet i know you will think the independents carry the cause , if it be said that the appointments of these superiour courts have no authority till ratified by the inferiour , which will resolve the power into the inferiour courts . by all which i think it is clear abundantly , that the associations of churches into synods , cannot be by a divine warrant . but i must call in some relief , for i grow weary of speaking too long . eud. i suppose none will deny the association of churches to be an excellent mean for preserving unity and peace : but to assert a divine original for them , methinks , is a hard task ; and truly to assert the divine authority of the major part which must be done according to the principles of presbytery , is a thing fuller of tyranny over consciences , than any thing can be feared from episcopacy ; since the greater part of mankind being evil , which holds true of no sort of people more , than of church-men , what mischief may be expected if the plurality must decide all matters ; and to speak plainly , i look on a potion of physick as the best cure for him , who can think a national synod , according to the model of glasgow , is the kingdom of christ on earth , or that court to which he hath committed his authority , for he seems beyond the power or conviction of reason . crit. the scripture clearly holds forth an authority among church-men , but visibly restricted to their commission , which truly is not properly a power residing among them , for they only declare what the rule of the gospel is ; wherein if they keep close to it , they are only publishers of the laws of christ : and if they err from it , they are not to be regarded : it is true , the administration of sacraments is appropriated to them , yet he that will argue this to have proceeded more from the general rules of order , the constant practice of the church , and the fitness of the thing , which is truly sutable to the dictates of nature , and the laws of nations ; than from an express positive command , needs much logick to make good his attempt . it is true , the ordaining of successors in their office belongs undoubtedly to them , and in trying them , rules are expresly given out in scripture , to which they ought to adhere and follow them : but as for other things , they are either decisions of opinions , or rules for practice . in the former their authority is purely to declare , and in that they act but as men , and we find whole schools of them have been abused ; and in the other , they only give advices and directions ; but have no jurisdiction . it is true , much noise is made about the council of ierusalem , p. 106 , as if that were a warrant for synods to meet together . but first , it is clear no command is there given , so at most that will prove synods to be lawful , but that gives them no authority , except you produce a clear command for them , and obedience to them . next , what strange wresting of scripture is it , from that place to prove the subordination of church judicatories ? for if that council was not an oecumenical council , nor a provincial one , which must be yielded , since we see nothing like a convocation ; then either paul and barnabas were sent from antioch , as from one sister church to ask advice of another ; and if so , it proves nothing for the authority of synods , since advices are not laws : or antioch sent to ierusalem , as to a superior church by its constitution , which cannot be imagined : for what authority could the church of ierusalem pretend over antioch ? and indeed had that been true , some vestige of it had remained in history ; which is so far to the contrary , that the church of ierusalem was subordinate to the church of cesarea , which was metropolitan in palestine , was subject to antioch , the third patriarchal sea. it will therefore remain that this was only a reference to the other apostles , who besides their extraordinary endowments and inspiration , were acknowledged by all to be men of great eminency and authority : and therefore the authority of paul and barnabas not being at that time so universally acknowledged , they were sent to ierusalem , where s. iames was resident , and s. peter occasionally present . now the authority of the decree must be drawn from their infallible spirit ; otherwise it will prove too much , that one church may give out decrees to another . but will the apostles mutual consulting or conferring together , prove the national constitution , and authority of synods or assemblies ? poly. all that hath been said illustrates clearly the practice of the iews , among whom as the high-priest was possessed with a prophetical spirit , which sometimes fell on him by illapses , as apears from what is said of caiaphas ; and sometimes from the shining of the stones in the pectoral , called the urim and thummim ; so the priests and levites being the chief trustees and depositaries of the law , their lips were to preserve knowledg , and the law was to be sought at their mouth , yet they had no legislative authority : they had indeed a court among themselves , called the parhedrim , made up of the heads of the orders , and of the families ; but that court did not pretend to jurisdiction , but only to explain things that concerned the temple-worship : nay , the high-priest was so restricted to the king and sanbedrim , that he might not consult the oracle without he had been ordered to do it by them : neither do we ever hear of any laws given out , all the old testament over , in the name of the priests . and in the new testament , the power ( it seems ) was to be managed by the body of the faithful , as well as by church-men . it is true , the apostles were clothed with an extraordinary power of binding and loosing of sins ; but no proofs are brought to justifie the pretences to jurisdiction that are found among their successors . for in the epistle to corinth , the rules there laid down , are addressed to all the saints that were called to be faithful : so also is the epistle to the thessalonians , where he tells them to note such as walked disorderly , and have no fellowship with them ; which are shrewd grounds to believe that at first all things were managed parochially , where the faithful were also admitted to determine about what occurred : but for synods , we find not the least vestige of them before the end of the second century , that synods were gathered about the controversie concerning the day of easter ; and the following associations of churches , shew clearly , that they took their model from the division of the roman empire , and so according as the provinces were divided , the churches in them did associate to the metropolitans , and became subordinate to them , and these were subordinate to the patriarchs ; by which means it was that the bishops of rome had the precedency , not from any imaginary derivation from st. peter : for had they gone on such rules , ierusalem where our lord himself was , had undoubtedly carried it of all the world : but rome being the imperial city , it was the see of the greatest authority . and no sooner did bizantium creep into the dignity of being the imperial city , but the bishop of constantinople was made second patriarch , and in all things equal to the bishop of rome , the precedency only excepted . much might be here said for proving that these synods did not pretend to a divine original , though afterwards they claimed a high authority , yet their appointments were never called laws , but only canons and rules , which could not pretend to a jurisdiction . basil. but that i may not seem to rob the church of all her power , i acknowledg that by the laws of nature it follows , that these who unite in the service of god , must be warranted to associate in meetings to agree on generals rules , and to use means for preserving purity and order among themselves , and that all inferiours ought to subject themselves to their rules . but as for that brave distinction of the churches authority , being derived from christ as mediator , whereas the regal authority is from him as god , well doth it become its inventors , and much good may it do them . for me , i think , that christ's asserting , that all power in heaven and in earth was given unto him ; and his being called , the king of kings , and lord of lords , make it as clear as the sun , that the whole oeconomy of this world is committed to him as mediator : and as they who died before him , were saved by him , who was slam ●●om the foundation of the world : so all humane authority was given by vertue of the second covenant , by which mankind was preserved from infallible ruin , which otherwise it had incurred by adams fall . but leaving any further enquiry after such a foolish nicety , i go now to examine what the magistrates power is in matters of religion : and first , i lay down for a maxim , that the externals of worship , or government , are not of such importance , as are the rules of iustice and peace , wherein formally the image of god consists . for christ came to bring us to god : and the great end of his gospel , is , the assimilation of us to god , of which , justice , righteousness , mercy and peace make a great part . now what sacredness shall be in the outwards of worship and government , that these must not be medled with by his hands ; and what unhallowedness is in the other , that they may fall within his jurisdiction , my weakness cannot reach . as for instance , when the magistrate allows ten per cent of in●●rest , it is just to exact it ; and when he bring● i● down to six per cent , it is oppression to demand ten per cent ; so that he can determine some matte●s to be just or unjust by his laws : now why he shall not have such a power about outward matters of worship , or of the government of the church , judg you ; since the one both in it self , and as it tends to commend us to god , is much more important than the other . it is true , he cannot meddle with the holy things himself ; for the scripture rule is express , that men be separated for the work of the ministery : and without that separation , he invades the altar of god , that taketh that honor upon him , without he be called to it . but as for giving laws in the externals of religion , i see not why he may not do it , as well as in matters civil . it is true , if he contradict the divine law by his commands , god is to be obeyed rather than man. but this holds in things civil , as well as sacred . for if he command murder , or theft , he is undoubtedly to be disobeyed , as well as when he commands amiss in matters of religion . in a word , all subjects are bound to obey him in every lawful command . except therefore you prove that church-men constituted in a synod are not subjects , they are bound to obedience , as well as others : neither doth this authority of the magistrate any way prejudge the power christ hath committed to his church : for a father hath power over his children , and that by a divine precept , tho the supreme authority have power over him , and them both : so the churches authority is no way inconsistent with the kings supremacy . as for their declarative power , it is not at all subject to him , only the exercise of it , to this or that person , may be suspended : for since the magistrate can banish his subjects , he may well silence them : yet i acknowledg if he do this , out of a design to drive the gospel out of his dominions , they ought to continue in their duty , notwithstanding such prohibition ; for god must be obeyed rather than man. and this was the case of the primitive bishops , who rather than give over the feeding their flocks , laid themselves open to martyrdom . but this will not hold for warranting turbulent persons , who notwithstanding the magistrates continuing all encouragements for the publick worship of god , chuse rather than concur in it ( tho not one of an hundred of them hath the confidence to call that unlawful ) to gather separated congregations , whereby the flocks are scattered . phil. nay , since you are on that subject , let me freely lay open the mischief of it : it is a direct breach of the laws of the gospel , that requires our solemn assembling together , which must ever bind all christians , till there be somewhat in the very constitutions of these assemblies , that renders our meeting in them unlawful : which few pretend in our case . next , the magistrates commanding these publick assemblies , is certainly a clear and superadded obligation , which must bind all under sin , till they can prove these our meetings for worship unlawful . and as these separated conventicles are of their own nature evil , so their effects are yet worse , and such as indeed all the ignorance and profanity in the land is to be charged on them : for as they dissolve the union of the church , which must needs draw mischief after it , so the vulgar are taught to despise their ministers , and the publick worship , and thus get loose from the yoak . and their dependence on these separated meetings , being but precarious , as they break away from the order of the church , so they are not tied to their own order : and thus betwixt hands , the vulgar lose all sense of piety , and of the worship of god. next , in these separated meetings , nothing is to be had but a long preachment , so that the knowledg and manners of the people not being look'd after , and they taught to revolt from the setled discipline , and to disdain to be c●techised by their pasto●s , ignorance and profanity must be the sure effect of these divided meetings . and in fine , the disuse of the lord's supper is a guilt of a high nature ; for the vulgar are taught to loath the sacrament from their ministers hands , as much as the mass : and preaching is all they get in their meetings : so that what in all ages of the church hath been looked on , as the great cherishing of devotion and true piety and the chief preserver of peace among c●●●ti●ns , is wearing out of practice with our new modelled christians . these are the visible effects of separating practices : but i shall not play the uncharitable diviner , to guess at the secret mischief such courses may be guilty of . basil. truly , what you have laid out is so well known to us all , that i am confident isotimus himself must with much sorrow acknowledg what wicked arts these are that some use to dislocate the body of christ , and to sacrifice the interests of religion to their vanity , humor , or perhaps their secular interests . but i hold on my design , and add , that if the magistrate encroach on god's prerogative , by contradicting or abrogating divine laws , all he doth that way , falls on himself . but as for the churches directive power , since the exercise of that is not of obligation , he may command a surcease in it . it is true , he may sin in so doing ; yet cases may be wherein he will do right to discharge all associations of judicatories , if a church be in such commotion , that these synods would but add to the flame : but certainly he forbidding such synods ; they are not to be gone about , there being no positive command for them in scripture , and therefore a discharge of them contradicts no law of god , and so cannot be disobeyed without sin : and when the magistrate allows of synods , he is to judg on whether side in case of differences , he will pass his law : neither is the decision of these synods obligatory in prejudice of his authority ; for there can be but one supream ; and two coordinate powers are a chymaera . therefore in case a synod and the magistrate contradict one another in matters undetermined by god , it is certain a synod sins if it offer to countermand the civil authority , since all must be subject to the powers that are , of which number the synod is a part ; therefore they are subject as well as others . and if they be bound to obey the magistrates commands , they cannot have a power to warrant the subjects in their disobedience , since they cannot secure themselves from sin by such disobedience . and in the case of such countermands , it is indisputable the subjects are to be determined by the magistrates laws , by which only the rules of synods are laws , or bind the consciences formally ; since without they be authorized by him , they cannot be laws ; for we cannot serve two masters , nor be subject to two legislators . and thus , methinks , enough is said for clearing the title of the magistrate in exacting our obedience to his laws in matters of religion . crit. indeed , the congesting of all the old testament offers , for proving the civil powers their authority in things sacred , were a task of time : and first of all , that the high priest might not consult the oracle , but when either desired by the king , or in a business that concerned the whole congregation , is a great step to prove what the civil authority was in those matters . next , we find the kings of iudah give out many laws about matters of religion : i shall wave the instances of david and solomon , which are so express , that no evasion can serve the turn , but to say they acted by immediate commission , and were inspired of god. it is indeed true , that they had a particular direction from god. but it is as clear , that they enacted these laws upon their own authority , as kings , and not on a prophetical power . but we find iehoshaphat , 2 chr. 17. v. 7. sending to his princes to teach in the cities of iudah , with whom also he sent priests and levites , and they went about and taught the people . there you see secular men appointed by the king to teach the people : he also , 2. chr. 19. v. 5. set up in ierusalem a court made up of levites , priests , and the chief of the fathers of israel , for the judgment of the lord , and for the controversies among the people ; and names two presidents , amariah the chief priest to be over them in the matters of the lord , and zebadiah for all the kings matters . and he that will consider these words , either as they lie in themselves , or as they relate to the first institution of that court of seventy by moses , where no mention is made but by one judicatory , or to the commentary of the whole writings , and histories of the iews , shall be set beyond dispute , that here was but one court to judg both of sacred and secular matters . it is true , the priests had a court already mentioned , but it was no judicatory , and medled only with the rituals of the temple . the levites had also , as the other tribes , a court of twenty three for their tribe , which have occasioned the mistakes of some places among the iewish writings : but this is so clear from their writings , that a very overly knowledg of them will satisfie an impartial observer . and it is yet more certain , that from the time of ezra , to the destruction of the temple , there was but one court , that determined of all matters both sacred and civil ; who particularly tried the priests , if free of the blemishes which might cast one from the service , and could cognosce on the high priest , and whip him when he failed in his duty . now this commixtion of these matters in one judicatory , if it had been so criminal , whence is it that our lord not only never reproved so great a disorder , but when convened before them , did not accuse their constitution , and answered to the high priest when adjured by him ? likewise , when his apostles were arraigned before them , they never declined that judicatory , but pleaded their own innocence , without accusing the constitution of the court , though challenged upon a matter of doctrine . but they , good men , thought only of catching souls into the net of the gospel , and were utterly unacquainted with these new coined distinctions . neither did they refuse obedience , pretending the court had no jurisdiction in these matters , but because it was better to obey god than man ; which saith , they judged obedience to that court due , if it had not countermanded god. but to return to iehoshaphat , we find him constituting these courts , and choosing the persons and empowering them for their work , for he constituted them for iudgment and for controversie ; so that though it were yielded , as it will never be proved , that two courts were here instituted , yet it cannot be denied , but here is a church judicatory constituted by a king , the persons named by him , a president appointed over them , and a trust committed to them . and very little logick will serve to draw from this , as much as the acts among us , asserting the king's supremacy yield to him . next , we have a clear instance of hezekiah , who , 2 chron. 30. ver . 2. with the counsel of his princes , and of the whole congregation , made a decree for keeping the passover , that year on the second month , whereas the law of god had affixed it to the first month , leaving only an exception , numb . 9.10 . for the unclean , or such as were on a journey , to keep it on the second month. npon which hezekiah with the sanhedrim and people , appoints the passover to be entirely cast over to the second month for that year . where a very great point of their worship ( for the distinction of days was no small matter to the iews ) was determined by the king , without asking the advice of the priests upon it . but that you may not think this was peculiar to the king of israel , i shall urge you with other instances : when ezra came from artaxerxes , he brings a commission from him , ezra ch . 7. ver . 25 , 26. impowering him according to the wisdom of his god , that was in his hand , to set up magistrates and iudges , who might judg them that knew the laws of his god , and teach them that knew them not : and a severe certificate is passed upon the disobedient ; and one of the branches of their punishment , which is by the translators rendered banishment , being in the chaldaick , rooting out , is by some judged to be excommunication ; which is the more probable , because afterwards , chap. 10. ver . 8. the censure he threatens on these who came not upon his proclamation , is , forfeiture of goods , and separation from the congregation . here then it seems a heathen king gives authority to excommunicate : but be in that what will , ezra upon his return acted in a high character , he makes the priests , levites , and all israel , to swear to put away their strange wives : he convenes all the people under the certificate of separation from the congregation , and enjoyns confession of their sins and amendment : and we find both him and nehemiah acting in a high character about the ordering of divine matters , which could only flow from the king's commission , for neither of them were prophets , nor was ezra the high priest but his brother , and so no more than an ordinary priest. mordecai likewise instituted the feast of purim , for which nothing could warrant him , but the king's authority , committed to him , who gave him his ring for sealing such orders , since he was neither king , priest nor prophet . and on the way , let me observe what occurs from that history , for proving what was yesterday pleaded for , the subjects ought not to resist , no not the tyranny of their superiours , since a writing was procured from ahasuerus for warranting the iews to avenge themselves , and to stand for their lives , and to destroy and slay all that would assault them , which saith they might not have done this before that writing was given out , and yet their killing of 74000 of their enemies shews , what their strength was . but all i have said will prove that the civil powers under the old testament did formally judg about matters of religion ; and that that priviledg belongs to kings by vertue of their regal dignity , and not as they are in covenant with god , since even heathen kings give out orders about divine matters . poly. if from sacred you descend to humane practices , nothing was more used than that the emperors judged in matters of religion , neither was this yielded to them only after they became christians , but eusebius , lib. 7. cap. 30. tells , how they made application to aurelian a heathen emperor , for turning samosatenus out of the church of antioch , who decreed that the houses of the church should be given to those bishops , whom the christians of italy and the roman bishops should recommend to them . constantine also , when not baptized , did all his life formally judg in matters both of doctrine and discipline : and for the laws they made about church matters , they abound so much , that , as grotius saith , one needs not read them , but look on them to be satisfied about this . and indeed i know not how to express my wonder at the affrontedness of that pamphleter , who denies this , pag. 483. pray ask him , was the determining about the age , the qualifications , the election , the duties of church-men , the declaring for what things they should be deposed , or excommunicated , a formal passing of laws in church matters , or only the adding sanctions to the church determinations ? and yet who will but with his eye run through either the first six titles of the code , or the 123. novel , besides many other places , all these , and many more laws about church matters will meet him . but should i take a full career here , i am sure i should be tedious , and grotius hath congested so many instances of this , that i refer the curious reader to him for full satisfaction . the elections of bishops which had been formerly in the hands of the people and clergy , with the provincial synods that judged of them , became so tumultuary , that popular elections were discharged by the council of laodicea , can. 13. and the emperors did either formally name , as theodosius did nectarius , or reserve the ratifying their election to themselves . and i must confess , it is a pretty piece of history , to say the bishops consented to this , either as diffident of their office , or out of ambition . see p. 485. tell your friends that they must either learn more knowledg , or pretend to less ; for can they produce the least vestige for the one branch of this alternative , that the bishops their allowing the emperor such an interest in their elections , flowed from a distrust of their office ? let them give but one scrap of proof for this , and let them triumph as much as they will. is it not a pretty thing to see one talk so superciliously of things he knows not ? isot. but all you have brought will never prove that a king may at one stroke subvert a government established in the church , and turn out all who adhere to it , and set up another in its place ; neither will this conclude that the king may enact all things about ecclesiastical matters , and persons , by his own bare authority , which is a surrender of our consciences to him : certainly , this is to put him in christ's stead , and what mischievous effects may follow upon this , if all matters of religion be determined , by the pleasure of secular and carnal men , who consider their interests and appetites more than god's glory , or the good of the church and of souls : truly my heart trembles to think on the effects this both hath produced , and still may bring forth . see pag. 483. phil. it is charity to ease your lungs sometimes by taking a turn in the discourse , though you need none of my help . but what you say , isotimus , doth no way overturn what hath been asserted : for either the change that was made was necessary , sinful , or indifferent : the two former shall not be at this time debated , but shall be afterwards discussed : but if it be indifferent , then the kings laws do oblige us to obedience , and the mischief hath followed on the change falls to their share , who do not obey the king's laws , when the matter of them is lawful . and as for the thrusting out church-men when they are guilty , solomon's precedent is convincing , who thrust out ab●athar from the high priesthood ; neither can the least hint be given to prove that he acted as inspired , and not as a king : and nehemiah tho but commissionated by artaxerxes , thrust one out from the priesthood , for marrying a strange woman . for your prying into acts of parliament , truly neither you nor i need be so much conversant in them . neither were it any strange matter , if some expressions in them would not bear a strict examen . but that you now challenge about the king's enacting of all matters , will never infer a surrender of conscience to him ; for certainly that must relate to what goeth before , of the outward government and policy of the church . besides , none will quarrel the phrase of the kings authority in all things that are civil ; yet that will not infer that he can enact the lawfulness of murther and theft . so these expressions must carry with them a tacite exception . yea , even without that allowance , the phrase may be well justified , since it only imports that the kings enacting any thing in these matters , makes them legal , which differs much from lawful ; and saith only that such orders issued forth by the king , are de facto laws , which will not conclude they must be obeyed ; but only that his authority is to be acknowledged , either by obedience , if the command be just , or by suffering , if unjust . as for the effects this may produce , i am sure they cannot prove worse than these which have followed upon the pretences of the churches absolute authority , and intrinsick sovereign power . and indeed since there is so much corruption among men , nothing that falls into the hands of men , can scape the mixtures of abuse at long run . but i must add , that the passions and pride of many church-men in all ages have been such , that the decision of the plurality of church-men , seems the model of the world that is fullest of danger . isot. three things yet remain to be discussed : the one is , if obedience be due to the laws , when they command things contrary to our consciences ? for sure you cannot pretend in that case , to give a preference to humane laws beyond conscience , which is the voice of god. the next is , when the magistrate commands things just of themselves , but upon unjust motives and narratives , whether my obedience doth not homologate his bad designs ? and finally , where the commands of the magistrate are manifestly unlawful , how far should the church , and church men , oppose and contradict them ? for a bare non-obedience seems not to be all we are bound to , in that case . when i am satisfied in these things , i will quit this purpose . basil. to engage in a particular discussion of what is now moved by you , would draw on more discourse than our present leisure will allow of ; yet i shall attempt the saying of what may satisfie a clear and unprejudged mind . and to the first , i shall not fall on any longer enquiry into the nature and obligation of conscience , than to tell that conscience is a conviction of our rational faculties , that such or such things are sutable to the nature and will of god. now all religion is bound upon us , on this account , that there is such evidence offered for its truth , which may and ought to satisfie the strictest examen of reason . and all certainty is resolved in this , that our rational faculties are convinced of the truth of the objects that he before us : which conviction when applied to divine matters , is called conscience . but there may be great mistakes in this conviction : for either the prejudices that lie on our minds from our senses , the prepossessions of education , interest , or humors , the want of a due application of our faculties to their objects , or chiefly the dulness and lesion of our organs , the corruption of our minds through sin and lust , occasion many errors : so that often without good reason , oft contrary to it , we take up persuasions , to which we stifly adhere , and count such convictions evidences of the will of god. i acknowledg , when a man lies under a persuasion of the will of god , he ought not to go cross to it : for this opens a door to atheism , when that is contradicted of which we are convinced . but if this persuasion be false , it cannot secure a man from sinning in following of it . for it is a man 's own fault that he is thus imposed upon , since if his rational faculties were duly applied , and well purified , they should prove unerring touchstones of truth . if therefore through vanity , wilfulness , rashness , or any other byass of the mind , it be carried to wrong measures , a man is to blame himself , and thus his errour ought to aggravate , and not lessen his guilt . if then a man's conscience dictate to him the contrary of what god commands , in that case , he is in a visible hazard : for his error can never t●ke away god's autho●ity , and so his wrong informed conscience doth not secure him from guilt , if he be disobedient . on the other hand , nothing in scripture can bind a man to act a-against the convictions of conscience , since we are bound to believe the scriptures , only because of the evidence of their authority to our rational faculties : if then our belief of the scriptures rest on that foundation , no part of scripture can bind us to walk contrary to that evidence , for then it should destroy that principle on which our obligation to believe it self is founded , which is the evidence of reason ; and so in that case , a man sins whatever he do . neither is this to be accountd strange , since that erroneous conscience is from man's own fault . and that which some alledg to escape this , that in such cases a man ought to forbear from acting , will not serve turn , to excuse a man from sin : for in these precepts which exact a positive obedience , such a ●orbearance and surceasing from action , is a sin . upon these evidences then it will follow , that if the conviction of our conscience run contrary to the magistrates commands , these convictions are either well grounded , or ill : if the former , then the magistrates command being contrary to the nature and will of god , a●e not to be obeyed : if ill grounded , then that mistaken persuasion cannot secure us from sin , no more than in the case of conscience contradicting the law of god : for the laws of the magistrates in things lawful , are the laws of god , being the application of his general laws unto particular instances , by one cloathed with authority from him . therefore tho i do not say the laws of the magistrate can warrant our counteracting an erroneous conscience ; yet on the contrary , a misinformed conscience will not secure us when we disobey the magistrates lawful commands . and thus i think your first question is clearly answered . end. you have a great deal of reason to say so , your discourse being so closely rational , that i cannot see any escape from any pa●t of it ; yet i must add , that certainly it is a piece of christian tenderness , which obligeth all in authority , to beware of laying gall-traps and snares in the way of tender consciences . and the best way to get an undisputed obedience , is , that their commands be liable to as few exceptions as is possible ; and that the good of any such laws be well ballanced with the hazards of them , that so the communion of the church in all outwards , particularly in the sacraments , may be had on as easie terms as is possible , whereby nothing be enacted that may frighten away weak●r minds from the f●llowship of the saints . but on the other hand , great caution must be had by all subjects on what grounds they refuse obedience to the laws , that so they be not found following their own designs and interests , under a colour of adhering firmly to their consciences . they must deliver themselves from all prepossessions , and narrowly examine all things , ere they adventure on refusing obedience to the laws . but now consider if an unjust motive or narrative in a law , deliver tender consciences from an obligation to obey it , or not ? basil. if the magistrate do couple his motive and narrative with our obedience , so that we cannot do the one without a seeming consent to the other , then certainly we are not to obey : for actions being often signs of the thoughts , an action how indifferent soever , if declared a sign of concurring in a sinful design , makes us guilty , in so far as we express our concurrence by a sign enjoyned for that end . but if the motive or narrative be simply an account of the magistrates own thoughts , without expressing that obedience is to be understood as a concurrence in such intentions , then we are to obey a lawful command , tho enacted upon a bad design : for we must obey these in authority , ever till they stand in competition with god. if then their laws contradict not god's precepts , neither in their natural nor intended si●nification , they are to be obeyed , whatever the grounds were for enacting them , which is only the magistrates deed , for which he shall answer to god. poly. this calls me to mind of two stories not impertinent to this purpose : the one is of iulian the apostate , who to entangle the christians , that never scrupled the bowing to the emperors statue , as a thing lawful , caused to set up his with the images of some of the gods about it , that such as bowed to it , might be understood , as ( likewise ) bowing to the images : which abused some of the simpler : but the more discerning refused to bow at all to those statues , because he intended to expound that innocent bowing to his statue , as an adoration of the gods about it . a christian likewise being brought to the king of persia , did according to the law bow before him ; but when he understood that to be exacted as a divine honor to the king , he refused it . eud. this is clear enough that all actions are as they are understood , and accordingly to be performed , or surceased from . but it seems more difficult to determine what is to be done in case a magistrate enact wicked laws : are not both his subjects bound to refuse obedience ; and the heads of the church , and the watchmen of souls likewise to witness against it ? and may they not declare openly their dislike of such laws or practices , and proceed against him with the censures of the church ? since as to the censures of the church , we see no reason why they should be dispensed with respect of persons , which s. iames condemns in all church judicatories . basil. i shall not need to repeat what hath been so often said , that we must obey god rather than man : if then the magistrates enjoyn what is directly contrary to the divine law , all are to refuse obedience , and watchmen ought to warn their flocks against such hazards ; and such as can have admittance to their princes , or who have the charge of their consciences , ought with a great deal of sincere freedom , as well as humble duty , represent the evil and sinfulness of such laws : but for any synodical convention , or any declaration against them , no warrant for that doth appear ; and therefore if the magistrate shall simply discharge all synods , i cannot see how they can meet without sin . but for parochial meetings of christians for a solemn acknowledgment of god , such assemblings for divine worship , being enjoined both by the laws of nature , and nations , and particularly commanded in the gospel , no consideration can free christians from their obligation , thus to assemble for worship : if then the magistrate should discharge these or any part of them , such as prayer , prais●s , and reading of scriptures , preaching the gospel , or the use of the sacraments , they are notwithstanding all that to be continued in . but for the consultative or directive government of the church , till a divine command be produced for synods or discipline , it cannot lawfully be gone about without or against his authority . crit. for refusing obedience to an unjust command , of surceasing visible worship , the instance of daniel is signal : who not only continued his adorations to god , for all darius his law ; but did it openly , and avowedly , that so he might own his subjection to god. but for reproving kings , we see what caution was to be observed in it ; since god sent prophets with express commissions for it in the old testament : and samuel notwithstanding this severe message to saul , yet honored him before his people . it is true , there should be no respect of persons in christian judicatories : but that is only to be understood of these who are subject to them : and how it can agree to the king who is supream , to be a subject , is not easily to be comprehended . since then honor and obedience is by divine precept due to magistrates , nothing that invades that honor , or detracts from that obedience , can be lawfully attempted against them : such as is any church-censure or excommunication . and therefore i cannot see how that practice of ambrose upon theodosius , or other later instances of some bishops of rome , can be reconciled to that , render fear to whom fear , and honor to whom honor is due . phil. i am sure their practice is far less justifiable , who are always preaching about the laws and times to the people , with virulent reflections on king , parliament and council : much more such as not content with flying discourses , do by their writings , which they hope shall be longer lived , study the vilifying the persons , and affronting the authority of these god hath set over them . and how much of this stuff the press hath vented these thirty years by past , such as knew the late times , or see their writings , can best judge . eud. now our discourse having dwelt so long upon generals , is to descend to particulars : that we may examine whether upon the grounds hitherto laid down , the late tumults , or the present schisms and divisions can be justified , or ought to be censured ? i know this is a nice point , and it is to be tenderly handled , lest all that shall be said be imputed to the suggestions of passions and malice . wherefore let me intreat you who are to bear the greater part of that discourse , to proceed in it calmly , that it may appear your designs are not to lodge infamy on any party or person , but simply to lay out things as they are : hoping withal , that you will not take your informations of what you say from the tatles of persons concerned , but will proceed on true and sure grounds . and that we may return to this with the greater composedness of spirit ; let our serious thoughts be interrupted with some chearfuller diversions : for our spirits are now too far engaged to fall upon such a head. isot. you have a great deal of reason to guard your friends well when they are to fall upon such matters , lest they sin against the generation of god's children . for my part , i am not afraid to enter on a discussion of these things , and doubt not to make it appear how the lord's work was signally carried on by his faithful servants , and that he himself appeared in it , even to the conviction of all beholders . if there were any either of the church or state , who covered their own bad designs , under these pretences , that makes not the cause a whit the worse : for christ chose twelve , and one of them had a devil . phil. were i at present to fall a canvasing these things , i doubt not i should quickly make all your plumes fall off : but i am willing at this time to break off our conference : for this point will neither be soon dispatched nor easily mananaged ; therefore we shall now part with an appointment to meet next day in this same place after dinner . basil. i believe none of us are so weary of another , or of the discourses we have tossed these two days , that it is needful to apprehend any will fail of being here at that hour : therefore , good night to you all . isot. be sure , i shall keep it , if an unavoidable excuse detain me not . adieu . crit. for me and polybistor , though it is like we shall not have great occasion of bearing our share in your discourse , yet we will not fail to be here . eud. i cannot express my sense of the honour you do me , in making this place still happy with so many good company , and so much pleasant discourse : and therefore you may assure your selves , i will wait for your return , not without impatience . and so i bid you all , good night . the third conference . isotimus . we are again as good as our word in keeping this appointment , and i hope we shall be no less exact in observing the rule we concluded last night of tempering our passions ; only i must guard you against the mistaking my zeal i may express for passion : remember who said , the zeal of thy house hath eaten me up , who also scourged the buyers and sellers out of the temple . eud. i confess , i want not my fears of some heat and excess in this days discourse : but i will crave leave to check it on what side soever it appear , i know there is a holy zeal for god , which will inflame a devout mind . but its fire 〈◊〉 mild and gentle , free of blustering and disorder : and that rage which is in many , for some parties or opinions , and against others , being as void of knowledg as of charity , ought not to pretend to christ's example , unless they be likewise acted by his spirit . a diligent search will quickly discover , if our motives and maxims have a tincture of his lowly meek and self-denying spirit in them . and certainly if our zeal be for god , it will take its degrees from the proportion of its objects . it is therefore a pharisaical pretence to own a zeal for some smaller matters , which have scarce been thought upon by the whole series of christians in all ages , till of late , when we are so cold in the defence of peace , charity , obedience to those over us , and the unity of the church : which are great , certain , and indispensible duties . that zeal likewise which transports a man unto unjustifiable heats of railing against particular persons , and appears in a bitter humor of dull jeering , and bold detraction , hath no reason to shroud it self under the example of christ's holy zeal ; who tho in the spirit of a zealot , having proved his divine mission and authority by miracles , he whipped the defilers of the temple out of it ; yet that dispensation wherein such practices were not unusual from extraordinary persons , being now changed into the new one , whose distinguishing character is charity , we are to bridle all the motions of distempered heat , left the effects of it be as unjustifiable as it self is . for it is to be considered , that the proper characters of the gospel spirit , are not devotion towards god , or zeal for his truths , which were common both with the religion traditionally conveyed from adam , and noah , and that which was delivered to moses ; but that which christ hath made the cognisance of his disciples , is , that they love one another , whereby all must know them to be such . and therefore all these who discover a spirit of hatred , rage , and malice at these , of whom they cannot deny but they may be christ's disciples , prove themselves to be void of his spirit . now , isotimus , what endless complaints could i here make of some you know of , who are perpetually trafficking to make all who differ from them odious , who catch up every tattle they hear that may defame them , and are sure to spread it as far as either their tongue or pen can reach : nor are they niggards of their additions to them , to make them swell bigger . with what marvellous joy do they suck in an ill report ? and tho it be but dubiously related , they will be sure to vent it as the greatest truth in the world. and when the stock of reports fails them , then they break in upon their magazins of forgeries : and here is an endless trade . sometimes they will piece up things as incoherent as the rags of a beggars cloak , and shew either their pretended intelligence , or profound sagacity , to smell out bad intentions . if they can fix nothing on their adversary , then that he is an hypocrite , or a dissembler , comes well to serve all purposes , and to defeat the best intentions : and , oh ! but the jealousies of popery and jesuitical practices , work wonders on their belief ! indeed , sir , i must tell you freely , i see a spirit stirring among us , which i look upon as tinctured with the deepest dye of antichristianism , and so void of the common impressions of good nature and civility ; but much more of his image , who will have us learn of him , in that he is meek and lowly , that really a man had as well live among scythians and barbarians , as among such wasps and vipers . every thing is alike for their malice . do some that differ from them live in a franker way , these are sure to be called licentious and profane . are others more severe , silent , an● retired , who express a contempt of the world with all its enjoyments , these must pass for papists , juglers and hypocrites ; and their best ac●ions must be lashed with the worst censures . again , if we treat them softly with gentleness and respect , then they are insolent , and impute such usage to ou● distrust of our own opinions , and a forced value of thei● way . and if we use a little more freedom to speak home , and discover their weakness and perversness to them , then they rage and some , and call us blasphemers ; and apply all the threatnings against mockers of god and piety , to such as shall offer to unmask them , or disclose any of their follies . if these in authority coerce them , nothing is to be heard but complaints of persecution , and revilings , and evil surmisings : but will gentle courses mollifie their hearts ? no , not so much as to be grateful or civil to those to whom they ow them : but they will be sure to observe how god binds up the hands of the wicked , and how marvellously he protects his own : and all the favor shewed them will have no better character than a very mean and scant act of iustice , ●licite by a visible state conveniency , if not necessity . see p. 493. you know of whom i mean , and how justly applicable these characters are to them : and that they are not the dreams of an e●travagant fancy ; but true , though imperfect descriptions of what every one sees to be among us . isot. i am heartily sorry to find you the first that swerves from your own rule , and to hear you engage in a discourse so unlike your self , at least so different from the character is conceived of you : these invectives being fitter for the author of the friendly debate , the scribl●r of the dia●ogues , or the asserter of ecclesiastical policy , who have mortally wounded religion , and all the professions and expressions of it , under a pretence of unvailing the pharisaical spirit . and indeed you are now in the same tract , your design being to charge all the faithful servants of christ , with this tatling , whispering , and censorious temper ; because perhaps some idle people who own a kindness for these opinions , but really are of no principles , may be guilty of these ways . eud. i beseech you , wrest not my words beyond my design , and their meaning . i charge not the whole party with these arts : yet that there is too great compliance given to them , and too little freedom used against them , by too many , may without unjustice , or breach of charity , be averred : but the disclosing of these is so far from injuring religion , that i know nothing so proper for recovering the world from the jealousies these arts have occasioned at it , as the unmasking of that spirit ; that so the amiable and lovely visage of true religion may appear in its own lustre , and free of these false colors some unjust pretenders to it , h●ve cast over it : and therefore these writings you mention , seem to have pursued a noble design , which shall not want its reward . b●t remember i make a vast difference betwixt the being of an opinion , and the pursuing all these crooked and wicked practices for its defence , which i have laid before you . at the former , i have no quarrel : for knowing how subject my self is to mistakes , i censure and judg none for their opinions , till they strike at the foundations of faith , or a good life : and so do not only not charge all your party with these imputations , but know a great many of them who are very free of them : but that many are too guilty of them , is what your self dares not deny . and how much of that temper appears in the late pamphlets , i leave with every rational reader to conside● : for it is not worth the while for any of us to sit down , and canvass them all . but how guilty are most of you in this which you here blame me unjustly for , which is the charging a party with the escapes , how great or signal soever , of some individuals . for to undertake the patrociny of every man in every party , is that which none in his right wits will do : to deal therefore equally with you , i neither think your party nor ours , culpable for the faults of some particular persons . b●t , sir , when a perverse detracting spirit gets in to these who pretend highly , certainly they ought to be told it , and that roundly too . for you know the greatest danger to religion , is to be apprehended from the leaven of the scribes and phari●●ecs ; since open and discernible faults do not so much prevail for infecting the christian s●creties , as these secret and more easily palliated errors . consider therefore a little what was the righteousness of the pharisees , and what was their leaven , and search for it ; left it yet leaven you , and lest your righteousness exceed not theirs . the pharisees prayed often , and long , both in the synagogues , streets , and widows houses : they studied the law exactly , and had a great reverence for moses and the prophets , and much zeal against blasphemers , false teachers and hereticks : they were strict observers of the sabbath , and were careful to prepare for their passouer solemnities : they had great respect for the opinions of their ancestors : they looked grave and solemn : they fasted often , and gave tythes of all they had : their outward deportment was not only clean , but beautiful : they were zealous to gain proselytes , and expressed a tenderness of conscience , even in the smallest matters : they were careful to avoid all converse with profane or wicked persons . in a word , they had many things , which to a vulgar and less discerning eye , made a fair show in the flesh . but with all this , they were proud , and exalted in their own conceits , so that they despised all other persons : they were magisterial , and desired to prescribe to every body : they were full of empty boastings , and assumed to themselves big and swelling titles : and all their opinions they obtruded as oracles . they did all to be seen of men , and loved salutations in the market places , and the uppermost rooms at feasts . they envied any they saw outstrip them in true worth ; and hated and contemned all that followed these . they studied to calumniate and revile every person that opposed them , with the most unjust and cruel reproaches , excommunicating all who adhered to them : neither would they yield to the clearest evidences were offered for their conviction : and nothing but the blood of the most innocent could satisfie their revenge . they were covetous , and devoured widows houses , with their pretences of devotion . they were false and subdolous , studying to ensnare others in their speeches , or wrest what they said to a contrary and mischievous sense . they were traytors to these in authority , though when it might serve their ends , they spared not to pretend much zeal for them : and the fervor of their zeal made them often attempt the murde●●ng of those who opposed them , and discovered their false pretexts , and mischievous designs . and from this , let all j●dge how much of that pharisaical leaven doth yet lurk , and leaven among us . i know the application would be thought as invidious , as it is obvious . and , i pray god , those g●ilty of these evils , may charge them home upon themselves : for i confess , i love not that part of the chirurgeons trade so well , as to dwell longer on the cutting of ulcers , or the searching of sores : and these whom this general hint will not help to some conviction , would be little prevailed upon by a closer discovery of the parallel . but m●stake me not , as if i charged one party only with this leaven , which is , alas ! too visible among many of all sides and parties . but to dwell no longer on generals , which every one will drive off himself , and lodge on others , let us now come to a closer review of our late times . and here , philarcheus , i quit the theme to you , who i know can manage it better . phil. truly , when i reflect on the late times , and the spirit which did then act in the judicatories both of church and state , i wonder much how any can be guilty of the error of thinking it was the cause of god was then fought for . i deny not but a great many , yea , i am willing to hope the greater part , were misled and abused , and did imagine it was religion and liberties they fought for ; and so went out as they were called , in the simplicity of their heart , and knew not any thing of the secret designs of their leaders : as in the case of absoloms rebellion , two hundred went from ierusalem with him , which might well a little excuse their fault , but could not alleviate the guilt of that unnatural rebellion : so whatever may be said for excusing the multitudes , who , i doubt not , meant well , yet that will never serve for vindicating the course was followed . i confess , if i saw any remorse or shame for by-past miscarriages ; if i found these people we speak of , either humbled for them before god , or ashamed of them among men , i should be the last on earth who would upbraid them with them : and that the rather , that his majesty hath buried the remembrance of them by a gracious oblivion . but when they continue so insolent , as still to bear up so high in their pretentions , as if god had been visibly with them : and when they think it an injury to their innocency to tell them of an indemnity , who would not be tempted to take them to task , and examine all their vain boastings , and empty pretences ? to which i am both provoked from their arrogance , and invited from the evident proofs of all i shall alledge , which i can lay before you from authentical papers and registers : and i shall freely tell you , that if any of these pamphleteers had but the half to say of these who yield a complyance to the present establishment , which i can say of them , the world would ring with it . but i count the defaming of men a wo●k as mean , as it is cruel . yet i look upon my self as obliged to give some accounts of the spirit and ways of these people , which i shall do with all the reserve and caution that becomes a christian. eud. hold , hold , i pray you , run not too far in your carreer , lest you lay open things were better hid : i confess these writers do justly draw it from you ; but for the faults of two or three , be not cruel to a multitude . and what will all you shall say avail ? for we know well enough how little the clearest evidence will prevail upon their belief : and though i in particular , know upon what grounds you can go , for verifying all you undertake , and that they are unexceptionably clear ; yet it is a dunghil not to be searched too much . wherefore let me , with my most earnest intreaties , divert you from the discourse you have threatned isotimus with . but because all these mens defences of the resistance subjects may make to their sovereigns , go upon the principles of maintaining religion and liberties , when invaded by the magistrate ; we will therefore be beholden to you , if you satisfie us , whether the late wars , as they were begun and carried on , were defensive or not ? phil. your authority over me is so entire , that your commands never fail of determining my obedience , therefore for this once i shall yield to your desire , but with this declaration , that if isotimus cannot prevail among his friends , for conjuring that pamphleting spirit into silence , i will be forced on more freedom than i either design or desire : and be made to tell name and surname of the actors of many things , which they may wish lay dead : and be made to prove them from authentick papers and records , and discover a mystery of iniquity , which hath lien long hid under fair pretences : and in a word , let you understand what were the arts , caballings , and intrigues of these who pretended so much to the interest of christ , when they sought their own : and if in doing this , i be forced on much round and plain dealing , the blame of it will fall to their share who extort it from me . but i come now to satisfie your desire , and doubt not to convince you , that the late wars were an invasion of the kings authority , and of the established laws , and were not for defence of any part of the established religion and liberties . in the year 1938. his majesty having understood , that the authorizing of the service-book , and book of canons , and the establishment of the high-commission-courts were illegal ; did upon the representation of those grievances , not only retract what he had formerly done , but in the fullest manner discharged them , and though the articles of perth stood setled by law , yet upon their petitions , who counted them grievances , he warranted their disuse : and for securing the fears of his subjects of the change of religion , ( with which some factious spirits had poysoned them ; ) he appointed the national covenant , as king iames had signed it , to be taken by all his subjects with a bond of mutual defence and adherence to it : he also summoned an assembly and parliament , for satisfying all the just demands and grievances of his subjects . but did this satisfie the zeal of that party ? no , for when all colors of grounds were removed from those malicious imputations , with which his majesties actions were aspersed ; then did they flee to their safe and sure refuge of jealousies and fears , out of which there was never any storming of them , as if all had been only offered to trepan and deceive them . and after his majesty had called a synod at glasgow , then came in the lay-elders , who were all of the nobility , and men of the greatest eminence of the kingdom , and carried the elections of the members of the assembly in the most arbitrary manner imaginable : many instances whereof i can yet prove from authentick papers , one generall i shall only name , ( for did i stand to reckon up all , i should never get to an end : ) the ruling elders who came from every pa●och to the presbyteries , for electing the commissioners to the assembly , were men of power , and of one knot ; and so when it was voted what ministers should be chosen , they who were listed , being at least six , were set to the door , and thus the elders who stayed within , carried the election as they pleased . and when the commissionated ruling elder was chosen , they were all so associated , that they could not choose wrong . and thus it was , that the secular men did intirely choose the members of the assembly of glasgow . but before they went to it , a written citation of the bishops was ordered to be read through all the churches of scotland ; wherein they were cha●ged , as guilty of all the crimes imaginable , which as an agape after the lords supper , was first read after a communion at edinburgh : and upon it , orders were sent every where , for bringing in the privatest of their escapes . ( and you may judge how consonant this was to that royal law of charity , which covers a multitude of sins ) nor was the kings authority any whit regarded all this while . was ever greater contempt put on the largest offers of grace and favor ? and when at glasgow his majesty offered by his commissioner , to consent to the limiting of bishops , nothing would satisfie their zeal without condemning the order , as unlawful and abjured . but when many illegalities of the constitution and procedure of that assembly were discovered , their partiality appeared , for being both judg and party , they justified all their own disorders . upon which his majesties commissioner was forced to discharge their further sitting , or procedure , under pain of treason : but withal published his majesties royal intentions to them , for satisfying all their legal desires , and securing their fears . but their stomachs were too great to yield obedience , and so they sate still , pretending their authority was from christ , and condemned episcopacy , excommunicated the bishops , with a great many other illegal and unjustifiable acts. and when his majesty came with an army to do himself right by the sword god had put in his hands , they took the start of him , and seised on his castles , and on the houses and persons of his good subjects , and went in a great body against him . now in this his majesty had the law clearly of his side : for episcopacy stood established by act of parliament . and if this was a cause of religion , or a defence of it , much less such as deserved all that bloud and confusion which it drew on , let all the world judg . it is true , his majesty was willing to settle things , and receive them again into his grace , and upon the matter granted all their desires : but they were unsatisfiable ; upon which they again armed . but of this i shall not recount the particulars , because i hope to see a clear and unbyassed narration of these things ere long . only one villany i will not conceal , at the pacification at berwick , seven articles of treaty were signed ; but the covenanters got a paper among them , which passed for the conditions of the agreement ; though neither signed by his majesty , nor attested by secretary or clerk : and this being every where spread , his majesty challenged it as a forgery : and all the english lords who were of the treaty , having declared upon oath , that no such paper was agreed on , it was burnt at london by the hand of the hangman , as a scandalous paper . but this was from the pulpits in scotland , represented as a violation of the treaty , and that the articles of it were burnt . these and such were the arts the men of that time used to inflame that blessed king 's native subjects against him . but all these were small matters to the following invasion of england , an. 1643. for his majesty did an. 1641. come to scotland , and give them full satisfaction to all , even their most unreasonable demands ; which he consented to pass into acts of parliaments . but upon his return into england , the woful rupture betwixt him and the two houses following ; was our church-party satisfied with the trouble they occasioned him ? no , they were not : for they did all they could to cherish and foment the houses in their insolent demands , chiefly about religion : and were as forward in pressing england's uniformity with scotland , as they were formerly in condemning the design of bringing scotland to an uniformity with england . i shall not engage further in the differences betwixt the king and the two houses , than to shew that his majesty had the law clearly of his side , since he not only consented to the redress of all grievances , for which the least color of law was alledged ; but had also yielded to larger concessions for securing the fears of his subjects than had been granted by all the kings of england since the conquest . yet their demands were unsatisfiable without his majesty had consented to the abolishing of episcopacy , and discharge of the liturgy , which neither his conscience , nor the laws of england allowed of : so that the following war cannot be said to have gone on the principles of defending religion ; since his majesty was invading no part of the established religion . and thus you see , that the war in england was for advancing a pretence of religion . and for scotlands part in it , no sophistry will prove it defensive : for his majesty had setled all matters to their hearts desire , and by many frequent and solemn protestations , declared his resolutions of observing inviolably that agreement : neither did he so much as require their assistance in that just defence of his authority , and the laws , invaded by the two houses : though in the explication of the covenant , an. 1039. it was agreed to , and sworn , that they should in quiet manner , or in arms , defend his majesties authority , within or without the kingdom , as they should be required by his majesty , or any having his authority . but all the king desired was , that scotland might lie neutral in the quarrel , enjoying their happy tranquillity : yet this was not enough for your churches zeal , but they remonstrated that prelacy was the great mountain stood in the way of reformation , which must be removed , and they sent their commissioners to the king with these desires , which his majesty answered by a writing yet extant under his own royal hand , shewing , that the present settlement of the church of england was so rooted in the law , that he could not consent to a change , till a new form were agreed to , and presented to him : to which these at westminster had no mind : but he offered all ease to tender consciences , and to call a synod to judg of these differences , to which he was willing to call some divines from scotland , for bearing their opinions and reasons . at that time , petitions came in from several presbyteries in scotland , to the conservators of the peace , inciting them to own the parliaments quarrel : upon which many of the nobility , and others , signed a cross petition , which had no other design , but the diverting these lords from interrupting the peace of scotland , by medling in the english quarrel : upon which thunders were given out against these petitioners , both from the pulpits , and the remonstrances of the commission of the general assembly ; and they led processes against all who subscribed it . but his majesty still desired a neutrality from scotland ; and tho highly provoked by them , yet continued to bear , with more than humane patience , the affronts were put on his authority . yet for animating the people of scotland into the designed war , the leaders of that party did every where study to poison the people with damnable jealousies of the king's inclination to popery , of his accession to the massacre of ireland , and of his designs to subvert by force the late agreement with scotland , if his armies were blessed with success in england . it were an endless work to tell all the ways were used for rooting these wicked jealousies in the peoples hearts : neither were all his majesties protestations able to overcome them : yet in end , when his majesty finding what their inclinations were , did refuse to admit the commissioners from scotland to mediate betwixt himself and the houses , they returned home ; and immediately upon that , contrary to all the laws of scotland , a great meeting of counsellors , conservators , and commissioners for the publick burdens , ordained a convention of estates to be summoned , which was never before done without the king's command , except in the minority of the kings : neither did they so much as wait for the king's pleasure , but only signified their resolution to him , and desired his commands against the day prefixed . here was an invasion of the king's prerogative , which deserved a high censure : yet so far did his majesty's clemency , and love to his native kingdom lead him , that he dispensed with this transgression , and allowed their sitting in a convention , provided they meddled not in the business of england , nor raised an army in order to it : but notwithstanding this , they voted themselves a free convention , and not restricted to the bounds prescribed in the king's letter , which they refused to registrate . and after this , they leagued with england . but having spoke my self out of breath , i quit the giving account of what follows to basilius . basil. i have observed one defect in your narration , for which i will be very favorable to you , beca●se i ●ntend to be guilty of that ●ame fault my self ; which is , that you have spoken nothing of the national covenant , and i mean to say as little of the l●ague . and i am apt to gues● that your silence was designed upon the same grounds that mine is : for indeed i can satisfie my self with nothing i can say upon the league , except i told all i know of the arts and manner of its contrivance . and truly , i cannot prevail upon my self at present , for the saying of that . therefore i will draw a vail over it , and say nothing , till i see further reason for a more full discovery ; and then i am afraid isotimus shall confess , it was not prudently done to h●ve extorted it from me . but to quit this , and pu●sue the narration philarcheus hath devolved on me , i shall tell you how commissioners c●me from england to treat for an army from scotland , for their assistance in the war they were then engaged in against the king : upon which all articles being agreed to , and a league ●wo●n , an army was sent into england , which turned the seales that did then hang in an even ballance , to the king's ruin . and truly , my invention cannot reach an argument , or color , for proving these to have been defensive arms , they being the effect of a combination with the subjects of england against our common king. b●t shall i next tell you what followed after the fatal revolution of things in england , upon his majesties trusting himself to the scots army , i am sure i should ●ill your minds with horror . for though his majesty offered concessions , justly to be wondered at , he having been willing to quit the militia for divers years , and to set up presbytery for three years ; and that in the mean while there should be a free synod , in order to a final settlement with other great diminutions of royal authority ; which shew how willing he was at his own c●st to have redeemed the peace of his kingdoms : only he added , that his conscience could not allow him to take the covenant , nor authorize it by law , nor consent to the abolition of episcopacy , or the liturgy ; protesting that how soon he could do these things with a good conscience , he should yield to all the desires of his subjects : in the mean while , he intreated for a personal treaty , in order to mutual satisfaction . yet with how much fury did that party press the setling of the government without him , the di●owning his interest , and the abandoning of his person to his enemies ; tho at that very time , the designs of the sectarian party , against both monar●hy and his majesties person , were breaking out , and had been made known to them by those who understood them well ? what followed upon this , i wish my silence could bury from the knowledg of all the world. but , al●s ! it is too well known what infamy these men brought upon themselves , and their count●y : which in the opinion of the world , was generally held guilty of that which was the crime of the prevailing party , whom the leaders over-awed and influenced . but after that , when his majesty was made prisoner ; when he was carried up and down by the army ; when the army forced both the houses , and the city of london ; when the treaties of scotland were violated in all their articles ; when the propositions agreed on by both kingdoms , were laid aside , and the four bills set in their place , wherein the covenant was not mentioned ; when upon his majesties refusing of these he was made prisoner , and the vote of non-addresses passed against him , then did the loyalty of the scots nation begin again to revive : and what through the sense of duty , what through the remorse of their former actings , eve●y one was forward to real resentments of these unworthy indignities put both on their king and country : but when the parliament of scotland had voted the country to be put in a posture of war for the defence of their s●vereign , then where should i end , if i told all the seditious papers , preachings , and discourses of some of the clergy , who contradicted and countermanded the parliament to a height of unparalelled boldness , even after all their desires , which they gave in a large remonstrance , were granted ? but did that satisfie ? no : they then took refuge in their common sanctuary of jealousies and fears . they threatned all who obeyed the commands of the parliament , not only with their church-censures , but with damnation . they did every where incite the people to rise in arms against the parliaments forces : and at a communion at matchlin , they did so work upon the vulgar , that they prevailed to get them draw up in a body , promising them great assistance both from god and men . they kept a correspondence with the sectarian army , and continued by many letters to press their speedy march unto scotland ; and after the scots army marched unto england , and was by the wise judgment of god defeated , then did many of the ministers , with all the vehemence imaginable , infl●me the people to rebellion , and got them to rise , and the● marched before their parishes like captains . they also called for the help of the sectarian army to them . and thus did they stand to the covenant , in maintaining the privileges of parliament , and preserving the king's person and authority . and when his majesty was murdered , what attempts made they for the preservation of his person , or for the resenting it after it was done ? this was the loyalty of that party ; and this is what all princes may expect from you , unless they be absolutely at your devotion . let these things declare whether these wars went upon the grounds of a pure defence . but if next to this , i should reckon up the instances of cruelty that appeared in your judicatories for several years , i should have too large a theme to run through in a short discourse . what cruel acts were made against all who would not sign the covenant ? they were declared enemies to god , the king , and the country . their persons were appointed to be seized on , and their goods confis●ated . and in the november of the year 1643. when some of the most eminent of the nobility refused to sign the covenant , commissions were given to soldiers to bring them in prisoners , warranting them to kill them if they made resistance . and , pra● , whether had this more of the cruelty of antichrist , or of the meekness of iesus ? or shall i next tell you of the bloody tribunals were at s andrews , and other pl●ces after philips-haughs ? and of the c●uelty again●t those pri●oners of war , who bore arms at the king's command , and in defence of his authority ? what bloudy stories could i here tell , if i had not a greater horror at the relating them , tha● many of these high pretenders had at the a●ting of them ? and should i here recount the procedure of the ki●k iudicatories , against all who were thought disaffected , i would be look'd on as one telling romances , they being b●yond credit . what processes of ministers are yet upon record , which have no better foundation than their not preaching to the times : their speaking with , or praying before my lord montrose : their not railing at the engagement , and the like ? and what cruelty was practised in the years 1649. and 1650 ? none of us are so young , but we may remember of it . a single death of one of the greatest of the kingdom , could not satisfie the bloud●thirsty malice of that party , unless made formidable and disgraceful , with all the shameful pageantry could be devised . pray , do you think these th●ngs are forgotten ? or shall i go about to narrate , and prove them more particularly ? i confess , it is a strange thing to see men who are so obnoxious , notwithstanding that so exalted in their own conceits : and withal remember that the things i have hinted at , were not the particular actings of single and private persons , but the publick and owned proceedings of the courts and jud●catories . these are the grounds which persuade me that with whatsoever fair colours som● m●y va●ni●h th●s● things , yet the ●pirit that then acted in that party , was not the spirit of god. isot. truly , you have given in a high charge against the proceedings of the late times , which as i ought not to believe upon your assertion , so i cannot well answer ; those being matters of fact , and done most of them before i was capable of observing things : and therefore when i see men of great experience , i shall ask after the truth of what you have told me . but whatever might be the design of some politicians at that time , or to whatever bad sense some words of the league may be stretched , yet you cannot deny , but they are capable of a good sense , and in that i own them , and so cleave to that oath of god , which was intended for a solemn covenanting with god : and the people meant nothing else by it , but a giving themselves to christ : to whose truths and ordinances they resolved to adhere at all hazards , and against all opposition : and in particular to oppose every thing might bear down the power and progress of religion , which was the constant effect of prelacy : therefore we are all bound to oppose it upon all hazards . and indeed when i remember of the beauty of holiness was then every where , and consider the licencious profanity , and ●coffing at religion , which now abounds : this is stronger with me than all arguments , to persuade me that these were the men of god , who had his glory before their eyes in all they did , or designed : whereas now i see every one seeking their own things , and none the things of iesus christ . and all these plagues and evils which these kingdoms do either groan under , or may apprehend , ought to be imputed to gods avenging wrath for a broken covenant , which though taken by all from the highest to the lowest , is now condemned , reviled , abjured , and shamefully broken . these things should afflict our souls , and set us to our mournings , if haply god may turn from the fierceness of his anger . phil. as for these articles that relate to the combination for engaging by arms in prejudice of the kings authority , or may seem to bind us to the reacting these tragedies , they being founded on the lawfulness of subjects resisting their sovereigns , if the unlawfulness of that was already evinced , then any obligation can be in that compact for that effect , must be of it self null and void : and therefore , as from the beginning it was sinful to engage in these wars ; so it will be yet more unlawful , if after all the evils we have seen , and the judgments we have smarted under , any would lick up that vomit : or pretend to bind a tye on the subjects consciences to rise in arms against their lawful sovere●gn . and let me tell you freely , i cannot be so blind or stupid , as not to apprehend that gods wrath hath appeared very visibly against us now , for a tract of thirty years and more ; nei●her doth his anger seem to be turned away , but his hand is stretched out still . but that which i look on as the greater matter of his controversie with us , is that the rulers of our church and state did engage the ignorant multitude , under the colors of religion , to despise the lords anointed , and his authority , and by arms to shake off his yoak , and afterwards abandon his person , disown his interest , refuse to engage for his rescue , and in the end look on tamely , and see him murdered . do you think it a small crime that nothing could satisfie the leaders in that time , without they got the poor people entangled into things which they knew the vulgar did not , and could not understand , or judge of , and must implicitly rely upon the glosses of their teachers ? for whatever the general assembly declared , was a duty following upon the covenant ( which was an easie thing for the leading men to carry as they pleased ) then all the ministers must either have preached and published that to their people , with all their zeal , otherwise they were sure to be turned out . the people being thus provoked from the pulpits , they were indeed to be pitied , who being engaged in an oath ( many of them , no doubt in singleness of heart , having the fear of an oath upon their consciences ) and not being able to examine th●ngs to the bottom , were entangled thus , and engaged which way the leading church-men plea●ed , and the guilt of this , as it was great in those who without due consideration engaged in those oaths , so it was most fearful in them ; who against the clear convictions of conscience , were prevailed upon by the thunders of the church , or the threats of the state , to swear what they judged sinful . i confess , their crime was of a high and crying nature , who did thus for the love of this present world , not only make shipwreck of a good conscience , but persisted long in a tract of dissembling with god , and juggling with men . but the wickedness of this comes mainly to their door , who tempted them to prevarication by their severities against all refused a concurrence in these courses . and the sin of all this was the greater , that it was carried on with such pretences , as if it had been the cause and work of god , with fasting , prayers , tears , and shews of devotion . for these things the land mourns , and god continues his controversie against us . to which i must add the great impenitence of those who being once engaged in that course of rebellion , have not yet repented of the works of their hands . for even such as own a conviction for it , do not express that horror and remorse at their by-past crimes which become penitents : but think if by rioting , drinking and swearing , they declare themselves now of another mind than formerly they were of , that they are washed free of that defilement . in a word , none seem deeply humbled in the presence of god , for the sinfulness of these practices , into which they entered themselves , and engaged others . and till i see an ingenuous spirit of confessing and repenting for these great evils , for all that rebellion , that bloud , oppreson , and vastation which these courses drew on , i shall never expect a national pardon , for that national guilt . for when on the one hand , many are still justifying these black arts , and not humbled for them , nor owning their penitence as openly as they committed their sins : and on the other hand , these who confess the faultiness of their courses , do it in a spirit of traducing others , of railing , and reviling , perhaps not without atheistical scoffings at true religion ; but not in a spirit of ingenuous horror , and sorror for their own accession to these courses , it appears we are still hardened , either into a judicial blindness of the one hand , or of obduration of heart on the other . that profanity doth much abound , i must with sorrow confess it , in the presence of my god : and i know there are many who roll themselves in the dust daily before god , and mourn bitterly for it : but when i enter in a deeper inquiry what may be the true causes of it , those that occur to me are , first , a judicial stroke from god upon us , for our by-past abominations : and chiefly for our hypocritical mocking of god , fastning the designs or humors of a party on him , as if they had been his ordinances , interests , and truths . and therefore because we held the truth of god in unrighteousness , his wrath hath been revealed against us . next , the frequent involving the land in reiterated oaths , subscriptions , and professions of repentance , under severe censures , which prevailed with many to swallow them over implicitly , and made others yield to them against their conscience , hath so debauched and prostituted the souls of people , that it is no wonder , they be now , as seared with a hot iron , and incapable of reproofs or convictions . besides , is it any wonder that these whose hearts naturally led them to atheism , when they see what juggling was used about some pretences of religion , and how the whole land was involved in so much bloud , about such trifling matters , come thereupon to have a jealousie of preachers and preaching , as if all they said , was but to maintain and advance their own interests and greatness , and thereupon turn scoffers at all religion , because of the base and irreligious practices of some , who yet vouched god and christ for all they did ? and on remark i shall offer on the way , that the sin of your church was legible in your judgment : their sin was the animating the people to rebellion , upon colors of religion ; and their judgment was , not only to be subdued , and oppressed by another rebellious army , who were not wanting to pretend highly to the cause of god in all their actings : but that they brake in pieces among themselves about a decision , who might be imployed to serve in the army , which at first disjointed , and afterwards destroyed your church : and the schism is still among us , which is like to eat up the power of religion , is but the dreg and genuin effect of these courses , and so all the prejudice it produceth to religion , and the true interests of souls is to be charged upon that same score . isot. really , i am much scandalized with this discourse , which if it were heard abroad , i know would much offend the hearts of the lord's people . and indeed , i think it ought not to be answered , no more than rabshaketh's railings were by eliakim . i wish i could with good hezekiah spread it out before the lord , and mourn over it , and for you who do so blaspheme god , and his cause . but whatever you may say in the point of resistance , yet you cannot deny , but we are all from the highest to the lowest bound in our stations ( at least ) to withstand prelacy , against which we did so formally swear in that oath of god , which most of you are not only content to break , but must needs despise and mock at . phil. god is my witness , how little pleasure i have in this severe discourse , into which the petulancy of these writers hath engaged me : but examine what i said from religion and reason , and you will perhaps change your verdict of it . for my part , i say none of these things in a corner , neither do i expect that they shall not fly abroad , and if they do , i will look for all the severities which the censures and malice of many can amount to . but i will chearfully bear that cross , and will be content to be yet more vile , for declaring freely what i judg to be god's controversie with the land i live in . if for this love to souls , many be my adversaries , i will betake my self to prayer : and shall only add this , that few who know me suspect my temper guilty either of flattery or bitterness . and the searcher of hearts knows , that i neither design by this freedom , to commend my self to any , nor to disgrace others , but meerly to propose things as they are . if this produce any good effect , i have my design ; if not , i have discharged my conscience , and leave the issue of it with god , who can out of the mouths of babes and sucklings , ordain strength and perfect praise . as for any obligation you may suppose the covenant brings upon us to oppose episcopacy , i shall discuss it with all the clearness i am master of . i shall not tell you , how much many who took that covenant , and do still plead its obligation have said ( from the words of the second article , and the explication given in it to prelacy ) for reconciling as much of episcopacy as is setled among us , to it , according to the declared meaning of its first imposers , when they took it , and authorized it . but leaving you and them to contend about this , upon the whole matter consider , that episcopacy is either necessary , unlawful , or indifferent : if the first be true , then you will without much ado confess that no oath in prejudice of a necessary duty , can bind any tie upon our conscience . if it be unlawful , i shall freely acknowledg that from the oaths of the covenants , there is a supervenient tie lying on us for its extirpation . but if it be indifferent , then i say it was a very great sin for a nation , so far to bind up their christian liberty , as by oath to determine themselves to that to which god had not obliged them : for the circumstances of things indifferent , may so far vary , that what is of it self indifferent , may by the change of these become necessary , or unlawful . therefore , in these matters , it is a great invasion of our christian liberty , to fetter consciences with oaths . and though the rulers and chief magistrates of a society , have either rashly or out of fear , or upon other unjustifiable accounts , sworn an oath , about indifferent things , which afterwards becomes highly prejudicial to the society , then they must consider that the government of that state is put in their hands by god , to whom they must answer for their administration . theeefore they stand bound by the laws of nature , of religion , and of all societies , to do every thing that may tend most for the good of the society . and if a case fall in where a thing tends much to the good and peace of a land , but the prince stands bound some way or other by oath against it , he did indeed sin by so swearing ; but should sin much more , if by reason of that oath he judged himself limited from doing what might prove for the good of the society . indeed when an oath concerns only a man's private rights , it ties him to performance , tho to his hurt ; but the administration of government is none of these rights a magistrate may dispose of at pleasure ; for he must conduct himself so , as he shall be answerable to god , whose vicegerent he is : and when these two obligations interfere , the one of procuring the good of the society , the other of adhering to an oath , so that they stand in terms of direct opposition , then certainly the greater must swallow up the lesser . it is therefore to be under consideration , whether the obligation of procuring the good of the society , or that of the magistrates oath be the greater ? but this must be soon decided , if it be considered that the former is an obligation lying on him by god , who for that end raised him up to his power , and is indeed the very end of government : whereas the other is a voluntary engagement he hath taken on himself , and can never be equal to that which was antecedent to it , much less justle it out . but if it contradict the other , the magistrate is indeed bound to repent for his rash swearing ; but cannot be imagined from that to be bound to go against the good of the society , for the procuring whereof , he hath the sword and power put in his hands by god. and so much of the tie can lie upon a magistrate by his oath about things indifferent , in ordering or governing the state that is subject to him : in which he must proceed as he shall answer to god in the great day of his accounts : and ought not to be censured or judged for what he doth by his subjects . but he enacting laws in matters indifferent , they become necessary obligations on his subjects , which no private oath of theirs can make void . indeed the late writer his arguing against this , is so subtil , that i cannot comprehend it so far as to find sense in it ; for he confesseth , pag. 232. that the magistrate is vested with a power proportional to the ends of government , so that no subject may decline his lawful commands , or bind himself by any such oath , as may interfere with a supervenient rational command . all this is sound , and indeed all i pleaded ; only his explication of rational , i cannot allow of : for tho a magistrate may proceed to unreasonable commands , yet i see no limits set to our obedience , but from the unlawfulness of them . but in the next page , he eats all this up by telling , that there are many things still left to our selves , and our own free disposal , wherein we may freely vow : and having vowed , must not break our word . and for instance , he adduceth a mans devoting the tenth of his substance to the lord , from which no countermand of the magistrates can excuse . but still he concludes , page 334. that the magistrates power may make void such vows as are directly , or designedly made to frustrate its right or to suspend the execution of others , in so far as they do eventually cross its lawful exercise . this last yields to me all i pretend in this case : for the covenant being made on purpose to exclude episcopacy , though at that time setled by law : if episcopacy be not unlawful , but lawful , which i now suppose , then the king's authority enjoining it , and it being a great part likewise of the government of the subjects , it is to be submitted to , notwithstanding the oath made against it . so that your friend yields without consideration , that which he thinks he denies : and therefore the reasoning in the dialogues holds good , that the oath of a subject in a matter indifferent , cannot free him from the obedience he owes the laws . it is true , his private vows in matters of his own concern , are of another nature , and so not within the compass of this debate , which is only about the obedience we owe the laws , supposing their matter lawful , notwithstanding our compacts made in opposition to them : and therefore i shall not discourse of them , but stick close to the purpose in hand . but my next undertaking must be to free children from any tie may be imagined to lie on them from the fathers oath : which was a matter so clear to my thinking , that i wonder what can be said against it . isot. indeed here your friend the conformist bewrayed his ignorance notably , not considering the authority parents have over their children by divine command , which dies not with them ; their commands being obligatory even after their death : for god commends the rechabites for obeying ionadabs command some ages after his death : therefore parents adjuring children they are obliged by it , as the people of israel by saul's adjuring them not to eat food till the evening , were obliged to obedience . and such adjurations may not only bind the children adjured , but all their posterity after them : as did the oath for carrying ioseph's bones out of egypt . and further , a society continuing still under the same notion , is bound through all ages to make good the compacts of their progenitors , they continuing to be the same society . and this is not only the ground on which the obligation of all alliances among kingdoms is founded ; but is also the basis on which our tie to the allegiance due to our sovereign is grounded . therefore as we find god in scripture covenanting with men , and their posterity , as in abraham's case , and fathers likewise engaging to god for themselves and their children , as did ioshua for himself and his house ; so our covenants being unanimously sworn by almost the whole nation , and confirmed by all the authority in it , must have a perpetual obligation on all the subsequent generations . see from pag. 205. to pag. 219. phil. i suppose , if it hold good that the covenant binds not these who took it , to oppose or extirpate episcopacy when setled by law , all this reasoning will of it self evanish in smoak : but to give your discourse all advantage , and to yield its obligation on these who took it , what you infer will never be made out ; since it is foun●ed on the supposition of a parents authority to adjure his child , that ties him after his fathers death , which you apply to the covenant . but in this there is a triple error committed by you : one of fact , and two of right . that of fact , is , that you suppose that in the covenant the subsequent generations are adjured to its observance : whereas not a word of this is in the covenant . on the contrary , in the end of the preface to the league , it is said , that every one for himself doth swear : neither is there a word in it all that imports an adjuration on posterity . it is true , in the 5. article , every one is bound according to their place and interest , to endeavour that the kingdoms may remain conjoined in a firm peace and union to all posterity . but he th●t will draw an adjuration on posterity from this , must have a new art of logick , not yet known . and in the national covenant , as it was taken by king iames , there is not a word that imports an adjuration on ●osterity . it is true , in the addition was made to it , ann. 1●38 . it is declared , that they are convinced in their minds , and confess with their mouths , that the present and subsequent generations in this land , were bound to keep that national oath and subscription inviolable . but this was only their opinion who signed it : yet for all that , there is no adjuration on posterity for observing it , no not in that addition then sworn to . the next error of your hypothesis , is , that the parents commands can bind the childrens confidence , in prejudice of the magistrates authority : for you must either suppose this , otherwise your arguing is to no purpose , since the king's authority is in this case interposed , and therefore all our fathers commands must yield to it : which because none deny , i shall not stand to evince . for if my father be bound to obey the king , as well as i am ; both he sins , if he enjoin me disobedience , and i am likewise guilty , if upon that i disobey . for he that hath no warrant for his own disobedience , can be imagined to have none for securing me in mine . and in end , you suppose a parents command or authority can bind the conscience after his death : which is manifestly absurd ; for certainly his authority must die with himself . it is true , a piety and reverence is due to the memory of our parents : and so much reverence should be payed to their ashes , that without a very good reason , the things they enjoyned should be religiously observed : but this is not a necessary obligation : for circumstances may so vary things , that we may be assured , that as our parents enjoyned such a thing , so had they seen the inconveniencies of it , they had not done it . now while a father lives , a child hath this liberty to argue with him : where it is not to be doubted , but the affection of a parent , together with the reasons adduced would make him change his commands : but indeed did their commands tie us after their death , we should be more in subjection to our parents , when dead , than we were when they lived : which goeth against the sense of all mankind . and what equality is there in such mens reasons , who will deny absolute obedience to magistrates , tho we be allowed to petition , and represent the grievances their laws bring upon us , and yet will assert an absolute and blind obedience due to the commands of our parents , tho dead ? your instance of the rechabites makes against you , for their progenitors had appointed them to dwell in tents , yet the fear of nebuchadnezzar had driven them to ierusalem : and consider if the incurring our lawful sovereigns displeasure , together with the hazard such obedience may draw after it , be not a juster ground of excusing our selves from obedience to any such command , suppose it were real . the rechabites did indeed abstain from wine , upon ionadab's command , for which they are commended , and blessed ; and so i acknowledg it a piece of piety to obey the commands even of a dead father ; yet in that place , it is not asserted , that that command tied their conscience ; but on the contrary , the blessing passed upon their obedience , seems rather to imply that it was voluntary , though generous and dutiful . the same answer is to be made to ioseph's adjuring the children of israel to carry up his bones ; which ought to have obliged even the children of these that were so adjured , out of the gratitude due to the memory of so great a man , especially nothing intervening that rendered obedience to it , either unexpedient or unlawful . but in general , consider that when a contract is made , either of an association under a form and line of magistracy , or of alliance betwixt two states , and confirmed by oath ; there is an obligation of justice that ariseth from the compact , whereby such rights were translated unto the person compacted with : and thereby he and his posterity according to the compact , are to enjoy these rights , because translated unto his person by the compact : but being once legally his , with a provision that they shall descend to his heirs , then his heirs have a right to them formally in their persons after his death , to which they have a title in justice , and not by the fidelity to which the posterity of the first compacters are bound by their fathers deed , but because the right is now theirs : so that though the first compacters were bound by promise and oath , their successors are only bound by the rules of justice , of giving to every man that which is his right : therefore whatever our ancestors may be supposed to have compacted with the king's progenitors , or whatever by treaty one state yields over to another , that promise , donation and oath is indeed the ground on which the kings right may be supposed to have been first founded . but now his title to our obedience proceeds upon the rules of justice , ( of giving him what is his , by an immemorial possession , passed all prescription , so many ages ago , that the first vestiges of it cannot be traced from records , or certain histories ) and not of fidelity of observing the promises of our ancestors to him , though i do not deny a pious veneration to be due to the promises and oaths of parents , when they contain in them adjurations on their childern . and thus the gibeonites having a right to their lives , confirmed to them by the compact of the princes of israel : they and their posterity had a good title in justice to their lives , which was basely invaded by saul , and had this aggravation , that the compact made with them was confirmed by oath , for which their posterity should have had a just veneration : but though that oath did at first found their title to their lives , and their exemption from the forfeiture all the amorites lay under ; yet afterwards their title was preserved upon the rules of iustice , and the laws of nature , which forbid the invading the lives of our neighbors , when by no injury they forfeit them . thus your confounding the titles of inheritance and presc●iption , with the grounds upon which they first accresced , hath engaged you into all this mistaking . but from all this , you see how ill founded that reasoning of the answerer of the dialogues is , for proving the posterity of these who took the covenant , tied by their fathers oath , which yet at first view , promised as fair colors of reason , as any part of his book , had he not intermixed it with shameful insultings and railings at the conformist : which i suppose do now appear as ill grounded , as they are cruel and base . but i am not so much in love with that stile , as to recriminate : nor shall i tell you of his errors that way of which i am in good earnest ashamed upon his account : for it is a strange thing , if a man cannot answer a discourse without he fall a fleering and railing . to conclude this whole purpose , i am mistaken , if much doubting will remain with an ingenuous and unprejudged reader , if either we or our posterity lye under any obligation from the covenants , to contradict or counteract the laws of the land , supposing the matter of them lawful : which being a large subject , will require a discourse apart . but i will next examine some practices among us , and chiefly that of schism and separation from the publick worship of god ; to which both the unity of the spirit , which we ought to preserve in the bond of peace , and the lawful commands of these in authority , do so bind us , that i will be glad to hear what can be alledged for it . isot. a great difference is to be made betwixt separation and non-compliance : the one is a withdrawing from what was once owned to be the church : the other is a with-holding our concurrence from what we judg brought in upon the church , against both reason and religion : and any thing you can draw from christ's practice or precept , in acknowledging the high priests , or commanding the people to observe what the pharisees taught them , is not applicable to this purpose : for first , these were civil magistrates , as well as ecclesiasticks , and doctors of the civil and judicial law , which is different from the case of churchmen with us . further ; the iewish church was still in possession of the privileges given them from god , and so till christ erected his church , they were the church of god : and therefore to be acknowledged , and joined with in worship . but how vastly differs our case from this ? see from p. 189. to p. 204. phil. you have given a short account of the large reasonings of the late book on this head , only he is so browilled in it , that there are whole pages in his discourse , which i confess my weakness cannot reach . but to clear the way for your satisfaction in this matter , which i look upon as that of greatest concernment , next to the doctrine of non-resistance , of any thing is debated among us ; since it dissolves the unity of the church ; and opens a patent door to all disorder , ignorance and profanity . i shall consider what the unity of the church is , and in what manner we are bound to maintain and preserve it . all christians are commanded to love one another , and to live in peace together : and in order to this , they must also unite , and concur in joint prayers , adorations , and other acts of worship , to express the harmony of their love in divine matters : sacraments were also instituted for uniting the body together ; being solemn and federal stipulations , made with god , in the hands of some who are his ambassadors and representatives upon earth : by whose mouths the worship is chiefly offered up to god , and who must be solemnly called and separated for their imployment . now these assemblings of the saints are not to be forsaken , till there be such a corruption in the constitution of them , or in some part of the worship , that we cannot escape the guilt of that , without we sepa●ate our selves from these unclean things . wherefore the warning is given , come out of babylon , that we be not partakers of her sins , and so receive not of her plagues . but though there be very great and visible corruptions in a church ; yet as long as our joining in worship in the solemn assemblies , doth not necessarily involve us into a consent or concurrence with these ; we ought never to withdraw , nor rent the unity of the body , whereof christ is the head . consider , how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity . and our saviour sheweth of what importance he judged it to his church , since so great a part of his last and most ravishing prayer , is , that they might be one : and this he five times repeats , comparing the unity he prayed for , to the undivided unity was betwixt him and his father . how shall these words rise up in judgment , against those who have broken these bonds of perfection upon slight grounds ! with the same earnestness do we find the apostles pressing the unity of the body , and charity among all the members of it : which is no where more amply done than in the epistles to the corinthians , whom the apostle calls , the churches of god ; and yet there were among them false teachers , who studied to prey upon them , and to strike out the apostles authority : some among them denied the resurrection , there were contentions and disorders among them in their meetings : such confusions were from the strange tongues some spake , that had one unacquainted with them , come in upon them , he had judged them mad : some were drunk when they did receive the lord's supper : they had an incestuous person in their society ; and it seems he was of quality , and much accounted of , since they were puffed up with him : they were also a scandal to the gospel with their litigious law sutes . these were great evils , and i hope beyond what you can charge on us : and yet though the apostle commands them to be redressed , and rectified , doth he ever allow of these in corinth , who were pure and holy , to forsake the solemn assemblies , till these things were amended ? or doth he not highly commend charity and unity to them ? next , consider what teachers these were who preached christ of envy and strife , out of contention , and not sincerely , that they might add affliction to the apostles bonds : and yet of these s. paul's verdict is , what then ? notwithstanding every way , whether in pretence , or in truth , christ is preached , and i therein do rejoice , yea , and will rejoice . now if he rejoiced that christ was preached at any rate , what spirit have they , who because they suppose some preach out of envy , or design to add to their affliction , do thereupon study to blast their reputation , and to withdraw first the hearts , and then the ears of all from them ? certainly , this is not the spirit of christ , or of his apostles . and though we see what corruptions had crept into the churches of asia , yet in the epistles to them in the revelation , they are still call'd the churches of god , in the midst of whom the son of god walked . they are indeed commanded to reform any corruptions were among them ; but such as had not that doctrine , and knew not the depths of satan , but had kept their garments clean , are not commanded to separate from the rest ; on the contrary , no other burden is laid upon them ; nor are they charged for not separating from the rest . from which premises i may infer , that as long as the communion of saints may be kept in , without our being polluted in some piece of sinful concurrence , all are bound to it , under the hazard of tearing christ's body to pieces . and this stands also with the closest reason ; for since unity is that which holds all the body firm , whereas division dislocates and weakens it ; nothing doth more defeat the ends of religion , and overturn the power of godliness , than scisms and contentions ; which give the greatest offence to the little ones , and the fullest advantages to the common enemy imaginable . if therefore the worship of god among us continue undefiled , even in the confession of all ; if the sacraments be administred as before ; if the persons that officiate be ministers of the gospel , then certainly such as separate from our publick meetings , do forsake the assemblies of the saints , and so break the unity of the spirit , and the bond of peace . and what you said of a non-compliance as distinct from separation , hath no relation to this purpose , where nothing of a compliance is in the case , but only a joining with the saints in solemn worship . and doth the change of the government of the church , in so small a matter as the fixing a constant president , with some additions of power over your synods , in stead of your ambulatory moderators , derive a contagion into our worship , so that without a sin it cannot be joined in ? indeed if a concurrence of worship required an owning of every particular in the constitution of the church , a man must go to the new atlantis to seek a society he shall join with , since few of clear unprepossessed minds will find such societies in the known regions of the world , against all whose constitutions they have not some just exceptions : and the world shall have as many parties as persons , if this be not fixed as the rule of unity , that we cleave to it , ever till we be driven to do somewhat which with a good conscience we cannot yield to . and even in that case , except the corruption be great and deep , a bare withdrawing , without a direct opposition , is all we are bound to . you are therefore guilty of a direct separation who forsake the assemblies of the saints , they continuing in their former purity , unchanged and unmixed , even in your own principles . isot. but one thing is not considered by you , which is a main point , that we had our church setled , according to christ's appointment , and ratified by law. and a change of that being made , all our faithful ministers were turned out by the tyranny of the present powers ; who in stead thereof , have set up a new form of government , of none of christ's appointment : and to maintain it , have thrust in upon the lord's people , a company of weak , ignorant , scandalous and godless men , called curates ; who instead of edifying , study to destroy the flock : of whom i could say much , had i a little of your virulent temper : but their own actions have so painted them out to the world , that i may well spare my labor of making them better known , it being as unnecessary as it is unpleasant . now if the true seekers of god do still stick to their old teachers , and seek wholsome food from them in corners , and are afraid of your false teachers , according to christ's command , of being aware of such men ; call you this a separation ? which is rather an adherence to the true church , and the keeping of our garments clean from the contagion of these men . and indeed these who do join with your curates , do profit so little by their ministry , that no wonder others have no heart to it . and i have known some whose consciences are so tender in this matter , that their having at sometimes joined with these curates in worship , hath been matter of mourning to them , even to their graves . and this may serve to clear us of the guilt of schism in this matter , when our withdrawing is only a non-compliance with your corruption . phil. all this saith nothing for justifying your separation . as for the turning out of your ministers , if the laws to which their obedience was required were just ( which shall be next considered ) then their prejudices , misinformed consciences , or peevis●mess , and not the tyranny of the rulers , must bear the blame of it . and for these set in their places , if upon so great a desertion of the church by so many church-men , all their charges could not be of a sudden supplied with men so well qualified , or of such gifts and worth as was to be desired ; it is nothing but what might have been expected upon such an occasion . and for your revilings , they well become the spirit which appears too visibly in the rest of your actings ; but we still study to bear these base and cruel reflections , with the patience becoming the ministers of the gospel , and of these who study to learn of him , who when he was reviled , reviled not again ; but stood silent at those unjust tribunals , when he was falsly and blasphemously reproached by his enemies ; and therefore i shall leave answering of these fearful imputations you charge on our clergy , to the great day of reckoning , wherein judgment shall return to the righteous , and all the upright in heart shall follow it . and in the mean while shall study to bless when you curse , and pray for you who do thus despitefully use us . we trust our witness is on high , that whatever defects cleave to us , and though , may be , we have not wanted a corrupt mixture ( as you know among whom there was a son of perdition ) yet we are free of these things you charge on us promiscuously , and that these imputations you charge us with , are as false as they are base . but all this will not serve the turn of many of your dividers , whose ministers continue with them as formerly , and meerly because they hold themselves bound in conscience to obey the laws they are separated from . truly if you can clear this of separation , you are a master at subtil reasoning . for you know it is not the third part of this church which was abandoned by the former ministers upon the late change , and yet the humor of separating is universal . and though some few of your own ministers have had the honest zeal to witness against this separation , yet how have they being pelted for it by the censures and writings of other schismaticks ? which have prevailed so much upon the fear or prudence of others , that whatever mislike they had of these separating practices , yet they were willing either to comply in practice , or to be silent spectators of so great an evil . but if separation be a sin , it must have a guilt of a high nature , and such as all who would be thought zealous watch-men , ought to warn their people of . and what shall be said of these ( even church-men ) who at a time when the laws are sharply looked to , do join in our worship ; but if there be an unbending in these , they not only withdraw , and become thereby a scandal to others , but draw about them divided meetings ; are not these time-servers ? for if concurrence in our worship be lawful , and to be done at any time , it must be a duty which should be done at all times : and therefore such masters of conscience ought to express an equality in their ways , and that they make the rules of their concurrence in worship , to be the laws of god , and not the fear of civil punishments . finally , such as think it lawful to join in our worship , and yet that they may not displease the people , do withdraw , shew they prefer the pleasing of men to the pleasing of god : and that they make more account of the one than of the other . for if it be lawful to concur in our worship , what was formerly said , proves it a duty : are not these then the servants of men , who to please them , dispense with what by their own concession must be a duty ? besides , such persons withdrawing , gives a great and real scandal to the vulgar , who are led by their example , and so a humor of separating comes to be derived into all : whereby every one thinks it a piece of religion , and that which will be sure to make him considerable , and bring customers to him , if he be a merchant or trades-man , that he despise the solemn worship , and rail at his minister : and if he but go to conventicles , and be concern'd in all the humors of the party , he is sure of a good name , be he as to other things what he will. eud. much of this we know to be too true : and certainly , nothing deserves more blame for all the disorders are among us than this separation . discipline goes down , catechising is despised , the sacraments are loathed , the solemn worship deserted . i know the poor curates bear the blame of all , and all of them must be equally condemned , if a few of them have miscarried ; for which when ever it was proved , they were censured condignly : in end , you charge their gifts , and that their people are not edified by them : but i pray you , see whether the prejudices you make them drink in against them , occasion not that . for it is a more than humane work , to overcome prejudices . read but the complaints of the prophets , and you will confess a churchmans not being profitable to his people , will be no good argument to prove him not sent of god , and when i consider , that even the apostles call for the help of the churches prayers , that utterance might be given to them , yea and desire them to strive together in their prayers for them ; i must crave leave to tell you , that the defect of that utterance , and power in preaching you charge on the present preachers , may be well imputed to the want of the concurrence of the peoples prayers , whom prepossessions have kept from striving together with them in prayer , that they might come among them with the fulness of the blessing of the gospel . and if there be any of such tender and mi●led consciences , who have been smitten with remorse for such concurrence in worship , as their tenderness is to be valued , so their ignorance is to be pitied : and they who thus misled them , deserve the heavier censure , since they have involved simple and weak consciences with their pedling sophistry into such straits and doubts . in fine , you cannot say , that a minister is by a divine right placed over any particular flock . if then it be humane , it with all other things of that nature , is within the magistrates cognizance ; so that when he removes one , and leaves a legal way patent for bringing in another , upon which there comes one to be placed over that flock , what injustice soever you can fancy in such dealing , yet certainly , it will never free that parish from the tie of associating in the publick worship , or receiving the sacraments from the hands of that minister , whom they cannot deny to be a minister of the gospel : and therefore no irregularity in the way of his entry , though as great as can be imagined , will warrant the peoples separating from him . neither can they pretend that the first incumbent is still their minister , for his relation to them being founded meerly on the laws of the church , it is ( as was proved in the second conference ) subject to the magistrates authority , and so lasts no longer than he shall dissolve it by his commands : unless it appear , that he designs the overthrow of true religion ; in which case , i confess pastors are , according to the practice of the first ages of the church , to continue at the hazard of all persecutions , and feed their flocks . but this is not applicable to our case , where all that concerns religion continues as formerly : only some combinations made in prejudice of the supreme authority are broken : and order is restored to the church , instead of the confusions and divisions were formerly in it . and if this change have occasioned greater disorders , wherever the defect of policy or prudence may be charged , yet certainly , if the change that is made , be found of its own nature both lawful and good , the confusions have followed upon it , are their guilt , who with so little reason , and so much eagerness , have not only refused obedience themselves , but hindered such as were willing to have yielded it . crit. indeed this point of withdrawing from the publick worship , for their faul●iness who officiate , or for the errors are supposed to be in the way of their entry , doth so contradict the whole series of the sacred rule , that nothing can be more expresly condemned in it . the sons of eli made the people abhor the offering , and they defiled the tabernacle of god ; yet for all that , the people continued to come and offer their sacrifices . the prophets do also tell us what kind of people the priests in their times were , and yet never a word of the peoples withdrawing from the worship . now this must by the parity of reason , hold good under the new dispensation ; except you say , we are not so much obliged to worship god in the unity of the spirit , as they were ; the contrary whereof will be found true . next , the high priesthood being entailed on the line of aaron , was certainly to descend ( as all other rights did among the iews ) by the right of representation and primogeniture ; and so did eleazer and phinebas follow in a line from aaron . it is true , the high priesthood was afterwards in ithamar's line , but it doth not appear by what conveyance it went to them , which certainly must have been divine , if lawful : and none can limit god from dispensing with his own positive laws . but the high priesthood was again set in its own channel by david , and so continued downward , till after the second temple , it becoming the chief secular power , was exposed to sale : and this appears from a passage cited by doctor lightfoot out of the talmud of ierusalem , in the first temple the high priests still served , the son succeeding the father , and they were 18 in number : but in the second temple they got the high priesthood by money . and some say , they destroyed one another by witchcraft : so that some say , there were 80 priests in that space ; some 81 , some 82 , some 83 , some 84 , and some 85. and that learned doctor reckons 53 in order , till he brings the succession down to the time of the wars , after which it was so confused , that he pursues it no further . and in the beginning of the 3 chap. of his temple-service , he proves the high priesthood to have descended to the first-born , as the priesthood , before the law , belonged to the first-born of every family . and therefore it was that when simeon the iust would have put onias his second son in the priesthood , he could not do it . but simeon the eldest brother obtained his right , and onias was put to fly to egypt , where he built a famous temple . this will prove that the high priests in our saviour's time had no just title to their office ; and yet our saviour , being by his humiliation in the character of a private person , never questioned it , no not when he was upbraided , as if he had answered god's high priest irreverently , which looks like a case of confession . and s. paul did the same . now as to what is said of the high priests being a civil magistrate , it will not serve to deliver you ; for his title to the civil power flowed from his office : therefore the owning him in that , did also acknowledge his office , since he had no other right to the civil power , but because he was high priest , and yet subjection was given him by our lord , who acknowledged the high priest. did he not also continue in the temple worship , and go thither on their festivities ? where you know he must have offered sacrifices by the hands of these priests : and yet we know well enough what a sort of people they were . if then we are no less bound under the gospel to the rules of order and unity , than they were under the law , it will follow that no personal corruption of church-men , can warrant a separation from worship , even though their opinions were erroneous , and their practices naughty : for the impertinency of the distinction of non-compliance and separation was already proved . but next to the temple-worship , was the service of the synagogue , which was for the most part in the hands of the scribes and pharisees , who expounded the law to the people : and christ's commanding the people to observe what they taught , shews clearly his pleasure was , that they should not forsake the synagogues where they taught : and his own going to the synagogues , in which it is not to be doubted but he concurred in the prayers and hymns , proves abundantly that their worship was not to be separated from . as for your friends involved discourse , about the declining of churches , pag. 193. i must let it alone , till i can make sense of it : for if he intend to compare our lord and his apostles , their joining in the iewish worship , with the misguided , though sincere devotion , of some holy souls who worshipped god with all the corrup●ions of the roman church , i hope he will repent the blasphemy of such a mistake . and as for what is alledged , pag. 198. that the iewish dispensation being mixed , and their law made up of matters political , as well as spiritual , therefore these scribes were the oracles of the civil law , and so to be gone to , it is as weak as the rest : for the law being to be sought from the priests lips , as to all the parts of it , any power the priests had of pronouncing about the questions of the law , was because they were priests , or as they were men separated for officiating in the synagogues : so the receiving their decisions in matters judicial , did acknowledg their office , which was purely ecclesiastical and sacred . from all this i may infer , that as long as any society continues to be the church and people of god , and hath the service and worship of god performed in it by men solemnly separated , according to god's appointment , whatever irregularities be either in their entry to such charges , or of their opinions or practices , these should indeed be cognosced upon , and censured by the supreme powers in the society ; but will never warrant private persons to separate from the worship , unless it be so vitiated in any part of it , that without sin they cannot concur in it : in which case , they are indeed to keep themselves clean , and to withdraw , but not to divide until the worship be so corrupted , that the ends of publick worship can no more be answered by such assemblies . poly. i know it is thought a piece of noble gallantry among our new modelled people , to despise the sentiments of the ancient church ; and therefore whatever i could adduce from them , would prevail little for their conviction : otherwise many things could be brought to this purpose from these two great assertors of the unity of the church against schisms and divisions , s. cyprian , and s. augustin : the latter especially , who by many large treatises studied the conviction of the donatists , who maintained their separation from the church , much upon the same grounds which are by your friends asserted . but i shall dismiss this point with one sentence of s. augustin , lib. 2. contra parmen . quisquis ergo vel quod potest arguendo corrigit ; vel quod corrigere non potest , salvo pacis vinculo excludit , vel quod salvo pacis vinculo excludere non potest , aequitate improbat , firmitate supportat , hic est pacificus . and let me freely tell you , that when i consider the temper , the untractableness , the peevish complainings , the railings , the high cantings of the donatists , which are set down by him , and others , i am sometimes made to think i am reading things that are now among our selves , and not what passed twelve ages ago . and indeed some late practices make the parallel run more exactly betwixt our modern zealots and the circumcellions , who were a sect of the donatists , that was acted by a black and a most desperate spirit . for st. augustin tells us , how they fell on these who adhered to the unity of the church , beating some with cudgels , putting out the eyes of others , and invading the lives of some , particularly of maximinus bishop of hagaia , whom they left several times for dead . and what instances of this nature these few years have produced , all the nation knows . how many of the ministers have been invaded in their houses , their houses rifled , their goods carried away , themselves cruelly beaten and wounded , and often made to swear to abandon their churches , and that they should not so much as complain of such bad usage to these in authority : their wives also scaped not the fury of these accursed zealots , but were beaten and wounded , some of them being scarce recovered out of their labor in child-birth . believe me , these barbarous outrages have been such , that worse could not have been apprehended from heathens . and if after these , i should recount the railings , scoffings and floutings which the conformable ministers meet with to their faces , even on streets , and publick high-ways , not to mention the contempt is poured on them more privately , i would be looked on as a forger of extravagant stories . but it is well i am talking to men who know them as well as my self . from these things i may well assume that the persecution lies mainly on the conformists side , who for their obedience to the laws , lie thus open to the fury of their enemies . isot. now , i dare say , you speak against your conscience : for do you think any of the lord's people have accession to so much wickedness , which is abhorred by them all : and this is well enough known to you , though you seem to disguise it . for you have often heard our honest ministers express their horror at such practices ; do not therefore sin against the generation of the lord's children so far , as to charge the guilt of some murdering rogues , upon these who would be very glad to see justice done upon such villains . phil. you say very fair , and i am glad to hear you condemning these crimes so directly : and i am as desirous as any living can be , to be furnished with clear evidences of believing as much good as is possible of all mankind . but let me tell you plainly , that the constant concealing of these murderers , whom no search which those in authority have caused to make , could discover , tho the robbers carried with them often a great deal of furniture , and other goods , which must have been conveyed to some adjacent houses , but could never be found out , after so many repeated facts of that nature , forceth upon the most charitable , a suspicion which i love not to name . next , let me tell you that these things are very justifiable from the principles your friends go upon : for if we be by oath bound to discover all malignants or evil instruments , that they may be brought to condign punishment ; and if our conformity be so notorious a wickedness , and such a plain breach of covenant , in the punishment whereof the magistrate is supine and backward , then let every one compare the doctrine of the late pamphlets , from p. 282. to p. 408. chiefly 404. and 405. and declare whether by the rules laid down in them , any private persons upon heroical excitations may not execute vengeance on these who are so guilty of gross and notorious backsliding and defection : and what may not be expected of this nature from him who hesitates to call the invading of the bishop with a pistol , an accursed act ; and will only condemn it , as rash , precipitant ; and of evil example : and that not simply neither , but all circumstances being considered , and their exigences duly ballanced ? which makes me apprehend his greatest quarrel with that deed was ; that it misled the designed effect , and so was done inadvertently , or too publickly , or upon some such particular ground , which may have occasioned its miscarriage . but to deal roundly with you , i shall freely acknowledg , if the doctrine of resistance by private subjects against these in authority be lawful , i see no ground to condemn such practices : for if we may rise in arms against those in authority over us , and coerce and punish them ; why not much rather against our fellow subjects , and those to whom we owe no obedience , especially when we judg them to have transgressed so signally , and to have injured us to a high degree ? which is the case , as most of you state it , with the ministers that are conformable . and from this , let me take the freedom to tell you , that the whole mystery of iesuitism doth not discover a principle more destructive of the peace and order of mankind , than this doctrine of the lawfulness of private persons executing vengeance on gross offenders , where the transgression is judged signal , the magistrate is judged remiss , and the actors pretend an heroick excitation . this puts a sword in a mad mans hands , and arms the whole multitude , and is worse than theirs , who will have such deeds warranted by some supreme eccl●●●astical power , or at least by a confessarius and director of the conscience . indeed this may justly possess the minds of all that hear it with horror , it being a direct contradiction of the moral law , and an overturning of all the societies of mankind , and laws of nature . eud. i am more charitable than you are : for though i must acknowledg what you have alledged to be the native consequence of what is asserted in that book , yet i am inclined to believe he intended not these things should be drawn from it , since he in plain terms , pag. 402. condemns these outrages . i confess , his zeal to defend all naphthali said , and to refute every thing the conformist alledged , hath engaged him further than himself could upon second thoughts allow of . and as for the instances of phine●as , elijah , or other prophets , the argument from them was so fully obviated in our first conference , that i am confident little weight will be laid upon it . but now , methinks , it is more than time we considered the importance of that difference about which all this ado is made : for one would expect it must be a very concerning matter , which hath occasioned so much bloud and confusion , and continues still to divide us asunder , with so much heat and bitterness . i confess , my discerning is weak , which keeps me from apprehending what importance can be in it to exact so much zeal for it , that it should be called the kingdom of christ ●●●n earth , his interest , cau●e , and work , which therefore should be ●a●nestly conten●ed for . i●ot . the natural man receiveth not the things of god , and the● are 〈◊〉 , to him : but wisdom 〈◊〉 of 〈◊〉 ●●●●dren . that we plead for , is christ's kingdom , which is in opposition both to the proud aspirings of the prelates , and to the violent invasions of the civil powers : we are therefore on christ's side , asserting that none in earth can institute new officers in his house , but those he hath appointed : and that he hath appointed none higher than ordinary preaching presbyters , among whom he will have an equality observed : which whosoever contradict , with diotrephes , they l●ve the preeminence , and lord it over god's inheritance . phil. though i will not fly so high with my pretensions in big words , yet the issue of our discourse will declare if i have not better grounds to assert episcopacy to have descended from the apostles , and apostolical time● , into all the ages and corners of the church who received it : and that there is nothing in scripture that contradicts ●uch an institution . but i shall ●efer the deci●ion of thi● to all impartial minds . basil. truly , when without a particular examen , i consider the whole matter in general , i can see little to except against episcopal government , that i cannot avoid the severe thoughts of suspecting the great ave●sion many have at it , to be occasioned from the ●●●rit of contradiction is in many which lus●●th to 〈◊〉 , or from their opposition to these in a●thority : ●or i doubt not but if presbytery had the same countenance from the laws , it should meet with the same contradiction from these who seem to adhere to no principle so firmly , as to their resisting the powers that are ordained of god. but the handling of this , with that fulness and clearness which the noise made about it requires , will take up more of our time than we can be now masters of , and may well claim a new conference : therefore we shall remit any further discourse about it to our next meeting . isot. it is agreed to : and i shall let you see , that for all the railings of these days discourse , my patience is yet strong enough to allow of another enterview , though i confess my self weary of so much bad company , whose evil communications are designed to corrupt my good principles . phil. i confess , my weariness is as great as yours , though upon a very different account : for i am ●urfeited of the contention and heat hath been among us , and long for an end of our conferences upon these heads , which i shall now go through once for all , being encouraged to meet with you again , because this penance is near an end : out of which if i were once extricated , i am resolved to meddle in such contentious themes no more . eud. having swallowed the ox , we must not stick on the rump . it is true , your converse is extreamly agreeable , yet my stomach begins to turn at so much disputing : but , i hope , to morrow shall put an end to it : and therefore i doubt not of your return , to finish what you hitherto carried on . and so a good night to you . the fourth conference . isotimus . i come now upon our last nights appointment , to pursue this conference to its end , and to examine what these grounds are which endear episcopacy to you so much , especially considering the great disorders and con●usions its re-establishment among us hath occasioned . for my part , i cannot see what can reconcile the world to it , much less what should enamour you so of it , as to make you adhere to it , notwithstanding all the evils spring from it , and all these black characters of god's displeasure are upon it : which really appear so signally to me , that it seems a fighting against god , to adhere longer to it . phil. truly , you and i enter on this s●bject with an equal surprize , though upon very different accounts : for i must tell you freely , that after i have with all the application of mind , and freedom of thoughts imaginable , considered what could engage so many in this island , into so much zeal and rage against the order , i am not able to satisfie my self about it . that venerable order having such a native tendency for advancing of true religion , peace , order , and every thing that is excellent : that the aversion and prejudices so many have drunk in against it , seem as unjust , as unconquerable , and look like a part of god's controversie with us ; whereby we are blindly carried into so much unjustifiable zeal against that , which if well managed , might prove an excellent mean for reviving the power of religion , that hath suffered so great decays . i shall not deny , but on our part there have been great failings , for which god's anger hangs over our heads : and that he permits all this opposition we meet with for punishing us for our sins , which have justly provoked god to make us base and contemptible in the sight of the people . and this i hope shall be an effectual mean of humbling us , and of purging us from our dross : whereby this holy order being again managed with the ancient spirit , may appear into the world in its p●imitive lustre ; and be attended with the blessings that then followed it , to the wonder and conviction of all men . but let me add , the opposition some firy spirits have given the establishment of episcopacy , deserves much of the blame of its being so little succesful in the great work of the gospel : for always bitter envy and strife produce confusion and every evil work : therefore when you are to view episcopacy in its amiable and lovely colors , let me send you back to that cloud of witnesses , who for the testimony of iesus endured all manner of torments , were torn by beasts , slain by the sword , burnt in the fire ; and in a word , who preached the everlasting gospel through the world. how many churches did these bishops found with their labors in preaching , and water not only with their tears , but their blood ? how sublime was their piety ? how frevent were their sermons ? how constant were their labors ? how strict was their discipline ? how zealous were they against heresies ? and how watchful against vice ? in a word , read but the histories and writings of those great worthies , who were by the confession of all men , bishops , and had more absolute authority over the inferior clergy , than is pretended to among us ? and then tell me , if you have not changed your verdict of that order . have there been such men in the christian world , as were ignatius , polycarp , i●●naeus , cyprian , thaumaturg , athanasius , basil , nazianzen , martin , ambrose , chrysostome , augustin , and a thousand more ? these were , after the apostles , the greatest glories of the christian church : and were burning and shining lights . it is in their lives , writings and decrees , that i desire you to view episcopacy : and if it have any way fallen from that first and fair original , direct your thoughts and zeal to contrive and carry on its recovery to its former purity and servor : but take it not at the disadvantage , as it may have suffered any thing from the corruptions of men , in a succession of so many ages ; for you know the sacraments , the ministery , and all the parts of religion have been soiled , and stained of their first beauty by their corrupt hands , to whose care they were committed . but he were very much to blame , who would thereupon quarrel these things . i shall therefore intreat you will consider that order , either in it self , or as it flourished in the first ages of the church , and not as prejudices or particular escapes may have represented it to you . eud. that you may both understand one another better , let me suggest to you the right stating of that you differ about , that you be not contending about words , or notions of things , which may appear with various shapes , and faces ; one whereof may be amiable , and another ugly : give therefore a clear and distinct account of that episcopacy you own and assert . poly. since philarcheus hath appealed to the ancient church , for the true pattern of episcopacy , i shall faithfully represent to you , what the office and power of their bishops was , and how it took its first rise and growth among them ; and then i shall leave it to be discussed , how lawful or allowable it is of it self . the iews had among them , beside the temple-worship , which was typical , their synagogues , not only over the land , but through all the corners of the world into which they were dispersed ; which were called their prosenchae among the greeks , and romans . thither did they meet for the dayly worship of god ; there did they likewise meet on their sabbaths , and recited their philacteries , or liturgies , and heard a portion of the law read : which was divided in so many sections , that it might be yearly read over : there was also a word of exhortation used , after the law was read : and there were in these synagogues , office-bearers separated for that work , who were to order the worship , and the reading of the law , and were to censure sins , by several degrees of excommunications , casting them out of the synagogue : they were likewise to see to the supplying the necessities of the poor . now if we consider the practice of our saviour , and his apostles , we shall find them studying to comply with the forms received among the iews , as much as was possible , or consistent with the new dispensation ; which might be instanced in many particulars , as in both sacraments , the forms of worship , the practice of excommunication , and these might be branched out into many instances . and indeed since we find the apostles yielding so far in compliance with the iews about the mosaical rites , which were purely typical , and consequently antiquated by the death of christ , we have a great deal of more reason to apprehend they complied with their forms in things that were not typical , but rather moral , such as was the order of their worship : these things only excepted , wherein the christian religion required a change to be made : and this the rather , that wherever they went promulgating the gospel , the first offer of it was made to the iews ; many of whom believed , but were still zealous of the traditions of their fathers . and so it is not like , that they who could not be prevailed upon to part with the mosaical rites , for all the reasons were offered against them , were so easily content to change their other forms , which were of themselves useful and innocent . now since we see the apostles retained , and improved so many of their rites and customs , why they should have innovated the government of their synagogues , will not be easily made clear : especially since they retained the names of bishop , presbyter , and deacon , which were in use among the iews , and since they did bless and separate them by the imposition of hands , which had been also practised among the iews : and all this will appear with a clearer visage of reason , if we consider the accounts given in the acts , or rules prescribed in the epistles of the apostles , about the framing and constituting their churches . all which speak out nothing of a new constitution , but tell only what rules they gave for regulating things ; which from the stile they run in , seem to have been then constituted : and is very far either from moses's language in the pentateuch , or from the forms of the institution of the sacraments : and except the little we have of the institution of deacons , nothing like an institution occurs in the new testament ; and yet that seems not the institution of an order , but a particular provision of men for serving the h●llenists in an office already known and received . now let me here send you to the masters of the iewish learning , particularly to the eminently learned , and judicious doctor lightfoot , who will inform you , that in every synagogue there was one peculiarly charged with the worship , called the bishop of the congregation , the angel of the church , or the minister of the synagogue : and besides him , there were three , who had the civil judicatory ; who judged also about the receiving proselytes , the imposition of hands , &c. and there were other three , who gathered , and distributed the almes . now the christian religion taking place , as the gospel was planted in the cities , where it was chiefly preached , these forms and orders were retained , both name and thing : for we cannot think that the apostles , whose chief work was the gaining of souls from gentilism or iudaism , were very sollicitous about modes of government ; but took things as they found them . only the elder and greater christians they separated for church offices , and retained an inspection over them themselves . and abstracting from what was said about the synagogues , it is natural to think , that when the apostles left them , and died , they did appoint the more eminent to be over-seers to the rest ; which why not every where , as well as was done by s. paul to timothy and titus , is not easily to be proved . but this is yet more rational from what was premised about the synagogue pattern ; only they did not restrict themselves to that number , for the number of the presbyters was indefinite ; but the deacons were according to their first original , restricted to the number seven . thus the first form was , that there was one whose charge it was to over-see , feed , and rule the flock : and where the number of the christians was small , they met all in one place for worship , and it was easie for the bishop to overtake the charge . but for the spreading of the gospel , he had about him a company of the elder , and more eminent christians , who were designed and ordained for diffusing the gospel through the cities , villages , and places adjacent : and these presbyters were as the bishop's children educated , and formed by him , being in all they did , directed by him , and accountable to him , and were as probationers for the bishoprick : one of them being always chosen to succeed in the seat when vacant through the bishop's death . now all these lived together , as in a little college , and were maintained out of the charitable oblations of the people , which were deposited in the bishop's hands , and divided in four parts ; one falling to the bishop , another to the clergy , a third to the widows and orphans , and other poor persons , and a fourth to the building of edifices for worship . thus the churches were planted , and the gospel was disseminated through the world. but at first every bishop had but one parish , yet afterwards when the numbers of the christians encreased , that they could not conveniently meet in one place ; and when through the violence of the persecutions they durst not assemble in great multitudes , the bishops divided their charges in lesser parishes , and gave assignments to the presbyters of particular flocks , which was done first in rome , in the beginning of the second century : and these churches assigned to presbyters , as they received the gospel from the bishop , so they owned a dependence on him as their father , who was also making frequent excursions to them , and visiting the whole bounds of his precinct . and things continued thus in a parochial government , till toward the end of the second century , the bishop being chiefly entrusted with the cure of souls , a share whereof was also committed to the presbyters , who were subject to him , and particularly were to be ordained by him ; nor could any ordination be without the bishop ; who in ordaining , was to carry along with him the con●urrence of the presbyters , as in every other act of ecclesiastical iurisdiction . but i run not out into more particulars , because of an account of all these things which i have drawn with an unbiass'd ingenuity , and as much diligence as was possible for me to bring along with me to so laborious a work : and this i shall send you when our conference shall be at an end . but in the end of the se●ond century , the churches were framed in another mould from the division of the empire : and the bishops of the cities did , according to the several divisions of the empire , associate in synods with the chief bishop of that division or province , who was called the metropolitan , from the dignity of the city where he was bishop . and hence sprang provincial synods , and the superiorities , and precedencies of bishopricks , which were ratified in the council of nice , as ancient customs , they being at that time above an hundred years old . in the beginning of the third century , as the purity of churchmen begun to abate , so new methods were devised for preparing them well to those sacred functions , and therefore they were appointed to pass through several degrees before they could be deacons , presbyters , or bishops . and the orders of porters , readers , singers , exorcists ( or catechists ) acolyths ( who were to be the bishops attendants ) and sub-deacons , were set up ; of whom mention is made first by cyp●ian : and these degrees were so many steps of probationership to the supreme order . but all this was not able to keep out the corruptions we●e breaking in upon church office●s , e●pe●●ally after the fou●th century , that the empire became christian : which as it broug●t much riches and splendor on church emp●oyments , so it let in g●eat swarms of corrupt men on the christian assemblies : and then the election to church offices , which was formerly in the hands of the people , was taken from them , by reason of the tumults and disorders were in these elections : which sometimes ended in blood , and occasioned much faction , and schism . and ambitus became now such an universal sin among churchmen , that in that century , monasteries were founded in divers places by holy bishops , as by basile , augustine , martin , and others ; who imitated the example of those in egypt , and nitria ; whose design was the purifying of these who were to serve in the gospel . it is true , these seminaries did also degenerate , and become nests of superstition and idleness : yet it cannot be denied , but this was an excellent constitution , for rightly forming the minds of the designers for holy o●ders ; that being trained up in a course of devotion , fasting , solitude , abstraction from the world , and poverty , they might be better qualified for the discharge of that holy function . and thus i have given you a general draught and perspective of the first constitution of churches , together with some steps of their advance● , and declinings : but i despair not to give you an ampler account , and plan of their rules and forms . mean while , let this suffice . phil. from what you have told us , i shall propose the notion i have of episcopacy , that the work of a bishop , as it is chiefly to feed the flock , so it is more particularly to form , educate , and try these who are to be admitted to church imployments ; and to over-see , direct , admonish , and reprove these who are already setled in church offices : so that as the chief tryal of those who are to be ordained , is his work , the ordinations ought to be performed by him ; yet not so as to exclude the assistance and concurrence of presbyters , both in the previous tryal , and in the ordination it self . but on the other hand , no ordination ought to be without the bishop . and as for jurisdiction , though the bishop hath authority to over-see , reprove , and admonish the clergy ; yet in all acts of publick jurisdiction , as he ought not to proceed without their concurrence , so neither ought they without his knowledge and allowance , determine about ecclesiastical matters . as for the notion of the distinct offices of bishop and presbyter , i confess , it is not so clear to me : and therefore since i look upon the ●acramental actions , as the highest of sacred pe●formances ; i cannot but acknowledge these who are empowered ●or them , must be of the highest office in the ch●rch . so i do not alledge a bishop to be a dis●inct office from a presbyter ; but a different degree in the same office , to whom for order and unities sake , the chief inspection and care of ecclesiastical matters ought to be referred , and who shall have authority to curb the insolencies of some factious and turbulent spirits . his work should be to feed the flock by the word and sacraments , as well as other presbyters ; and especially to try and ordain entrants , and to over-see , direct , and admonish such as bear office . and i the more willingly incline to believe bishops and presbyters , to be the several degrees of the same office , since the names of bishop and presbyter , are used for the same thing in scripture ; and are also used promiscuously by the writers of the two first centuries . now isotimus , when you bring either clear scripture , or evident reason , for proving this to be unlawful , or unexpedient , you shall shake my kindness to this constitution , whose venerable antiquity hath conciliated so much reverence from me to it , that it will be a great attempt to change my value of it . isot. these are all brave stories well contrived for triumphing among ignorants . but these pretences f●om antiquity have been so bat●led by the learned assertors of pre●byterial government , that i wonder how you can so confidently vouch them , ●ince there is not a vestige of any dispa●ity before the 140th year after christ . and we know the mystery of iniquity wrought in the days of the apostles , and that then there was a diotrophes who loved the preeminence , and the darkness and obscurity of the rise and progress of prelacy , doth the more confirm me , that it was the mystery of iniquity . the pretence from ignatius's epistles , hath been often overthrown ; and there are words in these epistles which clearly prove them to be the contrivance of some impostor , they being so inconsistent with the strain of religion , and truth of the gospel , not to speak of the orthodoxy and piety of ignatius , and the simplicity of these times , which demonstrate their interpolation evidently , for all the pains doctor hamond hath been at to assert their faith : and therefore these c●n furnish you with no argument . see pag. 145. and 151. poly. i confess i can hear you tell over the arguments of these pamphlets with some pa●ience : but truly in this instance , i know ●ot how to treat you , or rather him in whose name you speak , who yet would earnestly perswade the world of the great skill , he and his friends have in these things . surely they are the men of wisdom ! and one may as securely pull the hairs out of a lion's beard , as twit them with the least deg●ee of igno●ance . but , pray , tell your learned friend , that in his next publick appearance , he meddle no more with antiquity before he know it better , and discover not so much ignorance , that one of a months standing in that study may laugh at him . pray , sir , are you in earnest , when you tell me that for 140 years after christ , there is no vestige of prelacy on record ? will you not believe irenaeus , who lived at that time , though he wrote some years after , and reckons the succession of the bishops of rome from the days of the apostles ? or if the writings and records of that time be lost , will you give no credit in a historical matter to those who followed that time , and drew their accounts from writings then extant , though now lost , such as tertullian , cyprian , but especially eusebius , who gives the succession of the bishops , in the several great sees , from the apostles days ? certainly , he who was born but about an hundred years after the time you mark , would have had some knowledge of so great a change . but if there was no vestige of prelacy before the year 140 in which it first appeared , what time will you allow for its spreading through the world ? or was it in an instant received every where ? were all the pretenders so easily en●lamed to this paroxism of ambition ? and were all the other presbyters so tame , as to be so ●asily whed●ed out of their rights , without one protestation on the contrary ? how came the eclipse of the church to a total obscuration in one minute ? what charm was there in prelacy at that time , that the world was so inchanted with it ; and that so soon after s. iohn's death , when polycarp , and many more of the apostolical men did yet survive ? and how came it , that all the churches did so unanimously concur in the defection , and not so much as two witnesses appeared to fight against this beast ? let me tell you freely , there is not a ravery in don quixot's adventures , or amadis de gaul , but is liker to prevail on my belief , than this romance . but for ignatius's epistles , the hazard of the issue of the debate about them is very unequal : for if these epistles be his , then he dying so near s. iohn's days , the cause of presbytery will be undone . but though they be not his , the episcopal party sustain small prejudice : for from other traces of antiquity , it can be made as clear , that episcopacy was in the church from the days of the apostles , as any historical thing which is at so great distance from our time . but for your friends exceptions at these epistles , they betray his great skill , and tell clearly , that he understands not the question , and that he h●th never read a page of doctor hamond , though with his usual arrogance , he slights all he saith : for had he read any pa●t of his dissertation , he would have made a difference betwixt the old vulgar edition of these epistles , whose interpolations that learned doctor acknowledgeth , and the late edition of them by the learned vossius , according to the medicean codex , whose authority he only voucheth . now had he known this , would he have cited words out of them , which are not of the true edition asserted by doctor hamond , but are of the old vulgar and rejected one ? certainly , had he read any thing of that debate , which hath been truly managed with much subtil critical learning on both sides , he could not have stumbled unto such a mistake . but his reading , it is like , riseth not above pamphlets ; and finding these words cited on the same design , before the late editions of ignatius came out ; he , without examining , took them upon trust from second hand . but i shall not run out farther upon ignatius's epistles , than to recommend their perusal to you , and then i am confident you will discern such a native , simple , and sincerely pious , and devout strain in them , so unlike the swelled stile , or purposes of interpolated writings , that they will be their own testimony for convincing you of their genuineness : but the exceptions against them being so fully , and so lately , with an amazing diligence , answered by doctor pearson , i shall remit you to his labors , if you intend to examine this matter accurately . isot. your conformist did likewise alledge the 40 , but he should have said the 38 apostolical canon , with a hint , as if fifty of these might have been the apostles appointments : though the heap of them is so full of novelties , that their antiquity cannot be pleaded by any who knows the state of the ancient church ; as appears from the 3 , 17 , and 25 canons : and were these canons received , they would prejudge more than advance the cause you maintain , as will appear from the 4 , 33 , 36 , and 80 canons , not to mention the 24 , 26 , 28 , 41 , 53 , 57 , and 75. and in a word , these canons do only allow of a precedency of order , but not of your prelatick power and superiority , that claims the sole power of ordination and jurisdiction : see pag. 148. poly. truly , sir , if the former exceptions did prove your author a second hand writer , who voucheth antiquity upon the testimony of others , this doth it much more . for i am sure had he but read over those canons , which might be done in half an hour , he had argued this point at another rate : and had he seen the edition of dionysius exiguus , he had not accused the conformist for citing that canon , as the fortieth , since it is so in his division , who was their first publisher in the latine church , tho it be the thirty ninth in the greek division . but i will deal roundly in this matter , and acknowledge that collection to be none of the apostles nor clement's , since all that passed under clement's name was accounted spurious , except his first epistle to the corinthians . nor was this a production of the first two ages . for the silence of the writers of those centuries gives clear evidence for their novelty : they not being cited for the decision of things then in controversie , wherein they are express , as in the matter of easter , the rebaptizing hereticks , and divers other particulars . yet in the fourth and fifth century , reference is after made to some elders rules of the church , which are to be found no where but in this collection . the apostolical canons are also sometimes expresly mentioned : and this gives good ground to believe there were from the third century and forward , some rules general received in the church , and held apostolical , as being at first introduced by apostolical men . this was at first learnedly made out by de marca concord . lib. 3. c. 2. and of late more fully by that most ingenious and accurate searcher into antiquity beveregius in his preface to his annotations on these canons . yet i am apt to think , they were only preserv'd by an oral tradition : and that no collection of them was agreed on , and publish'd before the fifth century . it is certain , the latine church in pope innocent 's days acknowledged no canons but those of nice . and many of the canons in this collection , we find among canons of other councils , particularly in that of antioch ; without any reference to a preceding authority that had enjoined them : which we can hardly think they had omitted , had they received the collection ( i speak of ) as apostolical . and that of the triple immersion in baptism , looks like a rule , no elder than the arrian controversie . they began first to appear under the name of the apostles canons in the fifth century , which made pope gelasius with a synod of seventy bishops condemn them as apocryphal ; though i must add , that the authority of that pretended council and decree , though generally received , be on many accounts justly questionable : and yet by this we are only to understand , that he rejected that pretended authority of the apostles prefixed to these canons . in the beginning of the sixth century they were published by dionysius exiguus , who prefixed fifty of them to his translation of the greek canons ; but he confesses they were much doubted by many . at the same time they were published in the greek church with the addition of thirty five more canons , and were acknowledged generally . iustinian cites them often in the novels , and in the sixth novel calls them , the canons of the holy apostles , kept and interpreted by the fathers . and the same authority was ascribed to them by the council in trullo . these things had been pertinently alledged if you had known them , but for your friends niblings at them , if you will but give your self the trouble of reading these canons , you will be ashamed of his weakness , who manageth his advantage so ill . and to instance this but in one particular , had he read these canons himself , could he have cited the eighty which is among the latter additions , and passed by the sixth , which is full to the same purpose ? but for that impudent allegation , as if a bare precedency had been only ascribed to bishops by these canons , look but on the 14. the 30. 37. 40. 54. and 73. and then pass your verdict on your friends ingenuity , or his knowledg . by the 14. no churchman may pass from one parish to another without his bishop's sentence , otherwise he is suspended from ecclesiastical functions : and if he refuse to return , when required by his bishop , he is to be accounted a churchman no more . by the 30. a presbyter , who in contempt of his bishop gathers a congregation apart , having nothing to condemn his bishop of , either as being unholy or unjust , he is to be deposed , as one that is ambitious , and tyrannous ; and such of the clergy or laity as join with them , are likewise to be censured . by the 37. the bishop hath the care of all church matters , which he must administrate as in the sight of god. by the 39. the bishop hath power over all the goods of the church ; and the reason given is , that since the precious souls of men are committed to him , it is much more just he have the charge of the goods of the church . by the 54. if a clergy-man reproach their bishop , he is to be deposed , for it is written , thou shalt not curse the ruler of thy people . and by the 73. a bishop , when accused , is only to be judged of by other bishops . now from these hints , judg whether there be truth in that assertion , that only a precedency is asserted in these canons : and if all the power is now pleaded for , be not there held out ; not to mention the canon was cited by the conformist , that presbyters or deacons might finish nothing without the bishop's sentence , since the souls of the people are trusted to him . as for the sole power of ordination and jurisdiction , i am sure none among us do claim it , but willingly allow the presbyters a concurrence in both these . and as to what your friend saith of cyprian , it is of a piece with the learning and ingenuity that runneth through the rest of his discourse , from page 150 to page 160. where for divers pages he belabours his reader with brave shews of learning and high invention , so that no doubt he thinks he hath performed wonders , and fully satisfied every scruple concerning the rise and progress of episcopacy . isot. i pray you , do not fly too high , and make not too much ado about any small advantages you conceive you have of my friend : but upon the whole matter i am willing to believe there was a precedency pretty early begun in the church , which i shall not deny was useful and innocent , tho a deviation from the first pattern : neither shall i deny , that holy men were of that order : but when it is considered what a step even that precedency was to lordly prelacy , and how from that the son of perdition rose up to his pretence of supremacy ; we are taught how unsafe it is to change any thing in the church , from the first institution of its blessed head , who knew best what was fit for it , according to whose will all things in it should be managed . poly. it hath been often repeated , that nothing was ever so sacred , as to escape that to which all things , when they fall in the hands of mortals , are obnoxious . and may not one that quarrels a standing ministery , argue on the same grounds , a ministers authority over the people , gave the rise to the authority bishops pretend over ministers , and so the ministery will be concluded the first step of the beast's throne ? or may not the authority your judicatories pretend to be at the same rate struck out , since from lesser synods sprung greater ones , from provincial rose generals , and from these oecumenical ones with the pretence of infallibility ? but to come nearer you , that whole frame of metropolitans and patriarchs was taken from the division of the roman empire , which made up but one great national church : and so no wonder the bishop of the imperial city of that empire , was the metropolitan of that church : yet he was not all that neither , since he had no authority over his fellow patriarchs , being only the first in order , which truly were the bishops of that church : what they were for the first four ages , it was never judged an absurdity to grant to them still : tho the ruin of the roman empire , and its division into so many kingdoms , which are constituted in various national churches , do alter the present frame of europe so entirely , from what was then ; that with very good reason what was then submitted to , on the account of the unity of the empire , may be now undone by reason of the several kingdoms , which are national churches within themselves ; and need not to own so much as the acknowledgment of primacy to any , but to the metropolitan of their own kingdom . and it seems the interest of princes , as well as churches , to assert this . but for the pretence of the pope's supremacy episcopacy was so far from being judged a step to it , that the ruin of the episcopal authority over presbyters , and the granting them exemptions from the jurisdiction of their ordinary , was the greatest advance the roman bishop ever made in his tyrannical usurpation over churches . i need not here tell so known a matter , as is that of the exemption of the regulars , who being subject to their own superiors and generals , and by them to the pope , were sent through the world in swarms ; and with great shews of piety , devotion , and poverty , carried away all the esteem and following from the secular clergy ; who were indeed become too secular , and these were the pope's agents and emissaries , who brought the world to receive the mark of the beast , and wonder at her . for before that time , the popes found more difficulty to carry on their pretensions , both from secular princes and bishops : but these regulars being warranted to preach and administer the sacraments without the bishop's license , or being subject and accountable to him ; as they brought the bishops under great contempt , so they were the pope's chief confidents in all their treasonable plots against the princes of europe . and when at the council of trent , the bishops of spain being weary of the insolencies of the regulars , and of the papal yoak , designed to get free from it . the great mean they proposed , was to get episcopacy declared to be of divine right , which would have struck out both the one and the other . but the papal party foresaw this well , and opposed it with all the artifice imaginable : and lainez the jesuit , did at large discourse against it ; and they carried it so , that it was not permitted to be declared of divine right . and by this , judg if it be likely that the papacy owes its rise to episcopacy , since the declaring it to be of divine right , was judged one of the greatest blows the papal dominion could have received , as the abusing of the episcopal authority , was the greatest step to its exaltation . isot. be in these things what may be , i am sure from the beginning it was not so , since christ did so expresly prohibit all dominion and authority among his disciples , when he said , but it shall not be so among you : but whosoever will be great among you , let him be your minister , luke 22.26 . whereby he did not only condemn a tyrannical domination , but simply all authority , like that the lords of the gentiles exercised over them . see page 88. crit. i confess , the advantages some have drawn from these words of christ , for deciding this question , have many times appeared strange to me , their purpose being so visibly different from that to which they are applied . but if we examine the occasion that drew these words from christ , it will furnish us with a key for understanding them aright : and that was the frequent contentions were among the disciples about the precedency in the kingdom of christ : for they were in the vulgar iudaical error , who believed the messiah was to be a temporal prince , and so understood all the pompous promises of the new dispensation liberally , and thought that christ should have restored israel in the literal meaning : therefore they began to contend who should be preferred in his kingdom : and the wife of zebedee did early bespeak the chief preferments for her sons . yea , we find them sticking to this mistake even at christ's ascension , by the question then moved , concerning his restoring the kingdom at that time to israel . now these contentions , as they sprung from an error of their judgments , so also they took their rise from their proud ambition . and for a check to both , our saviour answers them , by telling the difference was to be betwixt his kingdom , and the kingdoms of the nations : these being exercised by grandeur and temporal authority , whereas his kingdom was spiritual , and allowed nothing of that ; since churchmen have not by christ a lordly or despotick dominion over christians committed to them , but a paternal and brotherly one ; by which in commanding , they serve their flock ; so that it is both a ministery and an authority . therefore the words of christ , it shall not be so among you , relate nothing to the degrees or ranks of churchmen , but to the nature of their power and jurisdiction over their flock , and not to their degrees among themselves , which appears evidently from the whole contexture of the words . and that he is not speaking of any equality among churchmen in their church power , appears from the mention is made of the greatest , and the chief ; he that is greatest among you , let him be as the younger ; and he that is chief , as he that doth serve : which shew he was not here designed to strike out the degrees of superiority , when he makes express mention of them ; but to intimate that the higher the degrees of ecclesiastical offices did raise them , they were thereby obliged to the more humility , and the greater labor . all which is evidently confirmed by the instance he gives of himself , which shews still he is not meaning of church power ( since he had certainly the highest ecclesiastical a●thority ) but only of civil dominion ; nothing of which he would assume . and if this place be to be applied to church power , then it will rather prove too much , that there should be no power at all among churchmen over other christians : for since the parallel runs betwixt the disciples , and the lords of the gentiles ; it will run thus , that tho the lords of the gentiles bear rule over their people , yet you must not over yours : so that this must either be restricted to civil authority , or else it will quite strike out all ecclesiastical iurisdiction . but how this should be brought to prove that there may not be several ranks in church offices , i cannot yet imagine . and as it is not thought contrary to this , that a minister is over your lay-elders and deacons , why should it be more contrary to it , that a rank of bishops be over ministers ? in a word , since we find the apostles exercising this paternal authority over other churchmen , it will clearly follow they understood not christ , as hereby meaning to discharge the several ranks of churchmen , with different degrees of power . but to tell you plainly what by these words of christ is clearly forbidden , i acknowledg that chiefly the pope's pretence to the temporal dominion over christendom , whether directly or indirectly , as the vicar of christ , is expresly condemned . next , all churchmen under what notion , or in what judicatory soever , are condemned , who study upon a pretence of the churches intrinsick power , to possess themselves of the authority , to determine about obedience due to kings or parliaments , and who bring a tyranny on the christians , and pr●cure what by arts , what by power , the secular arm to serve at their beck . whether this was the practice of the late general assemblies , or not , i leave it to all who are so old , as to remember how squares went then ; and if the leading men at that time , had not really the secular power ready to lacquay at their commands , so that they ruled in the spirit of the lords of the gentiles , whatever they might have pretended . and the following change of government did fully prove , that the obedience which was universally given to their commands , was only an appendage of the civil power , which was then directed by them : for no sooner was the power invaded by the usurper , who regarded their judicatories little , but the obedience payed to their decrees evanished . thus , i say , these who build all their pretences to parity on their mistakes of these words , did most signally despise and neglect them in their true and real meaning . now think not to retort this on any additions of secular power , which the munificence of princes may have annexed to the episcopal office ; for that is not at all condemned here : christ speaking only of the power churchmen , as such , derived from him their head , which only bars all pretensions to civil power on the title of their functions ; but doth not say that their functions render them incapable of receiving any secular power , by a secular conveyance from the civil magistrate . and so far have i considered this great and pompous argument against precedency in the church ; and am mistaken if i have not satisfied you of the slender foundations it is built upon : all which is also applicable to st. peter's words , of not lording it over their flocks . isot. you are much mistaken , if you think that to be the great foundation of our belief of a parity among churchmen , for i will give you another , ( page 91. ) which is this , that iesus christ the head of his church , did institute a setled ministery in his church , to feed and over-see the flock , to preach , to reprove , to bind , loose , &c. it is true , he gave the apostles many singular things beyond their successors , which were necessary for that time , and work , and were to expire with it : but as to their ministerial power which was to continue , he made all equal . the apostles also acknowledged the pastors of the churches , their fellow-laborors , and brethren . and the feeding and overseeing the flock , are duties so complicated together , that it is evident none can be fitted for the one , without they have also authority for the other . and therefore all who have a power to preach , must also have a right to govern , since discipline is referable to preaching , as a mean to its end : preaching being the great end of the ministery . these therefore who are sent upon that work , must not be limited in the other : neither do we ever find christ instituting a superiour order over preaching presbyters , which shews he judged it not necessary : and no more did the apostles , though they with-held none of the counsel of god from the flock . therefore this superior order usurping the power from the preaching elders , since it hath neither warrant , nor institution in scripture , is to be rejected , as an invasion of the rights of the church . in fine , the great advantage our plea for parity hath , is , that it proves its self , till you prove a disparity . for since you acknowledg it to be of divine right , that there be office●s in the house of god , except you prove the institution of several orders , an equality among them must be concluded . and upon these accounts it is that we cannot acknowledg the lawfulness of prelacy . phil. i am sure , if your friends had now heard you , they would for ever absolve you from designing to betray their cause by a faint patrociny ; since you have in a few words laid out all their forces : but if you call to mind what hath heen already said , you will find most of what you have now pleaded , to be answered beforehand . for i acknowledge bishop and presbyter , to be one and the same office ; and so i plead for no new office-bearers in the church . next , in our second conference , the power given to churchmen was proved to be double . the first branch of it , is their authority to publish the gospel , to manage the worship , and to dispense the sacraments . and this is all that is of divine right in the ministery , in which bishops and presbyters are equal sharers , both being vested with this power . but beside this , the church claims a power of jurisdiction , of making rules for discipline , and of applying and executing the same ; all which is indeed suitable to the common laws of societies , and to the general rules of scripture , but hath no positive warrant from any scripture precept . and all these constitutions of churches into synods , and the canons of discipline , taking their rise from the divisions of the world into the several provinces , and beginning in the end of the second , and beginning of the third century , do clearly shew they can be derived from no divine original ; and so were , as to their particular form , but of humane constitution : therefore as to the management of this jurisdiction , it is in the churches power to cast it in what mould she will : and if so , then the constant practice of the church for so many ages should determine us , unless we will pretend to understand the exigencies and conveniences of it better than they who were nearest the apostolical time . but we ought to be much more determined by the laws of the land , which in all such matters have a power to bind our consciences to their obedience , till we prove the matter of them sinful . now discover where the guilt lyes of fixing one over a tract of ground , who shall have the chief inspection of the ministery , and the greatest authority in matters of jurisdiction , so that all within that precinct be governed by him , with the concurring votes of the other presbyters : if you say , that thereby the ministers may be restrained of many things , which otherwise the good of the church requires to be done : i answer , these are either things necessary to be done by divine precept , or not : if the former , then since no power on earth can cancel the authority of the divine law , such restraints are not to be considered . but if the things be not necessary , then the unity and peace of the church is certainly preferable to them . i acknowledge a bishop may be tyrannical , and become a great burden to his presbyters ; but , pray , may not the same be apprehended from synods ? and remember your friends , how long it is , since they made the same complaints against the synods : and the hazard of an ill bishop is neither so fixed , nor so lasting , as that of a bad synod . for a bishop may die , and a good one succeed : but when a synod is corrupt , they who are the major part , are careful to bring in none , but such as are sure to their way ; whereby they propagate their corruption more infallibly than a bishop can do . and what if the lay ruling elders should bend up the same plea against the ministers , who do either assume a negative over them directly , or at least do what is equivalent , and carry every thing to the presbytery , synod , or general assembly , where they are sure to carry it against the lay-elders , they being both more in number , and more able with their learning and eloquence to confound the others ? but should a lay-elder plead thus against them , we are office-bearers instituted by christ , for ruling the flock , as well as you , and yet you take our power from us ; for whereas in our church sessions , which are of christ's appointment , we are the greater number , being generally twelve to one ; you ministers have got a device , to turn us out of the power : for you allow but one of us to come to your synods , and presbyteries , and but one of a whole presbytery to go to a national synod ; whereby you strike the rest of us out of our power : and thus you assert a preeminence over us , to carry matters as you please ? now isotimus , when in your principles you answer this , i will undertake on all hazards to satisfie all you can say , even in your own principles . next , may not one of the congregational way , talk at the same rate , and say , christ hath given his office-bearers full power to preach , feed , and oversee the flock ; and yet for all that , their power of overseeing is taken from them ; and put in the hands of a multitude , who being generally corrupt themselves , and lusting to envy , will suffer none to outstrip them : but are tyrannical over any they see minding the work of the gospel more than themselves ? and must this usurpation be endured and submitted to ? and let me ask you freely , what imaginable device will be fallen upon , for securing the church from the tyranny of synods , unless it be either by the magistrates power , or by selecting some eminent churchmen , who shall have some degrees of power beyond their brethren ? in a word , i deny not , but as in civil governments , there is no form upon which great inconveniences may not follow ; so the same is unavoidable in ecclesiastical government . but as you will not deny , monarchy to be the best of governments , for all the hazards of tyranny from it ; so i must crave leave to have the same impressions of episcopacy . crit. but suffer me to add a little for checking isotimus his too positive asserting of parity from the new testament ; for except he find a precept for it , his negative authority will never conclude it : and can only prove a parity lawful , and that imparity is not necessary . i shall acknowledge that without scripture warrants , no new offices may be instituted ; but without that , in order to peace , unity , decency , and edification , several ranks and dignities in the same office , might well have been introduced : whereby some were to be empowered either by the churches choice , or the kings authority , as overseers , or inspectors of the rest : who might be able to restrain them in the exercise of some parts of their functions , which are not immediatly commanded by god. and you can never prove it unlawful , that any should oversee , direct , and govern churchmen , without you prove the apostolical function unlawful : for what is unlawful , and contrary to the rules of the gospel , can upon no occasion , and at no time become lawful : since then both the apostles , and the evangelists exercised authority over presbyters ; it cannot be contrary to the gospel rules , that some should do it . to pretend that this superiority was for that exigent , and to die with that age , is a mere allegation without ground from scripture : for if by our lord's words , it shall not be so among you , all superiority among churchmen was forbid , how will you clear the apostles from being the first transgressors of it ? and further , if upon that exigent such superiority was lawful , then upon a great exigent of the church , a superiority may be still lawful . besides , it is asserted , not proved , that such an authority as s. paul left with timothy and titus , was to die with that age : for where the reason of an appointment continues , it will follow , that the law should also be coeval with the ground on which it was first enacted : if then there be a necessity that churchmen be kept in order , as well as other christians ; and if the more exalted their office be , they become the more subject to corruption , and corruptions among them be both more visible , and more dangerous than they are in other persons ; the same parity of reason that enjoyns a jurisdiction to be granted to churchmen over the faithful , will likewise determine the fitness of granting some excrescing power to the more venerable and approved of the clergy over others ; neither is this a new office in the house of god , but an eminent rank of the same office. isot. you study to present episcopacy in as harmless a posture as can be , yet that it is a distinct office , is apparent by the sole claim of ordination and iurisdiction they pretend to , and by their consecration to it , which shews they account it a second order : besides , that they do in all things carry as these who conceit themselves in a region above the presbyters . phil. i am not to vindicate neither all the practices , nor all the pretensions of some who have asserted this order , no more than you will do the opinions or actings of all your party : which when you undertake , then i allow you to charge me with what you will. but it is a different thing to say , that no ordination , nor greater act of jurisdiction , should pass without the bishop's consent , or concurrence ( which is all i shall pretend to , and is certainly most necessary for preserving of order and peace ) from asserting that the sole power for these s●ands in the bishops person . and though i do hold it schismatical to ordain without a bishop , where he may be had , yet i am not to annul these ordinations that pass from presbyters , where no bishop can be had : and this lays no claim to a new office , but only to a higher degree of inspection in the same office ; whereby the exercise of some acts of iurisdiction are restrained to such a method ; and this may be done either by the churches free consent , or by the king's authority . as for the consecration of bishops by a new imposition of hands , it doth not prove them a distinct office : being only a solemn benediction and separation of them for the discharge of that inspection committed to them : and so we find paul and barnabas ( though before that they preached the gospel , yet when they were sent on a particular commission to preach to the gentiles ) were blessed with imposition of hands , acts 13.3 . which was the usual ceremony of benediction . therefore you have no reason to quarrel this , unless you apprehend their managing this oversight the worse , that they are blessed in order to it : nor can you quarrel the office in the liturgy , if you do not think they will manage their power the worse , if they receive a new effusion of the holy ghost . and thus you see , how little ground there is , for quarrelling episcopacy upon such pretences . eud. i am truly glad you have said so much for confirming me in my kindness for that government : for if you evinces its lawfulness , i am sure the expediency of that constitution will not be difficult to be proved , both for the tryal of entrants , and the oversight of these in office : for when any thing lyes in the hands of a multitude , we have ground enough to apprehend what the issue of it will prove . and what sorry overly things these t●yals of entrants are , all know . ●ow little pains is taken to form their minds into a right sense of that function , to which they are to be initiated at one step , without either previous degree , or mature tryal ? and here i must say , the ruine of the church springs hence , that the passage to sacred offices lyes so patent , whereby every one leaps into them out of a secular life , having all the train of his vanities , passions , and carnal designs about him : and most part entering thus unpurified , and unprepared , what is to be expected from them , but that they become idle , vain and licentious , or proud , ambitious , popular and covetous ? i confess , things among us are not come to any such settlement , as might give a provision against this : but devise me one like a bishop's authority , who shall not confer orders to any , before either himself , or some other select and excellent persons , on whom he may with confidence devolve that trust , be well satisfied not only about the learning and abilities , but about the temper , the piety , the humility , the gravity , and discretion of such as pretend to holy orders : and that some longer tryal be taken of them by the probationership of some previous degree . indeed the poverty of the church , which is not able to maintain seminaries and colledges of such probationers , renders this design almost impracticable . but stretch your thoughts as far as your invention can send them , and see if you can provide such an expedient for the reforming of so visible an abuse , as were the bishop's plenary authority to decide in this matter . for if it lie in the hands of a plurality , the major part of these , as of all mankind , being acted by lower measures , the considerations of kinred , alliance , friendship , or powerful recommendations , will always carry through persons , be they what they will , as to their abilities and other qualifications : and a multitude of churchmen is less concerned in the shame can follow an unworthy promotion ; which every individual of such a company will be ready to bear off himself , and fasten on the plurality . but if there were one to whom this were peculiarly committed , who had authority to stop it , till he were clearly convinced that the person to be ordained , was one from whose labors good might be expected to the church , he could act more roundly in the matter : and it may be presupposed that his condition setting him above these low conside●ations , to which the inferiour clergy are more obnoxious , he would manage it with more caution ; as knowing that both before god and man , he must bear the blame of any unworthy promotion . and as for these in office , can any thing be more rational than that the inspection into their labors , their deportment , their conversation , and their dexterity in preaching and catechising , be not done mutually by themselves in a parity , wherein it is to be imagined , that as they degenerate , they will be very gentle to one another ? and when any inspection is managed by an equal , it opens a door to faction , envy , and emulation : neither are the private rebukes of an equal , so well received , nor will it be easie for one of a modest temper to admonish his fellow-presbyter freely . and yet how many things are there , of which churchmen have need to be admonished , in the discharge of all the parts of their function , especially when they set out first , being often equally void of experience and discretion ? but what a remedy for all this , may be expected from an excellent bishop : who shall either , if his health and strength allow it , be making excursions through his diocese , and himself observe the temper , the labors , and conversation of his clergy ? or at least trust this to such as he hath reason to confide most in , that so he may understand what admonitions , directions , and reproofs are to be given , which might obviate a great many indiscretions , and scandals that flow from churchmen . and the authority of such a person , as it would more recommend the reproofs to these for whom they were meant , so it could prevail to make them effectual , by a following censure if neglected . if the confusion some keep matters in , have hindered us for coming at a desired settlement , the office of episcopacy is not to be blamed , whose native tendency i have laid out before you , and in a fair idea , but in what was both the rule and practice of the ancient church , and wants not latter instances fo● verifying it . in a word , i must tell you , i am so far from apprehending danger to the church , from bishops having too much power , that i shall fear rather its slow recovery , because they have too little : which might be managed with all the meekness and humility imaginable , and indeed ought to be always accompanied with the advice and concurrence of the worthiest persons among the inferior clergy . but till you secure my fears of the greater part in all societies becoming corrupt , i shall not say by the major part of them , but by the better part . isot. i see you run a high strain , and far different from what was the discourse of this countrey a year ago , of an accommodation was in●ended , wherein large offers seemed to be made : but i now see by your ingenuous freedom , that though for a while you ( who were called a great friend to that design ) were willing to yield up some parts of the episcopal grandeur , yet you retain the ●oot of that lordly ambition still in your heart : and so though for some particular ends , either to deceive , or divide the lords people , you were willing to make an appearance of yielding ; yet it was with a resolution of returning with the first opportunity , to the old practices and designs of the prelats , of enhansing the ecclesiastical power to themselves , and a few of their associats . and this lets me see , what reason all honest people have to bless god that these arts and devices took not ; for an ethiopian cannot change his skin . phil. i confess to you freely , i was a little satisfied with these condescentions as any of you ; and though they gave up the rights of the church to a peevish and preverse party , whom gentleness will never gain : and therefore am no less satisfied than you are , that they did not take : and so much the more , that their refusing to accept of so large offers , gave a new and clear character to the world of their temper : and that it is a faction , and the servile courting of a party which they design , and not a strict adherence to the rules of conscience , otherwise they had been more tractable . eud. let me crave pardon to curb your humor a little , which seems too near a kin to isotimus his temper , though under a different character . for my part , i had then the same sense of episcopacy which i have just now owned . but wh●n i considered the ruines of religion which our divisions occasioned among us , and when i read the large offers s. augustin made on the like occasion to the donatists , i judged all possible attempts even with the largest condescentions for an accommodation , a worthy and pious design , well becoming the gravity and moderation of a bishop to offer , and the nobleness of these in authority to second with their warmest endeavors : for if it was blessed with success , the effect was great , even the setling of a broken and divided corner of the church : if it took not , as it fully exonered the church of the evils of the schism ; so it rendered the enemies of peace and unity the more unexcusable . only i must say this upon my knowledg , that whatever designs men of various sentiments fastened upon that attempt , it was managed with as much ingenuity and sincerity , as mortals could carry along with them in any purpose . i know it is expected and desired that a full account of all the steps of that affair be made publick , which a friend of ours drew up all along , with the progress of it . but at present my concern in one , whom a late pamphlet , ( as full of falshoods in matters of fact , as of weakness in point of reason ) hath mirepresented ( the case of accommodation , page 31 ) shall prevail with me to give an account of a particular pas●ed in a conference , which a bishop and two presbyters had with about thirty of the nonconformists , at pasley , on the 14th of december in the year 1670. when the bishop had in a long discourse recommended unity and peace to them , on the terms were offered ; he withal said much to the advantage of episcopacy as he stated it , from the rules and practices of the ancient church : offering to turn their pro●elyte immediately , if they should give him either clear scripture , good reason or warrant from the most primitive antiquity against such episcopacy . and with other things , he desired to know whether they would have joined in communion with the church , at the time of the council of nice , ( to carry them no higher ) or not ? for if they refused that , he added he would have less heartiness to desire communion with them , since of these he might say , let my soul be with theirs . but to that , a general answer was made by one , who said , he hoped they were not looked upon , as either so weak , or so wilful , as to determine in so great a matter , but upon good grounds : which were the same , that the asserters of presbyterian government had built on , which they judged to be conform both to scripture and primitive antiquity . but for scripture , neither he nor any of the meeting offered to bring a title : only he alledged some differences betwixt the anci●nt presidents , as he called them , and our bishops . but this was more fully enlarged by one who is believed to be among the most learned of the party : whose words with the answer given them , i shall read to you , as i take both from a journal was drawn of that affair , by one whose exactness and fidelity in it , can be attested by some worthy spectators , who read what he wrote after the meeting was ended , and judged it not only faithful , but often verbal : and that he was so careful to evite the appearances of partiality , that he seemed rather studious to be more copious in proposing what was said by these who differed from his opinion , whereas he contracted much of what was said by these he favored . the account follows . mr. — said , that he offered to make appear , the difference was betwixt the present episcopacy , and what was in the ancient church , in ●ive particulars . the first was , that they had n● archbishops in the primitive church . it is true , they had metropolitans ; but in a council o● ca●thage , it was decreed , that no bishop should be ●all●d ●ummus sacerdos , or princeps sacerdo●um , sed primae sedis episcopus . 2. the bishops in the ancient church were parochial , and not only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but in every village 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; for even in bethany we find there was a bishop . 3. two bishops might be in one church , such was ( not to mention alexander and narcissus at jerusalem ) augustin , who with valerius , was ordained bishop of hippo. 4. bishops were elected by their presbyters , so jerome tells us , that in alexandria the presbyters choosed one of their number to be bishop : and finally , the bishops were countable to and censurable by their presbyters : for either this must have been , otherwise they could not have been censured at all . for though we meet with some provincial synods in church history , as that of carthage in cyprians time , for the rebaptizing of hereticks ; and that at antioch against samo●atenus , yet these instances were rare , and recurred seldom ; therefore there must have been a power in presbyters to have censured their bishops , otherwise it could not have been done , which is absurd to imagine . and upon all these accounts , he judged the present episcopacy differed much from the ancient 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . upon this discourse , the bishop being weary of speaking much , looked to one of his presbyters , whom that pamphlet in derision , calls , a worthy doctor : who said , he found the ancient writings were so clear for a disparity among church-men , and so full of it , that he was assured none could doubt it , after he had looked but overly upon them : but as to what was alledged , he first assumed the five particulars , and spoke to them in order . to the first , he said , it was true , the term archbishop , was not used in the first centuries ▪ but in the council of nice , mention is not only made of metropolitans ; but the canon saith of them , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , let the ancient customs have their force : which shews the superiority of metropolitans to have been pretty early begun . and the canon that was cited , calling him , primae sedis episcopum , makes him primate : now we are not to contend about words , when the thing is clear : neither will ●any archbishop judg himself injured , if instead of that name , he be called metropolitan , or primate . besides , archiepiscopus , doth not import prince of the bishops ; but that he is the chief and first of them . and this prefixing of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , was not so odious : for nazianzen calls a bishop 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the areopagite 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for the second particular , it is true , bishops were in many places very thick set ; for in s. augustin ' s time it appears from the journals of a conference he had with the donati●ts , that there were about 500. bishopricks in a small tract of ground , but this was not universal : for theodoret tells he had 800. parishes in his diocese : and sozomen tells of great countries where there were very few bishops . and to prove this , the canons of ancyra make a difference betwixt the presbyters of the country from those of the city : and over the former there was a chorepiscopus ; which sh●ws that the whole diocese was not within the city . but this was not much to our purpose , since the more or the less did not vary the kind . and if a bishop might be over the ministers of the city , it cannot be unlawful that he be likewise set over more in the country : which can be no more essential to this matter , than it is , whether a parish be great or small . so that this difference may well make the one unexpedient , but unlawful it cannot be , if the other be lawful . for the third particular , there was a canon of the council of nice , that there might be but one bishop in a city . and he was amazed to hear the instance of s. augustin alledged , who was indeed ordained coadjutor to valerius ; but himself in his i 10. epist. condemns that , telling that he did it ignorantly , not knowing it to be contrary to the nicene rules : and therefore he tells how he designed eradius to be his successor , but would not ordain him in his own time , because of that canon . other instances of more bishops in one city , might have be●● more pertinently adduced to this purpose : but they were either coadjutors , such as nazianzen the son was to his father , or it was agreed to for setling a schism , as was done in the schism betwixt meletius and paulinus of antioch . and so s. augustin and the african bishops with him , offered to the donatists , that would they agree with them , these schismatical bishops should be continued as conjunct bishops with those already setled in those sees where th●y lived . it is true , some will have both linus and clemens to have succeeded s. peter at rome , and evodius and ignatius ●o have succeeded him at antioch : but for this , none assert that both succeeded to s. peter ; some being for one , and some for another : and so in a historical matter , the testimonies of these who lived nearest that time should decide the question . but the constitutions of clemens offer a solution to this , that at first there were in some cities two churches , one for those of the circumcision , and another for those of the uncircumcision : and after the destruction of jerusalem , this distinction was swallowed up . this is rational , and not without ground in scripture : besides , that that book , though none of clements , yet is ancient . and from all this it was clear , that there might be but one bishop in a city . as for the fourth particular , it is true , the ancient elections of bishops and presbyters were partly by synods , partly by presbyters , and partly popular . but as none would say it made any essential alteration of the constitution of a church , if instead of these elections , patrons had now a right of presenting to churches ; so though instead of these elections the king were patron of all the bishopricks , it did not alter the nature of episcopacy , much less justifie a schism against it . but beside this , it was known the capitular elections were still continued . and for the fifth particular , he desired they might give one instance in all antiquity , where a bishop was censured by presbyters : it being clear that they could finish nothing without the bishops sentence , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , was the words of the canon : and if they could finish nothing without the bishop , much less could they censure himself . provincial synods were begun in the second century , which appears from many synods were held about the day of observing easter . another expedient they had , when a bishop was heretical , that the neighboring bishops used to publish it in their cicular letters , which went around , and so they did excommunicate or d●pose them . but the regular way of procedure against bishops was in provincial synods , which were now offered to be se● up . yet even this exception could be no ground for separating , no more than in their principles lay elders had to separate from their ministers , who were their fixed president , and yet did not judge themselves censurable by these lay elders ; tho as to the power of ruling , they held them to be equal . with this he ended , saying , he had now proposed what occurred of a sudden to his tho ughts on these heads , though he believed much more might be adduced ; but he supposed there was enough said to clear these particulars . and it seems the person who had engaged him to this , judged so ; since neither he , nor any of his brethren , offered a reply . and by this account ( of the truth whereof i am willing all there present bear witness ) let the company judge of the ingenuity of these writers . but i shall pursue the discourse of the accommodation no further . basil. i am sure it hath left this conviction on all our consciences , that that party is obstinately fixed to their own humors , without the least color of reason . but now , i think , enough is said for justifying both the lawfulness and usefulness of episcopacy , and that there is nothing in it contrary either to the nature or rules of the gospel , or of right reason . and for any occasional evils may have risen from the restitution of this government , they are with no justice to be fastened on it . i know , many accuse their revenues and honors , thus the spirit that is in us lusteth to ' envy : and the eyes of many are evil , because the eyes of our pious progenitors were good . but indeed the ravenous appetites of some ostriches among us , have swallowed down so much of the churches patrimony , that what remains of it , can scarce provoke envy . and truly churchmen bestowing their revenues well , for alms-deeds , relieving the widows and orphans , and such modest hospitality and decency , as may preserve them from the disesteem of the vulgar , who measure their value of men much from these externals , there were no ground of quarrelling at them were their riches seven-fold increased . i am far from the thoughts of patronizing the german bishops , on whom i look as the disgrace of that order , who live in all things like other princes , making wars , and leading out armies : nor do they once consider their dioceses , or what they owe them as bishops , being wholly immersed in secular affairs . but for all this , i cannot see cause for blaming churchmen , their being either upon the publick councils of the kingdom in parliaments , or on his majesties secret councils , and that both because ecclesiastical matters are often in agitation , both in the one , and the other , in which none are so properly to be advised with as churchmen . occasion may also be frequently given to those who should be presupposed to understand the rules of equity and conscience best , to lay them before others , who either know them not , or mind them too little . and finally , they are subjects , as well as others , and by the clearness is to be expected in their judgments , and the calmness of their minds , together with their abstracted and contemplative manner of life , they may upon occasions be very prudent counsellors : and why a prince shall be deprived of the councils of that which should be the wisest and best part of his kingdom , no reason can be given . but for all this , i acknowledge there is great hazard from humane infirmity , lest by such medling they be too much intangled in matters extrinsick to them , whereby their thoughts may be drawn out from that inward , serene , and abstracted temper wherein their minds should be preserved ; both for more spiritual contemplation , and for a more close pursuing the work of the gospel , which ought still to be their chief labor . but i must touch this string no more , lest you say that the fox preacheth , and methinks our discourse is now near its period . isot. a great many things do yet remain which are untouched , and deserve to be better considered : for these crude dialogues poured out a great deal of stuff , which it is like the writer never examined : and in these , you who are his friends , must either vindicate him , or leave him to the mercy of every severe censurer . eud. his temper is well enough known to us , that he is very little sollicitous about the esteem or censures of men : and therefore , if all the particulars in his book , cannot maintain themselves to the judgments of rational and unprepossessed readers , he thinks them not worthy of his patrociny . and for that little trifling way of writing , by tracing every word in a book , or of making good all a man hath said , it is a task equally mean , unpleasant , and laborious : and looks like one contending for victory more than truth . were it a worthy thing for us to go and reckon how often and comes about in any of that pamphleteers long periods , or how often he writes false grammar , how harsh his phrases , and how tedious his periods are ? or make other such like remarks : alas , did we that , there were no end ! and yet such like are many of his reflections . but then how beautiful were our discourse , if interwoven with those elegancies of poor wretch , babler , impertinent , confident , ignorant , atheist , scoffer , and many more of that same strain ? i know well enough why he used those , his design being to make his gentle and simple readers stand gravely , and turn up the white , and look pale , and affrighted with all those black imputations he charges on that poor wretch . methinks i hear the censures of the herd , when they first read over his book , to this purpose : oh , here is a worthy piece , full of deep learning ; and believe me , he speaks home : he is a sweet man that wrote it , be he who he will , and was marvellously born through in it all . and oh , but it is seasonable ! and well t●ned : for he hath answered the whole book to a word . and where we thought it str●ngest , he sh●ws its weakness most . but i wish the poor wretch r●pentance , yet it is a proud companion , and full of disdain ; but i hope he is humbled for once : it were a pity of him , for they say he hath some abilities : but they are all wrong set : and he will , may be , study to heal the beast of the wound , which one of our champions hath given it ; but had he any sparks of grace , i could yet love him for his good — sake . it were a worthy attempt to go and satisfie such a gang of cattle : therefore the cavils on the fifth and sixth dialogue are so poor , that it were lost time to consider them ; and so groundless , that he who from reading over the dialogues themselves , is not able to withstand all those tricks of sophistry , would be little bettered by all we could add : and therefore we may well quit the theme , and that the rather , that we have examined all that is of publick concern in these debates : and for any thing that was started , which lies out of the way , we will leave the discussing of these to the conformist himself ; since our design in this conference was to get mutual satisfaction to our consciences , in these things which the laws enjoin : and if we have gained this , we are to leave contending about other things , which relate not to us . only if in these greater points it be found that what the conformist said in the dialogues , was grounded on so much clear and strong reason , as we have discovered since our first meeting ; it is to be presumed that in other things he was not so rash or irrational as to utter such absurdities or errors , as the late pamphlets do charge upon him . phil. our work was to consider , whether absolute subjection was due to the civil authority , and how far its dominion over our obedience did reach , and whether the principles and practices of the late times , had such evident characters of god's acceptance on them , that it was an unpardonable crime to reverse that building , which they prepared with so much noise , and cemented with so much blood ; and by consequence whether episcopacy was that accursed thing which provoked god's jealousie so much against us , that it was unlawful to unite with it , or so far to comply with its adherents as to unite with them in worship ? if these things be made clear to us , we need not amuse our selves , nor entertain one another with farther janglings , and therefore may break off our conference . isot. since you will break off , i shall not struggle about it : for it is a confession of your weakness , that you pass over so many things with this slight silence . basil. this is the genuine spirit of the party which you now express to the life ; but when ever the author of the dialogues undergoes the penance of examining what you desire , it will perhaps appear , you have as little ground for this as for your other boasting . but i am sure no scruple sticks with me about these great heads we have examined , so that upon a narrow survey of these matters , it appears he had more reason for what he asserted , than he then vented : and i have as little doubt of his being able to clear himself about other matters , which are snarled at by these pamphlets . but one thing i have not forgot , about which i am more sollicitous : which was a promise polyhistor made of sending when our conference were ended , an account of the model and forms of the ancient government : which i desire with such earnestness , that i wish we we●e gone , that he might be as good as his word . poly. i know not if it shall answer your hopes , but your curiosity shall be quickly satisfied , after i have given you some account of my design in it . when i considered the ruines of religion , and the decays of piety through the world , i have often bent my thoughts to seek out the most proper remedies and means for the churches recovery : and that which seemed the most promising , was to consider the constitution , the rites and forms of the ch●rch in her first and purest ages ; and to observe the steps of their dec●ning from the primitive simplicity and purity , which being once fully done , great materials would be the●eby congested for many use●ul thoughts , and overtures in order to a reformation . and this is a work , which for all the accurate enquiries this age hath produced , is not yet performed to any degree of perfection , or ingenuity : therefore i resolved to pursue this design as much as my leisure and other avocations could allow of . but as i was doubtful what method to follow in digesting my observations , the canons vulgarly called apostolical , offered themselves to my thoughts : i thereupon resolved to follow their tract , and to compile such hints as i could gather on my way for giving a clear view of the state of the church in the first ages . as for the opinions of the ancient fathers , these have been so copiously examined by the writers of controversies , that scarce any thing can be added to those who went before us : bet few have been at such pains for searching into their practices , and rules for discipline , and worship , wherein their excellency and strength lay . in this inquiry i have now made good advances , but at present i will only send you my observations on the two first canons : and as you shall find this task hath suc●eeded with me , i will be encouraged to break it off , or to pursue it farther . only on the way , let me tell you , that i am so far from thinking these canons , apostolical , that nothing can be more evid●nt , than that they were a collection made in the third century at soonest : for the matter of almost every canon discovers this when well examined , and therefore that epistle of zephir●us the pope , who lived about the year 20 , that mentions ●●●or as others cite it 70. ) of the apostles sayings , is not to be consider'd : that epistle with the other decretals , being so manifestly spurious , that it cannot be doubted by any who reads them : and the number sixty agrees with no edition ; for they are either fifty or 85. tertullian is also cited for them , but the words cited as his , are not in his book contra praxeam , from which they are vouched . nor can they be called the work of clemens romanus , though they were vented under his name . for athanasius in his synopsis , reckons the work of clemens apocryphal . and eusebius tells us that nothing ascribed to clement was held genuine , but his epistle to the corinthians . but the first publishers of these who lived , it is like in the third century , have called them apostolical , as containing the earliest rules which the apostolical men had introduced in the church . and afterwards others to conciliate more veneration for them , cal led them the canons of the apostles , compiled by clement . and this drew pope gelasius's censure on them , by which the book of the canons of the apostles is declared apocryphal : which some who assert their authority and antiquity , would foolishly evite , by applying that censure only to the 35. added canons : whereas the censure is simply passed on the book , and not on any additions to it . and this shall serve for an introduction to the papers i will send you how soon i get home . phil. i doubt not but all of us , except isotimus , will be very desirous to understand the particular forms of the primitive church : but he is so sure , that they will conclude against him , that i believe he is not very curious of any such discovery . isot. you are mistaken , for i doubt not , but much will be found among the ancients for me ; but if otherwise , i will lead you a step higher , to let you see that from the beginning it was not so : for antiquity , when against scripture , proves only the error ancient . and if you quit the scriptures to us , we will yield those musty records to you . eud. pray , speak not so confidently , after all your pretences have been so baffled , that we are ashamed of you : for you are like the spaniard , who retained his supercilious looks and gate , when he was set to beg . but i will not be rude in a place which owns me for its master , though really your confidence extorts it . isot. you are a proud company , and so elevated in your own eyes , that you despise all who differ from you , and think you censure them gently , if you call them no worse than ignorants and fools . is there any arrogance in the world like this ? phil. pray , let us not fall out , now that we are to part : but i confess it is no wonder the smart of all the foils you have got , provoke some passion in you , and so i pity you ; for i know none of your party who would have carried so discreetly . therefore , adieu , i must be gone , and leave this good company . isot. you will have the last word of scolding , but i perhaps will find out one that will be too hard for you all , and will call you to account of all you have both argued and boasted . basil. i will break of● next , since the design of your meeting is finished : only , polyhistor , mind your promise . poly. i go about it , and therefore , eudannon , i beg your pardon to be gone . eud. though retirement and solitude be ever acceptable to me , yet it will not be without some pain that i return to it , when i miss so much good company , as have relieved me these four days : but the truth is , on the other hand , i am glad to see an end put to this painful eng●gement of which i suppose we are all weary . it remains only that i return you my sincere and hearty thanks for the favor you have done me , which i wish i could do so warmly ▪ as might engage you frequently to oblige me with the like civilities . adieu , my good friends . finis . a briefe and summarie discourse upon that lamentable and dreadfull disaster at dunglasse. anno 1640. the penult of august collected from the soundest and best instructions, that time and place could certainly affoord, the serious enquirie of the painfull and industrious author. by william lithgovv. lithgow, william, 1582-1645? this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a05589 of text s109472 in the english short title catalog (stc 15708). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. 36 kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from 13 1-bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo 2017 a05589 stc 15708 estc s109472 99845119 99845119 10000 this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons 0 1.0 universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase 1, no. a05589) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set 10000) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, 1475-1640 ; 1278:15) a briefe and summarie discourse upon that lamentable and dreadfull disaster at dunglasse. anno 1640. the penult of august collected from the soundest and best instructions, that time and place could certainly affoord, the serious enquirie of the painfull and industrious author. by william lithgovv. lithgow, william, 1582-1645? [24] p. printed by robert bryson, edinburgh : [1640] in verse. signatures: a-c⁴. running title reads: times sorrowfull disaster at dunglasse. reproduction of the original in the british library. eng scotland -history -charles i, 1625-1649 -poetry. a05589 s109472 (stc 15708). civilwar no a briefe and summarie discourse upon that lamentable and dreadfull disaster at dunglasse. anno 1640. the penult of august. collected from th lithgow, william 1640 6414 9 0 0 0 0 0 14 c the rate of 14 defects per 10,000 words puts this text in the c category of texts with between 10 and 35 defects per 10,000 words. 2003-03 tcp assigned for keying and markup 2003-04 aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images 2005-03 melanie sanders sampled and proofread 2005-03 melanie sanders text and markup reviewed and edited 2005-04 pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a briefe and summarie discourse upon that lamentable and dreadfull disaster at dunglasse . anno 1640. the penult of august . collected from the soundest and best instructions , that time and place could certainly affoord , the serious enquirie of the painfull and industrious author . by william lithgovv . edinburgh , printed by robert bryson . the argument . what mean you poets now ? where are your verse ? shall gallants die ? will you forget their herse ? shall after times be robbd , of what disasters have now falne out ? fye on you poetasters why sit you dumb ? or can you not performe so sad a task , on such a grievous storme ? else gape you for reward , whilst there is none left to requite you , save your selves alone : this perhaps may stop you , why ? without gains , prest penmen shrink , its true , gifts sweeten pains but most men think , pathetick stiles seem hard for some to do , the like hath numbers marrde : shall i grown old then write ? nay , i must to it , since you , and your young straines refuse to do it . this work ten months ago , had seen the light , but unperformde promises , bred o'resight . at london , and at home : should i conceale for blandements , what i 'me bound to reveale , and at my cost dischargde : no , that wer● rare , to see mee court ( camelion like ) the aire . vvould god like subject , heavens from earth had closde , then friends nor foes , had grievd , nor yet rejoicde . but all monarchick tyme must seal this blow , what we construct , that sequel times may know : deeds smotherd , lye intombd , thoughts without words , are dumb mens signes , what our prime light affoords , is utterance from knowledge ; though now dark times , shut murder up , closde with perfidious crymes : nay , what 's not now ? hands , seals , oathes , writs , & vows , are cancelld , or forsworne ; deceit allows base falshood , for best truth : ( o treacherous hearts ! ) how shall the heavens revengeus ! on your parts yet patience crowns our suffrings , and none such but they who can the marke of conscience touch . then since it s so ; that words and woes agree , let silence sleep , i le mourne where mourners be . times sorrovvfull disaster at dunglasse , containing infallible grounds and reasons , how that most execrable and parracidiall deed was committed . let melting flouds , sad silent groaves , and winds bank-falling brooks , & shril woods that blinds prest nymphall lists ; let frowning time , & all the elements admyre , this monstrous fall , and marveilous mishape , done under tract of homicide , by an abortive fact : come let them roare , and rent the azure skies , ( lamenting this lament ) with shrinking cries , and agitat reports : let ecchoing hills , from their wide sighted tops , rebounding fills , the solitarie plains , with trembling sounds , of dreadfull massacres ; gorging stressd bounds , with laborinths of fears ; come spend their time , to sift the traitour , and that treacherous cryme : which this black herse averrs : let heavens , and all , that move , and live , within earths massie ball ; adhere , and witnesse bear , of these disasters , and by their kindes , turne prodigall worne wasters , of watrie woes : let darkned dens and caves , steep rocks sunk glens , dead creatures from their graves shout forth their plaints , sowre stormy showres of grief to plead our pleading losse . and to be brief ; come soul set mourners , for untimely death , that can expresse your sighes , and panting breath with hollow groanes , come shed with me salt teares , and plunging sobs , for mourning now appeares : say , if deep sorrow , may from passive mood , turn watrie woes , in a palmenian floud : it s more then time , coepartners had their share , grim grief is easde , when care reforgeth care , for if the minde ( like to a soul tormented ) make passion speak , melancholy is vented . what shaking terrour stroke me to the heart , whilst i conceivd the fact , and saw the part left desolate and spoild , and so confounded that my forcd cryes , from ecchoes twice rebounded , fell flatlings down , where they and i lay so , alive or dead , i knew not , if , or no : for passion ( like to rapsodies ) subverts the vitall sense , extreames construct our smarts . and none so shallow , but they may conceave that sudden news , if bad , our souls do leave , laid in a litargie , of sensllesse sleep , till rouzd , and then pale eyne begin to weep : such pearling drops , with windy sighs and sobs heart groaning grief , and cataphalion blobs , when brust , begets a voice , that voice sad words which now my self ; to my sought self affords . o fatall stroke ! o dolefull day and houre ! what raging hate , made time to lurk and loure , to murder such brave sparks , ( beside all others ) a noble lord , two knights , and two kinde brother all hammiltons of note ? with many moe , which in a catalogue , i will thee show , placd here at the conclusion , for direction so far by tryall , as i got inspection , vvith cost and toylsome paines : who can deplore their tragick end ? else who can keep in store their fatall names ? full threescore young and old , were killd and quelld , in that unhappie hould ; and smotherd down with stones : like fearfull end was ne'er heard of : what ? did a cloud portend that blustring blow , which rose on sunday morne , forth from the sea , and to dunglasse was borne . o pitifull presage ! which they did see , yet had no luck , from that hard luck to flee . but what ? who can expresse this grievous act ? hearts may conceive , what no pen can extract : some few of all were safe , and onely nine , of which there two , this mem'rie i propyne ; young dalmahoy and happie prestongrange , who by heavens marv'lous mercy , in this change did wondrously escape ; and yet both wounded , have in that harme , their health again refounded , all thanks to jove : lord make them wise to know their lives sweet safetie , in that dreadfull blow . for in the twinkling of a rolling eye , their friends and they were severd : but come , see , how all the rest lye shent , some undiscoverd are there shut up , with heaps of fragments coverd , and bodies torne and crushd : what shall i say ? but curse th' accident , of that dismall day . what , had the destinies , or angrie fates , crossde constellations , deaths prodigious mates , or ominous aspects , self-bloudy comets , that like prest whirlewindes , their furie vomits , with anxious threats on man , decreed this wonder ! that dye they must , and dye with such a thunder . o sterne mortalitie ! that with their death , reft blind posteritie , of lookd for breath , and natures tract , for they thryce hopefull syres , might have had children to their full desires ▪ which now we want , whilst they themselves are laid as low as dust , by deaths predom'nant spade . but stay sad soul , what means these heaps of stones , and lumps of walls , spread as confused ones ; trace here and there : where , when i went a spying , my heart it faild me , and i fell a crying : o heavens ! ( said i ) how came this deed to passe ? so many worthies slain , in sackt dunglasse : for what ? by whom ? what evill had they done ? that one black sudden blast , they could not shun : wa st their ancestors fault ? their owne much worse ? their kinreds guilt or friends ? their childrens curse ? or hyrelings scourge ? o heavens will ye conceal this stratagem , and not the truth reveal : if mortall men were angels , we should know the cause , the sin , the wretch , the hand the blow : but this combustion , ah ! confused tort , was but a crack : and now to make it short , there 's one suspect'd , and that suspitions true , actor he was , if done of spight , judge you , as after you shall hear : but i 'le proceed in method and in matter , so take heed . lo , i have searchd , and tryde , and seen the place , and spoke with some alive ; but for the cace and manner how , they know no more , then they who never saw 't , so sudden was the fray : that even the thought , of that prepostrous fit , vvas sensible , to have robbd them of their wit , if deeply weighd : as who would from a rock , leap headlong in the sea , such was that knock , these innocents receivd : a lyons heart vvould shake in pieces , to conceive their smart , and short farewell . so quick was their goodnight , like to a faulcon in his hungrie flight . that lends the eye a glance , that heart nor minde can show the like , except the rushing winde . which forceth me , ( if melting woes may mourne ) backwards to look , and to my plaints returne : o sad disaster ! so monstrous and cruel , as if hells mouth , had lent the action fewell , is more then admirable : what flesh can dascon the fault , and that short fury scan . afore the floud and after , the like blow was never heard of , nor no time can show so foule a tragick act : done , and undone , was both the deed , and dead ; the glimpsing moone vvas in the wayning hushd , as if the night that followd on , had lost its borrowd light from curling thetis ▪ like crack , nor like smoake made never strombolo , that burning rock in the eufemian gulf ; nor vulcans shop in the aeolian iles , can this o'retop , nor no like furious flame ; nor aetnaes fire in three set parts , may with this crack aspire , for all its force : was malice so incensde , that neither space nor favour , was propensde to harmelesse honestie . o dreadfull doome ! that with a clap , did threescore lives consume . or was it so , that flesh and bloud may shrink , to ruminat on them ? or shall we think but our deserts are worse ; the good with bad do suffer oft , for destinie is mad . me thinks that hell broke loose , and that the divell had got his reynes , the actor of this evill : o divine providence ! how could this be ? vvhen he that 's kept in chains , was now set free is he not limitd , and thy mighty power set to controle him , else he vvould devoure thy saints , and choicelings , but belike it s so thou lets him smite , yet sa●es thy people tho : he could not torture job , without commission nor yet work here , without thy large permission : was there no way to death , but by the rage of a tempestuous sound ? could nought asswage thine angrie face , o god! but dye they must , and with a violent rapt , be throwne to dust , as doomesday had been set , to raze the world with twinckling speed , so were they from us hurld . if done in field or battell , it had been no cause of sorrow , lesse of weeping eyne . for mars conceives no sturt , nor will allow his darlings should , to peevish wayling bow , which we must yeeld to : yet if we compare acts past , with present , this fact must be rare . how kings were murderd , & their kingdoms thrown downe to destruction , is distinctly known by pen and pensile ; and preceeding times have left to us the reason , and their crymes . proud pyrhus with a stone , from a weak hand lost life and kingdome , and his great command : and agamemnon , after ten yeares warres , returnd ; when done , were vanquisht phrigian jarres , was by his page transactd , ( with a back thrust ) from high bred honour , to disdainfull dust . vvhat bloud was shed , in the pharsalian field , where caesar fought with pompey ; both did weild the accidents of fortune , for they strove to lord the earth , next to imperiall jove ; caesar was victor , and that romane floure lost all the world , within one dismall houre : yet caesar smarts , ( the fates his doome extend ) he rose with bloud , and made a bloudy end . i will not speak , of tamberlanes great fight five hundred thousands , put to death and flight : nor from the thebane captaines will i bring their bloudy trophees , nor of carthage sing , and her subverted champion ; nor sackt tyre , nor ilions doome , shall my pen set on fire : nor siege i jebus , ( iosephs sacred storie ) where vanquishd jews , lost with themselves their glory nor of the eastern monarchy i le sing , how philips son , was made a persian king , and spread his wings to ganges ; whence returnde , to babels delicates ; where fortune spurnd , against his pride , and by a slave ( made slave ) was rest , of what he rest , nay , worse the grave . like instances , i many could produce , but these may serve , for to shut up the sluce : yet what of all , can all these paralell this horrid murder : no , i will thee tell like villany and fact , read never man , if with the matter , you the manner scan . traitours to castles fled , fraught with dispaire , have blown themselves , and fortunes in the aire but that was madnesse : voluntarie acts are murders , the devil constructs such facts : but this malheure , ah ! unexpectd disdain , came thundring forth , and with its crack they 're slaine , a ravishd thing , like to a thought or gleame of fancies fled ; so was this deed a dream , to sight and swift conceit : o wondrous wonder ! and fearfull blacknesse , of a boystrous thunder , which rent the clouds : oh! what shall i report , to correspond this all predominant tort : but stay and muse , on accidents have been , or voluntary deeds , too often seen ; crossd ships at sea misled , by chance , or spight , or for revenge , been vanquishd by strong fight have blown themselves aloft . looke for the nones , how men were burnt , and slaine , and drownde at ones : take here the popes armado , lately shrunk , where seas with papists bloud , were soundly drunk along the kentish shoare , till neptune staggerd , whilst hyrelings on , his tumbling sides they swaggerd : we thank thee martin trump , thou playd a spring on thy great trumpes , made tritons dancers sing spaine and romes overthrow ; and set us free from their damnd plots , perfidious policie . i will not here insist , although i can discusse their projects , subject , craft , and man . then to illustrate all , take eighty eight , take merchant fights , take pirats , & more slight take tartarets and frigots , you shall see when stressd and claspd , how desperatly they die : this word , give fire , transcends them through the aire where with themselves , their foes the like doe share , and seldome failes , unlesse a distance be , the one been sackt , the other back doth flee . vvhat of like accidents , they 're but extreames forcd on revenge , self-murder crownes their names vvith endlesse torture : but ah ! this deed now done , can not be matchd , with nought beneath the sunne . yet some i le point , to let you see what wounds depend on climats , and their sun-scorchd bounds . then i to earthquakes come , and deafning thunder , vvhere i le touch three grosse accidents of wonder , at berat near castras in languedock , a thunder bolt upon thee steeple broke ( the folk been fled for safetie to the church ) full sixteen hundreds , closd within its porch ) the steeple ( stroke ) fell down , and with its fall down came the church , the tecture , roof , and al vvhich smotherd the whole people : never one escapd that roaring shot , save twelve alone that kept at home , been sicklie , agd , and lame , and had no strength , to court this falling frame , this stone-welld town laid waste , the sequel day i came to view it , fearfull was the fray : this thundring blow fell out , on fryday morne one thousand , six hundred , and thirteen worne . from thence to lombardie , i le quicklie trace , to pearie , that incorprat haplesse place , set on the river ladishae , and closd between two hills , the alpes are here disclosde vvhich bend to rhetiaes land : this citie crownd for orenge , fig , and le●●●n , was renownd : the tenth of august , and on sunday night , at eight a clock , appeard a fearfull sight : an earthquake shook the hill , above , and under : the town streets trembled , like quagmyres asunder : the rock falls from above , the towne it sunk ingulfd within earths bosome : as it shrunk , there was none savd , not woman , man , nor childe , nor gold , nor goods , ( the truth been here instyld ) except a bell , that from the steeple brust , when it was swallowd , with a counter-thrust : the river followd on , and in it run long five houres space , till all was full , and done returnd to its own course : the bell was found on th' other side of ladish , dasht on ground : three thousand lives were lost , and ly interrd , vvithin one grave : behold , how fortune errd . last to bizantium , i amazed come , to reckon on mishaps , and there 's the summe , in winter ( not in harv'st the usuall time , when terramoti court , each parched clyme ) an earthquake movd , and in the town it fals , near bosphores side , and razd a myle of wals , which fencd the place ; and in that glutting downe three thousand houses , land , and sea did drowne , which held ten thousand people : but its true , there were few greeks , the most were turke and jew , and so the lesser losse : i will not stand here to expostulate ( from hand to hand ) how that ground was recoverd ; but it cost the great turke more , than all was drownd and lost : but for their sepulchre , i daring swear , i never saw the like , as i saw here . lo , this great judgement fell , in dark december , one thousand six hundred , ten , as i remember . yet to comment on this , these incidents , arise as bassads , from their elements , of fire , and aire : the one through clouds it brusts , the other choaks it , with retorting gusts : composde of contraries , lightning , and raine , the former forcd , the sequell addes the straine . the last as reinvestd , in earth is found , when hollow sun-scorchd chinks , divide the ground : the winde rushd in , begets a monstrous birth , that can transplant , or raze mountaines of earth . townes , forts , or cittadales , transforme a lake , in heaps of sand ; so , so , the earth can quake : not done by airt nor hand , or hellish plots , as this abortive deed ( exposd on scots ) was by the devill devisde , he actd his part and causd distress , with groaning patients smart done by ned paris , arraignd at the court of heaven , and earth , for this tremenduous tort enforcd on death . come let thy ghost appear , to answer for thy fact , that 's sifted here : wast done of malice ? or of negligence ? if not of purpose , lesse was thine offence ▪ and yet no oversight , nor carelesse minde , can thee excuse , for that would judgement blind ; no , it s not so , thy bloudy oathes and curses bewrayd thy drift ; thy foure times mounting horses , that afternoon : and still would flee , yet stayd , the train was laid , but thou the fact delayd , till thy lords comming back , with knights and gentry vvherein the inner court , just at the entrie , to mount the stairs , there , there , thou smote thy maister and many gallants with that damnd disaster : vvhich in thy looks was seen , ere it was done , mischief hung in thy face , that after noone , with railing , swearing , cursing , boasting some , ( vvhom thou affectd ) to haste soon to their home : and yet one scapd , whom thy menacing throat did spur away , the greater his good lot , the stable keeper there , will paterson , that did attend thee then , set me this down . but i le come near , and try more strict conclusions , base mindes ill set , are fosters of confusions ; then what meant that irne ladle in thine hand tane from the kitchin hot ( o hels fyrebrand ! ) vvhence to the magazin , thou kept thy way , vvhere eighteen hundred weight of powder lay , of which thou hadst the charge , and onely thou came onely there : what ? did thy lord bestow on thee that trust , and durst thou play the knave to kill thy maister : vile opprobious slave , mad were thy brains , and still were known for madnesse all times absurd , and rammage in thy badnesse : a great blasphemer of gods name , and more thy proverb was , devill damne me , there 's the gore , that slew thee with that slaughter : o cursde wretch ! and wicked drudge how could thou this way stretch thy cruel hands , was there no pittie left to save the saiklesse ? was thou so far reft , ( o senselesse sot ) from reason and respect of men and maister , that thou wouldst infect the earth and aire with murder : oft i said to thine and my consorts , this english blade is neither sound nor civil : o! how can his lord give trust , to such a frantick man : a daily drunkard , sotting here and there , led with deboshrie , and infernall care . another thing condemnes thee , that same night , an houre before the deed , in deep despight , thou wouldst not give to souldiers , match , nor ball , nor powder , save two shots : and worst of all these carabines thou chargd , and didst deliver to troupers were half chargd : nor seldome ever had half of them flint stones : their bals were choakd half ●aches downe , and could not be revokd , nor shot undread , though time and place cravd aid , bred from that barwick fray , was there defrayd . thy speech disclosd thy spight , thy rammage looke and glooming browes , gave signes ( if not mistook ) of unafronted drifts : thy grumbling words , and chattring lips , were sharper far then swords , which erst had been more calme : this tale was thine , some scots ere long should smart , as they at tine , which wore the papall badge : vvhich thou performd , whē that brave house , with thy cursd hāds thou stormd vvhich vvas made knovvn to some three dayes before the deed vvas done , it vvould be done , and more these news from barwick came , and many heare it , but could not know the manner how to feare it : which shows it was devisd , and sought , and wrought by traitours in both lands , ere it was brought to such a dreadfull passe . had this wretch livd , doubtlesse some had , in both the kingdomes grievd , and lost their hydra necks : now i le returne to cavell with the traitour , and this turne . thy body in three parts , sore torne was found and one of them thy legge , ●●ich on the ground , lay twelve weeks hid mongst stones , and this i saw two swyne its flesh , from thy cursde bones did gnaw a just and loathsome sight : in thy left hand the irne ladle stuck fast ; the grip and band was hard and sure , that scarce one man could throw the ladle from thy fingers ; there 's a blow . would god before breda , that thou hadst died three yeares ago , where thou wast vilifyed with every souldier ; then this wofull deed had not been done , nor such deep grievance spread in honest hearts , o vyle barbarian barbour , and son of a poore porter , could thou harbour so deadly damnd disdain , as for to kill all kinde of sex , in thy most sceleratill : nay , could not spare thy self ; had thou no wit to save thy self and flee , when time thought fit . away unhappie beast , what shall i conster ? but curse thy birth , bred for a murdring monster : did not thy maister cloath thee , like a knight , and stuff thy purse with gold : o thanklesse wight ! his love thy life abusde , whilst drunken snake , the tavern turnd thy church ; did thou forsake the law of duetie , but curst malandrine , thy brain-sick pate , must run on his ruine . might not seven yeares twice o're command thy part . to honour his familiar noble heart : were ever any knew him , but admyrd how his rich minde , was with great gifts inspyrd , and hardinesse of heart ; lord w. w. may , recall that combat , of his vanquishd day : and could this ruffian , th' abject of a traitour , injure so high a sprite , so kynde a nature . and yet he lives , ( so great was his good name ) christs martyr , truths mirrour , faiths soul-plight fame the cause was good he dyed for , but the fact and parracide , was hatefull , here 's the tract . o inhumane ! most execrable deed ! so barbrous neckt , with a cyclopian head , framd like enceladus ; that thrice me thinks , he 's worse than villane , at this murder winks . what heathnick , or what pagane ? savage bloud what infidel ? could have provd half so rude as this cursde cative , englands monster borne , that with the fact , left life and soul forlorne . what jamnite ? or what sabunck ? garlick slaves would not to nature stoupe ? whose light conceaves a tender kindnesse , to conserve the race of mankinde , vertue , having the first place : but this cerberian snake , had no regard to great nor small , like doome was never heard as he decreed : ah ! i want words and breath for to detect this charon , and their death . but he like erostratus would aspire , that set dianas temple in a fire , to purchase flying fame : so frantick he in this catastrophe , would living be , which i adhere to , and for longer time , i le fix on brasse , his filthy fact and cryme . if any be suspectd , more than this wretch , let justice , and sound judgement to it stretch , and let our parliament , sift and search out the plot , the man , the guilt , if there be doubt . for common fame i leave 't , and for like torts , of tortring tongues , i le not build on reports . why ? that 's absurd to follow flying fame , it s deep experience , reares up truth a name . now i le return to my pathetick style , and mourne with mourning ladies grievd the while , for losse of their dear husbands ; o pale woe ! when two made one , the knot dissolves in two , rent by the fates , egregious whirling rage , and not by frequent death , done by a page , and quintiscencd salpeter : o who can ! their melancholy mindes , in sadnes scan ! each soul reserves its grief , each hath like losse , for life there 's death , for comfort sorrows cross a common woe ; peculiar to each one graft , and engraves , a sympathizing moane : first , thou great dame , thryce noble by thy birth , sprung from a princely stock : what tongue on earth with words can swage thy woes ? thy sorrows show , from heart-grown grief , that foule pernicious blow , attachd fore thee : thy face , thy food , thy rest , and sleep denote , how thy sad soul 's opprest with helplesse care : whilst scarcely half a year did thou enjoy this dearest jewell , thy dear : great was that love , thy loving hadington bore to thy soul : thy love again did crowne his fixt respect : by which your tender hearts knit up in one , made love act both your parts : that hymen blushd ( the god of sacred rites ) to see how love involvd in one , two sprites : and why ? no wonder , both alike excelld , the one the other , in goodnesse paralelld , he spoke , you smild , he winkd , & you conceivd his mentall scope , what great content receivd your mutuall intents , whilst demonstration reciprocat , brought paphos one oblation : and yet he left thee , not to live alone , but left thee his fair phenix , being gone . a pledge of comfort , representing still his face , thy stamp , his heart , thy love , his will . o like penolope ! if thou couldst spinne a daily threed , and that same threed untwinne , till he turnd back , so that the fates had sworne thy pennance should be , twentie winters borne , and he redeemd : but stay sad muse , returne , galld grief and love , can not together mourne . two passions , two extreams , and here i finde , they 're violent rapts , in either of each kinde ▪ away with didoes stroke , lucretiaes smart , faire hieroes thrust , palmeniaes fatall dart , which grim despaire ( not love ) forcd them to act their self-sought murder , in a tragick fact : call , call to mind ! gods providence , and see nought comes to passe , without heavens high decree , which mortals must embrace : then lady spare thy ruthlesse grief , lay on the lord thy care . and ye the rest , deare ladies in your kindes , let sorrow smart , take comfort , lift your mindes above all worldly crosses ; you shall see , the length of dayes ; hence soules eternitie in endlesse peace : cast all your griefe on god , he can release , and chasten , bruise the rod . lo , deepest streames , in smoothest silence slyde , whilst channels roar , so shallow mourners glyde , with words at will , but mighty cares sit dumbe , like livelesse corps , laid in a livelesse tombe : whence moistned vapours , forcd from humid woes lye in oblivion terrd . and now to close , as quickly went their soules to heaven , we hope , as their lives quickly fled : the traitours scope was set on murder : but their angels watchd and caught their sprites , as with a twinkling catchd to paradise : where now thrice blest they be , with glorie crownde ; heires of eternitie , and endlesse joyes : for they as martyres died , and now sweet souls , with triumphs dignified : set up mongst hierarchies , of sacred sprites , that to their blest societie , them invites , to seale their martyredome , in jesus hand cled with his righteousnesse : who can demand a better state ? then face for face , to face , the face of faces , in that glorious place ; where saints and martyres , environing round , the old eternall , with the joyfull sound of aleluhiaes , sing before the throne holy , holy , lord , to heavens holy one , the lambe of god , hembd in with burning glore , praise , might , dominion , majestie , and power : where they ( thrice hopefull happie ) ever blest , are crownd and raigne , in long eternall rest . so , so forbear , ye who keep grief in store , take up your crosse , and for them mourne no more . and now followeth the names of the most part of them that died at dunglasse , the penult of august , 1640. so farre as possibly the author could collect by serious instruction , and diverse informations , both of the vulgars , and better sort . thomas earle of hadington . robert hammilton of binny his brother . master patrick hammilton , his naturall brother . sir alexander hammilton of lawfield . sir john hammilton of redhouse . colonel erskine , son to john late earl of mar. john keith , son to george late earle marshall sir gideon baillie of lochend . laird of ingilstoun elder . laird of gogor elder . alexander moore , heritour of skimmer . john gate minister at bunckle . niniane chirneside in aberladie . james sterling lieutenant . alexander cuningham lieutenant . david pringle barbour chirurgion . robert faulconer , sergeant . george vach , haddingtons purveyer . john white plaistrer , an english man . william symington , lochends servant . george neilson in alhamstocks . james cuningham in hadington . john manderstoun . matthew forrest . patrick batie . alaster drummond , alias gundamore . john campbell . john idington . james foord , john arnots post boy . john orre . andrew braidie . john tillidaff . john keith , a childe . women five . margaret arnot , daughter to the postmaister at cockburnspeth . marjorie dikson , john keiths servant . marion carnecrosse . aleison gray . with twelve bore armes , whose names i could not ken , souldiers for time , not mercenary men : the rest ( unfound ) ly terrd , corps , clothes , and bones under huge heaps of glutinated stones . lo , i have done , as much as lay in me , to try the truth , and blaze it , likes it thee , imepleasde : if not , a figge for carpers checks , whose chattring spight , the rule of reason brecks . and now to close , let criticks of all ranks , convince their censures , and yeeld me kinde thanks for what gain i , save labour , pains , and cost , to show the living , how the dead were lost . finis .